Hong Kong: HK set to grasp new opportunities

Chief Executive Carrie Lam

Welcome to the Asian Financial Forum, the 15th edition, and the first in a number of events to kick-start celebrations for the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

While the pandemic has once again prevented me from greeting you in person, I will not forgo an opportunity to give you an account of where Hong Kong stands in our financial services and am therefore speaking to you online. I am pleased to know that many financial and business professionals, investors, entrepreneurs and educators, as well as government and institutional leaders - from Hong Kong, Mainland China, throughout Asia and around the world - are taking in this year's two-day forum, and amongst them are a panel of distinguished speakers. It shows that the Asian Financial Forum has indeed become a brand event to start a new year, providing an opportunity for leaders and practitioners in the region and the world to exchange the views on the global economy in an ever-changing world, no less as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has lasted for two years.

This years theme is Navigating the Next Normal towards a Sustainable Future. The theme properly describes what people nowadays are looking forward to in a world of uncertainties marked by extreme weather, pandemic outbreaks, geopolitical tensions and diverging fiscal and monetary policies worldwide. It is exactly the quest to navigate through these uncertainties that brings us all here. During this forum, high-profile speakers from all over the world will offer their insight and intelligence on the new normal - on how we get there, how the evolving global economic and financial system must respond - and how we as economies, companies and individuals can better prepare ourselves for todays and tomorrows formidable tests, while building the sustainable future we all want.

Chief among these daunting global challenges is climate change. The forums line-up of speakers, I am pleased to note, includes such internationally recognised leaders as Mark Carney, the United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Action & Finance. Mr Carney has made a clear and compelling case for the need of every company, every financial firm, every bank, insurer and investor to change if we are to avert an all-consuming crisis. Jean-Claude Trichet, former President of the European Central Bank, is another forum highlight. Mr Trichet knows the essential importance of creating a resilient economy in troubled times. Indeed, in any times - good or bad - a stable and responsive financial system is critical in supporting economic growth.

Hong Kong's financial system is characterised by our sound regulatory and risk management regime. It is also underpinned by the principle of "one country, two systems" and with it, institutional strengths such as the rule of law, an independent judiciary, highly open and internationalised markets, a deep liquidity pool, and the free flow of people, information and capital. These strengths, which are embodied in the Basic Law, have not only sustained during the challenging period in Hong Kong over the past two and a half years, but have been fortified by the resolute actions of the central authorities to enact and implement the National Security Law in June 2020 and improve our electoral system last year to ensure patriots administering Hong Kong.

With one country, two systems back on the right track, international investors and observers have shown confidence in Hong Kong. The latest Global Financial Centres Index, in September last year, ranked Hong Kong third globally among the more than 100 financial centres assessed, behind only New York and London. Also in September, we were once again named the worlds freest economy in the Fraser Institutes annual Economic Freedom of the World report. And the 2021 World Investment Report, published last June by the United Nations Conference on Trade & Development, ranked Hong Kong the worlds third-largest recipient of foreign direct investment.

Last year, the daily turnover in our stock market averaged over US$21 billion, up 28.8% over 2020. We also continue to be a global fundraising hub. Last year, we raised US$42 billion in funds through initial public offerings (IPOs), ranking fourth globally. Hong Kongs fund management business is also flourishing. It grew 21%, year on year, to around US$4.5 trillion at the end of 2020.

Looking ahead, beyond the pandemic and the continuing cloud it raises over global economic growth, particularly associated with the Omicron COVID-19 variant, we see boundless possibilities. We know how important it is for Hong Kong to consolidate existing advantages and seek out fresh opportunities. For the next few minutes, allow me to talk about several of these prospects.

First and foremost is the strong support of the central government in consolidating and strengthening Hong Kongs role as an international financial centre, particularly in aspects of asset management, risk management and offshore RMB business, as reinforced in the countrys 14th Five-Year Plan promulgated in March 2021. In addition, Hong Kong has always been a reliable fundraising centre for Mainland enterprises and companies from all over the world. To ensure that we retain and, indeed, build on our strengths, our stock exchange, the HKEX, continues to introduce wide-ranging reforms. In 2018, it launched a listing regime for new economy enterprises, including pre-revenue, pre-profit biotechnology companies; innovative corporations with weighted voting rights structures; and qualified companies seeking a secondary listing in Hong Kong. To date, 70 such companies have listed in Hong Kong, raising US$74 billion through IPOs. Among them, 48 companies were pre-revenue or pre-profit biotechnology companies. These raised US$14.4 billion, making Hong Kong the worlds second-largest fundraising hub for biotechnology companies.

At the beginning of this new year, the HKEX also launched a listing regime for special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, following market consultation. Some have commented that our SPACs regime is not as relaxed as in some other jurisdictions, but I am confident that it will find success in the Hong Kong market, offering a judicious balance between market development and investor protection.

Hong Kong is also an ideal destination for international investors looking to park and manage their funds. In this regard, we are taking a multi-pronged approach to build on the enviable strength of our asset and wealth management sector. That includes diversifying our fund structures by introducing open-ended fund company and limited partnership fund regimes, along with re-domiciling funds to strengthen Hong Kongs edge in fund creation and operation. Nearly 400 limited-partnership funds have been set up in Hong Kong over the past year or so.

We are also working to provide profits-tax exemptions for qualified onshore and offshore fund transactions and the carried interest of private-equity funds operating in Hong Kong. In addition, we are putting a priority on the emerging family office business. Invest Hong Kong has set up a global team to provide one-stop shopping for family offices interested in establishing a presence in Hong Kong. We are also considering tax concessions to enhance Hong Kongs attractiveness as a family office hub.

Hong Kong is also an international risk-management centre. To enhance our competitiveness, we have implemented a variety of measures over the past year. They include offering profits-tax concessions for select insurance businesses and expanding the scope of insurable risks for captive insurers based in Hong Kong.

We have also established a dedicated regulatory regime for insurance-linked securities and launched a subsidy scheme for their issuance in Hong Kong. These measures, I am pleased to say, enabled the issuance, in October last year, of our first insurance-linked security. And that has spurred Hong Kongs emergence as a centre for insurance-linked securities.

There is more good news for our insurance industry. We are working to enhance mutual access of the insurance market in the Greater Bay Area, establishing after-sales service centres in the Greater Bay Area cities. The goal is to provide Hong Kong insurance policyholders in the Greater Bay Area with comprehensive support, from enquiries to claims and, of course, policy renewal. We are also preparing for early implementation of the unilateral recognition policy on cross-boundary motor vehicle insurance. This will allow Hong Kong vehicles to enter Guangdong through the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, while promoting connectivity throughout the region. We hope to make concrete progress on these measures early this year.

Financial technology is also a policy priority of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. Over the past year, our Fintech Proof-of-Concept Subsidy Scheme has granted US$1.3 million to more than 90 projects, following a rigorous vetting process. The projects range from wealthtech, regtech and insurtech payment systems to cross-boundary data analysis, remittances and many other areas.

The distress and disruption caused by the pandemic over the past two years have taught us the importance of preparing for global crises. That certainly includes climate change. Hong Kong announced its climate action plan in October last year, setting out strategies and measures to achieve our goal of reducing carbon emissions by 50% before 2035 as compared to the 2005 level, and carbon neutrality before 2050. This covers electricity generation, energy saving and green buildings, as well as green transport and waste reduction. We expect some US$30 billion in public-sector investment over the next 15 to 20 years to support the measures. I am confident this will also create wide-ranging opportunities for our fast-emerging green economy.

My Government, in collaboration with financial regulators and the industry, is stepping up efforts to promote green and sustainable finance in Hong Kong. Since May 2019, we have issued green bonds totalling the equivalent of more than US$7 billion under the Government Green Bond Programme. They cover bonds denominated in US dollars, euros and renminbi. The issuances drew welcome demand from global investors, helping to establish benchmarks for potential issuers in Hong Kong and the region. With the rolling out of the Green & Sustainable Finance Grant Scheme, we encourage the issuance of green and sustainable bonds and loans in Hong Kong. And we welcome financial and professional service providers and external reviewers to set up or expand here in Hong Kong.

Our Green & Sustainable Finance Cross-Agency Steering Group is actively developing its strategic plan. Last month, the steering group announced recommendations to encourage capacity building and access to green and sustainable financial data. The steering group has also completed a preliminary assessment of carbon-market opportunities for Hong Kong, and is exploring the possibilities of Hong Kongs development as a regional carbon-trading centre. That includes the creation of a global voluntary carbon market and carbon-market opportunities as part of Hong Kongs growing co-operation with the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. As the business bridge between China and the rest of the world, Hong Kong is well positioned to connect green and sustainable funds from the Mainland and the world. That can only help the Mainland in its efforts to realise peak carbon emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060.

Many of the issues, concerns and opportunities I have touched on will be discussed and debated throughout the Asian Financial Forum. My thanks to the Hong Kong Trade Development Council for putting together such a remarkable programme for this years forum, which I am sure you will thoroughly enjoy.

Ladies and gentlemen, we welcomed in a new year 10 days ago. In just over three weeks, we will celebrate the Chinese New Year - the Year of the Tiger. May it usher in a year of global ambition and vitality. May the tiger in all of us reveal our intelligence, courage and fierce determination to overcome challenges and build a better future.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam delivered this video speech at the 15th Asian Financial Forum held online on January 10.

This story has been published on: 2022-01-10. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Vietnam promotes application of AI in hydrometeorology

Applying artificial intelligence in the hydro-meteorological sector is essential, said Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Le Cong Thanh.













Releasing a ball to monitor wind direction and speed at the Lang Son agricultural meteorological station under Lang Son's hydro-meteorology station. (Photo: VNA)

According to the Deputy Minister, the hydro-meteorological sector in general and the National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting (NCHMF) in particular need to continue to speed up digital transformation and technology application, including the use of artificial intelligence to meet higher requirements and effectively serve socio-economic development.



Head of the NCHMFs Weather Forecasting Department Tran Quang Nang said that the Vietnam Meteorological and Hydrological Administration has developed forecasting technology, including the application of AI to various fields such as monitoring, calculation, forecasting technology. This application helps to improve the quality of hydro-meteorological forecasts and warnings, thus ensuring reliability and closeness to reality, and contributing to reducing disaster risks, and boosting socio-economic development.



Deputy Director General of the Vietnam Meteorological and Hydrological Administration Dr. Hoang Duc Cuong said that artificial intelligence has gradually replaced many manual jobs, helping save labour and limit some faults by human.



The Administration has established its Steering Committee for Digital Transformation for the 2021  2025 period, and at the same time implemented different research and application of artificial intelligence in specific problems, including the application of AI in storm forecasting, heavy rainfall quantification and forecasting of water level rise caused by storms.



Cuong said that the hydro-meteorological sector has received the States investments through modernisation projects that have achieved encouraging results.



In the coming time, the Vietnam Meteorological and Hydrological Administration continues to invest in and develop the application of artificial intelligence in data processing, hydrometeorological forecasting and warning, build a virtual assistant system to automatically provide weather information for users, and apply virtual reality and virtual interaction in the presentation of hydro-meteorological information./.
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No casualties have been reported so far.

"A level-2 fire broke out in a wood godown near Mustafa Bazar in the Byculla area of Mumbai. 8 fire brigades reached on the spot to control the fire, no casualties reported so far," said an official.

Rescue operation is underway. More details are awaited. (ANI)
A bamboo artefacts craftsman who claims to be a Master degree holder in Fine Arts seeks government intervention as he is forced to sell his goods on the footpath, making it difficult for his family to make ends meet. "2-3 generations of our family have been making flower pots, ornaments, paintings from bamboo, but now we don't have any business or source of income. We want the government to help promote this art," said Naseemuddin, bamboo craftsman. "To bring food on the table for my family, I have started selling artefacts on the footpath," he said. "This is a difficult period for artists, with the machine age traditional artistic houses are getting extinct. Earlier, we used to roam across the country with our artefacts, set up stall to sell our product. But since now (due to COVID-19 restrictions) we cannot go around to sell our products. We want the government to come forward to help artists," he added. (ANI)
After Bharatiya Janata Party MLA from Bihar's Narkatiaganj Rashmi Verma announces her resignation citing "personal reasons", party's state president Sanjay Jaiswal informed that the MLA wrote the letter due to some family issue but did not present it to the Legislative Assembly speaker. "There were some family issues with Rashmi Verma. She had written her resignation letter but did not present it to the Legislative Assembly speaker. Her personal issues have nothing to do with her political career. She will come back," Jaiswal said. Earlier on Sunday, Narkatiaganj's MLA wrote a letter to the Speaker of the Bihar Legislative Assembly which read, "I am resigning from the membership of Bihar Legislative Assembly because of my personal reasons. Kindly accept my resignation." She was elected to Bihar Assembly from Narkatiaganj seat on BJP ticket in the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections. With the announcement of resignation by Rashmi Verma, the tally of BJP in Assembly will reduce to 73 if Speaker accepts her resignation. The NDA had secured a 125-seat majority in the 243-seat strong Bihar Legislative Assembly in 2020, of which BJP won on 74 seats, JD(U) on 43 while eight seats were won by two other NDA constituents. The RJD, on the other hand, emerged as the single-largest party with 75 seats while the Congress only won 19 of the 70 seats it had contested on. (ANI)
The administration of 'precaution dose' of COVID-19 vaccine to healthcare, frontline workers and those above 60 years began in the national capital on Monday. "We feel fine. There are no side-effects, everyone should take the jab," said a woman who took a 'precaution dose' at a vaccination centre in RML Hospital. "As doctors advised that this dose is needed for frontline workers, I followed scientific advice and came here today to get the precautionary dose,' said a man present in the vaccination centre in Laxmi Nagar. "I am confident that whatever doctors have advised is correct. I am sure that with this dose, I am safe," said another. The online registration for 'precaution dose' on the Co-WIN platform began on Friday (January 8). All HCWs, FLWs and citizens aged 60 years or above with comorbidities will be able to access the vaccination for precaution dose through their existing Co-WIN account. The precaution dose can only be taken after 9 months i.e., 39 weeks from the date of administration of 2nd dose. The Ministry of Health and Welfare has recommended that precaution dose for healthcare workers, frontline workers and senior citizens with co-morbidities will be the same as given previously. It had also informed that the senior citizens with co-morbidities will not be required to produce a doctor's certificate or prescription at the time of administration of the precaution dose. Eligibility of beneficiaries for the precaution dose will be based on the date of administration of 2nd dose as recorded in the Co-WIN system. Co-WIN system will send SMS to such beneficiaries for availing the precaution dose when the dose becomes due. Registration and appointment services can be accessed through both online and onsite modes. The details of the administration of the precaution dose will be suitably reflected in the vaccination certificates. Union Health Minister Dr Mansukh Mandaviya informed that reminder SMS have been sent to more than 1 crore health and frontline workers and 60+citizens for their precaution dose. "The Government is ensuring the security of the health army that secures the country. Reminder SMS have been sent to more than 1 crore health and frontline workers and 60+ citizens for their #PrecautionDose . Appointments on COWIN are already open. The dosing program is being started from tomorrow," Mandaviya tweeted on Sunday. Indian Council of Medical Research also said that the third dose of Covaxin holds promise."Third dose of COVAXIN holds promise," ICMR had tweeted. The medical research body in its tweet further highlighted the benefits of getting Covaxin's precautionary dose. As per a letter to States/UTs by Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, personnel deployed for election duty have been included in the frontline workers category and will be eligible for precaution dose. Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa will be held between February 10 and March 7 and the counting of votes will take place on March 10. In his address to the nation on December 25, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that the precautionary doses of vaccine will be started for healthcare, frontline workers and citizens above 60 years with co-morbidities starting January 10, 2022. With the administration of more than 89 lakh doses (89,28,316) vaccine doses in the last 24 hours, India's COVID-19 vaccination coverage has exceeded 151.57 crore (1,51,57,60,645) as per provisional reports till 7 am today, the health ministry said on Saturday. (ANI)
Seeking a court-monitored probe into a security breach case, the state government urged to give them a fair hearing.

The government said that it has issued seven show-cause notices to the officers seeking an explanation why no action should be taken against them for the incident.

DS Patwalia, Advocate General of Punjab, told the court that the records have been taken into consideration by the Registrar General of the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

PM Modi's convoy was stuck on a flyover when he was on his way to Hussainiwala in Ferozepur district to visit National Martyr's Memorial.

Further details are awaited. (ANI)
After the Election Commission of India banned physical rallies till January 15 in the five poll-bound states due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, the Congress is gearing up to conduct virtual rallies. According to Congress sources, a green room will be set up at the party headquarters in Delhi, state capitals and several districts of the poll-bound states so that the leaders can virtually connect with the people. Green rooms will also operate from the residences of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, the sources said. Congress will also use social media platforms for its digital campaign. Twitter will be used to set the narrative from the latest data and Facebook and Instagram will be used on several issues. Live video content will be put up on social media platforms. The sources stated that the party will pay special attention to the content of the digital rallies. The content will be new, attention-grabbing and energizing to engage the general public. There is also a proposal to hold virtual 3D rallies of big leaders, which is yet to be finalized, the sources stated. Congress will also use local culture, language and folk songs during the rallies to connect with the people. The Election Commission of India on Saturday, while announcing the dates for the voting in the five poll-bound states, directed that no physical political rallies and roadshows will be allowed till January 15 for the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa, Manipur and Uttarakhand in wake of the COVID-19 surge. "No physical rally of political parties or probably candidates or any other group related to elections shall be allowed till January 15. The Election Commission will subsequently review the situation and issue further instructions accordingly," Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sushil Chandra had said. "No roadshows, padyatras, cycle or bike rallies and processions shall be allowed till January 15. Situation to be reviewed and fresh instructions to be issued later," the CEC said. Uttar Pradesh will go to the polls in seven phases from Feb 10 to March 7; Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa to vote on February 14th and Manipur to vote on Feb 27 and March 3. Counting of votes for the five poll-bound states will take place on March 10. A total of 18.34 crore electors including service voters will take part in the upcoming Assembly elections in Goa, Punjab, Manipur, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh. There are 403 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh, 70 seats are up for grabs in Uttarakhand, 117 seats in Punjab, 40 seats in Goa and 60 seats in Manipur. Out of these 5 poll-bound states, the BJP is in power in 4 states including Goa, Manipur, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh. (ANI)
Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai has expressed his grief at the passing away of renowned Kannada litterateur, critic and theatre personality Prof Patil.

Born in Hattimattur village of Haveri district, he attained fame as a revolutionary writer and was fondly called 'Champa'. His contribution to the Kannada language and Karnataka is immense. He was at the forefront of Gokak and many other movements for the cause of Kannada and Karnataka. He strongly advocated Kannada to be the medium of instruction in education, Bommai said in his condolence message.

He was a professor of English at Karnataka University, Dharwad and editor of 'Sankramana', a Kannada literary publication. He has also served as the head of the Kannada Development Authority and Kannada Sahitya Parishat, Bommai said.

Champa's death is an immense loss for the Kannada literary world, CM Bommai said and has prayed the almighty to give the strength to his family and followers to bear this loss. (ANI)
According to governments sources, PM Modi has been deeply involved with Kashi Vishwanath Dham and keeps a tab on all issues and developments in Varanasi.

They stated that the Prime Minister recently found out that most people working at Kashi Vishwanath Dham had to work barefoot because it is forbidden to wear footwear made with leather or rubber in the temple premises.

These include priests, people performing Seva, security guards, sanitation workers and other workers in the temple.

Sources said he immediately got 100 pairs of jute footwear procured and sent these over to Kashi Vishwanath Dham so that those performing their duties don't have to stay bare-footed in the chilling cold.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last month inaugurated phase 1 of the Kashi Vishwanath Dham project in Varanasi.

Before inaugurating the project, in his Lok Sabha constituency, the Prime Minister had greeted the labourers who were involved in the construction of the project with flowers.

PM Modi along with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also had lunch with the workers involved in the construction work of the Kashi Vishwanath Dham Corridor. (ANI)
Karnataka Home minister Araga Jnanendra on Monday informed that an FIR has been registered against 30 people for violating COVID-19 protocols during Congress' Mekedatu padayatra amid the COVID-19 restrictions in the state. "FIR has been registered against 30 people for violating COVID-19 protocols. Ramanagara district administration has taken action as per the law. We will not spare anybody who violates the law," Araga Jnanendra told ANI. The Congress in Karnataka on Sunday began its 11 days padayatra, demanding implementation of the Mekedatu project across the Cauvery river, despite the government's COVID-19 restrictions. Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai slammed Congress leader DK Shivakumar, who reportedly refused to take a COVID test after the padayatra. "This shows his culture; he is not bothered about the health of other people also," the Chief Minister said. Shivakumar was leading the yatra. The Home Minister had earlier informed that the state government have given free hand to the Ramanagar District Collector and Superintendent of Police to take action as per law. The Karnataka government has imposed a curfew on weekends and restricted public gatherings to fight the third wave of COVID-19, till January 19. It has also imposed a night curfew and has prohibited all rallies, dharnas, protests, among others. The Mekedatu balancing reservoir-cum drinking water project, to be constructed across the Cauvery river basin, has been at the centre of controversy between the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Earlier too on July 12, 2021, Bommai had said that the Centre will have to give clearance to the project as per law and there is no reason the state government will stop the project. (ANI)
The Allahabad High Court has refused bail to a man, accused of raping a woman after giving her false promise of marriage and then forcing her to convert. Rejecting the bail application of one Farhan Ahmad a.k.a. Sanu of Gorakhpur, Justice Om Prakash Tripathi said that the allegation against the accused was serious and he, cannot, therefore, be released on bail. The applicant was in jail for offences under Sections 376 (Punishment for rape), 504 (Intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace), 506 (Punishment for criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code 1860 and Sections 3 and 5(1) of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act 2020. The FIR was lodged against him at the Ramgarh Tal police station of Gorakhpur. The victim had alleged that the applicant-accused had established physical relations with her on a false promise of marriage. "He later pressurised me to convert to Islam threatening that he will not marry her unless I convert," she alleged in the FIR. However, during the course of hearing, the counsel for the applicant argued that the applicant had been falsely implicated and this was a case of consensual relationship since both the applicant and the victim were adults. He further contended that as per medical report, no external or internal injury was found on the body of the victim, and the doctor had not given any opinion about rape. Besides, the applicant also stated that he had never forced the victim at any point of time to convert to Islam and the entire prosecution story was false and fake. The government counsel, however, submitted that sexual intercourse with the victim on the pretext of false promise of marriage would attract the offence of rape. The high court, after taking into account the facts and circumstances, refused to grant bail to the applicant-accused. --IANS amita/dpb ( 327 Words) 2022-01-10-08:36:02 (IANS)
The Supreme Court on Monday said that it will constitute an independent committee headed by a retired top court judge to investigate the security lapse during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Punjab on January 5. A Bench of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana, Justice Surya Kant and Justice Hima Kohli will pass a detailed order on the composition of the Committee. However, it has been indicated that Committee will include DGP Chandigarh, IG National Investigation Agency, Registrar General of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and ADGP (security) of Punjab in the Committee. In the Meantime, the Bench asked both the Central government and the Punjab government to not go ahead with the inquiries by the Committees constituted by them. The top court was hearing a PIL seeking a judicial probe into the breach of the Prime Minister's security while on a visit to Punjab. During the hearing, the Punjab government urged the apex court to set up an independent commission regarding the incident. DS Patwalia, Advocate General of Punjab, said that the Central government's Committee has issued seven show-cause notices to the officers of the Punjab government seeking an explanation why no action should be taken against them for the incident. The Bench also questioned the Central government for issuing show-cause notices to the officials of the Punjab government over the security lapse, even as the matter was under the examination of the apex court. When the show cause notices have been sent to the officers with prima facie findings regarding their guilt over PM's security lapse, what is the purpose of this court considering the matter, the Bench asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who was appearing for the Centre. Solicitor General told the Bench that if the show cause notices pre-empt the final outcome, the Committee of Central government will examine the issue and report to Court and till then it will not act upon the notice. Senior advocate Patwalia expressed his apprehension on the Centre's Committee and argues that Punjab government officers may not get a fair chance to defend themselves. He said seven show-cause notices were sent, no inquiry was held, no opportunity of hearing given to them. Punjab's Advocate General Patwalia told the Bench that the Central government's Committee consists of three members -- Cabinet Secretary, IG SPG and the Director of IB. MHA head is heading the Committee and they are of prima facie opinion that State's officials are guilty already, he added. "Let the independent committee be appointed as State have no hopes from this Committee," Patwalia said. "Hang me if I am guilty but don't condemn me unheard," he further argued. Solicitor General said that the show-cause notices were issued before the order of the Court when it asked both the Committees not to go ahead with their inquires. Mehta then referred to the provisions of the Special Protection Group (SPC) Act and the "Blue Book" for PM's security. He said that PM's convoy had reached the place near to the protest area where crowds started gathering in the morning and there were no inputs from the Director-General of police which was his responsibility. There was a complete failure of intelligence and violation of protocols, he added. During the hearing, the Bench questioned the Centre for setting up a Committee and issuing showcase notices to Punjab officers. Justice Surya Kant told Solicitor General, "Your show cause notice is totally self-contradictory. By constituting a Committee you seek to inquire if there was a breach and then you hold state Chief Secretary and DG of Punjab guilty. Who held them guilty?" Mehta replied that PM's security is of paramount importance and the Centre has to look into the lapses. He added that the enquiry was against the officials who are responsible for the security protocols as per the Blue Book. The Bench told Mehta, "Yes there is a breach and the State has too admitted it, but the other issues are questions of facts and they have to be seen by independent persons... If you want to take disciplinary action against State officers what remains for this court to look into?" Patwalia also told the court that the records have been taken into consideration by the Registrar General of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. On the last date of the hearing, the apex court had asked the Registrar General to secure and preserve the travel records of the Prime Minister during his visit to Punjab forthwith. Meanwhile, several advocates of the apex court claimed to have received an automated call from an international number with a recorded message asking the Supreme Court not to "help the Modi regime" by taking up a matter related to Prime Minister's security breach in Punjab. Lawyers say that caller claimed that he is calling on behalf of designated terror outfit Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) and the said organisation takes responsibility of PM' security breach. The plea in the top court was filed by 'Lawyers' Voice' alleging that PM's security breach was a deliberate lapse on part of the State and sought the preservation of evidence on security arrangements and action against "erring" officials of Punjab government. It also sought direction to the district judge, Bhatinda to collect "all official documents and materials from all possible sources" pertaining to the movements and deployment of Punjab Police in connection with the visit at the earliest and produce the same before this court. "Issue a writ of mandamus or any other writ, order or direction fixing responsibility of Respondent No. 2 (chief secretary) and Respondent No.3 (DGP) and place them under suspension and further direct the Respondent No. 4 (Centre) to initiate departmental action against the same," it added. The Prime Minister was stuck atop a flyover for 15-20 minutes while on his way to Ferozpur, Punjab earlier this month due to the road being blocked by some protesters. The Ministry of Home Affairs termed it as a "major lapse" in his security. (ANI)
Amid the surge in COVID-19 cases driven by the Omicron variant, India began administering 'precaution doses' to healthcare, frontline workers and senior citizens with comorbidities on Monday. Beneficiaries have hailed the government's decision and said that it is a good initiative. 'I have got my precautionary booster dose. Everyone should get vaccinated. It is compulsory and it has no side effects. I have got covaxin," said Dharmendra Kumar Sharma, a beneficiary at RML hospital. Mahendra Pandey, another beneficiary at RML Hospital said, "on March 30, I received my second dose of covaxin. Today I have got a booster dose. It is a good initiative of the government to give booster doses to the frontline workers and senior citizens with comorbidities especially at a time when there is a third wave of COVID." "In such a situation, it will work as a shield to senior citizens and we welcome the government's decison wholeheartedly. My mother-in-law and I came to take the booster dose and we both didn't face any problem after the vaccination. It will provide immunity to us," he added. Kamla Joshi, another beneficiary at RML hospital said, 'Today I have received my booster dose. It is a great move. We welcome this move. I am above 80 years old and I didn't face any problem after getting my dose'. "We all need to take vaccines so that the spread of infection decreases. I have got the Covidshield vaccine. But anyone can take any vaccine. Both covidshield or covaxin are equally effective. There are slight chances of getting a fever after vaccination. But it doesn't mean that we get scared and do not take the vaccination. Frontline workers should take this dose as they are exposed constantly," said Dr Piyush Ranjan, a healthcare worker as well as a beneficiary at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital Dr Promila Chaddha, an 84-year-old beneficiary at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said, 'The booster dose is a must for health workers. I have received the covidshield vaccine. I didn't face any symptoms after taking the booster dose'. Similarly, Dr Alka Prasad, another frontline worker and a beneficiary at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said, 'Booster dose is a must. It should have been given earlier, but nevertheless, it's a very good initiative by the government and we have all been vaccinated and it's essential'. The online registration for 'precaution dose' on the Co-WIN platform began on Friday (January 8). The precaution dose can only be taken after nine months i.e., 39 weeks from the date of administration of 2nd dose. In his address to the nation on December 25, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that the precautionary doses of vaccine will be started for healthcare, frontline workers and citizens above 60 years with co-morbidities starting January 10, 2022. (ANI)
The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a plea alleging that China is deliberately spreading the COVID-19 virus as a biological weapon. A Bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and MM Sundresh dismissed a plea filed by a Karnataka-based lawyer who has contended that virgin coconut oil can dissolve the virus and sought directions to the Central government to stop China from spreading the virus. The Bench said the petition was only a publicity move. "Is it the court's job to see what is the international ramification, whether China is committing genocide or not? What kind of petition is this? You want this virgin coconut oil to dissolve the virus. What is going on? It seems you wanted to file a petition just to appear before this court. Nothing else," the Bench said. Dismissing the plea the Bench said, "The plea alleged that China is deliberately spreading COVID-19 as a biological weapon and the court should issue some order to the government. It is for the government to take action. We can't allow every person who thinks of some solution to the virus to come under Article 32 and file a petition. Nothing has prevented him from making suggestions to the appropriate authority. We do believe that he is here to get a name in the press and we request the press not to oblige." The petitioner told the Bench that he has filed the said petition to provide respite to the common people of the country from the COVID-19 situation. (ANI)
Japanese multinational conglomerate Sony's patent for a 3D scanner that can put real-world objects into virtual reality isn't something new. In fact, as per GSM Arena, the listing dates back to June last year, but since the patent office asked Sony to re-submit the documents with more details and the company has done so, it seems the tech giant is serious about this endeavour. The patent hasn't been granted yet, but the documents reveal that the 3D scanner might be used to put real-life objects into the virtual world, or it can be used to better blend the real surrounding with the virtual one. Moreover, the user will be able to scan even bigger objects than just some small, handheld stuff. The only requirement is to be able to scan the object in 360-degree. What needs to be kept in mind, though, since this is just a patent, is not to expect the tech to come around anytime soon and it might never leave the concept realm too, as per GSM Arena. (ANI)
Telangana Health Minister Harish Rao on Monday inaugurated a booster dose vaccination drive for frontline workers, health workers and senior citizens at the Government Unani Hospital, Charminar in Hyderabad. Harish Rao on the occasion said, "COVID-19 booster dose vaccination has started on a good note. The first dose is 102 per cent complete and the state has already vaccinated 38 per cent of children between 15 to 18 years with the first dose in just one week." The Minister urged the people to get vaccinated. "All the developed countries are taking the booster dose and we must also follow the same. Those who are eligible should take the booster dose." "Telangana has been at the forefront of vaccine distribution. The Government is trying to complete the vaccination as soon as possible on the orders of the Chief Minister", the Health Minister further informed. MIM Leader, MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi was also present at the launch of the booster dose at the Government Unani Hospital. He said, "Everyone should get vaccinated and do not pay attention to vaccine misinformation." Owaisi also urged people to follow the COVID-19 guidelines. "Let's all face COVID-19 together and everybody must cooperate with the Government in this." (ANI)
Noting that there has been a sudden rise in COVID-19 cases across India, a health expert has advised people to follow COVID appropriate behaviour and get vaccinated saying that precaution is the only important thing to protect ourselves from the virus and all its mutations. "For all variants of COVID-19, be it Delta, Omicron or any other variant, precaution is most important, which we call as COVID appropriate behaviour. This involves social distancing, hand hygiene, wearing masks and getting vaccinated. There is no medication as yet that can 100 per cent cure the disease. Prevention is the only thing that can protect us," Dr Sandeep Nayar, HOD, Respiratory diseases BLK Hospital told ANI. According to the expert, India will witness a peak in COVID-19 in January after which the cases might rapidly decline as in the case of South Africa. "COVID-19 cases have been rising for last 8-9 days (nationally); cases in Delhi, Mumbai are almost 4-5 times more. With the surge in cases, it is expected that a peak will be witnessed in January. Hopefully, a sharp decline will be there in peak as we saw in South Africa when cases soared suddenly and then declined," he noted. India on Monday reported over 1.79 lakh cases of the virus and the daily positivity rate is above 13 per cent. Meanwhile, Delhi has also reported a rampant surge in cases with over 20,000 cases being recorded for two consecutive days. A similar trend of increase in cases is also being reported from Maharashtra. Emphasising the importance of vaccination against the disease, Dr Nayar said that India is on the right path. "Now that we are also vaccinating the younger population in the age group 15 to 18 years and also discussions are on about the booster dose, India is on the right track. The vaccine prevents the disease from taking a severe form," he said. "As seen in the past, we defeated polio and smallpox with vaccination. Similarly, vaccination is important at the moment," he added. (ANI)
Union Minister of State for Defence and Tourism, Ajay Bhatt, on Monday assured that there will be no connectivity issue during digital rallies in Uttarakhand because Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is fully prepared for it. The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Saturday announced the schedule for the upcoming Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Punjab, Manipur and Uttarakhand and directed that no physical political rallies and roadshows will be allowed till January 15. Speaking to ANI, MoS Ajay Bhatt said, "BJP workers are law-abiding, we always follow the instructions of ECI. We are fully prepared for the digital rallies. We have done such a rally earlier. There will be no connectivity issues during digital rallied in Uttarakhand because people here are very cooperative and they do whatever told to do by the Government." The MoS further mentioned the connectivity or network issues in Uttarakhand and said that the party will try to connect in small groups where such problem arises. "We will try to connect with the areas with low connectivity in small groups. If we will not be able to reach any area via digital rallies, then we will find some other way and will surely connect every area of the state," he said. Taking a jibe at the Opposition for accusing constitutional institutions about digital rallies, he said that such accusations should not be made because the new variant of COVID-19, Omicron has hit the country. "Omicron variant is not an ordinary variant. The Central Government is continuously making arrangements to rescue from this COVID variant including booster dose. I hope we all stay safe including frontline workers, health workers under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. If the Opposition will still accuse the digital rallies, then I would say their thinking will remain the same forever," he added. Uttarakhand will go to the Assembly polls in a single phase on February 14. Earlier, Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra announced the poll schedule for five states including Uttarakhand. The counting of votes in Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Punjab, Manipur and Uttarakhand will be held on March 10. In the 2017 Assembly elections, BJP won 57 out of 70 seats in the state. After the elections and formed the Government under Trivendra Singh Rawat. The BJP has changed its Chief Minister twice over the last year in the State. Trivendra Singh Rawat made way for Tirath Singh Rawat, MP, in March last year. Amid the possibility of a bypoll not being held in six months for him to be elected to the State Assembly, Tirath Singh Rawat resigned and Pushkar Singh Dhami took oath as Chief Minister. In view of the rising COVID-19 cases, the Uttarakhand Government has prohibited all political rallies and protests in the state until January 16. (ANI)
Following the launch, the chief minister said that 99 per cent eligible population has received the first dose of COVID vaccine and 82 per cent has received the second dose in the state.

"We are prepared with hospital and ICU beds to fight the pandemic," Bommai said.

The registration for 'precaution dose' of COVID-19 vaccine for healthcare, frontline workers and senior citizens above 60 started on the Co-WIN platform on Saturday.

Union Health Ministry had earlier said that there is no requirement for new registration for the beneficiaries of precautionary COVID-19 vaccine dose

The senior citizens with co-morbidities will not be required to produce a doctor's certificate or prescription at the time of administration of precaution dose. (ANI)
About 1,000 Delhi Police personnel have tested positive for COVID-19, the Delhi Police informed on Monday. The officials added that a total of 46 prisoners in Delhi jails have also tested positive for the virus. Delhi Police sources today informed that senior officers are holding virtual meetings without much emphasis on physical meetings. In the Delhi Police Headquarters, all those who have tested positive for COVID-19 have been advised to stay in home isolation, sources said. A separate health desk has been set up for the policemen at Delhi Police Headquarters and is updating information related to the health of all the policemen. Delhi Police Public Relations Officer and Additional Commissioner Chinmoy Biswal is also infected with COVID-19, sources said. All the Delhi Police personnel have already received the doses of both the vaccines and are frontline warriors, preparations are on to jab them with a booster dose, sources said. At the same time, COVID-19 infection is spreading from prisoners to jail staff in Delhi jails. According to Director General (Prisons), Tihar, Sandeep Goel, a total of 46 prisoners are positive, of which 29 in Tihar Jail and 17 are in Mandoli Jail. "43 staff positive associated with jail administration, of which 25 are from Tihar jail, 12 are from Rohini Jail, 6 are from Mandoli Jail," he added. Goel said that due to COVID-19 infection, all the new prisoners are being quarantined. "COVID-19 tests are being done for all the prisoners coming to the jail. If any prison staff or prisoner is found to be Coronavirus positive, then the jail administration will carry out contact tracing to prevent the spread of the virus," he said. Meanwhile, a review meeting over the COVID-19 of the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) chaired by Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal was held in the national capital to decide on the more restriction to be imposed in the city amid the increase in the cases. (ANI)
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to examine a plea seeking criminal action in connection with hate speeches made at Dharam Sansad in Haridwar against the Muslim community. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal mentioned the matter before a bench headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana for urgent listing. Sibal submitted, "We're living in different times where slogans in the country have changed from Satyamev Jayate". The bench told Sibal, "We'll look into it". The bench also asked Sibal whether some inquiry is going on? Sibal replied that FIRs have been filed, but no arrest has been made so far and added that without court's intervention no action will be taken. After a brief hearing, the bench agreed to take up the matter. The petitioners - a journalist, a judge, and a Supreme Court advocate - have moved the apex court seeking urgent intervention in the matter pertaining to the hate speeches delivered between December 17-19 last year, in separate two events -- one organised in Haridwar by one Yati Narsinghanand. Reportedly, several Hindu religious leaders, who addressed the gathering, called upon the community to take up arms against Muslims. The petition seeks independent and impartial investigation into the incidents of hate speeches against the Muslim community by an SIT. --IANS ss/skp/ ( 223 Words) 2022-01-10-11:46:03 (IANS)
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Majithia's lawyer DS Sobti told reporters in Chandigarh that he will join the investigation on Tuesday.

"Bikram Singh Majithia has been granted interim bail. He will be joining the investigation the day after tomorrow at 11 am before the SIT. I believe that it is a political vendetta," Sobti said.

Punjab Police filed a case against Majithia, MLA, for his alleged involvement in a drugs case. The FIR was registered at SAS Nagar Police Station.

He was booked under Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) Act on the basis of a report submitted by the Special Task Force.

Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu had welcomed the police move. (ANI)
The Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) and the TPDK are conducting protests across Tamil Nadu against the desecration of a statue of Periyar, the father of the Dravidian movement, at Vellalore in Coimbatore. The desecration took place on Saturday night after 10 p.m., police said. Dravidar Kazhagam president, K. Veeramani has said that the party is conducting protest marches across the state and added that the Covid protocol is being followed. He said that people in batches of three to five people were protesting, holding placards and getting arrested adhering strictly to the Covid protocol announced by the state government. While speaking to IANS, the DK leader said, "We are conducting protests in a symbolic manner against the regular desecration of the statues of Thanthai Periyar. If we don't respond this will continue and the government of the day must act strongly against the perpetrators of this crime." On Sunday morning it was found that a statue of Periyar or E.V. Ramsamy was found sprinkled with saffron powder and garlanded with a chain of chappals. With the lockdown on Sunday and night curfew after 10 p.m., there were not many people around who could have seen the desecration of the statue. CCTV visuals have revealed the presence of a person near the statue, according to the Podanur police. K. Ramakrishnan, President of Thanthai Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam while speaking to IANS said, "The desecration of the statue of Periyar at Vellalore in Coimbatore is not a single phenomenon. Of late there have been several instances of people showing disrespect to the statue of Periyar and we cannot lay low and take this any more against the greatest social reformer of Tamil Nadu." Police have arrested and removed the protestors from Coimbatore, Tiruppur, Salem, Erode, Madurai, Chennai central, Tirunelveli, Kancheepuram, Chengalpattu, and other districts of Tamil Nadu. --IANS aal/dpb ( 316 Words) 2022-01-10-12:56:04 (IANS)
Maximum number of passengers were scheduled to travel to Dubai by SpiceJet Airlines.

"Thirteen passengers have been de-boarded today as they tested positive for COVID," a SpiceJet official told ANI.

Besides SpiceJet, many passengers of different airlines have also been deboarded after the reports of the concerned passengers came positive.

It is mandatory for passengers travelling to the United Arab Emirates to take rapid PCR test before the flights.

Notably, India has been reporting a surge a COVID-19 cases. According to Union Health Ministry, India logged over 1.79 lakh COVID-19 cases on Monday with the daily positivity rate surpassing 13 per cent. India's active caseload currently stands at 7,23,619. The case tally of Omicron in India has exceeded the 4,000 mark. (ANI)
Congress MP KC Venugopal on Monday wrote to President Ram Nath Kovind accusing Kerala Governor and the state government of dragging the President's office into their "political disputations" involving Kerala University Vice-Chancellor. In the letter, Venugopal wrote, "I wish to draw your kind attention to the most unfortunate event that has unfolded in last few days in Kerala, where your esteemed office has been dragged into political disputations." He alleged that it was a concerted attempt to lower the constitutional dignity of the post of President. "It is reported that the Kerala Governor, in his capacity as the Chancellor of the University, had issued a directive to the Vice Chancellor of the University of Kerala to confer D Litt on the President. As per reports, the Vice-Chancellor violated the statute of the University and directly informed the Governor that the University Syndicate had turned down the proposal," the letter read. However, later, the Governor summoned the Vice-Chancellor and urged him to give a written letter on the matter. Venugopal, in the letter, said that Vice-Chancellor VP Mahadevan Pillai had purportedly written a letter, revealing that the VC had merely discussed the proposal with some Syndicate members and informed the Governor that the University Syndicate had turned down the proposal. "The letter written by VC came out in public domain. It is also alleged that the handwritten letter was leaked to media by the Office of Governor itself to make the matter worse," the Congress MP said in the letter. Venugopal further requested President Kovind to seek a detailed report on these unwarranted events and take appropriate action to settle this matter. "I would urge upon your good self to issue a reprimand to those concerned with a clear warning to desist from involving the Office of President Kovind in their personal wrangling and point-scoring exercise," the letter added. (ANI)
In order to curb the menace of Narcotic substance in poll bound UP and Uttrakhand, IG Bareilly Ramit Sharma and DDG Narcotic Control Bureau, Gyaneshwar Singh jointly hosted a special multi agencies meeting. It was a first of its kind multi agencies meeting in which NCB, Police, IB, GRP, RPF, SSB, CISF, Excise, CBN, Helath and Education Departments also participated. Police officials of UP and Uttrakhand specially participated as their states are going for the polls. Speaking with IANS, NCB Deputy Director General Northern Range, Gyaneshwar Singh said they discussed a 'Joint Action Plan' to curb the smuggling of narcotic substance during polls. Singh said that under this Joint Action Plan, the NCB team will work with local Police and endorsement agencies. The NCB will have three-pronged strategy -- information gathering and sharing; supply reduction through effective enforcement; and the third will be demand reduction. "We will be working together on this three-pronged strategy," he said. "We will take effective steps to prevent the smuggling of narcotic substance. I will personally monitor the whole operation. Formulation of Joint Action Plan will help curb the menace of Drugs and Drug Money for conducting free and fair elections," Singh told IANS. It was decided in the meeting that all the agencies will help NCB to stop the smuggling of narcotic substance. They will share all the input, tip-off and other information related to the drug peddlers so that they could be caught on time. All the officials who took part in the meeting were of adjoining border areas of UP and Uttarakand. After the announcement of assembly elections, the drug peddlers and those who deal in illegal narcotic substance have got active. Police stations situated in the border areas have received complaints regarding drug smuggling. An SSB official said that at Indo-Nepal border there was a need of joint patrolling with the Police to stop cross-border drug smuggling. Sanjeev Gupta, IG Law and Order, UP said that the agencies will work in close coordination with each other. He informed how the law enforcement agencies are taking effective measures to curb the durg menace during elections. IG Bareily said the agencies have pulled their socks and are ready to take on the smugglers. DIG Kumaun, Dr Nilesh Ratan said that joint action group will be fruitful and all the information will be shared with agencies. Gyaneshwar Singh said he would personally monitor the entire operation. --IANS atk/skp/ ( 424 Words) 2022-01-10-13:16:03 (IANS)
Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has filed a fresh affidavit in Delhi High Court furnishing details of all the bank accounts and funds worth Rs 6,208 crores lying in those accounts. According to the affidavit, DMRC has Rs 6,208 crores in its various bank accounts as of January 3, 2022. The Reliance Infrastructure subsidiary, Delhi Airport Metro Express Pvt Ltd (DAMEPL) has filed an application in the Delhi High Court on January 7 stating that the DMRC in contempt, has failed to comply with the last order of the court passed on December 22 that had directed DMRC to make full disclosure of their all bank accounts and the funds lying in those accounts within one week. The application by DAMEPL is in response to DMRC's affidavit filed on January 5 in which it has made a partial or limited disclosure of its bank accounts only with respect to Rs 1,642.69 crores out of the total funds of Rs 5,800.93 crores that it had disclosed in the court through its last affidavit filed on December 21, 2021. DAMEPL in its application states that DMRC has intentionally not provided details of its remaining funds and bank accounts, which is clearly disregard and contempt of the Delhi HC order. DAMEPL says the conduct of DMRC clearly exhibits that it is deliberately trying to defeat and delay the execution process of the Arbitral Award, and also ensure that the next hearing scheduled on January 11 becomes ineffective. The delay in the payment of the Arbitral Award by DMRC is costing the taxpayer an additional interest burden of almost Rs 1.75 crores per day. According to the DAMEPL, DMRC in its last affidavit filed on December 21 in the Delhi High Court, had informed that it had total funds worth Rs 5,800.93 crores, as of December 17, 2021. Out of this, Rs 1,642.69 crores were classified as DMRC funds, Rs 2,412.12 crores as Project funds, and balance Rs 1,746.12 crores as other than DMRC funds. DAMEPL, in its application, has requested Delhi HC to direct DMRC to comply with the Court's previous order in letter and spirit and furnish complete details of all its bank accounts and the funds lying in those accounts along with the respective bank statements, on or before the next date of hearing i.e. January 11. The Supreme Court (SC), on September 7, 2021, had upheld the arbitration award of Rs 7,200 crores in favour of DAMEPL. DAMEPL then filed an execution petition in the Delhi HC on September 12, 2021, seeking the court's directions to DMRC for honouring the SC order and paying Rs 7,200 crores to the company. DMRC, out of Rs 7,200 crores, has so far paid Rs 1,000 crores. The bench of Justice Suresh Kumar Kait on the last date of hearing had noted the submission of DMRC informing the court that it has 1642 crore in their bank account. After taking note, the bench directed DMRC to file an affidavit having details of its bank accounts along with the balance amount. Earlier, DMRC had informed the Delhi High Court that it agreed to deposit Rs 1,000 crore in an escrow account and sought more time to compute the payable amount in the arbitral dispute with Reliance Infrastructure's Delhi Airport Metro Express Pvt Ltd (DAMEPL). In 2008, DAMEPL had entered into a contract with DMRC for running the airport metro line till 2038. As disputes arose between the parties, DAMEPL stopped operating the metro on the airport line and invoked the arbitration clause against DMRC alleging violation of contract, and sought a termination fee. (ANI)
As per information provided by Bihar Chief Medical Officer, the Chief Minister appealed to everyone to follow COVID-19 appropriate behaviour.

Earlier on January 4, the Bihar Government imposed a fresh curb by implementing a statewide night curfew from 10 pm to 5 am from January 6 to 21.

As per an order by the State Government, "Pre-school and 1 to 8 classes to remain close, online classes will continue. Educational institutions of classes 9-12 will function on 50 per cent capacity. Restrictions are to remain in effect from January 6 to 21."

It further read, "Night curfew will be imposed from 10 pm to 5 am. Religious places to remain closed. Malls, cinemas, clubs, swimming pools, stadiums, gyms, parks will also remain close till January 21.

Meanwhile, India reported 1,79,723 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the daily positivity rate in the country to 13.29 per cent, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Monday.

A total of 4,033 cases of the Omicron variant of coronavirus have been reported so far. Maharashtra has reported the highest number of cases (1,216), followed by Rajasthan (529) and Delhi (513). (ANI)
Union Health Minister Dr Mansukh Mandaviya on Monday advised five States and one Union Territory to ensure that all kinds of oxygen infrastructure is functional and operational, in view of the surge in COVID-19 cases across the country. The Union Health Minister met health ministers, officials from Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Goa, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, and Maharashtra at 3:30 pm today to discuss COVID-situation in these states. Official sources told ANI, "During the meeting with health ministers of 5 States and one Union Territory, the Union Health Minister advised them to ensure that all kinds of Oxygen infrastructure is checked so that it is in a functional, operational state." This meeting holds importance as India reported 1,79,723 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the daily positivity rate in the country to 13.29 per cent, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Monday. A total of 4,033 cases of the Omicron variant of Coronavirus have been reported so far. Maharashtra has reported the highest number of cases (1,216), followed by Rajasthan (529) and Delhi (513). About 1,552 patients infected with Omicron have recovered. The Ministry further informed that the active caseload in the country currently stands at 7,23,619 which accounts for 2.03 per cent of the country's total number of cases. The weekly positivity rate currently is at 7.29 per cent, while the daily positivity rate stands at 13.29 per cent. Total cases of COVID-19 in the country have risen to 35,528,004, the health ministry said today morning. As many as 46,569 patients recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours. The cumulative tally of COVID recovered patients now stands at 3,45,00,172. The recovery rate is at 96.62 per cent. The country also reported 146 new deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 4,83,936. India conducted 13,52,717 COVID-19 tests in the last 24 hours. The country has conducted 69,15,75,352 tests so far, as per the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) data. India has administered a total of 151.94 crore vaccine doses so far under Nationwide Vaccination Drive."1,51,94,05,951 people have been vaccinated in the country so far," the ministry said. With the administration of 29,60,975 vaccine doses in the last 24 hours, 1,51,94,05,951 people have been vaccinated in the country so far. (ANI)
The food and beverage industry in the national capital is once again facing hardships with restrictions being imposed due to a surge in COVID-19 cases especially of the new Omicron variant. Several restaurant owners in Delhi have raised concerns over e-passes acting as a hurdle in food delivery. Kewal Ahuja, owner of SGF India restaurant said, "We have over 30 outlets of the restaurants in Delhi-NCR and we are facing the issue of delivery in most of the outlets. We had applied for e-passes 2-3 days ago, but no pass has been issued to us. Because of this, we are facing hardship as we are unable to deliver the food." In a bid to keep the business going even amid restrictions, the owners have demanded to resolve the issue at the earliest. Expressing dismay at the reduced revenue share amid restricted operations, Ahuja said, "We request the Delhi government to resolve the issue. The restaurant industry is facing a crisis with the already imposed restrictions as we have to operate at 50 per cent capacity but pay the same amount of rent and salary to staff." Rohit, owner of Bistro 57 said, '"The main problem is of movement of delivery people. The government has said that food delivery is allowed and we can open the restaurants for online delivery and take away. However, we can't come to our outlets as we have not been issued passes. Police have put barricades and they are not letting us pass even after showing the licence to them and they are charging a fine. I have paid a challan on Saturday on the ground that I flouted weekend curfew. I don't know who is responsible for this?" Raising concerns for those involved in Swiggy and Zomato deliveries, Rohit said, "How will we operate if the delivery persons are also harassed like this?" "On several occasions, the riders have said that they are stopped at different places. Thus, they come late which leads to a delay in delivery and eventually the order gets cancelled. The police asks for a movement pass. When government has not issued any movement pass then how do we function?" he added. Deepak Rathor, a delivery boy at SGF restaurant said, "I applied for the e-pass on January 8 and it has not been issued yet. The problem is as we don't have an e-pass, police stop us during the curfew. E-pass is a must for us." Vikas, another delivery boy, narrated a similar story and urged the Delhi government to issue an e-pass at the earliest. Anurag Katriar, trustee of National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) said, "The food delivery is allowed as it is considered an essential service even amid curfew. To do that, we need e-passes. That is where we have faced problems. The e-passes are not being generated from the portal easily." Notably, the NRAI on Friday tagged the Delhi Chief Minister's Office in a tweet and sought help in resolving the e-pass problem for the food and beverage industry. "Request your intervention in resolving e-pass problems for F&B industry. We aren't getting them; leading to severe harassment. We will be compelled to shut down delivery as well if this isn't resolved right away," they wrote. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal responded, asking him to send him contact details (to get the issue resolved). "I am hoping that all the restaurants will get their e-passes in the next 2-3 days," the trustee of NRAI said. (ANI)
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Atul Bhatkhalkar on Monday wrote to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly secretary saying that he would appear for a discussion on his suspension case from the state Assembly only in the House instead of appearing for a hearing in front of the Deputy Speaker. Giving his arguments, Bhatkhalkar wrote, "No purpose would be served by the Deputy Speaker holding a hearing in as much as it is the House alone which is empowered to withdraw the impugned resolution by a further resolution." Therefore, Bhatkhalar pleaded to contest his case on merits before the House for an effective outcome. The 12-BJP MLAs including Atul Bhatkhalkar were suspended for one year from the Assembly on July 5, 2021, for alleged misbehaviour. The resolution was challenged before the Supreme Court through a Writ Petition and on December 14, the SC sought a response from the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly on the pleas filed by the MLAs. The SC further observed that the "matter be considered by the House appropriately". Following this, all the 12 suspended MLAs filed separate representations before the House, urging that the period of suspension be "commuted". "It is pertinent to submit that the Winter Session of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly was held from 22.12.2021 to 28.12.2021, however, no steps with regard to the said representations were taken despite the fact that all the representations were filed prior to the commencement of the Session", wrote Atul Bhatkhalkar on the Assembly not considering the MLA's plea in Winter Session. The Deputy Speaker later decided to hold a hearing on Bhatkhalkar's plea on Monday, January 10 at Vidhan Bhavan to which he did not appear as he said he is COVID-19 positive. (ANI)
For more than two decades, Keona Holley kept in touch with her friend Linda Clark-Dickey.

The pair met when Holley was just 16 years old, and started working at a McDonalds in Baltimore County, said Clark-Dickey, who served as her manager.

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She was the hardest little worker, said Clark-Dickey, 55. It stood right out to me, and I just stayed connected with her all through the years.

She watched as Holley went on to work in health care and became a Baltimore Police officer, determined to aid those in need. And Clark-Dickey was among the countless friends flattened by the news that Holley, a 39-year-old mother of four, had been gravely injured by gunfire Dec. 16 while sitting in her patrol car during an overnight shift in Curtis Bay. She died a week later at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

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Dozens of mourners gathered Sunday at Holleys viewing to remember the Mom from the West Side, a passionate and energetic community servant who joined Baltimores police force at 37, eager to make a difference. The line of well-wishers spilled down the block from the Wylie Funeral Home in West Baltimore on the dreary, rainy morning.

The viewing for Holley continues Monday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the N. Mount St. funeral home. A wake and funeral service in scheduled for 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. Tuesday at the Baltimore Convention Center. She is to be interred at King Memorial Park in western Baltimore County.

When Clark-Dickey heard about the shooting, she was devastated.

A tear streams down Gendell Hayes cheek as she writes, Job well done   on a poster of her friend, fallen Baltimore City Police Officer Keona Holley, at the Wylie Funeral Home. (Amy Davis/Amy Davis)

The first thing I thought about were the four babies, and her newest grandbaby, she said. But I felt honored because of who she was and what she stood for.

Rhonda Wilkins, 50, knew Holley as a young girl, when she was an integral part of life on West Baltimores North Grantley Street.

We were only three doors apart. We was family on Grantley Street, Wilkins said.

It felt like Holley  whom friends called KeKe  was everywhere, Wilkins said. The energetic youngster loved stopping by neighbors homes to say hello.

As she got older, it became clear Holley was a helper at heart. There was the time an elderly neighbor died and Holley carefully prepared her body for the mortician. There were all the times she took care of her young cousin after his fathers death. And there was her adopted dog Gizmo, a scrappy mutt others made fun of, but she adored.

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That was KeKe, Wilkins said.

People line up to pay their respects to Baltimore City Police Officer Keona Holley during the public viewing at the Wylie Funeral Home. Holley was fatally shot while on duty. (Amy Davis/Amy Davis)

John Brown, 37, met Holley while working as an attendant at Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, a state psychiatric facility in Jessup.

You knew she was walking in the room. She was a big presence, Brown said. She gave all that she was when she was working. Always.

After several years at the hospital, Holley started talking about a career on the police force. Brown said he worried about Holleys decision, and asked her why she was heading for such a dangerous career. He hasnt forgotten her response.

She said: Brown, this is what Ive always wanted to do.

The news of her death hit the Perkins hospital community hard, Brown said.

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Its been a quiet, somber place since shes gone. Because we still felt like she was a part of us, too, he said.

Worcester County sheriff's deputies Kenji Hara, left, and Scott Griffin made a long drive to pay their respects to fallen Baltimore City Police Officer Keona Holley at the Wylie Funeral Home. (Amy Davis/Amy Davis)

Some who traveled to the viewing hadnt known Holley at all, but felt linked to her because of her law enforcement service. Worcester County sheriffs deputies Kenji Hara and Scott Griffin traveled Sunday morning from Marylands Eastern Shore to pay their respects.

It could happen to any of us, Hara said.

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My wife, the one thing she likes to hear is that Velcro from our vests. She knows Im home, Griffin said.

The day after Holley was shot, police charged two men in the attack. Police said they used security camera footage and license plate readers to crack the case, and found ballistic evidence linking the pair to another fatal shooting  that of 38-year-old Justin Johnson in Yale Heights  just an hour after Holley was shot. Police have said the mens motives were unclear.

Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, who also attended Sundays viewing, said addressing violent crime in Baltimore was a number one priority for the states federal delegation. After incidents like Holleys death, displays of unity remain important, Cardin said outside the funeral home Sunday morning.

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 9 Police officers leave the Wylie Funeral home after paying their respects to fallen Baltimore City Police Officer Keona Holley, while others wait in line for their turn to enter. The public viewing for Officer Holley will continue on Monday, Jan. 10, and the funeral is scheduled for Tuesday, January 11. (Amy Davis/Amy Davis)

The weathers not exactly ideal for this. People are lined up because they really want to show that the communitys together, Cardin said. We need to do more of this type of unity in our community, we need to bring communities together, and weve got to end this senseless killing.

Inside the funeral home, mourners shared memories of Holley, scrawling messages beside photos of their dear friend and colleague.

As a harps gentle notes filled the room, Clark-Dickey picked up a bright red Sharpie. Next to a photo of Holley, smiling widely from beneath a set of braces, she wrote: God bless your beautiful family, Baby Girl!!! You were an amazing mom and friend.

Beside it was another note from a neighbor: Grantley St. is not the same.
The NIA said they chargesheeted Lalu Sen alias Rahul Sen, Najiur Rahman Pavel alias Najiur Rahman, Mikail Khan alias S.K Sabbir, Rabiul Islam alias Rabiul Isalm and Mohammed Abdul Mannan Bachu under sections 120-B, 353, 364, 449 & 450 of the IPC and Sections 120B, 204, 419, 465, 468 & 471 of IPC, Sections 17, 18, 38 & 39 of UA(P) Act, Section 14A(b) of Foreigners Act and Section 12 of Passport Act.

The charge sheet was filed before the special NIA court in Kolkata.

"The case was originally registered at STF PS, Kolkata, West Bengal. The police had mentioned in the FIR that three Bangladeshi nationals who had illegally entered India along with their associates of JMB/AQIS, were hatching conspiracy to carry out terror activities in India. They were also trying to recruit, motivate young Muslim youths in order to establish 'Caliphate' and for furtherance of terrorist activities in India and Bangladesh," said NIA official.

Later, the NIA took over the investigation following the home ministry order.

The NIA found in its investigation that the four Bangadeshi and one Indian national were actively involved in establishing module of JMB/AQIS and had conspired to recruit vulnerable Muslim youths in furtherance of terrorist activities in India to propagate ideology of JMB/AQIS.

The accused were planning terrorist activities to create riot like situation. They had been receiving funds from Bangladesh through Hawala channel.

They had also fraudulently obtained Indian identity documents including Aadhaar cards, Electoral Photo Identity Cards, PAN cards, Passports etc to evade detection and to conceal their illegal activities from the Law Enforcement agencies.

The NIA said that after gathering evidences against them they filed the charge sheet.

The NIA official said that they were further probing the matter.

--IANS atk/skp/

( 333 Words)

2022-01-10-15:18:02 (IANS)
As many as 15,68,896 people have been infected with COVID-19 infection in Delhi so far.

With these 19,166 new cases, the active caseload has gone up to 65,806 in Delhi which is the highest May 15 last year. On May 15, Delhi's active caseload stood at 66,295.

As many as 17 persons have succumbed to the coronavirus infection in the national capital in the past 24 hours, taking the cumulative death toll at 25,177 at present.

However, a total of 14,076 people have recovered from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of recoveries to 14,77,913 in the national capital.

Presently, the cumulative positivity rate stands at 4.68 per cent while the case fatality rate is 1.60 per cent.

Meanwhile, Delhi has administered 25,030 beneficiaries with the COVID-19 vaccine in the past 24 hours, while a total of 2,75,22,072 beneficiaries have been given COVID-19 vaccines so far in the national capital. (ANI)
Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj S Bommai on Monday evening said that he had tested positive for COVID-19 infection. The Chief Minister is currently keeping fine and is under home quarantine. "I have tested positive for COVID -19 today with mild symptoms. My health is fine, I am under home quarantine. I request everyone who have recently come in my contact to isolate themselves and get tested," tweeted the Chief Minister. Earlier today, the Chief Minister attended the funeral ceremony of Kannada writer Professor Chandrashekar Patil in Bengaluru today. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Union Minister of State for Defence Ministry Ajay Bhatt also tested positive for COVID-19 today. This news hold importance as India is currently witnessing a surge in COVID-19 cases. India reported 1,79,723 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the daily positivity rate in the country to 13.29 per cent, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Monday. A total of 4,033 cases of the Omicron variant of Coronavirus have been reported so far. Maharashtra has reported the highest number of cases (1,216), followed by Rajasthan (529) and Delhi (513). About 1,552 patients infected with Omicron have recovered. The Ministry further informed that the active caseload in the country currently stands at 7,23,619 which accounts for 2.03 per cent of the country's total number of cases. The weekly positivity rate currently is at 7.29 per cent, while the daily positivity rate stands at 13.29 per cent. Total cases of COVID-19 in the country have risen to 35,528,004, the health ministry said today morning. As many as 46,569 patients recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours. The cumulative tally of COVID recovered patients now stands at 3,45,00,172. The recovery rate is at 96.62 per cent. The country also reported 146 new deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 4,83,936. India conducted 13,52,717 COVID-19 tests in the last 24 hours. The country has conducted 69,15,75,352 tests so far, as per the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) data. (ANI)
"I have tested positive for Covid with mild symptoms. Have isolated myself at home," he said in a tweet.

The Minister asked those who came in his contact to isolate and get tested.

"Those who came in touch with me in last few days, kindly isolate and get tested!" Bhatt said.

Several minister and political leaders have tested positive for the virus in past few days.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday said that he tested positive for COVID-19 and has mild symptoms. He is also under home quarantine.

Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj S Bommai also tested positive for the virus today. In the recent past, Haryana Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala, MoS Nityanand Rai, MoS Health Bharati Pawar, Union Minister Mahendra Nath Pandey, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal have tested positive for COVID-19.

India has been reporting a surge in cases with over 1.79 lakh cases registered on Monday and a daily positivity rate of 13.29 per cent. (ANI)
The Delhi High Court on Monday raised differences between marriage with other relationships and opined that this qualitative difference may have played a part in the exception provided under Section 375 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code. A bench of Justices Rajiv Shakdher and C Hari Shankar was hearing a batch of petitions pertaining to the issue of marital rape. During the hearing, Justice Hari Shankar said, "In a marital relationship, there is a qualitative difference. There is an expectation of conjugal relationship for both parties." The court pointed out that when a party gets married, each has an expectation and to an extent, it is a right because if it is denied it can lead to various consequences. "When a party gets married, each has an expectation, and to an extent a right also, to expect normal sexual relationship with your partner which does not exist if there is no marriage," Justice Hari Shankar said. Therefore, Justice Hari Shankar, said that he, prima facie, feels that this qualitative difference has a part to play in the exception given to Section 375 of the IPC. "We are not here on whether marital rape should be punished. We are here on the question whether in such a situation the man should be held guilty of rape, because that is what we are doing if we strike down the exception, and we are doing something that the legislature felt is not correct. And the legislature still feels it is correct, " Justice Hari Shankar said. "So, if the legislature thinks it has something to do with the qualitative difference of the marital relationship, that is an aspect which has to be addressed when you are attacking the constitutionality of the provision. We cannot treat it as or parallelize it with an unmarried relationship, " Justice Hari Shankar said. "What is happening is that today if this act is committed, the man has not committed an offence, we knock out the exception, tomorrow if the same man does the same thing, he has created an offence. So qualitatively we may go into semantics and say this is creation of an offence and not creation of an offence. I don't know if we can say that. We are at least rendering an act which was not, prior to our judgment, an offence. So, to that extent we have created an offence. These are all aspects which do perturb me, " Justice Hari Shankar said. However, Justice Hari Shankar also made it clear that according to him, marital rape should be punished no doubt, as there can not be a compromise to women's sexual autonomy, sexual integrity and right to say no. Justice Hari Shankar observed that Section 375 of IPC defines rape in a very wide manner and says even a single instance of unwilling sex with the opposite party is enough to call it rape. Justice Hari Shankar opined that today we have to understand that this provision is still on the statute books despite all this and the possible reason maybe because of the manner in which rape is defined in 375. "We are concerned with the constitutionality of this provision. We must appreciate why this provision has remained on the statute books despite so many Verma Commission, Law Commission, " the court said. Meanwhile, Justice Hari Shankar, clarified he has not made up his mind as yet and that these are only his observations and even during the judgment, he can change his mind. However, another judge in the bench, Justice Shakhder, clarified that these were not the views of the Bench, as the matter is still being heard and said, "I may also have views but I would like to reserve them for now. " The court will continue hearing the matter on Tuesday. The court was hearing a batch of petitions relating to the criminalization of marital rape. The petitioners include NGOs RIT Foundation and All India Democratic Women's Association among others. Appearing for petitioners, advocate Karuna Nundy said that, the Verma Committee recognized that marital rape causes the same spectrum of harm as other rape, and cites with approval South African legislation that mandated that marital rape be sentenced with the same considerations as other rape. Advocate Karuna Nundy also said slapping your wife or killing her in the bedroom is specifically criminalized, but not raping her. (ANI)
Holistic synergy between the Centre and States is most vital for seamless and effective pandemic management, said Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Monday. His statement came during a virtual interaction with State Health Ministers and Principal Secretaries, Additional Chief Secretaries and Information Commissioners of six Western States or union territories of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Goa, Dadra and Nagra Haveli and Daman and Diu to review the public health preparedness for containing and management of COVID-19. During the interaction, the progress of the national COVID-19 vaccination campaign was also discussed in the presence of Dr Bharati Pravin Pawar, Union Minister of State for Health. The granular status and analysis of COVID in these states were made by the Health Ministry officials covering the trajectory of total and new cases, active cases, weekly and daily positivity, weekly tests conducted with proportion of RT-PCR and RAT testing, deaths, Cases per Million (CPM), Tests per Million (TPM) and omicron case status. This was followed by a detailed discussion on various aspects of COVID management including effective implementation of surveillance and containment activities, ramping up of hospital infrastructure, increased testing, enforcement of stringent restrictive measures for breaking the chain of transmission, and stress on COVID appropriate behaviour among the masses. Reiterating that the Centre is dedicated to supporting states in containing COVID, Mandaviya said, "Centre India has provided support under ECRP-II for strengthening the health infrastructure across the country." He urged the states to make robust preparation in terms of physical infrastructure and efficiently utilize the approved funds under ECRP-II and requested the State Health Ministers to review the implementation of physical activities under ECRP-II. It was also suggested that the operational status of infrastructure like beds, PSA plants, oxygen equipment be filled in by States on the national portal- https://covid19.nhp.gov.in/. The Union Minister advised the States to increase vaccination of all eligible populations, especially in low vaccination coverage areas or districts. He stated, "vaccination against COVID results in low hospitalisation and severity, as is seen globally." He emphasised the administration of 'precaution dose' for the identified categories commencing from today and urged the States to ensure full coverage of the vulnerable population. The Union Health Minister requested States or UTs to expedite full coverage of the eligible age group of 15-18 years at the earliest. Mandaviya said that irrespective of the COVID variants, 'Test-Track-Treat-Vaccinate and Adherence to COVID Appropriate Behaviour' continue to form the pivotal foundation for COVID management. He also highlighted the importance of teleconsultation through platforms such as eSanjeevani and advised the States to establish teleconsultation hubs in every district. "It is important that people know about the available health infrastructure and healthcare services available at various levels starting from the block level, such as hospital beds, testing facilities, ambulance services etc. States need to publicize their availability in the public domain through various means and also establish Control Rooms to monitor them", the Union Health Minister stated. Union Minister of State for Health, Dr Bharati Pravin Pawar stressed the need for strictly following home isolation guidelines in view of the rising number of mild COVID-19 cases. She also urged the states to ensure that the healthcare workers are trained for monitoring of those in home isolation. (ANI)
Former Congress president and Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi returned back to India on Sunday night from his personal visit abroad, informed party sources on Monday. According to party sources, he has taken charge immediately after his arrival in the national capital and a meeting was lined up to discuss the political situation in Goa where voting for assembly polls is scheduled to be held on February 14. The Congress leader held a meeting today evening on the subject with General Secretary KC Venugopal and Senior Observer of AICC for Goa P Chidambaram through video conferencing and took stock of the poll preparedness and campaign strategy in the state. "Congress leader Rahul Gandhi reached Delhi yesterday night. He held a meeting with party leader KC Venugopal and P Chidambaram regarding the Goa Assembly elections today evening," sources said. Earlier, a meeting of Rahul Gandhi was planned in Goa on January 16 which was postponed by the party due to rising COVID-19 cases. The Wayanad MP had gone abroad in the last week of December. Congress general secretary Randeep Surjewala had earlier said that Rahul Gandhi is on "a brief personal visit". "He has gone on a personal visit abroad and will be back shortly and at the same time he took on BJP and asked them not to spread rumours about it," Surjewala told ANI. His visit came when electoral preparations in five poll-bound states are in full swing and Congress has a crucial test not only in terms of its ability to contain the BJP but also for the space as the main challenger to the ruling party at the Centre. The Assembly elections in Goa are scheduled to be held on February 14. The counting of votes in all states will take place on March 10. The poll dates were announced by Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra at a press conference in Delhi on Saturday. With the announcement of poll dates, the model code of conduct has come into force. (ANI)
The Jharkhand BJP on Monday demanded a CBI investigation into the Simdega lynching case and alleged that the state police was also part of the conspiracy. A BJP delegation led by former Chief Minister Babulal Marandi met the Jharkhand governor and demand a CBI investigation in the Simdega mob lynching case where a person Sanju Pradhan was killed by a mob on January 4. Babulal Marandi said that Sanju Pradhan was beaten by the mob and set ablaze to death. "All these happened in police presence. Action should be taken against Simdega police and administration", the former CM claimed. "The fact of the case will unfold only after the CBI enquiry. He had opposed the selling of beef many a time. This is why he was killed", Marandi added. "The police have taken Sanju Pradhan's wife signature on a white paper", claimed Marandi. According to police, he was killed on the allegation of felling of Khuntkatti tree which is considered to be sacred among the locals. Amar Bauri, head of BJP ST-SC wing and part of the delegation said that Police's stand on the crime was an attempt to defame Khuntkatti Law. "There were incidents that have happened in past too but there was no killing. As per Khuntkatti laws, there's no death punishment. This has been deliberately done by making use of a mob to kill Sanju Pradhan", Barui claimed. (ANI)
Omicron is behaving very mildly and rarely affecting newborn babies, a senior doctor at Max Smart Super Specialty Hospital, Saket said on Monday. India has been witnessing a surge in the number of COVID-19 cases for the past few weeks. Taking cognisance of this information, Chief Advisor, Paediatrics and Infectious Diseases, Max Smart Super Speciality Hospital, Saket, Dr. Arvind Taneja told ANI today, "This virus is behaving very mildly and rarely affecting newborn babies to the extent that, even mothers who have given birth during this period are not affected. The babies are not born with any defects or abnormalities." "This virus is affecting children mildly. Mildly here means that they are getting a mild running nose, cough. In a few cases, high fever was reported but that does translate to the Omicron effect. If any person in the family is detected positive for COVID-19, they should home-quarantine themselves. That is the only precaution to take at the moment to curtail the spread of the virus," he said. Taneja said, "I believe that once the virus comes into the home, it spreads like wildfire. The third wave has already hit Delhi and major metropolises like Mumbai. Within a few weeks in January, the Omicron driven third wave will come like a Tsunami and will also disappear like a Tsunami." The doctor also lauded the Prime Minister's decision to roll out precautionary dose of COVID-19 vaccine for people aged above 60 years and vaccines for teens between 15-18 years of age. He said, "It is better to immunise this age group to reduce transmissibility. Senior citizens fall under the category of high-risk groups. Every healthcare, frontline worker, senior citizen and teens between 15-18 years of age should be fully vaccinated." The COVID-19 vaccination program for children aged between 15 and 18 years has been started on January 3, 2022. India achieved a milestone in its COVID-19 vaccination drive as the cumulative vaccine doses administered in the country surpassed the 150 crore mark on Friday. India is currently witnessing a surge in COVID-19 cases and reported 1,79,723 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the daily positivity rate in the country to 13.29 per cent, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Monday. A total of 4,033 cases of the Omicron variant of Coronavirus have been reported so far. Maharashtra has reported the highest number of cases (1,216), followed by Rajasthan (529) and Delhi (513). About 1,552 patients infected with Omicron have recovered. The Ministry further informed that the active caseload in the country currently stands at 7,23,619 which accounts for 2.03 per cent of the country's total number of cases. The weekly positivity rate currently is at 7.29 per cent, while the daily positivity rate stands at 13.29 per cent. Total cases of COVID-19 in the country have risen to 35,528,004, the health ministry said today morning. As many as 46,569 patients recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours. The cumulative tally of COVID recovered patients now stands at 3,45,00,172. The recovery rate is at 96.62 per cent. The country also reported 146 new deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 4,83,936. India conducted 13,52,717 COVID-19 tests in the last 24 hours. The country has conducted 69,15,75,352 tests so far, as per the Indian Council of Medical Research data. (ANI)
Head priest of the temple at Anjanadri hills, believed to be the birth place of Lord Hanuman near Gangavathi town in Koppa district of Karnataka, on Monday alleged illegal and immoral activities in the pilgrimage centre. Stating that there was no check on the elements indulging in such activities, Vidyadasa Baba said he would soon approach the court seeking solution to the problems. "Tehsildar and Revenue Inspector have joined hands to carry out many illegal activities at the pilgrimage centre. Parking fee has been charged illegally at the foot of the hill. The Revenue Inspector has given the contract to one of his relatives," Vidyadas Baba alleged. "I am rendering services at the temple as per the court orders. The Revenue department had appointed another priest earlier. Now, they are appointing a few more priests unlawfully and trying to take off huge money that is contributed to the temple by devotees," he explained. There is corruption in the purchase of materials for providing food for pilgrims at the temple. Almost the raw material rates are quoted double. A complaint had already been filed with the Religious and Endowment department. However, the District Commissioner of Koppal, Assistant Commissioner has not initiated action in this regard. Hence, he is preparing to wage a legal battle, he explained. Anjanadri Hills or Parvatha is believed to be the birthplace of Lord Hanuman according to myths. The pilgrimage centre is located close to the world heritage site Hampi. Lakhs of devotees from across the country visit the place including Bollywood bigwigs. It is 350 kilometers away from Bengaluru and 21 kilometers away from Hampi. --IANS mka/shb/ ( 289 Words) 2022-01-10-19:22:04 (IANS)
Two people were shot and killed in Baltimore County over the weekend in separate incidents, police said.

On Saturday night, officers were called to the 4600 block of Horizon Circle in Pikesville on Saturday night for a shooting, police said.

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When officers arrived around 8:45 p.m., they found Deonte Blick, 22, suffering from a gunshot wound. He died at the scene, police said.

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Early Sunday morning, county police said they were called to Towson for a report of a shooting.

County police said they responded to Colbury Road and Goucher Boulevard just before 4:30 a.m. and found Quenten Branch, 35, suffering from gunshot wounds. He died at the scene, police said.

Police said they are continuing to investigate the shootings.

Homicide detectives are asking anyone with information about the incidents to call 410-307-2020. Callers may remain anonymous.

Metro Crime Stoppers of Maryland is offering a $2,000 reward for each incident for any information that leads to an arrest.
"During interrogation, the accused revealed that he is a serial killer who had killed three minor girls earlier as well for opposing rape attempt," the police said.

The 54-year-old accused told the police that he had tried to rape a 15-year-old girl in December 2019. Similarly, the 54-year-old allegedly killed two other minor girls in August 2020 and June 2021 for opposing his rape attempts.

An investigation is underway by Crime Branch. (ANI)
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is projected to get a simple majority in Goa in the upcoming Assembly elections with 32 per cent vote share, while the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is projected to emerge as the main opposition with 23 per cent vote, as per the ABP-CVOTER Battle for the States survey. The 40-member Goa Assembly will go to the polls on February 14, while the counting of votes will be taken up on March 10. The sample size for the survey was 3,970 across all the 40 Assembly seats in the coastal state. The erstwhile prime contender Congress is projected to poll just a little more than 19 per cent vote share. It is clear from the vote share that Goa is heading for a split verdict that could eventually lead to the advantage of the BJP. Stemming the vote and seat erosion faced in the last few rounds of the tracker, the BJP has started to consolidate again in Goa. Currently, it is projected to win 21 seats, just ahead of the halfway mark of 20 seats. AAP is the surprise of the pack and is expected to win 7 seats, higher than the 6 seats projected for the Congress. In normal times, the anti-incumbency in the state would have been sufficient to sink the fortunes of the BJP. However, the incompetence of state Congress and better groundwork of AAP has split the anti-incumbency votes, pushing the BJP into an advantageous position. The stabilisers in this scenario will be the other smaller parties that are currently projected to poll 26 per cent vote share and win 6 seats. In the less likely case of a hung Assembly just like the previous Vidhan Sabha, the government formation will be a messy process with some twists and turns. BJP's incumbent Chief Minister Pramod Sawant is the most popular leader for the CM's post among Goans with 34 per cent approval. The second spot is held by AAP's unnamed leader with 19 per cent approval. Digambar Kamat of the Congress is their most popular leader with 9 per cent approval. If AAP is currently doing well without a face, will it stand to gain from projecting a strong leader? The question is better answered by the static trend of seats and votes in Goa for AAP. An absence of strong leadership is perhaps impeding galvanisation of more voters in their favour. The much-talked about entry of Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress is likely to be a non-starter. Its alliance with the MGP is still struck with approximately 8 per cent vote share, with almost 5.5 per cent showing their support for MGP and hardly 2.5 per cent expressing their support for the Trinamool. The fact is that popularity of MGP head Sudin Dhavalikar has come down from 8 per cent to 5 per cent in recent months after declaring his alliance with the Trinamool. The fact that the "unnamed face" of AAP is getting 19 per cent traction in the polls suggests that AAP has consolidated in Goa as the local party now. Ironically, it's the entry of Trinamool that has helped APP in scrubbing away the "outsider" tag. The Congress meltdown is weird in the state. Majority of the leaders have already left the party, yet the symbol still commands approximately 20 per cent votes, primarily consisting of minorities. It will depend on candidate selection if they can really take their vote share up by couple of notches. Whatever is the loss for in terms of votes, is a direct gain for AAP. It is no more the 'new kid on the block'. Its vote share has stabilised at around 23 per cent and it all depends on the local candidates if AAP can convert this base into a winnable vote share. Ironically, it's the fragmentation of opposition which is helping the BJP. Had the main opposition parties in Goa joined forces, it could have been game over for the BJP. --IANS san/arm ( 675 Words) 2022-01-10-20:34:01 (IANS)
After senior Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) MLA Bikram Singh Majithia was granted anticipatory bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Monday, party chief Sukhbir Singh Badal said his faith in the complete impartiality of the judiciary had been vindicated. The party president in its statement said, "The judiciary of our country is a bulwark against harassment and persecution. Whenever a law is wrongfully used for political purposes it is the judiciary that steps in to restore the dignity of the individual." Sukhbir Badal said the SAD's contention that the Congress government was following a policy of personal and political vendetta against the top SAD leadership had also been proved by the recent developments. "The Congress government was unmindful of the Covid crisis and even the deteriorating law and order situation in its quest to target the SAD. It even failed Punjabis by politicising the investigation into the cases of sacrilege due to its single-track policy of implicating the Akali leadership in these heinous crimes," he said. The SAD chief said the party was optimistic that truth would prevail over falsehood. "It is a matter of record that a majority of the police officers refused to become party to the vendetta exercise of the Congress government." "The Congress government was successful in registering a false case against Majithia after changing two state police chiefs and three directors of the Bureau of investigation," the SAD chief said. Majithia, who previously served as a minister in the Punjab government, has been booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act at SAS Nagar Police Station on the basis of a 2018 report submitted by the anti-drug Special Task Force (STF). (ANI)
SK hynix, a South Korean memory chip maker, has said it will invest in the joint establishment of a chip firm in the US with two other subsidiaries of South Korean conglomerate SK Group to diversify its product portfolio and expand its global business. The world's second-largest memory chip maker said the new company, SAPEON Ito be established with SK Telecom, South Korea's largest mobile carrier by subscriptions, and SK Square the investment spinoff of SK Telecom, will introduce the artificial intelligence chip SAPEON, developed by SK Telecom in 2020, in the global AI semiconductor market, reports Yonhap news agency. The investment decision was the result of the SK ICT Alliance formed by the three companies "to jointly develop and invest in information and communication technologies and create global market opportunities", the company said. "The alliance comes as SK hynix celebrates the 10th year since joining the SK Group and SK Square successfully spun off from SK Telecom, marking the beginning of a new era of synergies between semiconductor, telecommunication and investment," it explained. The three companies also plan to create and run a 1 trillion won ($830 million) fund this year to invest in the fields of AI, metaverse, chips and block chain, the company said, in order to "stay ahead of the convergence trend within the ICT industry and discover unicorns that can change the industrial landscape, which will lead to valuable business synergies". As part of its global expansion plan, SK hynix said it was seeking to collaborate with other global players, including Qualcomm. Park Jung-ho, vice chairman and CEO of SK hynix and SK Square, said he met with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon on January 6 to discuss a potential partnership in the fields of data center applications, high-speed memory for PCs, 5G business, metaverse and smart factories. --IANS wh/ksk/ ( 316 Words) 2022-01-10-10:50:07 (IANS)
Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin has tested negative for COVID-19 after having contracted the virus earlier this month, said Defense Department spokesperson John Kirby, reported Sputnik.

"Pleased to note that @SecDef tested negative today for COVID and will be returning to the office tomorrow. He's grateful for the vaccines, which rendered less severe the effects of the virus," Kirby said on Twitter.

Austin announced on Twitter on January 2 that he had tested positive for COVID-19 and was showing mild symptoms, reported Sputnik.

The Pentagon chief said that he was going to attend key meetings virtually and was going to quarantine himself at home for five days. He specified that the last time he had met with US President Joe Biden was on December 21st.

Austin had been vaccinated and got his booster shot in October. (ANI)
The death toll, which was 44 on Friday has increased significantly, published by state-run TV station Khabar 24 on Sunday, citing the Kazakhstan Ministry of Health, reported CNN.

Meanwhile, according to state media, police have opened 125 criminal cases relating to incidents of violence, including allegations of assault, murder, and robbery.

According to Kazakh official media, at least 5,135 individuals have been detained so far for suspected participation in protests in Kazakhstan, according to the country's Internal Affairs Ministry, reported the news portal.

The massive jump in the fuel price infuriated Kazakhs as the country is an exporter of oil and natural gases and Protests in the Central Asian country have resulted in the resignation of the government and the proclamation of a state of emergency, with soldiers from a Russia-led military alliance dispatched to quell the disturbance. (ANI)
In a stock exchange filing last week, Malaysian healthcare group IHH Healthcare Berhad (IHH) said that US fund Emqore Envesecure Private Capital Trust (Emqore) has filed a lawsuit against it and other defendants at the US District Court of New Jersey. IHH acquired a 31 per cent controlling stake in Fortis Healthcare in 2018 following a prominent bidding war against domestic and international companies. Although this triggers a mandatory offer to bring its stake to 57 per cent by buying shares from the open market, this has not taken place due to legal proceedings pending in the Supreme Court of India. IHH's takeover of Fortis has been challenged by Japanese drug maker Daiichi Sankyo in a bid to recover an arbitration award of INR 3,600 crore (USD 471 million) from the Fortis founders in a fraud claim. The next hearing is scheduled for February this year. Emqore is seeking, among others, damages in excess of USD 6.5 billion comprising compensatory damages plus treble damages and attorneys' fees pursuant to the US Racketeer, Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Emqore's claim against IHH essentially arises from allegations relating to the issuance of the shares of Fortis to IHH's subsidiary in or around 2018. Emqore broadly alleges that it has purportedly suffered losses as the defendants had allegedly conspired to frustrate a proposed share acquisition transaction between Fortis and Emqore's supposed predecessors. The company said that it is not possible to determine the estimated potential liability to IHH arising from the suit, as it involves 28 named defendants and 20 non-party defendants. However, it said that the suit is not expected to have any business, operational or financial impact on IHH, as IHH believes that it has strong grounds for dismissal of the suit. IHH further said that it will defend vigorously against the claims, and added, "it has strong grounds for seeking dismissal of Emqore's claims and intends to file a Motion to Dismiss Emqore's Amended Complaint on 3 principal grounds, namely, lack of personal jurisdiction, forum non-conveniens, and failure to state a claim for relief." Emqore had initially filed the lawsuit in June 2020. IHH was served in July last year with the original complaint and Emqore's motion to amend it. The motion had been pending adjudication until December 3, when Emqore's amended complaint was filed at the United States District Court. Malaysian healthcare group IHH which is publicly listed both in Singapore and Malaysia runs a total of 33 hospitals in India. On December 14 last year, it announced that its indirect wholly-owned subsidiary, Gleneagles Development Pte Ltd, completed the divestment of its entire 62.2 per cent equity stake Hyderabad-based Continental Hospitals Private Limited to D Gurunath Reddy and affiliates, its partner shareholder in Continental Hospitals. IHH is the largest operator of private hospitals in Southeast Asia with 80 hospitals across 10 countries. Its key markets are Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey, India and Greater China (including Hong Kong). In Turkey, it is the majority shareholder of Acibadem Healthcare Group, the largest Turkish private healthcare company. In Singapore it operates hospitals such as Gleneagles and Mount Elizabeth, and also runs the Parkway group of clinics, laboratory and diagnostic centres. Gleneagles also manages several hospitals in the southern part of India including Bengaluru and Chennai. In Malaysia, IHH owns the International Medical University in Kuala Lumpur, the Pantai group of hospitals and the Prince Court Medical Centre. The major shareholders of IHH are Mitsui of Japan, Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional and Citigroup of the US. In the latest IHH results briefing for analysts on November 29, 2021, it reported sterling financial performance for Q3 with net income soaring 77 per cent to MYR 550 million (USD 131 million) compared with the same quarter in 2020. This was on the back of the steady return of patients to hospitals and the provision of COVID-19 support services. Revenue was up 26 per cent to MYR 4.4 billion (USD 1.05 billion) and EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) climbed 32 per cent to MYR 1.1 billion (USD 260 million). For its India operations, revenue grew 41 per cent to MYR 977.2 million (USD 232 million) on contribution from COVID-19 related services and healthy recovery of non-COVID inpatient admissions. EBITDA increased 102 per cent to MYR 180.8 million. Inpatient admissions increased 29 per cent, revenue intensity increased 3.2 per cent as patients with more serious and urgent ailments sought treatment at its hospitals. For Q3 which ended in September, the average occupancy was at 66 per cent. Last year, it reiterated its commitment to Fortis Healthcare and India despite the ongoing legal case related to its takeover of Fortis. "Growing in India remains a priority for IHH as it is one of our four home markets, together withMalaysia, Singapore and Turkey. We respect and have full faith in the judicial process in India and look forward to a favourable outcome so we can proceed with the open offer. This will allow IHH to further invest into Fortis to provide even more support to the Indian healthcare sector, especially in critical times like now with COVID-19," said CEO and Managing Director, Dr Kelvin Loh. "Our focus, as the largest shareholder in Fortis, is to bring the best of our knowledge and expertise to help the Fortis leadership with the company's continued turnaround and to deliver even more trusted, quality care for all our patients in India." (ANI)
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) High Commissioner Filippo Grandi has said that the Taliban has to fulfil some promises if they want their financial resources to be unfrozen. The UN commissioner for refugees further said that Afghan women and girls must be allowed to attend schools, and minorities must be represented, reported Tolo News. Meanwhile, he also told the Washington Post that it is important to maintain dialogue with the Islamic Emirate, saying that this will ensure that Afghanistan is "viable", reported Tolo News. "But in the end, in the end, it is important to maintain that dialogue with the Taliban, because all these systems will be temporary in nature, and how to ensure that Afghanistan is viable, is a viable country able to support its people, I think will only be achieved through dialogue between the international community and the Taliban themselves," said Grandi. Grandi added that he delivered the same message to the Islamic Emirate when he was visiting Kabul that the "Taliban" has to fulfil some promises if they want their financial resources to be unfrozen, reported Tolo News. "When I was in Kabul, and when my colleagues were there, we all told the Taliban the same message. If you want your resources to be unfrozen, if you want the country to enjoy again substantive development support by the international community, you also have to take steps in their direction. It's--it goes both ways, but it is a dialogue. It cannot be a wall-to-wall situation, said Grandi. Following the Taliban takeover in mid-August, the US froze nearly 10 billion dollars in Afghanistan's assets and slapped sanctions on the Islamic Emirate. In the meantime, the stoppage of foreign aids to Afghanistan has crippled the already fragile economic system of Afghanistan and has adversely affected the lives of millions of people. (ANI)
In the past few months, several economic cooperation agreements concluded between various states in the Middle East brought about dramatic changes in relations between states, which would have been unthinkable two years ago. The whole situation can best be described as shifting sands. As a result of these agreements relations between former hostile countries have improved but at the same time, these agreements caused anger and concern to some friendly states and allies. One such cooperation agreement was concluded last November between the UAE, Iran, and Turkey under which goods will be sent from the UAE to Iran and then on to Turkey overland. The agreement will shorten transport times from the current 21 days through the Suez Canal to just eight days. Already an Emirati truck crossed Iran and arrived in the Mediterranean port of Iskenderun in Turkey in just eight days. This agreement is already worrying Egypt, which is gravely concerned about a significant decrease in traffic through the Suez Canal. Furthermore, the improvement of relations between the UAE and Iran could signify the end of the Arab anti-Iran coalition led by Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen against Tehran-allied Houthis. The UAE has withdrawn all its troops which fought in the conflict in Yemen on the side of the Saudis and dismantled its base in Eritrea, which was used to ferry heavy weaponry and Sudanese troops fighting the Houthis. However, although Saudi Arabia and the UAE were the leaders of the coalition fighting Iran's proxies in the Gulf, Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, may not be so shocked by these moves of his Emirati colleague, as Saudi Arabia has already held three rounds of talks with senior Iranian officials in Baghdad. Israel is the country that is really concerned about the warming of ties between the United Arab Emirates and Iran. The Israeli government which signed a US-led normalization deal with the UAE in September 2020 considers the agreement between the UAE, Iran, and Turkey as "worrying" and "not acceptable," a government official said. Israel is particularly concerned about a high-ranking visit by Tahnoun bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the UAE's national security adviser, to Tehran on December 6 who met Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. In another development, the much-touted agreement on the Europe-Asia pipeline, achieved in the framework of the Trump-brokered peace deal between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, is expected to be cancelled by the Israeli government for environmental reasons. Under the 10-year contract signed in December 2020 about 14 million tons of Arab oil per year would be unloaded to the Israeli port Eilat and using an existing 158-mile pipeline would be transferred to the port of Ashkelon in the Mediterranean. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi told Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet that he was concerned about the project which would sting Egypt's economy. The Euro-Asia pipeline, if implemented, would reduce income from tanker traffic in the Suez Canal, which is quite significant for Egypt's economy. The agreement to use the Eilat- Ashkelon pipeline for the transport of Arab oil to the Mediterranean was blocked last month by the Israeli Environmental Protection Ministry which cited concerns about possible leaks. This means that Israel has lost an opportunity to play a role in the transport of oil from the Middle East to Europe. Strong opposition to the agreement was something to be expected as the state-owned EAPC company operating the pipeline was responsible seven years ago for the largest environmental disaster in Israel's history, when one of its pipelines ruptured, releasing about 1.3 million gallons of crude oil into the Evrona Nature Resort. Undoubtedly, the news of the cancellation of the contract displeased the United Arab Emirates, but there was no strong reaction to the news on the part of the Emirati government. On December 7, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said that the cancellation of the Europe-Asia Pipeline, will damage Israel's relations with the Gulf monarchy," but not beyond anything that cannot be managed." Last November Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (MBZ) paid his first visit to Ankara in many years. putting an end to the frosty relations existing between the two countries from the time of the Arab Spring. Relations between the two countries hit an all-time low when Erdogan said that Ankara could suspend diplomatic ties with the Abu Dhabi administration after the UAE-Israel deal to normalize relations. For many years, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had actively supported the Moslem Brotherhood and on several occasions, he made harsh remarks about the Gulf rulers. He also sided with Qatar, which was under blockade by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain, allegedly for supporting terrorism. However, at the beginning of 2021, the four Arab states decided to restore relations with Qatar and later efforts were made to restore relations also with Turkey. Following a meeting of the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, dozens of cooperation and investment agreements worth billions of dollars were signed. The UAE has also allocated a USD 10 billion fund to support mainly strategic investments in Turkey, which is in a dire economic situation. It seems that at least some of the leaders of Middle East countries, partly because of the perceived withdrawal of the US from the region that deprived them of a security shield, have realized that they must reduce the number of their enemies and try to improve relations with hostile countries. They seem to have realized that the conclusion of mutually beneficial economic agreements is the best way forward and a win-win situation for all concerned. (ANI)
Vietnam Deputy Prime Minister Le Van Thanh on Sunday assigned ministries, sectors and localities to work with China to speed up customs clearance, striving for no congestion of trucks carrying goods for export at border gates before the Lunar New Year. Due to tightened COVID-19 measures and technical difficulties, thousands of container trucks have been stuck at Vietnam's border gates with China since mid-December. Citing Vietnam News Agency (VNA), Vietnam + reported that the request was made by the deputy PM at an online meeting on handling congested goods at the northern border gates, on January 8. This is the second meeting within two weeks chaired by Deputy PM Thanh on this issue. As of January 7 morning, the number of vehicles stuck at the border gates was 3,609, down 2,484 compared to ten days ago, in which, there were 2,015 vehicles in Lang Son, and 1,260 vehicles in Quang Ninh, reported Vietnam +. Thanh asked the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to continue working with localities, associations and enterprises to promote processing of agricultural products, and urged the Ministry of Industry and Trade to actively implement solutions to expand markets, promote the distribution and domestic consumption, especially through supermarkets, trade centres and traditional markets. Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Ngoc Dong affirmed that it is possible to export via rail and sea to China. Particularly for railways, it is possible to transport 80 containers of goods per day into this market, but it must be officially exported and have full records, added VNA. Le Quang Trung, Deputy General Director of the Vietnam Maritimes Corporation (VIMC) affirmed if exporting enterprises can meet requirements on procedures and want to switch the transport model for their export goods from land to sea route, the VIMC and logistics enterprises are ready to deploy ships to Quang Ninh and Hai Phong city to transport agricultural products to China. Shipping enterprises are also ready to reduce freight and logistics costs, reported Vietnam +. (ANI)
Whoever seeks to write the definitive account of Larry Hogans political career (and the governors own book, Still Standing: Surviving Cancer, Riots, a Global Pandemic and the Toxic Politics That Divide America, is not it), faces quite a challenge. How a Republican parlayed the legacy of his namesake father, a former Prince Georges County executive and member of the U.S. House of Representatives, a stint in Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr.s cabinet, and support of his own anti-tax grassroots organization Change Maryland into two elected terms as chief executive in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a greater than two-to-one margin remains one of the most remarkable achievements in modern Maryland politics. That polls show he remains popular with state voters despite all the travails of the last seven years makes it all the more so.

Given that success, its small wonder that the term-limited Mr. Hogan, who has expressed an interest in running for president in 2024, is often mentioned by others as a potential candidate to square off against Chris Van Hollen for his seat in the U.S. Senate.

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Theres only one problem with that choice: Its doomed to fail and Governor Hogan knows it.

First, please dont construe this as a call for Mr. Hogan to abstain from the Senate race. Better for candidates to try and fail than never to try at all. Or the more, the merrier, as the 16th century Tudors used to say. Voters deserve to have qualified candidates running for top offices, and a two-term governor surely fits that bill as well as anyone. Nor are we of the school that only Democrats need apply for the U.S. Senate having not only endorsed Mr. Hogan for statewide office but having endorsed Charles Mac Mathis, the last Maryland Republican to hold a U.S. Senate seat.

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Yet, heres what should be obvious to even the most casual observer of Maryland politics. First, the call for Mr. Hogan to run is not coming from within Maryland, its coming from inside the Capital Beltway. Why? Because top Republican Party officials know hes their best chance at defeating Mr. Van Hollen. The last Republican to run against Barbara Mikulskis successor, Del. Kathy Szeliga, lost by a landslide of nearly 700,000 votes six years ago. U.S. Sen. Ben Cardins last opponent fared even worse two years later. Indeed, getting pulverized by Democratic candidates in Senate races is a sad little club to which such unlikely souls as former U.S. Army chaplain Tony Campbell and former U.S. Secret Service agent (and current Fox News talking head) Dan Bongino belong.

That doesnt make Mr. Hogans chances of defeating the incumbent good, but, rather, better than probably anyone else. And if his candidacy only results in Mr. Van Hollen having to work hard to get reelected and the Democrats diverting money to his campaign? Well, thats helpful to the GOP cause in states more likely to swing their way. But who wants to put political fall guy as the latest entry on their resume at the age of 66? This is likely a major reason Mr. Hogan has so often dismissed the possibility of a Senate run when asked about it by reporters. As he told an interviewer on CNN just weeks ago: Its not something that Im really taking a serious look at. Yet the rumors persist. Why? Because even the possibility of him running (the filing deadline is not until late February) is part of the political chess game being fought over control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

Here is the biggest reason why Mr. Hogan cant win: his brand is as the independent, pro-business, no-nonsense skeptic of both Donald Trump and liberal Democrats. That plays well when voters see him as a check-and-balance to the Democratic majority in Annapolis or, on the national stage, as an outsider crying for reason from his own party. Saying no is what makes him appealing. Saying yes does not. If he joined the Senate, Maryland voters know he would tip the balance of the Senate toward Mitch McConnell and the GOPs whole Trump-loyal crew. Even the late Mac Mathias might have trouble winning today given the R after his name. Maryland voters understand the stakes here. The federal government is our local industry.

What we suspect Mr. Hogan would like most of all is to remain relevant in the national conversation, to help shape the future of his country. Theres surely nothing wrong with that. Continuing to lead a political organization like No Labels, which seeks to encourage bipartisanship, would seem a more appropriate calling. Even running for president or vice president makes more sense. Alas, until the Republican Party gets its act back together on the national level, the chances of any Republican from Maryland capturing a Senate seat would seem somewhere between slim and none no matter the candidates past polling numbers. Thats not just unfortunate for Mr. Hogans political career, such dysfunction at so high a policymaking level is unfortunate for us all.

Baltimore Sun editorial writers offer opinions and analysis on news and issues relevant to readers. They operate separately from the newsroom.
Pakistan has appointed Irfan Ashraf as Director-General of Kashmir Cultural Academy despite being seen openly threatening the public with weapons and accompanied by Talibani terrorists during elections in PoK, according to JustEarth news.

Irfan Ashraf's posters even displayed the photographs of Chief of Army Staff, Qamar Javed Bajwa, signalling connections between the Pakistan Army and extremists.

In another such case, MazharSaeed, a former associate of Tahreek-Taliban- Pakistan(TTP), a banned terrorist organization in Pakistan, was given a party ticket by Imran Khan to contest the seat reserved for Ulema and Mashaikh.

Locals have appealed for help to the international community because of Pakistan and China's violations of their human rights, massive corruption in the PoK Government and the dying democracy.

Youth are denied work prospects, women are denied primary health care, and young girls are susceptible to the Pakistani military in the region, according to the report.

The youth's future in PoK is further jeopardised by a lack of economic possibilities and corruption in development programmes.

Various hydroelectric projects around the region are merely vehicles for corruption and the exploitation of the region's natural riches.

United Kashmir People's National Party's (UKPNP) Central Secretary and Director for Committee on Foreign Affairs (Brussels & Eastern Europe) recently wrote a letter to Chair Foreign Affairs Committee in the European Parliament, David McAllistter and President of European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.

The letter was regarding appointments of extremist elements in the PoK Government, reported JustEarth news.

The letter also revealed a situation in which a relative of a Pak Army General was appointed to a high-ranking position in the PoK government after breaking local regulations.

UKPNP also drew the attention of European lawmakers on the condition of human rights and rising corruption in the region. (ANI)
Detained Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced to another four years in prison on Monday, the second round of verdicts against the ousted civilian leader. The Nobel prize winner was found guilty of multiple charges that include possession of unlicensed walkie-talkies, a source with knowledge of the court proceedings told CNN. Suu Kyi, 76, was Myanmar's state counsellor and de facto leader of the country before she was ousted and detained by the military in a coup 11 months ago and hit with almost a dozen charges that add up to combined maximum sentences of more than 100 years. They include several charges of corruption -- which each carry a maximum prison sentence of 15 years -- violating COVID-19 pandemic restrictions during the 2020 election campaign, incitement, illegally importing and possessing walkie talkies, and breaking the colonial-era Official Secrets Act -- which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison, reported CNN. She has rejected all allegations and her supporters say the charges against her are political. Monday's sentence includes two years' imprisonment for violating Myanmar's export-import law by possessing the walkie-talkies and one year for violating the communications law. The two sentences will run concurrently, the source told CNN. Suu Kyi was also sentenced to two years for violating the natural disaster management law, which regards breaking coronavirus rules. On December 7, a Zabuthiri Court in the capital Naypyitaw initially sentenced Suu Kyi to four years in prison after being found guilty of incitement and two years after being found guilty of violating section 25 of Disaster Management Law, sources close to the trial said. Later that day the military reduced the four-year sentence to two years. The military also halved the four-year prison sentence of Myanmar's deposed President Win Myint, reported CNN. Myanmar's military junta has sought to restrict information about the trials, which have been closed to the public. In October, a gag order was imposed on her legal team that prevented them from speaking with the media. (ANI)
Around 1,200 Rohingya refugees' homes were destroyed in a massive fire in the Kata area of Camp-16 refugee camp in Ukhiya of Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh on Sunday. The cause of the blaze has not been established yet. No casualty has been reported so far. The fire broke out around 4:55 pm, said Additional Superintendent of Police, Kamran Hossen, of Armed Police Battalion-8. He added that the fire rapidly spread and destroyed around 1,200 Rohingya refugee homes, reported The Daily Star. It was doused around 9:10 pm, said Emdadul Haque, station officer of Ukhiya Fire Station in Cox's Bazar. Enamul Hossen, a firefighter, stated that soon after getting the information about the blaze around 4.50 pm, four units of the fire station and dozens more from Cox's Bazar were rushed to the scene. Locals also said that at around 5:00 pm, they saw thick smoke billowing over the camp. Saddam Hossain, a local of Shafiullah Kata area, told The Daily Star that he saw hundreds of homes gutted in the fire. "Fire service, along with other Government agencies, are trying hard to douse the fire," he said last night. This is not the first time that a fire has broken out in the Rohingya camps. Incidents of fire have become common in the Rohingya camps in Cox's Bazar. Officials concerned have often attributed the origin of fires to gas cylinders. However, insiders in Rohingya camps have claimed that the fire is a result of arson. Notably, In March last year, 10,000 homes were gutted in a massive fire in four camps in Balukhali of Ukhiya, reported The Daily Star. (ANI)
Security talks between the US and Russia in Geneva scheduled for Monday have drawn attention from the international community. The talks are expected to focus on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the rising tensions in Ukraine, as well as arms control, cybersecurity and climate change, Xinhua news agency reported. While calling the dialogue a positive signal to improve frayed US-Russia relations, experts are cautious about its outcomes. "We have to manage expectations," Thomas Greminger, director of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy who previously served as secretary general of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe from 2017 to 2020, told Xinhua in a virtual interview. "It's obviously great that we will see another round of this Strategic Stability Dialogue on Monday here in Geneva. I think it's good that they meet and talk, but clearly for the issues on the agenda there are no quick fixes," he said. "I would expect the meeting on Monday to be an opportunity to spell out mutual concerns, to spell out mutual expectations," said Greminger. Keith Krause, a professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, told Xinhua: "I'm not very optimistic. I think that it's more the beginning of a longer-term conversation. "I know that certainly (US President Joe) Biden attempted to reset the relationship with the Russians last year, and I believe that's a long and slow process because there are many, many very clear differences between the two. Ukraine being one of them, but there are a number of other issues that are quite conflictual at this point. "On the nuclear dialogue, perhaps I would be a bit more optimistic that they will begin to have some conversations." In a year-end telephone call between Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, the two leaders discussed the decision to launch the negotiations under which Russia's security would be ensured in a bid to prevent a further escalation of tensions. Biden emphasized that Russia and the US bear a special responsibility for ensuring stability in Europe and the world. The two permanent members of the UN Security Council have vowed to de-escalate the standoff over Ukraine. Amidst heightening tensions, the Biden administration had previously threatened Russia with fresh, sweeping sanctions. Russia responded that further large-scale economic sanctions would lead to a severing of relations between Moscow and the West. On Friday, the Foreign Ministers of NATO member states held an extraordinary virtual meeting to discuss "Russia's continued military build-up in and around Ukraine" and broader European security issues. For Ukraine, seeking NATO membership has become one of its foreign policy priorities. In February 2019, the Ukrainian Parliament adopted amendments to the constitution, securing the country's aspiration to join the alliance. "Even without these current tensions and without this meeting about to happen, NATO membership of Ukraine couldn't be expected any time soon since there is a de facto moratorium on this issue in a few very important Western capitals," Greminger said. Krause agreed with Greminger, saying: "I don't think that Ukraine will join NATO any time soon. I do think that the country itself is in some sense divided." Greminger warned that geopolitical tensions between Washington and Moscow are likely to continue this year. However, at least some common ground for cooperation could be found, the expert added. --IANS ksk/ ( 568 Words) 2022-01-10-08:30:04 (IANS)
Turkey showed its support to Kazakhstan in light of the violent riots that shook the country and initiated an online meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Turkic States (OTG). Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, after a conversation with his Kazakh counterpart Mukhtar Tleuberdi, said that the event will take place on January 11. He also stated that Ankara is ready to provide Nur-Sultan with any necessary assistance. Turkey is concerned that Russia has knocked out of the chain of the "Turkic world" the main link - Kazakhstan reported Victoria Panfilova. Also, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar explained that the Russian military had recently bombed the water supply system, which seriously complicated the lives of people. Thus, Hulusi Akar signalled to Kazakhstan that Turkey would be more useful than Russia. Probably, to enhance the effect, he recalled the role that Turkey played in the Karabakh war. "Our goal in the South Caucasus is long-term peace and stability. The presidents of Turkey and Azerbaijan extended a hand of peace to Armenia. We hope that this gesture will be duly appreciated in Yerevan. This is a question that concerns not only Azerbaijan or Armenia but the region as a whole. The South Caucasus should turn into an island of stability, "the minister said, reported Victoria Panfilova. Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on this occasion: "We believe that our brothers will overcome all difficulties with their own means and abilities. We declare that we are ready to provide all kinds of assistance and support to our Kazakh brothers ". The situation in all regions of Kazakhstan, where riots took place on January 2-7, has stabilized, according to a statement released on Sunday by the acting President. The events in Kazakhstan were in the focus of attention of Ankara, the leader of the "Turkic world". Hulusi Akar recalled Turkey's successes in the fight against terrorist organizations in the region. According to him, since 2015, the Turkish Armed Forces have eliminated 33,275 terrorists in Syria, and thanks to the efforts of the Turkish army in Syria, about a million refugees have voluntarily returned to this country, 4,70,000 of whom have settled in the Idlib de-escalation zone, reported Victoria Panfilova. At the same time, the general noted that "the Aerospace Forces of the Russian Federation periodically strike the north-west of Syria, which creates irreparable damage and worsens the living conditions of the population of Idlib." Office of the ruling Nur Otan party in Almaty defeated by riots. Hulusi Akar's statements are understandable, especially given the fact that some Turkish experts argue: the introduction of CSTO troops into Kazakhstan marked the collapse of the idea of building a "Turkic world" - the huge material, organizational, ideological resources that Turkey has been investing in Kazakhstan for many years have gone a little is it not in vain, reported Victoria Panfilova. The Turkish officialdom openly laments the "loss of Kazakhstan's sovereignty" and calls on its authorities to act more decisively in this direction. The situation has developed in such a way that in the ranks of the "Turkic world" after Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, which is participating in the CSTO peacekeeping operation, actually broke away, in fact only Turkey itself and Azerbaijan, which still does not comment on the events, remain in the ranks. Turkmenistan always takes a special position and, as a neutral country, does not participate in any alliances. It is very difficult to imagine that Turkey will further strengthen its positions in Central Asia. According to Aleksandr Kobrinsky, director of the Agency for Ethno-National Strategies, Turkey was waiting for the right moment so as not to interfere in the armed phase of the conflict and to come to the rescue when it comes to economic issues. According to the expert, today it is necessary to understand exactly what lessons from what happened should be taken by both Kazakhs and Russians. "Taking into account the negative examples related to Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Moscow should try not to repeat the mistakes it made," Kobrinsky said, reported Victoria Panfilova. Meanwhile, the press secretary of the President of Kazakhstan, Berik Uali, suggested that the CSTO peacekeepers would stay in the country for a week. While the contingent had just completed the deployment, its commander, Colonel-General Andrei Serdyukov, promised that the peacekeepers would remain until the situation was completely stabilized. (ANI)
An Afghan boy who went missing during the hasty US-led evacuation from Kabul in August has been reunited with his family. Matthew Moore, reporting for DW News said that the boy's parents were unable to find him after a split-second decision to hand him to a soldier amid chaos at Kabul Airport on August 19, and they ended up leaving for the US without him. The lost baby Sohail Ahmadi, was just two months old when he went missing on August 19 as thousands of people rushed to leave Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban. Ahmadi was located in Kabul where a taxi driver named Hamed Safi had found him in the airport and took him home to raise as his own. "I found him at the airport laying down in a very bad way. I looked around and showed this child to many people, but I couldn't find anyone related to him," said Hamed. Farima Safi (Hamed Safi's wife) raised this boy as he was her own, except Sohail Ahmady isn't hers. He was separated from his parents during a melee at Kabul Airport, said Moore. "I love this child a lot, but we cannot be his father and mother. He has to live with his parents, said Farima Safi. "Like many babies, Sohail was thrust to the hands of soldiers amid frantic scenes," added Moore. Ahmadi was reunited with his grandfather, Mohammad Qasem Razawi with the help of an international campaign to locate the child, reported Moore. After more than seven weeks of negotiations and pleas, and ultimately brief detention by Taliban police, Safi finally handed the child back to his jubilant grandfather and other relatives still in Kabul, reported CNN. They said they would now seek to have him reunited with his parents and siblings who were evacuated months ago to the United States. During the tumultuous Afghan evacuation over the summer, Mirza Ali Ahmadi, the boy's father who had worked as a security guard at the US embassy, and his wife Suraya feared their son would get crushed in the crowd as they neared the airport gates en route to a flight to the United States, reported CNN. The case highlights the plight of many parents separated from their children during the hasty evacuation effort and withdrawal of US forces from the country after a 20-year war. (ANI)
Pakistan does not have financial independence and its foreign policy is not free from the US influence, said the country's National Security Adviser Dr Moeed Yusuf on Monday. "When we cannot [fulfil] the demands, we seek foreign loans. When you procure loans, your economic sovereignty is compromised," Geo News quoted Yusuf as saying on Monday. Further, Yusuf lamented that whenever a country seeks a loan from International Monetary Fund (IMF) or any other foreign organization, the nation compromises its economic sovereignty with such demands from global bodies. "It affects a country's foreign policy," said Yusuf, stressing that when foreign policy is affected, you cannot run the affairs as they would be in an ideal situation. Yusuf noted that when a country is dependent on international money lenders, it cannot allocate resources for human welfare or traditional security -- armed forces and internal security, according to Geo News. The NSA also emphasised that a country cannot have financial independence till it fulfils all local demands through its own resources. With regard to the foreign policy, Yusuf said, "It is still not [free from US influence] and I doubt that there is any country which is free from it." Yusuf is set to visit Kabul in a few weeks. He will head a senior delegation of Pakistani officials during his Kabul visit for further engagement with the Afghan government on all "assistance-related" prospects. His visit comes a few weeks after the Taliban prevented the Pakistan Army from fencing the border with Afghanistan as the two countries have issues over the Durand Line. (ANI)
MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that both the leaders discussed economic cooperation, with a special focus on the hydropower sector.

"Foreign Secretary @harshvshringla called on HE Lyonpo Loknath Sharma @BhutanMoeaMinister for Economic Affairs of Bhutan during the Minister's visit to India. Discussions covered economic cooperation, with special focus on the hydropower sector," Bagchi tweeted. (ANI)
Addressing reporters here, Minister for Commerce, Trade, Tourism and Transport Faiyaz Koya said that with a rapid spread of the Omicron variant confirmed in the country, the key measures against the virus should be tightened to contain its transmission, reports Xinhua news agency.

According to the Minister, people who fail to comply with the health protocols will face fines from Monday.

Koya said those who fail to wear a mask in the required settings will be fined 250 Fijian dollars ($117).

For failing to conduct temperature checks, the fine for individuals will be 250 Fijian dollars and 1,000 Fijian dollars for businesses.

High-risk businesses failing to verify vaccination status will face 1,000 Fijian dollars in fine.

Among other measures to be strengthened From Monday, group gatherings in homes, communities, and community halls will be limited to 20 persons.

Koya said the authorities will not hesitate to fine people or shut down businesses, including hotels, if necessary.

The Minister also urged Fijians to take the booster shots.

Meanwhile, Permanent Secretary for Health Ministry James Fong reported five new deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of Covid deaths to 709.

With 1,280 new confirmed cases, the island nation's infection tally to 57,187.

Currently, 94.2 per cent of the adult target population in Fiji are fully vaccinated, while 97.9 per cent have received at least one dose.

Fiji, which has a population of around 900,000, reported its first confirmed coronavirus infection in March 2020.

It was hit by the second wave in April last year.

--IANS ksk/

( 285 Words)

2022-01-10-11:06:02 (IANS)
The 14th round of Senior Highest Military Commander Level (SHMCL) talks between India and China will take place on January 12 at the Chushul-Moldo meeting point, on the Chinese side at 09:30 AM (IST). The Indian side is looking forward to constructive dialogue for resolving the remaining friction areas, said Indian Army officials. New Delhi and Beijing have been engaged in holding talks on the Line of Actual Control in the Eastern Ladakh area to resolve the standoff. So far, 13 rounds of talks have been held. Both sides are looking at the resolution of the Hot Springs friction point which emerged after the Chinese aggression last year. The friction points on the banks of the Pangong lake and Gogra heights have been resolved. However, Hot Springs needs to be addressed, the sources said. India has also been demanding the resolution of the DBO area and CNN junction area which have been there before the April-May timeframe last year and are considered to be legacy issues. India responded very aggressively to Chinese aggression and checked their actions at multiple locations. The 2020 Galwan clash also took place in June there in which both sides suffered casualties. While working towards establishing peace in the area New Delhi has also maintained a high level of preparedness to thwart any misadventure by the enemy troops. Rapid developments have been made in terms of roads and habitats for troops. Sources estimated that India can easily manage over 2 lakh soldiers in the area in extreme winters in case such a large number of troops are required to be there. (ANI)
Laura Neuman, who made the improbable jump from high school dropout to business school graduate and Anne Arundel County executive, has set her sights on Marylands governorship.

Neuman, once a Republican who is now a Democrat, launched her gubernatorial campaign Monday with a four-minute online video that charts her unique backstory.

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I never thought Id be county executive, let alone run for governor, she says in the video. I didnt even know what those things were when I was a kid.

Neuman becomes the first woman to join the field of Democratic candidates, which had been comprised of all men. Theres also just one woman running for governor as a Republican, Kelly Schulz, a former state lawmaker who is leaving her position as state commerce secretary to focus on the campaign.

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Neuman first publicly signaled her interest in becoming governor last month, when she opened a Laura Neuman for Governor campaign finance account.

Neumans launch video makes no mention of being a Democrat or why she switched from being a Republican, and her website omits any mention of party affiliation.

In an interview, Neuman said she retains a focus on being fiscally responsible but is also committed to the belief that the government should not have a say in personal decisions about who you love, who you marry or what women do with their bodies.

She noted that shes supported politicians and candidates from both parties over the years through campaign donations and endorsements.

Neuman touts her experience both in business and in government.

I bring public and private sector experience to this race. Ive created jobs. Ive been an entrepreneur. Ive worked in economic development. I understand how government works, she said.

Neumans launch video focuses on her life story, starting with growing up in an abusive home in East Baltimore and leaving home, only to be raped at gunpoint in her first apartment.

The video chronicles her rise to earn a masters degree in business administration  despite never completing an undergraduate degree  and finding success in the tech industry and convincing a detective to reopen and solve her rape case.

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I know what its like to be denied justice and to feel invisible when asking for help.



It's why I believe everyone in #Maryland should have access to opportunity regardless of where their story starts.



It's why I'm running for Governor. pic.twitter.com/79L1islY2q  Laura Neuman (@lauraneumanMD) January 10, 2022

Neuman, in the video, touts her work as Anne Arundel County executive, saying: I made it more transparent, more efficient and I earned the praise of both parties.

Maryland Policy & Politics Weekdays Keep up to date with Maryland politics, elections and important decisions made by federal, state and local government officials. >

Neuman was the surprise pick of the Anne Arundel County Council in 2013 to replace John R. Leopold, who resigned after being convicted of misconduct in office. Neuman served out the remainder of Leopolds term, then lost a bid to win a full term in 2014.

Since then, Neuman has moved from her home in the Annapolis area to one in Baltimore County and changed her party affiliation. Shes worked as an advisor to multiple companies and as an executive in residence at the University of Maryland, coaching faculty and students as they turn their ideas into products and companies.

Neuman, 56, said in an interview that she was inspired to run for governor after visiting her childhood neighborhood for an interview with a documentary film crew. She met a child living in her old home and was disappointed to see he struggled in an unsafe neighborhood with schools that didnt fully support him, just as she had.

I realized that decades had passed since I lived in that house and nothing has changed in that time, she said.

The rest of the field of Democratic candidates includes former Prince Georges County Executive Rushern L. Baker III, former nonprofit executive Jon Baron, state Comptroller Peter Franchot, former Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler, former U.S. Secretary of Education John King, former Obama administration official Ashwani Jain, author and former nonprofit executive Wes Moore, former U.S. Secretary of Labor Tom Perez, and activist and philosopher Jerome Segal.

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On the Republican side, in addition to Schulz, the other candidates include Del. Dan Cox, anti-tax advocate Robin Ficker and Baltimore County resident Joe Werner.

The deadline for candidates to declare their candidacy in the 2022 elections is Feb. 22. Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, is serving his second term and is barred from running again due to term limits.
Pakistan's minority councillors have voiced their concerns over the lack of protection to religious minorities as the country is witnessing a steep increase in incidents of forced conversion, with cases rising from 15 in 2020 to over 60 in 2021, according to media reports. According to The Nation, more than 70 per cent of people who were forcibly converted were minor girls. Reports say every single year, at least 1000 girls are abducted, forced to change their religious identity and are married off in Pakistan and there seem to be no measures taken in order to protect them from this criminal practice. Recently, two Hindu girls--aged 13 and 19--along with a teenage Christian girl were kidnapped and married off to 40-year-old men after having changed their faith. This prompted a large demonstration in Hyderabad which was aimed at creating awareness about such violations that thrive under the public and state's radar. As per The Nation, the matter of concern is that there is no law that prevents this from occurring. The Prohibition of Forced Conversion Act of 2021 was prepared and introduced to the parliament only to have been rejected because "it would create further problems for minorities". These are grave human rights violations--both the forced conversions and underage marriages that follow--which must be dealt with through proper laws that prohibit both. Furthermore, councils should be set up to verify, in instances of religious conversion, whether an individual is acting autonomously or under duress. Pakistan is already a dangerous home for minorities and issues like forced conversions only make it all the more hostile. Such cases of crime against minorities have been increasing steadily in recent years in Pakistan, as per the report. The cases of forced conversion have gone up since Pakistan's birth in 1947, as per the report cited by Islam Khabar. The plight of women in Pakistan is increasing day by day as a fresh report has stated that nearly 6,754 women were abducted in the country's Punjab province in the first half of 2021. Out of that, 1,890 women were raped, 3,721 were tortured whereas 752 children were raped, Duniya News reported. On August 30 last year, the Board of Trustees of Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) expressed concerns over increasing attacks on women in the country. In Islamabad, there were nearly 34 official incidents of rape while 27 incidents were reported in the media. The number of official incidents of violence recorded in Punjab was 3,721, but only 938 cases were reported in the media, Dunya News said. (ANI)
Amid the growing tension between China and Lithuania over the opening of Taiwan's mission in the Baltic nation, Beijing asked Vilnis to change its policy in relation to Taipei, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Monday. "We urge the Lithuanian side to correct the mistake and not be a pawn for anti-China forces. We also warn the US side that playing the Taiwan card is counterproductive and will get itself burnt," Wang Wenbin said. During the press conference, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman accused the United States of instigating Lithuanian authorities to undermine the one-China principle. "Lithuania violated its political commitment made upon the establishment of diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China and created the false impression of "one China, one Taiwan" in the world." "The US instigated the Lithuanian authorities to undermine the one-China principle from the outset and then supported, aided and abetted them. The US tries to seek political calculation aimed at using Taiwan to contain China at the expense of Lithuania's interests," he added. The tensions between China and the Baltic nation have erupted when in November last year Lithuania angered China by allowing Taiwan to open a representative office in Vilnius, equivalent to an embassy. It escalated in recent times after Lithuania took steps to strengthen ties with Taiwan. China considers Taiwan as its integral part. According to a report, Lithuania needs the support of the West and other foreign powers to counter Chinese aggression as it seems to be struggling almost alone against one of the world's economic and political superpowers. The representative office opened with the name "Taiwan Representative Office in Lithuania", thereby implicitly implying recognition of a legal entity separate from the mainland.Beijing attacked Lithuania by lowering its diplomatic relations with them. In addition, this month Beijing also demanded that Lithuanian officials surrender their identity documents in order to downgrade their diplomatic status. The demand was such a serious concern for Lithuania that Vilnius withdrew its remaining diplomats from China in mid-December, fearing for their safety. Further, China has suspended the movement of freight trains connecting Vilnius as part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It stopped processing Lithuanian food export license applications, according to Hong Kong Post. (ANI)
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) senior leader Ahsan Iqbal on Sunday has urged the Government's allies to part ways with the ruling party and to bring about a vote of no-confidence to send the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) packing, reported local media. Iqbal in a statement issued on Sunday accused Prime Minister Imran Khan of deceiving the public and said that the Pakistan Government will not be able to collect taxes, and now that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has postponed the review of its agreement with Pakistan, "this is a great opportunity for us", reported The Express Tribune. The party summoned a meeting of the Opposition at Parliament House on Monday. "Today, I want to appeal to the allies of the Government, Pakistan has a unique opportunity," Iqbal said. Iqbal said that if Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q), and Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) are concerned about the people of Pakistan and the country's sovereignty, then separate from the government, reported The Express Tribune. Stressing that once the Government is replaced, he said that Pakistan can request the IMF to review this agreement emphasizing that the existing agreement is based on the "incompetence" and "failure" of this government. Iqbal also blamed the current government for IMF's strict conditions. With regard to the State Bank of Pakistan's (SBP) autonomy, the PML-N leader said that Pakistan's sovereignty is at stake, stressing the government's allies to oppose the ruling party. (ANI)
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has deployed several teams within Rohingya camp-16 in Cox's Bazar in southeastern Bangladesh to provide assistance to refugees affected by a second devastating fire in one week, as per media reports. On Sunday, around 1,200 Rohingya refugees' homes were destroyed in a massive fire in the Kata area of Camp-16 refugee camp. "IOM currently has a mobile medical team on the ground to provide assistance as needed. Additionally, IOM, through its communications with communities team, is being deployed within the camp to ensure people have access to good information," Sputnik reported citing statement issued by the organization. IOM has also mobilized non-food item kits to help those in need. In addition, the organization intends to conduct technical assessments in Cox's Bazar together with other humanitarian entities to assess and meet the needs of the refugees. "We are coordinating with other humanitarian actors to ensure that those affected are provided with food, health, protection, water, sanitation, and hygiene needs. Shelter repair/rebuilding and access to cooking facilities - in the form of LPG [iquefied petroleum gas] are top priorities as the affected families seek to recover from the damages caused by the fire," Nusrath Ghazzali, officer-in-charge for IOM Bangladesh, said in the statement, the news agency reported. This is not the first time that a fire has broken out in the Rohingya camps. Incidents of fire have become common in the Rohingya camps in Cox's Bazar. Officials concerned have often attributed the origin of fires to gas cylinders. However, insiders in Rohingya camps have claimed that the fire is a result of arson. Notably, In March last year, 10,000 homes were gutted in a massive fire in four camps in Balukhali of Ukhiya, reported The Daily Star. (ANI)
Expressing condolences to families of people who were killed in the ongoing civil unrest in Kazakhstan, India on Monday said that it is closely following the recent developments in the country and has advised its nationals to follow local security instructions and get in touch with the Embassy of India for assistance. According to a statement by the Ministry of External Affairs statement, India looks forward to early stabilization of the situation in Kazakhstan. "India is closely following recent developments in Kazakhstan. We express our deepest condolences to families of innocent victims who have lost lives in the violence. As a close and friendly partner of Kazakhstan, we look forward to early stabilization of the situation," MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said. "Coordination with authorities has helped ensuring the safety and security of Indian nationals. They are advised to follow local security instructions and get in touch with the Embassy of India for any assistance," the statement added. During this week's violent upheaval in Kazakhstan, at least 164 people were killed and more than 5,000 were detained, as turmoil swept the country and the death toll climbed even higher. The death toll, which was 44 on Friday has increased significantly, published by state-run TV station Khabar 24 on Sunday, citing the Kazakhstan Ministry of Health, reported CNN. According to Kazakh official media, at least 5,135 individuals have been detained so far for suspected participation in protests in Kazakhstan, according to the country's Internal Affairs Ministry, reported the news portal. The massive jump in the fuel price infuriated Kazakhs as the country is an exporter of oil and natural gases and protests in the Central Asian country have resulted in the resignation of the government and the proclamation of a state of emergency, with soldiers from a Russia-led military alliance dispatched to quell the disturbance. (ANI)
A foreign citizen who arrived in Uzbekistan on January 7 was confirmed to be infected with the Omicron variant, the Ministry said, noting that pandemic restrictions, such as wearing masks, keeping social distance and checking body temperatures, will be tightened, reports Xinhua news agency.

The Uzbek Republican Special Commission announced that starting from January 15, foreign visitors will have to submit a negative PCR test for coronavirus infection taken within 48 hours before arrival.

"In the absence of PCR test results, it is necessary to take an express test for coronavirus infection at airports, railway stations and border checkpoints," it said.

Uzbekistan has so far registered 200,341 Covid-19 cases and 1,494 deaths.

--IANS ksk/

( 143 Words)

2022-01-10-13:52:03 (IANS)
Republican Congressman Jim Jordan has rejected a request from the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot to voluntarily cooperate with the probe. "This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core Constitutional principles, and would serve to further erode legislative norms," Xinhua news agency reported citing a letter Jordan wrote to Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi who chairs the committee. "As you well know, I have no relevant information that would assist the Select Committee in advancing any legitimate legislative purpose," Jordan said in the letter sent on Sunday. The committee in late December wrote to the Republican House member, requesting an interview with him about the riot, claiming that Jordan, as a staunch ally of Donald Trump, regularly interacted with the former President both in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election and in the aftermath of it. "We understand that you had at least one and possibly multiple communications with President Trump on January 6. We would like to discuss each such communication with you in detail," Thompson wrote in his letter. The committee requested that the interview be arranged on either January 3 or 4, or that Jordan meet investigators during the week starting January 10. Jordan has repeatedly blasted the committee's effort as politically motivated, once acknowledging that he did speak with Trump on the day of the riot. "I spoke with him on January 6. I mean, I talked with President Trump all the time and that's ... I don't think that's unusual," he said in an interview with Spectrum News in the summer of 2021. --IANS ksk/ ( 284 Words) 2022-01-10-14:12:03 (IANS)
In a statement, the ministry said that the decision has been made in line with the recommendation made by COVID-19 Crisis Management Coordination Center (CCMCC).

"Educational institutes will remain closed as per the recommendation of the CCMCC. The ministry will not take further decisions. We will issue a notice, accordingly," the ministry said.

On Sunday, a meeting of the CCMCC recommended that the government close schools until January 29 keeping in mind the increasing cases of COVID-19.

The Nepalese government took the decision in view of the increasing number of coronavirus cases. Nepal saw 1,167 new cases on Sunday. (ANI)
The protesters including civil society activists, traders, local body members, and general consumers were demonstrating at Martyrs Square, Dawn newspaper said on Sunday.

They also raised slogans against the officials of Pesco, SNGPL, the district administration and local lawmakers, as per Dawn.

Dawn quoting a protester reported that the problem of low gas pressure could be addressed if half of gas produced in Kohat was provided to its people.

"But due to criminal silence of the lawmakers and SNGPL, gas is provided to Punjab on a priority basis," he regretted.

Shah Mehmood, another protest leader, said even after the closure of CNG stations domestic consumers continued to face low gas pressure.

He said gas supply disappeared at 9 pm and continued till morning, as per Dawn.

Gas has typically been cheap and readily available however, Pakistanis are now struggling to cope with hours-long gas outages, according to Turkish Radio and Television (TRT).

Notably, household consumers in the country have also seen a sharp increase in their monthly bills. (ANI)
The US has condoled the recent deaths in Kazakhstan, which is facing unrest due to the recent protests that forced the Cabinet to resign and soldiers from the Russia-led alliance were called in to control the situation. "On this national day of mourning, we convey our heartfelt condolences to the people of Kazakhstan for the loss of life over the past several days," said the US State Department's Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs (SCA) on Monday. The bureau further said that Kazakhstan has always been a trusted friend to the united states and it pains us to see this upheaval. "We believe in the resilience of Kazakhstan's people and their capacity to rebound this crisis. We wish you all strength and peace of mind," the Bureau added. At least 164 people were killed and more than 5,000 were detained during this week's violent upheaval in Kazakhstan as turmoil swept the country and the death toll climbed even higher. The death toll, which was 44 on Friday has increased significantly, published by state-run TV station Khabar 24 on Sunday, citing the Kazakhstan Ministry of Health, reported CNN. Nearly 125 criminal cases related to the incident of violence have been opened by the police officials. These cases also include allegations of assault, murder, and robbery. Protests in Kazakhstan were infuriated by the massive jump in the fuel price as the country is an exporter of oil and natural gases. The protests in Kazakhstan have led to the resignation of the government. Soldiers from a Russia-led military alliance were also dispatched to quell the disturbance. (ANI)
Stressing that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is a "test case" for the Afghan Taliban, Islamabad has said that if the new rulers in Kabul cannot address Pakistan's concerns then how can they with their promise of cutting ties to al Qaeda and other such groups earn the trust of other countries? Islamabad believed that the banned TTP is a "test case" for the Afghan Taliban, as tackling the group would help the interim government establish its credentials in the eyes of the world with regards to dealing with other terrorist outfits, reported The Express Tribune citing a senior Pakistani official as saying. "We are telling the Taliban leadership to consider the TTP as a test case," the official familiar with the development said, emphasising that if the Taliban can not address concerns of Pakistan then who would trust them and their promise of cutting ties to al Qaeda and other such groups. Islamabad and the new rulers in Kabul enjoy close relations and Pakistan has been accused by the Ghani government of backing the Taliban against the former Afghan government. The Pakistani official also warned the Taliban that not addressing Islamabad's concerns will be damaging to the Afghan side. The West and the rest of the global community will "ask look the Taliban can not even satisfy Pakistan so how come they would address terror concerns of other countries," added the official. It comes after the Afghan Taliban have failed to address the issue of the TTP (Pakistani Taliban) raised by Pakistan. Afghan Taliban backs TTP, the proscribed group in Pakistan which has been behind several terror attacks in the country including the Peshawar Army School attack which killed over a hundred children in 2014. (ANI)
A language is the soul of any nation or society, which is a result of a person's ideas and creative thoughts as well as opinion, said the first secretary of Press Information and Culture, at the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu Naveen Kumar on World Hindi Day here on Monday. "Language is soul of any nation or society and any nation communicates with its help and express feelings. Language is result of a person's ideas and creative thoughts as well as opinion can only be expressed through language," Naveen Kumar, first secretary at Indian Embassy said. According to a statement issued by the Embassy, a video message given by India's Minister of State for External Affairs Meenakshi Lekhi on World Hindi Day was also shown to the audience. Senior Hindi litterateur of Nepal Ram Dayal Rakesh was the Chief Guest of the program and member of Pragya Parishad of Nepal Academy Professor (Dr.) Usha Thakur was the guest of honour at the event. Three eminent poets including Sudip Bhola, Vineet Pandey and Abhishek Tripath were invited from India who enthralled the audience with their poetry recitation. Along with them, 12 students from different schools of Kathmandu also recited Hindi poetry at the program. The students were given prizes by the Chief Guest for their excellent performances. The editor of Hindi monthly magazine 'The Public', Veena Sinha's book of Hindi short stories and 'The Public' magazine were released by the chief guest, the statement read. Besides, a Hindi poetry collection of Nepal's Hindi litterateur Karuna Jha was also released on the occasion. The latest issue of Hindi magazine 'Himalini' was also distributed among the guests, it added. "World Hindi Day" is observed on January 10 every year to promote the language around the world. (ANI)
"We explained to our American colleagues that we have and cannot have any plans or intentions to 'attack' Ukraine, and all measures for the combat training of our forces are carried out within our national territory," Ryabkov said following the Geneva talks on security with the US, as per Sputnik News Agency.

He noted that there was no reason to fear any kind of escalation of the scenario.

The security talks between US and Russian in Geneva concluded after roughly 7.5 hours, according to the State Department statement cited by Sputnik News Agency.

Earlier on Monday, Russia and the United States began talks in Geneva. Among the topics are the security guarantees that were proposed by Moscow and include, in particular, provisions on the mutual non-deployment of intermediate and short-range missiles and limits on military exercises, the media outlet said.

The meeting was held in a closed format at the US Permanent Mission to the UN Office in Geneva.

The Russian delegation was headed by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov and Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin. The US delegation is led by Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. (ANI)
Nepali Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's visit to India, which was scheduled to start on Sunday, has been called off because of the surging COVID-19 cases in India as well as Nepal and the cancellation of Gujarat Summit which he was going to address. Sources inside the Nepal PM Secretariat confirmed to ANI that preparations were in full swing for Deuba's four-day visit to India where he would have held multiple rounds of meetings with his Indian counterpart and other dignitaries. "COVID-19 cases have continued to rise in India as well as Nepal which ultimately became the cause for cancellation of visit as the main event had to be called off," the source confirmed. Nepali Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba had received an invitation to visit India earlier in December shortly after the two Prime Ministers met on the sidelines of the Glasgow Summit last year. Deuba was scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with his Indian counterpart shortly after attending the summit. So far, no details are available over the possible future date of the visit. (ANI)
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's party may face forfeiture of funds over Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) scrutiny committee's recent disclosure of donations from foreign companies and the country's nationals, a media report said. A report of the scrutiny committee over the PTI's foreign funding suggests that confiscation of contributions and donations could be made, reported Dawn. "If the ECP comes to the conclusion that a case falls within the mischief of Article 6(3) of the Political Parties Order (PPO), the penalty provided is confiscation of such contributions and donations... it cannot impose a ban on the political party [as that] action is restricted to only foreign-aided political parties to be decided by the proper forum," Dawn said citing the report. The report cites relevant judgments of the Supreme Court in the Hanif Abbasi and Benazir Bhutto cases. It was very clear from the unambiguous language of the provisions of the Political Parties Order (PPO) and the rules that the forum and penalty provided to determine whether contributions or donations are received from prohibited sources are different from the forum and penalty provided to determine whether a political party is a foreign aided political party, said the report. In recent days, the Imran Khan government has been targeted by the opposition parties over the foreign funding issue. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Saturday directed his party workers to not let Imran Khan off the hook after the report of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) scrutiny committee revealed that PTI has hidden foreign funding worth millions of rupees. "Do not let (prime minister) Imran Khan off the hook as he has been caught red-handed while stealing money through the party's foreign funding. His so-called honest image has completely been shattered and he should be exposed before the nation," Nawaz said during a party meeting attending virtually on Saturday. (ANI)
"#UNOWAS's role of preventive diplomacy, political mediation and facilitation has become even more important in the current scenario," tweeted Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations, New York.

Further, in his address, Ambassador TS Tirumurti highlighted that the countries in West Africa region have remained steadfast in pursuing democratic traditions, despite a few aberrations.

The Ambassador also congratulated the people of the Gambia and Cabo Verde for reposing faith in democratic values. India also extends felicitations to elected leaders.

The Ambassador in his speech expressed concern on terrorist organizations effort to instrumentalize the religious and ethnic dimensions of the farmer-herder conflicts

Further, Ambassador T S Tirumurti expressed solidarity with the call of the Secretary-General to ensure predictable and sustainable funding to the regional security initiatives such as G5 Sahel Joint Forces.

He said that India attached high importance to its relations with West Africa region and provided more than USD 3.5 Billion in soft loans, grants, capacity building, strengthening of democratic institutions. (ANI)
"Spoke to DPM and FM Prak Sokhonn of Cambodia. Discussed India ASEAN relations, Mekong-Ganga Cooperation, and the situation in Myanmar. Will work closely with Cambodia in its capacity as ASEAN Chair," Jaishankar tweeted.

The External Affairs Minister's conversation with Prak Sokhonn assumes significance as Prime Minister of Cambodia Hun Sen visited Myanmar on January 7, the first foreign leader to visit Myanmar since the generals seized power almost a year.

Cambodia at present holds the rotating chair of ASEAN. (ANI)
Khalid Balti had been making efforts for uniting various TTP factions and planning terrorist attacks with TTP chief Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud, the official said, adding that he had recently hinted at carrying out terrorist attacks inside Pakistan, according to Dawn.

The incident assumes significance as Afghan Taliban backs TTP, the proscribed group in Pakistan which has been behind several terror attacks in the country including the Peshawar Army School attack which killed over a hundred children in 2014.

However, a spokesman for the Taliban government denied the killing of the senior TTP member and said that no such incident had taken place.

"I do not confirm these reports. They are not true. No such incident has taken place on this (Afghan) side," Afghan government spokesperson Bilal Karimi told Dawn.com when asked for a comment on Balti's killing.

Khalid Balti hails from Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan region and had been an operational commander of the TTP for the past several years.

Further, in 2007, Balti joined the banned Tehreek Nifaz Shariat-i-Muhammadi in Swat and established close ties with Mullah Fazlullah, a former head of the TTP. He had cordial and close relations with TTP members of all tiers, according to Dawn. (ANI)
Its no secret that you can shop at Costco and save money, but you can also make silly mistakes that dont pay off. Mistakes you might make include the ones youll eventually realize, like having to throw out food you couldnt finish before expiration or reaching the end of your membership year and realizing you didnt make the most of the fee you paid. But they also could include mistakes you might not ever realize youre making. Before your next trip to Costco  and definitely before you sign up for or renew a membership  consider these 10 Costco shopping pitfalls that are costing you extra.

See: 10 Popular Products That Costco Doesnt Sell Anymore

Be Aware: 10 New Items Worth Buying at Costco This Month

Buying the Wrong Membership

There are two membership options to choose from at Costco  a Gold Star and an Executive Member for $60 and $120, respectively, said consumer analyst Julie Ramhold of DealNews. The biggest difference in perks for the two memberships is that Executive accounts receive an annual 2% reward on qualified Costco, Costco.com and Costco Travel purchases. But if you arent spending enough to make that reward worth it, then you may be better off going for the cheaper membership. Executive members will also be able to purchase items for resale and receive more benefits and discounts on select Costco services. The good thing is you can try out an Executive membership and then downgrade if you find its not worth it. Many members find they spend enough in a year that the reward certificate basically pays for the membership. But if thats not the case for you, Costco is good about making it easy to drop to the lower tier, and you dont miss out on too much in the long run.

More: 34 Dollar Store Secrets You Need To Know Before You Shop

Not Splitting the Costco Membership Fee

Because a Costco membership comes with two cards, you can split the membership fee with a friend or family member, said Andrew Lokenauth, a personal finance expert and CEO of Fluent in Finance.

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However, the catch is that the person has to be over 18 and reside at the same address, which is great if you have a relative or roommate who lives with you. But what if you dont? As a way around this, Costco does allow you to bring up to two guests with you per warehouse visit, but the Costco member must pay for the purchases. So you could potentially split the cost of the membership with a friend  although you would not be able to give the friend his or her own card  and plan your Costco shopping trips together. After each shopping trip, your friend could reimburse you for his or her portion of the items.

Find Out: How Much Does a Costco Membership Really Save You?

Not Taking Advantage of Costcos Price-Adjust Policy

Costco will price adjust any item you purchased at full price and recently went on sale, for both in store and online, Lokenauth said. If your item went on sale within 30 days after you purchased it, you can bring your item or receipt back and get a refund for the price difference.

Although it might not be practical to monitor Costcos pricing for 30 days following every item you purchase, it could pay off to do so for any large Costco purchases you make.

Check Out: The Secrets Behind These 10 Popular Costco Products

Buying Fresh Produce in Bulk

Its so tempting to stock up on fresh produce in bulk at Costco, but if youre a small household or you just dont have plans for how to use it all, you may want to reconsider, Ramhold advised. While buying a tray of apples or a huge bag of potatoes may be a good deal money-wise, if you end up having to throw out produce because it went bad, its not as good of a deal as it might seem initially.

Its smart to have a plan before you go to Costco. For instance, even if you plan on eating a big salad every day for lunch and buying bulk produce seems to make sense, will you be able to finish all the produce you buy before it expires? Perhaps you can consider splitting bulk food items that have a limited shelf life with a friend or family member, so both of you can benefit from the pricing.

Only Considering Brand-Name Wine

One thing that people absolutely do wrong in the wine aisle is to look for brands that they already know, said Mark Aselstine of Wine Club Reviews. Theres relatively little wiggle room in wine pricing these days for established brands, so you may only save a buck or two buying the Prisoner or Gnarly Head or whatever in the warehouse. Instead of those established names, consumers should absolutely look to some of the Kirkland labeled wines because those are half-off or even cheaper compared to their counterparts.

Aselstine said that oftentimes Costcos Kirkland-label wine is bottled by winemakers who simply label their own wine for Costco, which means that youre getting a brand-name wine at a much lower price than if you bought it with the brand-name label.

Good To Know: 25 Secret Money Traps at Target, Walmart and Other Big-Box Stores

Restricting Yourself to Whatevers in Your Local Store

Costco warehouses are huge and have aisles upon aisles of items to shop, as well as certain things you can only get in-store, Ramhold said. But if youre focusing on what your local warehouse carries, youre missing out. Costco.com has a ton of stuff that may not be in your local store, including different clothing styles, foods, electronics, and more. Youll get way more out of your membership by shopping both in-person and online  be sure to check the whats new and while supplies last sections on the website regularly. They feature new products the company has just begun to carry, as well as price drops on items they may be trying to clear out.

Not Checking Prices

Most Costco members joined to take advantage of the low costs on bulk items, which is convenient for stocking up for the entire family in fewer trips, said Adam Wood, cofounder of Revenue Geeks. Instead of buying a little bottle of olive oil that would run out quickly, you can acquire a two-liter bottle of Kirkland Signature Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil for $15.49 on Costco.com. On Amazon, a two-liter bottle of Mantova Extra Virgin Golden Italian Olive Oil costs $19.89. Thats an extra $4.

However, its important to always check prices and quantities to make sure youre getting the best deal. In Woods example, the two bottles of olive oil are truly the same size, so the savings are apparent. But when youre buying large quantities of items, youll need to do the math to make sure the per-unit price really is saving you money over buying the same item in a smaller quantity elsewhere.

Be Aware: The 37 Mistakes We Make When Shopping at Costco, Amazon, Target and Walmart

Ignoring Gift Cards

Not Costco gift cards  instead, I mean gift cards that are for other businesses, Ramhold said. Costco offers packs of discounted gift cards, and depending on the restaurant or store, you could save 15% to 25% off the face value of the cards. For instance, last year, I purchased $200 worth of gift cards to Texas de Brazil (split up into 4 $50 cards) for $150. Its also not uncommon to see $100 worth of gift cards going for $70 to $80, depending on the restaurant or store theyre for.

Not Buying Fuel

Gas prices at Costco (or any wholesale club) tend to be significantly lower than those at other local stations (often as much as $0.10-$0.40/gal cheaper), said Lauren Keys of Trip of a Lifestyle.

And if you really want to get extra bang for your buck, the Costco Anywhere Visa by Citi, which you must have a Costco membership to acquire, will give you 4% cash back on up to $7,000 worth of eligible gas purchases per year, including gas from Costco. Once you meet the $7,000 spending limit, the card pays 1% cash back. Additionally, youll receive 2% back on purchases from Costco and Costco.com. Another plus? The card has no annual fee.

Cut Now: 35 Useless Expenses You Need To Slash From Your Budget Now

Not Using the Return Policy as Needed

Although you dont want to abuse Costcos generous return policy, you should use it if you need it.

Since Costco sells such large quantities of their food, they dont want people to be discouraged from trying new things, Keys said. Thats why they let you return anything at any time, including food thats been opened, and even your membership itself! There are a couple of exceptions, but Costcos customer service is unmatched when it comes to guaranteed satisfaction.

More From GOBankingRates

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: 10 Silly Mistakes To Stop Making When You Shop at Costco
NEW YORK  A malfunctioning space heater sparked a fire that filled a Bronx apartment building with thick smoke, killing 19 people including nine children Sunday in New York Citys deadliest fire in three decades.

Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said the fire started in a malfunctioning electric space heater in an apartment unit spanning the second and third floors of the 19-story building. The door of the apartment was left open, allowing smoke to quickly spread throughout the building, Nigro said.

Some residents, trapped in their apartments, broke windows for air and stuffed wet towels under their doors. One man rescued by firefighters said hed become numb to fire alarms because of frequent false alarms.

Some residents could not escape because of the volume of smoke, Nigro said. Firefighters found victims on every floor and were taking them out in cardiac and respiratory arrest, he said, calling it unprecedented.

Stefan Ringel, a senior adviser to Mayor Eric Adams, said the children killed were 16 years old or younger. Many of the buildings residents were originally from the West African nation of Gambia, Adams said, and there was a large Muslim community.

Thirteen people remained hospitalized in critical condition, Ringel said. In all, more than five dozen people were hurt. Most of the victims had severe smoke inhalation, Nigro said. Adams called the toll horrific.

We've lost 19 of our neighbors today. It's a tragedy beyond measure. Join me in praying for those we lost, especially the 9 innocent young lives that were cut short, tweeted Adams, who was sworn in Jan. 1.

Approximately 200 firefighters responded to the building on East 181st Street around 11 a.m. Sunday.

News photographers captured images of firefighters entering the upper floors of the burning building on a ladder, multiple limp children being given oxygen after they were carried out and evacuees with faces covered in soot.

Building resident Luis Rosa said he was awakened Sunday by a fire alarm, but dismissed it at first, thinking it was one of the buildings periodic false alarms.

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But when a notification popped up on his phone, he and his mother began to worry. By then, smoke began wafting into his 13th-floor apartment and he heard sirens in the distance.

He opened the front door, but the smoke had gotten too thick for an escape, he said.

Once I opened the door, I couldnt even see that far down the hallway, Rosa told The Associated Press. So I said, OK, we cant run down the stairs because if we run down the stairs, were going to end up suffocating.

All we could do was wait, he said.

Another resident, Vernessa Cunningham said she raced home from church after getting an alert on her cellphone that the building was on fire.

I couldnt believe what I was seeing. I was in shock, Cunningham, 60, said from a nearby school where some residents gathered. I could see my apartment. The windows were all busted out. And I could see flames coming from the back of the building.

The 120-unit building in the Twin Parks North West complex was built in 1973 as part of a project to build modern, affordable housing in the Bronx.

The drab brown building looms over an intersection of smaller, aging brick buildings overlooking Webster Avenue, one of the Bronxs main thoroughfares.

By Sunday afternoon, all that remained visible of the unit where the fire started was a gaping black hole where the windows had been blown out. Apartments as high as the 12th floor also had broken windows. The intersection was choked with police and fire vehicles, and onlookers were still snapping cellphone pictures of the structure as darkness fell.

Theres no guarantee that theres a working fire alarm in every apartment, or in every common area, U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat who represents the area, told the AP. Most of these buildings have no sprinkler system. And so the housing stock of the Bronx is much more susceptible to devastating fires than most of the housing stock in the city.

Nigro and Torres both compared the fires severity to a 1990 blaze at the Happy Land social club where 87 people were killed when a man set fire to the building after getting into an argument with his former girlfriend and being thrown out of the Bronx club.

Sundays death toll was the highest for a fire in the city since the Happy Land fire. It was also the deadliest fire at a U.S. residential apartment building since 2017 when 13 people died in an apartment building, also in the Bronx, according to data from the National Fire Protection Association.

That fire started with a 3-year-old boy playing with stove burners and led to several law changes in New York City, including having the fire department to create a plan for educating children and parents on fire safety and requiring certain residential buildings to install self-closing doors.

Sundays fire happened just days after 12 people, including eight children, were killed in a house fire in Philadelphia. The deadliest fire prior to that was in 1989 when a Tennessee apartment building fire claimed the lives of 16 people.
Two men were injured after a shooter fired several gunshots into their vehicle on Saturday night in west Phoenix.

Two men in a vehicle were shot and injured in west Phoenix on Saturday night.

Phoenix police initially received reports of a vehicle collision in the area of North 83rd Avenue and West Camelback Road at about 7 p.m., according to police spokesperson Sgt. Vincent Cole.

When officers arrived, they found two injured men and one woman in the vehicle. Preliminary findings from the investigation revealed the three occupants were parked at a nearby location when an unknown person fired several gunshots into their vehicle, Cole said.

The three occupants were fleeing the scene when their vehicle collided with a tree nearby. The two men were taken to a hospital for their injuries, Cole said.

The investigation is ongoing.

Reach breaking news reporter Amaris Encinas at amaris.encinas@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter @amarisencinas.

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Phoenix shooting leaves 2 in vehicle injured near 83rd. Ave, Camelback
Hollywood star Nicolas Cage confirmed his actor wife Riko Shibatas pregnancy with their first child together.



A spokesperson for Cage confirmed the couples pregnancy to CNN on Jan. 7 on the actors birthday.



Cage and Shibata reportedly met through mutual friends in Shiga, Japan, while he was filming his 2021 action thriller film Prisoners of the Ghostland in 2020. The two later were married during a small ceremony in Las Vegas on February 16, 2021, according to People.



We met in Japan, and I thought she was stunning when I met her, Cage told Perthnow. We had a lot in common. She likes animals, too, so I asked her, Do you have any pets? And she said, Yes, I have flying squirrels. She had two sugar gliders. I thought, Thats it. This could work out.



The couple got engaged on FaceTime during their long-distance relationship, wherein Shibata resided in Kyoto and Cage in Nevada.



I got her a black diamond engagement ring, Cage explained. Her favorite color is black, so she wanted the black gold, and the black diamond. I customized and personalized it and I actually sent it to her FedEx.



Recently, the couple posed together while wearing Tom Ford for the cover of the Oct. 2021 issue of Flaunt.





Nicolas Cage and Riko Shibata cover The Magic Issue, out now.

Cage stars in new indie drama Pig, which features an isolationist truffle forager who endeavors on a quest to retrieve his stolen pig and best friend, Brandy.



From the cover story: "'Pig' presents painand pic.twitter.com/E190VYIzMn



 FLAUNT (@FlauntMagazine) October 21, 2021







Cage, who is 31 years older than his fifth wife Shibata, will become a father for a third time and has two sons from previous relationships: Weston Coppola Cage, 31, with ex Christina Fulton and Kal-El Cage, 16, with ex-wife Alice Kim, according to Hello!



Featured Images via Lionsgate Movies (left), NYCPAP (right)

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AdventHealth leaders present The Great 100 Nurses of NC Award to Beth Cassidy DNP, MSN, RN, NE-BC, RNC-OB.

AdventHealth Hendersonville announced that the 2021 Great 100 Nurses of North Carolina features one of its own, Beth Cassidy, DNP, MSN, RN, NE-BC, RNC-OB. Cassidy is the Director of Clinical Services for AdventHealth Hendersonvilles Emergency Department and Clinical Education.

THE GREAT 100, INC. recognizes and honors registered nurses in North Carolina for their commitment to excellence and to promote a positive image of the nursing profession, according to a news release from AdventHealth.

Each year, the Great 100 Nurses of North Carolina Board of Directors asks patients, coworkers, friends and family members to nominate an outstanding nurse practicing in North Carolina for recognition. Nominations are scored based on how the nominee:

Promotes and advances the profession of nursing in their practice setting and/or community

Demonstrates integrity, honesty and accountability

Displays commitment to patients, families and colleagues

Demonstrates caring and assists others to grow and develop

Radiates energy and enthusiasm, and contributes to overall outcomes in their practice setting

Through the years, Cassidy has nominated many of the members of the AdventHealth Hendersonville nursing team. She admits she was surprised when she found out that this year she was the one who had been nominated, the release states.

I was overwhelmed to hear that I was chosen, she said. It is an honor to be recognized among so many incredible nurses across our state. To have this happen because members of my nursing family here at AdventHealth nominated me is humbling. I work with the absolute best nurses in the business. Their commitment to compassionate, safe, high-quality care inspires me every day. I am truly blessed.

Nurses honored in the annual Great 100 Nurses in North Carolina represent many sectors of health care, working as nurses in hospitals, public health, nursing schools, home health, etc. They come from all practice areas in nursing, including acute care, sub-acute care, school nursing, nurse leaders, academics and many more.

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Beths history of care covers nearly every sector of nursing. She brings that expertise to every opportunity she and her nursing team experience. We see the impact of her willingness to lead and mentor the incredible nurses on her team and across our health system, shares Maureen Dzialo, MS, RN, NE-BC, AdventHealth Hendersonville VP of Clinical Services and Chief Nursing Officer.

To learn more about The Great 100 and see the full list of the 2021 recipients, visit Great100.org.

This article originally appeared on Hendersonville Times-News: Hendersonville nurse named one of the Great 100 Nurses of North Carolina
Deaf high school student Hakeem Pinckney was left a quadriplegic after an accident in this car left him severely injured.

Suspended South Carolina attorney Richard Alexander Murdaugh Sr., who is already facing seven ongoing civil lawsuits, could soon be facing as many as eight more.

Justin Bamberg, a Bamberg, S.C. attorney, Democratic state representative and civil rights advocate, has announced that he is representing seven of Murdaugh's alleged victims and is in the process of preparing eight civil suits on behalf of those clients to be filed in Hampton County Court of Common Pleas.

Richard Alexander Murdaugh

Among the clients that Bamberg represents is Hakeem Pinckney, a young deaf man who was rendered a quadriplegic following a tragic 2009 car accident. Murdaugh represented both clients in past civil suits.

Hakeem Pinckney was a student at the S.C. School for the Deaf and Blind.

"This would be eight multi-million dollar law suits," said Bamberg. "If the people that are liable to my clients don't voluntarily fix this, I will let the people of Hampton County do it, and I trust them. And I'm not filing these cases anywhere but Hampton County."

Bamberg said that he is in the process of gathering information and legal documents and the suits have not yet been filed.

Bamberg told The Hampton County Guardian that he plans to file legal actions against Murdaugh, the Peters Murdaugh Parker Eltzroth and Detrick, PA (PMPED) law firm, the Parker Law Group, Palmetto State Bank, former Palmetto State Bank CEO Russell Laffitte, and "anyone else I find was attached to stealing from these people."

The Guardian has reached out to all of these parties for comment. On Monday afternoon, G. Trenholm Walker and Thomas P. Gressette, Jr., legal counsel for Palmetto State Bank, issued the following statement:

"Palmetto State Bank is deeply concerned about the troubling allegations that have been made about Mr. Pinckneys settlement funds. The bank has taken immediate action under the leadership of its Board of Directors to obtain all of the pertinent facts and information. Palmetto State Bank intends to do what it can to right any wrongs that may have been committed."

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Murdaugh represented Hakeem Lynard Pinckney and his family in a lawsuit against a major tire company, Michelin North America, Inc., following the 2009 car crash. Court filings from Hampton County show that this case was settled on Oct. 7, 2011.

Pinckney, a student at the S.C. School for the Deaf and Blind at the time of his accident, was severely injured and left a quadriplegic. He later died, Bamberg said.

Laffitte was listed as a plaintiff on that lawsuit, court documents show.

Bamberg says that he has documentation that indicates that Murdaugh used Laffitte and Palmetto State Bank as a conservator for the Pinckney family, where settlement funds were paid, but the payment never reached the Pinckneys.

"Alex Murdaugh convinced this boy's mother to let Russell Laffitte, the CEO of Palmetto State Bank, be in charge of the money..." Bamberg said. "I feel bad for these people. ... These people need to be made whole, and we are going to sue anybody that we have to sue to make people whole, and I don't care who you are."

"No one is ever going to convince me that all of these wealthy, successful people, at the law firm and this bank, knew nothing," he said. "You have folks here who have been untouchable forever, but now it's 2021. There is no reason for anyone to be afraid of anyone."

Murdaugh has been indicted on financial crime charges in connection with the Thomas L. Moore case, but has not been indicted in connection to the Pinckney case. Laffitte has not been charged or indicted on any crimes.

On Nov. 5, the state Supreme Court's Office of Disciplinary Counsel delivered a subpoena to the Hampton County Probate Court stating an investigation is being conducted before the Commission on Lawyer Conduct. The Office of Disciplinary Counsel is responsible for investigating complaints against lawyers and judges in South Carolina.

The subpoena requested all documents in which Laffitte and another bank employee, Chad Westendorf, were appointed as a conservator or a personal representative of an estate, among other documents.

Hampton County Probate Judge Sheila Odom confirmed Monday, that her office had responded to those requests within two business days.

On Monday, Jan Malinowski, President of Palmetto State Bank, issued the following statement to The Guardian:

"Palmetto State Bank has permanently severed the employment of Russell Laffitte, effective immediately on January 7, 2022. The bank and its board of directors remain fully committed to their customers, employees, shareholders, and the communities Palmetto State Bank serves."

Megan Paquin, a spokesperson for Palmetto State Bank, confirmed that Westendorf was still employed at the bank.

Bamberg provided The Guardian with copies of two checks he says were written from PMPED to Palmetto State Bank, money he says was stolen from the Pinckneys.

This check was allegedly written as a conservator fee to Palmetto State Bank in Hampton.

This check was allegedly written as a settlement for a lawsuit that never reached the Pinckney family.

One check was for $60,000 for a conservator fee, the other check was allegedly a settlement amount of just over $309,000, according to copies of the check provided by Bamberg.

Murdaugh is currently facing 51 criminal charges for financial crimes, as well as multiple civil suits.

This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Alex Murdaugh facing eight more potential lawsuits over allegations of stolen money
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has tested positive for COVID-19, her office said in a statement on Sunday.

"She is experiencing symptoms and recovering at home," the statement said. "The Congresswoman received her booster this fall and encourages everyone to get their booster and follow CDC guidelines."

The CDC recommends that Americans who test positive for COVID-19 and develop symptoms isolate for at least five full days. After those five days, the CDC says that people can stop isolating if they are "fever-free for 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medication and your other symptoms have improved."

The CDC says that "If an individual has access to a test and wants to test, the best approach is to use an antigen test towards the end of the 5-day isolation period. Collect the test sample only if you are fever-free for 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medication and your other symptoms have improved."

COVID-19 cases continue to surge across the country, with an average of nearly 700,000 new cases reported per day, according to the CDC.

Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb suggested Sunday on "Face the Nation" that the Omicron surge may have already peaked in areas like New York City  where Ocasio-Cortez lives  Washington, D.C., Maryland and possibly Florida.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol December 8, 2021 in Washington, DC. House Democrats held the news conference to introduce a resolution to remove Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) from her committee assignments over Islamophobic attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). / Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images

There have been at least 44 breakthrough cases of COVID-19 among members of the House and Senate, with at least two dozen of those occurring since the holiday recess. Representatives John Katko, Ben Cline and Nancy Mace on Monday all announced they had tested positive.

According to govtracker.us, more than 100 members have contracted COVID-19 since the pandemic began. Capitol physician Brian Monahan said in a memo to lawmakers on January 3 that the positivity rate among lawmakers had jumped from 1% to 13%. Monahan recommended telework when possible.

"Congressional offices, Committees, and Agencies should immediately review their operations to adopt a maximal telework posture to reduce in-person meetings and in-office activities to the maximum extent possible," Monahan said in the memo. "Electronic means to facilitate all-virtual or hybrid- type meetings or hearings should be emphasized. Employing agencies should review their efforts to promote all required measures to sustain workplace and employee health and safety. Capitol food vendors and dining facilities will emphasize carry-out, delivery, grab-and-go type food options to reduce assemblies of people dining together in inside spaces (a high-risk viral spread activity). Any group activity indoors should promote strict mask-wear compliance."

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The House has not held any floor votes since December 14, and was scheduled to return from the holiday recess on Monday.

Zak Hudak, Nikole Killion and Jacob Rosen contributed to this report.

Bob Saget, comedian and "Full House" star, dies at 65

IRS warns of frustrating tax filing season ahead

Negotiations between U.S. and Russia yield little progress in diffusing Ukraine tensions
James Anderson (left) did not need Stuart Broads batting advice (Jason OBrien/PA) (PA Wire)

James Anderson says he was full of confidence that he could survive the final over and secure England a draw in the fourth Ashes Test in Sydney.

The 39-year-old is renowned for his bowling, as Englands all-time leading wicket-taker, but not so much for his skills with the bat.

However, he successfully negotiated the final over from Australias part-time spinner Steve Smith to earn a draw on 270 for nine, after they had been set 388 to win, and salvage some pride for an England side already 3-0 down in the series.

There was a moment when the umpires said it was too dark to bowl seam, Anderson told the Tailenders podcast. It was then I thought Ive got this. Spin is my absolute niche. I absolutely love facing spin.

I felt quietly confident going out there. If Pat Cummins had been bowling youd have seen a lot more of the whites of my eyes.

The minute I got out there Stuart Broad was telling me what to do  get a big stride in, smother the ball, dont let the bounce beat your bat. I was like its alright mate, Ive played before, its fine.

It was then I thought 'I've got this. Spin is my absolute niche'. I absolutely love facing spin

James Anderson on Tailenders podcast

Anderson also revealed what he said to Smith at the end of the match, after fluffing his lines with the final delivery.

Five balls from Steve Smith, he landed them really well, but the sixth  I dont think Steve would begrudge me using the word pie, Anderson added. When I shook his hand I said what was that? He said the pressure got to me.

England all-rounder Ben Stokes is hopeful of being fit for the fifth Test in Hobart despite a side strain, according to Anderson.

Stokes suffered the injury to his left side in Sydney but will travel and be assessed before the day-night series finale begins on Friday.

Hes already saying that it feels a bit better, Anderson said. Even though were 3-0 down. It would be very easy for him to say Ive pulled my side, Ill go home and get it sorted. Hes still got his sights on playing that fifth Test.

It shows what playing for this team means to him.
American Airlines aircraft. Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

A Twitter user posted a photo of an American Airlines pilot with a "Let's go, Brandon" bag tag.

American responded to the complaint saying it would send the information to the proper team.

The Twitter reply sparked backlash, with some users accusing American of a double standard.

American Airlines is receiving backlash over its Twitter response to a pilot's "Let's go, Brandon" bag tag.

On Saturday, the Twitter user Dana Finley Morrison posted a now-private tweet of an American Airlines pilot's bag tag featuring the words "Let's go, Brandon." The catchphrase was coined by conservatives after a NASCAR reporter misheard the crowd's profane chant toward President Joe Biden as "Let's go, Brandon" last fall. The phrase is now used as an insult to Biden.

In the tweet, Morrison tagged American Airlines and captioned it, "Y'all cool with your pilots displaying this kind of cowardly rhetoric on their crew luggage when they're in uniform, about to board a plane? We are not the only passengers who noticed and were disgusted."

Morrison has since protected her account, hiding the tweet, but screenshots were still shared across Twitter.

American Airlines responded to the tweet but did not disclose whether any action would be taken against the pilot.

According to the New York Post, Morrison shared now-private messages that she said she had with the airline assuring her that the complaint was sent to the proper team.

American did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment; attempts to contact Morrison for comment were unsuccessful.

American's response to Morrison's tweet went viral, though both started receiving backlash from Twitter users who sided with the pilot.

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"Are you against freedom of speech? Because I'm more than happy to exercise my freedom of taking my AA status to another airline if you even consider action against the pilot," one user said.

"If you allow BLM stickers, then you need to allow Lets Go Brandon stickers. Both are offensive to some people. Ban both or none," another commented.

American Airlines started allowing their employees to wear Black Lives Matters pins in September 2020 in support of the social cause, though some workers expressed frustration because there was not a similar allowance for pins supporting law enforcement, according to The Dallas Morning News.

This is not the first time an airline has come under fire over the anti-Biden slogan. In October, an Associated Press reporter reportedly heard a Southwest Airlines pilot say "Let's go, Brandon" during an announcement to passengers.

Read the original article on Business Insider
For the third time in as many months, a group of Haitian migrants has come ashore in the Florida Keys.

The latest group of 176 individuals arrived late Sunday night  near the shores of the exclusive gated community of Ocean Reef in north Key Largo shortly after 11 p.m. This is almost the exact same spot as two other boats that arrived from Haiti carrying large numbers of people.

This is the largest group of Haitians to make its way through the Florida Straits since boats began arriving again in November after more than a two-year hiatus. The Keys arrivals coincide with an increase in Haitian migrant activity in the aftermath of the July 7 assassination of the countrys president, Jovenel Moise; an increase in gang criminality and kidnappings, and the deadly Aug. 14 earthquake in the southern region of Haiti, where recovery has been impeded by ongoing violent clashes by warring gangs at the southern entrance of Port-au-Prince.

At least six people in the group have been taken to the hospital, according to the Key Largo Fire Department.

Key Largo Fire Capt. David Garrido said his staff transported three of the migrants to the Mariners Hospital in Tavernier, and Ocean Reef medics transported another three people.

They were all taken to Mariners and treated for fatigue, Garrido said.

Fifty-two Haitian migrants landed in the Florida Keys in this boat on Friday, Dec. 24, 2021, according to authorities.

The Coast Guard noted late Monday night that the boat was first spotted by a U.S. Customs Air and Marine Operations flight crew about 25 miles northeast of Anguilla in the Bahamas.

The Coast Guard Cutter Paul Clark caught up with the sailboat near Ocean Reef, and found the 60-foot vessel was overloaded with people and without basic lifesaving equipment or navigational lights. The Coast Guard crew immediately threw flotation devices to the people on the boat.

Making matters worse, the Coast Guard added, were the 20-mph winds and 4- to 6-foot seas.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said 11 of its units responded to a situation near Ocean Reef, possibly in reference to reports of over 100 people onboard a boat, with around 20 people needing medical evaluation and attention.

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Everyone was removed from the vessel. There were four patients total. Two adult patients and two pediatric patients were transported by ground to a local-area hospital, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said in a release.

Adam Hoffner, division chief with U.S. Customs and Border Protection in South Florida, said Border Patrol agents responded to the Ocean Reef area around 12:20 a.m. to what he called in a statement a maritime smuggling event involving a large group of migrants who made landfall.

The investigation regarding this incident remains ongoing, Hoffner said Monday morning.

Other agencies helping with the operation included the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Monroe County Sheriffs Office, according to the Coast Guard.

On Nov. 18, 2021, 63 Haitian migrants arrived aboard a rickety wooden sailboat in the Upper Florida Keys after reportedly spending three weeks at sea, according to what some migrants told U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Then on Christmas eve, a second group of 52 migrants landed on Card Sound Road in Key Largo.

As of Jan. 6, the U.S. has sent 13,320 Haitians back to Haiti onboard 125 Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter flights since mid-September, according to the International Organization for Migration, when the Biden administration announced it was ramping up deportations to Haiti after thousands of migrants arrived at the U.S. Southern border and camped out underneath an international bridge in Del Rio, Texas.

While most of the migrants from the two previous boats have been released from detention, according to immigration lawyers tracking migrants at South Floridas two detention facilities, they still face removal to Haiti under U.S. immigration law.

On Monday, 297 Haitians including 63 children were returned aboard three Haiti-bound flights from the U.S., say advocates tracking the flights, which last week numbered a dozen.

Puerto Rico has also seen an uptick in Haitian migration since August 2021, said Ricardo Castrodad, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Coast Guard in San Juan.

Much of the migration is occurring by makeshift boat through the Mona Passage, the strait between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, the island the Dominican Republic and Haiti share.

Smugglers often drop off migrants on tiny Isla de Mona, an uninhabited Puerto Rican nature reserve in the channel. After Dominicans, Haitians are the second-largest group the U.S. Coast Guard intercepts crossing the Mona Passage, said Castrodad.
CENTENNIAL, Colo. --News Direct-- Arrow Electronics

CENTENNIAL, Colo., January 10, 2021 /3BL Media/  As part of its ongoing effort to bridge the digital divide in East Africa, Arrow Electronics provided laptops and cell phones to the Global Livingston Institute (GLI), a nonprofit focused on improving health, the environment and economic development opportunities in the region.

The equipment was sourced from Arrow collaborator Close the Gap, a nonprofit and social enterprise that operates an electronics refurbishment operation in Nairobi, Kenya. The equipment supports GLIs community development programs in Uganda.

In the city of Lira, in northern Uganda, the organization deployed the devices at a new center that recycles 15 tons of plastic each month and provides the opportunity for community members to earn income for collecting plastic. An agricultural co-op in the area - where more than 500 farmers have been trained in best practices to increase yields and have better access to markets - also is using the devices to track finances. These enterprises are part of GLIs program in an area recovering from the impact of the Lord's Resistance Army insurgency that abducted child soldiers and kidnapped girls in central African nations.

In the western Ugandan city of Kabale, local health providers are using the equipment as part of a program to reach the most vulnerable with HIV testing, prevention, and treatment.

Thanks to Arrow for keeping our communities together through technology, from Kampala to Colorado. The companys leadership supports young leaders around the globe to listen, think, and act -- even during a pandemic. said GLI Founder and CEO Jamie Van Leeuwen.

With offices in Denver and Uganda, GLI is dedicated to improving communities globally. The organizations mission is to convene global communities to learn and advance best practices in community development, and create equitable, sustainable, and culturally responsive solutions to challenges in the areas of health, economic development and the environment.

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About Arrow Electronics

Arrow Electronics (NYSE:ARW) guides innovation forward for over 180,000 leading technology manufacturers and service providers. With 2020 sales of $29 billion, Arrow develops technology solutions that improve business and daily life. Learn more at FiveYearsOut.com.

###

View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Arrow Electronics on 3blmedia.com

View source version on newsdirect.com: https://newsdirect.com/news/arrow-electronics-and-close-the-gap-support-global-livingston-institute-106243145
The Buncombe County Detention Facility December 2, 2021.

When any person dies in the custody of the Buncombe County jail  a publicly funded institution tasked with holding and safeguarding those accused of crimes until their day in court  it raises important questions.

So when an unusually high number of jail fatalities appeared to be happening over a short period of time, Citizen Times staff were concerned there might be a dangerous trend. That turned out to be true. But it was not easy to verify.

Data is collected nationally on jails by the U.S. Department of Justice, including on jail deaths. But the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics releases the data only on an aggregated state-by-state level. Proponents say keeping jail-level information from the public makes jails more likely to report fatalities.

For subscribers: State's deadliest jail: Buncombe has worst death rate, Citizen Times investigation shows

The information flow became more restricted under President Donald Trump when the bureau did not publish even state-level reports. Those have restarted with the most recent report coming out in December with 2019 data.

It is not clear when newer data will be released. Asked that question, Justice Department spokesperson Tannyr Watkins said reports are published on a "periodic" basis.

Legislation passed in 2014 is meant to provide more detailed public information, shifting data collection to a different Justice Department agency not restricted from releasing jail-by-jail information and pushing jails to report deaths by restricting federal grant money if they do not.

More: Mother of woman who died in Buncombe County jail custody demands answers from sheriff

But the Death in Custody Reporting Act, co-authored by Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, has not been implemented, according to Reuters. Scott did not respond to a request for comment.

Justice officials, meanwhile, dispute that the law's update is meant to release jail-level information  though Watkins said the legislation does say the department must now "examine the relationship, if any, between the number of deaths and the actions of management of jails."

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Judge: Release video of Buncombe jail detainee Biddix who died, pending objections

More: Inmate dies at Buncombe County Detention Center; fourth death this year

To get information on deaths, the Citizen Times used a Reuters database, which runs through 2019. For the most recent data, the Citizen Times went to county jail systems and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, which is tasked with reviewing jails for compliance with health and safety rules.

Some jails responded. Some did not.

DHHS declined to make a jail inspector available to interview. On Jan. 7, a month after the Citizen Times request, the department supplied the jails' population numbers and death reports. The health department staff did not respond to a question asking when they would provide the compliance reviews.

DHHS death numbers were more complete than those given by some of the jails, including detainees who were discharged by jails before they died in hospitals, something critics say is a way to keep the fatalities off the books.

More: Buncombe DA: BCDC cannot be allowed to unload a dead, or dying, man without notification

Related: Incarcerated man dies at Buncombe County jail; fourth in-custody death in the past year

The Citizen Times also got death investigations and autopsies for detainees from the N.C. Medical Examiner's Office, the agency responsible for determining causes of deaths.

To fill in gaps, the Citizen Times used news reports and information gathered by nonprofits and the UNC School of Government.

Using average daily population and deaths by year, the Citizen Times calculated death rates for the state's 10 biggest jail systems: Mecklenburg, Wake, Guilford, Forsyth, New Hanover, Gaston, Cumberland, Buncombe, Durham and Pitt.

That showed from 2008-2018 Buncombe had the second highest jail fatality rate in the state per 1,000 detainees, at 2. That was behind Durham at 2.4. The national average is 1.5.

But when 2019 to 2021 are taken into account, including Buncombe's eight deaths, the county's rate becomes the worst at 2.9. Durham is the next highest at 2.3.

It is a number about which local officials, such as Sheriff Quentin Miller, who is responsible for managing the jail, said they were unaware  but which a top former state corrections official and former federal prosecutor say could be a key piece of information in saving lives.

Joel Burgess has lived in WNC for more than 20 years, covering politics, government and other news. He's written award-winning stories on topics ranging from gerrymandering to police use of force. Got a tip? Contact Burgess at jburgess@citizentimes.com, 828-713-1095 or on Twitter @AVLreporter. Please help support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Asheville Citizen-Times investigates North Carolina's deadliest jail
BEIJING (AP)  Beijing on Monday accused Washington of inciting Lithuania to contain China" in a feud over the status of self-ruled Taiwan after U.S. officials expressed support for the European Union-member country in the face of Chinese economic pressure.

Lithuania is the latest flashpoint in China's campaign to pressure companies and foreign governments to adopt its positions on Taiwan, Tibet and other sensitive issues.

The United States has instigated the Lithuanian authorities to undermine the one-China principle, said a foreign ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin. It has supported, aided and abetted them in going further down the wrong path to achieve its political calculations to contain China.

American and Lithuanian officials say China has blocked imports from the northern European country since the Taiwanese government was allowed to open a trade office there under the name Taiwan.

In a phone call last week, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai expressed strong support to a European official for Lithuania in the face of economic coercion, Tais office said in on its website.

Taiwan and China have been ruled separately since splitting amid civil war in 1949. The mainlands ruling Communist Party never has controlled the island but claims it as part of Chinese territory and threatens to invade.

The U.S. and most other governments, including Lithuania, have diplomatic relations only with Beijing but maintain commercial and informal political ties with Taiwans democratically elected government. Most governments acquiesce to Chinese pressure by requiring Taiwanese entities to operate under the name Chinese Taipei.

Beijing retaliated for Lithuanias move by expelling the Lithuanian ambassador. Lithuania has closed its embassy in Beijing.
Ben Affleck and Rep. Ayanna Pressley. BG004/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images, Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images

In a Boston Globe interview, Ben Affleck addressed how seriously he considered running for office.

"She probably would have beat my [expletive], so I'm glad I didn't run," he said of Rep. Pressley.

Affleck said people wanted him to run in the district Pressley won after a 2018 primary upset.

America may have seen a Congressman Ben Affleck were it not for Rep. Ayanna Pressley's underdog victory in 2018, the Oscar winner told The Boston Globe recently.

In a Q&A published last week, Affleck said he gravitated toward politics as his career progressed, but a full-blown run for office was never in the cards.

"People wanted me to run against [former US Representative Michael] Capuano in the, you know, the old Tip O'Neill district," Affleck said, referring to the third-longest-serving speaker of the House of Representatives in US history.

In 2018, Rep. Ayanna Pressley delivered a shocking upset to Capuano in the Democratic primary and ultimately won the seat, joining colleagues who pulled off similar intraparty challenges in what would become "The Squad."

"She probably would have beat my [expletive], so I'm glad I didn't run," Affleck said, with the Globe omitting his swear word of choice. "Even though she's from Ohio, I have a feeling she would have cleaned my clock."

The grind of Congress and the need to keep fundraising also proved unappealing to the movie star and screenwriter, which he said led to him starting the Eastern Congo Initiative instead.

Affleck added that he campaigned for Democratic nominee John Kerry in 2004. "I felt strongly about gay marriage; and I felt George Bush and the war in Iraq was wrong," he said.

"But I didn't want to run for Congress," he continued.

"I looked at the life of people in Congress and it was a constant process of glad-handing, begging for money, and being beholden to people," Affleck said. "It's so depressing."

Read the original article on Business Insider
BEVERLY, MA  Beverly will sponsor two more free coronavirus test dates for city residents and employees this week.

The walk-in testing will take place at Beverly High School at the main entrance off of the large parking lot. Testing hours are Wednesday from 4 to 8 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.



Pre-registration is advised and can be done here.



"COVID-19 testing is an important way to protect your family, friends, and community," officials said. "It will save lives and help keep our community headed in the right direction."

Cataldo Ambulance will perform the testing. This is the PCR nasal swab test with results typically emailed within 24 to 48 hours.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)

This article originally appeared on the Beverly Patch
The Recount

Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) sounded off during a press conference about Trevor Noahs jabs at him and the state of Florida during the White House Correspondents dinner on Saturday. The Florida governor and possible 2024 presidential candidate who did not attend the dinner said he never would have and had no interest in it. During his monologue, Noah roasted politicians from both parties.
Bob Saget attends the red carpet premiere & party for Peacock's new comedy series "MacGruber" at California Science Center on December 08, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. Rodin Eckenroth/FilmMagic/Getty Images

Saget was found dead in a hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, Florida.

The actor was best known for his role as Danny Tanner in the ABC sitcom "Full House."

Detectives found no sign of foul play or drug use.

Bob Saget, the stand-up comedian and actor best known for his role as Danny Tanner in the ABC sitcom "Full House," died Sunday at age 65, authorities said.

Saget was found dead in a hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, Florida, according to the Orange County Sheriff's Office. Deputies responded to a call about an unresponsive man around 4 p.m. local time. Saget was pronounced dead at the scene. Detectives found no sign of foul play or drug use.

Saget was nicknamed "America's Dad" for his role as the patriarch of the Tanner family in "Full House," which aired from 1987-1995. In addition to acting, the Philadelphia native hosted "America's Funniest Home Videos" from 1989 to 1997.

Despite a clean-cut image due to those roles, Saget was also known for his adult-oriented stand-up routines, which were full of raunchy and explicit language.

Jodie Sweetin, Dave Coulier, Candace Cameron, Bob Saget, John Stamos, Mary-Kate Olsen / Ashley Olsen, Lori Loughlin Season Three promotional photo for the ABC tv series 'Full House', August 8, 1989. Disney General Entertainment Content/Getty Images

Saget was in Florida for a string of comedy shows. After performing stand-up Saturday night in Jacksonville, Saget said in an Instagram post that he loved the set and praised the audience for being fun and positive.

"I had no idea I did a two hour set tonight. I'm back in comedy like I was when I was 26. I guess I'm finding my new voice and loving every moment of it," Saget wrote.

Saget is survived by his wife, Kelly Rizzo, and three daughters from his previous marriage.

Tributes for Saget poured in from fans, friends, co-stars, and fellow comedians.

"I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby," actor John Stamos, who starred alongside Saget in "Full House" as Uncle Jesse, said on Twitter.

Penn Jillette, of the Las Vegas magic duo Penn & Teller, said on Twitter: "Saget would have wanted something tweeted that was really funny and in very bad taste. I can't do that. I'm just so sad. Bob was just great on every level and we will all miss him."

Read the original article on Insider
(Getty Images)

Comedian and Full House star Bob Saget has died, aged 65.

The news was first reported by TMZ, who said he was pronounced dead at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, Florida. There is currently no word on the cause.

Saget was touring the state and last performed on Saturday night (8 January) in Jacksonville. He tweeted about the show shortly after it ended, writing: Loved tonights show @PV_ConcertHall in Jacksonville. Appreciative audience. I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight. Im happily addicted again to this s***.

He was set to be touring his stand-up show until May.

The comedians career was kickstarted in 1987 when he was cast as Danny Tanner in ABC sitcom Full House.

He was also known for hosting Americas Funniest Home Videos from 199 to 1997 and being the voice of the future Ted Mosby in hit sitcom How I Met Your Mother.

In the later stages of his career, Saget returned to his stand-up roots, touring comedy shows around America.

He is survived by his wife Kelly Rizzo and three children.

More to follow
When Chloe attained B Corp status last October, it was a major milestone for the fashion house in terms of its environmental ambitions, yet only one stepping stone on its long path to fully becoming a company that is purpose-driven, community-based and accountable.

What was perhaps most gratifying to chief executive officer Riccardo Bellini, the architect of the new business model, was that the designation immediately prompted calls from several luxury peers inquiring about ways to make their companies more environmentally and socially sustainable.

More from WWD

I think industry collaboration is becoming an essential part of any climate strategy. You cannot handle this issue alone, he said.

In his view, the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, last November unleashed a sense of urgency to change, to collaborate and to find solutions.

Part of the commitment of B Corp members is to promote the label, and Bellini is an articulate and enthusiastic, yet grounded, champion of companies doing good for the planet and people, while still pursuing profits.

He declined to say which brands reached out to him with requests for advice and information, stressing that each company has to pursue their own journey and evaluate if B Corp is right for them or not.

Still, the designation is fueling exceptional conversations, reflecting a genuine interest in new business models that are more sustainable.

B Corp is rooted in collaborating together toward a better way of doing business, he said. Its our role to spread the gospel, to walk the talk, and to support like-minded companies that want to follow a similar path.

In an exclusive interview roughly one year after he disclosed Chloes new business approach, Bellini reviewed progress after an eventful 2021 for the French brand, part of Swiss luxury group Compagnie Financiere Richemont.

The principle behind the purpose-driven model is the shift from a shareholder mentality to a larger stakeholder mentality, he explained, characterizing it as a foundational and long-term cultural shift for this company.

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With it comes a new set of measuring sticks, framed by a triple bottom line  for environmental, social and financial progress.

Bellini exalted the B Corp status for offering an accountability toolbox as a management tool, enabling Chloes leadership team to start developing a precise action plan based on its scoring and to set targets across the company.

Its new sustainability board, which is responsible for holding the company accountable, met twice last year, most recently in October to review progress to date.

As of late last year, the company was on track to meet 2021 goals of:

Making sure at least 50 percent of materials used for ready-to-wear collections are lower-impact, a goal overachieved for the pre-fall 2022 collection, reaching 70 percent.

Reducing global carbon emissions per product by 15 percent.

Producing at least 20 percent of raw materials for rtw in collaboration with fair-trade organizations such as Akanjo or Made 51.

Positively impacting at least 30,000 girls via its UNICEF Girls Forward partnership.

Launching an internal volunteering program offering up to eight hours a year, per employee.

Were extremely transparent, Bellini said, noting that all of its 2021 and three-year goals are published on the companys website, under the sustainability sections. Its ESG activities are also well documented on its LinkedIn page.

Last July, Chloe published its first environment profit and loss account, covering 2020, which details everything from its greenhouse gas emissions by category of product to water consumption, air pollution, waste and land use.

It is now planning to publish a social profit and loss account, considered an industry first, by the end of 2023, having conscripted a research team at the Institut Francais de la Mode, and with the support of the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers. The methodology has been approved and first tests will be conducted this year, in tandem with industry consultations.

Bellini noted that Chloe will open-source the methodology for anyone in the industry who wishes to measure its social impact on different factors, such as gender equality and inclusion.

There are also intangibles, including Chloes newfound attractiveness as a workplace for Millennials, who meticulously research companies values and environmental track records, and a higher level of engagement among current employees, according to the executive.

This is bringing completely new energy and a new sense of inspiration, Bellini enthused.

Addressing other aspects of the business, Bellini gave a shoutout to its creative director Gabriela Hearst, who unveiled her first collection for the brand last March.

We have been going through a major creative rebound over the past year, and Gabriela has been a key force behind all this process of transformation creatively and also on the sustainability agenda, he said. Over the last few seasons we have been streamlining and sharpening in a very clear way our creative message.

Without mentioning specific talents, he said we have been renewing our creative teams across all product categories.

Richemont does not break down results by brand, but has cited improvements in its other businesses, which include its fashion and leather goods maisons, in the six months ended Sept. 30, with sales rising 3 percent at constant currency.

In the interview, Bellini said, we have been seeing a very positive dynamic and very promising initial response to the creative renewal from existing clients, past clients and a flow of new clients coming into the brand.

Of course, this is just the beginning of the long journey and a long transformation that we are approaching with a very long-term view, he said. Im a big believer in balance, and I refer to balance in our category mix of ready-to-wear, shoes and bags; balance in our geographical footprint, and balance in our channel mix.

In tandem with the arrival of Hearsts first Chloe products, the brand swept clean its Instagram account, and confounded many of its 9.8 million followers with close-up images of insects, mushrooms, flowers and the occasional female body part. Eventually it posted more images of actual products, like its new low-impact Nama sneaker.

It generated a very powerful and interesting and animated conversation, he said of the new communication approach. In todays world, fashion companies need to start reflecting in a larger way the role of communication beyond just creating desire for products.

We need to recognize that our communication can also have a positive and powerful impact culturally It can also trigger a positive narrative and the positive impact to the outside world, he asserted.

Over the last two years Chloe has been re-balancing its channel mix from wholesale toward direct-to-consumer sales, which now account for about 60 percent of business. The brand counts 125 directly operated boutiques.

Bellini described gradual growth of the brands retail network, with his primary focus on consolidating and upgrading. The company has quietly debuted a range of pop-ins  a refreshed design concept already present in boutiques including Paris, New York, Shanghai, Taiwan, Beijing and Tokyo. A new store concept is to be rolled out a later stage.

A temporary space serving coffee and chocolates by Alain Ducasse at the Saint-Honore flagship in Paris last October was among initiatives to bring new energy into the stores.

Chloe has also made significant progress on the digital front, with digital penetration increasing to 25 percent, up from 10 percent two years ago.

We transformed all our platforms in China and established a new omnichannel technology platform for our China business. And now, we are excited for the partnership with Farfetch, he said, referring to Richemonts quest to create a neutral, industry-wide platform, built on the latest omnichannel retail technologies.

He flagged significant work ahead on its social and environmental footprint, and its supply chain, along with an ongoing cultural shift within the company.

Not that Chloe is going it alone. The executive touted collaborations with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the Fashion Pact and the Prince of Wales Sustainable Markets Initiative.

I think there is a shift in mentality in collaborating more and more with other players to drive change, he said.

Chloe will mark its 70th anniversary in 2022 with a variety of events and initiatives to promote the heritage of the brand and exalt the innovative values and ideas that founder Gaby Aghion brought to the industry, first and foremost using fashion to support the advancement of women in society.

Those values are exceptionally current in many, many ways now and theyve been a key source of inspirations for our purpose work, he said.

SEE ALSO:

Gabriela Hearst and Chloe Go Way Back

Chloe Attains B Corp Certification

Chloe Quietly Shifts to Purpose-Driven Business Model
President Nguyen Xuan Phuc receives Lao Minister of Public Security

President Nguyen Xuan Phuc hosted a reception in Hanoi on January 10 for Lao Minister of Public Security Gen. Vilay Lakhamphong, during which he appreciated the latter's efforts to promote the special and precious traditional ties between the Parties and States, including between their ministries of public security.





President Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) receives Lao Minister of Public Security Gen. Vilay Lakhamphong in Hanoi on January 10. (Photo: VNA)



Stressing the great friendship, special solidarity, and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and Laos, the President hailed defence - security cooperation as a pillar in bilateral relations.



He spoke highly of the two ministries coordination outcomes and cooperation orientations, noting that the Party and State of Vietnam always create favourable conditions for the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security to boost frequent and effective ties with its Lao counterpart, especially in crime fight and personnel training.



President Phuc expressed his hope that they will enhance close and practical cooperation to concurrently deal with strategic issues and work together in combating cyber and drug crimes and improving professional capacity.



As the two countries will mark the 60th founding anniversary of diplomatic ties in 2022, he asked their public security forces to increase joint activities so as to develop result-oriented cooperation and turn it into an exemplar of bilateral relations.



For his part, Vilay informed his host about the outcomes of the earlier talks with his Vietnamese counterpart Gen. To Lam.



He thanked the Vietnamese Party, State, and Ministry of Public Security for their precious support for Laos, especially in the trying times.



In the time ahead, the two ministries will step up the crackdown on crimes, particularly drug crime; strengthen coordination to ensure security - order in areas along the shared borderline; guarantee social order and safety to promote investment projects, including those from Vietnam, in Laos; and boost education of younger generations on the countries special friendship, according to the minister.
Photo: YouTube

News stories about the climate crisis often contain mentions of greenhouse gases, and the greenhouse effect. Whilst most will find the analogy easy to understand, what exactly are these gases, and why are they contributing to the warming of the Earth?



1. What is the greenhouse effect?



In a greenhouse, sunlight enters, and heat is retained. The greenhouse effect describes a similar phenomenon on a planetary scale but, instead of the glass of a greenhouse, certain gases are increasingly raising global temperatures.

The surface of the Earth absorbs just under half of the suns energy, while the atmosphere absorbs 23 per cent, and the rest is reflected back into space. Natural processes ensure that the amount of incoming and outgoing energy is equal, keeping the planets temperature stable.

However, human activity is resulting in the increased emission of so-called greenhouse gases (GHGs) which, unlike other atmospheric gases such as oxygen and nitrogen, becomes trapped in the atmosphere, unable to escape the planet. This energy returns to the surface, where it is reabsorbed.

Because more energy enters than exits the planet, surface temperatures increase until a new balance is achieved.

2. Why does the warming matter?



This temperature increase has long-term, adverse effects on the climate, and affects a myriad of natural systems. Effects include increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events  including flooding, droughts, wildfires and hurricanes  that affect millions of people and cause trillions in economic losses.

Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions endanger human and environmental health, says Mark Radka, Chief of the UN Environment Programmes (UNEP) Energy and Climate Branch. And the impacts will become more widespread and severe without strong climate action.

GHG emissions are critical to understanding and addressing the climate crisis: despite an initial dip due to COVID-19, the latest UNEP Emissions Gap Report shows a rebound, and forecasts a disastrous global temperature rise of at least 2.7 degrees this century, unless countries make much greater efforts to reduce emissions.

The report found that GHG emissions need to be halved by 2030, if we are to limit global warming to 1.5C compared to pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.

3. What are the major greenhouse gases?



Water vapour is the biggest overall contributor to the greenhouse effect. However, almost all the water vapour in the atmosphere comes from natural processes.

Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide are the major GHGs to worry about. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for up to 1,000 years, methane for around a decade, and nitrous oxide for approximately 120 years.

Measured over a 20-year period, methane is 80 times more potent than CO2 in causing global warming, while nitrous oxide is 280 times more potent.

4. How is human activity producing these greenhouse gases?



Coal, oil, and natural gas continue to power many parts of the world. Carbon is the main element in these fuels and, when theyre burned to generate electricity, power transportation, or provide heat, they produce CO2.

Oil and gas extraction, coal mining, and waste landfills account for 55 per cent of human-caused methane emissions. Approximately 32 per cent of human-caused methane emissions are attributable to cows, sheep and other ruminants that ferment food in their stomachs. Manure decomposition is another agricultural source of the gas, as is rice cultivation.

Human-caused nitrous oxide emissions largely arise from agriculture practices. Bacteria in soil and water naturally convert nitrogen into nitrous oxide, but fertilizer use and run-off add to this process by putting more nitrogen into the environment.

Fluorinated gases  such as hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride  are GHGs that do not occur naturally. Hydrofluorocarbons are refrigerants used as alternatives to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which, having depleted the ozone layer,were phased out thanks to the Montreal Protocol. The others have industrial and commercial uses.

While fluorinated gases are far less prevalent than other GHGs and do not deplete the ozone layer like CFCs, they are still very powerful. Over a 20-year period, the global warming potential of some fluorinated gases is up to 16,300 times greater than that of CO2.

5. What can we do to reduce GHG emissions?



Shifting to renewable energy, putting a price on carbon, and phasing out coal are all important elements in reducing GHG emissions. Ultimately, stronger emission-reduction targets are necessary for the preservation of long-term human and environmental health.

We need to implement strong policies that back the raised ambitions, says Mr. Radka. We cannot continue down the same path and expect better results. Action is needed now.

During COP26, the European Union and the United States launched the Global Methane Pledge, which will see over 100 countries aim to reduce 30 per cent of methane emissions in the fuel, agriculture and waste sectors by 2030.

Despite the challenges, there is reason to be positive. From 2010 to 2021, policies were put in place to lower annual emissions by 11 gigatons by 2030 compared to what would have otherwise happened. Individuals can also join the UNs #ActNow campaign for ideas to take climate-positive actions.

By making choices that have less harmful effects on the environment, everyone can be a part of the solution and influence change.

Speaking up is one way to multiply impact and create change on a much bigger scale.
UFC lightweight champion Charles Oliveira has expressed a desire to move up and down across weight classes to challenge for more titles.

After a retiring Khabib Nurmagomedov relinquished the lightweight belt in late 2020, Oliveira knocked out Michael Chandler last May to win the vacant gold, before submitting Dustin Poirier in December to retain it.

While the Brazilians next fight looks likely to be a lightweight title defence against Justin Gaethje or Conor McGregor, Oliveira is eyeing potential clashes with welterweight champion Kamaru Usman and featherweight title holder Alexander Volkanovski.

Oliveira, who competed at featherweight before moving up to 155lbs, told MMA Fighting: I really thought I couldnt drop to 145 anymore.

But this last weight cut, I was really [close to] 155 before the fight with this work weve been doing, with lots of water in the body, and we believe we could easily make 145.

If I had the opportunity to go straight for the 145 belt, Id move down to fight. Also, if I had the opportunity to go straight for the 170 belt, Id also move up to fight.

But I believe its more viable to [drop down] to 145 instead of going to 170 at this moment. Becoming a two-division champion, a Brazilian man, would be awesome.

Only seven fighters have ever held UFC titles in two different divisions, with just four of them holding those belts simultaneously. Among the latter group is Oliveiras compatriot Amanda Nunes, who is womens featherweight champion and only recently lost her bantamweight belt.

Any bid by Oliveira to become a dual-weight champion will likely have to wait, as Volkanovski and Usman look set to defend their titles soon.

Volkanovski was due to take on Max Holloway in a trilogy bout at UFC 272 in March, but Holloway has withdrawn from that bout due to injury  per ESPN  with Chan Sung Jung the frontrunner to replace the Hawaiian.

Meanwhile, Usman is expected to defend his title against former opponent Leon Edwards in the near future.

While Gaethje is the No1-ranked lightweight in the UFC, Oliveira has made no secret of his wish to fight McGregor next.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China is willing to increase "law enforcement and security" cooperation with neighbouring Kazakhstan and help oppose interference by "external forces", China's foreign minister said on Monday, after violent protests in the Central Asian country.

Wang Yi, who is also a state councillor, made the comments in a call to Kazakhstan's foreign minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

"Recent turmoil in Kazakhstan shows that the situation in Central Asia is still facing severe challenges, and it once again proves that some external forces do not want peace and tranquillity in our region," the ministry quoted Wang telling Tileuberdi.

Government buildings in Kazakhstan were briefly captured or torched in several cities last week as initially peaceful protests against fuel price increases turned violent. Troops were ordered to shoot to kill to put down a countrywide uprising.

Authorities have blamed the violence on "extremists", including foreign-trained Islamist militants, for the violence.

Authorities also asked a Russian-led military bloc to send in troops, who the government says have been deployed to guard strategic sites, a move questioned by United States.

Experts say China worries instability in its neighbour could threaten energy imports and Belt-and-Road projects there, and security in its western Xinjiang region, which shares a 1,770-km (1,110-mile) border with Kazakhstan.

China was willing to "jointly oppose the interference and infiltration of any external forces", said Wang.

China's President Xi Jinping on Friday told Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev that China resolutely opposed any foreign force that destabilises Kazakhstan and engineers a "colour revolution", Chinese state television said.

China and Russia believe "colour revolutions" are uprisings instigated by the United States and other Western powers to achieve regime change.

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"China does not want to see an expansion of U.S. influence in Kazakhstan and Central Asia as a result of this unrest," said Li Mingjiang, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

"If a colour revolution in a nearby country leads to political democratisation, it could encourage the liberal-leaning intellectual elite in China to try something similar," he said.

Since the Vietnam War in the 1960s, China traditionally does not send troops to other countries, citing its policy of non-interference, except under the United Nations Peacekeeping banner.

Last month it sent six police officers to the Solomon Islands to help train the police force and quell the riots sparked by the country's 2019 switch of diplomatic relations to Beijing from Taiwan.

(Reporting by Gabriel Crossley and Yew Lun Tian; Editing by Robert Birsel and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
BEIJING (Reuters) - The northern Chinese city of Tianjin tightened exit controls and is requiring residents to obtain approval from employers or community authorities before leaving town in an effort to block the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

The port city to the southeast of Beijing reported 21 domestically transmitted cases with confirmed symptoms on Sunday, the National Health Commission said on Monday, up from three a day earlier.

Tianjin, with around 14 million residents, said over the weekend it detected two local cases of infection with the Omicron. The source of the infections and route to the community remained unclear, and officials had yet to announce how many other local cases were caused by Omicron.

The highly transmissable Omicron variant is rapidly spreading globally, forcing several countries to tighten travel rules, and presents a heightened challenge to China's efforts to quickly extinguish local outbreaks.

China's quick containment strategy has taken on extra urgency in the run-up to the Winter Olympics, to be staged in Beijing and neighbouring Hebei province starting Feb. 4, and with the Lunar New Year holiday travel season beginning later this month.

Tianjin's mass testing scheme, which it aims to complete in two days, is part of its effort to "resolutely prevent the virus spreading to other provinces, regions and cities, especially Beijing", the city government said in a letter to residents on Monday.

Last year, China hosted several foreign diplomatic delegations in Tianjin instead of Beijing, including those from the United States. The city is also one of north China's most important oil and gas terminals, is a production base for European planemaker Airbus and hosts data storage centers for Chinese technology firms such as Tencent.

In China's central Henan province, the city of Anyang detected two local Omicron infections traced to a student arriving from Tianjin, a local paper backed by Communist party authority in Anyang said on Monday.

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It remained unclear how many other local cases in Anyang were Omicron. The city of 5.5 million residents suspended all bus services from Sunday.

Prior to the Tianjin and Anyang outbreak, China had reported a handful of Omicron cases among international travellers, and at least one locally transmitted Omicron infection.

In December, a national health official said local transmission of Omicron, caused by an Omicron infection arriving from overseas, had been found in the southern city of Guangzhou and quickly contained, without giving local case numbers.

Nationwide, mainland China reported 97 new local symptomatic cases for Sunday, up slightly from 92 a day earlier, with 60 in Henan.

The city of Xian, where local authorities are planning the gradual resumption of parcel deliveries and some businesses as a weeks-long lockdown showed signs of easing, reported 15 local symptomatic cases.

(Reporting by Roxanne Liu, Stella Qiu, Ella Cao and Tony Munroe; Editing by Kim Coghill and Michael Perry)
CLEVELAND  A Starbucks in downtown Cleveland has filed paperwork requesting a union representation election, according to Workers United.

The West 6th Street Starbucks petitioned the National Labor Relations Board on Monday morning. A majority of hourly workers at the store signed union authorization cards, according to the Chicago and Midwest Regional Joint Board of Workers United.

"I think unionization is right for our store and all Starbucks stores. We're referred to as partners by Starbucks, because we own stock in the company. The next thing is to have a seat at the table and a union would do that," said Joe Nappi, 20, a barista at the store.

"Currently, we don't really have a say in how our store is run. I don't think that's right. We dedicate a lot of our time and a lot of our day to help this store be successful and I think it's completely reasonable to have a say in how things are run at our store," Nappi told Patch.

Workers United representatives said this is the first Starbucks in Ohio to ask the Labor Board for a union vote. Similar requests for votes have been filed by stores in Boston, Knoxville, Buffalo, Chicago, Seattle, and around the nation.

Nappi believes Starbucks corporate leaders will do everything in their power to prevent his location from unionizing. He expects those efforts to begin immediately.

In Cleveland and across Ohio, young workers in the service industry have sacrificed, while the

CEOs and big shareholders rake in record profits. Workers United is proud to stand with Cleveland

Starbucks partners as they attempt to win a real seat at the table, safety on the job and

economic justice. Their fight is our fight, and weve got their backs," said Workers United Ohio State Director Mark Milko in a statement.

In addition to Monday's filing with the National Labor Relations Board, the employees sent an email to Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson that reportedly reads:

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Starbucks partners invest their safety, time, and well-being to serve at the forefront of the

customer service industry, and this has been especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic. (However), we do not feel we have been adequately cared for in terms of consistent guidelines or effective safety measures These experiences have often (led) to burnout, disillusionment, and a feeling that rather than being considered partners, we are simply cogs in a machine. we know we can all do better.

A Starbucks spokesperson said they have not yet received the petition for a union election, but did receive the letter from workers.

This article originally appeared on the Cleveland Patch
Bob Saget arriving at the premiere of "Jackass Presents Bad Grandpa" at the TCL Chinese Theatre in 2013 in Los Angeles. Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

Bob Saget was found dead in his hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday.

Saget's "Full House" costar John Stamos tweeted that he was "broken" and "gutted" over the news.

Several comedians, actors, and friends of Saget praised his kindness, humor, and wit.

The stand-up comedian and "Full House" actor Bob Saget was found dead in his hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday, according to authorities.

Saget, 65, performed stand-up in Jacksonville the night before his death, posting to Instagram that he loved the set and praising the audience.

"I had no idea I did a two hour set tonight. I'm back in comedy like I was when I was 26. I guess I'm finding my new voice and loving every moment of it," Saget wrote.

Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen, who starred in "Full House" alongside Saget, paid tribute to their co-star in a statement shared on Monday with the TODAY show.

"Bob was the most loving, compassionate and generous man," their statement read. "We are deeply saddened that he is no longer with us but know that he will continue to be by our side to guide us as gracefully as he always has. We are thinking of his daughters, wife and family and are sending our condolences."

Another of Saget's "Full House" costars, John Stamos, tweeted that he was "broken," "gutted," and "in complete and utter shock" over the news.

"I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby," Stamos said.

The actor Kat Dennings also wrote a social-media tribute for Saget, whom she starred alongside in "Raising Dad." The sitcom aired in 2001 and had one season.

"I'm speechless," Dennings wrote on Instagram. "Bob Saget was the best. So kind. I was his TV daughter for one season and he was generous, protective, caring and wonderful. He talked about his kids constantly. Rest In Peace."

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Because he doesn't use social media, the "Saturday Night Live" cast member Pete Davidson released a statement through the comedian Dave Sirus, saying Saget was one of the "nicest men on the planet."

"When I was younger and several times throughout our friendship he helped me get through some rough mental health stuff," Davidson said in a statement. "He stayed on the phone with my mom for hours trying to help in any way he can - connecting us with doctors and new things we can try. He would check in on me and make sure I was okay."

The actor and comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who participated in a 2008 Comedy Central roast of Saget, commemorated the loss of his longtime friend and shared a photo they took together on Twitter.

"Still in shock," Gottfried tweeted. "I just spoke with Bob a few days ago. We stayed on the phone as usual making each other laugh. RIP to friend, comedian & fellow Aristocrat Bob Saget."

The comedian Patton Oswalt similarly expressed disbelief in a Twitter statement, saying they had plans to catch up over coffee after Saget finished editing a documentary.

"Bob was at my house in October interviewing me for a documentary. He was sharp and dark and funny as always," Oswalt tweeted alongside several photos of Saget.

Read the original article on Insider
The position of Sessions Court Judge Division II will be on the ballot this year.

Its still early, but its likely the only competitive judicial race between political parties in Republican-rich Knox County in 2022 is going to be the Sessions Court Judge Division II position, to which a Republican was recently appointed by county commission.

The post was held 35 years by Republican Geoff Emery until he took early retirement in December and county commission appointed Judd Davis, a prosecutor with the district attorney generals office, to succeed Emery. Democrat Sarah Keith, another prosecutor with the district attorney generals office, also sought the appointment. Sessions courts handle misdemeanor and felony cases.

Due to a policy of Attorney General Charme Allen, a Republican, that her staff members cannot seek election against a sitting judge, Keith resigned effective Jan. 1 to run for the post in the May 3 Democratic primary. Judge Davis will seek the Republican nomination. The general election for Knox County officeholders is Aug. 4.

Democrats probably wont run (for other judicial offices) unless there is another open seat, Matt Shears, Knox County Democratic Party chairman, said. He said in talking with lawyers, they say lawyers dont like to run for office unless an incumbent doesnt seek re-election or the seat is otherwise vacated.

Democratic elected officials and other leaders, who are strong inside the city of Knoxville, are solidly behind Keith for the Sessions Court judgeship as are some Republicans. Keith has spent 16 years with the attorney generals office, primarily as a prosecutor, although she was a law clerk while a student in the University of Tennessee College of Law. She also has worked in the 10th Judicial District.

A native of Scott County, Keith is a friend of Lori Phillips-Jones, a Republican who served by appointment as district attorney general in the 8th Judicial Circuit, now practices law in Oneida and is on a host committee for a fundraiser for Keith. The fundraiser was originally planned for Thursday, Jan. 13, but was postponed due to a spike in COVID-19 cases in Knox County. A new date for the fundraiser will be announced later.

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Democrats on the host committee are Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon; former Knoxville mayors Madeline Rogero and Dan Brown; Knoxville City Council representatives Seema Singh and Lauren Rider; state Reps. Gloria Johnson and Sam McKenzie; Knoxville County Commissioners Courtney Durrett and Dasha Lundy, and the Rev. Harold Middlebrook, among others. John Gill, a Republican who served as U.S. attorney and then worked as special counsel for the Knox County district attorneys office, also is listed on the host committee.

2022 elections: Why 2022 promises to be a year of mud-slinging in local, state and federal elections

Judicial candidates have to be careful what they say about issues or policies. Keith said she is running because she thinks she would be good and will respect everyone involved in cases, listing attorneys, witnesses, victims and testifying officers. She said she doesnt intend to take cases under advisement for any significant length of time. She repeated that position when asked if cases were being held under advisement for an unduly amount of time.

Davis, who said Thursday hed only had a couple of days with a docket, said he intends to work hard and make objective decisions. He said he had not experienced cases being held under advisement for a long time in his experience as a prosecutor.

Davis said he already has had several fundraisers since naming Emily Taylor as treasurer on June 29. He has a long list of supporters on his website, juddforjudge.com, that include former and present Knox County officeholders and a number of attorneys, including Democrats  like Tim Roberto, whose brother, Andrew, was just elected Knoxville vice mayor.

In a related development, neither Davis nor any judicial candidate running as a Republican will have to file a fee with the Tennessee Republican Committee since its executive committee in December voted to remove fees for judicial candidates.

This was after potential candidates and a judicial ethics committee headed by state Court of Criminal Appeals J. Ross Dyer said judges and judicial candidates cannot pay what amounts to an assessment to a political organization for offsetting costs related to its endorsement, based on a state Supreme Court ethics rule.

Political blogger Brian Hornback, a 6th District member of the GOP executive committee, said in removing a $500 fee approved in August, the committee also added other positions, including district attorney general and public defender, that apply in Knox County.

The Tennessee Republican Partys bylaws on its website says individuals seeking elective office as a Republican candidate will be required to submit the following fees prior to the applicable filing deadline for the office they seek: Governor and U.S. Senate, $5,000; U.S. Congress, $2,500; state senate, $1,000; state house, $500; state executive committee and countywide elected offices, $100, and county commission and constable, $25.

Shears said the state Democratic Party does not require fees for candidates seeking the Democratic nomination.

INTERIM U.S. ATTORNEY NAMED: Francis M. Trey Hamilton III has been appointed interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee by Attorney General Merrick Garland, continuing a position he had held as acting U.S. Attorney since March 1. In the acting capacity, he took the oath from Chief U.S. District Judge Travis R. McDonough in Chattanooga.

A press release issued Wednesday said Hamiltons appointment by Garland was effective Dec. 26 and he is to serve 120 days or until a presidential appointment is made.

The former U.S. Attorney was Republican Doug Overbey, appointed by President Donald Trump. He left Feb. 28 at the request of the administration of President Joe Biden.

Randy Nichols, a Democrat who was long-time Knox County attorney general, expressed interest in the position early in 2021, but the political scuttlebutt is he is not likely to be appointed by Biden since it hasnt happened yet.

POLITICAL ODDS & ENDS: Knoxville lawyer Jim Corcoran, former political candidate and member of the Tennessee Republican Executive Committee, is now working in the legal division of the Tennessee Department of Childrens Services in Maryville. He said he has resigned the Republican Executive Committee position.

Georgiana Vines is retired News Sentinel associate editor. She may be reached at gvpolitics@hotmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Knox County judicial race shaping up between Judd Davis and Sarah Keith
Stephanie Van Nguyen, left, along with her two children 4-year-old Kristina (center) and 3-year-old John (right), has been missing since 2002.

A human bone found in the Ohio River last October is that of a Delhi Township mother of two who had been missing for 19 years.

The fibula bone found on Oct. 18 was confirmed to be Stephanie Van Nguyens, according to Dearborn County Coroner Cameron McCreary.

The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation made the identification using mitochondrial DNA, he said in a statement Monday.

Van Nguyen, 26, went missing in April 2002 along with her two children, 4-year-old Kristina Nguyen and 3-year-old John Nguyen. They were last seen in Rising Sun, Indiana.

As remains of the children still have not been found, they will remain listed as an open missing persons case, unless remains are located or the family files through the courts to have them declared legally dead, the statement said.

Police found the 1997 Nissan Pathfinder belonging to Van Nguyen in the Ohio River near Lesko Park in Aurora Indiana in October. Police think the mother deliberately drove her 1997 Nissan Pathfinder into the water, killing herself and her children.

Van Nguyen left a note saying she was going to drive into the Ohio River, police said. She and her children were never found and the case eventually went cold until police reopened it last year.

Delhi Township Police Lt. Joe Macaluso told The Enquirer last year Nguyen's family found the note and reported her missing.

It's unusual for a missing persons case to go unsolved for so long, Macaluso said at that time. "Oftentimes, we are able to locate missing people sooner than later."

The investigation was reopened due in part to the coming 20th anniversary of when Nguyen disappeared, Macaluso said. "We've always kept this as a case that has been on our minds and in our hearts."

Delhi police worked with the Hamilton County Police Association Dive Team and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, in using sonar technology to scan the river, according to a news release.

The coroner said once the weather improves, there are plans for another dive to search for other possible remains.

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"I am happy we were finally able to give Ms. Nguyen's family some closure in this almost two-decades-long search for their loved one," McCreary said.

Quinlan Bentley contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Coroner: Bone found in Ohio River belonged to missing Delhi Twp. mom
Last year, President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats' American Rescue Plan Act earmarked over $3.7 billion for Kentucky's state and local governments to help them weather the coronavirus pandemic.

In December, however, another disaster befell the commonwealth. Tornadoes carved a historic trail of devastation through Western Kentucky that will take a long time, and a lot of money, to make right.

That's why Kentucky officials are looking into whether they can devote any of the hundreds of millions of dollars their governments got from the American Rescue Plan Act toward those burgeoning tornado relief efforts.

Much of the ARPA money already has been divvied up, but a lot remains available. However, there are strings attached that limit what funds can be spent on tornado relief, according to a recent statement from the Kentucky Senate's Republican leadership team.

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State government has about $1 billion in ARPA money left that still needs to be appropriated, according to that emailed statement.

Apart from the ARPA, the U.S. government also devoted a ton of money to Kentucky through two major, bipartisan packages over the past couple years: 2020's Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act and 2021's big infrastructure bill.

President Joe Biden, along with former Gov. Steve Beshear (left) and current Gov. Andy Beshear, right, meet with Kentuckians affected by the devastating tornado in Dawson Springs, Ky. Dec. 15, 2021

CARES Act money that had flexibility in how it could be used already has been allocated or spent, according to the statement from the Senate Republican Leadership Team. For ARPA and 2021's infrastructure package, funds for water, sewer and broadband initiatives perhaps could help with some of the rebuilding process, "but none of it is really intended for tornado recovery..."

"In fact, many parts of ARPA specifically require funding to be used only in response to COVID-19," the Republican leadership team noted.

More: Was your home damaged in the Kentucky tornadoes? Here's how to get help

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"... We may be able to work in some funding for job training or wraparound services for those that have lost their jobs, but it would have to (be) crafted carefully to still take the pandemic into account. The infrastructure bill will also have an impact in water, sewer, and broadband, but we will likely not see an immediate impact from those funds for a little while."

Considering the staggering scope of assistance needed in Western Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear's office said last week that state officials and local communities are researching their options.

One potential course of action could involve repurposing some of the $250 million in ARPA money the state legislature allocated last year to a grant program for drinking water and wastewater projects.

December's outbreak of tornadoes wrecked a water tower in the hard-hit town of Mayfield and disrupted a lot of Western Kentucky residents' water service.

"Some communities have raised the possibility of altering their water and sewer project funding through the cleaner water program to address weaknesses or damage from tornadoes," Beshear's communications director, Crystal Staley, told The Courier Journal via email.

Beyond that, Staley indicated the governor's administration is checking if federal funds designated to help Kentuckians cover their rent and utility bills could offer another avenue to assist tornado victims, saying:

"We are also exploring the possibility of using the utility and tenant relief in combination with FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) aid. We are currently working directly with the cities and the counties and FEMA on funding to restore damaged property."

More: FEMA trailers are coming to Kentucky. Here's what tornado survivors need to know.

The federal government sent Kentucky a bunch of money for rent relief over the past couple years, including about $234.9 million through ARPA's Emergency Rental Assistance program, according to Staley. About $25.8 million from that pool of money is reserved for Jefferson and Fayette counties, though.

Beshear's administration already includes Team Kentucky's Healthy at Home Eviction Relief Fund on its list of tornado resources for Kentuckians.

The governor also has said he's talking to state lawmakers about legislation that would spend $150 million to help communities rebuild from the tornado damage and put $50 million toward helping Western Kentucky schools, although he did not detail what the source of those funds would be.

Beshear hopes the legislature will fast-track this proposal, saying last week: "I want every family and community touched by these storms to know that I am with you, the General Assembly is with you and the Commonwealth of Kentucky is with you ... We will rebuild every structure and every life."

The Republican-run legislature's two top leaders, Senate President Robert Stivers and House Speaker David Osborne, indicated last week that they were still talking over the details of that relief bill with Beshear.

Then Republican-backed legislation was filed Saturday, with Osborne as a co-sponsor, that suggests putting $200 million from the state's General Fund into a West Kentucky State Aid Funding for Emergencies (SAFE) fund.

That fund would be used to provide financial support to Western Kentucky, including local governments and school districts, as the region recovers from December's tornadoes.

The legislation says $30 million of the money quickly would go toward school districts impacted by the tornadoes, including to help them repair buildings and provide wrap-around services to schoolchildren, while another $15 million would be earmarked to help provide temporary housing.

Financial issues are top-of-mind during the legislature's annual lawmaking session, and not just because of the need for tornado relief. Lawmakers also have to pass a new budget for state government.

Beshear plans to roll out his recommended budget this Thursday, but House Republicans got the jump on him late last week by introducing their own proposal, which would devote another $350 million in ARPA money toward clean water and wastewater projects.

Morgan Watkins is The Courier Journal's chief political reporter. Contact her at mwatkins@courierjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter: @morganwatkins26.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky tornado relief: Could American Rescue Plan money help?
A look at the shareholders of Macquarie Telecom Group Limited (ASX:MAQ) can tell us which group is most powerful. Generally speaking, as a company grows, institutions will increase their ownership. Conversely, insiders often decrease their ownership over time. Warren Buffett said that he likes "a business with enduring competitive advantages that is run by able and owner-oriented people." So it's nice to see some insider ownership, because it may suggest that management is owner-oriented.

Macquarie Telecom Group has a market capitalization of AU$1.5b, so we would expect some institutional investors to have noticed the stock. Taking a look at our data on the ownership groups (below), it seems that institutions are noticeable on the share registry. Let's delve deeper into each type of owner, to discover more about Macquarie Telecom Group.

Check out our latest analysis for Macquarie Telecom Group

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About Macquarie Telecom Group?

Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it's included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing.

Macquarie Telecom Group already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. This suggests some credibility amongst professional investors. But we can't rely on that fact alone since institutions make bad investments sometimes, just like everyone does. When multiple institutions own a stock, there's always a risk that they are in a 'crowded trade'. When such a trade goes wrong, multiple parties may compete to sell stock fast. This risk is higher in a company without a history of growth. You can see Macquarie Telecom Group's historic earnings and revenue below, but keep in mind there's always more to the story.

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Hedge funds don't have many shares in Macquarie Telecom Group. Looking at our data, we can see that the largest shareholder is the CEO David Tudehope with 51% of shares outstanding. This implies that they possess majority interests and have significant control over the company. Investors usually consider it a good sign when the company leadership has such a significant stake, as this is widely perceived to increase the chance that the management will act in the best interests of the company. Viburnum Funds Pty Ltd. is the second largest shareholder owning 9.7% of common stock, and Australian Ethical Investment Ltd. holds about 6.1% of the company stock.

Researching institutional ownership is a good way to gauge and filter a stock's expected performance. The same can be achieved by studying analyst sentiments. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future.

Insider Ownership Of Macquarie Telecom Group

The definition of an insider can differ slightly between different countries, but members of the board of directors always count. Management ultimately answers to the board. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO.

Insider ownership is positive when it signals leadership are thinking like the true owners of the company. However, high insider ownership can also give immense power to a small group within the company. This can be negative in some circumstances.

Our most recent data indicates that insiders own the majority of Macquarie Telecom Group Limited. This means they can collectively make decisions for the company. Insiders own AU$808m worth of shares in the AU$1.5b company. That's extraordinary! Most would be pleased to see the board is investing alongside them. You may wish to discover if they have been buying or selling.

General Public Ownership

With a 25% ownership, the general public, mostly comprising of individual investors, have some degree of sway over Macquarie Telecom Group. This size of ownership, while considerable, may not be enough to change company policy if the decision is not in sync with other large shareholders.

Private Equity Ownership

With a stake of 9.7%, private equity firms could influence the Macquarie Telecom Group board. Sometimes we see private equity stick around for the long term, but generally speaking they have a shorter investment horizon and -- as the name suggests -- don't invest in public companies much. After some time they may look to sell and redeploy capital elsewhere.

Next Steps:

While it is well worth considering the different groups that own a company, there are other factors that are even more important. Consider for instance, the ever-present spectre of investment risk. We've identified 2 warning signs with Macquarie Telecom Group (at least 1 which shouldn't be ignored) , and understanding them should be part of your investment process.

If you would prefer discover what analysts are predicting in terms of future growth, do not miss this free report on analyst forecasts.

NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the last twelve months, which refer to the 12-month period ending on the last date of the month the financial statement is dated. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Campus News

Aspiring diplomat named UB's first Rangel fellow

By CHARLES ANZALONE

I have dreamt of a career in diplomacy ever since I started interning at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training in Arlington, Va., in summer 2020. 

A UB senior who aims to be an American diplomat has been named UB's first recipient of the far-reaching and lucrative Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Fellowship.

Sophie May, who expects to graduate from UB with degrees in French and political science and a minor in history, will receive the full array of benefits from the Rangel fellowship. These include up to $24,000 annually to fund tuition and fees toward a masters degree in international affairs, and an $18,000 stipend per year for living expenses, as well as assistance preparing for a Foreign Service career with the Department of State.

The award also includes a 10-week internship on Capitol Hill and a 10-week overseas internship at a U.S. embassy or consulate during the summer between Mays first and second years of graduate school.

She was one of 45 students selected this academic year to receive the fellowship.

I have dreamt of a career in diplomacy ever since I started interning at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training in Arlington, Va., in summer 2020, says May, a graduate of St. Marys High School in Lancaster.

During this internship, she interviewed foreign service officers and learned firsthand about careers in the American Foreign Service.

This led me to desire a career as a foreign service official myself, she says. The Rangel fellowship has made this possible.

After two years of graduate school, as well as internships and professional development opportunities, May plans to become a foreign service officer in 2024.

The fellowship bears the name of Charles Rangel, the second-longest serving member of the House of Representatives at the time of his retirement, serving continuously from 1971 to 2017.

This fellowship has allowed me to fulfill my greatest professional goals while simultaneously pursuing other incredible opportunities along the way, says May. I am extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity to utilize my unique skills and talents in service of the nation.

Im sending out a big thanks to family, friends, professors and the UB scholarship office.

May is the latest success story from UBs Office of Fellowships and Scholarships, which has mentored, encouraged and assisted scores of promising UB students who have earned national and international scholarships and fellowships.

The Rangel fellowship will be life-changing for Sophie and is a perfect fit for her academic and career goals, says Megan Stewart, director of the Office of Fellowships and Scholarships. She is committed to serving our country and diversifying the Foreign Service.

May, who says she admires the career of Madeleine Albright, the first female U.S. secretary of state who served from 1997 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton, says she will pursue a degree specializing in U.S. national security pertaining to Eastern Europe, Russia and Eurasia. In summer 2023, she will intern at an embassy abroad.

An important part of my application that I believe persuaded them to select me was my ability to apply my unique experiences to a career in the Foreign Service, says May.

In particular, she says, she was able to demonstrate on a written application each of the 13 dimensions explained in the Foreign Service Officer Qualifications on the U.S. Department of State website.

I also believe that my language skills (advanced knowledge of French, intermediate knowledge of Russian and beginner knowledge of German and Spanish) helped me stand out, says May, an avid reader who loves learning languages, yoga and traveling.

My passion for reading made me curious to learn more about the world around me, and this led to my love of traveling, which ultimately drove my desire to become an FSO (foreign service officer), says May. I love learning languages, but I also adore sharing this passion with others.

She says her absolute favorite thing in the world is her current job teaching children French at Alliance Francaise.
The number of COVID-19 cases jumped by nearly 487 last week in area schools, while the number of new quarantines also tripled when comparing the week ending Jan. 8 to the week ending Dec. 17.

Schools were on break Dec. 18-Jan. 2. Monday's school report revealed that 512 people (356 students and 156 employees) tested positive for COVID-19 during the week ending Jan. 7, up from 25 for the week ending Dec. 17.

The record for COVID-19 school cases in one week was 733 from Aug. 21-27.

Some field trips postponed: COVID: Ocala schools delay out-of-state field trips, lest students get 'criminal records.'

County cases spike: Marion County's COVID-19 cases during omicron wave approach levels of delta surge

Home testing: Confused by all the COVID-19 home tests? A new report says these tests are easiest to use

Marion County Public Schools, the county's largest employer, educates about 43,000 students using 7,000 employees at 51 schools and dozens of district offices. Each Monday the school district issues its weekly COVID-19 update.

There were 726 people (638 students and 88 employees) placed under quarantine during the week ending Jan. 7, compared to 169 for Dec. 11-17. The record quarantines in Marion County schools was 3,404 last August.

The Marion County School Board did not bring back a mask mandate with opt out clause for parents to remain in compliance with new state statutes. The only change was that most out-of-state field trips were to be postponed.

COVID omicron surge: From No. 9 to No. 4 to No. 5: Florida still in Top 10 list of states where coronavirus spreads the fastest. Almost 670,000 vaccines issued in one week https://t.co/QifRBWpJTi @MikeStucka @byjensangalang  Ocala StarBanner (@OcalaStarBanner) January 10, 2022

The number of new cases for all of Marion County was 3,130 for Dec. 31-Jan.6, up from 1,543 for Dec. 24-30, 363 for Dec. 17-23, and 146 for Dec. 3-Dec. 9. Total COVID-19 cases in Marion now stand at 62,790.

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From Aug. 20-26, Marion recorded a seven-day record of 3,228 cases, or an average of 461 per day. The winter surge peaked in January 2021, which was then a record, at 1,988 (284 per day) in one week.

Marion continues to see spike

Marion County's seven-day total of new hospitalizations was 116 on Monday. That is up from 68 last week, according to federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Three months ago, during a spike attributed to the delta variant, the record hit 350.

The seven-day positivity rate was 28.49% on Monday, up from 22% last week and up from a low of 2.79% on Nov. 22. On Aug. 12, Marion's all-time high topped 30%.

You can get COVID-19 and the flu at the same time. Here's what to know about "flurona." https://t.co/Wf34f0CETc pic.twitter.com/EUGQUwIELg  USA TODAY (@USATODAY) January 5, 2022

The Florida Department of Health reported Friday that Marion's seven-day positivity rate was 24.6% for the week ending Jan. 6.

In all, 226,587 Marion County residents have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Of those, 80,587 have also had their booster.

The report shows that 69.7% of Marion residents ages 12 and older have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, and 65.2% of residents ages 5 and older have had at least one dose.

Meanwhile, 89.8% of residents ages 65 and older have had at least one dose. The data shows that 62% of Marion's entire population has had one dose.

 Contact Joe Callahan at (352) 817-1750 or at joe.callahan@starbanner.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoeOcalaNews.

This article originally appeared on Ocala Star-Banner: COVID in Marion County schools: Cases spiked after winter break
CALDWELL, NJ  Caldwell University announced on Thursday that all members of their "campus community" must get COVID-19 vaccine booster shots by Jan. 31 at the latest. College reopens after Martin Luther King Day, on Jan. 18.

The college, based on Bloomfield Avenue in Caldwell, said in a message to the community:

"Due to the increased transmission of COVID-19 in the region, the continued spread of the Delta and Omicron variants across the globe, and the CDC having approved COVID-19 booster shots for everyone ages 16 and older, Caldwell University has decided to require all members of the campus community to receive a COVID-19 booster if eligible no later than Jan. 31, 2022.

"According to our records, this deadline is six months from when most students were fully vaccinated, making most individuals eligible for their boosters within this window. The University will work directly with those who are not yet eligible for their booster by Jan. 31."

Those who have an exemption must get tested periodically.

Other Universities Requiring Booster



Other colleges in New Jersey including Rutgers, Princeton, and the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken have required the boosters for the new semester.



Caldwell University noted that people can schedule a vaccine appointment by using the state of NJ vaccine finder or Essex County vaccine finder. Pharmacies, doctors' offices, and some municipalities also have the vaccines. READ MORE: Where To Find A Vaccine In The Caldwells

More Than 6,000 Hospitalized In New Jersey

Cases of COVID, particularly the easily transmissible omicron variant, have been rapidly proliferating around the state since December. However, 85.5 percent of the cases confirmed and sequenced in New Jersey in the last four weeks are the Delta variant that has been causing deaths and hospitalizations since early summer. Omicron account for 13.9 percent. (Not all positive tests, however, are sequenced to determine the variant).

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On Friday, the state's 71 hospitals had reported 5,621 people hospitalized with COVID, 419 getting breathing help from ventilators.

By Monday, the number had climbed to 6,000 hospitalized, a total not seen since the first wave of the pandemic in April 2020. Six hospital emergency rooms were on divert status Monday due to a staff shortage or high patient volume.



In America, more than 837,000 people have died of COVID since the start of the pandemic. The daily death rate is highest right now in these states: Michigan, Delaware, Indiana, Arizona, and Pennsylvania.



You can sign up to get breaking news alerts in Caldwell and/or get a free daily newsletter each morning at 6 a.m. with local news. Sign up with your zip code here and you'll get an email asking for your preferences.



Get a free 6 a.m. newsletter with news in the Caldwells: https://patch.com/subscribe





This article originally appeared on the Caldwells Patch
The year 2021 started out with two mass shootings just outside musical venues that left four people dead and 26 injured  a foreboding start that seemed to continue a troubling violent trend from the year before.

Then something unexpected happened. Homicides in Miami-Dade County plummeted. Law enforcement leaders attributed it to stepped-up enforcement, a focused effort to get guns off the street and prosecutions. Others pointed to an array of social factors.

Whatever the reason, murders throughout Miami-Dade County, with its 2.7 million residents, declined by more than 15 percent compared to the previous year, bucking a national trend in which more than a dozen cities across the U.S. set all-time high murder rates.

We had more resources to investigate. We shared information. We seized tons of firearms off the streets and the state attorney helped by giving additional attorneys to close cases, said Miami-Dade Police Director Alfredo Freddy Ramirez.

In 2021, the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiners Office recorded 245 homicides. Thats 45 less than the previous year  a year in which law enforcement attributed much of a 15 percent uptick in homicides to the frustrations of being locked down during the pandemic. The MEs records show that 188 of last years murders were from gunfire. Others came from stabbings, drownings, assault, even arson.

The countys homicide numbers pale in comparison to those of many cities across the country with similar populations.

Chicago, with the same population as Miami-Dade, continued its skyrocketing murder trend with more than 800 last year. There were 467 homicides in Houston, which also has a similar population. And Philadelphia, with 1.6 million residents, had 559 murders.

Even some cities long considered among the safest in the country saw significant rises in violent crime. San Antonio, with a population of 1.6 million, had its deadliest year in over a decade with 128 homicides. And San Diego, with a population of 1.5 million, had close to 100 murders, doubling its total from the year before.

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University of Miami sociology chair and criminologist Alex Piquero noted that if you toss out 2020 as an aberration, Miami-Dades homicide rate is fairly consistent with previous years. Miami-Dade saw 241 homicides in 2019. Piquero said many big cities with high murder rates like Chicago and Philadelphia are just continuing a trend that began years ago.

Historically, high immigrant cities tend to have lower homicide rates. They dont want to run afoul of the law, so they create buffers, said the UM professor. And theres no doubt that getting guns off the street and violent people off the street had an effect on the low crime numbers.

Only eight law enforcement agencies in Miami-Dade have their own homicide bureaus. All but one of those agencies reported fewer murders in 2021 than the previous year. The lone exception was Hialeah, which had one more homicide in 2021 than the year before. Miami-Dade Police also cover far more homicides than just those in the unincorporated area. The largest agency in the county is also contracted to investigate murders for the 27 other police departments in Miami-Dade that dont have homicide bureaus.

Broken down by agencies, both Miami-Dade and Miami police investigated 9 percent fewer murders in 2021 than the year before. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which investigates highway killings, saw a 38 percent drop. Miami Gardens, Miami Beach, North Miami, North Miami Beach and Hialeah stayed about the same.

Chassidy Saunders, known to friends and family as the TikTok Princess, was only 6 years old when she was shot and killed in January during a birthday party in Miami.

The year began with 29 homicides in January, among them the death of 6-year-old TikTok Princess Chassidy Saunders. She lost her life on Jan. 16 during a triple-shooting at a birthday party in Miami. It continued a troubling trend of children felled by gunfire from the year before.

Over the next three months, 76 more people would be killed in Miami-Dade. One of them was a gregarious 3-year-old named Elijah LaFrance. He was shot and killed in front of the North Miami-Dade home his family had rented for Elijahs birthday party.

Elijah LaFrance, 3, lost his life to gunfire in April when he was shot and killed in front of a home in North Miami-Dade that his parents rented for his birthday party.

Then came the back-to-back shootings that local law enforcement officials and experts say led to the end of a 16-month violent crime wave.

Late on a Friday night, at the start of Memorial Day Weekend, a vehicle pulled up just outside a rented party space in Miamis trendy Wynwood district and a gunman fired off more than three dozen rounds from a semiautomatic rifle. In less than 30 seconds, Quinton Valbrun, 25, was killed and six others were injured.

Only 26 hours later in early morning hours of Memorial Day in a northwestern pocket of Miami-Dade, dozens of people were clearing out of El Mula Banquet Hall when three masked gunmen jumped from a Nissan Pathfinder and fired off hundreds of rounds from semiautomatic rifles in a matter of seconds.

Shankquia Lechelle Peterson, 32, Desmond Owens and Clayton Dillard III, both 26, were killed. Twenty others were injured.

Police attributed much of the years violence to escalating social media beefs over everything from girlfriends to new musical releases. Lethal disputes over controlling drug-dealing corners or territory seem rarer than in years past. Those were arguments that often erupted into violence, but that police had become more adept at dealing with.

Four days after the El Mula shooting, community leaders reeling from the bloodshed and pressured by anguished family members gathered at Miami-Dade Police headquarters in Doral and announced the creation of Operation Summer Heat. Among those in attendance was County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle and the chiefs of several policing agencies across the county.

The group vowed a host of measures to stop the violence: more cops on the street, the sharing of information, a weapons and drug sweep. Perhaps most important, additional resources to investigate homicides and attorneys to help in the prosecution of them.

Over the next seven months there would be 112 more homicides. The murder rate had dropped by 36 percent. Miami-Dade Police attributed it to their strategic policing plan. During the same time period, police said, there were 3,741 arrests and 946 firearms were taken from the streets. Ramirez said with help from the State Attorneys Office, the clearance rate for last years murders jumped drastically.

Most important, he said, the killing of children abated. Only four children under the age of 18 were shot and killed in the last seven months of 2021.

Actually I was angry, very angry seeing our children being shot. The rhetoric on social media manifested its way onto the streets. A lot of these shootings were over minor things, like something on TikTok, the director said. As a father and a police officer, it was infuriating. Something needed to be done.

Tangela Sears, an anti-gun violence activist whose son was killed in 2015, said catching and convicting shooters gives those affected by gun violence some hope.

Tangela Sears, an anti-violence activist who lost a son to gun violence in 2015, said the importance of having an investigator from the State Attorneys office at homicide scenes and catching and convicting shooters, cant be understated.

I wont say it brings closure to our pain, she said. But it brings the justice we wish for. It gives you hope.
Good morning, Detroit! Let's get you all caught up to start this Tuesday, January 11 off on an informed note. Here's everything you need to know today in town.

First, today's weather:

Quite cold, becoming breezy. High: 23 Low: 21.

Here are the top stories today in Detroit:

Detroit Public Schools announces spectator reduction limits for sporting events. (Detroit Free Press) Detroit expands COVID-19 booster shots for people age 12 and up. (FOX 2 Detroit) Metro Detroit housing market sees dip in monthly sales in December. (WXYZ) Crain Communication acquires Journal of Precision Medicine parent company. (Crain's Detroit Business) 2022 Metro Detroit Arts & Events Preview. (Hour Detroit Magazine)

This Newsletter will run Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday each week.

Today in Detroit:

From my notebook:

Detroit Historical Society: "On January 10, 1923, the first annual meeting of the Detroit Historical Society featured a lecture on the Underground Railroad. Today, the Detroit Historical Museum houses Doorway to Freedom, a powerful permanent exhibit on the subject. ..." (Facebook)

Detroit Symphony Orchestra: "Troupe Vertigo is back to perform orchestra favorites with the DSO. Enjoy dizzying aerial acts, acrobatic perfection, feats of strength, and more! Get your tickets today  bit.ly/3GKBPhI" (Facebook)

Detroit Police Department: " WINTER SAFETY TIPS : Michigan winters can be brutal. Check out these cold weather safety tips from the Detroit Health Department. " (Facebook)

Detroit Medical Center: "When Eli was diagnosed with end stage kidney failure, his mom Rachel, donated her kidney to him on his 2nd birthday. Today, Eli and his new kidney are doing well and his family is forever grateful to DMC Children's Hospital of Michigan's..." (Facebook)

Detroit Public Schools Community District: "Grab and Go Meals  are returning  for all students during online instruction! Students can visit any #DPSCD school site from 9 a.m. - 1 p.m., Mon (3 meals) & Thurs (2). Students receive meals Mon, and 2 meals Thurs. For more informat..." (Facebook)

Detroit Public Schools Community District: "#DPSCD Social Worker and Cass Tech alumnae Ms. Harbin is encouraging young girls to #RiseUpWithDPSCD through  TeaTime, a girls group! TeaTime was started to help unite and empower our young ladies. Read more by visiting detroitk12.org!" (Facebook)

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Loving the Detroit 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 dylan.siwicki@patch.com

Now you're in the loop and ready to start this Tuesday! I'll see you soon.

 Dylan Siwicki

About me: I was born and raised on Detroit's Westside, in the hard working blue-collar Polish neighborhood of Warrendale. I'm a Detroit Public School graduate who fought hard to earn my education. My aspiration into journalism came as a young kid, when I began following the corruption scandal of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.My first break in to the journalism world began with the opportunity to work at the Michigan Journal, where I primarily reported on campus and local news throughout Dearborn community. I eventually worked my way to news editor. In correlation to work in journalism, I had an amazing opportunity to study and write about many different cultures and backgrounds at the Piast Institute, which also helped me prepare for this role. So with first-hand experience growing up in a tight-knit neighborhood, I know the importance of delivering news and telling stories that impact local communities. And as a breaking news editor at Patch for Metro Detroit, it's my job to deliver that news. So feel free to contact me about news tips or your own unique experiences at dylan.siwicki@patch.com

This article originally appeared on the Detroit Patch
Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko

Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko is among more than two dozen California DAs aiming to block new rules that would allow early release of certain felons from state prison.

Late last month, the 28 DAs won a temporary restraining order that, for now, keeps the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation from boosting good conduct credits for inmates serving time for a so-called "second strike" offense. The CDCR's emergency regulations apply to inmates previously convicted of a serious and violent felony who are now serving time for a separate felony involving a nonviolent crime.

One problem, the prosecutors say, is that California's definition of nonviolent crimes includes offenses involving domestic violence, human trafficking, rape of an unconscious person, animal cruelty and weapons possession.

"The word 'nonviolent' certainly applies to many violent crimes," Nasarenko said.

The emergency rules would potentially allow certain second-strike inmates housed in minimum-security facilities to serve only a third of their sentences by increasing credits from 50% to 66%, according to the prosecutors.

Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, who is leading the legal challenge, said the new class of credits includes some that don't require inmates to complete rehabilitation programs.

Releasing these dangerous inmates after serving a small fraction of their sentences not only lacks accountability, it shortens effective rehabilitation, violates victims rights and is a significant threat to public safety," Schubert said in a statement.

She noted the DAs are not contesting good conduct credits for inmates working at fire camps, but said "sneaking in another class of individuals with serious and violent criminal histories goes too far.

Dana Simas, spokesperson for the state corrections agency, said in an email the department "stands by its regulations as drafted" and began implementing the unaffected portions as scheduled on Jan. 1.

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"CDCRs primary mission is public safety," Simas wrote. "As part of that mission it will continue to ensure incarcerated people who are making efforts toward their own rehabilitation by maintaining good behavior and participating in programming and rehabilitative opportunities are afforded the chance to earn credits for their efforts."

Late last month, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Raymond Cadei issued the temporary order that, for now, has put a freeze on the contested rules. The temporary order will be in place until the court hears the prosecutors' request for a preliminary injunction.

An official with the Sacramento County DA's office said during December's hearing, information presented on behalf of state prison officials indicated they estimated the overall number of impacted prisoners was in the 300s.

Nasarenko said the contested credits would apply to several dozen inmates sentenced by Ventura County Superior Court judges.

"It is my position, as well as that of many of my colleagues, that this revictimizes victims," he said of the new credits. "It changes the goalposts right in the middle of the game."

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: DAs want to block early-release rules for some California felons
A man was arrested at a Doja Cat concert in the US after making a bomb threat in order to jump the queue.

Fans had been queuing for more than 12 hours on Saturday to see the rapper perform a free show at Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis, ahead of the College Football Playoff national championship today (Monday 10 January).

Around 5pm, a man who wanted to move forward in the queue told people around him that he had a bomb or explosive device in his rucksack, the Indianopolis Metropolitan Police Department confirmed to the Indianapolis Star.

The rucksack turned out to be clean. The man, who had unrelated outstanding warrants and was arrested for those, is currently in custody.

A fan wanted to advance in line so he exercised very poor judgement and told those around him in line he had a bomb in his backpack, Deputy Chief Joshua Barker told the publication.

Someone did the right thing and alerted IMPD. The backpack was clean.

The IMPD said the investigation into the bomb threat is still ongoing.

Doja Cats performance was slightly delayed as a result of the threat, but eventually continued as planned.

However, it was not without incident, as she was forced to halt her band after a fight broke out over a pair of drumsticks she tossed into the crowd.

Listen, no fighting. I don't want to see that, I don't want to see that at all. I care about you, and it's way too cold out here for that, she told fans.

Doja Cat is nominated for eight awards at this years Grammy Awards ceremony, which has been postponed due to the Omicron variant of coronavirus currently surging in the US.
Donald Robinson.

Donald Robinson, one of the early Black Detroit firefighters and the city's first Black fire marshal, has died. He was 89.

Robinson died Jan. 6 at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where he had been admitted after becoming ill on Dec. 22, said his daughter, Donna Robinson Milhouse, a 36th District Court judge.

Milhouse described her father as a hard worker who was devoted to his family, loved the arts, and was a lifelong champion for the city of Detroit.

He loved his family and always said it and showed it, said Milhouse, the oldest of Robinsons three children. As a father, he supported everything we wanted to do and he never saw any limits to what we could accomplish. He also echoed that sentiment in the way he viewed art and his city. He really appreciated the beauty in things around him and he didnt buy into labels, especially negative labels about Detroit.

Robinson, the oldest of Irene and Alvin Robinson Sr.s four children, grew up in Detroits Brewster Projects at 556 Erskine St, she said.

A lot of people his age are transplants, but he was born here and came up at (Historic) Ebenezer A.M.E Church," Milhouse said. "Plus he worked for the city government, so there was that extra level of connection. We would be on summer vacations in Mississippi and he would be taking phone calls from the fire department. Detroit was what he knew from the beginning and he enjoyed living in the city.

Donald Robinson holds artwork he created as a student at Cass Technical High School.

Born in 1932, Robinson graduated from Cass Technical High School. Afterward, he attended Wayne University, which is now Wayne State University. At Cass and Wayne, Robinson excelled in art, as he shared with the Free Press in a story published in 2021.

Throughout school, I could always impress any art teacher I had because I could do what he or she could do, Robinson said. But getting a job in the field as a young Black person at that time, in that field, was tougher.

Donald Robinson, by his recollection, was the 16th African American to join the Detroit Fire Department when he was hired in 1956. He would go on to become a fire inspector and on Sept. 5, 1974, he was appointed fire marshal by Mayor Coleman A. Young

Seeking steady employment that would enable him to provide for a family, Robinson joined the Detroit Fire Department in 1956. Robinson told the Free Press, to his recollection, he was the 16th Black person hired into the department. He stated that the highlight of his career occurred on Sept. 5, 1974, when he was appointed fire marshal by Mayor Coleman A. Young, which Robinson said made him the first Black person to hold the position in a major city. He would serve as fire marshal for 18 years before his retirement.

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Donald Robinson, by his recollection, was the 16th African American to join the Detroit Fire Department when he was hired in 1956. He would go on to become a fire inspector and on Sept. 5, 1974, he was appointed fire marshal by Mayor Coleman A. Young

The fire department was exciting, it provided security, and I think around the time I joined the department there was some pressure from the greater Black community about where were the Black firefighters?, Robinson said.

More: Michigan's Black soldiers in Civil War faced enemy fire in battle, racism in public

Milhouse remembers how her father remained connected to the arts, even during his career with the fire department. And that arts connection included joining the Brazeal Dennard Chorale with his wife Barbara, whom he married in 1958.

More: Pontiac man with oxygen tank burned over 80% of body

Membership in the Brazeal Dennard Chorale meant being a part of one of the oldest African American choral groups in the country. Robinson would later become the Chorales executive director. He helped to expose the group to larger audiences, which included an appearance at the 2012 World Choir Games in Cincinnati, where the Chorale won a gold medal in the spiritual music competition and a silver medal in the mixed chamber music category.

Dad was so involved and engaged with the Chorale, I believe, because he was always teaching history and he felt Negro spirituals were a very important part of our history, Milhouse said. He always wanted to promote the strength that came out of our history, culture and art.

Robinson is survived by his wife, Barbara; children Donna Robinson Milhouse, Donald (Chris) Robinson and Anthony Robinson; grandchildren Justin Milhouse, Natalie Milhouse, Jasmine Spivey, Jessica Gray and Anthony Robinson; and one great-grandchild Kinsley Spivey.

Donald Robinsons grandson Justin Milhouse, a Detroit-based photographer provided the photos that appeared with the Free Press story about his grandfather in 2021. Following Donald Robinson's death, Justin Milhouse described the artistic bond he had with his grandfather.

More: For Detroiter Donald Robinson art has always meant 'an opportunity to soar'

Donald Robinson and his grandson Justin W. Milhouse.

When I think about my granddad these words come to mind: humility, family, art, Detroit, Black pride, love, compassion, music, theatre, travel, humor, education, and inspiration," Justin Milhouse said in a written statement. His energy is love and we did everything we were supposed to do in this lifetime and Im truly grateful for that.

"His last words to me regarding my art were: I have no words and we were both teary-eyed and overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. Granddad, youre not done teaching and Im not done learning.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Donald Robinson, Detroit's first Black fire marshal, dead at 89
Above the equator, winter officially begins in December. But in many areas, January is when it really takes hold. Atmospheric scientist Deanna Hence explains the weather and climate factors that combine to produce wintry conditions at the turn of the year.

How does the Earths orbit influence our daylight and temperatures?

As the Earth orbits the sun, it spins around an axis  picture a stick going through the Earth, from the North Pole to the South Pole. During the 24 hours that it takes for the Earth to rotate once around its axis, every point on its surface faces toward the Sun for part of the time and away from it for part of the time. This is what causes daily changes in sunlight and temperature.

There are two other important factors: First, the Earth is round, although its not a perfect sphere. Second, its axis is tilted about 23.5 degrees relative to its path around the Sun. As a result, light falls directly on its equator but strikes the North and South poles at angles.

When one of the poles points more toward the Sun than the other pole, that half of the planet gets more sunlight than the other half, and its summer in that hemisphere. When that pole tilts away from the Sun, that half of the Earth gets less sunlight and its winter there.

Graphic of Earth tilting on its axis, with Northern Hemisphere toward the sun.

Seasonal changes are the most dramatic at the poles, where the changes in light are most extreme. During the summer, a pole receives 24 hours of sunlight and the Sun never sets. In the winter, the Sun never rises at all.

At the equator, which gets consistent direct sunlight, theres very little change in day length or temperature year-round. People who live in high and middle latitudes, closer to the poles, can have very different ideas about seasons from those who live in the tropics.

Theres an old saying, As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens. Why does it often get colder in January even though were gaining daylight?

It depends on where you are in the world and where your air is coming from.

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Earths surface constantly absorbs energy from the Sun and stores it as heat. It also emits heat back into space. Whether the surface is warming or cooling depends on the balance between how much solar radiation the planet is absorbing and how much it is radiating away.

But Earths surface isnt uniform. Land typically heats up and cools off much faster than water. Water requires more energy to raise and lower its temperature, so it warms and cools more slowly. Because of this difference, water is a better heat reservoir than land  especially big bodies of water, like oceans. Thats why we tend to see bigger swings between warm and cold inland than in coastal areas.

The farther north you live, the longer it takes for the amount and intensity of daylight to start significantly increasing in midwinter, since your location is tilting away from the Sun. In the meantime, those areas that are getting little sunlight keep radiating heat out to space. As long as they receive less sunlight than the heat they emit, they will keep getting colder. This is especially true over land, which loses heat much more easily than water.

As the Earth rotates, air circulates around it in the atmosphere. If air moving into your area comes largely from places like the Arctic that dont get much sun in winter, you may be on the receiving end of bitterly cold air for a long time. That happens in the Great Plains and Midwest when cold air swoops down from Canada.

But if your air comes across a body of water that keeps a more even temperature through the year, these swings can be significantly evened out. Seattle is downwind from an ocean, which is why it is many degrees warmer than Boston in the winter even though its farther north than Boston.

How quickly do we lose daylight before the solstice and gain it back afterward?

This depends strongly on your location. The closer you are to one of the poles, the faster the rate of change in daylight is. Thats why Alaska can go from having hardly any daylight in the winter to hardly any darkness in the summer.

Even for a particular location, the change is not constant through the year. The rate of change in daylight is slowest at the solstices  December in winter, June in summer  and fastest at the equinoxes, in mid-March and mid-September. This change occurs as the area on Earth receiving direct sunlight swings from 23.5 N latitude  about as far north of the equator as Miami  to 23.5 S latitude, about as far south of the equator as Asuncion, Paraguay.

Whats happening on the opposite side of the planet right now?

In terms of daylight, folks on the other side of the planet are seeing the exact opposite of what were seeing. Right now, theyre at the peak of their summer and are enjoying the largest amounts of daylight that theyre going to get for the year. I do research on Argentinian hailstorms and Indian Ocean tropical cyclones, and both of those warm-weather storm seasons are well into their peaks right now.

[Over 140,000 readers rely on The Conversations newsletters to understand the world. Sign up today.]

But theres a key difference: The Southern Hemisphere has a lot less land and a lot more water than the Northern Hemisphere. Thanks to the influence of the southern oceans, land masses in the Southern Hemisphere tend to have fewer very extreme temperatures than land in the Northern Hemisphere does.

So even though a spot on the opposite side of the planet from your location may receive exactly as much sunlight now as your area does in summer, the weather there may be different from the summer conditions you are used to. But it still can be fun to imagine a warm summer breeze on the far side of the Earth  especially in a snowy January.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Deanna Hence, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Deanna Hence receives funding from NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Illinois Campus Research Board.
Campus News

McDevitt named director of Honors College

By JAY REY

Patrick F. McDevitt, associate professor of history, College of Arts and Sciences, has been named academic director of the University Honors College.

He will begin in his new role this month.

Dr. McDevitt will lead the Honors College team as they work to build upon the 40-year history of the University Honors College in providing a transformative, inclusive and innovative education for our Honors Scholars and developing lifetime connections with our thousands of alumni worldwide, says Ann Bisantz, dean of undergraduate education.

I look forward to welcoming Dr. McDevitt to the Honors College.

A UB faculty member since 2001, McDevitt is a historian of Ireland, Great Britain and the British Empire with research interests in gender and sexuality, imperialism and colonialism, food and famine, sports, and fashion.

He is author of May the Best Man Win: Sport, Masculinity and Nationalism in Great Britain and the Empire, 1880-1935 and the forthcoming book The Great Irish Famine: A Global History.

McDevitt was an Honors Faculty Fellow from 2015-17 and currently serves as program adviser for the Fulbright awards, working with UB students competing for the prestigious grants to research, study or teach English around the world.

As one of the nations first honors programs, the University Honors College offers talented UB students rigorous coursework  both in and out of their majors  while using the resources of a large research university to provide a small-college experience. It includes nearly 1,400 UB students.

I see the job of the academic director as focused on a few key, overlapping and mutually reinforcing areas: building diversity, extending outreach, expanding development and innovating curriculum, McDevitt says.

His first priority is to continue to expand the diversity of the students, in terms of race, ethnicity, gender identity, majors, geography and economic background.

At the same time, he wants to reach out to current and prospective students, as well as alumni and the UB community at large.

Continued development of the curriculum also will be at the forefront of McDevitts charge.

The Honors College has always been an incubator for innovation, and our curriculum is one aspect of that, he says. Creating more opportunities through academics to showcase achievements and discoveries supports an enhanced student experience.

A native of Emerson, N.J., McDevitt earned a bachelors degree in history from New York University, where he graduated magna cum laude. While there, he had the experience of taking part in a scholars program.

The programming encouraged me to tread far from my comfort zones and question many certainties I possessed when I first arrived, he says. Learning, talking and traveling with my fellow scholars inspired me  a teen from a very small school in a very small town  to stretch myself in new and profound ways.

McDevitt won a Fulbright to New Zealand and earned a First-Class Honours Degree from the University of Canterbury. He returned to New Jersey to earn masters and doctoral degrees in European history at Rutgers University. He was an assistant professor of history at Rowan University before coming to UB.

While at UB, McDevitt has served in a wide range of roles. That has included leading the Phi Beta Kappa and Fulbright programs, serving on the Faculty Senate and being director of graduate studies in the history department.

For much of his two decades at UB, McDevitt has been involved in the Honors College, whether teaching honors students, helping select winners of the Presidential Scholarship or recruiting potential Fulbright Scholars.

In short, he says, the Honors College is my favorite part of UB.
EDISON, NJ  Doug Schneider was unanimously elected Board President at the Edison Public Schools BOE reorganization meeting on Monday, Jan. 3. Schneider is a newcomer to the BOE and along with Brian Rivera and Biral Patel, took the oath of office on Jan. 3.

Board member Shivi Prasad-Madhukar was elected to serve as Vice President unanimously.

"I want to congratulate Doug and Shivi for taking the leadership role. I look forward to working with you guys... its going to be a tough year with the pandemic and everything. The new leadership will make the school district much better," said outgoing President Jerry Shi.

During the meeting, Superintendent Bernard Bragen addressed concerns from a few parents who wondered why the district was in-person, while other New Jersey school districts went virtual due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases.



Bragen said students suffered many significant learning losses at every level, and online learning wasnt the same as being in a classroom for many students.

The Superintendent noted that many students were struggling with mental health issues.

When you have students that are attempting suicide, I would argue that yes it (social/emotional learning) is important. Where some of our students are with their ability to cope with frustration, the burdens of being in school on a regular basis, and things that they havent navigated for almost a year-and-a-half, many are struggling, Bragen said.

These decisions are not made in isolation, that we would take easily.

Bragen said many New Jersey school districts, like South Brunswick, went remote due to staffing concerns. That situation hasnt risen in Edison, he said. Although there are COVID-19-related staff absences, the school district has enough staff to open schools safely.

Thank you for reading. Have a correction or news tip? Email sarah.salvadore@patch.com

Get breaking news alerts on your phone with our app. Download here. Sign up to get Patch emails so you don't miss out on local and statewide news.

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This article originally appeared on the Edison-Metuchen Patch
An elderly New York man has been charged with threatening to kill Donald Trump, whom the wannabe assassin compared to Adolf Hitler.

Thomas Welnicki, 72, of Rockaway Beach, was charged on Monday with threatening to kill the former president multiple times between July 2020 and December 2021.

Speaking with the US Capitol police in July of 2020, Mr Welnicki allegedly said he would acquire weapons and take [Trump] down] if the president refused to leave office.

Two days before the anniversary of the 6 January riots, the 72-year-old again allegedly threatened the former president, telling a Secret Service agent in a voluntary call that, "I will do anything I can to take out (Trump) and his 12 monkeys, according to court documents.

During calls with law enforcement, the man reportedly also referred to an alleged $350,000 bounty on Donald Trumps head.

The Independent has reached out to the public defender representing Mr Welnicki for comment.

Although Donald Trump is not named in the criminal complaint, it is implied that the president was the target of the mans threats, given the associated dates of his comments.

According to an affidavit from a Secret Service agent, the would-be assailant believed he was defending democracy, arguing in one call, I dont want to hurt anyone, but I will stand up to fascism.

The threat against Mr Trump comes little more than a week after federal agents arrested Kuachua Brillion Xiong, 25, a California man traveling across the country to the White House with a cache of weapons and a kill list including President Joe Biden and Dr Anthony Fauci.

Police intercepted Mr Xiong in Iowa for driving aggressively, and found a rifle, body armor, and the White House on the cars GPS system.

Xiong began to attempt to control the conversation and began talking about his disapproval for the government due to the sex abuse of children, a local sheriffs deputy said of the man.

With events like the 6 January Capitol riot, and the continued opposition from large swathes of Republicans to accept the 2020 election results, political scientists have been warning of a general devolution in US politics towards intractability and violence more commonly seen in less stable nations.

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We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe, Barbara F. Walter, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego who serves on a CIA advisory panel called the Political Instability Task Force, told The Washington Post.

If you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America  the same way youd look at events in Ukraine or the Ivory Coast or Venezuela  you 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.
By Guy Faulconbridge and Alistair Smout

LONDON (Reuters) -Britain on Monday put the biggest private health companies on high alert to deliver crucial treatments such as cancer surgery should Omicron overwhelm National Health Service hospitals in England.

The United Kingdom's death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic stands at 150,154, the world's seventh worst official COVID toll after the United States, Brazil, India, Russia, Mexico and Peru.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has bet on refraining from lockdowns to deal with the Omicron variant which in recent weeks has swept across the United Kingdom, albeit with death rates significantly lower than previous waves.

In a sign of just how stretched the National Health Service could become, Health Secretary Sajid Javid ordered England's NHS to strike a 3-month deal with private health companies to allow patients to get treatments such as cancer surgery outside.

"Millions of patients have already got their tests and treatment quicker thanks to our existing deal with independent providers," said David Sloman, NHS England chief operating officer and COVID incident director.

It also places independent health providers on standby to provide further help should hospitals face unsustainable levels of hospitalisations or staff absences," Sloman said.

The agreement includes Practice Plus Group, Spire Healthcare, Nuffield Health, Circle Health Group, Ramsay Health Care UK, Healthcare Management Trust, One Healthcare, Horder Healthcare, Aspen Healthcare and KIMS Hospital, the NHS said.

Circle CEO Paolo Pieri said that since the first COVID wave in March 2020, its hospitals had supported the NHS by performing urgent, life-saving operations and treatments for over 400,000 NHS patients.

"We stand ready to support the NHS in its time of need," Pieri said.

Spire said the final details of the new contract still had to be agreed. The deal expires on March 31.

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"The agreement in principle is for payment by activity based on NHS tariff, with minimum value underpins," Spire said.

"If required, subject to meeting agreed criteria, Spire Healthcare will grant NHSE access to 100% of its facilities and teams on a local, regional or national basis in the event of a surge of COVID-19 patients in NHS hospitals in England."

There is still pressure on British hospitals and the country is not yet in a position to say it can live with COVID-19, Housing Secretary Michael Gove said on Monday.

"We are moving to a situation where it is possible to say that we can live with COVID and that the pressure on the NHS and on vital public services is abating," he told Sky News.

"But it's absolutely vital to recognise that we are not there yet... there will be some difficult weeks ahead."

(Reporting by Alistair Smout and Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Kate Holton)
(Bloomberg) -- Pine Labs Pvt, an Asian digital payments provider backed by Sequoia India and Mastercard Inc., is moving ahead with preparations for a U.S. listing and seeks to raise about $500 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

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The company has filed confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering in New York as soon as in the first half of this year, the people said. The listing could give Pine Labs a valuation of about $5.5 billion to $7 billion, they said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley are the lead banks on the deal, the people said. Considerations are ongoing and details such as the size and timing could still change, the people said.

A representative for Singapore-based Pine Labs didnt respond to requests for comment, while representatives for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

Bloomberg News reported in August that Pine Labs is considering an IPO in 2022.

Led by Chief Executive Officer Amrish Rau, the company in July raised about $600 million from investors including Fidelity Management & Research Co. and BlackRock Inc., according to a statement. The company said it was targeting a public offering within 18 months and has been operationally profitable for several years -- a rarity among the new crop of Indian fintechs.

The startup, which offers solutions for in-store and online payments as well as prepaid, loyalty and pay later programs, is valued at $3 billion, Rau said at the time.

The deal was followed by an additional $100 million in funding from Invesco Developing Markets Fund. It also counts Temasek Holdings Pte, PayPal Holdings Inc. and Actis Capital among its other investors. Indias largest commercial bank, the State Bank of India, invested $20 million in the startup earlier this month.

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Pine Labs serves over 150,000 merchants in India, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The company has expanded both organically and via acquisitions including consumer fintech platform Fave last year. The digital payments gateway and commerce platform, whose main operations are in India, supports payments for enterprise customers including Apple Inc., McDonalds Corp. and Starbucks Corp.

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A Maryland man has lived for three days with a pig heart beating inside his chest.

The surgery, at the University of Maryland Medical Center, marks the first time a gene-edited pig has been used as an organ donor.

Dave Bennett, 57, agreed to be the first to risk the experimental surgery, hoping it would give him a shot at making it home to his Maryland duplex and his beloved dog, Lucky.

This is nothing short of a miracle, his son David said Sunday, two days after his father's life-extending surgery. Thats what my dad needed, and thats what I feel like he got.

Bartley Griffith, left, was the lead surgeon for Dave Bennett, who received a pig heart.

In the nine-hour surgery, doctors replaced his heart with one from a 1-year-old, 240-pound pig gene-edited and bred specifically for this purpose.

Bennett is breathing on his own without a ventilator, though he remains on an ECMO machine that does about half the work of pumping blood throughout his body. Doctors plan to slowly wean him off.

Scientists have worked for decades to figure out how to save human lives with animal organs. More than 100,000 people sit on organ transplant waitlists, suffering terrible symptoms and side effects. About 6,000 of them die every year waiting in vain for someone else's tragedy to provide them with a kidney, heart or lung.

Pigs have similar organs to humans. If those organs could be used in transplants, the waiting would end. People who would never be considered candidates for transplants  who never make it onto those transplant lists  could look forward to family dinners, playing with their kids or grandkids and simply going back to living their lives.

A surgical team at the University of Maryland School of Medicine works to give patient Dave Bennett, 57, of Maryland, a gene-edited pig heart.

That's the promise of so-called xenotransplantation. And the field took a major leap forward with Bennett's surgery Friday.

"This is a truly remarkable breakthrough," said Robert Montgomery, a transplant surgeon at NYU Langone and a heart transplant patient himself. "I am thrilled by this news and the hope it gives to my family and other patients who will eventually be saved by this breakthrough."

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In September, Montgomery moved the work forward by becoming the first to transplant a pig kidney into a person, but in that case, and a subsequent surgery in December, the person had been declared brain dead. Montgomery kept the body functioning via machine for more than two days each time, showing that the human immune system would not immediately reject a kidney from a gene-edited pig.

The Maryland procedure "takes what we did in September of 2021 to the next level," Montgomery said. "At that point, the race was on."

Others in the field were supportive, if a bit envious.

"We've all been doing this for a really long time, and I'm sure it's got to be fun to be first," said Joseph Tector, a transplant surgeon and xenotransplantation researcher at the University of Miami.

Tector, who focuses on kidney transplants, said he's waiting until he's confident he can provide reliable, durable results, "so that when we do it, we can help everybody."

Animal rights activists object to the use of pig organs. There would be more human organs available for transplant if health authorities assumed everyone was an organ donor unless they opted out, instead of the opt-in system.

Ethicists have fewer concerns.

Animal trials are essential to begin a new therapy in humans, said the Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia.

Despite years of research, there are sure to be many more twists and turns along the road of getting our immune system to play nice with implanted animal organs, Pacholczyk said. I suspect this is a first step on the journey from yesterdays scientifically unimaginable to todays barely achievable to tomorrows standard of care.

Patient experience

Bennett, who has been relatively healthy most of his life, began having severe chest pains in October, his son said.

He went into the University of Maryland Medical Center with severe fatigue and shortness of breath. "He couldn't climb three steps," said David, a physical therapist who understood the seriousness of his dad's condition.

A pig heart transplant at the University of Maryland gives Dave Bennett Sr., center, more time with his family, David Bennett Jr. and Nicole (Bennett) McCray.

Two months of trying to save Bennett's own heart didn't work. A handful of transplant programs either formally or informally rejected him for a heart transplant. He was deemed ineligible for an artificial heart pump because of uncontrollable arrhythmia.

About 3,000 Americans a year are lucky enough to get a new heart, and 20% of those who make it to the waitlist die waiting or become too ill to receive one.

Bennett didn't qualify for the list, because he had not followed doctors' orders, missing medical appointments and discontinuing prescribed medications. History has shown that people with that kind of track record don't do well with an organ transplant.

At first, Bennett didn't want to participate in the experimental surgery. He had worked odd jobs his whole life  pool repairs, car maintenance, painting  depending on his physical strength, but two months in the hospital had made any kind of surgery risky. He didn't want to die on an operating table.

Bennett had a change of heart, his son said, when he realized he would probably never be able to leave the hospital otherwise.

"He knew that this was his best option," David said. "He's a fighter and has a desire to live."

Although Bennett has a long way to go, David said he's optimistic about his father's future.

The family in 2019: From left, David Bennett Jr., Preston Bennett, Dave Bennett Sr., Gillian Bennett, Nicole (Bennett) McCray, Sawyer Bennett and Kristi Bennett.

My dad has told both of his sisters and myself, Don't worry. God is holding my hand, David said, describing his father as a man of faith, though not tied to any particular religion. I believe there's continued reason to be hopeful.

Even if it doesn't change his outcome, the surgery allows Bennett to leave a legacy, David said.

"Regardless of what happens, I want to help other people," Bennett told his son before the surgery.

Bennett had a pig valve implanted almost a decade ago, and bacon is his favorite food, so the idea of receiving a part from a pig didn't bother him much, David said, although he still hopes he'll be able to get a human heart.

Perhaps after six months of showing he can follow doctor's orders, he'll be a better candidate for a heart transplant, and the pig heart will serve only as a bridge.

The last evening I talked with the patient, he said, I really want to have a human heart, said Dr. Bartley Griffith, who led the surgery for the University of Maryland Medicine. I said, I want you to have a human heart.  It would drive us crazy to take that nice (pig) heart out, but it would be your choice.

The hardest part of undertaking such experimental surgery, Griffith said, was talking to Bennett beforehand.

"You're not afraid of demonstrating to the FDA and to the hospital and to your chairman and to your partners that you're ready, because you've got confidence in that, in yourself," he said. "I think the fear is in being honest to your patient."

The surgery was experimental and its outcome was uncertain.

"You've got to tell the patient that in essence, we're ready for liftoff," Griffith said, adding that others compared him to a shuttle astronaut. "But I kept reminding people: we're in the control room. It's the patient who's shot to the moon."

Three experiments in one

For years, the researchers in Maryland and elsewhere have experimented with implanting gene-edited pig organs into baboons.

The University of Maryland Medicine team, co-led by Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, has kept baboons alive for as long as nine months, when they died of something other than immune rejection. They felt ready to try the procedure in a person.

Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin directs the program in cardiac xenotransplantation at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Taking care of a patient, said Mohiuddin, who directs the University of Maryland School of Medicine's program in cardiac xenotransplantation, "it's much, much easier than taking care of a baboon."

Pulling off the procedure required the right patient  a willing volunteer who had no other medical options  as well as support from the hospital system and three separate approvals from the Food and Drug Administration. (The hospital and academic institution would not reveal the cost of the procedure but picked up any fees not covered by insurance.)

The process began Dec. 15, when Bennett agreed to consider the procedure. Maryland officials scrambled to provide an application to the FDA on Dec. 20, requesting "compassionate use" authorization to proceed.

Then they had to answer a slew of questions, including about the pig.

The pig, provided by Blacksburg, Virginia, company Revivicor, which raises pigs for transplant, was genetically modified in 10 different spots before birth.

"There are 100,000 genes in the pig," Griffith said Sunday afternoon in a Zoom interview, along with Mohiuddin. "Muhammad wants me to believe that by changing 10 of them, we can transplant a pig heart into a human. Are you kidding?"

Bartley Griffith is a surgeon at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

"You did it," Mohiuddin responded, laughing.

Three genes were turned off that might otherwise have triggered an immediate immune rejection  the recognition of a pig organ as coming from a different species. Six human genes were added to prevent blood from coagulating in the heart, improve molecular compatibility and reduce the risk of rejection.

One final gene was turned off to keep the pig from growing too large.

The 1-year-old pig that gave its heart to Bennett weighed about 240 pounds; a standard male pig of the same age might weigh 450 pounds, said David Ayares, Revivicor's executive vice president and chief scientific officer.

Researchers learned from studies in baboons that without editing out this growth gene, even an organ taken from a young animal would keep growing. In a couple of the baboons, the transplanted pig hearts grew too big for their chests.

"We've marched down this road over the last decade, going from a one-gene pig to a two- to a five- to an eight to a 10, and we rationalized each of those and made modifications along the way," Ayares said.

Ayares has worked for two decades to develop pigs that are suitable for human transplant. Pigs bred to provide kidneys for transplant may need only one gene turned off to avoid immediate organ rejection. Pigs bred for their hearts probably need 10, Ayares said, to allow them to function effectively and safely.

Revivicor's parent company, United Therapeutics, aims to get into pig-to-human lung transplants, whose pigs will probably need "at least that many" gene edits, Ayares said.

A second innovative aspect of the surgery is the use of an immunosuppressive medication that seems to be essential for long-term survival of a transplanted organ. Researchers had used a version developed for baboons, but this was the first time using a humanized version in a person.

A surgical team at University of Maryland School of Medicine works to give patient Dave Bennett, 57 of Maryland, a gene-edited pig heart.

The third aspect was the box that the heart was placed in after taking it from the pig. Researchers have learned that simply putting a heart on ice, as is done with a human heart, doesn't work in between-species transplants. A German team figured out a method of perfusing the heart with nutrients and hormones.

"In the primates, the hearts just weren't working until they started using that pump," Montgomery of NYU said. "Nobody understands why."

Bruno Reichart, a retired German heart transplant surgeon, who tested pig hearts in baboons for years, said he thinks the pig heart probably works better if liquid continually flows through it. But essentially, the proof is that it works.

"Who is successful is right, who is not successful is wrong. It doesn't need much more explanation in surgery," he said.

The FDA granted emergency authorization for the surgery on New Years Eve, and it was conducted Jan. 7 from around 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Before pig organs can routinely be used in transplant surgeries, all three aspects have to be further tested in animals to meet FDA standards. Revivicor is building a pig facility that will meet FDA production requirements.

Ayares said he and others are savoring the moment.

"This is one of the most exciting things in my 20-year-plus xeno career," he said.

If they can provide an unlimited supply of organs, Ayares said, the organ transplant list will probably increase by "orders of magnitude," as more people who aren't at death's door begin to see transplant as an option.

"We've done so much work up to this day," Ayares said. "We're confident this is going to continue to grow and build and really be the solution."

What does success look like?

No one has been kept alive before with an organ from a specifically tailored animal. So any survival at all could be considered success.

Montgomery said he considers the surgery a success already.

"The critical thing here is we've moved this thing out of these endless primate operations," he said. "We're now going to get real data in humans and really understand this thing."

Tector, of the University of Miami, said he wouldn't provide a pig kidney to a patient unless he was sure the person would survive at least a year. "When we do it, we think we're going to get reasonable survival long-term," he said.

Reichart said he would expect Bennett could live indefinitely with his new heart.

"Maybe I'm a little obsolete and maybe from another world, but success would be at least a year," he said. "Why shouldn't it work for three years, for five years? We'll see. That's part of the experience they'll gain now."

Reichart, CEO of a company he co-founded to commercialize pig-to-human heart transplants, called XTransplant, said he's concerned that Bennett was turned down for a transplant because he didn't take previous prescriptions.

"The patient has a great responsibility to other patients in the world to behave properly and take his medications," Reichart said. "He got the chance with the first one and everybody will look at the results."

Griffith, the surgeon, said he's been inspired by the efforts of so many to save Bennett and lay the groundwork for animal-to-human transplants.

"It's been restorative to my soul to see people come together to save just one life," he said. "They understand the implication."

Contact Karen Weintraub at kweintraub@usatoday.com.

Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Heart transplant milestone: Human receives heart from gene-edited pig
A former state district judge was found guilty of trespassing after an incident at the Nueces County Courthouse over a year ago.

Former state district judge Guy Williams was arrested on suspicion of making terroristic threats and criminal trespassing.

Guy Williams, former 148th District Court judge, was found guilty of trespassing by Judge Sid Harle, of Bexar County, on Jan. 4. The Harris County district attorney's office was asked to handle the case back in 2020.

In May 2020, Williams was arrested inside of the Nueces County Courthouse. Williams faced charges of making a terroristic threat to a public servant, a third-degree felony, and criminal trespassing, a Class B misdemeanor. No weapons were involved in the incident.

More: Former judge Guy Williams accused of making terroristic threats, criminal trespassing

According to the Harris County District Attorney's Office, Williams represented himself and was found guilty in less than 15 minutes.

Williams was sentenced to three months of probation and the punishment was stayed pending Williams' appeal. If the punishment were to stay in place and Williams failed to complete his probation, he would face nine months in jail.

Construction on the Nueces County Courthouse on Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021.

Williams told the Caller-Times on Monday that he intends to sue Nueces County for malicious prosecution and excessive force. He claims Nueces County officials refused to give him a pass that other lawyers use to go through courthouse security.

Williams says he emailed Nueces County Judge Barbara Canales and Sheriff J.C. Hooper to let them know he would be visiting the courthouse to get a security pass the day he was arrested, but when he arrived he was told security canceled all lawyer passes.

He claims the sheriff's department used excessive force, causing him to need surgery on his rotator cuff.

In late 2019, Williams was convicted of public intoxication, a Class C misdemeanor, following a May 2018 incident in which police said Williams was a passenger in a vehicle that crashed at Whitecap Boulevard and Park Road 22, striking two palm trees.

In 2018, Williams was tried on felony charges of aggravated assault related to a reported road rage incident. A jury acquitted him of one of the counts and the other count was later dismissed after jurors were deadlocked on a verdict.

Story continues

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Ashlee Burns covers trending and breaking news in South Texas. See our subscription options and special offers at Caller.com/subscribe

This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Former Nueces County judge Guy Williams found guilty of trespassing
FBI agents leave the downtown Department of Water and Power headquarters in 2019. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

A former high-level lawyer in Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuers office has agreed to plead guilty in the federal corruption probe of the Department of Water and Power billing debacle, becoming the first staffer under Feuer to do so.

Thomas Peters, 55, of Pacific Palisades, agreed to plead guilty to one count of aiding and abetting extortion. In his plea agreement, made public on Monday, he admitted that he threatened to fire one of the city's outside lawyers unless that lawyer paid off a person who was threatening to reveal damaging information about city lawyers' handling of the DWP mess.

Peters, who worked as chief of the civil litigation branch, joined Feuer's office in 2014, and handled the bulk of claims or lawsuits filed against or brought by the city. He resigned in 2019.

A lawyer for Peters did not respond to a request for comment. Feuer, in a statement, said he is "furious and disappointed beyond words" that one of his own employees committed such a "breach of trust."

"Nearly three years ago I asked for and received the resignation of this individual because of unrelated past conduct," Feuer said. "But at no time until today was I aware of Mr. Peters' illegal actions. With his admission of wrongdoing we finally know the truth of what happened."

Feuer also acknowledged that he hired Peters. "I own that choice," he said.

The plea deal will almost certainly complicate Feuers bid for mayor in the June 7 primary election. Until now, the only government officials who had struck plea deals were former DWP executives  not any employees of the city attorneys office.

Monday's announcement marks the latest plea agreement in a federal investigation that became publicly known in July 2019, when FBI agents searched the city attorney's office and DWP headquarters.

Last month, prosecutors announced that former DWP general manager David H. Wright agreed to plead guilty to bribery. Wright admitted in his plea agreement that he pushed for the DWP to award a $30-million no-bid contract to a company in exchange for a $1 million-per-year job and use of a Mercedes at that company once he retired from the DWP.

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Prosecutors also announced a plea deal with David Alexander, the DWP's former chief cyber risk officer. Alexander admitted he lied to FBI agents about his conversations with Paul Paradis, an attorney hired by Feuer's office to handle litigation sought by the DWP over the disastrous rollout of its billing system, which sent inaccurate bills to hundreds of thousands of customers.

Paradis had been brought on by Feuer's office to sue PricewaterhouseCoopers, the consulting firm that the city blamed for the billing debacle.

The city attorneys office also retained Beverly Hills attorney Paul Kiesel, who worked with Paradis on the case.

Around the time Paradis began working with the city, he had also been representing Antwon Jones, a DWP customer who had been looking to the sue over faulty utility bills. Several DWP ratepayers already had filed lawsuits against the utility on that issue.

The city attorneys office was aware that Paradis had represented Jones, prosecutors have said.

In his plea agreement, Paradis said he was authorized by the city attorney's office to find a lawyer to represent Jones who would be "friendly to the city and its litigation goals." That way, the class action lawsuit involving Jones and other ratepayers, would be settled quickly and in a way that was "orchestrated by the city on the terms desired by the city."

Paradis reached out to an attorney in Ohio and asked him to represent Jones in his lawsuit against the city. Paradis told the lawyer in Ohio, who has not been named in any of the filings, that he would secretly do all or most of the work in the case, in exchange for a 20% cut of the legal fees the Ohio lawyer would receive once a settlement was reached, according to his plea agreement.

With Paradis working both for the city and the lawyer in Ohio, there was "no attorney fulfilling the ethical duty to represent the best interests of Mr. Jones or the class of LADWP ratepayers through a true adversarial process," his plea agreement states.

The DWP settled the class-action lawsuit with its ratepayers for $67 million, with Paradis secretly collecting a $2.175-million kickback from the attorney in Ohio, according to his plea agreement.

In November 2017, Peters  then heading the civil litigation office for Feuer  learned that a former employee of Kiesel's, the outside lawyer helping to sue PricewaterhouseCoopers, had threatened to go public with damaging information about the city's handling of the billing litigation unless she received more than $1 million, the plea agreement states.

That former employee had "sensitive documents" showing that the city's legal team had secretly colluded with the lawyer representing DWP ratepayers in the billing lawsuit, prosecutors said.

In his plea agreement, Peters confirmed that he feared that if the employee went public with those documents, she would show that the settlement negotiations between the DWP and its ratepayers were not the adversarial proceeding that they were supposed to be, which would in turn jeopardize the citys $67-million settlement and damage the reputation of Feuers office.

The city's lawyers had been fighting demands from PricewaterhouseCoopers to produce such documents, prosecutors said. Kiesel, in turn, privately complained that his employee's threats were "extortion," according to the plea agreement.

Kiesel took part in a failed mediation at the DWP cafeteria with his former employee, who lowered her demand to $900,000, the agreement states. He responded with a counteroffer of $60,000, which was not accepted, the plea agreement states.

Peters instructed Kiesel to satisfy the staffer's financial demand  and warned him he would be fired if he didn't, according to his plea agreement. "I need you to take care of this," he said in one text message.

In December 2017, Kiesel told Peters in a text message that he had agreed to pay the employee $800,000, and that the employee had agreed to return the documents, according to prosecutors' filings.

In his plea agreement, Peters admitted that he knew that the employee's conduct constituted extortion and that the conduct was a felony. Instead of reporting the crime, Peters concealed the extortion, as well as the damaging information that she had threatened to reveal, the agreement states.

It's still unclear who in Feuer's office knew about the illegal or unethical activities that have been alleged by prosecutors in the DWP billing case.

Monday's filing states that an unnamed City Attorney Official directed Paradis and Kiesel to pursue the strategy of finding a lawyer to represent DWP ratepayers in the billing case. The document also says that Peters spoke with senior members of the city attorneys office about the threat from Kiesel's former employee to reveal sensitive documents.

Rob Wilcox, a Feuer spokesman, said his boss had not been aware of the alleged extortion cited by prosecutors.

Feuer is one of several city officials seeking to replace Eric Garcetti as mayor, who can't run again because of term limits. At some point in the race, one of his opponents will point to the corruption case and argue that he showed poor management of the office, said political consultant Eric Hacopian.

Its a line of attack on him thats always going to be there," said Hacopian, who is not representing any candidates in the mayoral contest.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
The sister-in-law of a former, high-ranking Republican leader in Michigan accused the lawmaker of sexually assaulting her for years when she was an underaged teen, officials said Monday.

Lee Chatfield, 33, who served as speaker of the state House of Representatives in 2019 and 2020, denies any criminal wrongdoing and instead admits to extramarital  but consensual  sex with the accuser, defense attorney Mary Chartier said.

"Mr. Chatfield is innocent of the false rape claims made against him," Chartier said in statement to NBC News. "He had affairs while he was married, including a sexual relationship with the woman who is now claiming she was raped."

Chartier said this "affair lasted for years, but they were both consenting adults over 18," adding that "this woman regularly contacted Mr. Chatfield to initiate sexual encounters, and she took steps to hide the affair from others, including her husband."

"Mr. Chatfield deeply regrets the decisions he has made. It has caused great pain to his wife and family, and they are working through this together," Chartier added.

The age of consent in Michigan is 16 and Rebekah Chatfield told Bridge Michigan that the abuse happened when she was underage.

Rebekah Chatfield, 26, is now married to the former lawmaker's younger brother Aaron Chatfield.

He destroyed me, and has controlled my life since I was 15-16, the past 10-11 years, she told the non-profit news outfit.

And I know the only way to get justice for this is to come forward and to file a criminal (complaint) against him.

Rebekah Chatfield's attorney could not be immediately reached for comment on Monday by NBC News.

When asked about Rebekah Chatfield's allegations, Lansing police confirmed they "received a sexual assault complaint from" a 26-year-old woman in December and "immediately began an investigation," Lansing police spokesman Robert Merritt said in a statement to NBC News on Monday.

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"Lansing Police Detectives are currently coordinating with Michigan State Police for accusations in jurisdictions outside the city of Lansing," Merritt added.

Chatfield represented the 107th House District in Northern Michigan, which included Chippewa, Emmet and Mackinac Counties.

Michigan State Police Lt. Brian Oleksyk confirmed his agency is looking into a sexual assault complaint out of its Seventh District, which includes Chatfield's old district.

"The Lansing Police Department referred a complaint to MSP investigators in our Seventh District (Northern Michigan) last week, and it is under review. We have no further information to share on this matter at this time," Lt. Oleksyk said in a statement to NBC News, when asked about Rebekah Chatfields allegations.

Before Chatfield was forced out of office due to term limits, he was one of the state GOP's rising stars after assuming the speakership at age 30, the youngest person to hold that seat for more than 100 years.

This investigation prompted Michigan House of Representative attorneys to tell all members to preserve any communications with Chatfield.

Gideon DAssandro, spokesman for current House Speaker Jason Wentworth, said the chamber is cooperating with police.

"Yes, the House has reached out to the Michigan State Police and the Lansing PD to offer assistance and coordination with their investigations," DAssandro said. "In order to help them with their work, the speaker ordered a litigation hold."
Trump embraces Sean Hannity at a Missouri rally Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Text messages released by the House Jan. 6 committee are a reminder how closely intertwined Fox News and former President Donald Trump's White House were during his presidency  several prominent opinion hosts privately pleaded for Trump to stop the Capitol siege by his supporters, and Sean Hannity appears to have also been in the loop on Trump's plans to overturn President Biden's victory.

But that only scratches the surface of the influence this "cable Cabinet of unofficial advisers" had on Trump and White House policy, The Washington Post reports.

"There were times the president would come down the next morning and say, 'Well, Sean thinks we should do this,' or, 'Judge Jeanine thinks we should do this,'" said former Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, referring to Hannity and Jeanine Pirro. The Fox News stars would offer Trump advice on policy and personnel, but "a lot of it was PR  what he should be saying and how he should be saying it; he should be going harder against wearing masks or whatever."

Grisham, who resigned after Jan. 6 and has written a book critical of Trump, said frustrated West Wing staffers would roll their eyes as they scrambled to respond to this mess of influencers. Alyssa Farah, a Trump White House communications director, said the goal of Trump's staff was to "try to get ahead of what advice you thought he was going to be given by these people," because their unofficial counsel "could completely change his mind on something."

Farah said Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Pirro, and Fox Business host Lou Dobbs had the most influence on Trump. Michael Pillsbury, an informal Trump adviser, told the Post he saw the biggest impact from Dobbs, whose show was canceled last February. Trump began embracing lawyer Sidney Powell and other election fabulists after watching them on Dobbs' show, and he was inclined to believe their patently false claims in part because he was seeing on TV, he added.

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"It taught me the power of the young producers at Fox, and Fox Business especially," Pillsbury told the Post. "These young producers who are in their mid-20s. They come out of the conservative movement, they've never been in the government. They are presented with these reckless, fantastical accounts. And they believe them and put them on for ratings."

You can read more about the influence of Trump's Fox Cabinet at The Washington Post.

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Clear to partly cloudy. Low 38F. Winds SSE at 15 to 25 mph.

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Partly cloudy skies during the morning hours will give way to cloudy skies and rain in the afternoon. High 56F. SSE winds shifting to N at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Higher wind gusts possible.
PARIS (Reuters) -French technology consulting company Atos issued a profit warning on Monday, its second in seven months, causing its shares to slump to their lowest level since around mid-2012.

The company's latest profit warning also came just several days after its new CEO Rodolphe Belmer, appointed in October, officially took over the reins.

Atos shares plunged by 15% in early session trading.

Atos said its financial objectives stated in July could not be met, due both to delays on deals with customers and to lower margins at its hardware and software resales unit.

"I joined the company last week, at the time when the figures were being collected and consolidated. The current state of financial insight leads us to the obligation to issue a profit warning today due to the significant variance in the financial KPIs (key performance indicators)," said Belmer.

"However, most of the items underlying this severe gap are non-recurring...I am convinced that the company has the necessary assets and all the talents to operate a swift turnaround", he added.

The tenure of Atos' previous CEO, Elie Girard, was tainted by accounting errors and by a July 2021 profit warning.

The company's fall from grace saw Atos exit France's blue-chip CAC 40 equity index and led to speculation about a takeover or the arrival of activist investors.

Atos said it now expected a 2.4% decline in its 2021 full year revenues, coming in at 10.8 billion euros ($12.24 billion) - below a previous forecast for "stable" sales.

Atos also now forecast an operating margin at around 4% for 2021 versus a target of around 6% previously, and its free cash flow target was now expected at a negative figure of 420 million euros - below a previous forecast for positive free cash flow.

Belmer, who previously led French satellite firm Eutelsat, said he will present a new organization of Atos' board of directors at the end of next month, and a new strategy plan in the second quarter of this year.

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Atos, whose shares had also slumped by around 50% in 2021, will give its 2022 objectives on Feb 28.

($1 = 0.8827 euros)

(Reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten; Editing by Christopher Cushing/Sudip Kar-Gupta)
Bob Saget. Michael Tran/AFP via Getty Images

Bob Saget, the actor and comedian who brought Full House's beloved dad Danny Tanner to life, died Sunday. He was 65.

Florida's Orange County Sheriff's Office told The Hollywood Reporter that Saget was found unresponsive at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes hotel on Sunday, and was pronounced dead at the scene. The cause of death is not yet known, but the sheriff's office told TMZ that "detectives have found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case" and "the Medical Examiner's Office will make the final call on the cause and manner of death."

A native of Philadelphia, Saget was the longtime host of America's Funniest Home Videos, but was best known for his role as the Tanner family patriarch on Full House, which aired on ABC from 1987 to 1995; he later reprised his role for the Netflix revival Fuller House. Danny Tanner was known for his heart-to-heart chats with his daughters D.J. (Candace Cameron Bure), Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin), and Michelle (Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen), as well as his love of sweaters and being a neat freak.

Saget also provided the narrator's voice on How I Met Your Mother and had a recurring role on Entourage. Off screen, Saget regularly toured as a stand-up comic, where his R-rated jokes let the crowd know this wasn't Danny Tanner on stage. He started his latest U.S. tour in September, and performed in front of a crowd in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday night. Saget is survived by his wife, Kelly Rizzo, and three children.

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Gary Clark #12 of the New Orleans Pelicans handles the ball during the game against the Phoenix Suns on January 4, 2022 at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Former Cincinnati Bearcats standout Gary Clark signed a two-way contract with the New Orleans Pelicans, the team announced Sunday. The Pelicans waived Clark last weekend.

Clark has played in nine games for the Pelicans this season. He had 12 points in a win Dec. 28 against the Cleveland Cavaliers, and 10 points, seven rebounds and a crucial blocked shot near the end of a win last Thursday against the Golden State Warriors.

Last month, Clark became the first-ever NBA call-up for the G League's Mexico City Capitanes when the Pelicans signed him.

Clark averaged 14.4 points and 6.8 rebounds in eight games for the Capitanes. He scored 31 points Nov. 22 in a 125-123 win against the Rio Grande Valley Vipers.

Clark joins former Xavier Musketeers standout Naji Marshall and former Moeller High School standout Jaxson Hayes on the Pelicans. They are three of the seven players from Greater Cincinnati high schools, UC or XU on NBA rosters.

In May, Clark signed a two-way deal with the Philadelphia 76ers. He appeared in two games last season for the Sixers.

In March, Clark was traded to the Denver Nuggets along with Aaron Gordon in a blockbuster trade that brought Gary Harris, R.J. Hampton and Denver's protected 2025 first-round pick to the Orlando Magic. He appeared in two games for the Nuggets and was waived April 8.

Clark averaged 3.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and 0.9 assists in 18.2 minutes per game in 35 games for the Magic after agreeing last November to a two-year deal believed to be worth $4.1 million to remain with Orlando.

In Aug. 2020, Clark scored 15 points and added six rebounds in 28 minutes in the eighth-seeded Magic's 122-110 Game 1 upset of the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks.

The Magic signed Clark in Jan. 2020 about one week after he was waived by the Rockets after parts of two seasons in Houston.

Clark was the American Athletic Conference Player of the Year as a senior for the Bearcats.

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This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Gary Clark signs two-way contract with New Orleans Pelicans
ATLANTA (AP)  The prosecutor weighing whether Donald Trump and others committed crimes by trying to pressure Georgia officials to overturn Joe Bidens presidential election victory said a decision on whether to bring charges could come as early as the first half of this year.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said in an interview with The Associated Press last week that her team is making solid progress, and shes leaning toward asking for a special grand jury with subpoena power to aid the investigation.

I believe in 2022 a decision will be made in that case, Willis said. I certainly think that in the first half of the year that decisions will be made.

But Willis told the AP that she hasn't imposed deadlines on her staff and has urged them to be thorough in their examination.

She's assembled a team of fewer than 10 people  lawyers, investigators and a legal assistant  who are focused primarily on this case and can consult outside lawyers with particular expertise in certain areas of law, she said.

Were going to just get the facts, get the law, be very methodical, very patient and, in some extent, unemotional about this quest for justice, she said.

Willis declined to speak about the specifics, but she confirmed that the investigation's scope includes  but is not limited to  a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a November 2020 phone call between U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Raffensperger, the abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta on Jan. 4, 2021, and comments made during December 2020 Georgia legislative committee hearings on the election.

Willis is not alone in investigating attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election defeat. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee released a report in October based on a review of documents and interviews with former officials. And a U.S. House committee is preparing to release the findings of its investigation of the deadly riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which included conversations with election officials who were pressured by the former president. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said the Justice Department "will follow the facts wherever they lead.

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Willis' inquiry also is not the only state criminal investigation involving Trump. New York prosecutors have subpoenaed Trump and his two eldest children in their investigation of his business dealings.

A Trump spokesman dismissed the Fulton investigation as a politically motivated witch hunt when it became public last February, after Willis instructed Georgias top elected officials to preserve any records related to the general election, particularly any evidence of attempts to influence election officials. The probe includes potential violations of Georgia law prohibiting the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local government bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the elections administration, the letters said.

Willis said she has not yet decided whether to ask the chief judge of the Fulton County Superior Court to impanel a special grand jury. While she could decide whether she has enough for an indictment based on evidence and witnesses who speak with her team willingly, she said, a special grand jury can be helpful to compel people who refuse to testify without a subpoena.

"I like investigations to be complete and so we probably would move in the direction of a special grand jury, she said.

As she has before, Willis said she won't be rushed or influenced by the intense public interest in this case.

"I just think the public should be patient  you know, go on, lead your lives  trust that theyve elected a district attorney that knows that this is a serious issue, takes it seriously and were doing our job here, she said.

Since his loss, Trump has made repeated unproven claims that widespread fraud cost him the election. Some of his supporters have targeted election officials and workers, in Georgia and across the country, making violent threats against them. Willis, a Democrat, said people unhappy that she's considering possible criminal charges against the Republican former president have made threats and expressed their frustration in a way that is so irrational that I believe that they would do me harm.

Previously a prosecutor for 17 years in the office she now leads, Willis said threats are not new for her.

They are truly wasting their time. It is not going to deter me from doing my job, period, she said. "Im not going to do any less or more because, you know, you try to offend me because Im Black or female or of a political party. We were elected to do a job and thats what Im going to sit here and do.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, on January 20, 2020. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo

A Google executive reportedly said the firm's "Project Vivian" was to convince employees "that unions suck."

The news surfaced as part of an NLRB court ruling.

The case kicked off after four Google employees were fired in 2019 after organizing.

New details have surfaced about Google's secret anti union campaign, dubbed Project Vivian.

The tech giant ran the project between late 2018 and early 2020 to convince employees not to unionize, per a new report from Vice, which viewed court documents not yet available to the public.

Google's director of employment law, Michael Pfyl, in the documents called the initiative an opportunity "to engage employees more positively and convince them that unions suck," Vice reported.

Another Google attorney also reportedly wrote that the company should select a "respected voice to publish an OpEd outlining what a unionized tech workplace would look like, and counseling employees of FB (Facebook), MSFT(Microsoft), Amazon, and google (sic) not to do it."

And Google's HR director, Kara Silverstein, said she supported the idea but said it would be best if "there would be no fingerprints" and wouldn't be "Google specific," per the report.

A Google spokesperson told Insider: "The underlying case here has nothing to do with unionization, it's about employees breaching clear security protocols to access confidential information and systems inappropriately."

Four Google employees, who were fired in 2019, filed a complaint with the NLRB alleging they were illegally terminated for organizing. In response, the company claimed the group  which came to be known as the "Thanksgiving Four"  was fired for violating security rules by sharing confidential information, which the former employees deny.

Google employees then discovered in 2019 that the company had hired a company called IRI Consultants that is known for helping employers squash organizing efforts. That decision wasn't made by Google's lawyers but by higher-ups like Silverstein and Danielle Brown, the company's vice president of employee engagement, Vice reported, citing court documents.

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The series of court documents surfaced as part of a ruling last week involving the National Labor Relations Board and comes after an NLRB judge directed Google to hand over 180 pieces of internal material involving the project late last year. The tech giant, however, has since refused, citing attorney-client privilege, per Vice.

An NLRB judge, however, said that doesn't apply to some of the documents.

"Many of these documents are, or involve the development of, campaign materials in which IRI provides antiunion messaging and message amplification strategies and training tailored to [Google's] workforce and the news and social media environment," NLRB judge Paul Boas wrote in 2019.

Google pushed back on that argument at the time, telling Insider that the firm disagrees with the "characterization of the legally privileged materials referred to by the complainants."

Read the original article on Business Insider
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) is seen during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing to discuss reopening schools during Covid-19 on Thursday, September 30, 2021.





New Hampshire state Senate President Chuck Morse will challenge incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), marking the latest sign that the GOP Senate primary in the Granite State is solidifying.

Morse broke the news to WMUR in Manchester, N.H., on Sunday, saying that he will release specific policy positions later this month.

"I obviously believe that I have what it takes to win a statewide race in the state of New Hampshire," Morse told the New Hampshire news outlet. "I honestly believe that I've done a good job in New Hampshire on reducing taxes and growing the economy. Compare that to Washington."

Morse is only the second Republican to challenge Hassan, following retired Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc. Londonderry, N.H., Town Manager Kevin Smith is widely expected to jump into the primary in the next several weeks.

New Hampshire's Senate race has become one of the more closely watched Senate races of the cycle. National Republicans were dealt a major blow after they failed to recruit the state's incumbent Gov. Chris Sununu (R) to run for the seat. Instead, Sununu will run for reelection in a race that is expected to be more favorable to Republicans.

Hassan, on the other hand, is proving to be a formidable Senate incumbent. Her reelection campaign has already raised $14.4 million.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates New Hampshire's Senate race as "lean Democratic."

The New Hampshire Democratic Party released a statement on Sunday reacting to Morse's announcement, claiming the GOP primary will be "messy and divisive."

"Chuck Morse is an anti-choice, anti-education politician who has championed extreme legislation like an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape, incest, and fatal fetal anomaly, as well as school vouchers that raise property taxes," said party chair Ray Buckley. "Republicans are going to spend the next eight months embroiled in a race to the far right that will seriously damage whoever emerges as their nominee."
deltacron-coronavirus

Getty Images - Design: Alex Sandoval

From new COVID-19 variants seemingly popping up on the regular to the possibility of catching "flurona" (aka the flu and COVID at the same time)  all while cases continue surging nationwide  the last thing you likely want to hear is news about a reported new thing called "Deltacron" that reportedly combines (you guessed it) Delta and Omicron.

The good news is, so far, it seems "Deltacron" is much ado about nothing. Here's the scoop: Researchers in the island country of Cyprus recently found a combined strain of Delta and Omicron, according to Bloomberg News. It was dubbed "Deltacron" because they ID-ed genetic markings similar to Omicron within genomic sequencing of strains of Delta. The combined strain was discovered in 25 cases, according Leondios Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus and head of the Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology, as reported by Bloomberg. They then sent the data to GISAID, the international database that tracks changes in the virus, for further research. Kostrikis said he believes the combo strain will be displaced by the much more prevalent Omicron well before it even takes off (similar to the IHU variant out of France, which luckily hasn't shown signs of rapid spread).

Naturally, this ~fun~ discovery began making global headlines  but just as quickly, health experts took to Twitter to assuage panic and settle nerves. Krutika Kuppalli, M.D., FIDSA, infectious disease doctor who serves on the World Health Organization's COVID-19 technical team, tweeted that the dual strains "did NOT form a super variant," adding, "this is likely sequencing artifact (lab contamination of Omicron fragments in a Delta specimen)."

Okay people lets make this a teachable moment, there is no such thing as #Deltacron (Just like there is no such thing as #Flurona) #Omicron and #Delta did NOT form a super variant



This is likely sequencing artifact (lab contamination of Omicron fragments in a Delta specimen) https://t.co/DDvM24bt9g  Krutika Kuppalli, MD FIDSA (@KrutikaKuppalli) January 9, 2022

She wasn't the only one calling it a potential lab error. Thomas Peacock, Ph.D., a virologist at Imperial College London also tweeted that the discovery was "clearly contamination" and attributed it to the lab results of those 25 patients being inadvertently merged together. He explained that, to determine if something is a true combined variant, there would ideally be "multiple sequencing labs finding the same recombinant/homoplasy independently (or at least on different sequencing runs)." With both Delta and Omicron now so prevalent in so many areas, Peacock notes it's entirely possible the lab results were accidentally contaminated, adding, "this literally happens to every sequencing lab occasionally." (Read more: Why Are the New COVID-19 Strains Spreading More Quickly?)

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Molecular biologist Eric Topol, M.D., founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute even called Deltacron a "scariant," adding that it's "one less thing to worry about."

Small update: the Cypriot 'Deltacron' sequences reported by several large media outlets look to be quite clearly contamination - they do not cluster on a phylogenetic tree and have a whole Artic primer sequencing amplicon of Omicron in an otherwise Delta backbone.  Tom Peacock (@PeacockFlu) January 8, 2022

And in case you want more proof than the medical chatter happening on Twitter (fair), there's also Chicago-based internal medicine physician Vivek Cherian, M.D., who tells Shape that there's genuinely no need to panic or worry about the creation of some super virus. "Based on the information currently available, it seems more likely that it may be a contamination as opposed to a combination of the Delta and Omicron variants."

That doesn't mean it's not possible two variants won't combine in the future, notes Dr. Cherian, but as of right now, this really is one worry you can check off the mental stress list. "Because COVID transmission around the world is exceedingly high at this point in time, the chance of recombination is always there, but only time will tell whether that ultimately will lead to other variants that are more transmissible and virulent" (aka contagious and severe). (Read more about the COVID-19 Omicron variant here.)

"Bottom line: We have effective vaccines available and our goal should be to get as many people vaccinated as soon as humanly possible  not only in the United States but around the globe," says Dr. Cherian. "We want to create as many dead ends as possible for this virus, therefore limiting its ability to spread and mutate into a potential variant that we truly would need to be concerned about in the future."

Given that the current vaccine and booster recommendations provide ample protection against severe illness from current variants, staying up-to-date on vaccines  as well as wearing masks with two or more layers when around other people, frequent hand-washing, and social distancing  are the best ways to prevent any sci-fi movie super variants from brewing in the first place.

The information in this story is accurate as of press time. As updates about coronavirus COVID-19 continue to evolve, it's possible that some information and recommendations in this story have changed since initial publication. We encourage you to check in regularly with resources such as the CDC, the WHO, and your local public health department for the most up-to-date data and recommendations.
In Lancaster County, Kreider Farms is launching the nation's first-ever Hemp-fed Cage Free Egg.

Produced on the company's 3,000-acre farm, the cage-free eggs are a product of chickens hand-fed a specially formulated and laboratory-tested all-vegetarian diet consisting of 20% hemp seed meal.

The Chiques Creek brand pays homage to a creek in Lancaster County, which played as one of the leading producers of hemp in the United States.

It is a 31.6-mile-long waterway of the Susquehanna River, that runs through the company headquarters at Kreider Farms in Lancaster County, PA.

Dave Andrews, VP of sales and marketing at Kreider Farms, said the company began brainstorming the concept back in 2016.

According to Andrews, Hemp agriculture runs deep in the Lancaster County heritage.

Dave Andrews, VP of sales and marketing at Kreider Farms, in Lancaster County, stands next to a picture of an observation tower that was created at the farm using a decommissioned silo.

Hemp History in Lancaster County

In 1683, one of the first laws passed by the Pennsylvania General Assembly encouraged farmers to grow hemp.

"As a whole, Lancaster County hemp farming dates back to the early 1700s," Andrews said.

The first permanent settlers of what became known as Lancaster County began planting hemp, and by 1729 the mass production of hemp led to the establishment of Hempfield Township in Lancaster County.

More: Sen. Mike Regan: Legalization of adult-use marijuana is inevitable

More: Some Pa. stores sell Delta-8 THC, which promises a weed-like high. Is it legal?

"Our ancestors used to grow hemp on our farms, and the Lancaster area was a key hemp production and processing center dating back to Colonial times," he said.

In 1937, however, the hemp industry in Pennsylvania came to an abrupt end with the passage of a law that made growing hemp illegal in the United States.

But in 2016, Andrews and his team at Kreider Farms said they heard rumors that agricultural hemp was heading for a "renaissance."

The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture acknowledged to Kreider Farms that the passage of a farm bill to legalize agricultural hemp was on the horizon, and the farm bill legalizing hemp agriculture again in the United States passed in a bipartisan vote in November 2018.

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Hemp began showing up in products such as shampoo, hand soaps and food.

In 2019, Kreider Farms began creating its own hemp products when it released a line of specialty refrigerated hemp teas with flavors such as Passionfruit Mint, and Apricot Orange Blossom.

But Andrews said the concept of a hemp egg took much longer to develop.

A Kreider Farms hemp-fed, cage-free egg looks just like a regular egg with maybe a darker yolk, Dave Andrews, vice-president of sales and marketing said.

The hemp egg

After the success of the hemp tea, Andrews said the team brainstormed the idea of a hemp egg.

"Our thought was then to feed hemp material to chickens and put nutritional fortification into the chickens and eggs," he said.

Feeding livestock involves a variety of regulations that the farm needed to obey. Additionally, there needed to be research conducted, and a blend of recipes and formulations of feed to produce the eggs, followed by having them lab tested.

"The testing and trials took several years, papers had to be written by accredited scientists and everything had to be submitted to the state and auditing authorities," Andrews said.

The process was further slowed down by COVID, but in 2021 Kreider Farms received approval by the Pennsylvania State Department of Agricultural, to produce and sell the Hemp eggs.

While they do contain hemp, these eggs are THC-free, and consuming them will not get you high.

Inside a carton of a Kreider Farms hemp-fed cage-free eggs it says that the eggs have a richer colored yolk and contain higher amounts of certain nutrients than regular eggs.

These cage-free brown eggs are filled with nutrients including Omega-3, Vitamin D, Vitamin B12 and are a source of vitamin B2, vitamin B5, vitamin E, Biotin, Choline and Selenium.

"The result of feeding hemp to chickens not only provides vitamins and nutrients to the chickens, but results in a healthier egg for consumption," Andrews said.

The hemp eggs will be available at select Giant grocery stores, as well as numerous independent grocery stores in Central Pennsylvania such as Shady Maple Markets and Oregon Dairy in Lititz.

Lena Tzivekis is a reporter for the Evening Sun. Follow her Twitter at @tzivekis, and say hi, or let her know where to get the best cup of coffee!

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Lancaster farm launches nation's first-ever Hemp-fed cage free egg
ATLANTA (AP)  Nerea Hermosa scored 20 points, Lorela Cubaj added 17 points and 11 rebounds and No. 16 Georgia Tech beat Virginia 67-31 on Sunday.

Mckenna Dale hit a 3-pointer early in the second quarter to give Virginia its first lead of the game at 18-16 but Eylia Love hit a 3-pointer 30 seconds later to put the Yellow Jackets in front for good and spark a 10-0 run.

Carole Miller hit a 3 to cut the Cavaliers' deficit to 31-24 with 7:13 left in the third quarter but they went scoreless for the next 9 minutes and did not make another field goal until Amandine Toe hit a 3 with 3:45 left in the game to make it 63-29.

Love finished with nine points, nine rebounds, five assists and three steals for Georgia Tech (11-3, 2-1 ACC).

Miller and Toi led Virginia (3-9, 0-2 ACC) with eight points apiece on combined 4-of-19 shooting.

___

More AP womens basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/womens-basketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
The omicron variant is fueling a spike in COVID-19 cases in Anne Arundel County and Maryland, and the resulting quarantine of school bus drivers who have tested positive for the virus is causing the cancellation of even more routes to schools, deepening a crisis that has affected thousands of students since the school year began.

The first week of classes after winter break was largely interrupted by snow closures, but when schools were open last week, more than 40 bus routes were without service. Superintendent George Arlotto told the Board of Education that 46 routes were without service on Wednesday when students returned after two days off due to snow. Contractors have reported that around 30 drivers are out due to COVID-19, he said.

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Arlotto said those numbers speak to challenges that will persist until the spike in cases abates.

On Sunday, the seven-day average case rate was above 220 per 100,000 residents statewide, four times higher than the case rate in January 2021.

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Before winter break, the Anne Arundel County Office of Economic Development distributed funds to contractors to cover a $5,000 hiring and retention bonus for drivers and a $2,000 hiring and retention bonus for aides who work on buses. County Executive Steuart Pittman allocated $4.2 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act money to the effort.

The board is considering Arlottos fiscal 2023 operating budget proposal, which includes a proposed $3.4 million to pay for a cost-of-living increase for drivers and aides in the years to come.

During a budget hearing Thursday evening, Randall Jubb of Jubbs Bus Service said he personally delivered some of those bonuses to make sure they got into workers hands before the holidays. He said contractors are grateful and that he has already noticed an increase in employment candidates.

However, the $3.4 million increase proposed by Arlotto isnt enough to maintain the pay increase the bonus provided to workers, he said. Those who stay on and work in fiscal 2023 would face a pay cut under the proposed budget, Jubb said.

He asked the board to change the cost-of-living pay increase so it matches the bonuses given this year to recruit and retain drivers. The shortage the school system is experiencing is part of a national trend, which predates the COVID-19 pandemic and the market to employ commercial drivers is competitive right now.

Im here today to underscore the importance of our industry, Jubb said.
A crowd of supporters huddled inside Ravenna City Hall as Honorary Way was renamed for Tricia Krause and her late husband, Gary.

Part of the short ceremony was relocated indoors because of Friday's bitter cold temperatures. After a few speeches recognizing the couple, the group headed outdoors briefly, where the sign was unveiled. Krause joked with supporters that her "way" was now printed on the sign.

Honorary Way is a means to publicly and temporarily honor distinguished citizens and good Samaritans for their achievements by ceremonially naming the street after them. The Honorary Way bench and street sign is at the corner of South Park Way and West Main Street, at the entrance to the Ravenna courthouse lawn. Previously, the landmark had been named for Gene Mills.

The Cruise In, which began in 2014, draws thousands of cars and spectators to the east end of Ravenna. The event was canceled in 2020 because of COVID-19, and months later, Gary Krause died from complications COVID. However, the event made a triumphant return this past August, with Tricia Krause running the event in her late husband's memory.

Tricia and Gary Krause of Mongoose Motorsports were recognized by the city of Ravenna with the Honorary Way street sign. Tricia Krause with the sign at Park way and East Main streets. Gary Krause died in 2020 from complications of COVID-19.

Ryann Kuchenbecker, executive director of the Ravenna Area Chamber of Commerce, said the Krauses have "gone absolutely above and beyond," noting that she still refers to Gary Krause in the present tense because "his presence is so incredibly here."

She said at one of the first cruise-ins, Gary Krause said one of the cars came from a customer of his in Dubai, and the thousands of cars that attend are only there because of his presence.

"They always put the community first," she said.

Tricia Krause unveils the Honorary Way sign honoring her and her husband, Gary, at Park Way and East Main Street in Ravenna with her son Neko Krause, 20, and daughter Carlee Krause, 22. Gary Krause died in 2020 from complications of COVID-19.

Mayor Frank Seman said he had a "love/hate" relationship with the couple, sometimes clashing with Gary when he made decisions to block entrances to some businesses along the mile.

"Gary was the gas and Tricia was the brakes," Seman said, noting that Gary Krause was the type to "ask for forgiveness instead of permission" while his more pragmatic wife would ask, "how are we going to pay for this?"

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"I'm pretty sure he's in a nice warm spot in heaven, laughing his head off at us doing this in the cold," he said.

Tricia Krause said when she and her husband were first asked to add a cruise-in to the Celebrate Portage events, Gary estimated that 300 cars might come if the weather was good. Instead, 700 cars came to that first cruise-in, a number that grew despite a heavy rain one year. At last year's event, 3,363 cars and an estimated 15,000 spectators attended the cruise-in.

She said her husband often reflected on the blessings they had, including being able to call the mayor, request additional police patrols or help from the fire department hanging banners, and that cars had been built for customers all over the world. Those cars included two cars in the Fast & Furious movies, and cars to NASCAR legends Ray Evernham and Rick Hendrick.

Ryann Kuchenbecker, executive director Ravenna Area Chamber of Commerce, hugs Tricia Krause during the ceremony naming Honrary Way for Tricia and her late husband, Gary.

"It wasn't always easy for us," she said. "After 10 years of being in business, things were just starting to get easier. Gary would say, 'I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, I just hope it's not a freight train.' "

She thanked her team, saying they shared the honor.

Todd Peetz, director of the Portage County Regional Planning Commission and of Celebrate Portage, said the couple was responsible for organizing, fundraising and promoting the event.

"Without their help, it would be one tenth of what it is," he said. "They always put the community first."

This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Ravenna names Honorary Way for cruise-in founders
Global Perspective teacher, Meredith McGinnis helps junior Jada Blake with an assignment in class at John Overton High School in Nashville, Tenn., Wednesday, March 3, 2021.

More than 250 Metro Nashville Public Schools staff members reported new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the days before students returned to class after winter break.

From Monday, Jan. 3 to Sunday, Jan. 9, 269 staff members reported new COVID-19 cases and another 82 employees are in quarantine or isolation.

During the same time period, 88 students tested positive for COVID-19, and 46 are in quarantine or isolation, according to district data updated Sunday.

Combined with vacant positions and absences for other reasons, the district had 571 staff members out Monday, including 333 teacher absences. The district employs about 11,030 individuals  of those, about 6,890 are certified educators.

What to know as Metro Schools reopen: Despite COVID-19 surge, Nashville students are soon headed back to class. What parents should know.

The skyrocketing cases come as school officials in Nashville  and across the country  worry about ongoing staffing shortages thanks in part to the highly contagious omicron variant.

Students returned to school buildings Monday after an extended winter break thanks to last week's snowfall. But teachers and staff returned to work Tuesday, Jan. 4 for professional development ahead of the spring semester.

Many teachers and school-based staff were given the opportunity to work remotely before snowfall closed buildings entirely "to limit possible exposures of teachers and staff inside of [the] buildings," staff were told in an email last Monday.

The number of new cases among staff is the most reported in a single week so far this school year, even in the first weeks after schools reopened after summer break. Previously, the highest weekly number of new cases among staff was 89, reported on Sept. 7, 2020.

Before the most recent update, the district had reported about 36 new COVID-19 cases among staff on average this school year.

CDC guidelines: CDC cuts isolation time for Americans who test positive from 10 days to 5. Latest COVID-19 updates

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On average last fall, the district reported about 487 positions absent or vacant on a given day, according to district data. The substitute fill rate on average last fall was around 35%, compared to 30% on Monday.

Last week, ahead of schools reopening, district spokesperson Sean Braisted told The Tennessean that COVID-19's impact on students and staff has "been a concern throughout the school year."

Related: At least 1 in 33 Nashvillians has COVID-19. City officials say 'please get your booster'

"We have worked hard to mitigate against the spread of the virus and have been able to operate without closing any schools this year," Braisted said in an email.

"Our school nurse team is tracking new cases of COVID-19 reported among staff and students and we will work closely with school administrations so that we can provide additional supports to schools with higher needs for staffing when necessary."

Stay up-to-date on Tennessee's top education news by signing up for our new weekly newsletter, School Zone. Sign up here.

Want to read more stories like this? A subscription to one of our Tennessee publications gets you unlimited access to all the latest news throughout the entire USA TODAY Network.

Meghan Mangrum covers education for the USA TODAY Network  Tennessee. Contact her at mmangrum@tennessean.com. Follow her on Twitter @memangrum.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Hundreds of Metro Nashville teachers, staff test positive for COVID-19
Broward Sheriffs Office deputies launched a search for two unidentified suspects Sunday after a man was found shot in Lauderdale Lakes.

Deputies found the victim suffering from a gunshot wound near the 3300 block of West Oakland Park Boulevard around 3 p.m., said spokeswoman Claudine Caro-Guaraldi in an emailed statement.

She said the man, whose identity was not made public, was taken to a local hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening.

Meanwhile, deputies cordoned off the area and summoned a SWAT team, dogs and aircraft to help search for two men whom they believe were involved in the shooting.

Detectives from BSOs violent crimes unit are investigating.
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP)  A local leader of Honduras indigenous Lenca group was shot to death Sunday, police said.

Pablo Isabel Hernandez was killed on a dirt road near the town of San Marcos de Caiquin as he headed to a local church with his father and brothers, police spokesman Cristian Manuel Nolasco said.

Nolasco said the ambush may have been related to personal or political disputes.

Hernandez served as director of a radio station known as Radio Tenan, the Indigenous Voice of the Lencas. He was also active in indigenous education and environmental projects.

The Association of Honduran Community Media said in a statement that it considered the killing yet another attack on freedom of expression and the defense of human rights.

Hernandez was the second Lenca leader killed in less than a year. In March 2020, Lenca activist Juan Carlos Cerros Escalante was shot death in the town of Nueva Granada, in the Caribbean coast province of Cortes. He had helped lead a fight against construction of a dam.

Both Hernandez and Cerros Escalante belonged to the same indigenous community as Berta Caceres, a prize-winning environmental and Indigenous rights defender who was murdered in 2016.

According to rights groups, over three dozen environmental activists have been killed in Honduras since Caceres' death.

Caceres was a co-founder of the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. She helped organize opposition to the Agua Zarca dam project, which was to be built on the Galcarque River. The river holds spiritual importance for the Lenca people as well as being a critical source of water. The dam project remains frozen.
The worst result, after buying shares in a company (assuming no leverage), would be if you lose all the money you put in. But on the bright side, if you buy shares in a high quality company at the right price, you can gain well over 100%. For example, the HiTech Group Australia Limited (ASX:HIT) share price has soared 266% in the last half decade. Most would be very happy with that.

Now it's worth having a look at the company's fundamentals too, because that will help us determine if the long term shareholder return has matched the performance of the underlying business.

See our latest analysis for HiTech Group Australia

In his essay The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville Warren Buffett described how share prices do not always rationally reflect the value of a business. By comparing earnings per share (EPS) and share price changes over time, we can get a feel for how investor attitudes to a company have morphed over time.

Over half a decade, HiTech Group Australia managed to grow its earnings per share at 5.9% a year. This EPS growth is slower than the share price growth of 30% per year, over the same period. This suggests that market participants hold the company in higher regard, these days. And that's hardly shocking given the track record of growth.

The company's earnings per share (over time) is depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

It might be well worthwhile taking a look at our free report on HiTech Group Australia's earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What About Dividends?

As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). The TSR incorporates the value of any spin-offs or discounted capital raisings, along with any dividends, based on the assumption that the dividends are reinvested. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. As it happens, HiTech Group Australia's TSR for the last 5 years was 424%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. And there's no prize for guessing that the dividend payments largely explain the divergence!

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A Different Perspective

HiTech Group Australia provided a TSR of 2.7% over the last twelve months. But that return falls short of the market. If we look back over five years, the returns are even better, coming in at 39% per year for five years. It's quite possible the business continues to execute with prowess, even as the share price gains are slowing. While it is well worth considering the different impacts that market conditions can have on the share price, there are other factors that are even more important. To that end, you should be aware of the 3 warning signs we've spotted with HiTech Group Australia .

If you are like me, then you will not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on AU exchanges.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.



This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban administration's acting foreign minister travelled to Iran to meet with his Iranian counterpart, who called for Afghan financial assets blocked since the Taliban takeover to be released for humanitarian purposes.

A spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry said on Monday the visit did not constitute official Iranian recognition of neighbouring Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. But Iran's foreign minister criticised the United States over the frozen assets.

"The assets of Afghanistan blocked by America...should be used for humanitarian purposes and improvement of the living conditions in Afghanistan," Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said, according to a local news agency after his meeting with Afghan acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.

"The fighting of the brave Afghan nation has shown that no foreign power can occupy Afghanistan and rule there, he said.

Hardline Islamist Taliban insurgents took control of Afghanistan on Aug. 15 as U.S. and other foreign forces withdrew after a 20-year presence in support of its Western-backed Kabul government.

Foreign governments have since scrambled to work out how to engage the Taliban to avoid a meltdown of the Afghan economy and security while avoiding formally recognising the new government.

The United States, with support from some other Western governments, has blocked billions in Afghan central bank assets held abroad, and upheld sanctions on Taliban members, paralysing the banking sector and hastening economic collapse.

Some neighbouring countries are stepping up calls for the international community to take action to tackle a humanitarian crisis unfolding amidst the harsh Afghan winter.

Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi said the acting foreign minister also met in Tehran with Ahmad Massoud, exiled leader of the Afghan National Resistance Front (NRF).

Karimi said the Taliban had assured Massoud and other resistance leaders they could come back to the country "without tension", but did not provide further details of the meeting.

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Massoud could not immediately be reached for comment.

The NRF opposed the Taliban takeover and violent clashes have taken place since August between the two sides in the resistance movement's stronghold of Panjshir, north of Kabul.

(Writing by Charlotte Greenfield with additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Dubai; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) gives an opening statement during a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing of the Department of Justice on Thursday, October 21, 2021.





The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol accused Rep. Jim Jordan of backtracking on his commitment to cooperate after the Ohio Republican said Sunday he would refuse to voluntarily appear before the panel.

"Mr. Jordan has previously said that he would cooperate with the committee's investigation, but it now appears that the Trump team has persuaded him to try to hide the facts and circumstances of January 6th. The Select Committee will respond to this letter in more detail in the coming days and will consider appropriate next steps," a committee spokesperson said Monday.

Jordan previously said he has "nothing to hide" with regard to his actions surrounding Jan. 6.

In a four-page letter sent to the committee Sunday night, Jordan said he has "no relevant information" that would assist the committee's investigation.

"At the time of the security breach of the Capitol, I was present in the House Chamber performing my official duties pursuant to the U.S. Constitution and federal law. The other topics referenced in your letter likewise related to the performance of official duties. Your attempt to pry into the deliberative process of informing a member about legislative matters before the House is an outrageous abuse of the select committee's authority," Jordan wrote in the letter shared on Twitter.

"This unprecedented action serves no legitimate legislative purpose and would set a dangerous precedent for future Congresses," he added.

The panel requested Jordan's assistance in a Dec. 22 letter largely geared toward learning more about the lawmaker's communications with former President Trump. Jordan has acknowledged he spoke with Trump that day.

The committee's Monday statement goes further, alleging that Jordan had knowledge of Trump's plans for contesting the election and that the former president's legal team may be pressuring the Ohio lawmaker not to cooperate.

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"Mr. Jordan's letter fails to address the principal bases for the Select Committee's request for a meeting, including that he worked directly with President Trump and the Trump legal team to attempt to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election. Mr. Jordan has admitted that he spoke directly to President Trump on January 6th and is thus a material witness. Mr. Jordan's letter to the committee fails to address these facts," the committee continued in its statement.

Beyond his communications with the president, other texts from Jordan have also surfaced during the committee investigation. Texts from Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows show Jordan forwarded him a text message calling for former Vice President Mike Pence to buck his ceremonial duty to certify election results.

And another text from Meadows's trove shows that Fox News host Sean Hannity also communicated with Jordan, apparently raising new possible options ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration.

Jordan is one of three people from whom the committee has sought voluntary cooperation. Similar letters have been sent to Hannity and Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.).
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The January 6 commitee criticized Rep. Jim Jordan for refusing to voluntarily cooperate with its probe.

"It now appears that the Trump team has persuaded him to try to hide the facts," a committee spokesperson said of Jordan.

Jordan on Sunday sent a letter to the committee declining its request for information.

The House select committee investigating the Capitol riot on January 6 criticized Rep. Jim Jordan on Monday for refusing to voluntarily cooperate with the probe.

A spokesperson for the congressional panel said in a statement that "Jordan has previously said that he would cooperate with the committee's investigation, but it now appears that the Trump team has persuaded him to try to hide the facts and circumstances of January 6th."

The statement comes after Jordan refused to provide the committee with further information about his communications with then-President Donald Trump on the day of the riot.

Jordan accused the panel of pursuing a partisan witch hunt and said its request for information was "unprecedented" and "inappropriate."

"This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core Constitutional principles, and would serve to further erode legislative norms," the Ohio Republican on Sunday wrote in a letter to committee chair Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi.

In a December 22 letter, Thompson asked Jordan to meet with the committee to discuss any communications he had with Trump on January 6 and any information he had leading up to the day.

Jordan has previously acknowledged that he spoke with Trump on January 6, but hasn't revealed the details of their conversation.

"Mr. Jordan's letter fails to address the principal bases for the Select Committee's request for a meeting, including that he worked directly with President Trump and the Trump legal team to attempt to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election," a committee spokesperson said in a statement. "Mr. Jordan has admitted that he spoke directly to President Trump on January 6th and is thus a material witness."

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The spokesperson added that the committee "will respond to this letter in more detail in the coming days and will consider appropriate next steps."

Jordan's refusal to voluntarily cooperate with the investigation comes after he said on multiple occasions that he has "nothing to hide" from the January 6 committee.

Jordan's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Read the original article on Business Insider
CHICAGO  Karin Norington-Reaves, the coordinator for federal workforce training for Chicago and suburban Cook County, on Sunday joined the growing list of contenders vying to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush in the new South Side and southwest suburban 1st Congressional District.

For the past 30 years, I have been focused on public service. I have served as a teacher in elementary schools. Ive been an attorney. And now, for the past decade, Ive been leading workforce development and watching our working families and all of the struggles that theyre enduring, said Norington-Reaves, 52, a resident of the Chatham neighborhood.

I feel very strongly that my experience as an attorney, as a practitioner of workforce development, as someone whos had an intimate look at federal policy over the past decade, I feel I am well suited to represent the citizens of the first district in Congress, she said.

Norington-Reaves joins a field for the Democratic nomination that already includes 3rd Ward Ald. Pat Dowell, who was the first to announce after Rush said last week he would retire at the end of his term in January. Previously announced candidates include Kirby Birgans, a Chicago teacher, Pastor Chris Butler, community activist Jahmal Cole, educator Dee Nix and attorney Michael Thompson.

The field for the June 28 primary is expected to expand even further as several elected officials and community activists and leaders look at the rare chance to compete for an open seat in Congress in a safely Democratic district. Rush is stepping down next January when his term expires after 30 years in Congress.

Norington-Reaves has served as head of the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership since it was formed in July 12 as part of a collaborative effort between County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel to centralize and streamline workforce development efforts.

She previously served as deputy director of urban assistance in the state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, a lawyer in the civil division of the U.S. Department of Justice and in the Maryland attorney generals office, and as a lobbyist in Illinois for the Citizens Utility Board, among other roles.

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Norington-Reaves said she would stress to the districts voters her role in connecting people to jobs, saying her work at the workforce partnership has placed about 100,000 people in meaningful, lasting employment.

I have to differentiate myself by connecting with the voters. And that means raising funds to amplify my message. It means getting out in the community and all of the communities, not just in the city of Chicago, but in suburban Cook County and all the way down to Will County, she said.

It means connecting with those folks, listening to them, understanding the issues that are most pressing to them, and helping them see the connection between my experience and what theyre struggling with and my capacity to actually bring about solutions and bring resources to bear, she said.

Norington-Reaves said that if shes elected, her priority would be to try to improve the quality of life for working families. But she said efforts to curb gun violence deserve special attention.

We have got to get these illegal guns off the streets. Weve got to have tougher gun laws. Theres no reason in the world a civilian should be carrying a military-grade weapon, she said. We absolutely have to change the laws so that we can create safer communities.


On the anniversary of the dark day our Capitol was attacked, I came across Martin E. Karlinskys letter to the editor from last January asking Assemblyman Colin Schmitt to explain his own actions that day.

Schmitt was photographed meeting with a Right to Life religious group at 4:30 that morning on a bus in a Monroe park-and-ride. This group was bound for Washington, D.C., to protest the certification of a democratic election that is mandated by U.S. Code law. Schmitt reportedly claimed he was there merely to discuss legislation. In other words, Schmitt saw the early signs of smoke from the fire of insurrection, but he says he didnt inhale.

Will Schmitt help his nation heal by unequivocally disowning the debunked claims of a stolen election that incited anti-American violence? Does he understand the U.S. Constitution he swore to uphold forbids government officials from giving preferential treatment to any religious group? Are his loyalties to law, order and the Constitutionor to other, more partisan interests?

A year later, we are still waiting for his answers.

Robert Kirkpatrick

Cornwall on Hudson

This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: Colin Schmitt has yet to explain his actions morning of Jan. 6, 2021
For more than two decades, Keona Holley kept in touch with her friend Linda Clark-Dickey.

The pair met when Holley was just 16 years old, and started working at a McDonalds in Baltimore County, said Clark-Dickey, who served as her manager.

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She was the hardest little worker, said Clark-Dickey, 55. It stood right out to me, and I just stayed connected with her all through the years.

She watched as Holley went on to work in health care and became a Baltimore Police officer, determined to aid those in need. And Clark-Dickey was among the countless friends flattened by the news that Holley, a 39-year-old mother of four, had been gravely injured by gunfire Dec. 16 while sitting in her patrol car during an overnight shift in Curtis Bay. She died a week later at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

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Dozens of mourners gathered Sunday at Holleys viewing to remember the Mom from the West Side, a passionate and energetic community servant who joined Baltimores police force at 37, eager to make a difference. The line of well-wishers spilled down the block from the Wylie Funeral Home in West Baltimore on the dreary, rainy morning.

The viewing for Holley continues Monday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the N. Mount St. funeral home. A wake and funeral service in scheduled for 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. Tuesday at the Baltimore Convention Center. She is to be interred at King Memorial Park in western Baltimore County.

When Clark-Dickey heard about the shooting, she was devastated.

A tear streams down Gendell Hayes cheek as she writes, Job well done   on a poster of her friend, fallen Baltimore City Police Officer Keona Holley, at the Wylie Funeral Home. (Amy Davis/Amy Davis)

The first thing I thought about were the four babies, and her newest grandbaby, she said. But I felt honored because of who she was and what she stood for.

Rhonda Wilkins, 50, knew Holley as a young girl, when she was an integral part of life on West Baltimores North Grantley Street.

We were only three doors apart. We was family on Grantley Street, Wilkins said.

It felt like Holley  whom friends called KeKe  was everywhere, Wilkins said. The energetic youngster loved stopping by neighbors homes to say hello.

As she got older, it became clear Holley was a helper at heart. There was the time an elderly neighbor died and Holley carefully prepared her body for the mortician. There were all the times she took care of her young cousin after his fathers death. And there was her adopted dog Gizmo, a scrappy mutt others made fun of, but she adored.

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That was KeKe, Wilkins said.

People line up to pay their respects to Baltimore City Police Officer Keona Holley during the public viewing at the Wylie Funeral Home. Holley was fatally shot while on duty. (Amy Davis/Amy Davis)

John Brown, 37, met Holley while working as an attendant at Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, a state psychiatric facility in Jessup.

You knew she was walking in the room. She was a big presence, Brown said. She gave all that she was when she was working. Always.

After several years at the hospital, Holley started talking about a career on the police force. Brown said he worried about Holleys decision, and asked her why she was heading for such a dangerous career. He hasnt forgotten her response.

She said: Brown, this is what Ive always wanted to do.

The news of her death hit the Perkins hospital community hard, Brown said.

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Its been a quiet, somber place since shes gone. Because we still felt like she was a part of us, too, he said.

Worcester County sheriff's deputies Kenji Hara, left, and Scott Griffin made a long drive to pay their respects to fallen Baltimore City Police Officer Keona Holley at the Wylie Funeral Home. (Amy Davis/Amy Davis)

Some who traveled to the viewing hadnt known Holley at all, but felt linked to her because of her law enforcement service. Worcester County sheriffs deputies Kenji Hara and Scott Griffin traveled Sunday morning from Marylands Eastern Shore to pay their respects.

It could happen to any of us, Hara said.

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My wife, the one thing she likes to hear is that Velcro from our vests. She knows Im home, Griffin said.

The day after Holley was shot, police charged two men in the attack. Police said they used security camera footage and license plate readers to crack the case, and found ballistic evidence linking the pair to another fatal shooting  that of 38-year-old Justin Johnson in Yale Heights  just an hour after Holley was shot. Police have said the mens motives were unclear.

Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, who also attended Sundays viewing, said addressing violent crime in Baltimore was a number one priority for the states federal delegation. After incidents like Holleys death, displays of unity remain important, Cardin said outside the funeral home Sunday morning.

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 9 Police officers leave the Wylie Funeral home after paying their respects to fallen Baltimore City Police Officer Keona Holley, while others wait in line for their turn to enter. The public viewing for Officer Holley will continue on Monday, Jan. 10, and the funeral is scheduled for Tuesday, January 11. (Amy Davis/Amy Davis)

The weathers not exactly ideal for this. People are lined up because they really want to show that the communitys together, Cardin said. We need to do more of this type of unity in our community, we need to bring communities together, and weve got to end this senseless killing.

Inside the funeral home, mourners shared memories of Holley, scrawling messages beside photos of their dear friend and colleague.

As a harps gentle notes filled the room, Clark-Dickey picked up a bright red Sharpie. Next to a photo of Holley, smiling widely from beneath a set of braces, she wrote: God bless your beautiful family, Baby Girl!!! You were an amazing mom and friend.

Beside it was another note from a neighbor: Grantley St. is not the same.
Lisa Diaz has refused to send her daughter Helena, 9, back to school (stock image). (Getty)

A mother is facing jail after keeping her daughter out of school for almost two years because of COVID.

Lisa Diaz, 40, has not sent nine-year-old Helena to primary school in 20 months over fears children could be in danger from coronavirus and long COVID.

She has been hit with letters from Wigan Council threatening her with court action after her daughter's poor attendance became a cause for concern.

The authority's welfare team said it would pursue the route of penalty notices and prosecution.

Diaz could be fined 2,500 or jailed for three months under the law.

Lisa Diaz appeared on ITV 1's Good Morning Britain. (Good Morning Britain)

Diaz, a qualified teacher who now works in sales, conducts lessons at the family home in Wigan and keeps her headteacher informed of Helena's progress.

During an appearance on ITV1's Good Morning Britain, she said: "I want my children to be safe and I want my children in school. I don't want any of this.

"But somebody has to stand up for what is right, somebody has to speak out.

"It's immoral, it's disgraceful that people are being treated this way."

Watch: How are schools coping with Covid?

Helena has taken part in outdoor learning activities, but Diaz refuses to send her back to a classroom.

Her son Alex, 12, has since returned to the classroom following his full vaccination after also being kept off school.

Read more:

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Diaz added: "The laws were designed for parents who take their children out of school no good reason.

"They're not playing truant, they know where my children are because I send their teachers pictures every day.

"I'm not withholding an education from them, so on what grounds am I being criminalised?"

Wigan Council said the school is following government guidance and insisted that robust risk assessments were in place to keep children safe.

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Colette Dutton, director of childrens services at Wigan Council, said: Wigan Council remains committed to working with all schools and families and has done throughout the pandemic to ensure that all children can return to school as safely as possible.

We are unable to comment on individual cases, however, the council has advised and supported our schools in line with current government guidance.

For those children where there is clear advice from a medical practitioner that a child should not attend, alternatives are considered and put in place.

Our headteachers have worked tirelessly to carry out robust risk assessments and have taken all of the safety measures and precautions available to them to ensure a safe return for their pupils.

Watch: How the world could be better after COVID
The Living the Dream banquet celebrating Martin Luther king Jr. will occur in May, but activities will take place throughout January.

The board of Living the Dream Inc. faced a tough decision this past summer.

Its annual banquet has developed into one of the nations largest celebrations of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. since it began in 1985. Members canceled the event in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and they didnt want to do it again for a second year.

Because of the severity of the delta variant during the summer, however, the organization was concerned about the well-being of the attendees.

The group decided to push back the event until May 7, 2022, which fulfilled a long-held goal of founders Robert and Jacqueline (Jacquie) Bugg.

Board member John Nave said, Robert and Jacquies message has always been we want not only to recognize King in January, but we also want to recognize him through the whole year.

The Buggs son, Anton, who is now chairman of LTD Inc., added, We werent sure what was going to be going on with COVID and the community, so were trying to keep everyone safe. We still wanted to have the celebration, so we just pushed it back.

Living the Dream banquet has grown to one of largest in the country

The first banquet had around 100 guests. Today the event has grown to between 800 to 1,000 people in attendance.

My dad was just a dreamer, Anton said. He always came up with ideas. He was part of bringing Big Brothers Big Sisters to Topeka, so hes always been an innovator in the community. My mom was his right hand, and they built it together.

Weve had speakers and guests come in saying this is the largest celebration in honor of Martin Luther King in the country. Theyre very impressed with what goes on here.

Even though the banquet has moved to spring, LTD Inc. has events planned throughout January. The group has partnered with Unified Public Schools 501 Topeka Public Schools to collect nonbreakable and nonperishable food items at donation bins in all district buildings until Feb. 1.

Jan. 10-14 is designated Respect for Elders and Preschoolers Week. The organization will deliver personal care baskets to Topeka area senior centers. They will also give MLK storybooks and coloring sheets to area preschools. Plus, a MLK storytelling video will be available on the Living the Dream Facebook page for preschoolers and their families to enjoy.

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A day of community service will take place on the MLK holiday, Jan. 17. The Community Food Network is partnering with LTD Inc. to pack food parcels for children, families and seniors at Harvesters.

The service day will continue on Jan. 18, 20 and 22. Anyone wanting to help can sign up on Harvesters website, www.harvesters.org, and go to the How to Help tab.

Also, on the MLK holiday, Living the Dream Inc. will present the awards for their annual MLK Student Art, Essay and Poetry Competitions through a virtual presentation at 10 a.m.

I see a lot of young leaders in Topeka taking on Kings message, Anton said. One of the goals with some of the older generation is to reach out and teach these younger people how to go about shaping our community.

The Mountaintop will feature Topeka actor Dane Shobe as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In May, the banquet will feature a production of the two-person Broadway play The Mountaintop, with well-known Topeka actor Dane Shobe in the role of Dr. King. Set in room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the play is a fictional depiction of Kings last night before his assassination in 1968, after he returns to his room from giving the Ive Been to the Mountaintop sermon.

More information about the banquet and January events can be found on the Living the Dream website, ltdtopeka.com.

A lot of events appear under our umbrella, Nave said. Its about bringing the community, the region together. Lets continue having the discussions  the tough talk about race relations and systemic racism.

King fought for all of that, but he didnt fight just for African Americans. He fought it for everybody. Robert and Jackie want to recognize him and push his ideology and philosophy, and continue to have those talks not only in January but in January through December.

That is our continuous goal.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Topeka to celebrate MLK Jr. in January; Living the Dream set for May
Jan. 10Kirk Edwards composed his "Martin Luther King Jr. March" in the mid-1990s in support of the holiday commemorating King's life and legacy, at a time when the holiday hadn't yet been made an official state government holiday in all 50 states.

The U.S. Coast Guard Band, of which Edwards was a member, played the "Martin Luther King Jr. March" twice back when he composed it.

On this year's Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 17, the piece will be performed again in New London, this time by the New London Community Orchestra. It will be part of the orchestra's "Concert for Healing" at the Garde Arts Center, and the show will feature an array of music, from orchestral works by Black composers to civil rights anthems.

Edwards has a long history in music, particularly in southeastern Connecticut. He was a saxophonist and clarinetist with the Coast Guard Band from 1981 to 2000 and then became Cadet Band Director at the Coast Guard Academy before retiring in 2011 after more than three decades of service.

He performs in the Madry Temple Church Band, the Coalition Jazz Band, and many chamber music groups.

And he has been a member of the New London Community Orchestra (NLCO) for about five years and is the group's principal clarinet player, as well as being a board member.

When he told NLCO President Tom Clark about the "Martin Luther King Jr. March," the idea percolated for the orchestra to play it during a concert. Edwards created an orchestral arrangement of the piece for the group.

In composing a work in honor of King, Edwards says he thought it was proper to create a march, since King famously held and participated in civil rights marches.

He did a fair amount of research about King. During his travels with the Coast Guard Band, Edwards was in Memphis and was able to visit the Lorraine Hotel, where King was assassinated in 1968. The band also performed for a music conference in Atlanta that was around the corner from the Ebenezer Baptist Church and the Center for Nonviolent Social Change  the Martin Luther King District where his home was.

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Edwards tried to capture the majestic aspect of King's marches in the first strain of his composition, followed by a second strain that imitated the call-and-response of a Baptist preacher, which King was.

He calls the end result kind of a collage; within the march, he uses segments from other compositions. He references "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" because King, just before he was shot, reportedly asked a saxophonist who was outside his Memphis hotel balcony to play that piece.

And Edwards superimposes a bit of "America the Beautiful" partially as a reminder that King was American and, at the end, he weaves in "We Shall Overcome."

"I thought it would be nice to end it on an optimistic, forward-looking note," Edwards says.

Edwards says having the composition performed now is "surreal  I didn't know that I would ever hear it again."

Incredible people, incredible works

Edwards' "Martin Luther King Jr. March" is part of the first half of the concert, along with four other works by Black composers.

"All of these are incredible people and incredible works," says Hilarie Clark Moore, the NLCO's music director.

They include the updated "Suite of Dances" by Florence Price, who, Clark Moore says, is "very hot" right now and can be heard on the radio.

Then there is the "In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy" by William Grant Still, which he wrote for WWII soldiers. He said he hopes "that our tribute to those who died will make the democracy for which they fought greater and broader than it has ever been before."

"That is so notable," Moore says, mentioning that Black American soldiers fought for democracy abroad but didn't have it at home.

They will also perform "Lyric for Strings" by George Walker, who was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Moore says it's a mournful tune that is often played at funerals and "wonderful services for horrible things in our country."

On the program, too, is a movement from Mary Watkins' larger piece "Five Movements in Color for Orchestra," about the African-American experience. The NLCO will play the second movement, which Moore says reflects "the profound grief felt by newly arrived Africans (in) a strange land, leaving their life behind, and in spite of their trauma  being enslaved, dehumanized, degraded, oppressed  they carried essential wisdom and spiritual knowledge. It's supposed to be actually of their despair but also hope, that they have that inner strength from many generations before."

"It's a very powerful piece," she adds. "It is supposed to be a song of sorrow and a song of hope together."

The second half of the concert consists of civil rights anthems performed by vocalists and the orchestra, including "Lift Every Voice and Sing," often called the "Black national anthem," which will feature soloist Katim Brown. The segment of civil rights anthems in the NLCO concert will conclude with "We Shall Overcome" and "Amazing Grace," with audience participation on both.

These anthems tend to be performed with perhaps a guitar or piano, but Edwards has written full orchestral scores for them for the NLCO.

Clark says the only reason the NLCO can play the anthems "is because Kirk has done the arrangements for an orchestra for these anthems. He's involved in all these different slices of the operation here. We wouldn't be here, and we wouldn't be performing it the way we're performing it, if it weren't for Kirk."

Bringing people together

Clark says the hope with the concert is to expose people to contemporary Black composers they might not know as well as to historic Black composers.

And, he says, "Every time you can get people together ... people from all communities coming together and having an emotional experience together, ... that is one of the things we can do to help push the story forward about social justice. It's not everything, of course, but these kinds of efforts do help push the social justice issue forward."

Moore adds, "It's what we can do as an orchestra."

Edwards says, "It's amazing the impact music has, the messages and themes. It sort of just sticks in your mind for a long time."

Clark notes that King wanted to have music as part of everything he did; he thought music was very important and provided an emotional connection to the civil rights struggle.

"We're here to honor Dr. King and his work, so it's an excellent way to do that," he says.
Former Lexington-Richland 5 superintendent Stephen Hefner has countersued the district, claiming it violated his First Amendment rights by suing him.

Hefner, who was the district superintendent from 2011 to 2018, denied any wrongdoing against the district in an answer and counterclaim to the districts November lawsuit.

Additionally, Hefner is seeking damages from the district for allegedly filing a frivolous lawsuit and using legal action to force an apology from him. The retort was filed in court Monday by Hefners attorney, Thomas McGee.

The school district in November filed a lawsuit against Hefner, alleging he sent a wrongful, malicious and politically motivated complaint to the school districts accrediting agency.

Hefner does not deny writing the complaint but says it caused the district no harm, according to the official answer. In addition to dismissing the claims made against him by the school districts initial suit, the retort says that the suit was politically motivated and was filed merely to extract an apology from Dr. Hefner., adding that the district is using public dollars to force an apology.

In August, Hefner  as well as former superintendents Herbert Berg and Wendell Clamp and former school board chairmen Danny Brabham and Carl Hust  filed a complaint with the districts accrediting agency over how the district hired an interim superintendent.

The district hired an interim superintendent in June, naming Akil Ross to the role. But Ross was not hired as a district employee. Rather, the district contracted with Rosss firm, HeartEd LLC, to provide superintendent services.

The accrediting agency, Cognia, has since said it does not plan to take action on the complaint.

The districts suit claims Hefner organized the other four signatories, and that while its accreditation status has not been affected, its goodwill in the community has been.

This loss of goodwill in the community could result in the District losing state funding if students withdraw from the District and attend school elsewhere, according to the Lexington-Richland 5 suit.

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The districts suit asks for a jury trial and damages. In mid-December, the board recommitted to the legal action, voting 4-3 not to dismiss the claim.

Hefners retort asks that the districts claim be dismissed, and that he be awarded damages instead.

Hefners claim against the district argues its actions would cause a reasonable person to cease to engage in a constitutionally protected activity. The conduct alleged herein has and will continue to have a chilling effect on private citizens ability to express disagreement with (the district) for fear of retaliatory action.

Hefner is asking for a trial to determine the amount of damages.
Jan. 9Zack Moyer of Walking Tall Ministry is hoping police are able to identify a man who shot a paintball gun at homeless people outside an outreach center in Gloverville on Tuesday.

Tuesday afternoon, deputies with the Aiken County Sheriff's Office were dispatched to Walking Tall Ministry in reference to a shooting incident.

Police reviewed video surveillance footage showing a "grey small four door sedan drive by with a unknown white male hanging out of the passenger side window" shooting paintballs at homeless individuals, according to an incident report obtained from the sheriff's office.

I was preparing breakfast in the building when "I heard what sounded like an automatic weapon being fired into the parking lot," Moyer said.

He ran outside to investigate, but the suspects were gone.

"When I looked at the (surveillance) footage, there were a couple of guys in the car and they were riding by, they started firing off paintball shots at the people walking through the parking lot," Moyer said. "You can see he looks back at the fire barrel and points directly at those people  he got five or six shots off during that period of time."

The suspect shot a fence and dumpster behind where the people were standing, but nobody was hit.

Moyer said the incident put the people the ministry serves in danger.

"We have some older folks and some disabled folks who can be startled and maybe lose their footing and fall," he said. "I hope it was kids, but we haven't found out yet."

Investigators were not able to pick up a license plate from the video, but are working to identify the suspect.

"We do have a couple of suspected vehicles, but we've not yet been able to talk to the individuals," Moyer said.

Depending on the age of the suspects, he said the ministry may not press charges.

"If it's teenagers, I'm going to talk with them myself and see how they act about it," he said. "If they act right about it, I'll probably have a good talking to them and their parents and let it be since nobody was hurt. Now if they were an adult, then we will certainly press charges."

The ministry said generally, people in Aiken County are very compassionate and want to help the ministry.

"Our ministry is solely based on donations through our community," he said. "Sometimes people ride by hollering terrible things at the people or ride by and splash water on them  you have those incidents like that. But overall, people are very good and compassionate to the homeless in our community."
RIVIERA BEACH  A 27-year-old man died Sunday evening, hours after someone shot him outside a home on West 31st Street, Riviera Beach police said.

Paramedics took Jamal Cowart to St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, where he died from his injuries, according to a news release.

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Police did not list a place of residence for Cowart.

The shooting took place on the 1100 block of West 31st, just west of President Barack Obama Highway, just before 4 p.m.

The statement from police did not discuss a motive for the shooting. "At this time, detectives are actively following up on positive leads," it said.

Click here to view the homicides tracker in a larger window 

The fatal shooting is the second confirmed homicide in Palm Beach County during 2022, following one last week in suburban West Palm Beach.

The county recorded 109 homicides during 2021, according to figures from the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Office. A Palm Beach Post online database lists 10 confirmed homicides in Riviera Beach last year.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Police investigate fatal shooting of man, 27, in Riviera Beach
The driver involved in a crash that killed an off-duty Jersey City police officer has been charged after investigators found he did not have a valid license at the time of the wreck, prosecutors said Monday.

A 30-year-old Jersey City resident turned himself over to Hudson County detectives and was released with a summons for causing death while driving unlicensed, prosecutors said.

In July 2021, the officer, Morton Otundo, 40, of Jersey City, was traveling east on Communipaw Avenue on a motorcycle at 2 a.m. when the defendant, who was driving his SUV in the opposite direction, tried to make a left turn onto Woodward Avenue and allegedly struck Otundo and his vehicle, prosecutors said.

COVID: List of North Jersey towns with mask mandates as omicron COVID cases rise

Otundo was taken to Jersey City Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 2:30 a.m.

The defendant could face three to five years in prison if convicted.

Nicholas Katzban is a breaking news reporter for NorthJersey.com. To get breaking news directly to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.

Email: katzban@northjersey.com

Twitter: @nicholaskatzban

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Jersey City NJ: Charges in crash that killed police officer
Surgeons implant the heart of a genetically modified pig into a human as part of a life-saving operation. (University of Maryland School of Medicine)

In a first-of-its kind operation, surgeons successfully implanted the heart of a genetically modified pig into a human patient, saving his life after hed previously been deemed ineligible for a traditional heart transplant.

David Bennett Sr., of Maryland, was safely in recovery from the procedure on Monday, where his doctors from the University of Maryland Medical center have been monitoring his condition.

It creates the pulse, it creates the pressure, it is his heart, Dr. Bartley Griffith, the director of the cardiac transplant program at the medical center, told The New York Times. Its working and it looks normal. We are thrilled, but we dont know what tomorrow will bring us. This has never been done before.

The procedure marks the first time a genetically modified animal heart has been transplanted into a human body without immediate rejection, according to UMD.

It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know its a shot in the dark, but its my last choice, Mr Bennett said of the procedure in a statement. I look forward to getting out of bed after I recover.

The 57-year-old had been in hospital for weeks with a life-threatening heart arrhythmia and only a heart-lung bypass machine was keeping him alive before the procedure.

The surgery, conducted on New Years Eve with emergency authorisation from the Food and Drug Administration, could open the door for greater organ access, according to the doctor who performed it.

This was a breakthrough surgery and brings us one step closer to solving the organ shortage crisis. There are simply not enough donor human hearts available to meet the long list of potential recipients, said Dr Bartley P Griffith in a statement.

Roughly 110,00 people are waiting for organ transplants in the US, and more than 6,000 die each year before they can be matched with an organ donor and brought in for surgery.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated with additional information.
Indianapolis political and civic leaders entered this year once again calling on the community to stop the violence, this time with a week of prayer and fasting to call attention to the city's record-breaking homicide rate.

The Indianapolis Urban Pastors Coalition, a group of religious leaders concentrated primarily on or near the far eastside that formed last June, joined Mayor Joe Hogsett and city-county councilors on Monday to announce a series of prayer services from Monday, Jan. 10 to Monday, Jan. 17.

"When we quietly reflect on the challenges that our city and our neighbors face, we are able to reconnect with the spirit of community that has been so damaged over the past two years," Hogsett said at a press conference at the New Direction Baptist Church on the east side.

Councillors Keith Graves, from left, and La Keisha Jackson join others in prayer during a press conference Monday, Jan. 10, 2022 at the New Direction Church, introducing a week of prayer in Indianapolis. The Indianapolis Urban Pastors Coalition (IUPC) is taking a stance against violence in the city by calling for the week of prayer and fasting to start the new year.

The announcement comes as Indianapolis wraps up a record-breaking year of homicides  in November, the city passed the previous record homicide number of 245, and ended the year with 271, according to preliminary year-end data from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.

The new year also marks the first in a massive three-year effort to combat crime using part of the $419 million in federal American Rescue Plan funding that the city will receive.

More than a third of that funding  $150 million  will cover an anti-violence agenda that officials are hoping will curb crime.

That programming, in conjunction with city funding, will increase the number of city peacemakers to 50, add 100 new police officers and increase the amount of annual crime prevention grant funding by roughly five times over, from about $3 million each year to $15 million.

Indianapolis has poured millions into its crime grant funding. Has it worked?

City leaders have routinely stressed that the community also needs to be involved in the fight to stop homicides. During the pandemic, too, Hogsett has noted that other cities have also experienced an increase in homicides.

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"Even in a year of record investment in the root causes of violence and law enforcement, the city does appreciate one thing above all else: We do not and cannot act alone," Hogsett said.

The coalition also highlighted various programs that the religious community has offered  including a summer jobs program for teenagers at New Direction and a mentoring program at New Revelation Christian Church.

"It's going to take all of us working together, not just from high positions but working together in grassroots efforts to bring resolutions to the challenges that are facing our city," said Pastor Richard Reynolds, vice president of the new coalition.

Pastor Kenneth Sullivan Jr., center, prays with others after press conference Monday, Jan. 10, 2022 at the New Direction Church, introducing a week of prayer in Indianapolis. The Indianapolis Urban Pastors Coalition (IUPC) is taking a stance against violence in the city by calling for the week of prayer and fasting to start the new year.

Republicans at the Statehouse, frustrated by the rising level of homicides under the Democratic administration, have filed a slew of bills to restrict bonds, set new standards for electronic monitoring and create a new crime reduction board led by IMPD.

Republican minority council leader Brian Mowery said a week of prayer to curb the violence is a welcome effort, but said the prosecutor also needs to be doing his job.

"It almost seems as if Indianapolis has become a safe haven for criminals because they're not going to get prosecuted," Mowery said. "We've got to have a prosecutor that's going to step in and do his or her job and get these criminals prosecuted to get them off the streets."

Red flag law: Failure to enforce red flag laws ended in 14 deaths

Mowery said Republican legislation at the Statehouse was a step in the right direction.

"We can't be a city of violence, crime and murder and expect that we're going to have these big conventions want to continue to Indianapolis the way they have so far," he said. "It's only a matter of time until they start seeing our numbers and they realize Indianapolis maybe isn't the safest place to go for their convention."

Asked about the various pieces of legislation, however, Hogsett focused solely on gun violence  noting a new bill that would eliminate the permit requirement for people carrying a handgun.

"That's not the right direction that we ought to be going," he said. "I think there are other common-sense ideas...greater background checks, more penalties for straw purchasing, closing the gun show loopholes. There are a myriad of different ways that we could get more guns that are illegally possessed off the street."

IndyStar reporter Lawrence Andrea contributed to this story.

Call IndyStar reporter Amelia Pak-Harvey at 317-444-6175 or email her at apakharvey@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmeliaPakHarvey.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indianapolis leaders join pastors in prayers to end violence
Herman Williams Jr., pictured in February 2002 outside the Oldtown fire station, worked for Baltimore City in various positions for 47 years. (Jed Kirschbaum / XX)

Herman Williams Jr., Baltimore Citys first Black fire chief who was commended for bravery during his lengthy career, died of complications of a stroke Saturday night at Springwell Assisted Living. He was 90 and formerly lived in Northwest Baltimore.

Mr. Williams served the city for 47 years under nine mayors. He worked as a firefighter, in the Department of Public Works and retired as fire chief in 2001.

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It was an honor to name Herman Williams fire chief, former Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said. He was the consummate professional. He was respected locally and nationally. Making him chief was a source of pride to me personally.

The fire chief also gained fame later in life through his son, Montel Williams, the national television talk-show host who spoke about his father instilling in him discipline and a love for books.

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My dad was a man whose shoes were truly too big ... to fill, Montel Williams tweeted.

My dad was a man whose shoes were truly too big and to fill. Thanks for this tribute, @BaltimoreFire.  https://t.co/qgQcWKd5TH  Montel Williams (@Montel_Williams) January 10, 2022

Current Baltimore Fire Chief Niles R. Ford said it would be an understatement to say Mr. Williams will be missed.

Not only was he was an extraordinary mentor, but he was a dear friend & inspiration, he tweeted.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said Mr. Williams embodied the true spirit of public service.

Herman Williams Jr. led a city giveaway of 70,000 smoke detectors. (Jed Kirschbaum / XX)

The difference he made blazing the trail for Black firefighters to serve in @baltimorefire and his unwavering commitment to our residents and the City of Baltimore will always be remembered, Mr. Scott tweeted.

His daughter Marjorie Hines said of her father: He was a strong man and a strong father. I watched him work three jobs at one time  he was a firefighter, a musician and he built us a home. "

Mr. Williams was born in New York City. He moved to Sandtown-Winchester as a teen, graduated from Frederick Douglass High School and earned a degree at the Community College of Baltimore County.

Before becoming a firefighter, he was a bass player at Block bars and at the Royal Theater. He also broke an occupational color barrier by becoming a streetcar motorman and bus driver for the old Baltimore Transit Co.

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In a 2002 Sun interview, he recalled the abuse he endured from white passengers.

He was among the first Black streetcar [and bus] drivers, the story said. People threw stones at his streetcar and spat on him when he was driving a bus. Two women even refused to get on his bus on Park Heights Avenue.

Baltimore City Fire Chief Herman Williams Jr., who began his career as a firefighter in 1954, announces in January 2001 that he will retire. At his right is Mayor Martin O'Malley. (Amy Davis / XX)

Mr. Williams recalled the incident.

It was on the 5 line, he said. I told the lady, `You might as well get on this one. There are three black guys driving behind me. You laughed at those things.

Mr. Williams, a member of the Baltimore Urban League, recalled how that organization, which had been fighting discrimination in employment, asked a bunch of guys in 1953 to take the exam for the fire department.

We all failed, 30, 35 guys, he said. And Im telling you what was so idiotic about this was that it was a simple little IQ test: How much is one and one? Where is City Hospital? That kind of stuff.

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The story made the newspapers and the reports hinted something fishy was going on. As a result, we were all called back to take the test again. This time, we all passed, Mr. Williams said.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 24 Lois H. Feinblatt was a pioneering sex therapist who practiced with the Johns Hopkins Sex and Gender Clinic for more than three decades and was a also a philanthropist. (handout)

I dont know who behind the scenes got on that, he said. Mr. Williams also added that he believed the help came from Mayor Thomas A. DAlesandro Jr., who had courted the African American vote with support for civil rights when he was reelected in 1951.

The fire department job meant a $2,000 pay cut. He had been making $5,500 a year with the transit company.

On April 7, 1955, The Sun reported that he was the first Black fire department fighter to be decorated by the fire board. Mr. Williams rushed to help a boy with multiple injuries who had been struck by a hit-and-run driver.

In 1958 he was called to Cabin Branch Creek when a heavy crane went off a drawbridge. The driver was trapped and the tide was rising.

Mr. Williams and firefighter Andy Kovoski jumped into the water. Mr. Williams went under to free the trapped mans foot which had lodged behind the steering column.

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I twisted his ankle hard. I was underwater but I could hear him scream. His foot came free. I shot up and spit out a mouthful of foul water. ... I suddenly realized something. Andy, how the hell did I get out here? I cant swim, Mr. Williams recalled.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 78 Peter N. Marudas was a respected political strategist and adviser to three Baltimore mayors and a U.S. senator.

The fire board awarded Mr. Williams a meritorious service bar.

Bravery, hard work and a thick skin put Williams on the track to becoming chief. He would train rookies at the Fire Academy and police violations of the fire code with the Fire Prevention Bureau. The revered Fire Chief Thomas Burke supported and encouraged him, a 2002 Sun profile said.

But in 1979, when he was deputy chief, a step away from command of the department, he was summoned before a gathering of big shot politicos and told in so many words, like Brando in On the Waterfront, Kid, its not your night, the profile said.

Mr. Williams went off to a rather pleasant exile as chief of administrative services in public works department and then as commissioner of transportation. Mr. Williams said he liked these jobs.

It was a real pleasure for me to ride through the city and see the grass cut, he said. Because my guys were doing that. Potholes were filled. Seeing bridges being built I signed the contracts for.

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Mr. Williams was thinking of retiring in 1992 when Mr. Schmoke said, Why dont you retire as chief of the fire department?

Mr. Williams fought hundreds of fires during his 35 years with the Baltimore City Fire Department.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 60 Naomi Judd, the Kentucky-born matriarch of the Grammy-winning duo The Judds and mother of Wynonna and Ashley Judd, has died at the age of 76. Her family announced Judd's death on April 30, 2022. (Josh Anderson/AP)

The death of a fireman [is] like a stab in the heart, Mr. Williams said in 2002.

He recalled a terrifying February 1999 fire in a downtown high-rise building, the Charles Towers.

I was driving down the Jones Falls Expressway, and when I got down to Maryland Avenue I could see it: Oh, my God.

Smoke and flames billowed from the 15th floor of the 30-story apartment building.

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A lot of the tenants had rushed to the roof, Mr. Williams said. Then there was a fear people might want to start jumping. So we called in the [Maryland State Police] helicopters and lowered some men down to make sure everybody was OK.

[ Rev. Dr. Bowyer G. Freeman, former Howard County NAACP president, dies ]

Mr. Williams led the fire service through a tumultuous eight years that included widespread budget reductions, staff cuts and station closings. Throughout his tenure, the city set record lows in fire deaths and the number of fires declined by nearly half.

He also led a city giveaway of 70,000 smoke detectors.

In 2003, an East 25th Street fire station complex was named in his honor.

My father could make a good meatloaf, but his real specialty was crab cakes, his daughter said. And he loved making them for disabled veterans.

Survivors include two daughters, Marjorie Hines of Hanover and Clolita Vitale of Lakewood, Florida; two sons, Herman Williams III of Baltimore and Montel Williams of Miami; seven grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. His wife, the former Marjorie White, died in 2017.

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Plans for a funeral are incomplete.




A Mexican judge issued seven arrest warrants on Sunday linked to the "Fast and Furious" gunrunning scandal, when U.S. federal officials allowed around 2,000 firearms to be trafficked into Mexico.

The Mexican attorney general's office announced the warrants Sunday, naming three of the targets, including drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

The other two targets named were Genaro Garcia Luna, who served as Public Security secretary under former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, and Luis Cardenas Palomino, a close collaborator of Garcia Luna's and former head of intelligence for Mexico's now-defunct Federal Police.

Guzman and Garcia Luna are both imprisoned in the United States; Garcia Luna is awaiting trial on charges of receiving bribes from Guzman, while Guzman is serving a life sentence for crimes committed as head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel.

Cardenas is under arrest in Mexico, accused of having obtained confessions through torture in a high-profile kidnapping case.

The Mexican attorney general office's statement did not say whether it would seek the extradition of Guzman, who has twice escaped high-security prisons in Mexico.

But it said Mexican judges have issued two other outstanding warrants for Garcia Luna, prompting requests for his extradition to Mexico.

Garcia Luna led Mexico's police under Calderon, a bitter political rival of current President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Under Calderon, Mexican authorities increased their collaboration with U.S. authorities as violence between rival cartels and the Mexican state ramped up.

The sting operations that eventually came to be known as Fast and Furious, led by the Arizona U.S. attorney's office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, started in 2006, the same year Calderon took office and appointed Garcia Luna.

The operations were intended to allow U.S. agents to track illicit guns in Mexico to cartel leaders; most of the guns were lost without any successful related prosecutions of cartel heads.

The operation came to public light after two of the guns bought as part of Fast and Furious were found at the scene of a shootout where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was fatally shot in 2010.
Michael Parks, left, replaced Shelby Coffey III, right, as editor of the Los Angeles Times in1997. (Paul Morse / Los Angeles Times)

Michael Parks, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa and later led the Los Angeles Times during a tumultuous period that ended when the Chandler family sold the newspaper after a century of control, died on Saturday. He was 78.

In his 25 years as a foreign correspondent, first for the Baltimore Sun and then for The Times, Parks covered some of the most momentous events in modern history, including the Vietnam War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

After nearly three years as top editor at The Times, he taught at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism for 20 years and served two stints as director of its journalism school.

Parks died of kidney failure and a heart attack at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena late Saturday after suddenly falling ill at home before dawn, according to his son, Christopher Parks.

From 1980 to 1995, Parks worked as The Times' bureau chief in Beijing, Johannesburg, Moscow and Jerusalem. Erudite, with a powerful work ethic, he was known as an exceedingly prolific writer. After short runs as deputy foreign editor and managing editor, he was named editor of The Times in 1997.

His appointment came at a difficult time in the newspaper's history. Once known for massive profits, The Times  like other papers  was starting to face financial struggles that led to budget cuts and changes in senior business management. The newsroom faced growing pressure from executives to generate more revenue.

Parks' tenure came to a dramatic end after a newsroom uproar over The Times' profit-sharing arrangement with Staples Center on revenue from ads in an October 1999 issue of the Los Angeles Times Magazine that was devoted to the opening of the downtown arena.

Times writers and editors were furious when they learned that top Times executives had struck the ad deal, saying it undercut the integrity and independence of their journalism by giving the subject of the magazine a stake in its profits.

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Although Parks said he had not known about the profit sharing until after the magazine was written and edited, he did learn about it in time to have stopped it from being published, which he did not do. He later expressed "profound regret," saying he had underestimated the impact on The Times' credibility.

A few months after the outcry, Tribune Co. of Chicago bought control of the newspaper from the Chandler family and replaced Parks with John Carroll, then editor of the Baltimore Sun.

Still, Parks was remembered Sunday as a dogged reporter with a keen intellect and a mentor and advisor to many younger journalists.

"He always asked for the really tough assignments, and he got them, because I knew he was going to do so well in the job," said Alvin Shuster, a former Times foreign editor.

Parks won his 1987 Pulitzer for international reporting. The prize jury commended him for "balanced and comprehensive coverage of South Africa."

Parks was based in Johannesburg from 1984 to 1988, a period when South Africa's brutal white-minority regime was fighting a Black majority revolt against its apartheid system of strict racial segregation.

Scott Kraft, who succeeded Parks as The Times' Johannesburg bureau chief, described him as a "student of liberation struggles across the globe." Parks made frequent trips to Zambia to meet exiled South African leaders of the African National Congress, including future president Thabo Mbeki, but also had sources in the white regime, which was then rare for reporters, said Kraft, now a Times managing editor.

"Michael was an extraordinarily gifted foreign correspondent, one of the finest of his generation," Kraft said.

South Africa threatened to expel Parks in 1986 as he was reporting on the growing anti-apartheid protests and outbreaks of violence, but Times editors persuaded the government to let him stay.

Born in Detroit in 1943, Parks grew up there and worked as a reporter at the Detroit News while earning his bachelor's degree in classical languages and English literature just across the Detroit River at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada.

He got a job as a state politics reporter at the Baltimore Sun in 1968, then launched his career as a foreign correspondent two years later as the Sun's Saigon correspondent covering the Vietnam War. It was there that he met Shuster, then a New York Times reporter who lived in the same hotel.

Parks was one of those hard-working correspondents who never slept, and the typewriter was heard all night long from his room, Shuster recalled.

The Sun named Parks Moscow bureau chief in 1972 when Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were thawing. He moved to Cairo in 1975 and covered the full span of the Middle East for the Sun for three years, then worked in the late '70s as its bureau chief in Hong Kong and then Beijing.

The Times hired Parks as its Beijing bureau chief in 1980. Over the next 15 years, he tracked the sweeping social and political changes in China and South Africa, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Oslo Peace talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

When he moved to Los Angeles in 1995 and started his quick rise up the ranks of editors, colleagues recalled, he made a point of challenging the white male culture that dominated the newsroom, a challenge that has persisted into the 2020s.

"It wasn't just an old boys club, it was an old, white, senior-in-age boys club," said Carol J. Williams, a former Times foreign correspondent who credited Parks with expanding The Times' thin ranks of women on assignment overseas.

Michael Parks, left, who was named editor of The Times in 1997, congratulates Clarence Williams III on winning the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Once the newsroom was engulfed by the Staples fiasco, Parks was left struggling to survive. Kathryn M. Downing, then publisher of The Times, had approved the profit-sharing deal without notifying Parks. Mark H. Willes, chairman and chief executive officer of parent company Times Mirror Co., said he learned of it after the deal was struck and did nothing to stop it.

Downing said she had not told Parks about it out of what she later acknowledged was a misguided attempt to honor the separation of editorial and business concerns. Neither Downing nor Willes had experience in the news business when they took control of The Times.

Parks "paid a price for their errors," said Roxane Arnold, a former senior editor at The Times.

At USC, Parks taught reporting and writing to graduate students from 2000 until his retirement in May 2020. He was also director of the journalism school from 2002 to 2008, then again on an interim basis in 2013 and 2014.

Unlike so many of his peers who believed the glory days of journalism were in the rearview mirror, Michael believed deeply that journalism had a bright future, and he saw it every day through the experience of his students, said Willow Bay, dean of the Annenberg School.

He really leaned into the changes brought by the internet and the development of digital media.

Parks is survived by his wife, Linda Parks; his sons Christopher Parks of Bloomington, Ind., and Matthew Parks of Cape Town, South Africa; two sisters; two brothers; and four grandchildren. His daughter, Danielle Parks, died in 2007.





This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Happy Monday, people of Woonsocket, and happy Save the Eagles Day! Let's get you all caught up to start today off on an informed note.

You can participate in the Milagros Projects Day of Service! Also, a proposal to offer $250,000 in funding for downtown businesses may not go forward. Finally, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse discusses a grant for the Woonsocket PD.



First, today's weather:

Partly sunny and breezy. High: 29 Low: 12.

Here are the top four stories in Woonsocket today:

The Milagros Project is honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a Day of Service. You can participate by bringing feminine hygiene products and diapers to the All Saints Church Parking Lot on Saturday. You may do so between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. (Milagros Project) The Downtown Woonsocket Collaborative wants the City Council to allocate $250,000 for Main Street area business owners. This money should be earmarked for building renovations. The program would help modernize Main Streets historic properties, many of which remain out of compliance with contemporary building and fire codes. However, Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt may not be on board with the idea, pointing out a pandemic-era grant program that funneled COVID relief funds to local businesses and said the city has offered new signage and other improvements in the downtown area. (Valley Breeze) Senator Sheldon Whitehouse announced Wednesday that the Woonsocket PD will receive a grant totaling $819K to help divert people dealing with addiction to treatment rather than jail. This federal funding will help save lives and change lives for the better. It gives people a chance to get treatment and the level of care they need. It will also help save taxpayers by reducing avoidable health and social service expenditures related to the costs of untreated addiction. The PD will create the program with input from Brown University, Columbia University, and others. (Sheldon Whitehouse) Lincoln announced Thursday that it will hire an outside consultant to determine the timing of roadway repaving. It follows the lead of Pawtucket, which has already adopted this method. Funds from the American Recovery Plan Act will be instrumental in getting the city caught up. Cumberland is considering working with a consultant but hasnt made any decision yet. (Valley Breeze)

From our sponsor:

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Today's Woonsocket Daily is brought to you in part by Newrez, a leading nationwide mortgage lender. Make a smart move for your future and refinance with Newrez today. Call 844-979-1707 to connect with a Newrez loan officer. Newrez, LLC (NMLS #3013)

Today in Woonsocket:



New England Winter Expo at the Rhode Island Convention Center (9 AM to 6 PM)

Monday Morning Book Group at the Warwick Library (10 AM)

The Cumberland Public Library presents Sleepy Storytime (online) (6:30 PM)

From my notebook:

A number of City of Woonsocket employment positions are posted within a few different departments. Go to: https://www.woonsocketri.org/p... (Facebook)

Loving the Woonsocket 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 Woonsocket@Patch.com

You're officially in the loop for today. See you all tomorrow morning for another update!

 Sylvia Cochran

About me: Sylvia Cochran works out of sunny Southern California and has been freelance writing full-time since 2005. She loves dogs, cats, books, plays Best Fiends (don't judge), embraces social justice, and tries to live out Micah 6:8.

This article originally appeared on the Woonsocket Patch
SAN FRANCISCO, CA  As the weekend wraps up, we've rounded up all the stories you may have missed Saturday and Sunday to prepare you for Monday.

But before we jump into the Golden State's top stories, NorCal residents should know that Gov. Gavin Newsom activated the California National Guard to support community testing sites as the state experiences a testing shortage amid a dire surge in COVID-19 cases driven by the omicron variant.

The difficulty finding coronavirus test kits in many parts of California and delays in getting results are causing increasing frustration and contributing to the surge of infections that in just two weeks more than doubled the number of people in hospitals with COVID-19.



Read more about that here.

From the body of a California skier that was found after going missing on Christmas to a hospital in San Francisco needing assistance in identifying a woman  here are a few of the stories you missed over the weekend.

A San Francisco hospital needs the public's help in identifying a female patient who has been hospitalized since late November.

Rory Angelotta, who went missing on Christmas Day, was found outside a ski resort in Northern California.

An employee working in the drive-thru window was shot after an apparent argument over a counterfeit bill, police said.

Pleasanton police arrested a woman on suspicion of fleeing from the scene of a two-car collision.

The Governor's proposed budget also calls for new legislation to put supplemental paid sick leave policies in place.

Petaluma police arrested a 37-year-old Santa Rosa man Thursday morning on suspicion of stealing a car.

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Federal prosecutors have charged an Oakland man in connection with a violent road rage incident that happened last week in San Francisco.

An 18-year-old man who fled just before being checked into the hospital has been located, police said Saturday.

SamTrans is giving six months worth of free rides to low-income students as a part of their Youth Unlimited Pass pilot program.

















This article originally appeared on the San Francisco Patch
Five days after authorities say she caused a fatal crash while driving drunk on Interstate 44, Emily Hernandez pleaded guilty in federal court Monday in connection with the U.S. Capitol riot.

Hernandez, 22, of Sullivan, Missouri  seen during the insurrection last year carrying a wooden name plate torn from House Speaker Nancy Pelosis office  pleaded guilty to one count of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, a misdemeanor. The plea hearing was held via video conference in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Hernandez is scheduled to be sentenced March 21. She faces a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $100,000 fine and must pay $500 in restitution for damage to the Capitol building, which prosecutors say totaled about $1.5 million.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg told Hernandez she was pleading guilty to breaching the Capitol then going into Pelosis suite and taking a piece of the broken sign bearing the speakers name. Then, he said, Hernandez entered the rotunda and took a Do Not Touch sign from the foot of a statue. She also was carrying a red Keep off Fence sign from the Capitol grounds, the judge said.

Is that all correct? Boasberg asked Hernandez.

Yes, your honor, she said.

Hernandez was the first Missouri resident to be charged in connection with the Capitol riot.

Last Wednesday, Missouri authorities said she was driving the wrong way on I-44 in Franklin County just after 7 p.m. when she crashed into an SUV, killing the passenger, Victoria N. Wilson, 32, of St. Clair, and seriously injuring her husband, Ryan E. Wilson, 36, who was driving.

Hernandez was placed under arrest for driving while intoxicated, resulting in the death of another person and driving while intoxicated, causing serious physical injury of another person, a Missouri Highway Patrol spokesman said.

Her attorney, Ethan Corlija, told The Star on Sunday night that charges have not yet been filed. The Highway Patrol said that investigators would present the case to the prosecuting attorney once toxicology reports were completed.

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At Mondays plea hearing, federal prosecutor Jessica Arco told the judge that the crash was extremely concerning and devastating for all involved.

Miss Hernandez behavior, if the allegations are true, indicate that, to the government, she could pose a threat to the public and to herself, quite frankly, if immediate action is not taken, Arco said.

Boasberg approved the governments proposed new restrictions on Hernandez. She now is prohibited from driving, drinking alcohol and possessing firearms and must undergo mental health evaluation and treatment as well as alcohol and drug testing and treatment. She also must surrender her passport.

Hernandez was arrested nine days after the Capitol invasion. Photos of her and her uncle, William Merry Jr., holding up Pelosis sign were widely distributed after the riot.

William Merry (red cap), Paul Westover (yellow stocking cap, behind sign) and Emily Hernandez (wearing sunglasses) during the U.S. Capitol invasion on Jan. 6, 2021.

Merry was charged Feb. 4 along with Paul S. Westover, of Lake St. Louis. The three allegedly breached the Capitol together. Merry pleaded guilty in federal court last week to theft of government property, a misdemeanor. Westover pleaded guilty last month to a misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.

Hernandez was initially charged with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds; disorderly conduct which impedes the conduct of government business; stealing, selling, conveying or disposing of U.S. property; disruptive conduct in the capitol buildings; and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in the capitol buildings.

On Dec. 29, prosecutors filed a new document charging Hernandez with a single misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds.
Moncus Park is offering free classes, including fitness, dance and art programs, as part of its community programming.

The non-profit park announced the schedule for the first three months of 2022 on Monday.

"The park partnered with local nonprofits, businesses and entrepreneurs to produce these programs that focus on three core pillars: arts and culture, health and wellness, and environmental education," park spokesperson Mary Allie Hebert said in a release.

Moncus Park opens: Visitors can enjoy walking trails, dog park

There are classes for children and adults including a yoga class, an environmental education program and painting classes.

Moncus Park is offering free community programming, including art and fitness classes. The Lafayette Art Association hosted one of the first in the park, Collage 101 with Margo Baker. Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022.

Here are the planned events for January, February and March:

Jan. 11, noon-1 p.m. - Lafayette Art Association collage 101 for adults

Jan. 11, 5:30-6:30 p.m. - Spoken Red dance cardio class for adults

Jan. 18, 9 a.m.-noon - Volunteer day mulching the iris beds

Jan. 18, noon-1 p.m. - Stretch & Grow youth fitness and yoga class for ages 6-17

Jan. 18, 7-8 p.m. - Happy Little Trees Acadiana painting class for ages 6-12

Jan. 25, noon-1 p.m. - Gayle Webre youth environmental education program

Jan. 25, 5:30-6:30 p.m. - Zydefit dance workout for adults

Feb. 2, 5:30-6:30 p.m. - Zydefit dance workout for adults

Feb. 9, noon-1 p.m. - CrossFit Acadiana adult health and wellness program

Feb. 9, 5:30-6:30 p.m. - Space Yoga adult health and wellness program

Feb. 16, noon-1 p.m. - Stretch & Grow youth fitness and yoga class for ages 6-17

Feb. 16, 7-8 p.m. - Ecole St. Landry intro to French for all ages

Feb. 23, 7-8 p.m. - Happy Little Trees Acadiana painting class for ages 6-12

March 3, noon-1 p.m. - Stretch & Grow youth fitness and yoga class for ages 6-17

March 3, 5:30-6:30 p.m. - Ecole St. Landry intro to French for all ages

March 10, 6:30-7 a.m. - CrossFit Acadiana adult health and wellness program

March 10, 5:30-6:30 p.m. - Space Yoga adult health and wellness program

March 17, noon-1 p.m. - Embody Zest balance and flexibility program

March 24, 5:30-6:30 p.m. - Zydefit dance workout for adults

March 31, noon-3 p.m. Programming Appreciation Day to learn about the first quarter vendors and meet the second quarter vendors

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The full schedule can be found on the Moncus Park website.

Moncus Park officially opened Jan. 1. Some parts of the park are still being built, such as the splash pad and treehouse, but visitors can still enjoy the walking trails, pond and dog park.

Contact Ashley White at adwhite@theadvertiser.com or on Twitter @AshleyyDi.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Moncus Park offering free programs like yoga, dance French lessons
HOWELL, NJ  Mother Seton Academy in Howell will close down permanently after the end of the current school year due to declining enrollment and financial challenges.

"Despite the important and worthwhile effort to keep a Catholic school education available in our area, and the hard work invested in this ideal by so many in our community, we have been impacted by factors that impeded our ability to reach our goals," reverends Peter James Alindogan and John P. Bambrick said in a joint statement.

The decline in enrollment has been the biggest challenge facing the school.

"Along with the coronavirus pandemic, (it) has compromised our ability to sustain operations without significant outside assistance," the statement said.

The school was founded in September 2019 with the merger of St. Veronica School in Howell and St. Aloysius School in Jackson and was established in the latter location.

"Enrollment at Mother Seton Academy has been a persistent concern and has now seriously declined," the reverends said.

The school started out with a class of over 300 students and now has fewer than 126 in grades 1 through 8.

"This is well below the level of academic and financial sustainability for any Catholic school, and has led to a deficit in the school budget of $140K as of September, 2021," they said. "Despite a subsidy from the Diocese of Trenton of more than $250K over the past two years and additional funding from the two parishes, the school will not be able to have a sound financial footing without much higher enrollment levels; something that is unrealistic given current demographic trends in the area."

The reverends said that the St. Aloysius Parish and St. Veronica Parish can't cover more of the school's expenses since they had a "catastrophic" loss of income due to the pandemic shutdown.

"It is clear that for all of these reasons, Mother Seton Academy cannot remain open beyond the current school year," the statement said. "This announcement is painful for us personally and to us all. We acknowledge the disappointment that this news brings to our dedicated faculty, staff, children and families of the Academy. The Diocese will work to assist our faculty and staff in planning for their next steps."

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More information is available at the school's FAQ page about the shutdown.

Have a news tip, correction or comment? Email catarina.moura@patch.com.

This article originally appeared on the Holmdel-Hazlet Patch
A Detroit woman who claimed a robber shot her 4-year-old child later confessed that she accidentally pulled the trigger while cleaning her gun, authorities said.

The shooting took place Friday around 3 p.m. in the 6500 block of Brush Street, according to Detroit police.

The mother initially told officers someone opened fire outside an apartment after unsuccessfully trying to snatch her purse, hitting the child twice. The victim was in critical condition at a hospital, officials said Friday. The child's status was unknown Monday.

However, Police Chief James E. White admitted during a press conference that there was conflicting information from the mother and the hospital where the child was taken.

The puzzle isnt coming together the way it should," he said. "We got a call from the hospital indicating that we had a crime scene here. The crime scene is on the inside of the home, not on the outside, which is inconsistent with the initial information that we have."

In an update later in the evening, police said: The childs mother now admits to accidentally shooting the 4-year-old. The investigation continues."

The mother said she shot the child in the arm and the leg, according to NBC affiliate WDIV of Detroit. She was taken into custody Friday before midnight, the news station reported.

Nearly 500 people die each year due to unintentional firearm injuries, according to the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. In 2019, 486 Americans died from unintentional firearm injuries.

The organization says safe storage of firearms can help lower the risk of unintentional firearm injury.

The incident comes after two other shootings involving parents and children.

In Ohio, a 16-year-old girl was fatally shot by her father who thought she was an intruder breaking into their home, according to Columbus authorities. In North Carolina, a police officer shot his 15-year-old son in the head in what appeared to be an accident, officials said. The son was hospitalized in critical condition.
Gov. Newsom's budget proposal has a five-year, 5% budget increase for UC and CSU. Above, UCLA's campus on Jan. 7. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Gov. Gavin Newsom's budget proposal released Monday makes a significant pledge to the University of California and California State University: five years of annual funding increases that would deliver long-sought financial stability.

But there's also a big caveat. The public university systems have to close achievement gaps among underserved students, a stubbornly elusive goal for years, and meet a long list of other specific targets to boost graduation rates, reduce the cost of attendance and increase California undergraduate enrollment.

The budget plan also proposes funding to increase California student enrollment this fall by 9,434 students at Cal State and 7,132 at UC  including 902 seats at UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego currently allocated to international and out-of-state students. The state would provide $31 million to those three popular campuses to cover the cost of replacing nonresident students, who each pay about $30,000 in supplemental tuition, with Californians.

The multiyear agreements Newsom unveiled with UC and Cal State would provide a 5% base general fund increase for five straight years in exchange for commitments to expand access, equity, affordability and training for state workforce needs. The list of targets is longer and more prescriptive than those in previous agreements between governors and state universities. Former Gov. Jerry Brown, for instance, focused more generally on increasing transfer students, reducing costs and shortening the time to obtain a degree.

Additionally, roughly $1.6 billion is proposed for California's 116 community colleges  the nation's largest higher education system  linking funding to increasing the number of students transferring into UC and CSU, and a 20% hike in associate degrees, certificates or credentials by 2026.

"We have been working with our education partners, CSU, UC and Community Colleges, to see if we can come up with a new multiyear framework, and we have," Newsom said Monday.

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UC President Michael V. Drake, Cal State Chancellor Joseph Castro and California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley all supported Newsom's proposal.

Michele Siqueiros, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity, said the proposal is "incredible and necessary" to improve student outcomes.

The Institute for College Access & Success, which advocates for equity in higher education, also supported the proposal, saying it is "rightly focused on closing equity gaps by race and income."

Newsom's higher education proposal also features ambitious timelines for the elimination of differences in graduation rates of students who are low-income, underrepresented students who are Black, Latino and Native American and those who are the first in their families to attend college compared with their more advantaged peers.

But meeting those targets  2025 for Cal State and 2030 for UC  could prove a heavy lift.

At Cal State, for instance, those gaps widened last year, with the differential in graduation rates for underrepresented students growing to 12.4% and for low-income students, 10.2%. The gap worsened even as the 23-campus system moved closer to its goal to raise the overall four-year graduation rate to 40% by 2025  hitting 33% last year from 19.3% in 2015, when the initiative was launched.

UC is also struggling with equity gaps. The overall four-year graduation rate for freshmen entering in 2016 was 71.3% but 59.3% for Black students, 60.7% for Latinos, 75% for white students and 77.7% for Asian Americans.

The pandemic's disproportionately negative effect on underserved college students, who are experiencing more failing grades and withdrawals from school, may make it even more difficult to meet the agreement's targets.

An administration official, however, expressed confidence that the university systems would meet their goals and did not identify any consequences if they did not.

Overall, UC would receive an increase of $307.3 million in ongoing funding, including $200.5 million for the 5% base general fund increase, $99 million for enrollment growth and the replacement of nonresident students, and additional support for foster youth students and firearms research. In addition, the budget proposes $295 million in one-time funds to support climate research, innovation and entrepreneurship, dyslexia research, deferred maintenance and other needs.

The budget also proposes a collaboration with the community colleges to ensure that dual enrollment credits will be accepted for transfer credit and apply toward a UC degree.

To lower the cost of attendance, Newsom is asking UC to increase the share of new tuition revenue dedicated to financial aid to 45% from the current 33% and to eliminate textbook costs for lower-division undergraduate courses and a "substantial portion" of upper-division and graduate courses. Cal State is also asked to reduce the cost of instruction material.

Cal State would receive an increase of $304.1 million in ongoing funding, including $211.1 million for the 5% base general funding increase, $81 million for enrollment growth, and increased support for foster youth students. The plan also includes $233 million in one-time funding to build the Cal State Bakersfield Energy Innovation Center and support farming programs, deferred maintenance and other programs.

Under the agreements, Cal State will increase online offerings and boost enrollments in education, early education, science, technology, engineering and math programs by 25% to help create a "high demand career pipeline." UC has agreed to increase graduates in those fields.

In addition, the budget plan includes $750 million for campus housing projects and increases of $515 million for the Middle Class Scholarship program and $500 million for programs to help students complete college financial aid forms.

The state's community colleges experienced a significant drop in enrollment during the pandemic as many students have opted for the workforce over education. The budget proposes $150 million to build on a previous $120-million investment to assist with the colleges' enrollment and recruitment efforts.

The budget also proposes $100 million for technological updates and data protection services. The chancellor's office did not say how, or if, such funds would go to an ongoing bot enrollment issue that has affected the college system for months.

Newsom stressed Monday that the proposal, which will be presented in May, is subject to revision.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Abdulrazak Gurnah

Abdulrazak Gurnah attends the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2017 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Credit - Getty Images - 2017 Simone Padovani/Awakening

When Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature last October, becoming the first Black writer to win the award since Toni Morrison in 1993, his books shot to the top of must-read lists. But in the U.S., as well as other parts of the world, the now 73-year-old authors backlist (10 books published from 1987 to 2020) was largely out of print. American publishers immediately began bidding for reprint rights of Gurnahs work, with Riverhead securing the rights to three books, including his acclaimed novel Afterlives, released in 2020 in the U.K. and set to arrive in the U.S. this August.

In the citation for the Nobel, Gurnahs body of work is praised for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents. Those topics are at the center of Afterlives, a heartbreaking and sweeping story centered on the devastation brought about by Germanys colonial rule in early 20th-century East Africa. In Afterlives, Gurnah set out to write a novel about this period partly to bring greater awareness to the brutalities inflicted on those living in East Africa at the time. The story focuses on four characters who are all touched by the war in different ways and examines the impact of trauma. Gurnah is very familiar with the landscape of this narrativehe was born in Zanzibar, now Tanzania, and fled the country as a teenager, becoming a refugee at 18 and relocating to England.

TIME is exclusively revealing the books coveran intricate and layered design by Grace Hanand spoke to the Nobel laureate about winning literatures biggest prize, his hopes for his new readership and the problems with deeming 2021 a big year for African literature.

When you won the Nobel Prize, you essentially became a celebrity author overnight. How did that feel?

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To be perfectly honest, I felt like enough of a celebrity before. I have loyal readers who have been reading my books for many years, and I was quite comfortable with that. But this is global. People all over the world know about it, whether they are readers or not. The thing thats been most amazing is the number of publishers across the world who want to publish the books in their own languages.

Read More: The 21 Most Anticipated Books of 2022

What was going on inside your head the moment you learned you won?

I thought, This is a joke. But then I found out that this is very often the response of people being awarded the prize, because it comes out of nowhere. What kind of writer would you be if you were to receive this call and think, Oh, good. Ive been waiting for this?

With you winning the Nobel and Damon Galgut winning the Booker, some are calling 2021 African literatures big year. What do you make of that?

Its nonsense. Its suggesting something to do with a phenomenon of Africa rather than these awards that have been given for the quality of the writing of those particular texts. The selection panels of these awards didnt all get together and say, Hey, lets make this Africas year. They selected writers for the writing, not where they came from. Its okay if you want to make a journalistic case that this is Africas year, so long as it doesnt make it seem like some kind of recognition of a region rather than recognition of the writing itself.

Your book Afterlives, which will be published in the U.S. in August, fits into many buckets: its historical fiction, a multi-generational saga and an epic love story. How do you categorize it?

It was really about telling something about a historical episode that has not been given enough attention. I also wanted to say something about the resolution of people to survivehow people retrieve their lives after trauma, how people come through those things and organize and shape themselves.

Like many of your books, Afterlives deals with displacement, colonization and loss. What draws you to those themes?

Partly because its my experience, but also because its very much a phenomenon of the times we live in. Writing about dislocation or strangers finding themselves unwelcome is not to invent anything. Its to write about whats right in front of our eyes.

What do you hope new readers will take away from reading Afterlives?

That they will have a better grasp of that historical moment and that that historical moment does not stand as a unique episode, but that it is repeated in different parts of the worldand perhaps it is repeated even in our times. Forces can appear suddenly, disrupt, destroy and leave people to find ways to recover themselves. I hope they will take away the possibility of speaking out against injustices.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Carroll Community College is partnering with the county health department to help vaccinate more area residents with free COVID-19 public vaccination clinics scheduled through January.

Located on the Westminster campus at the Bollinger Family Conference Center in Room K100, 10 clinics are scheduled on campus through Jan. 28.

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Rick Pauley, a state care coordinator with the Carroll County Health Department, shares a smile with Roy Stetler of Westminster after administering his booster shot during a Carroll County Health Department vaccine clinic at Carroll Community College in Westminster Friday, Jan. 7, 2022. (Dylan Slagle / Carroll County Times)

Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccinations will be available. Registration is recommended, but walk-ins are welcome as space allows. To check availability for the community college clinics, go to https://cchd.maryland.gov/registration-links/.

Our regularly scheduled clinics allow 196 to register with room for some walk-ins. Some of our added clinics may be open to more or fewer people, said Maggie Kunz, a Carroll County health planner.

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Vaccination clinics will be held four times this week, from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. today, Tuesday and Friday, while an afternoon clinic for ages 18 and older will be held 3:30-6:30 p.m., Wednesday.

Alan Schuman, Carroll Community Colleges executive vice president, said the college is committed to working with the health department to serve the community throughout the pandemic.

Were very excited that were able to accommodate the on-site vaccination sites here for at least through January and, if needed, we will work with the health department to keep it going into the future, Schuman said.

Patrice Jackson, a Westminster resident who was in line for a booster shot on Friday, said that residents should not wait to get vaccinated.

Its something that has to be done instead of waiting for something to happen  Im doing what is required to take care of the safety of myself, as well as other people, Jackson said.

As of Jan. 6, the county reported a positivity rate of 27.8%. The total number of confirmed cases in Carroll County as of Jan. 6 was 16,644, up by 541 cases when compared to Jan. 4, according to the county health department.

Afternoon Update Weekdays Updating you on the day's biggest news before the evening commute. >

Carlos Toro of Westminster was also waiting to receive his vaccine Friday. He encouraged other Carroll County residents to get vaccinated due to countys high transmission levels.

It needs to be taken seriously ... this is not a new thing, so we should know what to do and also help out those who cant make it, Toro said.

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Carroll Community College officials said the college monitors COVID-19 rates on a daily basis. In anticipation of a spike in cases following the end-of-year holiday break, the college limited the number of employees and students on campus, said Patricia Carroll, chief communications officer at the college.

The college is also is offering a higher percentage of online classes since the start of the pandemic, according to Carroll.

We continue to strongly encourage employees and students to get vaccinated and get their booster dose and we offered a $100 vaccine incentive in an effort to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19 on campus, Carroll said.

Pharmacist Kate Ledbetter prepares a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine during a Carroll County Health Department vaccine clinic at Carroll Community College in Westminster Friday, Jan. 7, 2022. (Dylan Slagle / Carroll County Times)

The surging omicron variant is making vaccination more important than ever, said Carroll County Deputy Health Officer Robert Wack.

People should definitely get vaccinated and definitely get their boosters. We are still hammering away on what were calling the triple play  vaccinations, masks and distancing. Those are still important and theyre even more important today than ever, Wack said.
Rep. Madison Cawthorne (R-N.C.)





A group of 11 North Carolina voters filed a legal challenge to disqualify Rep. Madison Cawthorn from running for a second term, arguing his involvement in a rally preceding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill constitutionally bars him from waging another campaign.

Lawyers for the 11 voters filed the suit to the State Board of Elections, contending that Cawthorn's comments in the speech shortly preceding the insurrection violate the 14th Amendment, which states in part that no person "who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress ... to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same."

The suit goes on to claim that the mob that stormed the Capitol last year in an unsuccessful attempt to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential race results "amounted to an insurrection."

"As set forth in our complaint, the publicly available evidence, including Representative Cawthorn's own statements and reports that he or his office coordinated with the January 6 organizers, establish reasonable suspicion that Representative Cawthorn aided the insurrection, thereby disqualifying him from federal office. We look forward to asking him about his involvement under oath," said Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech For People.

"Claiming to be fighting a battle for our Constitution, Cawthorn has engaged in blatant acts of insurrection," added John Wallace, another lawyer who filed the suit. "He must be held accountable for his actions which have threatened our democracy. Wisely, the Constitution provides a remedy for our protection. We seek here the imposition of that remedy."

Cawthorn, who is running in the newly created 13th Congressional District, is the youngest member of the House at 26 and has established himself as a conservative firebrand since his election in 2020. In a speech the morning of the riot, he accused Democrats of trying to silence conservatives and leveled unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in the 2020 cycle.

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"The Democrats, with all the fraud they have done in this election, the Republicans hiding and not fighting, they are trying to silence your voice," he said. "Make no mistake about it, they do not want you to be heard."

Cawthorn later voted against certifying Biden's presidential victory, but he also ultimately signed a letter with other Republican lawmakers congratulating him on the win.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Cawthorn swatted away the latest challenge, saying the suit will not distract the lawmaker.

"Over 245,000 patriots from Western North Carolina elected Congressman Cawthorn to serve them in Washington. A dozen activists who are comically misinterpreting and twisting the 14th amendment for political gain will not distract him from that service," said Luke Ball, the spokesperson for Cawthorn.

Conversations around the 14th Amendment, which was created after the end of the Civil War, have quietly built among Democrats over the prospect of using it to bar former President Trump to run for the White House again in 2024.

Trump remains a chief purveyor of election fraud claims and also spoke at the rally preceding the riot last year, telling the crowd "We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."
Alan Noble

Karen Swallow Prior

Nathan Carr

Anika Prather

OBU will host the Lamppost Literary Conference Friday, Feb. 25, on the Universitys campus in Shawnee. The event promotes the reading and teaching of the Great Books and is themed Great Books for All. Hosted by the Division of Language and Literature, the conference is designed for students, parents, teachers, home school educators, administrators of primarily Christian and classical schools, as well as home school networks, along with all readers of great books.

The event will feature guest speakers Dr. Karen Swallow Prior, Dr. Anika Prather and Fr. Nathan Carr. Dr. Alan Noble, associate professor of English, will deliver a lecture titled, Your Education is Not Your Own. Keynote addresses will be given by Prior and Prather, while Carr will participate in a panel discussion. Additionally, breakout sessions led by OBU faculty members will explore the value of teaching and reading the great books in todays diverse world and will discuss strategies for teaching specific texts or authors.

According to Dr. Brent Newsom, chair of the Division of Language and Literature and associate professor of English, high school literature teachers and students, from classical, Christian and public schools, as well as home school parents, will gain inspiration and practical tools at the conference to sustain their work as educators.

Newsom commented about how the sessions led by Noble, Carr, Prior and Prather will relate to the conference theme and emphasize the value of great literature for people from all backgrounds.

Our two keynote speakers, Dr. Karen Swallow Prior and Dr. Anika Prather, are among todays foremost advocates for the transformational value of encounters with great books, Newsom said. Priors book, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books and Prathers volume Living in the Constellation of the Canon: The Lived Experiences of African American Students Reading Great Books Literature, powerfully show how studying great books empowers readers to understand, express and respond to fundamental human concerns.

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In addition, Fr. Nathan Carr, headmaster of The Academy of Classical Christian Studies, will join Prior and Prather for a panel discussion, and OBUs own Dr. Alan Noble will also speak at the conference, drawing on his incisive new book You Are Not Your Own. It promises to be a day filled with insight and inspiration. These remarkable scholars call us to go deeper with literature and to make that depth accessible to a broader range of readers and students. Their work releases literature from the page and shows how it becomes embodied in the lives of readers who are formed by it.

Taking its name from the lamppost featured prominently in C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia, the Lamppost Literary Conference draws inspiration from writers like Lewis and his friend J.R.R. Tolkien and offers a Christian framework for the imaginative practices of reading great literature and writing creatively.

Newsom encourages all high school students to attend, as the conference gives them a great look at the quality education offered at OBU.

High school students are encouraged to attend the Lamppost Conference. The student track is free of charge and enables high schoolers to get a taste of life as an OBU student, while also receiving the benefit of the plenary sessions.

The schedule for the day begins with check-in starting at 8 a.m. followed by a welcome and introduction at 8:30 a.m. Nobles lecture, Your Education is Not Your Own, will kick off the keynote sessions for the day.

Following a brief break, three breakout sessions will begin at 10:15, led by three OBU professors. Dr. Jessica Rohr, assistant professor of English, will lead Narnia in the Writing Classroom. Dr. Edward English, visiting assistant professor of English, will lead Native American Literature in the Classical Context. Dr. Kaine Ezell, associate professor of English, will lead Teaching Huckleberry Finn.

The next breakout session will begin at 11:30 a.m. Newsom will lead a session on Frederick Douglass and the Great Tradition. Dr. Daniel Spillman, associate professor of history and director of the OBU Honors Program, will teach a session titled Teaching History with Plutarch. Dr. Lyda Wilbur, assistant professor of Spanish, will lead a session titled Spanish Language Literature and the Classical Classroom. Lunch and the keynote session with Dr. Karen Swallow Prior will follow at 12:45 p.m.

The next breakout session will commence at 2 p.m. Dr. Benjamin Myers, Crouch-Mathis Professor of Literature and professor of literature and English, will lead The Divine Comedy and Spiritual Formation. Dr. Sidney Watson, professor of English, will teach a session on W.E.B. DuBois and the Great Books. Dr. Charles Swadley, associate professor of English and Spanish, will lead Teaching Sophocles Oedipus.

A 3:30 p.m. panel on Diversity and Classical Education will include Prior, Prather and Carr. Following a meet and greet at 5 p.m., dinner and a keynote session featuring Prather will begin at 5:30 p.m. and will conclude the event.

A separate track will be available for high school students. This track will include the keynote sessions with Noble, Prior and Prather, as well as the afternoon panel discussion, but adds in a campus tour, a student panel, the chance to sit in on an OBU class and lunch in OBUs Cafe on the Hill.

Registration for adults is $35 and high school students are free. A maximum registration fee of $60 per family is available to make the conference affordable for families bringing multiple family members. To register, visit okbu.edu/lamppost. Those unable to attend the conference in person may register to stream the plenary and keynote sessions.

Karen Swallow Prior, Ph. D., is research professor of English and Christianity and culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. She is the author of Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me (T. S. Poetry Press, 2012), Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah MorePoet, Reformer, Abolitionist (Thomas Nelson, 2014) and On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books (Brazos, 2018).

She is co-editor of Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course in Contemporary Issues (Zondervan 2019) and has contributed to numerous other books. Her writing has appeared in Christianity Today, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, First Things, Vox, Relevant, Think Christian, The Gospel Coalition, Religion News Service, Books and Culture and other places. She is a founding member of The Pelican Project, a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, a senior fellow at the International Alliance for Christian Education, a senior fellow at the L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture and a former member of the Faith Advisory Council of the Humane Society of the United States.

Dr. Anika T. Prather earned a B.A. from Howard University in elementary education. She has also earned several graduate degrees in education from New York University and Howard University. She earned a masters degree in liberal arts from St. Johns College and a Ph.D. in English, theatre and literacy education from the University of Maryland. Her research focus is on building literacy with African American students through engagement in the books of the canon. She has self-published her dissertation, Living in the Constellation of the Canon: The Lived Experiences of African American Students Reading Great Books Literature.

She has served as a teacher, supervisor for student teachers, director of education and head of school. She currently teaches about the Black classical tradition in various universities as an online adjunct and is the founder of The Living Water School located in southern Maryland. The Living Water School is a unique Classical Christian school for independent learners, based on the educational philosophies of Classical Education and the Sudbury Model. She and her family reside in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. For more information, visit Prathers websites at www.drprather.com and www.thelwschool.org.

Fr. Nathan Carr is headmaster of The Academy of Classical Christian Studies in Oklahoma City. He leads The Academy by casting and safeguarding its vision and overseeing its overall operations, as well as shaping and developing The Academys culture, staff and curricular offerings. He began serving at Providence Hall in 2006, teaching secondary school math and science, functioning as upper school development director and then being named provost before becoming headmaster for The Academy.

Carrs introduction to and subsequent love of great books occurred in the Western Civ classroom at OBU. After graduation from the University of Central Oklahoma, he enrolled at Reformed Theological Seminary and earned a Master of Arts in religion. He has also completed post-graduate work at the University of Torontos Wycliffe College, is an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church and is vicar of St. James Episcopal Church of Oklahoma City.

Dr. O. Alan Noble is associate professor of English at OBU, editor-in-chief of Christ and Pop Culture and author of numerous articles and books. He has been teaching composition and literature for more a decade, beginning at Antelope Valley College in his hometown of Lancaster, California, then at Baylor University before coming to OBU.

Noble has contributed scholarship on Cormac McCarthy and has published a book with InterVarsity Press titled, Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age. His most recent book, You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World, was released in 2021. Noble is co-founder of the evangelical political organization Public Faith; a member of the Leadership Council of the AND Campaign; and a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Vox, Buzzfeed, First Things, Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition. He has given talks on literature, popular culture, technology, secularism and related issues at a number of colleges, churches and organizations. For more information on Dr. Noble and his publications, visit okbu.edu or his personal website oalannoble.com.

For more information about OBU, visit okbu.edu.

This article originally appeared on The Shawnee News-Star: OBU to host Lamppost Literary Conference on Great Books Feb. 25
Richard Leakey, Kenyan wildlife conservationist, places a rhino horn to be burned at the zoo in Dvur Kralove, Czech Republic, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017. Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, known for his fossil-finding and conservation work in his native Kenya, has died at 77. His death was announced Sunday, Jan. 2, 2022 by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta. The cause of death was not announced.

Richard Leakey, the world-famous paleontologist responsible for some of the most important fossil finds, died at the age of 77 this past Sunday.

Born in Kenya to equally famous parents  Louis and Mary Leakey  he never graduated from college but made his mark with his discovery of skulls and skeletons that helped date the origins of modern humans and defined the parameters of human evolution.

Mary Leakey had long before discovered footprints in rocky ground that proved that early man walked upright. Louis Leakey made his own equally impressive discoveries and mentored a host of young men and women who followed in his footsteps.

Richard Leakey first became interested himself in 1967 when he flew over Lake Turkana, a desolate, moon-like region of northern Kenya, and saw fossils that he was determined to uncover.

One of his best-known finds came in 1984, when he unearthed the 1.6 million-year-old skeleton of a creature called Homo Erectus, which he called Turkana Boy. Another skull, discovered 8 years later, extended our knowledge of that species several million years into the past.

But Leakey was more than just a paleoanthropologist. He became director of the Kenya National Museums, which in time featured a stunning display, one of the best in the world, of his finds and those of his colleagues and contemporaries.

And then he became the irascible head of the Kenya Wildlife Service, at a time when Kenyas elephants were threatened with extinction. Poachers, out to collect as much ivory as they could, were killing elephants right and left, and decimating what had once been huge herds. Leakey ordered his rangers to shoot on sight, collected all the poached ivory  and then in 1989 burned it in a huge bonfire consuming 12 tons of ivory, to demonstrate to the poachers and to the world  that there was no commercial advantage to collecting it.

I learned of the ivory bonfire at about the time I began going to Kenya with my wife in the early 1990s. I knew how Leakey antagonized some people, among them President Daniel arap Moi, who fired him from many of his positions. Enemies were also responsible for sabotaging the small plane he piloted, which crashed and led to him losing both of his legs below the knee.

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As a reporter for Life magazine, Stolley traveled all over the world. Here, he stands beside the anthropologist Richard Leakey in Kenya.

But Leakey refused to be daunted. He remained active in Kenyan reform politics, challenging the power of the president, and sounded enormously hopeful when I interviewed him twice, first in 1996 and then again the next year. "There are changes in the pipeline," he told me, and went on to say, "theres no such thing as never in this game."

Much to my surprise, and everyone elses, the president appointed him as head of the nations public service, figuring he was the only one strong enough and tough enough to deal with the corruption endemic in Kenyan society. I happened to be in Kenya at the time, and emailed him a quick note of congratulations, which, to my surprise, he found time to answer. Leakey did manage to start the necessary cleanup, and made a difference, though in time, the president changed his mind, and Leakey lost that job as well.

Leakey was a tireless promoter of the need for further fossil discoveries to enhance our knowledge of the contours of human evolution. I heard him lecture brilliantly in Cincinnati some 25 years ago, and a while after that I heard his wife Meave Leakey, speak at Miami University, when he became involved in national politics and she took over the mantle of paleontological science.

Leakey was known around the world. He was on the cover of Time magazine in 1977. He was the focus of a 1981 BBC program called "The Making of Mankind." He remained energetic despite assorted ailments, one of which entailed a kidney transplant from his brother, and continued to walk on prostheses for years after he lost his legs. In the process, he mentored a generation or more of Kenyans, and scientists around the world, in helping us understand so well the origins of our ancestors.

Allan M. Winkler is a history professor emeritus at Miami University.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Opinion: Fossil hunter Richard Leakey helped date origins of modern humans
Chelsea Dunn

Jackie Azis

Stacy Ostolazo served 12 years in the U.S. military, was honorably discharged and now lives in Sarasota County. He is the sole caregiver for his father, who has prostate cancer.

Ostolazo is currently unemployed. To make matters worse the state of Florida  at the insistence of Karen Rushing, the Sarasota County clerk of court  has suspended his drivers license. With the dearth of mass transit in Florida, being unable to drive greatly restricts the possibility of gainful employment. It also makes it harder for Ostolazo to attend to his fathers needs.

How did he lose his license?

In October 2017 Ostolazo was observed in public with an open container of an alcoholic beverage. He was not in a vehicle. He was on a street, and the offense had nothing to do with driving. Ostolazo was not charged with a crime; he was issued a civil citation. But when Ostolazo was unable to pay the $293 in court costs, fines and fees, Rushing notified the state to suspend his license.

If someone owes you money, you dont make it harder for them to get a job and pay off the debt. The punishment doesnt make much sense. What Rushing did was also outside her authority.

She is now the target of a legal action brought on behalf of Ostolazo by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and Southern Legal Counsel. The action before Floridas 2nd District Court of Appeal demands that Rushing justify her actions in suspending drivers licenses as a penalty for nonpayment of indicated amounts.

Florida law says a persons license can be suspended if they are convicted of violating a state criminal statute and do not pay the resulting monetary obligations. But nowhere does state law say that such a suspension can result from failure to pay monies owed for violation of a municipal or county ordinance, which is not a criminal offense.

Often such cases involve people experiencing homelessness. Of the 1,883 drivers license suspensions initiated in Sarasota County between July 2006 and March 2021 for ordinance violations, more than two-thirds were for minor infractions such as open containers, camping violations, violations of park rules, obstructing a thoroughfare while soliciting a charitable donation, etc.

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In 2019 a three-judge panel in Marion County Court reversed the suspension of the drivers license of a man who was homeless and was charged with violating a local ordinance that prohibited sleeping out of doors. The judges sided with the man challenging the suspension, Anthony Cummings, who was represented by the Southern Legal Counsel and the ACLU of Florida. They also reduced his costs.

The Marion County clerk of court responded by working with the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles to reverse some 1,600 drivers license suspensions. The highway safety department also amended Floridas Uniform Traffic Citation Manual to state that drivers license suspensions for violation of municipal and county ordinances may lack sufficient legal authority. It also sent letters to the clerks of courts around Florida, including Rushing.

Rushing responded by lifting only 21 of the 1,786 suspensions connected to violations of local ordinances active at that moment. And she continued to request license suspensions in such cases as they crossed her desk, despite the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles' notification.

Traditionally the practice of suspending a drivers license was used to promote highway safety, targeting motorists for driving under the influence, reckless driving, repeated speeding tickets and similar offenses.

More recently, however, suspensions have been used as a fundraising tactic. Licenses are suspended for nonpayment of monetary obligations stemming from violations that have nothing to do with driving, including a failure to appear in court, not paying child support and myriad other reasons.

License suspension for nonpayment of such fees primarily impacts people who are low-income. Black Americans, who are more likely than white Americans to be low-income, are also more likely to be affected. Florida suspends the licenses of its Black citizens at a rate 1.5 times higher than the general population.

A persons inability to pay has nothing to do with their ability to drive safely. A 2013 study by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators found that less than 1% of drivers suspended for non-driving reasons . . . are involved in a crash while their drivers license is suspended.

Meanwhile, various states have already enacted legislative reforms to tackle debt-based license suspension. For example, legislation signed into law in Texas in 2019 resulted in more than 600,000 people having their driving privileges restored.

Rushing and other Florida clerks of court must adhere to state law. They should also stop making it harder for low-income people to drive, qualify for jobs, work their way out of poverty and care for loved ones.

Chelsea Dunn is staff attorney at the Southern Legal Counsel. Jackie Azis is staff attorney of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota County residents are hurt by clerk's unfair suspension policy
PARIS (Reuters) - The main suspect in the November 2015 Islamist attack that killed 130 people in Paris has recovered from his COVID-19 infection, allowing the trial into the attacks to resume soon, French media reported on Monday.

Salah Abdeslam "is in a position (...) to attend the hearing by the criminal court" according to a medical expertise seen by French public television France Television, which said on its website that the accused will be able to attend the trial's next session on Tuesday.

Abdeslam, 31, is believed by prosecutors to be the only surviving member of the Islamic State cell that carried out the gun-and-bomb attacks on bars, restaurants, the Bataclan concert hall and the Stade de France stadium on Nov. 13, 2015.

The trial, which began in September in a specially designed courtroom at Paris's historical Palace of Justice, is one of the most complex - and most closely followed - in modern French history.

It was halted earlier this month due to Abdeslam's health status.

(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel)
By Deborah Kyvrikosaios

ATHENS (Reuters) - A marble fragment of the Parthenon temple has been returned to Athens from a museum in Sicily, a move officials hope will advance efforts to have the British Museum send back ancient sculptures from Greece's most renowned ancient landmark.

Athens' Acropolis Museum presented on Monday the "Fagan fragment", a 35-by-31-centimetre (12-by-14-inch) marble fragment showing the foot of the seated ancient Greek goddess Artemis brought home from the Antonio Salinas Archaeological Museum in Palermo.

"It is marvellous that Sicilian and Italian friends thought to bring it back where it was born," Acropolis Museum Director Nikolaos Stampolidis said of the fragment, once part of the temple's eastern frieze.

It is to be placed in the Parthenon Gallery - a glass-walled chamber with a view of the Parthenon that displays sculptures of the temple's 160-metre-(520-foot)-long frieze in the same position as they were on the original monument, with plaster copies replacing pieces that are now mainly in the British Museum.

"We hope that this first step taken by Sicily can encourage a similar decision in other countries," said Antonio Salinas Museum Director Caterina Greco.

Part of Sicily's cultural heritage agreement, which provides for transfers and exchanges of artefacts between museums, the Parthenon fragment will be loaned to Athens for four years with a renewal option for another four, but talks are underway between governments for the piece to remain permanently.

In return, the Acropolis Museum will loan Palermo a 5th century BC headless statue of the goddess Athena and an 8th century BC amphora from the Geometric period for four years.

The "Fagan fragment" is a part of a larger sculpture in the Acropolis Museum that is mostly a plaster copy, whose original pieces are in the British Museum.

The fragment was once part of the collection of the 19th century British consul general to Sicily, Robert Fagan, a diplomat and archaeologist, before it was purchased by the Royal University of Palermo in 1820 from his widow after his death. It is not clear how Fagan first acquired it.

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LONG DISPUTE OVER 'ELGIN MARBLES'

The "Fagan fragment" is the first piece of the sculptures of the Parthenon - Greece's most renowned 5th century BC monument - to return to Greece from a foreign museum.

Athens has campaigned to have the "Elgin Marbles", as they are often known - 75 metres of Parthenon frieze, 15 metopes and 17 sculptures - returned from the British Museum since they were removed by British diplomat Lord Elgin in the early 19th century when he was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire then ruling Greece.

The British Museum bought the marbles in 1816 and British officials say they had been acquired legally by Elgin, a claim Greece denies. The British Museum says there are no current discussions with the Greek government on their return.

"They are essentially providing the road map on how the permanent return of the Parthenon marbles to Athens could be organised," said Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni, referring to the loan by Italy.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has offered to loan significant artefacts to Britain in return for the marbles, after decades of rejected appeals.

"(This) paves the way for the British Museum to enter into serious discussions with the Greek authorities in order to find a solution that would be mutually acceptable," Mitsotakis said during the presentation.

When Mitsotakis visited Downing Street in November, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told him that the issue was one for the British Museum and not for his government.

"I did raise the issue when I visited," Mitsotakis said on Monday. "I felt encouraged by (Johnson's) statement...that the British government would not oppose a possible agreement that could be reached between (Greece) and the British Museum."

In March last year Johnson told a Greek newspaper that Britain was the legal owner of the marbles.

Recently European countries such as France, Spain and Germany have stepped up to return looted artefacts in their museums back to their African countries of origin.

"When there is a will, there is a way. Sooner or later this will happen," Mitsotakis said of the marbles returning from Britain.

(Reporting and writing by Deborah Kyvrikosaios; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, seen with Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Florida's surgeon general, addresses a question during a Jan. 4, 2022, Jacksonville news conference to discuss COVID-19 testing policy and monoclonal antibody treatment availability.

Promote proven policies

If youve ever played peekaboo with your little one, youve helped them work on object permanence. Your baby is learning that people and objects exist even when they cant see or hear them. Object permanence is one of the development milestones that your infant will learn during their first year of life.

On Jan. 4, Gov. Ron DeSantis gave a news conference where he stated, Live your life as you would have before COVID. He held his news conference at a podium with a sign stating, Early treatment saves lives, promoting monoclonal antibody treatment. This treatment costs taxpayers approximately $2,100, compared to $20 for a vaccine. Importantly, evidence shows that two of the three monoclonal antibodies do not work for the omicron variant. He and the surgeon general also discouraged testing after significant exposure without symptoms.

Meanwhile, more and more people are contracting the virus. Workforces are being affected with sick call-outs, especially critical in the health care industry.

Gov. DeSantis, we are not pre-COVID. You should be promoting simple, proven public health policies, such as wearing masks in crowded indoor spaces and getting three doses of a COVID vaccine. Encouraging people to ignore the issue does not make it go away. Didnt your parents play peekaboo with you?

David J. Burchfield, MD, Gainesville

More Letters to the Editor:

Get insured

The open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act ends Saturday. What this means is that the time to act is now. For those who qualify, there are still opportunities to get plans that might have been unaffordable in the past, because federal subsidies that were increased in 2021 have been extended through this year.

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Official figures show more than 2.6 million people in Florida have enrolled in plans on the federal health insurance exchange through Dec. 15.

Health insurance Navigators like myself are here to help consumers get through the application process. My organization, Suwannee River Area Health Education Center, has a team of Navigators standing by in our 15-county service area. We are funded from federal grants awarded to the statewide Florida Covering Kids and Families program.

We are holding in-person enrollment events Saturday, Jan. 15, at the Library Partnership in Gainesville from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; at the Civic Media Center, also in Gainesville, on Wednesday, Jan. 12; and in Live Oak on Tuesday, Jan. 11, from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Suwannee River Regional Library.

You can also contact us by calling 386-230-9400 or by emailing navigator@srahec.org.

Ronnie Lovler, Gainesville

Bring back the Whigs

We need more than two functioning parties in a system that isn't built around the amount of money spent on advertising. One alternative is so simple that a child could understand it. Maybe someday it could happen in our version of democracy. Why not?

Abraham Lincoln was a Whig when he tried to bring his values to the forming Republican Party. There had been two Whig presidents elected in its past, William Harrison and Zachary Taylor. I would still vote for a Whig representative when, in reality, my vote might be for the lesser of evil alternatives. That was not my choice this round of elections, but had there been an alternative, there's a chance I could have gone that way.

Whigs do still exist but don't get much publicity. With liberty and justice for all is still just a dream that some of us have.

Tom Prahl, Hawthorne

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.

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This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Letters to the Editor: Gov. DeSantis, we are not pre-COVID
Twenty-one of our neighbors in Anne Arundel County lost their lives last week to COVID-19. Thats an average of three per day. They are not numbers, they are human beings with families and friends. We are projected to continue losing our people at that rate or higher in the coming weeks.

I had hoped we were done with government mandates in our COVID response, but science is clear that masks slow the spread of this virus. Masks keep kids in school, workers on the job, people out of hospitals, and people alive. They dont save everyone, but they do save some.

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Our hospital leaders pleaded with the County Council to extend the mask mandate, citing studies that show more people mask when its required.

Of the 540 local businesses that responded to our recent questionnaire, nearly two-thirds said that they support a government mask mandate. They want to protect their employees and the economy that sustains them.

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Of the 1,752 county residents that sent testimony to our County Council for last Fridays special session, 75% supported extension of our mask mandate.

All of our neighboring counties have implemented temporary mask mandates to address this super surge, and Gov. Larry Hogan is once again saying, Wear the damn mask.

So what the hell is going on with the Anne Arundel County Republican Party? All three of its representatives on the seven-member County Council voted Friday to end our countys mask mandate, the day after their party sent an anti-mask fundraising appeal.

On Nov. 15, the same three council members voted against accepting $5.4 million in desperately needed state grants to continue our health departments COVID vaccination program, testing, and opioid intervention work.

Its a strange development. The Baltimore County Council also has a seven-person council with three Republicans on it, and they put together a six-person supermajority in favor of a mask mandate. Republican-led counties across the state are eagerly accepting state grants to combat this virus.

Im often told by keyboard activists from the far right that my commitment to slow the spread of this virus in our county will cost me the next election, a risk I take willingly. The unfortunate reality, however, is that its not just an online fringe that is challenging the long-standing consensus that public health and public safety are a fundamental obligation of government. Its also the party leadership, and even the candidates who are running campaigns to put themselves in this job.

Herb McMillan uses this newspaper as his vehicle to weave circular logic about COVID that would likely be banned by Twitter and Facebook, and the political machine behind Jessica Haire uses expensive television ads during Fox News.

The Haire campaign, chaired by her husband and transitory (2004) candidate for county executive, Dirk Haire, went so far as to run television ads in recent weeks suggesting that business closures early in the pandemic, the ones that were mandated by Gov. Hogan, were a failure of leadership.

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I wont shrink away from the debate over the obligation of government to protect its people, the long-standing bipartisan American tradition of government-driven vaccination programs and health orders, and even the specifics of every difficult decision that I, the governor, and my peers in neighboring counties have made during this pandemic in consultation with our health officers.

This countys Republican Party used to represent fiscal conservatism and a healthy disdain for excessive regulation. It has recently become so ferociously opposed to delivering the basic functions of local government that its leaders are no longer capable of managing the public institutions that they malign.

So as we enter this election year, we must show passion in defense of our local public servants and the work that they do on behalf of our residents. We must show the contrasts between the progress we are making and efforts to undermine that progress.

And we must never back down in defense of our right to protect the health and safety of our beloved neighbors.

Steuart Pittman, a Democrat from Davidsonville, is the Anne Arundel County executive.
Rep. Jim Jordan, one of former President Donald Trumps closest allies, said Sunday evening he would not cooperate with an interview request from the select panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, calling it an unprecedented and inappropriate demand.

Your attempt to pry into the deliberative process informing a Member about legislative matters before the House is an outrageous abuse of the Select Committees authority, the Ohio Republican said in a four-page letter to Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the panel chair.

Jordans decision follows a similar rejection by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), the only other lawmaker whose testimony the committee has requested so far. Although Thompson initially indicated the committee might pursue various tools to force recalcitrant lawmakers to comply, he has since suggested that the panel may have little leverage against lawmakers who dont cooperate voluntarily.

Instead, Thompson has indicated the panel will use the court of public opinion to reveal lawmakers conduct ahead of and on Jan. 6  via obtained messages and testimony  and leave it to them to explain why they didnt cooperate with investigators.

A select panel spokesperson said the committee would respond to Jordans letter more in the coming days and would consider appropriate next steps.

Mr. Jordan has admitted that he spoke directly to President Trump on January 6th and is thus a material witness, a panel spokesperson said. Mr. Jordans letter to the committee fails to address these facts.

Jordan was among the House Republicans who worked most closely with Trump in the run-up to the Jan. 6 session of Congress meant to finalize the 2020 presidential election results. He also has acknowledged speaking with Trump at least once after rioters had overtaken the Capitol.

The panel sent a letter to Jordan on Dec. 22 seeking an interview with him about his conversations with Trump on Jan. 6, communications with Trumps allies about actions and strategies on Jan. 6, and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The committee recently revealed a text message from Jordan to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Jan. 5 in which he forwarded a strategy for blocking Joe Bidens election. According to Jordan, he was passing along a plan sent to him by a former Pentagon inspector general. His aides have declined to say whether he supported that strategy or why he decided to send it to Meadows.

Jordan has frequently insisted he has nothing to hide when asked if he would cooperate with the Jan. 6 select committee, and he has expressed uncertainty about whether he had one or multiple conversations with Trump on Jan. 6  both before and after the riot.
OPINION: And just like that, the new Sex and the City reboot fumbles its attempt to add color to its cast.

Warning: This post contains spoilers, so if you have not watched the first six episodes of And Just Like That, please go do that first and then come back.

Let me start this off by saying I was a huge fan of the original Sex and the City series.

I started watching the show during its original run on HBO. I own all the box sets. Ive seen both movies. As a writer, I imagined myself some sort of Black Carrie Bradshaw*, but without all the neuroticism, the fancy New York apartment and the over-the-top wardrobe.

*(Carrie Bradshaw could never. As a Black woman, I realize she could never fill my shoes, and I have a pretty extensive collection of Chucks that I dont keep in my oven. The fact is, as a Black woman, I am much stronger than Carrie ever will be, but thats a topic for a different essay. Moving on.)

When I heard there was going to be a reboot, I was exciteduntil I learned that Kim Cattrall wouldnt be returning (more on that later), but I was still willing to give it a go out ofloyalty I guess?

So fine. We catch up with the ladies over 17 years and an entire social justice movement for racial equality after the final episode of the original show. Miranda is no longer a redhead, is still married to Steve, and allows her now teenage son Brady to have sleepovers with his girlfriendwhich come complete with noisy sex that Miranda has to hear each night since, for whatever inexplicable reason, their bedrooms share a wall. Charlotte is still the most tightly wound member of the group, still married to Harry and doing the active mothering thing with their two daughters, Lily and Rose. Carrie still dresses like someone who is completely unaware of how filthy the streets of New York City really are as she drags frothy trains behind her through Manhattan. But shes married to Big now, and they live in a fabulous penthouse apartment with all their rich people things, and I think we are supposed to believe that Carrie finally got her happily ever after.

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The ladies are a couple of decades older, which they remind us about over and over againalmost to the point of beating us over the head with itbut they are still the same friend group minus Samantha.

And just like that, the first disappointing error from the new reboot is shoved in our faces, as the story we are told for Samanthas absence is such a not-Samantha story as in Samantha would never do that and it doesnt even match her personality. Getting dumped by Carrie as her publicist would not cause Samanthawho was already 10 years older than the rest of the girls in the group and the obviously most confident member of the quartetto flee to London, abandoning her New York life and all her clients and clout because Carrie (seriously, because of Carrie?!?!) didnt want her as a publicist anymore.

The Samantha storyline should have been the signal that everything else in this reboot would be handled just as clumsily, including the introduction of four new charactersall women of colorwho seem to only exist through the lens of their white counterparts.

First is the beautiful Nicole Ari Parker, who is introduced to us by Charlotte as Lisa Todd Wexley or L.T. Dub, as she is known in the parent circles at the school their children attend together. Lisa is apparently that girl, and Charlotte is desperate for her friendship and approval, but we are never really given a reason why. Who is Lisa? Whats her story? Why is she so important to Charlotte? Six episodes in, Im still not even clear on what exactly Lisa does, but at a dinner with her and some of her friends, Charlotte is able to impress all the Blacks with her extensive knowledge of Black art and Black artists, so I guess thats cool, right?

Its even more annoying when we are introduced to Dr. Nya Wallace (played by Karen Pittman), a law professor at Columbia University who is teaching a class Miranda is enrolled in for her Master of Human Rights degree. See, as Miranda clumsily explains to Wallace (who is completely uninterestedobviously so) as they wait in the same subway station, she was at home watching television when the Muslim ban came down, and she saw all those lawyers going to JFK to help, and she couldnt just not do anything. Each of the first few scenes with Miranda and her Black heavily features Mirandas white savior complex, because why introduce Black characters into this white show if you arent going to beat white people everyone over the head with this message?

Both Parker and Pittman are capable of carrying their own, separate storylines, so while its refreshing to see color on the Sex and the City screen, its disappointing that their visibility only matters within the universe of the white characters they are propping up.

Karen Pitman and Cynthia Nixon in a scene from Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That (Credit: screenshot/HBO Max)

And theres more of the same when we meet Che Diazas played by nonbinary Mexican actor Sara Ramirez who is smoking hot in this roleCarries boss on a podcast shes on to talk about sex and sexuality. Although there are some interesting and *cough* smoldering scenes with Ramirez down the line, we still only see Che when they are interacting with the white people on the show.

Full disclosure: I have been a huge Sarita Choudhury fan ever since she starred opposite Denzel Washington in Mississippi Masala (a great film if you havent seen it. Please find it and watch it). Every time I see her in something, I get so excited, and when I heard she was going to be in the reboot, I was happy.

She plays Seema Patel, a sexy and powerful Manhattan real estate broker who helps Carrie sell the penthouse she shared with Big and buy a new home after his death. Her scenes are again limited to her interactions with Carrie, and you just know there is so much more to her story that needsand deserves to be toldoutside of her relationship with the whiny brat main character of the show.

And speaking of Big, Im not even going to get into the dumb way Carrie became a widow on the show. Im just going to say, as a fan of the original series, I wanted to like this. Instead, I was annoyed from the very first episode. I am going to keep watching because there is some part of me that hopes it gets better, but after the weak and inexcusable way they wrote off Willie Garsons character after he died, I dont know how much hope there is.

Listen. We want to see ourselves reflected in the art we consume. I love Sex and the City, but there was a part of me that always knew the experiences reflected on the show were those of white women in their 30s and 40s, living a New York City life that made it possible for them to be completely oblivious that there were equally successful Black women walking around that city having similar experiences and conversations. I could never fully see myself in the show because we werent there.

Now that we are there, its time to write us into the story in a way that reflects us for us and not for the consumption of people who are not us.

Representation matters, but not like this.

Monique Judge

Monique Judge is a storyteller, content creator and writer living in Los Angeles. She is a word nerd who is a fan of the Oxford comma, spends way too much time on Twitter, and has more graphic t-shirts than you. Follow her on Twitter @thejournalista or check her out at moniquejudge.com.

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The post Representation matters, but not like this appeared first on TheGrio.
All visitors to nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Rhode Island must either be vaccinated or provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test, the office of Gov. Dan McKee announced on Monday.

Additionally, all visitors will be required to wear masks, regardless of their vaccination status.

The mandate, issued with the Rhode Island Department of Health, will go into effect immediately.

Previously, Rhode Island's nursing home guidelines had stated that visitors only needed to wear masks if they had not been vaccinated.

Staffing crisis: RI Health Dept. opens door for COVID-infected staff to work at hospitals, nursing homes

As COVID-19 case surge: Code triage' declared at Eleanor Slater Hospital as COVID cases mount

The emergency rule allows facilities to keep a list of visitors who have already provided proof that they are vaccinated, so that repeat visitors don't have to show their vaccine cards again and again.

Negative COVID test option

Those who opt to provide proof of a negative test instead "must either have a negative antigen (rapid) test result from within the previous 48 hours, or a negative PCR test result from within the previous 72 hours," a news release from McKee's office stated.

Previously: Nursing homes, already facing staffing crisis, grapple with vaccine deadline

Exemptions: Federal judge refuses to block Rhode Island COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health-care staff

The new policy "will help alleviate pressure" on nursing homes and assisted living facilities "and keep residents, staff and visitors safe," McKee said in a statement.

McKee and Director of Health Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott both alluded to the fact that Rhode Island is once again experiencing a surge of COVID cases  which could peak this week, according to the state's models.

"If you have a loved one in a nursing home or assisted living facility, the best way to visit safely with that person is to get vaccinated," Alexander-Scott was quoted as saying. "However, to ensure that residents can still see their loved ones, testing is also an option.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI nursing home mandate requires proof of COVID vaccination or test
KENOSHA -- In the end, it was like Dominick Black gave 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse some beer, not an AR-15-style rifle later used to kill two people at protests in Kenosha.

On Monday, Black, 20, pleaded no contest Monday to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a non-criminal ordinance violation. He also agreed to pay $2,032.50 in fines and costs.

The pleas were made through Black's attorney. Two felony counts of providing a firearm to a minor, resulting in death, were dismissed.

Dominick Black looks at a photograph held by Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger, where he along with Kyle Rittenhouse and a group of others posed on Aug. 25, 2020, during Kyle Rittenhouse's trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis, on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year.

The brief hearing provided an end note to part one of the Rittenhouse story that drew intense national media attention in 2020. He was depicted, on one hand, as an out-of-state conservative vigilante, and by supporters as a community-minded volunteer who defended himself while exercising Second Amendment rights.

A jury acquitted Rittenhouse, 18, of all counts during a two-week trial in November. He has since given numerous interviews on conservative news outlets and been a guest speaker at conservative political events.

He and Black became friends after Black began dating Rittenhouse's older sister. Rittenhouse, two sisters and their mother lived in Antioch, Illinois, just over the border.

In May 2020, on a trip up north, Black bought Rittenhouse a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 rifle at a Ladysmith hardware store. Rittenhouse, then 17, was too young to legally purchase the weapon at the time.

The gun was kept at Black's stepfather's house in Kenosha until the friends decided to go downtown on the night of Aug. 25, 2020 to help protect a car dealership. The business had sustained arson and vandalism during two prior nights of the protesting and rioting following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

A couple months after Rittenhouse was charged, prosecutors hit Black with the two felonies, one for each of the people Rittenhouse fatally shot -- Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber. Prosecutors accused Black of providing the gun on Aug. 25, when both friends went armed downtown.

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Black, testifying for the state at Rittenhouse's trial, said the gun had been locked in his stepfather's safe until the violence broke out in Kenosha on Aug. 23. Then, Black said, his stepfather moved them to the basement, where Rittenhouse picked it up and Black didn't try to stop him from bringing it downtown.

From day one, Rittenhouse's lawyers had argued that one of the counts against him -- possessing a firearm as a minor -- should be dismissed based on their reading of what they called an exception in the state law. Black's lawyer later made the same argument.

Right before the Rittenhouse case went to the jury, Judge Bruce Schroeder agreed with the defense the statute was too confusing, and threw out the possession charge.

At Monday's brief plea hearing, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger said while his office still disagrees with that interpretation, he knows that's Schroeder's view and might just dismiss Black's case entirely.

That and the fact that Rittenhouse was also acquitted of the other charges, Binger said, made it appropriate to resolve the case, instead of pressing the felonies prosecution. Binger did not respond to questions from a reporter after the hearing.

Black's attorney, Anthony Cotton, of Waukesha, said he has no indication that federal authorities might charge his client with a straw-purchase. He said Black now works full-time for a fencing contractor and thought Rittenhouse was rightly acquitted.

Cotton said until Monday's hearing, Black was under an order to have no contact with Rittenhouse and didn't think the two had spoken since right after the Aug. 25, 2020 shootings.

Contact Bruce Vielmetti at (414) 224-2187 or bvielmetti@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ProofHearsay.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Rittenhouse friend accepts citation over providing AR-15-style rifle
PECATONICA  Stanley Campbell recalled the time he was serving in a soup kitchen in a Lutheran Church. He was standing between a Presbyterian and a Catholic who were engaged in a conversation about the variety of church services.

Stanley Campbell, director of Rockford Urban Ministries, speaks about his 37 years with RUM at First Congregational United Church of Christ on Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022, in Pecatonica.

He said a man waiting patiently in line finally told them, "'I don't care how you serve communion, just serve the soup.'

"That was such great theology," Campbell said. "That is what we are really meant to do here. So often we get caught up in the rigmarole of doing worship, when in reality the worship comes in helping those in need."

Campbell, 71, the longtime executive director of Rockford Urban Ministries and community peace activist, shared the story Sunday during his sermon at First Congregational United Methodist Church of Christ in Pecatonica.

More: His activism spans decades. After being hit by a van in December, he's determined to march again

Rockford Urban Ministries is an outreach of the United Methodist Church and a longtime champion of social justice causes. The ministry also founded the Rockford Interfaith Council.

Campbell was hired in 1985 to become the first non-clergy lay person to head the United Methodist program. His message Sunday before 16 people who braved the elements to come listen focused on key lessons he's learned from the helm of RUM for the past 37 years.

"Churches are the basic foundation for any community doing good," he said. "So when a church gets involved in a social justice issue  no matter how controversial whether it's civil rights, affordable housing or just helping the poor  then that issue takes on strength.

"Anytime a church makes either a pronouncement or gets involved in some issue within the community, it can make a big difference."

Sometimes individuals can do it, too.

Campbell lives in an apartment that overlooks the operations of Miss Carly's, a nonprofit organization in Rockford that serves free meals.

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More: SwedishAmerican Hospital honors Miss Carly's

"And yes, many people in that neighborhood don't like the fact that people (those with addictions, the homeless, the mentally unstable and others) are being attracted to that building," he said.

Campbell said he has watched as volunteers dole out food and clothing to those in need on a regular basis. He called them a blessing to the community.

Campbell said one of the first things he learned early on when tackling any issue was to pray about it.

"Say a prayer and say it as loudly and clearly and with as many people as possible," he said. "Sometimes you can hear people join in in that prayer. And a good organizer will usually keep track of those folks who join in. ... These are the people who have been called upon to help with the problem."

Campbell suffered a broken pelvis after being struck by a vehicle in late 2020 near the Auburn and Main streets round-a-bout. He said he has made about a 75% recovery.

"I used to walk three miles a day," he said. "Now, I do about a mile."

While the Rev. Violet Johnicker of Brooke Road United Methodist Church has taken on some of Campbell's duties since becoming RUM's new associate director, Campbell said he has no plans on quitting being a community activist.

"I'll keep working on social justice until I die," he said.

Chris Green: cgreen@rrstar.com; @chrisfgreen

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Peace activist Stanley Campbell calls on churches help those in need
SOMERSET  It wont be long before youll be able to grab a hot Starbucks coffee and a warm Philly style cheese steak sandwich in one fell swoop.

And by June you should be able to add freshly made burritos and other Mexican menu items to the mix by walking a few extra yards.

Jersey Mikes Subs franchisee Bob Quinlan is shooting for a March opening date for his Somerset sandwich shop inside a commercial building that sits directly below Fairfield Inn & Suites.

Fellow franchise owner Dustin DeBoer is hopeful that his and his partners first Pancheros Mexican Grill endeavor will open for business in the same building sometime in June.

The year-old Route 6 hotel and four-unit commercial building are located within what has become known as Fairfield Commons. The 14-plus-acre property sits across the street from a plaza containing The Home Depot Somerset store.

'Not just another chain': Caribbean-style takeout open for business in Fall River

For the past year the sole tenant in the single-story commercial building has been a Starbucks coffeehouse, which since opening has operated on a strictly drive-through-lane basis.

That suits Quinlan just fine.

He recounted how when he and his wife had some time to kill before catching a flight at Los Angeles International Airport they drove to nearby El Segundo to stop off at a Jersey Mikes Subs, which happens to sit not far from a Starbucks.

Quinlan says he was impressed.

It was one of the busiest (Jersey Mikes) Ive seen, he said.

Notwithstanding the obvious, inherent stylistic disparities, Quinlan says as far as hes concerned Jersey Mikes and Starbucks compliment each other when it comes to generating sales.

An image from the website of Pancheros Mexican Grill

A new Mexican food chain entry

DeBour, 30, says the Pancheros Mexican Grill at Fairfield Commons is the first time hes been involved as a partner in a franchise deal.

The Connecticut native and Rhode Island resident, however, is no stranger to Somerset.

His franchise partners, Douglas Stack and Kevin OShea, own the nearly adjacent Sonic fast-food restaurant on Route 6, which opened in 2016, as well as another one in Warwick, Rhode Island.

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DeBour says he works for Stack and OShea as operations manager at both those Sonics.

Its doing very well, he said of the Somerset Sonic.

Pancheros Mexican Grill in Somerset, DeBour noted, will only be the third so far in New England for the Iowa City restaurant chain. The others are located in two towns in Connecticut.

Somerset and Fall River currently each have an independently owned Mexican eatery called Fiesta Mexican Restaurant.

Fall River also has two Taco Bell restaurants and a site where a Chipotle Mexican Grill is now under construction. And a Taco Bell on Route 6 in Swansea is in the planning stages, according to the towns planning board.

But DeBour said hes convinced his Pancheros will fare well against any Mexican-style, fast-food chain.

I love Chipotle, he said, but were better.

Franchisee Bob Quinlan is opening a Jersey Mike's Subs shop in Fairfield Commons on Route 6 in Somerset.

Jersey Mikes coming to Somerset

Quinlan, 58, has been a Jersey Mikes Subs franchisee since December 2017 when he opened his first restaurant in Hanover.

Less than a year later he opened a second store in Fall River inside the busy SouthCoast Marketplace shopping center.

Quinlan describes the Fall River Jersey Mikes, now managed by Jennifer and Roger West  who he says also run his and his partners Seekonk sub shop  as a great performer.

End of an era: Venus de Milo owner says the clock has run out on take-out business

After opening the Hanover and Fall River stores by himself, Quinlan said it quickly became apparent that he would need some help if he was going to expand his portfolio.

He says he was fortunate to enlist Al Graziano as his partner. The two of them, he said, not including Somerset have opened seven Jersey Mikes in locations including Quincy, Stoughton and Swampscott.

Quinlan says the 30-year-old Graziano previously worked for Jersey Mikes as a national trainer and helped him get his Hanover restaurant off the ground.

It was his last tour of duty, he said of Graziano, who left the company to become an independent consultant before deciding to go into business with Quinlan as a full-time franchisee partner.

Quinlan says the two of them decided to establish a presence in Somerset after they happened to drive by the Fairfield Commons property.

The hotel is a draw for sure, but its not the main factor. Its the traffic, he said, adding that there are a lot of hungry contractors at Home Depot who like sandwiches.

One of the older Jersey Mike's in the region opened in 2002 on Route 44 in Raynham.

Jersey Mikes Subs, on its website, says it charges a franchise fee of $18,500. Quinlan says the total investment for his Somerset restaurant  including construction build-out, inventory and employee training  will amount to $500,000.

He said he and Graziano have secured a loan with Rockland Trust Bank, which Quinlan calls a great partner.

Quinlan said he expects to hire between 15 and 25 employees, half of whom will be full-time and half part-time. The hourly starting wage, he said, is $15.

The 1,500-square-foot space inside 554 GAR Highway, he said, will have 20 customer seats at booths and a counter.

Quinlan said he makes a point of trying to buy produce from local businesses, which includes vegetables from Fall River-based Nasiff Fruit Company. His meats, however, come by way of foodservice provider Sysco.

Quinlan says one thing that sets Jersey Mikes apart from the pack of other national sub shop chains is the fact that all meats and cheeses are freshly sliced per each order.

He said employees in the morning also slice onions, lettuce and tomatoes and that four varieties of bread are baked on premises each day.

Quinlan says catering is a significant part of his business with subs sold by the box and bag.

Customers who dont want bread have the option of ordering a Sub in a Tub with ingredients minus sandwich rolls placed in a container.

The road to owning becoming a franchisee

Quinlan said he became a Jersey Subs franchisee a few years after selling a printing company he owned in Woburn.

He says the first time he ate in one of the restaurants was when he and his wife, who is originally from New Jersey, were visiting the Jersey Shore, not far from where Jersey Mikes got its start.

I liked the product and atmosphere, he said.

Quinlan says it hasnt been easy in recent months to find enough job candidates: Weve definitely felt the pressure, he said, referring to a common challenge facing many employers who rely on entry level workers.

'A complete nightmare': Kitchen staff shortage hurting restaurants in the SouthCoast

But even before the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic, Quinlan said he found out early in his career as a sandwich shop franchisee just how daunting employee turnover can be.

At the end of my first year in Hanover I sent out 125 W-2 (tax) forms, he said by way of explanation.

Quinlan says thats why hes always got his eyes peeled for young talent.

If I see a kid in line (waiting to order) who seems to have a little bit of energy, Ill say: How would you like to have an interview?

Charles Winokoor may be reached at cwinokoor@heraldnews.com. Support local journalism and subscribe to The Herald News today.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Pancheros Mexican Grill and Jersey Mike's Subs to share Somerset site
SALEM, MA This week's bitterly cold temperatures are adding yet another layer to the challenge of keeping school classrooms open and as safe as possible during the current omicron surges.

As students returned full-time to the classrooms last spring and again in the fall, the recommendation that bus and classroom windows remain open, and students eat lunch outside as much as possible, were relatively easy to embrace at all levels. But as the winter approached, and temperatures fell, the protocols became more and more uncomfortable just as the need for them  specifically rising coronavirus cases and community spread  became greater.

"During the colder days and months, we are encouraging students to have the option  when possible  of eating outside and suggesting that classrooms keep windows open as much as reasonably possible," Superintendent Steve Zrike wrote in his weekly newsletter to families last week. "It is not our intention to create conditions where it is impossible for students to learn due to the cold, but rather to enhance airflow by cracking open a window."

Zrike also said last week that some school rules prohibiting the wearing of hats and hoods in classrooms were being relaxed because those classrooms will be a little more chilly than normal for the next month or two.

But there is a difference between opening a window on a brisk day and opening one with wind chills expected to remain below zero as is forecast for Tuesday.

In Boston, the decision was made on Monday to cancel school outright because of the arctic blast. But in the districts that choose to press on rather than call off classes for the second time in three school days after Friday's storm, the intense cold will result in the judicious enforcement of the COVID protocols.



Salem Public Schools Director of Public Relations Liz Polay-Wettengel told Patch on Monday that while open windows are advised "as much as reasonably possible" at least for one day on Tuesday that will not be the case.

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"We have HEPA filters in each classroom to help circulate the air to aid the ventilation in our schools," she told Patch. "We trust our school leaders and staff will appropriately balance enhancing ventilation with shielding students from the winter elements, especially on days where we have frigid forecasts like (Tuesday)."

She added that outdoor lunches  which are encouraged most school days will not be allowed on Tuesday. She said students have that option when it is 20 degrees or warmer.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)

This article originally appeared on the Salem Patch
Hey, neighbors! It's me again, Debora Whitehead, your host of the Shirley-Mastic Daily.

First, today's weather:

Colder with periods of sun. High: 30, low: 15.

Here are the top stories in Shirley-Mastic today:

A 39-year-old woman died after her car went off the Long Island Expressway in Medford early Sunday morning, Suffolk police said. Police did not release her Identification. After the crash, she was transported to Long Island Community Hospital where she was pronounced dead. (Patch)

St. Joseph's College Cheerleader's team trip to Florida is canceled for the second time. Last October, with the spread of the virus, the trip to attend a national dance and cheerleading competition was canceled and reschedule for Jan. 3. Now with the virus spreading furiously, officials at the Patchogue school told the team of 14 young women that the trip to Florida was canceled again due to COVID-19 concerns. (Newsday/Subscription Required) Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone announced the opening of three new COVID-19 testing sites. Tests are free of charge. It will be on a first come, first served basis. Click on the link for locations. (TBRnews) Winter Long Island Restaurant returns! From Jan. 23  30, Long Islanders will have eight days of food fun! Restaurants will offer special deals. Click here to see the list of restaurants participating in the event. (Greater LI)

Today's Shirley-Mastic Daily is brought to you in part by Newrez, a leading nationwide mortgage lender. Make a smart move for your future and refinance with Newrez today. Call 844-979-1707 to connect with a Newrez loan officer. Newrez, LLC (NMLS #3013)

Today in Shirley-Mastic:

Small Business Mentoring via Zoom at MMS Library. (6 p.m.)

From my notebook:

Suffolk County History: "Upcoming Exhibit: Beyond the Gates: Long Island's Grand Estates of Yesteryear. Opening Reception with light refreshments on Saturday, Jan. 29. From the Gilded Age to Great Gatsby's 1920s, recognizable names like." (Instagram)

Girl Scouts of Suffolk County: "Our girls are having a blast with the beautiful snow outside! From snow angels, making snow cones, to building snowmen and more, our girls are truly creative!" (Instagram)

Girl Scouts of Suffolk County: "Congratulations to our Gold Award Girl Scout, Lilah! Lilah is teaching text-based coding to middle school girls to help them see the possibilities in STEM based careers." (Instagram)

Nextdoor Neighbor, North Shirley: "Anyone know someone who fixes TV's and is local? - Thanks." (Nextdoor)

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More from our sponsors  thanks for supporting local news!

Events:

FREE WEBINAR | Michelangelo and the Terrible Pope Presented by Dr. Rocky Ruggiero. (Jan. 11)

NCNW LONG ISLAND CROSS COUNTY SECTION General Membership Meeting. (Jan. 22)

Add your event

Announcements:

Whitmore's End-Year Media Blitz Features LI's Hospitality Clients (Details)

Stressed out caring for a loved one with memory issues? (Details)

Add your announcement

Loving the Shirley-Mastic Daily? Here are all the ways you can get more involved:

Send a friend or neighbor this link so they can subscribe

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Send me a news tip or suggestion at shirley-mastic@patch.com

Now you're in the loop and ready to head out the door on this Monday. I'll be back in your inbox tomorrow morning with another update!

 Debora Whitehead





This article originally appeared on the Shirley-Mastic Patch
The great and barrier-breaking actor Sidney Poitier (1927 - 2022) died just a few days ago. While he was a well-known and highly respected actor and civil rights activist, he was also known as a trusted friend and business partner to John J.P. Newton, Sr. (1919 - 1990), a businessman, family man, and community servant who loved and helped Belmont DeVilliers grow and succeed.

Mr. Newton owned the Sugar Bowl Restaurants and the Bunny Club in Belmont DeVilliers, and was a one-time president of the Belmont DeVilliers Business Association.

Poitier, 61, during an interview in Los Angeles on March 14, 1988, where he talked about his 10-year absence from film acting. "At 50," he said, "I decided to see what life was really like outside of the narrow corridor of work. It was wonderful."

Newton and Poitier met in New York in the 1940s where Newton was a police officer and a club manager. Poitier was a budding actor and entrepreneur and the two men joined together in the restaurant business in New York. In an interview in 1980 with the Pensacola News Journal (PNJ, November 30, 1980), Newton said he was told by his friends that Sidney taught me how to enjoy life and I taught him how to make money.

Discovery: Belmont-DeVilliers history museum opening to celebrate local African-American culture

Kukua Institute: Pensacola nonprofit plans to illuminate local Black history

Newton returned to Pensacola in the 1950s and, as he and Poitier had remained friends, the actor visited him here. Chris Buskey, a local barber and realtor, grew up on the Blocks and said it was commonplace to see Poitier in the neighborhood. I was 12 year-old shoe shine boy and runner for Mr. Hughes Lee, the barber, said Buskey. One day in 1978, he was going to get a burger from Blue Dot and saw Mr. Newton and another man standing on the corner in front of The Bunny Club. That man turned out to be Sidney Poitier. I said thats the man from the TV. 

Newton introduced him to Sidney Poitier. Thats one day Ill never forget, said Buskey.

Portrait of Robin Reshard, founder of Pensacola Network in Pensacola, Florida on Friday, January 27, 2017. #weareonenation

I choose to believe that the spirits of these two gentle men  Newton and Poitier  have reconnected on a different street now, that their lives and work served a purpose that enriched the human, cultural, and economic lives of many in the Belmont DeVilliers neighborhood, Pensacola, and across the world.

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Their individual histories may unveil different stories and reveal many narratives. Now, their collective story as friends is reunited in history. And Belmont DeVilliers is better for it.

Robin Reshard is executive director of the Kukua Institute and Ezra Gerry Museum and Research Center and founder of the Pensacola Network.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Sidney Poitier enriched Pensacola's Belmont DeVilliers community
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is renewing a push for more funding for police, tougher penalties for certain criminal offenders and more information about sentences handed down by judges.

There is nothing more important than addressing the violent crime crisis in our state, the Republican governor said Monday during a State House news conference.

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Lawmakers in the Democrat-dominated legislature have shown little interest in the Republican governors initiatives, though there are signs that they may give at least some of the measures more consideration when they return to Annapolis Wednesday for their annual legislative session.

Hogan has regularly blasted Democratic leaders  particularly those in Baltimore  for being ineffective at preventing violent crime. Baltimore City experienced 337 homicides last year, the continuation of a jump in violence that dates back to 2015. More than 700 people were shot and survived last year.

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Hogan said that there are no more excuses for lawmakers not to support his initiatives.

The time for action is now, Hogan said.

The Democratic leaders of the General Assembly, House of Delegates Speaker Adrienne A. Jones and Senate President Bill Ferguson, did not respond immediately to the governors proposals.

Central to Hogans approach to fighting crime is his Re-Fund the Police Initiative  which subverts the de-fund the police calls from some activists, who have called for slashing money spent on police or abolishing departments altogether.

Hogan said the idea of cutting funding for police officers is dangerous, and that police officers are underfunded and under attack.

You could not possibly have a worse time for anyone to call for defunding the police or for cutting funding for public safety, Hogan said.

Police departments are largely funded by local governments, and few have cut police funding significantly in response to activist demands. Baltimore City increased police spending in its current budget.

Hogans original Re-Fund the Police plan, announced last October, would increase state funding for local police and sheriffs departments, add money for raises and bonuses at state police agencies, spend money on body cameras and training for police officers, match Metro Crime Stoppers rewards and spend more on neighborhood safety grants.

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Hogan plans to expand his proposal to total almost $500 million to be spent over three years. The biggest piece would boost salaries, bonuses and scholarships for state police agencies, while Hogans plan also would increase state aid for local police and pay for Maryland State Police barracks improvements and a new tactical services building.

Finally, Hogan would add money for victim services programs and neighborhood safety grants.

[ Bashing Baltimore and the radical left, Gov. Hogan pitches $150 million boost in Maryland public safety spending ]

The spending plans would be included in the governors proposed budget for the state fiscal year that starts July 1, which is subject to scrutiny by state lawmakers. He also plans to introduce a bill to require future governors to maintain the higher level of state aid to local police and sheriffs.

When Hogan first unveiled Re-Fund the Police in the fall, Democratic leaders in the legislature said they would not rule out some increases in police funding. They did, however, push back against the governors aggressive stance.

The House stands ready to have an open and honest conversation about improving policing and reducing crime in the state once there are real ideas  not rhetoric, Jones said at the time.

The other two components of Hogans crime plan have been reviewed and rejected by state lawmakers in past years: the Violent Firearms Offender Act, which increases some sentences for those who use guns during crimes, and the Judicial Transparency Act, which would require a public report each year on judges sentences.

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The state Senate has incorporated part of the firearms offender bill in other legislation it has passed in recent years, but the House of Delegates has rejected it.

The bill requiring reports on sentencing also has gone nowhere in past years, though Jones created a House of Delegates work group to look at the issue, signaling that there may be room for compromise. The work group is expected to announce its recommendations at the end of this month.

Because the sentences judges impose are an important part of the criminal justice system, we must take a closer look at how information about sentencing is provided to the public, said Del. Luke Clippinger, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in a statement when the work group was formed in December

Clippinger, a Baltimore Democrat who works as a prosecutor, is chairing the bipartisan work group.

In an interview last week, Clippinger said his committee will look at sentencing issues to see whether changes could result in deterring crime. But he noted that some mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes were expanded in 2018, adding: I dont know that theres been an appreciable change in gun crime since we did that.

Hogan also said he hoped Baltimore Citys elected officials would support his proposals, though he said he hasnt reached out to City Council members. Hogan said he hoped to get a meeting with Mayor Brandon Scott back on the schedule after it was canceled when the governor contracted COVID-19 in December.

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Separate from his proposals to the General Assembly, Hogan said the states Division of Parole and Probation would start aggressively tracking open warrants for people who are under the divisions supervision. Hogan expressed concern that judges are not issuing warrants when requested by probation officers and that when warrants are issued, they arent served  though he did not offer any data.

Breaking News Alerts As it happens When big news breaks in our area, be the first to know. >

Democratic leaders, including Baltimore States Attorney Marilyn Mosby, have been pressing Hogan to improve the parole and probation system, noting that a significant number perpetrators and victims of gun violence alike are under supervision by state parole officers.

In a letter to the governor last month, Sen. Cory McCray and Del. Tony Bridges of Baltimore said the Division of Parole and Probation is understaffed, leading to inadequate monitoring of people who might be headed for trouble.

There is no reason that there cannot be more rigorous supervision of violent offenders in the State, the lawmakers wrote. Ignoring the core functions of State government is having real life and death consequences.

Ferguson, the Senate president, said in an interview last week that hes open to considering Hogans proposals, given that gun violence is out of control.

But he noted that local, state and federal government officials need to be on the same page with a multipronged plan that both holds people accountable for crimes and addresses the root causes of violence.

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Theres no one singular solution, he said.

Baltimore Sun reporter Bryn Stole contributed to this article.
By Maayan Lubell

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel's Health Ministry on Monday instructed people self-testing for COVID-19 to swab their throat as well as their nose when using rapid antigen kits to increase the chances of detecting the Omicron variant.

The recommendation goes against the advice of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has said manufacturers' instructions should still be followed and that incorrect use of throat swabs could pose a safety risk.

On Israeli Army Radio, Sharon Alroy-Preis, Israel's public health chief, said antigen - or lateral flow - tests, used widely in the country, are less sensitive than PCR tests in detecting illness.

"In order to increase their sensitivity we will from now on recommend swabbing the throat and the nose. It's not what the manufacturer instructs but we are instructing this," she said.

The ministry later issued guidelines which said a swab should be taken from the throat and then from one nostril.

"It has the potential to improve the reliability of the test," Salman Zarka, Israel's pandemic-response coordinator, told a news conference, adding that the ministry would release a video showing how to use the new method.

Zarka said the ministry had spoken with companies supplying the test kits before issuing the new recommendation.

Rhenium, one of the Israeli importers of antigen kits, said earlier the Health Ministry had not consulted with it before issuing the new guidelines and that the tests, not checked by the company for throat swabs, were intended for nasal swabs.

MORE THAN ONE TEST

With Omicron pushing daily infection cases to record highs, health officials have prioritised risk groups for PCR testing and trusted younger, vaccinated people to test at home if exposed to COVID-19. [L1N2TM11R]

Alroy-Preis said that when exposed to a carrier, people should take more than one test or wait three days after exposure before testing with rapid kits.

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The quarantine period for those testing positive is expected to be shortened from 10 to seven days, though a final decision has not been made, the Health Ministry's director general said.

Some infectious disease experts have advocated throat swabbing with antigen tests because people can transmit Omicron to others when the virus has infected their throat and saliva but not yet reached their nose.

A study released on Wednesday by online archive medRxiv before peer review looked at 29 Omicron-infected workers in high-risk professions who had PCR and antigen tests simultaneously on multiple days. The PCR tests of saliva detected the virus on average three days before rapid nose-swab samples became positive.

However, the U.S. FDA tweeted on Friday: "When it comes to at-home rapid antigen COVID-19 tests, those swabs are for your nose and not your throat". Throat swabs, it said, "if used incorrectly, can cause harm to the patient".

Israel has confirmed around 1.5 million infections since the coronavirus pandemic began, and more than 8,000 deaths, and says around 60% of its 9.4 million population is now fully vaccinated.

(Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Jo Mason, Philippa Fletcher and Mark Heinrich)
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan and Canada have agreed to start talks on an investment protection agreement, both governments said on Monday, part of the Chinese-claimed island's efforts to boost ties with fellow democracies in the face of growing pressure from Beijing.

Taiwan has been angling for trade deals with what it views as like-minded partners such as the United States and the European Union.

While a member of the World Trade Organization, Taiwan's only has free trade agreements with two major economies, Singapore and New Zealand, and China has pressured countries not to engage directly with the government in Taipei.

Taiwan's cabinet said chief trade negotiator John Deng had met virtually with Canada's International Trade Minister, Mary Ng, and the two agreed to start "exploratory discussions" on a Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Arrangement, or FIPA.

The cabinet statement said the move was "an important milestone" in strengthening economic and trade relations.

The Canadian government, which like most countries has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, said in its statement that Ng "highlighted Taiwan is a key trade and investment partner as Canada broadens its trade links and deepens its economic partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region".

The direct meeting between the two government ministers could anger China, which has stepped up efforts to isolate Taiwan as Beijing asserts its sovereignty claims.

China views democratically-governed Taiwan as part of its territory with no right to state-to-state ties, a view Taiwan's government strongly rejects.

Canada is also a member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP, which both Taiwan and China have applied to join.

(Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
A healthcare worker gets information from peopled lined up to be tested at a COVID-19 testing site outside the Gardens Branch Library in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida on December 20, 2021.

Count me in. Im one of the nearly 2 million Americans who tested positive for COVID-19 over the holidays even though I had both vaccine shots and the booster. Fortunately, I had no symptoms. Like so many others, I was completely shocked to read my test result and felt kind of ashamed. "Do I really have to tell people?" I wondered to myself.

The rapid-fire spread of the omicron variant has magnified our great national debate about individual liberty versus the greater good. But, as I knew, and then had affirmed by two medical ethicists, I had an obligation to tell others whom I might have put at risk.

Quarantining for the good of all

I texted my family. And then I made a list of everyone I knew that I had been in close contact with (which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines as being less than 6 feet away for 15 minutes over a 24-hour period). I called those friends I knew to be infrequent email users, and then sent individual emails to about a dozen others.

Is it the flu, a cold, or the omicron variant?: How to know, and when to get tested for COVID

More: Florida reports almost 400,000 new COVID infections, skyrocketing hospitalizations

One friend quickly wrote back, Youre so courageous. Another, Thats integrity. Honestly, I didnt feel courageous or virtuous; I felt disappointed and sad.

Amy McGuire, director of the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine, insists that we all must give up some individual liberties, including our privacy, for the benefit of the community  so that others can take precautionary measures to protect themselves and their loved ones.

If you dont tell the people you may have unwittingly infected, how can they in turn protect themselves and their own loved ones? Thats the very definition of the common good, and its what we mean when I say were all in this together.

Exposing others to the virus can have drastic consequences. The high transmissibility of the omicron variant makes it more critical, not less, to disclose infection. Arthur Caplan, professor of medical ethics at New York University, acknowledges that we dont yet know how nasty, as he put it, omicron could be for the general population. But, what about our privacy? I asked. He says theres no reason to disclose having high blood pressure or cancer, but contagious diseases are different. The duty to tell others about an infection has long been recognized, both legally and ethically. Think HIV, tuberculosis, mumps and measles.

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COVID-19 charts: See the latest data for Palm Beach County and Florida

I know these decisions can be complicated, and I wondered  worried  about folks who cant afford to stay home during a quarantine period. Yes, it might be tempting to keep quiet about a positive test, especially if you dont have symptoms, if telling your employer translates into lost pay. I spoke with a CEO of a small business in Lexington, Kentucky, and she told me theyve just come up with a solution: If an employee is vaccinated and still gets COVID-19, that person will get paid for lost days. If someone who is not vaccinated gets sick, the answer is no.

While still in COVID jail, I was out walking my dog  permissible during quarantine as long as youre masked  when a neighbor asked whether I were still in isolation period. She thanked me for doing the right thing, even though there are no COVID police watching over us. As Baylors McGuire said, We need to embrace an ethic of solidarity, which means to care for each other and about each other, now more than ever.

COVID-19 Etiquette Recap:

Get tested: Take either a rapid antigen or PCR test before attending any gathering that individuals whose age and health may make them susceptible to the virus.

Disclose: If you test positive, or have a known COVID-19 exposure, you must tell others with whom youve been in close contact. No ifs, ands or buts.

Stop the spread: Information from reputable sources will help others make informed decisions, get tested themselves and prevent the continued spread of this virus.

Steven Petrow, a writer on civility and manners and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. This column originally appeared in USA Today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Should I tell people that my COVID-19 test came back positive?
Jan. 10NEW LONDON  Santa might still be the most popular gift-giving holiday figure for children during Christmas in the United States, but Latinos in this city have not forgotten their roots.

The Dominican Association of New London handed out hundreds of donated toys in a drive-thru giveaway on Sunday as part of the celebration of Three Kings Day, a holiday popular in Puerto Rico and many Latin American countries. The holiday, which falls on Jan. 6, celebrates the day in Christian religion when the three wise men brought gifts to the baby Jesus. Children received gifts from the three wise men.

"In Spanish-speaking countries, this is bigger than Christmas. We are trying to bring that to the United States," said Jose Mateo, a member of the Dominican Association.

Mateo joined Miguel Afanador and Mayor Michael Passero to dress up as the three kings, waving to families as they passed through the parking lot of the organization's 60 Jay St. headquarters. Cars pulled in, greetings were exchanged and families were handed age-appropriate toys and N95 masks.

The Dominican Association partnered with Griffin Health, Ledge Light Health District and the state Department of Public Health to sponsor a vaccination clinic. Dozens of people, children and adults, waited in line for first and second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine and in some cases a booster shot. City Council President Efrain Dominguez called it a "bright idea" for the nonprofit organization to couple the two events.

One 10-year-old, Angelina, stood with her mother in line on Sunday for her first dose of the vaccine, a decision her mother said she made for her safety because of the rising COVID-19 numbers in the schools.

Dominguez, joined at the toy giveaway by fellow Councilor Jocelyn Rosario, said when he was a young child living in Puerto Rico, he filled shoe boxes with hay for the wise men's camels and slid them under his bed. When he awoke in the morning the boxes contained presents.

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Yamilla Mateo, a member of the Dominican Association of New London, said the tradition of celebrating Three Kings Day remains strong, especially among residents from Caribbean countries. For many immigrants with children born in the United States like herself, she said the celebration is "a chance for us to get back to our traditional roots."

The annual event has been growing in popularity in New London through the years as the Spanish-speaking population grows.

Census numbers show the Hispanic population in New London grew by 19% between 2010 and 2020 with an estimated 9,326 people in the city identifying as Hispanic. The Hispanic population in New London County grew grew by 33% over the past 10 years.

Beatriz German, who was born in Mexico, said Three Kings Day was the traditional holiday for her family and something she's passed on to her children. Her daughters, Amayra, 8, and Alyssa, 2, accompanied her to Sunday's event.

Organizers of Sunday's event promise an even larger giveaway next year.

g.smith@theday.com
Donald Trump

James Devaney/GC Images Donald Trump

A spokesman for Donald Trump is downplaying a detailed new report that the former president is frustrated over the pace of progress in launching his new media platform, Truth Social.

"The demand for President Trump, his leadership, and his America First solutions continue to grow despite Big Tech's attack on his freedom of speech. The movement President Trump built is omnipresent throughout social media, like a MAGA block chain," Taylor A. Budowich said in a statement sent to PEOPLE in response to questions about a Monday story in The Washington Post about delays in the development of Truth Social.

"His influence is not limited to any one verified account. To cancel Trump, Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms would have to cancel a majority of their most engaged users," Budowich went on, echoing his boss. "The fact is you can't cancel MAGA, because MAGA is America."

The former president was permanently kicked off Twitter and suspended from using Facebook and Instagram for at least two years in the aftermath of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a mob of Trump supporters. The social media companies pointed to Trump's own statements about the rioting.

While he eventually urged them to leave the Capitol, he also praised the group and tweeted "these are the things and events that happen.  Remember this day forever!"

A year later  a year in which he has had to send statements via email to reporters rather than blast out social media posts  Trump is "antsy" to get back online so he and his team can communicate directly with followers, raise money and weigh in on political news, including a multitude of races in the 2022 midterm elections coming in November, the Post reported.

RELATED: Users Quickly Start Picking Apart Donald Trump's New Social Media Platform

But people familiar with the project told the paper the debut of Truth Social, which was announced in October, is likely still months away.

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A rollout of the app was "expected in the first quarter of 2022," the Trump Media & Technology Group said in its October announcement. Since then, the company has drawn scrutiny for its intention to merge with Digital World Acquisition Corp.

A timeline of five to six months is not unusual for merger deals to close, according to an expert cited in the Post story, which also states that it's not clear whether Trump's new media company has raised its own money to launch its initiatives.

U.S. President Donald Trump

Michael Kovac/WireImage

Delays in hiring workers to build and launch Truth Social has been complicated and slow-going, at least in part because of investigations related to the merger, according to the Post.

But the former president has so far declined lucrative offers to be associated with other social media apps like Gettr and Parler that are already up and running in favor of launching his own, Trump-branded platform.

Former California Rep. Devin Nunes is one high-profile hire that was announced as Nunes stepped down from his job in Congress earlier this month to become the CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group. That umbrella company has yet to launch any initiatives, including Truth Social.

An iPhone-only app is "coming soon" and "expected Feb. 21, 2022," according to a page for Truth Social on Apple's App Store.

RELATED: Trump Cancels Press Conference Planned for Anniversary of Capitol Riot as Allies Warn Him Against It

An early version of Truth Social was discovered shortly after it was announced in October, allowing users to sign up, register and pick apart the app. The TruthSocial.com pages were later taken down and unverified accounts were disabled.

In December, Trump Media and Technology Group announced an agreement with Rumble Inc., a video distribution platform its CEO said is "immune to cancel culture."

Trump said in a statement about the deal that his new company has "already launched Truth Social on the Rumble Cloud for invited guests only, and the initial Beta launch has been excellent."
(Corrects year of Bill Clinton's inauguration to 1993 from 1992 in eight paragraph)

By Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) -The U.S. Mint has started rolling out quarters which feature late American author and activist Maya Angelou, the first Black woman to appear on the coin.

The coin is part of the American Women Quarters program, which also includes Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American Hollywood film star, the United States Mint said https://bit.ly/33nwqyE on Monday.

Angelou rose to international prominence after the publication of her groundbreaking autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," with its unflinching account of rape and racism in the segregated South.

At age 7, Angelou was raped by her mother's boyfriend, who was later beaten to death in an assault that some believed was carried out by Angelou's uncles. The trauma of the rape and her assailant's death left Angelou mute for six years. She began writing during that silent period.

She died https://reut.rs/3zM2FDP in 2014 aged 86. The prolific African-American writer was known for her lyrical prose and regal speaking voice.

"Each time we redesign our currency, we have the chance to say something about our country - what we value, and how we've progressed as a society," U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

"I'm very proud that these coins celebrate the contributions of some of America's most remarkable women, including Maya Angelou."

The recipient of more than 30 honorary degrees, Angelou read "On the Pulse of Morning" at the 1993 inauguration of former President Bill Clinton.

Angelou's reading marked the first time an African American woman wrote and presented a poem at a presidential inauguration.

In 2010, Barack Obama awarded Angelou the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and she was the 2013 recipient of the Literarian Award, an honorary National Book Award for contributions to the literary community.

The American Women Quarters program also features Wilma Mankiller, the Cherokee Nation's first female principal chief; Adelina Otero-Warren, a leader in New Mexico's suffrage movement; and Sally Ride, an astronaut and physicist who was the first American woman in space.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Richard Chang)
Vietnamese, Lao PMs witness signing of nine cooperation documents

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and his Lao counterpart Phankham Viphavanh have witnessed the signing and handing over of nine co-operation documents between the governments, ministries, agencies, and enterprises of the two countries.









Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and his Lao counterpart Phankham Viphavanh (L)



The signing ceremony was held as part of the 44th session of the Vietnam-Laos Intergovernmental Committee on Bilateral Cooperation on January 10.



During the course of the meeting, the two sides discussed and concretized the conclusions of the two Politburos and the agreement on the co-operation plan between the two nations for 2022. They therefore agreed on the drastic implementation of the plan from the beginning of the year, with a view to bolstering co-operation across multiple fields such as politics, foreign affairs, security and defence, investment, and trade.



The contents and orientations exchanged at this meeting can be considered to be of great significance in concretising high-level co-operation agreements, thereby facilitating the two countries ministries, sectors, localities and businesses in the process of concretizing high-level co-operation agreements. This is in addition to carrying out co-operation activities towards the successful implementation of the 2022 Cooperation Plan.



Both sides went on to state their appreciation and show their elation at the results of comprehensive co-operation between the two countries ahead this year, particularly through the effective implementation of high-level agreements of ministries, sectors, and localities.



Co-operation in politics, foreign affairs, national defence and security, economics, culture, social affairs, and people-to-people exchanges have been further strengthened and expanded. This can be seen in education and training which has been promoted, with the number of Laotian students studying in Vietnam rising to 14,000.



Trade turnover also reached US$1.3 billion, exceeding the set target and representing an annual rise of 30.3%.



Vietnamese enterprises have made significant contributions to the Laotian budget, pouring in more than US$1 billion over the past five years. Indeed, the new mechanism for co-ordination and promotion of ties between the two sides, typically through the Vietnam - Laos Intergovernmental Committee, have continued to prove effective.



Regarding the direction of co-operation moving forward, the two sides consented to focus on competently realising joint statements and agreements adopted by the two Politburos and at the 44th session of the Vietnam-Laos Intergovernmental Committee on Bilateral Cooperation.



The two sides therefore agreed to ramp up political, foreign, security, defence, investment, and trade relations, with two-way turnover in 2022 set to soar by 10% compared to 2021. They emphasized the need to expand co-operation in human resource training, investment in transport infrastructure projects, and co-operation in the management of sustainable use of water and natural resources.



Both nations will will make every effort to effectively organise the Vietnam-Laos, Laos-Vietnam Friendship and Solidarity Year 2022 which will mark the 60th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relations and 45 years of the Vietnam-Laos Treaty of Amity and Cooperation.



The event gave the chance for the two countries to promise to encourage ministries, sectors, and localities to expand their relations and support each other. In the spirit of mutual trust, the both sides affirmed their readiness to offer mutual support and co-operate at international and regional forums. These contents have been concretised in documents that were signed during the 44th session of the Vietnam-Laos Intergovernmental Committee on Bilateral Cooperation.



The success of the meeting is set to offer fresh impetus to stepping up bilateral co-operation in a more practical and effective manner, making an important contribution to strengthening the traditional friendship, special solidarity, and comprehensive co-operation between Vietnam and Laos.
The common area on the Belknap campus of the University of Louisville is desolate on a Tuesday evening at 5:50 pm when the area known as the quad is usually bustling with activity. The university extended spring break through March 17 and thereafter classes will be offered remotely due to the coronavirus outbreak in Louisville, Ky. on Mar. 17, 2020.

LOUISVILLE, Ky.  University of Louisville faculty, staff and students are in an uproar over the administrations refusal to allow classes to be taught remotely.

As the new semester began Monday, more than 500 professors, staff, students, parents and other community members have signed a petition to allow courses to be offered online.

One of the signers, an administrator in the Speed School, wrote the wish for normalcy should not supersede the need for safety, while a graduate teaching assistant said, Please be dedicated to BEING SAFE, not dedicated to being in person.

Shannon Madison, a student, said, I am three weeks from open-heart surgery and have to come to class in person with a collapsed lung.

Faculty members also denounced the policy Monday afternoon at a meeting of the College of Arts & Sciences, the university's largest unit, with nearly 800 professors and staff.

Citing a directive from Interim President Lori Stewart Gonzalez, Professor David Owens, the interim dean of arts and science, told department chairs Sunday that courses designated as in-person may not be moved online and violations may result in discipline.

He said Gonzalez made it clear there is "no wiggle room" on the policy.

University spokesman John Karman on Monday affirmed the administration's stance on in-person classes.

"Because the science shows that classroom learning is safe and more effective, we feel it is vital to provide the best educational experience possible for our students," Karman said in a statement.

Tricia Gray, an associate professor of political science and chair of that department, called the directive "ridiculous and short-sighted" at a meeting Monday afternoon attended by about 70 faculty and staff.

University of Louisville faculty members met to discuss the school's administration's refusal to allow professors to move their classes online. They have been threatened with discipline if they do. Jan. 10, 2022.

"To threaten seems very extreme and not in keeping with the message of a caring community," she said.

Ricky Jones, chairman of the Pan-African Studies department and a columnist for The Courier Journal, said he would defy the order if necessary.

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"I am not going to punish a faculty member who tells me they feel unsafe, even if it means I am removed as chairman," Jones said.

More: As COVID-19 cases soar, antibody treatments and new antiviral pills in very short supply

Astronomy Professor Gerard Williger said about 10% of his students with the virus have begun making recordings of his classes to give to those who can't attend class.

U of L argues risk is low for vaccinated people

In an email Sunday to the Cardinal community, Gonzalez said the university planned to begin the semester with "in-person instruction and normal business operations, in part because of the risk of severe illness to fully vaccinated individuals from contracting COVID remains very low.

Newly appointed U of L interim president Lori Stewart Gonzalez in her office at Grawemeyer Hall on the Belknap campus in Louisville, Ky. on Dec. 15, 2021. Gonzalez was named interim president after former president Neeli Bendapudi accepted the same position at Penn State University.

She also said students' academic performance and mental well-being suffered during remote instruction.

The crackdown on remote instruction comes amid a surge in the omicron variant of COVID-19 that prompted Jefferson County Public Schools to move to virtual learning this week and Northern Kentucky University to push back the start of the semester a week to Jan. 18.

The University of Kentucky also began the semester Monday with in-person classes, but without the threat of sanctions for violators.

Acting Provost Robert DiPaola said in an email that moving "an in-person class early in the semester online for one or two weeks is not backed by the data and the science of the likely trajectory of the virus."

More: Louisville's mass COVID-19 test site opens as omicron drives cases 'unfathomably high'

Still, he said, "Given the current variant transmission, short-term disruptions may occur, and accommodations may be needed should an instructor become COVID positive, for example."

U of L faculty say they want flexibility

In a previous email to faculty in the University of Louisville's College of Arts and Sciences, Owen acknowledged concerns about the variant but said it is important that we have policies that apply equitably to all faculty and staff.

In the memo to department chairs, Owen reminded them as appointees of the board of trustees, they have a responsibility to uphold and enforce university policy.

Professors say they are not asking for the university to go to remote instruction entirely but instead give instructors the flexibility to teach online if their safety or the students safety demands it.

No one is trying to get out of doing our jobs, Lauren Haberle, an associate professor of sociology, said in an email to Owen and others. And no one should be afraid of being disciplined for trying to do our jobs the best way we know how.

Kalasia Ojeh, an assistant professor in the Department of Pan-African Studies and co-chair of the colleges Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, told Owen in an email that it stands in support and solidarity with the right of faculty, staff and students' right to teach, work and learn in any modality that supports their health and safety.

As of Monday morning, the online petition had been signed by 179 students, 109 faculty members, 72 staff, 480 alumni and 18 parents. The petition was created by United Campus Workers of Kentucky.

More: As COVID cases rise, large Kentucky school district reinstates mandatory mask policy

Beth Edwardson, who identified herself as a parent, said her daughter is a law student who is immunocompromised because of her treatment for Hodgkins lymphoma.

Ginan Kurdi, a student who also signed the petition, wrote: Please move to online. I live with my family of six, and my mother is positive and sick.

Corey Feger, an academic counselor, said: Having our safety disregarded by the administration is hurtful enough, but having it disregarded at the salary Im paid is frankly insulting.

Owen said he has no choice but to follow the president's directive but he agrees with it because studies have shown instruction is not as effective online as in class especially for first- and second-year students.

He also said that faculty who contract the virus and have to isolate may teach classes online from home.

Andrew Wolfson: 502-582-7189; awolfson@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @adwolfson.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: University of Louisville threatens to punish staff who teach remotely
Chris Mazdzer was wrong. Hes headed to the Olympics.

The 2018 silver medalist, who originally thought a 25th-place finish in a World Cup luge race this past weekend had doomed his chances of making the Beijing Games, was nominated by USA Luge on Monday for what will be his fourth Olympic team.

The decision on whether he was going or not hinged on whether USA Luge was told it had qualified three spots for the men's singles Olympic field. Tucker West and Jonny Gustafson knew they had spots, and Mazdzer spent the weekend waiting and wondering.

Finally, Monday, the call came.

Man, honestly, relief, Mazdzer told The Associated Press shortly after being informed by USA Luge. Incredibly excited. Its a mixed bag this time around. I had no idea it was going to be this emotionally draining and stressful. Its relief, honor and excitement."

Mazdzer is the only USA Luge men's singles slider to medal in the Olympics, after earning a silver in the Pyeongchang Games four years ago. The only other singles medal for the Americans in Olympic competition came in 2014, when Erin Hamlin won bronze at the Sochi Games.

USA Luge has medaled four times in doubles, taking silver and bronze at both the 1998 Nagano Games and the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.

Mazdzer was hoping to race in both singles and doubles at the Beijing Games. He and doubles teammate Jayson Terdiman were eliminated from Olympic contention last week.

I'm definitely very excited to be going to the Olympics," Mazdzer said. I just wish it was with Jayson as well."

The rest of the team that USA Luge was nominating for U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee approval, typically just a formality, on Monday was already determined. Summer Britcher, Emily Sweeney and Ashley Farquharson will race in womens singles, Zack Di Gregorio and Sean Hollander will make their Olympic debuts in doubles, and theyll be joined by the mens trio.

This is my third time going through an Olympic trials process and I was blown away by just the support and character that everyone showed across the board on this team  whether they made the team or not," Britcher said. It was such incredible sportsmanship. And Im heartbroken for those of my teammates that didnt make the team but Im just really excited to see how that sportsmanship and teamwork builds into the next several years."

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Terdiman plans to retire; Mazdzer is leaning toward retirement after this season, though has not made a final decision and could return for a potential farewell if there is at least one race in North America in the coming seasons.

It would be nice to do at least one race back in North America," Mazdzer said.

___

More AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
MONTPELIER  The Vermont Legislature is authorizing municipal governments and school districts to pass budgets with pre-printed ballots this year to help cope with the continued COVID-19 pandemic.

Those bodies are now also authorized to hold remote informational meetings where voters can discuss budget issues.

The Bennington Banner reports that quick passage was seen as essential to give municipal and school officials sufficient time to plan for the meetings. This year Vermont's traditional Town Meeting Day will be held March 1, although some communities and school districts use alternative dates.

Lynn Vera, a member of the South Burlington Board of Civil Authority, enters mailed-in ballots into the counting machine on Town Meeting Day, Tuesday March 5, 2019, at Orchard School in South Burlington.

If signed by Gov. Phil Scott, the bill would authorize measures similar to those put in place last year to help communities conduct local business while minimizing the risk from the pandemic.

Communities are also authorized to move their meetings to later in the year when it could potentially be safer. The House gave final passage to the bill that was passed by the Senate on Wednesday.

Prior to the pandemic, many Vermont communities and school districts would hold public meetings at which budgets and other items would be decided after sometimes lengthy debates that would be decided with voice votes.

This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Vermont Legislature authorizes remote municipal meetings
Italy Pompeii Museum Reborn (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

An array of multicolored houses perched on the cliffs of Vernazza in the Cinque Terre of Italy. It was a view I had dreamed about since I was 12, pinning a picture of it to the manifestation board in my bedroom. With each passing minute, it became apparent how skilful the editor of that photograph was. The colors were so much brighter than reality.

I reached into my paper cone of fried seafood, popped a piece into my mouth and then discreetly looked for a place to spit it out. I glanced across at my husband, who was chewing his sandwich like it was bubblegum. I think the panini might be stale, he said, his jaw working mechanically. I glared at my fritto misto. Twenty euros down the drain for six bite-size pieces of inedible fish. I tried to push away thoughts of the currency conversion.

Italy was the country Id wanted to visit most, and, having recently lost several friends my own age, living to 30, let alone 90, felt less certain than it had in years before. Theres an urgency that comes with that, a sense of expectation. If this was my try-before-you die trip  if this was the culmination of all my savings  then it was unacceptable to have even a single meal fall short of the sky-high expectations Id built up over years of rumination.

Days later, it was 104 degrees Fahrenheit  40 degrees Celsius  in Pompeii by 9am. I was sunburnt, had heatstroke, and there was no shade  fair enough in a town that had been decimated by an active volcano, but dont try to argue with me when Im hot. I wanted to go back to our Airbnb and leave the historical monument I had fantasized about visiting since I saw it in a school textbook. I started to cry because it felt like I had to spend the entire day there in order to make it all worth it. Not even the assorted ancient penis sculptures around the barren city could cheer me up.

The truth is that Italy still made for a wonderful vacation. Barring a couple of awful meals, the food was delicious and the scenery was incredible. But I should never have framed my journey there as a bucket list trip, because that phrase instantly meant a minor disappointment was amplified to borderline catastrophe. I had spent so much, expected so much  it had to be perfect. With bucket list trips, we are delving into fantasy and escapism, but as creative and inspiring as that can be, it can veer into toxic positivity, says clinical psychologist Ryan Cooper.

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A similar thing happened when I visited New York City. Frank Sinatra had told me I wanted to be a part of it. Taylor Swift had assured that it was waiting for me. And on day two of my visit, some guy on the Staten Island ferry tried to fight me because I accidentally tripped over his feet. One of the biggest upsides of the trip was when I saw Mandy Patinkin spit on the sidewalk on the Upper West Side.

Turns out Im not alone when it comes to the Big Apple being on a bucket list, nor in it falling short. Amber Leach, a professional photographer, travelled from the UK to New York City in the hopes of a snow-filled cityscape. I had planned some beautiful, snowy, Christmassy photos with my family in Central Park. Christmas movies set in New York are just magical. It was always a place on my bucket list, especially covered in snow, Amber explains. Only, she happened to travel during the warmest Christmas on record. [People] were actually wearing T-shirts at the Rockefeller Center with the Christmas tree behind them.

For Lucy Gordon, founder of From Our Cellar, Cuba was the bucket list destination that fell short. We had planned the trip for years and got recommendations from people who had been there. We got all the guidebooks and set out thinking this was going to be the most amazing adventure, Lucy says. There was litter absolutely everywhere, including on the beaches. Our itinerary for two weeks of traveling finished five days early. We had hyped it up so much in our heads but ended up desperate to come home.

The problem is that even a fantasy trip will still need to happen in the real world, Cooper, the clinical psychologist, says. We need some mental flexibility. It wont be a movie montage. When we hit disappointments in a bucket list trip (and its not an if but a when), we need to reframe. Our thoughts determine how we feel. We can change our subjective experience of something by working on how we handle our thought processes.

Theres nothing wrong with being excited about a trip. The problems arise when you expect your destination to match up with the perfect vision in your head. We need to think in advance How would I like to approach that [disappointment] so that its part of my travel plan? Cooper suggests. That way when it happens, we integrate it. We create options for ourselves. Anything worth pursuing will have some challenges. These challenges are not the enemy but part of the experience.

Instead of a bucket list, once-in-a-lifetime trip, then, Ive learnt to reframe any vacation as a trip. Just a trip. That gives it a chance to be a positive experience even when it falls short of built-up expectations. And if you cant do that, maybe its time to stay at home. More and more people are discovering the beauty of the staycation and becoming tourists in our own countries. Over the past few years, in my own native South Africa, I have gone beyond the beauty of Cape Town and the wonders of safaris in the Kruger and explored little-known gems like Hogsback and Cintsa. So many South Africans havent visited towns like these, and they have swiftly become my favorite return visits.

Consider, too, the green ramifications. Traveling is wonderful for the economies of the places you visit, but not traveling is better for the environment. We live in a society that urges travel constantly but financially it isnt viable for many, and psychologically the trip can take a toll of its own. If the prospect of planning travel seems like too much, and if the thought of it all going pear-shaped on the bucket list trip makes you anxious even while still in the ideation phase, perhaps the solution is simply to do nothing  at least for the time being. The world can wait. And if it cant, prepare yourself for imperfection. It is the real world, after all.
By Lisa Richwine

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Dark Western "The Power of the Dog" and a remake of "West Side Story" won the biggest awards on Sunday at a diminished Golden Globes ceremony held privately without the usual glitzy lineup of Hollywood's top television and movie stars.

Actors, directors and film studios largely ignored the Globes this year after criticism in 2021 that its organizers, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), operated with questionable ethics policies and no Black members https://www.reuters.com/article/us-awards-goldenglobes-diversity-idUSKBN2AR01A. Longtime broadcaster NBC opted not to air this year's awards.

The HFPA, which has expanded and diversified its membership https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/golden-globes-group-adds-new-members-it-works-diversify-2021-10-01 and overhauled its practices, announced its picks at a Beverly Hills ceremony held behind closed doors. Recipients of HFPA philanthropic grants sat in the audience and announced winners. Honorees were revealed via social media and a live blog.

Steven Spielberg's "West Side Story," a tale of young love set among rival street gangs, was named best musical or comedy film. Released by Walt Disney Co, the film earned three trophies overall, including best actress for Rachel Zegler.

Netflix's "The Power of the Dog" also won three awards including best director for Jane Campion.

Other acting honors went to Will Smith for playing the determined father of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams in "King Richard" and Nicole Kidman for her role as Lucille Ball in "Being the Ricardos."

"Thank you for the acknowledgement!" Kidman, one of few winners to acknowledge their award, wrote on Instagram. "Lucille, this is for you and all the other incredible women nominated."

Andrew Garfield won a best actor award for his role as playwright Jonathan Larson in musical "Tick, Tick... Boom!"

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For television, cutthroat corporate family saga "Succession" received the best drama award and "Hacks," about a fading female comedian, was crowned best comedy.

Netflix led all studios with four film awards. HBO and HBO Max landed the most television honors, with six.

'JOURNEY OF CHANGE'

Mj Rodriguez, was named best TV drama actress for "Pose". It was the first Golden Globe given to a transgender actress.

"Wow! ... Thank you!" she wrote on Instagram. "This is the door that is going to open the door for many more young talented individuals."

"West Side Story" stars Zegler and Ariana DeBose, who won best supporting actress, also acknowledged their wins.

"There is still work to be done, but when youve worked so hard on a project- infused with blood, sweat, tears and love- having the work seen and acknowledged is always going to be special. Thank you," DeBose tweeted.

The Globes normally draw millions of TV viewers to a celebrity-filled red carpet and champagne-fueled dinner that makes for a glamorous yet informal contrast to the Academy Awards, the industry's highest film honors.

In the past, winning a Globe provided a boost to movies making a run for the Oscars. This year, the significance is less clear. Awards watchers will follow closely other upcoming award ceremonies like the Screen Actors Guild and Producers Guild of America ahead of the March 27 Oscars.

Critics had objected to the HFPA not having any Black members and raised questions over whether close relationships with Hollywood studios influenced the selection of nominees and winners. In May, Tom Cruise returned the three Golden Globe statuettes he had won.

The HFPA responded https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/golden-globes-group-adds-new-members-it-works-diversify-2021-10-01 by adding 21 new members, six of whom are Black, banning gifts and favors, and implementing diversity and sexual harassment training. The group now has 105 members and plans to expand this year.

"We are on a journey of change and we're not going to rest," HFPA President Helen Hoehne said in a statement.

At the ceremony, the HFPA played videos of support from actors Jamie Lee Curtis, who praised the group's charitable work, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said winning a Golden Globe in 1977 helped launch his career.

"They understand that to support the arts and creativity, one must cultivate new, original and diverse voices," he said of the HFPA.

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Additional reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Karishma Singh and Gerry Doyle)
Fast food workers and activists demonstrate outside McDonald's downtown flagship restaurant on July 31, 2014 in Chicago, Illinois. Scott Olson/Getty Images

National Economic Council Deputy Director Bharat Ramamurti said that workers are experiencing a "Great Upgrade."

Ramamurti was referencing the elevated number of workers quitting low-wage work and job switching.

The country seems to be grappling with a wage shortage as workers leave behind low paying jobs for better prospects.

A record-breaking number of workers quit their jobs in November  and the White House is celebrating.

That's because workers in the lowest-paying sectors decided to throw in the towel and bid goodbye to their old jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest data release. In leisure and hospitality alone, a record 1 million workers quit their job. At the same time, hiring boomed and job openings fell slightly, suggesting that workers weren't permanently leaving the workforce, but rather job switching.

National Economic Council Deputy Director Bharat Ramamurti tweeted out a chart from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute that showed how quits were elevated in lower-paying sectors. The chart in particular compared the rates of quits and hires by industry:

"Workers are quitting to go take new, better-paying jobs. It's not the Great Resignation -- it's the Great Upgrade," Ramamurti wrote. He said that it's "exactly the kind of economy" President Joe Biden said he wanted to create.

The ongoing pushback against a wage shortage, as workers leave low-wage jobs for higher-paid work, comes after decades of stagnant and declining wages.

"I think it's very good that we're seeing wage growth in our country," Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh told Insider last week. "I think it's good, particularly on our low income workers."

Indeed, workers with less than a college degree have seen their wage expectations skyrocket up, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Survey of Consumer Expectations Labor Market Survey. The lowest wage they'd be willing to accept for a new job has grown by about 16.5% from November 2019 to November 2021. Nick Bunker, an economist at Indeed, pointed out on Twitter that the entire increase in how much workers expect from a new job has been driven by workers with less than a college degree.

Story continues

"It's time for employers to realize that it's frontline workers like us who keep the doors open  and if they want us to keep showing up they need to respect us, protect us and pay us what we deserve," Maribel Cornejo, a McDonald's worker and leader with the Fight for $15 in Houston, Texas, previously said in a statement to Insider.

But even as wages rise and workers act with their feet to drive up pay, the federal minimum wage has not increased since 2009. It remains at $7.25 an hour. A push last year to raise it to $15 an hour as part of Biden's American Rescue Plan ultimately failed, with eight moderate Democrats voting against the proposal.

"I'm hopeful that we can get the $15 an hour minimum wage through the Congress," Walsh said. "It's a baseline wage for workers."

Read the original article on Business Insider
Head of Xbox Phil Spencer stands in front of an Xbox sign wearing a State of Decay shirt.

Back in November, the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, told staff he was evaluating all aspects of the Microsoft gaming divisions relationship with Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard following a bombshell report by The Wall Street Journal of workplace misconduct and coverups at the massive publisher. Pressed to elaborate on what exactly that meant in a new interview today with The New York Times, Spencer said he wasnt interested in virtue shaming another company.

Spencer wrote in a November email to Xbox teams that he was disturbed and deeply troubled by the horrific events and actions recently brought to light in The Wall Street Journals report, a sentiment he reiterated today in an interview with tech reporter Kara Swisher on her podcast Sway.

Read more

I always feel for people working on any team, my own teams, other teams, Spencer said when asked about Activision Blizzards ongoing reckoning with reports of widespread sexual harassment and discrimination. I think people should feel safe and included in any workplace that theyre in. Ive been in this industry long enough to maybe feel more ownership for what happens in the video game space. And Im saddened and sickened when I hear about workplace environments that cause such distress and destruction of individuals and teams.

When Swisher asked in a follow-up how the reports about Activision Blizzard had changed Microsofts longtime partnership with the giant video game publisher, Spencer said he couldnt go into it publicly.

We have changed how we do certain things with them, and theyre aware of that, he said. But I alsothis isnt about, for us as Xbox, virtue-shaming other companies. Xboxs history is not spotless.

Story continues

As an example of Xboxs own problematic past, Spencer referenced a now infamous 2016 GDC party Microsoft hosted that included women in schoolgirl outfits dancing on platforms. Spencer apologized for it at the time, and did so again in an interview with Axios last November. Two former senior Xbox employees were mentioned in last years reports about misconduct at Activision Blizzard, but Microsoft has so far declined to comment on them.

Spencer was asked several more times by Swisher about any ways Xbox would be punishing Activision Blizzard for past incidents at the company, but he remained vague:

Swisher: I dont mean to be rude, but whats wrong with punishing them for that? Like, we dont want to do business with you unless you cleaned up. Now, again, these issues were back several years ago too, but under the same leadership, Bobby Kotick, whos the long-time Activision CEO. Spencer: I think in terms of interactions with other companies, the things that we choose to do with our brand and our platform, in coordination or not with other companies, is the avenue that we have to have an impact. I would say in terms of individuals that are in leadership positions at other companies, its not obviously our position to judge who the CEOs are. Like, CEOs are chosen by shareholders and boards. At Xbox, I know who Im accountable for here in terms of the business and the operations. Its my teams here, my management chain. And thats the thing that we continue to focus on, is to try to grow. And whether thats us sharing, again, the experiences that we have with other partners, if we can help them on their own journey or on the things that happen in our own teams.

Following last Novembers Wall Street Journal investigation, thousands of employees at Activision Blizzard called for CEO Bobby Kotick to resign. A worker group called ABK Workers Alliance announced shortly afterward that it was passing out union cards to members, while a smaller group of developers officially went on strike following the announcement of layoffs at Call of Duty: Warzone studio Raven Software.
Ed Gowen has been fascinated with art for as long as he can remember.

My mom would tell me that I was drawing since I was big enough to hold a pencil, the Appomattox-based artist said.

He remembers getting his first oil painting set at 12 years old, a gift from a school teacher, but said he only treated it as a hobby up until about 30 years ago, when he decided to turn that hobby into a profession.

I started teaching freelance classes to make a living, to get an income, and my teaching activities became rather popular, so I started a circuit in the Southside-Central Virginia area and held classes once a month in the area.

But even while he was teaching others, he remained steadfast in creating his own art. He was able to make it into a few galleries, and he had good luck in national shows.

However, it wasnt until he retired from teaching just a few years ago that he really started focusing on his own artwork, striving to create a name for himself in the field.

Up until about 10 to 15 years ago, I had never painted a serious portrait, Gowen said.

His favorite thing to paint is natural outdoor scenery, mainly because he grew up on a farm.

I had brothers and sisters, but they were a good bit older than me, so I was pretty much a loner-type child, living in the country, he said. I fell in love with the landscape and I had this talent for painting and drawing, so I just started taking in the scenes around me.

Gowen is a native of Central Virginia, having graduated from Rustburg High School. He credits the beautiful nature of the region as a part of his love of painting the outdoors as well, which has helped him create some of his favorite art work, and also caused him to have a run-in with a park ranger.

I was posting up outside, painting this house just off the road, and I heard something behind me, so I turned around and it was a park ranger coming up to me, Gowen said. I thought, Well, what am I doing? Am I too close to the road? Do they not want me to get paint thinner in the grass? I just knew I was doing something wrong.

But it turns out that it was just her childhood home and she really liked the painting, and down the road, her family bought the painting, and wanted prints and a copy for her sister.

Gowen doesnt just paint outdoor scenes, though. It was actually a portrait painting of his late father that earned him national recognition, finishing in the top 50 of more than 1,200 artists in the Portrait Society of Americas nationwide competition.

The Nap is a life-size, 48-inch-by-36-inch oil painting of Gowens father enjoying a nap in a chair. He got the inspiration for the painting from a picture that was taken of his father.

It was a picture of him taking a nap on our back deck in the sun, and I kept looking at it for the last four to five years thinking that would make for a good painting, he said.

One thing distinctive about my dad was his big working mans hands, and his hands were just resting in his lap, which make for a very distinctive part of the portrait. There is just something about the mood of the painting that caused it to be recognized by many people.

Gowens favorite part of the portrait isnt noticeable unless you look at it with a close eye.

Dad was a very large man; he had a huge belly, he said. The bottom button of his shirt in the picture was popped open, and if you look closely, you can see his white T-shirt, and a lot of people thought it was a cute part of the painting.

For somebody who has worked an entire life in art, receiving the national recognition was just a sign that his hard work was paying off.

I felt like I was taking a shot in the dark by sending this to the portrait society, but when I saw my name in the finalists, I thought this is amazing.

It was a confirmation that when you see things like that happen, you are doing something worthwhile, and youre doing what youre supposed to be doing, he said.

With more than 30 years in art, this wasnt Gowens first break in the art world  it was just his most recent.

His work has been on display from New York to California in many different art galleries, including such shows as the Salmagundi Club, Oil Painters of America, and the National Oil and Acrylic Painters Society. He has done several group and individual shows, including a show in New York Citys SoHo district in 1999, which is known for its trendy neighborhood, and is home to many famous artists studios and lofts.

Through those 30 years, Gowen now feels he is using the gifts that he has been given for the right purpose.

I consider my talent for art a gift from God, Gowen said. Receiving recognition for that shows me that I am using that gift in the right way, to please Him.

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B:2022() 20220110 19:06:16  :

: B :2022()

Stock Code: 000553(200553) Stock Abbreviation: ADAMA A(B) Announcement No. 2022-3







ADAMA Ltd.



Announcement on the Resolution of the 1st Interim

Shareholders Meeting in 2022







The Company and all members of its board of directors hereby confirm that all

information disclosed herein is true, accurate and complete with no false or

misleading statement or material omission.







I. Important Notice



1. No proposal was vetoed at the meeting.

2. The meeting didnt change any resolution made by the previous shareholders

meetings.





II. Holding of the Meeting



1. Time of the On-site Meeting: starts at 14:30 on January 10, 2022



2. Venue: 6F A7 Building, No.10, Chaoyang Park South Road, Chaoyang District,

Beijing



3. Nature of Meeting: Combination of on-site voting and online voting



4. Convener: The Board of Directors of the Company



5. Host: Erik Fyrwald





6. Time/Date of Online Voting:



Online voting: online voting via the trading system of Shenzhen Stock Exchange will be

from 9:15 a.m. to 9:25 a.m., 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. on

January 10, 2022; online voting via the online voting system of the Shenzhen Stock

Exchange will be any time from 9:15 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on January 10, 2022.



7. The convening and holding procedures comply with the Company Law, Rules of

Listing of Shenzhen Stock Exchange and other laws and regulations, as well as the

Articles of Association of the Company.



III. Attendance in the Meeting



1. Attendance of Shareholders



24 shareholders participated in the on-site meeting or via online voting system,

representing 38,584,704 shares, accounting for 1.6561% of the Companys total shares.

Among them, 3 shareholders participated in the on-site meeting, representing 1,503,064

shares, accounting for 0.0645% of the Companys total shares and 21 shareholders

participated via online voting system, representing 37,081,640 shares, accounting for

1.5916% of the Companys total shares.



2. Attendance of B-share Shareholders



5 B-share shareholders participated in the on-site meeting or via online voting system,

representing 1,153,464 shares, accounting for 0.7552% of the Companys total B shares.

Among them, 2 shareholders participated in the on-site meeting, representing 587,964

shares, accounting for 0.3849% of the Companys total B shares and 3 shareholders

participated via online voting system, representing 565,500 shares, accounting for 0.3702%

of the Companys total B shares.



3. Attendance of Mid-small Shareholders



24 Mid-small shareholders participated in the on-site meeting or via online voting system,

representing 38,584,704 shares, accounting for 1.6561% of the Companys total shares.

Among them, 3 shareholders participated in the on-site meeting, representing 1,503,064

shares, accounting for 0.0645% of the Companys total shares and 21 shareholders





participated via online voting system, representing 37,081,640 shares, accounting for

1.5916% of the Companys total shares.



The directors, supervisors and some senior executives of the Company, as well as the

lawyers engaged by the Company as witnesses attended the meeting.



IV. Deliberation and Voting on the Proposal



The following proposal was voted at the meeting by means of online and on-site voting:



1. Proposal on the Signing of a Financial Service Agreement with Sinochem

Finance Co., Ltd.





The proposal is a related-party matter. As Sinochem Holdings Corporation Ltd. indirectly

controls the Company through Syngenta Group Co., Ltd, the controlling shareholder of

the Company. Syngenta Group Co., Ltd. constitutes the affiliated shareholder of the

Company, which holds 1,828,137,961 shares of the Company. Such affiliated shareholder

or its representative does not participate in the on-site meeting or vote via online voting

system.



1.1 Voting Summary:



35,378,440 shares for it, accounting for 91.6903% of all the shares entitled to vote held

by the participating shareholders; 3,206,264 shares against it, accounting for 8.3097% of

all the shares entitled to vote held by the participating shareholders; 0 shares abstained

(among them, 0 shares are considered as abstained due to non-voting), accounting for

0.0000% of all the shares entitled to vote held by the participating shareholders. Among

them:



(1) Voting Summary of B-share Shareholders:



0 shares for it, accounting for 0.0000% of all the shares entitled to vote held by the

participating B-share shareholders; 1,153,464 shares against it, accounting for 100.0000%

of all the shares entitled to vote held by the participating B-share shareholders; 0 shares

abstained (among them, 0 shares are considered as abstained due to non-voting),

accounting for 0.0000% of all the shares entitled to vote held by the participating B-share

shareholders.





(2) Voting Summary of Mid-small Shareholders:



35,378,440 shares for it, accounting for 91.6903% of all the shares entitled to vote held

by the participating Mid-small shareholders; 3,206,264 shares against it, accounting for

8.3097% of all the shares entitled to vote held by the participating Mid-small

shareholders; 0 shares abstained (among them, 0 shares are considered as abstained due

to non-voting), accounting for 0.0000% of all the shares entitled to vote held by

Mid-small shareholders present.



1.2 Voting Result: As a general resolution, this proposal has been approved with more

than 50% of the total number of shares entitled to vote held by the participating

shareholders.



The above proposals were disclosed on the website of Juchao Information

(http://www.cninfo.com.cn) on December 24, 2021.



V. Legal Opinion



1. Name of the law firm: King & Wood Mallesons, Shanghai



2. Names of the lawyers: Wang Letao, Pan Jun



3. Conclusive opinion:



In the lawyers opinion, the convening and holding procedures comply with the Company

Law, Rules for the Shareholders Meetings of Listed Companies, Notice of the Shenzhen

Stock Exchange on Issuing the Detailed Implementing Rules of the Shenzhen Stock

Exchange for Online Voting at Shareholders Meetings of Listed Companies and other

applicable laws and regulations, as well as the Articles of Association of the Company;

the qualification of the convener and attendees are legitimate and valid; the voting

procedures and voting results of the meeting are legitimate and valid.



VI. Documents for Reference



1. Resolutions of the 1st Interim Shareholders Meeting in 2022;



2. Legal Opinion on the Witnessing of the Shareholders Meeting.





This announcement is hereby made.







The Board of Directors of ADAMA Ltd.



January 11, 2022









 Stock Code: 000553(200553) Stock Abbreviation: ADAMA A(B) Announcement No. 2022-3ADAMA Ltd.Announcement on the Resolution of the 1st InterimShareholders Meeting in 2022The Company and all members of its board of directors hereby confirm that allinformation disclosed herein is true, accurate and complete with no false ormisleading statement or material omission.I. Important Notice1. No proposal was vetoed at the meeting.2. The meeting didnt change any resolution made by the previous shareholdersmeetings.II. Holding of the Meeting1. Time of the On-site Meeting: starts at 14:30 on January 10, 20222. Venue: 6F A7 Building, No.10, Chaoyang Park South Road, Chaoyang District,Beijing3. Nature of Meeting: Combination of on-site voting and online voting4. Convener: The Board of Directors of the Company5. Host: Erik Fyrwald6. Time/Date of Online Voting:Online voting: online voting via the trading system of Shenzhen Stock Exchange will befrom 9:15 a.m. to 9:25 a.m., 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. onJanuary 10, 2022; online voting via the online voting system of the Shenzhen StockExchange will be any time from 9:15 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on January 10, 2022.7. The convening and holding procedures comply with the Company Law, Rules ofListing of Shenzhen Stock Exchange and other laws and regulations, as well as theArticles of Association of the Company.III. Attendance in the Meeting1. Attendance of Shareholders24 shareholders participated in the on-site meeting or via online voting system,representing 38,584,704 shares, accounting for 1.6561% of the Companys total shares.Among them, 3 shareholders participated in the on-site meeting, representing 1,503,064shares, accounting for 0.0645% of the Companys total shares and 21 shareholdersparticipated via online voting system, representing 37,081,640 shares, accounting for1.5916% of the Companys total shares.2. Attendance of B-share Shareholders5 B-share shareholders participated in the on-site meeting or via online voting system,representing 1,153,464 shares, accounting for 0.7552% of the Companys total B shares.Among them, 2 shareholders participated in the on-site meeting, representing 587,964shares, accounting for 0.3849% of the Companys total B shares and 3 shareholdersparticipated via online voting system, representing 565,500 shares, accounting for 0.3702%of the Companys total B shares.3. Attendance of Mid-small Shareholders24 Mid-small shareholders participated in the on-site meeting or via online voting system,representing 38,584,704 shares, accounting for 1.6561% of the Companys total shares.Among them, 3 shareholders participated in the on-site meeting, representing 1,503,064shares, accounting for 0.0645% of the Companys total shares and 21 shareholdersparticipated via online voting system, representing 37,081,640 shares, accounting for1.5916% of the Companys total shares.The directors, supervisors and some senior executives of the Company, as well as thelawyers engaged by the Company as witnesses attended the meeting.IV. Deliberation and Voting on the ProposalThe following proposal was voted at the meeting by means of online and on-site voting:1. Proposal on the Signing of a Financial Service Agreement with SinochemFinance Co., Ltd.The proposal is a related-party matter. As Sinochem Holdings Corporation Ltd. indirectlycontrols the Company through Syngenta Group Co., Ltd, the controlling shareholder ofthe Company. Syngenta Group Co., Ltd. constitutes the affiliated shareholder of theCompany, which holds 1,828,137,961 shares of the Company. Such affiliated shareholderor its representative does not participate in the on-site meeting or vote via online votingsystem.1.1 Voting Summary:35,378,440 shares for it, accounting for 91.6903% of all the shares entitled to vote heldby the participating shareholders; 3,206,264 shares against it, accounting for 8.3097% ofall the shares entitled to vote held by the participating shareholders; 0 shares abstained(among them, 0 shares are considered as abstained due to non-voting), accounting for0.0000% of all the shares entitled to vote held by the participating shareholders. Amongthem:(1) Voting Summary of B-share Shareholders:0 shares for it, accounting for 0.0000% of all the shares entitled to vote held by theparticipating B-share shareholders; 1,153,464 shares against it, accounting for 100.0000%of all the shares entitled to vote held by the participating B-share shareholders; 0 sharesabstained (among them, 0 shares are considered as abstained due to non-voting),accounting for 0.0000% of all the shares entitled to vote held by the participating B-shareshareholders.(2) Voting Summary of Mid-small Shareholders:35,378,440 shares for it, accounting for 91.6903% of all the shares entitled to vote heldby the participating Mid-small shareholders; 3,206,264 shares against it, accounting for8.3097% of all the shares entitled to vote held by the participating Mid-smallshareholders; 0 shares abstained (among them, 0 shares are considered as abstained dueto non-voting), accounting for 0.0000% of all the shares entitled to vote held byMid-small shareholders present.1.2 Voting Result: As a general resolution, this proposal has been approved with morethan 50% of the total number of shares entitled to vote held by the participatingshareholders.The above proposals were disclosed on the website of Juchao Information(http://www.cninfo.com.cn) on December 24, 2021.V. Legal Opinion1. Name of the law firm: King & Wood Mallesons, Shanghai2. Names of the lawyers: Wang Letao, Pan Jun3. Conclusive opinion:In the lawyers opinion, the convening and holding procedures comply with the CompanyLaw, Rules for the Shareholders Meetings of Listed Companies, Notice of the ShenzhenStock Exchange on Issuing the Detailed Implementing Rules of the Shenzhen StockExchange for Online Voting at Shareholders Meetings of Listed Companies and otherapplicable laws and regulations, as well as the Articles of Association of the Company;the qualification of the convener and attendees are legitimate and valid; the votingprocedures and voting results of the meeting are legitimate and valid.VI. Documents for Reference1. Resolutions of the 1st Interim Shareholders Meeting in 2022;2. Legal Opinion on the Witnessing of the Shareholders Meeting.This announcement is hereby made.The Board of Directors of ADAMA Ltd.January 11, 2022
Broad assumptions can fall away when we take a new look at something we thought familiar.

In todays case, that principle applies to the contentious battle over education policies in the countrys wealthiest county that played a role in Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkins narrow victory over Democratic rerun Terry McAuliffe.

In the lead up to that election, Loudoun County School Board meetings dominated national headlines as an unwitting ground zero in a culture war over claims of children being indoctrinated with critical race theory.

Fox News in particular fanned the flames, airing almost 80 stories over four months in 2021, and Virginia saw reverberations from that ludicrously outsized news coverage as the issue sprang from nowhere to dominate discussions in school districts.

The complaints that flooded meetings of puzzled school board members were usually accompanied by anger over mask-wearing requirements, which at least connected to real school policies.

Mainstream media outlets have often bolstered a perception that the actions of outraged parents in Loudoun County were primarily motivated by an opposition to the honest teaching of Black history. A more recent, outside-the-mainstream examination of the situation paints a more nuanced picture, if not a comforting one.

A five-part series on the Loudoun County education battles by anti-establishment journalist Matt Taibbi, published through his TK News website on Substack.com, reads more like a dark comedy, with the caveat that real people continue to be adversely affected by this pileup of escalating absurdities.

Taibbi made his reputation as an investigator and critic of complex financial controversies such as the government bailouts of the banks behind the subprime mortgage crisis that caused the Great Recession of 2008.

An admirer of the late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, Taibbi famously described investment firm Goldman Sachs as a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Lately hes become more of a media gadfly, firing off protests at an industry that he sees as moving toward unbridgeable partisanship and away from the constitutional principles of free speech and freedom of the press.

Perhaps the most disconcerting revelation from his independent look into Loudouns troubles is that the precursor to all this national hullabaloo, the school systems effort to address inequities in the admission of Black and Hispanic students to gifted programs, actually resulted in the disenfranchisement of other minority groups  Asian and South Asian families.

Under the blind admissions system that was previously in place, Asian students, not white students, made up the largest portion of Loudouns gifted program enrollees, though they comprised only about 20% of the population. (By the way, because of the communitys affluence, these sought-after programs feed directly into Ivy League institutions such as Harvard, Princeton and Stanford.)

The percentage of Black students in these programs was smaller than their proportion of the overall student body, which in 2019 led the countys NAACP chapter to file a discrimination complaint with Attorney General Mark Herrings office.

Taibbi notes that the school district does have a bleak history when it comes to segregation and complaints of racist incidents. He also adds sardonically that the gifted admissions controversy arose at the same time that Herring, himself a Loudoun graduate, publicly admitted to wearing blackface at a college party.

At about the same time as the controversy over admissions, in a perfect storm of bad judgement, a Loudoun County elementary school organized a runaway slave game meant to teach about the Underground Railroad, the network that worked to help enslaved Black people escape  and the well-meaning but ill thought out exercise resulted in a Black parents complaint that further inflamed these rising tensions.

By the time Herrings office ruled that Loudouns gifted admissions process was indeed discriminatory against Black and Hispanic students, the wealthy school district had already spent about $500,000 on a California consulting firm hired to address issues with diversity. Herrings office adopted that firms recommendations  measures that really were, for better or for worse, guided by interpretations of critical race theory principles.

Critical race theory is not taught in Virginia schools, and this nugget does not contradict that fact. However, according to Taibbi, a growing number of Loudoun parents and educators, among them at least a few who regularly voted Democratic, felt the consulting firms recommended changes went too way far, playing right into the right wing caricature of CRT as a system that deliberately turns students against each other.

In the meantime, the voices of South Asian parents upset with the school system because of the changes to their kids access to the gifted programs went unheard. Taibbis piece opens with anecdotes of South Asian residents in Loudoun casting votes for a Republican ticket for the first time in their lives.

For the record, Youngkin did not win Loudoun County, but he lost there and in other Northern Virginia localities by a smaller margin than his predecessor Ed Gillespie did to Ralph Northam in 2017. Pair that with the surge in support he received from rural Virginia and complete Democratic control of the state came to an end after only two years.

Taibbis series does not address the widespread misinformation about the teaching of CRT that blazed through the state, beyond acknowledging McAuliffes infamous Sept. 28 debate gaffe that played into the hands of Youngkin and Republicans (I dont think parents should be telling schools what to teach) and asserting that Democrats nationally are in danger of losing the publics trust on education if they dont reverse a course he described as a parents should leave ruining education to us approach.

Virginia election experts have asserted that the closing of schools because of COVID-19 and the switch to virtual learning weighed heavier in the Democratic defeat than CRT.

Taibbi supports that conclusion, saying in an interview that though coverage of Loudoun rarely made mention of it, school closures were the primary issue for most people there  The more common complaint was, My kids are not learning anything.

 The Roanoke Times
Heres a wish for the new year that may sound familiar to readers: Virginias state and local governments should resolve to be more transparent in 2022.

Seems simple, right? Straightforward, noncontroversial. Well, youd be surprised.

The Virginia Freedom of Information Act states clearly that the affairs of government are not intended to be conducted in an atmosphere of secrecy since at all times the public is to be the beneficiary of any action taken at any level of government.

And yet, despite that rather firm and forceful directive, and the language that follows requiring most government documents to be public and most meetings to be open, Virginia repeatedly sees its elected and appointed officials run afoul of it.

So let this be a year when government at every level lets the sunshine in and affirms a commitment to openness, accessibility and transparency.

Begin at the commonwealths center of power: the General Assembly. For two years, the pandemic disrupted normal operations in Richmond, with the House operating remotely and the Senate meeting in several locations.

That was all to keep members safe, which was important, but it also made engagement more complicated. Virtual committee and subcommittee meetings, while necessary in the COVID era, are a poor substitute for the sort of in-person interaction that can make legislation stronger.

On the plus side  and this is a big plus  that experience should serve as to remind legislative leaders the value of broadcasting and recording meetings and keeping those meetings archived and accessible. Doing so means more Virginians can experience the debate without traveling to Richmond.

A recent letter to those leaders, sent by Megan Rhyne on behalf of the openness coalition Transparency Virginia, offers some other ideas for strengthening the legislatures commitment to transparency.

Those suggestions include reducing the number of bills left in committees without consideration or a vote, adopting a unified meeting notification system, making past Senate floor session and committee meetings searchable by keyword, continuing to livestream subcommittee meetings and incorporating virtual public testimony into in-person meetings.

Before the pandemic, the legislature had made important strides toward transparency, under leadership of both parties, and advancing these priorities would help bolster the work to keep the public abreast of the goings on in Richmond.

More than that, lawmakers heading to the session in a weeks time can accomplish a great deal by supporting bills that improve Virginias FOIA and opposing those that would carve out additional exemptions to the law.

In November, the Freedom of Information Advisory Council endorsed three measures that would increase access to records. All three deserve adoption.

One would reduce fees for record requests, a long-overdue reform championed by Del. Danica Roem, D-Prince William, that will set reasonable limits on fees. It also discourages citizens from flooding a government body with frivolous requests, a key concern of public officials.

The second bill, being carried by Del. Michael P. Mullin, D-Newport News, allows for the release of law enforcement disciplinary records when investigations are complete, with narrow language to define those records and allowing for redaction of some personal information. Thats an important step for more effective law enforcement oversight.

Finally, the FOIA Council gave its backing to a bill that would change the commonwealths law for public bodies holding electronic meetings  how often they can be held, rules for participation by the public and members, etc. The legislation is the product of considerable negotiations among government access groups, local government associations and media organizations, meaning there is broad consensus for these reforms.

Again, many of these protocols and measures are straightforward, needed and serve the public interest. Virginia can hope this is a year for transparency in the commonwealth and citizens should encourage their elected officials to see that it is.

 The Virginian-Pilot & Daily Press Editorial Board. Disclosure: Virginian-Pilot Opinion Editor Brian Colligan serves on the Virginia Coalition for Open Government Board of Directors. VCOG is a member of the Transparency Virginia coalition.
The Belgian judiciary wants the Chairman of the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), Ali Mahmoud arrested on charges of corruption and embezzlement, Libya Observer reports, citing Belgian magazine De Tijd.

Mahmoud is subject to an international arrest warrant and could be arrested if he leaves Libya and the warrant aimed at investigating lost interest on the LIAs billions at Euroclear for several years.

According to the Belgian magazine, Mahmoud will be a source of concern for the Belgian Euroclear Bank, if corruption charges are proven, because the bank and its shareholders, including the Belgian government, will be liable.

The Belgian government also, according to the magazine, released interests worth 15 billion euros, which were later transferred to foreign accounts in London and Bahrain.

The United Nations Sanctions Committee ordered in 2011 to freeze most of the funds of the Libyan Investment Authority, including those in the Belgian clearing house, also known as, Euroclear Bank.
Ex-Tunisian President Mohamed Moncef Marzouki has revealed French authorities have turned down Tunisias request to extradite him after he was condemned to four years in prison in December on charges of plotting against the North African country.

Marzouki indicated that he has been subjected to an international arrest warrant issued by Tunisian authorities.

The former Tunisian leader has been living in France for several months now. He has been in an open feud with incumbent President Kais Saied that he described as a dictator apprentice.

Marzouki has been among outspoken critics of Saied over his July 25 move during which he seized all major powers including the executive and legislature.

In December, the Court of First Instance in Tunisia sentenced Marzouki in absentia to four years imprisonment on charges of attacking the states external security.

The former leader took responsibility for contributing to the postponement of the Francophonie summit scheduled for November 2021 in Tunisia.

Marzouki has called over the weekend for civil disobedience in the North African country to topple Kais Saied.

In a statement posted on his Facebook page, Marzouki accused Saied of pushing the country to an unprecedented level of problems.

In less than a year, Tunisia drifted to division, economic collapse, threats against judges and grave violations of human rights, Marzouki said.
A group of Algerian human rights organizations and militants have called on the Algerian authorities to put an end to the new wave of cracking down and violations of the constitutional rights to freedom of speech, assembly and association.

In their joint statement released lately, they called for the immediate liberation of prisoners of conscience, detained independent journalists and trade unionists, urging the Algerian authorities to stop the prosecution of pro-democracy militants and repeal illegitimate liberticidal laws used to muzzle the vocal critics and popular Hirak protesters.

The year 2022 starts with a surge in oppression targeting academics, journalists, lawyers, civil society representatives. This is a dangerous escalation putting Algerias future & unity at high risk and exposing it to international sanctions for failing to honor human rights commitments, say the signatories of the statement.

The signatories include the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights (LADDH), International Riposte, the Association for Change & Democracy in Algeria, Confederation syndicale des forces productives (COSYFOP), the Youth Rally for Algeria (RJPA), the National Autonomous Union of Public Administration Personnel (SNAPAP), as well as a large number of journalists, lawyers, university professors, politicians and civil society representatives.
Morocco on Monday called for a new win-win partnership between the European Union (EU) and the African continent, as France holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU.

It is necessary to define together a common commercial and industrial pact, based on the strengths of Europe as a renewed and innovative industrial power and Africa which offers relays of carbon-free competitiveness in terms of production, innovation and services, said Minister of Industry and Trade, Ryad Mezzour.

The Moroccan official made the address, via videoconference, before an international conference on the theme European Union-Africa trade relations: towards new partnerships , held Monday in hybrid format in Paris, marking the start of the French presidency of the Council of the EU for six months.

This international conference seeks to highlight the European partnership with Africa in terms of trade and investment, a few weeks before the AU-EU summit and the priority of reshaping the European partnership with Africa. Organized in several roundtables, the conference discusses the current stakes and state of play of the EU-Africas economic and commercial partnership.

The gathering also tackles the potential and perspectives of trade and investment relations between the EU and African countries, through the prism of existing trade agreements in North Africa on the one hand, and in sub-Saharan Africa on the other hand.

In his address, the Moroccan official stressed the paramount necessity to improve the competitiveness of African companies and jobs creation on both sides of the Mediterranean, and to build a new win-win partnership, pleading for a more ambitious North-South-South cooperation.

This North-South-South cooperation, underlined Mr. Mezzour, must also be part of a joint and complementary approach that includes the maintenance and development of European industries established in Africa, a relocation of Asian value chains in the Euro-Mediterranean-Africa space capitalizing on geographical proximity, reduced logistics costs, a gain in competitiveness, as well as a reduction of the environmental footprint.

Mezzour also underlined that the countries of the two shores of the Mediterranean can count on the support and the mobilization of Morocco for the deepening and the modernization of our agreements and our ambition as regards trade and investment, allowing our two shores to meet together the numerous challenges we face.

The official also surveyed the large-scale structuring projects carried out in Morocco, including ports, airports, industrial reception areas of technologies, renewable energies as well as an industry that is today renowned worldwide for its competitiveness and the know-how of its human capital.

This evolution increased Moroccos attractiveness towards its traditional partners and attracted new ones, said the Minister, noting that the health crisis has revealed the resilience and ingenuity of the local industry and of its great potential. This is why the economic recovery has been faster there than elsewhere, thanks to the mobilization and commitment of its industrial operators, he said.
The Wyoming Republican Party apparatus includes people who are quite radical, Rep. Liz Cheney said Thursday.

Cheney made the comment on the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The lawmaker gave multiple interviews that day, while also observing a moment of silence in the House of Representatives.

Since the attack, Cheney has steadfastly insisted former President Donald Trump helped to incite the riot, which occurred as Congress worked to certify the presidential election. That criticism, and her vote to impeach Trump, prompted serious blowback within Wyoming.

In early 2021, the state party voted to censure her for her vote to impeach Trump. More recently, the Wyoming GOP narrowly voted to unrecognize Cheney.

There are people in the state party apparatus of my home state who are quite radical. And some of those same people include people who were here on Jan. 6th, include a party chair who has toyed with the idea of secession, Cheney said in a Fox News interview Thursday. So, there is a very radical element of the Republican Party in the same way that there is a radical element of the Democratic Party.

Cheney was referencing Wyoming GOP chairman Frank Eathorne, who alluded to secession in an interview last year and was at the rally outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, which he termed peaceful and patriotic, in statement released shortly afterward.

Eathorne was not the only Wyoming Republican present at the Capitol that day: Cheyenne businessman Darin Smith, who sought at one point to unseat Cheney in Augusts Republican primary, attended as well. Smith previously told the Star-Tribune that he does not regret attending, but also clarified that he did not storm the Capitol building.

The Republican Party plans to issue a statement on Cheneys comments about the chairman.

It is clear where the state party stands on Cheney already.

To further her own personal political agenda, Representative Liz Cheney has not only caused massive disruption, distraction and division within the House Republican Conference, but has also willingly, happily, and energetically joined forced with and proudly pledged allegiance to democrat Speaker of the House Pelosi, as a means of serving her own personal interests while ignoring the interests, needs and expectations of Wyoming Republicans, the resolution that unrecognized her stated.

As Cheneys reelection year kicks off, the interviews she gave on Jan. 6 indicate that she remains committed to the approach shes employed for the past 12 months: slamming Trump for lying about the 2020 presidential election and his role in the Capitol riot. Those comments have come with consequences, including losing her leadership position in the House.

I think that is really important when you have somebody who has demonstrated his lack of fidelity to the Constitution, someone whos at war with the rule of law, you cannot entrust that person with the power of the presidency ever again, Cheney said in an interview on the anniversary. And I think its critically important for the Republic that he not be anywhere close to the Oval Office ever again.

Cheneys continued rebukes of Trump has prompted praise from Democrats, which anti-Cheney Republicans have harped on. For example, Vice President Kamala Harris said in an interview that she applaud[s] her courage.

Harriet Hageman, the Trump-endorsed candidate against Cheney, used the vice presidents comments in a campaign message released Friday.

Good for Liz Cheney that Kamala Harris is happy with her work in Congress, because Wyoming sure isnt, Hageman said in a statement. Cheney is trying to get another bite at the apple in her vendetta against President Trump after her vote to impeach him failed to remove him from office.

Outside of the numerous interviews Cheney did on the anniversary, she and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, were the only two Republicans in the House for a moment of silence commemorating the Capitol attack.

Dick Cheney, a Wyoming political icon who is largely abhorred by the left wing for his role in the Iraq War, was warmly greeted by Democrats at the House, The New York Times reported.

When asked about Republican leaderships response to the attack on the Capitol, Dick Cheney replied Its not a leadership that resembles any of the folks I knew when I was here for 10 years.

My daughter can take care of herself, he added, when asked about Republican leaderships treatment of her.

Criticism of Trump has made Cheneys reelection effort difficult. In the past, shes coasted to reelection. This time, she faces a formidable challenge from Hageman.

According to recent polling, Trump remains the front-runner for the Republican nomination if he elects to run again.

Follow state politics reporter Victoria Eavis on Twitter @Victoria_Eavis
Auburn City Schools is evaluating whether to reinstate its previous mask requirement as the district reported its highest number of COVID-19 cases in a one-week period since the school year began in August. Faculty returned to school on Wednesday, with students back in class on Thursday.

The school district reported on social media that there were 154 confirmed cases among students, faculty and staff the week of Jan. 3-7, with 92 students receiving word of potential exposure at school.

On Nov. 1, the Auburn City Board of Education rescinded the mask requirement under a condition that it could be reintroduced if greater than 0.5% of its 10,400 students, faculty and staff were confirmed as having COVID-19 in a single week. This means if 52 additional cases are confirmed this week, masks will be required again starting Jan. 18, according to Daniel Chesser, public relations coordinator for ACS.

Ever since we rolled it back Nov. 1, the option to wear (masks) is still there, and theyve always been required on school buses per the U.S. Department of Transportations rules and regulations, Chesser said. If youre paying attention to the numbers with the hospital and statewide numbers, I think youll start to see a lot more people wearing masks in the community than maybe you saw a month ago, so that just goes right along with the same scenario for the school system as well.

In the first half of the school year, Auburn City Schools reported 12 COVID-19 cases the first week of classes from Aug. 10-13 and saw a peak of 93 COVID-19 cases the week of Aug. 23-27. Last week was well above that peak, but Chesser said the district is making every effort to keep schools open and kids learning and does not plan on shifting back to hybrid or remote instruction this semester.

We kind of saw a lot of the detriment with virtual learning; it works for some students, and it doesnt for others, he said. (Per) the achievement goals of the Alabama State Department of Education, there was some learning loss in the 2020-21 school year that can be directly correlated to remote learning.

Chesser said some COVID safety precautions remain in place this semester, like social distancing and waves of students being sent to cafeterias to pick up prepackaged lunches. He said Auburn City Schools has been working very hard this year to hire substitute teachers in the event any full-time teachers test positive for COVID-19 and noted some substitutes have taken more long-term roles.

Also, the district is continuing to seek additional bus drivers to fully staff its fleet of 100 buses.

Were only down a couple but thats all it takes to turn things out of whack and have one or two routes canceled for the day, Chesser said. The selling point on that position is part-time employment with full-time benefits.

Pay for bus drivers ranges from $18.22-25.72 per hour based on driving experience, according to Chesser, and the job comes with paid training, sick and personal leave and health insurance eligibility. Those interested can call 334-887-2100 to learn more.

ACS will continue to post weekly COVID-19 updates on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AuburnCityEdu and Twitter at www.twitter.com/AuburnCityEdu.

Want to see more like this? Get our local education coverage delivered directly to your inbox. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
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Cloudy skies during the morning hours followed by thunderstorms in the afternoon. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High near 75F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

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NOS's Information Management Office (IMO) plays a central role in providing IT infrastructure for NOS and NOS-wide IT governance (which includes strategic planning and policy development).

NOS Relocates Data Center

SUPPORTS NOS PRIORITY: PREPAREDNESS AND RISK REDUCTION

NOS successfully relocated its primary IT data centers to the NOAA Enterprise Data Center in Ashburn, Virginia, during the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2021. This relocation also allowed NOS to modernize the infrastructure that provides the backbone to all NOS IT systems and establish more robust networking routes to major cloud service providers. The relocation was performed with little to no production impact to NOS IT customers.

NOS Paves the Way for New Phone, Voice System

SUPPORTS NOS PRIORITY: PREPAREDNESS AND RISK REDUCTION

In FY 21, IMO cleared the decks to identify, prepare, and facilitate procurement of a new, modern phone and voice system to replace the 2,517 phones in use at NOS. IMO ensured continued voice connectivity while the change was implemented by using a cloud-based system. Now, users can remain mobile while making and receiving calls directly from computers and tablets, with no need to change their phone numbers.

Leading the Development of the NOAA Data Strategic Action Plan

SUPPORTS NOS PRIORITY: PREPAREDNESS AND RISK REDUCTION

In collaboration with other NOAA line offices, NOS led development of the NOAA Data Strategic Action Plan. The plan is a roadmap for implementing the NOAA Data Strategy, with the goals of maximizing the value of data assets with a consistent and transparent approach to data governance, stewardship, access, and use. It also ensures NOAA is well-positioned to meet the administrations legislative and policy requirements. As of this writing, the plan is currently undergoing final approval by the NOAA Executive Council.

IT Continues to Provide Outstanding Workforce Support, Access

SUPPORTS NOS PRIORITY: PREPAREDNESS AND RISK REDUCTION

Year two of the COVID-19 pandemic introduced continued challenges for IT support and network access. IT staff continued to refresh, deploy, and troubleshoot equipment and software with outstanding customer support for a workforce of full-time teleworkers. During this time, NOS also upgraded 65% of the workstations to Microsoft Office 2019, with close to 100% of some NOS offices receiving the upgrade.

Leading the First Comprehensive NOS Data Program Analysis

SUPPORTS NOS PRIORITY: PREPAREDNESS AND RISK REDUCTION

The NOS Data Management Working Group developed and presented a first-ever plan to NOS deputy directors that aims to increase IMOs ability to manage data consistently, and comply with the growing number of laws, policies, guidelines, and requirements surrounding data management. The project will have three stages and will continue into 2022. It will pave the way for a unified NOS data management program and respond to the growing demand for NOS data availability.
PM fucked it up like he fucks up everything.

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I wonder what performative bullshit Scotty from Marketing will perform next to distract us from the RAT shortages and Omicron surge (which he could have prevented or at the very least managed!!!!)





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literally all they had to do was wait 2 hours and 15 minutes

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yikes

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They were always going to release him, been saying it from the start.

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Yeah, it seemed like a lot of buck passing to see who got the 'burden' of being the one to let him in.



Seems like it's fallen on this judge. The government, border control and TA can now shrug their shoulders and say it wasn't their call.

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May he break both ankles in his first round match.

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he won his appeal off a procedural technicality - and thats what the appeal was about, procedural rules rather than the actual merits of his exemption. they cancelled his visa at 742am when he was supposed to be given until 830am to respond to the cancellation notice.



the govt lawyer decided to forego presenting his case and dropped it as it seems like the plan was to have the immigration minister cancel his visa a second time in a proper way. what i really wish happened was the govt lawyer stating his case first and then settled so more info could be reported, because the media reporting headlines make it out like novaxx did nothing wrong.



novaxx own legal documentation reveals he knew he was positive dec 16 and proceeded to go to multiple public events after maskless. this included being maskless with covid at an event where he posed for photos with like 20 kids. the govt should be able to cancel his visa just off of that basis of being detrimental to public health.



so essentially we just have to wait a few hours to see if the immigration minister uses his executive ministerial powers to cancel his visa a second time or not.







Edited at 2022-01-10 08:23 am (UTC)

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Yep. The government may still deport him - we'll see. Though the government are giant fuckwits at every possible opportunity so who knows.

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They're gutless. They won't do it.

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What a scumbag

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I don't think they'll want the optics of cancelling it a second time.

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Just deport the motherfucker. He knowingly exposed children while he was contagious. He belongs behind bars. If they decide to let him play, someone needs to set fire to the arena. They need to boo so loudly it can be heard on the moon.

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This makes more sense. Because I was thinking, the case seemed pretty cut-and-dry. Add to that fact that he has openly espoused his anti-vaxx beliefs and his history whining about restrictions.

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Yeah, I'm just a random third-year Canadian law student, but administrative law (which immigration falls under in commmon law countries) is very similar, and reading everything it all checks out legally, I'm not surprised with the turn out

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it's ridiculous how the govt stalled on letting aussies return home due to border controls but we let this fucknugget in who has been tested positive and doesn't believe in the vaccine.



i'm sorry, but tennis does not sit anywhere close to the public health in terms of importance. i hate this shitty govt.

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This saddens me.

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BOO

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Perfect comment and avatar combination!

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Literally what cant the Australian govt fuck up?

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I know right?? I can't wait to vote Scomo out.

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I know this isn't a laughing matter, but

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Thats the liberal national coalition for ya

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Handing out favours to their buddies in the private/commercial sectors.

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Disgusting. Fuck this crazy bastard pos. Such a huge blot mess upon human history. Guaranteed, there is no way that he can get any redemption in the future. Trash

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Urgh fuck offffff.

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lol i predicted this from the start. typical

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This has been very politically motivated. We have an election soon and our conservative federal government is likely going to lose. They saw the backlash in the community against Djokovic being allowed to play as an opportunity for political point scoring and distraction from our covid case numbers.



Like how they fucked Australia's recent management of covid, they fucked this up too.

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I honestly think the LNP will win again. I hope to hell they will not but Murdoch has brainwashed too many.

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I hate that I think this too :(

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Labour has been sitting in the back doing jack all. They should been destroying Liberal/Scotty every chance they got, everything has been handed to them this time around

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aaaand thanks to bullcrap like this, the balkan peninsula will never get rid of covid (or at least until all of the antivaxxers die).



and to think 50 years ago they shut down a smallpox outburst in 3 months-.-

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It's wild to think that 60 years ago the world banded together to eradicate smallpox and now we can't even agree that infectious diseases are bad.

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tell me about it, I fucking hate it here. trash heap mentality.



imagine these antivaxxers trying their dumb bullshit in yugoslavia lmfao

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tickets to goli otok?

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also, after reading the transcript of his border force interview - novaxx pretty much left this all on tennis australia. he didnt make sure he was following federal rules but just completely followed tennis australia's instructions. he assumed since tennis australia made their own processes in conjunction with the victorian state govt that everything would fall in line federally as well.



reading between the lines, its clear tennis australia was working to ensure novaxx got an exemption and shit was not a blind process. especially with applying for the visa in november, getting covid dec 16, and tennis australia's own exemption deadline was dec 10. tennis australia gave the medical exemption after their own deadline knowing the exemption was for novaxx. how else would they explain it?

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This whole situation leaves a bad taste in mouth from all sides of this case. Everyone sucks.



(But they are arresting him again, right? The government is gonna get more involved and if Novak loses this part of the process - he might be banned for 3 years from Australia I think. IDK. Idk law in Australia.)

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Libyas crude oil production rose to 900,000 bpd from 700,000 bpd after the completion of repair work on a pipeline, the countrys oil ministry said, as quoted by Bloomberg.

The pipeline that was being repaired links two oil fields to the Es Sider export terminal. Its shutdown for repairs took 200,000 bpd offline, which coincided with field outages caused by blockades that shaved off more barrels from Libyas total.

Before the outages and the pipeline shutdown, Libya was producing between 1.25 and 1.3 million bpd, but the latest events brought this down to less than 800,000 bpd temporarily.

More outages are not out of the question, however. Libyas oil infrastructure has suffered years of neglect, and the field shutdown for the pipeline repairs is unlikely to be the last one. As the chairman of the National Oil Corporation said earlier this month, the countrys oil infrastructure has been a casualty of years of illegal closures and financial problems that are yet to be solved.

In addition to more repairs likely to affect production, the dispute between the government and the Petroleum Facilities Guard is still not settled, suggesting that the field outages may continue. The PFG shut in production from four fields in December, including Libyas top producer, El Sharara, which has the capacity to produce 300,000 bpd.

The reason for the blockade is, once again, delays in salary payments, according to the PFG, which, as the name suggests, is supposed to be guarding oil facilities. During Libyas civil war, however, the PFG evolved into yet another paramilitary group in the conflict-torn country.

Despite the complex political and social situation, the NOC has been putting a lot of effort into boosting oil production, especially while Libya is exempt from the OPEC+ production cuts. Plans are to increase the total to 1.4 million bpd, although with all the disruptions, it will likely take longer than the NOC hopes.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
China is hosting this week foreign ministers from major oil producers and exporters in the Middle East to discuss boosting energy ties and a possible free trade agreement, while Beijing is concerned with the unrest in central Asian oil producer Kazakhstan.

More than 160 people were killed in Kazakhstan in one week of unrest during protests that affected production at the countrys largest oilfield, Tengiz, operated by Chevron.

The U.S. supermajor said on Sunday that production at the oilfield was gradually being restored to its usual volumes, following several days of curtailed output amid logistics disruptions due to contractors supporting the protests.

Tengizchevroil, the joint venture pumping oil at Tengiz, produces around 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) out of Kazakhstans total crude oil production of some 1.6 million bpd.

As Kazakhstan was plunged into protests, with a shoot-to-kill order from President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the unrest raised concerns over the energy security of China, which has invested in Kazakhstans energy industry.

So China is hosting this week the foreign ministers of the worlds largest oil exporter Saudi Arabia, as well as the foreign ministers of Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain, and the secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Nayef bin Falah Al-Hajraf, The Arab Weekly reports.

The Gulf countries and China will be seeking to progress negotiations over a free trade agreement (FTA) and cooperation in areas including energy.

The visit is vitally important, and it may lead to positive results for a China-GCC FTA, after negotiations started in 2004, Li Shaoxian, director of the China Institute for Arab Studies at Ningxia University, told the Global Times.

According to Chinese media and analysts, the Gulf officials and China will also discuss energy ties and regional security.

GCCs secretary general Al-Hajraf hopes the visit will help strengthen GCC-Chinese relations and economic, investment and technical cooperation, the Saudi Press Agency reported on Monday.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Putin has now gained an opportunity to re-engage with the five Central Asian states that have been drifting away from Russian influence

While it remains unclear exactly what forces were responsible for sparking the unrest, Kazakhstans President Tokayev appears to have benefitted from the events

The current unrest in the Kazakhstan capital, Nur-Sultan, and other Kazakh cities (particularly Almaty, the commercial capital), has broad implications for the security of Central Asia and Russia; is linked to the security breakdown in Afghanistan; and is linked to internal power politics of Kazakhstan itself. Kazakhstan Pres. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev took so much advantage of riots over rising fuel prices that the events seemed to have been tailored by him. But Russia and the United States also had an interest in the strategic diversion which the sudden melee represented.

The incident could be interpreted by the US and NATO as a distraction of Russian policy interest away from its supposed military escalation against Ukraine (possibly allowing Ukrainian forces, backed by Washington, to advance their positions inside Ukraine).

Russia, however, won the opportunity to re-engage in the five Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) which had been gradually distancing themselves from Moscow. Russia also wanted to protect, if possible, the remaining power of Kazakhstan First President and Elbasy (Leader of the Nation) Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev, 81, who had abdicated the Presidency in 2019 to seek a quasi-monarchical role above politics.

Nazarbayevs move was in some way a doctrinal model for the movement of Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin out of daily politics at some point. And now the turmoil in Kazakhstan has threatened that model, already having allowed Pres. Tokayev to remove some of Elbasy Nazarbayevs supposedly locked-in powers.

The independence of the five republics in 1991 overturned several hundred years of dominance by Moscow of Central Asia. Now there was a chance for Moscow  and Beijing  to claw back some influence in the regions former khanates.

The independence of the five republics effectively overturned several hundred years of gradually-acquired domination by Moscow of Central Asia, and this event, caused by the failure of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was believed by Pres. Putin to have constituted Moscows worst geostrategic loss of the 20th Century.

Fuel price riots have, in the early 21st Century, replaced the bread riots of the 20th Century, and the unrest in the Kazakhstan cities would have been easy to stimulate by any, or several, of the range of potential actors, from Pres. Tokayev to Pres. Putin, to the US Government. The only question which remains is whether the Communist Party of China (CPC) had any interest in promoting unrest in Kazakhstan. At first glance it seems difficult to see any opportunity there for Beijing, however, which is why the CPC remained quiet on the topic, seeking only to see a restoration of normalcy in Kazakhstan, which supplies or transits some 20 percent of the natural gas requirements of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC).

Significantly, however, CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping said on January 7, 2022, that he opposed a color revolution in Kazakhstan. His use of the term implied some belief that the US ultra-left faction might somehow be involved in an attempt to change the Kazakhstan Government by a populist putsch. Beijing clearly viewed the events in Kazakhstan as having been the result of external manipulation, but implying that it was a color revolution alone (ie: US-backed) may have been a discreet way of also implying Russian involvement without insulting Moscow.

Related: Cold Weather In North Dakota And Alberta Forces Oil Producers To Curb Production In any event, Russian overt involvement in controlling events in Kazakhstan once they had erupted was clear and obvious. Kazakhstan Pres. Tokayev on January 6, 2022, invited Moscow to send military forces in to help quell the riots under the terms of the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization), although the invitation was to all other members of the CSTO as well. Pres. Tokayev claimed that the protestors were terrorists who had received training abroad, and that may have been overstated but not entirely without foundation, especially given the allegations of a color revolution.

The riots did include a spontaneous element  perhaps a majority  of people genuinely disaffected by the poor economic conditions in Kazakhstan, and particularly by high fuel prices affecting home heating during the winter months.

But if there was, indeed, an attempted color revolution, then the primary beneficiary would seem to be Pres. Tokayev himself, in much the same way as the alleged coup attempt in Turkey in July 2016 was staged by Turkish Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdo?an to flush out and remove opponents within his own system. It is probable, if there was a color revolution attempt, that Pres. Tokayev used advanced knowledge of this to engage Russia and the CSTO to ensure that he consolidated power to finally eliminate Elbasy Nazarbayevs residual grip on power.

Not surprisingly, Pres. Erdo?an on January 6, 2022, called Pres. Tokayev to offer his support for the Tokayev Governments handling of the situation.

The finalization of the rift between Pres. Tokayev and Elbasy Nazarbayev has been coming since Mr. Tokayev was elevated to the Presidency from his post as Chair of the Senate in 2019. He was replaced in the Senate by then-outgoing Pres. Nazarbayevs daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva. She kept that position for less than a year, before being summarily dismissed from the post by Pres. Tokayev on May 2, 2020. That kind of personal insult to Elbasy Nazarbayev openly indicated that battle lines had been drawn.

Russia, on receiving the call for help on January 6, 2022, immediately dispatched Spetznaz special forces units to assist in quelling the rioters, and neighboring Kyrgyzstan also sent its own special forces unit, apparently from the National Guards Panther brigade rather than from the Armys 25th Special Forces Brigade.

Few of the other five Central Asian states will have found comfort in the Kazakhstan situation, particularly Uzbekistan, which had undertaken regional diplomacy to consolidate the special trading status of those five ex-Soviet territories and to build an economic and strategic capability that was less dependent on Russia for overland access to European and world markets. Uzbekistan had been working to promote a capability whereby the five states could trade south, through the Uzbekistan capital, Tashkent, by rail into Afghanistan, and then across to Pakistan and to the outside world without having to use Russian or Chinese transit.

But the manner of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan by the US Joe Biden Administration by August 30, 2021, meant that Afghanistan was thrown into economic and social chaos, creating a major refugee flow northward into the Central Asian states. Moscow immediately recognized that it was in a position to re-assert itself in the region.

There had been a conscious effort by Uzbekistan, in particular, to replace Russian influence and the use of the Russian language. Pres. Putin immediately offered Russian security assistance under the CSTO to deal with the refugee crisis and the revived threat of radical Islamism coming northward from Afghanistan, and within weeks suggested that the Central Asian states return to the use of the Russian language as their primary lingua franca.

As a result, then, of the January 2022 Tokayev-led transformation of Kazakhstan with Russian assistance, the Government of Uzbekistan, under Pres. Shavkat Mirziyoyev, must be considered most at risk. There will be an implied pressure on Pres. Mirziyoyev to close down the increasing Westernization he introduced to Uzbekistan.

In Kazakhstan itself  while police, military, and paramilitary forces have been given license to suppress the alleged revolt as violently as necessary, with considerable casualties on all sides  Pres. Tokayev moved quickly to remove all the remaining Nazarbayev loyalists. This started with the head of the National Security Committee (KNB), Karim Masimov, who was immediately dismissed by the President and the next day, January 6, 2022, arrested on charges of high treason.

Certainly, Masimov was Nazarbayevs man (he had effectively headed the administration of then-Pres. Nazarbayev), and he had strong connections in Moscow, up to and including Pres. Putin.

This begs the question, then, as to whether the color revolution  with or without US involvement  was something which could have originated with Elbasy Nazarbayev to curb the growing threat that Pres. Tokayev posed to the enduring (and possibly multi-generational) powers of the Nazarbayev dynasty? If so, he failed.

Moscow now must abandon the Nazarbayev line and support Tokayev if it is to regain dominance in Kazakhstan.

Moscow had become invested in the concept of the restoration of multi-generational constitutional leadership above the level of the political presidency, and Nazarbayev, by moving to the position of First President and Elbasy, had begun a move which provided such a model to Russia, short of reinstating the hereditary Tsarist imperial monarchy. Related: Oil Tops $80 After OPEC+ Sticks To Plan To Ease Cuts

Still, the question persists as to why Pres. Tokayev needed foreign troops to help quell the street protests. The riots were relatively persistent and widespread, but not of a scale which required such massive military intervention that the Armed Forces of Kazakhstan and the National Guard could not theoretically handle. Unless there were lingering questions over the loyalty of those armed forces, presumably to former Pres. Nazarbayev.

Clearly, many of the protestors were there actually doing the work of Tokayev, given that they tore down at least one statue of Nazarbayev and chanted, in Kazakh, the equivalent of Go away, old man!. But they were still, in essence, cannon fodder to the police and military units, who were, by January 7, 2022, given kill without warning orders to suppress the street protests. The bloodier the events, the more draconian could be the transformation of the system.

But it begged the question as to who armed the protestors if, indeed, they were armed. Most of the protestors were unarmed, and many were indignant that they had been branded as terrorists by the Government. Significantly, the Tokayev Government severely curbed the ability of international journalists to cover the events.

Pres. Tokayev immediately removed Elbasy Nazarbayev from his Chairmanship of the National Security Council, one of the key levers of real authority over the security and intelligence apparatus. Pres. Tokayev also dismissed the Government, allowing him to build a new Administration completely free of the Nazarbayev team.

Western media raised the comparison of Russian troops entering Kazakhstan with the invasions by Soviet troops of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Hungary in 1956, but the parallels are not there. The number of Russian troops engaged in Kazakhstan in the January 2022 affair was small, and, moreover, Moscow was genuinely attempting to contain a situation which it would have wished to avoid. But, with Pres. Tokayev requesting help (in order to elevate the crisis to one in which he was perceived to be a victim), Russia had no option but to agree  under the terms of the CSTO treaty  and play its part.

Nonetheless, the suggestion is not credible by Tokayev supporters that there had been 20,000 protestors engaged in open aggression against the Government, given the lack of evidence of such organized forces until now. Tokayev officials said that events in Almaty  such as attacks on the administrative offices and military sites, the capture of the airport, and taking hostage of foreign passenger and cargo airplanes  pointed to the high level of preparedness and coordination of the perpetrators, arguing that they must have been trained and dispatched from abroad.

But the evidence to support that is also not there. Indeed, by January 8, 2022, it was clear that the curtain was falling on the theater of the protests. The events had provided the necessary catalyst for Pres. Tokayev to act, and to flush out and suppress civilians who were genuinely aggrieved over economic opportunities while the Kazakh leadership actually continued to record great personal and national financial gains.

As a result, the bottom line is that the affair was created and managed by Pres. Tokayev, possibly utilizing (or drawing in, indirectly) US State Dept. elements to support what they thought would be a color revolution as a stalking horse. The affair certainly consolidated Pres. Tokayevs power and destroyed any residual elements of the incompletely-considered constitutional monarchy of Elbasy Nazarbayev. It revived the prospect of greater Russian engagement in the region only as a secondary by-product.

But it has significantly weakened the cohesiveness with which the five Central Asian former Soviet or Russian Empire states had been developing a new Central Asian economy with links to the wider world. And the affair was greatly facilitated by the sense of unrest and uncertainty engendered when the US effectively abandoned Central Asia on August 30, 2021.

By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs.

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Among developed nations, Australia is a black sheep. The nation still relies on coal for the majority of its energy mix, and its targets for cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions are half that of the US and the UK. The coal-rich country aims to cut emissions by just 26% from 2005 levels by 2030. Canberra has also resisted joining the two-thirds of countries who have pledged net zero emissions by 2050, the BBC reported in October. The Australian economy is largely dependent on coal. It is the second-biggest exporter of coal in the world (behind Indonesia) and coal is the nations second-biggest export. It should come as no surprise, then, that Australian politicians are unusually loyal to the worlds dirtiest fossil fuel, even as global scrutiny and climate pressure mount.

Although Australian coal producers are chasing a shrinking market as the world leans into the global clean energy transition and coal, in particular, is falling out of favor, Australian coal markets have recently been buoyed by Asian markets desperate for coal amid a global energy crunch. Last year marked a particularly turbulent time for the Australian coal industry due to an unofficial embargo imposed by Beijing on Australian coal imports, leaving huge shipping containers full of China-bound cargo adrift at sea. Though China hasnt resumed its once-hefty consumption of Australian coal, plenty more markets have opened up, most notably India, whose own domestic coal supplies came dangerously close to running dry late last year.

While coal has persisted as a stalwart economic boon for Australia, it is an increasingly sticky wicket politically. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's government is under huge pressure from global leaders and climate activists to do more to reduce the countrys carbon footprint. The window to reduce worldwide greenhouse gas emissions enough to avoid the worst impacts of climate change is rapidly closing. Last year, the United Nations declared a code red for humanity, as the impending climate crisis calls for unprecedented action on the part of the global community.

Related: Fossil Fuel Financing Under Pressure As Wall Street Caves To ESG Demands

And now, this year, Australia is responding to the mounting pressure to decarbonize by powering the worlds largest coal port with 100% renewable energy. The Port of Newcastle will still function as a coal port with an exportation average of 165Mt of coal a year, which is being seen by some as a clear example of greenwashing. However, the decision to power the port with renewable energy is being touted as just the first step of a more sweeping decarbonization plan. The Port of Newcastle says that it plans to increase the non-coal portion of its business so that coal only makes up half its revenue by 2030. Notably, this wording does not commit to actually decreasing the coal business, although the Port has also said that it wants to completely decarbonize by 2040.

As part of the plan to power the port with renewable energy, the Port of Newcastle has inked a deal with New South Wales wind farm operator Iberdrola. Port of Newcastle Chief executive officer Craig Carmody says that the company sees the writing on the wall, and believes that a pivot away from coal will be economically critical in order to avoid seeing the areas economic bedrock collapse, like Newcastle after the steel industry dried up. I would prefer to be doing this now while we have control over our destiny, while we have revenue coming in, than in a crisis situation where our revenue has collapsed and no one will lend us money, Carmody was quoted by the Guardian as saying.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

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Kuwait Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of one of OPEC's largest producers, aims to ultimately make its portfolio 100-percent compliant with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles, the fund's managing director Ghanem Al-Ghunaiman told Bloomberg.

"The process is ongoing with the KIA currently transitioning toward 100% ESG compliance for the entire portfolio while currently focusing on the E part of ESG," Ghanem Al-Ghunaiman told Bloomberg News.

Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) is the world's first-ever sovereign wealth fund created from the riches the country has amassed from its oil sales. Since 1976, Kuwait has been allocating a minimum of ten percent of the state's annual revenues to a fund for future generations "by diversifying revenue streams and ensuring a fiscally sustainable and secure future."

According to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute (SWFI), the Kuwaiti fund is currently the third-largest in the world, behind only the Norwegian wealth fund and the Chinese fund China Investment Corporation. Kuwait Investment Authority has assets of over $735 billion.

KIA has started to apply the ESG standard set by an independent globally-recognized ESG benchmark provider, Al-Ghunaiman told Bloomberg, without disclosing the name of said provider.

The fund will target companies "that have recognized and adapted to long-term financial risks and opportunities presented by climate change and resource depletion," its managing director told Bloomberg, offering a rare insight into the fund's strategy for the future.

Meanwhile, the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, Norway's $1.3 trillion Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), is pre-screening companies for sustainability risk before deciding to invest in them and, within one decade, it has divested from 366 firms that it has assessed as lacking sustainable business models.

In 2021 alone, the Norwegian fund assessed sustainability risk across more than 400 companies that were added to the fund's index, and chose to refrain from investing in nine companies that it believed would increase the fund's financial risk in the long term, Norges Bank Investment Management said last month in an update on its actions to protect from risks in the long term.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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Just as Libya partially recovered its oil production, bad weather forced the closure of four oil export terminals in the easta sign that Libyas crude exports in January will be much lower than in November, the last month of relatively stable and normal operations at its oilfields and oil ports.

The ports in eastern LibyaEs Sider, Ras Lanuf, Zueitina, and Harigawere all closed on Saturday, and could remain closed until the start of next week, two sources told Bloomberg on Monday.

The port closures due to bad weather add to Libyas recent setbacks in production and exports, after the blockade on several oilfields in the west and the two ports, Zawiya and Mellitah, exporting crude from them.

On December 20, Libya declared force majeure on its oil exports after crude oil production had been shut in from four of Libyas oilfields, including the largest 300,000-bpd El Sharara field. Other oilfields that are shut in include El Feel, Wafa, and Hamada. The oilfields were shut in by members of the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), which is tasked with protecting the oilfields, according to Libyas NOC. The PFG reportedly closed a valve on a pipeline going from Sharara to the Zawiya port, and another valve from Wafa to Mellita.

The result of the port closures is that the daily crude oil exports in the first week of January slumped by 45 percent compared to the average crude export rates in December, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Apart from bad weather and blockades, Libya suffered in recent days from the shut-in of 200,000 bpd of crude oil production due to maintenance work on a pipeline. Libyas oil production had slumped to 780,000 barrels per day early last week, before production was restored after the pipeline repairs were completed earlier than planned.

Currently, the OPEC member exempted from the OPEC+ production cuts pumps around 900,000 bpd, per Bloomberg estimates. This compares to 1.14 million bpd of crude oil in November 2021, according to the latest Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) from OPEC.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Mexico has reduced the debt burned of state-owned oil major Pemex by as much as $3.2 billion through a refinancing operation, Bloomberg reports, citing a statement by the Mexican finance ministry.

The operation involved swapping debt that was close to expiring with a new bond that will mature in 10 years. The government also refinanced some medium-term debt taking advantage of low refinancing costs.

This is not the first time the government has used debt swap and refinancing tools in its efforts to reduce the debt burden of the state oil company, which is the world's most indebted one with its debt pile at $113 billion.

In 2020, Pemex issued a $1.5-billion bond to refinance its existing debt. Then in December last year, the government gave Pemex a capital injection of $3.5 billion. With the latest debt refinancing move, the company's "financial pressure" will be reduced by some $10.5 billion between 2024 and 2030, according to the finance ministry.

In addition to debt refinancings and direct capital injections, the government has also provided the energy major with tax breaks to help it get back on its feet. Since the Lopez Obrador administration came into power, the state has reduced the amount of taxes the company owes it three times, from 64 percent to 40 percent.

The Mexican government has been moving ahead with a comprehensive revamp of the country's energy market aimed to virtually undo all the reforms implemented by the previous administration and re-establish state-owned companies as the dominant players in the field. Lopez Obrador also strongly favors fossil fuels and a key role for Pemex in the market.

Pemex, however, has been struggling to reverse a long-term decline in oil production, especially after the Lopez Obrador government effectively shut out foreign oil companies from Mexico's oil wealth.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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Turkmenistan's president has ordered the government to find a way to extinguish a colossal gas fire burning since the 1970s.

Dubbed the "Gates of Hell," the fire was rumored to be started deliberately in 1971 when a gas-drilling site collapsed into a gas reservoir, and geologists decided to set it on fire to keep the methane from spewing into the atmospherein the expectation that the fire would die out on its own in a few weeks.

It didn't.

The crater currently measures more than 230 feet by 65 feet and is a major tourist attraction in Turkmenistan, which has proven reserves of 19.5 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, which makes them the world's fourth-largest. Production stood at a little over 60 billion cubic meters annually as of 2019, with half of that exported to China.

The "Gates of Hell" crater's official name is the "Shining of Karakum," but it is also known as the Darvaza Crater, named so after the nearby village. The site is located some 160 miles from the Turken capital Ashgabad.

According to long-time president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, the fire is having an adverse impact on the environment and affecting the health of people living in the vicinity, according to a report by the AP citing Turkmen media.

What's more, the country, which has ambitious gas export expansion plans, is losing a valuable commodity in the fire "for which we could get significant profits," Berdymukhamedov said. Turkmenistan plans to boost export to destinations including Pakistan, India, Iran, and even Western Europe over the next nine years.

This would not be the first attempt to put out the fire that has been burning for five decades. One previous attempt failed back in Soviet times. Then, in 2010, Berdymukhamedov again ordered experts to find a way to extinguish the fire, but was unsuccessful as well.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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The view from Dr. Ali Khans hotel room might give the impression that the Nebraska public health expert was taking some time away to relax from the states winter cold spell.

Palm trees. Green vegetation. Blue ocean on the horizon.

In reality, Khan, dean of the University of Nebraska Medical Centers College of Public Health, volunteered to travel to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands last month at the behest of the World Health Organization. He went there to help the remote U.S. territory with its response to a COVID-19 outbreak.

Khan said the island territory, set in the Pacific Ocean north of Guam and east of the Philippines, has done a good job of responding to the virus. But in October, health officials identified a large outbreak among schoolchildren and construction workers.

Its the kind of work Khan has done for roughly three decades during a career focused on health security, global health and emerging infectious diseases. Before joining UNMC, he had a 23-year career as a senior director at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which he joined as a disease detective.

At the CDC, Khan responded to numerous high-profile domestic and international public health emergencies. He is also a former assistant surgeon general with the U.S. Public Health Service.

Khan represents UNMC on the steering committee of the WHOs Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, a technical partnership that provides support upon request to prevent and control outbreaks and public health emergencies.

UNMC is one of three American institutions represented on the 21-member international network. The others are Tulane University and the CDC.

Khan said the Northern Mariana Islands has mounted a model public health response to COVID-19, with good leadership by the governor and local health system and solid, aligned public health messaging.

While the commonwealth has faced challenges with vaccine confidence, misinformation on social media and equity issues similar to those on the U.S. mainland, 90.8% of residents eligible for vaccination  those 5 and older  have received at least one vaccine dose, according to CDC data, and 84.4% are fully vaccinated.

By comparison, 78.5% of all U.S. residents 5 and older have received at least one shot, and 66.5% of that group are fully vaccinated.

The territory has had 18 deaths since the start of the pandemic, representing about one-half of 1% of all cases reported. The mortality rate for the U.S. as a whole is 1.4%, according to Johns Hopkins University.

They have shown both how you can get to higher vaccination numbers and what could be the benefits of that when you think about morbidity and mortality, Khan said. He said he would like to see the U.S. get to a vaccination rate of 85%.

The commonwealth, he said, faces some particular challenges that make it important for residents to work together to keep outbreaks under control. The territory has a single health system with a finite number of nurses, doctors and hospital beds. If those beds fill, the health system cant send patients to hospitals in neighboring states, as can be done on the mainland.

If they have an out-of-control outbreak, not only is there no room at the inn, but theres only one inn, he said.

Khan said he hasnt been to a single store during his three weeks on Saipan, the commonwealths largest island, that isnt religious about making sure that patrons write down their names and phone numbers upon entry, take their temperatures and wear masks.

After shutting down and switching to remote learning during the earlier clusters, schools reopened in person Jan. 3.

Its just so nice to see what is possible when you approach it collectively as a community, politically and scientifically, he said.

The territory is also receiving support from federal agencies. But the supply chain is long, said Sean Casey, Pacific COVID-19 incident manager for WHO. The turnaround time for supplies is long, and many of the small nations dont have a lot of leverage when ordering supplies. The WHO recently provided PCR testing materials, which had been running low, as well as rapid antigen tests.

Casey said the global outbreak network is key to connecting partners with resources and expertise.

Its a really critical tool for us, and its really great that weve been able to leverage it for the Pacific and deploy Dr. Khan to the CNMI, he said.

Khans job involves working with health officials to improve their surveillance, lab methods and screening practices. He is also helping the team make sure that theyre collecting the right data and using it to improve their work. That includes looking at questions such as who gets hospitalized and why and whether patients got monoclonal antibodies and, if they didnt, why not.

Its all about using data to improve their response, and its a lot of fun, said Khan, who gave up his personal holiday time from the university to make the trip. The WHO is paying his local expenses.

Khan will be in the territory for about two more weeks. He plans to try to find some scholarship funds and recruit some students for the college, which offers classes online.

Such deployments, he said, also ensure that he stays current in his research and teaching. Two years ago, he went to Fiji and Tonga for a measles outbreak. He was in Sierra Leone during the 2014 Ebola outbreak.

This is what Ive done for 30 years, he said.

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The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has caused a sea change in how the federal government views the threat of domestic extremists, say researchers affiliated with the University of Nebraska at Omahas counterterrorism center.

And analysis of the 700-plus people arrested in connection with the riot continues to produce surprises.

UNOs National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (known by the acronym NCITE) was less than a year old when rioters bearing banners of then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol as Congress certified Joe Bidens victory in the 2020 election. But it has given new focus to the work of NCITE, which was established in 2020 with a 10-year, $36.5 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security to be the agencys research hub.

Ive never seen so many resources and such consistent energy toward understanding the domestic terror threat, said Gina Ligon, the centers director. (The Jan. 6 attack) has made what were doing more urgent.

Ligon said that in the immediate aftermath of the attack, she expected that well-established far-right groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers would turn out to be the driving force behind the riot  the kind of people shown in videos wearing tactical gear and carrying zip ties. They would have been followed by a larger group of unaffiliated protesters who entered the Capitol but didnt engage in violent acts.

My first thought was that it was this organized, top-down militia that got everyone spun up, Ligon said.

Thats not the way it turned out.

A study released last week by George Washington Universitys Program on Extremism  part of the NCITE consortium  showed that just 11% of those arrested so far were members of known extremist organizations.

The vast majority were not affiliated with organized groups, said Seamus Hughes, the programs deputy director.

The study also dismissed any notion that large numbers of rioters were down-and-out skinheads associated with past far-right groups.

Instead, the analysts found a diverse group ranging in age from 18 to 80, representing 350 counties in 45 states. Most (87%) are male, and most had jobs. There were business owners, real estate agents, a yoga instructor, a state legislator and even a musical theater actor.

Although some press attention has focused on the arrest of current or former military service members, only 11% had ties to the military.

The information was drawn from court records of the 704 people charged with federal crimes for participating in the siege.

It showed that many of those accused of crimes were part of what the studys authors called spontaneous clusters of people who are alleged to have joined in lawless or violent acts with people they had never met before.

It feels a little bit novel, Hughes said.

Ligon described them as people with no connection before Jan. 6 who may have linked up on the spur of the moment based on a shared ideology that was shaped by social media.

They see someone wearing the same symbols and speaking the same language, and instantly have this bond, she said. It requires a lot of trust to follow someone down a hallway and commit acts of violence.

In the past, foreign terror groups like the Islamic State group relied on direct recruitment of new members, typically using YouTube or other social media. The idea of spontaneous clusters suggests that law enforcement may have to look beyond those groups.

There are things that are happening online that are taking the place of what traditional terrorist structures do, Ligon said. Our thinking about what a terrorist organization is has shifted radically.

Twenty years ago, the Sept. 11 terror attacks forced disparate parts of the federal government to drop their turf battles and work together to prevent another 9/11. That effort succeeded, but at a cost.

We became pretty fixated after 9/11 on the foreign (terror) threat, said Samuel Hunter, an NCITE faculty member at UNO. But there was an emerging home threat. Jan. 6 was an exclamation point on the shifting nature of the threat base.

Though the Jan. 6 events were planned in plain sight  promoted even on Trumps own Twitter feed  the violence caught federal law enforcement by surprise. Clear warnings werent heeded, and intelligence tips werent shared.

The government has upped its game dramatically since the Capitol riot, Ligon said, boosting communications among intelligence and law enforcement agencies and for the first time enacting a cross-agency strategy to counter domestic terror groups.

Theres been a sea change in domestic policies, Ligon said. The last year of studying has made me more confident that we can degrade this faster.

NCITE is part of the response. It now encompasses 50 researchers at 18 academic institutions. Seventeen of them are based at UNO, in a newly constructed addition to Mammel Hall.

Hunter, a professor of industrial and organizational psychology, left a tenured position at Penn State University to come to NCITE last year.

The attraction for him was that NCITE planned to bring together academics from different disciplines  such as business, political science, psychology and information science  to combat terrorism.

We all bring different perspectives to the table, Hunter said. Theres no one way. None of us are going to solve this alone.

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Starbucks said in December that all of its U.S. workers must be fully vaccinated by Feb. 9 or face a weekly COVID testing requirement. (Mark Lennihan/AP)

NEW YORK  Companies that would be affected by a Biden administration vaccine-or-testing requirement for workers have largely remained on the sidelines while the Supreme Court considers whether the rule can be enforced.

The requirement, which would apply to companies with 100 or more employees, has faced numerous court challenges and was upheld last month by a three-judge panel with the U.S. Court of Appeals. Since then, one major company  Starbucks  announced its own vaccine mandate. It said in December that all U.S. workers must be fully vaccinated by Feb. 9 or face a weekly COVID testing requirement.

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Many companies, including Lowes and Target, have publicly said they would abide by any federal vaccine mandate and were taking steps to meet it, but stopped short of coming out with their own requirement. General Motors said in an email to The Associated Press Friday that it stands firmly in support of COVID-19 vaccinations, and that it was reviewing the rules with multiple internal and external stakeholders.

GM continues to encourage employees to get vaccinated given the broad availability of safe and highly effective vaccines, which data consistently show is the best way to protect yourself and those around you, General Motors said.

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Last weeks arguments before the Supreme Court come as companies of all stripes are grappling with labor shortages made more acute by the rapid spread of the highly contagious omicron variant of COVID-19. Business groups like the National Federation of Independent Businesses and National Retail Federation have slammed the requirements as onerous and could hinder companies ability to hire workers.

Jeff Levin-Scherz, population health leader at consulting firm Willis Towers Watson, says that many companies are hesitant to make any moves because court challenges have created a lot of uncertainty. He also pointed out that 14 states have enacted legislation that limits employer vaccine mandates. That makes it hard for companies that operate in different states to create a uniform plan, he said.

Levin-Scherz also noted that some companies may not need to do their own vaccine mandates because nearly all are vaccinated; others in more rural states typically have much bigger percentage of unvaccinated workers and that would require a bigger effort.

A survey of more than 500 U.S. companies by Willis Towers Watson conducted from Nov. 12 to Nov. 18 showed that more than half of all respondents either require or plan to require COVID-19 vaccinations. That includes 18% that now require vaccinations; 32% that plan to require vaccinations only if the Biden rules take effect; and 7% that plan to mandate them regardless of the rules status.

The survey also showed that very few employers with vaccination requirements  3%  have reported a spike in resignations, although nearly 1 in 3 of those planning mandates are very concerned that they could contribute to employees leaving their companies. On the other hand, nearly half of employers surveyed believe that vaccine mandates could help recruit and retain employees.

In August, Chicago-based United Airlines became the first major airline to require employees to be vaccinated or face termination. Others followed in the fall, but withheld or dropped threats to fire anybody who didnt get the shots.

Dallas-based Southwest Airlines said on Friday that its awaiting a final decision on the legal challenges. In the meantime, it will not enforce the Biden administrations Jan. 4 deadline for all federal contractors be vaccinated. The company notes that 93% of its workers are vaccinated against COVID-19 or have been granted an accommodation.

Walmart, the nations largest retailer, required that all workers at its headquarters as well as its managers who travel within the U.S. be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Oct. 4 but it excluded front-line workers, who the company has said have a lower vaccination rate than management. The discounter has not offered any details about how its taking steps to meet the federal mandate.

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Last month, Chicago-based aerospace giant Boeing said it was suspending a company vaccination requirement for all U.S.-based employees, citing court challenges.
Kathryn Romine of Lincoln became a big advocate for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commissions Your Parks Adventure challenge this year.

I really like the spirit of adventure and the opportunity to get out and see places I never get a chance to see, Romine said. Im always up for getting out and hitting the road.

She and a friend visited several state parks and recreation areas across Nebraska, many for the first time, while taking part in the Your Parks Adventure Program. As the challenge grand prize winner, Romine will now be able to camp in her new Forest River RV Patriot Edition 14cc camper from AC Nelsen RV World.

In the challenge, which was part of the state park systems centennial celebration, people who visited any state park area from June through November took a photo at a designated station, and submitted it and their story online. Selfie stations were placed at 100 sites among Game and Parks 76 state park, state historical park and state recreation areas.

More than 800 participants visited the selfie stations and shared their photos  some with multiple generations, groups of friends and pets.

Only those who visited Chadron State Park, Victoria Springs State Recreation Area, Arbor Lodge State Historical Park and Danish Alps State Recreation Area were entered in a drawing for the grand prize donated by AC Nelsen RV World. More than 228 people met that challenge, visiting those parks across the state.

Each photo entry from a unique selfie station qualified for a monthly prize drawing. All participants who submitted a photo and story received a commemorative parks centennial sticker, and those participants who completed the grand prize challenge also received a limited-edition commemorative challenge coin.

Romine heard about the challenge from her friend. As they got more involved, they went online and spread the word, too.

People would ask What possessed you to drive across the state like that? We just told everybody it was amazing, she said. We could not have done it if we hadnt been encouraged by the competition.

Runner-up Eddie Dorn of Filley, Nebraska, received a camping package for four, sponsored by JEO Consulting. Cleve Stolpe of Belden, Nebraska, received a camping package for two, sponsored by Crouch Recreation.

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Tornadoes cause damage to Humble, Kingwood

Several tornadoes touched down in the Humble area during Saturday nights storms.

The National Weather Service confirmed Sunday that multiple tornadoes touched down in the Houston area late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, according to findings from survey teams.

According to Humble Police Chief Ken Thies, parts of a commercial roof were blown nearly a quarter-mile away, landing in the middle of a nearby neighborhood.

Multiple homes and businesses reported some level of damage, including fallen trees and roofs torn off.

EF-1 damage was found near Humble and EF-0 damage near Montgomery. The survey teams also found an EF-1 tornado hit the Kingwood area. Scientists use the Fujita scale to measure tornado damage intensity. An EF-0 means winds were between 40 and 72 mph, and an EF-1 tornado has winds between 73 and 112 mph.

Power lines were also damaged, according to authorities. As a result, power was knocked out for thousands of residents.No injuries were reported.

City crews, police officers and residents worked together to clear roads of downed trees.

The story courtesy of Click2Houston.com. Photos courtesy of David Lambrix, Kingwood
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SPRINGFIELD  The Illinois Board of Higher Education is recommending a 5% increase in funding directed towards state public universities, as part of its first budget request under a new strategic plan. The move now goes to the state legislature and governor.

At its first meeting of 2022, the board passed a yearly budget recommendation for fiscal year 2023. It includes a 7% increase from the budget passed for fiscal year 2022, for a total recommendation of $2.132 billion, up from $1.993 billion.

That does not include the State Universities Retirement System.

IBHE board member Jennifer Delany echoed other board members when she said she was glad to see the boards staff recommend an increased budget.

It shows foresight in thinking about How do we invest our way out the pandemic? she said.

By far the largest section of the budget goes to the states public universities, with the board recommending $1.217 billion.

The recommendation includes another $4.7 million for Illinois State University, to $74.35 million. Eastern Illinois University would see a 6% increase to $44.26 million. The Southern Illinois University system, which includes both SIU Carbondale and SIU Edwardsville, would see a 4% increase to $201.3 million, the second largest appropriation after the University of Illinois system.

The recommendation for community college funding also increased by 5%.

IBHE Executive Director Ginger Ostros presentation on the budget emphasized how the budget works within the strategic plan, especially in equity initiatives. That includes significant increases to funding for Illinois Student Assistance Commission programs, including a 71.5% increase in operations and outreach, a 121.1% increase in funding for the Minority Teachers Scholarships program and a 121.6% increase in the Teachers Loan Repayment Program.

I really like how the budget priorities map well on the strategic plan, board member Derek Douglas said.

The recommendation also increases the Monetary Award Program, or MAP, budget by $50 million, to $530 million. The board hopes to increase it over time to $1 billion. The program continues to fail to serve all eligible applicants, Ostro said.

It continues to fall short of covering average tuition and fees at public universities and community colleges, she said.

The budget recommendation is normally changed by the governor and the state legislature before being approved, sometimes significantly so. The changes often include line items, including the amounts designated for specific universities.

Contact Connor Wood at (309)820-3240. Follow Connor on Twitter: @connorkwood

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BLOOMINGTON  A two-year contract with Flock Safety to purchase and install 10 automatic license plate readers in Bloomington is tabled to the first week of February.

The Bloomington City Council in a 6-2 vote on Monday pushed off a decision to enter a $59,000 contract with the Atlanta, Georgia-based company for the cameras after several members of the public criticized the technology, raising concerns of privacy.

Ward 3 alderwoman Sheila Montney and Ward 5 alderman Nick Becker voted against tabling the contract. Ward 1 alderman Jamie Mathy was serving as mayor pro temp in Mayor Mboka Mwilambwe's absence.

The Central Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois earlier in the day urged the city to pull out of the agreement with Flock Safety.

The ACLU in a statement Monday called the technology "invasive" and stated the city needs to share more information with the community before contracting the company.

"Beyond these immediate issues, the ALPR technology poses a risk to civil liberties and privacy, and also, can become a tool to surveil and monitor Black and brown communities," the ACLU said in a statement. "These are the very communities that already suffer from significant over-policing, whether in Bloomington or other communities across the country."

The Bloomington City Council will consider the two-year contract with Flock Safety at its Feb. 8 meeting. The cost of the first year of the contract is $31,500, and the second year is $27,500.

Documents prepared ahead of the city council meeting indicate the security cameras would help the Bloomington Police Department in "enhancing public safety in areas impacted by violent crimes and near locations of frequent vehicle crashes."

If approved, 10 automatic license plate readers would be installed in "areas of the city impacted by violent crime in 2021." The cameras are pole-mounted and solar-powered, and will connect to a ALPR cloud system.

Eight police departments and sheriff offices in Illinois have agreed to share ALPR data with Bloomington: West Peoria, Springfield, Champaign, Rantoul, Channahon, and Pekin police departments, and the Champaign County Sheriff's Office.

The documents do not include locations of the proposed cameras. The Pantagraph has filed a Freedom Information Act request seeking the information.

Carol Koos, president of the ACLU of Illinois Central Illinois Chapter during the Monday council meeting said: Primarily, more information needs to be shared with the community before this agreement is considered for approval. Communication with citizens prior to approval will increase sense of trust in police and city government.

Said Olivia Butts, who is a member of the leadership team of Black Lives Matter of Bloomington-Normal: I think most folks would agree that if the Bloomington community is to undergo more surveillance, then there should be some sort of public town hall or public input, at the very least some discussion among council people about how this will affect policing and how this will affect the community.

Resident Matthew Toczko, of Bloomington, questioned the timing.

How dare you try to sneak this by as a consent agenda item with zero public discussion or debate and no real chance for the people of Bloomington to say no to it. This kind of public surveillance bullshit is exactly the kind of thing that demands transparent discourse and a democratic process before implementation in a purportedly free society if it is implemented at all," he said.

The Bloomington Police Department also intends to speak with the Public Safety and Community Relations Board later in January about ALPRs and the city's plan for their use.

Bloomington currently has a network of security cameras installed in public areas throughout the city, which have helped solve crimes. The use of such cameras has raised local questions and concerns regarding privacy.

The ACLU has stated that, if the city moves forward with the contract, the the police department should create a specific privacy policy regulating the use of the technology, which should be shared with the public. The organization also stated the BPD should publicly share where the APLR cameras are installed and how the decision on where to place them was made.

Contact Sierra Henry at 309-820-3234. Follow her on Twitter: @pg_sierrahenry.

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BLOOMINGTON  When Bloomington police were called in May 2017 to the scene of a brutal stabbing death at a west-side motel, supervisors immediately began reviewing video footage from department-issued cameras to find out who killed 27-year-old Shannon Hastings.

That footage eventually revealed evidence that helped convict Kyle Brestan in December 2019.

A public safety camera produced evidence in the case and led us to evidence in the case we wouldnt have had at all that was critical in that homicide case, said Jack McQueen, who supervises the Bloomington Police Department crime and intelligence analysis unit.

Police say Bloomingtons network of cameras, which spreads throughout the city in public areas, has provided a valuable view of the city and helped officials solve crimes and get convictions. But the use of cameras has also raised questions about privacy and how far the program will go.

BPD currently uses eight mounted cameras and two towed camera units that have generated evidence in 29 shootings, seven robberies, four stabbings, four gun arrests and three homicides as of mid-January.

They have paid dividends over and over and over again, especially in regard to violent crime, McQueen said.

The most recent camera installation was placed near the intersection of Howard and West Market streets, though the equipment isn't kept in one place for longer than a few months.

I think its going to help out tremendously, said Paige Hinthorn, general manager at Metro by T-Mobile, 1001 W. Market St. There are a lot of problems happening on this side of town so I think its going to help with the stores security.

The cameras have been in use since 2013 and are deployed based on complaints and analysis of police reports, incidents and calls for service.

Our goal is to add five to seven cameras per year for the next few years and see where that takes us. We dont want cameras on every other block. We dont want that; we think thats too much, said Police Chief Dan Donath. We dont want cameras on top of cameras.

Of the eight mounted cameras and two towed camera units, a few are currently down for repairs or updates. One previously at Market and Howard is now on Market just west of Howard; others are at Tracy Drive at Oak Creek; the 1200 block of Orchard Road; Washington Street at Lee Street; Euclid Avenue at Olive Street; and South Morris Street at Six Points Road. McQueen said the cameras are moved based on need and crime analysis.

Reducing crime

Police agencies around the world have turned to the devices as the technology has become more portable and less expensive.

Chicago installed remote-controlled video cameras in high-crime areas in July 2003. Newark, New Jersey, has cameras posted around the city and posts live footage online, in hopes people will call in tips.

But privacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have raised concerns about whether the technology is too pervasive. One specific area of concern is the use of facial recognition software.

Bloomington officials say the use of the technology clearly is having an impact.

We find, over the course of time, that in order to solve some crimes, an interdispersing of cameras throughout the city does have value, Donath said.

The Bloomington chief said cameras not only help the department reduce crime but also help to reduce the fear of crime.

Gary Muhammad, a barber at A Kut Above at the corner of Howard and Market streets, assumes a camera was placed near that intersection because there have been a few minor things happening in this area over the years.

But I would say that nowadays things have calmed down considerably, whether the cameras had a part in that, I dont know, he said.

McQueen believes the cameras deter planned crimes and can capture evidence for spontaneous and often more violent crimes.

The key to the program is transparency, he said.

Nobody shouldnt know how it works and nobody shouldnt know what theyre collecting, and any problems that people have with it, we want to address on the front end of it, he said.

Bloomington police said that when a camera is installed in a new area, the department contacts nearby residents and businesses to field any questions.

But Muhummad said no one approached A Kut Above, although he believes the installation is good for the area.

Probably all in all its a good thing that the cameras are there, he said. If its a measure to prevent crime or whatever, make the community more safe, then who can oppose being kept more secure?

After a Facebook post about the cameras went up in January, the department engaged more with the community about camera use and gave more details, including:

Cameras are marked with BPD logos and the word police

Cameras are deployed exclusively in public locations

Cameras are not actively monitored

Unless recorded footage is retained for criminal incidents, recordings are automatically deleted after 14 days

Cameras do not record audio

Use of footage is governed by state and federal legislation as well as internal BPD policy

An issue of privacy

The main concern relayed to the department is privacy  what do these cameras see?

In addition to pointing away from residential areas and instead toward roads, Our newest deployments, as were switching them out, have the ability to mask out private areas, McQueen said. Some of them have the ability to mask out your address, your windows, a door, a pool, for example, and when a camera moves, the mask (adjusts) with the image ... An opaque box stays on the image. The technology just got there to allow that.

Maintaining a reasonable expectation of privacy for residents is a priority.

If we arrest you, we cant just go through your phone. Its going to be the same principles, the same reasonableness (with any footage), said Public Information Officer John Fermon. If the camera picks it up, even if we have access to that, we have to have a conservative approach and thats why were being transparent about it.

When it comes to privacy, Muhummad said, Were under observation no matter where we are  uptown, downtown, east side, west side.  If youre not doing anything wrong, what do you care where theres cameras?

As cameras improve in resolution and capability, a new management system will help to keep police access conservative as well, McQueen said.

We can lock employees out on a zoom camera. Lets say it zooms 30 times; we can lock them at 15 so they cant go any further, he said.

McQueen said the department has received only one complaint or concern about the cameras since the program began.

In the absence of complaints, we still want to be a good steward of public privacy as this program goes forward, McQueen said. You dont want to lose trust in the department ... at any point in time.

In Normal, Police Chief Rick Bleichner said his department has researched the use of cameras and even borrowed them from BPD after crime sprees, but we dont have a plan to get a program at this time.

Collecting footage

When canvassing areas where a crime is committed, officers also call upon businesses and residents with private cameras that could have recorded the incident.

Mark Jontry, regional superintendent of education for McLean, DeWitt, Logan and Livingston counties, said Bloomington police previously have asked to view footage recorded on external cameras at the Regional Alternative School, 408 W. Washington St.

Weve been doing that for a number of years. Theres always been businesses that had cameras; now residences are becoming more frequently a location for video as the Ring doorbells or (other alarm systems that provide video) become more commonplace, Donath said.

The city allows businesses to register their cameras through the police department, so officers know where cameras might be available. The department doesn't have access to the cameras or footage unless provided by the business owner.

One of the BPD cameras was installed at the corner of Washington and Lee streets, across from the alternative school. Jontry said he doesnt have any concerns about its installation, as its being used to keep everyone safe.

Its 2020 now," Donath said "and we should adapt to the times that we live in. We should be a dynamic police department that does that kind of stuff."

Contact Kelsey Watznauer at (309) 820-3254. Follow her on Twitter: @kwatznauer.

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Jan. 24 marks the two-year anniversary of the first confirmed case of COVID in Illinois being announced. A Chicago resident was the first, with additional cases in Kane and McHenry counties confirmed on March 11 being the first outside Chicago and Cook County.

The Pantagraph is looking for Central Illinois residents to talk about how their lives have changed in the past two years and what they hope is ahead. We're looking for a variety of stories on what people feel about vaccinations, policies and life 24 months later.
There has been so much sorrow in the food industry over the past two years. And yet, hope persists.

Hope that customers will adapt to takeout when they cant dine in. Hope that mandating vaccinations will slow the spread of omicron and keep restaurants and bars open.

And hope that new restaurants, even in such challenging times, can thrive.

Since resuming weekly food critiques in May, the Tribune has chronicled the journeys of such optimists, from caterers who launched one of the best barbecue joints in the city to a Filipino neighborhood cafe whose star seemingly cant ascend high enough.

But, alas, there are so few hours in a day, and not enough time to fully examine every new restaurant worthy of it. As we kick off 2022, here are four restaurants that opened in 2021, reviewed in brief, listed alphabetically. Keep in mind that we only visited each restaurant once, compared to full reviews that typically require at least two visits, and are not starring these reviews in light of that.

Were always on the hunt for the most exciting elements of Chicagos vibrant food scene. Know of something? Email Food editor Ariel Cheung at archeung@chicagotribune.com.

Jaleo

A worker walks past with a paella dish at Jaleo, 500 N. Clark St., on opening night Thursday, July 15, 2021, in Chicago. (John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune)

When chef and humanitarian Jose Andres came to Chicago in May 2020, it wasnt to hype his first restaurants in the city. He helped open a COVID-19 testing site, then spent the rest of his day delivering meals to a South Side school and a West Side hospital. He hyped local chefs and his World Central Kitchen crew instead.

With all his good works, I remained skeptical about the fourth location of Jaleo in the world, opened in the River North neighborhood July 15. The original, an ode to modern Spanish tapas, opened 28 years ago in Washington, D.C., where Andres still earns critical acclaim. Then came Las Vegas, and then Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, for crying out loud.

In Chicago, a display case of branded merch stands right inside the entrance of the former Naha space. Youll find the foosball table turned into a dining table to your right. Oh look, theres the bulls head hanging on the wall, too.

We do have the only Jaleo with a tapas bar, not that there was anyone pulled up to it the night I visited in mid-December, early in the omicron era. We also claim the only Pigtail, a basement bar offering creative drinks and bites, which Ill visit another time.

Upstairs, the arroz rabo de toro ($80, for two to four people, only available for dine-in) is the only dish exclusive to Chicago on the extensive menu. Its a saucy Meloso-style rice dish with braised oxtail  its not a paella, so you trade a socarrat crunch for heaping spoonfuls of silken rice. The meat and vegetables have mostly melted together, except for a few slender parsnips, pearl onions and green beans. Every grain of rice of the intensely rich dish seems superbly cooked, but Im not quite convinced its worth nearly twice the price of a mushroom and seasonal vegetable paella.

On the other hand, the pescado con pisto ($18) could be worth double. The market fish of the day comes perched on the traditional Spanish stew, similar to ratatouille. When I say the big, fat, crispy-skinned trout fillet can easily serve two, thats only if youre willing to share the dish that evokes summer warmth and winter comfort simultaneously.

I might pay just about any price for the ensalada de hinojo y manzanas con queso manchego y Nueces ($12). The tissue-thin shaved fennel and green apple salad with nutty manchego and crisp walnuts has become a signature item at Jaleo. How could a salad you could theoretically make at home be so special? Im still not quite sure. Perhaps because its an impeccably prepared blast of fresh textures that stands alone and complements just about everything else on the menu, from the funky seleccion de Ibericos ($34), an artful mosaic of the famous acorn-fed cured meats served with picos, little mini breadsticks; to the ensalada rusa ($14), a velvety potato spread enriched with bonito conserva; to croquetas de pollo ($12), the fanciest feather-light chicken fingers youll ever taste; and even the tarta de queso ($16, for two), the intentionally burnt-top, Basque-style goats milk cheesecake.

Chef Justin DePhillips oversees the Chicago location. Every single staff person I encountered (from the host to my server to the employee who brought out my perfectly timed takeout order) should be commended for flawless personal attention that made me forget theres any other Jaleo in the world.

500 N. Clark St., 312-820-7771, jaleo.com/location/chicago

 Louisa Chu

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Kitchen & Kocktails

Dream eggs with blackened shrimp at Kitchen + Kocktails restaurant in Chicago (Louisa Chu / Chicago Tribune)

If youve been wondering about Kitchen + Kocktails, the Chicago location of the Black-owned restaurant in River North that transformed the old Bennys Chop House, youre not alone. They post photos frequently on Instagram, but mostly ignore the many comments from unrequited fans. Hi, can you respond to my DM please, asks one. IKR right? empathizes another.

Thats the way its gone since the restaurants grand opening Oct. 1. Opening weekend, however, played out on social media like a disastrous group date.

The TRiiBE reported shortly after that Dallas-based owner and attorney Kevin Kelley said hes making changes to address complaints. One table waited four hours, only to receive the wrong order. Another table had one of their party escorted out, because their shoes violated the dress code policy, according to The TRiiBE.

If you try to make a reservation, youll see that lengthy and controversial dress code policy, which disallows some bodysuits. Im not sure how they check if ones top is actually a onesie.

After I failed to find a reservation, and since Kitchen + Kocktails started taking walk-ins until 8 p.m., I took my chances one day for lunch, properly attired.

When I arrived at 1 p.m., which showed no availability online, I expected a packed house. I was the only customer  rarely a good sign.

To my thoroughly unexpected relief and delight, the experience was fantastic.

The Dream Eggs with blackened shrimp ($13), the restaurants play on deviled eggs, come topped with pristine Cajun seasoned crustaceans. The Key Lime Pie Kocktail ($15), with a graham cracker-dusted rim, sipped with a beautifully balanced and bracing citrus flavor profile.

I asked my server about the most popular dish so far, and she answered catfish, without hesitation. When she asked if I wanted it grilled or fried, I paused for a moment, before we declared in unison: Fried.

That fried catfish ($21) included huge yet impeccably tender cornmeal-breaded fillets with deliriously delicious creamy grits that stole the show.

An order of Southern fried chicken and butter pecan waffles ($21) could have easily served two. The hard fried crust held a nice spiced kick, while the pecan-loaded waffles offered a lovely caramel complement.

A seafood gumbo ($13), though, seemed promising with crab legs in the shell, but felt thin overall.

With the waffles being as good as they are, you might pass on the peach cobbler ($7) and banana pudding ($7), but I recommend ordering them for takeout so you can better appreciate the delicate hand used to prepare the traditional Southern comfort food desserts.

After the opening pains, Kelley brought chef Vannessa Brown up from Dallas to oversee the Chicago location too. She and her team show they can more than meet the challenge when everything goes right.

There are clear signs that its still a work in progress. Those sporadically answered messages on social media remain a red flag. No one has ever answered the phone the many times Ive called. The online ordering system has never been available. Someone did call back last time, and you can theoretically reserve by text or online.

Do note a 20% gratuity is included, well worth it the one time I visited. Just leave those bodysuits at home.

 L.C.

444 N. Wabash Ave., 312-659-1951, kitchenkocktailschi.com

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Nobu Chicago

The Nobu Hotel in West Loop in Chicago on Monday June 29, 2020. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

How much should we care about Nobu Chicago, the 40th or so location of a restaurant that first opened in New York back in 1994? As the story has been told (many times), thats when Robert De Niro and Meir Teper teamed up with chef Nobu Matsuhisa, whose Los Angeles restaurant had started to explore the fusion of traditional Japanese cuisine with spicy and sour Peruvian accents.

Some menu items havent changed since Bill Clintons first presidential term. Even if youve never stepped foot in a Nobu, youve likely heard of black cod with miso ($42), a dish Nobu didnt invent but certainly made obscenely popular. It arrives looking exactly like youve seen online, complete with a colorful pickled ginger sprout resting delicately on the fillet. Though Ive tried many variations of the dish over the years, the Nobu original is meltingly tender and deeply savory, with a slight sweetness that kept tempting me on. Another early Nobu standard, the yellowtail jalapeno ($30) features six slices of the pink-hued fish topped with thin rounds of green chile, set in a bright yuzu-soy sauce. Its hard to imagine the combination of buttery fish with spicy and acidic notes will ever go out of fashion.

While it was fun to finally try dishes Id read about for years, Nobu isnt completely stuck in the past. In the Nobu Cold Dishes Now section, youll find tai agave ($36), a stunning plate featuring raw slices of the seabream fish paired with a dressing made of aji amarillo (a yellow Peruvian chile) and agave. Move on to the Nobu Hot Dishes Now, and you can find the umami chicken ($39), which was as juicy as any Ive tried this year.

Its at this exact point, before the sushi course even arrived, when I began totaling up the cost of all these dishes in my head and marveled at how easy it was to drop so much money so quickly. No one has ever accused Nobu of being affordable, but its striking to experience it in person. Thats especially true if you order a cocktail, the cheapest of which is $18. I certainly enjoyed the barrel-aged Old Fashioned, featuring Kikori Whiskey and served in a glass with hand-carved ice  even if it was $20.

Nobus location smack dab in the middle of the West Loop explains some of the cost. But this kind of luxury experience also requires an enormous crew to run so smoothly. I was transfixed by the number of chefs in the massive, open kitchen, all laser-focused on slicing, rolling and precisely executing their tasks.

In other words, you get what you pay for at Nobu. Just know youll pay a lot.

854 W. Randolph St., 312-779-8800, noburestaurants.com/chicago

 Nick Kindelsperger

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Provare

Seafood trio pasta by Jourdan Higgs, chef and co-owner at Provare, an Italian-Creole restaurant in the West Town neighborhood of Chicago (Jourdan Higgs/Provare)

Dont be like me and try to stroll into Provare in West Town on a Friday night without a reservation. While greeted warmly by the host, she was clear that my wife and I didnt stand a chance. Maybe try to make a reservation for early on a Tuesday? she suggested, before glancing around the completely packed room full of people smiling and looking like they had no intention of leaving soon.

Sometimes we have slow moments between 3 and 5:30 p.m., chef and co-owner Jourdan Higgs said later.

Success like this is impressive for any three-month-old restaurant, let alone one created by two people without any industry experience. Higgs and his business partner, Michael Williams, first met in college, but it wasnt until 10 years after graduating that they teamed up to create a restaurant that mixed Italian and Creole cuisines. I love going to New Orleans, and Im always trying different dishes, Higgs said. There were just certain flavors that we wanted to bring to Chicago.

The pasta is just as important. While many Italian restaurants make fresh pasta every day, far fewer take the time to make dried pasta from scratch. We had a pasta extruder flown in from Italy, Higgs said. That was a game changer. Currently the kitchen makes their own bucatini, fettuccine, rotini and mafaldine. The latter ribbon-shaped pasta with ruffled edges shows up in the shrimp Hennessy scampi ($26) a heaping dish featuring a creamy and complex sauce thats topped with plump shrimp and brightened with sweet red cherry tomatoes and spicy Fresno chiles. Its clear after a bite why this is the restaurants most popular dish.

The condensed menu features only one entree without pasta, but dont get upset if youre lured in by the four lamb chops ($36), cooked exactly to my requested medium-rare. They rest on a huge scoop of the house special corn, a moderately spicy take on the Creole classic, maque choux.

But you can have a grand time at Provare with nothing more than a couple of appetizers and a round of drinks. Start with the chefs special calamari ($16) that includes loads of crunchy, tender pieces of squid mixed with fried pieces of banana peppers, jalapenos and red onions. Or try the salmon egg rolls ($14), one of those dishes thats becoming increasingly popular at Black-owned restaurants around Chicago.

The cocktails, named for locations around Chicago, skew fruity, though are fortunately more refreshing than sweet. Thats true of the Madison & Pulaski ($14), a tequila-based drink where bracing ginger beer helps cut through the muddled strawberries. Youll also find a few wines by the glass, and Higgs is looking forward to eventually offering beer selections from Funkytown Brewing, a new Black-owned brewery.

Along with a fascinating menu, its easy to simply fall for Provares welcoming vibe. I cant remember a restaurant where so many people looked so happy to be there. We want people to enjoy themselves, says Higgs. We live in hectic times, but we want to make sure everyone has a great experience.

 N.K.

1421 W. Chicago Ave., 312-988-0943, provarechicago.com

Big screen or home stream, takeout or dine-in, Tribune writers are here to steer you toward your next great experience. Sign up for your free weekly Eat. Watch. Do. newsletter here.
Like so many COVID-weary Americans, Kyle Hopwood thought the pandemic was winding down over the summer, as virus case counts in the Chicago area waned and life seemed to inch closer to normal.

She was relieved after getting vaccinated against COVID-19, and tentatively began dining at restaurants and resuming small get-togethers with loved ones. Hopwood and her fiance set a wedding date for September 2022, assuming that by then the pandemic would be a distant memory.

But then came colder weather  as well as the highly contagious omicron variant of the virus  and infections soared once again, wreaking havoc on holiday celebrations, businesses, travel, education and health care.

We thought we saw the light at the end of the tunnel, said Hopwood, 29, of the Lincoln Park neighborhood, who has a masters degree in public health. Now were back to square one.

In some ways, Hopwood has found this latest surge to be even more draining mentally and emotionally compared with earlier points in the pandemic, which has killed more than 5 million people around the world.

While shes planning her wedding for later this year, she said its hard to get excited with so much uncertainty.

Youre not alone in feeling what youre feeling, if you are feeling angry or anxious, she said. Your feelings are valid. I think were all frustrated.

Roughly four dozen readers shared with the Tribune their struggles and worries during this latest COVID-19 surge, which has temporarily shut down many schools, filled hospitals to near capacity and spurred a wave of new local COVID vaccine mandates for restaurants, bars, gyms, theaters and other indoor public venues.

Some expressed dismay at the unpredictable nature of the virus, citing uncertainty about how cases might ebb or spike, as well as bewilderment amid ever-changing public health guidelines. Others described exhaustion due to the duration of the pandemic, wondering when it will finally end.

Many reported heightened anxiety and fatigue as the pandemic stretches into its third year, once again upending so many aspects of daily life.

Ive been home with my 8-year-old for one and a half years due to her heart condition, said one parent who responded to a Tribune survey about the surge. Was hoping shed be able to go back to school now that shes vaccinated, but due to the surge  and only 30% of 5-to-11-year-olds being vaccinated, which means 2 out of 3 are NOT vaccinated  we are going to wait. Her health and safety are number one.

I am the (human resources) manager for a company of 370 people and I feel like I am in a pressure cooker and have been for the past two years, one woman responded. Feels like whatever I do Im fighting people and with this new surge its constant. You have to deal with the ignorant people who dont want to mask up or get vaccinated and think this is a joke, and its infuriating as you see people around you getting sick. What happened to being considerate of others?

I am so dismayed by the readiness with which our leaders have chucked out these essential workers who helped us get through the pandemic, said a local social worker, referencing workplace COVID-19 vaccine mandates, and adding in the survey that she recently lost her job after refusing to get vaccinated. Most recently, many have been banned from public places, leaving them to wonder where they will get their social interaction.

As local COVID-19 case counts continue to set pandemic records, here are the experiences of a few more Chicago-area workers, parents and business owners, as told to Tribune reporters.

Inevitable

When the first coronavirus cases were reported in Illinois in January 2020, Maggie Coons was determined to do anything she could to protect her family from the new virus.

But now, with the Omicron variant spreading so quickly, shes almost resigned that eventually they will get sick despite taking precautions like vaccinating, getting booster shots and masking.

So many of her friends and relatives and neighbors have caught COVID recently, even those who have been very careful throughout the pandemic.

During the first week of the new year, the state has averaged 28,775 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 per day, including 42,903 new cases reported Friday. Thats up from an average of 19,797 daily cases during the final week of 2021, a 45% increase.

Deaths also are rising again, with state health officials on Friday reporting 101 additional fatalities, the second consecutive day with a triple-digit death toll. The state has recorded 444 coronavirus-related deaths since Jan. 1, more than in the entire month of June or July.

Its so much more contagious, said Coons, 52, of northwest suburban Palatine. I feel like theres nothing we can do to keep from getting it. I feel like its inevitable. At this point its a dreary resignation instead of a dread or fear.

While she knows infections from the new variant have generally been milder, particularly for the fully vaccinated, shed rather her loved ones not get ill.

It still could mean weeks of school missed or work, she said. And who knows if its going to produce long-haul symptoms. They dont know yet.

One silver lining of this point in the pandemic is that there are more tools to fight the virus, from vaccines to boosters to medications, she said.

But shes frustrated that so many people are still forgoing COVID-19 shots, the greatest protection against severe illness, hospitalization and death.

Its extremely infuriating, she said. Its the reason this has gone on for so long. Theyre putting their personal freedoms above whats best for everyone.

Restaurant woes

More than three decades ago, Gloria Torres and her husband opened a little restaurant in their home in the Pilsen neighborhood.

Right next to the small kitchen where Torres prepares homemade Mexican delicacies, they served patrons at their dinner table covered in a colorful tablecloth.

Torres is 72 and her husband is 82. Theyve managed to keep their business open throughout the pandemic, despite their fear of catching the virus, which has so far infected more than 2.3 million in Illinois and 300 million internationally.

The restaurant industry has taken a tremendous hit amid the pandemic, facing waves of indoor dining shutdowns and staff shortages. At certain points, government regulations allowed only takeout or delivery food orders.

Over the summer, their worries about getting the COVID-19 eased a little after they got vaccinated. Their hope for normalcy revived when cases began to drop and city regulations allowed them to once again fully reopen and welcome customers inside their kitchen for dining.

But the most recent surge has discombobulated the couple and their home business.

New rules in Chicago and suburban Cook County require proof of vaccination at restaurants and many other indoor public venues, a heavy burden on the couple, who live alone and have no help to check vaccine cards and identification.

To keep their business going while complying with regulations, theyve decided to switch to only offering carryout because the vaccine mandate exempts those quickly picking up food as opposed to dining inside.

Were just so sad, Torres said in Spanish. This is again affecting the poor people, the small business owners.

School uncertainty

For thousands of Chicago-area families, abrupt school cancellations or a switch to remote learning have thrown education and child care into a tailspin.

An impasse between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union canceled classes starting Wednesday. Various suburban districts have also suspended classroom instruction due to a statewide shortage of school employees.

Teachers and school workers are out sick or need to quarantine. There arent enough substitutes. Even at schools that are open, so many parents and students awaken wondering if class will in session tomorrow, the next day and the day after.

The hardest part for Chris Arjona, a father of two in the Lakeview neighborhood, is the day-to-day uncertainty.

His daughters, ages 6 and 4, are in the Chicago Public Schools district, and the sudden cancellation of classes presents the biggest challenge yet.

The biggest impact (of) the surge is the chaos surrounding schools, Arjona said, adding that he and his wife work full time. Parents are stuck in the middle to reconcile jobs that have full demands, but schools are unreliable and unpredictable.

Theres also the emotional toll on kids, who thrive on routine and consistency, he said. They miss their friends, teachers and activities. The inability to plan and answer all the swirling questions  will classes be canceled for a few days or weeks or longer  is so hard on adults and children alike.

The suddenness of it, the lack of warning and the lack of a clear path forward is just hard on everyone, he said. Citywide, its everyone going through this.

More complexity

The mother felt great relief when COVID-19 shots were authorized for kids aged 5 to 11 in November, and her 8-year-old daughter could finally get vaccinated.

But her son, who is 4, still cant get inoculated against the virus, leaving him unprotected.

I would be less distressed if both my kids were vaccinated, said Liza Papautsky, 42, who lives in the western suburbs.

In some ways, the earliest days of the pandemic were easier for her because there were fewer decisions to make with so much of the world on lockdown. Now every choice feels like a difficult and complicated burden.

Only part of her household is vaccinated, and Papautsky is a breast cancer survivor, putting her at higher risk. Yet she also has to take into account her familys mental health and well-being.

Should she have her unvaccinated son in a swim class where he and other unvaccinated kids wont be able to wear a mask? She ultimately opted against it, but then theres also the toll on kids that comes with limiting outside activities and contact with their peers.

This surge is a painful punch in the gut, deflating (and) dejecting, especially after a period of a more hopeful time, she said. Im tired, angry, and hopeless.

Shes concerned about the health of her family, but shes also worried about passing along the virus to others and further overwhelming health care systems.

As of Thursday, more than 7,000 patients in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19; more than a thousand were in intensive care units and over 600 were on ventilators, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. Local childrens hospitals have also recently seen a huge spike in kids admitted for COVID-19.

Its navigating the uncertainty and then making the best decision you can in the midst of all this uncertainty, she said. Especially right now, in the moment were in, having to revisit those decisions frequently.

Will we survive?

In January 2020, Nereida Aparacio made her longtime dream a reality when she opened her nail salon in the Pilsen neighborhood with the help of her daughter, Rubi Carmona.

The family had invested all their savings in the new business. The two were optimistic and excited for their venture  until the coronavirus-spurred March 2020 lockdown forced them and other businesses to temporarily close.

Sentia que el mundo se me venia encima, said Aparicio, who had worked as a nail technician for over a decade in different salons around the Chicago area. I felt like that world was coming down on me.

But they chose to remain strong, said Carmona, who is now a senior at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

She recalled the tension and anxiety her mother went through when they were forced to shut down the salon. Now shes stressed again at the prospect of losing salon clientele amid the latest surge.

Its frustrating and tiring, Carmona said.

Shes had to handle the pressures of the business while navigating her last year in college via remote learning. She takes care of all the salons administrative work for her mother even as she manages her own difficulties with online classes for her biology degree.

We almost feel like were going back to step one, and its forcing us to think about what we would do next, Carmona said. Will we survive?

Holidays disrupted

So many of Eric DeChants relatives and close friends had COVID-19 recently that his family canceled their Christmas dinner celebration.

He said as many as a dozen people in his inner circle have tested positive in recent weeks.

We were going to spend time with friends on New Years Eve, he said. It got canceled.

The 43-year-old father of two from the Oriole Park neighborhood said this surge has affected nearly every aspect of his life, from work to school to vacations and social gatherings.

Its like, should we leave the state? he said. Should we go to this museum? Is it that dangerous? I dont know.

In addition to his work as a legal engineer for a software company, DeChant also helps carpool his daughter and area classmates to school following a CPS school bus driver shortage.

DeChant said the surge has even intruded on his main respite from the troubled world: a nearby health club with hot tubs and a lap pool where he went to relax.

I love hot tubs, he said. In the aquatic section, you cant wear a mask, so its the biggest infection hazard. I normally would have spent a decent amount of time there relaxing or rejuvenating over the winter break ... but I did not just out (of fear) that I bring something home.

Despite the all-encompassing effect the surge has had on his familys life, DeChant said he still looks to the positive.

Its stressful, he said. While this has been a very long period, its not as bad as other points. I have less peace of mind, but overall, Im incredibly grateful that I can work from home. My furnace works. Im a count your blessings kind of guy.

Tribune reporter Dan Petrella contributed.
The interpretive center at the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site will be temporarily closed during a $5 million renovation of the building for at least a year, but the site will remain open for visitors who want to walk the trails or climb Monks Mound.

The center will close on March 1 and the renovations will take a year or possibly longer to be completed.

The work on the 1988 building includes replacement of the roof as well as the heating and air conditioning systems, fire suppression system and security system. Also, the building's theater will be restored.

Funding for the building renovation will come from the state's $45 Rebuild Illinois capital improvement plan, which is supported by increases in the state's gas tax, cigarette tax, gaming taxes and vehicle registration fees approved by lawmakers and Gov. J.B. Pritzker in 2019.

Displays inside the interpretive center will not be changed significantly but some updates will be made, according to site Superintendent Lori Belknap.

Any changes to the interpretive displays will not be part of the $5 million funding from the state's Rebuild Illinois plan, Belknap said.

Belknap said she didn't know whether the building's renovation would affect the effort to have the site added to the National Park Service but she said the work will certainly improve the safety and experience visitors have at the center.

Federal lawmakers in recent years have sought to get federal protection for the site. And on Nov. 30, U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking him to use his authority under the Antiquities Act to designate the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site as a unit of the National Park Service.

Indian mounds

The 100-foot high Monks Mound was built by American Indians, who were part of what scholars today call the Mississippian culture.

It is the largest pre-Columbian, earthen structure in all of North and South America, according to a former official with the site. Dozens of other mounds were also built on the site.

The site is known as "America's first city," and it is believed to have had a population larger than London in 1250.

At the height of the Cahokia Mounds, an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 American Indians lived at the site, which was formed around the year 1000 and abandoned by 1400.

In the 1800s, the mounds were named after the Cahokia tribe that lived in the area when European settlers arrived.

Monks Mound is named after a group of French Trappist monks who lived near the mound on another mound from 1809 to 1813.

How to visit

The site is located at 30 Ramey St. off Collinsville Road near Interstate 255 in Collinsville.

During the building renovation, visitors will be allowed to park on the north side of Collinsville Road in the Monks Mound parking lot. The driveway leading into the interpretive center will be closed and no public access will be available to the main parking lot and surrounding area.

Walking tours are expected to resume in the spring while the renovation is underway.

Belknap noted that visitors can learn more about the mounds by using the site's new "augmented reality" app for Apple devices. This costs $4.99 to download.

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Chicago police Superintendent David Brown has moved more than half the departments officers assigned to tactical units back to basic patrol functions as the department struggles with an exodus of cops due to COVID-19 and retirements, and as it deals with some who have shown poor performance, law enforcement sources said over the weekend.

The officers being reassigned are from tactical units  which typically make the most arrests in the departments 22 patrol districts and focus on crime patterns behind robberies, shootings and drug activity  to the regular district patrols whose cops respond to 911 calls and establish more of a rapport with businesses and residents.

The change comes as 2021 ended as one of Chicagos most violent years in decades. Some 800 people were slain, 4,000 were and more than 1,700 carjackings were reported, police statistics show.

In a prepared statement, Chicago police spokesman Don Terry wouldnt confirm or deny Browns move.

The Chicago Police Departments top priority is safeguarding every community and neighborhood across the city, Terry said. We are continuing to review crime activity citywide and put the appropriate resources in place to ensure public safety and grow community trust and support.

Brown has chosen to move tactical officers to beat patrol functions for several reasons, sources said, including that a big swath of the department has been sidelined with COVID-19 and the nations second largest police force has been losing officers to retirements.

Around the time Browns permanent predecessor, Eddie Johnson, was fired by Mayor Lori Lightfoot in late 2019, the department had around 13,000 sworn officers. Now that number is under 12,000.

Department leaders have also recognized that some tactical officers have been generating little or no activity, meaning theyve made little or no arrests or traffic stops, or have failed to adequately do other measurable police work, sources said.

One source briefed on the matter through the chain of command said the department learned last week of at least 70 tactical officers across the city had been showing little or no activity during their shifts.

The issue of generating activity, however, has proven controversial for Brown. Hes been known to push his commanders to get their officers to make more arrests and traffic stops. At weekly CompStat meetings, in which Brown evaluates the performance of his command staff, he has indicated that he would demote commanders for poor performance.

But police oversight advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, have warned that this demand for activity could lead to wholesale constitutional violations, particular in Black and brown communities, in what amounts to a police quota system.

A Chicago police supervisor, Lt. Franklin Paz, filed a lawsuit against the department last year, alleging he was removed from his unit because he was pressured to make illegal stops and arrests. That lawsuit is pending.

Brown and Lightfoot have often blamed what they perceive as a lenient, catch-and-release criminal justice system in Cook County for the rise in Chicagos violence.

Lightfoot, as well as Gov. J.B. Pritzker, have pledged to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on community-based violence prevention groups that focus on conflict mediation and provide social services to address mental illness and other other root causes of violence. Proponents of this method see it as a more viable alternative to spending a big chunk of the citys budget each year on policing.

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CHICAGO  U.S. Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois has tested positive for a breakthrough case of COVID-19, according to his office.

The suburban Chicago Democrats office released a statement Saturday saying Casten was fully vaccinated and had received a booster vaccine dose. He described his symptoms as mild and said was in isolation.

Im grateful for the miraculous work of our scientists and health care workers  and encourage everyone to get vaccinated, boosted, and mask up, Casten said.

Casten, first elected in 2018, is the latest Illinois politician to test positive for COVID-19.

Last month, outgoing U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush announced he had tested positive. Days later, Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who was also vaccinated, said she had tested positive.

The news comes as the state and many parts of the world are reporting record infections and hospitalizations.

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A 48-year-old woman from Cahokia Heights died in a crash in which she lost control of her SUV on icy pavement on Illinois 255 in Madison County on Saturday, the Illinois State Police reported.

Chimanita Dodd was pronounced deceased at the scene, according to a news release from the state police.

Dodd was driving north on the highway at mile marker 6 at about 9:57 a.m. when she lost control of a 2002 Chevrolet Blazer on ice, according to a preliminary investigation.

The SUV left the roadway to the left and entered the median, police said. The vehicle rolled numerous times and Dodd was ejected.

The metro-east was under a winter weather advisory for freezing drizzle on Saturday morning, according to the National Weather Service.

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Imagine getting ready to leave work when you suddenly get a call that your mother has been in a serious car accident and is in the hospital. At the emergency room, the nurses tell you that she has been rushed into surgery. After several hours, her surgeon comes out and tells you that she survived in large part due to blood donations from strangers.

Blood transfusions can mean life or death. As many as 5 million people receive blood transfusions each year for reasons such as surgeries, injuries, cancer, anemia and sickle cell disease. In order to keep up with demand, about 9,667 people would need to donate blood every day.

I recently received an email from University of Chicago Medicine encouraging me to donate amid a critical nationwide blood shortage. I looked up the eligibility requirements and was disappointed, but not surprised, to find that the Food and Drug Administration deferral policy remains outdated and homophobic. It bans blood donations from men who have had sexual contact with men in the past three months.

Restricting millions of people in the U.S. from donating blood based on fear over HIV is unethical and unfair to gay and bisexual men and, most importantly, to the millions of patients who desperately need blood transfusions.

This kind of policy was first introduced amid the early stages of Americas HIV/AIDS epidemic when we knew very little about HIV. In the early 1980s, there was no reliable test for HIV, and scientists were still trying to determine the route of transmission. Thousands died from this devastating disease at the time, and around 12,000 blood transfusion patients contracted HIV.

Though the majority of HIV cases in the U.S. occur in gay or bisexual men, the effectiveness of screening for HIV has improved massively. Current HIV tests have an accuracy of 99% to 100%, and the risk of acquiring HIV through a blood transfusion is 1 in 1.5 million. Our scientific progress has pushed us past the need for this precaution.

Those who argue that this restriction is based on a concern for safety rather than homophobia need only compare how the FDA treats HIV versus another bloodborne disease, hepatitis B. The tests used to detect HIV in blood donations are effective following a seven- to 10-day window after first exposure to the virus. For hepatitis B, an incurable disease, this window is a full 12 days.

Furthermore, around 67% of people with hepatitis B do not know they have it, while only 15% of people with HIV are unaware of their positive status. Additionally, 60% of Americans with hepatitis B are Asian, yet the FDA correctly chooses to not place a blanket ban on blood donations based on ethnicity, due to the agencys ability to accurately screen for this disease.

It becomes clear that some of the criteria that determine blood donation eligibility are rooted in social demographics and anti-LGBTQ attitudes rather than an accurate assessment of risky individual behavior. To put this into perspective, a man who has sex only with his husband of 10 years is banned from donating blood while a heterosexual man could engage in sexual behavior with multiple female partners in a week and donate blood freely.

Lifting this ban would not only increase the amount of blood available for those in need, but also would help reduce the social stigma on LGBTQ individuals. How can we expect full equality for LGBTQ Americans when we are seen as less than in the eyes of the medical community and government?

Christian Carrier is a medical student at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and co-leader of OUTPatient, the schools LGBTQ+ student group.

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100 years ago

Jan. 10, 1922: Bloomington firemen begin working 24-hour shifts today, creating a three-platoon system in the fire department. The day shift used to work ten hours, and the night shift fourteen. The new system will allow firemen a little more leisure time than the old one did.

75 years ago

Jan. 10, 1947: Noble Webb and Vernon Kauffman shot a 90-pound Timber Wolf west of Six Points (now Morris and Veterans). It took them two days to track the animal and bring it down. Theres no bounty on wolves McLean County, so now they dont know what to do with the pelt.

50 years ago

Jan. 10, 1972: A single engine plane crash in central Tennessee claimed the lives of four local people. The victims were identified as Mr. and Mrs. Warren Anderson of Normal and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Dennis of Shirley. They are survived by nine children. Cause of the crash in unknown.

25 years ago

Jan. 10, 1997: Eureka City Council decided to revamp the police department after an incident led to felony charges against two officers. 25-year Police Chief Gerald Reinmann will take an extended vacation and wont come back. He wasnt charged. The search is on for a new chief.

Compiled by Jack Keefe; jkeefe@coldwellhomes.com.
Around 58 people have been killed in villages in the northwestern Nigerian state of Zamfara during deadly reprisal attacks by armed bandits following military airstrikes on their hideouts this week, government authorities told CNN. But residents told Reuters that an estimated 200 people or more were killed.



Residents gained access to the villages on Saturday after the military captured the communities to organize mass burials, they told Reuters.



Zamfara's commissioner for information, Ibrahim Dosara, told CNN on Sunday that four communities in the state's Anka and Bukkuyum districts were targeted in the deadly raids while disputing widely reported casualty figures.



"It is not true (that 200 people were killed). The attacks were carried out in two local government areas namely Bukkuyum and Anka. Four communities in those areas were attacked; one in Bukkuyum where 36 people were killed, and three in Anka in which 22 people were killed... These figures were compiled and brought to the state government by the village heads," Dosara told CNN.



Ummaru Makeri, a resident who lost his wife and three children during the attack, said around 154 people had been buried including several vigilantes who were killed. Residents said the total death toll was at least 200.



Reuters reported on Friday that at least 30 people had been killed in the Anka local government area in Zamfara when more than 300 armed bandits on motorbikes stormed eight villages and started shooting sporadically on Tuesday.



The military said it had conducted airstrikes in the early hours of Monday on targets in the Gusami forest and west Tsamre village in Zamfara state, killing more than 100 bandits including two of their leaders, following intelligence reports.



One resident who declined to be identified told Reuters the attacks on the villages could be linked to the military strikes.



Dosara stated told CNN that security was being strengthened in the affected districts and relief items were being distributed to displaced victims.



"Money and relief materials have been given to the people who are displaced to rebuild their houses. The government is making every effort to ensure that the people are given the necessary protection."



There have been a series of attacks in northwest Nigeria, which has seen a sharp rise in mass abductions and other violent crimes since late 2020 as the government struggles to maintain law and order.



In a separate incident, 30 students abducted from their college in the northwestern Nigerian state of Kebbi were freed on Saturday, a spokesman for the Kebbi governor said, without providing details.



President Muhammadu Buhari said in a statement on Saturday the military had acquired more equipment to track down and eliminate criminal gangs that have been subjecting people to a reign of terror, including through the illegal imposition of taxes on communities under siege.

"The latest attacks on innocent people by the bandits is an act of desperation by mass murderers, now under relentless pressure from our military forces," Buhari said.



Buhari added that the government would not relent in its military operations to get rid of the bandits.

Source: CNN









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 Kotoka International Airport (KIA) has recorded a total of 2,772 COVID-19 positive cases among international arrivals in the last month.



The cases are out of 76,267 tests conducted at the port from December 6, 2021, to January 5, 2022.



Data on the Ghana Health Service (GHS) COVID-19 update page show that the number of COVID-19 active cases recorded in the country as of January 5 was 13,0007, with 1,325 deaths.



Presently, 45 out of the total active infections are severe with 12 in critical condition.



The data indicate that the Greater Accra region has the highest number of 83,966 infections followed by the Ashanti region with 21,984 cases.



Dr Frankline Asiedu-Bekoe, Director of Public Health at the GHS, told the Ghana News Agency, that more cases were being recorded in the country due to the presence of the Omicron variant.



He urged the public to visit the vaccination centres and receive their jabs to help curb the spread of the virus.



Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.



Most people infected with the virus will experience mild to moderate respiratory illness and recover without requiring special treatment.



However, some will become seriously ill and require medical attention. Anyone can get sick with COVID-19 and become seriously ill or die at any age.



Signs and symptoms of COVID-19 include fever or chills, cough, shortness of breath or difficulty in breathing, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, loss of taste or smell and sore throat.



The populace is advised to protect themselves from the virus by observing the safety protocols such as the wearing of a nose mask, observing social distancing, washing hands with soap under running water, observing social distancing, and avoiding handshakes.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The New Patriotic Party (NPP) last Friday lost one of its leading members, Mr Ishmael Ashitey, and described his death as a great loss.



Mr Ashitey, who was also a former Greater Accra Regional Minister and former Regional Chairman of the NPP, passed on at the International Maritime Hospital in Tema on January 7, 2022.



He served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tema East in the second, third and fourth Parliaments under the Fourth Republic of Ghana.



In Parliament, he served on the Mines and Energy, Foreign Affairs, Governments Assurances and the House committees, and also served as a Minister of State at the Ministries of Food and Agriculture and Trade, Industry and Presidents Special Initiatives under the Kufuor administration.



During his tenure as Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the NPP, he led his party to retain majority of the parliamentary seats in the 2016 general election.



Mr Ashitey was also aspiring to contest the National Chairmanship of the NPP this year.



Until his demise, he was a member of the National Executive Council of the NPP and the NPP National Council.



He is reported to have hosted some friends and family members in the afternoon prior to his demise at the hospital.



Tributes



In a tweet, Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia expressed his condolences to the family on the passing of Mr Ashitey, who was a former Minister of State, former Tema East MP and NPP regional chairman.



He wrote: "My thoughts are with them at this difficult period."



NPP



Meanwhile, the Ghana News Agency (GNA) reports that the NPP has described the death of Mr Ashitey as a great loss to the party.



"His death is a great loss to the party. We will liaise with the family to give him a befitting burial," the General Secretary of the NPP, Mr John Boadu, said after leading a party delegation to the residence of the former Greater Accra Regional Minister in Tema.



"We are saddened by this and want to use this opportunity to get the family to take heart," he said.



Meanwhile, a book of condolence has been opened at his residence.



Many people, mainly from the NPP, are trooping to the residence to commiserate with the family.



Among the mourners were the General Secretary of the NPP, Mr John Boadu; the Director of Communication of the party, Mr Yaw Buaben Asamoa; former MP for Tema Central, Mr Kofi Brako; the Minister of Roads and Highways, Mr Kwasi Amoako-Atta; the Volta Regional Minister, Dr Archibald Yao Letsa; the Metropolitan Chief Executive for Tema, Mr Yohane Amarh Ashitey; Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives in the Greater Accra Region.



Dr Letsa called on the family last Saturday and expressed shock at the demise of his former colleague.



Hon. Ishmael Ashitey was a great friend and colleague. He will be greatly missed. May his soul rest in perfect peace, he said.



Mr Asamoa wrote: We have lost a pillar of the NPP. He taught so many the path to politics. Go in peace, our political father.



Mentor



The immediate past MCE of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA), Mr Felix Mensah Nii Annan-La, in an interview with the Daily Graphic, said Mr Ashiteys death would create a huge vacuum in the NPP.



I am a product of some of the young politicians Mr Ashitey mentored in Tema, he added.









Source: graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Few U.S. cities have labor politics as fraught as Chicagos, where the nations third-largest school system shut down this past week after teachers union members refused to work in person, arguing that classrooms were unsafe amid the omicron surge.

But in a number of other places, the tenuous labor peace that has allowed most schools to operate normally this year is in danger of collapsing.

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While not yet threatening to walk off the job, unions are back at negotiating tables, pushing in some cases for a return to remote learning. They frequently cite understaffing because of illness, and shortages of rapid tests and medical-grade masks. Some teachers, in a rear-guard action, have staged sickouts.

In Milwaukee, schools are remote until Jan. 18, because of staffing issues. But the teachers union president, Amy Mizialko, doubts that the situation will significantly improve and worries that the school board will resist extending online classes.

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I anticipate itll be a fight, Mizialko said.

She credited the district for at least delaying in-person schooling to start the year but criticized Democratic officials for placing unrealistic pressure on teachers and schools.

I think that Joe Biden and Miguel Cardona and the newly elected mayor of New York City and Lori Lightfoot  they can all declare that schools will be open, Mizialko added, referring to the U.S. education secretary and the mayor of Chicago. But unless they have hundreds of thousands of people to step in for educators who are sick in this uncontrolled surge, they wont be.

For many parents and teachers, the pandemic has become a slog of anxiety over the risk of infection, child care crises, the tedium of school-through-a-screen and, most of all, chronic instability.

And for Democrats, the revival of tensions over remote schooling is a distinctly unwelcome development.

Because they have close ties to the unions, Democrats are concerned that additional closures like those in Chicago could lead to a possible replay of the partys recent loss in Virginias governor race. Polling showed that school disruptions were an important issue for swing voters who broke Republican  particularly suburban white women.

Its a big deal in most state polling we do, said Brian Stryker, a partner at the polling firm ALG Research whose work in Virginia indicated that school closures hurt Democrats.

Anyone who thinks this is a political problem that stops at the Chicago city line is kidding themselves, added Stryker, whose firm polled for Bidens 2020 presidential campaign. This is going to resonate all across Illinois, across the country.

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Chicago Teachers Union members, some of them teachers at Juarez High School in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood, stand outside the school before going door to door to make the public aware of their demands, including temporary remote learning or proper testing, safe staffing levels, high quality masks for students and staff, vaccinations, and clean schools, on Jan. 7, 2022. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

More than 1 million of the countrys 50 million public school students were affected by districtwide shutdowns in the first week of January, many of which were announced abruptly and triggered a wave of frustration among parents.

The kids are not the ones that are seriously ill by and large, but we know kids are the ones suffering from remote learning, said Dan Kirk, whose son attends Walter Payton College Preparatory High School in Chicago, which was closed amid the districts standoff this week.

Several nonunion charter-school networks and districts temporarily transitioned to remote learning after the holidays. But as has been true throughout the pandemic, most of the temporary districtwide closures  including in Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee  are taking place in liberal-leaning areas with powerful unions and a more cautious approach to the coronavirus.

The unions demands echo the ones they have made for nearly two years, despite all that has changed. There are now vaccines and the reassuring knowledge that in-school transmission of the virus has been limited. The omicron variant, while highly contagious, appears to cause less severe illness than previous iterations of COVID-19.

Most district leaders and many educators say it is imperative for schools to remain open. They cite a large body of research showing that closures harm children, academically and emotionally, and widen income and racial disparities.

But some local union officials are far warier of packed classrooms. In Newark, New Jersey, schools began 2022 with an unexpected stretch of remote learning, set to end Jan. 18. John Abeigon, the Newark Teachers Union president, said that he was hopeful about the return to buildings but that he remained unsure if every school could operate safely. Student vaccination is far from universal, and most parents have not consented to their children taking regular virus tests.

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Abeigon said that if tests remain scarce, he might ask for remote learning at specific schools with low vaccination rates and high case counts. He agreed that online learning was a burden to working parents but argued that educators should not be sacrificed for the good of the economy.

Id see the entire city of Newark unemployed before I allowed one single teachers aide to die needlessly, he said.

In Los Angeles, the district has worked closely with the union to keep classrooms open after one of the longest pandemic shutdowns in the country last school year. The vaccination rate for students 12 and older is about 90%, with a student vaccine mandate set to kick in this fall. All students and staff are tested for the virus weekly.

Still, the president of the local union, Cecily Myart-Cruz, would not rule out pushing for a districtwide return to remote learning in the coming weeks.

You know, I want to be honest  I dont know, she said.

The tensions are not limited to liberal states. In Kentucky, teachers unions and at least one large school district have said they need the flexibility to go remote amid escalating infection rates.

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But the Republican-controlled state legislature has granted no more than 10 days for such instruction districtwide, and unions there worry that may be inadequate. Jeni Ward Bolander, a leader of a statewide union, said that teachers may have to walk off the job.

Frustration is building on teachers, Ward Bolander said. I hate to say wed walk out at that point, but its absolutely possible.

National teachers unions continue to call for classrooms to remain open, but local affiliates hold the most power in negotiations over whether individual districts will close schools.

And over the past decade, some locals, including those in Los Angeles and Chicago, were taken over by activist leaders whose tactics can be more aggressive than those of national leaders like Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers and Becky Pringle of the National Education Association, both close Biden allies.

Complicating matters, some local unions face internal pressure from their own members. In the Bay Area, splinter groups of teachers in both Oakland and San Francisco have planned sickouts, and demanded N95 masks, more virus testing and other safety measures.

Rori Abernethy, a middle school teacher in San Francisco, organized a sickout there Thursday. She said the Chicago action had prompted some teachers to ask, Why isnt our union doing this?

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In Chicago and San Francisco, working-class parents of color disproportionately send their children to the public schools, and they have often supported strict safety measures during the pandemic, including periods of remote learning. And in New York, the nations largest school district, schools are operating in person with increased virus testing, with limited dissent from teachers.

But the politics become more complicated in suburbs, where union leaders may find themselves at odds with public officials at pains to preserve in-person schooling.

In Fairfax County, Virginias largest district, the superintendent has a plan for switching individual schools to remote learning in the event of many absent teachers.

Kimberly Adams, the president of the local education association, said her union may want stricter measures. And she said that districts should be planning for virus surges by distributing devices for potential short bursts of online schooling.

But Dan Helmer, a Democratic state delegate whose swing district includes part of Fairfax County, said there was little support among his constituents for a return to online education.

Deb Andraca, a Democratic state representative in Wisconsin whose district lies just north of Milwaukee, where schools went remote this past week, said that Republicans have targeted her seat and that she expected schools to be a line of attack.

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Everyone I know wants schools to stay open, she said. But theres a lot of talk about how teachers unions dont want schools to stay open.

Jim Hobart, a partner at Public Opinion Strategies, a polling firm that counts several Republican senators and governors as clients, said the school closure issue created two advantages for GOP candidates. It has helped narrow their margins among a demographic theyve traditionally struggled with  white women between their mid-20s and mid-50s  and it has generally undermined Democrats claims to competence.

A lot of people  Biden, Mayor Lightfoot in Chicago  have said schools should be open, Hobart said. If theyre not able to prevent schools from choosing to close, that shows a weakness on their part.

Labor officials say that many of their critics are acting in bad faith, exploiting parents pandemic-related frustrations to advance long-standing political goals, like discrediting unions and expanding private-school vouchers.

Thus far, neither the critiques nor the broader pandemic challenges appear to have significantly hampered unions public standing, even according to polls conducted by researchers skeptical of teachers unions.

And if it turns out that Democratic candidates pay a political price for unions assertiveness, local labor officials do not consider it to be among their top concerns.

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If periods of remote learning this winter hurt the Democratic Party, thats a question for the consultants and the brain trusts to figure out, Abeigon said. But that its the right thing to do? Theres no question in my mind.

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Nigeria is working to develop a Covid-19 vaccine, President Muhammadu Buhari said in a televised interview on Thursday, as the country battles growing cases of the virus.



Health experts say Nigeria needs to triple its vaccination drive from just over 100,000 doses a day to meet its target of inoculating more than half its population by the end of next year.



The West African country has been exploring options to acquire or purchase vaccines through the COVAX facility to enable it to inoculate at least 70% of its population.



Some of the vaccine donations it received had a shelf life that left only weeks to administer the shots. Nigeria destroyed more than 1 million expired vaccines last month.



"We are working very hard with the ministry of health to develop vaccines," Buhari said on state television. "We shouldn't make noise about it until we succeed."



Speaking to CNN on Friday, Nigeria's minister of state for health, Dr. Olorunnimbe Mamora, said the country was working to establish a vaccine-manufacturing hub within two or three years. But this would depend on the availability of funds, he stated.



"Vaccine manufacturing is not done in a jiffy. Yesterday (Thursday), we had engagements with some of our international development partners and funding partners towards developing our vaccine manufacturing hub. It's a joint venture project between the federal government and an indigenous pharmaceutical company," Mamora told CNN.



The senior health official added: "The timeline is a function of how soon we get funding. We have to source funds through international agencies, as well as technological support. So, we are looking at the next two to three years."



Nigeria, which has not tested widely for Covid-19, has recorded 246,195 cases and 3,066 deaths since the pandemic started.



In 2017, Nigeria's cabinet approved a plan to produce basic vaccines with pharmaceutical firm May & Baker Nigeria (MAYBAKE.LG) via a joint venture. It's unclear whether the project took off.



Buhari said his administration is encouraging Nigerians to get inoculated. Fewer than 4% of adults in Africa's most populous nation of over 200 million have been fully vaccinated.



Mamora says vaccine hesitancy was still a problem among Nigerians. "We desire to double or triple our vaccination rate ... to be able to achieve herd immunity by vaccinating not less than 70% of our population, but we are still dealing with vaccine hesitancy," he said, adding, "We have a large stock of vaccines now."

Source: CNN









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The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, Monday said the media have the duty to protect and preserve the unity and stability of the country.



In the face of all the turmoil in the world, you are proud because you can point to your country with pride in its stability and increasing success, he said.



Otumfuo Osei Tutu, addressing the opening ceremony of the Media Capacity Enhancement Programme at the Manhyia Palace in Kumasi, said:

In Ghana, the media can be said to be a major success story in the countrys journey to democratic governance.



The Ghanaian media had evolved over the years with more flexibility compared to the days when both the print and electronic media were owned and controlled by the state.



The contrast today is mind-boggling.



The media terrain today reflects a diversity of political opinion and journalists feel free to operate without the constraints of the now-deceased criminal libel law, the Asantehene said.



The four-day programme is being organised under the auspices of the Ministry of Information, on the theme: Equipping the Media to play an Effective Role in Our Nation Building.



Its principal objective is to enhance the existing knowledge base, skills set and qualitative output of media personnel.



It is also expected to help the media to develop a deep understanding of socio-economic and development issues and the forces that shape, influence and constrain nation-building.



Otumfuo Osei Tutu said the greatest asset of the journalism profession was credibility, adding: Credibility comes from the accuracy of information and fairness with which it is presented.



He reminded journalists to disabuse their minds of the misconception that their freedom was without bounds.



The removal of the criminal libel law only removed the criminal element, which could send journalists to jail, he said.



But, the right of the citizen to have recourse to the law for the protection of their reputation against defamation by the media remains absolutely intact.



The laws of libel and defamation were alive and there were still laws against incitements, offenses likely to cause a breach of the peace and many others designed to protect the peace and security of the state, the Asantehene said.



Mr Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, the Minister of Information, said the training would consider the laws, regulations and ethics governing journalism practice, pledging governments commitment to assisting the media to perform their roles effectively.



On the Media Capacity Enhancement Programme, he advised the participants to take the lessons seriously as they sought to improve their output.



Journalists, he said, ought to keep learning to build their knowledge base and sharpen their skills for efficient work.



It is expected that the programme would help the participants, selected from the various media organisations nationwide, to appreciate the role of investigative journalism within the framework of institutionalizing efficiency, accountability and transparency in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors to aid national growth.

Source: GNA









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Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Asantehene, has called for unceasing reflection towards safeguarding the nations democratic credentials.



He said recent events in Parliament should nudge stakeholders, especially the political leadership, to act on deepening democratic sanity.



Otumfuo Osei Tutu made the call when he opened the maiden Media Capacity Enhancement Programme (MCEP) at the Manhyia Palace on Monday.



We have come to a year when the nations constitutional order was put through the severest stress. The commencement of work in the 8th Parliament of the fourth republic had not been in the most edifying tradition and no one had expected that the year would conclude with the honourable House degenerating into a brawl with very honourable members putting aside their debating skills in order to exhibit their punching prowess.



The stress on our highest institution of the state and the nations side has shown clearly that we cannot afford to be complacent or take anything for granted both now and the future. Recognizing this also makes it necessary for us to take a good look at ourselves and the path we have embarked upon- seek any fault lines that may appear so we can take the appropriate steps to mend them.



Such constant retrospection is necessary if we are to avoid the unexpected and secure the future for generations to come, he said.



Otumfuo Osei Tutu said the focus of such introspection should be highest on our political leaders and called for support for the Chief Justice in strengthening the Judiciary and protecting the Rule of Law.



He emphasized the role of the media but noted that it lacked the recognition accorded other estates of the realm.



However, when it comes to matters relating to the fourth estate, we tend to treat it less than seriously that it deserves. After all, we do not elect them, nor do we have to worry about how much our taxes need for their upkeep.



Nonetheless, the role the media plays is in every inch as critical as any of the institutions within the body politic. The media opens the ears of society to what is happening around them and acts as a filtration system that enables the people to filter good from the bad, he stated.



Otumfuo Osei Tutu appealed to the media to endeavour to maintain freedoms under the practice, noting that press freedom did not guarantee abuse.



He charged the media to help protect the nations democracy, which continued to flourish in a sub-region fraught with collapsing democracies.



The capacity programme is on the theme: Equipping the media to play an effective role in our nation-building, and kicks off in Kumasi with the first cohort of 250 practitioners from across the various media organizations and associations.







Source: GNA









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33Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. today welcomed the S21 FE 5G to the Galaxy S21 series. The S21 FE 5G is a smartphone that delivers select fan-favorite Galaxy S21 premium features in a well-rounded package to empower people to explore and express themselves. It is equipped with some of the most-loved aspects of the Galaxy S21  eye-catching design, powerful performance, pro-grade camera, and seamless ecosystem connectivity.



At Samsung, we are focused on bringing the latest mobile innovations to even more people, said Lucas Lee, Managing Director at Samsung Ghana. We saw an incredible response to Galaxy S20 FE and Galaxy S21 lineup. So we applied the same approach with S21 FE 5G, equipping it with the premium features that matter most to our loyal Galaxy fans  because were focused on delivering a smartphone that meets their most important needs.



More Ways for Users to Express Themselves

The S21 FE 5G continues the Galaxy S21 legacy with a premium, signature design. It all starts with the iconic, fan-favorite Contour-Cut frame that seamlessly integrates with S21 FE 5Gs camera housing for a stylish, unified look. Samsung is giving consumers even more ways to express themselves with four new, fashionable color options  Olive, Lavender, White or Graphite  all of which include a stylish haze finish. And the S21 FE 5G features a sleek and slim 7.9mm-thick body, so it can easily slip into a pocket to keep up with any on-the-go lifestyle.



Power for When Fans Need It Most



Samsung users said power and display are critical to keeping up in todays 24/7 world. Thats why S21 FE 5G comes equipped with Galaxys latest, super-fast application processor  the same powerful processor used in the S21 series. Dedicated gamers and streamers will be wowed by the S21 FE 5Gs ultra-crisp, high-quality graphics and picture quality, and the S21 FE 5Gs new 240Hz touch response rate takes all their favorite games to new heights with lightning-fast reaction capabilities. And those games will look incredibly smooth thanks to S21 FE 5Gs 120Hz refresh rate, which provides the highest resolution on a Dynamic AMOLED 2X display.



Long-lasting batteries are also a top priority for busy, on-the-go Galaxy users; so S21 FE 5G is outfitted with an all-day battery built to last from work to home and everywhere in between. S21 FE 5Gs powerful battery is reinforced with 25W Super-fast charging capabilities so you can charge your battery by more than 50% in just 30 minutes, and enjoy the S21 FE 5Gs brilliant high-speed performance without interruption.



Photo Favorites for the Galaxy Fan



The Galaxy S21 is renowned for its industry-leading camera, and S21 FE 5G is equipped with the same pro-grade setup used to capture the worlds most vivid photos. Photography amateurs and pros-alike can effortlessly edit, post, and share scroll-stopping content. It also includes an improved Night Mode setting compared to S20 FE. Now, users can enhance low-light shots while out with friends at night and capture super-clear photos in the darkest conditions. And when you want to get everyone in the shot, S21 FE 5G provides Samsungs best selfie experience yet. Use S21 FE 5Gs advanced 32MP front camera to snap a high-quality selfie of all your best friends. Then let its enhanced AI Face Restoration capabilities make you all look your best. Plus, with Dual Recording, you can stay on top of the action in front of and behind you  just start recording, and your camera captures views from both lenses at the same time.



Truly Tailored and Secure Mobile Experience



Thanks to Samsungs intuitive One UI 4, you can design your ideal mobile experience  one thats uniquely suited to your needs and allows you to express who you are, securely. Packed with deeper customization options and stronger privacy controls, you get to call the shots. With expanded capabilities, your home screens, icons, notifications, wallpapers, and more can all be reimagined. Take for instance, widgets, which have been redesigned and upgraded to offer deep personalization options. Samsung believes a truly tailored experience goes beyond just look and feel. To ensure peace of mind, S21 FE 5G is built with a new privacy dashboard that brings security and privacy controls into one convenient place, making the experience of One UI 4 on the Galaxy S21 FE 5G as seamless as it is secure.



Official Launch



Starting on January 11, 2022, the Galaxy S21 FE 5G will be widely available through authorized Samsung retailers.



For more information about the Galaxy S21 FE 5G, please visit https://www.samsung.com/africa_en/smartphones/galaxy-s21-5g/galaxy-s21-fe-5g/, or samsungmobilepress.com.

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 Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) has dismissed reports that the children of a close relative of President Akufo-Addo used the Presidential Jet for a shopping trip to the UK in December 2021.



In a statement released on Sunday, signed by the Acting Director, Public Relations, Commander Andy La-Anyane, GAF, said the claims are frivolous and without any basis.



He stated that the Falcon EX jet has not been to Europe for a very long time.



We believe that this unfortunate publication, which has been circulated widely, is a calculated effort to undermine the image of the Ghana Armed Forces in the eyes of the general public, part of the statement reads.



This is in reaction to allegations by the Executive Director of Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA), Mr Mensah Thompson.



In a post on Facebook, Mr Thompson claimed that between December 20 and 30, 2021, the children of a close relative of the President took the jet on a trip to the UK to shop.



They didnt go alone; they went with their friends and partied in the sky all through the trip, taking snap videos and flaunting their lucky adventure, he stated.



Ghana has spent close to half a billion dollars in the last two years renting private jets for our President while his family members continue to lavish in our rejected aircraft at the expense of the poor taxpayer, Mr Thompson alleged.



However, the Ghana Armed Forces maintained that the claims are only a figment of the authors imagination. It added that the allegation can easily be verified since there is always a task order for the movement of all Ghana Air Force platforms.



They called on Ghanaians, especially politicians once again, not to drag the GAF into any partisan politics.



Meanwhile, GAF has referred the matter to the Police for investigation.



In view of the seriousness we attach to such malicious publications, the issue has been referred to the Inspector General of Police for further investigations, GAF hinted.

Source: JFM









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Lawyer Edudzi Kudzo Tamekloe has admitted his shock when years ago he witnessed the truth about how President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addos presidential chair was allocated a V8 to transport it to public functions across the country.



Speaking last week on Metro TVs Good Morning Ghana programme, the aide to former President John Dramani Mahama said he initially did not believe the truth of reports to that effect until he attended a function where the reality unfolded before his eyes.



The President assigns V8 to carry his chair. In fact, initially, I thought it was not true until I saw it. The first time when I saw it myself I was shocked, (it was) at the burial grounds of a retired Supreme Court judge.



I went with John Mahama, when the president came, obviously he is the last person to come. A whole V8 is dedicated to a chair, with the driver and a guard. That whole V8 is assigned to carrying the Presidents chair, he lamented.



Asked what the problem was with the issue by the host of the programme, he replied by asking if regional coordinating councils cannot get a chair for the president?



We are getting to the point of insanity. What is the justification for assigning a whole V8 to carry a chair? Who should be funding the presidential spirituality? he quizzed.



Presidential seat and controversy



In August 2000, the presidential chair became topical after netizens pointed out in a series of photos that the President used a particular chair at all public events whenever and wherever he travelled nationwide.



This came after pictures of him at different radio stations on a regional tour saw him use the particular chair.



During Akufo-Addos tour in the North East Region at the time, he visited PAD 95.1 FM for an interview along with his presidential seat. The usual studio seat, according to the picture making rounds, was shifted aside, and replaced with his.



Also, during his visit over the weekend in the Ashanti Region, his presidential seat was taken along with him for an interview with Wontumi Radio Station among others.



There have been mixed reactions since the pictures emerged in the public space, as some say its a standard protocol while others have attached spiritual connotations.



Gabby Otchere-Darko, who commented on the Facebook post by Francis Kenndy Ocloo, explained that it was to keep him protected from Coronavirus.





Source: ghanaweb.com









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National Youth Organizer of the New Patriotic Party, Henry Nana Boakye popularly known as Nana B, wants the Executive Director of Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA), Mensah Thompson, "arrested immediately".



To him, the leader of the anti-corruption and civil society advocacy group, has a "penchant of spewing outright lies and false allegations ostensibly to incite the public and endanger lives".



Presidential Jet On X'mas Shopping Trip



Mensah Thompson had alleged that the Presidential aircraft of the Ghana Air Force was used by relatives of President Akufo-Addo for a shopping trip to the United Kingdom between 20th and 30th of December 2021.



According to him, during the said 10-day shopping trip, children of the relative of the president did not go on the fun-filled trip alone, but in the company of their friends.



"So between the 20th and 30th of December, 2021..during the Christmas, the children of a close relative of the President took Ghanas Presidential Jet the Falcon EX jet on a trip to the UK just for Christmas shopping. They didn't go alone, they went with their friends and partied in the sky all through the trip, taking snap videos and flaunting their lucky adventure," Mensah Thompson wrote on Facebook.



He urged state institutions such as the National Security Ministry, Ghana Air Force, and the Defense Ministry to provide answers to why the presidential jet was put at the disposal of these "spoilt youngsters."



GAF Rebuts, Asks IGP To Investigate



Hours after his claims, the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) issued a statement on Sunday, signed by the Acting Director, Public Relations, Commander Andy La-Anyane, dismissing the report saying they are only a figment of the authors imagination.



We believe that this unfortunate publication, which has been circulated widely, is a calculated effort to undermine the image of the Ghana Armed Forces in the eyes of the general public, partion of the statement read.



Whiles calling on Ghanaians, especially politicians, not to drag them into any partisan politics, the Ghana Armed Forces pointed out that details about the presidential jet can easily be verified since there is always a task order for the movement of all Ghana Air Force platforms.



In view of the seriousness we attach to such malicious publications, the issue has been referred to the Inspector General of Police for further investigations, GAF hinted.



Amazing U-turn



But in a dramatic volte-face, the ASEPA boss has issued a groveling apology for peddling falsehoods. His apology on Facebook - the same medium he used to make his earlier assertions - was before the GAF issued a statement denying his claim.



I have had extensive conversations this morning with the PRO of the Ghana Armed Forces pursuant to the usage of the Presidential jet by the children of the relatives of the President.



In the same medium I made the earlier publication, I withdraw the publication pending an official response from the GCAA. I unreservedly apologise to the Ghana Armed Forces if their image was in anyway affected by my publication. We shall put out for your consumption the response to our request from the GCAA records of the Falcon 900-EX.



Penchant For Lies, Arrest Him!



Notwithstanding the apology, the NPP stalwart still wants the ASEPA boss arrested and possibly prosecuted to serve as a deterrent to others. In a facebook post, Nana B cited relevant provisions of law to back his call.



"It does appear that Mr. Thompson from ASEPA has the penchant of spewing outright lies and false allegations ostensibly to incite the public and endanger lives. He persist in doing that, brazenly, because he always get away with it regardless of the magnitude of such evil lies he peddle.



On this current issue, he must be subjected to the full rigors of the law to deter him from hiding behind social media to create confusion in the system. We can't look on for him to always peddle brazen and wicked falsehood and later turn around to say "I am sorry, I apologise for peddling falsehood". There are laws in this country and he must face it squarely. He must be arrested immediately.



Section 76, Electronic Communications Act, 2008 (Act 775):



(1) A person who by means of electronic communications service, knowingly sends a communication which is false or misleading and likely to prejudice the efficiency of life saving service or to endanger the safety of any person,  commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not more than [thirty six thousand Ghana Cedis] or to a term of imprisonment of not more than five years or both.



(2) A person is taken to know that a communication is false or misleading if that person did not take reasonable steps to find out whether the communication was false, misleading, reckless or fraudulent.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/GHANA









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The coins were likely dug up by a badger searching for food during the vast snowstorm which paralysed Spain in January 2021.

A treasure trove of some 200 Roman-era coins was discovered in northwestern Spain thanks to the apparent efforts of a hungry badger hunting for food, archaeologists have said.

Described as "an exceptional find", the coins were discovered in April 2021 in La Cuesta cave in Bercio in the Asturias region, with details outlined in the Journal of Prehistory and Archaeology published last month by Madrid's Autonomous University.

The coins were likely dug up by a badger searching for food during the vast snowstorm which paralysed Spain in January 2021.

At that time, many creatures struggled to find berries, worms or insects to eat, with this luckless mammal only unearthing a handful of inedible metal discs that were later spotted by a local.

"On the floor of the cave... in the sand likely dug up by badger at the entrance to its sett, we found the coins with more inside," the archaeologists wrote after finding 209 coins dating back to between the 3rd and the 5th century AD.

Most of these late Roman era coins "originate from the north and eastern Mediterranean" from Antioch, Constantinople, Thessaloniki which later passed through Rome and Arles and Lyon in southern France, although at least one coin came from London, they wrote.

"The quantity of coins recovered, as well as the undoubted archaeological interest of the transition to the early medieval period, make the hoard discovered at Bercio an exceptional find," they wrote.

The researchers said the coins had likely been moved there in the "context of political instability" linked in particular to the invasion of the Suebians, a Germanic people, who pushed into the northwestern part of the Iberian peninsula in the 5th century.

Explore further Israeli archaeologists find treasures in ancient shipwrecks

 2022 AFP
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

The lockdowns, travel restrictions, and remote working and remote learning that became obligatory for many people around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been inconvenient for some of them but they also represented a lesson we might learn regarding how well we can cope without the daily commute. Such a lesson could point us to new ways of working and learning that might even have a reduced carbon footprint, suggests work published in the International Journal of Global Warming. Indeed at the height of the lockdown and enforced remote activity, during the second and third quarters of 2020, carbon emissions fell enormously.

Aseel A. Takshe, Davide Contu, and Noelia Weber of the Canadian University Dubai, UAE, Jon C. Lovett of the School of Geography at the University of Leeds, and Paul Stenner Faculty of Arts and Social Science, School of Psychology and Counseling, The Open University, UK, suggest that change is afoot. They explain how the various restrictions implemented in efforts to curtail the spread of the coronavirus may have altered our perceptions of effective climate change actions. The team has now surveyed environmental students to see how their perceptions have changed and through their statistical analysis of the results have found four discourses that emerge.

The first sits well with the notion that we ought to learn the lessons of the so-called new normal and that this could benefit us in slowing climate change. The second is more pessimistic but suggests that we should at least endeavor to not return to pre-pandemic habits. The third discourse from the survey analysis demonstrates that many think economic recovery will have precedence over any consideration of the huge problem of climate change. Finally, the opportunities for sustainability after COVID-19 emerge.

The team suggests that, in the UEA, at least, projections for lowering carbon emissions could be achieved if the government implements a 'green' economic recovery in parallel with more stringent climate policies, such as abolishing any carbon-intensive investments. They add that adaptation will, of course, be a shared responsibility between governments, communities, and individuals. There is now a need to undertake similar surveys in other nations to determine whether or not similar discourses emerge and to measure the temper of environmental students elsewhere.

More information: Aseel A. Takshe et al, Prioritising climate change actions post COVID-19 amongst university students; a Q methodology perspective in the United Arab Emirates, International Journal of Global Warming (2022). Aseel A. Takshe et al, Prioritising climate change actions post COVID-19 amongst university students; a Q methodology perspective in the United Arab Emirates,(2022). DOI: 10.1504/IJGW.2022.120071
Undergraduate students at Oregon State University assist in monitoring the intertidal zone on the Oregon coast. Credit: Elizabeth Cerny-Chipman

Ecological communities on the Oregon coast are being subtly destabilized by the pressures of climate change despite giving an appearance of stress resistance, new research by Oregon State University shows.

The findings are important because assessing and understanding how plants, animals and other life forms respond to a warming planet is critical to human welfare, lead author Bruce Menge said.

The study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that ecological communities in Oregon's rocky intertidal zone have grown less stable for at least a decade though their structurethe organisms that comprise themhas basically stayed the same.

The community destabilization arises from decreasing resiliencethe ability to bounce back from disturbance. The findings suggest other ecological communities around the globe that project a look of stability actually wouldn't appear that way upon close inspection of how their member organisms collectively react in the face of disruption.

"Climate change is threatening to destabilize ecological communities," said Menge, a professor of integrative biology at OSU who has been conducting research on the coast for four decades. "A possibility is that they'll stop being persistently occupied, what we call basins of attraction, and move into other states."

Menge, postdoctoral researcher Sarah Gravem and colleagues in the College of Science looked at a total of six sites in three distinct regions of Oregon's low intertidal zone from 2011 to 2019. The regions are Cape Perpetua on the central coast, Cape Foulweather to the north and Cape Blanco to the south.

At every site the scientists created five "disturbed plots," each a half-meter square. Once a year those plots were cleared of all life forms big enough to be seen with the naked eye: limpets, mussels, sea anemones, barnacles, seagrass, sponges, snails, crabs, sea stars, etc.

The plots were photographed regularly and from those pictures, researchers could gauge the amount of taxa on each plot.

If the ecological communities surrounding the plots were stable, the plots would show steady recovery patterns following each clearing. That was not what happened, the researchers found.

Generally, the disturbances caused communities to move toward structures dominated by bare space and "weedier" taxa like barnacles and filamentous algae.

"And in all cases, over time the rates of recovery slowed and also became more variable," Gravem said. "Increasing variation in key ecological processes can be a signal that an ecosystem is on the verge of a state shift. On the Oregon coast, the factors behind that increasing variation appear to be coming from changes in ocean currents and thermal disruptions like marine heat waves, which can alter growth, decrease colonization rates and kill organisms."

The research doesn't necessarily indicate that the iconic rocky regions of Oregon's shoreline are nearing an ecological tipping point where sudden, often irreversible ecosystem changes happen, the scientists say. But the findings aren't good news either, they say.

"On land, extreme wildfires illustrate how gradual changes in temperature or rainfall can eventually lead to catastrophic events," Menge said. "In the ocean environment, novel occurrences like marine heatwaves and disease epidemics are the new and acute threats being added to the gradual increases in water temperature and ocean acidification commonly associated with climate change."

The scientists say that although it's difficult to predict exactly when a sudden ecosystem change will happen, systems nearing the brink of one may send out warning signals. Increasing variability of community structure is believed to be one of them, and another is the system recovering more and more slowly from small perturbations.

"Resilient systems can quickly bounce back to their original configurations after a disturbance," Gravem said. "Rocky intertidal systems are highly dynamic but Oregon's has begun to show signs of losing its resilience, likely in response to unprecedented stresses related to acute warming events. Even the intact communities we studied alongside the cleared plots became more variable, which we believe to be a harbinger of instability and an early warning sign for community state change."

Angela Johnson, Jonathan Robinson and Brittany Poirson of the OSU College of Science also participated in the research.

Explore further Sea star juveniles abundant, but recovery is anything but guaranteed
The man who bought an AR-15-style rifle for Kyle Rittenhouse pleaded no contest Monday to a reduced charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor in a deal with prosecutors that allows him to avoid prison.

Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder accepted Dominick Blacks plea during a six-minute hearing. Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger dropped two felony counts of intent to deliver a dangerous weapon to a minor as part of the deal.

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Contributing to the delinquency of a minor is a misdemeanor punishable by up to nine months in jail, but Binger reduced the charge to a non-criminal county ordinance violation. Under the deal, Black will pay a $2,000 fine. Each felony count would have been punishable by up to six years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Rittenhouse used the rifle to shoot three people, killing two, during a tumultuous night of protests in Kenosha in 2020 over the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white police officer. A jury acquitted Rittenhouse of homicide and other charges in November.

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Binger told Schroeder that he didnt believe he could move forward with the felony counts against Black, who testified against Rittenhouse. Binger noted, among other things, that during Rittenhouses trial, Schroeder sided with defense attorneys who argued that Wisconsin law prohibits minors from possessing short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns but allows them to possess long guns.

In these circumstances, to go forward with these felony charges against Mr. Black, given the courts legal ruling as well as Mr. Blacks cooperation and the jurys decision in the Rittenhouse case, does not seem appropriate, Binger said.

Blacks attorney, Tony Cotton, said nothing except to confirm the deal.

Black was 18 and dating Rittenhouses sister when he purchased an AR-15-style rifle for Rittenhouse in May 2020. Rittenhouse, of Antioch, Illinois, was 17. Black testified during Rittenhouses that he bought the rifle so he and Rittenhouse could target shoot and hunt on a friends property in northern Wisconsin.

Three months later, in August 2020, Rittenhouse used the rifle to shoot Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz. Rosenbaum and Huber died of their wounds. Rittenhouse is white, as were all of the people he shot.

Rittenhouse argued that he fired in self-defense after the men attacked him. On the last day of his trial, Schroeder dismissed a charge of being a minor in possession of a firearm.

Binger told Schroeder on Monday that he anticipated the judge would have dismissed the felony counts against Black based on that decision. He also told Schroeder that he didnt agree with his interpretation of state law and suggested the district attorneys office might appeal that ruling.

District Attorney Michael Graveley didnt immediately respond to a message about that.

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The rifle was tagged as evidence in Rittenhouses trial, but its unclear what will become of it. Rittenhouses attorney, Mark Richards, said Rittenhouse wants it to be destroyed. Graveley also didnt respond to a message inquiring about what will be done with it.
Nairobi, Kenya. Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Many African cities struggle to supply safe, potable water to their residents. One of the main reasons for this is urbanization; cities' populations grow rapidly as more people move to them from rural areas.

Another reason, in some regions, is water scarcity.

Researchers have long suspected that informal urban neighborhoods are lagging behind their formal counterparts when it comes to accessing safe drinking water. But this reality can be obscured when data is aggregated to city scale rather than being examined at a granular, localized level.

Numerous studies have been conducted to examine inequalities in safe water access. Most measure this access through source type, such as access to tap water. Some have incorporated other dimensions of water service delivery, notably water quality. However, relatively few studies have examined intra-urban differences in the volumes of water consumed.

In our study in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, we examined patterns of domestic piped water distribution between 1985 and 2018. We used data from Nairobi's water and sewerage utility using small areas they call "itineraries." These have an average population of 700. We also examined granular population data from the WorldPop mapping initiative and we drew on spatial data about the age of different neighborhoods for the years between 1975 and 2014 from the Global Human Settlement project.

This data allowed us to examine differences between neighborhoods in sufficient domestic water consumption, cost, and water access. Crucially, we could examine changes over time. The data revealed that newly developed low-income urban neighborhoodshome to up to a third of Nairobi's populationare not as well serviced as older, wealthier and less densely populated areas.

Our hope is that these findings may influence governance and policy in the water sector. Water supply must be reliable, safe and affordable to everyone who lives in Nairobi.

Key findings

The data showed that water sufficiency in Nairobi differs according to several factors. These include the age of a neighborhood, income level, type of water access and the size of the population per itinerary.

The World Health Organisation recommends at least 1500 liters of water per individual per month for domestic use. We found that residents in high- and middle- income areas were six and four times more likely to receive 1500 liters. Less densely populated areas were more likely to receive higher volumes of water.

The manner in which people access water differs according to income, too. People in high- and middle- income areas tend to have piped connections in their homes. Those in middle to low and low-income areas were more often getting water from communal taps or water kiosks (water vendors who sell water purchased from the utility company).

We also found that a great deal of wateran average of 3.5 billion liters per monthis being wasted either through burst pipes, theft or irregular meters. This is more than twice the amount of water needed for every one of the city's residents, across all areas, to access the recommended 1500 liters a month.

Tackling the problem

There are three ways to address the spatial inequality of water access in Nairobi: good data to plan water services and tariffs, investing in infrastructure, and governance.

Data on water supply and consumption is key in assessing the gaps in the water distribution process. It can also help to ensure better management of sometimes scarce or limited water supplies. Historically, government data has been poorly stored.

However, there have been positive improvements in this regard as governments increasingly ensure that their data is accessible, electronically stored, complete and consistent. This enables research and future planning. Kenya has digitized the water consumption data and made the water tariff structure publicly available.

Improving water sufficiency will also require the right investments from the government. Growth in city population should be accompanied by investments in infrastructure to support provision of safe water to the populationincluding proper funding of water utility companies to enhance their performance. Investments should be organized based on residential category and neighborhood age, with a focus on the groups the data shows are not being well serviced.

Finally, good governance is required to minimize both water losses and social inequalities. There should be a deliberate prioritization of water supply and infrastructure development in low-income areas, both in newer and older neighborhoods, and in densely populated areas. This is critical if Kenya is to achieve the water access targets outlined in the African Union's Agenda 2063 and the 2030 United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.

Explore further Rural Alaskans struggle to access and afford water

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The newly described specimen for the fossil pangolin species Smutsia olteniensis. Credit: Claire Terhune, University of Arkansas.

Deeper analysis of fossils from one of Eastern Europe's most significant paleontological sites has led to the discovery of a new species of pangolin, previously thought to have existed in Europe during the early Pleistocene but not confirmed until now.

"It's not a fancy fossil," said Claire Terhune, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas. "It's just a single bone, but it is a new species of a kind of a weird animal. We're proud of it because the fossil record for pangolins is extremely sparse. This one happens to be the youngest pangolin ever discovered from Europe and the only pangolin fossil from Pleistocene Europe."

The bone, a humerusor upper arm bonecame from Graunceanu, a rich fossil deposit in the Oltet River Valley of Romania. For nearly a decade, Terhune and an international team of researchers have focused their attention on Graunceanu and other sites of the Oltet. These sites, initially discovered because of landslides during the 1960s, have produced fossils from a wide variety of animal species, including a large terrestrial monkey, short-necked giraffe, rhinos and saber-toothed cats, in addition to the new pangolin species.

"What's especially exciting is that although some work in the 1930s suggested the presence of pangolins in Europe during the Pleistocene, those fossils had been lost, and other researchers doubted their validity," Terhune said. "Now we know for sure that pangolins were present in Europe around at least 2 million years ago."

Modern-day pangolins exist in Asia and Africa. Often referred to as scaly anteaters, they look somewhat like the armadillos that roam the southern United States. With scales from head to tail, they are sometimes mistaken as reptiles, but modern pangolins are actually mammals and are most closely related to carnivores. They are also among the most illegally trafficked animals in the world. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the eight species of living pangolins on two continents range from "vulnerable" to "critically endangered."

The new pangolin fossil is between about 1.9 to 2.2 million years old, placing it within the range of the Pleistocene Epoch, which ran from roughly 2.6 million years ago to about 11,700 years ago. The identification of this fossil as a pangolin is significant because previous research suggested that pangolins disappeared from the European paleontological record during the middle-Miocene, closer to 10 million years ago. Previous work hypothesized that pangolins were pushed toward more tropical and sub-tropical equatorial environments due to global cooling trends.

As the youngest and best documented fossil pangolin from Europe and the only fossil from Pleistocene Europe, the new species revises an earlier understanding of pangolin evolution and bio-geography. Smutsia olteniensis, as the new species is called, shares several unique traits with other living members of the genus Smutsia, which are currently found only in Africa.

This work was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Terhune's collaborators were Sabrina Curran at Ohio University, Timothy Gaudin the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and Alexandru Petculescu at Emil Racovita Institute of Speleology in Bucharest.

Explore further Fossils reveal diversity of animal species roaming Europe 2 million years ago

More information: Claire E. Terhune et al, The youngest pangolin (Mammalia, Pholidota) from Europe, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (2021). Journal information: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology Claire E. Terhune et al, The youngest pangolin (Mammalia, Pholidota) from Europe,(2021). DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2021.1990075
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

You're likely familiar with the idea of the sterile mule: a hybrid animal born of a horse and a donkey that is unable to breed.

But what about a fertile mule whose teeth just aren't right for chewing the grass in its environment?

Hybrid animals are often infertile or inviable because their genes can be incompatible, a result of natural selection, where species adapt through evolution. These incompatibilities are a by-product of the genes that the parent populations used to adapt to their environments, and occur due to 'mismatched' genes that potentially affect things like cellular processes. These incompatibilities are an important mechanism in speciation, because instead of having different populations or species collapse into one larger population, they can instead remain distinct.

But research conducted at the University of British Columbia on hybrid threespine stickleback fish suggests that hybrid incompatibilities can be dependent on their environment, says lead author Dr. Ken Thompson, a doctoral student in the UBC department of zoology and Biodiversity Research Centre at the time of the study.

"Hybrid incompatibilities as a genetic mechanism, are almost always assumed to affect hybrid organisms in all of the habitats that they encounter," says Dr. Thompson, now a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's department of biology. "But some hybrids can be perfectly viable and fertile in the labit's only when subjected to ecological pressures, such as predators or foraging for food that they die off or don't mate as successfully as other fish."

Previous research has highlighted that there appears to be a 'mismatch' component to this ecological speciation, for example when some hybrid fish have mismatched jaw traits that reduce their ability to feed. What wasn't clear was whether the genetics of the 'ecological' mismatch were akin to the genetics of the 'intrinsic' mismatch that resulted in infertile or unviable individuals. "Although the genetics of 'intrinsic' incompatibilities have been relatively well-studied for decades, we knew almost nothing about the genetics of 'ecological' incompatibilities that only appear in particular environments. However, these ecological incompatibilities are likely to be quite common in nature" says co-author Dr. Catherine Peichel, a professor at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Bern.

Dr. Thompson and his colleagues compiled genetic data from experiments conducted at UBC between 2003 and 2013 of two types of hybrid threespine stickleback fish, where about 3,300 fish had been raised in large artificial ponds at UBC and 550 in a lab. The researchers found fish raised in the pond had a three percent higher heterozygosity, which indicates that they had a lower incidence of 'mismatched' genes. The researchers theorize that fish with 'mismatched' genes died off only in the ponds, leading to the surviving fish having greater average heterozygosity. In the lab, with no ecological pressures or influence, these 'mismatched' fish survived and heterozygosity did not differ from 50 percent, the expected amount under classical rules of genetics.

"This is the first paper to show that a genetic signature of hybrid incompatibilitiesthe death of individuals with more 'mismatched genes'can be caused by ecology," says Dr. Thompson. "However, analyses of average 'ancestry heterozygosity' are very coarse, and further research is needed to identify exactly which genes and which traits are affected."

The research shows how theoretical predictions about selection on mismatched genes, for instance, ancestry heterozygosity, could be applied to real data from experiments, he says. "I think a lot of people will have this sort of genetic data available to them and perhaps they just never thought how they can use it to test predictions about hybrid incompatibilities."

"Analysis of ancestry heterozygosity suggests that hybrid incompatibilities in threespine stickleback are environment-dependent" is published in PLOS Biology.

Explore further Commercial fishing in reduced fish populations may cause genetic changes

More information: "Analysis of ancestry heterozygosity suggests that hybrid incompatibilities in threespine stickleback are environment-dependent" PLOS Biology (2022). Journal information: PLoS Biology "Analysis of ancestry heterozygosity suggests that hybrid incompatibilities in threespine stickleback are environment-dependent"(2022). journals.plos.org/plosbiology/  journal.pbio.3001469
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

It's widely understood that animals such as salmon, butterflies and birds have an innate magnetic sense, allowing them to use the Earth's magnetic field for navigation to places such as feeding and breeding grounds.

But scientists have struggled to determine exactly how the underlying sensory mechanism for magnetic perception actually works.

In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of researchers, including scientists from Oregon State University, outlines a new theory. Magnetite crystals that form inside specialized receptor cells of salmon and other animals may have roots in ancient genetic systems that were developed by bacteria and passed to animals long ago through evolutionary genetics.

The theory is based on new evidence from nanoscopic magnetic material found within cells in the noses of salmon. The paper's lead author is Renee Bellinger, who began the research as a doctoral student at Oregon State, completing her Ph.D. in fisheries science in 2014.

"The cells that contain magnetic material are very scarce," said Bellinger, who now works as a research geneticist at the U.S. Geological Survey and is affiliated with the University of Hawaii, Hilo. "We weren't able to definitively prove magnetite as the underlying key to magnetic perception in animals, but our study revealed associated genes as an important tool to find new evidence of how potential magnetic sensors may function."

"Finding magnetic receptors is like trying to find a needle in haystack. This work paves the way to make the 'needle' glow really bright so we can find and understand receptor cells more easily," Bellinger said.

The findings have the potential for widespread application, from improving salmon management through better understanding of how they use the ocean to targeted medical treatments based on magnetism, said coauthor Michael Banks, a fisheries genomics, conservation and behavior professor at Oregon State.

"Salmon live a hard and fast life, going out to the ocean to specific areas to feed and then coming back to their original spawning grounds where they die. They don't have the opportunity to teach their offspring where to go, yet the offspring still somehow know where to go," Banks said. "If we can figure out the way animals such as salmon sense and orient, there's a lot of potential applications for helping to preserve the species, but also for human applications such as medicine or other orientation technology."

Bellinger's work built on research from more than 20 years ago by Michael Walker of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, who initially traced magnetic sensing to tissue in the noses of trout.

"He narrowed it down to magnetite in the olfactory rosette," Bellinger said. "We were expecting to see chains of crystals in the noses of salmon, similar to how magnetite-producing bacteria grow chains of crystals and use them as a compass needle. But it turns out the individual crystals are organized in compact clusters, like little eggs. The configuration was different than the original hypothesis."

The form in which magnetite appears, as tiny crystals inside specialized receptor cells, represents biomineralization, or the process by which living organisms produce minerals. The similarity between magnetite crystals of bacteria and fish suggests that they share a common evolutionary genetic history, Bellinger said.

The mechanism for developing magnets was developed by bacteria more than two billion years ago and then passed on to animals. Today, these tools to perceive magnetism continue to be present across a broad array of animal species, said Banks, who is affiliated with OSU's Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences in OSU's College of Agricultural Sciences and the Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station at OSU's Hatfield Marine Science Center.

The process for sharing them across animal life may have been similar to the evolution of mitochondria, which control how animals release energy. Mitochondria originated in bacteria and were then transferred to other organisms, he said.

Understanding the evolutionary history of magnetite is a step toward further pinpointing the underlying process, the researchers said. Banks, Bellinger and colleagues would next like to test their new understanding and associated markers to further address the mystery of why and how some life forms have well-tuned tools for long and precise migratory strategies.

Co-authors of the paper are Jiandong Wei of Shanghai University in China; Uwe Hartmann of Saarland University in Germany; Herve Cadiou of the Institute of Cellular and Integrative Neuroscience in France; and Michael Winklhofer of the University of Oldenburg in Germany.

More information: M. Renee Bellinger et al, Conservation of magnetite biomineralization genes in all domains of life and implications for magnetic sensing, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences M. Renee Bellinger et al, Conservation of magnetite biomineralization genes in all domains of life and implications for magnetic sensing,(2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2108655119
Seth Young's research group collecting and describing limestone samples from a field site in the Roberts Mountains, Nevada. Credit: Anders Lindskog/Florida State University

Florida State University researchers have new insight into the complicated puzzle of environmental conditions that characterized the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction (LOME), which killed about 85% of the species in the ocean.

Their work on the 445-million-year-old mass extinction event was published online in the journal AGU Advances on Monday.

"We found that reducing conditionswith low to no oxygen and little to no hydrogen sulfide levelsare probably playing a much more important role than we previously thought," said lead author Nevin Kozik, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science and researcher at the FSU-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. "If you imagine a pie chart of the causes of this extinction, we're increasing that wedge that signifies oxygen deficiency, which is happening in concert with a cooling climate and widespread habitat loss due to sea-level change."

The research is the first study to use measurements of multiple elements from several sites to examine the conditions that led to the LOME, the second-largest extinction event in the Earth's history and the only mass extinction to occur during what are called icehouse conditions, when Earth's climate is cold enough at the poles to support ice sheets year-round.

To measure oxygen and sulfide concentrations from millions of years ago, scientists use geochemical proxies that correspond to ancient marine conditions. Iodine concentrations and sulfur isotopes from three sites provided information on the oxygen and sulfide levels in the ancient ocean.

The extinction happened in two distinct pulses. Using these geochemical measurements as environmental proxies, the researchers found that oxygen levels decreased ahead of the first pulse and remained low. Levels of hydrogen sulfide in the oceans decreased initially leading into the first pulse of the extinction event, but then these levels increased afterward coinciding with the second and final pulse of the extinction.

At the same time the Earth's climate was cooling, glaciers were growing at the ancient South Pole (modern-day North Africa), which led to decreasing sea levels and habitat loss for marine organisms in shallow seaways in the tropics.

"The geological record indicates that many environmental factors were at play leading to this extinction event," Kozik said. "The processes we are linking together here are like several punches that beat down life during this time."

Even while conditions were becoming inhospitable for many organisms around the planet, the environment in some places remained oxygen-rich and able to support a diversity of life. The researchers found evidence of higher oxygen levels at a site near present-day Quebec that was home to a shallow reef on the continental shelf 445 million years ago.

"We know that life had to survive and persist after this mass extinction, and we now have an indication that at least this location had enough oxygen to support life," said co-author Seth Young, associate professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science and researcher at the FSU-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. "That's consistent with what you find in the rock and fossil records, which are that reefs are persisting through this extinction event. The fossils are suggesting that, at least there, life was OK."

The extinction event is an ancient analogue to what's happening on Earth today. Earth today, as in the Late Ordovician, is in an icehouse period and is experiencing a major loss in biodiversity, a warming climate and a decrease in oceanic oxygen.

"All of those things are really important and provide a modern perspective on this mass extinction event," Young said. "It's important to not only understand what caused this extinction event, but also how did the Earth system get out of this and continue on. That's the impetus for studying many of these things, not only to understand why this happened, but what was the survival period like and what led to the reemergence and rediversification of life."

Researchers from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and University of California, Riverside contributed to this study.

Explore further Researchers find oxygen spike coincided with ancient global extinction

More information: Nevin P. Kozik et al, Geochemical Records Reveal Protracted and Differential Marine Redox Change Associated With Late Ordovician Climate and Mass Extinctions, AGU Advances (2022). Journal information: AGU Advances Nevin P. Kozik et al, Geochemical Records Reveal Protracted and Differential Marine Redox Change Associated With Late Ordovician Climate and Mass Extinctions,(2022). DOI: 10.1029/2021AV000563
Credit Tim Fawcett. Credit: Tim Fawcett

Pheasants' heads cool rapidly as they prepare to fightthen heat up afterwards, new research shows.

Scientists from the University of Exeter used thermal cameras to watch juvenile pheasants, to see how their temperature changed during aggressive interactions that establish the pecking order.

They found that pheasantsboth the instigator and the recipient of the aggressiongrew more cool-headed before a fight, due to a stress response in which blood rushes to the body's core.

Their heads became hotter again after the confrontation, as normal blood flow was restored.

"We were surprised that both individuals in these aggressive encounters followed a similar pattern of cooling and heating," said Dr. Tim Fawcett, of the University of Exeter.

"We expected that a fight would be more stressful for the pheasant on the receiving end of the aggression, and therefore that we'd see a stronger response in them.

"We can't say for certain what causes this pattern, but it could be that maintaining a place at the top of the pecking order is just as stressful as being at the bottom."

While male and female pheasants followed a similar pattern of cooling and heating before and after a fight, females were cooler on average.

"Thermal cameras provide a unique opportunity to non-invasively measure dynamic changes in physiological state over a short period of time," said Dr. Mark Whiteside, from the University of Plymouth.

"Using this technique we were able to measure responses to aggressive interactions, in semi-natural environments, in real time."

Changes in blood flow are an important part of the stress response in multiple animal species, in a variety of different situations.

The pheasants in the study were six or seven weeks old. They were captive at the time, but were later released into the wild.

The paper comes 100 years after Norwegian zoologist Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe coined the term "pecking order" in his Ph.D. thesis about chickens.

Published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, the new studyby a team including the University of Plymouthwas funded by the European Research Council and the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.

The paper is entitled: "Hot-headed peckers: thermographic changes during aggression among juvenile pheasants (Phasianus colchicus)."

Explore further A-maze-ing pheasants have two ways of navigating

More information: Hot-headed peckers: thermographic changes during aggression among juvenile pheasants (Phasianus colchicus), Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (2022). Journal information: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Hot-headed peckers: thermographic changes during aggression among juvenile pheasants (Phasianus colchicus),(2022). doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0442
The transformation of indigenous symbols into Vai letters. Credit: Momolu Massaquoi (1911)

The world's very first invention of writing took place over 5000 years ago in the Middle East, before it was reinvented in China and Central America. Today, almost all human activitiesfrom education to political systems and computer coderely on this technology.

But despite its impact on daily life, we know little about how writing evolved in its earliest years. With so few sites of origin, the first traces of writing are fragmentary or missing altogether.

In a study just published in Current Anthropology, a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, showed that writing very quickly becomes 'compressed' for efficient reading and writing.

To arrive at this insight they turned to a rare African writing system that has fascinated outsiders since the early 19th century.

"The Vai script of Liberia was created from scratch in about 1834 by eight completely illiterate men who wrote in ink made from crushed berries," says lead author Dr. Piers Kelly, now at the University of New England, Australia. The Vai language had never before been written down.

According to Vai teacher Bai Leesor Sherman, the script was always taught informally from a literate teacher to a single apprentice student. It remains so successful that today it is even used to communicate pandemic health messages.

The first page of Vai manuscript MS17817 from the British Library. Credit: The British Library

"Because of its isolation, and the way it has continued to develop up until the present day, we thought it might tell us something important about how writing evolves over short spaces of time," says Kelly.

"There's a famous hypothesis that letters evolve from pictures to abstract signs. But there are also plenty of abstract letter-shapes in early writing. We predicted, instead, that signs will start off as relatively complex and then become simpler across new generations of writers and readers."

The team scrutinized manuscripts in the Vai language from archives in Liberia, the United States, and Europe. By analyzing year-by-year changes in its 200 syllabic letters, they traced the entire evolutionary history of the script from 1834 onwards. Applying computational tools for measuring visual complexity, they found that the letters really did become visually simpler with each passing year.

"The original inventors were inspired by dreams to design individual signs for each syllable of their language. One represents a pregnant woman, another is a chained slave, others are taken from traditional emblems. When these signs were applied to writing spoken syllables, then taught to new people, they became simpler, more systematic and more similar to one another," says Kelly.

Animated evolution of the Vai letters  'bhi' ,  'tho' and  'fi' over 175 years. Credit: Julia Bespamyatnykh (2018)

This pattern of simplification can be observed over much longer time scales for ancient writing systems as well.

"Visual complexity is helpful if you're creating a new writing system. You generate more clues and greater contrasts between signs, which helps illiterate learners. This complexity later gets in the way of efficient reading and reproduction, so it fades away," says Kelly.

Elsewhere in West Africa, illiterate inventors reverse-engineered writing for languages spoken in Mali and Cameroon, while new writing systems are still being invented in Nigeria and Senegal. In response to the study, Nigerian philosopher Henry Ibekwe commented: "African indigenous scripts remain a vast, untapped repository of semiotic and symbolic information. Many questions remain to be asked."

Explore further Study: Complexity holds steady as writing systems evolve

More information: Piers Kelly et al, The Predictable Evolution of Letter Shapes, Current Anthropology (2022). Journal information: Current Anthropology Piers Kelly et al, The Predictable Evolution of Letter Shapes,(2022). DOI: 10.1086/717779
For trees to grow into the sky, they depend on a fungal partner. Credit: P. Ruegg / ETH Zurich

Most trees live in symbiosis with fungi. ETH Zurich researchers show just how important this partnership is for tree growth through the first-ever comprehensive data analysis compiled for European forests on a massive scale.

Most of the world's tree species have a close relationship with the fungi, known as ectomycorrhizae, that grow on their roots. These form a dense network around the fine roots, supplying the trees with nutrients and protecting them from pathogens. In return, the fungi receive energy in the form of carbohydrates, which the trees produce via photosynthesis. Scientists have known about this mutualistic relationship for a long time.

What has been missing, however, is a full understanding of the extent to which ectomycorrhizal fungi influence the growth of mature trees and whole forests. It has long been assumed that physical factors such as temperature, rainfall and anthropogenic nitrogen input into the soil were the principal factors influencing tree growth, while the effect of the fungal communities hidden underground has been hard to measure and over-looked.

Three times faster growth

But now, postdoc Mark Anthony and fellow members of the group led by Tom Crowther, Professor of Global Ecosystem Ecology at ETH Zurich, have changed all that. Studying five species of the most common European forest trees, they show that differences in fungal communities are linked to even greater variation in tree growth than local climate conditions and anthropogenic nitrogen inputs. The study was recently published in the journal ISME.

"Differences in ectomycorrhizal fungal communities correspond to a tree-fold increase in tree growth rates. These fungi also provide a clearer ecological explanation for differences in tree growth compared to other factors such as temperature and rainfall," says Mark Anthony, lead author of the study.

Fungal fertilizers

The fastest growing trees were found where ectomycorrhizal fungal communities are highly adapted to extract the inorganic nitrogen compounds ammonium and nitrate from soil and make these available to the trees. Inorganic nitrogen is found in most fertilizers, is the most energetically beneficial form of nitrogen, and is an excellent growth promoter of plants.

There was slower growth in forest trees where local ectomycorrhizal fungal communities are adapted to supply trees with nitrogen from organic sources. This type of nitrogen is found in dead, decaying biomass in the ground. To release it, the fungi must first generate special enzymes to depolymerize and break down the biomass. Doing this costs the fungi more energy than directly tapping inorganic nitrogen from the soil and in turn it also costs trees more. Since fungi that tap organic nitrogen draw their required energy from tree partners, the trees themselves are left with less energy to devote to their own growth.

Network of white fungi on the roots of a spruce tree (Picea glauca): Such ectomycorrhiza can promote tree growth. Credit: Andre-Ph. D. Picard, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Identifying fungi and their functions

To gain these new insights, the researchers identified the ectomycorrhizal fungi present in soil samples across 137 European forest monitoring plots. They then paired each type of fungus present with its fully sequenced genome to determine the function each one has within the overall forest ecosystem. Finally, they correlated the various functions of the fungi with decades of tree growth data to reveal the relationship between ectomycorrhizal fungi and tree growth. The species of tree investigated included the deciduous trees oak and beech as well as the conifers pine and spruce.

Inoculating tree seedlings with ideal fungi

The team's findings will have an impact on future research and on forestry itself. Researchers can now identify the types of fungi and their properties that will allow trees to grow faster, or indeed slower. In this way, this study can help the forestry sector to inoculate certain woodlands using specific fungal communities in order to effect targeted changes in tree growth.

"Inoculating tree seedlings with fungi is already an established practice. Our work provides a solid scientific basis for this practice and can help improve it," Anthony says.

He also envisages applications related to climate change and rapidly changing ecological conditions. First, faster tree growth could present a quick way of absorbing more carbon from the atmosphere. Second, some trees no longer grow well in certain areas due to global change; new fungal partners could be sought for these trees to help them survive.

Survival advantage in the future climate

"In the future, fungal communities that utilize organic nitrogen could be advantageous for many species of tree," Anthony says. This is because rising temperatures and CO 2 concentrations promote plant growth. To grow faster, trees draw on easily obtainable inorganic nitrogen. In doing so, they deplete stores of this kind of nitrogen more quickly, which in turn could slow long-term growth. This is in contrast to the fungal communities that utilize organic nitrogen, which is more abundant in the soil albeit harder to access. The right fungi could ensure that their tree partner grow steadily into the future by capturing this organic nitrogen over the long term.

Explore further Tree growth response to soil nutrients and neighborhood crowding varies between mycorrhizal types

More information: Mark A. Anthony et al, Forest tree growth is linked to mycorrhizal fungal composition and function across Europe, The ISME Journal (2022). Journal information: ISME Journal Mark A. Anthony et al, Forest tree growth is linked to mycorrhizal fungal composition and function across Europe,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41396-021-01159-7
The mountain lion known as P-81, pictured here, is among the first in the Santa Monica Mountains with a tail defect. Credit: National Park Service

Southern California cougars often make the news with their litters of oh-so-cute kittens, but a UCLA-led study suggests that these mountain lions may soon find it much harder to reproduce due to a lack of genetic diversity.

Scientists tracking two local mountain lion populations, one in the Santa Monica Mountains and another in the Santa Anas, have identified the first reproductive signs of inbreeding among these groups, which are cut off from other cougar populationsand therefore breeding optionsby busy freeways.

The animals averaged a whopping 93 percent abnormal sperm rate, while some also displayed physical signs of inbreeding, like deformed tails or testicular defects. Researchers have long had genetic evidence of inbreeding, but the malformed sperm is the first evidence that inbreeding is manifesting in the reproductive system.

"This is a serious problem for an animal that's already endangered locally," said the study's lead author, Audra Huffmeyer, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher who studies fertility in large cat species and is a National Geographic Explorer. "It's quite severe."

The study, currently available online and scheduled for publication in the January 2022 print edition of the journal Theriogenology, lends added urgency to the need for wildlife crossings, structures that would allow the mountain lions and other animals to roam further and find a broader pool of potential mates, the researchers said. Mountain lions, also known as cougars, are a bellwether species, making them a leading indicator that inbreeding could soon cause problems for other wildlife species in the Santa Monica and Santa Ana mountains, the researchers explained.

The current research draws on work by scientists from UCLA, the National Park Service's Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center. Both the NPS and UC Davis are carrying out long-term studies of Southern California mountain lion populations, currently following 17 cats in total.

Mountain lion and kittens. Credit: National Park Service

Tracking the signs of inbreeding

Over the past year, the research team identified nine adult males from the Santa Monica and Santa Ana ranges with signs of inbreeding, including the first evidence of reduced fertility. The scientists took sperm samples from five cougars that died from unrelated causes, such as rat poison or car collisions. (Though researchers would like to get those samples from live mountain lions, it's unsurprisingly a complicated proposition.) They found that each had very high levels of abnormal sperm, together averaging an exceedingly high 93 percent abnormal sperm rate. One of the five also had testes of dramatically different sizes.

The researchers also found other telltale physical manifestations of inbreeding among living cougars: four had kinks in their tails, including one that also had only one descended testicle. Both mountain ranges included at least one mountain lion with a malformed tail and one with abnormal sperm.

These findings are similar to the signs of severe inbreeding seen early on among most Florida panthers in the 1990sincluding the kinked tails, undescended testes and teratospermia (60 percent or more abnormal sperm), Huffmeyer noted. The Florida panther population only recovered with the introduction of mountain lions from Texas.

The kinked tail of P-81, a physical manifestation of inbreeding. This same male mountain lion was found to have an undescended testicle, a condition known as cryptorchidism. Credit: National Park Service

"The Florida panthers were also severely isolated and severely inbred, so the fact that we're seeing the same traits in our mountain lion population is alarming," she said. "If we don't do anything to introduce more genetic diversity to the Southern California mountain lions, we will have more males with reproductive problems, fewer kittens and a lower rate of kitten survival."

Ultimately, there's a real risk of extinction for the mountain lions in the Santa Monica and Santa Ana ranges. Although they haven't seen evidence yet, once scientists start finding significant inbreeding depressionmeaning decreased fertility and reduced kitten survivalextinction is predicted to occur within 50 years, with a median extinction time of 12 to 15 years, according to 2016 and 2019 papers evaluating population viability that included scientists from UCLA, NPS, UC Davis, the University of Wyoming, and the University of Nebraska.

"That's why these recent findings of physical manifestations of inbreeding are so significant," said Seth Riley, the wildlife branch chief at Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and a researcher and adjunct associate professor at UCLA. "We are not yet seeing the declines in survival, reproduction and physical condition that they saw in Florida, but seeing these signs of it is a major concern and potential harbinger of further, more serious issues. We have not yet seen a noticeable decline in litters of kittens, but it may be a bit early."

P-81 tail kink. Credit: National Park Service

Finding a solution: Wildlife crossings

While a few mountain lionsin particular the cougar known as P-22, who frequents Griffith Parkhave successfully crossed freeways, far more have been killed trying to do so. For years, conservationists have lobbied for the construction of wildlife crossings that will help populations of cougars and other animals penned in by roadways connect with populations they've been largely isolated from for generations, Riley said.

The California Department of Transportation has scheduled groundbreaking for early 2022 on one such crossing, a wildlife bridge over Highway 101 in Agoura Hills in northwestern Los Angeles County, thanks to a mix of public and private funding. Biologists and land managers hope this project will lead to more crossings. In fact, early plans are being formulated for a possible structure over Interstate 15 in in Riverside County.

Crossings, the researchers say, help all local animal species amp up their genetic mix and, when feasible, are preferable to the Florida scheme of transporting mountain lions into circumscribed local habitats, which is not a long-term solution and can often result in mortality for translocated animals.

A local mountain lion kitten, photographed in August 2020. Credit: National Park Service

For now, the researchers will continue monitoring how the newly discovered fertility issues affect the mountain lions' breeding, keeping a close eye on potential decreases in the number of kitten litters and kitten survival rates.

"If we don't do anything to add genetic diversity, the end is near," Huffmeyer stressed. "That sounds dramatic, but that's what we've seen."

Explore further Female mountain lion is 99th to be tracked in Santa Monica Mountains study

More information: Audra A. Huffmeyer et al, First reproductive signs of inbreeding depression in Southern California male mountain lions (Puma concolor), Theriogenology (2021). Audra A. Huffmeyer et al, First reproductive signs of inbreeding depression in Southern California male mountain lions (Puma concolor),(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.theriogenology.2021.10.016
Pupils wear face masks as they attend class at Kitante Primary School in Kampala, Uganda Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Uganda's schools reopened to students on Monday, ending the world's longest school disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda

Uganda's schools reopened to students on Monday, ending the world's longest school disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The reopening caused traffic congestion in some areas of the capital, Kampala, and students can be seen carrying their mattresses in the streets, a back-to-boarding school phenomenon not witnessed here for nearly two years.

Uganda's schools have been fully or partially shut for more than 83 weeks, the world's longest disruption, according to figures from the U.N. cultural agency. The shutdown affected more than 10 million learners.

The East African country of 44 million people first shut down its schools in March 2020, shortly after the first coronavirus case was confirmed on the African continent. Some classes were reopened to students in February 2021, but a total lockdown was imposed again in June as the country faced its first major surge.

For many parents, the reopening was long overdue.

"Inevitably, we have to open up schools," said Felix Okot, the father of a 6-year-old kindergartner. "The future of our kids, the future of our nation, is at stake."

The country's schools cannot "wait forever" for the pandemic's end, he warned.

Pupils walk around the school compound during break time at Kitante Primary School in Kampala, Uganda Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Uganda's schools reopened to students on Monday, ending the world's longest school disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda

The protracted school lockdown proved controversial in a country where measures aimed at stemming the spread of the virus were ignored by many. Vaccine skepticism, even among health workers, remains a problem, with growing reports of fake COVID-19 vaccination cards sold in downtown Kampala.

Many students returning to school are believed to have had no help during the lockdown. Most public schools, which serve the vast majority of children in Uganda, were unable to offer virtual schooling. The Associated Press reported in November on students in a remote Ugandan town where weeds grew in classrooms and some students worked in a swamp as gold miners.

Some critics pointed out that the government of President Yoweri Musevenian authoritarian who has held power for 36 years and whose wife is the education ministerdid little to support home-based learning. Museveni justified the lockdown by insisting that infected students were a danger to their parents and others.

Pupils wear face masks as they attend class at Kitante Primary School in Kampala, Uganda Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Uganda's schools reopened to students on Monday, ending the world's longest school disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda

"There are many things which can't be predicted right now. The turnout of students is unpredictable, the turnout of teachers is unpredictable," said Fagil Mandy, a former government inspector of schools now working as an independent consultant. "I am more worried that many children will not return to school for various reasons, including school fees."

Mandy also noted concern that a virus outbreak "will spread very fast" in crowded schools, urging close monitoring by school administrators.

Welcoming the reopening of Uganda's schools, Save the Children warned that "lost learning may lead to high dropout rates in the coming weeks without urgent action," including what it described as catch-up clubs.

The aid group warned in a statement Monday of a wave of dropouts "as returning students who have fallen behind in their learning fear they have no chance of catching up."

Pupils play outside during break time at Kitante Primary School in Kampala, Uganda Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Uganda's schools reopened to students on Monday, ending the world's longest school disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda

Pupils walk around the school compound during break time at Kitante Primary School in Kampala, Uganda Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Uganda's schools reopened to students on Monday, ending the world's longest school disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda

A school security guard measures the temperature of the pupils at the entrance of Kitante Primary School in Kampala, Uganda Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Uganda's schools reopened to students on Monday, ending the world's longest school disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda

It remains to be seen how long Uganda's schools will remain open, with an alarming rise in virus cases in recent days. In the past week health authorities have been reporting a daily positivity rate in excess of 10%, up from virtually zero in December. Museveni has warned of a possible new lockdown if intensive care units reach 50% occupancy.

Hoping for a smooth return to school, authorities waived any COVID test requirements for students. An abridged curriculum also has been approved under an arrangement to automatically promote all students to the next class.

Uganda has received foreign support toward the reopening of schools.

The U.N. children's agency and the governments of the U.K. and Ireland announced financial support focusing on virus surveillance and the mental health of students and teachers in 40,000 schools. They said their support was key for Uganda's school system to remain open.

Explore further South Africa begins second phase of reopening of schools

 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
On a recent morning with wind chills below zero, at a Cook County forest preserve, a coyote paced back and forth inside a cage, turning tight figures eights, peering out through the wires. With sharp teeth and quick movements, the animal looked ready to hunt. But animal experts agree, he probably cant survive on his own in the wild.

Before he opened his eyes as a pup, forest preserve officials said, this coyote was found in Tennessee by people who took him for an abandoned dog and brought him to a domestic animal shelter. He was kept there for three weeks, socialized and trained to be adopted like a pet.

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When the operators realized he was a coyote, he was placed with an animal rehabilitator for several weeks, who concluded hed been imprinted by humans. That means he had no fear of people, and was dependent on them for survival and socialization.

A coyote paces in his cage at the River Trail Nature Center in Northbrook on Jan. 5, 2022. Forest preserve officials said the coyote was found in Tennessee by people who took him for an abandoned dog and brought him to a domestic animal shelter. He was kept there for three weeks, socialized and trained to be adopted like a pet. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

Eventually, the coyote was placed with the Forest Preserve District, spokesman Carl Vogel said. Since August 2018, hes been kept in a metal enclosure at the River Trail Nature Center in Northbrook, where Vogel said he gets expert care.

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Some people are trying to change that. About 1,800 people signed a Change.org petition to move the coyote to a more natural habitat at an out-of-state animal sanctuary. The effort was led by animal lover Nicole Milan, who was disturbed to come across the caged coyote while on a hike late last year.

Other animals kept in captivity at the nature center, like a Swainsons hawk or a red-tailed hawk, have been physically injured, having lost an eye or a wing. The coyote, however, is physically healthy.

I was flabbergasted, Milan said. Its cruel and barbaric to keep a wild animal in solitude in such an unnatural, tiny cage. You wouldnt leave a dog alone like that in a cage.

Milan, who runs her own consulting company, calls the coyote Rocky, after the movie boxer. She asked forest preserve officials about its conditions, and was told the outdoor cage, roughly 10 by 22 feet, meets U.S. Department of Agriculture standards, and that the coyote gets regular veterinary care. She offered to pay for a larger enclosure but was turned down.

Nicole Milan near the coyote's cage at the River Trail Nature Center in Northbrook on Jan. 5, 2022. Milan wants the coyote she calls Rocky to be moved to an animal sanctuary in Colorado. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

Going further, Milan contacted the Wild Animal Sanctuary outside Keenesburg, Colorado, 30 miles northeast of Denver, which operates almost 800 acres of refuge land for captive wild animals. It is state and federally licensed, and is home to more than 550 large carnivores separated by species, including lions, tigers, bears and coyotes.

Most of the sanctuarys animals come from illegal roadside zoos or other private owners. The facility saved many of the big cats featured on the viral cable television documentary Tiger King, which were transferred there on authority of the U.S. Department of Justice, founder and Executive Director Pat Craig said.

The sanctuary offered to take care of Rocky in large, outdoor, fenced-off enclosures, where after being evaluated and acclimated, he might live with other coyotes for socialization, pursue natural behaviors such as running and playing, and be fed.

Normally, according to the Urban Coyote Research Project, in which the Forest Preserve District participates, wild coyotes spend more than a quarter of their lives hunting and traveling, often in open areas such as prairies. They often live in packs and have a highly organized social system.

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After being hunted and trapped to the point where they were considered wiped out from the area, along with wolves, in the 1800s, coyotes have since made a comeback, with thousands living in the metropolitan area.

Solitary coyotes travel large distances, covering up to 60 square miles across different towns and even states. In captivity, they typically live 13 to 15 years.

A coyote paces in its cage at the River Trail Nature Center in Northbrook on Jan. 5, 2022. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

Milan sent the forest preserve a letter in mid-December proposing to move Rocky. She was told officials would get back to her by Jan. 22.

A friend, animal law attorney Cherie Travis, supported Milans efforts, calling the coyotes captivity cringeworthy. While the forest preserve nature center is 60 years old, advocates note that zoos and animal sanctuaries have evolved in recent decades to provide larger, more natural settings for the animals welfare, and to build public appreciation for natural habitat.

Vogel, the district spokesman, said the coyote is well cared for, and serves an educational purpose for visitors, with feeding demonstrations and talks educating visitors on the native animals. Some visitors, including schoolchildren from Chicago, may never see a coyote in the wild.

These ambassador animals play an important role, to teach the public what kind of animals live here, and how the public can support and protect native animals, so theyre really doing something important, he said.

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Milan has been reaching out to forest preserve board members for help and plans to attend the forest preserve board virtual meeting set for Tuesday, though Vogel said such situations typically are handled by staff members. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkles office did not immediately respond to questions about what to do with the animal.

Milan was unconvinced by the districts educational claims, saying the cage only shows how to treat animals cruelly.

Its only teaching children its OK to hold wild animals captive, she said.

The forest preserve board is expected to discuss the matter at its meeting Tuesday, after hearing comments from the public and a presentation from the forest preserve staff.

A coyote paces in its cage at the River Trail Nature Center in Northbrook on Jan. 5, 2022. Forest preserve officials said the coyote was found in Tennessee by people who took him for an abandoned dog and brought him to a domestic animal shelter. He was kept there for three weeks, socialized and trained to be adopted like a pet. (Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune)

In Cook County, commissioners serve on both the county board and the forest preserve board. Preckwinkles office issued a statement committing to protecting animals but supporting the status quo.

All Forest Preserves ambassador animals serve an important role in helping connect Cook County residents to nature while having their needs for shelter, food and medical care met. This is the charge of the nature centers staff and the wildlife experts responsible for these animals, and we are confident that every possible step is being taken to ensure the same for the coyote at River Trail Nature Center.

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County board and forest preserve Commissioner Scott Britton, in whose district the nature center is located, said he will listen to all sides. He said the staff let him in the coyotes outer cage Thursday to see its attachment to humans. Naturalists indicated to him their thought that the animal would not be able to socialize with other coyotes, and that theyd prefer to keep it for educational purposes.

Britton said he might consider a compromise in which the district could seek funds to provide a better enclosure for the animal.

Im looking to do whats best for this coyote, he said. We need to have a longer conversation and figure out whats best.

Commissioner Larry Suffredin called the situation a learning opportunity. Hes nervous about transferring the animal out of state into a new setting but suggested having a third-party veterinarian look at the coyote and suggest options.

Whatever we advocate for, it has to solve a problem, he said.

The forest preserve mission is to protect open space, with all of its associated wildlife, in a natural state for the education, pleasure and recreation of the public  It says nothing about keeping animals captive.

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Brookfield Zoo, partially funded by the forest preserve and located on forest preserve land, has habitats built for wild animals, but zoos dont typically house common local animals like coyotes.

rmccoppin@chicagotribune.com
The contiguous United States experienced 688 natural disaster-related fatalities in 2021the most since 2011, said a federal weather agency report on Monday.Spencer Platt/Getty Images/AFP.

Nearly 700 people died due to natural disasters in the contiguous United States in 2021the most since 2011, said a federal weather agency in a report released Monday.

The year "was marked by extremes across the US, including exceptional warmth, devastating severe weather and the second-highest number of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters on record," said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The death toll for weather-related disasters in the 48 mainland states plus the District of Columbia totaled 688, more than twice 2020's tally of 262, the agency said.

Human activity has caused life-threatening climate change resulting in more severe weather events across the globe.

Twenty separate weather incidents cost the country $1 billion or more, the second-most billion-dollar events recorded in a calendar year behind 2020, which saw 22, the agency said.

The costly disasters included four hurricanes, three tornados, two floods, a cold wave, and western wildfires, droughts, and heat waves.

Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the statistics "sobering."

"The devastating toll and trauma imposed by extreme weather and climate disasters have, and continue to, hit some people harder than others with communities of color, low-income communities, and communities that have endured multiple disasters often bearing the brunt of its impacts," she said.

A bitter cold snap left millions of Americans without electricity in February, when a deadly winter storm system held its grip across huge swathes of the United States, even pushing as far south as Mexico.

Record-low temperatures wracked places ill-prepared for such conditions, overwhelming local utility companies and infuriating residents left to huddle under coats and blankets and fend for themselves. More than 20 storm-related deaths were registered.

Hurricane Ida struck the US Gulf Coast as a Category 4 hurricane in late August, bringing major flooding and knocking out power to large parts of the heavily populated region.

The final blast of the storm killed at least 47 people in the US Northeast as it turned streets into raging rivers, inundated basements and shut down the New York subway.

NOAA reported that 2021 ranked as the fourth-warmest year in a 127-year period of record, with average temperatures of 54.5 degrees Fahrenheit (12.5 degrees Celsius) in the contiguous US.

December 2021 was the warmest on record6.7F above average.

The 2021 average temperature was 2.5F higher than the 20th century average.

US northeastern states Maine and New Hampshire had their second-warmest year on record, and 19 more experienced a top-five warmest year.

Alaska, however, saw a 0.4 degree drop in average yearly temperature and its coldest year since 2012.

Explore further US hit with 18 billion-dollar disasters so far this year

 2022 AFP
Weather extremes in 2021 included a once-in-a-thousand-years heatwave in North America.

The last seven years have been the hottest on record globally "by a clear margin", the European Union's climate monitoring service reported Monday, as it raised the alarm over sharp increases in record concentrations of methane in the atmosphere.

Countries around the world have been blasted by a relentless assault of weather disasters linked to global warming in recent years, including record-shattering wildfires across Australia and Siberia, a once-in-1000-years heatwave in North America and extreme rainfall that caused massive flooding in Asia, Africa, the US and Europe.

In its latest annual assessment, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) confirmed that 2021 had joined the unbroken warm streak since 2015.

It found that last year was the fifth warmest on record globally, marginally warmer than 2015 and 2018. Accurate measurements go back to the mid-19th century.

The annual average temperature was 1.1 to 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, measured between 1850 and 1900, C3S said.

That was despite the cooling effect of the natural La Nina weather phenomenon.

Overall, the monitoring service found the last seven years "have been the warmest years on record by a clear margin".

"2021 was yet another year of extreme temperatures with the hottest summer in Europe, heatwaves in the Mediterranean, not to mention the unprecedented high temperatures in North America," said C3S Director Carlo Buontempo.

"These events are a stark reminder of the need to change our ways, take decisive and effective steps toward a sustainable society and work towards reducing net carbon emissions."

Methane surge

The C3S also monitored atmospheric concentrations of the planet-warming gases carbon dioxide and methane, finding that both had increased with no sign of a slowdown.

Methane particularly has gone up "very substantially", to an annual record of about 1,876 parts per billion (ppb).

Growth rates for 2020 and 2021 were 14.6 ppb per year and 16.3 ppb per year, respectively. That is more than double the average annual growth rate seen over the previous 17 years.

But an array of human-caused and natural sources made it hard to pinpoint why there had been such a strong increase in recent years, C3S said.

Methane (CH4) is the gas most responsible for global warming after CO2. While more short-lived in the atmosphere, it is many times more potent than CO2.

Natural sources include wetlands, while human-induced sources are leaks from natural gas and oil production, coal mining and landfills, as well as rice paddies, livestock and manure handling.

Vincent-Henri Peuch, Director of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, which tracks greenhouse gas increases, said observational evidence was crucial in the effort to avoid "climate catastrophe".

Reducing the amount of methane seeping into the air would quickly translate into a slowdown of rising temperatures, and help close the so-called emissions gap between the Paris Agreement target of a 1.5C cap on warming and the 2.7C we are heading for even if all nations honour their carbon-cutting promises.

That has spurred interest from policymakers keen to find the quickest ways to wrestle down emissions.

At the COP26 climate summit last year, around a hundred nations joined an initiative to cut methane emissions by at least 30 percent this decade. Noticeably absent was China.

The oil and gas industry has the biggest potential for rapid reductions, especially through the detection and repair of gas leaks during production and transport.

While global warming may seem gradual, its impact on extreme events is "dramatic", said Rowan Sutton, of Britain's National Centre for Atmospheric Science at Reading University.

"We should see the record breaking 2021 events, such as the heatwave in Canada and floods in Germany, as a punch in the face to make politicians and public alike wake up to the urgency of the climate emergency," he told the Science Media Centre.

"Moreover, the continued increases in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere screams out that the underlying causes have yet to be addressed."

Explore further Slashing methane emissions key for keeping Earth cool

 2022 AFP
FORT EDWARD  Fort Ann Supervisor Samuel Hall was unanimously reelected chairman of the Washington County Board of Supervisors at the boards annual reorganization meeting on Jan. 3.

Hall and fellow Republican Supervisor Robert Henke of Argyle, who was unanimously elected deputy chairman, were sworn in by New York State Associate Justice Stanley Pritzker.

You do a great job, Pritzker told supervisors in the chamber and attending remotely. We ought to be proud of ourselves.

The board reappointed board clerk Deb Prehoda, County Attorney Roger Wickes, County Administrator Melissa Fitch and Public Defender Michael Mercure to two-year terms. Hebron Supervisor Brian Campbell, chairman of the boards budget committee, will continue as budget officer. Fitch and Prehoda will be county auditor and deputy auditor, respectively.

Hampton Supervisor David OBrien agreed to serve as sergeant at arms and Salem Supervisor Evera Sue Clary will continue as chaplain. Hall said he would confirm committee assignments by the end of the week.

The board adopted a new schedule of votes weighted by town population based on the 2020 census.

In his closing remarks, Hall noted the very trying last two years. He praised the supervisors and county employees for their work since the start of the pandemic. Thanks to their efforts, we came out significantly better financially than other counties, Hall said.

The boards next regular monthly meeting will be Jan. 21 at 10 a.m. at the Washington County Municipal Building in Fort Edward. The meeting will also be livestreamed on the boards Zoom channel.

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Warren County Health Services reported the COVID-related death of a resident in their 70s on Sunday.

The county stated this individual had not been vaccinated and lived at home before contracting the virus and dying in the hospital.

Health Services and the Warren County Board of Supervisors offered their condolences to the loved ones of the deceased, in a news release.

Warren County Health Services also reported 190 new COVID cases and 191 recoveries on Sunday.

Of the new cases reported, 96 involved fully vaccinated residents.

The county is now monitoring 1,415 active cases.

The county stated the number of hospitalized cases decreased Sunday, with a total of 13 residents in the hospital. One vaccinated patient is critically ill. Overall, six of the 13 patients have been vaccinated.

Health Services has recorded 2,858 breakthrough cases out of the 47,105 fully vaccinated residents. According to the report, 50,684 residents have received one dose of the COVID vaccine, including 1,480 children in the county.

Appointments are open for Warren County Health Services next COVID-19 vaccination clinic on Tuesday, Jan. 11.

Registration for Warren County clinics is required through online links posted at https://warrencountyny.gov/covidhub/ unless otherwise noted.

Health Services is also making plans for school and pediatric vaccination clinics in the coming weeks.

Upcoming Warren County Health Services clinics:

Tuesday, Jan. 11, Warren County Municipal Center, 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., Moderna booster and first doses, Johnson & Johnson booster, Pfizer booster and first dose. (Registration links posted)

Tuesday, Jan. 18, Warren County Municipal Center, 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., Moderna booster doses. (Registration not yet open)

Tuesday, Jan. 25, Warren County Municipal Center, 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., vaccines to be determined. (Registration not yet open)

In addition, the New York state mass vaccination site at Aviation Mall has Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, including boosters and pediatric vaccines, that are being offered Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

The countys seven-day rolling positivity rate was at 18.2% on Sunday.

Saratoga County

The Saratoga County Department of Public Health Services reported a total of 2,797 active COVID cases on Friday.

Before the weekend, a total of 56 Saratoga County residents were being hospitalized.

Public Health Services has recorded 226 deaths in cases involving unvaccinated residents, 19 deaths of fully vaccinated residents who were not yet eligible for a booster, 29 deaths involving fully vaccinated residents who were eligible for a booster but did not receive one, and one resident dying after being fully vaccinated and receiving a booster dose of the COVID vaccine.

The seven-day rolling positivity rate in the county was at 19.9% Friday, according to the countys website.

Washington County

The Washington County Public Health Department last updated its COVID data on Friday night.

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TRENTON  In the waning days of voting before a new legislative session, the New Jersey Senate approved three new members to the Pinelands Commission.

Its the first time in years a Pinelands appointment has even come for a vote.

Behind the scenes, environmentalists were describing Mondays vote as a compromise, with the approval of Theresa Lettman, a longtime member of the Pinelands Preservation Alliance whose nomination has been hung up for years, at the same time the Senate said yes to two more recent appointees.

Gov. Phil Murphy nominated Laura Matos and Davon McCurry to the board late last year. Some environmental organizations questioned their nominations, citing their industry connections. Some groups dropped their objections now that their favored candidate was among the approved members.

On the record, the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters celebrated the vote Monday.

We are thrilled to see that the dying wish of my dear friend, late Commissioner Candace Ashmun, one of the forces behind the foundation of the Pinelands Commission, has finally been fulfilled and that Theresa Lettman has successfully been confirmed to succeed her on the Pinelands Commission, said Ed Potosnak, the executive director of the League of Conservation Voters, in a statement released after the vote.

That organization and others previously had decried Murphys most recent appointees.

Matos is the managing director and general manager of Kivvits New Jersey office, a media and public relations company that also works on public policy issues. In 2021, McCurry was named deputy head of marketing and public affairs in New Jersey for rsted, the Danish energy company that is working to build wind farms off the Jersey coast.

But the environmental groups singled out Elvin Montero, the deputy executive director the New Jersey Chemistry Council, as the most problematic appointment. Murphy later pulled his name from consideration. With Monteros nomination off the table, environmental attorney Edward Lloyd remains on the board, even though his term officially expired in 2005.

After Mondays vote, Potosnak praised all three new members.

Lettman will bring critical expertise to the Pinelands Commission, and together with the other nominees, Davon McCurry and Laura Matos, mark a critical first step to restore proper functioning to a body responsible for protecting one of New Jerseys most valuable environmental treasures, he said.

Murphy nominated Lettman and Jennifer Coffey of the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions two years ago, but those nominees stalled in the Senate.

Sources with knowledge of the issue have indicated it was state Senate President Steve Sweeney holding up Murphys previous appointments. The powerful South Jersey Democrat lost his reelection bid in November to all-but-unknown Republican challenger Edward Durr, and on Wednesday, Democratic Sen. Nicholas Scutari is set to take over as Senate president.

Sweeney did not respond to a request for comment on the story Monday.

Michael Zhadanovsky, a spokesperson in Murphys press office, said the governor is pleased with the confirmations.

"Their qualifications are second to none, and they represent critical new and diverse voices for the Pinelands Commission," he wrote. "With their addition to the commission, a quorum will finally be in place and the Commission will be able to continue with a renewed focus on preservation of the pinelands."

In a statement Monday, the advocacy group Pinelands Preservation Alliance praised Lettman, a former member, as a highly qualified choice for the seat. The organization said Matos and McCurry will replace commission members Rick Prickett and DArcy Rohan Green, describing them as proven advocates for the environment.

In their new roles, Matos and McCurry have large shoes to fill, the groups statement read.

If there was a grand deal to get the nominations approved, not everyone signed on. The New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club described the nomination approvals as a pyrrhic victory. The organization instead wants Murphys original nominees, including Coffey, Jessica Sanchez and Bob Jackson. The organization said it will not support Matos or McCurry, describing the vote as one step forward and two steps back.

It is disappointing that true environmental champions and leaders were replaced with corporate nominees who have a conflict of interest, said Anjuli Ramos-Busot, director of the Sierra Club, New Jersey Chapter.

The commission overseas the Pinelands National Reserve, encompassing close to a million acres over seven counties.

Of the 15 members on the Pinelands Commission, seven are appointed by the governor with the advice and consent of the Senate and another seven represent the counties within the Pinelands. Before Mondays approval, the terms on all of the governors appointed seats were expired, and two were vacant, making it difficult to achieve the eight-member quorum required to take action.

One board seat is appointed by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. In late December, Jonathan D. Meade was named as the new federal representative. He is the associate regional director for resource stewardship and science for the National Park Services Northeast Region in Philadelphia, a post hes held since January 2018. Also on Monday, Democratic US Rep Andy Kim, D-3rd, said he and US Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-2nd, pushed for the appointment.

Im proud that the New Jersey delegation, in a bipartisan way, was able to successfully advocate for this appointment, Kim said.

Ashman was the longest serving member of the Pinelands Commission until her death in 2020 at the age of 96. She was first appointed in 1978.

Contact Bill Barlow: 609-272-7290 bbarlow@pressofac.com Twitter @jerseynews_bill

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WILDWOOD  After being blown into unchartered waters by the pandemic, South Jersey boat dealers and buyers are preparing for the upcoming season.

The Wildwood Fishing & Boating Expo took place over the weekend at the Wildwoods Convention Center with 16 vessels for boating and fishing spread out over a 35,000-square-foot display area.

There were also rows of more than 60 vendors selling fishing and boating gear, along with an assortment of other nautical-themed novelties and clothes. It was the first time the event was held since April 2019. The expo was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Just to get out and see people and laugh with them and joke and know that theyre happy and doing well and all, thats a big draw for this weekend, said Kate Toogood of Cape Harbor Marine Service dealership in Rio Grande, Middle Township.

Gerry Vessels, a Wildwood senior firefighter, is the organizer of the expo. Not a dealer himself but someone who boats and fishes, Vessels created the event in 2017.

We should be stakeholders in what is happening in our own community, and the fishing and boating is part of our community, Vessels said.

The long wait for the 2022 expo did not appear to dampen enthusiasm. There were five boat dealerships at the event and more than 5,000 total people who attended, Vessels said That exceeded the 2019 expo, which Vessels said was between 3,200 and 3,500 people.

This is a great event for the locals, said Joe Baker of Cape May Outboard dealership, who has been attending expos for 15 years.

Given the origin of the event, buyers and dealers had strong ties to the local community.

Sean Gannon, of the Backwater Marine Repair dealership in Cape May Court House, said he got involved selling boats as a result of his experience as a Cape May boat mechanic. He said this was his third expo and that he was happy to connect with the broader Cape May community.

For Tom Stocker, of McKee Yacht Sales in Wildwood, boating has been a local, family affair. He grew up spending much of his time on his grandfathers boats. A former Wildwood Crest police captain, Stocker also received his license as a boating captain decades ago. He soon became involved as a boat dealer, and has been attending expos for 18 years.

The majority of (boat sales) Im involved in right now, its a family atmosphere, its a place to go for the day with the grandkids and the kids, Stocker said.

The popularity of the expo over the weekend reflects a surge in demand for boats since the beginning of the pandemic. With cruises and other typical summertime events shut down due to coronavirus restrictions, personal boating trips became a valuable getaway.

With COVID, it did spring a lot of people into finding different family activities that they could together, but would still be able to stay isolated, and out on a boat, you have to be a clear, fair distance away from other people, Toogood said.

Like other industries across the U.S. economy, supply chains for boating and fishing companies have struggled to keep pace with the rising demand, leading to delays in boat production.

Stocker, of McKee Yacht, said he was warning buyers that some boat orders would likely not be ready for as many as nine months.

People were just buying boats, buying boats, buying boats, and now the manufacturers just cant keep up with the demand and supply the boats, said Rich Czekaj, who was at the expo with Blue Water Boats in Cape May Court House.

Supply chain problems were also impacting some of the vendors. Captain Frank Giacolone of Gabriel Tackle Co. in Brick Township and Chadwick Beach, said he has encountered serious difficulty finding supplies, calling it nuts.

Giacolone and other vendors nevertheless agreed that it was a positive development to be back at expos. Don Parr, of Canyon Reels, also based in Brick Township, said events like the Wildwood expo, and the personal interactions they bring were crucial to his business. He added that his company has overcome much since its founding in 2009, and it would be able to overcome the pandemic as well.

We went through (Superstorm) Sandy, we went through COVID, and it continues to just get better and better for us, Parr said.

Over the course of the weekend, there was a circuit of seminars for people to attend. Experts in boating and fishing gave talks about their experiences and giving out advice. Guests at the event included Captain Dave Marciano from the National Geographic television show Wicked Tuna.

Captains Cody Melton and R.J. Melton of the Jersey Nutz fishing charter business and sport team in Manasquan, Monmouth County, gave a presentation at the expo. Brothers and award winning fishermen, the Meltons said they grew up fishing recreationally with their father and grandfather.

Were just trying to help (expo attendees) out, making their dreams come true, Cody Melton said.

Vessles said that despite the complications created for the industry by the pandemic, he believed events like the expo were still valuable for the community.

Its something here, where we can all come together for what we know and what we love and thats fishing and boating, Vessels said.

Contact Chris Doyle cdoyle@pressofac.com

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Cape May County has a thriving tourism industry that has rebounded to record levels from pandemic cautions and restrictions. What must be a $7 billion industry by now looks very solid.

But Capes ocean and bay vacation paradise has an Achilles heel that so far is proving difficult to protect. Access into and out of the tourist destinations depends on some 28 bridges subject to the damage of salt in the water and air.

For decades, officials generally did only the maintenance necessary to keep the bridges open, putting off far more expensive repairs and preparation for their replacement.

Tolls on some of the bridges covered current expenses. Bridges exceeded their expected lifespan and became more costly and challenging to keep open.

The county spent nearly $4 million on rehabbing the bridge between the Wildwoods and Cape May when state funding fell well short of the $7.4 million price. The bridge over Middle Thorofare, crucial to one of the East Coasts most valuable fishing ports, needs replacement at an estimated cost of $230 million.

Then in September 2020, the county Board of Freeholders announced a bold plan to address the needs of the bridge system.

They projected the cost for needed bridge repairs and replacements at $603 million to $890 million. County officials said they expected about half the money would come from federal and state sources, and hoped as much as 70% would. Freeholder Will Morey said the county already had started putting some money toward the bridges in 2017, and that the impact on county taxes would be tolerable.

The replacement of the drawbridge leading into Stone Harbor was deemed the most urgent project, and the freeholders (now called commissioners) issued a call for design proposals. That bridge at 96th Street is scheduled for replacement in 2027.

Even if the countys bridge plan is funded as expected, the work will take at least until 2035 to finish.

More money is needed meanwhile to keep the spans open. Recently the county Bridge Commission announced that tolls on the five bridges it manages will double in three years to $3 per vehicle with two axles.

That should generate another $15 million for covering increasing maintenance costs, even as administrative costs have been reduced.

The countys long-term capital plan for its bridges can only get more expensive going forward. And this seems to be a good time for securing funding for it, with $1.7 billion in federal money for infrastructure recently dedicated and state government running a surplus of more than a billion dollars this fiscal year.

The millions of visitors to New Jerseys preeminent tourism county and the millions in taxes and fees they bring to the state should encourage officials to support the bridges visitors and locals depend on.
By Adrian Justins

Last week saw the annual unveiling of new gadgets and innovations at CES, the worlds largest technology fest, in Las Vegas. As ever, home tech has had an upgrade. Here, we round up the dominant trends in residential technology and take a look at the latest products designed for cutting edge living.

The new tech could find a home juxtaposed with the exposed brickwork, metal pillars and wooden beams of this one-bedroom converted warehouse in London. On the market for 565,000, the apartment is close to the skyscrapers of the Canary Wharf business district.

Form and function

Research by the German trade body GFU Consumer & Home Electronics found that year-on-year sales of home electronics rose 11.6 per cent in Germany in 2020 and the upwards trend continued last year. Dr Sara Warneke, the organisations chief executive, says that after spending more time at home during the pandemic consumers have developed a greater need to surround themselves with lovely and pleasant things.

Televisions that look the part as well as play the part cater to this demand. Loewe has announced its We.See sub-brand range of smart televisions, designed to look equally good from all angles (below and main picture, above). The TV is available in 55-inch (1,699), 50-inch (1,499) and 43-inch (1,299) versions with Ultra High Definition resolution. It has an elegant pedestal and an unusual bicolour frame. Audio is provided by a Dolby Atmos 80-Watt soundbar.

Sustainable gadgets

Tech buyers are becoming more concerned about electronic waste and carbon footprints. Increasing numbers of consumers say they are likely to spend money with companies working to reduce climate change, says Alex Cho, president of personal systems at Hewlett-Packard.

Danish electronics brand Bang and Olufsen has responded with the Beosound Level wireless speaker (from 1,149), which has received Cradle to Cradle certification, meaning its manufacture meets the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institutes principles including promoting clean air, saving water and social fairness. The speaker has a modular design that allows batteries to be replaced, fabric and wood covers to be changed and electronic components to be upgraded easily if the streaming technology used becomes outdated. More than half of the plastic used in its construction is recycled. The model can operate as a standalone portable speaker, paired with another or combined with a soundbar to provide immersive Dolby Atmos sound.

Cleverer kitchens

The increased consumer focus on sustainability includes a drive towards premium appliances that benefit from advanced sensor technology, which can intuitively monitor and adapt programmes, and can offer significant energy savings, says Tim Buszka, head of brand and digital at Whirlpool.

His companys W Collection 770mm induction hob (849) uses sensors to monitor and adjust the temperature according to what is cooking, until the food is ready to serve. Buszka claims the hob can reduce energy consumption by up to 30 per cent compared with a standard Whirlpool induction hob.

Improved communication

How we show up online is of huge importance, says HPs Cho. Three-quarters of people surveyed by the company in 2021 said that they judge someone online based on the quality of their audio and video output. Part of the solution is a more reliable home network, but Cho says great cameras, mics and speakers are now a must-have.

Debuted at CES, the Noveto N1 sound-beaming device allows someone sitting at a computer to hear immersive audio, as if they were wearing headphones, yet those nearby are almost unaware of the sound. The N1 pushes algorithm-generated ultrasonic sound waves into the air, which are individually silent but, with the help of a built-in 3D camera and AI-based dynamic ear-tracking algorithms, target the listener. The N1 should hit the shops by April, priced $795.

Even smarter homes

The role of the smart home has evolved since Hive made its first smart thermostat 11 years ago. Customers dont just want convenience, they want to save money and be more sustainable, says Americo Lenza, portfolio director for service and solutions at Hive parent company British Gas. The Hive Mini smart thermostat (below, right), due on sale early this year for 119, will remind you to switch off the heating if you have gone out and left it on. It can also automatically turn the heating on when the temperature dips, preventing frozen pipes. Heating and hot water can be controlled manually or by creating automated schedules via an app. Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit compatibility allows for integration with other home automation devices.

Meanwhile Lutron, a pioneer of home automation lighting, has recently launched its RA2 Select smart lighting dimmer (from 600) that can operate any existing lights. Unlike some smart lighting options, it runs off its own wireless hub rather than being part of a home network so is unaffected by WiFi problems. An app allows the creation of specific light settings to suit different occasions  such as watching a film or eating dinner  and for remote control from outside the home. The dimmer switch (below, left) can control multiple bulbs and be integrated with smart home products such as Sonos, Apple, Amazon Alexa and Ring.

Property photography: Savills
Lashonda Reese sees cooking as a hobby, rather than a chore.

In between running errands, helping her 20 and-18-year-old daughters, taking care of her 3-year-old niece and handling other responsibilities, taking the time to make meatloaf  her favorite to cook  or spaghetti and mac and cheese  her daughters' favorites to eat  is a reprieve from the daily juggling act.

"I've found myself worrying about most things that I can't really do anything about" Reese said. "So I've been trying to relax, basically."

Kitchen items such as pots, pans and utensils were some of the things Reese cited as needing right now, along with a new sofa and clothes for the family. Through Quad-City Times readers' donations, she will receive assistance from the Quad-City Times Wish List.

To donate, visit unitedwayqc.org/wishlist.

Tyler Wilson with Community Action of Eastern Iowa nominated Reese for the Wish List, which uses donations from readers to provide Quad-Cities residents with goods that fulfill a basic need.

"I've never really got nominated for anything before," Reese said. "I was really excited about this."

Reese moved to LeClaire from Chicago with her two daughters, Jada and Jessica, in 2017, and she has taken care of her niece, Katie, since 2019. She's currently working on gaining full custody of Katie.

With Jessica in her senior year of high school and working and Katie on the waiting list for a daycare, Reese is constantly moving. She drives Jessica to school and work and takes Katie along whenever she needs to go somewhere, like medical appointments.

Jada is pregnant and due in July, so she needs maternity clothes. Reese has also been looking for a larger space to move into before the baby is born.

"I'm on the move from seven in the morning to about six, and I'm just in and out of the house, in and out of the house," Reese said.

She had been working at Genesis Health Systems after graduating from Midwest Technical Institute with a Medical Assistant Certificate in May 2020 alongside her older daughter, but spreading arthritis in her back rendered her unable to work in December 2021.

In addition to her responsibilities in the Quad-Cities, Reese frequently heads to Chicago to look after her mother. Her father died in June 2021, and Reese has been trying to figure out how to move her mother to LeClaire, so they can be closer.

Once all of the things up in the air in Reese's life have settled, from waiting on custody and daycare to moving her immediate and extended family to a home they can all thrive in, she said she'll feel much more relaxed. She might even have more time to put her new kitchen items to good use.

"I'll have a lot of things off my mind," she said.

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Damari Perry, the North Chicago child who authorities say was killed the day before his sixth birthday, was literally born into the foster care system, according to Illinois Department of Children and Family Services records.

The boys mother, Jannie M. Perry, who is charged in Damaris death, lost custody of her six other children in 2014 after a DCFS domestic violence investigation, department spokesman Bill McCaffrey said Monday. Shortly after Damari was born on Dec. 30, 2015, he also went into foster care. DCFS records show that Perry regained custody of her children in 2017.

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In May 2021, the spokesman said, DCFS investigated an allegation of abuse or neglect involving Damari, but the report was later determined to be unfounded. On Dec. 29, a family member kept Damari in a cold shower as a punishment for misbehavior until he became unresponsive and later died, authorities allege.

Jannie Perry, 38, remained under medical care Monday and in police custody, awaiting a bond court appearance in the death of her son, North Chicago police Chief Lazaro Perez said.

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Were waiting for her to get out so we can get on with the process, Perez said Monday.

Perry is charged with first-degree murder, and two of her other children are charged in connection with the boys death.

Perez said he did not believe that North Chicago police had previous law enforcement contacts at the Perry family residence in the 1700 block of North Sheridan Road.

Jannie Perrys children are as old as 20, according to authorities. Her oldest, Jeremiah R. Perry, has been charged with aggravated battery and concealment of a homicide in connection with his brothers death. Another Perry child, whom authorities say is 17, has been charged as a juvenile.

Perrys four other children have been placed in foster care with DCFS, McCaffrey said.

Perry and two of her children were arrested over the weekend after North Chicago police and FBI agents recovered the Damaris body early Saturday near an abandoned house in Gary.

In a Sunday bond hearing for Jeremiah Perry, Lake County prosecutors in Waukegan said a family member had forced Damari Perry to remain in a cold shower on Dec. 29 for an unspecified period until the child began to vomit and he became unresponsive. The cold shower was a punishment for misbehavior, prosecutors told the judge.

Despite the boys apparent distress, no one in the home sought medical attention for him and he later died, authorities said. After the boy died, family members took his body to Gary and left it in the 700 block of Van Buren Street.

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Damari was reported missing Wednesday, and his mother and a sibling told police the child might be in Skokie. But investigators determined that story was completely false, the prosecutor said at the Jeremiah Perry hearing.

Jannie Perry and two of her children were taken into custody Friday night.

The Lake County (Indiana) coroners office conducted an autopsy Monday, but preliminary results were not expected to be released until Monday night or possibly Tuesday, a coroners investigator said.

Jannie Perry was expected to appear in bond court Sunday but complained of medical issues Saturday and was taken to a hospital. Authorities have not disclosed the nature of her illness. Perez said Monday that authorities do not have a timeline for her release and she remains under police guard.

Jeremiah Perry is scheduled for a Tuesday court appearance for an update on his attempts to hire an attorney. He remains in the Lake County Jail where he is being held in lieu of $3 million bail.

The fact that a cold shower allegedly was used as punishment drew comparisons with the 2019 death of Andrew AJ Freund, 5, of Crystal Lake, whose parents later were convicted of causing his death.
SPRINGFIELD  Illinois officials are seeking answers after the killing last week of a state child welfare worker during a home visit  the second such tragedy to occur in less than five years.

Deidre Silas, an investigator with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, was stabbed to death last Tuesday when she responded to a call of possible endangerment of children in a home in the central Illinois town of Thayer.

A man related to one or more of the six children who were at home at the time, 32-year-old Benjamin Reed, is being held in the Sangamon County Jail without bond on first-degree murder and other charges. An attempt by The Associated Press to reach Reed's attorney on Friday was unsuccessful.

Silas' death is the second time in four-and-a-half years that state officials and the social work community are asking what should have been done, but wasn't, to prevent it. DCFS investigator Pamela Knight, 59, died following a brutal beating while attempting to remove an endangered child from his father in September 2017.

Like Silas, Knight was alone when she was attacked. Officials at DCFS, which has 23,000 children under its care, have not released details about the circumstances behind Silas' visit to the home in Thayer, 23 miles south of Springfield, but DCFS Director Marc Smith said last week that agency protocol was followed.

The attack on Silas also marked the 21st time since 2017 that caseworkers were subject to "threats or acts of violence" during 2.5 million home visits in Illinois, agency spokesman Bill McCaffrey said.

Her death has raised questions of why case workers are sent into potentially volatile environments alone, and whether understaffing  a problem that has plagued DCFS for decades despite a federal consent decree regulating it  affects the response of caseworkers in the field.

"DCFS, if you're sending someone into a situation like this, just send two at a time," Silas' father, Roy Graham, said last week. "Whether it's a male and female or two males or two females, either way, but send two per visit, not just one."

Police agencies historically have been willing and able to help. That cooperation was strengthened after Knight's death. A law signed in 2018 allows law enforcement officers to cross into another jurisdiction to back up a home visit. Knight, who was based in Sterling, did have police backup initially.

But the boy Knight was seeking was not at his father's home, forcing Knight to check his grandparents' home in the next county. She decided that waiting for a new police agency to accompany her jeopardized the boy's safety. The boy's father met her at the second stop, and beat and kicked her so severely that she suffered brain damage and died five months later.

Arnold Black, a child protection specialist and supervisor in the DCFS Urbana office, said that any time a case worker or a supervisor believes there should be two workers on a home visit, it's approved. And there is no hesitancy to seek police backup, as outlined in the agency's administrative procedures on field safety.

"Sometimes, taking the police can agitate the client. You've got to know the family ... You have some families that are going to yell and scream at you for the first five minutes, but then they're going to let you in," Black said. "But if it's a newer case, or if it's in a rural area, I have no problem pulling another worker to go."

The problem, though, is that pairing workers stretches the workforce, sometimes resulting in plucking employees from other offices, Black said. The Urbana office has a worker shortage of more than 6% and agents on Black's team have caseloads of 30 to 50 families per worker, in many cases exceeding the limit of a 1988 federal consent decree that limits to 12 the number of new cases assigned monthly to each worker.

The Knight tragedy also resulted  with a push from the DCFS employees' union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31  in office-based security guards and improved access to law enforcement records of people to be visited.

Black, a member of the AFSCME committee which quarterly discusses issues with DCFS management, said the workforce continues to push for other changes it supports.

Those changes include ongoing self-defense and de-escalation training from the Illinois State Police, public service announcements to familiarize the public with caseworkers and their duties and a law enforcement database like in Cook County that records not only arrests and convictions but any interaction police have with a particular address.

Newly hired investigators, who make about $55,000 a year, must successfully complete a six-week "foundations" training session that includes safety precautions, DCFS spokesman Bill McCaffrey said. Once in the field, they continue under a supervisor's tutelage and must complete a "workplace and field safety" training session within 90 days of starting.

Sen. Sara Feigenholtz, a Chicago Democrat and leader on child-welfare issues, said DCFS needs to build an infrastructure, with private sector cooperation, to recruit and retain employees. She anticipates more immediate safety legislation when the facts of Silas' death are public.

"If there are any other resources we can give our frontline workers, you'll be sure that we're going to be looking to see how we avoid this kind of situation," Feigenholtz said.

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Salvador and Jessica Castaneda are setting course to open in Eldridge a brewery, the citys first, and coffee shop, The Granary.

At 219 N 1st Street, the Castanedas end goal is to create a place with all things craft: craft coffee, craft beer, and some lighter tapas-style food items, which are similar to appetizers and popular in Spain.

The Castanedas, and their six children have traveled the Western U.S., and as far as Guatemala, Belize, Costa Rica, and Kauai to explore and taste-test craft coffee, beers, and wine.

Theyve drawn inspiration from everywhere theyve visited, the Castanedas agree, but some of their favorites include touring a coffee plantation in Antigua, Guatemala, a small popular cafe in Panajachel, Cafe Loco, Monorail Espresso in Seattle, a warehouse district market on Kauai in Hawaii with shops, coffee places, and small restaurants as well as learning about coffee crops at a plantation there.

Our end goal with this coffee shop is to create a destination point where we pay attention to the little details, whether it be the coffee, the sandwiches, the food, the beer, Salvador Castaneda said.

As for the beer, Jessica Castaneda bought her husband a full beer brewing kit at a yard sale, knowing hed wanted to learn how to brew. It sat in the garage for six months. Jessica bought an ingredient kit, which sat in the garage for another six months.

One day I was like what the heck I might as well just do it and so I made the beer and it came out pretty good, Salvador said. I was like, huh maybe I should do this more often and so I started making beer all the time.

At one point he was making 20 gallons of beer a month, trying different recipes and experimenting with different types and flavors. Salvador said he plans to upgrade his brewing set to make a menu of a handful of beers on tap, and get creative with brewing and naming new beers after people and businesses in Eldridge. For example, his contractor on the project likes cherry blonde ale, so Salvador plans to brew it and name it after him.

Starting out, the building The Granary calls home will be 1,500 square feet, Salvador said. The property the Castanedas purchased, though is 1.3 acres and more than 6,500 square feet of building space. Salvador said theyd like to brainstorm ideas with community members and test out whats popular to determine what they could use the extra space for.

Overall, Salvador said theyre looking to become peoples third place

Your home is your first place. Your work is your second place. And then we want to become everybody's third place, which is a place where you can come enjoy a good cup of coffee, some good beer, some good food, meet other people, just chat, Salvador said.

As long as everything goes according to plan, the Castanedas hope to open later this spring.

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A dive into Illinois town names reveals that many of their origins are exactly as we would expect: Theyre named after local founders and leaders, other cities and countries, and for geographic descriptions of the area.

Some names appear to be biblical (Bible Grove, Boaz, Corinth, Galatia, Piety Hill, Providence), while others suggest traits that we may aspire to (Confidence, Harmony, Love, Triumph, Unity, Equality, Fidelity, Joy).

Some sound like an insult  hey, Marblehead!

There are names that sound like whoever was in charge of naming ran out of ideas, like America, Hometown, No. 9, Cornland and New City.

Many are not so much towns as remote places on the map, with no easily discernible clue as to their origin (were looking at you, Chicken Bristle).

Heres a closer look at some of Illinois oddball town names:

Big Foot Prairie

Location: McHenry County, Illinois/Walworth County, Wisconsin

Population: N/A

Named for: Potawatomi leader Big Foot

Bone Gap

Location: Edwards County

Population: 234

Named for: When European settlers arrived to the area, the village was located in a gap in the treeline, and they found a number of animal bones left behind by the Piankeshaw tribe who previously lived there.

Goofy Ridge

Location: Mason County

Population: 350

Named for: According to a 2003 book called Passing Gas: And Other Towns Along the American Highway, the town was once called just The Ridge, but after a group of area moonshiners made a game of shooting a walnut off a mans head, a witness called it a goofy thing to do, and the town took on the name Goofy Ridge.

Grand Detour

Location: Ogle County

Population: 429

Named for: A turn in the Rock River where it flows north past the town, instead of its southwest path

Ivanhoe

Location: Lake County

Population: N/A

Named for: Sir Walter Scotts 1820 novel Ivanhoe

Moonshine

Location: Clark County

Population: N/A

Named for: Unclear. A 1987 article in the Houston Chronicle reported that Moonshine was a dry town, but we wonder if there was a history of bootlegging. The article suggested the name could have come from the moon shining on swampy land near the store (now a diner serving up Moonburgers), or that residents from Philadelphia may have named it for locations in Pennsylvania.

Muddy

Location: Saline County

Population: 63

Named for: The Harrisburg Big Muddy Coal Co., in 1903

Munster

Location: LaSalle County

Population: N/A

Named for: Unclear. It may have been named for Munster, a province in Ireland.

No. 9

Location: Williamson County

Population: N/A

Named for: Madison Coal Co.s No. 9 mine

Normal

Location: McLean County

Population: 52,736

Named for: Previously called North Bloomington, the town was later named Normal for the normal school, or teachers college, known today as Illinois State University.

Paw Paw

Location: Lee County

Population: 848

Named for: A nearby grove of pawpaw trees

Poverty Ridge

Location: Fulton County

Population: N/A

Named for: A line of nearby hills known as Poverty Ridge.

Ransom

Location: LaSalle County

Population: 356

Named for: Civil War Gen. Thomas E.G. Ransom, who was born in Vermont but lived in Illinois for a time.

Sandwich

Location: DeKalb and Kendall counties

Population: 7,418

Named for: Early town leader and politician Long John Wentworth named the town for his hometown of Sandwich, New Hampshire.

Shake Rag

Location: Williamson County

Population: N/A

Named for: It started out as a nickname for this town during the Civil War era. The owner of a store and saloon would raise a red cloth above his roof to signal that a new barrel of whiskey had arrived.

Sources: City of Sandwich, Town of Normal, Williamson County Museum, Wikipedia

Contact Robyn Skaggs at (309) 820-3244.

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Billy Bausal doesn't ask for much, but a new winter coat and boots would make a big difference for him.

Bausal will receive help from a $1,000 donation from the Dispatch-Argus Santa Fund, a program that raises money annually to help Illinois Quad-Citians in need of items like clothing, furniture and other necessities.

To donate, visit qconline.com/santafund.

"I've been having a hard time," Bausal said. "I still need boots, shoes and clothes."

Bausal, 57, needs sweatshirts, jeans, shoes, socks, other personal items, pre-paid minutes for his cell phone and bus passes to be able to get around. He was nominated for the Santa Fund by Pamela Turner of The Arc of the Quad-Cities Area, the Rock Island nonprofit agency that assists people with disabilities.

Turner said Bausal struggled with cognitive skills and that he was one of the kindest people she knew.

"I have known Billy for over 25 years," Turner said. "He's had a rough five years; he lives on very limited resources. Before winter started, he said, 'I just need two pairs of jeans, two hoodies and a coat and I think I'll make it through.'

"It just broke my heart."

Bausal has limited family support and lives off $500 a month from his part-time job at IMEG Corp. where he works as a janitor sanitizing work spaces. He is barely able to cover all of his financial needs, Turner said.

"He doesn't ask for much, and he doesn't complain. He just wants help," Turner said. "His clothes are paper thin and worn out. He is such a loving, kind man. He doesn't stand there with his hand out as though people should help him.

"It is difficult for me to put into words what a kind, loving man he is. It is hard for all of us to see how much he needs. He's just a good man."

The Moline Dispatch-Argus Santa Fund helps people in need nominated by local social service agencies and churches. It is the 114th year for the campaign.

So far this year, donors have raised $56,383 to help families in need. Donations will be accepted for the 2021-22 campaign through Jan. 15.

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On Jan. 6, 2021, Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, an Air Force veteran and pilot in the Wisconsin Air National Guard, spent six hours barricaded in his office with his gun, ready to defend himself against the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

A mob attempted to disrupt the session to count Electoral votes and formalize the election of Democratic President Joe Biden over former Republican President Donald Trump.

There was a moment where I was like, Man, theres a real sense of evil, " he told Rolling Stone magazine about what was unfolding throughout the Capitol building.

Nearly a year has passed since that tumultuous day in American history and Kinzinger is one of two GOP lawmakers serving on the U.S. House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6th Capitol riot. And, despite the time, Kinzinger said he still questions how far the national conscience has progressed from the chaos of that day.

The line has been clearly drawn in his mind between what is right and wrong. He said he is frightened the line is not as clear to some of his fellow Americans, who believe conspiracy theories that the FBI, or ANTIFA, or other groups were behind it and not Trump supporters.

Despite voting for Donald Trump in November, Kinzinger became one of his biggest critics in the days leading up to Jan. 6, and unapologetically so, afterward. He was one of 10 members of the GOP who voted in favor of Trumps second impeachment, started the Country First Campaign to set a conservative agenda away from the former presidents politics and agreed to be on the committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack  all controversial moves within his own party, and even within his own family, in which 11 members sent him a letter accusing him of being a part of the devils army.

After being censured by at least three county Republican parties within his district, taking on criticism within his party and being drawn into a new district with another sitting GOP congressman, Kinzinger decided not to run for a seventh term in Congress.

On Wednesday, Kinzinger ended speculation of a statewide political run in Illinois and announced in a video he is transitioning from serving just one corner of Illinois into fighting this new nationwide mission full time. His communication director later confirmed to the Chicago Sun-Times on Wednesday he would not mount a statewide run. She did not return an immediate message for comment with Shaw Media.

In a recent interview with Shaw Local News Network at his Ottawa office, Kinzinger reflected on the Jan. 6 insurrection and his role not only in getting to the root of how it transpired, but setting the record straight for future generations.

On the one hand, it feels like it was yesterday, on the other hand, it feels like it was 10 years ago, Kinzinger said of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

When I look back over the last year, I look back with a lot of disappointment. I initially thought there was no way that we dont recover, look inward at this, and say what went wrong? That went too far. "

Thats why he says the Jan. 6 committees work is important.

The committees challenge is to gather all the information it can  texts, emails, depositions, testimony, all in the face of legal battles and delays, and figure out what went wrong, then write an accurate account for the history books.

In recent weeks, the committee has released bits of information, which Kinzinger described as just tips of the iceberg. Text messages from Mark Meadows, Trumps chief of staff, were shared in December with the public, demonstrating the former president was being admonished to call off the rioters. Recently released text messages show Fox News anchor Sean Hannity reaching out to Trump and his inner circle with concerns about how the electoral count was going to play out.

The congressman said these items are capturing attention from not only the public, but also Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who opposed the formation of the Jan. 6 committee, but took notice of Meadows texts, saying I do think were all watching, as you are, what is unfolding on the House side, and it will be interesting to reveal all of the participants who were involved.

Thats a big deal and I think it shows he recognizes this is big as well, Kinzinger said.

The committees challenge will be two fold, Kinzinger said. Capture the publics attention, but also present it all before the end of the year. If the Republican Party regains control of the House in the November election  which he believes will happen  Kinzinger said the committee will be shut down.

The congressman said the goal is to conduct hearings presenting the committees findings by late summer or early fall.

Kinzinger said the scope of the investigation goes beyond finding out how Trump reacted in the days leading up to Jan. 6 and shortly after it. His bigger concerns are regarding the days before and after.

He acknowledges, even if evidence were to spell out clear wrongdoing, not everyone is going to change their mind on what happened.

You can give some people, not everybody, all the evidence in the world and it wont matter, Kinzinger said. So I look at it, and I go, this is going to be a longer battle. Well come to full accountability on the committee, but the change in the national conscience is going to take a long time.

Further clouding matters, Fox News didnt televise the committee report that made public the series of text messages to Meadows as the riot was unfolding. Kinzinger said there are people who consume only media to their political taste, and that makes having an open debate challenging.

Thats why I think local media is so important, local TV, local radio, newspapers, Kinzinger said. The more they can relate local news events to whats happening with the country through local stories, thats important.

Kinzinger said the country wasnt far from a massive crisis on Jan. 6.

Recalling a Senate clerk grabbed the paper electoral vote ballots before the insurrection, he said there wasnt a clear direction on what the country would have done next and how local officials would have reacted if states had to re-certify their results had the ballots been destroyed or lost.

He believes the country needs to reflect on what transpired Jan. 6 and change course.

I think we will hit a point, short of a change of course, where we are fully incapable of actually functioning and competing with other countries as a country, Kinzinger said.

Barbara F. Walter, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego, serves on a CIA advisory panel called the Political Instability Task Force, which studies the likelihood of civil unrest in other nations. She published a book this month called How Civil Wars Start, outlining an argument for why the U.S. is vulnerable to a Civil War, using the same parameters the U.S. uses to analyze other nations.

When asked about the potential of a Civil War, Kinzinger said he doesnt foresee it in a military sense, or anything like the one that pit the North versus the South. He also said talk of one is best avoided, because it shouldnt become the narrative.

What I worry about is when we make friends based on politics, which to me is actually the most asinine reason to be a friend with somebody and we dont learn other perspectives and we dehumanize the other side, violence is the next logical step, he said. I truly am worried about at least a collapse of what we have today.

What gives him hope?

I am completely confident this is the right thing to do, he said of the Jan. 6 committees work.

The committees findings, he said, will set the tone for how the next generation talks about Jan. 6, learns about it and remembers it.

In five or 10 years when kids are in school, he said, they are going to learn about that report, theyre not going to learn about the conspiracies.

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The 6-year-old North Chicago boy reported missing before his body was found days later in an abandoned Northwest Indiana house had been forced into a cold shower by a relative as punishment before he died, Lake County prosecutors told a judge Sunday.

Damari Perry had been forced to stay in the running shower for an unknown amount of time before he began vomiting and became unresponsive Dec. 29, authorities said during a Sunday morning bail hearing for his older brother.

That sibling, Jeremiah R. Perry, 20, was charged with aggravated battery causing great bodily harm to a child younger than 12, concealing a homicidal death and obstructing justice, according to authorities. A judge ordered him held on $3 million bail during the hearing, said Jim Newton, a spokesman for the Lake County (Illinois) states attorneys office.

Damaris mother, Jannie M. Perry, 38, also faces charges of first-degree murder and concealment of a homicidal death, but her expected appearance was removed from the Sunday court call for unknown reasons. North Chicago police werent immediately available for comment.

Another of Damaris siblings appeared in Lake County juvenile court Sunday on similar charges, but Newton declined to provide details on that case.

During the hearing, Assistant States Attorney Kyle Doyle told the court that Damari had apparently misbehaved inside his home last month and the frigid shower was his punishment, according to Newton. Authorities didnt say which family member forced the boy into the shower. It wasnt immediately clear what specifically the 6-year-old was being punished for.

Despite the boys troubled state, no one in the house sought medical attention and he later died from his injuries, officials said. After Damaris death, his family took his body to an abandoned house in the 700 block of Van Buren Street in Gary, Ind.

Damari was reported missing Wednesday by his mother and a sibling, and the family at first told police he might be in Skokie, which turned out to be a completely false story contradicted by evidence and resulting in the obstructing justice charges, according to the states attorneys office.

Then investigators quickly turned their focus to the boys home in North Chicago and the three were arrested Friday night. The boys body was discovered in Indiana early the next day.

All other children in the Perry family home were placed in the custody of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, authorities said.

Jeremiah Perry is scheduled to return to court on Tuesday.

An autopsy is expected to be performed Monday in Lake County, Ind., to determine Damaris cause and manner of death.

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CHICAGO  Talks between Chicago school leaders and the teachers' union resume Sunday amid a standoff over remote learning and other COVID-19 safety measures that canceled three days of classes and loomed over the start of another week in the nation's third-largest district.

Disputed issues included testing and metrics to close schools. The Chicago Teachers Union wants the option to revert to districtwide remote instruction, and most members have refused to teach in-person until there's an agreement, or the latest COVID-19 spike subsides. But Chicago leaders reject districtwide remote learning, saying it's detrimental and schools are safe. Instead, Chicago opted to cancel classes as a whole two days after students returned from winter break.

Chicago Public Schools face the same pandemic issues as other districts nationwide, with more reverting to remote learning as infections soar and staff members are sidelined. But the situation in union-friendly Chicago has been amplified in a labor dispute that's familiar to families in the mostly low-income Black and Latino district who have seen disruptions during a similar safety protocol fight last year, a 2019 strike and a one-day work stoppage in 2016.

"What the teachers' union did was an illegal walkout. They abandoned their posts and they abandoned kids and their families," Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press." "We are working diligently every singe day at the bargaining table to narrow the differences and get a deal done."

Her statements weren't as dismissive as a day earlier when shortly after the union made its latest offer public, she said, "CTU leadership, you're not listening" and vowed not to "relent." Both sides have filed complaints to a state labor board.

Union leaders accused Lightfoot of bullying, saying they agree that in-person instruction is better, but the pandemic is forcing difficult decisions. Attendance was down ahead of the cancelations due students and teachers in isolation from possible exposure to the virus and families opting to keep children home voluntarily.

"As educators, we're trying to use all the tools we have to make our community safe and to educate children," said Jesse Sharkey, the union's president, speaking Saturday at a news conference with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, blasting anyone who suggests union members are showing a lack of concern for kids. "It's hard to believe that the mayor really believes that."

There was some progress.

The district said late Saturday it will allow more incentives for substitute teachers, provide KN95 masks for all teachers and students, and that Illinois will provide about 350,000 antigen tests. But both sides remained far apart on key issues including COVID-19 metrics that will lead to individual school closures and compensation. The district said it won't pay teachers failing to report to schools, even if they tried to log into remote teaching systems. The union doesn't want any of its roughly 25,000 members to be disciplined or lose pay.

District leaders have said some schools, where enough staff showed up, may offer instruction Monday even without an agreement; all buildings have remained open for meal pickup. However, only a handful of principals said they had staff to open and many preemptively canceled Monday classes, anticipating shortages.

School leaders have touted a $100 million safety plan, which includes air purifiers in each classroom. Also, roughly 91% of staff are vaccinated and masks are required indoors.

Since the start of the academic year, some individual classrooms have temporarily switched to remote instruction when there are infections. But in rejecting a widescale return to remote learning, city health officials argue most students directed to quarantine because of possible classroom exposure don't get COVID-19. The district is piloting a "test to stay" program to cut isolation times.

The union argues that the measures fall short, especially considering the omicron-fueled surge that has upended the return to work and class. It has also criticized the district for not enrolling enough students in a testing program and an unreliable database of COVID-19 infections.

Seven district families, represented by the conservative Liberty Justice Center in Chicago, filed a lawsuit in Cook County over the closures last week, while roughly 5,000 others have signed a petition urging a return to in-person instruction.
Karin Norington-Reaves, the coordinator for federal workforce training for Chicago and suburban Cook County, on Sunday joined the growing list of contenders vying to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush in the new South Side and southwest suburban 1st Congressional District.

For the past 30 years, I have been focused on public service. I have served as a teacher in elementary schools. Ive been an attorney. And now, for the past decade, Ive been leading workforce development and watching our working families and all of the struggles that theyre enduring, said Norington-Reaves, 52, a resident of the Chatham neighborhood.

I feel very strongly that my experience as an attorney, as a practitioner of workforce development, as someone whos had an intimate look at federal policy over the past decade, I feel I am well suited to represent the citizens of the first district in Congress, she said.

Norington-Reaves joins a field for the Democratic nomination that already includes 3rd Ward Ald. Pat Dowell, who was the first to announce after Rush said last week he would retire at the end of his term in January. Previously announced candidates include Kirby Birgans, a Chicago teacher, Pastor Chris Butler, community activist Jahmal Cole, educator Dee Nix and attorney Michael Thompson.

The field for the June 28 primary is expected to expand even further as several elected officials and community activists and leaders look at the rare chance to compete for an open seat in Congress in a safely Democratic district. Rush is stepping down next January when his term expires after 30 years in Congress.

Norington-Reaves has served as head of the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership since it was formed in July 12 as part of a collaborative effort between County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel to centralize and streamline workforce development efforts.

She previously served as deputy director of urban assistance in the state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, a lawyer in the civil division of the U.S. Department of Justice and in the Maryland attorney generals office, and as a lobbyist in Illinois for the Citizens Utility Board, among other roles.

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Norington-Reaves said she would stress to the districts voters her role in connecting people to jobs, saying her work at the workforce partnership has placed about 100,000 people in meaningful, lasting employment.

I have to differentiate myself by connecting with the voters. And that means raising funds to amplify my message. It means getting out in the community and all of the communities, not just in the city of Chicago, but in suburban Cook County and all the way down to Will County, she said.

It means connecting with those folks, listening to them, understanding the issues that are most pressing to them, and helping them see the connection between my experience and what theyre struggling with and my capacity to actually bring about solutions and bring resources to bear, she said.

Norington-Reaves said that if shes elected, her priority would be to try to improve the quality of life for working families. But she said efforts to curb gun violence deserve special attention.

We have got to get these illegal guns off the streets. Weve got to have tougher gun laws. Theres no reason in the world a civilian should be carrying a military-grade weapon, she said. We absolutely have to change the laws so that we can create safer communities.

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Former President Donald Trump criticized South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds on Monday morning, after Rounds insisted the 2020 election was fair on national television Sunday.

Trump went after Rounds via an emailed statement, accusing the senator of going "woke on the Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020." The former president has insisted the 2020 election was stolen from him despite several investigations and recounts.

Rounds, a second-term senator and a former South Dakota governor, insisted during an interview on ABC's "This Week" the 2020 election was fair and made remarks about supporting Trump if he ran again in 2024.

"I will take a hard look at it," Rounds told host George Stephanopoulos.

"Personally, what I have told people is, is I'm going to support the Republican nominee to be president. I'm not sure that the eventual nominee has even shown up yet," he said. "There's still  we're two years to go, where we're going to focus on the next election cycle. It's critical that we take back the House. It's critical that we take back the United States Senate."

Looking toward the 2022 midterms, which could break the deadlock in what is now a 50-50 Senate, the 67-year-old said Republicans must move past unfounded allegations that Trump was cheated out of the last presidential election.

Rounds added he would leave it to the courts to decide whether Trump can run for office again. Democrats have been exploring ways to prevent Trump from running for president, including using the 14th Amendment, according to reporting from The Hill.

Trump also called the senator a "RINO" in the emailed statement, meaning Republican In Name Only. He called Sen. John Thune a RINO in late 2020. Rounds isn't up for reelection in South Dakota until 2026.

"Even though his election will not be coming up for 5 years, I will never endorse this jerk again," Trump wrote. " ... The Radical Left Democrats and RINOS, like 'Senator' Mike Rounds, do not make it easy for our Country to succeed. He is a week and ineffective leader, and I hereby firmly pledge that he will never receive my Endorsement again!"

Rounds defended his stance in a statement released Monday afternoon and criticized Trump for further sewing lies about the 2020 election results. In his statement, Rounds did not mention Trump by name, instead referring to him as "the former president."

"Im disappointed but not surprised by the former presidents reaction. However, the facts remain the same. I stand by my statement. The former president lost the 2020 election," Rounds said.

"This isnt new information. If were being honest, there was no evidence of widespread fraud that would have altered the results of the election. To that point, nearly all of my Senate Republican colleagues acknowledged this last January. During the electoral certification process, we did our due diligence and looked at the challenges made by the former presidents lawyers. Over 90 senators agreed that there was not enough evidence to overturn the results and, therefore, certified the election as our Constitution calls for."

Rounds commended former Vice President Mike Pence for standing his ground in certifying the election results and acknowledging Biden's victory.

"It's time the rest of us do the same," Rounds said.

Rounds, who was first elected to the Senate in 2014 and re-elected in 2020, said attacks from Trump and his supporters are detracting from Republican principles and the party's goal to retake the House and Senate. He called for "disciplined" leadership.

If you look at the challenges our nation faces today - whether it be inflation, the border crisis or Afghanistan - its clear that we are in desperate need of responsible, conservative, disciplined leadership in the White House," Rounds said.

As a Republican Party, our focus should be on what lies ahead, not whats in the past. Elections are about growing support for your party, not further dividing it. Attacking Republicans certainly isnt going to result in a winning formula. Neither is telling citizens not to vote. If we are going to win in 2022 and 2024, we have to move forward together.

 Rapid City Journal assistant managing editor Nathan Thompson contributed to this report.

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CNN lists Vietnamese Beef Pho among world's best 20 soups

Prestigious website CNN Travel has selected the local delicacy Pho Bo (Beef Pho) among its 20 best soups worldwide.







A bowl of beef pho (Photo: Leisa Tyler/LightRocket/Getty Images)



In the article CNN revealed that the broth is simmered for hours with cinnamon, star anise, and other warm spices in order to create a wonderfully aromatic base for this rice noodle soup.



The website also quoted Andrea Nguyen, author of "The Pho Cookbook, as sayings that Pho is among the nations most recognised culinary exports, despite the soup being a relatively new food.



Andrea Nguyen went on to explain that while today's pho restaurants typically serve a wide range of different flavours, beef is the original.



By 1930, the soup was being served with slices of raw beef cooked gently in the broth, the author added.



According to details given by the website, beef pho remains the most beloved version in the nation, with options including the original raw beef, a mix of raw and cooked beef, along with brisket and tendon.



Rounding off the list of the top 20 best soups in the world are Bouillabaisse of France, Caldo verde of Portugal, Chorba frik of Algeria, Libya and Tunisia, Chupe de camarones of Peru, Gazpacho of Spain, Groundnut soup of West Africa, Gumbo of United States, and Harira of Morocco.



This is in addition to Kharcho of Georgia, Lanzhou beef noodle soup of China, Mohinga of Myanmar, Menudo of Mexico, Moqueca de camarao of Brazil, Soto ayam of Indonesia, and Tom yum goong of Thailand.
Chicago Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson wants a federal jury to hear hed started the process to amend his tax returns with his accountant weeks before government agents confronted him about strange loans from a collapsed Bridgeport bank.

The problem is, thats not how the accountant remembers it.

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At an evidentiary hearing Monday offering a sneak preview of Thompsons upcoming criminal trial, accountant Robert Hannigan testified that the first time the alderman had talked to him about amending the returns was on Dec. 7, 2018.

Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson during a City Council meeting May 26, 2021. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

That was five days after the FBI knocked on Thompsons door and started asking questions about payments from Washington Federal Bank for Savings, a clout-heavy lender in the Daley clans Bridgeport neighborhood that collapsed in 2017, court records show. Agents also handed Thompson a subpoena that day asking for his tax information.

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Hannigan, who said hed recently discovered notes he took of his conversation with Thompson, testified it was the first time hed heard that the $219,000 in outstanding loans Thompson had from Washington Federal wasnt a mortgage at all, but some kind of line of credit that appeared to be interest-free.

For many years, we assumed that there was a mortgage loan (with Washington Federal) and that interest was deductible, Hannigan told U.S. District Judge Franklin Valderrama. This was the first conversation to find out that was not the fact. ... At that point in time Im feeling that we filed a tax return that was not correct.

Thompsons attorney, Chris Gair, repeatedly challenged Hannigan on his recollection, saying that Hannigan previously told their legal team that hed actually talked with Thompson about the tax issue in November.

Hannigan replied that he didnt recall saying such a thing.

Gair also asked Hannigan whether he told defense attorneys during the same July 2021 interview that he didnt believe Thompson filed for bogus mortgage interest tax deductions on purpose.

I dont recall those comments, Hannigan replied.

Thompson, 52, the 11th Ward alderman since 2015, was charged in April in a seven-count indictment with filing false tax returns and lying to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. officials about the payments from Washington Federal.

A jury trial is scheduled to begin Feb. 4 at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse  the first criminal trial for a sitting Chicago alderman in three decades.

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At the conclusion of the evidentiary hearing Monday, Valderrama brought up the impact that the recent COVID-19 surge could have on the trial, saying he was not aware of any plans by the chief judge to suspend trials as of this moment but that it was a fluid situation.

Gair said he had some concerns that prospective jurors might direct their resentment at the parties or the court for requiring people to come in for a jury during these trying times.

I think its essential we have a fair trial, Gair said.

Valderrama said those issues would have to be sorted out during questioning of prospective jurors. He also said he will require witnesses and attorneys who want to speak without a mask to verify on the record that they are fully vaccinated.

If this case goes forward it will be done in a way where we maximize the safety of everyone in the courtroom, the judge said.

Thompsons trial is expected to last about a week and will feature mostly dry testimony about tax documents.

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Looming large over Mondays hearing was the case against former Chicago alderman and Cook County Commissioner William Beavers, who was convicted a decade ago of failing to pay taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars he took out of his campaign fund and used for gambling and other personal expenses.

A jury convicted Beavers on all counts. On appeal, his attorneys argued the court should have allowed them to present evidence that Beavers had made efforts to pay the taxes and reimburse his campaign coffers before he was charged. The move, they said, would have demonstrated to the jury Beavers good faith and lack of intent to file fraudulent tax returns in the first place.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, however, siding with prosecutors argument that the only thing that mattered was Beavers state of mind at the time he made the fraudulent filings.

Beavers was sentenced to six months in federal prison.

Ironically, Beavers had also repeatedly accused federal investigators of going after him because he refused to wear a wire on fellow county Commissioner John Daley, who is Thompsons uncle and the brother of the former mayor.

Now, nearly 10 years later, Valderrama has to decide whether the appellate ruling in Beavers case is the controlling law in the charges against Thompson.

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After hearing about two hours of testimony Monday, Valderrama said hed rule on the issue during the final pretrial conference Friday.

In addition to the case against Thompson, Washington Federals collapse has led to federal charges against a number of the banks executives and former customers alleging a multiyear, $31 million embezzlement scheme that preceded the institutions failure.

In December, a superseding indictment charged William Mahon, a top official with the citys Streets and Sanitation Department, with willfully filing false tax returns as part of that larger probe.

Thompson, meanwhile, has denied wrongdoing. In a statement after the indictment was announced, Thompson said his conscience was clear and that hes paid the back taxes owed and repaid the rest of the loan in question.

I did not commit any crime, I am innocent and I will prove it at trial, the statement said. The charges in the indictment do not relate in any way to my public service or to my professional life. I remain 100% dedicated to serving the people of Chicago to the best of my ability.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
An alleged shoplifting incident last week ended with felony robbery charges for a Hamilton man following an altercation outside a grocery store.

Samuel Douglas Burrous, 44, appeared Friday in Ravalli County Justice Court on the felony count and misdemeanor charges of theft and obstructing a peace officer.

Hamilton police were dispatched to Super One Foods in Hamilton at 7:11 a.m. on Jan. 4 after Burrous allegedly stole some wine and deli items and threatened store employees, according to the charging affidavit.

Leading up to the incident, Burrous approached the store manager and asked when the store could begin selling alcohol. After the manager said not until 8 a.m., Burrous then allegedly set one bottle down at the register and walked out the door with another bottle of wine and some hot deli items.

Two store managers followed him to his car and told the man he needed to return to the store to address the items he took without paying.

Burrous refused and got into his car. With his car door still open and the store employees talking to him, Burrous pulled out his keys and went to start the car.

One of the stores employees reached in to attempt to take the keys while the other called law enforcement. The store manager was unable to get the keys out of Burrous hand and made one more attempt to pull them out of the ignition.

At that point, court records said Burrous told the manager he was having a bad week and then reached inside his jacket with his right hand as if he were reaching for a handgun. He told the manager dont go there.

Both managers backed away and Burrous drove off. The men noted that Burrous car had no front or back license plates.

Another Super One employee was just getting off shift and observed Burrous vehicle involved in a traffic crash in front of the Walgreens store. The employee called 911 and provided reports of Burrous location as he walked away from the scene.

A police detective located Burrous walking on the 100 block of Pinkney Street. The officer activated his emergency lights, exited his vehicle and ordered Burrous to stop walking and keep his hands out of his pockets.

Burrous initially ignored the detective and kept walking. When Burrous finally stopped, the affidavit said he continued to put his hands in his pockets.

The detective could see that Burrous was holding a hard object at his waistline on his left side underneath his suit jacket. When Burrous used his right hand to attempt to reach inside his jacket, the officer took control of both arms.

At that point, Burrous told the detective he had a glass bottle inside his jacket and he didnt want it to fall and break. The officer removed the bottle of chardonnay wine hidden under the mans jacket.

Burrous refused to give the detective identification or his name.

The detective then arrested Burrous for obstructing a police officer. Burrous was later identified by his Alaska drivers license found in his wallet.

Ravalli County Justice Jim Bailey set bond at $25,000.

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QUESTION: My husband had the Pfizer booster three months ago. He now wants to get the Moderna booster.

Is it safe to get another booster shot after only three months? If not, how long should he wait to get another booster? He has coronary artery disease and heart failure but no problems with weight or diabetes.

When would it be safe for him to get a fourth shot? We really do not want him to get COVID-19 or any of the variants.

ANSWER: Israel has been at the forefront of COVID vaccinations. Health experts there are debating the pros and cons of a fourth shot.

An expert panel recommended that people over 60, immunocompromised patients and health care workers get another booster at least four months after their third Pfizer shot. Before rolling out this program countrywide, Israeli researchers are testing the additional booster on 150 health care workers.

Public health authorities in the U.S. are not yet recommending a fourth shot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did state, however, that people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech shots initially could get a Moderna booster as the third shot.

QUESTION: I bought and read your Top Screwups book. Even though I am very aware of problems in health care, having worked in that sector here in New Zealand, I learned a lot from your book. It was especially helpful about how to avoid medical mistakes and misdiagnoses.

I have a short list of safety strategies I give to friends and family who need hospitalization:

1. Dont go to hospital unless you really have to.

2. While in hospital, question everything. If you cant do that yourself, have someone with you who can.

3. Get out as fast as possible.

ANSWER: Thanks for your succinct advice. Before COVID-19, it was estimated that medical errors were the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. (BMJ, May 3, 2016).

Were glad you found our book Top Screwups helpful even in New Zealand. In it, we try to give people the tools they need to avoid health care harm. Those who are interested may find it in their public library or in the Books section of the store at www.PeoplesPharmacy.com.

QUESTION: Thank you for posting articles about Xyzal withdrawal on your website. I am currently going through that awful process.

Since stopping Xyzal, I have been breaking out in hives throughout the day on my arms, stomach, legs, hands and chest. I was searching my brain for what I could possibly be allergic to. Had I changed detergents? (No.) Eaten anything unusual? (No.)

This has been mentally draining and ruined my holiday. The hives look like welts or long scratch marks when I havent even scratched the area. Is there any way to make the drug manufacturer warn of this terrible withdrawal process? It seems like they have a responsibility.

ANSWER: Levocetirizine (Xyzal) and its chemical cousin cetirizine (Zyrtec) are antihistamines that are less likely to cause drowsiness than older allergy medicines. Readers first reported withdrawal itching more than a decade ago.

We badgered the Food and Drug Administration about this problem for years. Finally, the agency reported more than 100 cases it found in its FDA Adverse Event Reporting System database (Therapeutic Advances in Drug Safety, July 5, 2019).

The agency told us that it would require a warning about discontinuation itching in the prescribing information. Sadly, though, we have seen no such warning on over-the-counter versions of these antihistamines.
An officer with Virginia Commonwealth University police has been indicted in Richmond Circuit Court for assault and battery, according to the citys top prosecutor.

VCU Officer Polly F. Griffin was on-duty and in uniform at the time of the alleged offense, Commonwealths Attorney Colette McEachin said in a news release on Monday. Griffin was indicted by a grand jury last Tuesday on the single count, a class 1 misdemeanor punishable by up to 12 months in jail and/or up to a $2,500 fine.

The alleged assault occurred on Oct. 27, 2021, according to a statement from Corey Byers, a spokesperson for the university police department. VCU police launched an internal investigation into the incident and based on the evidence of potential misconduct, the department forwarded the matter to McEachins office, which led to last weeks indictment.

Griffin was arrested Monday, the statement said. She remains a VCU employee, the statement continued, but is not on active duty for VCU Police.

The VCU Police Department expects highly professional conduct by all staff at all times. VCUPD investigates evidence of officer misconduct and takes the appropriate action, the department said.

McEachin and VCU declined to provide any further information about the incident citing the ongoing case.

The announcement follows a new policy McEachin announced in July 2020, amid unrest calling for policing reforms, to release the names of law enforcement officers indicted for a crime considered either an abuse of authority or excessive use of force while in their performance of duties.
Roughly one in four families living in public housing is at risk of eviction as the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority has doubled down on plans to resume lease enforcement this month at its communities.

About 900 families are slated to receive a 30-day termination notice this week  a precursor to formal legal action, the housing authority said. Another 1,600 households are at least one month behind on rent and could soon face the same fate, according to figures the agency shared.

As frigid temperatures gripped the region and Virginia registered record-breaking COVID-19 cases fueled by the omicron variant, tenant advocates and educators urged officials to avert a crisis that they say would have long-ra anging consequences for residents, especially those with children, and the citys schools and safety-net providers.

Educational outcomes in Richmond are deeply tied to the circumstances the kids have at home, said Thad Williamson, a University of Richmond professor, former policy adviser to Mayor Levar Stoney and former head of the citys Office of Community Wealth Building. Poverty has a lot of harmful effects on kids and their ability to learn, and one of them is absolutely housing instability and the trauma associated with having to get up and leave, not knowing where youre going to stay a given night.

Williamson joined Richmond Public Schools music teacher Beth Almore in writing an open letter to RRHA and city officials last week demanding action. The pair urged a freeze on evictions for families with children through the end of the school year and called on city leaders to coordinate with the school system and housing authority to ensure those families can apply for rental assistance.

Its unclear how many of the families facing eviction have school-aged children, but federal data shows three out of five RRHA households are headed by women with children. One of the reasons tenants cited for falling behind on payments was virtual schooling, according to RRHA. RPS held classes virtually for most of the pandemic, and in-person learning resumed this school year. RPS estimates as many as 1,200 students live in public housing.

The fallout from mass evictions on this scale would land disproportionately upon RPS teachers, staff, social workers, and administrators, the open letter said. RPS staff will, by necessity, be tasked with managing the tremendous disruption caused by the sudden dislocation of children from their homes and communities.

Angela Fountain, an RRHA spokeswoman, said the agency had not filed any eviction cases against tenants so far this month.

Households that receive the 30-day notices will have the option of entering into payment plans and applying for rent relief, Fountain said. If the household does neither within 14 days, RRHA will file an eviction in Richmond General District Court, triggering the legal process and potential removal if the outstanding balance is not settled.

RRHA has a responsibility to be good stewards of the public resources that are entrusted to us, Fountain stated. It is taxpayer dollars that we are in charge of administering and we must be accountable for those resources.

Once one of the regions most aggressive evictors, RRHA stopped putting families out for nonpayment of rent in late 2019 after pressure from advocates. The housing authority extended its freeze through spring 2020, while offering tenants payment plans to catch up on rent.

When the pandemic began, state officials temporarily closed courts and established protections to keep renters housed. Many of those safeguards have since expired. The agencys staff announced plans to resume lease enforcement last summer. However, after calls from board members and tenants advocates, RRHA ultimately pushed that plan out until this month to give families more time to catch up.

As of December, RRHA received $1.8 million for 962 households that have sought rental assistance through a state-run program. Virginia still has hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for renters who have fallen behind during the pandemic. The housing authority is among the top 10 landlords in the state in terms of dollars received through the program, according to data provided by Virginia Housing.

Art Burton, a longtime Richmond activist, said forcing vulnerable families out of their homes, who are overwhelmingly made up of people of color, was poor policy.

For public housing to think that for some reason the most affected population, those individuals who live in their community who already had been designated as essential workers, should be forced to be facing eviction and have the extra stress of eviction, I mean... thats crazy, Burton said.

Tylur Arnold, a 10th grade teacher at Armstrong High School in Richmonds East End, said evictions disrupt his students ability to focus on learning. Housing insecurity can also worsen attendance issues, especially when temporary housing a family may turn to is further from a childs school.

Most of the hotels are either near The Diamond, or theyre being placed in hotels further down Midlothian Turnpike, Arnold said. Those kids still come to us, and that creates attendance issues in itself.

Barrett Hardiman, vice chairman of RRHAs board, said the housing authority needs to reconsider its plan.

I personally dont feel confident moving forward with enforcement, Hardiman said. Theres more than we need to do to get families back to where they should be  Its a conversation that [the board] needs to have.

Last year, RRHA launched a public campaign encouraging residents to come current on overdue rent. In recent months, it has sent staff door-to-door, mailed reminders and resources to residents.

Hardiman said he worries residents mistrust of the agency has hampered efforts to get them caught up. Working with trusted community organizations, like the Office of Community Wealth Buildings Ambassadors program, could help nudge families toward applying, he said.

I dont feel like we have done enough to really get families out of this, Hardiman said. Id love to have a partnership with the city for an all hands on deck, three-month push just trying to get as many people signed up for rental assistance as possible.

The boards property management committee is scheduled to discuss plans for lease enforcement on Wednesday.
The invite was casual, but effective.

During last months virtual town hall meeting hosted by Chickahominy Pipeline LLC, in which company representatives sought to answer questions from the public about the 83-mile pipeline they wish to build through five central Virginia counties, Hanover Countys retired deputy county administrator, Frank Harksen, asked company representatives if theyd attend a Board of Supervisors meeting.

For the first time since the pipeline was brought to the countys attention last summer, they will.

Beth Minear, Chickahominy Project Outreachs spokesperson, is slated to attend the evening portion of Wednesdays Board of Supervisors meeting. The meeting begins at 2 p.m., but Chickahominy is not listed on the agenda until 6 p.m.

While theres no public hearing planned, residents were able to submit questions that theyd like the supervisors or county staff to ask Minear. Questions were accepted online through 4 p.m. Tuesday.

By phone Monday, Hanover County Administrator John Budesky said hes grateful that someone from Chickahominy has accepted an invitation. He and county leadership have been trying for months to get the company to a public meeting.

He said the timing is interesting, given that the State Corporation Commission last month rejected a request by Chickahominy to build the pipeline without commission approval.

The commissions Dec. 22 order started with a Sept. 3 request by Chickahominy to build a pipeline to transport natural gas through Louisa, Hanover, Henrico, New Kent and Charles City counties to a natural gas power plant in Charles City. The power plant would burn the gas to create electricity that would be sold into a large market of numerous states.

Chickahominy argued that it did not need permission to build the pipeline because its not a public utility  meaning not selling to retail customers  but rather, it was merely transporting the gas to the power plant.

The commission, however, found that Chickahominy is a public utility under the law, agreeing with an SCC hearing examiner who reviewed the case.

Minear, in response to the SCC ruling, said last month by email that the company was weighing its options on how to proceed, and whether it will appeal, file an application for a certificate, or consider other options, all are on the table.

Chickahominy Pipeline still plans to pursue this project.

On Monday, Budesky said he and others likely have questions about what those statements mean, what happens next, and how it will impact Hanovers residents.

It will be the first time Chickahominy has agreed to be at a board meeting, so there may be some new ground covered, said Budesky, adding, We just want to get answers for our residents.

The meeting will be held in the public meeting room, 7516 County Complex Road, as well as livestreamed on the countys website for those who wish to watch virtually.
At an early age, as her family was scrambling not to starve and simply to stay alive while World War II erupted around them and the German army invaded their French town, Denise Duesing learned not to take life for granted.

She also developed an attitude that might seem astonishing considering the hardships she endured.

I can see something good in every person I meet, she says.

Duesings approach to life has served her  and others  quite well. Now 87, she has long been active in the service of others: helping immigrants and military veterans, and working as a caretaker for shelter animals, among other roles in the community. She still serves as a spiritual care volunteer at Bon Secours Memorial Regional Medical Center, where she is a eucharistic minister and one of the first participants in the hospitals Sacred Passages program, in which volunteers stay at a dying patients bedside so they dont have to exit this world alone.

Still avidly engaged in helping others at 87? Maybe its not hard to see where this comes from.

In 1943, three Jewish teens were fleeing Nazis outside her home. As they ran, one of the three collapsed in the street, her legs unable to carry her farther. No one dared go out to help for fear of being shot for helping Jews. When darkness fell, though, and their neighbors could not see, Duesings parents rescued the girl and took her in, hiding her and caring for her for three days until she recovered and could continue on her way.

Perhaps wanting to help is in the family DNA, Duesing suggested, noting that her younger brother, who still lives in France, enjoys making life better for widows and orphans.

All she knows is, I think I make people feel good, and in return I feel wonderful.

***

Duesing is a sweetheart, said Pantheir Whiting, who got to know Duesing through her work as a school crossing guard.

She is one who has a lot of wisdom, but she also has a heart to share, said Whiting, now retired, who formerly worked as an office assistant for Henrico polices community policing unit. She cares for people, and she shows how she cares through her work.

Those children are not students to her, Whiting said of the kids Duesing helps at school, those are her babies.

And its not like a bunch of children pose a great challenge to Duesing. She had seven of her own  six sons and a daughter, a girl Duesing had cared for in France, whom she and her husband, Billy, adopted and brought to America.

Denise and Billy met after the war at a U.S. Army base outside Jarny, France. Billy, from West Virginia, was an Army sergeant, and Denise worked at the officers club. They married in 1962 and moved to the United States, settling in Richmond.

In the 1970s, she began driving a school bus for the familys church, St. Paul Catholic Church, taking her youngest along with her for the ride. In 1979, Duesing responded to an ad for Henrico County crossing guards and went to work at Chamberlayne Elementary School. She has shown up ever since on school days  I have grown roots there, she joked  through all imaginable weather, mornings and afternoons, helping keep students safe as they cross St. Charles Road to reach the school.

She has gone through many principals, and some of the earliest children she helped across the street are now grandparents. Duesing rarely missed time from work, Whiting recalled, but one time after she was injured in a fall she had to stay out for a while.

She said, You know, in life, everyone needs a stumble to keep them humble, Whiting remembered Duesing telling her. That quote sticks with me.

In 2015, Duesing was selected by the Virginia Department of Transportation as one of Virginias Most Outstanding Crossing Guards. In 2019, she celebrated her 40th anniversary on the job, and in 2022, she is still at it.

How long does she intend to work?

As long as I can stand up and stop the traffic, she said. It does me good to get out.

***

Duesing was born of Polish parents who moved to France in 1930. Duesing came along in 1934 and grew up in Jarny, in northeastern France, not far from the border with Germany. She recalls how her parents taught her and her brothers to have unwavering faith and courage  attributes that came in handy during WWII.

When Duesing was 6, after days of German bombs falling from the sky, her family had to flee its home as German soldiers advanced toward Jarny. The next few years were an exercise in resilience as the family tried to survive the war under the harshest conditions. Food was scarce. Hope wasnt particularly abundant either.

Her father was injured in a mining explosion in a coal mine where he had found work in southern France. Trying to make their way back home to Jarny, across German lines, the family was separated, and Duesing, her mother and brothers were captured and ordered aboard a train to Germany, which meant, they feared, certain death.

While waiting to board, a German officer pulled them out of line and showed them a picture of his three children, who were about the same age as Duesing and her brothers. He gave them money and let them go. A few minutes later, when another soldier pulled a gun on them, the same officer intervened and ordered the soldier not to shoot and sent the mother and children on their way.

When Duesing thinks about the war, she cant help but recall the extreme hardships her family endured, but she also more eagerly remembers and talks about the German officer who came to her familys rescue. My guardian angel, she calls him.

Due to his kindness, I survived and was able to forgive the German soldiers, she said in a story she wrote in collaboration with Mike DellaRipa, a friend and fellow Bon Secours spiritual care volunteer. I then made a personal commitment to dedicate my life to serving others.

I believe that you poison yourself when you do not forgive, she said. I have also learned when you are able to survive a hard time, you become a better person.

DellaRipa said hes never met anyone like Duesing.

Its amazing and inspiring to me that she has this attitude, said DellaRipa. She lives for the sheer joy of doing good for others.

Over the years, she has volunteered with the Henrico County Employee and Citizen Language Bank, where her knowledge of French and Polish allows her to help county staff communicate with residents who did not speak English .

When families fleeing Poland arrived here in the 1980s, she and her family helped them get settled, assisting them in finding jobs and registering their children for school. She sat through the night at the hospital with one expectant mother and was still there in the morning when the baby arrived. Afterward, Duesing was asked to be the childs godmother.

She still participates with police groups in annual holiday programs, providing meals for families and taking children shopping for presents.

In the 1970s, she became a lay minister for her church, visiting parishioners unable to attend church and ferrying others who could attend in the churchs school bus. Her role involved into serving as a lay minister at the old Richmond Memorial Hospital, where she tended to the spiritual needs of Catholic patients. She had to stop for a while when her husband became ill, but she resumed her eucharistic hospital ministry work after Billy Duesing died in 2012. They were married for 50 years.

In recent years, she began volunteering with Sacred Passages, a program with a simple purpose: to make sure no one dies alone, said the Rev. Robert Shenk, who leads the program.

Its a ministry of presence, Shenk said, as trained volunteers sit with patients in their final hours of life. They might hold their hands. They might speak softly to them. They might pray. They might read scripture. They might do nothing but sit quietly and provide silent companionship.

Just creating a sacred space, Shenk said.

We tend to get a lot of interest in it because people agree with us that people should not die alone, he said. Just compassionate people wanting to help.

Duesing, he said, is the picture of a person we want.

Shes just a very sweet, peaceful person, Shenk said. When youre in her presence, she gives off an aura of calm and joy. You would never know shes been through a lot. Theres not an ounce of negative energy coming from that woman because she lives a life of gratitude.

Duesing volunteered for Sacred Passages, in part, because she was unable to travel to France when her mother was dying.

I felt so bad that I couldnt go to my mothers funeral, she said. When the [hospital] chaplain put out an email to all volunteers that they were starting the program, I didnt even think for a second. I said, Thats something I want to do.

Because of COVID, Duesing has been unable to volunteer in the hospital for most of the last two years. She cant wait to return to those roles.

Just to bring a little comfort to somebody, she said, it feels good.
A Radford man who accepted a plea bargain with the commonwealths attorney was sent to prison last week after pleading guilty to endangering a 4-year-old child.

The child was found unclothed outside a Floyd County home and tested positive for methamphetamine.

The deal dropped a possession of meth charge against Brian W. Graham in exchange for a guilty plea on Jan. 4.

Circuit Judge Mike Fleenor sentenced Graham to three years with a year and seven months suspended.

Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Ryan Hupp told Fleenor that county deputies encountered Graham and others at the Circle K gas station and food shop in Floyd on June 4, 2021, after receiving a call about a disturbance.

During their investigation, deputies learned that a young girl may have been left at home without supervision, and upon arrival to the residence, they found a 4-year-old child naked in the yard.

It took several attempts of knocking at the door before a man opened it and identified himself as Grahams father. Hupp said the man claimed to have been in the bathroom and could not answer the door.

Deputies searched the house and discovered drugs that tests later revealed were methamphetamine, along with drug paraphernalia.

The sheriffs office called in the Department of Social Services and a test of the child found meth in her system.

A county grand jury indicted Graham on possession of the drug, felony child abuse and disregard for life. The charges were later amended to cruelty, injuring a child; and child endangerment, also a felony.

Conviction on such charges can lead to prison sentences of up to 20 years, but the plea agreement followed Virginia sentencing guidelines for a sentence of three years with about half of that suspended.
Now that an area in downtown Roanoke is named Henrietta Lacks Plaza, advocates want to privately raise $140,000 to erect a statue of her.

Lacks, a Black woman from Roanoke, went to The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, for cancer treatment in 1951. Doctors couldnt save her, but they discovered that her cells were capable of growing outside her body in a laboratory vessel.

The cells, which are still alive, morphed into a remarkably durable and prolific line and supported the discovery of research breakthroughs around the world, the medical center said.

Problem was, doctors didnt obtain Lacks permission to use her cells in medical research; the university says the research project some 70 years ago occurred before the inception of informed consent. Her family members say they werent informed until the 1970s. Put in the spotlight, key beneficiaries including Johns Hopkins have sought to make amends.

In Roanoke, only the Science Museum of Western Virginia honors Lacks with a public display, with her name engraved on a staircase listing contributors to science. Lacks is honored with signs, markers, statues and exhibits in various places of the United States and world. Assuming fundraising is successful, the Roanoke statue would be life-size and go in the west half of the former Lee Plaza beside the Noel C. Taylor Municipal Building.

The city council renamed the west side for Lacks in July.

But is a statue enough?

Vice Mayor Trish White-Boyd, who initiated the plaza renaming and statue project, doesnt think so.

The vice mayor has gotten in touch with a group of cultural educators in Richmond who produced a multimedia presentation about some of that communitys unknown or forgotten Black history. Its called Hidden in Plain Site Richmond and is available free online.

If Roanoke can raise an additional $40,000, the plan is to contract with the Hidden In Plain Site team to create a similar presentation about Roanokes hidden history, White-Boyd said.

Hidden In Plain Site Richmond can be viewed on a computer, phone or virtual reality headset. The viewer, clicking at their own pace, goes virtually to 10 locations keyed to events that shaped the experiences of Black people living in Richmond during the 1800s and 1900s. The locations, generally without statues or monuments today, existed in plain sight with only limited public knowledge of what took place, according to the producers.

For instance, one part of the Richmond presentation focuses on Robert Lumpkin and his Lumpkins Jail. The producers depicted the notorious holding facility for enslaved people within modern-day images of the grass lot beside heavily traveled Interstate 95 and about 500 yards from the Virginia State Capitol where it all happened. Narration, recreations and readings flesh out the story.

People who have seen Hidden In Plain Site Richmond have told the producers they will never feel the same way about parts of the city covered in the presentation, said Dean Browell, a market researcher and member of the Hidden In Plain Site team. Dontrese Brown, an educator, and David Waltenbaugh, a virtual reality developer, are also on the team.

Hidden in Plain Site also produced a presentation on indigenous people in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and has other projects lined up. Each one is an attempt to unearth important history and tell it accurately with extensive detail.

Browell said said there an historical sign in Louisa County recognizing Henry Box Brown, a person who was enslaved on a Louisa-area plantation but escaped slavery by shipping himself in a box to Philadelphia. Hidden In Plain Site Richmond tied its telling of Browns story to the address of the shipping company in downtown Richmond that unwittingly handled his box, according to the presentation, he said.

Lacks could be a character in the Roanoke presentation, assuming it is funded, because her story is hidden in that many people do not know it, Browell and White-Boyd agreed. Her home is believed to have stood in Southwest Roanokes Perry Park. Its without a marker.

Checks should be made out to the Harrison Museum, the fundraisers fiscal agent, with the phrase Henrietta Lacks on the memo line. Contributions should be mailed to: The Harrison Museum, P.O. Box 21054, Roanoke, Va. 24018.

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The final, written ruling issued by a state bar panel in an investigation into a former judge reflects that one panelist disagreed with the decision to dismiss the allegations.

The Roanoke Times incorrectly reported Dec. 20 that officials unanimously felt there wasnt clear and convincing evidence to sustain a disciplinary complaint filed against John Weber III.

Weber, a longtime local attorney who became a Roanoke Valley juvenile court judge in 2015, came under scrutiny after a woman reported that he slept with her while working as her defense attorney and then later, while a judge, paid her to keep quiet about it.

Weber, who resigned from the bench, adamantly denied the allegation of a sexual relationship. He acknowledged that he paid the woman a little over $22,000 in 2018 and 2019 but said that money began as charitable aid after his ex-client reached out seeking help to turn her life around and beat addiction.

Weber and the woman, who both testified during a Dec. 17 hearing convened by the state bar, agreed that she told him that she was a new mother who was intent on rebuilding her life but in need of help.

That story would emerge to be false, and a bid to gather money to support the addiction that she was still gripped by at the time.

The appeals for money later turned threatening when the woman said she would expose their past intimate relationship unless he continued paying her. She told bar investigators she was a young, frightened addict when she hired Weber to defend her in court in 2013 and 2014, and he exploited that vulnerability.

Weber said the accusation was untrue but the threats left him paralyzed by fear for his job, family and reputation. He worried no one would believe that the money already given had been altruistic.

He continued paying her for about five months, before cutting communication with her in July 2019, and never reported he was being threatened.

The report that led to the investigation was made by the woman in 2020. She said she took action after entering recovery and growing troubled by Webers continued position as a judge. The Roanoke Times doesnt name alleged victims of sexual misconduct without their consent.

Weber quietly resigned from the bench amid the investigation. His attorneys said he did so out of respect for the role and to focus on defending himself against the accusations.

The disciplinary hearing that unfolded last month spanned 14 hours, and extensive arguments about the credibility and consistency of the allegations.

At the end, a five-member panel of the state bar disciplinary board announced that it felt the case had failed to meet the standard of clear and convincing evidence and that the complaint against Weber would be dismissed.

The order formalizing the decision afterward showed it was reached by a majority vote of the panel. One member exercised the option to attach a written dissent outlining why she came to a different conclusion.

In her three-page statement, Yvonne Gibney, a Richmond-based attorney who serves on the state board, said she felt there was ample evidence to support the charge that Weber had a physical relationship with a client in violation of professional standards.

She wrote, in part, that the tipping point for her had been a review of 4,826 text messages exchanged by Weber and the woman in 2019.

The texts were submitted to investigators by Weber, and his attorneys said the threads supported his account that the financial aid had begun charitably, with no threats or accusations of impropriety, until the womans messages became aggressive in an effort to continue getting money.

Gibney, echoing arguments presented by state bar ethics staff, concluded the texts instead detailed desperate and extraordinary efforts by Weber to avoid exposure including repeated requests that the woman turn over an old cellphone that she claimed had incriminating messages from their past relationship.

In last months hearing, Weber testified that he knew no incriminating messages existed, but he feared a record would be fabricated as that was one of the threats leveled.

The woman testified that she didnt believe any improper messages from that period actually existed.

The majority vote on the disciplinary panel didnt pen an opinion expanding on what shaped its decision to dismiss the case. The panel was composed of four attorneys and one layperson from other parts of the state outside of Western Virginia.

Weber, whos returned to private practice, could have faced sanctions ranging anywhere from a reprimand to the loss of his law license if he hadnt prevailed in the disciplinary proceeding.

His attorneys, John Lichtenstein and Tony Anderson, said in a statement this week that they respectfully disagreed with the dissenting opinion and were grateful that the state bar ruled in Webers favor.

Weber dedicated his career to helping others and steadfastly denied the allegations from the outset, they said. We are most pleased that Mr. Weber will have the opportunity to return to the practice of law through which he has and will again help so many.

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When Andrew Toy heard about a fatal shooting near his home late last year, he rushed to see if he could help Chicago police with video from his homes security camera.

The 63-year-old lifelong resident of Chinatown and active member of the neighborhoods Facebook watch group said cooperating with police was an easy decision. I got young children in the neighborhood, Toy said. I dont want them or my wife or neighbor to be the next victim.

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What authorities called the execution style shooting of Toys neighbor, Woom Sing Tse, 71 and a longtime Chinatown fixture, was the latest of several acts of violence affecting the Asian community in the Near South Side neighborhood in the last couple of years. Homicides in 2021 in the 9th District, which includes Chinatown and Bridgeport, are up 14% from the year before and 121% compared with 2019, according to Chicago police.

Toy said he feels that elected officials at all levels of government are failing residents.

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Hes among many in the Near South Side enclave supporting the creation of Chicagos first-ever majority Asian ward, which would unify Chinatown and nearby areas with fast-growing Asian American populations.

Its a goal he thinks could come to fruition during the ongoing ward remapping process in the Chicago City Council.

While Toy is not alone in his support for such a ward, residents and stakeholders vary on what they want from an alderman. Many of those differences revolve around attitudes toward law enforcement.

Toy says hes an independent who voted for Democrat Barack Obama but then backed Republican Donald Trump. For him, officials must support a strong police department.

Chinatown residents havent always been so quick to trust law enforcement, Toy said, given language barriers and fears over immigration status.

Ninth District police Cmdr. Don Jerome walks down Wentworth Avenue after speaking at a community town hall at Chinese Christian Union Church to discuss crime and safety in Chinatown on Dec. 21. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

But, like him, a new wave of community members are increasingly concerned over recent high-profile murders of Asian Chicagoans, and are clamoring for solutions that include more police and vigilant neighbors.

Thank God for CPD, Toy said. Everybody says defund the police and guess what? Theyre the only ones doing their job.

Darek Lau, a program assistant with Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community, said Chinatown residents nearly always list public safety as a concern when asked about their top priorities, followed by education, including an effort to bring a high school to the neighborhood, and more bilingual services.

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But Lau, a Bridgeport resident whose parents emigrated from Guangdong, China, and Hong Kong, said he doesnt think more aggressive policing is a permanent answer to rising crime.

He wants his next alderman to support reallocating Chicago police funding to other social services at some point, but first the city should continue exploring sending mental health crisis responders in lieu of officers in certain situations, he said.

Policing is a complicated solution; it has to be really thoughtful, Lau said. While I would like to see a future where police arent as needed and dont take up as much of our budget, I think it will take many years to develop.

Much of Chinatown is now represented on the City Council by 25th Ward Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, with a slice also in the 11th Ward of Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson, a member of the famous Bridgeport political family who is under indictment for alleged tax offenses and has a trial set for February.

People stroll down Wentworth Avenue in Chicago's Chinatown neighborhood on Dec. 21. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

Under some proposed maps, Thompsons ward would be redrawn into a majority Asian ward that includes Chinatown, Bridgeport and chunks of McKinley Park.

Should Daley Thompson be forced to leave his seat, Mayor Lori Lightfoot would get to appoint his successor, giving that person a likely political advantage in seeking a full four-year term in the 2023 city election.

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On a national level, most of Chinatown supported Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, but Trumps share of the vote increased significantly over 2016 in several precincts, according to the Chicago Board of Elections.

Advocates of a majority Asian ward on both sides of the political spectrum agree that they want someone who understands the needs of the areas growing immigrant community, which mainly speaks Mandarin and Cantonese.

The supporters also argue that the need for such a ward is especially pressing after the 2020 U.S. census found Asian Americans are the fasting growing racial group in Chicago. The number of city residents who identify as Asian increased by 31% over the last decade, census figures show.

Daley Thompson threw cold water on the idea of a majority Asian ward in a Dec. 1 letter to ward residents, citing the need to keep neighborhoods like Canaryville intact and that dividing areas or neighborhoods on race is indeed racism.

In a Dec. 21 town hall on Chinatown safety, Daley Thompson did not contradict that position but said that consolidating, uniting Chinatown into one ward so that theres one point of contact I think will also help in terms of the services we can provide working with the 9th district, working with the police.

Daley Thompson did not return a request for comment following that meeting.

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Consuela Hendricks of Washington Heights spends a lot of time in Chinatown and, while she supports the idea of an Asian majority ward, expresses some concerns.

Hendricks, who is Black, began working as a youth organizer in Chinatown as a teenager at Curie Metropolitan High School before becoming co-founder of the community group People Matter. Hendricks said she hasnt always been made to feel welcome by the neighborhoods Asian residents.

She said pedestrians sometimes cross the street when they see her, or whisper derogatory Chinese phrases near her, such as hak gwei or hei gui, which mean black ghost in Cantonese and Mandarin, respectively.

Less blatant but just as concerning to her are the calls for heightened police presence or the signs reading Asian Lives Matter at recent protests against violence toward Asian Americans.

Thats a rebuttal to Black Lives Matter, Hendricks said about the slogan. It is ultimately very sad to see two groups of color who are in need of so much to be (pitted) against each other.

Chicago police officers listen as a citizen speaks during a community town hall at Chinese Christian Union Church to discuss crime and safety in Chinatown on Dec. 21, 2021. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

In September, People Matter established a public safety commission to address alternate solutions to gun violence in neighborhoods such as Chinatown, ones that dont wind up making Black people feel less safe.

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She said she hopes the next alderman of the potential Asian majority ward is dedicated to bridging racial gaps in the neighborhood.

(Chinatown) is well-deserving to have its own ward, Hendricks said. The only thing Im worried about as a Black person in Chinatown is the increasing anti-Blackness, and Im just worried about the wrong person in power once elected.

In December, during a town hall meeting on public safety in Chinatown with police leaders, differences on how to tackle crime continued to emerge.

Chicago police Superintendent David Brown nodded to an audience member who lamented instances of young people engaging in violence, saying, Youre exactly right. They have a really fast revolving door being released back to their parents.

It was another apparent shot by Brown at the release policies of the Cook County chief judges and states attorneys offices, which have also been criticized by Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Other politicians, including state Rep. Theresa Mah, who represents Chinatown, and Sigcho-Lopez talked about immediate issues such as increased surveillance cameras and streetlights as well as holistic approaches to combating crime like bolstering mental health services.

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Some people participating in the meeting through Zoom wrote messages in Chinese in support of suppressing riots and calling for Mayor Lori Lightfoots resignation if violence in the city does not abate.

Patrick McShane, president of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, received a round of applause for saying, We in Chinatown  appreciate our Chicago Police Department.

Grace Chan McKibben, executive director with the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community, speaks at a community town hall at Chinese Christian Union Church to discuss crime and safety in Chinatown on Dec. 21, 2021. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

Grace Chan McKibben, executive director of CBCAC, said ahead of the meeting that she expected wide-ranging opinions from a community that has always bucked its stereotype of being quiet and docile. She is less focused on its internal divisions and more on getting representation in the next ward map.

We just want to be able to be sure that the communitys voices are heard, Chan McKibben said. In the general discourse when people talk about the different races, Asian Americans are very often ignored. And we just want to make sure that is not the case.

ayin@chicagotribune.com
After 17 years in downtown Charlottesville, the International Rescue Committee has moved to a larger office, giving the organization much needed space to grow staff and programs, director Harriet Kuhr said from her new office, just after moving in.

The move to 375 Greenbrier Drive just off U.S. 29 comes as IRC is working to resettle hundreds of Afghan evacuees who arrived in Charlottesville this fall following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

Since Oct. 1, IRC has welcomed 280 new arrivals, essentially doing a years worth of work over a six-week period. The agency has nearly doubled its staff since and is planning to expand its case management, employment and health services.

Were adding staff as quickly as we can, Kuhr said. We also know theres the immediate need when they first get here, but theyre going to be here in this community for years.

IRC, which started in 1998, has resettled nearly 5,000 people  about a third of whom were from Afghanistan.

Typically, bringing refugees to the United States is a long process, which gives agencies time to plan. With the Afghans, that didnt happen.

Were used to those numbers but spread out over a whole year, Kuhr said. But then everybody comes at once and theres staffing issues, but then theres also the pressure on housing and everything.

Many of the new arrivals are still living in hotels until housing can be found for them, though some church groups and other organizations have taken people in, Kuhr said. In addition to helping with housing, IRC helps families enroll in school, access healthcare services and provides job readiness training.

Housing is the biggest pain point currently, Kuhr said. Landlords or property managers interested in assisting this group should reach out to IRC.

Its going to take us a really long time to find housing for all the people here, she said.

New Afghan refugees are expected to continue to move to the area through February.

As part of the move and because of the overwhelming response, IRC paused in-kind donations last month. Kuhr said gift cards to area stores, especially the local Afghan stores, the Grand and Medina markets, have been working great.

Because we can just hand those gift cards off to people and they can go shopping and get what they want, she said.

IRC signed a lease for the new office off Greenbrier Drive last spring but the decision to move was years in the making, Kuhr said. IRC has been in need of more space for its employees and to meet with the people it serves as well as more parking.

With the move, IRC went from about 5,500 square feet of space to 7500 square feet.

The Greenbrier space is not directly on a bus line, but Kuhr said shes hoping to work with Charlottesville Area Transit to improve bus access to the office. Currently, the office is accessible via a Route 5 bus stop on the corner of Commonwealth and Greenbrier drives.

The new space will provide staff with a more professional setup, Kuhr said. Theyve also upgraded their technology in the move.

Kuhr said IRC staff also will be working in a more collaborative space, helping them to work together better.

They also have more meeting space as well as a larger classroom area that they can use to host community events, which they didnt have in their old location.

This year, Kuhr said shes excited to get settled into the new office and fill the open staff positions to really get to a place where were providing high quality, comprehensive services to both our newer refugees who are coming in and the Afghans that are already here.
RICHMOND  Virginias systems for continuing state government in the face of disaster are being put to the test.

With the General Assembly preparing to convene on Wednesday for a 60-day session, legislative agencies are running their websites and computer systems on a backup IT network to bypass malware implanted in a ransomware attack that crippled them last month.

The legislative agencies  including the Capitol Police and the division that drafts bills  have mostly restored their computer systems and websites, using a separate network for continuity of government as a criminal investigation continues into the ransomware attack first detected on Dec. 12.

Nearly all our web assets and applications are up and running using our Continuity of Government environment, which is located separately from our local environment, said Dave Burhop, director of the Division of Legislative Automated Services, the IT operator for the legislative branch of government.

Continuity of government is an emergency plan to keep the government operating in a disaster  natural or man-made. In this case, the state is trying to avert a disaster from an attack on legislative agencies timed almost exactly a month before the assembly arrives in Richmond for a session that will include adoption of a new two-year state budget.

While some additional work continues, we remain laser-focused on ensuring that our General Assembly systems are operational and available for the upcoming session, Burhop said in an email message this week. Our teams will remain heavily engaged monitoring for any suspicious activity and respond to any needs.

The attack did not affect the computer systems and websites for the executive branch of Virginia government, which are managed by the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, or VITA. However, the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services continues to use manual time sheets for recording employee work hours because of a separate ransomware attack on the Ultimate KRONOS Group, a global human resources management company that provides services to the state agency.

Legislative websites are operating and the Division of Legislative Services is relying on a separate bill drafting system to produce bills and resolutions for the assemblys 140 members to introduce during the session. However, the drafting process was initially delayed by the attack and ensuing investigation by Burhops department, VITA Agency and an independent contractor, Mandiant.

Based on the data from the security investigation to date, weve been able to identify effective strategies, he said.

At the same time, the Virginia Department of State Police is leading a criminal investigation into the attack, which began on Dec. 10 when computer hackers broke into the legislative IT system using what Burhop called extremely sophisticated malware. The state discovered the cyberattack two days later through the intelligence fusion center run by state police.

Currently, the bad guys have most of our critical systems locked up except for [the Legislative Information System], Burhop told Senate Clerk Susan Schaar and House Clerk Suzette Denslow on Dec. 13.

The state received a ransom note, but without a specified amount of money required for the attackers to remove the malware from the system. The identity of the attackers remains unclear, as the State Police and FBI conduct the criminal investigation.

Its still ongoing, State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said Friday.
RICHMOND  Virginias elected officials will need to make dramatic policy changes to address the inequities brought on by centuries of racial segregation and oppression, a state commission tasked with studying systemic disparity in Virginia found.

The 65-page report is the work of the Commission to Examine Racial and Economic Inequity in Virginia law, which was created by Gov. Ralph Northam last year in an effort to better understand how ongoing policy exacerbates inequity.

Much of their work focused on economic disparity faced by Black Virginians, who are more likely to be at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. Among its 45 policy recommendations, the commission is urging lawmakers to back paid family and medical leave for workers, to boost tax relief and to improve protections against foreclosure.

An earlier version of the commission was created in 2019 in the aftermath of Northams blackface scandal. The original commission first set out to identify racist laws that remained in the states code despite no longer being enforced. The commissions work led to many of those laws being formally repealed by the Virginia legislature in 2020.

In its final report, the commission focused on the present day, offering recommendations to address economic inequality, the unique struggles of Virginians of color that live in rural areas and disparities in environmental conservation.

The recommendations come as Virginia enters a new era of divided government. Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin will become the states first GOP governor in almost a decade; he came into power after running a campaign that included promises to do away with the teaching of systemic racism in Virginia schools, arguing that public discourse on race has been too divisive.

Power of the Virginia legislature will be shared by the parties: Republicans will have majority control in the House, while Democrats will have a majority in the Senate.

Cynthia Hudson, the former chief deputy attorney general of Virginia, who chaired the commission, urged the states leaders to look at the work without the lens of political ideology.

This is simply about common humanity, and trying to bring equity to the treatment and quality of life of every Virginian, Hudson said in an interview. Its not political  but rather moral and necessary.

The commissions report highlighted data from the U.S. Census Bureau showing that the median household income for Black Virginians was about $68,000 in 2018  less than two-thirds of the median household income of white Virginians.

State-level policies intentionally created these disparities, the report reads, adding that undoing them will require targeted policy action.

The commission urged lawmakers to create a paid family and medical leave program that would provide workers with paid time off after childbirth, or if they or a family member face a medical event requiring care.

Virginians of color are less likely to have access to paid leave, the commission found, and the lack of it leaves many working Virginians without income during major life events, making them more likely to fall into economic distress.

The lack of time off could also have negative effects on peoples health. For example, Black women are twice as likely as white women to die during pregnancy or within a year of pregnancy. Paid leave would allow new mothers more time to attend postpartum health visits and recover from childbirth, the report states.

The commission also urges lawmakers to create a partially refundable state earned income tax credit, and ensure that workers of color are not disproportionately disqualified.

The commission also proposed ways to mitigate foreclosures, including providing better access to counsel for homeowners at risk of losing their home. The body also recommended limiting the percentage of a workers wages that debt collectors can garnish.

The commission also took a look at how struggles faced by rural Virginians exacerbate disparities borne by people of color. Among its recommendations, the commission urged lawmakers to address the lack of health care personnel and funding in the states rural areas, and to improve rural infrastructure, including broadband and access to food sources.

Finally, the commission also urged lawmakers to address disparities in environmental conservation. The group urged lawmakers to make tribal governments eligible for land conservation grants, and to prioritize minority communities in the development of urban greenspaces.

While the commissions work ends with the Northam administration, its members urged the states new leaders to create a permanent commission dedicated to racial equity, and to create a policy review process that will assess new laws for their racial equity impact.

Asked what her message to the states leaders would be, Hudson said: It would be to not discard or diminish this work. Use it, read it, expand upon it.
Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin has chosen a veteran of the managed care insurance industry as secretary of health and human resources, who will oversee a group of state agencies with big budgets to carry out critical missions.

John Littel, former president of Magellan of Virginia and a former executive at Amerigroup Corp., brings more than three decades of experience in health care financing, including services for a struggling behavioral health system that Youngkin has vowed to improve.

Later Monday, Youngkin named Fauquier County Sheriff Robert "Bob" Mosier as his choice for secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security. Mosier, who has a 30-year background in law enforcement, was first elected Fauquier's sheriff in 2015.

As health secretary, Littel would oversee a department still on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a $18 billion Medicaid program.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating impacts on Virginians across the Commonwealth, and John will play a pivotal role in overseeing our efforts to protect Virginians' lives and livelihoods," Youngkin said in a statement.

"Starting on Day One, Johns experience will be an asset as we fix our broken mental and behavioral health system, ensure Virginians have access to affordable, free-market health care options, and reform our health care safety net to save taxpayer dollars and improve health care outcomes."

The health pick was well-received by a key Democratic legislator who welcomed Littel's extensive experience.

"I'm just excited to see he won't be in learning mode on the first day," said Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax, the outgoing chairman of the House Committee on Health, Welfare and Institutions, and a leader on health care issues on the House Appropriations Committee. "These are huge, complex programs."

Medicaid, run by the Department of Medical Assistance Services, has a two-year budget of $25 billion in federal and state funds to serve almost 2 million Virginians who are elderly, disabled or too poor to afford commercial health insurance.

Magellan, now operating as Molina Complete Care, is one of six managed care companies that administer most Medicaid services in Virginia, based on a fixed monthly fee for each recipient. The company previously served as administrator of behavioral health services.

"You need someone who understands health care financing," said Doug Gray, executive director of the Virginia Association of Health Plans.

"He's just really knowledgeable," Gray said of Littel. "He's been at it for a long time."

Youngkin takes office on Saturday. The appointment comes as Virginia faces a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations due to the omicron variant.

The governor's transition team announced on Friday that he and Attorney General-elect Jason Miyares will challenge a federal rule that requires hospital employees to be vaccinated against COVID. That announcement came on the day that Virginia broke its record for COVID hospitalizations, with 3,329.

Sean Connaughton, president and CEO of the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association, said the state's beleaguered private hospitals look forward to working with Littel "about ways in which the commonwealth can support our hospital members during the continued response to the surging COVID-19 pandemic, as well as on a range of other issues including strengthening our behavioral health system, and addressing health care workforce shortages.

Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, chairman of the state Behavioral Health Commission, said of Littel: "He probably has the skill set that could be put to good use in the system, but the reality is, hes going to be drinking from a fire hose for awhile."

Littel would succeed Dr. Vanessa Walker Harris as secretary of Health and Human Resources. Dr. Daniel Carey, a cardiologist from Lynchburg, left the post in October to become chief medical officer for a large medical group based in Washington state.

The Secretary of Health and Human Resources oversees 12 state agencies. In addition to the health department and Medicaid, the secretary also is responsible for the Department of Social Services and the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, which runs a system of state behavioral health institutions, while coordinating with local community services boards and behavioral health authorities.

Littel is rector of the College of William and Mary, serving as chair of the Board of Visitors and its executive committee.

He is a graduate of the University of Scranton and of Catholic University School of Law.

As for the public safety choice, Mosier would succeed Brian Moran, who has served in the post since 2014, under Govs. Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam. Ten state agencies come under the office.

Mosier served as a deputy sheriff in Fauquier before his 2015 election. Northam appointed Mosier to the Criminal Justice Services Board in 2021 and to the Substance Abuse Services Council in 2020.

During his campaign Youngkin said public safety was among his top priorities. Following a November roundtable with law enforcement officials in Chesterfield County, Youngkin noted that in 2020 Virginias homicide rate  6.15 per 100,000 citizens  was the states highest in 20 years, according to Virginia State Police statistics.

Youngkin also said Virginia must increase the pipeline of people who are going into law enforcement jobs.

Sheriff Mosier will play an important role in keeping our communities safe," Youngkin said in a statement Monday. "We will get to work on this key priority by fully funding and raising pay for our law enforcement officers. Together, we will protect qualified immunity, and on Day One fire the Parole Board," Youngkin said.

"Bob shares my vision for innovating how our law enforcement officers build trust and engage in their communities they serve by building bridges with local leaders to reduce crime and keep Virginians safe."

Mosier also has an array of international experience in support of law enforcement.

For example, in 1996, the U.S. State Department chose Mosier to serve in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the International Police Task Force as a station commander, where he represented the Fauquier County Sheriffs Office. He next served with the International Justice Mission, a human rights organization, as Director of Investigations working in Asia, Middle and Near East, Africa, and Latin America.
The high road...

Here is an unusual and fun thing: a Roanoke-centric bestselling book list.

Independent bookseller Book No Further in downtown Roanoke has made public a list of their top 25 bestselling titles of 2021. The store has made a practice since founder Doloris Vest set up shop in 2017 of promoting work by the regions treasure trove of local authors, and this list reflects those efforts.

Likely, it will shock no one who has paid even the vaguest dollop of attention that the #1 spot is occupied by former Roanoke Times journalist Beth Macys Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America, the widely acclaimed examination of the opioid crisis and its toll on Appalachia, recently adapted into an eight-part Hulu miniseries thats now nominated for a Golden Globe.

Series stars Michael Keaton and Kaitlyn Dever are also nominated in the best television limited series categories, for best actor and best supporting actress, respectively. (Though the show can be harrowing, theres delight to be had in spotting the many recognizable Virginia locales used for filming.)

Macy appears again on the list at #14 with Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local  And Helped Save An American Town, her 2014 debut chronicling how John Bassett III of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co. in Galax fought to keep his factorys jobs from going overseas.

An intriguing third place goes to Bland County author Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry (like Macy, a Hollins University alumna) for her debut short story collection What Isnt Remembered, winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction.

A Moscow native who immigrated to rural Virginia in 1995, she credits mentors at Hollins and at Radford University with encouraging her to become a writer, an ambition that never occurred to her until she read the late Toni Morrisons novel The Bluest Eye during a college course.

Blacksburg gets representation in the No. 5 slot with author Sarah Warburtons You Never Can Tell, a suburban serial killer thriller, as Warburton puts it, released in August by cozy mystery publisher Crooked Lane Books. Fans of another Hulu series, Only Murders in the Building, might be intrigued to know that Warburton works a true crime podcast into the proceedings  as listening to one sparked the idea for her novel.

Roanoke College associate professor Gregory Samantha Rosenthal appears at No. 9 with Living Queer History: Remembrance and Belonging in a Southern City, published last month by University of North Carolina Press. An examination of LGBTQ history and culture in Roanoke and Appalachia, the book came together from interviews conducted by the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project, which Rosenthal co-founded.

Down at No. 26 youll find one of the most famous Roanoke Valley tomes of all time, Hollins grad Annie Dillards poetic collection of reflections on nature, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

As President Barack Obama bestowed a National Humanities Medal upon Dillard in 2014, a military aide intoned, In poetry and in prose, Ms. Dillard has invited us to stand humbly before the stark beauty of creation. (The same ceremony honored actresses Sally Field and Miriam Colon and fellow authors Larry McMurtry, Stephen King and Tobias Wolff.)

Book No Furthers list serves as a quick, delightful tour of our regions lively arts scene and its rich literary heritage  not to mention, its a mere scratch on the surface. Hopefully it will send curious readers exploring.

...and the low road

So long as were celebrating a sampling of the Roanoke regions contribution to high art, we might as well trumpet a Roanoke-centric low art offering thats probably not on your radar.

On New Years Day, Netflix added a thriller to its streaming lineup called #followfriday. We wont mince words: its a slasher movie from 2016 that first aired on SyFy, a cable network long renowned for dubious quality content. Though its hardly the worst film ever made (stay to the end for a footnote on that), the flick is so eager to hammer home a message that too many young people spend too much time on social media that it completely neglects other essential ingredients, like dialogue written the way humans actually speak, or a coherent plot.

Why mention this offering at all? Well, if you think its fun spotting familiar settings while watching Dopesick, youll get that fun a hundredfold watching #followfriday, which was shot at locations all over Roanoke and Salem, with an emphasis on Roanoke Colleges beautiful campus. Every 10 minutes, it seems, the movie cuts to a view of the Roanoke Star.

Back in 2020, Roanoke was the setting for a small, unnerving indie drama, The Swerve, that managed the astonishing feat of earning a 100% Fresh score on Rottentomatoes.com, which films nerds know is 1) very hard to accomplish, 2) and a sign of an excellently made movie. #followfriday on the other hand has garnered so little attention despite being out for years that it has no reviews on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and an audience score of 23% rotten.

Back in the age of the dinosaurs  i.e., 1999  the hit sci-fi mystery show The X-Files set an episode in Hollins, Virginia but didnt film it here, which a few local fans saw as a missed opportunity, as the tongue-in-cheek tale of demonic powers could perhaps have made convenient use of the Star Citys great big glowing star.

Well, for those whove been waiting to see the Roanoke Star employed for sinister atmosphere, #followfriday does it. Perhaps someday there will be a really cool hit movie that sets its climactic cat and mouse shootout inside Roanokes storied Grandin Theatre, but until that movie arrives, we have #followfriday.

Regarding that earlier note: back in 2011, a remake of the actual worst movie ever made, Plan 9 from Outer Space, was partially filmed in Roanoke. The remake is also terrible, but fun in the way that movies that know theyre bad can be fun.
This artist's conception of the James Webb Space Telescope in space shows all its major elements fully deployed. The telescope was folded to fit into its launch vehicle, and then was slowly unfolded over the course of two weeks after launch. Credit: NASA GSFC/CIL/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope team fully deployed its 21-foot, gold-coated primary mirror, successfully completing the final stage of all major spacecraft deployments to prepare for science operations.

A joint effort with the European Space Agency (ESA) and Canadian Space Agency, the Webb mission will explore every phase of cosmic historyfrom within our solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe.

"Today, NASA achieved another engineering milestone decades in the making. While the journey is not complete, I join the Webb team in breathing a little easier and imagining the future breakthroughs bound to inspire the world," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. "The James Webb Space Telescope is an unprecedented mission that is on the precipice of seeing the light from the first galaxies and discovering the mysteries of our universe. Each feat already achieved and future accomplishment is a testament to the thousands of innovators who poured their life's passion into this mission."

The two wings of Webb's primary mirror had been folded to fit inside the nose cone of an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket prior to launch. After more than a week of other critical spacecraft deployments, the Webb team began remotely unfolding the hexagonal segments of the primary mirror, the largest ever launched into space. This was a multi-day process, with the first side deployed Jan. 7 and the second Jan. 8.

Mission Operations Center ground control at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore began deploying the second side panel of the mirror at 8:53 a.m. EST. Once it extended and latched into position at 1:17 p.m. EST, the team declared all major deployments successfully completed.

The world's largest and most complex space science telescope will now begin moving its 18 primary mirror segments to align the telescope optics. The ground team will command 126 actuators on the backsides of the segments to flex each mirroran alignment that will take months to complete. Then the team will calibrate the science instruments prior to delivering Webb's first images this summer.

"I am so proud of the teamspanning continents and decadesthat delivered this first-of-its kind achievement," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate in NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Webb's successful deployment exemplifies the best of what NASA has to offer: the willingness to attempt bold and challenging things in the name of discoveries still unknown."

Soon, Webb will also undergo a third mid-course correction burnone of three planned to place the telescope precisely in orbit around the second Lagrange point, commonly known as L2, nearly 1 million miles from Earth. This is Webb's final orbital position, where its sunshield will protect it from light from the Sun, Earth, and Moon that could interfere with observations of infrared light. Webb is designed to peer back over 13.5 billion years to capture infrared light from celestial objects, with much higher resolution than ever before, and to study our own solar system as well as distant worlds.

"The successful completion of all of the Webb Space Telescope's deployments is historic," said Gregory L. Robinson, Webb program director at NASA Headquarters. "This is the first time a NASA-led mission has ever attempted to complete a complex sequence to unfold an observatory in spacea remarkable feat for our team, NASA, and the world."

NASA's Science Mission Directorate oversees the mission. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the project for the agency and oversees the Space Telescope Science Institute, Northrop Grumman, and other mission partners. In addition to Goddard, several NASA centers contributed to the project, including Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, and others.

More information:

Mission information: www.nasa.gov/webb

Provided by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
LAKE CITY, S.C.  Dual credit course enrollments are booming at Lake Citys Continuum this semester.

Nearly 500 students from Pee Dee area high schools have enrolled in one or more of the 21 dual credit courses this spring, according to Francis Marions Director of Dual Enrollment Anna Todd. This is the largest number of students to participate since the programs launch in fall of 2019.

These high participation rates are a direct reflection of the quality educational experience students get in the program, Todd said. Dual enrollment exposes students to courses that are typically not offered in high school. It gives them the opportunity to have more challenging courses and gain college and high school credit at the same time. Having this take place somewhere like The Continuum makes it an experience students cannot get anywhere else.

The Continuum is a $25 million enterprise borne of a partnership among The Darla Moore Foundation, Francis Marion University and Florence-Darlington Technical College.

The facility is equipped with seven high-tech classrooms, three computer labs, three distance learning classrooms, large prep rooms for biology and chemistry labs, four workforce development classrooms, health science spaces and a large lecture hall that can also accommodate special events.

No other region in South Carolina has an educational partnership quite like this, offering a comprehensive array of curricular opportunities and career training choices. Thirteen high schools across the Pee Dee region participate in these programs.

Francis Marion University is proud of our strong partnership with the Darla Moore Foundation and Florence-Darlington Technical College, said Dr. Fred Carter, president of FMU. The educational opportunities for the students who study there are both unique and distinctive. So are the college and career choices open to them.

Florence-Darlington Technical College President Dr. Jermaine Ford said the dual enrollment program will continue to boost educational opportunities for students in the Pee Dee region.

Florence-Darlington Technical College is honored to work with Darla Moore and the Darla Moore Foundation at The Continuum in Lake City, Ford said. The Continuum has been wonderful for dual enrollment in the Pee Dee region, and it has played an integral role in FDTCs mission. FDTC and FMU will continue to work together to educate the region and support workforce and economic development. We are excited for what the future holds.

The Continuum was conceived as a hub for regional education and workforce development, focusing on advancing academic knowledge and the development of critically needed workplace specializations.

The curriculum is taught by faculty from FMU and FDTC. This includes courses that lead to two-year and four-year university degrees, dual enrollment instruction for high school students, workforce development certificate programs, and programs for K-12 students in science and innovation.

The Continuum also contains a business incubator managed by FMUs Kelley Center for Economic Development. No other region in South Carolina has this type of collaboration among a philanthropic foundation, comprehensive university and a technical college.
Jason Parker

Co-founder & President, Copperworks Distilling

Growing up in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Jason was a "back-to-the-land" kind of teenager who read Mother Earth News. One day he saw an ad that told him he could brew his own beer for .13 cents. This led to him and his friends forming Cripple Creek Brewing in his bedroom closet. He was hooked.

He moved to Washington and attended Evergreen College. While studying he learned about CAMRA, Campaign for Real Ales. In England, big breweries were buying up small breweries that had pubs. They would buy them and close the breweries, then sell their mass-produced beer in the pubs. In 1972, there was a consumer movement to save small breweries. The early microbrew scene began in the Northwest. Jason went to England, studied CAMRA, and met brewers.

Back in Seattle, he was in the University of Washington bookstore where he met a guy in a bow tie who asked him if he was a brewer and acknowledged that he "was involved in it." It turned out to be Charles Finkel. Jason was thrilled - Charles imported some of his favorite beers through is company Merchant du Vin. Charles introduced Jason to his wife Rose Ann who was working with a small brewery in Scotland, Traquair House. Jason pulled up his sweatshirt to reveal his Traquair House t-shirt. "There were three people who knew of Traquair House, and we were all in the bookstore at the same time," Jason laughs.

Charles asked Jason if he's like to interview for the brewer position at his new brewery at Pike Place Market. He did and was hired. He spent two years there until they had maxed out capacity. While they were building capacity, Jason returned to Evergreen to study microbiology and chemistry. When he graduated, they weren't ready, so he got a job at Fish Tale Ales in Olympia, training their first brewers. When he was done, Pike had filled all their positions, so he took a job at Redhook in Fremont. "It was eye opening; I had worked at small breweries and this was huge-like the second or third largest craft breweries. I took lots of ideas from them, but it wasn't for me. It was too big and not focused on new beers, mainly on mass production."

Hart Brewing had just taken a long lease at a location across from the Kingdome. This later became Pyramid Brewing Co. He spent seven years there as brew master, building it from the ground up. It was an empty shell when he started. Around 2000, Pyramid became publicly traded and in Jason's opinion, their mission changed from making the best beer they could to making shareholders wealthy. He was no longer consulted on making beer. His boss was let go and he reported to the guy who ran warehousing.

Jason had been exposed to use of software at Pyramid and was interested in IT. He left Pyramid and the brewing industry for seven years at ChemPoint, an outsourcing sales company as a business analyst. "I would help IT understand workers' needs and build solutions for them.

He decided to get his master's degree in IT Management at the University of Washington and was told that when in the program it wasn't a good idea to make major changes - don't get married, don't buy a house. So he did it all. He met his partner, and they bought a house. After graduating, he took a job at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where he stayed seven years.

At this point, he'd been away from brewing for 14 years. In 2008, Washington State began allowing craft distilling. "I looked at who was opening distilleries and they didn't have any experience in any facet of the process. They were Boeing engineers and hobbyists. I knew they'd build scrappy, small distilleries and grow in stages over years. I wasn't first, but I thought I could leap the line starting bigger quickly. I raised the money and found our waterfront location, leasing it in April of 2012.

In 2021, they began work on expansion to Kenmore (pub/restaurant, tasting room, production facility) and planning for a Seattle expansion next door to their current location for a restaurant and event space.

Copperworks Distilling Co.

1250 Alaskan Way

Seattle, WA 98101

206-504-7604

www.copperworksdistilling.com
 Rounding up some notable Sunday criminal justice reads | Main | Advocacy groups giving poor first-year grades to Prez Biden on criminal justice reform 

January 10, 2022

Spotlighting guideline circuit split, two Justices express "hope" US Commission will be back "in near future"

The Supreme Court issued this lengthy order list this morning which, as is typical, is mostly full of lots and lots of denials of certiorari. The Justices granted review in three cases (one involving habeas procedure) and called for the Solicitor General's views in two other cases. But, at the very end of the 24-page order list without much of interest for sentencing fans, was a notable short statement by Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Barrett, respecting the denial of certiorari in Guerrant v. US, No. 21-5099. Here are highlights:

This petition implicates a split among the Courts of Appeals over the proper definition of a controlled substance offense, and, accordingly, over which defendants qualify as career offenders.... Defendants in [most Circuits] qualify as career offenders for federal sentencing purposes even if their only prior offenses involved substances not prohibited under federal law. As a result, they are subject to far higher terms of imprisonment for the same offenses as compared to defendants similarly situated in the Second or Ninth Circuits. It is the responsibility of the Sentencing Commission to address this division to ensure fair and uniform application of the Guidelines. Cf. Braxton v. United States, 500 U.S. 344, 348 (1991). In March 2021, I wrote concerning an unresolved Circuit split over the proper interpretation of a Guideline. See Longoria v. United States, 592 U. S. ___. The Sentencing Commission lacked a quorum of voting members then, and it still does today. At this point, the Sentencing Commission has not had a quorum for three full years. As the instant petition illustrates, the resultant unresolved divisions among the Courts of Appeals can have direct and severe consequences for defendants sentences. I hope in the near future the Commission will be able to resume its important function in our criminal justice system.

I am intrigued and pleased to see Justice Barrett now joining Justice Sotomayor in flagging the need for a functioning US Sentencing Commission to address problematic circuit splits. But it bears noting that plenty of circuit splits, including this one, pre-date the USSC's loss of a quorum. Even when fully functioning, the USSC has never been able to resolve all challenging circuit conflicts, and I share Dawinder Sidhu's view that we should all "be troubled by the courts refusal to review conflicts involving the federal sentencing guidelines." (See full article here.)

I think it is the responsibility of the USSC and SCOTUS to help "ensure fair and uniform application of the Guidelines." And, as Justice Sotomayor notes, we are now a full three years into a quorum-less Commission and still do not even have Commissioner nominees. Moreover, even if Prez Biden were to nominate new Commissioners in the next few weeks (which seems unlikely) and the Senate were to confirm those nominees quickly (which seems unlikely), a new Commission could not "fix" this broken guideline until Nov 2022 at the earliest (and Nov 2023 or later is much more realistic). But SCOTUS could, and arguably should, "solve" this issue and others with a per curiam opinion that advances consistency for the time being subject to future review by a future Commission.

Because the Supreme Court has largely abdicated its role in guideline interpretation for over three decades now, I am not surprised that it is not now trying to fill the gap created by a quorum-less Commission. But I wish there were more than just a couple of Justices willing to do a lot more than just talk up their "hope" that another part of the federal judiciary would be able to soon help advance sentencing justice.

January 10, 2022 at 11:07 AM | Permalink

Comments

You're right that the lack of a quorum isn't the primary reason circuit splits aren't being resolved. I recently dealt with a circuit split over the meaning of "physically restrained" in the guidelines that's been active and explicitly identified for more than two decades. It's just more fun for the Sentencing Commission to add new sentencing enhancements and whatnot than to undertake the harder work of resolving circuit splits.

Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 10, 2022 1:40:58 PM

Sotomayor has little shameafter getting fact-checked by the Washington Post for her false claims at oral argumentshe has something to say Monday morning. Hard to take her seriously.

Dont get me wrongI do like that she often issues statements regarding cert denials, which is good for the federal court system, but after those gaffes at oral argumentshe should be spending her time getting up to speed on things.

Posted by: Federalist | Jan 10, 2022 2:59:54 PM

A couple of thoughts. First, more noteworthy than that two justices thought the absence of a Commission is worth briefly remarking upon is the fact that seven justices don't.

Second, once the Guidelines became an "apply them if you like and ignore them if you don't" contraption, courtesy of Booker, Gall and Kimbrough, the importance of the Commission nosedived. In theory, it could still have important work to do, to wit, putting some kind of teeth back in the Guidelines (as a passage in Booker almost invites Congress to do), but a Biden-appointed Commission will do no such thing. As for circuit splits, SCOTUS will have the final say, as ever.

The reason there's a push (almost exclusively from the Left, with a few exceptions) for a revived USSC is to have a Sentencing Suggestions Maybe If You Like Them official group to push a pro-criminal line, just as Justice Sotomayor is often fond of doing. But since the pro-criminal line already owns the large and loud precincts of legal academia, one must wonder whether such a Commission would be much more than redundant.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 10, 2022 3:18:42 PM

I remember back in the days when one of my hats as a county prosecutor was being the county counselor. At least once every two or three years, we had a work session to clean up loopholes that had arisen as creative people found a way to work around our county zoning ordinance.

So fixing problems with the guidelines should be something that the USSC does on a regular basis.

On the other hand, in other circumstances, when faced with a circuit split over the meaning of a regulation or a statute, I can't see the Supreme Court just saying that it would wait for Congress or the administrative agency to fix the issue.

Posted by: tmm | Jan 10, 2022 3:46:43 PM

I love how Otis started to take the position that the USSC is meaningless once his nomination fell through.

Posted by: AFPD | Jan 10, 2022 7:22:58 PM

Bill, how could the Commission on its own put teeth back into the Guidelines? How could Congress? I thought Booker held mandatory guidelines unconstitutional...

Posted by: Curious | Jan 10, 2022 9:04:01 PM

AFPD --

I know lying in court has become routine, but try not to let it spill over here. As no point did I say the USSC is meaningless. I said, to the contrary, "it could still have important work to do, to wit, putting some kind of teeth back in the Guidelines (as a passage in Booker almost invites Congress to do)..." A return to (at least) presumptive guidelines would be a big step forward for the rule of law over the rule of taste. As things stand now, we have let irrational disparity and much of the luck of the draw back into the system.

And I said all this in in a published article seven years BEFORE I was nominated or considered to be nominated (see: https://fedsoc.org/commentary/publications/the-slow-sad-swoon-of-the-sentencing-suggestions). Your statement that I took my position only as post-facto sour grapes (only "once his nomination fell through") is flagrantly and intentionally false. Not that this is new with your crowd. And not that you'll ever be nominated for beans, sonny.

No wonder you don't have even the minimal guts to sign your name.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 10, 2022 10:13:53 PM

Curious --

The Commission on its own cannot restore mandatory or presumptive guidelines, but can recommend this to Congress, which, as Booker notes, can adopt that recommendation. Making recommendations to Congress is an explicitly stated statutory mission of the USSC.

To oversimplify matters, the Booker Court held the guidelines unconstitutional (under Blakely) because they were mandatory AND kept the pre-existing preponderance standard even for sentencing beyond the statutory max. If Congress restored mandatory guidelines but made the govt prove the relevant aggravating factors beyond a reasonable doubt, it would satisfy Booker's analysis.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 10, 2022 10:19:59 PM

Thanks Bill and apologies for the unfair and inappropriate abuse you are subjected to on this board.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but didn't Booker also hold that the guidelines were unconstitutional because they were based on facts found by a judge, not a jury? So to make them mandatory again, wouldn't Congress not only have to raise the standard of proof to BRD, but also require the government to prove aggravating factors to a jury? At that point, they wouldn't really be sentencing guidelines anymore, they'd just be new crimes defined with much greater specificity and with much narrower sentencing ranges.

Posted by: Curious | Jan 11, 2022 10:42:52 AM

Theres no doubt that mandatory guidelines are unconstitutional.

Posted by: Federalist | Jan 11, 2022 11:11:47 AM

Huh, Federalist? Mandatory guidelines are perfectly constitutional under existing SCOTUS precedent if (but only when) their application complies with the Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights of proof BRD and a jury trial.

A number of states have extended those rights in response to Blakely (such as Minnesota), though many defendants (such as Derek Chauvin) waive their right to jury findings at the sentencing stage even if they sought a jury trial on basic guilt issues. Of course, most defendants in every US jurisdiction waive most of their Fifth/Sixth trial procedure rights, as the vast majority of criminal cases are resolved via plea bargains.

Though the too-intricate guidelines produced by the US Sentencing Commission are "advisory" after Booker, many defendants in federal court still face a more limited set of mandatory "guidelines" in the form of mandatory minimums for most drug offenses and others. Since Alleyne, these defendants clearly have Fifth and Sixth Amendments protections attaching to any necessary factfinding that impacts their applicable mandatory minimum sentencing terms. Because of a variety of formal and informal forms of sentence reductions only available to those who waive a lot of rights, most federal defendants waive their Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights even in the context of mandatory sentencing provisions (and they also waive many other procedural rights, like a statutory right to appeal/seek habeas).

One exception to all these rules concerns the "fact" of a prior conviction. There has been uncertainty about the reach of that exception for a couple of decades now, and SCOTUS might address this matter in the Wooden ACCA case this term.

Posted by: Doug B. | Jan 11, 2022 11:52:20 AM

Curious --

Thanks for your kind remarks. Doug has his reasons for allowing anonymous posts, but that allowance has drawbacks, illustrated inter alia by the guttersniping done by the person calling himself "AFPD." I very much hope he isn't actually an AFPD, and I doubt that he is. The ones I dealt with were more honest and professional.

My recollection of Booker, which is pretty good but not perfect at this point, is that the govt would need to prove the sentencing aggravators that take it above the maximum BRD but not necessarily to a jury. Indeed, a jury does not even exist in about 95% of the cases, which get plea bargained, i.e., the parties consent to judgement to be entered by the court. I think that, as long as the aggravator standard were set at BRD, my proposal would fly under Booker. (And my proposal is basically nothing more than the one Justice Stevens endorsed in his four-justice dissent to the remedial portion of Booker).

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 11, 2022 2:52:43 PM

Federalist and Doug --

I far more often agree with Federalist when he takes issue with Doug, but this time is different. There is no doubt that mandatory guidelines are not per se unconstitutional. As Doug notes, statutory mandatory minimums are constitutional (an issue I litigated more than once), and a fortiori, mandatory guidelines are as well, they being more flexible than the statutory MMs. The only requirement relevant to this discussion is that mandatory guidelines must provide that aggravators that would take the sentence above the maximum guideline range (which Blakely oddly denominates as the statutory maximum) must be proved BRD.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 11, 2022 3:06:01 PM

Bill, after the Alleyne decision in 2013, any fact that legally raises the maximum OR THE MINIMUM sentencing range must be proved by to a jury BRD (subject to defense waiver)

Posted by: Doug B. | Jan 11, 2022 7:27:05 PM

Doug --

In 95% of the cases (i.e., the 95% that get bargained), the parties are virtually always going to waive a jury determination, since that is the whole point of plea negotiations to begin with. In the other 5%, yes, the same jury that determined guilt will also have to determine the existence vel non of an above-the-maximum (or as you note, an enhanced minimum) aggravator.

Posted by: Bill Otis | Jan 11, 2022 9:30:02 PM

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Nebraska doctors are warning that treatments effective against the omicron variant of COVID-19 are in such short supply that not all of the high-risk patients who qualify for them are getting them.

The upshot: The treatments, some of which are new and promising, won't be an option in the near future for the vast majority of Nebraskans.

That means vaccination and boosters remain the best way to prevent serious illness, hospitalization and death.

While efforts are underway to bolster production of the treatments, ramping up to the point where they will make a difference during the omicron wave "is logistically just not going to be possible," said Dr. Mark Rupp, chief of the University of Nebraska Medical Centers infectious diseases division.

"I don't want folks to have the wrong idea that, 'Oh, they've got all these medicines that they can now treat people and either prevent them from getting more seriously ill, or if they are seriously ill we can rescue them in the hospital," Rupp said. "That's just not reality, unfortunately."

The warning comes as cases of COVID-19 in Nebraska jumped to 14,799 for the week ending Wednesday, more than double the 7,176 cases recorded during the previous seven-day stretch. The tally was the second-highest weekly total of the entire pandemic, just below the 15,348 cases recorded during the second week of October 2020.

COVID-19 hospitalizations, which lag infections by about two weeks, continued to tick up after a brief dip over the Christmas holiday, reaching 568 statewide Thursday. That included 352 in metro Omaha hospitals.

The state recorded 78 additional deaths during the past seven days, the highest weekly figure in exactly a year. It's not clear, however, whether those deaths, which also lag infections by weeks, are attributable to the delta variant or to omicron.

Dr. Barbie Young Gutshall, a physician in O'Neill, wrote in a social media post that the hospital there now has an entire wing of COVID-19 patients and that its family room had been turned into an infusion center.

She, too, stressed that health care providers soon would have next-to-nothing to offer patients because of the limited supply of therapies that can target omicron.

Rupp said some of the monoclonal antibodies that providers used successfully during prior waves to keep people with COVID-19 from become seriously ill are not effective against the omicron variant. That includes the infusion that became commonly known as the BAM drug.

The monoclonal therapy that is effective against omicron, called sotrovimab, is in short supply across the country. The state receives an allotment and parcels it out to providers across the state.

Nebraska Medicine, UNMC's clinical partner, posted Friday on Facebook that the health system currently receives enough of the therapy for about five people a day. But the hospital has 75 to 100 outpatients a day who meet federal criteria to receive intravenous infusions of the drug.

"We way outstrip the number of people who would meet the criteria for use," Rupp said.

CHI Health officials said their hospitals, too, have limited supplies of the treatment. The health system randomizes who will receive the infusions based on extensive criteria and a review by a multidisciplinary team.

"The best current treatment we have to recommend is that patients get vaccinated, and get a booster if previously vaccinated," CHI Health officials said in a statement.

Rupp said Nebraska Medicine also has enough of another long-acting therapy called evusheld to infuse between 50 and 100 high-risk people a week. That drug, a preventative, gives people about six months of antibody protection. The health system has about 10,000 patients who would qualify, with 1,000 in the highest-risk group. That group includes people who probably haven't mounted an immune response despite vaccination, a group that typically consists of transplant and high-risk cancer patients.

The health system also is starting to administer three days of intravenous remdesivir to outpatients. A recent study showing that the drug, which previously has been used in seriously ill patients who require oxygen support, could substantially decrease the risk of progression in high-risk patients. It's best used within five to seven days of infection.

But administering it is not easy. "We will be maxing out the number of infusion chairs in our infusion centers to give that," Rupp said.

Two new oral treatments also are available. The first, molnupiravir, prevents progression in about 30% of patients. Nebraska Medicine currently gets about 40 courses a week. "But by no means is it a game-changer," Rupp said.

Data suggests that the more promising of the two, paxlovid, is up to 90% effective in keeping people from becoming seriously ill and requiring hospitalization. Rupp said the hospital, to the best of his knowledge, has not received any doses of the drug.

The first doses of the drug apparently have been directed to clinics that serve those with limited access to health care, such as Omaha's OneWorld Community Health Centers and Charles Drew Health Center.

Andrea Skolkin, OneWorld's CEO, said the health center has received enough for four patients a day. More is coming, but officials don't know how much or when. The health center has to prioritize who receives it.

President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he had doubled the nation's order of the drug to at least 20 million courses and is accelerating delivery. The first 10 million courses are to be available by June and the rest by the end of September.

Meanwhile, health systems are bracing for more patients and urging Nebraskans to help head off a surge, namely by getting vaccinated and boosted, wearing quality, well-fitting masks in public and avoiding large crowds.

Jeremy Nordquist, president of the Nebraska Hospital Association, tweeted Tuesday that hospitalizations due to COVID-19 may double in Nebraska over the next two or three weeks.

"At the same time, hospital staffs will be limited due to COVID spread," wrote Nordquist, a former state senator. "This very well may be the worst of the pandemic. Nebraskans, you know how to help our hospitals & #HealthcareHeroes. Please do!"

Said Rupp, "There's a popular belief out there that omicron is very mild and that people don't have to worry about it. But the issue is there's just such a vast wave of folks who are sick that even if a much lower proportion of them get seriously ill and require hospitalization, it's going to still result in a very high crest of hospitalizations and a high stress level on the medical system."

World-Herald Staff Writer Henry J. Cordes contributed to this report.
Karin Norington-Reaves, the coordinator for federal workforce training for Chicago and suburban Cook County, on Sunday joined the growing list of contenders vying to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush in the new South Side and southwest suburban 1st Congressional District.

For the past 30 years, I have been focused on public service. I have served as a teacher in elementary schools. Ive been an attorney. And now, for the past decade, Ive been leading workforce development and watching our working families and all of the struggles that theyre enduring, said Norington-Reaves, 52, a resident of the Chatham neighborhood.

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I feel very strongly that my experience as an attorney, as a practitioner of workforce development, as someone whos had an intimate look at federal policy over the past decade, I feel I am well suited to represent the citizens of the first district in Congress, she said.

Karin Norington-Reaves, CEO of Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership, answers questions during a news conference in Chicago on Sept. 14, 2020. Norington-Reaves has announced her candidacy for the 1st Congressional District. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

Norington-Reaves joins a field for the Democratic nomination that already includes 3rd Ward Ald. Pat Dowell, who was the first to announce after Rush said last week he would retire at the end of his term in January. Previously announced candidates include Kirby Birgans, a Chicago teacher, Pastor Chris Butler, community activist Jahmal Cole, educator Dee Nix and attorney Michael Thompson.

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The field for the June 28 primary is expected to expand even further as several elected officials and community activists and leaders look at the rare chance to compete for an open seat in Congress in a safely Democratic district. Rush is stepping down next January when his term expires after 30 years in Congress.

Norington-Reaves has served as head of the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership since it was formed in July 12 as part of a collaborative effort between County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel to centralize and streamline workforce development efforts.

She previously served as deputy director of urban assistance in the state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, a lawyer in the civil division of the U.S. Department of Justice and in the Maryland attorney generals office, and as a lobbyist in Illinois for the Citizens Utility Board, among other roles.

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Norington-Reaves said she would stress to the districts voters her role in connecting people to jobs, saying her work at the workforce partnership has placed about 100,000 people in meaningful, lasting employment.

I have to differentiate myself by connecting with the voters. And that means raising funds to amplify my message. It means getting out in the community and all of the communities, not just in the city of Chicago, but in suburban Cook County and all the way down to Will County, she said.

It means connecting with those folks, listening to them, understanding the issues that are most pressing to them, and helping them see the connection between my experience and what theyre struggling with and my capacity to actually bring about solutions and bring resources to bear, she said.

Norington-Reaves said that if shes elected, her priority would be to try to improve the quality of life for working families. But she said efforts to curb gun violence deserve special attention.

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We have got to get these illegal guns off the streets. Weve got to have tougher gun laws. Theres no reason in the world a civilian should be carrying a military-grade weapon, she said. We absolutely have to change the laws so that we can create safer communities.
Bob Saget, the actor-comedian known for his role as beloved single dad Danny Tanner on the sitcom "Full House" and as the wisecracking host of "America's Funniest Home Videos," has died, according to authorities in Florida. He was 65.

The Orange County, Florida, sheriff's office was called Sunday about an "unresponsive man" in a hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, according to a sheriff's statement on Twitter.

"The man was identified as Robert Saget" and death was pronounced at the scene, the statement said, adding that detectives found "no signs of foul play or drug use in this case.

Saget was in Florida as part of his "I Don't Do Negative Comedy Tour," according to his Twitter feed.

Fellow comedians and friends praised Saget not only for his wit, but his kindness.

"I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him," wrote John Stamos, who co-starred with Saget on "Full House. "I love you so much Bobby."

Norman Lear, who called Saget a close friend, wrote the comedian "was as lovely a human as he was funny. And to my mind, he was hilarious."

"In often a ruthless business he was historically not just hilarious but more importantly one of the kindest human beings I ever met in my career," actor Richard Lewis wrote on Twitter.

Saget's publicist didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Saget, also the long-time host of "America's Funniest Home Videos," played squeaky clean Danny Tanner, a widower and father to three young girls, on "Full House," the ABC sitcom that also brought fame to the Olsen twins when it debuted 1987.

Saget the stand-up showed his flip side with what become a much-talked-about cameo in the 2005 documentary "The Aristocrats"  in which 100 comics riffed on the world's dirtiest joke  that revealed his notoriously filthy sense of humor.

As Saget recalled the Jake Tapper in a July 2021 interview, the track of his career was unexpected.

"'Full House' was an accident," he said. "I got fired on CBS and was asked to be in 'Full House.'"

The sitcom, which starred Candace Cameron Bure, Jodie Sweetin and twins Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen in one role, ran for eight seasons. It lived on in syndication with strong enough nostalgia surrounding it that Netflix picked up a spin-off in 2016, "Fuller House," starring Bure but featuring frequent appearances from original stars, including Saget, Dave Coulier and John Stamos. It ran for five seasons, concluding in 2020.

"I'm close with all the kids. It doesn't happen a lot in the world where you stay close with all the people," Saget told Tapper. "We're an unusual cast in that way that I have been able to remain close with everybody, because I don't take eight years of my life lightly and then the other five or six years, six seasons."

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SIOUX CITY -- Music director Sandra Pearson was all smiles while conducting her choir through a riveting rendition of Percy Grey Jr.'s "Heal the Land."

"We've got to heal the land because there is a whole lot of hurt going on," she said in the middle of a Jan. 6 rehearsal. "My prayer is to heal the land."

A veteran church music director, Pearson will be conducting an all-community choir honoring the life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as part of Siouxland's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration.

The event, which includes speakers and local dignitaries, will be held at 7 p.m. Jan. 17 at Kingdom Ministries Church, 2000 Military Rd., for the very first time, according to the Rev. Afolabi Ehikioya.

"We are honored to host this year's Martin Luther King Day celebration," Ehikioya, a native of Nigeria, explained. "It will allow many people to see our church."

Kingdom Ministries, a new nondenominational Pentecostal church, moved into the building, which previously housed Concordia Lutheran Church, in October 2021.

"The community has opened its heart for me and my family," Ehikioya, who had previously been a pastor in Tampa, Florida, said. "We want to return the love."

The MLK Community Choir, a staple at every Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, is made up of choir members from a number of local churches in addition to people simply wanting to participate.

"Everybody is invited to join our choir, regardless of race or religion," Pearson. "It isn't a Black thing or a white thing. We can all learn from the legacy of Dr. King."

For many years, Siouxland's annual MLK activities have been a passion for Pearson and her husband Andrew Pearson, who are both longtime Sioux City Community School District employees.

"Originally, we celebrated Dr. King's birthday during an annual program held at East Middle School," Andrew Pearson explained. "I credit people like (former East Middle School Principal) Tom Peterson, (former outreach specialist) Tito Parker and (former Sioux City School Superintendent) Larry Williams for helping to get the ball rolling."

Since then, the Martin Luther King Day celebration, now sponsored by the Sioux City NAACP chapter, the Human Rights Commission and Mary Treglia Community House, has become a community-wide party, complete with prominent speakers and special musical guests.

"For as long as he's been in town, (current Sioux City Community School District Superintendent) Paul Gausman has played drums for us," Andrew Pearson said. "If Dr. Gausman is free, he said he'll always be our drummer. He's actually very good at it."

But it is also students who deserve a special shout out, according to Andrew Pearson.

"It is the young people who are our future," he said. "East Middle School students continue to be a part of the MLK program to this day."

According to Sandra Pearson, MLK's calls for unity are as relevant now than they've ever been.

"We need unity because we are all in this together," Pearson said, quoting from Hezekiah Walker's spiritual "I Need to Survive." "I pray for you, you pray for me. I love you, I need you to survive. I won't harm you with words from my mouth. I love you, I need you to survive."

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A 42-year-old Mundelein-area man was killed Sunday night when he was run over by two cars as he lay in the roadway on Illinois Route 83, according to the Lake County sheriffs office.

The identity of the man has not been released.

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Police said he had been at a bar near the intersection of Illinois 60/83 and Taylor Lake Road, near Diamond Lake, and was likely walking home at around 10:50 p.m. Sunday. For an unknown reason, police said, he laid down in the southbound lane of the highway and was subsequently struck by two motorists, neither of whom was hurt.

The man was wearing dark, non-reflective clothing, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

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An autopsy has been scheduled, and authorities are continuing to investigate.
The Wyoming Republican Party apparatus includes people who are quite radical, Rep. Liz Cheney said Thursday.

Cheney made the comment on the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The lawmaker gave multiple interviews that day, while also observing a moment of silence in the House of Representatives.

Since the attack, Cheney has steadfastly insisted former President Donald Trump helped to incite the riot, which occurred as Congress worked to certify the presidential election. That criticism, and her vote to impeach Trump, prompted serious blowback within Wyoming.

In early 2021, the state party voted to censure her for her vote to impeach Trump. More recently, the Wyoming GOP narrowly voted to unrecognize Cheney.

There are people in the state party apparatus of my home state who are quite radical. And some of those same people include people who were here on Jan. 6th, include a party chair who has toyed with the idea of secession, Cheney said in a Fox News interview Thursday. So, there is a very radical element of the Republican Party in the same way that there is a radical element of the Democratic Party.

Cheney was referencing Wyoming GOP chairman Frank Eathorne, who alluded to secession in an interview last year and was at the rally outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, which he termed peaceful and patriotic, in statement released shortly afterward.

Eathorne was not the only Wyoming Republican present at the Capitol that day: Cheyenne businessman Darin Smith, who sought at one point to unseat Cheney in Augusts Republican primary, attended as well. Smith previously told the Star-Tribune that he does not regret attending, but also clarified that he did not storm the Capitol building.

The Republican Party plans to issue a statement on Cheneys comments about the chairman.

It is clear where the state party stands on Cheney already.

To further her own personal political agenda, Representative Liz Cheney has not only caused massive disruption, distraction and division within the House Republican Conference, but has also willingly, happily, and energetically joined forced with and proudly pledged allegiance to democrat Speaker of the House Pelosi, as a means of serving her own personal interests while ignoring the interests, needs and expectations of Wyoming Republicans, the resolution that unrecognized her stated.

As Cheneys reelection year kicks off, the interviews she gave on Jan. 6 indicate that she remains committed to the approach shes employed for the past 12 months: slamming Trump for lying about the 2020 presidential election and his role in the Capitol riot. Those comments have come with consequences, including losing her leadership position in the House.

I think that is really important when you have somebody who has demonstrated his lack of fidelity to the Constitution, someone whos at war with the rule of law, you cannot entrust that person with the power of the presidency ever again, Cheney said in an interview on the anniversary. And I think its critically important for the Republic that he not be anywhere close to the Oval Office ever again.

Cheneys continued rebukes of Trump has prompted praise from Democrats, which anti-Cheney Republicans have harped on. For example, Vice President Kamala Harris said in an interview that she applaud[s] her courage.

Harriet Hageman, the Trump-endorsed candidate against Cheney, used the vice presidents comments in a campaign message released Friday.

Good for Liz Cheney that Kamala Harris is happy with her work in Congress, because Wyoming sure isnt, Hageman said in a statement. Cheney is trying to get another bite at the apple in her vendetta against President Trump after her vote to impeach him failed to remove him from office.

Outside of the numerous interviews Cheney did on the anniversary, she and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, were the only two Republicans in the House for a moment of silence commemorating the Capitol attack.

Dick Cheney, a Wyoming political icon who is largely abhorred by the left wing for his role in the Iraq War, was warmly greeted by Democrats at the House, The New York Times reported.

When asked about Republican leaderships response to the attack on the Capitol, Dick Cheney replied Its not a leadership that resembles any of the folks I knew when I was here for 10 years.

My daughter can take care of herself, he added, when asked about Republican leaderships treatment of her.

Criticism of Trump has made Cheneys reelection effort difficult. In the past, shes coasted to reelection. This time, she faces a formidable challenge from Hageman.

According to recent polling, Trump remains the front-runner for the Republican nomination if he elects to run again.

Follow state politics reporter Victoria Eavis on Twitter @Victoria_Eavis

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Beginning his eighth and last year as governor, Pete Ricketts is focused on his final agenda  and it looks largely familiar.

A limited and disciplined state budget, and some additional targeted tax relief with an emphasis on property taxes. But investment in the state's natural resources is also on the list now with a billion federal dollars sitting on the table in the form of pandemic recovery funds.

Although Ricketts is cautious in identifying the specific projects he may support in advance of the unveiling of his final state budget proposal and subsequent State of the State address to the Legislature on Thursday, he has been meeting with the Legislature's adventurously-named STARWARS committee as it develops a package of water resource development proposals for senators to consider.

An intriguing new project on that study committee's list of potential targets is development of a large new lake between Lincoln and Omaha.

It has emerged as a new possibility on a list of water development projects that could be initiated with federal pandemic funding, all of which promise a lasting impact on recreation, tourism, flood control, economic development and water sustainability in the state.

Already targeted by the legislative committee are projects at Lake McConaughy near Ogallala and at Lewis and Clark Lake and Niobrara State Park in northeast Nebraska.

Answers to his position on the water resources development proposals may be revealed at a news conference including STARWARS committee members Monday afternoon.

During each of his eight years as governor, Ricketts scheduled a series of separate interviews with members of the Capitol news media in conjunction with the beginning of the legislative session.

This year's sit-down was held in the Governor's Hearing Room rather than in his office, with Ricketts carefully distanced and wearing a mask because of his recent exposure to someone who contracted the coronavirus.

Tax relief appeared to top his priorities for the final year of his final term.

And property taxes were first on his list.

"We've provided $2 billion in tax relief in this biennium," the governor said, with more than $1.9 billion in direct property tax relief dominating that total.

"That's a big deal," Ricketts said, "but we have more work to do."

Workforce development, corporate tax reduction, continued expansion of rural broadband service, construction of a new state prison and pro-life legislation are on his final-year agenda, he said.

The governor is also focused on a proposal to limit the growth of local government spending, primarily in public schools, to 3% annually, as an additional means of securing property tax relief.

"We've been able to accomplish a lot even with the pandemic," Ricketts said in answer to a question about how COVID-19 has impacted his governorship.

"Over the last two years, the people of Nebraska have done a wonderful job" of dealing with COVID-19, he said. "My administration took a balanced approach," Ricketts said, balancing restrictions with an effort to "let people live normal lives."

"I asked Nebraskans to do the right thing and they did," Ricketts said, allowing the state to continue to navigate its way through the pandemic in a manner that led a scorecard of states compiled by Politico last month.

"If every category were given equal weight  which assumes each priority was of equivalent importance, a policy choice in itself  the top scorer overall would be Nebraska, with an average of 73 out of 100, despite scoring below the national average in the social well-being category," the Politico analysis concluded.

Ricketts has been unwilling to venture into any discussion about his future plans until his work as governor is done, but he did acknowledge in answer to a question that he would prefer to remain in the public sector rather than return to the private sector, where he worked as an executive at Ameritrade before his election as governor in 2014.

"I love being involved in the public sector," he said. "We'll see what happens down the road."

Reach the writer at 402-473-7248 or dwalton@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSdon

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DES MOINES -- With lopsided majorities in the House and Senate, Iowa Republicans gathering Monday in Des Moines for the launch of the 2022 legislative session are likely to launch more than one moon shot.

GOP legislative leaders are planning what they call a moon shot tax-cut plan that eventually would eliminate the states personal income tax. But their appetites may not stop there.

I think there's going to be an effort to push for everything that's on the agenda, University of Northern Iowa political scientist Chris Larimer said about the session. I think they're going to push on tax cuts, maybe more easing of gun restrictions and kind of waiting and seeing what they're going to do on abortion in anticipation of a U.S. Supreme Court decision later this spring on a Mississippi abortion law.

I cant fathom theres a world in which the majority party doesnt use this election-year session to attack womens rights more, House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst, D-Windsor Heights, predicted. They just cant help themselves.

Still, Larimer said, even with majorities of 60-40 in the House and 32-18 in the Senate, Republicans may not get everything they want because of differences within their own party.

At this point, a lot ideas are being floated. A proposal such as cutting or eliminating income taxes has broad but not unanimous support among Republicans. Proposals to further restrict access to abortion, to prohibit employers from mandating employees practice health measures such as vaccinations and to bring criminal charges against teachers and librarians who make available books that the some legislators deem to be obscene face longer odds.

Without commenting on any specific proposal, House Speaker Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford, told reporters that just because one bill gets filed doesn't mean that it always is going to make it all the way through the Legislature.

In addition to lawmakers personal agendas and the priorities already outlined by leaders, the 2022 session will be influenced by election-year politics. All 100 House seats are up for grabs this year. Due to redistricting, its likely more than half the 50 Senate seats will be on the ballot. The exact number wont be known until the filing deadline March 18.

Republican leaders downplay the impact of November elections, saying it will be business as usual for them.

I think it's going to be largely what you've seen the last five years, said Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny. We started a vision for Iowa to implement pro-growth policies and put us on a direction that we thought was the right direction for this state.

Like previous sessions when Republicans were in control, Whitver said 2022 will be about passing laws and bills and initiatives that Iowans want. Thats why Republicans have their large majorities, Grassley added.

Democrats believe the GOP is confusing what their corporate donors are telling them with what the public wants.

My job is to remind Iowans every chance I get that Republicans campaign in moderation and govern in the extreme, Konfrst said. They come out saying I care about child care, I care about mental health, and then they get to the floor and its a completely different ballgame. Whenever they dont involve us, whenever they do legislation that doesnt have bipartisan support, were going to point out why and were going to spend time letting Iowans know whats really happening up here.

Senate Minority Leader Zach Wahls, D-Coralville, thinks GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds and legislative Republicans will give his party plenty to talk about. Hes calling on legislators to focus on the state's number one problem  the Kim Reynolds workforce crisis.

Small businesses are having trouble staying open, maintaining hours and struggling to hire new employees, Wahls said. Schools are having larger class sizes or canceling classes altogether because of teacher shortages and the inability to operate buses. Hospitals are desperate for more staff. All of these problems are a direct result of the Kim Reynolds workforce crisis.

Unfortunately, the Republican response to the Reynolds workforce crisis is to try and distract Iowans by focusing their rhetoric on banning books, putting teachers and librarians behind bars, lying about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack and taking away Iowans freedoms, liberties and civil rights, he said.

If the first thing a person sees when they Google Iowa is a story about book banning, about the constitutional amendment for abortion, for guns  I think that makes the Kim Reynolds workforce crisis worse, not better, Wahls said.

He may have a point, Larimer said.

They could, potentially, go too far. There could be damage, perhaps to the reputation of the state, Larimer said. If there's a sense that Iowas really out of touch on certain things and it affects businesses or business investments, then I think there's potential that the maybe go too far.

They're always concerned about elections, but there are larger concerns about how Iowa is perceived by others, Larimer said. That could that have long-term effects.

Its hard to measure the impact of the election on the session, but its heightened this year because of redistricting that redrew legislative election boundaries to reflect population changes over the past decade. Many lawmakers will running for re-election in unfamiliar districts. Some will face fellow party members in primaries. And some will be facing another incumbent in the general election.

In addition to dealing with tax cuts and budget decisions, and issues ranging from broadband and child care to workforce housing and confronting coronavirus issues, many lawmakers will be trying to figure out how's my district changed? How do I campaign in this in this new district? said Tim Storey, executive director of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

There's potential for a great deal of change, Storey said, because in the election after redistricting, turnover spikes from around 18 to about 25 percent.

Theres an old maxim that the party in power legislates cautiously in an election year. But I don't know how much that rule applies anymore, that you don't want to do anything super-controversial in an election year, Larimer said.

Republicans may stop short of doing anything that will harm the states reputation or make it harder to attract investments, he said.

But in terms of pushing their party platform, I would expect them to continue to push and to push pretty hard, Larimer said.

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State officials unveiled proposals Monday for $700 million in water resource development in Nebraska, pointing to the vital importance of water in securing the state's agricultural and economic development future.

Gov. Pete Ricketts announced that the state is notifying Colorado that Nebraska plans to proceed with a $500 million plan of developing a canal and reservoir system to capture water from the South Platte River, exercising its legal right to that water flow from Colorado under a 1923 compact between the states.

The directive comes in response to plans in Colorado to capture that water with as many as 300 projects before it is allowed to flow into Nebraska, the governor said.

At the same time, Speaker of the Legislature Mike Hilgers of Lincoln unveiled recommendations from a legislative study committee for $200 million in water development projects, including creation of a 7-mile-long lake between Lincoln and Omaha.

Other projects recommended by the Legislature's so-called STAR WARS Committee would fund improvements at Lake McConaughy in Keith County, along the Lower Niobrara River in northern Knox County and along the Lower Platte River near Schuyler.

The proposed new lake between Lincoln and Omaha would be 4,000 acres in size. That compares to the 3,600 acres at Lake Okoboji in Iowa, a popular vacation and recreation destination for Nebraskans.

Hilgers stressed that the new lake, which would be 30-to-35-foot deep, would not dam the Platte River and would not impact Ashland, proactively answering any fears that the project would be akin to earlier proposals that would have had that impact.

Ricketts dodged a question as to whether he will support the committee's recommendations with a suggestion to "stay tuned" for the budget proposals that he will present to the Legislature on Thursday.

Hilgers said the timeline for the proposed lake and other projects would depend on funding decisions.

The lake, along with the other projects, are viewed as opportunities for economic development, tourism, recreation, flood control and water resource sustainability.

The committee is seeking funding from a billion-dollar pot of federal pandemic recovery money allocated to Nebraska.

Ricketts centered on the development of a canal and reservoir system along the South Platte River, pointing to the impact on irrigation, drinking water, the ability to generate electric power and its environmental impact.

Projects now in the planning stage in Colorado could result in a nearly 90 percent reduction in water flows coming into Nebraska, he said.

"They fired the first shot," Attorney General Doug Peterson said, pointing to Colorado's decision to attempt to capture the water before it entered Nebraska.

"We're notifying Colorado that we're moving forward with this process," he said.

Ricketts launched the news conference, which included members of the legislative committee, with the statement: "After her people, water is Nebraska's greatest resource."

Today's officeholders need to "assure access to water resources for generations to come," he said.

Projects proposed by a unanimous vote of the legislative committee include development of a new marina at Lake McConaughy along with roadway improvements and development of an iconic gateway entrance; development of an event center and lodge at Niobrara State Park along with marina expansion and retrofit and a landing boat launch; and flood mitigation jetty repairs and Wahoo Creek flood control along the Lower Platte River.

Those projects, along with creation of the proposed lake between Lincoln and Omaha, would generate an estimated $5.6 billion in regional economic impact during construction and more than $150 million in annual regional economic impact, the committee stated.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7248 or dwalton@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSdon

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The Nebraska State Patrol is investigating alleged online threats reported by State Sen. Julie Slama after she introduced a bill seeking to ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected.

Slama, of Sterling, took to Twitter on Thursday and wrote: Its fascinating to see the death threats, rape threats, & sexually explicit comments sent by self-proclaimed feminists to me, a female state senator, because I introduced a #prolife Heartbeat Bill.

On Friday, Slama said on Twitter that she had reported threats to the patrol.

A patrol spokesman confirmed that the agency received a report Friday morning and said an investigation is ongoing.

Slama provided The World-Herald with photos of one email, one Facebook comment, one direct message on Twitter and six tweets that she received and reported.

Among the photos provided, one includes the word rape. An email with the subject line rape and incest asks Slama, so your future daughter gets raped and impregnated by your future husband, she should have to carry the baby to term?

One Twitter user said Slama has a great face to curb stomp. Another said that they would get pregnant just to leave the fetus on Slamas doorstep. In direct messages on Twitter, one user said die.

One of the reported tweets is a photo of a monkey holding a gun with the text this is a threat on the image.

The Nebraska Family Alliance, the Nebraska Catholic Conference and Nebraska Right to Life issued a joint statement condemning the violent threats and messages.

No public official, or any person regardless of their stance on any issue, deserves to have their human dignity degraded and disrespected in such a way, they said. We are proud to support Senator Slama in her legislation to help create a state where every unborn life is celebrated, valued and protected.

Slama introduced Legislative Bill 781  referred to as the heartbeat bill  on the first day of the legislative session. If passed, it would make abortions illegal after a fetal heartbeat is detectable, which usually occurs around six weeks of pregnancy.

There is a medical exemption in the bill that would allow abortion to save the life of the mother. There are no exceptions for rape or incest.

In addition to Slama, the bill currently has 20 co-sponsors. In a statement after introducing the bill, Slama said the legislation is an absolute necessity to protect innocent life.

While abortion opponents cheered the legislation, abortion rights advocates warned that the bill was a red alarm and said the legislation violates current U.S. Supreme Court precedent established in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

But the future of Roe is uncertain. The court is currently weighing a case involving a Mississippi abortion law, and the ruling could lead to the overturning of Roe.

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On a table in downtown Cairo, Fady Francis, 30, aligns miniature sculptures of 100 influential world figures, standing side by side in harmony, although the figures were from different cultures, spoke different languages and lived in different eras in history.



These statues and busts are carved by Francis as part of his 100-figure sculpture project that he has been working on over the past three years and expects to display in exhibitions in Egypt and abroad later this year.

Among the miniature sculptures are the mummy of Egypt's ancient King Ramses II lying down in a little coffin and the bust of China's philosopher Confucius, surrounded by statues and busts of Egyptian writer Taha Hussein, India's Rabindranath Tagore, German-born physicist Albert Einstein, Austria's composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso.

"They gather together in one place regardless of their different languages and cultures," the Egyptian artist and journalist told Xinhua, stressing that it is the theme of his project.

Francis said his choice of Taha Hussein was because he was one of the most influential Egyptian writers in the 20th century and was referred to as "the Dean of Arabic Literature," although he became blind in his early childhood.

"He was a figure that defied all difficult conditions and his influence wasn't restricted to Egypt but extended to the world," he added.

Francis said the bust of Confucius was one of his lastest works, noting that he visited China in 2017 and was impressed by its culture and architecture.

"He (Confucius) is a Chinese philosopher whose thoughts influenced humanity. His works were translated into different languages across the world. I chose him as a symbol of Chinese culture, thought and philosophy," Francis told Xinhua.

Francis started learning to paint since childhood, and was inspired by the ancient Egyptian artistic antiquities in the monument-rich province of Luxor, where he was born and grew up.

Three years ago, his interest turned to sculpture. Now he uses polymer clay as the main material of his sculptures, whose heights vary between 8 and 18 cm, shaping them with simple sculpting tools such as a toothpick and a needle, and using a magnifying glass to be able to take care of the smallest details.

Some of the miniature statues are sculptured in a caricature-based style with bigger heads, while the focus of some busts is on the details of the facial features such as those of Confucius and Tagore, according to the artist.

Although the first year under the COVID-19 pandemic was difficult for the world, Francis took the global lockdown that followed as a "chance" to improve his sculpturing skills and managed to finish 60 miniature sculptures in 2020.

"I believe that art is a message of peace that unites all human beings despite their different cultures and languages," the artist told Xinhua.
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For the past few months, Simon van Zuylen-Wood has been trying to get inside the head of one guy: Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance. Vance has interested me ever since his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, was published in 2016, van Zuylen-Wood said. Everybody was talking about Hillbilly Elegy, whether they loved it or hate it. He had this Virgil-like identity.

The reason van Zuylen-Wood has been trying to understand Vances motivations now is that this genial translator for the white working class sounds really different these days. Back when his book first came out, Vance was happy to pen essays saying Donald Trump offered the white working class an easy escape from the pain. He actually called Trump an opioid. In his harsher moments, Vance simply called Trump an idiot.

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Now that hes running for Senate, though? Vances approach has changed. Consider his comments over the summer about Trump. Its really stark to see the transformation, van Zuylen-Wood said.

On Mondays episode of What Next, I spoke with van Zuylen-Wood about J.D. Vances transformation. His shift may look opportunistic, but van Zuylen-Wood says that it can actually help explain the way the Republican Party is turning itself inside outtrying to conform to the Trump playbook and escape it, at the same time. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Mary Harris: The internet started laughing at the idea of J.D. Vance as a Senate candidate from the moment he declared. Theres this little clip of video that went viral from his announcement speech. Vance is standing at a podium, with a campaign sign stuck to it. It says, JD Vance, conservative outsider. And just as he gets to telling everyone what hes about to do, that sign falls off the podium. A few days later, Vance started showing up on Fox News, swearing loyalty to Donald Trump, the president hed once compared to a drug dealer.

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Simon van Zuylen-Wood: If the pressure on him in Washington, in New York, and in San Francisco was not to be pro-Trump, the pressure in a Republican primary is to be pro-Trump. So he deleted all the stuff where he was criticizing Trump, and all of a sudden he reverses himself, publicly, and says, I take it back. Actually, I was wrong. I am pro-Trump now.

And then he adopted this aggressive, almost bellicose, online personathis pugilistic persona where hes doing war with liberals online all the time.

But J.D. Vances Senate run has been fueled by an emerging intellectual movement on the right, and by watching Vance over the past few years, you can see this evolution happening.

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Before he declared for Senate, if you followed essays he would write or TV appearances or his Twitter feed, you could see that actually he had been moving further and further away from the center-right establishment politics that everybody assumed he had when the memoir came out. He was allying himself with a populist strain of the right that intersects with certain populist strains of the left.

What did that sound like?

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It sounded like he opposed Trumps tax cut. He would rail against Thatcherite, Reaganite conservatism. He would talk about the need for tariffs. He would talk about the need for generous family subsidies.

There was a kind of Bernie SandersmeetsEdmund Burke populist conservatism that he started articulating publicly.

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This worldview has become known as NatCon, or national conservatism. Can you define this emerging ideology?

I can try. Ill start by describing it as an intellectual version of Trumpism. That may sound like a contradiction in terms, but its a Trump-era attempt to reorient the Republican Party away from free markets and interventionist foreign policy. Thats the baseline.

Its basically a populist intellectual persuasion on the right that is nationalist about trade and borders, skeptical of big business. It tacks left on economics compared with the mainstream Republican Party, but probably a little right on cultural and social issues than the kind of pro-business Republican right.

It is not represented heavily in Congress at all. Id say the two figures most associated with it are Sens. Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley. It does have a champion, though, in Tucker Carlson on Fox News, who is the most prominent figure associated with national conservatism.

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Its funny. Right after Rush Limbaugh died, I did an interview with someone who basically said, This is how Rush Limbaugh was going.

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Thats fascinating. I dont follow Limbaugh closely. I didnt know that at all. Thats potentially extremely telling, that somebody like Limbaugh, who has repeated the mainstream cut taxes, support business conservatism, was trending in that direction. And it might say a lot about the intellectual currents on the right right now.

The funny thing about this emerging camp is it reminded a colleague of mine of Liz Lemons terrible boyfriend on 30 Rock, which was a laugh line when this was on national television, because this was a category that did not exist then.

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Right? Totally.

But it does now.

Thats a great point. The classic formulation is the inverse of that, right? The Mike Bloombergstyle Im a fiscal conservative, social liberal. The irony is that that viewpoint is totally overrepresented in establishment or elite spaces. So the fiscally liberal social conservative or social moderate is kind of the mainstream default American position. And its fascinating if you think about American politicsthis is sort of how Trump won and caught people by surprise, which is that he married these things that were not seen as going together at all. But if you listen to the NatCons, they basically argue that its way more intuitive to marry social conservatism and economic liberalism than it is to try to fuse it the other way around.

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For now, is this ideology mostly rhetorical? Are there policies or proposals I would recognize as in keeping with what the NatCons are advocating for?

Its mostly rhetorical in the sense that most of its proponents are extremely online right-wing intellectuals. So if you spend a lot of time on NatCon Twitter, which is definitely a thing, you start to see all these splinter movements within the splinter movement. You see all this infighting, like any Twitter community. Theres a dense quarterly journal that informs their policies. Theres a new think tank that is affiliated with national conservatism. But again, its presence in Congress is minuscule.

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Now, if you get into whats actually happening in Congress, its kind of mixed. So I would say that if you want to take the argument that actually these people are all talk, you could look at the fact that Marco Rubio, who talks a big game on this stuff, ended up voting for Trumps corporate tax cut. If you want to take the more charitable view that actually there is something behind it, you could take the view that Marco Rubio spearheaded the [Paycheck Protection Program] in Congress after the pandemic. You could look at the fact that Josh Hawley sponsored and wrote a big antitech monopoly, anti-Amazon bill. Mitt Romney, whos a kind of NatCon junior memberwhich is ironic because hes exactly the type of conservative these people always hatedauthored a pretty widely praised family subsidy plan that would have paid families up to $15,000 a year to help support child-rearing costs. And so there actually are these interesting feints at economic liberalism that are happening among the NatCons. But the question is: How serious are they, or how much power do they really have to tilt the direction of the Republican Party this way? Because the headwinds are still completely in the opposite direction.

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Part of the reason that national conservatism may seem like an odd fit for someone like J.D. Vance is that Vance spent the early part of his career chasing a pretty traditional group of mentors. He started an investment fund that collected money from Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Eric Schmidt of Google, and the Walton family, the founders of Walmart. These are not necessarily people who are looking to shake up the status quo. But if you look closely, you can see the ways Vance has been interested in changing the way elite institutions work.

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One very unexpected and interesting origin point actually dates back a decade ago to when he was at Yale Law School, of all places. So he went to see a speech by the billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who is seen as a backer of a lot of the NatCon infrastructure and is backing not just Vance but another NatCon-affiliated Senate candidate in Arizona. Thiel, before he was more affiliated with politics, was largely known as a critic of technological stagnation.

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And he argued to these Yale kids, Hey, this rat race youre in, looking for clerkships and corporate law jobs, its actually related to the fact that technological stagnation in this country isnt producing growth. Youre all competing for the same jobs on the same coasts in the same communities. Vance ends up connecting this critique with his own feelings about his community being left behindthis Rust Belt manufacturing base of Southwest Ohio being depleted by globalization and by automation. And he decides that its not a coincidence that theres this credentialized rat race going on in his universe and that all the jobs are concentrated on the coasts and in the big cities. And so he starts thinking about this through the vein of tech.

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He joins a venture capitalist fund thats premised on trying to seed startups based in flyover country, basically. And then he starts his own VC firm premised on the same. And so he actually tries to marry this tech zillionaire vision with his populism. And thats one of the seeming contradictions that leads into his current Senate race.

I was struck by this one scene in your reporting where J.D. Vance has just spoken at a conservative conference, and he gave a speech that was titled Universities Are the Enemy. And all I could think when I read that was this is a guy who went to Yale Law School, who has benefited from all of the education and connections that a fancy university degree gives you. Did that strike you too?

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One interesting way of looking at Vance is that hes a veteran code switcher. I think hes always felt alienated in both worlds he belonged to. And you saw this as early as the memoir. The memoir was, in some ways, a critique of the place he came from and an appreciation for the world he ascended to. One of the reasons a lot of people on the left criticized it is that they thought he was being too harsh on his own people. And one of the interesting developments thats happening is that hes gone from focusing on the perceived pathologies and failings of his own community, by focusing on what he thought was a self-destructive culture in the white working class and in the Appalachian white working class, to focusing on the perceived pathologies and failings of elite America.

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Well, thats his community too.

And thats his community too.

I think youre totally right that there is a broader conversation in politics right now about how to embrace populism and whos embracing it and how to make that Republican. And you can obviously see that with Trump and how he tried to do that, but then ended up cutting taxes for the rich. But the thing is: I go to J.D. Vances Twitter feed. And its an ugly place. He just tweeted out a video that was retweeted by Donald Trump Jr. Essentially, it was a defense of Jan. 6. It says Capitol rioters are being detained unfairly. He says Congress needs to investigate the BLM movement. I feel like thats meaningful.

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It is. And his online persona can be really quite toxic, and even some people who instinctually support him are kind of depressed at the Don Jr. act hes doing online.

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He has a friend called Rod Dreher, who is a conservative religious blogger, and Dreher said something to me like, Shitposting has become the dominant style for young radicals on the right, and I think this is a hazard for Christians in particular.

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So there is a very coarse attitude that Vance has online. Im glad you brought up Don Jr. because his whole vibe is very Don Jr.ish in public. Hes got this beard now, which he didnt used to have. The online persona is real, and he absolutely needs to be seen in the vein of the things that he says publicly on the record and that represent what he believes. But I also think that there is an ideological underpinning that the trollishness doesnt capture.

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This brings us back to the Senate GOP primary in Ohio. J.D. Vance may be the most nationally prominent of the candidates, but polling shows hes trailing behind the leading Republican: the former state treasurer, Josh Mandel.

Josh Mandel and Vance from the outside look fairly similar in the sense that they both seem to be trying to outflank each other from the right and triggering the libs, but the ideological fissures between both of them, in fact, run pretty deep.

Ohio is basically just a solid red state at this point. But Mandel and Vance have lurched far enough, rhetorically at least, to the right that Congressman Tim Ryan, whos the presumptive Democratic nominee, might be popular enough to pull up an upset against them.

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Ryan also embraces populism, just from the left.

Correct. Tim Ryan, like Sen. Sherrod Brown, is a natural fit for the Rust Belt and actually talks about some of the same economic issues. But Ryan does it without the right-wing populism, or the right-wing trollishness, or the right-wing social issues.

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Vance went off on LeBron James of all people for something he said about Kyle Rittenhouse two months ago. And I remember thinking, like, youre really going to criticize LeBron?

In Ohio.

Yeah, I just dont know how far-thinking that was. But it almost gets to the fact that hes not all strategic.

Setting aside whether hes contradictory or not, does this philosophy that you say J.D. Vance is articulating seem to be resonating with voters?

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It doesnt really seem to be resonating with the Republican primary voters who show up to events seven months before a primary, for what thats worth.

Among that crowd, the heavy Fox Newswatching crowd, I didnt see it resonating. They wanted to talk about national stuff. They wanted to talk about: Why were you anti-Trump five years ago? They wanted to talk about Jan. 6 or Kyle Rittenhouse, stuff that honestly has nothing to do with whats going on in Ohio.

There was an event I went to, and the night the event was going on, a groundbreaking opioid trial was going on. There was a county just 10 miles to the north of where we were that brought a big federal civil case against chain pharmacies for exacerbating the opioid crisis. And the chain pharmacies were eventually found responsible in that trial. It was the first federal trial in which chain pharmacies have been found responsible for exacerbating the crisis. And this is exactly the kind of thing that J.D. Vance should be talking about and should care about. The opioid crisis has personally hit him. His hometown of Middletown, Ohio, was totally wracked and devastated by the opioid crisis. And yet nobody was talking about anything that wasnt just on TV. This is part of the broader nationalization of politics, which has been super depressing, and Vance ended up just having to play to that crowd. And I did not see his big lines about American manufacturing get a lot of applause. People wanted to talk about the same old culture war stuff.

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This article is part of the Free Speech Project , a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the ways technology is influencing how we think about speech.

Just as 2021 closed out, the Kremlin massively escalated its pressure campaign against American tech companies by issuing its largest-ever fines of U.S. tech firms: $100 million to Google and $27 million to Facebook for what it called a systemic failure to remove banned content. These figures blew previous fines, typically only tens or a few hundred thousand dollars, out of the water and mark a significant escalation in the Kremlins efforts to bring Big Tech to heel. They also illustrate the coercive tactics in the Kremlin toolkitwhich appear to be working against at least one major technology firm.

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In September, the Russian government sent letters to Apple and Google, demanding they delete a mobile app created by opposition leader Alexey Navalny to identify non-Kremlin-backed candidates with the greatest chance of election victory. Apple and Google initially refused. With a national election looming that month, Moscow ramped up the pressure: It called in the U.S. ambassador to berate him about election interference; it summoned representatives from Apple and Googles new local offices to parliament and named specific employees the state would prosecute; and it sent masked, armed thugs to hang around Googles Moscow office. Sure enough, both companies removed the Navalny app by the end of that week.

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Then, in October, the Russian governmentspecifically, the State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption, part of Russias lower house of parliamentmet with Google leadership and handed over a long list of additional demands. Parliament officials kicked off the meeting with a frequent Kremlin talking point that falsely equated Googles provision of services to regime critics in Russia (e.g., to Navalny) with interference in the Russian electoral process.

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The Russian officials then issued several demands: that Google stop YouTube users in Russia from questioning election results; comply with all censorship orders, including what Russia calls extremist (often, just political) content; restore RTs German accounts (which YouTube had recently blocked for spreading COVID disinformation); and alter Google Maps in Russia to comply with the Kremlins desired view of the world, including to reflect the Russian governments illegal annexation of Crimea. The Duma also reiterated that Google must have an office on the ground in Russia, per a law passed in 2021 and entered into effect on Jan. 1. The goal of the law is to make foreign tech companies with over 500,000 daily Russian usersfrom Spotify to Pinterest to Googleopen offices in Russia, so that the Russian government can threaten and coerce employees on the ground.

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Googles response to these demands, at least for now, appears to be a mixed bag. For instance, the Google blog post on the meeting said that Google does not take sides in countries territorial disputeseven though not taking a side is, in fact, taking a sideand that Crimea is displayed for Russian users in accordance with local laws on state borders. It also said that Google paid all fines issued to it. However, Google did not budge on the suspension of Russian state-linked accounts in other countries; the blog defended, for example, the suspension of RTs German YouTube channel because it was spreading COVID-19 disinformation. Now, the Kremlin has fined Google a record $100 million for not complying with its takedown orders.

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All of this matters for Russian citizens and for global internet freedom developments.

YouTube is by far the most popular internet platform in Russia, even more than Russian Facebook VK. The Kremlins pressure campaign against Googlewhich has already included unilaterally blocking a Google Doc used by Navalny and threatening Google employees to get the app deleted for users in Russiacould undermine Russians ability to access independent news reporting and other citizens speech. This is no accident. YouTube is full of content that infuriates the Kremlin; in fact, the most popular video on Russian YouTube in 2021 was Navalnys investigation into Putins $1.3 billion palace, allegedly built with laundered money. The video was viewed more than 119 million times and helped catalyze protests against state corruption and Navalnys subsequent jailing.

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Russias pressure tactics offer a less-technical, more traditionally coercive alternative to Beijings rather technical internet control model. Recent developments indicate Moscows approach may be working.

Other companies, like WhatsApp and Facebook, appear to be keeping their heads down and complying with smaller fines and local office requirements as well. Yet Googles current dilemma shows that appeasement may not be a viable long-term approach. The more that Big Tech companies are entangled with Putins highest-priority issues, like opposition movements and the dissemination of Putin-critical information, the more the Russian government will prioritize making these companies bend the knee. This will mean more censorship and surveillance demands made directly to companies; increased fines from Kremlin-controlled courts; and simultaneous harassment, intimidation, and threats against company employees on the ground.

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When the Kremlin called Apple and Googles censorship resistance election interference, that wasnt just propaganda. It wasnt saber-rattling, either. Putin and his inner circle genuinely see U.S. internet companies as arms of the American state, hence why Apple and Googles initial response prompted Kremlin claimsas deluded and conspiratorial as they arethat Washington was interfering in Russian politics. This view is an extension of Putins overall mindset vis-a-vis opposition movements, which cannot possibly be the product of individual agency and instead are overtly or covertly supported by foreign powers.

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Debates over American tech companies operating in authoritarian regimes can become quite Manicheaneverything is portrayed as black-and-white, with companies cast as either supporting or undermining a dictator. Certainly, in some cases, these firms actions are unacceptable, as when Amazon cooperated with Chinese censorship and propaganda purely to sell goods and services, which (unlike YouTube) do not fall under the category of distributing news and opinions to a countrys citizens. But in many cases, as in Russia, companies are navigating complex decisions about how to push back against demands where possible, and at what point they cannot remain in a market without routine, serious compromise with an authoritarian state.

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Simultaneously, however, these companies are driven by profit. And many tech firms complying with new local office requirementsa tool of Kremlin coerciondo not adequately prepare for the scenario where their employees are threatened or harmed because executives, including those outside Russia, will not comply with state demands. Some of these companies also choose to comply with local office requirements in the first place, rather than, for example, investing those resources in making sure their services are available in Russia through virtual private networks.

But if these enormous, end-of-year fines are any indication, it may not be long before some American tech companies are forced to fully bend the knee or leave Russia altogether.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
People protested in front of the house of one of the alleged perpetrators.

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Miloslavov, a satellite village near Bratislava, saw some protests over the weekend. Locals hit the streets to show their disagreement with the case which shook up the village of some 2,300 inhabitants.

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The case concerns an 11-year-old girl who was attacked and abused by a group of older teenagers on January 2. She was beaten up, forced to drink alcohol and then the attackers, between 14 and 16 years of age, took photos of her private parts and filmed her. They were reportedly her friends. The incident took place in the village in the compound of the former cooperative. Television Markiza was the first to report on the case.

The media reported that drugs were also used on the scene and that this was not the first time that the group of teenagers had attacked someone.

Leaked online

The public learned about the case when photos and videos appeared online. The local teenagers' behaviour sparked outrage in Slovakia, especially in Miloslavov where the incident took place and from where the victim together with the attackers are from.
Maros Zilinka has been criticised by both coalition politicians and Slovak MEPs.

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Shortly after he criticised the defence agreement with the United States, the news emerged that General Prosecutor Maros Zilinka will attend the 300th anniversary of establishing the Russian prosecutors office.

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As the Dennik N daily reported, he will be the sole head of the prosecutors office from the Visegrad Group (V4) countries to attend the celebrations in Moscow.

Russia is not considered a democratic state, and the local prosecutors office acts as the defender of Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime, prosecuting his critics and turning them into political prisoners, according to Dennik N. In addition, Russian General Prosecutor Igor Krasnov is on the EU sanction list for violating human rights.

Slovakias general prosecutor will attend the celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the Russian prosecutors office on January 11-13, 2022, together with the representatives of 34 countries and international institutions, such as the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the International Association of Prosecutors, the General Prosecutors Office told Dennik N.

General prosecutor damns defence deal, challenges Heger governments foreign policy Read more

The spokesperson of the General Prosecutors Office failed to answer questions in relation to the Russian general prosecutor being on the sanctions list, and whether any other top prosecutor from EU countries will be present, according to the daily.

The visit was meanwhile criticised by some coalition MPs as well as several MEPs from Slovakia.

This is not the first time Zilinka will meet with Krasnov. They met in July 2021 in Moscow, and Zilinka even said that they would like to deepen their cooperation, Dennik N wrote.

Calls to cancel the trip
Cabinet changes rules for mass events, but not everyone is happy. General prosecutor criticised for trip to Russia. More in todays digest.

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Good evening. Read the Monday, January 10, 2022 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.

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Schools and culture reopen

Thousands of children returned to kindergartens, primary and secondary schools after Christmas school holidays, which officially started on December 20. Some schools closed even earlier, following the decision of regional hygienists stating that schoolchildren should instead switch to distance education due to the risk of infection.

Starting on Monday, the school traffic light system is in place again. Based on the current valid rules, if there is an infected pupil in the classroom, the principal will decide on closing the entire classroom. The only exception to self-isolation will be for children vaccinated against Covid or those recently recovered from Covid.

An entire school may be closed in special cases, but this will depend on the discussion with regional hygienists.

Schoolchildren are required to wear masks during school, while their parents can test them with antigen tests.

After quite a long break cultural venues, such as theatres, cinemas and concert halls, reopened on Monday as well, under the OP regime, meaning that they can welcome visitors who are fully vaccinated and recovered from Covid in the past 180 days. Several personalities active in culture have criticised the condition of allowing only 50 people.

Following the criticism, the cabinet approved at its January 10 online session some changes to the conditions under which mass events, including cultural ones, can be held. They divided the events into three groups based on the risk of infection they pose, and increased the limits.

Some representatives of the cultural sphere consider this insufficient, calling for more systemic changes.

At the same time, the night curfew ended on Sunday, meaning that people will be allowed to go outside after 20:00 as well. The change affects several shops and services (including pubs and restaurants), since they can remain open after this hour. The national emergency will remain in place until February 23, meaning that gatherings of more than six people are still not allowed, for example.

For a deeper insight into current affairs, check out our Last Week in Slovakia report published earlier today. You can sign up for the newsletter here.

More on the coronavirus and vaccination

855 people were newly diagnosed as Covid positive out of 4,490 PCR tests performed on January 9. The number of people in hospitals is 2,117 ; and 27 more deaths were reported on Sunday. The vaccination rate is at 50.17 percent, 2,759,539 people having received the first dose of the vaccine. More stats on Covid-19 in Slovakia here.

out of 4,490 PCR tests performed on January 9. The number of people in hospitals is ; and were reported on Sunday. The vaccination rate is at 50.17 percent, people having received the first dose of the vaccine. More stats on Covid-19 in Slovakia here. Labs in Slovakia have confirmed 34 more Omicron cases in Slovakia . As a result, there currently are 54 confirmed cases infected with this variant.

. As a result, there currently are 54 confirmed cases infected with this variant. It has been possible to choose the exact date and time when registering for the Covid vaccine shot via the Korona.gov.sk website since the end of last week. In the case of children, the date and time can be chosen only for centres that vaccinate children aged five to 11, and just for the first dose.

via the Korona.gov.sk website since the end of last week. In the case of children, the date and time can be chosen only for centres that vaccinate children aged five to 11, and just for the first dose. Slovakia has signed a contract for 340,000 doses of the Covid vaccine by the Novavax company, expected to arrive to the country in the first six months of the year.

General prosecutor criticised for trip to Russia

General Prosecutor Maros Zilinka (Source: SME)

Not long after his criticism of the Defence Cooperation Agreement with the United States, news emerged that General Prosecutor Maros Zilinka will travel to Russia to attend the ceremony on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of establishing the Russian prosecutors office.

As the Dennik N daily reported, he will be the only head of the prosecutors office from the Visegrad Group (V4) countries to attend the celebrations in Moscow on January 11-13. It is not clear whether there will be top prosecutors from any other EU country, according to the daily.

The trip has been criticised by several coalition MPs, including Juraj Seliga of Za Ludi, who even presented a list of people from Czechoslovakia who ended up in the Soviet gulags between the years 1945 and 1960, as well as a group of Slovak MEPs. They called on the general prosecutor to cancel the trip.

The General Prosecutors Office does not want to comment on the political statements.

This is not the first time Zilinka will meet with Russian General Prosecutor Igor Krasnov, who is on the EU sanctions list for violating human rights. The two met in July 2021 in Moscow, and Zilinka even said that they would like to deepen their cooperation, Dennik N wrote.

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Picture of the day

Zilina-based carmaker Kia Slovakia wrapped up the production of its Sportage model of fourth generation in the first week of January 2022. The model has been manufactured in the plant since late 2015, and has become the most produced generation of a model in the plants history.

The last car model Kia Sportage, fourth generation, manufactured in Zilina. (Source: Courtesy of Kia Slovakia)

Feature story for today

Last year saw a major political crisis in Slovakia, which resulted in the resignation of the prime minister. 2022 is unlikely to see a similar event, political observers agree. Even so, this may still turn out to be a turbulent year on the Slovak political scene.

Political analysts see Eduard Heger's position as prime minister as stable and the survival of the ruling coalition as very likely, given that it is in the interests of all those involved. Early elections are thus an unlikely development; but in the autumn of 2022 voters will still be asked to vote in two elections. These will hint at the mood in the country and possible future alliances at national-level politics.

Upcoming elections to show the country's mood. Eventful 2022 expected in Slovakia Read more

In other news

The opposition party Smer , led by former three-time prime minister Robert Fico, plans to summon a non-scheduled parliamentary session and wants to organise a referendum on whether people agree with placing American military bases in the territory of the Slovak Republic. Meanwhile, Defence Minister Jaroslav Nad (OLaNO) commented on the criticism of the agreement, saying that if just one of the threats presented by critics comes true, he will resign and never run for public position again.

, led by former three-time prime minister Robert Fico, and wants to on whether people agree with placing American military bases in the territory of the Slovak Republic. Meanwhile, Defence Minister Jaroslav Nad (OLaNO) commented on the criticism of the agreement, saying that if just one of the threats presented by critics comes true, he will resign and never run for public position again. Special prosecutor Daniel Lipsic cancelled the decision on bringing charges against 10 local councillors from the village of Varin (Zilina Region), who were said to express sympathies towards a movement aimed at suppressing fundamental rights and freedoms. The councillors in question disagreed with changing the name of a street, named after Jozef Tiso, president of the Nazi-allied wartime Slovak state.

cancelled the decision on (Zilina Region), who were said to express sympathies towards a movement aimed at suppressing fundamental rights and freedoms. The councillors in question disagreed with changing the name of a street, named after Jozef Tiso, president of the Nazi-allied wartime Slovak state. The police have launched several criminal prosecutions linked to the case of an 11-year-old girl who was attacked and abused by a group of older teenagers in the village of Miloslavov (near Bratislava) in early January. Meanwhile, a crisis team comprised of psychologists came to the local school, to discuss with teachers what has happened and how to handle bullying.

(near Bratislava) in early January. Meanwhile, a crisis team comprised of psychologists came to the local school, to discuss with teachers what has happened and how to handle bullying. Jan Micovsky , former agriculture minister, is leaving the OLaNO caucus , saying that he has lost trust in the movement and its fight against corruption. He has been critical of the practices of his successor Samuel Vlcan, who has recalled several fighters against corruption, as well as the change in attitude of Igor Matovic and the failed promises of PM Eduard Heger. (Dennik N)

, former agriculture minister, , saying that he has lost trust in the movement and its fight against corruption. He has been critical of the practices of his successor Samuel Vlcan, who has recalled several fighters against corruption, as well as the change in attitude of Igor Matovic and the failed promises of PM Eduard Heger. (Dennik N) Bratislava launched the new parking system in the first three zones today  Dvory 4, Tehelne Pole and Krasnany. People parking in these zones can ask for their parking card online; an annual parking fee for residents amounts to 39 per vehicle. Visitors will be able to park in the zones after paying an hourly fee; they can also use a visitor or bonus parking card, the city announced.

 Dvory 4, Tehelne Pole and Krasnany. People parking in these zones can ask for their parking card online; an annual parking fee for residents amounts to 39 per vehicle. Visitors will be able to park in the zones after paying an hourly fee; they can also use a visitor or bonus parking card, the city announced. Disinformation is an important security threat , according to the recent police report on disinformation. The highest number of disseminated hoaxes in 2021 concerned Covid-19, and appeared in the online space particularly in the spring and the autumn, i.e. during the second and third pandemic wave.

, according to the recent police report on disinformation. The highest number of disseminated hoaxes in 2021 concerned Covid-19, and appeared in the online space particularly in the spring and the autumn, i.e. during the second and third pandemic wave. Industrial production in Slovakia grew by 4.3 percent year-on-year , after two months of decline, exceeding pre-pandemic values by almost 7 percent. Thirteen of 15 manufacturing activities recorded positive numbers, according to the Statistics Office.

, after two months of decline, exceeding pre-pandemic values by almost 7 percent. recorded positive numbers, according to the Statistics Office. The lack of engine drivers has resulted in changing the train timetable in western Slovakia, which will be in place until Sunday. Dozens of trains will not be dispatched on the routes between Trnava  Bratislava  Kuty, Pezinok  Bratislava  Malacky, Bratislava  Komarno, and Bratislava  Senec  Nove Zamky/Galanta, the state-run passenger railway carrier ZSSK announced.

More on Spectator.sk:

People enjoy sunny weekend in the Tatras, car parks full Read more

Liptovsky Mikulas commemorates Janosik's execution with a gallows replica Read more

The fairytale path of Revuca Read more

If you have suggestions on how this news overview can be improved, you can reach us at editorial@spectator.sk.
https://sputniknews.com/20220109/sen-graham-says-current-democratic-radical-agenda-causes-most-dangerous-times-since-1930s-1092140547.html

Sen. Graham Says Current Democratic 'Radical' Agenda Causes 'Most Dangerous' Times Since 1930s

Sen. Graham Says Current Democratic 'Radical' Agenda Causes 'Most Dangerous' Times Since 1930s

Among other things, Graham responded to Biden's Thursday speech marking the anniversary of January 6, in which he avoided mentioning former President Donald... 09.01.2022, Sputnik International

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Because of President Biden and his Democratic colleagues' "radical" legislative agenda, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina warned that Americans are living in the "most dangerous times since the late 30s."In an interview with John Catsimatidis, Graham spoke about a wide range of issues, including the omicron variant of COVID-19, vaccinations, the January 6 riot anniversary and the upcoming 2022 elections. With regard to the latter, he predicted that Americans will be motivated to vote "not based on what happened on January 6, but based on this failed Democratic radical agenda." Graham also predicted that Republicans will make significant gains in November's elections and that Trump would win the 2024 presidential election.January 6 was a "dark day," according to the senator, and those who attacked the Capitol "need to be punished," but said Trump should not be held responsible for the protesters' behavior.He slammed Biden's Capitol riot anniversary speech, claiming that the events of that day, when Trump supporters rushed the Capitol to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election, would not lead to Democratic victories in 2022.The senator first condemned the speech while Biden was still in the middle of giving it. Graham tweeted his displeasure with Biden's statements, calling them a "brazen" politicization of the event.With his mentioning of the dangerous '30s, Graham was likely referring to the 1929 stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression in the following decade, raising questions about the efficiency of the capitalist economic system, while socialist and communist movements were on the rise. In order to stabilize the economy and safeguard workers, former President Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented the New Deal, which featured programs such as Social Security, the Works Progress Administration, and the National Labor Relations Act.

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https://sputniknews.com/20220110/american-airlines-evokes-backlash-online-after-apologising-for-pilots-lets-go-brandon-sticker-1092154179.html

American Airlines Evokes Backlash Online After Apologising for Pilot's 'Let's Go Brandon' Sticker

American Airlines Evokes Backlash Online After Apologising for Pilot's 'Let's Go Brandon' Sticker

While some netizens urged the airline to not fire the pilot, others warned that they might stop flying American Airlines if the latter were to take action... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

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American Airlines has apologised online after a concerned citizen notified them about a Lets Go Brandon sticker they spotted on one of the carriers pilots luggage.The complainant tweeted a photo of the sticker in question and, having tagged the airline in her post, inquired whether American Airlines were cool with their pilots displaying this kind of cowardly rhetoric on their crew luggage when they are in uniform, about to fly a plane.Thank you for bringing this to our attention and we want to get this to the right team, the airline replied on Twitter. Please DM any additional details.The American Airlines reaction, however, apparently did not sit well with quite a few social media users who argued that the pilot did nothing wrong.Some urged the airline to not fire the pilot, or even suggested that he should get a raise for having to deal with Karen passengers such as this one.And there were also those who promised to never fly American Airlines again if the latter were to take action against the pilot.As the complainant has since made her Twitter account private, it is somewhat problematic to gauge the feedback she received online.

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https://sputniknews.com/20220110/bennett-warns-israel-wont-be-bound-by-any-iran-nuclear-deal-will-reserve-freedom-of-action-1092150401.html

Bennett Warns Israel Won't Be Bound by Any Iran Nuclear Deal, Will 'Reserve Freedom of Action'

Bennett Warns Israel Won't Be Bound by Any Iran Nuclear Deal, Will 'Reserve Freedom of Action'

Tehran, other signatories of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Iran nuclear deal, and the United States have been negotiating on bringing the agreement... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

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Israel is not part of the talks in Vienna on the JCPOA, and will not be bound by their terms, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has said.Characterising Iran as "the head of an octopus that constantly threatens via its proxies," Bennett warned that Israel has "shifted from defence to offence consistently" to deal with threats.The prime minister also commented on the security situation in Israel, saying it was 'good' and 'getting better.'Current and former Israeli officials are divided regarding the JCPOA and its implications for Tel Aviv's national security. While Bennett and his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, have repeatedly condemned the landmark agreement (and in Netanyahu's case, helped to torpedo it in 2018), others, including Israel Defence Forces Operations Directorate Chief Aharon Haliva and former deputy national security adviser Chuck Freilich, have characterised it as "the best of the bad options" for Tel Aviv. The alternatives, Freilich warned in a recent interview with Haaretz, include massed missile strikes against Tel Aviv by Iran and Hezbollah in retaliation to any Israeli aggression.In late December, Iran showed off its precision missile and drone capabilities, targeting a mockup facility in the desert built to resemble Israel's highly secretive Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center - the suspected birthplace of the Israeli nuclear bomb.Israel neither confirms nor denies possessing nuclear weapons, but is suspected to have between 80 and 400 warheads in its arsenal. At the same time, Tel Aviv has repeatedly threatened to attack any Middle Eastern nation it believes may be developing nukes, doing so repeatedly over decades, targeting Iraq, Syria and Pakistan. Israeli intelligence has also been accused of assassinating multiple Iranian nuclear scientists, and engaging in sabotage against Tehran's nuclear programme.Iran has vocally denied any intention of pursuing nukes, with the country's officials pointing to the country's ballistic and cruise missile deterrent and their drone capabilities, and characterising nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction generally as incompatible with Islam. The Islamic Republic has repeatedly criticised the international community for its alleged double standards on the nuclear issue, pointing out that while it is a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, it remains subjected to stringent United Nations nuclear inspections, and faces harsh Western sanctions. Tel Aviv, Tehran points out, faces no such restrictions, despite actually having a major nuclear arsenal.

https://sputniknews.com/20220104/israeli-ex-official-points-to-mammoth-frightening-tool-iran-has-to-answer-attack-on-nuclear-sites-1092017791.html

https://sputniknews.com/20210913/iran-accuses-us-europe-of-very-shameful-double-standard-regarding-israels-suspected-nukes-1089041531.html

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https://sputniknews.com/20220110/bojo-reportedly-to-reveal-covid-19-strategy-of-scaled-back-free-testing-shorter-isolation-periods-1092155812.html

BoJo Reportedly To Reveal COVID-19 Strategy of 'Scaled Back Free Testing, Shorter Isolation Periods'

BoJo Reportedly To Reveal COVID-19 Strategy of 'Scaled Back Free Testing, Shorter Isolation Periods'

Boris Johnson could reveal his governments strategy on how the UK will live with COVID-19 within weeks, according to UK media reports citing Whitehall sources.

2022-01-10T13:27+0000

2022-01-10T13:27+0000

2022-01-10T13:27+0000

boris johnson

uk

covid-19

omicron strain

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Boris Johnson could reveal his governments strategy on how the UK will live with COVID-19 within weeks, according to The Sun.Measures said to be mulled by the Prime Minister are expected to include free lateral flow coronavirus tests (LFT) being scrapped for all settings but the most high-risk ones, such as care homes, hospitals and schools.The Autumn and Winter Plan, cited by Whitehall sources, suggested that the universal free-of-cost provision of LFTs would be phased out to ensure that individuals and businesses using the tests will bear the cost. The estimated cost of free LFTs during the COVID-19 pandemic is around 6 billion (approximately $8 billion) with the budget for testing set to be reviewed in April.In line with a reported cost-cutting move, the National Health Services Test and Trace system would also be scaled back.The reported strategy is prompted by the fact that studies suggest the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is milder than other strains, with an official UK report claiming that the risk of hospitalisation is 50 to 70 percent lower than with the Delta variant.When asked about reports of free lateral flow testing being scrapped, UK Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi on Sunday stated that is absolutely not where we are at.According to government sources, currently the main focus is to deal with the growing pressure the NHS is facing amid sick leave staff shortages. Accordingly, calls for the isolation period to be cut from seven to five days have gained strength.Housing Secretary Michael Gove, while not denying reports of free tests being phased out, told Sky News they would be around "as long as we need them."On Monday Johnson hailed the fact that Britain was making progress against Omicron and revealed that his government was "looking a" reducing the isolation period to five days. However, he acknowledged that ministers would follow the science. "We've got to make sure that we see off Omicron. We're making great progress... (But) the 18,000 people with COVID currently in hospital... that's massively up, and the numbers are increasing," said the PM, adding that 30% of those cases could have been infected in hospital.Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson acknowledged that parts of the NHS would feel "temporarily overwhelmed" amid a surge of Omicron cases, but said there was a "good chance" he would not impose fresh measures beyond the current "Plan B" strategy. The latter, which triggered a Tory rebellion in the Commons when laid out by the PM in December, presupposes work from home guidance, mask-wearing in public places and COVID passes.Boris Johnson had also announced plans for 100,000 critical workers to take daily coronavirus tests from 10 January. These industries include food processing, transport and the border force.On Sunday, the number of COVID-19 cases in the UK dropped for the fifth day in a row. A total of 141,472 cases were reported, after an earlier milestone of 150,000 on Saturday.

https://sputniknews.com/20220108/omicron-is-ray-of-light-for-end-of-covid-19-pandemic-uk-expert-says-1092114656.html

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2022

Svetlana Ekimenko

Svetlana Ekimenko

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Svetlana Ekimenko

boris johnson, uk, covid-19, omicron strain
An art fair featuring urban culture and popular art will be launched in May in Chengdu, Sichuan province, in an effort to meet the artistic demand of the younger generation who grew up under the influence of popular culture.

UniUltraUrban Art Fair or U3 Art Fair will be held in Chengdu's central park with works from more than 150 galleries and popular culture brands.

"The art fair is expected to attract as many young people as possible, just like a big art party mixed with popular culture," said Zhang Yiwan, a co-partner of Young Talent Media and organizer of the art event.

Zhang introduced that urban art featuring popular motifs from pop culture was embraced warmly in China from 2018. It's also a trend in the international art field represented by artists like Kaws and Takashi Murakami. Urban artists are always working with street arts, pop arts and designed toys.

Although Beijing and Shanghai are regarded as center of China's urban art, the art fair will be launched in Chengdu where life pace is much more slower than the former two cities. Chengdu is known for its pandas and hotpots.

"Chengdu has a huge potential in urban art. Young people here are willing to spend on subcultures," says Zhang.

The art fair will feature animation, internet and designed toys and also the art lovers themselves.

"Urban culture is a kind of lifestyle of the younger generation. And we hope the art fair can suit with their lifestyle," Zhang added.
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/counter-terrorism-operation-continues-in-almaty-overall-situation-stable---reports-1092143240.html

Counter-Terrorism Operation Continues in Almaty, Overall Situation Stable - Reports

Counter-Terrorism Operation Continues in Almaty, Overall Situation Stable - Reports

NUR-SULTAN (Sputnik) - The situation in Kazakhstans Almaty is stabilizing, although the counter-terrorism operation continues in the city, the Khabar 24 TV... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T03:01+0000

2022-01-10T03:01+0000

2022-01-10T03:04+0000

collective security treaty organization (csto)

kazakh foreign ministry

kazakhstan

terrorism

riots

counter-terrorism

terrorist group

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Sirens are still going off in the city and the curfew is still in place, Khabar 24 reported on Monday, adding that the situation at the checkpoints is calm and traffic is resuming.On Sunday, Kazakh media reported that the counter-terrorism operation in Almaty was entering a new stage and military forces had been stationed at all 13 checkpoints to prevent the escape of militants from the city. Law enforcement authorities had taken full control of all entrances and exits from Almaty.A wave of protests swept across Kazakhstan earlier this month, following a sharp rise in gas prices. Despite the government's attempts to quell the discontent and promises to bring the prices down, violence erupted in Kazakhstan and there have been widespread clashes with law enforcement officers in several regions.The government declared a state of emergency until January 19. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev asked for assistance from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in resolving the issue and peacekeepers were sent into Kazakhstan. Tokayev said on Friday that the government had reached a compromise with peaceful protesters on urgent social and economic issues and that he was going to announce specific measures on Tuesday.According to Kazakhstans Foreign Ministry, the countrys law enforcement will carry out a major investigation into the causes of the mass riots and will present the results to the world community.The ministry has called on the media not to distort information regarding the unrest in Kazakhstan and emphasized that law enforcement and the military are currently standing up to terrorists and not peaceful protesters. Preliminary data indicates that well-coordinated terrorist groups trained from abroad which carried out armed aggression in Kazakhstan include people who had participated in combat activities in the past, on the side of radical Islamist groups.

https://sputniknews.com/20220109/sputnik-kazakhstan-journo-points-to-main-error-in-wests-media-coverage-of-situation-in-her-country-1092137277.html

kazakhstan

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collective security treaty organization (csto), kazakh foreign ministry, kazakhstan, terrorism, riots, counter-terrorism, terrorist group
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/csto-peacekeepers-to-leave-kazakhstan-at-first-request-once-situation-stabilizes-ministry-says-1092143072.html

CSTO Peacekeepers to Leave Kazakhstan at First Request, Once Situation Stabilizes, Ministry Says

CSTO Peacekeepers to Leave Kazakhstan at First Request, Once Situation Stabilizes, Ministry Says

NUR-SULTAN (Sputnik) - The peacekeeping contingent of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) sent to Kazakhstan to help protect vital facilities... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T02:59+0000

2022-01-10T02:59+0000

2022-01-10T02:59+0000

protests in kazakhstan

collective security treaty organization (csto)

russia

asia & pacific

kazakhstan

peacekeeping operations

peacekeepers

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"The CSTO peacekeeping forces will stay in Kazakhstan temporarily and will leave the country after the situation stabilizes, at the first request of the Kazakh side," the ministry said in a statement published on Telegram.On Sunday, the head of the CSTO mission in Kazakhstan, Col. Gen. Andrey Serdyukov said that the peacekeeping forces of the organization had completed relocation to Kazakhstan.According to Serdyukov, CSTO peacekeepers are now helping protect critically important facilities in the city of Almaty and nearby regions.A wave of protests swept across Kazakhstan earlier this month, following a sharp rise in gas prices. Despite the government's attempts to quell the discontent and promises to bring the prices down, violence erupted in Kazakhstan and there have been wide-spread clashes with law enforcement officers in several regions.The government declared a state of emergency until January 19. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev asked for CSTO assistance in resolving the issue and peacekeepers were sent into Kazakhstan. A counter-terrorism operation continues. Tokayev said on Friday that the government had reached a compromise with peaceful protesters on urgent social and economic issues and that he was going to announce specific measures on Tuesday.

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collective security treaty organization (csto), russia, asia & pacific, kazakhstan, peacekeeping operations, peacekeepers
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/denmark-set-to-send-4-fighter-jets-frigate-to-baltic-states-1092160076.html

Denmark Set to Send 4 Fighter Jets, Frigate to Baltic States

Denmark Set to Send 4 Fighter Jets, Frigate to Baltic States

Copenhagen is planning to send four F-16 interceptors and a frigate to the Baltic States to support NATO, which sees the threat of a real military conflict in Europe, Danish Defense Minister Trine Bramsen said

2022-01-10T15:31+0000

2022-01-10T15:31+0000

2022-01-10T15:31+0000

denmark

f-16

baltics

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Denmark offered NATO that it sends four F16 fighter jets with the staff of 70 people and a frigate with 160 people on board to Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, Bramsen told the Danish TV2 broadcaster.The minister added that Russia allegedly amassed thousands of soldiers near the border with Ukraine and requested for a new security treaty, which will force NATO forces out of the Baltic States and Poland despite their membership in the alliance. The request, Bramsen went on, contradicts the EU right to self-determination, just as another Russia's request to ban Ukraine and other neighboring countries from joining NATO. Therefore, Denmark is ready to extend a helping hand to the Baltic States in the event of Russia's aggression, Bramsen concluded.In late 2021, Russia forwarded a list of proposals to the United States and NATO on security guarantees that would restrain the alliance from expanding eastward, admitting Ukraine, and forming military bases in post-Soviet countries. The first round of negotiations officially kicked off with the US earlier today in Geneva. Talks with NATO are slated for Wednesday.Russia has repeatedly refuted accusations of western countries and Ukraine of "aggressive actions," qualifying them as a pretext to deploy more NATO military equipment close to the Russian borders.

denmark

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denmark, f-16, baltics
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/deputy-fm-says-anti-russian-sentiment-within-nato-affects-us-russia-bilateral-dialogue-1092142710.html

Deputy FM Says Anti-Russian Sentiment Within NATO Affects US-Russia Bilateral Dialogue

Deputy FM Says Anti-Russian Sentiment Within NATO Affects US-Russia Bilateral Dialogue

MOSCOW/GENEVA (Sputnik) - The United States is uncomfortable discussing security guarantees with Russia in bilateral formats since Washington feels the "eyes... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T02:51+0000

2022-01-10T02:51+0000

2022-01-10T02:54+0000

sergei ryabkov

bilateral meeting

us

russia

russian foreign ministry

security

meeting

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"They find it uncomfortable to hold bilateral dialogue with us, because they feel behind them the eyes and ears of the most anti-Russian group within NATO," Ryabkov said ahead of the upcoming strategic stability dialogue.On Sunday evening, Ryabkov met with US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in Geneva. The deputy foreign minister said that the conversation was difficult, but businesslike."The conversation was difficult, but businesslike. We went straight to the matter of the upcoming talks. I think that tomorrow we will not waste time. I never lose my optimism, I am always guided by it," the diplomat said.The meeting preceding the official Russian-US talks on security guarantees was held in Geneva on Sunday evening and lasted more than two hours.US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement after the talks that "the United States would welcome genuine progress through diplomacy" during the strategic stability talks, but the US "will not discuss European security without our European Allies and partners."In December, Russia released its draft proposals on security guarantees. Negotiations on security guarantees between Moscow and Washington are scheduled for January 10, followed by a Russia-NATO Council meeting to discuss the issue on January 12, and the summit of Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) the following day.

https://sputniknews.com/20220109/russia-will-not-bow-to-us-pressure-or-make-any-concessions-deputy-fm-says-ahead-of-geneva-meeting-1092126786.html

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sergei ryabkov, bilateral meeting, us, russia, russian foreign ministry, security, meeting
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/france-reportedly-seeking-whole-of-eu-treaty-with-britain-on-migrant-channel-crossings-1092161028.html

France Reportedly Seeking Whole-of-EU Treaty With Britain on Migrant Channel Crossings

France Reportedly Seeking Whole-of-EU Treaty With Britain on Migrant Channel Crossings

Illegal crossings from France to the UK by migrants aboard small boats more than tripled in the past year, with over 28,000 people making their way to the... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T16:00+0000

2022-01-10T16:00+0000

2022-01-10T16:00+0000

france

britain

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https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/106646/29/1066462936_0:255:4896:3009_1920x0_80_0_0_d0c32b9e677909288a2b8607fec7b975.jpg

Paris is seeking whole-of-bloc negotiations between the European Union and the United Kingdom on an asylum and migration treaty that would stem the flow of migrants along the Channel crossing route, a senior French government official told The Guardian.Ultimately, the official noted, the goal is to create a legal means of immigration with Great Britain, so people can legally go to Great Britain to seek asylum.Britain was stripped of its EU-era right to return asylum seekers back to the European mainland when it quit the bloc, and has subsequently rejected efforts to legally bind it to a treaty under which individuals could apply for asylum abroad, fearing it would be swamped in applications.Last week, Home Office staff told The Times newspaper that a resolution to the Channel migrant crisis was unlikely to be reached before the presidential elections in France in April, with No 10 all but giv[ing] up hope of reaching an agreement with Paris on the matter before then.France Says NonFrance and the UK have suffered a major falling out over the Channel migrant crisis, with London accusing Paris of failing to properly monitor its shores and doing little to stop people from setting sail for the UK. The French side has blamed Britain for failing to tackle UK-based human smugglers making a profit from the crossings, and claimed that the island nations attractive labour market and lack of deportations encourage illegal immigration. Paris has also pointed to the difficulty of policing the migrant flow, particularly as many would-be crossers reportedly only stop over in France for a few days or even a few hours before continuing on to Britain.Last month, the French government formally rejected a proposal by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to conduct joint patrols to battle the influx.Johnsons letter, sent out by Twitter in late November, shortly after a media report revealed that 27 migrants died off the coast of Calais when their inflatable dinghy sank, sparked anger from Paris, which was not able to examine it ahead of time. President Macron privately branded Johnson a clown with the attitude of a vulgarian.Publicly, Macron called on his British colleague to get serious.You do not communicate via tweets and open letters. We are not whistleblowers. The [EU] ministers will work with serious issues with serious peopleWe will then see how to move forward efficiently with the British, if they decide to get serious, the French president said.At least 28,395 people crossed the English Channel into the UK in 2021, according to government figures. Crossings more than tripled over a year from 8,461 in 2020 and just 1,835 in 2019, Britains final year of membership in the EU.

https://sputniknews.com/20220107/farage-fires-shot-across-bojos-bow-on-channel-migrants-and-net-zero-taxes-1092098044.html

https://sputniknews.com/20211203/france-snubs-bojo-offer-of-joint-calais-patrols-tells-uk-to-focus-on-legal-immigration-paths-1091216358.html

france

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Ilya Tsukanov

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Ilya Tsukanov

france, britain
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/inconceivable-scandal-as-illegal-immigrant-hired-to-clean-swedish-prime-ministers-villa-1092145633.html

'Inconceivable' Scandal as Illegal Immigrant Hired to Clean Swedish Prime Minister's Villa

'Inconceivable' Scandal as Illegal Immigrant Hired to Clean Swedish Prime Minister's Villa

A Nicaraguan woman in her 20s, who has a conviction and was slated for deportation, was allowed to clean the prime minister's private villa, as the Security Police Sapo failed to run the necessary background checks.

2022-01-10T05:48+0000

2022-01-10T05:48+0000

2022-01-10T05:48+0000

news

europe

sweden

illegal immigrants

scandinavia

magdalena andersson

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Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson has landed in hot water as an illegal immigrant has been hired to clean her villa. This raised questions about the protection level of top-ranking officials in the Nordic country.In the days before Christmas, the police were alerted to the prime minister's home in Nacka, where a burglar alarm had been triggered by mistake by a cleaning lady, according to the newspaper Expressen. On the spot, the police found and arrested the wanted woman, who happened to be an illegal immigrant without a residence permit.According to Expressen, the twenty-something woman comes from Nicaragua. The Swedish Migration Agency had earmarked her for deportation in the spring of 2020, but she has remained in the country illegally, and has been wanted since autumn.Furthermore, the woman was convicted of theft at Ahlens City in Stockholm in autumn, 2020. As she had no previous conviction at that time, she received a suspended sentence.The security police Sapo run background checks on those who work for representatives of the central government. However, when work for a protected person is performed privately, the person's background is not checked, a Sapo spokesman told Expressen.Security expert Dick Malmlund, a former police officer, and a longtime head of security at Swedish Trade, is very critical of the scandal.It is inconceivable, Malmlund told national broadcaster SVT about the incident. According to him, Sapo should be responsible for the prime minister's security around the clock.Subsequently, Sapo chief Charlotte von Essen said it will check whether a need for a change in the rules has arisen.I can understand that as it has been reported about the incident, and it raises questions. For the Security Police, it is not possible to go into details when it comes to the security of our protected individuals, but of course the Prime Minister's security is of the highest priority, von Essen told national broadcaster SVT.Andersson herself assured that she has done the obvious things as a customer and that she has always paid her employees their official salary. Then again you can always think about whether you could have done more, Andersson told the newspaper Goteborgs-Posten.

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Igor Kuznetsov

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https://sputniknews.com/20220110/iran-gave-stinging-slap-on-americas-face-in-response-to-soleimani-killing-warns-of-more-revenge-1092154041.html

Iran Gave Stinging Slap on Americas Face in Response to Soleimani Killing, Warns of More Revenge

Iran Gave Stinging Slap on Americas Face in Response to Soleimani Killing, Warns of More Revenge

Tehran marked the second anniversary of Revolutionary Guard Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimanis assassination last week. The anti-terror general was killed... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T12:01+0000

2022-01-10T12:01+0000

2022-01-10T13:08+0000

iran

revolutionary guard

qasem soleimani

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Iran has taken only part of the retaliatory measures it plans to take in response to Qasem Soleimanis assassination, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander-in-chief Hossein Salami has warned.Characterising the 8 January missile attack on US bases in Iraq as a stinging slap on the face to the United States, which considered itself the emperor of the world and did not stop making threats of tit-for-tat retaliations, Salami stressed that the strike proved Irans military capabilities across a broad theatre.Iran marked the second anniversary of Qasem Soleimanis assassination on 3 January. During the two decades that he served as commander of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force  Irans elite extraterritorial fighting force, Soleimani assisted the Iraqi and Syrian military forces, Iraqi militias and even US-supported Kurdish forces in the fight against Daesh (ISIS)*, al-Qaeda* and other jihadists. In the 2000s, Soleimanis Quds Force provided support to Lebanons Hezbollah militia in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War.On Sunday, the Islamic Republic slapped sanctions on 51 Americans, including both current and former officials, targeting everyone from serving Pentagon generals to current and former top spies and security advisors to former president Donald Trump. Trump himself, as well as former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, ex-national security advisor John Bolton, and former CIA director Gina Haspel, were designated earlier in the sanctions, known as the Act on Countering Violations of Human Rights and Adventurist and Terrorist Actions of the United States of America in the Region.Iranian and Iraqi courts have repeatedly threatened to prosecute Trump and others for Soleimanis murder. Interpol has refused to touch the case, citing its political nature.Soleimanis death continues to resonate in the minds of many Iranians and the people of the Middle East in part because he was seen as standing beyond Irans Islamic Republican system of government, and, as recently described by President Ebrahim Raisi, as someone belonging to no political grouping. Soleimanis anti-terror activities, Raisi said, helped save Shia and Sunni Muslims, Christians, Yazidis and all followers of the Abrahamic religions across the Middle East from the scourge of Islamist extremism.

https://sputniknews.com/20220103/irans-president-says-main-violator-and-murderer-trump-must-face-trial-for-soleimani-assassination-1092002370.html

iran

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Ilya Tsukanov

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https://sputniknews.com/20220110/iran-to-hold-new-round-of-talks-with-saudi-arabia-in-iraq-foreign-ministry-says-1092153435.html

Iran to Hold New Round of Talks With Saudi Arabia in Iraq, Foreign Ministry Says

Iran to Hold New Round of Talks With Saudi Arabia in Iraq, Foreign Ministry Says

Iran and Saudi Arabia will soon hold the fifth round of negotiations in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad to resolve existing differences between the countries

2022-01-10T11:09+0000

2022-01-10T11:09+0000

2022-01-10T11:09+0000

saudi arabia

middle east

iran

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"There is another round of talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia on the agenda, which will be hosted by Iraq. We tried to continue negotiations on the issues that have arisen between us, despite all the disputes," Khatibzadeh said during a press conference.Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia soured in January 2016 following Riyadh's decision to execute Shia cleric Ayatollah Nimr al-Nimr, who questioned the Gulf monarchy's authority. On the same day, crowds of Iranians broke into the territory of Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran and consulate in Mashhad. In response, Riyadh cut the relations with Tehran.In the spring of 2021, Iran and Saudi Arabia began negotiations to settle the controversies in bilateral relations. They held four rounds of talks in Baghdad. According to the Iranian foreign ministry, although the negotiation had some positive impact on the bilateral relations, the resumption of work of the embassies has not yet been discussed.

saudi arabia

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saudi arabia, middle east, iran
Moscow: It's Strange to Hear From US It Does Not Understand What's Happening in Kazakhstan

It is strange to hear that the United States does not understand what is going on in Kazakhstan, Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministrys spokeswoman, said on Monday.



"Although, of course, it was strange to hear from  the US Secretary of State or a White House official that they do not understand what is happening in Kazakhstan and do not understand why Kazakhstan made such decisions. It's amazing, they usually always understand everything," Zakharova told Channel One Russia.



The spokeswoman mentioned that Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev explained how extremists undermined the peaceful protests with evidence during the Monday CSTO meeting and Washington can no longer "hide behind" their lack of understanding of the situation.
You are here: Business

China's largest oil field located in Bohai Bay produced more than 30 million tonnes of crude oil in 2021, top-ranked nationwide, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) said on Sunday.

The oilfield contributed half of the country's crude oil output increase last year.

China's offshore oil output reached 48.64 million tonnes with a year-on-year increase of 3.23 million tonnes, taking up 80 percent of the total national oil growth, according to China Media Group.

It was the third consecutive year that offshore oil production accounted for over half of the national oil growth, signaling the exploration offshore for natural resources has become crucial to the country's drive for the production.

"The company has invested over 50 billion yuan (almost $8 billion) annually in the past three years," said Cao Xinjian, general manager assistant of CNOOC.

He added the technology breakthroughs for exploiting deep sea and heavy oil opened up new opportunities for the industry.

In September, CNOOC announced a new discovery of an oilfield in Bohai Bay with an estimated reserve of over 100 million tonnes.
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/mothers-in-arms-slam-blairs-knighthood-for-afghanistan-iraq-wars-while-they-got-to-bury-sons-1092151299.html

'Mothers-In-Arms' Slam Blair's Knighthood For Afghanistan, Iraq Wars, While They 'Got to Bury Sons'

'Mothers-In-Arms' Slam Blair's Knighthood For Afghanistan, Iraq Wars, While They 'Got to Bury Sons'

A petition to strip former British Prime Minister Tony Blair of his knighthood, posted on Change.org a week ago, has already gained more than a million... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T10:37+0000

2022-01-10T10:37+0000

2022-01-10T10:37+0000

tony blair

iraq war

afghanistan

uk

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Five women brought together by grief met in Coventry Cathedral on Saturday to each light a candle for their sons, killed in Afghanistan, and voice their fury over the bestowing of knighthood on the man they blame for their loss  Tony Blair.Carol Valentine, Hazel Hunt, Caroline Whitaker, Caroline Jane Munday-Baker and Helen Perry refuse to be reconciled with the fact that the former UK Prime Minister was made a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter by the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, in the New Year Honours List.The women in question had earlier penned a letter, cited by the Daily Mail, appealing to the British monarch to revoke the honour to the ex-Labour PM which tramples on our sons sacrifices and sought to show the world the devastation he has caused to us and countless other families.A wave of indignation was unleashed after the announcement, with those objecting arguing that Blair, who was at Downing Street from 1997 to 2007, was unworthy of the honours due to "war crimes" committed under his tenure.Some have argued that Blair should be in prison for ordering UK troops in November 2001 to join the US-led invasion of Afghanistan following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. The then-British Prime Minister had also taken a decision to participate in the 2003 US coalition-led invasion of Iraq, under the pretext that the Saddam Hussein government possessed an active weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme. The latter assertion proved to be false, as no stockpiles of WMDs or an active WMD programme were ever discovered in Iraq.Mothers-in-ArmsCarol Valentine, whose son Sgt Simon Valentine, 29, was killed while trying to clear land mines in Afghanistan in 2009, was cited as acknowledging that while they might never be able to stop Blairs knighthood, it was their turn to become mothers-in-arms to fight for their honour and ensure their sacrifice is never forgotten.Caroline Whitaker, whose 29-year-old son, Sgt Gareth Thursby, was shot dead at a checkpoint in Helmand in 2012, underscored that they would shout from the rooftops that Tony Blair took the country into conflicts that we had no business in.She added:As the five women met, a petition calling for Tony Blair, 68, to be stripped of the knighthood passed a million signatures. The petition, which has no legal force, was started by actor and presenter Angus Scott on the change.org website and denounced the ex-Labour leader for having "caused irreparable damage to both the constitution of the United Kingdom and to the very fabric of the nation's society".Voicing their agreement, the mothers stated that the former PM should do the decent thing and hand back the oldest and most senior British Order of Chivalry in the wake of so much opposition.She slammed Blair as a narcissist who sent our sons to their deaths in a war we should never have been to.Helen Perry added: Over a million signatures to see him off and yet he does nothing.

https://sputniknews.com/20220109/knighthood-for-tony-blair-outrageous-says-mother-of-one-of-first-uk-soldiers-killed-in-iraq-war-1092125469.html

https://sputniknews.com/20220107/a-million-people-sign-petition-to-strip-tony-blair-of-knighthood-1092097549.html

afghanistan

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2022

Svetlana Ekimenko

Svetlana Ekimenko

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Svetlana Ekimenko

tony blair, iraq war, afghanistan, uk
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/north-korea-fires-unidentified-projectile-toward-east-sea-in-latest-launch---jcs-1092165714.html

North Korea Fires Unidentified Projectile Toward East Sea in Latest Launch - South Korean JCS

North Korea Fires Unidentified Projectile Toward East Sea in Latest Launch - South Korean JCS

Less than a week after what it said was the country's second hypersonic missile test, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has reportedly fired another projectile into the Sea of Japan.

2022-01-10T22:37+0000

2022-01-10T22:37+0000

2022-01-10T23:48+0000

launch

north korea

sea of japan

missile

dprk

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Less than a week after what it said was the country's second hypersonic missile test, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has reportedly fired another projectile into the Sea of Japan, according to South Korean and Japanese defense officials.The projectile has not yet been identified, but was noted by the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff as a possible ballistic missile launch. A hypersonic glide vehicle like that tested last week also begins its flight atop a rocket booster, but soon detaches to glide unpowered toward its target instead of following a standard ballistic trajectory.Japanese officials said the projectile landed outside the country's exclusive economic zone. The government reportedly formed a crisis response center in response to the launch."Our goal remains complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. We are prepared to engage in and support serious and sustained diplomacy to that end. It is the DPRK that now must choose dialogue and peace over its unlawful and threatening weapons program," she added. The UN Security Council met shortly afterward to discuss the launch in a closed-door hearing.Pentagon press secretary John Kirby also said on Monday that the US was still assessing last week's test, adding that regardless of whether it was a traditional ballistic missile or hypersonic weapon, it "continues to be in violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions and we certainly call on the DPRK to abide by those obligations and those responsibilities and to look for ways to deescalate."The US has long sought to force the DPRK to give up its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs by imposing crushing economic sanctions. Pyongyang says it needs the weapons to guarantee its security in the absence of a permanent peace treaty ending the Korean War, which began in 1950 and only ended with a ceasefire in 1953. It has said it will give up its nuclear weapons if the US removes its sanctions and its 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea, but the Biden administration says it will not begin talks with the DPRK without prior guarantees about North Korean denuclearization.

sea of japan

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launch, north korea, sea of japan, missile, dprk
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/ohio-lawmaker-jim-jordan-refuses-to-cooperate-with-january-6-select-committee-1092164933.html

Ohio Lawmaker Jim Jordan Refuses to Cooperate With January 6 Select Committee

Ohio Lawmaker Jim Jordan Refuses to Cooperate With January 6 Select Committee

US Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has informed the US House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol that he will not... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T21:27+0000

2022-01-10T21:27+0000

2022-01-10T21:34+0000

donald trump

us house select committee

jim jordan

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Jordan, in a letter dated January 9, 2022, responded to the Select Committee with a series of accusations including the suggestion that the investigation was conducting partisan witch hunts.The Select Committees letter to Jordan identifies the latter as a material witness over communications he had with US President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, and to answer questions about potential additional communications he held with the former US leader. In particular, the letter addressed Jordans role and knowledge of strategies to overturn the results of the 2020 US presidential election.Jordans four-page letter, containing numerous footnotes, does not directly address the Committees reasons for requesting his cooperation. Much of the letter instead contains critiques of Democrats and the Select Committee.Jordan, in his response to the Select Committee, blasts House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for what he characterizes as her failure to adequately protect the Capitol, expands on his claim of a partisan witch hunt, and suggests, similar to others who have refused to cooperate with the Committee, that the investigation is a violation of the First Amendment protection of free speech.Jordan does recount his whereabouts during the attack, but offers no insights into his communications with Trump before, during, and after the January 6 Capitol attack.A spokesman for the Select Committee, Tim Mulvey, responded to Jordans letter.In the coming days, the Select Committee is expected to respond to the letter in more detail. Thus far, the Committee has been wary to issue subpoenas to members of Congress but has not ruled out the practice.Representative Jordan has long been a Trump-supporter, including after the end of the latters presidency. In a 2018 interview with Anderson Cooper, Jordan stated that he had never heard Trump lie.Jordan called the protest of the 2019 Trump impeachment inquiry, in which approximately two dozen Republican lawmakers unsuccessfully stormed a closed-door deposition, justified.

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Nevin Brown

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Nevin Brown

donald trump, us house select committee, jim jordan
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/polish-border-guard-officer-suffers-head-injury-as-migrants-storm-polish-belarusian-border-1092156529.html

Polish Border Guard Officer Suffers Head Injury As Migrants Storm Polish-Belarusian Border

Polish Border Guard Officer Suffers Head Injury As Migrants Storm Polish-Belarusian Border

A Polish Border Guard officer has suffered a head injury during migrants attack on the border in attempt to enter the country from Belarusian territory

2022-01-10T13:32+0000

2022-01-10T13:32+0000

2022-01-10T13:32+0000

belarus

europe

poland

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"During today's forceful attempts to push the Polish-Belarusian border near Czeremcha and Szudzialowo, foreign citizents and Belarusian services threw not only stones, but noise firecrackers in the direction of Polish patrols. The Border guard officer received head injuries, she was hospitalized," the statement said.According to the border control, in the past 24 hours 49 attempts to illegally cross the border from the Belarusian territory have been registered.In 2021, the Polish border guard recorded over 40,000 attempts of illegal border crossing, which is several dozen times more than a year earlier. The monthly number grew from 3,500 in August to 7,700 in September and 17,400 in October, before decreasing to 8,900 in November.Belarus started assisting migrants in their voluntary return home late November. Nonetheless, the number of migrants stuck at the Polish-Belarusian border at the end of 2021 amounted to around 2,000 people, with 600 placed at the Bruzgi migrant camp only.Thousands of migrants have gathered at Belarus' borders with Poland and other neighboring EU countries since early summer trying to reach Europe through the Belarusian border. In response to illegal crossing attempts, Warsaw boosted security in the area, blaming Minsk for fueling the crisis to get back at Brussels for imposing sanctions. Belarus, for its part, reiterated that it could no longer curb illegal migration the EU due Western sanctions.

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belarus, europe, poland
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/protest-reportedly-takes-place-in-beirut-over-continuous-blackouts-1092158540.html

Protest Reportedly Takes Place in Beirut Over Continuous Blackouts

Protest Reportedly Takes Place in Beirut Over Continuous Blackouts

A protest took place in front of the Lebanese Energy Ministry in Beirut due to ongoing power outages in various locations across the country, media reported on Monday.

2022-01-10T14:32+0000

2022-01-10T14:32+0000

2022-01-10T14:33+0000

lebanon

power outage

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According to the Lebanese broadcaster Al Jadeed, demonstrators tried to enter the building of the ministry due to a lack of electricity in Akkar, the northernmost governorate of Lebanon. Lebanese Energy Minister Walid Fayad reportedly appealed to the protesters by video, as he was not in the ministry at the time of the demonstration. The minister promised that the electricity would be evenly distributed between the regions of the country.The current outage is related to a conflict around the power station in the Aaramoun settlement near Beirut. On Saturday, residents of the settlement tried to break into the station in protest over constant power outages. As a result, the entire power grid went out of service. Electricity was also temporarily cut off at the Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport.The energy crisis has been going on in Lebanon for over 30 years. Amid severe economic meltdown, Beirut has not been able to provide fuel for power plants for over six months, leaving the country without electricity for up to 20-22 hours a day. In remote regions, such as Akkar, residents barely have any access to any state-produced electricity. The situation has created a black market for private power generators that fill the gap. However, due to the sharp increase in prices, the majority of the population is currently unable to pay bills for alternative sources of energy and is left without electricity.

lebanon

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lebanon, power outage
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/protests-erupt-as-iconic-social-reformer-periyars-statue-vandalised-in-indias-tamil-nadu---1092151966.html

Protests Erupt as Iconic Social Reformer Periyar's Statue Vandalised in India's Tamil Nadu

Protests Erupt as Iconic Social Reformer Periyar's Statue Vandalised in India's Tamil Nadu

Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, a social reformer and famous political leader in India, led several movements in his lifetime for the betterment of the Dalit community... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T14:00+0000

2022-01-10T14:00+0000

2022-01-10T14:00+0000

tamil nadu

bharatiya janata party (bjp)

india

india

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Political parties in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu have condemned the desecration of the statue of Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, the founding father of the Dravidian movement. On Monday, the Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) and the Thanthai Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam (TPDK) staged a protest march across the southern Indian state.On Sunday morning, a life-size statue of Periyar was found vandalised in the state's Coimbatore district. It had been garlanded with a pair of slippers and smeared with saffron powder.Although the Tamil Nadu state police have registered a complaint about the matter, there have been no arrests so far.Politicians across the party line have condemned the act and demanded strict action against those responsible.Legendary actor and politician Kamal Haasan said, "Periyar passes on to today's generation with vigour. He cannot be insulted."Actress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician Khushbu Sundar also condemned the act.Meanwhile, members of Dravidar Kazhagam on Monday gathered in front of the statue and raised slogans condemning the act and demanded that police book the culprits.

tamil nadu

india

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Deexa Khanduri https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0c/1e/1081607388_0:0:961:960_100x100_80_0_0_e9e931b8c1e18fb41f3074e2145d7a3a.jpg

Deexa Khanduri https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0c/1e/1081607388_0:0:961:960_100x100_80_0_0_e9e931b8c1e18fb41f3074e2145d7a3a.jpg

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tamil nadu, bharatiya janata party (bjp), india, india
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/putin-appeasement-slur-shows-little-chance-for-diplomacy-1092159771.html

'Putin Appeasement' Slur Shows Little Chance for Diplomacy

'Putin Appeasement' Slur Shows Little Chance for Diplomacy

Anyone proposing the slightest diplomatic engagement with Russia  no matter how reasonable or necessary  is immediately tarred with the false slur of... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T15:20+0000

2022-01-10T15:20+0000

2022-01-10T15:20+0000

russia

talks

nato

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That, unfortunately, means that as Russian officials hold high-level talks this week with counterparts from the United States and NATO there is little chance for a diplomatic resolution to dangerous tensions.German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is the latest target for the appeaser label after it was reported that his administration is looking to find a restoration of normal relations with Russia.Separately, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg have taken a tough anti-appeasement line towards Russia ahead of negotiations this week.Blinken said alleged Russian aggression will not be tolerated while the NATO civilian chief said the bloc would not compromise in admitting whatever nation likes to join the military alliance.Its quite clear that the US and its NATO allies are totally dominated by groupthink that is infested with chronic Russophobia. After a videoconference for NATO foreign ministers last Friday, Blinken gave a presser in which he accused Russia of a litany of transgressions, ranging from invading Ukraine in 2014 to poisoning former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, from interfering in US elections to complicity in war crimes in Syria.All of the allegations of malign Russian activity are dubious and unsubstantiated. Indeed, the claims are arguably unhinged, slanderous and offensively provocative. And yet Moscow is supposed to dialogue with such people?The abject thing is the absolute conviction with which these allegations are articulated and professed as truth. Blinken, as with other US politicians and media pundits, as well as NATO counterparts, seems to believe their own propaganda with regard to demonizing Russia. At no point is there the slightest cognizance of NATOs own involvement in orchestrating the 2014 coup detat in Ukraine, an event that has created so much of the present tensions. All the other alleged Russian transgressions can be rebutted too with ample evidence. But there is no intelligent scope for a reasonable debate and argument based on facts.Russia is purportedly guilty of all charges because the charges are formulated on the basis of Russophobia. This is ideological bigotry that is premised on deeply hostile prejudice that can be traced back to the Cold War and before.The relentless groupthink and Russophobia as displayed by the US and its European vassals indicates that there is negligible chance of a diplomatic resolution to security tensions with Russia.Moscow has reasonably put forward what it considers to be red lines for its national security, including the eastward expansion of NATO to include Ukraine and other former Soviet Republics, as well as the installation of strike weapons near its border.Instead of those long-held existential concerns held by Russia being considered and responded to, the United States and its partners are upping the ante by accusing Moscow of seeking a pretext for invading Ukraine.The groupthink of the US and its NATO allies and their incorrigible Russophobia ultimately mean that Russias legitimate security apprehensions will fall on deaf ears.And, more disturbing, if any American or European public figure should dare to question the hostile Russophobia and propose a genuine mutual compromise then they will be vilified as an appeaser to Moscow.This is a reference to the 1930s and the lead-up to World War II when British and French leaders were perceived as having acquiesced to Adolf Hitler and the aggression of Nazi Germany.Such an argument is false and ludicrous. For a start, British and French governments in the 1930s did not appease Hitler. They enabled the expansionism of Nazi Germany as a way to bludgeon their real perceived geopolitical rival, the Soviet Union. British and American capital helped build the Nazi war machine, and fascism more generally, as a weapon against socialism and communism.To insinuate that todays Russia is somehow comparable to Nazi Germany is historically illiterate and absurd. Nonetheless, that this is the point of accusations against German Chancellor Scholz for daring to appease Russian leader Vladimir Putin with a proposed (and eminently reasonable) reset in relations.What is ominous is that the false appeasement argument is wheeled out by US and European politicians and media every time they want to drum up public acceptance of war. When the American and European military wants to wage a war they usually demonize the target with false Hitler comparisons and flawed appeasement claims.The toxic implication is that appeasing Hitler was wrong because it led to war and likewise to do so with Putin is also a mistake. But the entire argument is spurious. The Western powers did not appease Hitler, they fomented his aggression, which then after losing control had to be finally eliminated through war. And Russia is not the aggressor. It is the US and NATO.NATOs expansionism towards Russia is aggressive and hostile for the past 30 years since the supposed end of the Cold War. It is deplorable that the present tensions are viewed as being the fault of Russia  that is an expression of sheer Russophobia. All the while, any attempt at reasonable dialogue is shot down as appeasement which carries multiple insults in its falsification.It is foreboding that trying to have a conversation with the US and NATO is like having a conversation with a brick wall.

https://sputniknews.com/20220109/us-penning-punishing-sanctions-against-russia-in-case-of-invasion-of-ukraine---report-1092122855.html

https://sputniknews.com/20211231/nato-is-transforming-ukraine-into-military-foothold-against-russia-lavrov-tells-sputnik-1091937563.html

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russia, talks, nato
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/record-high-infection-cases-and-long-queues-is-israel-losing-control-over-covid-19-1092147689.html

Record-High Infection Cases and Long Queues: Is Israel Losing Control Over COVID-19?

Record-High Infection Cases and Long Queues: Is Israel Losing Control Over COVID-19?

On Sunday, Israel registered more than 17,000 new cases of coronavirus. According to estimates, the current wave of the pandemic will see two to four million Israelis infected

2022-01-10T08:31+0000

2022-01-10T08:31+0000

2022-01-10T14:26+0000

middle east

israel

covid-19

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Up until recently, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett thought he'd had the coronavirus pandemic under control.From October to mid-December, the number of daily cases was relatively low, rarely exceeding 1,500 patients per day, and it seemed to many that the booster shot had done the trick.Losing ControlThen came the Omicron variant, which quickly turned the situation upside down. Within weeks, the strain, which is believed to be more infectious than the original virus -- had spread within Israel.On Sunday, more than 17,000 new cases were detected in Israel, and the projections are that the country will register between two to four million patients in the current wave.To detect those patients, Israel operates dozens of drive-throughs as well as permanent detection centres across the country. But they can barely cope with the daily flow of people there.In recent days, local media have shown how bad the situation was. Long queues out of detection centres have become a daily occurrence; the frustration of many Israelis, who have been forced to wait for their turn for six to eight hours, has become a common phenomenon.Local authorities have tried to take the pressure off those detection centres, and Israelis were asked to resort to home antigen tests. Those vanished from the shelves of pharmacies within hours, prompting many Israelis to try their luck online.Internet websites in Israel offer a variety of those tests but their prices are ridiculously high, ranging from $23 each to $612 for a set that contains five tests.The black market is also trying to grab a slice of the cake, and recent reports suggest that the absence of tests has made the industry blossom. Meanwhile, authorities are struggling to contain the situation.Confusion Is DominatingHowever, what the authorities have also failed to contain has been the confusion of the public. In the past couple of weeks, coronavirus regulations have changed several times. Such was the case with the policy of testing for COVID-19. Such was the situation with the education outline that failed to address the concerns of parents, and such was the case with the admission of tourists into the country.That confusion has only added to the already existing frustration of the masses that's now only growing.Sunday's poll -- conducted by Channel 12 -- revealed that 63 percent of Israelis felt the current government had failed in tackling the coronavirus pandemic.Prime Minister Bennett and Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman got exceptionally low rates, with 62 and 66 percent opposing their policies.Bennett is aware of that alarming trend. On Sunday, he released a statement on his official Facebook page, trying to calm the masses.The post then goes to explain that the Omicron variant is much more vicious than other strains that Israel has seen so far. He has also detailed a list of achievements of his government, including millions of vaccines, anti-COVID medications and a boost for local hospitals and medical centres.But as numbers keep growing, many doubt that the soothing words of the Prime Minister will calm the masses.

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https://sputniknews.com/20220110/rioters-reportedly-wanted-to-seize-swords-of-huns-and-sakas-from-almaty-museum-1092151075.html

Rioters Reportedly Wanted to Seize Swords of Huns and Sakas From Almaty Museum

Rioters Reportedly Wanted to Seize Swords of Huns and Sakas From Almaty Museum

Rioters attempted to storm the Central State Kazakh Museum in Almaty and seize swords and spikes that once belonged to Huns and Sakas, Khabar 24 TV channel reported.

2022-01-10T13:02+0000

2022-01-10T13:02+0000

2022-01-10T13:03+0000

protests in kazakhstan

protests

kazakhstan

museum

riots

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Rioters attempted to storm the Central State Kazakh Museum in Almaty and seize swords and spikes that once belonged to Huns and Sakas, Khabar 24 TV channel reported. Since the museum is located not far from the city administration where the riots had started, the museum's employees decided to spend a night inside the building to prevent looters from damaging the museum's collection. She believes that "spirits of ancestors and ancient warriors" helped her to persuade the rioters to leave peacefully. In early January, mass protests in Kazakhstan began over a rise in prices for liquefied natural gas. People took to the streets in several Kazakh cities, where some of the protesters clashed with the police. According to the Kazakh authorities, "militants" and "terrorists" tried to use the protests to organise a coup. Dozens of people on both sides are reported to have been killed as a result of the clashes but the exact death toll has yet to be confirmed. A nationwide state of emergency is in place in Kazakhstan until 19 January.

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https://sputniknews.com/20220110/russia-us-begin-talks-on-security-guarantees-in-geneva-1092148309.html

Russia, US Begin Talks on Security Guarantees in Geneva

Russia, US Begin Talks on Security Guarantees in Geneva

GENEVA (Sputnik) - Russia and the United States have begun talks on security guarantees in Geneva, a Sputnik correspondent said. 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T08:00+0000

2022-01-10T08:00+0000

2022-01-10T08:00+0000

world

russia

us

security

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The meeting is being held in a closed format on the territory of the US Permanent Mission to the UN Office in Geneva. The central issue of the talks is expected to be Russia's security suggestions for NATO and Washington, which include, in particular, provisions on the mutual non-deployment of intermediate and shorter-range missiles, non-expansion of NATO eastward and reduction of military exercises.The Russian delegation is headed by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin. The US delegation is led by Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.On Saturday, a preliminary part of the talks in the format of a working dinner took place in Geneva. Ryabkov said that the conversation was difficult, but businesslike.

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world, russia, us, security, talks
You are here: China

A "Fuxing" high-speed Electric Multiple Unit (EMU) left Xichang City in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Sichuan Province, for Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, on Monday.



It marked the departure of the first "Fuxing" bullet train from the prefecture in the remote Daliang Mountain, one of China's most recent areas to shake off abject poverty.

The high-speed train operates at a speed of 160 km per hour on the new Chengdu-Kunming railway, which runs almost parallel to an existing railway between the two cities.

Running via tunnels and bridges, the high-speed train can reduce the travel distance between the two cities by about 236 km.

Thanks to the new bullet train service, local fresh cut flowers from Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture are estimated to reach the Kunming Dounan Flower Market, Asia's largest fresh cut flower trading market, in roughly four hours.

This new train service is also regarded as another effort to consolidate the country's achievements in poverty alleviation.
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/sen-sanders-gop-base-growing-as-democratic-party-turns-its-back-on-the-working-class-1092165457.html

Sen. Sanders: GOP Base Growing as Democratic Party Turns Its Back on the Working Class

Sen. Sanders: GOP Base Growing as Democratic Party Turns Its Back on the Working Class

Between Biden's low approval rating and a gubernatorial loss in the battleground state of Virginia, Democrats have a lot to prove and even more to lose in the... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T22:45+0000

2022-01-10T22:45+0000

2022-01-10T22:45+0000

joe biden

bernie sanders

us senate

us house of representatives

chuck schumer

us

nancy pelosi

us congress

democrats

biden administration

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Democrats, although faced with centrist hurdles, must make "a major course correction" and refocus legislative efforts on fighting for the American working class, according to Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose comments were published exclusively by The Guardian on Monday. Sanders, who serves as chairman of the US Senate Committee on the Budget, told the outlet that the GOP has been able to expand its base due to its appeal to the average employed American. The Vermont senator also noted that lawmakers have fallen victim to capitalism and have ignored the true concerns of the average voter, including low wages, lack of healthcare, debt, and the threat of homelessness.While it is hard to approve legislation via the 60-vote threshold in a Senate comprised of 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, there should be more pushparticularly from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumerto set forth legislation with widespread voter support, such as medicare for all, stricter gun laws, and a wealth tax.He also called on Schumer to hold votes on bills to support working families, such as proposals on extending the child tax credit and raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. The US senator from Vermont spoke with the UK-based outlet on January 6, marking the one-year commemoration of a violent and deadly attack by supporters of then-US President Donald Trump against the US Capitol building and its inhabitants.Sanders also released a statement declaring that American "democracy is under attack from Republicans in Congress" and pointing out that many GOP-controlled state legislatures are working to enact laws that will make it "harder for people of color and young people to vote."The US senator called on Congress to end the disconnect between Americans and politicians, a result of the repetitive cycle of unfulfilled campaign promises. "Congress must boldly address the long-neglected crises facing the working people of this country," Sanders added, highlighting the strength of the American working-class vote.

https://sputniknews.com/20220106/one-year-since-capitol-riot-obama-sanders-clinton-cruz-and-others-weigh-in-on-6-january-events-1092070718.html

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https://sputniknews.com/20220110/sex-abuse-victims-lose-case-against-reigning-english-premier-league-champions-manchester-city-1092157294.html

Sex Abuse Victims Lose Case Against Reigning English Premier League Champions Manchester City

Sex Abuse Victims Lose Case Against Reigning English Premier League Champions Manchester City

A sexual abuse scandal involving children at football clubs in the United Kingdom (UK) unravelled in November 2016 when ex-Crewe player Andy Woodward disclosed... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T14:45+0000

2022-01-10T14:45+0000

2022-01-10T14:45+0000

sport

english premier league

manchester city

court

sputnik

premier league

sex abuse

pedophile

sport

sport

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Five-time English champions Manchester City have won a court battle against eight men who sued the Premier League club. They accused paedophile, Barry Bennell of abusing them more than three decades ago. The high court judge, who ruled in favour of City, categorically rejected the men's claim that the club was responsible for the abuse.According to the claimants, Bennell, sexually abused them between 1979 and 1985 when he was employed as a scout for City. The victims, all currently aged above 40, were seeking damages from City for its association with Bennell, aged 68, who has been convicted on similar charges in the United States and Britain. The men had argued in court that City's relationship with Bennell was "one of employment or one akin to employment" and that's why the liability of their abuse rested on the club's shoulders. Delivering his verdict against the men, Justice Johnson said that City's relationship with Bennell wasn't a strong ground to make the club liable for the abuse he committed. "The relationship gave Bennell the opportunity to commit the abuse, but MCFC had not entrusted the welfare of the claimants to Bennell. It follows that it has not been shown that MCFC is legally responsible for Bennell's acts of abuse," he added.The lawyer of the alleged victims, David McClenaghan, however, wasn't happy with the outcome of the case and promised to make an appeal against the judgement. He revealed that the men were in "shock" after the court's decision. Meanwhile, a City spokeswoman declined to comment on the outcome before reiterating the club's apology to the survivors of the alleged abuse.She said that the club has "both personally and publicly apologised without reservation for the unimaginable suffering that each survivor experienced as the result of abuse they suffered."

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sport, english premier league, manchester city, court, sputnik, premier league, sex abuse, pedophile, sport, sport, coach, child sexual abuse, sex abuse, sex abuse, court case, pedophile, manchester city, premier league
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/stoltenberg-and-ukraines-foreign-minister-kuleba-address-media-ahead-of-nato-ukraine-meeting-1092144905.html

Stoltenberg and Ukraine's Foreign Minister Kuleba Address Media Ahead of NATO-Ukraine Meeting

Stoltenberg and Ukraine's Foreign Minister Kuleba Address Media Ahead of NATO-Ukraine Meeting

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba address the media in Brussels ahead of the NATO-Ukraine Commission meeting

2022-01-10T09:47+0000

2022-01-10T09:47+0000

2022-01-10T09:48+0000

world

ukraine

nato

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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba address the media in Brussels ahead of the NATO-Ukraine Commission meeting.Kuleba's visit to Brussels is taking place against the backdrop of a meeting between Russia and the United States scheduled for 10 January, which will take place as a strategic dialogue at the level of the representatives of the foreign ministries. A meeting of the Russia-NATO Council is scheduled for 12 January, and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Permanent Council meeting in Vienna, which is scheduled for 13 January.Follow Sputnik's Live Feed to Find Out More!

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Stoltenberg and Ukraine's Foreign Minister Kuleba Address Media Ahead of NATO-Ukraine Meeting Stoltenberg and Ukraine's Foreign Minister Kuleba Address Media Ahead of NATO-Ukraine Meeting 2022-01-10T09:47+0000 true PT14M32S

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https://sputniknews.com/20220110/this-is-hard-cdc-head-walensky-explains-confusing-guidelines-as-all-free-to-decide-on-their-own-1092141352.html

'This Is Hard': CDC Head Walensky Explains Confusing Guidelines as All Free to Decide on Their Own

'This Is Hard': CDC Head Walensky Explains Confusing Guidelines as All Free to Decide on Their Own

This comes amid the current surge in daily COVID-19 cases over the past few weeks due to the Omicron variant, and the ongoing US Supreme Court debate over... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T01:28+0000

2022-01-10T01:28+0000

2022-01-10T01:28+0000

omicron covid strain

us

us centers for disease control (cdc)

covid-19

omicron strain

u.s. supreme court

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Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), on Sunday tried to explain the newly revised guidelines on testing and isolation for those who have tested positive for COVID-19 and those who are showing symptoms of the virus, and the agency's confusing messaging that has caused the public to lose trust in her organization.Fox News host Bret Baier challenged Walensky in a Sunday interview, wondering if she believed that the "confusion about the guidance" she mentioned, such as on "isolation and testing," had contributed to the public distrust of the CDC.Baier started by mentioning the agency's newly-issued recommendations that advise isolation duration following a positive test from ten to five days and removed the recommendation for a negative test before leaving isolation.Baier noted that the "other guidance is the mask-wearing, educators being vaccinated before returning to the classroom." Walensky replied that "this is hard."However, Baier went on to say that, despite the new guidance, facilities like Georgetown University were still using ten-day isolation protocols for asymptomatic students, as well as testing that could result in a positive result from small amounts of the deadly virus even if the student in question was not infectious. Then, he asked Walensky to comment on the "major companies and universities [..] ignoring" the updated guidelines and continuing to isolate or quarantine asymptomatic people for ten days.The new guidance, according to Walensky, is intended for the general public, although larger organizations and universities should continue to make their own decisions.In response to that, Baier further pressed her on whether it is "extreme" to lock multiple people in a room with those allegedly infected, but Walensky reiterated that instructions in "congregate settings" may need to be tailored to the circumstances.The host asked Walensky whether she would like to convey that message to universities such as Georgetown, that are currently following the ten-day isolation guidance. More to the interview, Walensky was asked to comment on the Supreme Court scrutiny of the Biden administration's vaccine mandates, especially the statement by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who brought up children suffering because of COVID-19 during oral arguments in a lawsuit involving the Biden administration's vaccine mandate for enterprises with at least 100 employees. In her argument, the justice said that the US currently has "100,000" children in hospitals with COVID-19, "which we've never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators."Walensky admitted that the number is nowhere near the figure given by Sotomayor, saying that there are fewer than 3,500 children in hospitals with COVID-19, while also emphasizing that Americans can still help prevent hospitalization by getting vaccinated.Walensky further pointed out that COVID-19 hospitalizations typically comprise people who are admitted to hospitals for other reasons and then test positive for the virus while there, rather than those who are admitted because they are unwell with the coronavirus.Moreover, Sotomayor mentioned the delta variant, claiming that the omicron is equally as lethal. Walensky seemed to dismiss the idea that this is true on an individual basis, saying that "on a person-by-person basis, it may not be," but adding that the death rate "may rise dramatically" due to the increased number of omicron instances.The number of detected cases of the coronavirus in the US has exceeded 60 million, according to Johns Hopkins University. Over 60 million people have been infected with the coronavirus in the country since the outbreak, of which more than 837,000 patients have died.According to the CDC, the current 7-day moving average of daily new cases (586,391) grew 85.7% from the previous 7-day moving average as of January 5, 2022.

https://sputniknews.com/20211230/cdc-recommends-doses-mimosas-champagne-cocaine-twitter-giggles-at-posts-mocking-cdc-guidelines-1091924476.html

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Kirill Kurevlev

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Kirill Kurevlev

us, us centers for disease control (cdc), covid-19, omicron strain, u.s. supreme court
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/threat-is-real-pakistan-pm-khan-seeks-action-against-modi-for-not-controlling-extremist-hindus-1092149205.html

Threat is Real: Pakistan PM Khan Seeks Action Against Modi For Not Controlling Extremist Hindus

Threat is Real: Pakistan PM Khan Seeks Action Against Modi For Not Controlling Extremist Hindus

At a three-day conference in the holy Indian city Haridwar, right-wing Hindu activists took an oath to eliminate 200 million Muslims if necessary to make a... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T12:22+0000

2022-01-10T12:22+0000

2022-01-10T12:22+0000

pakistan

genocide

extremism

muslims

imran khan

narendra modi

violence

hindus

india

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Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has warned global powers of the "extremist agenda" of the Indian government while highlighting a recent gathering of Hindu activists in the northern Indian city of Haridwar. The three-day event named "Dharam Sansad," attended by Hindu monks and activists, issued a blatant call to rid the country of Muslims and to turn the secular republic of India into a Hindu nation.Khan's outbursts came after the Narendra Modi-led government failed to condemn incendiary remarks aimed at minority communities at the closed-door meeting held between 17 and 19 December.The police have not arrested any of the participants, even though a number of video recordings are available on social media. The Uttarakhand Police registered a case against the organisers of the Hindu Conclave, but only after former diplomats, lawyers and students condemned the most blatant and alarming incitement to violence in recent years.The organisers have announced a "Retaliation Day" set for 16 January against the Police case.On Monday, the Supreme Court of India agreed to hear a petition seeking criminal action against the Dharam Sansad organisers for their genocidal calls against Muslims. No arrests have been made so far.During the conference, Swami Prabodhanand Giri, head of a right-wing Hindu organisation in Uttarakhand, said the country now belongs to Hindus. Videos from the conference also showed other participants swearing an oath to turn India into a Hindu nation. The inflammatory remarks come as five states are holding elections, including Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

https://sputniknews.com/20211019/muslim-parliamentarian-in-india-questions-pm-modis-silence-on-killings-in-jammu-and-kashmir-1090027186.html

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Rishikesh Kumar https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/08/04/1080055820_0:0:388:389_100x100_80_0_0_40018ee210946d65d49ffba4f4c008e1.jpg

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pakistan, genocide, extremism, muslims, imran khan, narendra modi, violence, hindus, india
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/uk-cabinet-minister-gove-gets-stuck-in-bbc-lift-for-half-an-hour-on-way-to-interview-1092161247.html

UK Cabinet Minister Gove Gets Stuck in BBC Lift for Half an Hour on Way to Interview

UK Cabinet Minister Gove Gets Stuck in BBC Lift for Half an Hour on Way to Interview

UK Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities Michael Gove got stuck in an elevator at the BBC's headquarters in London on Monday where he had arrived for an interview with Radio 4's Today programme.

2022-01-10T18:34+0000

2022-01-10T18:34+0000

2022-01-10T18:34+0000

michael gove

uk

elevator

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UK Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities Michael Gove got stuck in an elevator at the BBC's headquarters in London on Monday where he had arrived for an interview with Radio 4's Today programme. Gove spent about half an hour in the lift with a security guard. "You might have been hoping to hear from Michael Gove, the presenter Nick Robinson told listeners about five minutes after Goves interview was about to begin at 8:10am.After Gove eventually reached the studio 15 minutes late, he joked that he had been levelled up, referring to his ministerial role.Gove was invited to the show to discuss a 4 billion package to make sure leaseholders escape heavy costs in replacing combustible cladding on buildings in the UK. The minister is expected to announce in Parliament that residents of blocks between 11 metres and 18 metres tall will no longer face costly bills. According to Gove, developers will be asked to pay, and those who fail to pay could be fined.

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2022

Sofia Chegodaeva

Sofia Chegodaeva

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Sofia Chegodaeva

michael gove, uk, elevator
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/ukraine-urges-germany-to-impose-preventative-punitive-measures-on-russia-scrap-nord-stream-2-1092153244.html

Ukraine Urges Germany to Impose Preventative Punitive Measures on Russia, Scrap Nord Stream 2

Ukraine Urges Germany to Impose Preventative Punitive Measures on Russia, Scrap Nord Stream 2

Nord Stream 2  the $10.5 billion, 1,230 km gas pipeline running from Russia to northeastern Germany along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, was completed and made... 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T11:03+0000

2022-01-10T11:03+0000

2022-01-10T11:46+0000

ukraine

weapons

germany

nazi germany

nord stream 2

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Berlin should abandon the Nord Stream 2 project as one of the tough measures that should be taken by the collective West against Russia to prevent the aggravation of the crisis in Ukraine, Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk has said.In order to prevent a new Russian invasion, our partners in Europe and the US would have to take very tough preventative punitive measures against Moscow before Putin extends his military intervention, and not afterwards, when it is too late, Melnyk said, speaking to reporters from Germanys Funke media group on Monday.Melnyk did not clarify what Germany  which depends on natural gas for over a quarter of its total energy consumption, and which has faced growing demand for the clean fossil fuel after reducing dependence on coal and nuclear energy, would stand to gain from scrapping Nord Stream 2, particularly amid the cold winter facing Europe.In mid-December, the German association of underground gas storage operators said that the countrys reserves had fallen below 60 percent, constituting a historically low level compared to previous years, and warned that storage would fall further to potentially dangerous levels by February.Send Arms NowIn his interview with German media, Melnyk also urged Berlin to drop its absolutely reprehensible veto on the delivery of new weapons to Kiev.We have a full right to self defence, the ambassador said. Only an immediate increase in the supply of defensive weapons to Ukraine to increase its defence capability would constitute a real game changer, he suggested.Melnyk went on to try to lay a guilt trip on Germany for its historic responsibility for World War II, suggesting that Berlin has the same kind of obligation to help Ukraine today as it has had to assist Israel  which has received billions of dollars in reparations assistance over the decades. Support from Berlin is Germanys historical duty for its eternal historical responsibility to Ukraine for Nazi tyranny, the diplomat claimed.Melnyk is not averse to making controversial statements. Last year, the diplomat warned that Ukraine may have to dust off plans to build nuclear weapons to fight of Russian aggression if it wasnt allowed to join NATO.Recent months have seen a dramatic escalation in tensions between Russia and the West over the crisis in Ukraine. Kiev and its allies have claimed that Moscow has concentrated up to 100,000 troops on the border in possible preparations to invade. The Kremlin has dismissed these claims, and issues its own concerns, as a guarantor of the Minsk agreements on Ukrainian peace, that Kiev may be preparing a military operation to try to resolve the frozen civil conflict in the countrys east by force.

https://sputniknews.com/20211216/germanys-gas-reserves-plummet-to-record-low-as-nord-stream-2-left-on-ice-1091574081.html

https://sputniknews.com/20210429/israel-troubled-by-rally-of-ukrainian-nationalists-marking-creation-of-ss-division-1082765712.html

https://sputniknews.com/20210415/ukraines-ambassador-to-germany-says-kiev-may-have-to-build-nukes-if-it-cant-join-nato-1082640859.html

ukraine

germany

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2022

Ilya Tsukanov

Ilya Tsukanov

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Ilya Tsukanov

ukraine, weapons, germany, nazi germany, nord stream 2
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/us-russia-security-talks-in-geneva-conclude-after-roughly-75-hours-1092160909.html

US-Russia Security Talks in Geneva Conclude After Roughly 7.5 Hours

US-Russia Security Talks in Geneva Conclude After Roughly 7.5 Hours

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US-Russia security talks in Geneva concluded after roughly 7.5 hours, the State Department said in a statement circulated in media. 10.01.2022, Sputnik International

2022-01-10T15:58+0000

2022-01-10T15:58+0000

2022-01-13T14:14+0000

geneva

us

russia

nato

russia-nato row on european security

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Earlier on Monday, Russia and the United States began talks in Geneva. Among the topics are the security guarantees that were proposed by Moscow and include, in particular, provisions on the mutual non-deployment of intermediate and short-range missiles and limits on military exercises.The meeting was held in a closed format at the US Permanent Mission to the UN Office in Geneva.The Russian delegation was headed by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov and Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin. The US delegation is led by Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.

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2022

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geneva, us, russia, nato
https://sputniknews.com/20220110/us-sanctions-116-ortega-admin-figures-for-undermining-nicaraguas-democracy-on-inauguration-day-1092164398.html

US Sanctions 116 Ortega Admin Figures for Undermining Nicaraguas Democracy on Inauguration Day

US Sanctions 116 Ortega Admin Figures for Undermining Nicaraguas Democracy on Inauguration Day

The Biden administration announced it had levied sanctions against Nicaraguan officials, calling it a defense of democracy and human rights in the country. Washington rejected its recent elections because President Ortega won.

2022-01-10T19:47+0000

2022-01-10T19:47+0000

2022-01-10T19:46+0000

defense ministry

nicaragua

daniel ortega

latin america

us sanctions

elections

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The sanctions were unveiled as Nicaragua was preparing to inaugurate the victors of the November 7, 2021, election, including Ortega, who will begin a fourth five-year term as president. He has been in office since 2007, winning reelection four times with comparable margins of support."In concert with democracies in the international community, the United States will continue to call out the Ortega-Murillo regime's ongoing abuses and will deploy diplomatic and economic tools to support the restoration of democracy and respect for human rights in Nicaragua, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday.The US Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated eight Nicaraguan government officials as sanctions targets, including President Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo, Ortegas wife.It also targets Bayardo De Jesus Pulido Ortiz, head of the personnel and cadre department of the Nicaraguan Army, and Bayardo Ramon Rodriguez Ruiz, chief of the general staff of the Nicaraguan Army, saying they led a violent crackdown on dissent beginning in 2018, when US-backed riots swept the country.Defense Ministry Rosa Adelina Barahona De Rivas, Nahima Janett Diaz Flores, the director general of the Nicaraguan Institute of Telecommunications and Postal Services (TELCOR), and Celina Delgado Castellon, deputy director general of TELCOR and a member of the board of directors of the National Electric Transmission Company (ENATREL) representing TELCOR, were both sanctioned, as well. The Treasury said they were responsible for running a pro-Ortega troll farm on Facebook that Meta shut down in November, just days before the election.The US Treasury also sanctioned Ramon Humberto Calderon Vindell, former president of the board of directors of Nicaraguan state-owned oil company Petroleos de Nicaragua, and president of the board of directors of the ENIMINAS. Its reasons for targeting the firm arent related to any alleged repression, though, and seem to simply be intended to crush an important pillar of the Nicaraguan economy.The Government of Nicaraguas 2017 creation of state-owned ENIMINAS increased state involvement in the mining sector, especially gold mining, through joint ventures with private firms. The value of Nicaraguas gold exports has increased dramatically in recent years, driving profits to its allies in the private sector and increasing ENIMINAS revenues, which senior figures in the ruling party manage. Because ENIMINAS is owned or controlled by, or acts for or on behalf of, the Government of Nicaragua, officials of ENIMINAS are, therefore, officials of the Government of Nicaragua, OFAC said.At the same time, the European Union also unveiled sanctions on seven individuals and three entities in Nicaragua, including many of the same targets as Washington.40 Years of US Coup AttemptsIts a playbook the US has used time and again in Latin America, going back to the September 11, 1973, coup in Chile that saw the democratic socialist government of President Salvador Allende overthrown by the murderous military junta headed by Augusto Pinochet. More recently, the US has used it against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, where President Nicolas Maduro and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) have been denounced as illegitimate and authoritarian by Washington, which has instituted crushing economic sanctions intended to force the Venezuelan people into revolting against their government.However, by 2006, 15 years of neoliberal reforms to suit the cheap labor demands of US-based corporations had proven deeply unpopular, and voters brought Ortega and the FSLN back. Ortega quickly grew close to Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, and other Latin American leftist states, earning the lasting enmity of the US, which renewed its attempts to overthrow him. Deadly protests in 2018, which targeted police and FLSN figures, were hailed in Washington as pro-democracy protests, and the arrest of leading figures in the demonstrations last year was denounced by the US as an attack on democracy because many had registered as election candidates.Just days before the election, the US Congress passed the Reinforcing Nicaraguas Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform (RENACER) Act, which created a framework for a new regime of punishing sanctions in case Ortega won the election.In response to RENACER and other US attacks, Nicaragua quit the Organization of American States (OAS) after the November election, saying the group has as its mission to facilitate the hegemony of the United States with its interventionism against the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.Several Latin American leaders traveled to Managua to attend Ortegas and Murillos inauguration, including Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador sent Ramiro Ayala, Mexico's charge d'affaires in Nicaragua, saying that despite qualms about the election results, we can't set aside our policy of national self-determination and independence.

nicaragua

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2022

Morgan Artyukhina https://cdnn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e5/04/17/1082703728_0:0:800:800_100x100_80_0_0_0b6ce8daa7411284d60c8a0b6d84186d.jpg

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defense ministry, nicaragua, daniel ortega, latin america, us sanctions, elections
The Winbak Farm Winners Circle at Woodbine Mohawk Park was a happy haven for many who celebrated victories both big and small in Canadian harness racing in 2021. Its a place to take a moment and recognize the hard work that goes into producing a champion. And its a place where Winbaks own Pat Woods had the chance to celebrate the pinnacle of an OBrien Award-worthy season.

A first-time candidate as a result of revised eligibility in 2021, Winbak Farm was named an OBrien Award finalist for Armstrong Breeder of the Year.

It is always an honour to be recognized by our peers in this industry for something we love to do, Woods, manager of Winbak Farm of Canada, told Trot Insider. We are always striving to produce nice racehorses, so its very rewarding for those horses to succeed on the racetrack. We are very proud of our Winbak-bred horses.

Among those horses are OBrien Award finalist Desperate Man, the 2021 North America Cup champion and Ontario Sires Stakes star who led all horses in Canada for earnings under the management of the Cecchin family. OSS Gold winners Camealongway and Kolby Two Step also contributed to Winbaks chart-topping season in the provincial program as the farm led all breeders with earnings totalling $1,174,095.

Overall, Canadian-sired or Canadian-foaled horses bred by Winbak earned more than $5.2 million in 2021, with 251 starters producing 475 wins through December 21. But one victory certainly stands out for Woods.

Without hesitation, it was Desperate Man winning the North America Cup final. I was at the track that night with friends and staff for dinner cheering him on," said Woods. "Getting the opportunity to be in the Winbak Farm Winners Circle for the win photo with a Winbak-bred champion was incredible. There is no better feeling than to watch one of your babies win Canada's biggest race. We are so proud of him and so happy for his connections. It was definitely the pinnacle of our season. It's in those moments that it makes all the long days and hard work worth it.

Hard work and a dedicated team with a wealth of breeding expertise and a commitment to excellence spanning across North America is behind the farms success.

Teamwork is how we succeed this year and any year, said Woods. Winbak Farm is a big operation, only through dedicated staff, teamwork and support from clients can we be at our best. Our staff work so hard to do their best for these horses. They check their egos at the door, share their knowledge and experience for the betterment of the animal, and trust the process to building a racehorse. That is how our Winbak team succeeds. We are also very lucky to have wonderful support and trust from owners and trainers who turn our yearlings into quality racehorses. Sometimes it doesn't hurt to have a little racing luck too.

The culmination of the teams efforts resulting in an OBrien nomination was news that Woods was eager to share and quickly spread across the Canadian contingent in Inglewood, Ont., to the flagship farm founded by Joe and JoAnn Thomson in Chesapeake City, Maryland.

I was the one that got the call personally from Kathy [Wade Vlaar]. It is so thrilling to just be nominated and recognized. As soon as I got off the phone, I gave our owners and management team the great news who passed it down to the whole Winbak team. Everyone was so elated on the nomination. Winbak owners, Joe and JoAnn Thomson, were very honoured and quick to give credit to their hardworking staff for Winbak's successful year and the O'Brien nomination.

With the 2021 OBrien Awards gala a virtual affair as the COVID-19 pandemic persists, Woods will be cheering on Winbak and its supporters from afar, including fellow nominee George Millar of Millar Farms.

It's unfortunate that it has to be virtual but that is what it is today. I always think it's nice when you get to see someone's reaction live when they win and get to congratulate them in person, said Woods. I will watch from home this year, cheer on Desperate Man and my friends that are up for awards also. I will even be cheering our friend and client, George Millar, who is up against us for Armstrong Breeder of the Year. Millar Farm had an incredible year, and so deserving of the nomination. They are great people who have always supported our Winbak stallions year after year, so we are so happy for them and wish them the best of luck. I am fortunate to stand great stallions here at Winbak who have produced great sons and daughters who are nominated. So, its an added bonus to see how they all do. It should be a great night. I will definitely enjoy it.

The winners will be revealed on Sunday, Feb. 6 via a live streamed presentation on standardbredcanada.ca.
The fight against the COVID-19 pandemic has been China's main priority since the beginning of 2020. The battle continued last year under relatively better conditions. The experience of 2020 and massive inoculations facilitated the effort of the Chinese government to place the virus under control and prevent dangerous contractions in the case of new strains such as Delta and Omicron. The insistence on the zero-COVID policy combines a close monitoring of infections when they break out in parallel with the implementation of restrictions when they are required. Having already vaccinated more than 85% of its population by the end of 2021, China remains hopeful that it can obtain herd immunity in 2022.



Notwithstanding tremendous challenges caused, among other things by the pandemic, the Chinese economy has remained strong for another year. The World Bank projects China's real GDP will reach 8% in 2021. Throughout the year, foreign companies continued to invest in China. A Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) report in July asserted that "global economic decoupling from China, or as some call it, reshoring, is not happening." Recent data from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce demonstrated that foreign direct investment into China from January to November 2021 had increased by 15.9% in comparison to the same period of 2020, reaching $157.2 billion in total.

Trade numbers also outline the resilience of the globalization skeleton of the international economy. Eurostat shows that Chinese exports to the EU increased by 18.5% between January and October 2021, and imports by 12.9%. Also, Bloomberg data estimates that Chinese exports to the United States grew by 28.3% in the first 11 months of the year, and imports from the United States surged by 36.9%. In the same period, the Chinese consumption market expanded, and total retail sales of consumer goods rose by 13.7%, amounting to $6.25 trillion.

Although the persistence of the pandemic does not allow safe predictions about 2022, Morgan Stanley believes that China's growth might be better than expected and reach 5.5%, whereas the World Bank estimates 5%. The Chinese government has already started to take drastic measures to respond to the problem of property market debt. In addition, it intervened quickly last September to tackle the energy crunch by producing more coal.

In 2021, China announced the elimination of absolute poverty and began its new journey to patiently create a prosperous society. Technological progress lies at the heart of this vision but data governance remains critical. Last year, the Chinese government put some limits in the operation of big technological companies by creating a strict legal framework, elaborating on the concept of "common prosperity" and supporting competition in line with the standards of the Chinese socialist system. These efforts are expected to accelerate. China's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) identifies the potential of data as a significant growth contributor.

As continuity is the main characteristic of China's history and progress, its metamorphosis will further evolve in 2022. This year, however, is inaugurated with the culmination of the country's preparations to host the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. Fourteen years after the successful organization of the Beijing Summer Olympics, the Chinese government, ordinary citizens, and volunteers are working hard to succeed again. New records, a safe Games, and full stadiums in COVID-19 times will strengthen China's pride and confidence.

George N. Tzogopoulos is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/GeorgeNTzogopoulos.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

If you would like to contribute, please contact us at opinion@china.org.cn.
With last weeks Interstate 95 nightmare traffic jam fresh in mind, lets compare what happened in the snowy mess on the highway to all-time traffic jams across the globe.

The more than 40-mile jam last week along both sides of I-95 forced the closure of the interstate and left hundreds of travelers stranded during blizzard-like conditions for more than 24 hours.

That was an ordeal many will never forget, much like those unfortunates who found themselves stuck in other terrible traffic jams.

First, lets cover another local legendary snowy fiasco on I-95.

In February 2001, in whiteout conditions, a tractor-trailer slid into another car, starting a chain reaction of crashes on southbound I-95 in Stafford County involving at least 118 vehicles, leaving one woman dead and 100 injured.

The southbound lanes were closed, leading to a 12-mile backup. People were trapped in their cars and smoke from burning vehicles clouded over the scene. Dozens were stranded in makeshift shelters and rest areas.

Further from home, on the island of Java in 2016, a deadly 13-mile traffic jam along a road on the Indonesian island lasted for three days as people returned to the mainland after a festival marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

The packed roadway left no space for travelers, some of whom were trapped in their cars, while the temperature reached 86 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a 2019 hotcars.com list of worst traffic jams.

Twelve people, mostly elderly, died of dehydration while stuck inside their sweltering vehicles.

Back in the U.S., a 2005 hurricane led Interstate 45 in Texas to turn into a parking lot.

On Sept. 21 of that year, Houston residents were evacuating ahead of Hurricane Rita, according to a 2013 Forbes list of some of the worst traffic jams in history. As many as 2.5 million people packed into vehicles and hit the road, which led to a massive 100-mile queue on Interstate 45, according to the Forbes article.

The traffic jam lasted up to 48 hours, with some travelers stranded for as long as 24 hours.

An even longer traffic jam happened in 1980 in Lyon-Paris, France, when winter vacationers returning to the city ran into inclement weather. That massive backup stretched 109 miles, earning the mark of longest traffic jam in the Guinness Book of World Records.

In November 2012, a traffic snarl in Moscow, Russia, stranded travelers for up to three days after a snowstorm buried Highway M-10, which links Petersburg to Moscow. The Forbes article noted that the government reportedly set up tents along the route to offer provisions and psychological counseling  to mired motorists.

How about a traffic jam that lasts nearly two weeks?

That happened in an August 2010 traffic jam on the Beijing-Tibet Expressway lasting 12 days and covering 62 miles. Ironically, according to hotcars.com, the massive jam was caused by trucks, carrying construction supplies to help ease traffic jams, blocked at an exit to Beijing.

In Tokyo on Aug. 12, 1990, holiday travelers heading home and residents evacuating because of a typhoon warning resulted in more than 15,000 vehicles packing an 84-mile stretch of highway.

In Feb. 1, 2011, more than 20 inches of snow fell on Chicago, with the blizzard hitting its peak during the commuter rush, according to a Forbes article. The normally idyllic Lake Shore Drive became a nightmare for northbound travelers, who were stuck in their cars for more than 12 hours in drifting snow that reached almost as high as the cars windshields.

Perhaps the grand champion of traffic jams happened in Germany on April, 12, 1990, setting the Guinness World record for most vehicles in a roadway backup.

That hellish jam happened during the Easter holiday, just months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, as relatives traveled across the borders, according to Forbes.

The boost in travelers resulted in an 18-million car traffic jam on a road that normally averaged half a million vehicles per day.
As the raging omicron variant of COVID-19 infects workers across the nation, millions of those whose jobs don't provide paid sick days are having to choose between their health and their paycheck.

While many companies instituted more robust sick leave policies at the beginning of the pandemic, some of those have since been scaled back with the rollout of the vaccines, even though omicron has managed to evade the shots. Meanwhile, the current labor shortage is adding to the pressure of workers having to decide whether to show up to their job sick if they can't afford to stay home.

"It's a vicious cycle," said Daniel Schneider, professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. "As staffing gets depleted because people are out sick, that means that those that are on the job have more to do and are even more reluctant to call in sick when they in turn get sick."

Low-income hourly workers are especially vulnerable. Nearly 80% of all private sector workers get at least one paid sick day, according to a national compensation survey of employee benefits conducted in March by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But only 33% of workers whose wages are at the bottom 10% get paid sick leave, compared with 95% in the top 10%.

A survey this past fall of roughly 6,600 hourly low-wage workers conducted by Harvard's Shift Project, which focuses on inequality, found that 65% of those workers who reported being sick in the last month said they went to work anyway. That's lower than the 85% who showed up to work sick before the pandemic, but much higher than it should be in the middle of a public health crisis. Schneider says it could get worse because of omicron and the labor shortage.

What's more, Schneider noted that the share of workers with paid sick leave before the pandemic barely budged during the pandemic  50% versus 51% respectively. He further noted many of the working poor surveyed don't even have $400 in emergency funds, and families will now be even more financially strapped with the expiration of the child tax credit, which had put a few hundred dollars in families' pockets every month.

The Associated Press interviewed one worker who started a new job with the state of New Mexico last month and started experiencing COVID-like symptoms earlier in the week. The worker, who asked not to be named because it might jeopardize their employment, took a day off to get tested and two more days to wait for the results.

A supervisor called and told the worker they would qualify for paid sick days only if the COVID test turns out to be positive. If the test is negative, the worker will have to take the days without pay, since they haven't accrued enough time for sick leave.

"I thought I was doing the right thing by protecting my co-workers," said the worker, who is still awaiting the results and estimates it will cost $160 per day of work missed if they test negative. "Now I wish I just would've gone to work and not said anything."

A Trader Joe's worker in California, who also asked not to be named because they didn't want to risk their job, said the company lets workers accrue paid time off that they can use for vacations or sick days. But once that time is used up, employees often feel like they can't afford to take unpaid days.

"I think many people now come to work sick or with what they call 'allergies' because they feel they have no other choice," the worker said.

Trader Joe's offered hazard pay until last spring, and even paid time off if workers had COVID-related symptoms. But the worker said those benefits have ended. The company also no longer requires customers to wear masks in all of its stores.

Other companies are similarly curtailing sick time that they offered earlier in the pandemic. Kroger, the country's biggest traditional grocery chain, is ending some benefits for unvaccinated salaried workers in an attempt to compel more of them to get the jab as COVID-19 cases rise again. Unvaccinated workers enrolled in Kroger's health care plan will no longer be eligible to receive up to two weeks paid emergency leave if they become infected  a policy that was put into place last year when vaccines were unavailable.

Meanwhile, Walmart, the nation's largest retailer, is slashing pandemic-related paid leave in half  from two weeks to one  after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reduced isolation requirements for people who don't have symptoms after they test positive.

Workers have received some relief from a growing number of states. In the last decade, 14 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws or ballot measures requiring employers to provide paid sick leave, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

On the federal front, however, the movement has stalled. Congress passed a law in the spring of 2020 requiring most employers to provide paid sick leave for employees with COVID-related illnesses. But the requirement expired on Dec. 31 of that same year. Congress later extended tax credits for employers who voluntarily provide paid sick leave, but the extension lapsed at the end of September, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

In November, the U.S. House passed a version of President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan that would require employers to provide 20 days of paid leave for employees who are sick or caring for a family member. But the fate of that bill is uncertain in the Senate.

"We can't do a patchwork sort of thing. It has to be holistic. It has to be meaningful," said Josephine Kalipeni, executive director at Family Values @ Work, a national network of 27 state and local coalitions helping to advocate for such policies as paid sick days.

The U.S. is one of only 11 countries worldwide without any federal mandate for paid sick leave, according to a 2020 study by the World Policy Analysis Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

On the flipside are small business owners like Dawn Crawley, CEO of House Cleaning Heroes, who can't afford to pay workers when they are out sick. But Crawley is trying to help in other ways. She recently drove one cleaner who didn't have a car to a nearby testing site. She later bought the cleaner some medicine, orange juice and oranges.

"If they are out, I try to give them money but at the same time my company has got to survive," Crawley said. "If the company goes under, no one has work."

Even when paid sick leave is available, workers aren't always made aware of it.

Ingrid Vilorio, who works at a Jack in the Box restaurant in Castro Valley, California, started feeling sick last March and soon tested positive for COVID. Vilorio alerted a supervisor, who didn't tell her she was eligible for paid sick leave  as well as supplemental COVID leave  under California law.

Vilorio said her doctor told her to take 15 days off, but she decided to take just 10 because she had bills to pay. Months later, a co-worker told Vilorio she was owed sick pay for the time she was off. Working through Fight for $15, a group that works to unionize fast food workers, Vilorio and her colleagues reported the restaurant to the county health department. Shortly after that, she was given back pay.

But Vilorio, who speaks Spanish, said through a translator that problems persist. Workers are still getting sick, she said, and are often afraid to speak up.

"Without our health, we can't work," she said. "We're told that we're front line workers, but we're not treated like it."

___

D'Innocenzio reported from New York and Durbin reported from Detroit.

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In a multi-part film about the events of World War II, Armenia was shown in its historical borders, including the territory of modern Turkey, ermenihaber.am reported.

The first to draw attention to this fact was the Turkish Maritime and Global Strategy Center (Turk DEGS), which considered this fact an assault on the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Turkey.

The issue was also touched by the pro-government newspaper "Yeni Akit", which refers to the opinion of many unhappy Turkish citizens, demanding that the Supreme Council of the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (RTUK) to take action and impose the most severe sanctions on Netflix.

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Editors note: Information is provided by the Cowlitz County Corrections Department and local law enforcement agencies. Each individual named in this report is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Possession of stolen vehicle  Woodland police Saturday arrested Andrew Marcus Belsher, 24, of Newberg, Ore., on suspicion of possession of a stolen vehicle, eluding a police vehicle, resisting arrest, obstructing a public servant and driving with a suspended license.

Assault  Longview police Sunday arrested Chris Martin McMillan, 38, of Longview, on suspicion of second-degree assault.

Possession of stolen vehicle  Washington State Patrol troopers Monday arrested Elise Marie Kelley, 33, of Tacoma, on suspicion of possession of a stolen vehicle and obstructing a public servant.

Burglary  Longview police Sunday arrested Scott Matvey, 47, of Longview, on suspicion of second-degree burglary.

Robbery, theft  Longview police Monday arrested Luke Seamus McGuire, 27, of unknown address, on suspicion of first-degree robbery and third-degree theft.

Theft, forgery  Longview police Sunday arrested Rachel Lynn Ponder Anderson, 30, of Longview, on suspicion of first-degree theft and forgery.

Burglaries

100 block of Schaffran Road, Castle Rock. Sunday. Resident in the process of moving out but someone went inside.

1600 block of 13th Avenue, Kelso. Sunday. Believes just one unit.

400 block of Beechwood Street, Woodland. Sunday. No suspects.

Stolen vehicles

1300 block of 11th Avenue, Kelso. Sunday. Silver 1998 Honda Civic. Washington BUV1724. Stickers in the back window and hood strapped down with bungee cords.

300 block of 17th Avenue, Longview. Sunday. Gray Honda CBR 1000cc motorcycle. Oregon M432510. Taken sometime overnight.

Thefts

800 block of Triangle Center, Longview. Sunday. Safe deposit box empty, believe theft occurred about two weeks ago.

300 block of 24th Avenue, Longview. Sunday. Firearm stolen.

1400 block of Dike Access Road, Woodland. Unknown suspect.

Vandalism/malicious mischief

100 block of Ragland Road, Longview. Sunday. Damaged shed door hinge from attempted break in.

1000 block of Chestnut Street, Kelso. Sunday. Vehicle keyed or scraped.

Vehicle prowl

900 block of Third Avenue, Kelso. Sunday. Man checking door handles.

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Amazon and Flipkart will advance their Republic Day sale by 4-5 days due to rising Covid-19 cases and restrictions.

The e-commerce giants, Amazon and Flipkart are likely to advance their Republic Day sales by 4-5 days this year due to rising Covid-19 cases. The surge in Omicron infections have put both Amazon and Flipkart sales in jeopardy as the restrictions imposed by authorities affect their operations including supply chain and delivery timelines. Hence, the two largest e-commerce portals have decided to start the Republic Day sale at the earliest i.e, January 16-17 for a better business.

Amazon and Flipkart Republic Day sale to be preponed this year

Moreover, a longer-than-usual sales period can also be expected this year to recover the lower business post Diwali. The Economic Times has quoted Avneet Singh Marwah, chief executive of Super Plastronics Pvt Ltd (SPPL), manufacturer of Kodak, Thomson, Blaupunkt and Westinghouse brands of consumer electronics and appliances online as saying, The online Republic Day sales are getting advanced since the marketplaces fear continued surge in infections and stricter restrictions by states, which could impact supply chain and deliveries.

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He also told the portal that sales in offline stores are already down and hence it is a bigger opportunity for the marketplaces to convert business.

While both the e-commerce giants are yet to make any official statement, a senior executive of the marketplaces shared that the decision to prepone sales has been taken due to the fear that last-mile delivery staff may get infected, disrupting operations.

India reported 159,642 new Covid-19 cases in 24 hours on January 10. As the nation has been witnessing continuous surge in Covid-19 infections, several states including Delhi and Karnataka have already imposed weekend lockdowns and night curfews to curb the spread. However, e-commerce portals are allowed to continue their ops. Tamil Nadu is the only state that has not allowed online deliveries of products, except food delivery during weekend lockdown.

Calling online sales an efficient and safer way for consumers to purchase during the pandemic, the marketplace executive said that they don't expect any significant restrictions on e-commerce.

Republic Day sales is the first yearly sale of the e-commerce portals and is believed to be one of the highest business periods across categories for ecommerce due to raining discounts and offers. It usually begins around January 20-22 and lasts for 3-4 days.
Physicists Robert Goldston and Jacob Schwartz with computerized sketch of the international ITER experiment behind them. Credit: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Excitement about fusion energy is growing. The international ITER project in France, which counts China, India, Europe, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States as its partners, is starting to assemble the world's most powerful fusion experiment. It is designed to produce 10 times more fusion power, in the form of heat, than the power injected into the fuel.

Consequently it will approach what is required for a practical fusion power plantproducing 25 to 30 times more fusion power than the power put in. Meanwhile, about $2 billion of private capital has flowed into fusion R&D, some focused on accelerating the development of ITER-like configurations, and some focused on alternative approaches to fusion.

In this context, the National Academies has recommended that the United States aim to have a fusion pilot plant put electricity onto the electrical grids sometime between 2035 and 2040. This would be a major step forward for this technology, with the goal of demonstrating that fusion has all the features needed to be a practical source of power, in the real world.

Since the time of the National Academies report, the National Ignition Facility in California has made a major advance in its own performance, producing nearly as much power (in the form of fusion heat) as the power delivered to the target (in the form of energy coming in from a laser), while a private company has demonstrated a fusion-relevant magnet operating at a 70-percent higher field than used in ITER.

Even with the latest successes in the lab, however, it will take time to build out a new energy infrastructure, so it is unlikely that fusion will contribute in a major way to President Biden's goal of decarbonizing US electrical energy production by 2035. However, over the time period between 2035 and the end of the century, the worldwide demand for energy is expected to climb fourfold, with growth concentrated in the developing world. To meet this demand while not driving global warming, low-carbon energy sources will need to be used on a growing scale. Because of fusion's intrinsic characteristics, it is well suited to complement wind and solar in this time frame, particularly if we look beyond US shoresand also at the production of non-carbon fuels.

Why fusion?

One way to help eliminate carbon emissions and thereby fight global warming may be to exploit fusion, the energy source of the sun and stars. The production of energy from fusion entails controlling very hot gasses, so hot that the electrons are knocked off of their atoms, forming a gas of positively charged nuclei and negatively charged electrons called a plasma. For practical amounts of fusion to be produced on Earth, the temperature of this plasma must be in the range of 150 million degrees Celsiusdespite claims about so-called "cold" fusion that have proven incorrect.1

The easiest way to make fusion energy is to use nuclei with low electrical charge, in particular forms of hydrogen, which have the smallest nuclear chargethe charge of a single proton. This way the nuclei repel one another minimally, so they can most easily approach close enough to fuse. The forms of hydrogen with the highest reaction rate are deuterium (containing one proton and one neutron) and tritium (containing one proton and two neutrons). Tritium does not exist in nature, so it must be produced in the fusion power plants themselves. However, the basic fuels, deuterium and lithium, are abundantly available.

One major advantage2 of using fusion as an energy source is that its underlying physics precludes either a fuel meltdownsuch as what happened at Three Mile Island and Fukushima Daichior a runaway reaction, such as at Chernobyl. Furthermore, the amount of radioactive material that could be released in an accident in a fusion power plant system is much less than in a fission reactor. Consequently, a fusion system has much less capability to damage itself, and any damage would have much less dangerous consequences. As a result, current concepts for fusion systems may not necessitate an evacuation plan beyond the site boundary.3 Another advantage of fusion is that neither the fuel nor its products create the very long-lived radioactive waste that fission does, which means that fusion does not require long-term, geological storage.4

Fusion also presents low proliferation risks compared with fission. Since there is no need for uranium or plutonium in a fusion power system, these required components of nuclear weapons need not be present at all. It is possible to produce weapons-usable materials using neutrons from the deuterium-tritium fusion reaction, but this would be easy to detect.5 Tritium is used to "boost" the reactions in advanced nuclear weapons. It cannot be used without uranium or plutonium, however, so it is not a primary proliferation risk. (Nonetheless, tritium should be carefully controlled and accounted, and measures of surveillance and containment should be applied, as tritium is produced and consumed in a deuterium-tritium, or DT, fusion system.)

Where does fusion research stand now?

The most basic requirement for a fusion power system is that it must produce much more energy than is required to maintain the very hot plasma. In the temperature range of interest, the ratio of power produced to power required depends on the pressure, p, of the plasma multiplied by the time, , over which energy injected into the plasma is confined there. As the product of these two factors, p, rises, eventually some or nearly all of the heat required to sustain the plasma is provided by the charged products from the fusion reaction itself, allowing external heating to be turned far down. Thus, pis a key scientific yardstick for progress in fusion R&D.

The p product required at the center of a commercial DT fusion plasma is about 30, for example six times the pressure of air at sea level, with the energy in the plasma being replaced every five seconds. This sounds modest, but it must be achieved at a temperature in the range of 150 million degrees Celsius. The reaction between protons and boron, which is attractive because it does not require tritium and does not produce neutrons, requires about 1,000 times greater p, at a temperature ten times higher than needed for DT, making it much more challenging to employ.

Physicists are exploring two classes of systems for confining hot plasmas: those that operate nearly continuously and use magnetic fields (Magnetic Confinement Fusion); and those that operate in short pulses, using the inertia of the hot fuel to hold it briefly in place (Inertial Confinement Fusion).

The tokamak configuration, which looks like a doughnut stuffed with a magnetic field, holds the record for p in a magnetic confinement device, about two. Using DT fuel, tokamaks have produced 10 megawatts of fusion heat for about a half-second. The ITER project under construction in France is designed to produce 400 to 500 megawatts of fusion heat, 10 times the input of power to the fuel, for periods of at least 400 to 500 seconds. While it will approach the conditions for commercial fusion power production, it will not turn its fusion heat into electricity. For a practical magnetic-confinement fusion system, 25 to 30 times more heat must be produced by fusion than is injected into the fuel, and the heat produced must be converted to electricity.

A similar magnetic-confinement system under development with public funding is the stellarator, which looks more like a cruller than a simple doughnut. It offers stronger plasma control than the tokamak, but needs more complex magnets. Indeed, simplifying stellarator magnets is a major focus of research. This system6 has to date reached a p of about 0.2, with the same goal as tokamaks of about 30.

In the private arena, the companies Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Tokamak Energy are both focused on developing advanced magnets to reduce the size and capital costs of future tokamaks, as compared with ITER. Commonwealth Fusion Systems has recently announced the achievement of a very high magnetic field,7 70 percent higher than used in the ITER design. This much higher magnetic field should increase p in a tokamak of a given size by a factor of five8 which is very promising. Stellarators are also being pursued with private funding by the companies Renaissance Fusion and Type One Energy.

Multiple companies9 are pursuing simpler magnetic confinement systems than tokamaks, with less external control over the plasma. These in general are projected to produce less-expensive fusion power systems with a less-expensiveand so in principle quickerpath to fusion power. However, they have achieved10 much lower values of p, a few thousand times lower than current tokamaks.

Inertial confinement fusion was conceived as soon as lasers were invented. The idea is to compress and heat a small pellet of frozen DT fuel to the point where the resulting fusion burn greatly exceeds the input energy. A series of lasers of growing energy led to the construction of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), whose recent results have made headlines. Meticulous efforts at the NIF have reduced asymmetries in the pellets and in the laser drive that can spoil the compression, ultimately leading to a single shot (as of the time of this writing) that produced about 70 percent as much fusion energy as energy in the laser light entering the target.11 This is a major accomplishment, for which the NIF team deserves congratulations. It brings the NIF close to the original goal for which it was constructed: to allow study of aspects of nuclear weapons without underground testing. This major milestone may invigorate the pursuit of inertial confinement for fusion power. The scale of the scientific goal, however, is such that an inertial fusion energy system would need to produce about 150 times more fusion energy than a compression laser delivers.

(There is an intermediate concept called "magneto-inertial" fusion, in which a magnetically confined plasma is rapidly compressed to higher density and temperature.12 One can anticipate that it will be difficult to control the plasma during such compression, but no recent experimental results are publicly available. One company, General Fusion, has announced plans to build a demonstration power plant in the United Kingdom.)

There are also engineering challenges facing both magnetic and inertial fusion concepts. In both, it is necessary to mitigate high fluxes of heat to material surfaces, withstand high neutron fluxes, and produce tritium. A key issue for tokamaks and stellarators is to raise the fieldand reduce the costof magnets. For inertial fusion, the lesson from the NIF is that extremely precisely manufactured targets will need to be injected into a reaction chamber, and compression drivers will be required to hit these targets with extreme precision. This will need to occur about ten times per second.

When and how can fusion contribute to mitigating climate change?

Private companies are in a hurry to develop fusion, and many say that they will be able to put commercial fusion power on the US electric grid in the early 2030s. The total private financing in this sector is impressive, at about $2 billion. Some of these companies argue that their systems are much simpler and cheaper than tokamaks or stellaratorsthe approaches favored by public financingso the large gap in p can be bridged quickly. Other firms say that their innovations for tokamaks or stellarators will speed the development of these systems. After looking over the state of publicly and privately funded fusion research, the National Academies recommended13 that the United States embark upon a program14 to develop multiple preliminary designs for a fusion pilot plant by 2028, with the goal of putting a modest amount of net electricity on the US electrical grid from a pilot plant starting sometime in the years between 2035 and 2040, use the pilot plant to study and develop technologies for fusion, and have a first-of-a-kind commercial fusion power plant operational by 2050. The United Kingdom has recently announced a plan to build a prototype fusion power plant by 2040.15 China has a plan to begin operation of a fusion engineering test reactor in the 2030s, while the European Union foresees operation of a demonstration fusion power plant in the 2050s.

Even under the aggressive schedule of the private sector, the time required to build out a new energy infrastructure is such that fusion will not contribute in a major way to President Biden's goal16 of decarbonizing US electrical energy production by 2035. Consequently, we must look beyond the 2035 timeframe to see how fusion can make a major contribution, and how it can complement renewables. We should also look beyond the confines of the United States, and beyond only electrical energy production.

World electrical energy consumption is projected to quadruple between 2035 and 2100, and the new energy production required to meet it must not release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Consequently, providing low-carbon electricity in the world market, including later in the century, is of great importance for holding climate change at bay. Furthermore, in addition to generating electricity, fusion can also contribute low-carbon heat for the production of hydrogen or carbon-neutral liquid fuels.17 This is a major focus of the Kyoto Fusioneering company.

The cost of solar and wind electricity has fallen dramatically, so for fusion to be successful it will need to be integrated into a world energy economy that contains a large proportion of renewable energy.18 But the sun does not always shine, nor does the wind always blow, so solar and wind power vary over timescales of hours, weeks, and months. Electrical energy storage will likely become available to smooth out daily variations in sun and wind. But a very large battery, or the equivalent, that only discharges its energy on a seasonal basis is not likely to be practicaland locations for very-large-scale efficient energy storage such as pumped reservoirs or pressurized caverns are limited. Furthermore, as renewable energy grows, the best sites will become occupied and developers will be forced to turn to sites with more variability, poorer grid connection, more difficulty in achieving public acceptance, or simply less sunlight or wind, making complementary energy systems even more important.

Fusion may offer a solution. This low-carbon energy source could complement the weekly and monthly variations of wind and solar, because it can provide reliable, so-called "dispatchable" electrical power capacity, one that can be turned on during periods of lower renewable power production, or higher demand. Grid operators are already beginning to pay for such electrical capacity, rather than only megawatt hours, and regulators are enabling such payments. This is similar to paying for the speed of your internet connection, rather than for each byte of information you receive. Such capacity-based costing will be a growing benefit for capital-intensive systems like fusion, as the market penetration of intermittent renewables grows.

None of this is an argument against growing renewables and adding energy storage to help meet President Biden's goal, but simply to make the point that there will be an important role for reliable low-carbon electrical capacity such as fusion, as renewable energy sources expand to fill a large part of electrical needs, and electrical power needs grow. Systems like fusion could be called upon to integrate with renewables by providing electricity with weekly or seasonal variation. And fusion systems could use the weeks or months of high renewable electrical power to produce hydrogen or liquid fuels for transportation and to perform maintenance.

Turning to the world energy market, the intrinsic characteristics of fusion may give it an advantage in the currently less-developed regions of the world, where the greatest growth in electrical energy demand is anticipated.19 While fusion systems will require a strict safety regime, the consequences of a misstep are much less than for fission. Similarly, the problems associated with a large expansion in the need for geological storage of radioactive waste are not encountered for fusion. Finally, the proliferation risks of uranium enrichment and of plutonium in used fuel will not be encountered. This suggests that there could be a significant market for fusion, in parallel with growing renewables, in the developing world.

The cost of fusion is a key uncertainty in this analysis. As we have seen, the tokamak is the magnetic confinement system closest to realization. One could imagine using the ITER project as a benchmark for the cost of a large tokamak. It is difficult, however, to assess the cost of the ITER project, because in-kind components are being supplied by the international partners much more than cash. Furthermore, the cost and complications of an international collaboration building a first-of-a-kind device, with first-of-a-kind regulation, has added expense. If the new magnets being developed by private companies permit much higher magnetic fields, this could allow smaller and less expensive tokamak or stellarator systems. If one or more of the other configurations discussed here is able to leap forward in p quickly, these systems are likely to have cost advantages. With the new results from the National Ignition Facility, inertial confinement fusion may be in the running as well.

Public-private partnerships can be an important contributor to the path forward for fusion, combining the scientific and technical knowledge that is continually being advanced through public funding with the financial resources and focus on cost and schedule provided by private funding.20 The goal of publicly funded research is to provide the much-needed science and technology to assure that fusion can be an available option, while private funding is focused on developing the intellectual property and know-how to bring specific implementations of fusion to fruition as soon as practicable.

In summary, fusion has been advancing rapidly both in the public and private sectors. While fusion is unlikely to make a major contribution to President Biden's goal of decarbonizing US electrical energy production by 2035, there are goals beyond 2035 to keep in mindincluding goals beyond US shores, and beyond electrical energy production. Fusion has favorable intrinsic characteristic for meeting these goals, complementing renewables. If fusion energy development is not pursued now, it will not be available when it may be needed to enable a cooler and more equitable planet.

Explore further Unveiling the steady progress toward fusion energy gain
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Visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Sri Lankan leaders pledged in Colombo on Sunday to further develop bilateral relations, carrying forward the spirit of the Rubber-Rice Pact.

Wang, during his visit, met with Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris, and attended a ceremony to launch a series of events marking the 65th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Sri Lanka, and the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Rubber-Rice Pact.

Wang said at the ceremony that the two countries are always good friends, noting that China has provided a large amount of COVID-19 vaccines and other medical supplies to Sri Lanka.

China and Sri Lanka are also good partners in common development, said the Chinese state councilor, adding that Sri Lanka is on the key route of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative in South Asia.

The first phase of the Colombo Port City project has been completed and new programs are being launched, said Wang, citing that the cooperative management of the Port City has brought profits for Sri Lanka, the Hambantota Port's cargo throughput has continued to see new high, and the industrial zone is developed in full swing.

China and Sri Lanka are good brothers supporting each other, Wang said. "Amid the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic and tortuous process of economic recovery, we need to cooperate more closely than ever before."

He said the two sides should further deepen their mutual political trust, firmly support eath other on issues of core interests, significant concerns and national dignity.

"We will continue to jointly fight the pandemic and cooperate in the research and development of COVID-19 vaccines and effective medicines," said Wang.

He said the two sides ought to keep synergizing their development strategies and upholding multilateralism.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, during the meeting with Wang, said Sri Lanka is willing to work with China to hold a series of events marking the 65th anniversary of diplomatic ties between Sri Lanka and China and the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Rubber-Rice Pact.

Sri Lanka is ready to strengthen cooperation with China in the fields of economy, trade, finance, tourism and infrastructure, so as to benefit the people of the two countries, he stressed.

Wang said the long-standing friendly exchanges between the two countries have shown that they have always adhered to the principle of mutual respect, mutual understanding, mutual trust and mutual support.

He said the two countries opened the door for friendly exchanges by signing the Rubber-Rice Pact, demonstrating their national spirit in the fight against hegemony and power politics, and breaking the Cold War isolation imposed by the West.

"The spirit of the pact characterized by independence, self-reliance, unity and mutual support is deeply rooted in the hearts of the two peoples, and such spirit should be carried forward."

Wang said China is ready to offer vaccines and medical supplies to Sri Lanka, and is willing to work together with Sri Lanka on effective medicines, stressing that the Colombo Port City and Hambantota Port projects could be engines for pushing forward bilateral cooperation.

He said it is imperative to discuss the restart of talks on free trade agreement between the two countries by tapping the opportunities of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement and China's vast market, to facilitate Sri Lanka's economic recovery and development.

Chinese enterprises will be encouraged to invest in Sri Lanka, he said.

The Rubber-Rice Pact was signed in December 1952 when China needed to import rubber and other supplies and Sri Lanka, which sees rubber as a key export, was facing rising price of rice and slump of rubber price.

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, during his meeting with Wang, expressed his gratitude to China for providing COVID-19 vaccines and anti-pandemic supplies, saying China always extends help when Sri Lanka needs it the most.

He hoped to continue deepening bilateral relations and conduct close practical cooperation with China to jointly address challenges.

Wang said the friendly relationship between China and Sri Lanka benefits the development of both countries and serves the fundamental interest of both peoples. It does not target any third party and should not be interfered with by any third party, he said, adding that the all-round cooperation and strategic mutual trust between the two countries contribute to regional peace and stability.

Wang said China is ready to work with Sri Lanka to expand mutually beneficial cooperation in various fields and elevate their strategic cooperative partnership to a new height.

He noted that China encourages Chinese enterprises to invest and develop in Sri Lanka, and combine Chinese capital and experience with Sri Lanka's human resources advantages to help Sri Lanka improve the ability of self-development and accelerate industrialization.

The Chinese foreign minister concluded his tour to the Maldives and Sri Lanka on Sunday. Before this, Wang visited the African nations of Eritrea, Kenya and the Comoros on Jan. 4-7.
Former Sen. David Perdue and his wife Bonnie didnt have to wait long in line Monday to cast their ballots for the May 24 primary, which will determine who will receive the Republican nomination for the race to serve as Georgias next governor.
On Saturday, the city of Navasota will host a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration beginning with a parade at 10 a.m. and continuing with a memorial program at Friendship Baptist Church at 1111 S. Lasalle St. The celebration will feature a keynote address from the Rev. Harvey Walker of Crossing Community Church in Houston. The memorial program will honor all area pastors.

MONDAY

EVENTS

Brazos County horse judging contest, beginning at 8 a.m. at the Brazos County Expo, 5827 Leonard Road in Bryan. Junior, intermediate and senior age divisions in halter and performance classes.

Mystery Book Club, 6 p.m. at Larry J. Ringer Library, 1818 Harvey Mitchell Parkway in College Station. The group will be discussing The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware. Registration is not required.

Brazos Church Pantry food distribution, 1 to 2:30 p.m. at 304 W. 26th St. in Bryan. brazoschurchpantry.org.

HEALTH AND FITNESS

Zumba, 5:45 p.m. at Lincoln Recreation Center, 1000 Eleanor St. in College Station. A 45-minute fitness program inspired by Latin dance and set to upbeat Latin music. Cost is $5 per class; ages 16 and older welcome.

COVID-19 TESTING

St. Teresa Catholic Church, 201 Hall St. in Bryan, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Due to high demand, walk-ins may not be accepted. curative.com.

Lincoln Center, 1000 Eleanor St. in College Station. 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Due to high demand, walk-ins may not be accepted. curative.com.

Kohls parking lot kiosk, 1509 Texas Ave. in College Station, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Due to high demand, walk-ins may not be accepted. curative.com.

Blinn College, 651 Blinn Blvd. in Brenham, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Friday. Due to high demand, walk-ins may not be accepted. curative.com.

Rudder Plaza kiosk, 275 Joe Routt Blvd. on the Texas A&M University campus in College Station, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. For Texas A&M students, faculty and staff members. Appointments required.

Mays Plaza kiosk, 210 Olsen Blvd. on the Texas A&M University campus in College Station, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. For Texas A&M students, faculty and staff members. Appointments required.

A.P. Beutel Health Center, 311 Houston St. on the Texas A&M University campus in College Station, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. For Texas A&M students, faculty and staff members. Appointments required.

EXHIBITS

Oceans of Plastic at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station. A collection of art made from plastic pollution acquired from beaches along the Texas coast. The museum is open Monday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is $9 for adults, and tickets must be purchased at bush41.org/visit/admission.

SUPPORT GROUPS

Until We Meet Again, 11 a.m. at Christ United Methodist Church, 4201 Texas 6 in College Station. For anyone grieving the death of their spouse.

Spanish sexual assault therapy group, 5 p.m. Open to female survivors of sexual assault. For more information, call 731-1000 or email kdalum@sarcbv.org.

Gender affirming support group, 6 p.m. at Friends Congregational Church, 2200 Southwood Drive in College Station. All attendees must wear masks. Email info@pridecc.org for more information.
On Jan. 7, Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin named Kay Coles James, a former Virginia health secretary who led the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under President George W. Bush, as secretary of the commonwealth.

Earlier that day, Youngkin announced W. Sheppard Shep Miller III, a member of the states transportation regulatory board, as the next secretary of transportation.

Among other duties, a secretary of the commonwealth helps a governor fill key posts on many boards and commissions.

James, a co-chair of Youngkins transition steering committee, served as secretary of Health and Human Resources in Gov. George Allens administration from 1994 to 1996. She held the personnel post in the Bush administration from 2001 to 2005. In recent years, she was president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington.

Secretary James will be a true asset to the administration, Youngkin said in a statement. Our shared vision combined with her tremendous experience will pave the way for a new day in Virginia. Kay has an extensive public service background; she has always been a leader and innovator in Virginia government.

James previously has served as a member of the Fairfax County School Board, the state Board of Education and the Virginia Commonwealth University Board of Visitors. She also has been dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University.

James, born in Portsmouth, was raised in public housing in Richmond before graduating from Hampton University. She founded the Gloucester Institute, which offers leadership training to African American college students.

Under President George H.W. Bushs administration from 1989 to 1993, she served as associate director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and as assistant secretary for public affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

James is the second person of color in the governor-elects Cabinet, along with Craig Crenshaw, Youngkins pick for secretary of Veterans and Defense Affairs.

James succeeds Kelly Thomasson, who has served as secretary of the commonwealth since 2016 in Gov. Terry McAuliffes administration.

Miller, Youngkins choice for secretary of transportation, is a member of the Commonwealth Transportation Board and the Virginia House Ethics Advisory Council. He is also on the board of Virginia FREE, an advocacy group for the states businesses.

Shep will be an invaluable leader as secretary of transportation as we fulfill our promises to all Virginians to invest in roads, highways, and transportation infrastructure in every corner of the commonwealth, so we can jumpstart job growth and keep Virginians moving, Youngkin said in a statement.

Youngkins announcement comes days after a fast-moving snow paralyzed a nearly 50-mile stretch of Interstate 95, leaving hundreds of motorists trapped in their cars overnight in cold temperatures, without ready access to gas, food or vital information.

Miller succeeds Shannon Valentine, a former state delegate who oversees a $5 billion transportation system, according to the Northam administration.

In 2017, Miller sold KITCO Fiber Optics, a defense contracting firm, and retired as chairman.

A Norfolk resident, he has a B.A. from Hampden-Sydney College and an MBA from the College of William & Mary.

mleonor@timesdispatch.com (804) 6 49-6254 Twitter: @MelLeonor_ Staff writer Andrew Cain contributed to this report.
Bob Saget, the actor-comedian known for his role as beloved single dad Danny Tanner on the sitcom "Full House" and as the wisecracking host of "America's Funniest Home Videos," has died, according to authorities in Florida. He was 65.

The Orange County, Florida, sheriff's office was called Sunday about an "unresponsive man" in a hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, according to a sheriff's statement on Twitter.

"The man was identified as Robert Saget" and death was pronounced at the scene, the statement said, adding that detectives found "no signs of foul play or drug use in this case.

Saget was in Florida as part of his "I Don't Do Negative Comedy Tour," according to his Twitter feed.

Fellow comedians and friends praised Saget not only for his wit, but his kindness.

"I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him," wrote John Stamos, who co-starred with Saget on "Full House. "I love you so much Bobby."

Norman Lear, who called Saget a close friend, wrote the comedian "was as lovely a human as he was funny. And to my mind, he was hilarious."

"In often a ruthless business he was historically not just hilarious but more importantly one of the kindest human beings I ever met in my career," actor Richard Lewis wrote on Twitter.

Saget's publicist didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Saget, also the long-time host of "America's Funniest Home Videos," played squeaky clean Danny Tanner, a widower and father to three young girls, on "Full House," the ABC sitcom that also brought fame to the Olsen twins when it debuted 1987.

Saget the stand-up showed his flip side with what become a much-talked-about cameo in the 2005 documentary "The Aristocrats"  in which 100 comics riffed on the world's dirtiest joke  that revealed his notoriously filthy sense of humor.

As Saget recalled the Jake Tapper in a July 2021 interview, the track of his career was unexpected.

"'Full House' was an accident," he said. "I got fired on CBS and was asked to be in 'Full House.'"

The sitcom, which starred Candace Cameron Bure, Jodie Sweetin and twins Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen in one role, ran for eight seasons. It lived on in syndication with strong enough nostalgia surrounding it that Netflix picked up a spin-off in 2016, "Fuller House," starring Bure but featuring frequent appearances from original stars, including Saget, Dave Coulier and John Stamos. It ran for five seasons, concluding in 2020.

"I'm close with all the kids. It doesn't happen a lot in the world where you stay close with all the people," Saget told Tapper. "We're an unusual cast in that way that I have been able to remain close with everybody, because I don't take eight years of my life lightly and then the other five or six years, six seasons."
Debra Ashworth of Grand Island has been named executive director for Nebraska Operation Lifesaver.

The nonprofit is a public safety education group dedicated to reducing crashes, injuries and fatalities at railroad crossings and rights of way.

Im really excited, but Im also humbled. Its a big responsibility and I take that very seriously, she said.

As Nebraska OLI executive director, Ashworth is responsible for holding regular meetings and reporting to the state board, and representing Nebraska for the agency.

She started in the position on Jan. 1.

For the last 17 years Ashworth has been a volunteer for Operation Lifesaver, leading education efforts for the nonprofit west of Omaha and Lincoln.

She worked for 37 years for Union Pacific Railroad, mainly as a dispatcher. She retired in Omaha as a superintendent of dispatch.

Ashworth was first drawn to OLI by a tragedy that struck at Christmas Day.

I was testing one of my train dispatchers and shed gotten an emergency call in Arkansas, she said. Two boys were riding an ATV the older boy had gotten for Christmas. The young boy wanted to drive it and he got it hung up on railroad tracks. Instead of jumping off and leaving the ATV, he kept trying to get his brothers new ATV off the tracks.

Ashworth called it a tragedy not only for that family, but for the trains conductor and engineer, as well.

It was Christmas Day and they had to witness that and that stays in their memory, she said. That family is always going to remember Christmas as the day they lost their youngest son, but itll always also stick with those two trainmen.

Ashworth applies her competitive nature to her passion for railroad crossing safety.

When I was just a presenter I tried to have the most presentations of anybody, because I wanted to get our rail safety message out, she said. The first year, I said, I think I can do 50. At the end of that year, I had done 79. The next year I said, Im going to do 100. And it just kept going up. Prior to COVID, I was doing about 300 to 350, which is quite a bit.

This includes full presentations done each day of the Nebraska State Fair, utilizing the agencys mobile training trailer.

A key effort for Ashworth now is finding new volunteers to serve the state west of Omaha and Lincoln.

My role has changed quite a bit now, so that isnt as important as me getting other volunteers and have them be motivated, she said.

Nebraska OLI has 92 volunteers currently, and 25 are out west.

Those 25 that are out west havent done any presentations in four years, Ashworth said. When North Platte needs a drivers ed class, my husband, Mark, and I go out there and we do that. I cant do that anymore. I cant be everywhere in the state.

Ashworth also works toward finding partner agencies, including various fire departments. Her goal this year is to partner with the states sheriffs.

Ashworth is also pursuing new safety legislation this year. In Nebraskas drivers education programs, she wants rail safety curriculum to be required in all of those classes.

Iowa has it, and I figure if Iowa can have it, we certainly can, she said. Its much needed.

Railroad crossing safety training is for everyone, Ashworth emphasized.

You want to know that it takes a train almost a mile to get stopped. You want to know how big the trains are compared to your vehicle, or you being on foot. I always try to do that, especially for drivers ed kids, she said.

Not all railroad crossings have lights and gates, she added.

Basically, 1,200 of them have lights or gates of some type, but about 2,500 of ours do not, she said. Theyre what we call passive. Youre going to see that advanced warning sign and know its your responsibility as a pedestrian or a driver to be looking for a train.

For more information about Nebraska Operation Lifesaver, visit community.oli.org/state/ne.

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Trinity Lutheran School has gotten a facelift including new flooring, fresh paint, new water fountains and an LED sign to greet visitors and share events happening at the school.

Pastor Adam Snoberger said of the building,(Andy Rathe, school principal and pastor) has been able to help us take a fresh look at everything, and see some of the possibilities that were there for upgrading. Hes been able to look with some fresh eyes. Andys visioning in terms of that has been a real blessing to us.

As with any project, there have been some surprises during the switch. Rathe said some of the ballasts had date labels from the 1960s. He also said the old water fountains were discovered to have leaks. Rather than paying to have the decades-old fountains repaired, the school has new, COVID-friendly water fountains that include a spot for students and staff to fill water bottles.

Snoberger said the sign also will be a welcome change.

It will be mainly letting people know what things are coming up, special events that are taking place in our school and our church, he said. Another advantage is that well be able to put both our announcements in English and Spanish.

Security will be addressed, including but not limited to adding more security cameras, Rathe said. Weve got a consultant group coming in in the spring to just give us an overall plan for the school as far as what you do in all sorts of different scenarios, from their perspective as law enforcement experts.

The process is multi-phased, Rathe said. The emphasis this year is flooring, paint, eventually some bathroom remodels, window replacements and ceiling replacement. A lot of lighting is converting to LED lights.

Upgrades dont come free, but the schools foundation has come to the rescue. Russ Ropte is the treasurer of Trinity Lutheran Schools foundation, which is dedicated solely to supporting the school.

The quality of education has already been proven, he said. Were strictly from the funding side of it. We back them up from the financial standpoint.

The time for updates had come for the school that was established by German settlers even before Trinity Lutheran Church in Grand Island was constructed, and the foundation was on board from the get-go.

We kind of got ourselves behind the eight ball on keeping the facilities up to date. This is really what we needed: to get things back up to date and get the school a more modern look," Ropte said.

Trinity Lutheran School offers a part-time preschool up to eight grade education. The newest portions of the school, which houses grades 4-8, were constructed in the 1960s and 1970s. The oldest section, housing elementary grades, dates to the 1930s.

Ropte said there had been talk of doing a complete overhaul of the older section, but that the bones were good enough  options like demolition arent necessary. The current facilities are structurally sound, Ropte said,

These are good improvements to make the facilities last. The attitude at Trinity is to do what we need to do to make things work.

Rathe said the current phase, which includes the flooring and other improvements, has so far required $150,00-$175,000.

In the long run, the improvements should be more economical. The new lighting is going to save us money and allow us to enhance other offerings we have, Rathe said.

Its all about quality for the students, Rathe said. We want to match the appearance of our facility to match the quality of the education that we give our kids here.

Jessica Votipka is the education reporter at the Grand Island Independent. She can be reached at 308-381-5420.

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YORK  Christopher Martin, 40, of Geneva, has been sentenced to prison in a case where he fled from law enforcement in the city limits of York.

According to court documents, it was nearly 11 a.m., on April 29, when troopers with the Nebraska State Patrol saw a silver Chevy Blazer with no license plates stop at the intersection of East 14th Street and Nebraska Avenue.

A trooper began following the vehicle as it turned and went onto 12th Street. Then the vehicle turned into the alley between 12th and 11th Streets (according to court documents), with the driver failing to use a turn signal.

Then the troopers said the vehicle quickly accelerated and turned east onto 11th Street. Court documents indicate Martin (who was the driver of the vehicle) quickly accelerated across Nebraska Avenue and failed to stop at the stop sign. Troopers said he then continued east and turned onto East Avenue and failed to stop at a stop sign.

They said Martin turned several times, in the area of Burlington and Nebraska, 13th and 14th, but they lost visual sight of him at some point. They said they did see tire marks through an intersection and onto a nearby sidewalk.

The police department and sheriffs department then assisted in order to locate the vehicle. The troopers were informed of the vehicles previous owners address and when they were contacted, they said they sold the vehicle two weeks earlier to Martin. They also advised they thought Martin lived in Geneva and they provided the VIN number for the vehicle.

At approximately 12:30 p.m., a trooper saw the Blazer parked in a back yard of a residence in the 1200 Block of N. Maine Avenue. The trooper noticed that the drivers door and hood were spray-painted white and the left rear tire was blown and off the vehicle.

The homeowner was contacted and the person confirmed that the vehicle belonged to Martin. The person also told law enforcement that Martin uses methamphetamine very often.

The vehicle was towed away.

Then the police department confirmed they had custody of Martin.

The trooper went to York County Corrections to speak with Martin who told him he was the only person in the vehicle and he freaked out when he saw the troopers cruiser. Martin stated he got off of parole in early March and he said his license was suspended and thats why he fled. He agreed he was driving extremely fast on residential streets. He said he drove to (that particular house) and parked the vehicle. He said he then went to a relatives house to inform her that he was going to be going to jail. He said he also was working to inform his boss that he was going to be going to jail and while walking back to where the vehicle was, he was taken into custody by the police department.

What stands out is that already back in 2015 he was habitual criminal-eligible, said York County Attorney John Lyons. He has a history of failures to appear and probation revocation. He was also just released from parole before this and this was fleeing from police. There is nothing different about his conduct and no lessons have been learned. I dont believe probation would be successful as it hasnt been for him before. We are asking for a straight sentence with post-release supervision.

The only term of probation hes had was back when he was 18, said Martins attorney, Deputy York County Public Defender Patrick Tarr. His most recent supervision was for parole and that was successful. He takes responsibility for his actions, hes employed. He freaked out a little bit, he said, as he knew he had no license plates, no insurance or license and it was a short flight. It was kind of like his anxiety took over. The PSI does a good job pointing out the better direction his life is going at, at this point. He did treatment in prison and while he was on parole. Probation could help him keep moving forward.

I know I have a record, but Im doing well now, Martin said.

Your prior record has a delivery of a controlled substance, which led to a prison sentence, a possession of a controlled substance that led to prison, driving under suspension, another driving under suspension, resisting arrest and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony which led to prison, Judge James Stecker said to Martin. You are a high risk to reoffend and you are habitual criminal-eligible. And you committed this offense one month after parole. Considering all the factors, the court finds a lesser sentence would depreciate the seriousness of the crime. And this flight was on residential streets at high speeds  that is completely unacceptable.

Martin was sentenced to a term of one year in prison with credit for two days already served. His drivers license was revoked for two years. And he was ordered to 12 months of post-release supervision.
Obey one-China principle in deeds, not words

China Daily) 15:36, January 09, 2022

On Friday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to media inquiries about the fine and warning issued to the Chinese subsidiary of the Japanese company 7 &i Holdings that is the operator of 7-Eleven convenience stores in China, violating China's Regulation on Map Management.

The Credit China website, which publicizes details of administrative penalties, shows the company displayed problematic maps on its official website and the entrance to its company offices in Beijing. The maps contain so many mistakes that they could even be listed as an index for mistakes to be avoided.

In the map on its official website, it skipped the islands in South China Sea and the Diaoyu Islands, made mistakes on China's boundaries in Aksai Chin and Southern Tibet, and portrayed Taiwan as "an independent country". The map at its company entrance had all the mistakes except the last one.

Beijing Municipal Commission of Planning and Natural Resources fined the company 150,000 yuan ($23,520) for the two wrong deeds.

The difference between the two maps suggests two possibilities. One, the company knows China's stance of sovereignty issues well, which is why it avoided portraying Taiwan as an independent country on the map at its company entrance. Yet it just turned a blind eye to the same mistake on its official website, putting the wrong map there as if no one would notice that.

Two, its executives know that Taiwan is part of China and tried to avoid wrongdoings on the issue, but were so ignorant that they cared little about the other mistakes on the map.

The company has said that it "is taking the issue seriously and making sure to prevent a recurrence".

Upholding the principle of one China should be done in deeds, not just words. It is the obligation of all companies doing businesses on the Chinese mainland to obey the laws and regulations, and to gain enough knowledge about the laws should serve as a key, indispensable step of that.

(Web editor: Xue Yanyan, Sheng Chuyi)
 Flash

Some 5,800 people have been detained in Kazakhstan amid riots, including a number of foreigners, the press service of Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said on Sunday.



"Currently, some 125 criminal cases have been initiated, around 5,800 people have been brought to the police, with a significant number of foreign nationals among them," it said in a statement after the operational headquarters' meeting held under the chairmanship of Tokayev.

The situation has been stabilized in all regions of the country, with the operation of utilities and life support systems being restored, it noted.

Tokayev, during the meeting, reiterated his determination to fully restore public order and security in the Central Asian country.

Violent protests sparked by fuel price hikes have been rocking Kazakhstan for several days, leading to multiple deaths and many injuries.

In response to the protests, Tokayev accepted the government's resignation on Wednesday and has sought help from the Collective Security Treaty Organization to put an end to the mounting unrest.

The president has declared a day of national mourning on Jan. 10 to commemorate the deceased.
MAYFIELD, KY.  Dick Cochran, Jeff Heinrichs and Ron Lunbery were shocked at what they saw in Mayfield, Ky., late last month.

They headed there with the Hot Meals USA trailer to feed victims and rescue workers after a deadly EF4 tornado wrecked Mayfield and the surrounding region on Dec, 11.

The devastation was unimaginable. This funnel wrecked churches built of brick and stone more than 100 years ago. It even took down a full water tower. Thousands of homes are gone, Cochran said.

They left Kearney Dec, 27. Arriving Dec. 28, the trio set up the 24-foot-long Hot Meals trailer and got busy. They worked 12-hour days for the next eight days to not only feed storm victims, but to teach volunteers how to prepare and serve food.

They left the trailer in Mayfield and started home Jan. 5. They will return to Kentucky in late January to pick it up.

We fed thousands of people and made a lot of new friends, Cochran said last week,

When serving crowds in Kearney, Hot Meals gets its food from Cash-Wa. For this trip, Cash-Wa hooked up Hot Meals with CRS in Owensboro., Ky. That company had a semi waiting when Hot Meals arrived and provided food all week. They are a great group of people, Cochran said.

He expected that New Years Day might be slow, but we had a heck of a busy day. Hot Meals served between 700 and 900 meals and had orders for 1,200 meals the next day.

On Jan. 2, temperatures plunged into the teens, but Hot Meals served 1,400 people for lunch and about that number for dinner.

We had wonderful volunteers helping from all over the United States, Cochran said.

By Jan. 3, as they served storm victims and rescue workers, the trio also trained local volunteers to cook and serve meals. They included members of Rotary International, the Knights of Columbus and other nonprofits.

Some had lost everything. We also had victims come up and help, Cochran said.

Cochran, Heinrichs and Lunbery faced weather challenges of their own. Several days after they arrived, another threat of tornadoes was predicted, so they secured the trailer to be sure it would remain in place. No tornadoes hit, but Mayfield got five to seven inches of rain, and flooding occurred because streams were plugged up with tornado debris, Cochran said.

The Hot Meals effort began in part through Cheri Clark, executive director of the Kearney Jubilee Center. Her mother lives 15 miles from Mayfield. Initially, women from one of just two Mayfield churches that was not destroyed were feeding about 500 people a day, and they were exhausted, Cochran said.

This left a gap, so we stepped in. Sometimes life decides for us when we will go, he said.

The damage is so widespread. This will take years to recover, he added. It will take months just to get power back even on a temporary basis. Without Jeff and Ron, theres no way we would have gotten everything done.

On the Hot Meals Facebook page, Cochran posted photos from an area 11 miles away from Mayfield.

On the way out to the lake we crossed the tornados path at least 15 times. This thing must have been a mile wide and stayed on the ground for many miles, he said.

Mayfield residents were especially grateful for the Hot Meals assistance. Thank you so much for all your help! It was great getting to know you, said Kara Baldwin Kirschbaum, a resident impacted by the storm.

Thank you for the kind, compassionate heart in making the trip here and helping supply warm, delicious food to our community. We are certainly blessed to have you here with us, Jerry McIntosh, another Mayfield resident, said.

By the time Cochran, Heinrich and Lunbery head back to get the trailer in Kentucky, they will have fed tens of thousands meals to their neighbors  all from a little trailer from Kearney, Nebraska, Cochran said.

Everyone who was cooking food for victims in the days right after the storm took off when the press left, he said. This job is far from done. Most victims havent even gotten insurance adjusters out yet. Cleanup is just starting.

As for the damage, he said, It looked like Joplin, Missouri, all over again.

Cochran, a retired restaurateur, used to live east in Joplin. Working on his own, he served thousands of displaced people after a twister devastated Joplin in 2011.

Now living in Kearney, Cochran launched Hot Meals USA in 2018. The nonprofit fed people in central Nebraska after two floods in 2019. It also responded throughout central and western Nebraska during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

He also provided 18,000 hot meals in four days after a derecho in central Iowa in August 2020.

The trip to Mayfield, 767 miles away, is the second-farthest ever taken by Hot Meals. The nonprofit also helped in Houston, 910 miles away, after floods a year ago because Cochran was in the region and responded to a request for help.

Cochran has begun plans to build an office and warehouse for Hot Meals USA, which he has operated out of his home. He is setting up satellite Hot Meals locations near Des Moines and at St. Joseph, Mo. In addition to the 24-foot trailer he took to Mayfield, Hot Meals has a 48-foot-long trailer and expects to have a third trailer ready by spring.
I lay crumpled like a pretzel. Agony shot from my left knee to my hip. My right knee throbbed, too. My right shoulder hurt. For a moment, I didnt know where I was.

It was a clear, dry, sunny Monday with temperatures flirting with freezing. I was driving back to Kearney alone from Aldie, Virginia, where Id spent Christmas with my daughter. Needing a restroom break, I pulled into a travel plaza off I-70 east of Indianapolis, parked in the empty parking lot at the convenience store and got out of the car.

Suddenly I was on the ground, folded over on both knees, held up by my shaking arms. Wretched pain pierced my knees. I feared Id cracked a knee cap. As I groped to figure out what had happened, I realized that the parking area was sheer ice, as smooth and invisible as glass.

I raised my head. Nobody was around. My head spun. How could I drive the 800 miles back to Kearney? If EMS had to take me to a hospital, who would drive my car?

I could not stand up on that ice, so I gingerly crawled across it on my tender knees like a spider. When at last I got to dry pavement, I managed to stand up.

I hobbled into the convenience store and limped around a bit to shake off the stiffness. The clerk was setting Cinnabon pastries on the shelves. When I told her Id fallen on the ice outside, she smiled and nodded and kept on working.

I headed back outside and circled around the rear end of the car, clinging to it, to get to the car door without falling again. I managed to accomplish that. My left leg throbbed, but I needed only my right foot to press the gas pedal and the brake. Gingerly, off I went.

As I drove through Illinois and crossed the Mississippi, I blamed myself for the mishap. Sure, that ice was invisible, but why did I stop there? Pain chewed at my knee and my thigh. I gulped a couple of aspirin. I had no ice. I could not elevate my leg. All I could do was keep driving.

When I stopped for gas, I scrutinized the pavement for black ice before stepping painfully out of the car. I had an apple and potato chips in the car, so I ate lunch in a rest area parking lot. I wobbled as I walked to the restroom.

As I drove, my mind darted back to 1995 when Id wrecked my left knee on a canoe trip in the Ontario wilderness, That night, as I laid in my tent, my knee felt like broken glass, but we were in the wilderness, far from medical help, and all I could do was wrap the knee in an Ace bandage for five days and keep paddling.

When I got home, a Cleveland Clinic orthopedist had imprisoned it in a brace and ordered therapy, but nothing helped until I went to Arizona six weeks later to visit my cousin Joe. Joe lives on the Hopi Reservation with his Hopi wife. He sent me to see Thomas, the so-called Hopi bone doctor.

Thomas, a medicine man, massaged my knee at his home for 45 minutes. He said immobility was ineffective. He said all parts of the body are connected, and they must all keep moving. He said my five days on the river canoing and camping after the injury were a blessing. Thomas was, too. His magic fixed my knee.

I focused on Thomas all afternoon. In Missouri, an ice storm had left glittering ice crystals on every tree, every branch, every bit of corn stubble. Its beauty took my mind off my knee.

At 5:30 p.m., I stopped for the night at Cameron, Missouri. I got a drive-thru burger and managed to limp through ice and snow into my motel room without falling. I got ice for my knee and elevated it, but pain kept me tossing until 3 a.m.

The next morning, the pain had ebbed a bit. I made it effortlessly back to Kearney. I think Thomas is watching from heaven. My knee is slowly healing.
As the raging omicron variant of COVID-19 infects workers across the nation, millions of those whose jobs don't provide paid sick days are having to choose between their health and their paycheck.

While many companies instituted more robust sick leave policies at the beginning of the pandemic, some of those have since been scaled back with the rollout of the vaccines, even though omicron has managed to evade the shots. Meanwhile, the current labor shortage is adding to the pressure of workers having to decide whether to show up to their job sick if they can't afford to stay home.

"It's a vicious cycle," said Daniel Schneider, professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. "As staffing gets depleted because people are out sick, that means that those that are on the job have more to do and are even more reluctant to call in sick when they in turn get sick."

Low-income hourly workers are especially vulnerable. Nearly 80% of all private sector workers get at least one paid sick day, according to a national compensation survey of employee benefits conducted in March by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But only 33% of workers whose wages are at the bottom 10% get paid sick leave, compared with 95% in the top 10%.

A survey this past fall of roughly 6,600 hourly low-wage workers conducted by Harvard's Shift Project, which focuses on inequality, found that 65% of those workers who reported being sick in the last month said they went to work anyway. That's lower than the 85% who showed up to work sick before the pandemic, but much higher than it should be in the middle of a public health crisis. Schneider says it could get worse because of omicron and the labor shortage.

What's more, Schneider noted that the share of workers with paid sick leave before the pandemic barely budged during the pandemic  50% versus 51% respectively. He further noted many of the working poor surveyed don't even have $400 in emergency funds, and families will now be even more financially strapped with the expiration of the child tax credit, which had put a few hundred dollars in families' pockets every month.

The Associated Press interviewed one worker who started a new job with the state of New Mexico last month and started experiencing COVID-like symptoms earlier in the week. The worker, who asked not to be named because it might jeopardize their employment, took a day off to get tested and two more days to wait for the results.

A supervisor called and told the worker they would qualify for paid sick days only if the COVID test turns out to be positive. If the test is negative, the worker will have to take the days without pay, since they haven't accrued enough time for sick leave.

"I thought I was doing the right thing by protecting my co-workers," said the worker, who is still awaiting the results and estimates it will cost $160 per day of work missed if they test negative. "Now I wish I just would've gone to work and not said anything."

A Trader Joe's worker in California, who also asked not to be named because they didn't want to risk their job, said the company lets workers accrue paid time off that they can use for vacations or sick days. But once that time is used up, employees often feel like they can't afford to take unpaid days.

"I think many people now come to work sick or with what they call 'allergies' because they feel they have no other choice," the worker said.

Trader Joe's offered hazard pay until last spring, and even paid time off if workers had COVID-related symptoms. But the worker said those benefits have ended. The company also no longer requires customers to wear masks in all of its stores.

Other companies are similarly curtailing sick time that they offered earlier in the pandemic. Kroger, the country's biggest traditional grocery chain, is ending some benefits for unvaccinated salaried workers in an attempt to compel more of them to get the jab as COVID-19 cases rise again. Unvaccinated workers enrolled in Kroger's health care plan will no longer be eligible to receive up to two weeks paid emergency leave if they become infected  a policy that was put into place last year when vaccines were unavailable.

Meanwhile, Walmart, the nation's largest retailer, is slashing pandemic-related paid leave in half  from two weeks to one  after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reduced isolation requirements for people who don't have symptoms after they test positive.

Workers have received some relief from a growing number of states. In the last decade, 14 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws or ballot measures requiring employers to provide paid sick leave, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

On the federal front, however, the movement has stalled. Congress passed a law in the spring of 2020 requiring most employers to provide paid sick leave for employees with COVID-related illnesses. But the requirement expired on Dec. 31 of that same year. Congress later extended tax credits for employers who voluntarily provide paid sick leave, but the extension lapsed at the end of September, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

In November, the U.S. House passed a version of President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan that would require employers to provide 20 days of paid leave for employees who are sick or caring for a family member. But the fate of that bill is uncertain in the Senate.

"We can't do a patchwork sort of thing. It has to be holistic. It has to be meaningful," said Josephine Kalipeni, executive director at Family Values @ Work, a national network of 27 state and local coalitions helping to advocate for such policies as paid sick days.

The U.S. is one of only 11 countries worldwide without any federal mandate for paid sick leave, according to a 2020 study by the World Policy Analysis Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

On the flipside are small business owners like Dawn Crawley, CEO of House Cleaning Heroes, who can't afford to pay workers when they are out sick. But Crawley is trying to help in other ways. She recently drove one cleaner who didn't have a car to a nearby testing site. She later bought the cleaner some medicine, orange juice and oranges.

"If they are out, I try to give them money but at the same time my company has got to survive," Crawley said. "If the company goes under, no one has work."

Even when paid sick leave is available, workers aren't always made aware of it.

Ingrid Vilorio, who works at a Jack in the Box restaurant in Castro Valley, California, started feeling sick last March and soon tested positive for COVID. Vilorio alerted a supervisor, who didn't tell her she was eligible for paid sick leave  as well as supplemental COVID leave  under California law.

Vilorio said her doctor told her to take 15 days off, but she decided to take just 10 because she had bills to pay. Months later, a co-worker told Vilorio she was owed sick pay for the time she was off. Working through Fight for $15, a group that works to unionize fast food workers, Vilorio and her colleagues reported the restaurant to the county health department. Shortly after that, she was given back pay.

But Vilorio, who speaks Spanish, said through a translator that problems persist. Workers are still getting sick, she said, and are often afraid to speak up.

"Without our health, we can't work," she said. "We're told that we're front line workers, but we're not treated like it."

___

D'Innocenzio reported from New York and Durbin reported from Detroit.
Top Performers

GSV Unveils 2022 Edition of EdTech150 List of Leading Companies in Digital Learning

GSV Ventures, a female-led venture capital firm focused on the education sector, has unveiled the 2022 edition of GSV EdTech 150, its annual list of the worlds leading, most transformational growth companies in digital learning.

GSV evaluated more than 3,000 private companies to create the acclaimed list of companies revolutionizing the world of education technology, the firm said in a news release. GSV estimates that the 150 companies selected reach a total of about 3 billion people  almost half of the global population  and generate approximately $20 billion in revenue.

As the global pandemic continues to drive learners online, more and more companies are innovating in the digital learning space  making it increasingly competitive for companies to make the top 150, said Luben Pampoulov, partner at GSV Ventures. The way GSV sees it, Ed is on The Edge, and increasingly more companies have the ideas, know-how, and talent to transform the world and provide all people equal access to the future. We know these companies are well-equipped to help us achieve that goal, and we look forward to watching them do so.

GSV launched its list of education technology leaders two years ago with the EdTech 50. As the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated significant growth technological evolutions in the sector, the list increased to 150 notable companies in 2021. The sector shows no signs of slowing down, GSV noted, with the 150 companies selected for this year's list collectively experiencing revenue growth in the high double digits.

Find the full GSV EdTech 150 list on the GSV website, or read details about the selection process in this GSV blog on Medium. Of the companies selected from across the globe, 42 are based in North America and serve the K12 market.

To arrive at its list, GSV evaluated more than 3,000 venture capital and private equity-backed private, for-profit companies that met the following criteria:

VC or PE-backed companies in Digital Learning, excluding public and nonprofit companies

Companies that have achieved meaningful scale, and primarily, but not exclusively, those that are post-Series A in their development

Companies experiencing strong, organic top-line growth

The final selection was then determined by GSV's proprietary scoring system, which applies scores across several KPIs such as revenue scale, revenue growth, active learner reach, international reach, and margin profile.

The GSV EdTech 150 includes three major sectors: Life-Long Learning, Higher Ed, and K-12.

Life-Long Learning (inclusive of Workforce Learning and Adult Consumer Learning) is the leading sector with 42% of the GSV EdTech 150 falling within the category, with an additional 5% of companies serving the Life-Long Learning and Higher Ed blend and another 3% serving both K-12 and Life-Long Learning.

Selectees in the K-12 sector (including Early Childhood) account for 27% of the list, while companies in the Higher Ed sector account for just 5% and 9% of the GSV EdTech 150 serve a blend of the two. More companies on the list are serving all sectors than ever before, with 9% of the selectees serving all three major sectors, GSV noted.

The GSV EdTech 150 selectees will be celebrated at the ASU+GSV Summit, a major EdTech event connecting industry leaders and emphasizing equity in education, secheduled for April 46, 2022, in San Diego, Calif. Representatives from the 150 companies will be invited to join panel discussions or give presentations on their company initiatives, the GSV news release said.

See the full GSV EdTech 150 list and learn more about the upcoming summit at www.asugsvsummit.com/edtech-150.
Cybersecurity

Finalsite Says Ransomware Actor Identified as Client Sites Back Online

School website software provider Finalsite said Monday that an investigation has identified the threat actor behind a ransomware attack last Tuesday that prompted the company to shut down its systems, taking about 3,000 school websites offline for most of the week in the process.

Thousands of K12 schools and universities whose websites are hosted by Finalsite were affected by the outage starting on Tuesday, Jan. 4, though the reason for the outage was not disclosed until Thursday afternoon. As of noon Monday, all the websites were back online and most functions working, the company said, with a few remaining functions such as the file manager and integrations still being restored.

Finalsite Director of Communications Morgan Delack told THEjournal that company officials were not able to quickly share the details of the why in an effort to protect the investigation, and she added that while clients were notified of the outage later that day, we should have sent communication to all our clients the moment the websites went down universally.

We should have done better in that regard, Delack said. We have been listening to the needs of our clients and (doing everything possible to) help make it as easy to recover from this as possible.

With help from cybersecurity forensic investigators from Charles River Associates, Finalsite has determined who the threat actor is, we have contained their activity, and we know how they gained access and when they gained access, she said. The investigation includes assistance from data privacy attorneys at Mullen Coughlin LLC, she said.

We have found absolutely no evidence that client data has been compromised or extracted, Delack added. The remainder of the investigation is to confirm these findings and ensure compliance with cybersecurity laws and best practices.

Delack told THEjournal on Friday that the company had full access to its files and data throughout the incident and a forensic investigation was under way. We have no evidence that our data or client data has been taken. Finalsite also noted that its database information on client schools is limited to names and email addresses and said the company does not store payment information, academic records, Social Security numbers or other personal information.

It's important to note that the malware is not what took our sites offline, Delack emphasized again on Monday. We did so proactively  and immediately  upon learning of the issue in order to protect our data. The reconnection of our websites is taking so long because we had to rebuild everything in a clean, safe environment again. At this time, we have no evidence that data was compromised, and we credit that to our early actions.

Delack initially estimated that about 5,000 of its almost 8,000 global customers had been affected by the incident; on Monday, that total was revised down to 3,000 school websites impacted.

Finalsite, with offices in Connecticut and the U.K., provides website, marketing, and communications platforms for schools and universities in 108 countries. It is a portfolio company of Veritas Capital.

Read more about the timeline of the outage and the companys reaction in THEJournals initial report on the ransomware attack.

In a webinar for clients held late Thursday, Finalsite officers emphasized that they take security extremely seriously and are frequently updating protocols based upon any best practices and new information.

The Finalsite security team has strict security measures in place to protect the information in our care, and have worked to add further technical safeguards to our environment, the transcript reads. Weve invested $2.5 million into hosting security and our team monitors our network systems 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As we learn more about this incident, we are taking additional steps to further secure the environment and prevent this type of attack from occurring again.

Cybersecurity experts and even the U.S. Department of Education have warned in recent months of a marked increase in cyberattacks on schools and universities, and the K12 Cybersecurity Act of 2021, signed into law in October, directs the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to identify risks and provide resources for schools to better protect their IT security.
Teacher Poll

National Survey Shows Mentoring More Important Than Ever for Student Success

In a new national survey of 1,418 teachers by education nonprofit Gradient Learning released Monday, an overwhelming majority of teachers said one-on-one mentoring for students is vital for student success.

The Gradient Learning survey, conducted in partnership with Project Tomorrow, queried teachers in grades 412, with 85% being classroom teachers and 11% special education teachers. The respondents were from rural, urban, and suburban schools.

Mentoring, at its core, guarantees young people that there is someone who cares about them, assures them they are not alone in dealing with day-to-day challenges, and makes them feel like they matter, according to nonprofit organization Mentor. Research confirms that quality mentoring relationships have powerful positive effects on young people in a variety of personal, academic, and professional situations.

Find a Mentoring Program Adults wishing to join a mentoring program can visit the Mentoring Connector website to browse a list of mentoring opportunities near their location or virtual opportunities with students across the country. Educators and parents wanting to find mentors for their students can do so on the National Mentoring Resource Centers Find a Mentor website.

As educators and school leaders seek new ways to keep students engaged and supported in and out of the classroom, mentoring has emerged as an affordable solution. According to Mentor, students who have a mentor are 55% less likely to skip school and 78% more likely to volunteer in their community.

According to the National Mentoring Resource Center, regardless of the structure, staffing, and goals of the program, mentoring programs in schools have shown to be a cost-efficient way of increasing the positive relationships students have in their lives, while also boosting factors leading to educational success.

A recent Speak Up survey by Project Tomorrow found that two-thirds of parents with school-aged children are concerned about their childs emotional well-being as a result of COVID-driven disruptions, thus pushing student social and emotional well-being as a top priority for educators, families, and caregivers.

We have found as educators that the relationships must come first, and kids are not going to learn if we dont have an established relationship with them, said Heather Brown, assistant principal at Royal Spring Middle School in Georgetown, Kentucky. Kids want to be here if they have a meaningful relationship with somebody. It improves student learning and its a way for teachers to get to know their students  we need it now more than ever.

Other key findings of the survey:

88% of teachers said one-on-one mentoring provides value to their students

82% said mentoring time with their students results in positive changes in academic performancea

83% shared that mentoring is helping students learn to succeed on their own

Gradient Learning, funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, supports nearly 80,000 students and 4,000 educators in 400 schools across the United States with free resources for equitable learning such as its Summit Learning program and the Along digital reflection platform.

Take Action with Information Educators and parents can use the Gradient Learning poll information to make an impact in a number of ways: Share the survey insights with your community

Incorporate the survey findings into your schools vision for maximizing student success

Begin a discussion with local educators, parents, and leaders who help shape education in your area
 Flash

Thirty students and a teacher have regained freedom after being held for more than six months by gunmen who attacked their school in northwest Nigeria's Kebbi state and abducted them in June 2021, according to a state official on Sunday.

Yahaya Sarki, spokesperson for the governor of Kebbi state, said in a statement that the 30 students and their teacher from the Federal Government College in Birnin Yauri area of the state arrived in Birnin Kebbi, the state capital, on Saturday following their release.

"They shall undergo medical screening and support while being re-united with their families," Sarki said.

A group of unknown gunmen attacked the secondary school on June 17, 2021, killing at least one policeman and abducted an unspecified number of students and several teachers.

According to local media reports, scores of students had been freed in batches before the latest release.

A series of gunmen attacks recently happened in the northern part of the most populous African country, including attacks on schools and the kidnapping of students.
The region helped build Illinois at statehood in 1818. Over 200 years later, lower "Egypt" has largely been forsaken, or so it seems to many o
MACEDONIA  The Illinois attorney general is accusing a coal mine operator of polluting the area with toxic foam to try to stop an underground fire.

Exposure to such chemicals can cause long-lasting damage to the environment and poses a serious risk to public health, Kwame Raoul said.

Raoul's lawsuit in Franklin County alleges that the Sugar Camp mine in August used firefighting foam containing PFAS compounds. There was no immediate comment from the owner, Foresight Energy.

The compounds are called forever chemicals because they dont break down in the environment or the human body and can accumulate over time. They have been linked to a variety of health problems.

State environmental regulators received complaints about foam in a farm ditch and a tributary to Akin Creek near the mine. The mine is 110 miles southeast of St. Louis.

The mine's wastewater permit doesn't allow it to discharge PFAS, the state said.

It is critical that the state holds polluters accountable when violations occur in order to protect local watersheds and the health of nearby communities, said Andrew Rehn, water resources engineer with Prairie Rivers Network, an advocacy group.

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COLUMBIA  Prominent South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh was scheduled for a virtual hearing Monday as a judge could consider lowering the $7 million bond she set last month.

Murdaugh's attorneys are asking Circuit Judge Alison Renee Lee to reconsider her bond order, arguing in a filing last week that the $7 million effectively amounts to a no bond decision because Murdaugh has no money.

The 53-year-old heir to a legal empire in Hampton County, South Carolina, has been jailed since his arrest in October on a growing number of charges for mostly financial crimes. Prosecutors have accused Murdaugh of stealing more than $6.2 million from about a dozen clients between 2015 and 2020 by using a fraudulent bank account to divert settlement and other money to himself.

Lee said in December that Murdaugh must pay the entire $7 million if he wants to leave jail to go on house arrest with electronic monitoring, get counseling and be randomly drug tested.

"Mr. Murdaugh does not have seven million dollars or anything close to that amount," the attorneys wrote. "Mr. Murdaugh is a man who cannot pay his phone bill."

A judge in a separate civil suit Murdaugh faces froze his assets in November, and court-appointed receivers now control every cent. That order bars Murdaugh from using his own money or property to post bail, according to the filing.

Murdaugh used the money he stole to pay bank overdraft fees, credit card payments, checks written to friends and family and other items, indictments state. His victims ranged from family friends and a state trooper to an undocumented immigrant and a person injured in a car wreck, prosecutors have said.

Lee's initial bond order exceeded amounts recommended by prosecutors, who had suggested the judge either set bond at the $6.2 million Murdaugh was accused of stealing or a lesser figure of $4.7 million  about $100,000 for each count.

Murdaugh's father, grandfather and great-grandfather were prosecutors in tiny Hampton County, where every road leading to the county seat is two lanes.

The family's law firm, located in the most impressive building in town after the courthouse, has spent a century winning multimillion-dollar verdicts, though the firm stripped the Murdaugh moniker from its name last week.

Murdaugh's legal troubles began after his wife, Maggie, and son Paul were found shot dead outside a family home last summer. Their killings remain unsolved, and Murdaugh's lawyers say he has denied having anything to do with their deaths.

He faces a separate set of charges in what prosecutors have described as a scheme to have himself killed to secure a $10 million insurance payout to his surviving son Buster.

All the charges against Murdaugh are felonies and he could face more than 500 years in prison if convicted of all them.

The criminal investigations and civil suits Murdaugh faces have also prompted increased scrutiny into the actions of his affiliates.

A bank whose executives Murdaugh steered some of his clients toward to act as conservators or personal representatives fired its CEO last week after a group investigating unethical or illegal behavior by lawyers sent a subpoena asking for records.

Russell Laffitte was fired by the Palmetto State Bank's board. In a statement, the Hampton-based bank said it remains "fully committed to their customers, employees, shareholders, and the communities Palmetto State Bank serves."

The statement did not say why Laffitte was fired, but The Island Packet of Hilton Head reported the move came after the newspaper asked about requests from the state Supreme Court's Office Of Disciplinary Counsel for records of cases where Laffitte acted as an official to help Murdaugh's clients and their families handle legal settlements.

The bank has said Laffitte and another executive named in court documents, Chad Westdendorf, were acting on their own and not as representatives of the bank when they worked with Murdaugh.

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Orangeburg photographer Cecil Williams has captured thousands of images of African Americans fight for equal rights over decades and is now set to unveil a wall art series that depicts their history in the state. It is a story which he hopes will reach middle and high schools.

Williams, whose photographs have helped to preserve the African-American experience of the second half of the 20th century, is giving the community another glimpse into his treasure trove of images with Moments of Grace  The South Carolina History That Changed America wall art series.

I believe we need something like this because often South Carolinas history and the things that we did have been lost in history. We stand on the shoulders of many great people, but our history is not known, Williams said.

Using his skills in photography, art, and computer graphics, the 84-year-old started the series in 1999. He has just completed 60 of what will be a series of 100 images that depict the states history, culture and heritage and how it all intertwines with African Americans fight for justice and equality.

He hopes to have his series of 11X17-inch images distributed among the states middle and high schools.

The goal is to get this in all of the middle and high schools in the state of South Carolina. I have an upcoming meeting with state Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman. From a person who brokered the meeting with her, they said she was very excited to see it. She indicated she wanted to see me and would be meeting with me after Christmas. So that may happen any day that I have a meeting with her, Williams said.

He continued, My book Out of the Box in Dixie in 2006 also was distributed by Inez Tenenbaum, who at that time was the state superintendent of education, to the 88 school districts of the state of South Carolina. They bought 2,000 of my books and distributed them to the 88 school districts. Now I believe it's about 83 school districts.

Williams felt his work was not done.

I felt that this was another moment that I might have something to offer to the educational system in our state. Our youth today don't know our history, and I think history gives us a bearing from which to base all of the things we do presently and in the future, he said.

Williams said a press conference formally announcing the project will be held at 11 a.m. Friday, Jan. 14, at the S.C. Department of Archives and History at 8301 Parklane Road in Columbia.

Each one of the projects contributing sponsors will received a framed, poster-size image from the series, which includes images illustrating the experiences of those involved in the Briggs vs. Elliott case, which would eventually lead to the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision that forced the desegregation of public schools.

Williams described how his project to create images from the states African American history into a wall art series was birthed.

During the NAACPs Freedom Fund banquet each year, Nelson Rivers, who was the executive director for a number of years, would ask me to create from my images a special picture to give to the corporate sponsors. That was from I think about 1999 or so.

For many years through his leadership, and also during the leadership of Dwight James, who was the NAACP's executive director up until recently, I created a series of images, and they would be based on my photographs, or my paintings, with a framed copy to be given to the corporate sponsors. So that was the birth of the idea, he said.

He continued, For two decades I did this. So during COVID, I had more time on my hands. So I created this series.

His images are available in both 11X7-inch and 22X34-inch sizes.

Williams said he anticipates having his wall art series presented in the libraries of schools.

Normally, posters and, you might say, African-American history, or afro-centric history, comes out and is much more discussed during Black History Month. Here is a history that could actually be available at all times because we are so far behind in educating our youth about history. Again, my concentration is on South Carolina African American history. Seemingly, the African American history so far in South Carolina has been left out of the history books, but actually my museum emphasizes really that we are at the very beginning," he said.

The Cecil Williams South Carolina Civil Rights Museum is a nonprofit entity that Williams operates in Orangeburg.

Ive never even had an open house because I never felt I had finished the museum yet. Im still working on it. I originally financed it myself getting it off the ground.  Then I got some small contributions, and were still waiting, trying to get major contributions and donors so we can really launch it, he said.

But now seemingly the City of Orangeburg and perhaps Claflin University are opening the door of opportunity for me at the Railroad Corner as being the museum entity that might locate in the State Theater. Theyre saying that this might be the excellent mix there, to put a place that is of culture, heritage and history and so forth, Williams said.

In the meantime, he thinks his wall art series is an opportunity to tout the importance of the visual arts in education, particularly of those who made a difference in African Americans struggle for freedom and justice.

He referenced the series images of Judge Julius Waties Waring, a U.S. District Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina. Waring played an important role in the early legal battles of the American Civil Rights Movement, with his dissent in Briggs v. Elliott proving foundational to the Brown v. Board of Education case.

This image I created of Strom Thurmond  even though Strom Thurmond was known to be a very vocal, rigid segregationist, nevertheless the other side of it was that he was the first to hire a Black aide on Capitol Hill and also brought millions of dollars to Black colleges and HBCUs and Black businesses, Williams said.

He said his series includes powerful images with small captions of their significance in history, including his picture of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall at Claflin University in November 1955 shortly after the Brown vs. Board of Education case was decided.

It also includes images of the leaders of the Friendship Nine civil rights student movement; Harvey Gantt, the first African-American to integrate Clemson University and, of course, images from the Orangeburg Massacre, referring to the event in 1968 that saw three students killed and 28 others injured when South Carolina Highway Patrol troopers opened fire on a crowd of protesters following three nights of escalating racial tension over efforts to desegregate All-Star Triangle Bowl.

All of them carry this theme: the South Carolina history that shaped America. That's the name of the series. I use my historical photography. My degree is from Claflin University in art. I studied under Arthur Rose, but my profession all of my life has been in photography since 9 years old," Williams said.

My hero in art is the great Norman Rockwell, who was an illustrator. So I think of myself as an illustrator because I create mixed media art that derives from my paintings, my photography and my computer graphic skills, he said, noting that the series also includes an image of Lenny Springs, a member of the state NAACPs board of directors, marching in Freedom March in Columbia.

I produced the image with a painterly effect. It goes beyond photography. This is how I use both photography and art. Think about the great image of the American Marines at Iwo Jima putting the flag up. Think about the lone citizen throwing a rock against a tank in Tiananmen Square, Williams said.

Powerful images teach so much and are memorable. So in todays world of social media, what could be more effective than a series of images that depict our history, our heritage and our culture? This is what Im trying to do, he said.

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In the second part of its Tek Fog investigation, The Wire looks at the tech behind the secretive app that lets BJP-linked cyber troops hack WhatsApp accounts and conduct targeted campaigns using third-party automation tools.

New Delhi: Technology developed and deployed by political operatives working to further the interests of India's ruling party appears to have given them the ability to add script to the URLs of published news stories at mainstream platforms in order to redirect unsuspecting readers to fake news and also hack into and take over WhatsApp accounts, potentially exposing millions of Indians to the risk of identity theft. Since the aim of the exercise is to use inactive hacked accounts to seed disinformation and fake news, vulnerable WhatsApp users also face potential legal liability in the event that criminal cases are filed relating to objectionable content simulated as emanating from their phone numbers. Last week, The Wire published the first part of its 20-month-long investigation into the secret 'Tek Fog' app being used by cyber operatives to manipulate social media trends in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and target critics of the Narendra Modi government. We explained the four features that make Tek Fog so unique and dangerous  (1) hijacking Twitter and Facebook trends, (2) phishing and capturing inactive WhatsApp accounts, (3) creating and deploying a highly granular database of citizens for targeted harassment, and (4) the possibility that its use is part of a political-corporate nexus linking the BJP to large tech players and platforms. Since the publication of our story, two of the companies which The Wire's source had named as having links to the use of Tek Fog  Persistent Systems and Sharechat  have issued statements denying any knowledge of the app. In Part 2, The Wire explains the technology by which Tek Fog is used to hijack a WhatsApp account, and the ease with which the processes involved may be scalable.

How the

'WhatsApp hijack' works On April 30, 2020, while interviewing the original whistleblower  associated with the Twitter account @Aarthisharma08  about various features of Tek Fog, they claimed the app gave the cyber troops using it the ability to access WhatsApp accounts of individual citizens as part of an inbuilt feature. The source explained that operators could remotely access 'inactive' WhatsApp accounts added to the app's contact list and use the hijacked phone number to send targeted messages to their 'frequently contacted' or 'all contacts' lists. An 'inactive' WhatsApp account means that the actual user of the number wasn't using the app  either because they had uninstalled the app or because they had reset their phone. The whistleblower also claimed that the contact list of the compromised account is synced to a cloud-based political database in the app, making numbers on the list available as potential targets in future disinformation, harassment or trolling campaigns. They went on to claim that this process of hacking WhatsApp accounts is a multi-step process. Targeted accounts that are 'active' are first sent a WhatsApp message in the form of a media file (image or video) from an unknown contact. They claimed that this initial file contains spyware  a piece of software that performs malicious activities, typically related to surveillance. After the media file has been downloaded by the target, the spyware is activated, making the phone vulnerable. Once the initial phishing file has been delivered, the activity status of the targeted account can be monitored via the Tek Fog app. When the account becomes 'inactive', it can then be seen by the operatives in an auto-complete search in the app. Immediately after being listed in the search results, the operatives are able to access the targeted WhatsApp account remotely, without the owner's consent or knowledge of the exploit. The choice to access only inactive WhatsApp accounts appears to be a practical  and not a technological  constraint since sending fake messages from an active account could raise suspicions. Demonstrating the 'WhatsApp hijack' in practice Seeking to verify the claim of account hijacking, The Wire asked the whistleblower to perform a live demonstration of this exploit by hijacking a WhatsApp account belonging to a member of our team and sending a custom message to his 'frequently contacted' contacts. Asked whether they require one of the phone numbers of the authors to execute the exploit, the whistleblower said that the WhatsApp account details of one of the authors was already available in the app. They went on to explain that this author's account has been in Tek Fog since January 30, 2020, soon after he received a WhatsApp message from an unknown number and downloaded a gallery of images onto his personal device. Coincidentally, on January 25, 2020, a few days before his account had been compromised, the same author had independently released a research report (subsequently published by Firstpost) uncovering the large tweet volumes, complex hierarchies and coordinated attacks carried out by bot-accounts belonging to the BJP IT Cell on Twitter. As the phone number of one of our WhatsApp accounts was already with the whistleblower, the team sent them a custom text message at 02:07 am IST (GMT+5:30) on the same day. The message said: "This is a ping from 123.212.789.1 from Devesh". We also uninstalled WhatsApp from the device whose number was already in the Tek Fog database. The Wire team asked the source to screen-record their device executing the 'hijacking' procedure and share that video with us. At 02:19 am IST, shortly after being provided with our custom text message, all five 'frequently contacted' users  including one that belonged to another author working on the investigation  received the same message as if it had come from our number, confirming that this particular feature of the app was functional at the time of analysis. Six minutes later, the source shared a screen recording of the Tek Fog app that showed them executing the task. Since Devesh's number was already in the Tek Fog contact list, the video begins with the whistleblower selecting the name 'Devesh' as it appears in the Tek Fog search. This method of hacking devices is fairly common  and is reminiscent of the Trojan horse story. In fact, the Pegasus spyware used a similar method before the NSO Group developed a zero-click exploit. One of the authors of this story learned from a source on background that what was likely happening is that by downloading a media file, spyware is activated which then steals a unique token or key that is private to a user's WhatsApp account. After Tek Fog has access to this private key, it can then check the activity status of the account and remotely send messages to the target's contacts via the same APIs that WhatsApp uses to deliver messages. The background source also highlighted that the process of sending messages to 'frequently contacted' or 'all contacts' in this exploit is similar to how WhatsApp structures its data and API on their servers. That said, at the time of publication, The Wire was unable to independently verify the precise mechanism through which Tek Fog is able to compromise WhatsApp accounts. More data would be required to come to a conclusion on this.

Modifying existing stories to

create fake news The source also demonstrated another advanced feature of Tek Fog: the ability to modify existing news articles to create fake news by changing keywords ('BJP' to 'Congress' or 'Left-wing' to 'Right-wing', for example) and to generate political junk news with a fictitious narrative by modifying the link of a published article. For example, thewire.in/pets/cat-dog-parrot could lead to a legitimate article, but the app could modify the link to thewire.in/pets/cat-dog-piranha and lead to a spurious article. A casual reader may not notice because most of the link is still the same (more so if the fake page is also styled like The Wire website). As evidence of this capability, the whistleblower gave The Wire team a link (generated by a URL shortener) that redirected to a manipulated version of an article (authored by one of the authors of this article) for The Print. The generated link had an embedded code in the query string, that led to a webpage which resembled a page on the original publication  but the source had edited the headline and parts of the text to make the author appear to say something they didnt say. The link was deactivated before this article was published but we are providing the screenshots below. The capabilities shown in this demo were similar to those that Max Woolf, a data scientist at Buzzfeed, had outlined in 2019. In his article, Woolf says that an AI model called GPT-2 can be used to generate coherent, text-like messages. (GPT-2 was built by OpenAI, a US-based AI research company, one of whose advisers is Elon Musk. OpenAI released an updated model called GPT-3 in May 2020.) But another company, Salesforce, has a 'better' AI model called CTRL. It takes this ability further by being able to generate long-form articles. Woolf has shown how this model can extract 'a surprising amount of metadata' from a series of random news articles  you just need to share the links  including detailed information about their underlying content, like their style and tone. CTRL can then be tweaked to use these insights to generate junk news, and upload it to a link that is similar to the original but with a few words changed  all on its own. The generated article is very realistic, and follows the style and the tone of the original, giving readers almost no reason to suspect that they're reading a fake article. The use of such sophisticated AI models helps reduce the workload of app operators. Instead, the operators can focus on disseminating junk news links through the BJP's network of WhatsApp groups  with Tasker's help, as we shall see below.

The automation engines:

Tasker and OpenAI Apart from hijacking inactive WhatsApp accounts  those owned by influencers or otherwise  and making fake news out of real news stories, the whistleblower claimed that the Tek Fog app could also be used to automate and stream the BJP's political messaging  mostly abuse and propaganda  by generating inauthentic accounts in bulk. App operatives then use these second-generation accounts to disseminate targeted narratives through the vast network of political chat groups that the party operates on the platform. According to a TIME investigation into the use of WhatsApp in the 2019 elections, apart from political campaigning, these chat groups frequently contain and disseminate false information and hateful rhetoric, much of which comes from forwarded messages. These groups also reportedly share messages targeting religious and ethnic minorities, posing a threat in a country that has had multiple incidents of mob violence driven by false information circulated through the app. The Wire built on primary testimony provided by the original whistleblower and on Persistent System's Sharepoint screenshots, shared by another independent source currently employed by the company. We could verify that Tek Fog uses an Android app called Tasker to schedule, trigger and disseminate messages to individual users  or even tens of thousands of hyper-localised political WhatsApp groups created and managed by the ruling party. Tasker, developed by a developer named Joao Dias, is one of the most popular automation apps available in the Android app store. It allows users to create several automated tasks that trigger specific actions  like opening the camera or calling a contact  or invoke functions on other installed apps, like sending a message through Facebook Messenger or playing music on YouTube. With Tasker, the process of opening or closing an app during automation can happen in the background, without requiring active supervision, giving app operators the freedom to do other things. Developers can also extend the functionalities of Tasker by creating third-party plugins to use with the app, thus allowing others to customise the app to suit their particular usage of it. The source explained that the people operating Tek Fog give Tasker a link. The link goes to a database that contains instructions to trigger different 'actions'  like opening WhatsApp and sending a message. In 2019, HuffPost reported on a thriving industry of private companies developing apps that could automate WhatsApp messages on behalf of the government. In the present system, the process of automation has taken a giant leap with the integration of open-source artificial intelligence techniques as well.

Violating privacy for

political gains Unlike open-broadcast platforms like Twitter, WhatsApp provides a sense of privacy and intimacy to its users  numbering in the hundreds of millions in India alone. But political actors appear to be exploiting these very features to flood the platform with mis- and disinformation, manipulated media and junk news  and escaping scrutiny from platform owners and law enforcement. The revelation of WhatsApp hijacking, with its ease and sophistication, combined with technologies to automate, learn and scale, poses a significant risk to the integrity of the Indian information ecosystem and the privacy of India's citizens. The same features also provide unprecedented insights into the technological arsenal of online operatives promoting the BJP and their ability to weaponise WhatsApp to dominate public and political discourse in the world's largest democracy. In Part 3 of our investigation, we shall see how Tek Fog has been deployed to engineer political narratives and target women journalists, especially those critical of the Narendra Modi government. Note: If you are working with Persistent Systems, Sharechat or the BJYM and are using/ have used or know more about the Tek Fog app and the broader operation underpinning its use, please contact us at tekfog@protonmail.com. We will ensure your anonymity and privacy at all costs.
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(TBTCO) - Thi truong chung khoan Viet Nam co ban van giu nhip on inh trong quy au nam nay, tuy nhien, thi truong chiu ap luc ieu chinh kha manh ke tu cuoi thang 3 en nay do tac ong tu cac yeu to ngoai bien va cac vu viec sai pham mang tinh on le cua mot so ca nhan, to chuc. Theo cac chuyen gia, nhung tac ong en tam ly ngan han cua nha au tu la kho tranh khoi, nhung ay la co hoi e huong dong tien i ung huong, giup thi truong gan uc, khoi trong e phat trien ben vung.
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Visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met on Sunday with Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris, vowing to work together with the Sri Lankan side to jointly oppose politicizing the COVID-19 pandemic and using origins tracing as a tool.

Peiris said during the meeting that Sri Lanka and China have conducted all-round cooperation in various areas, with close communication between the two governments, frequent inter-party contacts and active people-to-people exchanges.

China has provided substantial and strong support for Sri Lanka's economic development and national construction, Peiris said, stressing that the Sri Lankan side will continue to firmly adhere to the one-China policy, support China's just propositions on international occasions, and oppose any attempt to politicize the pandemic.

During the meeting, Wang said the two sides should stick to the right direction of solidarity in the fight against the pandemic, and jointly safeguard international equity and justice.

Noting that China and Sri Lanka are good friends and partners who have always trusted and supported each other, Wang said the pandemic has not affected bilateral relations, with their friendship further enhanced through the joint fight against COVID-19.

The central bank of Sri Lanka issued commemorative coins for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, which reflects the sincere friendship and full trust of the Sri Lankan side towards China, Wang said.

China proposes that a forum on the development of Indian Ocean island countries be held at an appropriate time to build consensus and synergy, and promote common development, in which Sri Lanka can play an important role, said the Chinese state councilor.
PacifiCorp continues to operate unit 2 at the Jim Bridger coal-fired power plant despite running afoul of a federal regional haze permit  an infraction some believed would force a Jan. 1 shutdown.

Gov. Mark Gordon, who recently attempted to intervene in the regulatory noncompliance, warned in late December the Environmental Protection Agency might force the unit to shut down on Jan. 1.

In several short days, PacifiCorp will be forced to shut down Unit 2, lay off employees, and buy power to make up for the lost generation, Gordon wrote in a Dec. 27 letter to EPA administrator Michael Regan declaring an emergency suspension order to block such an action. That cost will be passed on to consumers in Wyoming and across the west creating a social and economic injustice.

Since then, EPA has declined to say whether a shutdown is or ever was a possibility, while PacifiCorp says there are no plans to change operations at Jim Bridger unit 2  one of four coal-fueled power generators at the plant.

I wont speculate on future determinations or actions, EPA Region 8 spokesman Richard Mylott told WyoFile via email Tuesday.

EPA has also refused to say whether or not it will recognize or decline Gordons emergency suspension order seeking to block the federal agency from demanding a shutdown for noncompliance. If unchallenged, Gordons suspension order would remain in effect through April.

EPA is reviewing the Governors action, Mylott wrote. Our primary focus, however, is continuing to work with the state and stakeholders to identify solutions that are consistent with the Clean Air Act, safeguard public health and air quality, and protect Wyomings workers and communities.

The Berkshire Hathaway owned utility giant, which operates as Rocky Mountain Power in Wyoming, claims that as of Jan. 1, it is operating unit 2 in compliance with a revised plan approved by the state but which remains in limbo at EPA.

The entire Jim Bridger plant, including units 1 and 2, began operating under Wyomings revised state implementation plan emission limits on January 1, 2022, PacifiCorp spokesperson Tiffany Erickson told WyoFile via email. The lower NOx [nitrogen oxide] and SO2 [sulfur dioxide] emission limits apply during the four-month period of the governors suspension and beyond based on an air permit issued by the state of Wyoming.

Meantime, Gordon has promised to file suit against EPA to force the agency into issuing a decision on the revised regional haze compliance strategy for the Jim Bridger power plant. EPA says it will issue a preliminary decision on the proposal and put it out for public comment  a process that is likely to exceed Gordons four-month suspension order, according to those close to the negotiations.

The regulatory row between PacifiCorp, Wyoming and EPA is charged with claims that potential actions by EPA, as well as the forthcoming natural gas conversions of Jim Bridger units 1 and 2 in 2024, will result in layoffs.

In addition to Gordons own claims, his office commissioned a study by University of Wyoming professor of economics Timothy Considine. The modeling weighs the potential impacts of closing Jim Bridger unit 2 prior to the end of its expected lifetime in 2028, and suggests a total of 327 jobs lost in Sweetwater County.

Considine didnt respond to WyoFile requests for comment on this story. Critics have panned studies by Considine in the past, including one that estimated the potential impacts of President Joe Bidens moratorium on federal oil and gas leasing, for allegedly playing to the energy industrys preferences.

Wyoming AFL-CIO Executive Director Tammy Johnson questioned the validity of the Jim Bridger unit 2 study.

The [Considine] study didnt go beyond the scope of a model because if you talk to the workers and you talk to the people affected, then youll get a better picture, Johnson said. And Im sorry that Mark Gordons team doesnt value the input from the people who are most affected by these issues.

PacifiCorp has assured union workers at both the Jim Bridger power plant and the Bridger surface mine that supplies coal to the plant  a combined workforce of about 887  that any workforce reductions would be prioritized via attrition, retirement and job transfers, according to Johnson.

PacifiCorp confirmed it has agreed to prioritize any job reductions via attrition, retirement and potential transfers. A natural gas conversion of Jim Bridger unit 2 would reduce the number of impacted employees compared to a full shutdown and retirement, Erickson with PacifiCorp said. However, union and non-union employees would still be impacted.

Although union members do not want coal plants or coal mines shut down, they do expect more direct help and a more comprehensive plan from the state to help Wyoming workers face a transition that seems inevitable, Johnson said.

Other states have offices of transition, Johnson said. And what better way  during this [federal stimulus] disbursement for these coal communities  for Mark Gordon to get on board with thinking about the workers and using some of that money to support workers.

The regulatory standoff stems from ongoing negotiations over Wyomings state implementation plan to reduce nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxides and particulate matter  the main pollutants that contribute to regional haze  from industrial sources. The Jim Bridger power plant falls within several Class 1 regional haze designations, which include Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks.

Wyoming has the primary regulatory responsibility for implementing the federal regional haze plan, and it had originally agreed to a schedule mandating that selective catalytic reduction controls be added to Jim Bridger unit 2 by end of 2021 and unit 1 by end of 2022.

But PacifiCorp never made preparations to add the controls. Instead, the utility and the state asked EPA to approve a revised plan to meet or exceed the regional haze pollution emissions reduction goals for the Jim Bridger plant by operating units 1 and 2 at lower capacities. In other words, theyd prefer to comply with the pollution limits by burning less coal and thus producing less exhaust instead of installing expensive equipment that would make the exhaust cleaner.

Several environmental and conservation groups have objected to the revision proposed by Wyoming and PacifiCorp, and EPA has yet to issue a decision regarding the alternative plan. Meantime, PacifiCorp plans to convert units 1 and 2 from coal to natural gas in 2024. Their regulatory fate in the interim, however, remains uncertain.

Gordons emergency suspension order has no merit because PacifiCorp has had about eight years to comply with the current regional haze plan, according to Powder River Basin Resource Council attorney Shannon Anderson.

Its not an emergency shut down, Anderson said. It is a failure to plan for the inevitable.

Gordon maintains that Wyoming, PacifiCorp and EPA had a deal to finalize the utilitys alternative method for meeting regional haze parameters and that EPA has recklessly failed to act.

PacifiCorp, EPA and Wyoming all agreed in 2020 that the regional haze guidelines would not only be met, but exceeded with the revised [state implementation plan], Gordon said in a Dec. 27 press release. Now, with that deal unilaterally abandoned by EPA, this emergency order is necessary to protect Wyoming workers from EPAs recklessness.

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

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The Wyoming Republican Party and Rep. Liz Cheney continue to trade barbs, this time over her comments suggesting the leaders controlling the state GOP are radicals.

The back and forth started with Cheneys statements on the anniversary of Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, when she spoke out against radical elements of the Wyoming Republican Party apparatus.

There are people in the state party apparatus of my home state who are quite radical. And some of those same people include people who were here on Jan. 6th, include a party chair who has toyed with the idea of secession, Cheney said in a Fox News interview Thursday. So, there is a very radical element of the Republican Party in the same way that there is a radical element of the Democratic Party.

The party chair is a reference to Frank Eathorne, the Wyoming GOP chairman, who raise the specter of secession in an interview last year days before President Joe Bidens inauguration.

Over the weekend, the party responded to Cheney

If Ms. Cheney wants to continue to pick a fight with the majority of Wyoming Republicans and accuse the vast majority of being deplorables and radicals, then of course she can continue that foolish ploy, the Wyoming GOP statement read. She can also continue to engage in the politics of personal destruction with other Republicans  which is her specialty and only real qualification to sit on the farcical January 6th Commission  but that is unlikely to improve her position in the polls.

The GOP statement indicates that two straw polls will be held at a Jan. 22 party meeting: one to gauge sentiment on her criticism of the party and a second to determine which House candidate that state central committee members will be voting for in Republican House primary in August.

Spoiler alert: the straw polls will very likely demonstrate the vast majority condemns her views and will be voting for someone else, the state party wrote.

Straw polls, however, are not always a strong indicator of broader sentiment. For example, former Sheridan County GOP Chairman Bryan Miller defeated now Sen. Cynthia Lummis by a large margin in a 2020 straw poll at the state party convention, but Lummis coasted to victory in the Republican primary a few months later.

Cheneys team responded Monday.

Liz stands by her comments. She has always been a conservative Republican. Like many other Republicans across Wyoming, she is deeply troubled by those members of our state party who have taken dangerous, and in some cases unconstitutional, positions, such as advocating for secession, said Jeremy Adler, a Cheney spokesperson. Liz ran for office as a Constitutional Conservative; she cannot condone what happened on Jan. 6th, and she will never abandon her conservative principles.

This back and forth follows multiple actions from the state party against Cheney.

In early 2021, the Wyoming GOP leadership censured her for her vote to impeach Trump. More recently, the state party narrowly voted to no longer recognize Cheney as a Republican, a move that is symbolic.

These actions against Cheney come in a year that has seen Wyomings lone representative steadfastly insist that former President Donald Trump helped to incite the Jan. 6 riot, which occurred as Congress worked to certify the presidential election.

The GOPs statement went on to repeat the word deplorables.

CNN will not be able to sell that deplorables tripe in Wyoming and save Ms. Cheney from an embarrassing defeat, it read.

Cheney did not call anyone deplorables in any of her numerous Jan. 6 anniversary interviews.

Although the state party did not respond when asked what exactly the statement meant with that word, it is likely a nod to Hillary Clintons comment during the 2016 presidential campaign in which she called Trumps supporters a basket of deplorables.

Labeling his voters that way caused severe backlash against Clinton and fed into the idea that she looked down upon them.

This is not the first time anti-Cheney groups have brought up Clinton.

With a slideshow of photos of Clinton, the ad starts, Remember? She benefited from a famous political last name. She sided with Nancy Pelosi and attacked President Trump when he was in office. She supported impeachment and she continues to attack President Trump today.

Clinton, a Democrat, and Cheney have drastically different politics and views.

Cheneys criticism of Trump and her impeachment vote has made Cheneys reelection effort harder than ever before. Previously, shes coasted to reelection. This time, she faces a formidable challenge from Harriet Hageman, the Trump-endorsed candidate.

While the views of Wyoming GOPs leadership on Cheney are clear, according to state statute, the state party cant endorse or spend money on a candidate in the primary.

Follow state politics reporter Victoria Eavis on Twitter @Victoria_Eavis

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A hazardous former bentonite mine in northwest Wyoming has been reclaimed to address safety concerns, the Bureau of Land Management announced recently.

The Cottonwood Creek Bentonite Mine, which sits on public land three miles north of Cody, was abandoned in the 1960s. The area has become popular for off-roading, so the agency developed a plan to remove the hazards and reclaim the mine site, the BLM said in a press release last week.

When the mine was abandoned, four trenches in unstable sedimentary rock, propped open with old timbers, were left behind, creating a hazardous environment for the public, BLM Geologist Gretchen Hurley, who also serves as the Abandoned Mine Lands coordinator for the Cody Field Office, said in a statement. Were grateful the State of Wyoming shared our commitment to make this area safer for public land users.

The project began with workers opening the hazardous mine trenches to assess them. Next, they used existing mine soil that had been stockpiled at the site to backfill the trenches, compacting each opening and re-contouring the entire ridge, according to the BLM. Erosion control equipment was also installed on the site, with the team using old mine timbers as part of the effort.

Afterward, workers reseeded the area with native plants such as Wyoming big sagebrush and Gardner saltbrush, according to BLM.

The BLM partnered with the state of Wyoming on the work. Wyomings Abandoned Mine Lands money paid for the project.

Through cooperation and partnership with landowners, the BLM, and other land managers, we can fulfill our mission to make these sites safe for our citizens while returning them to a productive natural state, said Wyoming AML Divisions Kurt Imhoff, who managed the site closure for the state.

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Wyomings Department of Family Services has reallocated $1 million in Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) money to the Northern Arapaho Tribal Housing Program.

ERAP, established by the CARES Act, is a relief program for Americans struggling to pay rent due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In all, the U.S. Department of the Treasury has set aside $352 million for the program in Wyoming. So far, community organizations have doled out $14.5 million of that money to landlords, renters and utilities companies.

The Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes run separate ERAP programs  together, they received about $4.5 million in federal money.

The Department of the Treasury is now reallocating some of the funds given out during the first wave of the program. The ERAP programs that got more money than they needed can request where the treasury moves their excess funds.

To date, Wyoming is the only state to reallocate some of its ERAP money to a Native American tribe, the Department of Family Services said in a news release Monday.

Kudos must also be given to the Northern Arapaho Tribe, which funded non-tribal member households facing eviction before Wyomings state program launched last year, Department of Family Services Director Korin Schmidt said in a statement. We all want to make it possible for eligible families and individuals to get the help that they need to keep a roof over their heads.

In addition to the Northern Arapaho Tribe, the Eastern Shoshone and Wyoming state government are also eligible to receive reallocated ERAP funds, according to the release.

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An increase in measles cases in January and February 2022 is a worrying sign of a heightened risk for the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases and could trigger larger outbreaks, particularly of measles affecting millions of children in 2022, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF have warned.

Pandemic-related disruptions, increasing inequalities in access to vaccines, and the diversion of resources from routine immunisation are leaving too many children without protection against measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases.
A pregnant mother and her family affected by the Quarry Street New Years Day fire say they felt pressured to accept an Oropune Gardens apartment as a permanent home after their years long efforts to find secure housing.

The family, who had previously spent months surrounded by debris and without electricity, told the Express they felt as though they were being pushed to mortgage the apartment as a quick fix to their problem.
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Britain reported another 141,472 coronavirus cases in the latest 24-hour period, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 14,475,192, according to official figures released Sunday.

The country reported a further 97 coronavirus-related deaths, bringing the total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain to 150,154.

The latest data came one day after Britain passed the grim milestone of 150,000 reported COVID deaths as the seventh country in the world following the United States, Brazil, India, Russia, Mexico and Peru.

Meanwhile, professor Kevin Fenton, London's public regional health director said the British capital "may have passed or be at the peak" of its latest wave of infections.

Based on the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, Fenton said the peak may have occurred around the New Year period.

He said the city is seeing reductions in overall case rates, although infection levels remain "very, very high" with one in 10 Londoners infected with COVID.

British scientists have said COVID booster jabs provide 90 percent protection against hospitalization in the over-65s for at least three months.

It means that there is "no immediate need" for a fourth jab to be administered to vulnerable people, the UK Health Security Agency said.

More than 90 percent of people aged 12 and over in Britain have had their first dose of vaccine and more than 82 percent have received both doses, according to the latest figures. More than 61 percent have received booster jabs, or the third dose of a coronavirus vaccine.

To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Germany, Russia and the United States have been racing against time to roll out coronavirus vaccines.
Those with authority over others often become wolves because the people under their charge 
Astronauts and space tourists could someday wear spacesuits made in Tucson, after longtime local NASA contractor Paragon Space Development Corp. acquired a New York-based provider of spacesuits and related equipment to NASA.

Paragon, which specializes in environmental control and life-support systems for space exploration, announced that it has reached a deal to acquire Final Frontier Design, a Brooklyn-based company that has several NASA spacesuit-development contracts.

Financial terms of the deal between the two privately held companies were not disclosed.

The fast-growing Tucson company says the addition of Final Frontiers spacesuit technologies to Paragons portable life-support systems makes Paragon the only U.S. company to offer a complete system for spacewalks, or extra-vehicular activity.

Though Paragon has primarily provided environmental and life-support systems for spacecraft, it was life-support system subcontractor to Houston-based Oceaneering Space Systems on NASAs proposed Constellation Spacesuit System in 2008.

Paragon also developed and built a special, pressurized spacesuit worn by Google executive Alan Eustace on a record-setting human high-altitude flight in 2014, in demonstration flight for a stratospheric balloon system made by then-startup World View Enterprises of Tucson.

Were the only company that has built an operational spacesuit in the last 30 years in the United States, said Paragon co-founder, President and CEO Grant Anderson, citing the 2014 StratEx mission. What this does is allow us to hit the price points and the operational requirements for the next generation of spacesuits, not only for NASA but also the commercial market.

Founded in 2009, Final Frontier has several NASA contracts for spacesuit components and is developing a design for NASAs next-generation spacewalking suit, the Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services or xEVAS, program.

We know that our level of expertise and technological creativity will help develop a highly workable, user-intuitive, safe, and flexible spacesuit  the ultimate life-support system for the ultimate hostile environment  that we think will be very attractive to NASA, Final Frontier co-founder and President Ted Southern said in a news release.

Final Frontier also has Space Act Agreement for its Intra-Vehicular Activity, or IVA, spacesuit. Such agreements allow NASA to work with private companies or other entities on mutually beneficial projects without contracts or financial obligations, sometimes leading to NASA funding.

Paragon plans to keep Final Frontiers staff of nine intact and move them to Paragons satellite office in Houston, and soon move to larger quarters there to house the current Houston staff of about 20 and the new employees, said Volker Kern, Paragon director of strategic resource planning.

While Paragons spacesuit research and development will be based in Houston, if the company gets a contract to manufacture its spacesuits, that work could possibly be done in Tucson, Anderson said.

With Final Frontiers expertise, Anderson said, Paragon should be able to compete for major NASA spacesuit contracts, as well as work for a market for commercial space and space-tourism missions he sees someday outstripping demand from NASA.

Final Frontiers newest EVA pressure suit weighs just 55 pounds on Earth, about half of the mass of NASAs current developmental xEMU suit, Anderson noted, calling it a technological game-changer.

Paragon is rapidly growing to meet demands of new contract work, including major subcontract work for Northrop Grumman on NASAs planned orbiting lunar space station, the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO).

Paragon has grown from about 50 employees a few years ago to more than 200 now and expects to reach about 300 by years end, after development and production ramps up at the new facility.

The company is in the process of expanding into the remaining roughly two-thirds of a 58,000-square-foot headquarters building on East Britannia Drive, where it moved last year. Paragon still occupies a manufacturing facility a few miles north on East Michigan Street.

Contact senior reporter David Wichner at dwichner@tucson.com or 520-573-4181. On Twitter: @dwichner. On Facebook: Facebook.com/DailyStarBiz

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The UA is committed to starting the spring semester Wednesday with in-person classes but will monitor COVID-19 case counts and is prepared to change plans, the schools president said Monday.

I move forward with great trepidation, but I do believe it is the right thing to do, UA President Robert Robbins said about opening with in-person classes. Well watch this very closely.

The school will monitor case numbers, positivity rates, the number of students isolating in special dorm rooms and how hospitals in the Tucson community are doing with the number of patients before any decisions are made to change from the current plan.

Robbins said although students need the stability of in-person classes, the school must take as many steps possible to mitigate the virus on campus.

The school is requiring everyone on campus to wear surgical-grade masks or better (KN95, N95, KF94 or N99) in most indoor settings because cloth masks are no longer sufficient protection against the highly transmissible omicron variant. The masks will be made available in campus buildings and outside classrooms.

The school has about 150,000 surgical-quality masks available in its stockpile, Robbins said.

A negative COVID-19 test will be required by the UA for any student returning to the dorms this semester.

The school has 300 isolation rooms available to any dorm resident who tests positive for COVID-19. That capacity can be increased to 600 beds with double occupancy, Robbins said.

He said he hopes the community spike in cases, largely due to the omicron variant, begins to subside in a couple of weeks.

A good mitigation strategy is the best course.  If things change we certainly reserve the right to change modalities to go back to essential classes (in person) or even totally online, Robbins said. Right now we are going to stay the course and ride this out.

The UA is also making testing and vaccinations available to employees and students. The school has take-home tests available at several locations and is also offering in-person testing with appointments required.

Starting Monday, students and employees can make an appointment for a COVID-19 test that will be given on the third level of the Student Union (at the former Cactus Grill). The testing will be available daily this week until 5 p.m. Friday.

Robbins said while COVID-19 tests are difficult to find in the community, the UA has the capacity to administer about 3,000 tests each day to students, faculty and staff. Even thats not enough, he said.

The school also said it will have a walk-in vaccination site set up from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 12, at the Cole and Jeannie Davis Sports Center, 640 N. National Championship Drive. Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines will be available. No appointment is necessary, and it is open to the public 5 years and older through a partnership with the Pima County Health Department.

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The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

The end of 2021 was big for the climate.

World leaders, scientists, CEOs and activists gathered in Glasgow for the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in November, the United Nations annual climate change conference. The United States and more than 100 other nations committed to end deforestation by 2030.

Its a lofty goal crucial to combating climate change. If accomplished, it will help the worlds forests do their jobs: providing habitats, regulating global temperatures and drawing carbon out of the atmosphere. The plan will require policies that stop deforestation, provide resources to Indigenous communities to protect their forests and allocate money for the restoration and protection of forests.

Protecting ecosystems is necessary to help combat the climate crisis. But, for those of us living in the desert Southwest, it raises the question: What about our ecosystem?

As an ecology student at the University of Arizona, I care deeply about the protection of Southwestern ecosystems. In class, I learn about the necessity of protecting biodiversity and safeguarding our natural resources. I often head home feeling helpless and overwhelmed.

In agreeing to end deforestation, President Joe Biden made a commitment to protect our natural lands. He also recognized the role of Indigenous people worldwide as stewards of their land.

But what about the beautiful desert of the borderlands and the Indigenous people who call it home? People have lived in the Sonoran Desert that spans the border of Arizona and Mexico for thousands of years. In Southern Arizona, the Tohono Oodham, Pascua Yaqui and others still live on what is left of their ancestral lands.

In 2017, President Donald Trump began construction of the border wall to block passage between the U.S. and Mexico from the Gulf Coast to the Pacific Ocean. The wall is often approached as a foreign policy issue, but it is also an ecological issue, fragmenting thousands of miles of habitat. Its construction threatened endemic species with extinction and blocked the migration of animals.

Perhaps most people on Capitol Hill are unfamiliar with the diverse and productive desert of the Southwest. Maybe they imagine empty sand dunes and a desolate environment reminiscent of the planet Arrakis in Dune.

But there is life in the desert  an ecosystem worth saving. An ecosystem under threat.

There is no telling what will happen in the 2024 presidential election, but environmentalists in the Southwest look at the calendar with trepidation.

Biden has made the protection of American ecosystems a priority. In January 2021, he issued the 30x30 initiative for locally driven conservation of U.S. lands and waters and in October he restored the boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument. He halted the construction of the border wall in the beginning of his term  a relief, with 450 miles of wall already built.

Perhaps 2024 will come and go, and environmentalists will have worried for naught. The alternative? 2024 will bring the continued construction of the wall, permanently slicing thousands of miles of habitat  and Indigenous land  in two.

In the face of this, environmental organizations like Defenders of Wildlife have shifted their focus. Besides mitigating ecological damage, theyve set their sights on a new goal: repealing the Real ID Act of 2005. This act gave the Department of Homeland Security the power to waive laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, to begin construction of the border wall. Repealing the Real ID Act will prevent construction of the wall from resuming without due process.

If Biden is truly committed to protecting ecosystems from destruction, then the border wall can no longer be ignored. The prevention of further damage is key. Tell your representatives that you support repealing the Real ID Act to ensure that the destructive process of wall construction, and other similar projects, cannot be allowed again.

Hannah Johnson is a student at the University of Arizona studying ecology and evolutionary biology driven by a passion for conservation and science communication.

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JENKS  Municipal leaders on Monday officially invited developers to consider the future of a choice piece of land in the citys core.

Proposals are sought for the Downtown Jenks West Gateway Infill Project, a 4.2-acre tract at Main and Birch streets. The land was formerly owned by the Tulsa City-County Library, which sold the property to the city in early 2021.

This 4-acre parcel will serve as the new western gateway into our new Jenks downtown, Mayor Cory Box said Monday at a news conference at the site. Our vision for this property includes retail, restaurants, commercial, residential and more  truly what we would call mixed-use.

What we want more than anything is ideas to come from the private sector.

The property has a fair market value of $3.04 million. It contains two rows of parcels divided by Aquarium Place (formerly Apache). It will primarily face Main Street, bordered on the west by Birch Street and on the east by railroad tracks.

This is the largest piece of developable land in downtown Jenks since the citys founding in (the) early 1900s, Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Josh Driskell said in a statement. This is an important opportunity for the future of downtown and the future of Jenks economic development.

A question-and-answer session on the request for proposals is scheduled for Jan. 26. The proposals are due by 5 p.m. March 30.

Jenks population has grown from fewer than 10,000 two decades ago to more than 25,000. It has a median household income of $96,515, with nearly half of the population holding at least a bachelors degree.

The citys Main Street was boosted in 1986 with a grant from the state of Oklahoma. Investors in the past couple of years transformed a rundown strip center near the site now being considered into the 52,000-square-foot Melody Lane, offering places where children and adults can congregate.

Last March, construction began on Melody Courts, a 15,000-square-foot development just west of Elm Street along Main Street.

Of the current project, Box added, "we believe this development will spark new growth up and down Main Street while solidifying a new vision for downtown Jenks, a vision that embraces and celebrates our past success while focusing on what will keep downtown thriving for many years to come."

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Russia will not give in to U.S. pressure or make any concessions ahead of the strategic stability talks set for January 10 in Geneva, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Rybakov told Sputnik news agency on Sunday.

"We will, of course, make no concessions under the constant pressure and threats coming from the Western side of the upcoming negotiations," Ryabkov said, adding concessions under duress were "entirely impossible." "This would mean going against our own interests, our security interests."

Apart from the security talk with the U.S., a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council is scheduled on January 12 in Brussels, followed by the consultations within the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) planned on January 13 in Vienna.

The deputy minister said that Moscow's main goal in Geneva is to discuss the non-expansion of NATO and the non-deployment of offensive weapons near Russia's borders.

But the diplomat said Russia is not optimistic about the forthcoming talks as the United States continues to insist that Moscow make unilateral concessions.

Later on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also told CNN's "State of the Union" program that he does not expect breakthroughs in U.S.-Russia security talks but hopes there can be areas where the two sides can agree.
This review originally published July 14, 2021, in Tulsa World:

The Basque Country occupies a region not quite the size of New Hampshire situated astride the border between Spain and France.

Restaurant Basque: Need to know Food: 4 stars  Service: 4 stars  Atmosphere: 4 stars

And, at first, Amelia Eesley thought that was all she needed to know to call her latest venture Restaurant Basque, 114 N. Boston Ave. It occupies the space that formerly held Amelias Market & Brasserie, and Hey Mambo and Sette before that.

I thought with that name, we could offer a mix of French and Spanish foods, she said. Fortunately, Chef Andrew knows all about Spanish food and Basque cuisine, and he knew if we had the word Basque in the name, then we would need to deliver on providing authentic Basque food.

Chef Andrew Donovan, who came on as executive chef for both Amelias and Restaurant Basque in 2020, served as executive chef at New York Citys Tia Pol, which under his guidance was named best Spanish restaurant in the city by the Zagat Guide.

It was during his time at Tia Pol that Donovan spent several weeks traveling around Spain, where I did nothing but eat, he said. The trip gave him a deeper insight into Basque cuisine, which he has put to use for Restaurant Basque.

Within the relatively small confines of the Basque region is a remarkable diverse geography, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pyrenees Mountains and everything in between, which means the areas unique cuisine draws equally from the oceans and rivers, farms and fields.

One thing that impressed me about Basque cuisine is that, while the techniques and procedures involved can be quite complex, there is a simplicity to it, he said. Ive always been a proponent of less is more, and thats a characteristic of Basque cuisine. A dish may have five or six relatively simple ingredients, but it is the way they are brought together that elevates it to a new level.

Still, Donovan said, there are some popular Basque dishes that might not find as enthusiastic a welcome on this side of the pond. One such dish he prepared for the staff to sample as the menu was being created was a whole baby squid braised in its own ink  the blue-black fluid the cephalopod uses as a defense mechanism.

Personally, I love it, Donovan said, but not everyone else did. So while we are making every effort to be authentic, we also want to make the food we serve approachable.

So the calamari dish served at Restaurant Basque takes the elements of that original dish  the rice ground to a flour, the onions and peppers sauteed with the calamari, the squid ink used as a dressing  to create something that looks similar to the fried calamari found at many restaurants, but packing a flavor that is unique.

Another tradition of Basque cuisine is its communal nature  most dishes are designed to be shared among those at the table, like the tapas popular throughout Spain. But instead of strolling from bar to bar, at Restaurant Basque it all comes to you, beginning with a loaf of brioche bread and roasted garlic piquillo butter.

The menu is divided into six sections, including cheese and charcuterie selections; small-bite offerings called Pintxos and Montadiltos; and Raciones, which are small-plates meant to share. The entrees are divided between Carne (Meat) and Mariscos (Seafood), with Verduras (Vegetables) making up the final group.

Our server, Trip, said one did not need to follow the typical progression of appetizer to entree to dessert, encouraging guests to select dishes that appealed at random. Theres no wrong way to order, he said.

My three companions for the evening and I decided to pass on the cheese and charcuterie because we  all right, because I  wanted to try everything and one needs to demonstrate some measure of restraint whilst among the public.

Instead we started with two variations on serrano ham, the ham croquettes ($8) and the bikini ($9), which are two-bite-sized grilled cheese sandwiches made with serrano ham and manchego cheese.

The gumball-sized croquettes had a nicely crunchy outer shell; the interior was a tad doughy with just a few shreds of ham. Much better was the bikini, where the ham was more of a presence and matched the assertive taste of the manchego.

We moved on to the shareables, selecting three: the charred Spanish octopus ($16), the Basque-style snails ($14), and the albondigas ($10), lamb meatballs in broth.

Let me pause here to sing the praises of the snails  the snails themselves were perfectly cooked, tender to the point of creaminess, and the sauce of bacon and choricero peppers was lively and potent. One could live on these things.

The octopus had a light char and meaty texture, and skewered with chunks of fingerling potatoes and topped with a mix of Manzanilla olives and roasted pine nuts. The meatballs had rich lamb flavor, but not even the clear broth in which they were served could remove the dryness.

We went with two entrees  the salt-baked petrale sole ($26) and the cast-iron roasted rib-eye steak ($44)  and at our servers suggestion, the crispy potatoes ($11).

The sole was melt-in-the-mouth delicate in texture, with the olive-forward salsa verde adding a piquant note. The rib-eye, which came to the table cut into bite-sized pieces, has a good crust that did not rely entirely on salt, and was the requested medium-rare. A few of the pieces, however, were mostly fat  when every bite is supposed to deliver a special experience, a little more judicious trimming of what goes to the table might be in order.

The potatoes were crispy as promised, and almost didnt need the aioli drizzled over them. The steak also came with crushed and crisped fingerling potatoes, which were tasty all by themselves.

We shared two desserts, Pears Belle Helene, a wine-poached pear with chocolate sauce ($12), and a burnt Basque cheesecake ($11). The pear was well-poached, slightly toothsome, and the slightly bitter chocolate was a good contrast. The cheesecake, which came with a slightly scorched exterior and a handful of berries, was unlike any other cheesecake Ive tried as far as texture and taste go. It had an almost salty, savory taste, and an airy texture.

Donovans wife, Ashley Whitworth Donovan, a sommelier, created the cocktail menu and oversees a wine list that focuses on Spanish wines.

We import most of the products we use from Spain, Donovan said. The oils, the vinegars, the seafood  we made every effort to use authentic ingredients.

The interior has not changed much from its days as Amelias Market & Brasserie. A new patio added about 30 additional seats to the existing 40 or so inside. The Market, specializing in Oklahoma foods, remains the entrance to the restaurant, but Eesley said its likely that the market area will be converted to restaurant seating in the future.

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Monoclonal antibody treatments for COVID-19 are scarce across Oklahoma as the newest surge has taken hold.

The life-saving infusions, when given in a certain time frame, can prevent the worst outcomes of COVID-19, though health experts have said theyre no replacement for vaccination. But Oklahoma doesnt have enough of the treatments, the states health commissioner said.

Only one monoclonal antibody treatment  sotrovimab  is effective against the omicron variant, which has quickly become the predominant strain nationwide. In Oklahoma, the health department has said it makes up 57% of a recent sampling of cases, though the time frame the tests were performed in is unclear.

Oklahomas most recent shipment of sotrovimab contained less than 600 doses, interim Health Commissioner Keith Reed said. The state is still requesting shipments of other monoclonal antibody treatments, but those are also in short supply.

As with other states, Oklahomas recent allocation of monoclonal antibodies has been insufficient to assure adequate supply moving forward, Reed said.

The shortage of monoclonal antibody treatments comes as Oklahoma is recording some of its highest new case counts and surging hospitalizations. Health leaders have said omicron appears to cause milder illness than the delta variant, but severe illness is still possible, especially for people at high risk of complications.

The state is working to increase its allocations, but as it stands now, the state expects to deplete its supplies within the month, Reed said.

The Health Department was previously focused on making sure monoclonal antibody treatments were available across the state. Now, its targeting specific regions and asking providers to have a plan for prioritizing patients for the scarce treatments.

We would love to be able to give (providers) as much as they needed, but its just not available right now, he said. Were at the mercy of the federal government and the manufacturers  theyre the ones that are really driving a supply chain.

Health care providers arent trying to keep patients from accessing monoclonal antibody treatments, Dr. Dale Bratzler, OUs chief COVID officer, said this week. They simply may not have the treatment available.

Even if your provider wanted to give (sotrovimab) to you, because they have a good sense that most of our cases in Oklahoma are omicron, they may not be able to because they may not have it. It is in short supply, he said.

The National Institutes of Health have laid out specific criteria for who should be prioritized for the scarce treatments. Immunocompromised people and those who are unvaccinated and at the highest risk for severe disease are in the first tier of prioritization.

The second tier includes unvaccinated people at risk for severe disease who arent otherwise included in the first tier  including people over 65 and those younger who have clinical risk factors, according to NIH.

Vaccinated people are in the third and fourth tiers, depending on their age, risk factors and whether they have received a booster dose.

People who are fully vaccinated but havent received a booster dose are likely at higher risk for severe disease.

The Health Department has said those who want to access the treatments should reach out to a health care provider to determine whether theyre eligible.
A Tulsa man who admitted to submitting a bogus application for a COVID-19-related government business loan was sentenced to prison Monday.

U.S. District Judge Gregory Frizzell sentenced Adam Winston James, 45, to serve two years in prison after he pleaded guilty in June to aggravated identity theft as part of a plan to fraudulently obtain a Paycheck Protection Program loan.

The U.S. Attorneys Office and our federal partners will hold accountable individuals like Adam James who steal pandemic relief funds paid for by American taxpayers, said U.S. Attorney Clint Johnson. Todays sentence reflects the Governments resolve to expose and prosecute wrongdoers who take advantage of national emergencies to personally enrich themselves.

Federal prosecutors charged James and Rafael Maturino, 41, in late 2020 in connection with a scheme to obtain PPP loans from area banks.

Maturino was sentenced June 1 to serve one year and one day in federal prison after he pleaded guilty in March to bank fraud after illegally receiving nearly $100,000 in PPP loans.

In James case, filed separately, he admitted to using the identities of five individuals to apply for PPP loans at an area bank, falsely claiming that a company James was affiliated with employed the individuals.

James received $125,900 from the bank as a result of the scheme, according to prosecutors.

James, through an attorney, requested a judge sentence him in accordance with federal sentencing guidelines. He also requested to take part in a drug and alcohol program offered by the federal prison system.

Adam is not asking for a pass, his sentencing memo stated. He knows his actions were both criminal and immoral.

The memo noted that James tried to return the funds within a month after receiving the loan proceeds.

James, through his attorney, asked for a justified punishment that offered an opportunity for redemption.

In addition to the two-year prison term, James will serve one year of post-custody supervision and was ordered to pay nearly $26,000 in restitution.

James was given until March 9 to surrender to federal Bureau of Prison officials.

The CARES Act is a federal law enacted on March 29, 2020, designed to provide emergency financial assistance to the millions of Americans who are suffering the economic effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office.

One source of relief provided by the CARES Act was the authorization of up to $349 billion in forgivable loans to small businesses for job retention and certain other expenses, through the PPP.

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P-EBT delay: A spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Human Services confirmed that the distribution deadline for summer 2021 Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer funds has been pushed back from Dec. 31 to Jan. 31 to allow extra time for student data validation.

Eligible students will receive a flat $375, which will be loaded on to their cards from the 2020-2021 school year and can be used to purchase food at authorized grocery stores and farmers markets. In order to qualify for the program, students must have been eligible for free or reduced price school meals either based on their household income or if they attended a school that exercised the National School Lunch Programs Community Eligibility Provision in 2020-2021.

Spring 2021 graduates will receive summer benefits if they otherwise qualified for the program.

New name: Tulsa Public Schools is accepting name suggestions for Central Middle and High Schools cafeteria through Jan. 31 via its website.

Superintendents Advisory Council: Four TPS high school students are among the 74 public school students across Oklahoma selected for state Superintendent Joy Hofmeisters Student Advisory Council.

As part of the council, Booker T. Washingtons Mya Anduze, Memorials Nefthari Beccera, East Centrals Marco Macedo Sanchez and Ethan Patrick from McLain will meet with Hofmeister virtually Jan. 25 to discuss issues they face in school.

In addition to the four TPS participants, other area students tapped for the council include Locust Groves Erin Bond, Kolby Dooling and Keona Losinske from Hominy, Skiatooks Elizabeth Garrison, Richie Hardin from Wagoner, Jonathan Menzel from Inola, Jenks Lian No, Daley Reynolds from Claremore, Bristows Sutton Titsworth, Sydney Vann from Owasso, Libertys Ayden Whittaker and Joyce Yang from Bartlesville.

Election deadline: Friday is the deadline to register to vote in the Feb. 8 election. Along with bond packages in Bixby and Jenks, school board primary elections are scheduled that day for Tulsa, Broken Arrow, Union and Catoosa.

Vaccine clinic: TPS is hosting a COVID-19 vaccine and flu shot clinic Monday from 4-6 p.m. at Kerr Elementary School, 202 S. 117th East Ave. Adult and pediatric doses will be available at the walk-in event.

COVID-19 by the numbers: With classes back in session, several area school districts resumed publishing updated COVID-19 case counts on Friday.

Bartlesville Public Schools reported 28 cases among students and 10 among its employees. An additional 85 students and four employees are in quarantine due to close contact exposure.

Berryhill Public Schools reported 17 cases among its students and staff district-wide, including nine at the high school.

Broken Arrow Public Schools reported 156 student cases and an additional 66 cases among its employees. The district does not differentiate among campuses in its public-facing reporting.

Collinsville Public Schools reported 30 student cases and four cases among its employees.

Glenpool Public Schools reported nine cases among its students and eight positive cases among its employees. Two additional employees are in quarantine due to close contact exposure.

Jenks Public Schools reported 228 cases among its students and an additional 71 among its employees. The districts central campus, which houses the high school, freshman academy and alternative center, accounted for 102 student cases.

Owasso Public Schools reported 68 cases among its students and 30 among its staff. OPS does not differentiate among sites in its public-facing reporting.

Sapulpa Public Schools reported 16 cases among its students and six among its employees.

Skiatook Public Schools reported 10 cases among its students and two among its staff.

Bixby, Sand Springs, Tulsa and Union did not publish updated case counts by the close of business Friday.

School board schedule: The boards of education for Allen Bowden, Anderson, Berryhill, Broken Arrow, Catoosa, Collinsville, Liberty, Sand Springs, Skiatook and Sperry are all scheduled to meet Monday.

The Statewide Virtual Charter School Board is scheduled to meet Tuesday afternoon in Oklahoma City.

The boards of education for Epic One-on-One and Epic Blended are scheduled to meet Wednesday in Oklahoma City.

Bixby and Claremores school boards are scheduled to meet Thursday.

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Officials with Tulsa, Broken Arrow and Union public schools announced Sunday that several of their campuses will be at least partially in distance learning Monday.

With one exception, students attending Anderson, Emerson, Hawthorne, Lindbergh and Patrick Henry elementary schools; Memorial Middle School, Tulsa MET and Phoenix Rising will not have in-person classes on Monday due to staff absences. That lone exception is for Memorial Middle School students receiving Tier 3 or 4 exceptional student support services.

Additionally, the fourth grade dual language classes at Skelly Elementary School, fourth grade at Kerr Elementary School and the third and fifth grades at Zarrow International School will also be in distance learning Monday due to staff absences.

Grab and go meal service will be available outside the elementary and middle schools from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Phoenix Rising students needing a meal are asked to call the school at 918-833-8650 to make arrangements.

A decision about Tuesdays classes will be announced by 2 p.m.

Monroe Demonstration Academy, McLain High School and Rogers and Central middle and high schools will all resume in-person classes on Monday. McLain, Rogers and Central started the second semester in distance learning after more than 30 faculty members across the three campuses called in absent.

To the east, staff absences have also forced Broken Arrows Sequoyah Middle School to go to distance learning Monday. Meal service will be available at the school from noon to 1 p.m. and the school is slated to resume in-person instruction on Tuesday.

After using Friday as a district-wide distance learning day, Union Public Schools announced Sunday night that in-person classes will be suspended Monday for its freshman academy and high school due to staff absences.

All other Union campuses will be in-person with the districts administrators and remaining substitutes reassigned to cover lower grades as needed. As of Thursday, Union had 28 uncovered classrooms district-wide.

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Just a week into the new year, the American Red Cross of Oklahoma has responded to more than 50 fires at single family and multifamily residences combined, the agency said.

That number includes a Thursday fire at a Tulsa County home where a man died.

In all of 2021, staff and volunteers responded to roughly 1,600 home fires across the state, providing health, mental health, spiritual care and recovery assistance services.

At the current rate, Red Cross of Oklahoma would see home fire responses increase 60% in 2022.

Most of us are spending a lot of time at home. Working from home is the new normal for many. Winter weather is keeping us inside. The ongoing pandemic is also keeping us housebound, said Red Cross Regional Preparedness Program Manager Linda Medford.

This can lead to an uptick in home fires with the two top causes of home fires at the forefront: cooking and heating.

The Red Cross has already responded to more than 600 home fires nationwide in 2022.

Recent fires have included two major apartment blazes in Tulsa last month.

A dozen Tulsans were displaced overnight Dec. 13 after a cooking fire swept through three apartments in a 12-unit building.

Firefighters responded to the Wedgewood Court apartments near 61st Street and Peoria Avenue about 11:35 p.m. and found that a fire in a ground-level unit had spread to two second-story units.

Tulsa Fire Department spokesman Andrew Little said firefighters helped one woman out of her apartment and that she was taken to a hospital. No other injuries were reported.

A second Tulsa apartment fire during the last week of December also displaced several residents.

Following last weeks fatal fire, Tulsa firefighters canvassed the neighborhood surrounding the home, visiting 107 homes and offering free installation of smoke alarms.

They found at least one smoke alarm in the burned home, but its unclear whether it was operable.

The extent of the damage rendered investigators unable to determine the fires cause, but Little said its possible it was a space heater.

Little reminded residents to plug only one space heater into an outlet at a time and never to use them with extension cords, keep them at least three feet away from combustible materials, and exercise additional caution if children or pets are in the home.

Any Tulsa resident without a smoke detector may call the fire department to have a device installed at no cost.

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Read what is in the news today:

COVID-19 Updates

-- Ho Chi Minh City authorities have detected one more imported case of the Omicron variant, bringing the total number of infections carrying this strain in the city to 12. Currently, the southern metropolis has a total of 30,182 people under home isolation.

Society

-- The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam has proposed the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs limit the number of combo repatriation flights to Noi Bai and Tan Son Nhat International Airports to reduce the pressure of COVID-19 testing on arrivals at the two airdromes.

-- The Ministry of Public Security has broken up a large-scale gambling racket which had processed transactions totaling more than VND300 billion (US$13.2 million) since the beginning of 2021. Police officers have arrested many top suspects.

-- A group of Vietnamese doctors, who are serving the Vietnamese level-2 field hospital under the United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, have successfully transported and given emergency treatment to a severe COVID-19 patient staying nearly 500km to the east of their garrison.

-- The Peoples Procuracy of Ea Kar District in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak has issued an indictment against 40 people in a deforestation case at Ea So Nature Reserve, a source told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Sunday.

Business

-- Deputy Prime Minister Le Van Thanh has urged relevant agencies to complete the construction of Long Thanh International Airport in the southern province of Dong Nai in the first quarter of 2025.

-- Two-way trade between Vietnam and Laos is estimated at $1.3 billion in 2021, a year-on-year rise of 30.3 percent, the Vietnam News Agency cited Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Quoc Phuong.

Lifestyle

-- Photographer Linh Pham will be the first Vietnamese ever to join the World Press Photo Contest jury, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

World news

-- Nineteen people were killed, including nine children, and dozens were injured when a fire, started by a malfunctioning space heater, spread smoke through a 19-floor building in The Bronx borough of New York City on Sunday, Reuters cited city officials.

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The Peoples Procuracy of Ea Kar District in Dak Lak Province, Vietnam has issued an indictment against 40 people, including two forest protection officers, in a deforestation case at Ea So Nature Reserve, a source told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Sunday.

The two officers are Hoang Cong Y, 47, and Vuong The Cao, 41, who are head and deputy head of two forest protection stations at Ea So Nature Reserve.

Y, Cao, and Hoang Cong Nhat, who is Ys 43-year-old brother, were indicted on charges of taking bribes, while giving bribes and violating regulations on exploitation and protection of forests and forest products were the indictments for 37 other people in the case.

In September 2020, Le Mo Y Cum, better known as Ma Khanh, who is a 37-year-old resident of Song Hinh District in Phu Yen Province, arranged for a group of people to go to Ea So Nature Reserve to illegally cut logs and sell them for money, according to the indictment.

Suspects indicted in a deforestation case in Dak Lak Province, Vietnam. Photo: Tam An / Tuoi Tre

Y Cum reached out to Y and had the latter agree on letting him and his group unlawfully exploit wood at two sub-zones under Ys management at the nature reserve, on the condition that the loggers would use handsaws to avoid making noise.

Y Cum paid Y VND700,000 (US$31) for each member in his group every logging time while each logger handed over VND1.2 million ($53) to him after each trip.

After reaching the deal, Y showed Y Cum a route to avoid the attention of other rangers at the nature reserve.

The scene of a deforestation case in Dak Lak Province, Vietnam. Photo: Tam An / Tuoi Tre

Meanwhile, Cao was responsible for informing Y Cum of the rangers patrol schedules and covering up for the loggers whenever they transported the cut wood out of the nature reserve.

Y Cum and his group exploited the Ea So Nature Reserve twice between October and November 2020, cutting down over 25 cubic meters of wood worth above VND175 million ($7,714).

The total bribes Y received from Y Cum through Nhat, who completely understood the nature of the transactions, totaled VND35 million ($1,543), of which VND4 million ($176) was given to Cao.

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A group of Vietnamese doctors, who are serving the Vietnamese level-2 field hospital under the United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, have successfully transported and given emergency treatment to a severe COVID-19 patient staying nearly 500km to the east of their garrison.

The patient is a female employee of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who had been ill for about five days with difficulty breathing, but she had not received any treatment, according to an announcement of Vietnams level-2 field hospital No. 3 on Sunday.

Upon receiving reports on the case, the management board of the hospital convened an urgent meeting and decided to dispatch an Aeromedical Evacuation Team (AMET) to the location of the patient in Bunj, a border town in the Upper Nile State of South Sudan.

The AMET then successfully carried the patient for 500km to the capital city of Juba for treatment.

As soon as the plane landed, we gave first aid to the patient on the spot, measured her oxygen saturation and gave her oxygen supply, encouraged her and brought her on the plane, said Lieutenant Huynh Van Khanh, a member of the AMET.

During the flight, the patient showed signs of fatigue and shortness of breath that increased when the plane took off, but the issues were promptly handled.

The AMETs mission is to stay ready for emergency air transport in its designated area.

During the nine months of its mission, the AMET has handled 15 cases of emergency aid and transport by air, including many serious illnesses such as acute myocardial infarction, cerebral hemorrhage, and gastrointestinal bleeding.

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Former Studio 10 presenter Joe Hildebrand has joined SKY News for The Blame Game, a new political quiz-style program to screen each Friday.

The show will screen in 2022 from late January.

Also joining this year are UK commentator Piers Morgan in a new primetime program, as part of a global News Corporation initiative (details announced in coming weeks).

Ross Greenwood fronts hosting Business Now with Ross Greenwood each Monday to Friday at 4:30pm, and will continue with Business Weekend on Sundays.

Erin Molan also joins as a primetime contributor and fronts a new doco on Online Safety.

In other changes Paul Murray Live moves to 8:00pm Sunday  Thursday, and continues with Paul Murray Live: Our Town and electorate Pub Tests.

The Rita Panahi Show will initially be scheduled at 9:30pm Monday  Thursday, then become a permanent fixture on Mondays later this year. The Front Page with Jenna Clarke will also move to 10:30pm.

Upcoming news docos include MH370: The Final Search a follow-up by Peter Stefanovic; Peta Credlin will present a new documentary giving on what really goes on during the political party election campaigns.

SKY News will also comprehensively cover the Federal Election, South Australian and Victorian State Elections with Kieran Gilbert, Andrew Clennell, Laura Jayes, Ashleigh Gillon, Tom Connell and Peter Stefanovic.

Paul Whittaker, Chief Executive Officer said: In 2021, our 25th year, we continued to build on our record audiences of 2020, ending the year as the #1 channel on Foxtel and the #1 Australian news channel on social media for the second consecutive year.

There are big plans for SKY News in 2022 as our team work to bring our viewers the most comprehensive coverage and insightful debate on the news and issues that matter most. Looking ahead, the news agenda is already busy. Well bring viewers unrivalled coverage of the Federal Election and post-pandemic Federal budget. Therell be in-depth analysis of the health, social and economic implications of new variants of COVID-19. And we have some big events to look forward to, including the winter Olympics and Commonwealth Games to name a few.

First Edition with Peter Stefanovic, weekdays at 5:30am, returns 24 January

AM Agenda with Laura Jayes, weekdays at 9:00am, returns 24 January

NewsDay with Tom Connell, Monday & Friday from 11:00am  2:00pm, Tuesday  Thursday from 11:00am  12:00pm, returns 24 January

NewsDay with Ashleigh Gillon, Tuesday  Thursday from 12:00pm  2:00pm, returns 24 January

Afternoon Agenda with Kieran Gilbert, and featuring Andrew Clennell, Monday  Thursday at 2:00pm, returns 24 January

Business Now with Ross Greenwood, weekdays at 4:30pm, premieres 31 January

The Kenny Report with Chris Kenny, weeknights at 5:00pm, returns 24 January

Peta Credlin with Peta Credlin, weeknights at 6:00pm, returns 31 January

The Bolt Report with Andrew Bolt, Monday  Thursday at 7:00pm, returns 31 January

Paul Murray Live with Paul Murray, Sunday  Thursday at 8:00pm, returns 23 January

The Front Page with Jenna Clarke, Monday  Thursday at 10:30pm, returns 24 January

The Rita Panahi Show with Rita Panahi, Monday  Thursday at 9:30pm, premieres 24 January

Bernardi with Cory Bernardi, Fridays at 7:00pm, returns 28 January

The Media Show with Jack Houghton, Friday at 8:00pm, returns 28 January

The Blame Game with Joe Hildebrand, Friday at 8:30pm, premieres 28 January

Hardgrave with Gary Hardgrave, Friday at 9:00pm, returns 28 January

Weekend Edition with Jaynie Seal and Tim Gilbert, Saturday & Sunday from 6:00am

Sunday Agenda with Kieran Gilbert and Andrew Clennell, Sunday at 8:00am, returns 30 January

Outsiders with Rowan Dean, Rita Panahi and James Morrow, Sunday at 9:00am, returns 23 January

Business Weekend with Ross Greenwood, Sunday at 11:00am, returns 6 February

Chris Smith Tonight with Chris Smith, Sunday at 6:00pm, returns 23 January

Sharri with Sharri Markson, Sunday at 7:00pm, returns 23 January

All times in AEDT.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg states that the meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission is taking place at an important time for European security and will allow coordinating positions before negotiations with Russia.

"Ukraine is a valued and long-standing partner to NATO. And today's meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission comes at the start of an important week for European security. The United States and Russia are currently meeting in Geneva. On Wednesday we will hold the NATO-Russia Council meeting here in Brussels. And on Thursday, the OSCE will meet. Our meeting in the NATO-Ukraine Commission is a timely opportunity to exchange assessments on the situation. To express Allies' strong political and practical support to Ukraine. And to coordinate ahead of diplomatic engagements with Russia," Stoltenberg said in Brussels on Monday ahead of the meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission, which will be held with the participation of Olha Stefanyshyna, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration.

According to the Alliance Secretary General, during a meeting with the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister, which took place before the meeting, the parties discussed the situation in and around Ukraine, while Russia continues to build up its military presence "with tens of thousands of combat-ready troops, armed with heavy capabilities."

"On Friday, NATO Foreign Ministers called again on Russia to remove its forces from Ukraine and from your borders. Demonstrate transparency. And de-escalate. Any further aggression against Ukraine would come at a high political and economic price," Stoltenberg said.

He again reiterated that "NATO Allies are united in their support for all nations to choose their own path."

"This has been a fundamental principle of European security for decades," the Secretary General said.

In addition, Stoltenberg welcomed the fact that Russia had agreed to an offer to host a NATO-Russia Council meeting this week.

"This is a positive signal. We will focus on European security issues, transparency related to military activities, risk reduction and arms control. We will listen to Russia's concerns, but any meaningful dialogue must also address our concerns about Russia's actions. And it must take place in consultation with Ukraine, as we are doing today. We are also consulting closely with other partners, including Georgia, Moldova, Finland, Sweden, and the European Union," he added.
The Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop, slated for March 24-26 on the University of Dayton's campus, has been postponed until Oct. 20-22 in the wake of a surge in COVID cases.

We appreciate the flexibility and generosity of our presenters and attendees  and the esprit de corps of the writing community who are looking forward to gathering together again in person, said Teri Rizvi, founder and director of the popular, nationally renowned workshop.

Attendees will have the opportunity to transfer their registrations or cancel by Jan. 28. Registration will reopen on Feb. 1 for available slots.

Registration for the in-person workshop is $499 and includes meals and full access to a virtual package of the keynote talks and the entertaining and educational Pitchapalooza for attendees to experience again long after the workshop ends.

For those interested in the virtual option only, the registration fee is $79. From the comfort of your home (think: pajamas!), attendees can enjoy the keynote talks in real time, participate in a live chat with other writers who are joining virtually or tap back in later at their convenience. Register here.

The Erma Bombeck Writing Competition Awards ceremony, keynoted by Kathy Kinney and Cindy Ratzlaff of Queen of Your Own Life, is going virtual at 7 p.m. on March 23. Its free, but registration is required.

Emmy Award-winner Cathy Guisewite, creator of the iconic Cathy comic strip and an essayist, will return to her hometown to kick off the fall workshop. Here's the rest of the keynote speaker slate:

 W. Bruce Cameron and Cathryn Michon, authors and screenwriters for major motion pictures based on Camerons popular novels. New York Times bestselling author Adriana Trigiani will engage in an entertaining, lively conversation with the husband-wife duo.

 Dion Flynn, improvisor, comedian and actor best known for playing Barack Obama on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

 Katrina Kittle, award-winning local author of five books and a popular public speaker.

 Laraine Newman, writer, founding member of the LA-based comedy troupe, The Groundlings, and an original cast member on Saturday Night Live. In 2021, she wrote and narrated an audiobook memoir, May You Live in Interesting Times.

The 2022 workshop will feature 30 professional writers and teachers on the faculty, including Saturday Night Live legend Alan Zweibel; New York Times bestselling authors; Judy Carter, author of the Bible (The New Comedy Bible; Emmy Award winners; Thurber Prize winners; a Moth GrandSLAM winner; screenwriters; and a slew of celebrated comedians. With her special blend of grace and humor, stand-up comedian Leighann Lord will emcee. Comic Wendy Liebman, a finalist on season nine of America's Got Talent, will host a stand-up comedy night.

Read more about all of the 2022 keynoters and faculty and peruse the workshop sessions.

The Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop is the only one in the country devoted to both humor and human interest writing. Through the workshop, the University of Dayton and the Bombeck family honor one of Americas most celebrated storytellers and humorists. In 2019, The Writer magazine named the workshop the best writing conference in Ohio and THE conference for humor writers. Immensely popular, it attracts writers from all over the nation and beyond.

The atmosphere is very supportive to both new and established writers looking for the kind of inspiration Erma received from University of Dayton English professor Brother Tom Price, who told her three magical words: You can write!

The workshop is co-sponsored by the University of Dayton's Alumni Association, College of Arts and Sciences and Bookstore as well as Books & Co., the Washington-Centerville Public Library, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, Writer's Digest, Progressive Printers, Books Forward and A Hotel Room of One's Own: the Erma Bombeck | Anna Lefler Humorist-in-Residence Program.

Attendees will be required to show proof of being fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as defined by the Centers for Disease Control or provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test result within 48 hours of arrival. Regardless of vaccine status, we encourage all attendees to test within 48 hours of arrival. Masks will be required indoors for all attendees, regardless of vaccination status. The vast majority of faculty, staff and students are vaccinated on the University of Daytons campus.
The Greater West Dayton Incubator is accepting applications for its first Business Blitz, a free boot camp that will help underrepresented entrepreneurs establish or grow their businesses.

Our goal is to help entrepreneurs legitimize, digitize and capitalize their new and existing businesses, said Whitney Barkley, incubator director. These are the common areas that businesses struggle with and we want to remove barriers to help businesses get the essentials they need to succeed.

Each session, held on Saturdays in February, will include a deliverable, such as a web page. The series will culminate with participants applying for an LLC with the $99 fee covered by the incubator.

This program is important for entrepreneurs of the West Side because it is designed to meet you where you are with your business and figuring out how to get to the next level, said Deirreon Durant, CEO of D2 Contracting Solutions and member of the incubators advisory council.

The Greater West Dayton Incubator offers Black, woman and other underrepresented entrepreneurs access to working space, consulting, training, capital and other resources. It was developed in partnership by community leaders of Greater West Dayton and the University of Dayton to help create a more inclusive economy, which can drive positive change in the community. It is also supported by the Entrepreneurs Center.

Applications for the Business Blitz are being accepted through Jan. 31. Seats are limited. Apply online at thegwdi.com.
Canbud also announces resignation of officer

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 10, 2022) - Canbud Distribution Corp. (CSE: CBDX) ("Canbud" or the "Company") is pleased to provide the following updates on its pending acquisition of Steep Hill, Inc. ("Steep Hill"), a cannabis science company in the business of providing lab testing, research and development, and consulting services in in the United States and elsewhere in the world.

As previously announced, on December 8, 2021, Canbud and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Canbud Merger Sub, Inc., entered into an agreement and plan of merger and reorganization agreement (the "Merger Agreement") with Steep Hill, pursuant to which Canbud agreed to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Steep Hill by way of a triangular merger (the "Transaction"). In connection with the Transaction, Canbud announces that Steep Hill's management has confirmed that the requisite majority of the shareholders of Steep Hill have approved and adopted the Transaction by written consent in lieu of taking such action at a formal special meeting of shareholders, in accordance with Delaware law. Steep Hill has also confirmed that it has been notified by the requisite number of holders of the outstanding Senior Notes and Subordinated Notes (collectively, the "Notes") of Steep Hill that they have elected to convert and cause the conversion of all outstanding principal and accrued and unpaid interest owing under all of the outstanding Notes into shares of Steep Hill. Such shareholder approval of the Transaction and the conversion of the Notes are conditions precedent to the consummation of the Transaction.

The consummation of the Transaction remains subject to a number of other conditions, including, without limitation, the conditions summarized in Canbud's news release of December 8, 2021 (a copy of which is available under Canbud's profile on www.sedar.com).

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Steve Singh, Chief Executive Officer of Canbud stated: "We would like to thank Steep Hill's shareholders and Note holders for their support of the Transaction. Canbud remains committed to closing the Transaction in the coming weeks, subject to the satisfaction of the remaining conditions and usual closing items provided for in the Merger Agreement."

Sameet Kanade, Chief Executive Officer of Canbud's subsidiary, Molecular Science Corp. ("MSC") added: "The past six months have been pivotal as Canbud re-positioned its business to focus on analytical testing within the cannabis and hemp market sectors. Canbud's management is now developing an integration plan to achieve the overriding strategic and business objectives of the pending Steep Hill acquisition. Through the Transaction and the post-closing integration plan, Canbud aims to generate value for its shareholders, by operating MSC's Canadian analytical testing business and Steep Hill's complementary U.S. and international business to take advantage of available synergies and cost saving, growth and expansion opportunities."

Canbud also announces that Robert Tjandra, its former director and President, has resigned from his most recent position as Canbud's Chief Operating Officer. In connection with Mr. Tjandra's resignation, Steve Singh, Chief Executive Officer of Canbud commented: "As Canbud continues to execute its strategy to focus primarily on the analytical testing service market within the cannabis and hemp sectors, we understand Robert's decision to step down as an officer at this time. He is one of the founders of Canbud and has worked tirelessly to further the Company's business from its inception. On behalf of Canbud's board of directors, I thank Robert for his many contributions to Canbud and wish him all the best going forward."

About Canbud Distribution Corp.

Canbud is an early-stage science and technology company focused on providing products and services, including analytical testing services within the hemp and cannabis market sectors. The Company's focus is on two areas: science and technology, by providing science-backed differentiated products and services that are critical within these sectors; and quality and compliance, by offering services that assist its customers to offer products and services that meet expected standards of quality, safety and compliance.

Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Information

The information in this news release includes certain information and statements about management's view of future events, expectations, plans and prospects that constitute forward looking statements. Forward looking statements in this news release include, but are not limited to, management's expectations with respect to the completion of the Transaction, including the timing and satisfaction of conditions thereof, and the post-closing integration plan and the strategic and business objectives of the pending Transaction. These statements are based upon assumptions that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, including assumptions that all conditions to closing of the Transaction will be satisfied, that the Transaction will be completed and assumptions about the operations, financial condition and future performance of Steep Hill and the Company. Although the Company considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available to them, they may prove to be incorrect, and the forward looking statements in this news release are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause future results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. Such risk factors may include, among others, the risk that required approvals and the satisfaction of material conditions have not been obtained in connection with the Transaction, and the risk that the Transaction is not approved or completed on the terms set out in the definitive agreement between the parties, and that its post-closing integration plans do not achieve its goals, including realizing synergies and cost saving, growth and expansion opportunities. Although the Company's management believes that the expectations reflected in forward looking statements are reasonable, the Company can give no assurances that the expectations of any forward looking statements will prove to be correct. Except as required by law, the Company disclaims any intention and assume no obligation to update or revise any forward looking statements to reflect actual results, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions, changes in factors affecting such forward looking statements or otherwise.

For further information, please contact:

Steve Singh, Chief Executive Officer

Tel: 416-847-7312

Email: ir@canbudcorp.com

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/109555
Senegal begin their quest for a first continental title on Monday with a Group B game against comparative minnows Zimbabwe at the Stade Kouekong in Bafoussam.

Africas top ranked team enter the tournament beset by expectation and weakened by temporary withdrawals due to the coronavirus.

Before leaving Senegal, the countrys president Macky Sall told the squad to bring back the trophy.

Six players including reserve goalkeeper Alfred Gomis all remained in Dakar after testing positive for the disease.

With the presidential directive still ringing in their ears, first choice goalkeeper Edouard Mendy - a Champions League winner with Chelsea - as well as skipper Kalidou Koulibaly succumbed to the disease in Cameroon along with striker Famara Diedhiou.

Third choice keeper Seny Dieng is set to start on Monday afternoon.

"It's a difficult and complicated situation," said Senegal coach Aliou Cisse ahead of the match against Zimbabwe.

"But we are going to be competitive and those who will go out onto the field are going to play for those who are absent.

"We are still going into the game against Zimbabwe full of confidence.

Ranking

And they should. Runners-up in 2019, they lie 100 places above the Zimbabweans who have never reached the knockout stages in their four previous appearances.

But Zimbabwe will be emboldened and keen to exploit the fragility.

Cameroon 2021 is their third consecutive appearance at the tournament - an unprecedented feat for Zimbabwe since it gained independence in 1980.

Guinea, under former international striker Kaba Diawara, take on Malawi in Group B at the same time as Group C begins with a clash between Ghana and Morocco at the Stade Ahmadou Ahidjo in Yaounde.

The sides are both expected to progress to the last 16 but with Gabon lurking, it could be as one of the four best third-placed teams.

Underdog

Were Comoros to occupy such a slot from Group C come the second phase later this month, it would be a huge achievement for the nation of less than a million souls competing in their first Cup of Nations.

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If you get to a tournament like this, then youre likely to meet the big teams, said head coach Amir Abdou in an interview just before the tournament.

But the pressure will not be on us, added the 49-year-old who also coaches FC Nouadhibou in Mauritania.

It will be on the so-called big opponents. They have to ask how they will approach the game against us.

'Hungry'

Morocco boss Vahid Halihodzic would probably respond: With discipline, mon ami.

The veteran coach displayed his renowned iron-fist in the run-up to the tournament with the exclusion of the Chelsea forward Hakim Ziyech.

The two fell out early in 2021 and Ziyech was overlooked for the six 2022 World Cup qualifiers played between September and November.

Halilhodzic also left out the Ajax Amsterdam full back Noussair Mazraoui, who he accused in mid-year of feigning injury to avoid playing in a friendly, a charge Mazraoui has denied.

Each team will have difficulties with players out due to the coronavirus, said Halihodzic on Sunday.

But we have to get on with it. It is no use crying or complaining. The team is hungry to do well and the Moroccan supporters are expecting us to have a good tournament. The squad is definitely ready to do something big.
This semester's Freshman Recruit Orientation Group (FROG) Week, held Jan. 4-8, welcomed 31 new members to the Corps of Cadets by exposing them to physical challenges and learning activities to begin their leadership journey at the University of North Georgia (UNG).

About 80% of the new cadets are enlisted in the Georgia Army National Guard or Army Reserve and started their time at UNG after experiencing basic training and advanced individual training in the fall. Some of the freshmen had other elements that made their journey to UNG different from most of their classmates.

FROG Week helps cadets transition to the military lifestyle through a variety of team-building activities.

Cadet Lt. Col. Callie Regal, a senior battalion commander from Dalton, Georgia, who is pursuing a degree in interdisciplinary studies, can always think back to her first FROG Week as she helps welcome new cadets to the corps each semester.

"When I came into the corps, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. For me, it was a trial run to try something different," Regal said. "It really taught me a lot about my leadership style and gave me the opportunity to grow around a bunch of people who inspire me. It's helped set me up for my future."
McLennan Community College students start their spring semester Monday with the same COVID-19 precautions and protocols in place as in the fall: in-person classes available, but vigilance and masking urged.

The return of students to classes comes as McLennan County sees its third major surge in COVID-19 cases in two years. Last week, the county set records in the number of new cases per day and total active cases. The schools fall semester coincided with the countys second spike in cases as the delta variant began its impact in late summer.

MCC will continue to offer classes in in-person, hybrid and online formats this spring for student convenience with recommendations for social distancing, masking and hand sanitation urged as before. Spokesperson Lisa Elliott said on-campus signs that the college strongly encourages masking were going back up in time for spring classes.

The college does not require student vaccinations, although it began the fall semester offering $200 for students to get fully vaccinated, with more than 400 taking the colleges offer.

MCC will offer free COVID-19 testing for students, employees and their families from 10 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. weekdays. The college also has a vaccination clinic planned from 9 a.m. to 4:40 p.m. Jan. 20.

Preliminary enrollment figures before the start of classes indicate a drop from last springs beginning enrollment, said Stephen Benson, vice president for finance and administration. Enrollment at the start of the spring semester was 6,606 students, compared to 7,169 students at the start of the 2021 spring semester, he said. Enrollment figures often fluctuate by several hundred students the first week or so of classes as some students wait until then to register.

Roughly half of the difference in spring enrollment may be because of a drop in high school students enrolled in dual credit classes, Benson said, though the number of fall students continuing in the spring increased over last year. The dual credit program lets high school students to take classes for both high school credit and college credit, and makes up a considerable part of MCCs enrollment.

Administrators in recent years have focused on increased scholarships, academic support and outreach to counteract declines in enrollment.

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Six sites in Lancaster, Douglas and Dodge counties are being looked at for the possible location of a new Nebraska state prison, the head of the system announced Friday afternoon.

The new 1,512-bed prison would replace the aging Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln.

The exact locations were not disclosed as negotiations are initiated with property owners, according to a news release issued Friday afternoon by the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services.

The top criteria in evaluating all available sites has been proximity to a population center to support staffing. The ones selected so far fit that bill," Scott Frakes, director of the state's prison system, said in the release.

Additional property owners could initiate offers, according to the release.

The approximate size of the site would be 160 acres.

We have looked at parcels smaller than that, but ultimately, it cannot be less than 100 acres. The land would need to include a buffer zone separating it from surrounding developed or undeveloped property, Frakes said.

Additional criteria included distance to utility systems, hospital and emergency services, community services, road access and terrain, according to the release.

Nebraska's prison system has been plagued with overcrowding and staffing shortages in recent years.

The new prison, which had been expected to cost $236 million, was proposed by Gov. Pete Ricketts in 2020.

An engineering study, also released Friday, found that the State Penitentiary in Lincoln would need $220 million in upgrades.

The penitentiary first opened in 1869, according to the Corrections website. It has undergone multiple updates over the years.

The condition of the aging facility came into the spotlight earlier this year when leaking pipes forced officials to shut off running water to the penitentiary for nearly two days.

Lawmakers earlier this year approved a budget compromise that put nearly $15 million toward design and planning for a new facility. The compromise required an engineering study of the penitentiary to assess its useful life.

Initially, part of Frakes proposal for a new prison included repurposing the penitentiary as a minimum-security facility. But he has shifted to talking about the new prison as a replacement. A key driver, he has said, is a data-driven initiative underway that could result in legislation that curbs population growth.

"Numerous consultants had a hand in evaluating the various components of (the state penitentiary). They looked at when things were built and upgraded, if they were ADA-compliant, the age and status of the utilities, technology and security systems, Frakes said.

Frakes formally proposed building a new prison late in 2020. Unlike Nebraskas newest state prison, which opened in the rural community of Tecumseh in 2011, the new facility would need to be in an area with a large enough population to staff the new facility, he said at the time, which pointed to Lincoln and Omaha as potential locations.

It also opened the door to communities between the two cities. Local officials in Waverly, Ashland and Wahoo said in October 2020 that Corrections staff had contacted them to gauge interest in hosting a new prison.

Responses were tepid.

Waverlys then-mayor, Mike Werner, expressed some doubt that his community, which sits just outside Lincoln in Lancaster County, would support the facility.
The elephant herd at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium has grown by one.

Kiki, an 18-year-old African elephant, gave birth to a calf Friday morning.

Mom and baby are doing well, zoo officials said in a press release. Zookeepers do not yet know the gender or weight of the calf.

It's the first elephant born at the Omaha zoo.

Kiki's pregnancy was announced in October, six months after zoo officials announced that 12-year-old elephant Claire was pregnant.

All the female elephants at the zoo were present when Kiki delivered her calf.

The Elephant Family Quarters building is closed to the public to allow staff to observe bonding, maternal behaviors and nursing between Kiki and her calf.

Callee, 21, is the father of both Kiki's calf and Claire's calf. He joined the zoo in 2019 from the Birmingham Zoo in Alabama.

Claire's calf also is due this winter.

Kiki's pregnancy was a bit of a roller coaster for zoo staff. She showed signs of pregnancy around the same time as Claire, but her hormone levels started to drop.

By spring, a zoo veterinarian heard the baby's heartbeat.

Claire's pregnancy has been textbook.

In the meantime, zoo staff worked on baby-proofing the elephant barn by installing new cameras with better night vision and filling gaps in the enclosure.

Kiki, Claire and the herd's three other females came to Omaha in 2016 from Swaziland.

Visitors will get the chance to reserve a timed ticket to see the calf with the herd once the elephant building has reopened. Updates on tickets will be available at a later date.
WATERLOO  A former Washington resident has been sentenced to prison for allegedly failing to register as a sex offender when he moved to Waterloo in 2018.

Judge C.J. Williams sentenced Dean Christopher Upton, 36, to two years and six months in prison during a hearing Friday in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids. Following prison, Upton will be on supervised release for five years.

According to court records, Upton had been arrested for child molestation in King County, Washington, in 2013 in connection with an incident from 2008. He pleaded to a reduced charge of felony assault with sexual motivation in 2015 and was sentenced to one year in jail.

In the spring of 2018, he moved to Waterloo to be close to family but didnt register as a sex offender.

In May 2020, he became involved in a chase with police during a traffic stop, and three months later a federal grand jury returned in indictment for failing to register as a sex offender. He was arrested when U.S. Marshals found him hiding in a cardboard box in his mothers attic, court records state.

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WATERLOO  A Farley man has been found guilty of sexually abusing a University of Northern Iowa student while he was visiting friends in Cedar Falls in August 2018.

Jurors deliberated Monday morning before finding Zachary James Lindauer, 23, guilty of third-degree sexual abuse in Black Hawk County District Court.

Following the verdict, Lindauer lifted his COVID protective face shield and received a kiss from his current girlfriend, who was watching from the gallery. Sheriffs deputies then led Lindauer from the courtroom in handcuffs to await sentencing, which will be at a later date.

The offense is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Lindauer had met the UNI student that night at a College Hill establishment. Prosecutors said he walked her back to her dorm and had sex with her, either by force by pushing her down when she tried to get up or by taking advantage of her incapacitated state.

Trial began last week, and the woman, who said she had been drinking vodka with friends before going to the hill, told jurors she didnt remember much of that night. Prosecutors showed surveillance videos which showed the woman swaying, and at one point she almost stumbled into an elevator wall during the walk to the dorm.

Lindauer took the stand and testified the woman had consented.

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WATERLOO  Police continue to investigate a weekend shooting that claimed the life of a young Waterloo man.

Authorities said 18-year-old Courtney Lamont Harris was sitting in his car in the parking lot of Prime Mart on Broadway Street shortly before 10 p.m. Saturday when he was shot multiple times. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

No arrests have been made in the slaying.

Capt. David Mohlis said police continue to interview witnesses and review security camera footage from businesses in the area.

The convenience store was also the scene of a shooting in November. In that case an argument started in the store, and those involved were removed from the business. The dispute continued in the parking lot, and two people were shot and survived.

Saturdays shooting is the first homicide in the city of Waterloo this year.

Four people lost their lives to gun violence in 2021.

Dayton Matlock-Buss, 23, was shot and killed outside a Grant Avenue home May 15.

Also on May 15, Tanniaah Sharquette Spates, 43, was shot at her Pine View Place apartment.

On May 23, Davonta D. Sellers, 27, died of a gunshot wound in the 300 block of West Fourth Street.

On Aug. 24, Dayton L. Sanders, 20, was killed in a robbery that turned into a shooting outside a convenience store in the 1100 block of Washington Street/Highway 218, according to police.

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With lopsided majorities in the House and Senate, Iowa Republicans gathering today in Des Moines for the launch of the 2022 legislative session are likely to launch more than one moon shot.

GOP leaders are planning what they call a moon shot tax-cut plan that eventually would eliminate the states personal income tax. But their appetites may not stop there.

I think theres going to be an effort to push for everything thats on the agenda, University of Northern Iowa political scientist Chris Larimer said about the session. I think theyre going to push on tax cuts, maybe more easing of gun restrictions and kind of waiting and seeing what theyre going to do on abortion in anticipation of a U.S. Supreme Court decision later this spring on a Mississippi abortion law.

I cant fathom theres a world in which the majority party doesnt use this election-year session to attack womens rights more, House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst, D-Windsor Heights, predicted. They just cant help themselves.

Still, Larimer said, even with majorities of 60-40 in the House and 32-18 in the Senate, Republicans may not get everything they want because of differences within their own party.

At this point, a lot ideas are being floated. A proposal such as cutting or eliminating income taxes has broad but not unanimous support among Republicans. Proposals to further restrict access to abortion, to prohibit employers from mandating employees practice health measures such as vaccinations and to bring criminal charges against teachers and librarians who make available books that the some legislators deem to be obscene face longer odds.

Without commenting on any specific proposal, House Speaker Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford, told reporters that just because one bill gets filed doesnt mean that it always is going to make it all the way through the Legislature.

In addition to lawmakers personal agendas and the priorities already outlined by leaders, the 2022 session will be influenced by election-year politics. All 100 House seats are up for grabs this year. Due to redistricting, its likely more than half the 50 Senate seats will be on the ballot. The exact number wont be known until the filing deadline March 18.

Republican leaders downplay the impact of November elections, saying it will be business as usual for them.

I think its going to be largely what youve seen the last five years, said Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny. We started a vision for Iowa to implement pro-growth policies and put us on a direction that we thought was the right direction for this state.

Like previous sessions when Republicans were in control, Whitver said 2022 will be about passing laws and bills and initiatives that Iowans want. Thats why Republicans have their large majorities, Grassley added.

Democrats believe the GOP is confusing what their corporate donors are telling them with what the public wants.

My job is to remind Iowans every chance I get that Republicans campaign in moderation and govern in the extreme, Konfrst said. They come out saying I care about child care, I care about mental health, and then they get to the floor and its a completely different ballgame. Whenever they dont involve us, whenever they do legislation that doesnt have bipartisan support, were going to point out why and were going to spend time letting Iowans know whats really happening up here.

Senate Minority Leader Zach Wahls, D-Coralville, thinks GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds and legislative Republicans will give his party plenty to talk about. Hes calling on legislators to focus on the states number one problem  the Kim Reynolds workforce crisis.

Small businesses are having trouble staying open, maintaining hours and struggling to hire new employees, Wahls said. Schools are having larger class sizes or canceling classes altogether because of teacher shortages and the inability to operate buses. Hospitals are desperate for more staff. All of these problems are a direct result of the Kim Reynolds workforce crisis.

Unfortunately, the Republican response to the Reynolds workforce crisis is to try and distract Iowans by focusing their rhetoric on banning books, putting teachers and librarians behind bars, lying about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack and taking away Iowans freedoms, liberties and civil rights, he said.

If the first thing a person sees when they Google Iowa is a story about book banning, about the constitutional amendment for abortion, for guns  I think that makes the Kim Reynolds workforce crisis worse, not better, Wahls said.

He may have a point, Larimer said.

They could, potentially, go too far. There could be damage, perhaps to the reputation of the state, Larimer said. If theres a sense that Iowas really out of touch on certain things and it affects businesses or business investments, then I think theres potential that they maybe go too far.

Theyre always concerned about elections, but there are larger concerns about how Iowa is perceived by others, Larimer said. That could that have long-term effects.

Its hard to measure the impact of the election on the session, but its heightened this year because of redistricting that redrew legislative election boundaries to reflect population changes over the past decade. Many lawmakers will running for re-election in unfamiliar districts. Some will face fellow party members in primaries. And some will be facing another incumbent in the general election.

In addition to dealing with tax cuts and budget decisions, and issues ranging from broadband and child care to workforce housing and confronting coronavirus issues, many lawmakers will be trying to figure out hows my district changed? How do I campaign in this in this new district? said Tim Storey, executive director of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Theres potential for a great deal of change, Storey said, because in the election after redistricting, turnover spikes from around 18% to about 25%.

Theres an old maxim that the party in power legislates cautiously in an election year. But I dont know how much that rule applies anymore, that you dont want to do anything super-controversial in an election year, Larimer said.

Republicans may stop short of doing anything that will harm the states reputation or make it harder to attract investments, he said.

But in terms of pushing their party platform, I would expect them to continue to push and to push pretty hard, Larimer said.

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The Iowa Legislature will likely address the selection of school library books this session.

Thats among the hot-button education issues likely to come before the Legislature in 2022.

Senate President Jake Chapman, a Republican from Adel; and Sen. Brad Zaun, a Republican from Urbandale who leads the Senate Judiciary Committee, have said they support bringing criminal charges against teachers and librarians who disseminate books Chapman and Zaun deem to be obscene.

Chapman has said he intends to propose legislation that would create a new felony offense for dissemination of obscene material to a minor.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver, a Republican, said he expects a very broad conversation in general about education, including the issues Chapman and Zaun will bring to the front.

Whitver, of Ankeny, said he did not know what the end result would be.

I havent seen any legislation that they may be working on or what that would look like, but over the last two years there has been an increased emphasis on education and, and parental choice and parental rights within education in the state of Iowa, Whitver said.

Some of the passages and images in those books are disturbing, Whitver alleged, and parents have brought those forward.

Whitver said its his understanding schools have mechanisms in place to address such concerns, but the Legislature would likely start by seeing if that process is in place statewide and how it is working, then go from there.

I think we feel very strongly obviously, that, you know, pornography shouldnt be distributed amongst a school, said House Speaker Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford. However, how do we do that in a way in which, you know, the local school boards are the ones that are making sure that its being addressed?

I dont necessarily think its through putting felonies or any of these kinds of things on there, Grassley continued.

Rep. Dustin D. Hite, the Republican chair of the House Education Committee, said he also anticipates conversations among the lawmakers about the topic, including the performance of the existing review process.

Any work on the floor will have to take First Amendment protections into account, Hite, of New Sharon, said.

When you discuss libraries and that sort of stuff, theres a big interplay with the First Amendment, Hite said.

Democratic leaders on both floors were critical of state lawmakers taking a hand in the issue and argued there is a process in place to address concerns about books or other materials.

The last thing that we need is to pour the gasoline of partisan politics on public education, Senate Minority Leader Zach Wahls, of Coralville, said. And thats what Republicans are doing.

House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst, Windsor Heights, said the legislatures job is to create an environment in which Iowa can grow and thrive.

And by taking away  by opening the door to taking away  books and jailing teachers for content in the classroom  I dont think thats the direction we need to be going, Konfrst said.

The process that is in place to review materials is adequate to its task, Rep. Sharon Steckman, the senior Democrat on the House Education Committee, said.

Many of the books recently questioned are Amazon best sellers, or come highly recommended or have received accolades, Steckman, Mason City, said.

Im not promoting porn for our kids, of course, I would never do that, but I do think we need to leave it the way it has been, Steckman said.

Sen. Herman Quirmbach, the senior Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, said he is anticipating action on this topic.

Its an election year, its a culture war issue, and its the kind of thing that they want to have to gin up their base, Quirmbach, Ames, said.

Librarians do an outstanding job in selecting appropriate material for their clientele, including taking the age of the audience into account, Quirmbach said.

The School Administrators of Iowa is anticipating some kind of legislation introduced on the issue, Roark Horn, SAIs executive director, said.

It might be more broad regarding parental access to school curriculum and increased ability to challenge it rather than targeted to certain books, Horn said.

Emily Piper, who lobbies for the Iowa Association of School Boards, said she was not aware of any legislation that would ban specific books, but there has been discussion about what process is used, and the IASB is educating lawmakers about that mechanism.

Theres already an appropriate process in place and its been utilized in central Iowa where decisions have been made to either remove books or to keep them as instructional materials, Piper said.

Diversity, mask mandates

Those interviewed were also asked about potential action on the recently enacted law that governs training on racism and sexism and diversity and inclusion efforts (HF802), as well as the law prohibiting school districts from mandating face coverings.

On HF802, Whitver and Horn  SAIs executive director  said lawmakers are still watching to see if the law is performing as intended.

So that like a lot of issues in the Legislature, were just gonna wait and see whats happening throughout the state, Whitver said.

Piper said the IASB was helping school boards and districts navigate the legislation so they understand how it applies to them and what they can do.

She would like legislators to require the Department of Education to provide a list of resources, curriculum and materials that meet the intent of the law.

The law prohibiting masks faces a federal court challenge.

No one anticipated new action on the law while the case is pending.

Erin Murphy contributed to this report.

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WATERLOO  A proposal to return downtown Waterloos two one-way streets to two-ways, as well installing a roundabout at the Six Corners intersection, could come to the council as early as February.

The discussion was first brought up at this months Technical Review Committee meeting Jan. 4. Mark Durbahn with AECOM  the citys consultant on the proposed project  presented preliminary designs for returning Fifth and Sixth streets to two-way traffic.

The City Council in December 2020 approved $89,000 to study the possible impact of reworking traffic on Fourth, Fifth and Sixth streets. The designs will formally be presented to the council Feb. 18. A meeting with key stakeholders is planned for late January or early next month, according to minutes from the meeting.

The street designs also would also include bicycle paths and a roundabout at the Six Corners area in the West-Central neighborhood. The streets at that intersection include West Fourth Street, and Kimball, Campbell and Williston avenues, before Williston splits with West Fifth.

Durbahn said the roundabout at Six Corners would help that intersection go from level of service C, or a stable flow of traffic, to level of service A, or an intersection with free flow of traffic, with motorists having complete mobility between lanes, according to the Highway Capacity Manual.

He also noted the design would still allow for large trucks through the roundabout, though semi tractor-trailers would be unable to turn from westbound Fifth Street to eastbound Fourth Street.

Returning Fifth and Sixth streets to two-way traffic has been talked about on and off for years, particularly because the two streets and their intersections have been prone to a high number of crashes.

In 2016, the city received a $484,000 traffic safety grant from the Iowa Department of Transportation after 109 crashes were reported to police on those two streets between 2012 and 2015. Nearly half were caused by someone turning left from the middle lane, including a deadly accident at West Sixth and Commercial streets in March 2014.

While the council agreed to the grant, it also heard from downtown business owners about changing the streets back to two-way traffic. Councilors Steve Schmitt and Pat Morrissey agreed it would benefit the city, with Morrissey saying it was a concept that is more friendly to downtown businesses and more friendly to a walkable, bike-able community.

Fifth and Sixth streets, as presently configured, were part of several one-way couplets conceived in the 1980s when the Waterloo-Cedar Falls highway and street system was rebuilt under the interstate highway substitution program, according to a previous Courier article. Fifth and Sixth were designed to facilitate traffic between the Six Corners and Waterloos northeast industrial area, where Tyson Fresh Meats and Deeres East Donald Street tractor assembly plant are located.

Downtown Waterloo once had more one-way streets: Lafayette and Sycamore streets were changed from one-way to two-way traffic in 2004 at the urging of Vandewalle and Associates, a consulting firm that said the one-way configurations were detrimental to downtown redevelopment efforts.

Commercial and Jefferson streets through downtown were converted back to two-way traffic in the mid-1980s when traffic volumes fell.

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WATERLOO  A Waterloo woman who was in a top-secret codebreaking unit during World War II has died 11 days shy of her 101st birthday.

Delores Schaack Burdett, 100, died Friday in hospice care at Edgewater/New Smyrna Beach, Florida, according to an obituary published in the Daytona Beach, Florida, News-Journal and family members. She had tested positive for COVID-19 despite having been vaccinated. She would have turned 101 on Jan. 18.

A 1938 graduate of Waterloo East High School who grew up on High Street near the school, she had worked in the offices at The Rath Packing Co. She joined the U.S. Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) following the death of a Rath colleague, Bob Manske, on the USS Arizona in the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that plunged the U.S. into World War II.

She was a member of the United States Naval Communication Intelligence Organization, based in Washington, D.C. She was a Navy intelligence communications specialist.

We decoded the Japanese messages. It was really quite an experience, Burdett said in a January 2021 Courier interview before her 100th birthday.

Our fleet intercepted the messages, and when they came to us, we decoded them, Burdett said. On one occasion, she said, I had gotten a message and it was telling about how the Japanese were planning to attack one of the islands. We got the message transcribed and out to our fleet and they destroyed that (Japanese) fleet.

But we couldnt discuss anything about our work  only within the walls of that room, she said. It was that secret.

It was so secret, Burdett said, she couldnt even discuss an award she received for her work after the war.

The Navy awarded the Naval Communication Intelligence Organization, including Burdett, a unit commendation for their work. But the notification letter she received about the award said, It is directed that, because of the nature of the services performed by this unit, no publicity be given to your receipt of this award.

I couldnt tell my husband, nobody, she said I packed it away in the bank. It was there for 50 years, and after 50 years they said we could talk about it.

And her husband Glenn, originally from Tennessee, was a career Navy man. All he knew was I was in communications. I couldnt tell him any more.

They married during the war, having been introduced through a mutual acquaintance in Washington.

Glenn subsequently served in the Philippines during the war. The couple lived in Waterloo for a time after the war. Glenn returned to the Navy and served 26 years, through Korea and Vietnam, and 25 years with the U.S. General Services Administration in Washington, before he retired and they moved to Florida. They were married 70 years, with two children and three grandchildren, and he died in 2014 at age 92.

In 2017, her unit received some long-overdue recognition with the publication of a New York Times best-selling book, Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II, by Liza Mundy.

In November 1945, after shed left the Navy, she received a letter of commendation from U.S. Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal.

Services with military honors for Burdett will be Wednesday in Florida. She told The Courier shed requested her Navy unit commendation award  a secret for 50 years  be pinned on her and laid to rest with her upon her passing.

Ive had quite a life, and that was an experience not many people had, she told the Courier last year.

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WAVERLY  A new chief executive officer has taken the reins at Waverly Health Center.

Matt Johnson previously served as CEO with MercyOne Centerville Medical Center since April 2019, and Cherokee Regional Medical Center for more than two years before that.

Tuesday was his first day on the job.

Around Halloween, the locally elected board of trustees appointed Johnson as the successor to Jim Atty, who left in March after having led WHC since 2014.

I had the opportunity to apply for this position and ultimately was blessed to have been selected to lead this organization, said Johnson in a telephone interview last week. Both the organization and community have a wonderful reputation throughout the state.

WHC has a history of being very progressive, and having incredible support from its community, he noted, adding that in return, it is able to focus on improving the quality of patient care.

The most appealing factor for Johnson was WHC being locally governed and community driven. WHC is overseen by five elected trustees, who serve four-year terms and hold public board meetings.

I believe that health care, particularly rural health care, needs to governed locally, and have that investment locally, Johnson said.

Johnson takes over the operation at a time when a major campus renovation and expansion project is underway, highlighted most recently by a newly opened clinic and emergency department.

Our 30,000 square feet of new build is now open as of Wednesday of (last) week. We have another 10 months of construction ahead before the project is complete, said Emily Neuendorf Frederick, a spokesperson who also serves as foundation director.

And as the last decade plus has unfolded, the organization has grown significantly, possibly doubled, in staff to some 500 people, Johnson said.

Johnson earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Simpson College in Indianola and a master of healthcare administration and doctorate of physical therapy from Des Moines University.

Johnson is a military veteran, having served in the 4th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army as a nuclear, biological and chemical operations specialist and later sergeant. During his military career, he was stationed in Colorado Springs, Colorado, before a deployment to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Johnson and his wife, Molly, have four children.

As a leader, Im here to help, Johnson said. If I can improve processes, quality of care, access to care, and assist the medical staff in any way that I can, I think the patients will benefit from that.

Being able to engage with this great group of medical professionals in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic is what gets him fired up to get started. But as one might expect, there are challenges.

Bremer County eyes March referendum on new EMS tax levy If a referendum were to pass, the revenue would funnel into the countys general fund, beginning in Fiscal Year 2023-24, but be allocated for the municipalities.

I believe the biggest challenge is staffing at this point, and thats our limiting factor, frankly, from being able to take care of even more patients here locally. Thats a very similar scenario for probably every other hospital in the region, he said.

We have a very tired workforce that has really performed admirably over the last, almost two years, and not always had the resources, he said.

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China, Sri Lanka promise to boost ties, carrying forward spirit of Rubber-Rice Pact

Xinhua) 08:05, January 10, 2022

COLOMBO, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Sri Lankan leaders pledged here on Sunday to further develop bilateral relations, carrying forward the spirit of the Rubber-Rice Pact.

Wang, during his visit, met with Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris, and attended a ceremony to launch a series of events marking the 65th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Sri Lanka, and the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Rubber-Rice Pact.

Wang said at the ceremony that the two countries are always good friends, noting that China has provided a large amount of COVID-19 vaccines and other medical supplies to Sri Lanka.

China and Sri Lanka are also good partners in common development, said the Chinese state councilor, adding that Sri Lanka is on the key route of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative in South Asia.

The first phase of the Colombo Port City project has been completed and new programs are being launched, said Wang, citing that the cooperative management of the Port City has brought profits for Sri Lanka, the Hambantota Port's cargo throughput has continued to see new high, and the industrial zone is developed in full swing.

China and Sri Lanka are good brothers supporting each other, Wang said. "Amid the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic and tortuous process of economic recovery, we need to cooperate more closely than ever before."

He said the two sides should further deepen their mutual political trust, firmly support eath other on issues of core interests, significant concerns and national dignity.

"We will continue to jointly fight the pandemic and cooperate in the research and development of COVID-19 vaccines and effective medicines," said Wang.

He said the two sides ought to keep synergizing their development strategies and upholding multilateralism.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, during the meeting with Wang, said Sri Lanka is willing to work with China to hold a series of events marking the 65th anniversary of diplomatic ties between Sri Lanka and China and the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Rubber-Rice Pact.

Sri Lanka is ready to strengthen cooperation with China in the fields of economy, trade, finance, tourism and infrastructure, so as to benefit the people of the two countries, he stressed.

Wang said the long-standing friendly exchanges between the two countries have shown that they have always adhered to the principle of mutual respect, mutual understanding, mutual trust and mutual support.

He said the two countries opened the door for friendly exchanges by signing the Rubber-Rice Pact, demonstrating their national spirit in the fight against hegemony and power politics, and breaking the Cold War isolation imposed by the West.

"The spirit of the pact characterized by independence, self-reliance, unity and mutual support is deeply rooted in the hearts of the two peoples, and such spirit should be carried forward."

Wang said China is ready to offer vaccines and medical supplies to Sri Lanka, and is willing to work together with Sri Lanka on effective medicines, stressing that the Colombo Port City and Hambantota Port projects could be engines for pushing forward bilateral cooperation.

He said it is imperative to discuss the restart of talks on free trade agreement between the two countries by tapping the opportunities of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement and China's vast market, to facilitate Sri Lanka's economic recovery and development.

Chinese enterprises will be encouraged to invest in Sri Lanka, he said.

The Rubber-Rice Pact was signed in December 1952 when China needed to import rubber and other supplies and Sri Lanka, which sees rubber as a key export, was facing rising price of rice and slump of rubber price.

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, during his meeting with Wang, expressed his gratitude to China for providing COVID-19 vaccines and anti-pandemic supplies, saying China always extends help when Sri Lanka needs it the most.

He hoped to continue deepening bilateral relations and conduct close practical cooperation with China to jointly address challenges.

Wang said the friendly relationship between China and Sri Lanka benefits the development of both countries and serves the fundamental interest of both peoples. It does not target any third party and should not be interfered with by any third party, he said, adding that the all-round cooperation and strategic mutual trust between the two countries contribute to regional peace and stability.

Wang said China is ready to work with Sri Lanka to expand mutually beneficial cooperation in various fields and elevate their strategic cooperative partnership to a new height.

He noted that China encourages Chinese enterprises to invest and develop in Sri Lanka, and combine Chinese capital and experience with Sri Lanka's human resources advantages to help Sri Lanka improve the ability of self-development and accelerate industrialization.

The Chinese foreign minister concluded his tour to the Maldives and Sri Lanka on Sunday. Before this, Wang visited the African nations of Eritrea, Kenya and the Comoros on Jan. 4-7.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Liang Jun)
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Studies show antigen tests miss many asymptomatic infections. They work best when you're having COVID-19 symptoms, Wroblewski said. Common signs of COVID include cough, fever, fatigue, muscle aches, congestion, runny nose, loss of taste or smell, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The Cue and Lucira tests use a newer molecular technology called isothermal amplification that is similar to PCR. Like PCR, it works by copying the virus's genetic material until there are detectable levels.

David Pride, M.D., director of the clinical molecular microbiology laboratory at the University of California, San Diego, says that while molecular tests are generally more accurate than antigen tests because they can detect the virus at lower levels, they are still less sensitive and less specific than a PCR test done in a lab.

For any at-home test, if you have symptoms and you test positive, it's very, very likely you have the virus, Pride said, and you should go into isolation and get in touch with your health care provider.

How confident can you be of a negative result?

A negative test can give you more confidence about going into work or visiting a family member, but experts emphasized that it's not a free pass to stop wearing a mask, practicing social distancing or taking other precautions.

"The danger is that you'll have people use these tests to say I can safely go see grandma, when they may be brewing an infection that is below the limit of detection, said Gary Procop, M.D., medical director in clinical virology at the Cleveland Clinic. People really need to understand these subtleties, and they're not all on the package insert, he added.

Antigen tests, in particular, are likely to miss the virus if you're early in the infection or if you dont have symptoms.



A study published by the CDC on Jan. 22 found that Abbott's antigen test identified only 34 percent of COVID-19 infections in people without symptoms.

A large-scale review of 68 studies published March 24 found that rapid antigen tests identify about 72 percent of people with symptoms and only 58 percent of those without symptoms. Antigen tests are most accurate when used within the first week after symptoms develop, the review found.

The FDA-authorized instructions for use for antigen tests stress that negative results do not rule out COVID-19 and should not be used as the sole basis for treatment or patient management decisions, including infection control decisions.

If you test negative but have symptoms, reach out to your health care provider, because there's a high risk it's a false negative, Procop said. Your doctor may order a PCR test to confirm your result.

How difficult is it to give yourself a test?

The authorized at-home tests all require you to collect a sample by swabbing your nostrils, either just inside or a little deeper, depending on the test. The good news: You don't have to insert a swab into the deepest part of your nose like some of the tests performed by health care providers.

As a general rule of thumb, make sure you're really swirling it around and hitting skin, Wroblewski advised. Also, avoid blowing your nose right before you take the test.

All of the tests include detailed instructions with pictures.

When is it better to get the test from a health care provider?

If your symptoms are severe or if you are in a group at high risk of complications from COVID-19, some experts recommend getting tested by a health care provider rather than doing an at-home test.

"With COVID, your oxygen saturation counts can decrease pretty quickly, particularly if you are in a high-risk group, so you want to make sure someone is monitoring your condition, Wroblewski said.
2. Finally, faster 5G networks

You may have bought a 5G-capable phone by now, hoping to exploit the wickedly fast network speeds the wireless carriers have been crowing about for years. Only you havent quite experienced those speeds. Frankly, your 5G coverage has been only marginally better than the 4G LTE you had before, if that.

Your experience should start to improve on or after Jan. 19, when both AT&T and Verizon switch on the 5G networks based on C-band spectrum. This refers to a swath of radio airwaves the carriers spent billions of dollars on at auctions to access. The carriers did voluntarily agree to temporarily delay turning on C-band 5G near certain airports  a list of the exact airports has not yet been made public  because of an ongoing standoff with Federal Aviation Administration officials worried about airline safety.

Without getting bogged down in the all-too-geeky details, these bands promise faster service and wider coverage. You will need a fairly recent state-of-the art smartphone from Apple, Google, Samsung or others, and you may have to opt in to one of your wireless carriers more expensive cellular plans.

Frank Boulben, Verizon Consumer Group's chief revenue officer, says you will be able to access these broadband-like speeds at sporting events, concerts, malls and train stations. He touted peak speeds in Verizons case that are up to 10 times faster than 4G.

Boulben has a pitch for potential cord cutters, too: Faster 5G may be a viable alternative to cable.

Youll know that youre humming along with the fastest service on an AT&T phone if you see a 5G+ indicator in the display; that + reflects youre in a coverage area able to access AT&Ts fastest 5G Plus service. On a Verizon phone, you will see 5G UW, with the UW short for the carriers top Ultra Wideband service.

And on T-Mobile, which was not involved in the recent spat over airline safety and which has already been employing its own spectrum to provide faster service, you will see 5G UC, signifying Ultra Capacity. If you see a 5G indicator without the +, UW or UC on any of these phones, youre getting a less robust flavor of 5G.

Boulben acknowledges the confusion. But, he says, weve been very consistent at Verizon in talking about 5G Ultra Wideband as the real 5G  with the benefits you expect from that technology.
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FSG Appointed as an Australian Distribution Partner of OneWeb LEO Satellite



OneWeb Appoints FSG as LEO Distributor

Sydney, Jan 10, 2022 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Field Solutions Holdings Limited ( ASX:FSG ), Australia's leading rural and regional telecommunications carrier, is pleased to announce it has been appointed as a OneWeb Distribution Partner in Australia, delivering OneWeb's LEO (Low Earth Orbit) high-speed, low-latency satellite services to rural, regional, and remote Australia.Highlights- Delivering business grade LEO satellite services to rural, regional, and remote Australia- "Fibre-like" high speed, low-latency connectivity- First ever trial of LEO backhaul in FSG's Australian Neutral Host Pilot under the Federal Mobile Blackspot program- Complete installation and management services to supply, install and support LEO customers across all states- Government, Enterprise, Agri Business, Mining and Resources- Trials to commence with Queensland and NT Government"This is an important milestone for Rural and Regional Connectivity as OneWeb's LEO satellite delivers business grade satellite capabilities" commented Andrew Roberts, FSG CEO. "OneWeb's technology will help us further extend our reach across underserviced regions of Australia with "fibre like" connectivity to the most out of reach places, accelerating our ability to deliver technologies such as 5G and IoT anywhere" he added.OneWeb, the low earth orbit (LEO) satellite company, is now over the halfway point toward delivering global LEO satellite services in 2022 and is seeing growing demand from telecommunications providers, ISPs, and governments worldwide to offer its low-latency, high-speed connectivity services. OneWeb has raised USD $2.7 billion since November 2020."OneWeb's enterprise-grade network has a unique capability to serve hard-to-reach businesses and communities. Our work with FSG will focus on how satellite technology can support improved capacity and coverage in remote, rural, and challenging geographic locations," said David Thorn, OneWeb Regional Director, APAC. "Today's agreement with FSG demonstrates OneWeb's execution momentum and our goal to reach remote communities in Australia with fibre-like services."In Mid 2021, FSG announced it had been awarded projects under the Commonwealth Mobile Blackspot Project which will see FSG build and trial Australia's first Neutral Host mobile network. This project, which will be trialled in northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland will also showcase the ability for OneWeb's LEO Satellite technology as an enabler for the deployment of 5G in Rural and Remote regions."We're very excited to partner with OneWeb to pioneer and deploy these new technologies, which further help to close the digital divide between metropolitan areas and rural and remote areas in Australia, faster and more cost effectively." Roberts commented. FSG will be retailing and wholesaling the OneWeb product set nationally and via our regional offices, together will providing installation services, ongoing support and technical assistance. "Providing a fully supported, turn-key product is especially vital in remote and rural areas " adds Roberts.About OneWebOneWeb is a global communications network powered from space, headquartered in London, enabling connectivity for governments, businesses, and communities. It is implementing a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites with a network of global gateway stations and a range of user terminals to provide an affordable, fast, high-bandwidth and low-latency communications service, connected to the IoT future and a pathway to 5G for everyone, everywhere. Find out more:About Field Solutions Holdings Limited

Field Solutions Holdings Limited (ASX:FSG) is dedicated to provide connectivity to Rural and Regional Australia where other providers simply cannot. We employ innovative technologies and a community focused approach which engages local government, businesses and residents to ensure we build where it is most needed. FSG provides, builds, and operates "true broadband networks" specifically for rural, regional, and remote Australia. FSG is a licensed Australian telecommunications carrier and a retail service provider (trading under the brands 'JustISP,' TasmaNet and Ant Communications), and a NBN Co Retail and Business Service Provider.
WASHINGTON  Advocates for closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center were optimistic when President Joe Biden took office. And they were relieved this summer after the U.S. released a prisoner for the first time in years. Many are now increasingly impatient.

In the months since that release, there have been few signs of progress in closing the notorious offshore prison on the U.S. base in Cuba. That has led to increased skepticism about Bidens approach as the administration completes its first year and the detention center reaches a milestone Tuesday  the 20th anniversary of the first prisoners arrival.

President Biden has stated his intention to close Guantanamo as a matter of policy but has not taken substantial steps toward closure, said Wells Dixon, an attorney with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which has long taken a leading role in challenging the indefinite confinement without charge at the base.

Theres a lot of impatience and a lot of frustration among advocates and people who have been watching this, said Daphne Eviatar, director of the security with the human rights program at Amnesty International USA.

Without a more concerted effort, those who want the center to close fear a repeat of what happened under President Barack Obama. Obama made closing Guantanamo a signature issue from his first days in office, but managed only to shrink it in the face of political opposition in Congress.

We cant forget what this country did 20 years ago and is continuing to do today, Eviatar said. This administration has a lot on its plate, certainly, but this is such an egregious human rights offense.

There are 39 prisoners left. Its the fewest since the detention centers earliest days, when the initial groups, suspected of having a connection to al-Qaida or the Taliban, arrived on flights from Afghanistan  hooded, shackled and clad in orange jumpsuits  to what at the time was a sleepy U.S. outpost on the southeastern coast of Cuba.

Guantanamo became the focus of international outrage because of the mistreatment and torture of prisoners and the U.S. insistence that it could hold men indefinitely without charge for the duration of a war against al-Qaida that seemingly has no end. The critics grew to include Michael Lehnert, a now retired Marine Corps major general who was tasked with opening the detention center but came to believe that holding mostly low-level fighters without charge was counter to American values and interests.

To me, the existence of Guantanamo is anathema to everything that we represent, and it needs to be closed for that reason, Lehnert said.

At its peak, in 2003, the detention center held nearly 680 prisoners. President George W. Bush released more than 500 and Obama freed 197 before time ran out on his effort to whittle down the population.

President Donald Trump rescinded the Obama order to close Guantanamo, but largely ignored the place. He pledged during his first campaign to load it up with some bad dudes but never sent anyone there and said the annual cost of operating the detention center was crazy, at around $13 million per prisoner.

Of the remaining prisoners, 10 face trial by military commission in proceedings that have bogged down for years. They include Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Two others still at Guantanamo have been sentenced and one of them, former Maryland resident Majid Khan, is expected to complete his sentence next month.

The other 27 include 13 who have been cleared for release, including eight under Biden who could now be returned to their homeland or resettled elsewhere. Two dozen have not been cleared and have never been charged, and likely never will be, a status that some Republicans continue to defend, including in a Senate hearing last month.

Were not fighting a crime. Were fighting a war. I dont want to torture anybody. I want to give them due process consistent with being at war, and, if necessary, I want to hold them as long as it takes to keep us safe or we believe that theyre no longer a threat, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

A senior Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy, said the National Security Council is actively working with the Defense, State and Justice departments and other agencies to reduce the population within restrictions imposed by Congress. The restrictions include a ban on returning prisoners to certain countries, including Yemen and Somalia, or sending any to the U.S., even for further imprisonment.

The official said the administration is committed to closing the detention center, an effort it jump-started after four years of inaction under Trump.

One sign of progress is the eight approved for release through a review process created under Obama. Under Trump, just one detainee was cleared and the only release was a Saudi sent back to his homeland as part of an earlier military commission plea deal.

Critics want the Biden administration to get busy repatriating or resettling the detainees who have been cleared and to restore a State Department unit devoted to the effort that was eliminated under Trump.

Until I see some visible signs that the administration is going to do something about it, I am not heartened, said Lehnert, the retired Marine Corps general. If there is somebody in charge of closing Guantanamo, I have not talked to anybody that knows who they are.

Advocates argue the administration could resolve the fate of the rest through plea agreements with those charged in the military commission cases and releasing the rest.

Bidens low-key approach could be a smart strategy considering the political opposition encountered by Obama, argues Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York who with his students has represented 14 Guantanamo prisoners since 2005.

President Biden appears to have learned from Obamas missteps, transferring one prisoner and clearing many without being too loud about it and painting a target on his own back, Kassem said. Still, the administration must up the pace because, at the rate of one prisoner a year, it wont come close to shuttering the prison.
WASHINGTON  President Joe Biden faces a steep path to achieve his ambitious goal of slashing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, amid legislative gridlock that has stalled a $2 trillion package of social and environmental initiatives.

Bidens Build Back Better plan, which contains $550 billion in spending and tax credits aimed at promoting clean energy, was sidetracked by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who said just before Christmas that he could not support the legislation as written.

Democrats insist they are moving forward on the sweeping package, which also would bolster family services, health care and other programs. Manchin signaled in recent days that climate-related provisions were unlikely to be a deal-breaker, but the bill has taken a back seat to voting rights legislation and other Democratic priorities.

Even without the legislation, Biden can pursue his climate agenda through rules and regulations. But those can be undone by subsequent presidents, as demonstrated by Biden reversing Trump administration rules that rolled back protections put into place under Barack Obama.

Experts cite Bidens executive authority to regulate tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks, as well as restrict emissions from power plants and other industrial sources, and the federal governments vast power to approve renewable energy projects on federal lands and waters.

Indeed, the Environmental Protection Agency announced new tailpipe rules for cars and trucks the day after Manchins bombshell announcement Dec. 19. The next day, the Interior Department announced approval of two large-scale solar projects in California and moved to open up public lands in other Western states to solar development as part of the administrations efforts to counter climate change by shifting from fossil fuels.

The administration also has access to tens of billions of dollars under the bipartisan infrastructure law approved in November, including $7.5 billion to create a national network of electric vehicle chargers; $5 billion to deliver thousands of electric school buses nationwide; and $65 billion to upgrade the power grid to reduce outages and facilitate expansion of renewable energy such as wind and solar power.

I think the U.S. has a lot of tools and a lot of options to make gains on climate in the next decade, said John Larsen, an energy systems expert and partner at the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm.

Build Back Better is helpful to meet Bidens goals, but if you dont have Build Back Better, that doesnt mean nothing happens, Larsen said. It just makes the task ahead a bit more challenging.

Larsen is co-author of a Rhodium Group study last fall that found that passage of the Build Back Better package, along with the bipartisan infrastructure law and regulations by key federal agencies and states, could cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 45% to 51% below 2005 levels in 2030.

The Biden bill offers incentives for electric car purchases, development of technology to capture and store carbon emissions, and construction of wind and solar farms, among other provisions.

Global leaders made progress at a November climate summit in Scotland, but there needs to be much more action taken, said Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann. And for the U.S. to be able to do its part, we need the climate provisions of Build Back Better to pass Congress as soon as possible.

Jesse Jenkins, an energy systems engineer at Princeton University who has led an effort to model the Build Back Better bills effect on U.S. emissions, said there is a yawning gap between where U.S. emissions are today and where we need to be to hit President Bidens climate targets.

Such a gap is unlikely to be bridged by executive action or state policy alone, Jenkins said in an email. The Princeton model estimates that the United States will fall 1.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent short of Bidens 2030 climate commitment without the Build Back Better law.

Carbon dioxide equivalent is a standard measurement for the range of so-called greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, that are generated from the burning of coal and petroleum and from other industrial uses and agriculture, and trap heat in the atmosphere.

Still, Jenkins remains optimistic about U.S. climate action.

I do not accept the premise that the Build Back Better package is dead, he wrote, adding that he thinks there is still a very good chance that Congress passes the climate provisions and some combination of social policies being pushed by Democrats.

The consequences of failure are untenable, and the climate clock only moves in one direction, Jenkins said.

Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., said shes confident Biden and his administration will make good use of their current regulatory authority, as well as billions of dollars in new spending in the bipartisan infrastructure law. But on their own, those tools are not enough to meet Bidens climate goals, she said. Rules imposed by one administration can be undone by the next, as Biden and former President Donald Trump have both demonstrated repeatedly.

Trump withdrew the U.S. from the global Paris climate accord and rolled back dozens of regulations imposed by his Democratic predecessor, Obama. Biden, in turn, has moved to reverse Trump on a range of actions, from rejoining the Paris agreement to canceling the Keystone XL oil pipeline and pausing new oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters.

Biden has elevated the issue of climate change across the U.S. government, signing an executive order to make the government carbon-neutral by 2050 and converting to an all-electric fleet of car and trucks by 2035.

Even so, Bidens efforts can only go so far without an assist from Congress.

Regulatory authority is no substitute for congressional action, Smith said. Thats why its so important that we pass the strongest bill possible, and thats what were focusing on doing.

Enacting clean-energy investments in the Build Back Better Act would cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by a cumulative 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030, Jenkins said, an amount that would put the U.S. within easy reach of Bidens commitment to cut emissions to half of 2005 levels by 2030.

Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy Committee and whose states economy relies heavily on energy production, suggested he could back many of the climate provisions in the bill, including some tax credits. He also wants to include money to promote nuclear power and capture emissions from industrial facilities that pump out greenhouse gases.

I think the climate thing is one that we probably can come to an agreement on much easier than anything else, Manchin told reporters on Tuesday.

Democrats would need all their votes in the 50-50 Senate to advance the measure over unanimous Republican opposition.

___

AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this story.
BAGHDAD  Iraqs new parliament reelected its speaker for a second term Sunday, the first step toward forming a new government after a general election whose results have been contested by powerful Iran-backed factions.

In a reflection of tensions, the meeting was marked by disarray, with the eldest member of Parliament who was leading the session being evacuated to the hospital apparently due to the stress.

The chaotic meeting ushers in what is likely to be a lengthy period of political wrangling among rival groups to choose a new president and prime minister. As leader of the biggest bloc, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr  a maverick leader remembered for leading an insurgency against U.S. forces after the 2003 invasion  has the upper hand in forming a new government. But he will have to manage tensions with rival Shiite groups who continue to reject the election results and are demanding to have a say in the government formation process.

According to Iraqs constitution, the largest bloc in Parliament has the right to choose the new prime minister. But as the meeting got underway Sunday, a coalition known as the Shiite Coordination Framework, an alliance of Shiite factions which object to the vote results, submitted a list of lawmakers names it claimed now hold the biggest parliamentary bloc with 88 seats, rather than al-Sadr.

Chaos erupted briefly in the chamber, during which lawmakers crowded around Mahmood al-Mashhadani, who was leading the session. Within minutes, the 73-year-old lawmaker was carried out of the room by security forces and bundled in an ambulance that took him to hospital, where he was visited by some of the heads of political and militia factions. The lawmaker appeared to be in good condition, according to witnesses who later saw him there.

Following the disruption, the parliament session resumed, although the issue of the majority was not immediately resolved.

Later, 200 lawmakers picked incumbent Parliament Speaker Mohamed al-Halbousi for a second term, while 14 voted for al-Mashhadani.

Al-Halbousi, whose Sunni party came in second with 37 seats, is the former governor of Anbar province and was supported by al-Sadr, Kurdish and Sunni groups.

Earlier Sunday, lawmakers from al-Sadrs bloc arrived early to the parliament building in Baghdad, donning white shrouds Muslims use to wrap their dead in a sign of their willingness to die for him. Al-Sadr, one of Iraqs most influential political leaders, was the biggest winner in the Oct. 10 vote, securing 73 out of Parliaments 329 seats.

Pro-Iran factions that alleged voter fraud lost around two-thirds of their seats  a significant blow. Supporters of armed groups pitched tents and staged a sit-in around the capitals so-called Green Zone, which houses the Iraqi government and many foreign diplomatic missions, for more than two months, while they appealed Iraqs top court.

Tensions culminated in November with an assassination attempt with armed drones against Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimis residence  an attack blamed on Iran-aligned groups. The premier was unharmed.

The Court rejected the appeal filed by Iran-backed factions and ratified the election results late last month, clearing the way for a government to be formed.

Lawmakers at Sundays session are expected to elect a parliamentary speaker and two deputies. Parliament will then have to elect a new president, who in turn will have 15 days to appoint a prime minister nominated by the largest bloc to form a new government.

Under an unofficial agreement dating back to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Iraqs presidency  a largely ceremonial role  is held by a Kurd, while the prime minister is Shiite and the parliament speaker is Sunni.

The election was held months ahead of schedule in response to mass protests in late 2019, which saw tens of thousands in Baghdad and predominantly Shiite southern provinces rally against endemic corruption, poor services and unemployment. They also protested against the heavy-handed interference of neighboring Iran in Iraqs affairs through Iran-backed militias.

Independent candidates drawn from the October 2019 protest movement who ran under the Imtidad list won nine seats. Some of them arrived to the parliament building riding a tuk tuk from Tahrir square, the epicenter of the protest movement. The colorful three-wheeled motorcycle vehicles ferried demonstrators back and forth from the square and became a symbol of the protest movement.

Hamzeh Hadad, a political analyst, said the makeup of the new parliament could help make elected officials more accountable to the public due to the new smaller electoral districts.

With many independents and new political parties elected like Imtidad Movement, we could see a true opposition formed in parliament for the first time, he said. This is what Iraqis will be hoping to see from the new legislature.
MOSCOW  Kazakhstan authorities said Sunday that 164 people, including a 4-year-old girl, were killed in a week of protests that marked the worst unrest since the former Soviet republic gained independence 30 years ago.

The office of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said order has been restored in the Central Asian country and that the government has regained control of all buildings that were taken over by the protesters. Some of the buildings were set on fire.

Sporadic gunfire was heard Sunday in Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan, according to the Russian TV station Mir-24, but it was unclear whether those were warning shots by law enforcement. Tokayev said Friday he had authorized a shoot-to-kill order for police and the military to restore order.

The demonstrations, which began in the western part of Kazakhstan, began Jan. 2. over a sharp rise in fuel prices and spread throughout the country, apparently reflecting wider discontent with the authoritarian government. They prompted a Russia-led military alliance to send troops to the country.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Tokayevs order something I resolutely reject.

The shoot-to-kill order, to the extent it exists, is wrong and should be rescinded, he said Sunday on ABCs This Week.

And Kazakhstan has the ability to maintain law and order, to defend the institutions of the state, but to do so in a way that respects the rights of peaceful protesters and also addresses the concerns that theyve raised  economic concerns, some political concerns, Blinken added.

The same party has ruled Kazakhstan since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Anyone aspiring to oppose the government has either been repressed, sidelined, or co-opted, amid widespread economic hardship despite the countrys enormous reserves of oil, natural gas, uranium and minerals.

About 5,800 people were detained during the unrest, Tokayevs office said.

The death toll of 164, reported by the state news channel Khabar-24 and citing the Health Ministry, was a significant increase from previously announced totals. It was unclear if that number referred only to civilians or if law enforcement deaths were included. Kazakh authorities said earlier Sunday that 16 members of the police or national guard had been killed.

The ministry said 103 of the deaths occurred in Almaty, and Kazakhstans ombudswoman for childrens rights said three of those killed were minors, including a 4-year-old girl.

The ministry earlier reported more than 2,200 people sought treatment for injuries, and the Interior Ministry said about 1,300 security officers were injured.

Almatys airport, which had been taken over by protesters last week, remained closed but was expected to resume operations Monday.

Tokayev said the demonstrations were instigated by terrorists with foreign backing, although the protests have shown no obvious leaders or organization. Sundays statement from his office said the detentions included a sizable number of foreign nationals, but gave no details.

It was unclear how many of those detained remained in custody.

The foreign ministry of neighboring Kyrgyzstan on Sunday called for the release of well-known Kyrgyz musician Vikram Ruzakhunov, who was shown in a video on Kazakh television saying that he had flown to the country to take part in protests and was promised $200. In the video, apparently taken in police custody, Ruzakhunovs face was bruised and he had a large cut on his forehead.

The former head of Kazakhstans counterintelligence and anti-terrorism agency has been arrested on charges of attempting to overthrow the government. The arrest of Karim Masimov, which was announced Saturday, came just days after he was removed as head of the National Security Committee by Tokayev.

No details were given about what Masimov was alleged to have done that would constitute an attempted overthrow of the government. The National Security Committee, a successor to the Soviet-era KGB, is responsible for counterintelligence, the border guards service and anti-terrorist activities.

As the unrest mounted, Kazakhstans ministerial cabinet resigned but remained in their posts temporarily. Tokayev spokesman Brisk Uali said the president would propose a new cabinet on Tuesday.

At Tokayevs request, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russia-led military alliance of six former Soviet states, authorized sending about 2,500 mostly Russian troops to Kazakhstan as peacekeepers.

Some of the force is guarding government facilities in the capital, Nur-Sultan, which made it possible to release part of the forces of Kazakhstani law enforcement agencies and redeploy them to Almaty to participate in the counterterrorist operation, according to a statement from Tokayevs office.

In a sign that the demonstrations were more deeply rooted than just over the fuel price rise, many demonstrators shouted Old man out, a reference to Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was president from Kazakhstans independence until he resigned in 2019 and anointed Tokayev as his successor.

Nazarbayev retained substantial power as head of the National Security Council. But Tokayev replaced him as council head amid the unrest. possibly aiming at a concession to mollify protesters. However, Nazarbayev adviser Aido Ukibay said Sunday that it was done at Nazarbayevs initiative, according to the Kazakh news agency KazTag.
If you ever watched the show The Big Bang Theory, you heard the fictional Sheldon speak of the real Richard Feynman.

Feynman was a professor of theoretical physics at Cal Tech, Los Alamos resident during the Manhattan project, and 1965 Nobel Prize winner in physics.

Feynman was, by his own description, a curious fellow. While working on his doctorate at Princeton, Feynman took part in Graduate College seminars arranged by the dean. At one session, the dean noted an upcoming presentation by a hypnotist.

Advance warning was given because the hypnotist wanted a few volunteers to be hypnotized during his presentation.

When the request for volunteers was made, Feynman, sitting at the back of the room, yelled Meeeeee. No one else said anything. Only one person was curious enough to experience what this hypnotism was all about. I too, am curious. I am a dumb version of Feynman. My capacity to understand is quite limited, so I stick with topics within my expertise.

One such topic is partnership tax allocations. Partnerships do not pay tax. They accumulate items of income and deduction, and then pass them on to their partners.

How this is done can be simple or complicated. Tax allocations must match the partners economic arrangement. Complex (or simple) economic arrangements lead to complex (or simple) allocations.

The tax law has detailed rules that try to align the tax and the economics. Feynman said, If you thought that science was certain  well, thats just an error on your part.

Making partnership tax allocations work is not scientific and even less certain. We need to recognize that and do the best we can to deal with it.

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden of Oregon has proposed dramatic changes to the rules for partnership tax allocations. His objectives  fairness and simplicity.

There is much fairness in Wydens proposals. This fairness comes at a cost of great complexity. I think Wyden is a good man with good intentions. I dont think he understands what happens when a partnership tax return is prepared.

When I first read his proposals, I wanted to leap up and be the first to respond. Given my interest in partnership tax issues, I thought that, if anyone should respond, it should be Meeeeee.

Unlike Feynman, others jumped up before me. There have been several excellent articles in tax journals pointing out the problems with the Wyden proposals.

I doubt you have read these articles. I will summarize. Wydens proposals are simply not workable. They come from a desire to better match tax and economics. They will not be comprehensible to those who prepare most of the 28 million partner (K-1) information returns.

Wyden also serves on the Joint Committee on Taxation, which works with Congress and professional staff to develop tax policy.

I have written often about the sad state of our tax laws. By this, I do not mean so-and-so pays too much (or too little) tax. I would like to see a logical tax system. I care little about whose ox is gored by this system.

We have a complete breakdown of the legislative process. The tax legislative process no longer consults policy experts. It consults lobbyists, who are entirely about whose ox is gored.

Wyden is trying to move the ball down the field. I just think hes going about it wrong. I do believe he will listen to those who prepare tax returns, many of whom are not experts in partnership tax law.

Feynman said, I would rather have questions that cant be answered than answers that cant be questioned. Members of Congress no longer accept questions about their answers.

Feynman knew nothing of the tax law. He knew how to solve problems with integrity. One final quote could guide our tax policymakers.

You can know the name of a bird  (but) know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. Look at the bird and see what its doing  thats what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

We need a curious chair of a legislative committee who wants to make things better, as long as he is willing to learn how the bird actually functions.

Jim Hamill is director of Tax Practice at Reynolds, Hix & Co. in Albuquerque. He can be reached at jimhamill@rhcocpa.com.
TAOS  Its been the scene of countless dinners, weddings, fundraisers, graduations, fiesta dances and reggae concerts.

Now El Taoseno, a hub of Taos dining, has been sold to another icon, a local mattress maven.

Mary Domito, known locally as Mattress Mary, owner of two Taos furniture and bedding stores, closed last week on the sale of the local favorite from the five Archuleta siblings who have owned and operated the Paseo del Pueblo Sur landmark since it opened in 1994.

Yolanda, Fred, Orlando, Leonard and Diana Archuleta closed the restaurant Dec. 31 in order to retire.

Domito will join the restaurant building with her existing furniture store next door making the complex into a 23,000-square-foot shopping experience on 1.83 acres.

The establishment launches her new, private label with branded mattresses, bedding and apparel under the Double-M/Taos Brand, said a news release announcing the sale.

Im glad we were able to keep it with her, said Yolanda Archuleta. She (Domito) is really part of the community.

End of an era

For the Archuletas, their employees and their loyal clientele the transaction was bittersweet.

There were four generations that actually worked here, Yolandas brother Fred said. The business helped hundreds of employees and members of the family get through high school, to college and to move on to the careers they have now, he said.

Steven Archuleta, grandson of Orlando, washed dishes and cooked there.

For my grandparents, and aunts and uncles, its good for them to retire, he said. Ill miss it, there are a lot of memories here.

On Wednesday, several generations of Archuletas scurried throughout the cavernous building  which includes a dance hall and bowling alley  packing up and moving all the equipment, furniture and dinnerware for liquidation.

I think our local patrons they are going to miss us, Yolanda Archuleta said, as she packed water pitchers at the restaurant last week. They came here to socialize, they came here to share a meal, they came here just to connect with the roots of Taos.

It wasnt just food, Archuleta said, music in many forms from zydeco to reggae once echoed through the building.

This was the hub of the community, we even brought reggae in here, they did a lot of reggae dances here.

Move to retail

Domito has plans to keep things local as a counterpoint to big-box national players and she plans to keep the location connected to the towns ethos and character.

Taos has an undefinable quality to it that is unique, Domito said. She added she wants the business to grow but I want to keep it simple.

Domito moved to Taos 20 years ago after working in mattress sales in California and the East Coast. She opened her first store in 2004 after her research revealed there were no mattress stores in Taos.

Her new acquisition is going to allow me to consolidate the two stores I currently have, I never wanted to have more than one store in Taos, Domito said.

Domito will turn the dining room into a gift/gallery/provisions/branded apparel department with the work of local artisans, ceramics, gifts, greeting cards, gourmet food items, T-shirts, caps, hoodies and other wearables.

The back of the building will display and sell mattresses and the old bowling alley area will be a warehouse. A food truck for the property is also in the works.

The sale was beautiful timing, Domito said. The Archuletas were ready to retire and I was needing to expand.

Domito hopes that customers may come in for a mattress and leave with an appreciation of local history.

I am seeking old photographs, bowling pins and any artifacts and things that I will feature throughout the store, she said.

Domitos Mountain Lifestyle Furnishings stores employ nine full-time employees but she declined to reveal her annual sales volume. The listing price for El Taoseno was $2 million, according to Domito.

The current store location next to Albertsons on the south side of Taos will close July 31. The new El Taoseno location is scheduled to open in July.

The sale was just for the building itself and the El Taoseno name is up for sale separately, according to Fred Archuleta.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

Bernalillo County filed an emergency notice in federal court last week because a ransomware attack made the Metropolitan Detention Center unable to comply with terms of a settlement agreement in a years-running lawsuit over jail conditions.

The county last Wednesday announced its offices and systems were the victims of a cyberattack, affecting a wide variety of county government operations. Most county buildings were closed until further notice.

As a result, the county-operated MDC has been unable to access its cameras since the attack, which is one of the reasons it has fallen out of compliance in the McClendon v. City of Albuquerque lawsuit, which centers on jail conditions.

The attack has limited how much time inmates can spend out of their cells, and also reduced their access to telephones and tablets, according to the filing. The county also has been unable to gather data required as a condition of the settlement agreement. No visitors have been allowed.

The county said in the filing that its inability to access cameras is one of the more concerning aspects of the cyberattack, which has caused the facility to be on lockdown since Wednesday.

This means inmates, even inmates in general population, are temporarily limited to their cells, Taylor Rahn, an attorney for the county, wrote in the filing. Tia Bland, a county spokeswoman, said technicians over the weekend had some success getting MDC cameras working. She said jail officials are optimistic for more progress on Monday.

She said county headquarters at Alvarado Square will have limited public access beginning at 8 a.m. Monday.

Local courts, also affected by the attack, have designated new spaces for defendants.

A space was set up at Childrens Court in Albuquerque with secure laptops so defendants can speak with their attorneys at hearings in state district court. Metropolitan Court is designating more space for defendants at the courthouse and considering moving some proceedings to a nearby building, according to a news release from the Administrative Office of the Courts.

I sincerely appreciate our criminal court bench, as well as Metropolitan Court Chief Judge Maria Dominguez, all of our justice partners and the New Mexico Supreme Court emergency response team for working quickly to enact plans to allow criminal proceedings to continue in the face of this unforeseen event, Second Judicial District Court Chief Judge Marie Ward said in a prepared statement on Friday.
An 18-year-old Hobbs woman faces several felony charges after admitting to police that she placed her newborn baby in dumpster outside a store in Hobbs on Friday.

Alexis Avila told police she gave birth, then later left the baby in a dumpster outside the Rig Outfitters and Home Store in Hobbs, KOAT and multiple news outlets were reporting on Sunday.

The woman has been charged with attempt to commit a felony and child abuse.

Avila is scheduled to appear in Lea County District Court on Monday.

The child was in stable condition Sunday.

A news release from the Hobbs Police Department posted on the everythinglubbock.com news site said officers responded to the 1400 block of N. Thorp in reference to a newborn being located in a dumpster.

Officers rendered aid to the newborn, and the baby was transported to a local hospital by Hobbs EMS. The child was subsequently transported to a Lubbock, Texas, Hospital for further pediatric treatment.

Investigators were able to retrieve surveillance video and later located a suspect vehicle, according to the release.
Copyright  2022 Albuquerque Journal

Zac is one of the lucky ones.

The 32-year-old Afghan refugee  technically a humanitarian parolee  spent three months at the U.S. Armys Fort McCoy in Wisconsin before being relocated to Albuquerque, where he and his family were able to get into a rental apartment with the help of Lutheran Family Services.

LFS currently does almost all the housing placements for refugees who come from any number of countries  but those placements are becoming increasingly difficult.

The huge demand and short supply of homes in Albuquerque have caused a severe housing shortage.

In addition, LFS is trying to help a large influx of Afghan refugees. Normally, during the course of a year, LFS would place about 100 refugees from various parts of the world. It is currently trying to house about 100 a month, most of them from Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, Zac worked as a sales representative for a telecommunications company and as a financial analyst for a construction company before taking a job as a translator for U.S. Army forces there. When the U.S. military vacated Afghanistan and the Taliban became the de facto government, Zac, his wife and their 3-year-old daughter fled the country, expedited by a Special Immigrant Visa.

Like many Afghan refugees, Zac is reluctant to use his full name or show his face in photographs because of uncertainty about the reach of the Taliban, and because of fear of reprisals against family members still living in the country.

While he finds comfort in the familiarity of the high desert landscape of Albuquerque, which is similar to much of his homeland, Zac said he is not completely at ease in his apartment in the Southeast part of the city.

Grateful to have a roof over his head, he said, there is no escaping the reality that where he lives, is not in a good neighborhood.

Indeed, the area where Zac is housed is recognized by police as having a high rate of crime, violence and drug abuse. Because of that, Zac said he had to turn down a job offer at a big-box department store that would have had him working late into the night and leaving his wife and child alone.

It was far away, and I would have had to walk because I dont have transportation, he said.

LFS is currently aiding in his job search, as well as providing him and other refugees additional support, said economic development program manager Jeff Hall. That support comes in the form of food, mental health services, aid in opening a bank account and acquisition of a drivers license and state ID card. The organization also helps with accessing some government benefits and offering programs in English as a second language, financial literacy and job skills, he said.

We have an employment program where were able to get people jobs relatively quickly, particularly if they have permanent housing, Hall said. Our average time from date of arrival to getting them their first job is two months.

LFS provides refugees with, on average, 90 days of housing assistance, by which time the refugees should have been placed in jobs and be generating enough income to start paying their own housing expenses, Hall said. They can continue to receive other services through LFS.

Biggest need

LFS is primarily funded by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The funding is based on a per-refugee formula. But that formula doesnt help in the search for housing.

So the problem now is finding available housing, Hall said. We have different community partners who we work with and were able to get people into these homes, but the challenge is working with new partners and finding more housing, because the need is so much greater than what our current partners have in available space.

The biggest need is housing for very large refugee families  in some cases eight to 12 family members, Hall said. That means we need homes with four, five or more bedrooms. You simply cant put 10 people in a two-bedroom home with one bath.

On top of issues regarding family size, the refugee population has additional obstacles to overcome, Hall said. Many of them are coming in with no credit history, no rental history, no employment history, limited English capacity, and theyre competing for limited housing against other applicants who have all of these things.

That competition is often with area residents who qualify for public housing or for the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program, as well as low-income people moving to Albuquerque from larger states where housing has become even more unaffordable, Hall said.

Until housing can be found, LFS is putting up families in short-term Airbnb rentals and in church-owned buildings of various denominations that have bathrooms and have been furnished with beds and laundry appliances, Hall said.

Funding we got, its housing that we need.

Limited inventory

The Albuquerque Housing Authority, which manages Section 8 and public housing programs for the city of Albuquerque, Bernalillo County and Rio Rancho, is also feeling the supply-and-demand pressures. For the last six months, they have seen more requests for extension of housing vouchers because people have been unable to locate rentals and therefore have been unable to use their vouchers, said executive director Linda Bridge.

I believe its related to escalating housing prices across the market. Theres limited inventory for single-family homes and escalating prices for those properties, Bridge said.

The single-family homes that people previously rented are now being purchased for top dollar, resulting in a loss of rental inventory. That puts pressure on the rental market with more demand for the remaining rental units  and higher rental prices, Bridge said.

That makes it harder to use housing vouchers, because we do have limits on how much we can subsidize, she added. Its particularly challenging for low-income people who cant pay a market rent, and rely on rental subsidies to help.
NEW YORK  A malfunctioning space heater sparked a fire that filled a high-rise Bronx apartment building with thick smoke Sunday morning, killing 19 people including nine children in New York Citys deadliest blaze in three decades.

Trapped residents broke windows for air and stuffed wet towels under doors as smoke rose from a lower-floor apartment where the fire started. Survivors told of fleeing in panic through darkened hallways, barely able to breathe.

Multiple limp children were seen being given oxygen after they were carried out. Evacuees had faces covered in soot.

Firefighters found victims on every floor, many of them in cardiac and respiratory arrest, said Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro. Some could not escape because of the volume of smoke, he said.

Some residents said they initially ignored wailing smoke alarms because false alarms were so common in the 120-unit building, built in the early 1970s as affordable housing.

More than five dozen people were hurt and 13 were hospitalized in critical condition. The fire commissioner said most of the victims had severe smoke inhalation.

Firefighters continued making rescues even after their air supplies ran out, Mayor Eric Adams said. Their oxygen tanks were empty and they still pushed through the smoke, Adams said.

Investigators said the fire triggered by the electric heater started in a duplex apartment on the second and third floors of the 19-story building.

The flames didnt spread far  only charring the one unit and an adjacent hallway. But the door to the apartment and a door to a stairwell had been left open, letting smoke quickly spread throughout the building, Nigro said.

New York City fire codes generally require apartment doors to be spring-loaded and slam shut automatically, but it was not immediately clear whether this building was covered by those rules.

Building resident Sandra Clayton said she grabbed her dog Mocha and ran for her life when she saw the hallway filling with smoke and heard people screaming, Get out! Get out!

Clayton, 61, said she groped her way down a darkened stairway, clutching Mocha in her arms. The smoke was so black that she couldnt see, but she could hear neighbors wailing and crying nearby.

I just ran down the steps as much as I could but people was falling all over me, screaming, Clayton recounted from a hospital where she was treated for smoke inhalation.

In the commotion, her dog slipped from her grasp and was later found dead in the stairwell.

About 200 firefighters responded to the building on East 181st Street around 11 a.m.

Jose Henriquez, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who lives on the 10th floor, said the buildings fire alarms would frequently go off, but would turn out to be false.

It seems like today, they went off but the people didnt pay attention, Henriquez said in Spanish.

He and his family stayed, wedging a wet towel beneath the door, once they realized the smoke in the halls would overpower them if they tried to flee.

Luis Rosa said he also initially thought it was a false alarm. By the time he opened the door of his 13th-floor apartment, the smoke was so thick he couldnt see down the hallway. So I said, OK, we cant run down the stairs because if we run down the stairs, were going to end up suffocating.

All we could do was wait, he said.

The children who died were 16 years old or younger, said Stefan Ringel, a senior adviser to the mayor. Many survivors were brought to a temporary shelter at a nearby school.

The drab, brown building looms over an intersection of smaller, aging brick buildings overlooking Webster Avenue, one of the Bronxs main thoroughfares.

By Sunday afternoon, all that remained visible of the unit where the fire started was a gaping black hole where the windows had been smashed.
JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS OVER: The New Mexico Department of Transportation District 3 folks wrapped up two-plus years of widening U.S. 550 between Interstate 25 and N.M. 528 in November.

And on Jan. 3 crews started on 550s bridge over the Rio Grande.

Transportation Secretary Mike Sandoval, whos been very open about being stuck in the construction backups himself, says the department acknowledges reconstruction work just wrapped up on U.S. 550, and many drivers want to know why this bridge rehabilitation project is taking place on the heels of the last project or why the work couldnt have been done simultaneously. The answer is, during the previous project crews discovered the need to rehabilitate a portion of the bridge but the finding was unexpected and did not fit into the scope of work. We realize this will once again impact travel on U.S. 550, but safety is a priority, and we need to make sure the bridge is safe for the traveling public.

The seven-month project is scheduled through July. Crews will work from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday; two lanes of traffic will remain open in the eastbound lanes; the farthest lane south will be closed from east of Sheriffs Posse Road to east of the Rio Grande bridge, but access will be maintained to all residences and businesses. NMDOT adds in its news release that the work is being scheduled now because flows are at their lowest, and the timing will also minimize the impacts to migratory birds and animals who use the bridge during warmer summer months.

More information is at www.nmroads.com.

HOLDING IT AT THE STATE LINE: Tom Weber asks why the rest area and visitor center on Interstate 40 at the Arizona border has been closed for so long?

We passed it during a Thanksgiving road trip, he emails. It was remodeled very nicely perhaps 10 or 15 years ago and serves as a nice welcome to our state for visitors arriving from the west. Its been closed since the pandemic started, but why? There is no work being done, from the looks of it, and Arizona has open rest stops that are in great shape. If its money, why isnt the state investing in this with a record budget surplus? These rest stops at our borders provide tourists with all kinds of information to encourage them to stay longer  and spend their money  in our state. As a N.M. taxpayer, Im aggravated by closed facilities like this when Im counting on places to make a stop during a road trip.

BLAME THE PRAIRIE DOGS: Delane Baros, the public information officer for the state Department of Transportations District 6, understand(s) your frustration with closed facilities. The Manuelito Rest Area and Visitor Center has been closed since 2019 due to septic tank issues. Prairie dogs had burrowed around the septic system, creating unsafe environmental conditions. The burrowing caused sewage to leak.

At that time NMDOT had to hire a consultant to redesign the entire system. Once designed, construction work began to replace the septic system. In August construction work was completed. The Department of Tourism staffs the visitor center and a contract is in the process of being fully executed for cleaning the rest area. Since early December, the rest area has been open Tuesday-Friday from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. and will expand hours of operation once the cleaning contract is executed and the visitor center is fully staffed.

MVDs THIRD SELF-SERVE KIOSK: Late last year Derrick emailed over the weekend, and for the first time, I renewed my vehicles registration at one of the MVD kiosks in the Albertsons off of San Mateo and Montgomery. I found it extremely user-friendly and convenient.  Why are there only two and why are they both in the NE Heights of Albuquerque?

Charlie Moore with N.M. Tax and Rev, which oversees the Motor Vehicle Division, says we are looking at new locations, including at least one on the West Side, but they arent settled yet. In the meantime, MVD opened a new kiosk last week, albeit it in the NE Heights. The kiosk in the Sandia Laboratory Federal Credit Union at Juan Tabo and Comanche is the first to accept cash, and it joins kiosks in the Albertsons at Montgomery and San Mateo and at Juan Tabo and Candelaria. MVD says in a news release it has partnered with Intellectual Technology Inc. and host businesses on the kiosks, which let customers print their vehicle registration and sticker in as little as two minutes without visiting an MVD office. Instructions and voice prompts in English or Spanish make the kiosk as easy to use as an ATM. There is a $3.95 fee in addition to the registration fee plus a 2.3% credit card convenience fee associated with the transaction. However, MVD offers a 5% discount off the base registration cost on transactions conducted on the kiosks.

Editorial page editor DVal Westphal tackles commuter issues for the metro area on Mondays. Reach her at 823-3858; dwestphal@abqjournal.com; or 7777 Jefferson NE, Albuquerque, NM, 87109.
GENEVA  The United States and Russia locked horns over Ukraine and other security issues Monday with no sign of progress from either side at highly anticipated strategic talks.

Low expectations from both Washington and Moscow about the high-stakes session in Geneva appeared to have been met as senior diplomats from the two countries emerged without offering any hint of success.

Neither side characterized the meeting as a complete failure, but neither did they offer any prospect of easing the increasingly worrisome standoff over Russias military buildup on its border with Ukraine that the West sees as a fundamental threat to European security. Nor was there any indication of movement on other, perhaps less-explosive matters that have vexed the U.S.-Russia relationship.

Moscow insists on guarantees to halt NATOs eastward expansion and even roll back the military alliances deployments in Eastern Europe, while Washington firmly rejects the demands as a nonstarter.

With both sides dug in on their positions and Ukraines future hanging in the balance, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said no progress was made on the central demand on NATO expansion, although he insisted: We have no intention to invade Ukraine. U.S. officials openly questioned that comment.

Ryabkov spoke following talks with his U.S. counterpart, Wendy Sherman  part of a flurry of diplomatic activity in Europe this week aimed at defusing the tensions.

Sherman called the talks a frank and forthright discussion but would not, or could not, point to any progress.

It was not what you would call a negotiation, she told reporters. Were not to a point where were ready to set down texts and begin to go back and forth.

We were firm, however, on pushing back on security proposals that are simply nonstarters for the United States, Sherman said, adding we will not allow anyone to shut NATOs open-door policy that extends to countries seeking to join the alliance.

She said Washington will not forgo bilateral cooperation with sovereign states that wish to work with the United States. And, we will not make decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine, about Europe without Europe or about NATO without NATO.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has described NATO expansion to Ukraine and other former Soviet states as a red line for Moscow, demanding binding guarantees from the West that they wouldnt become members of the alliance.

Moscow has sought to wrest a string of concessions from the U.S. and its Western allies, and has massed an estimated 100,000 troops near Ukraine in steps that have raised concerns about a possible military intervention there.

The situation now is so dangerous, and so  I would say  precarious that we cannot afford any further delays in resolution of this very fundamental question, Ryabkov said at a separate news conference at the Russian mission. As President Putin said, on many occasions, we cannot backpedal. We cannot go backwards. There is no further space for us to do so.'

Ryabkov rattled off Russian concerns and demands issued last month on subjects like NATO expansion and wanting Western commitments not to deploy offensive weapons near Russian borders.

The American side has treated the Russian proposals seriously and deeply studied them, he said, adding that he characterized Moscows demand for legally binding guarantees that NATO would not move eastward as an absolute imperative for us.

Ryabkov emphasized that it would be hard to work on other issues if the U.S. stonewalled on Russias key demands.

If now NATO proceeds towards deployment of capabilities that are being developed very rapidly in the U.S., and will possibly be introduced somewhere in Europe, it would require a military response on the Russian part, that is a decision to counter this threat through means at our discretion, said Ryabkov, speaking in English. That will inevitably, unavoidably damage security of the U.S. and its European allies.

He did not elaborate.

After Ryabkov stated that Russia had no intention to invade Ukraine, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, was publicly skeptical.

I wish to believe him, I wish that it is true that they have no plans, but everything weve seen so far indicate that they are making motions in that direction, she told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Echoing comments from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Sherman said progress could only happen if Russia stays at the table and takes concrete steps to de-escalate tensions.

De-escalation, she said, would include returning the Russian troops now deployed on Ukraines borders to their barracks.

Weve made it clear that if Russia further invades Ukraine there will be significant costs and consequences well beyond what they faced in 2014, she said. Russia has a stark choice to make.

However, neither Sherman nor State Department spokesman Ned Price would say if the U.S. would move ahead with sanctions if Russia opts not to invade but also refuses to withdraw its troops from the border.

Mondays meeting was part of Strategic Security Dialogue talks on arms control and other broad issues launched by Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden at a June summit in the Swiss city. Talks between Russia and NATO are planned Wednesday in Brussels followed by a meeting in Vienna of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on Thursday.

The U.S. has played down hopes of significant progress and said some Russian demands  like a possible halt to NATO expansion  go against countries sovereign rights to set up their own security arrangements and are nonnegotiable.

But U.S. officials have expressed openness to other ideas, like curtailing possible future deployments of offensive missiles in Ukraine and putting limits on American and NATO military exercises in Eastern Europe  if Russia is willing to back off on Ukraine.

Blinken said Sunday he didnt expect any breakthroughs, with a more likely positive outcome being an agreement to de-escalate tensions in the short term and return to talks at an appropriate time.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg similarly played down expectations ahead of the talks.

I dont think that we can expect that these meetings will solve all the issues, he told reporters in Brussels after talks with Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraines deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration. What we are hoping for is that we can agree on a way forward, that we can agree on a series of meetings, that we can agree on a process.

During a visit to Rome, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said dialogue offered the only way out of the crisis.

At the same time, its equally clear that a renewed breach of Ukrainian sovereignty by Russia would have grave consequences, she said.

Russia has said it wants the issue resolved this month, but NATO is wary that Putin might be looking for a pretext, such as a failure in the negotiations, to launch an invasion.

Ukraine was not present at the table Monday and wont be involved in discussions with Russia until Thursdays OSCE meeting.

Eager to keep Kyiv in the loop, the Pentagon said Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Gen. Mark Milley spoke with Ukraines military chief Monday.

They exchanged perspectives and assessments of the evolving security environment in Eastern Europe, spokesman Col. Dave Butler said. Ukraine is a key partner to NATO and plays a critical role in maintaining peace and stability in Europe.

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Lee reported from Washington. Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Frank Jordans in Berlin, Lolita C. Baldor in Washington, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.
CHICAGO  Students are poised to return to Chicago Public Schools after leaders of the teachers union approved a plan with the nations third-largest district late Monday over COVID-19 safety protocols, ending a bitter standoff that canceled classes for five days.

While school districts nationwide have faced similar concerns amid skyrocketing COVID-19 cases, the labor fight in union-friendly Chicago amplified concerns over remote learning and other pandemic issues.

The deal, which would have students in class Wednesday and teachers back a day earlier, still requires approval with a vote of the unions roughly 25,000 members. Issues on the table have been metrics to close schools amid outbreaks and expanded COVID-19 testing.

Neither side immediately disclosed full details of the proposal Monday evening, but the district notified parents in the largely low-income Black and Latino school district of about 350,000 students that classes would resume Wednesday.

We know this has been very difficult for students and families, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said at an evening news conference. No one wins when students are out of a place where they can learn the best and where theyre safest.

In a dueling news conference, union leaders acknowledged it wasnt a home run but teachers wanted to be back in class with students.

The Chicago Teachers Unions house of delegates voted Monday evening to suspend their work action from last week calling for districtwide online learning until a safety plan had been negotiated or the latest COVID-19 surge subsided. The district, which has rejected districtwide remote instruction, responded by locking teachers out of remote teaching systems two days after students returned from winter break.

While there has was some progress on smaller issues like masks, negotiations over the weekend on a safety plan failed to produce a deal and rhetoric about negotiations became increasingly sharp. Some principals canceled class Tuesday preemptively and warned of further closures throughout the week.

Earlier Monday, Union President Jesse Sharkey said the union and district remained apart on a number of key features, accusing Lightfoot of refusing to compromise on teachers main priorities.

The mayor is being relentless, but shes being relentlessly stupid, shes being relentlessly stubborn, Sharkey said, playing on a reference the former prosecutor mayor made about refusing to relent in negotiations. Shes relentlessly refusing to seek accommodation and were trying to find a way to get people back in school.

Lightfoot accused teachers of abandoning students and shot back at the union president.

If I had a dollar for every time some privileged, clouted white guy called me stupid, Id be a bazillionaire, Lightfoot, who is Black, told WLS-TV.

By evening, she had said she was optimistic with the latest proposal, which went to union leaders for a vote.

Her first term in office has been marked by other battles with the influential union, which supported her opponent in the 2019 election, including a safety protocol fight last year and a 2019 teachers strike.

Developments in the fight, with pending complaints before a state labor board, made international headlines and attracted attention from the White House. Press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that President Joe Biden, who has pressed for schools to stay open, had remained in touch with Lightfoot and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker during negotiations.

Parents and advocacy groups also stepped up calls Monday for quicker action.

A group of parents on the citys West Side  near the intersection of largely Black and Latino neighborhoods  demanded students return immediately.

Cheri Warner, the mother of 15-year-old twins, said the sudden loss of in-person learning has taken a toll on her family.

One of her daughters has depression and anxiety, and winter is always difficult. Losing touch with her friends and teachers adds to that burden, Warner said.

The girls missed their whole eighth grade year and it felt like they werent really prepared for high school, Warner said. Theyre all trying to figure out how to catch up and its a really stressful situation.

Other parents said the district needs to do more.

Angela Spencer, an organizer with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization and a nurse, said shes concerned about her two kids safety in schools. Spencer said her kids schools werent adequately cleaned before the pandemic and she has no confidence in the districts protocols now.

Several families represented by the conservative Liberty Justice Center in Chicago, filed a lawsuit in Cook County over the closures, while more than 5,000 others signed a petition urging a return to in-person instruction.

District officials, who call the union action an illegal stoppage had kept buildings open for student meal pickup and said that schools with enough staff were allowed to open their doors to students. Some teachers showed up despite union directives; district officials estimated about 16% of teachers did so Monday.

Three schools, including Mount Greenwood Elementary, were able to offer instruction Monday, according to district officials. Parents at the largely white school on the citys southwest side expressed relief.

City officials argued that schools are safe with protocols in place. School leaders have touted a $100 million safety plan, including air purifiers in each classroom. Roughly 91% of staff are vaccinated and masks are required indoors.

Union officials have argued the safety measures fall short and the district has botched testing and a database tracking infections.

There were small signs of agreement in recent days.

The district has purchased KN95 masks for students and teachers, agreed to bring back daily COVID-19 screening questions for anyone entering schools, and added more incentives for substitute teachers.

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This story has been corrected to show the mother of 15-year-old twins is called Cheri Warner, not Cherie.

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Associated Press writers Kathleen Foody in Chicago, and Rick Callahan in Indianapolis and photojournalist Charles Rex Arbogast contributed to this report. Follow Sophia Tareen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sophiatareen
NEW YORK  Investigators sought answers Monday for why safety doors failed to close when fire broke out in a New York high-rise, allowing thick smoke to rise through the tower and kill 17 people, including eight children, in the citys deadliest blaze in more than three decades.

A malfunctioning electric space heater apparently started the fire Sunday in the 19-story building in the Bronx, fire officials said. The flames damaged only a small part of the building, but smoke poured through the apartments open door and turned stairwells into dark, ash-choked death traps. The stairs were the only method of escape in a tower too tall for fire escapes.

Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said the apartments front door and a door on the 15th floor should have been self-closing and blunted the spread of smoke, but the doors stayed fully open. It was not clear if the doors failed mechanically or if they had been manually disabled. Nigro said the apartment door was not obstructed.

The heavy smoke blocked some residents from escaping and incapacitated others as they tried to flee, fire officials said. Firefighters carried out limp children and gave them oxygen and continued making rescues even after their air supplies ran out.

Glenn Corbett, a fire science professor at John Jay College in New York City, said closed doors are vital to containing fire and smoke, especially in buildings that do not have automatic sprinkler systems.

Its pretty remarkable that the failure of one door could lead to how many deaths we had here, but thats the reality of it, Corbett said. That one door played a critical role in allowing the fire to spread and the smoke and heat to spread vertically through the building.

Dozens of people were hospitalized, including several in critical condition. Mayor Eric Adams called it an unspeakable tragedy at a news conference near the scene Monday.

This tragedy is not going to define us, Adams said. It is going to show our resiliency.

Adams lowered the death toll from an initial report Sunday, saying that two fewer people were killed than originally thought. Nigro said patients were taken to seven hospitals and there was a bit of a double count.

The dead included children as young as 4 years old, City Council Member Oswald Feliz said.

An investigation was underway to determine exactly how the fire spread and whether anything could have been done to prevent or contain the blaze, Nigro said.

A fire department official said the space heater had been running for a prolonged period before the fire began. What caused it to malfunction remains under investigation, spokesman Frank Dwyer said. Fire then spread quickly to nearby furniture and bedding, Dwyer said.

Nigro said the heat was on in the building before the fire started, and the space heater was being used to supplement it.

But Stefan Beauvogui, who lived with his wife in the building for about seven years, said cold was an ongoing problem in his fourth-floor apartment. Beauvogui said he had three space heaters for the winter  for the bedrooms and the sitting room. The heating system that was supposed to warm the apartment dont work for nothing. He said he had complained, but it had not been fixed.

Large, new apartment buildings are required to have sprinkler systems and interior doors that swing shut automatically to contain smoke and deprive fires of oxygen, but those rules do not apply to thousands of the citys older buildings.

The building was equipped with self-closing doors and smoke alarms, but several residents said they initially ignored the alarms because they were so common in the 120-unit building.

Bronx Park Phase III Preservation LLC, the group that owns the building, said it was cooperating fully with the fire department and the city and working to assist residents.

We are devastated by the unimaginable loss of life caused by this profound tragedy, the statement said.

A spokeswoman for the ownership group, Kelly Magee, said maintenance staff in July fixed the lock on the front door of the apartment in which the fire started and, while doing that repair, checked that the apartments self-closing door was working. No issues were reported with the door after that point, Magee said.

New York City inspectors have issued violations for problems with self-closing doors on five apartments in the building and one opening to a stairwell stretching back a dozen years, according to a database maintained by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The records state that all the violations were corrected.

Residents smoking in the stairwells sometimes tripped the fire alarms, and property managers had been working with them to address the problem, Magee said. She said the alarms appeared to work properly on Sunday.

The tower was required by building codes to have sprinklers only in its trash compactor and laundry room because it has concrete ceilings and floors, she said.

Camber Property Group is one of three firms in the ownership group that purchased the building in 2020 as part of $166 million purchase of eight affordable housing buildings in the borough. One of Cambers founders, Rick Gropper, served on Adams transition team, advising him on housing. He contributed to a dozen politicians in the past few elections, including $400 to Adams campaign last year.

New York City has been slow to require sprinklers for older apartment buildings, passing laws to mandate them in high-rise office towers after 9/11 but punting in recent years on a bill that would require such measures in residential buildings.

In 2018, a city lawmaker proposed requiring automatic fire sprinklers in residential buildings 40 feet or taller by the end of 2029, but that measure never passed, and the lawmaker recently left office.

A sprinkler system set off by heat in the apartment might have saved lives, said Ronald Siarnicki, executive director of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.

Most likely it would have extinguished that fire or at least held it in check and not produced the amount of toxic smoke, said Siarnicki, adding that firefighter groups have been lobbying for stricter sprinkler requirements for years.

The building is home to many families originally from Gambia in West Africa.

Resident Karen Dejesus said she was used to hearing the fire alarm go off.

Not until I actually saw the smoke coming in the door did I realize it was a real fire, and I began to hear people yelling, Help! Help! Help!' she said.

Dejesus, who was in her two-floor apartment with her son and 3-year-old granddaughter, immediately called family members and ran to get towels to put under the door. But smoke began coming down her stairs before the 56-year-old resident could get the towels, so the three ran to the back of the apartment.

It was so scary, she said. Just the fact that were in a building thats burning and you dont know how youre going to get out. You dont know if the firefighters are going to get to you in time.

Firefighters broke down her door and helped all three out the window and down a ladder to safety. Dejesus clung to her rescuer on the way down.

The fire was New York Citys deadliest since 1990, when 87 people died in an arson at the Happy Land social club, also in the Bronx. Sundays fire happened just days after 12 people, including eight children, were killed in a house fire in Philadelphia.

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Associated Press writers Bobby Caina Calvan, Deepti Hajela and Bernard Condon contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON  Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of former President Donald Trumps closest allies in Congress, on Sunday rejected a request for an interview by the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

In a combative letter to committee chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., Jordan said, The American people are tired of Democrats nonstop investigations and partisan witch hunts.

He said the interview request amounts to an unprecedented and inappropriate demand to examine the basis for a colleagues decision on a particular matter pending before the House of Representatives, adding, This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core constitutional principles and would serve to further erode legislative norms.

Thompson told Jordan in a letter last month that the panel wants him to provide information surrounding his communications with Trump on Jan. 6 and Trumps efforts to challenge the result of the 2020 election.

We understand that you had at least one and possibly multiple communications with President Trump on January 6th, the letter read. We would like to discuss each such communication with you in detail.

In his response Sunday, Jordan insisted, I have no relevant information that would assist the Select Committee in advancing any legitimate legislative purpose.

He accused Democrats of using the committee as a partisan cudgel against their political adversaries.

Jordan is a staunch supporter of Trumps false claims about voter fraud. The lawmaker brought those claims up during an October hearing on a motion to hold former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon in contempt for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena.

In that hearing, Jordan admitted that he spoke with Trump on the day of the attack.

Of course, I talked to the president, Jordan told members of the Rules Committee, in response to questioning from the panels chairman, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. I talked to him that day. Ive been clear about that. I dont recall the number of times, but its not about me. I know you want to make it about that.

The panel is also seeking information regarding Jordans meeting with Trump and members of his administration in November and December 2020, and in early January 2021, about strategies for overturning the results of the 2020 election. Thompsons letter said the committee is also interested in any discussions Jordan may have had during that time regarding the possibility of presidential pardons for people involved in any aspect of the Capitol attack or the planning for the two rallies that took place that day.
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In a new photo shared on Instagram, the Dawn Granger / Dove depicter on 'Titans' is seen smiling to the camera while sitting next to her comedian boyfriend.

Jan 10, 2022

AceShowbiz - It looks like Minka Kelly really had a great time vacationing with Trevor Noah. Sharing the first picture of her and her boyfriend on social media, the actress portraying Dawn Granger / Dove on "Titans" gushed over their trip to his hometown of South Africa.

The 41-year-old beauty posted the snap in question on Instagram on Sunday, January 9. In the photo, she was seen sitting next to the comedian in a yacht as a group of friends posed behind them.

The photo saw Minka wearing a silky floral gown with Trevor donning a pink crew-neck pull-over. In the accompanying message, the former "Friday Night Lights" star raved, "Take a trip to South Africa. Find friends like these. Have the holiday of a lifetime. Thank you, Mzansi."

More than a week prior, Trevor shared on his own Instagram page a photo of him with Minka from a birthday party of his best friend, Xolisa Dyeshana. "Happy Birthday @xolisadyeshana," he captioned the photo. "May your laugh always be loud, maybe your stories always be long, and may your friends always be good looking."

The twosome was unveiled to be in a relationship in August 2020 as they reportedly have moved in together to his place. The pair, however, allegedly parted ways in May 2021 before reuniting less than a month later.

Trevor and Minka appeared to confirm their reconciliation as they were spotted packing on some PDAs during a double date later that month. After enjoying dinner together, they were seen holding hands and staying close to one another while walking down the street.

In September, the lovebirds were caught on camera walking her dog together in New York City. They were seemingly in good spirits as they chatted during the outing while "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah" host held the dog leash nearly the entire stroll.
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Meanwhile, Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas grab their first Golden Globe award for the 'No Time to Die' song, 'Drive My Car' wins best foreign language film and Kenneth Branagh scores Best Screenplay prize for 'Belfast'.

Jan 10, 2022

AceShowbiz - Will Smith has been hailed as one of the best actors at the 2022 Golden Globe Awards. The 53-year-old star won Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama for his role in "King Richard".

It's his first Golden Globe win though he had been nominated five times before, including twice for his role on the TV series "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air". He defeated Mahershala Ali ("Swan Song"), Javier Bardem ("Being the Ricardos"), Benedict Cumberbatch ("The Power of the Dog") and Denzel Washington ("The Tragedy of Macbeth") for the prize.

Andrew Garfield was another first-time winner at the Sunday, January 9 ceremony. "The Amazing Spider-Man" star was named Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy for his role in "Tick, Tick... Boom!", edging out Leonardo DiCaprio ("Don't Look Up"), Peter Dinklage ("Cyrano"), Cooper Hoffman ("Licorice Pizza") and Anthony Ramos ("In the Heights").

Kodi Smit-McPhee, who received his first Golden Globe nomination through his role in "The Power of the Dog", won the prize for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture. He won over other strong contenders, including Ben Affleck ("The Tender Bar"), Jamie Dornan ("Belfast"), Ciaran Hinds ("Belfast") and Troy Kotsur ("CODA").

Japanese movie "Drive My Car" won another top prize at the event, being named as Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language. Kenneth Branagh snatched one in Best Screenplay - Motion Picture category for penning "Belfast".

Hans Zimmer won his third Golden Globe for Best Original Score - Motion Picture, thanks to his work in "Dune". Meanwhile, Best Original Song - Motion Picture went to "No Time to Die" (from "No Time to Die"), which is sung by Billie Eilish, who also wrote it with her brother Finneas. The song earned the two Grammy Award-winning artists their first Golden Globe win.

More winners will be announced through real-time updates on the Golden Globes websites and social media accounts.
HBO TV

It is revealed at the annual award event that Jason Sudeikis is the winner for Best Television Actor - Musical/Comedy Series for his role as the titular character on 'Ted Lasso'.

Jan 10, 2022

AceShowbiz - The 2022 Golden Globes Awards has announced the TV winners on Sunday night, January 10. The annual award-giving event, which featured no audience this year, saw Sarah Snook among the honorees in the TV department.

The star nabbed the Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for TV, thanks to her amazing portrayal of Shiobhan "Shiv" Roy on "Succession". The Australian star edged out the likes of Jennifer Coolidge ("The White Lotus"), Kaitlyn Dever ("Dopesick"), Andie MacDowell ("Maid") and Hannah Waddingham ("Ted Lasso") for the award.

This marked Sarah's first Golden Globe award. The Adelaide-born star joined fellow "Succession" cast member Jeremy Strong, who was named as the best actor in drama series earlier in the event.

The winner of Best Actress in a Television Motion Picture or TV Series was Kate Winslet for her stunning performance on "Mare of Easttown". Meanwhile, this year's Best Actor - Television Motion Picture at the 2022 Golden Globes Awards was Michael Keaton from "Dopesick".

Later, it was revealed that Jason Sudeikis was the winner for Best Television Actor - Musical/Comedy Series for his role as the titular character on "Ted Lasso". As for Best Television Actress - Musical/Comedy Series, the award went to "Hacks" star Jean Smart who won over co-star Hannah Einbinder among others.

That wasn't the only trophy that "Hacks" took home that night. The HBO Max series was announced as the winner of Best Musical/Comedy Series, beating out "The Great", "Only Murders in the Building", "Reservation Dogs" and "Ted Lasso".

Also among the winners at the 79th Golden Globe Awards was "Pose" actress Michaela Jae Rodriguez. The actress snagged Best Television Actress - Drama Series! Performing after besting out Uzo Aduba ("In Treatment)", Jennifer Aniston ("The Morning Show"), Christine Baranski ("The Good Fight") and Elizabeth Moss ("The Handmaid's Tale").
20th Century Fox/Netflix Movie

Steven Spielberg's take on the classic stage musical and the Western psychological drama bag three awards apiece, including best drama pic and best musical or comedy film.

Jan 10, 2022

AceShowbiz - The full winner list of the 79th annual Golden Globe Awards has been unveiled. At the event, which was held in private at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday, January 9, "West Side Story" and "The Power of the Dog" came out as the biggest winners in movie field.

Steven Spielberg's take on the classic stage musical and the Western psychological drama bagged three awards each, including the coveted Best Motion Picture - Drama and Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, respectively.

"West Side Story" nabbed two other awards in acting categories. Its female lead Rachel Zegler won Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, while her co-star Ariana DeBose nabbed the Golden Globe in supporting role category.

"The Power of the Dog" helmer Jane Campion snatched the top prize of Best Director - Motion Picture. The movie earned its third Golden Globe through Kodi Smit-McPhee's win in Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture category.

"Belfast", which led the nominations alongside "The Power of the Dog" with 7 apiece, only snagged one through Kenneth Branagh's win in Best Screenplay - Motion Picture. The actor/filmmaker was also nominated in best director category.

Meanwhile, Japanese film "Drive My Car" was hailed as Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language. "Encanto" won over "Flee", "Luca", "My Sunny Maad" and "Raya and the Last Dragon" for the Best Motion Picture - Animated trophy.

Nicole Kidman ("Being the Ricardos" and Will Smith ("King Richard") were named best drama actress and actor respectively. Andrew Garfield won the best actor in musical or comedy through his role in "Tick, Tick... Boom!".

Other winners in movie field included Hans Zimmer ("Dune") for Best Original Score - Motion Picture, and Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas for writing "No Time to Die" (from "No Time to Die"), which was picked as Best Original Song - Motion Picture.

The 2022 Golden Globe Awards was held without audience and was neither broadcast nor live-streamed. The winners, including those in TV categories, were announced through real-time updates on the Golden Globes websites and social media accounts.

Full Movie Winner List of the 2022 Golden Globe Awards:
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The 'Ayy Macarena' hitmaker is spotted liking his ex-girlfriend's latest social media post months after he turned himself in on suspicion of domestic violence against her.

Jan 10, 2022

AceShowbiz - Tyga seemingly tries to fix his relationship with Camaryn Swanson. The "Ayy Macarena" hitmaker was spotted liking his ex-girlfriend's sexy social media post months after he turned himself in on suspicion of domestic violence against her.

The hip-hop star double-tapped Camaryn's latest photo on her Instagram account that she posted on Saturday, January 9. The snap saw her donning a colorful crop top and a pair of jeans. She fiercely posed in front of a railing overlooking the city view in Las Vegas.

Many fans quickly noticed Tyga's social media gesture. In the comment section of the post, one Instagram user wrote, "Tyga liked the photo?! Didn't he give her a black eye?!" Another questioned, "Why tyga like the photo???"

Others left a little reminder for Camaryn with one person commenting, "I'll be damned if we watched you cry on your live for days only to take tyga back." In the meantime, someone else said, "He dont deserve you baby sorry."

Tyga and Camaryn had an altercation in October last year. At the time, TMZ reported that she showed up at the rapper's home in California "screaming in the middle of the night" before things turned physical. On the next day, the former boyfriend of Kylie Jenner voluntarily turned himself in to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Tyga, born Micheal Ray Nguyen-Stevenson, was released from jail just hours later on a $50,000 bond. Days later, he took to his social media account to slam the allegations against him. "I want everyone to know that the allegations against me are false," he declared in an Instagram Story. "I was not arrested. I took myself into the police station and cooperated. I have not been charged with any crime."

Tyga reportedly will not face felony charges over the case. Tyga's case was first handed to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. However, it has since been forwarded to the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office. This means the emcee escaped the felony domestic violence because only the district attorney's office can charge people with a felony. Though so, he could still be charged with a misdemeanor in the case.
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Most of the TV star's fans are mainly supportive of their alleged romance as one fan calls Blake 'the sweetest person' and the hairstylist pretty much agrees.

Jan 10, 2022

AceShowbiz - Former "The Bachelorette" leading lady Clare Crawley seemingly has moved on from ex Dale Moss. On Sunday, January 9, the California hairstylist sent fans into frenzy after she posted on Instagram a video of her getting cozy with Blake Monar.

The video was a montage taken from her trip to Indiana. She could be seen spending some time with Blake, who was among suitors in her season of ABC's "The Bachelorette". They played bowling, went shopping together and even looked pretty domestic while playing around with his niece and baby nephew.

"Went for business, left with the most unexpected remarkable memories!" so Clare captioned her post. "Indy, you were truly beautiful and exactly what my soul needed."

Additionally, Blake, who also appeared on "Bachelor in Paradise" season 7, took to his Instagram Stories to share a video of himself and his niece pushing Clare on a toy car inside a home. Another post saw him and Clare walking outside together as he put his arms around her. "How's walking on black ice with a grown man hanging on your back @clarecrawley?" he wrote over the clip.

Fans were mainly supportive of their alleged romance. Gushing over Blake, one person wrote underneath Clare's post, "Blake is the sweetest person." To that, Clare replied, "He truly is."

Clare's outing with Blake arrived months after she her split from Dale. Opening about having a hard time following the breakup, Clare told Jana Kramer on "Whine Down With Jana Kramer" podcast in October, "It's the deep pain of -- this is the one that gets me -- like, how do you say goodbye to somebody you never wanted to walk away from?"

"You're having to say goodbye to somebody you don't want to be saying goodbye to, you have to walk away from somebody you don't want to walk away from. It's hard, it's painful," she went on to say. "The juxtaposition of...not wanting somebody to walk away but gladly holding the door for them because they want to walk away. I'll never do that again. If you want to walk away from me, I'll fight to the death to do what it takes to have a successful, thriving, great relationship."
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The actor's family, including his wife Kelly Rizo, says they are 'devastated' over his sudden passing, while the fashion designers remember their TV father on 'Full House' as 'the most loving, compassionate and generous man.'

Jan 10, 2022

AceShowbiz - Bob Saget's loved ones have broken their silence on his shocking passing. In a first statement released by his family after news broke about his death, his family admitted that they are "devastated."

"We are devastated to confirm that our beloved Bob passed away today," his family, including wife Kelly Rizo, said in the statement to Page Six. "He was everything to us and we want you to know how much he loved his fans, performing live and bringing people from all walks of life together with laughter."

The Saget family added, "Though we ask for privacy at this time, we invite you to join us in remembering the love and laughter that Bob brought to the world." Bod did not have a child with Kelly, but shared three adult daughters Aubrey, 34, Lara, 32, and Jennifer, 29, with his first wife, screenwriter and former attorney Sharri Kramer.

Meanwhile, tributes poured in from more Hollywood stars. Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen, who starred alongside Bob on "Full House", also released a statement through the news outlet. "Bob was the most loving, compassionate and generous man," they remembered their former TV father.

The actresses-turned-fashion designers added, "We are deeply saddened that he is no longer with us but know that he will continue to be by our side to guide us as gracefully as he always has." They continued, "We are thinking of his daughters, wife and family and are sending our condolences."

Candace Cameron Bure took to Twitter to mourn Bob's death. Finding it hard to find the words to express her feelings, she wrote, "I don't know what to say [broken heart emoji]. I have no words. Bob was one of the best humans beings I've ever known in my life. I loved him so much."

Candace Cameron Bure mourned the death of Bob Saget

Dave Coulier, who also starred on the ABC sitcom as Bob's onscreen best friend, also penned on Twitter, "My heart is broken. I love you, Bob. Your forever brother, Dave."

Dave Coulier also paid tribute to his 'Full House' co-star.

They followed their co-star John Stamos, who earlier posted on the blue bird app, "I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby."

Also reacting to the sad news was Jon Stewart, who simply said, "Bob Saget Just the funniest and nicest" Kat Dennings said, "Oh god. Bob Saget!!! The loveliest man. I was his TV daughter for one season and he was always so kind and protective. So so sorry for his family."

Amy Schumer recounted, "Bob Saget was really kind. Fun to be around and loved comics more than anyone. I'm donating to @srfcure a charity very close to his heart. Also 'Dirty Work' is one of my all time favorite movies. Directed by Bob."

"I'm so shocked at @bobsaget's passing," Joel McHale mourned. "One of the most kind & thoughtful people Ive ever come across & he just happened to be one of the funniest on the planet. I will miss you so much Bob. Love you dear friend. I'm so sorry @kellyrizzo. And so sorry to the rest of the family."

Josh Gad found it hard to believe his pal is gone now. "There wasn't a kinder person in Hollywood than Bob Saget. I am having trouble wrapping my head around this. I do not want to believe this. It's all too much to handle," he wrote.

B.J. Novak tweeted, "I have always and will always love Bob Saget." Andy Cohen remembered the late actor, "He had the biggest heart and wore it on his sleeve. He was so generous with his feelings. A mensch. #BobSaget."

Bob died suddenly in his hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando on Sunday, January 10 in the middle of comedy tour. He was 65 years old. The Orange County Sheriff's Office said deputies responded after security found him unresponsive in his room. He was pronounced dead on the scene.

The cause of death is not immediately given, but authorities said, "Detectives found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case." They additionally noted, "the Medical Examiner's Office will make the final call on the cause and manner of death."
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The former star of 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians' has been facing backlash after an old clip of the family reality show, in which she allegedly used the N-word, resurfaced.

Jan 10, 2022

AceShowbiz - Khloe Kardashian has been facing heavy criticisms after an old "racist" clip of "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" resurfaced. Shortly after the video went viral on the Internet, the Good American founder was hit with new accusation as she posted cute photos of her daughter True Thompson.

On Sunday, January 9, the 37-year-old reality star made use of her Instagram account to share a series of photos of her 3-year-old daughter posing in a white tank while holding her cat. She simply captioned the adorable snaps with a heart emoji.

While others praised Khloe's sweet post, many social media critics believed that she was trying to escape from getting backlash after a shocking scene of her allegedly dropping the N-word on "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" resurfaced. One wrote, "True and her kitten are adorable, but I am just reminded of that theory where they post their kids after a scandal."

A separate person criticized, "Posting their kids when something bad gets brought up about them." In the meantime, a third social media critic chimed in, "Queue the 'use the kids to distract from scandals' trick."

The shocking clip of the famous family's popular series in question saw Khloe speaking to defend her sister Kim Kardashian after trolls accused her of appropriating black culture. When offering a response to the haters, Khloe said, "Hashtag fact, my baby is black."

"Hashtag I only like black c**k. That's what I would say," Khloe went on to say. Then, Khloe appeared to use the N-word when she described some of the name-callings she received from fans.

After one Twitter user reshared the old clip to the platform, fans rushed to plead with Hulu to "cancel" their new show. "I will never condone racism or bullying the way the Kardashian/Jenner family continues to perpetuate," one person penned. The said person also included the hashtags "#boycotthulu" and "#cancelkardashians."

Another agreed, "They need to be canceled!! Why did Hulu even bother extending the life of this show??" One person also claimed that "KUWTK" showcased the family's "racist behavior."

Aside from her current situation, Khloe has been dealing with the news that her baby daddy Tristan Thompson fathered another child with a woman named Maralee Nichols. After the paternity test proved that the Sacramento Kings player is the father of the baby, he will most likely be required to pay out as much as $40K a month in child support.
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The Democratic Representative of New York's positive test results comes more than a week after she was captured maskless while enjoying her trip to Miami, Florida.

Jan 10, 2022

AceShowbiz - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has tested positive for COVID-19. The Democratic Representative of New York, who has returned from her winter getaway from Florida, is reportedly "recovering at home."

"Representative Ocasio-Cortez has received a positive test result for COVID-19. She is experiencing symptoms and recovering at home," so read a Sunday, January 9 statement from her office. "The Congresswoman received her booster shot this fall, and encourages everyone to get their booster and follow all CDC guidance."

The news arrived more than a week after AOC was spotted maskless when visiting a packed bar in Miami, Florida. On December 30, she was also caught on camera enjoying a drink with her boyfriend at an outdoor restaurant. Both of them did not wear face masks.

AOC's trip has been criticized by Republicans on Twitter. One in particular was supporters of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who sarcastically wrote, "Welcome to Florida, AOC! We hope you're enjoying a taste of freedom here in the Sunshine State thanks to Ron DeSantis's leadership."

AOC, however, was quick to fire back. "Hasn't Gov. DeSantis been inexplicably missing for like 2 weeks?" she asked. "If he's around, I would be happy to say hello. His social media team seems to have been posting old photos for weeks."

"In the meantime, perhaps I could help with local organizing. Folks are quite receptive here," she continued. "I'd also be happy to share some notes from @GovKathyHochul's work in NY since he seems to be in need of tips!"

AOC also responded to a tweet condemning the photo of her and her boyfriend's outing. "If Republicans are mad they can't date me they can just say that instead of projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend's feet. Ya creepy weirdos," she argued.

"It's starting to get old ignoring the very obvious, strange, and deranged sexual frustrations that underpin the Republican fixation on me, women,& LGBT+ people in general," she further elaborated. "These people clearly need therapy, won't do it, and use politics as their outlet instead. It's really weird."
Columbia Pictures Movie

The 'Amazing Spider-Man' actor, who returns to the franchise along with Tobey Maguire, admits in a new interview that lying about him reprising his role felt 'weirdly enjoyable.'

Jan 10, 2022

AceShowbiz - Andrew Garfield has opened up about how it felt to lie about his role in "Spider-Man: No Way Home". Although it was "stressful" to lie to the media, the Peter Parker depicter admitted that he had fun doing it.

"The Amazing Spider-Man" actor made the confession in a new interview with The Wrap. "It was stressful, I'm not gonna lie. It was rather stressful but also weirdly enjoyable. It was like this massive game of Werewolf that I was playing with journalists and with people guessing, and it was very fun," he said.

"There were moments where I was like, 'God, I hate lying.' I don't like to lie and I'm not a good liar, but I kept framing it as a game," the 38-year-old continued explaining. "And I kept imagining myself purely as a fan of that character, which is not hard to do."

Andrew went on to note, "I placed myself in that position of, well, what would I want to know? Would I want to be toyed with? Would I want to be lied to? Would I want to be kept on my toes guessing?" He added, "Would I want to discover it when I went to the theatre? Would I want to be guessing, guessing, guessing?"

"I would want the actor to do an incredibly good job at convincing me he wasn't in it. And then I would want to lose my mind in the theatre when my instinct was proven right," the British-American star concluded. "That's what I would want."

Andrew had repeatedly denied rumors suggesting that he's featured in the Tom Holland-starring movie. "I'm not in the film. I love Spider-Man, I always have, I was so happy to have played the part. I'm so excited to see what they do with the third one," he said when speaking on "Today" back in November 2021.

"Spider-Man: No Way Home" introduces the multiverse storyline, which opens the door for Andrew and Tobey Maguire's returns as their own versions of Spider-Man. The film, which also stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Zendaya Coleman and Alfred Molina among others, has out-grossed "Titanic" domestically by bringing $668 million so far.
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The '30 Rock' alum calls out one news outlet in particular for putting 'lies' and 'nonsense' on its cover instead of spotlighting the death of movie legend Sidney Poitier.

Jan 10, 2022

AceShowbiz - Alec Baldwin insists that he is cooperating with police in investigation into the fatal shooting on the set of "Rust". The actor has called "bulls**t" on any reports that suggested he doesn't help police in the investigation, despite not turning over his phone.

"Any suggestion that I am not complying with requests or orders or demands or search warrants about my phone, that's bulls**t, that's a lie," he said in an Instagram video posted on Saturday, January 8. Speaking from inside of his car, he noted that authorities from another state have to go through the state he lives in to make a request for his phone.

"This is a process where one state makes the request of another state," he argued. "It's a process that takes time, they have to specify what they want. We are one thousand percent going to comply with all that."

"But of course, we are 1000 percent going to comply with all that. We are perfectly fine with that," the former "Saturday Night Live" star assured. He added that he is committed to finding the truth about Halyna Hutchins' death, saying, "The best way, the only way, we can honor the death of Halyna Hutchins is to find out the truth. That's what I'm working toward, insisting on, demanding."

Alec went on singling out The Post in the video for putting "lies and bulls**t and nonsense" on its cover rather than giving the spotlight to late actor Sidney Poitier. He ranted, "Sidney Poitier - one of the icons of the business, one of the kings of movie royalty dies - and on the cover of The Post they have other lies and bulls**t and nonsense."

He remains confident, though, that "it's all going to work out, regardless of what they say in these right-wing rag sheets, and people who are all about hate."

Alec was then one who held the gun which discharged and accidentally killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the Western drama on October 21, 2021. In his first TV interview since the shooting accident, he said he didn't pull the trigger.

"I cock the gun. I go, 'Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that?' " he recounted moments before the gun discharged. "And then I let go of the hammer of the gun, and the gun goes off. I let go of the hammer of the gun, the gun goes off."

When ABC News' George Stephanopoulos asked, "So, you never pulled the trigger?" Alec responded, "No, no, no, no, no." He reiterated, "I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them."
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The 'West Side Story' stars, who bring home Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy and Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture respectively, celebrate their wins on their social media accounts.

Jan 10, 2022

AceShowbiz - Rachel Zegler and Ariana DeBose are celebrating their win at the 2022 Golden Globe Awards. The "West Side Story" stars took to their social media platforms to express their gratitude after taking home their first award from the annual prize-giving event.

Rachel, who won the award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, made use of her Twitter account on Sunday, January 9 to share her reaction after her name was listed on the winner list. She tweeted, "I got cast as maria in west side story on 1/9/19. and i just won a golden globe for that same performance, on 1/9/22." She concluded, "Life is very strange."

Rachel Zegler celebrated her win at 2022 Golden Globe Awards.

Not stopping there, Rachel posted a video on her Instagram Story that saw her shedding her tears. In the short clip, the Maria depicter in Steven Spielberg's film also mouthed a voice that could be heard saying, "What the f**k is going on?" seemingly shocked by her win.

In the meantime, Ariana took to her Instagram page to celebrate her win. "There is still work to be done, but when you've worked so hard on a project- infused with blood, sweat, tears and love- having the work seen and acknowledged is always going to be special," the actress, who won Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture, penned. She added, "Thank you," along with several hashtags, "#latinosinfilm #afrolatina #queertalent #musicalsrock."

Many fellow actresses left congratulatory messages in the comment section, including Rachel. The "Shazam! Fury of the Gods" actress wrote, "Ari," adding a red heart emoji. Meanwhile, Eden Espinosa gushed, "Just as it should be. Beyond proud of you hermana."

Briar Nolet commented, "congratulations love! [red heart emoji]," while Kristin Chenoweth penned, "So happy for you and the movie!" In the meantime, Leisha Hailey exclaimed, "Incredible!!!" including a slew of clapping hands emoji.

Also during the 2022 Golden Globes, "West Side Story" took home the award for Best Picture - Musical or Comedy. In addition, "The Power of the Dog" also came out as another big winner, bringing home the award for Best Motion Picture - Drama.
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The actor, who rose to fame for portraying his father Demetrius Flenory of Black Mafia Family, puts the rumors about his body odors to rest after being accused of smelling 'like a bag of onion.'

Jan 10, 2022

AceShowbiz - Lil Meech is setting the record straight. The actor portraying his father Demetrius Flenory of Black Mafia Family on "BMF" denied the accusations that he has poor hygiene, saying that it's a lie.

On Sunday, January 9, 50 Cent shared a video of Lil Meech's fan who complained that the "BMF" star smelled "musty." The female fan also claimed that the 21-year-old star "smelled like onions" during a club appearance.

"Lil Meech was very musty on Friday night," the female fan said. "He had went [sic] to six places and he smelled like a pound of onions. I just want to know what possessed him to put on that long-sleeved shirt and to be musty like that."

In the caption, 50 Cent trolled Lil Meech, "@llimeechbmf getting so fly the hating is starting. [laughing emoji]. she said you smelled like a bag of onion's LMAO." The "In da Club" rapper added, "Nah dat's Creed baby the gold bottle. LOL."

Responding to the allegations, Lil Meech, whose real name is Demetrius Flenory Jr., commented, "Lying straight Thru her teeth feigning for a picture," adding a slew of laughing face with tears emojis. In a separate comment, he left more laughing face with tears emojis.

Upon learning the female fan's statement, "Amateur" actor Michael Rainey Jr. defended Lil Meech. The 21-year-old actor wrote in the comment section, "Lying on the gang is crazy [man facepalming emoji] [laughing face with tears emoji]."

Lil Meech rose to fame for portraying his father Demetrius Flenory, also known as Big Meech, on "BMF". The actor/rapper recently landed a spot in season 2 of the hit HBO show "Euphoria", which premiered on Sunday.

Days prior to the premiere, Lil Meech made use of his Instagram account to release a snapshot from a scene of the drama series. "EUPHORIA. JANUARY 9TH. HBO MAX. WE NOT SLOWING DOWN NO TIME SOON ONLY UP FROM HERE..," he captioned his post.

Many of his famous pals and friends showed some support in the comment section. 50 Cent wrote, "You know the vibes [clapping hands emoji]," while DJ Spin King added, "My boy! I told ya he gonna be a star." One fan chimed in, "Let's get those CREDITS!!!!!!!" A second penned, "I'm watching everything with you in it [face with heart-shaped eyes emoji]."
Hyderabad-based BikeWo -- one of the fastest-growing EV two-wheeler smart hub networks in India, has announced a partnership with celebrated legendary Tollywood actor Venkatesh Daggubati. As a part of the collaboration, Venkatesh Daggubati has now become a strategic investor in the company with an undisclosed amount of investment, and has also been appointed as BikeWos lead brand ambassador.

Following this association, BikeWo will be looking to expand its EV servicing and charging network across different states of India while leveraging VenkateshDuggibatis personal brand and by collaborating with him for a series of marketing, outreach and brand promotion activities. This will be a long-term collaboration that will help the brand to grow and scale in order to meet its ambitious target of installing 20,000 EV charging points pan-India by 2025.

Speaking on the collaboration, Vidhyasagar Reddy, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer, BikeWo said, We are delighted and proud to welcome the evergreen legend VenkateshDaggubati as Bikewos investor and brand ambassador. Venkateshs faith and trust in BikeWo are an inspiration for us, and going forward, we will be working closely with him on a number of strategic aspects. Furthermore, his association with the brand marks a whole new chapter in BikeWo's commitment to young Indians in the realization of their dreams and aspirations by serving simple and delightful two wheeler service experiences, creating infrastructure for EV with battery swapping and charging points, and enabling entrepreneurship opportunities to BikeWos ever-growing network of dealer-partners.

Venkatesh Daggubati said, I am elated to be a part of BikeWos journey of making the EV bike sector more organized and providing a better user experience.BikeWo is a brand that stands out in the EV space not only by laying infrastructure for EV 2W charging and servicing, but also by encouraging and creating entrepreneurs, especially women entrepreneurs, through its unique franchise network. I look forward to walking the futuristic EV adoption journey with BikeWo, and Im committed to do my bit in helping the brand in realizing its vision.

BikeWo has been founded by Mr. Vidhaysagar Reddy --- who has studied International Business from West London College, UK, and is a passionate tech and environmental enthusiast who previously has hadan experience of over 6 years in sales and business development with Freshworks.He saw Freshworks grow from a single product to multiple products and from 1M USD revenue to becoming a 'unicorn' and then filing for IPO. During his stint there, Vidyhyasagar brought in key strategic accounts and led the sales of their flagship product- Freshsales from 0 to 50mn USD. In 2021, he quit his job and started-up BikeWo -- where he is bringing in the Freshworks experience and learnings into Bikewo, so that it can also follow a similar growth journey, while bringingtogether technology, environment, and people to organize a largely unorganized sector.

BikeWo is solving critical issues and gaps in India burgeoning EV ecosystem by laying the infrastructure for EV battery swapping and charging points, and thereby paving the path for increased adoption of electric 2 wheelers across India. On the other hand, Tollywood film actor and producer VenkateshDaggubati, popularly known as Victory Venkatesh, is one of the most loved industry veterans who is well-known for his acting prowess and has worked in many award-winning Telegu films in his illustrious career spanning over three decades.
EVE WORLD, a women-only platform that proffers expression, creation, and community enablement appoints Singapore-based Dr. Keith Kueh as the Director of Engineering and Ozan Yukruk from Ukraine as the Product Lead. In his new role, Keith will lead and build EVEs engineering team across product development, research, and design as well as machine learning, and blockchain technology. On the other hand, Ozan will play an instrumental role with his product & technical prowess to ensure that the roadmap aligns perfectly to the vision and business needs. Together, both Keith and Ozan will work closely with the Founders - Tarun Katial, Aparna Acharekar, and Rajneel Kumar.

Gearing up for a launch this year, the announcement is in line with the platforms objective of accelerating its development velocity and laying a strong foundation.

Rajneel Kumar, Co-Founder  EVE WORLD said, We are extremely delighted to have Keith onboard with us. His profound understanding of technology and expertise across industries is a strength advantageous for Eve World. With Keiths extensive knowledge and experience, we are confident that he will be instrumental in driving the platform's growth thereby making him an excellent addition to our leadership team. Furthermore, having Ozan on board is another stellar recruitment by us that will see him strategize opportunities that increase engagement on the platform. His deep hands on experience in gaming will be a valuable asset.

Keith brings in over two decades of in-depth domain knowledge and technical proficiency to Eve World. During his illustrious career, he had a wide range of experience in technology, sales, & marketing for brands including Ahealo, Gracious, & Sockect. He also spearheaded development and services for technology infrastructure for many companies in Singapore.

Dr. Keith Kueh said, I am excited to join EVE WORLD and be a part of its growth story. My aim will be to build a future-proof tech architecture that thrives on seamless and innovative user experience, in addition to leveraging blockchain technology to create a responsible virtual environment for women worldwide.

Additionally, Ozan brings with him more than 15 years of work experience in the technology sector as well as another five years in the product management space. Hailing from a software development background, he has worked in software projects in the Fin-tech, Mobile Games, Health and Fitness, Malware Analysis, Retail arena for different companies.

Ozan Yukruk shared, Im delighted to be a part of EVE WORLD and looking forward to being part of the many milestones that they set in their journey. Continuing to chase excellence, I hope to make the most of my software development and product management skills as we continue to build a decentralized, engaging and safe, digital ecosystem for women around the world.

Eve World seeks to build a positive and valuable digital experience for women worldwide, where young girls and women of all ages can create and consume content, share opinions and thoughts, engage, and build connections in a responsible, safe virtual environment.

--
GE appoints Weber Shandwick as communications partner for South Asia, to manage complex business to business communication for the region. The mandate covers strategy planning, transformation communications, strategic media relations, proactive storytelling, content planning and implementation.

The focus will be on building a strong communications strategy across South Asia, that educates key stakeholders on GE's transformation across Aviation, Healthcare and Energy. The aim is to deliver messages about the future of flight, precision health and decarbonization.

Commenting on the appointment Gayatri Rath, Executive Director, Communications & Brand GE South Asia, said, We are happy to appoint Weber Shandwick as our communications partner. Their ability to articulate the brief and bring it alive with a realistic, doable approach was truly commendable. Our goal is to raise our position and build a stronger understanding for the brand and its values, in the region. We needed a partner that can deliver to this ask with deep thinking, strong relationships, and agile teams.

GE as a brand has always been aspirational to work for. We are proud to have won the confidence of the management team to take on such a large mandate. We are excited with the task ahead and are confident that we will deliver impactful outcomes said Valerie Pinto, CEO, Weber Shandwick India.
Havas Group India has appointed Sumeer Mathur as National Planning Head & Managing Partner, Havas Worldwide India - the creative agency of the group with immediate effect.

Sumeer will be partnering Manas Lahiri, Managing Director and Ravinder Siwach, ED & NCD of Havas Worldwide (Creative) to scale up the agency further, collaborate with key clients including Reckitt, Citroen, Dabur, Suzuki, William Grant, Tata and Harman (JBL) among many others, and drive the strategic planning vision and expertise at Havas Creative India. Sumeer will be based out of the Gurgaon office and report to Rana Barua, Group CEO, Havas Group India.

Sumeer will also collaborate closely with Arindam Sengupta, Chief Client Officer of Havas Worldwide and Head, Group Integration; and with Prashant Tekwani, EVP & Business Head, Havas CX to drive the groups vision of integration and CX. In addition, Sumeer will also join forces with the entire senior leadership of the group companies of Havas Group to help drive the integration across the network.

Rana Barua, Group CEO, Havas Group India, said, The last two years have been game-changer for Havas Worldwide India. We have been relentless, focused and committed. This led to exponential growth, effective partnerships, and addition of several marquee clients. We need to now build a strong integrated leadership team that aggressively takes this growth mandate ahead. With Sumeer, Manas, Ravinder, Arindam, Prashant, Geet and all the other leaders forming the core team, it will further fuel our growth and empower us to deliver meaningful, ROI-centric marketing solutions for our clients. I am confident that Sumeer will drive this mandate quite effortlessly.

Adding further, Bobby Pawar, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, Havas Group India, said, The meaningful difference we make to our clients business through our differentiated products, digital-led strategic solutions and engaging storytelling, is what led us to the top league in the industry. Sumeer will drive this further. Throughout his career, Sumeer has worked with strong business teams, delivering tangible business results. His keen interest in understanding what drives culture, what motivates consumers, and how digital technologies are reshaping brand interactions will add a tremendous value to our strategic planning function."

Sumeer said, "I am excited to join a team that has driven an amazing growth story in such a short time and has diverse capabilities that deliver what brands and clients need. Havas Creative's philosophy of meaningful brands is ahead of the curve in its understanding of the forces that shape consumer attitudes and behaviour in the world today. I look forward to leveraging this for our clients across categories."

Sumeer has worked across sectors such as FMCG, Telecom, Automobiles, Foods for some of Indias leading brands including Royal Enfield, Bira, Mother Dairy, Airtel, Unilevers Fair & Lovely, Clinic All Clear, Cadbury and many more. Over the years, he has had successful stints at leading agencies such as DDB Mudra Group, JWT, Rediffusion Y&R, Contract and Lowe Lintas. His last stint was at Edelman as Senior Vice President, National Planning & Strategy Head.
IT service company, Kyndryl India appoints Rony Thomas as Head of communications. He confirmed his Joining via a Linkedin post. He quoted Its an exciting challenge. Very few communications professionals get to join a US$ 19 Billion company with a presence in 65 countries just as it starts its journey as an independent entity. Thats rare. Yet, it brings with it amazing possibilities and opportunities to experiment, move fast, and build a strong brand that matters to customers and employees alike. I couldnt pass up on that chance!

He has spent over a decade at PR agencies Text 100 and Vox PR India Private Limited working on several blue-chip brands including Microsoft, Compaq, and APC among others. At Vox PR, a subsidiary of Text 100 India Pvt. Ltd, He was a Senior Consultant and agency lead for the IBM mandate and operations lead for the Vox PR team in Bangalore. Before joining Vox PR, He worked in Singapore for Text 100 Singapore on Symantec, Lenovo, and Linksys client mandates.

Over the past 22+ years, He has managed the PR campaigns for several blue-chip clients. In 2004, He was awarded the Text 100 APAC Star Award for Excellence in Technology. Later in 2006, He was also awarded the Text 100 India Person of the Year Award.

The creative highlight of his professional life was working as a production coordinator on a Merchant Ivory movie that starred Greta Scacchi.

Prior to this , he was with Amazon Web Services and Accenture leading their PR in India and with Hewlett Packard managing their Corporate Communications in India. He holds a Master of Business Degree in Communication Studies from the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
Alton, IL (62002)

Today

Showers and thundershowers early, mainly cloudy overnight with occasional rain likely, possibly heavy at times. Low 58F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Showers and thundershowers early, mainly cloudy overnight with occasional rain likely, possibly heavy at times. Low 58F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
The soybean market has turned the page on 2021 and is now focusing its attention on South America as 2022 begins.

The U.S. soybean crop was harvested last fall and put into bins or onto rail cars and ships for sale. This time of year, with much of the U.S soybean crop sold and soybean harvest underway in South America, the market is turning its attention to the Southern Hemisphere.

Were watching South America. Brazil is a huge country, (and) theyre starting harvest and the market will talk about that harvest for the next two months, said Ed Usset, professor emeritus and grain marketing economist with the University of Minnesota.

South America, mainly Brazil but also Argentina, is expecting a large, perhaps record crop this year due in part to increased planted acreage.

(The South American soybean) harvest has started, and the prices, Im hearing, are cheaper than U.S. prices on the world market, he said. Well see how that South American crop comes in.

Besides harvest, the market will also be keeping a close watch on weather patterns in Brazil and Argentina and how that may impact the crops.

Were keeping all eyes on South American weather and prospects, he said.

Right now, South America is looking at a large crop and Brazils prices are less than in the U.S., which may temper the U.S. soybean market. But this situation is not atypical as the world market usually turns toward South America once the new year and harvest begins there.

If theres a somewhat bearish case to be made out there right now, its with soybeans. Its less than bullish, lets put it that way, Usset said.

Looking at local prices, Usset noted that in southwestern Minnesota soybean prices were $13-plus for January delivery.

Over $13. Thats good stuff, he said. In August of 2020, local prices were in the $8 range, so this has been a very good year for soybean producers.

At one local elevator in west central Minnesota regularly followed in this column, as of Jan. 5, the January cash price for soybeans was $13.62 and basis was -35 cents under. The June 2022 futures price for new crop soybeans was listed at $14.09 and basis was +7 cents over.

Although the region is in the midst of winter, producers are already beginning to look ahead to spring and planning their rotations. In many cases, good soybean prices at this time of year would be an enticement for producers to increase acreage in spring, but thats not necessarily the case this year as many other grains are also seeing good prices. Because of that, Usset doesnt have a strong opinion on whether these good prices will have a big impact on planted acreage this spring.

I dont see a big enough difference in corn and soybean prices that producers are going to make a big shift between corn and soybeans. Thats my own sense, he said. Both markets are good. Both markets are profitable, and if theyre both doing well youre going to stick to your rotation.

The question I have is around wheat, he continued. Wheat prices are great and no one has any, and I wonder if in the Dakotas there might be a swing. Theres been a big, strong move for three decades for more corn and bean acres and less wheat acres in the Dakotas, and I just wonder if spring wheat wont steal a few acres back. It probably will.

People are going to look at corn and soybean values  and wheat  and make a judgment. I dont see a big enough difference between corn and soybeans to knock people off their rotations to make them change, he concluded.

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In Supreme Court arguments on the OSHA COVID Vaccination Mandate case, the Wise Latina revealed at least Sixth Degree Stupidity for all to see. One should not casually suggest that a graduate of law school who has ascended through the ranks to the highest Court in the land is stupid. But that is the inescapable conclusion her performance requires. For those who missed the demonstration of her upward failure, we must present the details. But first, we must look at the question the Supreme Court is supposedly trying to address.

Justice Kavanaugh granted the emergency appeal in NFIB v OSHA, and limited it to legal issues only:

Whether the Occupational Safety and Health Administrations Interim Final Rule: COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing; Emergency Temporary Standard, 86 Fed. Reg. 61402, violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 or the First Amendment.

This is a question of law. It does not in any way address how many of what sort of patients tested positive, became ill, were hospitalized, placed in the ICU, required a ventilator, or died. Those are medical questions and are outside the legal Question Presented. This is more than a technical distinction. The Supreme Court grant of certiorari specifically states what it will hear arguments about. Briefs for the appeal must address those arguments. But Justice Sotomayor must have missed that detail in law school.

The Wise Latina was not alone. Justices Kagan and Breyer were equally adrift in the storm of panic porn unleashed on America by the Dark Lord of Disease, Anthony Fauci. They are suffering from the same mass formation psychosis described by the great Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun.

If the soul is impartial in receiving information, it devotes to that information the share of critical investigation the information deserves, and its truth or untruth thus becomes clear. However, if the soul is infected with partisanship for a particular opinion or sect, it accepts without a moments hesitation the information that is agreeable to it. Prejudice and partisanship obscure the critical faculty and preclude critical investigation. The result is that falsehoods are accepted and transmitted. (Muhammad ibn Khaldun al-Hadrami, 1379).

These three alleged jurists could not contain themselves in presenting egregious lies about the prevalence and severity of COVID-19. In doing so they perverted the judicial process in ways that could not be remedied short of immediate factual rejoinders. Unfortunately, counsel for the plaintiffs in the case were unprepared for questions of fact and left great edifices of insanity standing without being challenged.

The first Justice appointed solely to satisfy equity rules for race and gender stated as fact,

Hospitals are almost at full capacity.

Over 100,000 children are hospitalized with COVID. Many are on ventilators.

If true, one in nine hospital beds in the US would have a COVID-ill child in it. But she overstated the number of hospitalized children by a factor of fifty because there are only about four thousand kids in the Krankenhaus with positive Wuhan Flu tests. CDC data shows a total of 823 deaths from COVID for ages 0-18 in the entire two years of the pandemic. Most of those have extreme obesity. Justice Sotomayor must have been listening to left-wing commentators emphasizing the horrific spike in cases and watching the visuals of traffic jams waiting for drive-through tonsillectomies. Of course, that is a self-fulfilling prophecy, due to COVID panic porn saturating the airwaves.

Mental incapacity was not restricted to the Wise Latina. Justice Breyer claimed that hospitals are full almost to the point of maximum, and 750 million new cases were reported in the US yesterday. I thought he was seated on the Supreme Court of a country with only 330 million people. And last time I checked, less than fifteen percent of hospital beds are occupied with COVID-positive patients.

Image: Supreme Court justices (edited in befunky). Fox News screen grab.

Just to complete the trifecta, Justice Kagan chimed in with,

Why isnt this necessary to abate a grave risk? This is a pandemic in which nearly a million people have died. It is by far the greatest public health danger that this country has faced in the last century. More and more people are dying every day, more and more people are getting sick every day. I dont mean to be dramatic here. Im just sort of stating facts.

Of course, shes using the 800,000 CDC death count which, by any rational consideration, cannot be true. Aside from questionable counting because of financial incentives and political pressure, we know that part of the spike in deaths is because of the lockdowns (drug overdoses, suicide, untreated underlying diseases) and the refusal to treat COVID patients. Even the CDC Director conceded yesterday that theres a difference between deaths from COVID and those with COVID.

All this hysteria derives from the near-complete suppression of scientific facts from the public square. Without going into all the details (which are amply documented by many), we may summarize the following.

COVID deaths have resulted from severe underlying medical conditions, which were exacerbated by the Alpha and Delta spike proteins.

Millions of people have needlessly become ill and thousands have died in the US due to the active suppression of prehospital treatment protocols centered on Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin.

The Omicron variant is a result of vaccination and Mullers Ratchet, which explains the near-universal natural process of viruses becoming more infectious and less deadly.

The Alpha spike protein, the toxic part of the virus, is the primary active part of the vaccine, meaning that the vaccine actually induces a form of the disease.

Vaccination is not preventing disease. In fact, it appears to be making disease more likely (and here).

Immunity following COVID recovery is far better than from vaccination.

Vaccination and extreme isolation are no protection from infection. An Antarctic research station with extremely strict incoming criteria and quarantine has still suffered an epidemic.

Vaccination has little or no effect on the possibility of a person spreading COVID.

In short, all the medical facts stand firmly in opposition to continued vaccination. This is true in spades for a vaccine mandate.

Fortunately, its likely that the conservative majority on the Court will be looking to the law, not the hype. After all, policy is the province of the Legislature, not the Executive. As Alexander Hamilton discovered in Lin-Manuel Mirandas wonderful lyrics, Youre going to need congressional approval, and you dont have the votes.

The President is not a king. He does not get to rule with a pen and a phone, and if our Supreme Court values our Republic, hell get slapped down. Again. If they dont, then everything our Founding Fathers fought and died for is likely to be lost, because there will no longer be any defining rules.

Ted Noel MD is a retired Anesthesiologist/Intensivist who podcasts and posts on social media as DoctorTed and @vidzette. His DoctorTed podcasts are available on iHeart, Stitcher, Pandora, and other channels.
Aside from labeling herself an affirmative action baby, Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor once suggested she was a wise Latina. Given this, apropos here is a line from ancient Chinese sage Confucius:

Wisdom is, when you know something, knowing that you know it; and when you do not know something, knowing that you do not know it.

Sotomayor certainly failed this test during oral arguments on Friday over the Biden administrations COVID-19 vaccine mandates, making outlandishly incorrect claims that have brought her mockery. We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators, she stated matter-of-factly. "We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition, many on ventilators.

Both assertions are so distant from reality that one could wonder where the judge gets her information; even limiting oneself to just New York Times perusal shouldnt yield such profound ignorance.

In reality, hospitals are not nearly overwhelmed, and the children hospitalized who have coronavirus number only about 3,700, according to the CDC. Yet even this is misleading. As Dr. Anthony Fauci himself admitted recently  with Democrats tanking poll numbers inspiring him to paint a rosier picture  most of these children are hospitalized with SARS-CoV-2, not because of COVID-19.

(Note: The former is the pathogen; COVID-19 is the disease that can result from it. So, technically, its not even correct to say that asymptomatic kids under medical care and testing positive for the virus are hospitalized with COVID; there is no COVID because they have no symptoms.)

As Fauci confessed, every child admitted to the hospital is automatically tested for the China virus, and thus will a kid being treated for a broken leg be listed as a hospitalization with SARS-CoV-2 upon a positive result. Of course, this merely echoes what those of us in the truthful media have been saying for, uh...almost two years.

Whats more, even though pediatric with-China-virus hospitalizations appear to have risen, this is likely only because were in respiratory disease season and the omicron variant is more contagious (but less deadly) than earlier strains.

The bottom line, however, is that healthy children are not imperiled by this disease. In fact, a recent study analyzing 15 months of the pandemic in Germany, a nation of 83 million people, found that not even one healthy youngster died of COVID.

Sotomayor wasnt alone in proving that epidemiology isnt her bag. Justice Neil Gorsuch said during oral arguments that [w]e have flu vaccines. Flu kills  I believe  hundreds or thousands of people every year." While the judge didnt explicitly say that he was referencing the United States (and not the world), his comments context makes clear that he was talking about our country. In reality, however, influenza claims an average of between 12,000 and 60,000 Americans annually. [Editor's note: There is also a strong indication that Gorsuch said not "hundreds of thousands" but "hundreds or thousands," with the MSN using the least reasonable interpretation. Newsweek has admitted that he did not say hundreds of thousands.]

In fairness, Gorsuchs mistake wasnt as egregious as Sotomayors. Not only did he preface his claim with I believe, indicating unsureness, but severe flu pandemics have killed upwards of 100,000. The Spanish flu in 1918-19, for example, claimed 675,000 Americans (more than two million adjusted for todays population). Nonetheless, he still was in error.

All this said, it wouldnt matter if there were one million American kids hospitalized for COVID and 100,000 on ventilators or if only two people died of the flu yearly  not insofar as a judges role goes, anyway.

A justices job is merely to render opinions on the constitutionality of executive and legislative actions, not on the wisdom of those actions. Its not the business of the courts to remedy a perhaps stupid but constitutional law or order; thats the role of legislators and/or chief executives, whose errancy can be remedied by the people (should the latter experience a moment of clarity at election time).

But Sotomayors and Gorsuchs errors illustrate another reason why judges should stay in their lane:

When perhaps drunk on power and venturing beyond their lane, they get lost and swerve and too frequently crash even worse than when they, often wantingly, attempt to conduct their legitimate duties.

Whats more, were the ones they crash into.

Now, I could note here about lawyers in general, as Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift did in Gullivers Travels, "that in all points out of their own trade, they were usually the most ignorant and stupid generation among us, the most despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and learning, and equally disposed to pervert the general reason of mankind in every other subject of discourse as in that of their own profession."

But I wouldnt do that (and not just because Swift already did). Rather, the point is that lawyers are specialists just like any other specialist, not Experts in the Area of Everything. As Professor Thomas Sowell has put it, most of us have expertise in only a narrow sphere of endeavor. Thus must a judge or leader possess enough humility to accept and recognize his limitations and not become a shining example of how a little knowledge is dangerous.

Unfortunately, though power may certainly corrupt, it surely can reveal a persons true character. And part of the reason judges arrogantly engage in judicial activism is that weve invited them out of their lane. I reference here the idea of judicial supremacy, the notion that courts opinions are not only binding on those parties to the case before them, but on the executive and legislative governmental branches as well.

This power, do note, was declared for the courts by the courts themselves, notably via the Marbury v. Madison decision (1803), and is not in the Constitution. It also is an idea that, if considered valid, Thomas Jefferson warned, would render our Constitution a felo de se  an act of suicide.

The proper role of the courts is, first, to rule on individual cases, with their decisions binding on a particular cases litigants but no one else. Second and as Ambassador Alan Keyes put it to me on the phone years ago, their function is to act as an alarm bell, saying at times to the nation, Beware! We think this law is unconstitutional; you need to take a look at it. If the people are convinced, its then their job to elect officials who will effect the necessary change.

Conservatives will understandably be very happy if the SCOTUS strikes down the Biden administrations vaccine coercion and if the feds, reflecting what they more or less have done for 200 years, then abide by the decision. Nonetheless, if Sotomayoresque stupidity doesnt illustrate the folly of allowing five black-robed lawyers to decide what law means for 334 million people, Im not sure what will.

By the way, some may wonder what wed do if the courts couldnt strike down the vax mandate wholesale. Well, a proper Constitutional understanding also informs that the states have the power to nullify unconstitutional federal actions; this would especially carry moral weight if the alarm bell SCOTUS had already opined against the given action.

The bottom line is that the judiciary should be the weakest branch, as Alexander Hamilton said, not the strongest precisely because unelected judges are shielded from the consequences of their folly. And, as English philosopher Herbert Spencer warned, "The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."

And a bench of fools doesnt make for a very good oligarchy.

Correction: Justice Gorsuch said "hundreds, thousands," not "hundreds of thousands" according to a revised Supreme Court transcritpt

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on MeWe or Parler, or log on to SelwynDuke.com.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License
In two and a half centuries, we have gone from this:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

To this:

You must, against your conscience and free will, submit to forced government injections of experimental chemicals developed by pharmaceutical companies motivated by profit and their bottom line, accept that medical treatments will be administered according to race, and consent to being digitally tracked in perpetuity to ensure your continued compliance with any future mandates the State may deem necessary for the "common good"  or you can lose your job, your property, your liberty, and any possibility for future happiness.

Is it any wonder that Democrats work so hard to "cancel" the Founding Fathers and their project for human freedom? If Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison were alive today, they'd take one look around, spit on their hands, grab some soft dirt, and get back to work. The American Leviathan can't have that.

If we were being honest, we would acknowledge that the current U.S. government has much more in common with Pablo Escobar than Thomas Jefferson. The Colombian drug lord and terrorist who controlled the Medellin Cartel in the late 20th century was fond of telling those who considered opposing him that they could choose either plata o plomo  silver or lead  riches or execution. I'm not saying that these experimental injections for the Chinese Flu are a death sentence  although for anybody who experiences an adverse reaction from forced treatment, especially when we won't know the potential long-term side-effects for a decade or longer, all of this still has to feel like a game of Russian roulette in which the first five players have already pulled the trigger and your turn's up next.

No, the real bullet the U.S. government has loaded in the chamber is for those who resist its medical dictatorship and find themselves denied their natural rights altogether. Plata o plomo, America! Reap the rewards of obeying the government's new authorities, or find out what life is like for those who will not comply. Following in Escobar's footsteps, the U.S. government has decided that threats and coercion are effective tools for selling a lot of drugs!

From my vantage point, the federal authorities have lost all goodwill with the people. Our current circumstances bring to mind a question posed by Boston clergyman and Loyalist Mather Byles (one revived by Mel Gibson in The Patriot): "Which is better  to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three thousand tyrants one mile away?" I know this much: if we could rid ourselves of all three thousand tyrants today by sending them all three thousand miles away, we as a people would be much more safe, secure, prosperous, and of course free.

In reflecting upon the crises collectivists and globalists have unleashed on civilization, Brandon Smith over at Alt-Market asks an important question: "Is there a way to prevent psychopaths from getting into positions of power?" He rightly sees free societies as being under sustained attack by a collection of narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths who have effectively taken over government and today conspire for "mutual gain" at the expense of those governed, "much like a pack of wolves" hunting and tearing apart their prey. He sagely notes that our current situation is ironic because the construction of democratic institutions over the last three centuries was intended, among other things, to liberate populations living under daily threats of death and turmoil brought by the rule of royal dynasties genetically predisposed to psychopathy and self-grandeur. Democratic institutions, in contrast, were supposed to provide strong mechanisms for "weed[ing] out aberrant individuals" through transparent elections.

Looking around today at who runs for office and holds power, though, it would seem that having an "aberrant" personality is more of a requirement than a disqualification. Our ruling psychopaths make running for office highly undesirable for good decent people, and the psychopathic 1% of the 1% pushing globalism down our throats have found it perhaps even more easy to control the votes and actions of poor elected representatives and bureaucrats than to deal with all-powerful kings or mercurial dictators. Smith sees an unavoidable fight coming in our future but does recommend a future electoral system should the psychopaths ever be "exiled" where a random public lottery (a la mode de William F. Buckley, Jr.), aided by strict term limits, fills every available political and government job. Hear! Hear!

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, and we do have a problem today: our "precious democracy" is filled with government actors you wouldn't trust to dog-sit, let alone babysit. This phenomenon is nothing new; power tends to attract the worst kinds of people. The good news is that our Founding Fathers devised a system that protects individual rights, champions liberty at the expense of government, and inherently limits power by separating it into distinct jurisdictional branches that compete against each other. The bad news is that the modern federal government threw out the Constitution decades ago so that the Supreme Court could act as a supra-legislative oligarchy, congressional authority could be controlled by a small monied international ruling class, the president could use his "pen and phone" as would a king, and administrative agencies could simultaneously harness the powers of all three branches of government with hardly any accountability owed to the voting public at all.

It should be no surprise, then, that our political leaders talk only about "saving democracy" these days and have nothing to say about "preserving freedom." If we actually preserved our freedom, they'd be out of office permanently. If "democracy," on the other hand, means nothing more than Club Psychopath, then those in power will rush to preserve their abomination faster than they jumped at the chance to board Jeffrey Epstein's Lolita Express. If "voting rights," as the Democrat Congress calls them, mean opening the electoral floodgates to large-scale mail-in balloting initiatives implemented by partisan political operatives and shielded from scrutiny by federal power-hoarders, then "democracy" is just another word for total and permanent control by an entrenched aristocracy. Democratic institutions are no good in and of themselves if they do not serve to preserve and protect the very natural rights and freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and given such robust spirit by our own Declaration of Independence.

It may be a modern proverb (one often incorrectly ascribed to Benjamin Franklin because it sounds as if it came straight from Poor Richard's Almanack), but it is no less true: "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." And when "our precious democracy" has more in common with Pablo Escobar's way of doing business than with Washington's or Jefferson's, we must always be prepared to contest the vote.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
History will record, once the storm clouds of leftist propaganda are dispelled by the winds of truth, that President Trump's remarks on January 6, 2021, were a defense of the Constitution, American democracy  and criticism of weak-kneed Republicans, addressed to tens of thousands of his patriotic supporters. Here is the text of those remarks.

President Trump was equally on target when, a year and a day after "Jan. 6," he called his successor to account for "doing the most divisive thing possible  slandering his political opponents as domestic terrorists, just like insecure dictators do in communist countries." In his January 7 response to the tawdry comments of the incumbent, Mr. Trump was on target in remarking, "The American people also see that January 6 has become the Democrats' excuse and pretext for the most chilling assault on the civil liberties of American citizens in generations." Here are Mr. Trump's January 7 incisive remarks as made available by the Trending Politics site, via Newsmax.

More than 700 people have been caught up in the "Jan. 6" net put out by Attorney General Garland's Justice Department. This report by NPR suggests that Garland, in the manner of A. Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson's attorney general, won't be satisfied until he gathers up thousands more innocent people in a bald attempt to intimidate the Republican Party in advance of this year's congressional elections, and the presidential election, November 2024. Indeed, it seems to this observer that we have just cause in referring to this attorney general as A. Merrick Garland (with the "A" standing for "Authoritarian"). Palmer, between November 1919 and January 1920, is reported to have taken into custody some 3,000 leftist immigrants, with one critic commenting that the aim seems to be "to repress a political party."



Library of Congress collection, public domain.

A century later, and Democrats appear again infected with the repressive bug to stamp out free speech. It is also to be noted that after a century, The Washington Post has not changed its repressive spots; where the paper, a century ago in this Wikipedia article on "The Palmer Raids," supported the roundup of East Europeans, today's Post, under oligarch J. Bezos, has no difficulty with a roundup of as many Trump people as Garland can find.

Republicans would do well to take instruction from Donald J. Trump on their tradition of buckling in response to Democrat aggrandizement, balderdash, and conspiracy diatribes, certainly going back to this baseless allegation by First Lady Clinton, on the Today show, January 27, 1998.

The tune is unchanged; merely the lyric. "Vast right-wing conspiracy" of 24 years ago has become

"Trump's anti-democracy conspiracy" of 2022. How refreshing, and politically productive, it would be, if all congressional Republicans stood fast with Donald J. Trump, against the lies of the aggrandizing left, and revitalized the legacy of liberty given us by the founders, that our domestic anti-democrats would undo.
The lead story on Fox News's website on Saturday reported that the Biden administration was telling hospitals that "certain Covid patients may qualify for treatment faster based on their RACE" (emphasis original). Earlier the same day, the Washington Free Beacon examined the story in considerable detail.

The roots of this de facto medical racism were first exposed in several articles at American Thinker by this writer, including on November 25, 2020, and on April 26, 2021. Back then, this toxic phenomenon of providing medical treatments based on the patient's race or ethnicity was in its infancy. Now, thanks to the power of Biden's FDA, it is going national.

As Saturday's Fox News article noted:

Guidance issued by the Biden administration states certain individuals may be considered "high risk" and more quickly qualify for monoclonal antibodies and oral antivirals used to treat COVID-19 based on their "race or ethnicity."



The top of Fox News's home page, Saturday, January 8, 2021.

The lead of the Free Beacon's story was more specific:

In New York, racial minorities are automatically eligible for scarce COVID-19 therapeutics, regardless of age or underlying conditions. In Utah, "Latinx ethnicity" counts for more points than "congestive heart failure" in a patient's "COVID-19 risk score"  the state's framework for allocating monoclonal antibodies. And in Minnesota, health officials have devised their own "ethical framework" that prioritizes black 18-year-olds over white 64-year-olds  even though the latter are at much higher risk of severe disease.

The Beacon's headline and subhead pointed to the origins of this racist policy:

Food and Drug Administration Guidance Drives Racial Rationing of COVID Drugs

State triage policies cite FDA guidance to justify allocating care based on race

In my April 2021 article at AT, I noted:

President Biden's 200 page Covid-19 plan (published on Jan. 21, 2021) is filled with references to race, inequality, equity, and the need to consider "redress" in virtually every federal department and program from now on. An Executive Order by Biden established a COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The roots of Biden's preoccupation with race and health care go back to the first days after the 2020 election. As I wrote at AT on November 9, 2020, when Biden's COVID-19 Task Force was announced, one of the panel's co-chairs fits this new race preference bill perfectly:

The second panel co-chair is Marcella Nunez-Smith, M.D., who grew up in the Virgin Islands and is now a physician at the Yale University School of Medicine, where she holds a variety of titles. Dr. Nunez-Smith specializes in race and health care and studies medicine through the prism of race, social justice, and identity politics.

As the Biden administration enters its second year in power this month, its racist medical policies have been institutionalized by administrative state fiat  thanks to the power accorded it by the COVID-19 Plandemic. It has also been given faux intellectual cover by the world's leading medical journals, all of which have gone "woke," including the New England Journal of Medicine. On its website, the NEJM has published a "Race and Medicine Collection" consisting of the full text of scores of recently published articles that "reflect(s) NEJM's commitment to understanding and combating racism as a public health and human rights crisis."

As I wrote in my AT article last April:

It turns out that for some time now the American medical Establishment has been laying the groundwork to focus increasingly on the alleged prominent role of racism in medical outcomes. An article in Time (April 21, 2021), for example, maintains that "a problem" is that "The World's Leading Medical Journals Don't Write About Racism." ... The authors write: Over the past year, rising deaths from COVID-19, police brutality, anti-Asian hate crimes, and the inequitable damage of climate breakdown, have made the manifold harms of racism easier for everyone to see. Harms that were once shielded from public consumption by segregation or shrouded from public scrutiny by stories depicting the U.S. as a nation of fairness and freedoms, are now the center of an ongoing national confrontation with racism and its impacts on health, safety, and justice. They then link to their new article (April 20, 2021) in a major peer-reviewed journal, Health Affairs: "Medicine's Privileged Gatekeepers: Producing Harmful Ignorance About Racism And Health." In that article, the authors express concern that in their review of 200,000 articles published during the past three decades in the world's four top medical journals, only 1% of them (or about 2,000) mentioned "racism." "Just think about that," they write. The source of the problem they insist is that "nearly all of the editors and chiefs [of the four journals] have been white men." They do see hope, however, now that Joe Biden is the president. On March 1, the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced new initiatives to address the impacts of "structural racism on biomedical research." On April 8, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared racism "a serious public health threat."

It appears that the unprecedented power and control amassed by the establishment thanks to the politics of COVID-19 have now encouraged the further corruption of medicine. The elites' obsession with equity has resulted in race being employed to facilitate the backdoor introduction of the medical Death Panels that Sarah Palin and others warned us about during the debate over Obamacare in 2009.

Peter Barry Chowka has been a frequent contributor to American Thinker since 2007. He is the permanent guest host of John B. Wells's national terrestrial radio programs Caravan to Midnight and Ark Midnight. Peter is also a regular contributor to the BBC and a frequent guest on the Glazov Gang internet video program.
There's a saying that if you want to know what the Democrats are doing, just look at what they're accusing others of doing. That's certainly the case when it comes to anti-Semitism. Democrats wildly hurl totally unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism at Republicans when it is their party that has become aggressively hostile to the world's only Jewish state and that traffics in Jewish stereotypes. The latest person to be smeared is Sen. Marco Rubio for calling out the media about its overwrought January 6 histrionics.

One could write a lengthy treatise about the anti-Semitism coming from the left. There is the Democrat party's increasing hostility to Israel. The Squad is famously anti-Israel. Just last month, one of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's staffers called Israel a "racist European ethnostate built on stolen land from its indigenous population." I addressed his antisemitism and ignorance here, so I won't repeat myself.

Ocasio-Cortez herself is no piker when it comes to hostility to Israel, so much so that she "wept" when it came to funding Israel's Iron Dome defense system. But the whole "Squad" (short for Squalid?) is like that. As Hamas rained rockets on Israel last May, the Squad went on a verbal rampage against Israel because Israel dared to use targeted strikes to take out the terrorists trying to kill her civilian population. To assuage them, Biden sent millions of taxpayer dollars to Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza.

And who can forget Squad member Ilhan Omar and her overt, classic anti-Semitic tropes? When it emerged that she'd married her brother, committing both immigration and student loan fraud, she immediately accused "Zionists" of targeting her. Then there was her tweet that American support for Israel was "all about the Benjamins," which is an explicit anti-Semitic trope about Jews buying the government. She also accused Israel of committing "unthinkable atrocities."

Whenever their anti-Semitism is pointed out, leftists immediately point to the Jews on their side of the aisle. However, sadly, these are Jews guided not by the Torah, but by the Democrat party platform and Marx. They like throwing around Yiddish words, boast about fasting on the high holidays, and talk about matzoh recipes, but their allegiance is neither to Jews nor to Israel.

Image: Marco Rubio. Rumble screen grab.

While all these Democrats feel perfectly comfortable insulting Jews and attacking Israel, they love to use the charge of anti-Semitism as a defense to protect George Soros from criticism. Soros is genetically Jewish but is otherwise hostile to all religions and especially hostile to Israel. And as of Sunday, Democrats have decided to use the smear as a cudgel against Marco Rubio, one of two senators from Florida, a state that has a significant Jewish population.

Rubio's alleged sin was a tweet stating that "[t]he upscale liberals who control the media and Democrat party believe Jan 6th was another Pearl Harbor or 9/11[.] And the rest of America, including many Democrats, think they are nuts[.]"

The upscale liberals who control the media and Democrat party believe Jan 6th was another Pearl Harbor or 9/11



And the rest of America, including many Democrats, think they are nuts  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 6, 2022

Rubio is correct. The mainstream media spent all of Thursday taking turns having fainting attacks as they relived the horror of January 6, 2021. And these people are indeed upscale liberals (although I would call them leftists). They're all college grads, so they've been indoctrinated. They're all frantically hostile to Trump, Republicans, and conservatism in general, and they run the gamut of races and religions. Indeed, Nicolle Wallace, Brian Stelter, Joy Reid, Whoopi Goldberg, Ana Navarro, Anderson Cooper, and all the other mainstream media talking heads are mostly not Jewish, but they live the lives of one-percenters.

Rubio, to his credit, refused to accept the left's attempt to smear him:

Cmon team Loony Left, dont be so lazy



The your a bigot smear is worn out & fake outrage is boring



If you are going to come for me can you at least put a little effort into it? https://t.co/UpmfDb8FpU  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 9, 2022

You dont get to lecture anyone about anti-semitism if you support,enable or sympathize with



-a liberal media that wont call Hamas terrorists



-socialist politicians who want to cut off support for Israel;or



-left wing activists who support BDS



https://t.co/8I77u7yT7E  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 9, 2022

The liberal controlled legacy & social media is anti-Semitic pic.twitter.com/GizxSVqwmX  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 9, 2022

No matter how you feel about Rubio, the one thing he is not is an anti-Semite. But the ones hurling the smear at him almost certainly are.
With the anniversary of January 6, we were handed a crafted feast prepared by the Democrats and the media. They equated January 6 with the attack on Pearl Harbor. You equate a riot with the deaths of 2,403 service persons who died in a sneak attack? They said it was another 9/11. How obscene. Moreover, Biden laid the blame for this at the doorstep of former president Trump, claiming, "He tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob reached the Capitol."

The argument seems foolhardy and bombastic at best, but there is a logic behind this  one aimed at the 2022 and 2024 elections. This is all about instilling fear. Their reason for doing this is simple  they intend this to be a major point of contention in the upcoming election cycles.

January 6 was an embarrassment, to be sure. It was tragic, in that a life was lost that day and police officers were injured.

Was it a threat to democracy?

Even the language the left uses to describe those events  "insurrection," "traitors," "domestic terrorists," "seditionists"  is designed to inflame passions and emotions. These phrases and words are specifically aimed at instilling fear in the general public. When 70 of their protesters attempted to force their way into the Capitol during the Brent Kavanaugh hearings, none of these phrases were applied. Like with the rioting, looting, and destruction during the summer of 2020, the left dodges its blatant hypocrisy.

Can you have an insurrection where there is no plan to overthrow the government? How many insurrections were, for the most part, unarmed in the last century? Can you have an insurrection if no one is charged with insurrection? Even if they coerced Congress to certify Trump as president, there was no way that vote would stand. In fact, despite all of the posturing, there is no sane or logical scenario where Trump would have remained president, but we are all led to believe that it was his wicked scheme all along.

Let's savor a bit of reality. The FBI reported last August that there was no overarching plot in the events that took place. Even Merrick Garland's comments about the prosecution of those involved did not use the word "insurrection" or references to domestic terrorism. While the Democrats have claimed that there were plans to kill specific members of their party, no one has been charged with attempted murder.

If there was a plot, by now we would have seen the documents detailing such a despicable plan. Instead, what we have are trespassing and vandalism charges, along with weapons charges against people for having canes, crutches, and mace. While some firearms were confiscated, the authorities have not said how many protesters were "armed." One thing is for certain: if hundreds were armed with guns, we would have seen footage of that as proof that this was an armed coup attempt. Is there such a thing as a disarmed insurrection?

The media still claim that five people were killed in the attack, despite the fact that only one individual, a protester, was killed that day. She was unarmed.

So why are the Democrats lying and inflating this embarrassing event? The party that loves labeling people and groups, and assigning negative attributes and collective guilt, wants to tie every Republican candidate to this event. It is their contention that this was a Republican conspiracy from the start, hence the whining about Democrat members of Congress being afraid of their Republican counterparts. They will seek to place every conservative head for the next eight years into a noose they call an insurrection that was really just a riot.

They intend to force Republicans to turn on each other. They will be pressured in debates to denounce an insurrection, whether that was what it was or not. The Democrats will demand capitulation on the part of Republican candidates and require them to denounce President Trump and anyone involved with the rioting that took place. If they do, the hope is it diminishes Trump. If they refuse, then it makes them look complicit in the rioting that took place.

The Democrats (and a handful of Republicans) still fear Donald Trump. Despite their best efforts, his is a voice that has to be reckoned with. They believe that making him the evil villain in a plot to overthrow the government is their path to permanent power. It plays well with people who already loathe Trump, but for the rest of America, it seems disingenuous.

So the spectacle of this last week was just that: a spectacle. It was theater. It is intended to frame arguments that will be aimed at every single Republican in the years to come.

Blaine L. Pardoe is author of Blue Dawn: The most chilling "what-if" in history...the progressive overthrow of the United States. Pardoe is an award winning New York Times bestselling author who lives in Virginia. He is the author of numerous science fiction, military history, true crime, horror, and business leadership books.

Image: Tyler Merbler.
As if we needed confidence in yet another American institution destroyed, we were treated with a true spectacle of deceit in last Friday's Supreme Court's oral arguments on OSHA's vaccine mandates. With the hysterical hyperbole of a CNN anchor, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a self-proclaimed wise Latina woman, refuted that description by declaring, "We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators. We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators."

Despite her Yale pedigree, or perhaps because of it, as physicist Wolfgang Pauli famously quipped, she's "not even wrong." You must at least be in the ballpark to be wrong, especially when the facts are easily accessed on HHS and CDC websites. As of today, hospital capacity is at 79%, with only 18% being used for COVID; there are 140 COVID hospitalizations of children; and cumulative child COVID cases since its inception total 5,520. Ventilator use, which proved deadly at the beginning of the pandemic, comes about in 3% of the cases.

Extending her epidemiological deception to the legislative record, Sotomayor explained, "OSHA proposed regulations, it didn't act fast enough, and Congress told it to act faster." The problem is, not only did Congress do no such thing, but it did exactly the opposite! Only a month ago, the Senate, with Democrat support, passed S.J. Res. 29 to nullify OSHA's vaccine mandate.

As implacably vacuous as Sotomayor's hysterics were, Justice Elena Kagan plunged the Court to a level so benighted that it made Roberts's "it's a tax" seem like wisdom from the Oracle of Delphi. While her progressive ramblings are certain to inspire the army of "experts" infesting every crevice of D.C.'s bloated bureaucracy, they betray a profound contempt for constitutional law:

So who decides? Should it be the agency full of expert policymakers and completely politically accountable through the President? This is not the kind of policy in which there's no political accountability. If people like this policy, they'll go to the polls and vote it that way. If people don't like it, they'll vote that way. This is a publicly  a politically accountable policy. It also has the virtue of expertise. So, on the one hand, the agency with their political leadership can decide. Or, on the other hand, courts can decide. Courts are not politically accountable. Courts have not been elected. Courts have no epidemiological expertise. Why in the world would courts decide this question?

Because it raises one of the biggest constitutional questions facing the country today: at what point will the Court enforce the Constitution's non-delegation doctrine? It's incredible that a sitting justice on the nation's highest court didn't even understand the question.

After the preamble, the very first line of the Constitution says, "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States," and therefore, they cannot be delegated anywhere else; hence, the non-delegation doctrine.



Image: Clarence Thomas. YouTube screen grab.

Yet, if studying the Supreme Court has taught us anything, it's that justices possess a superpower worthy of "The Incredibles" to rationalize away the Founders' clear written intent. In 1928's JW Hampton v. U.S., the Court rewrote the Constitution, stating that Congress could delegate its legislative duty if it did so framed with some "intelligible principle." Since then, this fundamental breach of the Constitution has been challenged only once, by none other than Court's only sitting true originalist, Justice Clarence Thomas, in 2001:

I am not convinced that the intelligible principle doctrine serves to prevent all cessions of legislative power. I believe that there are cases in which the principle is intelligible and yet the significance of the delegated decision is simply too great for the decision to be called anything other than 'legislative.' On a future day, however, I would be willing to address the question whether our delegation jurisprudence has strayed too far from our Founders' understanding of separation of powers.

But this isn't Kagan's only failure, because her claim that OSHA's mandate is "completely politically accountable through the president'' ignores over 100 years of the Court's equally egregious jurisprudence. Madison wrote "the president alone should possess the power of removal [of Executive Branch employees] from office [creating] an unbroken chain of dependence" to a president accountable to the people. Today, Madison's premise, as well as Kagan's assertion, is laughable.

The assault on the Unitary Executive goes back to Congress's "Tenure in Office Act of 1867" requiring congressional approval to terminate high-ranking individuals. Andrew Johnson was famously impeached for violating it. Later, when FDR tried to remove the FTC commissioner, the Court ignored Article II's clear language  "executive Power shall be vested in a President"  and effectively amended new language to the Constitution, that the power of removal is not illimitable when the agency function is quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial.

It only got worse when JFK issued executive order 10988 granting government employees the right to unionize, which was codified into the Civil Service Reform Act of '78. Between the Court's rulings and collective bargaining contracts, the president has been emasculated in carrying out "his great responsibility" of exercising executive branch functions. As Common Good founder and author Phillip Howard lamented, "the links in the chain of authority have been broken."

Despite Sotomayor's hysterics and Kagan's constitutional obliviousness, with OSHA about to ram through the most costly and far-reaching mandates ever  a mind-numbing 154 pages  and Congress on record against it, all under the guise of an emergency, and all without public comment, if today is not Thomas's promised day to re-evaluate the Court's delegation jurisprudence, then that day will never come.
On the eve of the Russia-NATO talks over Ukraine, a spanner seems to have been thrown into the works with the Kazakhstan revolt and Russian military intervention that's followed.

The initial conventional wisdom was that Vladimir Putin has now got his hands full and won't be invading Ukraine any time soon.

It's dubious. Seems to me that the 3,000 troops Russia sent are kind of piddly, given the million-strong size of the Russian army. Three thousand troops is about the same size of the U.S. troop count that the U.S. had been keeping inside Afghanistan to prevent the place from becoming a hellhole, back when President Trump was in office. Even the foreign policy establishment, these characters who tell the Bidenites what to think, have lately been changing that forcast. I checked Foreign Policy.

The real problem seems to be in Russia's perception of who started the revolt, which may well lead to Joe Biden, shattering any good will Putin may have had in cooperating with NATO on Ukraine, as well as any leverage with Russia that the U.S. might have.

If so, thanks a lot, Joe.

In a nutshell, the Russians think Joe Biden did it, throwing out the Kazakhstan revolt like a stun-grenade distraction to draw Russian attention away from Ukraine and thus keep the Russians from invading the place. Russian troops have been massing along the Ukraine border for months now, and U.S. intelligence officials have forecast an invasion sometime early this year. The Bidenites don't actually know what to do about it, given that Putin saw their military 'brilliance' up close in the catastrophic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as the Bidenites' wokester military focus, hunting "terrorists" in its own ranks. With this crap going on, Putin knows he has nothing to fear from Joe Biden, so now's the time for an invasion if that's what he wants. From Russia's point of view, eastern Ukraine at least, is already pretty much is Russia anyway, and the U.S. doesn't keep its promises on Russian security, as AT contributors Alexander Markovsky and Ted Belman have noted here.

But Kazakhstan complicates that best-laid plan. It's as if someone wants the Russians to be kept busy putting out dumpster fires over in the scruffy 'stans bordering its eastern hinterlands so that it can't contemplate taking back Ukraine.

Clint Ehrlich, who identifies himself as a computer scientist and lawyer, and seems to have had contractual ties with Russia, as well as a Russian perch, has a very interesting perspective arguing it may well be that Joe's the one doing this:

Here is the beginning of Ehrlich's sequence of tweets on Twitter:

The situation in Kazakhstan is a much bigger deal than Western media is letting on.



I believe it significantly increases the risk of NATO-Russia conflict.



Here is my report from Moscow. A MEGA-thread...   Clint Ehrlich (@ClintEhrlich) January 7, 2022

Or, you can read ZeroHedge's excellent summary of the tweets here.

Ehrlich starts by pointing out Russia's vital interests in Kazakhstan -- in uranium, in rocket launches, in the two countries' gargantuan shared border with the prospect of Kazakh refugees flooding into Russia if there's real trouble, and in the large Russian minority (25%) inside Kazakhstan, who are largely resented by the locals and who could well become targets of "ethnic cleansing" by the country's crazed Islamist fanatics and/or resentful nationalists. He writes:

What is "hybrid war"? From the Russian perspective, it is a two-pronged approach to regime change. First, Western-backed NGOs encourage large protests against an incumbent government. Second, armed provocateurs use the protests as cover to stage kinetic attacks.

Which is pretty much the U.S. playbook, as such terms go: Start a Sorosian "color revolution," with glorious talk about "democracy" and all those Kazakhs out there who really want to be Jeffersonian democrats, and then get some disgruntled elites to maneuver to power behind the scenes to get the standing oligarchs out. It worked in Ukraine...

White House spokesweasel Jen Psaki has denied it, of course, calling it Russian propaganda straight out of the Russian "playbook," but she's on thin ice. What the heck would she know about a Russian playbook given the Democrats' claims to Russian disinformation back when the Hunter Biden emails were out, let alone the Democrat-created Steele dossier? All of these were claims of a Russian playbook, too. What would she know about a Russian playbook, given that all the previous playbook acts she's cited have been the Democrats' own doing? Sit this one out, Jen.

Ehrlich notes that sine the U.S. playbook worked out well for the Obama administration in Ukraine in 2014, they may well be trying to duplicate it again in Kazakhstan.

Here are a couple of screenshots of tweets I made earlier about the Russian point of view -- this Viktoriya Topalova character, who was supposedly an independent researcher based in Canada, amd had very useful observations about Kazakhstan, but mysteriously disappeared from Twitter in the last day or so. We all know that Twitter takes orders from the White House, so it's hard not to wonder if she was shut down for being a Russian government-sponsored account:

So that might have been the Kremlin speaking, given that her very interesting Twitter account was shut down (or maybe deleted?) in the last few days.

Meanwhile, Ehrlich, with all his Moscow ties and Moscow location, has noted that NGOs were crowing about their involvement in stirring the pot in Kazakhstan, too. That's two claims.

It does look like some sort of "playbook" on pot-stirring, but it's uncertain still if the U.S. was involved. Maybe it was just Sorosians, who specialize in this stuff.

Things point harder to Biden, though, with the news that Kazakhstan's former intelligence chief, Karim Q. Massimov, got arrested. The Diplomat reports it this way:

According to a statement from Kazakhstans National Security Committee (KNB), the countrys intelligence and security service, on January 8 its former head, Karim Massimov, was arrested on January 6 on charges of treason. Massimov had led the powerful organization until his dismissal on January 5. As Paolo Sorbello explained earlier this week: Massimov, like his deputy Samat Abish (who was fired on January 4), is a loyalist of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled the country for 29 years until 2019 and hand-picked Tokayev to be his successor.

That was a man Hunter Biden called his close friend. The picture, if authentic, shows it.

That's also Massimov standing on the right, next to Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.



They had a controversial meeting, unmasked by anti-corruption activists inside Kazakhstan.



It's awkward for the U.S. President to be linked to the man accused of heading an anti-Russian uprising. pic.twitter.com/1Bl29Xoj0a  Clint Ehrlich (@ClintEhrlich) January 8, 2022

The excellent Mark Wauck, a former FBI agent and occasional AT contributor, on his Meaning In History Substack, writes this

The Baidan connection to Kazakhstannot just Ukraine and Chinahas long been known to those who followed the crime family that now occupies the White House. Among the Baidan connections in Kazakhstan was the the head of the intel servicesnow the former head: Among the boldest and eye-brow raising political moves by embattled Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev within the past days that grabbed international headlines was his ordering the arrest of Kazakhstan's powerful former intelligence chief, Karim Massimov, on the charge of high treason. Eyebrow raising? Id say so. A direct Baidan connection, head of the intel services, charged with high treason for leading an attemptedand apparently failedcoup? People want to know whether he did that at the behest of Zhou. Certainly the Russians will say soand why not, given the aggressive US moves and rhetoric of the past months? What's more, a NGO-type group called KIAR, which says it's a corruption fighting group in Kazakhstan, (and could be a Russian front, too) says this:

Hunter Biden, a board member of the Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma, became the epicenter of a huge political scandal in Washington. He received hundreds of thousands of dollars of salary at this company, while his father was the vice president of the United States and was personally responsible for the policy towards Ukraine. Currently, in the US Congress, these circumstances have led to numerous hearings. But no one knows that H. Biden received payments from KazMunaiGas, since he was a member of the management of the Kazakh company Burisma Kazakhstan. It was created jointly by the Kazakh state concern and a private Ukrainian company. Now the Burisma Group corporate website is unavailable, but we know that it was Karim Massimov, being the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, who received the leaders of Burisma in Astana and instructed KazMunaiGaz to create a joint venture with it. What for? Is it not so that you can legally pay American politicians? This is the money that Kazakh oil workers and their families did not receive 

Well.

And it's pretty interesting that Hunter's Ukraine ties mesh with his Kazakh ties and his good friend the now-busted Massimov.

The arrest of Massimov suggests that Kazakhstan's president is starting to get the upper hand. That would no doubt be the result of his close ties to Moscow, which has at least some intelligence on what is going on on the Biden-side of things, particularly since Hunter Biden is so exposed. It's quite likely they have a lot on the Bidens, given their intelligence apparat, and this new exposure of Biden, via the Massimov bust, can only serve to tie Biden's hands further, as the specter of his role in Kazakhstan now can be exposed.

Sound like Biden's in a good position to project American strength? When have we ever had a U.S. president as compromised as this -- to the point of lacking any leverage -- and as likely to get caught? In the past, the Kremlin would compromise Democrats based on ideological affinities, the kind Bernie Sanders used to project, or else Reagan-hate: Look up Ted Kennedy who ran interference for the Soviet Kremlin for stuff on that one. Today, the Kremlin has corruption leverage, knowing all of Joe's venal secrets around his greed for cash as the big guy, and the fact that he seems to have tried to pull a fast one by starting something in Kazakhstan. If I were Ukrainian right about now, I'd be plenty worried.
With the Supreme Court on the verge of deciding one of its most consequential decisions ever with regard to OSHA and CMS vaccines mandates, Americans are fast approaching a tipping point that might require us all to make some difficult decisions.

On the one hand, if the Court upholds the mandates, millions will be forced to inoculate or forced into poverty. Will we go silently into that dark night, or we will resist? What will that resistance look like? What will the Marxist authoritarians do to enforce these mandates  apart from forcing us out of our jobs. Impose fines? Incarcerate us? With jails across the country emptying out as radical district attorneys refuse to enforce the law, will there be enough room to accommodate the millions who resist? If not, what kind of facilities will be erected to house the unvaccinated? Will mayors and governors take executive action, or legislatures enact laws, that allow government agents to vaccinate us against our will (which might entail "making us more compliant and willing to cooperate" with medication)?

Sounds like a dystopian novel or sci-fi flick, but if the highest court of the land doesn't see the glaring violation of our inalienable rights, this isn't that far-fetched, and We the People will be on our own.

Waiting until the 2022 elections are over in the hopes that Republicans win is not the best solution. First, we might not win. If we do, the majority might not be robust enough. In any case, we can never be sure Republicans in the majority will vote as a unified party. Even if they present a solid bloc, after their repeated failures in repealing Obamacare and providing alternatives that they had over eight years to prepare for, how can we ever trust Republicans to follow through on any legislation to combat vaccine mandates?

There is much the Congress could do in clarifying the very muddy waters of public health law  such as repealing vaccine mandates already in place; defining the exact circumstances in the case of a national emergency that threatens national security, where the federal government can preempt 100+ years of clear precedent that states have police powers in regulating public health; or maybe going so far as to lay out constitutional guidelines the states should follow in balancing compelling state interests in quarantines/lockdowns/mask or vaccine mandates against the rights of individuals to make their own health decisions and freely exercise their First Amendment liberties  especially in the context of new medical technology that hasn't been fully vetted.

On the other hand, if the Court grants the stay, effectively taking the teeth out of the mandates, it still ain't over. Democrats might ignore the decision. They'll likely work on other workarounds. But, of even greater concern, will a denial of the mandates on federalism grounds (confirming that mandates fall within the police powers not of the federal government, but of the states), empower blue states to take even more drastic measures?

If so, the broader constitutional issues that affect us as individuals  fundamental rights to life, liberty, and property  as opposed to federalism squabbles, will become even more pressing. Can a state deny us our means of survival in terms of a job? Or fine us so much money for lack of compliance that we have no choice but to comply? Or punish us in other ways, like withholding our Social Security payments or Medicare?

It's not that hard to imagine such wicked behavior by an administration, as we now have (for the second time) the Biden administration controlling and limiting the supply of monoclonal antibodies to Floridians.

In an ideal world, a SCOTUS ruling against the mandates would cause the entire house of COVID mandates to collapse. I pray for that. But a taste of power can be intoxicating and hard to give up. When it comes to COVID, Democrats are like a dog with a bone.

We must be prepared for any contingency and, above all, be prepared to stand together and stand up for each other. We have no power as individuals, but we do in large numbers.

Moreover, law enforcement personnel, national guardsmen, and military members will have to choose sides: blindly enforce what you know in your heart is wrong, freedom-crushing, and outright un-American? Or refuse to comply even if that means you lose your job?

We've all seen the videos of cops dragging unmasked parents from their kids' outdoor sporting events or berating a five-year-old for not wearing a mask at a Manhattan restaurant. Do you want to be that guy or our heroes?

And what about you doctors, the majority of whom took leave of your senses, forgot about your oaths, lost your cojones, and abandoned your patients? What will you do with patients who refuse to get vaccinated? Betray them and turn them in? What if authorities threaten your license  will you kowtow to save your own butt and allow medical procedures to be forced on unwilling patients? Has COVID Fear so infected your rational brain that you are willing to defenestrate informed consent and return to a time when, without any informed consent, black males with syphilis were studied and not treated with penicillin?

If you think I'm exaggerating, let's not forget that doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies denied us the right to try alternative COVID treatments like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, and the president is currently controlling the supply of and restricting monoclonal antibody treatments!

None of us ever anticipated battling this kind of enemy from within  being jailed indefinitely for exercising our First Amendment rights or being investigated by federal agencies for standing up to school boards. None of us could ever imagine the government monitoring the social media accounts of our soldiers.

None of us wants to lose a job or choose between respecting and carrying out the wishes of our superiors, and honoring our freedoms and fellow citizens by standing up to those superiors.

The people we should model ourselves after are the police officers, health care workers, and members of the military who have stood up to their superiors for what they know is wrong and didn't forget about the little guy.

If the Supreme Court lets us down, remember Obama's mantra: "We are the ones we've been waiting for."

If we don't do our part to stop the madness, government will be unrestrained in doing just about anything in the interest of public health, and free will, as we know it, will cease to exist. No joke.

Photo credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
Supreme Court Sets Up High-Level Committee On Modi's Security Lapse:- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi faced a security breach during his Punjab tour and he had to return back home without completing his tour. This created a sensation across the country and the Union Home Ministry asked the Punjab government to come up with an explanation about the security breach. The Supreme Court of India today constituted a Committee that is headed by a judge to probe into the matter. The bench headed by NV Ramana and Surya Kant, Hima Kohli heard the plea and announced their decision. Advocate General DS Patwalia appeared on behalf of the Punjab government and Patiala informed the court that the travel details of Narendra Modi were taken on record by the Registrar General of the High Court.

He also informed the top court that seven show-cause notices have been issued to the cops and the concerned authorities in Punjab after the incident. The lawyer also argued to direct an Independent probe instead of a Committee. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta mentioned about the Blue Book of the Special Protection Group (SPG) that is tasked by the security of the Indian Prime Minister. The state government was not bothered about the minimum inconvenience and the protest area is just 100 m from the place where the Prime Minister reached told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta. He said that there was no intimation to the convoy about the crowd gathering and called it an intelligence failure.
Fossil smartwatches will soon gain Alexa support. The Texas-based fashion brand, which is a long-time maker of Wear OS smartwatches, announced the news during an online briefing at CES 2022. The company also unveiled a new smartwatch under its Skagen sub-brand, called the Falster Gen 6, at the recently concluded electronics show. Additionally, it collaborated with Razer for a limited edition version of the Fossil Gen 6 smartwatch that debuted last year.

Alexa support will roll out to both of these new smartwatches in the coming months. Perhaps, according to a 9to5Google report, the Skagen Falster Gen 6 already features a Wear OS tile for the Amazon digital assistant. But it currently doesnt work. You can apply the tile but navigating to it simply brings up a Coming Soon message.

The original Fossil Gen 6 will also get Amazon Alexa, the company has confirmed. Alexa will be launching in the first half of this year on our Gen 6 devices, with the opportunity to roll out on future devices. Well have more information closer to launch! Fossil said in a statement.

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While Alexa is all but confirmed to feature on future Fossil smartwatches, the company didnt tell whether or not it plans to roll out the Amazon digital assistant to its older models. We will likely get confirmation on that when the rollout begins for the Gen 6 devices.

Well have to wait longer for Wear OS 3 to arrive on Fossil smartwatches

Googles Wear OS platform for smartwatches received a much-needed overhaul last year, thanks in part to Samsung and Fitbit. The new unified platform, which is called Wear OS 3, debuted on Samsungs Galaxy Watch 4 series. But, unfortunately, those are still the only devices running the much-improved new version. And will remain so for several more months.

Fossils Gen 6 models launched after Wear OS 3 arrived but, disappointingly, still running the older version. Google said they will eventually receive the update to the new version but not until the mid to second half of 2022. Fossil was expected to provide a more concrete timeframe at CES 2022 but, sadly, it didnt. The company simply reiterated Googles original timeline. So well have to wait longer for Wear OS to arrive on Fossil smartwatches.

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Wear OS 3 will be also available to a handful of devices from Mobvoi. These include the TicWatch Pro 3 GPS, TicWatch Pro 3 Cellular/LTE, TicWatch E3, and the Chinese brands future models. Stay tuned for more information regarding the rollout timeline.
The Gmail app has been around since Android was first released. So it should come as no surprise that the app has now officially crossed 10 billion installs on the Google Play Store.

With this landmark, the Gmail app is now only the fourth to have at least 10 billion installs. Other apps on the list include Google Play Services, YouTube, and Google Maps. Other Google apps such as Chrome, Photos, and Search could be next to join this exclusive club.

As Android Police points out, Facebook will likely be the first non-Google app to breach the 10 billion installs mark. Its also important to remember that Gmail comes preinstalled on every Android smartphone with Play Services, so its not a surprising feat by any metric.

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Gmail is now more than just an app for emails, thanks to the introduction of productivity features

The current iteration of Gmail is significantly different from its original version. Initially meant to be a mobile substitute for the web version of Gmail, the app has now grown into a productivity hub. With apps like Meet and Chat built into Gmail, its no longer just an email client. This, in turn, has led Google to discontinue its popular chat service, Hangouts.

One of the more recent additions to Gmail enables users to start 1:1 video or audio calls inside a chat window. This is a convenient way to communicate with your contacts rather than sending them an invite link. The update coincided with the winding down of Google Hangouts as most of its features were integrated into Chat and Meet.

Needless to say, Gmail is now more functional than ever, with the ability to make or receive audio/video calls and manage your mail. But the inclusion of these features has also made it somewhat cumbersome. If youre considering alternatives, we recommend checking out the Spark mail client, which offers a few features that are missing on Googles mail client.

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Gmail is the last of Googles concerns right now as it emerges from a rocky end to 2021. The companys marquee product launch of 2021, the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, didnt manage to please experts. The initial launch of the device was marred with bugs and glitches, some of which have since been fixed with updates.
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Robert Durst, who left behind a trail of corpses and the mystery of a body never found, died Monday of cardiac arrest at age 78.

His lawyer told The New York Times he died at a hospital in Stockton, Calif.

In 2000, Durst was convicted of the murder of a friend, who prosecutors said he killed to cover up the slaying of his wife nearly two decades earlier. Durst, prosecutors contended  and jurors believed  shot Susan Berman to keep her from talking to authorities.

Bob Saget found dead in Orlando hotel room Saget landed dozens of roles across a career that spanned four decades, including hosting "Full House," Americas Funniest Home Videos and serving as the narrator of How I Met Your Mother.

The wheels of justice finally caught up to Durst in 2021, when he was convicted Sept. 17 in the Dec. 23, 2000, killing of Berman. Authorities contended Durst killed his wife, Kathie, in 1982. Her body was never found, and Durst took whatever knowledge he had of the crime to his grave.

Susan Berman was a witness to a crime and was intentionally killed, the jury forewoman said when announcing the guilty verdict against Durst.

The Westchester County district attorney announced Oct. 2 it had charged Durst in Kathie McCormack Dursts killing.

On Oct. 14, Durst was sentenced to life in prison, with Deputy District Attorney John Lewin calling Durst as a narcissistic psychopath.

Hes 78 years old, Lewin said. Hes been walking around for a long time. He had a lot more of a life ... Kathie didnt make 30. On balance, considering what hes done, he got a lot more of a life than he was entitled to.

The New York real estate scion became notorious nationally in 2015 when HBO aired The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, a six-part documentary that detailed his wifes disappearance, Bermans execution-style shooting and Dursts killing and dismembering of a Texas man in 2001.

Durst was born in New York City, the eldest of four children of real estate magnate Seymour Durst and his socialite wife Bernice Herstein, who died in a fall when Robert was 7. He grew up in swanky Scarsdale in Westchester County.

He originally passed on the family business, opening a health food store, All Good Things, in Vermont in the early 1970s. He closed it in 1973, when his father convinced him to come back to the city and work for the Durst Organization. But he was stepped over when Seymour selected Roberts brother Douglas to run the company.

Robert met Kathleen McCormack in Vermont, and they married in New York on April 12, 1973, Roberts 30th birthday. Durst and his wife lived in South Salem, Westchester County, when she was last seen alive in 1982. Three weeks before she vanished, Kathy was treated at a Bronx hospital for facial bruises. She told a friend Robert had hit her but declined to press charges.

Eight years after Kathie vanished, he divorced her, citing abandonment. At her familys request, Kathie was declared legally dead in 2017.

Her fate remained a mystery, with the theory being that Durst killed her and disposed of her body in New Jerseys Pine Barrens.

One person who might have known what happened was Berman. She was a longtime friend of Durst who helped provide him for an alibi for the time Kathie vanished. When authorities began probing the case in 2000, she was a loose end too dangerous for Durst to dismiss.

On Dec. 23, 2000, he went to the L.A.-area home of his longtime ally  the daughter of mobster David Berman, a partner-in-crime of Bugsy Siegel  and pumped a slug in the back of her head.

It would take two decades for Durst to pay for that crime, which gave him time to kill Morris Black in Texas in 2001. Black was a neighbor of Dursts, until his body parts were discovered in Galveston Bay.

Durst claimed the shooting was self-defense and was acquitted of homicide. He was convicted of dismembering the corpse  doing such a good job with a knife, two saws and an ax that Blacks head was never found.

As a criminal, he seemed to be leading a charmed life, until HBOs The Jinx changed his luck. Durst seemed eager to tell his version of the truth, speaking with director Andrew Jarecki. But the story didnt portray Durst in the light hed hoped.

On March 14, 2015, the day before the last episode aired, Durst was arrested and charged with Bermans murder.

In the series, Bermans stepson gives the documentarians an envelope Durst sent to his mother, with the handwriting matching that of an anonymous letter sent to police to alert them to Bermans murder. Both letters also misspelled Beverly Hills as Beverley Hills.

Confronted with the letters, Durst asked the filmmakers for another interview. After the interview ended, Durst went to the bathroom unaware that his microphone was still recording. In a rambling, off-camera diatribe to himself, he closed with, What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.

Little did he know he was writing his own epitaph.
Michael Lang, who brought the legendary Woodstock music festival to life in 1969, died Saturday at age 77 from a rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Lang, a Brooklyn native and New York University dropout, made a name for himself as a concert promoter in the late '60s, particularly the 1968 Miami Pop Festival, which included Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry and Frank Zappa.

But it was in Woodstock, N.Y., where Lang, alongside Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld and John Roberts, made history.

Bob Saget found dead in Orlando hotel room Saget landed dozens of roles across a career that spanned four decades, including hosting "Full House," Americas Funniest Home Videos and serving as the narrator of How I Met Your Mother.

More than 400,000 people descended on the three-day festival in mid-August 1969, converging on Max Yasgurs farm for a heady mix of sex, drugs and music from Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Who, Carlos Santana, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and more.

Woodstock offered an environment for people to express their better selves, if you will, Lang told Pollstar in 2019. It was probably the most peaceful event of its kind in history. That was because of expectations and what people wanted to create there.

Lang followed up the shows unimaginable success with two more festivals: Woodstock '94, featuring Green Day, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nine Inch Nails, and Woodstock '99, with Metallica and Rage Against the Machine.

A planned 50th anniversary show in 2019, with scheduled performances including The Killers, Imagine Dragons, Halsey, Miley Cyrus, Janelle Monae, Dead and Company, Santana and David Crosby, fell apart over financial issues.

Lang is survived by wife Tamara and five children.
(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 10 - A Rome judge on Monday requested the government intervene to enable the case to move forward against four Egyptian National Security Agency (NSA) officers over the abduction, torture and murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni in 2016.

In October the Court of Assizes in Rome ruled the trial in absentia of the four Egyptian security could not proceed until there was proof the defendants had formally received notice of being on trial, sending the case back to a preliminary hearings judge (GUP).

On Monday the GUP transmitted the case documents to the government to verify if anything had come from warrants sent to the Egyptian authorities in April 2019 and to see if there was any room for dialogue with Cairo on this matter.

The judge said a hearing would take place on April 11 to assess the results of Monday's request.

Regeni was found dead in a ditch on the Cairo-Alexandria highway on February 3, 2016, a week after disappearing.

The 28-year-old from Friuli had been tortured so badly that his mother said she only recognised him by the tip of his nose.

He had been fingered as a spy by the head of Cairo street sellers' unions, the politically sensitive issue that was the subject of his doctoral research for Cambridge University.

Last month a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the Regeni case said blame for the researcher's death lies with the four NSA officers and said that Egypt should now be called to "face up to its responsibility".

It said "if it is good that (prosecutors) are insisting despite the ever clearer Egyptian boycott (of the investigation and trial), at a political level it is time to remind Egypt of its responsibilities, as a State, which are very clear.

"The time has come for a decisive step to be taken with the Egyptian government in order to remove the obstacle hindering the probe". (ANSA).


(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 10 - Tourism Minister Massimo Garavaglia on Monday visited the Italy pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020, shown around by Expo Commissioner General Paolo Glisenti.

Among the others attending were Italian Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates Nicola Lerner and the President of tourist board ENIT, Giorgio Palmucci.

Garavaglia was visibly fascinated by the explanations of the various exhibits on show and particularly struck by its showpiece, a 3D reconstruction of Michelangelo's David.

Among the exhibits he toured were one unveiled Sunday on theatres in Sicily, and an immersive installation in the Spazio Accademia dedicated to the mosaics, archaeological artifacts and the architectural riches of Sicily.

Garavaglia is at Expo for the week devoted to travel and connectivity.

His visit continued with a look at the pavilions of Portugal and the UAE, as well as participation in the international forum "New Frontiers of Sustainable Tourism", at the Italian pavilion.

(ANSA).


BEIRUT -International and local humanitarian organizations have denounced human rights violations operated by the United Arab Emirates, a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council which has presented itself as "open" to western-style reforms. Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR) have published a document over the past few hours stating that Emirati authorities have recently imposed detention to a well-known political opponent who was prevented access to medical care after a letter he wrote was published in July by foreign media.



HRW and GCHR said authorities in Abu Dhabi transferred Ahmed Mansur, detained for the past four years, to a smaller and more isolated cell, denying him medical attention.



Mansur was arrested in 2017 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for articles considered as "offensive" by the United Arab Emirates. In his posts on social media, Mansur repeatedly called for reforms promoting democracy and human rights. Authorities in Abu Dhabi have always denied allegations of abuse and violations against political opponents. In July, an internet news site in Arabic, based in London, called Arabi21, published a letter in which Ahmed Mansur denounced violations suffered in the prison of Sadr, north-east of the capital Abu Dhabi.


NAPLES - Women in Saudi Arabia will be allowed to become taxi drivers. The Saudi government announced its decision, highlighting that the change is one of a series of steps that are part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 strategy to diversify the country's economy, online newspaper The National reports. Women, the newspapers said, will be allowed to attend 18 driving schools that offer driving license courses and exams required to hold a taxi license: the schools are in the main Saudi cities including Riyadh, Jeddah, Jazan, Asir, Najran, Jouf, Hail and Taif.

The government's announcement was welcomed with joy by women who see their employment opportunities increase. Only in 2017, in fact, women were allowed to drive their private cars and since then over 174,000 Saudi women have taken a driving license.

The political strategy of Vision 2030 aims to increase women's role in public life. The participation of women in the labor market has risen from 19% in 2016 to 33% in 2020, according to the Saudi statistics bureau.
Zaki: in Imola itinerant show on prisoners of conscience From January 20 to February 10 in Piazza Matteotti

(ANSAmed) - BOLOGNA, JANUARY 10 - Bringing the themes of freedom and justice to the places of civil society, making them accessible to everybody, is the objective pursued by Imola, which will host from January 20 to February 10 the exhibit 'Zaki and others prisoners of conscience', set up under the covered walkway of Piazza Matteotti with the portraits of Gianluca Costantini.



It is the itinerant show created on the 30th birthday of Patrick Zaki, which was organized in Bologna in June and was also held in several cities, including Turin and Bari. At a national level, it was organized by Amnesty International Italia and the Sardines grassroots movement. Local partners along with the municipality and the University of Bologna include Anpi, Libera, Soci Coop Alleanza 3.0, Comitato pace e diritti. The initiative is organized "at a time that is not a coincidence - a time during which perhaps we will know something about the judicial situation of Zaki", said Giacomo Gambi, the culture councilor of Imola.



The Egyptian student of the University of Bologna was released from jail in December after 22 months in prison but he is still on trial with a hearing scheduled on February 1. The exhibit, explained Marianna Francesca Tafuro for Amnesty International Imola, "is a small reconstruction of the repression of prisoners around the world: 50 from 13 different countries". Zaki, she stressed, "was never alone". He was "with thousands of people in the world that are persecuted for who they are or what they do", said the activist, adding that "Patrick is not alone because since his arrest demonstrations and initiatives were organized to be close to him and ask for his release. It is also thanks to the attention of civil society, since this show was presented, that seven people have been released in a few months", including Sanaa Seif and Mahienour el Masry in Egypt. Zaki's name has not been included yet because his judicial case is still pending. "Until that moment, we will continue the battle to free Patrick and other prisoners of conscience". (ANSAmed).




Energy: Eni wins five exploration licenses in Egypt In eastern Mediterranean, western desert and Suez Gulf

(ANSAmed) - ROME, JANUARY 10 - Italian oil and gas giant Eni has won five exploration licenses granted by the Egyptian oil ministry, including four as operator, in the Egyptian onshore and offshore, after the "Egypt International Bid Round for Petroleum Exploration and Exploitation" 2021 previously announced by the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation and the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company through the Egypt Exploration and Production Gateway. The announcement was made in a statement Monday by the Italian energy group which explained that the licenses are in the eastern Mediterranean (Block "EGY-MED-E5" in partnership with BP 50%-50% and Block "EGY-MED-E6" IEOC 100%), in the Suez Gulf (Block "EGY GOS-13" IEOC 100%) and in the western desert (Blocks "Egy-WD- 7" in partnership with APEX 50%-50% and "EGY-WD-9" IEOC 100%) with a total surface of 8,410 square kilometers.



The licenses, continued Eni, "are placed within prolific basins with proven oil systems able to generate liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons and can also rely on nearby existing producing and processing facilities and on a demanding market that will allow the rapid valorization of the potential exploration discoveries". These results, the statement also said, "are in line with Eni's strategy to continue to explore and produce gas to support the internal Egyptian market and contribute to the exports of LNG thanks to the recent restart of the Damietta LNG plant". Eni has been present in Egypt since 1954, where it is currently the main producer in the country of equity hydrocarbons for some 350,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. (ANSAmed). (ANSA).




Italy-Lebanon: photovoltaic system thanks to blue helmets Project 'Forli for Lebanon' continues

(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, JANUARY 10 - Italian blue helmets that are part of the UN mission in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL) are continuing to support the project "Forli per il Libano" (Forli for Lebanon) for the Lebanese population that has been enduring an unprecedented social and economic crisis, according to a statement issued by the command of the Italian contingent of UNIFIL.



The statement said that the "city of Forli, thanks to the sense of solidarity of its citizens, together with the municipality and several organizations operating in the territory, including the Committee for the fight against hunger in the world, Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi di Forli and Avis in Forli, has created a project for the population" of the province of Tyre in southern Lebanon. According to the statement, "the blue helmets of ItalBatt of the UNIFIL mission operation in south-west Lebanon, on base 66 Reggimento Fanteria Aeromobile Trieste, have activated a photovoltaic system at the high school of Bazuryeh, one of the three municipalities present in the area of responsibility of the Italian battalion".



The statement said that the school of Bazuryeh "has a user base of 700 youths, many coming from neighboring villages".



According to the statement, the last local intervention "capitalizes on efforts of the community of Forli to support projects for the development of education and culture". Over the past few days, a ceremony was held for the activation of the photovoltaic system.(ANSAmed).




BEIRUT - Italian blue helmets that are part of the UN mission in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL) are continuing to support the project "Forli per il Libano" (Forli for Lebanon) for the Lebanese population that has been enduring an unprecedented social and economic crisis, according to a statement issued by the command of the Italian contingent of UNIFIL.

The statement said that the "city of Forli, thanks to the sense of solidarity of its citizens, together with the municipality and several organizations operating in the territory, including the Committee for the fight against hunger in the world, Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi di Forli and Avis in Forli, has created a project for the population" of the province of Tyre in southern Lebanon. According to the statement, "the blue helmets of ItalBatt of the UNIFIL mission operation in south-west Lebanon, on base 66 Reggimento Fanteria Aeromobile Trieste, have activated a photovoltaic system at the high school of Bazuryeh, one of the three municipalities present in the area of responsibility of the Italian battalion".

The statement said that the school of Bazuryeh "has a user base of 700 youths, many coming from neighboring villages".

According to the statement, the last local intervention "capitalizes on efforts of the community of Forli to support projects for the development of education and culture". Over the past few days, a ceremony was held for the activation of the photovoltaic system.
Lebanon: premier Miqati in Cairo looks for support Meetings with top Egyptian officials scheduled

(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, JANUARY 10 - Lebanese Premier Najib Miqati, for months trapped in an institutional stalemate caused by the same political forces that support his government, has landed in Cairo where he is scheduled to meet with top Egyptian officials, media in Beirut report. The reports said Miqati's visit to Egypt follows an invitation by Cairo to take part in the Youth Forum scheduled to take place in the tourist resort of Sharm ash Shaykh on the Red Sea.



Since mid-October, the Lebanese executive, which was only formed in September, has not gathered due to an impasse decided by pro-Iranian armed party Hezbollah. The Shiite movement feels threatened by the Lebanese judicial investigation into the devastating explosion at the port of Beirut, which in August 2020 killed 220 people, and has repeatedly asked for the removal of the head of investigations. (ANSAmed).




Migrants: France, record Channel crossing attempts in 2021 Number of people who drowned off Calais has tripled

(ANSAmed) - PARIS, JANUARY 10 - The year 2021 recorded a record number of attempts to cross the English Channel, said on Monday the French office in charge of immigration and integration (Ofii). The bureau added that the number of wrecked and rescued migrants off Calais, in northern France, who were then assisted by the State, tripled last year.



"The number of shipwrecked people off Calais who were rescued was 1,002 in 2021", compared to 341 in 2020 or an increase of 194%, Ofii told France Presse. Last November, the Channel turned into a cemetery with the shipwreck of a rubber dinghy in which 27 migrants who were trying to reach Great Britain died - a similar tragedy to the many reported in the Mediterranean Sea.



(ANSAmed).




UAE 'violate human rights' - HRW, GCHR 'Political detainee deprived of medical care and in isolation'

(ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, JANUARY 10 -International and local humanitarian organizations have denounced human rights violations operated by the United Arab Emirates, a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council which has presented itself as "open" to western-style reforms. Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR) have published a document over the past few hours stating that Emirati authorities have recently imposed detention to a well-known political opponent who was prevented access to medical care after a letter he wrote was published in July by foreign media.



HRW and GCHR said authorities in Abu Dhabi transferred Ahmed Mansur, detained for the past four years, to a smaller and more isolated cell, denying him medical attention.



Mansur was arrested in 2017 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for articles considered as "offensive" by the United Arab Emirates. In his posts on social media, Mansur repeatedly called for reforms promoting democracy and human rights. Authorities in Abu Dhabi have always denied allegations of abuse and violations against political opponents. In July, an internet news site in Arabic, based in London, called Arabi21, published a letter in which Ahmed Mansur denounced violations suffered in the prison of Sadr, north-east of the capital Abu Dhabi.(ANSAmed).




Boris Johnson will not face an investigation by Parliaments sleaze watchdog into the 112,000 refurbishment of his Downing Street flat, No 10 has confirmed.

Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone had faced calls to investigate whether the Prime Minister broke the rules for MPs after his adviser on ministerial interests, Lord Geidt, revealed last week that Mr Johnson had failed to tell him about exchanges with a Tory donor who helped fund the revamp.

Labour called on Ms Stone to open an inquiry after it emerged that the Prime Minister had discussed a pet project by Lord Brownlow for a Great Exhibition 2.0 in WhatsApp messages in which he also asked for the go-ahead for the refurbishment work.

Ministerial records show that, six weeks later, Lord Brownlow met then-culture secretary Oliver Dowden and representatives of the Albert Hall to discuss his proposal  although it did not in the end proceed.

Lord Geidt said he was not informed of Boris Johnsons exchanges with a Tory donor (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Labour said it was corruption plain and simple if Lord Brownlow was able to get access to ministers in return for helping to bankroll the redecoration work.

However the Prime Ministers official spokesman said it had been confirmed that Ms Stone would not be carrying out an inquiry into the matter.

It is not for me to speak on behalf of her, but I understand she has confirmed they wont be looking at that, the spokesman said.

It is understood that Ms Stone wrote to No 10 at the end of last week, making clear that support for ministers in their ministerial activities should be declared through the Ministerial Code  which Mr Johnson did  rather than the Register of Members Interests, which she polices.

In his report last week, Lord Geidt said he would not have changed his original conclusion that Mr Johnson did not breach the Ministerial Code if he had been aware of the exchanges with Lord Brownlow, although he made clear his deep unhappiness at the way the issue had been handled.

The Prime Minister said after he learned that the work  which far exceeded the official 30,000 allowance  had been paid for by the Conservative Party, including a donation by Lord Brownlow, he reimbursed the costs from his own pocket.

A previous investigation by the Electoral Commission resulted in the party being fined 17,800 for failing to properly declare a 67,000 donation from a firm controlled by Lord Brownlow.
MPs have mourned the loss of Jack Dromey by paying tributes and holding a minutes silence.

Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle led the Commons in paying their respects to the Labour MP, who died in his flat in his Birmingham constituency on Friday.

Shadow communities secretary Lisa Nandy said: Mr Speaker, can I thank you for your kind words about Jack Dromey who should have been with us today  there is a space over there that I know Jack would have occupied.

Back in the 70s, horrified by the spectacle of a skyscraper in London that lay empty while people slept rough underneath it, Jack was one of those who occupied Centre Point Tower in protest.

He was never afraid to speak truth to power, and I hope today marks the start of all of us across the House invoking his spirit.

Communities Secretary Michael Gove agreed with Ms Nandys generous and fitting tribute.

Mr Gove added: He was a relentless campaigner for social justice throughout his career.

Earlier, Sir Lindsay said: I regret to have to report to the House the death of our friend Jack Dromey, member for Birmingham Erdington.

I know honourable members in all parts of the House will join me in mourning the loss of our colleague and extending our sympathy to the honourable members family and friends.

He added there will be an opportunity for MPs to pay tribute to Mr Dromey at a later date, to be determined in consultation with the family.

Defence minister Leo Docherty opened defence questions by associating himself with the Speakers tribute, and expressed his deepest sympathy to Mr Dromeys wife  Labour MP Harriet Harman  and the rest of his family.

The father-of-three had represented Birmingham Erdington since 2010. He is understood to have died from natural causes, having contributed to a Parliament debate as recently as Thursday.

Shadow defence secretary John Healey mourned the death of his Labour colleague (PA)

Labour shadow defence secretary John Healey said: We mourn deeply on this side his very sad, very sudden death.

He touched everyone he worked with, everyone has a proud moment of reflection of Jack Dromeys story and our House and our politics are the poorer without him this week.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: We are sorry for his loss, our condolences are with his family.

I shall remember Jack with his trademark mac that he often wore and never changed, and also his well-crafted arguments, often against the Government, but nevertheless making a strong, often powerful point.

Conservative MP for Beckenham Bob Stewart said: I am very sad about the loss of Jack.

I have known him since we both served together, him for the unions, me for the military, in Northern Ireland a long time ago.
The boss of Atom Bank said he is utterly committed to the groups new four-day working week after the move sparked a 500% surge in job applications and boosted staff morale.

Mark Mullen, chief executive of the digital lender, said that while it was too early to declare victory, results of the trial so far have been encouraging.

The UKs first app-based bank saw the jump in people applying for job vacancies in one week, shortly after it announced all employees could work 34 hours over four days instead of the usual 37.5 hours over five days  with no pay cut.

Atom Bank boss Mark Mullen switched employees to a four-day week in November (Jonathan Brady/PA)

A survey of Atoms staff also showed they are feeling less stressed, with 86% now looking forward to going to work each day, up from 77%.

Speaking to the PA news agency, Mr Mullen said that while the firm is only two months into the new regime, there are really good reasons to be optimistic and cheerful.

Its initial review showed improvements in most areas, from short-term sickness and customer complaints to filling vacancies and boosting staff numbers.

Mr Mullen is initially trialling the move for three months, but stressed the move was a commitment and not an experiment.

Im utterly committed to the decision, he said.

I have no doubt in my mind that if Atom people want to make the four-day working week a success, well make it a success.

The decision saw the firm become the biggest UK company to adopt a four-day week and comes as companies across a raft of sectors are boosting staff benefits to attract and retain employees.

Stockbroker finnCap offered staff unlimited paid holidays to help prevent burnout and, from January, will ensure employees take a least four weeks off each year, including a few days every quarter.

Virgin Money also increased the number of holiday days workers can take each year, while over-50s insurer Saga recently became the first firm to offer paid leave to grandparents.

Mr Mullen said Atoms radical change was made in direct response to the pandemic, coming amid the much-talked about Great Resignation as lockdowns saw workers rethink their careers and strive for a better work-life balance.

In a nutshell, its about competing for talent and retaining people, and ultimately being successful, because people are our business, he said.

Like many firms, Atom saw staff turnover increase after the first lockdown and found it harder to hire.

At one stage, the Durham-headquartered bank had 70 vacancies  nearly three times the normal level.

It has already begun to turn the tide on hiring thanks to the shift to home working and the four-day week, with staff numbers increasing to more than 460.

However, the group continues to monitor the impact of the changes, with its one-month review flagging an increase in staff turnover and recorded overtime, though Atom stressed these measures are usually tracked on a rolling average and that data for a single month is not representative.

Not all staff have opted to switch to a four-day week at the group, but around 95% of employees decided to make the change  with Mr Mullen leading the way.

Its strange to have Fridays off and not feel like I should be doing something but I really rather like it, he said.

For years I couldnt sleep on a Sunday because I was getting agitated about Monday but Im finding Im just not stressed about Monday mornings anymore.
(AP) - Robert Durst, the wealthy New York real estate heir who was convicted of killing his best friend and sentenced to life in prison, has died at the age of 78.

Durst died in a state prison hospital facility in Stockton, his attorney Chip Lewis said.

He said it was from natural causes due to a number of health issues.

Durst was convicted in September of shooting Susan Berman at point-blank range in 2000 at her Los Angeles home. He was sentenced to life October 14.

Two days later, he was admitted to hospital with Covid-19, his trial attorney Dick DeGuerin said.

Durst had long been suspected of killing his wife, Kathie, who went missing in 1982 and has been declared legally dead. He was finally indicted in November for second-degree murder in her death.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles presented evidence Durst silenced Berman because she helped him cover up Kathies killing and was about to talk to investigators.

They also argued he killed a Texas man who discovered his identity when he was living secretly in Galveston after Bermans killing. Durst was acquitted of murder in that case in 2003, after testifying he shot him in self-defence.

Durst discussed the cases and made several damning statements including a stunning confession during an unguarded moment in the six-part HBO documentary series The Jinx: The Life And Deaths Of Robert Durst.

The show made his name known to a new generation and brought renewed scrutiny and suspicion from authorities.

He was arrested in Bermans killing the night before the final episode, which closed with him mumbling to himself in a bathroom while still wearing hot mic saying: Youre caught. What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.

The quotes were later revealed to have been manipulated for dramatic effect but the production  done with Dursts cooperation against the advice from his lawyer and friends  dredged up new evidence including an envelope that connected Durst to the scene of Bermans killing as well as incriminating statements he made.

Police had received a note directing them to Bermans home with only the word CADAVER written in block letters.

In interviews given between 2010 and 2015, Durst told the makers of the The Jinx that he did not write the note, but whoever did had killed her.

Youre writing a note to the police that only the killer could have written, Durst said.

His defence lawyers conceded in the run-up to trial that Durst had written the note, and prosecutors said it amounted to a confession.

Clips from The Jinx, and from the 2010 movie All Good Things in which Ryan Gosling played a fictionalised version of Durst, had starring roles at trial.

As did Durst himself. His attorneys again took the risk of putting him on the stand for what turned out to be about three weeks of testimony. It did not work as it had in Texas.

Under devastating cross-examination by prosecutor John Lewin, Durst admitted he lied under oath in the past and would do it again to get out of trouble.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 14: Robert Durst (R), seated with attorney Dick DeGuerin, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole on October 14, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. Durst was sentenced for the murder of Susan Berman in 2000. (Photo by Myung J. Chun-Pool/Getty Images)

Did you kill Susan Berman? is strictly a hypothetical, Durst said from the stand. I did not kill Susan Berman. But if I had, I would lie about it.

The jury promptly returned a guilty verdict.

It long appeared he would avoid any such convictions.

Durst went on the run in late 2000 after New York authorities reopened an investigation into his wifes disappearance, renting a modest apartment in Galveston and disguising himself as a mute woman.

In 2001, the body parts of a neighbour, Morris Black, began washing up in Galveston Bay.

Arrested in the killing, Durst jumped bail. He was arrested for shoplifting a sandwich six weeks later in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he had gone to college. Police found 37,000 dollars in cash and two handguns in his car.

He would testify that Black had pulled a gun on him and died when the weapon went off during a struggle. He told jurors in detail how he bought tools and dismembered and disposed of Blacks body. He was acquitted of murder. He pleaded guilty to violating his bail, and to evidence tampering for the dismemberment. He served three years in prison.

Durst had bladder cancer and his health deteriorated during the Berman trial. He was escorted into court in a wheelchair wearing prison attire each day because his attorneys said he was unable to change into a suit. But the judge declined further delays after a 14-month pause during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr DeGuerin said Durst was very, very sick at his sentencing hearing and it was the worst he looked in the 20 years he spent representing him.

Durst entered the courtroom with wide-eyed vacant stare. Near the end of the hearing after Ms Bermans loved ones told the judge how her death upended their lives, Durst coughed hard and then appeared to struggle to breathe. His chest heaved and he pulled his mask down below his mouth and began to gulp for air.

The son of real estate magnate Seymour Durst, Robert Durst was born April 12, 1943, and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He would later say that at age of seven, he witnessed his mothers death in a fall from their home.

He graduated with an economics degree in 1965 from Lehigh University, where he played lacrosse. He entered a doctoral programme at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he met Ms Berman, but dropped out and returned to New York in 1969.

He became a developer in the family business, but his father passed him over to make his younger brother, and rival, Douglas the head of the Durst Organisation in 1992.

In 1971, Robert Durst met Kathie McCormack, and the two married on his 30th birthday in 1973.

In January 1982, his wife was a student in her final year at medical school when she disappeared. She had shown up unexpectedly at a friends dinner party in Newtown, Connecticut, then left after a call from her husband to return to their home in South Salem, New York.

Robert Durst told police he last saw her when he put her on a train to stay at their apartment in Manhattan because she had classes the next day.

He would divorce her eight years later, claiming spousal abandonment, and in 2017, at her familys request, she was declared legally dead.

Robert Durst is survived by his second wife Debrah Charatan, whom he married in 2000. He had no children.
Morgan Wallen appeared alongside his Big Loud label-mate, ERNEST, Saturday night as the emerging country vocalist made his scheduled debut appearance at the Grand Ole Opry. The tandem recently collaborated on a new ballad, "Flower Shops," which they sang together during ERNEST's set.

The appearance was first reported via the Grand Ole Opry's Twitter feed with a tweet at 8:41 p.m. CST stating, "Surprise! @MorganWallen joins @ernest615 to perform their new duet 'Flower Shops.'"

Almost immediately, the Grand Ole Opry's Twitter feed was inundated with fierce backlash to Wallen's appearance due to the perception that the top-selling artist has yet to significantly atone for the perception that he's a racist, following his February 2021 controversy surrounding his use of a racial slur.

This issue was compounded by a tweet dated June 9, 2020, from the Opry at the onset of the post-George Floyd/national riots era of the Black Lives Matter movement. In it, the Opry stated, "Racism is real. It is unacceptable. And it has no place at the Grand Ole Opry."

Racism is real. It is unacceptable. And it has no place at The Grand Ole Opry. pic.twitter.com/nKN66V5u88  Grand Ole Opry (@opry) June 9, 2020

Wallen's appearance follows a year wherein the Opry has made moves to feature several Black artists onstage, as Brittney Spencer, BRELAND, and Willie Jones all made Opry debuts.

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Black artists and performers, along with white allies who occupy the country-adjacent Americana lane, sounded off on Twitter about the Opry's decision.

"Last night @opry, you had a choice- either upset one guy and his team, or break the hearts of a legion of aspiring Black country artists. You chose wrong, and Im real sad for a lot of my friends today. Not surprised, though. Just sad," Tweeted superstar performer Jason Isbell.

Isbell famously had seven Black female artists open for him during an eight-night October 2021 residency at the Ryman Auditorium (whose 2013 song "Cover Me Up" was covered by Wallen in 2019) tweeted.

Allison Russell poses for a portrait Thursday, Aug. 12, 2021 in Nashville, Tenn. Russell was raised in Canadian by a father she describes as a white supremacist. At age 15, as she explored her emotional and sexual identity, she ran away from home and relied for a time on sleeping in Montreal graveyards and 24-hour coffee shops. Now an adult with a child of her own, she found her way to Nashville and documented her coming of age on Outside Child, one of the finest albums out of Music City in 2021.

Allison Russell, a Grammy-nominated artist and a key figure in the Americana Music Festival's #AllAmericana campaign, tweeted, "the rot of bigotry permeating mainstream country is rough. But take as #bellhooks said, 'Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power-not because they don't see it, but because they see it & they don't want it to exist.' #allamericana"

"morgan wallens thoughtless redemption tour is the nail in the coffin of me realizing these systems, and this town is really not for us, wrote rising star Joy Oladokun. "imma keep making my lil music in my attic, yall can listen if you want. i dont know that ill do this work forever."

In support of Oladokun's tweet, 2021's Americana Artist of the Year Brandi Carlile made a much blunter and more caustic statement: "F*** em. The ones you want are listening to you."

Rissi Palmer, a Durham, North Carolina-based veteran Black Nashville performer who made her Opry debut in 2007 (and returned to the stage in 2021), added something of a note of next steps in a series of tweets, writing the following:

"I believe now is the time to watch and move. Watch how people are responding and reacting and move accordingly. Systems only work when we continue to participate in them. The moment we stop and divest, they lose their power. I cant say this enough: lets stop running into a burning building. Lets create platforms and systems that celebrate and welcome us. Never again will I beg anyone to love/accept me, and neither should anyone else. Anyone that wants to participate in that, they can come sit w/ me. Money and power is all this industry understands and respects. If you figure out how to make money and create power, guess whos knocking on your door? Black Wall streets were created AND destroyed for a reason, remember that."

The Opry's Twitter has remained silent outside of a seemingly timed tweet for 8:00 AM CST Sunday. As well, as of the printing of this story, representatives from neither Big Loud Records nor the Grand Ole Opry have responded to requests by The Tennessean for statements. The Tennessean will update this story upon receiving communication from either party.

Charley Pride performs during the Grand Ole Opry show at the Ryman Auditorium on Feb. 3, 2012.

The Opry's historical record regarding race includes Charley Pride's 1993 invitation to join the Opry and Darius Rucker's invitation in 2012. In 1925, Black harmonica player DeFord Bailey overcame racial opposition from the director of the Grand Ole Opry's home radio station, WSM Radio, before making his debut appearance. Following years of the Opry also included white artists playing in blackface like Lee Roy "Lasses" White and his partner, Lee Davis "Honey" Wilds, who joined the Grand Ole Opry cast in 1932. Then, by 1967, the previously mentioned Pride made his Opry debut. In recent years, performers including Palmer in 2007, Mickey Guyton (debuted in 2015), and recent The Voice runner-up Wendy Moten (debuted in 2019) have appeared.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Morgan Wallen on Grand Ole Opry with ERNEST sparks backlash
(Reuters) - U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren sharpened her criticism of the Federal Reserve on Monday over its handling of an ethics scandal at the central bank ahead of the renomination hearing of Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

Warren, a Democrat and member of the Senate Banking Committee, is one of the lawmakers Powell will appear before on Tuesday as the committee considers whether to progress his renomination. She has already said she will not support his reappointment to the post. Powell is expected to be reconfirmed.

"I am deeply concerned that your continued refusal to release information about Fed officials' trading is at odds with your stated commitment to address the scandal 'forthrightly and transparently' and... it raises suspicions that the Fed may be failing to disclose the full scope of the scandal to the public," Warren wrote in a letter to Powell.

Her new letter, following two earlier requests for information from the central bank last year, comes after a report in the New York Times last week that Fed Vice Chair Richard Clarida had corrected his previous financial disclosure late last month. The updated disclosure showed he sold a stock fund and then swiftly rebought it shortly before the Fed announced a barrage of rescue programs to stem the economic fallout from the pandemic.

The latest controversy follows the resignations of two regional Fed bank presidents, Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan and Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren, last year in the wake of an outcry over their trading activities during the pandemic.

Powell has since announced new ethics rules governing financial holdings and dealings at the central bank but Warren has requested a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into Fed officials' trading activity to determine if any trades violated insider trading rules.

In her letter, Warren renewed her calls for the Fed to disclose all ethics communications provided to Fed officials in 2020 and 2021. She requested a response by Jan. 17.

(Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
A pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong. (AFP via Getty Images)

Can democracy be snuffed out? You bet it can. Just look at whats happening in Hong Kong.

My last visit there was at the end of 2019, right before the pandemic, during what seems in retrospect to have been the final stand of the pro-democracy movement. In those days, pop-up demonstrations were a regular event, including clashes in the streets between masked activists and police officers.

The Hong Kong government was already cracking down on dissent and increasingly siding with Beijing's efforts to bring the city under its total control. But independent news organizations still challenged the erosion of democratic freedoms. Opposition politicians spoke out in defense of autonomy and independence.

Everywhere there were signs of debate, dissent and resistance: detritus from the previous nights protests, peeling wall posters and angry anti-government graffiti.

But those days are over.

The protests have been beaten back. More than 100 pro-democracy leaders and activists have been charged under the draconian national security law imposed in June 2020. Thousands of demonstrators have been arrested as well; the charges include subversion and separatism.

Government is being purged of critics. In 2021, Hong Kong and Chinese authorities demanded that elected officials and candidates for office pledge their loyalty not just to Hong Kong and its laws, but to Beijing as well. Hundreds of members of Hong Kong's district councils resigned or were removed from office. Even those who swore fealty were removed if the authorities didnt find their pledges credible.

The repression of the independent media has been intense  and successful. In the final week of December, Stand News, an independent pro-democracy website, was raided by hundreds of police officers; seven editors, board members and a journalist were arrested and the organization said the site would be taken down. A few days later, on Jan. 3, Citizen News, a small online news site, said it too would stop publishing due to fears for the safety of its staff.

They were among the last remaining independent voices in the city. Their closure followed the shutdown in June of the feisty, independent tabloid Apple Daily, owned by clothing tycoon Jimmy Lai, who is now in prison.

The teachers union and the citys largest independent trade union were disbanded in 2021, as was the Civil Human Rights Front, which had organized some of the biggest pro-democracy demonstrations.

Police and courts have become tools of Chinese state control rather than independent and impartial enforcers of the rule of law, said Human Rights Watch in June. Since my visit, academic freedom has been threatened, museums harassed, films canceled, monuments removed, political slogans banned and books removed from libraries.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam is now merely a functionary of the government in Beijing.

This is how democracies disappear. Without leaders who dare to speak out, without venues to publish or broadcast independent news, without recourse to an independent judicial system, without basic rights and liberties guaranteed and protected by the government, theres no way for the people of Hong Kong to stand firm against the encroaching overlords from the mainland.

Their subjugation is terribly depressing to watch.

The city was under British colonial rule for more than 150 years, until 1997, when the United Kingdom handed it over to China. At that time, the Chinese government agreed to allow a significant measure of political autonomy and personal freedom for 50 years under a framework known as one country, two systems.

But that promise has been broken.

The United States government decries the situation, of course. After Stand News was shut down two weeks ago, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Journalism is not sedition. A confident government that is unafraid of the truth embraces a free press.

But what is the U.S. prepared to do about it? Theres a limit to how much pressure the American government will put on a mighty superpower like China to protect the people of Hong Kong. Hong Kong matters more to China than it does to us.

If nothing else, whats occurring in Hong Kong is a reminder that democracy is fragile. Thats something we should take to heart.

There was a period just after the Cold War ended when some people believed the forward march of democracy had become irreversible, that the collapse of dictatorships was inevitable , that the liberal democratic order had triumphed over totalitarianism and despotism. In the early 2000s, the number of free and democratic countries grew dramatically, by all sorts of measures.

But in recent years, democracy has been in retreat. The Economists Democracy Index for 2020, for instance, found that thanks to democratic backsliding, only 8.4% of the worlds people were now living in what could be considered full democracy. The index's global democracy score was lower than its been since it was created in 2006.

Backsliding has occurred here at home, too. The Economist now classifies the U.S. as a flawed democracy. And in March of last year, the U.S. fell to a new low in an annual global ranking of political rights and civil liberties by Freedom House, earning 83 out of 100 points, down from 94 a decade earlier.

So we can't be complacent. Democracy, the rule of law, civil rights and individual liberties matter  and they are in jeopardy, at home and abroad. The people of Hong Kong are sending us a poignant message: If you live in a democratic system, savor it and celebrate it  and fight for its survival.

@Nick_Goldberg

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
John and Katianna Hong are opening Yangban Society, a deli and mini-mart a place to gather items for a picnic, grab drinks before dinner or sit down for a meal. (Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)

Katianna and John Hong have cooked in Michelin-starred restaurants, but their newest endeavor has taken them on a very different path. On Jan. 10, they are scheduled to open Yangban Society, a casual deli and super mini-mart that they say will challenge notions of what it means to be Korean American.

Yangban was designed to be many things at once  a place to gather items for a picnic, grab drinks before dinner or sit down for a meal. It occupies the two-story, 5,000-square-foot space that previously housed the upscale French restaurant Bon Temps, which closed in April 2020. The Arts District property has gone through a transformation that plays with design elements, like the Douglas fir-slattedbanquettes that line the walls on the second floor and are paired with marble tables.

Downstairs, a row of glass cases will be filled with hot and cold items that nod to deli culture and Korean banchan  including hot smoked trout and cream cheese, and pickled vegetables. The deli will also feature rotating specials made in the kitchen  ranging from kimchi and pork belly pozole to a jajangmyeon-meets-bolognese fusion served over rice. There will be Asian-style rotisserie chicken slow-cooked over charcoal and wood, and soft serve from Petaluma-based Double 8 Dairy, one of only two water buffalo dairies in California. Customers will be able to buy canned cocktails and bottles of Hite beer or Krug Champagne to pair with their meals and grab a table downstairs or upstairs.

Yangban Society occupies the two-story, 5,000-square-foot space that previously housed Bon Temps in the Arts District. (Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)

A corner of the second floor  marked by vibrant blue walls  will house a separate super mini-mart, which pays homage to the convenience stores of Japan and South Korea, such as Lawsons and FamilyMart. The shelves will be stocked with Los Angeles-based and Asian American-owned brands, featuring Katiannas hand-picked snacks, drinks and sundries, incense from L.A. tattoo artist Hyungi Park, Korean hand-knit sponges, barley tea highballs canned in-house, and a makgeolli rice wine that Sawtelle Sake makes exclusively for Yangban.

The second-floor walls are adorned with photographic prints  of candid street shots taken in the 1980s and 1990s  by Seoul photographer Wook Kim, and the alley outside features a wheat-paste mural by Korean American artist Dave Young Kim.

There's a separate super mini-mart, which pays homage to the convenience stores of Japan and South Korea. (Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)

For John, the restaurant is about embracing being the son of Korean American immigrants and showcasing all those things: Its about being proud, and in educating myself even deeper [about the Korean culture], and finding some closure within that.

An evolved taste

Katianna, who was born in South Korea, was only three months old when she came to the United States and was adopted by her German-Jewish father and Irish-Catholic mother. Her father worked as an attorney; her mother was an art teacher.

Growing up in a predominantly white suburb in upstate New York, Katianna, 38, said she identified so strongly with being white that she often wondered about her ancestry. (A DNA test, she said, indicated she was 97% Korean.)

The deli will feature rotating specials made in the kitchen. (Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)

Family rituals included attending a Unitarian church on Sundays; afterward, theyd stop at a deli, where Katianna steeped herself in the culture and would grab large turkey sandwiches for lunch. Her paternal grandmother (a great cook, Katianna said) introduced her to homemade matzo ball soup.

(While Katiannas cooking is also influenced by her Irish-Catholic heritage, she doesnt talk about it as much  and its become a bit of a sore spot between her and her mother. She's actually gotten really upset recently because I keep talking about the Jewish part. And she's Irish. And I'm like, I don't know, I really like the matzo ball.)

Katianna said her mother sent her to Korean camps in the summer to learn about her culture, but she remembers it being a bad experience: I didn't have any Asian friends. I didn't want to associate with them because that made me stand out and be different, and I was just trying to blend in.

When she was 16, an aunt and uncle took her on her first trip back to South Korea, but it was a frustrating experience. I already wasnt feeling totally connected here [in the United States], Katianna said. And then, after going to Korea and realizing that Koreans dont claim you either because you don't speak Korean and you look very American, I felt like I didnt belong anywhere.

It wasn't until the Hongs took a trip to South Korea together that they noticed a shift in their thinking about Korean cuisine. (Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)

It wasnt until she was in her 20s  when she was cooking at Melisse in Santa Monica and met John in the kitchen  that she became interested in Korean culture again, and he became her gateway.

John also grew up in a white neighborhood  in Highland Park, Ill.  where it was commonplace for him to visit delis and partake in friends bar mitzvah celebrations. His parents had immigrated from South Korea to the United States in the 1980s. They didnt speak much English and ran a dry-cleaning business.

It was hard because there wasn't much help on the assimilation part, said John, 34. They were very Korean and let me deal with not really fitting in.

He was always surrounded by members of his extended family, who spent time in the kitchen cooking Korean food, and these experiences led him to the culinary industry. After doing a two-year externship at the lauded Alinea in Chicago, he followed his family to L.A. and landed at Melisse.

Katianna and John were still only colleagues when she moved on to work at Christopher Kostows The Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa, where she eventually became the first female chef de cuisine at a Michelin three-star establishment in the United States. She convinced John to join her, and they eventually began dating and moved up the ranks together. Katianna went on to open Charter Oak, Kostows second restaurant in Napa, and John became Meadowoods chef de cuisine.

It wasnt until they took a trip to South Korea together that they noticed a shift in their thinking about Korean cuisine. The experience also inspired them to reconsider the way they thought about fine dining. John says he initially wanted to work at the best (mostly Eurocentric) restaurants, but his objectives were starting to change. There's the same value in your own ethnic food, but it just hasn't been necessarily showcased, he said.

The deli has gone through a transformation that plays with design elements. (Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)

Six years ago, they began fantasizing about creating Korean dishes that channeled their own experiences. After getting married and having a child, they moved back to L.A. in 2019 with a seed of an idea for Yangban. It would be a departure from the fine dining world they had long inhabited. Their ideas of success had evolved.

Success for us would be able to prepare delicious food that we could stand behind and has the integrity to reach everyone and not just this very small group of wealthy people that come to a three-Michelin-starred restaurant, Katianna said.

They came up with the tongue-in-cheek name Yangban Society, a reference to the Korean aristocratic ruling class of the Joseon Dynasty that essentially made the laws, owned land and slaves, and benefited from their wealthy lineage. Their delis name was a satirical approach that flipped the concept of social hierarchy on its head. Really at its core, its about setting the standards for your society, being a positive member of your community and anchoring in these core values, versus what family you were born into and how much money you have, John said.

They funded Yangban by partnering with Sprout L.A.  the restaurant group that oversees spots like Bestia and Republique  through a random connection, John explained. Shin Irvin, the founder and creative director of Folklor, notable for his work with the Line Hotel and Gjelina, helped design the space.

I totally got what they were talking about, because I am Korean too and adopted just like Kat, said Irvin, 50. The idea of doing an American/Korean/Jewish deli hit the right notes in me. I grew up on the East Coast with all these delicatessens, and I saw Korean influence in New York and here in L.A.

The Hongs have been working on several specials that speak to their combined experiences and love for market-driven ingredients. Theyll have a pea shoots and chives salad, their take on Korean barbecue restaurants scallion salads. Johns version of a French dip is inspired by Korean galbi-tang (short rib soup) and Chicago-style Italian beef sandwiches.

When John thinks back to his formative years, hes cognizant that he didnt embrace being Korean because, like most kids, he was trying to fit in. He says he now realizes that being different is cool when youre older.

Katianna used to think if she opened a respected restaurant serving traditional Korean food, she would finally be accepted by others as being Korean. But thats changed for her: In this process, I've become more comfortable with, This is my version of Korean. This is who I am, and it's authentic to us.

712 S. Santa Fe Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 866-1987, yangbanla.com





This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
By Karl Plume

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The United States aims to double the country's cover crop plantings to 30 million acres by 2030 under a new Department of Agriculture (USDA) conservation program launched on Monday.

The agency's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) will spend $38 million to help farmers in 11 states plant crops at a time fields are often left fallow, which can bolster soil health, limit soil erosion and capture and store carbon.

The investment, made through a partnership with the United Soybean Board, National Corn Growers Association, National Pork Board and others, is the latest farm-level effort by the Biden administration meant to address climate change.

Cover crop plantings have been rapidly expanding in recent years as some large agricultural companies launched carbon farming programs that pay farmers to adopt more environmentally friendly practices.

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the Environmental Quality Incentives Program's Cover Crop Initiative, at the American Farm Bureau Federation's annual convention in Atlanta.

The most recent USDA Census of Agriculture showed 15.4 million acres of cover crops were planted in 2017, a fraction of overall acreage devoted to agriculture.

Rob Myers, director for the Center for Regenerative Agriculture at the University of Missouri, estimates plantings were as high as 22 million acres in 2021.

Farmers and ranchers in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and South Dakota will be eligible for incentives under the program, which USDA aims to expand in coming years.

(Reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago; Additional reporting by Leah Douglas in Washington; Editing by Alexander Smith)
U.S. and Russian officials held over seven hours of talks Monday, but the two sides did not negotiate or appear any closer to a resolution over heightened fears that Russia will attack its neighbor Ukraine.

In dueling press conferences after the talks, the top U.S. and Russian diplomats said their meetings were constructive, as they now move on to a second round at NATO's headquarters on Wednesday.

But while U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman urged caution and praised the "frank and forthright" tone, her counterpart, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, warned the U.S. is moving too slowly and not taking seriously Moscow's key demands.

Whether that sets the stage for genuine negotiations, or whether Russian leader Vladimir Putin is seeking a pretext for war, remains unclear, as Russia pushes to reclaim its Soviet sphere of influence and present its clearest, most fundamental challenge to European security in three decades.

MORE: Week of US-Russia diplomatic talks kick off amid Ukraine tension

Ryabkov said it is impossible for any progress to be made until the U.S. gives legal guarantees Ukraine and Georgia will never join NATO.

"We are fed up with loose talk, half promises. Ukraine and Georgia will never -- never ever -- become members of NATO," Ryabkov told reporters afterward, reiterating Russia's top demand, laid out last month in two draft treaties. "We do not trust the other side. We need ironclad, waterproof, bullet-proof, legally binding guarantees. Not safeguards -- guarantees."

He has said "no progress" was made on Russia's central demands and warned the U.S. is failing to understand the urgency of the situation.

Even as he denied the approximately 100,000 Russian troops on three sides of Ukraine's borders are preparations for an invasion, Ryabkov again warned Ukraine could spark conflict with a "provocation,"

"Enough is enough. The station now is so dangerous and so precarious that we cannot afford any further delays," he added.

PHOTO: In this Dec. 22, 2021, file photo, Russian service members fire weapons during tactical combat exercises at the Kadamovsky range in the Rostov region, Russia. (Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters, FILE)

But Sherman made clear that the U.S. will not bend on what it sees as a key principle -- that countries like Ukraine can make their own decisions about joining an alliance. Instead, she said the U.S. offered "preliminary ideas" on how to ease tensions and promote transparency between the world's two largest nuclear powers, including reducing missile deployments or military exercises.

"We certainly urged Russia to deescalate, to create an environment that is conducive to the diplomatic track, but we will see," she told reporters,

MORE: US open to talking with Russia about missiles, troop exercises: Secretary of State Antony Blinken

While the two sides gained "a better understanding of each other and each other's priorities and concerns," she said, they weren't engaged in negotiations just yet: "We're not at a point where we're ready to set down texts and begin to go back and forth."

"We must give diplomacy and dialogue the time and space required to make progress on such complex issues," she added, saying the U.S. would "move as expeditiously as we possibly can," but that, "Negotiations on complex topics like arms control cannot be completed in a matter of days or even weeks."

PHOTO: In this Dec. 22, 2021, file photo, Russian service members drive BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles during tactical combat exercises at the Kadamovsky range in the Rostov region, Russia. (Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters, FILE)

In contrast, Ryabkov struck a tone of urgency, adding, "In the coming days there will be more full clarity whether another round will take place, if yes, in what format."

After the NATO-Russia meeting Wednesday, there will be a third round of talks Thursday at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a Cold War-era forum that has deployed a war monitor in eastern Ukraine as Russian-led forces battle the Ukrainian government.

MORE: Biden, Putin hold call amid heightened tensions over Ukraine

That war, which has killed approximately 14,000 people and counting, is one way Moscow continues to destabilize its neighbor Ukraine, a former Soviet state that has sought closer ties to the West since protests toppled a pro-Russian oligarch president in 2013. After that revolution, Russia seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and launched the war in the eastern provinces known as Donbas.

But the movement of approximately 100,000 Russian troops, along with heavy equipment, has sparked deep concerns about a possible full-scale invasion. Sherman said Monday it was still unclear what Putin had decided but called on Russia to return those forces to their barracks away from Ukraine's borders.

PHOTO: U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, left, and Russian deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, right, attend security talks at the United States Mission in Geneva, on Jan. 10, 2022. (Denis Balibouse/Pool via AP)

Russia has complained for decades about NATOs expansion to include countries that Moscow dominated as the Soviet Union. Now it has argued that Ukraine has moved too close to the alliance, arguing that NATO military advisors and equipment provided to help Ukraine defend itself in its war with Russia mean it is becoming a de-facto part of it. In 2008, NATO adopted a resolution that stated Ukraine and Georgia would one day become part of the alliance, but there is little support among Western countries for that to happen quickly.

Russia views having forced the U.S. to talk about its concerns around Ukraine is an important victory in itself. Ryabkov at the talks suggested that had given grounds for some optimism.

"I dont consider the situation hopeless, he continued. I think the usefulness of the talks in Geneva is mainly that, for the first time, we were able to talk about issues that before existed, but as if behind the scenes.

But he said Russia wants NATO to use its next summit in Madrid this year to renounce the 2008 resolution that opened a path for Ukraine and Georgia to join, a demand that has been seen as a non-starter by the U.S.

The U.S. has floated ideas to increase transparency and reduce suspicions between the two sides, including reductions on the deployment of nuclear missiles and other weapons -- although Sherman said the U.S. will not negotiate on the deployment of its forces in Europe, saying it's an issue for only the U.S. and its allies to discuss.

"We will go through all of the discussions this week. We will reflect on them all. I expect that incorporating those, talking with our partners and allies at NATO, at OSCE -- we will then have further conversations with the Russian government and decide on the best way forward," she said.

For Russia, however, that rejection of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, another former Soviet state where Russian forces currently occupy parts of the country, does not bode well for a diplomatic solution. The question is: If the U.S. and NATO hold firm on that line, will Moscow accept anything else instead, or will its forces attack?

An agreement is still "possible," Ryabkov said, but ending NATO's expansion is "an absolute imperative."

US, Russia talks end with 'no progress': Here's what you need to know originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
US comedian Bob Saget has died at the age of 65, police said.

Saget, known for starring in US sitcoms including Full House, was pronounced dead at a hotel room in Orlando, Florida.

Officers from Orange County Sheriffs Office were called following reports of an unresponsive man at the Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Earlier today, deputies were called to the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes for a call about an unresponsive man in a hotel room. The man was identified as Robert Saget & pronounced deceased on scene. Detectives found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case. #BobSaget pic.twitter.com/aB1UKiOlmi  Orange County Sheriff's Office (@OrangeCoSheriff) January 10, 2022

Saget was identified and pronounced dead at the scene.

The force said no signs foul play were found.

Earlier today, deputies were called to the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes for a call about an unresponsive man in a hotel room, Orange County Sheriffs Office said.

The man was identified as Robert Saget & pronounced deceased on scene.

Detectives found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case.

Saget had just begun his new 2022 stand up tour and had earlier tweeted about his show in Jacksonville, expressing his delight at being back performing.

Loved tonights show @PV_ConcertHall in Jacksonville. Appreciative audience. Thanks again to @RealTimWilkins for opening. I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight. Im happily addicted again to this shit. Check https://t.co/nqJyTiiezU for my dates in 2022. pic.twitter.com/pEgFuXxLd3  bob saget (@bobsaget) January 9, 2022

Loved tonights show @PV_ConcertHall in Jacksonville. Appreciative audience, he tweeted.

Thanks again to @RealTimWilkins for opening.

I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight. Im happily addicted again to this s**t.

British comedian and and Great British Bake Off host Matt Lucas paid tribute to Saget as a magnificently naughty comedian.

In terrible shock of the horrible news of Bob Saget's sudden passing. He was a warm, kind, humble man and a magnificently naughty comedian, always treading the line so deftly. He will be greatly missed.  Matt Lucas (@RealMattLucas) January 10, 2022

In terrible shock of the horrible news of Bob Sagets sudden passing, Lucas wrote on Twitter.

He was a warm, kind, humble man and a magnificently naughty comedian, always treading the line so deftly.

He will be greatly missed.
Owosso, MI (48867)

Today

Periods of rain. High 51F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near an inch..

Tonight

Rain showers early with overcast skies late. Low 43F. Winds N at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 10, ARMENPRESS. The draft concept of introducing comprehensive health insurance in Armenia was discussed during today's consultation chaired by Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, ARMENPRESS was informed from the Office of the Prime Minister.

The draft concept was presented by the Minister of Health Anahit Avanesyan and the Deputy Minister of Health Lena Nanushyan. It was noted that several models were studied in the process of developing the concept with the idea of a state health system as the basis. The aim of the reform is to create a system of sustainable health financing based on the principles of the social responsibility of the state and social solidarity of the population, and ensuring financial access to basic medical services for all groups of the population. The work done in the direction of financial evaluation of the introduction of the system, development of the package of basic services, definition of the groups of the population being insured, calculation of the necessary expenses were presented. It was noted that the draft is under discussion with the interested departments, and following the approval, a package of relevant legislative changes will be developed. The officials of the Ministry of Health emphasized that the parallel implementation of other reforms in the sphere, such as the improvement of infrastructure, the development of e-health, the strengthening of the capacity of the primary health care unit, is an important precondition for the successful introduction of the system.

An exchange of views took place on the conceptual approaches to the introduction of comprehensive health insurance. Issues related to funding mechanisms and sources, definition of population groups, insurance premiums and collection, service quality standards, calculation of the amount of money needed for the health expenses of insured citizens, cost-effectiveness, ensuring of social justice and social solidarity, investment risks were raised and a number of proposals were presented.

Emphasizing the importance of the reform, the Prime Minister noted that the primary goal of the comprehensive health insurance should be the prevention of diseases. Accordingly, it is necessary to introduce a model that will guarantee the operation of a cost-effective, high-quality health care system. The Prime Minister highlighted the introduction of a universal asset declaration system in parallel with the introduction of comprehensive health insurance system, taking into account the interconnectedness and interaction of these reforms.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan instructed to amend the draft concept based on the results of the consultation and submit it for final discussion.
According to information published by the Australian Department of Defense, on January 10, 2022, Australia has confirmed the purchase of 75 M1A2 SEPV V3 from the United States as well as 29 M1150 assault breacher vehicles, 17 M1074 joint assault bridge vehicles, and six M88A2 Armored Recovery Vehicles.

Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link



U.S. soldiers assigned to Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team (3ABCT), 1st Cavalry Division, conduct preventative maintenance checks and services on their new M1A2C (SEP v.3) Abrams Tanks at Fort Hood, Texas, July 21, 2020. (Picture source U.S. DoD)

Australian Minister for Defense, the Hon Peter Dutton MP today announced a $3.5 billion investment in the Main Battle Tank (MBT) Upgrade (LAND 907 Phase 2) and Combat Engineering Vehicle (LAND 8160 Phase 1) projects. The first tanks will be delivered to Australia in 2024, with the projects expected to achieve Initial Operating Capability in 2025.

The M1A2 SEPV V3 MBTs will replace the Australian armys 59 Abrams M1A1s, which were bought in 2007 but have not seen combat.

In April 2021, the U.S. State Department has released the approval of a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Government of Australia of Heavy Armored Combat Systems and related equipment for an estimated cost of $1.685 billion. The Government of Australia has requested to buy one hundred sixty (160) M1A1 Tank structures/hulls provided from stock in order to produce the following end items and spares: seventy-five (75) M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams Main Battle Tanks; twenty-nine (29) M1150 Assault Breacher Vehicles; eighteen (18) M1074 Joint Assault Bridges; six (6) M88A2 Hercules Combat Recovery Vehicles; and one hundred twenty-two (122) AGT1500 gas turbine engines.

Citing the "Brisbane Times" newspaper, over the coming years, Australia will spend somewhere between $30 billion and $42 billion on armored vehicles. This will include a fleet of infantry fighting vehicles which will likely be announced later this year at a cost of between $18 billion and $27 billion.

The M1A2 SEPV V3 also called M1A2C is a modernized version of the Abrams M1A2 Main Battle Tank (MBT) that benefits from a number of upgrades in the areas of survivability, maintainability, full efficiency, and network capability.

The main armament of M1A2 SEP V3 includes one 120 mm smoothbore M256 cannon. The tank will be fitted with a Low Profile (LP) CROW (Common Remotely Operated Weapon System). This effort improves the tank commanders situational awareness without compromising capability. The second armament includes a coaxial 7.62 mm M240 machine gun mounted to the right of the main gun, and a similar weapon skate-mounted on the left side of the turret for the loader can be elevated from -30 to +65, total traverse being 265.



A U.S. Marine Corps M1150 Assault Breacher Vehicle enters a U.S. Navy Landing Craft Utility on Camp Lejeune, N.C., Mar. 17, 2020, during Type Commander Amphibious Training. (Picture source U.S. DoD)

The Assault Breacher Vehicle (ABV) M1150 is a highly mobile and heavily armored minefield and complex obstacle breaching system. It consists of an M1A1 Abrams tank hull; a unique turret with two Linear Demolition Charge Systems (employing two Mine Clearing Line Charges (MICLIC) and rockets); a Lane Marking System (LMS); Integrated Vision System; and a High Lift Adapter that interchangeably mounts a Full-Width Mine Plow (FWMP) or a Combat Dozer Blade.

The M1150 ABV, which requires a crew of two Soldiers, improves the mobility and survivability of combat engineers while having the speed and ability to keep pace with the maneuver force. It creates a tank-width cleared a lane through a minefield by launching and detonating one of its MICLIC systems across the minefield, then proofing the lane with its FWMP while marking the cleared lane with its LMS.



Leonardo DRS M1074 Joint Assault Bridge JAB. (Picture source Leonardo DRS)

The M1074 Joint Assault Bridge (JAB) provides the Army Mobility Augmentation Companies and Brigade Engineer Battalions supporting Armored Brigade Combat Teams (ABCT) with a survivable, deployable and sustainable heavy-assault-bridging capability. The JAB will provide a gap-crossing capability to cross wet or dry gaps to provide freedom of maneuver on the battlefield and keep pace with Abrams ABCT operations.

The JAB M1074 is based on an M1A1 Abrams main battle tank hull with a heavy (M1A2) suspension integrated with a hydraulic bridge launcher system to launch the existing Armored Vehicle Launched Bridge (AVLB) Military Load Class 95 Scissor Bridge. The JAB improves survivability, mobility, and supportability for the warfighter.



U.S. Marines assigned to Delta Company, 1st Tank Battalion, conduct routine maintenance on an M88A2 Hercules recovery vehicle on forward operating base Shir Ghazay, Helmand province, Afghanistan, (Picture source U.S. DoD)

The M88A2 Improved Recovery Vehicle HERCULES (Heavy Equipment Recovery Combat Utility Lift and Evacuation System) recovers tanks mired to different depths, removes and replaces tank turrets and power packs, and uprights overturned heavy combat vehicles. The main winch on the M88A2 is capable of a 70-ton, single-line recovery, allowing the HERCULES to provide recovery of the 70-ton M1A2 Abrams tank.

The A-frame boom and hoist winch of the M88A2 can lift 35 tons. The spade can be used to anchor the vehicle when using the main winch and can be used for light earthmoving to prepare a recovery area. The M88A2 employs an auxiliary power unit to provide auxiliary electrical and hydraulic power when the main engine is not in operation. It can also be used to slave start other vehicles, as well as a means to refuel or defuel vehicles. The M88A2 can refuel Abrams tanks from its own fuel tanks.

The M88A2 HERCULES is the successor vehicle to the M88A1, which only had a recovery capability of 56 tons. The M88A1s mission was focused on the M60 Series tank while the M88A2 is focused on the Abrams tank.
According to information released on January 10, 2022, BAE Systems has signed new support, sustainment, and readiness agreement with the Norwegian Army for its fleet of 144 CV90 Infantry Fighting Vehicles, securing a new contract model to support the availability and continuous modernization of the fleet.

Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link



Norwegian army modernized CV9030 tracked armored IFV Infantry Fighting Vehicle. (Picture source Norway MoD)

The seven-year agreement with the Norwegian Defence Logistics Organisation governs the purchase of components and equipment, as well as management and engineering work. It includes maintenance of the System Integration Lab, which ensures that both the customer and BAE Systems can monitor vehicles current conditions and state of readiness to optimize vehicle performance and capabilities across the fleet.



We are pleased to sign this contract to further secure the CV90 fleet for the future, both for ongoing sustainment and incremental capability upgrades, said Maj. Gen. Lars Christian Aamodt, head of the Norwegian Defence Logistics Organisation. We have today one of the worlds most modern Infantry Fighting Vehicles able to advance combined arms with air and sea systems. With this contract, we aim to stay in this position for many years to come.



This incremental upgrades and continuous improvements model, carried out as a combined effort between the Norwegian Army, local industry, and BAE Systems Hagglunds, will keep the combat-proven CV90 among the worlds most advanced Infantry Fighting Vehicles in service.



We look forward to strengthening the trust and cooperation we have with our Norwegian customer, and building on the positive experiences with our Norwegian industry partners who are an essential part of this contract, said Tommy Gustafsson-Rask, managing director of BAE Systems Hagglunds, which manufactures the CV90. We are committed to going the extra mile to serve our Norwegian customer, along with other countries who operate the vehicle, who all benefit from being part of the CV90 User Club.



BAE Systems Hagglunds, based in Ornskoldsvik, Sweden, is currently working closely with its Norwegian industry hub, including small and medium-sized businesses, to deliver 20 additional new CV90s to the Norwegian Army. The order includes engineering and multi-carrier variants as part of its effort to grow and modernize in the face of evolving threats.



Norway is one of seven European users operating the CV90. The others are Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, and the Netherlands. With close to 1,300 vehicles in service in multiple variants, the vehicle is designed to accommodate future growth to meet evolving missions.



The modernized version of the Norwegian army CV9030 tracked armored IFV Infantry Fighting Vehicle.

According to the Military Balance 2020, the Norwegian army has a total of 91 CV9030 tracked armored vehicles including 76 vehicles in IFV (Infantry Fighting Vehicle) configuration, 15 CV9030COM Command Post vehicles, and 21 CV90 MkIIIb reconnaissance vehicles.



Citing open sources information, Noway has a total of 164 CV90 in all variants. 104 CV9030Ns were purchased in 1994. 17 of these were later upgraded with air-conditioning, additional mine protection, and rear-view cameras, and were designated CV9030NF1. In April 2012, the Norwegian Government proposed to upgrade all CV90s in the Norwegian Army's inventory, in addition to acquiring more vehicles. In June 2012, a deal was signed with BAE Systems Hagglunds and Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace for the acquisition of 144 new/upgraded vehicles, including 74 infantry fighting, 21 reconnaissance, 15 command, 16 engineering, 16 multi-role, and two driver training vehicles. On February 18, 2021, it was announced that Norway had ordered another 12 combat engineering vehicles and 8 multi-role vehicles.



The CV9030 is an export version of the CV90 IFV (Infantry Fighting Vehicle) fitted with a two-man turret armed with a 30 mm Bushmaster II automatic cannon. The hull of the CV9030 is of all-welded steel construction with the driver seated front left, power pack to his right, turret in the center and offset to the left, and troop compartment at the rear of the hull. The vehicle accommodates eight infantrymen which are seated at the rear of the hull The eight infantrymen are seated on four each side facing each other, with each man having a bucket-type seat which is also provided with a seat belt. The infantry enters and leaves via a large door in the rear that opens to the right, which is equipped with a single vision block with an associated firing port in the center.
Community spread of COVID-19 basically blocked in China's Xi'an

Xinhua) 08:27, January 10, 2022

-- Xi'an, capital city of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, has basically stopped the spread of COVID-19 in communities one month after the resurgence of the epidemic hit the city, thanks to stringent containment measures such as city-level lockdown and rounds of mass nucleic acid testing.

-- Daily cases in Xi'an with a population of 13 million began to drop since the start of this year and slipped to two-digit numbers quickly, with 30 new cases, all in centralized quarantine, reported on Saturday.

-- As notable progress has been made to control the epidemic, Xi'an will gradually lift closed-off management based on the judgment and research conducted by national and provincial experts.

XI'AN, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Xi'an, capital city of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, has basically stopped the spread of COVID-19 in communities one month after the resurgence of the epidemic hit the city, thanks to stringent containment measures such as city-level lockdown and rounds of mass nucleic acid testing.

The virus spread in communities had been basically cut off, Xu Mingfei, vice mayor of Xi'an, told a press conference on Jan. 5. Xu said that all the new cases found over the previous rounds of nucleic acid testing were among the people who were quarantined at designated places (centralized quarantine) or at home.

Daily cases in Xi'an with a population of 13 million began to drop since the start of this year and slipped to two-digit numbers quickly, with 30 new cases, all in centralized quarantine, reported on Saturday.

The city, a popular tourist destination known for the Terracotta Warriors, registered 1,989 locally transmitted confirmed cases as of Saturday since Dec. 9, 2021.

Aerial photo taken on Jan. 1, 2022 shows a view of Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province. (Xinhua/Tao Ming)

The viral genome sequencing of the new cases has identified them as strains of the highly contagious Delta variant, which are highly homologous with imported cases from an inbound flight on Dec. 4, 2021, according to the provincial center for disease control and prevention.

STRICT CONTAINMENT MEASURES

Many positive patients didn't show obvious symptoms in the initial stage, and they tended to ignore their physical condition, which led to community transmission and clustered cases, local officials have said.

The number of confirmed cases in Xi'an rose by more than 150 per day for a week in late December, and the virus has spread to other cities and provinces.

To curb the spread of the virus, the city has launched several rounds of mass nucleic acid testing, with thousands of sample collecting venues set up.

A medical worker takes a swab sample from a resident for nucleic acid testing in Beilin District of Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Dec. 29, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

Mass nucleic acid testing can help health authorities identify the infected cases and put them under quarantine early. Meanwhile, it is conducive to adopting precise control measures and relieving public stress, said Li Qun, director of the health emergency center of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

As the trajectories of the positive cases in Xi'an were complex and involved a wider area, and some could not be traced to known sources, the megacity imposed closed-off management for communities and villages since Dec. 23 last year.

"The strict containment measures introduced are based on the epidemic situation to prevent transmission within the city and spreading elsewhere," said Lei Zhenglong, a member of the Xi'an taskforce team sent by the State Council for epidemic control.

JOINT EFFORTS AGAINST EPIDEMIC

During a recent tour to Shaanxi Province for investigation and research on prevention and control of the epidemic, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said that Xi'an saw a sharp decline in daily-reported new COVID-19 cases and had basically blocked the spread of COVID-19 in communities. However, Sun warned that the epidemic containment is still at a crucial stage, and urged efforts to prevent the rebound of the epidemic.

As of 6 p.m. Jan. 6, the city arranged 431 venues for centralized quarantines, putting 45,760 people under quarantine.

"The quarantined personnel have overcome the inconvenience to themselves and their families for the safety of all. They are also heroes," said vice mayor Xu.

Ma Hui, one of the residents in isolation, recorded his life in a quarantined site in short videos. "Despite some inconvenience at the beginning, the room is warm, and we receive necessities and even snacks," said Ma, 40, in a video.

Community workers and volunteers have devoted themselves to sending free groceries to residents in lockdown. People can also place orders online, and items will be distributed and delivered to each household by community staff and volunteers.

A volunteer arranges packed vegetables in Yanta District of Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Jan. 5, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

The city government has taken measures to help people under closed-off management overcome inconvenience brought about by containment measures.

For example, responding to people's difficulty in accessing medical services, the city government has dispatched buses to shuttle those who need emergency treatment at hospitals to prevent the risk of cross-infection, said vice mayor Xu.

In Yanta District, the worst-hit district, several officials, including the Party chief of the Yanta District, have been removed from posts due to dereliction of duty.

As notable progress has been made to control the epidemic, Xi'an will gradually lift closed-off management based on the judgment and research conducted by national and provincial experts, Lyu Yongpeng, deputy director of the city's health commission, said on Saturday.

As of Saturday, a total of 262 patients had been discharged from hospitals after recovery.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world's largest free trade pact, will provide new opportunities for more inclusive and balanced growth, Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Malaysia (ACCCIM) deputy secretary-general Michael Chai Woon Chew told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Among the many benefits of RCEP will be the transfer of technology and production capacity from developed countries to less developed ones, as the former seek to build up new markets, the Malaysian business observer said.

Produced by Xinhua Global Service
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This is as a tribute to the 10th Sikh guru Gobind Singhs four sons who were executed by the Mughals

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday announced that starting this year December 26 would be observed as Veer Baal Diwas, as a tribute to the 10th Sikh guru Gobind Singhs four sons who were executed by the Mughals.

After announcing repealing of the three controversial farm laws on November 19, the birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev, Mr Modi chose the Parkash Purab of the tenth Sikh Guru to announce the decision of Veer Baal Diwas, a demand made by various BJP leaders, including members of Parliament from Delhi, Parvesh Sahib Singh Varma and Manoj Tewari.

Mr Modi made the announcement through his social media handle, a day after the Election Commission announced the polling schedule for five states, including Punjab. Mr Modi also tweeted his message in Gurumukhi.

Today, on the auspicious occasion of the Parkash Purab of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, I am honoured to share that starting this year, 26th December shall be marked as Veer Baal Diwas. This is a fitting tribute to the courage of the Sahibzades and their quest for justice. Veer Baal Diwas will be on the same day Sahibzada Zorawar Singh Ji and Sahibzada Fateh Singh Ji attained martyrdom after being sealed alive in a wall. These two greats preferred death instead of deviating from the noble principles of Dharma, the Prime Minister tweeted.

Mr Modi further wrote: The bravery and ideals of Mata Gujri, Sri Guru Gobind Singh Ji and the 4 Sahibzades give strength to millions of people. They never bowed to injustice. They envisioned a world that is inclusive and harmonious. It is the need of the hour for more people to know about them.

Welcoming the decision, Union home minister Amit Shah said, The incomparable sacrifice and patriotism of four Sahibzadas and Mata Gujri to protect the country and religion is the heritage of the country. Today on the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, I heartily welcome the decision of Modi Ji to celebrate the martyrdom day of Sahibzadas on 26th December as Veer Bal Diwas. BJP president J.P. Nadda said that the decision is a perfect tribute to the patriotism of the Sahibzades and a source of inspiration for the coming generations. Many BJP leaders used the occasion to highlight the many decisions taken by the Modi government for the Sikh community, including the evacuation of the Sikhs from Afghanistan after the Talibans takeover of the neighbouring country. The Modi government has been taking a number of measures to reach out to the Sikhs, a community, which was perceived to be upset with the ruling BJP after three farm reform laws were enacted.
Mr Modi stressed upon the need to continue intensive containment and active surveillance in clusters reporting higher number of cases

New delhi: As the Omicron variant continues to fuel a surge in the infection count in the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday emphasised that continued Jan Andolan and focus on Covid-19 appropriate behaviour were critical in the ongoing fight against the pandemic. As many as 1,59,632 new Covid-19 infections were reported in 24 hours -- the highest in 224 days, across 27 states and Union territories The Omicron count has also gone over 3,850. In a bid to stymie the coronavirus spread, India will start administering precautionary vaccine doses to frontline/healthcare workers and people aged over 60 years with comorbidities from Monday.

At a review meeting on Covid-19 situation, Mr Modi stressed upon the need to continue intensive containment and active surveillance in clusters reporting higher number of cases, and providing required technical assistance to states where infections are increasing rapidly.

The PM also underlined the necessity of using masks and boosting the health infrastructure, saying that there is a need for continuous research in testing, vaccines, pharmacological interventions, including genome sequencing as the coronavirus is evolving.

Mr Modi called for ensuring adequate health infrastructure at district level and accelerating the vaccination drive for adolescents in mission mode. He also called for effective implementation of home isolation for mild and asymptomatic cases and to disseminate the factual information to the community at large. Mr Modi said that a meeting with chief ministers would be convened to discuss state-specific scenarios, best practices and public health response.

Conveying gratitude for the relentless services provided by the healthcare workers in managing the pandemic, he said ensuring precaution dose for them and other frontline workers should be taken up rapidly. An estimated 1.05 crore healthcare and 1.9 crore frontline workers, and 2.75 crore comorbid people in the 60 plus age group would be administered the precaution dose. There would be no mix-and-match of vaccines for the precaution dose. The beneficiaries would be given the same vaccine as their previous two jabs.

A presentation was also made in the meeting to highlight Indias consistent efforts towards the vaccination campaign, with 31% adolescents aged 15-18 years having been administered with the first dose so far within seven days of the start of the drive.

This was the PMs first Covid review meeting since December 24, when the Omicron variant had made an appearance in the country. Compared to then, the Covid numbers have skyrocketed, with hundreds of doctors and healthcare workers contracting the virus. Among others present in the meeting were Union home minister Amit Shah, health minister Mansukh Mandaviya, the chief of the railway board, the civil aviation secretary, Niti Aayog member (health) Dr V.K. Paul and ICMR DG Dr Balram Bhargava.

India logged over 1.5 lakh daily infections for the second consecutive day, taking the active caseload to 5,90,611. The data uploaded by the health ministry at 8 am Sunday showed that the country had recorded 1,59,632 fresh Covid-19 cases and 327 deaths in the last 24 hours. The ministry said that the daily positivity rate has gone up 10.21 per cent.

Just ahead of the Budget Session of Parliament, which usually begins at the end of January, nearly 400 staffers working with Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha secretariats and allied services have tested positive for Covid-19 in the last few days, triggering a move to impose curbs on employees attendance. It is learnt that 65 staffers of Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 200 of Lok Sabha Secretariat and 133 of allied services have tested positive for Covid-19 between January 4-8 during regular tests.

In Delhi, 17 deaths due to Covid-19 and 22,751 infections were reported in a day as the positivity rate soared to 23.53%. The number of new cases reported on Sunday was the highest since May 1 last year when the city recorded 25,219 cases with a positivity rate of 31.61%. Currently, 1,618 Covid patients are in hospitals. Of them, 44 are on ventilator support. The city has 60,733 active cases of which 35,714 are in home isolation.

Mumbai also reported 19,474 Covid-19 cases and seven fatalities, taking the citys tally of infections to 9,14,572 and the toll to 16,406. A day earlier the city had reported 20,318 coronavirus infections and five deaths. A total of 1,240 patients were hospitalised during the day. It said that 7,432 of the total 34,900 beds (21.3%) have been occupied in Mumbai.

In wake of the imminent third Covid-19 wave, most states and Union territories, including Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi, have already announced night curfew and other restrictions.

The Himachal Pradesh government on Sunday banned social and religious functions till January 24. It also prohibited any gathering of more than 100 people indoor and 300 people for outdoor academic, sport, cultural and political events. Attendance of staff at state government offices was capped at 50 percent. The restrictions, however, will not be applicable to emergency services.

The Rajasthan government announced the closure of schools in the municipal areas till January 17, a Sunday curfew and restricted market timings and occupancy at restaurants and movie theatres. A one-day complete lockdown was enforced across Tamil Nadu and most roads and other public places wore a deserted look. Suburban and other train operations, bus and other public transport services including the Metrorail in Chennai were suspended. Chief minister M.K. Stalin had earlier ordered fresh curbs which included statewide night curfew between 10 pm and 5 am with effect from January 6.

The Puducherry government also announced that all schools conducting offline classes for students from Classes 1 to 9 would remain shut from Monday. Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope said the state government would gradually bring curbs at places of worship and other sites, including liquor vends, that attract crowds to control the coronavirus pandemic. He, however, said that even as cases are rising, hospital bed occupancy and oxygen demand remain low. When these start rising, we will enforce stricter restrictions, he added.
The top court was hearing the plea of an organisation seeking thorough investigation into security breach to PM Modi's convoy in Punjab

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the ongoing inquiries by two separate panels of the Centre and the Punjab government into the security breach during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent visit to Punjab, and said that it will set up a committee headed by a former apex court judge to probe it.

A bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana said that a formal order to this effect will be passed shortly on setting up of the panel to which the DGP Chandigarh, IG of NIA and the Registrar General of Punjab and Haryana HC may be part.

The top court was hearing the plea of an organisation, Lawyers Voice, seeking a thorough investigation into the breach in Prime Minister Modi's security in Punjab to ensure there is no such event in the future.

On January 5, the prime minister's convoy was stranded on a flyover due to a blockade by protesters in Ferozepur after which he returned from poll-bound Punjab without attending any event, including a rally.
by Nirmala Carvalho

In just ten days the number of new cases reported rose nine folds in the country. Starting today healthcare staff and seniors with co-morbidities can receive the third, booster shot. State elections set for February-March will go ahead, whilst schools are closed again for many children. Meanwhile, the Church has mobilised for the poorest.

Mumbai (AsiaNews)  In India too, the new wave of COVID-19 fuelled by the Omicron variant is getting worse by the day, raising concerns among many.

Last spring, the country was brought to its knees by the pandemic, with makeshift pyres set up parks to cremate victims bodies.

Now, after a few months of respite, the data on infections show an rapid upward trend. Today alone, 179,723 new cases were reported, a number not seen for more than six months.

However, the speed with which the virus is spreading is striking: until 10 days ago, daily new infections averaged less than 20,000.

So far, the number of daily deaths remains low  146 today  but the pressure on hospitals is beginning to rise.

The Health Ministry estimates that hospitalisations are limited to 5-10 per cent of cases compared to 20 per cent of the wave in May 2021.

In recent months, Indias vaccination campaign has made important progress with a total of more than 1.5 billion doses administered.

However, in terms of the population, the aforementioned figure means that only 46.2 per cent have received the first two doses, whilst a third has not received any.

Meanwhile, starting today, health authorities have begun administering the third, booster shot to health staff and seniors with prior medical conditions.

In this context, the decision by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to go ahead with elections in five states (Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Punjab and Manipur) in seven phases between 10 February and 7 March has raised eyebrows.

Many fear that the vote could become another superspreading event, as was the case last year in West Bengal.

Faced with such concern, the ECI banned election rallies until 15 January and removed the picture of Prime Minister Modi from all vaccination certificates in the five states.

Many activists have raised doubts about the wisdom of the decision, pointing to the fact that whilst elections have not not postponed, schools have been closed.

Many Indian children have already lost two school years and it is feared that further shutdowns could worsen the scourge of child brides and child labour, as well as increase malnutrition among children.

Another source of concern is the situation of the elderly, who are 8 per cent of the population; they too are at high risk of marginalisation.

For this reason, even in this new stage of the COVID emergency, the Catholic Church of India has continued its effort to reach out to the most marginalised and the homeless.

At the shrine of the Child Jesus in Nashik (Maharashtra), warm clothes and some New Year sweets were handed out, said the shrines rector Fr Errol Fernandes SJ, speaking to AsiaNews. Keep praying for our work with the poor. Thanks for your generous contributions, he added.
Official line: Csto troops, led by Moscow, intervened to protect government structures from attacks by foreign trained Islamists. In all likelihood, Moscow military used in the power struggle with the faction of former President Nazarbayev. So far the energy pipelines are safe, including those to China.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - The government of Kazakhstan has declared that Islamist radicals trained abroad are among those responsible for the recent attacks on government offices and security forces. The authorities in Nur-Sultan, who speak of about 8,000 arrests, however, do not mention any specific terrorist group.

The protests, which broke out on January 2 due to the rising cost of living, have spread to most of Kazakhstan. Demands to lower the price of gas have been joined by demands for political change in a country dominated by elites linked to former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the nation's father-master since its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It now seems that President Kassym-Jomart Tokaev has regained control of the situation. Tristan Kenderdine, an analyst based in Kazakhstan and director of Future Risk, points out to AsiaNews, the fact that the authorities are issuing press releases in English for the international media indicates that they are confident of maintaining control.

Not all areas are pacified though. Last night there were reportedly two more gunbattles, one in Taldykorgan, about 200 km north of Almaty (one of the epicenters of the protests) and another on its outskirts, along the highway into Kyrgyzstan, notes Kenderdine. Today there are also vague reports of weapons seized by the Security Forces, as well as of opponents gaining access to government arsenals.

To quell the uprising, Tokaev has requested support from Russian-led military forces from the Csto (Collective Security Treaty Organization). "Almost no one [in Kazakhstan] is in favor of this scenario," Kenderdine says. He explains, however, that given the range of scenarios that could emerge, the Russian initiative might prove to be the lesser evil.

Kenderdine echoes the statements of eyewitnesses during the early stages of the peaceful protests, "it seems fairly clear now that a secondary, more coordinated, element was injected into the naturally formed protests. However whomever orchestrated this group is much more likely to have been part of the inter-clan power struggle than connected to any outside interference", he adds.

With the blocking of the internet, it is difficult to independently assess the news that is circulating. Kenderdine claims that the foreign trail is an "absurd" attempt by the Tokaev government to justify the deployment of Csto troops. Out of fear that Nazarbaev's men would partly control the security apparatus during the riots, the expert speculates, Tokaev would have allowed the arrival of 2,500-5,000 soldiers from the Russian-dominated organization.

In light of this there are emerging Chinese concerns about the stability of Kazakhstan, where Beijing has many strategic and economic interests, especially with regard to the operation of the gas and oil pipelines from which it obtains its supplies.

"We have not heard any disruptions to the energy infrastructure," Kenderdine reveals. The researcher points out that any group that wants to come to power would not sabotage the gas and oil pipelines, which represent the wealth of the nation. He also points out that the crisis has nothing to do with relations between the country and China.
He won 200 votes out of 329 MPs elected in October. The first session was characterised by clashes and disruptions over majority status between the pro-Iranian Fatah and MPs close to al-Sadr. The acting speaker was hospitalised from exhaustion. The election of the new head of state is now set to begin; whoever is picked will be charged with naming the future prime minister who will form the government.

Baghdad (AsiaNews)  The members of the Iraqi Council of Representatives (parliament) elected last October met yesterday for the first time after months of political and institutional stalemate, and re-elected MP Mohammed al-Halbousi (pictured), a Sunni, as speaker, as well as two deputy speakers after a process characterised by rows, controversies and repeated disruptions.

The leaders of Fatah, an Iranian-backed Shia coalition, and members of the State (Rule) of Law coalition of former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki submitted a document to the acting speaker saying that they constituted the largest bloc in parliament with 88 seats.

MPs close to Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, winner of the elections on 10 October, responded immediately claiming they had the majority in the chamber based on the outcome of the polls.

In an increasingly tense climate, acting speaker Mahmoud al-Mashahadani was forced to interrupt the session and seek medical treatment himself in hospital due to exhaustion.

When the session resumed, the election ended with al-Halbousis mandate as speaker renewed with 200 votes out of 329 with the support of al-Sadr, Kurdish parties and Sunni MPs.

Hakim al-Zamili, who ran for Sadrs party, was elected as Halbousis first deputy speaker, whilst Shakhwan Abdulla, from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), was voted in as a second deputy.

However, Shia Muslim parties close to Tehran rejected the results saying they would turn to the Supreme Court to contest their legality.

What happened today inside the parliament is illegal and will have dire consequences on the state level," said Fatah lawmaker Humam al-Tamimi.

Now parliament has 30 days to elect the President of the Republic whose task is to pick a new prime minister capable of winning the support of a majority of MPs to form a new government.

Talks to elect a new head of state are expected to start today, said a source close to the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Under post-Saddam Hussein 2005 constitution, the post of head of state is reserved to an ethnic Kurd. To be elected, a candidate must obtain the support of two thirds of the Assembly (220 deputies).

In his first speech after his election, al-Halbousi stressed that the election of the speaker is the first step of the legislature, and that Iraqis expect a lot from their lawmakers.

He noted that it is important to fix the process and regain the confidence and consent of the population, and announced the upcoming election for the President of the Republic.

Picking the head of state and the future government are expected to ease sectarian tensions and ensure Iraqs stability and future. For this reason, it is in everyones interest to ensure broad representativeness in the future cabinet.
by Mathias Hariyadi

Heavy rains have led numerous rivers to break their banks flooding entire areas of the province. In recent days, Sumatra (three children dead and 32,000 displaced) and North Aceh have also been hit. Unregulated deforestation and illegal logging at the origin of the floods,.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) - At least eight people have died in the heavy floods that have hit Jayapura, capital of the province of Papua, in the far east of the Indonesian archipelago. The torrential rains - which have caused rivers to overflow, the collapse of banks in several points and caused major landslides in several districts - began on January 7 and have caused the displacement of about 7,000 people.

Among the areas affected by the floods and at the moment still covered in several parts by water are North Jayapura Utara, South Jayapura, Abepura, Heram and Muara Tami. The provincial capital, Jayapura, is divided into two different areas: the highlands, where the Sentani airport is located, and the lower part where most of the residential complexes, government offices and public facilities are located.

The heavy floods have affected the lowland areas, where three different rivers flow, whose overflow is at the origin of the emergency.

A critical situation, caused by a week of heavy weather, has also been recorded on the island of Sumatra, where there are currently at least 32,000 displaced persons and three victims, all children. The torrential rains that have been falling since December 31 have caused flooding in at least four districts and flooded much of the eastern sector, long below the water level. At least 11,000 houses were submerged, while the inhabitants sought shelter in makeshift places, temporary accommodation, public buildings and even mosques.

In some areas the waters have begun to recede, but the state of emergency remains in force and the same rescuers are struggling to reach the affected areas. The authorities of North Aceh, among the most affected areas, have declared a state of emergency until January 15. At the moment the priority is still to save lives and help the people in need, but there are those who have already begun to count the damage and fear heavy repercussions on activities. Muhammad Hatta, a resident of the village of Lhoksukon in Aceh province, confirmed to al-Jazeera the serious concerns because "the local economy has been destroyed.

Among the main causes of the floods that have affected several areas of Indonesia is the progressive deforestation taking place in recent years. Interviewed by AsiaNews, Jafar, also a resident of the village of Lhoksukon, points out that the "massive floods have become a common problem in the region of North Aceh in recent years" and "deforestation has aggravated the consequences of the phenomenon". Nur, former executive director of the local branch of Walhi (the Indonesian environmental fund), is certain: "The devastating floods that have flooded 15 sub-districts - he points out - are certainly linked to deforestation".
In his address to the diplomats representing 183 States accredited to the Holy See, Francis stressed the need to tackle issues such as vaccines for all and openness to those who are forced to leave their country, as well as the main crisis hotspots, from Syria and Afghanistan to the Ukraine and Myanmar.

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  Pope Francis addressed the diplomats representing 183 countries accredited to the Holy See (plus the European Union and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta) during the traditional exchange of greetings that mark the start of the new year.

In his long speech, the pontiff said that dialogue and fraternity are "essential to overcome the multiple crises that humanity is currently facing, most notably the pandemic, with its economic and social consequences, the climate emergency and the conflicts between states.

Francis stressed the need to tackle issues such as vaccines for all and openness to those who are forced to leave their country, plus the main crisis hotspots, from Syria and Afghanistan to Ukraine and Myanmar.

However, he made no reference to the ongoing crackdown in Hong Kong nor to Chinas actions against religion, omissions in all probability due to the secret agreement between the Holy See and China.

Notwithstanding such silence, Francis' examination of the international situation started with the pandemic, which continues to cause social isolation and to take lives.

The health emergency calls for a response at the individual level since Health care is a moral obligation, at a political level to implement measures of prevention and immunization in favour of people and communities, and at an international level, so that the entire world population can have equal access to essential medical care and vaccines. To achieve this goal, Francis wants international agencies to adapt their legal instruments lest monopolistic rules constitute further obstacles to production.

Speaking about his visits in 2021, the Pope singled out his stay on Lesbos (Lesvos) Island and his meeting with migrants. Before those faces, we cannot be indifferent or hide behind walls and barbed wires under the pretext of defending security or a style of life. Consequently, I thank all those individuals and governments working to ensure that migrants are welcomed and protected.

The pontiff thanked again Italy for its actions, and called on the European Union to adopt a coherent and comprehensive system for coordinating policies on migration and asylum, with a view to sharing responsibility for the reception of migrants. [. . .] Sadly, we must also note that migrants are themselves often turned into a weapon of political blackmail, becoming a sort of bargaining commodity that deprives them of their dignity.

Given the current international situation, he noted a crisis of trust undermining multilateralism. Important resolutions, declarations and decisions are frequently made without a genuine process of negotiation in which all countries have a say. This imbalance, now dramatically evident, has generated disaffection towards international agencies on the part of many states; it also weakens the multilateral system as a whole, with the result that it becomes less and less effective in confronting global challenges.

Speaking about the protection of rights, Francis mentioned in particular the right to life, from conception to its natural end, and the right to religious freedom.

Looking at various international crises, he said that he hoped to see Lebanon pursue necessary reforms with the support of the international community. Likewise, always in the Mideast region, Syria too needs Political and constitutional reforms [. . .] for the country to be reborn, but the imposition of sanctions should not strike directly at everyday life, in order to provide a glimmer of hope to the general populace, increasingly caught in the grip of poverty.

The same goes for the conflict in Yemen, a human tragedy that has gone on for years, silently, not to mention the lack of progress in the peace process between Israel and Palestine.

Another topic close to the pontiffs heart is the urgent need to care for our common home and the Paris Accord on climate. Here his thoughts turned to the Philippines, struck in these last weeks by a devastating typhoon, and of other nations in the Pacific, made vulnerable by the negative effects of climate change.

Other sources of concern are the institutional tensions in Libya, the episodes of violence by international terrorism in the Sahel region, and the internal conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan and Ethiopia, where there is need to find once again the path of reconciliation and peace through a forthright encounter.

Reciprocal trust and readiness to engage in calm discussion should also inspire all parties at stake, so that acceptable and lasting solutions can be found in Ukraine and in the southern Caucasus, and the outbreak of new crises can be avoided in the Balkans, primarily in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Dialogue and fraternity are all the more urgently needed for dealing wisely and effectively with the crisis which for almost a year now has affected Myanmar; its streets, once places of encounter, are now the scene of fighting that does not spare even houses of prayer.

Naturally, these conflicts are exacerbated by the abundance of weapons on hand and the unscrupulousness of those who make every effort to supply them. At times, we deceive ourselves into thinking that these weapons serve to dissuade potential aggressors. History and, sadly, even daily news reports, make it clear that this is not the case.

Nuclear weapons are another source of grave concern for Francis, for whom possession of them is immoral. On a more positive note, he said that the restart of talks over the Iran nuclear accord was an important step.

The last two issues Francis touched were education and work. in the first case, he mentioned his message for the World Day of Peace.

Education is in fact the primary vehicle of integral human development, for it makes individuals free and responsible. [. . .] It is an outstanding expression of dialogue, for no true education can lack a dialogical structure. Education likewise gives rise to culture and builds bridges of encounter between peoples.

Work too is an indispensable factor in building and keeping peace. The pandemic has sorely tested the world economy. This has further highlighted persistent inequalities in various social and economic sectors. Here we can include access to clean water, food, education and medical care. The number of people falling under the category of extreme poverty has shown a marked increase.

Here too, greater cooperation is needed among all actors on the local, national, regional and global levels, especially in the short term, given the challenges posed by the desired ecological conversion. The coming years will be a time of opportunity for developing new services and enterprises, adapting existing ones, increasing access to dignified work and devising new means of ensuring respect for human rights and adequate levels of remuneration and social protection.

Last but not least, Francis said that, We should be unafraid, then, to make room for peace in our lives by cultivating dialogue and fraternity among one another. The gift of peace is contagious; it radiates from the hearts of those who long for it and aspire to share it, and spreads throughout the whole world. (FP)
by Vladimir Rozanskij

Moscow (AsiaNews) - 40 years have passed since the imminent new universal flood was predicted due to the melting of the polar ice caps. The images of the past few days of Siberian rivers overflowing due to the accumulation of detached blocks of ice seem to confirm the most catastrophic predictions. An extensive report by Julia Latynina, observer of the Novaja Gazeta, traces the history of the announced disasters to understand what future actually awaits us.

Latynina points to the many published articles according to which "the Maldives islands should have already disappeared more than 20 years ago", and the Arctic is about to collapse on the world below, in the words that former US vice-president Al Gore has been repeating since the 2009 Copenhagen summit. Scientific theories, when disproved by reality, are usually revised and corrected, but "if they refer to the end of the world, the disproof seems to reinforce them even more".

What did not happen in 2000 is postponed to 2010, and in 2022 it is strengthened for the next decades, at least until 2100, when according to the latest forecasts the waters of the oceans will rise by half a meter, or perhaps more than two meters, for others up to nine meters above the current level, making disappear not only the Maldives, but almost all of Europe, whose survivors will have to move to Siberia; between 100 and 700 million people are in fact destined to die by drowning, according to the authoritative magazine Science and Nature, which has predicted the disappearance of Miami and all of Florida within 80 years and that of London within 50, given that "the height above sea level of the British capital is only 11 meters".

The unanimity of such beliefs make it scandalous just to suspect their inevitability, "almost like the suspicion about the existence of witches in the Middle Ages," recalls the Novaja Gazeta report. In fact, the sea level has been rising steadily since 1900, as confirmed by the graphs on the Nasa sites. After all, in the last 20 thousand years, after the last glaciation, the sea has risen by more than 120 meters. Yet the figures are not as catastrophic as they seem: since 1995 the oceans have risen by 8 centimeters, about 3 millimeters per year, 18 centimeters throughout the twentieth century.

Human efforts in more recent times have actually not been limited to defending the mainland from disappearing due to flooding, but have partly succeeded in gaining other territories. The small island of Singapore (719 km2) expanded by more than 22% between 1965 and 2015, and an additional 8% will be gained by 2030 through the creation of embankments. Similarly, the territory of Hong Kong, Macau, Dubai and South Korea has grown, with projects, moreover, harshly condemned by ecologists as too invasive with respect to the balance of the ecosystem. And yet, since ancient times, the Egyptians have defended themselves in similar ways from the floods of the Nile, and the Dutch have begun to reconquer the submerged lands from the sea since the XI century.

Latynina's conclusion, certainly in agreement with the many fears for the imminent flood, is that it is necessary to intervene to save the planet, but "not with apocalyptic alarmism, rather with the imitation of our predecessors", because if the men of the past times fought against the floods of seas and rivers, "those who have conquered the moon and space, and have more advanced technologies at their disposal than those of the Pharaohs, should be able to do just that.".
TEHRAN, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh, on Monday ruled out the likelihood of a temporary deal between Iran and remaining parties to the 2015 nuclear deal, also known as the JCPOA, in the ongoing Vienna meetings, saying that such a deal will not meet Iran's demands.

"We should all try to make sure that the return of the United States to the JCPOA is accompanied by necessary guarantees and verification, and that the lifting of sanctions which should have been done under the JCPOA is done effectively," said Khatibzadeh, adding that none of these can be achieved by an "interim" agreement.

Making the remarks in his weekly press briefing, Khatibzadeh noted that "we are looking for a stable and reliable agreement, and no agreement that does not have these two components is on our agenda."

He emphasized that Vienna talks are only about ensuring a full, responsible and verifiable return of the United States to the JCPOA, and Iran will not accept the raise of any issue in the Vienna talks out of the framework of 2015 deal.

As for the progress of the negotiations in Vienna, he said that "we negotiate neither pessimistically nor optimistically. We negotiate based on reality."

On Saturday, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, said that the disputes over lifting anti-Iran sanctions are decreasing in Vienna talks, according to official IRNA news agency.

New rounds of nuclear talks began on Nov. 29 in Vienna, after a nearly six months of hiatus, between representatives of Iran and those of the P4+1 group, including Britain, China, France, Russia plus Germany, with the United States indirectly involved.

The talks have mainly focused on removal of U.S. sanctions against Iran and the return of Washington to the deal from which it withdrew in 2018. 
Kabul (AsiaNews/Agencies) - After the U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban's seizure of Kabul last August, nations in the region have found themselves dealing with a new government that they have not yet formally recognized, but with which they have opened diplomatic channels.

Yesterday, a delegation led by the Foreign Minister of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Amir Khan Muttaqi, flew to Tehran to meet his Iranian counterpart, Hussain Amir Abdullahian. The meeting between the two concerned bilateral political and economic relations: according to a statement issued by the Taliban government, "Iran will be able to use the territory of Afghanistan to export its goods to Central and South Asia, and in the same way Afghanistan will be able to use the Iranian territory for exports".

In the meantime, on January 8, the day preceding the meeting with the Taliban envoy, Abdullahian had already proposed to India to cooperate in order to send humanitarian aid to Kabul through the Islamic Republic so as to avoid the passage through Pakistan, which in the past months has caused many tensions between Islamabad and New Delhi.

In October, India offered to send 50 thousand tons of grain to the Afghan neighbor through Pakistan, which after an initial assent refused to carry out the shipment because it wants it to be done under its own conditions, not those of Delhi; as a result, the load of aid has not yet started and two tranches of medicines and anti-Covid vaccines departed from India this month passed first through Tehran and then through Dubai.

In his January 8 phone call with Abdullahian, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar discussed using the Iranian port of Chabahar to ship food and medicine to Afghanistan. The port stems from a trilateral agreement signed in 2016: it allows Iran to avoid U.S. economic sanctions by connecting it with oceanic economic routes, while India sees it as an alternative and rival infrastructure project to China's Belt and Road Initiative, especially the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, centered on the Pakistani port of Gwadar, not too far from Chabahar.

But Iran has also acted as a mediator in the Afghan political crisis: in Teheran, the Taliban Muttaqi met the opposition leaders Ahmad Massoud (son of the "Lion of Panshjir" and head of what is called the National Resistance Force) and Ismail Khan, local chief of the western province of Herat who had taken refuge in Iran during the capitulation of the city. To both the Taliban say they want to guarantee a safe return home.

Developments are awaited, but despite the fact that the Iranian Foreign Minister Abdullahian, in his phone call with Jaishankar on Saturday, stressed the need for Afghanistan to form an inclusive government, it is increasingly difficult to believe the promises of the Taliban: after the ban on taxi drivers to take fare from women alone and barefaced, signs have appeared in the streets of Kabul recommending the wearing of the hijab, even the heads of mannequins have been cut off in recent days and critics of the government have been arrested.

Professor Faizullah Jalal, a lecturer at Kabul University, has been jailed for repeatedly blaming the Taliban on television in recent months. To justify his arrest, the Taliban re-shared tweets from a fake account of the professor.
Mr. Phillip Nathaniel Ware aged 62, passed away on Wednesday April 6, 2022 in Dallas, Texas . He was born to Mr. Frederick Brink Ware and Ms. Irene Duffner on Sunday, November 15, 1959 in Kansas City, Kansas. Phillip N. Ware will leave his loved ones with unforgettable memories and loving st
Here is one RV that you cant find and, even if you did, few could probably afford it. This is the 1961 Holiday House Geographic, also known as Model X (no relation to todays Model X ), and arguably one of the rarest trailers in the world. At the time it was introduced by Medford, Oregon-based company Holiday House, which had been set up in 1959 by President of the Harry & David fruit company, David Holmes, it was aptly described as the trailer for the rich.The Geographic was also futuristic and feature-packed , and stood out from all the other trailers at the time. It was and is, to this day, a unicorn on wheels, with a fiberglass body and an instantly recognizable silhouette. It is a true collectible of which only two examples survive to this day, and both are located in private collections The Harry & David fruit company was in the business of selling (duh) fruit. The owners got the idea to expand onto the recreational vehicles market and, in 1959, launched the Holiday House company. For the 1960 and 1961 model years, some 200 units in total were produced, of varied sizes and with various features that appealed to a wide palette of customers. Holiday House trailers were popular, despite the low production numbers so, in mid-1960, the more expensive version was introduced, the Geographic.Described as the trailer for the rich, it was designed by BMW race car designer Chuck Pelly, and it came with a price tag of $8,500, at a time when houses were only a couple thousand more expensive. Consequently, of the two models produced and showcased around the country, neither sold.The showcase model ended up with a Holiday House employee at a discount, after the company shut down, and was fully restored in 2007, before selling to a private collector and shipping to France a few years later. Reports say that the restoration was true to the original, including the teak woodwork, and kitchen appliances like the Norcold refrigerator, the Magic Chef oven and dual fold out Magic Chef cooktops.The other example was considered lost until 2016. The incomplete examples inside the Holiday House factory, which may have been as few as seven and as many as 11, depending on which account you believe, were destroyed in a factory fire that also spelled the end of the RV business. The molds were saved from the fire, but were destroyed by the owners at a later time.The lost Geographic, the one that was discovered by chance in 2016, underwent a two-year restoration and upgrade by Flyte Camp in Bend, Oregon, and sold in 2018 for $250,000. It is the one shown in the photo gallery and in the video below, which marks the moment when the original designer, Pelly, set foot in it after six decades. Consider this the reunion you never knew you wanted to see.The restoration process was incredibly challenging due to the state of the trailer: when it was discovered by mere chance, it had been sitting in a field for more than 15 years, being used as storage for spare parts. It was so covered in green mold it was hardly recognizable.The team at Flyte Camp conducted the restoration from the frame up, trying to stay true to the original but offering modern upgrades . The unit received new axles, brakes, and wheels with whitewall trailer tires, as well as a vintage-looking awning. The interior was decked in black walnut wood, hardwood floors, marmoleum floor in the bathroom and a teak hardwood shower, stainless steel countertops and finishes. The original light sconces were fitted with LED lights, and some cabinetry was removed to make the space more livable.Speaking of, the L-shaped couch and the gaucho couch sleep a total of four people when extended, and offer plenty of room to move about when folded. The kitchen is fully functional, with a two-burner cooktop, a sink and a hidden three-way fridge. The bathroom is perhaps the fanciest retro bathroom youre ever likely to see on a trailer, and that should say it all.This Geographic doesnt just look good: theres an LP on-demand hot water heater, and generous holding tanks for off-grid living, a battery pack with an inverter and solar panel compatibility, air-conditioning, a 32 TV screen, surround sound and DVD / Bluetooth stereo system. All these are ingeniously hidden from view, so that the retro charm isnt diminished.Before it sold and went away with its collector owner, this Geographic was featured in several magazines and television shows. Not that its one-of-two status or its sheer beauty werent enough to turn it into a proper celebrity.
HP

Superyachts are often described as a home away from home for their wealthy owners. This 163-footer (50 meters) vessel was literally Harald McPikes home in the Bahamas. The eccentric Austrian-born billionaire, rumored to have made his first million at blackjack, had reached some of the worlds highest peaks, and had skied to the North Pole, and was ready to reach a new frontier, the space one.McPike was portrayed as mysterious by the media  the unusual billionaire who chose to live aboard his superyacht in the Bahamas. But he had become famous years earlier when he sued U.S.-based Space Adventures for an alleged breach of contract. The space fever was already brewing in 2012, and McPike was one of the few who could afford to secure a future trip to space.He paid a total of $17 million just as deposits, hoping to go to space in the following years, onboard a Russian spacecraft. But the agreement was broken, with accusations on both sides, and McPike didnt get to be the first billionaire in space. A settlement was finalized in 2019, and the adventurer carried on with his secluded life. But it looks like he is done with superyacht living as well.Even with all the controversy aside, Home is a one-of-a-kind vessel. It was Heesens first-ever hybrid model, combining Van Oosanens efficient FDHF hull design with hybrid propulsion, resulting in lower fuel costs and emissions, plus reduced noise and vibration levels. Equipped with two 805mtu engines, two generators, and two e-motors, Home has four propulsion modes, from hybrid to boost (a top speed of 16.8 knots/19 mph/31 kph).The Dutch yacht boasts an equally-modern interior. The famous Cristiano Gatto created a clean, Ibiza beach club look, where huge ceiling-to-floor windows throughout are a key element. Home included all the features of a successful boat, from the jacuzzi and gym to an elegant bar and a large sun deck equipped with privacy glass screens. The owners room comes with a dressing room and a private office, and six other cabins provide accommodation for up to 12 guests.The controversial billionaires literal home, unique in its own right, is up for grabs. Burgess Yachts lists it for $33.4 million (29.5 million)  a home with a story.
American rapper and record executive/entrepreneur William Leonard Roberts II, better known around the world as Rick Ross, has been exploring all means of travel/transportation as of lately. Boats, planes, automobiles, anything goes  so long as theyre plenty hot, figuratively speaking.It seems that even virtual rides entice him enough to give the social media nod of approval, as far as a cool Tri-Five is concerned. Created by the Brazil-based pixel master tucked behind the revealing johnrendering account on social media, this is classic America at its finest.Let us discuss both the setting and the ride, and only afterward get back to Biggest Boss Rick Ross. The 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Convertible , something thats ubiquitous to the Tri-Five culture, is an aftermarket wonder. It rides crimson, white, and chromed as close to the ground as possible.The custom atmosphere is unquestionably there, as even the aftermarket wheels have a direct link with Rick Ross. Anyway, the slammed Tri-Five looks as if produced yesterday, all shining brightly under a hot salt flats sun! Oh, it clearly gives us summer jitters , although we are a long way from running around looking for shade.Now, unfortunately, we have no idea why the virtual designer opted to directly reference Rick Ross. Maybe he deemed the ride worthy of the rap superstar. Or, hopefully, perhaps we are looking at a preview for the entrepreneurs next vintage-modern ride? Who knows, since Ross is not giving any hints, either. Although, he does approve of the hypothetical build and thinks its on fire (about six times!).And there is a second beef to be had if you ask us: why no info on the possible technical goodies, either? Sheesh, these automotive virtual artists only thinking about styling and (almost) never the geeky powertrain stuff...
But even in times of relative peace, armed forces are as active as ever. When not fighting in a war, military units constantly learn how to do that more effectively, during countless exercises conducted around the world.For most of us, not directly involved in such activities, military exercises are a great opportunity to look at the hardware the various branches can deploy in case of conflict. And few branches seem to take as much pride in their machines as the U.S. Air Force ( USAF ), who kept flooding us with images of aircraft in action for the duration of 2021.As we stepped into the new year, the USAF compiled some of those pics into a sort of best of album , and the one we have here is part of that selection.Taken by an Airman 1st Class back in March 2021, it shows one of Americas most potent and modern weapons, the mighty fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II , as it flies over the Nevada Test and Training Range. The plane is deployed with the 62nd Fighter Squadron based at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, a unit specifically tasked with conducting fighter training using the F-35.The plane, pictured from an uncomfortably close distance by means of a Nikon camera that makes the jet look fat, is seen here taking part in one of the many Red Flag exercises held throughout 2021. Dating all the way back to 1975, when it started out as a means to train pilots for aerial combat, Red Flag is now much more complex, and it includes war-fighting across air, space and cyberspace domains, as per the USAF.
GM made this commitment in a letter sent to California Governor Gavin Newsom, stating that it is committed to complying with Californias regulations, reports Reuters Back in 2020, not long after Joe Biden was elected president, GM decided to no longer oppose California from setting its own emissions rules, which was something the Trump administration had been fighting against.GM is joining California in our fight for clean air and emission reduction as part of the companys pursuit of a zero-emissions future, said Newsom. This agreement will help accelerate Californias nation-leading commitment to tackling the climate crisis.In 2019, California said that it would halt all purchases of new vehicles for state government fleets from not just GM, but also Toyota and any other carmakers backing former president Donald Trump with regards to this environmental issue. All this took place after the state purchased $58.6 million worth of GM vehicles between 2016 and 2018.In April of last year, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) said that it would restore legal authority to California to set tougher vehicle emission standards and zero-emission vehicle mandates, which didnt go over too well with various Republican party members.As far as long-term plans are concerned, California will ban the sale of new gasoline-powered passenger vehicles starting in 2035, although the Biden administration would prefer it if 50% of all new vehicles sold by 2030 would be either fully electric or plug-in hybrids.Ultimately, the United States can focus on shifting to battery electric vehicles sooner, after the EPA finalized new emissions requirements through 2026 that basically reversed what the Trump administration had been trying to accomplish.
Hankook is a global tire manufacturer whose products are suitable for a wide range of applications. The company makes tires for all types of vehicles, from small passenger cars to SUVs, trucks, RVs, buses, and even motorsports.Hyundai Motor Company and Hankook started a collaboration with the latter bringing to the table its latest airless i-Flex tire concept. This tire is meant to go with Hyundais Plug & Drive (PnD) module, which was also unveiled at the CES. The i-Flex is fitted to maximize the characteristics and functions of the PnD module.Hankooks tire is described as a futuristic non-pneumatic one with a biometric design. Thanks to this design, the i-Flex is supposed to offer impressive shock absorption and load-bearing capacity. The fact that it has an airless construction also makes it safer and reduces maintenance costs.With Hankook s tire not requiring air-pressure monitoring or refills, the i-Flex is an optimal solution for autonomous vehicles.In its recently presented version, the i-Flex comes in a compact 10 format with a diameter of 400 mm (15.7) and a width of 105 mm (4.1). It has a c-shaped concave tread profile that ensures the maximum contact patch and is designed for multidirectional vehicle movement.Hyundais PnD modular platform is described as an all-in-one solution for its MoT (Mobility of Things) ecosystem in which everything from small objects to community spaces will gain mobility using Hyundais robotics technologies. The platform is supposed to be adaptive and expandable, offering intelligent steering (the steering wheel can turn 360 degrees), LiDAR, and camera sensors that allow it to move around autonomously and more.For now, all of the above remain bold and futuristic concepts with no clear intentions of bringing them to fruition being announced by neither Hyundai nor Hankook.
BEIRUT, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese President Michel Aoun warned on Monday that political differences may threaten national unity, sovereignty and independence.

The president also called for an urgent national dialogue that transcends political differences, according to a statement by Lebanon's Presidency.

"The dialogue concerns us all and its goal is not to achieve a partisan or personal interest," Aoun noted.

He explained that the national dialogue would address three matters: expanded administrative and financial decentralization, a defense strategy to protect Lebanon and a financial and economic recovery plan that includes essential reforms and the equitable distribution of losses of the financial sector.

Lebanon is going through its worst financial crisis as the government has been incapable of adopting practical solutions because of differences among political parties on issues such as the investigation into the Beirut port blasts and the diplomatic crisis with Gulf countries. 
If you're a fan of Dodges, Plymouths, and Chryslers, this is a good place to look for a project car. But it's not just these three brands that are represented here. Amazingly enough, the place is also packed with DeSotos and Imperials.With both brands discontinued many decades ago, their cars are getting increasingly harder to find. Phased out in 1961, DeSoto is becoming a rare sight, even in junkyards. I've seen at least four of them in the video below, including a late 1950s four-door and a 1955 coupe.Introduced in 1955 as Chrysler's luxury division, Imperial survived until 1983, but its early models are also hard to find nowadays. The oldest I've seen here is a 1959 model year. And it's quite the long four-door, similar to the Crown limousines the company offered in its first 10 years on the market.There's also a 1967 version, most likely powered by the big 440-cubic-inch (7.2-liter) Wedge V8 and a 1961 example with the iconic "free-standing" headlamps. The latter is actually in good condition, perhaps ready to hit the road with a mild restoration.Since we're talking about luxury cars, this junkyard is also home to quite a few Chrysler 300 "letter cars," including C, D, and F models. You'll spot a couple of them at the 26:43-minute mark, tucked away from the elements. These two appear to be in decent condition.But there are a few more goodies worth mentioning, including a 1950s Dodge Coronet police car, a pack of Plymouth Savoys and Valiants, and a few Fury models. Plenty of options here if you want to build yourself a "Christine" tribute.There's also an original 1965 Satellite survivor, a 1961 Belvedere (a better option to the Chevrolet Impala if you ask me), and a couple of Dodge A100 vans. These compact haulers aren't incredibly rare, but you don't see them very often either.But as you'll see for yourself, this junkyard also includes a few Chevrolets, Pontiacs, and Fords, as well as a very lonely Porsche 928 . Hopefully, it will find a new home during one of the junkyard's upcoming auctions because these grand tourers are too cool to meet the crusher.Meanwhile, hit the play button below if you're a Mopar fan. You're certainly going to enjoy this lengthy video.
Dealing with the lack of chips has become a global effort, and while foundries are working non-stop on improving the production capacity, others are trying to find a way to streamline the supply chain and reduce the disruptions in their operations.Carmakers, in particular, have been hit hard by the chip shortage, and more often than not, they have been blamed for sticking with an old approach that has previously worked like a charm.Most vehicle manufacturers are still using an old chip design, and most of them rely on real-time orders sent to suppliers, therefore avoiding building up inventories for obvious cost reasons. Now that the lack of a chip inventory is proving critical, they are looking into all kinds of approaches to prevent a similar crisis from happening again.Hyundai is one of the carmakers spearheading the push for a new chip strategy in the long term.The South Korean company has already confirmed on several occasions that it plans to make its chips in-house, and at CES, Jose Munoz, Hyundai Motors global chief operating officer and president of the North American unit, reiterated pretty much the same plan.We want to have control of our own destiny, he said, explaining that Hyundai just intends to reduce the reliance on suppliers in an attempt to have fewer disruptions to worry about. Munos reminded Hyundai isnt the only company to be looking into such an approach, but right now, its not exactly clear how the whole thing would work, given it lacks the know-how to handle chip design and manufacturing.Most likely, Hyundai will join forces with a tech partner to work specifically on this front, but for the time being, were being told that several approaches are under consideration.
ABS

As the largest shipbuilding company in the world, with activities spanning over half of century, HHI is a suitable candidate for introducing viable maritime autonomous operations. Avikus is the companys subsidiary that specializes in autonomous navigation technologies for ships, and it recently signed a contract that will advance these technologies even faster.Avikus claims to have successfully demonstrated the first autonomous commercial vessel in Korea, in 2021 and is now moving on to even bigger plans. It intends to coordinate the transoceanic voyage of a large-scale commercial ship, using autonomous shipping technology. In order to achieve that, Avikus signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the American Bureau of Shipping (), at this years CES event in Las Vegas.The goal is to obtain Approval in Principle (AIP) for the implementation of these technologies. As a maritime classification society that is part of the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS), ABS determines the criteria for maritime technology viability. Avikus required this approval in order to start real-world testing of its technology range.These products include the Hyundai Intelligent Navigation Assistant System (HiNAS), Hyundai Intelligence Berthing Assistance System (HiBAS), and Hyundai Intelligent Navigation Assistant System 2.0 (HiNAS2.0). Based on the operation data provided by Avikus, ABS will review the design, monitor testing procedures and their implementation at each testing stage. As a result, the autonomous technologies will be certified gradually, stage by stage.As commercial ships powered by alternative fuels or hybrid propulsion systems are becoming more frequent in the shipping world, autonomous ones are also gearing up to bring changes. The autonomous vessel segment is expected to grow by more than 12% per year, and become a multibillion-dollar sector.
People who were expecting the new Model Y to tow a trailer were left high and dry by Tesla. The American EV maker did not foresee the new 12-volt Li-Ion battery would not be able to provide auxiliary power for the trailer. This capability will come later this year as a retrofit adapter for those who need it. Luckily, the trailer lights/brakes are not impacted.

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Alongside the platform-sharing Chevy Camaro, General Motors allowed Pontiac to unleash the Firebird nameplate into the world just in time for a direct brawl with both Fords Mustang and its more upscale Mercury Cougar. And it clearly made a legend out of that rivalry.Now, every iteration has its iconic quirks and features. But if anyone seeks to stand out in a huge crowd of Bandit-inspired makeovers of the second generation, there is always the solution to go down to earlier model years.Sure, it could be said that 1970 to 1976 Firebirds look eerily quirky and perhaps even a tad too close to second-generation Camaro styling. But if one allows the automotive worlds virtual artists to have their way , there is no chance that anyone will dare to make fun of the hypothetical real-world project build once complete.Case in point. Rostislav Prokop, the Czech Republic-based pixel master better known as rostislav_prokop on social media, is giving us plenty of Pontiac reasons to rejoice. Well, to be frank, we would have loved additional POVs of the CGI experts  Bronze Mamba  Firebird Trans Am. Alas, one cannot have them all, especially because this falls into the merely wishful thinking category.Nevertheless, this Pontiac looks amazingly slammed and widened, so we are giving it a virtual hall pass. Especially since the digital Firebird almost scrapes the floor, and it certainly looks way too close for comfort... even if no speed bumps are in virtual sight. Luckily, we immediately forgot about them all over again, mesmerized by the widebody aerodynamic kit and the stunning paintjob.Now, there is just one additional beef  alongside the traditional one regarding its surreal, ethereal existence. Why are there no hints toward the envisioned powertrain... not even in the hashtags?!
Real Housewives of New Jersey star Teresa Giudice knows how to throw a great party and knows exactly the best place for it: onboard a luxurious yacht.To celebrate her daughter Gias 21st birthday, she rented a Ferretti yacht for $3,440 in Miami, which is the cost for only four hours, and started the festivities.Lumar, the yacht she rented is 70-feet (21.3 meters) long, and it has a capacity of six guests in three ensuite rooms. The interior design is light and bright, with wood flooring and a lot of white and beige, while the exterior has a modern vibe.Giudice revealed she worked with Miami Boats Rental for the event, which claims to have the largest fleet of VIP luxury yachts in Miami, as she tagged them in several Instagram Stories.The birthday girl also shared a series of pictures and short videos on her social media account, showing how she celebrated onboard the $3.4k rental. The yacht comes with its own captain and crew members.Onboard, theres also kitchen space, continuing the wood theme and featuring an open-plan layout, with wooden table and chairs included. There is the perfect spot to just lay in the sun and get the best tanning session towards the stern of the yacht.There are also paddle boards and a floating mat if you want to engage in some activities on the water.The guests at the party all seemed to be dressed in swimsuits, ready to have fun on the water, and this yacht surely delivers.
Even though Russias submarine game is far from the roaring force it displayed throughout the Cold War, its still one of the strongest in the world. In 2016, a new series of submarines started being built  Project 636.3 designates the third generation of large, diesel-electric powered, underwater vessels. They are based on the previous Kilo-class submarines, but with superior qualities, including a better target detection range, an advanced control system, and more powerful weapons.The Project 636.3 submarines are known to be some of the quietest (or stealthiest) in the world, which is why the U.S. Navy dubbed them the Black Holes, National Interest reports. Almost 243-foot-long (74 meters), they have a displacement of over 3,900 tons and boast a working depth of 787 feet (240 meters). But they can reach as deep as 984 feet (300 meters), able to operate for almost 45 days at a time. With a top speed of 20 knots (23 mph/37 kph), and a range of 7,500 miles (12,000 km) these silent killers can go anywhere, anytime.The Magadan was the third one to join the new class after the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and the Volkhov were delivered in 2019. Magadan officially joined the Russian Navy in October 2021, but this is the year when it will kick off its first mission , as part of the Pacific Fleet  according to a recent announcement of the Ministry of Defense.Packed with the latest radars, sonars, and communication systems, and boasting a Club-S integrated missile system with a 310-mile (500 km) fire range, in addition to its torpedoes, the Madagan is ready to hunt down enemy submarines and strike land facilities.The fourth Black Hole, Ufa, is also on its way, expected to be delivered this year.
EV

ICE

HP

The 2022 BMW i4 is a low-slung four-door sedan with a 4 Series Gran Coupe exterior. Its looking to compete in themarket with the Tesla Model 3, Kia EV6, and thwe Polestar 2.First impressions on the i4 might be a turn-off due to its redundant make-up, but according to Supercar Blondie, theres something special about this new premium EV liftback.For starters, the 2022 i4 comes with blue highlights on the grille, side skirts, and the rear diffuser. The blue outlines signify electric, a universally accepted color for efficiency and environmental conformation.Thats not all. There are three different ways you can get into the 2022 i4. You can open this electric model with a traditional key, the BMW smartphone app, or a BMW card-like easy-to-carry key.The i4 also comes with a compelling infotainment system. Theres a curved screen integrated with personalized user experience settings unique for each user. BMW is working with renowned composer Hans Zimmer to create the sounds of cars for future BMWs.There are two versions of the i4. Supercar Blondies test unit is the i4 eDrive40, but theres also an M Performance version - the i4 M50.The i4 isnt the first BMW electric model. The German automaker already has two famous sub-brands: the funky-styled i3 and the i8. According to Supercar Blondie, while the market loved the two models, it was still looking forward to an electric version of a BMWmodel - and the 2022 i4 appealed to that audience.The 2022 BMW i4 makes 340and can go from 0 to 60 mph (97 kph) in 5.5-seconds.At the end of the video, Supercar Blondie specs out her BMW i4. She goes for aluminum trim, sky scrapper gray metallic shade with an all-white interior, and 19-inch aerodynamic wheels. This exact spec will be available for the audience soon.
AWD

Back in the real world, the Munich-based automaker is well known for underrated output figures. Take, for instance, the bone-stock M3 Competition weve covered last year. Although BMW quotes 503 horsepower and 479 pound-feet (650 Nm) of tire-shredding torque, the dyno says it actually makes 538 ponies and 519 pound-feet (703 Nm) at the crank.Given these circumstances, are you surprised the M4 Competition is faster than a bone-stock Toyota GR Yaris over the quarter-mile? The following video starts with the Japanese interloper launching off the start line very well, but clearly enough, the BMW has the last laugh over the finish line.In addition to more displacement, double the number of cylinders, and one more turbocharger, the M4 Competition also happens to feature a much quicker transmission. The 8HP supplied by ZF Friedrichshafen is the culprit, and with the German automakers proprietary launch control, its far superior to the hatchbacks more driver-focused manual transmission.With rear-wheel drive, the G82 is capable of hitting 100 kilometers per hour (62 miles per hour) in 3.9 seconds, while the optional M xDrive system cuts four-tenths off that estimate. Fitted with much narrower tires, namely 225/40 R18s compared to 275/40 R18s and 285/35 R19s, the three-cylinder turbo Toyota GR Yaris in Euro-spec trim needs 5.5 seconds for the same feat.Even though its been soundly beaten, the Yota is a handling-focused machine with plenty of WRC-infused goodies. The GR-FOURsystem, for example, is designed to offer a slight performance advantage over twin-coupling AWD or permanent all-wheel drive with a center differential.Over in South Africa, where this drag race takes place, the GR Yaris can be yours from 615,700 rand or $39,230 at current exchange rates. The M4 Competition, on the other hand, retails from 1,940,000 rand ($123,630).
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said large businesses should not comply with the Biden administration's "oppressive" mandate for COVID-19 vaccinations or testing that's due to take effect Monday.

What he's saying: The Republican governor told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday the requirement "needs to be struck down" and urged Arkansas businesses with 100 or more employees affected by it to wait for the Supreme Court ruling on the matter.

"I expect the Supreme Court, hopefully, to rule against the Biden administration on that oppressive vaccine mandate," Hutchinson said in his interview with CNN's Jake Tapper.

"Our employers in Arkansas, some make the decision that they ought to have a vaccine requirement in the workplace. And I support their ability to make that decision. There shouldn't be a ban against that, Hutchinson continued.

"But others make the decision that it's not necessary. Maybe they work in a more open environment or they have a risk of losing too many employees. And so they have that freedom."

The big picture: The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on Friday, and a majority of the justices indicated that they believed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's requirement was too broad, per Axios' Sam Baker.

Meanwhile, coronavirus cases and hospitalizations have surged in Arkansas this month, with Hutchinson sending National Guard troops to assist with testing around the state.

Representatives from the Biden administration did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment.

Go deeper: The fate of Biden's vaccine mandates is in the Supreme Court's hands
People walk past a closed store in Beirut, Lebanon, on Jan. 10, 2022. Lebanon's merchants took a hit in 2021 by the country's unprecedented economic and financial crisis with 35 percent of them shutting down their stores or some branches, according to the Beirut Traders Association. (Xinhua/Bilal Jawich)

by Dana Halawi

BEIRUT, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's merchants took a hit in 2021 by the country's unprecedented economic and financial crisis with 35 percent of them shutting down their stores or some branches, according to the Beirut Traders Association.

Adnan Rammal, representative of the trade sector in the Economic and Social Council, told Xinhua that a large number of merchants had to close their stores last year as they were unable to cover the expenses in light of the drop in sales from 50 to 90 percent, varying among different sectors.

According to Rammal, the sectors that were mostly impacted include furniture, household appliances, electronics and carpets, and the demand for food has also dropped by 40 percent.

Over the past two years, Lebanon has witnessed an unprecedented financial crisis amid the shortage of U.S. dollar, which prompted a steep depreciation of the Lebanese pound.

As a result of the collapse of the local currency, citizens saw an obvious devaluation of their salaries. Most of them are employed by the public sector and get paid in local currency, while only an approximate of 20 percent of the Lebanese receiving their salaries in U.S. dollars.

Moreover, the financial crisis forced banks to impose heavy restrictions on withdrawals from deposits, which has deteriorated people's purchasing power.

Mohamad Rayes, owner of a men's clothes shop in Hamra, told Xinhua that sales at his shop dropped by over 80 percent compared to the pre-crisis years of 2017 and 2018, as people have been focusing their consumption on necessities.

"If we do not see any improvement in demand during the coming summer season, we will have to close doors and lay off employees," he said.

For his part, Abed Ramadan, sales manager at Dallas, a famous clothes shop in Hamra, told Xinhua that his store has gained no profits since last summer, but the owner is keeping the shop open.

"Any decision to shut down the store will deprive several families from a source of income," he said, adding that his store will not import new clothes for the coming summer season given the deteriorating living conditions of the Lebanese and the political instability.

Meanwhile, Tony Eid, head of Achrafieh's Merchants Association, told Xinhua that a number of merchants are still in the market as some of the operation costs, such as electricity, rent, and salaries, can still be paid in Lebanese pound, which is cheaper.

Eid called on the government to follow a clear economic and financial strategy by adopting a specific exchange rate of the U.S. dollar to the Lebanese pound.

"We can no longer receive checks or credit card payments by our clients as the exchange rate in the bank is lower than that of the parallel market," he explained.

Eid also urged Lebanese authorities to make efforts to attract tourists, who spend U.S. dollars on shopping and other services. 

People walk past a closed store in Beirut, Lebanon, on Jan. 10, 2022. Lebanon's merchants took a hit in 2021 by the country's unprecedented economic and financial crisis with 35 percent of them shutting down their stores or some branches, according to the Beirut Traders Association. (Xinhua/Bilal Jawich)

People walk past a closed store in Beirut, Lebanon, on Jan. 10, 2022. Lebanon's merchants took a hit in 2021 by the country's unprecedented economic and financial crisis with 35 percent of them shutting down their stores or some branches, according to the Beirut Traders Association. (Xinhua/Bilal Jawich)

People walk past a place for rent in Beirut, Lebanon, on Jan. 10, 2022. Lebanon's merchants took a hit in 2021 by the country's unprecedented economic and financial crisis with 35 percent of them shutting down their stores or some branches, according to the Beirut Traders Association. (Xinhua/Bilal Jawich)
Former "American Idol" contestant Clay Aiken is running for Congress in North Carolina, he announced in a video Monday, eight years after his failed bid for a House seat in the state.

Details: Aiken, who finished second on "American Idol" in 2003, is running as a Democrat to replace long-serving Rep. David Price in North Carolina's redrawn 6th District. Price, also a Democrat, announced last October he would not seek re-election.

Aiken lost a bid for Congress in 2014 to then-Republican incumbent Renee L. Ellmers.

What he's saying: For decades, North Carolina was actually the progressive beacon in the South. ... But then things changed, and the progressives lost power, and we started getting backward-ass policies, like the voter suppression bills and the bigoted bathroom bill, Aiken said in the video.

Because today, it seems like the loudest voices in North Carolina politics are white nationalists, like this guy, Aiken said, as the video showed a clip of Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.).

Aiken's platform includes fighting for "inclusion, income equality, free access to quality health care, and combating climate change," per his campaign website.
Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham is scheduled to meet with the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot on Wednesday night, after she was invited by member Rep. Jamin Raskin (D-Md.), according to a source with direct knowledge of the planned meeting.

Why it matters: Grisham, who was replaced as press secretary in April 2020, was chief of staff to former first lady Melania Trump at the time of the riot and may offer the investigation new information on the events inside the White House on and around that day.

The big picture: The invitation to speak before the Jan. 6 committee came after Grisham had a "candid" and "in-depth" phone call with Raskin about what was happening in the White House that day, including conversations involving former President Trump, a source familiar with the call told CNN.

Grisham, who started working for Trump as a press aide during the 2016 presidential election, was one of the first Trump administration officials to resign over the riot.

She later said it was a mistake to serve in the Trump administration and that she regretted enabling a culture of "casual dishonesty" at the White House.

Tim Mulvey, a spokesperson for the select committee, declined to comment.

Grisham wrote in a memoir published last year that she confronted the first lady on Jan. 6 with a text that read, Do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness and violence?

Grisham wrote that Melania Trump responded with No."

Go deeper ... Scoop: Inside Trumps Jan. 6 cancellation
Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev claimed Monday that unnamed actors had orchestrated an "attempted coup detat" against him and said he would soon provide evidence.

What's happening: Authorities announced Saturday that powerful intelligence chief Karim Massimov  a close ally of former dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev  had been arrested on suspicion of treason. Nazarbayev has himself vanished from view after being ousted last Wednesday from his role as head of the security council.

The backstory: Nazarbayev ruled Kazakhstan from independence in 1990 through 2019, when he handed the presidency to Tokayev but continued as security council chief and the apparent power behind the throne. Multiple members of Nazerbayev's family have become billionaires due to the family's control of much of the oil-rich country's economy.

The former president's spokesman on Saturday denied claims that the 81-year-old and his family had fled the country. Nazarbayev, the spokesman claimed, is in regular touch with Tokayev and continues to support him.

But the purge of Nazarbayev loyalists since last Wednesday signals there is a battle underway within the Kazakh elite.

Breaking it down: The government acknowledges that spontaneous, peaceful protests over a spike in fuel prices began last weekend in Western Kazakhstan and spread from there.

Events took a turn last Tuesday night in Almaty, Kazakhstans largest city, when mobs stormed public buildings and briefly took control of the international airport  apparently with little intervention from security forces.

The next day, Tokayev fired the cabinet and security chiefs (including Nazarbayev) and took the extraordinary step of requesting troops from the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

The government has blamed the violence on local and international terrorist groups, speaking foreign languages and showing a high level of preparedness and coordination.

Another possible explanation: Akezhan Kazhegeldin, a former prime minister and now a de facto opposition-leader-in-exile, claims the Nazarbayev family, fearful that its hold on power and the economy was slipping, attempted to use the protests as cover for a coup to restore Nazarbayev as president and establish a member of the family as his successor.

He claimed in a phone interview with Axios on Friday that the mobs in Almaty were able to quickly take control of so many key sites because the local security forces were "all under Nazerbayev control" and stood aside.

Another exiled opposition figure, Serik Medetbekov, made similar claims in a separate interview with Axios. He contended that paramilitaries long under Nazarbayevs command were behind the street violence.

Between the lines: The accounts were not based on direct knowledge and could not be verified. Kazhegeldin and Nazarbayev are also long-time political foes.

Where things stand: "I think we can be confident that there is a high-level elite struggle going on and some level of infighting," says Alexander Cooley, a Central Asia expert at Columbia University. "I think we can also say with a high degree of confidence that there was a political reason why Tokayev turned to the CSTO and the Russians."

The most obvious reason, Cooley contends, would be to convince members of the security services who were wavering or potentially plotting against him that Moscow had his back.

Tokayev's government has stopped referring to the Kazakh capital as "Nur-Sultan," the name it was given in 2019 to honor Nazarbayev. But the apparent transition in power and personnel underway there may not be easy to manage for a president who owes his power to Nazerbayev and up to now had been seen as the ultimate loyalist.

What to watch: If the current crisis ends with the Nazarbayevs out of power or potentially out of the country, the fight might not be over, Cooley notes.
The Ministry of Health said two persons tested positive for the variant after arriving in the country from abroad.

The patients condition is satisfactory, the ministry said in a statement. They were not hospitalized. They both are receiving treatment at home.

The Omicron cases were detected after two months of a steady decline in coronavirus cases and deaths in Armenia.

Armenian health authorities have reported between 100 and 150 cases a day for the last two weeks, sharply down from over 2,000 daily cases recorded in late October.

Only three Armenians died from COVID-19 on Sunday, according to the Ministry of Health. A record 62 deaths caused by the disease were registered on November 2.

This downward trend has contrasted sharply with Omicron-driven spikes in COVID-19 infections in Europe and the United States.

Announcing Omicrons officially confirmed entry into Armenia, the Ministry of Health again called on unvaccinated citizens to get inoculated against the coronavirus.

Ministry data shows that only about 740,500 people making up roughly a quarter of the countrys population were fully vaccinated as of Sunday. More than 212,000 others received only the first dose of a vaccine.

On Monday, Health Minister Anahit Avanesian officially announced the introduction from January 23 of a mandatory coronavirus health pass for entry to cultural and leisure venues.

The decision means that only those people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or have had a recent negative test will be allowed to visit bars, restaurants and other public venues. The requirement does not apply to minors, pregnant women, people who have a contraindication to vaccination as well as those who tested positive for the coronavirus up to 90 days ago.
We hope that the efforts within the framework of the CSTO aimed at assisting friendly Kazakhstan will help restore the country's normal life in the shortest possible time, Pashinian told the emergency video conference attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The purposefulness of our actions towards the earliest possible stabilization of the situation and the return of the country to normal life is obvious, he said. This is a critical moment for ensuring basic living conditions for citizens and the security of strategically important facilities.

Cities throughout Kazakhstan have been struck by protests that initially erupted in the western region of Mangystau on January 2 over the doubling in the price of subsidized liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev asked the CSTO for urgent intervention on January 5 as mobs stormed government buildings and looted businesses in his countrys largest city, Almaty.

The military bloc responded by sending more than 2,000 mostly Russian peacekeeping troops. They are understood to have been deployed in and around Almaty.

Speaking at the CSTO summit, Toqaev said calm has returned to Kazakhstan after days of violence described by him as terrorist aggression" and "attempted a coup d'etat."

Putin likewise claimed that "terrorists" are using social media networks to bring people out into the streets of Kazakhstan as a cover for their attacks. CSTO troops will stymie any attempts by external forces to topple governments within the alliance, he said.

Pashinian also spoke of the involvement of international terrorist groups in the events in Kazakhstan. But like Toqaev, he did not produce any evidence to back up the claim.

In a televised interview on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken denounced Toqaev's shoot to kill order issued to security forces. Blinken also said Washington is seeking clarification on why the Central Asian nation needed to call in the Russian-led security force.

Pashinians decision to send 100 Armenian troops to Kazakhstan was criticized by Armenian opposition groups as well as civil society members. The latter are concerned about the violent suppression of what they see as legitimate protests against Kazakhstans authoritarian government.

Critics also argued that Kazakhstan and other CSTO member states failed to provide Armenia with military assistance requested by Pashinian after Azerbaijani troops crossed into Armenian territory in May. Kazakh leaders openly congratulated Azerbaijan on its victory in the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The main opposition Hayastan alliance said on Saturday that Yerevan should have supported the Russian-led intervention in Kazakhstan without committing any troops.

A Hayastan lawmaker, Gegham Nazarian, said that the Armenian soldiers were flown to the Almaty area at a time when we ourselves have problems with border security and have not yet overcome the post-war shock.

And most importantly, we must not forget that Kazakhstan was among those countries that openly voiced support for Azerbaijan during the [2020] war, Nazarian told RFE/RLs Armenian Service. "It also congratulated Azerbaijan on its so-called victory.

Hayastan, which has the second largest group in the National Assembly, demanded on Monday that the parliament committees on defense and foreign relations hold a joint meeting on the Armenian deployment to Kazakhstan. Pro-government lawmakers heading the committees did not immediately respond to the demand.
Two other generals as well as former Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan and an arms dealer were arrested as part of the same investigation in September. The National Security Service (NSS) charged them with fraud and embezzlement that cost the state almost 2.3 billion drams ($4.7 million).

The accusations stem from the purchase of allegedly outdated rockets for the Armenian army.

According to the NSS, a private intermediary delivered the rockets to Armenia in 2011 and that the Defense Ministry refused to buy them at the time after discovering that they are unusable. The ministry re-commissioned them after Tonoyan was appointed as defense minister in 2018.

The NSS for months did not confirm reports that it has also indicted Lieutenant-General Artak Davtian, the chief the armys General Staff.

A spokesman for the Office of the Prosecutor-General, Gor Abrahamian, listed Davtian among seven indicted suspects in the case. Abrahamian said he stands accused of abuse of power but did not elaborate.

The suspects include Lieutenant-General Stepan Galstian, one of Davtians former deputies who was sacked in December.

Davtian has not been dismissed despite the indictment. It is not clear whether he will plead guilty to the accusations during his trial expected to start soon.

According to Abrahamian, a prosecutor overseeing the NSS inquiry certified its findings and sent the case to a court on January 7.

The prosecutors decision came four days after Tonoyan again strongly denied any wrongdoing. In a statement, the former defense minister insisted that the ammunition did not go past its expiration and was successfully used during the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Tonoyan warned that he must not be made a scapegoat for Armenias defeat in the six-week war. He pledged to make surprise revelations in that regard.
TEHRAN, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Iran is willing to boost economic and trade cooperation with Oman, Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said on Monday.

Amir Abdollahian made the remarks upon arrival in Muscat. During his one-day visit to Oman, he will hold talks with Omani officials on bilateral relations, as well as regional and international issues, according to official news agency IRNA.

"Tehran-Muscat relations are long-standing and stable, and in the course of these stable and strong relations, we are interested in promoting political and cultural relations to higher levels of economic and trade cooperation," he told reporters. 
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JERUSALEM, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Israel will not be bound by any future nuclear deal between world powers and Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Monday.

Addressing the parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Bennett said, "It is important for me to say and clarify unequivocally: Israel is not a party to the agreements, Israel is not bound by what will be written in the agreements if they are signed."

He stressed that "Israel will continue to maintain full freedom of action, anywhere and anytime, without restrictions" if the agreements are signed.

Bennett said Israel is concerned about the talks in Vienna, where negotiators have been trying to restore the 2015 nuclear deal.

As a vocal opponent of the nuclear deal, Israel insists that Iran has been secretly seeking to obtain nuclear weapons despite Iran's repeated statements that its nuclear program is peaceful. 
"My name is Kovid and I'm not a virus."

Kovid Kapoor, from Bangalore, India, wrote that tweet in February 2020, right after the World Heath Organization announced the official name for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus: Covid-19.

Kapoor had no idea he'd still be using that line as the coronavirus pandemic heads into its third year - and that simple daily acts such as ordering a coffee in Starbucks, checking into a hotel, or showing his passport at airport security would never be the same again.

The pandemic has fundamentally changed the lives of the many people who share the Sanskrit name of Kovid. And many of the Kovids are tired of the jokes. Several have even bonded over social media, forming a loose network to discuss and complain about their shared experiences of being mocked for a name that means "scholar or learned person" - and is referenced in Vedic literature, including within a Hindu prayer dedicated to Lord Hanuman - yet takes on a whole new meaning in the covid pandemic.

"It's been absolutely crazy," Kapoor told The Washington Post of life with the same name as a deadly respiratory virus.

While Kapoor notes that the "d" at the end of his name is not a hard stop - it's meant to be pronounced "Kovid-dah" - some of his experiences in the last few years are almost tongue twisters. For instance, this Kovid believes he contracted covid-19 at the coronavirus vaccination center.

Kapoor has largely turned to humor, telling his Twitter followers he's been "kovid positive since 1990" - when he was born - and he could only laugh with the airport employees carefully reviewing his passport on his recent trip to Sri Lanka, his first time leaving the country during the pandemic. Or at Google's assumption his own name must be spelled wrong.

Or that time his friends ordered him a birthday cake with his name - yet the baker instead sent over "Happy birthday, covid-30 in frosting. The bakery has since apologized, offering him free cake.

"Life threw me threw me (and all of us) a sour lemon," Kapoor tweeted. "I just decided to take it all in good humor and make some lemonade out of it... The funny [and] sad part is that there's gonna be a lot more of these in the future, I believe for the rest of my life."

When the World Health Organization chief announced the new name of the virus in February 2020, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said experts had many issues to consider. "We had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people, and which is also pronounceable and related to the disease," he explained.

Yet the WHO did not spare this particular group of people.

"For the first year it was hilarious," 28-year-old Kovid Jain, from the Indian city of Indore, told The Post. A friend had rushed to tell her in 2020 that she was sharing the same name as the new virus everyone was talking about. Jain, who got married in December that year, added that "my friends used to say 'Kovid getting married in the times of Covid' and we would laugh."

Now, she often opts not to use her name in public, using her husband's name or other nicknames instead, "just to spare the unwanted mockery." She said, "I use my initials KJ or my pet name Koko at coffee shops or food joints to avoid the attention."

This is hard for Jain, who says she loves her name and it has "a deep meaning." Her father, who is a professor, chose it.

Once, after wishing someone a happy new year, Jain received the reply, "We would rather not have a new year greeting from you, Covid-19."

Kovid Sonawane, 34, from Nagpur in the state of Maharashtra, said that while he understands the funny side, he is "mostly irritated by the correlation," especially when the jokes come from people outside of his friendship group.

At the time the covid-19 pandemic got its name, India had reported just three cases of the virus, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. As of Sunday, 483,000 lives have now been lost to the virus in India, with more than 35 million cases recorded across the country, according to John Hopkins University. The highly transmissible omicron outbreak has triggered an alarming spike in cases across the country, with some states reintroducing measures such as curfews to prevent the spread of infection.

It's not just people named Kovid who have been affected by new words added to the global lexicon. Artist Omarion, whose real name is Omari Ishmael Grandberry, took to Twitter recently to clear up any confusion around his name and the omicron variant of the virus. "I am a musician and entertainer, not a variant," he joked as he wished fans a happy new year.

And some companies have been forced to respond. Delta Air Lines made headlines last summer as marketing teams reportedly scrambled to avoid referring to the Delta variant of the virus. According to company CEO Ed Bastian, it was easier to use "B.1.617.2" or instead call it "the darn variant."

Corona beer was one of the first impacted. "The new coronavirus that was first found recently in Wuhan, China, is not the same as Corona beer," read a January 2020 article published by Forbes as people around the world Googled terms such as "beer virus" and "Corona beer virus," as they tried to work out whether the virus was associated with the beverage which is brewed in Mexico.

Kapoor's friends have also made the connection. They photographed him holding a bottle of the beer, posting it on social media with the caption: "Hey look, it's Kovid having a corona."
Frank Rebelo lined up the upgrades well before he boarded his Caribbean cruise: the dining package that would let him eat at high-end restaurants, the beverage package that would keep the drinks flowing. But after contracting covid-19 and isolating in a designated cabin, he had to order off the room service menu: turkey sandwich, pizza, burgers and three choices for dessert.

"They were like, 'We're going to give you the minimum you need to survive,' " said Rebelo, 54, who owns a small trucking company and works as a DJ while splitting his time between Tijuana and Las Vegas.

His nine-night voyage on the Norwegian Getaway late last month went awry after a coronavirus surge sent cases soaring to record heights on land and at sea. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cruise lines sailing in U.S. waters reported 5,013 coronavirus cases between Dec. 15 and Dec. 29, about 30 times more than the total from the previous two weeks.

On Dec. 31, the CDC escalated its travel warning for cruises to Level 4, advising against cruise travel even for the vaccinated. By that time, it was too late for Rebelo and thousands of others to heed the message.

Although passengers must follow strict rules to cruise - with the vast majority of people onboard vaccinated and everyone required to test negative - infections have slipped through. As positive cases mount, passengers and crew have coped with less-than-ideal accommodations. Many interviewed by The Washington Post reported long waits for service, hours without water, bare-bones food and confusion over when and who to test - even as most ships maintain their course.

For customers such as Rebelo, waiting on room service when they paid for premium options can feel like an indignity. For crew, quarantine can be even more difficult - even without getting sick.

One crew member on Royal Caribbean's Odyssey of the Seas, who did not want her name published because she is still employed by the company, said she was sent to "soft quarantine" after having contact with someone who tested positive. That means she was allowed to work but required to spend the rest of her time in her room.

She said one day she found her lunch outside her door as workers were fogging the hallway with cleaning chemicals. She decided not to eat the food.

"One night my dinner was like just a box of rice. Nothing else. Not even a roll or a vegetable," she said. "Just rice. I was like, cool, glad I have a box of Pop Tarts in my room."

A former member of the cruise director staff on Oasis, Ovation and Harmony of the Seas said he tested positive for coronavirus recently and was served food in quarantine that seemed inedible to him. He declined to have his name used because of concerns about endangering future job prospects.

He provided pictures that showed a rotting orange; a small seafood salad in a box with a slice of watermelon; and a box with a scoop of white rice, a hard-boiled egg and a paltry pile of corned beef hash.

"It would be different if I worked for, like, a construction company that doesn't know anything about how to prepare food," he said. Royal Caribbean did not address questions about meals it provides to quarantining crew members.

Aboard the Norwegian Encore, however, passenger Kelly Araujo said she and her mother took solace in room service deliveries. The 18-year-old student at Duke University said she could order anything available from the dining rooms to her quarantine room. She ate lava cake with a molten chocolate center every night.

Araujo and her mother spent four days in a windowless room without seeing sunlight. They would nap, watch TV or scroll online, losing track of the hours.

"It just felt like one really, really, really long day," Araujo said. "Even when we'd wake up, we would do the same thing the next day."

During part of a three-week sailing on the Seabourn Ovation, Barry Kluger was exiled to the quarantine floor. The 68-year-old retired public relations executive missed his wife, he said, getting to see her only when she would visit a balcony near his and talk to him through an opening in a wall. Kluger, who was vaccinated, boosted and previously infected, had an asymptomatic case. He spent most of his lonely days online, posting updates about his quarantine on social media. On New Year's Eve, he wore a tux, ordered champagne and rang in 2022 with his wife over Zoom.

Kluger said the crew, to their credit, did their best to entertain him. The cruise director brought him trivia and board games. His meals, although served on disposable plates, looked elaborate: Two ginormous shrimp on a bed of greens and dollops of sauces, grilled prawns with roasted autumnal vegetables, an assortment of mussels and octopus over yellow rice.

"Cruise lines didn't create covid," he said. "Everyone's trying to feel their way through it."

Araujo, the college student who enjoyed nightly lava cake, said within three days of her family's Norwegian sailing, her mother started feeling nauseated. The family thought it was motion sickness at first.

"When we tested positive, it was like they didn't know what to do," she said of the company. "It was like they had not thought that anyone was going to test positive."

Araujo, whose father tested negative, said staff told her she and her mother were the only people to test positive, but she wondered how many other guests carried the virus without getting a test. Initially, her family was told they would disembark together on the U.S. Virgin Islands. Instead, they stayed on and split up so she and her mother could quarantine.

On the Norwegian Getaway, Rebelo said he had to argue to receive a test after he developed a cough and chills.

"They grilled me," Rebelo said. "They did not want to know. If you were firm with them, and I was, they came up and tested."

He said he and other infected passengers on the Dec. 27 cruise tried to provide information about their close contacts on the ship, but "they would not take it down." The ship's next sailing was canceled.

In response to questions about his claims, Norwegian sent a link to its protocols, which say the company has "various contact tracing methodologies to identify and notify those who may have been exposed."

Rebelo said the cruise companies are promoting their safety precautions before people board but should be doing more before they return to land. The CDC doesn't require disembarkation testing for fully vaccinated passengers.

"You've been cruising around in this petri dish for 10 days," he said. "Shouldn't you have to test before you can go back on land?"

Graphic designer Mike Ratliff, 33, found out his 4-year-old daughter had contracted covid because she had to get tested before the end of the cruise on the Harmony of the Seas, as Royal Caribbean requires for unvaccinated kids on trips that are five nights or longer.

His daughter had been feeling a little tired and had a cough, but he said those symptoms didn't seem out of the ordinary, especially several days into a busy cruise.

Then Ratliff found out she was positive. He thought the rest of his group - three older kids, his wife and parents, all vaccinated - would have to isolate because everyone had been exposed.

But Ratliff said only he had to isolate because he took his daughter to get tested; his wife had to persuade staff to let her join with their 6-year-old son because she did not want to be separated from her ill, youngest child. No one else in the group was tested on the ship.

He said his father even followed up with officials on board to make sure they didn't need to quarantine or get tested. According to Royal Caribbean International spokeswoman Lyan Sierra-Caro, passengers identified as a close contact less than 24 hours before to the end of the cruise are supposed to quarantine but are not tested on board.

During the day and a half left of the Western Caribbean sailing, Ratliff started documenting his experience with videos on TikTok, calling the account "Cruising With Covid."

"5-Star Service" he wrote on one video where he got what sounded like a busy signal as he tried to reach room service for food and water.

"This is absolutely awful," he says.

Sierra-Caro said passengers are provided with free bottled water and room service.

Ratliff said it took at least an hour to reach room service, and then another hour to get food delivered. After the first meal, he said, he made the mistake of throwing out empty water bottles, realizing too late that there was no way to collect water from the sink to drink. His efforts to get more water sent to the room were fruitless before dinner, which he said arrived nearly three hours after they ordered it and was "super cold."

After Ratliff and his wife drove their four kids home from Central Florida's Port Canaveral, everyone in the family got sick. His parents tested positive, but his immediate family didn't even bother getting tested.

While Ratliff said his family knew cruising came with risk of covid, he was disappointed with the way they were treated after his daughter tested positive.

"It was just frustrating that they weren't able to meet basic needs," he said. "We're still a guest on the ship that we paid money to be on."

Even though some shows and events got canceled because of staffing issues, Ratliff said it was a good cruise early on, with stops in Cozumel, Costa Maya and Roatan.

"We had a good time up until we didn't," he said.

David Beyer, a 68-year-old travel adviser from Colorado, tested positive Dec. 30, eight days after boarding the Celebrity Equinox for the "ultimate Southern Caribbean cruise."

Beyer developed a slight cough before he woke up "not feeling good at all." After waiting hours for a test and results, he relocated from his cabin to an isolation room a couple of floors down.

The new room was a "stripped-down" version of the original, Beyer said, with just a bar of soap in the shower, no tissues and no bath mat.

"If I'd had hair I needed to shampoo, I would've been [out of luck]" he said. "Thank goodness I'm bald."

His husband, Don McCleary, kept their original room because he had tested negative; McCleary said he planned to get tested again this week because he had covid symptoms.

Until the ship returned to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Jan. 3, Beyer passed the time talking on the phone, playing games on his cellphone, watching TV and gazing at the sea from the balcony. He was able to order from the dining room menu, though the process to obtain the lukewarm food that arrived in paper boxes left a lot to be desired.

"Sometimes I was dialing upward of nine to 10 times to get through," he said. "I think it was just so many people they were just overwhelmed, and it took a long time."

After a Caribbean cruise on the Celebrity Reflection, Elizabeth Seguin is stuck in quarantine in Miami for two weeks before she can make it home to Quebec. The 23-year-old disembarked on Jan. 2 for a trip that was supposed to be a respite from lockdown in the cold Canadian province.

Within her group of three families, eight people tested positive on the ship, Seguin said. She wishes she knew how many passengers in total were infected.

"We would hear the announcement every morning, like, 'It's New Year's Eve. I hope you have a good new year,' " she said, "and that kind of sucked, because we were stuck and couldn't participate in all of that."

Still, Seguin said she thought it was just as safe on a cruise as it would be in plenty of environments on land.

"When you go to a hotel, they don't ask for your vaccination, they don't ask for negative tests," she said. "If you go to a concert, or you go to a festival, you can still get covid."
Laura Leonard was thrilled to get time off work to visit her mother in Connecticut over the holidays.

The trip was supposed to be quick, just four days during New Year's weekend, but after months on the front lines of the pandemic as a case worker at a Chicago-area hospital, she was eager for a break. Then, 90 minutes before her scheduled Jan. 3 departure back home, Southwest Airlines canceled the flight.

It cost nearly $500 to get back to Chicago - two days later and on another airline. During the mad scramble to return home, she considered renting a car and driving 900 miles. The $680 price tag was just too much.

Like thousands of passengers who planned holiday trips, Leonard became caught in an epic travel meltdown in its third week that has forced the cancellation of more than 28,000 flights since the first signs of trouble on Christmas Eve, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware. What began as a pandemic-related challenge quickly snowballed into a multitiered test - coupling the uncertainties of omicron with the more familiar headache of winter weather.

"I just wanted my time off. I wanted to enjoy it," Leonard said. "But this is - it's upsetting and I don't know. I've never gone through anything like this and I am just so bummed."

The disruption for airlines and travelers is on track to become the most severe since more than 56,000 flights were canceled in a single week at the outset of the pandemic, when people didn't want to fly. A triple whammy of robust demand for holiday travel, staffing shortages triggered by a surge in coronavirus cases and bouts of wintry weather at airline hubs has ushered in one of the worst periods for air travelers in years.

More than two weeks later, the surge in daily flight cancellations has shown no signs of abating: Some airlines have announced schedule cuts through the end of the month as they fight to recover.

The ferocious speed with which the omicron variant has spread took the nation by surprise, but there's some evidence airlines could have been better prepared. Flight cancellation data shows one carrier, American Airlines, has seen significantly less disruption than others, a record it attributes to changes made during a lengthy ramping-up process that included its own meltdowns last year.

While the number of scrubbed flights has been the biggest obstacle for travelers, it's not the only disruption. About one-third of flights nationwide that have taken off in the past two weeks have been late, with the average delay topping 50 minutes on some days, according to FlightAware.

Then there are the hundreds of suitcases and bags still to be claimed at airports - some that didn't follow passengers onto connecting flights; others that were lost when passengers were rerouted through different airports after their original flights were canceled. At Reagan National Airport, an American Airlines hub where more than 85% of flights were canceled Monday, baggage claim was filled with unclaimed bags.

American said in a statement that "residual winter storm impacts, icy roads and aircraft deicing conditions inhibited our recovery efforts," adding that it is working to reunite passengers with their luggage.

Olivia Graham considered herself fortunate: her American Airlines flight landed Dec. 22 in Columbus, Ga., with no problem, but her luggage didn't. More than two weeks later, she doesn't know where her suitcase is. It was last spotted in Charlotte.

"They say they're looking but with no progress after two weeks," Graham said. "I just don't know what to do."

American said it is looking into the whereabouts of Graham's bag.

Despite the protracted spell of chaos, industry watchers say a meltdown that left fuming travelers stranded at airports is unlikely to have a lasting effect on airlines' recovery from the pandemic. They say the same dynamics that have pushed demand for travel to near pre-pandemic levels in recent months will continue well into the new year.

"There remains tremendous pent-up demand for air travel, be it leisure, long-haul international or business, which will fill seats, driving our positive industry outlook," Jonathan Root, a senior vice president at Moody's Investors Service, wrote in a report this month.

Helane Becker, an airlines analyst at financial firm Cowen, said while the course of the pandemic is hard to predict and new variants could pose fresh challenges, people are ready to move beyond the pandemic.

"People have had it with covid," she said. "They're sick of hearing about it. They're sick of talking about it."

For many, that will manifest itself in more travel.

Since the start of the pandemic, about 50,000 airline employees have left the industry through retirements or voluntary buyouts. When passenger demand began ramping up last spring, airlines scrambled to bring back workers. But a tight job market made recruiting more difficult, and gaps remain even as thousands of new employees have been hired.

Becker said the ability of airlines to stabilize service and continue adding capacity will be dictated by their ability to shore up staffing levels.

FlightAware data shows that while recent disruptions have been severe - exacerbated by the unknowns of the omicron variant - bad weather has caused comparable problems for airlines in the past decade. In February last year, when Texas was in a deep freeze, airlines recorded 16,000 cancellations in one week. The week Hurricane Sandy struck in October 2012 saw almost 20,000 canceled flights. Winter storms in January 2011 prompted 19,000 cancellations.

Even so, it's of little solace to those caught in the chaos.

After visiting family in Maryland for Christmas, Zari Warden, 18, was ready to return to Seattle for the new college semester. But when she woke up Dec. 28, she learned her flight on Alaska Airlines was canceled as the carrier grappled with lingering effects of a snowstorm two days earlier.

"We already figured that the flight was going to be canceled because so many other flights had been canceled," Warden said. "It wasn't a surprise - it was just trying to figure out how to go from there."

Warden's father called the airline but couldn't get through to an employee - a common refrain from stranded travelers. After three days, they gave up and bought a ticket for a Jan. 4 flight on United Airlines.

That flight was delayed an hour because baggage crews were shorthanded amid a coronavirus outbreak, but Warden made it home at last.

The first inkling of holiday travel trouble was a Dec. 21 letter from Delta Air Lines Chief Executive Ed Bastian, who asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to cut its recommended isolation time after airline employees test positive for the coronavirus. Over the next few days, several airlines announced cancellations because of rising cases among their workforces as the omicron variant began to surge.

Delta, United and JetBlue Airways were among those that canceled flights on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Then came the weather. The day after Christmas, a storm socked Seattle with more snow in a single day than in all of 2020. It crippled the operations of Alaska Airlines, which is headquartered in the city.

In the days that followed, bad weather hit the Upper Midwest as airlines scrambled to staff flights and keep enough workers critical to other functions, such as handling baggage.

FlightAware cancellation data illustrates how in the days that followed, individual airlines suffered at different times over the weeks as storms hit various parts of the country.

Southwest rode out the first several days of industry disruptions with minor effects, only to scrub about 2,000 flights in the first four days of 2022 as snow rolled through its hubs in Chicago, Denver and Baltimore. Southwest has extended a program that offers bonus pay to employees through Jan. 25.

"Our focus is to stabilize the operation as we work through winter storms, while navigating the national COVID-19 spike to maintain sufficient staffing, so that we can offer a more reliable schedule as soon as possible," said Southwest spokesman Brian Parrish.

Alaska Airlines, still struggling in the aftermath of the December storm, first urged customers to defer travel through Jan. 2, then announced it would cut its schedule by 10 percent through January to get back on it feet.

"We're at our best when we are safe, reliable and caring," Alaska said in a statement. "And right now, we need to build more reliability back into our operation as we deal with the impacts of omicron and during a time when guests generally fly less."

One carrier has suffered consistently since late December: SkyWest Airlines has canceled more than 4,000 flights, according to FlightAware. The airline runs shorter routes for major airlines on smaller planes.

Becker said larger carriers tend to cancel their smaller regional flights more quickly because it's less disruptive. Regional airlines also tend to operate in more challenging areas with less support for remedies like de-icing.

In a statement, SkyWest said it had faced the combined effects of coronavirus cases, quarantined employees and bad weather.

"Given the ongoing surge in COVID cases and related sick calls, we've been working with each of our major partners to proactively reduce our January schedules for the remainder of the month to ensure we're able to adequately staff our remaining flying as we work to recover in the coming weeks," the company said.

Becker said the different experiences reflect varying strategies in the industry over the holiday period. American and Southwest faced high-profile meltdowns earlier in 2021 and Becker said they adopted a more conservative approach afterward.

One major carrier has ridden out the past two weeks with minimal disruptions. American Airlines has only canceled about 3 percent of its flights since Christmas - far fewer than its competitors, according to FlightAware.

David Seymour, American's chief operating officer, attributed the lower numbers to work that began as the carrier sought to rebound from the first year of the pandemic. That effort hit hurdles early on - with American facing waves of cancellations in June and October - but Seymour said the airline recruited staff, brought back those who were on leave and offered incentives to employees who agreed to work extra hours.

Seymour said American built a December schedule it could adequately staff. The airline couldn't predict the rise of the omicron variant, but had built in a buffer in case of the unexpected, Seymour said.

Still, several American customers said that while their flights operated as scheduled, they ran into other difficulties the carrier still has yet to resolve.

Nikki Mckenzie, of Los Angeles, said the airline bungled the reservation she and her husband had booked in Ecuador, charged a fee to rebook it, then lost their luggage, forcing them to spend a week with only what they packed in their carry-ons.

"You feel like you're screaming into a void and no one cares," she said of attempts to reach customer service employees. Late Friday, after inquiries from The Washington Post, American said it found Mckenzie's suitcase and made arrangements to have it delivered.

Seymour said the airline is expecting a strong summer with rising demand for travel. But as recent weeks have shown, he said, the pandemic could present surprises.

"What the country feels, we're going to feel," he said.

Henry Harteveldt, an aviation analyst with Atmosphere Research Group, said airlines are hoping the country moves beyond the worst of omicron by the middle of February.

"Airlines want to be ready to capitalize and be ready for what I suspect will be a very, very strong spring and summer travel season," he said.
Today, a new city attorney will take office.

Sharae Reed, who is Black, will be the first female city attorney that Beaumont has ever had.

I've been the first female to matriculate all the way through this office, Reed said. That makes it so much better. It makes it better because now another female lawyer has an opportunity that wasn't there before. Now it's not unheard of.

The Beaumont native went to West Brook High School, then Lamar University before moving to Houston to attend Thurgood Marshall School of Law. She and a group of friends made a commitment to move back to Beaumont to help make their hometown better. After giving 11 years of legal service to the city, she is moving into the top role with a track record of suggesting fresh ideas.

I was the first person to say, Why don't we have interns in our office? I want other people being exposed to city government, she said. And so it started off as a partnership with one of the local middle schools that had career days and they encourage their students to shadow somebody in their field.

This program has expanded to allowing law students to intern with the city. She sees it as one way to attract and retain good native talent.

People really don't know that they have something to come home to if they haven't been exposed to it, Reed said.

She was appointed to the lead position by the City Council after the outgoing city attorney, Tyrone Cooper, suggested that she might be a good replacement.

Related: Beaumont city attorney will retire after Christmas

Reed is passionate about bridging the gap between the community and the local government. One of the ways she hopes to do this is by being another key player in meetings with city officials and city council members.

When (lawyers) are in the room, and can advise people who make decisions, you're in a position to make it betteror worse, depending on the advice that youre giving, she said. What I mean by that is just you know, making sure that they now have a young fresh perspective that they might not have had before.

In her job, shell do everything from defense to maritime law. Every day is something different, and for that she is grateful. But she realizes that many people do not understand what she does. To make it simple, she likens city government to the human body.

The city council will be the brain, right? They're making decisions. And the city manager's office will be the nervous system because he's pumping it out and telling all these other people to do things based on the instructions that he got from the brain, Reed said. And wed be the heart. We kind of have to have to keep it going.

Though she officially starts Monday, she says her week really begins on Tuesday after the City Council meets  thats when she gets her marching orders.

rachel.kersey@beaumontenterprise.com

twitter.com/ontheREKord
When I die, I want you to have a big party. I dont want anyone to cry for me.

Those were the words Joshua Yates, 34, once told best friend Sheryl Richard-Jackson.

On Friday, family and friends gathered in Charlton-Pollard Park to celebrate Yates life, which was ended by a homicide on the last day of the year.

There was dancing, food, drinking  the very party Yates may have envisioned.

But as they gathered for a balloon release in his memory, the crowd could keep only half that promise  a party, but not one without tears.

Sister Samantha Yates held on to her aunt Precious Durousseau as aunt Scharryl Bush spoke before the balloon release.

Bubba (as he was known to family) had big dreams, bigger than any of you could know. Hed say, Youll see the sign  Joshua Yates for President of the United States, Bush recounted.

As Yates never had any children of his own to keep his memory alive, she noted; those gathered need to do that, instead.

Keep him in your memories. Keep his name out there, Bush said.

Given his faith, Bush said theres no doubt that in his last breath, he forgave the person who took his life, but she and others prayed for justice as they set their balloons loose into the setting sun sky.

Its where sister Samantha Yates is sure her brother and best friend was watching Fridays party from above.

Samantha became the youngest of the three children born to Tonjia Yates Jones and Jerald Gasaway after their baby brother died in 1994, but said she was more like the big sister to brother Josh. He called me for everything, she said. He was more than Bubba, he was my best friend. He was everything to me.

Its still shocking, she said of Yates violent death.

Now, with both her brothers gone, Its just me, she said.

We all were in shock, said Yates Jones, after getting a call from grandparents Joyce and Rick Bodwin, that an ambulance was en route to her sons home on New Years Eve.

The Bodwins had come bearing birthday gifts for Yates, who turned 34 on Dec. 30.

They found the back door to his home wide open. When Rick Bodwin stepped inside and saw Joshuas feet lying nearby, they called 911.

Then they called Yates parents  Tonjia Yates Jones and Jerald Gasaway.

Yates Jones had planned to make her own trek to Joshs home to deliver birthday gifts, as he continued recovering from COVID, before the family gathered for their annual New Years Eve tradition of releasing balloons in memory of loved ones lost through the years.

Instead, shes now mourning the loss of yet another son  a loss that has had no resolution or information from police to date, she said.

Any sad situation, he could turn into a happy occasion, no matter what. Even if he was grieving, he could make it better. The love he had for his family was beyond compare, Yates Jones said.

Fridays gathering, to which other families whove lost loved ones to violent crimes were invited, wasnt solely about justice for Josh, but for anyone killed through any violence, she said.

Father Jerald Gasaway manned a barbecue grill Friday, cooking for those arriving to honor his son. Its a skill his son Joshua raved about often.

My son was a good kid. He ran for mayor. For somebody to do this, I just dont know, he said.

I know we all have to die some day, but not like this. Wed never even think hed die like this, Gasaway said, adding, I just dont understand why we have to kill each other. I dont understand.

Im not really mad at him (his sons killer), Gasaway said, but I look down on him. Be a man, take your fate. I know youre not sleeping right knowing what you did. My son was loved. My son cherished his life. At 12, 13, hed go to the old folks home to visit people. He didnt have a bad bone in his body. Its just senseless.

Among those who joined the community gathering were Yates aunt and uncle Richard and Lisa Moreno, who drove 16 hours from Clifton, AZ, to join the vigil.

Yates stayed with them when he went last summer to work and check out the possibility of a new life that would offer a life change and new atmosphere.

He fit right in with the mountain men  4 wheeling with them, Lisa said.

Yates had returned to Beaumont to tie up loose ends before making a more permanent move back to Arizona.

He already had a job lined up in one of the mines, Richard said, Lisa adding, He was supposed to come to be with us. We just cant believe hes gone.

Fridays community gathering helped, Grandmother Joyce Bodwin said, We need this support.

Bodwin is battling cancer and other illnesses, but relies on faith to get through all in these hardest of times - hard times that resonated with family and friends, like Richard-Jackson, whos struggled to navigate day to day life without her friend.

Everyday, I pick up the phone to call; wed talk every day, she said.

Now, she puts the phone down, knowing the call will never be completed.

Its a tough reality to understand  a struggle for all close to Yates.

Its still shocking. He wasnt that person - he didnt deserve this. He had a lot to do here. He was going to run for mayor again, Samantha Yates said.

Because he believed in the power of getting involved in local politics and community leadership, Yates made a first bid for mayor against Becky Ames in 2019.

He wanted to encourage young voters to engage in the process  one they may feel is broken..

He was always fixing something, his sister Samantha Yates said. He never gave up. If you tell Josh no, hes gonna say, yes I can, and hell show you. Life had no limits with him.

Yates family and friends experienced the limitless impact he had as they gathered for Fridays going away party in Charlton-Pollard Park.

If Josh knew the impact he had on this community, Yates said, her voice trailing off. I know hes up there now, just crying and laughing. Hes happy  dancing and having a good time. He was so full of life.

kbrent@beaumontenterprise.com
Barbara F. Walter, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, has interviewed many people whove lived through civil wars, and she told me they all say they didnt see it coming. Theyre all surprised, she said. Even when, to somebody who studies it, its obvious years beforehand.

This is worth keeping in mind if your impulse is to dismiss the idea that America could fall into civil war again. Even now, despite my constant horror at this countrys punch-drunk disintegration, I find the idea of a total meltdown hard to wrap my mind around. But to some of those, like Walter, who study civil war, an American crackup has come to seem, if not obvious, then far from unlikely, especially since Jan. 6.

Two books out this month warn that this country is closer to civil war than most Americans understand. In How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them, Walter writes, Ive seen how civil wars start, and I know the signs that people miss. And I can see those signs emerging here at a surprisingly fast rate. Canadian novelist and critic Stephen Marche is more stark in his book, The Next Civil War: Dispatches From the American Future. The United States is coming to an end, Marche writes. The question is how.

In Torontos Globe and Mail, Thomas Homer-Dixon, a scholar who studies violent conflict, recently urged the Canadian government to prepare for an American implosion. By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence, he wrote. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship. As John Harris writes in Politico, Serious people now invoke Civil War not as metaphor but as literal precedent.

Of course, not all serious people. Harvard political scientist Josh Kertzer wrote on Twitter that he knows many civil war scholars, and very few of them think the United States is on the precipice of a civil war. Yet even some who push back on civil war talk tend to acknowledge what a perilous place America is in. In The Atlantic, Fintan OToole, writing about Marches book, warns that prophecies of civil war can be self-fulfilling; during the long conflict in Ireland, he says, each side was driven by fear that the other was mobilizing. Its one thing, he writes, to acknowledge the real possibility that the U.S. could break apart and could do so violently. It is quite another to frame that possibility as an inevitability.

I agree with OToole that its absurd to treat civil war as a foregone conclusion, but that it now seems distinctly possible is still pretty bad. The fact that speculation about civil war has moved from the crankish fringes into the mainstream is itself a sign of civic crisis, an indication of how broken our country is.

The sort of civil war that Walter and Marche worry about wouldnt involve red and blue armies facing off on some battlefield. If it happens, it will be more of a guerrilla insurgency. As Walter told me, she, like Marche, relies on an academic definition of major armed conflict as one that causes at least 1,000 deaths per year. A minor armed conflict is one that kills at least 25 people a year. By this definition, as Marche argues, America is already in a state of civil strife. According to the Anti-Defamation League, extremists, most of them right-wing, killed 54 people in 2018 and 45 people in 2019. (They killed 17 people in 2020, a figure that was low due to the absence of extremist mass shootings, possibly because of the pandemic.)

Walter argues that civil wars have predictable patterns, and she spends more than half her book laying out how those patterns have played out in other countries. They are most common in what she and other scholars call anocracies, countries that are neither full autocracies nor democracies but something in between. Warning signs include the rise of intense political polarization based on identity rather than ideology, especially polarization between two factions of roughly equal size, each of which fears being crushed by the other.

Instigators of civil violence, she writes, tend to be previously dominant groups who see their status slipping away. The ethnic groups that start wars are those claiming that the country is or ought to be theirs, she writes. This is one reason, although there are violent actors on the left, neither she nor Marche believe the left will start a civil war. As Marche writes, Left-wing radicalism matters mostly because it creates the conditions for right-wing radicalization.

Its no secret that many on the right are both fantasizing about and planning civil war. Some of those who swarmed the Capitol a year ago wore black sweatshirts emblazoned with MAGA Civil War. The Boogaloo Bois, a surreal, violent, meme-obsessed anti-government movement, get their name from a joke about a Civil War sequel. Republicans increasingly throw around the idea of armed conflict. In August, Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina said, If our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, then its going to lead to one place and thats bloodshed, and suggested he was willing, though reluctant, to take up arms.

Citing the men who plotted to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Walter writes that modern civil wars start with vigilantes just like these  armed militants who take violence directly to the people.

There are parts of Walters argument that Im not quite convinced by. Consider, for example, Americas status as an anocracy. I dont dispute the political science measures she relies on to show the alarming extent of Americas democratic backsliding. But I think she underplays the difference between countries moving from authoritarianism toward democracy, and those going the other way. You can see why a country like Yugoslavia would explode when the autocratic system holding it together disappeared; new freedoms and democratic competition allow for the emergence of what Walter describes as ethnic entrepreneurs.

Its not clear, however, that the move from democracy toward authoritarianism would be destabilizing in the same way. As Walter acknowledges, The decline of liberal democracies is a new phenomenon, and none have fallen into all-out civil war  yet. To me, the threat of America calcifying into a Hungarian-style right-wing autocracy under a Republican president seems more imminent than mass civil violence. Her theory depends on an irredentist right-wing faction rebelling against its loss of power. But increasingly, the right is rigging our sclerotic system so that it can maintain power whether the voters want it to or not.

If outright civil war still isnt likely, though, it seems to me more likely than a return to the sort of democratic stability many Americans grew up with.

Marches book presents five scenarios for how this country could come undone, each extrapolated from current movements and trends. A few of them dont strike me as wholly plausible. For example, given the history of federal confrontations with the far right at Waco, Ruby Ridge and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, I suspect an American president determined to break up a sovereign citizen encampment would send the FBI, not an Army general relying on counterinsurgency doctrine.

Yet most of Marches narratives seem more imaginable than a future in which Jan. 6 turns out to be the peak of right-wing insurrection, and America ends up basically OK. Its so easy to pretend its all going to work out, he writes. I dont find it easy.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
KHARTOUM, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Sudanese police on Monday announced the death of a protester and the injury of 30 demonstrators and policemen during mass protests in the capital Khartoum and other cities on Sunday.

A total of 22 policemen were injured during the demonstrations and the police used "minimum legal force" in dealing with the protesters, the Sudanese police said in a statement.

During the demonstrations, 86 protesters were arrested and legal procedures have been taken against them, the police said.

However, the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors (CCSD), a non-governmental organization, said in a statement on Monday that two protesters were killed and 68 others injured during Sunday's demonstrations.

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets on Sunday in Sudan's capital Khartoum and other cities to demand civilian rule despite efforts by parties concerned to bring a political solution to the crisis in the North African country

On Saturday, the United Nations (UN) launched an intra-Sudanese political process to end the crisis.

Volker Perthes, the UN envoy for Sudan, said in a statement that the political process would seek a "sustainable path forward towards democracy and peace" in the country. It was not immediately clear when the discussions might begin.

On Jan. 2, Sudan's Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok announced his resignation amid a political crisis and waves of protests in the country.

Sudan has been suffering a political crisis with regular mass protests after the general commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan declared a state of emergency on Oct. 25, 2021 and dissolved the Sovereign Council and the government. 
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen (left) speaks to Myanmar military chief Min Aung Hlaing (right) during a dinner in Naypyidaw, Jan. 7, 2022.

Updated at 7 p.m. ET on 2022-01-10

ASEANs commitment to retain its integrity in the face of Cambodias dalliance with the Burmese junta will be tested at an upcoming in-person meeting of the blocs foreign ministers, analysts said Monday.

If member-states want to keep the Association of Southeast Asian Nations from self-destructing, they must reject any attempts by 2022 ASEAN chair and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen to allow the Burmese regimes foreign minister to attend that meeting, one observer said.

If Cambodia insists on inviting the junta to ASEAN meetings, we should say no. If need be, we should just boycott the meetings.  In my view, [Foreign Minister] Retno should not attend, Rizal Sukma, a former Indonesian ambassador to Britain, told BenarNews, referring to Retno Marsudi.

If Cambodia wants to destroy ASEAN, and other ASEAN countries are okay with it, so be it, added Sukma, a senior researcher at the Jakarta-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The comments by Sukma and other analysts followed Hun Sens visit to Naypyidaw on Friday and Saturday, during which he met with the military coup leader Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing. It was the first visit by a foreign leader since the military coup last February.

The Cambodian PM views ASEAN as an old boys club where dictators can still be dictators, said Hunter S. Marston, a doctoral student at ANU College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.

Unfortunately, ASEAN has no consensus on how to approach Myanmar, so were about to see whether more democratic-leaning states within the bloc will stand up to Hun Sen [and] hold the Myanmar junta accountable, he told BenarNews.

Who is attending?

Hun Sen is set to host his first major ASEAN meeting as chairman of the regional bloc on Jan. 18-19 at a foreign ministers retreat in Siem Reap.

As of Monday, BenarNews confirmed through the Malaysian foreign ministers press secretary that the countrys top diplomat would be attending next weeks meeting virtually.

In Jakarta, a spokesman for Indonesias foreign ministry said ASEAN member-countries would be briefed at the meeting about the outcomes of Hun Sens visit to Myanmar, but he declined to say if Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi would participate.

Officials from both countries declined to comment on Hun Sens trip to Naypyidaw or the possibility that the Burmese juntas foreign minister would be attending next weeks meeting in Siem Reap. Elsewhere, officials at the foreign ministries of ASEAN member-states Thailand and the Philippines did not immediately respond to BenarNews requests for comment.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Cambodias foreign ministry told Radio Free Asia (RFA) that it would soon be known if the junta's foreign minister, Wunna Maung Lwin, was invited to Siem Reap as well.

We will issue a press statement soon in the coming days, Koy Koung said.

Myanmars military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, was optimistic when asked about the outcome of Hun Sens visit.

The visit will help our representation [in ASEAN], he told RFA, claiming that the junta had fulfilled one point of ASEANs five-point roadmap to democracy agreed to last April  ending violence.

He was referring to a joint statement issued at the end of Hun Sens two-day trip to Myanmar that said the junta had extended a ceasefire with all Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) until the end of 2022.

The statement made no mention of pro-democracy activists.

On Monday, the Cambodian PM defended his visit, claiming to have achieved three major outcomes of the five-point consensus: a ceasefire, humanitarian aid to all parties, and sending an ASEAN special envoy to have a dialogue with all stakeholders.

A worker adjusts an ASEAN flag at a meeting hall in Kuala Lumpur, Oct. 28, 2021. [Reuters]

Save the integrity of ASEAN

Analysts and human right activists, however, were upset about Hun Sens visit because he did not meet with pro-democracy leaders, and heard about the crisis only from the side of the junta, which toppled the elected government in a coup last February.

Some dismissed the joint statement issued by Cambodia and Myanmar as a pack of lies. They said that any gains ASEAN had made by shutting out Min Aung Hlaing from the blocs main summit last year for non-implementation of the five-point roadmap were undermined by Hun Sens visit.

The joint statement is a misguided and dangerous attempt to deceptively portray a breakthrough, when in fact his unilateral actions have dramatically weakened ASEANs collective leverage to solve the Myanmar crisis, Charles Santiago, chair of the group ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), said in a statement Sunday.

Hun Sens rogue diplomacy is a threat to ASEAN, APHR said.

Men Nath, Norway-based representative of Cambodia Watchdog Council, told RFA that the result of Hun Sens trip to Myanmar was zero.

It is a complete opposite from the ASEAN mechanism for resolving the Burmese issue, he said Monday.

What [Hun Sen] has done by referring to the ASEAN mechanism has merely caused a divide in ASEAN.

Heads of other ASEAN member-states need to get immediately involved  to save the integrity of ASEAN as a regional forum, Malaysian analyst MD Mahbubul Haque, a lecturer in International Studies at the University Sultan Zainal Abidin, told BenarNews.

The Indonesian, Malaysian, or Singaporean PM or president should closely work on the Myanmar crisis. You cant rely on Thailand or Philippines, Haque said.

Do not let [Hun Sen do it] alone.

Tria Dianti and Ronna Nirmala in Jakarta, Nisha David in Kuala Lumpur, Shailaja Neelakantan in Washington, and Radio Free Asia, a BenarNews affiliate, contributed to this report.

This story has been corrected to say that the Cambodia foreign ministry will soon announce whether it has invited Wunna Maung Lwin, the top diplomat of the Burmese junta, to the upcoming meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers.
Indonesia this week will gradually resume exports of coal used to generate electricity, a senior government official said Monday, as the Philippines joined other countries in pressing Jakarta into lifting its ban on foreign shipments.

The state power utility, PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN), which reported a coal shortage, now has enough supply to last through January, said Luhut Pandjaitan, coordinating minister for maritime affairs and investment.

About a dozen ships that are already filled with coal and have been verified will be released tonight, Luhut told reporters after a meeting with other officials. Exports will resume gradually starting Wednesday.

On Dec. 31, the government decided to halt coal exports in January after local producers failed to meet their obligation to supply at least a quarter of their output for domestic needs.

The Indonesian Coal Manufacturers Association (APBI) has said the policy, known as the Domestic Market Obligation, is unfair because it requires producers to sell coal to the state electricity company at below the global market price.

Its not that we want to change the DMO, but it should also be adjusted so suppliers are encouraged to comply, APBI Executive Director Hendra Sinadia told BenarNews.

Last week, the association warned that temporarily stopping exports would cause coal prices to soar and result in lost revenue of up to U.S. $3 billion this month.

Meanwhile, the energy ministry said the shortfall could affect nearly 20 Indonesian power plants which generate electricity for 10 million consumers.

In addition, dozens of foreign ships sent to load coal from Indonesian ports have been in limbo since the ban.

On Monday, the Philippines Department of Energy warned that the Indonesian ban would be detrimental to economies reliant on coal for power generation, according to a statement posted on the departments website.

It said Philippine Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi had sent a letter to his Indonesian counterpart, Arifin Tasrif, to appeal for the ban to be lifted.

Elsewhere, Japan, which imports about 2 million tons of coal per month from Indonesia, also appealed to end the ban.

In its own letter, the Japanese Embassy in Jakarta said the country imported only high calorie coal which is more expensive, efficient and environmentally friendly. It is not used by Indonesian power stations.

The sudden export ban has a serious impact on Japans economic activities as well as peoples daily life, the embassy said, according to a copy of the letter obtained by BenarNews.

On Friday, South Koreas trade ministry expressed concerns about the ban and urged a prompt resumption of shipments, the Yonhap news agency reported.

Indonesia exported 29 million tons of coal in January 2021, slightly down from 32 million tons in January 2020. Almost 32 percent of Indonesias total coal production of 405 million tons went to China in 2020.

15 days

Allowing for exports to resume, Luhut said PLN had coal reserves for up to 15 days of coal reserves.

We can see now things are getting better, he said.

Luhut said the Indonesian government had considered dissolving PLN Batubara, a PLN subsidiary tasked with supplying power plants with coal, saying it was responsible for the fuel shortage because it bought coal from third-party traders instead of from producers.

PLN must no longer buy from traders, he said.

Erick Thohir, minister for state-owned enterprises, sacked a PLN director last week in a move linked to the coal supply crisis.

On Monday, Energy Minister Arifin said he had replaced the director to improve coal governance.

He said he hoped the coal industry would return to normal.

[W]e hope that in the coming days we will have coal resilience and be able to continue exports, Arifin said after meeting Japanese Industry Minister Koichi Hagiuda.

A kind of shock therapy

Fabby Tumiwa, executive director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform, a private think-tank, said the export ban served as a wake-up call for businesses and authorities.

This is a kind of shock therapy from the government for businesses and officials who like to play games. In the future, there must be a solution to monitor and ensure the availability of supply, Fabby told BenarNews.

He said businesses and the government should start thinking about long-term energy solutions.

We have started to think about substitutes for coal. Today there is no supply because there is no shipment. Tomorrow there will be no supply because it is no longer available. What can you do? Fabby said.
KHARTOUM, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Sudan's Transitional Sovereign Council on Monday welcomed the United Nations (UN) initiative to facilitate a comprehensive dialogue among the Sudanese parties to end the ongoing political crisis in the country.

The council made its stand clear during a meeting held at the Republican Palace, chaired by the council's Chairman Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, the council said in a statement.

The council called for involving the African Union to support the initiative and contribute to the success of intra-Sudanese dialogue.

The council also stressed the need to speed up the formation of a caretaker government to fill in the executive void left by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok's resignation on Jan. 2.

On Saturday, the UN launched an intra-Sudanese political process to end the crisis.

Volker Perthes, head of UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan, in consultation with Sudanese and international partners, formally launched the political process, which is aimed at supporting Sudanese stakeholders in agreeing on a way out of the current political crisis.

Sudan has been rocked by regular mass protests after the general commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan declared a state of emergency on Oct. 25, 2021, and dissolved the Sovereign Council and the government. 
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PHNOM PENH, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese community in Cambodia on Monday held an event to cheer for the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and Spring Festival.

The event was co-organized by the Federation of Khmer-Chinese in Cambodia and the Cambodian Chinese Calligraphers Association and attended by nearly 100 people.

During the half-day event held in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, participants wrote Chinese calligraphy to voice their support for the Beijing Winter Olympics and offer best wishes for the Spring Festival.

Xie Lirong, rotating chairman of the Federation of Khmer-Chinese in Cambodia, said, "We believe that the Beijing Winter Olympics will be the most-ever exciting event."

Feng Lifa, president of the Cambodian Chinese Calligraphers Association, thanked calligraphy enthusiasts for calligraphy performance on the spot, and said, "The Beijing Winter Olympics will be full of profound charm of the traditional Chinese culture because it is not only a sporting event, but also a cultural event."

In a recent interview with Xinhua, Cambodian government chief spokesman Phay Siphan said the Beijing Winter Olympics will promote friendship, solidarity and cooperation among countries around the world.

"The Olympics is an opportunity for athletes from countries around the world to show their physical ability or talent in sports, not ideology or opposition," he said.

"Countries should not politicize the Olympics because it is against the Olympic spirit." 
With COVID-19 surging still, masks will remain required indoors in Massachusetts public schools through at least the end of February, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education announced Monday.

School staff, students and parents had been awaiting a decision from Education Commissioner Jeff Riley on whether he would leave in place the mask mandate that was set to lapse this coming Saturday, unless Riley extended it for a third time. In December, Riley said he was waiting to give the medical community more time to understand the omicron variant.

Omicron fueled a massive spike in COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts, and the return to classrooms after winter break was marked at many schools by an abundance of virus-related absences that, in some cases, caused staffing shortages. Districts reported a total of more than 51,000 new student and staff COVID-19 cases from Dec. 23 to Jan. 5.

At Rileys request, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education granted him authority in August to mandate masks in schools for individuals age 5 and up through at least Oct. 1. Rileys latest extension keeps the requirement in place through Feb. 28. Masks are not required outdoors, while eating or drinking, or for students who cannot wear one for medical or behavioral reasons.

Riley is electing to leave in place the option through which local officials can opt to lift the mandate for vaccinated individuals at a particular school if they first demonstrate to the DESE a vaccination rate of at least 80 percent.

The mask requirement remains an important measure to keep students, teachers and staff in school safely at this time, the department said in a statement. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, in consultation with medical experts and state health officials, will continue to evaluate public health data.
The Outlook is today's look ahead at the week's weather and climate change, their impact on the Berkshires and beyond. Clarence Fanto can be reached at cfanto@yahoo.com.
By Pete Fairbairn

The Bowling Green State University School of Nursing has moved into Central Hall on the BGSU main campus. The new facility features a state-of-the-art simulation center and a skills lab located on the second and third floors of the former Business Administration Annex, which just underwent a $3 million renovation.

The new home of the School of Nursing has been designed to facilitate an innovative curriculum that aligns with the latest advancements in health care. Nursing students learn basic psychomotor skills associated with the care of individuals across the lifespan. Development of clinical judgment skills continues in the skills laboratory as students apply evidence-based practice and the nursing process to concepts of physiological integrity, including safety, oxygenation, perfusion, nutrition, elimination, mobility, integument, sensory, and infection control.

Photos show how the new space and technology are being used for hands-on experience in support of classroom instruction.
Spearfish, SD (57783)

Today

Mainly clear skies. Low 36F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Mainly clear skies. Low 36F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph.
Today

Cloudy with light rain this evening. Low near 40F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.

Tonight

Cloudy with light rain this evening. Low near 40F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.

Tomorrow

Mostly cloudy skies early, then partly cloudy in the afternoon. High 59F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- An explosion rocked outside a school in Lal Pur district in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nangarhar on Monday, killing four students and injuring 10 others, a district official told Xinhua anonymously.

"So far, we have no more details, but we will try to get more information," the official added.

Meanwhile, Nadir Muhmand, chairman of a district youth council, told Xinhua that the incident occurred at midday when an improvised bomb attached to a handcart was detonated outside Warsak School in Lal Pur. More than a dozen of students were affected.

Eyewitness Muhmand said the affected people were transported to a hospital in the district.

The Taliban security forces cordoned off the area for precautionary measures.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Militants affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) group have claimed responsibility for a number of bomb attacks in Nangarhar in recent months. 
At some point after he became chief surgeon in Napoleons army, Dominique Jean Larrey started walking across blood-soaked battlefields to pick out those among the wounded who could still be saved, usually by instant amputation of limbs.

In time, he developed a system of sorting and separating  trier in French  the casualties. Ignoring rank and nationality, he considered only those who had the greatest chance of surviving. His method became known as triage.

In worst-case scenarios, triage is nowadays accepted almost universally as necessary and justified. And yet, the idea still rests on an act of cruelty  cruel both to a victim and to the doctor having to make the decision. It often necessitates allowing one human being to die in order to ration the care that might let another live.

The current pandemic is a worst-case scenario. On-and-off for almost two years, doctors and nurses in some places have had to make traumatizing choices about life and death. Sometimes they had too many COVID patients for too few ventilators; other times too many with SARS-CoV-2 to be able to treat those dying from cancer or other diseases. Now the omicron variant  which appears to be somewhat milder but much more infectious  threatens to overwhelm hospitals yet again.

Against that backdrop, nine Germans have done us all a favor by starting an overdue debate. They brought a case to the constitutional court in Karlsruhe, arguing that during triage situations they risked discrimination, and therefore death. Thats because they suffer from disabilities. One, aged 30, had a stroke just after birth and cant walk, stand or speak. Others have atrophied spinal muscles that complicate breathing. The oldest is a septuagenarian who has heart disease and diabetes.

Under existing guidelines in Germany, issued by a medical association, disabilities should in theory be irrelevant during triage  as is the case with age, sex or ethnicity. The only thing that matters is whether one individual patient in a specific situation with a specific ailment stands a better chance of being saved than another.

In practice, however, doctors under pressure are apt to view the frailties of disabled people as comorbidities, and thus relevant. Nancy Poser, one of the plaintiffs, explained the situation this way: If she had a heart attack and showed up in the hospital in her wheelchair, shed get a worse triage score than a smoker simultaneously arriving with COVID-19. Hed get a bed; she wouldnt. She would have to die, exactly that.

Last week, the judges in Karlsruhe ruled for the plaintiffs by requiring parliament to swiftly pass legislation that will govern the triage decisions to come. Ruling discrimination unconstitutional is the easy part, of course. The hard part will be enacting laws that give doctors legal security and simultaneously make sense in the real world, rather than just causing new problems.

As the discussions heat up, some pundits are already demanding making triage more fair overall. Theres danger in that goal. We cant agree on whats fair even in other policy areas, such as taxation, and certainly wont in this context.

Start with this hottest potato  how doctors should treat unvaccinated patients in triage. Almost nine in 10 of those hospitalized in Germany with SARS-CoV-2 are people who havent had their shots. If they had all been inoculated, intensive care units would never have come under such pressure and there wouldnt be a need for triage at all.

To some people, this suggests that vaccinated patients, other things being equal, should get dibs, and the unvaccinated should wait for beds. Martin Hoffmann, a philosophy professor, emphasizes that this wouldnt be about punishing the unvaccinated. It would simply take into account that the vaccinated have already taken an (admittedly tiny) risk  that of adverse reaction to the jab  to protect themselves and others. The unvaccinated havent, and must therefore accept more risk subsequently.

This logic may make intuitive sense, but intuition can be a bad guide to triage laws. Any consideration of vaccination status, like disability, would open Pandoras box. Just as Larrey didnt take rank into account, medical staff must never mix quasi-moral judgments into their decisions  that is, how deserving a patient may be, based on previous behavior. Otherwise, doctors would set precedents that could in time lead to a new debates about whose life is worth living.

The German parliament and other legislatures should therefore clarify that the allocation of scarce medical care must be based solely on the merits of each individual case and the relative likelihood of success, always with the goal of maximizing lives saved. Only medical staff can make these decisions.

But to ensure that even under pressure and ambiguity no discrimination takes place, parliament could require doctors to seek additional and independent opinions  perhaps from a medical board that can be contacted around the clock. This would add bureaucracy, but might prevent some bad calls.

That leaves the thorny issue of those unwilling to get vaccinated. Triage is not the place to deal with it. But society is justified in trying to prevent the worst-case scenarios that lead to triage in the first place. Provided shots can be made available to all, democratically elected legislatures are therefore well within their rights to mandate vaccination.

Like every doctor, Dominique Jean Larrey would have preferred to treat every single victim on the battlefield. Our overall goal in policy today must be to keep that option alive  by making triage unnecessary wherever possible, so that doctors can care for all patients.

Andreas Kluth is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.
For using Orochems proprietary Simulated Moving Bed (SMB) platform

Mumbai-based Arch Pharmalabs has announced the signing of a Technology Access & Services Agreement with Orochem Technologies, USA, on an exclusive basis.

The agreement allows Arch to collaborate with Orochem for using Orochems proprietary Simulated Moving Bed (SMB) platform for pharmaceuticals and other applications.

Simulated Moving Bed (SMB) technology is a highly engineered process for implementing chromatographic separation. It is used to separate one chemical compound or one class of chemical compounds from one or more other chemical compounds to provide significant quantities of the purified or enriched material, more cost-effectively than obtained using simple (batch) chromatography. SMB Technology provides for the highest purities of industrial or metric ton scale purification for APIs, nutritional supplements, fatty acids, and speciality sugars.

Ajit Kamath, Chairman & Managing Director, Arch Pharmalabs Ltd. commented, "The partnership with Orochem provides Arch Pharmalabs vast opportunities for separation and purification of various small molecule Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients from its three USFDA approved facilities in India. It also allows Arch Pharmalabs to collaborate with other pharmaceutical companies to conduct contract manufacturing of APIs at its Vitalife facility in Gurgaon."
I regularly fly with KLM from Minneapolis to New Delhi, and always stop over in Amsterdam. I am frequently in Minneapolis for research and this is my route to go home to take a break from work. I have done the journey so many times that I know almost all the shops at Schiphol inside out. However, one time in summer 2019, the predictability was broken when I missed my connecting flight to New Delhi.

Source: Sergey Soldatov - 123RF

SOUTH AFRICA How conversational commerce is shaping the future of business

Coffee diehards and hyper-personal shopping

Where its heading

SOUTH AFRICA How chatbots will continue to be an important part of digital marketing

I was tired, hungry, sleepy, and the customer-service counter was closed. I had the choice to make the long walk to customer services at the next gate or use my iPhone, so I tried my phone.I texted the KLM WhatsApp number and went back and forth with an assistant on my choices. Within minutes I was on the next flight, with the boarding pass on my phone. It was only later that I discovered that I had been dealing with next-generation artificial intelligence  in an example of the new field of conversational commerce.If you havent encountered it yet, you will soon. Certain supermarkets are providing voice-enabled shopping services to customers, for example. In the US, Walmart shoppers can ask Google Assistant to add certain things to their virtual shopping trolleys and to learn from their shopping habits.Google has similar deals with two other supermarket giants  Target in the US and Carrefour in France  while Amazon provides voice-enabled shopping in the UK to online customers of Ocado . Not to be outdone, Walmart recently bought conversation-commerce specialist Botmock to expand its services in this area.There are already more than a billion people interacting with businesses via either text or voice-based conversational tools. In 2021, conversational commerce is expected to account for total sales of $41bn worldwide, and is forecast to grow five-fold to nearly $300bn by 2025  half of it from chatbots. So how is this market developing, and what does it mean for our shopping habits?If conversational commerce still feels under the radar, one reason is that most growth has been in China, Japan and South Korea . All the same, it is cropping up everywhere. If you are talking to your girlfriend or boyfriend on Facebook and suddenly want to send them flowers, you dont even have to break the conversation. You click on 1-800-Flowers.com , a conversational AI tool integrated with Messenger, and explain what you want. You dont even need to enter card details if you use Apple, Samsung or Google Pay.Or maybe like me you are a die-hard coffee lover. I used to stand in a queue to get my morning latte, but not now. I just order from my couch from the chatbot on the My Starbucks Barista app, and my coffee is waiting when I reach my local store.The AI underpinning these advances encompass are deep learning , sophisticated natural language-processing voice recognition , and cognitive computing  which is a system for machine-thinking that emulates human thought. But the big selling point  besides ease, comfort and shopping anywhere at any time  is probably the potential to make a customers retail experience much more personal.If it lives up to expectations, customers might soon be able to interact with an AI who understands what they want in specific detail. We already see big retailers offering personalised products to attract customers  for example Nike and Adidas allowing people to design their own trainers.But by using sophisticated AI, personalisation can move to a whole new level. Customers will receive personalised recommendations in their own language, easing the burden of choice and making the experience as enjoyable as possible. They might spend more money as a result  not because they are being manipulated, but because they almost feel like they are buying from a friend.Meanwhile, businesses will gain new insights into peoples shopping behaviour. Yes this raises privacy questions, but it will also help businesses to refine their offering. This should reduce returns and increase sales.Conversational commerce reminds me of the 2013 movie Her , set in a near-future where Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with Samantha (Scarlet Johannson), an AI-based virtual assistant. The relationship eventually becomes unworkable when it emerges that Samantha is simultaneously having intimate friendships with thousands of men. She then combines with other AIs to perform an upgrade that leads to them withdrawing from human interaction.We may be some way from falling in love with chatbots, but clearly there are questions about ethics here. The technology must not harm humans or pose any threat to their dignity. For instance, Microsoft recently restricted its voice mimicry technology because it makes it easier to create deep-fake videos Another issue is jobs. Automation is clearly a threat to the workforce, and conversational commerce could well be part of that. But unfortunately, businesses will not pay for so many support staff if AI can do the job at least as well. One consolation is that AI in its entirety might create more jobs than it destroys. For instance, the World Economic Forum predicted in 2018 that the net new jobs created by AI would be 58 million by 2022 Looking further ahead, conversational commerce could become all the more prevalent in the metaverse, the virtual reality representation of the internet, with voice-enabled shopping potentially accounting for 30% of all e-commerce revenues by 2030. It seems foreseeable that we will be interacting with AI avatars in virtual reality stores, or talking to bots in real-life supermarket aisles via augmented reality glasses.What may seem alien to our generation is likely to be second nature to the shoppers of tomorrow. There are pros and cons to this technology, but I suspect my little chat with the KLM chatbot at Schipol airport will soon seem quaint compared to what comes next.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article
Cape Town-born liquor brand Suncamino Floral Rum, has launched in the UK. The local rum, which is the world's first floral-infused rum, is being introduced to the UK and exclusively distributed by 31Dover, named Spirits Retailer of the Year in The Spirits Business Awards 2020.

Source: Supplied

Bottling the spirit of Cape Town

Conceived in Cape Town and distilled in Barbados, award-winning local rum is aged for up to 8 years in ex-bourbon oak barrels before it arrives in Cape Town. It is then further matured and infused with the natural extracts of hibiscus, honeybush and orange blossom.As rum grows in popularity across the world, and discerning drinkers seek out craft spirits and experiences, founders Stewy van der Berg and Inus Smuts created Suncamino Rum to inspire adventure. The name means journey to the sun and is a fitting name for adventure seekers and lovers of the outdoors. Through Suncamino, Van der Berg and Smuts aim to reinvent rum and lead the category beyond the nautical themes and pirate stories of the past.We wanted to bottle and share the feeling of Cape Town where wild, picturesque landscapes meet an eclectic mix of cultures, tastes, sounds and sights. When people drink Suncamino, they do so because they want to become a part of a lifestyle thats represented by the brand  one that is centered around creativity, individuality and adventure, says van der Berg.Creative director Smuts explains how they plan to make a splash in the UK market: We want to build something with our consumers that will inspire moments of storytelling, create value and make a difference. We are very fortunate to have 31Dover to fast-track our UK distribution, a passionate brand team, and some great strategic investors, including the likes of Mark Barnard, serial investor and ex-CCO of Diageo-Global.According to the brand, Suncamino Floral Rum stood out from hundreds of international craft rum brands during the selection process, due to its beautiful flavour profile, and strong brand presence. It appeals to the gin drinkers with its floral aspect, the whisky drinkers with its oak-aged character, and the rum drinkers with its innovation within the category. It aims to offer an alternative for those looking for craft credentials in another spirit category, encapsulating the essence of summer with a unique Capetonian flavour.
It's the station that everybody's talking about. Launched just six months ago, Hot 102.7FM has already changed the Jo'burg radio landscape for the better. In the latest bold move, station managing director Lloyd Madurai is putting the programming of the station in the hands of its listeners.

We have spent the past six months building a good, solid foundation for the sound of Hot 102.7FM but we believe with your help we can make Hot 102.7FM a great station, says Madurai. He has challenged radio listeners to take Jo'burgs 2022 radio check-up survey and make the big switch to the all new Hot 102.7FM. Madurai says: I love radio, but most of all I want to lead a radio station that listens to its audience and gives them what they want to hear from their favourite station.Jo'burgs 2022 radio check-up is an honest survey of what listeners really think about their radio stations. The online survey will run for a period of eight weeks with questions about music preferences, programming content, favourite presenters, charity initiatives and, most of all, your opinion on how radio can be made better for you. Simply go online to https://big-switch.joburg-radio-checkup.co.za or www.hot1027.co.za to be part of the survey.Make the big switch to Hot 102.7FM and, just for having your say, you could walk away with your share of R120 000.00.Tune in to Hot 102.7FM in the greater Jo'burg area, check out DSTV ch822 or visit www.hot1027.co.za and make the big switch today.
Registration is now open for the 16th instalment of Meetings Africa. The show will offer an array of exhibitors and buyers from across Africa and the world, an opportunity to meet as they partner to contribute to rebuilding the continent's business events industry.

Source: Supplied

Following the announcement by South African Tourism (SAT) last year that the trade show will be staged in a physical format after an absence in 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Meetings Africa is set to reignite Africa's business events industry."The Covid-19 pandemic has taken its toll on the global business events industry, however, as the business events industry on the African continent, we remain optimistic and we are thrilled to invite global buyers to come network and do business with our exhibitors from across the African continent," says Amanda Kotze-Nhlapo, chief bureau officer at the South Africa National Convention Bureau."There has been a resounding call for face-to-face business engagement from our industry players, and we are confident in executing a safe event. While we understand the severe blow that has been dealt to the industry, we are also confident in creating a conducive platform for our participants. Buyers who will not be able to travel to South Africa due to travel restrictions will be accommodated through a minimal virtual platform. Meetings Africa is a representation of the unrelenting spirit of an African industry that forges ahead and opens its doors to the world," adds Kotze-Nhlapo.Meetings Africa celebrated its 15th anniversary in February 2020 before the world closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and hosted 324 exhibiting companies from across the continent.At Meetings Africa 2022, the SANCB, in collaboration with its valued partners, will implement a revamped, globally bench-marked hosted buyer programme to ensure a successful exhibitor-buyer trade show experience.The show will take place in a physical format at the Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, from 28 February to 2 March 2022, with BONDay (Business Opportunity Networking Day) hosted on 28 February.For registration to participate as a buyer or an exhibitor, please contact the Meetings Africa exhibition management and sales teams who are on standby to assist. South Africa National Convention Bureau, together with our official host partners, the Gauteng Tourism Authority, along with the City of Johannesburg and the Sandton Convention Centre, are ready to welcome you.To register for the show, please visit the Meetings Africa website or contact: Gisele Masengo on +27 61 866 4486 and Rembu Moshapo on +27 76 296 0944. Alternatively, you can e-mail az.oc.acirfasgniteem@rotibihxe
Chinese state councilor Wang Yi meets Sri Lankan foreign minister

Xinhua) 08:31, January 10, 2022

COLOMBO, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met here on Sunday with Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris, vowing to work together with the Sri Lankan side to jointly oppose politicizing the COVID-19 pandemic and using origins tracing as a tool.

Peiris said during the meeting that Sri Lanka and China have conducted all-round cooperation in various areas, with close communication between the two governments, frequent inter-party contacts and active people-to-people exchanges.

China has provided substantial and strong support for Sri Lanka's economic development and national construction, Peiris said, stressing that the Sri Lankan side will continue to firmly adhere to the one-China policy, support China's just propositions on international occasions, and oppose any attempt to politicize the pandemic.

During the meeting, Wang said the two sides should stick to the right direction of solidarity in the fight against the pandemic, and jointly safeguard international equity and justice.

Noting that China and Sri Lanka are good friends and partners who have always trusted and supported each other, Wang said the pandemic has not affected bilateral relations, with their friendship further enhanced through the joint fight against COVID-19.

The central bank of Sri Lanka issued commemorative coins for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, which reflects the sincere friendship and full trust of the Sri Lankan side towards China, Wang said.

China proposes that a forum on the development of Indian Ocean island countries be held at an appropriate time to build consensus and synergy, and promote common development, in which Sri Lanka can play an important role, said the Chinese state councilor.

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Liang Jun)
GHAZNI, Afghanistan, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- "The tanks on display are relics of the military defeat of America and its allied nations," head of the information department in Ghazni province Mawlawi Habibullah Mujahid told Xinhua.

Mujahid described Ghazni, 125 km south of Kabul, as the main center of resistance and scene of bloody fighting between the Taliban and the U.S.-led forces during the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan.

These are the damaged or destroyed tanks of the United States and other countries within the framework of the International Security Assistance Force, he said.

Mujahid, who fought the foreign forces, said the defeat of a so-called super power by a poor nation was part of Afghanistan's "glorious history."

Mujahid said all damaged military equipment and documents related would be put on display in the province. Next to the main road in Ghazni, the exhibition also houses tanks left over from the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979-89.

The U.S.-led forces occupied Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 terrorist attacks, overthrowing the Taliban regime in 2001 and accusing Taliban of sheltering Osama bin Laden, chief of the terror group al-Qaida. A U.S.-backed administration was installed in Kabul. Twenty years on, the U.S. forces quit the administration and the Taliban reassumed power.

"Putting the military hardware on display will inspire the next generation to defend their country and provide lessons to any country with evil intentions against Afghanistan," Mujahid said. Details of each tank's demise will be put on display beside the broken hardware.

Hafizullah, a resident of the Ghazni province, said the exhibition would keep the history of Afghanistan and the defeat of invaders alive.

"All the equipment including the tanks put on display here should be protected as war memorial," Hafizullah said. 
KABUL, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- A cargo flight carrying a fresh shipment of pine nuts left the Afghan capital Kabul for China on Monday, authorities said.

"About 45 tons of pine nuts will be transported by today's cargo flight to Shanghai, China, that marks the first flight carrying a shipment of pine nuts to China in 2022," Sabawoon Ahmadzai, who is in charge of chartered cargo flights of the Afghan private airline Kam Air, told Xinhua.

The airline has run more than 30 cargo flights taking pine nuts to China since November when Afghanistan resumed export of the nut to China, according to Ahmadzai.

"Cargo flights will continue in 2022 as the Kam Air and exporters and Afghan pine nuts traders are determined to increase Afghanistan's exports," he said. 
IN A SIGN OF WIDENING disagreements within the government of Kazakhstan, the once supremely powerful head of the countrys internal intelligence agency has been fired. He was subsequently arrested by his own agency for alleged treasonable acts. Karim Masimov (or Massimov) served twice as prime minister of Kazakhstan under his political mentor, former President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Nazarbayev, who is traditionally referred to as the father of the nation kept Masimov in his inner circle of confidants throughout his nearly 30-year rule.

Masimov also served as director of Kazakhstans all-powerful National Security Committee (NSC). Founded in 1992, the NSC is one of several successor agencies to the Soviet-era Committee for State Security (KGB). The agency performs a wide array of counterintelligence functions, while also commanding a sizeable border guard force and having responsibility for counter-terrorism and covert action operations. It works closely with the Foreign Intelligence Service (also known as Syrbar, or KNB), which is Kazakhstans primary external intelligence agency.

In a surprise move, the government of Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Nazarbayevs hand-picked successor, fired Masimov from his NSC post on Wednesday. Masimov was reportedly replaced with his chief bodyguard. Less than 24 hours later, the NSC announced it had arrested Masimov, along with several other current and former government officials. In a statement posted on its website, the NSC said Masimov had been arrested as part of a pre-trial investigation into high treason. It is not currently known if this move is linked to the ongoing nationwide protests, which have resulted in the deaths of over 160 and the arrests of nearly 5,000 people.
JAKARTA, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia plans to stop the exports of bauxite ore in 2022 and copper ore in 2023 as an attempt to boost investments in the downstream sector and exports of higher value semi-finished or finished products, Indonesian President Joko Widodo said on Monday.

Bauxite ore is the main material for aluminum, while copper concentrates are widely used in the production of precious metals such as gold and silver.

Indonesia is a big exporter of these metals. The country mainly exports the two mineral commodities to Asian countries.

Starting Jan. 1, 2020, the Southeast Asian country banned nickel ore exports. The world's largest nickel ore producing country aims to push miners to develop smelters and refine the metal ore domestically so they can export higher-value products. 
Noether's Legacy

Amalie Emmy Noether, a German mathematician known for her contributions to abstract algebra, stands as a trailblazer in the field. She defied convention by earning a doctorate in mathematics in 1907 at a time when women typically were excluded from academic positions. In 1915, she proved Noethers theorem, a fundamental of mathematical physics that explains the connection between symmetry and conservation laws.

Although she spent the bulk of her early career as an unpaid (sometimes uncredited) assistant and did earn the title of professor, Noether never achieved the rank of full professor in her native Germany.

Noether was among many academics who fled Germany prior to World War II. In 1933, she joined the faculty at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she taught mathematics, and lectured at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton until her death in 1935.

The Amalie Emmy Noether Fellowship in Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computing honors Noether, who faced open resistance due to gender and ethnic discrimination yet surmounted those challenges to make some of the most significant advances in her elected research field.

Those inspired by Noethers legacy are encouraged to apply.
A lot has changed! (Image via ClayAiken.com)

WRAL: Clay Aiken is running for Congress again in North Carolina. He is FORTY-THREE YEARS OLD, in the time flies department, and he sounds MUCH more progressive this time around:

Clay is a strong Democrat running for Congress to give a voice to those who want to bring sanity and civility back to the political conversation. He knows he cant change Washington by himself. But he has also learned that he has a voice that makes people listen, and hell use it for the people of North Carolinas 6th District to deliver on needed progressive policies  from stopping climate change, systemic racism, income inequality and gun violence, to securing voting rights, free health care, and a womans right to choose.

I never cottoned to Clay back in the day ... but this sounds good. Maybe now is a better time for him than his last go-round.

Above, his personal pitch.

Saget's death came out of the blue. Anti-vaxxers came out of the woodwork. (Image via ABC)

GR8ERDAYS: RIP Bob Saget, 65. His shocking death was barely announced before anti-vaxxer lunatics invaded my IG to imply he must've died because he was boosted ... five weeks ago. This, with zero information on how he died, and in spite of the fact that seemingly healthy people of all ages, especially in their sixties, do, in fact, suddenly die. Also overlooked by anti-vaxxers  Saget had very recently had what sounded like a hard time with COVID-19. In their minds, having recently had COVID-19 is less material than having been vaccinated.New details suggest hew as packed and ready to leave his hotel.

TWITTER: Two of the lawyers arguing (it appears so far successfully) against Biden's vax mandate at the SCOTUS ... have tested positive for COVID-19.

WORLD OF WONDER: Anti-vaxxer Novak Djokovic had a big court win, with an Australian judge voiding his detention and ordering him released. He could, in theory, play at the Australian Open there, but government officials appear ready to extend the battle. Meanwhile, Djokovic tested positive for COVID in December and posted with kids at an event the very next day. This is a sociopath. Anti-vaxxers are anti-logic sociopaths  they're already running around the Internet claiming Bob Saget must've died from his booster shot ... that he received, like countless others, FIVE WEEKS AGO. It's maddening, the harmful stupidity.

HUFF POST: AOC tested positive for COVID-19. Vaxxed and boosted, she's dealing with symptoms and recovering at home.

EXTRATV: The Golden Globes were announced on Twitter, and Mj Rodriguez aka Michaela Jae Rodriguez made history as the first trans woman to win Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series, Drama.

NYP: Trump crony Lee Chatfield has been accused of sexually assaulting his own sister-in-law from the time she was 15 years old. Somehow, though only 33 now, Chatfield has already left office due to term limits, having been the youngest person to serve as Michigan Speaker of the House in 100+ years.

LGBTQ NATION: Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe's daughter Ava comes out as being attracted to ... people.

JOE.MY.GOD.: Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) is set to intro legislation to ban members of Congress from holding or trading individual stocks while in office, and would also probably hold them to a promise to place financial assets in blind trusts.

GUARDIAN: No words. That's the reaction of gay Australian rugby player Josh Cavallo in response to being pelted with homophobic taunts from the crowd during a match.

NYP: Sadly, Yao Pan Ma, the 61-year-old Asian man who was brutally attacked while collecting cans to make ends meet, has died months after the assault  without ever waking up. HIs alleged attacker, Jarrod Powell, was caught on video killing the man and has been charged with two counts of assault as a hate crime. His charges will of course now be revised in light of his victim's death. The killer  who has 15+ prior arrests going back over 30 years  claimed, without any proof, that he was attacked first.

INSTAGRAM: Happy birthday to rocker Pat Benatar, and ...
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Bradford, PA (16701)

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Cloudy with occasional showers for the afternoon. High 66F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

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PHNOM PENH, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Three Cambodian deminers were killed and one seriously wounded on Monday after an anti-tank mine exploded during a demining and explosive ordnance disposal operation in northwestern Preah Vihear province, officials said.

The accident took place at 11:30 a.m. local time in a remote village in Choam Ksant district, said Heng Ratana, director general of the Cambodian Mine Action Center, adding that the victims worked for a non-profit NGO Cambodian Self Help Demining.

Ly Thuch, first vice president of the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority (CMAA), said the anti-tank mine erupted when the demining experts were trying to defuse it at the request of villagers.

"This is a big loss of human resources in the demining sector," he told Xinhua. "They had saved many people's lives from landmines during their lifetime, and we will remember their great courage in mind forever."

Thuch said all the victims were males.

Cambodia is one of the countries worst-affected by mines. An estimated 4 million to 6 million landmines and other munitions have been left over from three decades of war and internal conflicts that ended in 1998.

Landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) explosions killed 11 people and injured 33 others in 2021, said a CMAA report, adding that from 1979 to 2021, landmines and UXO explosions had claimed a total of 19,808 lives, and either injured or amputated 45,156 others. 
The snow piling up in Westman is leaving producers feeling cautiously optimistic for the 2022 growing season after a summer of drought and adversity in 2021.

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SUBMITTED Manitoba Beef Producers president Tyler Fulton is hoping for the best in 2022  but preparing for the worst.

The snow piling up in Westman is leaving producers feeling cautiously optimistic for the 2022 growing season after a summer of drought and adversity in 2021.

Manitoba Beef Producers president Tyler Fulton said he is hoping for the best but preparing for the worst leading up to spring. Fulton runs an operation based in Birtle with about 600 head of cattle.

The summer of 2021 was a challenging time for ranchers.

"Honestly, it felt like we were constantly just trying to put out fires just dealing with the crisis of it all," Fulton said.

Producers were forced to look for contingencies on several different fronts, especially when it came to keeping animals fed and watered.

Fulton uses dugouts to water his cattle. Most of the sites are fenced off and employ a solar watering system to preserve the quality and quantity of the water. Even with these mitigation steps, he still lost dugouts over the summer due to the drought.

By the middle of June, Fulton said, they had to pull cows from pastures because of the lack of water for the first time ever.

The ranch chose to sell some animals they intended to keep over the summer, but they avoided having to sell animals from their core herd.

Producers from across the province were in a similar situation, he said, and many were forced to sell cattle to survive the summer.

"There were I think three auction marts that ran throughout the whole summer. They didnt miss a week. They were operating in July and August when typically, they arent open ... All of those animals would not have otherwise been sold," Fulton said. "We know that guys are already feeling the pinch because they have been forced to buy feed and some of them have been forced to sell their cows. It has both short-term and long-term implications."

In the short term, producers have been forced to put up capital for feed because the drought prevented them from letting cattle graze. They are now short of cash, Fulton said, because 2021 represented one of the worst production years from a profitability standpoint  prices of cattle were slightly down and did not represent the cash ranchers had to pay for feed during the drought.

Longer-term impacts of the 2021 summer involve the sustainability of individual farms that had to sell cattle. Animals are the economic generator of a farm. Selling these animals was a hit to operations and families, Fulton said, because it was the loss of a core economic driver and revenue generator.

Mitigation and sustainability practices are emerging in response to the extreme weather producers have been experiencing, especially among younger producers who are interested in adopting water and soil conservation practices.

These practices can include rotational grazing and more intensive management of grazing lands.

"The benefit is there. But, at the end of the day when youve got precipitation levels that were less than half of what an average year would be, everybody is struggling," Fulton said. "It is going to be one of those practices that will be the consistent thing that allows producers to stay in the business and weather the climatic disasters that arise."

Provincial and federal programs, including the AgriStability, MASC Forage Insurance Program, On-Farm Climate Action Fund and the Ag Action Better Management 503, can also help producers struggling to manage adverse weather conditions.

"In order for a producer to get a benefit from the program, they need to experience a disaster, and thats what last year was," Fulton said.

Keystone Agriculture Producers president Bill Campbell said it was a challenging year in 2021 with regard to the drought conditions producers faced across the province.

"Virtually everyone can agree that our sub-soil moisture moving forward in 2022 is adequate, and so were going to require some above-average snowfall and some very timely rains in the spring and throughout the growing season to alleviate those drought concerns," Campbell said.

Campbells farm is based in Minto. He faced a dry summer, but was able to get some timely rains and harvest an average crop. He added some of his forage production was impacted significantly and was in a claim situation.

Farmers learned important lessons in 2021 and have been grateful for the support provided by all levels of government.

The greatest way to alleviate the 2022 drought is to have those timely rains, which will ease everybodys minds.

Campbell said his farm has utilized zero-till features. He did not work any of the lands last fall and left stubble standing to collect as much snow as possible.

He also used GPS technology to ensure they are not overlapping and wasting nutrients fuel.

"Theres been a significant adaptation to some of the environmental concerns that have been happening," Campbell said.

The drought is not a new situation for many farmers, Campbell said, as they faced similar situations in 1988, 1961 and the 1930s.

The key difference now is producers are better equipped to handle extreme weather like droughts.

"If this had been 1988 with the tools I had at that time, we would have been looking at a significant disaster. I honestly believe weve been able to evolve and adapt and do the best that we can," Campbell said.

Agriculture is an innovative industry because adapting is key to a farms survival  farmers do best they can and experiment to see what leads to the most positive returns.

"If you dont try, then youre not moving forward," Campbell said. "Weve learned a lot over the years, and its the greatest group of innovators I think on the landscape as far as dealing with the conditions that we have."

When farmers have a bad season, it ripples out, affecting multiple industries and consumers.

"Society has maybe taken for granted the assumption that the grocery store will have food and I will be able to purchase what I want when I want. When we have these particular disruptions from supply chains or processors or transportation or production, it certainly will impact society and consumers," Campbell said.

 ckemp@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @The_ChelseaKemp
Bob Saget, the actor-comedian known for his role as beloved single dad Danny Tanner on the sitcom Full House and as the wisecracking host of Americas Funniest Home Videos, has died, according to authorities in Florida. He was 65.

Deputies in Orange County, Florida, were called Sunday about an unresponsive man in a hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando and found Saget dead, according to a sheriffs statement on Twitter. Detectives found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case.

Saget was in Florida as part of his I Dont Do Negative Comedy Tour. After warm audience receptions to his gigs Friday in Orlando and Saturday in the Ponte Vedra Beach resort area, he celebrated online.

Bob Saget in Sydney in 2014. Credit:James Brickwood

Im back in comedy like I was when I was 26. I guess Im finding my new voice and loving every moment of it, he posted Saturday on Instagram.
Im just some guy from Melbourne, says Michael Kahan, who still cant figure out why people are willing to have a conversation about how they overcame personal failures on the podcast Funny in Failure.

Why a podcast about failure?

Where do I begin? The reason I started the podcast is that I was living a life that I didnt feel was quite mine. I was listening to a lot of external voices of how my life should be. I realised that something wasnt quite right, and I knew I wasnt alone in these feelings. After speaking to a lot of my peers and friends I realised we were sharing in universal feelings that were not living our best life. Working in corporate I realised that wasnt the best job for me. Fast forward, I started improv comedy.

Bit of a shift, then.

Doing improv comedy can be really tough when you have no performing background, you havent done anything quite like that before. I actually failed a class, which was quite tough to deal with, I didnt know how to process it. And speaking to a lot of the people in that field, I realised they were going through what I was going through, at a much larger scale. Essentially, I didnt really understand the topic of failure, and I wanted to learn more about it: what did it mean? Because its so multifaceted and it means a lot of things to so many people. I wanted to normalise the stigma behind failure, show that its normal, youre not defined by failure, everyone goes through it, its actually essential to growth and moving forward. And its a learning experience that can propel you in ways you never thought possible.

Michael Kahan, host/producer of the podcast Funny in Failure.

Have you been surprised by just how universal these feelings are?

Yes, every single podcast I am constantly surprised. You dont need to be in arts, or be a comedian or actor or director or writer to experience these feelings. Just hearing these stories is mind-boggling, and I feel very privileged, that my guests would spend time [telling] a complete stranger about the highs and lows of their life. I had Bronnie Ware on the podcast, internationally best-selling author. She was rejected at least 20 times with her book, and she didnt let that stop her. Often when we get a no, we go, OK, I guess this cant be done. But when you hear a story of such resilience, and how the person doesnt stop, but says, OK, I got a no, how can I work on this, how can I grow, how do I move forward? Its ... inspiring and empowering to hear how people, through what can be perceived as a negative experience, move forward and achieve great success.
A child under five and a man in his 30s are among the record 18 COVID-19 deaths in NSW on Monday, as the vaccine rollout for primary schoolchildren begins.

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said the 20,293 new COVID-19 cases recorded on the states deadliest day of the pandemic clearly is an underestimate, with rapid tests still unable to be registered through the Service NSW app.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet watches on as Ines Panagopailos, 8, receives her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccination at the Sydney Childrens Hospital in Randwick on Monday. Credit: Pool/AAP

There are now 2030 people in hospital with the virus, of whom 159 are in intensive care units.

The new infections were reported from 84,333 tests, resulting in a positive rate of 24 per cent.
Queensland Chief Health Officer John Gerrard has reassured parents they should not be anxious about children being infected with COVID-19, describing the effects on youth as a mild respiratory illness.

John Gerrard said the biggest concern was the health of adults experiencing terrible COVID-19 symptoms, not children. Credit:Dan Peled - Getty

As Queensland recorded 9581 cases on Monday and vaccinations opened for children aged five to 11, Dr Gerrard said cases of children falling terribly ill to the virus were rare.

For the most part, the children will have only a mild illness very similar to any of the respiratory infections theyve had in the past, he said.

There are definitely rare complications of COVID-19 in children, Im not going to downplay it, but for the vast majority it is a simple respiratory virus, like a virus they would have had in the past.
More than half of Queenslands COVID patients in intensive care are at the Gold Coast as a significant surge saps hospital resources.

The state on Monday recorded 9581 new COVID cases, but authorities said that number was not final, with four private pathology labs yet to record their results due to what was believed to be a software issue.

Health Minister Yvette DAth said the numbers would be updated once the results became available.

Of those 9581 cases, 3714 were recorded as rapid antigen tests, while 440 people were in hospital being treated for the virus, 21 of whom are in ICU.
He said those who kept working would need to return negative results to daily rapid antigen tests over a five-day period. They would also not be able to enter shared break areas, and must wear face masks  N95 or P2 if they are available  throughout their shift, and both the worker and their employer must consent to them returning to work. Mr Foley also announced more amendments to Victorias coronavirus restrictions that would come into force from 11.59pm on Wednesday. Among the changes were new rules for visitors to hospitals and aged care facilities and the closure of dance floors at most indoor hospitality venues. Those [hospitality] venues can still operate and there are no changes to density settings currently in place, Mr Foley said. The Health Minister said while weddings were excluded from the rule, authorities encouraged wedding hosts and guests to put their dance floors outdoors.

Residents at aged care facilities would still be allowed up to five visitors a day, as long as their guests returned a negative rapid antigen test result before their arrival. However, if test results could not be provided, the number of daily guests to each resident would be reduced to two. Victorians planning to visit a hospital from Thursday would need to prove they had two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. Those unable to provide that evidence would be required to return a negative rapid antigen test before they enter, and wear a mask to N95 or P2 standard or equivalent. Hospitality venues wont be able to operate indoor dance floors, unless for a wedding, under the restrictions announced Monday. Credit:AP Victorian Healthcare Association chief executive Tom Symondson welcomed the decision to bolster visiting restrictions, saying hospitals had been using rapid tests to screen visitors for COVID-19, but many had run out of supplies. He said unvaccinated people were more likely to catch and transmit COVID-19 and the policy would reduce the risk to healthcare workers and vulnerable patients, including pregnant women, newborns and those receiving cancer treatment.

Victoria looks towards national approach for school return Victorias state schools are set to resume classes on Monday, January 31, but Mr Foley said the state was looking for a national approach to decide if the start of term should be delayed to allow more children to get vaccinated. He said national cabinet last week agreed the issue of a consistent approach to the return to school is very important. I understand that the Commonwealth this week [is] commencing the discussions to try to get a consistent approach to those issues, and Victoria will be a part of those discussions, Mr Foley said.

Loading Weve all done it really hard, but kids in particular havent been able to get vaccinated  theyve missed a lot of school to protect the rest of the community. We want to make sure that their sacrifice - their effort  is recognised and that we get them back to school as quickly as possible and  that we do so safely, and we will be active participants in that national approach. Professor Cowie said between late November through to early December, COVID-19 cases in five to 11-year-olds accounted for more than 30 per cent of Victorias total infections, but that figure had now dropped to 4 per cent. With schools having closed and kids not attending school, that proportion ... has dropped quite drastically, suggesting whether its within the school or associated with school, there are significant amounts of transmission that occurs.

Meanwhile, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, who returned to work on Monday after taking leave, said schools had been one of the issues he had been discussing with NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet as he published a screenshot of the pair talking over Zoom to his social media account. Mr Foley said almost 9000 of the self-reported COVID-19 cases recorded in Victoria on Monday reportedly came from rapid antigen tests taken on Sunday. The Health Department later said another 3000 were from tests done on January 8 and the remainder came from swabs taken over the prior five days. The two people whose deaths from COVID were reported on Friday were both in their 70s. The deaths take the total number of COVID-related fatalities in Victoria since the pandemic began to 1580. The number of people in hospital with the virus has grown to 818, and there are 118 people in intensive care. Twenty-eight are on a ventilator.

NSW reported 20,293 new coronavirus cases and 18 deaths  the most daily deaths in the state since the pandemic began. Victorias COVID-19 vaccination program expanded on Monday to include children aged between five and 11, with paediatric Pfizer jabs available at state-run clinics, along with general practice clinics and pharmacies. While state-run hubs were reportedly ready to go ahead with the five-to-11-year-old rollout on Sunday, peak medical bodies complained doctors and pharmacists were forced to delay or even cancel coronavirus vaccine appointments. Balwyn Health Care general practitioner Dr Mary-Anne Lancaster was among those affected by delivery cancellations.

Loading Were going to have to cancel, as are a lot of other clinics [for] kids today, she told 3AW on Monday morning. Weve got hundreds [of people booked in to receive a COVID-19 vaccine] this week. We ordered our vaccines on [December 12], they were promised to arrive the week of [January] the 7th. A spokesperson for the Pharmacy Guild of Australia said Victorian pharmacies were in much the same position as GPs. Federal COVID-19 task force commander Lieutenant-General John Frewen said on Monday authorities would have more than enough vaccines for every kid to have their first dose before the end of the year.
Although he emphasises that most properties will be fine, specific properties and specific communities will be affected, making now a good time to make long-term plans. Loading The technology around climate change analysis has improved in the past couple of years, allowing property-specific risk analysis where banks can assess a mortgage application and see whether a house is on the side of the street that floods or the side that doesnt, he said. Mallon issues hundreds of reports a week for potential homebuyers who are checking property risk, warning its naive for homeowners to think they can sell a property to someone who wont be doing the same. A homebuyer will experience 30 years of sea-level rise by the time they pay out their mortgage, and if they sell at any time, the new owner will also be looking 30 years ahead.

People in coastal areas need to be thinking quite long-term in terms of the future value of their property, he said. Mallon warns owners of coastal property not to go without insurance, and to consider the possible impacts to their house. For example, is it near a river that could break its banks? Is it low-lying and at risk from a large storm on top of high tide, when a small rise in sea levels can be magnified to push waves further inland? Does the local council have a plan to deal with coastal inundation, especially for properties that arent at least 10 metres above sea level? Could the beach in front of the house be eroded? The beach near Inverloch Surf Lifesaving club, as erosion affects Victorias coastline. Credit:Jason South Its no hypothetical in Collaroy on Sydneys northern beaches, where last week large swells washed away sand in front of a sea wall that was designed to protect properties and the beach from storm surges. Laing + Simmons Narrabeens Chris Gamarra has been fielding enquiries from potential buyers about coastal erosion and flood.

Erosion and flood are hot on buyers minds at the moment, understandably, he said. I have just sold a lakefront [home] in Narrabeen  the concerns there for flooding and flood risk was very significant. A strong swell washed away sand in front of the Collaroy sea wall last week. Credit:Brook Mitchell He noted concerns held by some in the community about the sea wall management and predicted an increase in values for properties away from the affected area that are seen to be on a safer part of the beach. I think you will see properties change in their price depending on their risk level, which is not something we have had in the past.

But LJ Hooker Mona Vales Kylie Segedin said others in the community expected the sea wall would give them more protection in time, which made them feel safer. Last week just after that storm, we had enquiries on that [property] weve got for sale on Collaroy Beach. Its not a concern, she said. There will be people that are concerned about erosion, but they are not the buyers for those properties. The sea wall at Collaroy was constructed last year. Credit:James Brickwood A recent report estimates a $30 billion investment is needed in coastal protection and adaptation projects over the next 50 years.

Prepared for the Insurance Council of Australia, the report calls for relatively modest spending that would avoid losses for individuals and communities, through coastal protection infrastructure, better data collection and difficult decisions about the long-term viability of some properties. A survey of 94 coastal councils in 2020 found 90 per cent rated coastal hazards a priority issue, but identified funding issues as critical to deal with the challenge, the Australian Coastal Councils Association said. Some coastal areas are already experiencing climate change impacts, especially during storms, said Sarah Boulter, senior research fellow at the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility at Griffith University. In some parts of the country, councils are very aware of some of those risks, she said. A diligent owner should be looking and thinking, is there a risk here and how soon will I experience that risk?

Although living by the coastline defines the Australian lifestyle, it is going to become more challenging, she said. Loading This could mean hard engineering solutions such as sea walls in some areas, or sand-dune nourishment and revegetation, or changes in planning rules to avoid developing at-risk areas. Australia is a wealthy country with very good engineers who will be able to protect important parts of the coast over time, University of Sydney Associate Professor in the School of Geosciences Ana Vila Concejo said. And in some areas, the houses are not so close to the coastline as to be in immediate danger, although others are at risk and may be best managed through moving the residents into less dangerous areas, she said.

That will be the only solution in some areas. In other cases, if the Australian government and Australian public think this is worth saving, there can be engineering interventions. She warned potential homebuyers to look at the surrounding environment  are there stable cliffs in front of their beach house, or is it near an estuary that could flood? If your dream property is just behind the dunes and the elevation is not very much above the high water mark  I would not buy there either. Major banks are preparing their home loan books for climate change, and working with their regulator.
LISBON, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- At some 90 percent, Portugal has one of the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates in the world and public support remains strong for the government's drive to fully inoculate the population.

Unlike in other European countries, anti-vaccine protests are rare in Portugal and people generally accept, respect and follow the authorities' containment and health safety measures.

Pedro, a supplier of food products for restaurants, told Xinhua that he readily followed the recommendations of the scientists and the health authorities, and that is why he was preparing to take the booster vaccine dose.

However, he complained that the restrictions imposed by the government on the movement of people caused economic losses for the hospitality industry.

Roberta, who owns a restaurant in the city of Viseu, told Xinhua that she was vaccinated but remained skeptical.

She said that while the confinement has heavily penalized certain sectors, other businesses, such as the country's supermarkets and retailers, ended up benefiting from the "state of calamity" decree that has been in force in Portugal since Dec. 1, 2021.

In recent weeks, daily COVID-19 infections have soared to record highs and the sharp increase in hospitalizations continued to put enormous pressure on the country's healthcare system.

Last Sunday, Portugal registered 26,419 new cases, bringing the cumulative total since the start of the pandemic to more than 1.6 million. The day also saw 22 deaths, taking the count to 19,113. Currently, 1,449 patients require hospital treatment, 150 of them in intensive care units (ICUs).

According to health experts consulted by Xinhua, the vast majority of the severe COVID-19 cases and of those in ICUs either have not completed the two-dose vaccination course or have comorbidities.

The number of daily confirmed cases in children aged between five and 11 is also high, the health authorities said. The country has started to vaccinate this age group in recent weeks only.

"All hospitalized children are unvaccinated," said Maria Joao Brito, director of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Unit at Hospital Dona Estefania in Lisbon.

She said that the vaccines are effective at protecting against "severe diseases and complications associated with COVID-19, such as pneumonia, MISC-C (Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome) or the infection of the central nervous system."

According to infectology specialist Jose Pocas, "even those who are vaccinated are not completely protected, but it is better to vaccinate to prevent an exponential increase of cases." 
Bangkok: A court in Myanmar has sentenced ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to four more years in prison on Monday after finding her guilty of illegally importing and possessing walkie-talkies and violating coronavirus restrictions, a legal official said.

Aung San Suu Kyi spent 15 years under house arrest under the previous, decades-long military rule. Credit:AP

Suu Kyi was convicted last month on two other charges and given a four-year prison sentence, which was then halved by the head of the military government. The cases are among about a dozen brought against the 76-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate since the army seized power last February, ousting her elected government and arresting top members of her National League for Democracy party.

Suu Kyis supporters say the charges against her are contrived to legitimise the militarys actions and prevent her from returning to politics.

If found guilty of all the charges, she could be sentenced to more than 100 years in prison.
One of the peak bodies for small businesses in New South Wales has called for the state government to return support to SMEs as they face the ongoing Omicron crisis.

SMEs, especially those in hospitality that rely on seasonal income, are currently being battered by staff shortages caused by employees who either have Covid or are forced to isolate as close contacts.

Read more: Non-major set for big broker play in 2022

Its been a really challenging Christmas and New Year period for businesses of all sizes across industries as they battled with staff becoming infected and isolating, and a lack of consumer confidence, said chief executive Daniel Hunter.

It was an imperfect storm as customers voted with their feet and stayed away from venues that would normally be thriving during Summer, and those that did attend were met with venues that were severely understaffed.

Business NSW has been working closely with Government on measures that can provide some swift and short-term support for businesses, at a time when they need it most,

These relief packages proposed include:
Bryan, OH (43506)

Today

Rain. Thunderstorms possible...mainly in the afternoon. High 61F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall possibly over one inch..

Tonight

Rain ending early. Remaining cloudy. Low 46F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Samunnati, an agri-value chain enabler and Indias largest agri-tech enterprise, on Monday announced hitting the Rs 10,000 crore gross transactional value (GTV) mark across its agri-commerce and agri-finance business.

Interestingly, 50 per cent of this GTV came in over the last 18 months. Samunnati said that its vision is to make markets work for smallholder farmers and make agri value chains operate at a higher equilibrium.

The Rs 10,000-Crore-GTV mark is a significant milestone in our journey to enable the agri value chains to operate at a higher equilibrium. We are grateful to our customers, partners, stakeholders and above all, the farmers for their sustained faith and support over the past years," said Anil Kumar S G, Founder and chief executive officer of Samunnati.

"We are blessed to have an enabling cohort of investors, lenders and other stakeholders who have encouraged us to move forward on our mission. We strive to make profitable and sustainable for the millions of smallholder farmers that ensure our nation's food security," he added. Samunnati currently has access to over 1500 farmer collectives with a member base of over 6 million farmers and envisions impacting one in every four farming households through its network by 2027.

Recently Samunnati and Federation of Indian FPOs and Aggregators (one of the subsidiaries of NAFED) also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to support FPOs. Federation of Indian FPOs and Aggregators (FIFA) is a national level association of more than 100 producer organizations. As part of the MOU, Samunnati and FIFA will guide the FPOs through various training modules focused on their capacity building and institutional development, deploy Samunnatis FPO Grading and Assessment Tool, give FPOs access to Samunnatis Digitization Suite, provide market linkages and financing solutions.

Samunnati Foundation, the non-profit subsidiary of Samunnati, has also recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with IIT Madras Incubation Cell (IITMIC) to develop innovation in and help support agritech startups in their goals. Through this partnership, the organizations will provide incubation support/facilities to entrepreneurial ventures, prepare position papers and propose policy recommendations.

Among other things, the tie-up will facilitate research and development in areas such as promotion of alternative crops, adoption of a green agricultural ecosystem including use of green agricultural machinery, solar pumps and others, indigenously developed food processing tech, and other support services for the agricultural community.
Inc supplier will reopen an manufacturing facility in southern India on Wednesday with 500 workers, government officials and a legislator in the region where the plant is located told Reuters.

The plant, in the town of Sriperumbudur near the state capital of Chennai, employed about 17,000 people but was closed on Dec. 18 after protests over 250 of its workers who fell sick with food poisoning.

has since placed the factory on probation after discovering that some dormitories and dining rooms did not meet required standards. and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. K Selvaperunthagai, a member of the state assembly for the area, said the Chief Minister M K Stalin told the assembly late on Friday the plant would reopen on Wednesday with 500 workers.

Government officials have said Foxconn intended to resume production gradually but have not said when the full workforce would be back on the job. Foxconn has been making the 12 and testing production of the 13 at the Sriperumbudur facility, its only plant in India, government officials have said. Apple has eight other suppliers in India.

Selvaperunthagai told Reuters the state government would build a hostel facility with a capacity to house tens of thousands of workers from various industries to address the concerns about standards of dormitories and dining facilities. "The government is clear that they don't want such incidents to happen again," he said.

Tamil Nadu, a state of more than 70 million people and one of the country's most industrialised, is sometimes called the "Detroit of Asia". It is home to factories of including BMW, Daimler, Hyundai, Nissan and Renault.

(Reporting by Sudarshan Varadhan; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

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The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) has rejected petitions filed by ride sharing players Meru and Fast Track Call Cab against alleging predatory pricing ways and anti-competitive practices in Bengaluru market.

The appeals were filed by the entities against ANI Technologies, which run the app-based taxi service under the brand name .

It was alleged that indulged in abuse of dominant position and entered into anti-competitive agreements with drivers in the Bengaluru market.

The appellate tribunal has upheld the order passed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI), which in July 2017 had rejected the allegations of abuse of dominant position against Ola. The watchdog's decision followed a detailed probe by its investigation arm Director General (DG).

The petitions by the two entities had challenged CCI's order.

While rejecting the petitions, also said that Ola was not in a dominant position in the Bengaluru market.

"Moreover, since Ola is not in dominant position the question of abuse of dominant position through predatory pricing also does not get attracted. In sum, we do not think the orders of the Commission dated 19.7.2017 require any interference. Both the appeals are, therefore, dismissed," the appellate tribunal said in an order on January 7.

It was alleged that Ola indulged in predatory pricing by offering discounts to customers and incentives to drivers with the sole intention to monopolise the radio taxi services in Bengaluru after receiving four series of funding from their investors.

"Looking to the market behaviour of Ola, we hold a clear view that Ola was providing a mobile-app based solution to the riders and drivers in a new and easy way for taxi rides which includes taxi booking and payment," said.

According to the appellate tribunal, Ola employed a pricing strategy to establish its brand and network to provide much more efficient and user-friendly services to customers in real-time at any place and anytime, to edge out the competitors who were already present in the radio taxi market in Bengaluru, which cannot be faulted as being predatory pricing.

Regarding the incentives that Ola provided to drivers, said they were either in monetary form or in the shape of schemes that are dynamic in nature and change with market conditions.

"Moreover, participation in these schemes are completely optional for the drivers," NCLAT bench, comprising Justice Jarat Kumar Jain and Alok Srivastava, said.

The strategy is that once demand rises, Ola has to bring in more drivers in its network, and therefore its incentives to drivers are engineered to attract them to the network, the appellate tribunal said.

Further, NCLAT noted that these incentives are developed and offered with a view to offer advantageous terms of engagement so there are enough suppliers to take care of increasing demand.

"Therefore, we are of the view that Ola is working on generating demand through customer discounts and then bringing in more drivers to cater to the increased demand. Ola tries to create a win-win for the riders and drivers, and of course to its enterprise," NCLAT said.

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Motorcycle India on Monday said it has rolled out six millionth vehicle from its Gurugram-based manufacturing facility.

The company sells a range of products including Access 125, Gixxer 250 and 150 series, Burgman Street and the recently introduced Avenis 125.

"This year marks the completion of Motorcycle India's 15 years in the country. It is indeed heartening to also announce the roll out of our six millionth two-wheeler product in India from our Gurugram plant," Managing Director Satoshi Uchida said in a statement.

This six millionth milestone is a testament to the company's continued commitment to provide superior value to customers in India, he added.

"We are delighted that we could reach this landmark despite the challenges thrown by the second wave and the global semiconductor shortage across the world," Uchida stated.

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Leading watchmaker Group India Ltd on Monday said it has been granted manufacturing and distribution rights for Guess & Gc branded in the country.

It has sealed a pact with Nederland B.V. for the grant of manufacturing and distribution rights for the Indian market, India said in a statement.

"The deal is a significant win for Timex Group India, given the Guess & Gc market share, reach and brand recognition in the fashion watch segment. The power of the Guess & Gc brands will be a great addition for Timex Group India," said a statement.

This partnership will allow Timex Group India to expand its business through the distribution of style-driven product assortments to its fashion-focused customer base.

Timex Group India Managing Director Sharmila Sahai said, "We are delighted to announce this partnership. Guess & Gc branded are known for providing quality timepieces for fashion-conscious consumers worldwide, and the recognition that these brands have in the Indian market is phenomenal."



Sahai added that this strategic collaboration leverages the strength of the company's retail partner network and allows further expansion of its distribution footprint in the country.

The new agreements are effective from January 2022.

Timex Group designs, manufactures and markets innovative timepieces around the world. It is a privately held company headquartered in Middlebury, Connecticut with multiple operating units and over 3,000 employees worldwide.

Timex Group produce under a number of well-known brands, including Timex, Guess, Versace, Salvatore Ferragamo, Gc, Furla, Missoni, adidas, Nautica and Ted Baker.

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(Vi) is unlikely to opt for conversion of interest on government dues into equity, brokerage said in a note today. The telecom company has to take a call on the issue by Wednesday.

Our calculation suggests that if Vi were to exercise this option, there would be ~52 per cent dilution and the government could end up owning 34 per cent stake. With the recent ~20% tariff hikes and Vi having likely tied up the funding for repaying the non-convertible debentures maturing between December 2021 and February 2022, its prospects have improved. In our view, Vi is likely to continue its fund-raising efforts from its promoters and other investors rather than letting the government acquire a significant stake,  said.

Last Friday, Bharti Airtel announced that it will pay the interest on deferred spectrum and adjusted gross revenue liabilities and will not issue equity to the government.

The company informed the department of telecommunications that it will not avail the option of conversion of the interest on deferred spectrum and AGR dues into equity, it said in a stock exchange notification on Friday.

The government last October announced a slew of measures to protect the financial health of telecom . This includes a four year moratorium on the spectrum and AGR dues. Further the also have an option to convert the interest amount arising due to the said deferment into equity.
BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The total number of COVID-19 cases in the United States topped 60 million on Sunday, as the Omicron variant ripped through more countries and regions around the world, nudging them to tighten restrictions and ramp up vaccinations against the latest surge.

SURGING CASES

Driven by the Omicron variant, many countries and regions have reported record-high infections recently.

Just days before the United States passed the milestone of 60 million cases, the country had shattered a single-day record with over 1 million COVID-19 infections.

The United States, the country worst hit by the pandemic, with the world's largest caseload and highest death toll, is experiencing the most significant infection surge to date, putting additional pressure on its already overtaxed health care system.

"Due to the tsunami of Omicron cases, the volume is affecting our health and community service," Rebecca Weintraub, assistant professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, was quoted in an ABC News report as saying.

"The burden on the health care system is made worse by nationwide staffing shortages and hospital capacity at elevated levels as many other patients seek care for non-virus related reasons," said the report.

The Omicron variant has sent Britain's daily infections surging over Christmas and the New Year, with 141,472 coronavirus cases reported on Sunday.

The data came one day after Britain's COVID-19-related deaths topped 150,000, making it the seventh country that passed the grim milestone.

India has also saw a steep rise in daily infections with 179,723 new cases reported on Monday, which is the fourth consecutive day that more than 100,000 daily new cases were registered in the country.

The overall caseload in Africa has exceeded 10 million on Sunday with the rapid transmission of the Omicron variant, which is alarming as it only took less than one month for Africa to record an increase of one million new cases since Dec. 15.

Turkey and Kuwait have reported record-daily COVID-19 cases recently, while Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned on Sunday that 2-4 million Israelis are predicted to be infected during the current outbreak fueled by the Omicron variant.

EFFORTS TO BATTLE PANDEMIC SURGE

Faced with the current COVID-19 flare-up, countries and regions have stepped up efforts to speed up a vaccination roll-out and impose more restrictions to curb the pandemic.

Temporary mass vaccination sites that were set up months ago across the United States are being reopened to get more people vaccinated and boosted amid the latest spike.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently told Americans to avoid travel on cruise ships, regardless of their vaccination status.

Greece's government has implemented further protection measures due to the spread of the Omicron variant. When schools reopen on Monday, all students and teachers are required to be tested 2-3 times a week during January, regardless of their vaccination status.

Several state governments in India have imposed fresh restrictions due to the latest surge. Maharashtra, India's richest state, said schools and colleges will be closed till Feb. 15, and only fully vaccinated people will be allowed into private offices while limiting the capacity to 50 percent of the total workforce.

The Israeli government has led a policy based on keeping the economy open while aggressively promoting vaccination.

Meanwhile, Africa has highlighted the need to strengthen global solidarity and speed up inoculation in the world's least vaccinated region amid the current surge. 
YES Bank, the largest shareholder in Dish TV India with a 25.6 per cent stake that it acquired by way of loan recovery, is planning to sell its holding in the satellite TV broadcaster to Tata Sky and Bharti Airtel. Other institutional investors, who jointly own 45 per cent in Dish TV, are also keen to sell their stake, according to banking sources.

Talks with both Tata Sky and Airtel are underway and a final decision is expected soon, the sources said. YES Bank and Dish TV are engaged in a bitter legal battle over the control of the company. The promoters, the Subhash Chandra ...
Amid the surge in the COVID-19 cases, 114 police personnel and 18 senior officers including 13 Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCPs), four Additional Commissioner of Police (CPs) and one Joint CP (Level Officer) have tested COVID-19 positive in the last 48 hours, police informed on Sunday.

According to the police, in the last 48 hours, two policemen died.

"114 policemen and 18 senior officers, including 13 DCPs, 4 Additional CPs, and one Joint CP (Level Officer), have tested COVID19 positive and 2 policemen have died in the last 48 hours," the police said.

As many as 125 policemen succumbed to the virus so far, the police said.

Meanwhile, recorded 19,474 new COVID-19 cases and seven deaths in the last 24 hours, informed Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Sunday.

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At least 18,000 ICU beds and 28,000 oxygen beds will be required for COVID-19 patients if the daily cases rise up to one lakh in the national capital, according to government estimates.

Hospitalisation or institutional support will be required in only five per cent of COVID-19 cases when the daily cases will reach the one-lakh mark. While 4,000 of them will require oxygen beds, the number of patients requiring ICU beds will be 1000, as per the estimates.

The projected estimates were shared by the government in a meeting of the Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) on Monday to review the preparedness and conditions during the third wave driven by the Omicron variant of .

The SUTRA' model by IIT scientists had predicted that the COVID-19 peak in will be around January 15 and the national capital can record around 70,000 cases daily during that time.

The number of ICU beds required to manage the surge will be 18,000, while that of oxygen beds will be 28,000 with the average length of stay being 18 and seven days, respectively, according to the estimates.

A total of 46,000 hospital beds will be required during the surge, the official figures stated.

The government said it targets to have 37,000 Covid beds ready besides 10,594 ICU beds and 2,328 paediatric beds.

As on January 10, 31,695 COVID-19 beds are ready while the number of ICU beds and paediatric beds ready is 9,844 and 2,328, respectively, as per the figures.

On Sunday, Delhi reported 17 deaths due to Covid, the highest in a day since June 13 last year.

The capital has logged 53 COVID-19 deaths so far this month. A total of 54 fatalities due to the viral disease were recorded in the last five months -- nine in December, seven in November, four in October, five in September and 29 in August.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the pace of the contagion in the city has been a matter of "deep concern" but maintained that there is no plan to impose a lockdown for now and urged people to follow Covid-appropriate behaviour as well as get themselves vaccinated.

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As the daily tally of Covid cases inches close to the 200,000-mark, nearly 5 to 10 per cent of active cases in the present surge have needed hospitalisation until now, the said.

Flagging concerns around the rising positivity rate in the country, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said that the situation is dynamic and evolving and, therefore, the need for hospitalisation may also change rapidly. He said that during the second Covid wave, 20-23 per cent of active cases needed hospital care.

Indias daily positivity rate on Monday reached 13.29 per cent and daily cases stood at 179,723. There are currently 723,619 active cases in the country.

On Monday, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, in a meeting with health ministers of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Goa, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu, said, Let there be no lapses in our preparedness as we battle this surge of the pandemic. Holistic synergy between the Centre and states is most vital for seamless and effective pandemic management.

The current rise, Bhushan said, is being driven by and the continued presence of Delta variants in large geographies across the country. In this context, augmenting human resources, particularly healthcare workers, assumes critical importance, he said.





In a letter to states, the Union health secretary also asked them to conserve the energy of health workers by staggering the workforce and restricting elective procedures in . While various states have initiated steps for jumbo health centres and field hospitals, it must be appreciated that both infrastructure and human resources have their limitations, Bhushan said.

Health workers in several have been catching Covid as the new variant is on the rise in the country. According to some reports, almost 750 in New Delhi are out of action due to Covid infection. At the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) alone, 350 are in isolation.

Delhi, which after two days of weekend curfew, recorded slightly lower cases on Monday (19,166) but saw a high positivity rate of 25 per cent, has decided to put more curbs in place such as shutting down dining at restaurants. The Delhi Disaster Management Authority has decided not to impose a lockdown at this stage.

All states have been asked to keep a daily watch on the total active cases, patients in home isolation, hospitals, oxygen, ICU and ventilator support. Based on this monitoring, the availability of health workers per facility has to be reviewed on a daily basis.

The has also suggested to states that they should, on priority, earmark different categories of beds in private clinics for Covid care, upgrade beds in Covid care centres to oxygenated beds as required, and add additional ambulances. It has also asked states to engage retired medical professionals or MBBS students for teleconsultation and for skilling of community workers in basic Covid care and management in the Covid care centres.

The Centre has directed states to leverage all the available resources to implement human resource strategies and skill upgradation of healthcare workers.
Deputy Chief Minister Chowna Mein on Monday said he has tested positive for coronavirus.

Sharing the information on his Twitter handle, Mein requested everyone who came in contact with him in the last few days to quarantine themselves and get tested.

Today, I got myself tested for Covid through RAT and was found positive. I have got mild symptoms but doing well with no other problem. I request all those who came into contact with me in the last few days, to isolate themselves and get their Covid test done, the deputy chief minister tweeted.

Chief Minister Pema Khandu wished for speedy recovery of his deputy.

Get well soon @ChownaMeinBJP ji, our prayers are with you for speedy recovery, Khandu tweeted.

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(BSP) chief Mayawati's 66th birthday on January 15 this year, will not be a grand affair.

The president has asked her party workers to celebrate her birthday in their homes in view of the surge in the Covid cases across the state and also the implementation of the model code of conduct (MCC) after the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the schedule for assembly elections in five states, including Uttar Pradesh.

The celebrates Mayawati's birthday as 'Jan Kalyankari Diwas' with much fanfare.

"The usual pomp and show of the birthday celebrations will be missing this time as the party has decided to keep it a low-key affair due to the enforcement of the model code and sudden rise in Covid cases," said a functionary.

Mayawati, at a party meeting, has already asked her cadres to follow the Covid protocol and poll code guidelines during the electioneering for the assembly polls.

"The party leaders, office bearers, workers and supporters will celebrate my birthday with their family members in their homes. They should assist the poor and impoverished people who have to suffer due to the Covid pandemic," said at the meeting.

The BSP president, however, will release the 17th edition of her book 'A Travelogue of My Struggle Ridden Life and BSP Movement' at the party's state unit office on the occasion.

"The travelogue will generate self-respect among the party supporters and guide them to take the movement launched by the BSP forward," she said.

Meanwhile, the BSP has finalised the candidates on the majority of seats and they have been made in-charge of the respective assembly segments. The name of the candidates will be released with the notification of the first phase polling by the ECI on January 14.

--IANS

amita/skp/

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The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Sunday has written to the suggesting an introduction of e-voting mechanism for citizens to cast their votes.

The traders' body appreciated the commission's higher usage of technology, apps, and the latest move to allow candidates to file their nomination papers online.

"In this context we would like to suggest that the Commission should also introduce an e-voting system through which the electors can cast their votes with any device with access to the internet from anywhere in the world," it said in the letter.

"The secrecy of the ballot can be maintained under the high security standards by using online voting software. The casting of votes remains anonymous as the technology system's architecture can strictly separate personal data from the electronic ballot."

It added implementation of such a mechanism would reduce costs.

On Saturday, the commission announced the Assembly poll dates as well as counting dates for Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Goa and Punjab.

The polls would be held in seven phases. Uttar Pradesh would have voting on February 10, 14, 20, 23 and March 3 and 7; Punjab, Goa and Uttarakhand would have polling on February 14 while Manipur would have voting in two phases, February 27, and March 3.

--IANS

ad/shs

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Around 5,000 beds are available at institutional isolation centres set up by the Delhi government for COVID-19 patients, according to official data.

Of the 5,539 beds available, 561 are occupied. At the centres in Shahdara, northeast, west, north, none of the beds are occupied it said.

The Delhi government has been stressing that most cases this time are mild or asymptomatic and do not require hospitalisation.

Delhi logged 17 more deaths due to COVID-19 and 19,166 infections in a day as the positivity rate rose to 25 per cent, the highest since May 4 last year, according to the city health department's data on Monday.

A total of 1,912 Covid patients are in hospitals. Of them, 65 are on ventilator support, government data showed. The city currently has 65,803 active cases of which 44,028 are in home isolation.

The South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) has started a COVID-19 helpline to provide consultation and guidance to patients in home isolation.

The number of patients at home isolation has been increasing. They have mild symptoms and are getting proper consultation, Mayor Mukesh Suryan said.

"The SDMC has started Covid Helpline to provide proper consultation and guidance. Experienced doctors from the SDMC will provide consultancy services to Covid patients in home isolation," he said.

The mayor added the SDMC has decided to provide teleconsultation or video consultation to the people to contain the spread of Covid infections.

The round-the-clock Covid helplines of the South Delhi civic body are 9999019340, 9999019375, 9999019426 and 9999019745.

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Gujarat reported 6,097 COVID-19 cases on Monday, taking the state's tally to 8,68,301, while the death toll increased by two to touch 10,130, an official said.

On Sunday, the daily addition to the tally, at 6,275, had breached the 6000-mark for the first time in nearly eight months, while Monday's rise was slightly lower than a day earlier, he pointed out.

He said 1,539 people were discharged during the day, taking the recovery count to 8,25,702, leaving the state with 32,469 active cases, including 29 critical patients.

"The deaths took place in Surat and Rajkot. Ahmedabad city led with 1,893 cases, followed by 1,778 in Surat city, 410 in Vadodara city, among other areas," he said.

A government release said 3.82 lakh people were given COVID-19 vaccine doses on Monday, including 1.50 lakh beneficiaries who received their 'precaution' dose, taking the total number of jabs administered so far in the state to 9.35 crore.

In adjoining Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, the active tally stood at 120. The Union Territory has a caseload of 10,802, including four deaths, while 10,678 have recovered.

Gujarat's COVID-19 figures are as follows: Positive cases 8,68,301, new cases 6,097, death toll 10,130, discharged 8,25,702, active cases 32,469, people tested so far - figures not released.

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Delhi's air quality was in the 'satisfactory' category Monday morning, as rains and thunderstorms the past few days eased the pollution.

The citys Air Quality Index (AQI) was at 53 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'.

However, SAFAR has predicted that low wind speed is expected to deteriorate Delhi's overall air quality. AQI is likely to be Satisfactory tomorrow and then degrade to Moderate on January 11 and January 12 due to low wind speeds, SAFAR said on Sunday.

Delhi's AQI on Sunday morning was 90, in the 'satisfactory' category. This came after Delhi recorded its highest rainfall in a day for January in 22 years on Saturday, yielding the city's best air quality in over two months. The last time Delhi's air was in this category was on October 25 last year.

Delhi was the world's tenth most polluted city in the world with an AQI of 168 on Monday. Meanwhile, Kolkata stood at the first spot in IQair's list of the world's top ten most polluted cities with an AQI of 185.

Preliminary data from a month-long experiment has shown that indoor levels were nearly half of the outdoor levels in Delhi-NCR during November-December so far.

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.
On January 9, 2022 local time, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, along with Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, attended the launching ceremony of the celebrations marking the 65th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Sri Lanka and the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Rubber-Rice Pact in Colombo.

Wang Yi said, the friendship between China and Sri Lanka dates back to ancient times. Faxian and Zheng He left a long-lasting imprint on the exchanges between the two peoples. The Rubber-Rice Pact fully demonstrated our national spirit in the fight against hegemony and power politics. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1957, the two sides have always respected and supported each other. In 2014, President Xi Jinping paid a historic state visit to Sri Lanka, opening a new chapter of friendly cooperation between China and Sri Lanka.

Wang Yi said that China and Sri Lanka are good friends standing together with mutual assistance. After the outbreak of the pandemic, President Gotabaya donated Ceylon black tea to China twice on behalf of the Sri Lankan government and people, and Prime Minister Mahinda personally led his cabinet members to chant prayers for China. China has provided a large number of COVID-19 vaccines and anti-pandemic supplies to Sri Lanka.

China and Sri Lanka are good partners for common development. Sri Lanka is an important part of China's Belt and Road cooperation in South Asia. The first phase of the Colombo Port City has been successfully completed, and new projects are ready to be launched. Achievements have been made in our cooperative operation of the Colombo Port time and again, bringing important benefits to Sri Lanka. The cargo throughput of the Hambantota Port has reached record highs, and the industrial park has been developing in full swing.

China and Sri Lanka are good brothers supporting each other. The Sri Lankan side always abides by the one-China principle and supports China's legitimate position in international and regional affairs. China firmly supports Sri Lanka in safeguarding national sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity and in following a development path suited to its national conditions. The strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries featuring sincere mutual assistance and enduring friendship has kept developing in depth.

Wang Yi stressed, at a time when the global pandemic is spreading and the economic recovery is tortuous and difficult, we need to work together more closely than ever. Both sides should take the 65th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries and the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Rubber-Rice Pact as an opportunity to carry forward the spirit of the pact, which is characterized by independence, self-reliance, unity and mutual support, jointly address challenges, share opportunities, seek common development, and consolidate and expand the China-Sri Lanka strategic cooperative partnership, so as to better serve the interests of the two countries and two peoples.

We should further deepen political mutual trust, and firmly support each other's core interests, major concerns and national dignity. We should further join hands to fight against the pandemic. China will continue to provide anti-pandemic supplies according to the needs of Sri Lanka, and cooperate with Sri Lanka on vaccines and specific medicines. We should seek further synergy between our development strategies. China will firmly promote high-quality Belt and Road cooperation and help Sri Lanka realize its "Vision of Prosperity and Glory". We should further promote multilateralism, adhere to openness, inclusiveness and mutual benefit, oppose isolation, conservatism and zero-sum games, and jointly build a community with a shared future for mankind.

Wang Yi said, I wish China-Sri Lanka friendship everlasting vitality. China is ready to join hands with Sri Lanka to push bilateral relations to a new level.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation is investigating a fire in a tractor that was being readied to push back an Air India Airbus A320 aircraft at on Monday morning. No injuries were reported and there was no damage to the Air India plane, which eventually took off for Jamnagar after a slight delay.

Pushback is the process of moving an aircraft from its parking position using ground support equipment like tugs or tractors.

The pushback tractor was connected to the aircraft with a tow bar. On observing smoke the tractor was detached and taken behind, said an official aware of the incident.

Personnel of AI Airport Services Limited which carries out ground handling services for Air India tried to douse flames with extinguishers. Showing presence of mind, one of the employees drove a baggage tractor to push the burning tractor further away from the aircraft. The airports firefighting service later joined to control the fire.

The DGCAs air safety department is probing the incident and further action will be taken on the basis of the outcome, an official said.
Both Inc. and its supplier Technology Group released statements on Monday, assuring the implementation of a raft of 'corrective actions' and putting in place a 'rigorous' monitoring system' to ensure better living conditions for their blue-collar workforce.

The Taiwanese company will start bringing back workers gradually to its manufacturing unit at Sipcot Industrial Park in Sriperumbudur, which was shut down last month, following protests over a mass food poisoning incident at the plant's offsite dormitory facility.

According to sources, around 70 workers have already returned to one of the dormitories that meets the standards laid down by Inc. The plant will restart operations in a phased manner.

The protests drew attention to the plight of blue-collar labourers and triggered local government scrutiny.

Inc. said on Monday the plant remains on probation, but that workers will begin returning as it ensures standards are met in both dining and living facilities.

The plant was placed on 'probation' by Apple Inc. after around 159 people were hospitalised due to food poisoning at one of the plant's hostels.

We have been working on a series of improvements to fix issues we found at the offsite dormitory facilities at Sriperumbudur and to enhance the services we provide to our employees. We have implemented a range of corrective actions to ensure this does not happen again and a rigorous monitoring system to ensure workers can raise any concerns they may have, including anonymously," read a statement.

"For the past several weeks, teams from Apple, along with independent auditors, have been working with to ensure a comprehensive set of corrective actions are implemented at the offsite accommodation and dining rooms at Sriperumbudur. Workers will start to return gradually as soon as we are certain our standards are being met in every dormitory and dining area," said an Apple Inc. statement.

Although Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin had stated earlier that the plant would restart operations fully on January 12, sources said it may well be a gradual process and is likely to happen this week.

For Apple, the issue echoes a similar incident in India a year ago, where it placed another iPhone maker, Wistron Corp., on probation, following riots over unpaid wages.

Foxconn has pledged to revamp its local management team and operations in the wake of the Chennai protest, and the Tamil Nadu government said the company had agreed to expand living areas, upgrade bathing facilities, and provide drinking water.

Apples most important assembly partner has grappled with labour issues in the past, particularly in China, where it makes most of the worlds iPhones, among other devices from laptops to tablets and gaming consoles for major brands.

The Taiwanese company, Chinas biggest employer of private labour, began a sweeping reform of its operations after a spate of suicides in 2010 exposed harsh living and working conditions for the hundreds of thousands of migrants it employs to put together gadgets for foreign corporations.

"We will gradually begin to welcome back team members as each offsite dormitory becomes ready and is approved. We continue to support our employees and thank them for their patience as we work through the improvements, Foxconn said on Monday.

For more than three weeks, a team of executives of Foxconn have been working to improve the facilities at each of its dormitories, followed by several rounds of inspection by an Apple-assigned auditor to ensure its global standards are met.

According to Apple Inc.'s global standards, not more than eight individuals are allowed in one dormitory/sleeping room, with not less than 3 square metres of living space per occupant. In addition, one toilet and one shower facility is needed for every 15 employees. Foxconn was under fire for allegedly keeping 25-30 workers in hostel rooms meant for 10, in addition to subpar dining facilities
plays an important role in spreading our knowledge and culture, Prime Minister said on the occasion of World Day on Monday.

The Ministry of External Affairs celebrated the programme on World Day virtually. The programme was presided over by the Minister of State for External Affairs, Meenakshi Lekhi, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement.

During this programme, messages by Prime Minister Modi and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar were read out.

Extending his best wishes, the prime minister said that Hindi plays an important role in spreading our knowledge and culture due to its simplicity, according to the statement.

The PM said that the increasing use of Hindi in the field of information technology and technology as well as its popularity among the youth present a bright future for it.

The External Affairs Minister said in his message that together "we are continuously moving towards our goal of taking Hindi to the global stage".

In her remarks, Lekhi said various steps have been taken by the Ministry to promote the study of Hindi abroad.

She pointed out that the government has established about 50 Chairs, including 13 Hindi Chairs, in universities abroad to promote Indian languages, culture and studies.

She further said that Hindi language is taught in more than 670 educational institutions in more than 100 countries.

Lekhi expressed hope that under the able leadership of Prime Minister Modi and under the guidance of the External Affairs Minister, Hindi will continue to grow at the world stage.

The Minister of State for External Affairs also announced the names of three Passport Offices viz., Bareilly, Chandigarh and Bangalore for doing best work in Official Language Hindi. She also announced the award of three best magazines from among the Hindi Home Journals published by Passport Offices.

Secretary (West) Reenat Sandhu, Additional Secretary (Administration) and Dean, Sushma Swaraj Foreign Service Institute, Arun Kumar Chatterjee, senior officials from the Ministry, Passport Offices, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Global Council of India, Office of the Protector of Emigrant, as well as Indian diplomats, were among those who participated in the event.

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The drive for administering precaution dose to the healthcare workers, frontline workers and 60-plus individuals commenced on Monday across the country. The CoWIN portal has sent over one crore reminder messages to the beneficiaries to get the precaution dose.

Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on this occasion said in a tweet, "The program of giving Precaution Dose on the advice of doctors to healthcare and frontline workers and people of 60+ age is starting from today across the country".

He added in the same tweet, "Under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi ji, the government is committed to provide additional security cover to healthcare and frontline workers on priority".

Earlier, Vikas Sheel, Additional Secretary and Mission Director, National Health Mission, said that the reminder SMSs have been pushed to more than 1 crore beneficiaries for the precaution dose. The system is ready to welcome beneficiaries at vaccination centres on Monday.

The precaution dose will be administered to those who have completed nine months after the second dose. The health ministry had earlier said that the CoWin system will send reminder SMS to those eligible for the precaution dose.

The online booking of appointments for precaution dose through CoWIN portal started from Saturday. However, the ministry has clarified that there would be no need for new registration for precaution dose. The government has also clarified that the precaution dose will be of the same jab as the first and second dose. Those who got Covaxin will get Covaxin and those who got Covishield will get Covishield.

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Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Monday said he has tested positive for COVID-19, with mild symptoms.

The Chief Minister also said he is doing "fine" and is under home quarantine.

"I have tested positive for COVID-19 today with mild symptoms. My health is fine, I am under home quarantine. I request everyone who have recently come in my contact to isolate themselves and get tested," Bommai tweeted.

He had attended several official engagements today including last rites of noted Kannada literary figure Chandrashekhar Patil, launch of precaution dose COVID vaccination, meeting on administrative reforms, and meeting with a delegation of former Vice Chancellors, among others.

Recently, Bommai's cabinet colleagues- Revenue Minister R Ashoka and Primary and Secondary Education B C Nagesh- had tested COVID positive.

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A Police constable has been suspended for refusing to cut his hair and trim his over-long moustache, despite being instructed by his senior officials.

The suspension order, issued on Friday to constable Rakesh Rana, posted as a driver in MP Police's motor transport wing, surfaced on social media on Sunday.

The order, issued by Assistant Inspector General Prashant Sharma, said that Rana faced action for not improving his appearance.

"During a check, constable Rakesh Rana was found with hair and moustache grown long. He was instructed to cut his hair and trim his moustache as his turnout was awkward, but he did not follow the order," it read.

The order said Rana's absurd and ugly moustache had left a negative impression on other employees and as he failed to comply with order, he was suspended as part of disciplinary action.

Sharma also said that Rana was adamant on keeping long hair and moustache, which was not accordance with the norms of uniformed personnel.

Calling it a matter of self-respect, Rana said he will not compromise on this issue as he had been keeping the moustache since long time.

In a video surfaced on social media, he was heard saying: "I can't understand why I was suspended for keeping long moustaches when the fact that several senior police officials have also serving with long moustaches. I have been serving under him (Sharma) for the last one year, he could have said it to me earlier, but never questioned me on my moustache. I will rather accept suspension order but not compromise with my self respect."

--IANS

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While back pain has been a common symptom of viral diseases, doctors are witnessing an increase in the case of severe back pain among patients, even after recovery.

The four most common symptoms of the variant are cough, fatigue, congestion and runny nose, according to US CDC analysis. Recently, the UK-based Zoe Covid app study added new symptoms such as nausea and loss of appetite.

"Back pain, though common in most viral fevers, but compared to Delta, patients tend to have more back pain and less loss of smell and taste," Dr Ann Mary, Consultant, General Medicine, Amrita Hospital, Kochi, told IANS.

"A significant number of these patients are having back breaking pain in the lower back and severe myalgia which is adding to the patient's woes," Mary added.

Omicron is a variant of global concern due to its high transmissibility. Emerging research has revealed that the Omicron variant causes less damage to the lungs and less severe disease when compared to other variants.

"It's a well known fact that myalgias are commonly seen in viral infections. Covid is not an exception but we are seeing more cases of back pain with Omicron even after recovery which patients label as weakness," Dr. Arun Chowdary Kotaru, Consultant, Respiratory/ Pulmonology and Sleep Medicine, Artemis Hospital, told IANS.

However, since data on Omicron is limited and gene sequencing is costly, the reason is "difficult to explain", Kotaru said.

First detected in South Africa and Botswana in late November, Omicron has been discovered in more than 100 countries and across all seven continents, as per the open access data sharing platform GISAID.

India on Wednesday registered 4,033 Omicron cases from 27 states. Of these, 1,552 have been discharged from hospitals.

Meanwhile, scientists at Department of Biotechnology's Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) in India said that the highly transmissible Omicron with three sub-variants - BA.1, BA.2 and BA.3 - is likely replacing the previously dominant Delta strain in India, pushing the daily tally of Covid cases in the country.

Among the three sub-lineages, the scientists have noted the significant presence of both BA.1 and BA.2 in genone tests conducted in the country. BA.1, in particular, has been co-circulating with Delta and also replacing it in Maharashtra and several other states. BA.3 has not been detected so far in the country, media reports said.

"The rapidity with which the infection is spreading, it looks like the Omicron is replacing the other variants in India, like the Delta variant. So we can say that it will be the predominant variant," Dr Rahul Pandit Director-Critical Care, Fortis Hospitals Mumbai, told IANS.

"However, the Delta variant is still there and contributes to some amount of infection," added Pandit, who is also Member of National and Maharashtra's Covid-19 Taskforce. He said that Omicron is also causing the reinfection because we can see that most of the patients still remain asymptomatic.

"With the sudden surge, and if the South African trend is to be looked at, we can expect that cases will go up rapidly in the next 4 to 6 weeks, and come down rapidly as well," Pandit said.

--IANS

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The COVID-19 tally in rose to 8,03,643 on Monday with detection of 2,317 new cases, while the death toll increased to 10,538 after one more patient succumbed to the infection, a health department official said.

The recovery count stood at 7,84,506 after 559 people were discharged from hospitals during the day, he said. The state is now left with an active tally of 8,599, the health official said. On Sunday, had recorded 2,039 cases and one fatality. Indore and Bhopal, the two worst coronavirus-hit cities of Madhya Pradesh, recorded 645 and 489 fresh cases, respectively, during the past 24 hours, the official said. With 68,137 samples examined during the day, the number of tests in MP went up to 2,43,58,664, he added. A government release said 10,59,37,812 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered so far in the state, including 3,09,067 on Monday. figures in MP are as follows: Total cases 8,03,643 new cases 2,317, death toll 10,538, recovered 7,84,506, active cases 8,599, number of tests so far 2,43,58,664.

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: The Andhra Pradesh government on Monday decided to clamp the Covid curfew from 11 PM to 5 AM afresh in view of the spurt in number of cases over the past few days.

The state saw a sudden jump in cases as over 4,000 were added in just the last five days.

At a high-level review meeting here, Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy directed the Health Department officials to enforce other restrictions as well and ensure people strictly followed Covid Appropriate Behaviour to check the spread of the virus.

Henceforth, only 200 people will be permitted for any outdoor event and half that number for an indoor event.

Only alternate seating will be permitted in cinema halls and auditoria.

Physical distancing should be maintained in all places of worship.

"Ensure that people necessarily wear a (facial) mask. If not, impose penalty. Shops and business establishments should strictly followed all Covid restrictions," the Chief Minister told the Health officials.

The Chief Minister also directed the officials to set up one Covid Care Centre with all facilities in each of the 175 Assembly constituencies. The 104 emergency call centre should also be strengthened to promptly respond to any calls for medical help.

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A mid global surge in Covid cases, the variant and waning immunity, the rolling out of the third Covid shot came as a relief to over 930,000 beneficiaries who lined up on Monday for their precautionary dose after a long wait.

On Day One, 936,264 beneficiaries received their third shot of the vaccine, according to provisional data on CoWIN portal. Gujarat administered the maximum number of such doses (over 150,000), followed by Andhra Pradesh (over 112,000).

A visibly relieved N Ravishankar, a medical officer at Coimbatore government medical college who was one of the first to get the booster dose at his centre, said, You should not take the virus home and give it to your kids.

Nearly 57.5 million people are eligible for the precautionary dose announced by the government for healthcare and frontline workers, and those above 60 years of age with comorbidities. Of these, 10 million are healthcare workers and 20 million are frontline workers.

They are eligible for the precautionary dose nine months after their second shot. for the elderly began in March 2021.

For many healthcare staff, however, the third shot remained elusive as several were down with Covid and would have to wait for three months to get their dose. Many doctors felt that a gap of nine months should be relaxed for healthcare staff as the country is in the middle of a third wave.

A recent study on Covaxin shows that boosters work when given after six months, said a Mumbai based doctor. Many of us are not eligible for a shot if we stick to the government guidelines  which prescribe a nine-month gap after the second dose, and at least three months gap after recovering from Covid-19. Many healthcare staff caught Covid recently, and this puts them off the list, the doctor added.

Some others, however, feel that even though there is a slight delay, the third dose has come at the right time as cases are now rising. In hindsight, we are all wiser. But we had limited stocks. The government had to prioritise the double-dose for as many as possible, and rightly so, said Bishnu Panigrahi, group head, Medical Strategy and Operations, Fortis Healthcare and member of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industrys (FICCIs) Covid group.

In the morning, vaccinations in Mumbai were off to a slow start due to some technical issues with walk-in registrations on the CoWin platform, which slightly delayed the process in some hospitals. Today, only 200 vaccines were given. We plan to start the healthcare workers in full swing from Tuesday, said Joy Chakraborty, chief operating officer of Hinduja Hospital.

Hinduja has a staff of 2,800 at its hospital. It will also offer precautionary shots to healthcare staff from across the city who do not have vaccination centres at their institutions.

In West Bengal, the vaccination drive started almost glitch-free. Wherever vaccination is happening, doses to eligible recipients are being administered. This is actually software-driven and those who got text messages turned up for the shot, said West Bengal state family welfare officer Ashim Das Malakar.





The state has assessed a requirement of 500,000 doses this month towards the new drive. We have adequate doses, Malakar added.

More than boosters, states such as Tamil Nadu are concerned about primary double vaccination. We are not sure about the interest for the third dose as more than 9.3 million are yet to even take the second dose, despite so much persuasion by meeting in person and even offering gifts, said T S Selvavinayagam, director of public health, Tamil Nadu.

In all, 1.04 million people are eligible for the third dose in the state. I dont think any health worker will stay away from taking vaccines as they are the most educated in this respect, Ravishankar added.

In Kerala, where more than 30,000 precautionary doses were given, there were queues of health workers to take the jab. Unless we take the dose, we may be transmitting the disease to those with comorbidities. At the Ayyampuzha primary health centre where I work, except for a couple of people, all the 30-35 staff took the fresh dose today, said Mathews Numpeli, a senior government doctor from Kerala.

Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai inaugurated the states precautionary dose campaign to give the third jab to 21 million frontline workers and senior citizens. I urge all our eligible citizens to arm themselves against Covid-19 and its variants and help save lives, he said at the inaugural event.

Deepsekhar Choudhury and Ishita Ayan Dutt contributed to this report
A Christian man has been sentenced to death in Pakistan a decade after he was charged with blasphemy.

Zafar Bhatti, 58, was accused of sending blasphemous text messages from his phone.

He has always denied the accusations but was charged with blasphemy in 2012, and in 2017 he was sentenced to life in prison.

An appeal was lodged by the Christian NGO, the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS-PK), which has been supporting Bhatti throughout his ordeal.

Last October, the case was referred back to a trial court by Mr Justice Abdul Aziz who said Bhatti should have been given the death sentence instead of life imprisonment.

Bhatti has now been sentenced to death by the Pakistan session court of Rawalpindi and is being held under high security due to threats to his life from extremists.

CLAAS-PK has called for Bhatti, a diabetic, to be granted bail and released from prison on medical grounds after he suffered a heart attack in prison last October, but the request was refused.

The charity says his health is continuing to decline behind bars.

Nasir Saeed, director of CLAAS-PK, said Bhatti is a victim of Pakistan's blasphemy laws.

"Since the promulgation of the blasphemy law in Pakistan, the law is oppressive and frequently misused," he said.

"Provisions have been used as tools of revenge in personal conflicts, to target religious minorities and to oppress political opponents or critical voices, putting in jeopardy the lives of the accused and also their families, members of their communities, judges, lawyers and everyone that tries to seek justice.

"The situation continues to deteriorate, and minorities are living under constant threat as the government has failed to protect religious minorities in the last years, exacerbating existing religious divides and thus creating a climate of religious intolerance, violence and discrimination against vulnerable minority groups in the country, including Ahmadis, Hindus and Christians.

"In the recent year several blasphemy cases have been registered against Hindu, Christians and even against Muslims, on mere suspicion."
One person was killed and at least two injured in a gas leak incident from an industrial area in suburban Ghatkopar here on Monday morning, BMC Disaster Control said.

The incident occurred around 8 a.m. when methanol and cyanuric chloride gas leaked, in the premises of a factory in Kurla Industrial Estate, north-east .

According to the Fire Brigade which rushed there, one person Ramnivas Sarod, 36, died due to inhaling the toxic gas.

Two others - Rubin Solkar, 36, Sarvansh Sonavane, 25, have been admitted to BMC's Rajawadi Hospital where their condition is described as stable.

The cause of the gas leak, how many persons were present in the factory premises at that time and other aspects are being investigated, said an official.

--IANS

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president on Monday appealed to State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) employees, who are on a strike for more than two months now, to rejoin duty, while Transport Minister Anil Parab assured no disciplinary action will be taken against 50,000-odd agitating staffers.

Pawar, whose party is a key constituent of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, made the appeal at a meeting of an action committee of labour unions held at Sahyadri Guest house in South Mumbai. At the meeting, Parab assured that no disciplinary action will be taken against around 50,000 MSRTC employees who are currently participating in the strike demanding merger of the loss-marking corporation with the state government for better salaries and other benefits. The minister said the government will also positively think about cases of staffers who have been suspended or dismissed since the stir began. Since October 28, 2021, a majority of MSRTC employees are on strike, which intensified from November 9, paralyzing the bus services of the state-run transport undertaking.

According to an MSRTC release, the corporation has served show-cause notices to around 50,000 striking employees, but it has not taken actions against them like suspension or dismissal from service. Speaking at the meeting, Pawar said for the past two years, the coronavirus pandemic has caused financial losses to the state transport corporation, which is connected to the common man. A question mark has arisen over the very existence of the organisation, the former Union minister said and appealed to the employees to immediately rejoin duty to avoid hardship to lakhs of passengers and for the future of MSRTC. "No action will be taken against the around 50,000 employees, who have been participating in the strike... so far no action has been taken against them," Parab said. The minister said at the same the government will take sympathetic and positive stand about the employees who have already been suspended or dismissed from service after the agitation started. According to union leaders, the committee has demanded a roll back of actions taken against the employees besides doing away with anomalies in salaries of MSRTC staffers. MSRTC is one of the biggest public transport bodies in the county with a fleet of around 16,000 and nearly 93,000 employees. Corporation used to ferry around 65 lakh passengers daily before the pandemic.

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Lakhs of 60-plus citizens and frontline as well as health workers queued up for their third Covid jab on Monday as India began administering a precautionary dose against the infection, a critical step that comes as cases spike alarmingly in the country.

Braving snow, plummeting winter temperatures, rain in some places or unrelenting sun in others, many people could be seen waiting their turn outside vaccination centres across the vast expanse that is India.

An estimated 1.05 crore healthcare and 1.9 crore frontline workers, and 2.75 crore co-morbid people in the 60-plus category is the estimated targeted population, Health Ministry sources said as the ramped up vaccination drive to increase the Covid protection umbrella kicked off -- 17 days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the announcement on December 24.

In the national capital, which added 22,751 cases to its tally of infections and a positivity rate of 23.53 per cent on Sunday, around three lakh people who took their second dose nine months ago are eligible for their third booster dose of the vaccine.

The vulnerable population -- also including personnel deployed for election duty will get a precautionary jab of the same vaccine they took 39 weeks ago, the government has said. Slots are booked using existing CoWin accounts.

In Maharashtra, a particular area of concern for its huge numbers, state Health Minister Rajesh Tope said on Twitter just before noon that the state had administered 91,648 doses.

As the immunity booster drive got off the ground -- in accordance with what several countries are doing to enhance protection for their populations -- scenes of the elderly and others getting another layer of protection were replicated in villages, towns and cities.

In Gujarat, Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel was present at an urban health centre in the capital Gandhinagar as the drive kicked off. The aim is to cover nine lakh eligible people in about 3,500 vaccination centres where more than 17,000 health workers would be engaged for the purpose, a statement from Chief Minister's Office said.

His Tamil Nadu counterpart M K Stalin was on hand too to launch the drive in a Chennai centre.

The state government said in a statement that the drive has been initiated following instructions from the Central government to roll out the precaution dose for eligible populations.

In Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal Collector Avinash Lavania and Inspector General (Bhopal rural) Irshad Wali were among those who took the precaution dose at a special camp at the collector's office in the state capita.

The drive to administer the precaution doses to eligible people was also going on at the Pandit Khushilal Sharma Government Ayurveda College in Bhopal, as well as other places across the state, officials said.

"Today, we plan to administer the booster dose to at least two lakh frontline and healthcare workers. The drive will be carried out in all vaccination centres. At present, we have 1.4 crore doses. Hopefully, this will help us give the booster dose also to vulnerable senior citizens in the state," a health official in West Bengal said as the scheme rolled out.

Giving details, the official said 22 lakh senior citizens, 10.5 lakh health workers, 7.5 lakh frontline personnel and 5 lakh doctors in the state are scheduled to receive the precautionary dose.

"As doctors, nurses, policemen and healthcare and frontline workers got COVID-19 vaccine doses well before the masses, their antibody count has touched rock-bottom. Hence, they must get the booster dose first so that their immunity levels increase," Dr Anima Halder, principal of state-run Infectious Diseases and Beliaghata General Hospital told PTI.

The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has opened over 100 urban primary health clinics to administer the booster dose. Other state-run and private establishments are also giving the jabs, officials said.

In Odisha, where Speaker S N Patro was among those who took the booster shot during the day, the state government has set up 2,276 session sites across districts for the purpose, a senior health department official in Bhubaneswar said.

The vaccination capacity of each session site has been enhanced by 20 per cent in order to hasten the whole process, said Bijay Panigrahi, director of family welfare and state nodal immunisation officer.

He said Odisha has targeted jabbing 17,52,838 booster shot beneficiaries.

About 1,340 session sites in the state are already providing anti-COVID shots to teenagers in the 15-18 years age group.

As the drive gathered pace, the Centre on Monday clarified to states and UTs that no time limit has been set for the operationalisation of Covid vaccination centres, and they can operate till 10 pm daily based on availability of human resources and infrastructure.

In a letter to states and UTs, additional secretary in the Union Health Ministry, Manohar Agnani advised all states and UTs to ensure compliance to COVID Appropriate Behaviour (CAB) at all levels in view of the rising cases



The country had started administering vaccine doses to those in the 15-18 years age group from January 3.

The countrywide COVID-19 vaccination drive rolled out on January 16 last year with healthcare workers getting inoculated in the first phase. The vaccination of frontline workers started from February 2.

The next phase of inoculation began from March 1 for people over 60 and those aged 45 and above with specified co-morbid conditions. The country launched vaccination for all 45-plus people from April 1.

The government then decided to expand its vaccination drive by allowing everyone above 18 to be vaccinated from May 1, 2021, while the inoculation of teenagers in the age group of 15-18 years started from January 3 this year.

On Monday, the country recorded 1,79,723 infections with active cases increasing to 7,23,619, the highest in around 204 days, while the death toll has climbed to 4,83,936 with 146 fatalities, according to data from the ministry.

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The maritime fighter aircraft on Monday demonstrated its operational capability at a naval facility in Goa as the Navy plans to acquire a fleet of combat jets for its indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC) Vikrant, people familiar with the development said.

The demonstration by the naval variant of the jet took place at the shore-based test facility (SBTF) at INS Hansa, the naval air station in Goa, they said.

The Indian Navy is planning to procure a batch of fighter jets for IAC Vikrant that is likely to be commissioned in August.

IAC Vikrant is currently undergoing critical sea trials.

Over four years back, the Indian Navy had initiated the process to acquire 57 multi-role combat aircraft for its aircraft carrier.

Four planes were in contention for the deal which included (Dassault, France), F-18 Super Hornet (Boeing, US), MIG-29K (Russia) and Gripen (Saab, Sweden).

In March, F-18 Super Hornet is likely to demonstrate its operational capabilities.

At present, the Indian Navy operates Russian-origin MiG-29K fighters from its sole aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya.

The Request For Information issued by the Navy for procurement of the deck-based fighter jets sought to know at what level of Transfer of Technology (ToT) the companies are willing to share with India.

India had signed an inter-governmental agreement with France in September 2016 for the procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets at a cost of around Rs 59,000 crore for the Indian Air Force.

The first batch of five Rafale jets, manufactured by French aerospace major Dassault Aviation, arrived in India on July 29, 2020.

Already 33 Rafale jets have been delivered to the IAF by the plane's maker Dassault Aviation.

French defence minister Florence Parly, during a visit to India last month, indicated that France will be interested to supply the carrier-based jets.

"We know that the aircraft carrier will soon be...that aircraft are needed. We are open and ready to provide any other Rafale if this is India's decision," she said.

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The on Monday refused to interfere with the Bombay High Court's decision granting bail to Deepak Kochhar, husband of former ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar, in a money laundering case registered by the .

Dismissing the ED's appeal, a bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana took note of the submissions of Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who was appearing for the probe agency, that the legal issued raised in the plea be kept open for adjudication in an appropriate case.

Having heard solicitor general appearing on behalf of the petitioner and carefully perusing the material placed on record, we see no reason to interfere with the impugned order passed by the High Court granting bail to respondent No.1 (Deepak Kochhar) herein.

The special leave petition is, accordingly, dismissed. As a sequel to the above, pending interlocutory application also stands disposed of. However, the question of law is kept open to be decided in an appropriate case, the bench, which also comprised Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli, ordered.

On March 25 last year, a single judge bench of the Bombay High Court granted Kochar bail in the money laundering case and said there was no likelihood of him absconding or tampering with evidence.

Kochhar had approached the high court after a special Mumbai court rejected his bail plea in December 2020.

The high court had directed Kochhar to surrender his passport before the special court in the city hearing the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) cases, and asked him to cooperate with the probe.

Kochhar was arrested by the ED in September 2020 under the PMLA in the alleged ICICI Bank-Videocon money laundering case.

The ED had registered the money laundering case following an FIR by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against the Kochhar couple, Videocon Group promoter Venugopal Dhoot, and others for allegedly causing loss to the ICICI Bank by sanctioning loans to the Videocon Group of companies in contravention of the bank's policies.

Kochhar had argued that the ED had taken note of all the alleged proceeds of the crime in the case so there was no chance of him creating any third party rights or interfering with the probe if out on bail.

He had also said in his bail plea that the entire case against him was based on documentary evidence, which was already in the ED's possession, and hence there was no question of him tampering with the evidence.

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Sulli Deals app creator Aumkareshwar Thakur, has been sent to police custody for four days by a court, informed on Sunday.

The IFSO unit of Delhi Police's Special Cell arrested the mastermind of the Sulli Deals app from Indore on Sunday after receiving information about him from Bulli Bai app case mastermind Neeraj Bishnoi during the investigation, said DCP (IFSO), KPS Malhotra, on Sunday.

"During the interrogation of the Bulli Bai app mastermind Neeraj Bishnoi, we found evidence that helped us arrest Aumkareshwar Thakur, who wrote codes for Sulli Deals app. He is being interrogated and his laptop is under forensic examination", said Malhotra.

"Both the Bulli Bai and Sulli Deal app case masterminds have been arrested. On Saturday, a team of IFSO, Special Cell went to Indore and arrested Thakur," added the DCP. As per police information, the arrested 25-year-old Aumkareshwar Thakur is a Computer Graduate residing at Newyork city Township of Indore. "We are still investigating the case and have seized Aumkareshwar Thakur's laptop which was used in Sulli Deal case and have sent it for forensic examination", said DCP Malhotra. " "The accused was operating on Twitter under the name of Aumkar Thakur."

In July 2021, the Sulli Deal app was made on the Github platform to auction . The matter came to light when took suo moto cognisance of this matter. The Delhi Police were investigating the case for the last six months but the first arrest in the case came after Bulli Bai app case mastermind Niraj Bishnoi was apprehended from Assam's Jorhat.

The Delhi police, during the investigation, found out that the Bulli Bai mastermind Niraj Bishnoi and Aumkareshwar Thakur were virtually connected over the internet. "They never met in person. They were connected virtually through chat rooms," KPS Malhotra said.

KPS Malhotra further said, "In January 2020, through the Twitter handle @gangescionBK, a group called 'Trade Mahasabha' had joined Aumkareshwar Thakur. Trolling women of the Muslim community was discussed through the group. After which the Sulli Deal app was created on GitHub." "The accused deleted all their social media footprints as the case came to light. The Special Cell of Delhi Police is now interrogating Aumkareshwar Thakur, as well as analyzing technical gadgets to trace the code/photos related to the Sulli Deals app case."

The accused Aumkareshwar Thakur said that there are others who are guilty in the Sulli Deal case along with him, said police. The police are now looking for the other culprits.

DCP said that all the information that they have got in the case is from interrogating the accused and police research. No information has been received from Github.

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: Continuing to report a spike in fresh infections, on Monday reported 1,825 new COVID-19 cases, taking the tally to 6,95,855, while the death toll rose to 4,043 with one more fatality.

The state had recorded 1,673 fresh cases on Sunday.

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) accounted for the most number of fresh cases with 1,042 , followed by Medchal Malkajgiri (201) district, the bulletin said, providing details as of 5.30 PM today.

It said 351 people recovered from the infection on Monday. The cumulative number of recoveries till date was 6,76,817.

The number of active cases surged to 14,995, the bulletin said.

It said over 70,000 samples were tested today and the total number examined till date was nearly 3.02 crore.

Meanwhile, the State Government on Monday launched the administration of booster doses of COVID-19 vaccine to senior citizens with co-morbidities, healthcare and frontline workers.

Health Minister T Harish Rao formally launched the initiative at Government Unani Hospital at Charminar.

On the inoculation for children, he said the state was able to administer the first dose of vaccine for children in the age group of 15 and 18 in just six days.

In a separate programme, Union Minister of Tourism and Culture G Kishan Reddy visited the state-run Gandhi Hospital here and interacted with doctors and monitored the administration of (Booster Doses) for people aged 60 years and above.

Later talking to reporters, Kishan Reddy said state governments have been given powers to take decisions for setting up containment zones or put in place other restrictions depending on the severity of the spread of the virus.

The centre in coordination with state governments is making necessary arrangements and taking adequate measures ensuring beds, medicines, oxygen and ventilators, he said.

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Amid a sharp spike in COVID-19 cases and with a projection of over 32,000 infections in in the possible third wave, the state government has decided to impose a night curfew from 9 pm to 5 am.

As per a decision following a slew of meetings chaired by Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb and Chief Secretary Kumar Alok, curfew would be in force between 9 pm in the night to 5 am in the morning from January 10 to January 20, said Information and Cultural Affairs (ICA) minister Sushanta Chowdhury.

In a press conference at Civil Secretariat here on Sunday evening, Cabinet spokesperson and ICA minister Chowdhury also informed that adequate preparations are afoot to tackle the third wave of the COVID-19--if the present rise in the cases is considered the third wave of the pandemic.

He said that altogether 689 positive cases have been reported till Saturday with the overall positivity rate of the state standing at five per cent. The majority of cases are being reported in the Agartala Municipal Corporation area with the test positivity rate of 16.95 per cent, the minister added.

According to Chowdhury, the health experts have already sounded an alarm considering the present situation prevailing all over the state and an initial projection of 32,000 cases has been set.

"The health experts and scientists have predicted that in the third wave, is expected to have over 32,000 cases altogether and five per cent positivity rate that accounts for 1,617 cases per day that would be serious in nature", he told mediapersons.

"Tripura is prepared to tackle the third wave of COVID-19 with the availability of adequate health infrastructure across the state. In view of the increase in COVID cases across the state, two crucial meetings were held on Saturday and Sunday under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Kumar Alok with officials of various departments and Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb with the council of ministers, respectively," he added.

The minister further said that a total of 3,880 children might get affected in the third wave and among them, 194 may develop severe symptoms. "Taking this on a serious note, 216 beds with ICU facilities are available in Agartala while 50 beds in each district are arranged for children," he informed.

Meanwhile, Chowdhury also spoke in detail about the state's COVID-19 related infrastructure.

"All districts have been directed to open COVID-19 call centres and redressal cells. In the state, there are 2,562 total beds for COVID-19 patients and 700 beds are reserved for serious patients. Out of these 700 beds, 330 beds are installed in various facilities of West Tripura district", he stated.

"If there is a requirement, the number of beds can be increased and there is a facility for that. At present, 22 oxygen plants are functional. There is a sufficient stock of medicines. There is sufficient stock of oxygen concentrators, oxygen cylinders, pulse oximeters and ventilators. About 500 to 700 doctors, nurses, MPWs, sweeping staff, etc shall be recruited on a contractual and emergency basis", he added.

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The government declared four villages located near the Nepal border in the district as revenue villages, an official said on Sunday.

District Magistrate of Bahraich, Dinesh Chandra Singh said the decision was taken before the announcement of the general elections to the UP Legislative Assembly. These four villages are Bhavanipur, Tedhia, Dhakia and Bichhia located in Mihinpurwa tehsil of the district. All these villages are Vantangiya villages.

The Vantangiya' community comprises people brought from Myanmar during the colonial rule to plant trees.

A revenue village is a small administrative region with defined borders. One revenue village may contain many hamlets. A village administrative officer is the head officer of a revenue village.

Singh said the decision in this regard was taken on January 3 at a meeting presided over by the chief secretary, and the letter was received on January 8.

"The people of these villages will now get the benefits of all the schemes of the government," he said.

Gita Prasad, a resident of Dhakia village, on Sunday said, "We are happy with the decision of the government. We celebrated Holi and Deepawali together. There are around 225 families in these four villages consisting of over 1,500 members.

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Until Monday, India had administered the first dose to 23.8 million teens within a week of starting vaccinations for 15-18 years old. While 31.3 per cent of the teen population has received the first dose, the pace of vaccination is uneven across the country.

A Business Standard analysis shows that two of the largest states preparing for elections have had the worst performance in terms of first dose administration to 15-18 year olds. Uttar Pradesh was able to administer first doses to only 16.4 per cent of the population, whereas Punjab covered just 2.4 per cent of the teens in ...
Do you drink tea? There are many different kinds.

According to Roy Morgan Research, almost 10 million Australians drink tea at least once a week. Whats the most popular kind of tea? Black tea by a mile.

According to Canstar Blue Research, 42 per cent of tea drinkers choose Black tea as their number one preference. This was followed by English Breakfast (30 per cent), Green Tea (23 per cent), Earl (18 per cent), Chai (10 per cent), and fruit infusions at 9 per cent.

It was a different story among younger Australians aged 18-29 with Green Tea the clear winner (35 per cent) followed by Chai (22 per cent), Earl Gray (20 per cent), and Fruit Infusions (15 per cent). It would appear older Australians are sticking with the tried and tested while the younger generations are more adventurous with their tea.

There are many different varieties of tea; youll probably like some and not others but theyre all tea even if theyre not your cup of tea.

Christians are united by the love and saving grace of Jesus but the body of Christ is made of unique individuals; were not all the same.

In a local church, some people love long expository sermons; these people would love to listen to an hour-long sermon on the second coming of Christ. Others would be fidgeting in their seats praying for the second coming because long sermons are not their thing.

Some believers are highly expressive in their worship; raising their hands in adoration, kneeling in reverence, clapping in celebration and there are others who also love Jesus very genuinely but theyre not so expressive.

Some people are prayer warriors, some are drawn to Bible study, others have a heart for pastoral care, some are activists who need to be out in the community. Some are practical hands-on types who come into their own at a working bee, some are great at hospitality and some dont even drink coffee!

Is the person who loves to serve the morning tea any less committed to Christ than the person who organizes the half-night of prayer?

Is it right for the believer who is openly expressive in worship to presume that another believer is unmoved in worship simply because they dont move?

God has made us with different personalities and preferences. Is it right to judge another believer simply because their preferences arent your cup of tea?

Beyond the local Church, there are also differences between Church denominations.

Some denominations have been around for centuries and others have emerged more recently. Some denominations will have an upbeat worship style with lots of noise and expression. Some churches will have longer sermons and a more academic approach and others will be activistic communities with a focus on being a light in their local communities. Some will be warm at welcoming and having a strong sense of community. A healthy church will incorporate all these aspects but its likely that a church community will be stronger in some areas and have room to grow in others.

Would it be right for a church with longer sermons to presume a church with upbeat worship is being run purely on emotion? Should a church with upbeat worship consider another church to be dead if they dont share their worship style? Its easy to be judgemental of other Christians and other churches, especially when you dont know them. The more you get to know Christians from other churches the more you understand its not so easy to stereotype them. Christian judgement goes into overdrive when it comes to famous preachers who are usually labelled as heretics by people who have never done anything more than google them. Sadly Gods people occasionally drift into becoming giants of judgement rather than giants of Gods grace.

How can Gods people be less judgemental? Some helpful tips.

1. Serve interdenominationally

If you have the opportunity to be involved in a ministry with the different churches in your town, take it.

As you serve alongside your brothers and sisters in Gods kingdom who attend a different denomination youll learn much and experience the blessings of Christian community. Occasionally you might find yourself in disagreement and that becomes a fantastic opportunity to have a cup of tea and listen to one another.

2. Read widely

Dont just read the denominational favourites that people in your church read, be brave and read books from those outside your denomination.

Try the same with Christian speakers and dont just listen, looking for the faults but look for the good things they say. If you find 80 per cent of the message helpful and 20 per cent unhelpful, praise God for what was helpful.

Heres the message:

If your growth as a believer has led you to become more judgmental of other believers and other churches, something went wrong along the way. Believers should be best at pointing people to Jesus not at pointing out why the church down the road has it wrong.

Lets not be giants of judgment. Lets extend grace to believers who might not be your cup of tea.
Chief Secretary Durga Shankar Mishra has issued new COVID-19 guidelines in the state on Sunday amid a surge in COVID cases in the state.

The state has increased the duration of night curfew from 10 pm at night to 6 am in the morning, stated the official order. Chief Secretary Durga Shankar Mishra ordered the suspension of physical classes in educational institutions in the state till January 16. However, the schools will conduct online classes.

"All the beneficiaries aged between 15 to 18 years of age must get a vaccination against COVID-19 by January 15", said the Chief Secretary.

He also ordered the Integrated COVID Command Control (ICCC) to run with full capacity. He has ordered the Police officials and the District Magistrates to take stock of the pandemic situation.

According to Uttar Pradesh's Saturday health bulletin, the state saw 6,411 new COVID-19 cases.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sluggish growth momentum in the December quarter and emerging risk from the third Covid-19 wave may shave 80 basis points (bps) off Indias real gross domestic product (GDP) growth to 9 per cent for FY22, said in its latest estimate.

While the economic impact of the Omicron wave in the fourth quarter could be lower than previous waves, the activity momentum in the third quarter was much lower than our expectation. This has led us to revise downwards our FY22E real forecast by 80 bps to 9 per cent year-on-year (YoY), largely due to weaker third quarter activity. Consequently, we have also revised FY23E real forecast to 8.3 per cent YoY (versus 8.7 per cent earlier), India Chief Economist Samiran Chakraborty said in a research note on Monday.

Governments statistics office last week projected 9.2 per cent growth for FY22, well below 9.5 per cent forecast by the International Monetary Fund as well as the Reserve Bank of India, even as the size of the Indian economy is expected to surpass the pre-pandemic level after recovering from a historic contraction in the preceding year.

Economists believe the official GDP data has overlooked the imminent impact of the third wave on growth momentum. With the escalating Covid-19 caseload, many states have imposed night and weekend curfews to curb the spread of the third wave, adversely impacting mobility and contact sensitive services.

India Ratings last week estimated that in the March quarter would now stand at 5.7 per cent, 40 bps lower than the agencys earlier estimate of 6.1 per cent. For the entire FY22, the rating agency expects to be 9.3 per cent, 10 basis points lower than its earlier estimate.

Chakraborty said although daily Covid cases were crossing 150,000 already, there were reasons to be hopeful of a less-disruptive Covid wave. These include lower hospitalisation rates (currently seen in cities like Mumbai and experience from South Africa), shorter Covid wave cycle period (40 days of trough-to-peak of daily cases in SA, compared to 90-100 days in previous waves), higher vaccination coverage (70 per cent second dose for adults in India), and weakening link between Covid and activity, he said.

While Google mobility has started to decline, the impact of Omicron on overall activity could take a couple of weeks to reflect in the data, Chakraborty said.

There are reasons to be hopeful of a relatively less-disruptive Covid wave in terms of overall activity. This, along with support from government spending, could cushion the fall in activity momentum in Q4 FY22E, he said.
The government's intention is not to get into business but create standards through the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) that it expects will be adopted by the global e-commerce ecosystem, a senior official said on Monday.

At the Start-up India Innovation week panel discussion, Anil Agrawal, additional secretary of Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), said the country is trying to become a pioneer in standard for e-commerce through ONDC.

"We are clear from the government's point of view that we are only a facilitator. We are not here to get into business. We are only creating standards. If you look at standardisation, it is something that anyone who is a pioneer in developing standards ultimately gets lots of business," Agrawal said while speaking about ONDC.

has initiated the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) project, which aims to promote open networks developed on open sourced methodology, using open specifications and open network protocols independent of any specific platform. The task has been assigned to the Quality Council of India (QCI).

ONDC is expected to digitise the entire value chain, standardise operations, promote inclusion of suppliers, derive efficiencies in logistics and enhance value for consumers.

"Today, wherever you have international standards, you end up conforming to those standards and you end up paying a lot of royalties for adopting those standards.

"Imagine you develop standards and the world adopts it. This is the beginning of what we are seeing in India. It is not going to be limited to Indian e-commerce. It is going to go global," Agrawal said.

During the panel discussion, Paytm President and Group Chief Financial Officer Madhur Deora said the challenge in e-commerce is to build trust and then create a differentiating factor when there are thousands of entities offering similar services.

PhonePe founder and CEO Sameer Nigam said companies need to lower the cost of technology solutions to the level that it resolves the problem of local grocery shops and conveniently connect it digitally with the e-commerce ecosystem.

(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 will take up concerns regarding the market access impediments and non-tariff barriers faced by Indian exporters with South Korea on Tuesday, a statement by the commerce and industry ministry said.

Concerns regarding a trade deficit, which is in favour of the East Asian nation, will also be taken up during a bilateral meeting between Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and Trade Minister of the Republic of Korea Han-koo Yeo. Indias against South Korea continued to remain high over the past few years.

Exports did not witness a massive jump, despite a free trade agreement between both nations. Bilateral trade between India and South Korea during April-October stood at $13.69 billion, with a of $5.29 billion.

The discussion will also feature investment related issues. The meeting is expected to further boost India-Korea trade relations in an equitable and balanced manner to the mutual advantage of both countries, the statement said.
There is a battle for the in western Uttar Pradesh, hope for the Samajwadi Party and revival for the Rashtriya Lok Dal in the region that goes to polls in the first phase on February 10.

The region, considered one of the most politically sensitive, surcharged and highly polarised areas, especially after the farmers' agitation, will set the tone for elections in the remaining six phases in .

Elections will be held in the 94 Assembly segments in 11 districts of west namely, Shamli, Meerut, Hapur, Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahr, Aligarh, Agra, Gautam Buddha Nagar and Mathura, on February 10.

In the 2017 Assembly elections, had received a decisive mandate in the region and carried that momentum further to other parts of the state.

The BJP, in 2017, had won 66 of the 76 seats in this region. The Samajwadi Party (SP) won four, the Bahujan Samaj Party won three, the Congress won two and the Rashtriya Lok Dal could win only one.

The scenario has changed almost completely in the past five years.

The wounds of Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 have healed to a large extent and the Jat-Muslim hostility has diluted. The communal lines have blurred and farmer unity is now a bigger factor in the region. Religious polarization is unlikely in the region in the present scenario.

The has been trying to placate the farmers by repealing farm laws but its own leaders are queering the pitch by announcing that farm laws will be brought back after the elections.

It has been a tough going so far for the BJP whose leaders have been facing hostile voters in the rural interiors of the region. The failure of the government to announce MSP guarantee, payment of cane dues, shortage of fertilizer and the menace of stray cattle are factors that remain major irritants for the ruling BJP. The government's apathy towards families of farmers who died during agitation, is another major factor.

The biggest political beneficiary of the farmers' agitation that lasted for one year, however, is the Rashtriya Lok Dal.

The RLD president Jayant Chaudhary has managed to regain lost ground among the Jat community to a large extent by extending active support to farmers during their agitation. Jayant has been visiting villages, attending Khap meetings and interacting closely with Jat leaders.

The demise of Chaudhary Ajit Singh in May last year, has also brought ample sympathy for Jayant and his party is poised to make a political comeback in west UP.

The Samajwadi Party, this time, is contesting the elections in alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Dal. It had allied with the Congress in 2017 but could not make much headway as Jats, then, had opted for BJP because the wounds of Muzaffarnagar riots were still fresh.

The SP, this time, is confident of riding piggyback on RLD's growing popularity graph.

The partnership could give a tough fight to the BJP in many parts of western .

Besides, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav's uncle Shivpal Yadav will be contesting in alliance with the Samajwadi Party and this will help avoid a split in his key vote bank.

One factor that could upset Samajwadi Party calculations in the first phase is the entry of Asaddudin Owaisi's All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM).

The party could play an important role in many constituencies as the Muslim population in this region amounts to around 26 per cent.

If the AIMIM succeeds in weaning away Muslim votes -- or even a section of votes -- the SP-RLD alliance may not perform as well as expected.

The first phase in western UP is also crucial for the Bahujan Samaj Party since the region was once considered as a party stronghold.

This time, the emergence of Bhim Army which will be contesting as Azad Samaj Party is bound to damage the BSP which, in any case, is being questioned for Mayawati's absence in its campaign.

Mayawati, has, so far, restricted herself to tweets and press releases but has not stepped out of her home to campaign.

The Congress, on the other hand, is losing leaders with an alarming frequency. Congress national secretary and one of its more popular leaders in the areas, Imran Masood, is all set to join the Samajwadi Party.

Masood, a former MLA, has been repeatedly urging the party leadership to join hands with the SP to defeat BJP.

Harendra Malik and Pankaj Malik of Congress have already quit the party to join the SP.

The women card of the Congress is unlikely to work in western UP where the patriarchal system still dominates the society and women claimants in elections are few and far in between.

One thing that is clear is that any party that takes a head start in the first phase where 94 seats -- almost one-fourth of the total 403 seats -- will be going to polls, will enjoy a definite advantage in the remaining six phases of elections in Uttar Pradesh.

--IANS

amita/dpb

(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.)
With just over a month to go for Assembly elections in Goa, political observers feel the may upset BJP's plans for retaining power in the coastal state, but appear less enthused about Trinamool Congress, whose entry has added colour to the poll campaign.

will win around 20 of the 40 Assembly seats, while the BJP will garner around 15 seats, a veteran political analyst based in the capital told PTI.

The Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) is likely to win 3 to 4 seats, and the Aam admi Party (AAP) will bag a seat or two, the analyst said.

He attributed the poll prospects of MGP, which came into prominence under the leadership of Goa's first chief minister Dayanand Bandodkar, to its alliance with the Mamata Banerjee-led . On its own, MGP may have fared very badly. But TMC's monetary clout will help it, he added.

Former State Election Commissioner Prabhakar Timblo said will form the next government in the coastal state. Anti-incumbency is very high in the state, and that will work against the BJP, he added.

The grand old party will win around 20-22 seats, Timblo said. Congress will do well as long as it does not project those who have crossed their expiry date in politics in these elections, he added.

Timblo was emphatic that neither nor AAP will have much of an impact in the February 14 elections.

Giriraj Pai Vernekar, a political analyst and a BJP sympathizer, said the ruling party presented a report card of its regime's performance in the last 10 years, while seeking votes.

BJP is not afraid of anti-incumbency as people know that a double-engine government is necessary to continue the state's development. Otherwise, there is confrontation between the Centre and the state, as in case of West Bengal, he said.

Durgadas Kamat, General Secretary of Forward Party (GFP), which has a pre-poll alliance with Congress, said that the alliance will be victorious.

There is a groundswell against the BJP and in favour of Congress and GFP as people know we can give a good and honest government, he said.

AAP unit convener Rahul Mhambrey said the Arvind Kejriwal-led party is projecting fresh and clean faces in the next month's Assembly elections. People have seen the Delhi model of development. We will emulate it here, he added.

There is also a talk of a grand alliance of all opposition parties that could effectively avoid the split of the traditional Congress votes in many constituencies and cause concern for the ruling BJP. However, nothing concrete has emerged on that front so far.

Prominent leaders like PM Narendra Modi, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi were in Goa ahead of the elections. BJP chief J P Nadda, Union minister Nitin Gadkari and former Union minister P Chidambaram were other prominent leaders to visit the coastal state.

Two major pre-poll alliances took shape in Goa. Congress has tied up with GFP, a regional outfit that was a part of the Manohar Parrikar government in 2017, while has found a regional partner in the form of MGP, which fought the 2017 polls in alliance with the Shiv Sena but later joined the Parrikar-led government.

In the last few months, many posters featuring Mamata Banerjee's photo and the slogan 'Goenchi Navi Sakal' (Goa's new dawn) have been put across the state.

TMC MPs Mahua Moitra and Derek O'Brien are leading the party's campaign in Goa.

AAP entered Goa's political scene during the 2017 Assembly elections and tried to build a base in the coastal state.

In the 2017 Goa Assembly polls, BJP won only 13 seats while Congress won in 17 constituencies. However, BJP staked claim to form the government with the support of 3 MGP MLAs, 3 GFP MLAs, two Independents and an NCP MLA under the leadership of Parrikar who resigned as defence minister to return to the coastal state.

After Parrikar's death in March 2019, then Assembly Speaker Pramod Sawant became the CM. Sawant's administration has come in for praise from PM Modi for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and vaccination drive.

(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.)
Nearly 9,000 personnel of the Police and home guards, along with 34 companies of paramilitary troops, will be deployed across Gautam Buddh Nagar for assembly elections, Police Commissioner Alok Singh said Saturday.

Elections to the three assembly constituencies of Noida, Dadri and Jewar in Gautam Buddh Nagar in western are scheduled on February 10 during the first phase of polling in the state.

Singh said security assessment in the district has been completed as joint teams of the state government, police and other departments have toured polling stations sites and studied their criticality and vulnerability.

"A security plan for the whole district has been prepared, keeping every aspect in mind and in compliance of criteria set by the Election Commission," Singh, flanked by District Magistrate Suhas L Yathiraj and Joint Police Commissioner Love Kumar, said.

"Approximately 8,700 police and home guard personnel, besides 34 companies of the paramilitary force, depending on the requirement and availability of troops, will be deployed in Gautam Buddh Nagar during the polls," the police commissioner told reporters.

Arrangements have been made for their accommodation and plan drawn for their deployment, he said.

Domination plan will begin from Sunday when the first batch of paramilitary troops arrive in Gautam Buddh Nagar and will carry out flag marches in areas that have been identified as critical or vulnerable and areas of troublemakers, Singh said.

"There are a total of 248 identified troublemakers in the district and preventive action has been taken against them by the local police in view of the elections," he said.

Apart from this, political parties have been apprised of the EC's guidelines related to the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic, he said, adding police will follow the changes that have been made in the Model Code of Conduct due to COVID-19.

Gautam Buddh Nagar has 16.23 registered voters -- (6.90 lakh), Dadri (5.86 lakh) and Jewar (3.46 lakh). There will be 552 polling stations across the district -- (149), Dadri (201) and Jewar (202), officials said.

Of the total polling stations 202 have been categoriSed 'critical', the officials added.

Results for the elections will be announced on March 10.

(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.)
During this week's violent upheaval in Kazakhstan, at least 164 people were killed and more than 5,000 were detained, as turmoil swept the country and the death toll climbed even higher.

The death toll, which was 44 on Friday has increased significantly, published by state-run TV station Khabar 24 on Sunday, citing the Ministry of Health, reported CNN.

Meanwhile, according to state media, police have opened 125 criminal cases relating to incidents of violence, including allegations of assault, murder, and robbery.

According to Kazakh official media, at least 5,135 individuals have been detained so far for suspected participation in in Kazakhstan, according to the country's Internal Affairs Ministry, reported the news portal.

The massive jump in the fuel price infuriated Kazakhs as the country is an exporter of oil and natural gases and in the Central Asian country have resulted in the resignation of the government and the proclamation of a state of emergency, with soldiers from a Russia-led military alliance dispatched to quell the disturbance.

(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.)
Apple's director of Mac System Architecture Jeff Wilcox is departing from the company to join .

Wilcox originally joined from in 2013 and at Intel, Wilcox will now become an " Fellow" and serve as the chief technology officer of the design engineering group.

In a post on his Linkedin account, Wilcox stated, "After an amazing eight years I have decided to leave and pursue another opportunity."

"It has been an incredible ride and I could not be prouder of all we accomplished during my time there, culminating in the Silicon transition with the M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max SoCs and systems," he added.

For the last eight of those years, Wilcox led that system architecture team in multiple roles, most recently as the company's director of Mac system architecture.

Wilcox began his career in 1994 with Ortho Clinical Diagnostics as a Design Engineer. In 1997, he became Principal Component Architect for Intel Corp.

Ten years later he transitioned to being Principal Architect for NVIDIA, only to return to Intel as the Principal Engineer in 2010. A little over three years later he made the move to Apple as Director, Mac Systems Architecture.

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won a legal fight to enforce an award of around $131 million against the founder of troubled NMC Health. The lender turned to a London court after a Dubai judge ordered Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty to pay the money after his foreign exchange business failed to meet a transaction agreement with in 2020.



Shettys lawyers said at a December hearing in the UK that he is financially paralyzed and asked for the suit to be adjourned so he could get proper legal representation. A London judge rejected that application on Monday. Shetty, 79, is facing a number of freezing orders, including in India where he is currently stranded, his lawyers said. As part of this case, obtained a worldwide freezing order against Shetty, including against a London property.



A lawyer for Shetty said he will appeal the judgment. Barclays didnt respond to a request for comment. Its not the only legal battle for the Indian entrepreneur. He filed a suit in New York last year against Ernst & Young over its auditing work for his NMC Health, in which hes seeking $7 billion.
Sometimes life is just a broken tea bag.

You can boil the water to the perfect temperature, warm your favourite bone china cup, fill the cup to the exact level which still leaves room for milk

And watch in horror as your teabag glumly and inexplicably bursts.

A limp, raggedy bag, a confused once-golden brew and wildly rogue tea leaves.

Tea leaves spilling everywhere. Nasty, floaty, incorrigible bits of dried leaves swirling in your cup and waiting to snag in your teeth like a spinach pastry.

Honestly, if ever there was a year of broken tea bags, 2021 must be it.

Or maybe that was 2020.

Who knows? The years are kinda morphing together at this point. A horrifying gaggle of rippling lockdowns, soaring housing costs, ongoing job uncertainty and the odd tsunami warning thrown in for dramatic effect (yep, writing from Auckland).

When all we want is a decent cup of tea.

I am, by nature, a level-headed and, dare I say it, fairly woke person.

I try to remind myself to take most of lifes blows with some levity. Or endurance. Or even resignation, if thats what is needed to deal with the moment.

Because no matter how low I get  and as a survivor of diagnosed C-PTSD and Anxiety, I can get pretty low  I know Ill eventually find my feet. Yes, I may have taken on a few extra unhealthy coping mechanisms or some new awkward humour defaults, but the point is that Im standing again.

So if I come out of the other side with useless Post-It-Notes, a new recipe for cake-free cake, and some epic yoga moves that no-one on this good green earth can actually physically embody

Well, I still made it to the other side. And thats what counts.

And its this inbuilt tenacity  this inexplicable yet profoundly human quality of resilience  that makes us bound to eventually get a good cup of tea.

And we need that tea, because life is really not that fair. Or sensible. Or easy.

In fact, lately its been downright shitty.

As a species, we are dealing with unimaginable stressors, worries and strains upon our homes, societies and even our globe.

Were doing it tough right now.

But even if our collective rising up comes in waves, and even if we take turns to stand while others take a breather, and even if tea bags are bursting on us left and right

We still keep trying.

We still keep believing for a better world and striving for a kinder community and sowing into a grander vision of the future.

And we do all of this in the face of and despite the messy teabags trailing hack-inducing ashes through our cups.

Because thats the nature of resilience. And resilience is what runs in our nature.

And here we are: learning and adapting and making fresh cups of tea.

So your tea bag burst. Irreversibly.

And your milk expired. Last week.

And the stores are in lockdown mode. Again.

And standing for two hours on cramping feet in a shuffling, masked-up queue of small talk amidst potentially virus-laden strangers, makes buying fresh milk a hazard at best and an introverts nightmare at worst.

Yet somehow  against all the odds  some deep, visceral spirit within us drives us on.

To do what must be done. To brave the inconveniences.

To look that ripped tea bag in its inconsequential eye, calmly toss it in the trash, and start all over again.

So 2020 was the year of broken tea bags.

And 2021 is looking as though its got a personal vendetta against our favourite, slightly-chipped mug.

But we know how to make a fresh cup of tea.
Benchmark futures in fell more than 2per cent on Monday, hit by concerns of production and transportation disruptions, after the country reported cases of the Omicron variant of the over the weekend.



The northern coastal city of Tianjin has tightened exit controls after detecting local Omicron cases. The central Henan province also reported two local Omicron cases on the same transmission chain.



"The Tianjin outbreak over the weekend may provide some immediate downside shocks to prices should infection rates escalate and additional lockdown be imposed," said Atilla Widnell, managing director at Navigate Commodities, Singapore.



The most traded futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange, for May delivery, dropped 2.2per cent to 698 yuan ($109.52) per tonne as of 0256 GMT.

Spot prices of with 62per cent iron content for delivery to China, meanwhile, increased $1 to $128.5 per tonne on Friday, according to SteelHome consultancy. "Looking further forward, the market looks well supported by sentiment around a post-Beijing Winter Olympics, partial stimulus-fuelled steel demand recovery," Atilla added.

Dalian coking coal futures sat tight at 2,266 yuan a tonne and coke prices inched 0.2per cent higher to 3,148 yuan per tonne.

Steel prices on the Shanghai Futures Exchange were mixed.

Construction used steel rebar dipped 0.04per cent to 4,486 yuan per tonne and hot rolled coils, used in the manufacturing sector, slipped 0.4per cent to 4,625 yuan a tonne.

Shanghai stainless steel futures, for February delivery, jumped 2per cent to 17,175 yuan per tonne.

($1 = 6.3735 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Chinese city of Tianjin, with around 14 million people, has tightened exit controls and now requires residents to obtain approval from employers or community authorities before leaving town and a negative COVID-19 test within 48 hours of departure.

The northern coastal city reported 21 domestically transmitted cases with confirmed symptoms on Sunday, the National Health Commission said on Monday, up from three a day earlier.

Tianjin said over the weekend it detected two local infections who contracted with . The city government announced the new exit rules in a statement late on Sunday.

In the central Henan province, the city of Anyang detected two local infections, and the city's outbreak could be traced

back to a student arriving from Tianjin, a local paper backed by Communist party authority in Anyang said on Monday.

It remained unclear how many other local cases in Tianjin and Anyang were .

Anyang, with 5.5 million residents, suspended all its bus services from Sunday.

Nationwide, mainland reported 97 local symptomatic cases for Sunday, up slightly from 92 a day earlier, with 60 in Henan.

The city of Xian, where local authorities are planning the gradual resumption of parcel deliveries and some businesses, reported 15 local symptomatic cases.

There were no new deaths for Sunday, leaving the death toll unchanged at 4,636. Mainland had 103,776 confirmed symptomatic cases as of Jan. 9, including both local and imported ones.

(Reporting by Roxanne Liu, Stella Qiu, Ella Cao and Tony Munroe; Editing by Kim Coghill and Michael Perry)

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Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has asked to restructure the crisis-hit island nation's debt repayments as part of efforts to help the South Asian country navigate its worsening financial situation, the BBC reported.

Rajapaksa made the request during a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Sunday.

In the last decade, has lent over $5 billion for projects including roads, an airport and ports, the BBC report said.

is Sri Lanka's fourth biggest lender, behind financial markets, the Asian Development Bank and Japan.

But critics say the money was used for unnecessary schemes with low returns.

"The President pointed out that it would be a great relief to the country if attention could be paid on restructuring the debt repayments as a solution to the economic crisis that has arisen in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic," Rajapksa's office said in a statement.

The statement also said China was asked to provide "concessional" terms for its exports to Sri Lanka, which amounted to around $3.5 billion last year, without providing further details, the report added.

Rajapaksa also offered to allow Chinese tourists to return to provided they adhere to strict coronavirus regulations.

Before the pandemic, China was Sri Lanka's main source of tourists and it imports goods from the Asian giant more than from any other country.

In recent months, has been experiencing a severe debt and foreign exchange crisis, which has been made worse by the loss of tourist income during the pandemic, the BBC report said.

The country has received billions of dollars of soft loans from China but the island-nation has been engulfed in a foreign exchange crisis which some analysts have said has pushed it to the verge of default, as per the BBC report.

Sri Lanka has to repay about $4.5 billion in debt this year starting with a $500 million sovereign bond, which matures on January 18.

--IANS

san/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.)
is yet to reach a decision on lifting its export ban as authorities discussed overcoming logistic issues that have slowed efforts to distribute to domestic power plants, a mining group executive said on Sunday.

The world's biggest thermal exporter suspended coal exports on Jan. 1 after Indonesia's state power utility reported dangerously low inventory levels of the fuel, putting Southeast Asia's biggest economy on the brink of widespread power outages.

The move had sent global prices of the fuel up last week with buyers monitoring closely discussion between Indonesian authorities and the local coal industry. An energy ministry official had pledged to review the ban after Jan. 5 Indonesia's Coordinating Ministry of Maritime and Investment Affairs met with miners and other related industry again on Sunday, but has not made any decision yet regarding resuming exports, said Hendra Sinadia, executive director of Coal Miners Association.

"One of the issues discussed was the limited availability of vessels to transport the coal to power plants," he said.

Senior minister Luhut Pandjaitan has said that the coal supply emergency at local power plants is over, but the government still needed to continue discuss policies in this area.

The discussion will be resumed on Monday, a spokesman for minister Luhut said on Sunday.

Last week Japan's embassy in Jakarta asked Indonesia's energy ministry to exclude high-calorific coal from the export ban as they are not used by local power plants and for permission for five vessels already loaded with coal to depart for Japan.

South Korean Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo on Friday held a video call with his Indonesian counterpart to convey "concerns about Indonesia's coal export ban and strongly requested the Indonesian government's cooperation for a prompt resumption of coal shipment", South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

Japan and South Korea are among the top destinations for Indonesian coal and together with China and India, they accounted for 73% of its exports in 2021, ship tracking data from Kpler showed.

(Reporting by Fransiska Nangoy

Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

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Prime Minister on Monday alleged that minorities in India were being targeted by extremist groups and warned that such an agenda "is a real and present threat" to regional peace.

Khan took to Twitter to make the allegations in the wake of alleged inflammatory and provocative speeches against Muslims at an event in Haridwar in Uttarakhand held in December.

On his Twitter handle, Khan also questioned whether the BJP government supports the call for genocide of minorities in India, especially the 200 million Muslim community.

It is high time community took note & acted, he further said.

In another tweet, Khan accused the BJP-led government of targeting minorities in India, adding that the extremist agenda is a real and present threat to peace in our region.

Last month, the Pakistan's Foreign Office summoned India's Charge d'Affaires and conveyed its concern over the alleged hate speeches made at the Haridwar conclave.

conveyed to the Indian side that the reported hate speeches were viewed with grave concern by the civil society and a cross-section of people in the country.

Held in Haridwar from December 17-20, the Dharma Sansad was organised by Yati Narasimhanand Giri of the Juna Akhada, who is already under police scanner for making hate speeches and inciting violence against Muslims.

At the event, several speakers allegedly made inflammatory and provocative speeches, calling for the killing of people from the minority community.

Two FIRs have been lodged against 15 people in the case, including Waseem Rizvi who changed his name to Jitendra Narayan Tyagi after converting to Hinduism recently and organiser of the Sansad Yati Narasimhanand, the head priest of Dasna temple in Ghaziabad.

A five-member Special Investigation Team has been constituted to look into the matter.

India's Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a Public interest litigation (PIL) seeking action against those who made hate speeches during the recent conclave.

A bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana took note of the submissions of senior advocate Kapil Sibal that no action has been taken against those who made the hate speeches despite registration of FIR.

(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.)
Russia said on Sunday it would not make concessions under U.S. pressure and warned that this week's talks on the crisis might end early, while Washington said no breakthroughs were expected and progress depended on de-escalation from Moscow.

The hard line from Moscow underscored the fragile prospects for negotiations that Washington hopes will avert the danger of a new Russian invasion of Ukraine, at the tensest point in U.S.-Russia relations since the Cold War ended three decades ago.

Talks begin on Monday in Geneva before moving to Brussels and Vienna, but the state-owned RIA news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying it was entirely possible the diplomacy could end after a single meeting.

"I can't rule out anything, this is an entirely possible scenario and the Americans ... should have no illusions about this," he was quoted as saying. "Naturally, we will not make any concessions under pressure" or amid constant threats from participants in the talks, said Ryabkov, who will lead the Russian delegation in Geneva.

Moscow was not optimistic going into the talks, Interfax news agency quoted Ryabkov as saying.

The U.S. prognosis was similarly gloomy.

"I don't think we're going to see any breakthroughs in the coming week," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a CNN interview. In response to Russian demands for Western security guarantees, the United States and allies have said they are prepared to discuss the possibility of each side restricting military exercises and missile deployments in the region.

Both sides will put proposals on the table and then see if there are grounds for moving forward, Blinken said. "To make actual progress, it's very hard to see that happening when there's an ongoing escalation, when Russia has a gun to the head of with 100,000 troops near its borders," Blinken said in an interview with ABC News.

Ahead of the formal talks, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman met with Ryabkov on Sunday in Geneva and told him Washington "would welcome genuine progress through diplomacy," the State Department said.

Ryabkov told reporters his meeting with Sherman had been "complex but businesslike," Russian new agency Interfax said. Tens of thousands of Russian troops are gathered within reach of the border with in preparation for what Washington and Kyiv say could be an invasion, eight years after Russia seized the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine.

The comments from Russia's Ryabkov, who has compared the situation to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war, were consistent with the uncompromising line Russia has been signalling for weeks.

Russia denies invasion plans and said it is responding to what it calls aggressive and provocative behavior from the NATO military alliance and Ukraine, which has tilted toward the West and aspires to join NATO.

Further complicating the picture, Russia sent troops into neighboring Kazakhstan last week after the oil-producing former Soviet republic was hit by a wave of unrest. Russia's foreign ministry reacted furiously on Saturday to a jibe by Blinken that "once Russians are in your house, it's sometimes very difficult to get them to leave."

Red lines

Last month, Russia presented a sweeping set of demands including for a ban on further NATO expansion and an end to the alliance's activity in central and eastern European countries that joined it after 1997.

The United States and NATO have dismissed large parts of the Russian proposals as non-starters.

The United States was not willing to discuss pulling some U.S. troops out of eastern Europe or rule out expanding NATO to include Ukraine, Blinken said. To abandon its demands for a more-limited agenda would be a major climb-down that Russia seems unlikely to make, especially after weeks of troop movements near Ukraine and a series of tough statements from President .

The Kremlin leader has said that after successive waves of NATO expansion it is time for Russia to enforce its "red lines" and ensure the alliance does not admit Ukraine or station weapons systems there that would target Russia.

Ukraine won a NATO promise in 2008 that it would be allowed to join one day, but diplomats say there is no question of that happening any time soon. NATO said it is a defensive alliance and Moscow has nothing to fear from it. That is far from Putin's world view, which sees Russia as under threat from hostile Western powers he says have repeatedly broken promises given as the Cold War ended not to expand toward its borders. The United States and its allies dispute such pledges were given.

In two conversations over the past five weeks, U.S.

President warned Putin that Russia would face unprecedented economic sanctions in the event of further aggression against Ukraine. The Group of Seven nations and the European Union have joined in threatening "massive consequences."

Putin said that would be a colossal mistake that would lead to a complete rupture of relations. In addition to the Geneva talks, Russia is also due to hold negotiations with NATO in Brussels on Wednesday and at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna on Thursday.

(Reporting by Tom Balmforth in Moscow, Mark Trevelyan in London and Doina Chiacu in Washington; writing by Mark Trevelyan and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Mary Milliken, Andrew Heavens, Bill Berkrot and Chris Reese)

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Oil fluctuated after recording the biggest weekly gain in a month as supplies returned in Kazakhstan while production in Libya remained volatile.

Brent crude rose to trade near $82 a barrel after earlier swinging between gains and losses. Libyan production increased to 900,000 barrels a day after pipeline maintenance was completed, although some of its ports could be closed for the next week due to bad weather. Some output was restored in Kazakhstan following widespread unrest.

For the time being, demand has held up well against the spread of omicron across the globe and speculators have boosted their net-bullish bets on the global Brent benchmark to a six-week high as a result.

Traders are focused on China, however, which is continuing to battle outbreaks of the virus. The worlds largest oil importer ignited a mass testing blitz in the northern port city of Tianjin as the country strives to maintain its zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19 in the face of more transmissible variants. Crude oil trades steady with focus on robust demand and so far a limited fallout from the omicron surge, said Ole Hansen, head of commodities strategy at Saxo Bank A/S.
German researchers are set to study how far rapid antigen tests are able to detect the highly transmissible variant of Covid-19, media reports said.

"We do not know exactly how well these tests work for Omicron," health minister Karl Lauterbach was quoted as saying on public broadcasting channel ARD on Sunday.

Lauterbach added that the results of the assessment would become available within the next few weeks.

It was clear, however, that "the alternative not to test at all ... would be far too dangerous," said Lauterbach, who is also a scientist and physician.

According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious disease, now accounts for 44 per cent of infections in Germany, the Guardian reported.

On Sunday, RKI registered 36,552 newly reported Covid infections within 24 hours, three times the number a week earlier.

Late last month, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also released a statement saying rapid antigen tests appear less sensitive to than previous variants.

"Early data suggests that antigen tests do detect the Omicron variant but may have reduced sensitivity," the FDA said at the time.

Omicron was first discovered in South Africa and Botswana in late November. Since then the fast spreading strain has been found in more than 100 countries.

A recent study, not peer-reviewed yet, also showed that some rapid antigen tests for Covid-19 may not reliably detect the Omicron variant during the first few days of infection, even when a person is shedding the virus in high enough quantities to be contagious, preliminary evidence hints, Live Science reported.

--IANS

rvt/dpb

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The former chief executive of James Hardie Industries on Monday rejected the Australian building materials giant's claims about concerns over his conduct and management style, and said he was "blindsided" by his firing last week.



The world's top maker of fibre cement products on Friday terminated CEO Jack Truong, saying dozens of top executives had threatened to quit due to his conduct which, though not discriminatory, breached its code of conduct.



Executive Chairman Mike Hammes later said on a conference call that he had urged Truong to change his behaviour but a "sincere change" had not occurred.



"I was blindsided by the termination and unequivocally reject the assertions made by Mr. Hammes and the company," Truong said in an emailed statement early Monday.



"I'm ... proud of the progress we made in building a culture of inclusion and respect with our more than 5,000 devoted employees. Based on employee and customer feedback, it was clear that they recognised our progress," Truong said.



Truong's departure came at a time James Hardie has ridden a pandemic housing boom to record profits, and highlighted the growing importance firms are putting on executive conduct beyond just earnings and dividends.



Brokerage Citi said in a note it saw little cause for concern in the short-term from Truong's departure, but the company's strategy may have a different feel over the medium-term when Hammes retires.



"With a new CEO and chairman combination, investors should be open to the possibility of changes down the track," the brokerage said.



(Reporting by Shashwat Awasthi; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)

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President vowed to protect and its ex-Soviet allies from what he called outside efforts to destabilize their governments with public protests, just days after Russian-led troops helped Kazakh authorities subdue nationwide demonstrations.

We wont let anyone disturb the situation in our homes and wont allow scenarios of so-called color revolutions to be played out, Putin told a televised video conference Monday of leaders of the six-nation Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Moscow-dominated bloc whose deployment of troops to Kazakhstan was the first time it had sent forces to shore up a government under pressure from popular unrest.

Of course, we understand that the events in Kazakhstan arent the first and will be far from the last attempt to intervene in the internal affairs of our states, Putin said, alleging that some of the Kazakh protesters had been trained in camps outside the country. He also cited the use of what he called Maidan technologies, a reference to the 2014 uprising in Ukraine that forced out a pro-Russian leader.

The dramatic intervention by the CSTO helped embattled Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev crush an uprising that started in protests over fuel-price increases but rapidly led to the seizure of government buildings around the country. Tokayev called the events an attempted coup.





ALSO READ: 164 killed, more than 5,000 detained in Kazakhstan during protests

Tokayev fired a number of top security officials in the wake of the unrest and authorities charged one with treason. More than two dozen people were killed and about 8,000 have been detained, authorities said. China backed the crackdown, while the U.S. and other western capitals were critical of the harsh moves.

and China have long denounced the color revolutions that have over the last several decades toppled autocratic leaders and brought pro-western governments to power.

Putin blamed technology for fueling the destabilizing events in Kazakhstan and elsewhere in the region.

Using internet communications and social networks, efforts are continuing to draw our citizens into protests, which are the forerunners of terrorist attacks, Putin said, calling on the CSTO to propose new steps to block attempts at destructive external intervention in the region.

Kazakh authorities suspended internet access for several days at the height of the protests last week. The Kremlin has been tightening regulation of foreign technology companies for years.

Putin said that the Russian-led troops would leave Kazakhstan as soon as their mission is completed and the countrys president requests it, but didnt specify a date. He said the forces had helped Kazakh authorities restore control over the entire country.
Tianjin fights Chinas first real battle against Omicron, puts Beijing on high alert

(Global Times) 08:52, January 10, 2022

North China's Tianjin Municipality, home to 15 million people and also a major gateway to Beijing, started massive nucleic acid testing early Sunday morning, ramping up a swift response to the new Omicron variant after the city detected 20 COVID-19 infections in a single day, with two identified as carrying the new variant.

Epidemiologists said it's the first real battle against Omicron on the Chinese mainland as domestically-transmitted cases linked to the strain were discovered in local communities for the first time. The sudden outbreak also put adjacent Beijing on alert, creating huge uncertainty and high possibility of a spillover as the source of the outbreak remains unknown. But epidemiologists assured that as long as rapid tracing of the origin of the new viral chain is conducted and effective measures are put in place, the outbreak is expected to be extinguished before China's Spring Festival and 2022 Winter Olympic Games, which are only few weeks away.

Tianjin reported on Sunday night another 20 people who tested positive for COVID-19, all from the city's Jinnan district. They were sent to hospitals for further diagnosis and treatment. It is not clear whether they were infected with the Omicron variant.

Tianjin discovered two locally transmitted cases involving the Omicron variant, which were identified among individuals who volunteered to be tested Saturday. A further 18 cases were found in a follow-up tests of high-risk groups. The Tianjin municipal government said the two cases were part of the same transmission chain, but are not linked with the imported Omicron case detected in December, 2021 in the city.

The two Omicron infected individuals had not travelled outside the city recently, and it remains unknown whether the other 18 residents are also carrying the Omicron variant.

Among the 20 infected people, 15 are children aged between 8 and 13. The cases are concentrated in Tianjin's Jinnan and Nankai districts. A residential building in a compound in Jinnan was designated as high-risk of transmissions while three other residential buildings in this compound and two buildings in another compound are medium-risk.

Tianjin on Sunday night required residents not leave the city unless necessary. Those who have to leave should have a negative nucleic acid test results valid in 48 hours and green health codes and seek approvals by their employers or communities.

The city also strengthened checks on resident traveling to Beijing by setting check points and special channels at highways and transportation stations.

Fight with Omicron

To ensure public safety and containing Omicron from spreading further, residents in the city are required to remain in place and undergo nucleic acid testing. The city-wide testing began at 7 am on Sunday morning and is expected to complete within 24 hours, according to a notice from the city's anti-epidemic command center.

As of Saturday night, Tianjin had quarantined 75,680 people. Among 70 environment tests, 14 were positive and two were detected in elevators within residential buildings.

Tianjin municipal government said on Sunday that it will update nucleic acid test information of fever clinics every two hours, which impressed netizens for the city's efficient and organized way in dealing with the outbreak.

The health code of residents who don't receive a nucleic acid test within 24 hours will be changed to orange, which means the person is restricted from entering public places, including subway and buses. Residents who have been vaccinated within the last 48 hours will not participate in the test, the command center confirmed.

The anti-epidemic command center said at an urgent meeting at wee hours Sunday, which also included city Party chief Li Hongzhong and mayor Liao Guoxun, that mass testing must be carried out rapidly to fulfill the responsibility of Tianjin as a "moat" for Beijing and contain the epidemic at the fastest speed and the lowest cost. Mass testing will allow officials to gain a better understanding of the current landscape and ensure the safety and health of residents, the command center said.

Based on the patients and viral transmission chain, the virus has spread across three generations among the newly confirmed 18 infections, suggesting the virus probably has circulated among the community for a certain period of time, Zhang Ying, a deputy director of the municipal health commission, said at a late press conference on Saturday night. More positive infections are expected to be uncovered, Zhang said.

Affected by the flare-up, subway lines one and six will be partially closed starting from Sunday. Tianjin Binhai International Airport has cancelled 144 flights.

Preparing for a potential lockdown, several Tianjin residents told the Global Times that people rushed to markets to snap up food. A resident surnamed Liu said that a supermarket near her home was full of people at 7 am on Sunday morning, with the queue stretching 200 meters.

Another resident surnamed Wang said most vegetables were sold out early on Sunday morning, and the delivery service for nearby market was suspended.

Liu said that although the outbreak came so suddenly, she appreciated the local government's swift response. She added that the overnight nucleic acid testing "assures people."

Tianjin's bureau of commerce issued a notice on Sunday saying that two districts of the city launched emergency plan to ensure market supply. Current vegetable stocks are enough to feed the city for three to four days; stock of rice, flour and edible oil in Tianjin are able to meet 30 days of demand.

The Global Times learned that two biggest universities in Tianjin, Tianjin University and Nankai University, both with branches in Jinnan district, where the latest cases were mostly found, have imposed restrictions on leaving and entering of their campuses. Tianjin University notified students on Sunday that it has postponed final examinations until next semester.

A Beijing-based immunologist told the Global Times that it's the first real battle against Omicron on the Chinese mainland as Omicron-infected domestically-transmitted cases were discovered in local communities for the first time, and that huge uncertainties exist as the source of the current outbreak remains unknown. He believes imported goods to be the likely source of infection. If the Omicron virus has spread three generations in the community, Tianjin's COVID-19 cases will increase rapidly and reach 100 soon, he said.

Speaking at a Saturday conference, Zhang Wenhong, a leading infectious disease expert in Shanghai said that it is groundless that some Chinese self-media are saying that the new variant is causing relatively minor symptomscompared to previous strains, and he also didn't agree that Omicron is just "enhanced influenza."

He said that after researching the medical imaging of the new variant, he felt safe to say that Omicron has fought human's immunological system and won.

The immunologist warned of the risks that the Tianjin outbreak would pose to Beijing, because of a large number of people who commute between the two cities.

Beijing on alert

The Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Sunday suggested people in Beijing do not visit Tianjin and those in Tianjin refrain from travelling to the capital. Commuters between Tianjin and Beijing, estimated around 100,000 as of 2020, are encouraged to work from home.

Anyone in Beijing who had visited Jinnan and Nankai districts of Tianjin since December 23, 2021 will be subject to home quarantine and be tested. Others who had travel history to Tianjin since the date mentioned above were asked to report to local community officials, employers and hotels immediately, the center said.

An employee from a nucleic acid testing point in Beijing's Chaoyang district told the Global Times that demand for testing had spiked on Sunday. A Beijing resident surnamed Liao who went to Tianjin last week told the Global Times that she volunteered to take a test after hearing what happened in Tianjin. "A negative test assures not only me, but my family and colleagues. I will stay at home for some days and won't cause trouble for the public."

Entry checkpoints from Tianjin to Beijing have implemented heightened epidemic inspection protocols. Commuters are being asked to contact their employers and communities and sign up a letter of commitment before they are allowed to enter Beijing. Many vehicles and people were persuaded to return. Some residents who returned to Beijing from Tianjin over recent days have been asked to quarantine at home. The inter-city train between Tianjin and Beijing is operating normally as of press time.

Apart from Tianjin, China has seen sporadic outbreaks in other cities and provinces. In total, 92 locally confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported on Saturday, scattered across Henan Province, the city of Xi'an, Ningbo and Shenzhen.

The coronavirus is more likely to cause an outbreak and infection during winter, that's why China is seeing more frequent outbreaks at the moment, Yang Zhanqiu, a deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University, told the Global Times.

Yang said that one thing for sure is that it is important to identify the source of an outbreak and time frame of infection as soon as possible. "As soon as the source and time of when the virus arrived in China are identified, larger scale of spillover can be controlled," he said.

The virologist said that city-wide nucleic acid testing is the quickest way to find cases and prevent further spreading. "The virus has four to five dormant days, number of confirmed cases will keep climbing in the future," said Yang, noting that it remains unknown how long the virus has been circulating in Tianjin, and it is possible it's already spilled over into other provinces.

Yet experts are confident about China's current dynamic zero-COVID strategy, saying that Beijing and other cities are on high alert in regard to Tianjin and flare-ups occurring elsewhere, and that the outbreak in Tianjin will not breach the capital.

"Now it is only three weeks away from China's Spring Festival, if we can pinpoint the source and take corresponding measures, the outbreak in Tianjin will be extinguished in time," Yang said.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Dave is an engaging Welshman I have known for over 40 years.

We used to play chess together when we both lived in the same big city where he still resides. Although my family and I left over 26 years ago, email, phone and occasional physical contact was maintained for many years. He would now have made about 75 trips around the sun.

Throughout his healthy, active life it seems he had always been employed in well-paid work, his job having taken him all over the world.

Everyone has forgettable history

Dave left his wife (mother of his 3 children) long ago, she being an extremely difficult, touchy, critical person. But even so, this did not send a good message to his children. Probably nor did she. He remarried, always maintaining a staunch atheistic mindset.

With his new wife he hiked and push-biked around many exotic parts of the world most of us will never see. Recently he returned to Wales to attend the funeral of a young mother aged 40 who had died of cancer. She left behind a grieving husband and 3 small children.

An angry email

In his anger he wrote to me out of the blue: if your god is all powerful then I do not want to know someone who can be so cruel.

Many years prior, the clergyman friend who had introduced me to Jesus, had said with a hint of regret that perhaps his greatest failing had been that he gave up on people too quickly.

A considered response

Having felt I had persevered with Dave long enough, after reflecting on his critical email excuse for doing nothing other than occasionally complaining about what he claimed was the unfairness of God, I decided to firmly (probably bluntly) respond.

I wrote back in part: for the atheist who only believes in what he can see, its probably better for you to simply believe that this is just a case of nature eating nature, so theres no-one to blame.

We want to blame someone

This dear ladys death was one of those heartbreaking, difficult-to-explain events that occasionally sadly takes place in our godless world.

As Dave had stubbornly (and illogically) maintained that he did not believe in the god he wanted to blame, he would have to blame the cruelty and unfairness of this premature death squarely on mindless evolution and its impersonal god, science.

Although he may have actually wanted to attack the personality of God rather than His existence, he could not have it both ways.

He wanted the good He gives but not the Giver

He had travelled the world and enjoyed all that the Creators hands have provided including his own amazing good health, the warmth of the sun and the life-giving rain. He had delighted in many foreign places, partaken of much local cuisine, and on and on it goes.

All taken for granted and never given thanks for. But the moment something goes horribly wrong, its the fault of the cruel god of the Bible.

As most of us have probably had someone ignore our very existence whilst in their close proximity, we know that not only is it a very aggressive thing to do but is also hurtful and painful.

This is what Dave has done all his life to the God Who loves him deeply, but he has disdainfully and ungratefully travelled around in Gods handiwork enjoying its benefits and pleasures.

There are many Daves in the world

Weve all met someone like Dave.

But: Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. (Hebrews chapter 11 verse 6).

Belief without proof?

Scoffers say that faith involves belief without proof and at one time so did I.

But the very existence, order and balance in the world, the incredible intricacy of the single cell, the formation of and the abilities within the human body and its complex parts (including the mystery and power of the brain), and the clockwork planetary precision of the heavens, individually and collectively constitute clear and compelling evidence which resoundingly refutes mindless randomness and chance, and deafeningly shouts: creation.

Survival of the fittest may (and probably does) account for just that: healthy survival, but can never convincingly explain to the searching human heart and mind the staggeringly profound commencement of life as the evolutionist blindly maintains.

That mysterious spark of life in the first heartbeat of the foetus defies mere human scientific explanation and reasoning.

A field examination!

Evolutionists maintain that the pursuing lioness chases down the sick, injured, slow, young or old prey thereby keeping the herd fit and strong. But the gazelles hooves may simply have slipped on the grass or it zigged when it should have zagged.

Whilst this suits their atheistic mindset, is there a recorded example anywhere of an incredibly brave evolutionist having wrenched the prey from the jaws of the hungry lioness so as to conduct a field examination of its age and state of health?

Refusal

Dave has refused to even consider (let alone put into practice) the following:

You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD. (Jeremiah chapter 29 verses 13/14). Jesus repeats this to us today: seek and you will find. (Matthew chapter 7 verse 7).

The unspoken opposite of Jesus words at the death of the unbeliever: I never knew you may have been: you never knew Me. In this sense man truly is the author of his own destiny.
Top Russian and US officials held a working dinner in Geneva on Sunday as part of the kickoff to a string of meetings in three European cities this week, with bilateral ties at a low ebb over Russia's military buildup near .

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and other Russian officials arrived in the evening for a meeting at the residence of the US ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, diplomatic officials said.

The luxury apartment overlooks Lake Geneva.

Ryabkov was meeting with US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and her team.

Earlier on Sunday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on state television that a first round of narrow-format talks on security would get underway during the day, according to Tass news agency.

The less formal Sunday talks come ahead of a broader discussion between the two diplomats and their teams at the US mission in Geneva starting Monday, a first step toward rekindling dialogue as ties have worsened because has deployed an estimated 1,00,000 troops along its border with . Concerns have risen about a broader Russian military incursion in the country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's government has laid out a list of demands, such as seeking guarantees that the NATO military alliance won't seek to expand any further eastward to countries like or Georgia, which are former Soviet republics.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ABC's "This Week on Sunday he didn't expect any breakthroughs in talks in the bilateral talks in Geneva or during conversations in Brussels, at a meeting of the NATO- Council, and at the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe in Vienna later this week.

The and other Western allies have pledged severe costs to if it moves against Ukraine.

The question really now is whether President Putin will take the path of diplomacy and dialogue or seeks confrontation," Blinken 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.)
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who held talks with Sri Lanka's top leadership on Sunday, has said that no "third country" should "interfere" in the close ties between Beijing and Colombo, in an apparent reference to India's concerns over Beijing's big-ticket strategic projects in the island nation in the Indian Ocean.

Wang, who travelled to Colombo during the weekend from the Maldives on a two-day visit, in his meeting with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa said that the friendly relationship between China and Sri Lanka benefits the development of both countries and serves the fundamental interest of both peoples, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

"It does not target any third party and should not be interfered with by any third party, Xinhua quoted Wang as saying, in a thinly veiled reference to India.

China is seeking to deepen its ties with Sri Lanka making billions of dollars of investments in ports and infrastructure projects amid criticism that they are debt traps.

China's takeover of the Hambantota port on 99 years' lease for USD 1.2 billion debt swap drew concerns over Beijing acquiring strategic assets far away from home by providing heavy loans and investment to smaller nations.

The Hambantota port together with Colombo port city project where China is building a new city with reclaimed land in the sea were viewed with concern, especially in India as Beijing seeks to increase its presence in the Indian Ocean.

There have been global concerns over debt traps and regional hegemony by China using its Belt and Road (BRI) infrastructure projects.

China is doling out huge sums of money for infrastructure projects in countries from Asia to Africa and Europe. The US' previous Donald Trump administration had been extremely critical of the BRI and was of the view that China's "predatory financing" is leaving smaller counties under huge debt endangering their sovereignty.

Last month, China suspended a project to install hybrid energy plants in three islands of Sri Lanka's north, citing security concern from a third party, amid reports of Indian concern over its location which is not far from Tamil Nadu's coast.

Significantly, Wang during his talks with the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G. L Peiris proposed to establish a forum for the development of Indian Ocean island countries, which observers say is an attempt by Beijing to expand its influence in the region.

During my visit to several Indian Ocean island countries this time, I feel that all island countries share similar experiences and common needs, with similar natural endowment and development goals, and have favourable conditions and full potential for strengthening mutually beneficial cooperation, a press release by the Chinese Foreign Ministry quoted Wang as saying.

"China proposes that a forum on the development of Indian Ocean island countries should be held at an appropriate time to build consensus and synergy and promote common development, he said, adding that Sri Lanka can play an important role in it.

Before his Colombo visit, Wang also visited the Maldives where he held talks with top leaders of the island nation to deepen ties with China.

Six island nations are located in the Indian Ocean, namely Comoros, Madagascar, the Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka.

In a tweet, the Chinese embassy in Colombo described Sri Lanka as "real Pearl" of the Indian Ocean.

In his meeting with Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, Wang praised him and described the Sri Lankan leader as an old friend to the Chinese people.

"You paid six visits to China when serving as Sri Lankan President...We hold this special friendship dear and this story will be enshrined in the history of China-Sri Lanka relations," Wang said.

Significantly, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who is the brother Mahinda Rajapaksa in his meeting with Wang raised Sri Lanka's deepening forex crisis and spiralling external debt and sought Beijing's assistance.

President Rajapaksa pointed out that it would be a great relief to Sri Lanka if attention could be paid to restructuring the debt repayments as a solution to the economic crisis that has arisen in the face of COVID-19 pandemic, according to a statement issued by the President's Office.

It is estimated that Sri Lanka owes debt payments to China in the region of USD 1.5 to 2 billion this year.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US hopes to thwart the China- alliance by mixing carrots and sticks to draw Tehran into a long-term dialogue on issues of concern to the US and its allies.

More dexterous towards Tehran should mix carrots and sticks to draw into a long-term dialogue on issues of concern to the and its allies, according to National Interest.

The policy implication of this view--if one accepts "strategic competition" as the guiding principle on China--is that the Biden administration should "test the opposite premise" of isolating Tehran, "by restoring nuclear diplomacy, lowering regional tensions, and forging new arrangements." Crucially, to accomplish this vision, a "fast timeline" of re-joining the 2015 deal is necessary--but far from sufficient, writes Lyes Mauni Jalali for the National Interest.

Earlier, Iran had completely pivoted towards its "Look to the East Policy" after the withdrawal of the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in May 2018 and imposition of new sanctions on Iran by Trump's Administration and after these developments Tehran lost hope to normalize relations with the West and marched eastward.

Jalali said that Iran's "Look to the East policy" strategy aims to strengthen Iran's strategic cooperation with Russia and .

On the other hand, incentives imply a rebuke of the policy of isolation. As it relates to Iran, economic integration (primary sanction relief) and political integration, in exchange for verifiable political ends should be the guiding diplomatic principle, according to National Interest.

Iran is also a pivotal player in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, and has a key cultural foothold in Afghanistan, notably amongst the Dari-speaking population (Afghan dialect of Persian) including the Hazaras (Persian-speaking and of Shiite faith), chipping away at Russia's cultural dominance of Central Asia.

(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.)
Vietnamese farmers and exporters could end up in major loss as Chinese buyers have stopped purchasing Vietnamese dragon fruit.

According to industry sources, some 300,000 tonnes of dragon fruit will be ready for harvest shortly, but there will be no customers since has clamped down its cross-border trading.

This has led to a decrease in dragon fruit prices in recent weeks.

With the northern provinces of Quang Ninh and Lang Son having both restricted at the border with due to containers pilling up, many Chinese buyers have stopped purchasing Vietnamese dragon fruit, Phan Van Tan, deputy director of Binh Thuan's Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, told a forum Thursday, reported VnExpress.

Every year, roughly 1.4 million tonnes of dragon fruit are produced in . The three provinces of Binh Thuan, Long An, and Tien Giang account for 80 per cent of the total but this time the farmers and exporters are troubled as they have no buyers.

Some exporters have stated that they have attempted to move items by sea, but that this is not a viable option because shipping costs have increased threefold since last year.

Dragon fruit exports to exceed that of 50 other markets, said Nguyen Khac Huy, CEO of Hoang Phat Fruit in Long An Province, reported VnExpress.

Notably, China has been the biggest buyer of Vietnamese agricultural produce and dragon fruit for years.

(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.)
Outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesperson and the militant group's most wanted commander Khalid Batli alias Mohammad Khurasani was killed in the eastern Nangarhar province of along the border with Pakistan, defence sources said on Monday.

Khurasani, the senior TTP commander, was involved in the killing of civilians and personnel of security forces in Pakistan.

He was killed in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, defence sources here said, without disclosing the details.

A senior security official confirmed Khurasani's death but refused to share details about the circumstances around the high-profile killing.

Khurasani, around 50, belonged to the Gilgit-Baltistan region and joined the extremist ranks in the Swat area of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province around 2007. He became close to the militant leader Mullah Fazlullah who later became chief of the TTP, according to the security official.

He was appointed spokesperson of the TTP in 2014 and since then played a key role in the militants' propaganda campaign.

Security sources said that he recently became active to unite various militant factions under the leadership of TTP chief Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud and he was frequently travelling to Kabul after the Taliban take over in August last year.

Earlier, he managed a terrorist hideout in North Waziristan tribal district of Khyber Pakthunkhwa but fled to during operation Zarb-i-Azab in 2014.

His killing comes in the wake of the breakdown of a month-long ceasefire between the TTP and the Pakistan army. The TTP had announced to halt all attacks from November 9, 2021 for one month.

Last week, Pakistan Army spokesman Maj Gen Babar Iftikhar said that the talks with the TTP ended after the banned group came up with certain conditions which were not acceptable,



"The ceasefire finished on December 9... Operations are going on against them (militant), he had said, adding that operations would continue until the menace of militancy was over.

(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 African nations will close their borders with Mali, sever diplomatic ties and impose tough economic sanctions in response to its "unacceptable" delay in holding following a 2020 military coup, the 15-state regional bloc said on Sunday.



The fresh measures from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) represent a significant hardening of its stance towards Mali, whose interim authorities have proposed holding in December 2025 instead of this February as originally agreed with the bloc.



In a communique issued after an emergency summit in the Ghanaian capital Accra, ECOWAS said it found the proposed timetable for a transition back to constitutional rule totally unacceptable.



This schedule "simply means that an illegitimate military transition government will take the Malian people hostage", ECOWAS added.



The organisation said it had agreed to impose additional sanctions with immediate effect. These included the closure of members' land and air borders with Mali, the suspension of non-essential financial transactions, the freezing of Malian state assets in ECOWAS commercial banks and recalling their ambassadors from Bamako.



Meanwhile, regional monetary union UEMOA instructed all financial institutions under its umbrella to suspend with immediate effect, severing the country's access to regional financial markets.



The Malian interim government said it was astonished by the decisions. In response, it vowed to close its side of the border with ECOWAS member states, recall its ambassadors, and reserve the right to reconsider its membership in ECOWAS and UEMOA.



"The government strongly condemns these illegal and illegitimate sanctions," it said in a statement read on state television by spokesperson Abdoulaye Maiga in the early hours of Monday, calling on Malians to remain calm.



They have previously blamed the election delay partly on the challenge of organising a democratically robust vote amid a violent Islamist insurgency.



TOUGHER RESPONSE



Special forces commander Assimi Goita was one of several colonels who overthrew Malian President Boubacar Ibrahim Keita in August 2020, after which the interim authorities promised an 18-month transition to civilian rule.



Goita staged a second in May 2021 when he pushed aside the interim president and took the job himself.



The tougher response from ECOWAS reflects the pressure the organisation is under to show it can protect democracy from a backslide to military rule after West and Central Africa saw four coups within 18 months.



The new measures will be gradually lifted only after an acceptable election timeframe is finalised and progress is made towards implementing it, ECOWAS said.



Under previous sanctions, Mali's ECOWAS membership is suspended and members of the transitional authority and their relatives are subject to travel bans and asset freezes.



Immediately after Keita was ousted, ECOWAS temporarily closed its borders with and halted financial flows - short-term sanctions that caused a sharp fall in imports to the landlocked country.



Mali's political upheaval has also deepened tensions with former colonial power France, which has thousands of soldiers deployed across West Africa's Sahel region to battle Islamist insurgents.

(Additional reporting by Ange Aboa; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky, Frances Kerry and Pravin Char)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Non-banking financial company Five Star Business Finance and solar energy player Waaree Energies have received capital regulator Sebi's go-ahead to raise funds through initial share-sales.

The two companies, which filed their preliminary IPO documents with between September and November, obtained its "observations" letter during January 3-7, an update with the regulator showed on Monday.

In parlance, issuance of observations letter implies to its go-ahead for the initial public offering (IPO).

Going by the draft papers, Five Star Business Finance, which is backed by bunch of investors like TPG, Matrix Partners, Norwest Ventures, Sequoia and KKR, is looking to raise up to Rs 2,752 crore through an IPO.

The IPO is a entirely an offer for sale by existing shareholders and promoter group entities.

The OFS will see sale of shares to the tune of Rs 257.10 crore by SCI Investments V, Rs 568.92 crore by Matrix Partners India Investment Holdings II LLC, Rs 9.56 crore by Matrix Partners India Investments II Extension LLC, Rs 385.65 crore by Norwest Venture Partners X- Mauritius, Rs 1,349.78 crore by TPG Asia VII SF Pte Ltd and Rs 180.93 crore by promoter group entities.

Currently, TPG Asia holds 20.99 per cent stake, Matrix Partners owns over 14 per cent, Norwest Venture has 10.22 per cent stake and SCI Investments holds 8.83 per cent stake in the company.

Chennai-headquartered Five Star Business Finance provides secured business loans to micro-entrepreneurs and self-employed individuals, each of whom are largely excluded by traditional financing institutions.

Waaree Energies' IPO comprises a fresh issue of equity shares of aggregating to Rs 1,350 crore and offer for sale (OFS) of 40,07,500 equity shares by existing shareholders and promoters.

The OFS consists of sale of 13,15,000 equity shares each by Hitesh Chimanlal Doshi, Virenkumar Chimanlal Doshi and Mahavir Thermoequip Pvt Ltd and up to 40,000 by Samir Surendra Shah and up to 22,500 equity shares by Nilesh Gandhi jointly with Drasta Gandhi.

The proceeds from fresh issuance worth Rs 978.36 crore and Rs 184.23 crore will be utilised to finance the cost of setting up a two gigawatts (GW) per annum solar cell manufacturing facility and a one GW per annum solar PV module manufacturing facility in Chikhli, Gujarat.

The remaining proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes.

Waaree Energies is one of the major players in the solar energy industry in India focused on PV module manufacturing, with an aggregate installed capacity of two GW as of March 31, 2021.

The company currently operates three manufacturing facilities comprising four factories in India at Surat, Tumb and Nandigram.

(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.)
Shares of One97 Communications, the parent company of digital payments major Paytm, hit a new low of Rs 1,181.10, down 4 per cent on the BSE in Mondays intra-day trade after global brokerage Macquarie maintained its underperform rating on the stock and reduced its target price (TP) to Rs 900.

The stock was trading at its lowest level since its market debut on November 18, 2021. It was quoting lower for the fifth straight trading day, having fallen 12 per cent in the last one week, as compared to a 1.8 per cent rise in the S&P BSE Sensex.

In the past one month, it has slipped 25 per cent, as against a 2.5 per cent gain in the benchmark index. The mandatory one-month lock-in period for anchor investors expired on December 15, 2021.

With today's slide, the market price of has fallen 45 per cent from its issue price of Rs 2,150 per share. The stock had hit a record high of Rs 1,961.05 on November 18, but has failed to touch its issue price post listing.

"Post the various business updates and results, we believe our revenue projections, particularly on the distribution side, is at risk and hence we pare down our revenue CAGR from 26 per cent to 23 per cent for FY21- 26E. We are roughly cutting revenue estimates for FY21-26E on an average by 10 per cent every year due to lower distribution and commerce/cloud revenues offset partially by higher payment revenues," Macquarie said in a stock update.

"We cut our earnings (increase our loss projections) by 16-27 per cent for FY22-25E owing to lower revenues and higher employee and software expenses. We cut our TP sharply by around 25 per cent owing to lower target multiple of 11.5x (Price to Sales ratio) (from 13.5x earlier) and lower sales numbers," the brokerage firm said.

The Reserve Bank of Indias proposed digital payments regulations could cap wallet charges. Payments business still forms 70 per cent of overall gross revenues for Paytm, and hence any regulations capping charges could impact revenues significantly. Add to that, Paytms foray into insurance was recently rejected by the insurance regulator Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA). We believe this could impact the company's prospects of getting a banking license, it said.
The key benchmark indices may look to consolidate at the start of the week, before the action heats up with Q3 earnings from the IT sector. As of 08:00 AM, the SGX Nifty January futures were quoted at 17,928 as against the spot Nifty close of 17,813 on Friday. Meanwhile, here are the for trade today.

Earnings Watch: 5 Paisa, Ganga Papers, GI Engineering , GNA Axles, Thambhi Modern Spinning and Vikas Lifecare are scheduled to announce December quarter results today.

Reliance (RIL): The Mukesh-Ambani led firm has spent $5.7 billion on acquisitions and investments across various sectors over the past four years, the latest being its acquisition last week of a majority stake in the luxury hotel Mandarin Oriental in New York for $98.2 million and a 25.8 per cent stake in Dunzo, a hyperlocal delivery platform, for $200 million. READ MORE



TCS: India's largest IT firms board plans to consider a share buyback proposal on January 12 when it meets to announce the Q3 results.

Meanwhile, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has also been selected to implement the second phase of the Passport Seva Program, the countrys largest mission critical e-governance programme till date. will be managing the project for another nine-and-a-half years, which can be extended for two more years. READ MORE



YES Bank, the largest shareholder in with a 25.6 per cent stake acquired by way of loan recovery, is planning to sell its holding to Tata Sky and Bharti Airtel. Other institutional investors, who jointly own 45 per cent in Dish TV, are also keen to sell their stake, according to banking sources. READ MORE Indias largest carrier IndiGo will cut 20 per cent of its flights due to lower demand as a rapidly spreading coronavirus upends the recovery of air travel. Meanwhile, other airlines are being forced to cancel flights as states tighten restrictions to combat the spread of the virus, and people are dropping last-minute travel plans. READ MORE The Uttar Pradesh Cabinet has approved a proposal to impound Rs 1,000 crore from Bajaj Hindusthans power plant in the state to pay sugarcane farmers. According to the amended UP Sugarcane (regulation of supply and purchase) Act 1953, government agencies can impound the assets of the group companies if any firm defaulted on the payment of sugarcane dues. READ MORE The company has fixed January 17 as the record date for demerger of its Domestic Wiring Harness business into Motherson Sumi Wiring India and merger of Samvardhana Motherson International, the resultant company.

Sunteck Realty: The company informed BSE, that it had 29 per cent QoQ jump in pre-sales to Rs 352 crore, and collections of Rs 270 crore, up 30 per cent on a QoQ basis.

Bharti Airtel: The telecom major on Friday said it will pay interest on the deferred spectrum and adjusted gross revenue (AGR) liabilities, and will not issue equity to the government. Airtel owes the government around Rs 1 trillion in spectrum and AGR dues as of now.

Spandana Sphoorty: The troubled microfinance institution (MFI) has sought forbearance and a waiver from its lenders as regards some conditions in agreements on borrowing funds. While it is servicing all borrowing, there has been a breach in certain covenants on account of a rise in non-performing assets (NPAs) and a change in management, the MFI said in a filing with the BSE. READ MORE



JSW Steel: Sajjan Jindal-led said it will be investing Rs 15,000 crore to expand capacity at its Vijayanagar facility in Karnataka for commissioning in FY24. Of the total six-million-tonne expansion planned, the new part of the project consists of 5 million tonnes and one million tonnes at the existing facility through optimisation.

Jindal Stainless: Ratings agency, Crisil Ratings has upgraded the long-term bank facilities ratings of Jindal Stainless to AA-/Stable from A+/Stable. The rating of JSLs short-term bank facilities have been reaffirmed at Crisil A1+.

Lupin: The drugmaker on Friday said it has launched antiviral medication Molnupiravir under the brand name Molnulup in India for the treatment of COVID-19. Molnupiravir has been given emergency use authorisation by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) for treatment of adult COVID-19 patients who have a high risk of progression of the disease, including hospitalisation.

SBC Exports: The companys board has approved proposals for 1:1 bonus shares and a stock split in 1:10 ratio.

HKG: The companys board is scheduled to meet on January 12 to consider proposals for bonus issue of equity shares, and migration of the company from SME Platform of BSE to the main board of BSE.

Stocks in F&O ban: Delta Corp and RBL Bank are the only two stocks in the F&O ban period today.
Green rooms will also operate from the residences of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, the sources said.

After the of India banned physical rallies till January 15 in the five poll-bound states due to a surge in (COVID-19) cases, the is gearing up to conduct virtual rallies.

According to sources, a green room will be set up at the party headquarters in Delhi, state capitals and several districts of the poll-bound states so that the leaders can virtually connect with the people.

Green rooms will also operate from the residences of and Rahul Gandhi, the sources said.

will also use social media platforms for its digital campaign. Twitter will be used to set the narrative from the latest data and Facebook and Instagram will be used on several issues. Live video content will be put up on social media platforms.

The sources stated that the party will pay special attention to the content of the digital rallies. The content will be new, attention-grabbing and energizing to engage the general public.

There is also a proposal to hold virtual 3D rallies of big leaders, which is yet to be finalized, the sources stated.

Congress will also use local culture, language and folk songs during the rallies to connect with the people.

The of India on Saturday, while announcing the dates for the voting in the five poll-bound states, directed that no physical political rallies and roadshows will be allowed till January 15 for the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa, Manipur and Uttarakhand in wake of the COVID-19 surge.

"No physical rally of political parties or probably candidates or any other group related to elections shall be allowed till January 15. The will subsequently review the situation and issue further instructions accordingly," Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sushil Chandra had said.

"No roadshows, padyatras, cycle or bike rallies and processions shall be allowed till January 15. Situation to be reviewed and fresh instructions to be issued later," the CEC said.

Uttar Pradesh will go to the polls in seven phases from Feb 10 to March 7; Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa to vote on February 14th and Manipur to vote on Feb 27 and March 3.

Counting of votes for the five poll-bound states will take place on March 10.

A total of 18.34 crore electors including service voters will take part in the upcoming Assembly elections in Goa, Punjab, Manipur, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh.

There are 403 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh, 70 seats are up for grabs in Uttarakhand, 117 seats in Punjab, 40 seats in Goa and 60 seats in Manipur.

Out of these 5 poll-bound states, the BJP is in power in 4 states including Goa, Manipur, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh.

(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.)
In a stock exchange filing last week, Malaysian healthcare group (IHH) said that US fund Emqore Envesecure Private Capital Trust (Emqore) has filed a lawsuit against it and other defendants at the US District Court of New Jersey.

IHH acquired a 31 per cent controlling stake in in 2018 following a prominent bidding war against domestic and international . Although this triggers a mandatory offer to bring its stake to 57 per cent by buying shares from the open market, this has not taken place due to legal proceedings pending in the Supreme Court of India.

IHH's takeover of Fortis has been challenged by Japanese drug maker in a bid to recover an arbitration award of INR 3,600 crore (USD 471 million) from the Fortis founders in a fraud claim. The next hearing is scheduled for February this year.

Emqore is seeking, among others, damages in excess of USD 6.5 billion comprising compensatory damages plus treble damages and attorneys' fees pursuant to the US Racketeer, Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Emqore's claim against IHH essentially arises from allegations relating to the issuance of the shares of Fortis to IHH's subsidiary in or around 2018.

Emqore broadly alleges that it has purportedly suffered losses as the defendants had allegedly conspired to frustrate a proposed share acquisition transaction between Fortis and Emqore's supposed predecessors.

The company said that it is not possible to determine the estimated potential liability to IHH arising from the suit, as it involves 28 named defendants and 20 non-party defendants.

However, it said that the suit is not expected to have any business, operational or financial impact on IHH, as IHH believes that it has strong grounds for dismissal of the suit.

IHH further said that it will defend vigorously against the claims, and added, "it has strong grounds for seeking dismissal of Emqore's claims and intends to file a Motion to Dismiss Emqore's Amended Complaint on 3 principal grounds, namely, lack of personal jurisdiction, forum non-conveniens, and failure to state a claim for relief."

Emqore had initially filed the lawsuit in June 2020. IHH was served in July last year with the original complaint and Emqore's motion to amend it. The motion had been pending adjudication until December 3, when Emqore's amended complaint was filed at the United States District Court.

Malaysian healthcare group IHH which is publicly listed both in Singapore and Malaysia runs a total of 33 hospitals in India.

On December 14 last year, it announced that its indirect wholly-owned subsidiary, Gleneagles Development Pte Ltd, completed the divestment of its entire 62.2 per cent equity stake Hyderabad-based Continental Hospitals Private Limited to D Gurunath Reddy and affiliates, its partner shareholder in Continental Hospitals.

IHH is the largest operator of private hospitals in Southeast Asia with 80 hospitals across 10 countries. Its key markets are Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey, India and Greater China (including Hong Kong).

In Turkey, it is the majority shareholder of Acibadem Healthcare Group, the largest Turkish private healthcare company. In Singapore it operates hospitals such as Gleneagles and Mount Elizabeth, and also runs the Parkway group of clinics, laboratory and diagnostic centres.

Gleneagles also manages several hospitals in the southern part of India including Bengaluru and Chennai. In Malaysia, IHH owns the International Medical University in Kuala Lumpur, the Pantai group of hospitals and the Prince Court Medical Centre.

The major shareholders of IHH are Mitsui of Japan, Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional and Citigroup of the US.

In the latest IHH results briefing for analysts on November 29, 2021, it reported sterling financial performance for Q3 with net income soaring 77 per cent to MYR 550 million (USD 131 million) compared with the same quarter in 2020. This was on the back of the steady return of patients to hospitals and the provision of COVID-19 support services. Revenue was up 26 per cent to MYR 4.4 billion (USD 1.05 billion) and EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) climbed 32 per cent to MYR 1.1 billion (USD 260 million).

For its India operations, revenue grew 41 per cent to MYR 977.2 million (USD 232 million) on contribution from COVID-19 related services and healthy recovery of non-COVID inpatient admissions. EBITDA increased 102 per cent to MYR 180.8 million. Inpatient admissions increased 29 per cent, revenue intensity increased 3.2 per cent as patients with more serious and urgent ailments sought treatment at its hospitals. For Q3 which ended in September, the average occupancy was at 66 per cent.

Last year, it reiterated its commitment to and India despite the ongoing legal case related to its takeover of Fortis.

"Growing in India remains a priority for IHH as it is one of our four home markets, together withMalaysia, Singapore and Turkey. We respect and have full faith in the judicial process in India and look forward to a favourable outcome so we can proceed with the open offer. This will allow IHH to further invest into Fortis to provide even more support to the Indian healthcare sector, especially in critical times like now with COVID-19," said CEO and Managing Director, Dr Kelvin Loh.

"Our focus, as the largest shareholder in Fortis, is to bring the best of our knowledge and expertise to help the Fortis leadership with the company's continued turnaround and to deliver even more trusted, quality care for all our patients in India.

(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.)
Anupam Rasayan India, a custom synthesis & speciality chemical firm, has signed a letter of intent (LoI) worth $95 million (i.e. Rs 700 crore) with a major multinational crop protection company to supply a new life science related active ingredient.

Anupam Rasayan India will enter into a long-term contract to supply this life science related speciality chemical product for the next five years. This new molecule is in addition to the existing product portfolio with this customer.

The speciality chemicals major is manufacturing products for over 66 domestic and international customers, including 23 multinational companies. The company has a long history of high customer retention and have been manufacturing products for select customers for over a decade. The company caters to a diverse base of Indian and global customers.

Anand Desai, the managing director (MD) of Anupam Rasayan India, has said: "We are very pleased to announce that this LoI is in line with our strategy of value re-engineering to manufacture high-value products for medium to large volumes and with the supply spanning over five years shows the confidence customers are reposing in Anupam Rasayan's multi-faceted capability and this LoI further expands our high-value product portfolio with major global players."

"This is one more feather in Anupam's cap as in this financial year till date we have signed LoIs worth Rs 1,800 crore and contracts worth Rs 820 crore; taking the total contracts/ LoIs signed in this financial year to Rs 2,620 crore. These orders demonstrate firm revenue visibility for growth in the coming years through the commercialisation of new molecules."

On a consolidated basis, the company reported 37.2% rise in net profit to Rs 36.05 crore on 13.3% increase in revenue from operations to Rs 248.92 crore in Q2 FY22 over Q2 FY21.

Shares of Anupam Rasayan India rose 0.57% to Rs 1,031.55 on BSE. Anupam Rasayan India is one of the leading companies engaged in the custom synthesis (CSM) and manufacturing of specialty chemicals in India.

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Anupam Rasayan India has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) worth $95 million (Rs 700 crore as per the current exchange rate) with one of the top ten multinational crop protection company for supplying a new life science related active ingredient.

The company will enter into a long-term contract to supply this life science related speciality chemical product for the next five years. This new molecule is in addition to the existing product portfolio with this customer.

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GTPL Hathway rose 11.34% to Rs 299.50 after the company said it partnered with Aprecomm to bring innovation to customer experience with network intelligence.

GTPL Hathway announced an investment in innovative technology to remotely optimise its residential WiFi connections through a partnership with Aprecomm.

Aprecomm offers cloudbased automated solutions to enhance WiFi performance. Its patented technology helps in automatically and proactively troubleshooting WiFi issues.

The unique A.I. (artifical intelligence) technology will help GTPL bring down the customer issue resolution time and enhance the customer experience on its network of more than 700K connected broadband households.

Aprecomm's A.I. engine allows GTPL to convert its household connections to A.I. enabled smart WiFi access points. Additionally, the technology offers proactive monitoring and measuring of the wireless experience of the connected devices and provides realtime insights to improve the reliability and performance of the network.

Speaking on the development, Anirudhsinh Jadeja, managing director, GTPL Hathway, said: "The partnership with Aprecomm will aid us in our efforts to ensure the best experience for our broadband consumers with a faster and proactive resolution of potential issues."

"The measurable improvements offered by the integration between GTPL and Aprecomm also lead to lower maintenance costs and improved customer satisfaction for one of the country's fastest growing ISPs."

GTPL Hathway is the 2nd largest MultiService Operator (MSO) in India providing digital cable TV and the 6th largest private wireline broadband service provider in India.

On a consolidated basis, GTPL Hathway's net profit fell 4.5% to Rs 43.08 crore on 3.5% rise in revenue from operations to Rs 595.94 crore in Q2 FY22 over Q2 FY21.

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Jyoti rose 7.67% to Rs 15.58 after the company said it has done one-time settlement of Rs 1.35 crore with Technology Development Board, New Delhi.

Jyoti said it has given six equal monthly installments in post dated cheques starting from 14 January 2022.

The reason for settlement is that the company has taken part funding under indigenous technology for wind turbine project from Technology Development Board, which has been shelved long time back.

Now the company offered a one time settlement amount for remaining balance amount, which Technology Developed Board has accepted.

Jyoti said it has sufficient liquidity to pay the six monthly installments.

On a consolidated basis, Jyoti reported net loss of Rs 3.05 crore in Q2 September 2021 as against net profit of Rs 0.04 crore in Q2 September 2020. Net sales rose 10.87% to Rs 27.03 crore in Q2 September 2021 over Q2 September 2020.

The Jyoti Group of companies is a conglomeration of industrial units involved in manufacturing and marketing a wide range of electrical and hydraulic engineering equipment used extensively in the vital sectors of national and international economy.

Jyoti is engaged in manufacturing of engineering goods, and manufactures and markets a range of electrical and hydraulic engineering equipment.

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One97 Communications (Paytm) fell 3.71% to Rs 1,186.20, extending its losing streak to fifth consecutive trading session.

Shares of the Paytm have declined 11.45% in five trading sessions from its previous closing low of Rs 1339.60 posted on 3 January 2022. The counter has fallen 39.5% from its 52-week high of Rs 1961.05 hit on 18 November 2021. The stock hit an all time low of Rs 1,185 in intraday today.

Selling emerged after a foreign brokerage reportedly initiated coverage on the scrip with an 'Underperform' rating and a price target of Rs 900. The brokerage house said that it sees "no sign of headwinds abating". The target price is a 25% lower from current levels.

Earlier this month, insurance regulator IRDAI rejected Paytm's proposed buyout of general insurance company RahejaQBE. The rejection is likely to hamper investment plans of several domestic and multinational insurance companies.

The stock entered the bourses on 18 November 2021. It was listed at Rs 1955, a discount of 9.07% compared with the initial public offer (IPO) price of Rs 2150. The counter has declined nearly 45% from its IPO price.

The IPO of Paytm was subscribed 1.89 times. The issue opened for bidding on 8 November and it closed on 10 November. The price band of the IPO was fixed at Rs 2080 to Rs 2150 per share.

Paytm is one the largest payments platform in India based on the number of consumers, number of merchants, number of transactions and revenue ended March 2021. The company launched Paytm in 2009, as a mobile-first digital payments platform to enable cashless payments for customers giving them the power to make payments from their mobile phones. It started with bill payments and mobile top-ups as the first use cases, and Paytm Wallet as the first Paytm Payment Instrument.

The company reported consolidated net loss of Rs 473.50 crore in Q2 FY22, higher than net loss of Rs 436.70 crore in Q2 FY21. Net sales jumped 63.64% to Rs 1086.40 crore in Q2 FY22 over Q2 FY21. Pre-tax loss stood at Rs 471.50 crore in Q2 FY22, higher than pre-tax loss of Rs 428.30 crore in Q2 FY21. Revenue growth was driven by 52% growth in non-UPI payment volumes (GMV) and more than three times growth in financial services and other revenue.

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Rama Steel Tubes was locked in an upper-circuit of 5% at Rs 455.15 after its step-down subsidiary, RSTIL signed an annual contract with Huihai Group, Hong Kong to supply 15,000 MT of specialty steel SKUs per annum in Nigeria.

RST lndustries (RSTIL) signed a new annual contract with Huihai Group, Hong Kong for procuring 15,000 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) with an exclusive arrangement for Nigeria. This contract has exclusive arrangement with Rama Steel Tubes (RSTL) specifically for procurement and supply of 15,000 MTPA of specialized steel SKUs in Nigeria.

Meanwhile, in a separate announcement, RSTL stated that it is setting up a manufacturing facility of 20,000 MTPA at its step-down subsidiary, RSTIL in Nigeria, West Africa.

RSTIL has already commenced the expansion exercise for setting up the proposed facility in Nigeria, the expansion is expected to be completed in two tranches and will be fully operational by August 2022 and expects to operate at full capacity by Q3 FY23.

This additional capacity is mainly aimed at expanding its current repertoire of SKUs to include roofing sheets. The total capital outlay for this expansion will be Rs 20 crore and will be funded through a mix of internal accruals and partially through debt.

The company's consolidated net profit surged to Rs 7.09 crore in the quarter ended September 2021 as against Rs 3.45 crore during the previous quarter ended September 2020. Sales rose 48.57% YoY to Rs 192.99 crore in Q2 FY22.

The scrip hit an all-time high at Rs 455.15 during intraday trade. Rama Steel Tubes is a manufacturer of steel tubes. The company has 20% exports rate, with a global presence in more than 16 countries.

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has shut down its Tizen app store for both its new and existing users.

According to GSMArena, the company closed registrations and made the store available only to existing users and they could only get previously downloaded apps.

After December 31, 2021, the Tizen app store was permanently closed and Z series smartphone users were suggests to switch over to Android or iOS

Despite completely switching to Android for its phones and Wear OS for its smartwatches, recently unveiled its new smart TVs recently and they are still running Tizen OS.

Tizen OS for smart TVs is quite feature-rich and offers a collection of all popular audio and video streaming services.

It even integrates Samsung Health, SmartThings, Samsung TV Plus, and various other gaming features.

--IANS

wh/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.)
Swedish audio brand Urbanista has forayed into the Indian market and aims to have around 5 per cent of the market share in the premium headphones and TWS (True Wireless Stereo) segments by the end of this year.

The company, which has a presence in more than 90 countries around the world and more than 30,000 global stores, is aiming to have a slice of the headphones and earphones market, a segment now growing faster after the pandemic.

The company, as part of its retail strategy, is focusing both on online and offline channels and expects its products available at 500 stores by end of March 2022 including tier II cities.

"We would like to do around 5 per cent of the premium organised segment of headphones and TWS by end of this year 2022," Urbanista India Brand Head Vijay Kannan told PTI.

The headphone and earphone industry in India has been growing at a CAGR of 9 per cent pre-pandemic and holds strong expected growth at a CAGR of 7 per cent going forward, he said adding this makes it an even more interesting market for Urbanista.

"India today stands at a whopping USD 11 billion of headphones and earphones market, which is already one of the largest in the world," Kannan added.

Urbanista combines high-quality audio engineering with Sweden design inspired by the urban life of global popular cities.

It has introduced its range of products in India including its Urbanista Los Angeles, the world's first and only solar-powered headphones, which give users freedom from charging, and Urbanista Lisbon, the world's smallest TWS earbuds.

"We are currently available in tier I cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and will be foraying into tier II cities including Ahmedabad, Pune, Chennai, Jaipur and Hyderabad by the end of January 2022. We foresee to have around 100 retail stores who will be selling Urbanista products by the end of January 2022 and 500 stores by the end of March 2022, said Kannan.

Besides, Urbanista products are also available in all major online marketplaces.

Urbanista CEO Anders Andreen said: We are very excited to introduce our products to the Indian market. Urbanista is a Sweden brand with an international focus that gets inspiration from the world's greatest cities through fashion, design, music and urban culture. With India being the mobile capital of the world, we believe our brand and products will resonate well with the Indian people.

Urbanista's products are designed in Sweden and manufactured at its global plants in Sweden and China.

(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 ubiquitous foot-soldiers of Indias thriving are discontented. Were talking about your Ola/ Uber cab drivers and Swiggy/ Zomato delivery partners. Some of them are now tasked with delivering your bread and milk in just 10 minutes! But as a recent report by the Fairwork Foundation, in collaboration with the Oxford Internet Institute has found the earnings of these app-based platform workers or gig workers in India have declined over the last two years. Thats owing to the withering of incentives offered by and a reduction in take-home earnings due to a surge in out-of-pocket expenses. The Fairwork India Ratings 2021: Labour Standards in the Platform Economy, now in its third year of publication, serves as an indictment of the work conditions for this growing class of unorganised workers. This year, the report ranks 11 Indian startups which engage contract gig workers. It scores them out of 10, based on their performance against five principles, namely: Fair Pay, Fair Conditions, Fair Contracts, Fair Management and Fair Representation. Notably, Olas score has come down from 2/10 in 2020 to zero in 2021. This is, at a time, when it has become notoriously difficult to get a cab driver to accept your ride request on Ola platform. Uber has also slipped from one to zero. And Urban Company, which topped the list in 2020 with a stellar score of 8/10, has slipped three-points to five. We reached out to Ola, Uber and Urban Company to understand the reasons behind the fall in their scores, but didnt receive any responses. So, we asked the lead investigator for Fairwork in India, Professor Balaji Parthasarathy. The decline in Urban Companys score has coincided with ongoing protests by its beauticians. The first protest was in October last year, as beauticians complained against Urban Companys commissions of up to 30%-35% per job. Urban Company responded with some concessions, one of them being reducing its highest commission for beauty service professionals to 25% from 30%. However, last month, Urban Companys beauticians again held a protest outside the companys Gurugram office. Their complain was about new work policies, which would have beauticians pay a subscription fee upfront to get gigs through Urban Companys portal. Beauticians would also have to take a minimum number of jobs each month, thus reducing their gig work flexibility.

This time, Urban Company responded to the protest by suing the protesting beauticians. This remains the first such instance of an Indian gig company suing its own workers.

At the heart of the growing discontent with gig work is the fact that this new model of work hasnt lived up to its core promises. Startups in the ride-hailing and food delivery sectors attracted their first bunch of gig workers with the promises of good pay and work flexibility. By paying these workers per task or gig, did away with the burden of having to provide them with social security and other standard employee benefits.

However, wages have reduced over time, and gig work has become a permanent gig for Ola/Uber cab drivers and Swiggy/ Zomato delivery partners. Several testimonies in the Fairwork reports over the last three years highlight how most workers have to work 12-16 hours to make ends meet. And yet, they enjoy little in terms of social security that any employee would get.

A PIL in the Supreme Court by the Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Workers (IFAT) seeks the classification of gig and platform workers as unorganised workers under the Unorganised Workers Act, 2008. This would entitle them to benefits such as provident fund, health and maternity benefits and old age protection.

This, even as the Centre has come up with the Code on Social Security which recognises gig and platform workers.

A counter-view to the criticism of gig work conditions in the Indian platform economy, is that the ecommerce sector is yet to mature. To expect this nascent space to provide better pay and all kinds of insurance to unskilled gig workers, who run in lakhs per company, is a bit too much.

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With the worst most likely behind it, the bruised looked poised to regain some of its vitality. While some sectors were still nursing the pandemic wounds, others were able to scrape through. On Friday, the government projected growth in real GDP during 2021-22 at 9.2%, compared to a contraction of 7.3% in 2020-21. Gig economy made itself known during the pandemic. And it also brought the spotlight on the working conditions of those who work on contract. Last month, the European Union brought a proposal to give all the rights being enjoyed by permanent workers to these gig workers. Back in India, the recent Fairwork ratings highlighted how well or poorly these workers of unorganised sectors were being treated by companies. After the gig economy, let us see what is happening on Dalal Street. Equity markets are beginning to turn volatile as profit-making at higher levels is capping the upsides.

Last week, the Sensex and Nifty added over 1% each, supported by healthy buying in banking counters. Our next report delves into the market trajectory for this week, key events that will guide the sentiment, and trading strategies for investors. For markets and investors, contingency is a potentially negative event which may occur in future, like recession or pandemic. And they prepare for it in advance, just like most of us. We maintain an emergency fund to deal with a job loss or any medical emergency. The governments also do it. Our Constitution has a provision for a contingency fund. The corpus of this fund is always kept intact. Let's look at how it works and more in these episode of the podcast.
Article 267 of the Constitution mandates formation of a corpus under Contingency Fund of India to deal with any emergency situation. It is an imprest placed at the disposal of the President of India.

Government cannot withdraw funds from it without authorization of the Parliament. And the corpus has to be replenished with the same amount later.

It is one of the three categories in which the central government accounts are kept based on the constitutional requirement. The other two are Consolidated Fund of India and the Public Account. We had explained Consolidated Fund of India in the decoded section of our previous episode.

In government accounts, the Contingency Fund has a single Major Head to accommodate all transactions of the fund. It is placed at the disposal of the President, who releases the funds on request of the Union Cabinet at a time when there is a crisis, such as a natural disaster.

Any expenditure incurred from this fund requires a subsequent authorisation from the Parliament.

The Union ministry holds the fund on behalf of the President. And the fund size is enhanced from time to time by the government. In 2005, the corpus of the fund was raised from Rs 5 crore to Rs 500 crore.

And in the last Union Budget, the government enhanced the Contingency Fund of India from Rs 500 crore to Rs 30,000 crore through the Bill 2021.

The fund can be increased through a Bill when the Parliament is in the session. Or through Ordnance if the House is not in session and situation warrants. Withdrawal from the fund takes place with the approval of the Secretary of Department of Economic Affairs, in terms of the Contingency Fund of India Act, 1950.

While increasing the corpus last year, the government also conferred more powers to the Expenditure Secretary in dealing with the fund.

An amount equivalent to 40% of the corpus has now been placed at the disposal of the Expenditure Secretary. All further Contingency Fund releases beyond this limit will require the approval of the Expenditure Secretary in addition to the Economic Affairs Secretarys approval.
Arch Pharmalabs Ltd., India, announced the signing of a Technology Access & Services Agreement with Orochem Technologies Inc., USA, on an exclusive basis. The Agreement allows Arch to collaborate with Orochem for using Orochems proprietary Simulated Moving Bed (SMB) platform for Pharmaceutical and other applications.

Simulated Moving Bed (SMB) technology is a highly engineered process for implementing chromatographic separation. It is used to separate one chemical compound or one class of chemical compounds from one or more other chemical compounds to provide significant quantities of the purified or enriched material, more cost effectively than obtained using simple (batch) chromatography. SMB Technology provides for the highest purities of industrial or metric ton scale purification for APIs, nutritional supplements, fatty acids, and specialty sugars.



Ajit Kamath, Chairman & Managing Director, Arch Pharmalabs Ltd. commented, We are extremely excited with the technology collaboration we have signed with Orochem Technologies Inc. for use of their proprietary SMB process, under license to us for various applications. Orochem Technologies Inc. is based in Naperville, Illinois, USA, and has been a pioneer in large scale chromatographic purification of small and large molecules for the pharma and nutraceutical industry. The partnership with Orochem provides Arch Pharmalabs vast opportunities for separation and purification of various small molecule Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients from its three USFDA approved facilities in India. It also allows Arch Pharmalabs to collaborate with other pharmaceutical companies to conduct contract manufacturing of APIs at its Vitalife facility in Gurgaon. We look forward to this association with Orochem and expand the applications of their proprietary platform and offer unique solutions to the pharma industry worldwide.



Dr. Asha Oroskar, CEO of Orochem Technologies Inc. commented, We are very pleased with this new partnership with Arch Pharmalabs. Over the past 25 years Orochem Technologies Inc. has been successful in commercializing the SMB Chromatography Technology around the world. Applications include: Omega-3, Phospholipids, Sugars, Active Pharma Ingredients, Proteins etc. from Kilo to ton scale. Orochem Technologies has over 20 US Patents covering SMB applications in various fields. Orochems Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Anil Oroskar is world renowned expert in SMB Technology with over 100 US patents. This partnership with Arch Pharmalabs establishes an expert skill center for SMB Technology Development at Arch Pharmalabs Vitalife Facility in Gurgaon, India. The commercialization of the SMB Technology allows Worldwide Pharma and Nutraceutical Industry an avenue to shorten product development cycle time for new and generic active ingredients.



Arch Pharmalabs Ltd., is a Mumbai Headquartered company based in India. Arch has multiple USFDA approved facilities with multiple chemistry capabilities from kilogram to multi-ton scale. Arch has been at the forefront of attracting and practicing path-breaking technologies, in the field of manufacturing of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients and Intermediates. Arch has been manufacturing, commercially, various import substitute and complex intermediates covering, but not limited to, blockbuster drugs like Atorvastatin, Rosuvastatin, Ursodexycholic Acid etc. Recently it has also diversified into Lithium compounds.



Orochem Technologies Inc., is a privately owned company registered in Naperville, Illinois, USA, since 1996. Its subsidiary Orochem India is based in Mumbai, India. Orochem specializes in chromatography products and services covering lab products to commercial scale SMB products.
Santhosh George Varghese - Leader For Professional Services at DevOps Enabler & Co. said

One of the recent milestones DevOps Enabler & Co. has attained is the Microsoft Gold DevOps and Cloud Platform competency in the third quarter of 2021. For the past six years, we developed strong and strategic partnerships with some of the worlds leading tech entities to help us provide the best solutions to our clients,
 Acquisition Adds Adaptates Novel Antibody-based  T-cell Engager Platform to Takedas Immuno-oncology Portfolio Built Around the Innate Immune System

 Successful Multi-year R&D Partnership Results in Takedas Third Oncology Build-to-Buy Acquisition Announced in Less Than a Year

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (TSE:4502/NYSE:TAK) (Takeda) today announced the exercise of its option to acquire Adaptate Biotherapeutics (Adaptate), a UK company focused on developing antibody-based therapeutics for the modulation of variable delta 1 (V1) gamma delta () T cells. Through the acquisition, Takeda will obtain Adaptates antibody-based  T cell engager platform, including pre-clinical candidate and discovery pipeline programs. Adaptates  T cell engagers are designed to specifically modulate  T cell-mediated immune responses at tumor sites while sparing damage to healthy cells.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220110005102/en/

The planned acquisition of Adaptate follows Takedas recently exercised option to acquire GammaDelta Therapeutics (GammaDelta) and is intended to further accelerate the development of innovative  T cell-based therapies. Combining GammaDeltas cell therapy-based platform and Adaptates antibody-based  T cell engager platform with Takedas strong research and development organization positions Takeda to be at the leading edge in deploying the full potential of  T cells in the fight against cancer. The planned acquisition complements Takedas ongoing efforts to research and develop cell engagers for solid tumor applications, bolstered by the novel T cell engager COBRA platform, which was acquired from Maverick Therapeutics in another successful build-to-buy collaboration.

Partnering with early-stage innovators to access cutting-edge platforms in the fight against cancer is at the center of our R&D strategy, said Christopher Arendt, Ph.D., Head of Oncology Cell Therapy and Therapeutic Area Unit of Takeda. Adaptates  T cell engager platform and the teams deep understanding of  T cell biology gives us an opportunity to develop a new class of therapeutics that tap into powerful innate immune mechanisms. The planned acquisition will strengthen our immuno-oncology R&D efforts as part of our ongoing pursuit of life-transforming medicines for patients with cancer.

Adaptate was formed in 2019 as a spin-out company from GammaDelta with investment from Abingworth LLP and Takeda, in which Takeda received an exclusive right to purchase Adaptate for a pre-negotiated upfront payment. The acquisitions of Adaptate and GammaDelta are expected to be finalized in Q1 of Takedas fiscal year 2022, pending completion of review under applicable antitrust laws, including the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 in the U.S.

Our acquisition by Takeda recognizes the tremendous work put in over the last two years by Adaptates incredibly talented team, said Dr. Natalie Mount, CEO of Adaptate. We have rapidly demonstrated, in preclinical models, the therapeutic potential of our novel V1-targeting antibodies, and this move brings us an exciting step closer to realizing the full potential for V1 T cell targeted therapies to improve treatment outcomes for cancer patients.

In addition, Tim Haines, Chair & Managing Partner at Abingworth noted, Having played an instrumental role in creating Adaptate, we are delighted to see the impressive developments of its  T cell therapeutic antibody portfolio to date, under the leadership of Natalie Mount. We look forward to seeing Takeda progress Adaptates very promising therapeutic antibodies into the clinic.

Takedas oncology pipeline focuses on novel strategies that leverage the power of the immune system, with a focus on innate immunity. Innate immune responses serve as the bodys first defense mechanism against disease and involve the orchestration of a broad arsenal of mechanisms and cell types, including  T cells and natural killer (NK) cells, that may help to overcome cancers ability to evade immune recognition. Adaptate has discovered a unique set of antibodies that selectively modulate  T cell activity in the tumor microenvironment. The antibodies provide a precisely targeted signal to the immune system, thereby offering the opportunity for superior efficacy and safety compared to conventional immuno-oncology approaches in solid tumors.

Takedas Commitment to Oncology

Our core R&D mission is to deliver novel medicines to patients with cancer worldwide through our commitment to science, breakthrough innovation and passion for improving the lives of patients. Whether its with our hematology therapies, our robust pipeline, or solid tumor medicines, we aim to stay both innovative and competitive to bring patients the treatments they need. For more information, visit www.takedaoncology.com

About Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (TSE: 4502/NYSE: TAK) is a global, values-based, R&D-driven biopharmaceutical leader headquartered in Japan, committed to discover and deliver life-transforming treatments, guided by our commitment to patients, our people and the planet. Takeda focuses its R&D efforts on four therapeutic areas: Oncology, Rare Genetics and Hematology, Neuroscience, and Gastroenterology (GI). We also make targeted R&D investments in Plasma-Derived Therapies and Vaccines. We are focusing on developing highly innovative medicines that contribute to making a difference in peoples lives by advancing the frontier of new treatment options and leveraging our enhanced collaborative R&D engine and capabilities to create a robust, modality-diverse pipeline. Our employees are committed to improving quality of life for patients and to working with our partners in healthcare in approximately 80 countries and regions. For more information, visit https://www.takeda.com.

Important Notice

For the purposes of this notice, press release means this document, any oral presentation, any question-and-answer session and any written or oral material discussed or distributed by Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (Takeda) regarding this release. This press release (including any oral briefing and any question-and-answer in connection with it) is not intended to, and does not constitute, represent or form part of any offer, invitation or solicitation of any offer to purchase, otherwise acquire, subscribe for, exchange, sell or otherwise dispose of, any securities or the solicitation of any vote or approval in any jurisdiction. No shares or other securities are being offered to the public by means of this press release. No offering of securities shall be made in the United States except pursuant to registration under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or an exemption therefrom. This press release is being given (together with any further information which may be provided to the recipient) on the condition that it is for use by the recipient for information purposes only (and not for the evaluation of any investment, acquisition, disposal or any other transaction). Any failure to comply with these restrictions may constitute a violation of applicable securities laws.

The companies in which Takeda directly and indirectly owns investments are separate entities. In this press release, Takeda is sometimes used for convenience where references are made to Takeda and its subsidiaries in general. Likewise, the words we, us and our are also used to refer to subsidiaries in general or to those who work for them. These expressions are also used where no useful purpose is served by identifying the particular company or companies.

Takeda Forward-Looking Statements

This press release and any materials distributed in connection with this press release may contain forward-looking statements, beliefs or opinions regarding Takedas future business, future position and results of operations, including estimates, forecasts, targets and plans for Takeda. Without limitation, forward-looking statements often include words such as targets, plans, believes, hopes, continues, expects, aims, intends, ensures, will, may, should, would, could anticipates, estimates, projects or similar expressions or the negative thereof. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions about many important factors, including the following, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements: the economic circumstances surrounding Takedas global business, including general economic conditions in Japan and the United States; competitive pressures and developments; changes to applicable laws and regulations, including global health care reforms; challenges inherent in new product development, including uncertainty of clinical success and decisions of regulatory authorities and the timing thereof; uncertainty of commercial success for new and existing products; manufacturing difficulties or delays; fluctuations in interest and currency exchange rates; claims or concerns regarding the safety or efficacy of marketed products or product candidates; the impact of health crises, like the novel coronavirus pandemic, on Takeda and its customers and suppliers, including foreign governments in countries in which Takeda operates, or on other facets of its business; the timing and impact of post-merger integration efforts with acquired companies; the ability to divest assets that are not core to Takedas operations and the timing of any such divestment(s); and other factors identified in Takedas most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F and Takedas other reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, available on Takedas website at: https://www.takeda.com/investors/reports/sec-filings/ or at www.sec.gov. Takeda does not undertake to update any of the forward-looking statements contained in this press release or any other forward-looking statements it may make, except as required by law or stock exchange rule. Past performance is not an indicator of future results and the results or statements of Takeda in this press release may not be indicative of, and are not an estimate, forecast, guarantee or projection of Takedas future results.

About Adaptate Biotherapeutics

Adaptate Biotherapeutics is an immunotherapy company developing an innovative portfolio of therapeutic antibodies designed to modulate the activity of a patients own cytotoxic gamma delta T cells in situ. Our exquisitely targeted approach offers the potential to safely and effectively address the challenges often encountered by current cancer immunotherapies.

Adaptate Biotherapeutics spun-out from GammaDelta Therapeutics in late 2019. The Company has received investment from Abingworth LLP and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited with support from Kings College London, the Francis Crick Institute and Cancer Research Technology.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220110005102/en/
Inuit hunter Nanook prepares to throw his harpoon in 'Nanook of the North' (1922), a film hailed as one of the first full-length documentaries. The rarely screened movie, directed by Robert Flaherty, will be shown with live music by Jeff Rapsis on Sunday, Jan. 23 at 2 p.m. at the Town Hall Theatre, 40 Main St., Wilton. Admission is free, with a suggested donation of $10 per person to help defray expenses. For more information, call 603-654-3456 or visit www.wiltontownhalltheatre.com.
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Carroll, IA (51401)

Today

Rain likely. Low 39F. Winds NNE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low 39F. Winds NNE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
Photo: Nathan VanderKlippe

A wet and upset-looking coyote was rescued from Richmonds Iona Beach Regional Park after it was reported injured on Sunday afternoon.

Nathan VanderKlippe, who was on the Iona beach jetty, took to Twitter to give the public a minute-by-minute update of the rescue.

The drenched coyote was first spotted sitting on the rocks, next to the water, on the north side of the Iona jetty in a couple photos posted by VanderKlippe.

First came the critter rescue people. A barefoot rescue attempt was made, reads VanderKlippes post.

However, the coyote had burrowed beneath the rocks when rescuers came with a cage.

The Canadian Coast Guard was called in and arrived in a hovercraft to help with the rescue.

According to VanderKlippe, the coyote had a broken leg and was not keen to emerge from its shelter possibly because of the rescuers, gathering crowds and the hovercraft.

The coyote was eventually rescued and taken away by the hovercraft.

Now the coyote is off to wherever rescued coyotes go, said VanderKlippe.

The Richmond News has reached out to the Canadian Coast Guard for comment.
As a long-time resident of Kelowna, I am not happy with our current city council.

It seems to me big money developers, corporations and/or big government come into our city and lean on our current mayor and rubber-stamp councillors (Charlie Hodge being the lone exception) and basically get what they want. Long-time residents and seniors be dammed.

I realize Kelowna will grow and that is just progress but when multiple 30- to 40-storey towers are proposed and approved all over town, maybe it's time to slow this down and look at what we are building and the kind of city we are going to end up with.

Our city is going to be Vancouver 2.0 the way we are being governed and I, for one, don't like it or want to live in a city like Vancouver.

What is wrong with a more European-looking city with five to six storey storeys maximum and some interesting architecture? Victoria comes to mind.

Part of the problem we have with our current city council is that the councillors do not represent any particular area in the city, so when a project is proposed residents do not have the option of contacting their neighbourhood elected representative in that area and expressing their opinions.

If the elected representative was from that particular area, (he or she) would be accountable to his or her constituents.

The current city council (system) may have worked well when Kelowna was a small town and there was more community and interaction from local politicians and the public but things have changed and big money (now) trumps "little people".

It's time we have elected officials on our city council who we voted for who represents our interests in our neighbourhoodsa ward system.

By doing so, there will be more grassroots input from residents as to what the long-term plan is for Kelownas growth.

Alan Smith
Photo: The Canadian Press Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin arrives to be processed at the Gatineau Police Station in Gatineau, Que., on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin's battle for reinstatement as head of Canada's COVID-19 vaccine distribution campaign can go on now that the Federal Court of Appeal has agreed to consider his case.

Government lawyers had asked the Appeal Court to quash Fortins case after the senior military officers legal team appealed a Federal Court ruling in October that rejected his request for reinstatement to the vaccine rollout effort, or a similar position.

Appeal Court Justice Anne Mactavish instead cleared the way for Fortin's case to move ahead, saying in a decision released Friday that the governments request should be handled by the same three-judge panel that will hear his appeal.

I am satisfied that, in these circumstances, it is preferable that the merits of the (governments) motion to quash be determined by the panel hearing the appeal, Mactavish wrote in her decision.

While a date has not been set, Fortins lawyer Natalia Rodriguez said she expects the appeal to be heard in the spring. Fortin's legal team is asking the case be sent back to the Federal Court for a different judge to hear.

This means Maj.-Gen. Fortins appeal will be heard and the panel hearing the appeal may consider the arguments in the (governments) motion in making its decision, Rodriguez said of Mactavishs decision.

Fortin has been fighting for reinstatement since he was abruptly removed from his post at the Public Health Agency of Canada in May 2021, five days before military police announced they had referred an investigation of alleged sexual misconduct to Quebec's prosecution service.

The senior military officer, who previously commanded a NATO training mission in Iraq before being assigned in November 2020 to lead the vaccine rollout effort, was formally charged with one count of sexual assault in August.

The case, which relates to an alleged incident dating from 1988, is due back in Quebec court Jan. 24.

Fortin has maintained his innocence and, in challenging his removal in Federal Court, accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other senior members of the Liberal government of having turfed him from the vaccine campaign for purely political reasons.

During two days of court hearings in September, Fortin's legal team argued that the military's grievance system was the wrong venue for deciding whether his removal was appropriate, given the political nature of the decision.

His lawyers also raised concerns about the military grievance system, citing a recent review by retired Supreme Court justice Morris Fish that found long delays and ultimately described the entire system as "broken" and in need of urgent reforms.

But McDonald rejected those arguments in October, writing: "In my view, the high-profile nature of Maj.-Gen. Fortin's position and the allegations of political interference are not exceptional circumstances that allow him to bypass the internal grievance process."

As for concerns about the grievance system, McDonald noted then-acting defence chief Gen. Wayne Eyre, who has since been appointed to that position, had instituted new orders to address the problems identified in Fish's report, adding any concerns about unnecessary delays were "purely speculative."

Fortins legal team subsequently filed a notice of appeal in October, arguing McDonald erred in her ruling on several grounds and asking that the Appeal Court send the matter back to the a different Federal Court judge.

In asking the Appeal Court to reject the case, government lawyers argued the issue was moot as the position Fortin held with the vaccine campaign no longer exists. They also say he is currently serving in a position suitable for his rank.

Fortins lawyers have in turn argued their client, who is listed as serving in a temporary position as a senior adviser to the commander of the Canadian Joint Operations Command, has not been ordered to do anything for the military  including report to work  since last May.
Power Cement sign deal for 7MW power plant

10 January 2022

Power Cement Ltd has signed an agreement to set up a 7MW solar power plant at its existing site in Jamshoroo, Sindh state, Pakistan.

Power Cement has decided to explore environment-friendly renewable energy solutions without incurring any major capital expenditures. "The company has signed an agreement with Burj Solar Energy (Private) Ltd for procurement of electricity on a fixed tariff (around 40 per cent lower than the existing grid tariff) for the next 20 years," a company bourse filing stated.

According to the agreement, Burj Solar will invest by setting up a dedicated 7MW solar power plant which is expected to be operational within the next six to eight months.

Published under
Crown Cement signs Elevated Expressway supply contract

10 January 2022

Crown Cement has signed an agreement with The Fifth Major Bridge Engineering Co Ltd of China, the contractor of Dhaka-Ashulia Elevated Expressway Project in Bangladesh.



Under the deal, Crown Cement will supply 'Crown' brand cement to the Dhaka-Ashulia Elevated Expressway Project.

Md Mukter Hossain Talukder, FCA, chief executive officer of Crown Cement, and Mr Wei Haijiang, project chief engineer of The Fifth Major Bridge Engineering Co Ltd, signed the agreement on behalf of their respective sides at Le Meridien Dhaka on 29 December 2021.

Published under
Arawak Cement to keep production going during maintenance work

10 January 2022

Arawak Cement Co Ltd (TCL group) says there will be no pause in its cement production in Barbados as it carries out major maintenance work starting in early February.

Following several meetings over the past week regarding dust from the St Lucy facility, the decision was taken to carry out several upgrades and maintenance of its kiln.

Arawak Cement has sought to reassure customers that production will be unaffected by the work. "Arawak Cement Co Ltd clarifies misleading news reports that we will be 'closing our plant for one month in February'. It is confirmed that from the first days in February, upgrades and programmed major maintenance to our kiln will be carried out on the plant, as is done annually," a company statement read.

"Like in the past, this will not result in stoppage to the production of cement or our cement supply to our customers. During this time, we will continue to distribute our product and be available to customers on a regular basis," Arawak Cement said.

Published under
Honduran cement price rise alarms construction industry

ICR Newsroom By 10 January 2022

Members of the Honduran Chamber of the Construction Industry (CHICO) have demanded that the cement industry explains the reasons for a HNL10 (US$0.41) price increase for a bag of cement in the domestic market.



"We hope to see what solid substantive arguments will be presented by the cement companies when I understand that an agreement had been reached to leave said increase on stand-by, taking into account what the Honduran people are experiencing," said Osmin Bautista, who heads up the chamber.



The price of a bag of cement was increased with effect of January 2022 after an agreement signed with the Ministry of Economic Development. As a result a bag of grey cement, priced at HNL190 previously is now sold for a minimum of HNL200, depending on the logistics involved.



The cement producers have highlighted the need for a price rise due to high production costs, particularly raw materials and the devaluation of the lempira.



The construction chamber argued that the price rise would impact Hondurans when repairing, expanding or building a new home. The country currently counts a housing deficit of more than a million dwellings.

Published under
Burundi authorities request consultation in Buceco price hike

ICR Newsroom By 10 January 2022

Buceco has raised its price for a bag of cement from 1 January 2022, informing all its approved sales agents that prices per 50kg bag would be increased from BIF24,500 (US$12.21) to BIF27,500 for 32.5R cement and from BIF30,000 to B-F33,000 for 42.5R cement.



However, Burundis Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism has asked the cement producer to suspend the application of the price rise, which it considers unilateral and detrimental to local consumers. The Ministry of Trade has asked Buceco to carry out a consultation with the ministry to determine the level of the revision based on production costs, profit margin and production capacity. It also asked Buceco to avoid any type of speculation when marketing its products.

Published under
Dr. Rebecca Morsch, MD, MPH, of Ooltewah is being honored by the American Medical Association (AMA) for her work in Papua New Guinea .

She will receive the Dr. Nathan Davis International Award in Medicine Monday in Washington, D.C .

Dr. Morsch is the director of the Community Based Health Care program of the Nazarene Health Ministry in Papua New Guinea . She is the sister of Mrs. Finley Knowles. Lori and her brother, Gary Morsch MD are accompanying her to the banquet.

Ceremonies on Monday are in conjunction with the AMA National Advocacy Conference, and AMA has flown Dr. Morsch to Washington to receive the prestigious award.

As director of the Health Care program Dr. Morsch trains community-chosen Community Health Volunteers and Village Birth Attendants in one of the United Nations designated Least Developed Countries. Her training curriculum focuses on prevention and provides culturally-sensitive health education about childbirth and childcare, hygiene, waste management, injury prevention and sexually transmitted diseases. Dr. Morsch also helped organize Papua New Guinea s array of community-based health organizations into the Effective Development Empowering the Nation (EDEN) Network. After working as a social worker for more than 15 years, Dr. Morsch changed course and entered medical school at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, and went on to earn a Masters of Public Health degree from Loma Linda University . By treating, educating and counseling patients beyond the U.S. border, her work is having a positive impact on health care in the global arena.

Dr. Morsch in learning of the honor said, I felt shocked, honored, humbled and unworthy, for I knew that every doctor at Kudjip Nazarene Hospital was more worthy of the award than I was, not to mention probably thousands of other missionary doctors around the world. Now I feel that this award is for everyone that makes Community Based Health Care (CBHC) happen and keeps me on the field, but mostly an acknowledgement of what happens when God uses ordinary people.

Travel is a huge challenge. Fuel is expensive, and our vehicle gets a beating on the back roads. Sometimes we have to take a boat, and/or fly to get near our destinations. Finding team members who are healthy and willing to make the hikes, stay in villages for weeks at a time, and have the passion and ability to be CBHC trainers is a challenge. The lack of infrastructure and communication ability with many of the communities is challenging, to say the least."
If you live in Alabama, the chance youll test positive for COVID are now greater than not. In the state of Alabama 54.59 percent of COVID-19 tests are now coming back positive. This week in Georgia the test positivity rate is 37.82 and in Tennessee its 36.78. In all three states these are record numbers, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, as the virus continues to explode across the South and elsewhere in the nation. Georgia has recorded 89,063 new cases of the disease in the past week, Alabama 69,566 new cases, and Tennessee 50,894.

Further, the experts tell us that the reported numbers are actually less because fully vaccinated persons with mild cases arent going to the hospitals; their symptoms not so severe to warrant it.

On the other hand, hospitals are bulging with cases that need to be admitted. This weekend there were about 25 COVID patients in Erlanger Hospitals emergency room awaiting beds and similar scenarios are straining the nations hospitals to their limits.

It is being reported that 75-to-80 percent of hospitalized patients are not vaccinated.

Derek Hawkins, writing in Sundays editions of The Washington Post, tells us, One eye-opening study out of Norway looked at an omicron outbreak at a Nov. 30 holiday party where 66 people of 117 fully vaccinated attendees tested positive for the virus and 15 had probable cases. Health authorities investigating the outbreak found that cough, nasal congestion, fatigue and sore throat were the most common symptoms, followed by headache and fever.

More than a dozen of those infected said their symptoms cleared in a couple of days, while 62 attendees said they were still experiencing some symptoms around the one-week mark. None of the cases required hospitalization as of Dec. 13, two weeks after the party, researchers found.

People with mild COVID  of whatever strain  tend to bounce back in a week or two, according to Johns Hopkins. Research shows they probably arent at risk of spreading the virus to others 10 days after the onset of symptoms, provided that their symptoms have improved in that time and they arent feverish, Hawkins wrote.

Severe cases, on the other hand, can stretch for more than a month and leave people contagious for longer. There also is the vexing problem of long COVID, which can cause some symptoms to linger for many months, even in vaccinated people.

* * *

MAJOR DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN

FROM KCRA-TV 3, Sacramento: Health care workers who test positive and are asymptomatic for COVID-19 are allowed to return to work, according to new guidelines announced on Saturday by the California State Department of Public Health. No quarantine or testing is required.

The latest rules go on to say that health care providers who have been "exposed and asymptomatic may return to work immediately without quarantine and without testing." However, an N-95 respirator (face mask) must be worn.

"It's a major disaster waiting to happen," said Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, president of the California Nurses Association. "I think it's callous and it's putting our patients and ourselves in grave danger."

A Department of Health representative did not respond to KCRA 3's questions about whether the new guidelines could expose patients to COVID-19, but wrote, "Due to the critical staffing shortages currently being experienced across the health care continuum because of the rise in the omicron variant ... CDPH is temporarily adjusting the return-to-work criteria."

* * *

CRITICAL STAFF SHORTAGES GROW

(CNN) About 24 percent of U.S. hospitals are reporting a "critical staffing shortage," according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services, as public health experts warn the COVID-19 surge fueled by the Omicron variant threatens the nation's health care system.

"Given how much infection there is, our hospitals really are at the brink right now," Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, told CNN on Sunday.

Of the approximately 5,000 hospitals that reported this data to HHS on Saturday, nearly 1,200 -- about 1 in 4 -- said they are currently experiencing a critical staffing shortage, the largest share of the entire pandemic. More than 100 other hospitals said they anticipate a shortage within the next week.

The U.S. health care system is Jha's greatest concern, he said, noting the Omicron surge could hamper its capacity to care for patients suffering from conditions other than COVID-19.

royexum@aol.com
The Nature Conservancy and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency announce that the 43,000-acre Ed Carter Unit of the North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area will be permanently protected after the sale of a conservation easement associated with the property. The easement, located in an area known as Ataya and as Tackett Creek, will also protect 179 miles of streams and provides habitat for the Tennessee elk herd, which attracts thousands of visitors each year for sport and wildlife watching.A conservation easement restricts certain land uses to protect specific conservation values on a property while it remains in private ownership and generates local property tax revenue.A land trust or government agency, in this case TWRA, holds and enforces the easement, which is legally binding in perpetuity regardless of whether the property is sold or passed to heirs.In addition to limiting development on the Ed Carter Unit of the North Cumberland WMA, the terms of this easement allow TWRA to manage wildlife habitats and public recreation access, including multi-use trails.Purchase of this easement is a major accomplishment for habitat conservation and public recreation, says Tim Churchill, TWRAs chief of federal aid and real estate. Protecting the resources at the Ed Carter Unit has been considered one of our agencys highest priorities for several decades.After transfer of the easement, TNC will continue to oversee daily operations as part of its Cumberland Forest project, an impact investment project that manages this property as well as an additional 200,000+-acre network of high conservation value lands and waters located along the Tennessee-Kentucky border and in a portion of Southwest Virginia.Over the next decade, our primary goal is to manage these lands as working forests, space for people to play, and permanently protected, critical habitats for our regions game and non-game species, says Terry Cook, TNCs Tennessee state director. This transaction advances that goala win for forests, water, wildlife and people.To help fund the transaction, TNC secured a $620,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundations Acres for America conservation program to augment state funds dedicated to purchasing the easement. The Cumberland Forest project is also pursuing opportunities to generate revenue through sustainable forestry, the sale of leases and licenses for hunting and fishing, participation in the carbon marketplace, and transforming former mining operations into sites for solar and other forms of renewable energy.The Ed Carter Unit of the North Cumberland WMA is located in the heart of the Central Appalachian Mountains, a globally significant, connected and resilient temperate hardwood forest representing the single most critical landscape east of the Mississippi for climate resiliency and ecological services (clean water, clean air, carbon storage) benefiting tens of millions of people. In 2021, TNC identified the Appalachian Mountains as one of the most globally significant landscapes key to pursuing the dual goals of slowing the pace of climate change and protecting 30 percent of the planets biodiversity by 2030.
African American Population Decline in Chattanooga

The 2020 Census Redistricting data shows that both the White and Hispanic population in the city of Chattanooga increased between 2010 and 2020. The African American population decreased. These numbers only include those who classify as a single race.



White Alone, Non-Hispanic grew from 93,698 to 98,977 (+5,279)

Hispanic grew from 9,225 to 16,581 (+7,356)

African American declined from 58,256 to 52,384 (-5,872)



Recent community debate has focused on the reported decline of Chattanoogas African American population between 2010 and 2020. Is it really happening? Are the data reliable? Some have suggested the Census data are less robust than in previous years due to the COVID pandemic in 2020. A recent Census simulation by The Urban Institute found Black and Hispanic/Latinx people had a net undercount of more than 2.45 and 2.17 percent, respectively, in our simulated 2020 Census.



Others have claimed that people are voting with their feet, seeking more affordable housing or better employment opportunities elsewhere. Census data from the American Community Survey (at least since 2018) have shown that African Americans are leaving Chattanooga. A 2019 analysis of American Community Survey data from 2018 showed an exodus of African Americans living in census tracts in and near downtown Chattanooga to suburban locations. The decreases in African American population are concentrated in neighborhoods near downtown. As such, we dont believe the documented population decline is primarily due to a compromised 2020 Census.



Table 1 shows data from the 2020 Census used for redistricting. The African American population in Hamilton County dropped by 5.1 percent, a loss of 3,472. At the regional level, Bradley County (+1,009) and Catoosa County (+466) experienced a gain of African American residents. In total, the African American population in the region dropped by 2,875.

Table 1: African American Population Change in Chattanooga MSA by County, 2010-2020



County 2020 2010 Change Hamilton, TN 64,428 67,900 -3,472 Marion, TN 1,047 1,012 +35 Sequatchie, TN 72 21 +51 Bradley, TN 5,238 4,219 +1,019 Catoosa, GA 1,858 1,392 +466 Dade, GA 145 142 +3 Walker, GA 2,871 2,829 +42 TOTAL 70,421 73,296 -1,856

SOURCE: U.S. Census, 2020 Redistricting Data.

SOURCE: U.S. Census, 2020 Redistricting Data.

Within Hamilton County, demographic transition among African Americans was most pronounced in communities near downtown Chattanooga. Table 2 (see appendix) lists Census Tracts that experienced an African American population decline of at least 100. For these 19 Census Tracts (not all tracts in the city of Chattanooga), the African American population declined by 7,659. Most Census Tracts where the African American population increased by at least 100 were located in suburban Hamilton County. Table 3 (see appendix) shows a total growth of 4,926 African Americans in these Census Tracts. Simultaneously the white population (includes Hispanics) in the 24 tracts experiencing African American population gains grew by 289.

Hamilton County and Chattanooga are experiencing rapid population transition. The number of African Americans in the city is decreasing while some suburban areas are experiencing modest increases. The growth is occurring primarily east of downtown around the airport, the Bonny Oaks corridor, and southeast of the city near East Ridge and tracts along the Georgia border, as shown in Maps 1 and 2.

Root Causes of Transition

Demographic transition is a lagging indicator. That is, it happens after a prolonged period of change. Leaders from Chattanoogas political, business, and philanthropic communities embraced a radical redevelopment ethos in the early 2000s that continues today. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent by local government and philanthropies to prime the pump of redevelopment downtown and in surrounding urban neighborhoods. Leaders from other cities have sent delegations to Chattanooga to learn how the turnaround was orchestrated.

Prior to the explosion of growth on East Main Street and Jefferson Heights, civic elites actively promoted gentrification. If gentrification is about restoring those homes and getting enough confidence in the market that this is a good neighborhood, bringing those houses back to life with people living in them, thats not a bad thing. Thats a good thing (Sarah Morgan of the Lyndhurst Foundation and Community Impact of Chattanooga, 2012).



A cursory review of 990 reports for large Chattanooga Foundations shows robust funding in the early 2000s to CNE for acquisition of properties in Jefferson Heights and home buyer incentives for MLK neighborhood type grants. Throughout this time period, millions of dollars flowed to River City Corporation focusing on downtown and Main Street redevelopment. Grants were also given for the purposes of artist recruitment and artist housing incentive projects in Jefferson Heights. Millions more were spent on placemaking projects to change the look, feel, and vibe of the community. Simultaneously, more millions were invested in bike lanes, urban greenways, and riverfront beautification and museums. The following list includes the purposes of specific Foundation grants from that time:



Highland Park Land Acquisition

Ross Hotel Acquisition

Animate Bijou Building

MLK Corridor Project

Downtown Revitalization

MLK Mural

East 5th Housing

Property Acquisition

New Park @ Main and 13th

Downtown Riverwalk

Revitalize E. Main

MLK Facade

Jefferson Heights Park

Streetscape Main St.

Main Street Improvements

Artist Housing Incentives

MLK Home Buyers Incentives

Home Buyers Incentives Ft. Negley, Highland Park

Housing Incentives and acquisition of properties in Jefferson Heights

Housing Incentives and acquisition Highland Park

Buy-Hold Activities in 4 CIC Neighborhoods

The demographic transition that picked up steam after 2010 was planned, coordinated, well-funded, and intentional. It was planned in boardrooms by civic leaders with little input from community residents most impacted by the changesoften times by unelected leaders. The increase in redevelopment activity attracted investors and real estate speculators. These forces contributed to rising property values, more new development, and an influx of tech workers, entrepreneurs, and empty nestersprimarily white residents.



Thats why radical demographic transition has occurred. The trend is real. Bringing in new residents was the goal. It succeeded. It has been loudly celebrated by leaders in Chattanooga. It is a brand marketed to tech entrepreneurs and business startups. Moving forward, real estate investors will continue to make money and inner-urban neighborhoods will continue to displace remaining working class African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites.



Tradeoffs

What has the African American community gained from the redevelopment of Chattanooga? If people are sharing in the bounty of growth, the demographic changes might be tolerable.



According to the ACS, the home ownership rate for African Americans in Chattanooga declined from 38.9 percent in 2010 to 31.2 percent in 2019 (U.S. Census, 5-year estimates). The total number of African American owner occupied homes declined from 8,934 to 7,387 during the same time period. The 2019 median household income of African Americans in Chattanooga was $30,53953.9 percent of the White Median Household Income (ACS, 5-year estimates).

From this limited analysis, the data seem underwhelming that African Americans in Chattanooga are experiencing widespread standard of living gains. Granted, some African Americans have relocated to Chattanooga and others have successfully started new businesses in the technology economy. But, on the whole, it seems as if the African American community has not made substantial gains in the last decade. Communities have been lost. Home ownership is down. Household income gains have been weak. These are the unintended consequences of the Chattanooga Renaissance. The people who have been the most negatively impacted by these changes were never included in the process where civic leaders made their choices. And now they have to live with them, but not near downtown.

Future Reports

When the full 2020 Census is released in 2022, the Unity Group will conduct a comprehensive State of Black Chattanooga report to chronicle social, economic, and demographic changes between 2010 and 2020.

The Unity Group

Dr. Ken Chilton





APPENDIX

Table 2: African American Population Decline in Hamilton County, 2010-2020

Tract 2020 2010 Change 122 1,737 2,705 -968 12 2,235 3,005 -770 124 728 1,442 -714 25 1,821 2,396 -575 33 4486 5023 -537 32 2374 2832 -458 4 2,513 2,940 -427 11 717 1,090 -373 13 706 1,075 -369 29 1,147 1,515 -368 114.02 3427 3791 -364 14 518 880 -362 123 2,654 2,968 -314 26 885 1,191 -306 18 382 629 -247 8 255 402 -147 30 779 919 -140 105.02 123 237 -114 16 1,906 2,012 -106 TOTAL 29,393 21,714 -7,659

Table 3: African American Population Growth in Hamilton County, 2010-2020

Tract Growth 104.35 100 34 102 114.49 103 117 108 114.11 112 119 127 113.23 128 104.31 137 112.06 148 104.33 184 114.13 184 114.45 195 20 206 114.47 211 116 215 113.21 221 118 229 114.46 241 114.42 254

* * *

Just a minor observation: It isn't "Black Flight" when people are forced out. It's the darker more sinister side and outcome of gentrification.

Like "White Flight" in 1960s and '70s, the term "flight", when used in such a way as to define people leaving an area in high volume, suggest people left of their own accord, without any heavy-handed shady dealings going on. Many of Chattanooga black elected and community leaders also had a hand in forcing blacks from the city. At the very least they should have been able to predict the outcome.

Remember some Chattanoogans, white/black whatever, boasting about their "Weed 'n Seed" initiatives?

Brenda Washington
The Tennessee Department of Tourist Development unveiled its official 2022 Tennessee Vacation Guide on Monday with three covers showcasing the sights, sounds and experiences that created the Soundtrack of America. Tennessees music scene, culinary experiences, unmatched scenic beauty, family fun and hidden gems make the state a world-class destination.

The 2022 Tennessee Vacation Guide celebrates the three main regions, from country and bluegrass to jazz and rock n roll, with three distinct covers. The cover story, penned by Colin Escott, highlights stages and festivals to see live music, attractions, places where legends were born and musical milestones. Levitt Shell in Memphis offers a series of free concerts and was where historians say Elvis Presley performed the first rock n roll show. The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville is the longest-running radio show in the world and marked its 5,000th performance in 2021. In Knoxville, the Tennessee Theatre , built in 1928 as a movie palace, still entertains audiences with concerts and events. Visitors and locals are encouraged to discover the stories behind the songs along the Tennessee Music Pathways .

To spark planning your vacation now playing in Tennessee, the guide also highlights:

New & Noteworthy events and attractions like Company Distilling in Townsend

Outdoor Adventures on the water like fishing, kayaking and 56 Tennessee State Parks

Checking Inn at quant bed & breakfasts, luxurious hotels or beds underneath the stars

Making Family Memories at  Kid Reviewed  destinations

Hitting the Open Road on Discover Tennessee Trails & Byways

Uncovering a Piece of the Past at historic sites like the 12 statewide stops on the U.S. Civil Rights Trail

The guide offers over 150 pages of travel inspiration and is available free as a printed guide or instant download at TNvacation.com , or at any of Tennessees 16 Welcome Centers. Franklin, Tn.-based Journal Communications, Inc. produces the guide, which is distributed to nearly 500,000 visitors annually.
Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park will be hosting a temporary museum exhibit today that showcases the artifacts that were unearthed during the 2021 University of Tennessee Chattanooga Archaeological Field School. This exhibit will be on display for one year at the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center.



Under the direction of Dr. Morgan Smith, the archeological field school was initiated to discover the boundaries of Brotherton field on Chickamauga Battlefield. Brotherton field is the location where a gap in the Union line was exploited by Confederate forces and precipitated the Union defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga. Artifacts from the Native American occupation period, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II were recovered. These artifacts record the changes in our surrounding landscape and demonstrate how Chickamauga Battlefield was utilized before and after the Civil War.

"To learn more, visit the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center and join us as we explore the parks complex and diverse cultural landscape," officials said.



For more information about programs at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, contact the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center at 706-866-9241, the Lookout Mountain Battlefield Visitor Center at 423-821-7786, or visit the park website at www.nps.gov/chch.
1883, the Yellowstone prequel on Paramount+, shows life in the Wild West. Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, a real-life married couple, play a couple in the show. Together, they embark as Dutton immigrants on a quest to settle on new land, and fans get to witness the various challenges they come across on the way. But filming hasnt been easy, and Hill noted she dealt with the elements when shooting her scenes for 1883.

Where is 1883 filmed? The Yellowstone prequel depicts poverty and the Great Plains

Tim McGraw as James Dutton and Faith Hill as Margaret Dutton in 1883 | Emerson Miller/Paramount+

1883 follows the Dutton familys quest across the Great Plains, and the show explores the early days of the Dutton dynasty pre-Yellowstone era. So, where was 1883 filmed?

According to The Teal Mango, the show appeared to film in the Southwest and West, primarily in Texas and Montana. The publication notes production used Montanas Park County near Yellowstone National Park often. The show reportedly utilized Fort Worth, Texas, as a filming base as well.

LaMonica Garrett also talked about filming in Montana during a blustery day. We were in Montana, and it was probably the coldest day, Garrett explained. Me, Sam [Elliott], and Tim [McGraw] are on our horses on top of the hill and there was a gunfight that was about to start and the wind was howling, like it was just  things were being thrown around, cameras tipping over.

Faith Hill said she got major windburn during extreme weather conditions while filming

Faith Hill in 1883 | Emerson Miller/Paramount+

1883 cast member Faith Hill also talked about the difficulties she experienced while filming the show. During an interview with Collider, Hill and fellow actor Isabel May discussed the weather conditions. Hill noted filming the show was a challenge but it needed to be, as living during that time period had so many obstacles.

We wore a lot of sunscreen, Hill said of shooting in the direct sunlight.

Weve also been in very cold environments, May added. We started out in 106-degree weather and we went down to 12-degree weather.

With really high winds, Hill noted. We got windburn. We got a ton of dirt on our face. A ton of dirt. So maybe that protects us from the sun.  If you go to Texas in the summer, you should probably cover your face.

Hill also noted she learned a lot from the crew  and she had a new appreciation for civilization after filming. She also spent ample time cleaning the dirt from her nails, ears, and hair.

Tim McGraw says Faith Hill has a number of similarities to her character in 1883

Tim McGraw as James Dutton in 1883 | Emerson Miller/Paramount+

Faith Hill and Tim McGraw dont regularly partake in filming shows together, but they couldnt give up their opportunity to take join the 1883 cast. According to McGraw, Hill has a lot of similarities to her character, Margaret Dutton.

Margaret, shes the steel and the backbone of the family anyway, McGraw explained during an interview with Rotten Tomatoes. So is Faith at home, so I think theres a lot of similarities. I have three daughters, so I certainly could lean on that relationship with Elsa that I have with my daughters and find things that we have in common and magnify those things. Same with Faith.

Hill relates to her character, too, in that she adores her children. Different time obviously, but no different in the fact that we love our family, she noted.

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RELATED: Yellowstone Fans Have Never Seen Anything Like 1883 Promises Spinoff Star Faith Hill
One of the most intriguing couples on 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days Season 5 is Jasmine and Gino. Out of the seven new couples introduced this season, theyre the pair fans seem to have the most questions about. Gino, who admits that Jasmine is out of his league, lives in Michigan. Meanwhile, Jasmine was born and raised in Panama City, Panama. While theyve chatted over video calls and through texts for the past nine months, they finally took the next step to meet in person.

Before the 90 Days Season 5 star Gino | discovery+

Before the 90 Days Season 5 star Gino admits that he paid for different cosmetic procedures for Jasmine

Early on in Before the 90 Days Season 5, Gino admitted that he coughed up the money for a few different cosmetic procedures Jasmine wanted. Ginos family was skeptical of Jasmines intentions, especially his uncle Marco. Gino hasnt been able to work for the past several months. Uncle Marco was nervous Jasmine might be taking advantage of him.

Gino told Uncle Marco, Since Ive been smart with my savings, I thankfully have been able to send money to help Jasmine out. He confessed to his uncle Marco that he had sent her some money. He said, Shes not a materialistic kind of person.

However, later in episode 1, Gino revealed to the cameras, Ive helped for things such as, you know, doing her lips or maybe her eyebrows. Or maybe facial treatment, possibly her hair or her teeth.

In Before the 90 Days Season 5 Episode 5, Jasmine pressured Gino to spend over $500 on clothes for himself. However, once he heard the total, he quickly backed out and didnt purchase anything. Jasmine, noticeably annoyed, marched off and gave Gino the cold shoulder.

Meanwhile, Gino told cameras, I know shes trying to get me to spend money on myself, and not her, but I dont want her to see me as a walking cash machine.

$500 on clothes? Maybe another timeGino refuses to spend that much on a new outfit on #90DayFiance! pic.twitter.com/E6r36cRpDS  90DayFiance (@90DayFiance) January 9, 2022

RELATED: Before the 90 Days Season 5 Star Kimberly Threatens to Flip the Table, Suspects Usman Sojaboys Friends of Sabotaging Their Relationship

Gino gave Jasmine an electric toothbrush as her Christmas present

Before the 90 Days Season 5 was filmed over Christmas in 2021. This means fans see Gino and Jasmine exchange gifts as a couple for the first time. Jasmine gives Gino a t-shirt with a funny saying and a pillow she had designed. However, Ginos gift to Jasmine was much less exciting.

He gave her her Christmas gift upon arriving in Panama but didnt tell her it was her Christmas present. When she asked Gino for her gift after he opened the ones from her, he awkwardly told her hed already given it to her.

The toothbrush I probably shouldve waited until Christmas to give it to you, but I just couldnt wait, he explained to a very disappointed Jasmine.

At the gift shop Gino refused to remove his hat to try on a Panamanian straw hat, instead he tried it on over his cap #90DayFiance pic.twitter.com/UNaCEf4eUZ  90DayFiance (@90DayFiance) January 3, 2022

Fans were absolutely baffled at the toothbrush gift in Before the 90 Days Season 5

A toothbrush might be an acceptable gift in certain circumstances, but this was clearly not one of them. Jasmine expected much more in a Christmas gift from Gino, and fans were just as baffled.

One Redditor wrote, Like I get its expensive, but no. Just no. A toothbrush is something you give someone after many moons and years together. Not for a fresh relationship or for Christmas.

Another user chimed in to say that it wasnt weird because the toothbrush wasnt expensive, either. I would be pissed, first off its a strange a** gesture and me personally I dont prefer electric toothbrushes, if I did Id buy my own they are not expensive in my opinion even the higher end ones. And thats just weird too weird for me as others said maybe as a stocking stuffer! Really doesnt matter the price of the gift just as long as its not completely stupid and weird.

Jasmine made it clear she expected a more meaningful gift, but Gino didnt get the message. Fans will have to wait and watch more of Before the 90 Days Season 5 to see how all of this plays out in the long run.

RELATED: Before the 90 Days Season 5: Heres the Sexy Anime Character Ella Dressed Up as for Johnny  Naruto
90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days Season 5 premiered on Dec. 12, 2021, and this season brought seven new couples to the show for fans to watch as their journey to find love unfolded. Weve seen every couple so far except for Ben and Mahogany. All the pairs have met in person except Johnny and Ella. Fans are starting to wonder if it ever actually happens.

Before the 90 Days star Ella | discovery+

Johnny and Ella have plans to meet in Idaho in Before the 90 Days Season 5

Five episodes deep into Before the 90 Days Season 5, and fans have watched five of the seven couples meet in person. However, Johnny and Ella have yet to make it happen. Through the episodes, audiences learn that Johnny plans to travel to America and stay with Ella in her hometown of Idaho Falls, Idaho. However, in episode 5, viewers learn that Johnnys suffered yet another setback, and his visa to Singapore was not approved.

Ella gets the news of Johnnys setback while she works out in a gym. She immediately calls him to get to the bottom of the issue. Johnny doesnt answer, though, and Ella is left to ponder what this could mean by herself. However, fans suspect that Johnny and Ella might not actually meet in person this season.

Ellas go-to crystal for all things love-related is rose quartz #90DayFiance pic.twitter.com/7OqugIUsd4  90DayFiance (@90DayFiance) January 3, 2022

RELATED: 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days Season 5: Ella Details Her Online Sex Life With Her Asian Prince Johnny

Fans think Johnny and Ellas story doesnt play out like some might believe in Before the 90 Days Season 5

Before the 90 Days Season 5 includes plenty of clever editing to get reactions from fans. Its a well-known trick in reality TV at this point, and Before the 90 Days is no exception. After watching five episodes of Before the 90 Days Season 5, fans are starting to suspect that Johnny and Ella dont meet in person like the rest of the couples so far.

First of all, the couples filmed this season at the height of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic around the beginning of 2021. At this point in time, China, where Johnny lives, still had stringent regulations regarding the coronavirus pandemic, and borders were closed. Secondly, none of the preview clips for Before the 90 Days Season 5 showed Johnny and Ella together in person like the clips did with the other couples.

Why fans dont believe Johnny and Ella actually meet

Fans suspected something was up last week. One Redditor wrote, China basically locked the borders since early 2020, even their own citizens arent allowed to travel overseas now. Some provinces even restrict cross province travel. Plus in the preview we see Ella breaking down and crying, but we never saw a preview of them together.

Another user shared, I mean in regards to the timeline of the show. Almost all the other couples have been physically together for at least one episode at this point. Based on editing of past seasons, Ella and Johnny wont meet in person and will stop being shown. Then theyll switch to the Jesus dude in Peru (weve only seen in the trailer at this point) who will also be unsuccessful and short lived.

Audiences saw footage of Ben and Mahogany in next weeks episode, but still no video of Johnny and Ella together. However, Ella already received backlash and was accused of fetishizing Asian cultures, but has since apologized to fans. It looks like fans will have to keep watching this season to see how Johnny and Ellas relationship unfolds. Tune in for new episodes of Before the 90 Days Season 5 every Sunday night on TLC. The show also streams on discovery+.

RELATED: 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days Season 5: Ella Responds to Fans Calling Her Out About Her Asian Fetishism in the Most Lackluster Way
Elton Johns Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting wasnt an easy song to create. During an interview, one of the writers of Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting revealed the first version of the song was aborted. He also said he and John tried to create the song in a studio surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.

Elton John | D. Morrison/Express/Getty Images

Why Elton John and Bernie Taupin wanted to craft Goodbye Yellow Brick Road in Jamaica

One of the most famous albums of the 1970s is Johns Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It features numerous classic songs, including the title track, Candle in the Wind, and Bennie and the Jets. All of the songs on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road were co-written by John and Bernie Taupin. During an interview with Rolling Stone, John discussed where he worked on the album with Taupin. We went to Jamaica to write and record at Dynamic Studios in Kingston, he said.

John said other popular artists used the same studio. Thats where The Rolling Stones had done Goats Head Soup and Cat Stevens had done Foreigner, he recalled. And we thought wed have a change of climate from the chateau where wed done the last couple of albums.

RELATED: The Monkees Micky Dolenz Learned to Sing Songs Properly When He Was in an Elton John Musical

Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting is the only song Elton John and Bernie Taupin tried to record in Jamaica

Taupin said their time in Jamaica wasnt great. To use the terminology of the time, it was not a good vibe,' he said. I remember a lot of barbed wire around the studio and armed guards.

We spent a lot of time congregating around the pool area of the hotel, feeling there was safety in numbers, John said. The Stones did manage to record there, but in retrospect I think they had a mobile unit with them. The only thing I remember trying to record was Saturday Nights Alright For Fighting. It was an aborted [attempt], just atrocious.

RELATED: Elton John Almost Didnt Perform at Princess Dianas Funeral  Royal Household Felt the Song Was Too Sentimental

The way the world reacted to Saturday Nights All Right for Fighting

The album version of Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting became popular. The song reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, staying on the chart for 12 weeks. The songs parent album, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, was an even bigger hit. It topped the Billboard 200 and spent 111 weeks on the chart.

Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting was also a hit in the United Kingdom. According to The Official Charts Company, the song peaked at No. 7 and remained on the chart for nine weeks. Meanwhile, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road topped the chart and lasted on it for 102 weeks. Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting appeared in Johns cameo scene from Kingsman 2: The Golden Circle. Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting became a classic song even if it was difficult to create.

RELATED: Elton Johns Candle in the Wind: Why Bernie Taupin Co-Wrote the Song When Hes Not a Marilyn Monroe Fan
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar have had a rough year. Not only did they see their eldest son sent off to prison, but they had to deal with the fall out of the verdict. They also suffered through Jim Bobs embarrassing state senate defeat. It doesnt come as a big surprise that theyve kept a low profile. Still, it was shocking that the duo appeared to be a no-show at a pretty big family event.

Jedidiah Duggar and Katey Nakatsu revealed the gender of their upcoming baby

Jedidiah Duggar and Katey Nakatsu announced that they were expecting a baby back in September 2021. Jed and Katey are one of the more mysterious Duggar couples. They were married in April 2021, just before Josh Duggar was arrested on child pornography charges. TLC never filmed their big events, and the couples moments to shine have largely been overshadowed by Jedidiahs troubled older brother.

With Josh now safely behind bars, the duo took the opportunity to announce the gender of their upcoming baby on their YouTube channel. On January 7, they shared a 2-minute video that revealed they were expecting a baby boy. Jedidiah and Kateys son will be the first Duggar grandson born since 2018.

Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar appeared to be a no-show at Jedidiah and Kateys gender reveal

Their assembled guests met Jedidiah and Kateys big baby news with muted enthusiasm. When the family swarmed the couple to congratulate them, it became clear that Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar did not attend the event. The family matriarch and patriarch didnt appear in any of the footage shared.

Jim Bob Duggar and Michelle Duggar | Kris Connor/WireImage

Not only did Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar not appear at the event, but they didnt seem willing to host it on their compound, either. The Duggar family has had many gender reveal parties, and the vast majority of them took place at the Duggar family home in Springdale, Arkansas. Jedidiah and Katey, however, opted to use a public park for their party, prompting questions from Duggar family followers.

Is there trouble between Jed and his parents? It seems possible. Jedidiah was named on the witness list as a potential witness during Josh Duggars trial. It is unknown if he was a witness for the prosecution of the defense, though. Jedidiah and Jil Dillard were the only two Duggar siblings named as potential witnesses. Neither one of them testified.

Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar werent the only family members not visible in the video

While Jim Bob and Michelles absence was certainly notable, they werent the only Duggar family members missing from the action. The YouTube video panned a large portion of the crowd, and it was clear to see that Joy-Anna Forsyth, Josiah Duggar, John David Duggar, and Joseph Duggar were all on hand with their spouses. Jessa Seewald appeared in the video briefly, too.

The Duggar family | Bill Clark/Roll Call/Getty Images

Jill Dillard and Derick Dillard were decidedly missing, though. Jeremiah Duggar, Jedidiahs twin brother, was also a no-show at the event. Jeremiah had a good reason to miss the gender reveal party. The 23-year-old announced his engagement to Hannah Wissmann on the same day that Jedidiah and Katey uploaded their gender reveal footage. Jedidiah and Katey didnt include Anna Duggar or her seven children in the festivities.
Kanye West and Julia Fox are becoming a hot new couple, despite only meeting less than two weeks ago. The former sex worker described a recent date with West, revealing that he bought her a new wardrobe after filling a hotel room with clothes for her.

Julia Fox | Paul Archuleta/WireImage

Kanye West and Julia Fox have been spotted together several times recently

West and Fox have been making headlines ever since the start of 2022. In a blog-style article she wrote for Interview, Fox detailed her new relationship with West.

I met Ye in Miami on New Years Eve and it was an instant connection, the Uncut Gems star shared. His energy is so fun to be around. He had me and my friends laughing, dancing, and smiling all night.

Fox opened up about her date in New York with West after meeting in Miami. We decided to keep the energy going and fly back to New York City to see Slave Play. Yes flight landed at six and the play was at seven and he was there ON TIME. I was impressed.

The actor, who was born in Italy, wrote about how she and the rapper went to an Italian restaurant. After the play we chose to do dinner at Carbone which is one of my favorite restaurants. Obviously.

She shared that West brought his own photographer on their dinner date. At the restaurant, Ye directed an entire photo shoot for me while people dined! The whole restaurant loved it and cheered us on while it was happening.

Kanye West and Julia Fox for Interview Magazine pic.twitter.com/9usvFEBUZo  SAINT (@saint) January 7, 2022

Julia Fox revealed that Kanye West filled a hotel suite with clothes for her

After their dinner date, Fox said that West gave her a surprise that was every girls dream come true. She wrote, After dinner Ye had a surprise for me. I mean, Im still in shock. Ye had an entire hotel suite full of clothes. It was every girls dream come true.

She was amazed at the effort the Donda rapper put into what was only their second date. It felt like a real Cinderella moment. I dont know how he did it, or how he got all of it there in time. But I was so surprised. Like, who does things like this on a second date? Or any date!

Fox said she looks forward to seeing where her relationship with West goes. Everything with us has been so organic, she wrote. I dont know where things are headed but if this is any indication of the future Im loving the ride.

Julia Fox and Kanye West | Gotham/GC Images

Although West filled a hotel suite with clothes for Fox, Page Six revealed that the actor only kept six outfits.

The entire wardrobe was provided by Diesel, and Fox was given 40 looks to choose from. All of the pieces were from Diesels Spring and Pre-Fall 2022 lineup, so they arent available to the public yet.

The publication reported that Fox tried on several looks but ended up keeping six outfits, including a $375 T-shirt and a $1,250 pair of jeans with built-in boots.

RELATED: Kanye West and Pete Davidson Spent New Years Eve in Miami Without Kim Kardashian West
Kim Kardashian West and Pete Davidsons relationship is heating up. The couple recently took a trip to the Bahamas, where the reality star posted a swimsuit selfie. Scott Disick hilariously pointed out that the SNL star was missing from Kardashian Wests photo, and fans are going wild over his comment.

Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson have taken their romance out of country. https://t.co/YmnyjwvBpm  TMZ (@TMZ) January 5, 2022

Kim Kardashian West posted a bikini selfie while on vacation with Pete Davidson in the Bahamas

On Jan. 3, Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian West were spotted boarding a plane to the Bahamas. They went on what appeared to be their first international trip together after spending New Years Eve apart.

Kim and Pete are on vacation spending time together, a source told ET of the topical trip. The two werent able to ring in the new year since she was with her family in California and Pete was hosting his NYE special in Miami.

On Jan. 6, Kardashian West posted an Instagram photo of herself wearing a brown bikini and headphones in a sunny location. She captioned the image, sweet sweet fantasy baby.

Kim Kardashian West | David Livingston/Getty Images

Fans were quick to notice that Kardashian West did not include her boyfriend in her vacation photo. One fan commented, are you going to post a pic with Pete we know youre there with him?! while another wrote, We want Pete content 

Scott Disick, one of Kardashian Wests co-stars on Keeping Up with the Kardashians, commented, Damn! Wheres the tripod!

Although he could just be talking about a camera tripod since Kardashian Wests photo was a selfie, Disicks remark was likely a reference to Davidsons, ahem, BDE. The SNL stars ex-fiancee Ariana Grande alluded to his size in her thank u, next music video.

It seems like Kourtney Kardashians ex-boyfriend is as curious as everyone else about where Davidson was while the SKIMS founder snapped her selfie.

Kardashian Wests fans noticed Disicks comment and have been replying with endless laughing face emojis. It looks like they knew exactly who and what the Talentless founder was referencing with his tripod remark.

One fan replied, you know who hes talking about, genius comment, while another said, between Petes legs.

Several fans responded with comments about Davidsons BDE, such as, hahahaha hes calling Pete a tripod. Big D energy  and, been saying it all along.. BDE.

One encouraged Kardashian West to enjoy her new relationship by commenting, live ur best life Kim, we all need a good tripod once In awhile! Another wrote, lol eggplant emoji xs 10.

RELATED: Scott Disick Vacations With Former Flame Bella Banos Amid His Ex Kourtney Kardashians Engagement to Travis Barker
Nicole Kidman is known for two things: her longstanding acting career and being Australian. But while the actor is proud of her heritage, married an Australian (Keith Urban), and starred in a movie called Australia (although shed prefer if you didnt remember that film), Kidman was actually born an American citizen.

Nicole Kidman | Rich Fury/Getty Images

Her parents lived interesting lifestyles in their own right that led them to the island state of Hawaii at the time of Kidmans birth.

Why was Nicole Kidman born in Hawaii?

Despite her Aussie heritage, Kidman was born on American soil. She entered the world in 1967 while her parents were there on educational visas in Honolulu, Hawaii. This meant that Kidman can claim citizenship in both Australia and the United States.

Coming into the world as a Hawaiian also gave Kidman another moniker. During an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, she revealed that she was also given the Hawaiian name Hokulani, which translates to heavenly star. The name has less than glamorous origins of the Honolulu Zoo. There was a baby elephant that was born at the same time as me. [The elephant] was called Hokulani, Kidman explained.

Unfortunately, the baby elephant did not share the same bright future as Kidman. Nortons production team emailed the zoo about the elephant Hokulani, hoping to hear some lighthearted story about her daily antics. It turns out that Hokulani was found dead in the moat of her exhibit in 1970.

What did her parents do?

Nicole Kidman is TREMENDOUS as Lucille Ball in #BeingTheRicardos. Her performance is so versatile & layered  sharp, funny, sexy & even heartbreaking at times. Sorkin's writing is solid, as it always is, but Kidman elevates the material tenfold. Good movie, GREAT performance pic.twitter.com/Yrf9dxQmcZ  Erik Davis (@ErikDavis) November 24, 2021

Kidmans father, Antony, was a biochemist, clinical psychologist, and author. Her mother, Janelle Ann, was a nursing instructor who helped to edit Antonys books. The Kidmans didnt stay in Hawaii for long, but they did remain in the United States for a few more years. They moved to Washington D.C., where her father worked at the National Institute of Mental Health at St. Elizabeth Psychiatric Hospital. The family returned to Australia after Kidman turned four.

The future actor showed a talent for performing at an early age and eventually dropped out of high school to pursue her dream on a full-time basis. As a 16-year-old, she starred in an Australian holiday movie Bush Christmas and the comedic action film BMX Bandits.

Eventually, her passion brought her back to her second home. She returned to the states in 1990 for her first American production, Days of Thunder, which also starred her future husband, Tom Cruise. Since then, Kidman has mainly worked in the US, earning plenty of acclaim and awards in the process.

What other celebrities were born outside of their parents home countries?

Thanks to the 14th Amendment, all babies like Kidman who are born in the United States or in a US territory are American citizens, regardless of where their parents are from. Depending on the political climate and laws at the time, dual citizens can vote in both countries, but the US requires the use of an American passport when leaving or entering the country.

Of course, Kidman is far from the only actor who is a US citizen with foreign history. According to The Hollywood Reporter there are several more other notables who now are dual citizens:

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Probably the most obvious person on the list, Schwarzenegger moved to the US in 1968 as an Austrian bodybuilder and became an iconic action star and eventual governor of California. Natalie Portman: Born Natalie Herschlag, the actor was born in Jerusalem to Jewish parents. Her family moved to America when Portman was three so that her father could continue his medical training. Charlize Theron: Theron is from Benoni, South Africa, and arrived in the US at the age of 19 after her mother bought her a one-way ticket so she could pursue her dreams. She became an American citizen in 2007. Keith Urban: Yep, Kidmans husband is also a dual citizen. He was born in Whangerei, New Zealand to Australian parents. After releasing his first album, he moved to Nashville in 1992 to advance his career. Safe to say that worked out for him.

RELATED: Aaron Sorkin Slams Social Media Backlash for Being the Ricardos Casting: I Dont Use Twitter As My Casting Director
Ana Navarro is the latest co-host on The View to test positive for coronavirus (COVID-19). The political commentator follows Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, and Sunny Hostin in opening up about contracting the virus. After confirming her diagnosis on the ABC talk show, Navarro has now given her concerned fans a health update on how shes doing.

Ana Navarro | Paula Lobo/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images

How is Ana Navarro doing after testing positive for COVID-19?

Navarro is a fan-favorite on The View for her sassy clapbacks and straightforward opinions. The Republican pundit is always a fun time on the show, and her presence is missed when she doesnt make an appearance. Navarro has been co-hosting for the week of Jan. 3 after Whoopi Goldberg took the week off to recover from COVID-19. However, by the end of the week, Navarro would reveal she had tested positive for the virus as well.

Luckily, the shows co-hosts were all broadcasting remotely from their respective homes, and Navarro didnt come in contact with her colleagues. Furthermore, Navarro shared with fans on Twitter how she was doing during her social distancing effort at home.

On Day 3 of COVID isolation. Trudging through it, she tweeted on Jan. 8. Feeling so much appreciation and gratitude for all the scientists and medical researchers who worked on developing the vaccines and treatments we have today, that are making this more manageable and less lethal for most of us.

Navarro had contracted the virus before and has not been shy about her advocacy for the COVID-19 vaccine. The breakthrough case comes as the U.S. sees an uptick in cases following the holidays.

On Day 3 of COVID isolation. Trudging through it.



Feeling so much appreciation and gratitude for all the scientists and medical researchers who worked on developing the vaccines and treatments we have today, that are making this more manageable and less lethal for most of us.  Ana Navarro-Cardenas (@ananavarro) January 9, 2022

RELATED: The View Co-Host Ana Navarro Thirsting Over Daniel Craig Is Everything and Fans Agree

Ana Navarro reveals she has a COVID-19 breakthrough case

On The Views episode that aired on Friday, Jan. 7, Navarro broke the news to viewers that she had a breakthrough case of COVID-19.

Just before the show started, I got a call from Christine, our COVID nurse, and the PCR [test] I took yesterday came out negative, Navarro revealed. I am now positive for COVID. Im feeling no symptoms, Im feeling pretty good so far. I hope this stays and I did what the CDC recommended. The minute that I felt a tickle in my throat I assumed I had it.

When Navarro shared her statement, she said she was doing well, and her symptoms were not overwhelming. Navarro testing positive for COVID-19 came days after her father contracted the virus in Nicaragua. The television personalitys father could not travel to Florida until he presented a negative test and sadly missed out on spending time with her on Christmas.

Whoopi Goldberg also shares health update

Goldberg was also missing from The View because her tests continued to come out positive for COVID-19. The EGOT legend has been gone since before the shows winter hiatus and skipped out on the first week back after the holidays. Goldberg made a remote appearance on Wednesday, Jan. 5 to update fans on her well-being.

I just feel like, you can only do what you can do and whatever your body decides its going to do is what you have to roll with, Goldberg said.

The star said she is quarantining in her very nice house, and her family doesnt let her come out of her room.

My family is here, and theyve been hiding in their rooms as well, she continued. Doors are closed. Im not allowed to leave this specific area, and every now and then, I just want to kick the door open.

The View airs weekday mornings at 11 a.m. ET on ABC.

RELATED: The View Co-Hosts Send Ana Navarro Their Condolences Following News of Mothers Death
By examining the catalyst using high-powered electron microscopy, it was revealed that the active catalyst did not contain gold atoms or clusters, but rather gold nanoparticles  extremely small particles between 3 to 15 nanometres in size that can exhibit significantly different physical and chemical properties to their larger material counterparts. (symbolic image).

A simple, low-cost method of directly converting natural gas into useful chemicals and fuels, using the precious metal gold as a key ingredient, has been proposed by researchers at Cardiff University in collaboration with researchers in Lehigh University, USA and the National Centre for Magnetic Resonance in Wuhan, China.

Whilst natural gas is one of the greenest fossil fuels, it still emits dangerous greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when burned.

This has, in turn, led researchers to devise novel ways of converting methane, which accounts for 70-90% of natural gas, into more useful products, such as a fuels and chemicals, in a simple, cost-effective and low-carbon manner.

In a study published in Nature Catalysis, the team led by researchers from the Cardiff Catalysis Institute has demonstrated, for the time, the direct conversion of methane into methanol and acetic acid using a gold catalyst.

Up until now, this has only been achieved through indirect routes which include multiple steps that are highly energy consuming and very costly.

To achieve the creation of methanol and acetic acid the team reacted methane with oxygen in the presence of a catalyst made from gold and the zeolite ZSM-5.

By examining the catalyst using high-powered electron microscopy, it was revealed that the active catalyst did not contain gold atoms or clusters, but rather gold nanoparticles  extremely small particles between 3 to 15 nanometres in size that can exhibit significantly different physical and chemical properties to their larger material counterparts.

The production of methanol using this catalyst was expected; however, the novelty of the new method came in the production of acetic acid.

Acetic acid is a common industrial chemical with large quantities used to make products such as ink for textile printing, dyes, photographic chemicals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, rubber and plastics.

Methanol, meanwhile, is commonly used as a precursor to many other commodity chemicals, as well as a biofuel.

Despite the well-known inertness of the precious metal gold, pioneering research by scientists at the Cardiff Catalysis Institute has demonstrated that it is, in fact, an extremely efficient and reliable catalyst that can be used effectively in many important industrial processes.

Co-author of the study Professor Graham Hutchings, Regius Professor of Chemistry from the Cardiff Catalysis Institute, said: The oxidation of methane, the main component of natural gas, to selectively form oxygenated chemical intermediates using molecular oxygen has been a long-standing grand challenge in catalysis.

We have successfully demonstrated this for the very first time in this study, providing an important first step towards the creation of important fuels and chemicals in a simple and cost-effective way.
Connecticut was hit with its first major storm of the winter season on Friday, Jan. 7, as the region saw 6 to 10 inches of snow spread across much of the state, with some areas receiving a foot or more of the white stuff.

In Cheshire, the cleanup began on roads and sidewalks shortly after the last of the snowfall ceased in the early-morning hours. Yet, while local crews were out clearing the streets, others, including local students who had the day off from school, decided to break out the sleds and snowboards to enjoy the day.

For more photos, see page 16.

Left: Cameron Webber couldn't have been happier to break out his sled on Jan. 7 and race down the hill at Mixville Park in Cheshire, after the first big winter storm of the year dumped several inches of snow on the town.
Funeral Service will be 10:00 a.m. Saturday, April 30, 2022, at Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church. Interment will be at Rose Hill Cemetery under the direction of Sevier Funeral Home. Elnora J Rock of Chickasha, OK, passed away on Thursday, April 21, 2022, at the age of 85. She was born Dece
Over the past several decades, American evangelicalism has moved away from the religious labels, symbols, and buildings that used to define church.

Many newer churches dont contain stained glass, crosses, or traditional sanctuary setups. They tend to adopt contemporary names, leaving out denominational labels or other religious language. Along with those shifts, churchgoers have changed the way they speak about their faith; think of phrases like Its is not a religion; its a relationship.

These trends have had a real impact on how younger people understand their religious identity. Evangelical Protestants have been debating for years over the definition and usefulness of the evangelical label. Now, it appears Protestant may be losing its place too.

New research shows that a significant portion of Americans no longer attach to the word Protestant the way older Americans have for generationsa finding that has implications for those who study and measure religious affiliation as well as for church communities themselves.

The insight comes thanks to a weekly survey called the Nationscape, which Democracy Fund began in mid-2019 and stands as the largest publicly available survey dataset in history, with nearly a half million people surveyed.

When asking about religion, survey administrators gave respondents the option to identify as Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, Orthodox, or Christian, among other options for other faiths. Its the Christian response that makes a difference. Surveys typically make people specify a tradition within Christianity. But when given the option to not choose the Protestant label, many who attend Protestant churches dont.

The younger a person is, the more likely they are to prefer Christian over Protestant. Among 20-year-olds, 22 percent indicated that they were Christians, while 8 percent said that they were Protestants. At 40, 25 percent said Christian, and 11 percent chose Protestant. Around age 55, people are just as likely to say Protestant as Christian.

The oldest Americans clearly still identify as Protestant. About a third of 70-year-olds said that they are Protestants, with just 10 percent indicating that they are Christians.

The label Catholic seems to be less impacted by age; 18 percent of young folks say they are Catholic compared to 25 percent of folks 75 and older.

While it can be problematic to seek out a causal link for survey findings around religious identity, the shift corresponds to the recent history of Protestant Christianity. The rise of nondenominational Christianity and the decline of the mainline Protestantism began in the 1980s. People who are in their 50s or younger grew up in a world where Protestant terminology was falling out of favor.

However, race is also a factor in the gap between Protestants and Christians. Among younger Americans, ages 18 to 45, African Americans have the highest levels of religiosity and were more likely than other racial groups to prefer Christian to Protestant. Thirty-eight percent of Black respondents said they were Christians, compared to 10 percent who said Protestant.

Younger Hispanics are also nearly four times more likely to choose the Christian option over Protestant. The gap is smaller among white respondents (24% versus 11%) and those who identify as Asian (13% versus 7%).

In a new paper published last month at the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, I attempted to find other factors around why people hold onto Protestant identity or prefer the Christian label.

The data indicates that those with higher levels of education are more likely to identify as Protestants, but even among younger people with a graduate degree, most prefer Christian over Protestant.

While the Nationscape survey does not include many questions related specifically to religion, it does ask respondents about politics. There is some evidence that younger people who identify as Protestants are more likely to say that they are Democrats than those who say that they are Christians. For instance, 27 percent of white Protestants were Democrats, compared to 20 percent of white Christians. That gap also appears for Black and Hispanic respondents as well.

This may be because churches in the mainline tradition such as United Methodists and Episcopalians, which are more likely to still use Protestant as a label in sermons and literature, tend to be more politically moderate.

Im a pastor and an academic, and the findings from the Nationscape survey are troubling from both perspectives. Younger Americans dont seem to have much familiarity with the term Protestant. If surveys continue to ask about Protestant identityas most still doand the average American doesnt understand that distinction, then social scientists run the very real risk of mismeasuring religion.

Fortunately, the overall composition of religion in the Nationscape survey does not look substantively different from other surveys that only include the Protestant option. If Protestants are combined with Christians in the survey, their overall composition doesnt differ significantly from Protestants in other data. But that may not always be the case.

From a social science standpoint, how people identify (or not) with a religious tradition is incredibly important. One of the key questions that human beings face is Who am I? And who are people like me? Religion is one of the ways in which Americans help sort themselves into social space. The Protestant identity helps Baptists, Methodists, and Episcopalians know that they share a great deal of commonality. When those labels begin to fade, there are fewer social signposts to aid people in finding like-minded people.

For churches, a bigger issue may be that many folks sitting the pews may not have any clue about their churchs denominational affiliation or its connection to larger church history. That kind of religious literacyan understanding of how the basic precepts of their tradition differs from other Christianscan be helpful for understanding their Catholic, Mormon, and Orthodox neighbors, but also for a deeper understanding of the distinctives of their own faith as Protestants.

Embracing a label-less approach to spirituality seems to be the current trend, but as this data indicates, it is having very real impacts on how Americans understand their place in the religious world.

Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. His research appears on the site Religion in Public, and he tweets at @ryanburge.
Online church and virtual campuses have become mainstays during the pandemic, and one Denver-area megachurch is making virtual services its only optionsfor good.

Last week, The Denver Post reported that The Potters House Denver will sell its property in Arapahoe County and continue to worship exclusively online.

The churchled by the daughter and son-in-law of T. D. Jakesis one of the first and most prominent megachurches to move one of its locations online permanently without operating other in-person campuses in an area.

COVID-19 forced every church in America to rethink how to best serve their parishioners and the broader community, pastor Toure Roberts told the Post. Due to the inability to gather and the economic instability of the pandemic, our church, like many other churches in the nation, experienced declining donations.

As a result, The Potters House Denver decided to abandon its 32-acre property and 137,000-square-foot building, first built in 1989 and the churchs home since 2011. Another pastor at the Denver campus said the church had averaged 10,000 worshipers in live attendance and 300,000 weekly YouTube views.

Roberts cited the buildings condition and need of repairs, saying, We decided that the best way forward would be to sell the property, continue our online offering that had proven a successful alternative and maintain our hands-on community outreach operations.

Even with another round of COVID-19 infections disrupting services, experts dont predict that many others will follow suit.

Black churches  whether historical African or classically evangelical traditions, emphasize not forsaking assembling together, said David Goatley, professor of theology and director of the Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School. Being the body of Christ means functioning together, and being in community is critical.

Despite giving up its physical location, The Potters House Denver will continue its local outreach and mercy ministries, including its food bank, which Roberts said feeds thousands of Denver families each year. In January, the church also launched local community groups.

When visitors to The Potters House Denver site click to watch online, theyre directed to the churchs Los Angeles location, named ONE, which streams five services on Sundays and two on Thursdays, with attendees there in person. On The Potters House Denvers Facebook page, members from LA lead prayer on Facebook Live.

A spokesman for The Potters House declined to answer further questions and referred CT to Robertss statements in The Denver Post.

The Potters House, founded in 1996 by Pentecostal preacher T. D. Jakes, now reports over 30,000 members across its locations in North Dallas, Fort Worth, Denver, and Los Angelesthe latter two led by Sarah Jakes Roberts and Toure Roberts. Jakes has returned to preaching in person at the Dallas church, where masks are required.

Jakess influence as a thought leader and exemplar because of his media reach is significant, said Goatley, but the number of churches that identify with Jakes is relatively small compared to the number of churches identifying with historical Black denominations like the African Methodist Episcopal and historic Baptist congregations.

Throughout the pandemic, Black churches have exercised caution in regard to in-person gatherings. Black churches have generally waited the longest to resume worship in person, and churches that have remained closed have been more likely to see significant drops in giving.

Lifeway Research found last November that African American pastors were 3.5 times more likely than white pastors to say their offering was down by 25 percent or more during the pandemic.

Though Black church leaders also been quick to implement technology to connect with church members virtually during the pandemic, gathering together as a community remains an integral part of life for the Black denominations.

Because The Potters House Denver is relatively new to its community and attracts young people, Goatley suspects it can successfully transition to an online-only congregations, but he doesnt believe the online-only platform will become a trend among Black churches.

Congregations that have prioritized relational intimacyshowing up for births, deaths, marriages, graduationswill not want to trade their relational capital for online views.

Churches that havent had that intimacy of ministry and [have instead] focused on gathering and production, people can experience that virtually. What you cannot virtually experience is relational intimacy, Goatley said.

Digital church can be a great outreach and missiological resource, says Jason Thacker, chair of research in technology ethics at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Counsel of the Southern Baptist Convention. But he worries that by going exclusively, permanently online, The Potters House Denver misses the New Testament directives to gather together.

Digital services are dangerous when they become the primary means of the church, because we are an embodied people, Thacker says. Church isnt a service, a sermon, or even worship gathering, but the people of God.

Thacker and his family have taken advantage of their churchs online worship services to protect his wife, who is currently immunocompromised after multiple rounds of cancer treatments. Hes grateful that vulnerable families like his can maintain a connection to their local church and for the outreach opportunities online church can create for those hesitant to enter a church building.

Thacker appreciates that The Potters House Denver will continue its food bank ministry, but wondered, If youre not forsaking those [ministries], why forsake the body gathering?
Ex-youth pastor sentenced to 20 years in prison for molesting boys

A former youth pastor in Indiana has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for molesting several boys aged 11 to 13 for several years.

An Elkhart County judge sentenced the 46-year-old man, Scott Christner, formerly a youth group leader for First Baptist Church in Goshen, to three nine-year sentences for Level 4 felonies and 20 of those years will be served in prison with seven suspended, WNDU reported.

Christner also received two seven-year sentences for two Class C felonies to be served along with the remaining suspended sentence in case he violates his parole after serving the prison time, the news outlet added.

Christner was arrested in 2019 after a victim made allegations of sexual abuse, followed by several other victims and their parents. He had molested children since 2012, according to court documents.

Christner was a trusted member of the church and was considered family, a parent of a victim was quoted as saying.

In a written statement, a victim referred to Christners double life, pretending to be a kind, giving man, while also molesting kids.

Christner said he had been hoping for forgiveness from his victims and their families, but the father of a victim remarked that he isnt remorseful for his actions, but that he got caught, and he only stopped because he got caught.

In a separate case last week, the Reformed Presbyterian Church placed Jared Olivetti, a pastor of Immanuel Reformed Presbyterian Church in West Lafayette, Indiana, was placed on leave pending its investigation into accusations of covering up sexual abuse involving minors in his congregation.

The incidents of abuse took place on and off church property between spring 2019 and March 2020, according to IndyStar, which revealed that eight victims from multiple families reported over- and under-clothes touching, oral-genital contact and penetration by a boy at the church.

The boy is a relative of Olivetti, who, along with some other elders, failed to act with urgency, said IndyStar, which investigated the sexual abuse last month. The pastor didnt immediately recuse himself but used his leadership position to interfere with the churchs response, according to the probe.
Jamal Bryant among 25 faith leaders on hunger strike for voting rights

Megachurch pastor Jamal Bryant, who leads New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia, is among 25 faith leaders who have embarked on a hunger strike in a bid to push Congress to pass voting rights legislation by Martin L. King, Jr. Day on Jan. 17.

The pastors, who are all part of a coalition called Faith for Black Lives, began the hunger strike on Jan. 6, the first anniversary of the U.S. Capitol riot.

Rev. Stephen A. Green, chair of Faith for Black Lives and pastor of St. Luke AME Church in New York City, was not immediately available for comment when contacted by The Christian Post on Monday.

The group explains in a statement on its website the pastors' concern over various voting rights bills enacted in states across the country that they argue disenfranchise communities of color.

"Across the country, voting rights are being threatened as 19 states passed 34 laws impacting the right to vote, specifically targeting communities of color," Faith for Black Lives noted.

"States enacted laws to reduce early voting, restrict access to absentee ballots, and seize control of non-partisan election administration official functions. In addition, extreme partisan gerrymandering threatens access to Black political representation in state and federal elections for the next decade."

Conservatives contend that bills, such as the one passed last year in Georgia, aim to improve the integrity of the voting process amid allegations of voter fraud. Progressives believe that such bills curtail ballot access for urban and suburban communities.

Green suggested that the hunger strike was a part of "moral resistance."

"As faith leaders, we are called to speak truth to power and to raise the conscience of this nation through moral resistance," he said. "This moment requires sacrifice and a deep commitment to radical love in action in order to redeem the soul of this nation and protect our democracy. Through this hunger strike we hope to press upon the United States Senate the moral imperative of this moment."

Democrats in Congress have used the anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot as an opportunity to renew their push to advance several federal voting rights bills after failing to do so in 2021.

Legislation proposed since Democrats won the House in 2018 includes the For the People Act, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

All three proposals have been met with varying degrees of resistance from Republicans while an ongoing debate over whether the Senate filibuster should be repealed continues to rage. Abolishing the filibuster would give Democrats the ability to pass those bills with a simple majority rather than compromising with Republicans to meet a 60-vote threshold.

However, at least a two Democrat senators  Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kristen Simena of Arizona  have expressed their opposition to repealing the filibuster. Last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told colleagues that the Senate would vote no later than Jan. 17 to change Senate rules if Republicans continue to block voting rights legislation.

"We're living in a precarious time, and Democrats in Congress can't let these procedural rules get in the way of strengthening democracy, especially as it relates to voting rights," Spencer Overton, a professor of law at George Washington University Law School and the president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, told FiveThirtyEight.

"If we don't step up to the plate and people don't try to preserve democracy, we'll end up being in a situation where you have a minority of people who control the country, and that minority is not going to reflect the diversity of our nation."

While Democrats claim that their bills aim to make it harder for states to suppress votes, critics of the legislation say they are attempts to defang state voter identification laws, ban the updating of voter rolls and block poll observers from watching the vote count.

The text of the Freedom to Vote Act, introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, contends that "recent elections and studies" have shown that "minority communities wait longer in lines to vote, are more likely to have their mail ballots rejected, continue to face intimidation at the polls, are more likely to be disenfranchised by voter purges, and are disproportionately burdened by voter identification and other voter restrictions."
Pastor whose church paid him nearly $390K in 1 year apologizes for not paying taxes, fraud

Ever since he was a young boy, North Carolina Pastor Frank Jacobs Sr.s mother noticed he had a taste for expensive things. She warned him that he would have to get a good education to afford them. So he studied hard and ultimately became a pastor, earning nearly $400,000 in one year. It apparently wasnt enough.

Earlier this month, Dena J. King, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, announced that Jacobs, 51, who led the Rock Worship Center Church in Charlotte from at least 2009 to 2018 and Quest Church in Charlotte from at least 2019 to 2021, pleaded guilty to tax and wire fraud.

Jacobs was accused of filing a false tax return and using fraudulent information to obtain a $52,000 loan from the federal governments coronavirus relief program for small businesses, known as the Paycheck Protection Program.

On Sunday, during a Facebook Live broadcast from Quest Church, Jacobs said very little about his charges. But he told his congregation and supporters that the Bible remains his favorite book and apologized for embarrassing the church.

Its been a tough week, a very tough weeks for me and my family, said the father of five, who is married to online talk show host Kimberly Jacobs.

I first want to apologize to you  as church members and people who follow this ministry for being in a situation where you have to even see this, hear this, deal with this with your friends and colleagues. Im very embarrassed by it, and Im very sorry about it, and I apologize to you that youre enduring this even as I endure it. Im sorry to you because you had nothing to do with it.

Jacobs, who did not immediately respond to calls for further comment from The Christian Post on Monday and appears to have stepped back from his current ministry, said he decided to speak out publicly because he has long been an advocate of personal responsibility.

Most of you know that my favorite book is the Bible, my second favorite book is The Oz Principle of Accountability. And when you do something that you shouldnt do, you ought to take the accountability and responsibility for it. I ask you to forgive me, he said.

I ask you to forgive me for what Ive done, and I appreciate very deeply the many text messages, phone calls that have come to me. Ive not been able to talk in-depth about this  but I appreciate the prayers of the saints. I appreciate the support of the ministry as we continue to move forward. And Im just grateful for the outpouring of love Ive seen as a result of this.  Well get through this. Ill get through this. Keep us lifted up. Keep us in your prayers.

Documents cited by the U.S. Department of Justice show that for tax years 2009 through 2013 and 2015 through 2017, Jacobs failed to file timely U.S. individual income tax returns, Form 1040s, even after he received correspondence from the IRS in some of those years about the need to file and pay taxes.

He filed a return for 2014, claiming he only earned $66,370. But an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service suggests that he had $387,456.35 in income, according to a court document cited by The Charlotte Observer.

On April 22, 2020, Jacobs filed a fraudulent PPP loan application on behalf of Quest Church. He claimed the church paid five employees more than $135,500, but the church did not report any wages to the IRS for the corresponding calendar year and did not pay any withholding taxes.

Jacobs was released on bond following his court appearance last Tuesday and will be sentenced at a later date.

Filing a false tax return carries a maximum statutory penalty of three years in prison and a $250,000 fine, while the wire fraud charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
UK girls' school association bans trans-identified biological boys from enrollment

An association of 25 girls schools in England and Wales has adopted a new policy to maintain the institutions single-sex status by refusing admissions to trans-identified biological male students.

The Girls Day School Trust updated its policy on gender identity last month, saying its committed to single-sex education for girls, and, therefore, admissions to the schools are based on the prospective students legal sex as recorded on their birth certificate.

Applications from students who are legally female but who identify as trans or non-binary will be carefully considered on a case-by-case basis, the policy states. Single-sex schools present a particular context for transgender students. There may be cultural challenges involved in a trans student who does not identify as a girl attending a school which deliberately tailors its ethos and educational approach to cater specifically for girls.

The policy argues that admissions policies based on gender identity instead of sex recorded on a students birth certificate would jeopardise the status of GDST schools as single-sex schools under the act.

For this reason, GDST schools do not accept applications from students who are legally male, the policy stresses. We will, however, continue to monitor the legal interpretation of this exemption.

GDST Chief Executive Cheryl Giovannoni said in a statement that its member schools are able to operate a single-sex admissions policy, without breaching the Equality Act 2010 on the basis of an exemption relating to biological sex.

Under current laws and guidance, the GDST believes that an admissions policy based on gender identity rather than the legal sex recorded on a students birth certificate could jeopardise the status of GDST schools as single-sex schools under the act, Giovannoni maintains.

Teacher and trans campaigner Debbie Hayton wrote an op-ed for the UnHerd titled A Win for Common Sense at The Girls Day School Trust.

As the law stands, children in the UK cannot acquire a Gender Recognition Certificate which means they cannot change their legal sex, Hayton wrote. So that means that there is no question about girls schools excluding girls who choose to identify as boys: they are still female legally as well as biologically. Trans-identified girls are not being turned down.

The group being excluded are boys who identify as girls, but not because of their gender identity, Hayton continued. One only needs to look as far as the Equality Act 2010, which allows single-sex schools to refuse to admit pupils of the opposite sex. ... Those boys remain legally male and therefore ineligible.

Headteachers in the United Kingdom have called on the Department for Education to frame national guidance on transgender issues to be published as education leaders are struggling to cope, according to The Telegraph.

It is a really big issue and the lack of formal guidance for schools is something that we are concerned about, Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School of College Leaders, was quoted as saying. This issue has grown quite rapidly over the past few years and it certainly feels like something that has become much more common. It is increasingly something that almost all schools are having to think about, but particularly single sex schools.

In 2017, when the gender identity issue was becoming more prominent in the U.K. and the number of children referred to gender identity clinics was on the rise, a major school guide announced that it would rate schools based on how transgender-friendly they are.

Sally-Anne Huang, the headmistress of the private James Allens Girls School in south London, said at the time that she would no longer be calling her students girls to avoid potentially offending pupils who were questioning their gender.

I try not to say girls, [but] when you have been teaching for 20 years, it is very hard not to say girls, she said, according to The Sunday Times.

Some critics have, however, warned that pushing trans issues on young people risks leaving them confused.

Chris McGovern, a former adviser to the Department for Education, warned in 2017 that people are making a career out of encouraging children to question gender at an age when they need to be left to be children.

When teachers raise these issues children can become confused or unhappy and traumatized by it, he said.
Why America is not a Christian nation

Im betting that youre already mad at me.

Declaring that the United States is not a Christian nation beneath the banner of The Christian Post has got to be some kind of violation, right? Just the idea probably invokes outrage along the lines expressed by that great American hero, Daffy Duck, who once said: Doesnt that just gall ya sister?

But before you leave nasty comments or send me links to David Barton books, hear me out.

Im not saying that American society has not been heavily influenced and supported (for the better) by Judeo-Christian values and ethics. Only historical revisionists wishing to erase God from our culture would assert such a thing.

What I am saying is that, if you define a Christian nation as one governed solely by New Testament principles, then there has never been a Christian nation. There have been, and are, plenty of countries with Christians living in them who influence their culture, but not one solely piloted by the precepts of the New Testament.

Further, in all of history, there has only been one theocracy governed directly by God and that was ancient Israel. And there will never be another one until the Millennial Kingdom overseen by Christ at the end of the age.

All that said, it was the dream of some who first came to America (e.g., the Pilgrims) for the country to be a Christian nation. However, things didnt work out as they planned.

The fly in the Christian ointment

In a sermon he preached a couple of years ago, entitled America  a Great Idea, Tommy Nelson discussed how many of the English reformers in the 1500s and 1600s longed for a Protestant government. While some (the Puritans) stayed in their homeland with the hopes of purifying their countrys authority, others came to America with hopes of building that type of national governance.

The Pilgrims who came wanted to establish the ancient medieval idea of Augustine  the City of God. There would be no church-state separation, but rather a State that was the Church.

But by the late 1600s, their desires were dashed. Why? Nelson gives a humorous but accurate one-word answer:

Teenagers.

In short, the faith of the parents didnt carry on to their children and so began the downward descent of non-Christian thought and secularism to the point where we are today. Nelson says that America was, the last vestige of the medieval dream of Augustine to have a city of God, but it wasnt realized due to the Pilgrims underestimating the biblical doctrine of depravity.

Fake faith

If you want to do a depressing Bible study (arent those the best?), look at all the Old Testament personalities who were devoted to God and then see how their kids turned out. Sure, a few continued in the parents faithful footsteps, but many did not.

The same is true today. Maybe in your own family.

The stories are endless of faithful parents who lived out Christ in front of their offspring and did everything to pass along the truths of God, only to have their children seemingly run off the Christian rails, sometimes in spectacular fashion.

The problem is they were never on the rails to begin with. The Hellenistic and classical Greeks actually had a word for such a thing: nomizo. The term described a type of faith held only because it was passed down by custom and tradition.

The word nomizo is never used in the New Testament to identify Christian faith; instead the Greek term found everywhere in its pages is pistis, which comes from the verb peitho that means to be persuaded, and denotes trust, confidence, conviction, reliability and something worthy of belief.

In other words, its the real thing.

In the future, the fake nomizo and true pistis faith will come to a head in Christs Millennial Kingdom where Satan leads a revolt of those who have lived under the perfect rule of Jesus, but (incredibly) side with the devil against Him. One of the saddest verses in all the Bible says, the number of them is like the sand of the seashore (Rev. 20:8).

I dont know about you, but the fact that a glorified, reigning Jesus (in the flesh) is not enough to keep a 100% believer-filled Christian nation intact gives me pause. It makes me reflect on the guilt and sense of failure some have shared with me over having children or other family members that arent  despite their best efforts  in the faith.

But Christs upcoming Millennial reign, and the tares that are prophesied to exist within it, teaches a great truth about the inherited sin nature we all have, how powerful it is, and Gods sovereignty over salvation.

As for us today, living in an America that is not a Christian nation, our duty remains what it always has been: be salt and light (Matt. 5:13-16) and, for our unsaved loved ones, pray that God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth (2 Tim. 2:25).
Episcopal Church, Anglican diocese spar over which congregation gets $2M bequest

A small Episcopal church in Texas is at the center of an ongoing legal battle over who rightly owns a bequest from a deceased parishioner currently valued at around $2 million.

Dr. Hendley McDonald, a former member of St. Marys Episcopal Church of Hillsboro who passed away in 2017, had left $1.3 million to the congregation in his will. The amount was placed in an interest-bearing bank account and, as a result, has grown to $2 million.

However, two congregations, both of which worshipped at the church property and have fewer than 30 regular attendees, have staked claim to the McDonald bequest.

One congregation belongs to the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, controlled by the theologically conservative Anglican Church in North America. The diocese recently won a years-long legal battle to keep the churchs property after breaking away from the Episcopal Church in 2008.

The other congregation belongs to The Episcopal Church in North Texas and began holding worship services at a former bank drive-thru building last June.

The two parties will present oral arguments at a hearing before a probate court in Waco on Jan. 14.

Katie Sherrod, communication director with The Episcopal Church in North Texas, directed The Christian Post to an Episcopal News Service story. Senior warden David Skelton argued that the Episcopal congregation was meant to have the money.

[McDonald] very clearly did not want this money to go to some breakaway non-Episcopalians calling themselves Anglicans, Skelton told ENS.

Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth Director of Communications Suzanne Gill told CP that the bequest was left to the church and not to the continuing Episcopal congregation.

There has been no change to the legal name of the church in Hillsboro under Fr. Michael Heidt. As the courts at every level have found, it is St. Marys Episcopal Church in that city, said Gill.

Gill told CP that on two different occasions in the last seven months, the legal representative for the breakaway diocese offered to split the bequest evenly, avoiding ongoing legal costs which deplete everyones resources, but that no response was ever made to this offer.

In November 2008, most of the Fort Worth Diocese voted to exit the Episcopal Church due to the increasing theologically liberal direction of the mainline Protestant denomination.

A central point of objection was the ordination of the Rev. Gene Robinson, the churchs first openly gay bishop, which led other churches and dioceses to leave the denomination.

In response, a lengthy legal battle ensued over whether the breakaway diocese or the national church rightly owned the property assets of the Diocese of Fort Worth.

In May 2020, the Texas Supreme Court partially reversed an earlier ruling against the breakaway leadership, concluding that the diocese owned the property, not the national denomination.

According to the Episcopal News Service, St. Mary's members split nearly in half after the schism and about a dozen members who wished to remain with the Episcopal Church continued worshiping in the church under an agreement with ACNA leaders.

It was our decision that it was time to move on, to a place where we had bathrooms and a coffee pot and could stay and chat over coffee after church, Skelton told ENS. Wed already notified them that we were no longer paying the utilities.
Sadie Robertson Huff encourages young adults to find God-centered identity at Passion 2022

Speaker and author Sadie Robertson Huff encouraged young believers to find their identity in Christ  and not in what the world or personality tests tell them  in order to live God-glorifying lives and discover their purpose.

I want to remind you of who you are tonight. I want to talk about identity, which should be a great conversation, right?" the 24-year-old "Duck Dynasty" star told thousands of young adults gathered for Passion 2022 at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Jan. 2.

"As a culture, we love to talk about identity. Were obsessed with our identity," she continued. "We love to talk about who we are. But also, its kind of strange because although we are obsessed with talking about who we are, nobody likes to actually be hit with the question, 'Who are you?

For many, there is "anxiety and insecurity" around the question, "Who am I?" Huff contended.

Because truthfully, youre sitting here right now and I know there are thousands of you in this room thinking the same thing: I have no clue who I am.' ... That is a hard place to be, friends, but you're not alone, she added.

Other times, people tend to be confused about who they are because they identify with many different things instead of finding fulfillment in their God-given identity.

A few weeks ago, Huff said, she wrote a post on Instagram which asked her followers the question: "What do you identify yourself with?" The first group of respondents identified external factors such as "my looks" and "my sexuality." The second group of people, however, responded with confidence," "I am who [God] says I am."

Although Huff said she finds the second group of people's answers to be awesome, she said, she imagines that some of the people at the Passion conference sent answers from both groups.

Thats awesome that you know the answer to that question, she said. Has that actually changed who you are? Has who He says that you are actually changed the nature of who you are? Because we can say it all day long and we can even say it with confidence, but that doesnt mean were a confident person.

Huff shared how, in the past, she was "insecure," afraid" and "living in shame" despite understanding what God said about her.

"What He said about me didnt actually change me, she said. Friends, you can know everything He says about you, but what ultimately matters is who He is to you.  If Hes not on the throne of your life, then what He says about you isnt actually going to change who you are."

The Live Original author read from Matthew 16:13, where Jesus asks His disciples, "Who do you say I am?" In response, the Apostle Peter says, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

Then, Jesus responds by saying: And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

"Notice, when Peter recognized who Jesus was, Jesus in return told Peter who he was, Huff explained.

Peters identity was not found in who Peter found himself to be," she continued. "Peters identity was not found in who other people told Peter that he was or what they thought of him. Peters identity was found in who Jesus said he was, after first establishing that Jesus is God. Thats the most important question you can answer tonight, friends: Who is God to you?

Whoever is on the throne of someones life dictates who they are, she stressed. Therefore, it's important for Christians to know their identity, because who a Christian believes they are will directly impact their actions.

After Peter was given his identity, he then was given his mission to build a church. So we have to understand who God is, to understand who we are, to understand what we are called to do," she declared.

Many times, Huff said, Christians in society look to the world or personality tests more than they look to Jesus in order to find their identity.

"Were trying to take all these personality tests to lead us and guide us through our lives instead of leaning on the Holy Spirit," she lamented.

Were scrolling through social media trying to figure out answers to these massive questions about who we are, looking at TikTok, looking at Snapchat articles, trying to figure out, 'Who am I? instead of really leaning into the voice of God, Huff said.

She added that though she appreciates personality tests like the Enneagram and MyersBriggs, she understands that none of those things can tell her more about who she is than the One who knit her together in her mother's womb.

Because what happens is, when I say that those things are what I identify with, it excuses me to not have to be what Im called to be," she said. "I'll say  I have a very fearful personality. Im just going to be afraid because thats who I am. Thats how I was created. This is my identity.' But the Word of God said: Youve not been given a spirit of fear, but of power, love and self-control.

Some biblical principles "don't feel natural," Huff said, such as the concept of "turning the other cheek" or resisting sexual temptation.

"But Im going to tell you something that culture will never tell you: Although it may be legitimate to have those feelings, more legitimate than that, is the truth of what God says that you are," she said.

At a time when the word "truth" has lost its meaning, Huff encouraged audiences to remember that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.

"We want to be our own version of truth," she continued. "We want to be loved. We want to be power. We want to get control over our life. And we're trying to take on all these attributes of God. What we're not considering is trying to carry the weight of who God is. You also have to consider that you've got to carry the weight of your sin."

Every person is created "original," Huff said, but "we can't go find out more about our originality and our identity by who the world says we are."

"We have to find that in who God is, who He created us to be, based off the nature of who He is," she declared.

When believers "get a good look at who God is" and know who they are in Christ, the "enemy will no longer try to intimidate you because he's intimidated by who God is within you," she declared.

Huff quoted what the Bible says about the character and nature of God, reminding attendees that He is "our Savior, our guide, our peace, our Lord."

"When you fall, He will lift you up. When you fail, He will forgive you. When you're weak, He is strong. When you're afraid, He is your courage," she emphasized.

"If you believe that that is who your God is, you will not be confused by who you are, because He's not confused by who He is, and He is not confused on the purpose of your life."

Launched by Louie Giglio in 1997, the Passion movement "has a singular mission  calling students and leaders from campuses across the nation and cities around the world to live for what matters most," reads the event website.

Other speakers at this years two-day event included Tim Tebow, David Platt, Jackie Hill-Perry, Christine Caine and others.
Big Daddy Weaves Jay Weaver dies from COVID-19: My heart's broke for my family'

Big Daddy Weaves Jason Weaver, better known as Jay, has died from complications due to COVID-19 after many years of battling other health conditions.

Big Daddy Weave frontman Mike Weaver took to Facebook on Sunday to announce that his younger brother and bandmate went to be with Jesus on Jan. 2. He was 42. The late artist was a founding member of the band. He played bass guitar and sang with the Christian group.

Even though COVID may have taken his last breath, Jesus was right there to catch him, Weaver shared in the video announcement.

While noticeably broken up about his loss, Weaver said he is celebrating the fact that his brother is in Heaven.

Hes seeing things now that I long to see. My hearts broke for my family  but we all just really wanted to thank you for walking with us through so much for so long, he continued.

The Lord used Jay in mighty ways, Weaver testified.

The musician is survived by his wife, Emily, and their three children.

According to a previous message posted by Big Daddy Weave, Jay Weaver was in the hospital for at least five days fighting a tough battle against COVID.

Emily Weaver also released a statement at the time that said, I just want my best friend/everything to get better.

Her husband died the following day.

Jay Weaver had diabetes for 20 years, and the illness severely weakened his bodys immune system and ability to stave off infection, which resulted in the amputation of both of his feet.

He remained in the band for five years following the amputations. However, shortly before his death, the bassist announced hed made the difficult decision to come off the road with Big Daddy Weave for a time to focus on his health.

In August 2021, Big Daddy Weave said that the younger Weaver had suffered side effects from his dialysis treatments that led to him being admitted into the intensive care unit. However, God answered their prayers and he recovered.

Prayers for healing can now turn into prayers of thanksgiving that Jay is with the Lord! Mike Weaver concluded in his video message on Sunday.
Election integrity or voter suppression? 5 things to know about Texas voting bill

Texas has garnered national attention over the debate on legislation that would modify its state election standards in various ways.

Gov. Greg Abbott called the Texas Legislature to a special session for the summer to pass election reform legislation, specifically House Bill 3 and Senate Bill 1.

Democrat state legislators made headlines when they decided to flee the state for Washington, D.C., rather than allow for a quorum at the state House of Representatives.

Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa issued a statement on Monday defending the legislators' actions, claiming they were protecting voting rights against the attacks of the Republican governor.

Today, by breaking quorum to block Abbotts attacks on voters, Texas Democrats are making history. After Abbott dragged lawmakers back to the Capitol for his suppression session, Democrats are fighting back with everything weve got, stated Hinojosa.

We will not stand by and watch Republicans slash our right to vote, silence the voices of Texans of color, and destroy our democracy  all to preserve their own power. Our lawmakers have refused to be complicit in Republicans destructive attacks.

Nevertheless, the Republican-controlled state Senate passed its version of the legislation, known as Senate Bill 1, on Tuesday in a vote of 18-4, sending the bill to the state House of Representatives.

I am very proud that the Texas Senate passed Senate Bill 1 today. SB 1 is about ensuring that every Texan trusts the outcome of every election in Texas. It increases transparency and ensures the voting rules are the same in every county across the state, stated Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, as quoted by KHOU-11.

Both public and private polling indicates that the majority of Texans support the provisions included in SB 1, and yet, House Democrats were so intent on using this bill for political gain that they left the state to avoid voting on it. They are in Washington, D.C., repeating misinformation and lies about SB 1. Instead of doing their jobs, they are pushing Congress to pass a federal election bill Texans dont want.

Here are five important things to know about the legislation being debated in Texas aimed at reforming state election laws. They include how the latest bills contrast with an earlier proposed measure, how drive-thru voting is impacted, and a ban on 24-hour voting that took place for the first time ever in Harris County during the 2020 presidential election.

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How Hong Kongs system of democracy is constituted

09:02, January 10, 2022 By Li Laifan ( People's Daily

Democracy has always been comprehended differently since ancient times. However, its agreed that any colonial rule in human history is against the marrow of democracy.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (right) administers the oath-taking of the seventh-term Legislative Council members at the Chamber of the LegCo Complex on Jan. 3, 2022. (Photo from www.news.gov.hk)

Hong Kong had never enjoyed democracy under British colonial rule.

It was since 1997 when the Chinese government resumed its exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong and established the democratic system for the special administrative region that Hong Kong has embraced a new era of democracy guided by the one country, two systems principle.

The Chinese central government firmly supports Hong Kong in developing a democratic system that conforms to the regions constitutional status and actual conditions, and has taken significant steps to advance Hong Kongs democratic development.

Hong Kongs democratic system is based on the Constitution of China and the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). It is showing new vitality after constant development, playing a significant role in safeguarding Hong Kongs long-term prosperity, stability and security.

Chairman of the China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Electoral Affairs Commission Justice Barnabas Fung Wah (2nd R) and Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs of the HKSAR government Erick Tsang Kwok-wai (2nd L) open a ballot box at a counting station in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Dec. 19, 2021. (Photo from the official website of the HKSAR)

According to the Constitution and the Basic Law, Hong Kong has established an electoral system that suits its actual conditions. The system abides by the one country, two systems principle, ensures that Hong Kong is governed by patriots, accommodates the interests of all sectors of Hong Kong society, ensures balanced participation, and facilitates economic and social development. Being continuously refined, it is showing an increasing higher level of democracy.

According to the Basic Law, the method for selecting the Chief Executive shall be specified in the light of the actual situation in the HKSAR and in accordance with the principle of gradual and orderly progress. The ultimate aim is the selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures, and the selection of the legislature by universal suffrage.

The Basic Law grants extensive democratic rights and freedoms to Hong Kong residents. Under the Basic Law, permanent residents of the HKSAR have the right to vote and the right to stand for election in accordance with the law, and Hong Kong residents have freedom of speech, freedom of the press and publication, freedom of association, assembly, procession and demonstration, and other rights and freedoms provided for under the Basic Law and the laws of the HKSAR. It is under such institutional guarantee, Hong Kongs democracy is widely ensured.

To effectively respond to public opinions in developing the democratic system, the government of the HKSAR attaches high importance on the ideas of the public in improving and reforming the electoral system. Apart from soliciting professional opinions via statutory organizations, the HKSAR also learns about the appeals and suggestions of the public through public consultations. The public consultations cover a wide range of aspects, such as the selection of the Chief Executive, the formation of the Legislative Council, the election of district councils and the election of village representatives.

In Hong Kong today, the making of public policies and public governance involve broad social participation, which can effectively improve governance. Under the guidance of the HKSAR government, Hong Kongs governance is joined by different social sectors and personages, and all participants can fulfill their duties and cooperate with each other in the governance work of their districts.

This mechanism gives play to the leading role of the government, and facilitates cooperation among different social sectors on social governance. It also guarantees the right to know of the public, as well as the right to participation in the making of public policies, enabling the public to effectively join social governance.

Workers are counting votes for the 2021 Hong Kong Legislative Council election at the central counting station established at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Dec. 19, 2021. (Photo from the official website of the HKSAR)

Besides, the mechanism, working to bring those with expertise from social sectors to the social governance system of different districts, offers an opportunity for them to play a positive role in social governance, which mirrors the universality and inclusiveness of consultative democracy.

The Communist Party of China and the Chinese government designed, created, safeguarded and advanced Hong Kongs system of democracy. Hong Kong can implement the system in a manner that is differentiated from that in the Chinese mainland and with its own characteristics, based on relevant laws and the actual situation.

The principle of patriots governing Hong Kong is a fundamental principle to improve Hong Kongs electoral system, as well as a foundation for advancing Hong Kongs democratic development. Any Hong Kong residents can stand for election and participate in governing Hong Kong in accordance with the law, as long as they love the country and Hong Kong, and are not involved in activities that undermine national sovereignty, security and development interests, or jeopardize Hong Kongs prosperity and stability.

The central government has made various efforts and decisively implemented a series of major measures to develop and improve the system of democracy in the HKSAR, bringing the situation and democratic development in Hong Kong back to the right track. It is believed that under the principle of one country, two systems, the HKSAR will surely embrace a bright future and embark on a wider path of democracy.

(Lin Laifan is a professor with the School of Law, Tsinghua University.)

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
Presbyterian pastor accused of covering up abuse of 15 kids placed on leave by denomination

The Reformed Presbyterian Church has placed an Indiana pastor on leave as it investigates accusations of covering up sexual abuse involving minors in his congregation.

Pastor Jared Olivetti of Immanuel Reformed Presbyterian Church in West Lafayette will go through an ecclesiastical trial in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America and must refrain from exercising his duties as pastor pending the result, according to the denominations synod judicial commission.

By imposing this requirement, the SJC in no way pre-judges the case, but acknowledges the gravity of the accusations against Mr. Olivetti, said a letter sent by the commission, according to IndyStar.

The incidents of abuse took place on and off church property between spring 2019 and March 2020, according to the news outlet, which revealed that eight victims from multiple families reported over- and under-clothes touching, oral-genital contact and penetration by a boy at the church.

The boy is a relative of Olivetti, who, along with some other elders, failed to act with urgency, said the news outlet, which investigated the sexual abuse last month. The pastor didnt immediately recuse himself but used his leadership position to interfere with the churchs response, according to the probe.

Many church members told the news outlet that elders chose to publicly minimize the nature of the incidents and protected their pastor over the congregations children.

Were not sending a report up, Olivetti told the pastor of a neighboring church in July 2020. Its not going to be in our regular session minutes. Its going to be in a different (record), he was quoted as saying.

An ecclesiastical judicial commission, formed in late 2020, investigated the accusations and found that the pastor used undue, excessive, or improper influence to shape the churchs response, among other findings.

Olivetti has written for ChurchLeaders.com and GentleReformation.com, The Roys Report noted, adding that he also wrote an article based on one of his sermons on the need to exercise authority in a godly manner lest leaders endanger the vulnerable and enable the wicked.

Olivettis trial is likely to begin in March.
Sadie Robertson 'exhausted' amid battle with flu and COVID-19

Christian speaker and author Sadie Robertson Huff revealed she's had a rough start to the new year, battling both the flu and COVID-19 while dealing with a rodent issue in her home, forcing her to preach at the Passion 2022 conference digitally.

On social media, the 24-year-old "Duck Dynasty" star described the start of her new year as "quite interesting," as she contracted both COVID-19 and the flu, otherwise known as "flurona."

"It started off by me getting FLURONA (flu + covid) (yikes), Huff wrote on Instagram alongside a video clip of her husband, Christian Huff, holding their daughter, Honey James, as they both waved to her from outside of a window.

The Live Original author is a regular speaker at the annual Passion conference and was slated to speak at this year's event, held Jan. 2-3 in Atlanta, Georgia. However, she was unable to attend the conference in person due to her illness.

I was so bummed to miss [P]assion, she added. But I was so thankful that God gave me the strength to still preach my message to an empty room despite being so sick."

Huff preached a message titled Who is God? from a remote location in Atlanta, and the message was streamed at the conference. Her message centered on the topic of identity, an issue she acknowledged is highly relevant in a social-media-obsessed age.

"Were trying to take all these personality tests to lead us and guide us through our lives instead of leaning on the Holy Spirit," she told the Passion audience.

Were scrolling through social media trying to figure out answers to these massive questions about who we are, looking at TikTok, looking at Snapchat articles, trying to figure out, 'Who am I? instead of really leaning into the voice of God, Huff said.

She added that though she appreciates personality tests like the Enneagram and MyersBriggs, she seeks to find her identity first and foremost in Christ.

Because what happens is, when I say that those things are what I identify with, it excuses me to not have to be what Im called to be," she said. "I'll say  I have a very fearful personality. Im just going to be afraid because thats who I am. Thats how I was created. This is my identity.' But the Word of God said: Youve not been given a spirit of fear, but of power, love and self-control.

On social media, Huff revealed her home also saw a rat infestation at the top of the year, forcing her family to stay elsewhere.

"As we were on our way home from ATL we got a call that we have a couple of rats invading our home and those little guys are doing some workkk. So we couldn't go home," she wrote. It's disgusting and we are exhausted from getting over sickness and being out of our home."

"So here we are floating around trying to make the most of it. Thankful to be healthy now. Lord, help us to consider it joy! P.s. I'm sad to say Ratatouille the movie hits different now," she concluded.

The popular speaker also contracted COVID-19 while pregnant in 2020. At the time, she opened up about her experience, calling it "the hardest thing" to happen during her pregnancy.

"Seriously, my heart goes out to every single pregnant person with COVID and everybody with COVID," Huff shared. "They were telling me at the hospital, they were like, 'Man, people have to deliver with it.' I can't even imagine."

Ive learned a lot and I have been challenged in a lot of new ways, she noted. I will say my dependency on Jesus has never felt greater in some of the hardest moments of this sickness. Im thankful I serve a savior who is with me in these moments that feel rather lonely.
Texas youth minister charged with sexually assaulting 15-year-old girl

A former youth leader at a Baptist congregation in Texas has been arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a minor.

Timothy Wells, the former Junior High Minister at First Baptist Church of Wylie, turned himself in to authorities on Friday, and faces allegations that he sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl.

According to the Collin County Sheriffs Office, a staff member at First Baptist reached out to authorities in December to report the alleged sexual assault.

The allegation was leveled at another staff member and the assault was alleged to have occurred at an off-site location, not at the church, stated the Collin County Sheriffs Office last Friday.

During the course of their investigation, Collin County Sheriffs Office Investigators identified a 15-year-old female victim who disclosed that she had been inappropriately touched by First Baptist Church of Wylie Junior High Minister Timothy Wells.

In response to the allegation, Wells  who had been employed by First Baptist since January 2019  was put on leave by the church and later had his employment terminated.

Authorities charged Wells with indecency with a child by sexual contact, which is a second-degree felony, and was held at a detention facility in lieu of a $25,000 bond.

In a separate case last August, the pastor of a Texas Baptist congregation was sentenced to 17 years in prison after admitting to having molested a teenage girl from when she was 13 until she turned 18.

Stephen Bratton, the former pastor of The Grace Family Baptist Church, received the sentence after pleading guilty back in February of aggravated sexual assault of a child younger than 14.

Several other pastors came forward to tell authorities what was going on after this man confessed to them, and we applaud those people of conscience, stated Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg at the time.

This man, who had risen to a position of authority in the church, turned a child into a victim and violated his communitys trust. The victim and his community deserved, and got, justice."
Community turns to prayer as 8 children, 2 mothers among 12 killed in Philadelphia house fire

A Philadelphia neighborhood sought comfort in prayer and follow-up vigils Wednesday after 12 people from one family, including two adult sisters and eight of their children, died in a rowhouse fire as helpless neighbors were awakened by blood-curdling screams for help early in the morning.

My sisters and my nieces and my nephews are gone. They are deceased. They are never coming back, Keta Purifoy told reporters about the tragedy that struck her two sisters identified on social media as Rosalee McDonald, 33, and Virginia Thomas, 30.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney urged people to please keep all these folks, and especially these children, in your prayers during a news conference outside the charred home in Fairmount.

Philadelphia officials said fire crews responded at 6:40 a.m. to the blaze at the three-story row house on N. 23rd Street, which is owned, operated and inspected by the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

They found heavy fire coming from the second floor of the building, which took 50 minutes to bring under control.

Authorities said the building was originally a single-family home divided in an odd configuration to make two apartments, making it difficult for fire crews to navigate.

At least 26 people were living at the property at the time of the fire, Fox29 reported. Eighteen people lived in the upstairs apartment on the second and third floors, while another eight lived in the downstairs apartment, which included the first floor and part of the second floor.

While the home was equipped with four smoke detectors, none of them were working at the time of the fire, officials said. The fire is currently under investigation.

NBC Philadelphia reports that a child who escaped the blaze told investigators a Christmas tree caught fire, and the blaze spread to the rest of the building.

Qaadira Purifoy, another sister of the two mothers, told NBC Philadelphia that she believes the fire could have been avoided.

I feel like this couldve been avoided, she was quoted as saying. I feel like it should be mandatory that the city goes around making sure that the fire alarms are working and that theres fire extinguishers in every house.

Philadelphia Housing Authority President and CEO Kelvin A. Jeremiah said in a statement that the home was last inspected in May 2021 and the fire detectors were functioning properly at that time.

The ages of all the victims ranged from 2 to 33 years old.

Philadelphia Deputy Fire Commissioner Craig Murphy called the fire one of the worst he has responded to in decades.

It was terrible. ... Ive been around for 30, 35 years now, and this is probably one of the worst fires Ive ever been to, he said at a press conference.

As the bodies of the children were being removed from the building, relatives gathered in a circle and prayed, according to The New York Times.

Mickie Goodson, 55, who grew up in the area but now lives in West Oak Lane, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that praying with the family helped her.

I prayed with some of the family members, she said. They, of course, were devastated. Praying with the family helped me a little bit. I cant imagine how they felt. I cant fathom their pain, what theyre going through.

Redemption City Church on Poplar Street held a virtual prayer vigil for the community, which attracted more than 300 community members, lawmakers, faith leaders and other officials, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Were a community. When one of us hurts, we all hurt, Redemption City Church Lead Pastor Stephen Weeks told mourners during the vigil. He was not immediately available for comment when contacted by The Christian Post on Thursday.
The failing case for COVID-19 mandates

The recent COVID-19 outbreak is dealing a major blow to the justification for extreme vaccine mandates.

While there is some evidence that vaccines decrease the severity of COVID-19 infection, the public policy arguments to essentially force Americans to get vaccinated, under threat of losing their livelihoods, are rapidly falling apart as the recent wave sweeps the country.

What we are seeing with the latest surge in cases  attributed to the omicron and delta variants of COVID-19  is that countless people who have been vaccinated and boosted are getting sick.

Plenty of left-wing media outlets have tried to make Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seem like a reckless monster for refusing to implement harsh lockdowns and mandates since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pattern has repeated itself in the most recent wave.

But the reality is that there is no evidence that these policies would do anything to stop COVID-19 breakouts. If anything, Florida appears to be a refuge for Americans who want to carry on a semblance of normal life during a pandemic where there are no perfect options.

Some far-left politicians appear to be happily taking advantage of the haven Florida has created.

Are Floridas less restrictive policies creating a dangerous environment compared to places that went all-in on mandates?

Lets look at the example of New York.

The state has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country. It also has a statewide proof of vaccination or mask requirement. New York City has a proof of vaccination requirement for indoor businesses and dining.

Yet, the state and certainly the city is being hit by an enormous wave of COVID-19 cases.

On Monday, 14% of New York City Police Department officers were out sick, according to the New York Post. Most had COVID-19 or flu-like symptoms.

The [New York City Fire Department] said 30% of its 4,200 EMS staff and 18% of its 11,000 firefighters were sick, the Post reported.

While sickness numbers for many other city agencies havent been reported, its likely that they are very high.

This, after the city put thousands of its workers on leave due to its vaccine requirements. Now, presumably with a nearly entirely vaccinated staff, it is dealing with a serious shortage of healthy workers.

Could the city maybe use some of those workers put on leave from the mandates?

Health care providers could perhaps also use some of the thousands of people who lost their jobs in New York because they wouldnt get the vaccines.

New York has taken the vaccine mandate a step further, implementing a private sector vaccine mandate that just went into effect. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio may not have cared about the mandates impact on private businesses, but there is no doubt those businesses will feel the staff crunch.

Many businesses  restaurants in particular have already been forced to make their staff check vaccine papers at the door. This policy now seems farcical in the face of the clear inability of the vaccine to stop people from getting sick.

Its a performative act for the sake of compliance that does little for public safety.

Its not just New York thats implemented strict policies while dealing with a huge COVID-19 outbreak. Washington, D.C., which also has highly restrictive COVID-19 policies, is likewise facing a surge right now. Its hard not to see a similar situation not playing out all over the country this winter.

The bottom line is this. Its become clear that a significant number of Americans will get sick with COVID-19 this season, vaccine or not. Given the numbers we are seeing in New York and elsewhere, its hard to argue that highly restrictive and intrusive mandates are stopping that reality.

The justification that the Biden administration and other state and local governments have used to implement the mandates, even beyond the legal and constitutional issues, is crumbling.

Perhaps this is why President Joe Bidens approval on COVID-19  one of the very few issues where he was above water  is dropping sharply. Draconian COVID-19 policies of increasingly dubious effectiveness are remaining popular only among the strongly ideologically committed.

The test now is to see how leaders and policymakers will respond. Will they stick with the repressive mandates, or will they adjust to reality?

Originally published in The Daily Signal.
Jerusalem church leader: Israeli radicals threatening Christian presence in Old City

Weeks after some church leaders in Jerusalem called for a special cultural heritage zone for Christians in Jerusalem, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem said Israeli radical fringe groups are seeking to drive the Christian community out of the city.

Our presence in Jerusalem is under threat, Theophilos III, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, wrote in an op-ed in The Times (of London).

Our churches are threatened by Israeli radical fringe groups. At the hands of these Zionist extremists the Christian community in Jerusalem is suffering greatly. Our brothers and sisters are the victims of hate crimes. Our churches are regularly desecrated and vandalized. Our clergy are subject to frequent intimidation, he continued.

He believes the sworn intent of these radical groups is to extinguish the light of the Christian community from the Old City.

The patriarch noted that the radical groups, which are not representative of the state of Israel or the Jewish people, are seeking to occupy through illegitimate transactions two big buildings at the Jaffa Gate area, which lies on the pilgrim route to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The church was built on the spot where both Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians believe Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected.

Local families, who have lived here for generations, will be made to feel unwelcome in their own home and pilgrims who have longed to visit the birthplace of the Christian faith will have their experience diminished, Theophilos III warned.

By working to exclude one community, the Christians, these radicals pose an existential threat not only to the Christian family but to Jerusalem itself, a point upheld by so many of our Jewish cohabitants of the Holy Land, he added.

The Old City, which is part of East Jerusalem that was captured by Israel, has sites sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Israel captured East Jerusalem, including the Old City, along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 in what is known as the Six-Day War.

Before Christmas, the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem spoke with concern about the rising trend of violence against Christians in the Holy Land.

Since 2012 there have been countless incidents of physical and verbal assaults against priests and other clergy, attacks on Christian churches, with holy sites regularly vandalized and desecrated, and ongoing intimidation of local Christians who simply seek to worship freely and go about their daily lives, they stated in a statement.

These tactics are being used by such radical groups in a systematic attempt to drive the Christian community out of Jerusalem and other parts of the Holy Land.

The church leaders went on to note that while they appreciated the Israeli governments commitment to uphold a safe and secure home for Christians in the Holy Land, they believed that this commitment was being undermined by local politicians, officials and law enforcement agencies to curb the activities of radical groups.

The principle that the spiritual and cultural character of Jerusalems distinct and historic quarters should be protected is already recognized in Israeli law with respect to the Jewish Quarter, continued the church leaders.

The World Council of Churches acting general secretary, the Rev. Ioan Sauca, issued a statement in support of the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem.

Recognizing the gravity of the threat accelerating the already tragically steep decline in the Christian presence, the WCC strongly supports the church leaders call for an urgent dialogue with the political authorities of Israel, Palestine and Jordan with a view to addressing the challenges posed by radical groups and to protecting and supporting the Christian community, Sauca said.

During the Christmas season, Israel faced allegations of discrimination for not easing a travel ban for Christian pilgrims seeking to visit the country.

While Israel eased a restriction on travel due to the omicron variant of COVID-19 for Jewish individuals seeking the Birthright program, they maintained the ban for non-Jewish Christian pilgrims.
Over 400 million Christians live in lands of persecution: human rights activist

More than 400 million Christians live in countries that persecute churches  and that persecution is only worsening, according to the leader of a Roman Catholic human rights organization based in Italy.

Alessandro Monteduro, director of ACS-Italia, the Italian chapter of Aid to the Church in Need, told Vatican News in an interview published last week that there were around 416 million Christians who live in lands of persecution.

I want to clarify that living in lands of persecution' does not mean persecuted, but living in a land of persecution, however, exposes you daily to risks that may arise due to the behavior of the persecutors, explained Monteduro, as rendered by Google translate.

Unfortunately, all the reports of the charity agencies, but also those reports that involve the states most willing to do so, such as the United States and Great Britain, tell of a tightening of their conditions.

Monteduro also told Vatican News that in certain areas of the planet, such as the continent of Africa, the suffering of Christian communities is worsening due to religious intolerance.

Across Africa, from sub-Saharan Africa to East Africa, there are at least a couple of dozen terrorist organizations that have the ambition, from their point of view, to install caliphates in their territories, he continued.

He also spoke of violent persecution in India due to local fears that Christian groups are trying to convert Hindus to Christianity, adding that there was too much indifference to these tragedies.

Monteduros concerns over the rising intolerance of Christianity in Africa were echoed by the ecumenical Christian group Release International and its Persecution Trends 2022 report.

Release International cited multiple African countries, as well as the nations of India and North Korea, as regions that were of growing concern for local Christian communities.

In 2021 in Burkina Faso, for example, local Islamic terrorists engaged in a host of attacks on churches, including bombings, school burnings, assaulting places of worship and murders.

Release International also expressed concern about Afghanistan, which was recently taken over by the Taliban shortly after the U.S. pulled its troops out but left its military equipment.

In 2022, there is a very real threat of higher levels of violent persecution in Afghanistan, stated Release International CEO Paul Robinson, as part of the report.

Our partners tell us that Christians who are unable to follow the outward forms of Islam, such as praying at the mosque and saying the shahada, the Islamic profession of faith, will stand out more clearly.
If you have been looking for Mutual Fund Equity Report funds, it would not be wise to start your search with Hodges Small Cap Fund Institutional Class (HDSIX). HDSIX has a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank of 4 (Sell), which is based on nine forecasting factors like size, cost, and past performance.

History of Fund/Manager

HDSIX finds itself in the Hodges Capital family, based out of Dallas, TX. Hodges Small Cap Fund Institutional Class debuted in December of 2008. Since then, HDSIX has accumulated assets of about $50.91 million, according to the most recently available information. A team of investment professionals is the fund's current manager.

Performance

Obviously, what investors are looking for in these funds is strong performance relative to their peers. This fund has delivered a 5-year annualized total return of 10.8%, and is in the middle third among its category peers. Investors who prefer analyzing shorter time frames should look at its 3-year annualized total return of 14.79%, which places it in the top third during this time-frame.

When looking at a fund's performance, it is also important to note the standard deviation of the returns. The lower the standard deviation, the less volatility the fund experiences. The standard deviation of HDSIX over the past three years is 32.29% compared to the category average of 19.9%. The standard deviation of the fund over the past 5 years is 26.12% compared to the category average of 16.62%. This makes the fund more volatile than its peers over the past half-decade.

Risk Factors

Investors should not forget about beta, an important way to measure a mutual fund's risk compared to the market as a whole. HDSIX has a 5-year beta of 1.46, which means it is likely to be more volatile than the market average. Another factor to consider is alpha, as it reflects a portfolio's performance on a risk-adjusted basis relative to a benchmark-in this case, the S&P 500. Over the past 5 years, the fund has a negative alpha of -11.07. This means that managers in this portfolio find it difficult to pick securities that generate better-than-benchmark returns.

Holdings

Exploring the equity holdings of a mutual fund is also a valuable exercise. This can show us how the manager is applying their stated methodology, as well as if there are any inherent biases in their approach. For this particular fund, the focus is principally on equities that are traded in the United States.

As of the last filing date, the mutual fund has 78.88% of its assets in stocks, with an average market capitalization of $5.49 billion. The fund has the heaviest exposure to the following market sectors:

Industrial Cyclical Retail Trade Technology Non-Durable

Turnover is about 124%, so those in charge of the fund make more traders than comparable funds in a given year.

Expenses

For investors, taking a closer look at cost-related metrics is key, since costs are increasingly important for mutual fund investing. Competition is heating up in this space, and a lower cost product will likely outperform its otherwise identical counterpart, all things being equal. In terms of fees, HDSIX is a no load fund. It has an expense ratio of 1.10% compared to the category average of 1.10%. From a cost perspective, HDSIX is actually on par with its peers.

Investors need to be aware that with this product, the minimum initial investment is $1 million; each subsequent investment needs to be at least $100.

Bottom Line

Overall, Hodges Small Cap Fund Institutional Class ( HDSIX ) has a low Zacks Mutual Fund rank, and in conjunction with its comparatively similar performance, worse downside risk, and on par fees, this fund looks like a somewhat weak choice for investors right now.

For additional information on the Mutual Fund Equity Report area of the mutual fund world, make sure to check out www.zacks.com/funds/mutual-funds. There, you can see more about the ranking process, and dive even deeper into HDSIX too for additional information. If you want to check out our stock reports as well, make sure to go to Zacks.com to see all of the great tools we have to offer, including our time-tested Zacks Rank.

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Jacksonville City Council is scheduled to meet in regular session no later than 7 p.m. today in the Municipal Building, 200 W. Douglas Ave. The meeting will also be available online at the city's website.

The meeting will follow a 6 p.m. workshop. There is also a Finance Committee meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. and a public hearing scheduled for 5:45 p.m. regarding an expansion of the city's enterprise zone.
Houston' COVID-19 positivity rate hit a new record high last week, Mayor Sylvester Turner confirmed Sunday.

The Bayou City's latest 14-day average of positive COVID-19 was recorded at 38 percent, a new high, according to Turner, who announced the new figures on Twitter Sunday.

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"It was just 4.3% in early December," Turner said in his tweet. The mayor also encouraged residents to get vaccinated and boosted, if eligible. "Mask up in public and get tested if you have symptoms or gathered with people who don't live in your home," Turner continued.

Last week, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo declared the possibility of raising the county COVID-19 threat level to "Level 1:Red" in response to surging positivity rates in the region spurred on by the Omicron variant. On Monday, Harris County's alert status remained at "Level 2: Orange," having yet to reach the requisite percentage of COVID-19 patients in local intensive care units. To trigger a "Red" level threat, 20 percent of patients in local ICUs must be suffering from the virus. As of this writing, COVID-19 patients account for 14.67 percent of the population in Harris County ICUs.

On Jan. 3, city wastewater facilities recorded COVID-19 viral loads of 1,435 percent, a figure reflecting the amount of virus found in wastewater samples over a previous benchmark high set on July 6, 2020, according to city health officials.

On Friday, the state of Texas recorded an average of 52,867 new COVID-19 cases over the previous seven daysan increase of 37,771 cases over the previous week's seven-day average of 15,096, according to state data. The number of Texans hospitalized with the virus rose by 3,266 over the previous week's total, bringing the total to 9,216 hospitalized.
A federal lawsuit filed in Illinois over the weekend accuses 16 private universities  including Rice University in Houston  of using a shared formula to calculate the financial needs of student applicants in a way that unfairly limits aid to students who need it.

The lawsuit's plaintiffs are five five former students from some of those schools who say the universities are violating antitrust laws, which prohibit competitors from conspiring to set prices.

A Rice University spokesperson declined to comment on the pending lawsuit.

The suit claims that by limiting financial aid, this group of schools engaged in price-fixing, reducing competition and inflating the cost of attendance for those who receive financial aid. The plaintiffs calculated that the scheme affects more than 170,000 financial aid recipients at a cost running into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

In critical respects, elite, private universities like Defendants are gatekeepers to the American Dream, the lawsuit states. Defendants misconduct is therefore particularly egregious because it has narrowed a critical pathway to upward mobility that admission to their institutions represents.

Universities that do not take into account a students financial aid, known as a "need-blind policy," are allowed to collaborate on guidelines to assess a candidates financial need, as part of an exemption of antitrust laws provided by Congress in 1994.

The schools are known collectively as the 568 Presidents Group. It was named after Section 568 of the law that allowed them to discuss the guidelines for financial aid.

In 2003, the group established a shared methodology to determine a familys ability to pay for college. Schools were prohibited from favoring wealthier candidates so they could give away less scholarship money.

But this lawsuit claims that nine of the schools do consider a student or students familys financial situation at certain points of the admissions process. It says some schools have admitted wealthy students of past or potential donors. It also accuses some schools of giving preference to wealthier students in deciding whom to admit off the universitys waitlist.

Therefore, the lawsuit states, all schools that meet as part of this group have conspired to shrink the amount of funding they provide students, which means they are not exempt from antitrust laws.

Rice is not listed as one of the nine schools accused of taking an applicant's finances into account during admissions. Instead, the lawsuit states that it is one of seven defendants that may or may not have considered applicants' financial need. And it argues those seven schools should have known the other nine were not abiding by need-blind admissions practices.

According to the complaint, Rice joined the group in 1998 and implemented the methodology in 2003. The school then left, but rejoined again in 2017.

The lawsuit asks for a permanent end to the collaboration among the schools, as well as damages.

The antitrust exemption is set to expire at the end of September unless Congress renews it.

Disclosure: Rice University 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.

The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans  and engages with them  about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Bob Owen, Staff-photographer / San Antonio Express-News

As COVID numbers continue to increase in San Antonio, the stress on hospitals grows, pushing Mayor Ron Nirenberg and County Judge Nelson Wolff send an letter to the governor requesting hundreds more nurses.

The letter, sent Monday, January 10, calls on Gov. Greg Abbott to send 411 additional nurses and respiratory therapists to San Antonio-area hospitals. The number of COVID-19 positive patients in hospitals have increased from 202 to 778, a 285% increase from December 25, 2021, according to the letter.
Local

Young womans rare, surprising heart condition leads to life-saving surgery

nancykennedy / Nancy Kennedy / Chronicle Reporter Lou Ann Boemio, 42, had all the signs of a heart attack, but instead she had a rare, non-cancerous tumor inside her heart that Citrus Memorial Hospital cardiac surgeon Dr. Bao Thuy Duy Hoang removed, and now shes feeling as good as new, she said. nancykennedy / Nancy Kennedy / Chronicle Reporter Every cardiac surgery patient is familiar with this heart-shaped pillow: Its given to them after surgery to protect themselves from injury when theyre traveling in a car.

It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving and Lou Ann Boemio and her husband, Mark Karreman, were in a festive mood.

They were at Boemios favorite downtown Inverness spot, Pine Street Pub, to talk about their idea for a new business venture, a performing arts venue.

Boemio took three sips of her Guinness and felt like someone punched her in the chest.

I thought I was having a panic attack, she said. It was embarrassing and weird all at once.

Earlier that day, even days, weeks leading up to Saturday, she had not experienced any unusual symptoms.

I felt fine, she said. I excused myself and went for a walk, telling myself it was stress, maybe I hadnt been sleeping well or eating well, or it was the excitement of launching a new business. I couldnt understand why I would be having a panic attack.

As she came back to the table on the pubs outside back patio, her left arm went numb.

It felt like I hit my funny bone but it wouldnt go away, she said.

She also felt a radiating pain in her back and pain in her jaw; she had a headache and was sweating.

My husband, whos a non-practicing RN who used to work at Citrus Memorial Hospital on the cardiac telemetry ward, said, We need to get you checked out at CMH.

Just as we were leaving the parking lot, I started throwing up, she said. I had all the classic female and male signs of a heart attack.

She said she still didnt believe, or want to believe, she was having a heart attack.

Im only 42, she said. I used to weigh 360 pounds 10 years ago and through hard work Ive lost weight and have maintained, and I take care of myself. So, I kept telling myself, No. This isnt happening to me.

At the emergency room they gave her nitroglycerin and prepped her for an immediate heart catheterization.

They found no blockage of any sort, she said. It took eight people in the room to confirm it.

Boemio was correct: She didnt have a heart attack, but she did have something that caused those symptoms.

After an overnight stay in the cardiovascular ICU, an echocardiogram the next day revealed a large mass in her left atrium.

It was huge, she said, larger than a golf ball and slightly smaller than a tennis ball.

It was blocking 85 percent of the chamber, but because of how it was attached blood was able to flow. Basically, I was a walking miracle, she said. They were surprised that I hadnt dropped dead.

On Dec. 3, cardiac surgeon Dr. Bao Thuy Duy Hoang removed the non-cancerous tumor without cutting open her chest, patched up the patent foramen ovale (PFO) hole in Boemios heart that shouldve closed shortly after her birth but didnt, and did a mini mitral valve repair.

She went home a week later, as good as new.

She definitely had a very, very risky problem and couldve dropped dead any second because of how big the tumor was; it was nearly obstructing one of the chambers of her heart, and if theres no blood flow, thats it, Dr. Hoang said.

He said tumors in the heart are rare, and a tumor that size is even more rare.

Usually theyre less than 2 centimeters, but this one was huge, he said.

It was insane to me, Boemio said. It definitely changed how Im moving through life now  Im very blessed. I take nothing for granted.

It was very scary, but not until afterwards when I was able to really think about what happened, she said. Its shocking to learn I had this big tumor in my heart.

Not only that, as Dr. Hoang explained, this type of tumor is like a wad of raspberries, which made removing it that much more risky because if one or pieces broke off, the danger of a stroke was great.

As for the future, Boemio said shes excited to continue her new business venture with her husband.

Thats still in the planning stages, she said.

She does have a goal thats closer on the horizon, however.

On Jan. 21 she will be off Coumadin, a blood thinner medication.

Its on my calendar, she said. Im going back to Pine Street Pub to finish my beer.
Florida, US (34429)

Today

Cloudy with occasional showers for the afternoon. Thunder possible. High 88F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Rain showers early with clearing later at night. Thunder possible. Low 67F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
An article for Canadian employers who want to hire a foreign worker through the Express Entry system.

How Canadian employers can hire immigrants permanently An article for Canadian employers who want to hire a foreign worker through the Express Entry system.

How Canadian employers can hire immigrants permanently An article for Canadian employers who want to hire a foreign worker through the Express Entry system.

How Canadian employers can hire immigrants permanently An article for Canadian employers who want to hire a foreign worker through the Express Entry system. Shelby Thevenot Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

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Canadas Express Entry system is the main immigration pathway for foreign workers, but it is only open to skilled occupations. In this article, we will help you understand what is considered to be a skilled occupation, what makes a valid job offer, and how to help your new employees to become permanent residents.

Before hiring immigrants, is important to know the National Occupational Classification (NOC) code and NOC skill level of the job you are hiring for. For now, NOC skill levels are divided into 0, A, B, C, and D.

Occupations are classified into these skill levels based on how much education, experience, and job-specific training is required for the worker to carry out the necessary duties. Once you know this, it will help you figure out your employees immigration options.

Need Help Hiring Foreign Talent? Contact Cohen Immigration Law for a Free Consultation

Express Entry only recognizes occupations in three of these skill levels: 0, which are management positions; A, jobs that require a university degree; and B, technical jobs and skilled trades that may require college or apprenticeship training. If you are hiring for an NOC C or D occupation you will have to use a different immigration program.

Keep in mind, NOC skill level classifications will change in late 2022. There have been no official details released on which occupations will become eligible for Express Entry, and which ones will become ineligible. The changes will not affect the immigrant-hiring process.

Most employers need an LMIA

Oftentimes, the first step to hiring an immigrant is to demonstrate to the federal government that there is no Canadian available to fill the open position.

To do this, you need a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC). There is usually an advertising requirement for the LMIA, which means you have to post your job on the Government of Canadas Job Bank and advertise in two other places.

Once you have done the advertising requirement, you can apply for the LMIA. If ESDC agrees you need to hire a foreign worker because no Canadian is available, you will get a positive LMIA.

If you want to help your employee get Express Entry points

You can use the positive LMIA to help your employee get more points in the Express Entry system. While the LMIA helps your employee get points for their job offer, it is not necessarily a requirement. The more points they have, the more likely they are to be invited to apply for Canadian immigration. It is possible for employees to apply on their own without their employers backing.

If your employee is not an Express Entry candidate yet, they need to see if they are eligible for one of three immigration programs: the Canadian Experience Class, the Federal Skilled Worker Program, or the Federal Skilled Trades Program.

If they are eligible, they can create an Express Entry profile. Once all their documents are uploaded, they will get a score based on their credentials, age, and other factors. After that, they may be invited to apply for permanent residence in an Express Entry draw.

They do not need a job offer to create an Express Entry profile, but having a valid job offer can score them some extra points. They can get 50 points for having a valid job offer in an NOC 0, A, or B occupation. It is rare, but if their NOC code starts with 00 they can get 200 points for that job offer.

A valid job offer has to be full-time at 30 hours per week, and good for at least one year after the employee gets their permanent residency visa.

The only way they can get the points for the job offer without an LMIA is if they have an employer-specific, LMIA-exempt work permit. That means, if you hired them and did not do the LMIA process because they had an open work permit (Post-Graduation Work Permit, for example), you will need to get an LMIA so that they can receive the points.

To recap, to hire an Express Entry candidate with a valid job offer, employers need to:

get a positive LMIA, if you need one, and;

offer a full-time, LMIA-supported job to the candidate in writing that is ongoing for at least one year after they get permanent residency.

Who does not need an LMIA?

You do not need an LMIA if:

you already did it when you originally hired the foreign worker and you want to extend their job offer for at least one more year so they can get a permanent residency visa;

your employee has worked for you for full-time for one year (or the equivalent part-time) in Canada and they have a valid work permit that was exempt from an LMIA under an international agreement like CUSMA, or the work permit falls under the International Mobility Program, such as a federal-provincial trade agreement, or is considered a significant benefit to Canadian interests.

In other words, you do not need an LMIA if one of the Canadian governments LMIA exemption codes or work permit exemption codes applies to your situation.

If you are still unsure, and hiring a foreign worker from a visa-exempt country who is not already in Canada, you can contact the International Mobility Workers Unit.

What to tell your employee

Once your employee has an Express Entry profile, they will need to update it with:

employer name and address;

start date;

LMIA number; and

NOC code.

Most foreign workers can keep working in Canada while their application is processing. If their temporary status is set to expire between the time they apply for permanent residence and when they get a decision, they can apply for a Bridging Open Work Permit, which allows them to stay in Canada.

The time it takes to process an Express Entry application varies. Although IRCCs processing standard is six months or less for Express Entry, in 2020 it actually took the average Express Entry applicant nine months to get permanent residency status.

Need Help Hiring Foreign Talent? Contact Cohen Immigration Law for a Free Consultation

 CIC News All Rights Reserved. Visit CanadaVisa.com to discover your Canadian immigration options.
34821

Rina Mancini has been named Managing Director of QX Franchise Limited, a subsidiary of QX Global Group.

FREMONT, CA: One of the company's top executives, the Managing Director, is responsible for leading and managing the company's operations. To keep and expand the firm, the Managing Director oversees and stirs all of the company's activities, people, and endeavors. QX Global Group, a global pioneer in knowledge process outsourcing, has hired Rina Mancini as Managing Director of QX Franchise Limited. This subsidiary owns the Master Franchise rights to TaxAssist Accountants Canada. Propelled by QX's inorganic expansion strategy, Rina will help the company expand its geographic reach and accounting expertise into new industries.

Speaking on her appointment, Ms. Rina Mancini, MD, QX Franchise Limited, states, I am thrilled and excited to be able to continue the growth story of the award-winning TaxAssist franchise into the Canadian market. Besides providing much-need tax, accounting, and advisory services to the small business market, I believe TaxAssist Accountants will also offer significant benefits and opportunities both, to entrepreneurially oriented individuals wanting to start their own businesses, as well as to the clients they will ultimately serve.

Having worked in financial services, franchising, and information technology for more than 25 years, Rina has a strong track record. Customer Service, Call Center Management, Credit Risk Management, and Accounts Receivable Management are just a few of the areas in which she has demonstrated expertise.

For the recruitment, training, and support of new franchisees across Canada, Rina will collaborate with Niraj Mehta, SVP Operations, Johnny Rogers, VP Franchise Development, and Frank Robinson, CEO of QX Global Group, as well as the TaxAssist Accountants team within QX and the TaxAssist Accountants UK head office.

Mr. Frank Robinson, Group CEO, QX Global Group, comments, Geographic expansion is a cornerstone of our growth strategy, with North America as the top priority. Rina's appointment will accelerate our inorganic growth plans as well as help extend our accounting industry experience into new verticals.

QX has established itself as a leading provider of Finance and Accounting, Recruitment Consulting, and Accounting Services. Accounting outsourcing, finance and accounting outsourcing, back-office recruitment, and IT & transformation advisory are just a few of the many QX services that companies in fifteen different industries have come to rely on. With its more than 2,000 members spread across four delivery hubs in India, QX continues to generate corporate value by streamlining and automating business processes throughout the country.
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This article is part of a yearlong reporting project focused on redistricting and gerrymandering in Pennsylvania. It is made possible by the support of Spotlight PA members and Votebeat, a project focused on election integrity and voting access.

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Opinion: Is Joe Biden a tall, thin idiot, the WOAT, an ineffectual convert to the new and not-improved version of political liberalism  or all of these things?
Raspunsul la criza refugiatilor: Apel de propuneri, lansat de MAD-Aid in parteneriat cu Camera de Comert Britanica din Moldova
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Members of the House of Lords suggested that the Charities Bill is a missed opportunity to make more fundamental reforms to support the sector.

The bill was debated last week during a second reading committee in the House of Lords, where peers on all sides were generally supportive of the measures.

However, some peers used the debate to suggest that the bill should go further in some areas, while others sought reassurance that there would be safeguards in place to prevent fraud.

Opening the debate, Baroness Barran, minister for civil society, said: This bill improves the efficiency of the charity sector by implementing the majority of the recommendations from the Law Commissions Technical Issues in Charity Law report.

These simplifications include: making it easier for charities to sell land and to use money donated to a fundraising appeal that either fails to meet its target or overhits its target for similar purposes. It also introduces more flexibility for those with permanent endowments.

Rather than be overburdened by overly bureaucratic processes, charities will be able to focus their resources on the public good, Barran said.

Hodgson: Charity Commission is under the sway of the attorney general

Lord Hodgson, a Conservative peer who was involved in the early stage of the reforms, told peers: I take a certain paternal pride that a large number of the recommendations that I made have survived.

However, he was critical of the bill for not going far enough in one area.

The bill has my 100% support except in one serious matter, he said. He thinks the Charity Commission should not have to defer to the attorney general.

I imagine that most members will think of the Charity Commission as the all-powerful regulator of its sector. I certainly did before my review, he said. In fact, it is not. Its ultimate power is subject to the permissions of the attorney general.

This means it can only appeal to the Charity Tribunal to appeal the operation of charity law with the consent of the attorney general. Hodgson described this as a an extraordinary position, and said the law as it stands means the charity regulator is in the last resort under the sway of the attorney general.

In practical terms, Hodgson gave the example of the long running case at the Royal Albert Hall, where the Charity Commission has been waiting four years for a decision from the attorney general about whether it can seek a legal ruling concerning an apparent conflict of interest.

Hodgson suggested that the Commission should need to tell the attorney general what it was doing, but should not need their permission.

Missed opportunity

The Law Commission had made a similar recommendation and a number of peers backed Hodgson during the debate.

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, Labour, agreed with Hodgson, and said he would back him if he was to table an amendment.

I wonder whether this bill goes far enough, he said. In some senses we have the worst of both worlds. We have a relatively weak regulator, which is heavily burdened and not well resourced to do the sort of job it has.

It has had, it could be said, a pretty poor reputation in recent years, although it has improved. The bill is a missed opportunity to rectify some of those issues, but it is wrong to try to change too much in this bill  probably we do have to wait for another opportunity  but I think we will regret that.

In response, Barran said: The attorney general has an important and valued role as protector of charities, and it would be wrong to change this as the result of a single case, as cited in the case of the Royal Albert Hall. To put this into context: references to the Tribunal are rare; there have only been two since it was set up in 2009.

As she closed the debate she also reminded peers that because this is a Law Commission bill it will follow the special public bill committee procedure, meaning the government would resist any amendment that is not directly related to implementing the Law Commissions recommendations.

Additional safeguards

Some peers sought reassurance from the minister that there would be appropriate safeguards to stop charities using money inappropriately, particularly around the increased flexibility to use donations for similar purposes if a fundraising appeal has not been successful, or been too successful.

Baroness Greengross, a crossbench peer and former chief executive of Age Concern England, said: In most cases, the charities would use this money sensibly and as close as possible to the original, but experience has sadly taught me that there will be times when this will not be the case.

She gave an example from her time at Age Concern where someone had defrauded a local Age Concern and used the money to build a house, but were caught and the money recovered.

I had to travel out of London to where this local charity was based to convince the local police not to publicise the case to the national press. Fortunately, they agreed, for if they had not, the reputation of the national federation would have been undermined by the actions of an individual operating in a local charity.

Greengross said rare examples like this underscored the importance of having strong legal frameworks even if it can be cumbersome and time-consuming..

In response, Barran agreed about the need for checks and balances but said: The current law requires charities to contact donors to offer to return the donation. This can sometimes be disproportionate to the size of the donation.

Elsewhere, Baroness Goudie, Labour, said she is concerned about fundraising companies, where sometimes the amount that they take is more than the charity is able to raise.

I have been involved in cases where charities have had great appeals but the companies that charities use to assist them in their appeal are not always transparent, she said.

As the bill proceeds, I would like to see us put in a few more clauses to protect charities from these companies and how we will be more transparent, because the companies that assist charities always get paid.

Barran reminded peers that the rules around charities and their relationship with commercial partners already existed and were last updated in 2016.

Charity salaries

Meanwhile, Conservative peer Baroness Rawlings, a former president of NCVO, brought up the issue of charity salaries and admin costs.

She recalled being a voluntary nurse with the Red Cross when only 7% was allowed to be spent on administration, and complained that she could not see an equivalent figure on the Charity Commissions website.

The latest data filed with Commission shows that the Red Cross had an income of nearly 245m, for the year ending December 2019. It spent nearly 200m on charitable activities and just under 50m on raising funds.

Rawlings said: Todays list of charities is so huge and varied and the legal position so diverse and complex, especially in the area of percentage deductions, that perhaps charity law should be revisited further than this bill.

She highlighted that most charities are run mainly by volunteers and called for more transparency about how charities spend their money.

What do the NCVO, Charity Commission and all those generous people who donate their money have to say about the alleged percentage that some charities pilfer yearly from the kitty? she said.

I repeat my question: why do so many so-called charities need to spend the X%? It is no doubt more than the 7% that I mentioned earlier. This hard-raised money is possibly being spent on overheads and administration, rent, organising events and salaries. The figures should be transparent and easy to access and check.

Rawlings said she backs the bill, but urged the minister to find a way to include her argument and its spirit during the special committee stage.

Barran said: We recognise that executive remuneration in charities remains a public concern. The government's position is that charities should be transparent about executive remuneration so that members of the public can decide whether they want to support a charity.

She highlighted that the Register of Charities now includes how many people are in the higher pay bands for each charities and said some charities follow NCVOs guidance on executive pay transparency.

On admin costs, Barran said: I think some of the wider issues around transparency relate to the fact that we use charity to cover organisations made up only of a few volunteers with an income of just a few thousand pounds  or even maybe a few hundred pounds  a year, and we use the same term for charities that spend hundreds of millions of pounds as year and are, for example, important delivery partners to government and local government. In some ways it is unhelpful that we do that.

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Last November Ingeborg Beugel, a Dutch journalist who has been covering Greece for decades, was advised by her countrys embassy in Greece that she should leave the country for her own safety.

Days earlier Beugel had attended a joint press conference between the Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the visiting Dutch PM Mark Rutte. She asked them both about the way the Greek coast guard deals with refugee boats in the Aegean. When Beugel addressed Mitsotakis personally, and asked him to stop lying, Mitsotakis, usually mild-mannered, visibly lost his temper.

What I wont accept is that in this office you will insult me, or the Greek people, with accusations and expressions that arent supported by material facts. When this country has been dealing with a migration crisis of unrepresented intensity that has been saving hundreds, if not thousands, of people at sea.

The exchange became a front page story. Video of the exchange spread quickly on Greek social media. Beugel, largely unaware of the blossoming scandal, was returning to her Athens home from the supermarket later that night, she told CJR, when someone threw a stone at her head. It didnt quite hit me, but I didnt stick around to see who it was. I ran back to my house.

Large parts of the Greek mainstream media set their sights on her. The biggest tabloid in the country, Proto Thema, published her address and details about her life. Others called her a spinster. High-profile journalists called Beugel anti-Greek. The mayor of the island where she lives filed a lawsuit against her. Beugel has now left Greece for Holland. She doesnt know if it will be safe for her to return.



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Around the same time, Stavros Malichudis, an investigative journalist for Solomon magazine who has been nominated for the European Press Prize, was at home, scrolling through Facebook, when he saw the front page of the left-wing daily EfSyn.

The story revealed that the Greek National Intelligence Service was intercepting a journalists phone. Reading through some of the details, the names and incidents mentioned seemed too familiar, Malichudis said. I called a few of my colleagues, asking them to read the story and check that I wasnt going mad. He finally contacted the journalist who worked on the story, who confirmed that it was about him.

EfSyns story, which relied on redacted secret material, referred to information coming from a highly credible source, that a journalist was searching in Kos for a 12-year-old boy from Syria named Jamal, whose artwork had appeared on the cover of a special supplement of French newspaper Le Monde. Refugee stories are treated as national security issues Malichudis said, and thats why I think they were tapping my phone.

The story has been all but ignored in Greece. But Malichudis is grateful for support from international organizations. The Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) announced that it will be holding an online fact-finding mission to Greece to assess increasing concerns about media freedom and the safety of journalists in the country. It cited the murder of veteran crime reporter Giorgos Karaivaz and the limited progress of the investigation into the crime; numerous attacks on journalists; interferences faced by reporters specialising in migration, including surveillance by state authorities among other issues.

Its a very suffocating landscape for critical and independent reporting, said Laurens Hueting, Senior Advocacy Officer in the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, who participated in the investigation, citing how government control over the state-run media, the very large majority of the media landscape being owned by very few people who are close to New Democracy [the Greek ruling party] combines with a very high level of concern about its image abroad. Which then leads to lots of violations in the context of migration reporting.

Huetings overall impression, he said, was that you cant hold the authorities to account whether its on migration, whether its on police brutality, whether its on economic decisions, there is very limited space in the landscape for contrarian voice.

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Yiannis Baboulias is a journalist based in London, a member of the investigative outfit The Manifold and 2020 Resonant Voices fellow with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) A towering slab of rock broke from a cliff and toppled onto pleasure boaters drifting near a waterfall on a Brazilian lake Saturday and officials said at least six people died.

Edgard Estevo, commander of the Minas Gerais State Fire Department, said at a news conference that in addition to the dead as many as 20 people might be missing and officials were seeking to identify them.

Officials said at least 32 people were injured, though most had been released from hospitals by Saturday evening.

Video images showed a gathering of small boats moving slowly near the sheer rock cliff on Furnas Lake when a fissure appeared in the rock and a huge piece toppled onto at least two of the vessels.

Estevo said the accident occurred between the towns of Sao Jose da Barra and Capitolio, from which the boats had left.

The press office of Minas Gerais state told The Associated Press that the fire department had deployed divers and helicopters to help. Minas Gerais Gov. Romeu Zema sent messages of solidarity with the victims via social media.

Furnas Lake, which was created in 1958 for the installation of a hydroelectric plant, is a popular tourist draw in the area roughly 420 kilometers (260 miles) north of Sao Paulo. Officials in Capitolio, which has about 8,400 residents, say the town can see around 5,000 visitors on a weekend, and up to 30,000 on holidays.

Officials suggested the wall coming loose could have been related to heavy rains recently that caused flooding in the state ad forced almost 17,000 people out of their homes.

Earlier last year, the concern was a lack of rain as Brazil experienced the worst drought in 91 years, which forced officials to alert the water flow from the Furnas Lake dam.

The Brazilian navy, which also helped in the rescue, said it would investigate the causes of the accident.

Even in the dry season, in some parts of the lake the movement is so intense that the boats have to take turns to navigate on the lake, said the City Hall press office.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
This May, 2020 file photo of a funeral at Calvary Cemetery in Waterbury shows the precautions local funeral homes took early in the pandemic. With a spike in cases driven by the omicron variant, many of those precautions have returned. (Courant file photo) (KASSI JACKSON/The Hartford Courant)

Carolyn Adams of Middletown was known for her epic parties and magnanimous personality. For 42 years, she operated a furniture and home decor store on Durhams Main Street.

So when Adams died on Dec. 29, four days after her 97th birthday following what her family described as a fierce battle with COVID-19, a big crowd would have likely turned out for her funeral.

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Everybody knew her, said her daughter-in-law, Marilyn Pearson. Probably the entire town of Durham would have come.

But in response to the enormous spike in coronavirus cases driven by the omicron variant, her family opted for a small, outdoor gathering instead.

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Because of COVID and how highly contagious it is, we just had immediate family, Pearson said. We decided to do a celebration of her life later, in the spring, when things are hopefully better.

The pandemic has upended traditional rituals of mourning in a myriad ways, from eliminating deathbed hospital visits to replacing in-person funerals with livestream services.

The coronavirus crisis hit the industry hard, said Thomas J. Tierney, owner of John F. Tierney Funeral Home in Manchester, and many families struggled with the loss of human connection that has long been part of the grieving process.

The first go-round was a completely new and different experience than anything we ever had, Tierney said. It was something that caught everybody almost blind.

For funeral home operators, even mundane tasks, such as collecting death certificates from hospitals and nursing facilities and filing them at town halls, were complicated by COVID-19. (The state has begun the process of transitioning to electronic death certificates.)

Weve tried to be creative to help people through these dire times, said Diana Duksa Kurz, who owns funeral homes in Newington and New Britain.

Adjustments that once seemed novel, such as livestreaming memorial services  something that was virtually unheard of before March of 2020  have now become common.

Were much more prepared to meet people were they are, Tierney said. We have different ways to help families in need, which is good, though its a bad thing we had to find out about all of it through a pandemic.

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David W. MacDonald, president of the Connecticut Funeral Directors Association and owner of the Wallingford Funeral Home & Yalesville Funeral Home, said the pandemic continues to impact the funeral home industry.

Now, the sudden surge in cases has brought a heartbreaking sense of deja vu.

All of a sudden, were doing things we hadnt done in months, such as offering masks to mourners, said David W. MacDonald, who owns two funeral homes in Wallingford and serves as president of the Connecticut Funeral Directors Association.

MacDonald said he noticed the change in mid-December, when he had some business at a hospital. He came in through the emergency room, and it was standing room only. He encountered the same scene when he returned a week later.

Then, all of a sudden out of nowhere, MacDonald added, we had two deaths caused by COVID, or connected to it, and I said uh oh.

Its not as many as in the first and second waves,, but its definitely increasing.

In the chaotic early days nearly two years ago, most large gatherings were forbidden. But with the emergence of the vaccines and a relaxation of government orders limiting indoor crowds, the industry returned to a semblance of normalcy.

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Everybody thought we were getting over a hump.  We were just hopeful, Tierney said. Now there is a different feeling.

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Just before Christmas, with COVID-19 cases already rising, Tierney reinstated a mask mandate inside his funeral home, for our safety and the safety of the people we serve.

Delaying Carolyn Adams memorial service until the current surge subsides was never a question for her family, especially since they saw the devastation of the virus firsthand.

Carolyn Adams died of COVID-19 last month at 97. Her family is delaying her funeral due to concerns about the rapid spread of the virus. (Photo courtesy of the family.)

Before contracting COVID-19, Adams, who loved watching the news and spoiling her dogs, was vibrant and healthy, Pearson said.

A barrier-breaker who worked as a supervisor in a lighting factory, in the late 1950s and early 60s when women factory bosses were a novelty, Adams went into business for herself in 1974. She ran the Carolyn Adams Country Barn until 2016, when she retired at 91.

Adams, who had been vaccinated, contracted the virus several weeks ago. After she was admitted to the hospital, her family couldnt visit her so they had to rely on technology to stay in touch.

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It wasnt easy: She was hard of hearing so it was difficult for her to hear us, Pearson said. The whole thing was just horrifying.

Adams told her family she wanted to come home, and they had set everything up for her. She died on Dec. 29.
LOS ANGELES (AP)The Coast Guard has announced new safety rules following a deadly blaze that killed 34 people on a scuba diving boat off the California coast more than two years ago, including installation of fire detection and suppression equipment.

The Labor Day 2019 fire aboard the Conception off Santa Barbara marked the deadliest marine disaster in modern state history and led to criminal charges and calls for tougher regulations for small passenger vessels.

The new interim rules will take effect over the next two years. In addition to the fire systems, owners of boats with overnight passengers will be required, among other things, to provide better escapes from below deck and use devices that make sure a night watchman is alert and making frequent rounds.

An investigation into the disaster blamed the Conceptions owners for a lack of oversight and the boats captain for failing to post a roving watchman aboard the vessel, which allowed the fire to quickly spread and trap the 33 passengers and one crew member below deck. Captain Jerry Boylan and four crew members, all of whom were sleeping above deck, escaped.

Boylan has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of seamans manslaughter. He is free on bond awaiting trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

The new rules were expected after Congress mandated in December 2020 that the Coast Guard review its regulations for small passenger vessels. The law, included in the National Defense Authorization Act, also added new requirements regarding fire detection and suppression.

The new rules apply to small passenger vessels with sleeping quarters or operating on oceans or coastal routes, but excludes fishing boats and ferries.

The National Transportation Safety Board recommended in its investigation that the Coast Guard require boat owners to install more comprehensive smoke detector systems, upgrade emergency exits and make mandatory inspection checks on roving watches.

Since 1991, no owner, operator or charterer has been issued a citation or fine for failure to post a roving patrol, prompting the NTSB to fault the Coast Guard for not enforcing that requirement and recommend it develop a program to ensure boats with overnight passengers actually have watchmen.

The rules would also require boats to have at least two exits so if one is unavailable there is another way to escape. The exits must be clear and both cannot be directly above a berth.

The Conception bunkroom had an open stairwell toward the bow and a small escape hatch that was difficult to access and climb through above one of the bunks in the center of the boat. However, both led to the galley, which was in flames.

Family members of those who died have filed wrongful death lawsuits against the boat company, Truth Aquatics Inc., and the family that owned it. They have also sued the Coast Guard for lax enforcement that they say doomed the people below deck.

The families said the fire detection and suppression systems were out of compliance, and the two escapes from the bunkroom violated Coast Guard regulations because they led to the same place.

The boat had passed its two most recent Coast Guard safety inspections.

The Coast Guard has declined to comment on the lawsuit because of a policy not to discuss pending litigation.

The rules published late last month in the Federal Register begin taking effect March 28 and could be changed after a public comment period that ends in June.

Other new requirements include better training of crew, escape drills for passengers and guidance on how to handle flammable items such as rechargeable batteries.

While investigators said they couldnt determine what caused the fire because the boat burned and sank, they say the blaze started toward the back of the main deck salon _ where divers had plugged in phones, flashlights and other items with combustible lithium ion batteries.

After the fire, the Coast Guard issued a bulletin recommending a limit on the unsupervised onboard use of lithium ion batteries and extensive use of power strips and extension cords.

___

Associated Press journalist Janet McConnaughey contributed from New Orleans.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
BELLINGHAM, Wash. (AP)At least one person was missing and presumed dead as snow turned to rain and deluged the Pacific Northwest on Friday, causing flooding, landslides and avalanche danger in the mountains.

A 72-year-old man never returned after leaving his residence to move his car to higher ground on Friday morning west of Olympia, Washington, in Cosmopolis, according to Grays Harbor Undersheriff Brad Johansson.

The mans residence was on a road that was flooded and authorities fear his vehicle was swept into floodwaters down a steep bank next to his driveway, Johansson said.

Snow and rain forced the closure of parts of Washington states two major highwaysInterstate 90 and Interstate 5with flooding that also swamped roads throughout Western Washington and Oregon.

In southwestern Washingtons Lewis County, a 20-mile (32-kilometer) stretch of Interstate 5 had been closed in both directions south of Chehalis because of flooding from the Chehalis River. All lanes of Interstate 5 in that area reopened Friday afternoon.

The major route across Washingtons CascadesI-90 over Snoqualmie Passclosed Thursday due to avalanche danger, heavy snow and low visibility. Stevens Pass on U.S. 2, White Pass on U.S. 12 and Blewett Pass on U.S. 97 also closed Thursday.

Transportation officials say all four mountain passes that connect Western Washington with Eastern Washington likely would remain closed until Sunday because of dangerous conditions.

And part of one of the only other roads crossing the state, State Route 14 on the Washington side of the Columbia River, closed for several hours on Friday because of a fatal crash near Lyle, Finn said.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee issued an emergency proclamation on Friday because of severe winter storms going back to Dec. 17. State agencies and local jurisdictions are coordinating resources to address damaged property and infrastructure, assess damage caused by the storms and implement repairs, he said.

Washington State University canceled classes Monday and Tuesday to allow students ample time to return to Pullman in Eastern Washington following the severe winter weather, officials said on the universitys website.

Near Stevens Pass northeast of Seattle, the city of Leavenworth declared a state of emergency and asked for National Guard help after 3 feet (91 centimeters) of snow fell in 24 hours.

City leaders are concerned about the weight of snow on buildings and homes, KCPQ-TV reported.

In Seattles Magnolia neighborhood, firefighters responded to a home that slid down a hillside. Live video from KING-TV appeared to show crews rescuing a person and working to extinguish a fire just outside the home.

A man trapped in the homes basement was extricated, according to the Seattle Fire Department. A woman escaped on her own while one dog died and another is missing, firefighters said.

Dozens of watches and warnings were in effect in Washington and Oregon, including a flood warning for the northern Oregon Coast following huge amounts of rainfall.

The National Weather Service said Hoquiam, Washington, in Grays County received a record 5.78 inches (14.68 centimeters) of rain Thursday. Other areas saw nearly half of the rain theyd expect to see for the month of January in one day, according to the weather service.

Southwest Washington experienced its worst flooding in a decade and some rivers crested at more than 18 feet (5.5 meters) late Thursday, the National Weather Service said.

East of Seattle on Friday, parts of downtown Issaquah were closed after Issaquah Creek sent water over the roads. Some homes flooded and at least one apartment building was evacuated, KIRO-TV reported.

In Centralia and around Thurston County, streets were flooding Friday and Washington National Guard members were helping with filling sand bags and other requests, the guard said on Twitter. About 50 people on Friday had sought shelter at a site in Centralia, according to the American Red Cross.

In northwest Washington, snow fell in Bellingham while roadways flooded throughout Whatcom County. Exceptionally high tides and winds were causing coastal flooding around homes in Birch Bay, according to the Whatcom County Sheriffs Office. Tidal flooding of homes and businesses also affected towns including Edison and University Place.

In northwest Oregon, coastal flooding after heavy rains disrupted communities. Astoria got more than 4 inches (10.1 cm) of rain Thursday, breaking a record for rain on that date set in 1914.

The nearby city of Warrenton declared a state of emergency due to widespread flooding and school districts in Astoria, Warrenton, Knappa and Seaside canceled classes Friday.

In Oregon, Interstate 84 reopened after a landslide closed almost 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the highway from Troutdale to Hood River on Thursday.

Forecasters say the rains should subside over the weekend but landslides will continue to be a risk into Saturday as soils remain saturated.

About the photo: The parking lot of a closed Dutch Bros. coffee shop is filled with floodwater, Friday, Jan. 7, 2022, in Centralia, Wash. Snow and rain forced the closure of parts of Washington states two major highways, Interstate 90 and Interstate 5, with flooding that also swamped roads throughout western Washington and Oregon. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Beachwood, OH (44122)

Today

Thundershowers following a period of rain early. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. High 67F. Winds SE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms in the evening, then variable clouds overnight with still a chance of showers. Low 47F. SSW winds shifting to NW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
In this Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019, photo, a student at Crosby High School works in class in Waterbury, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill) (Jessica Hill/AP)

Staff shortages due to COVID-19 have continued to paralyze schools across Connecticut, forcing some districts to cancel classes and sparking calls for a remote learning option from legislators and advocates.

In Waterbury, schools superintendent Dr. Verna Ruffin canceled classes on Monday due to staff shortages. The citys public school system has now been closed for four school days in a row, due to last weeks snowstorm and the Three Kings Day holiday.

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On Monday afternoon, the district announced a new schedule for the week including half days for some schools, which officials said would relieve the district of the current staff shortage and transportation concerns affected by COVID-19. The half-day model will eliminate lunch periods and provide students with a grab-and-go breakfast and lunch, giving high school teachers the ability to cover additional classrooms.

Other schools have faced similar issues. Last Monday, Ansonia Public Schools announced that schools would be closed for the rest of the week, since a quarter of the staff was out with COVID-19.

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The Connecticut Education Association, the states largest teachers union, is encouraging its members and other unionized school staff to wear black to work on Wednesday to highlight concerns about school safety amid surging COVID-19 cases.

The CEA has called on the state to roll out more aggressive testing protocols for students and teachers, provide free access to COVID-19 testing at all schools and distribute N95 masks and at-home test kits to students and school staff, among other measures.

State Department of Education spokesperson Eric Scoville said in a statement that the department is planning for additional test kit and mask distributions as soon as supplies become available and is actively working with school districts to ensure they receive their needed supplies.

In response to staffing shortages, the department has issued more than 1,000 daily and long-term substitute authorizations for the 2021-2022 school year, Scoville said. He also noted that in the first half of the school year, the department issued 67% more substitute authorizations for teachers without a bachelors degree than it did over the course of the last pre-pandemic school year, 2018-2019.

CEA president Kate Dias said Monday she thinks school districts should have the option to switch to remote learning for a few days at a time when a school experiences a COVID-19 outbreak. Currently, that decision must be made at the state level.

Even when schools are open, in many cases you have teachers who are teaching not just their classes but also other peoples classes in order to keep schools open, Dias said. There needs to be some flexibility here.

The Black and Puerto Rican Caucus of the state legislature recently wrote to State Department of Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker requesting that superintendents be given the option to declare remote learning days, which would not need to be made up at the end of the school year.

Superintendents are already losing staff members to the virus and are expressing grave concerns about adequately staffing their school buildings in the coming weeks as this virus surge continues, read the letter, signed by Rep. Geraldo Reyes Jr., D-Waterbury and Rep. Bobby Gibson, D-Bloomfield.

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[ Whats next for COVID-19 in Connecticut? States omicron peak could be weeks away, experts say ]

Russell-Tucker responded to the legislators letter on Thursday, emphasizing that the Department of Education cannot authorize remote learning since the state does not have a remote learning provision for the current school year. She noted, even in subsequent school years, the legislation only allows for remote learning on the high-school level.

As we have shared with the Caucus, during the pandemic students who learned in-person lost the least ground academically while those who learned in hybrid or remote models showed substantially weaker achievement and growth, she wrote.

Though Gov. Ned Lamont has given local officials discretion over some pandemic-related decisions, such as the implementation of mask mandates, he has maintained that decisions about remote vs. in-person learning should be made at the state level.

We recognize there continues to be staff and faculty disruption when it comes to COVID-19, Lamont spokesperson Max Reiss said Monday. At the same rate, were trying to provide things like rapid tests, additional in-person testing capacity and N95 masks to provide additional protection and an understanding of the virus at the school level.

Breaking News As it happens Get the latest updates on Coronavirus and other breaking news events happening across Connecticut >

Reiss emphasized that there is no substitute for in-person learning and that the Lamont administration is committed to keeping schools open.

Dr. Ulysses Wu, chief epidemiologist at Hartford HealthCare, said Monday the safety of in-person learning during the current COVID-19 surge depends on vaccination, boosters, masking and social distancing.

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If these measures are taken, in-classroom transmission is not all that high, Wu said. But where a lot of transmission happens is the minute you step outside of that classroom. Were talking risky social behaviors, whether it may be in the lounge or in the lunchroom.

[ More patients, fewer staff and a lack of beds strain Connecticut emergency departments hit by omicron surge ]

In places with relatively low rates of vaccination or booster shots, Wu said, proper masking becomes especially important.

Masking works, he said. Wearing a mask as a chin guard doesnt work, wearing a mask as a helmet does not work, but wearing a mask properly fitted over your nose and mouth not only protects people against you but also protects you.

Eliza Fawcett can be reached at elfawcett@courant.com. Alex Putterman can be reached at aputterman@courant.com.
Clinton, IA (52732)

Today

Cloudy skies with periods of rain late. Low around 45F. Winds NE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch..

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Cloudy skies with periods of rain late. Low around 45F. Winds NE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 10)  Commission on Elections Commissioner Rowena Guanzon on Monday said she will require the camp of presidential aspirant Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. to present his notarized medical certificate after he skipped the poll body's hearing on his disqualification cases.

Marcos on Jan. 7 failed to show up for the Comelecs online pre-conference for the disqualification petitions lodged against him despite an order from the poll body to attend physically or virtually. His camp presented a medical certificate showing Marcos had a low-grade fever and had difficulty breathing due to a "painfully congested throat."

However, video clips of Marcos in a radio interview with DZME 1530 on Jan. 6 surfaced online over the weekend.

The Marcos camp on Sunday confirmed he gave two interviews on Jan. 6 despite feeling unwell, claiming he was examined by a doctor in between the two interviews.

"We believe it was that afternoon interview which exacerbated his condition. On the morning of Jan. 7, BBM was obliged to go in isolation because his condition worsened," spokesperson Vic Rodriguez said in a statement.

"A judgment call was made to let BBM continue with his needed rest, since he was in bed after taking his medicines," he added.

During the hearing, Marcos' camp produced a medical certificate from Dr. Benedict Francis Veldecanas from Aegle Wellness Center after Guanzon demanded proof to justify the presidential aspirant's absence.

Guanzon later questioned why the Marcos camp did not notify the poll body if they knew of his condition a day prior the hearing.

Guanzon said despite the delays, the decision on the disqualification cases filed against Marcos is expected by "around Jan. 17."

A total of seven pleas were lodged against Marcos' presidential bid. So far, two were dismissed  one that sought to declare him a nuisance bet, and another aiming to cancel his certificate of candidacy.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 10)  Metro Manilas local chief executives want the region to stay under Alert Level 3 even with the rapid increase in COVID-19 infections, MMDA chairman Benhur Abalos, Jr. said Monday.

In a virtual briefing, Abalos noted the slight increase in the National Capital Regions healthcare utilization rates (HCURs), especially in its ICU beds, as shown by daily data from Jan. 6 to 9, but said these figures were still within the metrics for Alert Level 3.

Metro Manilas total bed utilization rate still dwells within the 50 to 70% range prescribed for Alert Level 3 under the Department of Health metrics.

Abalos also cited the NCR mayors resolution slapping tighter restrictions on the unvaccinated  which is only in effect under the regions current alert level status  and how this would better protect them against the highly infectious Omicron variant.

He also mentioned the high vaccination rates in Metro Manila. As of Jan. 8, the region has administered over 22.64 million COVID-19 vaccine shots. Of this number, more than 924,500 already received booster shots  breaching the over 763,900 target for January.

Given the current restrictions, NCR residents have likewise resorted to self-regulating as shown by lower foot traffic in malls and vehicular traffic in major thoroughfares in the past days, Abalos added.

We will continuously monitor specifically the HCUR kung anong mangyayari rito. At kung kinakailangan dalhin sa Alert Level 4, ipapasok po namin [as to what will happen. And if we need to go to Alert Level 4, we will do it.] But for the meantime, the mayors see no need to escalate to Alert Level 4, he said, assuring they will alert the DOH themselves, should these rates go up.

Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion echoed the sentiment, saying upgrading to the stricter Alert Level 4 wouldn't even have much impact on businesses, which are already slowing down amid the rapid spread of COVID-19.

"There's really no need to even move to Alert Level 4 because by itself, mobility has slowed down tremendously," Concepcion told CNN Philippines on Monday night.

"Who's going to go out when infection is all over the place?" he said. "People will not go out. People will not dine out. People will not shop. They've already shopped last quarter, so they have consumed their savings. Definitely, businesses will be slow."

NCR is currently under Alert Level 3 until Jan. 15.

Persons behind circulating audio clips should be jailed

The MMDA official also condemned individuals who create and spread audio clips containing false information. These include recent recordings shared around social media asking the public to stock up on goods because a supposed total lockdown will be imposed due to ballooning cases.

Dapat talaga ma-trace ng NBI ito at mapakulong ang mga taong to, eh. Meron tayong krisis. Kinakalma natin ang tao that theres nothing to worry about. Lalo nilang ginugulo; nanggagaya pa sila ng boses ng sino-sino, said Abalos.

[Translation: These persons should be traced by the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) and jailed. We already have a crisis. Were calming people down that theres nothing to worry about, but theyre causing further confusion and even imitating voices of other personalities.]

Still, he said theres no need for Metro Manila mayors to pass a resolution to send these persons to jail as there are enough laws.

May mga batas naman tayo diyan... All that we have to do right now is mahanap talaga yung nanggagaya ng boses ng Presidente or kung sino. Dapat talaga ipakulong yun dahil 'di na biro ito. Kaya mga marites, wag niyo gagawin yan. Delikado kayo sa NBI, quipped Abalos.

[Translation: We already have laws All that we have to do right now is find whoever is mimicking the President or whichever personality. They really must be imprisoned because this is no laughing matter. To all the marites, dont do that because the NBI will get you.]

Malacanang also criticized the circulating audio clip and dismissed its contents as baseless rumors.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 10)  The Philippine General Hospital (PGH) on Monday clarified that only healthcare workers who don't have COVID-19 are allowed to report for work.

PGH spokesperson Dr. Jonas del Rosario issued the clarification after he was quoted that the hospital will allow its healthcare workers to skip quarantine if they are asymptomatic of COVID-19 in a bid to keep an adequate manpower.

The official said those who have high-risk exposures but are asymptomatic are not placed under quarantine and may still report for duty. However, once they become symptomatic, they will be pulled out and get tested.

When we say asymptomatic, they are COVID-negative po. I think people had this notion that we are sending healthcare workers, who have COVID infections, back to work as long they are asymptomatic. Hindi po yun (Thats not what we meant), he told CNN Philippines The Source.

Del Rosario noted that even though a staff is asymptomatic but tested positive for coronavirus, they will need to isolate themselves.

Lahat po ng COVID-positive po na healthcare workers, whether na asymptomatic, mildly symptomatic, or even more symptomatic, they will all go into isolation, he said. Kung ikaw ay may COVID, hindi ka pwede magtrabaho.

[Translation: All COVID-positive healthcare workers, whether they are asymptomatic, mildy symptomatic, or even more symptomatic, they will all go into isolation. If you have COVID-19, you cannot go to work.]

The PGH, which is the country's primary COVID-19 referral hospital, has modified its quarantine protocols for its exposed healthcare workers amid the rise in infections. As for fully vaccinated health workers exposed to a case, the government cut the quarantine period from 7 days to no required quarantine period as long as they are asymptomatic and wearing personal protective equipment.

So the administration decided, because of the circumstance, to change our quarantine protocol. What happened is those who are in high-risk exposure but fully vaccinated and they are asymptomatic, they are not being put into quarantine, said Del Rosario.

If they feel something, then they are pulled out and we test them to see if they have COVID, he added.

Meanwhile, Dr. Rontgene Solante, an infectious diseases expert from San Lazaro Hospital, said that their hospital is adopting the same policy on their healthcare staff.

With the countrys hospital capacity being stretched, Solante advised the public to only go to hospitals if they are experiencing severe symptoms.

If one-third or one-half of your workers are isolated, that would affect the function of the hospital, he told CNN Philippines The Source.

We need to prioritize only those patients that will be really sick and need emergency treatment. But those who are stable and have mild symptoms, just monitor yourselves at home and look for possible progression, Solante added. Because as of now, most of the hospitals are depleted because of healthcare workers who are sick.

The country on Monday logged its all-time high daily COVID-19 infections with 33,169 fresh cases. The nationwide tally is now at 2,998,530.

According to the Department of Healths latest data, 41% of isolation beds and ward beds, and 38% of intensive care unit beds nationwide are occupied.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 10)  Senator Manny Pacquiao vows an upgrade in the salary of medical frontliners, should he be elected to the highest position in the May elections.

Pacquiao said on Monday he would work to increase the minimum wage of health workers to at least 50,000 monthly, on top of other compensation such as their special risk allowance. He said this was within the acceptable income standard of 42,000, as per the National Economic Development Authority.

Pacquiao stressed the current salaries of 13,000 per month for private nurses and 19,000 for those in government are "very degrading, especially now that health care workers are the nation's most important resource."

His statement comes as hospitals struggle with shortages in manpower due to the surge in COVID-19 infections not only among patients, but also the medical frontliners. He also noted the growing number of health care workers who are leaving the country to work overseas.

"Hindi malayong maubos ang health workers natin [Its not impossible for us to lose all our health workers at this rate]," Pacquiao said.

"This 50,000 is still very low if we compare it with the salaries offered by other countries, but it might be enough to convince some of them not to leave their families behind," he added. "Ang mababang sweldo ay injustice para sa ating medical frontliners. Wawakasan natin ito [Giving our medical frontliners salaries this low is an injustice. We will put an end to it]."

The presidential hopeful said if given the chance, he would source the funds for health workers in public hospitals from the 700 billion to 1 trillion savings of the government, while those in private facilities would be provided with tax incentives or subsidies.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 10)  A major COVID-19 referral hospital in Manila is in need of more personnel as its nearly 400 healthcare workers caught the virus, a hospital official said Monday.

Two days ago, there were 310 healthcare workers approximately for the past week who turned out to be COVID-positive. Most of them are mildly symptomatic, said Dr. Jonas del Rosario, Philippine General Hospital (PGH) spokesperson, in an interview with CNN Philippines The Source.

But just last night, more healthcare workers were tested and we have about 86 healthcare workers who are COVID-positive, he added.

The PGH modified quarantine protocols for workers. Those with high-risk exposure but have no symptoms may still go on duty. However, they will be pulled out and get tested if they exhibit symptoms.

Even though some of the infected staffers are nearing the end of their quarantine, Del Rosario said that many healthcare workers are tested each day whenever they get symptoms.

Some of them are probably towards the tail end of their isolation. But its so fluid that every day, we are testing healthcare workers because some of them are getting really symptomatic, he said.

The lack of manpower due to COVID-19 infection has hobbled the state-run hospitals operation.

Yes, we definitely will need some augmentation. Im already seeing some key areas being affected, said Del Rosario.

The PGH earlier temporarily closed its maternity ward amid a surge in COVID-19 patients.

Talagang it will be very helpful if we can get some augmentation, even nurses coming from, Im hoping, maybe AFP, maybe from the Armed Forces [of the Philippines], maybe we can get some help from them, just to tide us over until we get some of our healthcare workers back, those who got infected, he added.

The country on Monday logged its all-time high daily COVID-19 infections with 33,169 fresh cases. The nationwide tally is now at 2,998,530.

According to the Department of Healths latest data, 41% of isolation beds and ward beds, and 38% of intensive care unit beds nationwide are occupied.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 10)  The private sector and local government units can be tapped to help if the government considers a free mass testing program for COVID-19, Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson said Monday.

In a radio interview, Lacson both sectors were willing to help should such a program be enforced. He added these groups should be encouraged instead of making it difficult for them to contribute.

Lacson made the statement amid concerns over the price of RT-PCR tests, as well as the increased demand for some antigen testing kits.

The presidential aspirant said testing should be free especially for workers who cannot afford tests that can cost thousands of pesos.

He also appealed to laboratories and diagnostic centers to keep clients up to date regarding test results to avoid giving them unnecessary stress.

Lacson said he and his wife were promised a 12-hour processing time, but ended up waiting for two days before getting their results. While he understood the delay because of the number of samples being analyzed, he said the courtesy of an update would have been appreciated.
Peter O'Meara stars in "Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed." The documentary/drama hybrid reassesses the reputation of the American Revolution icon whose name became synonymous with "traitor." (Talon Films)

Benedict Arnold, the Connecticut native whose name has been synonymous with the word traitor for 240 years, is getting a fairer shake thanks to a new movie.

Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed, a two-hour feature directed by Chris Stearn, isnt revisionist history. It doesnt lessen or ignore Arnolds switching of his allegiance from the not-yet-founded United States back to the British in 1780, or his attempt to surrender a U.S. fort to the British. What it offers is fresh context, to counter centuries of unquestioned vilification.

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The film premiered in November at Saratoga, New York (the site of one of the battles it reenacts), and is now available to rent online through Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Roku, Vimeo, on several cable systems and through the library video service Kanopy.

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When his story is told, a lot gets left out. The evidence is lying in plain sight. He lost faith in American leadership. When people say hes a traitor, I say, Give me a good reason why he should have stayed.

Connecticut may be ahead of much of the rest of the country in reassessing Arnolds role in the American Revolution.

No doubt, the early war hero turned traitor is one of the more infamous figures in American history. Some may not consider him a spy in the pure sense of the word, but no one doubts Benedict Arnold turned sides mid-war and was going to surrender the American fort at West Point, New York, in return for money and a command in the British army. The plot was uncovered in time, and Arnold escaped. It was Major John Andre, another spy, who helped convince Arnold to switch sides.

Arnold grew up in Norwich and became a prosperous businessman in New Haven; hes represented at the historical societies in both cities. For decades there have been regular costumed recreations on New Haven Green to honor Powder House Day, when Arnold demanded the keys to the gunpowder storage shed (which the city had voted to keep closed) so that he and his foot brigade could all load their guns, head to Massachusetts and join the revolution.

After numerous other examples of admirable rebellion and heroic leadership during the war, Arnold  who, the film points out, was passed over for numerous deserved promotions and assignments, and who came to perceive the new government as corrupt  believed the American leadership was going to blow it, Stearns said.

You dont have to give him nefarious ambitions. His motives are pretty clear. I believe he simply felt that the American experiment was not going to work, Stearns said.

Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed is a blend of documentary and drama: The key roles are played by actors, famous battles are restaged and hundreds of townsfolk in period dress mill around in the background of the village scenes.

But there are also shots of famous documents and museum pieces, with voice-overs from history professors such as you might hear in a History Channel program.

The narrator of the film is no less imperious a voice than Martin Sheen, the actor/activist who played a U.S. president for seven seasons of The West Wing.

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We had dreamed about getting somebody as great as him to lend his voice, Stearns said.

The director also sings the praises of Peter OMeara, the actor who portrays Arnold. He really captures what he was thinking.

The production style of Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed  part costume drama, part educational film  was a giant decision, Stearns said.

We could have done a straight documentary, with the historic houses and the portraits and the windowsills, he said. But few have done more to preserve American freedom than Benedict Arnold. We had to do right by him.

That duty to Arnolds legacy includes restaging historic battles in which he showed his heroism, battles which Stearns says hardly show up in the the history books.

Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed, the director says, is the first movie to recreate the Battle of Ridgefield.

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The film is based on the book Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered by James Kirby Martin. He wrote the book, Martin tells The Courant, because I remembered hearing about this really bad guy, but I knew from my military history that he did some remarkable things.

Heres this guy who were being told is the essence of all evil. Now, a historian is an investigator. The key is to get into the actual records and see what really happened. Martin quickly discovered that biographies of Arnold, dating to the 1835 Life and Treason of Benedict Arnold by Jared Sparks, were creating a narrative that portrayed him as rotten to the core for his entire life.

There were stories spread about how bad he was as a child, Martin said, the opposite of the I cannot tell a lie tale that historians would apply to George Washington.

The instinctive demonization of Benedict Arnold continues today, Martin points out. When the site of Arnolds New Haven home (now the parking lot of the citys High School in the Community) was excavated last year, a tunnel was discovered under the foundation.

Immediately, Martin said with a sigh, there was a theory that he was smuggling goods from the harbor. They jumped to the conclusion that he was this horrible criminal. But let me give you the name of another big smuggler of that time: John Hancock, the biggest name on the Declaration of Independence. The revolutionaries would smuggle goods as a political protest because they disagreed with the British taxation policies, Martin said. Arnold built that home in 1774 or 75. He hardly lived there. If he built a tunnel, he didnt need to. But imaginations run wild.

What has happened with Arnold is that historians have looked backward at his life. They start with treason, then want to prove that he always had a weak character. Every good historian, though, knows you begin a story at the beginning.

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Weekender Weekly Our picks for things to do and places to go this weekend >

The Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed film begins at the beginning, with the once-powerful Arnold familys fall from grace in Norwich, when they lost wealth and power in the community.

As for the ending, Martin argues that by 1780, the Revolutionary cause was moribund. It had gone inactive. When Arnold gets back to the British empire, his original allegiance, George Washington and others saw the propaganda value in this: Youre not Benedict Arnold. Join us. The film shows historical examples of Arnold being portrayed not as disillusioned but as the personification of evil. A 1780 political cartoon shows a literally two-faced Arnold riding in a horse wagon alongside the devil, whos shaking a bag of money at one of the faces.

Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed quotes Arnolds own published writings explaining his decision to switch allegiances: I was only solicitous to accomplish an event of decisive importance and prevent as much as possible in the accomplishment of it the effusion of blood. Reunion with the British Empire is the best and only means to dry up the streams of misery that have deluged this country.

Martin and the many other historians quoted in the film make clear that Arnold wasnt alone in losing trust in the incipient American leadership. They argue that his traitorous plan to surrender the fort at West Point to the British would not have changed the course of the Revolutionary War.

The film quotes Bill Stanley, a former director of the Norwich Historical Society who died in 2010 and a longtime champion of Arnold: In many respects, America more betrayed Benedict Arnold than Arnold betrayed America.

The big question, Martin suggests, is, How did this man who contributed so much to the American cause, destroy his own reputation while in his mind he was trying to do the right thing? It is a noble but tragic story.

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Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 11)  Twinkle Dargani, president of the controversial government supplier Pharmally, was released from Senate detention Tuesday morning on the grounds of her deteriorating mental health.

Senate President Vicente Tito Sotto III on Monday bared he and Blue Ribbon Committee chairman Senator Richard Gordon approved Darganis release after her mother Deepa expressed deep concern over her mental health condition.

She was turned over to her mother with no supervision from the Senate but with the understanding she will make herself available whenever needed.

Her mother has promised to present her to the Senate whenever she is needed by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, Sotto said.

Both the majority and minority leaders of the upper House also concurred with the decision, according to Sotto.

He added that Dargani has tested positive for COVID-19, but is exhibiting very mild symptoms.

The Senate is under lockdown until Sunday, Jan. 16, after several staff members tested positive for the viral illness. Three senators have also been infected, including Sherwin Gatchalian, Panfilo Ping Lacson, and Francis Kiko Pangilinan.

Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Rene Samonte said Dargani will first undergo medical check-up for proper turnover to whichever facility she will be brought [to].

The Pharmally president has been detained in connection with the Senate probe on her companys allegedly anomalous transactions with the government for pandemic response supplies.

She was arrested in November together with her brother Mohit, who is also an executive of the company. This was after they were cited in contempt for refusing to submit subpoenaed financial documents.

[LINK: Pharmallys Dargani siblings arrested by Senate security in Davao City]

Dargani remained under Senate custody due to her mental health condition, but Mohit was transferred to the Pasay City, along with another Pharmally official, Linconn Ong.
As of earlier this week, it is now mandatory to wear a mask if you are to walk into a Delaware business.
If you have not already registered (created a username and password) then click on the link below to register.

If you have already registered (you already have a username and password), please click on the Get Started below.

Your account number is located in the upper left hand corner on your address label on the Enterprise you receive in the mail or on the renewal form you received.

The last name must read exactly as it is printed on your label. Enter the account number WITHOUT the leading zeros on the label.
As classes begin during the first week of the spring semester, Penn State students have the opportunity to participate in events  both virtual and in person  on and around campus to take their minds off of impending schoolwork.

Monday, Jan. 10

9:30 a.m.  Students can commemorate the first day of classes by taking a photo in the photo booth in the HUB-Robeson Centers Galibraith Lounge until 2:30 p.m.

11 a.m.  The spring Involvement Fair will be held in Alumni Hall and Heritage Hall inside the HUB until 4 p.m.

Students can meet with various members of student organizations throughout the day.

5:15 p.m.  Penn States Health Promotion and Wellness will host virtual yoga and meditation for all students.

The sessions, which Sima Farage will run until 6:15 p.m., will occur weekly on Mondays and Wednesdays via Zoom.

Tuesday, Jan. 11

11 a.m.  The second day of the Spring Involvement Fair will be held in Alumni Hall and Heritage Hall inside the HUB until 4 p.m.

Students can meet with various members of student organizations throughout the day.

Wednesday, Jan. 12

8 a.m.  Penn State will host an Advocacy Unit Open House until 5 p.m. where students can visit multiple locations on campus, which will be geared toward different ways students can grow at the university.

By visiting the various locations and speaking to representatives, attendees can earn a stamp on their Open House Passport. Each stamp earns an entry into a raffle to win either an Apple Watch or one of two $50 gift cards for the Downtown State College Improvement District.

10 a.m.  Penn State Career Services professional attire closet will offer free professional clothing for undergraduates and recent alumni.

The closet will be open at the Bank of America Center Services Center until 4 p.m.

1 p.m.  Hosted by Penn State Career Services, students can attend a free Resume Tips and Career Fair Prep workshop that will help students prepare for Spring Career Days.

The workshop will be held at the Paul Robeson Cultural Centers conference room in the HUB until 1:45 p.m.

6 p.m.  As a part of Welcome Week, there will be a Penn State-related trivia event until 8 p.m. in room 008 inside the HUB.

Thursday, Jan. 13

4 p.m.  Transfer students looking to mingle can go to room 131 in the HUB.

This event will last until 5:15 p.m.

5:15 p.m.  Free to all students, Penn State will host Rock the Ice at the Pegula Ice Arena, which is part of Welcome Week. The free skate will include music.

Attendees should enter through Gate C, and the event will end at 7:15 p.m.

MORE CAMPUS COVERAGE

Penn State sees increase in coronavirus positivity rate Penn State has updated its latest coronavirus testing results to see a 13.2% increase in pos
A Costilla County man who represented himself as a "continental marshal" and said he "could take over the jail" had his conviction for impersonating a peace officer reversed last week, after the state's second-highest court determined his comments were "only speech."
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RTHK: Nearly 8,000 detained after Kazakhstan unrest

Nearly 8,000 people have been detained in Kazakhstan after days of historic unrest in the Central Asian country that left dozens dead, the interior ministry said on Monday.

"As of January 10, 7,939 people have been detained," the interior ministry said in a statement noting that several branches of the security services had been involved in the detentions.

Ex-Soviet Kazakhstan on Monday was observing a day of national mourning after the worst unrest in the republic's independent history.

The National Security Committee said in a statement that the country, including government and military facilities, was fully under the control of security services.

"Areas where militants and rioters might be hiding are being cleared. Evidence of criminal activity is being collected and recorded," the statement read.

Kazakhstan framed the violence as an attack by "terrorist groups" and has criticised foreign media coverage of the events, which began with protests over a fuel price hike in the west of the country at the beginning of the month.

During the unrest, the Moscow-led CSTO military alliance sent a detachment of 2,500 troops to the country following a request from Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.

The leaders of CSTO countries -- an alliance of former Soviet states -- were due to meet via video link on Monday, including with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (AFP)

This story has been published on: 2022-01-10. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
China helps boost global food security

09:07, January 10, 2022 By ZHAO YIMENG ( China Daily

Farmers load the harvested rice at Gangkou township in Yueyang county, Central China's Hunan province. (PHOTO/XINHUA)

Country's experience in reducing waste, increasing output shared around world

China's accumulated experience in reducing food loss and waste is being shared with the world and can help developing countries improve their ability to reduce food loss and ensure food security, experts and officials said.

About 14 percent of the world's food is lost during the processes from production to retail, and reducing that loss by 1 percentage point would be equal to a 28 million metric ton increase in grain output, which could feed 70 million people for a year, according to the State of Food and Agriculture 2019 report released by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

According to the FAO, over 155 million people experienced acute food insecurity in 2020, the highest number in the past five years, because of conflict, extreme weather events and economic shocks related to COVID-19.

Wu Laping, a professor at China Agricultural University's College of Economics and Management, said food loss and waste is largely affected by economic development, with developing countries losing food mainly before it is retailed and developed countries after retail.

For instance, food loss and waste mostly occurs in harvesting and storage in Africa and South Asia. Up to 30 percent of food loss was found during farmers' storage in some areas in Africa, and 21 percent of food in the United States was wasted during daily consumption, Wu told Economic Daily.

Compared with the world average, the food loss and waste situation in China is comparatively better. China loses 35 million tons of grain before retail each year, an amount roughly equal to the overall grain output of Sichuan province last year35.8 million tons.

China's experience shows that increasing grain output while reducing food loss and waste is a significant way to ensure national food security. In November, the country issued an action plan on saving food in multiple procedures to add "invisible" high-quality farmland.

Meanwhile, the reduction in loss and waste saves land, water, fertilizer and pesticides, and thus protects the environment and reduces carbon dioxide emissions, helping sustainable development.

"Because different countries face food loss and waste in different procedures, each country should find measures based on its situation," Wu said.

Lesser developed economies should focus on saving food during harvest and storage, which can be achieved by promoting varieties that can resist unfavorable conditions, such as weather and pests, and by improving modern agricultural machinery, high-quality storage and transportation equipment, he added.

China has made progress in saving food by promoting laws against food waste and action plans on saving food and reducing loss in the whole process from harvest to retail, Zhou Guanhua, of the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration, said last month.

"We have built 5,400 postproduction service centers, covering 1,000 major grain-producing counties in the country, to provide services including cleaning, drying, storing, processing and retailing," Zhou said, adding that the daily drying capacity can reach 1.1 million tons.

The centers can greatly reduce food loss that occurs through poor storage facilities and limited drying ability after harvest, as some farmers in Northeast China still dry grain on the ground or pile it in their yards.

Innovation, technologies and infrastructure are critical to increasing the efficiency of food systems and to reducing food loss and waste.

Zhou said new technologies to better store grain have been applied in warehouses. "Large grain depots in the country can reduce the rate of grain loss during storage to less than 1 percent."

The special vehicles for bulk grain, devices for unloading grain trucks, and automatic scales have proved effective, he said.

'Healthy eating'

People's growing awareness of "healthy eating" instead of seeking out refined staple foods has gradually prompted processing companies to transition from overprocessing to moderate processing.

"China is developing key technologies and equipment for moderate processing to help solve the problem of nutrition loss and impaired protein function due to overprocessing."

In September, China hosted the International Conference on Food Loss and Waste in Shandong province. The recent food action plan proposes to make the conference a regular event.

Ma Youxiang, vice-minister of agriculture and rural affairs, said China would take the conference as an opportunity to promote establishing an international cooperation mechanism for reducing food loss and working together to boost world food security.

As the largest developing country, China has actively participated in global food and agriculture management, launching cooperative procedures in saving food with other countries.

Under the projects of the FAO, the World Food Programme and other international organizations, China shared information, techniques and talent with other countries, especially developing ones, to improve their ability to reduce food loss, Ma said.

Sui Pengfei, director of the ministry's department of international cooperation, said the country will strengthen its collaborative research and development of techniques and equipment applied to key procedures for saving food.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Dr. Andrew Lim walks to the Bristol Hospital Emergency Department with nurse Barbara O'Neill, right, and case manager Theresa Landau, rear. COVID-19 pressures have increased patient load and decreased staffing numbers at hospitals across the state. Photograph by Mark Mirko | mmirko@courant.com (Mark Mirko/The Hartford Courant)

As the omicron surge ran through central Connecticut during the holidays, Bristol Hospitals emergency department was at times handling almost twice its normal number of patients  and with a reduced staff.

We expect on average about 80 patients in a day. Last week we would see peaks of 150, said Dr. Andrew Lim, director of the emergency department. And thats with less staff. With the positivity rate above 25 percent a lot of our staff are becoming sick.

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The situation is similar in many hospitals across the state, where COVID-19 patients are once again filling beds after a seasonlong lull following the worst of the delta variant.

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But at the same time, the ranks of nurses and support staff are down, partly because some frustrated and burned-out workers left the career. Even worse, the highly contagious omicron variant is striking hospital staff too, sidelining hundreds of workers when theyre needed most.

That means in emergency rooms  and across health care  the staff is worn down from nearly two years of the pandemic and battling a new wave of extra work.

We have more staff out now than last winter or than in the initial surge of 2020, said Caryl Ryan, chief nursing officer at UConns John Dempsey Hospital. And our patient volumes are very high. Our numbers for COVID-19 (cases) are going up to probably half of where they were in the first and second surges, and its supposed to keep rising for three weeks.

At Bristol Hospital, 75-year-old nurse Barbara O'Neill talks in a hallway with President and CEO Kurt Barwis. Photograph by Mark Mirko | mmirko@courant.com (Mark Mirko/The Hartford Courant)

Our ED is the department thats probably encountered the biggest change in patient volume and staff outage.

The situation is serious at Hartford HealthCare, parent of Hartford Hospital, St. Vincents in Bridgeport, the Hospital of Central Connecticut, Backus Hospital and several others.

We have just over 600 Hartford HealthCare colleagues who are out of work, who are quarantining and COVID positive, President and Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Flaks told a news conference last week.

At Stamford Hospital, Dr. Rohit Bhalla noted that even though patient volumes and demand for staff are high, hospitals are still doing routine services and procedures  unlike in the spring of 2020 when nearly all of that was suspended.

Were functioning as we normally do but at a very, very busy level, Bhalla said.

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All hands on deck

All of the physicians, nurses and hospital executives who spoke with The Courant said the quality of care remains strong, but acknowledged theyre going to extraordinary lengths to keep staffing up.

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Nearly all hospitals are shuttling staff from other assignments into the emergency department or medical floors as needed, and offering incentive  sometimes triple base bay  to attract staff to work overtime. Agencies that supply temporary nurses are charging even more.

Bristol Hospital, for instance, has paid up to $175 an hour for a fill-in registered nurse on a medical surgical floor and $190 in the intensive care unit or operating room.

A few hospitals now pull in administrative workers to pitch in with the lower-skill tasks such as housekeeping that would normally fall to nurses or aides. Barwis staff credits his executive team for stepping forward.

Leadership is out on the floors every day  they sign up to do helping hands on the floor, answer call bells, walk patients to the bathroom, sit with patients who need constant observation, said Michelle Miranda, Bristol Hospitals director of inpatient and emergency services.

Were holding it together. We have a dedicated core staff thats toughing it out. But she acknowledged that following the national trend, some Bristol nursing and support staff have left the field altogether because theyre burned out.

At Bristols emergency department, nurse Barbara ONeill said its a tough time  and she has the experience to know.

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Its been challenging. Id be a liar if I said it hasnt been. The volume is terrible now, but we handle it much better than we did with the first round. And we know so much more now than we did, said ONeill, 75, who has been an emergency nurse at Bristol for 53 years.

Nurse Barbara O'Neill, left, nurse and case manager Theresa Landau and Dr. Andrew Lim at the Bristol Hospital Emergency Department. Photograph by Mark Mirko | mmirko@courant.com (Mark Mirko/The Hartford Courant)

In the first round, I was scared to death. Im old, and the old people were the ones who were dying, she said. The staff was very protective of me. It was very rare Id get an assignment with a COVID patient. If I did, Id be getting dressed (in protective equipment) to go in and somebody would push me out of the way saying No, Ill do it.

With the risk lower and patient volume up, ONeill is handling the same duties as any other emergency department nurse this time around. Shes working 12-hour shifts and credits her young colleagues with keeping everyones morale up.

Everyone is tired now. You frequently hear, I cant do this anymore. Im done  then five minutes later, someone picks them right up and theyre back to where they were, she said.

A particular frustration is that when waves of COVID-19 patients show up at the emergency department, theres often an hourslong wait and no available room after theyre admitted, she said.

The floors are in the same predicament with low staff, so we have all these in-patients and then this big influx in the waiting room, ONeill said.

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A paperwork wall

A lot of the backlog is because transferring relatively stable patients to other facilities isnt as simple as in 2020, when insurers were waiving the time-consuming paperwork, according to some hospitals. Restoring that system would help a lot, said Kurt Barwis, Bristol Hospital president.

Now, administrative workers spend days getting authorizations, he said. Many insurers work strictly daytime hours and only on weekdays, so a delay on Thursday afternoon can mean a hospital bed is tied up until Monday or longer.

On average over the last four weeks, we had 1.26 patients parked in in-patient beds waiting for insurance authorization to discharge them to a skilled nursing facility, Barwis said. Timely authorization by insurance companies would have reduced the ED holds by a whopping 26 percent. Its totally dumbfounding that our system is this broken and backwards.

Theresa Landau, a case manager at Bristol Hospital, said shes seen how those delays frustrate patients and staff alike. Medicare advantage plans are particularly bad about this, she said.

Five Things You Need To Know Daily We're providing the latest coronavirus coverage in Connecticut each weekday morning. >

Now its difficult to get those authorizations. We are constantly fighting that battle every day, she said. We know we need to move people because theyre medically ready, and then it backs up because everyone is challenged by how many patients they have.

The hospital was housing nearly 10 such patients a week ago  people who were ready for a lower level of care, but still occupied hospital beds because of insurance delays, she said.

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Everything backs up. A couple of days ago, Anthem and Cigna decided to temporarily pause the need for prior authorizations, Lim said. The other insurance companies in the state need to follow suit.

The frustration is that everyone in the hospital has gone above and beyond to be creative, to work longer hours and after hours. To this point, insurance companies havent stepped up.

Sometimes theyre here in the Emergency Department for two or three days. In two or three days, we could have used that bed and that nursing care for 20 patients.

As pressures mount on hospital staff, Lim, ONeill and others are calling on patients and their families to practice extra patience  especially in long emergency department waits during the pandemic.

Everybody is frustrated, we know that. But just try to speak calmly: We really are sorry you have to wait, but were doing the best we can, ONeill said. One nurse was crying last week  she was tired; she was picking up extra shifts because we need it now. I just told her, Its OK. This too shall pass. You can get through this.
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The flood of remote workers at the start of the global pandemic in early 2020 had companies scrambling to find new software for communicating and collaborating with remote workers. Many turned to software-as-a-service (SaaS) options.

It was an obvious choice. Under the SaaS model, applications are hosted and maintained by a third-party vendor and delivered to employees over the internet, making them easy to deploy remotely.

SaaS apps are subscription-based, typically charged monthly or annually per user or seat, without the large up-front investment traditional on-premises software requires. Introduced in the early 2000s, SaaS has soared in popularity over the years and is now the leading method of software delivery.

The shift to SaaS from traditional software is also part of many companies digital transformation initiatives. The whole notion behind digital transformation and modernization is to be more resilient and more agile, says Frank Della Rosa, research director for SaaS and cloud software at IDC. With legacy software, the time it takes to bring up new infrastructure and the time it takes to deploy the software really limits a business ability to respond to change.

SaaS offerings also have an advantage in their ability to make new features available more frequently than traditional software offerings. With SaaS, the release cadence is happening on a quarterly basis, says Della Rosa. Theres a constant stream of new capabilities that businesses can take advantage of, which is not available to legacy software customers.

The problem with SaaS

The ease with which SaaS applications can be deployed means line-of-business leaders, small teams, or even individuals can begin using them easily  and that, in turn, has led to a proliferation of SaaS apps in many enterprises. In its 2021 Businesses at Work report, for example, access management provider Okta reported that its customers have deployed an average of 88 apps, an increase of 22% over the past four years. Larger customers (2,000 or more employees) have an average of 175 apps, while smaller companies (under 2,000) deploy an average of 73 apps.

These buying decisions now are democratized, says Della Rosa. What weve seen with SaaS is that users will take out a credit card and buy the tools they need, and then submit the expense. So now you have an enormous explosion of expenses coming in with software licenses that are creating a real headache in terms of being able to manage that spend.

In addition, redundancies have arisen as different departments end up buying the same type of software without knowing what's going on in other areas of the business. When subscription renewals come up, the procurement department often has no visibility into whether the software generates any real value for the business.

If you look at the proliferation of SaaS in an enterprise, [companies] could be underreporting the number of applications by a factor of 10, says Della Rosa.

The continued growth of SaaS apps across organizations is becoming a major pain point for IT managers, who need to know not only what is being deployed, but whether the apps are secure, whether they meet compliance regulations, and how much money is being spent on them.

What SaaS management tools do

A category of tools to help manage the SaaS sprawl has grown as well over recent years. Depending on the group defining the category, these could be called SaaS management platforms (SMPs) or SaaS operations management software (SaaSOps). Gartner, which refers to this category as SMPs, says such tools are offered by pure-play vendors, as well as traditional software asset management (SAM) vendors, cloud platform management and cloud migration vendors, cloud access security brokers, and even some IT service management vendors.

Traditional SAM tools are still largely focused on the management of non-SaaS applications where an installation is present, Gartner wrote in its February 2021 Market Guide for SaaS Management Platforms. However, leading SAM vendors are increasingly adding capabilities natively, or through acquisition, to support the discovery of SaaS applications and manage licenses. Gartner refers to some of these vendors as SAM for SaaS, which can further complicate a companys research.

IDCs Della Rosa says most SaaS management platforms evolved out of spend management and optimization tools that help organizations get a handle on the amount of money being spent on SaaS across the business. Over time, SaaS management companies began to add additional features, such as application security, vendor management, cost optimization, and onboarding/offboarding configuration for employees. Many vendors now provide SaaS app recommendation services, giving advice on which SaaS apps may be better for a particular problem or category.

The market for SaaS management is booming right along with the explosion of SaaS apps themselves. Gartner predicts that by 2026, 50% of organizations using multiple SaaS applications will centralize management and usage of these apps through an SMP tool, up from less than 20% using them in 2021.

Experts say organizations should consider SaaS management software if they notice a surge in subscription expenses, if multiple departments start buying the same software, if the security folks express concern over whether the apps in use are secure and compliant with regulations, or if trying to manage software purchases in a spreadsheet is becoming a nightmare.

Key SaaS management features to look for

First and foremost, the tools should be able to handle at least three major tasks: automated discovery of apps within an organizations infrastructure; managing and automating administrative functions, such as onboarding/offboarding; and providing a centralized location for enforcing app and data security policies for the SaaS portfolio.

Additional features and functionality may also be included. For example, some tools provide for role-based access controls; offer the ability to document, cancel, transfer, and upgrade software licenses; have a central reporting system for executives or compliance audits; let administrators create a catalog of approved apps that employees can download; monitor employee adoption and usage of apps and forecast future needs; and/or provide SaaS app recommendation services to reduce app overlap and optimize spending. Many automation capabilities rely on integrations with SaaS providers, so be sure to investigate the integrations offered by any SMP youre considering.

Beyond discovery and management functions, Della Rosa says hes receiving many inquiries regarding security and compliance concerns over SaaS installations.

Depending on the data an application accesses, it introduces risk, because theres no way to confirm that its being used in compliance and that the vendors providing the app are also current in their compliance [with] industry and regional regulations, he says. Being able to track and ensure that all users are authorized  identity and access management is key.

Della Rosa says organizations should look at vendors that can help them solve their immediate needs, whether those are security and compliance, spend management, or user engagement. If you ask any company whats most important  cost management, compliance, or usage data, theyre going to say all three.

If youre out of compliance or if youre unsure whether the vendors youre using have all of the updated documentation on their compliance, thats probably more critical than cost right now," he says. "So companies may want to look at a platform that has built its core value proposition around that, and then think about integration to address cost optimization and user engagement, he says.

Top SaaS management software choices

With many vendors offering standalone SaaS management, as well as traditional SAM vendors offering SaaS components to their offerings, companies should be able to find a product that meets their specific needs.

The main list below focuses on pure-play SaaS management vendors. Following that, youll find other options including traditional SAM vendors that have added SaaS management features to their existing tools. Choosing a type of vendor for SaaS management may ultimately depend on whether your company already has a SAM tool deployed, or if youre looking for tools that can manage on-premises applications in addition to SaaS apps.

We selected the following products, arranged alphabetically, through independent research and discussions with analysts who cover the market. Inclusion in this list is not a buying recommendation, nor is exclusion a sign not to buy. Rather, this is meant to be a starting point that highlights vendors, core features, and unique functionality for companies to consider when choosing a SaaS management system.

BetterCloud: Features of the BetterCloud platform include app discovery, file security, onboarding and offboarding, least-privilege access, security compliance, automated workflows, and centralized management of multiple instances of common SaaS applications. The company offers integrations with more than 60 different SaaS applications, including Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Okta. (See BetterClouds security details.)

Blissfully: Blissfully provides organization, automation, and security functions including SaaS management, vendor management, traditional software asset management, IT asset management, vendor and employee workflows, IT automation, access management, auditing and evidence, and compliance workflows. (See Blissfullys security details.)

G2 Track: G2 offers a software marketplace that lets people research, buy, and manage their software and services. The company recently introduced G2 Track, which helps companies discover and manage the applications used at their businesses. The offering lets companies manage their software and spend, track employee usage trends to attain value, control contracts and compliance, and reveal license and budget trends. (See G2 Tracks security details.)

Productiv: This platform uses machine learning models to discover ungoverned apps and ensure compliance, provide recommendations for optimizing app spend, and streamline the process for employees to discover deployed apps and request new ones. The system can provide usage data on more than 20,000 apps, including the spend, licensing, adoption rates, security, and functions. Onboarding and workflow automation for SaaS apps are also available. (See Productivs security details.)

Stackshine: Features of this platform include a subscription calendar to track past and future expenses; a centralized dashboard for vendor data, contracts, and invoices; alerts of upcoming renewal dates; and security alerts around compromised vendors and offboarded employees. The vendor also offers services such as vendor discovery and contract negotiation and can run survey campaigns of employees to discover favorite and least-liked apps. (Stackshines site does not include a security and compliance page; contact the vendor for encryption, authentication, and compliance details.)

Torii: This platform automates the discovery, spend optimization, operations, and compliance of SaaS applications across an organization. Spend monitoring includes vendor and license management, as well as chargeback reporting. The system can automate SaaS-related processes for employee lifecycle, it includes an application catalog, and it provides details on software utilization. Torii includes automated risk analysis and access control features, along with security alerts. (See Toriis security details.)

Trelica: Based in the UK, Trelica automates SaaS discovery to find shadow IT installations, optimize app spending, automate IT operations, and engage with end users. Engagement data can identify savings from unused seats, and renewal negotiation can reflect how much employees are using apps. Other features include employee onboarding automation, security and access risk, and the ability to gauge user satisfaction. Integrations with identity providers and SSO apps, finance tools, and business apps are also available. (See Trelicas security details.)

Zluri: This vendor says its goal is to simplify the worlds transition to SaaS by helping companies adopt and operate their software stack through a single intelligent dashboard. Features of the Zluri platform include smart application discovery, renewal monitoring, application cost optimization, vendor management, onboarding and offboarding automation, application usage data, and real-time notifications and reports. (See Zluris security details.)

Zylo: This system can discover applications across an organization, optimize spending and discover inefficiencies, manage renewals and forecast spending, and ensure compliance through governance processes. (Zylos site does not include a security and compliance page; contact the vendor for encryption, authentication, and compliance details.)

Other tools, including SAM, ITSM, and ITAM platforms

Enterprises that want to manage on-premises applications as well as SaaS apps should investigate software asset management (SAM), IT service management (ITSM), or IT asset management (ITAM) offerings, many of which are beginning to offer SaaS management features. Vendors in this space include Snow Software, Alloy Software, Flexera, Genuity, ServiceNow, and SailPoint  which addresses the issue via its identity management platform.

We also discovered other tools that may have one or two of the three main SaaS management capabilities (discovery, management, and security), but do not currently appear to be a complete SaaS management system. Vendors such as Airbase and Vendr, for example, offer spend management features.

Other vendors, such as CoreView, Sonar Software, and AvePoint, offer SaaS management features, but only for specific products like Microsoft 365 or Salesforce.
Amid the on-going coronavirus pandemic, 2021 followed in the footsteps of its predecessor, continuing to be an unpredictable, and at times incredibly difficult, year. But one thing that stayed constant was the steady flow of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) across the tech sector.

According to research by Global Data, global tech M&A deals had already neared $3 trillion by Q3, largely supported by the tech, media, and telecom sectors. Although nothing rivalled Xilinxs $35 billion acquisition of Advanced Micro Devices in 2020, last year did see Intuit buy Mailchimp for $12 billion and Square splash out a princely sum  $29 billion  for Afterpay.

GlobalData Global mergers and acquisitions value.

[ Further reading: Biggest technology acquisitions of 2021 ]

As for whether 2022 will maintain last years pace, early signs seem to suggest there will be no slowing of big deals across the industry, with cybersecurity and collaboration software already proving to be hot areas.

Here are the biggest enterprise technology acquisitions of 2022 so far, in reverse chronological order:

April 25: Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44B

Nine years after going public, and eleven days after billionaire Elon Musk first made an offer to buy Twitter, the social media network announced it would become a privately owned company once again.

The purchase price totals an eye-watering $44 billion and is includes of $21 billion of Musks own money, alongside debt funding from Morgan Stanley and other financial institutions. The purchase price represents a 38% premium to Twitter's closing stock price on April 1.

Despite initially declining Musks offer and enacting anti-takeover measures, the board ultimately decided to accept Musk's offer once it saw confirmed funding for the acquisition.

In a company statement, Bret Taylor, Twitter's independent board chair, said: "The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon's proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing. The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter's stockholders.

April 11: Kaseya buys Datto for $6.2B and takes the company private

Security software company Kaseya has agreed to buy Datto for $6.2 billion and will take the company private again, after it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020. Datto was founded in 2007 and provides data backup and security software, primarily to managed service providers.

This is exciting news for Kaseyas global customers, who can expect to see more functional, innovative and integrated solutions as a result of the purchase, said Fred Voccola, Kaseyas CEO.

April 5: AMD acquires Pensando for $1.9B

Chipmaker AMD has announced the acquisition of Pensando for approximately $1.9 billion.

Pensado specializes in data processing unites (DPUs), which include intelligent, programmable software to support the software-defined cloud, compute, networking, storage, and security services that could be rolled out quickly to edge, colocation, or service-provider networks.

There are a wide range of use casessuch as 5G and IoTthat need to support lots of low-latency traffic, Soni Jiandani, Pensando cofounder and chief business office told Network World last November. Weve taken a ground-up approach to giving enterprise customers a fully programmable system with the ability to support multiple infrastructure services without dedicated CPUs.

March 29: Celonis acquires Process Analytics Factory

Process mining specialist Celonis is acquiring fellow German software firm, Process Analytics Factory, for a reported $100 million.

Up until now, Celonis has been focused on helping enterprises optimize processes around their ERP systems  and more recently has branched out to help them optimize their use of workflow automation platforms, too. Now it is acquiring Process Analytics Factory to improve its process mining offering and help enterprises automate with Microsofts Power Platform.

In October 2020 Celonis launched its Execution Management System (EMS) to visualize and design more efficient processes, and in April 2021 it formed a partnership with Microsoft to deliver process analytics through Power BI and to integrate its process improvement tools with Microsoft power Platform. Then, in October 2021, it partnered with ServiceNow to deliver process mining capabilities to the Now platform. It also has technology partnerships with Appian, Coupa, IBM, Oracle, Salesforce, Snowflake, Splunk, and a handful of other software vendors.

March 28: HP to acquire Poly for $3.3B

HP has announced it is acquiring Poly, a company that specializes in video and audio equipment, for a purchase price of $1.7 billion, with a total transaction value of $3.3 billion, including debt. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2022.

The acquisition is set to accelerate HPs foray into the world of hybrid work, coming eight months after the company purchased remote desktop software provider Teradici.

Founded in 1990 and originally named Polycom, the company was acquired by headset maker Plantronics in 2019, after which the two newly merged companies rebranded themselves as Poly. Since then, the company has focused on providing enterprise-grade collaboration products, such as meeting room speakers and cameras, webcams, headsets, and software.

The rise of the hybrid office creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine the way work gets done, said Enrique Lores, president and CEO of HP. Combining HP and Poly creates a leading portfolio of hybrid work solutions across large and growing markets. Polys strong technology, complementary go-to-market, and talented team will help to drive long-term profitable growth as we continue building a stronger HP.

March 23: Apple acquires UK fintech startup Credit Kudos

Apple is acquiring the UK-based fintech startup Credit Kudos for an undisclosed amount. Credit Kudos last raised 5 million ($6.5 million) in funding in April 2020.

Neither Credit Kudos or Apple could be reached to confirm the deal, which was first reported by the crypto-focused publication The Block, citing three sources close to the deal.

Credit Kudos is a challenger credit bureau that uses machine learning and real-time data to build up a fuller picture of a persons credit score, rather than traditional agencies, which typically rely on older information such as bank and utility statements to build a profile.

The firm has also benefitted from the recent wave of open banking regulations across the globe, which aim to open up consumer financial data via a set of secure application programming interfaces (APIs). Credit Kudos provides this data to clients for services such as affordability and risk assessments.

It is unclear what Apple plans to do with Credit Kudos, but the company has invested significantly in its fintech capabilities over recent years  in particular, its mobile Apple Pay wallet and its Apple Card credit card, which is currently only available in the US and was built in partnership with Goldman Sachs.

March 8: Google buys cybersecurity company Mandiant

Google will acquire cyberdefense and response firm Mandiant for $5.4 billion, in a move to offer an end-to-end security operations suite and advisory services from its cloud platform.

Cybersecurity is a mission, and we believe its one of the most important of our generation, Mandiant CEO Kevin Mandia said in a statement announcing the acquisition. "Google Cloud shares our mission-driven culture to bring security to every organization. Together, we will deliver our expertise and intelligence at scale via the Mandiant Advantage SaaS platform, as part of the Google Cloud security portfolio.

March 3: Snowflake buys Streamlit for $800M

Data cloud company Snowflake has acquired Streamlit for $800 million, enabling developers and data scientists to build apps using tools with simplified data access and governance.

Streamlits open-source framework allows developers and data scientists to build and share data apps quickly and iteratively, without the need to be an expert in front-end development. According to Streamlit, the platform has had more than 8 million downloads and more than 1.5 million applications have been built using it.

At Snowflake, we believe in bringing together open standards and open source with industry-leading data governance and security, Snowflake Co-Founder and President of Products Benoit Dageville said in a statement announcing the acquisition. When Snowflake and Streamlit come together, we will be able to provide developers and data scientists with a single, powerful hub to discover and collaborate with data they can trust to build next generation data apps and shape the future of data science.

Feb. 28: Rakuten Symphony acquires Kubernetes platform Robin.io

The recently launched telco-focused arm of Japans Rakuten Group, Rakuten Symphony, has acquired Robin.io, a startup offering a Kubernetes platform optimized for storage and complex network applications.

The two companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition. Since first launching, Robin.io has moved beyond its original focus on storage to offer a more full-featured Kubernetes platform, providing large telcos with ways of automating 5G services applications on Kubernetes and orchestrating private 5G and LTE deployments.

Robin.ios technology innovations over the last several years will now get a much bigger canvas to lead the vision for cloud-native transformation for the industry. Our vision to deliver simple to use, easy to deploy hyperscale automation is very well aligned, said Robin.io CEO Partha Seetala.

Feb. 24: Cloudflare acquires security startup Area 1 Security

Cloudflare announced plans to acquire Area 1 Security for around $126 million, using both cash and stock to fund the acquisition.

Cloudflare has its own suite of zero-trust security products designed to prevent data loss, malware and phishing attacks, even when employees arent using their office network or a VPN. This deal will see the company add email security to this portfolio.

Area 1 Security has developed a product that stops phishing attacks sent via email before they reach an inbox. The company claims to have blocked more than 40 million phishing attempts in 2021 alone.

Cloudflare cCo-founder and CEO Matthew Prince said in a statement: To us, the future of Zero Trust includes an integrated, one-click approach to securing all of an organizations applications, including its most ubiquitous cloud application, email. Together, we expect well be delivering the fastest, most effective, and most reliable email security on the market.

Feb. 15: Intel to acquire Tower Semiconductor

Intel announced plans to acquire Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion, giving it access to more specialized production as it looks to take advantage of growing demand for semiconductors. The deal has been approved by both company boards, but is expected to take as long as 12 months to move through the normal regulatory channels.

Intel announced last year that it was planning to enter the foundry market to produce chips designed by their customers. Tower has been investing in multiple locations in recent years to boost capacity for 200- and 300-millimeter chips. It serves "fabless" companies, who design chips but outsource manufacturing, and integrated device manufacturers.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger sees the move as a good fit for the companys vision. Towers specialty technology portfolio, geographic reach, deep customer relationships and services-first operations will help scale Intels foundry services and advance our goal of becoming a major provider of foundry capacity globally, he said in a statement.

Feb. 15: Akamai acquires Linode for $900M

Akamai has entered into an agreement to acquire Linode, an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform provider, for approximately $900 million. Akamai reportedly expects Linode to add about $100 million in revenue for FY22.

Founded in 2003, Linode has positioned itself as an IaaS alternative to public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Unlike many of its competitors, Linode says it had not raised outside funding, boasting it has successfully run a profitable business since [its] inception.

The opportunity to combine Linodes developer-friendly cloud computing capabilities with Akamais market-leading edge platform and security services is transformational for Akamai, Akamai CEO and co-founder Tom Leighton said in a statement. Akamai has been a pioneer in the edge computing business for over 20 years, and today we are excited to begin a new chapter in our evolution by creating a unique cloud platform to build, run and secure applications from the cloud to the edge.

Jan 31: Citrix to be acquired by private equity firms for $16.5B

Cloud computing and virtualization company Citrix is being acquired by private equity firms Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital for $16.5 billion. Its been reported that Vista plans to combine Citrix with Tibco, which it acquired in 2014 for $4.3 billion.

The all-cash deal will see the publicly traded Citrix go private and will include the assumption of Citrixs debt, the companies said.
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On sait que les vols de cartes graphiques existent. La preuve en est, nous vous avions deja parle d'un vol pour 336 000 dollars de GeForce RTX 3090 dans les usines MSI . Eh bien ce jour, c'estqui annonce que la cargaison d'un camion de livraison a ete derobee. On parle de centaines de cartes graphiques GeForce RTX 3000, meme si la marque ne precise pas le nombre.Le vol a eu lieu sur le trajet entre San Francisco et un centre de distribution de la marque dans le sud de la californie.Voila la communication de la marque a ce propos, en francais dans le texte :"PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that on October 29, 2021, a shipment of EVGA GeForce RTX 30-Series Graphics Cards was stolen from a truck en route from San Francisco to our Southern California distribution center.These graphics cards are in high demand and each has an estimated retail value starting at $329.99 up to $1959.99 MSRP.PLEASE TAKE FURTHER NOTICE that under state and Federal law:It is a criminal and civil offense to "buy or receive" property that has been stolen. Cal. Penal Code section 496(a). It is also a criminal and civil offense to "conceal, sell, withhold, or aid in concealing selling or withholding" any such property.PLEASE TAKE FURTHER notice that:If you are able to successfully register your product and see it under My Products, then your product is NOT affected by this notice, you can also check the serial number at the EVGA Warranty Check page to see if it is affected. EVGA will NOT REGISTER or HONOR ANY WARRANTY or UPGRADE claims on these products.If you have or receive any information relating to these products, please share that with us at stopRTX30theft@evga.com.We appreciate your attention to this issue.Thank you,EVGA Management: Voila donc que les cartes volees viennent de reapparaitre, au. En effet, un revendeur local, que l'on connaissait deja pour ses ventes de Rig de Mining avec des cartes graphiques introuvables, propose donc des cartes EVGA avec une garantie limitee a 1 mois et avec des tarifs "interessants". Un utilisateur a achete deux de ces cartes et apres avoir contacte EVGA pour savoir si la garantie etait effective, il s'est avere que les numeros de serie des deux cartes graphiques correspondaient a des modeles voles il y a deux mois...
It's propaganda week at Cracked! Keep calm and read on.

In the spring of 1940, French soldiers were faring badly against a German invasion. They were wondering why the British (currently in France and aiding them) weren't as much of a help as they might have been. Then, from the air, came colored postcards. "Where is Tommy staying?" said the words on the card, against a scene of French soldiers dying. Hold the card to the light, and a new scene appeared, answering the question: It showed a British man having sex with a Frenchwoman.

The unfocused, weirdly angled pic above is all we're willing to show you. Because these cards got very explicit indeed, and you want to see them, with all the bits and bobs included, you'll have to look elsewhere. You'll also have to look elsewhere to see all the German porn propaganda we don't have time to cover today, as the Germans had different kinds for different opponents and different situations.

These opponents had pornaganda of their own. Much of it echoed the message of the Tommy cards: "Your woman back home is having sex without you. Lose hope." Countries still managed variations on this same theme, though.

British pornaganda preyed on Germans' racism. The man with the German woman in these leaflets was dark-skinned and was either labeled Italian (so, "your allies are having sex with your women," like in the Tommy cards) or as a "foreign worker" (so, "your mission for purity of race has already failed").
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Kim was dissatisfied with the quality of the films being produced under his control. He had a very specific vision of what he wanted these films to be but was frustrated that none of the actors and filmmakers shared his passion. Apparently, those lazy bastards were only putting in enough effort to keep the state from denying them food. Having seen how much better movies were in the rest of the world, Kim Jong-il had to figure out how to bring the quality of Western cinema to North Korea without having any of those annoying Western values like dignity, independent thought, or the idea of getting paid. So, he reached out to many of the filmmakers whose work he admired  and kidnapped them.

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In 1978, popular South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee took a trip to Hong Kong to meet with a businessman who was offering her an opportunity to direct a film and run a performance school. The businessman turned out to be a group of covert North Korean operatives who then abducted Choi and brought her to Pyongyang. But she was only bait. The real target was her then ex-husband, famed South Korean director Shin Sang-ok.

Shin had been traveling around the world trying to find someone to finance his next film project, but when he had heard of his ex-wifes disappearance, he went looking for her. When he arrived in Hong Kong, he too was abducted and flown to North Korea. At first, neither of them were informed of the others capture and both were held in lavish accommodations, although Shin was sent to prison for disobedience after twice attempting to escape.

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In 1983, Shin was released from prison and finally reunited with Choi. Kim Jong-il quickly put the two to work, making them watch and critique four films each day. Kim wanted Shin to direct films that could be entered in international film competitions. He granted Shin some leeway on the subjects and themes that might play well on these circuits, as long as the films message didnt give the people of North Korea any funny ideas about freedom or anything.
A Glastonbury-based company that hosts thousands of school websites in Connecticut and across the nation continued to recover Monday from a ransomware attack launched last week.

We still have no evidence that any data has been viewed, compromised or extracted, Finalsite spokeswoman Morgan Delack said.

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Finalsite has identified the cyber attacker and how they entered the system, but Delack would not identify the attacker or say whether the company paid ransom to restore the breached systems.

Attorney General William Tong said his office was monitoring the attack closely.

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Right now, Tong said, there are no reports that student data or personal information has been compromised, which would trigger notification requirements to our office.

Ransomware uses encryption to disable computer systems. Cybercriminals demand payment in exchange for restoration, often threatening to sell or leak information if the ransom is not paid.

On Jan. 4, Farmington schools and other districts with websites hosted by Finalsite discovered their sites were not accessible or displayed errors. The companys initial message said staff was investigating an issue leading to increased error rates and performance issues... A Jan. 6 update said staff had identified ransomware on certain systems in our environment on Jan. 4.

Five Things You Need To Know Daily We're providing the latest coronavirus coverage in Connecticut each weekday morning. >

An update Monday said the attack was not directed at any specific schools, but certain areas in the Finalsite systems as a whole. Client data stored in company databases is limited to demographics, including names and email addresses for some clients, and there is no evidence that such data was compromised, the company said. Finalsite does not store data such as credit card information, academic records, information related to students health or Social Security numbers, Delack said.

The integrity, safety, and security of our network and the information held in our care are our top priorities, the company said. We are taking steps to secure the environment and ensure this type of incident does not occur again.

Ransomware has become an urgent national security problem. Many of the criminal hackers are based in Russia. In a June summit, President Joe Biden pushed Russian leader Vladimir Putin to clamp down on the surge of cybersecurity and ransomware attacks that have targeted businesses and government agencies in the U.S. and around the globe.

Tong said no business or government entity is immune from a ransomware attack. He outlined necessary measures to protect personal information and critical infrastructure, including following the presidents executive order on Improving the Nations Cybersecurity, which outlines best practices that include multifactor authentication (because passwords alone are routinely compromised); endpoint detection and response (to hunt for malicious activity on a network and block it); encryption (so if data is stolen, it is unusable); and a skilled security team.

More information can be found here.

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Tong also announced a new online form designed to help businesses comply with their obligation to notify his office when they experience a data breach impacting Connecticut residents.

Jesse Leavenworth can be reached at jleavenworth@courant.com
Crossville, TN (38555)

Today

A few clouds with an isolated thunderstorm possible after midnight. Low 63F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

A few clouds with an isolated thunderstorm possible after midnight. Low 63F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
Colorado Springs Utilities CEO Aram Benyamin (left), Fiber Optic and Telecommunication Enterprise Manager Brian Wortinger (center) and Ting Internet Executive Vice President Jill Szuchmacher discuss CSU's fiber internet infrastructure project with elected officials and community leaders on Friday.
By Cynthia Hubert

At 6 years old, Clara Scarry attended a book fair in Florida and discovered My Life with the Chimpanzees, by renowned scientist and conservationist Jane Goodall.

I read it, and I was set, Scarry said. It put me on my path.

The book helped steer her toward a career as a biological anthropologist who documents the habits and behaviors of wild primates in remote locations, including Argentina and Ecuador. Now, as an assistant professor of Anthropology at Sacramento State, she is sharing her knowledge and adventures with her students.

A recently awarded grant will allow Professor Clara Scarry to take students into the field to study capuchin monkeys in their natural habitat. (Photo courtesy of Clara Scarry)

Scarry recently won a $180,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to bring students to her research site at Iguazu National Park in Argentina, where she leads a study of the ecology of tufted capuchin monkeys.

The grant is tied to Sac States status as a university with a sharp focus on traditionally underserved students, Scarry said.

A lot of our students work and have responsibilities at home, and cant be in the field for months at a time, she said. The grant will fund month-long stints for 12 Sac State scholars.

Among them is Stevie Capps, an Anthropology graduate student who will join Scarry at the research site in March. Capps had planned to participate last year, but the COVID-19 pandemic caused the excursion to be canceled.

The upcoming trip means more than an amazing experience in a new country, said Capps, a first-generation college student and Sacramento native.

My education will benefit immensely from this journey. Fieldwork, especially in primatology, is the building block to becoming a great researcher.

Capps said she felt somewhat lost after transferring to Sac State from a community college, but Scarry became her mentor, someone who made me fall in love with learning again. Scarry and other faculty encouraged and supported me every step of the way.

Scarry, the daughter of two anthropologists, attended high school in North Carolina, just down the road from the highly respected Duke University Lemur Center. As a senior, she worked as an intern at the sanctuary, observing the primates and collecting data.

She earned two undergraduate degrees at Arizona State University and did her graduate work at Stony Brook University in New York, where she earned masters and doctoral degrees in Biological Anthropology.

While at Stony Brook, she began conducting fieldwork on capuchin monkeys in the subtropical forest of Argentina under the supervision of her faculty advisor. Scarrys research focuses on aggression among groups of monkeys, decision-making and group coordination, and ranging behavior.

Though their appearance belies it, Professor Clara Scarry (in burgundy hoodie) says capuchin monkeys can be "real jerks." (Photo courtesy of Clara Scarry)

Primate studies shed light on the evolution of human behavior, said Scarry, who joined Sac State in 2018.

If you want to understand how humans became humans, you look at primates, which are our closest genetic match in the animal world, she said.

Scarry has studied hierarchies of monkeys, their cooperation with one another in defending their home ranges, and their methods for helping one another find food.

The environment at the research site in Argentina is rugged, beautiful, and sometimes precarious. In the field, Scarry has been stung by wasps more than 100 times and must navigate a landscape inhabited by poisonous snakes and spiders. Along with notebooks and camera equipment, she often carries a machete to hack through overgrown walking trails in dense forest.

Scarry said the capuchins she tracks may look cute and amiable, but they can be real jerks, and are known for mischievous and aggressive behavior, including stealing food from tourists who visit the areas spectacular waterfalls.

The payoff from observing them can be magical, Scarry said.

We get to see things that very few people do, she said. Going to the secret places in the forest where the monkeys gather, and sitting on top of a cliff watching them bed down for the night; watching them when the mist lifts in the morning. Each day we have incredible experiences.

Those moments in the field remind her of the words her childhood hero, Jane Goodall, once scribbled to the future researcher on the inside cover of one of her books.

Follow Your Dreams.

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A man is accused of voting twice in the 2020 general election, once in Florida and the second time through an absentee ballot in Connecticut, according to an incident report.

Charles Barnes Jr., 64, allegedly voted in person in Florida on Oct. 28, 2020, records show. Connecticut Secretary of State records show he also cast an absentee ballot in Connecticut Nov. 3, 2020.
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MILFORD  A Norwalk man is due in court next month on charges he sold drugs used in the fatal overdose of a Mayflower Court man whose death left his 3-year-old son alone in the home.

Firefighters broke into the house and found the boy uninjured in his crib, according to an arrest warrant for 52-year-old Erley Pulgarin for illegal distribution of narcotics, a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Pulgarins lawyer did not return a message seeking comment.

According to the warrant, cops were dispatched to the house Sept. 5, 2021 on a welfare check on the 30-year-old man after his mother had been unable to reach him by phone or by banging on the door.

At the time, the mans wife was in Florida at a bachelorette party.

The mother told police her son had a drug problem and had overdosed in the past but had been clean for two years.

After firefighters broke in, the man was found dead on a couch in the living room with his feet up on a coffee table. A medical examiner estimated the time of death sometime the previous evening.

His son was found in a crib in his bedroom and brought to his grandmother, according to the warrant.

In an office next to the living room, police found a paper plate with a rolled-up dollar bill and wax-like fold containing a white powder consistent with the packaging of heroin bundles, according to the warrant.

It appeared that the child never climbed out of his crib and never came downstairs, Detective Sgt. Jeffrey Cortes wrote in the warrant.

The child had no visible injuries and it appeared he had been in his crib the entire time, wrote Cortes, who also noted the presence of child safety gates at the stairs and door to the childs room, as well as a side rail on the crib.

The warrant noted that the drugs would have been within the childs reach if he had come downstairs and entered the room.

An autopsy a day after the victims body was found was inconclusive, but a month later the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined the cause to be an accidental overdose of fentanyl, acetyl fentanyl, and heroin, the warrant said.

Police searched the dead mans cell phone, which the warrant said revealed text traffic with Pulgarin, a former roommate, arranging for him to deliver drugs to the Mayflower Court home earlier the day the man died.

When Cortes called Pulgarin, he allegedly said he was a former neighbor of the victims, but then told the detective to call his lawyer with any other questions.

In the texts, the man asked for 3-400, but Pulgarin allegedly texted back Im going to get you 260 I think 300 or 400 too much for you I dont want anything happen to you like shane.

According to the warrant, Pulgarins Norwalk home was the site of a fatal 2016 overdose in which a man was found unresponsive in a bedroom with a needle lying next to him. His death was ruled an accidental overdose of heroin and cocaine.

Pulgarin was arrested Dec. 1 and released on a promise to appear. He is scheduled to appear in court Feb. 23.
A film crew sets up to shoot a scene in the yard of a Hartford residence on Charter Oak Avenue in Hartford in May, where "Call Jane" was being filmed. (Mark Mirko/Mark Mirko)

It was a Hollywood ending, but not the good kind.

An executive decision, made in a Disney boardroom thousands of miles away, led to the shuttering of Greenwich animation company Blue Sky Studios in April, leaving more than 450 people out of work.

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The move came after more than a decade of state support for Blue Sky Studios, in the form of hundreds of millions of Connecticut taxpayer dollars in incentives aimed at creating and retaining jobs and economic activity. The most recent installment  a $32 million tax credit payment  was disbursed less than two weeks before corporate parent Disney announced it was closing the shop.

Thats raised questions about whether Connecticut should keep rolling out the red carpet for an industry that is characteristically fleeting.

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Beyond its home base in Hollywood, film and television production is driven by tax incentives. Steve Kaplan, a representative with The Animation Guild in Los Angeles, said animation studios in places like Atlanta, Portland and Vancouver perform a lot of contract work for Hollywood conglomerates, passing along local tax credits to the major studio  often as a condition of the contract.

But with so many tax credits available across states and around the world, Connecticuts incentive program may not have even factored into Disneys move to shutter Blue Sky Studios, Kaplan said.

Theyre a multinational conglomerate. They made a decision based on money. I doubt the Connecticut incentive crossed their mind.

A film crew shoots a scene with Cromwell police officers Peter Pietraroia and John Carlson during the filming of "Blue Line." (Courant file photo) (Cloe Poisson / )

The dynamics of the Hollywood-centered film and TV industry arent entirely lost on the states economic development officials. In its 2019 annual report, DECD found that over the last decade, the average economic impact of the Film and Digital Media Production Tax Credit amounted to a loss of $58,510,604 in net revenue per year  well over half a billion dollars in all.

While there are gains in jobs, the additional revenue gained by the state do not compensate for the loss in state tax revenue due to the credits, the department concluded in the report. But DECD went on to recommend continuing the program despite those losses.

DECD said it has commissioned an outside consultancy to evaluate the states film tax credit programs. And in its most recent 2020 annual report, the agency said it was awaiting the results of that study  originally expected in mid-2021  before recommending any changes. The report was delayed and is now expected to be made public later this month.

A fixture in Greenwich

After nearly 35 years in Connecticut, Blue Sky Studios had become a source of pride for the states film and television sector. Soon after 20th Century Fox took a majority stake in the company, in the late 1990s, the studio launched its Ice Age franchise, followed by its Rio movies. It also produced the Oscar-nominated Ferdinand, The Peanuts Movie and others.

In 2019, Disney absorbed Blue Sky Studios in a $70 billion deal to acquire Foxs film and television assets. And over the following two years, employees at the studio grew increasingly concerned about their fate  even as production continued on the animated feature Nimona.

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In early February 2021, Disney announced plans to shutter the studio, shelving Nimona. Blue Sky Studios vice president Carolyn Wilson notified the Connecticut Department of Labor of the imminent layoffs of all 469 the companys employees.

Stars Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones rehearse their lines during filming of "Great Hope Springs" on Water Street in Stonington. (Courant file photo) (JOHN WOIKE | woike@courant.com)

Due to the continuing business impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, Blue Sky Studios Inc. has made the very difficult decision to close its studio and begin the process of permanent layoffs at its One America Lane, Greenwich, Connecticut 06831 location, Wilson wrote. We hope to accomplish our reduction in force with the least possible disruption to the lives of our employees.

That notice was dated less than two weeks after Blue Sky Studios received a $32 million tax credit from the state of Connecticut  the second such payment in as many years.

The value of those credits exceeded what auditors have since said should have been the upper limit of any credit granted to animation studios in the state: $15 million a year. In their most recent audit of the Department of Economic and Community Development, which administers film and television tax credits, state auditors concluded that Connecticut overpaid Blue Sky Studios by almost $50 million during the fiscal years 2016 through 2019.

(Blue Sky Studios also received incentives under another state program, the Film Infrastructure Tax Credit, which covers 20% of any infrastructure costs, such as buildings and production facilities, of over $3 million. Blue Sky received a total of about $7.4 million in infrastructure credits in the years 2009, 2012 and 2014. Auditors didnt take issue with those credits.)

The audit report, released March 31 of last year, didnt include tax credit data for 2020 and 2021. But by the auditors same logic, the two $32 million payments to Blue Sky Studios in the last two years would amount to overpayment of another $34 million, they told the Mirror. Thats because, according to auditors, Blue Sky Studios applied for  and received  the wrong credit. The company should have been eligible for a program known as the Digital Animation Production Tax Credit, which is capped at $15 million a year, auditors said. Between 2009 and 2016, Blue Sky Studios received the full $15 million animation credit every year, and it remains the only company that has received incentives under that program.

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Beginning in 2016, Blue Sky Studios shifted to the broader Film and Digital Media Production Tax Credit, which has no cap. Under that program, companies can receive  in the form of a tax credit  up to 30% off qualified production expenses or costs incurred in the state. These tax credits are not tied to a specific economic development project or the amount of jobs created or retained, auditors said.

According to DECD data, 2020 and 2021 payments to Blue Sky Studios under this program were based on in-state spending of more than $105 million each of the two years in question. By the time the second of those two tax credit payments arrived, Disney was days away from announcing Blue Sky Studios permanent closure.

The ephemeral industry

Many studies in other states and countries have raised similar criticisms of local film tax credits. Production activity may build up somewhere for a period of years, as long as tax incentives are available, but the industry base has remained in California. Hollywood still holds the purse strings.

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When I spend a dollar on a film tax credit, Im incentivizing economic activity today that may not be there tomorrow, said Michael Ndolo, an economic development consultant who has studied film tax credits in several states. Its a somewhat ephemeral industry that is highly sensitive to incentives and will go where the incentives are. You can see that in the numbers: As states expand their tax credits, the industry responds. Its quite elastic.

A scene from the movie "And So It Goes" was shot at Nicholas Fingelly Real Estate in the Southport section of Fairfield. The film, directed by Rob Reiner, featured Diane Keaton, Michael Douglas and Frances Sternhagen. (Courant file photo) (John Woike / Hartford Courant)

Connecticuts Film and Digital Media Production Tax Credit is this states only continuing business incentive program  grant, loan or tax credit  that is calculated as a discount off a companys expenses in the state, as opposed to being tied to a specific project, investment or number of jobs created or retained. And theres no limit on the number of years a company can receive the tax credit. In this way, Connecticuts program is very similar to those in other states competing for film production activity.

George Norfleet, commissioner of the Connecticut film office, said tying a production tax credit to a companys expenditures makes more sense than requiring a set number of jobs. Youre not going to need the same amount of people working on a webisode or commercial that you would have working on an continuing television production. So I think its hard for us to tell a producer how many people he or she needs or that company might need to execute a particular type of production, he said. Weve tied it to [capital expenditures] as opposed to job creation, but of course youve got to have a crew, so you know youre creating jobs.

Norfleet also pointed to the other two film and television industry incentive programs his office administers: the Digital Animation Production Tax Credit, which requires recipients to employ at least 200 full-time employees and is capped at $15 million, and the Film Infrastructure Tax Credit, which covers a portion of facility construction costs of over $3 million.

Infrastructure credits have declined steeply since a high of $40 million in 2013, and the state didnt award any in 2018 or 2020. Since 2017, the state has awarded no animation credits.

Ndolo said the kind of incentives that encourage the long-term development of an industry  like infrastructure credits  are more economically sound. Building up an industry cluster for film and television can attract multiple studios and a permanent workforce available for whatever productions might come through, he said. If I were to do anything, thats what I would suggest a state to do  incentivize fixed assets associated with your production capacity.

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The Film Infrastructure Tax Credit has helped companies like ESPN, NBC, Disney and WWE strengthen their physical roots in Connecticut, Norfleet said. Since 2009, WWE has received just over $10 million under the infrastructure program, NBC about $32 million, and ESPN has gained $48 million in tax credits toward buildings and facilities, according to DECD data. Each of those studios also receives several million in annual credits under the film and digital media credit program.

Our bread and butter is definitely the brick-and-mortar television soundstage-type studio businesses, where people come to work 250 days a year to the same building  to a production, Norfleet said.

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Taking a closer look

For the first 10 years of the headline Film and Digital Media Production Tax Credit, the state paid out between $22 million and $79 million in incentives each year. But from 2017 to 2020, the value of the program jumped to an average of about $130 million a year.

Blue Sky Studios $32 million in 2020 accounted for roughly one-quarter of the total credit payments issued under the program  even as the company was swallowed up by a Hollywood behemoth and founders and longtime employees braced themselves for closure.

Connecticut has a major advantage in its proximity to New York Citys media industry and workforce. According to the Motion Picture Associations latest report, Connecticuts film industry was directly responsible for more than 13,500 jobs and $1.8 billion in wages in 2019. The association compiled a list of Connecticut productions over 2019 and 2020, which included a half dozen Christmas movies and several long-running television series such as Judge Jerry, Maury, The Peoples Court, The Steve Wilkos Show, and WWEs Smackdown and Monday Night Raw.

Still, state officials continue to provide tens of millions of dollars in tax incentives every year to retain the studios that have put down roots here  with no limit on the number of years companies can apply for the credit and no guarantee a company receiving incentives will keep production going in the state year to year.

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State auditors pointed out in an email to the CT Mirror that the law requires that businesses receiving financial assistance shall not relocate out of state for 10 years after receiving such assistance or during the term of a loan or loan guarantee, whichever is longer, unless the full amount of the assistance is repaid to the state and a penalty equal to 5% of the total assistance received is paid to the state. But recent audits have found that DECD hasnt consistently applied those requirements, nor has the department adequately kept track of whether companies that received financial assistance remain in the state during the relocation period, auditors said.

In the case of Blue Sky Studios, its a moot point. The studio was shuttered by its corporate parent. And while many of its former employees have gone on to work at Disneys other animation studios, the company is no longer.

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Erica E. Phillips is a reporter for The Connecticut Mirror (ctmirror.org). Copyright 2022  The Connecticut Mirror.
Gov. Ned Lamonts repeated refusals to reinstitute a statewide mask mandate has created a calamity for Connecticut. COVID cases are skyrocketing, and hospitals are overflowing, returning caseloads to nightmare levels not seen since the pandemics darkest days. Front-line health care workers  nurses, respiratory therapists and doctors  are exhausted and stretched past capacity. The situation is a disaster, not just for COVID patients, but for everyone seeking care. Not surprisingly, death counts are rising again.

A long overdue statewide mask mandate would mitigate this chaos. Data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and elsewhere show that mandates decrease infections, hospitalizations and death. During the first COVID wave, Gov. Lamont issued a mandate, and Connecticut residents rose to the challenge, flattening the COVID curve, and helping hospitals escape the rationing and turmoil experienced in places such as Italy and New York City.

Masks prevent disease by protecting wearers from inhaling SARS-CoV-2 into their lungs. They also decrease spread by preventing infected people from exhaling virus into the air. In the hierarchy of masks, surgical masks are better than cloth because they have an electrostatic charge that helps capture the virus. KF94, KN95 and medical grade N95 masks are even more effective because they fit snugly over the face, preventing air movement through the sides. My colleagues and I have spent countless hours wearing N95s at the bedside of COVID patients and therefore facing little risk of infection. The risk is far greater in community spaces such as indoor restaurants and bars, stores, supermarkets and gyms, where mask-wearing is inconsistent.

When COVID rates declined in the spring of 2021, the CDC issued guidance that vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks, and Connecticut relaxed restrictions. At the time, we hoped most state residents would pursue vaccination, but this didnt happen. Connecticuts vaccination rates are high compared to the rest of the country, but only 75 percent are fully vaccinated. Hundreds of thousands of people remain vulnerable to COVID because theyre too young to be vaccinated, immunocompromised, or still refuse the shot despite its demonstrated safety and ability to prevent serious illness. Even among the fully vaccinated, many Connecticut residents have yet to receive booster shots, leaving them vulnerable to breakthrough infections, which can still spread disease.

With the rise of the omicron variant and without a statewide mask mandate, its no surprise that COVID rates are exploding.

Connecticuts current guidance on mask-wearing is muddled and ineffective. The governor has repeatedly resisted calls to reinstitute a mask mandate despite the latest surge, leaving individual towns to create their own rules. This means if I go shopping in New Haven or Hamden, I must wear a mask, but not in North Haven or West Haven. The state permits individual businesses to require masks, but without the backup of a statewide mandate, business owners are forced to choose between confronting customers who refuse to wear masks and endangering the health of other customers and employees.

Confusing messages from the Lamont administration, including repeated statements that the governor will not reinstitute a mandate, add to the frustration of medical and public health professionals working hard to promote mask use. Just as frustrating, Lamont has said he opposes a mandate because he considers it unenforceable. His spokesperson Max Reiss recently stated that the responsibility fell to individual cities and towns because it just wouldnt be possible to send out the state police to be the enforcers, as if Connecticut residents need the threat of police action to respond to common-sense public health rules.

Connecticut residents are understandably tired of wearing masks, and some complain that mandates impinge on their personal liberties. My colleagues and I understand the fatigue and recognize the widespread frustration as the pandemic enters its third year with no sign of letting up. But if we wish to regain our freedoms  to dine out again and to see each others faces again  the best thing we can do is come together to protect one another and bring this surge to a close.

Connecticut faces a choice in the weeks ahead. Without a statewide mask mandate, hospitals may be pushed past their breaking point, subjecting state residents to needless suffering and death as unmasked individuals continue to contract and spread disease. But it doesnt have to be this way. Gov. Lamont could issue a mandate tomorrow. He could use his authority to bring the latest surge to a more rapid end. He could choose health over politics. He could save lives. Its not too late for him to take the steps we desperately need.

Dr. Mark D. Siegel is a critical care pulmonologist at Yale-New Haven Hospital and a professor of medicine at Yale Medical School. The opinions expressed are his own and do not represent the official views of Yale Medical School or Yale-New Haven Hospital.
In December 2020, as part of its COVID relief package, Congress created the Emergency Capital Investment Program (ECIP) to encourage low- and moderate-income (LMI) community financial institutions to augment their efforts to support small businesses and consumers in their communities. The program is limited to Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and Minority Depository Institutions (MDIs).

Treasury formally launched the ECIP in March 2021, by posting an application form, instructions, and other program materials. To qualify for a capital investment under the ECIP, an applicant was required to complete an ECIP application form, which included four questions designed to ascertain the applicants responsiveness to community needs and its capacity to execute on a lending plan for its LMI communities. Credit union applicants were also required (1) to be low-income designated credit unions (LICUs) and (2) to gain approval from the NCUA to issue subordinated debt.

At the time of ECIPs passage, Congresswoman Maxine Waters remarked upon its priorities:

This Congress, my Committee has prioritized the importance of diversity and inclusion, seeking ways to ensure the financial system is more inclusive and gives a fair chance for all consumers to own a home or start a small business  A good example of this is our work on minority depository institutions (MDI) and community development financial institutions (CDFI), which are financial institutions that play a critical role as lenders in low- and moderate-income (LMI) and communities of color. These institutions are on the front lines of meeting the financial needs of communities that are disproportionately underserved by traditional financial institutions and are primary lenders to LMI and communities of color, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. CDFIs and MDIs assist minority entrepreneurs that are overlooked by traditional financial institutions.

A press release from the Treasury Department echoed Congresswoman Waters observations, noting that CDFIs and MDIs often make smaller loans and work with borrowers who might require more time-intensive and personalized technical support. The Treasury also trumpeted the expectation that recipients will multiply the impact of ECIP by leveraging additional capital from private and philanthropic sources to further expand lending to their communities.

Just before year end, Treasury announced that $8.7 billion will be awarded under the program. This includes awards of an estimated $2 billion to 85 credit unions.

Geographic Reach:

The programs 85 participating credit unions serve members in 32 states, Washington D.C. and the US Territory of Guam. Seven Louisiana credit unions will receive capital. Six credit unions in each of Michigan, New York, California and Texas are also taking part in the program. The geographic diversity of the recipients of the program is to be lauded as it represents the continued commitment to a true, nationwide recovery from COVID-19. Additionally, it demonstrates much needed investment in, and development of, all regions of the United States, not merely the economic centers. The geographic reach of the program is depicted below:

To better understand the programs likely impacts, we took a deeper dive into some of the key performance indicators of the credit unions participating in the ECIP.

Asset Size and Member Count:

Treasury awards were granted to credit unions with a mean asset level of $726 million and a median asset level of $275 million. These averages are larger than the national averages for credit unions, for which the mean assets are just over $400 million, but the program remained unbiased in granting money when looking at asset size. By asset level, Suncoast ($14.3B) was the largest credit union to receive an allocation and New Covenant Dominion was the smallest ($1.4M), representing almost the full range of credit union sizes in the country Credit unions receiving capital had an average of 54,289 members. The highest member count is at Suncoast (985,025) and the lowest member count is at New Covenant Dominion (330).

Net Worth Ratio and Loans to Shares Ratio:

Treasury awards were granted to credit unions with a mean and median net worth ratio of 9.81% and 9.11%, respectively. This is lower than the national mean and median net worth ratio of all credit unions which sit 10.24% and 10.61% respectively, indicating that the firms taking part in ECIP are slightly less capitalized than the countrys credit unions taken as a whole. However, it appears that the firms taking part in ECIP do an overall better job of utilizing their available capital to help their members. The loans-to-shares ratio in the group averaged 77%, significantly higher than the national average of just under 70%. This difference in loan-to-shares will be realized in the day to day lives of members as these credit unions are better able to fund peoples goals, aspirations, or necessities during the continued recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Designation:

Of the credit unions that received money in the ECIP program, 62 are CDFIs, 5 are MDIs, and 18 hold both distinctions. The federal focus on these designations helps ensure that the money distributed in the ECIP program is aimed at the areas most in need of investment. These designations represent a commitment to helping diverse communities that have traditionally been neglected or ignored by traditional banking, from Sisseton-Wahpeton Federal Credit Union serving members of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux tribe in South Dakota to South Side Community Federal Credit Union serving the south side of Chicago. These designations are not easy to gain or maintain and demonstrate these credit unions commitment to their members and the credit union mission of serving their communities.

Where Do We Go From Here?

The Treasurys ECIP awards are expected to begin funding toward the end of Q1, with the process likely to continue well into Q2. Before receiving its funds, each credit union will be required to execute a package of transaction documents that is yet to be finalized by Treasury.

After receiving its award, each credit union is required to report its quarterly lending data to the Treasury Department for the duration of the program in order that Treasury can accurately measure the programs impact against its intended objectives.

Co-author  Eli Krahn
Cullman, AL (35055)

Today

Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low around 65F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low around 65F. Winds light and variable.
Ms. Dorothy "Dot" McCrory age 88 of Dalton, Georgia, departed this life Monday, May 2, 2022 at the Regency Park Health Care Center. She was born May 15, 1933. Dot as she was known to friends, was preceded in death by her parents Elma McCrory and Boyd Hicks as well as a brother Jack Hicks. Sh
According to a Healthy Minds Study, during the winter and spring of 2021, 47% of UO students reported having major or moderate depression, 41% reported having generalized anxiety and 25% reported having positive mental health. We as a society are currently on season 3 of this pandemic amid new surges, and mental health on college campuses does not seem to be getting better.

Students, staff and faculty at UO say their mental health challenges, often fueled by high workloads or performance expectations, have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Many believe that structural changes, in addition to individual mental health support, are needed.

Heightened challenges

Many faculty, staff and students continue to face intense workloads and high expectations that impact their mental health, and the pandemic has amplified this.

Mariko Linn, assistant director and education and prevention outreach director at Counseling Services, has worked at the university since 2010. She said students and counselors around the country are struggling right now.

Demand for more mental health support is nationwide, and we do feel that at the University of Oregon, Linn said.

Linn explained there has been a change in the type of support students need. Many students do seek long-term therapy, but currently there is an increase in need for direct, immediate support. The number of students that come in as in-crisis and need to talk to someone immediately has drastically increased since the pandemic started, she said.

Graduate Employee and student Rajeev Ravisankar expressed that being a graduate student is difficult. He said the lack of adequate resources from the university and the pandemic has made that harder.

There is natural stress that comes along with being a graduate student and a GE, but all of these sorts of stresses such as food, income, housing, taking care of kids, etc. have been exacerbated because of the pandemic, Ravisankar said.

Many undergraduate students are feeling an increased weight of stress, anxiety and burnout, the feeling of being worn down from work that tends to lead to exhaustion. Angelica Meija, a fourth-year pre-medical student, said, while online classes may have been easier for some, school is still quite hard on students.

Previous generations dont understand. My dad always gets surprised by the number of hours I work, but its necessary to get a future job or secondary degree, Meija said. In her experience, most graduate programs and jobs require students to have extensive work and extracurricular experience, on top of doing well in their courses.

Honestly the majority of burnout concerning work doesnt necessarily stem from school but rather the extra stuff that we were expected to have, Meija said.

Professors have also been impacted. Dr. Leslie Jo Weaver, a global studies professor whose research focuses on mental health, said she has to battle to take care of her own needs and her students needs.

Students see a slice of what professors do and arent aware of the service-related obligations that we have. We have research expectations, we may sit on committees or have other leadership obligations. Its always been a juggling act, but its been exacerbated because of the pandemic, Weaver said. Professors are real people who are taking care of children who are out of school or a parent who is ill or whatever it might be. We struggle too.

Throughout the pandemic, professors have had to figure out how to adequately teach students online and support those who are struggling more than usual, while continuing to handle high expectations for their research. Many professors are still feeling that strain nearly two years in.

Additionally, Weaver said faculty and staff do not have the same resources and access to counseling as students, but they do have some, such as a robust insurance plan that covers mental health. One way that faculty and staff cope is with each other, finding community between one another.

Personally, I have colleagues and friends where I share triumphs and struggles, but its a little harder because we dont go to conferences or have face-to-face meetings, Weaver said. But these communities are very important.

Workload and mental health issues have also contributed to staffing shortages. Linn said the university is losing student affairs and support services staff members who are reevaluating what their values are with work and family.

According to Linn, Those who are in student affairs and support services are relying on each other or what is left of our team to continue to provide the same level of support. How do we continue to provide quality support knowing we are lacking resources and staff?

More than an individual approach

With many individuals struggling, faculty, staff and students say larger, structural changes  in addition to individual support  need to be made.

Ravisankar was the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation president last year and has worked closely with the university, health care and resources. He said the university tends to handle mental health on an individual-level rather than focusing on material needs and communal support.

An individual level of support means looking at mental health as a personal endeavor, such as going to therapy or attending a wellness workshop. However, only tailoring mental health support to the individual ignores the external factors that impact someones wellbeing, Ravinsankar said.

I don't see that many resources available on campus, other than too many workshops that focus on stress on an individual level, Ravisankar said. Yes, that is part of mental health, but it has become too much a part of the university's approach to dealing with mental health. There should be more support for the Duck Nest and similar initiatives on campus that can meet students' needs.

Ravisankar also mentioned seeing material needs addressed, such as food insecurity and having options like subsidized meals or free meals.

UO provides support for students like mental health consultations, an after hour crisis and support line, counseling sessions and wellness events and workshops. While classes were online between winter 2020 and spring 2021, the university made academic accommodations such as suspending academic disqualifications for the 2020 winter term, refunding the online credit fee, extending the deadline for spring 2020 graduates to complete requirements and allowing students to take more classes pass/no pass during certain terms.

Another example of a structural change is that UO allowed faculty on tenure track to pause their timelines. Weaver said that there should also be an increase in salary for career instructors not on tenure track.

That is a big equity issue that is not specific to the UO, she said. There also needs to be better support for students because students will confide in us about their struggles, and sometimes we dont know where to send them or how to help.

Kate Mills, assistant professor of psychology, echoes the same sentiment as Rajeev and Weaver. Mills has been working in academia her whole career, starting as an undergraduate, earning a Ph.D. and now working as a professor.

Mental health has been something that, its interesting, its often a point of research in many of the labs I have been a part of, but interestingly it is not a focus in conversation on how the structure of academia impacts mental health, Mills said.

Since the pandemic hit, meeting the high performance standards of academia has become harder for many.

[COVID] has been personally very difficult. There was an internal motivation to push through and to handle things, Mills said.

Millss feelings of working to push through and expand personal capacity are something that many people are currently going through. Circumstances have changed, but the structure of academia has not adjusted, Mills said.

For instance, we get messages and emails that say take care of yourself, but at the same time there is an increase of expectation to deliver, but the structure did not change, Mills said. The burden was placed on individuals rather than the structure to change. Few initiatives were fantastic, but they were only awarded to some faculty.

Throughout the pandemic, UO faculty, staff and students have faced heightened mental health challenges, and many say that addressing mental health on an individual level isnt enough. They want to shift the focus of the conversation to structural and cultural changes that will improve community members well-being.

Mills, Ravishankar and Weaver say that work expectations have remained high despite pandemic-related challenges  or, as Ravishankar said, Everything kept moving, nothing slowed down.
Driving north on U.S. Highway 101, Lee Yamada, 83, carefully scanned the left side of the road for a turn-off marked Baker Beach Road. The road leads to a campground nestled between Baker Beach and Florences coastal forests.

But Yamada had no plans to camp. He knew the spot was ideal for mushrooms to grow because of its climate and habitat. Yamada is a mushroom forager, and that day, he hoped to find some edible mushrooms.

Yamadas mushroom-hunting car, as he called it, bumped along the gravel as he turned onto the road. He passed a sign indicating entrance into Baker Beach Campground and a large pile of Cantharellus cibarius  more commonly known as chanterelles  obviously picked and discarded.

Yamada explained the abandoned mushrooms were likely unfit to eat due to the previous weeks heavy rain that likely caused the mushrooms to become slimy and rot.

Yamada could also easily spot the red caps of Russula emeticas growing in clusters near the entrance of a short trail to the beach. Yamada says one way to identify whether the russula mushrooms are edible is to nibble a portion of the cap with your front teeth.

He crumbled off a portion of the cap and stuck it between his front teeth, chewing daintily. A few moments later, he spit it out onto the ground.

Peppery, Yamada said. My tongue is tingling. Its not edible.

***

With 75 years of foraging experience, Yamada can easily discern nonedible mushrooms from edible mushrooms. Mushrooms mean more to him than a weekend hobby.

Its a lifestyle for me, Yamada says.

Yamadas love for teaching others about mushrooms is even stronger than his passion for mushrooms. Yamada is a board member of Cascade Mycological Society  a nonprofit organization with a mission to study and conserve fungi and to educate the public about fungi. There, Yamada teaches everything he knows from his years of experience to people in Eugene who are interested in mushrooms and mushroom foraging.

Yamada was first introduced to mushroom foraging by his parents, who were also taught by each of their parents. While Yamadas father primarily fished and clammed, Yamadas mother would forage for edible plants and mushrooms. Sometimes they would forage as a family. Growing up in the Santa Clara Valley, Yamadas family frequently hunted for mushrooms in dense orchards and grassy fields near their home.

Yamada recalls mushroom hunting as a 7-year-old boy in a dying prune orchard with his parents one afternoon. Yamada spied a cluster of oyster mushrooms growing high in one of the orchards dying prune trees. He scaled the withering limbs of the tree to harvest the mushrooms. Nearly 10 feet above the ground, he used a knife to cut the mushrooms near their bases, preserving them as much as possible. Yamada placed the mushrooms into the safety of his pocket before climbing down the tree and rejoining his parents on the ground to continue their walk.

By the end of their excursion, Yamada and his parents had foraged enough mushrooms for a meal. Once high in a tree, moving from pocket to pan to plate, the prized mushrooms were sauteed in a buttery sauce for the family to enjoy together.

The earliest Yamada can remember mushroom hunting alone was when he was around 6 or 7 years old. Yamada would jump off the bus after school and search for the mushrooms he was sure were edible  wild mushrooms like Agaricus bisporus and Pleurotus ostreatus, which are more commonly known as button and oyster mushrooms.

I loved mushroom hunting because, to me, it felt like an Easter egg hunt, Yamada says. It made me feel like I was good at finding something.

Yamadas fascination with fungus continued into adulthood. He joined two local mycological organizations, San Francisco Mycological Society and Santa Cruz Fungus Federation, where he could meet like-minded mushroom fans and master mycologists.

Of the mushroom organizations Yamada joined, he spent the most time with Santa Cruz Fungus Federation and was elected to the Fungus Fair Coordinator position by other members of the federation. Yamada was responsible for organizing the federations Fungus Fair, Santa Cruz Fungus Federations annual fundraiser and membership drive. He held the position for nine years, from 1993 to 2003.

Part of my drive is to educate people about that, but its fun, Yamada says. One of the slogans from my previous club, the Fungus Federation, was Keep the fun in fungus.

The size and popularity of Santa Cruz Fungus Federations Fungus Fair drew attention from the North American Mycological Association, which is a nonprofit organization of professional and amateur mycologists with over 90 affiliated mycological societies in the United States, Canada and Mexico, according to the associations website. Among a few other fungus fair organizers around North America, Yamada was added to a call list of people to contact for information and advice on organizing mushroom festivals.

Yamada stayed a member of the Santa Cruz Fungus Federation until 2012 when he moved to Eugene. Shortly after moving to Oregon, Yamada joined Cascade Mycological Society, where he shared his mushroom foraging experience and met new friends.

Joe Spivack, a fellow mushroomer and member of Cascade Mycological Society, became close friends with Yamada when the two bonded over a mutual passion for mushrooms. Both Spivack and Yamada are also interested in other forms of wild foraging, such as fishing, crabbing and clamming. Spivack says he loves spending time with Yamada and appreciates being able to learn from his experience.

Im his best buddy in a lot of ways, Spivack says. Rarely does a week go by when I dont call him.

***

Wandering into a coastal forest near Baker Beach Campground, Yamada identified each of the mushrooms he passed along the trail and explained how he could recognize them.

He identified some agaricales, more commonly known as gilled mushrooms because of the distinctive gills visible underneath the cap. Small salamanders lounge by the mushrooms, unbothered by Yamadas presence.

The quiet of the forest broke when Yamadas cell phone rang.

Hello? Yamada said, answering the call.

On the other end of the line was Yamadas friend Spivack, who was calling to schedule a time to go spot hunting with Yamada. In a week, Yamada and Spivack would lead a Cascade Mycological Society members-only foray in the Oregon Cascades, where they would teach individuals how to find edible mushrooms.

After agreeing to meet up in three days to prepare for the foray, Yamada briefly told Spivack about his day and how he was doing before saying goodbye. Yamada resumed identifying as many mushrooms as he could as dark clouds threatened rain.

***

As a board member of Cascade Mycological Society, Yamada helps to organize monthly meetings and local forays to educate people in Eugene on all things mushroom. At these events, attendees have opportunities to speak to and learn from expert mycologists and guest speakers on various fungi-related topics.

After COVID-19 restrictions forced Cascade Mycological Society to cancel in 2020, 2021 saw the return of Cascade Mycological Societys biggest educational event: the Mount Pisgah Arboretum Mushroom Festival.

On the morning of this years festival, the air was crisp at Mount Pisgah Arboretum. Dozens of people wearing bags and buttons with mushroom art, mushroom cap hats and fungus-patterned shirts wandered under the arboretums oak trees. Live performers filled the air with music as festival-goers explored canvas tents with activities and shops that all shared a common theme: mushrooms.

At the Mount Pisgah Arboretum Mushroom Festival, visitors can view diverse mushroom displays with anywhere from 450 to 525 identified species, compare edible and non-edible mushrooms, attend culinary demonstrations and go on mushroom hunting nature walks with experienced mushroomers. The festival is the largest mushroom festival on the West Coast.

There's nowhere else in our area where you can go see several hundred species and with correct names on them from an expert, Chris Melotti, president of Cascade Mycological Society, says. There's just no other place around that has those available to the general public.

At this years mushroom festival, Melotti volunteered at the Edible and Poisonous Mushroom tent with Yamada. Wearing homemade trousers with a mushroom pattern, Yamada was easy to spot. He stood in the center of the Edible and Poisonous Mushroom tent, surrounded by fold-up tables covered in soil and different varieties of local edible and nonedible mushrooms. As mushroom-garbed show-goers viewed the fungi, Yamada offered tidbits of information on how to safely identify them in the wild.

Melotti says Yamadas depth of knowledge has made him an invaluable curator of the mushroom festival and member of the organization.

Some of the traits that make Lee a good mushroomer are that he's always willing to learn and willing to share from his experience, Melotti says. Lee Yamada is unique in Cascade Mycological Society and in life in that he is always helpful and giving in anything he's involved in.

***

After nearly an hour of exploring the coastal forest near Baker Beach, rolling thunder announced the rain had finally arrived. It started slow. At first, trees protected Yamada from the wet, but the rain began to pierce the canopy steadily.

As the rain grew stronger, Yamada decided it was time to head back to the car, but there was one last mushroom he wanted to find before leaving. Retracing his steps toward the car, Yamada searched along the sides of the trail, finally stopping at a seemingly mushroomless spot.

Leaning over, Yamada pawed through wet forest debris, revealing a bulbous, white mushroom as big as his fist.

This is Boletus edulis, Yamada says. The Italians call it porcini. Its a delicious mushroom.

Carefully plucked from the debris, this mushroom was exactly the Easter egg Yamada hoped to find.
Former firefighter and fire ecologist Tim Ingalsbee positions himself in front of his computer webcam, surrounded by textbooks, Smokey the Bear posters and a large banner with the acronym FUSEE printed in bold letters.

Hes getting ready to begin a virtual news conference about logging practices and firefighting strategies, specifically in the context of the West Coasts recent history of severe and widespread wildfires. The 2020 Oregon wildfire season was one of the most destructive on record in the state, with a catastrophic outcome that killed at least 11 people, destroyed thousands of homes and burned more than 1 million acres of land.

As climate change causes dryer and hotter weather in Cascadia forests, wildfires are only predicted to get more severe in damage and frequency; climate and fire experts working with Oregon State University concluded that Oregons recent wildfires are a precursor to what the region will see in the future as the climate warms. Due to the intensification in damage and frequency of these natural disasters, traditional suppressive wildfire prevention methods are being questioned in favor of other, more environmentally friendly strategies.

Ingalsbee is a co-founder and Executive director of FUSEE, the locally based organization Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. FUSEEs mission challenges forest management projects that cut down trees in the name of wildfire prevention; forests across the Pacific Northwest are fragmented with sparse, lifeless stretches where trees have been cut down and dragged away to be used as timber. Instead, the organization advocates for learning to work safely with and sustainably live with wildland fire.

That work includes fighting fire with fire. Ingalsbee is a fierce proponent of fire mosaics, which the United States Fire Effects Information System defines as a controlled fire that produces patches of burned and unburned vegetation across the landscape.

You dont need to send armies of firefighters that are trying to do perimeter control in the remote areas, Ingalsbee says. Thats spreading the crew way too thin.

He says that prescribing and allowing fire mosaics to burn vegetation in rural areas will let firefighters concentrate their resources near the towns and communities that really need them.

These prescribed burns are not a modern convention; Indigenous groups across the Pacific Northwest have been following the methods practiced by their ancestors, often called a cultural burn.

But the prescribed burn strategies pose a challenge to Oregons booming timber industry  prioritizing controlled burns over the currently employed method of mass logging and clearing in the name of wildfire prevention allows for less timber production due to fewer numbers of logs being cleared and processed.

Today, more than 61,000 Oregonians are employed by the forestry sector, making this a matter of not only environmental protection, but of individual and collective economic sustainability as citizens rely on the timber industry for steady employment opportunities.

As a result of this ongoing conflict between environment and economy, an Oregon group known as Timber Unity emerged as the leading organized voice of pro-logging employees of the timber industry and their supporters. But environmentalists across the Pacific Northwest insist that ecological stabilization and environmental protection takes precedence.

Ingalsbee says that tensions have risen specifically regarding the states wildfire prevention techniques, which includes the abundant logging of trees, also known as thinning. According to Ingalsbee, many of the trees that are thinned in the name of wildfire prevention are actually the least flammable and therefore not environmentally optimal for removal.

The most flammable trees are young conifers that are generally densely stocked on a tree farm or a timber plantation, according to Ingalsbee. He says that on these farms, the most flammable part of a tree (the needle mass) is right there on the ground close to any kind of spark or surface fire.

I mean, thats just one contiguous mass of highly flammable fuel and lots of oxygen to feed the flames. Ingalsbee says that these types of young trees are not sustainable, given that climate change is increasing the frequency of wildfires in Oregon.

Its not just former firefighters taking up the cause  conservation groups are also getting involved, citing their own concerns about serious environmental and ecological damage to Oregons forests through current management strategies.

Rebecca White is the Wildlands Director at Cascadia Wildlands, a Eugene based non-profit that describes itself as a grassroots conservation organization known for its innovative and effective campaigns. Originally from Texas, she moved to Oregon to study conservation law in 2017, and now works on forest and biodiversity defense with a focus on Western Oregon public lands.

Cascadia Wildlands mission statement emphasizes that this defense of forest ecology is not anti-logging, but instead focuses primarily on the protection of older forest ecosystems. If logging threatens these ecosystems, thats when it becomes an issue for the conservation group, according to White. That very issue surfaced after reports from whistleblowers were published in the Oregonian alleging that the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has been intentionally mismanaging their roadside hazard tree removal in post-fire area by indiscriminately culling healthy trees.

While we support removal of trees that truly pose a public hazard, we were saddened to see the agency allowed much more logging than could be justified by safety needs, White says. As a result, fragile, burned soils were exposed to rain and erosion, and silt from the logged areas likely ended up in our rivers and streams.

She says that forest mismanagement directly affects the surrounding ecosystem, making it a wildlife safety issue as well as an environmental one.

White explains why Western Oregons forests are a particular case as opposed to others throughout the country; they are fire-adapted, meaning they have burned naturally for thousands, perhaps even millions of years. However, she says, these forests have in some ways become more susceptible to wildfires over the past few decades.

Its been estimated that as many as 90% of wildfires are human caused, according to the United States Department of Interior. White says that shes certain that the vast network of roads allowing drivers to access the backcountry has increased the opportunities for humans to start fires in our public forests by physically opening up accessibility to the trees residing there.

On private lands, the typical industrial clearcut logging is followed by establishment of dense, young tree plantations, White says. These tight-packed stands can burn more intensely and spread fire faster than older, mature forests with their wider spacing and cool, moist understories.

White says that in the modern era, much of western Oregons forested land has been converted to industrial tree farms, which leads to more fire susceptibility in those non-natural forests. About 80% of Oregons forestland has been classified as timberland, which means it can productively grow commercial-grade timber.

Its not just wildfire prevention methods being challenged; clean-up and recovery strategies are also being contested. Salvage logging, the clearing and production of damaged trees after a wildfire, can set back recovery by decades, preventing the trees from maturing back into a healthy forest.

A study by Ingalsbee titled Salvaging Timber; Scuttling Forests, details the drawbacks of salvage logging; potential issues caused by the logging of dead trees include the increase of erosion and sediment displacement, leading to soil nutrient loss and water pollution. Salvage logging can also damage forest vegetation and wildlife, and can end up increasing the risk of wildfires in the area.

The research argues that despite the perception of salvage logging as a necessary management tool for forest restoration after a wildfire, it can actually accomplish the opposite result by increasing the fire hazard, degrading water quality and impairing the habitat and ecological function of the forest.

As a forest ecosystem begins to rebuild itself after a wildfire, surrounding animals, insects and plants rely on the natural process of regeneration to heal and potentially enhance biodiversity and increase the long-term resilience of the forest.

Despite the risk posed to recovering forest ecosystems, salvage logging increased during the 2020 wildfires. This created a sizable log supply for local mills; the state proposed salvage logging of 3,600 acres of affected trees in the Santiam State Forest.

The impact [of wildfires] on the logging industry, the folks that harvest and haul wood for us, is pretty straightforward, says Oregon State University professor John D. Bailey, who specializes in the science of timber production and fire management. They must rapidly adjust their plans in order to capture the dead wood before it loses too much value on the market.

The impact of wildfires on Oregon firefighting techniques, Bailey says, is more complicated.

These next generation wildfires are forcing us to think about how to create more resilient landscapes, better fire-adapted communities, and safer and more effective firefighting responses to these large wildfire events, Bailey says. The state and federal response to the Bootleg fire was staggering  it was the largest and most important fire in the nation at the time. And it costs everyone millions of dollars per day. We have to be able to do better.

FUSEE believes that doing better requires a complete reevaluation in how we view and treat wildfire in our society; the organization strives for a paradigm shift in societys relationship with wildfires, manifesting in new firefighting strategies that focus on using controlled burns and working with wildfire as a natural occurrence.

Nothing influences fire like fire, Ingalsbee says. Were pitching that new kind of strategy for active ecological fire management  incorporating this concept of fire mosaics and prescribed fires.
Tom and Lauren Pirozzi found a presumed World War II helmet liner on the beach in Corolla, North Carolina, in November. The Outer Banks became known as Torpedo Junction during the war after repeated and deadly German U-boat attacks on ships along the North Carolina coast. (Tom Pirozzi)

Outer Banks property owner Tom Pirozzi and his wife were walking along the beach in Corolla over Thanksgiving when something caught his eye in a pile of seaweed.

At first, Pirozzi thought it was just a horseshoe-crab shell, but closer inspection revealed what appears to be an old-style military helmet liner, used as a cushion for steel helmets but also worn alone when not in combat zones.

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Back home in Pennsylvania, the Pirozzis did some research and believe the relic is a fiberglass, military liner made by Firestone between 1942 and 1945. Thats the same time frame German U-boats bombarded the U.S. East Coast with crippling torpedo attacks, with as many as 400 merchant and military vessels sunk and thousands killed. At least 80 of those assaults took place off the North Carolina coast, centered around the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in 1942, earning the region the nickname Torpedo Junction.

Flaming tankers burned so brightly off the Outer Banks that on shore, it was said, one could read a newspaper by the glow at night, while the grim flotsam of waroil, wreckage, and corpseswas strewn across local beaches, the National Park Service wrote in a history of Torpedo Junction on its website.

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Lauren Pirozzi said she and her husband have found plenty of whelk shells, sand dollars and and the normal scallops, clams and oysters on the beach near their home, but nothing like the old helmet liner, which washed up near a beach access in the Whalehead community.

So this liner has been churning around for 75 years out in the ocean, until a storm pushed it ashore. It was very likely lost at sea when one of those 400 ships went down, the Pirozzis wrote on their vacation home Facebook page, Whale Deserved. Never forget.

Tom Pirozzi enjoys military history and the couple discussed holding on to the liner, but they are also considering donating to a local museum, such as the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum on Hatteras Island, or the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, someplace that would display it, Lauren Pirozzi said.

While they decide what to do with their find, the post on the couples Facebook page has generated more than 700 comments, 4,600 reactions and has been shared more than 4,700 times.

Kari Pugh, karipugh@icloud.com
Editors note: Ava Weinreb, one of the sources in this story, is a member of the Emeralds digital team. She had no role in the writing or editing of this story.

Throughout our adolescence, popular culture sells college to us as a free-for-all cultural experience where we are finally at liberty to indulge in all things deemed previously taboo. This free-for-all includes everything from partying and drinking to no-strings-attached sex and one-night stands. And, while this newfound sexual liberation appears positive on the surface, the rules and realities of college hookup culture prove less than ideal for many students.

Hookup culture is the current acceptance and trend around casual sex minus relationships, commitment and emotional intimacy. This attitude dominates student life throughout most American college campuses, especially with the rise of apps such as Tinder and Grindr. However, Occidental University sociology studies have shown that hookup culture is more attainable for cisgender and heterosexual White students, while other groups are often left out.

At predominately White institutions, such as the University of Oregon, minority groups often face their own set of complicated issues regarding hookup culture. Lisa Wade, a professor of sociology at Occidental University who studies hookup culture, explained to NPRs Hidden Brain podcast, People of color are pushed out because of racism and an erotic hierarchy that privileges whiteness.

Some groups, such as Black men and Asian women, are eroticized by popular culture and deemed more sexually desirable. Others, such as Black women and Asian men, are less embraced sexually by White culture and thus participate less in hookup culture. And, while being included in the culture seems better than being left out, both are equally damaging, as being racially fetishized can be dehumanizing.

Bella Guinto, an Asian American UO student, agrees with this sentiment. While it is fun to be desired and able to participate in the culture, I often find it damaging to my mental health as I wonder if men are actually pursuing me for me, or because they want to explore and experiment outside of their race, and Im simply another box on their checklist, she said.

People of color arent the only ones who feel a disconnect from the typical campus hookup culture, as members of the LGBTQ+ community experience similar problems. While there are many spaces for members of the LQBTQ+ community to engage in hookup culture, college campuses remain a relatively unwelcoming space. Wade explained the college hookup scene is hyper-heterosexualized, and in order to hook up, LGBTQ+ students either participate at their own risk, risking homophobia in either behavior or attitude, or they go off campus.

Second-year student Ava Weinreb also often feels frustrated with the narrow definition of hookup culture, explaining, as a gay woman, it is different than the average heterosexual experience. Typical spaces for hookup culture like fraternity parties or bars dont always cater to the LGBTQ community. Personally, I have found my experience to be much more complex as many people still have internalized homophobia that is projected especially when drugs and alcohol are involved.

This isnt to say hookup culture doesnt have its upsides; we are lucky to live in a day and age where sexual promiscuity is welcomed and accepted for all genders, and we are free to use our bodies for expression. However, we must also examine the exclusive nature when discussing the topic. Inclusivity and representation are becoming increasingly important in all aspects of life, and we must reflect on how this manifests in the hookup culture on our campus.
Flanked by not one but two Union flags, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer  once a passionate advocate of a second referendum on EU membership  pledged in his New Year keynote speech last week to try to make Brexit work.

It was an astounding U-turn, even by Captain Hindsights standards. But whether or not Starmer, who served as the Brexit minister under Jeremy Corbyns Remoaner junta, has finally accepted Britains decision, it seems not everyone in his party is reading from the same hymn sheet.

A statement last week by the all-party pressure group, the European Movement, pledged to launch a campaign to rejoin the EU.

We are committed to restoring this countrys place at the heart of Europe. It will take time, but there is no excuse for delaying that process by a day longer than necessary, the statement read.

Flanked by not one but two Union flags, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer  once a passionate advocate of a second referendum on EU membership  pledged in his New Year keynote speech last week to try to make Brexit work

Chaired by Lord Adonis, head of policy during Tony Blairs tenure in No. 10, the European Movement is awash with Labour luvvies.

Its supporters include Baroness Quin, Blairs Europe minister, former Labour MEPs Mary Honeyball, Dame Pauline Green and Richard Corbett, and Clare Moody, a former adviser to Gordon Brown.

The group describes itself on Twitter as the largest pro-European organisation in the UK. We will always be European! it says.

Last week, Lord Adonis said: This is not finished business as far as the public is concerned.

Indeed, confident of this public mandate, the group advertises an online petition demanding a real alternative to this failed Brexit.

How many signatures does the campaign boast? Just over 1,600.

Starmer certainly has his work cut out dragging his party into the real (and democratic) world.

Surely Glenda deserves a gong!

Vanessa Redgrave, 84, a former stalwart of the Workers Revolutionary Party and life-long republican, was given a surprise damehood in the New Year honours list.

But why no damehood for the excellent Glenda Jackson? Shes a double Oscar-winner  one more than Redgrave  who had a second career as a Labour MP and government minister.

Jackson then returned to acting, winning a Tony award in 2018 for her Broadway role in Edward Albees Three Tall Women at the ripe young age of 82.

Ed Davey was embarrassed on The Weakest Link quiz show last week after a contestant was asked which Ed leads the Lib Dems and replied: Is it Ed Miliband?

Worse was to follow. At PMQs on Wednesday, the Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle called for: Ed Balls . . . Ed Davey. Ed who?

The PMs principal private secretary Martin Reynolds is said to have been lined up as the fall guy when the Cabinet Offices official inquiry into whether rules were broken at No 10 gatherings during lockdowns concludes.

Reynolds is said to have sent an email invitation, and was also pictured with Johnson and his then fiancee Carrie Symonds in May 2020.

But all is not lost. Reynolds will be made an ambassador, my mole tells me. Saudi Arabia is one option, as he speaks Arabic. Reynolds should remember boozy parties are frowned upon in the dry kingdom.

Labour MP Barry Gardiner received a rap over the knuckles last week from the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Gardiner had failed to register 30,000 of donations from two trade unions within the required 28-day period.

Baz blamed personnel issues, saying: The period was busy. Two of my staff had been ill and one caseworker had left.

He should have a word with his constituency office manager. Its his wife Caroline after all.

BoJo struggles with the bill

Few can forget that dinner at the Garrick Club for past and present Telegraph hacks in November. It was, of course, the event at which it was alleged the PM was persuaded by pals of Owen Paterson to try to reverse the Commons standards committees ruling that the Tory backbencher had broken lobbying rules.

Perhaps the ensuing uproar and humiliation for Johnson  with Paterson forced to resign as an MP and a subsequent by-election victory for the Lib Dems  was rather distracting.

For as the Oldie magazine reports, one of the journalists there has yet to pay their 85 share of the bill. And the guilty party? The PM!
An American woman has been mocked by hundreds after sharing a TikTok documenting her struggle to find common food items in Australian supermarkets.

Gabrielle, who recently moved from America to Adelaide, is confused as to why she can't find 'ground beef or chicken broth' in-store - however she's unaware they're just under different names (mince and stock).

'If you think grocery shopping is hard try grocery shopping in a foreign country,' Gabrielle shared online.

An American woman has been mocked by hundreds after sharing a TikTok about struggling to find common food items in Australian supermarkets

In the TikTok Gabrielle compares the common American names for food items and what the Australian names are.

'Heavy cream is thickened cream here, fries are called chips at restaurants but chips are called chips in the grocery store,' Gabrielle said.

The Adelaide-based expat also shared that she 'can't find ground beef, ground sausage', although as many know the food item is a supermarket staple and called mince meat.

Her TikTok has received over 286,000 views, with many comments from Aussies saying 'just cause we call it something different doesn't mean we don't have it', 'Broth = stock and ground meat = mince meat ,' a user commented online

Gabrielle also shared that she didn't think the nation stocks chicken broth, when again Australians just call it chicken stock.

Her TikTok has received over 286,000 views, with many comments from Aussies saying 'just cause we call it something different doesn't mean we don't have it'.

'Broth = stock and ground meat = mince meat ,' a user commented.

Her TikTok has received over 286,000 views, with many comments from Aussies saying 'just cause we call it something different doesn't mean we don't have it'

She also shared her confusion regarding the bag situation at supermarkets.

'You have to buy your bags, they don't just have a bunch of plastic bags for free,' she said.

'We want people to use reusable bags, not plastic,' an Aussie woman said.

Many have also shared shopping tips to Gabrielle who is 'grateful and happy to be here [in Australia]'.
Pippa Middleton proved she can nail casual chic as she stepped out shopping in London earlier today.

The mother-of-two, 38, wrapped up warm in a black polo neck, a grey checked coat and trainers as she enjoyed a stroll near her Chelsea home.

Pippa, who shares son Arthur, 3, and Grace, eight months, with her millionaire husband James Matthews, could be seen carrying a bag from upmarket supermarket Bayley & Sage on the outing.

Her appearance comes after her elder sister Kate celebrated her 40th birthday yesterday, with the royal reportedly having an intimate affair with friends and family at the Cambridges home, Amner Hall.

The Duchess of Cambridge's younger sister Pippa Middleton, 38, proved she can nail casual chic as she stepped out shopping in London earlier today

Socialite Pippa is often seen out and about walking her children and dogs in south west London, though this morning she opted to leave them at home.

Pippa began dating her husband James in 2016, with the two choosing to tie the knot in May 2017.

The racing driver-turned city trader, who was privately educated at Uppingham School, is set to inherit the Scottish courtesy title of Laird of Glen Affric which came with the 10,000-acre estate of the same name near Inverness that his father bought in 2008.

James is listed as managing director of Beaufort Glen Affric.

Pippa, who shares son Arthur, 3, and Grace, eight months, with her millionaire husband James Matthews, could be seen carrying a bag from upmarket supermarket Bayley & Sage on the outing

He owns a 3m private jet and bought a six-bedroomed 17m house in 2014, which boasts a car-stacking garage in the basement, along with an underground home cinema and a lift.

The happy couple tied the knot in 2017 at St Mark's Church in Englefield, the estate of former Conservative MP Richard Benyon.

In 2018, Pippa welcomed baby Arthur in the Lindo Wing of St. Mary's Hospital, the same place where sister Kate gave birth to all three of her children.

She and her multi-millionaire financier husband welcomed little Grace, who weighed 6lbs 7oz in the early hours of March 15 2021.

Pippa's appearance comes after her elder sister Kate celebrated her 40th birthday yesterday, releasing three new portraits to mark the occasion

The Cambridge family residence, Anmer Hall in King's Lynn, Norfolk, reportedly hosted Kate's birthday bash

Pippa has devoted herself to motherhood, in addition to supporting her charities.

She is now an ambassador for The British Heart Foundation, Disability Snowsport UK and The Mary Hare school for deaf children.

Speaking about the fame that came with being Kate Middleton's sister in 2018, she said she hadn't expected the reaction, revealing: 'I was surprised and still don't understand it.'

'I have had a few years of being in the public eye and I have developed something of a thick skin.

'But managing it all on my own has been quite hard. I have quite a lot thrown at me, such as being followed by people hiding behind cars and jumping out with cameras. It can be unnerving.'
Princess Mako of Japan's family has released their first official portrait since she renounced her title to marry her commoner boyfriend.

Mako, 30, eldest daughter of Crown Prince Fumihito and niece of reigning Emperor Naruhito, gave up her place in the royal family in October when she married university sweetheart Kei Komuro.

The couple have since moved to a one-bedroom apartment in New York, where Komuro works as a law clerk.

Princess Mako of Japan's family has released their first official portrait since she renounced her title to marry her commoner boyfriend. Pictured, her parents Crown Prince Akishino, front left, and Crown Princess Kiko, front right, with children Princess Kako and Prince Hisahito

Mako, far left, eldest daughter of Crown Prince Fumihito and niece of reigning Emperor Naruhito, gave up her place in the royal family in October when she married sweetheart Kei Komuro. Pictured, Mako and her family in November 2020, a year before she left royal life

Only male heirs descended from a male emperor are eligible for the throne. The family currently has three male heirs: Crown Prince Akishino, Prince Hisahito and Prince Hitachi

To mark the start of the new year, her parents, brother Prince Hisahito, 15, and sister Princess Kako, 27, were photographed at their official residence in Tokyo.

Her uncle, the Emperor, released a separate portrait with his wife and daughter, while the former Emperor and Empress released a third photograph.

It comes after Princess Aiko of Japan carried out her first official royal engagement since coming of age as she joined her family for the traditional New Year's ceremony in Tokyo.

Aiko, the only child of Emperor Naruhito, 61 and Empress Masako, 58, turned 20 in December, the age at which imperial family members officially begin their public life. It means she will now take on royal duties alongside senior family members.

Emperor Naruhito, Empress Masako (left) and their daughter Princess Aiko pose in a family portrait session at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, in an image released to mark the new year

On January 1, demure Aiko took part in the annual Shinnen Shukuga-no Gi in Tokyo, a reception where the most senior members of the Imperial household ring in the new year in front of illustrious guests.

Attendees included Naruhito's brother, the Crown Prince Fumihito Akishino, best known as Prince Akishino, his wife Princess Kiko and their daughter and Kako, 27.

For her first foray into public life, Aiko donned a white dress, white gloves and a pearl necklace. She was not, however, wearing a tiara.

The reception used to be the occasion for the women of the imperial family to don glitzy jewels and tiaras, however, since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, Naruhito has dialed back the bling in favour of more discreet looks.

Japan's former emperor Akihito and former empress Michiko posing for a photograph at Sento Karigosho or the Temporary Emeritus Imperial Palace in Tokyo, ahead of the New Year

Aiko looked poised during her first royal engagement, wearing a delicate white dress adorn with the imperial family's sash and the white gloves that women of the Imperial Household always don for this ceremony.

Her hair was styled in a neat bun, miles away from the long and straight hair she sported in previous pictures released in recent years.

The debutante was also wearing a discreet pearl necklace and matching earrings, jus like her mother, aunts and cousins, who also attended.

Due to the rules preventing female members of the royal family ascending the throne, Prince Hisahito is currently the only heir to the throne expected to father children.
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A seemingly innocent house with its own secret bar and strip club in the basement has hit the market for $799,900.

The home, in Indianapolis, Indiana, appears to be a regular family home from the outside  but the downstairs conversion has been described as the 'hottest club in Indiana' thanks to the unique party spot.

The property is based in a quiet cul-de-sac and has five bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.

A seemingly innocent house with its own secret bar and strip club in the basement has hit the market for $799,900

The home, in Indianapolis, appears to be a regular family home from the outside - but the downstairs conversion has been described as the 'hottest club in Indiana'

Even more surprisingly, one area of the makeshift nightclub has been transformed into a strip club

Upstairs, you'd have no idea that there's a nightclub right underneath your feet

Decorated with high ceilings and wooden accents throughout, the unsuspecting house offers a 5,000-square-foot interior and appears to be a typical abode - until you reach the basement

The kitchen is filled with luxury appliances, LED lighting on the ceiling, and a TV on the counter

There's also a large, walk-in pantry

Decorated with high ceilings and wooden accents throughout, the unsuspecting house offers a 5,000-square-foot interior and appears to be a typical abode  until you reach the basement.

The underground floor has been remodeled into a fully-stocked bar, complete with black booth seating, a pool table, neon signs, LED lighting, and space to dance.

Even more surprisingly, one area of the makeshift bar has been transformed into a strip club  containing a stage, stripper poles, a disco ball, and a large viewing sofa.

When you head down to the basement, you are instantly met with a very different vibe

The underground floor has been remodeled into a fully-stocked bar and nightclub

It contains numerous fridges of booze

There is also black booth seating, a pool table, neon signs, LED lighting, and space to dance in the large bar area

The strip club area comes complete with a stage, stripper poles, a disco ball, and a large viewing sofa

A neon sign that says 'Live Nudes' hangs above the entrance

It's a perfect place to entertain guests

Elsewhere, the property also offers a large swimming pool

There's also a spacious deck - which is great for relaxing

The house is located in the Geist area of Indianapolis, which is described as 'serene with zero crime, lots of wildlife, lake views, and close to shopping and interstates,' on the listing

Elsewhere in the property is a big, at-home office

The dining area comes with a stunning chandelier

Elsewhere, the property also offers a large swimming pool and a spacious deck  another perfect spot for entertaining guests.

There is also a man-made pond on the property and a three-car garage.

Elsewhere in the house is a kitchen filled with luxurious appliances, a large dining area with a chandelier, a spacious living room, and a laundry room.

The master bedroom is fit for a king or queen and has its own at-home office attached to it.

Inside one of the bathrooms, there's a large soaking tub.

In one of the bathrooms, there's a large soaking tub

Floor-to-ceiling windows allow sunlight to flood into the house

It also boasts a spacious living room, complete with a fire place and grand piano

The property is based in a quiet cul-de-sac and has five bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms in total

A loft overlooks the living room area

The master bedroom is fit for a queen or king

It also has its very own laundry room

There's even a small man-made pond outside

The property is on the market via the owner on Zillow for $799,900

Pictures of the home were shared online, where viewers were stunned by the basement conversion

One person called it the 'hottest club in Indiana'

The house is located in the Geist area of Indianapolis, which is described as 'serene with zero crime, lots of wildlife, lake views, and close to shopping and interstates,' on the listing.

The current owners are believed to be named Brad and Daryl Kohlmeyer, and they revealed on Facebook that they had the bar built in 2018.

They even shared some snaps of some parties they threw in the nightclub over the years.

Pictures of the home were shared online and recently went viral, and viewers were stunned by the basement conversion.

One person said: 'I live just across the border in Illinois. That may really be the hottest club in Indiana.'

'Business in the front, party in the back,' another user added.

Someone else commented: 'Ultimate house for introverts, you can go out and stay in at the same time!'

The property is on the market via the owner on Zillow for $799,900.
A Canadian politician is being mocked and criticized after sharing a photo of his first-responder wife shoveling snow after her 12-hour shift at the hospital.

Jon Reyes, the Minister of Economic Development and Jobs in Manitoba and a member of the province's Progressive Conservative Party, tweeted a photo of his wife Cynthia shoveling their driveway after a heavy snow on January 8  which he has snapped from inside, looking out the window.

'Even after a 12 hour night shift at the hospital last night, my wife still has the energy to shovel the driveway. God bless her and all our frontliners. Time to make her some breakfast,' he wrote.

But while Reyes seemed to intend the tweet to show awed praise of his nurse wife's stamina, tens of thousands of Twitter users have had other ideas and are calling him out for being 'lazy' and the 'worst' husband for not shoveling himself  or at least hiring someone to do it.

A Canadian politician is being mocked and criticized after sharing a photo of his first-responder wife shoveling snow after her 12-hour shift at the hospital

Jon Reyes, the Minister of Economic Development and Jobs in Manitoba and a member of the province's Progressive Conservative Party, tweeted a photo of his wife Cynthia shoveling their driveway after a heavy snow on January 8

'Even after a 12 hour night shift at the hospital last night, my wife still has the energy to shovel the driveway. God bless her and all our frontliners. Time to make her some breakfast,' he wrote

Cynthia, whose LinkedIn profile names her as a Registered Nurse Health Sciences Centre, had just arrived home from a lengthy hospital shift in the midst of a pandemic when she encountered the unshoveled driveway and took it upon herself to clear it.

It was early Saturday morning, so while it is unconfirmed how Reyes had spent the previous 12 hours, it is likely that he was at home and sleeping.

Reyes' tweet quickly went viral, earning thousands of responses from horrified and disgusted Twitter users, both male and female, conservative and liberal.

'Why are you watching and not shoveling? This tweet sucks,' wrote one.

'And the reason *you* couldn't be bothered to shovel instead of taking a picture from your room and tweeting is what, exactly? She just worked 12 hours. What were you doing?' asked another woman

'He saw his wife shoveling after a 12 hr shift and his first thought was let me tweet about this lol,' a man replied.

Reyes' tweet quickly went viral, earning thousands of responses from horrified and disgusted Twitter users, both male and female, conservative and liberal

'Bro, are you a bro? Get out there and shovel it yourself! Then make her breakfast,' chimed in US congressional candidate Buzz Patterson.

'I dont know whats worse. Her having to do this with you inside. Her having to do this after a 12 hr shift. Her doing this while you watch. Her doing this while you cook eggs over easy. I think you taking a pic and posting all of the above is worst,' added another commenter.

Countless users shared memes mocking Reyes for doing less than the bare minimum, with others imagining his wife reaching her breaking point.

A few joked that murder was in order.

'I can think of other ways to use that shovel,' wrote one woman, while a man echoed the sentiment: 'I hope she hit you with that shovel.'

'Even after a 12 hour night shift at the hospital last night, my wife still has the energy to shovel the driveway, AND build my coffin . God bless her and all our frontliners. Time to make her some breakfast,' quipped another.

Several joked that Reyes' behavior would lead him to be murdered - or at least divorced

'She just practicing, she gotta get your corpse at least six feet down,' said one more.

'Coroner's report: it appears he was decapitated with the blade of the shovel and from the expression on his face he didn't see it coming,' yet another tweeted.

Some were slightly less dramatic, calling for divorce over homicide.

'I hope she leaves you. Quickly,' model and media personality Scottie Beam.

'I will personally pay for her divorce lawyer,' wrote another, while a third said: 'You are now known as her 1st husband.'

Others imagined that the breakfast he was preparing was exceedingly low-effort, like burnt toast.

Critics couldn't understand what he had been doing that Saturday morning that he couldn't have shoveled it before she got home - or at least paid someone else to do it

A few even temporarily changed his wikipedia entry to call out the incident

Even former Manitoba cabinet minister Thomas A. Lukaszuk weighed in, writing: 'Ladies, let the record show that this is not a depiction of every politician husband'

'"Let me make her some breakfast. Hmm...I wonder if she wants Strawberry or Brown Sugar Pop-Tarts,"' wrote one.

A few even temporarily changed his wikipedia entry to call out the incident.

'Youre getting her a snowblower for Valentines Day, arent you,' joked one clever Twitter user.

Even former Manitoba cabinet minister Thomas A. Lukaszuk weighed in, writing: 'Ladies, let the record show that this is not a depiction of every politician husband.'

While a few argued that people wouldn't be having the same reaction if the roles were reversed, critics said that gender has nothing to do with it.

'I mean, I'm not physically able to shovel either, but you make $150K a year. Can you not afford to engage one of many small businesses that do snow clearing instead of leaving it to your HCP spouse?' wrote one.

Since the tweet had gone viral, Reyes' wife has created her own Twitter account to join the conversation.

'All I wanted to do was shovel!' she wrote,' adding a facepalm emoji.

Speaking to CBS News, Reyes seemed to vaguely acknowledge the criticism but somewhat miss the point.

"My wife is amazing, both at home and at work. I'm eternally grateful for her and everything she does. I love her very much,' he said.

'I'm happy that she is getting the worldwide recognition she deserves, and it serves as a reminder to everyone  especially me today  that we can never do enough to show our gratitude to health-care workers'
The Duchess of York has announced she is taking a break from her YouTube series Storytime with Fergie and Friends.

Sarah Ferguson, 62, who is commonly known as Fergie, revealed she will temporarily stop posting daily videos on her YouTube channel - which she started in lockdown.

The mother-of-two started the channel in April 2020 in order to keep children entertained at home.

In an Instagram story shared yesterday, Fergie reassured her fans that this break is only temporary, and that they will soon be updated when the show resumes.

'Storytime with Fergie and Friends will be taking a further break. We will update you soon on a return date,' read a post shared on the mother of Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie's Instagram.

Prince Andrew's ex-wife has been sharing daily videos on her Youtube channel since lockdown in April 2020

Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, 62, has announced she will be taking a break from her YouTube series Storytime with Fergie and Friends

The grandmother-of-two shared her last video to date on New Year's Eve, where she read Macca's Christmas Crackers by Matt Cosgrove. It has been watched nearly 140,000 times.

Other videos have seen her dress up as Little Red Riding Hood and don flower crowns and unicorn hats as part of her animated readings.

It comes after Fergie was spotted at Verbier's ski resort in Switzerland.

She was joined by Princess Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank as well as Princess Beatrice, her husband Edo Mapelli Mozzi and his son Wolfie.

The families celebrated the New Year together at the Duke of York's 17million luxury chalet - which was thought to be up for sale earlier this year - that overlooks the exclusive resort.

Fergie's daily videos, where she often read children's book by authors she loves - and sometimes her own titles, were watched by thousands at the peak of lockdown.

Sarah Ferguson, 60, treated her fans to two videos today as she dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood to read the classic children's tale on her YouTube channel (pictured)

The Duchess of York donned a red hooded cape and was joined by a mystery guest in a wolf mask and nightgown (pictured)

In the first episode of 'Storytime with Fergie and Friends,' which she posted to her YouTube channel, Sarah put on a very animated performance as she read kid's classic Hairy Maclary by Lynley Dodd.

Every since that first clip was shared, the mother-of-two has been updating the channel, often daily, with new videos where she could be seen reading children's stories.

In total, Fergie has shared 543 videos on the channel, gathering more than 42,500 subscribers.

Her latest video was watched by 139,481 fans, but they will have to wait to watch another of her videos.

The news comes as Fergie's ex-husband Prince Andrew, 61, is currently awaiting a ruling on whether a lawsuit related to allegations he sexually assaulted Virginia Giuffre, then 17, on three occasions in 2001 will be dismissed by a judge in New York.

Ms Giuffre, now 38, claims she was trafficked by billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell to have sex with the prince - at Maxwell's London home, at Epstein's New York mansion and on his private island in the Caribbean.

Fergie's last video was shared on New Year's Eve and watched by nearly 140,000 fans. She read Macca's Christmas Crackers by Matt Cosgrove

The Duchess shared DIY activities and read children's books on her Youtube channel, which counts more than 42,500 subscribers

Prince Andrew vehemently denies the claims, but his legal team is currently battling to have the case thrown out on a 'technicality' on the basis she waived her right to sue him when she signed an earlier 370,000 ($500,000) legal settlement with Epstein.

They have also accused Ms Giuffre of being after 'another payday at his expense'.

A ruling on whether the case will proceed to trial could be re returned this week following a hearing last Tuesday.

The allegations, though, have mired the duke for the last two years and led to a car crash interview with Emily Maitlis on Newsnight in which he claimed he was 'unable to sweat'.

Sarah launched the daily YouTube show (pictured) during lockdown in order to entertain little ones stuck at home

Meanwhile, Prince Andrew, pictured in 2019, is currently awaiting a ruling on whether a lawsuit related to allegations he sexually assaulted Virginia Giuffre , then 17, on three occasions in 2001 will be dismissed by a judge in New York

It has been reported by the Sunday Times that his expensive list of advisers totals an estimated 2 million.

The list includes a solicitor nicknamed 'Good News Gary' and a barrister who represented crime boss Terry Adams and Britain's most violent prisoner Charles Bronson.

The duke's ex-wife Sarah is understood to have also been involved in briefing against Ms Giuffre.

A source said the situation 'is a shambles' and Andrew is 'getting terrible advice', while he has not been helped by his family having 'given up on him'.

The allegations first came to light in 2011, but the prince did not provide public explanation until the November 2019 interview on Newsnight.

Sources say he agreed to the interview due to be a keenness to fix his reputation before his 60th birthday and the wedding of daughter Princess Beatrice.

It is understood he wanted to 'get on the front foot' and finally get his side of the story across to the public.

Andrew was initially dismissive of appearing on Newsnight for an interview on the basis his public relations adviser Jason Stein, former special adviser to Amber Rudd, believed it to be bad idea.

However, he was subsequently convinced by his private secretary Amanda Thirsk.
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Former Food Network star Sandra Lee enjoyed some fun in the sun this weekend while vacationing with friends in Cabo San Lucas.

Lee, 55, traveled to Mexico to host the 50th birthday party of her best friend Tracy Holland, the founder and CEO of HatchBeauty Brands.

The friends were seen having a blast at a local beach, where Lee layered a black button-down coverup over an orange bikini.

They were seen walking alone in the water, as well as stopping to talk to two men on the beach, who had Lee in stitches as she threw back her head in laughter.

Former Food Network star Sandra Lee enjoyed some fun in the sun this weekend while vacationing in Cabo San Lucas

Lee, 55, traveled to Mexico to and got in some time at the beach, where she dipped her feet in the water

Lee wore an orange two-piece which she layered with a black button-down coverup

She is there to host the 50th birthday party of her best friend Tracy Holland, the founder and CEO of HatchBeauty Brands

According to photographers, Lee and Holland has been seen at the Viceroy Hotel on Friday before heading to the beach

They walked side-by-side in the sand, going into the water up to their shins while keeping their coverups on

According to photographers, Lee and Holland has been seen at the Viceroy Hotel on Friday before heading to the beach.

They walked side-by-side in the sand, going into the water up to their shins while keeping their coverups on.

Lee donned a figure-flaunting two-piece, the top of which was just visible under her coverup, which was open down to the top of her ribcage.

She had her blonde hair pulled back, and shielded her eyes from the sun with a pair of sunglasses.

She appeared to be deep in conversation with Holland, who wore a pink one-piece with a leopard sarong slung around her hips.

They stopped to chat with two unidentified men, with Holland putting her arm around the shoulders of one and Lee laughing at what someone said.

Lee and Holland are longtime friends who were introduced by Tesco CEO Ken Murphy.

Lee had her blonde hair pulled back, and shielded her eyes from the sun with a pair of sunglasses

She appeared to be deep in conversation with Holland, who wore a pink one-piece with a leopard sarong slung around her hips

Lee appeared to enjoy dipping her feet in the water but didn't want to get the rest of her body wet

Lee and Holland are longtime friends who were introduced by Tesco CEO Ken Murphy

The day the photos were taken, Holland took to Instagram to sing her friend's praises

'Thank you Sandra Lee for helping to make my Mexican Riviera birthday so magical, I love your heart and soul!' she wrote

The day the photos were taken, Holland took to Instagram to sing her friend's praises.

'Thank you Sandra Lee for helping to make my Mexican Riviera birthday so magical, I love your heart and soul!' she wrote.

'Thank you for being my Muse in all things beautiful including for NatureWell. You are a creative force and thank you so so much.

'And Ken Murphy the best friendship matchmaker ever, you said it best when you said, I can take to my grave that that one of the great thing in the world I did was put the two of you together, what a friendship."

Lee, meanwhile, shared her own post, writing: 'Happy Birthday Sweet Trac! You beautiful creature- even more inside as out and  I love you so!!

'Time to get down  we are dialed in! And thank you KEN MURPHY for the gift of friendship  the world is a better place because of you both.'

Their girls trip came a week after Lee was photographed packing on the PDA with her fiance, Ben Youcef, 42, in Malibu on New Year's Day.

They stopped to chat with two unidentified men, with Holland putting her arm around the shoulders of one

Lee was pictured laughing uproariously at what someone said, throwing her head back

Lee, meanwhile, shared her own post, writing: 'Happy Birthday Sweet Trac! You beautiful creature- even more inside as out and - I love you so!!'

'Time to get down - we are dialed in! And thank you KEN MURPHY for the gift of friendship - the world is a better place because of you both,' Lee wrote

They were pictured walking on the beach with the two unidentified men

Lee laughed as she and her friend walked past some horses in the sand

The women wrapped their arms around one another, and Lee kissed her friend's cheek

She and Youcef, an Algerian writer and interfaith leader, spotted passionately kissing at the Malibu Country Mart the day after ringing in the new year together at Nobu Malibu, People reported.

'They are very much looking forward to the new year,' a source told the outlet. 'They are happier than ever.'

Instead of the large engagement ring her fiance gave her in Paris over the summer, Lee wore a delicate filigree band lined with diamonds.

The new bling is believed to be a Christmas gift from Youcef, a source told Page Six.

Lee moved to Malibu after she and her ex, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, split in September 2019.

Lee and Cuomo were introduced at a party in the Hamptons in 2005 by political adviser Alexandra Stanton, one of Lee's best friends and Cuomo's former aide.

At the time Cuomo, son of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, was fresh off a failed run for governor and a very public and bitter divorce from Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy.

Lee was also recently single after divorcing her husband of four years, KB Home CEO Bruce Karatz, earlier that year.

'Thank you for being my Muse in all things beautiful including for NatureWell. You are a creative force and thank you so so much,' Holland said of Lee

'And Ken Murphy the best friendship matchmaker ever, you said it best when you said, I can take to my grave that that one of the great thing in the world I did was put the two of you together, what a friendship,"' she added

With Lee in his corner, Cuomo rebounded and was elected New York Attorney General in 2006. Four years later, he went on to be elected governor in 2010.

They dated for 14 years and lived together, but they never got engaged in their decade and a half as a couple.

Lee and Youcef are believed to have met at a charity event in Santa Monica back in March, with him making the first move.

He is a father to five-year-old twins with his soon-to-be ex-wife, California-based realtor Apryl Stephenson. Though the pair are still legally married, they separated in 2019 and they filed for divorce in January 2020.

Youcef proposed to Lee in August during their whirlwind trip to France that coincided with the sexual harassment scandal surrounding Cuomo.

'Ben really wanted to distract Sandra from all the news, so he whisked her away to Paris,' an unnamed source close to Youcef told the New York Post. 'He knows how hard this has been on her and he wants to make sure she feels loved and supported.'

The source added: 'Ben is incredibly protective of Sandra. They're soulmates and head-over-heels in love.'

Cuomo, 64, resigned from office in August after investigators working for New York Attorney General Letitia James authored a report concluding he had sexually harassed 11 women.

Lee had spent New Year's with her fiance, Ben Youcef, 42, in Malibu (pictured in 2014)

Lee had dated Andrew Cuomo for 14 years until she broke up with him in 2019

Cuomo has denied the allegations.

The ex-governor has been hit with a charge of forcible touching relating to the allegation of Brittany Commisso, a former aide who claimed Cuomo groped her breast in the office of the Executive Mansion in Albany in December 2020.

The complaint, which was signed by an investigator from the Albany County Sheriff's Office, alleges that the former governor 'intentionally, and for no legitimate purpose, forcibly place his hand under the blouse shirt of the victim and onto her intimate body part.'

Commisso's claim was the most serious of all of the allegations listed in James' report, which Cuomo has maintained was a hit-job by James to get him out of her way.

'From the moment my office received the referral to investigate allegations that former Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, we proceeded without fear or favor,' James' office said in a statement.

'The criminal charges brought today against Mr. Cuomo for forcible touching further validate the findings in our report.'

If convicted, Cuomo could face up to one year in prison.

Despite the charges filed against him, Cuomo is considering running for political rival James' attorney general post, sources said.

He held the position from 2007 to 2010 before becoming governor and now sources close to the politician told the New York Post he could run for the position in 2022.

'People in Cuomos orbit are tossing it out there,' a person close to Cuomo told the New York Post. 'Theyre floating [the idea].'
Even before the arrival of omicron, those in public schools guessed the 2021-22 school year would be difficult.

School officials had long since decided classes would be in-person, but the ever-changing environment with COVID-19 has made this more problematic for staff and students.

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Public school educators have said districts already had issues to address  student achievement gaps, staffing, teachers pay, among others  before March 2020. But over the past 21 months, some of those challenges have been magnified.

Since the onset of COVID-19, Alisha Claytons stress level has become more than she can handle some days. Her workload as a teacher in Hampton seemed busier than usual when she had to work remotely, and she said it tripled since she returned in-person this school year.

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She recently had to isolate for a week because she contracted the virus, which forced her to face some of the feelings shed been avoiding because of her busy schedule.

She became a special education teacher to help students who often fall through the cracks. But lately, she said, being an educator comes at a heavy price.

___

The breaking point

On top of being a mother of four, some days were harder than others when Clayton had to teach class while helping her youngest son, who was in pre-K at the time. However, she preferred that to being in-person.

She pressed her own children to wear a mask and always sanitize their hands, but its hard to keep a safe distance from her students as a special education teacher, Clayton said.

(Theres) five of us in this house, so five people have the opportunity to bring COVID home. That was a scary thing to me, she said.

Clayton felt anxious, as many teachers did, when she had to return in-person. Although Hampton students first returned to schools in March, the district allowed Clayton to teach remotely for the remainder of the school year because her eldest son has diabetes and is considered a high risk for COVID. But in September, she had to go back.

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Her school division asked teachers to extend grace as they are all navigating unfamiliar territory, she said. But she didnt feel valued in return.

She said she spends her most of her planning blocks with students in trouble for behavioral reasons because the in-school suspension room may be full or the teacher is out sick. And the administrative work she had to complete for individualized education programs increased because she had to enter each report manually by November.

Although winter break was supposed to be the breather she needed, it was Claytons breaking point.

When her 12-year-old came home two days before Christmas from visiting family out of state, he told his mother he had a headache. Clayton also had an itchy throat but she didnt think she had been exposed.

The next day her son had a fever, and on Christmas he couldnt get out of bed. He tested positive for COVID-19 using an at-home test, and the next day Claytons symptoms worsened.

After a chaotic day of trying to hunt down places that would test her children  denied by two urgent cares in Virginia Beach where she lives  three of her children were able to get tested. Her 13-year-old son he wasnt showing any symptoms.

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Only Clayton and her 12-year-old son tested positive. She sent her other children to their fathers house while Clayton and her son isolated for a week. On Jan. 2, when her son tested negative, he joined his siblings and by Wednesday, Clayton also tested negative.

I guess I have been ignoring a lot of stuff ... Ill stay busy and Ill create distractions for myself not to deal (with issues), Clayton said. I had to realize, maybe, this job isnt the healthiest thing for (me) to be doing.

Before the pandemic, she said students often came to school sick. She worried the same thing would happen after the surge in cases during winter break. She also knew some of her colleagues who had been sick, but said they would still go into work because they didnt have any leave days to spare or they couldnt find a COVID-19 test.

Because Clayton still had symptoms last Sunday, her school nurse told her she needed to stay home until she submitted a negative test and didnt have any symptoms.

She still worked remotely all week because her one of teachers assistants became sick Sunday and another is new and Clayton wanted to be there if she needed help. Less than half of Claytons students attended her first two blocks. By time her third block came, Claytons assistant told her to sign off and get some rest  that she would handle the rest of the day.

After the snowball of challenges shes had to overcome, with so little in return, she said she doesnt know how much more she has to give.

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Like many teachers, she loves her job and she wants whats best for her students. But at what cost?

___

An uphill battle

It just kind of became a perfect storm with COVID  where people realize the extra added stress that everybody is experiencing because of COVID. Then, you add that on top of an already stressful job, Virginia Beach Education Association President Kathleen Slinde said. It just is becoming more and more difficult.

School administrators and elected officials have acknowledged the pressures teachers face, and many districts have worked to implement incentives to show appreciation for their faculty and staff.

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Since the start of this school year, Hampton City Schools teachers who instruct an additional class or fill in during their planning blocks receive extra compensation, as do teaching assistants if they work extra hours.

A majority of Hampton Roads school divisions gave out stipends or one-time bonuses for faculty and staff, and others provided additional time for planning periods, early release and wellness days, among others. On a statewide level, Gov. Ralph Northam recently proposed a 10% salary increase for Virginia teachers over the next two years.

Still, the pandemic continues to detour the public school systems progress.

Five of Hampton Roads districts have seen an increase in teacher absences during the first week after winter break, according the divisions spokesperson. A Chesapeake Public Schools spokesperson told The Virginian-Pilot the rise in the districts absentee teachers could be due to a number of reasons, including the coronavirus impact.

On Thursday, Chesapeake Superintendent Jared Cotton notified parents that individual schools could switch to virtual learning because of the increase in cases and families should prepare. As of Friday, six schools will switch to virtual learning for the week of Jan. 10.

York County school officials are also mulling plans to switch online due to staff and student attendance.

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While the division believes students benefit most from in-person learning and belong in schools, these attendance rates are not sustainable, the district said in a daily newsletter Thursday.

Slinde said many teachers have resigned or retired early after the pandemic hit. To make matters worse, there arent enough qualified candidates to fill the vacancies.

Staffing shortages existed before COVID-19, and educators predicted that trend would continue with low enrollment in teacher preparation programs and lower pay compared with other professions, Slinde said. The average early career teacher in Virginia with a bachelors degree will make 40% less than someone in a different profession with the same educational standard. For many, its the reason why teachers have second and third jobs.

Before the pandemic, Norfolk Public Schools substitute pool stood at 85%. Its down to less than 40% recently, according to Helen Pryor, president of the Education Association of Norfolk. The demands educators face today can leave a negative impression on prospective teachers, which she said is leading them to wait until working conditions improve.

We know that this really is no ones fault. And we know everyone is trying their very best, Pryor said. But there is no district thats doing it so much better than everyone else.

Its going to take time to address issues that persist before and after the pandemic, Pryor said,. But for the teachers and administrators who stayed, theyre keeping in mind that the work they do every day is for the students.

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Sierra Jenkins, 229-462-8896, sierra.jenkins@virginiamedia.com
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The United States has reached a new record for number of Americans hospitalized with Covid, with 132,646 currently admitted with the virus. It is yet another marker set during the U.S.'s record, Omicron-fueled, virus surge. Despite rising hospitalizations, though, not as many Americans are dying from the virus as were in previous surges.

However, not all of these hospitalizations are directly caused by the virus. Many people who go to the hospital for reason outside of Covid, such as injury or other ailments, are being tested while there. Deaths growing at a slower rate with 1,648 Americans dying from the virus every day - an 11 percent increase from two weeks ago. This signals either the effectiveness of the vaccines, or the more mild nature of the new strain.

Omicron cases are continuing to rise in the U.S but deaths caused by the virus are not following at the same rate, signaling the variant that has ground much of America to a standstill is not making people as sick as the Delta variant. Cases have more than tripled over the past two weeks alone, up from 198,326 per day to 709,850 per day.

On Sunday, Dr Walensky appeared on Fox News, and failed to answer whether or not many deaths currently being attributed to the virus actually have other causes. She also told ABC's Good Morning America last week that 75 percent of people who have died from the Omicron variant in the U.S. have at least four comorbidities - in what she called 'encouraging news'.

The U.S. also surpassed 60 million cases of the virus as of Monday morning according to Johns Hopkins University, another grim milestone for the country.

The record surge began in December, only weeks after the new variant was discovered by South African health officials. Omicron is the most infectious strain of the virus yet, and its ability to evade vaccine immunity has presented additional challenges.

Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, says that the world should be able to control Covid and even return to normal in the future - but only if people receive an annual vaccine, but it could require a decade of annual vaccination.

Pfizer - which produces the most commonly used vaccine in America and in much of the world, has benefitted greatly from the sale of its joint vaccine project with the German company BioNTech.

Bourla appeared on CNBC's 'The Squawk Box' Monday morning to discuss the future of the Covid pandemic and the role his company can play in fighting it. His statements come as the virus tears through the U.S. for a second consecutive January, and national health leaders go all-in on vaccines as a strategy to fight Covid.

American health leaders, like Dr Rochelle Walensky of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dr Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease, have centered vaccines in their fight against the virus - even in the wake of a vaccine resistant strain.

While the variant can evade the immunity provided by the initial vaccine regimens, experts have found that vaccine booster shots can re-establish some of those protections. Breakthrough infections are also more mild than those in unvaccinated people, and the Omicron variant is found to be a more mild strain, less likely to cause infection or death than other strains of the virus.

Because of the rise of Omicron, and the potential for future variants with similar vaccine resistant properties to arise as well, some fear Covid may never be fully ended. As long as the virus continues to mutate, it will always be able to find away around vaccines, and the protection people receive from the shots seems to wane in a matter of months anyways.

Bourla told CNBC that Covid will likely be around for the next ten years - if not longer - though it can be controlled with a robust booster campaign.

'We will have perfectly normal lives, with just injection maybe once a year,' he said.

The number of Americans hospitalized with Covid is nearing record levels, reaching 130,000 this week

Pfizer's vaccine has been deemed the gold standard worldwide, as the safest and most effective jab in the world. The shot has been administered over 300 million times in the U.S., almost 60 percent of total shots distributed, and is the only shot available to minors.

The success of the shot has led to a large windfall for the New York based firm, with an analysis by the People's Vaccine Alliance finding that Pfizer, its partner BioNTech and Moderna - producer of the second most popular vaccine - make a combined profit of over $1,000 every second. Continued use of the vaccines for the next decade will likely keep that figure high.

Pfizer has also been accused of using its leverage and control over the jabs to take advantage of developing nations. Denying them their ability to receive donations of the shots, and even writing clauses into contracts that would allow the company to seize state assets. The company even worked to get around intellectual property rights for vaccine technology in other countries, as Bourla publicly called the idea of doing so in America 'dangerous', according to a report by Public Citizen last year.

On CNBC, the Pfizer CEO said that getting these low income countries to a point where they can administer more vaccines at a faster pace is a key to controlling the virus.

'Particularly in low income countries, they have more than they can absorb right now,' he said.

'I think all the effort should be, right now... to build the infrastructure in low income countries so they can absorb more vaccines. Also, the campaigns that will convince the population [to get the shots].'

A top scientist at the pharmaceutical company also told Insider on Monday that testing for its Omicron-specific variant would begin trials by the end of January, and the shot could be available as early as March.

Mississippi is the leader among U.S. states in case growth over the past two weeks, up 702 percent over that period. On average, 180 of every 100,000 residents are testing positive for the virus every day. Texas is following just behind, with a 678 percent jump in cases over the past two weeks.

Like many of their peers with high case growth over the past two weeks, deaths in both states have remained relatively low, at around 0.3 per every 100,000 residents every day.

This not only signals how highly infectious this new strain is, but how mild it may be as well.

Other southern states, South Carolina (652 percent increase over the past two weeks), Kentucky (578 percent), Louisiana (546 percent), Arkansas (526 percent) and Alabama (522 percent) have all also suffered sharp increases in daily cases in recent weeks.

Many of these states are among those with the lowest vaccination rates in America, with all falling below the 63 percent national pace of fully vaccinated residents.

Despite the large portion of unvaccinated residents, deaths have not spiked to the same level cases have over recent weeks in the region.

Louisiana, for example, is among the states with the lowest death rate with 0.18 of every 100,000 residents dying of Covid every day, the sixth lowest rate of any state in America.

Only Kentucky and Arkansas have death rates higher than 0.5 out of every 100,000 over the past week, and both are well under the national leaders with 0.6 and 0.63 respectively.

While the south has been struck the hardest, cases are rising nearly everywhere in America. Maine is the only one of 50 states that is recording a decrease in cases over the past two weeks, down ten percent.

The other 49 states, and the District of Columbia, are all recording case increases over the past 14 days. Cases have doubled in all but four states during that period.

The northeast has much higher vaccination rate than the south, with states like Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut all leading the nation is vaccination rates. Still, though, the region suffers a huge surge in cases.

Vermont, where a nation-high 78 percent of residents are fully vaccinated cases are up 192 percent over the past two weeks. Over that period, cases are also up 216 percent in Rhode Island (77 percent vaccination rate), 172 percent in Connecticut (75 percent) and 178 percent in Massachusetts (75 percent).

In the Midwest, Kansas has experienced a 418 percent increase in cases over 14 days, among the nation leaders. Neighboring Missouri is right behind them, recording a 395 percent jump in infections since late December.

States along the west coast are experiencing massive surges as well, with a 405 percent increase in California, and 431 percent in Oregon. Alaska is also among the nations leaders with cases increasing six-fold over a 14 day period.

New York and New Jersey still retain the dubious honor of having the highest case rates in America. In the Empire state, 381 of every 100,000 residents are testing positive for the virus every day - with many of those cases being in New York City - while 355 of every 100,000 New Jersians are recording infections daily.

No other state has an infection rate of more than 300 of every 100,000.

Leaders in cases are not quite leading the nation in deaths, though.

Delaware is the nation's leader in Covid deaths, with 1.16 of every 100,000 residents dying from the virus every day. Wyoming falls just behind, with 1.14 of every 100,000, and Indiana at 1.07 of every 100,000.

Two longtime leaders in daily deaths, Michigan and Pennsylvania, find themselves among the nationwide leaders as well, with just over one of every 100,000 residents dying from the virus every day. No other state is suffering Covid deaths at that level, despite rampant case increases nationwide.

In England, which the US often follows around two weeks behind of, cases are actually declining. The nation was struck hard and early by the Omicron variant, but the new strain seems to be burning out. Infections have dropped by six percent over the past week, and hospitalizations could be nearing a peak as well.

The Omicron Covid variant could be less deadly than the flu Omicron could be even less deadly than flu, scientists believe in a boost to hopes that the worst of the pandemic is over. MailOnline analysis shows Covid killed one in 33 people who tested positive at the peak of the devastating second wave last January, compared to just one in 670 now. But experts believe the figure could be even lower because of Omicron. The case fatality rate  the proportion of confirmed infections that end in death  for seasonal influenza is 0.1, the equivalent of one in 1,000. Meanwhile, researchers at Washington University modelling the next stage of the pandemic expect Omicron to kill up to 99 per cent fewer people than Delta, in another hint it could be less deadly than flu. But UK Government advisers estimated the overall figure stood at around 0.25 per cent before Omicron burst onto the scene, down from highs of around 1.5 per cent before the advent of life-saving vaccines. If Omicron is 99 per cent less lethal than Delta, it suggests the current IFR could be as low as 0.0025 per cent, the equivalent of one in 40,000, although experts say this is unlikely. Instead, the Washington modelling estimates the figure actually sits in the region of 0.07 per cent, meaning approximately one in 1,430 people who get infected will succumb to the illness. Advertisement

Getting a handle on America's Covid situation has become a challenge in recent weeks. Long lags in reporting combined with testing shortages have led to the current case count constantly fluctuating, and likely being lower than actual totals. Hospitalizations and deaths, on the other hand, could be overcounted, with many being hospitalized or dying from another cause extraneously being listed as a death from the virus.

According to data from Johns Hopkins, the U.S. is averaging 709,850 new cases every day, and 1,648 deaths per day. Since the pandemic began, America has suffered 60 million infections and over 837,000 deaths.

Things may soon change, though, if America follows the path of England. Across the pond, cases have dropped by six percent over the past week. While hospitalizations (up 27 percent) and deaths (up 12 percent) are still rising, the growth has slowed in recent days - signaling the peak of the surge may have been reached. Both figures often lag behind cases as well.

London, once a global hotspot of the new variant, now finds not of its boroughs among the 25 in England with the largest Covid outbreaks - another positive sign that the new strain is burning out.

A MailOnline.com analysis on English data finds the new strain could be very mild, even potentially more mild than the flu. Currently in the UK, around 0.15 percent of Covid cases are fatal, compared to 0.1 percent of flu cases. While one in every 1,000 people who catch the flu die, a Washington University analysis finds that one in every 1,400 people who catch Omicron will succumb to the virus.

A DailyMail.com analysis of data in the U.S. finds that around 0.23 percent of cases are fatal, though many Covid cases in America are going entirely undetected - which would bring that figure down even further.

Data from the CDC from the 2019 to 2020 flu season - before the pandemic - found that 30 million Americans suffered a symptomatic case of the virus that year. Around 20,000 died, or a death rate of 0.05 percent.

Some experts are hopeful that the high infectiousness of the variant, combined with the relatively mild symptoms of Omicron could mean that the pandemic is soon coming to a close. Dr Jim Baker, an immunologist at the University of Michigan, wrote in blog that the virus is showing similar signs to the 2011 flu pandemic that it will burn out soon.

We have been focused on number of infections with COVID-19 because of the very sensitive and accurate diagnostic tests (PCR) we have developed,' he said.

'In contrast, as we look at the end of the pandemic, we now need to focus less on infections and more on deaths. That is truly the important marker of a pandemics impact and the only comparable measure to the 1918 flu epidemic where there were no diagnostic tests.'

A record of 132,646 Americans are currently hospitalized with Covid, the highest point of the pandemic so far. Despite this recent increase in cases and hospitalizations, deaths remain low, signaling the Omicron variant may not be very severe. Pictured: A New Hampshire nurse in an isolated Covid ward

'In the 1917 flu pandemic, after the initial burst of infections and deaths, two waves of deaths followed, each one less impactful. This is how pandemics end; two echo waves each being less and less significant. It is because in each wave the most susceptible individuals have been killed off as the rest of the population develops immunity. A similar pattern was seen in the 2011 Influenza A pandemic and it has now emerged with COVID-19. This pattern shows the COVID-19 pandemic is burning out.'

Denmark emerged as an early Omicron hotspot. Cases in the Nordic nation reached a record of over 20,000 per day at the start of the year, but dipped back down to 19,000 this week - signaling the variant may have peaked in the country.

Other countries have not been as lucky as Denmark and England, though. In Germany, cases are on the rise to start the year after declining for much of January. The country is averaging 49,000 cases per day, approaching the record of around 57,000 per day set late last year.

France's rocketing rise in Covid cases continues as well, up to nearly 300,000 per day, up from around 70,000 cases per day only two weeks ago.

"We will have perfectly normal lives, with just injection maybe once a year. And the pill in case we are sick will make it more flu like rather than life-threatening disease," says $PFE CEO @AlbertBourla to @megtirrell. pic.twitter.com/5HggesU1aT  Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) January 10, 2022
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now recommending Americans not to travel to Canada amid an Omicron fueled Covid surge striking both nations.

The agency moved Canada to 'Level 4' of its Covid travel advisory recommendations on Monday, the highest danger level a country can receive, and recommends against travel to the country.

It warns that people traveling to Canada should be fully vaccinated, and even those that are still suffer some risk of being infected and spreading Covid variants.

Canada joins more than 80 countries currently designated as having a 'Level 4' travel risk, including the UK, France, Italy and a handful of other European and African nations.

Canada has been designated as danger 'Level 4' for American travelers by the CDC. The agency now recommends Americans not to travel to the nation currently suffering a surge in cases. Pictured: A man in Toronto, Ontario, receives a Covid test on June 15

Like the U.S., Canada has suffered a shortage of available tests amid a surge in demand. Many public testing sites have seen long lines. Pictured: People line up outside a testing center in Toronto, Ontario, on December 29

America's neighbor is currently suffering its worst Covid surge yet, eclipsing over 40,000 new cases per day last week - smashing the previous record of around 9,000 per day. It has also sequenced the sixth most Omicron cases as any country in the world, with 23,620 confirmed as of Monday afternoon.

In Canada, hospitals are being filled - and slowly being overwhelmed - by the recent surge in cases.

Provinces on the Eastern side of the nation, like New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec, have been struck the hardest.

Dr Bob Bell, deputy health minister of the Ontario province, told Global News that that the variant has struck the hospital system in his region hard.

He says that lockdowns and other mandates could even be around the corner as cases continue to rise.

There is hope that the variant could be burning, out, though. After peaking last week around 42,000, new daily cases have dropped to 36,000 per day.

Schools around the nation stayed closed for an extra week of winter break to get the pandemic situation under control.

Alberta and British Columbia, the two most western province in the nation, returned to school this week, and health officials are working to deliver thousands of tests to schools around the nation to facilitate in the reopening.

Testing has become a problem for Canada, though, just as it has in America, though.

Rapid at-home tests are in short supply, and prices have spiked amid a growth in demand.

Just like major cities in the U.S., places like Toronto and Montreal have struggled with long lines at public testing sites due to high demand and low supply.

PCR tests, often considered the gold standard in Covid detection, are now in short supply as well, and Quebec has even barred people who do not have symptoms from receiving the tests.

Canada has a high vaccination rate, with 84 percent of residents having received at least one shot of the vaccine, and 78 percent fully vaccinated.

Around 26 percent of the population has also received a booster shot.

Along with Canada, Curacao, a small island off the coast of Venezuela, was also added to the list of Level 4 travel destinations by the CDC.

The addition of Curacao to the list makes it one of the first countries in the South American region to be added to Level 4 list during the recent Omicron fueled surge.
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It is an American city that looks like it's been annihilated by war.

Exactly one month after a deadly long-track tornado tore through Mayfield, Kentucky, street after street of homes and businesses lie flattened, smashed or hideously misshapen.

Endless piles of brick and rubble reach more than 12ft high, while broken concrete, splintered timber and twisted metal lie in cruel heaps throughout a mile-wide scene of devastation.

Abandoned homes have 'do not bulldoze' sprayed in large letters by homeowners hopeful of one day returning. American flags are everywhere among the ruins, all at half-staff.

And laying amid the horror, are signs of how life used to be. Wrapped Christmas presents that never got to be opened - and fancy shoes that once graced the feet of their proud owners.

Mayfield, Kentucky is reeling from the violent tornado that ripped through the city and claimed the lives of 22 residents on December 10. Pictured above is a memorial left outside the historic Graves County Courthouse, one of the few damaged buildings still standing

Street after street of homes and businesses now lie flattened, smashed or completely misshapen and surrounded by endless piles of debris

Many of the buildings that remain standing in the city are too damaged to occupy again and are now being demolished

All around, endless piles of brick and rubble reach more than 12ft high and broken concrete, splintered timber and twisted metal lie in heaps throughout a mile-wide scene of devastation

The town of 10,000 people now faces a long road to recovery and rebuilding, as it's estimated it will take 160,000 dump truck loads just to clear the debris from all the shattered buildings

The 200-year-old Kentucky town now resembles bomb-shattered European towns from World War Two

Among all this, ordinary people  still traumatized beyond belief  venture out to rebuild their community with their bare hands in scenes reminiscent of shattered European towns in World War Two.

The remarkable scenes are still in Mayfield four weeks after 22 residents lost their lives in a destructive tornado outbreak that killed 90 across five states, and at least 76 in Kentucky.

The statistics are staggering. The tornado, which carved a deadly trail of 165 miles, devastated 16 blocks as it cut through the center of Mayfield  smashing the iconic court house, and leaving it with just its ghostly facade.

It is estimated it will take 160,000 dumper truck loads just to clear the debris from all the shattered buildings. Six hundred people were made homeless.

Looking at the downtown area, it is hard to believe rebuilding can ever be achieved, such is the devastation in this 200-year-old city of 10,000 people.

Yet as DailyMail.com revisited Mayfield in the extreme southwest of the state, after first reporting the horror in December, the message from locals was clear: You just watch us.

Local Mayfield artist and insurance firm owner Fred Biggs, who stood outside the memorial erected in front of the Graves County Courthouse to scope it out for a painting, said the community has been active in its cleanup efforts even as it mourns

The Mayfield Consumer Products factory, a candle factory where nine workers died as a deadly tornado passed through the area on December 10, is still being cleared of debris

In the parking lot is a ghoulish tableau  dozens of employees' crushed and smashed cars from that fateful night are still there

Dozens of vehicles left nearby are now nothing more than tangled heaps of metal

The interior of the American Legion Theater, across from the courthouse, is now exposed after the violent twister tore through the stage

Sitting inside the American Legion Theater, the audience would now see the real-life drama that has unfolded since the December 10 hurricane that ravaged the city

Standing by the memorial fence in front of the courthouse, covered with 43 photographs of tornados victims, local artist Fred Biggs, 72, was defiant.

'President Biden called us resilient. That's not the half of it,' he said. 'You're not going to find a porch full of people smoking Marlboros and them wanting to know when the government is going to come and save us.

'We don't do that here. We just do what needs to be done.

'Look at the activity around here. You see anybody sitting around? Nope. Not going to.

'We need help. We are down, but we are a long way from out,' he added.

Biggs, who was at the courthouse to scope it out for a painting to memorialize the tragedy, fought back tears as he continued: 'Buildings don't make a community. We'll be back and we'll be back strong. That's us.' He paused and added: 'I'm getting too emotional.'

He continued: 'People don't realize just what we lost  the courthouse, city hall, the post office, two of the three fire department stations, all the ambulances and all the police cars, a bunch of churches, all the law offices.

'We got a new normal. We don't know what it is, but it is going to be a new normal. It can be put back together.'

His son Josh, 43, battled to help victims at the candle factory just outside town, where nine people on the night shift died when it was torn apart by the December 10 tornado.

All around there are signs of how life used to be just a couple weeks earlier. An office desk with paperwork and filing cabinets is now surrounded by debris

Among the smashed remains of people's homes still lie mangled washing machines, hot water tanks, a doll, and other personal items

Unopened Christmas gifts lay abandoned among a toppled Christmas tree and rubble inside one house

Resident Jackie Canter, 47, sifts through debris for any personal belongings outside a friend's house

Markings spray painted on the side of buildings and cars indicate they have been checked for survivors

Abandoned homes have 'do not bulldoze' sprayed in large letters by homeowners hopeful of one day returning

There is hardly a recognizable trace of some of the homes and buildings that once stood. Instead, there are piles of debris among the concrete footings

'Josh dug out 13 peoplethree dead,' he said. 'He had to put one woman in the back of his truck, dead. And her husband was there looking for her.'

Asked if we could speak to Josh, he shook his head and said: 'He's still struggling to deal with it all.'

In the Walnut Street area of the city, south of downtown, such was the devastation that there is hardly a recognizable trace of some of the homes that were once there. Instead, there are piles of debris among the concrete footings.

Tamra Yekinni, 61, is among the 600 residents left homeless after the deadly tornado destroyed her apartment

And among the smashed remains of people's homes still lie mangled washing machines, hot water tanks, a little girl's baby doll, endless shoes, and a couple's treasured photos.

The water tower, once a symbol of the city, is nothing more than a tangled heap of metal nearby.

As the noise of chainsaws filled the air while construction workers continued to clear ground at the intersection of Walnut Street and 11th Street, local Mary Harding, 26, reeled off the destruction toll.

Pointing, she said: 'There were one, two, three, four, five, six, seven or eight houses on this strip and now there is one standing.'

Walnut Street leads the way into the city from the candle factory operated by Mayfield Consumer Products, which is about two miles out.

The factory  first to be hit as the tornado struck south-east to north-west - is now razed to the ground. Its metal roof was ripped off in an instant like a tin can being opened.

As you approach it, a pungent aroma of scented candles hits you. It's like the smell is embedded in the now bare earth on the site.

Yekinni has since teamed up with out-of-state volunteers in getting supplies for a field kitchen and makeshift food distribution center to help those in need

A distribution center is set up outside the St James Church in Mayfield with boxes of donated goods and clothing for residents who lost it all in the disaster

Several distribution centers that have sprung up around the city with storage bins of canned food, pantry items, as well as toiletries and other basic necessities

More than 13,000 people in Kentucky have applied to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for assistance

It also hits you that this is a place that claimed nine lives and should be treated with sanctity for those lost souls.

In the parking lot is a ghoulish tableau  dozens of employees' crushed and smashed cars from that fateful night remain there. Markings spray painted on the side denote they were checked and no bodies were found.

On the way back into the city, hundreds of the factory's large sheet metal roofing panels are still wrapped around trees to the right of the road. They are also still scattered in nearby fields.

Millions of dollars of private money have poured into Mayfield for the disaster relief effort, DailyMail.com has been told.

But it is also the personal sacrifice of more humble volunteers  many who have come from other states - that is particularly poignant.

Retired factory worker Bill Buskey traveled 850 miles from Canandaigua, New York, to set up a field kitchen in the street and cook free meals for the needy. He arrived on December 26 and his grill has been working overtime ever since.

Mary Harding, 26, and Brent Mayfield, 30, stand in front of a strip of debris near Walnut Street and 11th Street where seven out of eight residential homes have been crushed to pieces

Mayfield, the county seat of Graves County, was hit especially hard by the storms, with hundreds of buildings destroyed

The scenes across the city are haunting, with shoes, towels, furniture, and personal belongings of residents now abandoned and strewn among the rubble of what was once their homes

Officials say rebuilding homes and city structures could 'take years' due to the extent of the devastation

St James Church is one of several places of worship that were smashed by the tornado. But that has made Pastor John Dandridge and his congregation even more determined to help those less fortunate

St James Church Pastor Dr. John Dandridge stands in front of his destroyed church. He has since setup a distribution center with donated goods for those in need

'Yesterday we provided enough meals to feed about 200 people and today we are half way to that,' he said. 'Sometimes the whole family comes and they will talk and eat. There are people who are living in their cars who are coming by.

'I have never done anything like this before. But I felt compelled to do this. It was instantly, I'm going to do this.'

One of the people who needed a free meal is now helping Buskey get supplies for his kitchen and makeshift food distribution center.

Tamra Yekinni, 61, who was forced to live in a shelter after her apartment was damaged, scouts items and brings them to Buskey in her white Subaru, which has a window blown out from the tornado.

She worked a day shift at the candle factory and knew one of the victims, Devin Burton, 21, who lived near her.

'I came here and ate and I said, boy that's really good,' she said. 'That's a home cooked meal. And I said to Bill, if I can find stuff I'll bring it. So that's what I'm doing. Food, whatever I can bring.'

Yekinni, who decided to return to her apartment despite the damage, added: 'I think everybody is so sad and still in shock at what has happened. I cry every time I go outside. It's awful. You feel helpless just looking around.

Adding to the destruction is the harsh winter weather that has made cleanup efforts all the more challenging in the city

The full force of winter suddenly descended on Mayfield, with snow and biting cold, hampering the relief efforts

'It's nothing. It's nothing because there is so much devastation. A lady at my shelter said to me, 'I have lived in Mayfield all my life and it's never going to look the same.' She was crying.

'The tornado was something you just could not believe the strength of it. I could feel something being sucked off the building. It went dead silent and then people were screaming and hollering and crying.'

Mayfield is the county seat of Graves County and nearly all the local administrative, court and emergency services' buildings were devastated by the tornado. Now, each department has decamped to various parts of the city.

The office of Mayor Kathy Stewart O'Nan is now working out of a formerly empty store in a small shopping plaza while the much bigger county court enterprise occupies a huge vacant store in another plaza that also now houses the county sheriff's department.

Karen Dowdy, 60, who lost her apartment in the deadly tornado, sits with her dog Pepe outside the Kenlake State Resort Park, which is acting as a shelter for displaced residents

Meanwhile the fire department, which lost its main station and one other, has just moved lock-stock-and-barrel to spare accommodation at Graves County Health Department. A makeshift bunk house with for seven firefighters has just been established along with an equipment room.

Fire chief Jeremy Creason, a central figure in the disaster recovery program, laid out his vision for a new and better Mayfield from the rubble of the old.

But first he paid tribute to the astonishing community that is somehow getting this place back on feet after unimaginable disaster.

'It is a tragedy when you lose 20 plus people in one night,' he said. 'And a lot of people have lost everything they ever had. Their house, their clothing, the food in the refrigerator. They lost their ability to drive back and forth to work. They have nothing.

'So there is a lot of fear in a lot of people, not knowing what tomorrow's going to bring.'

He continued: 'But the resilience of our community has shone through. The night of the tornado, within 30 minutes of it passing through there were farmers from outside the city riding into town with their tractors ready to help clear streets so we could get fire trucks and ambulances out there. They didn't have to do that.

'We have people who love their neighbors, they love their community, they take pride in this community and they just came to help. And we wouldn't be where we are if it wasn't for the local support, the drive that people have to clean up - to rebuild to get back up on our feet.

Outside the county courthouse now stands a memorial covered with 43 photographs of the 22 residents killed in the deadly tornadoes

Seventy-six people were killed across Kentucky after the deadly tornado outbreak, including 22 in Mayfield

A month after a deadly tornado outbreak, families of the victims are still processing the terrible toll

Despite the devastating events that left the city in ruins, the community have shown its resilience with a strong willingness to work and rebuild Mayfield from the ground up

'These people in this community, they're not people that are going to get punched and then go to the ground and not get back up.

'They're going to keep getting back up. And keep fighting until we get back to where we need to be. And hopefully better than we were on December 10, before this tornado hit.

'We have done as much to help ourselves as anybody has done to help us  and that is one of the reasons why we are so far along right now.

'We are told every day by state and federal agencies they are amazed at the progress we've made. And a lot of that is just the heart of the citizens of Mayfield and their willingness to work and rebuild.

'Every day they are out on the streets, on their properties getting debris on to the curb for the Corps of Engineers because they know the sooner we clean up, the sooner we rebuild, the sooner we rebuild the sooner we get to whatever our new normal might be.'

Despite facing months of recovery efforts, Creason denied that the arduous task of rebuilding the city would be just too daunting. 'Absolutely not,' he said.

Graves County Court Clerk Kim Gills stands inside a temporary city hall that has been erected inside strip malls throughout Mayfield

The office of Mayor Kathy Stewart O'Nan is now working out of a formerly empty store in a small shopping plaza while the much bigger county court enterprise has occupied a huge vacant store in another plaza that also houses the county sheriff's department

Each government department has decamped to various parts of the city, including this strip mall in Mayfield

'We have met with federal government, state government, non-government entities like Samaritans Purse, Eight Days of Hope and several groups who have already committed to not only help with the clean-up process, but they are going to come back and rebuild housing.'

'So for people who are under-insured or didn't have home owners insurance, some of these groups are going to come in and rebuild houses and they are going to give the homeowner the key and walk away,' he added.

The chief, who is central to planning approval in the city, sees positivity from disaster  and a newly-designed Mayfield reborn for a more modern age, ironically because of the tornado.

'We are going to reach out and get urban planners in to redesign the city of Mayfield,' he said.

'The way it was designed 200 years ago, maybe that is not the way we want to go for the next 200 years. So we want to establish a more growth-driven and attractive Mayfield where people say, I like the opportunities there and they want to come to us.'

Creason spoke as the full force of winter suddenly descended on Mayfield on January 6, with snow and biting cold, hampering the relief efforts.

He revealed there is an estimated 1.6million cubic yards of debris that needs to be hauled out of the city. That equates to roughly 160,000 dumper truck loads. 'It's hard to get your head around that figure,' he said.

'And then demolitions will have to take place of structures that are maybe still standing but are too damaged to use again. The time that takes is weather dependent.

'Today we're getting three inches of snow, so that slows down work. We hope by May or June we are going to be in a good spot in the clean-up.'

Graves County Clerk Kim Gills surveyed her new makeshift office amid the expanse of a former store in a strip mall and said: 'We'll be OK here.'

Speaking as the city was hit with three inches of snow, Fire chief Jeremy Creason, a central figure in the disaster recovery program, laid out his vision for a new and better Mayfield from the rubble of the old

With snowfall delaying work, Creason believes the city will be in a 'good spot' in the clean-up operation 'by May or June'

Massive destruction and leftover debris are seen in Mayfield, KY, nearly one month after a series of deadly tornadoes struck on December 10, 2021

She said it could be up to five years before her department can return to a rebuilt courthouse.

'We've pulled together as a family, we've got each other. I'm very proud of this community,' she said. 'We plan on rebuilding and coming back stronger than ever. But it's still heart breaking, my heart hurts daily.'

The sudden snow storm shut down all the street food and necessities distribution centers that have sprung up around the city.

One is run by the church of Pastor Dr. John Dandridge and dishes out clothes, diapers, and toiletries as well as basic donated food.

His St James church is one of many that was smashed by the tornado. But that has made his congregation and church elders even more determined to help those less fortunate.

'People in this neighborhood need everything,' he said. 'Most of them are effectively homeless. Their houses have been devastated.

'With the assistance of the community and other volunteers, this city will be will be rebuilt. It takes time.

'We have been able to provide and sustain the community in the midst of their hardship and trauma  and the difficulty called life. This tornado has left us in bad shape but there is still life because people are still living. And life goes on.'

Of the 600 made homeless, most are now living in lodgings at various state parks following the closure of emergency shelters in the city. About 120 people are currently in Kenlake State Park accommodation.

Karen Dowdy, 60, lost her apartment, which was in a block of seven others on North 5th Street near downtown.

Born and bred in Mayfield, she cuddled her dog Pepe as she told DailyMail.com: 'I am so pleased to be here. People have been great to us.

'We have got choices to go anywhere I guess, the authorities are trying to help us. But I am lucky to be alive. Everybody in our apartment complex walked out. I rushed to the bathroom and crouched down in the tub. That's how I lived through it.'

More than 13,000 people in Kentucky have applied to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for assistance.

About 10,700 have been referred for its individuals and households program, FEMA spokesperson Deanna Frazier told DailyMail.com.

'They are up for consideration for grant money. We have approved $8.8million going to individuals and families who were disaster survivors and that is going directly into their pockets to help them recover. It is financial assistance and it is grant money, so they don't have to pay it back.'

Private money is also helping out, on a wider scale.

Pastor Derrick Holloman, of High Point Baptist Church, revealed he receives constant calls from out-of-state benefactors offering to write large checks.

'I can assure you there have been millions of dollars donated by private individuals,' he said. 'I talked to a gentleman last Thursday. I don't even know him. He sent $15,000.

'Now I am trying to get a committee together to disperse these funds in the next three or four months.'

On the far reaches of the most devastated zone, Jackie Canter, 47, sifts through debris in the front yard of a partially-damaged home in a residential area.

All around, other houses have roofs missing or the fronts smashed in. But this house has escaped the very worst and is just about habitable.

However Jackie does not live there. It is the home of a friend who feels overwhelmed and Jackie is helping her out.

As she picks up a sodden carpet to see if it is salvageable, she tells us: 'This is nothing special, we're all helping each other out. It's what we do around here.'
This is the moment former Labour Cabinet minister Peter Mandelson was pictured with Jeffrey Epstein in his Paris home a year after the billionaire financier had been charged with sex crimes.

The previously unseen photograph, which has been published by The Sun, shows Tony Blair's former spin chief with Epstein as he blows out candles on a birthday cake.

The photo was reportedly taken inside Epstein's apartment in Paris's Avenue Foch months after Epstein had been formally charged with soliciting a woman for prostitution in August 2006.

Whilst police at that point had uncovered evidence he had abused underage girls, a US grand jury refused to indict Epstein on charges of sexual relations with minors.

He eventually pleaded guilty to procuring a child for prostitution in 2008 - after he was pictured with Lord Mandelson.

However, before the image was taken, news articles had alleged that the tycoon had engaged in sex acts with minors.

There is no suggestion that Lord Mandelson was aware of the allegations about Epstein at the time the image was taken.

Pictured: This is the moment ex Labour Cabinet minister Peter Mandelson was pictured with Jeffrey Epstein in his Paris home a year after the billionaire had been charged with sex crimes

Former Labour Cabinet minister Peter Mandelson was pictured with Epstein in Paris home

The previously unseen photograph, which has been published by The Sun, shows Tony Blair's former spin chief at a party for the convicted paedophile (Epstein pictured above in 2005)

A source told The Sun: 'This demonstrates how astonishingly close Peter Mandelson was to Jeffrey Epstein, even as his crimes were being exposed.

'Peter undoubtedly has questions to answer over this.'

Lord Mandelson is seen in the photograph with a glass of wine in front of him. He is wearing a partially unbuttoned shirt.

Meanwhile, the photograph also shows Epstein blowing out candles on a large cake held by a staff member.

Lord Mandelson has been approached for comment by MailOnline.

Lord Mandelson is seen in The Sun's image smiling alongside Epstein as he watched him blow out candles on a large birthday cake at his apartment (pictured) in Paris's Avenue Foch

At the time, he was the European Commissioner for Trade and went on to serve as Business Secretary in Gordon Brown's government.

The politician had been introduced to Epstein by Ghislaine Maxwell, who also introduced Prince Andrew to the the billionaire financier.

Maxwell was found guilty last month of trafficking young girls to Epstein for him to abuse.

In 2011, after Epstein had been convicted of child sex charges, it emerged that Lord Mandelson featured in the financier's 'little black book' - a contacts file of powerful figures from the worlds of royalty, politics, business and celebrity.

Prince Andrew's accuser Virginia Roberts claimed to have remembered seeing Lord Mandelson at the financier's town house in New York.

Prince Andrew and Lord Mandelson also previously worked together, when the Duke was a special representative for trade and investment. Above: The pair in 2007

Andrew and Lord Mandelson also previously worked together, when the Duke was a special representative for trade and investment.

In 2019, an acquaintance of Lord Mandelson said he had met Epstein on 'nor more than five or six occasions'.

Lord Mandelson stepped down as a Member of Parliament in 2004 after twice resigning from the New Labour government, including following a financial sleaze probe.
A teenage girl took her own life after replying to one final message from bullies who were sending 'relentless' abusive messages on social media.

Megan Evans, 14, was found dead at Milford Haven home in Pembrokeshire after enduring a barrage of online abuse which she had kept hidden from her parents.

The schoolgirl received threats and abusive messages on Snapchat including one fateful final message before she took her own life.

Before her death in February 2017, Megan sent one final message to a bully who said 'why don't you hang yourself' to which Megan replied 'OK'.

Now, five years after her death, her mother Nicola Harteveld said she feels it was that final message that 'did tip the scales'.

Speaking to Wales Online, Nicola said she did not know the signs to look out for that may indicate a child is struggling.

Schoolgirl Megan Evans (pictured) took her own life after replying to one final message from bullies who were sending 'relentless' abusive messages on social media, her mother revealed

Megan's mother Nicola Harteveld (pictured on ITV's This Morning in 2017) is speaking out in a bid to raise awareness about which signs may indicate a child is struggling with cyber bullying

She said: 'I can see things blindingly obvious now that I didn't have a clue back then.

'I was completely naive about it, that I always thought that somebody with a mental health problem, you could visibly see it. If your kids were struggling, they'd be in their room, wearing black, listening to dark music - that was my stupid perception of it back then.

'My bright, bubbly Meg, if she came to me and said she had an issue, I'd say: "Meg get a grip, don't be so daft, just deal with it".

Pictured: Megan Evans who died in February 2017

'That's what I would've probably said and I can openly say that, which is why I want to speak out. I was so wrong, mental health does not look like how I thought it did.'

In the months after her death in February 2018, Nicola dedicated her time to raising awareness about the dangers and impact of cyber bullying.

She appeared on ITV's This Morning and spoke with Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby about what had happened to Megan.

Speaking at the time, she said: 'Be careful what you say, words can't be taken back.

'They may seem trivial or may be said in anger or jest, but they can't be taken back.

'You don't know how that person will take it so be mindful of someone else's situation.

'I don't want her death to be in vain. I want to raise awareness to parents to keep an eye out for the signs. I just had no idea.'

Thinking back now, Nicola says she now 'sees the signs' and would 'one million per cent' do things differently.

She told Wales Online: 'She was sleeping a lot in the day because she was being kept awake at night by these messages, but I didn't see that then, " she said.

'The secrecy with her phone - she would literally not let her phone from her hands, and I would think that was a bit weird now, but then, not a clue.'
Residents in an upmarket neighbourhood complain a new 17-patron wine bar because they say it will 'diminish their quality of life'.

Paddington, in Sydney's eastern suburbs, is famous for its small suburban pubs that weave into the fabric of the neighbourhood and line its many narrow laneways.

However, the proposal for a new small bar on William Street triggered outcry from some locals who claimed it would cause too much noise, foot traffic, and drunken visitors.

Residents of Paddington in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs believe the introduction of an intimate new wine bar would 'diminish their quality of life'

'Our community is in one of the most densely concentrated areas for licensed venues in Sydney,' one Paddington resident told the Sydney Morning Herald.

'I believe we have reached a tipping point where anymore, especially one sited within a residential area would diminish our quality of life.'

The commotion has been caused by designs put forth by a local entrepreneur to take his online business into the area.

Elliot Scali, who runs NOTWASTED, an online organic wine store, hopes to convert a fashion store on William Street into a tiny drinking hole for 17 customers with three staff.

Hundreds gather outside Paddington's Royal Hotel to play Two-Up on Anzac Day

Mr Scali said he had no ambition to create a 'fully fledged bar', but instead it would offer an intimate setting for wine drinkers.

'We will be serving snacks only with a focus on provenance - like the wines. There will be no incentive for people to have more than a glass at a time. This is a very manageable number of people, it will be a light-touch and intimate feel,' he said.

He hopes to open the bar on William Street, in between two popular pubs; The London and the Paddington Inn, which are two of the most popular in the Eastern Suburbs.

Residents are concerned the wine bar would exacerbate the behaviour they believe is polluting the charming neighbourhood.

'I found a hotel menu in the laneway against plants at my back fence. I lifted it to find soiled toilet paper and faeces. Another neighbour witnessed a man exit the hotel to urinate. I witnessed a lineup of six men urinating,' a concerned resident told the SMH.

Woollahra Council say residents have gotten used to having the area to themselves during the pandemic (Patrons celebrate winning a game of Two-Up on Anzac Day in Paddington)

There are 65 liquor licenses operational in Paddington. It also has significantly lower rates of alchool-related assault and domestic assault than the City of Sydney.

'It is an alien element, not appropriate, nor sympathetic to the residential nature of this street,' president of The Paddington Society Will Mrongovius said.

The group believe the hours put forward by Mr Scali, which would keep the wine bar open until 11pm, are unreasonable and excessive for the narrow, one-way street.

Craig Swift-McNair, general manager of Woollahra Municipal Council, where Paddington is situated, said he believed residents had grown used to having the area to themselves over the past two years of the pandemic and welcomed new establishments.

He said as Sydney began to reopen, there needed to be a balance between support for local businesses and how they may affect residents.
Australia's biggest supermarkets have lost almost half their distribution centre staff to Covid isolation, putting food supply chains in disarray.

Supermarket shelves have been stripped bare in recent weeks with supply interrupted and fewer nightfill staff to replenish what does come in.

More than a third of retail workers are off sick, prompting NSW and Queensland to exempt food and grocery workers from isolation rules to help ease the crisis.

Their action sparked calls for the rules to be overhauled nationwide, which Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday confirmed would happen.

Absentee levels are closer to 40 per cent in Woolworths distribution centres, according chief executive Brad Banducci.

Woolworths has been hit hard by the Covid crisis and strict rules for close contacts, plunging 40 per cent of its distribution staff into isolation

He assured customers there was plenty of stock but warned their shopping trolley may be filled with unfamiliar brands.

'There is enough product in our supply chain... it may not always be their favourite brand... but it's not a cause for panic,' he told the ABC on Monday.

'You can plan and plan and plan but when something like this happens, you can never plan enough.

'The speed of it has been material, and we're adjusting as we go.'

On Sunday, NSW and Queensland eased isolation requirements for food and grocery workers, allowing asymptomatic workers who are close contacts to continue working if they return negative tests.

Mr Banducci welcomed the changes to help keep food on tables and said staff will be required to take rapid antigen tests before returning to work.

'We certainly wouldn't be going from one extreme to the other,' he said.

He estimates supply chain challenges to continue another two to three weeks until the Omicron wave peaks.

Woolworths boss Brad Banducci has assured customers there's plenty of stock but have been hampered by supply chain issues as shelves being stripped bare across the country

The supermarket giant emailed Everyday Rewards members last Friday telling them one in five workers at distribution centres and one in 10 retail staff were absent.

Woolworths resisted calls to introduce buying limits and insisted the empty shelves were the the result of delivery delays and distribution staff shortages due to the Covid outbreak.

'NSW is currently the most affected, although we are seeing impacts across the whole country, and it's not yet clear how soon the system will come back into balance as we move through the Omicron wave,' Woolworths wrote in the email.

'We understand how frustrating it is when you can't find the product you're looking for and, together with our suppliers and supply chain partners, we're working hard to get all products back on shelf as quickly as we can.'

The Independent Food Distributors Australia is 'now calling on remaining states and territories to form a 'national agreement' after NSW and Queensland eased isolation requirements.

'If there isn't one consistent, national agreement across the country, and quickly, then food distribution warehouses will continue to be impacted by Covid, which will ultimately impact those in the community that rely on us,' chief executive Richard Forbes told The Australian.

'A food transport system involves trucks crossing state borders daily, so the only solution is for premiers and chief ministers to agree on one close contact isolation rule for all food workers, nationally.'

Queensland and NSW has eased isolation rules for food and grocery workers to help ease the critical shortage of products on shelves

The federal government insisted getting supply chains back up and running to make sure shelves were stocked is a priority.

'Some important work that has been led through national cabinet has seen the Queensland and NSW governments coming forward with changes to the isolation requirements for workers in that supply and logistics area,' Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar told Sky News on Monday.

'It means fewer workers will need to isolate. That will mean those resources will not be taken away and that will have a positive benefit.'

Deputy Prime Minister Baranaby Joyce told Sunrise: 'We have to make sure we don't have panic buying because that doesn't help. We will not run out of food. We are not running out of food.'

The Australian Retailers Association and Shop, Distributive, and Allied Employees teamed up to write a joint letter to Mr Morrison calling for retail workers to be allowed to return to the work the moment they tested negative.

NSW supermarkets have been hit the hardest by the supply chain crisis due to Covid impacts

They also called for access to rapid antigen tests as a priority for essential frontline retail and distribution centre workers.

'We urge you to consult with the states and territories to provide free, immediate and appropriate priority access to rapid antigen tests to essential, frontline retail workers in stores and distribution centres and associated measures to help reduce pressure across the sector,' the letter stated.

Up to one in five retail businesses reported up to 50 per cent of their staff were affected by the isolation requirements, according to ARA boss Paul Zahra.

'This level of impact is unprecedented. Whilst there is light at the end of the Omicron tunnel, governments and businesses need to work together closely to get through this peak period safely and ensure retailers can continue to service the community requirements,' Mr Zahra said.

'With workforce resources so constrained we are asking for a focus on directing testing resources where they are most needed to support essential services, and reducing reporting red-tape and administration processes as much as possible.'

'We are getting member feedback that the new employer reporting requirements from the states are onerous, overwhelming teams and causing much needed resources to be diverted into administration which is a roadblock to other safety and support issues.'

Brad Baducci estimates supply chain challenges to continue another 2-3 weeks as Australia's Omicron wave peaks (pictured, empty fresh produce section)

SDA national secretary Gerard Dwyer called for immediate priority access to free rapid antigen tests for retail staff and businesses.

'The safety of retail and warehouse workers is paramount as they work to guarantee access to food supplies essential products,' he said.

'This is a community health issue and Governments at all levels must support the health and safety of these essential workers as much to ensure families access to essentials as for the viability of the workforce.'

Mr Morrison called a meeting of the cabinet's national security committee, which discussed whether an overhaul of isolation rules should be extended to other critical industries such as aviation, essential services, child care and education.

Ports Australia also called for the supply crisis to be resolved and warned of a major pharmaceutical and fuels shortage if the issue isn't addressed within days
A ritzy San Francisco condo tower is now leaning 26 inches and is expected to tilt by a further three inches annually after work to stabilize it ended up worsening the issue.

Just months earlier, the Millennium Tower - a high-end condo tower that opened in the earthquake-prone city in 2009 and sold units for millions of dollars - was only leaning 22 inches.

However, the 58-story, 645-foot tall building is now leaning 26 inches after stabilization work to help stop the sinking was halted because the removal of earth to add stabilizing piles was worsening its slant.

Construction workers were also found to have delayed pouring in grout after removing soil from under the building, potentially worsening the issue further.

The building has already sunk 17 to 18 inches. It was only originally estimated to sink 5.5 inches by 2028, although engineers insist there is no danger of it collapsing, and residents can continue to live in its luxurious apartments.

Engineers paused the project to 'determine why increased foundation movement was occurring and how this could be mitigated.'

Structural engineer Ronald O. Hamburger has now suggested the building lose more than half of the support beams - known as piles - under the structure, going from 52 to 18 to 'minimize additional building settlement.' The holes for the support beams were originally determined to be too big in September and caused soil movement.

The lavish Millennium Tower in San Francisco has tilted an additional four inches since summer

It is now tilted 26 inches and has sunk up to 18. Structural engineer Ronald O. Hamburger has now suggested the building lose more than half of the support beams under the structure, going from 52 to 18 to 'minimize additional building settlement'

In a letter to the general manager of the building last month, engineers suggested two potential causes for the sinking: 'Vibration of the soils associated with pile installation activity, and unintentional removal of excessive soil as the piles were installed.'

Hamburger said the 18 support beams will anchor in the bedrock beneath the building.

It was later learned, during the stabilization work, construction teams had a one to four day gap between evacuating loose soil and inject grout to reduce soil collapse, NBC Bay Area discovered in an exclusive investigation.

The delay goes against protocol and could have had a significant impact on the tilt and the rapid settlement, according to NBC Bay Area.

However, a spokesperson for the Millennium Tower Homeowners Association said support beams won't stop the sinking until it is driven into bedrock, which is supposed to happen later this year, NBC reported.

Earlier this summer, stabilization work was halted after the holes for the support beams were determined to be too big and had cause soil movement

The San Francisco Department of Building Inspection has approved the 18-support-beam plan and said it was 'satisfied that the associated settlement and tilt remain within safe ranges and support [Hamburger's] proposal to continue the retrofit using the modified installation procedures.'

The Department will also inspect the beams.

Residents were first informed of the sinking in 2016, and launched a flurry of lawsuits, one of which resulted in the currently-paused remedial work.

The building's well-off residents include former San Francisco 49er Joe Montana, Giants outfielder Hunter Pence and venture capitalist Tom Perkins, who died shortly after selling his penthouse for $13million in 2016.

In 2016, the geotechnical engineer leading the investigation, Pat Shires, suspected the building could sink between 24 to 31 inches.

Chris Jeffries, a founding partner at Millennium Partners, blamed the tower's structural issues due to the adjacent Transbay Join Powers Authority transit hub in 2016.

That site also includes San Francisco's tallest building, the Salesforce Tower.

Jeffries said the soil was weakened when the transit hub dug a 60-foot hole to create a dry construction site and pumped out millions of gallons of groundwater that led to the soil weakening until the Millennium Tower.

The accelerated sinking has reportedly reduced to normal speed - equivalent to roughly an inch a year - since the construction stopped, Zaratin insisted in September.

The ritzy building is 58 stories high and is 645 feet tall

It comes with a pool, spa, in-house cinema, and a restaurant

The glossy, 58-story, all-glass building, located at 301 Mission Street, was completed in 2009 and is the tallest residential building in the city.

Equipped with a 75-foot indoor lap-pool, a health club and spa, in-house cinema, and a restaurant and wine bar run by celebrity chef Michael Mina, all 419 apartments were quickly filled with wealthy residents when it opened.

Penthouse suites sold for more than $10million, with the cheapest apartment selling for $1.6million.

But the ongoing structural concerns have spooked many residents who have decided to sell, despite assurances from city officials that the tower remains safe.

An estimated 100 condos have lost $320,000 in resell values due to the sinking.

Ongoing structural concerns have spooked many residents who have decided to sell, despite assurances from city officials that the tower remains safe

An estimated 100 condos have lost $320,000 in resell values due to the sinking

Residents of the high rise reported hearing creaking and popping sounds coming from the building in September 2018.

Former venture capitalist Tom Perkins bought his apartment for $9.4 million, and sold it for $13 million in 2016. But he spent $9 million on renovating it, and would likely have recouped more of that sum had the tower not suffered its well-publicized lean.

He died in June 2016.

A resident on the 38th floor later reported a window fissure.

The parking garage not only houses expensive cars, but floor-to-ceiling cracks. Stress gauges have been placed to measure the cracks.
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A giant 'sea dragon' discovered in the Midlands has been hailed as one of the greatest finds in British fossil history.

The ichthyosaur, spotted at the bottom of the Rutland Water, is the largest and most complete skeleton found in the UK, at 32 feet (10 metres) in length, with a skull weighing a ton.

The new specimen, which lived approximately 180million years ago, was found at the largest reservoir in England as conservationists drained water to improve the habitat for breeding birds.

Joe Davis, 48, from Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, who found the skeleton, said: 'My colleague thought the ridges we saw at the muddy bottom of the reservoir were probably just pipes.

'When the palaeontologists and our team uncovered the full skeleton and lifted it out using a tractor with a loader, the head was as large as me, and I am six-feet tall. It's a tremendous beast.'

Historic: A giant 'sea dragon' discovered in the Midlands by wildlife trust worker Joe Davis (pictured with the skeleton) has been hailed as one of the greatest finds in British fossil history

Palaeontologists spent 14 days excavating the discovery before it was removed in August

The first ichthyosaurs (pictured) were discovered by palaeontologist Mary Anning in the 19th century. They are often called 'sea dragons' because of the size of their teeth and eyes

TEMNODONTOSAURUSTRIGONODON STATS Order: Ichthyosauria Age: 180 million years old Provenance: Rutland Length: 33 feet (10 metres) Skull length: 6.6 feet (2 metres) Advertisement

The ichthyosaur is believed to be a species called Temnodontosaurus trigonodon. But if it is found to be a new species, it could be named after Mr Davis.

Dr Dean Lomax, a world expert on ichthyosaurs from the University of Manchester who spent 14 days excavating the fossil, hailed it as 'one of the greatest finds in British palaeontological history'.

He said: 'Despite the many ichthyosaur fossils found in Britain, it is remarkable to think that the Rutland ichthyosaur is the largest skeleton ever found in the UK.

'It is a truly unprecedented discovery and one of the greatest finds in British palaeontological history.'

Ichthyosaurs, which were marine reptiles, first appeared around 250 million years ago and went extinct 90 million years ago, varying in size from one to more than 25 metres in length and resembling dolphins in general body shape.

The remains were dug out by a team of expert palaeontologists from around the UK in August and September.

Two incomplete and much smaller ichthyosaurs were found during the initial construction of Rutland Water in the 1970s. However, the latest discovery is the first complete skeleton.

Pictured: team of experts working on the Ichthyosaur skeleton at Rutland Nature Reserve

The specimen (pictured) was unearthed at the Anglian Water-owned nature reserve back in February last year during the routine draining and re-landscaping of a lagoon

'The find has been absolutely fascinating and a real career highlight,' said Mr Davis. 'Its great to learn so much from the discovery and to think that this amazing creature was once swimming in seas above us' Pictured: the T. trigonodon fossil, showing the spine and flipper

'Now, once again, Rutland Water is a haven for wetland wildlife  albeit on a smaller scale!,' Mr Davis added. Pictured: a close-up of the T. trigonodon fossil, showing the bones of the flipper

The find (pictured) 'is a truly unprecedented discovery and one of the greatest finds in British palaeontological history,' Dr Lomax concluded

The story of the Rutland Sea Dragon will feature on the episode of BBC Two's ' Digging for Britain ' programme airing on Tuesday, January 11th. Pictured: a 3D model of the specimen

After being discovered in February last year the new specimen was removed in August so as not to disrupt the birds at the nature reserve.

Dr Mark Evans of the British Antarctic Survey said: 'I've been studying the Jurassic fossil reptiles of Rutland and Leicestershire for over 20 years.

'When I first saw the initial exposure of the specimen with Joe Davis I could tell that it was the largest ichthyosaur known from either county.

'However, it was only after our exploratory dig that we realised that it was practically complete to the tip of the tail.'

He added: 'It's a highly significant discovery both nationally and internationally but also of huge importance to the people of Rutland and the surrounding area.'

Nigel Larkin, a specialist palaeontological conservator, said: 'It's not often you are responsible for safely lifting a very important but very fragile fossil weighing that much.

The fossil  whose skull alone was 6.6 feet (2 metres) -long and weighed one tonne  was unearthed between AugustSeptember by palaeontologists led by Dean Lomax of the University of Manchester and Nigel Larkin of Reading University. Pictured: vertebrae

'It was an honour to lead the excavation, said Dr Lomax, who is an expert on ichthyosaurs and has described five new species in the course of his research

'Despite the many ichthyosaur fossils found in Britain, it is remarkable to think that the Rutland ichthyosaur is the largest skeleton ever found in the UK,' said Dr Lomax

'The block containing the massive 2-metre-long skull weighs just under a tonne, comprising the fossil, the Jurassic clay in which it lies, and the encasing plaster of Paris and wooden splints,' said palaeontologist Nigel Larkin

'It's not often you are responsible for safely lifting a very important but very fragile fossil weighing that much. It is a responsibility, but I love a challenge,' add Mr Larkin

This is not the first ichthyosaur specimen to have been found at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve  with two smaller, partially complete fossil skeletons having been found during the construction of the reservoir back in the 1970s. Pictured: the latest excavation at the site

'Rutland Water has a long list of previous, fascinating archaeological and palaeontological discoveries, but none more exciting than this,' said Anglian Water CEO Peter Simpson

'It is a responsibility, but I love a challenge. It was a very complex operation to uncover, record, and collect this important specimen safely.'

The find comes amid a flurry of interest in the reptiles, which are nicknamed sea dragons because of their large teeth and eyes.

The first ichthyosaurs were discovered by fossil hunter and palaeontologist Mary Anning in the early 19th century.

Anning uncovered the first ichthyosaur known to science aged 12 and was the subject of Ammonite, a 2020 film starring Kate Winslet.

The excavation will feature on BBC2's Digging For Britain tomorrow at 8pm.
A historic archive of Freemasonry amassed by the Nazis in their wartime purge could still reveal secrets about the society, researchers say.

From insight into women's Masonic lodges to the musical scores used in closed ceremonies, the trove - housed in an old university library in western Poland - has already shed light on a little known history.

But more work remains to be done to fully examine all the 80,000 items that date from the 17th century to the pre-World War II period.

Masonic collars are seen next to book shelves at the Poznan University Library, housing a historic archive of Freemasonry in Europe amassed by the Nazis

A square (top) and a compass, symbols of Freemasonry, are displayed during an exhibition at the Poznan University Library

A historic archive of Freemasonry amassed by the Nazis in their wartime purge could still reveal secrets about the society, researchers say

'It is one of the biggest Masonic archives in Europe,' said curator Iuliana Grazynska, who has just started working on dozens of boxes of papers within it that have not yet been properly categorised.

'It still holds mysteries,' she told AFP, of the collection which curators began going through decades ago and is held at the UAM library in the city of Poznan.

Initially tolerated by the Nazis, Freemasons became the subject of regime conspiracy theories in the 1930s, seen as liberal intellectuals whose secretive circles could become centres of opposition.

Lodges were broken up and their members imprisoned and killed both in Germany and elsewhere as Nazi troops advanced during WWII.

The trove offers insight into women's Masonic lodges to the musical scores used in closed ceremonies

A book bearing a stamp (bottom R) of the National Socialist regime is among the historic archive

A copy of the work 'History of the Military Order of the Templars: or Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem' by Pierre Dupuy, published in 1751

Collection curator Iuliana Grazynska has just started working on dozens of boxes of papers within it that have not yet been properly categorised

The collection was put together under the orders of top Nazi henchman and SS chief Heinrich Himmler and is composed of many smaller archives from European Masonic lodges that were seized by the Nazis.

It is seen by researchers as a precious repository of the history of the day-to-day activities of lodges across Europe, ranging from the menus for celebrations to educational texts.

Fine prints, copies of speeches and membership lists of Masonic lodges in Germany and beyond feature in the archive. Some documents still bear Nazi stamps.

'The Nazis hated the Freemasons,' Andrzej Karpowicz, who managed the collection for three decades, told AFP.

Books on Freemasonry are seen on a shelf of a historic archive of Freemasonry in Europe

A copy of the work 'La Franche-Maconnerie...' by Antoine Lenoir and published in 1814 is on display

The collection was put together under the orders of top Nazi henchman and SS chief Heinrich Himmler

Nazi ideology, he said, was inherently 'anti-Masonic' because of its anti-intellectual, anti-elite tendencies.

The library puts some select items on show, including the first edition of the earliest Masonic constitution written in 1723, six years after the first lodge was created in England.

'It's one of our proudest possessions,' Grazynska said.

The oldest documents in the collection are prints from the 17th century relating to the Rosicrucians - an esoteric spiritual movement seen as a precursor to the Freemasons whose symbol was a crucifix with a rose at its centre.

Fine prints, copies of speeches and membership lists of Masonic lodges in Germany and beyond feature in the archive

A copy of the work 'The Constitutions of the Free-Masons', the first Masonic constitution written by James Anderson and published in 1723, is on display

A watch with Masonic symbols is among the trove of documents and objects from the secret society

The collection is open to researchers and other visitors, who have included representatives of German Masonic lodges wanting to recover their pre-war history

During the war as Allied bombing intensified, the collection was moved from Germany for safekeeping and broken up into three parts - two were taken to what is now Poland and one to the Czech Republic.

The section left in the town of Slawa Slaska in Poland was seized by Polish authorities in 1945, while the others were taken by the Red Army.

In 1959, the Polish Masonic collection was formally established as an archive and curators began studying it - at that time, Freemasonry was banned in the country under Communism.

The collection is open to researchers and other visitors, who have included representatives of German Masonic lodges wanting to recover their pre-war history.

It is 'a mine of information in which you can dig at will,' said Karpowicz.
Its all change in the newly redrawn 1st Congressional District that now includes Williamsburg and York County as well as James City County, King William, New Kent and King and Queen counties. However, the shake-up may not change the districts representation in Washington, D.C.

Rob Wittman, the incumbent Republican who has represented the 1st Congressional District of Virginia since 2007, reaffirmed his intention to run again after the district was redrawn.

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District 1 now includes western Henrico County and western Chesterfield County. York County and the cities of Williamsburg and Poquoson have also been added to the new district.

District 1 has gained parts of Tidewater and the Richmond suburbs at the expense of some counties further north. Caroline, King George, Fauquier, Prince William, Spotsylvania, Stafford, and Fredericksburg are no longer in District 1. King William, New Kent and King and Queen counties remain in District 1.

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The Virginia Public Access Projects analysis of the new District 1 points to a solidly Republican district with populous Henrico and Chesterfield comprising 44.5% of the new district, based on the 2016 presidential election. The districts demographics are 71.9% white, 12.9% Black, 6.8% multiracial and 5.8% Asian.

Virginias 2nd Congressional District, represented by Elaine Luria, lost parts of the Virginia Peninsula including Williamsburg, Poquoson and York County and now includes more rural areas including southern Chesapeake, Suffolk and Isle of Wight County. Political commentators predicted a closer race in 2022 than four years ago.

Wittman reaffirmed his commitment to run again Nov. 8 in the redrawn 1st Congressional District.

While the recently approved congressional and legislative maps by the Supreme Court may change Virginias First District geographically, they do not change my commitment to the people of VA-01 and the entire Commonwealth of Virginia, he said in a statement.

Throughout my time in public office, I have had the unique opportunity to lead and listen to the concerns and challenges faced by members of our community. I look forward to continuing to find real solutions for my constituents in Virginias First District, and to introduce myself to and represent those who live in the areas that will become Virginias First District, Wittman said.

With the addition of Henrico County and Chesterfield County, I look forward to representing my childhood home. With the addition of Williamsburg, York, and Poquoson, I look forward to once again representing the great people of the Historic Triangle and the City of Poquoson. My commitment remains and will always remain first and foremost to the needs of my constituents in VA-01.

Conservative Virginia state Sen. Amanda Chase has abandoned her high-profile run for Congress after the redistricting, stating she has no intention of running against Wittman, according to The Hill.

Virginias new congressional map moved Chases current home from the 7th Congressional District to the 1st. Chase had previously vowed to challenge Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) in the 7th district. However, many of the Richmond suburbs are now in the 1st District while the 7th District now includes parts of Prince William County and the city of Fredericksburg.

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Chase said she would not challenge Wittman, a Republican representative who is doing a good job representing the people of their district, according to The Hill.

James City County remains in District 1. Jason Purse, James City Countys assistant county administrator, said, James City County is fully encompassed by Congressional District 1. There werent any major changes at that level for our citizens.

Some of the state representatives lines changed and were still evaluating what that means for our voting precincts. What was previously the 96th (Del. Amanda Battens district) picked up additional area and the 93rd (Del. Mike Mullins district) became a little smaller. Once we get the complete mapping set of information well be able to do a street level evaluation of all of the potential changes in greater detail.

The Supreme Court approved final redistricting maps put together by two court appointees called special masters. The process included extensive public comment on earlier draft maps.

Sean Trende and Bernard Grofman, the special masters, were nominated by each political party. The process also included public input in writing and via hearings before the court.

David Macaulay, davidmacaulayva@gmail.com
Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she has caught COVID - days after she was snapped partying maskless at a Miami drag brunch.

The Bronx Representative, 32, made the announcement on her official Twitter page Sunday night, sharing a statement on House of Representatives headed paper which said: 'Representative Ocasio-Cortez has received a positive test result for COVID-19.

'She is experiencing symptoms and is recovering at home. The Congresswoman received her booster shot this Fall, and encourages everyone to get their booster and follow all CDC guidance.'

AOC then added some of her own guidance in a follow-up tweet, writing: 'For information on what to do if you're exposed to COVID, test positive or want to schedule a test or vaccine in New York City -- see our round-up of CDC and NYC resources here,' before adding a link to a personal website.

The progressive representative revealed her diagnosis on her Twitter page Sunday night

News of AOC's diagnosis triggered online mockery, with one commentator saying AOC shouldn't have visited Florida, and another mocking the lawmaker's claim that conservatives angry about her trip to the Sunshine State were actually harboring a secret crush on her

It is unclear when or how AOC became infected.

Despite staunchly advocating for mask and vaccine mandates, AOC abandoned her own rhetoric last week during a trip to Miami, Florida, where she was spotted maskless at numerous venues.

Her vacation was dragged on Twitter by conservatives, including a Twitter account devoted to and endorsed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, which invited her to 'enjoy a taste of freedom' in the Sunshine State.

'Welcome to Florida, AOC! We hope you're enjoying a taste of freedom here in the Sunshine State thanks to @RonDeSantisFL's leadership,' the tweet, by the Team DeSantis account, read.

Ocasio-Cortez responded to photos and criticism online with a tweet saying: 'Hasnt Gov. DeSantis been inexplicably missing for like 2 weeks? If hes around, I would be happy to say hello. His social media team seems to have been posting old photos for weeks. In the meantime, perhaps I could help with local organizing. Folks are quite receptive here.'

It's not known where she caught the virus, although she was pictured partying maskless during a brunch event in South Beach, Miami, on January 2

News of her diagnosis sparked mockery online, with one reply to the Twitter announcement berating Ocasio-Cortez for taking the trip to Florida during a time when Covid cases reached a record high.

Another joked about AOC's assertion that anyone criticizing her for the rules-free trip actually harbored a crush on her, writing: 'The virus just wants to date you.'

But on January 2, AOC was pictured getting up close and personal with pals at a drag brunch at the Palace Bar on Miami's South Beach.

She was snapped cuddling maskless with Pose star Billy Porter, and basking in the attention of other attendees, who were evidently thrilled to be in the presence of the star lawmaker.

It is unclear if Porter was also infected, or exposed, and he has yet to comment in the wake of AOC's diagnosis.

Florida confirmed a record 150,251 Covid cases January 4, around the time of AOC's visit; its numbers have dropped markedly since, with 26,588 new cases reported Sunday.

It's not known where she caught the virus; 1,928 cases were confirmed Sunday in Washington, DC, while 81,388 tests came back positive in her home state of New York.

Her presence in Florida, a state that she had long criticized for its lax coronavirus restrictions during earlier waves of the pandemic appeared to irk some Republicans and conservative journalists who became tired of her using the southern state as an example of how not to do things.

AOC has tested positive for COVID days after she was pictured partying maskless in Miami with actor Billy Porter (pictured in animal print)

AOC and Porter hugged during the outdoor event - he has yet to comment on her diagnosis, and its unclear if the Pose star has himself been exposed or infected

'AOC is STILL lounging it up in Florida, in large crowds and maskless. This time at a Drag Queen bar in Miami. Rules for thee but not for me,' wrote right wing journalist Brendon Leslie.

'For those of you with zero sense of humor: the whole point of this post is to expose hypocrisy. We dont actually care shes maskless. We care she fear mongers about Florida but then has the audacity to vacation here,' he added.

'AOC was spotted partying in a bar maskless in the great free state of Florida. Absolute hypocrite,' tweeted Twitter account Libs of Tik Tok.

AOC's trip to the drag brunch thrilled attendees - but the lawmaker was accused of hypocrisy for backing draconian COVID rules, then jetting off to vacation in a state famed for having none

AOC was also snapped enjoying cocktails at a Miami sushi restaurant with boyfriend Riley Roberts, with Roberts' Birkenstocks sparking a subsequent war of words between the firebrand congresswoman and conservative commentators

The progressive congresswoman was blasted by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for backing draconian restrictions in New York, then coming to the Sunshine State and enjoying its lack of COVID-19 protocols.

Right-wing commentator Brendon Leslie took aim at AOC after news of the event emerged, and accused her of hypocrisy.

AOC's jaunt to Florida also saw her sip cocktails at an outdoor sushi restaurant with her boyfriend Riley Roberts.

Roberts was snapped wearing a pair of Birkenstocks with bare feet, prompting jokes from Republicans, and subsequent backlash from AOC who accused conservatives of being sexually frustrated.

Hitting back, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: 'If Republicans are mad they can't date me they can just say that instead of projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend's feet. Ya creepy weirdos.'
Chicago's public schools will remain closed for a fourth day on Monday after the city's teachers' union failed to reach an agreement with Mayor Lori Lightfoot on COVID safety protocols.

The announcement was made by Lightfoot on Twitter Sunday evening. She said: 'Out of fairness and consideration for parents who need to prepare, classes will be canceled again Monday.

'Although we have been negotiating hard throughout the day, there has not been sufficient progress for us to predict a return to class tomorrow.

'We will continue to negotiate through the night and will provide an update if we have made substantial progress'

Lightfoot's latest update struck a more considered tone than last week's condemnation of teachers, which saw her brand their behavior 'unlawful.'

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Monday's school closures on her Twitter account Sunday night

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has clashed with teachers' union boss Jesse Sharkey, right, over ongoing school closures - but struck a more moderate tone on Sunday evening

The teachers' union justified its case in a series of tweets sent earlier on Sunday

Union bosses also cited soaring cases among teachers to justify the ongoing closures

She also put teachers who didn't show up at schools on no-pay status. The closures have infuriated the Windy City's working parents, who've been forced to find childcare at short notice.

It has also led to fresh warnings that those hardest hit by remote learning are the poorest children, who are less likely to have the required equipment, steady internet access, and a parent or carer to help when they need it.

Teachers in Chicago - the United States' third-largest school district - are currently at war with Lightfoot over demands for the entire district to close if positive COVID tests reach a certain, currently undecided, metric.

City officials say such closures should be decided on a school-by-school basis. The union also wants to delay the start of in-person classes until January 18, and for students to have to opt-out of regular COVID tests, rather than opt-in, as they do now.

This official City of Chicago graphic explains the Windy City's COVID latest numbers

Protesters who support school closures in Chicago are pictured close to Chicago City Hall on January 5

Another pro-closure protester was snapped driving a car around Chicago on January 5 with a sign saying 'Until cases decline, class is online!'

The Chicago Teachers Union wants the option to revert to districtwide remote instruction, and most members have refused to teach in-person until there's an agreement, or the latest COVID-19 spike subsides.

But Chicago leaders reject districtwide remote learning, saying it's detrimental to students and schools are safe. Instead, Chicago opted to cancel classes as a whole two days after students returned from winter break.

Chicago faces the same pandemic issues as other districts nationwide, with more reverting to remote learning as infections soar and staff members are sidelined.

Like all other large cities in the US, Chicago has been hit by a recent surge of COVID cases, blamed on the super-infectious Omicron variant.

A total of 5,260 new cases were recorded across the city on Friday, the most recent data available, with just over one in five COVID tests coming back positive.

Meanwhile, 90 people were in hospital on Friday - a 16 per cent drop on the week before - and 11 people died of COVID on the same day.

Vaccination rates of people who have had at least one dose of COVID vaccine now sit at 72.3 per cent.

But the situation in union-friendly Chicago has been amplified in a labor dispute that's familiar to families in the mostly low-income black and Latino district who have seen disruptions during a similar safety protocol fight last year, a 2019 strike and a one-day work stoppage in 2016.

The announcement for the roughly 350,000-student district came as the principals of some schools had already notified families their schools would be closed for instruction Monday because of staffing shortages.

The tone of Lightfoot and Martinez's Sunday evening statement suggested more progress than a day earlier when shortly after the union made its latest offer public, they said, 'CTU leadership, youre not listening' and vowed not to 'relent.'

The offer she rejected included teachers reporting to schools Monday to distribute laptops for remote learning to temporarily start Wednesday. Both sides have filed complaints to a state labor board.

Union leaders have accused Lightfoot of bullying, saying they agree that in-person instruction is better, but the pandemic is forcing difficult decisions. Attendance was down ahead of the cancelations due students and teachers in isolation from possible exposure to the virus and families opting to keep children home voluntarily.

'Educators are not the enemy Mayor Lightfoot wants them to be,' the union said in a statement Sunday, adding that the desire to be in the classroom 'must be balanced by ensuring those classrooms are safe, healthy and well-resourced, with the proper mitigation necessary to reduce the spread of COVID-19.'

Union leaders did not immediately have a response after the district's Sunday evening cancelation.

There appeared to be some headway over the weekend toward a deal.

The district, which deems the fight an 'illegal walkout,' said late Saturday it will allow more incentives for substitute teachers, provide KN95 masks for all teachers and students, and that Illinois will provide about 350,000 antigen tests.

FILE - Mick Leichenko, center, entertains his friends Jack and Will Marrion in his Chicago home, Jan. 6, 2022. Talks between Chicago school leaders and the teachers union resumed Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022 amid a standoff over remote learning and other COVID-19 safety measures. The situation looms over the start of a second week of school after three days of canceled classes in the nation's third-largest district. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, file)

But both sides remained at odds on key issues including COVID-19 metrics that will lead to individual school closures and compensation. The district said it won't pay teachers failing to report to schools, even if they tried to log into remote teaching systems. The union doesn't want any of its roughly 25,000 members to be disciplined or lose pay.

District leaders had said some schools, where enough staff showed up, may offer instruction Monday even without an agreement; all buildings have remained open for meal pickup. However, only a handful of principals anticipated having staff to open.

Chicago Teachers' Union also retweeted this tweet mocking their testy relationship with Mayor Lightfoot

Another retweet came from a teacher who insisted he and his colleagues wanted to get back into the classroom

School leaders have touted a $100 million safety plan, which includes air purifiers in each classroom. Also, roughly 91% of staff are vaccinated and masks are required indoors.

Since the start of the academic year, some individual classrooms have temporarily switched to remote instruction when there are infections. But in rejecting a widescale return to remote learning, city health officials argue most students directed to quarantine because of possible classroom exposure dont get COVID-19. The district is piloting a 'test to stay' program to cut isolation times.

The union argues that the measures fall short, especially considering the omicron-fueled surge that has upended the return to work and class. It has also criticized the district for not enrolling enough students in a testing program and an unreliable database of COVID-19 infections.

Several district families, represented by the conservative Liberty Justice Center in Chicago, filed a lawsuit in Cook County over the closures last week, while more than 5,000 others have signed a petition urging a return to in-person instruction.
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First the Victoria Sponge, then Coronation chicken  and now the Queen's Platinum Pudding.

Taking inspiration from dishes created to mark previous royal events, Buckingham Palace today announces a nationwide baking competition to find a dessert fit for the Queen to mark her historic jubilee.

Launched with Fortnum and Mason and The Big Jubilee Lunch, the contest will be open to all UK residents aged eight and over.

The winner will be chosen by a expert judging panel including Dame Mary Berry, Masterchef's Monica Galetti and Buckingham Palace's head chef Mark Flanagan.

They are looking for an 'inventive' dish that can be enjoyed by everyone  and it will be dedicated to the Queen to celebrate her 70 years of service.

Recipes for the Queen's Platinum Pudding Competition will be judged by an expert panel including Dame Mary Berry

The Queen is pictured at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down science park on October 15, 2020

Five finalists will be invited to Fortnum's store in London's Piccadilly to create their masterpieces for the judges and the winner will be crowned the creator of the Platinum Pudding.

The recipe will be made available for communities to share at an estimated 200,000 Big Jubilee Lunch street parties taking place over the four-day celebratory weekend in June.

The Queen's Platinum Jubilee Celebrations Programme in full Here is a list of all of the events taking place for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee: - January 10: Platinum Pudding Competition The competition is inviting members of the public to create a dish to dedicate to the Queen's reign. - May 12-15: Platinum Jubilee Celebration More than 500 horses and 1,000 performers will take part in a 90-minute show taking the Windsor Castle audience through history right from Elizabeth I to present day. Bank Holiday: June 2: Queen's Birthday Parade (Trooping the Colour) The colour will be trooped on Horse Guards Parade by the 1st Battalion, Irish Guards and over 1,200 officers and soldiers from the Household Division who will put on a display. Sandringham and Balmoral will also be open for residents and visitors to enjoy the celebrations across the Bank Holiday. Platinum Jubilee Beacons The UK will join the Channel Islands, Isle of Man and UK Overseas Territories to light a beacon to mark the Jubilee. The Principal Beacon will also be lit in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace. June 3: Service of Thanksgiving The Service of Thanksgiving for the Queen's reign will be held at St Paul's Cathedral. June 4: Platinum Party at the Palace Some of the world's greatest entertainers are billed to perform at the concert at Buckingham Palace to celebrate the most significant moments from the Queen's reign. June 5: Big Jubilee Lunch Street parties are being planned across the UK and neighbours are expected to join together for food and fun to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee. It will mark the end of the Bank Holiday. Platinum Jubilee Pageant Performers will come together in London to tell the story of the Queen's reign through a pageant that will include a 'River of Hope' section made up of 200 silk flags that will make its way through The Mall, appearing like a moving river. July: The Royal Collection Trust Three displays marking the Queen's accession to the throne, the Coronation and Jubilees will be put on at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse. Advertisement

It comes as details have emerged of other plans to celebrate the monarch's milestone, including a special Trooping the Colour, a thanksgiving service, the BBC's Platinum Party at the Palace, a show at Windsor Castle and a series of special exhibitions at royal residences.

There will also be a Platinum Jubilee Pageant held in London.

Mr Flanagan recommended that entrants for the pudding competition keep their recipes simple.

He added they should think 'subtle and elegant rather than fussy and over complicated', with flavours that 'sing'.

Dame Mary said she was 'thrilled' to judge a competition to 'make the perfect pudding for the Queen'.

The deadline for entries is February 4, after which they will be judged by a panel of award-winning home bakers, professional chefs, authors, historians and patissiers, who will choose their five favourites to go through to the final round.

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries claimed the competition was a 'wonderful' way to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee. 'I know it will inspire people of all ages across the UK to get baking,' she added.

Tom Athron, chief executive of Fortnum and Mason, said: 'We're proud to be launching the Platinum Pudding competition to celebrate and say thank you for the Queen's incredible 70 years of service.

'We hope that everyone will roll their sleeves up and get involved from individuals, families and community groups to care homes, schools and colleges.'

The Big Jubilee Lunch will be the UK's biggest community celebration, bringing people together to share 'friendship, food and fun', with an estimated twelve million people taking part over the four-day bank holiday weekend of June 2 to 5.

Executive director Peter Stewart said: 'There are more reasons than ever to get together this year and although things may be difficult right now, we're really excited to be bringing the spirit of the Jubilee into every neighbourhood with The Big Jubilee Lunch this June.

'We've had some practice in coming together safely over the past two years, so let's forge ahead and start planning some fun in and bring some Big Jubilee Lunch cheer to the UK.

'Together we can create a piece of history that everyone can feel part of.'

Other official activities over the Jubilee weekend include a special Trooping The Colour, tickets for which are available by ballot at qbp.army.mod.uk; a service of thanksgiving; the BBC Platinum Party at the Palace, for which tickets will be available by ballot next month; Platinum Jubilee beacons being lit across the country, including at Buckingham Palace; and a series of special exhibitions at royal residences featuring portraits of the Queen and some of her most famous outfits and jewellery.

The Queen in October at the start of the planting season for the Queen's Green Canopy, part of the Platinum Jubilee initiative

The Queen and Prince Charles plant a tree at Balmoral Cricket Pavilion to mark the start of the planting season last October

The Platinum Jubilee Pageant, which will see thousands of performers, dancers, musicians and military personnel unite to tell the story of the Queen's 70-year reign is also asking for schools across the country to get involved by helping to design silk banners that will process down The Mall in London.

Primary and secondary schools are being invited to enter designs incorporating their hopes and aspirations for the planet over the next 70 years. Further details can be obtained at www.riverofhope.co.uk.

There will also be a Platinum Jubilee Celebration during the Royal Windsor Horse Show and events to mark the Queen's Green Canopy, which has already seen more than 60,000 trees planted to create a living and, hopefully, everlasting tribute to the monarch.

Further details on the Platinum Pudding competition can be found by clicking here
Half of all patients being treated in NSW ICUs are unvaccinated with a 30-year-old who refused a jab among the latest deaths.

ICU rates have slowly been increasing across the state with 159 reported on Monday, up from 151 recorded on Sunday, 145 on Saturday and 134 on Friday.

Daily death rates have followed suit with the state reporting a record 18 deaths - an increase from the 16 and nine reported on the previous two days.

Half of all patients being treated in NSW ICUs are unvaccinated with a 30-year-old anti-vaxxer among the latest deaths

ICU rates have slowly been increasing across the state with 159 reported on Monday, up from 151 recorded on Sunday, 145 on Saturday and 134 on Friday (pictured, patient at St Vincent's Hospital in July)

ICU rates have slowly been increasing across the state with 159 reported on Monday, up from 151 recorded on Sunday, 145 on Saturday and 134 on Friday

NSW chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant confirmed the man in his 30s who recently died had been unvaccinated.

'The gentlemen in his 30s was not vaccinated,' she said at a press conference on Monday.

'And in terms of underlying health conditions, I really haven't been briefed adequately, and not all health conditions you would expect to lead to that.'

Dr Chant reminded residents the vaccine was the best protection against serious illness and death caused by the virus.

'We know that with Omicron having that booster is going to be really critical,' she said.

'And I do want to urge everyone particularly elderly or those with chronic underlying health conditions to get into the boosters.

'I'm also asking the community to be understanding if GPs are prioritising some of those most at risk patients or at risk children ahead of others.

'And if the community could just understand that at this time it is a greater benefit if we can get all of those particular members of the community at risk boosted.'

Premier Dominic Perrottet backed up Dr Chant and urged residents to get jabbed.

'The numbers don't lie,' he said. 'The best way of staying safe, keeping safe, is getting boosted.

Dr Chant reminded residents the vaccine was the best protection against serious illness and death caused by the virus

There were also 20,293 new infections reported from 84,333 conventional PCR lab tests

'That's been the strength in our state over the course of over the last six months we never believed we will get to the strong position but we are here because of the efforts and sacrifices people have made right across NSW.'

The number of people hospitalised with the virus in NSW has increased by 103, to 2030.

There were also 20,293 new infections reported from 84,333 conventional PCR lab tests. There is no way to report rapid test results in NSW yet, with the system due to come online mid-week, at which point case numbers are expected to surge again.

Mr Perrottet on Sunday confirmed a further 50 million at-home rapid test kits have been purchased by the state in addition to the 50 million already held in reserve.

The newly-purchased rapid tests would be a "core part" in getting kids back to school at the end of the month, he said.

While just over 78 per cent of children aged 12 to 15 in NSW have been fully vaccinated, primary school-aged children - those between five and 11 - only became eligible for their first dose on Monday.
The shocking moment a wanted man slams his car into a police vehicle in a desperate attempt to escape an underground carpark has left viewers perplexed.

The video was uploaded by a witness of the bizarre collision to TikTok on Sunday with the caption: 'Nothing worse than being blocked in'.

The driver is seen shooting out of a space in the underground lot and brutally colliding with the police car, sending the vehicle spinning to the left.

The driver is seen shooting out of a space in the underground lot and brutally colliding with the police car, sending the vehicle spinning to the left (pictured)

The white Holden Statesman reverses into the same spot before hurtling forwards again and fleeing the carpark with a screech of its tyres.

A shocked bystander who watched the bizarre encounter unfold is seen putting a helpless arm out towards the car as it races past him.

The footage has received over 300,000 views since it was uploaded on Sunday with social media users taking to the comments to share their thoughts.

'That's gonna make for a fun court hearing,' one suggested.

'Well this person won't be driving for a while,' a second wrote.

'Meanwhile in Australian shopping centres,' a third joked.

A NSW Police spokesperson said police were called after the driver of the car was seen speeding down David Street in Albury, five hours southwest of Sydney.

The white Holden Statesman reverses into the same spot before hurtling forwards again and fleeing the carpark with a screech of its tyres (pictured)

A senior constable followed the car into an underground carpark and stopped in front of the Holden, which had three passengers inside.

'The Holden driver repeatedly rammed the police vehicle until there was room to exit the carpark and drove from the scene,' the spokesperson said.

'The 30-year-old male senior constable was uninjured. The police vehicle sustained significant damage and was towed from the scene.'

Police launched an extensive search of the area and found the Holden abandoned on a street in Wodonga in Victoria, a ten-minute drive from Albury's city centre.

The car is due to undergo forensic examination with officers from the Murray River Police District urging anyone with dashcam footage to come forward.
Scott Morrison has confirmed supermarket shelf stackers who were a close contact with a Covid-positive case would be allowed back to work if they were asymptomatic.

The Prime Minister stressed Coles and Woolworths checkout staff who served customers would not be back at work before self isolating.

But with food on short supply at supermarkets, Mr Morrison said workers in essential industries who didn't serve customers would be allowed back at work, including night-time shelf stackers.

'Not customer facing, I should note on the food side,' he said.

'If we're talking about Coles and Woolies, we're not talking about people who are working on checkouts.

'Anyone who's customer facing, they are not doing that, but those who are driving trucks to deliver the food, those who are stacking the shelves at night, those who are at the distribution centre, those who are in the abattoirs.'

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Scott Morrison has confirmed supermarket shelf stackers who tested positive to Covid will be allowed back to work if they are asymptomatic

The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee has endorsed a new set of arrangements covering staff in critical supply chains, including food processing, food production and distribution.

'You can shut everything but there will be no food on the shelves,' Mr Morrison said.

'The issue goes to workplaces being eroded.

'What that involves is asymptomatic, close contacts being able to go to work in those sectors.

'We're very focused on the non-customer-facing roles in the critical supply chains.'

National cabinet, meeting again on Thursday, is now considering a series of recommendations, which could be extended to cover transport and aviation.

Mr Morrison said lockdowns were the alternative to letting asymptomatic workers back on the job in essential industries.

'You push through, you don't lock down,' he said.

The Prime Minister made the declaration after Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci revealed absentee levels at Australia's biggest supermarket chain were at 40 per cent.

Major employers are requiring staff to take routine rapid antigen tests.

The Prime Minister stressed Coles and Woolworths checkout staff who served customers would not be back at work before self isolating. But with food on short supply at supermarkets, Mr Morrison said workers in essential industries who didn't serve customers would be allowed back at work, including night-time shelf stackers (pictured is a Woolworths baker at Marrickville in Sydney's inner west loaded hot cross buns into an oven)

Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly said a seven-day isolate would remain for those who tested positive but this was under review 'according to circumstances'.

'We've certainly looked at all options of ways we can, in a risk-based approach, go forward with this to increase the availability of the workforce in these critical areas,' he said.

'For asymptomatic people, if they are negative even if they are close contacts, they can come back to work and we're encouraging them to do so.'

On Sunday, New South Wales and Queensland eased isolation requirements for food and grocery workers, allowing asymptomatic workers who are close contacts to continue working if they returned negative tests.

The Prime Minister made the declaration after Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci revealed absentee levels at Australia's biggest supermarket chain were at 40 per cent (pictured are empty boxes in the fruit and vegetable section of a Sydney Woolworths)

National cabinet at the end of December agreed to change the definition of close contact to mean someone who spent four hours or more with someone in a residential or aged care setting.

New daily Omicron cases in most states in the thousands each day, and Australians are now routinely being notified on state government QR code check-in apps that they had been in the same place as a Covid-positive person, from supermarkets to cafes.

Mr Morrison said it was 'a bit too early to tell' when asked about the effects on the economy as the high numbers of Covid cases 'had a dampening impact on consumer demand'.

'As the case numbers continue to rise, the volume of cases will of course have an inevitable impact on the workforce so we're looking to maximise those who can remain in the workforce,' he said.

'Anyone who is symptomatic or has Covid - they are not going into work.'
Michael Gove will today warn firms responsible for building unsafe homes that the Government is 'coming for you'  as he unveils measures to tackle the cladding scandal.

The Housing Secretary will confirm plans for a 4 billion fund to remove dangerous cladding from tower blocks in the wake of the Grenfell fire.

The cash, revealed in Saturday's Daily Mail, will help tens of thousands facing huge repair bills through no fault of their own.

The Housing Secretary will confirm plans for a 4 billion fund to remove dangerous cladding from tower blocks in the wake of the Grenfell fire (file image)

Mr Gove will also warn rogue developers they will be expected to foot the bill for the repairs.

In a speech to MPs today, he will say: 'I am putting them on notice. If you mis-sold dangerous products like cladding or insulation, if you cut corners to save cash as you developed or refurbished homes, we are coming for you.'

A leaked letter from Treasury chief secretary Simon Clarke authorises Mr Gove to use a 'high-level 'threat' of tax or legal solutions' to get developers to pay up.

Cladding tragedy: The Grenfell Tower blaze in 2017 killed 72

The move has been welcomed by campaigners for those facing huge bills for repairs, many of whom are unable to move home because banks won't offer mortgages against their properties.

Developers will be barred by law from clawing back the money via inflated service charges.

And leaseholders will be granted the right to sue builders over defective flats for up to 30 years  a five-fold rise in the current six-year limit.

However, campaigners have criticised an apparent loophole in the scheme which means it will cover only remedial work relating to cladding, rather than all fire safety work, such as repairing faulty firebreaks or dangerous balconies.

Controversial 'planning-free zones' dropped Planning reforms that would have stopped councils from blocking certain developments have been dropped. The controversial proposed 'development zones', in which there would have been a presumption in favour of planning permission regardless of local objections, had been opposed by dozens of Tory MPs. In a submission to a House of Lords inquiry, Michael Gove's Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said the new planning system would have 'effective local engagement at its heart'. And it specifically ruled out planning permission being granted automatically. It's the latest stage in Boris Johnson's retreat over planning, after he had proposed a 'once in a generation' shake-up of the system. Advertisement

Rachel Loftus, of End Our Cladding Scandal, said: 'You have to do all of what the experts say is required, but the Government is saying there is funding for only some of them.'

A Whitehall source said Mr Gove was in discussions with banks and insurers about ensuring that post-Grenfell repair bills are 'proportionate' and not inflated by demands to fix other building problems that do not directly affect safety.

The new scheme will directly help those living in buildings under 18 metres (59ft) who have missed out on previous grants and been told to take out huge loans to fund repairs.

Those living in properties above 18m are already able to access government grants from a 5 billion Building Safety Fund.

Mr Gove has employed forensic accountants to track down those responsible for fire-risk flats.

A dossier compiled by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities found that companies involved in the Grenfell fire have gone on to make huge profits since the June 2017 disaster which claimed 72 lives.

It found that 12 firms connected to the fire have since made pre-tax profits of 6.7 billion, paid out dividends of 3.1 billion and awarded pay packages and bonuses to directors worth 335 million.

Mr Gove is expected to say that those who knowingly put lives at risk should be 'held to account'.
A Mexican judge has issued seven arrest warrants related to a controversial, decade-old cross border arms trafficking sting that involved the country's most notorious drug lord and an ex-security minister.

The Office of the Attorney General's announced Sunday that Sinaloa Cartel co-founder Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, former top cop Genaro Garcia Luna and former federal police intelligence official Luis Cardenas are linked to the 'Fast and Furious' gun running scandal from 2009 to 2011.

The names of the four other individuals have not been released. DailyMail.com reached out to the Office of the Attorney General for comment.

El Chapo and Garcia Luna are currently in custody in the United States and Cardenas is behind bars in Mexico.

Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, who is serving a life sentence in the United States, is being linked to the 'Fast and Furious' weapons smuggling scheme which saw more than 2,000 firearms ferried from the U.S. into Mexico between 2009 and 2011

Mexico's former Security Minister Genaro Garcia Luna is among seven individuals for whom arrest warrants were issued by a Mexican judge on Sunday in connection to their alleged participation in the 'Fast and Furious' weapons smuggling scandal in which agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives permitted criminals to buy guns. The plot involved the tracking of the weapons once they were ferried over the Mexico-United States border and leading authorities to drug cartel leaders.

While it's unknown if the Mexican government will be seeking the extradition of El Chapo, who is serving a life sentence in a U.S. federal prison, Mexican judges had previously asked the U.S. government to turn over Garcia Luna.

Under the secret 'Fast and Furious' scheme, agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives permitted criminals to buy guns. The plot involved the tracking of the weapons once they were ferried over the Mexico-United States border and leading authorities to drug cartel leaders.

The operation was bungled and exposed following the December 14, 2010 murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, who was killed in a shootout with a gang known for robbing migrants near Rio Rico, Arizona, miles away from United States-Mexico international borderline.

Some of the rifles used by the gang were linked directly to the 'Fast and Furious' weapons smuggling program. At least six of the seven gang suspects were convicted and sentenced to serve between eight years to life in prison.

The Office of the Attorney General said the smuggled weapons are responsible for gangland slayings in Mexico and set off bitter cross-border recriminations over the operation.

More than 2,000 weapons that were trafficked have been used in criminal incidents dating back to 2009.

Luis Cardenas, a former intelligence official with Mexico's federal police, is also wanted by Mexican authorities for his alleged role in the gun smuggling scheme. He is currently behind bars in Mexico in connection to a kidnapping charge

The controversial 'Fast and Furious' secret cross-border weapons smuggling operation blew up in December 2010 after the murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Authorities were able to link the rifles that were used by a gang in the shootout to those that were purchased by criminals and later ferried into Mexico

'We have been informed that U.S. authorities have been charged with investigating and holding responsible public officials in that country,' the statement added, but without going into further detail.

Garcia Luna served as Mexico's security minister from 2006-2012 under former President Felipe Calderon, whose administration initiated a war against criminal organization that to date has left over 300,000 people dead.

The former top cop was arrested by federal agents in Texas in December 2019 and charged with four counts of cocaine trafficking conspiracy, one count of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise and one count of making false statements.

U.S. prosecutors allege that Garcia Luna accepted tens of millions of dollars in bribes - often stuffed in briefcases full of cash  in exchange for shielding El Chapo's Sinaloa Cartel from law enforcement operations.

During El Chapo's New York trial, his former son-in-law Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada told prosecutors that he had given Garcia Luna a suitcase containing $3 million in 2005 or 2006, and paid him between $3 million to $5 million in 2007.

Cardenas, who held multiple high-ranking government security positions during President Calderon's administration, was arrested in July 2021 in connection to a kidnapping charge.
Pictured: Prince Giacomo Bonanno di Linguaglossa and Tanya Yashenko

An Italian prince has launched a legal battle against his younger Belarusian girlfriend whom he claims milked him for gifts worth hundreds of thousands of euros.

Prince Giacomo Bonanno di Linguaglossa, 51, met Tanya Yashenko, 35, in 2019 at a dinner party and the pair struck up a romance.

The Italian aristocrat claims he then took her on glamourous trips around the world to destinations including Monte Carlo, Dubai and the Maldives.

According to the Times, it is understood he also gave her a Mercedes worth 83,000, a 58,000 share in a Rome bed and breakfast, expensive jewellery and 18,000 to help her to rent a flat in the centre of Rome.

Ms Yashenko filed a lawsuit against the prince last March after growing increasingly unhappy with the relationship, Italian media reported, and had accused the prince of stalking her.

Il Messaggero said that Ms Yashenko hired a psychiatrist to give evidence on her behalf but that the expert switched sides and now argues that the prince is the victim and that Tanya 'has been taking advantage of the psychological fragility of Linguaglossa', the outlet reports.

It was also reported that it claimed Ms Yashenko sent texts to the prince calling him 'dishonest, false, traitorous, deprived of empathy, mediocre [and] a liar'.

In December, Prince Giacomo hit back and has now launched his own legal action against Ms Yashenko, claiming he was traumatised by the break-up of a previous marriage and therefore unable to make sound decisions, the Times reports.

Pictured: Despite the ongoing legal battle, it was reported that Prince Giacomo Bonanno di Linguaglossa and Tanya Yashenko spent the Christmas holiday and New Year's Eve together

He claims Ms Yashenko took advantage of him while he was in this state and wants her to hand back all the gifts he says he bought her.

His lawyer Armando Fergola told the Telegraph the 35-year-old had taken advantage of the generosity of her 'sugar daddy' boyfriend who gave her cash and other property worth between 500,000 and 1 million.

Despite the ongoing legal battle, it is understood the couple spent Christmas and New Year's Eve together.

The prince told Il Messaggero 'I still love the girl' and also wrote on Facebook: 'I would like to publicly ask my partner Tanya for forgiveness for my false statements.'
Worldwide lockdowns in the spring of 2020 may have come with an unexpected side effect - a decrease in the number of lightning strikes.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found in a recent study that global lightning activity dropped nearly 8 percent during March 2020 to May 2020, when compared to the average number of lashes across the same period in 2018, 2019 and 2021.

They believe that aerosols produced by burning fossil fuels contributes to the formation of lightning. And as fewer people traveled and production at coal-burning power plants came to a halt in the spring of 2020, there was a reduction in these particles, leading to an equal reduction in the number of lightning strikes.

Earle Williams, a physical meteorologist at MIT, told Inside Science, his team used three different methods to measure lightning and 'all results showed the same trend - that is, a diminished lightning activity associated with a diminished aerosol concentration.'

This chart shows how lightning strikes dropped during spring 2020, during COVID lockdowns

Lightning activity worldwide decreased by almost 8 percent during global COVID lockdowns in the spring of 2020 a recent study found. Downtown Manhattan is seen here in the middle of a storm

The researchers used data from the Global Lightning Detection Network and the World Wide Lightning Location Network to study the number of lightning strikes hitting the ground, within clouds and between clouds and the air during the three month time period.

For the aerosols, they looked at satellite data showing the amount of air pollution in the atmosphere, measured as Aerosol Optical Depth, based on the way aerosols absorb and reflect light.

They presented their findings at the American Geophysical Union meeting in New Orleans last month, showing that there was a 7.6 percent decrease in lightning strikes.

One measure studying intracloud flashes also measured 19 percent fewer flashes in March 2020 to May 2020 when compared to the average number of flashes across the same period in 2018, 2019 and 2021.

And another method looked at global electromagnetic resonances called Schumann resonances. Williams said their intensities are thought to be proportional to the number of lightning flashes occurring.

The study also indicated that there was less lightning in 2020.

The results of the study showed that places with more dramatic reductions in the amount of aerosol released into the atmosphere tended to have the greatest reduction in lightning.

Southeast Asia, Europe and most of Africa saw some of the greatest reductions in both aerosol production and lightning strikes, according to the study, while the Americas saw fewer reductions.

Southeast Asia, Europe and most of Africa saw some of the greatest reductions in both aerosol production and lightning strikes, according to the study

Experts believe some aerosols can collect water vapor in the atmosphere, forming cloud droplets, and when there are more aerosols in the atmosphere, the water vapor in the clod is distributed among a greater number of droplets.

As a result, the droplets are smaller and are less likely to coalesce into larger droplets, Williams told Inside Science. Those smaller droplets stay in the cloud aiding in the formation of hail called graupel and even smaller ice crystals.

When those graupels and ice crystals collide, they create negatively charged crystals at the top of the cloud, while negatively charged particles remain at the bottom of the cloud.

Scientists think the difference in the charges causes lightning.

And when there is less pollution - like there was during worldwide lockdowns in the spring of 2020, the clouds form larger and warmer rain droplets, starving 'the cloud of the ice particles tat it needs for charge separation and you have reduced lightning activity,' Williams said.

His study follows that of a similar study published in May showing that lightning activity over the Tasman Sea jumped as much as 270 percent when smoke from Australia's wildfires in 2019 to 2020 blew over the water when compared to the same time the year before.

The effect of lightning over the ocean is especially telling, researchers say, because the ocean is flat and less variable in temperature, and is therefore less likely to influence how thunderclouds form or behave - allowing the effects of aerosols to shine through.
Asked about this, Prof. Ravinder Yadav said a decision could not be taken now in anticipation of the situation next week.  DC Image

HYDERABAD: Osmania University (OU) has asked its resident students to vacate the hostels immediately, after the government declared holidays for education institutions from January 8 to 16. The students have not been told when the hostels will reopen.

Around 300 students staged a protest on Saturday seeking more time from the university to leave the hostels as they were unprepared.

The authorities have cut drinking water and electricity supply. The university just informed us to vacate hostels without telling us a reopening date, said D. Naresh, state president, Dalit Minority Student Association.

Velapula Sanjay, a Ph D scholar, alleged that in the name of Covid, university officials were behaving ruthlessly with students. We need to submit our thesis for which we need to have accommodation and facilities to complete our work. This is not being allowed by Vice Chancellor Prof. D. Ravinder Yadav, he said.

Students complained that university officials were not in touch with them and were sending police personnel instead.

Prashanth, a hosteller, said the police had informed them about the water and power supply being restored for a day on Sunday, after the protests on Saturday. However, this was not done at all hostels. There are over 18 universities in the state, no one is forcing students to vacate hotels, he said.

Asked about this, Prof. Ravinder Yadav said a decision could not be taken now in anticipation of the situation next week. That is why the reopening date was not informed to the students, he said. What if a student tests positive on campus, which will affect the others? Who will be responsible? the VC asked.

Regarding Ph D students having to submit their theses, he said it was for those who passed out before 2016. Such students have no right to stay in OU hostels. They are forcefully living in the hostel for 10 years and are not vacating the rooms, and might be the ones to stage a protest, Prof. Yadav said.

This is another reason we asked students to vacate hostels so that we can get rid of unauthorised persons. We have to complete construction work for newcomers of whom 70 per cent are girls, he said. A few boys hostels are being converted to girls hostels.
Police are hunting the kidnappers of 39-year-old Omar Elomar who was abducted from his family home in Condell Park in western Sydney just before 7.30pm on Sunday.

Mr Elomar was taken from the house on Third Avenue and around six hours later a SUV was set alight at a unit block in Greenacre, which police believe may be linked to the abduction.

Police are unaware of Mr Elomar's whereabouts and the State Crime Command's Robbery and Serious Crime Squad and Bankstown detectives are investigating the incidents.

Mr Elomar may have been kidnapped after he was innocently linked to the theft of more than 400 kilograms of cocaine allegedly related to exiled Comanchero bikie boss Mark Buddle, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Omatr Elomar was kidnapped from the family home at Condell Park (above) in western Sydney on Sunday night and police have yet to locate his whereabouts

Reports suggest the kidnapping may have been due to Mr Elomar mistakenly being linked to a 400kg cocaine theft allegedly related to bikie Mark Buddle (above)

There is no suggestion Elomar was involved in the theft or distribution of cocaine, or any other crime.

Although Sunday night's abduction is not believed to have anything to do with the underworld shootings of members of the Hamzy family, it comes three days after the last fatal shooting.

Ghassan Amoun, the brother of jailed gangster and Brothers 4 Life boss Bassam Hamzy, was shot dead in a brazen broad daylight execution at lunchtime last Thursday in South Wentworthville.

Amoun was the third Hamzy relative to be gunned down, following brother Mejid Hamzy fatally shot at Condell Park in October 2020, and cousin Bilal Hamze outside a Japanese restaurant in Sydney's CBD last year.

The kidnapping follows several incidents in Condell Park, including the fatal 2020 shooting (above) of Mejid Hamzy, brother of jailed gangster and Brothers 4 Life gang leader, Bassam Hamzy

Mejid Hamzy's (above) assassination is part of an ongoing underworld war in Sydney's west which is not believed to be connected to Sunday's kidnapping of Omar Elomar

A family including a 12-year-old and three teenagers travelling in a car were miraculously unhurt when a man fired three bullets into the vehicle on Fourth Avenue last November.

The scene is one block from where Sunday night's kidnapping took place.

Police later said the shooting was an escalation of an argument that stemmed from 'social media and a chat group' argument.

Police have urged anyone who has information about the kidnapping or the SUV fire, or has dashcam footage, to contact Bankstown Police or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Victoria had 34,808 new infections on Monday - 21 per cent less than on Sunday

Daniel Andrews has demanded thousands of workers get Covid-19 booster shots within weeks, or face losing their jobs.

The Victorian premier issued a statement on Monday urging people who work in healthcare, aged care, disability, emergency services, correctional facilities, quarantine accommodation and hospitality to get their third jab.

Employees will be required to show their boss a vaccine certificate to prove they had the mandatory booster.

Workers eligible for a third dose before January 12 will have until February 12 to get the shot.

Daniel Andrews (pictured) has demanded thousands of workers get Covid-19 booster shots within weeks

People who are not yet eligible for their booster will be forced to get it within three months and two weeks after their second jab.

This means residential aged care workers must receive their third dose by 1 March, and health care workers by 29 March.

Disability, quarantine accommodation, correctional facilities, emergency services, and food distribution workers will need to receive their third dose by 12 March.

Manufacturing, warehouse and transport staff who work in food distribution will be required to get the booster, but retail supermarket staff will not.

Thousands of workers in Melbourne are now required to get their booster shot. Pictured: A health worker in Melbourne with Covid-19 vaccines

People who work in food manufacturing, packing and distribution will also be exempt from close contact isolation rules in an attempt to avoid supply shortages.

If an employee is a close contact, they will be able to return to onsite work if they are asymptomatic, take a rapid test for five days and return negative results.

Health Minister Martin Foley said the mandate was a 'sensible step' to reduce the risk of the virus spreading.

'This is a sensible extension of our existing vaccination requirements  ensuring our critical workers and the vulnerable community members they look after are protected,' he said.

Victorians in key sectors were forced to get the two initial Covid jabs last year.

Hospitality workers will have until March 29 to get their booster shots. Pictured: People at a bar in Melbourne

The state recorded 34,808 new infections on Monday - marking a 21 per cent drop from Sunday's 44,155 cases.

To help curtail the number of new infections, Mr Andrews' government announced that indoor nightclubs will shut from 11.59pm on January 12.

Dancing will still be permitted at weddings, but health authorities urged organisers to consider outdoor options.

Residents at aged care facilities will only be allowed five visitors per day, and only if those visitors have returned a negative RAT test on entry.

If there are no RATs at the facility, residents will only be allowed two visitors per day.

People looking to see a loved one in hospital must have received two doses of the vaccine or must return a negative RAT result before entering.
Another Whitehall department is to end its association with LGBT charity Stonewall amid concern about its lobbying.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) severed ties after a review by business minister Lord Callanan  despite unease in Downing Street.

Officials said the decision echoed similar moves by bodies such as the BBC and Channel 4 but refused to say exactly why it decided to end its association.

At the centre of the debate on Stonewall is its diversity champions programme, which many major organisations have joined.

The charity says the programme is an important way for participants to end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer staff.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) severed ties with the LGBT charity Stonewall after a review by business minister Lord Callanan (pictured)

Campaigners urging organisations to withdraw from Stonewall's diversity scheme in October last year

Businesses can also take part in Stonewalls workplace equality index, which ranks participants on how well they meet a set of its inclusivity criteria.

But critics have accused Stonewall of using the schemes to compel participants to share its views on transgender issues, such as allowing men to self-identify as transgender women.

And some sceptics within the Government argue that by taking part departments are effectively paying to be lobbied.

Beware Jane Eyre, students told Classic Victorian novels rarely shied away from the realities of life, but it seems the same cannot be said for todays students. Undergraduates reading Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre and Charles Dickenss Great Expectations now receive a trigger warning flagging up distressing passages. The decision by Salford University has drawn criticism from politicians and actors including Simon Callow, the star of several Dickens adaptations for television. He joked: I dont think the university authorities have gone far enough. A more helpful alert would be: Warning  this book may make you think. In extreme cases, it may even make you feel. The trigger warning to students, revealed by The Mail on Sunday, notes scenes and discussions of violence and sexual violence. A Salford University spokesman said: We give students the opportunity to have a discussion with their lecturer in advance. Advertisement

In recent months, the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Health have announced that they will no longer take part in the schemes.

The Treasury, the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions are also reportedly weighing up their involvement.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is believed to have pushed for all departments to sever ties with Stonewall. But some figures in Downing Street, including Boris Johnsons adviser Henry Newman, are said to have raised concerns that this sends a terrible message to the LBGT community.

Stonewall insists that participation in its schemes does not affect an organisations impartiality and that it does not require participants to act on its advice.

In the past five years, 14 government departments have spent 301,623 on Stonewall membership and training. Lord Callanans review into the business departments involvement with the charity focused on value for money.

Stonewall disputes that large numbers are leaving its diversity programme, saying overall figures are growing. Despite a number of high-profile drop outs, it said more than 200 employers signed up between November 1, 2020 and November 1 last year.

A BEIS spokesman said not renewing its membership of Stonewalls diversity champions programme brought it into line with other departments and organisations such as Ofsted and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

He added: Our decision in no way affects our steadfast commitment to ensuring the department remains a brilliant place for LGBT+ colleagues to work, while continuing to champion the rights of LGBT+ individuals...

A Stonewall spokesman said: Contrary to some reporting, our leading diversity champions programme continues to grow, and were proud to work with more than 900 organisations to help create working environments in which all lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer people can thrive.
Venues would have a legal duty to provide security in the wake of the Manchester Arena bombing under Government plans.

Home Secretary Priti Patel is due to detail the proposals, which include a requirement for some public places to be prepared for a terror attack, today.

They follow a consultation into what sort of venues should be bound by the so-called Protect Duty in the wake of the May 2017 atrocity in which 22 innocent people were killed as they left an Ariana Grande concert.

Figen Murray, mother of victim Martyn Hett, 29, has campaigned for the introduction of a 'Martyn's Law', including calling for venues and local authorities to have action plans against such attacks.

Currently there is no legal requirement for venues to employ security measures at the vast majority of public places.

Venues would have a legal duty to provide security in the wake of the Manchester Arena bombing under Government plans. Home Secretary Priti Patel is today due to detail the proposals, which include a requirement for some public places to be prepared for a terror attack

Pictured: The victims of the Manchester Arena terror attack in May 2017 during an Ariana Grande concert

Pictured: The night of the Manchester Arena terror attack that killed 22 people in 2017

Martyn Hett, 29, (pictured) was one of the 22 people murdered in the terrorist attack on the Manchester Arena

Figen Murray, (pictured) mother of victim Martyn Hett, has campaigned for the introduction of a 'Martyn's Law', including calling for venues and local authorities to have action plans against such attacks.

Seven in 10 of the 2,755 respondents to the consultation agreed that publicly accessible locations should take measures to protect people from attacks, according to the Home Office.

But the department said there was an understanding that measures should be proportionate to the size of the venue, with a greater onus put on those that are larger.

Ahead of the publication of the plans, Miss Patel said: 'Following the tragic attack at the Manchester Arena, we have worked closely with Figen Murray, victims' groups and partners to develop proposals to improve protective security around the country.

'I am grateful for their tireless commitment to the Duty and those who responded to the consultation; the majority of whom agreed tougher measures are needed to protect the public from harm.

'We will never allow terrorists to restrict our freedoms and way of life, which is why we are committed to bringing forward legislation this year, that will strike the right balance between public safety, whilst not placing excessive burden on small businesses.'

In a statement, Mrs Murray said: 'I am grateful for the Government's cooperation around the campaign for Martyn's Law and I welcome this report, which clearly indicates their commitment to protecting the public.

Suicide bomber by Salman Abedi (pictured) in the venue's City Room foyer following the end of an Ariana Grande concert

Forensic experts managed to recover these metal fragments which were used by Abedi as shrapnel to increase the amount of damage caused by his bomb

'The report shows a majority support for tougher security measures to ensure that people are better prepared to protect the public from terrorist attacks. It is also positive to see so many responses from campaigners and various industry sectors.

'I am aware that a significant number of organisations are already taking the practical and proactive steps that will make us all safer when visiting public places.

'I will continue to work closely with the Government and look forward to this legislation being introduced as quickly as possible, to avoid the further unnecessary loss of innocent lives.'
Credit where it's due to Labour for proving it's never too late to change your mind.

Not only has the party warmed to Brexit (grudgingly), it's proposing tax cuts, too!

Sir Keir Starmer treated the public with disdain by trying to overturn the referendum, insisting no good could come of it.

Well, his flagship plan to help families hit by spiralling energy prices  axing VAT on fuel bills  would be impossible inside his beloved EU. But Boris Johnson, who championed lopping the levy once outside the bloc, has cooled on the idea  letting Labour steal his political raiment.

As the cost-of-living crisis erupts, the Prime Minister must stop dithering over his own rescue package.

Millions of hard-pressed households face a toxic mix of rises to National Insurance, council tax, mortgage payments, food and petrol prices  the list goes on.

As the cost-of-living crisis erupts, the Prime Minister must stop dithering over his own rescue package

While No10 sleaze scandals may recede in voters' minds, they are less likely to forget (or forgive) a government that forces them to choose between heating and eating.

Mr Johnson should, then, heed the wise words of Lord Frost. The ex-Brexit minister urges him to ignore poor advice and follow his Tory instincts for free markets, low taxes and sensible environmentalism. That would allow post-Brexit Britain to maximise its new freedoms  and thrive.

In winning his 80-seat majority, the PM promised new Red Wall voters prosperity and better lives  not raided pay packets, spending splurges on unrealistic visions, a ruinous green agenda and continental-style dirigisme. Labour offered that and was soundly thrashed.

It's a lesson Boris should remember.

Stay bold on Covid

Mr Johnson ought also to revisit lessons from the pandemic.

At his boldest, he has been at his best. He threw the kitchen sink at the world-beating vaccine programme.

While the Cassandras wailed, he unlocked the country in July. When in full cry again before Christmas over Omicron, he weighed up the risks and rejected tougher curbs.

Each time he was vindicated. Most of Europe is still closed to varying degrees. Britain stayed open and has suffered no upswing in hospitalisations and deaths.

So the Mail believes Britain can and should lead the world again. This time by learning to live with Covid (stock image)

So the Mail believes Britain can and should lead the world again. This time by learning to live with Covid.

Unless a deadly new variant emerges, we must treat outbreaks like colds or flu, and not inflict economic and societal hardship through repressive measures.

In the meantime, Mr Johnson should cut the outdated self-isolation period from seven to five days  easing staff shortages in schools, hospitals and businesses.

The country is crying out for a return to normality. Reducing quarantine would be another stride along the path.

Bordering on lunacy

Another reason Mr Johnson won power was his promise to end the scandal of dangerous foreign criminals being able to escape deportation.

The public had grown weary of overseas convicts, aided by an army of human rights lawyers and perverse rulings from permissive judges, living here with impunity.

Yet has anything changed? In a verdict that would be farcical if not so serious, a court let an Afghan rapist stay because the Taliban takes a dim view of sex attackers.

And it gets worse. An Iranian sex predator dodged ejection after claiming his cross tattoo proved his conversion to Christianity, meaning he could be killed back home.

Meanwhile, our report finds Albanian offenders are brazenly living here, having been booted out. So much for ministers taking back control of our borders!

Until the Government tackles such affronts to justice, law-abiding citizens cannot sleep easily in their beds.
A body believed to be that of a missing man has been found in the Stirling Range national park in Western Australia's south.

Police say they discovered the body near Mt Toolbrunup during an extensive search for 26-year-old Muhammad Ferdiansah.

Mr Ferdiansah's family have been informed of the discovery and police intend to retrieve his body on Monday.

Police have discovered a body near Mt Toolbrunup during an extensive search (pictured) for missing man

Authorities had deployed a helicopter and drones along with local police and SES volunteers to search for Mr Ferdiansah after his car was found abandoned at the Mt Toolbrunup carpark on Saturday.

The national park in WA's Great Southern region is home to some of the state's highest mountain peaks.

Mt Toolbrunup, is the second highest peak, with Trails WA classing the 4km return hike to the summit as a grade 5 walk.

The rating is higher than the tallest peak, Mount Bluff, which has a difficulty grading of 4.

'Toolbrunup Peak towers above the other western peaks and offers uninterrupted views in all directions but can only be reached if you are fit and agile and prepared to scramble up some steep rock sections,' the Trails WA website says.

Authorities believe the body belongs to 26-year-old Muhammad Ferdiansah (pictured) who has been missing for several days

'The trail leaves the carpark and leads through woodland, mostly following the bank of a creek and becoming progressively steeper.

'Beyond the woodland it rises steeply over large boulders, loose rocks and steep scree to a saddle near the top of the south-west buttress.

'From here its a short, steep scramble to the top.'

The discovery comes after two hikers were rescued within the first few days of the year during two separate incidents after encountering trouble ascending Bluff Knoll.
Daniel Andrews has returned to work after 24 days of summer leave after he was slammed by Jeff Kennett for a big stint away following his injury-related absence last year.

As his first act back on the job, the Victorian Premier announced in a statement on Sunday afternoon he would be extending his controversial emergency pandemic laws for three months.

Mr Andrews said the extension was in direct response to an unprecedented rise in Covid cases as the new Omicron variant spreads across the state.

The Premier's three-and-a-half week absence didn't come without criticism from former Liberal premier Jeff Kennett, who took to Twitter to slam the leader last week.

'Daniel Andrews has had the best part of 6 months off from an injury he has never explained,' Mr Kennett tweeted out on Thursday.

His three-week break didn't come without criticism from former premier Jeff Kennett, (pictured) who took to Twitter to slam the leader last week

'Daniel Andrews has had the best part of 6 months off from an injury he has never explained,' Mr Kennett tweeted out on Thursday (pictured)

'Now continues to holiday while front line health workers continue to work under great pressure and at great personal risk. Time he returned to work.'

Mr Kennett was referring to a period of medical absence the premier took from March 9 to June 28 after he slipped and fell down wet stairs last year.

He broke several ribs and fractured his T7 vertebra after tumbling at his Sorrento home in southeast Melbourne.

The Premier told reporters he wasn't able to call out for his wife because the lower half of his lungs had collapsed. She found him on the ground moments later.

'As I put my foot on to the first step. I knew I was in trouble. I didn't really connect with the step it just slid straight off, I became airborne almost,' he said at the time.

'Then all I can hear is just this almighty crunch.

'When I heard the crunch, I knew. I thought this is serious, we're in trouble here.'

Mr Andrews (pictured in hospital) broke several ribs and fractured his T7 vertebra after tumbling at his Sorrento home in southeast Melbourne

Mr Kennett (centre) slammed Mr Andrews (left) for taking 24 days of summer leave over Christmas and last week said it was 'time he returned to work'

Conspiracy theories over the premier's injury and hiatus from public appearances began circulating shortly after the incident.

However, Mr Andrews quickly quashed these rumours when he told Ambulance Victoria to release a statement about their role in his treatment following questions from the state's opposition leader.

Liberal leader Michael O'Brien defended the interest and said asking questions was 'legitimate' to provide voters with a clear picture of what happened.

'If you have an accident in your own time, in the private sector you would not get paid for 6 months sick leave,' Mr Kennett continued in a separate tweet on Friday.

'Just another example of one rule for some and another for the majority of salary workers.'

Twitter users were quick to defend the premier against Mr Kennett's claims with one anonymous commentator's response racking up over 700 likes.

'Correction needed here Jeff, it wasn't 6 months and he did explain his injury, multiple times and in great detail,' they began.

'It's important to ensure what your tweeting is factual and correct as the rise of misinformation is harmful to democracy. Please take greater care in future.'

Twitter users were quick to defend the premier (pictured) against Mr Kennett's claims with one anonymous commentator's response racking up over 700 likes

One of the premier's first orders of business on his return to the state's top job on Sunday was to extend his controversial pandemic laws (pictured, Victorians protest the laws in November)

The comment came from 'PRGuy17' - one of the premier's most vocal defenders online who supported Mr Andrews throughout the pandemic.

One of the premier's first orders of business on his return to the state's top job was to extend his pandemic laws - which have been in place since December 15 and were due to expire on January 12.

What are the fines in Daniel Andrews' new law? $21,909: This fine is for breaching a pandemic order such as not wearing a mask, breaking a movement limit, attending an illegal protest or a gathering, refusing to get tested or failing to show ID. $90,870: This fine is for an aggravated offence for breaches that 'cause a serious risk to the health of another individual' such as going to work when infectious. $109,044: This fine is for businesses breaking rules which may include failing to make sure customers check-in or show proof of vaccine status. $454,350: This fine is for an 'aggravated' offence by a business such as encouraging customers to flout lockdown rules. Advertisement

The laws passed by the Victorian Parliament late last year allow him to announce a health crisis at any time and assume unprecedented powers.

The Victorian premier said on Sunday the extension of the declaration was a direct response to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

'As part of Victoria's continued response to the global coronavirus pandemic, Premier Daniel Andrews has extended the pandemic declaration to apply to the state of Victoria from 11.59pm Wednesday 12 January for three months,' a statement read.

It advised that in making the declaration the premier was satisfied on reasonable grounds there was a serious risk to public health in Victoria.

'The Omicron variant means there are significant challenges ahead of us. The third dose vaccine rollout, and our children five to 11 year-old vaccination blitz will give us the strongest chance of meeting this challenge,' Mr Andrews said.

'Extending the pandemic declaration ensures we are able to put the measures in place to slow the rate of transmission and protect the community's health and our health system.'

The controversial laws give the premier power to declare a pandemic for an unlimited period of time even if there are no cases of the virus.

If a new variant of Covid arises, the state government could announce pandemic orders 'by decree' to confine Victorians in their homes once again.

In announcing the extension, the Acting Chief Health Minister noted Omicron had become the dominant strain of Covid-19 and accounted for 75 per cent of cases.

The rise in hospital and ICU admissions that came amid no indication the state had reached the peak of its Omicron wave, were also noted the statement said.

In announcing the extension, it was noted Omicron had become the dominant strain of Covid-19 and accounted for 75 per cent of cases (pictured, people protest the laws in November)

The laws passed by the Victorian Parliament late last year allow him to announce a health crisis at any time and assume unprecedented powers (pictured, protestors march in November)

The laws state a person can be fined up to $21,909 for a breach of an order including not wearing a mask, breaking a movement limit, attending an illegal protest or a gathering, refusing to get tested or failing to show ID.

Businesses can be fined up to $109,044 for breaking rules which may include failing to make sure customers check-in or show proof of vaccine status.

In addition, there is a new aggravated offence for breaches that 'cause a serious risk to the health of another individual'.

These can be punished with a $90,870 fine and two years in jail. An example given in the bill is someone going to work when they are infectious and should be isolating.

Businesses can also be guilty of an aggravated offence, with a maximum fine of $454,350 if, for example, they refuse to obey a lockdown and encourage customers to also flout the rules.

It comes as the Victorian premier has demanded thousands of workers get booster shots within weeks, or face losing their jobs.

The Victorian premier issued a statement on Monday urging people who work in healthcare, aged care, disability, emergency services, correctional facilities, quarantine accommodation and hospitality to get their third jab.

The state recorded 34,808 new infections on Monday - marking a 21 per cent drop from Sunday's 44,155 cases (pictured, women walk in Melbourne)

It comes as the Victorian premier (pictured) on Monday demanded thousands of workers get booster shots within weeks, or face losing their jobs

Employees will be required to show their boss a vaccine certificate to prove they had the mandatory booster.

Workers eligible for a third dose before January 12 will have until February 12 to get the shot while people who are not yet eligible for their booster will be forced to get it within three months and two weeks after their second jab.

This means residential aged care workers must receive their third dose by 1 March, and health care workers by 29 March.

The state recorded 34,808 new infections on Monday - marking a 21 per cent drop from Sunday's 44,155 cases.

To help curtail the number of new infections, Mr Andrews' government announced that indoor nightclubs will shut from 11.59pm on January 12.

Dancing will still be permitted at weddings, but health authorities urged organisers to consider outdoor options.
By Olivia Day for Daily Mail Australia

Friday, October 15

Cleo along with her mother Ellie Smith, her partner Jake Gliddon and her little sister Isla Mae arrive at the Blowholes campsite around 6:30pm.

They had a 'quiet' night and arrived at sunset.

Saturday, October 16

1:30am: Parents' last sighting of Cleo in the tent she shared with her parents and baby sister when the four-year-old asks for some water.

6.23am: Ellie calls 000 to report her eldest daughter missing as she continues to search the camp ground.

6.30am: The first two officers are dispatched from Carnarvon police station. They travel to Blowholes as a matter of priority, with sirens and lights.

6.41am: A second police car with another two officers is sent to Blowholes, also with lights and sirens.

7.10am: The first police car arrives. The second is only minutes behind.

7.26am: Police on the scene establish a protected forensic area which is taped off to the public, surrounding the family tent where Cleo was last seen.

7.33am: A drone operator is called upon to search from the skies.

7.44am: A third police car is dispatched to the Blowholes.

8am: Family and friends of Cleo's parents begin to arrive to help with the ground search.

Another group of detectives briefly searches Cleo's home to make sure she's not there.

They then head to Blowholes and begin stopping cars coming into and leaving the area.

8.09am: A helicopter from a local company arrived at the scene and started searching as police request an SES team attend the Blowholes search.

8.24am: Police air-wing and volunteer marine searchers are called in to assist with the search.

8.34am: Roadblocks are set up at the entrance of Blowholes as detectives gather the names, registration details and addresses of people coming and going. Police search cars.

9.25am: Nine SES personel arrive at the Blowholes to assist with the search.

Investigators, bounty hunters and officers from the Australian Federal Police have spent two-and-a-half weeks searching for missing four-year-old Cleo (pictured)

9.30am: Detectives sit down with a distressed Ellie and remain by her side for the rest of the day while other search crews hunt for Cleo.

11am: Homicide detectives from the Major Crime Division are called and begin travelling from Perth to assist with the search.

1pm: More homicide detectives and search experts are flown in from Perth.

3pm: Officers and search experts arrive in Carnarvon to offer their expertise.

Sunday, October 17

Ms Smith takes to social media to plead for help finding her missing daughter.

A Facebook post uploaded at 1:45am on Sunday which said: 'It's been over 24 hours since I last seen the sparkle in my little girl's eyes.

'Please help me find her!

'If you hear or see anything at all please call the police!'

Police suggest Cleo may have been abducted.

Monday, October 18

Police release an image of the red and grey sleeping bag missing from Cleo's tent.

Cleo's biological father is interviewed by police in Mandurah and is asked to provide a statement, which he does so willingly.

WA Police with the help of SES members, volunteers and aircraft continue the land hunt for Cleo, with officers searching nearby shacks and vehicles in the area.

Tuesday, October 19

Cleo's mother Ellie Smith and her partner Jake Gliddon front the media for the first time and describe the terrifying moment they realised the little girl was missing.

Ms Smith says her four-year-old would never have left the tent by herself.

Police release new images of Cleo and the pink and blue one-piece she was wearing the night she went missing to aid the investigation.

Investigators urge anyone who was at the campsite or in the vicinity on October 15 to get in contact with police.

Wednesday, October 20

Police reveal the zip of the family tent, which was found hanging wide open by her mother at 6am on Saturday morning, was too high for Cleo to reach.

Officers say they 'haven't ruled out' reports from campers who heard the sound of screeching tyres in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Deputy Police Commissioner Daryl Gaunt confirms officers are investigating the whereabouts of 20 registered sex offenders in the Carnarvon area.

Thursday, October 21

The WA Government offers a $1million reward for information that leads to Cleo's location announced by WA Premier Mark McGowan.

'All Western Australians' thoughts are with Cleo's family during what is an unimaginably difficult time,' Mr McGowan said.

'We're all praying for a positive outcome.'

The speed of the reward being issued - within days of her disappearance - was unprecedented.

Pictured: Police are seen examining rubbish left near the Blowholes campsite in remote WA

Monday, October 25

WA Police confirm Cleo was definitely at the camp site - on CCTV footage on a camera installed inside a beach shack just 20 metres from the family tent she disappeared from.

Tuesday, October 26

Forensic officers and detectives spent much of the day at her home in Carnarvon, 900km north of Perth, on Tuesday and left with two bags of evidence.

Although investigators had been to the home before, this was the first time they thoroughly searched inside with a forensics team.

Acting WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch said the search of the family home was 'standard practice' and did not indicate they were suspects in Cleo's disappearance.

Wednesday, October 27

WA Police forensics officers return to the Blowholes campground and are seen collecting soil samples from a number of campfires near shacks in the area.

The federal government announce Australian Federal Police officers had been drafted in to support forensic and intelligence efforts.

Friday, October 29

Police return to the Blowholes camp to analyse the area with drones.

Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde returns to the Blowholes campsite to join the search for Cleo as the search hit the two-week mark.

He confirms national and international agencies are engaged in the search for Cleo.

Sunday, October 31

Detectives go door-knocking at a number of homes along the North West Coastal Highway in the North Plantations, 5km from Cleo's hometown on Sunday.

Monday, November 1

Detectives sort through mounds of rubbish from roadside bins located hundreds of kilometres away from the campsite she vanished from.

The material was transported to Perth, where forensic officers and recruits sorted through hundreds of bags in search of items that may have helped them find Cleo.

Officers issue a plea for dash cam and CCTV footage from within a 1000km radius of where the four-year-old disappeared.

Police renew an appeal for more businesses in Carnarvon to provide footage and go door to door in an industrial area on the outskirts of the town.

Her elated mother, Ellie, (pictured, with Cleo, her partner and younger daughter) broke her silence the morning Cleo was found, sharing a series of love heart emojis on Instagram

Wednesday, November 3

After two-and-a-half weeks of searching Cleo Smith is found alive and well in the early hours of November 3.

WA Police Deputy Commissioner Col Blanch confirmed just before 7am AEST that little Cleo is alive and well and had been reunited with her relieved parents.

'One of the officers picked her up into his arms and asked her 'what's your name?' he said. 'She said: 'My name is Cleo'.'

Ellie Smith posted to social media: 'Our family is whole again'.

Police arrest Carnarvon man Terence Darrell Kelly, 36, and take him in for questioning.

On October 19, Ellie Smith (pictured) and her partner Jake Gliddon fronted the media for the first time and begged the public to report any information 'big or small'

Thursday, November 4

Kelly is charged with multiple offences including forcibly taking a child under 16 and appears in Carnarvon Magistrate's Court barefoot and wearing a black T-shirt.

Friday, November 5

Terence Kelly is flown to Perth and taken to Casuarina prison.

Monday, January 24, 2022

Kelly pleads guilty via AVL from prison to kidnapping Cleo Smith and is ordered to appear in Perth District Court in March.
A scaredy cat has been reunited with his owners after he got stuck in an armchair that was donated to a Colorado thrift store while they moved home.

Montequlla the cat has had a happy reunion with his owners after being found inside a recliner that was taken to the Denver Arc Store in Denver, Colorado, on New Year's Eve.

He is believed to have climbed into the piece of furniture in a panic while his owners were moving home, with his disappearance leaving them stricken with worry.

Staff members discovered the lost kitty shortly after its owners dropped off the plush, pink recliner and were unable to get the cat out.

Scroll down for video

Montequlla was found by Denver Arc Store inside a pink recliner his owners dropped off, not knowing their beloved feline was stuck inside

The store was unable to get the cat out of the chair and had to call the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment, who was able to lure the feline out of its hiding spot

The store called that Denver Department of Public Health and Environment (DAP), which sent out DAP Officer Jenna Humphreys, who managed to lure the feline out to safety.

'Sure enough, there's a recliner out front, and there's a little orange tabby stuck inside,' Humphreys told KMGH. '[The cat was] very friendly, [but] couldn't get out. [The store staff] said that they had noticed the meowing shortly after somebody had dropped it off.'

Humphreys located a tracker in the cat and scan it in her truck and tried to call the owners, whose names were not released, but were unable to reach them.

Little did she know, the owners were frantically looking for their pet, who they still thought to be at home. They would later contact the thrift store, which forwarded them onto Humphreys.

Montequlla and the owners were eventually reunited and Humphreys said they were 'absolutely thrilled' to have their loved one back.

'They were so relieved,' told ABC 7 Denver.

The owners were later reunited with Montequlla after they frantically looked for him and went back to the thrift store. They are said to have been 'absolutely thrilled' to be reunited

The animal protection officer is now advising pet owners to be mindful while packing to move to a new home, as pets often choose seek shelter in odd places during the process.

'Oftentimes, when we have a stressful event like that, we know that animals can seek hiding spots. So, this one just happened to pick the recliner that they were going to donate to Arc,' Humphreys said. 'It's not uncommon for us to be called to help remove animals from those situations, but this was a new one.'
The Covid pandemic has seen real estate values surge at an even faster pace in Byron Bay than Bondi Beach - and this is expected to continue into 2022.

The ability of more professionals to be able to work from home has seen house values in particular really climb across Australia during the past two years, with buyers favouring lifestyle and proximity to water.

When it came to fashionable places by the beach frequented by A-list celebrities, the far north coast of NSW did even better than Sydney's eastern suburbs - at least in terms of rising values.

The Covid pandemic has seen real estate values surge at an even faster pace in Byron Bay (house pictured) than Bondi Beach - and this is expected to continue into 2022. When it came to fashionable places by the beach frequented by A-list celebrities, the far north coast of NSW did even better than Sydney's eastern suburbs - at least in terms of rising values

How they compare BYRON BAY HOUSE: $2,653,082 BONDI BEACH HOUSE: $4,265,688 BYRON BAY HOUSE RENT: $1,326.80 a week BONDI HOUSE RENT: $1,602.70 a week Sources: CoreLogic median house prices data for December 2021; SQM Research weekly rent data in the week ending January 4 Advertisement

Byron Bay's median house price since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 has climbed by 44.7 per cent, from $1.833million to $2.653million as of last month, CoreLogic data showed.

By comparison, Bondi Beach's mid-point house price rose by 37.4 per cent, from $3.105million to $4.263million.

Apartments were also more in demand with Byron Bay's median price rising by 38 per cent - from $1.013million to $1.399million.

During the same time frame, Bondi Beach unit values rose by 31.4 per cent, from $1.177million to $1.547million.

But renting a house is at least cheaper in Byron Bay compared with Bondi, although leasing costs in northern New South Wales have risen at an even faster pace than real estate values.

In the 2481 postcode - covering Byron Bay and surrounding beach and hinterland suburbs - it typically cost $1,326.80 a week to rent a house during the first week of January, marking an annual increase of 46 per cent, SQM Research data showed.

Apartments in the same area had a median weekly rent of $859.20, but the annual increase was just 9.6 per cent.

By comparison, Bondi Beach's mid-point house price rose by 37.4 per cent, from $3.105million to $4.263million (pictured is a house on the market)

In Bondi and the 2026 postcode, $1,602.70 is the mid-point weekly house rent, following an annual increase of 15.4 per cent.

For a unit, the median lease is $746.50, marking a yearly rise of 14.4 per cent.

Nicola Powell, the chief of research with online sales site Domain, is expecting Byron Bay house prices in particular to keep booming in 2022, along with Somers Beach on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula and Sunshine Beach at Noosa in Queensland.

This would occur even as the pace of real estate price growth cooled in other parts of Australia.

Prospective buyers last year increasingly searched the terms 'pool', 'beach' and 'water' in 2021.

'The pandemic has forced us all to use our homes differently as we spent more time than ever in them and perhaps forever made a mark on our purchasing decisions, property wish lists and architectural trends,' she said.

But getting a place to rent in Bondi could be harder in 2022 as last month's reopening of Australia's border to international students led to more demand for inner-city accommodation in Sydney's city centre, the eastern suburbs and inner Melbourne.

'The return of overseas migrants, international students and particularly skilled highly-paid migrants, will add to demand for housing,' Dr Powell said.

In the 2481 postcode - covering Byron Bay and surrounding beach and hinterland suburbs - it typically cost $1,326.80 a week to rent a house during the first week of January, marking an annual increase of 46 per cent, SQM Research data showed (pictured is a house on the market for $1,600 a week)

Nicola Powell, the chief of research with online sales site Domain, is expecting Byron Bay house prices in particular to keep booming in 2022, along with Somers Beach on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula and Sunshine Beach at Noosa in Queensland (pictured are tourists and locals enjoying Christmas Day at Byron Bay's main beach)

'Population growth is likely to be a government focus in 2022 and beyond to sustain higher economic growth and build Australia's skilled workforce, achieved by bolstering the migration intake.'

Home construction is still volatile with dwelling approvals in November rising by 3.6 per cent, following a 13.6 per cent fall in October, the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed on Monday.

But over the year, council approvals for construction have increased by 25.2 per cent.

Getting a place to rent in Bondi (pictured in January) could be harder in 2022 as last month's reopening of Australia's border to international students led to more demand for inner-city accommodation in Sydney's city centre, the eastern suburbs and inner Melbourne.

CommSec chief economist Craig James said more new homes in 2022 could help contain price rises, as the banks also raised their fixed mortgage rates.

'In terms of how quickly the work will be completed, it's all about getting access to the trades,' he said.

'Cost pressures may serve to delay some projects. Still, home building will be adding to economic activity in 2022.

'The additional stock should also keep a cap on the price of new and existing properties.'
Inquiries revealed that JKS Constructions Pvt Ltd mortgaged five acres in survey number 36/A/3 2013 and raised the loan in 2013, and as per the revenue records, there is no land on that survey number. (Representational Image/ PTI)

Hyderabad: A Chennai-based construction company has mortgaged a prime property in the city, the ownership of which is being claimed by the Telangana state government, and raised a loan of more than Rs 100 crore. It has since defaulted on the repayment.

The State Bank of India (SBI) which sanctioned the loan without due diligence has been trying to create a third party interest by auctioning the disputed land of five acres in Gopanapally. The SBI has been proceeding with the auction despite the Ranga Reddy district administration opposing the move.We have written to the SBI not to auction the land. We will move court to stall the auction (scheduled for January 28), Ranga Reddy collector Amoy Kumar told Deccan Chronicle.

Inquiries revealed that JKS Constructions Pvt Ltd mortgaged five acres in survey number 36/A/3 2013 and raised the loan in 2013. As per the revenue records, there is no land on that survey number.

The records also show that the SBI did not conduct due diligence because the government had already initiated its claims on the land and issued necessary orders.

Survey numbers 36 and 37 in Gopanapally were included in the prohibitory list. Ironically, the then sub-registrar seems to have contributed to the conspiracy by registering the mortgage deed though the land was already claimed by the government and placed in the prohibitory register under 22A of the Registration Act.

The government had in two earlier instances, once in 1991 and again in 2004, proceeded with its claims with relevant orders. When these orders were challenged by private claimants, the courts left it to the government to agitate for the ownership through a civil suit and proceed in accordance with the law. The Ranga Reddy collector recently stepped up efforts to protect the land and remove encroachments in these survey numbers besides pursuing the legal matters.

The SBI, however, claimed that except for an order from the collector not to proceed with auction, the property was free from encumbrance. It informed the bidders that it obtained an interim direction from the High Court with regard to the registration of the property.

Courts in several cases categorically stated that the transactions relating to these survey numbers were subject to the final outcome of the property dispute pursued by the state government.
A would-be customer of a high-end Tasmanian restaurant has bombarded the owners with abusive texts after their booking was cancelled because of the state's Covid outbreak.

The Agarian Kitchen Eatery, in New Norfolk, 32km north of Hobart, was forced to temporarily close on January 7 due to staff shortages after several workers contracted the virus.

Announcing with a 'heavy heart' their business would be shutting for at least six-days, owners Rodd Dunn and his wife Severine Demanet issued an apology to customers, saying the closure would be re-assessed on January 13.

'We have watched closely as rising Covid cases have resulted in staff shortages all across Australia, not only in the hospitality industry,' they posted on the restaurant's Instagram page.

The Agarian Kitchen Eatery, in New Norfolk, 32km north of Hobart, was forced to temporarily close on January 7 due to staff shortages after several workers contracted the virus

A disgruntled would-be guest bombarded the restaurant with abusive messages

'Every couple of hours another restaurant temporarily closes - it has been heart breaking to read and we have been preparing ourselves for this moment. but it has come much sooner than we expected.'

The couple advised they would be in contact with customers to cancel upcoming bookings and thanked regulars and dinners for their ongoing support.

But while most reservation holders were understanding, one outraged prospective guest slammed the restaurant owners for providing 'next to no notice'.

In screenshots of the fiery text exchange, posted online by head chef Stephen Peak, the disgruntled would-be guest labelled the restaurant a 'disgrace' after being notified about the situation.

Owner Rodney Dunn (pictured) and his wife contacted 240 guests to notify them they had been forced to cancel their reservations

'That's incredibly unsatisfactory... I can't believe you give [sic] us next to no notice when we are travelling to Tasmania for a birthday treat for my partner to go to your restaurant,' the person wrote to the owner.

'What are we now meant to do? So much for professionalism in Australian hospitality. This is a disgrace!!!!! And to think you end with the 'kind regards' expression.'

After the owners suggested they hoped the person would consider visiting their eatery during more favourable time, the prospective diner launched into another attack.

'Why would I ever visit Tasmania again? You're a rude person in the extreme,' the rant continued.

'I cannot believe your lack of endeavour and reliance on Covid as a crutch... Australia needs to get back to work. How would you have coped in world war. Not I suspect.

'I will never darken your door again and will so inform all my friends and acquaintances of which there are many.'

The angry reservation holder labelled the restaurant a 'disgrace'

Sharing the messages on Instagram, Mr Peak said almost all of the 240 guests whose bookings were understanding and wished the business and sick staff well.

He said the support was much appreciated but it was really upsetting to receive furious responses from some people.

'No one wants to close. No one wants to risk financial security. No one wants to be without work,' he wrote over the screen shots.

'Please be kind! Please treat everyone with respect.'

The post quickly went viral across social media as appalled Aussies slammed the diner's reaction.

'This is particularly upsetting given that my partner and I recently had to cancel our trip to TAS - and our booking at AK - super last minute because we both got COVID and the co-founder responded so kindly and didnt charge us,' one woman Tweeted.

Others vowed to rally behind the restaurant by booking in once it reopened.

'This restaurant is now on my bucket list,' one woman said.

'What an incredibly unpleasant person. Will make a point to visit the Agrarian Kitchen when they reopen, because I am this petty,' another said.
Children will be infected with Covid-19 even after a delayed return to the classroom, Queensland's top doctor has warned.

Queensland's chief health officer John Gerrard has urged parents to not to get 'too anxious' about their kids heading back to school next month but warned outbreaks in the classroom are inevitable.

Dr Gerrard stressed that while most young patients will suffer only mild symptoms and the chances of becoming 'terribly ill' were rare, the biggest concern is children passing the virus on family members at home and vulnerable relatives such as elderly grandparents.

The Sunshine State recorded 9581 new cases on Monday, a day after Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk delayed the start of term one by a fortnight until the second week of February due to the nationwide surge in Omicron infections.

Brothers Louise and Harry Taylor-Bishop were among the first primary school-aged students in Brisbane to roll up their sleeves for the Covid jab on Monday

'I worry that we're making parents overly anxious that it's going to make them terribly ill,' Dr Gerrard told reporters on Monday.

'There definitely are rare complications in children, I'm not going to downplay it, but for the vast majority it is a simple respiratory virus like any virus they would have had in the past.'

'It's very likely that there will be a surge in infections when schools return, we know that  it's inevitable that will happen.'

'In reality the biggest risk is not to the children themselves, but to the people around them, their parents and grandparents.'

Monday coincided with a milestone in Australia's vaccine rollout with ages 5-11 now able to roll up their sleeves for a jab.

Queensland students had their return to school delayed by a fortnight until February 7 after the state recorded 18,000 new Covid cases on Sunday.

Queensland's chief health officer John Gerrard (pictured on Monday) has warned Covid outbreaks in the classroom will be inevitable when students return to school from February 7

Years 11 and 12 will spend the first week from January 31 learning from home.

Dr Gerrard said the delayed start to the 2022 school year will allow more jabs in the arms of 5-11-year-olds and for adults to get their boosters.

'These two extra weeks give an opportunity to others who might be at risk to get their third dose. If I'm pushing anything it's that in particular,' he said.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and Victorian counterpart Daniel Andrews have ruled out a delayed return to the classroom, despite the surge in Omicron cases.

Dr Gerrard's comments come after Australian chief medical officer Paul Kelly said illness had been less severe in children since the pandemic hit Australia's shores two years ago.

The safe reopening of schools will be on the agenda when the national cabinet meets on Thursday.

Queensland has delayed the start of the school year by two weeks as Omicron cases surge

'For the vast majority of children who have Omicron it is a very, very mild disease,' Professor Kelly said.

'It's related to balancing the wider aspects and the importance of face-to-face learning in schools with the risk of COVID.'

Earlier on Monday, Australia's former deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth insisted no state should delay the return to school.

'Every government and medical expert in this country needs to follow the lead of the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund, which both state that schools should be the last to close and the first to open,' he told the Today show.

'We are not in a situation in Australia that requires a delay to schools opening.'

He added parents should be reassured rapid antigen testing will play a vital role in students returning to school with a 'test to stay' strategy implemented in the UK and many European countries.

'That is the only sustainable option, actually,' Dr Coatsworth said.

'If there's a case in the classroom, you test the remaining children, if they're negative on a rapid test, they remain in the classroom because it's a mild diseases in children,

'Because we will gradually vaccinate our five to 11-year-old population, that's going to be a safe thing to do. I do think that all states and territories should take that approach.'

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that it was important that once schools went back, they stayed back rather than face further disruption experienced in the last two years during lockdowns.

Australia has now surpassed one million Covid cases during the pandemic, almost two years since the country recorded its first infection on January 25, 2020.

More than 500,000 infections have been recorded in the past week.
Jim Jordan, a close confidante of Donald Trump, said on Sunday he will not cooperate with a House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

The Ohio Republican representative was asked to disclose conversations he had with the former president as 'Stop the Steal' protesters breached the Capitol in a bid to stop Congress from formally certifying the Democrat Joe Biden's election victory in the first days of 2021.

'This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core constitutional principles and would serve to further erode legislative norms,' Jordan said in a letter to committee chairman, Democrat Bennie Thompson.

'The American people are tired of Democrats' nonstop investigations and partisan witch hunts,' he added, joining a growing list of Trump allies who have refused to answer questions from the panel.

The combative rejoinder came after the committee asked for an interview with Jordan last month - a request the Trump ally described as 'an unprecedented and inappropriate demand'.

'Mr. Jordan's letter fails to address the principal [basis] for the Select Committee's request for a meeting, including that he worked directly with President Trump and the Trump legal team to attempt to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election,' a spokesperson for the January 6 select committee said in response to Jordan's letter.

'Mr. Jordan has admitted that he spoke directly to President Trump on January 6th and is thus a material witness,' they added. 'Mr. Jordan's letter to the committee fails to address these facts. Mr. Jordan has previously said that he would cooperate with the committee's investigation, but it now appears that the Trump team has persuaded him to try to hide the facts and circumstances of January 6th.'

They previewed: 'The Select Committee will respond to this letter in more detail in the coming days and will consider appropriate next steps.'

Jordan was one of Trump's main defenders during his two impeachment trials, the second on a charge of inciting the Capitol riot. Both times, Trump was acquitted by the Senate, then controlled by Republicans.

In denying the panel's request to appear, Jordan is the second GOP lawmaker to rebuke the committee in their probe to get to the bottom of the January 6 attack.

US Republican Representative Jim Jordan said on Sunday he would not cooperate with a US House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol after he was asked to disclose conversations he had with the former president as 'Stop the Steal' protesters breached the Capitol

Jordan was one of Donald Trump's main defenders during his two impeachment trials, the second on a charge of inciting the Capitol riot (pictured, the former president at a rally shortly before his supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021)

Full text of Joseph Schmitz's message to Jim Jordan, which Jordan forwarded to Mark Meadows On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all - in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence. 'No legislative act,' wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, 'contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.' The court in Hubbard v. Lowe reinforced this truth: 'That an unconstitutional statute is not a law at all is a proposition no longer open to discussion.' 226 F. 135, 137 (SDNY 1915), appeal dismissed, 242 U.S. 654 (1916). Following this rationale, an unconstitutionally appointed elector, like an unconstitutionally enacted statute, is no elector at all. Advertisement

Pennsylvania Republican Representative Scott Perry last month declined the select committee's request to speak with him.

'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,' the House Freedom Caucus member wrote in a statement posted to Twitter. 'I decline this entity's request and will continue to fight the failures of the radical Left who desperately seek distraction from their abject failures of crushing inflation, a humiliating surrender in Afghanistan, and the horrendous crisis they created at our border.'

This year, House Republicans nominated Jordan to the committee investigating the riot, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected the choice, citing his support of Trump's false claims of election fraud.

Thompson told Jordan in a letter last month that the panel wants him to provide information surrounding his communications with Trump as well as any communication the congressman may have had with Trump's legal team, White House personnel and others involved in planning the rally for January 6.

Jordan told Politico in August he spoke with Trump 'more than once' on January 6, but that he did not recall the exact number of times.

'We understand that you had at least one and possibly multiple communications with President Trump on January 6th,' Thompson's letter read. 'We would like to discuss each such communication with you in detail.'

It added that the committee had testimony indicating Trump was watching television coverage of the riot as he refused to appear publicly on TV and tell his supporters to go home.

It asked Jordan to detail any discussions he had regarding the possibility of presidential pardons for people involved in any aspect of the Capitol attack or the planning for the two rallies that took place that day.

In his response Sunday, Jordan insisted, 'I have no relevant information that would assist the Select Committee in advancing any legitimate legislative purpose.'

He accused Democrats of using the committee as 'a partisan cudgel against their political adversaries.'

Thousands of Trump supporters are seen on January 6, 2021, marching towards the Capitol. The riot left 150 members of law enforcement injured, and cost five their lives

Jordan is a staunch supporter of Trump's false claims about voter fraud.

The lawmaker brought those claims up during an October hearing on a motion to hold former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon in contempt for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena.

In that hearing, Jordan admitted that he spoke with Trump on the day of the attack.

'Of course, I talked to the president,' Jordan told members of the Rules Committee, in response to questioning from the panel's chairman, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.

'I talked to him that day. I've been clear about that. I don't recall the number of times, but it's not about me. I know you want to make it about that.'

The panel is also seeking information regarding Jordan's meeting with Trump and members of his administration in November and December 2020, and in early January 2021, 'about strategies for overturning the results of the 2020 election.'

'We would also like to ask you about any discussions involving the possibility of presidential pardons for individuals involved in any aspect of January 6th or the planning for January 6th,' Thompson said in his letter.

The interview request came after Jordan was revealed as the 'lawmaker' who sent a text to Mark Meadows on the eve of the riot, suggesting a way in which Vice President Mike Pence could avoid certifying the November 2020 vote.

Jim Jordan sent the above text to Mark Meadows on January 5. It was a forwarded message, which had been sent to Jordan by Joseph Schmitz, an attorney. Critics have pointed out that there was a period added at the end, and the full message was far longer

The text was a three-paragraph summary of a longer legal argument, and had been sent to Jordan by attorney Joseph Schmitz. Jordan then forwarded Schmitz's argument to Meadows.

Jordan's argument in his letter is essentially, 'So what?', claiming he has the right to be involved in any debate tied to congressional proceedings, including certification of election results.

At the time of the text, Trump was desperately seeking a way to prevent his No. 2 from certifying the results of the November vote in Congress - usually, a routine and uneventful procedure.

'On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all,' the text began.

The committee said last month that it could meet with Jordan on either January 3 or January 4, or the week of January 10. It had also offered to come interview Jordan in his home district.

The committee has long had its sights set on Jordan, and in August asked communications companies to preserve his phone records along with a number of other lawmakers .
An American Airlines passenger has sparked a firestorm by complaining about a pilot whose case bore a sticker critical of Joe Biden.

The pilot, whose identity was not released by the airline, is now under investigation.

Dana Finley Morrison, a Missouri-based fraternity and sorority worker, was flying from St Lucia to Miami on Saturday when she spotted the pilot's 'Let's Go Brandon' sticker.

The slogan began to circulate in September, when a Nascar reporter misheard the chants of 'F*** Joe Biden', and it has since become an anti-Biden rallying cry.

Morrison tweeted to American Airlines, saying: 'Y'all cool with your pilots displaying this kind of cowardly rhetoric on their crew luggage when they're in uniform, about to board a plane?

'We are not the only passengers who noticed and were disgusted.'

The airline then responded to Morrison, saying: 'Thank you for bringing this to our attention and we want to get this to the right team. Please DM any additional details.'

Morrison later posted screenshots which she said was the conversation with American Airlines, with the airline promising to review the matter internally.

The Dallas Fort Worth-based airline currently offers an official , company-endorsed Black Lives Matter pin for its staffers

'We hold our team members to the highest standards and expectations,' the airline said.

The airline has a policy that only official, preapproved badges or pins can be worn by its staffers. Examples include a military veterans pin, a gay pride pin and one for Christian workers. Pilots can only wear three pins at a time.

In October 2020, however, the Dallas Fort Worth-based airline came under fire after it created an official Black Lives Matter pin for employees.

Called the 'Stand for Change' badge, the adornment's release came after staffers implored the airline to allow them to express their support towards the left-leaning sentiment, with many wearing unofficial, non-approved messages bearing the message.

The airline eventually succumbed to employees' demands, despite its company policy of not supporting organizations - political or otherwise.

Morrison later posted screenshots which she said was the conversation with American Airlines, with the airline promising to review the matter internally

'American Airlines believes in equity and inclusion for all,' a rep for the company wrote in a statement at the time. 'In light of the appropriate attention to lives of Black Americans, we will allow team members who wish to wear a Black Lives Matter pin to do so if they choose.'

'We Believe Black Lives Matter. While American isnt expressing support for specific organizations, we stand in solidarity with the movement for equality and justice for Black Americans who continue to experience racism and discrimination.'

With that said, many spoke out in defense of the pilot amid the current Let's Go Brandon controversy, insisting that he should be allowed to express his views.

Mollie Hemingway, conservative commentator and an editor at The Federalist, labeled Morrison a 'Karen' - a privileged and offensive white person.

'Hope he and everyone else gets a raise for having to deal with Karen passengers such as this one,' Hemingway said.

Christina Pushaw, Ron DeSantis's press secretary, agreed, adding: 'This pilot deserves a raise for dealing with entitled Karens while doing his job.'

One woman vowed: 'Will never fly American again if you discipline an employee for having a political opinion.'

A man remarked: 'The World is watching, If crew can openly wear BLM merch, hard to justify censoring this.'

Others were also quick to point out the company's hypocrisy concerning its policies on politically charged pieces of flare.

'You guys have no problem with your employees sporting Democratic party, BLM, or rainbow regalia while they're on the job,' one user wrote. 'Why should this be any different?'

Another customer offered a similar sentiment while touting his 'Elite' traveler status with the company: 'We are Elite... and are absolutely FINE with his tag. If @AmericanAir allows BLM propaganda, this should be as well. Dana, sit down.'

A further user insinuated that the airline had more pressing issues to worry about, such as selling seats as flight cancellations spurred by COVID and inclement weather run rampant.

'Times are tough all around. Boycotts make life tougher. Flight cancellations just before the refund deadline mean empty seats. Think about it,' the user wrote to the company.

Another added that, provided he didn't press his views on anyone, there was no problem.

'If he's not pushing the agenda on the passengers and not spewing stuff over the intercom she can mind her own business!' she said.

'This young man has done nothing wrong.'

The airline says that it has launched an investigation into the pilot, but has remained mum as to the staffer's identity and whether or not he will face repercussions for donning the unapproved piece of flair.

DailyMail.com reached out to American Airlines Monday morning for comment concerning the probe, but did immediately hear back.

The incident is not the first time a US airline pilot has found themselves in hot water amid the divided political leanings in the country.

In November, a Southwest pilot faced scrutiny for signing off a PA announcement with 'Lets go Brandon' on a flight from Houston, and also found himself under investigation.

At the time, Southwest released a statement that asserted the airline 'does not condone employees sharing their personal political opinions while on the job, serving our customers.'

The details surrounding the investigator of the pilot, also left unnamed, have yet to be released more than two months later, as the airline refused to divulge details on the staffer.
Mark McGowan has warned Western Australia's unvaccinated population their lives are about to get 'very difficult' as he prepares to open the border.

WA recorded three new Covid cases on Monday, but all were already in isolation and were not infectious in the community.

In the lead up to the state re-opening on February 5, Mr McGowan said residents who are unvaccinated won't be able to enjoy the same freedoms as their innoculated counterparts.

'Life is about to get very difficult for you... it's a big encouragement to go and get yourself vaccinated' he said during a press conference on Monday.

Mark McGowan has warned Western Australia's unvaccinated population their lives are about to get 'very difficult' and will be locked out of all venues in the state

Mr McGowan said the state has successfully navigated through a Delta cluster and its two latest Omicron outbreaks, but said the virus would continue to find its way into WA.

'With the sheer number of cases in the rest of the country right now, it is placing pressure on supply chains across a number of industries,' he said.

As the state moves closer to 90 per cent vaccination rates, Mr McGowan said the eastern states are proof of what will happen if people continue to reject the jab.

'Over east, the intensive care units are filled with the unvaccinated... even though that's a tiny proportion of the population, they are hugely over-represented,' he said.

'[The unvaccinated] will be able to work in some limited industries, they'll be able to go to supermarkets and get essential supplies and alike, but a lot of the things we take for granted and the things we enjoy, they won't be able to do and that's because we want to protect them and save their lives, and we want to protect other people from their transmissibility.'

As the state moves closer to 90 per cent vaccination rates, Mr McGowan said the eastern states are proof of what will happen if people continue to reject the jab

The state will launch its vaccine passport app on Tuesday, with unvaccinated unable to enter all pubs, cafes, restaurants and gyms, as statewide restrictions remain on nightclubs and large venues.

Rapid antigen tests were finally approved for use in Western Australia on Monday after the federal government said RATs would designate a positive infection in an effort to stem wait time for PCR results.

Mr McGowan has requested residents only use the tests when there are high numbers of Covid cases in the state to help supply.

The state also made children under the age of 12 eligible for the vaccine on Monday, with the new school year moving closer.

Western Australia are moving towards the 90 per cent vaccination rate and the re-opening of its borders to the rest of the country

The February 5 re-opening date remains the biggest day on the West Australian calendar however, with a reluctant Mr McGowan again highlighting the issues that will come with uniting with the rest of Australia.

'Nothing is perfect with Covid, as you've seen over east, problems and issues develop,' he said.

'Things will happen that won't be great, things won't be perfect, but the good thing is we've been able to get our vaccination rate right up, but we need to get it up more.'
The United States on Sunday recorded 305,100 new cases of COVID-19 and 330 deaths.

The drop in cases and deaths was dramatic - falling from 900,000 cases reported on Saturday and 2,615 deaths. But the lower numbers in that analysis of Johns Hopkins University figures by DailyMail.com are believed to be due to a lag in reporting, rather than a significant improvement in the situation.

On Sunday New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the latest high-profile politician to confirm a COVID-19 infection.

The 32-year-old made the announcement on her official Twitter page Sunday night, sharing a statement on House of Representatives headed paper which said: 'Representative Ocasio-Cortez has received a positive test result for COVID-19.

'She is experiencing symptoms and is recovering at home. The Congresswoman received her booster shot this Fall, and encourages everyone to get their booster and follow all CDC guidance.'

AOC then added some of her own guidance in a follow-up tweet, writing: 'For information on what to do if you're exposed to COVID, test positive or want to schedule a test or vaccine in New York City -- see our round-up of CDC and NYC resources here,' before adding a link to a personal website.

It's not known where she caught the virus, although she was pictured partying maskless during a brunch event in South Beach, Miami, on January 2

AOC has tested positive for COVID days after she was pictured partying maskless in Miami with actor Billy Porter (pictured in animal print)

AOC and Porter hugged during the outdoor event - he has yet to comment on her diagnosis, and its unclear if the Pose star has himself been exposed or infected

AOC was also snapped enjoying cocktails at a Miami sushi restaurant with boyfriend Riley Roberts, with Roberts' Birkenstocks sparking a subsequent war of words between the firebrand congresswoman and conservative commentators

The progressive representative revealed her diagnosis on her Twitter page Sunday night

News of AOC's diagnosis triggered online mockery, with one commentator saying AOC shouldn't have visited Florida, and another mocking the lawmaker's claim that conservatives angry about her trip to the Sunshine State were actually harboring a secret crush on her

It is unclear when or how AOC became infected.

Despite staunchly advocating for mask and vaccine mandates, AOC abandoned her own rhetoric last week during a trip to Miami, Florida, where she was spotted maskless at numerous venues.

Her vacation was dragged on Twitter by conservatives, including a Twitter account devoted to and endorsed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, which invited her to 'enjoy a taste of freedom' in the Sunshine State.

'Welcome to Florida, AOC! We hope you're enjoying a taste of freedom here in the Sunshine State thanks to @RonDeSantisFL's leadership,' the tweet, by the Team DeSantis account, read.

Ocasio-Cortez responded to photos and criticism online with a tweet saying: 'Hasn't Gov. DeSantis been inexplicably missing for like 2 weeks?

'If he's around, I would be happy to say hello. His social media team seems to have been posting old photos for weeks. In the meantime, perhaps I could help with local organizing. Folks are quite receptive here.'

Her infection came as a former member of President Joe Biden's Transition COVID Advisory Board said on Sunday he expects COVID will become 'endemic' like the flu later this year.

In total, as of Sunday, the United States has seen 60 million cases since the COVID pandemic first began two years ago, with 900,000 deaths.

The surge in cases has led to a nationwide shortage in available staff members to handle business and services, with 5 million people serving in police and fire departments calling out sick.

Many experts have said the infection rate will continue to increase for the next few weeks before the Omicron surge peaks later this month, with National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease director Dr. Anthony Fauci saying on Friday that the US will likely record more than 1 million cases daily on a regular basis in coming weeks.

'It's still surging upward... I would not be surprised at all if we go over a million cases per day,' he told WNBC-TV.

'I would hope that by the time we get to the fourth week in January -- end of the third week, beginning of the fourth week  that we will start see this coming down.'

By the end of the year, a former member of Biden's Transition COVID Advisory Board said on Sunday, the COVID pandemic could even become endemic, meaning diagnoses numbers would become stable and predictable.

'I would say we're not yet in the endemic stage. We're still in the pandemic stage,' Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel told NBC host Chuck Todd, during a panel discussion on Sunday's Meet the Press.

'If you've got 1,500 people a dying from this disease it's still a pandemic and Omicron is spreading.'

But, he continued: 'We think that over the course of 2022, we will get to an endemic stage - and the plan is - or the proposal is - we need a strategic plan for that, that covers vaccines, getting more people vaccinated, and the only way to do that, as we've been very clear over time, is mandates.'

Emanuel said that about 60 percent of Americans voluntarily received a COVID vaccine, but the numbers increased once workplace and jurisdictional vaccine mandates were instituted.

As of Sunday, more than 74 percent of all Americans have received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine and 62.5 percent are fully vaccinated.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a former member of President Joe Biden's Transition COVID Advisory Board, said on Sunday that COVID could become 'endemic' like the flu later this year in the United States

Emanuel also said on Sunday that new treatments and other mitigation measures will also play a role in helping the virus become more manageable, noting: 'We need to improve our ventilation system. We need to get more therapies and get the link between a positive test and getting therapy much closer so you can actually start in three days and not only the rich and well-off get it.

'Those are kinds of things we need to put in place over the next three months to be prepared when COVID is really just in the air, like RSV - another respiratory virus, like influenza, like adenovirus, all the respiratory viruses.

'It's going to be here,' he continued. 'We're going to learn to live with it.'

His comments come as health officials in the UK reported that cases decreased 6.7 percent on Sunday to 141,472 new cases, and COVID hospitalizations in London, which has been ravaged in recent weeks by the Omicron surge, has decreased 31 percent to 310 on January 6 - the latest date regional data is available for.

UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) figures from Saturday also show there were 146,390 new positive tests over the past 24 hours, down 18.5 percent on the previous week's figure of 179,637.

That marked the biggest week-on-week fall since the start of November, well before the mutant strain sent cases soaring across the country.

But the number of people dying with the virus, however, rose 32.9 percent in the UK, with 97 deaths reported on Sunday, compared to 73 reported one week prior.

It marked the biggest week-on-week fall since the start of November, well before the mutant strain sent cases soaring across the country.

Experts now hope nationwide numbers will continue to follow London's trajectory of rapidly falling cases and now hospitalizations. A similar trend was seen Omicron ground zero South Africa, which saw a sharp peak in cases before infections quickly dropped off.

But in the United States, the surge in Omicron infections is causing a breakdown in basic functions and services two years into the pandemic.

'This really does, I think, remind everyone of when COVID-19 first appeared and there were such major disruptions across every part of our normal life,' said Tom Cotter, director of emergency response and preparedness at the global health nonprofit Project HOPE.

'And the unfortunate reality is, there's no way of predicting what will happen next until we get our vaccination numbers - globally - up.'

First responders, hospitals, schools and government agencies have employed an all-hands-on-deck approach to keep the public safe, but they are worried how much longer they can keep it up.

California is now allowing hospitals to force COVID-positive asymptomatic staff to work as the state grapples with a surge of Omicron cases and staff shortages.

'Hospitals have to exhaust all other options before resorting to this temporary tool. Facilities and providers using this tool, should have asymptomatic COVID-19 positive workers interact only with COVID-19 positive patients to the extent possible,' a statement issued by the California Department of Public Health on Saturday read.

The news sparked outrage among advocates for health workers, who argue hospital staff has carried the weight of the pandemic on their shoulders and are now being put at risk, along with their patients.

'Healthcare workers and patients need the protection of clear rules guided by strong science. Allowing employers to bring back workers who may still be infectious is one of the worst ideas I have heard during this pandemic, and that's really saying something,' Bob Schoonover, President of SEIU California told CBS Sacramento.

Health and human Services Secretary Dr Mark Ghaly said on Wednesday 'some facilities are going to be strapped,' as the Omicron variants spike worsens the situation.

About 40 percent of hospitals are expected to face critical shortages.

Kiyomi Burchill, a member of the California Hospital Association, said some hospitals have reported as much as one quarter of their staff out for COVID-19.
Virgin Australia has cut a quarter of all flights from its schedule in January and February, with hundreds of scheduled flights not resuming until the end of June, as the country's Covid crisis plunges thousands of workers into isolation.

The devastating blow to travellers has been caused by staffing issues and reduced demand as Omicron continues to wreak havoc across the country.

Virgin Australia has suspended nine internal routes and its sole international service  to Fiji  and reduced the number of flights on some other routes.

Virgin Australia has cancelled 25 per cent of its scheduled flights, with some routes not coming back until June (pictured, an arrival at Perth Airport)

VIRGIN AUSTRALIA SUSPENDED ROUTES  Adelaide-Darwin  Adelaide-Cairns  Adelaide-Sunshine Coast  Coffs Harbour-Melbourne  Hamilton Island-Melbourne  Sydney-Townsville  Melbourne-Townsville  Gold Coast-Launceston  Gold Coast-Hobart  Sydney-Fiji Advertisement

The airline's chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka said the aviation industry globally has been affected by surging Omicron cases, affecting both team members and consumer confidence.

'One thing we have learnt from the last two years is that we need to keep adapting as circumstances change.

'So we will continue to do that, and have made some temporary changes to our network to manage the current environment,' she said.

Ms Hrdlicka added that a shift to living with Covid-19 means there will continue to be changes made in businesses as well as in personal lives.

'We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused to any guest impacted by the changes to our flight schedule during this time,' she said.

Passengers whose flights have been cancelled will be 're=accommodated', the airline said, and where Virgin Australia is unable to provide an alternative flight, customers are advised to get in touch.

The flight cancellations start from Monday, January 24, with some services not set to resume until Thursday, June 23.

Virgin Australia also cancelled some flights to Darwin in lead up to Christmas.
Australians are clearing supermarket shelves of popular painkillers such as Panadol and Nurofen after a top medico said to stock up amid the Omicron surge.

Deputy chief heath officer Professor Michael Kidd urged people on Monday to be prepared for potential infections of the milder strain by having the over-the-counter medicines handy.

But the warning has caused a wave of panic-buying reminiscent of the toilet paper hoarding of 2020 - with many people saying they had gone to the supermarket and been unable to find the item.

Supermarkets shelves in Australia's capitals are being cleared of Panadol and Nurofen after the deputy chief medical officer said the pills would be handy amid Omicron (pictured: a Woolworths store on Monday)

'No Panadol on the shelves at my local Woolworths yesterday - stripped bare,' one person wrote to Twitter on Monday.

'Use Panadol they say. There's no Panadol to buy at Coles, at Woolworths, at the 4 local chemists or at Aldi. There is no Nurofen either,' another person said.

'So the local Woolworths was saying they had Rapid Antigen Tests. Husband went down. Nope no RATs. All gone. Also no Panadol, Nurofen or any other painkillers. Well done Greg Hunt. This is how you create that hoarding sh** you were talking about,' added a third.

Another person added they had searched for Panadol on the Woolworths online site and the item was unavailable.

Supermarkets have been experiencing supply-chain issues in recent weeks with many stores running low on stock (pictured: a Queensland Coles store on Monday)

Many people took to Twitter to vent their frustration after being unable to buy Panadol (pictured)

On Monday Professor Kidd said that with the prevalence of the Omicron strain, many Australians would likely test positive to the milder variant of Covid over the next few weeks.

'With the rising case numbers we've seen over the past week in many parts of the country, it's likely that many of us will test positive for Covid-19 over the coming days and weeks if we haven't already done so,' he said.

He said that having some the medicines around would help with mild aches and fevers that can be associated with Omicron.

'The first thing to do is to be prepared. My advice is that you make sure you have some paracetamol or ibuprofen at home.'

'It's important to be prepared because you won't be able to go to your supermarket or pharmacy if you are diagnosed with Covid-19.'

Professor Kidd added that drinking plenty of water is also essential and adding electrolyte powder such as Hydralite could also be beneficial.

While he said most cases could be mild 'some might become seriously unwell' so it was still important to isolate if you test positive and seek medical advice if stronger symptoms develop.

The panic-buying is reminiscent of toilet paper and paper towels being hoarded in 2020

Supermarkets have been forced to introduce buying limits once again after supply chain issues left shelves empty.

The increasing COVID-19 case numbers and subsequent isolation requirements have put pressure on food manufacturers and the transport and retail sector.

On Wednesday Coles reintroduced temporary buying limits on meat and poultry.

A spokesperson told AAP it was expected to take several weeks before things returned to normal.

The latest national cabinet meeting resulted in changes to testing requirements for truck drivers, removing the need for a PCR test every seven days.

The prime minister said the decision was key to ensuring food distribution networks could continue moving.

'We need truckies keeping on trucking ... to keep moving things around,' he told reporters in Canberra on Thursday.

Transport Workers Union national secretary Michael Kaine told AAP the industry welcomed the changes to testing which had been putting significant pressure on the sector.

Woolworths boss Brad Banducci has assured customers there's plenty of stock but have been hampered by supply chain issues as shelves being stripped bare across the country

But he said transport workers needed priority access to rapid tests to keep the industry moving.

'These tests are an important weapon in the fight against the virus, and without them, the virus is hitching a ride through transport supply chains, putting workers and the industry in danger,' he said.

The Victorian Farmers Federation called on the federal government to rethink isolation rules for workers in the industry as had been done for healthcare workers.

President Emma Germano said asymptomatic workers deemed close contacts of COVID-19 cases should have their isolation period reduced to lessen the pressure on food supply chains.

Meanwhile as of Thursday Woolworths had not introduced buying limits.

A spokesperson said stores had been impacted by supply chain issues but deliveries were still arriving daily.

They said stores will continue monitoring shelves in coming days and asked shoppers to be mindful of others when stocking up.
A mother and two of her children have been charged in the death of her six year-old son after they spun a 'completely false' story that he was missing after he was killed.

Damari Perry, 6, was reported missing on January 5 by his mother Jannie Perry, 38, and his 20-year-old brother, Jeremiah R. Perry,

They reportedly told authorities that he may have gone missing in Skokie, Illinois, where he and his 16-year-old sister were driven to a party, according to NBC 5 Chicago.

When police questioned the girl, she reportedly told officers that she fell asleep after having several drinks and woke up to find that Damari and the man who had driven them were gone.

But investigators quickly uncovered several contradictions in the story based on evidence they found in Skokie, and instead turned their attention to the boy's North Chicago home.

They interviewed several juvenile witnesses at the Lake County Children's Advocacy Center, who led them to find Damari's body near an abandoned home in Gary, Indiana.

His cause of death has not yet been revealed, and an autopsy is scheduled for Monday.

But on Friday, Damari's mother and two of his siblings were brought into custody.

Damari Perry, 6, was found dead near an abandoned home in Gary, Indiana

His 20-year-old brother, Jeremiah R. Perry, (pictured) was charged with aggravated battery causing great bodily harm to a child under 12, concealing a homicidal death and obstructing justice. He is being held on a $3 million bond

According to authorities, Damari was punished by being placed in a cold shower for an undetermined amount of time prior to his death.

He reportedly 'did something to upset family' on December 29, NBC 5 Chicago reports, and as a result, family members put him in the cold shower.

At some point, Damari vomited and was then taken out of the shower, but he eventually died. Prosecutors claim the relatives did not call for medical help and instead spun the 'completely false' story about Skokie.

Damari's mother, Jannie, is now charged with first-degree murder, concealment of a homicidal death and obstructing justice.

Jeremiah was also charged with aggravated battery causing great bodily harm to a child under 12, concealing a homicidal death and obstructing justice. A judge on Sunday ordered him held on a $3 million bail.

And an unnamed juvenile sibling also faces charges in Lake County Juvenile Court, with no further details offered on that suspect.

More charges could be filed against the family as the investigation continues.

'Our hearts ache over the murder of 6-year-old Damari Perry,' Lake County State's Attorney Eric Rinehart said in a statement. 'We would not have reached the awful truth of this case without the work of the FBI, the North Chicago Police Department and the investigators and staff at the Lake County Children's Advocacy Center.'

'Prosecutors, investigators and victim support professionals worked late into the night and into the early morning to make sure we understand this tragic crime,' he continued. 'Now, because of their rigorous and detailed investigation, we will be able to bring Damari's killers to justice in a courtroom.'
Prince Andrew has settled a 6.6 million debt with a French socialite, paving the way for him to sell his beloved ski chalet to fund his alleged sex abuse case.

Isabelle de Rouvre, 74, sold her house, Chalet Helora, to her then-friends Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson in 2014 for 18million.

Andrew and Fergie agreed with Ms de Rouvre that the house would be paid for in instalments.

But Ms de Rouvre claimed the Yorks failed to make the final instalment of 5m for the property in the exclusive Swiss ski resort of Verbier.

Initially Ms de Rouvre agreed that it could be deferred until December 2019, with interest accruing, but the pair still did not honour the agreement despite repeated demands.

Glamorous Ms de Rouvre, saddened by the breakdown in trust, was forced to launch a legal battle in the Swiss courts two years ago in an attempt to recoup the sum owed to her by the Duke of York.

The Duke finally paid late last year, and Ms de Rouvre has now said: 'The war is over. He has paid the money.'

The settlement raises questions over how Andrew raised the 6.6million he owed Ms de Rouvre - but it now paves the way for him to sell Chalet Helora and free up desperately needed cash to pay his escalating legal bills due to claims he sexually assaulted Virginia Roberts.

Andrew bought the seven-bedroom Chalet Helora, in the luxury Swiss resort of Verbier with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson in 2014 for 16.6million

In September last year, it was reported that Andrew and the Duchess of York were close to selling the chalet to settle a legal dispute with its former owner, Isabella de Rouvre, 74

Ms de Rouvre said: 'I sold it two months ago, or was it one. Maybe six weeks ago.

'Anyway, I sold it to the Yorks and we made an agreement. That is the end of the story thankfully.

'The war is finished. It is the end of the matter.

'I have nothing to do with it now. That's all.

'I don't know what they are doing now. They were here at Christmas but I only know that because I read it in the press. I did not see them. So Happy Christmas and that's that. The end.

'It was about six weeks ago that the matter was closed. It was November. It's done. They paid the money and it was done. It is closed for me. The war is over. He has paid the money. We have a war against Covid which is more important but this was a different war.

'The second payment needed to be paid and that payment is now done. That's it. You can be sure that's it. It's done.

Prince Andrew is pictured in 2001 with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson and their children in Verbier, Switzerland

Prince Andrew, Virginia Roberts, aged 17, and Ghislaine Maxwell at Ghislaine Maxwell's townhouse in London, Britain on March 13, 2001

'If they live here, they live here. But I don't know what they do.'

A friend of the socialite said it had been a 'hugely stressful' time for Ms de Rouvre.

She said: 'It has been hugely stressful for Isabelle. She sold the chalet in good faith. She thought they were friends. But it all went bad. It has been upsetting and stressful. She should not have been dragged into all this. It's a relief for her that the Yorks have now paid and she can sever ties.'

The clearance of debt means Andrew is now free to go ahead with plans to sell the property.

The Duke is needing to find the funds to pay his team of US lawyers as they battle the claims made by Ms Roberts.

Ms Roberts, who now uses her married name of Giuffre, claims that the prince had sex with her three times after she was trafficked by paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Prince Andrew has consistently denied the allegations.

Disposal of the chalet will leave him owning no property in the UK or abroad.

Fergie and the couple's daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, were seen cavorting around Verbier just after Christmas, enjoying a ski holiday  perhaps their last in Chalet Helora.

The chalet, which boasts seven bedrooms and an indoor swimming pool, holds special memories for the royals.

Prince Andrew walks through New York's Central Park with Jeffrey Epstein following the latter's prison term in 2011

Ghislaine Maxwell gives Jeffrey Epstein a foot massage on his private jet dubbed the 'Lolita Express'. The photo was entered into evidence in Maxwell's case on December 7 by the US Attorney's Office

As a family, the Yorks rented Chalet Helora from Ms de Rouvre for winter holidays before deciding to buy it in 2014 as a nest egg for their daughters.

Andrew and Fergie jointly purchased the property for about 18 million.

They reportedly took out a mortgage for 13 million with the remaining 5 million agreed to be paid in cash.

When this sum remained outstanding, the Yorks allegedly made a deal with the socialite to defer the payment until December 2019.

The pair was then expected to pay 6.6 million, consisting of the original sum plus interest.

But despite repeated demands the debt remained unpaid.

In May 2020, Ms de Rouvre was forced to sue the Duke. A protracted legal battle then ensued.

Until the debt hanging over the chalet was paid he was powerless to sell. It is believed he has now found a buyer and the sale is being finalised.

Fergie and the princesses were photographed in the resort last week with their families.

One neighbour said: 'Maybe that was their last holiday here. To be honest the neighbourhood won't be too sorry to see the back of them. Once they turn up along comes all the paparazzi from Italy, France, Switzerland, you name it.

'They are a nuisance blocking the roads and we often have to ask them to turn their engines off. They just sit there with fumes going everywhere polluting our beautiful mountain air.

'Plus, it's all rather seedy with Andrew bieng caught up in this sexual abuse scandal. That's not the image we want in Verbier.'
VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh government on Monday imposed a night curfew on the state in view of the increasing cases of Covid19 in the state. The curfew timings are from 11pm to 5 am, effective from tonight.

This decision was taken during a review meeting on the Covid situation held by chief minister Jaganmohan Reddy on Monday. The CM said preventive measures should be effectively implemented, including the wearing masks by people at all times and maintaining a physical distance.

Jagan asked the officials to take appropriate precautions in changing the prescriptions for Covid19 in the wake of spread of the new variant Omicron and make changes in home isolation kit accordingly. Consult health professionals and prepare the prescription, he told officials, and said they must review the availability of required medicines and procure and keep them ready for use.

The CM also asked officials to strengthen 104 call center and ensure the calls are attended to immediately. Organise one Covid care center in each constituency and take measures to ensure that all facilities are available there, he said.

Jagan asked the officials to continue imposing fines on those not wearing masks in public places and also ensure people wore masks in buses. Covid protocols should be followed in shops and shopping malls and no more than 200 people should be allowed to gather in public places and 100 people indoors.

He said 50 per cent of the seats should be left empty to ensure physical distancing in theatres and cine-goers must ensure to wear masks. Ensure physical distance is maintained and masks are worn in temples and other places of worship. The health department will release detailed guidelines soon, he said.
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At least 100 migrants including a child wearing a dinosaur snowsuit arrived in Dover after crossing the English Channel by small boat today.

More than 60 people are believed to have made the journey into the UK overnight after the Border Force boat Speedwell carried around 35 into the Port of Dover at 4.40am, and an RNLI lifeboat brought in another 30 or so less than an hour later.

Several members of the group of arrivals, which included a baby, appeared to be suffering from cramp after the long journey.

One migrant was seen being carried in a fireman's lift up the ramp towards the immigration facility at Tug Haven.

And a third group of at least 30 people were escorted into the Port of Dover on Border Force vessel Searcher at around midday.

This is the third group to be brought into the harbour today, after 60 to 70 people made the journey overnight, arriving in the UK before 5.30am this morning

A child is carried after migrant boats were brought into Dover Harbour early this morning

At least 30 people were escorted into the Port of Dover on Border Force vessel Searcher at around midday

Pictured: A group of migrants was brought into Dover Harbour early this morning

One migrant was seen being carried in a fireman's lift up the ramp towards the immigration facility at Tug Haven

Migrants arrived at Dover Harbour at approximately 4.40am today by the Border Force vessel 'Speedwell'

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 centres 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

An RNLI lifeboat had been launched and the Border Force's Speedwell was brought in to assist by the Coastguard after the first crossings were spotted in the Channel early this morning

It is the second migrant crossing of 2022, after 66 men and women, as well as a handful of young children, were intercepted in the English Channel on January 4.

The group were the first to make the treacherous 21-mile journey this year due to a brief weather window which brought calmer conditions at sea.

This comes after it was revealed that three times as many migrants crossed the Channel by boat last year compared to 2020.

A record-breaking 28,381 people made the perilous journey in 2021, a huge increase on the 8,410 who made the trip the previous year.

At least 1,020 boats were intercepted by UK authorities over the past 12 months  with an average of around 78 migrants arriving in three boats every day.

Last month alone saw 1,770 people arrive by small boat, compared to just 211 in December 2020.

But the busiest month for migrant arrivals was November, when a staggering 6,869 people reached the UK across 201 vessels the highest number since the crisis in the Channel began.

The figures reached an all time high on November 11 when 1,131 migrants arrived by small boat in one day.

November 24 also brought the gravest tragedy in the Channel when 27 men, women and children all died after their dinghy sank in the freezing cold waters.

Only two people are known to have survived the largest loss of life since the current crisis began.

Ministers have been warned arrivals will continue and more people will drown in the narrow stretch of water between Britain and France.

Last year's record number was an increase of about 20,000 on 2020 and came despite millions of pounds promised to French authorities to tackle the issue.

The last 12 months have seen smugglers packing more and more people aboard larger and larger dinghies, sometimes with deadly consequences.

The number of arrivals peaked in November when, despite dropping temperatures, at least 6,869 people reached the UK.

Between November 10 and 16 more than 3,100 people made the perilous crossing, the most in any seven-day stretch in the current crisis.

At least 1,020 boats were intercepted by UK authorities over the past 12 months  with an average of around 78 migrants arriving in three boats every day (pictured: Migrants brought into Dover today)

One of the migrant boats picked up following a dramatic stand-off in the English Channel

The Border Force vessel 'Speedwell' brought migrants into Dover Harbour early today

It comes as migrant crossings across the Channel trebled last year with more than 28,300 risking their lives to reach the UK

The same month also saw a new record for a single day, with 1,185 people reaching Britain on November 11.

Going into 2021 the most arrivals on a single day had been 416, set in September 2020.

Clare Moseley, founder of Care4Calais, a charity that supports refugees living in northern France, said rising numbers of small boat arrivals in Britain reflect a shift away from attempts to cross by lorry.

She said: 'They are some of the most vulnerable people in the world, having lost family members in bloody conflicts, suffered horrific torture and inhumane persecution.

'The Government tells us that people should travel by legal means but if this were truly possible why would so many be risking their lives in flimsy boats?

'If the Government were serious about stopping people smugglers, it would create a safe way for people to claim asylum and put people smugglers out of business once and for all.'
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Top experts today claimed that the end of the Covid crisis was 'in sight' as ministers claimed Britain is on a path to 'living with' the virus and Boris Johnson said the Government is 'looking at' cutting the self-isolation period again.

Dr David Nabarro, from the World Health Organisation, said coronavirus would pose a very difficult situation for the next three months 'at least' but insisted 'we can see the end in sight'.

Meanwhile, Professor Graham Medley, No10's chief modeller, warned Covid 'can't be an emergency forever' as he said 'Government decisions' would need to be made about scrapping mass testing and vaccinations.

They are the latest scientists to suggest Britain is moving into a new phase of the coronavirus crisis now that it appears increasingly likely the NHS will cope without new restrictions.

Dr Clive Dix, the ex-chief of the UK's vaccine taskforce, yesterday called for a return to a 'new normality' and for Covid to be treated like the flu now that the milder Omicron variant has a similar death rate.

Dr Dix, who was instrumental in acquiring the UK's Covid jab supply, called for mass population-based vaccination to end in favour of a 'targeted strategy' aimed at the vulnerable.

There are also calls for routine testing to be scrapped to put an end to the self-isolation crisis plaguing businesses and vital services now that Omicron is causing little or no symptoms for most.

Writing in the Mail today, Professor Angus Dalgleish, an oncologist at St George's University, said mass screening amounted to 'national self-harm'

It came as the Prime Minister today hailed 'great progress' against the fourth wave but warned that the NHS is still under significant pressure and urged people to get booster jabs.

On a visit to a vaccination clinic in Uxbridge, he poured cold water on rumours that lateral flow tests could stop being free soon, saying they will stay 'as long as necessary'.

And he tempered his optimism by stressing that ministers will follow the 'science' on whether quarantine can be cut again from seven days without causing another deadly spike in infections.

The government and NHS leaders appear increasingly confident that the Omicron wave will not overwhelm services.

Another 141,472 lab-confirmed cases were announced yesterday, but the figure fell for the fifth day in a row and the rate of increase seems to have slowed sharply.

Official data show hospitalisations are slowing across the country  with 2,000 being admitted on average each day in England, half of last January's peak  and are already falling in London, which was first region to be hit by Omicron.

The number of patients on ventilators has also stayed flat, and overall occupancy levels are no higher than in the winters before the pandemic struck.

In a round of interviews earlier, Housing Secretary Michael Gove said the UK is 'moving to a situation' where it is 'possible to say that we can live with Covid and that the pressure on the NHS and on vital public services is abating'.

However, he stressed that 'we are not there yet' and dismissed complaints that dire warnings about the possibility of huge numbers of deaths had been 'scaremongering'.

Mr Johnson is said to be drawing up a new strategy for the transition away from restrictions, which would be implemented by March.

There is speculation it could see lateral flow tests withdrawn for non-high risk situations as well as shorter isolation.

But asked whether free LFDs will be abandoned soon, Mr Johnson said: 'I think that we will use them as long as they are very important. There's a similar argument to be had about the quarantine period. The thing to do is look at the science.

'We're looking at that and we will act according to the science as we always have.

In other developments today:

More NHS cancer patients will be treated in private hospitals under a deal struck with the sector to 'safeguard' against the staff absence crisis and rising Covid admissions;

Clive Watson, chairman of the City Pub Group, questioned the continuing work-from-home guidance and said the review of measures due by January 26 is a 'very good opportunity' to change them;

Mr Johnson has insisted he and Chancellor Rishi Sunak are looking at ways of easing the cost of living crisis as the economy struggles to recover from Covid.

On a visit to a vaccination clinic in Uxbridge, Boris Johnson poured cold water on rumours that lateral flow tests could stop being free soon, saying they will stay 'as long as necessary'

Boris Johnson is said to be drawing up a new strategy for the transition away from restrictions, which would be implemented by March

In a round of interviews this morning, Housing Secretary Michael Gove said the UK is 'moving to a situation' where it is 'possible to say that we can live with Covid and that the pressure on the NHS and on vital public services is abating'

Hospitalisations due to Covid fell in England yesterday, and are also dropping in the capital which was first to be hit by the variant in a promising sign for the rest of the nation

Dr Nabarro, the WHO's special envoy on Covid, told Sky News that we need to 'respect' the virus but start transitioning to something closer to normal.

'I'm afraid we are moving through the marathon but there's no actual way to say that we're at the end  we can see the end in sight, but we're not there.

Catching a common cold may protect you from getting Covid, another study finds Catching the common cold could also protect against Covid, yet more research has suggested. Ever since the start of the pandemic, experts have speculated other coronaviruses  which tend to cause runny noses and sore throats  could offer some cross-reactive immunity. But new real-world evidence has uncovered the 'clearest evidence' yet that immunity induced by colds can help fight off Covid. People with higher levels of T cells from other seasonal coronaviruses were less likely to get infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid. T cells are a key part of the immune system, and hunt down invading pathogens and stop them replicating within the body. Imperial College London scientists studied 52 people who lived with someone who had tested positive for the virus. Half caught the virus, while the others managed to ward it off. They took blood samples from the volunteers within days of being exposed to SARS-CoV-2, allowing researchers to determine their T cell levels. Household contacts who did not test positive had 'significantly higher levels' of pre-existing coronavirus-fighting T cells, on average. These T cells 'targeted internal proteins within the SARS-CoV-2 virus rather than the spike protein to protect against infection', the team said. Professor Ajit Lalvani, one of the researchers, said: 'Our study provides the clearest evidence to date that T cells induced by common cold coronaviruses play a protective role against SARS-CoV-2 infection.' But experts warned people cannot rely on having had the common cold alone as protection against Covid and getting triple-jabbed remains 'the best way to protect yourself'. The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, showed the cells attacked the virus' internal proteins, not the spike protein, which the virus uses to enter human cells. Professor Lalvani said it could pave the way for a universal vaccine that protects against multiple variants. Current Covid vaccines produce an antibody response that attacks the virus and stops it binding to and infecting cells, but this response wanes over time. The jabs also trigger T cell immunity which is much longer-lasting. Once someone becomes infected, T cells stop an infection becoming much worse by protecting against hospitalisation and death. Vaccines recognise the spike protein on the outside of the virus based on the original Wuhan strain. But as Covid mutates over time, vaccines risk becoming less effective. Omicron contains extensive mutations that have already cut the effectiveness of vaccines. However, booster jabs have been found to boost protection against the variant to the equivalent of being double-jabbed against Delta. But scientists fear that as Covid continues to spread and mutate, a version could emerge that jabs offer less protection against. Professor Lalvani said the spike protein is under 'intense immune pressure' from the antibody-response triggered by vaccines, 'which drives evolution of vaccine escape mutants'. He added: 'In contrast, the internal proteins targeted by the protective T cells we identified mutate much less. 'Consequently, they are highly conserved between the various SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron. 'New vaccines that include these conserved, internal proteins would therefore induce broadly protective T cell responses that should protect against current and future SARS-CoV-2 variants.' However, academics not involved in the small study warned it could be a 'grave mistake' to think anyone who previously had a cold caused by a coronavirus  which represent about one in 10 of all colds  is protected against Covid. Dr Simon Clarke, a cellular microbiologist at the University of Reading, said the study adds to findings on how the immune system fights the virus. But he said it 'should not be over interpreted'. It is 'unlikely' the 150,000 people who've died within a month of testing positive for Covid 'never had a cold caused by a coronavirus', he said. Dr Clarke said: 'It could be a grave mistake to think that anyone who has recently had a cold is protected against Covid, as coronaviruses only account for 10 to 15 per cent of colds. 'Similarly, there is no measurement of how much protection the reported effect gives people and a link is only hinted at, it has not been proven conclusively.' Other studies uncovering a similar link have warned protection likely only lasts a short period of time because of how quickly immunity against the family of viruses that cause the cold last. Advertisement

'And there's going to be some bumps before we get there.

'And I can't tell you how bad they're going to be, but I can at least tell you what I'm expecting.

'First of all, this virus is continuing to evolve  we have Omicron but we'll get more variants.

'Secondly, it really is affecting the whole world. And, whilst health services in Western Europe are just about coping, in many other parts of the world, they are completely overwhelmed.

'And thirdly, it's really clear that there's no scope for major restrictions in any country, particularly poor countries.

'People have just got to keep working and so there are some very tough choices for politicians right now.

'It's going to be difficult for the next three months at least.'

Asked about a suggestion that there could be coronavirus surges two or three times a year, Dr Nabarro added: 'The way this virus is behaving, and has behaved really since we first met it, is that it builds up and then surges quite dramatically, and then it comes down again, and then surges again about every three or four months.

'It's difficult to use past behaviour to predict the future. And I don't like doing that too much.

'But I would agree that the pattern, I think, that is going to happen with this virus is continued surges, and living with Covid means being able to prepare for these surges and to react and really quickly when they occur.

'Life can go on, we can get the economy going again in many countries, but we just have to be really respectful of the virus and that means having really good plans in place for dealing with the surges.'

Meanwhile, Professor Medley, an expert in infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine at chair of the SPI-M modelling group that feeds into SAGE, said that when Covid becomes an endemic disease, the Government will be able to make 'cost-effective decisions about how it's going to manage the disease to improve public health, rather than manage the disease to try and reduce its own risk of hospitals being overcrowded'.

Asked whether that could mean an end to free mass testing and free mass vaccinations, he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'The decisions that the Government makes about vaccinating, for example against measles, are based upon decisions in terms of public health, but also the costs.

'And I think to some extent that approach will become more and more likely as we go forward. Vaccines are really the things that are changing the landscape, both in terms of public health and in terms of decision making.

'As ever, Government has to make a decision, balancing all these different views and different industries' perspectives, to come up with what it feels to be the correct policy.

'So we have an annual vaccination programme against influenza for example, we have childhood vaccination programmes against many other diseases, but we don't, for example, vaccinate against chickenpox, and that decision is (made by) Government based on looking at all the aspects of the decision.'

Pressed on free tests, Prof Medley said: 'I think that the value of the moment of getting free tests is that it does allow people to manage their risks. And we have seen since July, the number of submissions was roughly constant, sort of just under 1,000 a day, up until the beginning of December and that can really only come about if people are managing their risks and the free diagnostics have enabled that.'

Asked whether the Omicron wave is over in London but not elsewhere in the country, Graham Medley, professor of infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I think that at the moment the testing capacity issues, and the Christmas and the new year, mean that we can't really rely on cases to tell us what's going to happen exactly.

'At the moment we are seeing a relatively high number of admissions, how long that continues, whether that goes up or goes down, I think is unknown at the moment.'

He said the Omicron virus itself is 'less severe' than Delta but it is 'just as threatening' due to its transmissibility.

Pressed on whether the nation was moving away from a situation where Covid-19 was an 'emergency', Prof Medley said: 'I think that that transition is absolutely true. It can't be an emergency forever.

'So at some point it will have to stop being an emergency but that is likely to be a phase out rather than an active point in time where somebody can declare the epidemic over.

'It's going to fade out and disappear much more slowly than that I think.'

But the Prime Minister insisted 'Omicron is still out there, it is incredibly contagious'. 'We've got to make sure that we see off Omicron, we are making great progress,' he said.

'The number of people who have been boosted is 36 million, 90% of over-50s have been done but there are still millions who need to do it.

'Loads of people have had two jabs but they haven't yet come forward for their boost and I say to everybody: join the movement.'

Amid a growing clamour for a further tweak to isolation rules, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi suggested yesterday that a reduction would ease staffing issues, and Chancellor Rishi Sunak is believed to be in favour of the move.

Tory former chief whip Mark Harper, an influential lockdown-sceptic, urged the PM to declare an end to coronavirus restrictions.

A total of 25 out of 137 NHS Trusts in England have declared critical incidents  or 17.5 per cent. Above are the trusts that have publicly announced they have declared these incidents to help them manage winter pressures

Mr Harper warned Mr Johnson he could suffer an even greater rebellion than when he introduced his Plan B measures if he tries to extend them later this month.

Mr Johnson is unlikely to set out further plans while cases rates remain so high and the NHS remains under significant pressure.

Downing Street said it is 'too early to say' when the transition to 'endemic' will be complete.

But the PM's spokesman said: 'Exactly what point we're on, that is probably still too early to say.

'We are seeing early signs of cases falling in England and indeed even hospital admissions are starting to fall, but it's still too early to draw conclusions.'

The spokesman stressed that hundreds of millions of LFDs were being sent out this month.

'There's no doubt that the use of lateral flow devices are both interrupting chains of transmission and saving lives,' he said.

'We've got 425 million tests coming on in January, as we set out.'

He said the Government's Covid autumn and winter plan had set out that 'at a later stage, as the Government's response to the virus changes, universal free provision of these tests will end and I think that's what the public would expect'.

But he said it was 'too early to say specifically when we will have moved from the point where we've got extremely high prevalence currently, and when it will be right to consider a different approach'.

He added: 'It's right that we adapt along with the virus.'

Mr Gove said this morning: 'We are moving to a situation  we're not there yet  but we are moving to a situation where it is possible to say that we can live with Covid and that the pressure on the NHS and on vital public services is abating.

'But it's absolutely vital to recognise that we are not there yet and as the Health Secretary has reminded us, there will be some difficult weeks ahead and that is why we all need to continue to test, continue  if we are positive  to isolate and continue broadly to support the NHS as it goes through a challenging period.

'But one in which the frontline professionals are doing an amazing job.'

Mr Gove told Sky News it would be for Mr Johnson and Health Secretary Sajid Javid to decide whether to cut the period of Covid isolation to five days from seven.

But he said: 'We always keep things under review because we're always guided by the facts, by the science, and by changing circumstances.

'So I think it's striking to note that in the United Kingdom overall, particularly in England, we have one of the most open regimes, one of the essentially one of the most liberal approaches of any country in Europe, but we also need to balance that with a determination to ensure that we are not overwhelming the NHS.'

Mr Gove said the NHS was likely to face pressure for the next two-three weeks, and potentially longer.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'Our first responsibility at the moment must be to support the NHS, but you quite rightly legitimately ask if we get through  and at the moment I hope and pray that we will get through this difficult period  then there will be better times ahead.

'And I think one of the things that we do need to think about is how we live with Covid, how we live with this particular type of coronavirus. There are other coronaviruses which are endemic and with which we live, viruses tend to develop in a way whereby they become less harmful but more widespread.

'So, guided by the science, we can look to the progressive lifting of restrictions, and I think for all of us the sooner the better. But we've got to keep the NHS safe.'

Mr Gove admitted that he personally had been at the 'more cautious end' in the discussions over restrictions, before Christmas but the PM's judgement had been 'vindicated'.

'We always keep that under review but his judgment has been vindicated,' he said.

The Cabinet minister said it was 'impossible to predict' how long lateral flow tests will remain free.

But he said: 'But it is the case that in this country lateral flow tests are free, unlike in many other jurisdictions, they're a vital tool in making sure that we can curb the spread of the infection and also that people who are needed to isolate do so.'

Prof Graham Medley, who heads the SPI-M modelling subgroup of SAGE, said the country is transitioning away from 'emergency' - but warned it will be a process rather than a moment.

'I think that that transition is absolutely true. It can't be an emergency forever,' he told the BBC.

'So at some point it will have to stop being an emergency but that is likely to be a phase out rather than an active point in time where somebody can declare the epidemic over. It's going to fade out and disappear much more slowly than that, I think.'

Clive Watson, chairman of the City Pub Group, questioned the continuing work-from-home guidance and said the review of measures due by January 26 is a 'very good opportunity' to change them.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme things had been 'really, really tough for the hospitality industry'.

Ahead of the next review of measures which are currently in place in England under Plan B, he said: 'I think that's a very good opportunity to modify those. I mean, for instance, why do people who work in hospitals or work in retail go to work, but office workers are exempted from going to work?

'So I think we need to look at that very closely and start to withdraw those restrictions.'

Mr Harper, the chair of the lockdown-sceptic Covid Recovery Group, warned the rebellion if the Prime Minister tries to extend Plan B beyond January 26 could be even larger than the 100 Conservatives who defied him over their introduction last month.

'I think there will be even more people against it,' he said in an interview with the Financial Times. 'I think the intellectual argument now is even weaker.'

King's College London scientists today suggested that cases in the capital also appeared to be peaking. They said they had dropped by a third within a week, raising hopes that the worst of the outbreak may be over. The figures rely on weekly reports from three quarters of a million people nationally to estimate the prevalence of the virus

Asked when Mr Johnson should formally declare an end to the restrictions, the MP said: 'If that's not now, when is it?'

Mr Zahawi insisted yesterday that lateral flow tests will remain free for the time being after the Sunday Times reported their provision could be massively reduced.

He said the UK Health Security Agency will investigate whether the isolation period can be reduced to five days, telling Sky's Trevor Phillips on Sunday: 'It would certainly help mitigate some of the pressures on schools, on critical workforce and others.

'But I would absolutely be driven by advice from the experts, the scientists, on whether we should move to five days from seven days. What you don't want is to create the wrong outcome by higher levels of infection.'

Dr Clive Dix, former chairman of Britain's vaccine taskforce, said mass testing and vaccination should end for all but the most vulnerable after the booster campaign is over.

'It's pointless trying to stop infection with it, which is sort of what mass vaccination is all about, because it's not doing it. We're seeing a lot of infection,' he told Channel 4 News.

Dr Dix added: 'I think that's a little bit controversial but let's look at a couple of months' time, we shouldn't be mass testing. I think mass testing doesn't help anybody.

'I think we need to get to the point where if we have a young person who gets Covid, having been vaccinated, we know they've got levels of protection, but just like if they've got very bad cold or flu, they stay at home and when they get better they go back to work.'

NHS strikes deal with private sector to safeguard against Omicron: Independent hospitals on standby for three months to treat cancer patients if health service can't

More NHS cancer patients will be treated in private hospitals under a deal struck with the sector to 'safeguard' against the staff absence crisis and rising Covid admissions.

The deal allows NHS trusts in England to send a wide range of patients, including those who need some forms of cancer surgery, to nearby private wards if they cannot provide the care.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who signed off on the three-month deal, said it would 'ensure people can continue to get the care they need' as the health service wrestles with a winter crisis.

Neither the cost of the agreement, nor the number of beds hired, has been disclosed, but the Government paid 400million a month for 8,000 private beds during the first wave of the pandemic. The extra capacity comes as NHS hospitals were told to identify areas such as gyms and community centres that can be used to create 'super-surge' wards in case they are overwhelmed.

But NHS bosses are confident that they will cope with the current Omicron-fuelled pressures, with one top official today insisting the 'front line will hold' even with the health service on 'war footing'.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid (left) said the deal would provide 'safeguarding' to the NHS. But Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers which represents hospital trusts, said they could get through the Omicron crisis without further restrictions

Official data shows hospitalisations are slowing across the country  with 2,000 being admitted on average each day in England, half of last January's peak  and are already falling in London, which was first region to be hit by Omicron.

The number of patients on ventilators has also stayed flat, and overall occupancy levels are no higher than in the winters before the pandemic struck. But cabinet minister Michael Gove today accepted the NHS would be under pressure for the 'next two or three weeks'.

NHS waiting lists have surged to a record high of 6million after whole wards were turned over to fighting the virus, with some patients now waiting more than two years for care. MPs warned last week that the list could double in three years without urgent action to get more doctors and nurses on wards.
A court in Myanmar has sentenced ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to four more years in prison after finding her guilty of illegally importing and possessing walkie-talkies and violating coronavirus restrictions, a legal official said.

Suu Kyi was convicted last month on two other charges and given a four-year prison sentence, which was then halved by the head of the military-installed government.

The cases are among about a dozen brought against the 76-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate since the army seized power last February, ousting her elected government.

If found guilty of all the charges, she could be sentenced to more than 100 years in prison.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the deposed democratic leader of Myanmar, has been handed a four-year jail term for importing walkie talkies and violating Covid rules

Suu Kyi's supporters say the charges against her are contrived to legitimise the military's actions and prevent her from returning to politics.

Monday's verdict in the court in the capital, Naypyitaw, was conveyed by a legal official who insisted on anonymity for fear of being punished by the authorities, who have restricted the release of information about Suu Kyi's trials.

He said she was sentenced to two years in prison under the Export-Import Law for importing the walkie-talkies and one year under the Telecommunications Law for possessing them. The sentences are to be served concurrently.

She also received a two-year sentence under the Natural Disaster Management Law for allegedly violating coronavirus rules while campaigning.

Suu Kyi was convicted last month on two other charges - incitement and breaching Covid-19 restrictions - and sentenced to four years' imprisonment.

Hours after that sentence was issued, the head of the military-installed government, senior general Min Aung Hlaing, reduced it by half.

Suu Kyi's party won a landslide victory in a 2020 general election, but the military claimed there was widespread electoral fraud, an assertion that independent poll watchers doubt.

Since her first guilty verdict, Suu Kyi has been attending court hearings in prison clothes - a white top and a brown longyi skirt provided by the authorities.

She is being held by the military at an unknown location, where state television reported last month she would serve her sentence.

The hearings are closed to the media and spectators and the prosecutors do not comment. Her lawyers, who had been a source of information on the proceedings, were served with gag orders in October.

The military-installed government has not allowed any outside party to meet with Suu Kyi since it seized power, despite international pressure for talks including her that could ease the country's violent political crisis.

The military's seizure of power was quickly met by nonviolent nationwide demonstrations, which security forces quashed with deadly force, killing over 1,400 civilians, according to a detailed list compiled by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

Suu Kyi was deposed last year in a military coup and has been under house arrest ever since, an last month was given another four-year term for incitement (file image)

Peaceful protests have continued, but amid the severe crackdown, an armed resistance has also grown, to the point that UN experts have warned the country could be sliding into civil war.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said: 'The Myanmar junta's courtroom circus of secret proceedings on bogus charges is all about steadily piling up more convictions against Aung San Suu Kyi so that she will remain in prison indefinitely.

'Senior general Min Aung Hlaing and the junta leaders obviously still view her as a paramount political threat who needs to be permanently neutralised.

'Once again, Aung San Suu Kyi has become a symbol of what is happening to her country and returned to the role of political hostage of military hell-bent on controlling power by using intimidation and violence.

'Fortunately for her and the future of Myanmar, the Myanmar people's movement has grown well beyond just the leadership of one woman, and one political party.'

Suu Kyi was charged right after the military's takeover with having improperly imported the walkie-talkies, which served as the initial justification for her continued detention. A second charge of illegally possessing the radios was filed the following month.

The radios were seized from the entrance gate of her residence and the barracks of her bodyguards during a search on February 1, the day she was arrested.

Suu Kyi's lawyers argued that the radios were not in her personal possession and were legitimately used to help provide for her security, but the court declined to dismiss the charges.

She was charged with two counts of violating coronavirus restrictions during campaigning for the 2020 election. She was found guilty on the first count last month.

She is also being tried by the same court on five counts of corruption. The maximum penalty for each count is 15 years in prison and a fine.

A sixth corruption charge against her and ousted president Win Myint in connection with granting permits to rent and buy a helicopter has not yet gone to trial.

In separate proceedings, she is accused of violating the Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years.

Additional charges were also added by Myanmar's election commission against Suu Kyi and 15 other politicians in November for alleged fraud in the 2020 election.

The charges by the military-appointed Union Election Commission could result in Suu Kyi's party being dissolved and unable to participate in a new election the military has promised will take place within two years of its takeover.
A record number of over 55s in the UK are seeking treatment for cannabis addiction, amid fears 'stronger' skunk strains are leading to more mental health issues among Britons.

Newly analysed NHS data shows there has been a 777 per cent increase in the number of people in older age groups receiving substance misuse treatment for cannabis in the last 15 years.

But while treatment figures have increased among older groups, there has been a 22 per cent decrease among those aged between 18 and 24 over the same period, according to the analysis.

Experts warn the rise could be due to people in older age groups growing up in a 'permissive culture with a lack of harm awareness of drugs', compared with today, where information on illegal substances is freely and widely available.

It comes after separate figures, released last month, revealed how 56 per cent of people in treatment for non-opiate drug misuse - including for cannabis, crack cocaine and ecstasy - across last year were over 40 years old.

It also comes as support groups continue to warn of the dangers of extra strong 'skunk' cannabis, which they say can significantly increase the risk of mental health issues such as psychosis.

The latest figures meanwhile will cast further doubt on a new plan by Labour's Sadiq Khan to decriminalise cannabis in some parts of London.

The London Mayor says the scheme will 'divert young people who are found with a small amount of cannabis away from the criminal justice system and instead provide help and support'.

But the trial scheme is at odds with Prime Minister Boris Johnson's pledge to crackdown on drugs, while Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer last week also appeared to oppose Mr Khan's scheme by making clear he is 'not in favour of decriminalisation'.

NHS figures, analysed by The Times , show there has been a 777 per cent increase in the number of people in older age groups receiving substance misuse treatment for cannabis in the last 15 years

Researchers at King's College London found that the problem with 'skunk' is now so widespread that nearly a third of psychosis cases in London are caused by the drug

Cannabis is most widely used illegal drug in the UK - but it can cause a myriad of health problems Cannabis (also known as marijuana, weed, pot, dope or grass) is the most widely used illegal drug in the UK. The effects of cannabis can vary a lot from person to person. It can also vary depending on how much or how often it's taken and what it contains. Some examples include: Feeling chilled out, relaxed and happy; laughing more or become more talkative; feeling hunger pangs ('the munchies'; feeling drowsy, tired or lethargic; feeling faint or sick; having problems with memory or concentrating; experiencing mild hallucinations; feeling confused, anxious or paranoid. Cannabis and mental health Regular cannabis use increases the risk of developing a psychotic illness, such as schizophrenia. A psychotic illness is one where you have hallucinations (seeing things that are not really there) and delusions (believing things that are not really true). The risk of developing a psychotic illness is higher in people who: start using cannabis at a young age; smoke stronger types, such as skunk; smoke it regularly; use it for a long time; smoke cannabis and also have other risk factors for schizophrenia, such as a family history of the illness Cannabis also increases the risk of a relapse in people who already have schizophrenia, and it can make psychotic symptoms worse. Other risks of regularly using cannabis can include: feeling wheezy or out of breath; developing an uncomfortable or painful cough; making symptoms of asthma worse in people with asthma; reduced ability to drive or operate machinery safely If you drive while under the influence of cannabis, you're more likely to be involved in an accident. This is one reason why drug driving, like drink driving, is illegal. Source: NHS Advertisement

It comes after data released by the Office for Health, Improvement and Disparities (OHID) last month revealed how there were 275,896 adults in contact with drug and alcohol services between April 2020 and March 2021.

The figure, which includes treatment for other drugs such as cocaine and heroin, is a small rise compared to the previous year, when there were 270,705 referrals.

Over half (51 per cent) of the adults in treatment were there for problems with opiates - such as heroin - the largest substance treatment group.

According to the data, people in treatment for alcohol alone make up the next largest group (28 per cent) of all adults in treatment.

However the figures show there was also a nine per cent increase in the non-opiate group, which includes cannabis and other drugs such as crack and ecstasy.

Meanwhile the OHID data also showed a five per cent increase in entrants for cannabis treatment, 25,944 in 2019 to 2020 to 27,304 in 2021.

The biggest groups in terms of treatment for all drugs and alcohol meanwhile were the 40-44 year olds, followed by the 35-39 year olds and the 45-49 year olds.

Treatment among the over 50s also remained significantly higher collectively than those aged between 18-29.

Speaking to the Times, who analysed the NHS data to reveal the 777 per cent increase in treatment for the over-55s, Dr Tony Rao, a consultant psychiatrist and an expert on substance misuse among older people, said : 'We have seen a sharp rise in the number of people in older people's mental services with cannabis misuse.

'There is a cohort of people over the age of 55 who grew up in quite a permissive culture with a lack of harm awareness of substances.

'As people have gotten older they've mostly not reduced the levels of cannabis or alcohol they consume as previous generations did.

'There are also people who may have stopped using substances but then started again once they've retired.'

Support group Marijuana Anonymous (MA) meanwhile told the Times there had been an increase in attendance at its meeting particularly from the 'older age bracket'.

'The prolonged use of stronger, harder skunk has created more mental health issues and I think we can correlate that with the influx of older people seeking help,' he said.

It comes as a top psychologist warned earlier this month how highly-potent cannabis is not being taken seriously enough by some liberal-minded parents, who would rather see their teens smoke pot than drink alcohol.

Sir Robin Murray, 77, a professor of Psychiatric Research at the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP), King's College London, said around a third of the psychosis patents he sees at his practice in south London are caused by use of high-strength skunk.

Sir Robin Murray (pictured) , 77, a professor of Psychiatric Research at the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP), King's College London, said around a third of the psychosis patents he sees at his practice in south London are caused by use of high-strength skunk

It comes as London is set to relax drug laws by no longer prosecuting young people caught in possession of cannabis - offering them educational courses on the drug's dangers instead (Pictured: Cannabis farm which was busted in Coventry in June last year)

What is psychosis? Psychosis is when people lose some contact with reality. This might involve seeing or hearing things that other people cannot see or hear (hallucinations) and believing things that are not actually true (delusions). The two main symptoms of psychosis are: Hallucinations  where a person hears, sees and, in some cases, feels, smells or tastes things that do not exist outside their mind but can feel very real to the person affected by them; a common hallucination is hearing voices Delusions  where a person has strong beliefs that are not shared by others; a common delusion is someone believing there's a conspiracy to harm them The combination of hallucinations and delusional thinking can cause severe distress and a change in behaviour. Experiencing the symptoms of psychosis is often referred to as having a psychotic episode. Source: NHS Advertisement

The expert said the cases mostly involve young people, who often suffer from debilitating paranoia and hallucinations.

He told The Times: 'I think we're now 100 per cent sure that cannabis is one of the causes of a schizophrenia-like psychosis.

'If we could abolish the consumption of skunk we would have 30 per cent less patients [in south London] and we might make a better job of looking after the patients we have.'

It comes after he was part of the first team of researchers who proved a link between cannabis and mental illness among teenagers in the early 2000s - with many papers backing up his findings ever since.

Only two years ago, a study found that south London had the highest incidence of psychosis in Europe - and cannabis was said to be the largest contributing factor.

The investigation, overseen by Sir Robin and published in The Lancet Psychiatry, found that those who smoked high-potency skunk were five times more likely to develop psychosis than those who did not smoke it.

According to the findings, rates of psychosis in London could be slashed by 30 per cent if skunk was taken off the streets.

Despite its potentially harmful effects, Sir Robin welcomed London's plans to end prosecution of young people found in possession of cannabis.

The trial policy, set to be adopted by the Metropolitan Police and backed by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, would run in the boroughs of Lewisham, Greenwich and Bexley and apply to those aged 18 to 24, according to the Telegraph.

It would see carriers of the drug offered educational courses on its dangers rather than criminal prosecution.

A spokesman for Mr Khan said similar schemes were already being used in other parts of the UK, adding that it would 'divert young people who are found with a small amount of cannabis away from the criminal justice system and instead provide help and support' to cut reoffending.

Sadiq Khan is reportedly set to decriminalise drugs in London and wants to end the prosecution of young people caught with cannabis

The Labour leader insisted he was against softening the law after it was revealed a proposed pilot programme would see young adults caught with the Class B drug offered speeding course-style classes or counselling instead of arrest.

But asked about the plan after delivering a speech in Birmingham last week, Labour leader Sir Keir said: 'On the drugs legislation, I've said a number of times and I will say again: I'm not in favour of us changing the law or decriminalisation. I'm very clear about that.'

Meanwhile, Sir Robin said he wants more clarification over the scheme.

He said: 'My questions will be: where will they get the counsellors who know anything about risks of cannabis?

'What will happen if they don't accept the counselling or go back to cannabis use?

'And will it be accompanied by any education regarding the risks of cannabis  this is by far the most important thing.'

He added: 'Because Lewisham is one of the proposed boroughs [where the scheme could first be introduced] we will be able to track the effects on psychiatric problems secondary to cannabis use  addiction, suicide attempts and psychosis.

'But we need also to track road traffic accidents, street violence and visits to A&E departments for cannabis problems.'

Sir Robin said policy changes in other countries provided potential warnings for Britain.

In the state of Colorado in the US, there are now cannabis products available which contain more than 70 per cent THC - or tetrahydrocannabinol - the compound which gives users a high.

For comparison, traditional weed from the 1960s contained around 3 per cent or less THC, while the average in Europe and North America today is 10 to 15 per cent, according to an article by Sir Robin in JAMA Psychiatry.

Meanwhile, a study in Denmark found that alongside a rise in THC potency, cannabis-associated schizophrenia has increased by up to 400 per cent over the past two decades, reported the Times.

Sir Robin's study in 2019 warned that 94 per cent of all cannabis available on the streets of London was in the form of skunk.

Researchers from Kings College London studied 2,100 people in 11 cities in Europe and South America in the biggest study of its kind.

They found that the link with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and paranoid delusion was strongest in London and Amsterdam  the two cities where high-potency cannabis is most commonly available.

Sir Robin said at the time: 'If you are going to legalise, unless you want to pay for a lot more psychiatric beds and a lot more psychiatrists then you need to devise a system in a way that will not increase the consumption and will not increase the potency. Because that is what has happened in the US states where there has been legalisation for recreational use.

'The critical question is whether medicinal use remains medicinal. The problem in California and Canada was that medicinal use became a synonym for recreational use.

'You could go on the internet and tell a doctor, I have headaches, I have back pain, I feel better if I have cannabis. The main reason they legalised it was to try to control the amount of so-called medicinal use there, hoping that there would be a decrease in the use.

The research, published in the Lancet Psychiatry journal, found that skunk  with a THC level of more than 10 per cent  increased the odds of psychosis 4.8-fold in a person who smoked every day compared with someone who never used the drug.

Using it more than once a week was less dangerous, but still increased the risk 1.6-fold.
Catching the common cold could also protect against Covid, yet more research has suggested.

Ever since the start of the pandemic, experts have speculated other coronaviruses  which tend to cause runny noses and sore throats  could offer some cross-reactive immunity.

But new real-world evidence has uncovered the 'clearest evidence' yet that immunity induced by colds can help fight off Covid.

People with higher levels of T cells from other seasonal coronaviruses were less likely to get infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid.

T cells are a key part of the immune system, and hunt down invading pathogens and stop them replicating within the body.

Imperial College London scientists studied 52 people who lived with someone who had tested positive for the virus. Half caught the virus, while the others managed to ward it off.

They took blood samples from the volunteers within days of being exposed to SARS-CoV-2, allowing researchers to determine their T cell levels.

Household contacts who did not test positive had 'significantly higher levels' of pre-existing coronavirus-fighting T cells, on average.

These T cells 'targeted internal proteins within the SARS-CoV-2 virus rather than the spike protein to protect against infection', the team said.

Professor Ajit Lalvani, one of the researchers, said: 'Our study provides the clearest evidence to date that T cells induced by common cold coronaviruses play a protective role against SARS-CoV-2 infection.'

But experts warned people cannot rely on having had the common cold alone as protection against Covid and getting triple-jabbed remains 'the best way to protect yourself'.

Imperial College London scientists took blood samples from 26 people who caught Covid from a positive household contact and 26 who warded off the virus to determine their T cell levels. They found two types of T cells - scientifically known as IL-2 (two left graphs) and pan-N-specific IL-2 (right two graphs) were on average higher among people who tested negative (blue) compared to those who tested positive (red)

But experts warned people cannot rely on having the common cold alone as protection against Covid and getting triple-jabbed remains 'the best way to protect yourself'

The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, showed the cells attacked the virus' internal proteins, not the spike protein, which the virus uses to enter human cells.

Professor Lalvani said it could pave the way for a universal vaccine that protects against multiple variants.

Current Covid vaccines produce an antibody response that attacks the virus and stops it binding to and infecting cells, but this response wanes over time.

The jabs also trigger T cell immunity which is much longer-lasting. Once someone becomes infected, T cells stop an infection becoming much worse by protecting against hospitalisation and death.

Vaccines recognise the spike protein on the outside of the virus based on the original Wuhan strain. But as Covid mutates over time, vaccines risk becoming less effective.

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT IMMUNITY AGAINST COVID? People's immunity against the coronavirus is boosted by vaccination or previous Covid infection. Antibodies are the first line of defence against the virus and are important to stopping an infection in the first place. They attack the virus and stop it binding to and infecting cells. But if the virus is able to evade the antibody response, T cells kick in to identify and kill off infected cells, stopping them spreading further. This means that antibodies can stop an infection, but if someone does get infected, T cells stop it from becoming much worse. Studies and real-world data have shown that antibodies wane within months of being vaccinated or infected, while T cell protection against severe illness, hospitalisation and death is much longer lasting. High vaccine uptake in the UK  with 83 per cent of over-12s double jabbed and 62 per cent boosted  along with high levels of previous infection  with 40 per cent of Britons thought to have had the virus  have weakened the link between infection, hospitalisation and death. Advertisement

Omicron contains extensive mutations that have already cut the effectiveness of vaccines.

However, booster jabs have been found to boost protection against the variant to the equivalent of being double-jabbed against Delta.

But scientists fear that as Covid continues to spread and mutate, a version could emerge that jabs offer less protection against.

Professor Lalvani said the spike protein is under 'intense immune pressure' from the antibody-response triggered by vaccines, 'which drives evolution of vaccine escape mutants'.

He added: 'In contrast, the internal proteins targeted by the protective T cells we identified mutate much less.

'Consequently, they are highly conserved between the various SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron.

'New vaccines that include these conserved, internal proteins would therefore induce broadly protective T cell responses that should protect against current and future SARS-CoV-2 variants.'

However, academics not involved in the small study warned it could be a 'grave mistake' to think anyone who previously had a cold caused by a coronavirus  which represent about one in 10 of all colds  is protected against Covid.

Dr Simon Clarke, a cellular microbiologist at the University of Reading, said the study adds to findings on how the immune system fights the virus.

But he said it 'should not be over interpreted'. It is 'unlikely' the 150,000 people who've died within a month of testing positive for Covid 'never had a cold caused by a coronavirus', he said.

Dr Clarke said: 'It could be a grave mistake to think that anyone who has recently had a cold is protected against Covid, as coronaviruses only account for 10 to 15 per cent of colds.

'Similarly, there is no measurement of how much protection the reported effect gives people and a link is only hinted at, it has not been proven conclusively.'

Other studies uncovering a similar link have warned protection likely only lasts a short period of time because of how quickly immunity against the family of viruses that cause the cold last.
A coroner probing the stabbing of Yousef Makki has said more children may die as a result of Britain's deadly knife culture after finding the schoolboy was killed with a weapon bought 'with ease during school breaktime'.

Yousef, 17, died following a confrontation with his friend Joshua Molnar in upmarket Hales Barnes, Cheshire, during the early evening of March 2, 2019.

The teenager, who earned a scholarship to attend the 13,380 per year Manchester Grammar School, suffered a 12-centimetre deep wound to the chest inflicted with a flick knife.

Molnar, then also 17, was cleared of murder and manslaughter on the basis of self-defence, but was sentenced to 16 months' imprisonment for possession of a knife and perverting the course of justice by lying to police at the scene.

Mutual friend Adam Chowdhary, who was present during the fatal incident, was cleared of charges of perverting the course of justice and conspiracy to rob, and given a four-month detention order for possession of a knife.

An inquest into Yousef's death at Stockport Coroners Court concluded in November, with Senior Coroner Alison Mutch ruling the 'precise circumstances' of his death 'cannot, on the balance of probabilities. be ascertained'.

However, in a report published on Friday, she has written to Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi to highlight concerns over the UK's deadly knife culture.

She says: 'The inquest heard evidence that there was a culture amongst some teenagers who saw the possession of knives as being impressive and did not understand the risks that are inherent in the carrying of knives.

Yousef Makki, 17, was stabbed through the heart following a confrontation with his friend in Manchester

Joshua Molnar (left, pictured with mother Stephanie), then 17, who was sentenced to 16 months in a young offenders' institution after he pleaded guilty to possessing a knife

Adam Chowdhary, also then a pupil at Manchester Grammar School, was given a four-month detention order for possession of a knife

Senior Coroner Alison Mutch has written to Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi to highlight concerns over the UK's deadly knife culture

'The knife that Yousef was stabbed with was a that had been purchased with ease during break time at school.

'It was clear from the evidence that schools and education play a vital role in attitudes to carrying knives by teenagers.'

The inquest had earlier heard that Yousef was from humble beginnings, from a single-parent Anglo-Lebanese family, but had a brilliant mind.

His mother 'scrimped and saved' to buy his 1,000 school uniform after he won a scholarship to the 13,000-a-year Manchester Grammar School.

Paying tribute to her brother, Yousef's sister Jade Akoum said during the inquest: 'He was a peacemaker. He was everything you would want in a brother or son.

'Every day we miss him. It is a huge void we will never get back.'

His mother Debbie Makki, 55, died of Sepsis in May 2020.

Before her death, she wrote a statement to the court: 'I don't think people realise how something like this affects your whole life.'

The court heard that, on the day of his death, the three teenagers had convened in an underground car park under a supermarket shortly after attending the Square shopping centre in Manchester.

Chowdhary told the inquest Josh Molnar had been 'impressed' when they showed him the flick knives he and Yousef were alleged to have had in the car park, which they had jointly ordered in a break from lessons at school two weeks earlier.

The group then attended a country lane near Manchester Airport together after Chowdhary had arranged a small cannabis deal.

However, Molnar was beaten by two associates of the alleged dealer and his 2,000 Starling bike was thrown over a hedge.

Greater Manchester Police told the inquest it believes this 'pre-cursor event' was, in fact, a planned revenge attack and not a drug deal.

Police at the scene in Gorse Bank Road, Hale Barns, Cheshire, where Yousef was stabbed to death

Flowers, photographs and tributes pictured outside Manchester Grammar School following his death

Yousef's body is carried out of a funeral ceremony at he Dar Al-Hadi Foundation in Ardwick

It followed a review of police investigations into incidents in Wilmslow that Molnar was involved in two weeks earlier.

Molnar denied any involvement and was never prosecuted, but the boy's cousins attacked him in revenge, the inquest heard.

He said he blamed Chowdhary, who had cycled away from the confrontation, and later the same day took his 300 jacket as 'compensation' until the bike was returned.

Molnar also accused of Yousef of having 'just watched' as the assault took place.

The last time Yousef was captured alive was at 6.34pm and 46 seconds, when the three reconvened later that evening.

The inquest heard the fatal stabbing occurred, unseen by any camera, at about 6.36pm.

As Yousef lay dying, the panicking defendants hid the knives in bushes and down a drain, dialled 999 and desperately tried to staunch the blood pouring out of Yousef's chest wound.

Molnar was found not guilty of both murder and manslaughter after his defence said the stabbing was a tragic accident.

Chowdhary claimed he was looking at his phone and so did not see the stabbing.
The Metropolitan Police are investigating the incident after being informed by a 'third party' of the alleged sex attacks

One of the women reportedly broke down on their return flight and told friends

d a mansion after going to a nightclub in the California city

The pair had visite d a mansion after going to a nightclub in the California city

Police are investigative after two British airline cabin crew were allegedly sexually assaulted at an LA mansion.

The pair told friends they were drugged at the mansion before the attacks took place.

The two women were in the city as part of their work and told friends they visited the mansion after going to a nightclub.

One of the women broke down in tears on her flight back to London and told her colleagues about the attack.

The two women were in LA as part of their work for an international British airline

A 'third party' notified the Metropolitan Police on arrival at Heathrow Airport and an investigation was launched, according to the Sun.

A source told the Sun: 'The women were working abroad and let their hair down one evening. They went to a posh club in Los Angeles and from there they went back to a mansion.

'They claim that they were drugged and sexually assaulted while they were at the mansion. It's all very serious.'

A spokesman for the company told The Sun: 'We are aware of reports that crew members may have been involved in an incident while overseas.

'We take such matters extremely seriously and are providing them with full support.'

The Met said: 'Police at Heathrow were informed by a third party that two members of an incoming airline cabin crew had allegedly been sexually assaulted in the US.

'Our inquiries are ongoing.'
A giant bronze statue of a naked man which is being hailed as East Anglia's answer to the Angel of the North has been turning the heads of passing motorists on a busy road - and some say, dangerously so.

The 26ft tall Yoxman statue, which was unveiled at the end of last year, stands near the A12 at Cockfield Hall, in Yoxford, east Suffolk.

Created by sculptor Laurence Edwards, the towering statue, which has been likened to a 'wounded giant', has seen scores of people stopping in a lay-by opposite the sculpture in order to capture a picture of the artwork.

However it has since left locals split, with some describing the sculpture as a road safety hazard and others hailing it as 'very impressive'.

One villager said: 'It is a marvellous sculpture and is very impressive - but it could end up causing an accident as it is distracting motorists.

The 26ft tall Yoxman statue stands near the A12 at Cockfield Hall, in Yoxford, east Suffolk and was created by sculptor Laurence Edwards

The towering sculpture, which has been likened to a 'wounded giant', has seen scores of people stopping in a lay-by opposite the statue in order to take a picture

'The A12 is a very busy road and people can't help looking at a depiction of a naked man in all his glory as they are driving past.'

Meanwhile a social media user said: 'Seems a bit daft to put it by the A12, surely it's a traffic hazard. Drivers looking at that and not the traffic, or where they're going.'

However many have welcomed the statue, with one East Anglian admirer describing it as: 'Our very own Angel of the East'.

One user wrote: 'Drove past the incredible Yoxman statue at Cockfield Hall on the A12 at Yoxford at the the weekend. It was installed in November and was made by the Suffolk artist Laurence Edwards. Just amazing. Have you seen it?'

While another person commented: 'On route along the A12 so had to stop to take a photo of the Yoxman at Yoxford.'

Meanwhile another social media user added: 'My first encounter with Yoxman bronze by Laurence Edwards in the grounds of 17th century Cockfield Hall where we join bemused drivers pulling in to a once quiet lay-by on the A12 in Yoxford to admire the 8m high statue in its newly landscaped lakeside setting. Pretty stunning!'

The statue is in the grounds of Cockfield Hall which is set to form part of the Wilderness Reserve luxury holiday retreat, created by property billionaire Jon Hunt.

It was created by sculptor Laurence Edwards who lives in the village and drew inspiration for it from the bogs and woodland of the east Suffolk coast.

Mr Edwards said he wanted its surface to 'reflect the gnarly bark of ancient oaks growing in the parkland around Yoxford' with its arms likened to 'oaken branches'.

He likened it to 'a wounded giant perhaps, contemplating the mystery of the lake in front of him, awed by landscape aware of his fragility, an appropriate message for our time'.

A planning application for the sculpture described it as 'a large scale showpiece work for east Suffolk.'

The giant statue is in the grounds of Cockfield Hall which is set to form part of the Wilderness Reserve luxury holiday retreat

Sculptor Laurence Edwards said he drew inspiration for it from the bogs and woodland of the east Suffolk coast

East Suffolk Council said that the sculpture was meant to be 'tantalising, serving as a beacon for what is possible in the region'

It stated that it was intended to be 'a major landmark for the region - an attraction for tourists and locals seeking cultural and rural recreation and relaxation'.

The application, which was approved by East Suffolk Council, said that the sculpture was meant to be 'tantalising, serving as a beacon for what is possible in the region'.

Councillors welcomed it as being 'highly appropriate' and adding 'a sense of drama' to the parkland of Grade One listed Cockfield Hall - which dates back to the 16th century.

Yoxford Parish Council chairman Russell Pearce said: 'It has settled into the landscape quite well. I think it is fantastic, so I am biased.

'Some people are negative and say they don't like it and don't see the point of it. But the number of people who stop in the lay-by to look at it is incredible.

'I like the fact that you can see it as you drive past, and if you are in the High Street you can catch a glimpse of it in the gaps between houses.

'People have likened it to being Suffolk's answer to the Angel of the North. It is certainly encouraging more visitors to the village who have just come to see it.'

Last year Mr Edwards, who spent four years working on the project, described the sculpture as 'the Green Man of our age'.

He told the BBC: 'It can almost be seen by my house.

'He's a Green Man for our age, a lightning rod for loads of issues about ecology and what we are doing to this planet.

Many on social media have welcomed the statues, with one describing it as 'stunning'

'He's kind of like a revenant, a visitor from the past who's come back.'

Mr Hunt, who co-founded London estate agents Foxtons, was said to be worth 1.345 billion and the 126th richest person in the UK according to last years Sunday Tim Rich List.

His Wilderness Reserve business rents out a range of luxury country houses and cottages for staycations on his private 8,000 acre estate close to the Suffolk coast.

Visitors in the last year have included comedian Jack Whitehall and the cast of the reality show Made in Chelsea.

MailOnline has contacted the Wilderness Retreat for comment.
Police officers and staff have been accused of 'covering up' more than 100 cases of misconduct by colleagues over 18 months, according to data released under freedom of information laws.

Forces recorded 83 reports in 2019, and 33 in the first half of 2020, of allegations officers had failed to 'report, challenge or take action' against colleagues who had breached behavioural codes.

This includes dozens of cases of alleged sexual misconduct or discriminatory behaviour. The Met Police alone recorded 27 alleged cover-ups in 2019 and another 13 the year after.

Forces recorded 83 reports in 2019, and 33 in the first half of 2020, of allegations officers had failed to 'report, challenge or take action' against colleagues who had breached behavioural codes

Nearly a third of forces in England and Wales did not respond to freedom of information requests by The Times, meaning the figures are likely to be a significant underestimate.

Forces that did not include any internal cover-up allegations were Cambridgeshire, Cleveland, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Hertfordshire, Humberside, North Wales, Northamptonshire, Norfolk, Staffordshire, Suffolk and Wiltshire.

This may raise questions about whether these forces have appropriate systems in place to encourage whistleblowers.

The National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) said everyone in policing has a duty to 'call out' cases of misogynistic, sexist and sexualised behaviour in policing.

Police handling of misconduct cases has been subject to intense scrutiny since Wayne Couzens kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard as she made her way home from a friend's house on March 3.

Couzens, a diplomatic protection officer, used Covid powers to conduct a fake arrest before committing crimes so horrific they shocked the nation and undermined confidence in the police.

The Met faced a wave of criticism over missed opportunities to expose Couzens as a sexual predator before he went on to murder Miss Everard.

Deniz Jaffer and Jamie Lewis (right) were each jailed for two years and nine months for misconduct in public office after they were found guilty of sharing 'dehumanising' pictures of two murdered sisters. Dozens of colleagues knew what they had done but failed to act, reports said

Bibaa Henry, 46, and Nicole Smallman, 27, had been stabbed to death by teenage killer Danyal Hussain

It emerged the 48-year-old was allegedly known as 'the rapist' by staff at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary because he made female colleagues feel so uncomfortable.

He had been accused of indecent exposure in Kent in 2015 and in London in the days before Ms Everard's murder, but was allowed to continue working.

Priti Patel has announced there will be an independent inquiry into the 'systematic failures' that allowed Couzens to serve as a Met police officer.

The Home Secretary said the 'tragic events have exposed unimaginable failures in policing'.

Police handling of misconduct cases has been subject to intense scrutiny since Wayne Couzens kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard

Last month Met officers Deniz Jaffer, 47, and Jamie Lewis, 33, were each jailed for two years and nine months after taking 'dehumanising' photos of murdered sisters Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46.

Dozens of officers at Forest Gate police station in east London knew of their behaviour but did nothing about it, according to reports.

The pair, neither of whom was wearing forensic protection, had arrived at Fryent Country Park in Wembley, north-west, where they were charged with manning the police cordon.

During the night, Jaffer took four pictures of the bodies in situ and Lewis took two, and superimposed his face on to one of them to create the 'selfie-style' image.

Lewis wrote: 'Unfortunately I'm sat next to two dead birds full of stab wounds.'

Jaffer posted on another WhatsApp group: 'I have pictures of the two dead victims. Let me know who doesn't want to see.'

He also sent an inexperienced female officer at the scene photographs of the bodies as they lay intertwined in the bushes, including Lewis' 'selfie'.

Jaffer then showed the images to two other officers, including a female probationary officer he was supposed to be mentoring at Forest Gate police station, who was 'shocked' and 'disgusted'.

He deleted the pictures the same day Lewis was questioned by the police watchdog.

In victim impact statements, family members described the defendants as a 'disgrace' to the police family and to mankind.

Danyal Hussein, 19, was later jailed for murdering the sisters as a 'sacrifice' to a demon named 'the mighty king Lucifuge Rofocale' out of the belief it would help him win the lottery.
The Attorney General is 'a disgrace' for saying she might send the Edward Colston statue case to the Court of Appeal, critics have said, after a jury cleared four demonstrators who toppled the slaver's monument of criminal damage.

Suella Braverman said she was considering referring the case so the law can be 'clarified for future cases' on Friday after stating the decision was 'causing confusion'.

Rhian Graham, 30, Milo Ponsford, 26, Sage Willoughby, 22, and Jake Skuse, 33, were charged with pulling the statue down during a Black Lives Matter protest on June 7, 2020 in Bristol while a huge crowd was present, but were cleared of criminal damage last week.

The verdict has prompted debate after the 'Colston Four' opted to stand trial in front of a jury and did not deny involvement in the incident, instead claiming the presence of the statue was a hate crime and it was therefore not an offence to remove it.

However, retired judge and chair of the Society of Black Lawyers Peter Herbert has said the Attorney General's potential intervention 'smacks of institutional racism'.

He told The Independent: 'The Court of Appeal has no role to play in this acquittal  Her involvement smacks of institutional racism, demonstrating the need to defend the narrative of slavery and oppression, the direct link to colonialism, and therefore to present day injustices.'

Sage Willoughby, Jake Skuse, Milo Ponsford and Rhian Graham celebrate after receiving a not guilty verdict at Bristol Crown Court

The statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol during its last day on display at the M Shed museum in Bristol after being toppled during a protest

Attorney General Suella Braverman, MP for Fareham in Hampshire, said she was considering referring the case so the law can be 'clarified for future cases'

Retired judge and chair of the Society of Black Lawyers Peter Herbert

His comments follow a tweet from Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry on Friday in which she described Ms Braverman's intervention as 'shameful'.

She added: 'The Attorney General has a duty to uphold democracy, the rule of law and the sanctity of the jury system, not play political games when she doesnt like the results.

'I hoped Suella Braverman had learned a lesson after her shameful intervention on Barnard Castle, but clearly not.'

In his closing speech at the trial, barrister Liam Walker, representing Mr Willoughby, told the court: 'Make no mistake, members of the jury, your decision is not just going to be felt in this courtroom or this city.

'It will reverberate around the world. I urge you all to be on the right side of history.'

Mr Walker, a leading barrister from Doughty Street Chambers, then had to apologise for his remarks after Judge Peter Blair QC raised concerns.

The judge subsequently told jurors to decide the case on the basis of the evidence they had heard, after raising worries in their absence that undue pressure was being placed on them by excessive rhetoric from defence barristers.

Following the verdict, Ms Braverman tweeted: 'Trial by jury is an important guardian of liberty and must not be undermined. However, the decision in the Colston statue case is causing confusion.

'Without affecting the result of this case, as Attorney General I am able to refer matters to the Court of Appeal so that senior judges have the opportunity to clarify the law for future cases. I am carefully considering whether to do so.'

Concerns over the acquittal were shared by some Tory MPs, though several lawyers have dismissed claims that the verdict set a legal precedent which could give rise to other public monuments being defaced.

After being cleared, the Colston vandals stood outside court alongside protesters carrying banners boasting 'We toppled Colston'.

Three wore T-shirts designed by Bristol street artist Banksy featuring a stencil of the toppled statue's plinth.

Colstons last resting place: Surrounded by old chocolate wrappers and steam engine parts, the battered statue torn down by BLM protesters now languishes in the scruffy store room of Bristols history museum

By Isolde Walters and Jake Ryan for The Mail on Sunday

Still screened by protective glass, the battered statue of slave trader Edward Colston lies in a museum store room next to steam engine components, old chocolate wrappers and various other antiquities.

The bronze sculpture bears the red and blue graffiti from the Black Lives Matter protest in June 2020 when it was torn from its plinth in Bristol city centre, rolled through the streets and dumped in the harbour.

Museum visitors can view the statue, but only by booking a place on a once-a-day behind-the-scenes tour. Those hoping for commentary on the controversial effigy will be disappointed.

Still screened by protective glass, the battered statue of slave trader Edward Colston lies in a museum store room next to steam engine components, old chocolate wrappers and various other antiquities

The bronze sculpture bears the red and blue graffiti from the Black Lives Matter protest in June 2020 when it was torn from its plinth in Bristol city centre, rolled through the streets and dumped in the harbour

The volunteer guide who last week conducted a tour admitted: Ive been given a long list of things I can and cant say, so Im not going to say anything at all.

Staff at the M Shed museum, which celebrates Bristols history, last week removed the statue from general view  a decision that, according to the museum, was in line with a visitor survey.

It was put in the store room of the adjoining L Shed just days before four activists seen on CCTV looping ropes around the monument and pulling it down were cleared by a jury of criminal damage.

Amid claims that the verdict had created a vandals charter, Attorney General Suella Braverman is considering referring the acquittal to the Court of Appeal.

The Colston Four  Sage Willoughby, Rhian Graham, Milo Ponsford and Jake Skuse  are believed to have received legal aid to fund at least part of their defence.

A GoFundMe page for the Bristol Topplers Defence Fund sought donations towards legal fees not covered by legal aid and raised 13,500.

Museum visitors can view the statue, but only by booking a place on a once-a-day behind-the-scenes tour

Colston, a 17th Century merchant, made a fortune trading slaves but went on to donate so much money to philanthropic works in Bristol that his name appeared throughout the city on streets, schools and a concert hall.

The Government wants to increase the maximum sentence for damage to memorials or statues from three months to ten years, but experts fear it could lead to more acquittals.

Human rights barrister Adam Wagner said: The changes are an open invitation to ten times more Colston-type trials.

All of the cases for damaging public monuments would be in front of a jury at Crown Court because the sentence would be raised to ten years so we will see a lot more of this.
Bengaluru: Noted Kannada literary figure Chandrashekhar Patil popularly known as 'Champa' has died at a private hospital here on Monday morning, due to age related ailments.

He was 82 and is survived by wife, a son and a daughter, sources close to his family said.

He was suffering from age-related ailments and was shifted to hospital last night as his health situation deteriorated, they said.

A poet, playwright, Patil had also served as President of Kannada Sahitya Parishat.

An activist by nature, he was one of the foremost voices of Bandaya' genre of Kannada literature

He has participated in several literary and farmers movement or agitations including Gokak agitation, Bandaya movement, anti-Emergency agitation among others, and was a strong proponent of Kannada language as a medium of instruction in schools.

Patil, who was professor of English from Karnataka University, was the editor of the influential literary journal 'Sankramana', and had also served as Chairman of Kannada Development Authority.

He is recipient of Karnataka Sahitya Akademi Award and Pampa Award among others.

His popular works include poetries like- Banuli, Madhyabindu, 19 Kavanagalu, also plays like Kodegalu, Appa, Gurtinavaru, among others, including several essays. He also wrote in English like- "At the other end", which is an anthology of his poems.

Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai condoling Patil's death said his contribution to Kannada literary field is immense and his passing away has created a huge void.

Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, former Chief Ministers- Siddaramaiah, H D Kumaraswamy, several of Bommai's cabinet colleagues and political and literary figures have condoled Patil's death.
An 18-year-old New Mexico mother who was caught on video throwing her newborn child into a dumpster told police she did not know she was pregnant until the day before she delivered her baby in a bathroom.

Alexis Avila was arrested and charged with attempted murder and child abuse after her infant son was found clinging to life on Friday night in 30-degree weather, nearly six hours after being tossed in the trash.

Avila was released from jail after posting $10,000 unsecured bond less than two hours after her arrest. She will be arraigned at a later time at Lea County District Court.

August Fons, the acting chief of Hobbs police department, said he had never before come across a case like this.

'If you are struggling with a new infant, the best response is to find somebody who can help you with that,' he said.

'Contact us, and let us help you through the situation.'

Alexis Avila, 18, has been arrested and charged with attempted murder and child abuse for allegedly tossing her newborn child into a dumpster

Surveillance video showed a woman arriving in a white Volkswagen Jetta before opening the back door and tossing a black trash bag into a dumpster in Hobbs, New Mexico, at around 2pm on January 7.

Six hours later, footage showed three people looking through the dumpster before one of them found the infant inside. Incredibly, the newborn was alive, with the umbilical cord still attached.

Fons said their quick action was 'absolutely pivotal' in saving the baby boy's life.

According to a criminal complaint obtained by KRQE on Monday, Avila confessed to throwing away her child. The 18-year-old mother told police she did not know she was pregnant until she went to a doctor for a stomach pain on Thursday.

The following day, she delivered her son in a bathroom at her parents' home.

Avila said she had broken up with the baby's alleged father back in August 2021.

After giving birth, Avila said she 'panicked.'

She wrapped her son in a towel, placed him in a white plastic bag containing some trash, and a larger black trash bag, and drove around, before throwing the child in the dumpster at the Broadmoor Shopping Center at around 2pm.

New Mexico has a Safe Haven law, which allows a person to leave an infant not more than 90 days old with the staff of a hospital without fear of criminal prosecution.

It was not until nearly 8pm that evening that a group of dumpster divers, named by police as Michael Green, Hector Jesso and April Meadow rescued the infant after hearing his cries.

They told police they initially thought it was a kitten or a dog.

Meadow kept the baby warm by holding him in her arms until help arrived.

Avila's son was taken to a hospital in Hobbs before being transferred to another hospital in Lubbock, Texas, which has a more advanced NICU unit.

When doctors assessed the baby, they found that his body temperate was so low that it did not register, indicating hypothermia. The newborn has since been given a blood transfusion, and put on a feeding tube and oxygen.

Police said the baby was in a stable condition at the hospital on Monday.

During her interview with the police, Avila was quoted as referring to her child as 'it.'

Avila's mother, Martha Avila, told investigators she was not aware of her daughter's pregnancy.

Police later executed a search warrant at the family's home and seized physical evidence, including bloody clothing.

The shocking footage from New Mexico shows Avila tossing her baby in to a dumpster in a trash bag

Avila is seen driving off in her car which was later used to find her, after abandoning her baby

Avila told cops she did not know she was pregnant until she went to see a doctor for a stomach pain on January 6. The next say, she delivered her son in her parents' bathroom

After giving birth, Avila said she 'panicked.' She wrapped her son in a towel, placed him in a white plastic bag containing some trash, and a larger black trash bag, and drove around, before throwing the child in the dumpster at the Broadmoor Shopping Center at around 2pm. The baby was found six hours later.

Joe Imbriale, the owner of Rig Outfitters and Home Store, where the security camera footage was captured, said he was asked by police to review video on Friday night.

He told KOB: 'Something wasn't right, I saw the officers' faces, and they did not look right.

'I said 'What is it we are looking for?' and she goes 'We're looking for somebody who dumped a black garbage bag in your dumpster.' I turned around, I said 'please don't tell me it was a baby'.'

Imbriale told KRQE that the video recording included five hours of footage showing unsuspecting people 'dumping trash on this baby.'

The footage shows Avila driving into the parking lot in a white sedan and throwing a black garbage bag - containing her newborn - in it, before driving off and abandoning the child.

More footage shows the moment the child was rescued after people apparently heard the newborn's cries.

Footage from the same camera caught the moment a heroic woman rescued the child from the dumpster

The woman can be seen pulling the trash bag off the baby after being alerted by cries

Avila was located using security camera footage from Rig Outfitters and Home Store in Hobbs

Meadows pulled out a trash bag and reacted to what was inside.

She immediately began tending to the baby.

The child was wrapped up before being handed over to police and paramedics when they arrived a short time later.

Imbriale added: 'I was in shock just to see this.

'I can't sleep at night just knowing that this baby was just tossed in a dumpster like that.

'I'm sorry but who does that? That is evil. I don't have words for it.'

Avila could face up to 15 years in prison, depending on what charges are ultimately filed said Dianna Luce, the district attorney.
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The end of Covid test requirements for travel has sparked a boom in bookings and enquiries - with some firms reporting a 220 per cent increase on last week.

Painful, expensive and slow PCR testing under rules imposed by Boris Johnson's government had decimated the travel industry.

The regulations - which often saw tests having to be paid for before and after UK arrival - bewildered sector experts. They said it was an utterly unnecessary expense that turned people off going away and made everything cost more money, when the variant they had been introduced to stop was running rampant through the UK.

But now fully-vaccinated people returning to the UK no longer needed to take a Covid test before travelling and will not need to self-isolate until they receive a negative test result after arrival.

The requirement for a PCR test within two days of arrival for fully-vaccinated people has also been replaced with a cheaper lateral flow test.

It has given the industry a much-needed shot in the arm with some companies claiming an up to 220 per cent increase in bookings or enquiries, with many operators returning to pre-pandemic booking levels.

EasyJet said it saw demand for some destinations increase 400 per cent last week, with overall bookings up 200 per cent.

The budget airline said it has seen a 427 per cent rise in bookings for Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, and summer bookings for for Tenerife, Alicante and Malaga also up 200 per cent.

Virgin Atlantic reported a jump of 150 per cent in website searches and British Airways saw a spike of 40 per cent.

Last Saturday, dubbed 'Sunshine Saturday', was expected to be the busiest day of the year for holiday bookings, and the busiest on record.

TENERIFE: The island has proved popular with people enquiring and booking about new holidays this year and bookings to Tenerife have soared by over 220%

NEW YORK: The city has seen the highest UK travel boost as tourists flock to the Big Apple to holiday

ORLANDO: The fun and excitement of theme parks and attractions at Orlando has also been chosen by Brits, with bookings up by some 64%

What will the new travel rules be for UK tourists? If you qualify as fully vaccinated for travel to England (meaning at least 14 days has passed since your second jab), and you will arrive in England from January 7, you do not need to: Take a Covid test before you travel to England

Quarantine when you arrive in England If you qualify as fully vaccinated and will arrive in England after 4am Sunday (January 9), you can choose to take a lateral flow test instead of a PCR test after you arrive in England. If you take a lateral flow test and test positive, you will need to self-isolate and take a free confirmatory PCR. You must book the test before you travel to England. You can book lateral flows from today. You must take the lateral flow test no later than the end of day two after arriving. For example, if you arrive on a Monday, this would be by the end of the Wednesday. You cannot use a lateral flow until after 4am on January 4. Before this time, you must use a PCR test after arrival. The fully vaccinated rules also apply to children aged 17 and under, people taking part in an approved vaccine trial, and people who are unable to have a vaccination due to medical reasons. Click here for more details Advertisement

Jacqueline Dobson, President of Barrhead Travel, said: 'Demand for holidays this year is quickly beginning to pick up. Holidaymakers were keen to react to the relaxation of testing rules this weekend and we've noticed departures before the end of March are beginning to grow with over 20% of new bookings representing a lates market.

'Our holiday enquiries have increased by 165% and we expect a buoyant market in January for forward bookings.

'For our top destinations  Tenerife, Orlando and New York  there has been noticeable growth this week as customers look to secure deals for 2022 getaways. Bookings to Tenerife have soared by over 220%, Orlando is up by 64% and New York has grown by over 100%.

'There's a trend for familiarity this year: holidaymakers are definitely returning to their most-loved destinations this year  reflected in the sharp rise in bookings for our favourite holiday spots. Summer 2022 was already the most popular booking season due to holiday postponements and the volume of rebooking from last year.

'Availability will begin to dwindle sooner than is usual for this time of year and we recommend that anyone looking to travel in 2022  particularly for spring or summer  should book sooner rather than later.'

Travel expert Paul Charles told MailOnline the end to the restrictions had given people the encouragement to holiday again.

He said: 'People had been worried the government might keep onerous testing rules in place.

'The relaxation of thee restrictions has uncorked the confidence bottle.

'I think the end of January could see a lot of last minute trips. Across the board sales for Europe and the Caribbean are doing very well.

'I think people are sensing the Government has turned a corner on this and won't be going back.

'I think France will make some change this week but will be fully opened up by the end of January, just in time for the ski season.

'I was speaking to the CEO of the Wild Frontiers firm and they have seen a 166% increase in inquiries since last week.

'They, like a lot of places, were hit hard during the heavy restrictions.'

Tim Alderslade, CEO of Airlines UK, said: 'Bookings have gone through the roof since the move away from pre-departure and PCR testing last week, which proves what we have always said about demand being there for holidays and trips abroad.

'People have just been waiting for these onerous resrictions to be removed and they have responded in droves, with bookings in some cases almost back to pre-pandemic levels. Ministers should be commended for moving us in the right direction, but we will never return to full health as long as we persist with even the less expensive LFDs.

'With Omicron now known to be less severe than initially feared  and transmission very much spread across the whole of the UK  we should follow the example set by other countries across europe and scrap testing altogether for the fully-vaccinated. We need to go further to ensuring a proper vaccine dividend for international travel.'

Passengers no longer needed to have taken a pre-arrival lateral flow test. The changes will have a family of four about 300

Pictured: A busy terminal 5 arrivals hall at Heathrow Airport on Friday after the rules were relaxed so passengers arriving back into the UK no longer need to take a PCR test

Britons can fly to 16 countries for under 10 this month - including Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain

Cheapest flights available for Britons this month 4 to Croatia: London Stansted to Zagreb (Ryanair, January 22, 0830-1150, 2h20m)

London Stansted to Zagreb (Ryanair, January 22, 0830-1150, 2h20m) 5 to Italy : London Luton to Rome (WizzAir, January 22, 1020-1350, 2h30m)

: London Luton to Rome (WizzAir, January 22, 1020-1350, 2h30m) 5 to Netherlands : London Stansted to Eindhoven (Ryanair, January 22, 0615-0830, 1h05m)

: London Stansted to Eindhoven (Ryanair, January 22, 0615-0830, 1h05m) 6 to Norway : London Stansted to Oslo (Ryanair, January 22, 1800-2100, 2h)

: London Stansted to Oslo (Ryanair, January 22, 1800-2100, 2h) 6 to Poland : London Stansted to Krakow (Ryanair, January 22, 0840-1155, 2h15m)

: London Stansted to Krakow (Ryanair, January 22, 0840-1155, 2h15m) 7 to Austria : London Stansted to Vienna (Ryanair, January 22, 0830-1135, 2h05m)

: London Stansted to Vienna (Ryanair, January 22, 0830-1135, 2h05m) 8 to Bulgaria : London Stansted to Sofia (Ryanair, January 25, 0635-1135, 3h)

: London Stansted to Sofia (Ryanair, January 25, 0635-1135, 3h) 8 to Ireland : London Stansted to Dublin (Ryanair, January 25, 0530-0745, 1h15m)

: London Stansted to Dublin (Ryanair, January 25, 0530-0745, 1h15m) 9 to Czech Republic : London Stansted to Prague (Ryanair, January 25, 1145-1435, 1h50m)

: London Stansted to Prague (Ryanair, January 25, 1145-1435, 1h50m) 9 to Denmark : London Stansted to Copenhagen (Ryanair, January 26, 0840-1125, 1h45m)

: London Stansted to Copenhagen (Ryanair, January 26, 0840-1125, 1h45m) 9 to Germany : London Stansted to Berlin (Ryanair, January 22, 0730-1010, 1h40m)

: London Stansted to Berlin (Ryanair, January 22, 0730-1010, 1h40m) 9 to Greec e : London Stansted to Athens (Ryanair, January 25, 1545-2115, 3h30m)

: London Stansted to Athens (Ryanair, January 25, 1545-2115, 3h30m) 9 to Latvia : London Stansted to Riga (Ryanair, January 19, 0620-1055, 2h35m)

: London Stansted to Riga (Ryanair, January 19, 0620-1055, 2h35m) 9 to Portugal : London Stansted to Lisbon (Ryanair, January 25, 0620-0910, 2h50m)

: London Stansted to Lisbon (Ryanair, January 25, 0620-0910, 2h50m) 9 to Romania : London Luton to Bucharest (WizzAir, January 22, 1650-2205, 3h15m)

: London Luton to Bucharest (WizzAir, January 22, 1650-2205, 3h15m) 9 to Spain : London Stansted to Zaragoza (Ryanair, January 22, 1245-1555, 2h10m)

: London Stansted to Zaragoza (Ryanair, January 22, 1245-1555, 2h10m) 9 to Sweden : London Stansted to Gothenburg (Ryanair, January 25, 1845-2140, 1h55m) Checked by MailOnline on Skyscanner. Flight arrival and departures times are local. Advertisement

Jet2 and Jet2holidays chief executive Steve Heapy said: 'The relaxation of travel restrictions is welcome news for both the travel industry and Scottish holidaymakers, and comes during what is traditionally a very busy period for holiday bookings.

'We have seen an immediate and dramatic spike in bookings, with volumes since the Government announcement heading towards pre-pandemic levels, which demonstrates just how much demand is out there amongst people in Scotland wanting to get away for a much-needed holiday.'

Mainland Spain, the Canaries, the Balearic Islands, Turkey, and Greece were among the most popular choices for holiday makers.

Dame Irene Hays, the owner of Britain's biggest independent travel agent, said on Saturday she believed 2022 could finally be the year Britain got a proper holiday.

As soon as Boris Johnson scrapped stringent Covid tests for holidaymakers heading overseas, the phones started ringing off the hook at Hays Travel.

With staff at her 455 shops now rolling their sleeves up to handle the surge of bookings to holiday hotspots from Spain to the Maldives and Caribbean cruises, she says: 'When the announcement was made, it was such a sense of relief that this barrier and constraint has been removed.

'The feeling at Hays Travel was one of jubilation.'

Bookings are up 53 per cent since the Prime Minister confirmed on Wednesday that predeparture tests and quarantine on arrival would be scrapped for healthy vaccinated passengers from 4am last Friday.

Lateral flow tests have now replaced PCR tests on arrival and are much cheaper.

As a sign of the huge pent-up demand and lockdown savings, Dame Irene says her sun-starved customers are spending 478 more than before the pandemic.

An average family has splashed out 2,698 on a holiday over the past few days compared with 2,220 in 2019.

Hotel booking platform hoo said it thought things were on the up for the industry.

Co-founder, Adrian Murdock said: 'We hoped 2021 would be a better year after 2020, but really it was much the same.

'Very difficult for lots of people and the rise of Omicron halted many planned Christmas celebrations.

'With any luck, however, 2022 really is going to be better, so what better way of putting the hard times behind us than with a January getaway?

'Whether it's sun or snow you're looking for, there are some great locations that are not only affordable but also accessible thanks to eased travel restrictions and increasing vaccination levels.

Add to this the fact that hotels around the world are keen to attract winter customers with generous room discounts and there's never been a better time to take an early break from reality.

'Just be sure to check the current travel guidelines before booking.'

Mr Johnson announced the move in the House of Commons on Wednesday, telling MPs: 'When the Omicron variant was first identified, we rightly introduced travel restrictions to slow its arrival in our country.

'But now Omicron is so prevalent, these measures are having limited impact on the growth in cases, while continuing to pose significant costs on our travel industry.

'So I can announce that in England from 4am on Friday, we will be scrapping the pre-departure test, which discourages many from travelling for fear of being trapped overseas and incurring significant extra expense.'

The announcement  which covers those passengers who are fully-vaccinated or are under the age of 18  was broadly welcomed by the travel industry, which has been particularly hard-hit by the pandemic.

Tim Alderslade, chief executive of the industry body Airlines UK, said it would be a 'massive boost' for the sector at a 'critical' time of the year.

NHS lateral flow tests cannot be used for international travel, and the tests must be brought from a private provider.

People who have already brought PCR tests for travelling needs can still use them.
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Rail companies across Britain today warned passengers that they face reduced services 'until further notice' amid rail replacement buses, halved service frequencies and a 'Sunday-style timetable' on some routes.

Train firms have slashed hundreds of services due to thousands of Covid-related staff absences, with bosses warning passengers to expect last-minute cancellations and more crowded trains due to fewer in operation.

Some operators have brought in new reduced timetables from today including Greater Anglia, Southeastern and TransPennine Express while London Overground is now operating some of its services at half the normal levels.

Southern Rail has finally reintroduced trains to and from London Victoria after the post-Christmas closure was extended by a week, although not all services are back and those that are remain on an amended timetable.

Staff absence for all reasons is now at 11 per cent across all operators, according to the latest Rail Delivery Group data in the week to January 5  a sharp rise from 8.9 per cent up to December 29 and 8.7 per cent to December 22.

The ever-rising figure is also significantly up on 7.6 per cent in November 2021 and 4.5 per cent at the end of August 2020, during the period when Covid-19 rates in the UK were at their lowest during the pandemic.

Train companies said the amended timetables had been brought in because of high staff absence numbers but also lower demand since the Government's working from home guidance was brought back in last month.

And they defended the revised timetables today, saying that since the post-New Year return to work last Tuesday, cancellations have been at an average of 2.4 per cent across all operators, below the annual average of 3 per cent.

There were 920,000 entries and exits on Underground trains and 1,100,000 taps on buses up to 10am today. When compared to ridership last Thursday, January 6, this was up 17 per cent on the Tube and 5 per cent on buses. In terms of pre-pandemic levels, Tube ridership is at around 40 per cent and bus ridership at about 66 per cent.

At the weekend, Tube ridership was between 55 and 65 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, with 2.4million journeys made over the weekend. Bus ridership was between 65 per cent and 75 per cent - with 5.3million journeys made.

Latest Department for Transport figures show that National Rail usage was running at between 32 and 45 per cent of normal demand over the Christmas and New Year period - compared to the equivalent pre-pandemic day - and at between 53 to 75 per cent of normal demand in the four weeks of December leading up to Christmas.

Meanwhile congestion data from TomTom revealed that today was the busiest morning rush hour on London's roads in a month. The level of 61 per cent between 8am to 9am this morning was the highest since December 14 last year when 68 per cent was recorded, one day after the Government's working from home guidance returned.

It comes as Prime Minister Boris Johnson today hailed 'great progress' against Omicron and said the Government is 'looking at' cutting the self-isolation period again - but warned that the NHS is still under significant pressure.

There are mounting calls to reduce the mandatory quarantine period from seven days to five as fears mounted over the impact of more than a million people being forced into isolation. Ministers have already cut isolation times from ten days to seven for those who can provide negative tests on two consecutive days. But Downing Street has so far refused to follow the lead of France and the US in reducing the period to just five days.

Staff absence levels in schools were at about 8.5 per cent last week, and the Department for Education has modelled scenarios in which staff absences could reach 25 per cent this month. The NHS has also been hit hard, with military medics brought in to help London hospitals and troops on standby to drive ambulances. It comes as:

Michael Gove insisted the UK is 'moving to a situation' where it is 'possible to say that we can live with Covid';

The PM is said to be drawing up a strategy for the transition away from restrictions to come in from March;

A further 141,472 cases of coronavirus were announced yesterday, the fifth consecutive fall - and 97 deaths;

Boris Johnson denied lateral flow tests could stop being free soon, saying they will stay 'as long as necessary';

Latest NHS England figures show 16,399 hospital beds were occupied by patients with Covid-19 yesterday.

Rail passengers wait for a South Western Railway service at Bracknell train station in Berkshire during rush hour this morning

This Transport for London graph dating back to the start of 2020 shows how passenger numbers have dropped once again

Commuters wait to catch a London-bound train at Bracknell railway station in Berkshire during the morning rush hour today

This Transport for London graph shows passenger data split by station type, dating back to the start of 2020

Southern Rail brought back its services at London Victoria, Battersea Park, Clapham Junction and Wandsworth Common today, although it said its reduced timetable would remain in place 'until further notice'.

The services to and from Victoria were originally due to have restarted last week following engineering works, but they were then cancelled for a further week 'due to the impact of Covid on staff'.

How Covid-related staff shortages are affecting train services across UK Avanti West Coast : Says it is 'doing everything we can to run our full timetable but there may be some short notice cancellations'.

: Says it is 'doing everything we can to run our full timetable but there may be some short notice cancellations'. c2c : Normal service.

: Normal service. Caledonian Sleeper : Normal service.

: Normal service. Chiltern Railways : Operator warns it 'may have to make some short notice changes to our timetable' because of the 'impact of Covid-19 on our train crews'.

: Operator warns it 'may have to make some short notice changes to our timetable' because of the 'impact of Covid-19 on our train crews'. CrossCountry : 'Short notice alterations and cancellations' because of 'increasing levels of absence amongst train crew due to Covid-19 isolation periods'

: 'Short notice alterations and cancellations' because of 'increasing levels of absence amongst train crew due to Covid-19 isolation periods' East Midlands Railway : Normal service.

: Normal service. Eurostar : Normal service.

: Normal service. Gatwick Express : No services 'until further notice' because of the 'ongoing effect of coronavirus isolation and sickness'.

: No services 'until further notice' because of the 'ongoing effect of coronavirus isolation and sickness'. Grand Central : Normal service.

: Normal service. Great Northern : Reduced service on all routes 'until further notice' because of the 'significant ongoing impact of coronavirus, particularly in terms of staff sickness'.

: Reduced service on all routes 'until further notice' because of the 'significant ongoing impact of coronavirus, particularly in terms of staff sickness'. Great Western Railway : 'Reduced temporary timetable' in operation since January 8 because of 'higher than usual levels of staff being absent or self-isolating due to Covid'.

: 'Reduced temporary timetable' in operation since January 8 because of 'higher than usual levels of staff being absent or self-isolating due to Covid'. Greater Anglia : 'Sunday-style timetable with earlier first trains and more trains at peak times' on weekdays from January 10.

: 'Sunday-style timetable with earlier first trains and more trains at peak times' on weekdays from January 10. Heathrow Express : Normal service.

: Normal service. Hull Trains : A temporary timetable will operate until February 12 to 'minimise disruption'.

: A temporary timetable will operate until February 12 to 'minimise disruption'. LNER : Running a 'reduced timetable' between London and Leeds/Lincoln until at least February 11

: Running a 'reduced timetable' between London and Leeds/Lincoln until at least February 11 London Northwestern Railway : 'Some trains may be cancelled at short notice' and there is a rail replacement bus service on the Abbey Line and Marston Vale Line 'until further notice'.

: 'Some trains may be cancelled at short notice' and there is a rail replacement bus service on the Abbey Line and Marston Vale Line 'until further notice'. Lumo : Normal service.

: Normal service. Merseyrail : Some trains will be cancelled from January 8 'until further notice' because of the 'impact of the Omicron COVID-19 variant affecting staff availability'.

: Some trains will be cancelled from January 8 'until further notice' because of the 'impact of the Omicron COVID-19 variant affecting staff availability'. Northern : Operating 'several amended timetables' because of 'Covid and its impact on the availability of our train crew'.

: Operating 'several amended timetables' because of 'Covid and its impact on the availability of our train crew'. ScotRail : It is 'being forced to bring in a temporary timetable' until January 28 'as we continue to see colleagues off sick because of Covid-19'.

: It is 'being forced to bring in a temporary timetable' until January 28 'as we continue to see colleagues off sick because of Covid-19'. South Western Railway : New reduced timetable from January 17 due to a 'shortage of staff across our business' causing 'short term cancellations'

: New reduced timetable from January 17 due to a 'shortage of staff across our business' causing 'short term cancellations' Southeastern : Timetable reduced by 7% from January 10 because of an 'increasing number of our colleagues affected by Covid' and work from home guidance

: Timetable reduced by 7% from January 10 because of an 'increasing number of our colleagues affected by Covid' and work from home guidance Southern : London Victoria station services restarted from January 10 but reduced timetable continues 'until further notice' due to the 'ongoing impact of coronavirus isolation and sickness'.

: London Victoria station services restarted from January 10 but reduced timetable continues 'until further notice' due to the 'ongoing impact of coronavirus isolation and sickness'. Stansted Express : Half-hourly service running.

: Half-hourly service running. Thameslink : Reduced service on all routes 'until further notice' because of the 'ongoing impact of coronavirus isolation and sickness'.

: Reduced service on all routes 'until further notice' because of the 'ongoing impact of coronavirus isolation and sickness'. TransPennine Express : 'Amended timetable' from January 10 'due to a shortage of available train crew as a result of rising sickness levels'

: 'Amended timetable' from January 10 'due to a shortage of available train crew as a result of rising sickness levels' Transport for London : Reduced service on Richmond to Stratford and Dalston Junction to New Cross routes from January 10 due to a 'number of staff off ill due to Covid or self isolating'

: Reduced service on Richmond to Stratford and Dalston Junction to New Cross routes from January 10 due to a 'number of staff off ill due to Covid or self isolating' Transport for Greater Manchester: Normal Metrolink tram services.

Normal Metrolink tram services. Transport for Wales : 'Emergency timetable' to 'prepare for an expected rise in staff shortages due to the emergence of the Omicron variant'.

: 'Emergency timetable' to 'prepare for an expected rise in staff shortages due to the emergence of the Omicron variant'. West Midlands Railway : Rail replacement buses on the Leamington Spa-Nuneaton via Coventry line 'until further notice' due to the 'impact of Covid-19 on our workforce'. 'Some services on the Birmingham New Street to Shrewsbury line are likely to be cancelled'. Advertisement

Southern is now providing eight direct Southern services an hour to London Victoria and connections to existing services at East Croydon, Streatham Common, Balham, Mitcham Junction, Sutton and Epsom.

The firm said that as more train staff return to work, 'we are planning a larger service that will introduce more direct services to and from London Victoria', adding that there were 'far fewer people travelling due to Omicron and the work-from-home directive'.

In addition, the Gatwick Express remains completely suspended 'until further notice' because of the 'ongoing effect of coronavirus isolation and sickness'.

Angie Doll, interim chief operator officer of Southern's parent firm Govia Thameslink Railway, said today: 'We are now running a service to and from Victoria again.

'Due to the continued significant challenges we face with Covid affecting many of our colleagues, there are fewer trains than normal. Although we have far fewer people travelling with us at the moment due to the work-from-home directive, passengers may have to change trains to reach their destination. We're really sorry if this affects your journey.'

GTR also operates Thameslink and Great Northern trains - both of which have a reduced service on all routes 'until further notice' because of the 'ongoing impact of coronavirus isolation and sickness'.

Meanwhile Transport for London said it had 'planned some temporary changes to London Overground services but we are currently running more services on the two impacted lines than we had anticipated'.

The planned timetable changes mean a reduction of four trains per hour between Dalston Junction and Surrey Quays on weekdays with no service between Surrey Quays and New Cross. This means 12 trains will operate per hour and that customers may have gaps between trains of up to eight minutes in the core section between Dalston Junction and Surrey Quays.

A half-hourly service will now operate between Richmond and Stratford on weekdays - which will mean a reduction in frequency to six trains per hour in the core section between Willesden Junction and Stratford, down from ten per hour.

However, TfL said it would 'will run more services on these routes if absence rates allow us to and we will continue to keep operating services as planned across our network'. Weekend and Night Overground services are not affected by the changes.

TfL added that across its workforce, it currently has around 500 members of non-office-based staff off work due to a Covid-related illness, but said the overall proportion of staff off work 'remains low'. It said there 'may be other staff who work in more office-based roles who are self-isolating but are still working from home'.

There has not yet been any major impact on London Underground services apart from the Waterloo and City line which returned at weekday peak times today.

Rory O'Neill, TfL's general manager for London Overground, said: 'Like many businesses and organisations around the country, we are experiencing the effects of the pandemic with a number of staff off ill due to Covid or self-isolating.

'To ensure we can provide a reliable service, it has been necessary to make some timetable changes to London Overground services from Dalston Junction to New Cross and Richmond to Stratford.

'Customers continue to have a range of travel options. We will continue to do all we can to keep operating a near to normal service but advise everyone to check our website and the TfL Go app before they travel as further services may be affected at short notice by staff absences.'

Greater Anglia, which runs trains across Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire brought in a new amended service from Saturday, saying it was 'making further temporary changes to our timetable to reflect the current situation with the pandemic'.

The operator said a 'Sunday-style timetable with earlier first trains and more trains at peak times will run on weekdays' from today, and that an hourly service would continue to run on all regional routes, except Ipswich to Peterborough which will remain two-hourly as normal.

The Norwich to London Liverpool Street intercity service will become hourly, and Greater Anglia said it was 'making these changes in response to a drop in passenger numbers, due to Government advice to work from home and a general increase in coronavirus cases across the region'.

Vehicles travelling along the M3 motorway near Longcross in Surrey this morning as working from home guidance remains

Congestion data from TomTom revealed that today was the busiest morning rush hour on London's roads in a month. The level of 61 per cent between 8am to 9am this morning was the highest since December 14 last year when 68 per cent was recorded

Motorists drive along the M3 near Longcross in Surrey this morning at the start of the first full working week of 2022

The operator told passengers it would 'continue to monitor passenger numbers and will let you know if we make any further changes to the timetable'.

Southeastern, which operates across Kent and South East London, said it was reducing its timetable by 7 per cent from today after passenger numbers had 'reduced significantly in response to the latest advice' and amid an 'increasing number of colleagues affected by Covid'.

Among the changes are that peak-time mainline trains from Ashford International and Hastings via Tonbridge to London Cannon Street will not run; and there will be no service on the Bexleyheath line to London Cannon Street.

There will also be a reduced service from Slade Green via Woolwich and Greenwich to London Cannon Street; and some trains between Gravesend and Dartford via Sidcup to and from London Charing Cross will not run.

Boris Johnson said in Uxbridge, West London, today that the Government is 'looking at' cutting the self-isolation period again

TransPennine Express has also brought in a revised timetable from today which it said will 'provide a stable and reliable service for those customers who are travelling'.

Underground Northern line Bank branch closure is set to cause travel chaos for four months London commuters heading into the City face a difficult journey into work for the next four months when the Northern line's Bank branch closes. The route between Kennington and Moorgate will shut from this Saturday until mid-May 2022, which is due to upgrade works at Bank to increase the station's capacity and provide step-free access to the Northern line. Engineers will be connecting new tunnels to the existing railway and integrating new systems in the station. Transport for London said many lines and stations across central London will be busier, especially around the City, but extra Tube services and a new bus route will operate. The new bus, the 733 from Oval into the City (Finsbury Square), will also be introduced on weekdays and run every seven to eight minutes. Waterloo, Embankment, Tottenham Court Road and London Bridge are expected to be among the busiest stations during the closure, Andy Lord, Managing Director of London Underground, said: 'The Bank Station Capacity Upgrade is a crucial project that will support the City's growth and success after these challenging years of navigating the pandemic. 'I'm sorry for the disruption this vital work will cause, and I can assure Londoners that if there was any other way to connect the new tunnels with the existing railway then we would.' Advertisement

One of the amendments it that the Scarborough to Manchester Victoria and Liverpool Lime Street hourly services will be replaced with a Scarborough to York hourly service, with additional peak time extensions to and from Leeds.

Meanwhile the last service of the day between Sheffield and Cleethorpes will now operate as a rail replacement bus service.

Other operators warning of disruption included Avanti West Coast, which said it is 'doing everything we can to run our full timetable but there may be some short notice cancellations', while Chiltern Railways warned it 'may have to make some short notice changes to our timetable' because of the 'impact of Covid-19 on our train crews'.

CrossCountry said there would be 'short notice alterations and cancellations' because of 'increasing levels of absence amongst train crew due to Covid-19 isolation periods'.

And Great Western Railway has had a 'reduced temporary timetable' in operation since Saturday because of 'higher than usual levels of staff being absent or self-isolating due to Covid'.

Hull Trains has a temporary timetable operating until at least February 12 to 'minimise disruption', while LNER will be running a 'reduced timetable' between London King's Cross and Leeds and Lincoln until a similar date.

London Northwestern Railway said 'some trains may be cancelled at short notice' and there will be a rail replacement bus service on the Abbey Line and Marston Vale Line 'until further notice'.

Merseyrail told passengers that some trains will be cancelled 'until further notice' because of the 'impact of the Omicron COVID-19 variant affecting staff availability', while ScotRail said it was 'being forced to bring in a temporary timetable' until January 28 'as we continue to see colleagues off sick because of Covid-19'.

South Western Railway will be bringing in a new reduced timetable from January 17 due to a 'shortage of staff across our business' causing 'short term cancellations', and Transport for Wales still has an 'emergency timetable' in place to 'prepare for an expected rise in staff shortages due to the emergence of the Omicron variant'.

And West Midlands Railway warned that rail replacement buses on the Leamington Spa-Nuneaton via Coventry line would be running 'until further notice' due to the 'impact of Covid-19 on our workforce', adding that some services on the Birmingham New Street to Shrewsbury line are 'likely to be cancelled'.
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Known down the decades as one of Britain's best-loved actors, he has starred in a succession of mega film hits - from Alfie to The Italian Job, Zulu to Batman.

But now, Sir Michael Caine, 88, is selling off his cherished collection of memorabilia from many of his films after putting his seven-bedroom Surrey mansion up for sale for 3.75million in 2019.

He and his wife, former model Shakira Baksh, are 'downsizing', auction house Bonhams said.

The Oscar-winner said he was reluctantly saying goodbye to the hundreds of treasures. Among them is his 12,000 gold Rolex watch and 40 works of art, including paintings by LS Lowry and Marc Chagall.

Two standout lots show original posters from two of his most famous films  Zulu and Alfie. The former is expected to sell for up to 1,500, whilst the latter could fetch 700.

Posters from Caine's 1965 film the Ipcress File and 1971 production Get Carter are also up for grabs, whilst fans can get their hands on two pairs of Sir Michael's iconic spectacles if they are willing to part with an expected 1,200.

The lots are being auctioned with Bonhams and the sale is taking place on March 2.

Known down the decades as one of Britain's best-loved actors, he has starred in a succession of mega film hits - from Alfie to The Italian Job, Zulu to Batman. But now, Sir Michael Caine, 88, is selling off his cherished collection of memorabilia from many of his films after putting his seven-bedroom Surrey mansion up for sale for 3.75million in 2019. Above: Sir Michael with his wife Shakira. An image of them together in the 1980s (right) is one of the items up for auction

The Oscar-winner said he was reluctantly saying goodbye to the hundreds of treasures. One standout lot is an original poster from his 1967 Alfie. Alfie, which was released in 1966, saw Sir Michael star as a young womaniser who ends up having to confront his carefree life. Sir Michael was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance

Speaking in a video filmed by Bonhams for the sale, Sir Michael said of his art collection: 'It is all nostalgia and remembrance with me. I didn't collect art as some great art dealer, stuff became expensive accidentally.'

Many of the lots recount Sir Michael's years as a single man in the 1960s, when he made films such as Alfie, Zulu and The Italian Job.

Sir Michael recounted how he was guided around the south of France by glamorous star Brigitte Bardot.

'When I was single I was always in St Tropez,' he said.

'And Brigitte Bardot would show me around and everything. So it was all great. I've been in every one of those places.

'In that other room there's a set of posters on 'journey to Paris on the train'. I was a bit reluctant to sell them. They are such a memory to me.

Artworks depicting the south of France were on display in the drawing room of his home, whilst travel posters were put up in his study.

Zulu, which was released in 1964, was based on the famous Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879. It told the story of how around 150 British soldiers held off waves of attacks from between 3,000 and 4,000 Zulu warriors at a remote station on the border with Natal in South Africa. The film continues to be ranked as one of the best British productions of all time

Also for sale are director's chairs from the films Caine starred in in the 1960s and 1970s, including Get Carter (left) and the Ipcress File. Another chair, from 2005 film The Weather Man (right), is also up for sale

In the Ipcress File, Sir Michael played British spy Harry Palmer, who had been tasked with investigating the kidnappings and brainwashed reappearances of top scientists. He is seen encountering criminals, secret agents. The 1965 film was based on Len Deighton's novel of the same name. It received a BAFTA award for Best British film

A poster from Sir Michael's 1971 crime film Get Carter is also up for sale. The film also starred Britt Ekland and was based on Ted Lewis's 1970 novel Jack's Return Home. Sir Michael's character, Jack Carter, is a London gangster who returns to his home town and learns of his brother's allegedly accidental death. After suspecting foul play, he goes on a hunt for the truth

Sir Michael starred in 1975 film The Man Who Would Be King with Sean Connery. The above poster is adorned with the star's signature. The film follows the paths of two rogue former soldiers, who set off in India in the 19th century in search of adventure

Pairs of glasses worn down the decades by Sir Michael are on offer in the Bonhams auction. The lots are being auctioned with Bonhams and the sale is taking place on March 2

Also for sale are director's chairs from the films Caine starred in in the 1960s and 1970s, including Get Carter and the Ipcress File. Another chair, from 2005 film The Weather Man, is also up for sale.

A portrait of Sir Michael himself, by Lincoln Townley, is due to be sold for up to 15,000.

Sir Michael added: 'It's going to be quite a wrench to part with so many treasured parts of my life and career. But it's the right time to be moving on.'

He added: 'I hope these mementoes will give their new owners as much pleasure as they have given us.'

Zulu, which was released in 1964, was based on the famous Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879.

It told the story of how around 150 British soldiers held off waves of attacks from between 3,000 and 4,000 Zulu warriors at a remote station on the border with Natal in South Africa.

The most valuable lot in the auction is this painting by French-Russian early modernist artist Marc Chagall, which is tipped to sell for between 30,000 and 50,000. Speaking in a video filmed by Bonhams for the sale, Sir Michael said of his art collection: 'It is all nostalgia and remembrance with me. I didn't collect art as some great art dealer, stuff became expensive accidentally'

A portrait of Sir Michael himself, by Lincoln Townley, is due to be sold for up to 15,000. He is seen clutching a film award

British artist John Bratby's portrait of Sir Michael is tipped to sell for between 2,000 and 3,000. Bratby was well known for founding the kitchen sink realism style of art

Sir Michael's gold Rolex watch is tipped to sell for between 8,000 and 12,000, whilst his gold lighter - which bears his initials set in diamonds - could fetch up to 1,500

Sir Michael also travelled extensively and collected posters along the way. Above: An advert for the Venice Simplon Orient-Express. It is among a set of six similar posters which Sir Michael is selling

Just 15 British soldiers died but around 350 Zulus were killed and the fighting led to 11 Victoria Crosses being awarded to the defenders of Rorke's Drift, seven of them to soldiers of the 24th (2nd Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot - the most ever received for a single battle by one regiment.

The film continues to be ranked as one of the best British productions of all time.

Alfie, which was released two years after Zulu, saw Sir Michael star as a young womaniser who ends up having to confront his carefree nature.

Sir Michael was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance.

Sir Michael first put his Surrey home on the market in 2019. The 12,000 sq ft property was on sale for 3.75 million

The property boasts a barn conversion with a bar, an indoor pool, a hot tub and a two-bedroom cottage

Sir Michael first put his Surrey home on the market in 2019. The 12,000 sq ft property was on sale for 3.75 million and came with a barn conversion with a bar, an indoor pool, a hot tub and a two-bedroom cottage.

Sir Michael previously sold his apartment in South beach, Miami in 2018 for a reported $7.45 million (5.9m).

In the mid-1990s, he also sold his mansion in Beverly Hills, California but still owns a flat in Chelsea Harbour in west London.

He has previously talked about his Surrey mansion, appearing on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs to discuss his 120,000 cinema.

He revealed how the seats of the cinema have a 'refrigerator in the arm with a couple of beers in it'.

Caine also said that he always tried to get the best picture possible and so would always go for the newest projector because he wanted it to be the 'height of technical advancement'.

The actor has also spoken about the master bedroom at Keston Lodge, revealing how it comes with two ensuite bathrooms.

Caine says that having separate bathrooms is the key to a happy marriage.

He married his wife Shakira, an actress and model, in 1973.
Britain's leading psychology body has been criticised for encouraging psychologists to call their clients 'sluts' if they request it.

In guidelines aimed at encouraging more inclusive language, the British Psychological Society (BPS) told its 60,000 members to refer to patients using their 'preferred term', including so-called 'reclaimed terms like dyke or slut'.

But health professionals and members of the public have attacked the move, saying the word was inappropriate and derogatory.

Australian psychotherapist Tania Marshall described the BPS advice as a 'mess' and questioned if there could ever be a situation where 'referring to your client as a slut would be therapeutically beneficial'.

She tweeted: 'Surely we would want to explore where that came from, why they came to that term, why they use it, what it means for them and any background related to it, rather than just affirming it?'

In a response to Ms Marshall, the official BPS Twitter account claimed the word 'slut' had been 'reclaimed by feminist activists'.

It said: 'The use of preferred terminology is long established psychological/ psychotherapeutic practice & is in line with guidance We only advocate the use of reclaimed terms e.g. slut where it is the client's preference (as is clearly stated in the guidance).'

The statement sparked a furious response on social media, with one doctor accusing BPS officials of having 'lost their minds'.

In guidelines aimed at encouraging more inclusive language, the British Psychological Society told its 60,000 members to refer to patients using their 'preferred term', including so-called 'reclaimed terms like dyke or slut'

Describing the guidance (pictured) as 'a mess', Australian psychotherapist Tania Marshall questioned if there could ever be a situation where 'referring to your client as a 'slut' would be therapeutically beneficial

They added: 'Two scenarios in which a patient might demand a HCP [healthcare professional] refer to them as "slut"  a traumatised woman or a male fetishist.

'In either scenario it is unacceptable. Also, clinicians have no obligation to debase themselves by indulging insulting language.'

Feminist psychologist Dr Jessica Taylor claimed the word had 'definitely not been "reclaimed".

'It is actively used to oppress, we have decades of psych research to show that, and psychologists should never ever, ever refer to their clients as a "slut" no matter what,' she added.

WHAT DO THE BRITISH PSYCHOLOGICAL SOCIETY GUIDELINES SAY? The British Psychological Society, which represents around 60,000 psychologists in the UK, released guidelines in 2019 which advises its members to call their patients a 'slut' or 'dyke' if requested. The guidelines state: 'Clients may use many different terms to refer to their identities and practices and psychologists are advised to use those that are used by clients themselves or to ask which terms are preferred. 'Some people do not use GSRD or LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) labels, but may be comfortable with, for example, MSM (men who have sex with men), WSW (women who have sex with women), culturally specific terms, or reclaimed terms like dyke or slut. 'A clients preferred name and pronoun should be used in person and, in almost all cases, in documentation. 'These may be gendered (he or she) or if the client prefers, gender-neutral (they, or the clients preferred gender neutral term). 'Similarly, psychologists should use the clients preferred term for their relationship and understand how they define it.' Advertisement

Psychotherapist Dr Richard Gipps said it was the job of therapists to explore whether a patient's view of themselves was healthy or toxic, rather than just accepting it.

Former counsellor Laura Marcus added: 'If I had a client with anorexia I would not affirm that they were overweight and I certainly wouldn't call them fatty even if they called themselves that and said that's how they wanted to be called!'

While radical feminist Angie Jones tweeted: 'Any therapist telling a client to embrace a sexist slur or using it toward a client should be struck off.'

In a discussion about the issue on parenting forum Mumsnet, one woman wrote: 'I would have thought that if a woman came to a therapist insisting she be called "slut", the therapist should be trying to find out why.

'I can see  maybe  a group of women friends jokingly using the term. But in a therapist's office? Unprofessional is the kindest word I can use.'

Another questioned why the BPS had listed derogatory words for women but not for men in its guidance, describing the terms as 'misogynist'.

The BPS's 'Guidelines for psychologists working with gender, sexuality and relationship diversity' were first published in 2019.

But the controversial content came to light last week after it tweeted a link to the document and encouraged members to: 'Make it your New Year's resolution to be more inclusive of gender, sexuality & relationship diversity.'

Last year it was reported that the BPS was under examination by the Charity Commission over concerns about its governance, lack of transparency and claims it silenced certain academic views.

It was also accused of allegedly lobbying for psychologists to be allowed to prescribe drugs, including hormone blockers to transgender patients.

A BPS spokesperson said: 'Our Guidelines for Psychologists Working with Gender, Sexuality and Relationship Diversity were put together by experts working in this field and were subject to extensive consultation with all BPS members in 2019.

'The BPS is clear that it is down to the practitioners professional judgement to determine if the client is using terms, that could be considered derogatory, in an empowering way rather than in a self-loathing way that may be detrimental to them.

'In this case, we should have been clearer in our tweet that we do not believe this term has been universally adopted by all feminists.

'However it is important to recognise that for some people, reclaiming phrases that many consider to be derogatory, is a form of empowerment.'
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Russian citizens have been evacuated from Kazakhstan on military planes amid unrest in the country which President Vladimir Putin has blamed on 'bandits and terrorists' trained abroad.

Scores of civilians were seen arriving at Chkalovsky military air base, near Moscow, aboard a Russian Ilyushin Il-76 strategic airlifter on Monday.

The foreign citizens from Russia and other countries were evacuated following mass protests which began on January 2 and spread across Kazakhstan, with over 160 people killed and more than 8,000 detained.

Earlier today, President Putin alleged that 'well-organised and well-controlled groups of militants, apparently trained in terrorist camps abroad', were involved in the unrest.

Meanwhile, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said that 'order had been restored' in the country after what he described as an 'attempted coup d'etat fuelled by terrorist aggression'.

It comes as a state-imposed internet shutdown in Kazakhstan entered a sixth day on Monday, leaving millions of people struggling to access basic services and information about anti-government protests that have rocked the country.

Kazakh authorities reported this morning that a total of 7,939 people have been detained and 164 people confirmed dead - including three children - following mass protests which began on January 2.

The initially peaceful protests over a near-doubling of prices for vehicle fuel quickly turned violent and spread across the country last week, with Tokayev tweeting over the weekend that a highly disputed figure of 'twenty thousand bandits' had been involved in the uprising in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty.

Russian citizens have been evacuated from Kazakhstan on military planes amid unrest in the country which President Vladimir Putin has blamed on 'bandits and terrorists' trained abroad

Scores of civilians were seen arriving at Chkalovsky military air base, near Moscow, aboard a Russian Ilyushin Il-76 strategic airlifter on Monday

Russian citizens evacuated from Kazakhstan aboard an Ilyushin Il-76MD strategic airlifter undergo disinfection upon their arrival at Chkalovsky airfield on Monday

Russian citizens evacuated from Kazakhstan aboard an Ilyushin Il-76MD strategic airlifter arrive at Chkalovsky airfield on Monday

A burning truck is seen by the mayor's office in Almaty, January 5, 2022. Protests across Kazakhstan turned violent last week and led to dozens of deaths and thousands of protestors being detained

Russian citizens evacuated from Kazakhstan aboard an Ilyushin Il-76MD strategic airlifter undergo disinfection upon their arrival at Chkalovsky airfield on Monday

An Ilyushin Il-76MD strategic airlifter carrying the passengers of an evacuation flight for Russian citizens arrives at Chkalovsky airfield from Kazakhstan on Monday

An elderly woman who was evacuated from Kazakhstan is helped off the Ilyushin Il-76MD strategic airlifter upon its arrival at Chkalovsky airfield in Russia on Monday

Political slogans used in the protests reflected wider discontent with Kazakhstan's authoritarian government.

In a concession, the government announced a 180-day price cap on vehicle fuel and a moratorium on utility rate increases. As the unrest mounted, the ministerial cabinet resigned and the president replaced Nursultan Nazarbayev, former longtime leader of Kazakhstan, as head of the National Security Council.

One of the main slogans of the past week's protests, 'Old man out,' was a reference to Nazarbayev, who served as president from Kazakhstan's independence until he resigned in 2019 and anointed Tokayev as his successor. Nazarbayev had retained substantial power at the helm of the National Security Council.

Despite the concessions, the protests turned extremely violent for several days. In Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, the protesters set the city hall on fire and stormed and briefly seized the airport. For several days, sporadic gunfire was reported in the city streets.

The authorities declared a state of emergency over the unrest, and Tokayev requested help from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russia-led military alliance of six former Soviet states. The group has authorized sending about 2,500 mostly Russian troops to Kazakhstan as peacekeepers.

Both Putin and Tokayev said the demonstrations were instigated by terrorists' with foreign backing, although the protests have shown no obvious leaders or organisation and Kazakhstan's Interior Ministry has not released information about the thousands of people who have been detained.

On Friday, Tokayev said he ordered police and the military to shoot to kill 'terrorists' involved in the violence.

A view of the city hall building after clashes in the central square blocked by Kazakhstan troops and police in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Monday

The inside of a car is stained with blood following clashes in the central square blocked by Kazakhstan troops and police in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Monday

A car windshield is stained with blood following clashes in the central square blocked by Kazakhstan troops and police in Almaty, Kazakhstan on Monday, Jan. 10

Protesters clash with Kazakh policemen during rally over a hike in energy prices in Almaty, Kazakhstan, January 7, 2022

Kazakh policemen during protests over a hike in energy prices in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on January 5

In a televised statement this morning, Putin (L) alleged that 'well-organised and well-controlled groups of militants were used, apparently trained in terrorist camps abroad.' Meanwhile, Tokayev (R) said that 'order had been restored' after an 'attempted coup d'etat fuelled by terrorist aggression'

Kazakh authorities have since released well-known Kyrgyz jazz musician Vikram Ruzakhunov, whose arrest and apparent beating over his alleged participation in the unrest sparked outrage in neighboring Kyrgyzstan.

Although last week's protests began over a near-doubling of prices for a type of Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) that is widely used as vehicle fuel, their size and rapid spread suggested they reflect wider discontent in the country, which has been under the rule of the same party since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

In a statement on Monday morning, Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry said that peaceful protests throughout the country 'were hijacked by terrorist, extremist and criminal groups.'

'According to preliminary data, the attackers include individuals who have military combat zone experience in the ranks of radical Islamist groups. Currently, the law enforcement agencies and armed forces of Kazakhstan are confronting terrorists, not `peaceful protesters' as some foreign media misrepresent it,' the statement said.

Speaking at a virtual summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) this morning, Tokayev promised to reveal to the world 'additional evidence' of a 'terrorist aggression' against Kazakhstan.

He stressed that the demands of peaceful protesters have been 'heard and met by the state,' and the unrest that followed involved 'groups of armed militants' whose goal was to overthrow the government.

Russian President Vladimir Putin echoed that sentiment, calling the unrest 'an act of aggression' masterminded from abroad.

'The events in Kazakhstan are not the first and not the last attempt at interfering in the internal affairs of our states from the outside,' Putin said at the summit.

The Russian President also said that the CSTO, which dispatched 2,500 troops to quash the uprising in Kazakhstan, would not allow any more 'colour revolutions' to take place - a reference to several revolutions in ex-Soviet countries over the last two decades.

The Kazakh president added that 'constitutional order' has been restored and the 'large-scale anti-terrorist operation' in the country will soon wrap up, along with the CSTO mission.

The foreign militants involved, Tokayev charged later Monday, came from 'mostly Central Asian countries, including Afghanistan,' and some from Mideast nations.

Kazakhstan's National Security Committee said Monday that 'hot spots of terrorist threats' in the country have been 'neutralized.'

A military patrol detains a man on Nazarbayev Street in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Monday

A bus that was burned during the protests over a hike in energy prices is seen on a street in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on January 7

A crane loads a military truck, which was burned during clashes onto the platform in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Sunday

Kazakh entrepreneurs examine their store looted during riots after rally over a hike in energy prices in the shopping mall in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Monday

A looted shopping mall is seen in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Monday following days of violent protests

Kazakh authorities declared a day of mourning for the dozens of civilians who were killed in the uprising along with several members of Kazakh security personnel.

The streets of Almaty returned to near-normal on Monday after the worst violence in three decades of post-Soviet independence, with some public buildings and vehicles torched.

In Kazakhstan, internet connectivity was restored nationwide for a few hours on Monday, according to Internet blockage observatory NetBlocks, before being cut off soon after in the Central Asian nation following last week's wave of unrest.

'Earlier today, some users briefly came online for the first time in five days,' the group said on Twitter.

Authorities cut off access to the internet completely on Wednesday last week, NetBlocks said, as protests against a New Year's Day fuel price hike spread into nationwide demonstrations against the government and ex-leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, 81.

Aisha, a resident of the Kazakh capital of Nur-Sultan who asked not to give her real name, said she was working at her office when the shutdown took effect, leaving her with no source of news about developments in the country.

'My TV does not work without the internet, and there was no news on the radio at all, only entertainment programs,' she said via email.

Authorities started blocking internet in some parts of the country and limiting access to social media platforms several days earlier as protests erupted in the western city of Zhanaozen, said digital rights group Access Now.

Meanwhile, the arrest of Kyrgyz jazz musician Vikram Ruzakhunov amid the protests in Almaty led dozens of people to rally outside Kazakhstan's embassy in Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek on Sunday.

Ruzakhunov was shown this weekend in a video on Kazakh television and YouTube - which has since been removed - saying that he had flown to the country to take part in protests and was promised $200 for doing so.

In the video, which appeared to have been filmed police custody, Ruzakhunov's face was bruised and he had a large cut on his forehead, leading to suspicions his admission was forced under duress.

Kamchybek Tashiyev, head of the Kyrgyz State Committee for National Security, told reporters at the protest: '[Ruzakhunov] is not a terrorist. He's an ordinary citizen, a musician, a decent man.

'Vikram Ruzakhunov didn't participate in riots and street marches.'

The arrest of Kyrgyz jazz musician Vikram Ruzakhunov (pictured) amid the protests in Almaty led dozens of people to rally outside Kazakhstan's embassy in Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek on Sunday

A woman brings flowers at the embassy of Kazakhstan as a tribute to those killed during mass protests on Monday

People lay flowers in front of the Kazakhstan's embassy in Moscow on Monday

What is the CSTO? The Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) was formed by Russia and other former Soviet states in 2002, months after a US-led coalition intervened in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 attacks. It groups together some of the signatories - Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan - of a 90s-era security pact among former Soviet republics. Russia's President Vladimir Putin said at the time that 'we are living in a fast-changing world and therefore have to reinforce the treaty linking us and to adapt it new threats.' The bloc founded a 20,000-strong rapid reaction force in 2009, while its 3,600-member peacekeeping unit is recognised by the UN. Pascal Ausseur, a French former soldier and senior defence official who now heads the FMES think-tank, called the CSTO a 'mini-NATO... with Russia in place of the US on the other side'. The deployment of CSTO troops in Kazakhstan in January 2021 represents the first time the CSTO has committed forces to quell any unrest in one of its member states. Advertisement

Kyrygzstan's Foreign Ministry demanded Ruzakhunov's release, and the country's authorities may now look to open a probe on charges of torture despite news of his release today.

The aftermath of the unrest in Kazakhstan comes amid talks between Russia and the West regarding the escalating tension in eastern Europe and Ukraine.

Russia said on Sunday it would not make concessions under US pressure and warned that this week's talks on the Ukraine crisis might end early, while Washington said no breakthroughs were expected and progress depended on de-escalation from Moscow.

Talks begin today in Geneva before moving to Brussels and Vienna, but the state-owned RIA news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying it was entirely possible the diplomacy could end after a single meeting.

'I can't rule out anything, this is an entirely possible scenario and the Americans... should have no illusions about this,' he was quoted as saying.

'Naturally, we will not make any concessions under pressure' or amid constant threats from participants in the talks, said Ryabkov, who will lead the Russian delegation in Geneva.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a CNN interview: 'I don't think we're going to see any breakthroughs in the coming week.'

In response to Russian demands for Western security guarantees, the United States and allies have said they are prepared to discuss the possibility of each side restricting military exercises and missile deployments in the region.

Both sides will put proposals on the table and then see if there are grounds for moving forward, Blinken said.

'To make actual progress, it's very hard to see that happening when there's an ongoing escalation, when Russia has a gun to the head of Ukraine with 100,000 troops near its borders,' Blinken said in an interview with ABC News.
Pope Francis declared today that getting vaccinated against the coronavirus is a 'moral obligation' and denounced how people had been swayed by 'baseless information' to refuse jabs.

Francis used some of his strongest words yet calling for people to get vaccinated in a speech to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, an annual event in which he takes stock of the world and sets out the Vaticans foreign policy goals for the year.

Francis, 85, has generally shied away from speaking about vaccination until now, though his COVID-19 advisory body has referred to it as a 'moral responsibility.'

The Pope had previously termed vaccination as 'an act of love' and that refusing to get jabbed was 'suicidal,' but today he went a step further, saying that individuals had a responsibility to care for themselves.

'This translates into respect for the health of those around us. Health care is a moral obligation,' he asserted.

The Pope also admonished ideological divides and 'baseless information' discouraging people from getting vaccinated.

'Frequently people let themselves be influenced by the ideology of the moment, often bolstered by baseless information or poorly documented facts,' he said, calling for the adoption of a 'reality therapy' to correct this 'distortion of human reason'.

Francis' comments come days after hundreds of thousands of people protested Covid restrictions in cities across Europe on Saturday, while hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Turin in Italy to demonstrate against vaccine passes and rules that make vaccines mandatory for anyone more than the age of 50.

Pope Francis used some of his strongest words yet calling for people to get vaccinated in a speech to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, an annual event in which he takes stock of the world and sets out the Vaticans foreign policy goals for the year (pictured: Francis delivers the Angelus noon prayer in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022)

Francis today declared that individuals had a responsibility to care for themselves 'and this translates into respect for the health of those around us. Health care is a moral obligation,' he asserted.

A demonstrator holds a sign that reads 'Greenpass virus of the society', during a protest against mandatory vaccinations for people over 50 and stricter rules for the unvaccinated who, under the new regulations, will not be able to do a variety of activities including using public transport and sitting at restaurants, in Turin, Italy, January 8, 2022

'Vaccines are not a magical means of healing, yet surely they represent, in addition to other treatments that need to be developed, the most reasonable solution for the prevention of the disease,' Francis said.

Some Catholics, including some conservative U.S. bishops and cardinals, have claimed vaccines based on research that used cells derived from aborted fetuses were immoral, and have refused to get the jabs.

The Vaticans doctrine office, however, has said it is 'morally acceptable' for Catholics to receive COVID-19 vaccines based on research that used cells derived from aborted fetuses.

Francis and Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI have been fully vaccinated with Pfizer-BioNTech shots.

Francis repeated his call for universal access to the shots, particularly in the parts of the world with low vaccination rates, and called for revisions to patent rules so that poorer countries can develop their own vaccines.

'It is appropriate that institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization adapt their legal instruments lest monopolistic rules constitute further obstacles to production and to an organized and consistent access to health care on a global level,' he said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of protestors marched through the streets of several European cities this weekend to demonstrate against Covid restrictions in their respective countries.

Major demonstrations were held in France, Germany, Austria and Italy as thousands joined together in protest against what are perceived to be excessively strict restrictions and mandatory vaccinations.

The Pope's comments came after a protest in Turin, Italy on Saturday railed against new laws that make vaccines mandatory for anyone more than the age of 50.

Italy is targeting the unvaccinated with a host of new coronavirus restrictions which come into force today, with proof of vaccination or recovery from a recent infection required to enter public transport, coffee shops, hotels, gyms and other everyday activities.

The new 'super' health pass requirement, which eliminates the ability to show just a negative test to gain access to services, comes as many Italians return to work and school after the Christmas and New Year's holidays.

Italian riot police stand in front of demonstrators in Turin, Saturday Jan 8, during a protest against mandatory vaccinations for people over 50 and the banning of unvaccinated people from many public venues

A demonstrator holds a sign that reads 'Enough with the political persecution of health dissidents', during the protest in Turin

In his address today, Francis also reiterated his defence of migrants, saying each country should accept as many as possible and that responsibility for their integration should be shared.

On climate change, he said the results of last year's COP26 summit in Glasgow were 'rather weak in light of the gravity of the problem' and hoped that action on global warming could be consolidated at COP27 planned for Egypt in November.

He repeated calls for dialogue in areas of conflict or crisis such as Lebanon, Ukraine and Myanmar as well as his call for a ban on the possession of nuclear weapons.
A mother who hasn't sent her daughter to school for almost two years because she doesn't want her to get Long Covid now faces a 2,500 fine or a prison sentence.

Lisa Diaz, 40, who has a vulnerability due to a blood condition, began homeschooling her two children, Alex, 12 and Helena, nine after the UK went into lockdown last March and schools were shut.

She only just sent her son back to school in November once he was double-jabbed however, her daughter has now been absent from primary school for 20 months after Ms Diaz admitted her 'greatest fear' was her children getting Long Covid.

Ms Diaz, of Wigan, who is a member of the parent-led advocacy group Safe Education For All, now faces a 2,500 fine or prison - but she insists she will send her daughter to school once she is double-vaccinated.

Lisa Diaz, 40 hasn't sent her daughter Helena, nine, to school for almost two years because she doesn't want her to get Long Covid

The mother-of-two now faces a 2,500 fine or prosecution by Wigan council (pictured)

Ms Diaz, of Wigan, who is a member of the parent-led advocacy group Safe Education For All, now faces a 2,500 fine or prison - but she insists she will send her daughter to school once she is double-vaccinated

Local councils and schools can use various legal powers if your child is missing school without a good reason and measures include prosecution, where you receive a fine of up to 2,500, a community order or a jail sentence up to three months - which happens to parents who fail to ensure attendance.

Speaking on Good Morning Britain, she said: 'My concern is that Covid harms children.

'My greatest fear as a parent is that my children will end up with long covid. I am informed. Unfortunately, the government aren't putting out this message that covid is harmful for children.'

Long Covid is a patient-led term to describe the ongoing, fluctuating symptoms of coronavirus, and according to the NHS, recovery time differs for each individual.

Experts are not quite sure why the condition develops, and how to effectively treat it.

At least 1.3 million people are now living with long Covid in the UK with rates rising fastest in teenagers and young people, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Fatigue was the most common symptom reported to the ONS as part of individuals' experience of long Covid, and 233,000 of those who reported their symptoms said their day-to-day activities had been 'limited a lot'.

Ms Diaz, who describes herself as a 'woke leftie' and 'zero-Covid zealot', is facing a fine or prosecution by Wigan council - but she insists she is happy for her daughter to attend school as long as it is safe.

She added: 'There are no mitigations in primary schools whatsoever, apart from opening the window and a lot of hygiene theatre that's it.

'Let me just say straight off the bat I want daughter in school I also believe that school is the best place for children - the school has got to be safe. I don't see any controversy in that.

She sent her son back to school in November once he was double-jabbed however, her daughter has now been absent from primary school for 20 months after Ms Diaz admitted her 'greatest fear' was her kids getting Long Covid

'I think parents should be given the choice to vaccinate their children the vaccine has been rolled out successfully across America, across Europe and we're behind the curve. It is not a benign illness in children.'

However, the mother-of-two said that a 'multi-layered approach' needs to be considered for children's safety in schools across the UK.

She added: 'It's really worrying about the efficacy of the virus. We need a multi-layered approach. it's not one thing or the other. It's not vaccines or ventilation or masks.

'We need to be getting community transmissions down and we need mitigations in place in schools not just for the children's own health but for their education disruption.'

Ms Diaz, who describes herself as a 'woke leftie' and 'zero-Covid zealot', said that a 'multi-layered approach' needs to be considered for children's safety in schools across the UK

Despite studies showing Omicron is a milder variant and Britons who catch it are between 15 and 20 per cent less likely to be admitted than those who get Delta, Ms Diaz claimed it had caused a 'record number of hospitalisations' .

She said: 'We are seeing a record number of hospitalisations of children with Covid. The narrative that omicron is mild is just a fairytale.'

Dr Hilary added: 'I understand any parents concern but I don't recognise all those figures and statistics. NHS England hasn't published many statistics lately - only 2% of hospitalisations are children under 17.'

In a statement, Colette Dutton, director of children's services at Wigan Council, told MailOnline: 'Wigan Council remains committed to working with all schools and families and has done throughout the pandemic to ensure that all children can return to school as safely as possible.

'We are unable to comment on individual cases, however, the council has advised and supported our schools in line with current Government guidance.

'For those children where there is clear advice from a medical practitioner that a child should not attend, alternatives are considered and put in place.

'Our headteachers have worked tirelessly to carry out robust risk assessments and have taken all of the safety measures and precautions available to them to ensure a safe return for their pupils.'
A police officer is facing the sack for going on a mountain hike 20 miles from his home while on sick leave and in breach of Covid restrictions.

Mark Lee, 43, travelled to Cwm Idwal in Snowdonia, north Wales, with his partner and her autistic child on December 29, 2020, when Wales was an Alert Tier 4 area.

But he was spotted by a sergeant colleague at a petrol station on his day-trip jaunt.

PC Lee, who had served as a police officer for 12 years, was previously fined 600 at Llandudo Magistrates Court after pleading guilty to being away from his home, which was then in Colwyn Bay, without a reasonable excuse.

The officer, who was also handed 700 prosecution costs, is now facing a misconduct hearing on Thursday over his day out.

PC Mark Lee, pictured, arriving at Llandudno Magistrates Court for a hearing in July last year

PC Mark Lee, 43, pictured leaving court after his sentencing last October, when he was fined 600 with an additional 700 prosecution costs

PC Lee traveled 20 miles with his partner and her son from their home in Colwyn Bay to Cwm Idal in December 2020, when Wales was in Tier 4 restrictions

During his court case, PC Lee of Trefor, Porthmadog, claimed he was unaware of the restrictions that had come into force and had been on sick leave.

Prosecutor Helen Hall said: 'There were plenty of other open spaces where he could have exercised. Ignorance of the law is no defence.'

But Richard Orme, defending Lee, stated: 'It beggars belief that we have a police officer who has served the locality and members of he public to the best of his ability with decency and candour.

'It is to his credit that he's someone who has pleaded guilty to breaching coronavirus regulations by walking in the wrong place. It's a mightily brave guilty plea before this court today.

'He's aware that locally and nationally officers have issued tickets for breaches. He readily accepts that he must abide by the regulations too.'

PC Lee's misconduct hearing is scheduled at North Wales Police headquarters in Colwyn Bay on Thursday.

It is alleged he breached the 'standards of professional behaviour relating to discreditable conduct which constitutes gross misconduct'.
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London's Covid outbreak may no longer be shrinking, according to official data which has prompted scientists to warn that the worst of the Omicron crisis may not be over yet.

Infections in the capital have risen in under-60s as a whole since New Year's Eve, with rates highest among adults in their 20s and 30s. Top experts fear they will likely keep creeping up because children have now gone back to school, giving the virus more opportunities to spread.

Simultaneously, cases appear to be dropping among the over-60s in a hopeful sign pressure could ease further on the NHS, with London's hospitals already seeing a downturn in admissions.

But it's not yet clear whether either trend is genuine or simply due to changes in the number of tests being carried out, with the proportion of people now swabbing positive for the coronavirus having fallen for the first time since Omicron took off.

Academics today warned that cases would inevitably rise in over-60s if the outbreak is generally growing among younger adults, warning that the true trajectory won't become clear for another week or so.

Despite warning signs that the capital's outbreak may not have peaked, London's senior health official yesterday argued that outbreak peaked over the New Year period. Separate Covid surveillance data warned up to one in 10 Londoners were infected on New Year's Eve.

Yesterday London recorded 16,493 cases, its lowest tally since mid-December. Its hospitalisations are also falling after peaking at half the level of last winter's crisis.

But the numbers of critically ill patients has barely risen throughout the Omicron wave, which has given ministers confidence to stick to their 'ride it out' plan. Deaths are also flat and the mortality rate is dropping because of the ultra-infectious variant, experts say.

Nationally, Covid cases have fallen week-on-week over the last four days. But they are now highest in the North West and North East, in a sign these regions could soon face heavier pressures.

The above graph shows infection rates in under-60s in London since late November. It reveals that while rates are highest in 20 to 35-year-olds, there has recently been an uptick among children and their parents

The above graph shows Covid cases among over-60s and under-60s in London. Cases have now plateaued in the younger age group in a sign that the worst of London's Omicron crisis may not be over

Department of Health data showed cases had risen 2.2 per cent in a week among under-60s as a whole in London, illustrating a change in trajectory.

Broken down by age group the Government's statistics revealed coronavirus infections were highest among 20 to 24-year-olds (2,722.6 cases per 100,000 people in the week ending January 4), followed by 25 to 29-year-olds (2,666.6) and 30 to 34-year-olds (2,359.6).

But young children and adults in their 50s saw the biggest percentage rise in cases over the latest week figures are available for.

Under-5s saw the sharpest rise, increasing 16.3 per cent in a week (552.5). They were followed by 55 to 59-year-olds, up 10.9 per cent (1,824.6), 50 to 54-year-olds, up 7.8 per cent (1,887.9) and 5 to 9-year-olds, up 7.1 per cent (977.4),

Catching a common cold may protect you from getting Covid, another study finds Catching the common cold could also protect against Covid, yet more research has suggested. Ever since the start of the pandemic, experts have speculated other coronaviruses  which tend to cause runny noses and sore throats  could offer some cross-reactive immunity. But new real-world evidence has uncovered the 'clearest evidence' yet that immunity induced by colds can help fight off Covid. People with higher levels of T cells from other seasonal coronaviruses were less likely to get infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid. T cells are a key part of the immune system, and hunt down invading pathogens and stop them replicating within the body. Imperial College London scientists studied 52 people who lived with someone who had tested positive for the virus. Half caught the virus, while the others managed to ward it off. They took blood samples from the volunteers within days of being exposed to SARS-CoV-2, allowing researchers to determine their T cell levels. Household contacts who did not test positive had 'significantly higher levels' of pre-existing coronavirus-fighting T cells, on average. These T cells 'targeted internal proteins within the SARS-CoV-2 virus rather than the spike protein to protect against infection', the team said. Professor Ajit Lalvani, one of the researchers, said: 'Our study provides the clearest evidence to date that T cells induced by common cold coronaviruses play a protective role against SARS-CoV-2 infection.' But experts warned people cannot rely on having had the common cold alone as protection against Covid and getting triple-jabbed remains 'the best way to protect yourself'. Advertisement

Experts said more tests may be behind the rise in younger age groups, after some schools returned on January 4, but that it was still too early to tell.

Some 191,000 swabs were carried out in London on January 4, the most since March last year, but it is unclear how many of them were done for children returning to school.

There were also signs that cases among over-60s were dropping.

On January 2, the infection rate for the oldest cohort stood at 1,324.1, but it fell consistently over the next two days to 1,271.9.

Professor Gary McLean, an immunologist from London Metropolitan University, said the return of schools will 'surely result in more infections' among younger age groups.

But he told MailOnline a clearer image will only emerge 'next week' when the 'usual mixing for work and school return to pre-Christmas levels'.

Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious diseases expert at the University of East Anglia, said the rise in cases in younger age groups could be down to more swabs being done.

He told MailOnline: 'It's plausible that the plateau in cases in the under-60s is because of increased testing as people go back to work and so on, [rather than an actual surge], but we will need to give it a week or two to be sure.'

Asked whether cases in over-60s had peaked, Professor Hunter told MailOnline: 'It is possible. Based on the last day or so of data it does seem to have fallen in London in that age group.

'[But] we will need to give it a week or so until we've got rid of the holidays impact.... for it to be a bit more obvious what's going on.'

He warned: 'If cases in the under-60s rise they will rise in the over-60s because they generally get it from under-60s, not each other, except during outbreaks which are not occurring right now.'

Eminent statistician at Cambridge University, Sir David Spiegelhalter, also said it was too early to be certain whether cases had peaked in older adults in the capital.

He told MailOnline: 'It's still too soon to say with older people.'

Experts said yesterday the Omicron wave in London likely peaked over the New Year period, with Professor Fenton telling Sky News: 'We think we may have passed or are at the peak.

'Data from the ONS [Office for National Statistics] suggests that the peak may have occurred at or just about the New Year period and we're seeing reductions in overall case rates across the city and the prevalence of infections within the community.'

'[But] remember that infection levels are still very, very high... It means that we're not yet out of this critical phase of the pandemic, although we may well be past the peak.'

The above shows the number of lateral flow tests carried out every day in London. It reveals big spikes in swabbing on January 4 and 5 (right), when schools began to return from the summer holidays

The above shows the number of Covid patients in hospitals in the capital. It reveals that they may now be plateauing at around half the levels of the previous wave

The above shows the number of patients on mechanical ventilators in London. This has barely risen since Omicron arrived

This chart show the number of Covid deaths recorded in the capital. It is now rising

Boris Johnson today hailed 'great progress' against Omicron and said the government is 'looking at' cutting the self-isolation period again as ministers insisted Britain is on a path to 'living with Covid'.

The PM argued that efforts to 'see off' the latest variant were working amid signs the brutal wave is already slowing down - but warned that the NHS is still under significant pressure and urged people to get booster jabs.

On a visit to a vaccination clinic in Uxbridge, he poured cold water on rumours that lateral flow tests could stop being free soon, saying they will stay 'as long as necessary'.

And he tempered his optimism by stressing that ministers will follow the 'science' on whether quarantine can be cut again from seven days without causing another deadly spike in infections.

The government and NHS leaders appear increasingly confident that the Omicron wave will not overwhelm services.
Booming guitar industry brings better life to once-impoverished county in SW China

09:07, January 10, 2022 By Su Bin, Chen Junyi ( People's Daily

An international guitar industrial park in Zhengan county, Zunyi city, southwest Chinas Guizhou province, produces six million guitars a year, which accounts for 20 percent of the countrys total annual guitar output and are sold to over 30 countries and regions.

A woman makes guitar at a factory of guitar-making company Natasha in the guitar industrial park in Zhengan county, southwest Chinas Guizhou province, June 26, 2021. (Peoples Daily Online/Zhao Yongzhang)

The countys success in developing the guitar industry is fundamentally attributed to the work of skillful and down-to-earth local guitar makers, said Chen Kunhua, an official in charge of vocational capacity building at the countys employment bureau.

By building the labor service brand of Zhengan Guitar Craftsman, the county has stimulated the growth of local guitar industry and made it a reliable source of income and road to prosperity for residents, according to Chen.

Located on the border between Guizhou and Chongqing municipality, Zhengan nestles among high mountains and deep valleys, and lacks arable land. It has long been plagued by poverty.

In 1987, a great number of Zhengan residents began to work as migrant workers in south Chinas Guangdong province, which marked the beginning of Guizhous organized labor export to other regions.

Gradually, over 200,000 people out of the countys total population of more than 600,000 worked outside their hometown all year round. Among these migrant workers, over 60,000 engaged in Guangdongs guitar industry and many became technical professionals and were promoted to managerial roles.

A worker checks lacquered guitars at a guitar making company in the guitar industrial park in Zhengan county, southwest Chinas Guizhou province, July 10, 2021. (Peoples Daily Online/Qiao Qiming)

In 2012, Zhengan launched a project to encourage residents working elsewhere to come back home to start a business, since when the local guitar industry has been incubated.

My hometown established a guitar industrial park. Companies only need to take care of their operation inside the park, for the government handles everything outside the park, said Liu Jiangbo, one of the first batch of migrant workers who returned home to start their own businesses. They were motivated by a series of preferential policies concerning rent, tax and business environment construction rolled out by the local government.

In March 2016, Lius guitar company settled in the guitar industrial park and began with production. Guitar-making is a labor-intensive industry that depends on manual work for nearly 70 percent of its procedures, even with machines, he said.

In addition to technical professionals who came back to Zhengan together with him, he also hired many people living near the industrial park. We have built and expanded three production lines, and employed nearly 200 people. Most of them are local women, Liu pointed out.

Within merely several years, a total of 104 companies have joined the industrial park, generating an annual comprehensive output value of 6 billion yuan ($941 million). At the same time, a complete guitar industrial chain covering guitar making, sale, logistics and other related industries has gradually taken shape.

The local government has clear positioning for guitar industry. It has regarded the industry as a pillar industry and rolled out favorable policies, which are encouraging for practitioners in the industry, Chen said, noting that Zhengan has become a well-known guitar production base.

A guitar maker is busy with his work at a company in the guitar industrial park in Zhengan county, southwest Chinas Guizhou province, July 18, 2021. (Peoples Daily Online/Ning Jian)

After over 200 procedures, high-quality guitars made in Zhengan are brought to other regions from the mountainous county. Gradually, a stable workforce has been formed.

The local guitar industry has directly provided jobs for 9,242 residents and lifted 6,690 of them out of poverty. Nearly 100,000 people have secured employment in related industries.

In 2019, the labor service brand Zhengan Guitar Craftsman was officially launched. Craftsmen under the brand are not only limited to guitar makers, but also include people engaging in the supply and sale of guitars and working in upstream or downstream industries, as each link of the industrial chain requires workers to always pursue excellence through hard work, according to Chen.

To encourage companies to attach importance to talent cultivation, the local government organizes regular activities to help them apply for municipal-level and provincial-level guitar master studio accreditation.

The studios that obtain the accreditation can receive a subsidy of 100,000 yuan, Chen said, adding that Zhengan county now has 12 such studios in total.

The local government has also helped companies cooperate with schools to improve the skills of guitar craftsmen, Chen pointed out.

In October 2019, the first China Guitar Making Competition was held in Zhengan, gathering over 300 guitar makers from across China.

The event provides a platform for guitar makers to communicate with each other, Chen said, adding that many craftsmen in Zhengan won awards at the competition.

Chen believes that such guitar-making skill competitions have helped people better realize the urgency of building a guitar industry standard system.

The government will continuously guide vocational schools and the guitar industry in building and improving the industry standard system and formulating relevant vocational skill standards to create more development space for Zhengan guitar craftsmen, Chen said.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
Varanasi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sent 100 pairs of jute footwear for those working at Kashi Vishwanath Dham in Uttar Pradesh's Varanasi, sources in the government informed on Monday.

According to governments sources, PM Modi has been deeply involved with Kashi Vishwanath Dham and keeps a tab on all issues and developments in Varanasi.

They stated that the Prime Minister recently found out that most people working at Kashi Vishwanath Dham had to work barefoot because it is forbidden to wear footwear made with leather or rubber in the temple premises.

These include priests, people performing Seva, security guards, sanitation workers and other workers in the temple.

Sources said he immediately got 100 pairs of jute footwear procured and sent these over to Kashi Vishwanath Dham so that those performing their duties don't have to stay bare-footed in the chilling cold.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last month inaugurated phase 1 of the Kashi Vishwanath Dham project in Varanasi.

Before inaugurating the project, in his Lok Sabha constituency, the Prime Minister had greeted the labourers who were involved in the construction of the project with flowers.

PM Modi along with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also had lunch with the workers involved in the construction work of the Kashi Vishwanath Dham Corridor.
A senior fireman who was fired for racism has won almost 15,000 after an employment tribunal found he was unfairly dismissed.

Lee Glyde was Watch Manager at Salisbury Fire Station in Wiltshire when an investigation was launched in 2018 about potentially offensive comments he had made.

The firefighter was heard telling colleagues Grenfell Tower was 'full of immigrants' during a conversation about the 2017 blaze, a hearing in Southampton heard.

He also described his relationship with one of his former bosses as 'being treated worse than Jews in a concentration camp'.

Mr Glyde's bosses at Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service deemed all of his comments as racist and fired the firefighter for gross misconduct after almost 20 years' service.

But an employment tribunal has now found he was unfairly dismissed and awarded him 14,915.52 in compensation.

The tribunal ruled that while some of the comments were 'socially inept' they were not racist.

Lee Glyde (pictured) was Watch Manager at Salisbury Fire Station in Wiltshire when an investigation was launched in 2018

It also questioned the wording and validity of the charges levelled against him, and raised concerns about the investigation into him and the disciplinary process that followed.

The tribunal heard that following the Grenfell disaster in June 2017, which claimed the lives of 72 people, Mr Glyde had taken part in a discussion with colleagues about it.

He explained he had asked his brother, who was a health and safety inspector in London, whether he had inspected the tower block.

His brother said it was not in his area but had commented 'it would be full of quite a few immigrants', according to Mr Glyde.

The firefighter said he passed this comment on to his colleagues.

Investigators were told by four of his colleagues that Mr Glyde mentioned his brother when making the statement, with one even stressing this was not a remark made in a derogatory way.

However, one said Mr Glyde had stated: 'It was probably just full of immigrants anyway.'

This was the wording used in the charge subsequently made against him, the tribunal heard.

Three colleagues also recalled him saying during a course in October 2017 that when the threat level of terrorism was severe they would be allowed to go up to Muslims and 'restrain them'.

The tribunal also heard that Mr Glyde reportedly said 'I bet they have just s*** themselves' while sat in a fire engine at traffic lights and seeing a military helicopter fly over a car carrying Asian passengers.

However, the colleagues could not agree on how many people were sat in the car or confirm if they were an ethnic minority.

During the hearing Mr Glyde accepted he had described his relationship with his previous Station Manager as 'being treated worse than Jews in a concentration camp'.

An employment tribunal has now found the firefighter was unfairly dismissed and awarded him 14,915.52 in compensation

Mr Glyde was working at Salisbury Fire Station in Wiltshire (pictured) when bosses deemed all his comments as racist and fired him

After the investigation was launched in January 2018, Mr Glyde signed himself off work due to stress and was suspended shortly after.

He was sacked in May 2019 after being found guilty of gross misconduct.

However, the tribunal found this decision to be unfair.

'For a comment to be racist it would need to be hostile or derogatory towards a certain nationality or ethnic minorities or in terms from which an antipathy or animosity to them could be inferred,' the panel found.

'[Mr Glyde] was not accused of making any overtly discriminatory, insulting or hostile remarks towards any race or ethnic minority.'



Of the Grenfell remark, Employment Judge Max Craft noted that the full comment he was accused of making was disputed by Mr Glyde.

'The inclusion of the words ''just'' and ''anyway'' change what [Mr Glyde] has said was a statement of fact to a derogatory remark from which it could be inferred he had a callous and uncaring attitude towards the residents of the Tower who were immigrants,' he said.

There was also conflicting evidence about the comment made regarding the Asian family and the helicopter, the tribunal found.

The tribunal heard Mr Glyde accepted he had made a further comment about running over a terrorist to two of his colleagues.

He said he made this comment in the context of a number of terrorist incidents that had recently occurred and claimed 'it was not directed at any particular race or ethnic minority but at terrorists'.

Judge Craft said: '[Mr Glyde] made no reference to any race or ethnic minority in making the remark. He referred to terrorists. A reasonable employer acting reasonably would not have found that to be a racist comment.'

Regarding the concentration camp comparison, the tribunal judge said it was 'inappropriate' but not racist.

He said: 'The fact that a remark is immature and socially inept does not make it discriminatory or racist.

'However a reasonable employer acting reasonably would not have concluded it demonstrated any animosity or antipathy towards Jews. It could not have been considered a racist comment for that reason.'

The tribunal concluded the fire service should have considered mitigating factors - such as Mr Glyde's almost 20 years of previously unblemished service and the 'difficult domestic circumstances' he was going through at the time - more thoroughly before firing him.

If they had, it said, then 'dismissal would not [have fallen] into a range of reasonable options available to it to deal with these issues'.

A separate claim of disability discrimination was dismissed.
Michael Gove has hailed Tony Blair as an 'outstanding statesman and performer' as a campaign grows to axe the former Prime Minister's knighthood.

The Tory Cabinet minister defended the ex-Labour leader after a petition calling for his knighthood to be 'rescinded' reached more than one million signatures on Friday.

Sir Tony, 68, has been made a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter  the most senior form of knighthood, which has been bestowed upon all bar one of his predecessors in the Queen's reign.

The decision, though, has been met with condemnation from anti-war campaigners and bereaved families of soldiers killed in Iraq, who have vowed to return their Elizabeth Crosses in disgust.

However, Mr Gove said the honour was 'entirely appropriate' on Monday.

He told Sky News: 'I think we should all recognise that he served this country, he continues to serve this country, and I don't think it's possible for anyone to be in a position like that without attracting controversy and without inviting opposition.

Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Michael Gove pictured leaving the BBC offices in London on Monday

More than one million people have signed a petition calling on a knigthood awarded to Tony Blair (pictured) to be 'rescinded'

'But for myself, if I look back at Tony Blair's record, while there are aspects of it with which I can disagree, I think any fair-minded person would say that he was an outstanding statesman and performer and as a prime minister who put public service first this recognition from Her Majesty is entirely appropriate.'

Mr Gove highlighted the introduction of academies, a 'crackdown on crime and antisocial behaviour' and Sir Tony's 'recognition of the importance of a country like the United Kingdom being on the side of liberty internationally', as policies he agreed on with the former Prime Minister.

His comments come after the bereaved mothers of five soldiers, united in grief and fury over the bestowing of a knighthood on the man they blame for the death of their sons, hugged and shed tears as they met for the first time on Saturday.

Last week the Daily Mail published an open letter by Carol Valentine, Hazel Hunt, Caroline Whitaker, Caroline Jane Munday-Baker and Helen Perry to the Queen, begging the monarch to revoke the honour awarded to Mr Blair on New Years Day.

On Saturday, they shared stories and lit a candle for their sons, who each died in Afghanistan before their 30th birthday.

United in their grief: From left, Caroline Whitaker, Carol Valentine, Hazel Hunt, Caroline Jane Munday-Baker and Helen Perry at Coventry Cathedral at the weekend, each holding pictures of their sons who died in action in Afghanistan. From left: Gareth Thursby, Simon Valentine, Richard Hunt, James Munday and Michael Pritchard

A petition calling for Mr Blair's honour to be rescinded on Change.org has reached more than one million signatures

Amid the solemn surroundings of Coventry Cathedral, these mothers in arms spoke about their collective anger that Sir Tony  as they will never call him  had received the highest award in the land.

The Change.org petition, which accuses Sir Tony of being 'personally responsible' for the death of 'countless' civilians and servicemen, also hit the one million signature benchmark just after 4.30pm on Friday.

It was created by former soldier Angus Scott, who claims the former Mr Blair had been the cause of 'irreparable damage' to the constitution of the United Kingdom - and 'the very fabric of the nation's society'.

The petition added: 'Tony Blair caused irreparable damage to both the constitution of the United Kingdom and to the very fabric of the nation's society.

'He was personally responsible for causing the death of countless innocent civilian lives and servicemen in various conflicts. For this alone he should be held accountable for war crimes.

'Tony Blair is the least deserving person of any public honour, particularly anything awarded by Her Majesty the Queen.'

Mr Blair has long faced criticism for sending troops into Afghanistan and Iraq, a decision which culminated in a devastating report by Sir John Chilcot in 2016 which found he overplayed evidence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

A total of 179 British Armed Forces personnel and Ministry of Defence civilians died serving during the Iraq campaign, while a further 457 were killed during deployment to Afghanistan.

Current Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who opposed the Iraq war in 2003, though, said Mr Blair was a 'very successful prime minister' and 'made a huge difference to the lives of millions of people in this country'.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey also said last week that those calling for the honour to be removed are being 'disrespectful' to the Queen.

Mr Davey, who was knighted in 2016, said: 'If the Queen wants to knight a politician or someone out of politics in any walk of life, I think we should respect Her Majesty.

'And Im rather worried that people are being disrespectful to Her Majesty.'
A Taco Bell worker was shot dead by a customer on Saturday after the restaurant had refused to accept a counterfeit $20 bill from the diner who then opened fire.

The victim, named locally as Alejandro Garcia, 41, was working with his son at the fast food chain restaurant in south Los Angeles when he was shot in the torso at around 11pm.

Alejandro's son, who also works at the Taco Bell, had gotten into an argument with two men who had tried to pay with the fake bill while ordering drive-thru food in a black sedan.

The argument at the drive-thru window escalated and one of the customers began shooting. The attackers then sped off and remain at large.

Alejandro Garcia was shot and killed at the LA Taco Bell he worked at part-time to earn extra money for his three children

Police taped off the restaurant after the incident and the shooter and an accomplice are still at large

Garcia's son had attempted to close the window to provide cover but bullets still got in and hit Garcia in the chest.

The shocking case comes days after a teen girl was gunned down and killed during a robbery while working her shift at a Harlem Burger King - with the killer making off with only $100.

Kristal Bayron-Nieves, 19, was working as a cashier at the Burger King at 116th Street and Lexington Avenue in East Harlem around early Sunday morning when an armed robber entered the restaurant at around 1am.

Garcia's cousin Nancy Garcia del Sol told KABC: 'My nephew was close by so he closed the window but the shots  they went in.

'[Garcia] got shot in the heart, and that's what killed him, and he died there  in front of his son's presence.'

According to police, another unidentified victim at the scene suffered stab wounds.

Police are searching for two suspects, described only as men between 20 and 25 years old, according to ABC 7 News.

Two men could be seen tearfully embracing at the scene after the deadly shooting in south Los Angeles

No arrests have been made in the case.

Garcia worked at the restaurant part-time in order to provide extra money for his family - including three children.

A statement from Taco Bell said: 'We are shocked and saddened to hear that this happened,' Taco Bell said in an official statement on the incident.

'Our deepest condolences go out to the family and friends of [Garcia] in this difficult time.'
The mother of a three-year-old boy who was beating the odds against a rare condition but died after he contracted Covid has remembered him as a much loved little soul with 'a gentle spirit'.

Sebastian Moroney passed away peacefully at his Sydney home on January 7 after battling Covid for just over two weeks.

Having been born with Niemann-Pick, a condition which affects the body's ability to metabolize fat in cells, his mother Jordana said he was not expected to live past a few years but he had been bravely defying the odds.

'He had defied so much about what they said about when we would lose him, we became hopeful. He kept breaking the rules,' Ms Moroney told NCA Newswire.

'He had been getting weaker by inches because of his degenerative condition, but Covid just ripped through him and it changed everything,' she said.

While it is not known which strain Sebastian contracted, Dr Kerry Chant revealed at least one recent Covid death among young people was due to Omicron.

Sebastian Moroney (pictured) was defying the odds against a degenerative condition but died after he caught Covid - with his mother explaining how the virus quickly 'ripped through him'

But there was one ray of light, with Sebastian being alive to welcome his little sister Liora into the world.

'He was the sweetest thing... He loved everybody, he loved music [and] he lived to see his little sister, he lived to Christmas, he made it to his birthday.'

Ms Moroney said the family had taken every precaution to avoid anything which could have negatively affected Sebastian, including Covid, but he had been extremely susceptible because of his condition.

She praised the team at Westmead Children's Hospital and at Campbelltown Hospital who had provided so much support and care throughout Sebastian's life.

Staff would come out to their house weekly to care for the youngster so he wouldn't be exposed to other patients and risk infections - and he particularly loved interacting with the nurses.

Ms Moroney and her wife Erin have asked donations in Sebastian's name be made to the Westmead Children's Hospital refugee clinic.

The three-year-old did get to see the birth of his little sister Liora (pictured together) before his death

Sebastian is the youngest person in NSW to die from Covid and was among the record 18 the state reported to have died from the virus on Monday.

The number of people hospitalised with the virus also increased by 103, to 2,030.

Of those, 159 are in intensive care. Half are unvaccinated and 47 people are on ventilators.

As pressure on the health system mounts, Dr Kerry Chant is urging those at greater risk from COVID not to delay getting a diagnosis, and asked everyone to monitor for breathlessness, so health staff can intervene early.

'We don't expect young people to get breathless or dizzy and that's a sign you really need to escalate your care,' she said.

There were 20,293 new infections reported from 84,333 PCR tests on Monday.

Young children can now be vaccinated against COVID-19, with the first five-to-11-year-olds receiving their initial dose on Monday.

An estimated 2.3 million children in the demographic are now eligible for the Pfizer vaccine, with three million doses being distributed across the country.

NSW chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant (pictured) reported on Monday that 18 people died from Covid in NSW

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he was confident the vaccine rollout for children would be managed well and doses would be freely available.

'There are 6,000 places where people can go (for a child vaccination),' the prime minister said Canberra on Monday.

'There are 835,000 vaccines in those places right now as of last Friday and more would have been added to that since then - if you can't get it from where you would normally go, know there are other places where the vaccines are on the shelves.'

The Pfizer vaccine for five-to-11-year-olds is being distributed in orange-capped vials to differentiate it from other vaccines and will be given in two doses at least eight weeks apart.

The government is hoping children will receive their first dose of the vaccine before schools resume at the end of January.
A police officer has been accused of sharing a photo of a half-naked dead body on WhatsApp that he had taken while on duty.

PC Daniel Wallwork, of Avon and Somerset Police, is facing a misconduct hearing over allegations he took the picture on his personal mobile before sending it to another officer.

PC Wallwork had been attending the sudden death in North East Somerset in April last year at 7.05pm when he is said to have captured the image.

It showed the dead person partially clothed and lying face down in a bed and was sent to another officer on WhatsApp.

The allegation comes just months after PC Jamie Lewis, 33, and PC Deniz Jaffer, 47, admitted taking and sharing images of the scene where two sisters were murdered in London in June 2020.

They were sacked at a tribunal over the outrage at Fryent Country Park in Wembley where the bodies of Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry had been found. They were both then jailed for 33 months.

The allegation has been made against PC Daniel Wallwork, circled in red among colleagues

Five years ago PC Wallwork was praised for his work investigating the tipper truck crash in Landsdown Lane in Bath in 2015 where four people, including a little girl, were killed

The officer is alleged to have taken the picture and then shared it with another on WhatsApp

This unrelated allegation against PC Wallwork is a far cry from his exemplary career with Avon and Somerset Police

The PC had been commended nearly five years ago for his role in investigating the tragic tipper truck crash in Landsdown Lane in Bath in 2015.

That disaster killed four people, including a four-year-old little girl and his team were praised for their work.

It saw a 22 month investigation, which led to the conviction of two men for four counts of gross negligence manslaughter in 2016.

PC Wallwork will be brought before a misconduct hearing over the allegations he took the picture on his personal mobile before sending it to another officer.

The hearing on Wednesday will be told his action in April last year breached the Standards of Professional Behaviour for police officers.

Bibaa Henry, 46, and Nicole Smallman, 27, who were stabbed to death in Wembley last year

PC Deniz Jaffer and PC Jamie Lewis took and shared pictured of the two sisters' dead bodies

The panel will be told: 'PC Wallwork attended a sudden death in North East Somerset.

'At 7.05pm, he took a photograph on his personal mobile telephone of the deceased, partially clothed and lying face down in a bed.

'PC Wallwork sent this image via WhatsApp to another officer.

'At 9.01pm, PC Wallwork concluded and left the address.

'If proven, the allegations would amount to gross misconduct.'

Wallwork is alleged to have breached the standards of honesty and integrity; authority, respect and courtesy; and conduct.
The medals of a fighter pilot who became the poster boy of the RAF during the Second World War before test flying prototype jet planes later in his career are set to fetch up to 120,000 at auction.

Wing Commander Peter Lawrence Parrott flew Hurricanes and Spitfires and survived both the Battle of France and the Battle of Britain - despite being shot down twice.

Whilst in combat over Dunkirk in May 1940  before more than 300,000 retreating Allied troops had to be rescued  Wing Commander Parrott's plane was damaged by enemy fire and he limped home to Britain before crash landing in a field on the south coast.

Later, on December 1, 1940, he was shot down and recalled how, after he 'slammed into the ground', he was not sure if 'I was still in this world or had already passed on to the next'.

Parrott's wartime fame came when his photograph, which had been taken during the Battle of France, was used by the Royal Air Force (RAF) for a recruiting poster.

The advert, which called on Britons to 'Volunteer for flying duties', provided one of the iconic images of the Second World War.

Following the war, Parrott qualified as a test pilot and went on to fly early versions of Vampire and Meteor jets. Despite the high casualty rate, Parrott survived his service.

After leaving the RAF in 1965, Parrott worked as an airline pilot and, during the 1972 Arab Israeli war, was tasked with picking up Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and flying him to Khartoum so he could supposedly act as a mediator in the conflict.

On landing in Uganda, Parrott and his co-pilot were briefly arrested by Amin's mercenaries before they realised who they were.

Wing Commander Parrott's group of eight medals, which include the prestigious Distinguished Flying Cross awarded for bravery, are being sold by his family with auction house Dix Noonan Webb.

They are being sold with the pilot's long books and other mementoes collected during his service.

The medals of a fighter pilot who became the poster boy of the RAF during the Second World War before test flying prototype jet planes later in his career are set to fetch up to 120,000 at auction. Wing Commander Peter Lawrence Parrott flew Hurricanes and Spitfires and survived both the Battle of France and the Battle of Britain - despite being shot down twice

Parrott's wartime fame came when his photograph, which had been taken during the Battle of France, was used by the Royal Air Force (RAF) for a recruiting poster in 1940

Born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, in June 1920, Parrott was educated at Lord Williams' Grammar School.

After leaving school, he worked in the local council offices and then joined the RAF in 1938.

During the Second World War, Parrott flew with 607 Squadron and later with 145 Squadron, where he soared over the beaches of Dunkirk during the Battle of France.

During his first aerial combats in May 1940, he nearly achieved what was known as 'ace in a day' status  the term used to designate a pilot who had shot down five or more planes in a single period of flying.

He later recalled the moment that he spotted numerous German Junker 87 aircraft during the Battle of Britain. He wrote: 'our first view of the convoy near St. Catherine's Point was of Ju 87's in their bombing dives.

'Above the Ju. 87's were the escorting Bf 109's and farther to the south-east were two more large formations of enemy aircraft approaching the convoy - a formidable sight.

'I had already taken part in the Battle for France, and patrolled over Dunkirk during the evacuation, but I had never before seen so many aircraft in the sky at once.'

Wing Commander Parrott's group of eight medals, which include the prestigious Distinguished Flying Cross awarded for bravery, are being sold by his family with auction house Dix Noonan Webb. Pictured left to right: Distinguished Flying Cross, G.VI.R.; Air Force Cross, G.VI.R.; 1939-45 Star, 1 clasp, Battle of Britain; Air Crew Europe Star; Italy Star; War Medal 1939-45; General Service 1918-62, 1 clasp, Cyprus (Wg. Cdr. P. L. Parrott. R.A.F.); Mauritania, Order of Merit, Officer's breast badge, silver-gilt and enamel, in A. Bertrand, Paris case of issue

Parrott's medals are being sold with five of his log books, along with the recruitment poster

In early March 1940, Parrott's path to featuring on a recruitment poster began when his image was taken by photographer who was accompanying a group of war correspondents during the Battle of France.

He recalled: 'We were visited by a group of war correspondents with a photographer. The Commanding Officer had picked me as No. 3 in a section of three Gladiators to give a small flying display to them.

'As I was walking out to my aircraft the RAF photographer stopped me and asked me to look back at the roof of the Nissen hut I had just left.

'I did so but could see nothing of interest there but as I did so he dropped on one knee and tool a photograph of me and said, "Thank you."

'Soon afterwards my photograph appeared with three other 607 Squadron pilots [William Gore, Maurice Irving and John Sample - two which were killed in action during the Battle of Britain, and one was killed in a flying accident in 1941] in The Daily Sketch.

Soon after, the designer Jonathan Foss used the image of Parrott to form his first major RAF recruitment poster in 1940. It was used widely across the country.

It declared that applicants could be accepted as pilots, wireless operators, air observers and air gunners.

Experiencing this honour was only topped when he was shot down while serving in 605 Squadron.

He later recalled: 'Looking down, the ground seemed to be coming up remarkably quickly.

'I was swinging from side to side but had no time to try pulling the shrouds to stop the swing before I slammed into the ground, on about the third downward swing, falling on my right leg and shoulder. I felt half stunned....

I opened my eyes and found I was lying on the grass.... I was at this time not sure whether I was still in this world or had already passed on to the next. I did not really care much either way....'

Parrott went on to fly Spitfires over Sicily Italy and commanded 43 and 72 Squadrons.

In 1973, Parrott returned to Britain to work as a training adviser until he retired in 1983. Above: The pilot's 1338-1974 log books

After serving as a test pilot from 1948 onwards following the Allied victory in the war, Parrott left the RAF in 1965. He worked for airline Autair, flying routes in Britain.

He later flew members of the Libyan royal family and government on tours of the Middle East.

This connection led him to be directed by Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi to collect Idi Amin during the Arab-Israeli war.

On landing in the Ugandan city of Entebbe, he and his co-pilot were arrested and interrogated as suspected mercenaries before they were able to convince Amin's security forces who they were.

In 1973, Parrott returned to Britain to work as a training adviser until he retired in 1983.

After the 1982 Falklands War, Parrott organised the sending of a telegram 'From the Few to the Few' congratulating Sea Harrier pilots for their role in the victory.

He also helped to get the statue of Battle of Britain hero Lord Hugh Dowding erected in the Strand. He passed away in August 2003.

Parrott's medals are being sold with five of his log books, along with the recruitment poster.

Mark Quayle, Specialist (Associate Director) Dix Noonan Webb commented: 'Wing Commander Peter Parrott did more in the year of 1940, aged just 19, than most people experience in a lifetime.

'An 'Ace' who distinguished himself in both Hurricanes and Spitfires, surviving the Battle of France, the fall of Dunkirk, and triumphing in the Battle of Britain.

He also suffered the pain of losing his elder brother killed in action.

'Parrott went on to lead a colourful life of flying, including surviving the terrifying foibles of Idi Amin and Colonel Gaddafi.'
'Deltacron' probably doesn't exist, according to scientists who have called for calm over reports of a new Covid hybrid.

Researchers in Cyprus over the weekend claimed 25 patients had tested positive for a super-variant.

One academic claimed the samples he'd seen carried a similar genetic structure to Omicron  but also shared quirks seen with the Delta strain.

Dubbed 'Deltacron', news of the potential strain spread rapidly on social media.

But leading virologists have now poured cold water over the findings, insisting it is probably just a result of laboratory contamination.

They argued fragments of Delta samples may well have been leftover from previous sequencing, leading to the appearance of a new variant.

Dr Jeffrey Barrett, director of the Covid Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, dismissed fears the two strains had merged. 'This is almost certainly not a biological recombinant of the Delta and Omicron lineages,' he said.

Pictured here are 3D images of the Omicron and Delta viruses. Omicron is nearly five times more mutated than Delta in terms of its spike proteins. While a crossbreeding of the two variants, called a recombination, is a technical possibility, other scientists say recent reports of Deltacron is 'almost certainly' the result of a lab contamination

Cyprus is currently experiencing on of the biggest Covid outbreaks in the world with about double the number of daily new confirmed cases per million people of the UK and US. Source: Our World in Data

People queuing for a Covid vaccine in Cyprus yesterday where the new Deltacron variant was supposedly discovered

HOW CAN VIRUSES COMBINE? For a combined variant of the virus to emerge, one person must be infected with two strains of the coronavirus  likely from two separate sources  at the same time, and then the viruses must bump into each other inside the body. Once the viruses are inside the body, the way they spread is by forcing human cells to make more of them. The coronavirus is made up of genetic material called RNA and, to reproduce, it must force the body to read this RNA and make exact copies of it. There are inevitably errors when this happens because it happens so fast and so often and natural processes are imperfect. If two viruses are in the same place at once, both being duplicated by the same cells, there is a chance the RNA genes could be mixed up, just as there could be a mix-up if someone dropped two packs of cards at once and picked them all up. Most places have dominant variants of the virus so someone getting infected with two is unlikely to begin with. And, for healthy people, there is likely only a window of around two weeks before the body starts to develop immunity and successfully clear out the first version of the virus. This risk window could be cut to days for the majority of people who develop Covid symptoms  which takes an average of five days  and then stay at home sick. But huge, poorly controlled outbreaks like the ones in the UK and US over the winter, significantly raise the risk of the combination events simply because the number of infections is higher. Advertisement

Dr Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious diseases physician who works with the World Health Organization, agreed that it most likely a lab error.

'Deltacron is not real and is likely due to sequencing artifact (lab contamination of Omicron sequence fragments in a Delta specimen),' she said.

'Let's not merge of names of infectious diseases and leave it to celebrity couples.'

Dr Thomas Peacock, a virologist from Imperial College London, said the genetical make-up of the 'Deltacron' sequences 'look to be quite clearly contamination'.

But European Molecular Biology Laboratory deputy director general Professor Ewan Birney admitted it was possible, but unlikely, that the variants had merged.

He said that a 'key first step' was to confirm if this recombination has actually occurred or if the sequences are a lab error.

Meanwhile, the Cypriot team who discovered the variant have hit back at reports that their findings are untrue, insisting they have found a new variant.

Dr Leonidos Kostrikis, of the Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology in Cyprus ,told Bloomberg that the cases he had found 'indicate an evolutionary pressure to an ancestral strain to acquire these mutations and not a result of a single recombination event'.

As part of his argument, he claimed that the samples were processed in multiple sequencing procedures in more than one country with at least one from Israel.

'These findings refute the undocumented statements that Deltacron is a result of a technical error,' he said.

While a crossbreeding of Omicron and Delta is technically possible, virologists say it would be incredibly unlikely.

Recombination events, as they are scientifically known, could only occur if someone was infected with two different lineages simultaneously.

If viruses from both strains infected the same cell then they can, in theory, swap their genetic code and make a new version of the virus.

But researchers have said such an event would require very specific conditions and the coincidence of a number of uncontrollable events.

Dr Krutika Kuppalli an infectious-diseases physician who works with the World Health Organization said people should leave the merging of names to celebrity couples and not viruses

Dr Thomas Peacock a virologist from Imperial College London said 'The Cypriot 'Deltacron' sequences look to be 'quite clearly' the result of contamination

WHAT MUTATIONS DOES OMICRON HAVE? A group of mutations  including K417N, S477N, E484A and N501Y  are thought to help Omicron dodge antibodies that usually help fight off the virus. And N501Y, which was previously seen on Alpha, also helps the virus bind to the body's cells more easily, allowing for it to enter the body and replicate more efficiently. Meanwhile, it has 26 mutations on its spike protein that haven't been seen in previous variants. Three mutations found on the furin cleavage site may increase Omicron's transmissibility. These include P681H, which was previously seen in Alpha, as well as H655Y and N679K, which scientists spotted in the Gamma strain. A series of mutations may help the virus bind to the human cell and help Omicron escape the body's immune response. These include T478K, which was also on Delta and Q498R, which has not been seen on variants of concerns before. And missing mutations, including 105-107 Two mutations in the nucleocapsid  R203K and G204R, found on the Alpha and Gamma strains  may be associated with increased infectivity. Advertisement

Additionally, there would be no guarantee even if it did occur that it would result in a more dangerous strain.

However, MPs were warned about the prospect of a so-called Deltacron variant just last month.

Covid vaccine maker Moderna's chief medical officer Dr Paul Burton warned it was 'certainly possible'.

Only three strains created by viruses swapping genes have been officially recorded over the course of the pandemic, but these have faded away rapidly.

In one case, Alpha merged with B.1.177 in late January 2021. It only led to 44 cases in the UK before disappearing.

Instead of recombination, new Covid variants generally emerge on their own. SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the pandemic, constantly mutates and can pick up genetic quirks as it replicates.

In most cases the mutations are harmless, but occasionally they can make the virus more transmissible or better able to evade vaccines as is the case with the Omicron variant.

Omicron has 32 mutations on its spike proteins alone, nearly five times more than Delta.

Claims of the emergence of a new Deltacron variant came a lab in Cyprus which has reportedly submitted its findings to GISAID, an international database that tracks different Covid variants and their spread.

Cyprus currently has one of the highest Covid cases per head of population rates in the world.

Stats compiled by Oxford University-backed research team Our World in Data shows that as of yesterday Cyprus recorded 5050 daily Covid cases per million people.

This is nearly double the amount of the UK which recorded 2,607 daily cases per million people on the same date.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has said this week's talks between Russia and the West over escalating tensions in Ukraine could end today if the US and NATO are not willing to show 'flexibility'.

Ryabkov and his delegation arrived in Geneva earlier this morning under Swiss police escort for face-to-face talks with Wendy Sherman, the US deputy secretary of state.

Today's diplomacy will be followed by Russia-NATO talks in Brussels on Wednesday, before a meeting in Vienna of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe later this week.

But Ryabkov said he is willing to end the talks on the first day if the US is not willing to make certain concessions, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday: 'I don't think we're going to see any breakthroughs in the coming week.'

Nearly 100,000 Russian troops are gathered within reach of the border with Ukraine in preparation for what Washington and Kyiv say could be a new invasion, eight years after the annexation of Crimea.

Russia however has denied a planned invasion and said the military buildup comes as a response to 'aggressive behavior' from NATO, and fears the alliance would increase their military presence close to Russian borders should Ukraine be granted membership.

Meanwhile, residents in Ukraine have questioned why international negotiations over the fate of the country are being held without any representation for the Ukrainian government.

Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov, right, stands alongside US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman at the United States Mission in Geneva, Switzerland, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and head of delegation Sergei Ryabkov (pictured 2019) has said talks with the US could end on the first day if the US and NATO are unwilling to be flexible

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman (pictured August 2021) meets with Ryabkov and the Russian delegation to discuss escalating tensions in Ukraine

The amassing of Russian troops and equipment near Ukraine's border has caused worries in Kyiv and in the West that Moscow could be planning to launch an invasion. Russia, the United States and its NATO allies are meeting this week for negotiations focused on Moscow's demand for Western security guarantees and Western concerns about a recent buildup of Russian troops near Ukraine (Russian military exercises pictured in September 2021)

Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces, the military reserve of the Ukrainian Armes Forces, take part in a military exercise near Kiev on December 25, 2021, amid rising tensions along the border with Russia

This photo taken from video distributed by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service shows Russian military vehicles move during drills in Crimea, April 22, 2021

The amassing of Russian troops and equipment near Ukraine's border has caused worries in Kyiv and in the West that Moscow could be planning to launch an invasion.

Russia is believed to have roughly 100,000 troops stationed close to the Ukrainian border, and in the run up to Christmas engaged in large-scale military drills and war games in the Black Sea, Crimea and close to eastern Europe.

US President Joe Biden twice discussed the Russian troop buildup with Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, warning that Moscow would face 'severe consequences,' including unprecedented economic and financial sanctions, if it attacked its neighbour.

Sherman said 'the US will listen to Russia's concerns and share our own', but Blinken was doubtful that the week's diplomacy would yield any progress.

'I don't think we're going to see any breakthroughs in the coming week,' Blinken said yesterday.

'To make accurate progress, it's very hard to see that happening when there's an ongoing escalation  when Russia has a gun to the head of Ukraine with 100,000 troops near its borders, the possibility of doubling that on very short order,' he told This Week ABC.

Russia currently has around 100,000 troops stationed close to the border with Ukraine, which the Pentagon has warned constitutes an invasion force

Ukraine is pressing its western allies to send reinforcements, warning that it will be unable to withstand a Russian attack (pictured, Russian military equipment is arranged in a camp near to the Ukrainian border)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO and the alliance deploying weapons there as a 'red line' for Moscow, and said that Russia's military presence close to the Ukrainian border is simply for security reasons.

The Kremlin demanded that Washington and its allies make a binding pledge excluding NATO's expansion to Ukraine, Georgia or any other ex-Soviet nations, and expects Western nations to make a commitment not to deploy weapons or conduct any military activities in ex-Soviet nations.

A draft security blueprint presented by Russia stipulates that NATO must not station any troops in areas where they weren't present in 1997 - before the alliance moved to incorporate former Soviet bloc countries and ex-Soviet republics.

'We need legal guarantees of the non-expansion of NATO and the elimination of everything that the alliance has created since 1997,' Ryabkov told RIA news agency, before declaring that Russia had tried to show flexibility for the past 30 years and it was time for the other side to be flexible.

'If they are unable to do this, they will face a worsening situation in their own security.'

Putin called the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO and the alliance deploying weapons there as a 'red line' for Moscow. The Kremlin demanded that Washington and its allies rescind a 2008 promise of NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia, which also borders Russia (Putin pictured overseeing military drills, Sept 2021)

US President Joe Biden (R) twice discussed the Russian troop buildup with Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) last month, warning that Moscow would face 'severe consequences,' including unprecedented economic and financial sanctions, if it attacked its neighbour (pictured June 2021)

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg today sought to play down expectations of quick results from the week's discussions.

'I dont think that we can expect that these meetings will solve all the issues,' he told reporters in Brussels on Monday after talks with Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraine's deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration.

'What we are hoping for is that we can agree on a way forward, that we can agree on a series of meetings, that we can agree on a process.'

Russia has said that it wants the issue resolved this month, but NATO is wary that Putin might be looking for a pretext, such as a negotiating failure, to launch an invasion. The Russian President warned previously that he would be forced to take unspecified 'military-technical measures' should NATO proceed with increased military activity near Russian borders.

He didn't elaborate beyond saying the Russian response in that scenario 'could be diverse' and 'will depend on what proposals our military experts submit to me.'

Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said Putin had told Biden that Russia would act just as if the US would have acted if it saw offensive weapons deployed next to its borders.

Putin has noted that the new Zircon hypersonic cruise missile could give Russia a previously unseen precision strike potential if fitted to warships deployed to neutral waters.

The launch of a salvo of Zircons in late December heralded the completion of tests for the new weapon, which Putin said flies at nine times the speed of sound to a range of more than 620 miles.

As world powers race to develop advanced weaponry, Russia has carried out a number of successful tests of its Zircon hypersonic cruise missile. Pictured: An earlier test of Russia's Zircon missile in November

As officials from the United States and Russia began talks on Monday over Ukraine's security, Kyiv resident Oleg was among those who questioned why the country at the centre of the crisis was not at the negotiating table.

'I think it should not be this way,' the 59-year-old said.

'Ukraine must be present during those meetings because it is a more interested party than other countries, more interested party than Russia and the United States. Ukraine must be sitting in the first row.'

Ukraine has sought and received assurances from allies that there would be 'no decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine', as Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba put it last week - but talks have already begun in Geneva between Russia and the US.

'Ukraine must be present at such talks because they directly concern its security, its life,' said another Kyiv resident, 57-year-old accountant Valentyna.

More than 150 people gathered at a protest in Kyiv on Sunday, holding up signs saying 'SAY NO TO PUTIN'.

A December survey by the KIIS think-tank said 49 per cent of Ukrainians thought the threat of invasion was real, while 59 per cent said they would vote 'yes' compared to in a referendum on joining NATO.

Furthermore, 33 per cent said they were ready to put up armed resistance against Russia while a further 21 per cent said they were ready for civil resistance actions.
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Boris and Carrie Johnson have enjoyed a date night at one of London 's most exclusive private members' clubs.

The Prime Minister and his wife were photographed walking out of Oswald's in Mayfair last Thursday night at about 9.30pm accompanied by a security detail of six people before getting into a waiting Range Rover.

Mrs Johnson, 33, was wearing a 695 Wiggy Kit black Marais midi dress made from cotton canvas with velvet panelling and white embroidery, accompanied by a 413 Anya Hindmarch eyes beaded shoulder bag.

It comes as a bombshell email leaked last night proved that Boris Johnsons principal private secretary Martin Reynolds invited more than 100 staff to bring their own drinks to No10s lavish gardens on May 20, 2020 to make the most of the lovely weather.

At the time, only two people were allowed to socialise outside while at least two metres apart under national Covid curbs.

On a visit to his constituency yesterday, Boris Johnson ducked questions about whether he attended the May 20 garden party, merely insisting it was a matter for Sue Gray, the senior official leading an investigation into allegations of lockdown-busting parties across Whitehall.

However, ITV News alleges that around 40 staff met for drinks and food from 6pm that evening  including the PM and his wife Carrie.

Before the latest update in the party scandal broke, the couple enjoyed an evening out at the exclusive club Oswald's, which has a ground floor inspired by the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles and is known for its fine wines - with members also allowed to cellar up to 12 of their own there and no corkage fees applied.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his wife Carrie Johnson are photographed walking out of Oswald's in Mayfair last Thursday

Carrie Johnson leaves Oswald's private members' club on Albemarle Street in Mayfair last Thursday night at about 9.30pm

The Prime Minister's wife s photographed walking out of Oswald's in Mayfair last Thursday night at about 9.30pm

Boris Johnson sits in a Range Rover after leaving Oswald's private members' club with his wife last Thursday evening

Carrie Johnson is pictured inside a Range Rover before being driven away from Oswald's private members' club in London

The club has aimed to attract female members as well as couples and is owned by entrepreneur Robin Birley who named it after his grandfather, the portrait artist Sir Oswald Birley who painted Winston Churchill.

Applicants must be recommended by existing members and there is a waiting list, with membership prices only available on application. Visitors have included Dame Joan Collins, David Beckham and actress Amber Heard.

Other Conservative politicians known to have attended the club  owned by Winter Restaurants Limited - include Home Secretary Priti Patel, Housing Secretary Michael Gove and former chancellor George Osborne.

Today, Mr Johnson visited a vaccine clinic at a pharmacy in his Uxbridge constituency in West London, and said he would 'act according to the science' around cutting the self-isolation period for Covid-19 cases.

Experts are examining whether the period could be cut from seven to five days for cases, something which would help ease staffing crises across the economy and public services.

Boris Johnson walks along Albemarle Street towards a waiting car as a person looks out at him from behind a window

Boris and Carrie Johnson were accompanied by a security detail of six people and got into a waiting Range Rover outside

Carrie Johnson walks towards a Range Rover outside Oswald's, one of London's most exclusive private members' clubs

Mr Johnson also pledged that free lateral flow tests would be available for 'as long as it is necessary' as ministers considered how to move to a position of living with Covid-19.

The Prime Minister said testing was an important line of defence, along with vaccinations, in the face of the Omicron wave.

He is under pressure from Tory MPs to commit to ending restrictions and shift to a position where Covid-19 is treated in a similar way to other illnesses which do not require state interventions.

There is also a debate in Cabinet about cutting the self-isolation period, as France and the United States have done.

Carrie Johnson holds baby Romy as son Wilf heads off to explore at Thorpe Bay in Essex in a recent picture she posted online

Wilf and Dilyn the dog strike matching poses on their recent trip to the seaside in Essex

Wilf is seen sporting a characteristic Johnson hairstyle during the trip to the Essex resort

The Prime Minister's silhouette could be seen in the distance on the beach, wearing his signature beanie hat

Over the weekend, Mrs Johnson shared photos online of their children Wilf and Romy against a scenic backdrop of the beach at low tide at Thorpe Bay in Essex as they headed to the coast away from the pressures of Downing Street.

Wearing a red woollen hat and jeans, Mrs Johnson, 33, smiled broadly as she carried her one-month-old daughter in a cloud-patterned papoose.

Meanwhile Wilf, 20 months, enjoyed exploring the puddles in a red dinosaur jumpsuit and playing with the family's dog Dilyn.

In another picture, the Prime Minister's silhouette could be seen in the distance on the beach, wearing his signature beanie hat.

But by the end of Monday, Boris Johnson was again facing questions about whether he had attended the party in the garden of No 10 Downing Street in May 2020.

Scotland Yard has now confirmed that they are now in contact with the Cabinet Office over reports of the drinks party. The force is thought to be waiting to see if Ms Grays inquiry identifies rule-breaking before considering whether further action is needed, The Times reports.

The Prime Ministers principal private secretary Martin Reynolds invited more than 100 staff to bring their own drinks to No10s lavish gardens on May 20, 2020 to make the most of the lovely weather, an email leaked to ITV News shows

A spokesman for the Met said: The Metropolitan Police Service is aware of widespread reporting relating to alleged breaches of the Health Protection Regulations at Downing Street on May 20 2020 and is in contact with the Cabinet Office.

Mr Reynoldss email said: Hi all, after what has been an incredibly busy period it would be nice to make the most of the lovely weather and have some socially distanced drinks in the No10 garden this evening. Please join us from 6pm and bring your own booze!.

Labours deputy leader Angela Rayner said: Boris Johnson has consistently shown that he has no regard for the rules he puts in place for the rest of us.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey thundered: This is yet more evidence that while the vast majority of people were sticking to the rules, those in No 10 were breaking them.

'To add insult to injury, on the very same day that the Culture Secretary said people could only meet in pairs outdoors, it seems Boris Johnson's staff were holding a boozy party in Downing Street.

Sir Ed added that Ms Grays inquiry must interview Boris Johnson personally to get to the bottom of claims of Downing Street parties.

And Ian Blackford, the SNPs Westminster leader, accused the PM of sleaze and corruption, and demanded he come clean.

Mr Johnsons authority has come under serious challenge among backbenchers and Cabinet colleagues in recent months.

His government is fighting allegations that staff broke lockdown rules during the pandemic. In December, the PM insisted that a photo of a gathering in the No10 garden where staff were seen eating cheese and drinking wine from May 15, 2020 showed people working.

Another photo, obtained by the Sunday Mirror, showed Mr Johnson hosting a Christmas quiz in Downing Street in winter 2020.

The PM has also come under criticism for imposing restrictions including facemarks and Covid passes in response to the Omicron variant. It is understood that the issue sparked Lord Frosts dramatic resignation last month.
A married couple who illegally bred and sold dogs at their country home have been ordered to pay 400,000 by a judge.

Karl and Victoria Shellard forced canines to deliver back-to-back litters after setting up their unlicensed 'PosherBulls' breeding service from their home in Bonvilston, South Wales.

The rogue pair of dog-breeders were able to cash in on rising demand for dogs during the lockdown, selling puppies for up to 20,000 a time.

A court heard the couple bred at least 67 litters over six years - with one dog named Coco delivering six litters within a four-year period.

They also made up to 372,000 selling bulldog puppies to customers through advertisements on a website and social media - and have more than 1million in assets.

Karl, 43, and Victoria Shellard, 40, admitted back-to-back breeding - where dogs had delivered more than one litter in a 12-month period - and were both fined 19,000 each and ordered to pay back 372,531 under the Proceeds of Crime Act or face two years in prison.

Karl and Victoria Shellard were both fined 19,000 and ordered to pay back 372,531 after admitting back-to-back breeding

The dog-breeders were able to cash in on rising demand for dogs during the lockdown, selling puppies for up to 20,000 a time. Pictured: Some of the Bulldogs advertised by the couple online

Cardiff Crown Court heard the couple were first visited by animal welfare officers in January 2018 and told they needed to apply for a breeder's licence.

Their four-bedroom detached home in Bonvilston, South Wales, was then raided in December 2019 - along with two other properties connected with the business.

Investigators found 20 dogs in an outbuilding at their home with a laboratory fitted with microscopes and equipment for collecting semen and taking blood.

Officers also found a signed part-completed Breeder Licence Application Form which had never been sent off.

The court heard 24 dogs were found at a nearby property while six dogs were discovered at a building 15 miles away.

Prosecutor Tim Evans said the Shellards claimed to be 'experienced breeders' and 'leaders in distinguished Bulldogs of all colours'.

Mr Evans said: 'Despite these obvious works to facilitate their dog breeding business they failed to apply for a breeding licence until January 2020.

'That was two weeks after the execution of a warrant at the premises and almost two years after being told that a licence was necessary.'

The court heard the crimes took place between 2014 and 2020 - with information on C-sections showing 43 litters had been delivered in just one year. Pictured: Some of the couple's canines

The couple admitted back- to-back breeding - where dogs had delivered more than one litter in a 12-month period

The rogue pair set up their 'PosherBulls' breeding service from their home and bred at least 67 litters over six years. Pictured: Some if the Bulldogs advertised on the couple's site

Karl Shellard claimed he had not sent off the licence application because he and his wife were trying to sell their home and would need to change the address.

He admitted practising dog breeding for six years despite not having a licence.

Meanwhile mother-of-three Victoria Shellard said they would sell puppies for anything between 1,500 and 20,000.

The pair admitted back-to-back breeding - where dogs had delivered more than one litter in a 12-month period.

The court heard the crimes took place between 2014 and 2020 - with information on C-sections showing 43 litters had been delivered in just one year.

Mr Evans said: 'This back-to-back breeding would have been a licensing offence had they been licensed breeders. It is something that even legitimate breeders should never do.

'But, irrespective of the absence of a breeder's licence, it's an animal welfare offence as the recovery from a C-section takes many months and the Shellards were artificially inseminating these dogs long before they were healthy enough to undergo a pregnancy and subsequent C-section again.

'This was a positive decision to breed the animals in that way.'

A vet inspection was carried out in February last year after the couple officially applied for a breeding licence.

The couple were first visited by animal welfare officers in January 2018 and told they needed to apply for a breeder's licence, Cardiff Crown Court heard

But it was not granted due to poorly managed health issues, unfit accommodation and lack of space for dogs, a lack of understanding the guidelines and poor isolation facilities for unvaccinated dogs.

The pair pleaded guilty to breeding dogs without a licence and nine counts of failing to ensure the needs of a protected animal for which they were responsible.

Investigations under the Proceeds of Crime Act revealed they made 372,531 illegally but had available assets of 1,041,714.

Defending Heath Edwards said the business became 'nationally and internationally recognised' for the quality of the dogs which were 'healthy and of unquestionable pedigree'.

Judge David Wynn Morgan said: 'You were running a puppy farm and doing it to make money, and you made a great deal of money indeed.

'You could have run an extremely profitable business if you were properly registered but you're going to pay the price for that folly.'

The couple have three months to pay or they will have to spend 24 months in prison.

They have also been ordered to pay court costs of 43,775.
HYDERABAD: The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) organised Rythu Bandhu celebrations on a grand note across the state on Monday. Ministers, TRS MLAs, MLCs, MPs and others took part in the celebrations as Rythu Bandhu completed the Rs 50,000 crore milestone on Monday. Ksheerabhishekams (pouring milk) were performed to portraits of Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao in the Assembly constituencies to thank him for implementing Rythu Bandhu uninterruptedly since May 2018 despite financial constraints from March 2020 due to Covid. There were celebrations also on social media platforms with the hashtag #RythuBandhuKCR trending in the country on Twitter on Monday.

Khammam farmers created a massive 1,800 square feet portrait of the Chief Minister with vegetables at Burhanpuram Vegetable Market to express gratitude to the latter.

The party organised celebrations at NTR Stadium in Hyderabad which was attended by Assembly Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy and ministers T. Harish Rao, Talasani Srinivas Yadav, Mahmood Ali etc.

Speaker, who is supposed to be apolitical as per parliamentary conventions, also talked about politics by lashing out at BJP national leaders who are visiting Hyderabad for making criticism against the TRS government and the Chief Minister. Although the Speaker did not name any party, he said some leaders coming from other states were criticising the Telangana government and asked them to implement better schemes for the welfare of farmers in their respective states first before commenting against the Telangana government.

Marking the occasion of crediting of Rs 50,000 crore into the accounts of farmers, from the time of introducing the Rythu Bandhu until Monday, the TRS leadership called for week-long celebrations in the state from January 3 to 10. Subsequently, it was extended until January 15.

The celebratory mood reflected on Monday on social media too. Twitter saw a flood of tweets with the hashtag #RythuBandhuKCR. This hashtag was used by people across the sections including public representatives, farmers, and other Telangana NRIs across the globe. This hashtag stood at number one position on Twitter trends in India.

Pictures of farmers celebrating at Rythu Vedikas, Sankranthi Muggulu and much more were shared on Twitter.

Agriculture minister Niranjan Reddy stated that Telangana was the only state in the country that spends Rs 60,000 crore on agriculture and allied fields. An amount of Rs 50,600 crore was credited into the accounts of farmers under Rythu Bandhu so far.

"The Centre has backtracked on its three farm laws, against which the entire farming community outraged, due to Assembly elections in five states. There was no guarantee that the BJP government at the Centre would again bring back those farm laws," he said.

The Modi government diluted the Essential Commodities Act allowing corporate companies to stock pulses, oilseeds and other food grains. Rythu Bandhu was not implemented in Modis own state Gujarat. But Chandrashekar Rao introduced it without anyones demand, he added.
A teenage mother who died after childbirth may have suffered devastating brain damage due to the emergency medication given to her to stop her bleeding, an inquest heard today.

Teegan Barnard, 17, suffered a cardiac arrest within two hours of giving birth to her son Parker, who weighed nine pounds and nine ounces, in September 2019, at St Richard's Hospital in Chichester.

Pizza chef Teegan, who was around 5ft 6ins and weighed eight stone, lost 3.8 litres of blood in just 10 minutes during childbirth.

She suffered Postpartum haemorrhaging - a serious medical issue when mothers lose significant amounts of blood in labour - and underwent a caesarean to help her deliver her baby.

Teegan was given Carboprost, a hormone widely administered in childbirth emergencies to stop haemorrhaging, which may have had an 'undocumented adverse response' to the drug she was given to stop blood loss during labour, an expert said.

Professor Robert Forrest, a veteran toxicologist, today told an inquest in Chichester, West Sussex that the medication could have caused the brain damage which she then suffered, but added it would be a 'very rare complication indeed'.

Keen horse-rider Teegan died at her home in Havant, Hampshire on October 7, 2019.

Teegan Barnard, 17, was 'really looking forward to becoming a parent', her mother said. She suffered a cardiac arrest within two hours of giving birth to her son Parker, who weighed nine pounds and nine ounces, at 3.04am on September 9, 2019, at St Richard's Hospital in Chichester

Teegan's tragic last picture: This picture was taken shortly before Teegan died, weeks after giving birth. Investigators said it would have been 'best practice' and 'appropriate' for health workers to offer Teegan an induced labour

Teegan suffered obstructed labour - when a baby cannot exit the pelvis - and was given a C-section as well as being given two units of blood

She could have been offered to be induced three weeks before she gave birth to her child, but wasn't.

Teegan was given five doses of Carboprost - which is administered to cause the uterus to contract, stopping blood loss - at St Richard's, her inquest heard.

TIMELINE: TEEGAN'S TRAGIC DEATH AT 17 September 7, 2019: Teegan began to have contractions while 41 weeks pregnant, so went to St Richard's Hospital in Chichester, West Sussex, but midwives said she wasn't dilated enough so sent her home. September 8: Her contractions became 'very strong and she was in a lot of pain', so went back to hospital, and vomited at around 11pm. September 9: In the early hours, her pulse raised to 119 beats per minute. At 1am, Teegan showed signs of infection and was given an emergency caesarian. At around 3am her condition dramatically worsened and 'her lips turned blue' as she suffered breathing issues. The first-time mother suffered a devastating cardiac arrest and brain damage. October 7: Teegan died at home in Havant, Hamshire, after being discharged to spend her final days there. Advertisement

Prof Forrest, formerly of the NHS's Department of Forensic Pathology, said Carboprost may have caused the 'massively severe' breathing issues Teegan suffered within two hours of childbirth which starved her brain of oxygen.

When she was transferred to a bed after surgery, medics noticed her lips had turned blue. She had suffered 'bronchoconstriction' and 'bronchospasm' which starved her of oxygen.

Prof Forrest said: 'There was quite some time before Teegan could be properly ventilated and during that time sufficient oxygen was not getting into her.

'There was bronchospasm deep in the lungs and unfortunately she suffered brain damage.'

Prof Forrest continued: 'The bottom line is what caused the severe bronchoconstriction that she experienced?'

He said the evidence suggests there was not an allergic reaction, but that it was caused by Carboprost.

He said: 'The drug which is most likely to have caused it was Carboprost because Carboprost, particularly in people who suffer from asthma, can cause severe bronchoconstriction.

'This was massively severe bronchoconstriction.

'We are all different and have respond differently to different drugs.

'There are people that have idiosyncratic adverse responses to drugs. Individuals can have idiosyncratic responses which are previously undocumented before a drug is administered.

'It's possible that someone can have an idiosyncratic response to carboprost and it is undocumented.

'I think it's more likely than unlikely (in Teegan's case).'

Slight-framed Teegan Barnard (pictured left, with her mother Abbie Hallawell) lost almost four litres of blood when she gave birth to her nine pounds and nine ounce baby via caesarean section after experiencing an obstruction during labour

Pictured: Teegan Barnard and her baby Parker, taken hours before she passed away. Her devastated mother Abbie Hallawell, 35, who is looking after her son, collated pictures of Parker in his mother's arms - so that he can see them when he grows up

Lawyer Adam Walker, for Teegan's family, suggested the amount of CP given to her 'increased the risk' she faced. Prof Forrest said it was 'possible'.

Teegan's mother Abbie Hallawell arriving at her inquest

The doses Teegan received were in line with national guidelines, the inquest heard.

Prof Forrest said he can't be sure that Carboprost is the 'origin of the disaster', nor that the amount administered led to her death.

He added: 'Nobody should be worried about using Carboprost in an appropriate clinical setting because of Teegan's tragic case.'

Teegan's mother Abbie Hallawell had said the teenager 'loved her family and had close relationships with her grandparents'.

She added: 'She was a girly-girl who enjoyed socialising with her friends and horse riding. Growing up she was a normal healthy girl who didn't suffer any major illnesses.'

Ms Hallawell and Teegan's father Trevor Barnard have instructed expert medical negligence lawyers as they demand answers at the inquest.

Ms Hallawell and Mr Barnard are bringing up Parker - who is now two - alongside his dad, Leon Forster.
Pope Francis offered his condolences Monday to the victims of the 'devastating' apartment fire in the Bronx borough of New York that killed 17 people, nine of them children.

Francis sent a telegram to New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan offering 'heartfelt condolences and the assurance of his spiritual closeness' to those affected by the blaze. The telegram was signed by the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

The blaze, which also sent dozens of people to the hospital, was the deadliest in New York City in three decades. Investigators say a malfunctioning electric space heater, plugged in to give extra heat on a cold morning, started the fire in the 19-story building.

Francis' message noted the loss of so many children, and said the pope 'entrusts the victims and their families to the merciful love of Almighty God and invokes upon all consolation and strength in the Lord.'

Pope Francis offered his condolences to the families of the 17 victims of the Bronx fire on Sunday as he delivered the Angelus noon prayer in St.Peter's Square, at the Vatican

The inferno, caused by a faulty space heater, started in Unit 3N. Investigators are still trying to determine how the blaze spread. However NYC Mayor Eric Adams said it appears the smoke spread due to a door that was supposed to automatically close being open

New York City's worst fire disaster in more than 30 years that broke out on the second and third floor of a building at 333 East 181st Street in the Bronx has killed nine children and ten adults (pictured, people jump to safety from the burning building)

FDNY commissioner Daniel Nigro said that 'very heavy' fire and smoke 'extended the entire height of the building' and confirmed that a space heater caused the blaze. Firefighters were pictured rescuing residents from the blaze early on Sunday

The fire was the worst in more than 30 years in New York City.

It left 17 dead, more than 60 people injured, 30 hospitalized and 13 in critical condition. The five-alarm blaze erupted shortly before 11am on the second and third floor of a 19-story building at 333 East 181st Street in the Bronx.

The fire itself started from a space heater in an apartment that spanned the second and third floors of the building, and only made it to the hall, officials said.

But smoke still spread to every floor of the 120-unit building, likely because the door to the apartment was left open, the city's fire department commissioner Daniel Nigro told reporters at a news briefing.

'Members found victims on every floor in stairwells and were taking them out in cardiac and respiratory arrest,' Nigro said.

Fire marshals had determined through physical evidence and accounts from residents the fire started in a portable electric heater in the apartment's bedroom, Nigro said.

He added the heat had been on in the apartment building and the portable heater had been supplementing that heating. Several residents said the fire alarms in the building are always going off so they ignored them.

The two-story blaze gutted the Bronx apartment building on 333 East 181st Street and tens of residents were taken to safety by firefighters through the windows

The deadly fire - believed the worst to hit the city in more than 30 years - injured more than five dozen others, including 13 who were hospitalized in critical condition

While there have not been any major building violations or complaints listed against the building, according to city building records, however it was reportedly not up to code.

Public records show the building has open violations for cockroach and mouse infestations, lead paint and water leaks, however no structural violations were listed. The New York Post reported there were more than two dozen violations and complaints at the building since 2013 - despite $25 million in state loans for repairs.

The catastrophe was likely to stir questions on safety standards in low-income city housing. This was the second major deadly fire in a residential complex in the U.S. this week after twelve people, including eight children, were killed early on Wednesday when flames swept through a public housing apartment building in Philadelphia.

U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat whose district includes the New York building, told MSNBC that affordable housing developments such as the Bronx one pose safety risks to residents.

'When we allow our affordable housing developments to be plagued by decades of disinvestment, we are putting lives at risk,' he said.

Newly-elected NYC Mayor Eric Adams said many of the residents were from the small west African country of Gambia.

Meanwhile, the building did not have external fire escapes, and residents were meant to evacuate through interior stairways, Nigro said. 'I think some of them could not escape because of the volume of smoke,' he said.

Some 200 firefighters helped put out the blaze, and some ran out of oxygen in their tanks but pushed through anyway to rescue people from the building, Adams said.

'I really want to thank them for putting their lives on the line to save lives,' Adams said.

The Pope was on safer ground with his comments on Monday after he upset many last week by hitting out at 'selfish' couples who have pets instead of children.

He called for parents to have more offspring to solve the West's 'demographic winter'.

Speaking on parenthood during a general audience at the Vatican, Francis lamented that pets 'sometimes take the place of children' in society.

'Today... we see a form of selfishness,' said the pope. 'We see that some people do not want to have a child,' he said. 'Sometimes they have one, and that's it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of children. This may make people laugh but it is a reality.'

Adams praised the efforts of the NYFD on Sunday, thanking them for putting 'their lives on the line to save lives'

Firemen stand at the scene of a fire at a multi-level apartment building in the Bronx on Monday
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis accused the Biden administration of 'scapegoating' the Sunshine State in its criticism of DeSantis' handling of COVID-19 on Sunday night.

The popular Republican shrugged off of two years of criticism from the White House and the mainstream media over his unwillingness to impose COVID-19 mask, vaccine or other health mandates as the pandemic nears its third year, in an interview with Fox News' Mark Levin.

DeSantis is among President Joe Biden's loudest critics, including his handling of the pandemic. Throughout Biden's first year in office the advice of his health experts and his own sweeping vaccine order have been rebuffed by Republican governors in Florida, Texas, South Dakota and other states.

'When you are over the target, they're going to come at you. What I view it as -- I view it as positive feedback,' DeSantis said. 'If the corporate press nationally isn't attacking me, then I'm probably not doing my job.'

He also urged President Joe Biden to release more monoclonal antibody treatments to Florida after the federal government began rationing the treatments in September. It's unclear how the change affected Florida's supply but state officials have claimed it's been cut down for months.

In December the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced it paused shipments of two of three approved monoclonal antibody treatments because they were shown to be less effective against the now-dominant Omicron variant.

As of Sunday afternoon the White House resumed shipment of all three, the Washington Post reported.

DeSantis pushed back against accusations Florida was using up too much of the national supply of monoclonal antibody treatments

Studies have shown that two out of three of the approved monoclonal antibody treatments are not as effective against the now-dominant Omicron variant

COVID cases have more than tripled over the last two weeks, from an average 198,326 per day to 709,850 new daily infections.

The number of Americans hospitalized with COVID is nearing record levels as well, reaching 130,000 this week, though not all hospitalizations are a direct result of the virus.

Many people in the hospital for reasons other than COVID are testing positive, due to Omicron's high level of infectiousness, and being added to the total despite not having severe or sometimes any symptoms.

Deaths are rising at a much lower rate, with 1,648 people in the US dying from the virus daily.

During his Sunday evening interview DeSantis mocked Biden's campaign promise to 'shut down the virus' as 'ridiculous' and 'demagogic.' He claimed the White House's failure to live up to that promise is fueling their public frustration at red states like his.

DeSantis criticized Biden for saying he would 'shut down the virus'

'He gets in, and now you see, cases and all this like no ever anticipated was even possible. And so that's kind of his central promise of his campaign, totally up in smoke,' DeSantis said.

'And so I think as a result of that they try to find scapegoats, and I think trying to fight with Florida or Texas is just one of the things that they do to divert attention from their failure.'

Among the 'cardinal sins' cemented into Biden's legacy during the pandemic, DeSantis predicted, would be the myriad of school lockdowns that forced children to attend class remotely.

'Kids are locked out of school for over a year, we have schools closed now in parts of the country, unbelievably,' he said.

He added that federalizing treatments like antibody therapies was also a 'huge mistake.'

'Fauci and people like him are absolutely to blame for this, and so once we did get treatment online through the private sector, to ignore them and to put all your eggs in one basket, was a fundamental mistake,' DeSantis said of the Biden's administration priority on vaccines over therapies.

'Now the question is, Biden didn't mention it once. He mentioned after -- right before they cut our supply, he said "We'll ramp up monoclonal antibodies" then he cuts the supply, we have not seen the ramp up.'

Despite his urging, DeSantis said, 'I don't think they'll embrace it.'

He blasted the government's decision to ration the antibody treatments as 'political' despite HHS ascribing it to a supply issue.

'We were keeping tens of thousands of people out of the hospital, saved thousands of lives. No one disputes that. Well as that was happening in September, the federal government decided to seize control of the monoclonal antibodies and cut supplies to Florida and Texas mainly,' DeSantis claimed.

Before Omicron hit, he said Florida's COVID infection rate was 'so low that there just wasn't a lot of demand for [antibody treatments] for many months.'

But he said the latest virus wave means his state is falling behind on what they need in terms of supply.

Meanwhile new COVID infections are rising across the country though deaths and hospitalizations have remained relatively steady

'Well now you see omicron you see start to see more prevalence in winter, which we anticipated there would be an increase in demand. We are not getting what we need,' he said.

As of Friday Florida saw 69,914 new COVID infections, a 25 percent cumulative increase from the week before, but only three new virus-linked deaths.

It's mirroring a nationwide trend that's seen cases skyrocket across all 50 states, while the rate of deaths has remained relatively steady due to the Omicron variant typically leading to milder illness than the previously-dominant Delta strain.

DeSantis pushed back on accusations Florida uses 'too much' of the national supply, explaining it's because state officials there 'embrace treatment.'

'Most of these other governors and the people like Fauci, and the federal leadership, they basically say, get a shot, wear a mask, and they never talk about treatment,' he said.

He chalked up the need for more antibody treatment to the number of breakthrough infections being reported in fully-vaccinated and boosted individuals.

Shortly before Christmas HHS had announced a pause on shipment of monoclonal antibody treatments by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly because they were found to be less effective against Omicron.

They were an oft-sought treatment for patients with mild to moderate COVID infections, particularly during last summer's Delta wave. While the Omicron variant accounts for the majority of new cases, some health experts argue the therapies are still useful for patients infected with the previous mutation.

Last week DeSantis took credit for the Biden administration agreeing to send 30,000 additional monoclonal antibody doses to Florida.

'After pressure from Florida, the federal government has begun planning to send 30,000 additional doses to our state, so we can stand up new sites and expand capacity at existing sites,' DeSantis said in a statement Tuesday last week.

'We expect the Biden Administration to follow through so Floridians will have access to these life-saving treatments.'
A New Jersey mom has slammed JetBlue who she says surrounded her family and 'threw masks in her face' after she was unable to get her autistic two-year-old to wear his mask before take-off.

Jennifer Minsky, 44, of East Orange, New York, told CBS that she eventually had to give her son Ezra melatonin to get him to fall asleep so she could put a mask on him and the flight could finally take off from Cancun.

Minsky, who has been an elementary school teacher for the past two years, added that she and her husband were aware of the airline mask policy, and that they didn't experience any issues on the flight out of Newark.

But, when returning from the family vacation, her toddler did not want to wear his mask, as per the federal mask mandate for air travel.

Minsky says that instead of being understanding, the airline crew were unhelpful and shamed her.

In a phone-recorded video, rotating crew of flight attendants and air traffic controllers can be seen standing over Minsky as she desperately tries to get her teary son to wear his mask.

'They could clearly see that Ezra was upset, and the culmination of people being over him, he has sensory issues, so people that he didn't know were over on top of our family, throwing masks in our face,' Minsky told CBS.

Prior to the incident, the family's (pictured) return trip was delayed for three days, following multiple cancellations from JetBlue Minksy (right) also claims that JetBlue was informed ahead of time of her son's mental condition and even had a letter from her doctor to prove it before it was disregarded

In video footage, Minsky and her family were confronted by JetBlue crew who stood over them and were 'throwing masks in our face' for half an hour before the mother-of-two drugged her son with melatonin

There was chaos on board the flight from Cancun to Newark, as one flight attendant can be heard telling the family: 'We need to take off right now.'

Fearing things would potentially escalate to the point where they would be taken off the plane, Minksy and her husband finally gave in after half an hour and drugged up their son with a light dose of melatonin, a sleeping supplement, so they could put a mask on his face without him realizing it.

'I can't believe I even did that. We carry the melatonin for my older son. Ezra's not even old enough for melatonin. He in fact did fall asleep and we put the mask on him,' Minsky said.

According to Healthline, young children should avoid melatonin unless otherwise provided by a doctor. Doses between one and five milligrams may cause seizure or other neurological complications for toddlers.

The mother of two also claims that JetBlue was informed ahead of time of her son's mental condition and even had a letter from her doctor to prove it. However, the crew on the return flight disregarded the letter and ordered Ezra to mask-up.

'They wouldn't have anything to do with it,' she said.

Prior to the incident, the family's return trip was delayed for three days, following multiple cancellations from JetBlue.

The airline, like many others in the industry, has cancelled hundreds of flights in recent weeks due to a shortage of staff exposed to the omicron variant of COVID-19.

Minsky told CBS new that she couldn't believe that she had to give her son melatonin, which can cause serious neurological complication to young children, including seizures

Minsky says that her and her family plan to never use the JetBlue again after the incident

Travel expert Peter Greenberg told CBS that managing request for special needs on a flight is all about pre-flight communication and notifying airlines well ahead of time.

'The fact that she talked to JetBlue on the phone, she didn't confirm it in an email. The fact that she talked to the gate agent, she didn't confirm that the gate agent transferred that conversation to the flight crew. It's a bad game of telephone at that point,' he said.

'You need to be communicating and you need to confirm that communication because once you're on that plane and the door's closed, your rights, or the understanding of your rights, no longer rests with you,' he added.

Minsky revealed that her family had been offered credit as compensation after the trip. A spokesman for JetBlue also told CBS the family should have applied for a mask exemption before their outbound flight to Mexico, but did not offer details over the incident.

'With no exemption applied for beforehand, multiple crewmembers worked together to adjust seating assignments so this family could sit together and worked to eventually gain compliance and avoid further disruption to their travel plans,' the statement read.

Minsky says that her and her family plan to never use the airline again, if they can avoid it. The date of when they travelled back home remains unclear.

Dailymail.com has reached out to both JetBlue for comment, specifically regarding the incident.
A Colombian man with a painful lung disease has become one of the first people in Catholic Latin America to end his own life under a new euthanasia policy - despite not being terminally ill.

Victor Escobar, 60, died by legally regulated euthanasia at a clinic in Cali, the capital city of Colombia's Valle del Cauca province, late on Friday.

He suffered from end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which greatly diminished quality of life, as well as a number of other conditions, according to his lawyer Luis Giraldo.

Escobar, who is a practicing Catholic, had fought two-years for his right to euthanasia in the face of opposition from doctors, clinics, courts and the church, which categorically opposes assisted suicide.

Colombia de-penalised assisted death in 1997, and in July 2021 a high court expanded this 'right to dignified death' to those not suffering from a terminal illness.

'We reached the goal for patients like me, who aren't terminal but degenerative, to win this battle, a battle that opens the doors for the other patients who come after me and who right now want a dignified death,' Escobar said in a video message sent to media by Giraldo.

'I'm not saying goodbye, just "see you later".'

Victor Escobar, 60, (pictured at home in October) died by legally regulated euthanasia at a clinic in Cali, the capital city of Colombia's Valle del Cauca province, late on Friday

Escobar, who suffered from end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, kisses his wife Diana as he fights to be allowed to die by legally regulated euthanasia

Escobar (pictured surrounded by his family) fought two-years for his right to euthanasia in the face of opposition from doctors, clinics, courts and the church, which categorically opposes assisted suicide

The last footage of Escobar alive shows him smiling, surrounded by family before he was sedated and given a lethal injection.

Shortly before dying, Escobar said God does not like to see people suffer. He said: 'I do not think God will punish me for trying to stop suffering.'

Diabetes and a cardiovascular ailment had left him in a wheel chair and suffering from spasms that wracked his body, leading his family to back the idea of euthanasia.

In Europe only Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg and Spain have legalized euthanasia.

Colombia may have joined that list but access to the procedure is not always smooth. As of mid-2021 patients like Escobar - with chronic diseases and a life expectancy of more than six months - could not undergo euthanasia.

'They were being forced to live in undignified conditions against their will,' said Monica Giraldo of an NGO called the Foundation for the Right to Dignified Death.

She said that since the court ruling on euthanasia, three people with non-terminal diseases used it to end their lives but Escobar is the first to do so with cameras rolling so the public could witness it.

'I want my story to be known because it creates a path for patients like me, patients with degenerative conditions, to have an open door to seek rest,' Escobar said.

Shortly before dying, Escobar (pictured the day before his death on January 6, 2022) said God does not like to see people suffer. He said: 'I do not think God will punish me for trying to stop suffering

Escobar's wife Diana cares for her husband in Cali, Colombia, amid their fight for euthanasia to be legalised for degenerative but non-terminal patients in the Catholic Latin American state

Escobar has said he got ill from years of working with exposure to asbestos, an insulating material now known to cause cancer.

In October of last year a panel at the Imbanaco clinic rejected Escobar's request for euthanasia, after two years of earlier petitions that were also rejected.

The committee argued that Escobar was not terminal and there were still ways to try to alleviate his suffering.

At the time, Escobar told AFP: 'I was already feeling sick. I felt like my lungs did not obey me.'

Days earlier in another city, Medellin, 51-year-old Martha Sepulveda, suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also saw her request to die cancelled at the last minute on grounds that she was not terminal.

Giraldo said hospitals sometimes deny euthanasia requests over 'ideological positions' or scrap them at the last minute over legal concerns.

As of mid-2021 patients like Escobar (pictured with his wife Diana) - with chronic diseases and a life expectancy of more than six months - could not undergo euthanasia

Escobar (pictured on the way to doctor's appointment with his wife on October 14) has said he got ill from years of working with exposure to asbestos, an insulating material now known to cause cancer

Escobar appealed in court and won. He chose to die on January 7 - a Friday, so it would be easy for relatives to go to his funeral on the weekend, his lawyer said.

'I suffer from my diseases, and I suffer watching my family suffer because of me,' Escobar said in October, gasping for breath.

The courts also granted permission for Sepulveda to die after she, like Escobar, went public with her case

Sepulveda, who had been diagnosed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALA), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, in 2018, underwent the procedure in the city of Medellin at midday, DescLAB - who supported her case - said in a statement.

Sepulveda, was due to be euthanised on October 10 last year, but the procedure was halted at the eleventh hour.

The government says at least 157 people have chosen euthanasia since the July 2021 legal change.

Giraldo's foundation is now working with five people seeking assisted suicide, two of them with non terminal conditions.
Michael Gove today warned property developers to voluntarily stump up to replace dangerous cladding on flats still in place years after the Grenfell disaster or face punitive taxes to pay for the work.

The Housing Secretary has confirmed plans for a 4 billion fund to remove dangerous cladding from tower blocks in the wake of the deadly 2017 fire in west London.

The cash will help tens of thousands facing huge repair bills through no fault of their own. On a broadcast round today Mr Gove said it was time for those with 'the big bucks, the big profits' to act to remedy the fire safety risks.

Later, addressing MPs in the Commons he said firms that did not act would face 'commercial consequences' for their inaction while 'blameless' leaseholders have been 'shouldering a desperately unfair burden'.

The Communities Secretary told MPs: Those who knowingly put lives at risk should be held to account for their crimes, and those who are seeking to profit from the crisis by making it worse should be stopped from doing so. Today I am putting them on notice ... we are coming for you.'

Leaseholders in buildings between 11m (36ft) and 18m (59ft) tall will no longer have to take out loans to cover the costs of remediation work despite no new money coming from the Treasury.

Campaigners tentatively welcomed the plans as they trickled out over the weekend, but developers said they should not be the only ones responsible for the costs.

Mr Gove met with leaseholders groups today ahead of his statement in the House of Commons.

However, while the action was welcomed there was also criticism that it does not go far enough.

Reece Lipman, 32, who lives in a flat in Romford, east London, said: 'It feels like the Government keep trying to bail water off the Titanic with pots and pans and that's great, some people will be saved, but the ship is still going down and we haven't yet addressed that problem.'

The Housing Secretary confirmed plans for a 4 billion fund to remove dangerous cladding from tower blocks in the wake of the Grenfell fire

Cladding tragedy: The Grenfell Tower blaze in 2017 killed 72

Controversial 'planning-free zones' dropped Planning reforms that would have stopped councils from blocking certain developments have been dropped. The controversial proposed 'development zones', in which there would have been a presumption in favour of planning permission regardless of local objections, had been opposed by dozens of Tory MPs. In a submission to a House of Lords inquiry, Michael Gove's Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said the new planning system would have 'effective local engagement at its heart'. And it specifically ruled out planning permission being granted automatically. It's the latest stage in Boris Johnson's retreat over planning, after he had proposed a 'once in a generation' shake-up of the system. Advertisement

He added: 'I think it is very positive that we seem to, after four years of changing housing secretaries, that we seem to have a housing secretary who has got the rhetoric right and is now talking with a much firmer tone, which is very encouraging to see, and obviously any money to help with the crisis is going to be incredibly welcome.

'But I do think it's really important to state that even after all this time, the Government is still talking about just cladding, and it's not just a cladding crisis, it hasn't been just a cladding crisis for many years now.

'It is a full-blown building safety crisis.'

Labour warned that money earmarked for levelling-up schemes or housing projects could be 'raided' if talks fail to ensure developers stump up for fire safety improvements.

Shadow communities secretary Lisa Nandy highlighted a letter from Treasury minister Simon Clarke which she said cast doubt that a new tax on those responsible was the backstop.

Ms Nandy told the Commons: '(Michael Gove) was told 'you may use a high-level threat of tax or legal solutions in discussions with developers' ... 'but whether or not to impose or raise taxes remains a decision for me (the Chief Secretary) and is not a given at this point'.'

She added: 'It appears what he's told the public - that tax rises are the backstop - is not what he's told the Treasury. This letter says 'you have confirmed separately that DLUHC budgets are a backstop for funding these proposals in full should sufficient funds not be raised from industry'.

'That is not what the Secretary of State told the House a moment ago. So can he clear this up: has the Chancellor agreed to back a new tax measure if negotiations fail or is he prepared to see his own already allocated budgets, levelling-up funding or monies for social or affordable funding raided?

'Or is his plan to go back to the Treasury and renegotiate and legislate if he fails in March? If that is the case, it'll take months and there's nothing to stop freeholders passing on the costs to leaseholders in the meantime.'

Earlier, Mr Gove told Sky News: 'We want to say to developers and indeed all those who have a role to play in recognising their responsibility that we want to work with them.

'But if it's the case that it's necessary to do so, then we will use legal means and ultimately, if necessary, the tax system in order to ensure that those who have deep pockets, those who are responsible for the upkeep of these buildings, pay rather than the leaseholders, the individuals, who in the past were being asked to pay with money they didn't have for a problem that they did not cause.'

In the letter to the residential property development industry today, Mr Gove set a deadline of 'early March' to publicly accept his ultimatum and provide a 'fully-funded plan of action'.

They were also ordered to provide comprehensive information on all buildings taller than 11m that have fire-safety defects and they helped construct in the past 30 years.

A leaked letter from Treasury chief secretary Simon Clarke authorises Mr Gove to use a 'high-level 'threat' of tax or legal solutions' to get developers to pay up.

The move has been welcomed by campaigners for those facing huge bills for repairs, many of whom are unable to move home because banks won't offer mortgages against their properties.

Developers will be barred by law from clawing back the money via inflated service charges.

And leaseholders will be granted the right to sue builders over defective flats for up to 30 years  a five-fold rise in the current six-year limit.

However, campaigners have criticised an apparent loophole in the scheme which means it will cover only remedial work relating to cladding, rather than all fire safety work, such as repairing faulty firebreaks or dangerous balconies.

Rachel Loftus, of End Our Cladding Scandal, said: 'You have to do all of what the experts say is required, but the Government is saying there is funding for only some of them.'

A Whitehall source said Mr Gove was in discussions with banks and insurers about ensuring that post-Grenfell repair bills are 'proportionate' and not inflated by demands to fix other building problems that do not directly affect safety.

The new scheme will directly help those living in buildings under 18 metres (59ft) who have missed out on previous grants and been told to take out huge loans to fund repairs.

Those living in properties above 18m are already able to access government grants from a 5 billion Building Safety Fund.

Mr Gove has employed forensic accountants to track down those responsible for fire-risk flats.

A dossier compiled by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities found that companies involved in the Grenfell fire have gone on to make huge profits since the June 2017 disaster which claimed 72 lives.

It found that 12 firms connected to the fire have since made pre-tax profits of 6.7 billion, paid out dividends of 3.1 billion and awarded pay packages and bonuses to directors worth 335 million.

Mr Gove is expected to say that those who knowingly put lives at risk should be 'held to account'.
Congress returns to work on Monday for a week of reckoning as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer seeks to kill the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation.

This week marks the first time since mid-December the House and Senate are both in session at the same time. Lawmakers return to a packed to-do list, including funding the federal government.

But their return to govern comes amid an increase in COVID cases on Capitol Hill and heightened partisan rhetoric ahead of this year's midterm election, where Republicans are looking to win back control of Congress.

The clock is ticking to pass President Joe Biden's legislative agenda before lawmakers switch to fulltime campaign mode.

Schumer has vowed to pass voting rights legislation by January 17th - Martin Luther King Jr. Day - making this a critical week for Democrats.

But his plan to go 'nuclear' and change the Senate rules to allow the legislation to proceed with a simple majority vote faces opposition from two of his own: Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

Congress returns to work on Monday for a week of reckoning as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer seeks to kill the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation

Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema oppose changing Senate rules to end the filibuster and Schumer needs their votes to make it happen

Republicans are solidly opposed to the voting rights legislation, calling it an attempt to federalize elections they argue should be run by states.

Thay have said they will filibuster any attempt to pass federal legislation. That means Schumer would have to take the so-called 'nuclear' option, in which he holds a vote to change the rules to bypass the 60-vote threshhold to advance the legislation.

'If Republicans continue to hijack the rules of the chamber to protect us from protecting our democracy, then the Senate will debate and consider changes to the rules on or before Jan. 17,' Schumer warned on the Senate floor last week.

But Manchin and Sinema don't want to kill the filibuster without buy-in from Republicans, who are opposed.

And the GOP is prepared to hit back hard, calling Democrats' assertion that voting rights are being suppressed a 'big lie.'

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's office sent out a memo to reporters this weekend slamming Democrats for trying to change Senate rules. They argued their party has 'repeatedly stood up to the left and their Big Lie that there is some evil anti-voting conspiracy sweeping America.'

Last week, McConnell accused Schumer of being 'hellbent' on trying to break the Senate.

'It appears as if the majority leader is hellbent to try to break the Senate. His argument is that somehow state legislatures across the country are busily at work trying to make it more difficult for people to vote. Of course that's not happening anywhere in America,' he said.

Republicans also point to a 2016 study from Stanford that found making it easier to vote doesn't actually increase voter turn out.

'The recent wave of electoral reforms does not seem to have had any significant effect on voter turnout. And there is even evidence that some of the new reforms may have actually decreased turnout,' the study found.

In contrast, Democrats point to what they call a wave of restrictive voting right laws in various states.

Between January 1 and December 7, 2021, at least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting, the nonpartisan Brennan Center found. More than 440 bills with provisions that restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states in the 2021 legislative sessions, the center said.

Democrats are seeking to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, named after the late Congressman and civil rights activist. It would replace part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in 2013.

The bill would also restore voters ability to challenge laws, such as those related redistricting or voter ID requirements that could be seen as discriminatory.

It passed the House in August 219-212 along straight party lines.

The Senate is also trying to approve the House-passed For The People Act, which expands voter registration, early voting, mail-in voting and introduces restrictions on campaign finance.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's office called the Democrats' assertion that voting rights are being suppressed a 'big lie'

President Joe Biden will get involved in the voting rights fight with a trip to Georgia on Tuesday

President Joe Biden will get involved in the fight.

He heads to Atlanta on Tuesday to press the issue - traveling to the home state of civil rights icons the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis. Georgia was also ground zero in the 2020 presidential election, where Donald Trump falsely claimed Democrats stole votes to hand Biden a victory there.

The state also has two competitive races this fall: Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is in a tough re-election bid and Democrat Stacey Abrams is making a second attempt to become governor.

He will lay a wreath at the crypt of Martin Luther King Jr. and will visit the Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Warnock is a pastor.

He'll speak at the Atlanta University Center Consortium, which consists of four historically black colleges.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who is in charge of voting rights efforts for the Biden administration, will accompany the president on the trip. Harris would also be the tie-breaking vote in the 50-50 evenly divided Senate, where Biden needs every Democratic vote to get his agenda approved.

Separately, the Senate has yet to pass Biden's massive package of social safety net programs known as Build Back Better.

The House has passed the legislative package but it's held up in the Senate, where it needs every Democratic vote and Manchin killed it with his opposition.

The way forward on it is unclear. Manchin made his opposition known before Christmas and it appears no progress has been made since then.
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An immigrant father has revealed he leaped through flames to save his eight children from their blazing apartment after a faulty space heater set it alight and tore through the Bronx block killing eight children and nine adults.

The death toll, originally reported as 19, was downgraded to 17 on Monday. Addressing the revised death toll, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said patients had been taken to seven different hospitals in the city, which led to 'a bit of a double count'.

Fire experts, attributing smoke to the fatalities, believe a self-closing door in the Twin Parks North West complex may have malfunctioned, allowing the smoke to spread through the building.

'The fire was contained to the hallway just outside this two-story apartment, but the smoke travelled throughout the building and the smoke is what caused the deaths and the serious injuries,' Nigro said during a press conference Monday.

Exclusive photographs taken by DailyMail.com reveal what remains of the family unit after the fire engulfed their duplex apartment at 333 East 181st Street, at 11am on Sunday.

Mamadou Wague, who lived in Unit 3N with his wife and children, recalled how he was woken by his children screaming 'fire' and then found his eight-year-old daughter, Nafisha, screaming and trapped on a burning mattress in her bedroom.

'I just grab her and run,' the west African immigrant told the New York Times. 'I didnt think about anything except getting her out.'

Wague, 47, pulled his daughter from the burning bed, suffering burns to his lips and nose, and escaped the unit with his family. Nafisha sustained burns but is alive.

Fire Marshals ruled the fire 'accidental,' noting that it was caused by a malfunctioning space heater and that a 'smoke alarm was present and operational'.

A New York City official, who spoke to the newspaper on the condition of anonymity, revealed fire marshals suspect the space heater had been running uninterrupted for multiple days. According to a list of resident maintenance requests shared online, building received at least four complaints last year of units being without heat. It is unclear if Unit 3N was having an issue with heat.

Officials believe the fire spread so rapidly because Mr Wague left his apartment door open as he fled for his life with his kids.

Mayor Eric Adams said there may have been a 'maintenance issue,' as it was supposed to close automatically. He told CNN: 'The doors in the building did have self-closing mechanisms. We are just looking at that specific door.'

However, Andrew Ansbro, president of the FDNY Uniformed Firefighters Association Union, said the 49-year-old building was poorly equipped to deal with a fire.

'It was at a building that was built under federal guidelines way back when, so its not up to New York City fire codes,' he told the New York Daily News.

It has no fire escapes and stairwells meant to be used as emergency exits quickly filled with smoke, along with floors where stairwell doors were left open.

Large, new apartment buildings in the city are required to have sprinkler systems and interior doors that swing shut automatically to contain smoke and deprive fires of oxygen, however those rules don't apply to older buildings.

Many residents ignored the fire alarms when they went off on Sunday because they sound so frequently as false alarms.

'First we heard the fire alarm go off. Numerous times,' said Michael Joseph, 32, who lived on the sixth floor with his uncle. But we didn't think nothing of it, because normally people in the building, they smoke and tend to set it off. So we thought it was probably just people playing.'

The apartment complex was purchased for $24,675,000 in 2020 by a group of investors, including Camber Property Group. Rick Gropper, a co-founder and principal at Camber, was one of the nearly 800 individuals named last month to the new mayor's transition team.

Pope Francis offered his condolences Monday to the victims of the 'devastating' apartment fire. In a telegram sent to New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan he offered 'heartfelt condolences and the assurance of his spiritual closeness' to those affected by the blaze.

The fire at Twin Parks North West complex in the Bronx broke out in Unit 3N, where the nine-person Wague family resided. Their residence is pictured Monday, covered in ash and debris

The Wague family's apartment is seen completely destroyed. Father Mamadou Wague said the blaze left his eight-year-old daughter trapped in her bedroom on a mattress engulfed in flames. He pulled his daughter out of the flames and managed to escape

The blaze is unit 3N was caused by a faulty space heater

The entire unit was damaged by the blaze

T he building is home to many immigrants from west Africa, especially Gambia, and the Dominican Republic. It has a mix of private renters and those whose rent is being paid by the state.





W ague said he was asleep when the fire broke out, recalling how his kids alerted him to the blaze: 'One of the kids said, "Oh, Daddy! Daddy! Theres a fire!'





'I get up and theres smoke in the kids rooms.'

Smoke had filled the now ash-covered unit.

'It was dark,' his son, Hame Wague, 16, told the newspaper. 'We were all coughing.'

Although his entire family survived the blaze, the tragedy left Wague stricken with grief.

'I don't want anybody life  I don't want to hear anybody dead in this fire, that's what I worry about,' he told ABC 7 shortly after his rescue.

Mayor Adams, speaking Monday, vowed to 'double down' on encouraging residents to close doors in the event of a fire. However, he reiterated that city leaders do not place blame on the Wague family for the catastrophe.

'What we dont want to do is just to add more trauma on a family that was simply trying to escape, a very dangerous and a very frightening experience,' the mayor said during a press briefing.

The five-alarm blaze is New York City's deadliest in three decades. President Joe Biden, speaking with Mayor Adams Monday, offered his 'heartfelt condolences and support' to the victims, city leaders and residents. Biden told the mayor any resources the city needs will be made available.

Although the flames only damaged a small portion of the building, smoke escaped through the Wague family's open door and flooded the stairwells - the only method of escape as the building was too tall for fire escapes - with ash.

The building received various complaints from residents last year, including at least four alleging their unit had 'no heat'

Some people could not escape because of the volume of smoke, while others became incapacitated as they tried to flee. Several residents said the fire alarms in the building are always going off so they ignored them.

While there have not been any major building violations or complaints listed against the building, according to city building records, however it was reportedly not up to code.

Public records show the building has open violations for cockroach and mouse infestations, lead paint and water leaks, however no structural violations were listed.

The New York Post reported there were more than two dozen violations and complaints at the building since 2013 - despite $25 million in state loans for repairs.

The Twin Parks North West complex is classified as a D1 building, according to Street Easy. The classification designates the complex as an elevator apartment building that is semi-fireproof and without stores.

D1 buildings can be found in all five boroughs of New York City and account for about 29 percent of complexes in the Bronx, Property Shark reported.

The inferno, caused by a faulty space heater, started in Unit 3N, where the Wague family lived. Investigators are still trying to determine how the blaze spread, however NYC Mayor Eric Adams said it appears the smoke spread due to a door that was supposed to automatically close being open

Mamadou Wague said he was asleep when the fire broke out, recalling how his kids alerted him to the blaze: 'One of the kids said, "Oh, Daddy! Daddy! Theres a fire!'

New York City's worst fire disaster in more than 30 years that broke out on the second and third floor of a building at 333 East 181st Street in the Bronx has killed eight children and nine adults (pictured, people jump to safety from the burning building)

FDNY commissioner Daniel Nigro said that 'very heavy' fire and smoke 'extended the entire height of the building' and confirmed that a space heater caused the blaze. Firefighters were pictured rescuing residents from the blaze early on Sunday

Some of the broken windows from a fire where a space heater caught fire and caused the devastation in the Bronx

Some of the items that caught on fire in apartment 3N

Investigators determined a malfunctioning electric space heater started the fire in the 19-story building, leaving victims on 'every floor.'

Eight children were among at least 17 people killed and 63 injured in Sunday's inferno. Dozens of residents were hospitalized, several in critical condition, and doctors were continuing efforts to save victims live on Monday.

The mayor said it's likely the death toll could rise.

'We pray to God that they'll be able to pull through,' Mayor Adams said during a CNN interview Monday morning.

At least 200 firefighters responded to the scene, some arriving within minutes of the initial call for help. As they entered the building, the first responders were met with flames in the hallway.

Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said an investigation was underway to determine how the fire spread and whether anything could have been done to prevent or contain the blaze.

Adams said it appears the smoke spread due to a door that was supposed to automatically close being open.

'There may have been a maintenance issue with this door. And that is going to be part of the .. ongoing investigation,' Adams said on Good Morning America.

The mayor said the fire crews continued rescue measures even after running out of oxygen.

'Their oxygen tanks were empty and they still pushed through the smoke,' he explained, noting that icy conditions made it difficult for firefighters to put out the blaze.

Jay Jimenez, who lives in the building next door, said he went into the building to help rescue trapped residents. He said he helped 'a lot' of people make it to safety, but also recalled the horrifying moments he carried deceased victims out of the building.

'I was just focused on the mission,' Jimenez, 35, told DailyMail.com on Monday. He said he helped the fire department as they brought victims to the lobby: 'I pulled them out, while they bring them through the stairs and out the front lobby and I just took them by the knees and brought them all the way outside.'

He added: 'I couldn't sleep last night - I haven't slept. I feel sad. I got kids. I saw a three-year-old completely dead and that's in my mind. I am not the same. It's really sad.'

Jimenez also applauded the 'hero' first responders who risked their lives to help the trapped residents.

Firemen stand at the scene of a fire at a multi-level apartment building in the Bronx on Monday

Workers clean up at the scene of a fire at a multi-level apartment building in the Bronx on Monday

Some of the items that caught fire at 333 East 181st Street in the Fordham Heights area of the Bronx

Firefighters respond to a five-alarm blaze that broke out in the Bronx on Sunday

Clean-up and recovery workers are seen Monday cleaning in front of a Bronx apartment building a day after a fire swept through the complex

'The impact of this fire is going to really bring a level of pain and despair in this city,' Mayor Adams said during a press conference early on Sunday, shortly after the blaze was extinguished.

'The numbers are horrific. We have over 32 people who are life-threatening at this time. This is going to be one of the worst fires we have witnessed in the City of New York in modern times.'

Sunday's blaze came just days after a Philadelphia house fire killed 12 people, including eight children.

That was the deadliest fire at a U.S. residential apartment building since 2017, when 13 people died in an apartment in the Bronx, according to data from the National Fire Protection Association.

That fire started after a three-year-old boy was playing with stove burners.

The deadliest fire prior to that was in 1989 when a Tennessee apartment building fire claimed the lives of 16 people.
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Two Florida deputies, who had a newborn son together, were laid to rest on Saturday after they took their own lives within days of each other.

Deputy Clayton Osteen and Deputy Victoria Pacheco were laid to rest side-by-side in American flag-covered caskets in a solemn funeral attended by grieving family, friends and dozens of their fellow officers with the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office in Florida who saluted their coffins as they passed by.

'Clayton and Victoria were laid to rest side-by-side this afternoon,' family friend Kelly Riddle posted online after emotional family and friends said their goodbyes to the couple. 'Tonight we celebrate and share memories. Sunday we rest. Monday begins to the work of making sure this never happens again. Love and peace to all.'

The couple's son Jayce, who was left orphaned by their suicides, will be adopted by a 'close relative', Riddle revealed in a previous post.

Osteen's brother, Zack Osteen, currently has taken custody of the baby, according to a Facebook post fellow police office Matthew Fagiana, a patrol sergeant in Tennessee. It is not known if Osteen's brother will be the adoptive parent.

In the post, Fagiana called on the community to help collect basic items for baby Jayce, such as diapers, wipes, formula and gift cards.

'Lets do what cops do best and help a brother, a blue family, out,' the post read. 'Lets show Baby Jayce what kind of family he was born into.'

He later posted an update that there had been enough formula collected to last for over a year.

The sheriff's office posted photos of the service to their Facebook page, along with a heartfelt message by Sheriff Ken Mascara.

The post read, 'Today we say goodbye to our brother and sister, Deputy Clayton Osteen and Deputy Victoria Pacheco. May you rest in peace.'

'We greatly appreciate the outpouring of support and love from our fellow law enforcement agencies and the community.'

The sheriff's office posted photos of the somber service to their Facebook page, along with a heartfelt message by Sheriff Ken Mascara: 'Today we say goodbye to our brother and sister, Deputy Clayton Osteen and Deputy Victoria Pacheco. May you rest in peace'

The couple was laid to rest side-by-side on Saturday, January 8 after they both took their own lives within days of each other, leaving their six-week-old son orphaned

Donations and tributes have since piled in for Baby Jayce, including a GoFundMe account that has since raised over $112,000 as of Monday morning

The solemn funeral was attended by family, friends and dozens of their fellow officers with the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office in Florida who saluted their coffins as they passed by

The pair had worked at the department for over a year together with Osteen starting in 2019 and Pacheco in 2020

The tragedy began on New Year's Eve, when Osteen attempted suicide shortly before midnight. The 24-year-old died two days later in hospital.

His girlfriend Victoria Pacheco, 23, took her own life on January 4.

Donations and tributes have since poured in from friends and family members as well as from a GoFundMe page that has raised over $112,000 as of Monday.

The St. Lucie Sheriffs Office is rallying to raise money and day to day basics to help raise baby Jayce, (pictured) including accepting essentials like diapers, wipes, gift cards to baby stores and food stores

Baby Jayce Osteen is being adopted by a 'close relative' after his parents died by suicide within days of each other

The infant's parents Clayton Osteen (left) and Victoria Pacheco (right) killed themselves last week within days of each other. Osteen attempted suicide on December 31 and was taken off life support by his family two days later. Pacheco took her own life on January 4

Baby Jayce was born on November 22 and was only six weeks old at the time of his parent's death

'The families of Clayton and Victoria are so grateful for all prayers and support received,' Ridle said on the page. 'All donations will be used for enriching Jayce's life experiences and securing a brighter future.'

'Clayton and Victoria were joy-filled, first-time parents excited about their growing family, enamored with their baby Jayce, and so in love with each other,' the GoFundMe for Jayce reads. 'Tragically, for reasons completely unknown and totally out of character, Clayton took his own life December 31st, 2021. Reeling from the shock of loss, Victoria took her own life two days later.'

Pacheco's grandmother, Bernice Bartolini, likened the double tragedy to a 'Romeo and Juliet'-type story and said the couple is now 'together forever.'

St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office saluted the caskets as they said goodbye to Deputy Clayton Osteen and Deputy Victoria Pacheco on Saturday after the couple took their own lives within days of each other

A solemn service was held on Saturday at Westside Church followed by interment at White City Cemetery

Pacheco was described as a 'mother, partner, daughter, granddaughter, sister, aunt and friend to so many' who had joined the department a year after her partner in 2020

Osteen was remembered as a 'father, partner, son, brother, and friend to so many' and was a member of the department since 2019 where he became a SWAT team member, Deputy of the Quarter, and was awarded Deputy of the Year in 2020

Osteen and Pacheco had both been awarded for their heroism by their department. They were honored at their funeral on Saturday

Authorities have not said what might have prompted the couple's back-to-back suicides, nor how they died, but Sheriff Mascara noted in his statement that deputies often deal with 'stress' and are 'human'

A statement from the St Lucie County Sheriff Department announced the couple's deaths

'My heart is so sad I thought I was hurting before I lost my beautiful granddaughter,' Tragic Romeo and Juliet story. They are now together forever,' she wrote in a Facebook post.

'This loss is so painful ... Victoria and I were very close when I lived in Florida, she was there for me. I wish I could have been there for her. My insides are being torn apart, my heart hurts so bad.'

Sheriff Mascara has called for their deaths to become a 'catalyst for change' for helping mental health.

'While it is impossible for us to fully comprehend the private circumstances leading up to this devastating loss, we pray that this tragedy becomes a catalyst for change, a catalyst to help ease the stigma surrounding mental well-being and normalize the conversation about the challenges so many of us face on a regular basis.'

The young couple had just welcomed their first child together, a boy, in mid-November. Osteen and Pacheco are pictured during her baby shower in September

Osteen had served as a non-commissioned officer during his service for the United States Marine Corp

Pacheco was described as adventurous and artistic with interests such as horseback riding, surfing, sky diving as well as swimming with sharks

Obituaries have since been released for the couple in memory of the pair who worked over a year together at the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office.

Osteen was remembered as a 'father, partner, son, brother, and friend to so many' and was a member of the department since 2019 where he became a SWAT team member, Deputy of the Quarter, and was awarded Deputy of the Year in 2020.

Osteen was a retired US Marine, previously serving as a rifleman with 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment.

He enlisted in May 2015 and was featured in a video about undergoing training in the jungles of Brunei in 2016.

Pacheco was described as a 'mother, partner, daughter, granddaughter, sister, aunt and friend to so many' who had joined the department a year after her partner in 2020.

Besides her contributions to the department, she was also described as adventurous and artistic with interests such as horseback riding, surfing, sky diving as well as swimming with sharks.

Osteen and Pacheco had both been awarded for their heroism by their department.

Osteen saved a person from overdosing on drugs in 2020, while Pacheco did the same thing with another person a year afterwards.

Authorities have not said what might have prompted the couple's back-to-back suicides, nor how they died, but Sheriff Mascara noted in his statement that deputies often deal with 'stress' and are 'human.'

'While it's impossible for us to fully comprehend the private circumstances leading up to this devastating loss, we pray that this tragedy becomes a catalyst for change, a catalyst to help ease the stigma surrounding mental well-being and normalize the conversation about the challenges so many of us face on a regular basis,' the sheriff added.

For confidential support call the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255
Pictured: Kristal Bayron-Nieves, 19, who was shot and killed while working at Burger King in Harlem early Sunday morning

A teenage girl who had recently moved with her family from Puerto Rico to New York seeking a better life was gunned down and killed during a robbery while working one of her last few night shifts at a Harlem Burger King - with the killer making off with only $100.

Kristal Bayron-Nieves, 19, was working as a cashier at the Burger King at 116th Street and Lexington Avenue in East Harlem early Sunday morning when an armed robber entered the restaurant at around 1am.

The gunman pistol-whipped a male customer before punching a female manager in the face.

Bayron-Nieves, who just started the job three weeks ago, gave the robber $100 cash from the drawer, an eyewitness said, according to her mother.

The criminal turned to leave, but turned around again and shot Bayron-Nieves in the chest, according to the New York Post.

The teen was transported to nearby Metropolitan Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

'She didn't deserve to be mowed down while working at a Burger King,' a police source said.

Her family told the Post that she had already requested more security and moved to the day shifts after fearing for her safety when leaving work, but her new schedule was not supposed to start until next Friday, which proved too late for Bayron-Nieves.

'She is only 19, and she has more than 50 homeless people sleeping in front of the store,' her mother, Kristie Nieves, 36, said in Spanish through friend and translator Nathalie Pagan.

Surveillance photo of the suspect, right, wanted for killing the 19-year-old cashier while robbing the fast food eatery for just $100

Pictured: cops investigate a fatal shooting of a teen working at the Burger King at 116th Street and Lexington Avenue in East Harlem

The body of Kristal Bayron-Nieves is wheeled out of the Burger King early Sunday morning after she was fatally shot in the torso during a robbery

Bayron-Nieves had moved to New York City from her native Puerto Rico with her mother and 14-year-old brother two years ago.

The 19-year-old girl had recently earned her GED and took the job at the fast-food eatery to save money for a car, reported New York Daily News.

But Bayron-Nieves was afraid for her safety working nights and had asked management to be switched to day shifts.

Bayron-Nieves moved to New York from Puerto Rico two years ago. She had only recently obtained her GED

The 19-year-old was afraid to be working nights and had asked to be switched over to the day shift, which was supposed to happen next Friday

'It was gonna end on Friday, this Friday,' said her mother of the impending schedule change.

Her mother went on to say she felt particularly torn over her daughter's death after convincing her to continue going to work despite the teen's concerns.

'Kristal said Friday, 'I don't want to go. I'm scared,'' Nieves said.

'I say, 'You have to go and be responsible.' At 10 pm I wake her up to go and tell her, 'You have to go. You have to be responsible. You have to get a better life.''

Pagan added that Kristal's mom 'feels guilty about that. That's what she tells me earlier, that she feels guilty because she wakes her up to go.'

New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Sunday visited the scene of the shooting in Harlem on Sunday and paid his respects to the victim

Adams also tweeted about Bayron-Nieves' killing on Sunday

The teen was transported to nearby Metropolitan Hospital, where she was pronounced dead

The robber has yet to be identified or apprehended, according to police as they continue to investigate and canvas the crime scene, pictured above

A prayer vigil for Bayron-Ramos will take place in Harlem on Thursday night

NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell on Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg's 'woke' crime policies A January 3 memo sent out by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was criticized by NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell as it elaborated on his 'woke' crime policy beliefs The memo detailed the idea of reducing sentencing for non-violent crimes such as burglary, armed robbery and drug dealing despite the recent growth in NYC crime Bragg said that he will 'not seek carceral' sentences for criminals, unless they were guilty of murder or a handful of other crimes he deemed serious enough to warrant prison Sewell sent an email detailing her concern over Bragg's ideas as she felt it could put officers as well as the public at risk 'I have studied these policies and I am very concerned about the implications to your safety as police officers, the safety of the public and justice for the victims,' Sewell wrote in the email obtained by the New York Post. Sewell also said Bragg's sweeping changes would cause harm to local businesses already reeling from the pandemic and would 'invite more open-air drug markets and drug use in Manhattan.' She added that the changes could lead to more gun violence as well as exacerbate quality of life concerns 'The new charging policies of the Manhattan District Attorney effectively decriminalizes much of the conduct that New Yorkers are asking the police to address,' she wrote. In addition, Sewell she agreed with Bragg's hopes for more criminal justice reform in the Big Apple, but argued that the NYPD was already making headway through its community based policing. Advertisement

According to family, a young man, who stopped by to see her at the restaurant to bring her a flower almost nightly, was there when she was killed.

'He told us he was there until her last breath,' Pagan said.

'He tells us when he went and walk to the place that he always buy her a flower. He went back, and they open the door to this guy that was dressed like them, in all black.'

Bayron-Nieves reportedly mistook the robber for a delivery man before he punched the restaurant manager and the knocked out the young man who there to see her.

Pagan said the teen cashier ultimately gave the thief all the money in the register, about $100 in cash.

'So (the young man) says that the guy turns around and he comes back and shot her,' Pagan said.

'That he turn around like he is going to leave, but he comes back and shoots her.'

'She'd done everything that he say,' she said.

'She give him the money and everything. That she didn't even do nothing wrong.'

The robber, who has yet to be identified or apprehended, was described as a slim male who was wearing dark clothes and a black mask, according to police.

Authorities have since released surveillance video footage of the man wanted in the teen's death.

Pagan, the family friend, has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help the slain cashier's mother pay for her funeral.

New York City's new mayor, Eric Adams, on Sunday visited the scene of the fatal shooting in Harlem and addressed the incident during an unrelated press conference that was held just hours later.

'This is not only professional, its personal,' Adams said of his fight against gun violence. 'That family is traumatized, and Im going to reach out and give them the support thats needed.

'The police commissioner and I have said over and over again, thats the prerequisite of our prosperity, public safety and justice.'

A prayer vigil for Bayron-Nieves will be held of Thursday night at the Burger King win Harlem.

The fatal robbery comes as New York City's crime rate soars after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's controversial decision to downgrade burglary, armed robbery and drug dealing crimes felonies to misdemeanors.

The number of robberies has since increased by 19.4 percent over the course of the last week.

Meanwhile, former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton lashed out at Bragg, claiming the city's new woke top prosecutor is 'handcuffing the police' as authorities search for Bayron-Nieves killer, while blaming George Soros for Bragg's election.

Current NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell echoed Bratton's claims, and slammed the new policy as she considered it a 'danger' to officers.

Bratton, who said that Soros has 'effectively destroyed the criminal justice system in America,' called Bragg's woke policies of downgrading burglary, armed robbery and drug dealing from felonies to just misdemeanors a 'recipe for disaster.'

'He's well-intended in the sense that he's trying to find a way to address some of the issues of the past,' Bratton said.

'You don't address the issues of the past by effectively decriminalizing just about everything in New York City.'

Pictured: Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg downgraded armed robbery and other crimes from felonies to misdemeanors

Sunday's fatal robbery and shooting incident comes as crime continues to surge in NYC with a 19.4 percent increase in robberies reported

Bratton said newly-elected Mayor Eric Adams has his hands tied in terms of crime while Bragg's office implements its woke policies.

Mayor Adams had promised a return to broken-windows policing after winning on a tough-on-crime approach campaign.

'I don't know how Mr. Adams is going to do that when the DA is effectively handcuffing the police,' he said.

Several of New York City's borough district attorneys also took aim at the soft-on-crime policies laid out this week by Bragg.

Meanwhile, Crime Stoppers is offering $3,500 for the killer's capture as wanted posters with a surveillance photo of the killer could be seen gracing the streets of East Harlem on Sunday.
Around 500 candidates have competed in 54 trades, showcasing their skills. ( DC Image)

Vijayawada: Andhra Pradesh has won seven gold, four silver, two bronze and four medallions of excellence at the India Skill Competitions held in Delhi from January 6 to 10.

AP stood 6th at national level with a tally of 17 medals. The winners qualify to attend World Skills Competition, an international skill competition conducted once every two years in Shanghai, China, and held in October this year.

Around 500 candidates have competed in 54 trades, showcasing their skills. Some 30 candidates from 17 trades have participated from Andhra Pradesh.

The AP state skill development corporation (APSSDC) has provided training to these candidates for 90 days.

The winners of the gold, silver and bronze medals in India Skills Competition will be provided further training by NSDC for two months to enable them successfully participate in the World Skills Competition at Shanghai. Around 80 countries would participate in this contest.

APSSDC chairman Ajay Reddy and MD Bangara Raju congratulated the winners.

The gold winners are P. Sriman Narayana in Additive Manufacturing, P Sreekar Sai in Cloud Computing, Srihari in Cyber Security, K Eswar in Electronics, Lavanya Sai Kumar in Mobile Application Development, Srinivas in Mobile Robotics and Pavan Kumar in Mobile Robotics won Gold medals.
The U.S. issued a dire warning to Iran as the Islamic Republic warned of 'hard revenge' for the killing of General Qassem Soleimani at the two-year anniversary of his death.

Iran over the weekend sanctioned dozens of U.S. officials for alleged involvement in the attack on Iran's former top general.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that Iran's sanctions on Saturday came as Tehran's proxy militias continued to attack American troops in the Middle East.

'We will work with our allies and partners to deter and respond to any attacks carried out by Iran,' Sullivan said in a statement. 'Should Iran attack any of our nationals, including any of the 52 people named yesterday, it will face severe consequences.'

Soleimani, the commander of Iran's Quds Force, the overseas arm of the elite Revolutionary Guards, was killed in Iraq in a drone strike on January 3, 2020, ordered by then-President Donald Trump.

'We will prepare ground for the hard revenge against the US from within their homes,' said Soleimani's replacement, Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani, at a memorial service in Mashhad this week, according to Tasnim News.

'We do not need to be present as supervisors everywhere, wherever is necessary we take revenge against Americans by the help of people on their side and within their own homes without our presence,' he added.

'We will work with our allies and partners to deter and respond to any attacks carried out by Iran,' national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement

Soleimani's replacement, Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani (seen at his 2020 funeral) this week vowed to take 'hard revenge' on the US for the drone strike killing him

Soleimani (center), the commander of Iran's Quds Force, the overseas arm of the elite Revolutionary Guards, was killed in Iraq in a drone strike on January 3, 2020

Trump ordered the drone strike that obliterated Soleimani's convoy as he made a secret visit to Baghdad

The commander was blown up in his motorcade by a Reaper drone missile outside Baghdad airport in a strike ordered by Trump after intelligence revealed Soleimani was planning attacks on American soldiers in Iraq.

Ghaani called on the US to deal internally with the 'criminals' who carried out the strike on Solemani, whom the Trump administration called a major financier and mastermind of terrorism throughout the Middle East.

Otherwise, he vowed, 'the children of the Resistance Front' would take matters into their own hands in what he said would be a costlier manner.

And on Saturday, Iran targeted 51 U.S. officials, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, former national security adviser Robert O'Brien and head of Central Command Gen. Frank McKenzie, for 'terrorism' and human rights violations.

Sullivan referenced 51 people, but Tehran said it sanctioned 51.

One year ago Iran had slapped sanctions on Trump, former Sec. of State Mike Pompeo and eight other officials for the drone strike that killed Soleimani.

If Trump and Pompeo are not tried in a 'fair court,' Iran said it and its allies in the 'resistance axis' would seek revenge.

Addressing Tehran's largest mosque, Raisi said last week: 'The aggressor and the main assassin, the then president of the United States, must face justice and retribution' alongside former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo 'and other criminals'.

'Otherwise, I will tell all US leaders that without a doubt the hand of revenge will emerge from the sleeve of the Muslim nation.'

On Friday, Iran displayed three ballistic missiles at an outdoor prayer esplanade in central Tehran as talks in Vienna aimed at reviving Tehrans nuclear deal with world powers floundered.

The missiles - known as Dezful, Qiam and Zolfaghar - have official ranges of up to 620 miles and are already-known models, the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said.

And last week, a drone attack on a U.S. base in Baghdad was foiled - two armed drones were shot down as they approached an Iraqi military base hosting U.S. forces. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but writing found on the wing of one drone read: 'Soleimani's revenge.'

The United States is leading the international military coalition fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq and in Syria. There are roughly 900 US troops in Syria and another 2,500 in Iraq.

Diplomats from countries that remain in the 2015 nuclear deal - Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China - are working with Tehran to revive the accord, which had sought to limit Iran's nuclear ambitions in exchange for lifting of economic sanctions.

Iran has insisted that the U.S. must lift its sanctions before it will scale back its nuclear program.

A cleric walks past Zolfaghar, top, and Dezful missiles displayed in a missile capabilities exhibition by the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Tehran on Friday

The same type of ballistic missiles fired at al-Asad Air Base where the US soldiers are located in the Anbar province of Iraq two years ago are displayed in Tehran on Friday

Iran displayed the missiles in a blustering show of force in central Tehran on Friday

American diplomats are present at the nuclear talks in Vienna but they are not in direct talks with Iranians.

The accord collapsed in 2018 when then-President Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the deal and re-imposed sanctions on Iran.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, speaking on the second anniversary of Soleimani's assassination, said this week Trump must face trial for the killing or Tehran would take revenge.

Representatives attend a meeting of the joint commission on negotiations aimed at reviving the Iran nuclear deal in Vienna, Austria on December 27

On Wednesday morning, a statue to honour Qassem Soleimani (pictured) was unveiled in Hazrat Qamarbani Hashem Square in the southwestern Iranian city of Shahrekord

A statue of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani has been torched hours after it was unveiled by officials in Shahrekord, central Iran, to mark the second anniversary of his assassination

Earlier this week, a statue of Soleimani was torched hours after it was unveiled by officials to mark the second anniversary of his assassination.

On Wednesday morning, a statue to honour him was unveiled in Hazrat Qamarbani Hashem Square in the southwestern Iranian city of Shahrekord.

But by the evening it had been set on fire, ISNA news agency reported, calling it a 'shameful act by unknown individuals'.

'This treacherous crime was carried out in darkness, just like the other crime committed at night at Baghdad airport,' when Soleimani was killed, senior Muslim cleric Mohammad Ali Nekounam said in a statement carried by the Iranian state media.
Police sent crime scene investigators to a river in Dorset after a teenage treasure hunter found a human skull - only to then learn it is 1,400 years old.

Tom Read, 15, made the discovery while wading through the River Stour in the rural village of Sturminster Marshall in June.

He initially thought he had simply retrieved a boot, before closer inspection showed it was actually a human frontal bone skull fragment.

He told his shocked mother of the grim find, who in turn alerted the county coroner.

Crime scene investigators attended the scene and searched the river, but expert analysis through carbon dating has now concluded that the skull dates back to the early Anglo-Saxon period between 450-600AD.

The skull was subsequently listed as 'of antiquity' by police and will not be subject to a criminal investigation.

It is now set to be documented and could be put on display at the Dorset County Museum in Dorchester.

Crime scene investigators waded through the river in Dorset after the skull was found

Tom Read (centre left) talks with a police forensic officer on the bank of the River Stour in Dorset

The 1,400-year-old skull (pictured) is now set to be documented and could be put on display at the Dorset County Museum in Dorchester

Officers with special equipment and wet suits wade through the River Stour in Dorset after the discovery

Tom has previously found old coins and antique pottery, which he documents on his Instagram page Tom Finds, which has more than 2,000 followers.

He said: 'I found a human frontal bone skull fragment on my first river wading trip.

'After lots of processes including searching for more bones with police divers a couple of weeks after I made the initial discovery, the skull fragment was finally sent off for carbon dating.

'A couple of days ago we received the report and conclusion from the dating, and its very exciting.'

His mother, Rachel Read, added: 'Hes always been a bit of a treasure seeker, hes done a lot of metal detecting and mud larking and is always finding things.

'He was given a pair of river waders a few days before for his birthday and it was his first trip out in them finding a few things - including a human skull.

'We brought it home and thought what on earth had we done because its not necessarily something you want to have in your possession so we contacted the county coroner.

Tom Read, who has more than 2,000 followers on social media, has 'always been a bit of a treasure seeker', according to his mother

Tom Read's mother Rachel alerted the county coroner when she saw the 15-year-old's grim discovery

'Tom was lucky enough to join the dive team and three archaeological experts from Bournemouth University who were looking for other bones and trying to identify if it was modern or not.

'The only bones that were found were animal, nothing human.

'It was very exciting because one of the experts thought it was a river burial or a burial which the river has meandered over since and obviously we have never found any kind of human bones before.

'They came up with a range of 450-600 AD, the archaeology departments say that they think its early Anglo-Saxon.'
Former Donald Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort is writing a new memoir where he brands himself a 'political prisoner' and defends his work for a pro-Moscow political party.

Manafort, who was sentenced to seven years in prison after being convicted on tax fraud and conspiracy charges, is writing the memoir for Skyhorse Publishing, which is distributed by Simon & Schuster.

He was released to home confinement in 2020 due to coronavirus concerns. Trump pardoned his former advisor weeks before he left office.

Using a term favored by Trump, his publisher describes the book as a 'riveting account of the HOAX that sent a presidential campaign chairman to solitary confinement because he wouldnt turn against the President of the United States.'

Former Donald Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort is writing a memoir whose title calls him a 'Political Prisoner'

Manafort's memoir comes after he was pardoned by former President Donald Trump

A jury found Manafort guilty on eight counts of tax and bank fraud, and the former high-flying lobbyist then pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the U.S. and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

His prosecution came amid former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe. In the process it exposed Manafort's undisclosed lobbying work for former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych and his pro-Kremlin political party.

Through the course of his two trials, it was revealed how Manafort was able to live a lavish lifestyle. A federal judge ordered him to pay $24.8 million in restitution.

He was ultimately allowed to keep his $15,000 ostrich jacket, though he had to turn over multiple properties in New York.

The book has an August release date, with a hardcover price set at $32.50.

Manafort was convicted of eight counts of tax and conspiracy charges, and pleaded guilty to two others

Manafort served as campaign chair for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign

Manafort's lawyers complained that he was being held in solitary confinement at Northern Neck regional jail in a legal filing in 2018. Mueller's prosecutors countered in a filing at the time that he 'is not confined to a cell,' had 'his own bathroom and shower facility,' along with 'his own personal telephone' with the ability to use the phone 12 hours a day to help prepare for trial.

His publisher's statement also defends his work for Yanukovych.

'Not only is it untrue that Victor Yanukovych or any of Pauls clients were pro-Putin, it is the opposite of the truth. Pauls work in Ukraine and throughout his career was 100 percent aligned with US interests in the countries he worked in, sometimes even acting as a back channel for the White House itself.'

The Skyhorse Publishing imprint also published former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's tell-all, Disloyal, along with Robert F. Kennedy's book, The Real Anthony Fauci.

Trump's pardon of Manafort came in December 2020, amid other pardons for former political operative Roger Stone and Charles Kushner, the father of son-in-law Jared Kushner.

'Neither was Paul guilty of laundering money, evading taxes, or deliberately deceiving the US government by failing to register as a foreign agentwhich he wasnt,' writes his publisher. 'These were all politically motivated charges manufactured by the Special Counsels team for one reason and one reason only: to get Paul to testify against Donald Trump about a conspiracy that never existed.'
Missed chances to stop Wayne Couzens, and 'red flags' about his conduct, will be probed by an inquiry

An inquiry investigating how serving Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens was able to abduct, rape and murder Sarah Everard will look at whether any 'red flags were missed' earlier in his career.

Home Secretary Priti Patel has published the terms of reference for the first phase of the Angiolini Inquiry, named after Dame Elish Angiolini QC who is leading it, which will consider the 'systemic failures' that allowed Miss Everard's killer to be employed as a police officer.

The killer used Covid powers to conduct a fake arrest of the 33-year-old marketing executive as she walked home from a friend's house in March last year, in a crime that appalled the nation and undermined confidence in the police.

Couzens is now serving a whole-life order in prison, meaning he will never be released from jail.

The Met has faced a wave of criticism over missed opportunities to expose Couzens as a sexual predator before he went on to murder Miss Everard.

It emerged the 48-year-old was known as 'the rapist' by staff at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary because he made female colleagues feel so uncomfortable. He had been accused of indecent exposure in Kent in 2015 and in London in the days before Ms Everard's murder, but was allowed to continue working.

Despite the past cases, Couzens (pictured) was still a member of the elite Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection squad at the time of Sarah Everard's killing. Disturbingly colleagues in Kent nicknamed 'The Rapist' and the claim that he drove around naked in 2015 - three years before he was hired in London

Couzens abducted Sarah Everard as she walked home from a friend's house in Clapham, south London, on the evening of March 3, abusing his position as a police officer to force her into his car

The first part of the inquiry will start soon and is intended to conclude this year to make sure the 'family get the answers they need', the Home Office said.

The inquiry will seek to establish:

A timeline of Couzens' career and 'relevant incidents' including 'prior allegations of criminal behaviour and/or misconduct'.

The circumstances and decision making surrounding his vetting and re-vetting, including whether 'any potential risks and/or red flags were missed' as well as any matters arising from his transfer between forces.

His overall conduct, performance, training and any abuse of his police powers.

The extent to which any issues about his behaviour, particularly in relation to women, were 'known and raised by colleagues' including professional standards departments and senior leaders.

The inquiry will analyse documents from the Metropolitan Police, Civil Nuclear Constabulary and Kent Police as well as consider interviews, witness statements and findings from Independent Office for Police Conduct investigations.

The findings from the first part of the inquiry will inform the second - which will look at 'broader issues' arising for policing and the protection of women.

Ms Patel said: 'I am determined to understand the failings that enabled a serving officer to commit such heinous crimes - we owe an explanation to Sarah's family and loved ones, and we need to do all in our power to prevent something like this from ever happening again.

'The terms of reference agreed today for the Angiolini Inquiry are vital and will produce learning and recommendations for policing and others. I have assured Dame Elish she has my full support to ensure this inquiry gets the answers the public and the Everard family need as soon as possible.'

The 48-year-old, who used his warrant card and handcuffs to carry out the crime, had been planning rape and murder for at least a month before he targeted Ms Everard

Dame Elish, a former lord advocate of Scotland, described the publication of the terms of reference as a 'significant step forward to progressing this vital inquiry and ensuring Sarah's family and the wider public get a full understanding and explanation of the causes of, and factors contributing to, this tragic and harrowing murder.'

Although a non-statutory inquiry has been established, this can be converted to a statutory inquiry, where witnesses can be compelled to give evidence, if required.
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Londoners were today faced with another five months of Underground disruption due to strikes - with unions now planning three separate industrial actions due to issues over rotas, jobs, pensions and working conditions.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) said 94 per cent of its members on the Tube who took part in a ballot of 10,000 staff that ended yesterday have backed upcoming industrial action, with the dates to be confirmed.

This is in addition to a second set of strikes the RMT also announced yesterday by drivers on the Metropolitan line based at the Neasden depot in North London which will take place on January 20 and 21, and February 10 and 11.

And both of those strikes come on top of a third row over rosters on the Night Tube which has led to weekend walkouts and will continue to hit Central and Victoria line services on Friday and Saturday evenings until June 19.

The industrial action will add further woe to those travelling across the capital, with those heading into the City already facing a difficult journey into work for the next four months when the Northern line's Bank branch closes.

The route between Kennington and Moorgate will shut from this Saturday until mid-May 2022, which is due to upgrade works at Bank to increase the station's capacity and provide step-free access to the Northern line.

Engineers will be connecting new tunnels to the existing railway and integrating new systems in Bank, with the station set to close for Northern line users along with Elephant and Castle, Borough, London Bridge and Moorgate.

Transport for London has also imposed temporary changes to the Overground timetable due to staff absences, with service frequencies halved between Dalston Junction and Surrey Quays, and Richmond and Stratford.

There were 920,000 entries and exits on Underground trains and 1,100,000 taps on buses up to 10am yesterday. When compared to ridership on Thursday, January 6, this was up 17 per cent on the Tube and 5 per cent on buses. In terms of pre-pandemic levels, Tube ridership is at around 40 per cent and bus ridership at about 66 per cent.

This Transport for London graph shows passenger data split by station type, dating back to the start of 2020

This Transport for London graph dating back to the start of 2020 shows how passenger numbers have dropped once again

Commuters wearing face coverings travel on a London Underground Victoria Line carriage on Wednesday last week

This close-up of the London Underground map shows how the Northern line Bank branch closure will affect Tube passengers

At the weekend, Tube ridership was between 55 and 65 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, with 2.4million journeys made over the weekend. Bus ridership was between 65 per cent and 75 per cent - with 5.3million journeys made.

Yesterday, the RMT announced that Underground workers have voted to strike in a dispute over jobs, pensions and conditions - although the union has not yet confirmed the dates on when this will take place.

What are the three separate Tube strikes? Drivers on the Metropolitan Line based at the Neasden Depot will strike relating to rotas on: Thursday, January 20; Friday, January 21; Thursday, February 10; and Friday February 11 Central and Victoria line Night Tube services on weekend evenings until June 19, relating to rosters Upcoming RMT strike on jobs, pensions and working conditions announced yesterday  no dates yet Advertisement

The RMT said its members have been refused assurances on jobs, pensions and working conditions in the midst of an 'on-going financial crisis' it claims are driven by central Government.

The union's executive committee will consider the ballot result but says it will take 'whatever action is necessarily' to prevent staff paying the price for a financial crisis 'that is not of their making'.

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: 'A financial crisis at LU [London Underground] has been deliberately engineered by the Government to drive a cuts agenda which would savage jobs, services, safety and threaten the working conditions and pensions of our members.

'It must never be forgotten that these are the same transport staff praised as heroes for carrying London through Covid for nearly two years, often at serious personal risk, who now have no option but to rise up and defend their livelihoods.

'The politicians need to wake up to the fact that transport staff will not pay the price for this cynically engineered crisis and we will coordinate a campaign of resistance with colleagues from other unions impacted by this threat.'

On jobs, pensions and working conditions, Andy Lord, Managing Director of London Underground, said: 'The devastating impact of the pandemic on TfL finances has made a programme of change urgently necessary and we have been working with our staff and trade union colleagues for a number of months as proposals are developed.

Shoppers wear face masks on Oxford Street in London this afternoon as TfL red buses can be seen in the background

A London Underground user wears a mask as they travel on an escalator while on the network in the capital this afternoon

'Nobody has or will lose their jobs as a result of the proposals we have set out and there are no current plans to change the TfL pension or terms and conditions.

'We're calling on the RMT to work with us constructively, to avoid any industrial action which would damage TfL and London's recovery, as we ensure London Underground is efficient and financially sustainable so it can continue to serve Londoners and support its staff.'

It comes as Sir Brendan Barber, with the support of pensions expert Joanne Segars, is leading and facilitating an independent review of TfLs pension arrangements, which is a condition of the Government funding agreement from June 1. TfL bosses have insisted the review remains ongoing and no recommendations have yet been made.

TfL is proposing not recruiting into around 250 customer services vacancies that are currently unfilled, as well as having the aim of reducing posts by a further 250 to 350 as people retire or move on from the organisation.

It has said this would mean a reduction of around 500 to 600 posts compared to pre-pandemic staffing levels - although the precise number will depend on discussions with staff and trade unions. TfL has also insisted that the Underground would still have more than 4,500 staff available across the network to assist customers.

As part of the most recent funding agreement between TfL and the Government, TfL is also required to work towards achieving financial sustainability by April 2023, meaning it has had to speed up a pre-pandemic savings drive, which has an overall target for recurring savings of just over 500million for London Underground.

The RMT announced the new series of strikes on the same day as revealing another set of days of industrial action by Metropolitan line drivers based at the Neasden depot over what the union described as the 'outrageous imposition of rosters by London Underground bosses'.

It said there had been an 'overwhelming vote for action by drivers', with all members told not to book on for any shifts which start between 11.30am on Thursday, January 20 and 11.29am on Friday, January 21; as well as between 11.30am on Thursday, February 10 until Friday February 11 at 11.29am

How Covid-related staff shortages are affecting train services across UK Avanti West Coast : Says it is 'doing everything we can to run our full timetable but there may be some short notice cancellations'.

: Says it is 'doing everything we can to run our full timetable but there may be some short notice cancellations'. c2c : Normal service.

: Normal service. Caledonian Sleeper : Normal service.

: Normal service. Chiltern Railways : Operator warns it 'may have to make some short notice changes to our timetable' because of the 'impact of Covid-19 on our train crews'.

: Operator warns it 'may have to make some short notice changes to our timetable' because of the 'impact of Covid-19 on our train crews'. CrossCountry : 'Short notice alterations and cancellations' because of 'increasing levels of absence amongst train crew due to Covid-19 isolation periods'

: 'Short notice alterations and cancellations' because of 'increasing levels of absence amongst train crew due to Covid-19 isolation periods' East Midlands Railway : Normal service.

: Normal service. Eurostar : Normal service.

: Normal service. Gatwick Express : No services 'until further notice' because of the 'ongoing effect of coronavirus isolation and sickness'.

: No services 'until further notice' because of the 'ongoing effect of coronavirus isolation and sickness'. Grand Central : Normal service.

: Normal service. Great Northern : Reduced service on all routes 'until further notice' because of the 'significant ongoing impact of coronavirus, particularly in terms of staff sickness'.

: Reduced service on all routes 'until further notice' because of the 'significant ongoing impact of coronavirus, particularly in terms of staff sickness'. Great Western Railway : 'Reduced temporary timetable' in operation since January 8 because of 'higher than usual levels of staff being absent or self-isolating due to Covid'.

: 'Reduced temporary timetable' in operation since January 8 because of 'higher than usual levels of staff being absent or self-isolating due to Covid'. Greater Anglia : 'Sunday-style timetable with earlier first trains and more trains at peak times' on weekdays from January 10.

: 'Sunday-style timetable with earlier first trains and more trains at peak times' on weekdays from January 10. Heathrow Express : Normal service.

: Normal service. Hull Trains : A temporary timetable will operate until February 12 to 'minimise disruption'.

: A temporary timetable will operate until February 12 to 'minimise disruption'. LNER : Running a 'reduced timetable' between London and Leeds/Lincoln until at least February 11

: Running a 'reduced timetable' between London and Leeds/Lincoln until at least February 11 London Northwestern Railway : 'Some trains may be cancelled at short notice' and there is a rail replacement bus service on the Abbey Line and Marston Vale Line 'until further notice'.

: 'Some trains may be cancelled at short notice' and there is a rail replacement bus service on the Abbey Line and Marston Vale Line 'until further notice'. Lumo : Normal service.

: Normal service. Merseyrail : Some trains will be cancelled from January 8 'until further notice' because of the 'impact of the Omicron COVID-19 variant affecting staff availability'.

: Some trains will be cancelled from January 8 'until further notice' because of the 'impact of the Omicron COVID-19 variant affecting staff availability'. Northern : Operating 'several amended timetables' because of 'Covid and its impact on the availability of our train crew'.

: Operating 'several amended timetables' because of 'Covid and its impact on the availability of our train crew'. ScotRail : It is 'being forced to bring in a temporary timetable' until January 28 'as we continue to see colleagues off sick because of Covid-19'.

: It is 'being forced to bring in a temporary timetable' until January 28 'as we continue to see colleagues off sick because of Covid-19'. South Western Railway : New reduced timetable from January 17 due to a 'shortage of staff across our business' causing 'short term cancellations'

: New reduced timetable from January 17 due to a 'shortage of staff across our business' causing 'short term cancellations' Southeastern : Timetable reduced by 7% from January 10 because of an 'increasing number of our colleagues affected by Covid' and work from home guidance

: Timetable reduced by 7% from January 10 because of an 'increasing number of our colleagues affected by Covid' and work from home guidance Southern : London Victoria station services restarted from January 10 but reduced timetable continues 'until further notice' due to the 'ongoing impact of coronavirus isolation and sickness'.

: London Victoria station services restarted from January 10 but reduced timetable continues 'until further notice' due to the 'ongoing impact of coronavirus isolation and sickness'. Stansted Express : Half-hourly service running.

: Half-hourly service running. Thameslink : Reduced service on all routes 'until further notice' because of the 'ongoing impact of coronavirus isolation and sickness'.

: Reduced service on all routes 'until further notice' because of the 'ongoing impact of coronavirus isolation and sickness'. TransPennine Express : 'Amended timetable' from January 10 'due to a shortage of available train crew as a result of rising sickness levels'

: 'Amended timetable' from January 10 'due to a shortage of available train crew as a result of rising sickness levels' Transport for London : Reduced service on Richmond to Stratford and Dalston Junction to New Cross routes from January 10 due to a 'number of staff off ill due to Covid or self isolating'

: Reduced service on Richmond to Stratford and Dalston Junction to New Cross routes from January 10 due to a 'number of staff off ill due to Covid or self isolating' Transport for Greater Manchester: Normal Metrolink tram services.

Normal Metrolink tram services. Transport for Wales : 'Emergency timetable' to 'prepare for an expected rise in staff shortages due to the emergence of the Omicron variant'.

: 'Emergency timetable' to 'prepare for an expected rise in staff shortages due to the emergence of the Omicron variant'. West Midlands Railway : Rail replacement buses on the Leamington Spa-Nuneaton via Coventry line 'until further notice' due to the 'impact of Covid-19 on our workforce'. 'Some services on the Birmingham New Street to Shrewsbury line are likely to be cancelled'. Advertisement

Mr Lynch said of this strike: 'There's a toxic culture developing at LU which amounts to the wholesale ripping up of normal procedures and agreements and our members at Neasden have said loud and clear that enough is enough.

'I am calling on Tube bosses to get a grip and stop this wholesale undermining of normal industrial relations. We remain available for talks but no one should underestimate our determination to stop this nonsense.'

On the Neasden depot strike, a TfL spokesman said: 'We're disappointed that the RMT has confirmed strike action at Neasden Depot and will be talking with them this week to resolve the matter.'

This comes on top of what TfL described as potentially 'severe disruption' to night services on weekend evenings until June due to strikes by Tube drivers.

Members of the RMT are walking out on Friday and Saturday evenings since last weekend on the Central and Victoria lines in a dispute over rosters.

The action is set to continue on weekend evenings until June, with passengers urged to check before they travel and use buses to complete journeys.

London Underground said new rosters included assurances that there will be no job cuts, the option of permanent work for those on part-time contracts, and only scheduling up to four night shift weekends per year.

London Underground managing director Mr Lord said: 'We're disappointed that once again the RMT is continuing to push for strike action that is likely to cause further unnecessary disruption.

'We're calling on the RMT to join us for talks so we can work together to resolve this dispute around roster changes, which mean no job losses and greater flexibility for drivers.

'If these six months of action do go ahead, we will continue to operate as regular a service as possible. However, customers are advised to check before they travel and use buses to complete their journeys where required.

'I apologise to them for the impact this unnecessary action will have on their journeys.'

But RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: 'If London Underground and the mayor thought this fight for progressive and family-friendly working practices was going away they need to think again.

'RMT has repeatedly put forward cost neutral proposals that would repair the damage unleashed by deleting 200 driver posts and which would dig LU out of this mess.

'They have ignored us and that approach will have severe consequences for Londoners through to the summer.'

However, Jace Tyrrell, chief executive at New West End Company, said: 'Following another challenging festive period, hospitality and leisure businesses hope that the start of 2022 will bring optimism and footfall, however the new year joy has been depleted by the threat of even more disruptions caused by the planned Night Tube strikes.

'The proposed six-month strike action threatens the West End's night-time economy at a critical point when many businesses will be looking to recover from the impact of the pandemic.

'We strongly encourage RMT to call off these strikes in order to give viable hospitality businesses in the capital the best possible chance of survival.'

The RMT issued an update on the first weekend of Night Tube strikes yesterday saying that its members had 'remained solid and determined in support of the Night Tube action this weekend and have sent out the clearest possible signal that this issue isn't going away'.

As for the Northern line Bank branch closure, Transport for London said many lines and stations across central London will be busier, especially around the City, but extra Tube services and a new bus route will operate.

The new bus, the 733 from Oval into the City (Finsbury Square), will also be introduced on weekdays and run every seven to eight minutes.

Waterloo, Embankment, Tottenham Court Road and London Bridge are expected to be among the busiest stations during the closure,

Andy Lord, Managing Director of London Underground, said: 'The Bank station capacity upgrade is a crucial project that will support the City's growth and success after these challenging years of navigating the pandemic.

'I'm sorry for the disruption this vital work will cause, and I can assure Londoners that if there was any other way to connect the new tunnels with the existing railway then we would.'

Rail passengers wait for a South Western Railway service at Bracknell train station in Berkshire during rush hour this morning

Commuters wait to catch a London-bound train at Bracknell railway station in Berkshire in the morning rush hour yesterday

Meanwhile Transport for London said it had 'planned some temporary changes to London Overground services but we are currently running more services on the two impacted lines than we had anticipated'.

Get used to a 'Sunday-style timetable' on the trains 'until further notice' Rail companies across Britain warned passengers that they face reduced services 'until further notice' amid rail replacement buses, halved service frequencies and a 'Sunday-style timetable' on some routes. Train firms have slashed hundreds of services due to thousands of Covid-related staff absences, with bosses warning passengers to expect last-minute cancellations and more crowded trains due to fewer in operation. Some operators have brought in new reduced timetables from yesterday including Greater Anglia, Southeastern and TransPennine Express while London Overground is now operating some of its services at half the normal levels. Southern Rail has finally reintroduced trains to and from London Victoria after the post-Christmas closure was extended by a week, although not all services are back and those that are remain on an amended timetable. Staff absence for all reasons is now at 11 per cent across all operators, according to the latest Rail Delivery Group data in the week to January 5  a sharp rise from 8.9 per cent up to December 29 and 8.7 per cent to December 22. The ever-rising figure is also significantly up on 7.6 per cent in November 2021 and 4.5 per cent at the end of August 2020, during the period when Covid-19 rates in the UK were at their lowest during the pandemic. Train companies said the amended timetables had been brought in because of high staff absence numbers but also lower demand since the Government's working from home guidance was brought back in last month. Advertisement

The planned timetable changes mean a reduction of four trains per hour between Dalston Junction and Surrey Quays on weekdays with no service between Surrey Quays and New Cross.

This means 12 trains will operate per hour and that customers may have gaps between trains of up to eight minutes in the core section between Dalston Junction and Surrey Quays.

A half-hourly service will now operate between Richmond and Stratford on weekdays - which will mean a reduction in frequency to six trains per hour in the core section between Willesden Junction and Stratford, down from ten per hour.

However, TfL said it would 'will run more services on these routes if absence rates allow us to and we will continue to keep operating services as planned across our network'.

Weekend and Night Overground services are not affected by the changes.

TfL added that across its workforce, it currently has around 500 members of non-office-based staff off work due to a Covid-related illness, but said the overall proportion of staff off work 'remains low'.

It said there 'may be other staff who work in more office-based roles who are self-isolating but are still working from home'.

There has not yet been any major impact on London Underground services apart from the Waterloo and City line which returned at weekday peak times yesterday.

Rory O'Neill, TfL's general manager for London Overground, said: 'Like many businesses and organisations around the country, we are experiencing the effects of the pandemic with a number of staff off ill due to Covid or self-isolating.

'To ensure we can provide a reliable service, it has been necessary to make some timetable changes to London Overground services from Dalston Junction to New Cross and Richmond to Stratford.

'Customers continue to have a range of travel options. We will continue to do all we can to keep operating a near to normal service but advise everyone to check our website and the TfL Go app before they travel as further services may be affected at short notice by staff absences.'
A serial stalker who repeatedly walked past a model's tattoo shop window and left her 'too scared to have a baby' during his harassment campaign has been spared jail.

Yusuf El-Habachi, 29, began tormenting Helen Green in 2013 by repeatedly walking past her parlour in Soho, central London, and staring at her.

He also went to the salon and made sexual comments to Ms Green - leaving her fearful to go to work.

His cruel campaign stopped for five years, but he returned in 2018 and carried on staring at Ms Green through the window until she called the police.

El-Habachi, of Forest Gate, east London, was banned from contacting Ms Green, who models under the name Arabella Drummond, for the rest of his life in October 2018 under the terms of a restraining order.

But Westminster Magistrates Court heard El-Habachi, who has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, breached the ban for a third and fourth time when he walked past her shop on July 5 and July 31 last year.

Today El-Habachi's 18 week jail term was suspended for a year-and-a-half and he was told to carry out 40 rehabilitation days and live under an 8pm- 6am curfew for 40 days.

Yusuf-Habachi, 29, was told to carry out 40 rehabilitation days and live under an 8pm- 6am curfew for 40 days

The court heard how Ms Green has been wanting to have a baby with her partner but has so far avoided trying for one because of concerns over future encounters with El-Habachi.

She said: 'This (July 5) incident has made me feel extremely devastated that this has started all over again.

'I have had to deal with this man for so many years and I fear coming to work or going to lunch.

'This situation is affecting my relationship with my partner and there are days when I want to leave the country.

'There have been days of crying and worrying. I am tired of losing my life over this male and I just want this to end. I feel constantly in danger.'

Last year El-Habachi performed a sex act in front of another woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, on a bus in East London, on 1 July last year.

He later told police he was just 'doing something with my trousers' despite being caught on CCTV.

He admitted exposure, theft, one count of breaching a restraining order and breaching a suspended sentence at previous first appearances before a magistrates court.

The defendant admitted a second count of breaching a restraining order on the first day of his trial in November last year.

Today El-Habachi's 18 week jail term was suspended for a year-and-a-half and he was told to carry out 40 rehabilitation days and live under an 8pm- 6am curfew for 40 days.

He must also pay 150 compensation to the exposure victim and 150 in court costs.

An application by prosecutors to make him abide by a Sexual Harm Prevention Order was thrown out.

Luke Staton, prosecuting, said: 'At around 11 am on July 1 last year a woman boarded a bus and around two stops later the defendant boarded the bus and sat to the right of her in the back row.

'She could see out of the corner of her eye that there were some movements coming from the defendant.

'When she looked towards him, she could see he was masturbating with one hand while he looked at her and ''side-eyed'' her.

'The victim went to the driver to explain what happened and while she was doing that the defendant got off the bus.

'She asked the driver to report the incident and the defendant was caught on CCTV and identified. When interviewed by police the defendant made no comment other than to say ''I was not masturbating, I was just doing something with my trousers.''

'On July 5 last year, in breach of a restraining order imposed on 26 October 2018, the defendant was seen by a member of staff who works with Ms Green.

'There was no communication at all between the defendant and the victim. He walked past the store and glanced towards it for around two seconds.

'On July 31 last year the defendant was seen by the victim's manager walking past the store briefly and looking in the direction of the store before walking on.

The court heard how Helen Green had been wanting to have a baby with her partner but has so far avoided trying for one because of concerns over future encounters with El-Habachi

El-Habachi's 18 week jail term was suspended for a year-and-a-half and he was told to carry out 40 rehabilitation days and live under an 8pm- 6am curfew for 40 days at Westminster Magistrates Court

'The reason the restraining order was imposed was because he was walking past the store several times every day in the past.'

Mohammed Naqvi, in mitigation, said: 'The defendant has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and is close to being diagnosed with autism.

'He used to live with his elderly mother who is ill but since September he has been living in supported accommodation.

'He is now receiving much better, intensive, daily support. He has also been offered treatment at a stalking clinic which would help him.

'Prison would have a detrimental effect on his mental health which could deteriorate drastically as prison would be quite frightening for him.

'He could lose his place in supported accommodation if he were to be sent to prison today.

'He can undertake rehabilitation days as part of a community order. The court can follow the probation report and spare him prison today.

'In regards to the breaches of the restraining order, he has walked past, there has not been any interaction and on one occasion the victim had to be notified about.'

District Judge Neeta Minhas told El-Habachi: 'You cannot commit any further offences or breach any orders. If you do anything like that you will go to prison. I am not sure how many more chances can be given to you.

'The reason I have not sent you to prison is because you are in supported housing. You will lose that if you go to prison.

'You would be in a worse position if you were to lose that, and society would be put at greater risk if you lose your housing.

'You have run out of chances; this is probably your last. If you breach the order or offend again, not even your personal circumstances will be able to keep you out of prison.'
Four more lawmakers announced Monday that they contracted coronavirus after four others  including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez  announced their diagnoses over the weekend.

'I tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday,' New York Republican Representative John Katko tweeted on Monday. 'I am fully vaccinated and boosted, and am thankfully experiencing only mild symptoms. I will be voting by proxy in Washington this week and working from home as I recover. My constituent service team remains available and ready to serve.'

Republican Representative Ben Cline from Virginia tweeted on Monday: 'I took a COVID test on Saturday and the result was positive.'

'I have been vaccinated, and after consulting with my physician, I am taking all necessary precautions to isolate here at home in Virginia. Thanks to everyone for their support and assistance.'

Republican Arkansas Representative Rick Crawford also tested positive, according to a Fox News reporter.

GOP Representative Nancy Mace confirmed Monday evening that she had tested positive for the second time and is working from home in Charleston, South Carolina.

Since the start of December, 30 members of the House and Senate contracted coronavirus as the highly-contagious Omicron variant sweeps the nation and leads to an unprecedented spike in case rates.

Omicron cases are continuing to rise in the U.S but deaths and hospitalizations caused by the virus are not following at the same rate, signaling the variant that has grinded much of America into a standstill is not making people as sick as the Delta variant.

Cases have more than tripled over the past two weeks alone, up from 198,326 per day to 709,850 per day. The number of Americans hospitalized with Covid is nearing record levels as well, reaching 130,000 this week.

On Saturday, Representatives Jim Cooper, a Democrat from Tennessee; Sean Casten, a Democrat from Illinois; and Young Kim, a Republican from California, joined the growing list of members of Congress to test positive for COVID-19. All three are fully vaccinated and received their booster shots.

Ocasio-Cortez, 32, announced her positive diagnosis on Sunday  just days after she was pictured partying maskless at a drag brunch in Miami, Florida.

Capitol Hill staffers stood in hour-long lines at the Capitol on Monday to get tested for coronavirus as both the House and Senate are in session

Since the start of December, 30 members of Congress who are fully vaccinated and boosted contracted coroanvirus in the midst of the massive and nationwide Omicron surge

People wait in line on January 10, 2022 to get a COVID-19 test amid the Omicron surge that has affected all parts of the nation, including Capitol Hill

The Bronx representative made the announcement on her official Twitter page Sunday night, sharing a statement on House letterhead that stated: 'Representative Ocasio-Cortez has received a positive test result for COVID-19.'

'She is experiencing symptoms and is recovering at home,' the statement added. 'The Congresswoman received her booster shot this Fall, and encourages everyone to get their booster and follow all CDC guidance.'

Twenty-eight of the 30 members to test positive since the Omicron variant emerged last month are fully vaccinated and boosted, which is in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on how to best avoid infection. Crawford and Mace are vaccinated, but have not announced whether they are boosted.

Omicron is a far more contagious, but admittedly less serious, case of COVID. There are a plethora of breakthrough infections in vaccinated individuals with the spread of the new variant.

South Carolina Republican Representative Nancy Mace revealed her second COVID diagnosis on Monday evening

GOP Representatives Ben Cline (left) and John Katko (right) announced their positive COVID tests Monday morning

On Sunday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez revealed her positive coronavirus diagnosis after she was pictured partying maskless in Miami, Florida

On Saturday, Representatives Sean Casten, a Democrat from Illinois (left); Young Kim, a Republican from California (center); and Jim Cooper, a Democrat from Tennessee (right) all announced they received positive COVID tests

The 30 lawmakers who got COVID since Dec. 1 House of Representatives Brett Guthrie, R-Ky. (Dec. 8) Matt Cartwright, D-Pa. (Dec. 18) Jason Crow, D-Colo. (Dec. 19) Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y. (Dec. 21) Barbara Lee, D-Calif. (Dec. 21,) Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. (Dec. 22) Antonia Delgado, D-N.Y. (Dec. 22) Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. (Dec. 22) Kaialii Kahele, D-Hi. (Dec. 26) Bobby Rush, D-Ill. (Dec. 28) Doris Matsui, D-Calif. (Dec. 29) Bill Pascrell, D-N.J. (Dec. 30) Jesus Chuy Garcia, D-Ill. (Dec. 30) Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass. (Dec. 31) Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y. (Jan. 1)  second COVID diagnosis Jim Hagedorn, R-Minn. (Jan. 4) Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif. (Jan. 5) Michael McCaul, R-Texas (Jan. 7) Jim Cooper, D-Tenn. (Jan. 8) Sean Casten, D-Ill. (Jan. 8) Young Kim, R-Calif. (Jan. 8) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. (Jan. 9) Ben Cline, R-Va. (Jan. 10) John Katko, R-N.Y. (Jan. 10) Rick Crawford, R-Ark. (Jan. 10) Nancy Mace, R-SC (Jan. 10) Senate Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. (Dec. 19) Cory Booker, D-N.J. (Dec. 19) Chris Coons, D-Del. (Dec. 23) Rob Portman, R-Ohio (Jan. 4) Advertisement

Of senators to test positive since December 19 are Democrats Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, Cory Booker from New Jersey, Chris Coons from Delaware and Republican Rob Portman from Ohio. All are vaccinated and boosted.

Before that point, the last positive case in the Senate was in August when Democratic Senator John Hickenlooper from Colorado contracted the virus.

Among all 27 to test positive, Democratic Representative Adriano Espaillat from New York received his second positive diagnosis since the start of the pandemic. His first contraction was on January 13, 2021.

According to a running tally by PBS reporter Lisa Desjardins, 103 members of the House have contracted COVID since the onset of the pandemic and 18 members of the Senate.

Not all of recent COVID hospitalizations are directly caused by the virus. Many people who go to the hospital for reasons outside of Covid, such as injury or other ailments, are being tested while there. Since the Omicron variant is so prevalent at the moment, many of these people are testing positive and being added to the total despite not having severe symptoms.

Deaths are not growing at the same rate, though, with 1,648 Americans dying from the virus every day - an 11 per cent increase from two weeks ago. This signals either the effectiveness of the vaccines, or the more mild nature of the new strain.

The U.S. also surpassed 60 million cases of the virus as of Monday morning according to Johns Hopkins University, another grim milestone for the country.

The record surge began in December, only weeks after the new variant was discovered by South African health officials. Omicron is the most infectious strain of the virus yet, and its ability to evade vaccine immunity has presented additional challenges.

AOC provided her own guidance after her coronavirus diagnosis, writing in a Sunday tweet: 'For information on what to do if you're exposed to COVID, test positive or want to schedule a test or vaccine in New York City -- see our round-up of CDC and NYC resources here,' before adding a link to a personal website.

It is unclear when or how AOC became infected.

Despite staunchly advocating for mask and vaccine mandates, AOC abandoned her own rhetoric last week during a trip to Miami, where she was spotted maskless at numerous venues.

Florida has some of the most lax masking rules and COVID-related restrictions.

Ocasio-Cortez's vacation was dragged on Twitter by conservatives, including an account devoted to and endorsed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, which invited her to 'enjoy a taste of freedom' in the Sunshine State.

'Welcome to Florida, AOC! We hope you're enjoying a taste of freedom here in the Sunshine State thanks to [Ron DeSantis'] leadership,' the tweet, by the Team DeSantis account, read.

The progressive congresswoman responded to photos and criticism online with a tweet saying: 'Hasn't Gov. DeSantis been inexplicably missing for like 2 weeks? If he's around, I would be happy to say hello. His social media team seems to have been posting old photos for weeks. In the meantime, perhaps I could help with local organizing. Folks are quite receptive here.'

It's not known where the progressive representative caught the virus, although she was pictured at a drag brunch event in South Beach, Miami, on January 2 without a mask

News of AOC's diagnosis triggered online mockery, with one commentator saying AOC shouldn't have visited Florida, and another mocking the lawmaker's claim that conservatives angry about her trip to the Sunshine State were actually harboring a secret crush on her

News of her diagnosis sparked mockery online, with one reply to the Twitter announcement berating Ocasio-Cortez for taking the trip to Florida during a time when Covid cases reached a record high.

Another joked about AOC's assertion that anyone criticizing her for the rules-free trip actually harbored a crush on her, writing: 'The virus just wants to date you.'

But on January 2, AOC was pictured getting up close and personal with pals at a drag brunch at the Palace Bar on Miami's South Beach.

She was snapped cuddling maskless with Pose star Billy Porter, and basking in the attention of other attendees, who were evidently thrilled to be in the presence of the star lawmaker.

It is unclear if Porter was also infected, or exposed, and he has yet to comment in the wake of AOC's diagnosis.

Florida confirmed a record 150,251 Covid cases January 4, around the time of AOC's visit; its numbers have dropped markedly since, with 26,588 new cases reported Sunday.

It's not known where she caught the virus; 1,928 cases were confirmed Sunday in Washington, DC, while 81,388 tests came back positive in her home state of New York.

Her presence in Florida, a state that she had long criticized for its lax coronavirus restrictions during earlier waves of the pandemic appeared to irk some Republicans and conservative journalists who became tired of her using the southern state as an example of how not to do things.

AOC's trip to the drag brunch thrilled attendees - but the lawmaker was accused of hypocrisy for backing draconian COVID rules, then jetting off to vacation in a state famed for having none. AOC pictured above partying with actor Billy Porter

AOC and Porter hugged during the outdoor event - he has yet to comment on her diagnosis, and its unclear if the Pose star has himself been exposed or infected

'AOC is STILL lounging it up in Florida, in large crowds and maskless. This time at a Drag Queen bar in Miami. Rules for thee but not for me,' wrote right wing journalist Brendon Leslie.

'For those of you with zero sense of humor: the whole point of this post is to expose hypocrisy. We don't actually care she's maskless. We care she fear mongers about Florida but then has the audacity to vacation here,' he added.

'AOC was spotted partying in a bar maskless in the great free state of Florida. Absolute hypocrite,' tweeted Twitter account Libs of Tik Tok.

AOC was also snapped enjoying cocktails at a Miami sushi restaurant with boyfriend Riley Roberts, with Roberts' Birkenstocks sparking a subsequent war of words between the firebrand congresswoman and conservative commentators

Case rates have skyrocketed to unprecedented levels in December with the emergence of the highly-contagious Omicron variant

Death rates have not corresponded to the surge in cases  indicative of expert analysis claiming the latest variant is not as deadly or serious as previous variants

The progressive congresswoman was blasted by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for backing draconian restrictions in New York, then coming to the Sunshine State and enjoying its lack of COVID-19 protocols.

Right-wing commentator Brendon Leslie took aim at AOC after news of the event emerged, and accused her of hypocrisy.

AOC's jaunt to Florida also saw her sip cocktails at an outdoor sushi restaurant with her boyfriend Riley Roberts.

Roberts was snapped wearing a pair of Birkenstocks with bare feet, prompting jokes from Republicans, and subsequent backlash from AOC who accused conservatives of being sexually frustrated.

Hitting back, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: 'If Republicans are mad they can't date me they can just say that instead of projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend's feet. Ya creepy weirdos.'
Vice President Kamala Harris's former top aide Symone Sanders is joining MSNBC after leaving the Biden administration less than two weeks ago, network president Rashida Jones announced on Monday.

Sanders will likely continue backing her ex-boss from the sidelines in her new role as a host on the left-leaning network's weekend programming. She's also signed on to host a Peacock show on MNSBC's streaming arm The Choice.

No information has been released on what her shows will be called or who the first guests will be, though MSNBC said they would begin airing in the spring.

Sanders is the most notable outgoing Biden administration official so far to turn her exit into a full-time news media role.

The top Democratic strategist is joining the Biden and Harris-friendly channel after defending Harris throughout a mountain of negativity plaguing her first year as vice president.

On top of consistently low poll numbers, the former California senator is grappling with a slew of reports painting her as a workplace bully and and her office losing seven staffers since the disastrous border trip on June 25.

A press release announcing Sanders' new gig states her show 'will explore issues at the intersection of politics, culture and race and break down how decisions made in Washington impact electorates, industries, and communities across the country.'

'She will also interview law and policy makers, top government officials, scholars, and thought leaders.'

Sanders' departure was one of more than a half-dozen that prompted speculation that Harris' office may be in disarray

Sanders (right, at a January 2020 campaign event with Joe Biden) will be hosting multiple shows on MSNBC, the left-leaning network's president announced less than two weeks after her departure from Kamala Harris' office

Sanders shared the news herself on Twitter, writing, 'Well I guess I have some news to share this morning. I am excited to join @MSNBC and @TheChoice! I look forward to working with some of the most talented and amazing people in news. There is a lot to learn, but Im ready to get to work!'

Her future fellow MSNBC host Joy Reid celebrated the update.

'Congrats @SymoneDSanders and welcome to the family!' the liberal primetime host wrote on Twitter.

Heather Barmore, the director of the US Interior Department's digital strategy, wrote on the platform: 'This is fantastic news for a fantastic person.'

But some commented on the revolving door between Washington, DC officials and the media that covers them.

'The interchangeability between politics and the media is really dodgy, y'all,' wrote Ian Haworth, an editor at the conservative Daily Wire.

Sanders shared the news of her new job on Twitter late Monday morning

Her future co-worker, MSNBC host Joy Reid, welcomed Sanders to the network on Monday

An employee of the US Interior Department also congratulated the former Harris confidante

But some, like Daily Wire editor Ian Haworth, commented on the revolving door between politics and the media

Sanders made her national name by being the youngest presidential press secretary when she worked for Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign.

The 32-year-old defended her former boss in an interview published earlier this month in her hometown newspaper Omaha World-Herald, claiming it was the 'honor of her life' to serve Vice President Harris.

'She is someone who I watch every single day bring her full self to work,' Sanders said. 'I watch her challenge her teams, I watch her push us all to be better.

She added: 'I watch her raise issues and perspectives and topics and policy that other people  other folks just weren't thinking about.'

Kamala Harris' incoming communications director Jamal Simmons donated to Rand Paul's presidential campaign

Sanders called the reports and rumors of dysfunction in Harris' office just 'salacious gossip.'

Meanwhile the public-facing disarray continued on Monday when an investigation of incoming Harris communications director Jamal Simmons' Twitter account found he dismissed George W. Bush as an 'illegitimate' president.

He had claimed the election was 'stolen' from Al Gore and called Bush's 2000 victory illegitimate multiple times between 2012 and 2021, Fox News found.

Federal Election Commission filings revealed recently that Harris' incoming communications director also donated to Republican Senator Rand Pauls presidential campaign in 2015.

Simmons gave $250 in June 2015 to Pauls ultimately unsuccessful primary run for president.

The Kentucky senator was first elected to his post in 2010 and launched his presidential campaign in 2015. He dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses in February 2016 and was reelected to the Senate that year.

The information about Simmons' contribution comes after he already is off to a rocky start before even assuming his role in the vice presidents office.

Simmons was forced to apologize on Friday for a slew of previous tweets and comments that attacked Joe Biden, the COVID vaccine and spewed right-leaning immigration deportation views.

Simmons has dismissed the 2000 election as illegitimate on multiple occasions, his Twitter shows

The two knocks also come amidst a PR nightmare for Harris after seven aides left her office in the months after her disastrous southern border trip in June and reports emerged of her bully mentality and a toxic work environment.

With Simmons hiring, the vice presidents office is hoping to start anew.

In the 2015-2016 election season, Simmons also donated to several Democratic candidates and left-leaning entities.

He gave $500 to Harris run for Senate and another $500 combined donations to two separate Hillary Clinton-aligned groups to back the candidate in her run for president against Trump.

The new Harris aide, however, spent the first day after his hiring was revealed on cleanup duty.

Federal Election Commission filings reveal that Simmons gave $250 to Paul's campaign in June 2015. He also donated to Kamala Harris' Senate campaign and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in the 2015-2016 cycle

Simmons made a name for himself as a Democratic political analyst and operative with stints going back to the Bill Clinton administration. News of his hiring brought to light some of his more controversial tweets and statements.

As a pundit I tweeted +spoke A LOT, he tweeted Friday in a quick effort to address his past comments.

At times, I've been sarcastic, unclear, or just plainly missed the mark. I apologize for offending [people] who care as much as I do about making America the best, multi-ethnic, diverse democracy, he wrote.

He added: 'I'll help the Biden-Harris admin w/humility, sincerity+respect.'

One previous tweet touched on the red hot issue of immigration, which Harris has faced criticism for in her role as border czar.

'Just saw 2 undocumented folks talking on MSNBC. One Law student the other a protester. Can someone explain why ICE is not picking them up?' he tweeted back in 2010 amid one of many heated debates over U.S. immigration policy.

President Biden has charged Harris with focusing on the root causes of immigration, forcing her to already contend with political headaches over border crossings.

Chiming in on the issue was former White House aide Stephen Miller, an architect of the Trump Administration's controversial immigration policies.

'I agree with [Jamal Simmons]. If you break into our nation there must be deportation,' he wrote.

Jamal Simmons has been involved in national politics since the Clinton administration, and formerly served as deputy communications director for Al Gore's presidential campaign. He did a segment on a 'Dazed and Confused' Joe Biden as a media commentator in 2019

Simmons tweeted an apology Friday afternoon after some of his old tweets and comments surfaced criticizing Joe Biden, the COVID-19 vaccine and illegal immigrants

Years after the deportation tweet, Simmons ridiculed a 'dazed and confused' Joe Biden for conflating multiple stories while describing a trip to Afghanistan and criticized Donald Trump for pushing a 'janky science vaccine', it emerged on Friday.

Simmons has been brought on during an overhaul of the vice president's office, with her approval rating at a dire 32 percent and with seven staffers quitting since her disastrous border trip on June 25.

The veteran Democratic aide and TV commentator mocked Biden in 2019 for the gaffe during an episode of his politics show for The Hill called 'Why You Should Care.'

'We do this story about once a week!' he quipped. 'Its what you get with Uncle Joe.'

The segment began with a headline that said 'Dazed and Confused,' as he broke down the latest stumble by the former vice president, who had called himself a 'gaffe machine.'

Simmons made the comments at a time when the Democratic nomination was wide open  and long before he would be brought on to try to right Harris' struggling communications operation.

He told of how Biden at a town hall had 'conflated' multiple stories from a trip to Afghanistan. It turned out Biden got the timing wrong, the province wrong, along with key details  the story was about an Army soldier, not a Navy captain.

'This is the God's truth, he says. "My word as a Biden." Turns out, it wasn't God's truth,' Simmons says to the camera.

Simmons also critiqued Harris' run for president after she suspended her campaign, saying she 'pulled back in these very key moments.

He said she 'never quite got comfortable getting out of the pre-planned moments,' and criticized how she failed to capitalize on her early bussing attack on Biden, in another clip unearthed by Fox News. He said she also botched her handling of the fraught issue of Medicare for All during the primary.

Kamala Harris compares January 6 to Pearl Harbor and 9/11 Vice President Kamala Harris compared the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol one year ago to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and 9/11. 'Certain dates echo throughout history, including dates that instantly remind all who have lived through them where they were and what they were doing, when our democracy came under assault,' Harris began. 'December 7, 1941, September 11, 2001 and January 6, 2021.' Harris alluded to civil rights fights of the past century. 'What the extremists who roamed these halls targeted was not only the lives of elected leaders ... what they were assaulting were the institutions, the values, the ideals that generations of Americans have marched, picketed and shed blood to establish and defend.' 'We cannot let our future be decided by those bent on silencing our voices, overturning our votes, and peddling lies and misinformation by some radical faction that may be newly resurgent, but whose roots run old and deep.' Harris then called the U.S. the 'oldest and greatest democracy in the world.' 'I wonder, how will January 6 be come to be remembered?' Harris said. 'Will it be remembered as a moment that accelerated the unraveling of the oldest and greatest democracy in the world? Or a moment when we decided to secure and strengthen our democracy for generations to come?' Democracy was coined by the Greeks in 430 B.C., means 'for the people' and many communities such as Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the UK's Isle of Man, San Marino and Switzerland have had so-called democracies dating back to the ninth and tenth centuries. Advertisement

Simmons also went after former President Donald Trump on his coronavirus response  even calling life-saving vaccines under development 'janky.'

'Trumps fatally ill-managed Coronavirus response seems to have turned voters off to him the way Katrina destroyed Bushs political reputation, but pushing a janky science vaccine into the public for political purposes would turn incompetent culpability into intentional harm, he tweeted.

Urging people to get vaccinated has become a cornerstone of Biden's coronavirus response.

Harris is bringing Simmons into her press shop to replace one of seven staffer's she's lost over the past six months amid her own communications challenges.

Simmons will join the team after communications director Ashley Etienne and chief spokesperson took their leave in November and December.

An official announcement was expected from the White House later on Thursday, sources told The Hill.

Simmons is said to be widely respected in Democratic circles, and his entrance will come as the vice president's office is looking for a reset amid low poll numbers and headlines reporting dysfunction and bitter tension within the office.

Simmons has been involved in national politics since the Clinton administration, and formerly served as deputy communications director for Al Gore's presidential campaign.

A source familiar with the move told The Hill Simmons is expected to 'really change things up.'

Simmons also worked as an aide to former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., former Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark and was chief of staff former Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick, D-Mich.

He's also worked in media and frequents the cable news circuit.

Harris has now lost at least seven aides since her disastrous southern border trip on June 25 after her director of press operations Peter Velz confirmed Wednesday he is leaving his role with the White House.

Velz's announcement comes in the midst of a staff exodus following reports the vice president is a 'bully' who facilitates a toxic work environment and other reports indicate tensions between the president's staff and Harris'.

'Today is my last day at the White House, and it truly has been an honor,' Velz tweeted on Wednesday. 'I will be forever grateful to Vice President Harris, the incredible Team @VP, and I'm so proud of our work this past year supporting this historic Administration.'

'The White House is an amazing place to work -- you're surrounded by the most selfless, smart, hard-working people everyday doing their best to serve the American people. And it has has been an absolute joy,' he added.

Velz's next job will start later this month at the State Department's Protocol team where Velz says he will still support President Joe Biden and Harris in their meetings with foreign leaders, delegations and international travel.

His announcement comes the day after fellow staffer Vince Evans confirmed his departure from the vice president's office to replace Kyle Anderson as executive director with the Congressional Black Caucus.

Velz (left) made his announcement the day after Vince Evans (right) confirmed his departure from Harris' team

Velz confirmed his departure in a Wednesday tweet after reports emerged toward the end of 2021 that he was eyeing the exits in the midst of a staff exodus from the vice president's office

Velz will work with the State Department on the protocol team starting later in January

He posted a throw back image of hi at the press briefing room podium from 2021 and a more current image in the same pose

Evans and Velz's departures exhibit the reports of a staff exodus coming to fruition amid reports of turmoil in the vice president's office.

At the end of December, Harris' chief spokesperson Symone Sanders left her post.

Peter Velz confirmed Wednesday he is leaving Vice President Kamala Harris' team  making him the seventh staffer to depart since June

It followed the departure of Ashley Etienne, Harris' former communications director, who left in November.

In the aftermath of Harris' botched Central America and border trip, reports emerged that two other aides were eyeing the exits. Harris' former director of advance Karly Satkowiak and deputy director of advance Gabrielle DeFranceschi departed shortly after the trip in June.

Staffers on the VP's advance team are responsible for planning all of her trips, surveying venues for her to visit and working with local officials to prepare venues for media coverage.

At the time of Satkowiak's and DeFranceschi's departure from Harris' team it was not clear why they were leaving  but it did fuel further rumors of workplace tensions.

Rajan Kaur who was Harris' director of digital strategies left her staff in July after opting not to relocate to Washington D.C. from Brooklyn.

Harris' job approval rating is at 32 per cent, according to a new USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Tuesday. While that is a terrible rating, it is a 4 per cent increase from the November poll where her approval was at only 28 per cent.

Evans, in moving on from the vice president's office, will work closely with CBC Chairwoman Representative Joyce Beatty from Ohio.

'I started my career in Washington working for a member of the CBC, so I know firsthand the tremendous leadership and impact this caucus has in Congress and across the country,' Evans said in a statement. 'As we write the next chapter of the CBC story, I am excited for the opportunity to lend my experience and passion for supporting the collective vision of this storied caucus.'

Evans (right) said he is leaving Vice President Kamala Harris' (left) office to become executive director with the Congressional Black Caucus

Velz tweeted his congratulations to Evans on Tuesday

Velz wrote in a tweet Tuesday of Evans' new position: 'Congrats to the absolute KING and MVP of Team VP! Adore this man  one of the best colleagues and friends you can ask for.'

'I'm so happy to see you continue fighting the good fight and go do great things with the Congressional Black Caucus. Love you, [Vince Evans]!' he added along with a picture of them together.

Reports revealed that Velz, currently director of press operations for Harris, has also told those in the vice president's office that he plans to leave.

As Evans joins the CBC, there are already seven members of the 56-member caucus who have said they will not run for reelection in this year's midterms. This includes veteran members and Democratic Representatives Brenda Lawrence from Michigan and Bobby Rush from Illinois, the only lawmaker to ever beat Barack Obama in a political election.

Other CBC members seeking other offices include Representatives Karen Bass from California, Anthony Brown from Maryland and Val Demings from Florida  all Democrats.

As of Wednesday morning, 25 House Democrats announced they will not seek reelection this year as the party tries to hold onto their razor thin majorities in both chambers.

Evans, in his new role with CBC, will function as a chief of staff for one of Congress' most influential caucuses. His duties will include overseeing daily activities and working with members and their top aides to coordinate and implement priorities and legislative agenda.

A Florida native, Evans began his political career as an aide to a Tallahassee city commissioner, was a staffer in the Florida state Senate and served on the senior staff of Florida Representative Al Lawson.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Evans was Southern political director for Joe Biden and was political director for Harris when she became the vice presidential nominee.

Symone Sanders (left), Harris' senior adviser and chief spokesperson, left the White House at the end of 2021. It came after Ashley Etienne (right), Harris' former communications director, left in November

Officials maintain that Sanders and Etienne's departures were long-planned and not evidence of the reported turmoil.

Further, reports note that Sanders is getting married next year and was never able to go on a proper tour to sell her book, No, You Shut Up, which was published in May 2020.

When announcing her departure last year, many took Sanders' exit as further evidence that Harris's office was in disarray, amid headlines of a toxic work environment and an exodus of key personnel.

Some stories, however, pointed the finger at Sanders.

Two unidentified sources told The Hill that the spokeswoman was seen as a rival to Harris's communications director, and that she was the 'voice in numerous blind quotes about friction in the office.'

The Washington Post published a damaging expose in December branding Harris a 'bully' who inflicted 'constant-soul destroying criticism' on her office staff.

The piece - a result of interviews with 18 people connected to the VP - alleges that Harris failed to read briefings they'd prepared, only to turn on them if she was subsequently criticized for being unprepared.

The claims from staff who worked for Harris were published amid confirmed departures of two high level staffers, with two others who are said to be heading for the door too.

'It's clear that you're not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,' a former colleague told the Washington Post.

'With Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence.

'So you're constantly sort of propping up a bully and it's not really clear why.' Harris's staffers

Meanwhile, Gil Duran, who worked with Harris for just five months in 2013 before quitting, said the vice president was 'repeating the same old destructive patterns.'

Writing in his San Francisco Examiner column, he said: 'One of the things we've said in our little text groups among each other is what is the common denominator through all this and it's her.'

'One of the things we've said in our little text groups among each other is what is the common denominator through all this and it's her,' Duran told the Post. 'Who are the next talented people you're going to bring in and burn through and then have (them) pretend they're retiring for positive reasons.'

People familiar with the conversations told Politico that even more 'key members of Harris' orbit' are 'eyeing the exits' and have expressed interest in leaving less than a year into her vice presidency.

Some Democratic allies have urged Harris to embrace the concept of a reset after a rocky first year as vice president, which has been riddled with project failures  like addressing the southern border crisis  and reports of tensions between her team and the president's.

Her poll ratings have tanked, with top Democrats said to be appalled at the idea of her running for president in 2024 should Joe Biden decide not to seek a second term.

Harris' staff are leaving because they're burned out, there are better opportunities elsewhere and they don't want to be permanently branded a 'Harris person,' according to Axios.

Harris tamped down rumors of tension as she addressed Sanders' departure during a gaggle on her trip to North Carolina last month.

'I love Symone,' the vice president said. 'And I mean that sincerely.'

'I can't wait to see what she will do next. I know that it's been three years jumping on and off planes, going around the country ' Harris continued.

Sanders joined President Joe Biden's presidential campaign in 2019.

Harris declined to answer further questions on the wave of departures.

'Well, I told you how I feel about Symone,' Harris said.

During the trip, Harris' personal aide, Opal Vadhan, posted a photo of the VP's team all smiling as they celebrated the birthday of Deputy Director of Advance, Juan Ortega.

'A favorite tradition in the @VP's office is celebrating staff birthdays with cupcakes! Happy Birthday, @JuanoBano!' she wrote.

Harris was in Charlotte, North Carolina to tour a public transit facility and give a speech on the bipartisan infrastructure bill alongside Pete Buttigieg, her rumored competition.

She hugged the Transportation secretary before they both boarded Air Force Two. Buttigieg then took questions from a gaggle of reporters on the plane alone.

Amid poll numbers in the high 20s, some Democrats are pushing for Buttigieg to replace Harris at the top of the ticket in 2024, should Biden choose not to run for a second term.

The White House insists Biden plans to run again, but he will be 82 in 2024.

In November, Harris hit back at claims she is being misused as vice president, saying she doesn't feel like she's being under utilized by Biden and dismissed her low approval ratings which plummeted to 28 per cent in a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll of registered voters earlier this month.

'Polls, they go up, they go down,' Harris said. 'But I think what is most important is that we remain consistent with what we need to do to deal with the issues that we're presented with at this moment.'

No announcement has been made on whether Sanders has lined up another job, sparking questions over the circumstances surrounding her departure.

Harris in recent weeks has battled mounting reports that her office is in disarray, and that her team is frustrated at being handed 'no-win' tasks that don't suit her skillset, such as tackling the 'root causes' of migration behind the recent border crisis.

Asked if the staff departures were prompted by bad headlines for Harris, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that working in the first year of an administration is 'grueling and exhausting.'

'It's natural for staffers who've thrown their heart and soul into a job to be ready to move on after a few years,' she said.

Praising Sanders' work in the administration, Psaki said the spokeswoman 'has charisma coming out of her eyeballs.'

'It's natural for staffers who have thrown their heart and soul into a job to be ready to move on to a new challenge after a few years,' Psaki said.

Sanders traveled frequently with Harris and as a senior adviser helped her juggle a daunting portfolio including the migrant issue and push for a sweeping federal overhaul of election laws.

Harris has suffered plunging approval ratings since taking office, threatening what would normally be an easy path to the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, or 2024 if Biden decides not to seek re-election at age 81.

Amid the turbulence, Sanders has been Harris' top bulldog defender, batting back at claims of internal disarray and tension with the West Wing.

Last month, Sanders was the first to respond to a detailed CNN report in which Harris aides complained that she has been set up to fail, and handed a portfolio that is not commensurate with her historic status as the first woman, and first woman of color, to hold the vice president's office.

'They're consistently sending her out there on losing issues in the wrong situations for her skill set,' said a former high-level Harris aide in the bombshell report.

Sanders fired back in a statement: 'It is unfortunate that after a productive trip to France in which we reaffirmed our relationship with America's oldest ally and demonstrated U.S. leadership on the world stage, and following passage of a historic, bipartisan infrastructure bill that will create jobs and strengthen our communities, some in the media are focused on gossip - not on the results that the President and the Vice President have delivered.'

Amid the turbulence, Sanders has been Harris' top bulldog defender, batting back at claims of internal disarray and tension with the West Wing

An official in the vice president's office pointed out to Politico that Sanders, a former Biden campaign aide, had been working for the administration in some capacity for three years, and said that Biden and Harris had known of her departure 'for a while'.

Etienne's plan to leave was confirmed on November 18.

'Ashley is valued member of the Vice President's team, who has worked tirelessly to advance the goals of this administration. She is leaving the office in December to pursue other opportunities,' a White House official told DailyMail.com at the time.

Both Harris and Biden have vehemently denied that there is any tension between them, denying reports that are mostly based on the accounts of anonymous staffers.

The White House went full throat with their defense of her after a CNN report claimed Biden was distancing himself from Harris because of her sliding poll numbers, while the vice president is said to have felt isolated and frustrated with being given some of the most difficult issues for the administration in her portfolio.

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain tweeted Harris is an 'incredible leader' and Psaki argued Harris receives more criticism because of her status as a woman of color.

Harris is the country's first female vice president and the first vice president of color.

The president has publicly said he intends to run again, although pundits say that announcing he intends to step down after a single term would turn him into a lame duck leader.

But there has been anonymous chatter among Democrats that, if he does, he should consider replacing Harris.

There's additional speculation that if he doesn't run again, Harris would not be the strongest contender to replace him. Some have suggested Buttigieg would be a better candidate for the nomination.

A Politico/Morning Consult poll at the end of 2021 showed the transportation secretary with a higher favorability rating than both Biden and Harris  whom he led by 12 points.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has turned a Democratic charge back on them, accusing the left of spreading the 'big lie' about an 'evil anti-voting conspiracy' as they try to pass voting rights legislation.

Republicans have vowed a 'scorched earth' policy if Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer tries to eliminate the filibuster in order to advance voting legislation, which Republicans charge will federalize elections that should be handled by the states.

As part of that effort, McConnell's office sent out a memo to reporters this weekend slamming Democrats and arguing their party has 'repeatedly stood up to the left and their Big Lie that there is some evil anti-voting conspiracy sweeping America.'

'They will try to use fake hysteria to break the Senate and silence millions of Americans' voices so they can take over elections and ram through their radical agenda,' the memo claimed.

In response, Schumer on Monday accused McConnell of 'gaslighting' America.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell accused Democrats of spread the 'big lie' about an 'evil anti-voting conspiracy' as they push voting rights legislation

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer slapped back McConnell is 'gaslighting' America

Schumer has vowed to pass voting rights legislation by January 17th - Martin Luther King Jr. Day - making this a critical week for Democrats.

But his plan to go 'nuclear' and change the Senate rules to allow the legislation to proceed with a simple majority vote faces opposition from two of his own: Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

Republicans are solidly opposed to the voting rights legislation, calling it an attempt to federalize elections they argue should be run by states.

Thay have said they will filibuster any attempt to pass federal legislation. That means Schumer would have to take the so-called 'nuclear' option, in which he holds a vote to change the rules to bypass the 60-vote threshhold to advance the legislation.

'If Republicans continue to hijack the rules of the chamber to protect us from protecting our democracy, then the Senate will debate and consider changes to the rules on or before Jan. 17,' Schumer warned on the Senate floor last week.

But Manchin and Sinema don't want to kill the filibuster without buy-in from Republicans, who are opposed.

As part of their counter-offensive, Republicans also point to a 2016 study from Stanford that found making it easier to vote doesn't actually increase voter turn out.

'The recent wave of electoral reforms does not seem to have had any significant effect on voter turnout. And there is even evidence that some of the new reforms may have actually decreased turnout,' the study found.

In contrast, Democrats point to what they call a wave of restrictive voting right laws in various states.

Between January 1 and December 7, 2021, at least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting, the nonpartisan Brennan Center found. More than 440 bills with provisions that restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states in the 2021 legislative sessions, the center said.

Between January 1 and December 7, 2021, at least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting, the nonpartisan Brennan Center found

Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema oppose changing Senate rules to end the filibuster and Schumer needs their votes to make it happen

President Joe Biden will get involved in voting rights push with a trip to Atlanta on Tuesday

Democrats also tried to tie their push on voting legislation to the one-year anniversary of the January 6th attack on the Capitol, using it as a rallying cry.

In a letter to his colleagues last week, Schumer wrote that 'what happened on Jan. 6 and the one-sided, partisan actions being taken by Republican-led state legislatures across the country are directly linked, and we can and must take strong action to stop this antidemocratic march.'

Republicans say invoking January 6th is offensive. The voting bills were largely written before the riot in the Capitol.

'It is beyond distasteful for some of our colleagues to ham-fistedly invoke the Jan. 6 anniversary to advance these aims,' McConnelll said. 'The fact that violent criminals broke the law does not entitle Senate Democrats to break the Senate.'

Democrats are seeking to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, named after the late Congressman and civil rights activist. It would replace part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in 2013.

The bill would also restore voters ability to challenge laws, such as those related redistricting or voter ID requirements that could be seen as discriminatory.

It passed the House in August 219-212 along straight party lines.

The Senate is also trying to approve the House-passed For The People Act, which expands voter registration, early voting, mail-in voting and introduces restrictions on campaign finance.

Biden, who spent 36 years in the Senate, has been reluctant to get involved in the fight over the filibuster.

However, in December, he conceded in an interview with ABC News that he would support making an exception 'if the only thing standing between getting voting rights legislation passed and not getting passed is the filibuster.'

Biden heads to Atlanta on Tuesday to push for the voting legislation - traveling to the home state of civil rights icons the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis. Georgia was also ground zero in the 2020 presidential election, where Donald Trump falsely claimed Democrats stole votes to hand Biden a victory there.

The state also has two competitive races this fall: Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is in a tough re-election bid and Democrat Stacey Abrams is making a second attempt to become governor.

He will lay a wreath at the crypt of Martin Luther King Jr. and will visit the Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Warnock is a pastor.

He'll speak at the Atlanta University Center Consortium, which consists of four historically black colleges.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who is in charge of voting rights efforts for the Biden administration, will accompany the president on the trip. Harris would also be the tie-breaking vote in the 50-50 evenly divided Senate.
Firefighters had to take out the wall to reach the man trying to rob the house

ot caught in a chimney and had to be rescued

A burglar had to be rescued by firefighters after getting stuck in a chimney during an attempted robbery.

Police in Montgomery County, Maryland were called to a house in Silver Spring at 5.30am on Saturday to find the man wedged in the chimney above a fire place.

It is not clear at this stage how exactly the man became stuck but cops found that the top of the chimney had been removed.

It took firefighters more than an hour to free him - dismantling the wall brick-by-brick before he was taken to hospital with a police escort.

Maryland emergency services had to take the wall out in order to reach the burglar in the chimney

The hole left by the firefighters in the Silver Springs property after the foiled burglary on Saturday at 5.30am

Around two dozen firefighters had to work for hours to free the man who was then taken to hospital suffering from minor injuries

Firefighters used ladders and hammers to reach the man after they were called by the resident of the house

According to NBC Washington, a resident at the single-family home in Silver Spring called cops after hearing 'rustling' that he thought was coming from outside at around 3.30am

Officers attended the scene but left when they could find no evidence of an attempted break-in.

An hour later, the same resident said he heard 'moaning' inside a wall. Cops returned and found that the top of the chimney had been removed.

Firefighters had to take the wall of the property out and captured the rescue in hilarious footage.

The would-be burglar was then taken to hospital with a police escort and was treated for minor injuries.

Police did not confirm whether the man was charged for the attempted burglary.



The firefighters removed a sizable amount of the wall in order to get access to the trapped wannabe thief

The extraction by emergency services made a mess of the living room of the Maryland house

Around two dozen firemen from the Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Service took 90 minutes to free the man.

The fire department posted photos of the burglar while he was still stuck in the chimney.

The Chief Spokesperson for Montgomery County (MD) Fire & Rescue Service, Pete Piringer, tweeted the images hours after the foiled burglary.

They included pictures of the man mid-rescue with his trapped legs visible.
An eight-year-old girl was killed in a drive-by shooting as she went to pet a horse that was passing her family's front yard in Georgia.

Arbrie Anthony, and the horse she was petting, were killed when someone opened fire from a distinctive-looking orange Jeep just before 7.30pm on Saturday in the 2000 block of 3rd Avenue in Augusta.

Richmond County Sheriff Richard Roundtree said that he doesn't believe the eight-year-old was the intended target but said in front of her yard was a 'common gathering place' for groups - and believes the drive-by was targeting one of those individuals.

He added that it 'may have involved gangs' or could have been a 'retaliatory' attack but it was too early to say.

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Arbrie Anthony, 8 (left and right), was playing in the yard of her family's Augusta, Georgia, home on Saturday when she was fatally shot in the head

Authorities say suspects fired a barrage of bullets, killing Arbrie and also fatally wounding a horse that happened to be nearby

Cops are looking for this red-orange Jeep Compass Trailhawk in connection with the drive-by shooting

'These are cowards,' the sheriff said of the suspects. 'No matter what your beef is, no matter what your intent is, when children are present, they get a pass... it's always been that way.'

According to the sheriff, two horse riders had been passing by and Arbie had been petting their horses when a reddish-orange, newer model Jeep Compass Trailhawk drove by, and one or two of its occupants fired 5-10 rounds.

Arbrie was shot in the head and was transported by her father to Augusta University Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead a short time later.

Bullets also struck one of the horses, which died the next day, and a vehicle that was parked at the scene.

The horse riders were not injured and are said to be complying fully with police investigations.

Arbrie's father, Arthur Anthony (right) spoke at a vigil on Sunday, calling on the gunmen to turn themselves in

Family and friends gathered at the scene in August to pay tribute to Arbrie

A woman believed to be Arbrie's mother kneels beside a makeshift memorial to the slain eight-year-old on Sunday

On Sunday, distraught family members held a candlelight vigil outside Arbrie's home and called on the suspects to turn themselves in.

'They took my heart,' Arbrie's father, Arthur Anthony, told WJBF.

Anthony said his daughter loved dancing on TikTok and enjoyed the outdoors.

'She was a happy child, a loving child. She loved to do stuff loved going places,' said Arbrie's aunt Jamila McDaniel.

Arbire was playing in the yard and went to pet a horse during a gathering of people when the drive-by shooting took place. Her father said he witnessed the moment his daughter collapsed.

'I got on the ground, and the first thing when I got up, I yelled for her. She didnt respond back and I picked her up and rushed her to the hospital,' said Anthony.

Richmond County Sheriff Richard Roundtree told reporters during a press conference on Monday that the drive-by shooting was not a random act

Arbrie was described by her family as a joyful girl who loved dancing on TikTok and enjoyed being outdoors

During Sunday's emotional vigil, the girl's father appealed directly to the person or people responsible for his daughter's death.

'Please come forward, please speak up, please. Thats my baby,' Anthony begged.

A GoFundMe campaign has been launched to help Arbrie's family with her funeral expenses. So far, more than $19,000 has been raised.

Sheriff Roundtree revealed during Monday's press conference that the shooter or shooters fled the scene in the Jeep Compass Trailhawk featuring a broad black stripe on the hood and a moon roof.

Anyone with information on the drive-by shooting is being asked to call 706-821-1080.

Sheriff Roundtree appealed to any potential witnesses to come forward, saying that he is convinced that there are people in the community who know the shooter or shooters.

'I am confident we're going to solve this case,' the sheriff said.
The desperate family of a woman who has been missing since New Year's Day have issued a picture of her distinctive bat tattoo in the hope it will aid ongoing efforts to find her.

Alice Byrne, 28, was last seen leaving a friend's flat in Marlborough Street in Portobello, Edinburgh, between 8am and 10am on January 1.

Police drones, specialist services and officers from Police Scotland's Marine Unit have all been involved in the search since her 'out of character' disappearance nine days ago.

A Facebook group dedicated to finding her has also attracted thousands of members in just a matter of days.

A member of the group shared a close-up of Alice's distinctive bat tattoo on Monday in the hope it will rejig the memory of anyone who may have seen her.

The tattoo, on her left wrist, shows several bats and splatters that have been drawn in the style of an 'inkblot' test.

Posting the picture online, Andrea Fraser said: 'Sharing with the permission of family.

'Some of you will have seen the description and reproduced print of Alices distinctive bat tattoo. Here is a close up photo of Alices actual tattoo.

The family of missing Alice Byrne have released a new photograph of a distinctive tattoo on her left wrist

Ms Byrne (pictured), 28, was last seen leaving a friend's flat in Marlborough Street in Portobello, Edinburgh, between 8am and 10am on New Year's Day

'It really is distinctive - please continue to share using hashtag #FindAliceByrne'

Alice has been described as white, around 5ft 6ins in height and of medium build with short black hair.

She was last seen wearing a long black top with black jeans that were ripped at the knee alongside white trainers. She was also carrying a black rucksack.

However, 10 days on there have been no reported sightings.

The Facebook page set up to aid efforts to find her currently has more than 3,600 members.

Edinburgh local Rich Howells released a statement on behalf of the family on Sunday in which they said were 'astounded' by the support.

It said: 'Were astounded by the response we have received and really do feel supported by the community.

'We also wanted to reiterate our confidence in the police.

'Theyve been thorough and are doing way, way more in the background than people see. Thank you for everything you are all doing to #FindAliceByrne x'

The family has previously said it is 'shocked and distressed' regarding Alice's disappearance.

Local residents had attempted to organise a community search of Portobello and its surrounding areas, but these were cancelled at the request of police

Alices twin brother, Bruno Byrne, posted on social media that these searches were called off due to specialised police teams conducting searches and to avoid compromising useful evidence.

Last week, he said believed his sister was heading to a beach party at Portobello the day she went missing.

Alice (pictured on CCTV) has been described as white, around 5ft 6ins in height and of medium build, with short black hair

Police Scotland Chief Inspector Kieran Dougal said on Saturday: 'As time passes we have become increasingly concerned for her wellbeing and safety.

'We continue to appeal to anyone who was in the Portobello area at that time who may have dashcam footage to check devices and call if you have any sightings of Alice.

'We are aware that the beach and promenade area was busy on New Year's morning so appeal to anyone to review photos and call if they have any information that may assist in tracing Alice.'

Police Scotland are urging the public to contact the force on 101 with any information regarding her disappearance quoting the correct incident number - 0647 of January 2.
An instructor partly employed for his language skills has won a claim for racial discrimination after getting a dressing down for talking in Polish.

Team leader Slawomir Rowinski was accused by supervisor Neil Wailes of breaching a strict company policy to converse only in English.

The Polish-born instructor told an employment tribunal one of the reasons he had been hired was for his language skills.

He claimed he had been told he could speak in Polish if he was training and it helped with that.

Polish has become the most common non-native tongue in England and Wales with 700,000 speakers - ahead of Urdu and Punjabi.

Roughly half the workforce at food company Kuehne & Nagel in Reading is made up of migrants.

They come from Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Nigeria, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Romania and Poland.

Scots-born Mr Wailes 'exploded with angry and rude talk' as Mr Rowinski was teaching two new starters.

Polish born team leader Slawomir Rowinski was accused of breaching company policy

He worked at food firm Kuehne & Nagel in Reading whose workforce is made up of migrants

He shouted: 'I'm really p***** off with people who do not speak English at work.'

Mr Wailes said it was the claimant who reacted aggressively by throwing down a potato - insisting he could 'speak Polish if I want.'

He told the hearing colleague Stephen Maginnis first asked him to speak English. But the tribunal believed Mr Rowinski.

Employment Judge Andrew Gumbiti-Zimuto said: 'We found on 9 July 2019 the claimant was speaking in Polish, this was agreed by the parties.

'We accept that the claimant did this, as he said, to help a Polish trainee experiencing difficulties with an aspect of the training.

'We note the claimant did not recall Stephen Maginnis' intervention. We attach no significance to that.

'The claimant's evidence to the Tribunal was Neil Wailes' intervention was aggressive and hostile.

'The claimant accepted he had an angry reaction to what was said by Neil Wailes but considered it was appropriate in the light of how Neil Wailes had spoken to him.'

Swiss-based Kuehne & Nagel is a global transport and logistics firm that provides sea and airfreight forwarding

He said the tribunal was satisfied Mr Wailes was 'angry, rude,, aggressive and hostile.'

A second incident occurred a month later when Mr Rowinski was standing by the Goods In window speaking to a colleague in Polish.

The Reading tribunal accepted Mr Wailes approached him and in a rude aggressive manner said 'stop speaking in Polish'.

Next day he delivered a briefing in which he reminded staff of the respondent's language policy.

Mr Rowinski lodged a grievance complaint that was later rejected by shift manager Mathew Lindsay.

He told the investigation he had been given permission to use Polish when training.

The judge said: 'In his evidence to the Tribunal he stated he was told that one of the reasons he was recruited was for his language skills.'

Swiss-based Kuehne & Nagel is a global transport and logistics firm that provides sea and airfreight forwarding, contract logistics and overland businesses.

Its code of conduct states English as 'the business language employed across the company and particularly in the United Kingdom.'

Other languages in the working environment can create an atmosphere which 'is exclusive, potentially disrespectful and may be regarded as a breach of policy.'

Mr Rowinski, of Reading, Berkshire, has been responsible for training new and existing employees since 2007.

The tribunal upheld his claim for direct racial discrimination. Compensation will be agreed at a remedy hearing on 30 March.

The judge said: 'Neil Wailes' words suggested it was not so much the breach of the policy that was annoying him but the claimant speaking Polish.

'We are satisfied there are facts from which we could conclude the claimant was treated less favourably and that the less favourable treatment was on the grounds of his race.

'We conclude the respondent has failed to prove the less favourable treatment is not in any way related to the claimant's race.'
A missing girl last seen in Oldham nearly a week ago has become the focus of an international police hunt.

Inayah Kausar Mushtaq, six, was taken to the UK after leaving her home in Barcelona with her father according to Spanish missing people association SOS Desaparecidos.

The youngster's desperate mother Yousra Kausar, who is divorced from Inayah's dad and has now flown to England, said today she had been told by police they believed the pair were still in the UK.

An all-ports alert is understood to have been put in place to stop the youngster being taken out of Europe.

Speaking hours after SOS Desaparecidos confirmed Inayah was with her unnamed father and had vanished on January 4, worried Yousra said: 'My ex-husband came to visit our daughter that day.

Inayah Kausar Mushtaq, six, was taken to the UK after leaving her home in Barcelona with her dad according to Spanish missing people association SOS Desaparecidos

The youngster's desperate mother Yousra Kausar, who is divorced from Inayah's dad and has now flown to England, said today she had been told by police they believed the pair were still in the UK

'He said he was only going to spend an hour and a half with her but he then sent a message saying he wouldn't return until the following day and switched his phone off and never brought her back.

'The following morning he sent me another message saying they had left Europe and were in Turkey and were about to leave for another country with false passports containing names and dates of birth that had been changed.'

She told a Spanish TV programme: 'I'm in England now and his family say they don't know anything but the police here have told me they don't think my ex and my daughter have left the UK and believe they remain here.

'He left a letter with his sister saying he'd been planning this in the two years since I remarried.'

UK police are said to have been trying to geolocate the phone Inayah's dad sent his January 5 message to Yousra on.

SOS Desaparecidos, confirming the disappearance, said in a missing person's alert on the disturbing case alongside a photo of Inayah: 'Urgent. This six-year-old girl disappeared in Oldham on January 4.

'She is 3ft 6ins tall, slim with dark, long brown hair and a mole under her right eye. She is with her father.'

Inayah's mother Yousra said her ex-husband (pictured) was only meant to spend an hour and a half with his daughter, but he then sent a message saying he wouldn't return until the following day and switched his phone off

Spanish missing people association SOS Desaparecidos is investigating Inayah's disappearance, using this poster to appeal for information

One unconfirmed local report said Inayah, who is described as Spanish, used to live in the UK.

Her father, who is believed to have family ties to the Greater Manchester area, has been separated from Inayah's mum since the girl was three months old.

They divorced in 2018 but had shared custody of the missing six-year-old, although her dad is only believed to have had permission to visit her during the daytime between 10am and 7pm.

Pakistan has been mooted as one of the countries Inayah could be taken to, although Yousra said today her ex had told her when he claimed to be in Turkey he was heading to another unnamed destination.

Greater Manchester Police have been approached for a comment.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stumbled as she left the stage after singing the praises of late Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid at his funeral on Saturday.

The California Democrat, 81, quickly regained her balance by grabbing on to the podium after the slip.

During her remarks, Pelosi claimed that she had never heard Reid say an unkind word about any of his colleagues, a claim former President Obama later refuted.

'Few could rival Harry's understanding of his senators, their states, their needs, their ambitions, and in all of our conversations I never heard Harry say an unkind word about any of his Senate colleagues, Democratic or Republican,' Pelosi said.

Obama, who has credited Reid with his rise to the White House and delivered the eulogy, fact checked the speaker. 'He was willing to cut deals, even with folks he didn't agree with or particularly like.'

'I heard Nancy Pelosi say she never heard Harry say anything bad about any of his colleagues. I don't know about that Nancy,' the former president said as the room broke out in laughter.

'But he works with them! I love Nancy but--' Obama said, as he stopped talking and started chuckling himself.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stumbled as she left the stage after singing the praises of late Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid on Saturday

The California Democrat quickly regained her balance by grabbing on to the podium after the slip

During her remarks, Pelosi claimed that she had never heard Reid say an unkind word about any of his colleagues, a claim former President Obama later refuted

'Harry may have been a proud Democratic partisan, he didn't shy away from bare knuckle politics, but what is true is that I never heard Harry speak of politics as if it was some unbending battle between good and evil,' Obama said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also told of how Reid had frequently hung up the phone on her, a quirk known to many of those close to the late senator.

'He was a man of few words and he wanted everybody else to be a person of few words,' she said.

'And again, we'll go to the phone calls, because I immodestly say that I probably got hung up on the most by Harry Reid. Two or three times a day for 12 years. That is official working days, sometimes Saturday and Sunday.'

Obama said: 'He was willing to cut deals, even with folks he didn't agree with or particularly like.'

Reid died at the age of 82 at his home in Henderson, Nevada on Dec. 28

'But so sometimes I even called back, said 'Harry, I was singing your praises. I was thanking you for the great job you did in the legislation,' and the rest. 'I don't want to hear it,' click.'

'Harry's modesty made him unique, you might say, in politics, but his humility was rooted in his strong values,' Pelosi said.

Pelosi described an instance of his modesty when she tried to plan a dinner party to celebrate his accomplishments as he retired from the Senate.

'I don't want to do it,' Pelosi recalled Reid telling her. 'Save the money. Feed the poor.'

Reid encouraged Obama to run for the presidency in 2008, even though he was only a junior senator at the time, and the two became critical allies with Obama in the White House and Reid leading the Senate.

'Harry was not a schmoozer or a backslider. He did not regale you with long drawn out stories and he did not appreciate long drawn out stories,' Obama said.

The former president also spoke in awe of Reid's arduous upbringing and rise to the halls of Congress, noting his 'lack of pretension' and 'abiding loyalty.'

'They're qualities that are in short supply these days,' Obama said.

'It seems to me they are precisely qualities our democracy requires. Every understood you don't have to see eye to eye on everything in order to live together. Be decent toward each other. That we can learn to bridge differences - Background and race and region. He knew that our system of government isn't based on demanding that everybody think exactly the same way, in fact it presumes that ... people rarely will,' he continued.

Obama during his remarks told of the dirty work Reid had to put in to push through his landmark Affordable Care Act in 2009.

'The deals Harry made to get that law done didn't always look pretty,' Mr. Obama said, adding: 'Whenever I would object to a change he wanted to make, whether because of some policy concerns or worries about the optics, Harry would tell me with some exasperation in his voice, 'Mr. President, you know a lot more than I do about health care policy, OK? But I know the Senate.'

President Biden, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer all spoke during an invitation-only memorial for the longtime Senate leader who died Dec. 28 at home in Henderson, Nevada, at age 82 of complications from pancreatic cancer.
Attorney Alan Dershowitz - who defended Donald Trump during his first impeachment trial - is denying a report that claims he asked the 45th president to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell.

The request to absolve Maxwell - now a convicted sex predator - reportedly came after she was hit with sex trafficking charges and extradited to New York to await trial in July 2020.

The former Harvard Law School professor reportedly spoke to Trump about Maxwell's case during the last vestiges of his presidency.

Maxwell's brother Ian told the Times of London that 'there was one phone call between Professor Dershowitz and a family member during which the generic issue of pardons was touched on.'

Dershowitz dismissed the claim Monday, telling DailyMail.com: 'It's not true. It's false.'

Jeffrey Epstein's lawyer Alan Dershowitz allegedly asked client Donald Trump to PARDON Ghislaine Maxwell before she stood trial for sex trafficking underage girls

Trump did not issue a pardon for Maxwell who was convicted for her role in a sex trafficking scandal alleged to involve high-profile political figures, billionaires, and at least one member of the British royal family last month.

She faces up to 65 years in prison, but more time could be tacked onto her sentence after she faces trial again on perjury charges.

Trump had previously wished Maxwell well after confirming they had met several times in the past.

When asked to comment on whether he believed Maxwell would turn in the names of powerful people shortly after her arrest, Trump responded he 'hadn't been following it too much' but that he 'wishes her well'.

'I just wish her well frankly,' he said.

'I've met her numerous times over the years especially since I lived in Palm Beach and I guess they lived in Palm Beach.'

After hopes of a pardon fell through, Maxwell's lawyers are hopeful she'll get a retrial after some jurors reportedly admitted using their experiences of sexual abuse to sway the jury.

Maxwell's conviction is in jeopardy after Juror No 50 Scotty David admitted he 'flew through' a pre-trial questionnaire and did not recall being asked on the form about his experience of sexual abuse.

Dershowitz defended Trump (pictured on July 21, 2020) during his first impeachment trial

The request to absolve Maxwell - now a convicted sex predator - came after she was hit with sex trafficking charges and extradited to New York to await trial in July 2020. Maxwell is pictured with pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in 2005

Maxwell's sex trafficking case dominated national headlines last month and ended with five convictions related to her role in a sex trafficking scandal

Donald Trump sent a message of support to Ghislaine Maxwell as she awaited her trial for sex trafficking minors. Pictured the president, with First Lady Melania Trump, Epstein and Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago in 2000 (left) and Trump and Maxwell together at the Anand Jon Fashion Show in September 2000 in New York City (right)

David claimed he used his experience to influence other jurors, saying: 'When I shared that, they were able to come around on the memory aspect of the sexual abuse.'

The 35-year-old, who has hired a lawyer, could face jail if it is found he intentionally lied on the questionnaire.

A second, unidentified, juror told The New York Times that they, too, had been abused as a child.

'They said they had discussed the experience during deliberations and that the revelation had appeared to help shape the jury's discussions,' the paper reported.

There are reports that a third and even a fourth juror may have been similarly affected.

Lawyers for Maxwell, 60, have demanded an immediate retrial.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was ruthlessly lambasted by a slew of right-wing critics Sunday after the Democrat Congresswoman admitted she caught COVID-19 days after she was photographed maskless at a crowded club in Miami.

The Bronx Representative, 32, made the announcement on her official Twitter page Sunday night, sharing a statement on House of Representatives headed paper which said: 'Representative Ocasio-Cortez has received a positive test result for COVID-19.

'She is experiencing symptoms and is recovering at home. The Congresswoman received her booster shot this Fall, and encourages everyone to get their booster and follow all CDC guidance.'

Ocasio-Cortez's positive diagnosis, which the statement revealed was recorded Sunday, comes days after the self-proclaimed democratic socialist bashed a host of Republican personalities who took issue with a photo posted to social media showing her dining maskless at the Florida bar with her boyfriend on December 30.

The progressive representative revealed her diagnosis on her Twitter page Sunday night

Ocasio-Cortez's positive diagnosis comes days after the self-proclaimed democratic socialist bashed a host of Republican personalities who took issue with a photo posted to social media showing her dining maskless at the Florida bar with her boyfriend Riley Roberts on Dec. 30

In the bizarre Twitter tirade, Ocasio-Cortez claimed conservatives were only angry with her because they could not date her, labeling high-profile critics like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Trump advisor Steve Cortes 'creepy weirdos.'

The photo had depicted Ocasio-Cortez dining at the crowded drag club with her also unmasked boyfriend, Riley Roberts, who elected to don a pair of Birkenstock sandals for the ill-advised outing - an outfit choice Cortes chose to poke fun at.

After calling out Ocasio-Cortez for her hypocrisy regarding mask mandates, Cortes jokingly tweeted what he deemed to be the politician's second offense. '2. Her guy is showing his gross pale male feet in public (not at a pool/beach) with hideous sandals.'

The conservative broadcaster's post quickly drew the ire of Ocasio-Cortez, who seemingly elected to ignore Cortes' true qualm with the photo: the fact that she was ignoring her own state's COVID safety guidelines.

'Its starting to get old ignoring the very obvious, strange, and deranged sexual frustrations that underpin the Republican fixation on me, women,& LGBT+ people in general,' she wrote in response to the backlash December 31. 'These people clearly need therapy, wont do it, and use politics as their outlet instead. Its really weird.'

Now, just over a week later, conservatives who were left irate and confused by the progressive politician's strange claims, were quick to rub the positive diagnosis in her face - using the congresswoman's own brazen comments against her.

'AOC, who is doubled vaccinated and boosted, tests positive for covid,' conservative commentator Clay Travis wrote in response to the House of Representative's statement Sunday.

Travis, 42, quipped, 'Shell be perfectly fine because shes young and healthy, but she was just too hot for covid to resist,' echoing Ocasio-Cortez's claims.

AOC became the focus of the brunch at the Florida drag club after being spotted at by its presenter on December 31, who also did not don a mask

The New York congresswoman appeared to be continuing her New Year's vacation in the Sunshine State at a packed drag bar. The politician chose not to don a mask, as did most other patrons. It is not known if she contracted the virus while in Florida

Renowned conservative pundit Ben Shapiro also took to Twitter Sunday to similarly slam the New York politico, who is commonly referred to as 'AOC.'

'AOC only got covid because covid is obsessed with her boyfriend's feet,' Shapiro, 37, the founder of right-wing news site The Daily Wire, joked.

Journalist Caleb Hull also mocked Ocasio-Cortez's confusing allegations toward conservatives critical of her verbal attack following the House of Representative's Sunday announcement, joking that the congresswoman only 'tested positive for COVID-19 because the virus just wants to sleep with her.'

Fox News Senior Editor Will Ricciardella, meanwhile, wrote: 'COVID just couldnt resist AOC. Its not her fault shes so attractive.'

Matt Walsh, 35, a journalist employed by Shapiro's The Daily Wire, also joined in on the mass-mockery. 'Ew why is covid so obsessed with AOC,' Walsh wrote, echoing Ocasio-Cortez's words criticizing her conservative detractors. 'Super creepy.'

'Why does the coronavirus want to date AOC?' Former Fox staffer Kyle Becker asked his 217,000 followers.

Conservative radio personality Tim Young, on the other hand, jokingly stated that the New York rep's words should be taken with a grain of salt, citing previous instances of the politician's unreliable statements.

'AOC says she has COVID? ...is this the same AOC who told us she was afraid of being raped and murdered when she was no where near where rioters were on January 6?'

Fox News radio's Jimmy Failla, 45, also joined in on the action, with a post that seemed to poke fun at the bartender-turned-politician's intelligence.

The conservative commentator wrote Sunday: 'Prayers to AOC. Suffice to say this is the first time she got a positive result from taking a test.'

Days earlier, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was pictured raising a class over sushi with her boyfriend, Riley Roberts, while vacationing in Miami

As of Monday, it is still unclear when or how Ocasio-Cortez became infected, and whether she contracted the virus during her stay in the Sunshine State or not. It is unknown whether her boyfriend Roberts contracted the virus as well.
The Czech Republic has become the latest European country to ease Covid isolation rules, by allowing key workers to go into work even if they have tested positive for Covid.

In a major policy change, the central European nation has announced plans to scrap an automatic home isolation period for key worker such as doctors, firefighters and police officers.

Instead, key workers will be allowed to enter a 'working quarantine' meaning they can continue their job but safely away from their colleagues.

However they will still have to fully isolate if they test positive on a confirmatory PCR, according to Czech news outlets.

Health and socials workers are likely to figure in the 'working quarantine' scheme, along with drivers and those in other essential services such as power plants or water management plants.

However it is believed teachers will not be included on the list of key workers.

The move, which comes after Czech ministers announced plans to cut the country's isolation period from 14 days to five, is aimed at keeping critical services running in the event that cases spiral.

Though case rates in the Czech Republic are relatively low, with the country's seven day average currently at around 6,660 cases, experts have warned of up to 50,000 cases a day due to the rapid spread of Omicron.

According to Czech news outlet, Blesk, Minister of the Interior Vit Rakusan said: 'Work quarantine is that the employee comes to work, in the morning or during the morning he is tested with an antigen test and the antigen test is positive.

'If the antigen test is positive, the person is asymptomatic, so he feels subjectively good, so in that moment - for those specific professions - the employer has the right to say that he needs the person to perform the work.'

In a major policy change, the central European nation has announced plans to scrap an automatic home isolation period for key worker such as doctors, firefighters and police officers. The move has been announced by Czech Minister of the Interior and Deputy Prime Minister Vit Rakusan (pictured left)

Though case rates in the Czech Republic are relatively low, with the country's seven day average currently at around 6,660 cases, experts have warned of up to 50,000 cases a day due to the rapid spread of Omicron

But he said teachers were not likely to be included in the work isolation scheme.

He added: 'Once a teacher is tested positively, the risk level is so great that such a person will not logically go to class.'

The new rules are set to come in from January 17. The Czech government is to have say its final say on the plans on Wednesday.

It comes after the UK, France, Switzerland, Spain and Belgium all cut quarantine periods in the last three weeks and eased some of the conditions for infected staff to return to work.

With cases rising in many European countries, pressure is growing on health workers, police, firefighters and teachers due to the rise in key workers having to isolate.

But at the same time, data showing that Omicron is less likely to fill hospital beds, especially as many or most people are now vaccinated.

This has encouraged governments to scale back isolation measures and focus on sparing their battered economies.

The hours of work lost to the pandemic around the world in 2020 were equivalent to 258 million full-time jobs disappearing, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and last year the figure still amounted to around 125 million jobs.

'Governments are showing much less willingness to impose major lockdowns, or even to impose minor measures, in response to the Omicron wave,' said ILO economist Stefan Kuhn.

France and Switzerland have both cut quarantine periods to seven days from 10 since Christmas for those with a positive test.

In Spain - where the 14-day average infection rate hit a new record of 2,723 cases per 100,000 people on Friday, more than 10 times higher than at the beginning of December - the staffing squeeze is being felt across almost all sectors.

The national police union said many officers were working double shifts to cover for colleagues in isolation.

The national train operator Renfe said twice as many drivers were off with COVID-19 as in early December, and had to cancel some 40 services on Friday.

But rules passed on December 22 are now allowing staff back to work without taking a coronavirus test.

The Health Ministry has also set a viral load threshold below which an infected person who takes a PCR test can be considered non-infectious, and so fit to work - enabling medics, social workers and some police to report for duty even if they test positive.

In Spain - where the 14-day average infection rate hit a new record of 2,723 cases per 100,000 people on Friday, more than 10 times higher than at the beginning of December - the staffing squeeze is being felt across almost all sectors. Pictured: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez

Rafael Bengoa, co-founder of Bilbao's Institute for Health and Strategy, said authorities should focus more on managing infection than preventing it.

'Pandemics don't end with a huge boom but with small waves because so many have been infected or vaccinated,' said the former senior World Health Organization (WHO) official.

'After Omicron, we shouldn't have to be concerned with anything more than small waves.'

And there are signs that governments are listening.

'We have the conditions to ... start evaluating the evolution of this disease with different parameters than we have until now,' Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told the radio station Cadena SER.
Former President Donald Trump tore into GOP Sen. Mike Rounds after the South Dakota lawmaker called the 2020 election 'fair' and said Republicans 'simply did not win' the White House.

Trump, who has made support for his election fraud claims a litmus test, previously endorsed Rounds before his own 2020 election  says he will not do so again in the future.

'I hereby firmly pledge that he will never receive my Endorsement again!' Trump said in a statement from his pac.

Late Monday, Rounds hit back at the former president  rather than keep his head down amid the attack.

'Im disappointed but not surprised by the former presidents reaction. However, the facts remain the same. I stand by my statement. The former president lost the 2020 election,' Rounds said, according to Bloomberg News.

Trump's attack comes after Rounds appeared on ABC's 'This Week' to call the election fair.

'The election was fair, as fair as we've seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency,' said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said Sunday. Former President Donald Trump accused him of 'going woke' and said he would never endorse him again, as he did in 2020

'As a part of our due diligence, we looked at over 60 different accusations made in multiple states. While there were some irregularities, there were none of the irregularities which would have risen to the point where they would have changed the vote outcome in a single state,' he said.

'The election was fair, as fair as we've seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency,' said Rounds.

ABC's 'This Week' host George Stephanopoulos had asked him: 'What do you say to all those Republicans, all those veterans who believe the election was stolen, who have bought the falsehoods coming from' Trump.

Rounds spoke days after President Joe Biden tore into Trump during a Jan. 6th speech from the Capitol, where he used emphasis to call Trump a 'defeated' former president.

Former President Donald Trump said 'he will never receive my Endorsement again!'

Senator John Thune (R-SD) announced this past weekend he will seek another 6-year term

'Senator Mike Rounds of the Great State of South Dakota just went woke on the Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020,' Trump said, ridiculing Rounds' title.

Trump said Rounds 'found the election to be ok' despite 'massive evidence' he said was 'pouring in from Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other states.'

'Is he crazy or just stupid?' Trump asked.

'The only reason he did this is because he got my endorsement and easily won his state in 2020, so now he thinks he has time, and those are the only ones, the weak, who will break away,' Trump predicted. 'Even though his election will not be coming up for 5 years, I will never endorse this jerk again.'

He called Rounds a 'RINO.'

'The Radical Left Democrats and RINOS, like Senator Mike Rounds, do not make it easy for our Country to succeed. He is a weak and ineffective leader, and I hereby firmly pledge that he will never receive my Endorsement again!' Trump concluded.

Rounds' home-state colleague GOP Sen. John Thune announced this past weekend that he would seek reelection.

Rounds also urged Republicans not to dwell on the fraud claims because it could hurt the party.

'If we simply look back and tell our people, "Don't vote because there's cheating going on," then we're going to put ourselves in a huge disadvantage,' he said. So, moving forward, let's focus on what it takes to win those elections. We can do that.'

Rounds voted to certify the electoral votes that made Joe Biden president.
A kickboxer has denied being a professional hitman who shot dead a reality television stars brother - telling a jury he was in London to 'watch Netflix and chill' with a woman he met online.

Anis Hemissi, 24, is alleged to have been the gunman who murdered Flamur 'Alex' Beqiri, 36, in front of his family in Battersea, South West London, on December 24, 2019.

He is said to have donned disguises, including latex masks and a litter pickers outfit, to carry out reconnaissance in the days before the shooting.

Southwark Crown Court was told Mr Beqiri - whose sister Misse Beqiri, 35, appeared in reality television show The Real Housewives Of Cheshire - was 'involved in serious and organised crime', including international drug dealing.

Flamur 'Alex' Beqiri, 36, a Swedish national of Albanian heritage and whose sister Misse Beqiri appeared in Real Housewives Of Cheshire, was murdered outside his 1.5m home in Battersea, southwest London, on Christmas Eve 2019 (both pictured)

The doorstep of Mr Beqiri's home in Battersea, southwest London, where the shooting took place on Christmas Eve 2019

Prosecutors allege Hemissi was part of a team of four killers sent from Sweden to assassinate the father-of-two as part of a violent rivalry between two organised crime networks in the Scandinavian country.

But giving evidence on Monday, Hemissi said he flew to London from Copenhagen, Denmark, on December 20 2019 to meet a 22-year-old woman, Nadine, who had befriended him on Facebook.

He told jurors she was one of 'more than 20 girls' he was speaking to on social media and dating apps, including Tinder, at the time.

'At the end of November I was asking Nadine if she wants to come to Tunisia because I was there for work', he said.

'Her father said she wasnt allowed to come to a different country. She asked if I wanted to come to London because she lived there.

'We were going to have Netflix and chill, relax, maybe go out and eat something, maybe go out and buy some clothes.'

Flamur 'Alex' Beqiri, 36, was killed in front of his wife Debora Krasniqi (they are pictured together)

Hemissi said Nadine had arranged for him to stay in her friends flat - which was allegedly used by the killers after being rented through Airbnb - but made excuses not to see him.

'I was angry because I came all the way from Sweden', said Hemissi, who told jurors he instead spent most of his time playing games and watching TV series.

David Harounoff, defending, said: 'There may be some people in court who find it difficult to accept you had come from Sweden to meet a girl you had never met before. Is what you are saying true?'

His client said: 'Yes, its happened many times before.'

Hemissi, who said he had been a professional kickboxer, told jurors he had never heard of Mr Beqiri, had no motive to murder him and had not been paid to do so.

He said he may have read about some of the 'notorious criminals' involved in the Swedish gang conflict in newspapers but did not know them and had never met or spoken with them.

Jurors were shown CCTV footage of the shooting, which saw Mr Begiri hit by eight bullets as the gunman fired 10 times.

Mr Begiris wife, Debora Krasniqi, can be heard screaming and is seen cradling their two-year-old son moments after they arrived hand in hand with the victim.

Mr Harounoff, defending, said: 'Just before 9pm on the evening of December 24 2019, Mr Beqiri, his wife, and their two-year-old child were about to enter (their home).

'A gunman appears from behind and shoots him. The bullets hit his torso, his rear, and he died.'

Addressing Hemissi, Mr Harounoff said: 'The prosecution say you were the gunman. Were you the gunman?

Hemissi replied: 'No, sir.'

Mr Harounoff continued: 'The prosecution say the gunman was a professional hitman. Was that you?'

Hemissi said again: 'No, sir.'

Met Police dressed up a mannequin in different latex masks as they tried to find the disguised hitman behind the Christmas Eve shooting on a reality star's brother in 2019, a court has heard. Pictured: CCTV allegedly showing the gunman days before the killing

CCTV footage earlier played in court shows a man in high visibility clothing posing as a litter picker dressed in high visibility clothing staking out the victims house days before the murder.

Hemissi admitted buying a high visibility jacket and trousers in October 28, but denied he was the person captured on camera.

He told jurors he bought it just prior to one of his regular business trips to Tunisia, at the request of a cousin who needed it for his building business.

Hemissi denies murder and possession of a self-loading pistol.

Swedish nationals Estevan Pino-Munizaga, 35, Tobias Fredrik Andersson, 32, and Bawer Karaer, 23, also deny murder, while Clifford Rollox, 31, of Islington, north London, and Claude Isaac Castor, 31, of Catford, south-east London, deny perverting the course of justice.

The trial continues.
The British Museum is cashing in on the NFT boom by putting 20 of JMW Turner's paintings up for sale in digital form.

The artworks will be sold as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are unique digital tokens encrypted with an artist's signature verifying its ownership and authenticity and are permanently attached to the piece.

However, those buying the digital tokens at next month's auction will not have physical ownership of the paintings, and will not be allowed to touch them.

The 20 paintings from Joseph Mallord William Turner come from a collection left to the museum by Robert Wylie Lloyd, a former director of the auction house Christie's, who died in 1958.

The British Museum is cashing in on the NFT boom by putting 20 of JMW Turner's paintings up for sale in digital form. Pictured: Trafalgar painting by James Mallord William Turner

Conway Castle, North Wales, a painting by JMW Turner was left to the museum by Robert Wylie Lloyd, a former director of the auction house Christie's, who died in 1958

In his bequest, according to the museum, Lloyd said the paintings could only be shown for two weeks in February and that 'none of his drawings and watercolours may be lent to exhibitions outside the British Museum'.

The rarely exhibited paintings up for auction next month include A Storm (Shipwreck), completed in 1823, Messieurs les voyageurs, from 1829, and The Colosseum.

JMW Turner was born in 1775 and died in 1851. He was known as 'the painter of light', because of his interest in colours in his landscapes and seascapes.

His works included watercolours, oils and prints, and his use of watercolour was considered by some to be the 'most inventive and varied' ever devised for the medium.

The British Museum will be selling NFTs of the artwork in collaboration with LaCollection, a French start-up providing a platform to buy NFTs of artworks from museums.

In September, they worked together on the sale of NFTs of paintings by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai which attracted an audience from more than 120 countries.

The latest collection of 20 artworks will be sold across three levels.

There are nine in the ultra rare category, in which two NFTs have been created - with one being retained by the British Museum and the other going to the buyer. Seven will be super rare, where ten NFTs have been created, and four will be open edition, with a maximum of 99 NFTs to be sold.

LaCollection said the unique editions will be starting from 4,999, with prices from the open editions starting from 799.

The first ultra rare and open edition NFTs will be available to those who previously purchased a Hokusai NFT during a private sale starting on February 8 and ending on February 9. General market sales will then open on February 9, closing on March 4.

NFT sales surged in August, according to the largest platform for the burgeoning digital asset class, as speculators bet growing interest across the art, sport and media worlds would keep prices rising.

The niche crypto asset exploded in popularity in early 2021, especially with viral cryptocurrency hits like Dogecoin and Bitcoin, leaving many confused as to why so much money was being spent on items which do not physically exist.

The frenzy has now reached new highs. Sales volumes recorded on the largest NFT trading platform, OpenSea, hit $3.4billion in August last year, compared to March's $148 million. In January 2021, the monthly volume recorded on the platform was just over $8 million.

A self portrait of JMW Turner painted around 1754. A collection of his artworks will be sold as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are unique digital tokens encrypted with an artist's signature verifying its ownership and authenticity and are permanently attached to the piece

On average, more than $10 million in NFT transactions were taking place daily by the end of 2021, according to the website DappRadar.

Chris Torres, creator of Nyan Cat, sold his iconic meme for roughly $590,000 earlier this year and finally gained attribution for the artwork - which he said was a huge factor in why he first sought out NFTs.

Bad Luck Brian, the meme of Kyle Craven's hilariously bad yearbook photo, sold for more than $45,000.

Success Kid, the photo of photographer Laney Griner's at the time 11-month-old son Sam, has sold as a NFT for approximately $35,000. Sam is almost 15.

Overly Attached Girlfriend, spawned from a YouTube video of Laina Morris satirically showing her love for Justin Bieber, has sold for $459,260.

And in March, Twitter boss Jack Dorsey's first tweet - 'just setting up my twttr' - sold to Sina Estavi, the CEO of Malaysia-based blockchain company Bridge Oracle as an NFT for just over $2.9million.
A dog that ran off from his owner during the Caldor Fire near South Lake Tahoe in August has been brought home after a skier spotted the lost pup in a deep snowdrift last month.

Russ, a pit bull-terrier mix, was spooked and ran away from his owner a traveling nurse from Southern California who had been working at a nearby hospital.

The owner, from Riverside County, went searching for Russ, hung fliers and reported him missing before being forced to evacuate the area due to the Caldor Fire that was ragging through California destroying 222,000 acres and more than 1,000 structures over 67 days.

His owner assumed that Russ was lost for good.

Russ, a pit bull-terrier mix, was rescued after four months of being lost in the California woods

The lost dog was found in mid-December after skiers noticed a growling dog trapped in several feet of now near South Lake Tahoe

Animal rescue volunteer Leona Allen (pictured) hiked up the mountain to rescue the canine after heavy snow and steep terrain forced animal service officers to call off their mission

But on December 16, animal search and rescue non-profit group, TLC 4 Furry Friends learned of a dog that was stuck in several feet of snow near Twin Peaks, west of South Lake Tahoe.

Skiers reported that the canine appeared to be stuck in the snowdrift and growled at anyone who came near him.

El Dorado County Animal Services Officer Kyle Shumaker was notified of the animal but unable to reach him through the five-foot snow depth and steep terrain.

Instead, TLC 4 Furry Friends volunteers geared up and embarked on their own rescue mission up the mountain.

Executive director Wendy Jones contacted Leona Allen, 61, an experienced animal tracker who volunteers with TLC 4 Furry Friends and seasonal firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service.

When Allen arrived to the scene, temperatures were expected to drop to -2 degrees Fahrenheit by evening in the area filled with nearly five feet of fresh snow.

She hiked up the mountain in her snowshoes following the dog tracks, with her volunteer partner, Elsa Gaule following close behind with animal service sled.

'I looked up in my headlamp and saw this dark blob in the snow under the tree well, and I thought, 'Oh my gosh it's the dog and he's not alive anymore,' Allen told The San Francisco Chronicle.

The dog was found under a tree not moving but eventually opened his eyes and lifted his head as the volunteers worked to remove him from the heavy snow.

'I walked up, and all of a sudden he opened his eyes and lifted his head, and I screamed. It was just involuntary,' Allen said.

Gaule quickly gained the trust of the scared dog and wrapped him blankets. The two rescuers brought the lost dog down the mountain riding on the sled in Allen's arms.

'We were laughing so hard, No. 1 because the dog was still alive, but No. 2, we were laughing at our situation,' Allen recalled the nearly two-hour frozen hike down the mountain to meet Officer Shumaker.

Volunteer Elsa Gaule (pictured) quickly gained Russ's trust and warmed him with blankets after he was found under a tree barely moving

Russ's owner was 'ecstatic' to be reunited with his dog who he did not expect to see again. The dog survived the Caldor Fire, five-feet of snow and negative temperatures

'Elsa called it, 'Tobogganing the moonlight.' That sounds a little bit more romantic than what it is,' Allen said of the slow and methodical return to the base.

Allen removed her own jacket to replace the wet blankets and warm the shivering dog who was brought the a veterinarian who confirmed the dog was in good health.

'I've worked some pretty gnarly rescues, this probably being the top,' Allen admitted.

'I keep reliving the moment when he opened his eyes and lifted his head, and just the joy and elation inside of me was overwhelming. It's one more life that gets to live happy and warm and safe,' she said.

It was discovered that the dog had a microchip which allowed workers to track down Russ's owner. Allen and Gaule visited Russ everyday until he was reunited with his owner.

'When contacted, the owner was ecstatic to find out that his dog was alive!' TLC 4 Furry Friends officials said.
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The owners of the Bronx building where 17 people have died in a catastrophic fire insist smoke detectors were working on Sunday when the flames tore through the building, despite fire bosses claiming the building isn't up to code, and include a member of the new New York City Mayor's housing transition team.

Eight children and nine adults died after the fire started at 333 E. 181st St. near Tiebout Ave in the Bronx shortly before 11am, tearing through a duplex apartment then spreading to other units in the affordable housing complex.

It is believed to have been started by a space heater that was running uninterrupted for days inside 3N, an apartment where Mamadou Wague and his eight children lived. They all survived but another eight kids from inside the building, and nine adults, died.

At a press conference on Monday, officials said the fire spread after the apartment's entry door failed to automatically close, as it should have, when Wague and his family fled.

The building is owned by Bronx Park Phase III Preservation LLC, a consortium of three property developers; The Camber Property Group, Belveron Partners and the LIHC Group. They purchased the building along with seven others in late 2019 as part of a $160million deal on affordable housing in the Bronx.

333 East 181st Street was formerly known as Twin Parks North West. They bought it for just shy of $25million - which values each of the 120 apartments inside at $206,000. The wider, $160million deal of 1,200.

The tenants are all households earning 60 percent of area median income. A family or household of four in the building earns, for example, $72,000 and generally their rent will be less than a third of that annual income - less than $2,000 per month.

A spokesperson for the consortium would not confirm how much tenants pay in rent at 333 East 181st Street when contacted by DailyMail.com on Monday.

The developers paid a third less than the average sale price of homes in the Bronx, and a seventh of the average sale price of apartments in New York City when they bought the properties in 2019.

The inferno, caused by a faulty space heater, started in Unit 3N, where the Wague family lived. Investigators are still trying to determine how the blaze spread, however NYC Mayor Eric Adams said it appears the smoke spread due to a door that was supposed to automatically close being open

Rick Gropper of the Camber Property Group (left) is one of the owners of the building. He is also named as a contributor to Eric Adams' housing transition team. The Camber Group partnered with LIHC Investment Group and Belveron Partners to buy the property in 2020. Belveron founder Paul Odland is shown, right

The owners charge tenants there less than the market rate for apartments in the area.

They also receive subsidiaries from the local governments and enormous tax credits.

Andrew (left) and Charlie Gendron (right) of the LIHC group, the third investor

According to an announcement at the time they bought the properties, the developers said they intended to renovate.

It's unclear if any renovations had begun but recent records filed with the Department of Housing indicate complaints of lack of heating, roach and mice infestation and no water.

Some of the complaints were filed in December of 2021.

The developers agreed to keep the properties within the city's roster of affordable housing when they purchased them.

They said they would keep them affordable for the next 40 years at least.

One of The Camber Group's founders is Rick Gropper, who was among hundreds listed as a contributor to new Mayor Eric Adams' transition team in the housing department.

The others are Andrew and Charlie Gendron, of the LIHC Group, and Paul Odland of Belveron.

A spokesman for Bronx Park Phase III Preservation LLC, the group of investors who own the building, told The New York Times that the fire alarm system in the building was working on Sunday and that there were no outstanding concerns.

'We are devastated by the unimaginable loss of life caused by this profound tragedy.

'We are cooperating fully with the Fire Department and other city agencies as they investigate its cause, and we are doing all we can to assist our residents.

'Our thoughts are with the families and friends of those who lost their lives or were injured, and we are here to support them as we recover from this horrific fire.'

The building received various complaints from residents last year, including at least four alleging their unit had 'no heat'

The developers who own the building where the fire occurred on Sunday also own another seven in the neighborhood, shown above. They purchased them in 2019 as part of a deal in which they acquired 1,200 apartments for $160million - an average of $133,333 per apartment. The average market cost of an apartment in the Bronx is three times that as around $365,000

The fire at Twin Parks North West complex in the Bronx broke out in Unit 3N, where the nine-person Wague family resided. Their residence is pictured Monday, covered in ash and debris

The Wague family's apartment is seen completely destroyed. Father Mamadou Wague said the blaze left his eight-year-old daughter trapped in her bedroom on a mattress engulfed in flames. He pulled his daughter out of the flames and managed to escape

The blaze is unit 3N was caused by a faulty space heater

The entire unit was damaged by the blaze

NYC Mayor Eric Adams is shown at the site of the fire on Monday. He has announced a fund for the victims

New York City's worst fire disaster in more than 30 years that broke out on the second and third floor of a building at 333 East 181st Street in the Bronx has killed nine children and ten adults (pictured, people jump to safety from the burning building)

The five-alarm blaze erupted shortly before 11am on the third floor of a 19-story building at 333 East 181st St in Fordham Heights

Sheets were seen hanging from the windows of the apartment building at 333 East 181st Street in the Bronx on Sunday after a blaze broke out and killed 19

But Andrew Ansbro, president of the FDNY Uniformed Firefighters Association Union, said the 49-year-old building was poorly equipped to deal with a fire.

'It was at a building that was built under federal guidelines way back when, so its not up to New York City fire codes,' he told the New York Daily News.

One of the issues is the system of 'scissor stairs' inside which firefighters said made it more difficult to feed a hose through in the building.

His group partnered with the LIHC Investment Group and Belveron Partners to buy the property in 2020. It was one of eight buildings they planned to turn into affordable housing in the Bronx as part of a deal worth $166 million.

The building where the fire occurred - known as Twin Parks Northwest - was $24,675,000.

It receives funding from the state, but owners also collect rent from the residents who earn 60 percent of the median for the area.fire bosses say building is not up to code

Residents of the apartment complex said they were constantly complaining about faulty fire alarms.

Some told The City that they went off so often that they didn't immediately take Sunday's fire seriously.

One list of complaints against the property from the last month detail how residents complained about not having any heat.

After a faulty space heater set it alight and tore through the Bronx block killing eight children and nine adults.

The death toll, originally reported as 19, was downgraded to 17 on Monday. Addressing the revised death toll, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said patients had been taken to seven different hospitals in the city, which led to 'a bit of a double count'.

Fire experts, attributing smoke to the fatalities, believe a self-closing door in the Twin Parks North West complex may have malfunctioned, allowing the smoke to spread through the building.

'The fire was contained to the hallway just outside this two-story apartment, but the smoke travelled throughout the building and the smoke is what caused the deaths and the serious injuries,' Nigro said during a press conference Monday.

Exclusive photographs taken by DailyMail.com reveal what remains of the family unit after the fire engulfed their duplex apartment at 333 East 181st Street, at 11am on Sunday.

Mamadou Wague, who lived in Unit 3N with his wife and children, recalled how he was woken by his children screaming 'fire' and then found his eight-year-old daughter, Nafisha, screaming and trapped on a burning mattress in her bedroom.

'I just grab her and run,' the west African immigrant told the New York Times. 'I didnt think about anything except getting her out.'

Wague, 47, pulled his daughter from the burning bed, suffering burns to his lips and nose, and escaped the unit with his family. Nafisha sustained burns but is alive.

Fire Marshals ruled the fire 'accidental,' noting that it was caused by a malfunctioning space heater and that a 'smoke alarm was present and operational'.

A New York City official, who spoke to the newspaper on the condition of anonymity, revealed fire marshals suspect the space heater had been running uninterrupted for multiple days. According to a list of resident maintenance requests shared online, building received at least four complaints last year of units being without heat. It is unclear if Unit 3N was having an issue with heat.

Officials believe the fire spread so rapidly because Mr Wague left his apartment door open as he fled for his life with his kids.

Mayor Eric Adams said there may have been a 'maintenance issue,' as it was supposed to close automatically. He told CNN: 'The doors in the building did have self-closing mechanisms. We are just looking at that specific door.'
NBC White House correspondent Kelly O'Donnell turned to her creative side in a desperate bid to get a question to President Joe Biden as he avoided speaking to reporters yet again when he returned to the White House from Camp David on Monday.

The 79-year-old president has conducted far fewer press conferences than five of his immediate predecessors in his first year in office and has given less interviews with the media than the six presidents who served before him.

Biden ignored shouted questions from reporters on the White House South Lawn on Monday morning.

O'Donnell, trying to catch the president's attention, held up a thin piece of paper with the words, 'Russia Talks?' hand-written in marker pen.

It was in reference to security negotiations between United States and Russian officials that kicked off today, as the West frantically seeks a diplomatic resolution to Vladimir Putin's alarming military buildup at Ukraine's border.

Biden carried on walking towards the Oval Office as reporters shouted questions and O'Donnell held up her sign.

'Despite @KellyO's best efforts, President Biden did not stop to talk to reporters after returning from Camp David to the White House on this brisk January morning,' Josh Wingrove, a Bloomberg reporter who captured the image and posted it on Twitter wrote.

Despite @KellyOs best efforts, President Biden did not stop to talk to reporters after returning from Camp David to the White House on this brisk January morning. pic.twitter.com/9GSXAVIDqu  Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) January 10, 2022

Biden waved to reporters but ignored shouted questions when he returned to the White House from Camp David on Monday morning

According to a GOP official's count it's been 69 days since Biden last held a press conference -- the president has only given nine formal press conferences, six solo and three jointly with visiting foreign leaders. He has also conducted 22 media interviews.

His first solo press conference took place roughly two months into his term.

By comparison, at this point in their respective presidencies Donald Trump conducted 21 press conferences, Barack Obama was at 27, George W. Bush at 19, Bill Clinton at 38 and George H. W. Bush at 31.

Ronald Reagan only held six news conferences in 1981 because his schedule was scaled back early in his first term in 1981 after an assassination attempt.

Reagan did, however, engaged in 59 interviews in his first year as president.

The dismal showing from Biden only furthers speculation that the president is not running the show at the White House, which is fueled by Biden's continued comments during public appearances that his press team doesn't want him speaking to members of the media.

Biden has done just 22 media interviews, fewer than any of his six most recent White House predecessors at the same point in their presidencies.

President Joe Biden has given far fewer press conferences in his first year of presidency than his five predecessors

These interviews included one-on-one sessions with journalists at three of the major television networks, three CNN town halls, an appearance on MSNBC, a trio of regional television interviews via Zoom, as well as conversations with late night host Jimmy Fallon and ESPN'S Sage Steele.

He's given just three print interviews.

Trump did a whopping 92 interviews in his first year in office, more than two dozen of those with right-leaning Fox News. He did also hold lengthy sessions with ABC News, The Associated Press, the New York Times, Reuters and other outlets whose coverage he impugned throughout his presidency.

The White House has fielded requests from media outlets - and complaints from the White House Correspondents' Association - for Biden to do more one-on-one interviews and formal news conferences.

In what's become a familiar scene, Biden lingered after delivering a recent speech on the pandemic as reporters fired a barrage of questions, a few to which he gave answers.

'I'm not supposed to be having this press conference right now,' Biden said at the end of a meandering response that didn't directly answer one question about Senator Joe Manchin killing the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better package.

Seconds later, Biden turned and walked out of the State Dining Room, abruptly ending what's become his preferred method for his limited engagements with the press.

The dynamic between Biden and the media has the White House facing questions about whether Biden, who vowed to have the most transparent administration in the nation's history, is falling short in pulling back the curtain on how his administration operates and missing opportunities to explain his agenda.

Biden often answers a few press questions after his public remarks instead of vying for formal press conferences or media interviews. Here the president departs after speaking on the October jobs report on November 5, 2021

Biden does more frequently field questions at public appearances than any of his recent predecessors, according to new research published by Martha Joynt Kumar, a professor emerita in political science at Towson University and director of the White House Transition Project.

He routinely pauses to talk to reporters who shout questions over Marine One's whirring propellers as he comes and goes from the White House. He parries with journalists at Oval Office photo ops and other events. But these exchanges have their limitations.

'While President Biden has taken questions more often at his events than his predecessors, he spends less time doing so,' Kumar notes. 'He provides short answers with few follow-ups when he takes questions at the end of a previously scheduled speech.'

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has pushed back, arguing that a formal news conference with 'embroidered cushions' on journalists' seats is unnecessary since Biden answers questions several times a week.

But those exchanges often dont allow for follow-up questions, and Biden can ignore questions he might not want to answer.

'Fleeting exchanges are insufficient to building the historical record of the presidents views on a broad array of public concerns. We have had scant opportunities in this first year to learn the presidents views on a broad range of public concerns,' said Steven Portnoy, president of the White House Correspondents' Association and a reporter for CBS New Radio. 'The more formal the exchange with the press, the more the public is apt to learn about what's on the man's mind.'

Psaki also holds daily press briefings, unlike her Trump administration predecessors.

The president has answered questions at 55 per cent of events where he's delivered remarks or an address, more than even two of the more loquacious presidents, Bill Clinton (48 per cent) and Trump (41 per cent).

White House officials pointed to such frequent interactions with reporters as evidence that Biden has demonstrated a commitment to transparency. Officials also suggested that the pandemic has also affected the number of interviews and news conferences in the administration's first year.

'I think that we have been very transparent,' White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. 'I don't think you can just piecemeal and I think you have to look at it as a whole.'

Trump had regular, and sometimes lengthy exchanges, with reporters as a thwapping Marine One awaited him on the South Lawn.

Biden has continued the tradition of 'chopper talk,' a nickname coined by late-night host Stephen Colbert for strained exchanges, though he tends to keep the exchanges brief.

At other moments, Biden has used the exchanges to drive the news cycle.

Asked after a private visit with Pope Francis at the Vatican in October whether they discussed abortion, Biden said it didn't come up. But then he quickly pivoted to asserting that Francis told him he was 'a good Catholic and I should keep receiving communion.' The entire back-and-forth with reporters lasted about a minute.

The administration has put a premium on finding ways to speak to Americans where they are as it tries to maximize the president's limited time for messaging efforts, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration's communications strategy.

To that end, Biden has been interviewed by YouTube personality Manny Mua and went on the 'The Tonight Show' to push his domestic agenda and encourage people to get vaccinated. The White House believes such platforms can help the president more easily reach middle-class workers or young Americans who aren't glued to the cable networks or The New York Times.

Biden has also leaned on celebrities with big social media followings - including actress and songwriter Olivia Rodrigo and Bill Nye The Science Guy - who have done videos with Biden to help bolster his vaccination push and plug his major domestic spending initiatives.

Biden is hardly the first president to look beyond the mainstream media to try to connect with the public.

Former President Barack Obama appeared on Zach Galifianakis's 'Between Two Ferns' to help sell his signature health care law and visited comedian Marc Maron's garage to record an episode on the popular WTF podcast days after the 2015 Charleston church shooting. Obama spoke bluntly about racism in the wide-ranging interview with Maron.

Trump frequently called into Fox News' opinion shows, directly reaching his base without the filter of journalists.

Brian Ott, a Missouri State University communications professor who studies presidential rhetoric, said the scarcity of Biden news conferences and interviews with mainstream news media may help explain why Biden's approval ratings are near historic lows even though most polls show that much of his domestic agenda remains popular with a majority of Americans.

While pop culture and social media offer opportunities to connect with a segment of America, Ott said, the president connecting to the electorate through traditional broadcast and print news outlets - and holding formal news conferences - will be critical to correcting that disconnect.

'The presidency has always been a predominantly rhetorical enterprise,' Ott said. 'You can't drive an agenda without vision casting and part of that has to go through the mainstream press.'
Jailed: Sexual predator Tom Rodwell was jailed for life at Teesside Crown Court today

A 'callous and unfeeling sexual predator' who subjected five young woman to a series of rape ordeals and was described as a danger to women has been jailed for life.

Royal Navy serviceman Tom Rodwell, 31, used Tinder to snare his victims, including three university students, in the pretence of looking for a relationship.

But he subjected each to shockingly violent sexual attacks, some while they slept, in what a judge termed a 'campaign of rape' and even messaged one victim asking 'When can I rape you again?'

Jailing Rodwell for life with a minimum of 12 years, Judge Paul Watson QC said the defendant was 'addicted to a sense of power' he had over the women, whose lives he had 'ruined'.

The court was told that although he was not convicted, Rodwell had been accused of rape before in Scotland, but was acquitted in court.

He told Rodwell: 'You serially raped five young women in what can only be described in my judgement as a campaign of rape.

'You are a callous and unfeeling sexual predator whose only concern was for your own gratification.

'You placed no regard in the feelings and wishes of the women you raped, particularly if they stood in the way of you attending to your own desires.

'Under the guise of pretending to seek relationships, you exploited them using psychological pressure and manipulation as well as brute physical force.

'You sought to diminish their self confidence and self regard. Each in their own way was vulnerable and you knew this. That is why you targeted them.

'You have left deep emotional scars which will take years to heal, if they ever do. You have in so many ways ruined their lives and I am full of admiration for them coming forward to let the police know what you did.'

Judge Watson said Rodwell was a 'real and significant risk' to any woman he encountered.

He added: 'You are an unquestionably dangerous man.'

The young women, two of whom attended Durham University, met Rodwell, 31, on Tinder and were subjected to 11 degrading ordeals by a predator with a fascination for violent sex.

One of the young women said: 'I thought he would kill me. If he hadn't been arrested he would have gone on to murder somebody.'

Another victim described him as a 'monster.'

Rodwell was jailed for life at Teesside Crown Court and must serve a minimum of 12 years in prison after he admitted 10 counts of rape, one of attempted rape and one of sexual assault

Rodwell, who bears facial tattoos, admitted 10 counts of rapes, one count of attempted rape and one sexual assault between 2017 and 2020 when he appeared before Teesside Crown Court today.

He raped his first victim four times in 2017, his second once in the same year, the third was raped in 2017 and 2019 and he raped the fourth in 2020.

He admitted rape, assault by penetration and attempted rape against his fifth victim.

Prosecutor Richard Bennett told Teesside Crown Court: 'The defendant, using social media, would contact a number of single young women and once in contact with them, he would physically and sexually abuse them.

'In addition to the physical and sexual abuse, he would psychologically manipulate them and in some cases make them feel worthless. The effect on the victims is clear in their personal statements.

'It is clear that the defendant was sexually aroused by carrying out physical violence on these victims. He would also be sexually aroused when carrying out non-consensual sexual activity.'

The first victim was a university student when she met Rodwell in 2017 via Tinder.

She suffered from depression and anxiety and the defendant used this to his advantage and would taunt her about it. He was also violent towards her, slapping and hitting her, the court was told.

She described how sex was forceful and she would ask him to stop but he would choke and slap her.

Prosecutors said that in discussions between them, Rodwell said he was into 'rough sex'.

He would strangle her with one hand and she found that he would do the opposite of what she asked, the court heard.

Mr Bennet said: 'On one occasion the victim was in bed with the defendant and he made it clear he wanted sex.

'She said she did not want to have sex with the defendant and he responded by saying that it was 'not her decision'.

'He then pushed her down on the bed and had sex with her.

'She described that the defendant had raped her on a number of occasions and would come home from his job in the Navy, when he was stationed in Scotland. He would force her to have sex against her will.'

The second victim was also a University student when she met Rodwell via the Tinder app during 2017.

The court heard Rodwell targeted his victims on the Tinder dating app posing as someone looking for a relationship but soon turned to psychological manipulation and physical violence

On their first meeting Rodwell threw her contraceptive pills in the bin.

On the second occasion they met at a flat, they ordered some food and Rodwell initiated sex which she agreed to until he became forceful and started hitting her.

He told her there was 'nothing she could do as he was stronger than her' and continued to have sex with her in an ordeal which lasted up to 30 minutes, Mr Bennett said.

Later Rodwell sent her a Whatsapp message asking: 'When can I rape you again?'

In a personal statement the woman said: 'He has left me feeling vulnerable and ashamed and wondering whether I should have seen red flags in his behaviour.'

The third victim was also a student when she met Rodwell on Tinder.

Mr Bennett said: 'The defendant repeatedly ignored her request to use a condom and had sex without one.

'The defendant would drink before sexual intercourse. He was sexually rough and during and after sex she told him that he was hurting her.

'Rather than moderate his behaviour he became even rougher and on occasions he left her with bruises.'

Rodwell would rape his victim while she was asleep and became more and more violent as time went on until he began punching her on the back of her head during the sexual act, the court was told.

Mr Bennett said: 'He would hit her harder and harder, and sometimes four or five times a night. He would later say to her that she had deserved it because she was a ''slut'.'

The woman addressed the court in person to describe her ordeal.

She said: 'I used to think about how to kill myself to escape the abuse. I thought Tom would kill me and if he had not been arrested when he was I think he would have gone on to murder somebody.'

The fourth victim went on a date to a music event with Rodwell and woke up in a hotel to find him pulling her hair and forcing her into a sexual act.

His fifth victim also met Rodwell via Tinder and suffered a similar ordeal, beginning in 2019.

Mr Bennett said: 'He told her from the outset, in messages to her, that he wanted to 'own her' and 'choke her'.

'He made it clear that he did not want her to speak to anyone else and told her to delete her Tinder app. On the first occasion they met, he essentially invited himself to her home.

'She described a number of occasions when the defendant sexually assaulted or raped her.'

The court heard that he then took up with another woman and told his fifth victim she would have to be 'fully submissive in all ways' if she wanted him back.

She had had an emergency coil fitted and kept it for the remainder of the relationship so he would not have to use a condom, on his orders.

The woman read out a statement in court.

She said: 'I was a prisoner in my own home with a monster. My feelings were never considered, he took everything I had to give.

'I have to live in the house where I was physically, emotionally and sexually abused and I am reminded of this daily.'

Rodwell pleaded not guilty to a single further rape of the fifth victim and three offences of controlling and coercive behaviour, which were allowed to lie on file.

Andrew Turton, mitigating, said Rodwell claims to have had more than 100 sexual partners.

He said: 'His actions with five of them bring him before the courts today. He is a man of previous good character.'

Restraining orders were put in place to prevent him contacting any of the women.

After the sentencing, Detective Constable Rick Sainsbury paid tribute to the women who have now seen him jailed for life.

He said: 'Rodwell's offending is despicable.

'He is a dangerous individual and his selfish and depraved actions have caused lasting harm to his victims and their families.'
Kamala Harris' new communications director tweeted on more than one occasion that George W. Bush was an 'illegitimate president' who 'stole' the 2000 election from Al Gore, adding to a slew of revelations of his controversial past comments.

Jamal Simmons wrote in a June 2012 tweet that recently resurfaced in a Fox News report: 'I worked for Gore 2000 & believe W's 1st term to have been illegitimate. Yet when in the room w/him I stood and gave ofc respect'.

In a separate tweet from January 2017, Simmons wrote: 'I worked for Gore. Thought W was illegitimate. Still stood for him in respect for office. Members of Congress should go to inauguration.'

His most recent rebuke of Bush's 2000 presidential win against Simmons' former boss Al Gore was in a January 21, 2021 tweet  the day after Joe Biden's inauguration.

'The Trump vs Biden equivalency is wrong. Trump was an anti-Democratic huckster grifting the country while unleashing our demons,' Simmons tweeted last year. 'Biden is the #Democratic version of McCain - a good man I disagreed with. I thought W stole the 2000 elex but I still stood when he entered a room.'

This is yet another series of tweets to resurface from the veteran Democratic aide and political pundit since he was announced for the role heading up Vice President's Kamala Harris' communications shop following reports of toxicity and a staff exodus.

Several newly revealed past tweets from Kamala Harris' incoming communications director Jamal Simmons show him disputing the 'legitimacy' of George W. Bush's presidency

Simmons said he gave Bush respect by standing when he walked into the room despite feeling his win against his former boss Al Gore was 'illegitimate'

Simmons tweeted in 2017 that he thought W. Bush's win and said in a 2021 tweet that Bush 'stole' the election from Gore

He also tweeted a day after Joe Biden's inauguration that there was a difference between not standing for Donald Trump and not standing for Joe Biden  claiming Trump was an 'anti-Democratic huckster grifting the country while unleashing our demons'

The comments are eerily similar to that of Donald Trump, who claims that the 2020 election was rigged and 'stolen' by Democrats for Joe Biden.

The latest revelation comes after a Federal Election Commission filing analysis showed that Simmons donated $250 to Republican Senator Rand Paul's ultimately unsuccessful presidential campaign in June 2015.

The Kentucky senator was first elected to his post in 2010 and launched his presidential campaign in 2015. He dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses in February 2016 and was reelected to the Senate that year.

The information about Simmons' contribution comes after he already is off to a rocky start before even assuming his role in the vice president's office.

Simmons was forced to apologize on Friday for a slew of previous tweets and comments that attacked Joe Biden, the COVID vaccine and spewed right-leaning immigration deportation views.

The two knocks also come amidst a PR nightmare for Harris after seven aides left her office in the months after her disastrous southern border trip in June and reports emerged of her 'bully' mentality and a toxic work environment.

With Simmons hiring, the vice president's office is hoping to start anew.

In the 2015-2016 election season, Simmons also donated to several Democratic candidates and left-leaning entities.

He gave $500 to Harris' run for Senate and another $500 combined donations to two separate Hillary Clinton-aligned groups to back the candidate in her run for president against Trump.

The new Harris aide, however, spent the first day after his hiring was revealed on cleanup duty.

Federal Election Commission filings reveal that Simmons gave $250 to Senator Rand Paul's campaign in June 2015. He also donated to Kamala Harris' Senate campaign and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in the 2015-2016 cycle

Simmons made a name for himself as a Democratic political analyst and operative with stints going back to the Bill Clinton administration. News of his hiring brought to light some of his more controversial tweets and statements.

'As a pundit I tweeted +spoke A LOT,' he tweeted Friday in a quick effort to address his past comments.

'At times, I've been sarcastic, unclear, or just plainly missed the mark. I apologize for offending [people] who care as much as I do about making America the best, multi-ethnic, diverse democracy,' he wrote.

He added: 'I'll help the Biden-Harris admin w/humility, sincerity+respect.'

One previous tweet touched on the red hot issue of immigration, which Harris has faced criticism for in her role as 'border czar'.

'Just saw 2 undocumented folks talking on MSNBC. One Law student the other a protester. Can someone explain why ICE is not picking them up?' he tweeted back in 2010 amid one of many heated debates over U.S. immigration policy.

President Biden has charged Harris with focusing on the root causes of immigration, forcing her to already contend with political headaches over border crossings.

Chiming in on the issue was former White House aide Stephen Miller, an architect of the Trump Administration's controversial immigration policies.

'I agree with [Jamal Simmons]. If you break into our nation there must be deportation,' he wrote.

Jamal Simmons has been involved in national politics since the Clinton administration, and formerly served as deputy communications director for Al Gore's presidential campaign. He did a segment on a 'Dazed and Confused' Joe Biden as a media commentator in 2019

Simmons tweeted an apology Friday afternoon after some of his old tweets and comments surfaced criticizing Joe Biden, the COVID-19 vaccine and illegal immigrants

Years after the deportation tweet, Simmons ridiculed a 'dazed and confused' Joe Biden for conflating multiple stories while describing a trip to Afghanistan and criticized Donald Trump for pushing a 'janky science vaccine', it emerged on Friday.

Simmons has been brought on during an overhaul of the vice president's office, with her approval rating at a dire 32 percent and with seven staffers quitting since her disastrous border trip on June 25.

The veteran Democratic aide and TV commentator mocked Biden in 2019 for the gaffe during an episode of his politics show for The Hill called 'Why You Should Care.'

'We do this story about once a week!' he quipped. 'It's what you get with Uncle Joe.'

The segment began with a headline that said 'Dazed and Confused,' as he broke down the latest stumble by the former vice president, who had called himself a 'gaffe machine.'

Simmons made the comments at a time when the Democratic nomination was wide open  and long before he would be brought on to try to right Harris' struggling communications operation.

He told of how Biden at a town hall had 'conflated' multiple stories from a trip to Afghanistan. It turned out Biden got the timing wrong, the province wrong, along with key details  the story was about an Army soldier, not a Navy captain.

'This is the God's truth, he says. 'My word as a Biden.' Turns out, it wasn't God's truth,' Simmons says to the camera.

Simmons also critiqued Harris' run for president after she suspended her campaign, saying she 'pulled back in these very key moments.

He said she 'never quite got comfortable getting out of the pre-planned moments,' and criticized how she failed to capitalize on her early bussing attack on Biden, in another clip unearthed by Fox News. He said she also botched her handling of the fraught issue of Medicare for All during the primary.

Kamala Harris compares January 6 to Pearl Harbor and 9/11 Vice President Kamala Harris compared the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol one year ago to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and 9/11. 'Certain dates echo throughout history, including dates that instantly remind all who have lived through them where they were and what they were doing, when our democracy came under assault,' Harris began. 'December 7, 1941, September 11, 2001 and January 6, 2021.' Harris alluded to civil rights fights of the past century. 'What the extremists who roamed these halls targeted was not only the lives of elected leaders ... what they were assaulting were the institutions, the values, the ideals that generations of Americans have marched, picketed and shed blood to establish and defend.' 'We cannot let our future be decided by those bent on silencing our voices, overturning our votes, and peddling lies and misinformation by some radical faction that may be newly resurgent, but whose roots run old and deep.' Harris then called the U.S. the 'oldest and greatest democracy in the world.' 'I wonder, how will January 6 be come to be remembered?' Harris said. 'Will it be remembered as a moment that accelerated the unraveling of the oldest and greatest democracy in the world? Or a moment when we decided to secure and strengthen our democracy for generations to come?' Democracy was coined by the Greeks in 430 B.C., means 'for the people' and many communities such as Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the UK's Isle of Man, San Marino and Switzerland have had so-called democracies dating back to the ninth and tenth centuries. Advertisement

Simmons also went after former President Donald Trump on his coronavirus response  even calling life-saving vaccines under development 'janky.'

'Trump's fatally ill-managed Coronavirus response seems to have turned voters off to him the way Katrina destroyed Bush's political reputation, but pushing a janky science vaccine into the public for political purposes would turn incompetent culpability into intentional harm, he tweeted.

Urging people to get vaccinated has become a cornerstone of Biden's coronavirus response.

Harris is bringing Simmons into her press shop to replace one of seven staffer's she's lost over the past six months amid her own communications challenges.

Simmons will join the team after communications director Ashley Etienne and chief spokesperson took their leave in November and December.

An official announcement was expected from the White House later on Thursday, sources told The Hill.

Simmons is said to be widely respected in Democratic circles, and his entrance will come as the vice president's office is looking for a reset amid low poll numbers and headlines reporting dysfunction and bitter tension within the office.

Simmons has been involved in national politics since the Clinton administration, and formerly served as deputy communications director for Al Gore's presidential campaign.

A source familiar with the move told The Hill Simmons is expected to 'really change things up.'

Simmons also worked as an aide to former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., former Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark and was chief of staff former Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick, D-Mich.

He's also worked in media and frequents the cable news circuit.

Harris has now lost at least seven aides since her disastrous southern border trip on June 25 after her director of press operations Peter Velz confirmed Wednesday he is leaving his role with the White House.

Velz's announcement comes in the midst of a staff exodus following reports the vice president is a 'bully' who facilitates a toxic work environment and other reports indicate tensions between the president's staff and Harris'.

'Today is my last day at the White House, and it truly has been an honor,' Velz tweeted on Wednesday. 'I will be forever grateful to Vice President Harris, the incredible Team @VP, and I'm so proud of our work this past year supporting this historic Administration.'

'The White House is an amazing place to work -- you're surrounded by the most selfless, smart, hard-working people everyday doing their best to serve the American people. And it has has been an absolute joy,' he added.

Velz's next job will start later this month at the State Department's Protocol team where Velz says he will still support President Joe Biden and Harris in their meetings with foreign leaders, delegations and international travel.

His announcement comes the day after fellow staffer Vince Evans confirmed his departure from the vice president's office to replace Kyle Anderson as executive director with the Congressional Black Caucus.

Velz (left) made his announcement the day after Vince Evans (right) confirmed his departure from Harris' team

Velz confirmed his departure in a Wednesday tweet after reports emerged toward the end of 2021 that he was eyeing the exits in the midst of a staff exodus from the vice president's office

Velz will work with the State Department on the protocol team starting later in January

He posted a throw back image of hi at the press briefing room podium from 2021 and a more current image in the same pose

Evans and Velz's departures exhibit the reports of a staff exodus coming to fruition amid reports of turmoil in the vice president's office.

At the end of December, Harris' chief spokesperson Symone Sanders left her post.

Peter Velz confirmed Wednesday he is leaving Vice President Kamala Harris' team  making him the seventh staffer to depart since June

It followed the departure of Ashley Etienne, Harris' former communications director, who left in November.

In the aftermath of Harris' botched Central America and border trip, reports emerged that two other aides were eyeing the exits. Harris' former director of advance Karly Satkowiak and deputy director of advance Gabrielle DeFranceschi departed shortly after the trip in June.

Staffers on the VP's advance team are responsible for planning all of her trips, surveying venues for her to visit and working with local officials to prepare venues for media coverage.

At the time of Satkowiak's and DeFranceschi's departure from Harris' team it was not clear why they were leaving  but it did fuel further rumors of workplace tensions.

Rajan Kaur who was Harris' director of digital strategies left her staff in July after opting not to relocate to Washington D.C. from Brooklyn.

Harris' job approval rating is at 32 per cent, according to a new USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Tuesday. While that is a terrible rating, it is a 4 per cent increase from the November poll where her approval was at only 28 per cent.

Evans, in moving on from the vice president's office, will work closely with CBC Chairwoman Representative Joyce Beatty from Ohio.

'I started my career in Washington working for a member of the CBC, so I know firsthand the tremendous leadership and impact this caucus has in Congress and across the country,' Evans said in a statement. 'As we write the next chapter of the CBC story, I am excited for the opportunity to lend my experience and passion for supporting the collective vision of this storied caucus.'

Evans (right) said he is leaving Vice President Kamala Harris' (left) office to become executive director with the Congressional Black Caucus

Velz tweeted his congratulations to Evans on Tuesday

Velz wrote in a tweet Tuesday of Evans' new position: 'Congrats to the absolute KING and MVP of Team VP! Adore this man  one of the best colleagues and friends you can ask for.'

'I'm so happy to see you continue fighting the good fight and go do great things with the Congressional Black Caucus. Love you, [Vince Evans]!' he added along with a picture of them together.

Reports revealed that Velz, currently director of press operations for Harris, has also told those in the vice president's office that he plans to leave.

As Evans joins the CBC, there are already seven members of the 56-member caucus who have said they will not run for reelection in this year's midterms. This includes veteran members and Democratic Representatives Brenda Lawrence from Michigan and Bobby Rush from Illinois, the only lawmaker to ever beat Barack Obama in a political election.

Other CBC members seeking other offices include Representatives Karen Bass from California, Anthony Brown from Maryland and Val Demings from Florida  all Democrats.

As of Wednesday morning, 25 House Democrats announced they will not seek reelection this year as the party tries to hold onto their razor thin majorities in both chambers.

Evans, in his new role with CBC, will function as a chief of staff for one of Congress' most influential caucuses. His duties will include overseeing daily activities and working with members and their top aides to coordinate and implement priorities and legislative agenda.

A Florida native, Evans began his political career as an aide to a Tallahassee city commissioner, was a staffer in the Florida state Senate and served on the senior staff of Florida Representative Al Lawson.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Evans was Southern political director for Joe Biden and was political director for Harris when she became the vice presidential nominee.

Symone Sanders (left), Harris' senior adviser and chief spokesperson, left the White House at the end of 2021. It came after Ashley Etienne (right), Harris' former communications director, left in November

Officials maintain that Sanders and Etienne's departures were long-planned and not evidence of the reported turmoil.

Further, reports note that Sanders is getting married next year and was never able to go on a proper tour to sell her book, No, You Shut Up, which was published in May 2020.

Sanders, 32, defended her former boss in an interview published Monday in her hometown newspaper Omaha World-Herald, claiming it was the 'honor of her life' to serve Vice President Harris.

'She is someone who I watch every single day bring her full self to work,' Sanders said. 'I watch her challenge her teams, I watch her push us all to be better.

She added: 'I watch her raise issues and perspectives and topics and policy that other people  other folks just weren't thinking about.'

Sanders called the reports and rumors of dysfunction in Harris' office just 'salacious gossip.'

When announcing her departure last year, many took Sanders' exit as further evidence that Harris's office was in disarray, amid headlines of a toxic work environment and an exodus of key personnel.

Some stories, however, pointed the finger at Sanders.

Two unidentified sources told The Hill that the spokeswoman was seen as a rival to Harris's communications director, and that she was the 'voice in numerous blind quotes about friction in the office.'

The Washington Post published a damaging expose in December branding Harris a 'bully' who inflicted 'constant-soul destroying criticism' on her office staff.

The piece - a result of interviews with 18 people connected to the VP - alleges that Harris failed to read briefings they'd prepared, only to turn on them if she was subsequently criticized for being unprepared.

The claims from staff who worked for Harris were published amid confirmed departures of two high level staffers, with two others who are said to be heading for the door too.

'It's clear that you're not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,' a former colleague told the Washington Post.

'With Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence.

'So you're constantly sort of propping up a bully and it's not really clear why.' Harris's staffers

Meanwhile, Gil Duran, who worked with Harris for just five months in 2013 before quitting, said the vice president was 'repeating the same old destructive patterns.'

Writing in his San Francisco Examiner column, he said: 'One of the things we've said in our little text groups among each other is what is the common denominator through all this and it's her.'

'One of the things we've said in our little text groups among each other is what is the common denominator through all this and it's her,' Duran told the Post. 'Who are the next talented people you're going to bring in and burn through and then have (them) pretend they're retiring for positive reasons.'

People familiar with the conversations told Politico that even more 'key members of Harris' orbit' are 'eyeing the exits' and have expressed interest in leaving less than a year into her vice presidency.

Some Democratic allies have urged Harris to embrace the concept of a reset after a rocky first year as vice president, which has been riddled with project failures  like addressing the southern border crisis  and reports of tensions between her team and the president's.

Her poll ratings have tanked, with top Democrats said to be appalled at the idea of her running for president in 2024 should Joe Biden decide not to seek a second term.

Harris' staff are leaving because they're burned out, there are better opportunities elsewhere and they don't want to be permanently branded a 'Harris person,' according to Axios.

Harris tamped down rumors of tension as she addressed Sanders' departure during a gaggle on her trip to North Carolina last month.

'I love Symone,' the vice president said. 'And I mean that sincerely.'

'I can't wait to see what she will do next. I know that it's been three years jumping on and off planes, going around the country ' Harris continued.

Sanders joined President Joe Biden's presidential campaign in 2019.

Harris declined to answer further questions on the wave of departures.

'Well, I told you how I feel about Symone,' Harris said.

During the trip, Harris' personal aide, Opal Vadhan, posted a photo of the VP's team all smiling as they celebrated the birthday of Deputy Director of Advance, Juan Ortega.

'A favorite tradition in the @VP's office is celebrating staff birthdays with cupcakes! Happy Birthday, @JuanoBano!' she wrote.

Harris was in Charlotte, North Carolina to tour a public transit facility and give a speech on the bipartisan infrastructure bill alongside Pete Buttigieg, her rumored competition.

She hugged the Transportation secretary before they both boarded Air Force Two. Buttigieg then took questions from a gaggle of reporters on the plane alone.

Amid poll numbers in the high 20s, some Democrats are pushing for Buttigieg to replace Harris at the top of the ticket in 2024, should Biden choose not to run for a second term.

The White House insists Biden plans to run again, but he will be 82 in 2024.

In November, Harris hit back at claims she is being misused as vice president, saying she doesn't feel like she's being under utilized by Biden and dismissed her low approval ratings which plummeted to 28 per cent in a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll of registered voters earlier this month.

'Polls, they go up, they go down,' Harris said. 'But I think what is most important is that we remain consistent with what we need to do to deal with the issues that we're presented with at this moment.'

No announcement has been made on whether Sanders has lined up another job, sparking questions over the circumstances surrounding her departure.

Harris in recent weeks has battled mounting reports that her office is in disarray, and that her team is frustrated at being handed 'no-win' tasks that don't suit her skillset, such as tackling the 'root causes' of migration behind the recent border crisis.

Asked if the staff departures were prompted by bad headlines for Harris, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that working in the first year of an administration is 'grueling and exhausting.'

'It's natural for staffers who've thrown their heart and soul into a job to be ready to move on after a few years,' she said.

Praising Sanders' work in the administration, Psaki said the spokeswoman 'has charisma coming out of her eyeballs.'

'It's natural for staffers who have thrown their heart and soul into a job to be ready to move on to a new challenge after a few years,' Psaki said.

Sanders traveled frequently with Harris and as a senior adviser helped her juggle a daunting portfolio including the migrant issue and push for a sweeping federal overhaul of election laws.

Harris has suffered plunging approval ratings since taking office, threatening what would normally be an easy path to the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, or 2024 if Biden decides not to seek re-election at age 81.

Amid the turbulence, Sanders has been Harris' top bulldog defender, batting back at claims of internal disarray and tension with the West Wing.

Last month, Sanders was the first to respond to a detailed CNN report in which Harris aides complained that she has been set up to fail, and handed a portfolio that is not commensurate with her historic status as the first woman, and first woman of color, to hold the vice president's office.

'They're consistently sending her out there on losing issues in the wrong situations for her skill set,' said a former high-level Harris aide in the bombshell report.

Sanders fired back in a statement: 'It is unfortunate that after a productive trip to France in which we reaffirmed our relationship with America's oldest ally and demonstrated U.S. leadership on the world stage, and following passage of a historic, bipartisan infrastructure bill that will create jobs and strengthen our communities, some in the media are focused on gossip - not on the results that the President and the Vice President have delivered.'

Amid the turbulence, Sanders (right) has been Harris' top bulldog defender, batting back at claims of internal disarray and tension with the West Wing

An official in the vice president's office pointed out to Politico that Sanders, a former Biden campaign aide, had been working for the administration in some capacity for three years, and said that Biden and Harris had known of her departure 'for a while'.

Etienne's plan to leave was confirmed on November 18.

'Ashley is valued member of the Vice President's team, who has worked tirelessly to advance the goals of this administration. She is leaving the office in December to pursue other opportunities,' a White House official told DailyMail.com at the time.

Both Harris and Biden have vehemently denied that there is any tension between them, denying reports that are mostly based on the accounts of anonymous staffers.

The White House went full throat with their defense of her after a CNN report claimed Biden was distancing himself from Harris because of her sliding poll numbers, while the vice president is said to have felt isolated and frustrated with being given some of the most difficult issues for the administration in her portfolio.

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain tweeted Harris is an 'incredible leader' and Psaki argued Harris receives more criticism because of her status as a woman of color.

Harris is the country's first female vice president and the first vice president of color.

The president has publicly said he intends to run again, although pundits say that announcing he intends to step down after a single term would turn him into a lame duck leader.

But there has been anonymous chatter among Democrats that, if he does, he should consider replacing Harris.

There's additional speculation that if he doesn't run again, Harris would not be the strongest contender to replace him. Some have suggested Buttigieg would be a better candidate for the nomination.

A Politico/Morning Consult poll at the end of 2021 showed the transportation secretary with a higher favorability rating than both Biden and Harris  whom he led by 12 points.
Scotland Yard has reopened the case of an Australian woman who was kidnapped and murdered in Britain more than 50 years ago after the convicted killer confessed to where she was buried.

Metropolitan Police officers are investigating the location of Muriel McKays remains after Nizamodeen Hosein identified her grave.

Mrs McKay, who was 55 at the time, was the victim of a bungled abduction by Nizamodeen Hosein and his older brother Arthur Hosein after they mistook her for the wife of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

The brothers forced their way into the McKay home in Wimbledon, south London on December 29, 1969, bundled her into a car and took her to a Hertfordshire farm where they lived.

They then demanded 1million for the return of Mrs McKay, who was married to Mr Murdoch deputy Alick, pretending to be mafia. She was never seen alive again and her body was not found.

Following trial in 1970, the brothers were sentenced to life imprisonment in one of Britains first convictions for murder without a body.

According to The Times, Nizmodeen Hosein, 75, revealed that Mrs McKay was buried on the 11-acre Hertfordshire farm where she was held. The admission was made to a lawyer representing Mrs McKays family.

The killer, who has denied involvement in the kidnap, also insisted that no violence was used against her. He told her family that she collapsed and died while watching a TV news report with him about her kidnapping.

The confession was made after he was tracked down in Trinidad by documentary makers covering the story last year.

Mrs McKays daughter Dianne, 81, told The Times: Were pleased the police are taking it seriously. We have worked hard for the last few months to get this far and we just want to get on with it.

Muriel McKay was kidnapped from her Wimbledon home on December 29, 1969 after she was mistaken for Anna Murdoch, the 25-year-old wife of media tycoon Rupert, and later died

Nizamodeen and Arthur Hosein thought they were abducting Rupert Murdoch's then wife Anna Murdoch, pictured here in 1988

Muriel McKay's family (pictured in January 1970) are pressuring the police to excavate the farmhouse where she is thought to been buried in a bid to find her remains

Nizmodeen Hosein protested he had not killed McKay, maintaining instead that she had collapsed and later died from a heart attack while sitting downstairs in the farmhouse (pictured)

Its very frustrating because weve talked about nothing else, and now Nizam told us where he buried my mother and now we have to stop and wait. Its very difficult.

We are aware there are certain protocols which must be followed, for example obtaining a search warrant to search the area she is buried, but all we really wish is to move on and achieve the closure that we have been seeking for the past 52 years.

A spokeswoman for the Met told MailOnline: The Met were contacted in December 2021 by the family of Muriel McKay regarding information they had obtained in relation to her murder.

Officers from the Mets Specialist Crime Command have met with the family and are in the process of reviewing all the material.

According to The Times, detectives travelled today to the National Archives in Kew to retrieve the original case files.

However, the farms present owner has refused to co-operate with requests from the family to allow them on to the farm so that the location pinpointed by Hosein can be scanned using a ground-penetrating radar.

Depending on the evidence, the Met Police may decide to launch a search for Mrs McKay's remains.

Nizmodeen said: 'At the farmhouse there's a wooden gate, there's a few wooden gates, it has barn beside, barn beside, and ten foot forward, ten foot this side [left], the body's somewhere around there'

Nizamodeen (right) and Arthur Hosein (left) were convicted of her murder though police never recovered McKay's body

The pair claimed they were innocent but Arthurs fingerprints were found on the ransom notes and a notebook filled with the same paper that Muriel's letters were written on were discovered at the site.

Nizmodeen told Matthew Gayle, a British barrister in Trinidad hired by the family, that he wanted closure before he died and so would reveal the location of McKay's body.

He said: At the farmhouse there's a wooden gate, there's a few wooden gates, it has barn beside, barn beside, and ten foot forward, ten foot this side [left], the body's somewhere around there. Next to the barbed wire fence, about three foot [from the fence].

Mrs McKay was kidnapped after the brothers tailed a chauffeured Rolls-Royce belonging to Murdoch that was on loan to her husband Alick McKay.

She was abducted in the brotherss Volvo and taken to Rooks Farm, where they lived with Arthurs wife and children, who were on holiday at the time.

Newspaper executive Mr McKay returned home to find the telephone ripped off the wall, the contents of his wife's handbag strewn over the hall.

He later received a call from a man demanding 1million  equivalent to 20million today  if Mrs McKay was to be returned alive, sparking the UKs first high-profile, kidnap-for-ransom case.

Over the 40-day ordeal the brothers, who claimed to be a mafia group called M3, sent three letters and made 18 further calls demanding the money. They also sent Mrs McKays husband five letters allegedly written by Muriel, including one in which she said she was cold and blindfolded, as proof of life.

Two attempts by police to deliver fake notes to the kidnappers failed but the second try led officers to Rook's Farm, where Mrs McKay was taken by the brothers.

Nizmodeen told the lawyer he was the only person who buried Mrs McKay, refusing to implicate his brother Arthur who was also convicted for her murder.

Nizmodeen (above), 75, has now revealed the site where McKay was buried to a lawyer representing her family

He also protested he had not killed Mrs McKay, maintaining instead that she had collapsed and later died from a heart attack while sitting downstairs in the farmhouse.

This will forever haunt me for the rest of my days, Nizmodeen said, adding he had fed fried rice to Mrs McKay after kidnapping her. His brother Arthur died in prison in 2009.

Nizmodeen also agreed to talk to Mrs McKays sister Dianne, 81, in a video call.

She said: I was dreading speaking with him. At first I wrote him a letter and I couldn't do it, I felt physically ill. Since then I've got more into it and eventually I was able to front him up on a Zoom call.

He told me he wanted closure before he met his maker. I felt utter relief when he said she's buried at the farm. I've just thought about it so much over the years. For years I had terrible dreams of them throwing my mother in the sea.

We haven't had a good Christmas since it happened. To me it's a horrible time, it's the anniversary of it happening and New Year I find particularly upsetting. We always went abroad at Christmas so we could avoid the issue

Dianne added: It's always there in the back of your mind somewhere. It makes you more anxious  I lock the doors and moved abroad to somewhere in the middle of nowhere, I retreated to a very isolated place.

You didn't know whether to cry, or to accept, it was a very confusing emotion. You cannot grieve, you cannot accept, because there was no body...

When he told us those details, he said where it was, how to get there, how many steps, it was quite a lot of detail and I thought, My God, he's telling the truth, he can't be making this up.
A Texas police officer has been suspended after a mother of five claimed she was severely beaten by the cop during an arrest for driving while intoxicated when she was coming home with her kids from a birthday party for her 8-year-old daughter.

Anna Marie Barnes, 34, was arrested and allegedly severely beaten by the El Paso cop in August for reportedly being intoxicated when she crashed her car into a small tree while driving her five children - the oldest who is now 17 years old.

The El Paso woman was charged with driving while intoxicated with children under 15 years of age and resisting arrest during search or transport - but reports show she was not drunk at the time of her car accident.

Her civil rights attorney, Randall Kallinen, told DailyMail.com he has learned that an unnamed officer has been suspended from duty following an internal investigation into the allegations of excessive force.

Anna Marie Barnes was pictured with two massive black bruises around her eyes and a broken nose after she was arrested for allegedly driving while intoxicated and beaten by a cop

An unnamed officer has been suspended after a Disciplinary Review Board sustained Barnes' allegations of excessive force

The Texas Department of Public Safety reinstated Barnes' license four months after her arrest 'due to passed breath or blood results.' She was also deemed 'clinically sober' on the night of her arrest by Las Palmas Medical Center

The case was presented to a Disciplinary Review Board comprised of six civilian community members and six El Paso officers of various ranks. The board found the allegations against the officer to be true and recommended he be suspended.

'The DRB sustained the allegation against the officer and recommended a suspension. Additional information cannot be divulged due to the possibility of future litigation,' El Paso Public Information Officer Sgt. Enrique Carrillo said.

Barnes was driving her SUV home from her daughter's eighth birthday party on August 27 when she crashed around 10pm.

The police report filed by El Paso police said that Barnes smelled of alcohol and resisted arrest. The crash report states that the single mother then attempted to flee the scene of the crash on foot with her children.

She said that she began crying when officers told her that she was under arrest and did not offer her a sobriety test but slammed her to the ground to handcuff her. She claimed the officer then lifted her up and began punching her repeatedly as she screamed.

'He broke the bones under my nose and my nose. It's been painful. It just feels like somebody slammed me into a wall,' Barnes explained at a previous press conference.

Kallinen said that she is still in pain and unable to breathe properly five months later.

Barnes said her oldest daughter watched as the officers pushed her to the ground to handcuff her before EMTs began checking in with the five young children.

Her attorney claimed that while one of the two responding officers violently beat her, the other 'watched' and 'blocked' the view from El Paso Fire Department EMS.

According to the police report, Barnes began to back away and pulled her arms away to break from the officer's hold when he attempted to handcuff her.

The report states that while she continued to resist arrest, the officer used their leg to knock Barnes to the floor where he proceeded to strike Barnes several times with an open palm to 'gain compliance.'

She stopped resisting after being struck three times, the report notes.

'The way they say it makes you think its okay,' Kallinen said pointing to the officer's admittance of striking Barnes but noted that 'it's not an approved police procedure.'

'But even what they say is already bad enough. Even what they admit is already bad enough,' said Kallinen. Studies have shown 'open palm is just as deadly as strikes with a fist,' he said.

Barnes admitted that she thought she was going to die.

Photographs show the El Paso woman with two dark bruised circles around her intensely blood-shot eyes and smaller bruises on her face after her arrest. Her nose was also broken and needs reconstructive surgery.

Her attorneys also released a photo of Barnes' steering wheel to show that the airbag did not deploy and could not be responsible for her injuries.

A third photo that was shared by her legal team shows a small tree held up with a 2x4 along the sidewalk where she crashed with minimal damage.

A photo shows that Barnes' SUV did not deploy the air bags as her attorney's fight to prove her claims that the arresting office used 'excessive force' and caused her injuries

A photo shows the minimal damage left at the scene of the crash in El Paso, Texas in August

'Not only was she severely injured but now she has all these hospital bills and they're still going forward with the charges even though the DPS has cleared her,' Kallinen said.

Kallinen has since released an emergency room report from Las Palmas Medical Center which confirms that the 33-year-old was 'clinically sober' on the night of her arrest.

Kallinen also shared a letter from the Texas Department of Public Safety that states that Barnes' license was reinstated due to 'passed blood or breath results.'

Barnes claims that she was not offered a breathalyzer test but provided a blood sample to police. She also said had not been made aware that her license had been suspended.

'Now everyone can see that I wasn't drunk,' said Barnes. 'I knew the truth would come out eventually.'

But despite the evidence of her sobriety, the El Paso County District Attorney's Office has yet to drop the charges.

Barnes (bottom) and Kallinen (top left) are building a case against the city of El Paso and the two officers who arrested her last year

The office noted that there are two ways to find a person guilty of driving under the influence: having a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or more or proving that any amount of alcohol ingested had caused the driver to lose the normal use of either their mental or physical faculties.

Kallinen noted that although the DA's office has said that they could proceed with the charges they did not confirm that they will.

'With this set of facts they would have an extremely hard time proving this case,' he told DailyMail.com.

Barnes and her legal team are calling for her charges to be dropped and for all police officers in El Paso to be required to wear a bodycam.

Kallinen claims that nearly all major cities in Texas require all patrol officers to wear a bodycam while on the job and interacting with the public and has called for El Paso to follow suit. El Paso is the largest city in Texas where officers are not required to wear bodycams.

'If we had the body cam there would be no question of what happened,' the attorney said.

The El Paso Police Department said it could not comment at the moment because the investigation remains ongoing.

'This could have been avoided if he knew he was on camera,' Barnes said.

Barnes is working with her legal team to put together a case to file charges against the city of El Paso for their alleged pattern of failing to punish their officers for use of excessive force and the officers who allegedly beat and failed to stop the beating.
Prince Andrew has found a buyer for his beloved ski chalet in a deal worth an estimated 18 million, MailOnline can reveal.

Sources close to Andrew confirmed that the sale of the chalet in the exclusive Swiss ski resort of Verbier is proceeding after a mystery buyer agreed to take it off his hands.

Andrew was only able to sell the property, called Chalet Helora after settling a 6.6 million debt to French socialite Isabelle de Rouvre, 74, who sold it to him and Sarah Ferguson in 2014 also for 18 million.

Andrew and Fergie agreed with Ms de Rouvre that the house would be paid for in instalments.

But Ms de Rouvre claimed the Yorks failed to make the final instalment of 5m, resulting in her launching legal action against them in the Swiss courts two years ago for the amount she was owed, plus interest, which came to a combined 6.6 million.

Under Swiss law, he was prevented from selling the chalet until the matter had been resolved.

Ms de Rouvre confirmed the payment had been made and said: 'The war is finished. It is the end of the matter. I have nothing to do with it now. That's all.

Prince Andrew bought the seven-bedroom Chalet Helora (pictured), in the luxury Swiss resort of Verbier with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson in 2014 for 16.6million

In September last year, it was reported that Andrew and the Duchess of York were close to selling the chalet to settle a legal dispute with its former owner, Isabella de Rouvre, 74

'I don't know what they are doing now. They were here at Christmas but I only know that because I read it in the press. I did not see them. So Happy Christmas and that's that. The end.

'It was about six weeks ago that the matter was closed. It was November. It's done. They paid the money and it was done. It is closed for me. The war is over.'

A friend of the socialite said it had been a 'hugely stressful' time for Ms de Rouvre.

Meanwhile, a source close to Andrew confirmed to MailOnline: I can confirm that the legal action has been halted and that the chalet is being sold - but otherwise no comment on private financial matters.

There is no completion date for the sale but property experts in Verbier claimed that it could be just a matter of weeks.

Andrew is believed to have finally paid Ms de Rouvre late last year. She said: 'The war is over. He has paid the money.'

But the settlement has led to questions over how Andrew raised the 6.6million he owed her, especially as on paper at least, he earns a modest amount that is at odds with his lavish lifestyle.

Its sale will also help Andrew free up some money to pay his legal bills due to claims that he sexually assaulted Virginia Roberts, with a judge in the US set to rule on whether he should face civil action.

The sale of the chalet will help Andrew free up money to pay his legal bills from fighting claims he sexually assaulted Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts. Pictured: Andrew and Epstein in 2015

Officially, Andrew earns around 270,000 per year; this includes a 249,000-a-year annual stipend from the Queen, which is topped up with 20,000 from his naval pension.

But Royal observers claimed that he is far from a pauper prince and may be a lot wealthier than has been estimated, thanks to a number of past business deals and enjoying a circle of wealthy friends.

Andrew previously owned Sunninghill Park, his former 12-bedroom marital home in Windsor, which was gifted to him by the Queen when he married Fergie in 1986.

In 2007 it was bought by Timor Kulibayev, the son-in-law of the president of Kazakhstan, for 15m  3m more than the asking price.

In 2016 reports claimed that Andrew was closely involved in the sale and his staff went to great lengths to ensure the deal went through, which was denied by Buckingham Palace.

It also prompted wider speculation of Andrews links with Kazakhstan and claims that he acted as a fixer by helping a Greek sewage company and a Swiss finance house pursue a 385 million contract in the country.

One Royal observer told MailOnline: Andrew is not quite the penniless prince that we think. Hes the only one of the Queens offspring to have been gifted a house by her.

He made a lot of money from its sale, but we dont know how it was invested or what he did with it. He also had extensive business links with Kazakhstan and other powerful international business figures in his role as Britains trade envoy.

Andrew, Virginia Roberts, aged 17, and Ghislaine Maxwell at Maxwell's house, London, in 2001

His finances are not transparent and because he now doesnt have any official duties, they dont have to be.

Royal experts maintain that Andrew may also have inherited significant money from the Duke of Edinburghs will although it will remain secret for at least 90 years, following a High Court ruling.

The structure of the 18 million deal for Andrews chalet could also explain where he got the money from to pay off his debt to Ms de Rouvre.

Under this, the future buyer may have agreed to give Andrew 6.6 million as an advance, to help him settle the debt and pay the outstanding amount for the chalet upon completion of the sale.

But property expert Henry Pryor, who has advised a number of wealthy clients involved in top end deals insisted that only somebody close to Andrew would do this.

He said: A buyer paying money in advance to help Andrew settle his debt is highly unlikely. I would not advise any of my clients to do this and its not really how things work.

I cant see any wealthy buyer handing over 6.6 million prior to a sale being confirmed, unless its a close friend, Andrews mother or perhaps another relative.

Andrew has come under the spotlight in the past for his associations with wealthy figures, who it emerged, helped him out financially.

Maxwell gives Jeffrey Epstein a foot massage on his private jet dubbed the 'Lolita Express'. The photo was entered into evidence in Maxwell's case on December 7 by the US Attorney's Office

Late last year, Bloomberg News reported that Andrew took out a 1.5m personal loan in 2017 that was subsequently paid off by companies connected to David Rowland, a multimillionaire Conservative donor and financier, who he was close to.

Andrew denied any allegations of wrongdoing.

It was also confirmed in 2011 that Mr Rowland also helped clear Fergies debts of 5 million, with sources claiming that he was just one of a number of friends who rallied round.

Disposal of the chalet will leave him owning no property in the UK or abroad.

Fergie and the couple's daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, were seen cavorting around Verbier just after Christmas, enjoying a ski holiday  perhaps their last in Chalet Helora.

The chalet, which boasts seven bedrooms and an indoor swimming pool, holds special memories for the royals.

As a family, the Yorks rented Chalet Helora from Ms de Rouvre for winter holidays before deciding to buy it in 2014 as a nest egg for their daughters.

Andrew and Fergie jointly purchased the property for about 18 million.

Andrew pictured in 2001 with ex-wife Sarah Ferguson and the children in Verbier, Switzerland

They reportedly took out a mortgage for 13 million with the remaining 5 million agreed to be paid in cash.

When this sum remained outstanding, the Yorks allegedly made a deal with the socialite to defer the payment until December 2019.

The pair was then expected to pay 6.6 million, consisting of the original sum plus interest.

But despite repeated demands the debt remained unpaid.

In May 2020, Ms de Rouvre was forced to sue the Duke. A protracted legal battle then ensued.

Until the debt hanging over the chalet was paid he was powerless to sell. It is believed he has now found a buyer and the sale is being finalised.

Fergie and the princesses were photographed in the resort last week with their families.

One neighbour said: 'Maybe that was their last holiday here. To be honest the neighbourhood won't be too sorry to see the back of them. Once they turn up along comes all the paparazzi from Italy, France, Switzerland, you name it.

'They are a nuisance blocking the roads and we often have to ask them to turn their engines off. They just sit there with fumes going everywhere polluting our beautiful mountain air.

'Plus, it's all rather seedy with Andrew bieng caught up in this sexual abuse scandal. That's not the image we want in Verbier.'
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Robert Durst, 78, has died while serving a life sentence for fatally shooting his longtime confidante Susan Berman at point-blank range at her Los Angeles home in 2000 - before he could be tried for the murder of his wife Kathy.

He has long disputed killing Kathie, who has been missing since she disappeared from New York in 1982 and was presumed dead in 2017.

Last November - nearly 40 years after she vanished - a grand jury in Westchester County charged Durst with her second-degree murder after District Attorney Miriam Rocah and state police reopened the case.

Rocah in a statement expressed disappointment that Durst did not live to be prosecuted for his first wife's death.

'After 40 years spent seeking justice for her death, I know how upsetting this news must be for Kathleen Dursts family,' Rocah said. 'We had hoped to allow them the opportunity to see Mr. Durst finally face charges for Kathleens murder because we know that all families never stop wanting closure, justice and accountability.'

Kathie's family declined comment through their lawyer's office.

Durst died in a state prison hospital facility in Stockton from natural causes due to a number of health issues early Monday, his attorney Chip Lewis said.

In this December 15, 2021 picture, he was seen looking frail and with a breathing tube in a mug shot released by the California Department of Corrections

Durst tested positive for Covid-19 on October 16, just days after he was he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the execution-style killing of his longtime friend and confidant, Susan Berman in 2002

Los Angeles prosecutors proved during Berman's murder trial that Durst killed his pal - who helped cover up Kathie's killing - in order to silence her.

The eccentric millionaire was in 2003 also accused of killing neighbor Morris Black but was acquitted in 2003 after testifying it was self defense when they both struggled for a gun.

He has been behind bars since 2015, when the HBO documentary The Jinx: The Life And Deaths of Robert Durst, unearthed new evidence in Berman's killing.

Durst discussed the cases and made several damning statements including a stunning confession during an unguarded moment during the six-part documentary series.

The show made his name known to a new generation and brought renewed scrutiny and suspicion from authorities.

Robert Durst, convicted murderer and subject of the HBO true crime doc, 'The Jinx,' died while serving a life sentence in prison. He was 78-years-old. He is pictured on March 17, 2015

Robert Durst was indicted by a New York grand jury last November and set to stand trial for the murder of his wife, Kathie, who disappeared in 1982 and was presumed dead in 2017. Pictured in 1982

In the immediate aftermath of Kathie's disappearance, Susan Berman (above) helped Robert craft a phony alibi and stepped in to act as his publicist

He was arrested in Bermans killing the night before the final episode, which closed with him mumbling to himself in a bathroom while still wearing hot mic saying: Youre caught. What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.

The quotes were later revealed to have been manipulated for dramatic effect but the production  done with Dursts cooperation against the advice from his lawyer and friends  dredged up new evidence including an envelope that connected Durst to the scene of Bermans killing as well as incriminating statements he made.

Durst's health has steadily worsened in recent years.

Last December, he was seen looking frail and with a breathing tube in a mug shot released by the California Department of Corrections.

Just months earlier, Durst - who has numerous medical issues, including contracting COVID-19 - was seen in a wheelchair throughout most his trial in California.

Durst's lawyers said he was suffering from a 'myriad of life-threatening issues' including bladder cancer last September. 'His health deteriorated over the weeks of the trial,' said his lawyer Dick DeGuerin. 'He looked like death warmed over.'

Last October, Durst was sentenced to life for Berman's slaying. Prosecutors alleged his motive was to prevent her from revealing what she knew about the vanishing of his wife, Kathleen McCormack Durst in 1982.

Throughout his trial, his defense attempted to postpone his case due to ongoing health problems, including chest pains, breathing problems, pain while dressing and from having a catheter, and urinary tract infections due to his bladder cancer.

A week after his sentencing, he was indicted for the murder of his first wife Kathie Durst in 1982.

His death leaves behind many unanswered questions surrounding Kathie's unsolved case; and renewed public interest into the deluded misdeeds of one of America's most bizarre killers.

Pictured: Durst spins his wheelchir in place during his trial in Inglewood, California on September 8, 2021

Durst, born on April 12, 1943, was the eldest son of a prominent New York real estate dynasty. His grandfather, the family patriarch, Joseph Durst, was a tailor from Poland who immigrated to New Yok in 1902 with $3 sewn into his lapel.

In a few short years, Joseph moved up from peddling children's clothing on pushcarts to being a partner in a garment factory.

He soon after expanded into real estate in 1915 with the purchase of his first building on 34th Street. He also founded Capital National Bank, which made loans to the garment district and was eventually sold - giving him seed money for his budding real-estate empire.

Today, the Durst Organization is worth $8 billion with towering skyscrapers that dominate Manhattan's iconic skyline. The family-run business owns more than 16 million square feet of real estate in New York City, including a 10% stake in One World Trade Center.

Robert Durst's childhood was marred by tragedy when he witnessed his mother, Bernice, commit suicide by jumping off the roof of their family home. (Family members would later claim that it was an accident and dispute that Robert was anywhere present at the time).

Robert Durst was the eldest son of a prominent New York real estate family. He had a very troubled childhood. From early on he was prone to violent outbursts and pathological lying

Robert's childhood was marred by the death of his mother, Beatrice (right) in 1950. His 32-year-old mother died after falling from the roof of their Scarsdale residence in New York. However, Robert, only seven at the time, claimed he saw her jump from the roof and commit suicide

Robert's relationship with his brother, Douglas, only 18 months apart, was perennially fraught. Robert underwent counseling for the violent sibling rivalry that often ended in physical fights

Robert's relationship with his brother, Douglas, only 18 months apart, was perennially fraught.

TIMELINE: THE DESCENT OF ROBERT DURST 1982: Robert Durst's wife, Kathleen McCormack goes missing on January 31. Durst claimed that he dropped her off at the train station on the night she disappeared, and spoke to her later that evening on the telephone. Kathleen was never seen again. 1994: Robert Durst is pushed out of the family business due to increasingly erratic behavior. His brother is named successor of the real estate empire. 2000: The Westchester County district attorney announces in November that she is reopening the investigation into Kathleen McCormack Durst's disappearance and Susan Berman is considered a prime witness. 2000: Susan Berman is found executed in her Beverly Hills home. Three days later, an anonymous letter arrives at the Beverly Hills Police Department containing Berman's address and the word 'cadaver.' On the envelope 'Beverly' was critically misspelled as 'Beverley.' But the case goes cold. 2001: Durst was arrested in Galveston, Texas, shortly after body parts belonging to his elderly neighbor, Morris Black, were found floating in Galveston Bay. Police tracked him down with a receipt that was left in one of the garbage bags containing Black's body parts. Durst was released on bail and went on the run for 45 days before he was caught shoplifting a sandwich in Pennsylvania. 2003: Robert Durst stands trial for the murder of Robert Black and is acquitted of first degree murder. He pleads guilty for the lesser charges of bail jumping and evidence tampering and is sentenced to two years in prison. 2015: HBO releases a six-part documentary, The Jinx, that discovers new evidence incriminating Durst in the murder of his best friend, Susan Berman in 2000. FBI agents arrest him in New Orleans on eve before the final episode aired on March 15 2020: Robert Durst's trial for the murder of Susan Berman begins on March 20. The trial was paused for 14-months during the Covid-19 pandemic and resumed in May 2021. 2021: Robert Durst is found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole on October 14. 2021: On October 22, a Westchester County grand jury charged the ex-real estate scion for murder in the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathie McCormack Advertisement

Robert underwent counseling for the violent sibling rivalry that often ended in physical fights.

A psychiatrist's report in 1953 diagnosed 10-year-old Robert with 'personality decomposition and possibly even schizophrenia.'

Classmates described Durst as a 'loner' in high school. He went on to attend Lehigh University in Pennsylvania with a degree in economics before he matriculated to UCLA to enroll in a doctoral program. It was there, that he met Susan Berman, an aspiring writer who was the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster.

In 1969, Durst left UCLA to open a health food store in Vermont which was closed after only two years.

He moved back to New York and began dating Kathleen McCormack, a young dental hygienist who rented an apartment owned by the Durst Organization.

After two dates, he asked Kathie to move in with him, and they married on Robert's thirtieth birthday in 1973.

Robert joined his father, Seymour and brother Douglas in the family business, developing a string of successful skyscrapers in midtown Manhattan. Meanwhile, Kathie enrolled in medical school to become a doctor.

The couple partied at Studio 54, sailed the Mediterranean and traveled to Thailand while splitting time between their penthouse on Riverside Drive and a lakeside cottage in upstate.

But their relationship grew troubled, friends would later say, when Durst became controlling and pressed his wife to have an abortion.

'I was always, always, always very controlling,' he said, matter-of-factly in the 2015 HBO docuseries, The Jinx.

Three weeks before she went missing in 1982, 29-year-old Kathleen was treated at a hospital for facial bruises that were sustained in a physical fight with Durst.

She had discovered that Durst was having an affair with Prudence Farrow (the younger sister of Mia Farrow and the subject of the Beatles song 'Dear Prudence.')

Despite his tremendous wealth, Durst was notoriously cheap.

When Kathie asked for a $250,000 divorce settlement (a pittance sum for the billionaire), he refused, removed her name from their bank accounts and cancelled all her credit cards.

The last time Kathie McCormack was seen alive was on January 31, 1982, when she showed up unexpectedly at a dinner party thrown by a friend.

Durst claimed that he drove his wife to catch a 9:15pm train to Manhattan after having an argument in their upstate cottage. He maintained that he went back to have a drink with a neighbor and spoke to McCormack later that evening when she called from their Riverside Drive apartment.

Durst later admitted that he lied and just went to bed. 'That's what I told police,' he said in the The Jinx. 'I was hoping that would just make everything go away.' McCormack was never seen again and her body has never been found.

It took Durst five days to report her disappearance to the police. By then, he had already raised suspicions among her family and friends and was considered a prime suspect by police.

Kathleen McCormack Durst, 29, went missing on January 31, 1982 , her body has never been found. Durst was considered a prime suspect in the case but investigators were never able to pin him for the crime

Durst initially offered $100,000 for his wife's return, then reduced the reward to $15,000. When one of McCormack's friends and her sister found out that she had been reported missing, they broke into her cottage and discovered her belongings were already in the trash

In the immediate aftermath, his best friend and trustworthy confidant, Susan Berman stepped in to act as his publicist. She shielded him from the hounding press, lied in depositions, and helped him craft a phony alibi by posing as Kathleen in a fake sick call to her medical school that made it appear like she was still alive.

Raised by a mobster father whom she adored, Susan had long internalized the mob's Omerta, 'code of silence.' She was fiercely loyal to Robert Durst, who she called 'Bobby,' and who walked her down the aisle of her 1984 nuptials. He was even mentioned in the 'acknowledgements' of her 1981 memoir, Easy Street.

But it would be Susan Berman's intimate knowledge of the situation, that would eventually get her killed 18-years-later for 'knowing too much.'

Investigators traced leads, developed suspicions and questioned Robert Durst over McCormack's disappearance, but the case went cold for almost two decades. Years passed before she was finally presumed dead in 2017.

Speaking to the New York Times in 2015, Douglas Durst explained how he initially suspected his brother of foul play when his seven dogs, 'all named Igor,' died under mysterious circumstances within six months. 'Before the disappearance of my sister-in-law, Bob had a series of Alaskan Malamutes, which is like a husky,' he said. 'We dont know how they died, and what happened to their bodies.'

'In retrospect, I now believe he was practicing killing and disposing his wife with those dogs.'

Douglas explained how Robert chillingly began using the word 'Igor' as a verb replacement for 'kill.' He told the Times: 'When he was in jail in Pennsylvania, he was recorded saying, 'I want to 'Igor' Douglas.''

By 1994, Durst's professional life had gone off the rails too. As the eldest of four children, Robert was heir apparent of the family empire but a rift had developed at the Durst Organization over his increasing erratic behavior - which included mumbling to himself in meetings, stealing company money and urinating in his brother's trash bin.

In this Dec. 21, 2016 file photo, Robert Durst sits in a courtroom in Los Angeles

Pictured: In this April 14, 2015 file photo, Robert Durst leaves Federal Court in an Orleans Parish Sheriff's vehicle in New Orleans

His long-standing enmity with his brother had grown to keeping weapons  Robert menacingly kept a pointed plumber's wrench on his desk. In response, Douglas armed his office with a piece of pipe for protection.

Seymour Durst had no choice but to remove Robert as his designated successor and replace him with Douglas. Devastated by the move, Robert cut himself off from the family and began flitting among homes in New York, Texas and California. He did not attend his fathers funeral in 1995.

Eight years after Kathie went missing, Durst officially divorced her by claiming 'spousal abandonment.' He was able to slip the noose of law enforcement until May 2021, when the Westchester DA's office reclassified the case as a homicide. A grand jury charged Robert Durst with her murder in October 2021.

In the interim, Durst went on a killing spree that resulted in the deaths of Berman in 2000, and his elderly neighbor Morris Black in 2001. He was acquitted of the latter crime, and eventually convicted of murdering Berman last year.

Berman was found dead in her Beverly Hills cottage, on Christmas Eve, 2000. Prosecutors said Durst's motive was to silence her from revealing his connection to Kathie's 1982 disappearance.

Only one month earlier, in November 2000, the district attorney in Westchester County announced they were reopening the investigation into Kathie McCormack Durst's cold case. Berman was listed as a key witness to the investigation - which inadvertently signed her death warrant over to Robert Durst.

'If anything ever happens to me, Bobby did it,' she told her friends.

Executed with a single bullet to the back of her head, Susan's killing had all the hallmarks of a mob hit.

Investigators were confounded by crime scene and speculated it could have been an act of revenge for some long forgotten crime committed by her father, Davie 'the Jew' Berman, a former business partner of Bugsy Siegel.

A few days later, a mysterious letter arrived at the Beverly Hills Police Department, postmarked December 23, 2000. It contained Berman's address and the word 'cadaver.'

On the envelope 'Beverly' was critically misspelled as 'Beverley' which matched a previous letter Durst sent to Berman (though it would take investigators 15 years to make that connection). Her case went cold.

Susan Berman's murder went unsolved for 15 years. She was murdered in a execution-style killing with a single bullet to the back of her head

In the meantime, Robert Durst went on the run. He lived under different aliases, using false identities to buy cars, rent apartments, and open credit card accounts.

In another crime riddled with bizarre twists, Durst was arrested in October 2001 for murdering his elderly neighbor, Morris Black, and dumping his body parts in the Galveston Bay.

At the time, Durst was dressed in drag and posing as a mute woman named 'Dorothy Ciner' in a shabby Texas rooming house.

He jumped bail and was arrested six weeks later while shoplifting Band-Aids, a newspaper and a chicken sandwich at a supermarket, with $500 cash in his pocket and $37,000 in the trunk of his car.

Durst was arrested in October 2001 for murdering his elderly neighbor, Morris Black (above), and dumping his body parts in the Galveston Bay

In the 2003 trial, Durst claimed self defense. He alleged that Morris Black, 71, threatened him with a pistol and was accidentally shot in the ensuing struggle. A psychiatrist testified that Durst had Asperger syndrome, and he was subsequently acquitted of murder, despite his testimony about sitting in a pool of blood while carving up Blacks body.

Durst pleaded guilty to bail jumping and evidence tampering and was given a small three year sentence.

In a chilling 2015 interview, Durst told HBO: 'They never found the head. I have no idea why. I do know that there must have been 15 garbage bags full of body parts and other stuff with blood on it or whatever, and they found 12. Why they didnt find the other ones, since they were all dumped in the same place, I have no idea.'

In 2006, the Durst Organization officially cut ties with their wayward brother for a $65 million payout.

While on the lam, Durst had plotted to kill his estranged brother, Douglas and stalked his various homes and office armed with guns.

He signed over power of attorney to his second wife, Debrah Lee Charatan, a relationship Durst described as a 'a marriage of convenience.'

The New York Times reported they had 'never lived together as husband and wife,' and by the time the HBO documentary aired in 2015, the couple was estranged.

Charatan reportedly moved in full-time with one of Durst's real estate lawyers, Steven Holm.

Her relationship with Durst at the time of his death is unknown.

Robert Durst admitted to sending the infamous 'CADAVER' letter (above) that tipped police off to the location of Susan Berman's body at her address

Durst married his second wife, Debrah Lee Charatan in 2000. The couple briefly shared a Fifth Avenue apartment but apartment in 1990 but 'have never lived together as husband and wife'

Like Kathleen McCormack's case, Susan Berman's slaying went cold until 2015 when Durst sat down for a six-part interview with HBO. The filmmakers confronted him with a crucial piece of evidence that connected him to the anonymous 'cadaver' note sent to the Beverly Hills police, 15 years earlier.

During their research, the filmmakers had discovered a letter Durst wrote to Susan Berman in 1999 with identical handwriting and Beverly Hills was misspelled as 'Beverley' on both. Confident and cocky, even Durst admitted on camera that 'only the killer could have written' the note.

Flustered, he walked off to the bathroom with the microphone still attached, and was caught muttering to himself: 'There it is. You're caught! You're right, of course...What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.'

Twenty-four hours before the final episode aired on March 15, 2015, the FBI detained Mr. Durst on a murder warrant in New Orleans where he was staying under a different alias. After many delays due to various health concerns and the Covid-19 crises, Durst's trial resumed in May 2021.

Looking frail and wearing a brown jailhouse jumpsuit, Durst sat slumped in a wheelchair as the Judge sentenced him to life without parole on October 14, for the murder of Susan Berman.

Judge Mark Windham called Bermans death a witness killing and 'a horrific crime' that was also 'a denial of justice to the McCormack family.' Two days after sentencing, Durst was transferred to a hospital and put on a ventilator after testing positive for Covid-19.

'Bob is incapable of telling the truth,' said Douglas Durst in 2015. 'He is a true psychopath, beyond any emotions. Thats why he does things, so he can experience the emotions that other people have vicariously. Because he has absolutely none of his own.'

The Mafia Princess: Robert Durst's alleged victim Susan Berman who was murdered execution-style in her Beverly Hills home was the daughter of an infamous Las Vegas gangster with family ties to Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lanksy

Susan Berman was executed in her Beverly Hills cottage with a single bullet to the back of her head on Christmas Eve in 2000. A spent 9mm shell casing lay in a pool of blood nearby. But without a murder weapon or any other evidence, the hunt for her killer went cold until her close friend Robert Durst was arrested 15 years later.

Before then, Susan's mysterious killing had all the hallmarks of a mob hit, and many of her friends speculated it was an act of revenge for some long forgotten crime committed by her father, Davie 'the Jew' Berman - a business partner of Bugsy Siegel, one of the most notorious mobsters in Las Vegas' dark history.

While many made-men suffered violent ends; the irony of Davie's early demise in 1957 from natural causes was not lost on Susan throughout her life. Nor was it lost on Susan's closest friends, 43 years later, that she would be the one to die with a bullet in her head.

Considering her childhood as a 'mafia princess,' it came as a huge surprise to many when long-time friend Durst was arrested in 2015.

Susan Berman (pictured as a child) grew up as a sheltered 'mafia princess' in Las Vegas where her father, Davie Berman, a notorious gangster pioneered the gambling industry for the Mob in the city's nascent years

(L to R) Davie 'the Jew' Berman is pictured with his mobbed-up business partners, Gus Greenbaum, Joe Rosenberg and Willie 'Icepick' Alderman in 1952. These men operated as lieutenants for their East Coast bosses: Meyer Lanksy, Frank Costello and Lucky Luciano

It was not until Susan Berman began conducting research for her 1981 memoir, Easy Street, that she learned the true nature of her father's notorious past as a ruthless gangster that robbed banks, murdered enemies and served a seven year sentence at Sing Sing for kidnapping a wealthy bootlegger and holding him for ransom. She wrote: 'He fabricated a childhood for me that seemed all- American and completely normal'

Susan and the wealthy New York real-estate heir met in the 1960s as students at UCLA. They forged a fast and powerful bond over their similar upbringings: both had mothers who committed suicide and both grew up with immense wealth.

'It was always 'Bobby this, Bobby that, wonderful Bobby,' a friend recalled to New York Magazine in 2001. He was even mentioned in the 'acknowledgements' of her memoir, Easy Street.

Despite a successful career in journalism burgeoning on Hollywood, Susan is said to have inherited $4million from her father's mafia holdings but she died penniless. In the months prior to her murder, Durst gave her two $25,000 bailout checks as a gift. Some suspected that money could have been his motive.

Susan was born in Minneapolis on May 18, 1945 to Gladys and Davie Berman. She was the pampered only-child of the respected Mob visionary responsible for turning Las Vegas into a gambling gold mine for his partners in the Syndicate: Frank Costello, Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano.

On the day she was born, just outside the delivery room sat Chickie, Willie, Chief, Flippy, Rabbit and Lou  men that made the 'waiting room at Abbot Hospital look like the scene of the St. Valentine's Day massacre,' she joked in her 1981 memoir, Easy Street.

Susan spent her childhood in casinos, the carpeted floor between the poker roulette and craps tables was her de-facto playground.

Her 'friends' were the notorious mobsters Gus Greenbaum (whose throat would later be slashed in his home) and Willie 'Icepick' Alderman (who died serving time at Terminal Island for extortion and earned his moniker for his murder weapon of choice).

She did homework in the counting room, played gin rummy with her bodyguard and practiced multiplication tables on slot machines.

Both Elvis and Liberace sang at her birthday parties and her favorite activity was to watch the showgirls rehearse, and play dress-up in their fruit bowl hats, feathered headdresses and rhinestone tiaras. When she turned 12, her father bought out the entire Riviera Hotel gift store as her present.

'Everybody at the hotel was part of my extended family  the entertainers; Howard Hughes, who hung around in frayed short-sleeved shirts and tennis shoes; the hotel doctorand the men who lavished presents on me, gamblers who wanted to curry favor with my father.'

'I was surrounded by middle-aged men who helped my father raise me because my mother was so ill,' explained Susan.

Over time, the stress of Davie's dangerous life had taken its toll on Gladys Berman and she began to suffer from a series of mental breakdowns. Susan remembered how her mother spent most days lying in bed crying. 'I thought of her as a beautiful painting that was becoming dimmer and dimmer as she became more and more diminished,' wrote Susan.

Susan's blissful childhood came to an abrupt end in 1957 when her father died from a heart attack during a routine polyp removal surgery. Less than a year later, her mother died from a drug-overdose in a presumed suicide. David Berman, 'the greatest gangster that ever lived' was dead and Susan was sent to live with her Uncle Chickie in Lewiston, Idaho  far from the sheltered life she knew as Sin City royalty.

'He told his friends that I must never know the secrets of his past because the knowledge might destroy me,' wrote Susan in Easy Street. 'He was determined that the sins of the father would never be visited upon his child.'

It was at his funeral that Susan first heard the word 'gangster' associated with her father. She wrote: 'He fabricated a childhood for me that seemed all- American and completely normal, disguising his real career as carefully as he managed it.'

Susan never second-guessed why her family didn't have checking accounts (mobsters preferred to use cash boxes and hide their assets from the government).

She didn't question why the windows in her custom-built home were higher than most in the neighborhood (to protect them from being hit in drive-by shootings). Or why nobody in her household carried keys, (that was standard mobster protocol to protect their family from getting killed in the event they were kidnapped, bodyguards managed the door instead). 'Several men lived with us who my father said were 'friends', wrote Berman, 'I never knew they were bodyguards.'

She thought her father's reaction in small rooms was due to bouts of intense claustrophobia, not because he spent four years in solitary confinement at Sing Sing. And all those late night 'vacations' they took to the Beverly Hills Hotel weren't actually vacations at all, they were safety precautions when her life was in danger.

Memories of her unconventional childhood seemed to make less with time. 'As I got older and decided on this odyssey, it was finally because I wanted to know the truth myself, rather than rely on innuendo and rumors,' she wrote.

Davie Berman famously refused to name his accomplices after he was captured in a Central Park shootout by NYPD for kidnapping a wealthy bootlegger in 1927. His silence earned him a seven year sentence in prison but it cemented his position in the Mob

Susan is pictured with her mother, Gladys Berman, in the backstage dressing room of The Flamingo where she enjoyed playing dress-up in showgirl costumes as a little girl

Susan fondly remembers her idyllic childhood before she was orphaned after the death of her parents. She grew up alongside her father while he worked the casino floor. Her only friends were wise-guys and her bodyguards

As a child, Susan struggled to understand why it always felt like her mother was trying to safeguard her: 'She would always hold me very tightly when we were together. It was as if she felt she was protecting me from something, but what? From traffic? From strangers?' The answer only became clearer with time.

While sifting through her father's voluminous FBI record, she learned that the man she admired, was actually known to law enforcement as 'vicious' and the 'most dangerous type of law violator to exist.' The same man that she adored and said 'captivated' her from an early age was described in a front page New York Times story as 'so tough he could kill a man with one hand tied behind his back.'

Born in abject destitution to immigrant parents from Ukraine  David Berman turned to an early life of crime, out of desperation and survival. His childhood was defined by merciless poverty. 'Not the picturesque poverty but hungry, dirty, shameful poverty,' said Susan who learned that her father and uncle were forced to endure the unforgiving prairie winters in a one-room clay house without coats and shoes.

'I saw now why my father had indulged me in material excess, he had known fear and want and the terror of poverty as a child,' said Susan.

'Jews in the Midwest in the early 1900s had three options if they wanted to succeed: they could bob their noses and change their names and pass for gentile, they could go into menswear, or they can go into gambling,' said Susan.

'My father chose gambling and all it spawned.'

By the time he was 14, Davie Berman was fixing card games and running his own gambling operation in Sioux City, Iowa. The older gamblers hired him as a 'torpedo,' to go after those who reneged on bets and Davie put together a team of neighborhood toughs that 'administered beatings fast and hard.' Before long, he was able to support his entire family with his earnings.

Fast talking, brazen, enterprising and scrappy, Davie Berman was preternatural Las Vegas long before the cradle of sin even existed.

He graduated from small town gambling rackets to bootlegging at the height of Prohibition - cutting his teeth as a guard while riding shotgun in the specially modified black Cadillacs that muled contraband hooch across the Canadian border into major American cities.

Gladys felt isolated and claustrophobic in her heavily guarded lifestyle that began to feel claustrophobic'

After receiving permission from Meyer Lansky, David Berman raised $1 million among partners to buy the El Cortez in 1945. While negotiating a contract with the former owner, Berman asked his younger brother Chickie to guard the money

Soon Davie Berman was running his own bootlegging business with 20 distilleries across Iowa at the age of 16. He absorbed smaller operations by force and became the primary supplier to Al Capone's speakeasies throughout the Midwest.

'His bootlegging success led him into another more dangerous venture: bank robbery,' Susan wrote in her memoir.

Davie Berman struck banks and post-offices all across the Midwest. He always operated by the same M.O to great success: first he would kidnap and restrain the patrolling night-time policeman by feigning car trouble. Then he would break into buildings using a sledge hammer or crowbar, before making off like a bandit. But it was during one these routine heists that Berman got caught and was sent to prison for the first time.

Frank Costello arranged to meet with David Berman upon his release from prison in 1934. As a reward for his loyalty and silence, Costello offered Berman $1 million but he declined the offer - instead asking for permission to run the lucrative gambling operation in Minneapolis on behalf of the Syndicate

He held up a poker game that his associates set up for 'some out-of-town hayseed farmers who had a lot of money to loose,' said Susan. Her father's gang hogtied the farmers and held them at gunpoint while he took their gold watches and money.

Berman almost escaped but was captured two days later and sentenced to eight months in prison, he was only 19-years-old.

Berman's face appeared on 'wanted' posters throughout the country, but that didn't stop him from taking his crime spree to New York City in 1927 where he engineered a kidnap for ransom plot on behalf of his bosses, Frank Costello, Meyer Lanksy and Moe Sedway.

Abraham Scharlin and James Taylor were wealthy, rival bootleggers that Berman held captive in a Brooklyn apartment for one week. He set their ransom at $25,000 (roughly $275k in today's money). The two men were shackled together with their eyelids taped and pillow cases over their heads. 'They were not beaten, but were subjected to many indignities,' reported the New York Times.

Davie Berman was arrested for the crime in a Central Park shootout with NYPD that left his partner Joseph Marcus dead.

In keeping with the mafia Omerta code of silence, Berman refused to talk. He was detained for weeks and at one point, was questioned for 72-hours straight but maintained his denial and declined identifying his accomplices in the crime. He was told that if he copped a plea, he'd go free; that's when Davie Berman infamously remarked: 'Hell, the worst I can get is life.'

'It seemed the perfect gutsy gangster phrase and people everywhere in bars elbowed each other and repeated it,' wrote Susan.

The story captured the attention of newspapers across America, the Daily News described his crime as 'the most sinister plan of a gigantic kidnapping trust whose activities are aimed at underworld overlords.'

His FBI file read that he 'came to New York from Chicago, equipped with high powered automobiles, a liveried chauffeur, death dealing machine guns, hand grenades and tear bombs, with the purpose of kidnapping wealthy men engaged in illicit activities who would not readily complain to the police.'

The police were unable to indict Davie Berman on charges of kidnapping but nailed him for violating the Sullivan Act  a law that required New Yorkers to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. He was sentenced to twelve years at Sing Sing but got out after seven and a half on good behavior.

Davie Berman (right) was like a father to his younger brother, Chickie Berman (left). Berman often had to bail out his younger brother for reneging on Mob debts that he racked up with his terrible gambling habit

'My father had lived all his life according to the code of the underworld and what he did, he did well,' wrote Susan Berman in her 1981 autobiography, Easy Street

By the time he was released in 1934, Davie Berman had proven himself to be a trustworthy soldier for the Mob. As a reward for his loyalty and silence, Frank Costello offered him $1 million but Davie Berman declined, instead he asked for permission to run the gambling rackets in Minneapolis. His request was granted.

Davie Berman's timing couldn't have been more perfect. The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 dried up a massive source of income for organized crime members. And Davie Berman chose to focus his attention on bookmaking and gambling. At the same time, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia began his campaign against New York City's five crime families. Bosses were hot to expand their illegal operation to other territories, with outposts already established in Florida and Cuba.

Davie Berman's publicity photo for the opening of the Riviera Hotel, 1955. Starting as a teenager, he worked his way through the ranks of organized crime; graduating from petty shakedowns to bootlegging, bank robbing and kidnapping before he ran his own big-gambling operation in Minneapolis. Eventually he made the jump to Las Vegas where he was a powerful mob boss that turned the dessert town into a gambling capital

'Lansky, Costello and Lucky Luciano were looking for a few trusted lieutenants to run their new illicit activities all over America. My father became one of those men,' wrote Susan.

Defending his gambling empire from threatening encroachments by Kid Cann and Al Capone was tough work that resulted in many gangland slaughters, Berman hired Willie 'Icepick' Alderman as his enforcer.

Alderman punctured his victims' brains by stabbing an icepick through their eardrum  resulting in a death that appeared to occur from natural causes. Victims would immediately slump over in their chairs, the icepick produced a tiny puncture wound that could easily overlooked in autopsies that concluded the cause of death as 'cerebral hemorrhage.'

'All along the treacherous journey the thing I feared most was that I would find out something that would make me love my father less, that would tamper with the idealized, romanticized view I had of him as a child,' revealed Susan in Easy Street.

She added: 'I know what the Mob does  the Mob enforced by death  but I kept hoping against hope, naively, that I would find out that he had not been involved in those dealings.'

Davie Berman paid off politicians to keep his business afloat, but a newly elected mayor in Minneapolis came down hard on illegal gambling. Berman was forced to shut down his clubs and search for greener pastures. He set his sights on Las Vegas, where his stock-in-trade was 'legal and holy.'

He partnered with Bugsy Siegel and with the blessing of his East Coast bosses, he purchased the El Cortez for $1million in 1945 (roughly $14million in 2021).

Lansky was busy in Omaha, Nebraska at the time working on getting dog racing legalized. He hated the Las Vegas heat and 'was delighted to have trusted lieutenants like Davie run the city for him,' wrote Susan.

Uncle Chickie, Gladys and Davie in Sloppy Joe's Bar, Havana Cuba, 1940. The Mob opened casinos throughout Cuba when Mayor La Guardia of NYC began his crackdown on organized crime during the 1930s. After Prohibition was repealed, gambling became their new mafia enterprise

Siegel became popular in Hollywood where he Siegel worked with the syndicate to form illegal rackets. He was always described as 'a glamorous sportsman' and associated with Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Jean Harlow and studio executives Louis B. Mayer and Jack L. Warner

Moe Sedway was one of David Berman's most trusted allies and a personal favorite of Susan Berman's growing up. A description in his FBI file reads: 'Prone to be a snappy dresser, vain to the point of being boresome and in his own mind a terrific woman killer'

Bugsy Siegel and Berman knew each other from the early New York days when Siegel played an important role in establishing the Jewish component of organized crime. Together with Meyer Lanksy, Siegel founded Murder, Inc.. Years later, Bugsy was sent to look for new ways to invest Syndicate money on the West Coast which is how Las Vegas got its start.

Davie Berman cut in his old pals, Willie 'Icepick' Alderman and Moe Sedway on the El Cortez deal. Bugsy appointed Gus Greenbaum to watch over his Las Vegas interests while he ran rackets for the Mob in Hollywood and hobnobbed with Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant and Jack Warner.

Susan called the new partnership a 'Mob blind date.'

Meyer Lanksy was a founding member of Murder, Inc. - the Jewish branch of the Mob that was started with Meyer Lanksy as street kids in the Lower East Side

As pit boss, Davie Berman was in charge of all the gambling in the casino and he earned 11 percent of the combined take.

He shed his gangster image in favor of custom suits cut in exquisite fabrics. 'He had a ruby mezuzah that hung on a gold chain from his pocket and he always smelled of French cologne,' wrote Susan.

'He seemed like the most normal of fathers to me. The only thing I didn't like about him was his thinning hair.'

Las Vegas was supposed to be a fresh start for Davie Berman who wanted to keep it clean. He enforced a strict no-gun policy in his casinos and disagreed with Siegel when he wanted to infuse narcotics into the city.

He became known as the 'Mob diplomat' for settling disputes and setting up 'liaisons between aspiring opportunists and his eastern bosses.'

'In his early 40s, he was self-educated, personable, had been a war hero, and spoke five languages. He was looking for a way to grow beyond his life as a perpetual citizen of the underworld,' explained Susan.

Things started to go south between Bugsy and the East Coast bosses. He was unpredictable and prone to tyrannical fits. 'Siegel terrorized gamblers, had screaming arguments with his mistress Virginia Hall in public and threatened his employees who didn't do his bidding.' He demanded a bigger cut of the assigned take. To make matter worse, Frank Costello suspected him of double crossing them in a Mexican narcotics deal.

To get away from him, Davie Berman handed over the El Cortez to Siegel and took his associates to buy the Las Vegas Club and the El Dorado (now Binion's Horseshoe). 'Siegel wanted to make Las Vegas his personal shrine and he began to ruin it for everyone,' said Susan. It wasn't long before the bosses started to think of him as a liability.

They were also unhappy with his mismanagement of money in supervising the construction of the Flamingo Hotel. He spared no expense in building materials that were still rationed from WWII, he even arranged Lucky Luciano to ship marble from Italy (where he had been deported for running a prostitution ring). He envisioned a lavish temple of gambling on the grand scale of movie sets and mansions that he had seen in Hollywood. He racked up $3 million in costs before the hotel was even half finished.

Moe Sedway (center) and Gus Greenbaum are seen at the Flamingo Hotel circa 1948. 'The day after Bugsy Siegel was murdered, Gus Greenbaum walked into the Flamingo with my father, Moe Sedway and Willie Alderman and took over' wrote Susan. Within six months, Siegel's failing hotel began to turn a profit

Gus Greenbaum was a protege of Meyer Lanksy who eventually became both an alcoholic and a heroin addict

David Berman purchased the Las Vegas Club in an effort to get away from Bugsy Siegel's megalomania

There was no Strip when Davie Berman arrived in Las Vegas in 1945

Siegel decided to open the unfinished casino early to compensate for some of the construction expenses. He chartered a train from Union Pacific and private plane to transport some of his celebrity friends from Hollywood for opening night but nobody showed up. The expensive failure of his opening night cost Siegel his life and he was executed on March 1, 1947 in the Beverly Hills home of his mistress, Virginia Hall.

'The day after Bugsy Siegel was murdered, Gus Greenbaum walked into The Flamingo with my father, Moe Sedway, and Willie Alderman and took over,' wrote Susan. 'Privately the whole city breathed a sigh of relief.'

Under tremendous pressure from Chicago gangsters, Gus Greenbaum was forced to buy into the failing Riviera Hotel. He gave Davie 7 percent ownership and control of all business operations. After six months, the hotel began to turn a profit and Davie was making more money than ever before, 'money he couldn't show, money he had to fly to Switzerland with and deposit in several safety deposit boxes.'

That was the money that propelled Susan through America's finest boarding schools after her parents died. Susan's Uncle Chickie enrolled her in Los Angeles' illustrious Chadwick School, 'I didn't know it, but Chadwick was the famous school where movie stars' kids went,' she wrote. 'Never had so many young egos joined under one roof to compete.'

She shared a dorm with Dean Martin's daughters, remembers feeling envious of B.D. Merrill because her mother Bette Davis visited every weekend. She had French class with Yul Brynner's son who spoke the language fluently because he had lived in Switzerland and she said Liza Minelli was 'an adorable waif' who 'improvised dances whenever there was a spare moment.'

It was at school when she learned of Gus Greenbaum's gruesome murder from a classmate reading the LA Times.

It was the first time she heard the word 'mafia' and she thought: 'I wondered if my father knew Gus has been in that.'

Although Susan allegedly inherited $4million from her father, she died penniless and was forced to borrow $50,000 from her close friend Robert Durst in the months before he murdered her.

New York Magazine reported, 'she spent it like it would never end, dressing in $400 St. Laurent blouses bought three at a clip from Saks and boots that she liked to buy in sets of two.'

'My father's story is a very American story, and I am the most American product of all,' wrote Susan, who idolized his memory for the rest of her life.

She said: 'This is the story of a father who was a gangster, not a gangster who was a father.'

Susan went on to become a successful journalist, eccentric, larger-than-life and beloved for her gallows sense of humor. At parties, while friends proudly showcased photos of their children, Susan whipped out the copy of her father's mug shot that kept a permanent place in her wallet.

Gladys Berman suffered from a series of mental breakdowns. Susan remembered her mother spending most days lying in bed crying

David Berman (left) is photographed for a charity baseball game with Abe Schiller (a mob connected casino host) and Willie 'Icepick' Alderman (right)

David Berman (left with his wife Gladys) felt compelled to join WWII in 1941 but was rejected by the American Army for his criminal record and for being too old. Instead he paid off people to join the Canadian Army and was the last of three men to survive in his unit while fighting in Italy. Berman was honorably discharged in 1944 after he was shot and wounded by a landmine. Uncle Chickie (right) followed in his brother's footsteps and also joined the war effort, both men were enraged by Hitler's persecution of their fellow Jews

By the year 2000, Susan was in dire straits financially. Unable to afford her rent in Beverly Hills, she turned to her longtime friend, Robert Durst for money.

The friends first met as students at UCLA in the 1960s. In the interim years since their first meeting, Durst's behavior became progressively more erratic. He became estranged from his family, who disowned him from their $4billion fortune with a one-time settlement of $65million.

Gladys Berman (right) was a popular dancer before she met in Davie Berman (16 years her senior) in 1939 while performing at a nightclub in Minneapolis. With her cousin Lorelei, they became known as the 'Evans Sisters' and traveled throughout the Midwest

Loyal to a fault, Berman stood up for Durst after the suspicious disappearance of his wife, Kathleen McCormack in 1982 - and served as his official alibi in a deposition during the initial investigation. McCormack's disappearance remained unsolved for almost two decades until the Westchester County District Attorney announced in 2000 that she was reopening Kathleen McCormack's case as a homicide.

Susan Berman was murdered weeks later. The crime also went unsolved until 2015.

Prosecutors now claim that Durst's motive for murdering Susan Berman was that she 'knew too much' about the alleged homicide of his wife, Kathleen McCormack.

Durst went on the run, in the years after Berman's deceased body was discovered in 2000. He began living under different aliases, using false identities to buy cars, rent apartments, and open credit card accounts. Dressed in drag, he posed as a mute woman named 'Dorothy Ciner' and moved into a shabby apartment in Galveston, Texas.

In 2001, Durst was arrested for the murder of his neighbor, Morris Black after his dismembered body parts were found floating in Galveston Bay. Durst jumped bail and was later caught in Pennsylvania trying to shoplift Band-Aids, a newspaper and chicken-salad sandwich from a supermarket; despite having $500 in his pocket.

Durst was eventually acquitted of murder but served three years in prison for tampering with evidence for carving up Morris Black's body with a paring knife.

Those who knew Berman said that her most admirable trait was loyalty; loyalty not only to her father's memory, but to her friends. Uncle Chickie's eerily prescient advice before his niece left for college (which is where she would befriend Robert Durst) was 'enjoy yourself Susie, life passes too quickly. And remember one thing about the Bermans: we're loyal.'
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Lawyers for former President Donald Trump, his attorney Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Mo Brooks on Monday afternoon asked a federal judge to throw out claims he incited the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and to dismiss lawsuits brought by Democratic House members and police officers.

More than a year after hundreds of Trump supporters marched on Congress, the courtroom battle is just one place where the former president is being held to account.

The lawsuits claim Trump is responsible for injuries to police and lawmakers.

'The congressional Democrat plaintiffs are hoping this court will help them score points against a political rival at the expense of the Constitution,' Trump lawyer Jesse Binnall said at the start of the hearing.

'That is an invitation this court should decline.'

He argued that the former president cannot be sued because he was acting within the scope of his official presidential powers.

'Executive immunity must be broad,' he said.

The Democratic lawmakers - including Democratic Reps Eric Swalwell and Jerry Nadler - invoked an 1871 law passed to fight the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan that prohibits political intimidation.

President Trump told supporters on Jan. 6 last year to 'fight.' He said: 'We will never give up, we will never concede,' before a crowd attacked the U.S. Capitol

The FBI and Justice Department have arrested more than 725 people in connection with the attack last year. They are looking for hundreds more

The lawsuits charge that the worst attack on the U.S. Capitol since the War of 1812 was a direct consequence of Trump's actions, including a fiery speech he gave shortly before thousands of his supporters stormed the building to try to overturn President Joe Biden's election.

A Supreme Court decision from 1982 holds that presidents are immune from lawsuits over their official acts.

But Trump's accusers say his speech on the morning of Jan. 6 amounted to a campaign event rather than an official act.

In it, he called on his supporters to 'fight.'

'We will never give up, we will never concede.' he said.

Plaintiffs lawyer Joseph Sellers said it was 'inconceivable' that the Supreme Court intended to shield presidents from lawsuits over this sort of conduct.

'There is no legitimate role for fomenting an insurrection aimed at Congress,' he said.

The court is just one arena where the legal battle over who was responsible for the violence is playing out.

The FBI and Justice Department have arrested more than 725 people in connection with the attack.

And a House committee is proving whether legal action should be taken against Trump and his allies.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta was unlikely to issue a ruling on Monday, but the hearing may shed light on whether Trump and allies can be held liable in a civil court for the deadly Capitol siege.

Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives and acquitted by the Senate on a charge of inciting the riot, which is also under investigation by a House select committee.

Swalwell's lawsuit includes similar claims against Trump allies who also spoke at the Jan. 6 rally, including Giuliani, Trump's eldest son Donald Trump Jr., and Republican congressman Brooks.

Brooks has sought to dismiss Swalwell's claims, arguing his remarks at the Jan. 6 rally were within the scope of his duties as a House member. A law called the Westfall Act protects federal employees from being sued for actions taken as part of their jobs.

Trump and his co-defendants have argued that their remarks preceding the Jan. 6 attack were political speech protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

'Plaintiffs are all members of Congress; each has engaged in controversial speech,' Binnall wrote in a court filing.

'Yet they have chosen to foreswear their oaths to support and defend the Constitution by attempting to undermine the First Amendment by bringing this lawsuit, based on their longstanding and public grudges against President Trump.'

The two Capitol Police officers who sued Trump are James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby.

Their suit says they suffered physical and emotional injuries. They want compensatory damages of $75,000 each plus punitive damages.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy vowed to strip Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar, Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff of their committee assignments should Republicans take back power in the lower chamber after the midterm elections.

In an interview with Breitbart, the California Republican said he would kick Swalwell and Schiff off of the House Intelligence Committee and Omar off of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

McCarthy vowed to strike back after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi removed two members of his caucus from their committee assignments last year.

His prospects of becoming speaker are looking more bright as now 26 House Democrats have announced retirement at the end of this Congress. Most recently Rep. Greg Perlmutter, Colo., announced he would not be seeking reelection.

'The Democrats have created a new thing where they're picking and choosing who can be on committees,' he said. 'Never in the history [of Congress] have you had the majority tell the minority who can be on committee. But this new standard that these Democrats have voted for...'

In 2020, the House voted 230 to 199 to kick Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., from the Education and Labor Committee and the Budget Committee. Eleven Republicans joined Democrats in stripping the congresswoman of her assignments for espousing QAnon conspiracies before being elected to Congress  including supporting calls online for Nancy Pelosi's execution.

McCarthy vowed to strike back after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi removed two members of his caucus from their committee assignments last year

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., lost seats on the Oversight and Reform Committee and the Natural Resources Committee after posting a manipulated anime cartoon showing him killing Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in November.

McCarthy has said that Gosar and Greene will get their committee assignments back if Republicans regain power.

Calls grew for Swalwell to be kicked off of the Intelligence Committee over his relationship with suspected Chinese spy Fang Fang.

Swalwell has refused to confirm or deny sleeping with Fang before he was tipped off in 2015 that she was a Chinese agent.

The California Republican said he would kick Swalwell and Schiff off of the House Intelligence Committee and Omar off of the Foreign Affairs Committee

Swalwell's close relationship with Fang from 2012-2015 was first revealed to the public in a report from Axios in 2020, though Pelosi and Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy were both briefed on the matter in 2015.

'If Eric Swalwell cannot get a security clearance in the private sector, there is no reason why he should be given one to be on Intel or Homeland Security. He will not be serving there,' McCarthy told Breitbart.

Swalwell in a tweet claimed that McCarthy was going after him because he's 'effective.'

'McCarthy is targeting me for 1 reason: Im effective. He wants to carry water (& sort Starbursts) for Trumps Big Lie & not be called out.'

'Hes projecting onto me b/c hes incapable of facing down the Ku Klux Klan elements in his caucus. If he thinks hes silencing me, hes not,' the California Republican continued.

'Ilhan Omar should not be serving on Foreign Affairs,' McCarthy said. 'This is a new level of what the Democrats have done.'

McCarthy has repeatedly called on Pelosi to remove Omar from Foreign Affairs over critical remarks she's made about Israel. In July, Omar compared actions taken by the U.S. and Israel to those of Hamas and the Taliban.

'We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban,' she wrote on Twitter, prompting a renewed call for her ousting on the committee.

In 2019, Jewish groups called for Omar to be removed from her committee spot for raising the issue of powerful pro-Israel lobby groups in Washington and linking their influence to donations.

At a public event in Washington Omar said she wanted to discuss 'the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country.'

That same year, she came under fire for saying that 'some people did some things,' referring to 9/11. At the time she said the Council on American-Islamic Relations 'was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.'

McCarthy then turned to Schiff, chairman of the House Intel Committee.

'You look at Adam Schiffhe should not be serving on Intel when he has openly, knowingly now used a fake dossier, lied to the American public in the process and doesn't have any ill will [and] says he wants to continue to do it,' McCarthy said.

The GOP leader then suggested that Afghanistan could have fallen to the Taliban so quickly because the Intelligence committee under Schiff was focused on President Trump's impeachment.

'We're going to reshapethink about what happened in Afghanistan. Why did Afghanistan collapse so fast? Was the Intel Committee under Adam Schiff focused on impeachment and not on the safety of America? Why are people coming across the border that are on a terrorist watch list? What are they doing about it? Their own members on that committee say it's not happening when it's true. We need to have an Intel Committee that looks at what's happening around the world and keeps America safe.'

McCarthy also signaled he would move forward with forming a committee to investigate the Chinese Communist Party if he were to become speaker.

'I've looked and tried to get a committee on China,' McCarthy said. 'She [Pelosi] walked away from it when it took me eight months to get itshe walked away from it and you watch what's happening today. Would we have the supply chain problem? We did a China task forcewe didn't stop. You read through the recommendationsand those are the things we are going to implement. But America would be stronger today had we been able to do that sooner.'
David Kieve, a longtime Biden climate aide who worked on the 2020 presidential campaign, is leaving the administration

President Joe Biden is losing a longtime environmental aide, one who worked on his presidential campaign and is married to one of his top advisers.

David Kieve, the public engagement director at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, will exit the administration next week.

The reasons for his departure were unclear.

He's married to the White House communications director Kate Bedingfield. And he worked on outreach to environmental and climate change groups during Biden's 2020 campaign.

Kieve joins a few other senior administration officials heading for the exit, coming as Biden nears one year in office.

Another top environmental official, Cecilia Martinez, who oversaw environmental justice at CEQ, stepped down last week.

David Kieve is married to the White House communications director Kate Bedingfield - the couple is seen above with Biden and one of their children

In November, White House communications chief of staff Emma Riley announced she was leaving for the Labor Department. White House staff secretary Jessica Hertz resigned in October.

White House counselor Steve Ricchetti told NBC News that Kieve had worked 'tirelessly' for Biden since the early part of the presidential primary.

'His advocacy and work on climate issues has made him an important ambassador for the president to the climate community, rallying their support behind our ambitious agenda to tackle the climate crisis, the existential threat of our time,' Ricchetti said in a statement.

Kieve's resignation comes at a critical moment during President Biden's climate agenda.

The president's Build Back Better social safety net will held several provisions to fight climate change but its fate is in doubt after Democratic Senator Joe Machin said he couldn't support it in its current form.

Talks are continuing between Manchin and the White House but it's unclear how the final package will look. The White House has said it toned down some of its climate provisions at Manchin's request but he could ask for more as negotiations move forward.

Biden has stated the public goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent by 2030.

Kieve and Bedingfield married in January 2013. They have two children.

White House staff secretary Jessica Hertz resigned in October.

In November, White House communications chief of staff Emma Riley announced she was leaving for the Labor Department

There is expected to be some exodus at the White House in the next few months as the president hits the one-year mark in his administration. White House press secretary Jen Psaki originally said she envisioned her tenure lasting one year although she later clarified she would stay longer as needed.

In contrast, Vice President Kamala Harris has lost seven top aides since her disastrous southern border trip on June 25. The exodus also came amid reports the vice president is a 'bully' who facilitates a toxic work environment and that there are tensions between the president's staff and Harris'.

Harris' director of press operations Peter Velz left last week for a position at the State Department.

His announcement came the day after fellow staffer Vince Evans confirmed his departure from the vice president's office to replace Kyle Anderson as executive director with the Congressional Black Caucus.

At the end of December, Harris' chief spokesperson Symone Sanders left her post. On Monday MSNBC announced she would join their network to anchor a weekend show.

Her exit followed the departure of Ashley Etienne, Harris' former communications director, who left in November.
Pope Francis warned against attempts to cancel culture, decrying 'one-track thinking' which he said attempts to deny or rewrite history according to today's standards.

Francis made his comments in an address to diplomats, the main thrust of which was the condemnation of 'baseless' ideological misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and the pandemic.

The leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics said cancel culture amounted to 'ideological colonisation' and 'leaves no space for freedom of expression'.

It is the second time in recent weeks that the Pope has criticised the culture wars.

Last month, the Vatican expressed concern over a draft European Union communications manual that suggested not using the term Christmas and the use of the term human-induced instead of man-made.

The manual, which the Vatican saw as an attempt to cancel Europe's Christian roots, was later withdrawn for revision.

Pictured: Pope Francis warned against attempts to cancel culture, decrying 'one-track thinking' which he said attempts to deny or rewrite history according to today's standards

In his remarks on Monday, Francis warned of 'a form of ideological colonisation, one that leaves no room for freedom of expression and is now taking the form of the 'cancel culture' invading many circles and public institutions'.

He used the two words in English in the midst of a long speech in Italian.

The 'cancel culture' controversy is particularly sharp in English-speaking countries, especially in Britain where debate has raged over the country's imperialistic history.

Pro-active campaigns have seen the removal of several statues depicting historic figures who had a hand in the slave trade, such as Edward Colston.

Colston, a 17th Century merchant, made a fortune trading slaves but went on to donate so much money to philanthropic works in Bristol that his name appeared throughout the city on streets, schools and a concert hall.

His statue was toppled by a crowd amid growing tensions sparked by global outcry following the death of George Floyd in the US.

The 'cancel culture' controversy is particularly sharp in English-speaking countries, especially in Britain where debate has raged over the country's imperialistic history. Pictured: Activists throw the statue of Edward Colston, who had links to slavery, into the river in Bristol in 2020

Floyd was killed when white police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into his neck despite his desperate pleas that he 'can't breathe'. He passed out and later died in Minneapolis on May 25.

His death is seen as a symbol of systemic police brutality against African-Americans sparking outrage and largely-peaceful protests first across the US before quickly spreading worldwide.

Other figures targeted in the UK include Cecil Rhodes, a statue of whom campaigners are trying to have removed from Oriel College at Oxford University.

Last year, Guy's Hospital in London said it will move the statue of founder Thomas Guy to a less prominent position because of his ties to the slave trade.

Meanwhile, the National Trust published a research project which claimed to have found links to slavery and colonialism for 93 of its properties, including Chartwell - the former home of Winston Churchill - and Rudyard Kipling's home.

Pope Francis said the tendency, though, risked cancelling identity 'under the guise of defending diversity', adding that a kind of 'one-track thinking' is taking shape, one constrained to deny history or, worse yet, to rewrite it in terms of present-day categories.

Cecil Rhodes is another figure in British history who has been repeatedly targeted as a result of cancel culture. Pictured: Oriel Colleges statue of Cecil Rhodes at the University of Oxford

Besides the removal of statues, some activists have also demanded changing the names of institutions such as schools and hospitals named after the historical figures, saying they reflect the impact of Britain's colonialist history.

While the pope did not mention any specific cancel culture examples, he said any historical situation must be interpreted in the context of its times and not by today's standards.

Last month, Pope Francis compared the EU to a 'Nazi dictatorship' for trying to impose woke rules on language and ban using the word Christmas.

The pope, 84, warned the bloc not to 'take the path of ideological colonisation' as he returned from Greece after a four-day trip.

The EU was accused of trying to 'cancel Christmas' after telling staff to avoid the word in favour of 'holiday period' because it could be offensive to non-Christians.

Eurocrats published the rule months ago as part of a guide on 'inclusive communication', details of which leaked leading to a furious backlash.

Other suggestions in the book included replacing Christian names such as Mary and John with 'international' names such as Malika and Julio when using them in generic examples, and swapping the word 'man-made' for 'human-induced'.

The pontiff said the language diktats, which the European Commissioner for Equality admitted 'clearly needed more work', and said trying to ban the term Christmas amounted to 'a fad, watered-down secularism'.

He said: 'It is something that throughout history has not worked. In history, many dictatorships have tried to do these things. Im thinking of Napoleon, the Nazi dictatorship, the Communist one.

He added that the EU is 'necessary' but it needs to avoid stirring up divisions among its member states.
A missing woman's body was found 'mutilated by foxes' in a field a mile from the spot where her car broke down in Scotland.

The 55-year-old from Airdrie, Scotland, was waiting for roadside assistance to arrive in mid-December when she walked a mile away from her stranded vehicle and into nearby fields in south Ayrshire, in the west of the country.

Police found her body less than a week before Christmas at around 4.55pm on December 19.

They had been conducting a missing persons inquiry after the woman's Citroen was found empty the day before, near the coastla village of Monkton.

A 55-year-old woman was found dead a mile away from where her car broke down on a road near Monkton, Scotland. Pictured: A road leading to Monkton

Police in Scotland believe a fox may have mutilated the woman's body around a week before Christmas (File image)

A Police Scotland spokesperson said: 'Around 11.20pm on December 18, police were called to a report of a possible abandoned car on an unclassified road.

'Officers attended and the initial investigations failed to trace the registered keeper and officers started a missing person enquiry.'

The spokesperson added a day later the woman's body was discovered 'in a field approximately one mile from where the car was discovered'.

A source told The Daily Record: 'She died while she had been going through the fields.'

The death is not being treated as suspicious, while police believe a fox or badger is to blame for mutilating the woman's body.
Australia will spend more than $3.5billion to purchase 120 tanks and other armoured vehicles from the United States.

The upgrade could see the Australian Army gain up to 75 Abrams tanks, 29 assault breacher vehicles, 17 joint assault bridge vehicles, and six armoured recovery vehicles.

Defence minister Peter Dutton says the tanks, teamed up with other vehicles, would provide the ADF with critical firepower for land operations.

Australia will spend more than $3.5billion to purchase 120 tanks and other armoured vehicles from the United States (pictured, a US tank during training in Georgia)

Defence minister Peter Dutton (pictured) says the tanks, teamed up with other vehicles, would provide the ADF with critical firepower for land operations

'Teamed with the infantry fighting vehicle, combat engineering vehicles, and self-propelled howitzers, the new Abrams will give our soldiers the best possibility of success and protection from harm,' Mr Dutton said.

'The M1A2 Abrams will incorporate the latest developments in Australian sovereign defence capabilities, including command, control, communications, computers and intelligence systems, and benefit from the intended manufacture of tank ammunition in Australia.

'The introduction of the new M1A2 vehicles will take advantage of the existing support infrastructure, with significant investment in Australian industry continuing in the areas of sustainment, simulation and training.'

The vehicles will are set to arrive in 2024 with the defence minister to confirm the new purchases on Monday, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

The new additions reveal the government's interest in building a solid fleet of armoured vehicles in contrast to recent purchases of submarines and jet fighters.

The new additions reveal the government's interest in building a solid fleet of armoured vehicles in contrast to the purchase of submarines and jet fighters (pictured, an Abram tank)

The M1A2 Abrams will replace the army's 59 Abrams M1A1s which have not seen combat since they were bought back in 2007.

The last time the army deployed a tank was in the Vietnam War, where Australian troops - predominantly army personnel - until January of 1973.

Armoured vehicles are expected to cost Australia between $30billion and $42billion in the next three decades as China continues to gain a military advantage.

This cost includes the purchase of 'essential' infantry fighting vehicles that come at a price between $18billion and $27billion.

The tanks have been kitted out with an upgraded armour package which claims to provide better protection against improvised explosive devices.

The vehicles are set to enter service in 2025.

The decesion comes after Australia was forced to pursue nuclear submarines because of China's military build-up in the South China Sea and nearby Papua New Guinea, sparking fears of war.

In recent years, Communist China has built military bases in the South China Sea and terrorised smaller Asian nations like the Philippines and Vietnam with a series of naval exercises.

University of Sydney Associate Professor of Northeast Asian Politics, James Reilly, said the arms race between China on one side and Australia and the US on the other in this part of the Pacific could lead to war.

'I personally am deeply concerned about, what we call in international relations, security dilemmas where each two sides to a dispute keep taking more and more measures that they believe are reasonable and defensive but the other side responds in kind,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'We end up with spirals of increasing army, military build-ups, mistrust and increasing risk of war.

'The risk of war increases the more the countries are arming each other.'
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Thick black acrid smoke was pushed into every level of the Bronx apartment block where 17 died by two broken self-sealing doors at the top and bottom of the building that acted like a chimney.

One door on the third floor where the blaze began should have contained it in the apartment after it was started by a faulty space heater.

However the door failed and the fire escaped. While the flames were contained to the third floor a second broken self-sealing door on the 15th floor sucked the smoke upwards through the lift shaft and pushed it across every floor of the building.

The 17 victims were all killed by smoke inhalation. 15 people remained in hospital in a critical condition on Monday.

Mayor Eric Adams said: 'It was the smoke that took these lives, not the fire itself.

'We have a law here that requires doors to close automatically. We are looking at [that] through the investigation with the fire marshals, who will be extremely thorough with the investigation.'

The building has no fire escapes because when it was constructed in 1973 they were not a requirement.

It also only has a sprinkler system in its laundry and contractor room.

Large, new apartment buildings in the city are required to have sprinkler systems and interior doors that swing shut automatically to contain smoke and deprive fires of oxygen, however those rules don't apply to older buildings.

Fire officials cited the system of 'scissor stairs' inside the complex as a design that makes it more difficult to feed a hose through in the building.

Andrew Ansbro, president of the FDNY Uniformed Firefighters Association Union, said the ageing building was poorly equipped to deal with a fire.

'It was at a building that was built under federal guidelines way back when, so its not up to New York City fire codes,' he told the New York Daily News.

Fire investigators tested most of the doors in the complex on Sunday and found a handful of other units had doors that did not close automatically, as designed, a fire official confirmed to the New York Times.

Many residents ignored the fire alarms when they went off on Sunday because they sound so frequently as false alarms.

'First we heard the fire alarm go off. Numerous times,' said Michael Joseph, 32, who lived on the sixth floor with his uncle. But we didn't think nothing of it, because normally people in the building, they smoke and tend to set it off. So we thought it was probably just people playing.'

Fire experts said the design of a nearly 50-year-old Bronx building and its older fire safety features likely contributed to the a blaze caused by a faulty space heater turning the complex into a smoke-filled chimney on Sunday morning

The fire at Twin Parks North West complex in the Bronx broke out in Unit 3N, where the nine-person Wague family resided. Their residence is pictured Monday, covered in ash and debris

The family's apartment is seen completely destroyed. Father Mamadou Wague said the blaze left his eight-year-old daughter trapped in her bedroom on a mattress engulfed in flames. He pulled his daughter out of the flames and managed to escape

The blaze in unit 3N was caused by a faulty space heater, fire marshals determined Monday

The entire unit was damaged by the blaze

The owners of the Bronx building insist smoke detectors were working on Sunday when the flames tore through the building, despite fire bosses claiming the building isn't up to code, and include a member of the new mayor's housing transition team.

Eight children and nine adults died after the fire started at 333 E. 181st St. near Tiebout Ave in the Bronx shortly before 11am, tearing through a duplex apartment then spreading to other units in the affordable housing complex.

It is believed to have been started by a space heater that was running uninterrupted for days inside 3N, an apartment where Mamadou Wague and his eight children lived. They all survived but another eight kids from inside the building, and nine adults, died.

At a press conference on Monday, officials said the fire spread after the apartment's entry door failed to automatically close, as it should have, when Wague and his family fled.

'The fire was contained to the hallway just outside this two-story apartment, but the smoke travelled throughout the building and the smoke is what caused the deaths and the serious injuries,' Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro explained.

Mayor Adams, echoing Nigro's claim, vowed to 'double down' on the instructing residents to close doors in the event of a fire. However, he reiterated that city leaders do not blame the family for the catastrophe.

'What we dont want to do is just to add more trauma on a family that was simply trying to escape, a very dangerous and a very frightening experience,' Adams said.

Although none of the victims' identities have been confirmed by the coroner's office, police sources told the New York Post the youngest victims include a four-year-old, two five-year-old girls, a six-year-old boy, a pair of 11-year-old girls and a 12-year-old boy. Several victims appear to be from the same families.

Additionally, many residents remain missing including Dorel Anderson, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, and her boyfriend, Ramel Thompson.

Thompson's parents, who also live in the building and successfully escaped, claim the couple was in the apartment during the blaze but haven't yet been found.

Anderson's mother, Karen Benjamin, echoed the Thompson family's concerns, telling the Post: 'We were given no information. We cant find her.'

New York City's worst fire disaster in more than 30 years that broke out on the second and third floor of a building at 333 East 181st Street in the Bronx has killed eight children and nine adults (pictured, people jump to safety from the burning building)

FDNY commissioner Daniel Nigro said that 'very heavy' fire and smoke 'extended the entire height of the building' and confirmed that a space heater caused the blaze. Firefighters were pictured rescuing residents from the blaze early on Sunday

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said a malfunction with a self-closing door allowed smoke from a Bronx apartment fire started by a faulty space heater to spread throughout the building, killing eight children and nine adults

The building is home to many immigrants from west Africa, especially Gambia, and the Dominican Republic. It has a mix of private renters and those whose rent is being paid by the state.

Wague recalled how his kids alerted him to the blaze: 'One of the kids said, "Oh, Daddy! Daddy! Theres a fire!'

'I get up and theres smoke in the kids rooms.'

He then found his eight-year-old daughter, Nafisha, screaming and trapped on a burning mattress in her bedroom.

The 47-year-old father pulled his daughter from the burning bed, suffering burns to his lips and nose, and escaped the unit with his family. Nafisha sustained burns but is alive.

'I just grab her and run,' the west African immigrant told the New York Times. 'I didnt think about anything except getting her out.'

Smoke had filled the now ash-covered unit.

'It was dark,' his son, Hame Wague, 16, told the newspaper. 'We were all coughing.'

Although his entire family survived the blaze, the tragedy left Wague stricken with grief.

'I don't want anybody life  I don't want to hear anybody dead in this fire, that's what I worry about,' he told ABC 7 shortly after his rescue.

Fire Marshals have ruled the blaze 'accidental,' with the cause being a malfunctioning space heater. A New York City official, who spoke to the New York Times on the condition of anonymity, said officials suspect the space heater had been running uninterrupted for multiple days.

Emergency personnel from the FDNY provide medical aid as they respond to an apartment building fire in the Bronx

Some of the broken windows from a fire where a space heater caught fire and caused the devastation in the Bronx

Some of the items that caught fire at 333 East 181st Street in the Fordham Heights area of the Bronx

Firefighters respond to a five-alarm blaze that broke out in the Bronx on Sunday

The building is owned by Bronx Park Phase III Preservation LLC, a consortium of three property developers; The Camber Property Group, Belveron Partners and the LIHC Group. They purchased the building along with seven others in late 2019 as part of a $160million deal on affordable housing in the Bronx.

333 East 181st Street was formerly known as Twin Parks North West. They bought it for just shy of $25million - which values each of the 120 apartments inside at $206,000. The wider, $160million deal of 1,200

The tenants are all households earning 60 percent of area median income. A family or household of four in the building earns, for example, $72,000 and generally their rent will be less than a third of that annual income - less than $2,000 per month.

Andrew (left) and Charlie Gendron (right) of the LIHC group, the third investor

A spokesperson for the consortium would not confirm how much tenants pay in rent at 333 East 181st Street when contacted by DailyMail.com on Monday.

'We are devastated by the unimaginable loss of life caused by this profound tragedy.

'We are cooperating fully with the Fire Department and other city agencies as they investigate its cause, and we are doing all we can to assist our residents.

'Our thoughts are with the families and friends of those who lost their lives or were injured, and we are here to support them as we recover from this horrific fire,' they told DailyMail.com.

The developers paid a third less than the average sale price of homes in the Bronx, and a seventh of the average sale price of apartments in New York City when they bought the properties in 2019.

The owners charge tenants there less than the market rate for apartments in the area.

They also receive subsidiaries from the local governments and enormous tax credits.

According to an announcement at the time they bought the properties, the developers said they intended to renovate.

It's unclear if any renovations had begun but records filed with the Department of Housing indicate more than two dozen violations and complaints at the building since 2013.

Public records show the building has open violations for cockroach and mouse infestations, lead paint and water leaks, however no structural violations were listed.

Some of the complaints were filed in December of 2021.

The developers agreed to keep the properties within the city's roster of affordable housing when they purchased them.

They said they would keep them affordable for the next 40 years at least.

One of The Camber Group's founders is Rick Gropper, who was among hundreds listed as a contributor to new Mayor Eric Adams' transition team in the housing department.

The others are Andrew and Charlie Gendron, of the LIHC Group, and Paul Odland of Belveron.

A spokesman for Bronx Park Phase III Preservation LLC, the group of investors who own the building, told The New York Times that the fire alarm system in the building was working on Sunday and that there were no outstanding concerns.

'We are devastated by the unimaginable loss of life caused by this profound tragedy.

'We are cooperating fully with the Fire Department and other city agencies as they investigate its cause, and we are doing all we can to assist our residents.

'Our thoughts are with the families and friends of those who lost their lives or were injured, and we are here to support them as we recover from this horrific fire.'

The building received various complaints from residents last year, including at least four alleging their unit had 'no heat'

The developers who own the building where the fire occurred on Sunday also own another seven in the neighborhood, shown above. They purchased them in 2019 as part of a deal in which they acquired 1,200 apartments for $160million - an average of $133,333 per apartment. The average market cost of an apartment in the Bronx is three times that as around $365,000

The five-alarm blaze is New York City's deadliest in three decades. President Joe Biden, speaking with Mayor Adams Monday, offered his 'heartfelt condolences and support' to the victims, city leaders and residents. Biden told the mayor any resources the city needs will be made available.

Pope Francis offered his condolences Monday to the victims of the 'devastating' apartment fire. In a telegram sent to New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan he offered 'heartfelt condolences and the assurance of his spiritual closeness' to those affected by the blaze.

The death toll, originally reported as 19, was downgraded to 17 on Monday.

Addressing the revised numbers, Commissioner Nigro said patients had been taken to seven different hospitals in the city, which led to 'a bit of a double count'.

'This number could unfortunately increase again,' he told reporters.

'We pray to God that they'll be able to pull through,' Mayor Adams echoed, adding: 'If we take one message from this (disaster), it's close the door.'

At least 200 firefighters responded to the scene, some arriving within minutes of the initial call for help. As they entered the building, the first responders were met with flames in the hallway.

The mayor said the fire crews continued rescue measures even after running out of oxygen.

'Their oxygen tanks were empty and they still pushed through the smoke,' Adams explained, noting that icy conditions made it difficult for firefighters to put out the blaze.

'The impact of this fire is going to really bring a level of pain and despair in this city,' Mayor Adams said during a press conference early on Sunday, shortly after the blaze was extinguished.

'The numbers are horrific. We have over 32 people who are life-threatening at this time. This is going to be one of the worst fires we have witnessed in the City of New York in modern times.'

Sunday's blaze came just days after a Philadelphia house fire killed 12 people, including eight children.

That was the deadliest fire at a U.S. residential apartment building since 2017, when 13 people died in an apartment in the Bronx, according to data from the National Fire Protection Association.

That fire started after a three-year-old boy was playing with stove burners.

The deadliest fire prior to that was in 1989 when a Tennessee apartment building fire claimed the lives of 16 people.
Hundreds of protesters have gathered in cities across Germany to demonstrate against the government's Covid restrictions and looming discussions on mandatory vaccinations.

Demonstrators took to the streets of cities including Berlin, Cologne and Leipzig on Monday evening to protest against Chancellor Olaf Scholz's decision to toughen restrictions as Germany faces another surge in Covid cases.

The protests come as lawmakers in the Bundestag are set to debate whether to follow Austria and make vaccines mandatory for Germans.

ROSTOCK, GERMANY: Hundreds of protesters have gathered in cities across Germany to demonstrate against the government's Covid restrictions and looming discussions on mandatory vaccinations

ROSTOCK, GERMANY: Police officers in riot gear were seen forming a line in an attempt to stop a group of protesters from advancing down the streets in Rostock on Monday night

LEIPZIG, GERMANY: A riot police officer (left) stands up against a protester demonstrating against right-wing participation in the anti-vaccination movement on Monday night

Police officers in riot gear were seen forming a line in an attempt to stop a group of protesters from advancing down the streets in Rostock on Monday night.

The protests in other cities such as Frankfurt and Lubeck appeared to be largely peaceful on Monday night.

Last week, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in scores of German towns and cities, with police reporting sporadic violence at the demonstrations.

The protests follow a decision by Chancellor Scholz and the 16 state governors on Friday to toughen requirements for entry to restaurants and bars.

The leaders build on restrictions introduced just after Christmas that limited private gatherings to 10 people and effectively shut nightclubs.

People have already been required for some time to show proof of full vaccination or recovery to enter restaurants and bars  as well as many nonessential shops, theaters and cinemas.

COLOGNE, GERMANY: Hundreds of vaccine skeptics gather in front of Dom Cathedral on Monday night

BRUNSWICK, GERMANY: Protestors attend a demonstration against coronavirus restrictions and compulsory vaccinations on Monday night

BONN, GERMANY: People protest during the weekly Monday evening stroll against vaccine mandates and coronavirus-related restrictions

Friday's decision calls for the requirements to be ratcheted up for restaurants and bars. Customers will have to show either that they have received a booster shot or provide a negative test result on top of proof that they have been vaccinated or recovered.

'Half the population will be boosted ... in a few days' and will be able to go to restaurants without a test, Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey told reporters. 'This is an extra incentive to get boosters.'

Still, the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt said it wouldn't introduce the new rule for now because its cases mostly still involve the delta variant, and Bavaria said it was skeptical.

Scholz and the governors also agreed to shorten quarantine or self-isolation periods that are currently as long as 14 days, something that many other countries already have done.

People who have received boosters will no longer have to go into quarantine after having contact with coronavirus cases, and neither will people who have been fully vaccinated or recovered in the past three months.

All others can end their quarantine or self-isolation period after 10 days if they don't have  or no longer have  symptoms; that can be cut to seven days with a negative test.

'These are strict rules, but they are pragmatic and mean an easing of the current rules,' Scholz said.

FRANKFURT, GERMANY: Protestors attend a demonstration against coronavirus restrictions and compulsory vaccinations on Monday

COLOGNE, GERMANY: Hundreds of vaccine skeptics gather for protest march against government corona policy on Monday night

The COVID-19 situation in Germany has been foggy for the past two weeks because of very patchy testing and slow reporting over the holiday period. Official figures, which authorities have acknowledged don't yet show the full picture, have shown a steady increase in the infection rate over the past week.

The country recorded 49,279 cases on Sunday, an increase of more than 20,000 infections compared to the week before.

The looming vaccination mandate has been a rallying point for vocal anti-vaccine campaigners who have taken part in protests against Germany's pandemic restrictions. Some recent demonstrations have turned violent, with protesters attacking police officers after being ordered to disperse.

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said he didn't want to speculate about when the vaccine mandate could take effect, but acknowledged that it would likely come too late to stop the latest highly contagious variant of the virus from taking hold.

'With compulsory vaccinations we won't really be able to aggressively stop the omicron wave we're going through right now,' Lauterbach told public broadcaster ARD.

'What we will be able to do with compulsory vaccination, that's why I remain a clear advocate of a vaccine mandate, is avoid facing the same problem in the fall with a variant that might be much more dangerous,' he said.

Almost 72% of Germans are considered 'fully vaccinated,' while 42.3 % have received an additional booster shot.

Anger has continued to mount across Europe over Covid restrictions and mandatory vaccinations, with demonstrators protesting over the weekend.

In Austria, riot police watched on as hundreds of furious demonstrators were pictured marching through the streets of Vienna in protest at the nation's Covid curbs.

Marches were also seen in Paris and Magdeburg, Germany, as thousands joined together in protest against what are perceived to be excessively strict restrictions and mandatory vaccinations.
Thousands of feet under the ocean lies a global network of internet cables responsible for carrying 97 per cent of international communications.

In a digital age, these physical cables, sheathed in steel and plastic, are central to how we function. If they were to be disabled, it would not just prevent us accessing the web on our phones and laptops  it would disrupt everything from agriculture and healthcare to military logistics and financial transactions, instantly plunging the world into a new depression.

According to experts, this doomsday scenario ranks alongside nuclear war as an existential threat to our way of life.

And the newly appointed chief of the defence staff Admiral Sir Tony Radakin reckons Russia is the hostile power most likely to cripple these vital arteries.

In an interview at the weekend, he said there had been a phenomenal increase in Russian submarine activity over the past 20 years, adding: Russia has grown the capability to put at threat those undersea cables and potentially exploit them.

Any such interference would be treated with the utmost seriousness. Asked whether destroying cables could be considered an act of war, Britains most senior military officer said: Potentially, yes.

More than 97 per cent of the world's communications are transmitted through sub sea optical fibre cables surrounded by armouring wire and a Polyethylene cover

Russian President Vladimir Putin, pictured, has been investing heavily in his country's submarine fleet, including developing technology to interfere with sub sea cables

The good news is the cable manufacturers do not make things easy for would-be saboteurs.

The cables, largely owned and installed by private companies, are designed to withstand the natural rigours under the sea and cannot be cut easily.

Typically just over an inch in diameter, they consist of fibre optics  strands of glass as thin as a hair  in the centre, surrounded by galvanised steel wire armouring and then, on the outside, a plastic coating.

They are engineered to the five nines standard  meaning they are reliable 99.999 per cent of the time, a level generally reserved for nuclear weapons and space shuttles.

But, armed with hydraulic cutters attached to their hulls, Russian submersibles would make short work of the hosepipe-thin cables. Alternatively, divers or remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) fitted with cutters could do the job.

One ship identified as a serious threat is the Yantar. Officially described by the Russian navy as a research ship, it carries two mini submarines designed for engineering missions which can examine areas up to 3.75 miles underwater.

Just four months after it took to the sea for the first time in 2015, Yantar triggered concern in intelligence circles when it was detected just off the U.S. coast on its way to Cuba where undersea cables make landfall near Guantanamo Bay.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, pictured, commissioned research vessels which can target sub sea cables

In shallower waters, a vessel could deliberately drag an anchor along the seabed to rip the cables apart. Such an attack could be covered up by passing it off as an innocent fishing-boat accident.

Last August, the Yantar was seen off Irelands Donegal-Mayo coastline. Despite having territorial waters ten times the size of its land mass, Ireland has just one naval vessel to monitor the four cables that link it to the U.S. and the eight connecting it to Britain. Out at sea, the cables are even more vulnerable, as they are often hundreds or thousands of miles from the nearest naval bases capable of identifying, monitoring and intercepting hostile ships.

There are also fears that Yantars submersibles could carry technology capable of tapping the cables.

Around the world there are 436 of these cables, containing between them more than 800,000 miles of fibre optics.

The daddy of them all is the Asia American Gateway which is 12,430 miles long.

Each cable contains between four and 200 optical fibres  one fibre can transmit as much as 400GB of data per second, or enough for about 375 million phone calls.

A single cable containing eight fibre-optic strands could transfer the contents of Oxfords Bodleian Library  which contains more than 12 million books, journals and manuscripts  across the Atlantic in about 40 minutes.

They are far more important than satellite communications, which account for just 3 per cent of global traffic. As futuristic as satellites may sound, this mode of transmission has been in decline since the early 1990s as fibre-optic cables gained the ascendance.

Short of nuclear or biological warfare, it is difficult to think of a threat that could be more justifiably described as existential than that posed by the catastrophic failure of undersea cable networks as a result of hostile action, states a report from the Policy Exchange think-tank written in 2017 by the now Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who was then a backbench MP.

Every day the cable network carries $10 trillion worth of financial transfers. The report says: In the words of the managing director of one major telecoms firm: Cascading failures could immobilise much of the international telecommunications system and internet . . .

The effect on international finance, military logistics, medicine, commerce and agriculture in a global economy would be profound . . . Electronic funds transfers, credit card transactions and international bank reconciliations would slow . . . such an event would cause a global depression.

Sunaks report recommended that undersea cables should be designated as critical national infrastructure and cable protection zones should be established.

Meanwhile, British ships and other military assets protect cables in areas such as the North Atlantic. Last week it emerged the sonar equipment of one of those ships, a frigate called HMS Northumberland, was crashed into by a Russian submarine in late 2020.

At the time of the collision, the ship had deployed a Towed Array, a tube up to two miles long fitted with hydrophones to listen under the water, and it is this element the sub is believed to have hit.

As tensions rise between Russia and the West over countries like Ukraine and Kazakhstan, such incidents are likely to become a lot more common.
The NSW government wants to force residents report positive rapid antigen test results, saying a mandate will give authorities a clear picture of the spread of Covid-19.

The state is about to move into a dual reporting system for infections that includes positive, self-administered RAT results and the normal PCR results.

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant warned on Monday that the day's lower daily case number of 20,293 new infections was 'conservative' because RAT results were yet to be officially included.

While the system to report RAT results is not yet fully functioning, the current requirement is effectively voluntary.

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant warned on Monday that the day's lower daily case number of 20,293 new infections was 'conservative' because RAT results were yet to be officially included. Pictured: Sydneysiders walk through Bondi on January 4

Health Minister Brad Hazzard told The Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday the government wants to mandate the reporting of positive RAT results.

His department has sought advice from the Crown Solicitor's Office on how it can be legally enforced.

'It comes with the added benefit that it might also open the door to federal financial assistance if you're off work for the week. The bottom line is it is a must-do, even if there is no fine,' Mr Hazzard told the SMH.

'At the end of the day, it's an obligation on all of us to make sure that we log in to the Service NSW app, particularly as it will give a clear picture of how the virus is moving through the community.'

Meanwhile, primary school-aged children aged between five and 11 years on Monday began receiving their first dose of a special Pfizer vaccination.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet remains committed to getting children back in classrooms later this month, despite a recommended eight-week gap between the first and second doses for this cohort.

The NSW government is considering a mandate for reporting positive Covid rapid antigen tests (stock)

More than 78 per cent of children aged 12 to 15 are already fully vaccinated.

NSW on Monday recorded its deadliest day of the pandemic, with 18 dead including a three-year-old boy who had significant underlying health conditions.

Hospital admissions also climbed as 2030 people were hospitalised with the virus and 159 were in intensive care, about half of whom were unvaccinated.

Monday's fatalities surpassed the previous high of 16 deaths reported on Sunday.

While the number of new infections reported on Monday was lower, at 20,293, for previous days, case numbers are expected to rise this week when the government updates the ServiceNSW app to allow people to register positive RAT results.

The first of the state's 50 million test order will begin arriving this week, and the government is looking to source another 50 million RATs for distribution in late February and March.

The state is about to move into a dual reporting system for infections that includes positive, self-administered RAT results and the normal PCR results. Pictured: Sydneysiders line up for Covid testing at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital on January 10

The state-procured tests are intended for schools, social housing, vulnerable, remote and Indigenous communities, Mr Perrottet says.

But the rest of NSW can expect to see 'a substantial amount of supply being available through private supply chains as well'.

Meanwhile, isolation requirements have changed for some essential workers in a bid to combat stock shortages in supermarkets.

Furloughed food logistics and manufacturing staff are allowed to leave self-isolation to attend work if they have no symptoms, wear a mask, and undergo daily rapid antigen testing.

The hospitality sector has called for similar treatment and while Mr Perrottet says he 'completely understands' their concerns, the focus needs to be on essential workers for the time being.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki blamed a 'massive surge' in Omicron cases for the shortage of COVID tests available as the administration announced on Monday that health insurers will be required to pay for at-home kits starting January 15.

The administration is rushing to meet its promise to make 500 million at-home testing kits available for free for Americans. Psaki, at her press briefing, expressed confidence they would meet that goal and the U.S. Postal Service would be able to make the deliveries.

'We expect to have all contracts awarded over the next two weeks, and then Americans will begin being able to order these tests online later this month,' she said.

She pushed back against criticism of the long testing lines that popped up around the country as Americans sought to get tested around the holiday season.

'There has been a massive surge in cases as you know,' Psaki said. 'There's been an unprecedented demand for tests.'

The Biden administration also announed on Monday it is requiring insurance companies and group health plans to cover the cost of over-the-counter, at-home COVID-19 tests, so people with private health coverage can get them for free starting Saturday, January 15th.

The tests do not need to be ordered from health insurance companies but can be picked up online or at a pharmacy. Health insurancers will cover the cost or reimburse.

Private health insurers will have to cover up to eight home COVID-19 tests per month for people on their plans. A family of four, for instance, could be reimbursed for up to 32 tests per month. PCR tests and rapid tests ordered or administered by a health provider will continue to be fully covered by insurance with no limit.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki blamed 'massive surge' in Omicron cases for shortage of COVID tests

People wait in line to get a COVID-19 test at the U.S. Capitol on Monday

The wait in the U.S. Capitol to get a COVID test was about an hour

Covid cases have more than tripled over the past two weeks alone, up from 198,326 per day to 709,850 per day.

The United States also has reached a new record for number of Americans hospitalized with Covid, with 132,646 currently admitted with the virus. Deaths are growing at a slower rate with 1,648 Americans dying from the virus every day.

The U.S. also surpassed 60 million cases of the virus as of Monday morning according to Johns Hopkins University.

Psaki detailed the work the administration has done to try and ease the testing burden, including opening up 20,000 testing sites around the country, sending out 15 million tests to community and rural health centers, and finalizing the contracts for the 500 million at-home tests.

But long lines continued on Monday, particularly in Washington D.C. where the House and Senate were back in session at the same time since mid-December.

As a record number of COVID cases hit the Capitol - 30 members of the House and Senate since December - staffers lined up in the Capitol Visitors Center to get tested.

The wait ran about about an hour and the line snaked through the massive hallway where tourists usually wait to get their tour of the historic building. The Capitol is closed to the public during the pandemic.

'This is all part of our overall strategy to ramp up access to easy-to-use, at-home tests at no cost,' Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement on insurers covering the tests. 'By requiring private health plans to cover peoples at-home tests, we are further expanding Americans ability to get tests for free when they need them.'

Long lines to get tests have formed around the country - above a line in Aspen Hill, Maryland, at the local public library

Health insurers will be required to pay for at-home kits starting January 15

White House press secretary Jen Psaki also expressed confidence the U.S. Postal Service would be able to get the 500 million free at-home tests the administration promised to the public delivered

Psaki also expressed confidence the U.S. Postal Service, which has the contract to deliver some of the at-home testing kits being offered for free by the government, will make the deliveries.

The USPS recently warned the administration that implimenting its vaccine-mandate rule could have 'catastrophic' results with staff leaving. The mail system asked for more time to negotiate with the union over the requirement.

But Psaki argued because USPS was able to make its Christmas deliveries, it should have no problem delivering testing kits.

'The Postal Service also delivered 98, 99% of packages on time in advance of Christmas and their leaders have also said they're eager to take on this challenge. So we welcome that. And we're looking forward to working with them to get these tests out to the public,' she said.
Boatbuilder, sailor, adventurer and designer James Wharram was a man of multifarious interests who approached life very differently from the rest of us.

He was obsessed with Polynesian fishing boats. Apart from sailing, he loved politics, reading  and strong, clever, independent women. And he was never the sort to tie himself down to just one life partner.

'Many men are in need of two women in their lives, one to complement the other,' he told the Sunday Pictorial newspaper in 1959. 'Many are like myself and are capable of walking the tightrope of human relationships necessary to do it.'

He was something of a celebrity at the time  frequently in the papers and on television with Sir Edmund Hillary in New York  because, three years earlier, he had made the 3,000-mile journey from the Canaries to the West Indies in a flimsy, 23 ft, plywood and glue, doublesided canoe called Tangaroa. It was named after the Polynesian god of the fish and sea, and he had designed and built it in a barn near Manchester Airport.

No GPS in those days, of course, nor did he take a chart-plotter; no state-of-the-art gear. Nothing, really, that Christopher Columbus wouldn't have used centuries before.

He took very few clothes ('What's the point when they get ripped off by the wind all the time'); more than 200 books, from Plato to thrillers; 300 lb of wheat and oats; 70 lb of discounted dates; and two coffee grinders.

Shipshape: James Wharram with arms around Jutta (left) and Ruth in 1955

Ah, yes, and not forgetting his small, perfectly-formed crew, which included a terrier called Pepe and two fresh-faced, frequently-naked German girls  Jutta Schultze-Rhonhof, 18, and Ruth Merseburger, 30  who doubled as cook, navigator, bosun, helmsman, hairdresser and below-deck lovers.

'They are both in love with me and I love them. If I could marry them both, I would do it tomorrow but, sadly, it is not allowed,' said James, who has just died aged 93 after an epic life of free love on the ocean wave.

So instead, they lived, and sailed, as a joyous nautical menage a trois  the first of a series of similar arrangements that stretched happily through James's wonderfully rich life.

Sometimes, like Jutta and Ruth, there were just the two ladies. Later, there were as many as five, who jokingly nicknamed him 'His Lordship'. All were bright, boat-mad, strong, attractive and worked alongside him in his world-famous boat design business. Between them, they provided James with two adored sons, ganged up on him when he was annoying and laughed a lot. Somehow, it worked  for all parties.

'We were both in love with this man and we were both happy and great friends,' wrote Jutta and Ruth. 'We were sharing not so much a man as an idea  and a life of freedom and achievement. We were never jealous.'

It is a sentiment mirrored more than 60 years on by Hanneke Boon, his final surviving life partner and soulmate, who spoke to the Mail this week from her home in Cornwall.

'He was open and honest and appreciative of every woman for her own qualities. He never made one of us feel left out,' she says. 'Because it was always based on respect and openness and having a common aim and goal  building and sailing boats together. We had a goal we all worked on.'

Though on top of all that, James did, of course, have something else. Tall, strong-minded and charismatic, with enormous hands and feet, he had a zing, a spark, and a magnetism, according to Hanneke.

'Yes, he was attractive. Physically, he was light and strong. He was true and honest to his ideals and he was sexually strong as well, so there was no problem that he had several women. That just gave him more vigour and strength,' she says.

But for now, back to the winter of 1956, his epic voyage on Tangaroa with his crew of gutsy frauleins.

For five long weeks, they wrestled towering waves, violent storms, and a marine termite that gobbled through a large section of the flimsy hull.

Sailing high: James's catamaran the Spirit Of Gaia in 2018

'Time and again, death seemed certain as our tiny craft was hurled about like a cockleshell in the mountainous rollers,' James later recounted.

But they baled furiously, clung to each other and, whenever the sun appeared, lolled luxuriously naked.

Jutta, despite terrible seasickness, did the catering on a spirit cooker; Ruth, the navigating. They took turns to polish the deck, and goodness knows what else  and very happy they all were, too.

And when, finally, five weeks later, the boat was ripped to pieces on a reef off the coast of Trinidad, the girls stripped off and paddled to shore on rafts accompanied by a shoal of sharks, while James set off with a sharp knife in search of coconuts on another raft.

'We were a very special sort of family,' said Jutta. 'Sex was only a tiny part of our very full lives and virtually unimportant, but we were two women and one man.'

And even in those teeny cabins, barely the size of an upended wardrobe, it did happen. Because soon, it transpired that Jutta's seasickness was morning sickness and son Hannes was later born in Trinidad, where they lived in a bamboo raft house they built themselves.

All of which caused quite a ripple among the snooty sailing fraternity, who were already ruffled by James's blunt comments about boat design  and his northern accent.

Some were outraged, others resentful and churlish  putting Tangaroa's epic voyage down to wind 'drift'.

Many were just downright jealous. After all, as James's mother once put it: 'They did look so very happy and healthy.'

Not that James cared.

'What really got 'them' was that 'my girls' were not only good at sailing and navigation, but very good at building boats, too. And in addition, they looked beautiful,' he said.

So, ignoring all the winks and nudges, the trio got to work building the marginally sturdier 40 ft Rongo, named after the Polynesian god of war, to sail back home again. Born in 1928, the son of a builder, James was never one to blend in with the other boys from his council estate.

As a child, he read obsessively, and from the age of 12  when he was introduced to sailing on a trip on the Isle of Skye  almost all the books he checked out of Manchester Central Library were about boats.

'I decided what I wanted to do was the sail the oceans,' he said. 'But specifically in boats in the ancient Polynesian construction of two joined canoes.'

Technical college was ditched when, for his 19th birthday, he received a passport for a climbing holiday in Switzerland.

It was here that his adventuring truly began  and not just up mountains.

His first love affair was with a Swiss girl who shared his birthday. Then there was the young Viennese psychologist whom, James claimed, saw him as 'a wild, primitive sexual animal'; an actress who cost him a job when he missed a sailing to hook up with her; and Pat, an American who sent him a book called Boat Building In Your Own Backyard as a goodbye gift.

From then on, his passions were twofold  women and recreating the perfect Polynesian fishing boat.

He took jobs everywhere he could to learn his craft: on a Thames barge, in the stores at Thornycroft boat-builders and on a trawler off the west coast of Ireland.

He built the Tangaroa in 1955 while working on building sites where they called him 'professor' because he wore glasses and read sailing books during every tea and lunch break.

Having sailed to Germany and back, he prepared Tangaroa for its Atlantic crossing at Falmouth, despite endless warnings it would never succeed.

Even his father declared: 'I wouldn't sail that contraption on a pond in a park.'

The women, meanwhile, popped up, as if by magic, wherever he went. He met Ruth, a German au pair several years his senior in 1951 when he was pottering around the Lake District.

Three years later, he literally swam into Jutta, the daughter of an economics expert in the West German government, while practising underwater techniques in a pool in England.

All three had little interest in the dreary grey monogamy of post-war Britain and set up house together building boats.

After the nightmares of their first crossing in 1956, it's a wonder any of them were up for the return. But they were  and it was far worse.

It took nearly ten weeks in terrible weather, their food ran out and they survived on scraps for the last fortnight.

But they did it, the first West-to-East crossing of the Atlantic by a catamaran.

On their return they established a thriving business in self-build James Wharram designs, first in Pembrokeshire, where his entourage expanded to five ladies, and later Cornwall.

Of course, it wasn't all peace and love at Chez Wharram.

While he could be funny, loving, engaging and make quick, sometimes life-or-death decisions at sea, on shore he was lost.

'He can be the most useless and stupid man, incapable of finding his own shirt,' said Jutta.

He never learned to drive and left all the finances, cooking, cleaning and shoe cleaning to the women.

Close: An elderly James with Ruth (left) and Hanneke in 2005

The first major road bump came in 1961 when Jutta, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from her wartime experiences at the hands of the Red Army, could suddenly cope no more and took her life, aged just 24.

Ruth and James were devastated. They limped on  caring for little Hannes  until others joined his entourage and filled the gap.

Hanneke first met James when she was just 14 and on a camping trip with her Dutch, boat-mad family: 'My father was a sailor  we all were  and had read about James.'

They became an item five years later when he was in his 30s: 'There was obviously a spark there.

'At the time he was living with several other women  including the wonderful Ruth  so I joined a group, which I found rather attractive.'

They stayed together and Hanneke is mother to James's second son, Jamie. Hanneke credits Ruth  rather than James  as the person who made it all work so well, because she made the whole set-up really welcoming.

Together, this new trio co-designed Spirit Of Gaia, a 63 ft catamaran, and between 1994 and 1998, sailed her round the world. In James's 80th year, they undertook the Lapita voyage, a 4,000-mile trip following an ancient Pacific migration route on two double canoes, from the Philippines to the remote Polynesian islands of Anuta and Tikopia.

Five years later, Ruth passed away, but Hanneke and James continued to sail together until latterly, his battle with Alzheimer's became too much for James to bear, and on December 14, 2021, he took his own life.

Perhaps because of his unconventional lifestyle, public recognition came late in life  in 2018 he finally won a lifetime achievement award from Classic Boat Magazine  but he wasn't bothered.

Over 60 years, he and his team sold more than 10,000 sets of catamaran build plans to boating enthusiasts all over the world and he became a cult figure and hero in boating circles.

He also never lost his great enthusiasm for women  as lovers, friends, colleagues, crew  always insisting: 'I couldn't have achieved anything without ladies.'
Kazakhstan's former intelligence chief Karim Massimov, who Hunter Biden had described as a 'close friend,' was arrested last week and charged with high treason as violent anti-government demonstrations there see more than 160 people killed and nearly 8,000 more injured.

Massimov was arrested on Thursday, his own agency announced over the weekend, toward the end of a week of bloody protests sparked by a virtually overnight spike in fuel prices.

On Wednesday he was fired from his role heading the Kazakhstan National Security Committee by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. He previously served as the country's prime minister from 2007 to 2012 and again from 2014 to 2016.

A photo unearthed in October 2020 appears to show Joe Biden meeting with Massimov and Kenes Rakishev, his son Hunter's alleged business partner in Kazakhstan.

Hunter and Massimov reportedly became friendly when the then-vice president's son served on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma and Massimov was in his second stint as Kazakh prime minister.

The pair met up in Kazakhstan sometime in 2014 to discuss a potential energy deal, emails obtained from Hunter Biden's laptop reveal. Hunter allegedly skipped out on his Secret Service detail for the private get-together.

It was in 2016 that the president's son called Massimov a 'close friend.'

An undated photo appears to show Joe Biden and his son Hunter (center) meeting with Kazak businessman Kenes Rakishev (left) and Kazakhstan's former prime minister Karim Mossimov (right). The photo was first published on the website of an anti-corruption group called the Kazakhstani Initiative on Asset Recovery in 2019 and has not been independently verified

Massimov served as Kazakhstan's prime minister from 2007 to 2012 and again from 2014 to 2016

In one email from March 15, 2015, Devon Archer - former adviser to then-Secretary of State John Kerry - forwarded to Hunter an invite from Kazakh banker Marc Holtzman to a 'small private breakfast' with Massimov when he was prime minister

Another email from a former aide of John Kerry's shows Hunter getting invited to a 'private breakfast' with Massimov in 2015 by Kazakh banker Marc Holtzman.

'Prime Minister Massimov will be most delighted if you will please join us for a small breakfast at one table at the Willard Hotel, Holmes Suite from 8 am until 9 am,' Holtzman's email said.

The National Security Committee, which Massimov ran until the day before his arrest, is Kazakhstan's national intelligence agency that replaced the Soviet-era KGB after the USSR collapsed.

There were no details of the treason allegations against him. The security service said other officials were also detained, but did not name them.

On Friday, a pro-government politician said on television he had information that the security forces had been ordered to abandon Almaty airport so protesters could take it over. He said they had left a security building in the city undefended, enabling people to seize weapons.

It was not immediately possible to verify this account. The airport remains closed but is now under the control of Kazakh security personnel and Russian troops, according to Russia's defense ministry.

Protests that were sparked by a near-doubling of gas prices were initially peaceful when they broke out on January 2. But they quickly turned violent, becoming a broader rebuke against Tokayev's Russian-backed government.

The protests that sparked by high fuel prices in Kazakhstan on January 2 have since seen more than 160 people killed and nearly 8,000 detained

As of January 10, Kazakh authorities reported that 7,939 people have been detained and 164 people were confirmed dead -- including three children.

The undated photograph of Massimov and the Bidens, published in an October 2020 report, resurfaced in the wake of a New York Post report claiming that emails found on Hunter's laptop could purportedly implicate Joe in his embattled son's international business dealings during his time as vice president.

In the image - which was published on the website of an anti-corruption group called the Kazakhstani Initiative on Asset Recovery and has not been independently verified - Joe and Hunter are seen smiling alongside Rakishev and Mossimov.

DailyMail.com lifted the lid on Hunter's alleged relationship with Rakishev last week, revealing that between 2012 and 2014 the former VP's son worked as a sort of go-between helping the Kazak businessman broker US investments.

Emails passed to The Mail via anti-corruption campaigners from the Central Asian country revealed that Hunter held extensive meetings with Rakishev, who has close family ties to the kleptocratic regime of his homeland's despotic former president Nursultan Nazarbayev.

DailyMail.com lifted the lid on Hunter's alleged relationship with Rakishev (pictured) last week

Hunter also traveled to the Kazakh capital of Astana to hold business discussions with Rakishev, who was apparently looking to invest a portion of his personal fortune in New York and Washington DC.

Hunter then attempted to persuade Rakishev to buy into a Nevadan mining company, brokering a series of meetings with the firm, before convincing him to invest a cool million dollars with Alexandra Forbes Kerry, the film-maker daughter of Democrat Senator and former Presidential candidate John Kerry.

Rakishev, who wrote messages in broken English, appeared to have become intimate with the vice president's son, calling Hunter 'my brother!' and 'my brother from another mother!'

They shared gossip about their family holidays and dined together at luxury restaurants in New York and Washington DC ('I'm on vacation with family [at] Lake Michigan . . . trying to spend some much needed time with my wife and daughters. It's my 20th anniversary of marriage tomorrow,' Hunter told Rakishev in July 2013).

The unverified photo fueled speculation that Hunter may have dragged his father into the oligarch's orbit as well - deepening a long-standing controversy over Hunter's overseas business dealings when Joe was VP.

Joe Biden and his son Hunter are facing renewed scrutiny related to Hunter's business dealings overseas after his abandoned laptop was found to hold e-mails that allegedly show Joe Biden was in on Hunter's deals. Joe Biden's campaign has denied any wrongdoing

Hunter has for years been criticized for his lucrative but ethically questionable work overseas, which has often created apparent conflicts of interest with Joe's official roles.

The Biden campaign was rocked by a vintage 'October surprise' last week when a New York Post expose claimed that Hunter's laptop was abandoned at the computer shop in April 2019 for months and was found to contain emails that could implicate Joe.

The laptop's hard drive was obtained by Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who shared its contents with the Post.

Senior federal officials told Fox News on Tuesday that the FBI is now in possession of the computer and confirmed that Hunter's emails are 'authentic'.

The emails indicated that Hunter introduced his father Vadym Pozharskyi of Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company that Hunter served on the board of, in 2015.

The purported meeting allegedly took place a year before Joe pressured Ukrainian government officials to fire the prosecutor involved in an investigation of Burisma.

In one email, Pozharskyi wrote: 'Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent some time together. It's realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.'

The email did not state that the two actually met, and the Biden campaign responded that 'we have reviewed Joe Biden's official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.'

But the campaign later conceded that they couldn't rule out that the meeting may have happened.

Other emails purportedly sent by Hunter showed him leveraging his dad's office to boost his pay on Burisma's board.

The FBI has declined to confirm whether or not it is examining Hunter's laptop and its contents.

It comes hours after former President Trump demanded that Attorney General Bill Barr 'act fast' and appoint a special counsel to probe his Democratic rival before Election Day.

Then-Donald Trump said he wanted attorney general Bill Barr to name a special prosecutor to probe the Bidens

Trump called for Barr to appoint someone to probe the laptop, which has become the subject of repeated Trump attacks on his rival after Giuliani handed over the contents to the Post.

The ex-president said it revealed 'major corruption' and that it has to come out before the election.

Trump has yet to specify what crime he believes the Bidens have committed, but that has not stopped him from going as far as suggesting to voters that Biden belongs in jail.

His demand would appear to run smack into a Justice Department policy against taking actions that would interfere in an election  an issue that played out in 2016 in both the Hillary Clinton email probe and the then-unknown Russia probe.

'We've got to get the attorney general to act. He's got to act. And he's got to act fast. He's got to appoint somebody,' Trump said when asked about naming a special counsel on Fox & Friends.
President Biden will use a speech in Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday to push for changes to Senate rules that would allow the passage of voting rights legislation by simple majority.

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will visit the majority Black city to hit back at what they see as Republican efforts to restrict voting access.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Biden planned to push through voting rights legislation.

'His plan is to sign voting rights legislation into law. That requires a majority of senators to support it ... if there are changes to the Senate rules, which is something the President has expressed an openness to,' she said.

Georgia is a battleground state, where Democrats won two Senate seats in January 2021.

Atlanta was also the home of Martin Luther King, and Psaki said it was a 'place with profound civil rights history.'

President Biden will travel to Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday to deliver a speech on voting rights

White House Press Secretary said Biden would use his speech in Atlanta to advocate forcefully for 'protecting the most bedrock American rights, the right to vote and have your voice counted in a free, fair and secure election'

She confirmed that the president would back changing Senate rules, which currently require 60 senators to back most legislation, enabling a Republican minority to block voting rights bills.

'The president will forcefully advocate for protecting the most bedrock American rights, the right to vote and have your voice counted in a free, fair and secure election that is not tainted, tainted, tainted by partisan manipulation,' she said.

Democrats face a critical week as Chuck Schumer, their leader in the Senate, has set January 17 - Martin Luther King Day - as the deadline for passing the legislation.

But Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, who represent more conservative states, have said they want to keep the filibuster for the way it promotes bipartisanship.

Republicans have said they support keeping the filibuster because it gives minority lawmakers a voice in policymaking.

Their Senate leader Mitch McConnell on Monday afternoon signalled his opposition, with a threat to force votes on a string of GOP-sponsored bills if Democrats make changes.

'Since Sen. Schumer is hellbent on trying to break the Senate, Republicans will show how this reckless action would have immediate consequences," he told The Wall Street Journal.

And during a floor speech, he said: 'If Republicans refuse to join us in a bipartisan spirit, if they continue to hijack the rules of the Senate to turn this chamber into a deep freezer, were going to consider the appropriate steps necessary to restore the Senate so we can pass these proposals and send them to the presidents desk.'

Biden was once seen as a supporter of the status quo but has expressed frustration at the filibuster as his legislative agenda stalled. In October he said it was time to 'fundamentally alter' the filibuster for certain issues.

Hillary Clinton offered her support to changing Senate rules in order to pass voting rights legislation with a tweet on Monday. She has spoken in favor of abolishing filibuster in the past

He has received backing from a string of senior Democrats.

On Monday, former presidential candidate and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton weighed in with a call to change the rules.

Quoting the president who signed the Voting Rights Act, she tweeted: '"The right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless," Lyndon B. Johnson said. "It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies."

'It's time Senate Democrats adjust the rules to protect Americans' right to vote.'

At other times, Clinton has gone further and suggested that it was time to ditch the filibuster altogether.

What asked if she would get rid of it during the Atlantic Festival, she said, 'Absolutely,' and pointed to the way the Republican Party refused to vote on Merrick Garland - Barack Obama's pick for the Supreme Court in 2016.

'Keeping the filibuster now, when you're dealing with a political party that does not respect the rule of law, does not even respect the process unless it works for them, you know, witness what they did to Merrick Garland when President Obama had every right to appoint a Supreme Court justice,' she said.
He had declared that he wouldn't go out with any women under the age of 35 because they were 'too woke' and most of them were 'absolutely bonkers'.

Now, having abandoned his acting career to become a political activist, Laurence Fox, 43, has got engaged to a prep school teacher who's 28.

Arabella Fleetwood Neagle will be his second wife  Fox, former star of ITV detective drama Lewis, was married to Billie Piper for eight years.

Laurence Fox has announced his engagement to Arabella Fleetwood Neagle. Pictured: The couple were spotted walking to the local pub where they looked very much in love

The former ITV star, who played a policeman in Lewis, was previously married to Billie Piper, with whom he has two sons

After confirming their engagement with a paid-for notice in a newspaper, Miss Fleetwood Neagle was seen wearing her turtle-shaped engagement ring on a trip to the pub in south London. Fox described himself as the 'luckiest man in the world'.

It's thought that Fox  who has two sons with Piper, 39  proposed on a luxury foreign holiday over Christmas.

Miss Fleetwood Neagle apparently supports his political campaigning as she was pictured alongside him on the top deck of his Reclaim Party's battle bus during his unsuccessful bid to become London Mayor last year.

Laurence Fox posted this picture of him kissing a mystery woman,who must be his new fiancee Arabella

Unexpected: The divisive actor confirmed his proposal in a Telegraph ad before sharing the news with his 305,000 followers

Family: (pictured left to right) Arabella May Fleetwood Neagle, sister Lucinda Neagle, brother Oliver Neagle, dad Paul Neagle and mum Kathryn Neagle

Her parents, Paul and Kathryn Fleetwood Neagle, used to run a business selling dolls.

Fox  whose acting dynasty includes his father James and cousin Emilia  was dropped by his agent in 2020 after a string of social media comments that critics deemed racist.

Last year he said he could remove his children from school over his opposition to the Covid vaccination programme. He said he would educate them at home rather than let them be vaccinated without his consent.

Fox shares custody of his boys with Miss Piper, whom he divorced in 2016.

Laurence Fox is set to wed 28-year-old teacher who supported his 'anti-woke' bid to be London mayor: Actor, 43, confirms engagement to daughter of millionaire businessman after sharing snap of them kissing

BY JASON CHESTER AND MARTIN ROBINSON, CHIEF REPORTER FOR MAILONLINE

Laurence Fox's mystery fiancee is a 28-year-old prep school teacher who supported his 'anti-woke' campaign to be Mayor of London, MailOnline can reveal today.

The divisive actor turned activist, 43, announced he will marry Arabella May Fleetwood Neagle in an advert in a national newspaper before sharing the news with his 305,000 Twitter followers.

Miss Neagle, from north London, was photographed next to her husband-to-be on his 'Free London' battle bus last year when he was campaigning to oust Sadiq Khan as Labour's Mayor of London for his Reclaim Party.

She also marched alongside him in the streets of the capital when he urged Londoners to 'Reclaim your Freedom' in the election where the 'anti-woke' candidate secured 47,634 votes to finish in sixth place.

Arabella, who is yet to comment, is the daughter of a multi-millionaire businessman Paul Neagle, an investment manager and entrepreneur who lives in a 1.6million home.

Laurence Fox announces engagement to Arabella Neagle, pictured together during his campaign to be Mayor of London last year

She is also likely to be the mystery woman he was pictured kissing on an exotic beach in an Instagram post on New Year's Day.

Sharing the announcement in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Fox, a father of two previously married to Billie Piper for nine years who has campaigned against vaccines, masks and lockdown measures throughout the pandemic, tweeted: 'She said yes.'

The actor, who has also railed against the Black Lives Matter movement, has two children with Ms Piper, Winston, 12, and nine-year-old Eugene.

The short announcement was originally printed in Monday's edition of the Telegraph with the words: 'The engagement is announced between Laurence Paul Fox and Arabella May Fleetwood Neagle.'

Arabella (pictured left) accompanied Fox as he took to the streets of London

Days earlier Fox posted a photo of himself sharing a kiss with what appeared to be a mystery blonde woman, her face obscured, while relaxing on an undisclosed beach.

An earlier photo, shared in August, saw a head of messy blonde hair resting against the actor's chest, although the photo may well have featured one of his sons.

Captioning the image, he wrote: 'Luckiest man in the world.'

While little is known about Arabella, she is believed to have accompanied Fox during a London rally last May on behalf of his 'anti-woke' political collective, the Reclaim Party.

Her Oxford educated father Paul is listed as Bursar and Clerk to the Governors at Woodford Green Preparatory School in London, where the Neagle family are understood to be based.

Companies House records show he had previously served as company director for three separate businesses, of which two have since dissolved.

Sister Lucinda, a secondary school teacher, recently shared a family photo of herself with Arabella, brother Olivier, mum Kathryn and their father, taken during a family dinner.

Divided: The news prompted an inevitably mixed response from followers on Twitter

The Fox acting dynasty: Who are Laurence Fox's famous family? Laurence Fox comes from a distinguished acting family. His sister Lydia and brother Jack (One of many in the family to have appeared in Midsomer Murders) are both actors. Father James Fox is a film and TV actor who appeared in Performance, Death In Paradise, Downton Abbey and Midsomer Murders. His uncle Edward's impressive film CV includes Battle Of Britain, The Day Of The Jackal, A Bridge Too Far and Johnny English Strikes Again. Edward's first wife Tracy Reed appeared in Dr Strangelove and the original Casino Royale. His second wife Joanna David has appeared in TV hits Colditz, Rumpole of the Bailey, Inspector Morse, Midsomer Murders and The Darling Buds of May. Laurence's other uncle Robert was once married to Natasha Richardson, herself from a famous acting dynasty. Laurence's cousins include Emilia, with movie hits such as The Pianist on her resumee, and TV actor Freddie Advertisement

Fox has previously used his Twitter platform to rail against wokeness, entitlement, COVID vaccination and the Black Lives Matter Movement - pertinently the concept of taking the knee - prompting inevitable outrage and heated debate among followers.

His most recent controversy saw his Twitter account temporarily suspended over a post about Manchester City star Benjamin Mendy which read 'Get kneeling, f*****s' after news broke he was being charged with four counts of rape and sexual assault.

Fox  whose illustrious acting dynasty includes his father, James Fox  was dropped by his agent last year after an appearance on Question Time in which he rowed with an ethnicity lecturer over Meghan Markle.

Back in January 2020, he accused Rachel Boyle, an academic at Edge Hill University on Merseyside, of 'being racist' after she called him 'a white privileged male' for denying the Duchess of Sussex was hounded from Britain for being mixed-race.

Their angry exchange began when Boyle said criticism of Meghan in the media had been motivated by 'racism', adding: 'She's a black woman and she has been torn to pieces.'

But Fox hit back, saying: 'it's not racism' and continued: We're the most tolerant, lovely country in Europe it's so easy to throw the charge of racism at everybody and it's really starting to get boring'.

As the row continued he quoted Martin Luther King's 1963 'I have a dream' speech about living in a nation where children 'will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character' on Twitter.

He said: 'This is the position I took last night and I live by in life. If you can improve on it, I'm all ears. Or you can keep screeching ''Racist!'' at me and I can carry on having a jolly good giggle at your expense. The tide is turning'.

In March this year the former actor launched a bid in London's mayoral election, but won 47,634 votes placing him in sixth with 1.8 per cent of the vote.

Old times: The actor was previously married to Secret Diary Of A Call Girl star Billie Piper for eight years, divorcing in 2007

Family: The former couple share two children, sons Winston, 12, and nine-year-old Eugene (pictured with Winston in 2008)

Fox has also waded into the anti-vax row, insisting that he could remove his children from school because of his opposition to the Government's Covid vaccination programme.

He said he would educate them at home rather than let them be vaccinated without his consent.

'Every parent who loves their children should resist this insanity,' said the actor-turned-political campaigner.

Controversy: Actor-turned-political campaigner Fox blasted social media giant Twitter after his account was temporarily suspended last year

Not happy: Fox's Twitter account was suspended after his 'provocative' tweet that caused a furious backlash online

Hitting out: On Question Time in January 2020 he accused Rachel Boyle, an academic at Edge Hill University on Merseyside, of 'being racist' after she called him 'a white privileged male'

'I will not be sending my kids back to school. I will educate my kids at home from now on.

'The rushed vaccination of children, for no reason whatsoever, shows how deeply morally corrupt this regime has become. I look forward to reading with them at home and staying the hell away from the authorities.'

MailOnline has contacted a representative for further comment.
Residents have been told it's too late to evacuate their homes as a bushfire burns out of control on Western Australia's south coast.

The Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) issued an emergency warning for parts of Eagle Bay, Naturaliste, Dunsborough and Busselton on Tuesday.

The fire is threatening the Eagle Bay townsite, Meelup Regional Park and in an area bounded by Cape Naturaliste and Dunsborough, with residents advised not to try to flee the area.

Residents in parts of Eagle Bay, Naturaliste, Dunsborough and Busselton have been told its too late to leave as a bushfire burns out of control on Tuesday (pictured)

The DFES warned residents there is a threat to lives and homes in the affected area and to act immediately to survive.

People are urged to shelter in their homes in a room away from the fire front and ensure they are able to easily escape.

All doors and windows of the house must be closed with air conditioners switched off but water running through the system if possible.

If a home does catch fire and conditions become too unbearable inside, people are advised to go to an area that has already been burnt.

'Protect yourself by wearing long sleeves and trousers, made from cotton or wool, and strong leather boots,' the Department said.

The warning was issued just before 5am Tuesday after a fire began near the intersection of Curtis Bay Beach in Dunsborough.

Residents in the Eagle Bay townsite, Meelup Regional Park and in an area bounded by Cape Naturaliste and Dunsborough have been told its too dangerous to evacuate

The blaze forced parts of Cape Naturaliste Road to close, with the DFES warning it will head in a south westerly direction and is out of control and unpredictable.

A bushfire watch and act is also in place for people north of Caves Road and west of Cape Naturaliste Road in parts of Naturaliste and Dunsborough.

The DFES warned the blaze could pose a threat to lives and homes in the area as conditions are changing.

Residents who are unable to safely leave have been advised to proceed to the safer places of last resort.

Locations can be found at Pullman Bunker Bay Resort 42 Bunker Bay Road, off Cape Naturaliste Rd, Naturaliste and Eagle Bay Community Hall, 32 Fern Road, Eagle Bay.

A bushfire advice is in place south of Caves Road in parts of Quedjinup, Yallingup and Naturaliste, with residents advised to monitor WA Emergency for updates.

Residents in the area are encouraged to be alert and watch for signs of a bushfire, especially smoke and flames.
Victoria has confirmed 37,994 new Covid cases as NSW reported 25,870 infections and new close contact rules came into force to get food back onto Australian supermarket shelves.

Transmission in both states rose slightly on Tuesday - up from 30,062 (a 21 per cent rise) in Victoria and 20,293 (a 22 per cent rise) in NSW the day before.

New Covid-19 deaths in Victoria rose from two on Monday to 13 on Tuesday, but Covid-related fatalities fell in NSW from 18 to 11.

There are 170 Covid patients in NSW ICU units (up 11 from Monday) and 117 (down one from Monday) in intensive care in Victoria.

The latest figures came as asymptomatic critical food industry workers in NSW, Queensland and Victoria were told they could leave self-isolation to go to work even if they were classified as close contacts of a confirmed case.

Grocery bosses have warned fruit and vegetables could be left to rot as hundreds of workers are forced into isolation because of Covid-19 infection or exposure.

Pictured: Royal Prince Alfred Hospital main entrance on Monday. NSW reported 25,870 infections on Tuesday

The national cabinet - comprising Scott Morrison and state and territory leaders - is set to discuss the new rules on Thursday but the prime minister wants action before then.

Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said it was a 'reasonable step' allowing a balance to be found between reducing transmission of the virus and keeping enough workers in place to shore up food and grocery supply chains.

Close contacts who test negative but are asymptomatic will be able to continue to work, but be monitored using rapid antigen tests.

As of this week, children aged between five and 11 are eligible for the vaccine for the first time ever in Australia with NSW and Victoria racing to get as many children vaccinated before the start of the school term.

While just over 78 per cent of children aged 12 to 15 in NSW have been fully vaccinated, premier Dominic Perrottet said he was determined to send children back to the classrooms on January 28.

With a three week gap recommended between jabs, very few will be fully vaccinated when classrooms open their doors amid the nation's biggest outbreak.

Queensland has made the decision to delay the start of the school term by another two weeks and won't send children back to the classroom until February 7.

'More than 18,000 kids aged five to 11 have caught COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, which highlights why vaccination is so important,' premier Dominic Perrottet said.

Customers are pictured sitting outside a cafe at Bondi Beach in Sydney's east on January 8

Supermarkets have been hit by panic buying while supplies were disrupted by workers calling in sick

'We saw a great vaccination response for children aged 12-15 years, so we hope parents will book in their younger children before they start or go back to school.

'I want to also encourage anyone who has not yet received a COVID-19 vaccination to do so. This includes adults who had their second dose four months ago and are now due for a booster.'

Mr Perrottet dismissed concerns some parents would not be able to have their children vaccinated before the school term as several had complained about being unable to make a booking.

'Obviously this time of year is difficult for GPs because many are on leave,' he said. But there are mixed stories.

'They heard yesterday that people were struggling to get access to booster shots, but I heard many people were walking into the Homebush vaccination centre and getting a booster shot.

The cases come as children aged between five and 11 became eligible for the vaccine for the first time ever in Australia with NSW and Victoria racing to get as many children vaccinated before the start the school term

'There are many avenues available. I spoke to somebody this morning he made a booking just yesterday for the child to be vaccinated and received an appointment tomorrow.'

Some 63,000 children have already been booked in to receive the vaccine with NSW health minister Brad Hazzard praising parents for acting quickly.

'Whether it be measles or whooping cough or Pneumococcal or Hepatitis B, parents in NSW have always listened to the science to help protect their kids,' he said.

'No one wants to see their child in hospital and the best way we can safeguard our kids against COVID-19 and importantly, the elderly around them, is to get them vaccinated.'

Health Minister Greg Hunt says there will more than enough vaccines available for the 2.3 million children eligible for a jab with three million doses on hand over January.

However, while daily infection numbers are staggering compared to the impact of previous variants, Mr Hunt said severe illness has been relatively low

'We want to encourage all parents to bring their children forward over the period between now and the end of January to protect them and help protect the community,' Mr Hunt told reporters in Canberra on Sunday via video-link.

'I am aware and delighted that some general practices and pharmacies have already begun, they have received their vaccines, they have commenced the program and I think that is great news.'

But Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said parents are anxious because they can't get appointments for their children.

'That's a major problem. We need to make sure that is addressed. And this government have had a long time to prepare, making sure that supply was okay,' he told reporters in Ingham, Queensland.

He said this has led to Queensland's decision to delay the start of the school year by two weeks.

'That will have, of course, a further impact on the workforce and a further impact on the economy,' Mr Albanese said.
The Republican National Committee is launching a suit against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, the city council and the city board of elections over a new policy allowing around up to 900,000 noncitizens to vote in municipal elections.

The RNC is filing suit together with the New York GOP and state and local office holders, including city council members who voted against the legislation.

'American elections should be decided by American citizens. If Democrats can subvert elections this flagrantly in Americas largest city, they can do it anywhere,' RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement provided to DailyMail.com.

'The RNC is suing to protect the integrity of our elections, and we stand ready to do the same wherever Democrats try to attack the basic security of your ballot.'

Our City Our Vote, a campaign that pushed for non-citizen suffrage, estimated that the new bill would add around 900,000 to the city's voter rolls.

The New York City Board of Elections would be responsible for the new voters' registration, and would need to produce different ballots for non-citizen voters.

The New York City Council passed the law last month, and the city's new mayor allowed the bill to automatically become law on Sunday.

Unless a judge halts its implementation, New York City will be the first major U.S. city to grant widespread municipal voting rights to non-citizens beginning next year.

The non-citizens that qualify to vote under Eric Adams in New York City Lawful permanent residents of the city for at least 30 days

Visa holders legally authorized to work in the US

DACA recipients Advertisement

More than a dozen communities across the U.S. already allow non-citizens to cast ballots in local elections, including 11 towns in Maryland and two in Vermont.

Texas GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw condemned the new law on Twitter.

'Foreigners shouldnt be voting in American elections. You prove your loyalty to our country by becoming a citizen. Then you vote. How is this even up for debate?' he wrote.

Adams defended himself Sunday against criticism from members of his own party claiming that he did not support the legislation.

'No, I did not change my mind,' Adams told CNN's Jake Tapper on the State of the Union program. 'I supported the concept of the bill.'

'The one aspect of that I had a problem with and I thought was problematic, was the 30-day part, of being in the country for 30 days, was the place that I had questions,' he clarified. 'And I sat down with my colleagues. I'm a big believer in conversation. We have to start talking to each other, and not at each other. And after hearing their rationale and their theories behind it, I thought it was more important to not veto the bill or get in the way at all, and allow to build a move forward.'

The New York City Council passed the law last month, and the city's new mayor Eric Adams allowed the bill to automatically become law on Sunday

More than a dozen communities across the U.S. already allow non-citizens to cast ballots in local elections, including 11 towns in Maryland and two in Vermont

'In New York City, just Brooklyn, for example  47 per cent of Brooklynites speak a language other than English at home when I was the borough president,' the new Democratic mayor said. 'And so I think it's imperative that people who are in a local municipality have the right to decide who's going to govern them. And I support the overall concept of that bill.'

Under the new law, non-citizens still wouldn't be able to vote for president or members of Congress in federal races, or in the state elections that pick the governor, judges and legislators.

Rather, the measure would allow non-citizens who have been lawful permanent residents of the city for at least 30 days, as well as those authorized to work in the U.S., including 'Dreamers,' to help select the city's mayor, city council members, borough presidents, comptroller and public advocate.

Critics say the law could discourage legal residents from pursuing U.S. citizenship.

With Adams' decision to not veto and allow the bill to become law, the Board of Elections must now begin the process of drawing an implementation plan by July, including voter registration rules and provisions that would create separate ballots for municipal races to prevent non-citizens from casting ballots in federal and state contests.

It's a watershed moment for the nation's most populous city, where legally documented, voting-age non-citizens comprise nearly one in nine of the city's 7 million voting-age inhabitants. The movement to win voting rights for non-citizens prevailed after numerous setbacks.

'Dreamers' are young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children who would benefit from the never-passed DREAM Act or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows them to remain in the country if they meet certain criteria.

The first elections in which non-citizens would be allowed to vote are in 2023.

'We build a stronger democracy when we include the voices of immigrants,' said former City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez, who led the charge to win approval for the legislation.

New York City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez speaks during a rally on December 9 on the steps of City Hall ahead of a City Council vote to allow lawful permanent residents to cast votes in elections to pick the mayor, City Council members and other municipal officeholders

Rodriguez, who Adams appointed as his transportation commissioner, thanked the mayor for his support and expects a vigorous defense against any legal challenges.

Adams recently cast uncertainty over the legislation when he raised concern about the monthlong residency standard, but later said those concerns did not mean he would veto the bill.

While there was some question whether Adams could stop the bill from becoming law, the 30-day time limit for the mayor to take action expired at the stroke of midnight.

Adams said he looked forward to the law bringing millions more into the democratic process.

'I believe that New Yorkers should have a say in their government, which is why I have and will continue to support this important legislation,' Adams said in a statement released Saturday night. He added that his earlier concerns were put at ease after what he called productive dialogue with colleagues.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio had similar concerns but did not move to veto the measure before vacating City Hall at the end of the year.

Opponents say the council lacks the authority on its own to grant voting rights to non-citizens and should have first sought action by state lawmakers.

Some states, including Alabama, Arizona, Colorado and Florida, have adopted rules that would preempt any attempts to pass laws like the one in New York City.
Boris Johnson last night piled pressure on Government scientists to approve a further cut to Covid isolation after health chiefs admitted misleading ministers.

The Prime Minister asked the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to look again at whether the self-isolation period could be relaxed from seven days to five to ease crippling staff shortages in the economy and public services.

In an extraordinary twist, the UKHSA yesterday admitted it had issued misleading claims about the way Britains rules compare to other countries.

The health quango had claimed comparisons with the United States, where self- isolation has already been cut to five days, were not like for like, because self-isolation started from the date of a positive test rather than from when symptoms first emerge, as it does in the UK.

But last night the agency admitted it had been wrong, removing one of its central arguments against cutting self-isolation times  which have led to more than a million people being forced to stay away from the workplace.

Boris Johnson asked the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to look again at whether the self-isolation period could be relaxed from seven days to five to ease crippling staff shortages in the economy and public services. Pictured in his Uxbridge constituency on Monday

Ministers had repeatedly cited the false advice in recent days when explaining why Government was moving so slowly on the issue.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid was last night said to be angered by the blunder, with aides saying he was frustrated by the agencys mistake.

And it emerged the UKHSA had not even examined the case for moving to five days until now as it wrongly believed the idea had little chance of being adopted as policy.

Tory MPs last night called for a public apology from the quango, which is led by the former deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries who was awarded a damehood in the New Year honours.

Government sources said the Prime Minister was now trying to change the conversation on the issue but stressed that quarantine would only be cut if scientists approve the move as being safe.

The Daily Mail can reveal that a string of other senior ministers are also pushing for the move, including Mr Javid and Chancellor Rishi Sunak.

Speaking on a visit to a vaccine centre yesterday, Mr Johnson said the Government would keep issuing lateral flow tests as long as they are important, and added: There is a similar argument to be had about the quarantine period  whether to come down from seven to five days. The thing to do is to look at the science.

Asked whether he agrees with Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi that cutting the quarantine period would be helpful, he said: Yes, of course. We are looking at that and we will act according to the science.

In a blog post on January 1, the UKHSA said people were not comparing like to like when looking at the self-isolation advice in the UK and US.

It said while isolation in the UK starts from the emergence of the first symptoms, in the US the advice is to self-isolate for five days once you get a positive test which may be some days after the first symptoms.

Yesterday the quango admitted it had been wrong. It said the US authorities had clarified their advice on January 4 but it offered no explanation as to why its own advice had remained unchanged for a further six days.

Conservative MPs called for a public apology from the quango.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid was said to be angered by the UKHSA blunder, with aides saying he was frustrated by the agencys mistake

Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: This is yet another example of the bad, exaggerated advice that ministers have been receiving and that has been holding the country back.

The difference between five and seven days is critical to maintaining services in hospitals, schools and the economy. Former Cabinet minister David Davis said: This demonstrates why scientific advisers have to be very careful about basing their advice on facts rather than pessimistic guesswork.

If one of our aims is to protect the health service, sending people home for an unnecessary length of time does not help patients or other health service workers.

We need to see the hard data that justifies this, on a more established basis than their inaccurate assertions for the last few weeks.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen called for an apology, adding: This mistake has put the NHS and critical industries under severe pressure. It is the sort of basic information which politicians and the British public and employers would expect them to get right.

On the potential reduction to the self-isolation period, the Prime Ministers spokesman said: If it is possible to go further, wed want to act quickly but it needs to be based on the latest evidence and that work is still ongoing.

We certainly havent received any further updated advice.
The Blitz (from the German word, 'lightning') was the most intense bombing campaign Britain has ever seen

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A sequence of fascinating pictures shows the transformation of the British cities that were worst hit during Hitler's World War Two bombing campaign.

The Blitz (from the German word, 'lightning') - which lasted from September 1940 to May 1941 - was the most intense bombing campaign Britain has ever seen.

During the four months of the Battle of Britain, from July 1940 to October that year, RAF heroes clashed with Luftwaffe pilots in the vital fight for air supremacy - with a victory that ultimately scuppered Hitler's planned invasion.

However, after the country had defended its shores from Hitler's air force - its cities and ports were then battered by the Blitz. For eight months between 1940 and 1941 the country was subjected to a constant barrage of bombing from the Nazis.

Birmingham, Liverpool and Plymouth were hit eight times, Bristol six, Glasgow five, Southampton four, Portsmouth three, and there was also at least one large raid on another eight cities.

Meanwhile, London was attacked 71 times and bombed by the Luftwaffe for 57 consecutive nights.

In September 1941 alone, 5,300 tonnes of explosives were dropped on the capital city with other cities like Coventry suffering a 10-hour bombardment in one night, when 500 tonnes of high explosives and 900 incendiary bombs were dropped.

The financial cost of the Blitz, by the end of the horrific campaign, came to around 20,000,000 - with 116,000 buildings destroyed in London alone - but the human cost was catastrophic, leaving 43,000 dead.

Black and white photographs capture streets reduced to rubble in the days after the bombings and come in stark contrast to the buildings and roads that stand in the same place today.

 Slide me  LONDON: The debris of St Thomas's Hospital (pictured left), the morning after receiving a direct hit during the Blitz, in front of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben and the scene today (right). The hospital was first bombed on September 8, 1940

 Slide me  LONDON: The largest bomb crater in the capital city, left, on January 12, 1941, created when a bomb made a direct hit on the ticket hall of Bank Tube Station, killing at least fifty people. The Bank of England is seen on the far left and the Royal Exchange is pictured with a 'Dig for Victory' sign on it. Pictured right: Bank Station on March 12 this year

 Slide me  LONDON: Bomb damage to St Paul's Cathedral as a result of World War Two air raids (left) and St Paul's in the capital city today (right). London was attacked 71 times and bombed by the Luftwaffe for 57 consecutive nights

 Slide me  LIVERPOOL: The shell of Lewis's building in Liverpool which earlier that day had been crowded with shoppers on May 3, 1941 (left). The building, which is still named Lewis' and is set to be redeveloped, today (right)

 Slide me  LIVERPOOL: An emergency water supply reservoir which has been established in the basement of a blitzed building in Liverpool (left) on April 20, 1942, and the scene at the corner of Cook Street and Castle street today (right)

 Slide me  LIVERPOOL: Businessmen from bombed out offices gather in the street to transact business on May 13, 1941 (left) and how Fenwick Street looks today (right). The Blitz was the most intense bombing campaign Britain has ever seen

 Slide me  HULL: Firemen dampening down Mateer & Nelson on Chapel Street, Hull, following an overnight air raid by the Luftwaffe on the city on May 8, 1941, and how the same street looks today (right)

 Slide me  HULL: The shell of the Albion Congregational Church on Albion Street, Hull, following the air raids on the city around May 1941. The same place on the street today (right) after the previous building was torn down

 Slide me  COVENTRY: Bomb damage to Ford's Hospital on Greyfriars Lane (left). On the night of 14 October 1940, the 16th century building received a direct hit from a German bomb, leaving the warden, a nurse and six elderly residents dead. The site today (pictured right) after it was restored in 1953

 Slide me  COVENTRY: The spire of Coventry Cathedral rises above the ruined city centre after the body of the cathedral was destroyed during a devastating raid on November 14, 1940 (left) and how the cathedral looks today (right)

 Slide me  BIRMINGHAM: Scene showing the destruction in Newton Street, Birmingham, on the morning of April 10 after the air raid in 1941 (pictured left) and the same street in the city today (right)

 Slide me  EXETER: Bombed ruins of No 1 Dix's Field in Exeter, Devon, in 1942 (left) after a Baedeker bombing raid during the Second World War. Photographed for the National Buildings Record. How the street looks today (right)

 Slide me  SHEFFIELD: Rescuing wounded who were trapped under the cellar of The Marples, a public house in Fitzalan Square, during the first raid on Sheffield on December 13, 1940 (left). The same square today (right), with where the public house previously stood on the left-hand side
A foraging badger has uncovered a trove of 209 Roman coins dating as far back as the third century in a Spanish cave, scientists report.

Hailed as an 'exceptional find', the coins include some 'from the distant mints' of London, Constantinople and Antioch, an ancient city once located in what is now modern-day Turkey.

Researchers think they were hidden in the cave before the arrival of the Suebi, a Germanic people who invaded the Iberian Peninsula in AD 409, known for their infantry and ambush tactics.

The coins are thought to have been uncovered by a badger in a desperate hunt for berries and worms in the cave at Bercio, a parish in the municipality of Grado within the Spanish province of Asturias.

The hoard of 2019 coins (pictured) found in northern Spain have been described as 'an exceptional find'

Three archaeologists work at the location of the finding. The coins are now being cleaned at the Archaeological Museum of Asturias

ORIGINS OF THE 209 GRADO COINS - London - Antioch (ancient Greek city near modern-day Antakya, Turkey) - Constantinople (capital of the Roman/Byzantine Empire) - Thessalonica, Greece - Arles, France - London - Lyon - Rome Advertisement

The 209 coins are thought to be just a small part of a much larger set, now missing and possibly no longer in existence due to natural erosion.

The collection was discovered exposed at the cave by Roberto Garcia, a resident of the area, and two archaeologists in April 2021, but the find has only just been described in a new report by a team of Spanish researchers.

'In April 2021 it was located and rescued through a small emergency archaeological intervention financed by the Ministry of Culture of the Principality of Asturias, which up to now constitutes the largest Roman cave treasure in northern Spain,' they said.

'It is a set of 209 pieces between the 3rd and 5th centuries AD, the vast majority, deposited secondarily in a natural sink.

'The amount of coins recovered, as well as the undoubted archaeological interest of the moment of transition to the early medieval genesis, make the treasure discovered in Bercio an exceptional find.'

Although no badger was seen, the leading hypothesis is that Storm Filomena, which deposited snow across the Iberian Peninsula in January 2021, ramped up the creature's search for food, El Pais newspaper reports.

This hypothesis is largely due to the fact the collection was found mere feet away from a badger's burrow.

Researchers report: 'Up to now [the coins] constitutes the largest Roman cave treasure in northern Spain'

The team think the unsuspecting badger came across the coins instead of food morsels, leaving them exposed for humans to find months later.

One of the coins, weighing between eight and 10 grams and originating from London, is made up of copper and bronze but contains about 4 per cent silver.

The other coins hail from mints in Antioch, Constantinople, Thessalonica, Arles, Lyon, Rome or the Adriatic countries.

The coins were minted between the reigns of Emperor Carus (thought to have reigned the Roman Empire from AD September 282 to July 283) and Valentinian III (who reigned between AD October 425 and March 455).

The priceless collection was found in the cave near Grado, the northern region of Asturias, Spain

The discovery is 'in line with other neighbouring finds', researchers say; in the 1930s, the so-called treasure of Chapipi  14 gold coins from the time of Constantine and a gold ring  were found in valley of Grado.

'This accumulation of important findings, being prudent, could respond to that context of intense conflict in a border territory,' archaeologist Alfonso Fanjul Peraza told El Pais.

Currently, the collection is being cleaned at the Archaeological Museum of Asturias, close to where it was found.

Researchers have detailed the finding further in their report, published in Prehistory and Archeology Notebooks of the Autonomous University of Madrid.
The last seven years have been the hottest on record 'by a clear margin', new data shows, with levels of the climate-heating gases carbon dioxide and methane continuing to rise in 2021.

Analysis from the EU's satellite system found that 2021  which included record-breaking weather events such as the hottest summer ever in Europe, extreme heatwaves in Canada and the Mediterranean, as well as wildfires in Greece  was the fifth-warmest year.

Experts described the findings as 'another nail in the planetary coffin' and 'a punch in the face to make politicians and public alike wake up to the urgency of the climate emergency'.

'These events are a stark reminder of the need to change our ways, take decisive and effective steps toward a sustainable society and work towards reducing net carbon emissions,' said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which published the data today.

Data from C3S and the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) also indicated that atmospheric greenhouse gas levels continued to rise in 2021.

Specifically, carbon dioxide (CO) levels reached an annual global column-averaged figure of some 414 pm and methane (CH) approximately 1,876 ppb.

The findings showed that 2021 was one of the cooler years within the last seven, with an average global air surface temperature only 2.02.2F (1.1-1.2C) above the pre-industrial levels seen around 170 years ago.

Last year was only slightly warmer on average than 2015 and 2018, the coolest two years in the record-breaking run, while the warmest year on average was 2016.

Governments across the world have committed to limiting global temperature rises to 2.7F (1.5C) in an effort to curb the most dangerous effects of climate change.

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The last seven years have been the hottest on record 'by a clear margin', researchers with the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) have warned. Pictured: a graph of the annual global-average surface temperatures from 19702021, in degrees Celsius

Analysis from the EU's satellite system found that 2021  which included record-breaking weather events such as the hottest summer ever in Europe, extreme heatwaves in Canada the Mediterranean and wildfires in Greece (pictured)  was the fifth-warmest year

'2021 was yet another year of extreme temperatures with the hottest summer in Europe, heatwaves in the Mediterranean, not to mention the unprecedented high temperatures in North America,' said Buontempo.

'The last seven years have been the seven warmest on record.'

According to the researchers, on a global scale, the first five months of last year were relatively cool, in comparison with the recent and very warm years.

However, the following five months of 2021  from JuneOctober  saw average monthly temperatures that were consistent among the fourth warmest on record.

The preceding three decades (19912020) saw temperatures that were close to 1.6F (0.9C) above pre-industrial levels.

In comparison, regions with temperatures most above this baseline included a band stretching from the west coast of the US and Canada to north-east Canada and Greenland, as well as swathes of central and northern Africa and the Middle East.

The most below-average temperatures were found in Alaska, parts of Antarctica, most of Australia, west and easternmost Siberia and over the central and eastern Pacific  with this being concurrent with the La Nina that bookended the year.

The years from 19912020 saw temperatures that were close to 1.6F (0.9C) above pre-industrial levels. In comparison, regions with temperatures most above this baseline included a band stretching from the west coast of the US and Canada to north-east Canada and Greenland, as well as swathes of central and northern Africa and the Middle East

Over in North America, meanwhile, 2021 brought large temperature anomalies to bear on several different regions.

Northeast Canada, for example, started the year with unusually high average monthly temperatures  and saw such return again in the autumn.

June was the warmest on record for the continent, with western North America suffering through an exceptional heatwave that broke maximum temperature records by several degrees.

Hot and dry regional conditions exacerbated wildfires throughout July and August, hitting Canada and the US's western coastal states the hardest.

The 'Dixie Fire' that struck California was the second largest in the state's history  causing not only widespread destruction but also leading to a significant reduction in air quality that impacted thousands as the fire's pollutants were blown eastwards.

'Carbon dioxide and methane concentrations are continuing to increase year on year and without signs of slowing down. These greenhouse gases are the main drivers of climate change,' said CAMS director Vincent-Henri Peuch.

'This is why the new observation-based service led by CAMS to support monitoring and verification of anthropogenic CO and CH emissions estimates will be a crucial tool to assess the effectiveness of emissions mitigation measures.

'Only with determined efforts backed up by observational evidence can we make a real difference in our fight against the climate catastrophe.'

'Carbon dioxide and methane concentrations are continuing to increase year on year and without signs of slowing down. These greenhouse gases are the main drivers of climate change,' said CAMS director Vincent-Henri Peuch. Pictured: charts of monthly global CO concentrations from satellite observations (top) and annual mean growth rates (bottom)

'Europe's commitment to respond to the Paris agreement can only be achieved through effective analysis of climate information,' said the European Commission's Head of Earth Observation, Mauro Facchini.

'The Copernicus Climate Change Service provides an essential global resource through operational, high-quality information about the state of our climate that is instrumental for both climate mitigation and adaptation policies.

'The 2021 analysis  showing that globally the warmest years by far were recorded in the last seven years  is a reminder of the continued increase in global temperatures and the urgent necessity to act,' he concluded.

Meteorologist Sir Brian Hoskins of Imperial College London told Sky News that it has become 'difficult to say something new each time we see signs of another nail in the planetary coffin.'

However, he added, the data nevertheless presents 'yet another warning' of the impact that we are wreaking on the planet that is our home.

'Real action to curb our greenhouse gas emissions in the UK and globally is desperately needed,' he concluded.

Meanwhile, Reading University climatologist Rowan Sutton told Sky News he hopes the record-breaking weather of 2021 will serve as a 'punch in the face to make politicians and public alike wake up to the urgency of the climate emergency.'
A Steller's sea eagle that is native to Asia is making its way around North America and has recently been spotted in Maine.

The rare bird, which is more than 5,000 miles from home, was previously seen in Massachusetts on December 21, attracting hundreds of bird watchers around the Taunton River.

It was recently photographed on Friday in Boothbay Harbor by a photographer named John, who snapped a picture of the 20-pound bird covered in snow while perched in a tree and as it took to the skies for its next adventure.

This Steller's sea eagle, which has an eight-foot-long wingspan, was first reported in Alaska in 2020, then Texas in March 2021, Nova Scotia in November and Massachusetts last month.

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A Steller's sea eagle that is native to Asia is making its way around North America and has recently been spotted in Maine

'Incredible feeling to photograph a Steller's Sea Eagle 5 minutes from my house,' John wrote with the post on his Instagram page. 'This Eagle is currently lost and the only one in North America.'

Steller's sea eagles are native to China, Japan and Russia and are easy to spot with their dark body, white forehead, shoulders, tail, and thighs and bright-yellow bill.

The birds can grow more than three feet long and is considered more powerful and aggressive than its closest relatives, the bald eagle and white-tailed sea eagle.

In December, the Stellar's sea eagle was spotted by 200 bird watchers around the Taunton River in Massachusetts.

This Steller's sea eagle was first reported in Alaska in 2020, then Texas in March 2021, Nova Scotia in November and Massachusetts last month

It was recently photographed on Friday by a photographer named John, who snapped a picture of the 20-pound bird covered in snow while perched in a tree and as it took off for its next adventure

Bird watchers have traveled from all over New England to catch a glimpse at the rare bird, Tuanton Daily Gazette reports.

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,' Goff told Tuanton Daily Gazette.

'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.'

The rare bird, which is more than 5,000 miles from home, was previously seen in Massachusetts on December 21, attracting hundreds of bird watchers around the Taunton River (pictured)

And many are sure it is the same bird spotted on Alaska's Denali highway, about 4,700 miles away from its native range, in August 2020, the New York Times reports.

The bird was then observed in New Brunswick and Quebec, Canada this past July and in Goliad County, Texas in March 2021.

Wildlife officials believe a storm blew the bird off course and the creature is now lost, as it is likely become vagrant.

Vagrancy occurs when a bird wonders off its normal route, which could be due to a navigation error or a major storm scooping it up.

However, vagrancy is a normal occurrence  records show some albatrosses spend decades off their normal course.

Birders are sure it's the same eagle because it has unique white markings on its wings

Experts suspect the lone traveler may migrate with native bald eagles along the coastline, make its way back to its normal ranges in northeastern Asia or stick around and brace Nova Scotia's brutal winters. It is possible that the sea eagle may die while out of range, the New York Times reports.

Alexander Lees, an avian vagrancy expert at the Manchester Metropolitan University, told the New York Times: 'It's like an avian soap opera.

'We're all rooting for it. Will it make it home? Or is it doomed to never see another species of its own in its lifetime?'
Ralf Rangnick has told his players that a pressing game is the only way forward for Manchester United, and they must be ready to deliver exactly what he wants.

Rangnick arrived as Uniteds interim manager with a reputation as the godfather of gegenpressing in Germany, but there has been little evidence of it apart from the first half of his first game against Crystal Palace.

As the 63-year-old prepares for his seventh match in charge, against Aston Villa in the FA Cup tonight, he stressed the importance of the players meeting his demands.

Ralf Rangnick's interim manager at Manchester United has been underwhelming so far

This is the only way we can compete at this level, said Rangnick.

Whenever you watch games, even if its not the top teams, they play with intensity, physicality, energy and they sprint.

This is what we have to do. We have to develop into this kind of team.

Rangnick has told his players that a pressing game is the only way forward for United

Much as they did under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, United have lacked intensity under Rangnick

As I said after the first game against Crystal Palace, we showed at least in the first half a lot of those things and its about implementing this into the team. This is our job.

We have to develop the players and identify for each game the players who are willing and able to do that and to deliver exactly what we spoke about.

The pressure is on at a club like Manchester United. Im pretty sure that the players are aware of that. The team is able to dominate games, to win games.

United captain Harry Maguire has admitted he and his team-mates must raise their standards

When Rangnick spent a year studying in England and played for non-League Southwick more than 40 years ago, his farewell present from team-mates was a ticket to the 1980 FA Cup final between West Ham and Arsenal.

He added: Ive always been a big fan, supporter and admirer of the FA Cup.

For me, its a very important competition. We will definitely try to play with our best possible team.
Jurgen Klopp says a Covid outbreak that caused the postponement of Liverpool's Carabao Cup semi-final first leg at Arsenal had 'a lot of false positives'.

The EFL agreed to postpone the tie after Liverpool had been struck down by a Covid outbreak, with boss Klopp, his assistant Pep Lijnders and several players in isolation after positive tests.

Liverpool closed their Kirkby training centre on Wednesday and the club said a 'severe outbreak' at the club meant they could not field a team against the Gunners the following night.

Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp was on touchline at Shrewsbury after a false positive result

However, Klopp revealed that defender Trent Alexander-Arnold was the only player to actually test positive.

Anyone with a false positive result was still unavailable for Sunday's FA Cup third-round tie against Shrewsbury.

Klopp named four teenagers in his starting line-up with came from behind to win 4-1.

'This was the team we could line up with today and the boys did really well,' said the Reds boss.

Klopp named four teenagers in his starting line-up due to the false positive results

'We had last week a proper outbreak and it showed up that we had a lot of false positives but the rules are like they are so all these players who are false positives couldn't play.

'The only real positive came from Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives.'

After extensive talks, the EFL agreed to postpone the tie but Liverpool had to give up home advantage in the second leg.

The first leg is now set for Anfield on Thursday, January 13 with the second leg seven days later at the Emirates.
She's starring as Pamela Anderson in new Hulu and Disney+ series Pam & Tommy.

And Lily James has revealed how the role is one of her most challenging and transformative to date.

The actress, 32, told PORTER that it felt 'liberating' playing Pamela, but explained: 'Ive never worked so hard. I read the books [Anderson] has written, I read her poetry, I can parrot along to all her interviews.'

'I've never worked so hard': Lily James revealed she felt 'liberated' embracing Pamela Anderson's 'sensuality' for new Hulu series as she spoke with Porter magazine about the role

'I love that about acting; you fit into a character, and you realize youre not as different as you might have thought. You lean in to things in yourself, and discard parts of you that arent useful. We were exploring a particular moment in Pamela and Tommys life in the 90s, this absolute lust for love.'

Pam & Tommy chronicles the sex tape scandal which rocked Pamela and her then-husband Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee (played by Sebastian Stan) during their three year marriage.

It comes after photos of the star in costume hit the headlines, with Lily looking like Pamela's twin in her iconic red Baywatch swimsuit.

Lily explained that the makeup and costume took four hours every day to perfect, and came complete with a prosthetic body suit.

She explained: 'Of course, there was the physical transformation. Slowly, our incredible team found a balance where I resembled Pamela but also felt like I could act through it.

'Ive never done anything where I look very different from myself before. And Id really like to continue in this vein, because I felt there was something very freeing and liberating in it. There was a bravery that came from that. A courage that came from disappearing.'

Seeing double: Lily (L) looked the spitting image of Pamela (R) as she slipped into a busty red swimsuit in the Pam & Tommy trailer

She added that she was sorry to take the costume off at the end of the day, saying: 'I hated it It was like being stripped of all these superpowers! Id really enjoyed the physicality and the sensuality, even down to the long fingernails. There was just so much character to hold on to  it was really thrilling.'

Pam & Tommy chronicles the infamous sex tape which rocked Pamela and her then-husband Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee during their three year marriage.

Speaking about the scandal, Lily said she believes the effects are still being felt today.

She said: 'It provoked an internet and celebrity culture that, now, I believe is just way out of hand. There is no such thing as privacy now. [] Were constantly sharing our lives  with an audience that doesnt really care about you. And giving away information to corporations using it for profit. I know a time before that happened, but there are young girls who have no idea.

'This was a trigger moment that unintentionally sparked a new time I hope a lot has changed. But sometimes it doesnt feel like its changed quite enough.'

Dedicated: The actress, 32, revealed 'Ive never worked so hard. I read the books [Anderson] has written, I read her poetry, I can parrot along to all her interviews'

She continued by discussing the prejudice Pamela faced, saying: 'When you look back at some of her interviews from the 1990s, the misogyny is so striking. I mean, its changed so much, but I think its more hidden now, perhaps? Anyway, there was a lot in it that I found I could relate to.

'It felt like a challenge. And kind of essential. The shaming was so extreme. Unfortunately, thats still the case, dont you think? Women are held to much higher standards and attacked in ways that feel so vicious. Pamela had such wit and grace in the way that she held herself. I admire that strength.'

She went on to discuss her intentions behind the role, saying she wanted to 'provoke a conversation' and try and incite change through her work.

Transformation: Lily explained that the makeup and costume took four hours every day to perfect, and came complete with a prosthetic body suit

Lily said: 'I want to provoke a conversation, and I want to be part of these attempts at change. I realize a lot of its incredibly sensitive and difficult. And so, as an actor, to a certain extent, what you do is make yourself very open to talk to all of that.'

Pamela, 54, and Tommy, 59, tied the knot on a beach in Mexico in 1995 after dating for just four days. At the time, Pamela's mother hadn't even met Tommy.

The pair would go on to welcome sons Brandon, 25, and Dylan, 24, but they divorced in 1998.

In 2015, Pam told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live that she never profited from the sex tape, nor even watched it. She said: 'I've never seen it. I made not one dollar. It was stolen property...

She explained: 'Ive never done anything where I look very different from myself before'

'We made a deal to stop all the shenanigans. I was seven months pregnant with Dylan and thinking it was affecting the pregnancy with the stress and said, "I'm not going to court anymore. I'm not being deposed anymore by these horny, weird lawyer men. I don't want to talk about my vagina anymore or my public sex  anything."'

Out now: To see the full interview with Lily James read PORTER

The sex tape was stolen by Rand Gauthier, who is played by Seth Rogen in the show, after Tommy reportedly refused to pay for work that he had performed on their house.

When Gauthier confronted the musician about not being paid the $20,000 he was owed, Tommy pulled out a gun to scare him away.

Gauthier took his revenge by stealing the giant safe that had been kept in the couple's garage, which mainly housed the drummer's guns and Pamela's jewelry, in addition to the sex tape.

Earlier this year, Pam claimed that the video wasn't actually a sex tape, but was merely a compilation of footage of them naked on vacation, which just happened to include sex acts.

Last year, insiders claimed to The Sun that Pam thinks Pam & Tommy is 'a joke and cheap knock-off.'

She reportedly called the show 'God awful,' though the series had just begun filming, and she apparently claimed she had never heard of Lily or Sebastian.

The source said Pamela had 'no intention of watching this God awful show, absolutely not. Never.'

To see the full interview with Lily James read PORTER and/or download the NET-A-PORTER app for iPhone, iPad and Android
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Kanye West was seen enjoying quality time with his four kids at Los Angeles' swanky Soho Warehouse hotel, just days after going public with his relationship with actress Julia Fox three days before.

After spending the past week simultaneously romancing the Uncut Gems actress, 31, and Audri Nix, 27, the 44-year-old rapper stepped up for dad duty on Saturday at the Downtown hotspot.

The Yeezy founder's kids North, eight, Saint, six, Chicago, three and two-year-old Psalm, who he shares with ex Kim Kardashian, looked ecstatic as they were chauffeured to a hotel to meet up with their father where an aide toted the games Connect 4 and Guess Who into the meeting.

While exact details of Kim and Kanye's custody arrangement is not known, the KUWTK star, who announced her split from the rapper in February last year, said in June that they have an 'amazing co-parenting relationship.'

Dad duty: Kanye West was spend soaking in some quality time with his four kids after going public with his relationship with actress Julia Fox just three days ago

Kanye was in typically edgy garb for his meeting with his kids, following the uncharacteristically candid insight into his private life, unveiled by Julia in a magazine spread.

For their reunion, his eldest daughter North entered the building wearing a purple t-shirt, matching sneakers from her fathers company and a pair of trendy ripped jeans.

Her younger brother Saint wore a grey T-shirt and black rain boots, while little Chicago looked adorable in an all-black outfit and cowboy boots as they entered the hotel while flanked by aides.

The youngest of the brood sported a yellow plaid button-down, green pants and a stuffed rabbit in his hand.

Cuties: Her younger brother Saint wore a grey t-shirt and rain boots, while little Chicago looked adorable in an all-black outfit and cowboy boots

The little ones: While exact details of Kim and Kanye's custody arrangement is not known, the KUWTK star, who announced her split from the rapper in February last year, said in June that they have an 'amazing co-parenting relationship'

Fun: The security guard also toted a few toys and games, including Connect 4 and Guess Who

Going strong: Kanye's meeting comes after his big reveal of his romance with girlfriend Julia (pictured together)

Kim, who recently went public with her relationship with funnyman Pete Davidson, spoke last year about the state of her and Kanye's relationship, to which she simply said that they have an 'amazing co-parenting relationship,' before adding that she would 'forever be' his 'biggest fan.'

'We have an amazing co-parenting relationship, and I respect him so much, and you know, that was my friend first, first and foremost, for a long time, so I can't see that going away,' said the Selfish author.

'I will forever be Kanye's biggest fan. He's the father of my kids, Kanye will always be family.'

When asked what led to the pair divorcing. 'I honestly don't think I would even say it here on TV, but it was not like, one specific thing that happened on either part,' Kim began.

All dressed up: For their reunion, his eldest daughter entered the building wearing a purple t-shirt, matching sneakers from her fathers company and a pair of ripped jeans

Brothers: One security guard carried Psalm in his arms as Saint walked by his side

'I think it was just a general difference of opinions on a few things that led to this decision. And like, in no way would I want someone to think that I didn't give it my all, or not really try,' she continued.

'You know, we have four kids. There's nothing that I think parents would want more than to see, or even kids want more, than to see their parents together. I grew up and I lived that myself.'

She did however assert that he would 'always be family,' and called their marriage her 'first real' one, despite being married twice prior to NBA star Kris Humphries and Damon Thomas.

Following the visitation, West stepped out rocking a black Yeezy puffer jacket over a blue hoodie, jeans and black boots. The Grammy winner spent the rest of the evening working hard with his team in a design studio.

Ready to go: The kids looked excited to visit their dad for a few hours

Dinner was delivered to the studio and people on staff were seen coming in and out.

The outings come just days after Fox penned a 217 word account on her first two dates with the rapper, which included a trip to New York City.

Detailing their 'instant connection' after meeting in Miami on New Year's Eve to Interview Magazine, the actress described the star's generosity and 'fun' energy.

The article also contained a slew of images documenting their epic night out, from the many kisses they shared to the hotel suite full of clothing Kanye had surprised Julia with.

Back to work: Following the visitation, West stepped out rocking a black Yeezy puffer jacket over a blue hoodie, jeans and black boots

'He had me and my friends laughing, dancing, and smiling all night. We decided to keep the energy going and fly back to New York City to see Slave Play,' she gushed.

The actress continued: 'Ye's flight landed at six and the play was at seven and he was there ON TIME. I was impressed. After the play we chose to do dinner at Carbone which is one of my favorite restaurants.'

'At the restaurant, Ye directed an entire photo shoot for me while people dined,' she added. 'After dinner Ye had a surprise for me. I mean, I'm still in shock. Ye had an entire hotel suite full of clothes.'

Whirlwind romance: The outings come just days after Fox penned a 217 word account on her first two dates with the rapper, which included a trip to New York City

She said the move was 'every girl's dream come true' and 'felt like a real Cinderella moment.'

'I don't know how he did it, or how he got all of it there in time. But I was so surprised. Like, who does things like this on a second date? Or any date!' she marveled.

Fox concluded her piece by writing: 'Everything with us has been so organic. I don't know where things are headed but if this is any indication of the future I'm loving the ride.'

Moving on: Detailing their 'instant connection' after meeting in Miami on New Year's Eve to Interview Magazine, the actress, 31, described the star's generosity and 'fun' energy

There were also some very intimate snaps of their date night shared on Interview's Instagram which showed the two with their heads together as they kissed and even one where Julia straddled Ye in front of a clothing rack.

Another photo shared by Julia includes the shoot at Carbone, in which West and Slave Play writer Jeremy O. Harris can be seen in the background.

Harris also shared 'proof' of West directing Fox, 31, during the Interview Magazine photo shoot over dinner via Twitter.

Despite their romance feeling like it was ripped right out of a fairytale, her Prince Charming's love life has been quite complicated since his estranged wife Kim Kardashian filed for divorce last February.

In addition to wooing Fox, this week, he was also spotted looking cozy with Puerto Rican pop artist Audri Nix in Miami on a hotel balcony together on New Year's Day.

'He had me and my friends laughing, dancing, and smiling all night. We decided to keep the energy going and fly back to New York City to see Slave Play,' she gushed

And less than 24 hours after whisking Fox to the Big Apple, he spent more time with Nix at a gated property.

Hours before Fox shared PDA-heavy images of their second date, which showed them hugging and kissing with Interview, the validity of their relationship was called into question.

Following reports that his ex Kim Kardashian sees the 'romance' as an 'attempt to make her jealous', Ye is said to be documenting his many dates with his own media team.

A source told Page Six that Kanye has brought along the photographers as part of a larger project documenting his life.

'At the restaurant, Ye directed an entire photo shoot for me while people dined,' she added. 'After dinner Ye had a surprise for me. I mean, I'm still in shock. Ye had an entire hotel suite full of clothes'

They explained: 'He's decided to take matters into his own hands. He has an incredible life, he meets the craziest people on the planet. He realized maybe he should have an album of his life.'

The high profile romance has not gone down well with ex Kim, who is currently dating Saturday Night Live star Pete.

A source told The Sun: 'Kim thinks it's comical Kanye went from begging her to come back to showcasing his new girl all over the city within days.'

Annoyed: The high profile romance has not gone down well with ex Kim, who is currently dating Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson

'She knows it's not serious and is just typical hijinks from Kanye,' a source told The Sun.

'Kim thinks it's another desperate attempt to make her jealous. She honestly doesn't care, she's very over him at this point so his little game isn't working.'

Page Six confirmed West and Fox's romance last week, with an insider insisting the two are dating. They 'both just got out of their former relationships, and they've helped each other recover immensely.' the outlet revealed.

Julia has previously insisted she's not one 'to wait for things to be handed to me,' and with just a handful of appearances with Kanye she has seen her fame skyrocket.
Hayley Love has spoken about her struggle to bond with her one-month-old daughter Daisy in a revealing Q&A with fans on Instagram Stories on Saturday.

The 25-year-old former Farmer Wants A Wife star said the devastating feeling first hit her five days after welcoming Daisy on December 7.

'I had two horrible nights sleep with Daisy thinking I was going to be the worst mum ever,' she began.

Doing it tough: Farmer Wants A Wife star Hayley Love has spoken candidly about her struggle to bond with her one-month-old daughter Daisy in a revealing Q&A with fans on Instagram Stories on Saturday

'I never felt that instant "love" once giving birth. I got home and felt like my whole body was rejecting her.

'I'd stare at her when someone else was holding her and feel as though she wasn't mine, it was terrifying because I thought my fear of getting PP [postpartum] depression was happening.'

She said 'the feeling disappeared after about a week and now my love for her everyday grows'.

New addition: The 25-year-old former Farmer Wants A Wife star said the devastating feeling first hit her five days after welcoming Daisy on December 7

'I never felt that instant "love" once giving birth. I got home and felt like my whole body was rejecting her,' she confessed

Hayley added: 'Sometimes I cry when I'm holding her because I love her so much.'

She finished her post by promising other new mums who may also be struggling that 'it'll get better'.

Hayley added that despite their rocky start, she now 'can't imagine my life without' her infant daughter.

Expecting: In July, she shocked Farmer Wants A Wife viewers when she revealed she was 22 weeks pregnant with Will Dwyer's child, but said they were no longer together

In July, she shocked Farmer Wants A Wife viewers when she revealed she was 22 weeks pregnant with Will Dwyer's child, but said they were no longer together.

The cancer survivor was originally matched with farmer Matt Trewin on the Channel Seven dating show, before she went on to briefly date Will, 40.

Will later released a statement addressing Hayley's pregnancy in which he vowed to be 'the best dad I can be... when the time comes'.
Elsa Hosk put her svelte figure on display on Sunday in a series of alluring Instagram posts aimed at her 7.2M followers.

The 33-year-old model pranced around in a skimpy hot pink bikini while on vacation, just 10 months after giving birth to daughter Tuulikki Joan Daly.

The Swedish beauty captioned her stunning snaps writing: 'ocean blue as a pool.'

Beauty: Elsa Hosk put her svelte figure on display on Sunday in a series of alluring Instagram posts aimed at her 7.2M followers

The Victoria's Secret Angel gave her followers a perfect view of her slim waist and tan long legs in a tiny pink metallic top paired with a matching skirt.

The supermodel was seen standing in clear blue water, surrounded by rocks.

Her lovely blonde locks fell loose down her shoulders and she sported a pair of trendy red sunglasses.

Stunner: The 33-year-old model pranced around in a skimpy hot pink bikini while on vacation, just 10 months after giving birth to daughter Tuulikki Joan Daly

Baby blues: The Swedish beauty captioned her stunning snaps writing: 'ocean blue as a pool'

Stylish: The fashion-forward runway star donned a pair of trendy red sunglasses

In another shot the beauty actually took a dip in the blue water and got her bikini wet, revealing her impossibly trim wait and taut tummy.

She also took a stunning selfie that showed off her piercing blue eyes.

The runway star sported a white Jacquemus fringe bucket hat, that covered her icy platinum locks.

Fit: The model showed off her impossible curves, including her tiny waist

Mermaid: Fans were thrilled with the sexy snaps, with one calling Hosk 'a goddess' while another one named her an 'absolute mermaid'

Fans were thrilled with the sexy snaps, with one calling Hosk 'a goddess' while another one named her an 'absolute mermaid.'

The star also posted a video to her Instagram Story where she frolics in front of the camera to a song by The Beach Boys.

The model is seen adjusting her tiny pink bikini and gives her followers a view from all angles.

Having fun: The star also posted a video to her Instagram Story where she frolics in front of the camera

What a body! At one point the stunner adjusted her tiny bikini

Paradise: 'Morning from windy paradise,' the blonde beauty captioned the video

'Morning from windy paradise,' the blonde beauty captioned the video.

It's been 10 months since the Swedish stunner gave birth to her daughter, whom she shares with boyfriend Tom Daly. The pair have been together since 2015.

The fashion industry personality modeled for Victoria's Secret from 2011 to 2018. She has has worked for brands like Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Ungaro, H&M, Anna Sui, Lilly Pulitzer and Guess.
He's the son of supermodel Elle Macpherson and billionaire financier Arpad Busson.

And it appears Aurelius Cy Busson, who goes by his trendy middle name, is ready to step out of his famous parents' shadow.

The aspiring model, who turned 18 last February, shared a gallery of photos to Instagram on Saturday of himself celebrating the New Year at the beach.

Like mother, like son! Supermodel Elle Macpherson's youngest boy Cy Busson, 18, looked very grown up as he celebrated the New Year at the beach

Cy, who is believed to have rung in 2022 in The Bahamas or Miami, took his shirt off for a number of sun-drenched snaps.

He accessorised with a blue cap and sunglasses.

'Happy new year,' he captioned the photos.

Rising star: The aspiring model, who is believed to have rung in 2022 in The Bahamas or Miami, took his shirt off for a number of sun-drenched snaps

Cy appears to be following in his famous mother's footsteps.

He has already appeared in several magazine shoots and is represented by talent agency Next Models Miami.

In addition to his modelling career, he is a student at Babson College, which is known for its focus on entrepreneurship.

A good start: Cy has already appeared in several magazine shoots and is represented by talent agency Next Models Miami

Cy mostly kept out of the spotlight until turning 18 last year, but since reaching that milestone has featured in a handful of publications.

He appeared on the cover of Australian Vogue and French Elle alongside his mother and older brother, 23-year-old Flynn Busson.

He also fronted the Russian edition of Glamour Man.

Education: In addition to his modelling career, he is a student at Babson College, which is known for its focus on entrepreneurship

Elle wished her son a happy 18th birthday in February last year.

The model, 57, posted a gallery of never-before-seen snaps of her youngest child on Instagram, including one picture of herself breastfeeding a newborn Cy.

'Aurelius sped into the world in just four hours, bringing indescribable joy and unconditional love, making our family complete. Eighteen years today,' she wrote in the caption.

Lineage: It appears Aurelius Cy Busson, who goes by his trendy middle name, is ready to step out of the shadow of his famous parents, Elle Macpherson and French financier Arpad Busson

She continued: 'We love you to the moon and back and round Australia a gazillion times. Thank you for choosing us.'

Elle known as 'The Body', has previously said that when she became a mother, she decided to put her sons first over her career.

'I was 35 when I had my first [Flynn] and 41 when I had Cy and so I came to children a little later in life, but I made sure they were going to be the priority,' she said.

Childhood: Elle raised Cy between London and Miami. They are pictured here in March 2011

Fatherhood: Elle shares her boys with her billionaire ex-partner Arpad Busson (pictured)

'I used to travel a lot and I'd go through that thing that [working] mothers go through.

'I would always tell them, "Mum loves what she does and I hope in life you find something you love to do so that work doesn't feel like work and you go off and do your thing and while I'm off doing my thing. How cool for you guys to have that time without your helicopter, control-freak mother around."'

She also said she was 'moved' to learn one of her sons had said in an interview that she made them feel they were her 'priority'.
Married At First Sight stars Jules Robinson and Cameron Merchant intend to try for baby number two.

The reality TV couple are 'hoping to fall pregnant' again.

Mother-of-one Jules told 9Honey she would 'like to give her one-year-old son Oliver a sibling'.

Family of four? Married At First Sight stars Jules Robinson and Cameron Merchant intend to try for baby number two. Pictured with son Ollie, one

The flame-haired influencer added that she hoped to fall pregnant just as quickly as she did with Ollie after conceiving him in just two months.

The family news comes after Jules took to Instagram to let fans know she had Covid, confirming she had a running fever with a temperature of 39.4C while driving home from a Gold Coast trip alongside Cam and their baby son.

She said she felt 'bloody awful' in her caption, letting her near 750,000 followers know she was 'so sick' with the virus.

Easy: Influencer Jules told 9Honey she hoped to fall pregnant just as quickly with baby number two, after conceiving Ollie in just two months. Pictured last month

Battle: The family news comes after Jules and Cam revealed they've tested positive to Covid-19, following a five-day holiday in the Gold Coast

'When your Covid kicks in on your drive home from holidays and your husband takes care of everyone,' Jules wrote.

She then revealed she is currently in isolation in the guest bedroom of the family's house in Sydney.

'10 hours later, 3am home and isolating in guest bedroom, worst 10 hours but my hero hubby made it better,' she added.

Oh no: 'When your Covid kicks in on your drive home from holidays and your husbands takes care of everyone,' Jules wrote. She showed a thermometer with her temp at 39.4C

'P.S. it's bloody awful, like bloodyyyyy awful!!'

She then thanked fans for their support online, saying: 'Thank you everyone for the well wishes.

'We literally ducked and dived from catching it before our 5 day getaway, cancelling things and staying home constantly. I feel its kinda inevitable at the moment, which is an awful thought but life must go on. Stay safe all xx.'

Cam posted a similar sentiment to his own account, adding: 'Unfortunately Covid we couldnt run from you any longer At least you had the decency to allow us to enjoy our trip away. Heres to the next 7 days'

Break: The couple just returned back from five days in Queensland, where it appears they caught the virus while on a mini-break together

He later let fans know he was suffering from body aches from 'hot and freezing' night sweats.

'Last night was fun!' he joked. 'Happy Sunday!'

He also uploaded a photo from a sleepless night with him covered in sweat.

Aches: Cam let fans know he was chilling out in front of the TV, watching Netflix

Sweats: Cam later let fans know he was suffering night sweats with him saying 'Omicron' day two

Premier Dominic Perrottet revealed on Sunday he'd doubled his order of urgent rapid antigen tests to 100 million to alleviate the burden on the public health system.

The tests - some of which will arrive this week - will be distributed to essential workers and vulnerable communities.

'This will ensure supplies are provided to the most vulnerable in our community, and ensure they have immediate access to support and health advice as needed,' the premier told Sunday Telegraph.

'It will also provide greater confidence to businesses and the community.'
Newsreader Geoff Field said he would 'never' work with Kyle Sandilands or Jackie 'O' Henderson again after walking off their radio show in 2010.

But it seems their long-running feud is well and truly behind them after Kyle, 50, paid his former colleague, 61, a surprise visit while holidaying in Port Douglas.

The photo, which appears to have been taken outside Field's North Queensland home was shared on Instagram by Kyle's manager Bruno Bouchet on Friday.

Burying the hatchet? Former Kyle and Jackie O newsreader Geoff Field appears to have put his longtime feud with Kyle Sandilands behind him after they reunited in Port Douglas on Friday

'Radio reunion up in Port Douglas,' Bruno captioned the photo.

Geoff didn't seem to be expecting company when he bumped into Kyle and Bruno, as he was only wearing boardshorts and sunglasses.

Kyle opted for his signature black T-shirt, shorts and sneakers.

Stepping down: The sighting comes a month after it was announced Geoff had been made redundant from his job as News Director at 2SER, as the Sydney radio station struggles through a financial crisis

The sighting comes a month after it was announced Geoff had been made redundant from his job as News Director at 2SER, as the Sydney radio station struggles through a financial crisis.

Field's position was one of many that were made redundant at the station due to a restructure, according to Radio Today.

'Thoughts to my colleagues and students affected, but I'm sure 2SER will get through this and come out stronger than ever,' he tweeted.

Redundancy: 'Thoughts to my colleagues and students affected, but I'm sure 2SER will get through this and come out stronger than ever,' Field said in response to the news on Twitter

'I am blessed to have worked with so many amazing people since 2017 - and I've enjoyed the change since leaving commercial radio.'

Geoff began working at 2SER in 2017 and has trained hundreds of journalism students from UTS and Macquarie University at the station since that time.

The journalist said he was now looking forward to some downtime after working in breakfast radio for more than 25 years.

Past: Field was at 2DayFM FM for 18 years, during which he famously joined The Kyle and Jackie O Show as newsreader in 2004. Pictured with Kyle (left) and Jackie 'O' Henderson

Field has had a 40-year career in radio and worked with notable media figures such as Ita Buttrose, Andrew Denton, Derryn Hinch and Wendy Harmer.

He was at 2Day FM for 18 years, during which he famously joined The Kyle and Jackie O Show as newsreader in 2004.

He worked with Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson for seven years, followed by the Hamish and Andy show, staying with the station until 2015 when he was sacked because of a restructure.

Field recalled feeling 'angry and bitter' after the sacking, which came when 2Day FM replaced 'four newsreaders across the country' with a single reporter, Emma Freedman.

After leaving 2Day FM, he moved to 2SM and finally 2SER.

He has been nominated for four ACRA Awards for Best Metropolitan Newsreader.
Zendaya took to Instagram on Sunday to give her fans a cautionary message ahead of the second season debut of her HBO series, Euphoria.

The 25-year-old actress reminded fans that the show deals with dark topic matter that might be disturbing to some.

'I know Ive said this before, but I do want to reiterate to everyone that Euphoria is for mature audiences,' said Zendaya, who won an Emmy in 2020 playing the role of Rue Bennett on the HBO series.

The latest: Zendaya, 25, took to Instagram on Sunday to give her fans a cautionary message ahead of the second season debut of her HBO series, Euphoria. She was snapped in LA last week promoting the series

She continued: 'This season, maybe even more so than the last, is deeply emotional and deals with subject matter that can be triggering and difficult to watch. Please only watch if it you feel comfortable.'

The Spider-Man: No Way Home actress, who also posted a black and white shot of herself riding a bicycle in the social media post, signed off in saying, 'Take care of yourself and know that either way you are still loved and I can still feel your support. All my love, Daya.'

HBO's synopsis for the new season 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.'

In a trailer for the show's new season, Rue is seen toting a case full of drugs as she's asked about relapsing, and attending a Narcotics Anonymous meeting.

The actress reminded fans that the show deals with dark topic matter that might be disturbing to some

Zendaya won an Emmy in 2020 for playing the role of Rue Bennett on the HBO series

Zendaya last week spoke with E! News about the possibility of her beau and Spider-Man co-star Tom Holland making a cameo on the HBO drama.

'I mean, listen, we've talked about it all the time - we're like, "Let's just sneak him in the back of a shot or something!"' Zendaya said.

She noted that Holland played the titular role in the 2021 crime drama Cherry, adding that 'he's definitely not a stranger to' more dramatic roles.

Zendaya said that Holland has been 'very supportive' of her as she steps back into the role of Rue on the series.

'This is not an easy season, so I need as much of that as I can get,' she said.

Euphoria, which also stars Hunter Schafer, Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi, Maude Apatow and Alexa Demie, is set to debut its second season Sunday.
She has been busy juggling work and motherhood following the birth of her daughter Dylan three months ago.

And model Georgia Fowler enjoyed a well-deserved evening of fun over the weekend.

The Victoria's Secret stunner went on a romantic date with her partner, FISHBOWL owner Nathan Dalal.

Hot mama! Georgia Fowler showed off her ample cleavage and incredible post-baby body as she went braless in a silk dress during a romantic night out with her partner Nathan Dalal

The 29-year-old beauty dressed to the nines for the occasion, flaunting her ample cleavage and incredible post-baby body in a low-cut green wrap around mini dress.

The brunette also showed off her natural beauty by going makeup free, and wore her locks out in a wavy style.

Georgia let her little frock do the talking by just accessorising with her favourite Cartier ring, a gift from Nathan.

Stunning: The 29-year-old beauty dressed to the nines, flaunting her ample cleavage and incredible post-baby body in a low-cut green wrap around mini dress

The loved-up couple sipped on red wine and played a game of Backgammon as they enjoyed a night off parental duties.

Georgia recently flaunted her incredible post-baby body in a bikini as she celebrated the New Year.

She shared a photo to Instagram, of herself posing in a lime green bikini top and long skirt.

Bikini babe! Georgia recently flaunted her incredible post-baby body in a bikini as she celebrated the New Year

She completed the look with a long green vest and a matching coloured bag.

Georgia and Nathan welcomed their daughter Dylan in September, announcing her arrival on Instagram.

'Dylan Aman Dalah. 17.9.21. Welcome to the world. We love you so much,' she wrote, sharing a series of photos of the adorable newborn.

New addition: Georgia and her boyfriend Nathan Dalah welcomed their newborn daughter Dylan Aman in September

She announced she was expecting her first child with the FISHBOWL co-founder back in April.

She also shared a gorgeous short black and white video which she snuggled with her newborn.

At the time, she shared the news by writing: 'We can't wait to meet you, little one.'

'Dylan Aman Dalah. 17.9.21. Welcome to the world. We love you so much,' she wrote, sharing a series of photos of the adorable newborn

'It's been hard to keep this one quiet, but now it's pretty hard to hide,' she added.

'Nathan and I couldn't be happier to share our exciting news with you. We cannot wait to meet you little one and begin our next adventure together. The best is yet to come.'

The couple confirmed their romance in February last year.
Wonder Woman 1984 action star Chris Pine bared his biceps in a white tank top while shopping at Skylight Books in Los Angeles' Los Feliz neighborhood on Sunday morning.

The 41-year-old Emmy nominee purchased Jon Kalman Stefansson's 2020 novel Summer Light Then Comes The Night, Agustina Bazterrica's 2020 novel Tender is the Flesh, Takamura Kaoru's 2021 thriller Lady Joker, and Caroline Desroche's 2020 photo book Los Angeles Standards.

Chris also showed off his sculpted legs in a pair of grey shorts and New Balance sneakers, and he protected himself from the coronavirus by wearing a black face mask.

Bookworm: Wonder Woman 1984 action star Chris Pine bared his biceps in a white tank top while shopping at Skylight Books in Los Angeles' Los Feliz neighborhood on Sunday morning

Pine's sighting came a little over a week after a PDA-filled video of him and his Star Trek castmates Sofia Boutella and Zachary Quinto resurfaced and went viral on New Year's Eve.

The eye-catching clip - shot for an #AskStarTrek Twitter Q&A back in July 2016 - features Chris and Zach passionately kissing, biting, and embracing Sofia.

'It was very difficult, you gotta trust me on that,' the Algerian 39-year-old deadpanned as Pine began serenading her.

'You know, they gave me a hard time. There was no love there. They wouldn't listen to me. They never cared about me. They would never return my calls or eat dinner [with] me and it made me cry between takes. You gotta trust me.'

Nice stack! The 41-year-old Emmy nominee purchased Jon Kalman Stefansson's 2020 novel Summer Light Then Comes The Night, Agustina Bazterrica's 2020 novel Tender is the Flesh, Takamura Kaoru's 2021 thriller Lady Joker, and Caroline Desroche's 2020 photo book Los Angeles Standards

Omicron raging: Chris also showed off his sculpted legs in a pair of grey shorts and New Balance sneakers, and he protected himself from COVID-19 by wearing a black face mask

Last Friday, the third-generation Hollywood actor's girlfriend - Star Trek: Discovery star Annabelle Wallis - shared a b&w snap of herself in honor of the new year.

Chris has been dating the British 37-year-old as far back as April 2018, but they've never gone Instagram or red carpet official with their romance.

Pine executive produced and starred as discharged soldier James Harper in Tarik Saleh's twice-delayed action film The Contractor, which will hit US/UK theaters on April 1.

Pine's sighting came a little over a week after a PDA-filled video of him and his Star Trek castmates Sofia Boutella (M) and Zachary Quinto (L) resurfaced and went viral on New Year's Eve

The eye-catching clip - shot for an #AskStarTrek Twitter Q&A back in July 2016 - features Chris and Zach passionately kissing, biting, and embracing Sofia

As Pine began serenading her, the Algerian 39-year-old (M) deadpanned: 'It was very difficult, you gotta trust me on that. You know, they gave me a hard time. There was no love there. They wouldn't listen to me. They never cared about me. They would never return my calls or eat dinner [with] me and it made me cry between takes'

'Happy New Year to you all!' Last Friday, the third-generation Hollywood actor's girlfriend - Star Trek: Discovery star Annabelle Wallis - shared a b&w snap of herself in honor of the new year

Choose love: Chris has been dating the British 37-year-old (R, pictured in 2019) as far back as April 2018, but they've never gone Instagram or red carpet official with their romance

The STXfilms movie - formerly known as Violence of Action - reunited the UC Berkeley grad with his Hell or High Water onscreen brother Ben Foster.

Kiefer Sutherland, Gillian Jacobs, Eddie Marsan, and Florian Munteanu also have roles in The Contractor - which was shot 2019-2020 in Romania.

Last year, Chris also wrapped roles in Janus Metz's reflective thriller All the Old Knives and Olivia Wilde's 1950s-set thriller Don't Worry Darling.

Hitting US/UK theaters on April 1! Pine executive produced and starred as discharged soldier James Harper in Tarik Saleh's twice-delayed action film The Contractor

They make a good team: The STXfilms movie - formerly known as Violence of Action - reunited the UC Berkeley grad with his Hell or High Water onscreen brother Ben Foster (L)
Aussies swept the board at the 2022 Golden Globes.

National treasure Nicole Kidman took out the top prize at the annual awards ceremony, winning Best Actress in a Motion Picture for her portrayal of Lucille Ball in Being the Ricardos.

The 52-year-old had been nominated alongside fellow Hollywood heavyweights Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye), Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter), Lady Gaga (House of Gucci) and Kristen Stewart (Spencer).

Aussies on top! Nicole Kidman, 54, (pictured) has won the Best Actress in a Motion Picture award at the 2022 Golden Globes for her portrayal of Lucille Ball in Being the Ricardos

Australian actress Sarah Snook also won a Golden Globe Award for her critically acclaimed role in HBO drama Succession.

The 34-year-old, who hails from Adelaide, won Best Supporting Actress in a Series for her portrayal of political strategist and media heir Siobhan 'Shiv' Roy.

She beat the likes of Jennifer Coolidge (The White Lotus), Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso), Kaitlyn Dever (Dopesick) and Andie MacDowell (Maid) in her category.

Biopic: Being The Ricardos depicted the complicated relationship between real-life Hollywood power couple Lucille Ball, portrayed by Kidman (right), and Desi Arnaz, played by Javier Bardem (left), as they filmed their hit 1950s sitcom, I Love Lucy

Recognition: Australian actress Sarah Snook has won a Golden Globe Award for her critically acclaimed role in HBO drama Succession. Pictured at the AACTA Awards in Sydney last month

Her victory was announced at a private ceremony on Los Angeles on Monday, after this year's live broadcast was cancelled due to backlash over a lack of diversity in the nominations.

The Golden Globes is generally regarded as a good indicator of who will take home gold at the Academy Awards later in the year.

Several Aussies delivered the goods at the Golden Globes, with Kodi Smit-McPhee beating Ben Affleck to win Best Supporting Actor in any Motion Picture.

Stealing the show: The 34-year-old, who hails from Adelaide, won Best Supporting Actress in a Series for her portrayal of political strategist and media heir Siobhan 'Shiv' Roy

The up-and-coming actor was recognised for his incredible performance in western film The Power of the Dog.

Sarah started out on the stage, appearing in King Lear with the State Theatre Company of South Australia in 2009, shortly after graduating from Australia's most prestigious theatre school, NIDA.

Interestingly, Succession has often been likened to a modern day Shakespeare play, specifically King Lear.

Rising star: Several Aussies delivered the goods at the Golden Globes, with Kodi Smit-McPhee (left) beating Ben Affleck (right) to win Best Supporting Actor in any Motion Picture

After that, the roles quickly started pouring in for Sarah, who popped up in the hit Aussie dramas All Saints and Packed to the Rafters, and then scored a lead role in the ABC TV movie Sisters of War.

Things continued to pick up for Snook, who played True Blood star Ryan Kwanten's love interest in the Australian rom-com Not Suitable for Children in 2012.

Her career continued to gather steam in the following years as she landed the female lead in Ethan Hawke's sci-fi thriller Predetermination before fronting the American horror flick Jessabelle.

One of her most notable roles came in 2015, when she starred alongside Kate Winslet and Liam Hemsworth in the acclaimed Aussie film The Dressmaker.

Thespian: Sarah Snook started out on the stage, appearing in King Lear with the State Theatre Company of South Australia in 2009, shortly after graduating from Australia's most prestigious theatre school, NIDA

That same year, Sarah starred along Winslet once again, this time in the Steve Jobs biopic.

Following a notable appearance on Black Mirror in 2016, Sarah scored her career-defining role two years later as Roy in HBO's Succession.

In a 2018 interview about how she landed the part, she revealed she had auditioned alongside Jeremy Strong, who plays her on-screen brother Kendall Roy in the drama.

'I actually auditioned with Jeremy, who is playing my older brother now. I had put something down on tape, and then got called in for the screen test,' she told Collider.

'They flew me from Australia to LA, and between the audition and the screen test, I started to understand what this thing was more,' she continued.

'In the final audition, and doing it with Jeremy, I was finally like, "Oh, I get it! This is a drama. Its got a comedy edge, but its really sharp."'

Although Succession started off as a slow burn, the series has now become one of the most popular and critically-acclaimed programs on television today.

Star turn: One of her most notable roles came in 2015, when she starred alongside Kate Winslet (right) in the acclaimed Aussie film The Dressmaker

Notable roles: Sarah's career continued to gather steam, as she landed the female lead in Ethan Hawke's sci-fi thriller Predetermination

Key: According to Succession director Mark Mylod, Sarah's incredible performance as Shiv in the recent finale was the key to creating the 'perfect' ending for season three

In 2020, Sarah was nominated for an Emmy and a Critics' Choice Television Award for her role in the series.

Although she didn't win, the actress will get another shot at awards glory next year after being nominated another Critics' Choice Award, as well as a Golden Globe.

In November, her star status Down Under was confirmed when she graced the cover of Vogue Australia.

Major movie offers are now rolling in for Snook, who recently replaced A-lister Elizabeth Moss in the upcoming horror-thriller Run Rabbit Run.

Sarah is now enjoying the spoils of her success, buying a country home not far from Melbourne for close to $2million.

Private retreat: Sarah is now enjoying the spoils of her success, buying a country home not far from Melbourne for close to $2million

Sarah married Dave, 43, in February this year, and in an interview with Harper's Bazaar earlier this month, revealed they'd only recently moved into the home.

In an interview with Vogue Australia in October, Sarah revealed she'd fallen 'in love' with Dave at the start of the pandemic.

'At the beginning of the pandemic last year, I got locked down in Melbourne with one of my best mates and we fell in love,' she said.

'We've been friends since 2014, lived together, travelled together, always excited to see each other, but totally platonic.

'We've just never been single at the same time. I proposed and we got married in February in my backyard.'

She added: 'It's been a ride. There's so much heartache and sadness in the world, but on a micro personal level, I've been very fortunate.'
David Campbell has reminisced about meeting Bob Saget, who died at the age of 65 on Sunday.

In a post shared to Instagram, the Today Extra host recalled his meeting with the 'charming and generous' Full House star.

The 48-year-old posted a photo of himself and TV star Sonia Kruger posing alongside Saget.

Memories: David Campbell (right) has reminisced about meeting Bob Saget (centre), who died at the age of 65 on Sunday. In a post shared to Instagram, the Today Extra host recalled his meeting with the 'charming and generous' Full House star. Pictured with Sonia Kruger

'I was so excited and nervous to interview @bobsaget on the show. I needn't had been nervous,' David wrote.

'He was charming and generous every time we spoke. He stayed in touch once and a while through socials and made you feel like a friend.

'We spoke again late last year. Sometimes stars are so down to Earth, you forget how many people they touched just by saying hi. Bob was one of those. My kids are now watching Fuller House. Thanks for giving us joy Bob. RIP'.

'He was charming and generous every time we spoke. He stayed in touch once and a while through socials and made you feel like a friend. We spoke again late last year,' David wrote

It was revealed on Sunday that Saget, who went from being a respected stand-up comedian to a successful star of Full House, had died.

Sources close to the comic say he died Sunday at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, Florida, and police confirmed his death shortly afterward.

Employees of the hotel found Saget in his room around 4 p.m., and Sheriff's deputies and the fire department arrived soon after.

Few details are currently available about the circumstances leading up to Saget's death, though sources say that he was pronounced dead in his hotel room.

Loss: It was revealed on Sunday that Saget, who went from being a respected stand-up comedian to a successful star of Full House, has died. Sources close to the comic say he died Sunday at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, Florida, and police confirmed his death shortly after

The Orange County Sheriff's Office told TMZ that it has 'no information on cause of death, and detectives have found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case.'

Officials added that 'the Medical Examiner's Office will make the final call on the cause and manner of death.'

Saget's family confirmed his death later on Sunday in a statement.

Tour: The comedian's unexpected death comes amid his cross-country stand-up tour, which kicked off back in September 2021. He had recently played a string of dates in Florida, including a show in Orlando

'We are devastated to confirm that our beloved Bob passed away today,' they said. 'He was everything to us and we want you to know how much he loved his fans, performing live and bringing people from all walks of life together with laughter. Though we ask for privacy at this time, we invite you to join us in remembering the love and laughter that Bob brought to the world.'

The comedian's unexpected death comes amid his cross-country stand-up tour, which kicked off back in September 2021.

He had recently played a string of dates in Florida, including a show in Orlando.
Katy Perry kicked off her critically-acclaimed Vegas residency at Resorts World last month, ahead of performing 32 shows until March 2022.

And since the launch, the I Kissed A Girl hitmaker, 37, has been settling into Sin City life - which she documented in a new slew of snaps shared on Monday.

Taking to Instagram, Katy posted a number of snaps and videos, including a screenshot of a Facetime with her fiance Orlando Bloom, 44, backstage images of her racy PVC outfits, a snap of her fan mail and a video of her vocal warm-up.

Stunner! Katy Perry shared a slew of snaps from behind the scenes at her Vegas residency on Monday, including snaps of her sizzling PVC ensembles

Katy took to the stage for the first time on Wednesday 29 December and has since been hitting the stage to rave reviews from critics.

Seemingly having a wonderful time both on and off stage, she shared a trio of shots in her PVC looks - including a racy red ensemble, a blue number and a stand-out look - comprising a mushroom-inspired costume.

Then giving an insight into life away from her fiance, with whom she shares daughter Daisy, 16 months, she posted a screenshot of a beaming Orlando in bed while she posed with a bunch of roses in rainbow shades.

Katy then posted a video of her Starbucks coffee, with a small spillage alongside which looked like a graphic of a virus - to which she joked that she had only ordered a coffee, not 'covid' before zooming in on the splash.

Her love: Then giving an insight into life away from her fiance, with whom she shares daughter Daisy, 16 months, she posted a screenshot of a beaming Orlando Bloom in bed while she posed with a bunch of roses in rainbow shades

Sing along: She showed how she prepares for the stage with her warm-up

During her vocal warm-up, Katy posed in her mushroom outfit before turning the camera into selfie mode and performing her pre-show routines.

A stack of fan mail was next on the bill for the busy star, as she gave a snapshot of a pile of letters from adorning fans, complete with letters and snaps.

Katy has been praised for the 'highly camp' Las Vegas residency.

She has been delighting her fans with the zany show that sees her emerge from a giant toilet and converse with a talking mask, with critics lauding the show as both 'poignant' and 'whimsical, and psychedelic.'

Belting out: During her vocal warm-up, Katy posed in her mushroom outfit before turning the camera into selie mode and performing her pre-show routines

Yay! A stack of fan mail was next on the bill for the busy star, as she gave a snapshot of a pile of letters from adorning fans, complete with letters and snaps

Cheeky! Another of her looks comprised a gown with a cut-out and matching gloves

Katy's show, which featured several nods to the Covid pandemic, also saw the star hark back to her iconic California Girls video with an array of colourful ensembles, before lactating, and drinking, beer out of a bra dress made from cans.

After Katy kicked off her residency in Sin City, several critics have offered their thoughts, with most praising the wild and wacky showcase as being just the tonic for fans during the Covid pandemic.

Rolling Stone' Mark Gray, who lauded the 'larger than life' production, added: 'Aptly titled ''Play,'' the show is quintessential Perry, who indulged the emotional, the over-the-top, the whimsical, the psychedelic, and even the cheesy over the course of 95 minutes.

'The concert  which the artist is referring to as 'Perry Playland'  amounted to a giant singalong, which seemed to be exactly what she had in mind.'

Oh no! Katy then posted a video of her Starbucks coffee, with a small spillage alongside which looked like a graphic of a virus - to which she joked that she had only ordered a coffee, not 'covid' before zooming in on the splash

Top of the bogs! KKaty has been praised for the 'highly camp' Las Vegas residency

Elsewhere, Billboard's Melinda Sheckells noted a 'surprisingly poignant' moment came when Katy poured beer from her tin-can dress, while chatting to an enormous disposable mask.

She added: 'This almost two-hour wild ride through ''Perry Playland'' transports the audience into another dimension of rainbow fluff, heart-shaped confetti and larger-than-life anthropomorphic household objects - it's part fantasty, part hallucination and thoroughly high-camp Perry.'

Writing in the Las Vegas Review Journal, John Katsilometes noted the moment Katy referenced her late grandmother Ann Pearl Hudson, who worked on the Lido de Paris production at the Stardust, which has since been demolished and replaced by Resorts World.
Sophie Habboo and her fiance Jamie Laing enjoyed a 'self-care day' together on Sunday - however he was left baffled by one his partner's treatments.

The Made In Chelsea star, 28, admitted she couldn't wait to see Jamie's reaction while lying in a lymphatic massage system bag on the sofa in their flat.

The couple's pamper day comes after Sophie's 'terrifying' health scare, when the media star was hospitalised last month after 'turning blue'.

What is that! Sophie Habboo and her fiance Jamie Laing enjoyed a 'self-care day' together on Sunday - however he was left baffled by one his partner's treatments.

Following his massage in the other room, Jamie walked in to find Sophie in the full body bag and delcared that she looked like a 'fax machine'.

Jamie, who was wearing just an oversized red hoodie, asked Sophie what she was doing as she struggled to not to laugh at her fiance's reaction.

Sophie then explained that Jamie had just had a massage which is why he wasn't wearing many clothes, before adding that he does walk around naked a lot.

The reality personality's lymphatic massage system aids with drainage from the muscles and aids delayed onset soreness following a work out.

'How much was that!' The Made In Chelsea star, 28, admitted she couldn't wait to see Jamie's reaction while lying in a lymphatic massage system bag on the sofa in their flat

Working wonders: The reality personality's lymphatic massage system aids with drainage from the muscles and aids delayed onset soreness following a work out

Technical: Sophie shared pictures of her body massager on her Instagram Stor

Jamie recently spoke out about her 'terrifying' health scare and revealed Sophie 'nearly died' after waking up at around 5am 'throwing up' after a weekend celebrating them getting engaged by drinking champagne and eating oysters.

Jamie said he thought she had food poisoning and insisted they hadn't drank 'extortionately' the night before, saying they fell back to sleep before Sophie woke up at 7.15am again being sick.

He told Private Parts podcast: 'I clear her up and get her to the bathroom, we go downstairs and her lips are looking a little bit blue.'

Unwell: Jamie recently spoke out about her 'terrifying' health scare and revealed Sophie 'nearly died' after waking up at around 5am 'throwing up' after a weekend celebrating them getting engaged by drinking champagne and eating oysters.

But her oxygen levels seriously dropped and her fingers and lips turned blue, with Jamie saying he was 'scared'.

The Candy Kittens founder rushed her to the hospital, which was extremely busy, and he said she was 'crying tears' into her face mask as they waited to be seen.

He continued: 'I've never had fear like that in my life ever, we checked her oxygen levels and it was really low.'

Jamie said they spent seven hours in hospital, when his Made In Chelsea fiancee had to be put on a drip as her oxygen levels were 'seriously low'.

He added that they are still unsure what caused her sudden bout of illness, which came just days after they got engaged.

He continued: 'It was the most intense four days I've ever had in my entire life, she was turning blue, blue lips and fingers. I was screaming in there asking if anyone could help us.'

Mystery illness: Jamie said he thought she had food poisoning and insisted they hadn't drank 'extortionately' the night before, saying they fell back to sleep before Sophie woke up at 7.15am again being sick

Jamie shared a photograph of Sophie sitting in a hospital chair wearing a nasal cannula, sporting her Mrs Laing To Be cap with a pink face mask underneath her chin.

Influencer Jamie captioned his Instagram story: 'Not so well little thing but still wearing the hat,' followed by a heart and laughing emoji.

A nasal cannula is a device used to deliver supplemental oxygen or increased airflow to a person in need of respiratory help.

The couple recently took to their respective Instagram accounts to share the happy news of their engagement with their followers, as the former heartbreaker announced he 'can't wait to spend the rest of his life' with her.

Delighted Sophie told fans: 'WE ARE GETTING MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!!! I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with you.'

Mrs Laing To Be! Jamie said the couple are still unsure what caused Sophie's sudden bout of illness, which came just days after they got engaged (pictured)
Top Australian chef Neil Perry is currently isolating at home after testing positive for Covid-19.

The 64-year-old, who runs restaurant Margaret in Sydney's Double Bay, told The Daily Telegraph's Confidential on Monday that he's grateful to have not lost his 'sense of taste or smell'.

Neil has been updating his Instagram followers with his food cravings while in isolation, which include beef steak, artisan bread with butter and honey, and Chinese roast duck.

On the mend: Chef Neil Perry (pictured), 64, told The Daily Telegraph's Confidential on Monday that he's grateful to have not lost his 'sense of taste or smell' since testing positive for Covid-19

When asked about his reaction to Covid-19, Neil said it's 'not as bad as the worst cold but not great.'

'I've been better. I'm just very grateful I haven't lost my sense of taste or smell,' he went on to say.

One media star who has lost her sense of taste is Married At First Sight star Martha Kalifatidis.

Quality meals: Neil, who said his health has 'been better', has been updating his Instagram fans with his food cravings while in isolation at his Sydney home

Delicious: Neil has been enjoying artisan bread with butter and honey (left) and Chinese roast duck (rice)

Earlier this month, the 33-year-old revealed in an Instagram Stories post that she wasn't able to enjoy a barbecue with her fiance Michael Brunelli and her mother Mary Kalifatidis.

Lounging across her bed and dressed casually, Martha gave fans an update on her recovery from Covid-19.

'Last night I finally got to sleep. I had a solid eight hours of sleep and I feel so much better today,' she began.

Lingering symptom: Earlier this month, Married At First Sight star Martha Kalifatidis (pictured), 33, revealed in an Instagram Stories post that she has lost her sense of taste and wasn't able to enjoy a barbecue

'But I have lost my taste. Last night we had a barbecue, Michael, Mary and I, and I couldn't taste and they were enjoying it,' Martha went on to reveal.

'They even ate a Cornetto (ice cream) for dessert. I didn't have one obviously because I couldn't taste it.'

Martha then started a poll, asking her followers whether they still 'eat treats if you can't taste'.

Loss of taste: Updating her fans on her recovery, the influencer said at the time: 'I have lost my taste. Last night we had a barbecue, (fiance) Michael (Brunelli), (her mother) Mary and I, and I couldn't taste and they were enjoying it,' Martha revealed

Baffled: After being unable to enjoy a Cornetto ice cream, Martha then started a poll, asking her followers whether they still 'eat treats if you can't taste'

'Do you still eat if you can't taste? I don't get it,' she asked her fans.

Despite the loss of taste, Martha revealed that she's feeling like herself again and is 'back'.

In New South Wales, there were 20,293 new infections reported from 84,333 PCR tests on Monday.

There is no way to report rapid test results in NSW yet, with the system due to come online mid-week, at which point case numbers are expected to surge again.

On the mend: Despite the loss of taste, Martha revealed that she's feeling like herself again and is 'back'

NSW recorded its deadliest day of the pandemic on Monday, with a young child among 18 new deaths.

The fatalities reported also include six women and eleven men, including an unvaccinated man in his 30s.

The number of people hospitalised with the virus also increased by 103, to 2030.

Of those, 159 are in intensive care. Half are unvaccinated and 47 people are on ventilators.
Flames can be seen through a third story window at 1325 Merchant St., where a massive structure fire had been raging for several hours Sunday, Dec. 12.
A trespasser caught trying to get onto Kendall Jenner's property in Los Angeles has been arrested - but was soon released by law enforcement without charge.

The model, 26, has been subject to several stalker ordeals and has previously had trespassers try to access her home and enter her land without permission.

Sources told TMZ that a man named Arnold Babcock, 31, was stopped by security inside her gated community asking to see her reality star.

Oh no! A trespasser caught trying to get onto Kendall Jenner's property in Los Angeles has been arrested - but was soon released by law enforcement without charge

The online news outlet claimed that the man was walking around looking for Kendall and it wasn't the first time he had been stopped for doing so.

The security officer detained Babcock until police arrived to arrest him for trespassing, however he was released just a short time later.

According to TMZ, Los Angeles County district attorney George Gascon's office rarely file charges for trespassing, which is proving frustrating to police forces.

Repeated offences: The model, 26, has been subject to several stalker ordeals and has previously had trespassers try to access her home and enter her land without permission

They said that they feel suspects have more of an incentive to commit crimes again.

The district attorney's office told the publication: 'Our office charges trespassing cases when appropriate based on the totality of the circumstances.'

In June, a man allegedly tried to find Kendall at her LA home and presented himself at the gate of the star's exclusive community in an attempt to see her, law enforcement sources told TMZ.

Although the guards didn't allow him to enter, he then allegedly went around them and climbed over the wall guarding the community.

Scary: In June, a man allegedly tried to find Kendall at her LA home and presented himself at the gate of the star's exclusive community in an attempt to see her; seen May 2021 LA

The guards were reportedly familiar with the man because he had made several earlier attempts to see Jenner.

Unlike his previous attempts, he then scaled the wall in order to get past the guards, though he cut his hand seriously enough to require medical attention in the process.

The police were called to the scene and the intruder was apprehended, though it's unclear if the guards got ahold of him first or if the police captured him.

Despite his attempt to scale the wall, he was reported taken into custody before he ever made it to Jenner's house.

After a trip to the hospital to attend to his cut hand, the intruder was booked for misdemeanor trespassing and released from the jail after 10 hours.

Jenner has reportedly been steering clear of the house following an earlier stalking incident, and she traveled to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, over the weekend with her friend Hailey Bieber.

In April, a 27-year-old man named Shaquan King gained entrance to her property and attempted to take a nude swim in her pool, TMZ reported.

During the frightening break-in attempt he began pounding on the doors and windows and calling out for Jenner, who was home but safe from the stalker.

After he gave up on getting her to come out, he tried to get into the pool, though he was subdued by security guards and arrested by police shortly afterward.

The catwalk star was later granted a five-year restraining order against the skinny-dipping enthusiast.

Unsuccessful: The man was subdued before he reached Jenner's house, and he was booked for misdemeanor trespassing and held for 10 hours; seen in February 2020 in London

Sister act: Kendall previously had a man try to swim nude in her pool in April, and the same person tried to terrorize Kylie; seen in February 2020

The stalker also terrorized Jenner's younger sister Kylie Jenner.

He spent only six hours in jail for trespassing on Kendall's property and headed to Kylie's home shortly after being released.

The cosmetics mogul was able to get her own restraining order against the stalker, though a judge only granted a shorter three-year order.

Kendall previously moved out of her last home, located in West Hollywood, in 2017 after she was the victim of a burglary.

She had another stalker scare earlier in April, when she told a judge that a Los Angeles Police Department detective told her that a 24-year-old man named Malik Bowker had traveled across the country with the intention of purchasing an illegal firearm to murder her.

They claimed that he then intended to kill himself.

The catwalk star was swiftly granted a restraining order against him, which required Bowker to stay at least 100 yards from her.

At the time, he was being held in a hospital's psychiatric ward, though she claimed that she feared he would seek her out after being released, TMZ reported.

So far, Jenner hasn't made any moves to sell her current home, though she doesn't appear to have any plans to return to it.
Roxy Jacenko's daughter Pixie Curtis and son Hunter received their first dose of the Covid vaccination on Monday.

Pixie, 10, shared a photo to Instagram of herself getting the jab and urged all young Australians to get vaccinated.

'This is me today. 5.30pm getting my first Covid19 vaccination with my little brother Hunter,' she wrote.

Getting jabbed: Roxy Jacenko's daughter Pixie Curtis, 10, received her first Covid vaccination and urged others to get jabbed on Monday

'I am 10 and today in Australia it was the first day kids 5-12 could be immunised. So I wanted to share this video with you guys incase you are feeling nervous or uneasy about getting your vaccine and show you that I did it and it was totally fine and over in a second!'

Pixie also shared a photo of herself with a bandaid on her arm after getting jabbed with her seven-year-old brother Hunter.

Roxy shares Pixie and her son Hunter with her husband Oliver Curtis.

'This is me today. 5.30pm getting my first Covid19 vaccination': Pixie shared a photo to Instagram of herself getting the jab

The famous family reside in a $6.6million mansion in Sydney's Vaucluse.

Roxy runs a number of successful businesses including Sweaty Betty PR.

She also recently launched her latest venture, XRJ Celebrations, an event decorating business with best pal Jess Ingham.

Vaccine: Pixie also shared a photo of herself with a bandaid on her arm after getting jabbed with her brother Hunter

Roxy and her daughter Pixie also both have their own hair accessories range called Pixie's Bows.

It comes as children aged between five and 11 became eligible for the vaccine for the first time ever in Australia with NSW and Victoria racing to get as many children vaccinated before the start of the school term.

While just over 78 per cent of children aged 12 to 15 in NSW have been fully vaccinated, premier Dominic Perrottet said he was determined to send children back to the classrooms on January 28.
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It was the end of an era for the Kardashians after 14 years and 20 seasons of drama.

Yet four upper-crust families in Britain are set to take over screens next week, as ITV follows their daily lives as they try to earn enough money to survive in a new three-part series called Keeping Up With The Aristocrats.

An exclusive teaser clip shows today's Aristocrats fretting about how to pay for the upkeep of the grand houses that have become magnificent albatrosses around their necks.

'I'm not your ordinary princess': New ITV series Keeping Up With The Aristocrats follows four upper-crusts families in Britain - including Princess Olga Romanoff (pictured)

However, it also features the families having a good time with lavish parties, polo and plenty of booze. Princess Olga Romanoff, 71, who has a 13th century home in Kent, is among its stars.

She's a bona fide member of the Russian aristocracy, whose great-uncle Tsar Nicholas II was murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918.

Olga is also a cousin of the Queen, is related to Prince Philip and was once considered an eligible match for Prince Charles.

While Olga's blood may be as blue as the Danube, she's far more likely to be seen mucking out at her 13th-century home in Kent than quaffing champagne.

Family: She's also a cousin of the Queen , is related to Prince Philip and was once considered an eligible match for Prince Charles

The House of Romanov Princess Olga is a descendent of The House Of Romanov, which was the reigning imperial house of Russia from 1613 to 1917. They achieved prominence after the Tsarina, Anastasia Romanova was married to the First Tsar of Russia, Ivan the Terrible. Olga is the daughter of Prince Andrew Romanoff who was the eldest nephew of the murdered Tsar Nicholas II  the last emperor of Russia. Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Tsarina Alexandra and their five children were massacred in 1918, bringing a brutal end to the royal dynasty in Russia. The Romanov's were first associated with Provender House in 1890 and her grandmother, Sylvia McDougall, bought it in 1912 for her mother. Born in London, Olga moved to Provender House when she was just a week old and was home-schooled there, before moving between the city, Scotland and Kent She settled permanently following the death of her mother in 2000. Olga has restored the 13th century mansion and opened it to tourists. She also ventured into reality TV, appearing on Australian Princess to give advice. The premise to scour the country to find 12 young Australian women and give them the journey of their lives. In 2017 she published a memoir, Princess Olga, A Wild and Barefoot Romanov. Olga was once considered a possible bride for her third cousin and heir to the throne, Prince Charles. Advertisement

The Mountbattens Lord Ivar Mountbatten is a third cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth II and a first cousin, once removed of the late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Although he is not a member of the British royal family, he is the first member of the British monarch's extended family openly in a same-sex relationship. Queen Victoria was Lord Ivar's great-great-great grandmother, and he is a descendant of Alexander Pushkin. He was educated at the same institution attended by Prince Philip and Prince Charles - Gordonstoun School. He separated from wife Penelope Anne Vere Thompson in September 2010 and divorced amicably in November 2011. In 2015, he converted their former home, Bridwell Park, into an exclusive-use venue for weddings, corporate functions, and business events. In September 2016, Mountbatten revealed that he was in a relationship with cabin attendant James Coyle. 'We used to speak to each other so much over the phone that it was a bit like being on Cilia Black's Blind Date, talking to each other through the screen,' Ivar regaled On 22 September 2018 they were married in a private ceremony on Mountbatten's estate of Bridwell Park - the first ever same-sex marriage in the extended Royal Family. His former wife walked him down the aisle and 'gave him away' - a suggestion their three children Ella, Alexandra and Louise offered. Advertisement

Pictured: Provender House, owned by Princess Olga Romanoff

'I'm not your ordinary princess,' she says. 'At home you'll find me shovelling s***, sadly, not eating caviar.'

'Only children expect a princess in a tiara and a frilly dress,' she says.

'Adults might sometimes raise an eyebrow because I smell of horses and don't wear make-up, but they're too polite to say so.'

Olga's pile is medieval Provender House near Faversham, which she inherited 21 years ago upon the death of her mother (her father, Nicholas II's nephew, had escaped to England).

By then the money had run out and it was a ramshackle wreck. 'It's still falling down, 2.5 million later,' says Olga dryly.

Grand: Others in the show include Alexandra Sitwell, 63, and her husband Rick. She inherited the 17th-century Grade I-listed Renishaw Hall (pictured) in Derbyshire

Work hard, play hard: Olga hopes the series will reveal the reality of life for today's blue bloods

'I had to sell some of our Russian heirlooms to fund it.'

Today she generates income by renting out a wing of the house via Airbnb and by giving 14-a-head tours to busloads of tourists.

Yet Olga grew up in the grandest of circles because decades ago money was no object for her parents, until tax problems and her mother's spending habits saw it whittled away.

At 17 she was touted as a potential match for Prince Charles in high-society magazine Harpers.

'They were trying to line up suitable foreign princesses for Charles,' she says. 'Most of us were the wrong religion  I'm Russian Orthodox.

Wow! Bridwell Park, Devon. Owned by Lord Ivar Mountbatten

Life's a race: It also features the families having a good time with lavish parties, polo and plenty of booze

Party: To bring in money, Lord Gerald and his wife Lady Emma host weddings at Carlton Towers, which has 17 bedrooms for paying guests and six for the family

Alexandra Sitwell Renishaw Hall has been home to Alexandra Sitwells family for nearly 400 years. Alexandra was brought up at Renishaw Hall from the age of seven, and inherited the estate in 2009. She is married to her husband Richard Hayward. The couple have two adult children together. Alexandra loves the gardens and she credits her mother for continuing to expand and them. Richard is a British businessman and was chairman of football club Wolverhampton Wanderers from 2003 to 2006. Grade I listed Renishaw sits on 5,000 acres of land, with 10 acres of gardens. 'I was brought up here from the age of seven onwards, its still very much a family home, I have lots of happy memories from living here,' revealed Alexandra. The house was built in 1625 by George Sitwell, with further wings, rooms and gardens added later. George Sitwell began his financial empire by mining iron ore. The Sitwell family generated their wealth in the 16th and 17th centuries from iron-making and landowning. Renishaw was home to the literary Sitwell trio, siblings who established themselves as rivals to the Bloomsbury Set in the Twenties and Thirties. Advertisement

Lord Gerald Fitzalan Howard Gerald and Emma moved up to live at Carlton Towers in November 1990. Their first baby, Arthur, was one month old and nobody had lived at Carlton Towers for 20 years. Gerald is the youngest child of Miles Fitzalan-Howard, 17th Duke of Norfolk, and Anne Constable-Maxwell. Miles inherited both the Beaumont and Howard of Glossop baronies, becoming the 12th Baron Beaumont. Miles' mother, Lady Beaumont owned Carlton for 76 years, a period which saw two world wars and great social change. In the Second World War the house was used as an auxiliary military hospital but suffered little damage. Carlton was carefully restored to its original condition afterwards, at a time when many other large Victorian houses were being demolished. Emma moved to London when she was eighteen years old and began working for a recruitment company, eventually serving as an associate director. She met Gerald at a wedding in 1988 and the couple wed in 1990. In order to fund reconstruction on the house and open it up to tourists, Emma had to sell off family property, including furniture, paintings, silverware, and family heirlooms, to raise over one million pounds. Advertisement

'I remember reading the article with horror, because my mother didn't tell me it was coming out. She was trying to sell me.'

In 1968, Princess Anne delivered a sharp kick to Olga's leg at the Queen's annual Ghillies' Ball at Balmoral.

'We both liked the same young man and we were dancing an eightsome reel with him in the middle.

'At one point you're holding the hand of the woman on the other side, which happened to be Princess Anne, and I was slightly slow on the turn, so the royal foot came out and gave me an eff-off bruise on my shin.' On purpose? 'Probably,' smiles Olga.

Also appearing in the series is Lord Ivar Mountbatten, 58, a cousin of both the Queen and Prince Philip who cleans the 100-plus windows of his mansion, 18th-century Bridwell Park in Devon, himself.

Stunning: Renishaw Hall, Derbyshire. Owned by Alexandra Sitwell

Lord Ivar Mountbatten (left), 58, who lives in 18th-century Bridwell Park in Devon, tries to earn a crust by organising a pop-up restaurant at the house

The divorced father-of-three made history four years ago when he became the first British royal to enter into a same-sex marriage, with airline steward James Coyle.

In the series, Lord Ivar and James try to earn a crust by organising a pop-up restaurant at the house in collaboration with French chef Jean-Christophe Novelli, charging guests 165 a head for an exclusive dinner.

Other toffs in the show include Alexandra Sitwell, 63, and her husband Rick. She inherited the 17th-century Grade I-listed Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire where her family has lived since 1625.

There's also Lord Gerald Fitzalan-Howard, 59, whose father was the 17th Duke of Norfolk.

When Gerald's elder brother Edward inherited Arundel Castle in Sussex, as well as 126-room Carlton Towers in North Yorkshire, he gave the latter to Gerald, who's lived there since 1991. Who needs two stately mansions?

Expensive taste: The clip shows today's aristos fretting about how to pay for the upkeep of the grand houses that have become magnificent albatrosses around their necks

Lord Gerald is also related to royalty  he's a descendant of Anne Boleyn. The upside of having a stately home for Gerald is that he can practise playing his drum kit on the roof without annoying the neighbours (Carlton Towers sits in 1,000 acres).

But with a heating bill of 70,000 a year, he's always dreaming up new ways of earning money.

'I'm always full of ideas, some good and some completely rubbish,' confesses Gerald, 59.

To bring in money, Lord Gerald and his wife Lady Emma host weddings at Carlton Towers, which has 17 bedrooms for paying guests and six for the family.

But Gerald is also teaching himself to smoke fish and meat in a shed he bought from Homebase ('It's such an eyesore!' moans Emma), which he eventually hopes to serve to guests and he's also planted a vineyard so the estate can produce its own sparkling wine.

Country estate: When Gerald's elder brother Edward inherited Arundel Castle in Sussex he also gave it away to him

Pictured: Carlton Towers owned by Lord and Lady Gerald

'The moment the vines start growing, we're immersed in that,' explains Emma, 60. 'We're pruning all day long. It's back-breaking but it's so rewarding.'

The wine and smoked meats businesses are still embryonic, but the Fitzalan-Howards hope they will bring much-needed extra income.

'Having a stately home is a privilege,' says Emma, 'but it comes with a big emotional price tag.'

Olga Romanoff hopes the series will reveal the reality of life for today's blue bloods.

'Hopefully it'll show people that we don't sit on our backsides doing sweet FA,' she says bluntly. 'We actually get off them and try to make the place pay.'

Keeping Up With The Aristocrats, Monday 17 January, 9pm, ITV.
Molly-Mae Hague has apologised for her 'tone deaf' comments on wealth inequality which went viral last week.

The Love Island star, 22, posted a statement on Monday afternoon insisting she only wanted to 'inspire' her fans with her success story.

An interview, which was first shared on YouTube on December 13, went viral on Wednesday when it was shared on Twitter, and sparked outrage from fans after Molly-Mae insisted she had worked her 'a**e off' for her success.

Backlash: Molly-Mae Hague has apologised for her 'tone deaf' comments on wealth inequality which went viral last week

Issuing an apology on Monday via her Instagram account, which boasts 6.2m followers, Molly-Mae explained:

'I wanted to come back online today as normal but I feel like before I do I just wanted to say this...When I say or post anything online, it is never with malice or ill intent.'

'I completely appreciate that things can affect different people in different ways however I just want to stress that I would never intend to hurt or upset anyone by anything that I say or do.'

She added: 'I apologise to the people that have been affected negatively or misunderstood the meaning of what I said in the podcast, the intentions of the podcast were only ever to tell my story and inspire from my own experience. Love to you all, always x'

'No malice': The Love Island star, 22, posted a statement on Monday afternoon insisting she only wanted to 'inspire' her fans with her success story

An interview, which was first shared on YouTube on December 13, went viral on Wednesday when it was shared on Twitter.

In the clip, Molly, who last year was named the creative director of clothing brand PrettyLittleThing, a title with a seven-figure salary, said: 'You're given one life and it's down to you what you do with it. You can literally go in any direction.

'When I've spoken about that in the past I have been slammed a little bit, with people saying 'it's easy for you to say that because you've not grown up in poverty, so for you to sit there and say we all have the same 24 hours in a day is not correct.' But, technically, what I'm saying is correct. We do.'

She went on: 'I understand we all have different backgrounds and we're all raised in different ways and we do have different financial situations, but I think if you want something enough you can achieve it.

Unimpressed: Molly-Mae's subscribers took to the comment section of her latest YouTube video last week to share their opinion of the backlash the influencer has faced

'It just depends on what lengths you want to go to get where you want to be in the future. And I'll go to any length.' She then added: 'I've worked my absolute a**e off to get where I am now.'

Molly-Mae's subscribers took to the comment section of her latest YouTube video last week to share their opinion of the backlash the influencer has faced, with some choosing to hit the unsubscribe button.

Taking to the comment section, one wrote: 'You have done really well for yourself but undoubtedly saying that we all have the same 24 hours came across awfully because we really don't- privilege is so real in today's world, some people work ridiculously hard but have barriers to success such as family background, racism etc...'

Viral: An interview, which was first shared on YouTube on December 13, went viral on Wednesday when it was shared on Twitter under the heading 'If you're homeless just buy a house'

Slammed: One fan tweeted in response: 'She literally just went on a TV dating show and got brand deals, I'm not sure she 'worked here a**e off''

While another follower added: 'Molly, I've supported you through and through since Love Island, but I'm so hurt by what said in the podcast. I can comprehend that perhaps you don't mean it in the way it came across, but the point being is that it came across in a really terrible way.'

'Unsubscribing. What reflection on how our society awards idiots. Meanwhile many of those who make a meaningful contribution struggle,' typed a third.

A fourth subscriber chimed: 'Completely out of touch and deluded. It's embarrassing to listen to her speak on the matter because she just consistently exposes how sheltered and ignorant she is.'

A spokesman for the star told MailOnline last week that Molly acknowledges that people 'are raised in different ways' and 'from different backgrounds' and that she never meant to offend.

Awkward: After her comments went viral, footage also resurfaced of the star being left horrified after being asked to work a 12-hour shift in the PLT warehouse

Not impressed: Molly's statement came as footage resurfaced of the star left flabbergasted after being asked to work a 12-hour shift

A statement read: 'Molly did a podcast interview in December about her own rise to success. If you listen to the full conversation and interview Molly was asked about how the nature of her potential grows and how she believes in herself.

'This part of the interview was discussing time efficiency relating to success. Molly refers to a quote which says "We all have the same 24 hours in a day as Beyonce".

'She was discussing her own experience and how she can resonate with this specific quote. Her opinion on if you want something enough you can work hard to achieve it is how she keeps determined with her own work to achieve more in her own life.

'Molly is not commenting on anyone else's life or personal situation she can only speak of her own experience.

Defence: Dragon's Den star Steven Bartlett defended Molly-Mae after she was 'crucified' over her controversial comments on wealth inequality and poverty on his podcast

Double standards? Taking to Twitter on Friday, the Dragon's Den star claimed none of his male guests who have said similar things have faced such a backlash

'She acknowledges that everyone is raised in different ways and from different backgrounds but her comments here are in reference to timing, hard work and determination in her own life.'

'If you listen to this interview you can see the whole conversation was about her own personal circumstances, how she has grown up and this small clip in the conversation was talking about a quote that inspires her.

Social media users have shared a short snippet from this interview with words such as 'if you are homeless buy a house' and "if you are poor be poor" these are absolutely not Molly's words, these are not Molly's thoughts and this isn't at all the meaning or thought behind that conversation.'

Dragon's Den star Steven Bartlett defended Molly-Mae Hague after she was 'crucified' over her controversial comments.

Love Island star: A clip of her December interview went viral this week, with Molly's comments that she has 'worked my a**e off' for her wealth and that 'everyone has the same 24 hours in a day' to achieve sparking a backlash

Entrepreneur Stephen, 29, who interviewed Molly for the podcast, waded into the debate, suggesting the backlash was a result of sexism as he called out the 'double standard that successful women face' from critics.

Taking to Twitter on Friday he wrote: 'Molly Mae did an interview on my podcast, yesterday a soundbite from that interview went viral, she trended No.1 on Twitter, every newspaper covered it and MP's weighed in.

'I've had male guests say what she said. No-one cared. But when Molly says it, she's crucified? Crazy.'

He continued: 'I have become aware of the double standard that successful women face.

'If I interview a man he can brag about money, take full credit for his success and talk about his cars?

Support: Molly-Mae also found an ally in the form of Small Business MP Paul Scully, with the Conservative minister, 53, stating 'an aspirational approach to life is no bad thing'

'If I interview a successful woman, she's got to tip toe around her success and watch her words.'

Stephen, who recently replaced Tej Lalvani on Dragon's Den then added: 'Gender issues aside, the standard we hold Molly Mae to as a 22 year-old that's figuring out the world is absolutely outrageous.

'She once said she didn't like Italian food, it trended No.1 all day, was written about in every newspaper and she had to issue a public apology. 22.'

The reality star has also found an ally in the form of Small Business MP Paul Scully.

The Conservative minister, 53, waded into the row on Friday, stating 'an aspirational approach to life is no bad thing.'

Asked if her comments were fair, Paul told LBC: 'I think it is, but I think you've got to define success, because some of the comments that I was hearing in the lead up to my piece on this was about money, but success doesn't necessarily equal money.

Social media star: Molly, who boasts six million Instagram followers and 1.5 million YouTube subscribers, made the comments on the YouTube series The Diary of a CEO

'It can be, you know, furthering your job, whether it's in public service or whatever.

'And I think an aspirational approach to life is no bad thing. What we've got to make sure, though, is that opportunity is equally distributed around the country.

'And that's why the levelling up agenda that we often talk about in government is so, so important to make sure that those 24 hours can be matched by the opportunities by education and business across the country.'

Molly-Mae's father Stephen also spoke out in her defence, sharing a lengthy post in which he reflected on the storm surrounding his daughter and also the backlash faced by fellow influencer Elle Darby who lost more than 100,000 followers and was dropped by her management after racist tweets she sent as a teenager emerged.

In his post, Stephen stated: 'It must be tough for the media stars, influencers and public figures. Especially the younger ones who are still learning the emotional rollercoaster of life.

'It hurts me to see people literally driven to death by cruel comments of people who dont know the individuals and hide behind a keyboard often on fake accounts, cancelling someone for something 5,6,7 or 10 years ago, when a child is profoundly naive and shows a real lack of emotional intelligence.'

He added: 'Then attacking people for a sentence made as part of an interview taken out of context  I wouldnt mind but the CEO of Netflix appeared on a podcast called "the same 24hrs" on which many well respected business leaders have appeared  not attacked or cancelled.

'I think the context of Mollys words fit better with the title of that podcast we all have the same 24 hours in every day. But its how we USE those 24 hours that makes the difference in our health, happiness and success  but what do I know.'
Hollyoaks kicked 2022 off with a literal bang as a huge explosion ripped though the village.

Following a huge inferno at Salon de The de Marnie, exclusive pictures show Sylver McQueen (David Tag), his wife Mercedes (Jennifer Metcalfe) and long-lost daughter Cher (Bethannie Hare), emerging from the rubble.

Channel 4's hour-long special on Tuesday, January 11, will reveal what has happened to Romeo Nightingale (Owen Warner), who can be seen in a fireman's carry, and exactly how Sylver survived the blast.

Explosive: Hollyoaks is set to kick 2022 off with a literal bang as a huge explosion rips though the village while Sylver fights for his life in the afermath

Who dies? Following a huge inferno at Salon de The de Marnie, exclusive pictures show Sylver McQueen, his wife Mercedes and long-lost daughter Cher emerging from the rubble

The brand new trailer showed young Bobby Costello (Jakob Chialton) telling a devastating lie as he leaves his trapped step-father Sylver for dead.

Meanwhile, Toby Faroe's (Bobby Gordon) past catches up with him as he looks set to confess to Lisa Loveday's (Rachel Adedeji) murder to mum Martine (Kelle Bryan) and girlfriend Cleo (Nadine Mulkerrin).

The nail-biting clip teasing the hour-long special shows several characters' lives in danger as fire engulfs the salon during Marnie Nightingales Dee Valley hospital fundraiser.

Survivors: Tuesday's hour-long special (January 11) will reveal what has happened to Romeo Nightingale (Owen Warner), who can be seen in a fireman's carry on Sylver's shoulder

Boom: The nail-biting clip teasing the hour-long special shows several characters' lives in danger as fire engulfs the salon during Marnie Nightingales Dee Valley hospital fundraiser

Fireman's carry: The dramatic explosion will leave residents fighting for their lives

One life hanging in the balance is that of Slyver who returns to the village and attempts to rescue his family after initially leaving wife Mercedes over fears she'd cheat on him again.

However, after finding himself trapped in the rubble, he pleads with step-son Bobby to tell someone where he is so he can be saved.

But after reuniting with worried mum Mercedes who asks if he's seen Sylver, Bobby lies and says he hasn't seen him - leaving Sylver trapped and facing imminent death.

Later in the trailer, Bobby is seen smiling sinisterly - has he inherited his killer grandfather Silas Blissett's (Jeff Rawle) evil ways?

Wow: Amid the terror and destruction following a huge inferno at Salon de The, young Bobby Costello is seen telling a devastating lie as he leaves his trapped step-father Sylver for dead

Killer confession? Meanwhile, Toby Faroe's past catches up with him as he looks set to confess to Lisa Loveday's murder to mum Martine and girlfriend Cleo

Meanwhile, having seemingly gotten away with murdering Lisa, Toby is revelling in being the 'man of the moment' having passed his psych test to become his grandfather's kidney donor.

But his life looks set to unravel when undercover officer Saul Reeves (Chris Charles) figures out that Toby bumped off Lisa and confronts him about his crimes, telling Tobey he doesn't 'deserve' the happiness he now has.

Toby is later seen preparing to tell the shocking truth to Cleo and Martine just as the explosion goes off - but will he survive to reveal his terrible killer secret?

Inferno: The shocking scenes rock the whole village with rubble and debris flown into the air

Save me! After finding himself trapped in the rubble, Slyver pleads with step-son Bobby to tell someone where he is so he can be saved

Deadly lie: But after reuniting with worried mum Mercedes who asks if he's seen Sylver, Bobby lies and says he hasn't seen him - leaving Sylver trapped and facing imminent death

Uh oh: Later in the trailer, Bobby is seen smiling sinisterly - has he inherited his killer grandfather Silas Blissett's evil ways?

Elsewhere in the explosive trailer, Juliet (Niamh Blackshaw) reveals to her family that she plans to propose to girlfriend Peri (Ruby O'Donnell) - little knowing that Peri is listening in on the conversation.

Peri is then seen confessing to her loved ones that she doesn't want to get married and will be forced to say no to her girlfriend if she asks.

The girls are also caught up in the explosion, with the clip seeing Juliet quip: 'Bet you wish you'd said yes to marrying me now' just moments before falling from a fragile staircase.

The truth: Toby is later seen preparing to tell the shocking truth to Cleo McQueen and Martine Westwood just as the explosion goes off - but will he survive to reveal his terrible killer secret?

In for a shock: Will Cleo finally learn that her boyfriend is a killer?

Ready to commit: Meanwhile, the explosive trailer sees Juliet reveal to her family that she plans to propose to girlfriend Peri - little knowing that Peri is listening in on the conversation

Elsewhere, Sienna (Anna Passey) finds herself under suspicion as Warren (Jamie Lomas) accuses her of stealing his therapists notes in which he confesses to Brody's (Adam Woodward) murder.

Desperate for his fresh start after being let out of prison, Warren is left seething when the thief vows revenge on him and goes on to point the finger at grieving Sienna - but has he just unwittingly let the cat out of the bag?

Sienna also has another murder-related issue to deal with as when she and Ste (Kieron Richardson) go on the hunt for their stolen cleaning van - but they get more than they bargained when do track it down as they catch Ethan (Matthew James-Bailey) with a body in it.

But after getting a gun pointed at them, Sienna shockingly suggests that they bury the body in exchange for their lives - has she dragged herself and Ste into a whole new world of danger?

On the warpath: Elsewhere, Sienna finds herself under suspicion as Warren accuses her of stealing his therapists notes in which he confesses to Brody's murder

Drama: Sienna also has another murder-related issue to deal with as when she and Ste go on the hunt for their stolen cleaning van - but they get more than they bargained when do track it down

Body disposal: But after getting a gun pointed at them, Sienna shockingly suggests that they bury the body in exchange for their lives - has she dragged herself and Ste into a whole new world of danger?

The sizzling 2022 trailer also sees Marnie Nightingale (Lysette Anthony) and Jack Osborne (Jimmy McKenna) lean in for a kiss as they're trapped in the rubble.

Felix Westwood (Richard Blackwood) puts his life in jeopardy as he runs into the burning blaze to try and save his wife and kids.

While insecurities continue to play Nancy (Jessica Fox) and Darren Osborne's(Adam Booth) tumultuous relationship as she struggles to believe his wild story amid his recent kidnap horror.

Hollyoaks airs every weeknights at 6:30pm on Channel 4 and first look episodes air at 7pm on E4, and 6:30pm on Channel 4.

Terrifying: Felix Westwood puts his life in jeopardy as he runs into the burning blaze to try and save his wife and kids
Jennifer Lopez's latest film, The Mother, put a pause on production in Spain due to a coronavirus outbreak.

The Mother, which is set to be released later this year, had been filming in Vancouver, British Columbia, before production recently moved to Gran Canaria near the Canary Islands.

PEOPLE magazine confirmed that filming overseas had been halted 'due to positive coronavirus cases associated with the production team.'

Stopped: Jennifer Lopez's latest film, The Mother, put a pause on production in Spain due to a coronavirus outbreak; seen in October

Lopez reportedly flew into town last week and had been isolated while awaiting shooting, only to leave on a private plane back to the US just yesterday, according to Page Six.

The 52-year-old actress stars alongside Joseph Fiennes, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Omari Hardwick in the Niki Caro-directed film.

The local paper, La Provincia, first reported that a 'massive' coronavirus outbreak plagued a Netflix shoot, causing 'weeks-long production suspension.'

The 52-year-old actress stars alongside Joseph Fiennes, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Omari Hardwick in the Niki Caro-directed film; seen in December

The Spanish outlet reported that Lopez was first spotted in town on Wednesday and was set to film multiple scenes throughout the week.

It's unclear when production will resume filming.

Spain has seen a rise in COVID-19 cases as the Omicron surges across the globe, with 2,722 cases per 100,000 people reported on Friday, according to Reuters.

The percentage of hospital beds occupied by patients with coronavirus was 11.79%, while the number of patients with COVID-19 in intensive care units rose to 22.06%.

True love: Jennifer rekindled her romance with ex-fiance Ben Affleck last year after breaking up with Alex Rodriguez; seen in December

The health ministry reported that 80.2% of the population was fully-vaccinated, and 15million people had received booster vaccinations in Spain.

Back in Los Angeles, 45,584 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded by the Department of Health on Jan. 9  a growing number which prompted the Recording Academy and CBS to postpone the 2022 Grammy Awards, a safe step which was also taken by the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards.

'Given the uncertainty surrounding the Omicron variant, holding the show on Jan. 31 simply contains too many risks,' the Recording Academy said. 'We look forward to celebrating music's biggest night on a future date, which will be announced soon.'
Bob Saget reflected on life after death in one of his final posts on Instagram before he died, as he paid tribute to the late Betty White.

The Full House star, 65, was found by staff in his room at The Ritz-Carlton, Orlando, at 4pm on Sunday. The cause of his death remains unknown.

Just over a week before his passing, Saget shared his thoughts on the afterlife while writing a touching post about The Golden Girls star, who died aged 99 on Dec. 31.

'I don't know what happens when we die': Bob Saget pondered the 'afterlife' in one of his final Instagram posts paying tribute to Betty White just a week before his own passing

'Betty White. This amazing woman was exactly who you wanted her to be,' his tribute began on Dec. 31. 'Razor sharp wit, smart, kind, hilarious, sincere, and so full of love.'

Saget also remarked that White had said 'the love of her life' was her late husband Allen Ludden, who died of cancer at 62 in 1981. There have since been claims that Allen was the last word White said before she died.

In his post, Saget pondered: 'If things work out by Betty's design  in the afterlife, they are reunited.'

What he said: Saget shared his thoughts on the afterlife while writing a touching post about The Golden Girls star, who died aged 99 on Dec. 31

The actor added: 'I don't know what happens when we die, but if Betty says you get to be with the love of your life, then I happily defer to Betty on this.'

Saget was found dead hours after posting jubilantly about returning to the stage, and how he was loving being back in the limelight after a show at the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall in Jacksonville on Saturday night.

'Okay, I loved tonight's show in Jacksonville. Really nice audience. Lots of positivity. Happened last night in Orlando last night at the Hard Rock Live too. Very appreciative and fun audiences. Thanks again to @comediantimwilkins for opening.

'I had no idea I did a two hour set tonight. I'm back in comedy like I was when I was 26. I guess I'm finding my new voice and loving every moment of it.

Full House: Saget played 'America's dad' Danny Tanner on the show which aired from 1987 to 1995; cast photo taken 1993

'Gutted': 'I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby,' wrote Stamos

Speechless: 'I don't know what to say. I have no words. Bob was one of the best humans beings I've ever known in my life. I loved him so much,' wrote Bure

The Orange County Sheriff's Office told TMZ that it has 'no information on cause of death, and detectives have found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case.'

Tributes rushed in for the comedy star with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who took turns playing his youngest daughter on Full House, describing Saget as 'the most loving, compassionate and generous man.'

They said: 'We are deeply saddened that he is no longer with us but know that he will continue to be by our side to guide us as gracefully as he always has. We are thinking of his daughters, wife and family and are sending our condolences.'

Saget's Full House costar John Stamos wrote that he was 'broken' and 'gutted' after hearing the news. 'I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby,' he lamented on Twitter.

The star is survived by his wife Kelly Rizzo, whom he married in 2018, and his three children  Aubrey, 34; Lara, 32; and Jennifer, 29  all of whom he shared with his first wife Sherri Kramer, whom he was married to from 1982 to 1997.

His family paid tribute to their 'beloved Bob', saying they were 'devastated' by his passing. 'He was everything to us and we want you to know how much he loved his fans, performing live and bringing people from all walks of life together with laughter.

'Though we ask for privacy at this time, we invite you to join us in remembering the love and laughter that Bob brought to the world,' a statement said.

Saddened: 'We are deeply saddened that he is no longer with us but know that he will continue to be by our side to guide us as gracefully as he always has' their statement said in excerpt; pictured 2009

Police said in a statement: 'On 1/9/2022, just after 4 p.m., deputies responded to the 4000 block of Central Florida Parkway (Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes) in response to a man down call.

'On arrival, they located a man who was unresponsive in a hotel room. The man, identified as Robert Lane Saget, was pronounced deceased on scene. We have no information on cause of death, and detectives have found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case.'

The cause of death is yet to be determined and police 'do not anticipate' that further information will be given at this time.

The statement continued: 'This is all the information we have for release at this time and we do not anticipate further updates. The Medical Examiner's Office will ultimately determine cause and manner of death.'

The comedian's unexpected death comes amid his cross-country stand-up tour, which kicked off back in September 2021.
Chris Hemsworth shared a hilarious video to Instagram on Monday as he sarcastically joked about enjoying 'serenity' while on set of Extraction 2.

The video saw the actor, 38, standing at the bottom of a snowy hill while a digger was noisily at work in the background.

He spoke to the camera, in a hilarious deadpan way: 'Coming out into nature and just absorbing yourself within the pristine untouched ecosystems that earth has to offer.'

Funny: Chris Hemsworth, 38, shared a hilarious video to his Instagram on Monday as he sarcastically joked about enjoying 'serenity' while on set of Extraction 2

The camera then panned to the digger in the background before he guided it back to himself.

Then, the digger started beeping loudly and he joked: 'Not an unnatural sight or sound in sight.'

He wrote alongside the hysterical video: 'Just took a break from the madness of shooting Extraction 2 to allow myself to be truly present in the natural world, no distractions just serene calm and beauty.'

Extraction 2 is the sequel to the 2020 film - which followed Chris' character Tyler Rake who is hired to rescue the kidnapped son of a crime lord.

Hilarious: The video saw the actor standing at the bottom of a snowy hill while a digger was at work in the background

Having a laugh: He spoke to the camera, in a hilarious deadpan way: 'Coming out into nature and just absorbing yourself within the pristine untouched ecosystems that earth has to offer'

The video comes after Chris and wife Elsa Pataky recently suffered another setback in their plans to build a second 'Westfield-style' mansion on a 35 hectare site in an exclusive part of Byron Bay.

Daily Mail Australia revealed in August the family wanted to build a new seven-bedroom home - each with its own ensuite bathroom - less than a kilometre from the $30million mega-mansion they call home.

The new digs is expected cost the Hollywood power couple $4.4million but at the moment remains on the planning shelf.

Laughing: The camera then pans to the digger in the background before he guides it back to himself. Then, the digger started beeping loudly and he joked: 'Not an unnatural sight or sound in sight'

Upcoming: Extraction 2 is the sequel to the 2020 film - which followed Chris' character Tyler Rake who is hired to rescue the kidnapped son of a crime lord (pictured)

Daily Mail Australia has been told approval for the new compound has been put on hold due to a lack of expertise within Byron Bay Council.

'The council has lost a bunch of their staff in recent times and there is a huge backlog in processing Development Approvals,' a source told Daily Mail Australia.

'Not much is happening with it at the moment.'

The development has been plagued with issues since it was lodged earlier this year, with experts claiming the family are 'dreaming' if they hoped to come in on their documented budget.

'The Development Approval said the estimated cost to build the two houses was $4.4m. I reckon that wouldnt put Christmas dinner on the Hemsworths table. The figure will be way more,' a building industry expert told Daily Mail Australia in August.
Tiger King star Masha Diduk's mug shot has been released after she was arrested in Las Vegas for stealing a candelabra worth $5,000 this past July.

TMZ reports that Diduk took a pricy candle holder from a private dining room at a club located in the Wynn hotel.

However, the 29-year-old social media personality, best known as Jeff Lowe's 'hot nanny' on the Netflix show, has disputed how much the candelabra is actually worth.

She posted a screenshot to her Instagram on Sunday showing a candelabra worth $312, not $5,000, alongside a clown face emoji suggesting she disagrees with the claim.

However, she does not confirm or deny the theft.

According to the report, Diduk was captured on security cameras holding the candelabra on her forearm while making her way from the property.

Pictured: Tiger King's Masha Diduk, aka Jeff Lowe's 'hot nanny', seen in mug shot after stealing a candelabra worth $5,000 from the Wynn Las Vegas casino

The hotel's security was later able to find the license plate of the car that Diduk had been driving as well as a ticket that she used for valet service.

Further confirmation of her identity was provided through her social media posts.

A duo of images showed the reality television personality posing for a pair of shots while holding one of the club's signature cocktails.

She was eventually detained by the hotel's security team and was booked for grand larceny.

Dispute over price: Masha took to her Instagram Stories over the weekend to dispute the price of the candelabra

Caught in the act: The 29-year-old social media personality, best known as Jeff Lowe's 'hot nanny' on the Netflix show, was later captured on security cameras holding the candelabra on her forearm while making her way from the property

Diduk began receiving wide media exposure when became involved with several figures from Tiger King, which premiered on the Netflix streaming service in March of last year.

The model was previously hired as a part-time nanny for former zookeeper Jeff Lowe and his wife, Lauren.

Jeff and Lauren tied the knot in 2017, and welcomed a daughter named Sarah in 2019.

During the show's first season, the pair were seen discussing bringing in a nanny to help care for their baby daughter.

Making it happen: Diduk began receiving wide media exposure when became involved with several figures from Tiger King, which premiered on the Netflix streaming service in March of last year

Jeff expressed that, if they were going to enlist the help of a caretaker, they should look into finding an attractive woman to fill the position.

The former zookeeper announced that he had hired Diduk in a post shared to his Instagram account in March of 2020.

In the shot, the model posed with Jeff and Lauren while spending time at the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park.

On the job: The former zookeeper announced that he had hired Diduk with a post shared to his Instagram account in March of 2020

Jeff made a point of describing the social media personality as a '#hotnanny' in his post's caption.

Diduk also shared several photos that had been taken at the park to her Instagram account during the time period.

The model later spoke to TMZ and expressed that, despite the public's opinion, she was genuinely serving as the couple's nanny, albeit on a part-time basis.

Descriptive language: Jeff made a point of describing the social media personality as a '#hotnanny' in his post's caption

She remarked that she had met the couple when they took a trip to Las Vegas and that she had been commuting to Oklahoma for her nannying job, which occurred mainly on weekends.

Diduk also defended Jeff, as she felt that he had been wrongly portrayed as an abuser of animals on Tiger King, and expressed that she would not have worked for him and his wife if that were the case.

The media outlet reported that the timing of the nannying job's start coupled with the explosion of Tiger King's popularity was 'suspicious at best.'
Christine Quinn simply stunned wearing a sexy leopard print bikini as she soaked up the sun while on holiday in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with husband Christian Richard on Sunday afternoon.

The 34-year-old Selling Sunset star showed off her gym-honed figure in a two-piece number as she tanned by the pool in her private villa overlooking the Sea of Cortez.

Christine, who's known to be quite the yoga enthusiast, topped off her tan while wearing an underwire bra top with delicate straps wrapped around her shoulders.

Beach babe: Christine Quinn simply stunned wearing a sexy leopard print bikini as she soaked up the sun while on holiday in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with husband Christian Richard on Sunday afternoon

The fashion-forward Realtor rocked high-waisted bottoms to match as she roamed around the luxurious property.

Her platinum blonde hair was tousled to the side and worn in loose waves as it cascaded down her back.

She took to Instagram later in the day to strike a few poses wearing a sexy, two-piece cream-colored crocheted number.

Retreat: The 34-year-old Selling Sunset star showed off her gym-honed figure in a two-piece number as she tanned by the pool in her private villa overlooking the Sea of Cortez

Swimsuit season: Christine, who's known to be quite the yoga enthusiast, topped off her tan while wearing an underwire bra top with delicate straps wrapped around her shoulders

'I love you. I love you knot,' she captioned the series.

Christine's glam was flawless as she showed off a neutral palette to complement her gorgeous blue eyes and bold brows.

Christine noted that filming season four was particularly traumatic as she had to relive her son's 'extremely dramatic' birth where she almost 'flatlined' during an emergency C-section.

'Reliving the trauma on Selling Sunset about my birth experience, was one of the most difficult things I have ever done; let alone allowing these very raw, personal moments of my life captured on camera,' she wrote in a lengthy caption to honor her son's two-month birthday in July.

Model moment: She took to Instagram later in the day to strike a few poses wearing a sexy, two-piece cream-colored crocheted number

'I love you. I love you knot,' she captioned the series

Christine's glam was flawless as she showed off a neutral palette to complement her gorgeous blue eyes and bold brows

It's unclear the premise of the following season, but it will likely include her co-star Heather Rae Young's wedding to home renovation expert Tarek El Moussa.

Christine once compared their relationship to Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, a claim the couple didn't take too kindly.

On Amanda Hirsh's Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast late last year, Tarek said: 'Christine has a big mouth. She said some s**tty things about us. And that's about it. We're not really interested in dealing with her nonsense.'

Quinn told US Weekly in March: 'I dont regret saying those things at all. I mean, at the end of the day, Im a comedian and you know, its a show. We all say silly things. I talked to her probably a week ago. Shes super sweet, were on great terms. Im really happy for them that theyre getting married.'
Pic story: new life of disabled policeman in south China

Xinhua) 10:15, January 10, 2022

Tan Jianyong does exercise at a gathering center for disabled people in Nanning, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Jan. 6, 2022. Tan Jianyong is a 49-year-old policeman in Nanning. In 1998, three years after he became a policeman, Tan was shot in the chest by a gunman and got paralyzed from the chest down. Encouraged by his family, colleagues and friends, Tan was pulled out of the mire of depression. He gradually regained the self-care ability and returned to his post with supporting policies from work. Apart from work, Tan also involved himself in community, as he is willing to help disabled people alike mired in depression. (Xinhua/Zhou Hua)

(Web editor: Peng Yukai, Liang Jun)
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Emily In Paris' season two finale left fans longing for answers with a huge cliffhanger.

Yet viewers will have their questions answered very soon as the show has officially been renewed for a third and fourth series.

Lily Collins took to Instagram on Monday to confirm the 'VERY exciting news' whilst Netflix added that the new year meant 'new possibilities' for Emily.

'Say bonjour to series three and four!' Emily In Paris has been renewed for two more seasons confirmed leading lady Lily Collins and distributor Netflix on Monday

Lily, 32, who plays lead character Emily, shared an animated photo to Instagram, as she donned Emily In Paris pajamas and threw her hands in the air.

A still from the hit series featured on her top as she announced the comedy-drama's renewal and thanked fans for their 'incredible support.'

The actress penned: 'Woke up early to give you some VERY exciting news @emilyinparis is back for Season 3 AND wait for it, Season 4!!!!!'

Exciting: Lily, 32, took to Instagram to confirm the 'VERY exciting news' whilst Netflix added that the new year meant 'new possibilities' for Emily

She continued: 'I cant tell if Emily would love or hate this announcement outfit but shed be screaming either way. Truly love you all, thanks so much for the incredible support. Seriously cannot wait for more. Merci Beaucoup!!'

Season two saw the episode cut as Emily's Parisian life was left hanging in the balance with the choice of a job promotion at Savior's Chicago office or, to stay in the City of Love at Sylvie's brand-new agency.

Alongside a video posted to social media, Netflix captioned: 'Say bonjour to 3 & 4! EMILY IS OFFICIALLY RETURNING FOR TWO MORE SEASONS!'

The video showed highlights from the show's previous seasons and ended with 'Emily In Paris back for seasons 3 & 4.'

Amazing! Lily, 32, who plays the role of the lead character Emily, shared excitable photos to Instagram, as she donned Emily In Paris pajamas

The actress penned: 'Woke up early to give you some VERY exciting news @emilyinparis is back for Season 3 AND wait for it, Season 4!!!!!'

The news comes after Lily hinted at a possible plot line for season three, toying with fans that it could take place in Berlin.

And Lily's co-stars including Samuel Arnold and Ashley Park admitted they'd love to film there with even the official account of the show giving their stamp of approval.

Fans got excited after Lily reposted a picture of herself modelling for Vogue Hong Kong alongside a comment from a fan suggesting the style was more 'Emily In Berlin' and she teased in response: 'Season 3 pivot??? Who's with me?'

She continued: 'I cant tell if Emily would love or hate this announcement outfit but shed be screaming either way. Truly love you all, thanks so much for the incredible support. Seriously cannot wait for more. Merci Beaucoup!!'

Lily Collins produced the second season and starred as Chicago native Emily Cooper, who works as Savoir social media strategist despite never learning to speak or write French - much to some of her colleagues' annoyance.

The reference to Berlin was undoubtedly a nod to her edgy look in the Vogue shoot - which would tie in perfectly to the Berlin aesthetic.

Samuel Arnold, who plays Julian, said: 'Me always' while Ashley Park aka Mindy Chen in the series responded: 'Tres willing to check Berlin off the bucket list plz.'

The official Instagram site for the series added: 'Girl I'm going wherever you are.'
Amber Davies was left heartbroken on Monday as she revealed the touring production of Bring It On the musical has been cancelled.

The cheerleader themed musical has become the latest casualty of the pandemic after eight more theatres temporarily shut last month due to rising Covid cases.

Sharing the news with fans, the former Love Island star, 25 - who had been starring as Squad Captain, Campbell in the musical - posted a slew of snaps from her time on the show.

Sad: Amber Davies was left heartbroken as she revealed Bring It On musical tour has been cancelled due to 'self isolation requirements' on Monday

Amber shared two mirror selfies in costume, while another showed her on stage. Another picture showed a photo of her in character with a huge red cross painted on it.

One more showed he looking very glum with tears in her eyes while she laid down on a bed.

Another photo showed her outside posing with the advertisement for the show, while another was a group shot with the cast.

Alongside the photos, Amber penned: 'I post this with a heavy, heavy heart. "The producers of @bringitonuktour are sadly announcing that due to self-isolation requirements, resulting in 13 cancelled shows at @southbankcentre the show will no longer be able to continue on Tour.

End of an era: The former Love Island star has been starring as Squad Captain, Campbell in the cheerleader themed musical

Uspetting: She posted a slew of snaps from her time on the show, including two in the mirror in costume, while another showed her on stage

'I dont think Ive ever really felt the true meaning of gutted until now, but I know one thing for sure, we will be leaving this show on a HIGH.

'I am going to cherish every single second I have left on stage and feel eternally grateful to have worked with such an unbelievably talented cast, creatives & crew - friends which I have made for life.'

She continued: 'Its a hard pill to swallow, I feel like its ending before its even truly begun but I just want to say a big thank you to each and every one of you who have come to watch the show  its been a blast.

'So, heres to the beginning of the end of what I can only describe as truly some of the best months of my entire life.

Heartbreaking: One more showed he looking very glum with tears in her eyes while she laid down on a bed

Sad: Alongside the photos, Amber penned a very emotional message to her followers

'WE HAVE TWO WEEKS LEFT IN LONDON. Grab your tickets and lets HAVE FUN. The arts industry is suffering, its tougher than ever before - for us 7 months of work has just disappeared. @nadinedorries the sector youre responsible for is crumbling. Theres ZERO support. Please DO SOMETHING!

'For anyone else going through turbulence just remember times WILL change. If youre struggling, no matter what your journey is in life, you are not alone. Our worst days are temporary & with every bad day we will gain 10 better days. Keep smiling.'

Producers Selladoor Worldwide said in a statement: 'Cancelling 13 performances has resulted in an overwhelming loss of income for the production during a peak period that would otherwise have provided a vital financial backbone of the tour.

'This lost income, amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds, has sadly rendered the remainder of the tour financially unsustainable. It would be irresponsible for us to continue, and we therefore have no option but to cancel the remainder of the tour.

She wrote: 'I post this with a heavy, heavy heart. "The producers of @bringitonuktour are sadly announcing that due to self-isolation requirements, resulting in 13 cancelled shows at @southbankcentre the show will no longer be able to continue on Tour"

Ending: 'I dont think Ive ever really felt the true meaning of gutted until now, but I know one thing for sure, we will be leaving this show on a HIGH'

'We have not taken this decision lightly and have explored every possible alternative to avoid cancellation. Selladoor remain incredibly proud of this fantastically received production and are grateful to everyone who has worked so hard on it, and to all the audiences who have cheered us on.

'We are only too aware of the impact this will have on our wonderful cast, crew, musicians and creative team  as well as our audiences, venues and suppliers we had been due to work with during the tour.

'We are heartbroken that we have been forced into this position, but the impact of these cancellations caused by Omicron has left us with no other choice.'

Performances at the Southbank Centre are unaffected by this cancellation and the show will therefore conclude its run on January 22.

She continued: 'I am going to cherish every single second I have left on stage and feel eternally grateful to have worked with such an unbelievably talented cast, creatives & crew - friends which I have made for life'

Back in December, shows had to be cancelled due to a 'Covid-19 outbreak within the company.'

A Twitter post read: 'Due to continued Covid-19 cases within the company, we regrettably have no option but to cancel the 3pm performance on Sunday 19th December and both the 2:30pm and 7:30pm performances on Tuesday the 21st December.

'All ticket holders will be contacted shortly by their original point of purchase on how to rebook for another performance or be issued a refund.

'On behalf of everyone at Bring It On The Musical, we apologise for the inconvenience this will cause but we hope you will understand that these circumstances are beyond our control.

'We look forward to welcoming you back to our cheer camp in the not so distant future.'

Cancelled: Producers Selladoor Worldwide said in a statement, 'Cancelling 13 performances has resulted in an overwhelming loss of income for the production during a peak period'

The show featured a score by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Tom Kitt, with lyrics by Miranda and Amanda Green, and a book by Jeff Whitty.

It first opened in the US, going on to be nominated for a number of Tony Awards.

Leading the show alongside Amber is Louis Smith as Cameron, Vanessa Fisher as Danielle, Alicia Belgarde as Eva, Georgia Bradshaw as Nautica, Marvyn Charles as Twig, Chelsea Hall making her professional debut as Bridget, Chloe Pool as Skylar, Biancha Szynal as Kylar and Samuel Wilson-Freeman as Steve.

The role of La Cienega is played by Jal Joshua, while Connor Carson played Randall.

Disappointing: Back in December, shows had to be cancelled due to a 'Covid-19 outbreak within the company'

Last month, parts of London's West End were effectively in lockdown as theatre shows were suspended triggered by mounting fears over the new Covid variant sweeping the capital.

Big-budget productions from The Lion King at the Lyceum to Life of Pi at Wyndham's Theatre halted performances due to virus outbreaks among their cast and crew  a decision which is costing producers hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The Royal Shakespeare Company's production of A Comedy Of Errors at the Barbican and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in Wembley were also cancelled, while the National Theatre postponed a preview of Hex after a lead actor caught the virus.

Others which had been suspended included The Rhythmics at Southwark Playhouse, Force Majeure at Donmar Warehouse and Fair Play at the Bush Theatre. Moulin Rouge at Piccadilly Theatre also suspended shows.
Katie Holmes cut an elegant figure as she stepped out for coffee in New York City.

The 43-year-old actress donned a long emerald green coat for her outing in the trendy neighborhood of Soho on Monday morning.

Amid a spike in COVID-19 cases due to the spread of the Omicron variant, the Ice Storm star covered her face with a matching green Evolvetogether mask.

Stylish: Katie Holmes cut an elegant figure as she stepped out for coffee in New York City

The Ohio native wore the double-breasted coat over a mint green sweater and navy blue sweatpants that cuffed at the ankles.

Katie sported white socks and sneakers as she strolled down the sidewalk in the Big Apple.

The brunette beauty wore her shoulder-length locks down and parted on the side with a few strands tucked behind her ears.

Elegant: The 43-year-old actress donned a long emerald green coat for her outing in the trendy neighborhood of Soho on Monday morning

The Dawson's Creek alum showed off an edgy dark manicure as she carried two paper coffee cups while crossing the street in front of a large truck.

Lately, the Thank You For Smoking actress has frequently been spotted modeling a variety of stylish coats.

On Saturday, she was seen in a chic ivory coat following Manhattan's first snowfall of the winter season.

Staying safe: . Amid a spike in COVID-19 cases due to the spread of the Omicron variant, the Ice Storm star covered her face with a matching green Evolvetogether mask

On Friday night, Katie took to her Instagram Story to share an image of a sign on the side of a building that she had captured on her phone.

The sign featured a quote by dancer and choreographer Twyla Twerp that read, 'Art is the only way to run away without leaving home'.

A scattering of snow and slush lined the street and covered nearby newspaper stands.

Sharing a message: On Friday night, Katie took to her Instagram Story to share an image of a sign on the side of a building that she had captured on her phone

On her Instagram page, Katie paid tribute to legendary actor Sidney Poitier, who passed away on Friday at the age of 94.

Poitier became the first black actor to win a Best Actor Academy Award for his performance in 1964's Lilies of the Field.

The mom of one shared a black and white image of Sidney, writing, 'Rest In Peace,' along with several prayers hands emojis.

Tribute: On her Instagram page, Katie paid tribute to legendary actor Sidney Poitier, who passed away on Friday at the age of 94

Katie is currently prepping to start production on an adaptation of The Watergate Girl.

Development on the project was initially reported by Deadline this past March, when it was made known that the actress would produce and star in the project.

The upcoming feature is based on former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks' autobiography, The Watergate Girl: My Fight For Truth and Justice Against A Criminal President, which was published last year.

Watch the iconic series Dawson's Creek, on Stan in Australia.
Baroness Michelle Mone kept the drama surrounding her and her billionaire husband at bay on Monday as she promoted self-love with a chic Instagram post.

On Friday, MPs demanded that the 50-year-old businesswoman and Doug Barrowman explain the 'murky affair' of a 203million PPE Government contract for a firm set up by one of his employees - after leaked texts raised questions as to how involved she was in the deal.

Yet the lingerie tycoon appeared a world away from the issue at hand when she shared a beaming, full-length photograph on Instagram, through which she promoted the notion of self-love.

'You have to love yourself': Baroness Michelle Mone averted her thoughts from drama with a chic Instagram snap on Monday after MPs called for an explanation on a PPE government deal

Donning a black roll-neck jumper tucked into a cosy tweed skirt, her bouncy blonde curls cascading over her shoulders, Michelle was an advocate for loving oneself, but 'not in an egotistical way.'

The high-heeled blonde penned the positive post: 'You have to love yourself .

'Not in an egotistical way, but if you learn to love who youre spending the rest of your life with, then others will love you too [heart emoji]'.

Probe: On Friday, MPs demanded that the 50-year-old businesswoman and her husband Doug Barrowman (pictured) explain the 'murky affair' of a 203million PPE Government contract for a firm set up by one of his employees

Averting: The lingerie tycoon appeared a world away from the issue at hand when she sharing a beaming, full-length photograph on Instagram, through which she promoted the notion of self-love

Amid the ongoing questions, the Conservative life peer has always maintained she had no 'role or function' with PPE Medpro, a firm started two months after the first lockdown began.

She referred it as a potential supplier through the office of Lord Agnew and it was apparently fast-tracked through the government's so-called VIP fast-lane.

It was awarded more than 200m in government contracts to supply masks and surgical gowns.

But new WhatsApp texts which emerged on Friday appear to suggest she was involved in some further capacity, despite her denials.

Insistent: Amid the ongoing questions, the Conservative life peer has always maintained she had no 'role or function' with PPE Medpro, a firm started two months after the first lockdown began

Company: Medpro was set up two months after the start of the first lockdown with Anthony Page, a wealth management expert and longtime employee of Lady Mone's husband, named as its 100 per cent shareholder and a director

In June, after PPE Medpro was awarded its first contract with the DHSC, messages believed to be from her respond after a request for 'Lady Michelle' for information.

A reply said to be from her said 'We are just about to take off in the jet. The sizes are in the order. We are waiting for the official PO, this should come in today.

'They tell you not to start until you have this PO,' the Guardian reported she wrote.

Essentials: PPE Medpro shows these products among items it currently offers on its website

Fact: Government details show how Lady Mone referred PPE Medpro as a potential supplier

From leaving school in Glasgow with no qualifications to modelling and business deals: How 'Baroness Bra' made her millions Lingerie tycoon Michelle Mone was born in 1971 and grew up in Glasgow's East End, leaving school with no qualifications aged 15 before finding work as a model. After running a sales and marketing team for the Labatt's brewing firm, she decided to create a range of support bras after the idea came to her while wearing an uncomfortable bra during a dinner party. Lady Mone founded MJM International with her then-husband Michael Mone in November 1996, and three years of research, design, and development resulted in the patented Ultimo bra. In August 1999, a month after having her third child, she launched Ultimo at the Selfridges department store in London, which sold the pre-launch estimate of six weeks of stock within 24 hours. The business grew rapidly and in 2010 she earned an OBE from the Queen for her contribution to business. But she sold 80 per cent of Ultimo in 2014, one year after announcing she had left the company following a breakdown in her marriage. Lady Mone was nicknamed 'Baroness Bra' after being elevated to the House of Lords in 2015, where her official title is Baroness Mone of Mayfair. To celebrate her 50th birthday last month, she decided to host five parties - one for each decade of her life  with her new husband billionaire tech tycoon Doug Barrowman, 55. Advertisement

Christine Jardine MP, Lib Dem Treasury Spokesperson, said: 'The stench of sleaze and cronyism from the Conservative party is unbearable now.

'There must be an independent investigation into these revelations.

'From dodgy PPE contracts to Christmas parties, we can't simply cannot trust Conservative politicians to mark their own homework.

'Our taxes are about to be hiked to record levels yet millions of pounds worth of Government contracts appear to be ending up with chums of the Conservative party.

It is time we got to the bottom of this once and for all.'

Lady Mone's husband Doug Barrowman, a financier based in the Isle of Man, may also have helped set up the deal with a firm managing Medpro's supply chain.

Medpro was set up two months after the start of the first lockdown with Anthony Page, a wealth management expert.

Mr Page is also a longtime employee of Lady Mone's husband, and was named in the new firm's incorporation papers as its 100 per cent shareholder and a director.

Companies house documents also show Mr Page previously had been a secretary in a management consultancy firm called MGM Media, alongside director Lady Mone.

His role with that company ended on May 12, 2020 - the same day PPE Medpro was incorporated, with Mr Page as director and secretary.

He is also a director at Knox House Trustees, of which Lady Mone's husband Mr Barrowman is listed as a person of 'significant influence or control'.

It is linked to the Knox Group, a tax advisory and wealth management firm run by Mr Barrowman.

Today Angela Rayner MP, Labour's Deputy Leader and Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, called for all the details of what happened to be put into the public arena.

She added: 'These latest reports suggest that hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' cash ended up with a company closely connected to a Tory politician who personally referred it to a government minister.

'Labour has repeatedly called for an investigation into the awarding of these contracts.

Pictured: Anthony Page, PPE Medpro's owner, circled, at Lady Mone's wedding in 2020

Met Police probe 'racist texts', 'mental loony' allegations and unfair dismissal payouts: The string of controversies faced by Lady Mone The entrepreneur, 50, is a well-known figure in the media but has faced a string of controversies over the years. Officers from the Met Police are set to question her over a claim that she sent a racist text message to a financial consultant of Indian heritage after a fatal yacht accident on the French Riviera. Richard Lynton-Jones alleged Lady Mone racially abused him and called his partner a 'nut case bird' and 'mental loony' three weeks after a day of 'drinking and partying'. She denies it. In April last year her former housekeeper won a payout for unfair dismissal when she was axed from her role. Deborah Wendy Lace had been a long-term employee at Mone's billionaire hubby's Isle of Man estate and got 20,355 for unfair dismissal. In 2014 Scott Kilday, operations director at Mones company MJM International, won a case for unfair dismissal in 2014 after it emerged his office had been bugged and Mone had listened to the tapes for signs of disloyalty. Advertisement

'The public need to know the truth of this murky affair, including the role of Baroness Mone and other Tory politicians.'

In fact millions of the medical gowns bought by the NHS from PPE Medpro were never even used.

At the time they had to reach the British Standard for the sterilisation of medical devices or what was called a 'technical equivalent'.

If the equivalent was the standard aimed for, health regulator the MHRA had to approve them.

It publishes lists of current products that had been given its exemption to be used.

Today there was still no sign of PPE Medpro on either the 'List of medical devices given exceptional use authorisations'.

It was also not visible on the 'List of medical devices that are no longer covered by an exceptional use authorisation' or any other updates.

MailOnline has contacted Lady Mone's lawyers for a response on the new allegations.

They told the Guardian last night she could not be expected to comment on 'unknown and unattributable WhatsApp messages allegedly sent 19 months ago'.

They added: 'We have no idea  and neither does our client  of the content of the WhatsApp messages to which you refer, the recipients, the context and perhaps most important the provenance of them.'

Lawyers for Barrowman said the report amounted to 'clutching at straws' and was 'largely incorrect'.

They added: 'Our client's desire not to reveal private or confidential information should not be taken as an assumption that any of your assertions or conclusions are correct or unchallenged.'
Laura Anderson was not afraid to exhibit her phenomenal figure on Monday evening as she celebrated her anniversary with boyfriend Dane Bowers.

The former Love Islander, 32, shared sensational snaps from their evening at Shimmers in Dubai, where the couple could feast on Greek cuisine.

The blonde Scotswoman put on an ab-tastic display in a pale-pink Oh Polly co-ord, which was adorned with delicate pearls.

'We were soppy in private!': Laura Anderson marked her anniversary with boyfriend Dane Bowers on Monday by sharing a series of ab-flashing snaps in a glam ensemble

The long flared-sleeved crop top, which boasted a bust-flattering neckline, allowed a peek at the influencer's side tattoo as she posed up a storm at the eatery's table.

The revealing skirt, designed with a thigh-high split, drew attention to Laura's lithe pins as she snatched a photo opportunity with her Balenciaga bag while the Burj Al Arab snuck its way into the scenic snap.

Her blonde tresses were effortlessly styled, falling loose past her shoulders, and her anniversary finery was reinforced with sultry makeup, her lashes stealing the show.

She wrote alongside the celebratory shots: 'Anniversary Dins  We were soppy in private [sic] Dress *gifted @ohpolly'.

Special occasion: The former Love Islander, 32, shared sensational snaps from their evening at Shimmers in Dubai, where the couple could feast on Greek cuisine

Wow: The blonde Scotswoman put on an ab-tastic display in a pale-pink Oh Polly co-ord, which was adorned with delicate pearls

Gorgeous: The long flared-sleeved crop top, which boasted a bust-flattering neckline, allowed a peek at the influencer's side tattoo

The reality star also took to her Story with a 'cutie pie' captioned photograph of former Another Level band member Dane.

He threw a smile for the camera, looking suave in a plain black top as Laura managed to capture their idyllic surroundings.

The couple's anniversary come after Laura explained why she forgave Dane and took him back three years after he cheated on her.

Loved-up: The reality star also took to her Story with a 'cutie pie' captioned photograph of former Another Level band member Dane

The TV personality met Dane at a party in November 2017 where they had instant chemistry, despite their 10 year age gap and began dating.

However, Laura was rocked when she discovered that Dane was seeing someone else six months in.

She explained to The Sun: 'We weren't in a relationship at that point, and we never said we were exclusive, but I was disappointed, so I confronted him and ended it.'

Wow: The couple's anniversary come after Laura explained why she forgave Dane and took him back three years after he cheated on her

She then signed up to join Love Island, where she met Paul Knops but that relationship ended after she heard reports he had a secret girlfriend.

After a string of failed relationships, Laura turned to Dane for comfort and her feelings for him soon turned romantic earlier this year.

She added that she made him work for it, but didn't want shut herself off to him after their past together and soon they got back together.

Laura said: 'I never thought I'd be able to trust Dane again, but I trust him more than anyone I've ever been with  even people who haven't cheated.'
Things between Kanye West and his new girlfriend Julia Fox are heating up and the Uncut Gems star appeared in a black and white image that was shared to the rap mogul's Donda creative Instagram account over the weekend.

And, as Julia and Ye's burgeoning relationship grows, it seems their pasts continue to overlap in unexpected ways.

Last week, it reemerged that Fox modeled alongside Kim Kardashian's new beau Pete Davidson for a magazine and now it's revealed she once posed on social media in a pair of SKIMS.

Intertwined: Things between Kanye West and his new girlfriend Julia Fox are heating up and the Uncut Gems star appeared in a black and white image that was shared to the rap mogul's Donda creative Instagram account over the weekend

A black and white image of a buxom Fox posing in a satin trench coat and push-up bustier against the hood of a car was posted to the Donda creative Instagram account over the weekend.

The shot, which sees Julia gazing at the camera with winged eyeliner and a perfect matte pout was then re-shared by the actress. Several other images from her photo shoot date with Ye were also added to the grid.

The Donda creative page is not a verified account but is named after Kanye's late mother and the page is described as 'Galvanizing Creative Thinkers.'

While Julia popped up on the Donda page, it was unearthed by People that the beauty once posed on social media in a skimpy black bra and panty set from SKIMS, the clothing brand created and run by Kim Kardashian.

Wowza: A black and white image of a buxom Fox posing in a satin trench coat and push-up bustier against the hood of a car was posted to the Donda creative Instagram account over the weekend and then re-shared by Julia

In the photo, which had been shared on the official SKIMS Instagram prior to her romance with Kanye, Julia stunned in items from the summer mesh collection from 2019.

According to People, SKIMS 'gifted Fox some of the pieces for her to wear on Instagram'.

Just last month, Julia revealed on her podcast, Forbidden Fruits with Julia Fox and Niki Takesh, that she was a 'diehard, OG' fan of the Kardashians since day one.

She said: 'I've been watching Keeping Up since it first came out in 2007 when like, watching it was embarrassing.'

Crossing paths: Last week, it reemerged that Fox modeled alongside Kim Kardashian's new beau Pete Davidson for a magazine and now it's revealed she once posed on social media in a pair of SKIMS

'I like wanted them to be my family. You feel like you know them. It's like you're happy for them when something good happens.'

It doesn't seem, however, that her new relationship with Kim's soon-to-be former husband is endearing her to the famous family, however.

West is reportedly still hurting over his breakup with Kim, and is using his new romance with Julia Fox to get under his ex wife's skin.

A source who spoke to Page Six recently revealed: 'It's a desperate play for attention. There's no other explanation when he chooses  [Fox] to go public with.'

All for show? West is reportedly still hurting over his breakup with Kim, and is using his new romance with Julia Fox to get under his ex wife's skin

The insider also added that West, 44, is 'clearly hurting' and his public outings with the actress are 'a ploy to get under ex Kim Kardashian's skin.'

Julia, meanwhile, seems to have forgotten all about her obsession with KUWTK and has gone public with her thoughts about dating Ye.

In a new profile on the 31-year-old rising star from The Cut the actress admits it's 'all happening so quickly'.

'I'm going with the universe and the flow and seeing where it takes me,' before adding, '...where it takes all of us.'

In a new profile on the 31-year-old rising star from The Cut the actress admits it's 'all happening so quickly': 'I'm going with the universe and the flow and seeing where it takes me,' before adding, '...where it takes all of us.'

She also receives praise from her friend, author Cat Marnell, who said via text of Julia: 'She's a legitimate sorceress. She's the Michael Jordan of vixens She's devastating, like a hurricane.'

Julia penned a 217 word account on her first two dates with the rapper, which included a trip to New York City.

Detailing their 'instant connection' after meeting in Miami on New Year's Eve to Interview Magazine, the actress described the 44-year-old Grammy winner's generosity and 'fun' energy.

The article also contained a slew of images documenting their epic night out, from the many kisses they shared to the hotel suite full of clothing Kanye had surprised Julia with.

Big fan: Just last month, Julia revealed on her podcast, Forbidden Fruits with Julia Fox and Niki Takesh, that she was a 'diehard, OG' fan of the Kardashians since day one

'He had me and my friends laughing, dancing, and smiling all night. We decided to keep the energy going and fly back to New York City to see Slave Play,' she gushed.

The Uncut Gems star continued: 'Ye's flight landed at six and the play was at seven and he was there ON TIME. I was impressed. After the play we chose to do dinner at Carbone which is one of my favorite restaurants.'

'At the restaurant, Ye directed an entire photo shoot for me while people dined,' she added. 'After dinner Ye had a surprise for me. I mean, I'm still in shock. Ye had an entire hotel suite full of clothes.'

She said the move was 'every girl's dream come true' and 'felt like a real Cinderella moment.'

'I don't know how he did it, or how he got all of it there in time. But I was so surprised. Like, who does things like this on a second date? Or any date!' she marveled.

Fox concluded her piece by writing: 'Everything with us has been so organic. I don't know where things are headed but if this is any indication of the future I'm loving the ride.'
Keanu Reeves is known to be one of the most generous and humble stars in Hollywood.

And the 57-year-old Canadian actor displayed his giving nature once again as he quietly treated friends, members of his team and co-workers to an all-expenses paid trip to The Matrix Resurrections premiere in San Francisco last month.

'Yeah, it's great to be able to share our experiences and lives together,' Keanu said with his trademark modesty when asked about the trip by The Hollywood Reporter.

Selfless star: Keanu Reeves is known to be one of the most generous and humble stars in Hollywood. Seen in December 2021

The Lebanon-born performer, who rarely discusses his selfless gestures, did not further elaborate on the subject.

However, Chad Stahelski, who met Keanu when he served as his stunt double in the Matrix trilogy and went on to direct the actor in 2014's John Wick, affirmed the magnanimus act.

'He flew a bunch of us up here,' Chad told THR on the premiere's green carpet at the Castro Theatre.

Generous gesture: And the 57-year-old Canadian actor displayed his giving nature once again as he quietly treated friends, members of his team and co-workers to an all-expenses paid trip to The Matrix Resurrections premiere in San Francisco last month

'He's epic': Chad Stahelski, who met Keanu when he served as his stunt double in the Matrix trilogy and went on to direct the actor in 2014's John Wick, affirmed the magnanimus act. Seen in December 2021

He continued, 'He's incredibly generous. In the audience tonight will be so many people that helped him, from his martial art trainers to jiu-jitsu trainers to hair and makeup to his stunt crew.

'He makes sure that his friends and family are here. He's epic.'

THR reported that the Point Break star extended invitations to all of his representatives including his agents, manager and publicist.

All inclusive: THR reported that the Point Break star extended invitations to all of his representatives including his agents, manager and publicist

Joining in the fun: In addition, he invited family, friends, crew members and insiders to ensure that everyone was included in the celebration. Keanu pictured with The Matrix Resurrections co-star Carrie-Anne Moss, 54, and director Lana Wachowski, 56

In addition, he invited family, friends, crew members and insiders to ensure that everyone was included in the celebration.

The Ode to Happiness author picked up the tab for private jet travel, hotel stays, premiere tickets and other gifts.

Keanu also hosted a special post-premiere brunch for his guests.

The Speed actor is a well-known philanthropist who founded a private cancer foundaton that supports children's hospitals and funds pediatric cancer research.

A motorcycle enthusiast who co-founded the Arch Motorcyle Company, Keanu gifted all twelve members of his The Matrix Reloaded stunt crew a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

After filming wrapped on the upcoming film John Wick: Chapter 4, the actor surprised his four-member stunt crew with customized Rolex Submariner watches.
Charlotte Dawson has hit back at trolls who have told her she looks 'too glam' in photos of her three stone weight loss.

The reality star, 29, took to her Instagram page on Monday to set the record straight by sharing a recent make-up free snap of herself after working out in the gym.

She posted the picture alongside a throwback snap of herself in a bikini pulling a goofy pose.

Speaking out: Charlotte Dawson, 29, hit back at trolls who have told her she looks 'too glam' in photos of her after losing three stone

Hitting back: The reality star took to Instagram on Monday to set the record straight by sharing a recent make-up free snap of herself after working out in the gym

She wrote alongside the post: 'People have been sayin I look too glam to give a chuffin damn in my "after" pics - and that I should look more like my "before" pix with no make up. So here I am without me Makey on.. hope this helps you all & keeps the trolls away.' [sic]

Promoting her new fitness plan Belleh Blaster in the caption, she went on to write: 'If youre fancying a bit of Monday Motivation today never mind me - check out all the amazing beltin birds that have been having a laugh and blastin their bellies in my silly but sweateh fitness plan. So proud of all the gals, & myself' [sic]

Charlotte recently revealed to MailOnline that she was motivated to lose weight because of her late father Les' diabetes diagnosis.

Way back: She posted the new makeup-free picture alongside a throwback snap of herself in a bikini pulling a goofy pose

Charlotte recalled how she was diagnosed with gestational diabetes when pregnant with son Noah, now eleven months - and was warned by doctors post-birth that she needed to lose weight because she was on the verge of getting Type 2 Diabetes.

'Imagine getting told that,' she said, looking back on the health scare, 'I knew I had to do something because of my dad. [If he'd got help] he might've still been here today.'

The influencer - who has also dropped 7 inches off her waist - admitted she was never afraid to flaunt her former 'chunky but funky belly' with her followers for playful purposes, but it was her fiance Matt Sarsfield who 'saw the real her' beyond the larking about on screen.

'I would have a laugh with the belly jiggling but Matty would see the real me. I wasn't really that happy,' she recalled.

Had enough: Charlotte recently revealed to MailOnline that she was motivated to lose weight because of her late father Les' diabetes diagnosis (Les pictured with wife Tracy and baby Charlotte, 1992)

She made no secret of her love and overindulgence in chips and gravy, explaining that she never watched what she ate and got into 'happy bad habits.'

The mother-of-one also confessed: 'I hated exercise. I don't like the gym because I find it intimidating.'

One form of exercise that did, however, tick a box for a determined Charlotte was dancing.

'I wanted to make exercise more fun. It's not just about looking better, it's feeling better,' she said of her workout method.

Personal Trainer Emma Titelbaum devised a series of short 15 minute workouts for Charlotte to do in her front room.

'They're based on different dance styles like line dancing, ballet or 70's disco, but they do get a sweat on. And the thing is they're actually fun, so you don't notice you're working out,' she added.
Betty White suffered a stroke six days before she died peacefully in her sleep at age 99, her death certificate has revealed.

The Golden Girls star's official cause of death has been listed as a cerebrovascular accident, TMZ reported on Monday.

While a stroke can cause lasting brain damage and long-term disability, sources told the outlet that White was 'alert and coherent' following the incident.

Devastating: Just over a week after Betty White's passing sent shockwaves across Hollywood, her cause of death, at age 99, has been listed as a cerebrovascular accident

An insider confirmed to People that the beloved sitcom actress had 'mild stroke' but reiterated she 'died peacefully in her sleep' on December 31, just three weeks shy of her 100th birthday.

White made her name on The Mary Tyler Moore Show as Sue Ann Nivens and cemented her star status with TV's The Golden Girls and Hot In Cleveland.

Her death was announced by longtime agent Jeff Witjas, who told The Associated Press that she had not been suffering from any diagnosed illness.

Cause of death: According to her death certificate, obtained by TMZ on Monday, the Golden Girls star suffered a stroke six days before she died peacefully in her sleep at her home

'I truly never thought she was going to pass away,' Witjas said. 'She meant the world to me as a friend. She was the most positive person I've ever known.'

Prior to her passing, Betty had participated in a film celebrating her 100th birthday that was set to hit a handful of theaters on Jan. 17.

The producers of Betty White: 100 Years Young said in a statement after her passing, however, that they 'will go forward' with plans to release the movie special on what would have been her 100th birthday.

While a stroke can cause lasting brain damage and long-term disability, sources told the outlet that White was 'alert and coherent' following the incident; flowers and momentos pictured on top of the Hollywood Walk of Fame star after news of her death

On December 28, she tweeted: 'My 100th birthday I cannot believe it is coming up, and People Magazine is celebrating with me! The new issue of @People is available on newsstands nationwide tomorrow.'

Writer John Leavitt joked: 'You gotta admit, having an entire magazine devoted to your 100th birthday hit the racks and then dying before that birthday is excellent comic timing.'

President Joe Biden led tributes to the star, tweeting: 'Betty White brought a smile to the lips of generations of Americans.

She was last photographed in public running errands with her driver the day before her birthday 98th birthday, in January 2020. The star spent the remainder of last year, and the whole of 2021, shielding from COVID.

Shortly after that outing, she began limiting contact with others to avoid contracting the virus. When it first surged, she said she was 'relaxing through her quarantine' at her residence in Los Angeles.

The star's essential errands, like groceries, were being taken care of for her so she wouldn't have to leave her house. Additionally, she was 'only coming in contact with people being equally cautious of the virus' and who respected her state's stay-at-home orders.

White was known for her optimism and positivity.

'I've always been a cockeyed optimist,' White once said in an interview with Fox News. 'I got it from my mom. I'm gonna stick with it.'

On her 96th birthday she credited 'vodka and hot dogs' for her longevity and added that trips up and down the stairs of her two-story house kept her in shape.

Most importantly, she said: 'It's your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don't take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humor in our everyday lives.'

When she was awarded the Guinness World Record for longest TV career for a female entertainer in 2014, she said: 'I have no regrets at all. None. I consider myself to be the luckiest old broad on two feet.'

In a statement released last Friday, White's agent said she never feared dying because she 'always wanted to be with her most beloved husband Allen Ludden. She believed she would be with him again' (The couple are pictured together in 1974)

White was born in Oak Park, Illinois on January 17, 1922.

Her legal name, Betty, is not a shortened version of 'Elizabeth' because her parents did not want their daughter saddled by any derivatives and nicknames like Beth, Liza and Ellie.

White was an only child and liked it that way, she remembers her blissfully happy childhood as a young girl who was 'spoiled rotten, but taught to appreciate it.'

Her family moved to Los Angeles in 1923 when she was just over a year old. She attended Beverly Hills High School and though she was interested in theater she said, her dream was to become a zookeeper or forest ranger. 'The problem was, back then a girl wasn't allowed to be either one,' she wrote in her autobiography.

She started her entertainment career in radio in the late 1930s and by 1939 had made her TV debut singing on an experimental channel in Los Angeles.

After serving in the American Women's Voluntary Service, which helped the U.S. effort during World War Two, she was a regular on Hollywood on Television, a daily five-hour live variety show, in 1949.
John Stamos has released an official statement from the entire cast of Full House paying tribute to Bob Saget, after the actor died aged 65 on Sunday.

While Stamos, 58, had already tweeted his personal reaction to the news, it appears the cast have gathered together for a formal message.

The statement reads: 'Thirty-five years ago, we came together as a TV family, but we became a real family. And now we grieve as a family.'

'Bob made us laugh until we cried. Now our tears flow in sadness, but also with gratitude for all the beautiful memories of our sweet, kind, hilarious, cherished Bob. He was a brother to us guys, a father to us girls and a friend to all of us.'

John Stamos has released statement on behalf of entire Full House cast, stating Bob Saget 'was a brother to us guys, a father to us girls and a friend to all of us'

Concluding: 'Bob, we love you dearly. We ask in Bob's honor, hug the people you love. No one gave better hugs than Bob.'

It is signed off from, 'John, Dave, Candace, Jodie, Lori, Andrea, Scott, Jeff, Ashley and Mary-Kate.'

Lori Loughlin released an additional statement saying: 'Words cannot begin to express how devastated I am. Bob was more than my friend, he was my family.'

She added: 'I will miss his kind heart and quick wit. Thank you for a lifetime of wonderful memories and laughter. I love you Bobby.'

Last post: Saget's final Twitter and Instagram posts were sent late at night following his final performance in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday

Caption: He wrote that performing felt as fresh as 'when I was 26' and said he was 'finding my new voice and loving every moment of it'

Saget was found by staff in his room at The Ritz-Carlton, Orlando, at 4pm on Sunday.

The Saget family shared a statement yesterday that read: 'We are devastated to confirm that our beloved Bob passed away today.'

'He was everything to us and we want you to know how much he loved his fans, performing live and bringing people from all walks of life together with laughter.

Pictured out: Full House star Jodie Sweetin was seen on Monday in Los Angeles

'Though we ask for privacy at this time, we invite you to join us in remembering the love and laughter that Bob brought to the world.'

Saget was found dead hours after posting jubilantly about returning to the stage, and how he was loving being back in the limelight after a show at the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall in Jacksonville on Saturday night.

'Okay, I loved tonight's show in Jacksonville. Really nice audience. Lots of positivity. Happened last night in Orlando last night at the Hard Rock Live too. Very appreciative and fun audiences. Thanks again to @comediantimwilkins for opening.

Co-star: Mary-Kate Olsen was also seen out in NYC on Monday, in this exclusive image obtained by DailyMail.com

Tough times: Candace Cameron Bure was also pictured leaving her home in California on Monday

'I had no idea I did a two hour set tonight. I'm back in comedy like I was when I was 26. I guess I'm finding my new voice and loving every moment of it.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office told TMZ that it has 'no information on cause of death, and detectives have found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case.'

Tributes rushed in for the comedy star with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who took turns playing his youngest daughter on Full House, describing Saget as 'the most loving, compassionate and generous man.'

Flashback: Seen on Full House in 1987 with (LR) Mary-Kate/Ashley Olsen, Dave Coulier, Jodie Sweetin, John Stamos and Candace Cameron Bure

They said: 'We are deeply saddened that he is no longer with us but know that he will continue to be by our side to guide us as gracefully as he always has. We are thinking of his daughters, wife and family and are sending our condolences.'

Saget's Full House costar Stamos wrote in his first message that he was 'broken' and 'gutted' after hearing the news. 'I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby,' he lamented on Twitter.

The star is survived by his wife Kelly Rizzo, whom he married in 2018, and his three children  Aubrey, 34; Lara, 32; and Jennifer, 29  all of whom he shared with his first wife Sherri Kramer, whom he was married to from 1982 to 1997.
Her ex Shawn Mendes has been flaunting his beach body as of late.

But Camila Cabello was also heating things up on her Instagram account.

In throwbacks posted on Monday, the songstress, 24, wowed in a black bikini as she enjoyed a getaway to the Dominican Republic.

Va va voom! Camila Cabello wowed in a black bikini as she enjoyed a getaway to the Dominican Republic

Photos captured Camila soaking up the sea breeze while enjoying a boat ride in her swimsuit.

Camila was the picture of relaxation as she basked in the sunshine with one hand playing with her windswept hair.

In a selfie, she showed off her stunning complexion as she posed beside the sunset. Hardly an inch of makeup graced her naturally beautiful complexion.

Camila said she was too engrossed in her trip to post photos of it to her social media accounts.

Hello gorgeous! In a selfie, she showed off her stunning complexion as she posed beside the sunset

Strike a pose: The songstress posted this selfie on New Year's Eve

'I posted no pics because i was hashtag living life but I was in the REPUBLICA DOMINICANA BABYYYYYY VAMO A UN TETEOOOOOO,' she captioned the snaps.

The photos appeared to have been taken before 2022, as she had posted a similar selfie from a boat on New Year's Eve.

The last few weeks of 2021 were undoubtedly difficult for Camila, who split from Shawn after two years together in November.

Meanwhile: Camila's ex Shawn Mendes was spotted hitting the beach in Miami numerous times last week

Despite their split, the exes appear to be on friendly terms as they were spotted walking their dog Tarzan in Miami last week.

Shawn and Camila announced their breakup with a joint statement on Instagram.

The statement read, 'Hey guys, we've decided to end our romantic relationship but our love for one another as humans is stronger than ever.

Meanwhile: Cabello has also been sharing snaps from her trip to Montana

'We started out relationship as best friends and will continue to be best friends. We so appreciate your support from the beginning and moving forward.'

Camila and Shawn had been dating since July 2019, shortly after their hit duet Senorita was released.

The former couple's relationship seemed to be at an all-time high being together 24/7, while quarantining during the initial COVID-19 lockdown.

Heart to heart: Camila and Shawn had been dating since July 2019, shortly after their hit duet Senorita was released

But eventually all that consistent one-on-one time at home came to an end and they went back to work, stepping up their commitments, which meant they both had to travel to promote their latest projects.

It appears their relationship couldn't withstand all that time apart due to their hectic schedules.

Two weeks after announcing their split, Mendes dropped the breakup ballad It'll Be Okay.
Nature is known to be mysterious and unpredictable, and one of its mysteries is all set to be extinguished. Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov wants to extinguish the flames of the Gates of Hell  a gas crater that has been blazing for decades. The crater is also widely known as the Door to Hell and is located about 260 kilometeres away from Turkmenistan's capital, Ashgabat.

Have a look at where it is located:

Turkenmenportal reported that the 'hellish' hole was formed in the early 1970s, when the ground collapsed during a Soviet gas drilling expedition. Reportedly, scientists lit the massive hole on fire to prevent the spread of natural gas, and it was expected to burn out in a few weeks. But it has been burning ever since.

Turkenmenportal also reported that back in November 2013, famous traveller and explorer George Coronis went to the bottom of the crater to conduct research and collect samples. There, he found bacteria living at the bottom of the crater at high temperatures. The bacteria that was discovered has not been found anywhere else on Earth.

Turkmenistan's Gateway to Hell Crater. Photo: Getty Images

Even though the 'Gates of Hell' are being shut, there are more mysterious wonders you can visit. Most of these promise an out-of-the-world sight; while some will leave you baffled.

Here are 5 of them:

1. RINGING ROCKS PARK IN UPPER BLACK EDDY, PENNSYLVANIA, US

Ringing Rocks County Park, Pennsylvania

When hiking up the Ringing Rocks Park, it is advised to bring a hammer with yourself to tap the rocks and boulders piled 10 feet high in the seven-acre field. Most taps will reward you with bell-like tones; hence the name 'Ringing Rocks Park'.

Even though the stones are made of iron and hard minerals, scientists still wonder why the rocks sound like bells, causing people to believe the area is supernatural. Geologists suspect that the sound is produced by the stresses in the rocks.

2. SEDONA IN ARIZONA, USA

Sedona, Arizona. Photo: Getty Images

Sedona's red rocks, hiking trails and canyons have long mesmerised tourists, but there is more to this natural attraction.

Sedona boasts of multiple vortexes where swirling fields of intense energy are felt. Some believe that the Sedona's vortexes are a portal for celestial and terrestrial spirits. It is possible to feel a range of sensations due to intense energy, from a slight tingling on exposed skin, to a vibration emanating from the ground.

Mostly, energy from a vortex is felt by a palpable sensation across the nape of the neck and the shoulder blades.

3. ENCHANTED RIVER IN HINATUAN, THE PHILIPPINES

Enchanted River, Hinatuan, Philippines.Photo:Wikipedia

The Enchanted river is enchanted by name and by nature. This river is an eye-poppingly blue river that flows through an area of thick forest on the island of Mindanao. Locals say that the 'magical waters' are inhabited by mythical creatures, which includes an engkanto (a kind of environmental spirit).

It's also commonly believed that the river got its bright blue colour from sapphire and jade left behind by fairies' wands.

4. DIMMUBORGIR IN MYVATN, ICELAND

Considered to be a jewel of northern Iceland, 'Dimmuborgir' translates to dark fortress (you may recognise it from HBO's Game of Thrones).

Dimmuborgir, Myvatan, Iceland. Photo: Getty Images

The rock formaton is stark area of lava fields near Lake Myvatn. The formation was created by an eruption several millennia ago. It's believed that the rock formation is the home of the Yule Lads  the 13 tricksy sons of the troll Gryla, who come out at Christmastime one by one for 13 days, and are Iceland's version of Santa Claus.

The formation, covered deeply in snow, first featured in Season 3 of Game of Thrones. Here is a clip from the first episode:

5. HOUSKA CASTLE IN BLATCHE, CZECH REPUBLIC

This Gothic castle was built back in the 13th century, and has been making people go crazy since then.

Houska Castle, Blatche, Czech Republic. Photo: Wikipedia

The castle was built far from any water sources, has no obvious defensive use, and has never been inhabited. Locals in Blatche believe that the fortress was built over the Gateway to Hell with the intention to trap 'evil demons' that might escape and come to Earth.

Which of these places will you be visiting next (once it is safe to travel again, of course)?
Princess Basmah bint Saud Al Saud, 57, the last of the 108 children of King Saud, a cousin of Saudi crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman and an outspoken critic of the Saudi government, was on January 6 released from her arbitrary detention. Princess Basmah was detained along with her daughter Souhoud Al Sharif, 30, nearly three years ago.

Basmah's release was pressed by her advocates in London, who had petitioned the United Nations for her release. According to her lawyer, she faced severe health issues inside the jail and suffers from osteoporosis. Princess Basmah has moved to her home in Jeddah with her daughter.

BREAKING: Basma bint Saud Al Saud and her daughter Suhoud, detained since March 2019, have been released. pic.twitter.com/tTsh6kPgzE  ALQST for Human Rights (@ALQST_En) January 8, 2022

The government has so far not levelled any charges against her; neither produced any evidence to substantiate any wrongdoing on her part. But why was a Saudi crown princess arrested and jailed for nearly three years despite ill health?

Here's a 6-point lowdown on the whole case:

1. WHO IS PRINCESS BASMAH BINT SAUD?

Princess Basmah bint Saud is the youngest child of late King Saud, who ruled Saudi Arabia from 1953 to 1964. She is a businesswoman, a member of the Saudi royal family, and a human rights activist who was vocal about her views against the Saudi administration.

In a petition submitted to the United Nations in March 2020, the family of the princess informed that her detention by the Saudi administration in July 2019 might be because of her being an outspoken critic of abuses in our country of birth, but likewise for ... enquiring about the frozen fortune left (by) her father, news agency Reuters reported.

Saudi authorities have so far been tight-lipped on her arrest.

2. PRINCESS BASMAH'S ARREST

In March 2019, Princess Basmah was about to depart for Switzerland for her medical treatment, when she was arrested by the Saudi authorities. Her daughter Souhoud Al Sharif, who was accompanying her, was also arrested. Princess Bismah was kept in one of Saudi Arabia's most high-profile prisons, al-Ha'ir Prison. The prison has a number of human rights activists who have been critical of the Saudi administration.

At the Saudi Mission in 2020 in United Nations, the administration to the UN in Geneva told the working group of arbitrary detentions that the princess stood accused of criminal offences involving attempting to travel outside the kingdom illegally, news agency AP reported. It further added that the case needed a trial.

3. PRINCESS CRITICAL OF PRINCE

Princess Princess Basmah bint Saud. Photo: Getty Images

Princess Basmah was in London for several years and returned to the kingdom only in 2015 . Her arrest in 2019 has much to do with her criticism of her cousin Royal King Mohammad Bin Salman and his policies. In one of her stands against the kingdom, she vouched for constitutional monarchy of the kingdom from an absolute monarchy; a change that would have separated the position of the monarch from the country's executive branch. She had also urged the kingdom to observe restraint in the Saudi-led Yemen war.

4. WOMEN'S RIGHTS

The princess has been critical of the Saudi administration on the way it has been treating its women, be it in education, social standing or divorce laws, etc. In one of her write-ups in the BBC, she said that she would like to see a proper constitution that treats all men and women on an equal footing before the law.

5. DIVORCE LAWS NEED TO CHANGE

She felt that the current divorce laws in Saudi Arabia are abusive against women. She said that in most cases of divorce, the woman is at the mercy of her husband, and even the judge, who is the sole interpreter of the Quran, sides with the man, leaving the woman high and dry. Similarly, if a wife has to seek separation from the husband, she has to demand 'Khali', under which she has to produce four witnesses which is impossible in most cases as the reasons for separation are confined within the four walls of marriage.

Princess Basmah marked that the state of affairs in dealing with divorce laws are in complete contradiction to Quran, upon which the laws are based. In it, a woman is given full rights to divorce simply in the case of "irreconcilable differences, she said.

6. THE EDUCATION SYSTEM FOR WOMEN

Young Saudi women in an educational institution. Photo: Getty Images

In one of her critical assessments of the kingdoms approach to women's education, Princess Basmah advocated for complete overhaul of the education system, which in her view, was extremely dangerous. She said that the current education system tells the children that the position of women in the society is inferior to men and that womens sole duty is to remain at home, obey her husband and raise children. Also, girls are forbidden from taking part in physical education which is wrong, the princess said.

She said that this is complete opposite to what the Quran and the hadith of Prophet Mohammad says.

She said that the syllabus of the schools need to change massively and religious education should be given only from Quran and Sunna (life of the Prophet). Rest, according to her, is rote-learning which can be dangerous, as it leads to fundamentalism in later stages.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness decision to withhold financial and other State support from the Accompong community in North West St. Elizabeth, has not gone down well with Dancehall selector Foota Hype.

Foota made his comments on Sunday morning amidst the standoff between Accompong Maroon Chief Colonel Richard Currie and Holness.

The selector sided with the Colonel, who has declared Accompong sovereign, whilst rebuking the PM for withholding State support to the Maroons, after Holness declared at a Jamaica House press conference on Sunday morning, that among other Jamaica was a unitary sovereign state and that he would not support any group that claimed sovereignty in Jamaica.

The PM was responding to questions posed during a Jamaica House press conference, about a leaked Cabinet document referred to in a Gleaner article published last Friday, which it is said, cautioned government ministries, departments, and agencies that: there must be no acceptance of, or acquiescence to, any language or suggestion regarding sovereignty or indigenous rights, and no funds must be placed at the disposal of any person or entity claiming such.

There are some threats that the average citizen looking on might think innocuous or popular and take a liking to it because the discussions that are held in places that should know better does not highlight the threat, Holness had said adding that not one inch of Jamaica will come under any other sovereign authority and that pronouncements of this nature was the stuff of how guerrilla wars come and states break down.

Foota took to his Instagram live, an hour after Holness made his pronouncements, and spent several minutes of his hour-long monologue, deriding Holness decision to instruct government ministries, departments, and agencies to not to engage with, or fund Maroons who are asserting sovereignty from the Jamaican State.

If yuh watch wha di man seh dis mawning. Di man seh, him nuh business wid no odda system but di Queen system enuh, Foota said, referring to the Queen of England, Elizabeth II, who is the titular head of Jamaica.

Di man seh him naw contribute to no odda govament but di govament weh him a work wid. Suh him a basically tell yuh seh di Maroon dem an anybaddy else can guh dead enuh. If a him fi help dem God come outta di sky enuh. Because dem naw work wid di govament weh him a part of enuh. What govament is he a part of? Him a part a di Queen system. Him a part a colonial system, zeen. Him unda pressure so much dat him come out a talk weh him nuffi talk, Foota added.

Amidst his multiple calls for Holness to resign, Foota questioned the Prime Ministers judgment and goodwill towards the people living in the Accompong community.

How yuh fi tell di public seh if dem nuh part a da system deh, yuh nuh care bout dem? Di man seh him naw use taxpayer money help nobaddy weh unda no odda govament. Dat mean di man a seh if di people up a Maroon town a dead; if di Maroon dem a suffa like dog, him naw help dem. None a di country money naw help dem because dem unda different governance. Dem nuh unda di queen govament. Suh oonu nuh si suppm wrong wid dat? the Dark Knight producer said.

Dat mean seh Andrew blatantly a tell yuh seh a nuh everybaddy him care fah. Him care fi who a work wid Babylon system. But once yuh naw work wid Babylon system, you shall die! Foota shouted.

See more

Several hours after Foota made his comments, Colonel Currie himself took to Instagram accusing Holness of scheming to annex sections of the Maroon-owned mineral-rich Cockpit Country, and sell to foreigners.

The Munro College old boy also rebutted Holness sovereignty declaration, pointing out that Jamaica was not a sovereign state as the PM had stated, but a constitutional monarchy in which Queen of England Elizabeth II reigns Sovereign as Head of State and the Government was simply fully responsible in Elizabeths Commonwealth per the legal language in the Charter for Jamaica.

The Jamaican government is a professional at begging the world. We are selling out our natural resources; we are selling out our lands. These are regular day-to-day conversations that permeate the island as the government does not own its roads nor its airspace, amongst many other things, which is why Maroons will not subject themselves to a municipality, because Mr Holness and his cronies will try to take our ancestral estate  the Cockpit Country  and sell it to the highest bidder, the Chief declared.

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Currie went on to blame Holness and the Jamaica Labour Party administrations of National Hero Sir Alexander Bustamante and former Prime Minister Edward Seaga, for stifling the Maroon economy.

In a separate post, he ordered Holness to read the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people, to which Jamaica is a signatory.

Jamaica has an EXTENSIVE external debt and is constantly begging, so you rely on other sovereign nations, in other words, you are receiving funding from others, so please consider human and indigenous rights before you end up de-funded as well, Currie stated.
DARIEN  In the past two years, Cassie Mecsery has learned to look for small blessings.

The Darien resident juggles parenting her young children while handling the day-to-day operations of the Greenwich-based Cos Cob TV & Audio. And since 2019, she has been a caregiver for her husband, Sean Mecsery, who is currently living with an aggressive form of brain cancer.

I think I'm not really fully processing it, Cassie Mecsery said. The only way to handle it is almost to live in a state of denial. Yes, it does seem like a lot. But there really is no other option.

Sean Mecsery was diagnosed with late-stage glioblastoma in October 2019, at 48 years old. Glioblastoma is the most common cancer that begins in the brain and takes the form of aggressive and fast-growing tumors, according to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. There is no cure and limited treatment options.

For the past two years, Cassie Mecsery said her husband has attended numerous doctors appointments, undergone radiation treatment and chemotherapy, and tried a clinical trial in California. The cancerous brain tumor had come back twice within two years. Now, the tumor is back for a fourth time.

In order to cope with the medical expenses, which Cassie Mecsery said have presented the family with a heavy financial burden, she started a GoFundMe earlier this week. In just days, it raised $45,000 of its $75,000 goal from more than 330 donors.

Just the fact that people are donating at all and that they show that they care and they support our family, it just meant a lot to me, Cassie Mecsery said. It's funny how you look at some of the small blessings. That the community is rallying behind us and sharing this GoFundMe  it melts my heart.

Previously, starting a GoFundMe was not something Sean Mecsery wanted to do, his wife said. The family initially did not tell many people that Sean had been diagnosed with cancer.

Launching the GoFundMe now is really sad in a way because the fact that he's OK with it means that he knows things are getting pretty bad, Cassie Mecsery said. Were now on this fourth recurrence that is affecting his language, ability to function, and the expenses are mounting up. They are expenses we were not planning for.

The money will go toward funding the exploratory treatments Sean Mecsery has been using, which are not on the approved list of drugs for the cancer. Because of this, the familys insurance often declines to pay for the treatment, leaving them to pay out-of-pocket, Cassie Mecsery said.

Anything left over will be put into a college fund for the Mecserys two children, 6-year-old Calista and 2-year-old Westley. Sean Mecsery also has another daughter from a previous marriage.

It has been difficult for Sean Mecsery to step away from the family business, which his father created in 1945 and owned before him, Cassie Mecsery said. He began tagging along with his father to the store when he was still in grade school, returning to help run it after graduating from Vanderbilt University.

The store has evolved into an electronics and home video installation service. Cassie Mecesery said the store has customers from all over the area, including Darien.

Sean Mecsery was able to work at Cos Cob TV until early 2020, when Cassie Mecsery helped take over, she said. With some experience in e-commerce and digital retail, Cassie Mecsery said she had to learn the ropes of the business quickly after her husbands condition worsened. She now runs it full-time, along with accompanying her husband to appointments and treatments.

In the Mecsery household, there is now a renewed emphasis on slowing down and being aware of the preciousness of time, Cassie Mecsery said.

Because there is no real cure, most glioblastoma patients are faced with odds that are stacked against them.

The statistics are horrific, in terms of survival, Cassie Mecsery said. When you first get this diagnosis and you read these statistics, you're angry, you're sad. There's nothing good about it.

Currently, Sean Mecsery is experiencing severe symptoms: After the fourth tumor was discovered in February 2021, he has lost much function in his right arm, and he gets easily tired, Cassie Mecsery said.

It is nearly impossible for Sean Mecsery to do tasks like reading or writing. He also has aphasia, a condition that makes coherent speaking much harder.

But she said he still makes it a point to be with his children, taking them to lunch and participating in family photoshoots to capture the little moments.

And he can still express this about his children: Theyre the best, Sean Mecsery said.

raga.justin@hearst.com
Looking at the structural problems of Canadian conservatism at the dawn of 2022 (Part Two) By Mark Wegierski

web posted January 10, 2022 The Toronto-based Mackenzie Institute (despite a far higher profile in the late-1980s) appeared to mostly have been (from the 1990s until early 2014) the personal enterprise of one indigent person. The full name of the Institute was rendered in earlier years as The Mackenzie Institute for the Study of Terrorism, Revolution, and Propaganda. In early 2014, The Mackenzie Institute revamped its website and appears to have become more dynamic. The Ottawa-based Centre for Immigration Policy Reform, which was founded around 2011, appears to have become more active in 2014. Its main leading figures were the late Martin Collacott, and James Bissett, both of them formerly being prominent Canadian diplomats and civil servants. The Centre argues for lowered numbers and more responsible selection and screening in immigration, temporary worker, and refugee policies. The author is also aware of an association called Societe Macdonald-Cartier Society. For non-partisan celebration of the Canadian Monarchy, there is the Monarchist League of Canada. The profile of social and cultural conservatism in Canada is rather thin. The main social conservative publications are The Interim: Canadas Life and Family Newspaper (and an associated website, lifesite.net). The longtime magazine Catholic Insight (Toronto) ceased printing in 2015. Lifesite has tried to found a similar magazine, called Faithful Insight. Lifesite has had to defend itself from an irksome libel suit that could have potentially financially crippled the website. (However, the litigant passed away in 2014.) The main pro-life, pro-family association is called the Campaign Life Coalition. There is a French-language, Quebec-based, social conservative intellectual journal, called Egards. The most prominent think-tank of what could be called broadly religious conservatives is Cardus. Cardus has linked with the Centre for Cultural Renewal (formerly the Centre for Renewal in Public Policy). Cardus publishes a magazine called Convivium, as well as Comment. However, Convivium has become an online-only publication  its last print issue appeared in January 2017. Cardus is a think-tank which does not yet offer scholarships or grants (beyond one, as far as the author of this article can recall). In earlier articles, it had been suggested that Cardus could try to move in the direction of becoming an institution like the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) in the United States. The ISI, which has, for most of its history, been mostly traditionalist conservative, offers very extensive scholarships to students, as well as publishing scholarly journals and books, and holding various seminars and conferences for promising students and academics. There is also the Ottawa-based Institute for Marriage and Family Canada. In British Columbia, there is the Canada Family Action group. And, for many decades, REAL Women of Canada has been a well-known association. To be continued. Mark Wegierski is a Canadian writer and historical researcher. Home
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Police at the site of the alleged encounter of the four accused in the rape and murder of a veterinary on the outskirts of Hyderabad. (PTI File Image)

Hyderabad: There are possibilities of FIRs and criminal cases against officials involved in the death of the four accused in the Disha encounter killing, opined advocates involved in the case. The commission, which conducted the investigations and hearings, will be submitting a report to the Supreme Court on February 2, following which a decision will be taken with regard to starting a fresh investigation with an FIR against the officials involved in the encounter case.

V.S. Sirpurkar commission chairman and members Justice Rekha P. Sondur Baldota and Dr D.R. Karthikeyan finished their cross-examination in the case. They will be submitting their report to the Supreme Court as scheduled on February 2, said independent counsel P.V. Krishnamachary, the advocate representing the family of the four accused  Mohammed Arif, Jollu Shiva, Jollu Naveen and Ch. Chennakesavulu.

The court is likely to launch a fresh investigation with an FIR against the police officials involved in the case, he said.

The panel was set up on December 12, 2019 to inquire into the circumstances leading to the killing of four accused in the case. The victim Disha was kidnapped and sexually assaulted near Outer Ring Road (ORR) on the outskirts of Hyderabad on the night of November 27, 2019. After the sexual assault, the accused murdered her and set her body on fire at an underpass in Chatanpally.
Bengaluru: Karnataka Home minister Araga Jnanendra on Monday informed that an FIR has been registered against 30 people for violating COVID-19 protocols during Congress' Mekedatu padayatra amid the COVID-19 restrictions in the state.

"FIR has been registered against 30 people for violating COVID-19 protocols. Ramanagara district administration has taken action as per the law. We will not spare anybody who violates the law," Araga Jnanendra told ANI.

The Congress in Karnataka on Sunday began its 11 days padayatra, demanding implementation of the Mekedatu project across the Cauvery river, despite the government's COVID-19 restrictions.

Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai slammed Congress leader DK Shivakumar, who reportedly refused to take a COVID test after the padayatra.

"This shows his culture; he is not bothered about the health of other people also," the Chief Minister said.

Shivakumar was leading the yatra.

The Home Minister had earlier informed that the state government have given free hand to the Ramanagar District Collector and Superintendent of Police to take action as per law.

The Karnataka government has imposed a curfew on weekends and restricted public gatherings to fight the third wave of COVID-19, till January 19. It has also imposed a night curfew and has prohibited all rallies, dharnas, protests, among others.

The Mekedatu balancing reservoir-cum drinking water project, to be constructed across the Cauvery river basin, has been at the centre of controversy between the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Earlier too on July 12, 2021, Bommai had said that the Centre will have to give clearance to the project as per law and there is no reason the state government will stop the project.
Anyone over 60 years of age, or those eligible from other categories for the booster dose, or precautionary dose, can get their third shot starting Monday.  AP

Hyderabad: Health Minister T Harish Rao will formally launch the booster dose vaccination campaign in the state at the Government Unani hospital in Charminar on Monday.

The booster dose, a third shot of Covid vaccine, is being made available to all those over the age of 60 years, frontline and health care workers, as well as those suffering with other comorbidities that makes them vulnerable to Covid infection.

There are an estimated 41.6 lakh people who are over the age of 60 in Telangana according to health department data. From among these, around 20 per cent, or 8.32 lakh are believed to be also suffering from comorbidities.

Anyone over 60 years of age, or those eligible from other categories for the booster dose, or precautionary dose, can get their third shot starting Monday. However, they should have completed nine months after taking their second dose before receiving the third dose of the vaccine.

As per Government of India guidelines, the manufacturer of the third dose should be the same as the first two doses. For instance, if a person received two doses of Covishield vaccine, then the third dose will also be that of Covishield.

No prior appointments will be necessary and people can go to their near government vaccination centre to get their third dose, the government said here on Sunday.
Hanamkonda: Assam is a very small state compared to Telangana and its GDP is also less than that of the TS. But, when the Assam government gave one lakh jobs to youths in a year after the BJP took power, why could the Telangana government not do as much, asked Assam chief minister Hemanta Biswa Sarma here on Sunday.

Sarma noted that the unemployed youth in Telangana were in the forefront of the struggle for achieving statehood and they were being ignored by the TRS government.

The Assam CM was participating in a protest organised by TS employees and teachers seeking withdrawal of GO-317. The event held at a function hall in Hanamkonda district also saw the participation of BJP state chief Bandi Sanjay, Huzurabad MLA Etela Rajendar and OBC Morcha national president K Laxman.

Biswa Sarma alleged that KCR was ruling the state using his police and money power, but he forgot that money and police power will not work in front of the peoples power as was proven in the recent Huzurabad assembly by-election.

Even after spending more than 500 crore, the TRS was humbled by BJP nominee and former state health minister Etala in the by-polls, he pointed out.

I came to Telangana state to learn something from CM KCR, but found after coming here that there is nothing to learn from him. The TRS government is working against the employees, teachers and the youths, he said.

When prime minister Modi is sacrificing his life for the nation, chief minister Rao is only striving hard to make his son the next CM, the Assam CM said.

Sarma said, Now, KCR joined hands with the left parties that had opposed the formation of a separate Telangana state. People are no more going to trust the CM. He is not bothered about peoples issues and is working only to make money for his family members. The people are fed up. It will be the BJP that would form the government here after the 2023 assembly elections.

Bandi Sanjay said that when BJP fought for the rights of the employees and teachers, the CM is using the police power and registering false cases against me and other BJP leaders and sending us to jail." BJP leaders "are not afraid of going to jail for the sake of the people and we are not going to leave KCR and his family alone. We will send him to jail no matter where he hides, Bandi warned.

He said PM Modi called him and appreciated the BJP state unit for extending its support to the employees and teachers and the PM has asked us to continue fighting against the TRS government on people's issues.

As soon as the BJP forms a government after the 2023 assembly elections, it will throw GO-317 into the dust bin, he said.

KCR is afraid of BJPs agitations. There is nobody to support him in the state. That is why he is joining hands with the left parties though he had been criticising these parties till yesterday. KCR wanted to support China, which is against India. As part of this endeavour, he is joining hands with the Communists, he alleged.

Huzurabad MLA Etela Rajendar said, The TRS government is about to sink. It may not continue until the 2023 assembly elections and there is a possibility of assembly polls before 2023," he said.

Using police power, KCR is trying to harass rival political leaders and the media. By lodging false cases, he is sending them to jail. How-so-ever KCR tries to suppress the movement, he would face equally strong protests. The same scene that evolved against the TRS in Huzurabad will be repeated across Telangana state. People are ready to organise a funeral for the TRS party, he said.

Meanwhile, the police department beefed up security in Hanamkonda in view of the visit of Assam chief minister and state BJP leaders to prevent any incident.
HYDERABAD: Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) working president K.T. Rama Rao on Monday said the state government had spent Rs 2.70 lakh crore on agriculture and allied sectors since its formation in June 2014. Speaking to media persons at Telangana Bhavan on the occasion of Rythu Bandhu financial assistance crossing Rs 50,000 crore mark on Monday, Rama Rao dared 'political tourists' from the BJP visiting Telangana to specify any other state which spent more than the Telangana government or brought revolutionary changes in agriculture sector for the benefit of farmers. He challenged the Opposition Congress and the BJP leaders to come for an open debate on this issue.

Giving the break-up of the amount spent, Rama Rao said the TRS government had spent Rs 50,000 crore on Rythu Bandhu, Rs 3,000 crore on Rythu Bima, Rs 19,000 crore on crop loan waiver scheme, Rs 41,786 crore on 24x7 free power to agriculture, Rs 1.16 lakh

crore on irrigation sector, Rs 951 crore on farm mechanisation, Rs 573 crore on construction of Rythu Vedikas, Rs 750 crore on construction of crop drying platforms (Rythu Kallam), Rs 5,000 on crore sheep distribution scheme, Rs 2,000 crore on dairy sector and 20,000 crore on distribution of fishlings.

"There are 28 states in India. I dare the BJP and the Congress to come forward for an open debate whether any of these states are spending or implementing the schemes on agriculture and allied sectors which are superior to Telangana. Political tourists are coming to Telangana and criticising the TRS and Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao. All kinds of tourists are welcome to Telangana. Tourism industry is in bad shape in the state due to Covid. It's easy to criticise anyone. If they have guts, they should come out with facts and figures on the schemes and the money spent on agriculture and allied sectors in their respective states," Rama Rao said.

Stating that Telangana under the TRS regime had not only become fertile in one crore acres, but also a granary of over three crore tonnes of paddy which is beyond storage capacity of the Food Corporation of India (FCI). Rama Rao said, "Today, Telangana is at the doorsteps of achieving five revolutions, namely green (agriculture), pink (meat), white (dairy), blue (fish) and plant (Haritha Haaram), due to the measures of the Chief Minister."

He said even the opposition leaders who owned farmlands were benefiting from the scheme. He pointed out that schemes like Rythu Bandhu were being emulated by other states ruled by the Opposition parties and even the BJP government at the Centre in the name of "PM Kisan Yojana".

Rama Rao thanked the Chief Minister on behalf of 65 lakh farmers and their families as well as the TRS activists for implementing the Rythu Bandhu scheme without any interruption since May 2018 despite financial constraints due to Covid.

While the TRS government waived off farm loans of two lakh farmers in its second term in office since December 2018, Rama Rao assured that the remaining farmers too would get the scheme benefits soon and the delay was because of Covid-induced financial crisis.

Rama Rao thanked people, especially farmers for participating in the Rythu Bandhu celebrations, in adherence to Covid-19 guidelines.
VIJAYAWADA: Cinematography minister Perni Venkataramaiah alias Nani said that no illegal action had been taken with regard to lowering the prices of film tickets. The prices had been set as per GO No 35.

The minister was speaking to film director Ram Gopal Varma during a meeting on the issue, and said the YSRC government had done nothing new in the matter. They discussed other issues concerning the film industry as well, including the online ticket system.

Minister Venkataramaiah said that everyone could express their opinions on the ticket prices to the committee that was set up by the government. They could also meet the ministry which would convey their views to the committee.

Speaking to media persons, Varma said his talks with the minister had concluded on a positive note. He said that it was brought to the notice of the government that by dropping the movie ticket price the film industry would be severely affected.

Varma said the meeting had discussed five issues, of which the main one was reduction of ticket price. He said the minister had brought up a few issues which would be discussed with the film fraternity.

Varma said, I do not agree with the claim that the government has reduced movie ticket prices as part of political rivalry. However, the government decision will have its effect on all movies and cine stars. I dont think that the government has taken this decision to target Pawan Kalyan and N. Balakrishna.
Nervousness owing to the regulatory void is palpable among cryptocurrency exchanges in India. This has led many to question the future of blockchain technology, which is the technology backbone of digital currencies.

In this context, some words of the Reserve Bank of Indias governor Shaktikanta Das seem pertinent. The blockchain technology has been there for 10 years and can grow without cryptocurrencies, RBI Governor has said recently. Stakeholders operating in the ecosystem also carry similar views.

Currently, the challenge is coming from the regulatory uncertainty for cryptocurrencies. But, blockchain as a technology is likely to thrive as there are different use cases. From smart contracts to trade finance, the uses of blockchain technology are many. Moreover, the government itself is promoting this technology as evident from the fact that IIT Kanpur in collaboration with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has launched a course on blockchain, said Pareekh Jain, an IT outsourcing advisor & Founder of Pareekh Consulting.

Read more: Why the luxury tourism industry is latching onto Blockchain technology

The use cases of blockchain technology are many. Trade finance and smart contracts have emerged as live examples in recent years. Increasingly, digital assets - not limited to virtual currencies but include equities, bonds, digital golds - are being discussed for storing in blockchain ledgers.

Apart from financial services, players operating in retail, hospitality, mobility, and healthcare among others are actively pursuing various blockchain-powered solutions for implementation across the globe. India is also part of this broader trend.

Last year, big banks including the State Bank of India (SBI), ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra, Axis Bank, and 11 others have formed a new company called the Indian Banks Blockchain Infrastructure Company Private Limited (IBBIC). This new entity has a mandate of leveraging blockchain technology to solve a central problem in traditional banking  the processing of Letters of Credit (LCs), GST invoices, and e-way bills.

Interestingly, this system will be based on Infosys Finacle Connect, which is a blockchain-based platform that enables digitisation and automation of trade-related financial processes. Not only traditional banks, but Indias burgeoning fintech ecosystem are also driving blockchain adoption in recent years.

While Indian IT services biggies are coming up with many blockchain-based innovative solutions, the startup ecosystem is also doing its bit. Companies like Oropocket, GoSats. OpenXcell, SoluLab, and many other startups are providing blockchain-powered solutions to enterprises across the spectrum.

Against this backdrop, many feel India can be at the epicentre of blockchain innovation than coming up with crippling regulations on cryptocurrencies- the biggest use cases so far.

Those blockchain startups, which are more like service providers, will not face any regulatory heat but those who are designing completely decentralised applications, where having a token for their ecosystem is a good idea, will sadly be impacted by this, said Yash Mishra, cofounder of VoxWeb social media & Vollar cryptocurrency.

In this context, pivoting is undesirable when your current offering is doing well. The government interference in Web3 on the pretext of regulation will damage Indias prospects to be at the forefront of such massive shift, he added.

Web 3.0 to work as a catalyst

There is a raging debate with regard to Web 3.0 right now. Such is the intensity of the debate that tech titans Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey had different views on this emerging theme. While Web1 was about the static web pages of the 1990s, Web2 saw the emergence of social networks and mobile apps.

In Web 3.0, the third generation of the internet is built on the concept of edge computing and uses platforms built upon blockchain, cryptocurrencies, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), and many more.

Experts are of the view that the emergence of Web 3.0 will work as a catalyst for the blockchain ecosystem as a whole.

This is mainly because of the concept of decentralisation used in Web 3.0. According to a report by the US India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), Web 3.0 can help India contribute an additional $1.1 trillion to its GDP over the next 11 years.

Growing investors interest

No wonder, investors are aggressively infusing capital into blockchain-based startups in India. Last year was the best year for domestic crypto, blockchain startups as a fundraising took a giant leap.

Total risk funding in Indian crypto and blockchain startups shot up by more than 15 times to around $600 million, from just $37 million in 2020.

Though the lions share of this funding went to crypto exchange platforms like CoinDCX and Coinswitch Kuber  the two new crypto exchange unicorns in India, other startups are also getting investors attention of late.

As more blockchain-based solutions get implemented, fundraising by these new-age companies is likely to gather pace in coming years.

Of late, we see a lot of interest in B2B space. Because the capital required is less as compared to B2C startups and the returns are higher, said V Balakrishnan, Cofounder & Chairman of Exfinity Venture Partners and former CFO of Infosys with regard to startups operating in deep tech like blockchain technology space.

So, irrespective of proposed regulations on cryptocurrencies, the Indian blockchain ecosystem is all set to grow.

And the government, with its policymaking, can definitely lend a helping hand for its healthy & sustainable growth.

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The construction arm of Larsen & Toubro has secured an order for a significant and important part of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project.

The National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) awarded L&T the contract to design and construct Package No. MAHSR C-5 of the Mumbai Ahmedabad High Speed Rail Project.

L&T, in a press statement, confirmed the development, but did not specify the value of the project. However, it termed the project significant meaning it is worth Rs 1,000 crore to Rs 2,500 crore.

"The major scope of work for the project comprises design & construction of Civil and Building works for a double line high speed railway of a length of 8.198 km (chainage 373.700 to chainage 401.898)," the statement read.

The scope also includes the major station of Vadodara, Confirmation Car Base, Viaduct and Bridges, Crossing Bridges, Architectural, MEP and other associated works, the release added.

The project alignment passes through Vadodara in Gujarat and the project is scheduled to be completed within 49 months.

L&T is already executing two other packages (MAHSR C-4 and MAHSR C-6) of the high-speed corridor.

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For the first time in 234 days, the state capital on Sunday recorded over 9,000 new cases of people infected with the novel coronavirus.

The 9,020 city cases revealed account for 75% of the 12,000 new cases made public by the authorities on Sunday. The last time such numbers were recorded was on May 21, two weeks following the peaking of the second wave, when 9,591 cases were recorded.

Together with 901 discharges, these increases left the states active caseload at 38,370 cases.

The next highest case increases in Sundays bulletin were 398 cases recorded in Mysuru, 340 in Udupi, 298 in Dakshina Kannada, and 198 in Shivamogga. These increases are the result of a scaling up of testing, with the state having conducted an average of 1.41 lakh tests in the last seven days, which is a significant jump from the 99,708 tests done a fortnight ago.

The testing increases, however, have not been able to clamp down the states rising test positivity rate, which hit 6.33% on Sunday. Much of the testing increases were in Bengaluru Urban, which conducted 5.29 lakh tests in the last seven days.

Meanwhile, the state also revealed four new deaths to Covid-19. One of the fatalities had happened on Sunday and was a 50-year-old man with symptoms of Influenza-Like Illness (ILI), who succumbed 24 hours after being diagnosed with the disease. The other victims were aged between 77 and 83.

Child cases

Meanwhile, the state recorded 873 cases of pre-teens (0-9) having been

infected with Covid-19 in the last days and 3,618 teens (10-19) having been infected. These numbers are a significant rise from the 120 pre-teens and 539 teen cases recorded a fortnight ago.

Vaccination rate

As of Sunday afternoon, the state said it has vaccinated 15,58,067 children aged 15 to 17 in the state  constituting 28.28% of the target population.

Meanwhile, the states overall first dose coverage of adults reached 98.88%, while its second dose coverage hit 81.22%.

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Just how liberal is Canada today? By Mark Wegierski

web posted January 10, 2022 One of the central reasons for the continuing failure of the Canadian Right since the 1960s is the ongoing establishment of vast liberal-leaning media, juridical, academic, educational, bureaucratic, and corporate structures  a nexus of interests which certain American and European critics have called the managerial-therapeutic regime  which could be characterized as socially liberal and economically conservative. There is also the fact that North American pop-culture is the primary lived cultural reality for most people in Canada, which tends to reinforce socially liberal, consumerist/consumptionist, and antinomian attitudes, especially among the young. Unlike in most other Western countries, where countervailing factors of various kinds exist to the hegemony of the managerial-therapeutic regime, current-day Canada is probably an example of such a managerial-therapeutic system in its purest form. Some of these countervailing factors in the United States include such things as the far greater saliency of the military, the far greater presence of organized religion (both in regard to fundamentalist Protestants and traditionalist Catholics), homeschooling as a major social trend, the existence of probably hundreds of more traditional-leaning private colleges, and a large network of right-leaning think-tanks and publications  which together are part of what some have called the Right Nation. At the same time, the United States has a more robust tradition of independent-minded, left-wing, anti-corporate, ecological, or agrarian dissent, such as that typified by Ralph Nader, Christopher Lasch, Rachel Carson, Helen and Scott Nearing, and Wendell Berry. It could be argued that social, political, cultural, and economic life in Canada  lacking, in fact, either an authentic Right or Left -- has therefore become the least subject to popular will and democratic input. Indeed, it could be called post-democratic. The lack of robust democratic participation and input in Canada should be of concern to theorists across the political spectrum. Insofar as the system maintains itself through massive prior constraint against a very broad array of ideas, beliefs, and opinions, its pretense to be upholding democracy is questionable. Such a profound lack of equilibrium is radically harmful to a more ideal-typical form and exercise of democracy. It should be pointed out that Canada today may be seen as combining the most liberal aspects of America and Europe -- indeed, it may be world's most liberal society. Like some European countries such as the Netherlands, it is extremely socially-liberal, as demonstrated by the Canadian federal government's total acceptance of same-sex marriage. Although a vote on the issue took place in the Federal Parliament in 2005, it was with direct referral to the Canadian Supreme Court. What conservative critics call "judicial activism" is in Canada a comparatively late but now flourishing development, which only really got underway with the introduction of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) into the Canadian Constitution. The Charter, clearly a left-liberal rather than classical liberal document, essentially enshrined virtually the entire agenda of Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Canada's left-leaning Liberal Prime Minister from 1968-1984, except for nine months in 1979-1980) as the highest law of the land. After Brian Mulroney's huge Progressive Conservative majorities of 1984 and 1988 -- whose record in regard to social and cultural conservatism was indeed abysmal -- Canada's federal Liberal Party (headed by Jean Chretien) comfortably won the elections of 1993, 1997, and 2000. Liberal Paul Martin, Jr., was reduced to a minority government (a plurality of seats in the House of Commons) in 2004. However, Stephen Harpers Conservative governance in 2006-2015 tended towards centrism and moderation, despite the overheated rhetoric of his left-wing critics. This was partly due to the fact Harper held only a minority government in 2006-2011, failing to win a majority in the 2006 and 2008 elections. His majority government in 2011-2015 was also a disappointment for small-c conservatives and he in any case failed to break the pattern of the almost-inevitable return of the Liberals to power. Justin Trudeau (Pierres son) won a strong Liberal majority in 2015. Although he was reduced to a minority government in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, he still comfortably governed, mainly with the support of the New Democratic Party (NDP), which is even further left. On the other hand, unlike some European countries, Canada is characterized by very high rates of immigration, and it has whole-heartedly embraced multiculturalism, affirmative action (called "employment equity" in Canada), and diversity with a startling degree of unidirectional intensity. Canada's official immigration numbers were for over three decades, more than twice as large as those of the United States -- per capita -- and are now probably among the highest in the world. With a population now reaching about 38 million persons, Canada had been receiving every year about a quarter-million immigrants. (The Liberals have recently raised the numbers to 300,000, and, in 2021 and coming years, to over 400,000 a year.) At the same time, Canada has now embraced some of the more negative aspects of American society -- such as the excesses of pop-culture, the trend to political-correctness, and growing litigiousness. However, it lacks many aspects of America that may temper the aforementioned trends. In Canada, for example, the government accounts for about half of the GDP. (In contrast to about forty percent in the United States.) Taxes are very high, relative to the United States. The Canadian medical system is stringently socialized to an extent unheard of in the United States. Canada's gun control laws are also extremely strict. Unlike the United States, fundamentalist Christianity plays virtually no role in Canada. The debate about abortion and many other social issues is considered effectively closed. In another extreme contrast to the United States, Canada has virtually no military (the entire armed forces, including army, navy, air force, and reserves, number about 92,600 men and women) and there is major disdain throughout much of Canadian society (and especially in elite opinion) towards the military. Canada's security provisions, refugee-policy, and control of its borders are also extremely lackadaisical. Canadians appear to be characterized both today and in their earlier history by an unusual deference to governmental authority. Before 1965, Canada was probably a substantively more conservative society than the United States, but now, when the paradigm at the top has been fundamentally altered -- in the wake of the Pierre "Trudeau revolution" -- most Canadians are manifestly willing to follow the new, politically-correct line from Ottawa. There is virtually no heritage of independence, self-reliance, or belief in rambunctious free speech in Canada. Indeed, Canadian officials point proudly to their laws against "hate-speech" as highly necessary. They say they do not have "the American hang-ups" about restricting freedom of speech. What may be concluded from the combination of points made above is that right-of-centre positions are rather rarely seen or heard in Canada (except perhaps in the Western Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan). It could be argued that, given the left-liberal predominance in the Canadian media (especially in the taxpayer-funded CBC), in the education system (from daycare to universities), in the judiciary and justice system, in the government bureaucracies, in so-called high culture (typified by government-subsidized "CanLit"), in North American pop-culture and "youth culture," in the big Canadian banks and corporations, and (on most issues) in the leaderships of the main churches in Canada, any existing right-of-centre tendencies are being continually ground down. There is also the panoply of special interest groups, who receive extensive government and corporate funding. The social, political, and cultural situation of conservatives in Canada is desperate indeed. Mark Wegierski is a Canadian writer and historical researcher. Home
On Dec. 29, The Gateway Pundit, a far-right website that often spreads conspiracy theories, published an article falsely implying that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had withdrawn authorisation of all PCR tests for detecting Covid-19. The article collected 22,000 likes, comments and shares on Facebook and Twitter.

On TikTok and Instagram, videos of at-home Covid-19 tests displaying positive results after being soaked in drinking water and juice have gone viral in recent weeks, and were used to push the false narrative that coronavirus rapid tests do not work. Some household liquids can make a test show a positive result, health experts say, but the tests remain accurate when used as directed. One TikTok video showing a home test that came out positive after being placed under running water was shared at least 140,000 times.

And on YouTube, a video titled Rapid antigen tests debunked was posted on Jan. 1 by the Canadian far-right website Rebel News. It generated over 40,000 views, and its comments section was a hotbed of misinformation. The straight up purpose of this test is to keep the case #s as high as possible to maintain fear & incentive for more restrictions, said one comment with more than 200 likes. And of course Profit.

Also Read | High-profile breakthrough Covid-19 cases trigger vaccine misinformation in US

Misinformation about Covid-19 tests has spiked across social media in recent weeks, researchers say, as coronavirus cases have surged again worldwide because of the highly infectious omicron variant.

The burst of misinformation threatens to further stymie public efforts to keep the health crisis under control. Previous spikes in pandemic-related falsehoods focused on the vaccines, masks and the severity of the virus. The falsehoods help undermine best practices for controlling the spread of the coronavirus, health experts say, noting that misinformation remains a key factor in vaccine hesitancy.

The categories include falsehoods that PCR tests do not work; that the counts for flu and Covid-19 cases have been combined; that PCR tests are vaccines in disguise; and that at-home rapid tests have a predetermined result or are unreliable because different liquids can turn them positive.

These themes jumped into the thousands of mentions in the last three months of 2021, compared with just a few dozen in the same time period in 2020, according to Zignal Labs, which tracks mentions on social media, on cable television and in print and online outlets.

The added demand for testing due to omicron and the higher prevalence of breakthrough cases has given purveyors of misinformation an opportune moment to exploit, said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online conspiracy theories. The false narratives support the whole idea of not trusting the infection numbers or trusting the death count, she said.

The Gateway Pundit did not respond to a request for comment. TikTok pointed to its policies that prohibit misinformation that could cause harm to peoples physical health. YouTube said it was reviewing the videos shared by The New York Times in line with its Covid-19 misinformation policies on testing and diagnostics. Twitter said that it had applied a warning to The Gateway Pundits article in December for violating its coronavirus misinformation policy and that tweets containing false information about widely accepted testing methods would also violate its policy. But the company said it does not take action on personal anecdotes.

Facebook said it had worked with its fact-checking partners to label many of the posts with warnings that directed people toward fact checks of the false claims, and reduced their prominence on its users feeds.

The challenges of the pandemic are constantly changing, and were consistently monitoring for emerging false claims on our platforms, Aaron Simpson, a Facebook spokesman, said in an email.

No medical test is perfect, and legitimate questions about the accuracy of Covid-19 tests have abounded throughout the pandemic. There has always been a risk of a false positive or a false negative result. The Food and Drug Administration says there is a potential for antigen tests to return false positive results when users do not follow the instructions. Those tests are generally accurate when used correctly but in some cases can appear to show a positive result when exposed to other liquids, said Dr. Glenn Patriquin, who published a study about false positives in antigen tests using various liquids in a publication of the American Society for Microbiology.

Using a fluid with a different chemical makeup than what was designed means that result lines might appear unpredictably, said Patriquin, an assistant professor of pathology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.

Complicating matters, there have been some defective products. Last year, the Australian company Ellume recalled about 2 million of the at-home testing products that it had shipped to the United States.

But when used correctly, coronavirus tests are considered reliable at detecting people carrying high levels of the virus. Experts say our evolving knowledge of tests should be a distinct issue from lies about testing that have spread widely on social media  though it does make debunking those lies more challenging.

Science is inherently uncertain and changes, which makes tackling misinformation exceedingly difficult, Koltai said.

Researchers say that the falsehoods are rising despite efforts by social media companies to crack down and that many contain lies that had surfaced in the past.

The surge fits with the misinformation industrys pattern during the pandemic, said John Gregory, deputy health editor at NewsGuard, which rates the credibility of news sites and has tracked the prevalence of Covid-19 and vaccine misinformation. Whatever the current mainstream story is, they seek their own narrative to undermine it.

The CDC said in July that it would withdraw its request to the FDA for emergency-use authorisation of one specific test at the end of the year. Hundreds of other Covid-19 tests are still available from other manufacturers, the CDC later clarified.

Still, posts claiming that the agency had withdrawn support of PCR tests went viral on Facebook. The most widely shared post pushing the falsehood in July collected 11,500 likes, shares and comments, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned social media analytics tool. The post added the falsehood that the CDCs advisory meant that PCR tests could not distinguish between the coronavirus and the flu, when in fact the agency had simply recommended the use of tests that could simultaneously detect and distinguish between the flu and Covid-19.

Despite being fact-checked within days, the claim never fully went away. The Gateway Pundit article revived the claim at the end of the year, collecting nearly double the earlier posts likes, shares and comments on Facebook. On Instagram, screenshots of the article also went viral, collecting hundreds of likes.

Gregory said a similar phenomenon had occurred with social media posts claiming various liquids turned at-home coronavirus tests positive.

On Dec. 23, 2020, a video on YouTube showed coronavirus tests turning positive after being tested on kiwi, orange and berry fruit juice. It collected over 102,000 views. In the same month, a video producing the same results with Coca-Cola was posted on YouTube, collecting 16,800 views.

One year later, a spate of similar videos with the same theme appeared on TikTok and Instagram.

For Koltai, the reemergence of false narratives even after social media companies labeled them a year earlier shows the power of misinformation to thrive when it can latch on to a current event.

That is how narratives can peak at different times, she said.

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Officials from Russia, and the United States and its NATO allies, are meeting this week for negotiations on Moscow's demand for Western security guarantees and the West's concerns about a recent buildup of Russian troops near Ukraine.

Russian and US negotiators have a round of talks scheduled in Geneva on Monday that will be followed by Russia-NATO talks in Brussels and a meeting in Vienna of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe over the course of the week.

Also read: US tamps down expectations for talks with Russia amid Ukraine crisis

Here is a look at the agenda of the security talks and the main issues of contention:

Russian invasion fears

The amassing of Russian troops and equipment near Ukraine's border has caused worries in Kyiv and in the West that Moscow could be planning to launch an invasion.

Moscow has denied such an intention and in turn accused Ukrainian authorities of planning an offensive to reclaim control over territories in eastern Ukraine held by Russia-backed separatists - allegations Ukraine has rejected.

US President Joe Biden twice discussed the Russian troop buildup with Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, warning that Moscow would face severe consequences, including unprecedented economic and financial sanctions, if it attacked its neighbour.

Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and has backed the separatist rebellion that started the same year in the country's east, where more than seven years of fighting has killed over 14,000 people. The West has responded with sanctions that have battered the Russian economy but failed to persuade Moscow to change course.

Russia's security demands

Putin has described the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO and the alliance deploying weapons there as a red line for Moscow. The Kremlin demanded that Washington and its allies make a binding pledge excluding NATO's expansion to Ukraine, Georgia or any other ex-Soviet nations.

Moscow has also demanded that the US and its allies make a commitment not to deploy weapons or conduct any military activities in Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations.

Also Read | US vows 'severe response' to any further Russian aggression in Ukraine

The Kremlin has presented a draft Russia-US security treaty and a blueprint for a Russia-NATO agreement as a starting point for this week's negotiations. They would oblige the alliance not to station any troops in areas where they weren't present in 1997 -- before NATO moved to incorporate former Soviet bloc countries and ex-Soviet republics.

Moscow's proposals also suggest a freeze on patrols by Russian and US naval ships and bombers near each other's frontiers. In addition, they call for efforts to reduce the risk of incidents involving Russia and NATO warships and aircraft, primarily in the Baltic and the Black Seas; a reduction in the scope of military drills; greater transparency and other confidence-building measures.

US and NATO reaction

The US and its allies have roundly rejected the demand for NATO not to admit Ukraine or any other new members, emphasising that a key alliance principle is that membership is open to any qualifying country and no outsiders have veto power.

While Ukraine and Georgia aren't yet ready for NATO membership and have little prospect of being invited to join soon, the Western allies insist that NATO's doors must remain open to them. In 2008, NATO promised to eventually embrace the two nations, although it hasn't offered them a specific road map to membership.

Even though the allies firmly rejected a halt to NATO's expansion as a non-starter, Washington and NATO say they are ready to discuss arms control, confidence-building measures, greater transparency and risk reduction if Russia takes a constructive stance.

US officials said they are open to discussions on curtailing possible future deployments of offensive missiles in Ukraine and putting limits on American and NATO military exercises in Eastern Europe if Russia is willing to back off on Ukraine.

At the same time, the White House has urged Russia to help create a positive environment for the upcoming talks by pulling back its troops from areas near Ukraine. Moscow has dismissed the suggestion, saying it can deploy its forces wherever it deems necessary on its own territory and describing the buildup as a response to hostile moves by NATO.

Time limits

Putin has called the negotiations with the US a positive move but said he wants quick results, warning the West against trying to drown Russia's demands in idle talk.

Asked during a news conference last month if he could guarantee that Russia won't invade Ukraine, Putin responded angrily and said the West must give us guarantees and give them immediately, now.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who heads the Russian delegation at the security talks, described the demand for guarantees that NATO won't expand to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations as absolutely essential and warned that the US refusal to discuss it would make further talks senseless.

We are going there not with a hand outstretched but with a precisely formulated task that we need to solve on conditions that we formulated, Ryabkov said. He warned that Russia wouldn't make any concessions under threats and pressure and noted that the talks may end after the first round if the US and its allies are uncooperative

The Kremlin's blunt demands combined with a push for quick results have fuelled US suspicions that Moscow could make unrealistic requests just to see the talks collapse and then use it as a pretext for aggressive action. Russian diplomats have repudiated the claim.

Military-technical options

While Moscow has denied planning to attack Ukraine, Putin has warned that he would be forced to take unspecified military-technical measures if the West stonewalled on his security demands.

He didn't elaborate beyond saying the Russian response in that scenario could be diverse and will depend on what proposals our military experts submit to me.

Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said Putin had told Biden that Russia would act just as if the US would have acted if it saw offensive weapons deployed next to its borders.

Putin has noted that the new Zircon hypersonic cruise missile could give Russia a previously unseen precision strike potential if fitted to warships deployed to neutral waters. The launch of a salvo of Zircons in late December heralded the completion of tests for the new weapon, which Putin said flies at nine times the speed of sound to a range of more than 1,000 km (620 miles).

While voicing concern that NATO could potentially use Ukrainian territory for the deployment of missiles capable of reaching Moscow in just five minutes, Putin noted that Zircon would give Russia a similar capability.

It would also need just five minutes to reach those who issue orders, Putin said.
Pakistani counterterrorism police have killed six terrorists from the outlawed Islamic State group in a raid at a hideout in the southwestern city of Quetta.

The raid was carried in the Eastern Bypass area on Saturday night, the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) said in a statement, adding that the terror group had been planning a big attack in Quetta.

"There was heavy exchange of fire during the intelligence-based operation conducted on information about the presence of militants in the area. The CTD also seized arms, ammunition and explosive material from a house being used by the members of the banned outfit as their hideout, a CTD official said.

One of the dead terrorists was identified as Asghar Samalani, who had a Rs 20-lakh bounty on his head. He was killed along with other terrorists near a graveyard on Quettas Eastern Bypass, the official said.

They were moving to attack a sensitive installation in Quetta. On receiving the information, a CTD team reached the place and intercepted the terrorists, the CDS spokesman.

The militants were asked to surrender by the CTD personnel, but they started firing indiscriminately and lobbed grenades. A shootout ensued in which six ISIS members were killed while four to five others managed to escape in the dark, the statement said.

Things recovered by the CTD included an improvised explosive device, three submachine guns with 200 rounds, two 9mm pistols with 47 rounds, a hand grenade and two motorcycles, it said.

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Pakistan on Monday sought to take advantage of the hate speeches delivered at an event held in Haridwar last month to renew its campaign against India.

Prime Minister Imran Khan took to Twitter to use the hate speeches delivered at the Dharm Sansad held at Haridwar from December 17 to 19 to continue Pakistans tirade against India. He criticised the Narendra Modi government in New Delhi for its silence over the calls made from the podium during the event for genocide of minorities in India.

The continuing silence of Modi govt (Government) on the call at an extremist Hindutva summit in Dec (December) for genocide of minorities in India, especially the 200 mn (million) Muslim community, begs the question whether the BJP govt (Government) supports this call, he posted on Twitter.

Also read: Supreme Court to examine plea against hate speeches at 'Dharam Sansad'

The continuing silence of Modi govt on the call at an extremist Hindutva summit in Dec for genocide of minorities in India, especially the 200 mn Muslim community, begs the question whether the BJP govt supports this call. It is high time international community took note & acted  Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) January 10, 2022

It is high time international community took note & (and) acted, added Khan.

The Prime Minister of Pakistan also criticised the extremist ideology of the ruling BJP in India. He alleged that all religious minorities had been targeted with impunity by the Hindutva groups in India. The extremist agenda of the Modi govt (Government) a real and present threat to peace in our region, he tweeted on Tuesday.

New Delhi has not yet officially reacted to the tweets by the Prime Minister of the neighbouring country.

Khan has been targeting Modi and his government in New Delhi as well as the BJP and its mentor, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), not only on Twitter, but also in his speeches in the international forums, mostly on the issue of human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir, but sometimes also on alleged targeting of the minorities elsewhere in India.

New Delhi has also been turning the table on Khan Government, calling it out for atrocities on minorities in Pakistan.

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who held talks with Sri Lanka's top leadership on Sunday, has said that no "third country" should "interfere" in the close ties between Beijing and Colombo, in an apparent reference to Indias concerns over Beijings big-ticket strategic projects in the island nation in the Indian Ocean.

Wang, who travelled to Colombo during the weekend from the Maldives on a two-day visit, in his meeting with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa said that the friendly relationship between China and Sri Lanka benefits the development of both countries and serves the fundamental interest of both peoples, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

"It does not target any third party and should not be interfered with by any third party, Xinhua quoted Wang as saying, in a thinly veiled reference to India.

China is seeking to deepen its ties with Sri Lanka making billions of dollars of investments in ports and infrastructure projects amid criticism that they are debt traps.

Also Read | India not ready to allow any third country to mediate between itself and China

Chinas takeover of the Hambantota port on 99 years lease for $1.2 billion debt swap drew international concerns over Beijing acquiring strategic assets far away from home by providing heavy loans and investment to smaller nations.

The Hambantota port together with Colombo port city project where China is building a new city with reclaimed land in the sea were viewed with concern, especially in India as Beijing seeks to increase its presence in the Indian Ocean.

There have been global concerns over debt traps and regional hegemony by China using its Belt and Road (BRI) infrastructure projects.

China is doling out huge sums of money for infrastructure projects in countries from Asia to Africa and Europe. The US' previous Donald Trump administration had been extremely critical of the BRI and was of the view that China's "predatory financing" is leaving smaller counties under huge debt endangering their sovereignty.

Also Read | Why China is renaming locations across Asia

Last month, China suspended a project to install hybrid energy plants in three islands of Sri Lankas north, citing security concern from a third party, amid reports of Indian concern over its location which is not far from Tamil Nadus coast.

Significantly, Wang during his talks with the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G. L Peiris proposed to establish a forum for the development of Indian Ocean island countries, which observers say is an attempt by Beijing to expand its influence in the region.

During my visit to several Indian Ocean island countries this time, I feel that all island countries share similar experiences and common needs, with similar natural endowment and development goals, and have favourable conditions and full potential for strengthening mutually beneficial cooperation, a press release by the Chinese Foreign Ministry quoted Wang as saying.

"China proposes that a forum on the development of Indian Ocean island countries should be held at an appropriate time to build consensus and synergy and promote common development, he said, adding that Sri Lanka can play an important role in it.

Before his Colombo visit, Wang also visited the Maldives where he held talks with top leaders of the island nation to deepen ties with China.

Six island nations are located in the Indian Ocean, namely Comoros, Madagascar, the Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka.

In a tweet, the Chinese embassy in Colombo described Sri Lanka as "real Pearl" of the Indian Ocean.

In his meeting with Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, Wang praised him and described the Sri Lankan leader as an old friend to the Chinese people.

"You paid six visits to China when serving as Sri Lankan President...We hold this special friendship dear and this story will be enshrined in the history of China-Sri Lanka relations," Wang said.

Significantly, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who is the brother Mahinda Rajapaksa in his meeting with Wang raised Sri Lankas deepening forex crisis and spiralling external debt and sought Beijings assistance.

President Rajapaksa pointed out that it would be a great relief to Sri Lanka if attention could be paid to restructuring the debt repayments as a solution to the economic crisis that has arisen in the face of Covid-19 pandemic, according to a statement issued by the President's Office.

It is estimated that Sri Lanka owes debt payments to China in the region of $1.5 to 2 billion this year.

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The Union Health Ministry in a letter to the states, said that the precautionary dose given for healthcare workers, frontline workers and senior citizens will be of the same vaccine as the other two doses.

On Thursday, a letter written by Rajesh Bhushan, Health Secretary read as follows- "The administration of precaution dose for healthcare workers, frontline workers including personnel deployed for election duty and persons aged more than 60 years with co-morbidities will be starting from January 10, 2022, under the National Covid-19 Vaccination Programme. In this regard, the following may be noted, the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) has recommended the administration of the homologous vaccine for HCWs, FLWs and elders (more than 60 years of age) with co-morbidities i.e. the same vaccine that has been administered for the previous two doses would be given as the precaution dose to the eligible beneficiaries," according to a Zeenews report.

The letter also states that privately run hospitals can provide their staff with the precautionary dose, from January 10 onwards, either for free or of cost.

Also Read: Fresh registration not needed for precautionary Covid-19 vaccine dose: Centre

Here is some information on the precautionary dose:

- There is no need for new registration for those eligible for the precautionary or the third dose of Covid vaccine

- Those who have taken both Covid jabs and are eligible can take appointments or walk-in to any Covid-19 Vaccination Centre to get the third dose

- Vaccination with onsite appointment starts on January 10

- The Health Ministry will release the schedules for vaccination on January 8

- Online appointment facility will start by January 8

India has to date administered over 148 crore vaccine doses. 91 per cent of all adults have received at least one dose while 66 per cent have been fully vaccinated.

The vaccination programme for children between the ages of 15 and 18, started earlier this month and more than 17 per cent have been administered the first dose.

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Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati has expressed concern over the "increasing" use of religion in politics during elections and said the Election Commission must curb this worrying trend. Congress declared their second list of candidates for the 2022 Goa polls. Meanwhile, the CAIT has urged the ECI to introduce 'e-voting'. Stay tuned for more updates.
After initially welcoming the Covid protocols announced by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in campaigning, political leaders are now developing cold feet on the issue.

The temperature in political circles has fallen with the mercury, while apprehensions are growing.

A sitting MLA, waiting in his car outside the BJP state headquarters, said: "We cannot publicly oppose the ECI's decision on virtual campaigning but the fact remains that this will not work in semi-urban and rural constituencies. The reality is that even those who have smartphones, use them only to watch movies and web series. My own driver says that he will not recharge his data to watch political events."

Also read: State polls hold national importance

While all parties claim to have a definite presence in the virtual world and exude confidence about campaigning on social media, it is the candidates and aspirants who are worried.

"Now that even cycle rallies have been banned, how do we connect with our voters? Electioneering involves a personal touch where you go and meet voters, seek their support and blessings. You cannot expect to get votes through WhatsApp message and Facebook," said a Samajwadi Party (SP) legislator.

He said that there was insufficient time for a door-to-door campaign too.

"My constituency goes to polls in the first phase and I cannot cover the entire constituency in this manner. People want to meet their candidates and virtual rallies by leaders are not enough."

Several candidates are now apprehensive that if the curbs continue beyond January 15, it could impact voter turnout.

A BSP candidate from Kanpur said that since there was no physical campaigning, voters cannot be mobilised only through social media.

Also read: BJP enjoys definite edge in virtual campaigning

"We know how difficult it is to get voters-especially those from educated class-to come out and vote on the polling day. Most people prefer to relax at home since it is a holiday," he said.

Political analysts, on the other, are still unsure about the impact that virtual campaigning will have on voter turnout.

Senior journalist R.K. Singh said: "We still do not know how virtual campaigning will impact voter turnout. There are still people even in urban areas who are not active on social media. The virtual campaign will have an impact on young voters but there is doubt about the elderly ones who may not be enthused enough to come out and vote."

An election official, however, said that virtual campaigning will lead to a rise in voter turnout because voters in the state are "mature and smart".

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The BJP on Sunday slammed Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi for briefing Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's security.

Talking to Twitter, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra questioned the need to keep Priyanka Gandhi in the loop regarding the Prime Minister's security.

He said: "A sitting Chief Minister briefs Priyanka Vadra on Prime Minister's security! Why? What constitutional post does Priyanka hold and who's she to be kept in loop regarding Prime Minister's security? Channi Saab... be truthful.. you must have said to her 'work is done... what you asked for, has been done'!"

A sitting CM briefs Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on PMs security! Why? What constitutional post does Priyanka hold&who is she to be kept in loop regarding PMs security? We firmly believe that the Gandhi family should come out clean on this: Sambit Patra, BJP Spokesperson pic.twitter.com/e4DbvCGRA2  ANI (@ANI) January 9, 2022

BJP National General Secretary, CT Ravi, said, "Sonia Gandhi's Chief Minister did not respond to Prime Minister Modi but briefs some Priyanka Vadra. Just curious to know who Priyanka Vadra is."

Channi had maintained that there was "no threat" to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to Punjab on January 5. However, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said that the Prime Minister had to cancel his scheduled visit due to a security breach and has sought a detailed report from the state government for the same.

The MHA has also asked the Punjab government to fix responsibility for the lapse and take strict action.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah said, "The Ministry of Home Affairs has sought a detailed report on security breach in Punjab. Such dereliction of security procedures in the Prime Minister's visit is totally unacceptable and accountability will be fixed."

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Wrongly imprisoned real estate broker demands investigation of Ohio pro secutors By Rachel Alexander

web posted January 10, 2022 The Obama administration targeted sole proprietors and small businesses in the real estate industry after the crash of 2008, while letting the big banks off the hook with bailouts. One of most horrific cases involved Republican real estate broker Tony Viola , who served nine and a half years in prison as a juicy target of Ohio Democratic prosecutor Dan Kasaris. He was convicted of supposedly tricking banks into offering mortgages with no money down. But in reality, the banks were knowingly offering those loans  evidence the prosecution withheld from him. Viola only got out of prison due to an employee of the prosecution, Dawn Pasela, becoming so disgusted with the suppression of evidence showing the banks werent tricked and other corruption such as missing computers full of evidence that she changed sides, helping Viola conduct a successful appeal pro se from prison. But nothing happened to Kasaris or the federal prosecutor involved, Mark Bennett. Paselas parents, Edward and Karen Pasela, who have remained fairly quiet until now, are so outraged that they participated in a a press conference with investigative journalist Brian Douglas last month exposing what happened in Violas case and how bad corruption is in the Ohio criminal justice legal system. Douglas put together Violas story in a two-part series which included former colleagues of Violas testifying to his impeccable character. For his efforts, Douglas was threatened with a lawsuit by Kasariss attorney, which Douglas included in his investigation so people are aware of the intimidation. Douglas has been forced to hire his own attorney. Pasela was threatened by several FBI agents with prosecution if she did not leave the state and avoid testifying. They said they would bring charges against her for violating an NDA  but she never signed an NDA. Pasela was found dead the day she was supposed to testify in court in Violas defense for the first time, and it was blown off as alcohol poisoning with no real investigation. The parents of Pasela want a full investigation into their daughters death. Kelly Patrick, who was married to John Patrick, the brother of Kasaris, revealed how she discovered that Kasaris intervened as county prosecutor to prevent his brother from being prosecuted for domestic violence against her and for a marijuana growing operation. She also has evidence that Kasaris was having a longterm extramarital affair with the prosecutions key witness, Kathryn Clover, documented by over 100 pages of Facebook messages with his wife Susan. Bennett admitted that Clover, who was a paralegal for the prosecution, not really much of a fact witness as she was portrayed, had committed perjury but would not let her recant her testimony on the witness stand, even though she wanted to. Elsebeth Baumgartner also spent several years in prison due to legal corruption in Ohio. She discovered $1.4 million being misspent related to schools, and, as a lawyer, initiated federal racketeering lawsuits against those responsible. Kasaris got her indicted for intimidating a judge with the lawsuits  even though no federal judge ever ruled that her lawsuits were without merit. She believes she was targeted because she ran a blog exposing all the corruption. She said the corruption and cover-ups are so bad shes been unable to get any justice, There is no place to go to bring public corruption charges against a public official. Brenda Bickerstaff, a private investigator, explained how as part of her job, she tried to talk to a witness in a high-profile case, and Kasaris threatened to have her indicted if she did. Bob Grunstein, who wrote " Bad Minds, High Places " about how powerful people in the criminal justice system in Ohio misused the system to attack him after he dared to criticize an Ohio judge, relayed how common the corruption in Violas case is. He said the problem is the corrupt are untouchable. Any new rules and laws dont matter since they wont follow them, and no one will hold them accountable. No one will come forward because theyre terrified of what theyll do to them. The federal courts protect their friends in the lower courts, because thats where they came from. Viola said his case comes down to four key facts: First, the prosecution has never turned over the $20 million it collected as restitution to the victims, big banks. Instead, its been used as sort of a slush fund for prosecutors, buying laptops, hotel rooms, etc. Viola calls it money laundering. Second, the FBI admitted it did not know about 10,000 documents in its possession  many that exonerated him  for 10 years. Third, the judge in his case, Federal District Court Judge Donald Nugent, sealed the records regarding Clover so Viola and others cannot use the evidence of her role to expose prosecutorial corruption in his case and others. And fourth, Kasaris used a Yahoo email account with his official signature on it to conduct official business, using it as a backchannel way to communicate with criminal defense lawyers. Mariah Crenshaw of the criminal justice reform organization Chasing Justice said the laws can be changed to stop this kind of abuse. She is proposing legislation that will allow prosecutors to be charged with criminal negligence for withholding potentially exculpatory evidence, and wants to allow defense attorneys to present their side to grand juries instead of leaving it exclusively to prosecutors. Viola wants Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost to suspend Kasaris and conduct a full investigation into his wrongful prosecution, as well as a DOJ investigation of Bennett. U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) asked the FBI in November to enlist the Inspector General to investigate the FBIs actions in Violas case, but so far theres been no response. Maybe Viola will finally get somewhere because hes gotten such a broad spectrum of people interested in his case. Even Black Lives Matters is involved. When you have people all across the political spectrum expressing outcry over a criminal case, perhaps the corrupt players responsible for putting an innocent man in prison will finally be investigated  and exonerate over a thousand others in the real estate industry who were likely also wrongly prosecuted. Rachel Alexander and her brother Andrew are co-Editors of Intellectual Conservative . She has been published in the American Spectator, Townhall.com, Fox News, NewsMax, Accuracy in Media, The Americano, ParcBench, Enter Stage Right and other publications. Home
The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Sunday wrote to the Election Commission of India suggesting an introduction of e-voting mechanism for citizens to cast their votes.

The traders' body appreciated the commission's higher usage of technology, apps, and the latest move to allow candidates to file their nomination papers online.

"In this context we would like to suggest that the Commission should also introduce an e-voting system through which the electors can cast their votes with any device with access to the internet from anywhere in the world," it said in the letter.

"The secrecy of the ballot can be maintained under the high security standards by using online voting software. The casting of votes remains anonymous as the technology system's architecture can strictly separate personal data from the electronic ballot."

It added implementation of such a mechanism would reduce costs.

On Saturday, the commission announced the Assembly poll dates as well as counting dates for Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Goa and Punjab.

The polls would be held in seven phases. Uttar Pradesh would have voting on February 10, 14, 20, 23 and March 3 and 7; Punjab, Goa and Uttarakhand would have polling on February 14 while Manipur would have voting in two phases, February 27, and March 3.

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Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday said that he had tested positive for Covid.

In a tweet, he said, "I have tested positive for Corona today with mild symptoms. I am under home quarantine. I request everyone who have recently come in my contact to isolate themselves and get tested."

Former Union Minister and Lok Sabha member Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore also tested positive for Covid on Monday.

Union Minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar tested positive on Sunday. In a tweet, he had said: "And after succeeding in avoiding #COVID19 for last 21 months, it finally catches up wth me tdy as I tested +ve tdy."

Recently several Union Ministers tested positive for Covid. These include Mahendra Nath Pandey, Raosaheb Patil Danve, Bharti Pawar, Nityanand Rai, and S P Singh Baghel.

BJP MPs Varun Gandhi and Manoj Tiwari also tested positive for Covid. Tiwari, however, has recovered from infection as recent report on Saturday came negative.

Today, India registered single-day rise of 1,79,723 new Covid cases and 146 deaths.

I have tested positive for Corona today with mild symptoms. I am under home quarantine. I request everyone who have recently come in my contact to isolate themselves and get tested.  Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) January 10, 2022

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A worker of the ruling BJP in Manipur and his cousin were gunned down by an unidentified assailant on Sunday night, in what Chief Minister N Biren Singh termed as a political violence ahead of Assembly elections in the state.

Police said an unidentified gunman shot at Abujam John, a close aide of Manipur agriculture minister, O Lukhoi and his cousin, Abujam Sashikanta, a havildar of India Reserve Batallion near the former's house at Samurou in Imphal West district at around 10 pm on Sunday night. John, 58 died on the spot while Sashikanta succumbed to his injuries in a private hospital.

Chief Minister N Biren Singh, who visited the houses of the victims and the agriculture minister on Monday, said it was an act of political violence to threaten the BJP workers ahead of elections. He, however, did not name anyone for the attack.

Read | State polls hold national importance

Police said they are trying to ascertain the exact cause of the shootout and efforts are underway to identify the persons involved in the incident.

Local residents of Samurou blocked the highway connecting the area and burnt tyres on Monday morning to protest the killings. The situation was controlled after the CM assured justice to the victims' families.

Elections for the 60-member Assembly is slated on February 27 and March 3. BJP, which formed a coalition government in 2017 with the support of National People's Party and Naga People's Front, two regional parties in 2017, is how eyeing to retain power on its own. In 2017, Congress had emerged as the single largest party by winning 28 seats but could not take the regional parties on board to form the government.

Police said security has been beefed up given the fact that the state has several active militant groups and poll-related violence were reported during elections in the past.

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Several advocates of the Supreme Court on Monday claimed to have received an international call with a recorded message asking the top court not to "help Modi regime" by taking up a matter related to Prime Minister's security breach in Punjab last week.

A criminal complaint was also filed by Advocate On Record, Deepak Prakash and his team, Ms Divyangna Malik and Nachiketa Vajpayee, before the Commissioner of Police, New Delhi and National Investigation Agency, regarding the "threatening calls" received by them.

The recorded message claimed responsibility for blocking the Prime Minister's passage on Wednesday last week.

Also read: Supreme Court to examine plea against hate speeches at 'Dharam Sansad'

It also claimed that the Supreme Court did not do enough with regard to killings of Sikh community members during the 1984 riots.

Senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani demanded an NIA probe into this episode.

He tweeted, "The audio sent by the Sikhs for Justice USA to AORs (Advocates on Record) in the SC must be treated with circumspection. The audio could be a hoax motivated by publicity or to blur the trail to the guilty. But since it contains a veiled threat to SC judges/AORs the NIA must investigate it forthwith."

On Monday, resuming its hearing on a plea filed by Delhi-based 'Lawyers Voice', a bench of Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli agreed to form a high level committee headed by former top court judge to inquire into lapses resulting into the security breach of the Prime Minister.

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Former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir and PDP president Mehbooba Mufti Monday alleged that the ruling BJP was dividing Hindus and Muslims in the country as the party has nothing to offer on the developmental front.

They (BJP) only have one agenda in their hands which is rioting between Hindus and Muslims of the country, she told reports at the party office in Srinagar.

The firebrand PDP chief alleged that the BJP wants to break the harmony between the two communities for which they are attacking the age-old communal harmony of the nation to win elections".

Mehbooba, who along with three former chief ministers of the erstwhile state, Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad recently lost Special Security Group (SSG) protection, also claimed that the government was afraid of the struggle carried out by her party for the people of J&K.

Also read: Supreme Court to examine plea against hate speeches at 'Dharam Sansad'

Covid-19 protocols come only when PDP leaders and workers have to visit for Fateh Khwani (prayers) at their leaders (party founder Mufti Mohammad Sayeeds) grave. Maybe the administration is scared of our party as PDP always stands with the truth, she said.

On January 6, Jammu and Kashmir Police booked 10 Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leaders, including a former minister, for violating Covid protocols during a gathering to mark the sixth death anniversary of late Mufti. The PDP leaders were booked on the directions of the Tehsildar of Bijbehara town in south Kashmirs Anantnag district for disobedience and unlawfully or negligently spreading an infection.

Mehbooba, who was chief minister of the PDP-BJP coalition in J&K from April 2016 to June 2018, said that her party will continue the struggle until all motives get fulfilled and they will fight against all odds.

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To deal with the Election Commissions ban on physical poll rallies till January 15, the Bharatiya Janata Party is working on a detailed plan for virtual outreach to the voters in Uttar Pradesh.

Virtual rallies and the dissemination of these across thousands of WhatsApp groups, backended by a system to host lakhs of viewers is at the heart of the saffron partys digital campaign network.

A senior party functionary from the partys headquarters told DH that during the three-day long meeting of the partys core committee for Uttar Pradesh, which started Tuesday, the schedules of virtual rallies of the partys four senior leaders  prime minister Narendra Modi, president Jagat Prasad Nadda, home minister Amit Shah, and defence minister Rajnath Singh are being chalk out.

Sources said that PM Modi is scheduled to have a rally days after January 14. The BJP UP unit is working on scheduling the rallies of UP CM Yogi Adityanath.

Read | UP poll aspirants apprehensive of virtual campaigning

We have just finished the first phase of the poll campaign on January 9 with the Jan Vishwas rallies. We are meeting soon to discuss the second phase of the campaign, which will be largely digital, said the leader.

BJP leaders said that during the Covid period rallies where 8 to 10 lakh people have connected have already been successfully conducted. Similar rallies using Zoom and Webex are being worked out.

But this time, the party is creating a studio of sorts in the podium, where with video mixing and projection two or three leaders connecting from different locations can be viewed as being part of the podium.

Three major rallies, of Nadda, and union ministers Narendra Tomar and Smriti Irani on the partys Sewa hi sangathan were conducted in this fashion, in addition to several rallies of PM Modi earlier.

State IT Cell head Kameshwar Mishra said that the IT unit that is backending poll efforts started work in April 2020, days after the first lockdown was announced.

We anticipated in advance with covid spreading, and we never shut down office during two lockdowns even for a day, said Mishra over the phone.

Over 12,000 party workers are working as part of the unit, divided into two parts. The partys social media unit has 8000-odd members, while the IT department has 4000 workers. If the covid situation continues, the party plans to rope in more cameramen, OB vans to telecast rallies on traditional platforms, and buy a lot more bandwidth that it has.

The rallies, a leader involved in the partys tech efforts said, will be pushed out in all of the partys WhatsApp groups amounting to more than 2 lakh. As part of the Whatsapp hierarchical structure, the BJP has booth-level, mandal-level, and district wise groups. This does not include the WhatsApp groups spread across the six regions that the party has already divided the state in.

These rallies will be designed for different segments of voters. Jawan (youth) and kisan (farmers), as well as women form the largest target groups.

In addition to that, the party has been working on using technology to take Mann Ki Baat to voters to the booth level. Door to door efforts will be taken up, too, as the EC has allowed for four to five party workers to be part of that.

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In yet another jolt to the Congress, the party national secretary Imran Masood announced on Monday that he would join Samajwadi Party (SP).

"Under the prevailing political conditions, we need to support the SP to prevent the division of votes of like-minded people and provide good governance in Uttar Pradesh to put it on the path of development and progress," he said.

Masood said that although Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was working hard in Uttar Pradesh, the party is weak in the state.

He claimed the Congress had given him "honour and respect", but "it is the need of the hour to work together to support a similar ideology to prevent the division of votes of youths, women and farmers who have similar thinking".

SP spokesman Abdul Hafiz Gandhi said: "This trend of people from various parties moving towards SP is an indication of who is coming to power. Most of the disgruntled leaders of the BSP, the Congress, and the BJP are joining our party. There must be a strong wave in favour of the SP, and that is why leaders from other parties are trusting the visionary leadership of Akhilesh Yadav."

Several leaders have left Congress in recent months. From Jitin Prasada, to Annu Tandon to Laliteshpati Tripathi, these leaders have expressed their resentment at the leadership's failure to address issues.

Masood had been seeking a tie-up between the Congress and SP for the upcoming Assembly polls.

He had won in 2007 as an independent and fought from Nakur in the 2012 Assembly polls on a Congress ticket, but lost. He joined the SP in 2013, only to return to the Congress the following year.

Masood had stirred controversy in 2014 when he threatened to kill Narendra Modi when the latter was campaigning to be Prime Minister. He arrested for the comments.

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Two unidentified militants were killed in an encounter with security forces in Kulgam district of Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday, police said.

Security forces launched a cordon and search operation in Hassanpora village of Kulgam district following information about the presence of militants there, a police spokesperson said.

He said the search operation turned into an encounter after militants opened fire on the security forces.

Two ultras were killed in the exchange of fire with the security forces, the spokesperson said, adding the identity and group affiliation of the slain militants is being ascertained.

He said incriminating materials, including arms and ammunition, were recovered from the scene of the encounter.

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The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider a plea for taking action in connection with hate speeches made in Haridwar 'Dharam Sansad' against the Muslim community.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal mentioned the matter before a bench presided by Chief Justice N V Ramana for urgent listing.

"We are living in different times where slogans in the country have changed from Satyamev Jayate," he said.

The bench told Sibal, Well look into it.

Also Read | Hate speech: Time to step back from the brink

In the brief proceedings, the bench asked Sibal if any inquiry was currently under way. The counsel informed that FIRs have been filed, but no arrest has been made so far.

He also maintained without the courts intervention, no action will be taken.

Former Patna High Court judge, and senior advocate Anjana Prakash and a journalist approached the top court seeking urgent intervention in the matter pertaining to the hate speeches delivered last year, in separate two events organised by Hindu Yuva Vahini in Delhi and Haridwar respectively on December 17 and 19.

Several Hindu religious leaders who had addressed the gathering in Haridwar had reportedly called upon the community to take up arms against Muslims.

Also read: CPI(M) finds fault with Opposition parties not talking about anti-Muslim Dharam Sansad

The petition sought independent and impartial investigation into the incidents of hate speeches against the Muslim community by a Special Investigation Team (SIT).

Earlier, Former Union Minister Salman Khurshid, Dushyant Dave, Prashant Bhushan, senior advocate Basava P Patil and others, including the petitioner-former judge asked the CJI to direct action against those who made hate speeches in two events.

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Officials say a malfunctioning space heater caused the city's deadliest fire in more than three decades, which killed 19 people, including nine children, on Sunday in a Bronx apartment building.

The fire "started in a defective electric space heater" in an apartment unit on the second and third floors of the 19-story structure, according to Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro. The apartment door was left open, allowing smoke to quickly spread throughout the building.

New York City apartment building fire injures more than 50, kills 19

Some tenants, who were stuck in their flats, smashed windows to get some fresh air and shoved damp towels under the doors. Because of the repeated false alarms, one guy rescued by firemen said he'd become desensitized to fire alarms. "Because of the volume of smoke," Nigro stated, several residents "could not flee."

The children slain, according to Stefan Ringel, a senior adviser to Mayor Eric Adams, were 16 years old or younger. Many of the building's tenants were originally from Gambia, a West African country, and there was a sizable Muslim community.

According to Ringel, thirteen individuals were in critical condition in the hospital. In total, more than a half-dozen people were hurt. The bulk of the victims, according to fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro, suffered from severe smoke inhalation. Around 200 firemen arrived at the building on East 181st Street around 11 a.m., "discovering deaths on every level and bringing individuals out in cardiac and respiratory arrest," Nigro said, calling the death toll "unprecedented."

News cameras obtained photographs of firefighters using a ladder to approach the higher levels of the blazing building, many limp youngsters being carried out and evacuees with soot-covered faces. Luis Rosa, a building resident, claimed he was awoken by a fire alarm on Sunday, but rejected it at first, assuming it was one of the building's frequent false alarms, as per AP News.

Read Also: Where Is Harmony Montgomery? Here Are Chilling Details About Missing New Hampshire Girl and Her Parents

Cause of New York apartment fire

Mayor Eric Adams has already stated that the catastrophe "will be one of the deadliest fires we have seen here in contemporary times in the city of New York," citing the fact that 73 people died in the city's fires in the entire year of 2021. The fire appears to have started in a duplex unit on the building's third story, according to officials. Officials suspect smoke inhalation may be the blame for several of the injuries seen on the upper levels.

Firefighters arrived on the site three minutes after receiving the 911 call and found fire throughout the halls, according to Nigro. The fire and smoke spread because a door was left open, according to Nigro, who described the event as "unprecedented."

Fire gushed out of many windows of the structure, according to dramatic photos shared on social media. Just before 11 a.m., the FDNY began getting calls from various individuals on upper floors. Residents who managed to flee the building during the fire characterized the experiences as "traumatizing." , ABC7 Chicago reported.

The 120-unit Bronx structure was erected in 1972, according to city records. Residents revealed their desperate attempts to flee the building. When the fire broke out, Wesley Patterson, 28, was in his third-floor flat, where he had resided for 20 years.The 120-unit Bronx skyscraper was constructed in 1972, according to city records.

The fire originated in Wesley Patterson's third-floor flat, where he had resided for 20 years. He was in the bathroom when his girlfriend, who had seen flames billowing out from another apartment, hammered on the door. Within minutes, the flat filled with smoke, he said, as per The Daily Telegraph via MSN.

Related Article: New York Prosecutor Declines To Charge Ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo Despite Credible Allegations That He Kissed Two Women Against Their Will

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The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to set up a panel, headed by a former apex court judge, to probe the Prime Minister Narendra Modi security breach in Punjab last week.

A bench presided over by Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli asked both the Centre and the Punjab government not to move ahead with their respective inquires into the matter.

Following a detailed hearing, the bench said it will pass an order in the matter. We are taking the PM's security breach very seriously, the bench said.

During the hearing, the bench indicated other members of the committee would be DGP Chandigarh, IG National Investigating Agency, registrar general (Punjab and Haryana High Court), and ADGP (security) Punjab. The bench added that it will ask the committee to submit its report to it within a shortest possible span of time.

Advocate General of Punjab D S Patwalia raised issue of show-cause notices to its Chief Secretary and DGP. He asked the court to form an independent committee to probe the matter.

"Hang me if I am guilty..... but don't condemn me unheard," Patwalia said.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Centre, defended the show-cause notices issued by the central government, citing the statute and Blue Book. The bench, however, asked what was the point of asking the court to examine the matter if the Centre wanted to go ahead on its own.

"If you want to take disciplinary action against the state officers then what remains for this court to do," the bench asked Mehta, who maintained the top officers are responsible for the PM's security under the rules.

Senior advocate Maninder Singh, representing the Delhi-based petitioner NGO 'Lawyer's Voice', emphasised on the importance of protection to the PM of the country.

On Wednesday, Modi's convoy remained stranded on a flyover due to a blockade by protesters in Ferozepur. The incident forced the PM to cancel his rally and other events planned in poll-bound Punjab.

The plea alleged lapse in the security of the Prime Minister was occasioned clearly in connivance with the Punjab Police.

"It was only the Punjab government that knew the precise route of the Prime Minister which is never shared due to high security reasons. It has been reported that this may have been the single biggest lapse in security of any Indian Prime Minister in recent years," the plea claimed.

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Karnataka's Omicron tally rose to 479 on Monday after 146 new cases of the variant were detected, Karnataka health Minister K Sudhakar announced. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has tested positive for Covid-19 with mild symptoms. He said in a tweet that he is currently under home quarantine. With over 1.79 lakh new Covid-19 cases on Monday, India continues to see a surge in cases. Maharashtra reported over 45,000 cases and Bengal logged over 24,000 cases on Sunday. Stay tuned for updates.
As India continues to see a spike in Covid-19 cases, Omicron's three sub-variants are likely replacing the dominant Delta strain in India.

Scientists at Insacog (Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium) working on genome sequencing, told The Times of India that Omicron (B.1.1.529) sub-lineage BA.1 is now circulating widely and replacing the Delta strain in some states, including Maharashtra,

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Omicron variant (parent lineage B.1.1.529) includes three descendent lineages (BA.1, BA.2 and BA.3). While BA.1 and BA.3 have the 69-70 deletion in the spike protein, BA.2 does not.

Also read | 'Deltacron' a lab contamination, not a new variant: UK virologist

BA.3 has not been detected so far in the country, a scientist told the publication.

First detected in South Africa and Botswana in late November 2021, Omicron has been discovered in more than 100 countries and across all seven continents, as per the open access data sharing platform GISAID.

However, in what could be a matter of concern, the BA.2 lineage does not get registered in the RT-PCR-SGF test. This means isolating it is as an Omicron case from the daily cases will be difficult.

The unique mix of spike amino acid changes in Omicron (clade GRA, lineage B.1.1.529 and descendants BA.1 and BA.2) comprises several that were previously identified to affect receptor binding and antibody escape.

Also Read | New algorithm can predict Covid complication risk

According to data updated by the Union Health Ministry on Monday, India saw a single-day rise of 1,79,723 coronavirus infections taking the total tally to 3,57,07,727, including 4,033 cases of the Omicron variant reported across 27 states and union territories so far.

Of the total 4,033 cases of Omicron variant, 1,552 have recovered or migrated.

(With agency inputs)

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The ongoing tiff between Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan and Pinarayi Vijayan-led state government over the denial of giving the Honorary D Litt to President of India took a turn for the worse, with the former slamming the Kerala University Vice-Chancellor.

Speaking to the media soon after arriving from Delhi, Khan said he is ashamed and has to hang his head in shame.

"Kerala University is one of the oldest universities in the country and the Vice-chancellor cannot even write five lines correctly. He also cannot even speak properly. I was really ashamed," said Khan.

Khan said he was surprised to find out that no convocation has been held at the Kerala University for the past 10 years, so he told the Vice-chancellor (V P Mahadevan Pillai) to hold one.

"After a month he came back to me and I told him that I will personally go to the President of India to come and attend the convocation. But on 5th December he calls the Raj Bhavan and I was shocked to hear what he was saying. It took me 10 minutes to regain myself when I heard what he was saying. Soon after that, I called the Chief Minister," said Khan.

A handwritten letter on a piece of paper of the Kerala University VC to Khan has now come out which contains mistakes and it states that the syndicate had turned down the decision to confer the D Litt to the President.

Khan also slammed the way the Vice-Chancellor of the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit was selected.

"I was given just one name and I was told that six others who applied were not eligible. What does this mean, the six professors who applied are not at all eligible? This shows the quality of the higher education standards in Kerala," added Khan.

It was on December 31 that former Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala asked Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to come clean on why the recommendation of Khan as chancellor to confer Honorary D Litt to President Ram Nath Kovind was shot down.

On Monday, Chennithala said the silence of Vijayan is dangerous.

"Time has run out and Vijayan cannot remain silent like this anymore. He has to tell what has happened," said Chennithala.

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Even as the row between the governor and state government keeps on aggravating in Kerala, a letter said to be written by the Kerala University vice-chancellor to the chancellor has raised many eyebrows, owing to its 'poor language and phrasings'.

Governor Arif Mohammed Khan said on Monday that he felt ashamed to face anyone outside Kerala, owing to the poor language the vice-chancellor of one of the state's oldest universities was using.

The said letter was purportedly written by Kerala University vice-chancellor V P Mahadevan Pillai to the governor, who is also the chancellor of the university, informing that several syndicate members turned down the governor's proposal to confer D Litt to President Ram Nath Kovind.

The shabbily hand-written letter triggered criticisms against the vice chancellor's language skills on social media too.

However, the vice-chancellor is yet to comment on it.

Meanwhile, the governor alleged that the vice-chancellor could have rejected the proposal of conferring D Litt to the President under the direction of someone else.

There has been a long-running feud between the governor and the state government over the appointment of vice-chancellors of universities in Kerala. The governor claims he has been subjected to political pressures for the same.

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A court in Kerala on Monday concluded the hearing and reserved its verdict in the case of alleged rape of a nun by Bishop Franco Mulakkal.

The Additional Sessions Court is likely to pronounce the judgment on January 14. The trial in the case had started in November 2019.

The rape case against the Bishop was registered by police in Kottayam district in 2018. In her complaint to the police in June 2018, the nun had alleged that she was subjected to sexual abuse by Franco, then Bishop of the Jalandhar diocese of Roman Catholic Church, between 2014 and 2016.

The Special Investigation team which probed the case, arrested the Bishop and charged him with wrongful confinement, rape, unnatural sex and criminal intimidation.

The court had restrained the print and electronic media from publishing any matter relating to the trial in the case without its permission.

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In his concluding remarks before the Constituent Assembly of India, B R Ambedkar opined that:

The Constitution can provide only the organs of State such as the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. The factors on which the working of those organs of the State depends are the people and the political parties they will set up as their instruments to carry out their wishes and their politics.

It is clear from this that Ambedkar did not consider it necessary to mention political parties in the Constitution as these are not organs of the State. But so are the numerous associations/ federations which are not the organs of the State but the State regulates their functioning. Why has the State not thought of regulating registered political parties which may not be organs of the State but which actually run the affairs of the State? The only reason is that lawmakers do not want to be answerable to anyone as they consider themselves above law.

Read more: State polls hold national importance

They have cornered many benefits for themselves and get numerous privileges from the State as brought out by the Central Information Commission in its judgement of June 3, 2013, declaring them as public institutions and therefore coming under the purview of the Right to Information Act. They have challenged it in the Supreme Court and the matter rests there.

Once a political party is registered with the Election Commission of India (ECI), it cannot be deregistered even if it commits any number of offences. Look at the contrast - even a petty shopkeeper has to observe numerous conditions under the trade licence rules, failing which he loses his licence. What is more surprising is that some of them even get their parties registered with the CEC with a name that belies their secular claims and they even run the affairs of a secular state.

They collect money from all kinds of people including in cash and they are free to use that money in any manner they wish. Parties donating money to them get considerable tax benefits. And with the introduction of Electoral Bonds in 2018, the identity and the value of the bonds purchased by the donors is also not known. They also get various other benefits from the State.

Political parties are perhaps the only entities in our country who enjoy such privileges and benefits without any public accountability. The state of affairs of our political parties today is pathetic. There are, among MPs, 475 crorepatis and 233 with criminal charges against them, and 159 of them have serious charges like rape, murder, kidnapping and crimes against women etc. The situation at the state legislatures is no better. A large number of political parties are run like private enterprises controlled by an individual and his family members. Most political parties display very low intra-party democracy. Quite often, party tickets are sold or given to Bahubalis. Candidates view contesting elections as an investment leading to greater levels of corruption. The level of corruption seems to have reached an all-time high which is evident from the recent representation by Karnataka Contractors Association to Prime Minister Narendra Modi which has been widely covered by the media in recent days.

Political parties publicly show their ugly side during elections when they freely indulge in corrupt practices and criminal intimidation. Use of unparliamentary language, name-calling and violence are common in these campaigns. The present rot among the political parties is largely due to the total lack of any kind of regulation over their functioning. It is time these parties are regulated as most of the democracies in the world have brought their political parties under their constitutions and are being regulated.

I am quite sure that no political party would like to support any kind of regulation over their functioning. Yet, I strongly feel a serious debate is needed on the subject and the lead must come from civil society institutions. Judiciary must also play a crucial role in nudging the government to introduce reforms in this sector. I propose the following reforms to make political parties more accountable and transparent in their functioning and also to comply with democratic and secular norms in their functioning:

Constitutional/Legislative measures

Strengthen the ECI by providing constitutional security of tenure to all its members which is currently available to the Chief Election Commissioner only.

Declare the registered political parties as public institutions as their sole aim is to capture power to run governments.

ECI should not register any political party whose very name betrays its links with any religion or caste or creed.

Empower the ECI to lay down stringent conditions for the functioning of registered political powers and make non-compliance of these conditions punishable, including deregistration by the ECI. These conditions must ensure that the parties have limited tenures for their elected offices at all levels; they function on secular and democratic principles and are accountable and transparent in their affairs, besides others.

A separate constitutionally mandated regulatory authority should be created to ensure that these parties function in accordance with the conditions of their registration.

I can safely bet that there will be no large-scale opposition to these reforms though I concede that such reforms are not likely to see the light of the day in my lifetime. I hope that the demand for such reforms will gradually gain public support and someday, a central government led by a statesman with a clear majority in Parliament will introduce such reforms. It is only then that we can proceed to build a truly secular and democratic India. We need professionally managed and honest political parties to run the affairs of governments and not the corrupt family-owned commercial entities called the political parties.

(The writer is a retired IAS officer)
After a tumultuous 2021, Afghanistan transitioned into a new year with nothing 'happy' or 'new' about the situation in the war-ravaged country. The majority of the population continues to scramble for basic needs such as food, shelter, and fuel in the Taliban-dominated Afghanistan. As the harsh winter gripped Afghanistan, heart-wrenching images of women and children queuing up outside bakeries to get bread or a snowman made by Afghan children demanding that the World Food Programme provide food appeared on media portals, highlighting the dire situation in the country.

Factors such as war, conflict, chronic poverty, drought, widespread food insecurity have protracted presence in Afghanistan. The Covid-19 pandemic was perhaps the most recent addition to that list. Over the years, all these issues have resulted in millions of Afghans needing humanitarian assistance. However, the political upheaval caused due to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in the country.

Today, the situation is alarming because the country faces severe, multi-faceted, and interlocking humanitarian, economic, and political crises.

Months after the new rulers of Afghanistan announced the "interim government", the war-torn country is on the brink of mass starvation that threatens to take millions of Afghan lives this winter - a toll that may dwarf the number of civilians killed in war and conflict over the past two decades.

Also Read -- For India, challenges abound in framing an Afghanistan policy

Over the past few months, the UN has repeatedly warned that Afghanistan is on the brink of the world's worst humanitarian crisis. More than half the country is facing "acute" food shortages. According to the UN, almost 24 million people in Afghanistan, about 60 per cent of the population, suffer from acute hunger, and about 8.7 million Afghans are coping with famine.

UNDP's resident representative in Afghanistan, Abdallah Al Dardari, said in mid-November 2021, "The US $20 billion economy could shrink by US $4 billion or more and 97 per cent of the 38 million population are at risk of sinking into poverty. We have never seen an economic shock of that magnitude, and we have never seen a humanitarian crisis of that magnitude."

The World Health Organization had predicted around 3.2 million children could suffer from acute malnutrition in Afghanistan by the end of 2021, with a million of them at risk of dying as temperatures drop. An estimated 22.8 million people, or 55 per cent of the population, are expected to face emergency levels of food insecurity between November 2021 and March 2022.

The abrupt snapping of financial aid after the Taliban seized power worsened the country's shortage of essentials. Nearly 80 per cent of the budget of the Afghan government during the US-led era came from the international community, which funded ministries and also public services like healthcare and education. To prohibit the Taliban regime from accessing the funds, the US has frozen about US $9 billion of Afghanistan's central bank reserves. Although humanitarian workers have urged Biden Administration to take radical steps to release the frozen Afghan assets, the White House has not responded to such a proposition.

There is unanimous recognition within the international community about addressing Afghanistan's looming economic and humanitarian crisis. Initiatives such as the G-20 Summit on Afghanistan, Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan, India-Central Asia Dialogue hosted by India and the OIC foreign ministers session on Afghanistan held in Islamabad, among others, extensively discussed the importance of providing aid to Afghanistan. In December, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution proposed by the US to facilitate humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan while keeping funds out of the Taliban hands.

While this resolution promised to bring some respite to the Afghan people, how the aid will be delivered to them with little or no coordination with the regime in power, which the international community has not recognised, remains to be seen.

The international community must develop a mechanism to deliver aid and open a safe corridor for those at risk in Afghanistan while ensuring that they do not enforce brutal and barbaric Taliban rule in Afghanistan. It is also vital to minimise parallel mechanisms and coordinate responses to make the efforts more effective and timely.

For decades, the UN has played a vital role in Afghanistan, from coordinating humanitarian response to financing reconstruction and acting as a guarantor for peace and stability. Based on its historic role, unrivalled present-day capabilities, and past operating experiences, the UN can and should play a more significant role in Afghanistan as it struggles to deal with the current multi-dimensional and interconnected set of crises.

(Anwesha Ghosh is a Research Fellow at New Delhi's Indian Council of World Affairs)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.
Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai asked officials on Monday to come up with an annual ranking system to assess the performance of government departments.

Bommai said this at a meeting he chaired on the reforms necessary to tone up the administration.

According to a release from the chief ministers office, Bommai said citizen services should be made easily available by cutting down decision-making layers.

Also Read | Interest bleeds as Karnataka CM preps for Budget

Petitions from people should get a response within hours. Accountability should be fixed at lower and higher levels. Some of the responsibilities of the revenue department should be delegated to gram panchayats, Bommai said, adding that 40% of government work will be reduced if the revenue department is reformed.

Bommai said joint secretaries and deputy secretaries should be more empowered. Regional Commissioners should manage major irrigation and land acquisition issues, he added.

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Citing spike in Covid-19 cases in Karnataka, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Monday ruled out easing restrictions at places with less positivity rate. He instead stressed the need to take extra precautions.

"No...what I had said is that depending on the Covid spread we will take a decision. Now you are seeing, yesterday there were 12,000 cases in the state, nearly 9,000 were only in Bengaluru. Positivity rate in the state is at 6.8 per cent, in Bengaluru it is 10 per cent, in the whole country we are in third place," Bommai said in response to a question on plans to relax Covid restrictions in some districts by Sankranti.

Also Read | Karnataka CM Basavaraj Bommai Covid-positive with mild symptoms

Speaking to reporters here, he said, "in such a situation there is need to take extra precautions."

After the cabinet meeting last week, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister J C Madhuswamy had said that with plans to relax Covid restrictions at places with less positivity rate, the government is likely to review the containment measures announced by it by January 14 or 15.

At the cabinet meeting chaired by Bommai, some Ministers had expressed reservations about enforcing restrictions across the state, especially in places where the positivity rate is low.

The Karnataka government on January 4 had imposed curfew on weekends and restricted public gatherings to fight the third wave of Covid-19, till January 19. It has also decided to continue the night curfew for two more weeks, and has prohibited all rallies, dharnas, protests, among others.

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The Pentagon won its initial battle over the National Guard's vaccination requirement, but a larger war is raging as numerous states seek to assert their jurisdiction.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt's request to preliminarily halt the mandate was denied by a federal judge in late December. However, the state still has alternatives; and a week after Oklahoma's setback, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is fighting the requirement in court. The National Guard is divided between the states and the federal government. While governors usually mobilize the guard in the event of catastrophes or national disasters, the federal government can also do so; but this is unusual.

Pentagon wins legal battle on vaccine mandate

Per The Hill, the debate over the Pentagon's mandate centers on the question of who has control over the National Guard, and courts have now been drawn into the fray. Army guard troops have until late June to comply with the command or risk repercussions. Stitt and Abbott, speaking on behalf of the state, argue that they have control over the guard while it works under Title 32 of the US Code. Under Title 10, the president has the right to mobilize the guard, bringing him under federal control.

The Pentagon has mostly been silent about the litigation it is facing over the National Guard's and other military services' vaccination mandates. Officials have made it clear that the rule applies to all troops, regardless of service status, when it comes to the guard.

A renowned hospital's head has warned that a mandatory vaccine mandate for healthcare workers might result in the loss of 1,000 employees. Dr. Clive Kay, the chief executive of King's College Hospital (KCH), confessed he was "concerned" since around 10% of the hospital's 14,000 employees had not yet received the first dosage.

Read Also: Kamala Harris Selects New Communications Director Following Several Staff Exits; Vice President Compares January 6 To Pearl Harbor, 9/11

Gov. Abbott previously sued Biden admin over vaccination demand

Dr. Kay responded that his role was to "urge personnel to get vaccinated" after Sajid Javid was questioned by a consultant anesthetist on the ICU ward during a visit to the hospital. Steve James notified the Health Secretary that he disagreed with the Government's decision to require vaccines for NHS hospital personnel, claiming that the research did not support the action.

James also told the Secretary of Health that he declined to be vaccinated because he is immune to becoming "antibody" positive after being exposed to the virus. Kay refused to comment on "particular situations," but he said that it was a "moot question" whether they were fair because the measures were now legal. As the deadline for receiving a first dosage approaches, senior officials at KCH are stepping their efforts to persuade hospital employees to be vaccinated, he added, according to The Daily Telegraph via MSN.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has sued President Biden over the administration's military vaccination demand, arguing that his position "as commander-in-chief and on Texas's sovereignty" allows him to do so. Abbott filed a lawsuit in Texas on Tuesday, requesting that a federal judge dismiss Biden's vaccination demand, citing Abbott's authority as commander of the guard, which is subject to difficult jurisdiction.

Except when called up for federal duty by the president, state national guards remain under the direction of governors under overlapping legislation. Title 10 of the United States Code Active-duty troops are subject to the Code, whereas the Guard is subject to Title 32. The vaccination deadline for troops was December 31st. According to Abbott's lawsuit, 40% of the Texas Army National Guard men under his command are refusing the injection for religious or other reasons. Daily Mail reported.

Related Article: Supreme Court Justices Appear To Block Joe Biden's Controversial COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate for Large Companies

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The D K Shivakumar-led Karnataka Congress resumed its foot march demanding the implementation of the Mekedatu project on the second day Monday, even as 35 party leaders have been booked for defying Covid-19 curbs.

The local police have registered FIRs against Shivakumar, Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah and others for violating prohibitory orders during the launch of the padayatra on Sunday.

Also read: DKS refuses Covid test, says Karnataka govt deliberately hiking numbers

Anybody who violates the law will face action, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai told reporters. Now that cases have been registered, whatever needs to be done next as per provisions will happen automatically, he said when asked about arrests.

Shivakumar dared the government to book more cases and caustically said he would provide lists and photographs of thousands of people who took part in the inaugural foot march.

On Monday, the Congress march will cover 15 km from Shivakumars native Doddalahalli to Kanakapura.

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Karnataka Congress president D K Shivakumar was seen in another viral video reprimanding officials who wanted to test him for Covid-19.

You cant blackmail me. Hey MrIm fit and fine. You cant compel me. I know the law of this land, Shivakumar is heard telling a team of officials including the additional deputy commissioner and the district health officer. He later says sorry in the video.

Speaking to reporters earlier in the day, Shivakumar said the government is manipulating Covid-19 case numbers. I have ten doctors in my family. I know whats going on, he said. To show high case numbers, theyre subjecting people to testing and showing them as positive. Even IAS and police officers have told me about whatever is happening, he said.

Also Read | Siddaramaiah returns from Congress' Mekedatu padayatra due to fever

Responding to this, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said the government wanted to get people tested out of concern for their health. Testing people is the duty of the health department. The way (Shivakumar) behaved shows his culture, he said.

Meanwhile, Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah, who returned to Bengaluru on Sunday after developing a fever, will skip Mondays foot march. He has been advised rest by doctors, his office said. He will participate in the march on Tuesday.

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Urging the government to hand over Nandita death case of 2014 to CBI, Congress leader and former minister Kimmane Ratnakar will be staging a hunger strike in the premises of the taluk office on January 30 in Thirthahalli town.

Speaking to media persons, here on Monday, he alleged that BJP leaders including Aaraga Jnanendra, now home minister, had demanded the government to hand over the Nandita case to CBI.

"Jnanendra had plotted to create a communal clash in the town using the suicide case of Nandita. BJP leaders had even projected the suicide case as rape and murder. Even Union Home Minister Amit Shah too had visited the residence of Nandita during the 2018 assembly polls and had promised that the case would be handed over to CBI. So, it must be handed over to CBI without fail. He would stage hunger strike for 24 hours from 10:30 am to the next day," he added.

Daring BJP leader, he said he would resign from politics if he is found guilty in the case, if not, Jnanendra must step down from the posts of the minister, legislator. If he failed to do so, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai must sack him from the cabinet, he demanded.

He also alleged that Home Minister Aaraga Jnanendra has violated Covid-19 guidelines by organising annual fair, foundation stone laying ceremonies during the pandemic. "Lakhs of people participated in the annual fair held in the town recently. Are Covid norms only for common people?" he questioned.

Former MLA K B Prasanna Kumar, former MLC R Prasanna Kumar, Congress leader N Ramesh, Yamuna Range Gowda, Vijay Kumar and others were present on the occasion.

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The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has asked Karnataka DGP Praveen Sood to investigate KPCC President DK Shivakumar for allegedly indulging schoolchildren in political activity and interacting with them without a mask.

In a letter to Sood, the Commission has taken suo-moto cognizance of a video uploaded on Twitter, where Shivakumar is seen interacting with children in a school during the ongoing Mekedatu foot march.

Also Read | Government tried to infect me with Covid, says Shivakumar

That he met the schoolchildren during the padayatra is tantamount to indulging children into political activity, the Commission said. Further, both Shivakumar and the children are seen without masks, violating Covid protocol, it added.

His act is a prima-facie violation of provisions under Juvenile Justice Act, Epidemic Disease Act, and Disaster Management Act, the Commission said, asking Sood to look into this and submit an action-taken report within a week.

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Mourners gathered this morning (January 10) at St Columba's Church to pay their respects to beloved Derry teacher, Sean O'Kane.

The funeral mass was held by Father Paddy Baker who said to say Sean would be missed, 'would be an understatement.'

Father Baker said: "The crowd here at our mass here today is testament to the popularity of Sean.

"He was very much a Derry man, through and through. And he took huge pride in being a teacher in St. Joseph's and helping the boys in his own community.

"He loved St. Joseph's, he loved the pupils, he loved the staff. He was always encouraging and promoting pupils, both past and present, and this has been reflected in those who came to visit the family these last few days.

"Sean was promoted to Head of Year because of his postural awareness and the genuine care he had for the pupils' well being.

"He put the pupils' well being to the fore of his work. He had great empathy amongst the past pupils with the kindness, the generosity and the openness with which he treated them.



"Sean simply lived for the moment, to say that Sean will be sorely missed is an understatement.

"He has played a huge part in the lives of all the people here in this church today.

"We offer our deepest sympathy to Sean's family, his extended family and to his many friends who gather here to bid farewell."

Sean was a former St Columb's College pupil. In 1998, he left the College to study for a BA degree in English at Queen's University in Belfast.

Upon completing his undergraduate studies, he stayed on at Queen's to gain a PGCE certificate in teaching.



He then went on to teach both English and Drama at St Joseph's Boys' School in 2005 before becoming Head of Year.

Sean was 41 years old and sadly passed away on Friday after a period of illness.
Derry teachers have expressed their grave concerns over the safety of staff and pupils as they return to school during the Omicron spike.

Stormont ministers have been informed that around 90 per cent of cases in Northern Ireland are the Omicron variant.

Covid cases across the country have continued to rise with 30,423 cases reported from December 31 to January 3.

Of this, over 3000 were in Derry as Derry remains the county with the highest Covid infection rate in Northern Ireland.

Schools across the city resumed face to face teaching in the classroom earlier this week after the Christmas break, with no change to Covid guidance.

Susan Parlour, President of National Education Union (NEU) NI, said: "The message seems to be, 'keep the schools open and hope for the best,' it's farcical.

"There is no PPE in schools and there are no risk assessments. I understand this takes time but it is essential in the current circumstances.

"Face coverings are required in schools which staff need to provide themselves or they need to accept the substandard masks offered which are really not fit for purpose. Also, many children do not wear their masks and this is rarely challenged.

"We receive daily figures on Covid cases in schools but with no track and trace in place and lateral flow testing, which has proved time and time again to not be the most reliable, the number of cases and close contacts will be higher than what is recorded.

"Chief Medical Officer, Dr McBride, stated that Covid was not spreading in schools and that outside socialising was the cause, we saw the rise in cases over Christmas and the schools were shut.

"Mark Browne, Permanent Secretary, sent a letter to principals on December 31 that stated that the departments advice on measures to reduce transmission has not changed.

"He stated that EA has provided CO2 monitors to schools along with detailed instructions on their use.

"This is not the case. CO2 monitors are not on the ground and there is little to no guidance on how to use them."

NEU NI released a statement providing guidance for CO2 monitors and their use stating that 'carbon dioxide monitors are not a solution to the problem of poor ventilation.'

The Department for Education in England (DfE) is rolling out a very limited number of CO2 units and most schools will not be able to benefit from this scheme.

Susan continued: "Schools, students and principals feel let down and there are no mitigations in place to keep them safe.

"There seems to be a false perception that teachers want to teach from home, it is not the case.

"Teachers want to be in the classroom but they want it to be safe for both them and their students.

"There are no measures in place to keep the school community safe, no close contacts, no track and trace, no support and no meaningful guidance."

NEU NI are currently advising teachers and schools not to teach if over 25 per cent of their staff are absent. If this number of absent staff members is reached, the school should close.

The Education Minister stated that options are available such as consolidating classes or teachers teaching remotely as well as live teaching but Susan explained, 'this is even more work and pressure on teachers, in an already stressful teaching environment.'

At St Cecelia's College in Derry, 15% of the staff are currently off sick; six teachers and 10 classroom assistants. There are 16 pupils who are off sick in one class alone.

Tanya Wakeley, teacher and union rep at St Cecelia's College in Derry, said: "We are teaching in a Covid stew, it is a nightmare and it is not good enough.

"Those are the numbers only two days into the school year and we haven't even reached the peak of this Omicron wave.

"The government has to do something and we need to speak up. We don't want to work from home, it's not an efficient way to teach and it's double the workload.

"We want to be in the classroom to teach our pupils, but we want to be doing it safely, where both staff and pupils feel safe.

"We know for a fact that schools aren't safe at the minute and we can see that after only two days back teaching.

"The students feel let down too, especially the senior years. They don't even know if they'll be sitting their exams in the summer. Nobody knows what is going on and there is no clear direction.

"I have students that have never sat an official exam and that will no doubt never get their work experience. We feel very in the dark with everything and we are not being told enough."

With teacher absences, many teachers are forced to form composite classes or teach larger numbers of pupils than they are used to or is usually advised.

Tanya continued: "A class can have anything between 25 to 30 pupils and what we have to do at the minute, because we don't have enough teachers in school, is put more than one class in the multi-purpose hall.

"The pupils are all socially distanced, but Covid is airborne, and there are no windows in that hall.

"If we are in the classroom, the classrooms are freezing because we have to ventilate the rooms, it's the middle of January, with the cold air we are going to get sick either way, whether it's Covid or not.

"We are not provided with sufficient PPE, the masks are not fit for purpose and at this stage, it is a complete trust situation that pupils do not come in if they have tested positive or have Covid symptoms.

"The parents are worried as well and we don't even have the government's guidance to reassure them. We are being told one thing by the government and another thing by experts. You don't know what to believe and God knows what is coming next.

"This is not going away and it's definitely not going away in schools. It is going to get worse before it gets better and we need plans in place.

"We are collateral damage and we have been forgotten about."

Education Minister, Michelle McIlveen, has said her priority remains keeping schools open amid the surge of cases in Northern Ireland.

She said there have been no changes to the guidance issued to schools regarding Covid because health officials haven't changed their position.

Schools experiencing staffing shortages will have the option to move to remote learning and introduce partial timetables, she added.

A spokesperson for the Department of Education (DE) said that a range of mitigations have been recommended to risk the transmission of Covid within schools across the North.

They said: Throughout the pandemic the Department has worked closely with key stakeholders as well as the Department of Health and Public Health Agency as we manage our response and continue to do so.

We continue to follow advice in relation to all public health issues including contact tracing however no changes have been recommended in respect of the approach to contact tracing or changes to the DE Covid guidance.

Rates of Covid infection in the community in Northern Ireland are currently extremely high. Schools are part of our community so it is inevitable that there will be cases among staff and students in our schools.

While we cannot eradicate Covid altogether, a range of mitigations are recommended to reduce the risk of transmission as much as possible in the school environment.

These measures include regular LFD testing, good hand/respiratory hygiene, maximising ventilation, face coverings for post-primary pupils and staff and consistent groups wherever possible.

All staff and those aged 12 and over have also had access to the vaccination programme. We have a shared objective to support our schools so they are able to provide for our children as we all know that the best place for our children and young people is in school.

No one mitigation on its own will prevent the spread of the virus, but used together each mitigation provides works to reduce transmission.

Our schools, like those across the rest of the UK and Ireland, are facing staffing shortages due to the pandemic. There is a limited supply of qualified teachers.

We have made a formal call for retired teachers to provide support and we have also looked to provide more flexibility for schools in how they deploy substitute teachers. If further financial resources are needed by schools we will make bids to meet these costs.

The EA secured more than 11,500 C02 monitors and approximately 95 per cent of schools in NI have now been provided with monitors, with a further 5000 monitors expected imminently. The additional monitors will be delivered to the remaining schools as a priority and also to those schools that have requested additional monitors.

Good ventilation, along with other measures can help mitigate the risk of transmission. Natural ventilation, such as opening windows can be effective at reducing the risk from virus in the air.

School leaders who are concerned about ventilation in a room should contact the EA maintenance helpline for advice and support on the best approach for their individual circumstances.

In some cases where an area of poor ventilation has been identified, it may be appropriate to consider the use of an air cleaning unit as an additional mitigation whilst further remedial work is undertaken to improve ventilation.

The pandemic requires a collective response to support the safe operation of our schools  staff, parents, and pupils all have a key role to play carrying out regular testing and making sure making sure that anyone with symptoms follows Covid-19 advice and information which is available at NIDirect.gov.uk.
Sinn Fein Foyle MLA, Padraig Delargy, has written to the Health Minister to urge him to expand the collection of data regarding Covid-19 deaths.

Mr Delargy said he had done so in light of the lack of data in the North of Ireland on Covid deaths in relation to people who are disabled or d/deaf.

The term d/deaf is a category that records those who communicate via sign language only or make use of a hearing aid and can lip-read.

Foyle MLA Delargy, who is also Sinn Fein's disability spokesperson said that England records its Covid rates for disabled and d/deaf and that the Executuve in Stormont must do the same.

Mr Delargy added the reason the North should follow suit is so that the Executive can fully understand the effects of Covid on the disabled and d/deaf and be able to act accordingly.

He said: I am concerned about the lack of data collection regarding COVID-19 deaths of d/Deaf and disabled people.

The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) records the death rates for Covid-19 by age and gender, but the data relating to Covid deaths amongst d/Deaf and disabled people does not exist.

Statistics in England had shown that from early 2020 to early 2021, six in 10 Covid-19 deaths were from people that were disabled. This confirmed concerns that disabled people were more at risk of the virus and required greater protection.

Due to this not data being recorded here, we cannot fully understand the extent that Covid has had on disabled people, which has ramifications for policy decisions on restrictions and protection.

We also know that in Britain ethnic minorities are at a higher risk of getting sick or passing away from the virus, but again, we don't collect the data to assess the risk to our ethnic minority communities.

I have asked the Health Minister to work with NISRA to widen the scope of data collection to include disability and other Section 75 protected characteristics.

The Derry News contacted the Department of Health who in turn referred us on to the NISRA.

A spokesperson for the NIRSA said in reply to Mr Delargy's comments: As the pandemic progresses, NISRA has published additional research in relation to Covid-19 deaths, augmenting the information recorded on death certificates.

NISRA published a research report on 22 December 2021 on Covid-19 deaths for a range of health, equality and socio-demographic characteristics.

This report includes information on self-reported disabilities as collected on the 2011 Census.

The report can be found by clicking this link with Table 1 on page 9 reporting on Covid-19 deaths by disability measured by limitations in daily activity.

This research will be extended to cover later waves of the pandemic and further reports are planned to be published by mid-2022. In the next report, the number of Covid-19 deaths for persons self-reporting (1) deafness or partial hearing loss and (2) blindness or partial sight loss will be assessed.

A link to other NISRA Covid-19 research and to the weekly deaths statistics can be found by clicking on: https://www.nisra.gov.uk/statistics/cause-death/covid-19-related-deaths.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has warned she is prepared to unilaterally override parts of the post-Brexit agreement on Northern Ireland if the negotiations she is newly leading fail.

Ms Truss said she will suggest constructive proposals to her EU counterpart Maros Sefcovic this week during their first face-to-face talks.

But she said she is willing to trigger Article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol, which would suspend parts of the treaty designed to prevent a hard border with the Republic, if a deal cannot be struck.



EU Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic

The Foreign Secretary was handed responsibility for the negotiations after Lord Frost resigned as Brexit minister last month.

Ms Truss is hosting Mr Sefcovic, a European Commission vice-president, at the Chevening country retreat afforded to the Foreign Secretary when he visits on Thursday.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, she said it is her absolute priority to resolve the unintended consequences created by the protocol to maintain peace in Northern Ireland.

When I see Maros Sefcovic this week for our first face-to-face talks, Ill be putting forward our constructive proposals to resolve the situation.

The current issues are myriad and manifest, she argued, citing issues such as bureaucracy on sending parcels between Northern Ireland and Britain and problems procuring kosher food.

I am prepared to work night and day to negotiate a solution, Ms Truss continued.

But let me be clear, I will not sign up to anything which sees the people of Northern Ireland unable to benefit from the same decisions on taxation and spending as the rest of the UK, or which still sees goods moving within our own country being subject to checks.

My priority is to protect peace and stability in Northern Ireland. I want a negotiated solution but if we have to use legitimate provisions including Article 16, I am willing to do that.

Last week, Mr Sefcovic warned that the foundation of the entire deal brokered between the UK and the EU would be jeopardised if Ms Truss takes the drastic step.

This is a very distracting element in the discussions. You try to achieve something together and  bam  theres the threat of Article 16 again, he told German newspaper Der Spiegel.

It touches on the fundamentals of our relationship.

The Northern Ireland Protocol was the most complicated part of the Brexit negotiations, and it is the foundation of the entire deal. Without the protocol, the whole system will collapse. We must prevent that at any cost.
Foyle MP, Colum Eastwood has said the DUP strategy of cosying up to British Government Ministers on Brexit is foolish.

The SDLP leader was speaking after Foreign Secretary, and Britain's main Brexit negotiator, Liz Truss said she would not accept a deal which means goods from Britain being checked as they enter the North and would be prepared to invoke Article 16 to suspend the Northern Ireland Protocol.

However, Mr Eastwood stated Ms Truss' threat was another in a series of hollow statements from British Government Ministers who the DUP had taken at their word only to be let down on matters Brexit.

The Foyle MP said that meetings with senior Tories and threats to trigger Article 16 are like groundhog day for people in Northern Ireland who want political leaders focused on our crumbling health service, the crisis in our schools and the spiraling cost of living.

He said: It really is incredible that with our health service under immense strain, our schools facing a Covid crisis and households across the North facing spiraling energy costs that the DUP has refused to abandon its disastrous campaign of threatening the institutions of government over the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Instead of addressing the real priorities that people are concerned about  getting the surgery they need, protecting jobs in their communities, providing a warm home for their family  the DUP is once again chasing influence with Tories at Westminster who will use them when its convenient and then dump them just as quickly.

They havent learned a thing from their last ugly break up with that party.

It is like groundhog day for people in Northern Ireland who want political leaders focused on the urgent priorities facing us.

The only outcome to Jeffrey Donaldsons foolish crusade is more uncertainty and chaos at a time when we just cant afford it.

Parties that are serious about government should be seeking to work together to improve the lives of people in our communities.

Instead we have establishment parties in a toxic race to see who can bring the government down first to meet their own selfish needs. People are sick of it.
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OLYMPIA (AP)  The Washington Supreme Court on Thursday declined to hear two lawsuits challenging new political maps drawn by the bipartisan redistricting commission.

The separate lawsuits were filed by the Washington Coalition for Open Government and Arthur West of Olympia. They said the legislative and congressional maps must be invalidated because commissioners violated open meeting laws, negotiated secretly for hours before the Nov. 15 deadline and hurriedly voted on new boundaries that were not publicly displayed or debated.





. . .
Former United States President Donald Trump is once again promoting another baseless conspiracy where he blames federal agents for being responsible for the unprecedented Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill attack.

On Sunday, the Republican businessman released a statement where he said that "Americans aren't buying into the" work of a bipartisan House committee investigating the deadly Capitol Hill attack. The former president also referred to the term "fedsurrection" during his unproven claims against agents.

Trump's Criminal Referral

A former Trump White House speechwriter, Darren Beattie, who was previously fired for his ties to white nationalists and then rehired, was one of the proponents of the new conspiracy. Trump's statement congratulated Beattie and Revolver News for their exposure of the Fake News' false narrative surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 incident.

Trump said that with the help of Beattie's work and the help of others, Americans across the country were no longer buying into the "Unselect Committee's" attempts to fool more than 75 million citizens of the United States. The term he used to refer to federal agents and their alleged insurrection also became trending on social media, Independent reported.

During a Thursday interview with Republican congressman Matt Gaet,Beattie alleged that a passenger onboard a "Hippies for Trump" bus stopped just outside the justice department on Jan. 5, 2021. The former Trump official said that these people were the ones responsible for removing the fencing in the area.

The former Trump White House speechwriter said that the actions that day created the conditions for the Capitol Hill riot. Beattie added that Trump supporters who were in the area the following day did not even know they were trespassing.

Read Also: Supreme Court Justices Appear To Block Joe Biden's Controversial COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate for Large Companies

The Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested 738 people for their involvement in the unprecedented incident. Many of whom were charged for trespassing in the area, among a number of other crimes, Yahoo News reported.

Conspiracy Theory

While Beattie's claim that there was a "Hippies for Trump" van that stopped outside the justice department was quickly spread online within a week of the anniversary of the Capitol siege, it had no basis in reality and no evidence of it ever actually happening.

The situation comes as former President Trump could face criminal referral for his alleged involvement and stoke of the unprecedented Capitol Hill riot. Several members of Congress said on Sunday that the Republican businessman cannot hide behind immunity from criminal prosecution over the incident.

On that same day, lawmakers from both parties, including moderate Republicans, warned that Trump will not be spared criminal liability should he be proven to have coordinated the attack. Mike Rounds, a Republican senator from South Dakota, said during an interview that when Trump left office on Jan. 20, 2021, he lost all immunity from prosecution.

In his remarks, Rounds said that the shield of the presidency did not apply to someone who was already a former president. The senator added that everyone in the United States was subject to the courts of the country.

While the House panel did not have the authority to pursue criminal charges against Trump for his involvement in the Capitol Hill siege, they can provide the justice department with sufficient evidence, the New York Times reported.



Related Article: Donald Trump Announces Truth Social App Launch Date After Canceling His Virtual Appearance During Jan. 6 Capitol Riot Anniversary

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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By HAVEN DALEY

Associated Press

LOUISVILLE, Colo.  The recent Colorado wildfire caused at least $513 million in damage and destroyed nearly 1,100 homes and structures, officials said Thursday as they updated the toll of property lost in the most destructive wildfire in state history.

Boulder County released the new totals after further assessing the suburban area located between Denver and Boulder where entire neighborhoods were charred. It's the first estimate of economic damage for the Dec. 30 blaze.





. . .
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By DAVID KOENIG

AP Business Writer

Airbnb hosts in Oregon will soon only see the initials of some prospective renters, not their full names, in a change designed to prevent discrimination against Black users of the online lodging marketplace.

The new policy stems from the settlement of a lawsuit that claimed hosts could reject customers because they could conclude that the prospective renters were Black based on their first names.





. . .
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SEATTLE  Amazon has signed a series of global, multi-year agreements with automotive manufacturer Stellantis. These agreements will see the two companies collaborate on software solutions for Stellantis' new digital cabin platform, STLA SmartCockpit, starting in 2024.

By leveraging artificial intelligence and cloud solutions, we will transform our vehicles into personalized living spaces and enhance the overall customer experience, making our vehicles the most wanted, most captivating place to be, even when not driving, said Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares in a news release.





. . .
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SEATTLE  This year, Seattle public radio station KEXP is celebrating 50 years on the airwaves.

KEXP was founded in 1972 as KCMU, a 10-watt, student-run radio station operated by the University of Washington. To mark the anniversary, the station is running special programming throughout the year, beginning with 50 Years of Music. This weekly program will spotlight a different year from the organization's five-decade history  but not in order. Rather than running chronologically, the programming will jump around the station's 50-year timeline.





. . .
Harrisonburg, VA (22801)

Today

Partly cloudy in the morning followed by scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. High 78F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms before midnight. Low 58F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
US comedian Bob Saget has died at the age of 65, police said.

Saget, known for starring in US sitcoms including Full House, was pronounced dead at a hotel room in Orlando, Florida.

Officers from Orange County Sheriffs Office were called following reports of an unresponsive man at the Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Earlier today, deputies were called to the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes for a call about an unresponsive man in a hotel room. The man was identified as Robert Saget & pronounced deceased on scene. Detectives found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case. #BobSaget pic.twitter.com/aB1UKiOlmi  Orange County Sheriff's Office (@OrangeCoSheriff) January 10, 2022

Saget was identified and pronounced dead at the scene.

The force said no signs foul play were found.

Earlier today, deputies were called to the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes for a call about an unresponsive man in a hotel room, Orange County Sheriffs Office said.

The man was identified as Robert Saget & pronounced deceased on scene.

Detectives found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case.

Saget had just begun his new 2022 stand up tour and had earlier tweeted about his show in Jacksonville, expressing his delight at being back performing.

Loved tonights show @PV_ConcertHall in Jacksonville. Appreciative audience. Thanks again to @RealTimWilkins for opening. I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight. Im happily addicted again to this shit. Check https://t.co/nqJyTiiezU for my dates in 2022. pic.twitter.com/pEgFuXxLd3  bob saget (@bobsaget) January 9, 2022

Loved tonights show @PV_ConcertHall in Jacksonville. Appreciative audience, he tweeted.

Thanks again to @RealTimWilkins for opening.

I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight. Im happily addicted again to this s**t.

British comedian and and Great British Bake Off host Matt Lucas paid tribute to Saget as a magnificently naughty comedian.

In terrible shock of the horrible news of Bob Saget's sudden passing. He was a warm, kind, humble man and a magnificently naughty comedian, always treading the line so deftly. He will be greatly missed.  Matt Lucas (@RealMattLucas) January 10, 2022

In terrible shock of the horrible news of Bob Sagets sudden passing, Lucas wrote on Twitter.

He was a warm, kind, humble man and a magnificently naughty comedian, always treading the line so deftly.

He will be greatly missed.

Celebrities have expressed their shock and sadness over his sudden death.

US TV host and actor Whoopi Goldberg wrote: Sail on my friend Bob Saget with your huge heart and abject lunacy.

My condolences to his daughters & other family.

Star Trek actor George Takei said that Americas Dad Bob Saget, had been a regular presence in his household.

Deeply saddened to learn of the untimely passing of comedian Bob Saget, he said.

Beloved by millions as Americas Dad, he was a regular presence in our living rooms, bringing to us the funniest videos and countless belly laughs.

Gone too soon, like so many of the brightest souls.

Deeply saddened to learn of the untimely passing of comedian Bob Saget. Beloved by millions as Americas Dad, he was a regular presence in our living rooms, bringing to us the funniest videos and countless belly laughs. Gone too soon, like so many of the brightest souls.  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) January 10, 2022

Actor John Stamos, who starred alongside Saget on the sitcom Full House, also took to Twitter to express his grief.

I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby.
Duncan, OK (73533)

Today

Mainly clear. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 46F. Winds N at 15 to 25 mph..

Tonight

Mainly clear. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 46F. Winds N at 15 to 25 mph.
At least 10 people died while dozens of others incurred injury after a cliff face in southeast Brazil collapsed at a popular tourism spot, crushing a tourist boat filled with people, terrifying video footage shows.

The video was captured by boaters who were able to narrowly avoid being stuck under the massive cliff face. The footage shows the giant slab falling into Lake Furnas in Minas Gerais state on Saturday. It was reported that the cliff face fell at around 12:30 p.m. after days of heavy rains in the area.

Horrifying Cliff Collapse

One video showed boaters who were panicking as the cliff face slowly peeled off, sending boulders tumbling into the lake. They were shouting at others to "get away!" However, the calls appeared to have been drowned out by the sound of the waterfall in the area and the music that was being played inside the boats.

A separate video captured the moment the cliff came crashing down and crushing two boats in the water. Marcos Pimenta of the Minas Gerais civil police said that 10 people were fatal victims of the incident and added that no one was reported missing on Sunday afternoon, the New York Times reported.

The commander of the Minas Gerais State Fire Department, Edgard Estevo, held a news conference and initially said that as many as 20 people were missing after the incident. Officials said they were working on identifying the missing people. By Saturday night, many of the victims who were injured in the incident had already been released from the hospital, Estevo said.

Read Also: More Than a Dozen Including 9 Children Are Dead in New York's Worst Fire in 30 Years Caused by Malfunctioning Electric Space Heater

The popular tourist spot where the incident occurred ran along the Rio Grande river, with Estevo saying that the horrifying crash took place between the towns of Sao Jose de Barra and Capitolio, where the boats initially departed from. The heavy rain was attributed to dislocating the rocks in the cliff that caused its collapse.

Authorities deployed helicopters and divers to help with the search and rescue of victims in the area. Officials also revealed that the boats in the area were filled with about 12 to 20 people each, including children, Fox News reported.

Unprecedented Incident

In an interview, Rovilson Teixeira, who has worked in the area for six years, said that he has never seen such an incident. He said that everyone who saw the incident was stunned, noting that there were many ambulances who came from other areas in order to pick up the victims.

Rescuers said that the 10 fatalities were part of a group of family and friends who were on the boat that suffered the greatest impact of the collapse. Authorities reported that all of the victims were Brazilian nationals aged between 14 and 68, based on preliminary investigations.

Tourists flocked to the popular destination to see the cliffs, caverns, and waterfalls surrounding the green waters of Lake Furnas that were formed by the hydroelectric dam of the same name. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro posted on Twitter by sharing some of the videos uploaded online, with the caption "as the unfortunate disaster occurred, the Brazilian Navy moved to the site to rescue victims and transport the injured, CBS News reported.



Related Article: Breaking Bad Copycat Killer Stabs Man on the Head, Tries To Liquefy the Corpse But Got Caught by Police

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Dundalk Chamber have expressed their disappointment at the announcement of further job losses at National Pen.

It comes as the company announced on Friday evening that they plan to cease fulfilment operations at their Dundalk facility from next year as part of their latest restructuring plans.

The move is expected to place 100 fulfilment jobs at risk.

In a statement, PRO of the Chamber Paddy Malone said:

We hope that the lead in time of one year will enable a programme of training and other supports to help those affected to identify new job opportunities.

The Chamber has through its SKILLNETS programme, over the last two years, already seen the level of upskilling and retraining that is possible.

We will of course make our resources available to help in any way.

We do note that the company has already identified Ireland and the Dundalk region as an excellent place to operate ecommerce and both back office and HQ from.

We look forward to working with National Pen in continuing to support this venture.

National Pen is well aware of the advantages of locating digital and ecommerce activities within the M1 corridor, an area of 2,300,000 offering the ideal place to work and live, he concluded.
Dundalk Sub Aqua Unit have thanked the people of Dundalk for their support in the past year.

In a Facebook statement the group wrote:

2021 was a very difficult year for us all, especially that of the emergency services.

We in Dundalk Sub Aqua Search and Recovery would like to take this opportunity to wish all emergency services & their families & very happy & safe new year.

We'd also like to thank our members & all who assisted us in such a difficult year.

The year started off bleak, as we weren't permitted to dive, due to Covid.

Shortly thereafter our SAR (Search & Recovery) divers did resume training which allowed us to be at a standard required, if our services were needed.

Throughout the year we managed to overcome any obstacles we incurred & continued our work adhering to the guidelines outlined by the government.

With such dedication some of our members pursued online training & courses & with great results.

April Mc Crave graduated to a Mons 2 diving instructor, the youngest diving instructor in Ireland, whilst in the midst of planning her wedding

Bill Piper and Patricia Finley both qualified as 4 star advanced divers.

Damien Whelby qualified as a 3 star leading diver.

While this was ongoing our safety & training officers were working on a safe training programme to bring in new members. Often changing plans to suit safety guidelines.

They did manage a programme beginning in Oct & managed to bring in 13 new members, who are all excelling.

We look forward to hopefully a brighter & better new year for us all.

Dundalk Sub Aqua Search and Recovery Divers are a group of volunteers who will continue to serve our community.

We have no boundaries or borders, we will go anywhere in Ireland if needed, & we are always on call throughout the year.

Thank you all & stay safe.
Louth County Libraries are kicking off the New Year with a number of online virtual events and workshops for people of all ages.

Supporting Positive Behaviours Post Christmas with Aoife Lee from Parent Support takes place Tuesday 11th January at 7pm.

Aoife Lee regularly appear on Virgin Medias Ireland AM show as their parenting expert & The Dermot & Dave Show on TodayFM

In this session Aoife will be talking about understanding our childrens behaviours and how as parents and caregivers we can support ourselves and the children by maintaining boundaries and behaviours on the day-to- day challenges of parenting.

Following the Christmas break of downtime and device use, she will also be chatting about managing screens during the school term.

Moo Music Virtual Workshops takes place Wednesday 12th January at 10am.

A fun, interactive music session for children aged 0-5 years and their parents or grandparents. Sing, dance, play and have fun.

All Night Long - how to eat to optimise sleep and recovery zoom workshop with Glenville Nutrition takes place Wednesday 13th January at 7pm

Up to 75% of us suffer from sleep issues during our lifetime and it is certainly a common complaint at the moment.

Getting enough sleep is critical to support long term mental and physical health and can significantly impact your performance and coping mechanisms within a day or two.

This practical talk covers how much sleep we really need, why quality and quantity are both important and how sleep impacts our health.

Find out if you are in sleep debt and the 8 steps to better sleep that you can start to work on today.

To book your place at any of these events email libraryhelpdesk@louthcoco.ie or Tel 042 9353190
Gardai in Dundalk investigating the disappearance of Giedre Raguckaite in May, 2018 have this morning Monday 10th January, 2022 arrested a man.

He was arrested and is currently detained at a Garda station in the midlands pursuant to a warrant under Section 42, Criminal Justice Act, 2006. He can be detained for up to 24 hours.

Giedre Raguckaite, a 29 year old Lithuanian National, had been missing since May 2018. She arrived in Ireland in early March 2018 and took up residence in Drogheda. She moved to College Heights, Hoey's Lane, Dundalk at the end of April 2018. She moved out of that accommodation approximately 24th May 2018. Between 24th - 29th May 2018 there were two sightings of her in the Dundalk area.

On 29th May 2018 she made contact with a friend and at approximately 6.30pm she called her father in Lithuania. She explained that she had been in a hotel/licensed premises that day for dinner and was socialising. The location of this premises is currently unknown. It is believed she was in the Dundalk area until approximately 8pm.

She was last seen being assisted into a house in Laytown that night 29th May 2018 at 11pm by two men. It is understood she was very intoxicated. It is believed she left that house with these men at approxiamtely 1:45am on 30th May 2018. There has been no sightings or contact with Giedre since that time.
Introducing mandatory vaccines in Ireland could be difficult to achieve because of rights afforded by the Constitution, a legal expert has said.

David Kenny, associate professor of law at Trinity College in Dublin, said the State would have to show a very compelling and highly evidenced common good rationale to remove peoples decision-making rights.

Minutes from a meeting of the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) revealed the issue of mandatory vaccination is to be discussed by public health experts, it emerged on Monday.

However, such a move could face huge challenges as the Constitution protects bodily integrity and autonomy and medical decision making.

The Irish Constitution also provides for strong protection for the rights of parents and guardians and children under Article 41 and 42.

While those rights are not absolute, it is possible to limit them for the common good.

But Prof Kenny said it would be challenging to do that in court.

As the virus threatens to overwhelm the health system, officials from the Department of Health are to produce a paper that will set out the relevant ethical and legal considerations.

The number of unvaccinated people are filling up hospital beds, prompting discussions around mandatory vaccines and how they could be introduced in Ireland.

Many scientists say increasing the number of vaccinated people will help reduce the number of people admitted to hospital with serious Covid-related issues.

Prof Kenny said the state would be expected to look into the move, as well as any legal and ethnical objections.

He said: The Irish constitution presents some potential difficulties for a policy proposal like this.

You would have to show a very compelling and highly evidenced common good rationale for taking away peoples decision-making rights in circumstances like this.

Thats something that I think in principle could be done.

I wouldnt say that the Constitution is such that we could never, in any circumstance, introduce a mandatory vaccination scheme  simply that you would have to be able to show a necessity and a very strong common good that would be done with the mandate, not a good that will primarily accrue to those people.

It would have to very much be a common welfare benefit.

Prof Kenny said the high numbers of vaccinated people in Ireland could pose another hurdle should the state wish to introduce such a measure.

He said the state would have to compare the current level of vaccination numbers with how mandatory jabs would help keep people out of intensive care.

They would have to show that, whatever extra percentage they think they would capture with a mandate, would be such that it would make a really marked difference to our public health outcomes in order to overcome the sort of consent and autonomy question, he added.

I would think that the state would want to be producing very compelling public health evidence in this. It wouldnt be an easy legal fight for the state if there were a legal challenge and I assume there would be quite quickly.

Prof Kenny said legislatures would have concerns about the likelihood of any move surviving a constitutional challenge.

The Government could also seek to change the Constitutional by way of a referendum but Mr Kenny said this could take a long time.

It would put the matter in a public debate, and we have to all consider if that is something we want to do, he added.

It would be a challenging process.
Gardai have made a fresh appeal for information after a man was shot dead in a callous attack in the Dublin suburb of Ballyfermot in the early hours of Sunday.

Michael Tormey, who was in his 40s, was gunned down outside his home at around 4.35am while his wife and child were asleep inside, Superintendent Tony Twomey said outside Ballyfermot Garda Station on Monday.

He said: Today I am appealing for any persons who may have been in the area of Thomond Road, Kylemore Road from 3.30am on Sunday morning and may have witnessed any unusual activity.





Gardai do not believe Mr Tormey was involved in crime.

Supt Twomey said gardai have not yet established a motive.

We have a full investigation team assigned to this and we are happy that we will establish a motive within the fullness of time, he told reporters.

Supt Twomey said around 20 officers are working on the investigation, with door-to-door enquiries being carried out in the area.

It is believed the victim had attended a social event on the night of his death, before returning home at 3.30am.

Gardai do not believe he was involved in any kind of row in the hours before the shooting.

Were at the early stages of an inquiry but weve nothing at this stage to suggest that its linked to an earlier event, Supt Twomey added.
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After a 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck northwest China's Qinghai Province at a depth of 10 kilometers on Saturday midnight, a part of the Great Wall dating back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) fell.

In Shandan county, Gansu Province, northwest China, two meters of the Great Wall collapsed, 114 kilometers from the epicenter in Haibei Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai. Following the devastating earthquake, authorities conducted a search of local cultural artifacts and discovered the collapse site. The major barrier has been built, and work on restoration and repair has begun.

Earthquake also felt in bigger cities

Although the quake struck in a sparsely populated area, it was felt in several bigger cities. There were no confirmed deaths, but nine people were injured, with eight of them being released from the hospital and one being monitored. According to Shi Yucheng, chairman of the Gansu Earthquake Agency, the nearest residential area is 40 kilometers from the epicenter, which is in an earthquake zone with residents who are used to dealing with earthquakes.

As part of the local struggle against poverty, resident homes were restored or refurbished to be quake-proof, Shi noted, which helped to prevent mortality in such a large earthquake, Global Times reported.

During a news briefing, officials claimed that four people in Menyuan Hui Autonomous County received minor injuries and had been treated and discharged. At 1:45 am magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck in a steep part of Qinghai province, 3,659 meters (12,000 feet) above sea level. Some inhabitants in Xining, the province capital 140 kilometers (85 miles) southeast, rushed out of their homes and buildings.

Furniture and ceiling lamps swayed in a midnight video aired online by CGTN, the foreign branch of state broadcaster CCTV while animals in its corral abruptly sprang up and moved. Homes were damaged in various ways, according to photos from the state-run China News Service, including a shattered window, broken wall tiles, and a massive ceiling portion that had collapsed.

Five towns are within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the epicenter, as reported by the official Xinhua news agency. According to Xinhua, service on segments of a high-speed railway line between Lanzhou in Gansu province and the Xinjiang region has been disrupted due to damage to various tunnels. Inspectors have been deployed to check the rails after several Qinghai-Tibet railway lines have been blocked.

In an online statement, the Chinese Ministry of Emergency Management claimed that rescue and firefighting teams from Qinghai and neighboring Gansu provinces had deployed around 500 workers to the site. Another 2,260 rescuers from surrounding districts were on standby, according to AP NEWS.

Read Also: Japan, South Korea Criticize North's Latest Hypersonic Ballistic Missile Launch That Successfully Hits Target

Earthquake also rocks in Papua New Guinea

Meanwhile, the US Geological Survey reported a 5.9-magnitude earthquake off the coast of eastern Papua New Guinea on Sunday. The quake hit at a depth of 19 kilometers (12 miles) in the Solomon Sea around 0205 GMT, roughly 200 kilometers off the southern coast of New Britain island, according to the USGS.

There were no reports of damage or tsunami warnings at the time. Papua New Guinea is located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, which is a hotspot for seismic activity caused by tectonic plate friction. In July 2020, a 6.9-magnitude earthquake devastated the country's capital, Port Moresby; but no major damage was recorded. In February 2018, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake slammed the country's mountains, causing landslides, burying homes, and killing at least 125 people, NDTV reported.

Related Article: Xi Jinping Says China Is Not Seeking Dominance in the Global Stage Despite Claiming Majority of South China Sea

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@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
EBRD loan of US$ 28 million for construction of ultra-thin copper foil factory for EV batteries

Facility in Tatabanya, NW Hungary, to supply electric vehicle battery manufacturers in Europe

The project will contribute to the circular economy of the EV battery sector

A long-term loan of US$ 28 million from the EBRD will support the construction of an ultra-thin copper foil factory for electric vehicle (EV) batteries in Tatabanya, northwestern Hungary, by Solus Advanced Materials of South Korea, which is one of the global leading producers of the material.

The first plant in Europe to produce copper foil for EV batteries, this facility will supply to European EV battery producers in Europe.

By 2050, the European Union aims for a climate-neutral economy. Moving to electro-mobility is a key element in reducing CO 2 emissions and reaching the blocs climate action targets.

The plant in Hungary will contribute to this aim. Since it relies fully on scrap copper, it also contributes to the circular economy of the EV battery sector. The project is aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement on limiting climate change, and meets the requirements of the EU Taxonomy.

Frederic Lucenet, EBRD Head of Industries: We are pleased to finance this project, which marks another step forward in greening the economy and advancing e-mobility. We have a strong track record of financing EV manufacturing, EV batteries and other EV supply chain components. We fully support Solus Advanced Materials growth and its contribution to Hungarys becoming a hub for the European EV battery industry.

Keunman Kwak, CFO Solus Advanced Materials: "We are delighted with our cooperation with valued European partner such as EBRD. Construction of the plant in Hungary is a significant milestone for Solus and we believe EBRDs support will strengthen our growth strategy and contribute to accelerating the shift to EVs and a cleaner world for us all. We look forward to continued cooperation with the EBRD as a committed long-term partner.

To date, the EBRD has invested nearly 3.3 billion in 192 projects in Hungary.
Irish Water has warned of possible disruption to water supply in areas of the city tomorrow and Wednesday.

The company is working in conjunction with Cork City Council to install new watermains connections in Eagle Valley, Wilton.

As a result, Irish Water said there may be disruption to supply for homes and businesses in Eagle Valley, Wilton, Sarsfield Road, Togher, Spur Hill, Greenwood Estate, Robins Court, Sandown Crest, Doughcloyne Industrial Estate, Elm Vale, Elm Park, Westbury, Forrest Ridge, Fernwood, White Oaks, The Headlands and surrounding areas from 11pm tomorrow until 6am on Wednesday morning.

Following the completion of the improvement works, the water supply may take two to three hours to return as water refills the network.

Irish Water said work crews will endeavour to complete works ahead of time in order to expedite the return of supply to the affected areas.

The company acknowledged that this type of work can be inconvenient and said it will ensure its work crews make every effort to minimise any disruption these works may cause.

Customers can call the Irish Water customer helpline on 1800 278 278 if they have any questions in relation to the works.

Updates on this work can be found on the Irish Water Supply and Service map by entering the following reference number in the search bar on water.ie: COR00042672
A Blackrock householder heard a noise from a downstairs room and went down to find a very intoxicated intruder asking him for a charger for an electric bicycle.

That was the description given by Sergeant John Kelleher in the burglary case against Anthony Foley of 20 The Maples, Bridgemount, Carrigaline.

Sgt. Kelleher said at Cork District Court that the Director of Public Prosecutions had accepted jurisdiction to deal with the case summarily at district court level.

Judge Olann Kelleher asked for an outline of the allegations in the case so that he could decide on whether he would also accept jurisdiction for the case.

Sgt. Kelleher said, On August 19 2021 gardai received a report of a burglary at Church Road, Blackrock, Cork, where the injured party reported that at approximately 8.30 pm he and his housemate were upstairs in their home when he heard a noise downstairs.

When he went to check it out he was met with a male who was at the bottom of the stairs located in the sitting room.

When the injured party asked the man what he was doing in here the man said, Where is the charger for the bike?

The injured party ushered the man out of the house. He believed the man was drunk or on drugs.

There was some dispute at the scene about the electric bike in the house and the defendant was later identified.

Judge Olann Kelleher said he would accept jurisdiction to deal with the case in the district court.

29-year-old Foley faces a charge which states that he entered the property as a trespasser and committed the theft of an electric scooter and a JVC television.

Judge Kelleher directed that a copy of the prosecution statements would be sent to defence solicitor, Eddie Burke.

The case was then adjourned until February 14 for the accused to decide if he is pleading guilty or not guilty to the charge.
To protect endangered species, scientists and conservationists need to know where these species exist. But thats not always easy to do, as lower population numbers make it hard to find such vulnerable animals. But in two new studies, scientists have found ways to vacuum animal DNA from the air, making it easier to track down endangered species.

Environmental DNA, called eDNA, has been used for several years to track marine life or plants on land.

One thing that weve discovered in eDNA research is really that any environmental medium (water, soil, snow, etc.) has the potential to harbor DNA that we can sample, Stephen F. Spear, a U.S. Geological Survey research biologist, told NPR.

But using this process to track larger, land-based species is new. Kristine Bohmann, a lead author of one of the studies, came across the idea to vacuum DNA from the air a few years ago while trying to win a grant that funds unconventional scientific ideas. Bohmanns team landed the grant, and decided to experiment with different devices to try to capture eDNA. A standard, commercial vacuum cleaner did the trick, as did some homemade vacuum devices, which also had the benefit of being quieter.

Similarly, Elizabeth Clare, lead author of one of the studies and a molecular ecologist at York University in Toronto, Canada, and a team of scientists were testing the same procedure at a zoo in Cambridgeshire, UK. The team was able to successfully detect 25 species, including animals that were local but outside of the zoo. They detected a Eurasian hedgehog, a critically endangered animal, that zookeepers said sometimes wanders the area.

Both teams led by Bohmann and Clare were preparing to publish their research around the same time but caught wind of each others work. They connected and decided to publish their findings as a pair of related papers in Current Biology.

Theres more research to do, as the scientists arent sure what type of DNA they are obtaining. It could be from animals skin, saliva, feces, or urine. Clare also noted that their collected DNA missed some species that the team knew were close by. But the scientists are ready to dive in to find out more about this opportunity in hopes of using it for conservation efforts.

I have this vision of samplers that are deployed globally that can suck up the DNA from all these different sources, from soil and honey and rain and snow and air and water, sequence them on site, beam the data up to the servers, Clare said. Ultimately, she hopes this research could create biomonitoring systems for animals worldwide.

Based in Los Angeles, Paige is a writer who is passionate about sustainability. Aside from writing for EcoWatch, Paige also writes for Insider, HomeAdvisor, Thrillist, EuroCheapo, Eat This, Not That!, and more. She earned her Bachelors degree in Journalism from Ohio University and holds a certificate in Womens, Gender and Sexuality Studies. She also specialized in sustainable agriculture while pursuing her undergraduate degree. When shes not writing, Paige enjoys decorating her apartment, enjoying a cup of coffee and experimenting in the kitchen (with local, seasonal ingredients, of course!).






Volume of Brazil's poultry exports increases 9% last year





Brazil's poultry exports rose 9% by volume in 2021 to a record 4.6 million tonnes, industry group ABPA said on January 7, as diversifying destinations offset a drop in shipments to top importer China.



Revenue from poultry exports totaled $7.66 billion last year, a 25.7% jump year-on-year, ABPA added.



Asia brought in 1.64 million tonnes of Brazilian poultry in 2021, a 0.5% annual rise, even as China imports fell by 5% to 640,000 tonnes, Reuters reported. Higher sales to Japan and the Philippines helped offset the Chinese drop, ABPA said.



"Despite the slight decrease (in 2021), China remains the top destination for Brazil's poultry exports and is expected to retain this position," ABPA's head, Ricardo Santin, said.



Middle Eastern countries bought 1.33 million tonnes of Brazilian poultry last year, down 0.3% from 2020, ABPA added, while exports to Africa rose 19.2% to 662,300 tonnes. Shipments to the European Union were up 13.2% at 193,200 tonnes.



For 2022, Santin said Brazil's poultry sector expects to keep increasing its market share of global exports, noting that some competitors are facing relevant health-related issues.



A highly pathogenic bird flu has been spreading quickly in Asia and Europe in recent months, putting the industry on alert after previous outbreaks led to the culling of tens of millions of birds.



Fifteen countries had reported outbreaks of bird flu in poultry between October and the end of December, mostly the H5N1 strain, according to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).



Countries such as Japan and the United Arab Emirates are expected to remain among Brazil's top clients, ABPA added.



- Thomas Reuters Foundation
Interview: China's entry into WTO has created win-win situation, says trade expert

Xinhua) 13:29, January 10, 2022

GENEVA, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) has created a win-win situation, said Lu Xiankun, managing director of consulting institution LEDECO Geneva.

In a recent interview with Xinhua, Lu said that China has achieved unprecedented development through its integration into the multilateral trading system and that other WTO members have also benefited a lot from China's market economy transformation and opening up.

Before creating in 2017 LEDECO Geneva, which is in close collaboration with international organizations, Lu worked for many years in international trade.

The year 2021 marked the 20th anniversary of China's accession to the WTO. Over the past two decades, the global ranking of China's economic aggregate has risen to the second from the sixth place. Its ranking of trade in goods has risen from the sixth to the first, while that of its trade in services has jumped from the 11th to the second.

Lu cited relevant studies that the economic and trade growth rates of new members, including China, are higher than those of the founding members after their WTO accession, due in part to greater market openness.

China has earnestly fulfilled its WTO commitments and implemented in time relevant amendments to laws and regulations, Lu said.

Lu believes that since China's WTO accession 20 years ago, the country has provided a huge and steadily growing market for the exports of other WTO members.

China has now become the top trading partner of more than 50 countries and regions, and one of the top three trading partners of over 120 countries and regions. Since 2008, it has been the top destination of exports from the least developed countries.

Over the past 20 years, China's overall tariff level has dropped to 7.4 percent from 15.3 percent in 2001, lower than the 9.8 percent the country promised when entering into the WTO. Among the service trade sectors, China has opened up more than 120, far beyond 100 the country promised.

Meanwhile, China has been actively participating in various WTO activities, constantly learning, growing, and gradually emerging as a participant in the formulation of rules, and has also played a leading role in some fields, Lu said, citing such plurilateral negotiations as the Investment Facilitation for Development and the Informal Dialogue on Plastics Pollution and Environmentally Sustainable Plastics trade.

Lu said that with the growth of China's economy and the rising of its international status, the WTO and its members have higher expectations for China, hoping that China will play a leading role and make contributions that are more in line with its current strength and status.

Lu said that in order to deal with the dual impacts of the economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, some countries have adopted restrictive measures with unilateralism and trade protectionism, but these measures are not good "prescriptions" to the crisis, and can only make the situation worse.

A recent report of the WTO shows that members are gradually withdrawing trade-restrictive measures, while trade facilitation measures have greatly increased, Lu said.

"This is precisely the role of the relevant WTO rules, which curb the political impulse of approaching unilateralism and protectionism of some members and their leaders. It fully proves the core value and role of the multilateral trading system will not be marginalized because of one-off events."

Lu said that although economic globalization has encountered some adverse tides and the global industrial chain is undergoing some adjustments, no fundamental changes have occurred.

The economic exchanges between countries such as China and the United States are still closely intertwined and even further strengthened, Lu added.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Joe Biden and his attempt to control Putin are in vain as the Ukraine border does not improve with armies on either side.

The former UK ambassador to Russia, Sir Tony Brenton, has misgivings that the White House talks are useless and called the US president weak against the savvy Russian leader.

Since the start of the border standoff, Moscow has been maneuvering to the detriment of NATO allies to get an edge over them.

Biden's strategy does not affect the Kremlin

The two heads of state have been conferencing over the fate of the powerful military buildup of Russian Troops and equipment seen as a threat to Ukraine security.

An estimated 104,000 soldiers camped close to the border, and the West fears another similar move like Crimea, reported the Express UK.

Brenton gave his assessment based on how the White House has stumbled in everything it has done. The US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken a month ago warned the Kremlin of sanctions, but it was shrugged off instead.

Washington calls sanctions a substantial consequence that should make Russia shudder, but it does not faze the Kremlin. Sanctions by the US are overblown and have limited effect, like the current US President.

Since Kiev is not a NATO member, there will be no active military assistance if there is fighting. The Biden administration is useless as their threat for sanctions does not affect the Kremlin. Putin has shown resiliency in steering his nation that has been sanctioned.

Read Also: Boris Johnson Flares After Joe Biden Disregards Brexit Britain From Cutting Tariffs to Free Trade Deals

He added that Russian does not intend to invade Ukraine, despite what the US reported cited Foreign policy. The leadership of the United States has been questioned by many after the failure in Afghanistan.

Russia wants the West to stop encroaching

Moscow's action is to bring attention to the security of eastern Europe to give legitimacy to any agreement, especially to the region.

Russia does not trust NATO if they include Ukraine in its roster of members that will be a threat as it is seen. NATO wants to expand.

One senior administration from the US administration said it does not want to talk about limiting US troops, or their troop posture is in NATO countries, noted Euronews.

Talks are set in Moscow on Monday with the EU in Geneva, Switzerland; the discussion avoids a crisis.

Since last year, Russia has been placing thousands of troops on the Ukraine border, causing the EU problems as claimed. There is no guarantee if the US and its western allies can make headway against Moscow due to the divided union and the ineffectual Biden administration.

All Vladimir Putin wants is to stop the West from moving in on the eastern domain of the Russian Federation, but the US is courting a possible conflict by not considering it.

The US official says that there is some common ground to talk about in discussions. Even covering areas where they can consider.

This is a problem, according to Sir Brenton, the US does not want to have the fair commitment that Russian wants. It is where the Biden administration fails at. An Ex-UK ambassador to Russian calls Joe Biden moves on Putin as ineffective as his leadership and steering of the US is highly questionable.

Related Article: Joe Biden's Foreign Policy 'America is Back' Denies White House To Proceed Free Trade Deal With UK

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Effingham, IL (62401)

Today

A few showers early becoming a steady rain overnight. Low 57F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch..

Tonight

A few showers early becoming a steady rain overnight. Low 57F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
A few simple statements to The Guardian by the minister of Consumer Affairs, Alberto Garzon, have snowballed into a big problem. The leader of Unidas Podemos assured that Spanish extensive agriculture "is environmentally sustainable" and has great importance in many parts of Spain, as opposed to macro-farms, industrial livestock farming, which produces "poor quality meat" with animal abuse and environmental impact. But the right and the extreme right took a single sentence, the latter, and spread it out of context. PP, Vox and Ciudadanos joined the offensive against Garzon from the beginning, but socialist barons such as Javier Lamban from Aragon or Emiliano Garcia-Page from Castilla-La Mancha did so too. Today, Pedro Sanchez, who has uncovered a second steak war (referred to the tensions over Garzons declarations against the meat industry), has also joined the fray.

This time, the Spanish prime minister was more sophisticated than when Garzon defended that it was necessary to reduce not stop meat consumption. Then, Sanchez said that there was nothing better than "a good medium steak". Today, the socialist leader said he "greatly regrets" the statements of the minister of Consumer Affairs. Buying into the right-wing campaign, in an interview on Cadena SER, he defended that Spanish meat is of "extraordinary quality" and that it meets Spanish and European standards. The controversy, he reiterated, "does not correspond with the reality of the sector nor with the day-to-day life of the Spanish government".

The response from Unidas Podemos was quick. From another radio station, former Spanish vice-president and former leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, harshly criticised Pedro Sanchez, whom he accused of propagating the "hoax" of the right and the extreme right. "What the prime minister has done today is very serious, he has given veracity to a hoax," denounced Iglesias. "The right wing makes politics through lies. These media no longer interpret reality from a right-wing perspective. That is fake news (...). The fact that the prime minister recognizes that the weight of the hoaxes forces him to admit this lie is very serious," he criticised.

Second vice president and current leader of Unidas Podemos, Yolanda Diaz, also backed Garzon and recalled that "what he has done is simply corroborate what the Spanish government has been defending in its documents" and that these documents say that "we are committed to extensive and sustainable livestock, and that demands a commitment from the government as a whole". Diaz, who is also minister of Labour, warned Pedro Sanchez that it is necessary to "take care of the coalition" and be "careful with ones words".

Be that as it may, Unidas Podemos were the only ones who defended the statements, placed in context, of minister Alberto Garzon.

More reproaches

Beyond the livestock issue, today has been a day of more reproaches. The minister of Social Rights and Secretary General of Podemos, Iome Belarra, also criticised how in these two years of coalition government it has been "extraordinarily difficult" for the PSOE to "simply comply with what has been agreed". Belarra assured that "too many times the attempts of our partner to remain faithful to the agreement have been labelled as noise" and "the fact that it was the PSOE who once again resisted fulfilling the agreements has been swept under the rug" in a sample of the "two-party culture that our country does not accept any longer". She reiterated: "The agreements must be fulfilled, and we will demand it until the end of the legislature".
Washington, MO (63090)

Today

Thunderstorms likely this evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low 58F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms likely this evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low 58F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
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Mayor welcomes celebrated dance teacher to Town Hall

The Mayor of Douglas recently welcomed celebrated retired dance teacher Janice Cull, some of her former students and mothers of former students to the Town Hall.

Mrs Cull, who is current chairman of the Isle of Man Dance Teachers Association, first qualified in 1971 and held her first classes at St Ninians church then Cunningham House on Glencrutchery Road. In 1982 she moved to the 1st Douglas Scout hall in Demesne Road, where she remained for 18 years.

In 2000 she moved to a studio at the Ellan Vannin Gymnastics Centre at the NSC, remaining there until 2013 before relocating back to the Scout hall where she remained until her retirement in October of this year.

She is qualified in ballroom, latin and classical sequence.

Mrs Culls school has competed from Blackpool to St Petersburg and helped to raise funds for numerous local charities.

Among the guests at the Town Hall was former student Nicola Walkinshaw who said that Mrs Cull had opened up a world of opportunity for aspiring young dancers, while Her Worship spoke with fondness of the Mrs Culls schools on-island performances and encouragement she gave to her students, among them her own son, Gary Chatel.
Samsung may unveil its much anticipated (and leaked) Galaxy S22 at an Unpacked event on February 8th, according to South Korea's Digital Daily. "We have confirmed that the event will be held on February 8 and we are discussing the timing of invitations to be sent out at the end of January," a Samsung Electronics official told the site. Pre-orders are reportedly set to go live the next day, on February 9th, with shipping starting on February 24th.

Samsung will likely debut three phones, the Galaxy S22, S22 Plus and S22 Ultra models. According to some of the many rumors out there, all three devices will have very bright displays. Meanwhile, the Galaxy S22 Ultra's camera will offer what Samsung calls a "Super Clear Lens."

The primary chip could be Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, reportedly manufactured by Samsung. Devices outside the US may come with Samsung's Exynos 2200 chip that uses a GPU based on AMD's RDNA 2 architecture and could support ray tracing. Numerous images of the device have already surfaced, including a shot of the Galaxy S22 Ultra posted by Evan Blass (above).

The event schedule and release date have yet to be confirmed, but Samsung typically schedules its flagship smartphone events around the same time each year. It'll supposedly be shown at MWC 2022 in Barcelona, by which time it should already be in buyers' hands, if the leak proves accurate. Engadget has reached out to Samsung for confirmation.
Despite the massive number of stars in the sky, spotting one in the throes of a supernova is still an incredibly rare event. Now, astronomers have captured a red supergiant before, during and after a supernova explosion for the first time, gathering crucial new information about these dramatic events.

"This is a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die," said lead author Wynn Jacobson-Galan (UC Berkeley). "Direct detection of pre-supernova activity in a red supergiant star has never been observed before in an ordinary Type II supernova. For the first time, we watched a red supergiant star explode!"

Using the Pan-STARRS telescope in Maui, Hawai'i, scientists detected the doomed red supergiant star in the summer of 2020 thanks to the huge amount of light it was emitting. Later in the fall when it went supernova, the team captured the powerful flash using the Hawai'i-based Keck Observatory's Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS). They also captured the very first spectrum of the supernova, known as SN 2020tlf.

The observations showed that the star likely ejected massive amounts of dense circumstellar material just ahead of the explosion. Previous observations showed that red giants were relatively calm before going supernova, so the new data suggests that some may change their internal structure significantly before exploding. That could then result in tumultuous gas ejections moments before collapse.

SN 2020tlf is located in the NGC 5731 galaxy about 120 million light-years from Earth and was about 10 times more massive than the Sun. Stars go supernova when they run out of fuel and collapse on their own gravity, fueling a massive carbon fusion explosion. For that to happen, they must be large enough (8 to 15 solar masses) or they'll simply collapse into white dwarf star like our Sun eventually will. Any larger than that and they could collapse into a black hole.

The discovery will now allow scientists to survey red supergiant stars looking for similar types of luminous radiation that could signal another supernova. "Detecting more events like SN 2020tlf will dramatically impact how we define the final months of stellar evolution... in the quest to solve the mystery on how massive stars spend the final moments of their lives," said Jacobson-Galan.
Almost a year ago, Spotify announced plans to roll out a higher tier of its streaming service with CD-quality music in some markets in 2021. However, Spotify HiFi is still not available and there's no indication as to when it will actually arrive.

"Artists and fans have told us that HiFi quality audio is important to them. We agree, and were excited to deliver a Spotify HiFi experience to Premium users in the future," a Spotify spokesperson told Engadget. "We dont have timing details to share today." A Spotify moderator shared a similar update on the Community forums.

Back in 2017, Spotify tested CD-quality audio by offering some users in the US access to lossless music for an extra $7.50 per month. Since then, other prominent music streaming services have embraced lossless streaming, with Apple Music joining the likes of Tidal and Deezer. French HD streaming service Qobuz arrived in the US in 2019.

Spotify hasn't said how much HiFi will cost when the service rolls out more broadly, but competitors may force its hand into offering lossless music streaming at no extra cost. Apple Music, Amazon Music and Tidal have all rolled CD-quality audio into their standard plans over the last year.

Other details about Spotify HiFi beyond pricing and availability remain unclear. However, the company has confirmed the service will work with Spotify Connect-enabled speakers.

Update 1/10 4:10PM ET: Added Spotify's statement.
An Afghan infant boy who was separated from his parents amid the chaos of the Taliban takeover and mass evacuations reunited with his family five months later.

As masses rushed through the Kabul airport gates on August 19, the baby, Sohail Ahmadi, was two months old when his father turned him over to a US soldier.

Fearing that his infant might be crushed by the crowds, Mirza Ali Ahmadi felt that handing the child to a soldier would be the safest way to get him past the airport gates and be reunited with his family minutes later. But, at that same time, Taliban soldiers stopped the remainder of the throng, preventing Ahmadi and his family from passing for another half-hour.

Missing Afghan baby reunited with family

Officials told the Ahmadis that the infant had most likely been removed from the country separately and that they would be able to reconnect with him later after an unsuccessful search. Ahmadi and his wife were subsequently flown from Kabul to the United States, with no indication of when they would see their son again, as per Newsweek.

The baby's grandpa added that when Ahmadi recognized him, he went to Safi's house to get the child in exchange for presents. Safi declined, requesting that he and his family be evacuated from Afghanistan. The Ahmadi family was ultimately reunited with the infant on Saturday after seven weeks of discussions and enlisting the help of Taliban police. The family paid Safi 100,000 Afghani ($950) for caring for the baby.

The parents were able to view their baby through video chat after entrusting him to his grandfather's care. The Ahmadi family, who moved to Michigan in December, is hoping to reconnect with their infant in the United States shortly. Mirza Ali, 35, Suraya, 32, and their other children, ages 17, 9, 6, and 3, were flown to Qatar, then Germany, before landing in the United States aboard an evacuation plane.

The family is currently residing in Fort Bliss, Texas, among other Afghan refugees awaiting reintegration. In this town, they have no ties. Other families were entrusting their infants to the army at the Kabul airport as well. Video footage of a young newborn in a diaper being carried over razor wire by her arm went popular on social media. Her parents were reunited with her after that.

Read Also: Russia Blames Washington Wars for Kazakhstan Crisis as US, NATO Take Firm Line Ahead of Talks About Ukraine Tensions

Baby lost in chaos of Afghanistan airlift

Since his baby went missing, he notified everyone he encountered, including charity workers and US officials, about Sohail. An Afghan refugee support group developed a "Missing Baby" poster with Sohail's face on it and disseminated it around their networks in the hopes that someone would identify him, according to Reuters.

When word of the missing child spread in November, several of Mr Safi's neighbors recognized the baby's photos and made comments on a version of the story wondering about his whereabouts. Ahmadi asked his Afghan relatives to find Safi and requested them to return the newborn Sohail to the family. In an attempt to save the infant, Ahmadi's father-in-law, Mohammad Qasem Razawi, flew to the capital for two days and two nights with gifts for Safi and his family.

The baby's family went on to ask for help from the Red Cross but revealed they received little information from the organization.To report an abduction, Razawi eventually phoned the local Taliban police. Safi told the authorities that he was caring for the child and that he did not kidnap him, Independent reported.

Related Article: Taliban Seeks The Return of Afghanistan's Aircraft, Acknowledges Tensions with Pakistan

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Welcome to your Monday morning! CES is a wrap. While we planned to send a small team of Engadget staff to Las Vegas to cover the show in person, Omicron appeared on the horizon, and, well, our plans changed.

Engadget

We also decided, under those circumstances, to do our own thing for our annual CES Awards. Our favorites run the gamut from familiar categories like mobile, TV and wearables through to sustainability innovations, wildcards and transport tech. Did we miss anything?

 Mat Smith

Just dont expect a radical redesign.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman claims Apple is expected to introduce a third-generation iPhone SE this spring through a virtual presentation "likely" happening in March or April. As weve already heard rumored before, Gurman says the new SE would still cling to the iPhone 8-era design but add 5G and a new processor, bringing it closer in parity to existing iPhones. We last saw the iPhone SE in 2020, running on the A13 Bionic.

Continue reading.

It's not the first time a Y2K-style bug has sent Honda and Acura vehicles to the past.

Since the start of the year, Hondas forums have been flooded with reports of people complaining the clocks and calendars in their vehicles are stuck in 2002. Its affecting Honda and Acura models with GPS navigation systems manufactured between 2004 and 2012, with reports of people encountering the problem in the US, UK and Canada. Whats more, there doesnt appear to be a fix at the moment. Each time someone starts their car, the clock resets  even if they manually set it beforehand.

Continue reading.

Faster processors, updated button layout and longer power cables.

IKEA

IKEA and Sonos have released a second-generation version of their Symfonisk bookshelf speaker. No Earth-shattering changes here, but the update features a faster processor and more memory and draws less power when its on standby. It also comes with a longer power cable.

However, looking at the new model next to its first-generation counterpart, the most visible change is an updated button layout that brings the volume controls next to one another. Prices appear similar to the original in the Netherlands, but were still waiting to hear if or when the update will make it to the US.

Continue reading.

It will reportedly be backed by the US dollar.

PayPals VP of crypto and digital currencies has confirmed to Bloomberg that the online payment provider is "exploring a stablecoin." Jose Fernandez da Ponte added the company will work closely with relevant regulators if the project goes forward.

Continue reading.

The company is using a strategy sometimes reserved for supercars.

Ford

Ford is giving dealerships the option to ban customers from reselling the Lightning for up to a year after purchase. As the (since-pulled) document on the F-150 Gen 14 forums revealed, the dealer could "seek injunctive relief" to block ownership transfer or even demand payment for "all value" generated from the sale.

Continue reading.

The biggest news stories you might have missed

UK watchdog to grill Meta over child safety in VR

NASA finishes deploying the James Webb Space Telescope

Apple said to have ruled out a metaverse for its mixed reality headset

Breakthrough could help you 3D print OLED screens at home

Mars Perseverance halts rock sample storage due to debris
Yet another dark day in Hollywood today as we mourn the untimely death of comedian and actor Bob Saget, best known for his role as Danny Tanner on Full House.

Saget died last night at the age of 65 - according to the Orange County Sheriff's Department, he was found unresponsive in his Florida hotel room before he was meant to go on for a stand-up set. The cause of death is yet unknown, but police said they saw no evidence of foul play or drug use.

As soon as the news broke, the internet was immediately flooded with saddened tributes to the late actor, including ones from his former Full House co-stars.

Kimmy Gibbler - real name Andrea Barber - posted this:

There is no other person I enjoy exchanging insults with more than Mr. @BobSaget himself! Mr. T, https://t.co/fyVeU5IQP8  Andrea Barber (@andreabarber) July 30, 2016

If you were only familiar with Saget through Full House and America's Funniest Home Videos, that caption may confuse you - it is hard to imagine Danny Tanner insulting Kimmy Gibbler in a non-passive-aggressive way.

If you never saw Bob Saget on an uncensored network, you may not be aware that he actually had a very crude and somewhat unusual sense of humor - one that all of his castmates loved, especially his would-be brothers, Dave Coulier (Joey) and John Stamos (Uncle Jesse). Their interactions during his life may not give us the warm fuzzies the same way Full House does...but honestly, this is way better. For example, take this story Dave Coulier told about how Saget would balance himself out after doing a particularly mushy scene for Full House:

Listen to this podcast with me and @bobsaget Its really immature. And...its definitely not Joey and Danny. https://t.co/sku6WGGMUz  Dave Coulier (@DaveCoulier) October 12, 2020

Or this sweet picture of John Stamos grabbing Saget's ass - lovingly, of course, he wasn't a piece of meat.

#happybirthday to the man who's hand's have grazed my ass more than my own hands. Love you Bobby! @bobsaget pic.twitter.com/VWtN56UBto  John Stamos (@JohnStamos) May 18, 2019

Also, speaking of asses, apparently Stamos actually has a tattoo of Bob Saget on his so he is at the very least already immortalized there:

You can tell that - despite the fact that he was nothing like his Full House character - the three had fun together on set. They really acted less like friends and more like brothers - and, as a matter of fact, Saget referred to them as such.

My brothers @JohnStamos & @DaveCoulier surprise me on TODAYS NEW Episode Titled: John Stamos & Dave Coulier Call Bob While Hes Recording a Special New Years Eve Callers Episode. FOLLOW & LISTEN at: https://t.co/WlJDsODAiy @spotifypodcasts @Spotify pic.twitter.com/x1FkMFf6to  bob saget (@bobsaget) December 31, 2020

Saget's death is very sad, but it's still heartwarming to know that he had friends who loved him so much. May he rest in peace.
Peacock has finally dropped the trailer for the reboot of The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air and this time around it's no laughing matter.

In this more serious approach to the hit 90s NBC comedy, which made Will Smith a household name, the show, now simply called Bel-Air, takes the same story beats, only bringing a realism to the narrative by focusing on the more serious issues which lead Will to have to move to California with his wealthy family.

The show stars Jabari Banks as Will, Adrian Holmes as Uncle Phil, Cassandra Freeman playing Aunt Vivian, Olly Sholotan as Carlton, Coco Jones playing Hilary, Akira Akbar as Ashley, Jimmy Akingbola as Geoffrey, and Jazz will be played by Jordan L. Jones.

The trailer takes the world of The Fresh Prince and gives it a gritty veneer, deep dining into the trouble Will gets into with some thugs back in Philly, the family dynamic of the Banks in having to deal with their nephew's past, and how Will has to learn to navigate the new world thrust upon him in Bel-Air.

T.J. Brady and Rasheed Newson, showrunners for the series had this to say about the dramatic reboot,

At its heart, Bel-Air is a coming-of-age story that celebrates the strength and love of the Black family. We have stayed true to the original premise of the legacy series - Will's life is turned upside down after he is forced to leave West Philly and lands in Bel-Air with its gated mansions and wealth, however, our new series brings Will and the Banks family into the world as we know it now. It's been incredible to bring these iconic characters to life when you tap them into the cultural pulse of our time. The series was the fabric of so many of our upbringings, tied to memories and the joy of seeing ourselves represented on TV so it is important to us to pay respect to its legacy.

Bel-Air will premiere on Peacock dropping the first three episodes on February 13th with a new episode streaming every week. Until then, you can watch the trailer below.
LONDON, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Park Square Capital ("Park Square" or "the firm"), one of Europe's leading credit investment firms with approximately $10 billion in assets under management, today announces that Bonaccord Capital Partners ("Bonaccord"), a private equity firm focused on acquiring non-control equity interests in leading mid-size private markets sponsors, has invested in a non-voting, passive minority stake in the firm. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.

Bonaccord's investment marks a further step forward in the institutionalization of Park Square by aligning the team as substantial equity holders, creating a balance sheet to support the future growth of the firm, and enhancing its governance structures. The investment will have no impact on the day-to-day management or operations of Park Square and is non-voting, which means the firm's investment and decision-making processes will remain unchanged.

"We are delighted to welcome Bonaccord as a long-term strategic investment partner. Bonaccord's experience and track record of supporting leading alternative asset managers will be helpful to us as we continue to strategically build and scale our platform to better serve our limited partners," said Robin Doumar, Managing Partner of Park Square.

"We are thrilled to have the opportunity to partner with Park Square Capital in support of its institutionalization and long-term strategic initiatives. We believe that Park Square has built a leading platform among European private credit sponsors and is well-positioned for continued success." said Ajay Chitkara, Head of Bonaccord.

Park Square has experienced significant growth since its inception in 2004, with AUM increasing to over $10bn. It provides credit solutions to high-quality and stable companies across Europe and the United States and has invested more than $19bn in senior and subordinated debt. The firm has an experienced team of over 100 people based across London, New York, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Paris, Stockholm and Seoul.

Goldman Sachs acted as financial advisor and Kirkland & Ellis acted as legal advisor to Park Square. Fried Frank acted as legal advisor to Bonaccord on the transaction.

About Park Square

Park Square Capital is a leading private debt manager, providing senior debt, subordinated debt and mid-market direct loans to companies in Europe and the US.

Park Square provides financing for high-quality companies backed by leading private equity sponsors. The firm has a selective, long-term and flexible investment approach, aimed at delivering attractive risk-adjusted returns across the market cycle.

Park Square currently manages approximately $10bn of capital on behalf of its investors, which include global public and private pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, family offices and asset managers. The firm was founded in 2004 and remains fully independent. Park Square has over 100 staff, with offices in London, New York, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Paris, Stockholm and Seoul.

For more information, please visit www.parksquarecapital.com

About Bonaccord

Bonaccord focuses on making strategic minority investments in leading mid-sized alternative asset managers across private equity, private credit, real estate and real assets globally. Bonaccord's minority investments support the creation of long-term strategic value for these leading managers enhanced by leveraging Bonaccord's strategic development capabilities and broader global network. Bonaccord is a subsidiary of P10, Inc.

About P10

P10 is a leading multi-asset class private markets solutions provider in the alternative asset management industry. P10's mission is to provide its investors differentiated access to a broad set of investment solutions that address their diverse investment needs within private markets. As of September 30, 2021, P10 has a global investor base of over 2,400 investors across 46 states, 29 countries and six continents, which includes some of the world's largest pension funds, endowments, foundations, corporate pensions and financial institutions. Visit www.p10alts.com.

Media contacts

For Park Square enquires: GreenbrookAlex Jones / John HamlinParkSquare@greenbrookpr.com+44 207 952 2000
European Charlemagne Youth Prize (#ECYP2022)

Are you an EU resident aged 16-30 and working on a project that helps to change Europe? Then you could be the next winner of the European Charlemagne Youth Prize! The award supports youth-run projects that promote cooperation in Europe and internationally. Apply with your project now, receive up to 7500 and get the help you need to further develop your initiative.

Applications closed

The European Charlemagne Youth Prize is awarded to youth-run projects that promote European and international understanding. The award highlights the daily work by young people across Europe to strengthen European democracy and supports their active participation in writing the future of Europe. It is run jointly by the European Parliament and the Foundation of the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen, and was established in 2008.

Timetable for 2022

10 January 2022 launch of the competition 13 February 2022: deadline for submitting projects March 2022: announcement of the national winners May 2022: Award ceremony in Aachen

Previous prize winners

The European Charlemagne Youth Prize has been supporting inspiring youth-led projects from all over the EU since 2008. Every year national and European juries select 27 national projects, one from every Member State, and 3 European winners who are invited to the Award ceremony in Aachen.

Discover the previous prize winners

FAQs

Frequently asked questions will help you find answers to any questions you might have about the European Charlemagne Youth Prize and its application procedure.

Read the FAQs
Tejas Apte, Global Media Director at Unilever Singapore, is set to replace Gaurav Jeet Singh as General Manager Media, South Asia. The news has been confirmed to e4m by highly placed sources.

Singh recently stepped down from Unilever after being associated with the company for over 13 years and joined Facebook as Director, Partnerships.

Apte has been associated with Unilever for over a decade. He joined Unilever as Sr Media Services Manager in 2011, prior to that he has served stints at Marico and Mindshare.

exchange4media has reached out to Apte and HUL for confirmation, but is yet to get a reply.

Read more news about (internet advertising India, internet advertising, advertising India, digital advertising India, media advertising India)
Monday, January 10, 2022

Commentary From Crisis Management Expert Edward Segal, Author Of The Award-Winning Crisis Ahead: 101 Ways to Prepare for and Bounce Back from Disasters, Scandals, and Other Emergencies (Nicholas Brealey)

Making assumptions about anything can be dangerous. That's especially true when it comes to making assumptions about preventing or managing a crisis at companies and organizations.

To help get the new year off to a good start, review the following major assumptions about crisis management and crisis communications that can prolong or make a crisis worse. If you or your staff are guilty of believing any of these statements, take steps as soon as possible to ensure that you or they do not fall into these traps.

Assumptions And Reality Checks

No Crisis Today, No Crisis Tomorrow

"Because our company did not have a crisis today, it will not have one tomorrow."

Reality Check: A crisis can happen anywhere, anytime, to any company and for any reason. The more unprepared you are to deal with a crisis, the worse it will be when, not if, it happens.

Example: Colonial Pipeline had never been hacked or forced to shut down its 5,000 miles of pipelines. That is, of course, until last May.

No Plan Needed

"We do not need a crisis management plan."

Reality Check: Every organization, no matter how large or small or what industry or profession, needs a plan. Otherwise, they will waste valuable time when a crisis does strike trying to decide what to do, how to do it, when it do it, who will do it, where it do it and why to do it. And be sure to have different plans for different kinds of crisis situations.

Example: The organizers of Travis Scott's concert in Houston last November had a crisis management plan. But it made no provisions for crowd surges  which created the deadly crisis.

No Updated Plans Required

"Our organization does not have to update its crisis management plans."

Reality Check: Crisis plans should be reviewed at least on an annual basis and updated to ensure they reflect new possible crisis situations, changes in the industry and changes in the company's activities, operations and staff.

Example: Business executives around the world had to scramble last March after a cargo ship blocked the Suez Canal for several days and created a supply chain crisis for their companies. None of the organizations had updated their crisis contingency plans to account for such a disruption to how and where they receive their goods, products and supplies.

Do It Yourself

"I can manage a crisis all by myself."

Reality Check: Managing a crisis should not be left to amateurs. Unless you have received training and have managed a crisis before, do not assume you can manage one all by yourself. And even if you have crisis management experience, you will likely be too busy running your company or organization to devote the time needed to manage a corporate emergency, disaster or scandal.

Example: Ozy Media found that out the hard way this past October when it was hit by a crisis that forced it to shut down. When Marc Lasry, co-owner of the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks, announced he would resign as chairman of Ozy Media because of a crisis at the media company, he said, "I believe that going forward Ozy requires experience in areas like crisis management and investigations, where I do not have particular expertise."

No Rush

"We can take our time in responding to a crisis."

Reality Check: Every second you delay in responding to a crisis can make the crisis worse or help prolong it. The sooner you deal with the crisis, the sooner you can put it behind you.

Example: Peloton waited for weeks before recalling one of its products that had caused several injuries and the death of a child.

No Practicing

"We do not need to practice responding to different crisis scenarios."

Reality Check: Every crisis is different, and different types of crises can present their own challenges and difficulties. The more your crisis response teams practice responding to different scenarios, they better they will be prepared to respond to any situation.

Example: Andreas Grant is the founder of Networks Hardware. At least twice a year they practice their response to cyber attacks. He said, "This is superior to an in-person exercise because it places us in very real situations. Instead of just telling us to read the protocol on how to deal with a cyberattack, they make us experience a simulated attack. With this experience, it becomes much clearer on what to do if we get attacked for real."

"The biggest lesson I have learned from doing these are that experience is everything when it comes to acting fast in a crisis," he said. "Even if you theoretically know what to do you need the experience, otherwise your [response] will be slow and uncoordinated. This is especially true for groups of people who need to work together."

Staying Quiet

"When we have a crisis, we can wait until we tell anyone about it."

Reality Check: The failure to immediately disclose your crisis to stakeholders can lead to allegations that you are trying to cover something up, are afraid to tell the truth about the matter or are concerned about the consequences when people learn about the situation.

Example: Consumer credit reporting company Equifax waited for several weeks before announcing their computers had been hacked and cyberthieves had obtained confidential information for 143 million Americans.

No Outside Help

"Our company has all the resources, skills and expertise we will ever need to deal with any kind of crisis."

Reality Check: No company can possibly have all the staff and other resources they would need to respond to every conceivable crisis situation. But they can identify the areas in which they could need help in a crisis and take steps immediately to make sure those resources will be available as soon as they are needed.

Example: U.S. Capitol Police needed immediate reinforcements to respond to the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Because of issues related to the chain of command, it took them several hours to receive the help they urgently requested.

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House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy expressed confidence in his party's chances of regaining control of Congress, despite the fact that the midterm elections are less than a year away.

During Biden's first year in Congress, Democrats enjoyed a slender majority, with the Senate split 50-50 and the House divided 221 to 212. Only 12 Republicans are retiring or competing for a different post at the end of this year, compared to 25 Democrats.

Surge in Democratic retirements in 2022

However, a variety of circumstances, like President Joe Biden's low poll numbers, rising prices, and the departure of more than two dozen members of the caucus, make keeping that advantage a difficult task. The California Republican also detailed the minority party's legislative agenda for the 2022 legislative session, as well as a sneak peek at his expansive plan to examine the Biden administration during the president's first two years in office.

McCarthy predicted that the struggle for federal voting laws will be a major issue in the coming weeks. He said that Democrats were seeking to pass Senate H.R. In the face of an assault of GOP-controlled states implementing voting restrictions in the name of election security, Congress approved H.R. 1, or the For The People Act, to federalize voter safeguards, as reported by Daily Mail.

McCarthy said that "one-party control" had resulted in COVID-19 spikes, school closures, and a damaged economy. He also slammed the Biden administration for its lack of accountability, claiming that in 2022, House Republicans would be able to "get America back on track" by holding the government and Democrats "accountable."

In the 2022 midterm elections, the chairmen of the two Republican congressional reelection committees seem quite certain that Republicans will reclaim majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate. McCarthy is also "confident" that Republicans will reclaim the House majority, telling anchor Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that there are several areas where Democrats must be held accountable.

Read Also: States Seek To Exert Authority Over Broader Battle Against Joe Biden's Vaccine Mandate After Pentagon Wins First Fight To Vaccinate National Guard

McCarthy believes GOP will win back House majority

Democrats are aiming to keep their razor-thin majority in both chambers in this year's midterm elections, but they're up against historical odds and a hostile political atmosphere exacerbated by Vice President Joe Biden's dwindling poll numbers. Republicans in the House outperformed predictions in 2020, cutting the Democrats' majority in half. While Republicans lost control of the White House and the Senate, they did flip a dozen House seats and only need a net gain of five members in November to restore the majority they had for eight years before losing it to a blue wave in the 2018 midterm elections, according to Fox News.

House Democrats are facing an increasing number of retirements as they prepare for what is likely to be a difficult midterm election year. Since Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he couldn't back the party's social spending and climate package, a flurry of retirement announcements has capped off what has already been a depressing conclusion to Democrats first year in control in Washington.

More members are expected to announce their retirements in the coming days and weeks as they spend the holidays with their families and decide they don't want to return to the House. Retirements may have a cumulative impact on morale at the end of a year in which Congress has become an increasingly more poisonous atmosphere in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and Democrats have battled to accomplish President Biden's agenda with a razor-thin majority, The Hill reported.

Related Article: Michelle Obama Ranks Second as Democrats' Favorite 2024 Presidential Bet Despite Ex-FLOTUS Saying She'll Never Run For Office

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Monday, January 10, 2022

Journal of Private Equity published Article of Interest by John M. Collard, turnaround specialist, interim executive, outside independent director, capital finder, and private equity advisor.

www.StrategicMgtPartners.com

www.StrategicMgtPartners.com/jpe-dira.pdf Formatted Version

Article-of-Interest:

Why Hire Outside Directors When Private Companies Don't Have To? Change! Break the Status Quo. Rejuvenate.

By John M. Collard

Article

You need these guys  to increase cash flow and provide valuable guidance, contacts, growth, and credibility.

Outside directors are generally hired based on their experience, effectiveness, connections, and access to capital, which can be very beneficial to a company. Companies that are committed to going through significant business change (turnaround, transition into new markets, increased cash flow and corporate growth, generational ownership transfer), are anticipating a major liquidity event, or have shareholders who are not active or business savvy need guidance. An outside director is a member of the board of directors or advisors who is not part of the executive team. Outside directors are advantageous because they are experienced experts who rarely have conflict of interest and they often see the big picture differently than insiders.

Traditionally, companies invited friendly advisors to join their board. Now, there is more risk to directors as a result of legislation (Sarbanes-Oxley). Whereas there is formality (reporting, responsibility, risk), liability, and more expense (e.g. D&O insurance) to a board of directors, there is a budget-friendly alternative in the form of a "board of advisors" that is beholden only to management. The main difference is in where the fiduciary duty lies: to the shareholders or to management. Trusted outside directors can provide guidance for the business to produce value  for the business.

Why add outsiders?

1. Outside directors increase cash flow/business growth. A Forbes/Lodestone Global survey shows 97% of companies reporting increased revenues and earnings, with increases of 56% since adding a board with outside directors.

2. Outside directors can be a valuable resource. They bring a new set of skills and ideas, while you maintain control.

3. Outside directors provide an external source of accountability, which is key for businesses to move forward.

4. Outside directors are on the side of owners, shareholders, and managers, these advisors answer only to you.

5. Outside directors add credibility. When it comes time for a liquidity-seeking event, they send a message that your company has leadership and guidance.

With a board of directors, your company immediately gains legitimacy and a panel with expertise that you probably do not have in house. Although the role of board members is to direct accountability, develop strategy, protect assets, and oversee implementation, they are often adept at guiding major decisions, serving as a resource, and being a confidant to the CEO.

Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, discovered that he was the only person on stage that didn't make a sound. He realized that his job was to create great things out of the individual talents of the musicians in front of him. This is very much like the role of an outside director: to bring out the very best in the company's inside talent, to guide the company to meet its goals. Management makes decisions and maintains control, based on guidance and information.

Outside directors bring an independent perspective, develop strategic thinking and planning, use their experience and objectivity, provide their Rolodex of contacts, find capital, and guide transaction activity (Exhibit 1). Many of these benefits are absent in companies, so outside influence should be used to your benefit. After all, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by considering their advice when you make decisions.

Exhibit 1

Benefits of Outside Directors

Action/Skill Benefit Independent perspective



Unbiased advice Challenge management



Sounding board for CEO



Objective, Mediate conflicts Strategic thinking and



planning New directions, Transitions



Incentive-based compensation Experience and objectivity



New knowledge Been there, done that



Oversee performance and risk



Accountability, Credibility Contacts



Networks Investors, Lenders, Resources



Partners, Customers, Suppliers Capital infusion Raise Money, Restructure



Guide offering process



Find capital Transactions Prepare company for sale



Locate interested parties



Negotiate a deal

Create a culture and structure that will withstand third-party accountability to add value to your business. Start thinking as a serious, growing company and prepare for a future life as a public company or for increased scrutiny of investors.

Independent Perspective

The CEO needs unbiased advice and diversity of opinion from outside directors who care about the company's success, but who can view things from a distance and a different perspective. CEOs will be well served by adding board members who can challenge them and decisions they are about to make.

Strategic Thinking & Planning

Outside directors should constructively challenge and contribute to strategy development, implementation, and infrastructure. Outside directors can be particularly adept at guiding the company into new markets or changing direction when trouble occurs. Because these outsiders have experienced these situations and guided other companies through the pitfalls, they can certainly guide you to success with less trepidation.

Experience & Objectivity

The very nature of growth implies that a company is going to new opportunities. It is refreshing to make that journey with the help of an advisor who has been there, and done that, before. This objectivity can help you through the obstacles.

Contacts

Every company needs help when it wants to grow, prosper, or turn around. Outside directors can extend the company's reach by using their own contact network, including colleagues that can get involved to provide guidance and resources.

Capital Infusion

Outside directors often have a database of contacts who can supply capital, both in the form of equity (investors) and debt (lenders). Some have more extensive and higher quality databases than others. This means that you can get in front of many financing resources quickly once an expression of interest package is ready. Present your opportunity in terms the investor or lender wants to see. Your company is the product.

Transactions

Prepare for that liquidity event. The best time to sell a company is when a buyer wants to buy and has cash, which could come when you least expect it. Be prepared and work toward ultimate valuation throughout the process of growth.

Do not be surprised when you come to the realization that the company is not attractive to investors or lenders. This means that you have the opportunity to rebuild the company, or parts of it, so that it can be considered a good deal. Build a company in which investors want to invest.

What Buyers and Investors Look For

Businesses that create value: Consistency.

High probability of future cash flows: Promise of cash.

Market-oriented management team: Generate revenue.

Ability to sell and compete; develop, produce and distribute products; thrive and grow: Track record.

Fair entry valuation: Realistic return potential.

Exit options: Investors want ROI multiples.

Outside directors are adept at negotiating deals. They elevate you (management/board) to the decision-making role.

Hire that outside director. They bring about change.

View entire article at:



JPE: https://jpe.iijournals.com/content/22/1/36 Or



SMP: http://www.StrategicMgtPartners.com/jpe-dir.pdf

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About the Author: John M. Collard

John is Chairman of Strategic Management Partners, Inc. (410-263-9100, www.StrategicMgtPartners.com ) in Annapolis, Maryland. John is a Certified Turnaround Professional (CTP), and a Certified International Turnaround Manager (CITM), who brings over 35 years senior operating leadership, $85M+ asset and investment recovery, 45+ transactions worth $1.2B, and $80M fund management expertise to run troubled companies, serve on and advise company boards of directors, and raise capital. John has served as CEO, CRO, Receiver, senior executive to turn around troubled entities, and serves as an outside director. John is inducted into the Turnaround Management, Restructuring, and Distressed Investing Industry Hall Of Fame. John is Past Chairman of the Turnaround Management Association (TMA), Past Chairman of the Association of Interim Executives (AIE), and a Senior Fellow of the Turnaround Management Society. John is a Founder of TMA. John is Prince George's Business Leader of the Year. John is honored with the Interim Management Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Interim Executives. John is honored as Most Admired CEO in Maryland by Daily Record. John is honored with SmartCEO Distinguished Leadership Award, and others.

About the Firm:

Strategic Management Partners, Inc. ( www.StrategicMgtPartners.com 410-263-9100) is a turnaround management firm specializing in interim management and executive CEO leadership, asset and investment recovery, board and private equity advisory, raising money, and investing in and rebuilding underperforming distressed troubled companies. The firm has been advisor to Presidents Bush (41 & 43), Clinton, Reagan, and Yeltsin, World Bank, EBRD, Company Boards, and Equity Capital Investors on leadership, rebuilding troubled companies, investment recovery, turnaround management and equity investing. SMP is celebrating 25+ years of service to its clients. SMP was named Maryland's Small Business of the Year, and received the Governor's Citation, Governor Martin J. O'Malley, The State of Maryland as a special tribute to honor work in the areas of turning around troubled companies and saving jobs in Maryland. Turnarounds & Workouts Magazine has twice named SMP among the 'Top Outstanding Turnaround Management Firms'. American Business Journals named SMP among the Most Active Turnaround Management and Consulting Firms in Baltimore, Washington, and the Mid-Atlantic Region. Global M&A Network Turnaround Atlas Awards named SMP as Boutique Turnaround Consulting Firm of the Year.

Strategic Management Partners, Inc.: turnaround managers ready to run troubled companies, recover assets from investments gone bad, advise boards of directors and investors on company viability in distressed situations. We provide strong interim and operational leadership, board leadership, strategic planning, financial, defense conversion, business development, sales and marketing acumen developed building organizations in large and small companies, including President of public & private middle-market companies providing solutions to Commercial, Federal Government, International markets. Enterprises range from start-up to $100+mil. Industry expertise: Manufacturing; Job Shop; Engineering Services; Computer Processing/Services/Software/Integration; Communications; Defense Electronics; Aerospace; Federal Government Contracting; Systems Integration; High-Tech; Finance; Marine Services; Real Estate Development; Construction; Fabrication; and Printing.

End

###

Reference:

www.StrategicMgtPartners.com Turnaround Managers

www.StrategistLibrary.com or www.StrategicMgtPartners.com/library/libindx.html

Why Hire Outside Directors When Private Companies Don't Have To? article at: www.StrategicMgtPartners.com/jpe-dira.pdf>

https://jpe.iijournals.com/content/22/1/36

Fixer-Uppers: Rebuilding Value article

Raising Money article

Is Your Company in Trouble? Published by Corporate Board Magazine

Managing Turnarounds in Times of Crisis Published by NACD Directorship Magazine

Managing Turnarounds Phases and Actions Published by RMA Journal

Social Media:

John M. Collard on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/JohnMCollard

John M. Collard on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/JohnMCollard

John M. Collard on Twitter at http://twitter.com/JohnCollard

Collard on NewsReleaseWire

Firm:

www.StrategicMgtPartners.com Turnaround Management Experts

End

###
Monday, January 10, 2022

Oct 1, 2021

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The SAC Release

Strong Relationships and Proactive Strategies Are Key to Successful Navigation of Supply Chain Disruption

CLAREMONT, CA Ongoing supply chain volatility and disruption are creating major challenges for manufacturers, distributors, construction firms and retail groups. The strength of your customer and supplier partnerships is critical to successfully weathering the storm and thriving with high levels of disruption, according to The Society for the Advancement of Consulting (SAC) Supply Chain SIG. Proactive prioritization and allocation of products and services will create customer loyalty and enable profitable growth.

The World on Backorder  How the Best Supply Chains Compete

Globally, we are experiencing significant supply chain delays. At various points in the supply chain, organizations may be feeling material disruptions, resource constraints, and cost increases. Expect these interruptions into 2022, says Diane L. Garcia of Lorraine Consulting, LLC, who has over 13 years experience in operations and supply chain management and is an expert in helping clients improve their unique business processes. Diane applies cutting edge supply chain optimization knowledge and implements best practices to manufacturing and distribution companies in North America.

With such dramatic changes, its critical to align your supply chain performance to meet changing demand, according to Garcia. To do this, my best clients focus on building flexibility, predictability, and scalability into their supply chain processes and relationships. Lastly, with limited material availability, have a robust allocation process established across your organization. This mitigates delays to key customers.

How Companies Navigate Disruption Will Separate Winners From Losers

If there is one item every client has in common no matter the size or geography, its the increased level of supply chain material disruption, points out Lisa Anderson, president of Claremont, CA-based LMA Consulting Group, Inc and manufacturing expert known for creating supply chain resiliency. Material shortages. Transportation capacity constraints. Extended lead times. Rising prices. The level of disruption is extreme, and there is no end in sight. We are in a new era of transition, disruption, and volatility.

There will be a large separation between the winners and losers following this pandemic, similarly to the period following the Great Depression, she adds. The companies to thrive will focus on talent, innovation, revamping their supply chain (partnership, reshoring and nearshoring will continue to increase), proactive and integrated business planning (Sales, inventory and operations planning (SIOP/ S&OP), and the digitization of the supply chain. The rest will struggle and diminish.

The New Trifecta: Anticipate, Manage, and Maintain

Disruption in the supply chain is the new normal, explains Elizabeth Warren, President and CEO of Dialed-In Partners, a consulting firm that assists clients in achieving the best possible outcome for their projects. Todays executives and supply chain managers have to anticipate and manage disruption, while keeping operations running smoothly.

As shortages continue to impact markets, businesses should find alternative suppliers now, not when inventory is depleted, adds Warren. Businesses survive by pivoting, using materials on hand, such as distilleries making hand-sanitizer, or clothing manufacturers making face masks.

The post-pandemic business environment continues to be in a state of flux, and the need to strengthen existing supplier relationships, while simultaneously building new ones, is critical, Warren notes. Disruptions arent going away anytime soon. The key to surviving and thriving is to be flexible and pivot.

The Fruitful Areas of Supply Chain Resilience

Supply chain material disruptions across many sectors and global regions have been a key feature of the last eighteen months. This is due to a combination of factors including the COVID pandemic, geopolitical tensions, accidents, and natural phenomena, remarks Dublin, Ireland-based Patrick Daly, managing director of Alba Consulting, author of the book International Supply Chain Relationships: Creating Competitive Advantage in a Globalized Economy, and host of the Interlinks podcast on globalization.

This has provided opportunities for those businesses that have explored three aspects of their activity to change and improvenamely, their internal processes, their relationships with key supply chain partners, and innovation arising directly from the disruption and volatility of the trading environment, points out Daly.

If you want to look forward to a better future for your business beyond the pandemic and in a world of permanent disruption and volatility, these are the fruitful areas on which to focus to ensure ongoing resilience and adaptability, he recommends.

Velocity Can Reduce Supply Chain Challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught organizations how to conquer any global supply chain disruption, says Art Koch, President of Arthur Koch Management Consulting, LLC, based in Miami, FL. As the world exits the COVID-19 pandemic, we encounter localized hot spots that disrupt supply chains.

Diligent, insightful supply chain leaders are transforming their supply chains to be more flexible, responsive, and predictable, Koch notes. Its all about increasing supply chain velocity with reduced lead-times by near-shoring, on-shoring, and in-sourcing. An additional strategy is to partner with suppliers that have dual manufacturing capabilities. These tactics give supply chains added resilience during global, regionalized, or localized disruption. Hence, greater flexibility and responsiveness.

One Beacon of Light in the Current Chaos

Supply Chain disruption is an opportunity to create predictability in client communication, says Dr. Karen Wilson-Starks, President and CEO of TRANSLEADERSHIP, INC., and an executive leadership development expert based in Colorado Springs, CO.

Companies that are open, honest, and timely in their communications garner respect and trust from their clients, explains Wilson-Starks. Clients know they can count on you to keep them informed, to anticipate what they need to know, and to prioritize their best interests. Whenever unavoidable changes and delays occur, proactive communication opens the door for partnership and co-creation of mutually beneficial solutions. You become a beacon of light in chaos.

Lean is Not Dead

Some say that lean is dead because disruptions in supply chains have shown how vulnerable lean is and that it exposes companies and supply chains to shortages, says Antonio Zrilic, Managing Director of LOGIKO CONSULTING, based in Zagreb, Croatia, and the author of the book Six Step Inventory Optimization. They also blame lean supply chains for material shortages, while others suggest that less rigid inventory management would in some way improve the availability.

However, Zrilic points out, They forget that lean should not be implemented without a heavy dose of cooperation and relationships with partners. Lean without relationships is an empty phrase.

Vulnerability Exposes 18-Month Road to Recovery

Global supply chains are suffering their own version of Warren Buffetts famous saying, Only when the tide goes out, do you discover whos been swimming naked,' says David Ogilvie of David Ogilvie Consulting a niche consulting firm based in Brisbane Australia. COVID has exposed how vulnerable the supply chains of the world really are to disruption. It would be fair to say not enough risk management was conducted. No one really role played this type of scenario to the level that has come to pass.

Companies need to revisit their supply chain strategy and inventory management practices in light of this disruption, adds Ogilvie. It will take 18 months or more to recover. This will have a large impact on cash flow as a result. A review and potentially redesign of your supply chain is the most strategic and impactful thing you can do right now.

Deep Relationships Offset Long Lead Times

Long lead times due to supply chain disruption are here for the foreseeable future, said Evan Bulmer, director of EBAA in Adelaide, Australia. The author of Numbers that Matter: Learning What to Measure to Achieve Success in Your Business, Evan is the Financial Concierge for small business.

Its critical that businesses maintain strong and effective communication with their customers to help them through what is now a much longer and more problematic buying cycle, explains Bulmer. Without that input and direction, your customers are likely to get frustrated and look for alternative solutions.

About SAC

The Society for the Advancement of Consulting (SAC) is the premier association for independent consulting professionals who subscribe to an industry code of ethics and provide significant consulting results among their clients. Founded by Million Dollar Consulting guru Alan Weiss in 2003, SAC offers a series of in-person and online programs to help consultants share best practices and learn from industry experts and thought leaders in the business world. SAC today has members in 14 countries around the world.

For more information, go to http://www.consultingsociety.com, email info@consultingsociety.com, or call (909) 563-1803.
San Antonio Spurs guard Lonnie Walker IV last year paid $544,500 for a four-bedroom, 2,763-square-foot house in the Sonoma Verde area near La Cantera.

A Reading, Pa. native, Walker, 23, was drafted by the Spurs in 2018 and has been with the team ever since. David Garcia Jr. of Greater San Antonio Real Estate, who represented Walker in his home purchase, told the Express-News that he and Walker shopped around for four months to try to find the right house.

Walkers two biggest priorities, Garcia said, were a view and a pool. He got engaged to longtime girlfriend Emily Miller in November 2021.

He wanted to plant his roots in San Antonio, Garcia said. He really saw San Antonio as his home. And the biggest thing he looked for was a view. He really wanted to have that view so that when he got home at night, he had that view and could look out at the city. And he also wanted a pool.

Built in 2011 by Weekley Homes, the two-story house has an open floor plan, 3-1/2 bathrooms, vaulted ceilings and windows, a home office with French doors, an oversized first-floor primary bedroom with a sitting area, a second-floor flex room with a balcony, and a kitchen with an island.

REALTED: Rex Tillerson sells waterfront Horseshoe Bay mansion to former Baylor coach Art Briles

Outside on the 0.2-acre property are a covered patio, a grill area and a recently built Blue Haven pool and spa.

His house has an incredible view, Garcia said.

Garcia said that the house is not his forever home, but that his client wanted to invest himself in San Antonio.

The sellers paid $333,250 for the house in 2012, according to the real estate multiple listing service. They first listed it in October 2020 for $565,000, and sold it in early 2021 for $544,500, according to the real estate multiple listing service.

RELATED: DeMar DeRozan buys mansion from Michael Jordan's ex-wife, Juanita Vanoy Jordan

Listing agent Renee Campbell declined to comment on the transaction.

Bexar County gives Walkers new home an assessed value of $456,500. It had a $9,727 property tax bill in the 2021 tax year.

Goldsborough is a freelance writer
COVID-19 doesnt appear to be going anywhere as Mayor Ron Nirenberg and County Judge Nelson Wolff sounded an alarm Monday and asked for more hospital staff in a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott.

Nirenberg and Wolff thanked the governor for committing an additional 411 nurses and respiratory therapists who arrived last week, but their letter emphasizes that local hospitals still are stressed because the omicron variant of the virus is spreading quickly and causing a surge of hospitalizations.

Citing an increase in the COVID-19 testing positivity rate from 2.2 percent on Dec. 25 to 27.3 percent Monday, along with a nearly four-fold increase in hospitalized patients from 202 to 778 in the same period, the mayor and county judge said many local first responders and hospital clinicians also are being affected by omicron.

Bexar County hospitals have activated internal response/surge plans and contingency staffing models, but with hundreds of our nurses out each day, we are going to need a lot more help soon, they stated in the letter. As opposed to previous surges, this time nearly every area of the hospital is affected by clinicians being sick, which affects not only COVID-19 patients but nearly every aspect of patient care. We will quickly reach capacity in our hospitals as admissions of COVID-19 patients continue to increase rapidly.

We would greatly appreciate your assistance once again in sending additional state contract nurses as soon as possible, the letter stated.

On ExpressNews.com: Omicron variant hits city workers in San Antonio

About 24 percent of patients in local hospitals have COVID  an increase from 15 percent a week ago, according to Metropolitan Health District, and 38 of those patients are in the pediatric unit.

Additionally, three more people have died from COVID.

Metro Health also reported 4,023 new cases Monday, up from 3,894 the week before, while the seven-day average jumped to 3,662 from 2,055 over the last week.

In nearby Comal County, the numbers are just as dramatic  if not more. County officials reported 352 new cases Monday, an increase from 71 a week ago.

Wolff said the latest conference call with emergency coordinators Monday afternoon placed local hospitalization at 815, more than half of the 1,500-plus patients hospitalized at the peak of last years delta surge. Although some models have suggested the current wave could begin to wane in about two weeks, Wolff is concerned about the rapid increase of cases and hospital admissions.

Its a steeper rise than weve seen before, Wolff said. We dont know how high it will go or when we will reach that high point.

Whats causing a little bit more of the stress than weve seen before, because omicron spreads faster, is that more and more personnel that are needed are out, he said. Were only into it 26 days now, so its early. Its rising at a steeper incline than what the other surges were.

Although the state initially pays for the personnel support, it is reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Administration. Wolff said the state was slow to respond to the delta variant.

They made a mistake by not doing it last time. Hopefully, this time, theyll stay on top of it, he said.

The county judge also urged the public not to underestimate omicron because its milder than other strains of the virus. It still can have a devastating effect on unvaccinated people  they make up about 70 percent of hospitalized patients  and to vaccinated residents with underlying health concerns, Wolff said.

On ExpressNews.com: Local COVID-19 cases skyrocket as omicron takes hold

Bexar County commissioners will consider two grants totaling $1.3 million Tuesday for reliable COVID-19 testing that provides results within 24 hours, so people can know promptly whether they need to self-isolate, he said.

Local hospital officials have not provided details of the personnel shortages but generally acknowledged the facilities are near capacity.

A University Health spokesperson said the county-owned health system is reviewing several of the planning options we employed during other surges, and we are postponing some non-emergency surgeries that require an inpatient bed. We are not postponing outpatient surgeries.

Christus Santa Rosa Health System said it is encouraged by any support offered by our state and local leaders during this time.

The communities we serve need us now more than ever and we must find a way to overcome current staffing shortages, Christus Santa Rosa said in a statement.

Delayed tests

COVID testing facilities also are seeing a dramatic increase in traffic, and the city warned that lab results are taking longer than expected.

With increased testing volumes across the nation as well as logistical factors, such as severe weather and ongoing disruptions due to the pandemic, San Antonio residents may experience delays in receiving their COVID-19 test results, said Laura Mayes, city spokesperson, in an email.

The city contracts with Curative, a California startup, and Community Labs, a local nonprofit, for no-cost COVID testing. Both organizations are affected by the delays.

Community Labs and San Antonio officials announced their partnership last week with the opening of a new testing site at the Alamo College District Support Operations Building on North Alamo, among other sites that will open this week.

City leaders touted the appeal of Community Labs as their 24-hour turnaround time to receive PCR test results, which are generally considered more accurate than most rapid test results and are analyzed in a lab. But some residents tested Thursday at the new location had still not received results as of Monday morning.

In some cases, results may take up to two or three days to receive, according to Mayes.

In an email to residents, Community Labs said the delay was due to a delivery issue. The organization expected a shipment of two chemicals  which it called critical elements used in the laboratory processing of its PCR COVID samples  that did not arrive on time.

The email said Community Labs obtained limited supplies through other sources in the meantime. It now expects to receive the original shipment Monday.

We will send results as they are available Monday and expect to have cleared all backlogged samples by Monday evening, the email read.

The city expects the delays will be temporary, Mayes said, as it addresses the current high demand for COVID-19 testing in San Antonio and across the nation.

megan.stringer@express-news.net

shuddleston@express-news.net
Aurelina Prado received both vaccines and a booster shot to protect herself against COVID-19, but the San Antonio mother still contracted the virus during the holidays.

She believes she became infected during a Christmas family gathering. She recalled going to bed one night with no symptoms, then waking up the next day with all the ailments of the virus.

I felt horrible the first day  not really severe, just like a bad cold with nausea and the chills, Prado, 34, said.

Headaches, chills and a fever persisted for three days. Then she was left feeling tired, but her symptoms disappeared. On the ninth day, she was still testing positive for the virus.

Prado hoped the shots helped her body manage the severity of the illness.

Billy Calzada /Staff photographer

I knew the vaccine was not going to stop me getting COVID, she said. I was aware of that. I only did the vaccine due to knowing that if I did get COVID, the symptoms would be lesser. I knew the vaccine is not a preventive like it should be.

As the highly infectious omicron variant of COVID-19 continues to sweep across San Antonio and Texas, causing a sharp spike in the number of newly diagnosed cases, a greater percentage of patients hospitalized for the illness are people who were vaccinated.

In the past week, around 30 percent of COVID patients admitted to San Antonio hospitals are people fully vaccinated for the virus, according to daily reports from the citys Metropolitan Health District.

During the delta variant surge last year, that number was much lower, hovering around 20 percent.

On ExpressNews.com: Want to get tested for COVID? Prepare to wait hours, maybe even days

The COVID vaccines were built primarily on a structural spike protein observed with the original variants of the virus, said Dr. Bryan Alsip, chief medical officer and executive vice president of University Health, which serves as Bexar Countys hospital system.

As the structure of the virus changes with the emergence of different variants, the protective benefits of the vaccine become less effective.

It doesnt mean its 100 percent less effective, Alsip said of the COVID vaccines, just like it was never 100 percent effective ... But we still are seeing a lot of protective benefit at the worst end of the clinical spectrum. People who are seriously ill  it seems like with omicron  are a smaller percentage of those total infections.

Billy Calzada /Staff photographer

Because the virus structure has evolved and the vaccines arent bulletproof, its important for people to protect themselves in multiple ways, such as properly wearing face masks and practicing social distancing  staying 6 feet away from others outside the household  when appropriate.

Some of the patients hospitalized with COVID were admitted for other reasons and just happened to test positive for the virus, even though they werent showing symptoms, said Dr. Jan Patterson, an infectious disease physician at UT Health San Antonio.

What we are seeing  and in fact, its very much evidence that the vaccine is working  is that its preventing severe illness and death in people that are vaccinated, Patterson said. There are still people who are getting severely ill  and those are largely unvaccinated people.

She believes the COVID vaccine is more effective than a flu shot.

Theres no vaccine thats going to be perfect, Patterson said. As it has evolved over time, theres been less protection with the different variants. But whats still important is that even though people may have some symptomatic disease, that theyre still protected against hospitalization and death largely. So its still an effective vaccine in that way.

While some people have scoffed at the omicron variant and claimed its no more serious than a cold or the flu, Alsip said some people are still becoming critically ill and dying from this strain of the virus.

We wouldnt have the increase in hospitalizations for COVID right now if that were the case, he said of claims comparing omicron to a cold or the sniffles. Unfortunately, were still seeing people die from this disease.

On ExpressNews.com: Some in San Antonio are desperate to get tested for COVID-19  heres how to check a labs credibility

Peoples immunity to the virus also wanes with the passage of time. The booster shot recharges a patients supply of antibodies to fight the COVID virus.

No matter how much time has passed, Alsip said its never too late for vaccinated patients to get their booster shots.

One of the things I always try to teach people about vaccines is  you should never get them too early, but you can always get them later, he said.

According to the latest guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people who received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines can now get a booster shot five months later. Those who received a Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine can get their booster shot two months later.

Even if patients dont get a booster shot right on time and receive it later, its still going to help you, Patterson said.

The current surge in COVID cases will likely drop off as suddenly as it began, both doctors said. Patterson predicts this surge will be of shorter duration than those in the past and may die down in a month or two based on whats occurred in other countries, though she cant say that with 100 percent certainty.

The number of COVID cases is rapidly and sharply declining in South Africa, for instance, after case counts started to surge there around Thanksgiving.

Most of us that have been tracking this for two years now  at least I have put away my crystal ball, Alsip said. Because weve been wrong more often than weve been right, I think, in terms of predicting. That said, I think there is a little bit more sense of optimism around this latest surge simply because of the data that were seeing coming out of South Africa, where it was first identified.

Were now already seeing a relatively rapid decline in case numbers in South Africa. Its a fairly sharp decline thats sort of reflective of a very sharp incline on the front end. So if thats the case, we might expect to see a similar pattern ... We may start seeing a decline toward the end of this month or early February.

Vincent T. Davis contributed to this report.

pohare@express-news.net | Twitter: Peggy_OHare
DreamWeek celebrates a milestone next week  10 years of hosting a city-wide summit that embraces humanity and San Antonios diverse cultures.

The annual gathering will take place Jan. 13-30, with more than 200 events at 50-plus venues. This years theme is Our Future.

The way were trying to see our future is determined by what were creating now and what that will look like, said founder Shokare Sho Nakpodia. Its no different than what early framers of America had to do. Its a great way to try and settle things if we collectively plan our future together.

DreamWeek public relations manager Lisa Jackson said the events offer an exchange of ideas on a wide range of issues.

Its because of Shos vision that DreamWeek has been able to last this long and be this exciting, she said.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonios MLK March among events canceled for second year in a row because of COVID-19

Organizers said DreamWeek will continue with safety guidelines as the increase of omicron COVID-19 cases prompted the cancellation of other events. Recent closings include the Martin Luther King Jr. March, the Asian Festival and the Texas Folklife Festival.

Since 2013, the summit has led up to the citys MLK march, one of the largest in the nation. For the second year, the San Antonio Martin Luther King Jr. Commission board canceled the citys in-person march because of coronavirus safety concerns. The 2.75-mile march was scheduled for Jan. 17. The University of Texas at San Antonio Institute of Texan Cultures, which hosts the Asian and Texas Folklife festivals, said both celebrations would return in 2023.

However, the DreamWeek opening ceremony, luncheon, and Mayors Ball have been scaled back to observe social distancing. Organizers said gatherings hosted by their partners would be left to their discretion whether to postpone, switch to virtual events or go ahead with safety guidelines in place.

The summit is scheduled to kick off at 7:30 a.m. on Friday at the Jack Guenther Pavilion at the Briscoe, 210 W. Market St. The multi-forum event will close with the Mayors Ball on Jan. 29, at Venue Villita, 401 Villita St.

DreamWeek is the brainchild of Nakpodia, creative director of The Mighty Group, a local design and marketing firm. He founded the summit in 2013 as a response to then-Mayor Julian Castros challenge to advertising agencies to spotlight the citys long-established MLK march.

Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Nakpodia immigrated to London, where he earned a civil engineering degree at the University of Leeds. He worked in New York City as a cab driver and studied at the School of Visual Arts. When he moved to San Antonio, he brought his experiences from different cultures with him.

On ExpressNews.com: Despite coronavirus, DreamWeek 2021 kicks off ninth year of offering civil discourse, inclusive events in San Antonio

Mayor Ron Nirenberg called DreamWeek one of the most forward looking, iconic developments in San Antonio in the last decade.

It represents everything San Antonio should be, Nirenberg said. DreamWeek has taken our citys greatest demonstration of diversity and inclusion and the citys place in civil rights  and we have an important one  and wrapped an entire series of events around it. Sho has created a focus for DreamWeek that goes beyond aspirational lofty ideas of inclusion and diversity to really tackle problems that are global in nature  but locally important.

Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert Jr. said the event brings together voices that dont normally talk to each other.

Those diverse voices help toward a more civil society, he said. It is proof that the commonalities we share can work through the differences we all have.

The event is funded by donations, sales of branded merchandise and sponsorships solicited by the DreamVoice team. According to DreamWeek statistics, the summit has grown to draw more than 100,000 guests each year. Past events have included Martin Luther King III, the Native American Identity Empowerment Movement, the Holocaust: Learn & Remember and the Reproductive Health Action Forum.

On ExpressNews.com: DreamWeek brings MLKs life, legacy front and center

Nakpodia said DreamWeeks biggest changes came last year when they had to pivot from in-person venues to virtual events to follow the citys COVID-19 safety protocols.

He said an early event symbolized what the summit is about. It was a collaboration between Frost Bank and the San Antonio Housing Authority for 50 young people from economically challenged neighborhoods at the Plaza Club, then located on the 21st floor of the Frost Bank Tower. He said the occasion introduced the young people another view of the city.

I thought it was a wonderful thing, Nakpodia said. What a lot of youth in society suffer from is what to aim for. If they havent had a glimpse of that experience, how can they determine what to aspire to. Those force fields are what we need to break down. Not just physical movement, but also intellectual mentoring as well. Thats what were trying to get across.

vtdavis@express-news.net
When you make brisket, you will have leftovers about 90 percent of the time.

Because when you put in a 12-hour (or more) cook at home, you probably will smoke a beast (or two) to get the most out of that time and effort. And with beef prices so high, youre not going to throw away any of that precious meat.

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With brisket prices the way that they are, you definitely want to make the most of it, said Emilio Soliz, pitmaster at the downtown San Antonio Smoke BBQ+Skybar. Brisket doesnt keep all that great, so you want to find ways to quickly use it.

Your solution is breakfast, and specifically Mexican food breakfast. Breakfast brisket tacos are a staple at multiple Mexican restaurants, including one of the citys most celebrated, Garcias Mexican Food on Fredericksburg Road. The brisket taco there has been a top seller since debuting in 2005, according to co-owner John Garcia.

There is absolutely nothing new about the brisket taco (for breakfast); I think there is more of an awareness now, though, that brisket works great for breakfast, and its being used in more ways, said Ernest Servantes, co-owner and pitmaster of the Burnt Bean Co. in Seguin.

San Antonio has gained a reputation for outstanding barbecue, with much of it incorporating the regions Mexican influence. For example, Oaxaca cheese and serrano peppers are used to infuse the famed sausage links at highly lauded 2M Smokehouse, and most barbecue joints offer some sort of loaded nachos.

Back when he owned the now-closed Kings Highway Brew & Q near downtown in the Five Points neighborhood, Soliz would regularly offer a weekend brunch with brisket breakfast hash, a customer favorite, with slivers of jalapeno mixed with potatoes and onions.

People couldnt get enough of it, Soliz said.

On ExpressNews.com: The 25 best dishes from San Antonio restaurants in 2021

One of the most popular menu items at the Burnt Bean Co., which was recently ranked the fourth-best barbecue joint in the state by Texas Monthly, is the Sunday breakfast brisket huevos rancheros. Express-News dining critic Mike Sutter named it one of the top 25 dishes of 2021.

I always wanted to create a classic barbecue menu, but I wanted to also have that time on Sundays to incorporate some family favorites into the menu and experience, Servantes said. The huevos rancheros sort of took off, and I still have people tell me its one of the best things they have ever eaten.

Huevos rancheros are a perfect option for that leftover brisket. Smoky brisket topped with an egg will win over any breakfast table, especially when accompanied by beans, a stack of corn tortillas, fresh pico de gallo, tasty salsa and cheese.

On ExpressNews.com: Meet San Antonios Tiger Woods of brisket trimming

Brisket scraps from the trimming process are also commonly used to make carne guisada, but that process can be greatly expedited with the cooked leftovers, which dont need to be seasoned again  and those leftovers will come from the better parts of the brisket than the trimming scraps.

So enjoy your traditional barbecue plate today, but start asking yourself, Whats for breakfast tomorrow?

cblount@express-news.net | Twitter: @chuck_blount | Instagram: @bbqdiver
Hill Country Headlines: Top stories from the booming region, delivered to your inbox

After several delays, the demolition of a bridge in Boerne that will shut down Interstate 10 will finally be underway this week, the city announced on Facebook.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio oil and gas company enters bankruptcy amid highest oil prices in more than 7 years

Beginning at 9 p.m. Friday, the Texas Department of Transportation will shut down the main lanes of I-10 at Texas 46 to tear down the old bridge. All of the lanes will reopen at 5 a.m. on Monday.

For safety reasons, the new Texas 46 bridge over I-10 will also be closed. Traffic will be required to turn right onto the frontage roads.

The east and westbound lanes of the I-10 frontage road will be reduced to one lane each. Traffic on the westbound frontage road will continue through the Texas 46 intersection and back onto I-10 West at the entrance ramp near Frederick Creek. Eastbound traffic will continue on the frontage road through the Texas 46 intersection and back onto I-10 at the next available entrance ramp.

On ExpressNews.com: Castle Falkenstein: A Bavarian castle in the Hill Country hits Airbnb for $2K a night

Various stages of the project that aims to replace the overpass bridge at Main Street and Bandera Road have been delayed due to weather and nesting birds. The latest delay pushed the project into early February.

The city of Boerne suggested these alternate routes for this weekend:
"Those numbers show that omicron is as deadly and causes as much serious disease in the unvaccinated as delta did. . . . We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators." - Justice Sonia Sotomayor, during oral argument at the Supreme Court, Jan. 7

Several readers questioned these remarks by Sotomayor, made during a hearing on whether the Biden administration's nationwide rules ordering a vaccination-or-testing requirement on large employers were constitutional. Her remarks came during an exchange with Ben Flowers, Ohio's solicitor general, as he referred to a brief filed by the American Commitment Foundation, which argued that the rise of the omicron variant had made the vaccine rules less relevant because vaccines do not appear especially effective against it.

(We will not address remarks made by Justice Neil Gorsuch, which some readers also thought were wrong. The official court transcript suggested he had made an inflated statement about the annual flu: "Flu kills - I believe - hundreds of thousands of people every year." The flu kills between 12,000 and 52,000 people in the United States a year, but the audio of the argument shows Gorsuch actually said that "flu kills, I believe, hundreds, thousands of people every year." So the transcript is incorrect.)

- - -

The Facts

The brief in question sought to update the court on the latest scientific and technical information on the omicron variant, as that had emerged with force after the mandate was proposed. Epidemiologists Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University and Andrew Bostom of Brown University helped advise on it.

Its key argument, citing data from countries such as South Africa and Denmark, was that omicron cases were 80% less likely to get hospitalized (South Africa) and three times less likely to end up with hospital admissions than the delta variant (Denmark). Moreover, the brief argued, the case fatality rate in South Africa plunged dramatically when omicron became dominant.

Flowers, who said he had been twice vaccinated and received a booster, participated remotely after testing positive for covid. His symptoms were said to be "exceptionally mild."

"My presence here as a triple vaccinated individual by phone" suggested "vaccines do not appear to be very effective in stopping the spread or transmission," he said, though he added that vaccines are effective at preventing "severe consequences." That's when Sotomayor interrupted him to assert "those numbers show that omicron is as deadly and causes as much serious disease in the unvaccinated as delta did." She argued that "saying it's a different variant just underscores the fact" a workplace rule was needed.

Actually, as we have shown, that's not what the brief said. In fact, it even argued that vaccinated individuals might be more likely to catch covid rather than unvaccinated individuals. (The brief refers mainly to people with two vaccine doses as "vaccinated," not people who also received a booster.) The brief suggests "this may be because unvaccinated, covid-recovered patients have better protection versus omicron than vaccinated patients who never previously had covid."

Nevertheless, the spike in cases has led to increased hospitalizations, Sotomayor noted during the exchange. Almost 30% of intensive-care beds are filled with covid patients as of Jan. 8, according the Health and Human Services Department data.

But then Sotomayor went off the rails: "We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators."

That's wildly incorrect, assuming she is referring to hospitalizations, given the reference to ventilators. According to HHS data, as of Jan. 8 there are about 5,000 children hospitalized in a pediatric bed, either with suspected covid or a confirmed laboratory test. This figure includes patients in observation beds. So Sotomayor's number is at least 20 times higher than reality, even before you determine how many are in "serious condition."

Moreover, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been less than 100,000 - 82,843 to be exact - hospital admissions of children confirmed with covid since Aug. 1.

Still, the current seven-day average (Dec. 30-Jan. 5) is 797, which is a sharp increase from the week before (441) and represents the peak seven-day average for children, the CDC said. So Sotomayor is not wrong to suggest the rate of pediatric admissions is cause for concern. On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported a sharp rise in pediatric cases, with many of the children unvaccinated. (Some children are hospitalized for other reasons and then test positive for covid through screenings at the hospital.)

The Supreme Court media office did not respond to a request for comment.

- - -

The Pinocchio Test

It's important for Supreme Court justices to make rulings based on correct data. There has been a spike in pediatric cases with covid, even if the omicron variant appears less deadly. But Sotomayor during an oral argument offered a figure - 100,000 children in "serious condition . . . many on ventilators" - that is absurdly high. She earns Four Pinocchios.
The Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office identified the second Johnson High School student who died in a car crash in front of the school as 16-year-old Gabriel Juarez.

On Tuesday, the medical examiner identified Ziv Hoodani, 17, as the other student who died in the crash Saturday.

Bexar County Sheriff's Office deputies responded to the crash in the 23200 block of Bulverde Road, near the entrance of Johnson, just before 4 p.m.

On ExpressNews.com: Clean up efforts begin after Houston region is hit by 5 tornadoes

The sheriff's office has not released additional details on the crash.

Kin Man Hui/Staff photographer

Gary Comalander, Johnson's principal, sent a letter on Sunday to students and staff informing them that counselors would be available to all students beginning Monday morning.

"I have some sad news to share with you. Yesterday there was a terrible accident that occurred on Bulverde Road at the Johnson HS entrance. This accident involved two fatalities involving our Johnson students," Comalander wrote in the letter.

"Our counselors will be available in our library starting at 8 AM for any student needing support throughout the day. If you have any concerns about your child, please do not hesitate to reach out to your childs counselor.

The families are in our thoughts and prayers during this tragic time."
Russian officials said that the United States federal government was oblivious to the European nation's goal in Ukraine as authorities from both sides are set to meet and discuss various issues, including war games and missile deployments amid rising tensions.

On Sunday night, officials from both countries met to begin a high-stakes negotiation over threats to Ukraine and a growing divide between Moscow and Washington. However, prior to the meeting, there was deep pessimism from both sides regarding a potential diplomatic solution.

Russia Warns the US

A senior Russian official who was dispatched to the talks warned that the United States had a "lack of understanding" of the Kremlin's security demands. Prior to the meeting, the official said that the U.S. voiced doubts over whether or not Russia was "serious" about de-escalating the Ukraine issue.

The Russian official, identified as Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei A. Ryabkov, maintained the hard-line rhetoric that many analysts and Western officials see as a possible prelude to new Russian military action against Ukraine. The official's remarks seemed to have been aimed at lowering expectations that an agreement can be made after the meeting, the New York Times reported.

Ryabkov met with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and her team to talk about various issues. In a statement released on state television on Sunday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that a first round of "narrow-format" talks on security would be underway during the day.

Read Also: More Than a Dozen Including 9 Children Are Dead in New York's Worst Fire in 30 Years Caused by Malfunctioning Electric Space Heater

The Sunday negotiations were set before a much broader meeting that will include talks between the two diplomats and their teams at the U.S. mission in Geneva that will start on Monday. The discussions will be the first step in restarting talks between the nations as their relationship has become worse over Russia's deployment of roughly 100,000 troops to its border with Ukraine.

Many people have expressed their concerns about a broader Russian military incursion in the country. The situation comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin's government has laid out a list of his demands. This list includes seeking guarantees that the NATO military alliance will not seek to expand any further eastward to countries such as Ukraine and Georgia, ABC News reported.

Deteriorating Relationship Over Ukraine

The talks between the Russian and American diplomats will allegedly include the possibility of restricting military maneuvers and missile deployments in Eastern Europe. This could only be possible if Moscow agrees ahead of the talks.

U.S. officials raised the possibility of incremental shifts in decisions on Saturday about the United States' future strategic posture in Europe. However, American officials added that Russia would be given debilitating sanctions should it continue to intervene with Ukraine.

Additionally, U.S. lawmakers said that United States President Joe Biden's administration was open to discussions with Russia over the curtailing of possible future deployments of offensive missiles in Ukraine. The Democrat is also willing to put limits on U.S. and NATO military exercises in Eastern Europe.

"There are some areas where we think it might be possible to make progress," said one official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The remarks were made during a conference call, Aljazeera reported.

Related Article: Supreme Court Justices Appear To Block Joe Biden's Controversial COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate for Large Companies

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A jury sentenced Edison Carraman to 33 years in prison Monday for killing his cousin in a drive-by shooting in 2020 that prosecutors say might have been intended for a different relative.

After a weeklong trial, the same jury had taken four and a half hours Friday to convict Carraman of murder in the fatal shooting of Krisopher Carraman, 23, at a family barbecue. The victim was shot in the head and later died at Brooke Army Medical Center.

Testimony during the week-long trial from numerous relatives who witnessed the shooting established that Edison Carraman had started to date the victims ex-girlfriend and mother of his sons.

Edison Carraman, 23, testified in his defense, saying he never spoke to Kristopher Carraman on the night of March 27, 2020, but had received angry and profane text messages and phone calls from Gonzalo Carraman, another cousin who also was Kristopher Carramans uncle.

Gonzalo Carraman told the jury that he sent the texts because he felt it was wrong for Edison Carraman to be in a relationship with his nephews ex-girlfriend. Both he and the defendant agreed that the text messages escalated to profanity-riddled phone calls.

Edison Carraman said the exchanges made him feel belittled. He said he had no argument with Kristopher Carraman, with whom he was on good terms. The defendant said he agreed to meet Gonzalo Carraman at a park across the street from his South Side home on Pyron Avenue, where at least 15 relatives had gathered the night of the shooting.

Edison Carraman said he kept a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson handgun in the glove compartment of his car and also picked up a friend to accompany him so that someone could have my back in case something happened.

He said he drove that night, and his passenger  whom he would not name  was the one who fired the shots. The defendant also testified that he told the passenger to only shoot in the air and had no idea he would fire into a cluster of relatives in the front yard.

I was telling him, Dont shoot at the house. If you are going to shoot, shoot straight up, the defendant told the jury.

Edison Carraman testified that when he and the unnamed shooter left the scene, the shooter kept the gun. Investigators never found it, but they did recover shell casings at the scene that had tool markings from a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson handgun. A ballistics expert testified that unfired rounds located at Edison Carramans home had the same markings.

In some cases, witnesses who variously said the shooter was the driver or passenger in the car contradicted what they had told investigators earlier, a confusion they attempted to explain while testifying.

In his closing argument over punishment, defense attorney Raymond Martinez reminded the jury of this changing testimony and said there still was time to figure out the identity of the real gunman. He asked the jury to assess a 15-year sentence.

Before he asked the jury to sentence Edison Carraman to no less than 60 years, prosecutor David Martin said in his closing argument that it did not matter whether Edison Carraman was the driver or the passenger.

As a party, hes just as guilty as the person who pulled the trigger, if that happened, Martin said.

Alexandria Carraman and Michele Carraman, the victims aunt and mother, respectively, faced Edison Carraman in the 437th District Court after Judge Melisa Skinner read the sentence. Each fought back tears, expressed anger and pain, and said the family is now split.

But each said they knew they could only receive Gods blessings if they forgave Edison Carraman for taking Kristopher Carramans life.

It is because of him (Kristopher) that I forgive you, Michele Carraman said. My heart has no room for hate or anger. This heart of mine is for love of Kris.

But as Michele Carraman and other relatives rose and started to leave the courtroom, she yelled, Why you still lying? at Edison Carramans side of the family, which had remained silent throughout the proceeding.

Edison Carraman will have to serve at least half of his prison term before he is considered eligible for parole.

ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863
A former senior policy adviser to the Austin mayor pleaded guilty to charges that he conspired to misapply city and federal funds and lied about it under oath, the Department of Justice said.

Frank Rodriguez, 71, of Dripping Springs worked for Austin Mayor Steve Adler from 2015 to 2017, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to misapply federal funds and to falsify records in a U.S. agencys investigation.

The federal investigation into Rodriguez started in early 2017 after city officials started an investigation that was prompted by articles published by the Austin American-Statesman that year.

Before joining Adlers staff in April 2015, Rodriguez founded and was executive director of the nonprofit Latino HealthCare Forum. In June 2015, Rodriguez applied for federal Affordable Care Act navigator grant funding on the nonprofits behalf, and in doing so, he falsely said he was the organizations chief development officer and authorized representative, the DOJ said.

On ExpressNews.com: Ex-candidate for governor in Mexico granted release on bond in visa fraud case

Latino Healthcare Forum was awarded a federal grant that year based on the application Rodriguez submitted.

Investigators found email correspondence from Rodriguez to an employee at the nonprofit to make sure they were on the same page with respect to (his) fee for the grant, which was 10 percent of the grant, according to the DOJ.

In December 2015, Rodriguez gave the employee a draft of a consulting agreement so that it could address any issue that someone might have that the payments are for navigator grant work.

From December 2015 to December 2016, while Rodriguez was employed at Adlers office, he was paid more than $20,000 in consulting fees by Latino HealthCare Forum per the consulting agreement.

Investigators also discovered that Rodriguez continued working on the nonprofits behalf while he was a city employee by providing confidential city information to Latino HealthCare Forum, recommending that it receive city funding and undermining other nonprofits competing for city funding, the DOJ said.

On ExpressNews.com: Bookkeeper who stole almost $1.8 million from San Antonio law firm agrees to court judgment

The city of Austins Auditors Office started an investigation in 2017 regarding Rodriguezs conduct as a city employee, and during the investigation, Rodriguez drafted a letter to the auditor that contained false statements regarding his relationship to the nonprofit.

In 2019, while testifying at an ethics hearing, Rodriguez lied under oath, saying that the payments he received from Latino Healthcare Forum were reimbursements for previous expenses.

Rodriguez is scheduled for sentencing in March and faces up to five years in prison.

taylor.pettaway@express-news.net
Getty Images / Contributed

A Lubbock man was sentenced to 30 years in prison after admitting that he produced images of child sexual abuse multiple times in the last 18 years, the Department of Justice said.

Jason Paul White, 42, pleaded guilty to production of child pornography in September.
Shelley Luther, a Republican candidate for a Dallas-area state House seat, is under fire from members of both parties after tweeting last week that Chinese students should be barred from attending Texas universities.

Luther, a Dallas salon owner who rose to prominence for defying Gov. Greg Abbotts stay-at-home order early in the pandemic, tweeted Wednesday, Chinese students should be BANNED from attending all Texas universities. No more Communists!

She later deleted the tweet, but continued to defend the statement after state Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, called it ignorant and hateful and said it would incite violence against not only Chinese Americans, but all Asian Americans.

To casually conflate all Chinese students in America with actual registered members of the ruling party in the Peoples Republic of China is not only ignorance of an extreme nature, it is also the type of rhetoric that drives anti-Asian hate crimes, Wu said in a statement. Luthers racist statement not only paints a target on the backs of Chinese nationals studying in America, but it labels and targets anyone who looks or sounds vaguely Asian as a potential enemy.

IN-DEPTH: Hero or heel? Conservatives attacks on Sen. Ted Cruz underscore GOP infighting over Jan. 6 riot

Luther responded to Wus statement by calling him an enemy of the people and arguing that Texas Republicans agree with her view that Communist Chinese citizens should not access taxpayer funded state institutions.

GOP officials largely ignored Luthers remarks, though state Rep. Jacey Jetton, R-Richmond, responded by calling for Republicans to stand against canceling Chinese students on college campuses.

To do otherwise is an attempt to score cheap political points by targeting Chinese people, but real leaders know there is a huge distinction between Chinese individuals and the Chinese Government, Jetton tweeted. You want to attack an entire group of people because of the country they are from? Do you think all Chinese students and Chinese Americans think the same because of their country of origin?

Luther, who lost a special election for a Texas Senate seat in December 2020, is now challenging state Rep. Reggie Smith, R-Sherman, in the GOP primary for House District 62. The district is anchored in Grayson County, running along the Texas-Oklahoma border, and also takes in Delta, Fannin and Franklin counties.

Jetton, the first Korean American to serve in the Texas Legislature, was elected to the state House in 2020, replacing incumbent Republican Rick Miller of Sugar Land. Miller ended his re-election campaign after receiving blowback for saying Jetton was challenging him because he is an Asian.

jasper.scherer@chron.com


Flydubai plans to increase frequencies on most of its routes in the former Yugoslavia this summer season as demand for travel to the Emirate remains strong. The airline, which commenced three weekly services to Ljubljana last September, will add a further two weekly rotations for a total of five starting June 25. Prior to that, the carrier also plans to run four weekly flights during the first week of February and six rotations during the second week of the same month as a one-off due to strong demand. We see Ljubljana as a great opportunity. We will continue to work closely with the Slovenian Tourist Board and the government, as we believe that Slovenia is also a very interesting and attractive tourist destination for our residents, Flydubai said. Flydubai plans to increase frequencies on most of its routes in the former Yugoslavia this summer season as demand for travel to the Emirate remains strong. The airline, which commenced three weekly services to Ljubljana last September, will add a further two weekly rotations for a total of five starting June 25. Prior to that, the carrier also plans to run four weekly flights during the first week of February and six rotations during the second week of the same month as a one-off due to strong demand. We see Ljubljana as a great opportunity. We will continue to work closely with the Slovenian Tourist Board and the government, as we believe that Slovenia is also a very interesting and attractive tourist destination for our residents, Flydubai said.





The airline also plans to increase frequencies on its service to Belgrade. Starting June 26, Flydubai will maintain double daily flights from its hub to the Serbian capital. The carrier initially planned to run two daily flights this winter season but ultimately opted for a ten weekly service. Last summer season, services were maintained seven times per week. The carrier will also increase frequencies to Zagreb from its existing four weekly operation to daily flights starting March 27. Flydubai did not maintain services between the two cities over the past two summers (with exception to last October). In 2019, Emirates performed daily rotations with its Boeing 777 aircraft.





The hybrid carrier currently plans to progressively increase its frequencies to Sarajevo from the start of the summer season in late March, with double daily operations to be maintained from May 16 until September 12, after which there will be four weekly flights, although this is subject to change. However, last summer the airline performed three daily services on the route, with a fourth daily rotation operated on select days. Sarajevo Airport has initiated contact with Emirates in hope of attracting the airline to commence services during the summer but noted it would continue its cooperation with Flydubai. We sincerely hope that a respectable airline such as Emirates will consider and accept our offer in order for us to commence negotiations. There is strong demand and potential between the UAE and our country. Flydubai has been our partner for many years and we have excellent cooperation with them. In the coming period, we will work to further enhance our partnership, the General Manager of Sarajevo Airport, Alan Bajic, said recently.





This summer, Flydubai will resume its seasonal flights to Dubrovnik and Tivat on June 23 and June 24 respectively. Services to the Croatian coastal city will run three times per week until September 11, thereafter decreasing to two weekly until their conclusion on October 2. On the other hand, flights to the Montenegrin coast will be maintained twice per week until September 2. The airline has tentatively scheduled the resumption of its Skopje service from October 31.




With COVID-19 cases at record high numbers in local schools, teachers and staff plan to make a statement about school safety.

On Wednesday, a coalition of unions representing over 60,000 Connecticut public school employees will wear black to school to demand stronger health and safety measures. Members and their colleagues were encouraged to share photos on social media with the hashtag #Blackout4SafeSchools.

The coalition cited failures to distribute promised N95 masks and at-home test kits, staff shortages, and a need for flexibility in allowing for short-term remote learning.

We need every member of school communities across Connecticut  educators, paras, custodians, nurses, cafeteria workers, bus drivers and monitors, and support staff  to stand together and amplify the call for safe learning and teaching environments in our schools, read an event flyer.

More than 2,300 school staff members reported positive COVID cases early last week, according to state data through Wednesday. Those affected include employees or contractors that work in schools, from teachers to school transport workers.

The data represented an almost 5-fold increase since the record cases among staff set last school year in January 2021.

I personally dont feel very safe, said Sheena Graham, a music teacher in Bridgeport, and I dont think Im that odd in feeling that way.

Graham, who was the 2019 Connecticut Teacher of the Year, said proper mask-wearing has been a problem, and test kits are still hard to get. She also wondered if temporary remote learning could have kept case counts lower and more kids in school. Before winter break, the teacher said students were absent every day.

Though she loves her job, Graham plans to retire at the end of this month  and said she has slept better than ever since she made that decision.

This is part of the reason why, she said. Knowing what all the tools are, if they arent readily available, and if theyre not all functioning, then thats almost like not having them.

Last week, more than 7,600 students also reported new infections to their school districts, according to state data.

The numbers are preliminary and subject to change as schools become aware of more positive results from at-home and non-school-based tests.

Some school support staff, such as paraprofessionals and other non-certified employees, have extraordinarily close contact with the students, said Sherrie Weller, president of AFSCME Local 1522 in Bridgeport. Were talking about inches away from them.

The union lost beloved 12-year paraeducator Eleanor DeShields to COVID-19 last winter, so for her colleagues, Wednesdays effort for more stringent mitigation methods is personal.

My biggest concern is theres a lack of consistent protocol here, said Weller. That would go a long way to make people feel more secure in doing their jobs.

Not all educators on Monday agreed with the additional precautions. In Ellington, high school history teacher Aaron Hoffman encouraged educators to wear red to counter the blackout  and cited concerns about more mitigation strategies, remote learning and their impacts on student mental health.

The coalition has stressed their call is not for remote learning, but for flexibility at the local level to institute the model when necessary due to staffing shortages or other reasons. Hoffman favored a simpler approach: If kids are having symptoms, they can stay home. If adults are having symptoms, they can stay home, he said.

Symptom tracking recently became a greater priority in local schools, as state guidance has shifted away from contact tracing and stringent quarantine protocols. The details of that strategy, though, can vary from district to district.

We know that the mental health and education of our students has struggled because of remote learning, said Hoffman. They came back and those children, theyre out of the loop, theyre drained, they dont have the mental health they went into quarantine with.

Kate Dias, president of the states largest teachers union, suggested last week that increased illness of any kind is common after winter break, and the coalition had pushed to ward off a surge before schools reopened.

The unions have requested measures such as more aggressive testing protocols, access to testing, N95 masks and vaccines, and prohibiting combining classes for staff shortages and dual teaching.

Schools are a difficult place to be in right now, Dias said. Not bad, just hard. Everybody on the ground is being pushed into situations that are hard.

State officials have remained committed to in-person instruction, citing the benefits for student learning and well-being.
Fairfield, MT (59436)

Today

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 41F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 41F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph.
Meghan Markle, Prince William's sister-in-law, accused his wife of making her weep at a bridesmaid fitting, leaving him "reeling."

In a shocking interview with Oprah Winfrey, the Duchess of Sussex said that the Duchess of Cambridge had made her weep and "very wounded."

Despite being dubbed the Fab Four initially, tensions between Prince Harry and Prince William, as well as their spouses, were at an all-time high in the months after Meghan and Harry's wedding in 2018, according to The Sun.

Prince William furious with Meghan Markle

Earlier reports claimed that Meghan had "left Kate in tears" after a "stressful" fitting over her demands for Princess Charlotte's bridesmaids' dress. Meghan, 40, then claimed the exact reverse had occurred, accusing Kate of causing her to weep.

After Harry and Meghan made various claims against his wife and family, William, 39, was left "reeling" and his brain was "all over the place," according to a royal insider who spoke to the Sunday Times. In the days following the interview, he was obliged to publicly proclaim that the royals were "very much not a racist family."

Meghan stated she had forgiven Kate during the interview, but sources allege she slammed the door in her sister-in-face law's when she carried flowers to Nottingham Cottage, the Sussexes' residence at the time.

"There were no tears from anybody," Omid Scobie, a novelist and close friend of the Sussexes, said in Finding Freedom. It was later alleged that the "rift" occurred when Kate advised the bridesmaids should follow royal etiquette by wearing tights, which Meghan disagreed with.

Meghan was taken aback when the "opposite" of what she believed happened became public, causing her to be blamed for something she had no control over and that had happened to her. When Oprah asked Meghan for further facts, she said it would be unjust to go into more detail now that Kate had apologized, as per Mirror.

Read Also: Prince Charles, Prince William Are Furious While Queen Elizabeth Won't Fund Prince Andrew's Sex Abuse Case After Accuser Refuses Settlement Bid

Fans, royal family celebrate Kate Middleton's 40th birthday

Fans and members of the royal family have been celebrating the Duchess of Cambridge's 40th birthday on social media, with the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall being among the first to do so on Sunday morning.

Charles and Camilla's official Twitter and Instagram accounts have been updated with a number of stunning photographs. In one touching shot, Kate is seen staring across at her father-in-law, while in another, she is seen smiling beside the Queen and Camilla, who is dressed elegantly in a white suit jacket. Kate looked lovely in a maroon turtleneck sweater with her brown locks framing her pretty features in a third snapshot provided by the royals.

In advance of Kate's big day on Sunday, Kensington Palace shared three additional breathtaking images of the mother-of-three wearing Alexander McQueen outfits and jewelry lent to her by the Queen.

It's unclear where Kate will spend her birthday weekend, but she might be celebrating with her husband Prince William, and their three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis, at the Cambridges' rural residence in Norfolk, Anmer Hall.

Kate would very certainly have spent the weekend with her parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, as well as her siblings, James and Pippa, and their families, given how close she is to them. James is married to Alizee Thevenet, a French woman, and Pippa Matthews has two children, Arthur and Grace, with her husband James Matthews, Hello Magazine reported.

Related Article: QUEEN-IN-WAITING: How Kate Middleton Prepares For the Throne

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The organisers of the industry event Borderway Dairy Expo have announced an all-female line up of judges from the US, UK and Canada.

Harrison & Hetherington (H&H) said the move would highlight the opportunities for women within dairy farming.

Molly Sloan from Lake Mills, Wisconsin, will judge the Holstein and Brown Swiss Shows, while Terri Packard from Maryland will judge the Jersey and Red & White classes.

Jane Arrell from Shropshire is the judge for the National British Friesian and Dairy Shorthorn classes, and Katie Davidson from Scotland is judging the Ayrshire Show.

Lastly, Marie Eve Veronneau from Quebec will be judging the International Showmanship Show at the Expo, which takes place on 11-12 March at Borderway Exhibition Centre, Carlisle.

Glyn Lucas, senior pedigree dairy auctioneer for H&H, welcomed the all-female panel of expert judges.

"It is a reflection of the calibre of the event, that we can attract leading lights of the international dairy industry to judge," he said.

"All of our judges are experts in their own special fields, and together they highlight the opportunities for women within dairy farming.

Holstein Judge Molly Sloan is no stranger to Borderway Dairy Expo, having judged there in 2019. Renowned within the genetics industry, she has been the lead judge three times at World Dairy Expo and internationally at major shows in Australia, Brazil, France, UK, Peru, and Canada.

She has owned and worked with many top show animals, including her own All-American Holstein and Red & White Holstein nominations, and has her own small herd of elite genetic heifers.

She is currently Global Director of People Development & HR for the URUS Group, a dairy and beef holding company, where part of her focus is to develop training for global dairy producers.

Terri Packard is a 6th generation dairy farmer. She and her husband breed, develop, and market a select group of deep-pedigreed Holsteins and Jerseys from their farm in Boonsboro, Maryland.

She has served as official judge for the National Jersey Jug Futurity, officiated twice at Eastern State Exposition, and placed State Shows and State Fairs in twelve US states.

Jane Arrell has spent the last five years managing the prizewinning Alderbarrow herd until its recent dispersal.

Brought up on a dairy farm in Cheshire, Jane has been on the Holstein UK Judging Panel for over 20 years and has judged shows all over the UK and Ireland, including the regional section of the UK Premier Herd on numerous occasions.

She, her husband Phil and daughter Isla, have their own herd of Holsteins and Jerseys under the Thistlerose and Sweetpea prefixes.

The Ayrshire Show will be judged by Katie Davidson. Born and brought up on her familys farm, home to Halmyre Urr Ayrshires and Glen Urr Ice Creams.

For the past 15 years Katie has worked in various roles in the dairy industry and travelled for 16 months, working with some elite herds both at home and in Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand.

As well as winning the Hugh Stevenson Memorial Award during her years of Ayrshire Young Breeders, Katie also enjoyed success at the All Britain All Breeds Calf Show, securing Ayrshire Showmanship Champion in 2005 and 2008.

Completing the all-female line up and judging the International Showmanship Show is Canadas Marie Eve Veronneau. From Coaticook, Quebec she is the co-owner of the Philmardo prizewinning herds Ferme Philmardo, with her brother Dominic and father Phillipe.

Marie Eve has worked and showed with some of the best herds in North America including Provetaz, Piedmont, Lookout, Lexis, Arethusa, and Petitclerc; as well as showing in Australia, Italy, Switzerland, and Argentina.
Wales' Shadow Minister for Rural Affairs has called on Asda to reverse its decision to stop stocking exclusively British beef, calling the move 'deeply disappointing' and 'frustrating'.

The supermarket chain recently announced it had backed out of a commitment made in October 2021 to stock exclusively British beef, due to a rise in prices.

An Asda spokesperson told BBC News: "Whilst we continue to work hard to keep prices as low as possible for our customers, these increases are significant."

Samuel Kurtz MS, Welsh Conservative Shadow Minister for Rural Affairs, has written to Asda's CEO asking him to reconsider the 'deeply disappointing' move.

Mr Kurtz, who is the son of a beef farmer himself, spoke of his deep concern at the companys decision to drop their commitment to British farmers by stocking meat sourced from outside Britain.

He wasnt alone in his criticism, with the National Beef Association (NBA) chief executive Neil Shand saying he was also "deeply disappointed" by Asda's choice.

Speaking about the matter, Mr Kurtz said: As the son of a beef farmer, I understand first-hand the need for our British supermarkets to continue to support British farmers by flying the flag for our domestic produce.

"With supermarkets such as Aldi, Lidl and Morrisons abiding by this commitment, Asdas decision is out of kilter."

He added: Not only is fresh British beef reared to one of the highest food standards in the world, but by sourcing within Britain, supermarket chains can offer consumers a low-carbon alternative to meat imported from countries that are thousands of miles away.

Having written to Asda, its now important they reassess the situation and go on to reverse their decision by upholding their original promise to farmers."
The launch of the Improving Farm Productivity grant will help to provide farmers with 'much welcomed' funding for investment into robotics and innovative tech.

This is according to H&H Land & Estates, which says the fund will help farmers prepare for the phase out of BPS as they look to introduce new and innovative technology on-farm to increase profitability.

With a minimum grant available of 35,000 and a minimum eligible spend of 87,500, it provides funding of 40% of overall eligible expenditure.

The priorities for funding are to improve efficiencies, reduce the farm's environmental impact, improve nutrient and resource management, and the adoption of automation in areas with labour issues.

The emphasis on introducing new technology on to the farm is to help increase productivity whilst also improving the efficiency, resulting in reducing the farms overall environmental impact.

Jonathan Hird, chartered surveyor for H&H said: The aim of this new grant scheme is to improve productivity, improve the environment, and introduce innovation to bring farms forward into the 21st century with robotic equipment."

The application for support is a two-stage approach, he explained. "The first stage of the process, due to open in mid-January for eight weeks only, is an online checker.

"This is a process which identifies whether the farm business is eligible for the grant funding. If deemed eligible, you will then be invited to complete a full application.

"It is important to note that unless you have completed the online checker, you cannot submit a full application," Mr Hird said.

Anyone who is interested in applying are being told to be aware of the short timescale and criteria to complete the online checker application before its closure in mid-March.

As part of the full application process, farmers are required to provide a full breakdown of project costs, along with quotes for the equipment, and cashflows of the forecasted income and productivity for the new equipment on the farm.

There will also be clear emphasis on the justification for the funding and therefore the ability that farmers will be able to meet the desired priorities of the scheme.

The funding is specific. It is available for robotic and innovative equipment, including robotic milking systems, robotic harvesting, robotic weeding, robotic spraying, autonomous driverless tractors, robotic feeding systems, robotic transplanting, advanced ventilation control units, and wavelength specific lighting for horticultural crops.

Mr Hird added: "It also provides funding for the installation of slurry acidification equipment to lower pH value of slurry to stabilise ammonia.

"These applications are detailed, and as rural advisors we are there to support and assist farmers in ensuring that their applications for funding are successful."
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Hrithik Roshan is loved worldwide for his stellar acting and his good looks. While numerous Bollywood stars from Deepika Padukone to Ranveer Singh have expressed their love for the actor, even Hollywood actors cant stop themselves from loving the Jodha Akbar actor.

Hollywood actor Kristen Stewart got so smitten with Hrithik Roshan that she accepted that if shell have a boy, she would want him to look like Hrithik.

Kristen, in an interview, ahead of the release of her movie Breaking Dawn Part 2, told the PTI, If someone offers me a good script, I would love to work in a Bollywood film. I would love to work with Hrithik Roshan. He is such a wonderful actor and so good-looking.

She further added, In fact, if I have a boy, I would want him to look like Hrithik Roshan, but with Robs (her then boyfriend Robert Pattinson) eyes.

When Hrithik came to know about the comment, he felt elated and told NDTV, It was a stressful day when I read this compliment, and it kind of brightened my mood and day, it was a very warm way to compliment someone. I felt a lot of warmth.

Back in 2012, there was news about Hrithik and Kristen being starred together in Shekhar Kapurs Paani. However, Hrithik didnt confirm starring alongside Kristen in any project. He said, No, I haven't met her and there were talks of some projects in the past but nothing official yet.





Shekhar Kapur then started considering late actor Sushant Singh Rajput for Paani but the movie was shelved and was never made. Hrithik later starred in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and War while Kristen is one of the most talented young stars of Hollywood.
Many supermarkets in the United States have started to report that they have experienced incidents of "bare shelves" as fears continue to grow regarding the imminent meat and egg shortage after Omicron cases in the country have surged.

The effect of the coronavirus variant on food chains is seen to be one of the firsts in the country as operations are disrupted as more and more workers fall ill, resulting in a drop in productivity. The Omicron variant's continuous spread has caused a labor shortage in various industries, including farms, manufacturers, and distributors.

Meat and Egg Shortage

Additionally, schools and daycare centers are feeling the effects of rising fuel prices as more Americans are forced to work from home. SpartanNash Co., a Grand Rapids Mich.-based grocery distributor and store operator, claims that they have observed three times the number of coronavirus cases among their employees.

The situation has caused delays to operations and workers who feel stretched too thin. The chief executive of supply-chain consultant Resilinc Corp., Bindiya Vakil warned amid reports of bare shelves that labor shortages caused by the Omicron variant will only worsen the situation, The Sun reported.

As the number of confirmed cases continues to rise with the Omicron variant, United States President Joe Biden announced the set up of 10,000 additional COVID testing sites. Currently, there are already 80,000 up and running, with officials setting up new ones in regions that have been hard-struck by the latest wave of the health crisis.

Read Also: States Seek To Exert Authority Over Broader Battle Against Joe Biden's Vaccine Mandate After Pentagon Wins First Fight To Vaccinate National Guard

Additionally, the Democratic leader announced that his administration will be purchasing half a billion at-home rapid COVID tests. But the proposals have failed to mitigate fears among meat production companies who have continued to report signs of declining productivity due to the new variant.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture released recent data that showed meat companies have seen up to a 6% decline in the number of hogs and cattle slaughtered in the past week. Various plants are also finding it more and more difficult to procure food inspectors to come to their sites and oversee the processing of animals, which is a legal requirement for companies, Daily Star reported.

Recalled Meat Products

The situation is further exacerbated after roughly 14,976 pounds of beef sticks sold at Walmart and other retailers in the United States were recalled on Saturday. The incident is caused by misbranding and failure to declare milk, a known allergen, on its product label.

The supply of beef sticks affected in the recent operations came from Abbyland Foods Inc. based in Wisconsin. The products were delivered inside packages labeled "Iowa Smokehouse Original Smoked Beef Sticks" based on an announcement by the Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).

The items were found to have been produced from Nov. 15 to Nov. 17, 2021, and were packaged in two-pound, clear plastic bags. Authorities discovered the issue with the products after the firm received consumer complaints of cheese in the product and reported it to the FSIS. Fortunately, there have been no reports of adverse reactions from consumption of the said products, USA Today reported.



Related Article: Supreme Court Justices Appear To Block Joe Biden's Controversial COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate for Large Companies

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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.
Kelowna, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 10, 2022) - FISSION 3.0 CORP (TSXV: FUU) (OTCQB: FISOF) ("Fission 3" or "the Company") is pleased to announce that mobilization is underway for the 4000m seven hole winter drill program on its 100% owned Patterson Lake North "PLN" project in the southwest Athabasca Basin region of Saskatchewan, Canada. Drilling with two diamond drills will focus on the previously untested Broach Lake and N Conductor targets. PLN is one of the most advanced and highest ranked projects in F3's extensive portfolio by virtue of its proximity to the large, high-grade world class uranium deposits being advanced by Fission Uranium Corp and NexGen and having multiple untested and prospective targets for high grade uranium. Previous drilling by Fission 3 at the ~ 3 km long A1 conductor intersected basement hosted uranium mineralization supported by the presence of alteration, pathfinder elements and structural disturbance reinforcing the large-scale potential of the project. The A1 conductor remains untested to the northwest over a further 800m strike length. Follow up drilling of the A1 conductor is planned for the summer of 2022, to be guided by the ground geophysics that is currently in progress.

News Highlights:

The orientation of five drill holes planned at Broach Lake will be based on the results of the ground geophysics that commenced in December 2021. The ground geophysics has recently identified a new third conductor at Broach Lake which will be drill tested. The ground geophysics is ongoing and is expected to refine the other Broach Lake drill targets and consists of 22 line-km of DC Resistivity and 18 line-km of Time Domain Electromagnetic (TDEM) surveying.

Ground geophysics is in progress at the A1 conductor to develop drill targets for summer 2022 drilling, consisting of 14 line-km of DC Resistivity and 4 line-km of Time Domain Electromagnetic (TDEM) surveying.

Upcoming PLN Winter Drill Program:

Broach Lake Targets:

The Broach Lake conductors are ~9 km to the north, adjacent and parallel to EM conductors of the Patterson Lake Structural Corridor, host to Fission Uranium's Triple R deposit and NexGen's Arrow Deposit.

Five drill holes planned at Broach Lake will test the two previously defined conductors, a cross cutting basement resistivity low anomaly, as well as the new third conductor.

N Conductor Targets:

The N Conductors in the northeast part of the property are interpreted as multiple parallel basement EM conductors with an overlying low resistivity zone referred to as the "Chimney" target in the lower part of the sandstone above the 1-km wide conductor complex.

Two deep drill holes will test these basement conductors beneath the sandstone hosted "Chimney" resistivity anomaly. The drill holes will test for the potential that this feature is caused by clay alteration and/or dissolution of the sandstone matrix above uranium mineralization associated with basement structures delineated by the EM conductors.

About Patterson Lake North:

The Patterson Lake North property (PLN) lies adjacent and immediately north of the Patterson Lake South property (PLS), owned by Fission Uranium Corp. where uranium mineralization has been traced by core drilling at PLS over ~3.18 km of east-west strike length in five separated mineralized "zones" which collectively make up the Triple R deposit, and where a Feasibility Study has commenced. Previous drilling at PLN by Fission 3 in 2014 identified a mineralized structure associated with the ~3 km long A1 conductor with strongly anomalous geochemistry, including uranium values, in addition to common pathfinder elements including boron, copper, nickel and zinc. Drill hole PLN 14-019 intercepted a 7.5 m interval (191.5 m - 199.0 m) of anomalous radioactivity with peak measurements up to 1450 cps (as measured by handheld spectrometer) over 0.5 m within a strongly clay altered and brecciated graphitic gneiss which assayed 0.5 m of 0.47% U 3 O 8 within 6.0 m of 0.12% U 3 O 8 .

About Fission 3.0 Corp.

Fission 3.0 Corp. is a uranium project generator and exploration company, focusing on projects in the Athabasca Basin, home to some of the world's largest high-grade uranium discoveries. Fission 3.0 currently has 16 projects in the Athabasca Basin. Several of Fission 3.0's projects are near large uranium discoveries, including Arrow, Triple R and Hurricane deposits.

Qualified Person

The technical information in this news release has been prepared in accordance with the Canadian regulatory requirements set out in National Instrument 43-101 and reviewed on behalf of the company by Raymond Ashley, P.Geo., Vice President, Exploration of Fission 3.0 Corp., a qualified person.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD



"Dev Randhawa"

__________________________

Dev Randhawa, CEO

Investor Relations

Ph: 778-484-8030

TF: 844-484-8030

ir@fission3corp.com

www.fission3corp.com

Cautionary Statement: Certain information contained in this press release constitutes "forward-looking information", within the meaning of Canadian legislation. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur", "be achieved" or "has the potential to". Forward looking statements contained in this press release may include statements regarding the future operating or financial performance of Fission 3.0 Corp. which involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which may not prove to be accurate. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in these forward-looking statements. Such statements are qualified in their entirety by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding future expectations. Among those factors which could cause actual results to differ materially are the following: market conditions and other risk factors listed from time to time in our reports filed with Canadian securities regulators on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and Fission 3 Corp. disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities legislation.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/109451
Ad hoc announcement pursuant to Art. 53 LR

Idorsia receives US FDA approval of QUVIVIQ (daridorexant) 25 and 50 mg for the treatment of adults with insomnia

The approval of QUVIVIQ - 25 & 50 mg - is based on a robust Phase 3 clinical program that demonstrated significant improvement versus placebo on objective measures of sleep onset and sleep maintenance, as well as patient reported total sleep time

Idorsia's first approved medicine is a new treatment option for the approximately 25 million American adults living with insomnia2,3,4

Allschwil, Switzerland- January10, 2022

Idorsia Ltd (SIX: IDIA) today announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved QUVIVIQ (daridorexant) 25 mg and 50 mg for the treatment of adult patients with insomnia, characterized by difficulties with sleep onset and/or sleep maintenance1. The FDA approval of QUVIVIQ is based on an extensive clinical program that included 1,854 adults with insomnia at over 160 clinical trial sites across 18 countries. Insomnia, a serious medical condition, is the most common sleep disorder in the US.

QUVIVIQ is a dual orexin receptor antagonist, which blocks the binding of the wake-promoting neuropeptides orexins and is thought to turn down overactive wakefulness, as opposed to treatments that generally sedate the brain.

During the Phase 3 clinical program, QUVIVIQ demonstrated significant improvement versus placebo on objective measures of sleep onset and sleep maintenance, and patient reported total sleep time. Consistent with the US prescribing information, the 50 mg dose of QUVIVIQ, which was evaluated in one of the two pivotal studies, demonstrated a significant reduction in patient reported daytime sleepiness, using a validated instrument. The most common adverse reactions (in at least 5% of patients and greater than placebo) were headache (placebo: 5%, 25 mg: 6%, 50 mg: 7%,) and somnolence or fatigue (placebo: 4%, 25 mg: 6%, 50 mg: 5%).

The FDA has recommended that QUVIVIQ be classified as a controlled substance and it is anticipated to be available to patients in May 2022, following scheduling by the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

Martine Clozel, MD and Chief Scientific Officer of Idorsia, commented:

"After more than 20 years of research and a progressive understanding of the role of orexin in sleep-wake balance and of the potential of orexin receptor antagonism, we designed daridorexant to help address several issues people with insomnia face. Daridorexant properties include a potent inhibition of both orexin receptors, a rapid absorption for sleep onset, and a pharmacokinetic profile such that around 80% of daridorexant has been eliminated after a night of sleep to help minimize residual effects."

Dr Thomas Roth, PhD, Director of the Sleep Disorder and Research Center at Henry Ford Hospital, commented:

"As noted in the definition of insomnia, the disorder is not only a problem of the night but affects a patient's ability to function during the day. Although the personal and societal burden of insomnia is well established, elevating the impact insomnia has on both the night and day remains critical in addressing patients' needs. I am encouraged to see a new advanced treatment option for the millions of adults struggling with insomnia."

Patricia Torr, President and General Manager of Idorsia US added:

"I am extremely proud to be leading the US organization of such a forward-thinking and patient-centric organization like Idorsia. With this first FDA approval for our company, QUVIVIQ provides a new treatment option that can help adults with insomnia get to sleep faster and stay asleep longer, which we know plays an important role in how they feel the next day. It's an incredibly exciting time for us and I can't wait to transform the treatment paradigm in the US. We have a differentiated product, an amazing team, and an innovative strategy, giving me absolute confidence that we can make QUVIVIQ a great success."

Guy Braunstein, MD and Head of Global Clinical Development of Idorsia, commented:

"In our investigation of daridorexant we were able to demonstrate an improvement on objective sleep parameters, as well as improvement in patient-reported outcomes. What is truly impressive, we have shown a dose response in the efficacy of daridorexant, with no increase in the rate of somnolence or fatigue with increasing doses."

Phase 3 Clinical Program

The efficacy of QUVIVIQ was evaluated in two multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group studies, Study 1 (NCT03545191 (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03545191)) and Study 2 (NCT03575104 (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03575104)).

A total of 1854 patients with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5) insomnia were randomized to receive QUVIVIQ or placebo once daily, in the evening, for 3 months. Study 1 randomized 930 subjects to QUVIVIQ 50 mg (N = 310), 25 mg (N = 310) or placebo (N = 310). Study 2 randomized 924 subjects to QUVIVIQ 25 mg (N = 309), 10 mg (N = 307), or placebo (N = 308). The 10 mg dose is not an approved dose.

At the end of the 3-month treatment period, both studies included a 7-day placebo run-out period, after which patients could enter a 9-month, double-blind, placebo-controlled extension study (Study 3, NCT03679884 (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03679884)). A total of 600 subjects were treated for at least 6 months of cumulative treatment, including 373 treated for at least 12 months.

Primary efficacy endpoints for both studies were the change from baseline to Month 1 and Month 3 in Latency to Persistent Sleep (LPS) and Wake After Sleep Onset (WASO), measured objectively by polysomnography in a sleep laboratory. LPS is a measure of sleep induction and WASO is a measure of sleep maintenance.

Secondary endpoints included in the statistical testing hierarchy with Type I error control were patient-reported Total Sleep Time (sTST), evaluated every morning at home using a validated Sleep Diary Questionnaire (SDQ).

In Study 1, doses of 25 and 50 mg QUVIVIQ showed a statistically significant improvement vs placebo on polysomnography (LPS, WASO) and self-reported total sleep (sTST), at Month 1 and Month 3.

In Study 2, QUVIVIQ 25 mg showed a statistically significant improvement vs placebo on WASO and sTST at Month 1 and Month 3. QUVIVIQ 10 mg did not show a statistically significant improvement on LPS, WASO, or sTST at Month 1 or Month 3.

The efficacy of QUVIVIQ was similar across subgroups based on age, sex, race, and region.

The 50 mg dose of QUVIVIQ, which was evaluated in one of the two pivotal studies, also demonstrated significant reduction in daytime sleepiness compared to placebo, as measured by the sleepiness domain score from the Insomnia Daytime Symptoms and Impacts Questionnaire (IDSIQ)7 at month 1 and month 3 (key secondary endpoint). Results on this endpoint for the 25mg dose did not reach statistical significance in either study at both timepoints.

The most common reported adverse reactions (in at least 5% of patients and greater than placebo) were headache (placebo: 5%, 25 mg: 6%, 50 mg: 7%,) and somnolence or fatigue (placebo: 4%, 25 mg: 6%, 50 mg: 5%).

For more information see the Full Prescribing Information (https://www.idorsia.us/documents/us/label/Quviviq_PI.pdf) (PI and Medication Guide).

Important Safety Information

QUVIVIQ is a prescription medicine for adults who have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep (insomnia).

Do nottake QUVIVIQ if you fall asleep often at unexpected times (narcolepsy).

QUVIVIQ may cause serious side effects, including:

Decreased awareness and alertness. The morning after you take QUVIVIQ, your ability to drive safely and think clearly may be decreased. You may also have sleepiness during the day. Do not take more QUVIVIQ than prescribed. Do not take QUVIVIQ unless you are able to stay in bed for at least 7 hours before you must be active again. Take QUVIVIQ at night within 30 minutes before going to bed.

The morning after you take QUVIVIQ, your ability to drive safely and think clearly may be decreased. You may also have sleepiness during the day.

QUVIVIQ is a federally controlled substance because it can be abused or lead to dependence.

Before taking QUVIVIQ, tell your healthcare provider about all of your medical conditions, including if you:

have a history of depression, mental illness, or suicidal thoughts or actions; drug or alcohol abuse or addiction; a sudden onset of muscle weakness (cataplexy); daytime sleepiness

have lung or breathing problems, including sleep apnea

have liver problems

are pregnant or plan to become pregnant

are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed





Tell your healthcare provider about all of the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements

Taking QUVIVIQ with certain medicines can cause serious side effects. QUVIVIQ may affect the way other medicines work and other medicines may affect the way QUVIVIQ works.

Do not take QUVIVIQ with other medicines that can make you sleepy unless instructed by your healthcare provider.

What should I avoid while taking QUVIVIQ?

Do not drink alcohol while taking QUVIVIQ. It can increase the effects of alcohol, which can be dangerous.

Do not drive, operate heavy machinery, do anything dangerous, or do other activities that require clear thinking if you do not feel fully awake, or you have taken QUVIVIQ and have less than a full night of sleep (at least 7 hours), or if you have taken more QUVIVIQ than prescribed.

QUVIVIQ may cause other serious side effects, including:

Worsening depression and suicidal thoughts. Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any worsening depression or thoughts of suicide or dying .

Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any worsening depression or thoughts of suicide or dying Temporary inability to move or talk (sleep paralysis) for up to several minutes, or hallucinations while you are going to sleep or waking up.

Complex sleep behaviors such as sleep-walking, sleep-driving, preparing and eating food, making phone calls, having sex or doing other activities while not fully awake that you may not remember the next morning. Stop taking QUVIVIQ and call your healthcare provider right away if you experience a complex sleep behavior.





The most common side effects of QUVIVIQ are headache and sleepiness.

These are not the only side effects of QUVIVIQ. Call your doctor for advice about side effects.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch (http://www.fda.gov/medwatch) or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Notes to the editor

About Insomnia

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5), insomnia is defined as a combination of difficulty obtaining sufficient sleep and dissatisfaction with sleep combined with a significant negative impact on daytime functioning. Chronic insomnia is defined as difficulty initiating and/or maintaining sleep on at least three nights per week for at least three months, despite adequate opportunity to sleep.

Insomnia is a condition of overactive brain activity during sleep, and studies have shown that areas of the brain associated with wakefulness remain more active during sleep in patients with insomnia.

Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder, affecting more than 25 million adults in the US.2 Poor quality or insufficient sleep can affect many aspects of the daily lives of people with trouble sleeping including the ability to concentrate, mood and energy levels.3 In the long-term, insomnia is associated with numerous serious health conditions, such as psychiatric disorders, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, substance abuse and dementia.4,5,6

About Dr. Thomas Roth, PhD

Dr. Roth has been the Director of the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, since 1978. Dr. Roth is also a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Wayne State University, School of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan, and serves as a Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan, College of Medicine in Ann Arbor.

After serving as president of the Sleep Research Society, and the founding president of the National Sleep Foundation (NSF), Dr. Roth became chairman of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research advisory board. In addition, he was a member of the board of directors of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS), chaired the Association's Scientific Program Committee and the governing board of the World Federation of Sleep Research Societies.

Dr. Roth was instrumental in the formation of the Association of Sleep Disorders Center (ASDC) and served as the organization's second president. He is also the former Chairman of the World Health Organization's worldwide project on sleep and health. In addition to authoring and co-authoring numerous articles, Dr. Roth serves as past editor-in-chief of the journal Sleep. He currently sits on the editorial boards of Sleep Reviews, Stress Medicine, and Advances in Therapy and Human Psychopharmacology.

In 2002, Dr. Roth received the NSF's Lifetime Achievement Award for his accomplishments and contributions to sleep science, sleep medicine and public health. He received a Distinguished Research Award from the Sleep Research Society as well as the Nathanial Kleitman Award from the Academy of Sleep Medicine. Dr. Roth's contributions to the sleep field are expansive, ranging from prolific research productivity and scholarship to multiple national leadership positions, as well as the mentoring of many students and colleagues. Dr. Roth serves as a consultant to Idorsia.

References

QUVIVIQ Prescribing Information. Idorsia Pharmaceuticals US Inc. Jan/2022 Bhaskar S, Hemavathy D, Prasad S. Prevalence of chronic insomnia in adult patients and its correlation with medical comorbidities. J Family Med Prim Care. 2016;5(4):780-784. doi:10.4103/2249-4863.201153. Ustinov Y, Lichstein KL, Wal GS, Taylor DJ, Riedel BW, Bush AJ. Association between report of insomnia and daytime functioning. Sleep Med. 2010 Jan;11(1):65-8. doi: 10.1016/j.sleep.2009.07.009. Epub 2009 Sep 23. Olfson M, Wall M, Liu SM, Morin CM, Blanco C. Insomnia and Impaired Quality of Life in the United States. J Clin Psychiatry. 2018 Sep 11;79(5):17m12020. doi: 10.4088/JCP.17m12020. Doghramji K. The epidemiology and diagnosis of insomnia. Am J Manag Care. 2006 May;12(8 Suppl): S214-20. PMID: 16686591. de Almondes KM, Costa MV, Malloy-Diniz LF, Diniz BS. Insomnia and risk of dementia in older adults: Systematic review and meta-analysis. J Psychiatr Res. 2016 Jun;77:109-15. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2016.02.021. Epub 2016 Mar 8. PMID: 27017287. Hudgens S, Phillips-Beyer A, Newton L, Seboek Kinter D, Benes H. Development and validation of the Insomnia Daytime Symptoms and Impacts Questionnaire (IDSIQ). Patient. 2020;14(2): 249-268. https://doi. org/ 10. 1007/ s40271- 020- 00474-z





About Idorsia US

Idorsia US, an affiliate of Idorsia, is reaching out for more - we have more ideas, we see more opportunities, and we want to help more patients. To achieve this, we will help develop Idorsia into a leading biopharmaceutical company, with a strong scientific core. With commercial operations based outside of Philadelphia, PA, one of densest communities of life sciences talent in the world, we are helping to realize the company's ambition of bringing innovative medicines from bench to bedside. Our goal is to build a commercial footprint that will deliver Idorsia's deep pipeline of products from its R&D engine to the US market - with the potential to change the lives of many patients.

About Idorsia

Idorsia Ltd is reaching out for more - We have more ideas, we see more opportunities and we want to help more patients. In order to achieve this, we will develop Idorsia into a leading biopharmaceutical company, with a strong scientific core.

Headquartered near Basel, Switzerland - a European biotech-hub - Idorsia is specialized in the discovery, development and commercialization of small molecules to transform the horizon of therapeutic options. Idorsia has a broad portfolio of innovative drugs in the pipeline, an experienced team of professionals covering all disciplines from bench to bedside, state-of-the-art facilities, and a strong balance sheet - the ideal constellation to translate R&D efforts into business success.

Idorsia was listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (ticker symbol: IDIA) in June 2017 and has over 1'000 highly qualified specialists dedicated to realizing our ambitious targets.

For further information, please contact

US Media

Christopher Clark

Senior Director, US Head of Communications

Idorsia Pharmaceuticals US, 100 Matsonford Road, Radnor, PA 19087

+1 (215) 421 4887

christopher.clark@idorsia.com

www.idorsia.us (https://www.idorsia.us/)

Global Investors & Media

Andrew C. Weiss

Senior Vice President, Head of Investor Relations & Corporate Communications

Idorsia Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Hegenheimermattweg 91, CH-4123 Allschwil

+41 58 844 10 10

investor.relations@idorsia.com (mailto:investor.relations@idorsia.com)

media.relations@idorsia.com (mailto:media.relations@idorsia.com)

www.idorsia.com (http://www.idorsia.com)

The above information contains certain "forward-looking statements", relating to the company's business, which can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "estimates", "believes", "expects", "may", "are expected to", "will", "will continue", "should", "would be", "seeks", "pending" or "anticipates" or similar expressions, or by discussions of strategy, plans or intentions. Such statements include descriptions of the company's investment and research and development programs and anticipated expenditures in connection therewith, descriptions of new products expected to be introduced by the company and anticipated customer demand for such products and products in the company's existing portfolio. Such statements reflect the current views of the company with respect to future events and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Many factors could cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the company to be materially different from any future results, performances or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as anticipated, believed, estimated or expected.





Anhang
Paris, January10, 2022 - Referring to EU regulation No. 596/2014, which provides that issuers shall inform the public as soon as possible of inside information directly relevant to them, Atos announces today that the objectives communicated to the market on July 12, 2021 will not be met due to several significant effects described herein below.



The figures in this press release, including the revenue growth at constant currency, operating margin rate and free cash flow for the year 2021, are not finalized at this stage nor audited. The detailed full year figures for 2021, including potential impairment further to the assessment of the recoverable amount of assets, will be published as planned on February 28, 2022 (after market close).

Rodolphe Belmer, Atos CEO, said: "I joined the Company last week, at the time when the figures were being collected and consolidated. The current state of financial insight leads us to the obligation to issue a profit warning today due to the significant variance in the financial KPIs. However, most of the items underlying this severe gap are non-recurring. In particular, the large gap in Free Cash Flow mostly stems from working capital.

I am convinced that the Company has the necessary assets and all the talents to operate a swift turnaround. In this context,I will present at the end of February a new organization to the Board of Directors, andin Q2a plan that will demonstrate the drivers of this turnaround and the focus on profitable growth and value creation."

Revenue growth

Revenue in 2021 reached c.  10.8 billion, a decrease of c. -2.4% at constant currency.

The variance compared to the full-year objective of "stable" revenue came from:

The unexpected reassessment of the cost to go on transformation, replatforming and operations of a financial services BPO contract, signed in 2018 for 15 years with a large UK financial institution, leading to a major revision of the completion rate on the project, at the end of December 2021, and therefore translating into a negative revenue impact in 2021.

Impact on full-year revenue growth: c. 70 bps;



Big Data/HPCs and Unified Communications & Collaboration project slippages from end of 2021 to 2022 due to supply chain challenges as well as to customer postponements in Public Sector & Defense in the Netherlands and the UK.

Impact on full-year revenue growth: c. 90 bps;



Delay to 2022 of final agreements with several large customers to get compensated for extra work performed in 2021. These amendments, expected to be signed in December, would have led to additional revenue in 2021.

Impact on full-year revenue growth: 30 bps; and



The reduced level of low margin hardware and software resale in December 2021.

Impact on full-year revenue growth: c. 50 bps.



Operating margin

Operating margin amounted to c. 4% of revenue in 2021. The variance compared to the objective of c. 6% came mostly from:

The reduction of the revenue booked and additional costs in 2021 on the large BPO contract in the UK mentioned above.

Impact on operating margin rate: c. 90 bps;



Additionally, the run phase of the BPO contract on the remaining next 12 years requires the provision of c.  65 million for future losses under "Other Operating Income and Expenses".

Project slippages to 2022 due to supply chain challenges as well as to customer postponements.

Impact on operating margin rate: c. 30 bps;



Delay to 2022 of final agreements with several large customers as mentioned above to get compensated for extra work performed in 2021.

Impact on operating margin rate: c. 30 bps; and



Higher costs than anticipated in 2021 on settlements to close disputes with several customers at year-end.

Impact on operating margin rate: c. 40 bps.



Free Cash Flow

Free Cash Flow is estimated at c. -420 million. The variance compared to the objective of positive free cash flow is mostly due to working capital and in particular to:

 200 million from accelerated supplier payments at the end of 2021, as a result of unforeseen pressure from critical suppliers and subcontractors in the final weeks of 2021;





 150 million of customer collections postponed from end of 2021 to 2022 due to the late acceptance of projects by several customers which ultimately prevented collection by year-end;





 60 million, of which  30 million related to advance payments from customers and  30 million impact from the large BPO contract in the UK mentioned herein above; and





 30 million from the lower level of sales of receivables.





As a reminder, the full year Free Cash Flow figure of -420 million also comprises the impact of the German turnaround plan for -180 million and a reduction of advance payments from customers for -200 million, as communicated on July 12, 2021.

The Net Debt at the end of December 2021 is expected to be at c. -1.2 billion leading to a Net Debt on OMDA (under IFRS) ratio of c. 1.1. Taking into account the Worldline shares covering the Optional Exchange Bond, Net Debt on OMDA ratio is estimated at c. 0.8.

The objectives for 2022 will be published on February 28, 2022 at the occasion of the full-year 2021 results release.



Appendix

2021 Objectives 2021 Provisional figures Revenue growth at constant currency Stable c. -2.4% % Operating Margin to revenue c. 6% c. 4% Free Cash Flow Positive c. -420 million

Conference call

The Management of Atos invites you to an international conference call, on Monday, January 10, 2022 at 08:00 am (CET - Paris) chaired by Rodolphe Belmer, CEO.

You can join the webcast of the conference:

via the following link: https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/no379pbs (https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/no379pbs)

by telephone with the dial-in, 10 minutes prior the starting time. Please note that if you want to join the webcast by telephone, you must register in advance of the conference using the following link: http://emea.directeventreg.com/registration/7025829

Upon registration, you will be provided with Participant Dial In Numbers, a Direct Event Passcode and a unique Registrant ID. During the 10 minutes prior to the beginning of the call, you will need to use the conference access information provided in the email received upon registration.

After the conference, a replay of the webcast will be available on atos.net, in the Investors section.

Forthcoming events

February 28, 2022 (After Market Close) Full Year 2021 results

April 27, 2022 (Before Market Opening) First Quarter 2022 revenue

May 18, 2022 Annual General Meeting

July 27, 2022 (Before Market Opening) First semester 2022 results

Contacts

Investor Relations: Gilles Arditti +33 1 73 26 00 66 gilles.arditti@atos.net

Media: Anette Rey +33 6 69 79 84 88 anette.rey@atos.net

About Atos

Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with 107,000 employees and annual revenue of over  11 billion. European number one in cybersecurity, cloud and high performance computing, the Group provides tailored end-to-end solutions for all industries in 71 countries. A pioneer in decarbonization services and products, Atos is committed to a secure and decarbonized digital for its clients. Atos is an SE (Societas Europaea), listed on Euronext Paris and included in the CAC 40 ESG and Next 20 indexes.

The purpose of Atos is to help design the future of the information space. Its expertise and services support the development of knowledge, education and research in a multicultural approach and contribute to the development of scientific and technological excellence. Across the world, the Group enables its customers and employees, and members of societies at large to live, work and develop sustainably, in a safe and secure information space.

Disclaimers

This document contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including references, concerning the Group's expected growth and profitability in the future which may significantly impact the expected performance indicated in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties are linked to factors out of the control of the Company and not precisely estimated, such as market conditions or competitor's behaviors. Any forward-looking statements made in this document are statements about Atos' beliefs and expectations and should be evaluated as such. Forward-looking statements include statements that may relate to Atos' plans, objectives, strategies, goals, future events, future revenues or synergies, or performance, and other information that is not historical information. Actual events or results may differ from those described in this document due to a number of risks and uncertainties that are described within the 2020 Universal Registration Document filed with the Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF) on April 7, 2021 under the registration number D.21-0269 and the Amendment to the 2020 Universal Registration Documents filed with the AMF on July 30, 2021 under number D.21-0269-A01. Atos does not undertake, and specifically disclaims, any obligation or responsibility to update or amend any of the information above except as otherwise required by law. This document does not contain or constitute an offer of Atos' shares for sale or an invitation or inducement to invest in Atos' shares in France, the United States of America or any other jurisdiction.

Revenue organic growth is presented at constant scope and exchange rates.

Industries include Manufacturing (Aerospace, Automotive, Chemicals, Consumer Packaged Goods (Food & Beverage), Discrete Manufacturing, Process Industries, Services and Siemens), Financial Services & Insurance (Insurance, Banking & Financial Services, and Business Transformation Services), Public Sector & Defense (Defense, Education, Extraterritorial Organizations, Public Administration, Public Community Services and Major Events), Telecom, Media & Technology (High Tech & Engineering, Media, and Telecom), Resources & Services (Energy, Retail, Transportation & Hospitality, and Utilities) and Healthcare & Life Sciences (Healthcare and Pharmaceutical).

Regional Business Units include North America (USA, Canada, Guatemala and Mexico), Northern Europe (United Kingdom & Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Belarus, Finland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Sweden), Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Israel, and Switzerland), Southern Europe (France, Andorra, Spain, Portugal and Italy) and Growing Markets including Asia-Pacific (Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand), South America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, and Peru), Middle East & Africa (Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Qatar, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia, Turkey and UAE), Major Events and Global Delivery Centers.

Attachment
The company reaches 200 million in annual revenue and reinforces its market shares

PARDUBICE, Czech Republic, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- EcoFlow, a portable power and renewable energy solutions company, this week revealed that its annual revenue reached 200 million in 2021, increasing by 275% compared to the year before. Globally, EcoFlow has more than tripled its sales for the second consecutive year, outrunning the global portable power station market's CAGR of 42%. Most notably, in Europe, EcoFlow's sales has increased tenfold in comparison to that of the previous year.

"The impressive sales growth can be attributed to a few things," said Allen Zheng, the Global Sales Head at EcoFlow. "Our expansion to over 100 markets and the complete rollout of the RIVER and DELTA product lines are the main reasons. The rising power demand caused by increasing cases of extreme weather-related power outages also played a part."

In addition to the rapid sales growth, 2021 has been a milestone year for EcoFlow. In June, the company received a Series B investment of over $100 million from Sequoia's China fund, Hillhouse, and CICC. The funding round catapulted the company to one of the top industry leaders and saw the company valued at over $1 billion. One month later, EcoFlow launched the DELTA Pro, the industry's first portable home battery, on Kickstarter. The EcoFlow DELTA Pro went on to break Kickstarter's record for the most-funded tech project by raising over 10.6 million and was named one of TIME's 100 Best Inventions in 2021.

EcoFlow also took a more active role in environmental issues and emergency preparedness in 2021. In March, EcoFlow initiated a long-term reforestation fundraising campaign for the Million Forest Plan, an ecological project jointly initiated by the United Nations Environment Program, the Climate Organization, and the China Green Foundation. In September, EcoFlow launched an educational campaign -- 'Peace of Mind', which aimed to inform individuals about the importance of natural disaster preparedness through influencers and subject matter experts.

"We have great confidence in 2022 as what we've accomplished in the past year is a good indicator. EcoFlow will continue to expand in a socially responsible way while powering a new world," Zheng said.

About EcoFlow

EcoFlow is a portable power and renewable energy solutions company. Since its founding in 2017, EcoFlow has provided peace-of-mind power to customers in over 85 markets through its DELTA and RIVER product lines of portable power stations and eco-friendly accessories. EcoFlow's mission is to reinvent the way the world accesses energy by innovating lighter-weight and longer-lasting clean, quiet and renewable power storage solutions. EcoFlow's products are now available in 35 countries and regions across Europe, supported by a network of over 300 local retailers.

For more information, please go to EcoFlow's website.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1719254/EcoFlow_Portable_Power_Stations.jpg
- Following a successful 2021 event, the next edition of Digital Retail Africa will take place online on the 26th of January 2022.

- Event organised by IT News Africa

JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- With the global pandemic acting as an accelerant, digital transformation across retail verticals has gained new momentum, seeing rapid adoption of digital technology within the sector.

According to a 2021 research report released by PWC, people affected by the pandemic are driving a "historic and dramatic shift in consumer behaviour". The consulting firm reports a strong shift to online shopping as people were first confined by lockdowns, and then many continued to work from home.

Another significant finding from the report is that consumers are not likely to go back to their old ways of shopping once the pandemic is over.

Online sales in South Africa grew by 66% in 2020 to more than $1.8 billion (ZAR30 billion). This means that retailers have no choice but to reimagine the functionality of stores and tap into digital tools to stay relevant for the 'new normal customer'.

Under the theme "Developing sustainability and competitiveness in the post-pandemic retail landscape", Digital Retail Africa 2022 will bring together hundreds of retail leaders to discuss emerging industry trends.

Confirmed attendees for this year's event include senior executives from Superbalist, GSK, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Dis-Chem Pharmacies, Massmart, BMW Group, Leroy Merlin and Konga Nigeria among others.

Key topics to be discussed at DRA2022:

Reimagining the Future of Retail

Unpacking next-level E-commerce: People, Data & Technology

Leveraging technology and automation to unlock retail growth

Overcoming retail security challenges with the cloud

Touchless Retail Solutions: Reshaping the In-Store Experience

The impact of Buy-Now-Pay-Later platforms on the retail industry

Using technology to drive efficiencies in retail logistics

How Cloud Computing is Transforming the Retail Sector

To register, speak or sponsor DRA2022, visit www.digitalretailafrica.co.za [e]: events@itnewsafrica.com, [t]: +27 12 012 5801
Oslo, January10, 2022: Yara has a strong commitment to universal human rights and condemns all forms of repression and human rights violations. With the support of human rights organizations and trade unions, Yara has sought positive change by leveraging its presence in Belarus to promote occupational safety and human rights. However, the effects on the supply chain from the current sanctions on Belarus have forced Yara to initiate a wind-down of its sourcing of Belarusian potash, a key ingredient for the production of mineral fertilizers used in food production.



"The effects of the current sanctions on Belarus reduce Yara's ability to positively influence the safety and well-being of Belaruskali workers. For Yara, this is a disappointing development. We remain strongly committed to the safety and well-being of Belaruskali's workers. Despite the wind-down of potash sourcing, Yara aims to continue the industrial safety program initiated in 2021, in close cooperation with the independent trade union in Belaruskali and in full compliance with applicable sanctions," says Svein Tore Holsether, President & CEO of Yara International.



Through regular dialogue with Belaruskali management and trade unions, the implementation of a joint safety program in Soligorsk, first-hand observations, the secondment of a Yara Safety Director and through several other visits to Soligorsk, Yara has laid the ground for lasting improvements in the situation for Belaruskali workers. Although strengthening a corporate safety culture is a long-term process, Yara has already seen clear improvements in several areas during 2021. Some examples are machinery protection, trade union involvement and risk-based safe work assessments. It is Yara's ambition to continue this work despite its wind-down of sourcing activities. More details of the safety program can be found in a comprehensive report on yara.com: https://www.yara.com/siteassets/suppliers/reports/background-and-progress-report-on-yara-belaruskali-relations-9-january-2022.pdf/



Yara is committed to complying with all applicable laws and regulations, including sanctions. Although Yara's sourcing from Belarus is in full compliance with applicable sanctions, other parts of the supply chain are withdrawing essential services required to enable potash exports from Belarus, as a result of which Yara has initiated a wind-down in sourcing activities. The wind-down is expected to be completed by 1 April 2022. Yara will continue to monitor for any changes in the situation, including sanctions, as part of its ongoing sourcing operations.





Contact:



Vice President Corporate CommunicationsMobile: +47 900 15 550E-mail: kristin.nordal@yara.comDirector External CommunicationsMobile:Head of Investor RelationsMobile: +49 957 04 843E-mail: silje.nygaard@yara.comYara grows knowledge to responsibly feed the world and protect the planet. Supporting our vision of a world without hunger and a planet respected, we pursue a strategy of sustainable value growth, promoting climate-friendly crop nutrition and zero-emission energy solutions. Yara's ambition is focused on growing a climate positive food future that creates value for our customers, shareholders and society at large and delivers a more sustainable food value chain.To achieve our ambition, we have taken the lead in developing digital farming tools for precision farming and work closely with partners throughout the food value chain to improve the efficiency and sustainability of food production. Through our focus on clean ammonia production, we aim to enable the hydrogen economy, driving a green transition of shipping, fertilizer production and other energy intensive industries.Founded in 1905 to solve the emerging famine in Europe, Yara has established a unique position as the industry's only global crop nutrition company. We operate an integrated business model with around 17,000 employees and operations in over 60 countries, with a proven track record of strong returns. In 2020, Yara reported revenues of USD 11.6 billion.returns. In 2020, Yara reported revenues of USD 11.6 billion.www.yara.comThis information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to Section 5-12 the Norwegian Securities Trading Act
Strategic Acquisition Offshore South Africa and Namibia 2022 Drilling Programme

TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / January 10, 2022 / Eco (Atlantic) Oil & Gas Ltd. (AIM: ECO, TSX - V: EOG), the oil and gas exploration company focused on the offshore Atlantic Margins, announces today that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") to acquire 100% of Azinam Group Limited ("Azinam") (the "Acquisition"), including Azinam's entire offshore asset portfolio, in return for a 16.65% equity stake in the enlarged Group on completion of the Acquisition.

Highlights

Acquisition of a material offshore petroleum exploration asset base in Namibia and South Africa

Consideration in the form of new common shares to Azinam Holdings Limited (the " Vendor ") who will own 16.65% of the enlarged Group

") who will own 16.65% of the enlarged Group The Vendor will also be issued warrants in the Company, exercisable only upon a producible commercial discovery

The transaction strengthens the Groups strategic partnership with Africa Energy and Africa Oil

Clear drilling programme with an exploration well planned to be drilled on Block 2B - South Africa in H2 2022

The deal is expected to complete by 31 January 2022 subject, inter alia , to the signing of a Share Purchase Agreement and satisfactory completion of due diligence by Eco and any requisite approvals

, to the signing of a Share Purchase Agreement and satisfactory completion of due diligence by Eco and any requisite approvals Discussions are already underway with Eco's key existing stakeholders in relation to underwriting the funds required to participate directly in the 2022 Block 2B South Africa drilling programme.

Information on the Acquisition

Azinam is a wholly owned subsidiary of Azinam Holdings Limited (the "Vendor"), which is majority owned by Seacrest Capital Group ("Seacrest"). Azinam has successfully built a material offshore petroleum assets base in Namibia and South Africa. Pursuant to the MOU and subject, inter alia, to the signing of a binding share purchase agreement and completion of the Acquisition, Eco Atlantic will issue to the Vendor such number of new common shares in Eco as provides the Vendor with 16.65% of Eco's share capital as enlarged by such issue ("Enlarged Share Capital"), providing for a cashless acquisition to become the sole owner of Azinam's entire African portfolio.

Offshore South Africa, Orange Basin, Eco Atlantic will acquire 50% Working Interest ("WI") and Operatorship in Block 2B, where Africa Energy Corp. and Panoro Energy ASA maintain Working Interests. Eco will also acquire a material Working Interest of 20% in the deepwater 3B/4B Block and the shallow water and Nearshore 3B/4B Blocks where the Company will strengthen its ongoing strategic partnership with Africa Oil Corp. as the Operator and 20% Working Interest partner.

Offshore Namibia, Eco will acquire additional Working Interests in its current oil blocks where Azinam is a partner, being Petroleum Exploration Licenses ("PELs") #97, #98 and #99. Eco's resultant net Working Interest in these PELs will be 85% on completion. Working Interest on these Blocks are the same as its existing interest in PEL #100, and Eco is the Operator on all four PELs.

Completion of the Acquisition ("Completion") is subject, inter alia, to the signing of a Share Purchase Agreement and satisfactory completion of due diligence by Eco (which is nearing completion) by 31 January 2022 (or such later date as may be agreed) and any requisite approvals from the Government of South Africa, the Government of Namibia and the TSX Venture Exchange.

Gil Holzman Co-Founder and CEO of Eco Atlantic commented:

"We are delighted to update the market on this exciting transaction and welcome the stronger alignment with Africa Oil Corp. and the broader Lundin Group through direct partnership in Blocks 3B/4B and 2B.

"The acquisition strengthens our long-term and strategic position in Namibia, giving us 85% and Operatorship in four highly prospective blocks, and gives us added versatility as we look to partner with a major player to help accelerate further exploration activities in the country's burgeoning energy industry.

"As we have always stated in our corporate strategy, our goal is to build a portfolio that will offer shareholders near-term exposure to high impact drilling catalysts. The Azinam acquisition requires no cash funding to close, and positive discussions have been ongoing with Eco's key existing stakeholders in relation to underwriting the funds required to participate directly in 2022 South Africa drilling activity.

"We anticipate that our drilling in South Africa this year will be closely followed by an exploration well in Guyana. These activities come at a time when global discovered resources volumes and access to energy in southern Africa is at an all-time low and hydrocarbons are desperately required as the world navigates the path of successfully achieving the energy transition. We firmly believe that companies such as ours that explore for oil in and around emerging economies will play a vital role in reducing energy poverty.

"We are looking forward to commencing with our drilling campaigns planned in the prospective Block 2B in South Africa and in Guyana this year and beyond, and we will continue to further build our corporation to offer additional exploration catalysts as and when we believe these opportunities will be value accretive to our stakeholders."

Colin Kinley, Co-Founder and COO of Eco Atlantic commented:

"Much of the engineering and geological and geophysical work on the Gazania-1 well has been completed during the past year, so we are stepping into an active plan, which has the potential to offer shareholders additional near term catalysts. We have an experienced team of exploration specialists who are working to finalize the well planning and we benefit from having excellent support from our JV Partners at Africa Energy from their Cape Town base. We have already held meetings with the engineering contractor, the JV Partners and with the proposed rig contractor who currently is holding a slot for us while we seek to conclude the Acquisition and finalise our plans. Block 2B already has a previous light oil discovery - as there was an offsetting strat well, A-J1, drilled in 1988 that proved the presence of high quality oil in the area. We are excited to move ahead on planning the targeted well, having done extensive evaluation of this specific region over the past six years and are familiar and confident with its prospectivity."

Keith Hill, Non-Executive Director of Eco Atlantic and CEO of Africa Oil, further commented:

"The recent string of industry exploration successes, led by Guyana/Suriname but also in Ivory Coast, Ghana and offshore Brazil, has refocused attention on frontier basins in the southern Atlantic. With the addition of the Azinam acreage, we now hold some of the highest potential acreage in many of these proven and developing areas. The Orange Basin has two high profile wells currently drilling, namely the TotalEnergies Venus-1 and Shell Graff-1 wells, and success in either or both of these wells could make it one of the hottest exploration destinations in the world".

"The Gazania-1 well is planned to be drilled this year on Block 2B in South Africa in a rift basin that shows remarkably similar characteristics to the Lokichar Basin in Kenya. It's location in shallow water would facilitate a fast-track development with favourable economics. Africa Oil is very supportive of this acquisition and will actively assist Eco in its near-term exploration and any corporate initiatives."

Further information on the Acquisition

On completion of the Acquisition, Eco Atlantic will issue to the Vendor such number of new common shares in Eco as provides the Vendor with 16.65% of Eco's then Enlarged Share Capital. In addition, the Vendor will be issued warrants over new common shares in Eco, exercisable only in case of a producible commercial discovery on Block 2B or Block 3B4B, as follows: 20,000,000 warrants exercisable at a price of CAD$1.00 per share during the twenty-four month period immediately following Completion, and 20,000,000 warrants exercisable at a price of CAD$1.50 per share during the thirty-six month period immediately following the Completion, such exercise dates to be extended in the event a well is not drilled on Block 2B or Block 3B4B, until such time as a well is drilled on either Block and a producible commercial discovery declared.

In addition, the Vendor will enter into a lock-in agreement to restrict the sale of the consideration shares until the earlier of: the spudding of a well on Block 2B; or, 6 months following Completion in respect of a third of the consideration shares, with two equal further tranches being released from the lock-in 12 and 18 months following Completion

As at 30 September 2021, Azinam had total assets of approximately US$16 million, and in the nine months to 30 September 2021 recorded net income of approximately US$1.26 million.

A further announcement will be issued on closing of the Acquisition.

Drilling Planned 2022 Block 2B - South Africa:

With Operatorship and a 50% WI acquired in Block 2B, Eco joins block partners Africa Energy Corp. - 27.5% WI (Carried), Panoro 2B Limited - 12.5% WI and Crown Energy AB - 10% WI (Carried) (the "JV Partners").

Block 2B already has a previous light oil discovery - as there was an offsetting strat well, Soekor A-J1, drilled in 1988 that proved the presence of high quality oil in the area. Thick reservoir sandstones were intersected between 2,985 meters and 3,350 meters. The well was tested and flowed 191 barrels of oil per day of 36 degree API oil from a 10 meter sandstone interval at about 3,250 meters. The 686 square kilometre 2013 3D seismic data confirmed the up-dip prospectivity of the A-J1 discovery and significant further prospectivity.

In Block 2B, Azinam and the JV Partners have secured a contract with NRG Well Management Ltd, an international well engineering and project management company headquartered in Aberdeen, Scotland, to complete well design engineering and to assist with critical path well planning. The JV Partners have defined proposed drilling targets, completed a seabed survey, conducted a semi-submersible rig tender and begun negotiations to secure critical equipment, including securing a wellhead, and negotiating a rig contract. Eco will step into the role of Operator to drill this well. The Gazania-1 exploration well, expected to be drilled in H2 2022, will target JV Partners' estimates of 349 Million Barrels of Oil (Best Estimate - Gross Prospective Resources) in relatively shallow water depths of less than 200 metres. Block 2B is located in the Orange Basin in South Africa and covers an area of 3,062 km2. The Block is located approximately 300 kilometres north of Cape Town with water depths ranging from 50 to 200 meters.Discussions are ongoing with Eco's key existing stakeholders in relation to underwriting the funds required to participate directly in the 2022 South Africa drilling activity.

Block 3B/4B:

Eco Atlantic have acquired 20% WI in Blocks 3B/4B and Nearshore 3B/4B Offshore South Africa. Eco joins partners Africa Oil Corp. who is Operator of the Block (20% WI) and Ricocure (Pty) Ltd (60% WI carried). Partners in Block 3B/4B are currently reprocessing a large 3D seismic survey that will be used to high-grade leads towards a drilling prospect. Block 3B/4B is located in South Africa Orange Basin directly south of the currently drilling Namibia Orange Basin wells - Graff-1 (Shell) and Venus-1 (Total Energies).

Guyana Update:

In Guyana, Eco and its JV partners firmly believe that the Orinduik Block offers significant upside and are focused on the careful selection of stacked drilling target locations in the Cretaceous light oil. We will update the market on the 2022 target selection and drilling plans on the block once finalized. On Canje Block, where Eco holds 6.4% in JHI Associates Inc., which holds a 17.5% WI, the Operator, ExxonMobil, and JV partners including TotalEnergies continue to evaluate the 2021 drilling programme technical results.

Guyana continues to be one of the most prolific exploration regions in the world, with over ten billion barrels of oil discovered in the last six years, and in addition two new significant oil discoveries were announced last week by the ExxonMobil led consortium on the Stabroek Block north of Orinduik Block.

**ENDS**

For more information, please visit www.ecooilandgas.com or contact the following:

Eco Atlantic Oil and Gas c/o Celicourt +44 (0) 20 8434 2754 Gil Holzman, CEO Colin Kinley, COO Alice Carroll, Head of Marketing and IR +44(0)781 729 5070 | +1 (416) 318 8272 Strand Hanson Limited (Financial & Nominated Adviser) +44 (0) 20 7409 3494 James Harris Rory Murphy James Bellman Berenberg (Broker) +44 (0) 20 3207 7800 Matthew Armitt Emily Morris Detlir Elezi Celicourt (PR) +44 (0) 20 8434 2754 Mark Antelme Jimmy Lea Ollie Mills Hannam & Partners (Research Advisor) Neil Passmore +44 (0) 20 7905 8500

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014 as it forms part of United Kingdom domestic law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.

About Eco Atlantic:

Eco Atlantic is a TSX-V and AIM quoted Atlantic margin focused Oil & Gas Exploration Company with offshore license interests in Guyana, Namibia, and South Africa. Eco aims to deliver material value for its stakeholders through its role in the energy transition to explore for low carbon consuming oil and gas in stable emerging markets near to infrastructure.

Offshore Guyana in the proven Suriname-Guyana Basin, the Company holds a 15% Working Interest in the 1,800 km2 Orinduik Block Operated by Tullow Oil, and also indirectly through a 6.4% shareholding in JHI Associates Inc. a private company which holds a 17.5% WI in the 4,800km2 Canje Block Operated by ExxonMobil. In Namibia, the Company holds Operatorship and 85% Working Interests in four offshore Petroleum Licences: PEL's: 97, 98, 99 and 100 totalling 28,593 km2 in the Walvis Basin.

Offshore South Africa, Eco holds Operatorship and 50% WI of Block 2B, and 20% Working Interest of Blocks 3B/4B and Nearshore 3B/4B, totalling some 21,603 km2.

Eco Atlantic is also a 100% shareholder in Solear Ltd., Solear is an independent private clean energy investment company focused on low cost, high yield solar development projects in southern Europe.

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: Eco (Atlantic) Oil and Gas Ltd.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/681638/Eco-Atlantic-Oil-and-Gas-Ltd-Announces-Strategic-Acquisition
Xigem set to Pursue Big Data Opportunity with Expanded Technology Platform

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 10, 2022) - Xigem Technologies Corporation (CSE: XIGM) (FSE: 2C1) ("Xigem" or the "Company"), a technology provider for the emerging remote economy, today announced it has signed an Asset Purchase Agreement (the "APA") with 2747524 Ontario Inc. o/a Cylix Data Group ("CDG") dated January 7, 2022, which is the definitive agreement governing its previously announced acquisition of the assets of CDG, for aggregate consideration of $32.35 million (the "Transaction"). Formal closing of the Transaction is expected to occur by or around January 21, 2022. Transaction details and remaining steps are described more fully below. All dollar amounts are quoted in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted.

Throughout nearly three decades of operations, the asset underlying CDG ("Cylix") have been built to become a proprietary database of more than 74 million data points amalgamated from both third-party vendors and internally-originated sources. The business risk profiling service has been used by hundreds of customers including large blue-chip players to improve decision-making and productivity. The principals of CDG are currently developing Artificial Intelligence functionality to further differentiate its offering in the marketplace and position it to become one of the leading aggregators and originators of corporate and personal data in the Big Data market.

"We are very pleased to have executed the definitive asset purchase agreement as we near the completion of this vital acquisition. We expect Cylix to deliver significant value to both our shareholders and our customers," said Brian Kalish, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Xigem. "The integration of Cylix with our existing technologies will create a powerful platform capable of providing businesses with comprehensive customer information that can be a source of competitive advantage."

Xigem expects to operate Cylix as a stand-alone business unit immediately following the formal closing of the Transaction, with Cylix later becoming the unifying platform supporting the Company's other core technologies organically. The integrated offering will provide users of Xigem's iAgent SaaS-based CRM platform and its FOOi payment platform with instant access to streamlined information about current and potential customers and business partners. The information can be used to assist in allocating resources while also mitigating fraud risk in payment transactions.

Once integrated, Xigem's new technology is expected to create a robust platform to capitalize on the growing multi-billion dollar Big Data market. According to Research and Markets, the global market for Big Data was estimated at US$70.5 billion in the year 2020, and is projected to reach US$243.4 billion by 2027, spurred on in large part by the ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic.1 The segment in which Cylix currently competes, the global fraud detection and prevention market, was estimated at US$19.8 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow to US$106.7 billion by 2027, exhibiting a compound annual growth rate of 24% during the forecast period.2

Transaction Details

Pursuant to the APA, the Company has agreed to purchase substantially all of the assets of CDG (the "Assets") for consideration of $32,350,000 (the "Transaction"), in accordance with terms consistent with the binding letter of intent (the "LOI") executed on October 29, 2021. The Company will issue 64,700,000 units (the "Units") at a deemed price of $0.50 per Unit, with each Unit comprised of one common share of the Company (a "Common Share") and one-seventh (1/7) of one Common Share purchase warrant (each whole warrant, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder thereof to acquire one additional Common Share at a price of $0.60 for a period of 24 months. The securities issued under the Transaction are subject to contractual restrictions on trading, such that 50% may not be traded until six months after the closing of the Transaction, and the remaining 50% may not be traded until 12 months after the closing.

Prior to closing, the recipients of the Units, which are anticipated to be comprised of the shareholders of CDG, will enter into support and voting agreements with Xigem, pursuant to which such recipients will agree to vote any Common Shares that they then hold in favour of any matter put forth to the shareholders of Xigem by its then-current board for a period of two years, subject to early termination in certain circumstances. In addition, on closing Xigem and an entity controlled by one of the principals of CDG (the "Manager") will enter into a management agreement (the "MA"), under which the Manager will (i) fund $500,000 towards completion and commercialization of the next generation Cylix technology; (ii) fund additional development costs associated with Cylix until the earlier of Cylix meeting certain financial milestones or Xigem completing a subsequent financing; and (iii) substantially manage the operations of the Cylix business on behalf of Xigem.

The Company will appoint a nominee of CDG to its board of directors, and may also appoint an observer to its board of directors. Details of the board and observer appointments will be announced shortly.

The Transaction, including the proposed issuance of Common Shares and Warrants, is subject to customary closing conditions including the receipt of any required regulatory and exchange approvals.

About Cylix Data

Cylix Data is a B2B business intelligence technology company whose software improves efficiency and increases productivity for business professionals through the supply of information required to implement risk-management and decision-making processes. The Cylix database AI conglomerates, amalgamates, and cross-references seemingly disparate information into a comprehensive customer profile report and score that can be easily understood. For more information, please visit www.cylixdata.com.

About Xigem Technologies Corporation

Established in Toronto, Ontario, Xigem is positioned to become a leading technology provider for the emerging near trillion-dollar remote economy, with software capable of improving the capacity, productivity, and overall remote operations for businesses, consumers, and other organizations. iAgent, the Company's patented technology, and FOOi, its proprietary peer-to-peer mobile payments app, will provide organizations, businesses, and consumers with the tools necessary to thrive in a vast array of remote working, learning and treatment environments, while the Company looks to aggregate a portfolio of innovative technologies capable of disrupting traditional business models.

www.xigemtechnologies.com

Instagram: @xigemtechnologies

Twitter: @XigemTech

Facebook: @xigemtechnologies

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/xigem-technologies

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements contained herein that are not clearly historical in nature may constitute forward-looking statements.

Generally, such forward-looking information or forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or may contain statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "will continue", "will occur" or "will be achieved". The forward-looking information and forward- looking statements contained herein include, but are not limited to, statements regarding: the Company's ability to close the Transaction on or about January 21, 2022; the ability of Cylix to become one of the leading and most robust aggregators and originators of corporate and personal data in the Big Data market; the ability of Cylix to add AI functionality to its product offerings; the ability of Cylix to become a unifying engine that connects and drives other key technologies in Xigem's portfolio; and increased market demand for Cylix's products.

Forward-looking information in this news release is based on certain assumptions and expected future events, namely: the Company's ability to continue as a going concern; the continued commercial viability and growth in popularity of the Company's and Cylix's applications; the Company's ability to continue to develop and acquire revenue-generating applications; continued approval of the Company's activities by the relevant governmental and/or regulatory authorities; the continued development of the Company's and Cylix's technologies; the continued growth of the Company and Cylix; the Company's ability to finance the closing of the Transaction; and the ability of the Company to fulfil the requirements of the CSE in respect of the Transaction.

These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements, including but not limited to: the potential inability of the Company to continue as a going concern; the risks associated with the technology and data industries in general; increased competition in the technology, data and AI markets; the potential future unviability of the Company's and Cylix's product offerings; incorrect assessment of the value and potential benefits of the Transaction; risks associated with potential governmental and/or regulatory action with respect to the Company's activities; risks associated with a potential collapse in the value of data-related services; risks associated with the Company's potential inability to obtain regulatory approval with respect to the Transaction; the Company's inability to close the Transaction on or about January 17, 2022; the inability of Cylix to become one of the leading and most robust aggregators and originators of corporate and personal data in the Big Data market; the inability of Cylix to add AI functionality to its product offerings; risk that Cylix will not become a unifying engine that connects and drives other key technologies in Xigem's portfolio; and risks with respect to market demand for Cylix's products.

Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list is not exhaustive. Readers are further 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 placed will occur. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement and reflect the Company's expectations as of the date hereof and are subject to change thereafter. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, estimates or opinions, future events or results or otherwise or to explain any material difference between subsequent actual events and such forward-looking information, except as required by applicable law.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities, in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

SOURCE: Xigem Technologies Corporation

On behalf of the Company:

Brian Kalish, Chief Executive Officer

For further information:

Phone: (647) 250-9824 ext.4

Investors: investors@xigemtechnologies.com

Media: media@xigemtechnologies.com

Twitter: @XigemTech

Instagram: @xigemtechnologies

Facebook: @xigemtechnologies

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/xigem-technologies

www.xigemtechnologies.com

____________________

1 Age of Analytics Provides the Cornerstone for the Disruptive Growth & Proliferation of Big Data Technologies, Research and Markets, December 2020

2 Fortune Business Insights, Fraud Detection and Prevention Market Size, July 2021.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/109510
OSLO, Norway, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Norwegian Energy Company ASA ("Noreco" or "the Company") is pleased to announce a successful delivery from yard and sail away of the three Tyra West wellhead and riser topsides. The topsides were fabricated at Sembcorp Marine Ltd in Singapore and will be transported by HTV (Heavy Transport Vessel) BIGROLL BEAUFORT. The transportation of the topsides will take a planned pit stop at the Tyra site in the Netherlands to accommodate for an optimal installation window in the North Sea, expected in April.

In addition, Noreco completed the scheduled semi-annual borrowing base redetermination under the Company's Reserve Based Lending Facility (the "Facility" or the "RBL"), with the borrowing base remaining above the Facility's maximum cash drawing capacity of USD 1.0 billion. As of 31 December 2021, Noreco has drawn USD 900 million with USD 100 million available undrawn cash drawing capacity under the Facility.

In line with the Company's hedging policy, and as a result of the positive commodity price environment in Q4 2021, Noreco has entered into fixed-price swap contracts for additional oil and gas volumes from 2022 to 2024. The Company has hedged c. 415,000 MWh (c. 245,000 boe) of gas in summer 2022 at an average price of c. EUR 50/MWh and c. 720,000 bbl of oil in 2023 and 2024 at prices from $65 to $71/bbl.

Further, Noreco is pleased to announce that Cathrine Torgersen has been appointed the Company's Head of ESG, through her new role as EVP Investor Relations & ESG. This reflects the importance that Noreco places on being both an active participant in the Energy Transition and doing so in a meaningful, but measured manner.

"The sail away of the topsides is an important Tyra Redevelopment milestone for us and it further progresses the project towards first gas in the middle of next year. Despite COVID-19 challenges, Sembcorp Marine has demonstrated strong and resilient performance by delivering the new topsides for Tyra - last year for Tyra East and today for Tyra West. With a timely sail away from the yard in Singapore, we are excited to welcome the new modules at the Tyra field later this year after a safe voyage. The remaining two 2022 deliveries from the yards in Rosetti and Batam will complete what will be a state-of-the-art facility in the North Sea," said Euan Shirlaw, Acting Managing Director & CFO in Noreco

"We continue to focus on maintaining a strong capital structure to secure delivery of the Tyra project, with the recent successful redetermination outcome and additions to our hedging programme demonstrating this. By hedging, we seek to maximise pre-Tyra cashflow visibility with an approach that is also mindful of the prevailing market conditions. While this will continue, we do expect to increase our spot market exposure as Tyra first gas approaches in Q2 next year and beyond," he adds.

"Cathrine has been actively involved in our sustainability activities to date, and her appointment as the Company's Head of ESG will help ensure the sustainability-focused activities we develop are right for Noreco and for our shareholders. Our participation in the Tyra Redevelopment Project was an early demonstration of our commitment to the Energy Transition, by ensuring essential gas supply is available, and we intend to continue to progress in line with this theme where it makes sense for us to do so," he concludes.

An updated investor presentation is attached and will be made available at the Company's website, www.noreco.com.

Contact:

Cathrine Torgersen, EVP Investor Relations & ESG

Phone: +47 91 52 85 01

Email: ct@noreco.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/noreco/r/sail-away-of-tyra-topsides--corporate-update-and-appointment-of-head-of-esg,c3483277

The following files are available for download:
United States lawmakers warned Iran on Sunday that they could hand out "severe consequences" if any American citizens were attacked following Iran's sanctioning of more than 50 U.S. officials in the alleged "revenge" for the killing of General Qasem Soleimani in 2020.

In a statement released on Sunday, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the United States of America will continue to protect and defend its citizens. The official said that the U.S. federal government will continue to work with its allies and partners to deter and respond to any attacks carried out by Iran.

Iran Against the United States

Sullivan said that in the event that Iran chooses to attack any of the United States' nationals, including the 52 people named in the sanctions, the nation will face severe consequences. The American official's statement comes after Iran sanctioned more than 50 U.S. nationals on Saturday following the second anniversary of Soleimani's death.

In a statement, Iran's foreign ministry said that dozens of new sanctions were imposed on individuals for "their role in the terrorist crime by the United States against the martyred General Qasem Soleimani and his companions and the promotion of terrorism and violations of fundamental human rights," Newsweek reported.

It was discovered that many of the American nationals in the list of individuals sanctioned by Iran were from the U.S. military. The individuals include Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley and former White House national security adviser Robert O'Brien. Tehran is able to confiscate assets owned by the American's in Iran due to the sanctions. However, since the affected individuals did not have such assets, the move was largely a symbolic decision.

Read Also: States Seek To Exert Authority Over Broader Battle Against Joe Biden's Vaccine Mandate After Pentagon Wins First Fight To Vaccinate National Guard

Soleimani was the head of Iran's Quds Force, the overseas arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. (IRGC) He was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq in January 2020 that was ordered by then-President Donald Trump.

Sanctions Against U.S. Nationals

Last year, Iran imposed sanctions on the former president himself and other senior former U.S. officials over the killing of Soleimani. On Wednesday, authorities said that they planned to prosecute 127 people for their alleged involvement or cooperation with the assassination of the former military official, the Times of Israel reported.

This week, Iran conducted a ceremony that marked the anniversary of Soleimani's death where President Ebrahim Raisi said that Trump, Pompeo, and several others must be tried in a "fair court." He warned that, otherwise, Iran and its allies in what they called the "resistance axis" that Soleimani championed would seek revenge against the United States.

Additionally, Iranian officials also called on the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council to take formal action against the U.S. and Israel. They argued that the latter provided assistance to America during the assassination.

On Friday, the IRGC Friday exhibited an array of its locally developed missiles that it said were used during the 2020 attack against two U.S. bases in Iraq. The move was made in retaliation for the former general's assassination, Aljazeera reported.



Related Article: Prince William Allegedly Reeling Over Meghan Markle's Accusation That Kate Middleton Made Her Cry

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BASEL (dpa-AFX) - Molecular Partners AG (MOLN) and Novartis announced positive data from phase 2 study for Ensovibep (MP0420), a DARPin Antiviral Therapeutic for COVID-19.



A total of 407 patients were recruited in the Phase 2 study and ensovibep was safe and well-tolerated at all doses (75mg, 225mg and 600mg) - with 75mg the planned dose for further development, Molecular said in a statement.



The results from the randomized, placebo-controlled EMPATHY Part A study in acute COVID-19 ambulatory patients comparing single intravenous doses of ensovibep vs. placebo, met the primary endpoint of viral load reduction over eight days, for all three dosing arms.



The secondary endpoint of hospitalization and/or ER visits related to COVID-19, or death showed an overall 78% reduction in risk of events across ensovibep arms compared to placebo. Treatment arms were generally balanced in terms of demographic, baseline and disease characteristics.



The placebo arm with 99 patients had a total of six events (event rate of 6%); five patients were hospitalized, two of whom died due to worsening of COVID-19 and one patient had an ER visit only.



In the 301 patients treated with ensovibep, there were four events; hospitalizations occurred in two patients and two needed to visit ER (event rate of 1.3%). No deaths occurred in any of the patients treated with ensovibep.



Novartis has informed Molecular Partners of its intent to option its exclusive license to global rights of ensovibep, which will lead to a milestone payment of CHF 150 million. In addition, Molecular Partners will be eligible to receive 22% royalty on sales.



Molecular Partners expects about CHF 133 million cash and cash equivalents as per December 31, 2021. Upon receipt of the CHF 150 million option exercise milestone from Novartis, Molecular Partners now estimates its cash runway to extend well into 2025, excluding any potential royalty income as well as excluding potential further cash flows to or from R&D partners.







Copyright(c) 2022 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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BARCELONA, Spain, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The brand DESS Dental, from the Catalan company Terrats Medical, has unified all its online communication channels in a single website, www.dessdental.com. The aim is to ensure that their professional users can find all the information about their products and dental solutions in a faster, more intuitive and accessible way. The website is multi-country and multi-language oriented.

This new website is designed to meet the needs of customers in more than 40 countries in which the brand has presence. From now on, laboratories, milling centers, and dental clinics will be able to easily find all its products, CAD/CAM implant libraries, as well as the latest additions to the DESS Dental product catalogue.

DESS Dental sells the same products in all countries worldwide, always complying with the legislation and certification of each territory. This worldwide-selling website orientation gives us one single domain website unification process to respond to the high demand for exported products - in 2018 these accounted for 80% of the company's annual sales.

By 2022, our forecast is to continue growing at a rate of approximately 25%, thus exceeding the fifteen million euros invoiced in 2021.

DESS Dental is a brand with more than 70 years of experience in the manufacture of precision components, offering a wide range of prosthetic abutments that are 100% compatible with the most popular implant brands on the market. We are at the forefront of implantology products.

This is all thanks to our advanced and innovative products such as the angled AURUMBase solution that allows the insertion axis to be modified by up to 25, the new ELLIPTIBase Ti-base created for limited interdental spaces, or the SELECTGrip surface treatment that provides 5 times better adhesion than titanium interfaces in prosthetic restorations.

"The 3D digital implantology part will have a great future ahead, transforming the prosthetic creation from analogue to digital, based on CAD software specialized in implantology. The 3D digital technology produces considerable savings in materials and time and is also much better for the patient, in terms of waiting time and precision in the final elaboration of the prosthetic part in dental implants." Ruben Espuche, DESS Dental prosthetic specialist

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1721184/DESS_Logo.jpg

CONTACT: Miriam Rosello, miriam.rosello@dessdental.com, Tel.: 900 101 972
The SAP-integrated workflow suite has put forward additional functions for artificial intelligence, S/4HANA and Fiori.

At the turn of 2021/22, xSuite Group launched the new release 5.2.7 of the xSuite Business Solutions Cube. The new version offers SAP user companies more functionalities for artificial intelligence, S/4HANA and Fiori. xSuite Business Solutions Cube are the SAP-only solutions for on-premises operation of xSuite. They consist of components for procurement, processing of incoming invoices and orders, automatic matching of order confirmations and purchase orders.

The current version 5.2.7 also focuses on the expansion of artificial intelligence. On the one hand, this relates to agent determination, which makes the correct assignment even easier and faster. The AI component "Prediction Server" has been enhanced in such a way that it now recommends the most probable "agent" for the roles "Approval" and "Completion" on its own, entering it directly if the probability exceeds 85 percent (with manual correction still possible).

The xSuite Capture service from the cloud already relies on AI: When a correction is made or a value added, the software takes this information to improve its rule set. As the solution implicitly performs the training itself, no additional step is required for the training anymore. In the new release 5.2.7, AI-based implicit training has been extended. Now it is not only used for standard fields, but can also be used for customer-specific fields.

Extension for S/4HANA and Fiori

xSuite Business Solutions Cube 5.2.7 of supports SAP Fiori My Inbox. This gives users a central entry point to all tasks, including those outside the xSuite solution. Access to tasks is still possible through the xSuite inbox and individual tiles. Via the new xSuite tile "Procurement Summary", processes handled with xSuite Procurement Cube can be analyzed. For any period of time, you can evaluate lead times and top 10 suppliers or display which currencies account for which share.

In addition to ArchiveLink, documents can now also be stored via the CMIS standard (Content Management Interoperability Services). For existing customers, the release includes a number of new features: When creating the application, you can specify if the delivery address and the plant address differ, which is helpful if deliveries often go to home offices. When checking incoming order confirmations, multiple individuals from different departments can be stored in the workflow. In the event of discrepancies between order confirmation and order, more targeted inquiries can be made more quickly. Depending on the blocking reason (price, quantity, delivery date), a task is assigned to the employee responsible.

With Release 5.2.7, several preset layouts can be saved in the xSuite entry books and xSuite document views, and views can be made available globally for all users both in Fiori and xSuite Web Client. Another new feature is the mass change option for company codes. For example, if you accidentally scan 300 invoices into the wrong company code, you no longer have to open and change every single invoice.

About xSuite Group

Founded in 1994, xSuite is a software manufacturer of applications for document-based processes. xSuite provides enterprises across the globe with standardized, digital solutions, making work simple, secure and fast. xSuite's products provide digital document management, automation of important work processes, and efficiency in the use of e-files. Around 1,200 customers in more than 60 countries have come to rely on xSuite solutions.

xSuite's core competence is accounts payable (AP) automation in SAP, for mid-sized to large corporations, as well as for public clients. Other solutions automate procurement and sales order processing, or optimize file management and archiving. The solutions are available on-premises, cloud-based or hybrid, with standard processes from the cloud incoming mail, data extraction, and archiving supplementing locally installed applications. The Managed Services team supports customers using SAP-integrated xSuite solutions. xSuite Group is an SAP Silver Partner.

Headquartered in Ahrensburg, Germany, xSuite employs about 200 employees at eight locations in Europe, Asia and the U.S.A. In 2020, the company generated total sales of 40,6 million.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220110005403/en/

Contacts:

Barbara Wirtz

xSuite Group GmbH

Marketing and PR

Phone +49 4102 88 38 36

barbara.wirtz@xsuite.com

www.xsuite.com
ADHC Sues to Seek Cancellation of over 320 Million Shares

Del Mar, California--(Newsfile Corp. - January 10, 2022) - Universal Wellness Holding Corp (OTC Pink: ADHC) fka American Diversified Holdings Corporation ("ADHC") announced today that the company has filed an amended complaint adding more allegations against Tourist Cruise and its CEO Xavier Massana aka (Xavier Joan Massana I Modrono) CEO Ace Capital, Sergio Bellosta Suarez, CEO of Promocional Networks and CEO of Indo Global Exchanges ("IGEX"), Miroslav Zecevic, of Mina Mar Marketing Group ("Mina Mar Group"), Mina Mar Corporation, and additional Spanish entities (among others) involving allegations of serious misconduct perpetrated against ADHC, a public company, Ernest B. Remo, and the ADHC shareholders.

ADHC and Remo have amended their complaint, adding additional information and seeking additional relief from Zecevic's improper interference with ADHC's business relationship with a joint venture partner and CBD acquisition candidate. As detailed in the complaint, correspondence with the CEO of the acquisition candidate, Zecevic improperly threatened to add them to pending litigation after the announcement of the executed letter of intent. The amended complaint states that such actions interfered with ADHC's business relationships causing significant financial harm. Additionally, the amended complaint identifies Xavier Massana, a principal of Tourist Cruise SL, as an individual who has a history of improper shares issuances and returning shares to issuing entities. Indeed, as reflected in various 8-K filings, in one such instance earlier in 2021, Massana returned tens of millions of shares in Mojo Data Solutions Inc. The amended complaint not only details Massana's torrid past in having to return millions of shares, but doing so in 8-K filings where he (or his affiliated businesses), share the same address with Zecevic and Mina Mar Group.

See MOJO DATA SOLUTIONS, INC. (Form: 8-K, Received: 09/21/2021 13:15:13) .

See MOJO DATA SOLUTIONS, INC. (Form: 8-K/A, Received: 02/21/2019 17:09:23) .

The amended complaint can be found at:

https://nevada.tylerhost.net/ViewServiceDocuments.aspx?ADMIN=0&SID=283181a5-d261-415b-8ea0-284438c5af74.

This legal action contains allegations of years of improper actions that have caused significant harm to ADHC shareholders. Setting forth claims of conversion and intentional interference with contract against Zecevic (among other claims), the complaint states, "In August and September 2019, Zecevic caused over 300 million ADHC shares to be issued to the Spanish entities. However the monies that were paid for the shares were never received by ADHC. Instead of ensuring that ADHC would be paid for its shares, Zecevic arranged to have the monies paid directly to Mina Mar Corp., Zecevic's own business. ADHC, then a Nevada corporation, received nothing for these substantial share issuances. In addition to directing payment to his company, Zecevic set the price for the shares issued to Tourist Cruise SL (one of the Spanish entities) at 10% of the then-current price as traded on the open market." In support of these statements, the complaint attaches a purported "bank record from August 12, 2019 directing payment from Tourist Cruise SL to Mina Mar Corp. [not ADHC] for 62,500,000 ADHC shares."

In addition to the claims of financial malfeasance against Zecevic, the complaint also seeks relief from Zecevic's alleged repeated false statements against ADHC and its management. Included in the body of the complaint are images of a dozen publications and social media statements attributed to Zecevic, upon which the plaintiffs' claims are based. "Zecevic's false statements are intended to manufacture confusion and doubt about ADHC in the eyes of the public," the pleading states. Additionally, the complaint avers that "Zecevic caused American Diversified Holdings Corp., a New York corporation unrelated to ADHC to be formed and incorporated in New York on October 27, 2021 for the purpose of creating additional confusion with the public about the identity and management of ADHC and to otherwise leverage ADHC's good name, reputation, and trademarks for his benefit."

According to the complaint, the authorized and legal management team of ADHC, both as a corporation and individually, have been the target of a repeated campaign of false and malicious actions which has resulted in severe deterioration in the market value of ADHC's stock.

"After over two years of enduring the repeated attacks against the shareholders of ADHC this lawsuit sends a statement to the defendants that ADHC management will not sit by and allow the shareholders to be victimized," stated ADHC management.

ADHC is seeking monetary damages and other remedies to ensure that ADHC will no longer endure this wrongful behavior from the named defendants.

To review the amended complaint interested parties can follow the link below.

https://nevada.tylerhost.net/ViewServiceDocuments.aspx?ADMIN=0&SID=283181a5-d261-415b-8ea0-284438c5af74

Universal Wellness Holdings Corporation (FKA) American Diversified Holdings Corporation is a publicly traded holding company trading under the ticker symbol (OTC Pink: ADHC).

Investor Contact: eremo@universalwellnesshc.com ,858-259-4534, Twitter: @adhcmanagement

Information contained herein includes forward-looking statements. These statements relate to future events or future financial performance, involving known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to be materially different performance or achievements expressed. You should not place undue reliance on these statements since they involve known and unknown risks, cases, beyond our control may affect actual results. Any forward-looking statement reflects our current views with respect to future events and is subject to uncertainties.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/109512
Advisory Board Further Strengthened with a Leading Gaming Tech Executive

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 10, 2022) - Royal Wins Corporation (CSE: SKLL) (OTCQB: RYWCF) ("Royal Wins" or the "Company"), an innovative hyper-casual digital games studio with world's first fully-licensed real-money, pure-skill gaming platform, is pleased to announce that Luis Goldner, a leading gaming technology executive, has been appointed to the Company's high-profile Advisory Board.

Mr. Goldner is a seasoned corporate executive who has managed and operated Fortune 500 companies in the Americas with a focus on global partnerships, consumer trends, and operational best practices. Luis has been a pioneer in bringing Smart Card technology to Brazil and has over 12 years' experience in lottery and gaming industry, including serving as CEO for Intralot do Brazil which he grew to become the number one lottery operator in Brazil. He is currently serving as the Chief Operating Officer of digital media company ICARO Media Group based in New York.

Royal Wins' Chairman Charles Vycichl commented: "The depth of our Advisory Board is an acknowledgment of the potential Royal Wins has to become a global trendsetter in responsible, best-practices real-money, pure-skill hyper-casual gaming. We are positioned to make a real impact in the constantly growing world of gaming, and Mr. Goldner's combination of industry leadership experience and a track record of managing global growth strategies makes Luis an ideal candidate to help Royal Wins achieve just that."

"I am pleased to be working with the team at Royal Wins to help develop a leader in one of the fastest growing mobile gaming segments worldwide. There is an incredible business model being put together here and I look forward to being a part of the team's growth," said newly appointed Advisory Board member Luis Goldner.

Learn more about the Royal Wins Advisory Board here: https://royalwins.com/our-team.

About Royal Wins Corporation

Royal Wins is an innovative digital games studio pioneering pure-skill gaming with real cash prizes available on mobile casual games. Established in 2014, we design, develop, and operate real-cash prize skill games to disrupt and dominate the online gaming space, so that all players of legal age can play and win life-changing jackpots and prizes based on their skill as opposed to pure chance and odds. Our primary innovation and intellectual property centres around solving big data problems surrounding skill gaming mechanics, algorithms pertaining to balancing cash prizes, game difficulty modules, and maintenance of Return-to-Player (RTP) percentages.

Royal Wins has released a suite of pure-skill mobile games on Android and iOS mobile/tablet platforms.

Royal Wins is listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the ticker symbol SKLL and on the OTCQB under the ticker symbol RYWCF.

For more information, please contact:

Royal Wins Corporation

Nicholas Konkin

Communications Director

Phone: 1 647 249 9299, ext. 305

E-mail: ir@royalwins.com

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this news release that are forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in the Company's filings with Canadian securities regulators. When used in this news release, words such as "will, could, plan, estimate, expect, intend, may, potential, believe, should," and similar expressions, are forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements regarding the Company's unaudited financial results and projected growth. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements, there can be other factors that cause results, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended, including, but not limited to: dependence on obtaining regulatory approvals; investing in target companies or projects which have limited or no operating history and are subject to inconsistent legislation and regulation; change in laws; reliance on management; requirements for additional financing; competition; hindering market growth and state adoption due to inconsistent public opinion and perception of the medical-use and recreational-use marijuana industry and; regulatory or political change.

There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate or that management's expectations or estimates of future developments, circumstances or results will materialize. As a result of these risks and uncertainties, the results or events predicted in these forward-looking statements may differ materially from actual results or events.

Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release. Royal Wins Corporation disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise such information, except as required by applicable law, and the Company does not assume any liability for disclosure relating to any other company mentioned herein.

No securities regulator or exchange has reviewed, approved, disapproved, or accepts responsibility for the content of this news release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/109522
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The United States has warned Iran of severe consequences if it attacks any American nationals, including the 51 people against whom Tehran imposed sanctions at the weekend. The warning by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan came in the wake of Iran targeting US officials over the killing of General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in 2020. Those sanctioned by Iran's foreign ministry include General Mark Milley and former White House National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien. In a statement issued on Sunday, Sullivan said Iran's proxy militias continue to attack American troops in the Middle East, and Iranian officials threaten to carry out terror operations inside the United States and elsewhere around the world. 'Make no mistake: the United States of America will protect and defend its citizens. This includes those serving the United States now and those who formerly served. As Americans, we have our disagreements on politics. We have our disagreements on Iran policy. But we are united in our resolve against threats and provocations. We are united in the defense of our people,' the statement added. Washington vowed to work with its allies and partners to deter and respond to any attacks carried out by Iran. 'Should Iran attack any of our nationals, including any of the 51 people named yesterday, it will face severe consequences', Sullivan said. Copyright(c) 2022 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved 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.
JAKARTA, INDONESIA and DANVILLE, CA / ACCESSWIRE / January 10, 2022 / Indonesia Energy Corporation Limited (NYSE American:INDO) (IEC), an oil and gas exploration and production company focused on Indonesia, today announced that IEC's operating company has been recognized by the state oil and gas company, Pertamina, as the top three performer in 2021 among 11 oil and gas producing companies in Indonesia under Cooperation Agreement Contracts after comprehensive evaluation on the work commitment, financial, operations and safety records. This recognition is especially significant as IEC just recently announced that daily oil production rate has increased over 50% as a result of the recently completed "Kruh 26" well on its 63,000-acre Kruh Block and IEC plans to commence drilling two back-to-back producing wells at Kruh Block commencing in approximately 60 days. IEC's production target is to be producing approximately 450 barrels of oil per day after completion of these next two wells. IEC also plans to commence drilling on two additional wells at Kruh Block during the third quarter of 2022.

These new wells are part of IEC's overall previously announced plan to drill a total of 18 new wells on the Kruh Block over the next 3 years. In order to help meet its drilling plan goals for Kruh Block, IEC is in the process of completing plans to conduct a 30KM seismic program on the Kruh Block which should help to optimize well selection.

Mr. Frank Ingriselli, IEC's President commented "Indonesia with a more than 100-year history of welcoming international energy companies from around the world, has selected Indonesia Energy Corporation as the 3rd best energy production company in Indonesia. This recognition highlights our commitment to the highest standards of safety and economic efficiency. There are over 200 oil and gas companies operating in Indonesia and we have risen to the top. We are proud of our entire corporate teams' dedication and leadership"

About Indonesia Energy Corporation Limited

Indonesia Energy Corporation Limited (NYSE American: INDO) is a publicly traded energy company engaged in the acquisition and development of strategic, high growth energy projects in Indonesia. IEC's principal assets are its Kruh Block (63,000 acres) located onshore on the Island of Sumatra in Indonesia and its Citarum Block (1,000,000 acres) located onshore on the Island of Java in Indonesia. IEC is headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia and has a representative office in Danville, California. For more information on IEC, please visit www.indo-energy.com.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

All statements in this press release of Indonesia Energy Corporation Limited ("IEC") and its representatives and partners that are not based on historical fact are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and the provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Acts"). In particular, when used in the preceding discussion, the words "estimates," "believes," "hopes," "expects," "intends," "on-track", "plans," "anticipates," or "may," and similar conditional expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Acts, and are subject to the safe harbor created by the Acts. Any statements made in this news release other than those of historical fact, about an action, event or development, are forward-looking statements. While management has based any forward-looking statements contained herein on its current expectations, the information on which such expectations were based may change. These forward-looking statements rely on a number of assumptions concerning future events and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are outside of the IEC's control, that could cause actual results (including, without limitation, the anticipated results of IEC's 2020 exploration and production activities and the impact of global oil prices and the novel coronavirus outbreak as described herein) to materially and adversely differ from such statements. Such risks, uncertainties, and other factors include, but are not necessarily limited to, those set forth in the Risk Factors section of the Company's registration statement and related prospectus for the IEC's initial public offering filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Copies are of such documents are available on the SEC's website, www.sec.gov. IEC undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release, except as required by law.

Company Contact :

Frank C. Ingriselli

President, Indonesia Energy Corporation Limited

Frank.Ingriselli@Indo-Energy.com

SOURCE: Indonesia Energy Corporation Limited

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/681632/Indonesia-Energy-Recognized-as-Top-3-Performer-in-2021
Drilling high-grade feeder zones to build ounces in prolific mining camp, while advancing PEA and FS on high-grade heap-leachable oxide resource in 2022

Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 10, 2022) - Anacortes Mining Corp. (TSXV: XYZ) ("Anacortes" or the "Company") is pleased to provide a corporate update, including guidance on its 2022 objectives, as the Company advances towards its ambitious goal of becoming a low cost, mid-tier gold producer.

In 2021, Anacortes was formed through a transformational merger between the CPC company, First Light Capital, and New Oroperu Resources, which owned 100% of the highly-prospective Tres Cruces gold deposit in Northern Peru, 10 km southwest of the past-producing Lagunas Norte mine. As part of the transaction, the Company completed a $22M financing, led by institutional investors and industry executives, built its management team and commenced trading as Anacortes Mining Corp. on the TSX Venture Exchange on October 12, 2021.

Tres Cruces is located within a highly prolific belt of rocks extending for more than 600 km in Northern Peru, where ~100M ounces of gold has been discovered (~50M ounces produced) from long standing operations, including Newmont/Buenaventura's Yanacocha mine (South America's largest and most profitable gold mine), the ~14M ounce past-producing Lagunas Norte operation, and the past-producing ~6M ounce high-grade Pierana gold and silver mine, amongst others.

Tres Cruces is one of the highest-grade oxide deposits globally and hosts oxide plus sulphide indicated resources of 2,474,000 oz at 1.65 g/t gold and inferred resources of 104,000 oz at 1.26 g/t gold, inclusive of 630,000 oz of high-grade leachable gold at 1.28 g/t gold. (The current mineral resource estimate was prepared by Jeffrey D. Rowe, James N. Gray, and Ruperto Castro Ocampo with an effective date of March 16, 2021). Surrounding infrastructure includes the national highway from Trujillo, electricity from the national grid, airstrip, a deep-water port, nearby mining infrastructure from past producing operations and a very skilled workforce in the region.

The Property was under option to Barrick Gold from 2003 to 2020 and the bulk of the exploration work on the Property was performed by Barrick, operating from the nearby Lagunas Norte operation. Barrick's option expired on December 31, 2020 and the property was returned to New Oroperu as Barrick was in the process of selling Lagunas Norte.

Jim Currie, CEO of Anacortes Mining, states, "2022 will prove to be a very exciting year for Anacortes as we advance the Tres Cruces project. The PEA is well underway and will demonstrate the economics of the high-grade heap-leachable oxide resource. We are in the process of preparing an expedited drill permit application to test the depth extension of Tres Cruces, where a number of drill holes ended in mineralization. It's hard to believe that an asset such as Tres Cruces, with 371 drill holes, has never been properly tested below 250 meters from surface when so many holes ended in excellent mineralization. We strongly believe these wide zones of gold mineralization suggest an exceptional exploration opportunity for our shareholders to prove that Tres Cruces can be a world class asset in an excellent mining jurisdiction as we embark on our journey to become a mid-tier gold producer."

2022 Corporate Objectives:

Complete a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) on Tres Cruces to demonstrate the robustness of the high-grade, leachable oxide resource (Late Q1);

Permit and commence the first drill program in 14 years at Tres Cruces, which will include infill drilling, provide further samples for metallurgical testing and test the depth extension of the high grade feeder zones (early Q2);

Conduct ongoing regional exploration with mapping, surface sampling, as geological interpretation suggests potential for further oxide resources within the 3,000 hectare project;

Report on first phase drilling results;

Permit and commence a second phase exploration, infill, metallurgical, and condemnation drilling program to support a feasibility study (FS);

Initiate a FS on its ~630,000 ounce, near surface, leachable resource (Q4);

Continue engaging with the government and community to establish strong working relationships with local and regional stakeholders;

Apply for a listing in the United States to help broaden its shareholder base

Continue to review additional projects to compliment the Tres Cruces asset and work towards its objectives of becoming a low-cost mid tier gold producer

For reference, some of the more exciting drill-hole intercepts from previous drilling programs are listed in the tables below.

Select Holes Ending in Mineralization:

Drill Hole From (m) To (m)1 Interval (m) Au (g/t) RTC 237 312 350.0 (EOH) 38 1.07 RTC 255 37 265.0 (EOH) 228 2.95 Incl. 197 265.0 (EOH) 68 5.38 DTC 202 297.5 346.9 (EOH) 49.4 1.47 DTC 268 199.5 230.0 (EOH) 30.5 2.08 DTC 280 210.5 225.3 (EOH) 14.8 1.31 DTC 278 144 210.0 (EOH) 66 4.3 Incl. 190.5 210.0 (EOH) 19.5 11.01 DTC 285 0 130.0 (EOH) 130 1.84

Select Drill Holes with High Grade-Thickness Intervals:

Drill Hole From (m) To (m) Interval (m) Au (g/t) Au g/t x m RTC 255 37.0 265 228.0 2.95 672.6 DTC 056 79.5 271.5 192.0 3.4 652.8 RTC 052 76.5 271.5 195.0 1.81 353.0 DTC 279 57.0 144.0 87.0 3.4 297.5 DTC 278 144.0 210.0 66.0 4.3 283.8 DTC 252 41.5 77.5 36.0 7.51 270.4 DTC 258 0.0 130.0 130.0 1.8 239.2 TCG 003 61.00 150.5 89.5 2.7 238.1 RTC 015 108.0 272.5 164.5 1.3 210.6 RTC 004 79.5 163.5 84.0 2.5 210.0

For more information visit: www.anacortesmining.com

Twitter: @anacortesmining

LinkedIn: Anacortes Mining

On Behalf of the Board:

James A. (Jim) Currie

President & CEO

Investor Relations Contact:

Kin Communications Inc.

604-684-6730

XYZ@kincommunications.com

About Anacortes

Anacortes is a new, growth-oriented gold company in the Americas, which owns a 100-per-cent interest in the Tres Cruces gold project located in Northern Peru. Tres Cruces is one of the highest-grade oxide deposits globally and hosts oxide plus sulphide indicated resources of 2,474,000 oz at 1.65 g/t gold and inferred resources of 104,000 oz at 1.26 g/t gold, inclusive of 630,000 oz of high-grade leachable gold at 1.28 g/t gold. Anacortes is well capitalized and intends to aggressively advance the oxide resource at Tres Cruces through feasibility and to production under an open-pit, heap-leach scenario. Additionally, Anacortes will continue to seek further growth opportunities in the Americas, with the goal of creating the next mid-tier multi asset gold producer.

Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains forward-looking statements which constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation ("Forward-looking Statements"). All statements included herein, other than statements of historical fact, are Forward-looking Statements and are subject to a variety of known and unknown risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those reflected in the Forward-looking Statements.

The Forward-looking Statements in this news release may include, without limitation, statements about the the services to be provided to the Company by Kin and ITG and the Company's plans to aggressively advance Tres Cruces through feasibility and to production. Often, but not always, these Forward-looking Statements can be identified by the use of words such as "anticipated", "estimated", "potential", "open", "future", "assumed", "projected", "used", "detailed", "has been", "gain", "planned", "reflecting", "will", "anticipated", "estimated" "containing", "remaining", "to be", or statements that events, "could" or "should" occur or be achieved and similar expressions, including negative variations.

Forward-looking Statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are beyond the ability of the Company to control or predict and which may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the Forward-looking Statements. These risks include changes in general economic conditions and financial markets; political risks; risks relating to the current and potential adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy, financial markets and the Company's operations; and risks inherent in mineral exploration. Although Forward-looking Statements contained in this news release are based upon what each of the parties believe are reasonable assumptions at the time they were made, such statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company disclaims any obligation to update any Forward-looking Statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by law. There can be no assurance that these Forward-looking Statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, the reader should not place undue reliance on Forward-looking Statements.

The TSXV has in no way approved or disapproved of the contents of this press release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/109521
ProAmpac, a leader in flexible packaging and material science, was recently recognized with four design honors for their fresh-food-to-go packaging product offering. In 2021, ProAmpac was honored 10 times for their sustainable fresh-food-to-go packaging innovation.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220110005254/en/

Chicago Town Pizza HandRap has received the Packaging News 2021 UK packaging award. This is one of several design honors recently awarded ProAmpac for its sustainable Food-to-Go Packaging. (Photo: Business Wire)

"The recognition for ProAmpac's innovation in fresh food-to-go sustainable packaging over the last eleven months has been outstanding. Our commercial and technical teams have done an amazing job working with our customers and suppliers to bring these concepts to market. We are humbled by the recognition and are committed to continue to design and innovate novel sustainable alternatives to traditional packaging options," said Adam Grose, chief commercial officer.

UK Packaging Award

Packaging News recognized ProAmpac's HandRap for Chicago Town Pizza with a 2021 UK Packaging Award in the category of consumer convenience. The Chicago Town Pizza HandRap allows the product to be kept hot, fresh and full of flavor for up to three hours in a hot hold cabinet. What's more, the packaging is manufactured using 60% fiber, with the carton sleeve widely recyclable and offering a significant improvement in consumer handling.

Plant-Based Awards

ProAmpac's RecycAll Freshpack, their latest food-to-go innovation, was honored by FoodBev Media with best plant-based non-food productat the 2021 World Plant-Based Awards on December 9th in New York. FoodBev Media Awards Marketing Executive, Sana Gogia, said: "Our awards celebrate some of the most ambitious new plant-based products of 2021 from both established brands and start-ups. To see entries from around the world confirms what we predicted, that not only is the plant-based market a truly international one, it is also clear that innovation in the sector is booming."

PAC Global Awards

In addition, RecycAll Freshpack was nominated for the prestigious 2022 PAC Global Awards. These awards recognize the best packaging in the world in three categories, Brand Marketing, Package Innovation, and PAC IOU (Inclusive Opportunities for Universal Packaging). Awards winners will be announced in February. This is the third consecutive year ProAmpac was nominated by PAC Global.

Graphic Design USA (GDUSA)

ProAmpac's RapTray for THIS brand was recognized by GDUSA for excellence in graphic design. The 2021 American Graphic Design Awards is ProAmpac's 14th award from GDUSA, a magazine and information resource for graphic design professionals.

To purchase ProAmpac's fresh-food-to-go packaging online go to https://store.proampac.com/collections/fresh-food-to-go-packaging or for more information contact Marketing@ProAmpac.com.

About ProAmpac

ProAmpac is a leading global flexible packaging company with a comprehensive product offering, providing creative packaging solutions, industry-leading customer service and award-winning innovation to a diverse global marketplace. ProAmpac's approach to sustainability ProActive Sustainability provides innovative sustainable flexible packaging products to help our customers achieve their sustainability goals. We are guided in our work by four core values that are the basis for our success: Integrity, Intensity, Innovation, and Involvement. Cincinnati-based ProAmpac is owned by Pritzker Private Capital along with management and co-investors. For more information, visit ProAmpac.com or contact Media@ProAmpac.com.

About Pritzker Private Capital

Pritzker Private Capital partners with middle-market companies based in North America with leading positions in the manufactured products, services and healthcare sectors. The firm's differentiated, long duration capital base allows for efficient decision-making, broad flexibility with transaction structure and investment horizon, and alignment with all stakeholders. Pritzker Private Capital builds businesses for the long term and is an ideal partner for entrepreneur- and family-owned companies. Pritzker Private Capital is a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). For more information, visit PPCPartners.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220110005254/en/

Contacts:

Kristy Paulin

ProAmpac

(413) 875-9872

Kristy.Paulin@ProAmpac.com
Creates Only Solution To Leverage Community-Led and Product-Led Growth To Drive Net Revenue Retention at Scale

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Gainsight , the customer success company, announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire inSided , a privately held company based in Amsterdam.

InSided is a leading customer success community platform uniquely designed to leverage the power of communities to drive engagement and product adoption, increase retention and build lasting customer relationships. The platform is used by hundreds of companies including Gainsight, Gong, Productboard, Hopin, Sprout Social and Zapier.

The addition of inSided to Gainsight's existing portfolio of products creates a market-leading solution that can connect a company's digital products, customer-facing teams and client communities together across the entire customer journey.

"Every technology company wants to increase net revenue retention (NRR), the No. 1 driver of shareholder and enterprise value," Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta said. "But achieving this in a scalable manner is the No. 1 challenge executives face. In our research with clients, the top strategy they were using to scale was to leverage communities to bring users directly into the customer success process and to connect customers with their peers. We are excited that the addition of inSided to our portfolio now allows Gainsight clients to scale digital customer success efforts across community-led, product-led and customer-led growth initiatives."

"The next decade will see the emergence of a new technology stack that is designed to grow NRR," inSided Founder and CEO Robin van Lieshout said. "InSided has reimagined communities for the age of customer success. By joining forces with Gainsight, we have put ourselves in the best position to help companies around the world leverage digital technology to drive all aspects of the customer journey and positively influence NRR at scale."

A Holistic Approach To Digitally Scaling Net Revenue Retention

Since 2013, customer success teams have been using Gainsight CS to proactively and scalably address customer risks and opportunities that in turn drive customer retention and expansion.

In 2018, Gainsight extended its portfolio with Gainsight PX , which enables product and customer teams to use product analytics and personalized in-app customer engagement to drive product-led growth.

With this latest acquisition, Gainsight clients will have the unique advantage to extend the existing suite with a customer community hub, which centralizes all the content and engagement for end users in one single platform.

Communities as a Force Multiplier for Customer and Business Outcomes

According to the " 2021 Gartner Market Guide for B2B Community Platforms 1," online communities have become an integral - not optional - investment, driven by the shift to subscription models and the need for businesses to accelerate customer adoption. Communities are increasingly seen not as a support channel but instead as a customer engagement platform, signaling the potential for significant growth in this market.

Coined community-led growth, this has now been widely adopted by businesses as a multiplier on top of existing models such as customer- and product-led growth.

"Our customers have used inSided to personalize online community experiences and drive higher NPS, retention and expansion rates," van Lieshout said. "We're excited to join the market-leading customer success company and further integrate customer communities and customer voices into customer success and product adoption workflows. The combination of Gainsight and inSided makes scalable NRR growth possible for every company in the world."

Businesses will now have the ability to leverage community-led growth as a force multiplier to deliver better customer outcomes and drive higher NRR by:

Simplifying how customers engage with businesses across all stages of their journey.

Engaging all customers without exponentially increasing customer success costs.

Combining community activity, product usage and CSM input to predict renewals.

Blending email, in-app communications, CSM outreach and community interaction.

Allowing collaboration on success plans, playbooks and more via a customer hub.

"At Gong, we've grown our customer base exponentially over the past three years," Gong Chief Customer Officer Eran Aloni said. "During this phase of strong growth, Gainsight CS and inSided's community platform have been instrumental in enabling us to deliver high-quality customer interactions at scale and optimize net revenue retention across our customer base. We are excited to see both these companies join forces to deliver even greater joint value to customers."

ABOUT GAINSIGHT

Gainsight's innovative technology helps companies increase product adoption and prevent churn by identifying at-risk customers, creating systematic processes to mitigate concerns and efficiently ramping up engagement efforts. Gainsight's platform offers a powerful set of solutions focused on customer success, product experience and community engagement that together enable businesses to put the customer at the center of everything they do. Learn how leading companies such as GE Digital, SAP Concur and Box use Gainsight at www.gainsight.com .

ABOUT INSIDED

InSided is the only customer success community platform for software as a service and subscription-based companies. The platform is used by hundreds of companies to drive product adoption, increase retention and build lasting customer advocacy. Through a combination of customer community, knowledge base and product feedback features, inSided facilitates customer engagement, discussion and idea generation. With integrations such as Zendesk, Skilljar, Salesforce, Mixpanel and Gainsight, you can connect inSided to the rest of your technology stack and create a 360-degree view of your customer. Founded in 2010, inSided is headquartered in Amsterdam with an office in New York serving customers such as Gong, Gainsight and Zapier. For more information, visit insided.com .

1GARTNER DISCLAIMER

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1698432/Gainsight_Logo_Logo.jpg
Russian President Vladimir Out said a British top Admiral has been increased the submarine activity of late which he indicates should be monitored for fewer surprises.

The Russian navy is one of the most capable submarine forces with new subs coming online.

Also, these subs are getting specialized for more than standard missions that are assigned to them.

Russia is moving ahead and learning subtle ways to war fight

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, 56, new Chief of the Defense staff, warned that the uptick in the operations of the Russian submarine force is not to be ignored with the last 20 years.

He told The Times that all the activities may be more strategic and all the subs moving about of late might be initiating actions over perceived weakness. They can in theory take out even the US Navy and the Royal Navy with ease.

The Kremlin is probing for any weakness to attack and exploit all the activities that are subtle and not obvious.

One of these weaknesses is communication which lies on the sea floors of the world which is the real information system of wires and cable that are not guarded. This is an omnipresent Achilles heel with adverse consequences, reported the Express UK.

Undersea cables are fair game for any force which has the technology to fight in this environment. Most of the electronic information and traffic travel in these undersea connection.

Russia is one of the few navies to develop this specialty to be a real threat by eaves dropping silently or pose a danger by severing connections or cutting them via submarine activity. Putin can deny if it led to that.

Read also: US Submarines Get Improved Arctic Port to Dock Courtesy of Norway

Furthermore, if these cables were physically cut, it can be declaring war but needs more clarification.

Other details

Sir Radakin is the replacement of the recent UK armed forces chief, Sir Nicolas Carter who held the position for two decades till his recent retirement.

The reality of this dangerous scenario has hit home as a British warship struck a hunter-killer sub while in the Atlantic Ocean last Thursday.

A suspected Russian submersible could have been shadowing the HMS Northumberland and snagged on the towed sonar. This accident forced the ship to end its mission abruptly and go back to port for repairs, cited BBC.

Type 23 frigate warship was tasked with looking for a sub-contact that was thought to be 200 miles from Scotland.

Sources say that the sonar cable trailing the ship had inexplicable made contact with the hunter-killer sub.

According to the Sun, after the towed sonar array was found very chewed up and was abandoned due to damage.

Commander Tom Sharpe an ex-frigate captain ominously remarked if the accident was an unfortunate accident or was intentional on the former soviets.

But the official line is that the incident is a close pass that ended in an accident. The navy added that it was a random occurrence.

Soon after the Russian Embassy in London would not give any comment to any outlet about the collision in the Atlantic Ocean.

The British Ministry of Defense (MOD) said that in 2020 a Russian sub tracked by the Northumberland had been in contact with the sonar array.

Mr. Putin increasing the submarine activity is of strategic advantage if they will be placed to threaten the submarine cable that the new UK defense chief warns.

Related article: SSN-21 Sea Wolf-class: American-Made Soviet Typhoon ICBM Hunters

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Total of 180,000 sq.m let by Gecina in 2021

Regulatory News:

On December 30, 2021, Gecina (Paris:GFC) signed a nine-year lease with Keolis, a world leader for shared mobility, for around 6,000 sq.m of the Sunside building in La Defense. Keolis will be transferring its headquarters to Sunside.

This building, with 62% of its space now let, will be made available during the second quarter of 2022.

Located in La Defense, outside the Boulevard Circulaire ring-road, the 9,500 sq.m Sunside building, delivered during the second half of 2021, has benefited from a full renovation. It offers a comprehensive range of services (company restaurant, concierge desk, YouFirst Cafe, parcel lockers, etc.) that can be accessed with the YouFirst Bureau mobile app, rolled out since November last year.

The asset is also HQE Excellent and WiredScore certified.

Letting of Adamas completed

In December, Gecina also finished letting all of the Adamas building's 9,700 sq.m of space, with 2,780 sq.m let to Onclusive, a global public relations and communications partner, under a nine-year lease, and around 850 sq.m let to a digital services company, following the leases already signed with GazelEnergie and ISS.

Valerie Britay, Deputy CEO in charge of Gecina's Office Division: "We are delighted to welcome Keolis and its teams to the Sunside building and new tenants in Adamas. These leases confirm the upturn in letting trends in La Defense for outstanding buildings. Over the year in 2021, Gecina let 180,000 sq.m, 9% more than in 2019 before the health crisis and 11% more than in 2020, confirming the trend seen during the first half of 2021 with rental activity levels picking up in our preferred sectors and for high-quality buildings".

About Gecina

As a specialist for centrality and uses, Gecina operates innovative and sustainable living spaces. The Group owns, manages and develops Europe's leading office portfolio, with nearly 97% located in the Paris Region, and a portfolio of residential assets and student residences, with over 9,000 apartments. These portfolios are valued at 20.0 billion euros at end-June 2021.

Gecina has firmly established its focus on innovation and its human approach at the heart of its strategy to create value and deliver on its purpose: "Empowering shared human experiences at the heart of our sustainable spaces". For our 100,000 clients, this ambition is supported by our client-centric brand YouFirst. It is also positioned at the heart of UtilesEnsemble, our program setting out our solidarity-based commitments to the environment, to people and to the quality of life in cities.

Gecina is a French real estate investment trust (SIIC) listed on Euronext Paris, and is part of the SBF 120, CAC Next 20, CAC Large 60 and Euronext 100 indices. Gecina is also recognized as one of the top-performing companies in its industry by leading sustainability benchmarks and rankings (GRESB, Sustainalytics, MSCI, ISS ESG and CDP).

gecina.fr

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220110005899/en/

Contacts:

GECINA

Financial communications

Samuel Henry-Diesbach

Tel: +33 (0)1 40 40 52 22

samuelhenry-diesbach@gecina.fr

Virginie Sterling

Tel: +33 (0)1 40 40 62 48

virginiesterling@gecina.fr

Press relations

Julien Landfried

Tel: +33 (0)1 40 40 65 74

julienlandfried@gecina.fr

Armelle Miclo

Tel: +33 (0)1 40 40 51 98

armellemiclo@gecina.fr
Funding to support BIOiSIM computational platform to reduce the need for animal testing by selecting compounds showing promise to cure a disease prior to research in humans

LAUSANNE, Switzerland and SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Debiopharm (www.debiopharm.com), a Swiss biopharmaceutical company, announced today their co-investment in California-based start-up VeriSIM Life's $15 Million Series A Round to advance their mission to accelerate drug development via technology powered by artificial intelligence (AI). VeriSIM Life's computational platform reduces time and cost of drug development as well as reduces the need for animal testing that, in the vast majority of cases, does not translate well to humans. Debiopharm's co-investment in VeriSIM contributes to the growth plan of the start-up and will help to expand and establish transformational partnerships with industry and academia using their first-in-class 'virtual drug development engine' BIOiSIM. The investment aligns with Debiopharm's focus to invest in digital health solutions that improve the cancer patient journey, transform pharmaceutical R&D, and shift healthcare towards a more patient-centric approach.

With the financing round led by Morpheus Ventures, Debiopharm Innovation Fund joins new investors including Colorcon Ventures along with existing investors OCA Ventures, Intel Capital, Serra Ventures and Susa Ventures. Founded in 2017 by Jo Varshney, DVM and PhD alongside a cross-functional team of pharmaceutical scientists, software engineers and AI/ML and simulation experts, the start-up offers a range of translational-based solutions, customized for pre-clinical and clinical programs.

"We're moving into a time where AI-based technology will play a critical role in drug development. We absolutely need to reduce the time, costs & risks of drug development in order to be more efficient - that's exactly what the BIOiSIM is proven to do," said Tanja Dowe, CEO of the Debiopharm Innovation Fund. "The value of using this AI-based platform is the potential decrease in the need for animal testing and the acceleration of the pre-clinical, translational stage, helping drug research companies to more quickly select which early-stage medicines will most likely benefit patients and cure their disease."

More than 90% of drugs tested in animals fail to pass human clinical trials, resulting in delayed development and high costs. VeriSIM's BIOiSIM platform, driven by AI and machine learning (ML), de-risks R&D decisions by providing meaningful insights much earlier in the drug development process with unprecedented accuracy and scalability. VeriSIM's platform solves this decade-old translatability problem within the drug development phase and ensures clinical success of drugs intended for highly unmet needs. With its first-in-class platform, VeriSIM is transforming the way pharmaceutical and biotech companies address the most challenging diseases impacting humankind.

About VeriSIM Life

VeriSIM Life has developed a sophisticated computational platform that leverages advanced AI and ML techniques to significantly improve drug discovery and development by greatly reducing the time and money it takes to bring a drug to market. BIOiSIM is a first-in-class 'virtual drug development engine' that offers unprecedented value for the drug development industry by narrowing down the number of drug compounds that offer anticipated value for the treatment or cure of specific illnesses or diseases. The program not only reduces the time and cost of drug discovery and development, it also greatly reduces the need for animal testing that, in the vast majority of cases, does not translate to humans (over 90% of drugs that are currently tested in animals fail to pass human clinical trials). For more information visit: www.verisimlife.com.

Debiopharm's commitment to patients

Debiopharm develops, manufactures and invests in innovative therapies and technologies that respond to high unmet medical needs in oncology and bacterial infections. We aim to provide strategic funding and guidance for companies with Smart Data & Digital Health solutions with the ambition to change the way drugs are developed and the way patients are treated. Our growing portfolio company achievements includes 18 FDA clearances or CE marks and 2 IPOs. Since 2018 Debiopharm has invested over USD 120 million, typically leading the investment rounds of its 16 portfolio companies.

For more information, please visit www.debiopharm.com

We are on Twitter. Follow us @DebiopharmNews and @debiopharmfund

Debiopharm Contact

Dawn Bonine - Communication Manager

dawn.bonine@debiopharm.com

Tel: +41 (0)21 321 01 11
Laurie Freudenberg Joins to Drive Mijem's Userbase Growth

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - January 10, 2022) - Mijem Newcomm Tech Inc. (CSE: MJEM) ('Mijem' or 'the Company'), a social media and technology company that provides innovative solutions to create a vibrant social marketplace for Generation Z communities, today announced that it has hired Laurie Freudenberg as its Chief Marketing Officer. Ms. Freudenberg brings 18+ years of experience in digital marketing, gained through senior leadership positions at AOL Canada, as COO and co-founder of media advertising platform start-up ADCentricity, and as managing partner of bricks+matter, a Toronto-based digital strategy management consultancy.

Ms. Freudenberg will lead and scale Mijem's marketing team and capabilities. She will define, prioritize and drive all aspects of Mijem's marketing strategy to support and accelerate Mijem's growth, including: demand generation, brand marketing, user experience, education, public relations and communication strategies, engagement and retention strategies.

"Mijem has invested in building new features and functionality into the platform, and we are ready to aggressively expand our userbase beyond our current 72 university communities," said Ms. Freudenberg. "Key to this expansion will be the marketing of Mijem's new BSV loyalty program and cryptowallet, key features that our Gen Z target market demands. Marketing programs I have deployed in my prior roles are portable to Mijem's objectives, and our team has the expertise to implement them."

"Adding Laurie not only rounds out Mijem's executive team but also brings leadership that extends beyond marketing," said Phuong Dinh, Founder and CEO of Mijem. "She is an astute business strategist and is expected to contribute to detailing how the Company can achieve its short-term and long-term objectives. On behalf of everyone at the Company, I want to welcome Laurie to Mijem."

About Mijem Newcomm Tech Inc.

Mijem is a Canadian-based social media and technology company that provides innovative solutions to create a vibrant social marketplace for Generation Z to connect and to efficiently buy, sell and trade goods and services. Mijem's patent-pending flagship technology currently permits thousands of university and college students across the United States and Canada to both connect on-line and engage in consumer-to-consumer commerce.

For more information please visit:

Mijem Investor Website (https://investor.mijem.com)

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements contained herein that are not clearly historical in nature may constitute forward-looking statements. Generally, such forward-looking information or forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or may contain statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "will continue", "will occur" or "will be achieved".

Forward-looking information in this news release is based on certain assumptions and expected future events. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list is not exhaustive. Readers are further 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 placed will occur. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated.

Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement and reflect the Company's expectations as of the date hereof and are subject to change thereafter. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, estimates or opinions, future events or results or otherwise or to explain any material difference between subsequent actual events and such forward-looking information, except as required by applicable law.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities, in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

For further information, please contact:

Gord Tomkin, Chief Financial Officer

Mijem Newcomm Tech Inc.

416 915-4747

gtomkin@mijem.com

For media-related enquiries, please contact:

Laurie Freudenberg, media@mijem.com ;

For investor-related enquiries, please contact:

Sean Peasgood, investorrelations@mijem.com

SOURCE Mijem Newcomm Tech Inc.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/109581
Talon Metals has entered into an agreement to supply Tesla with nickel from the Tamarack Project in central Minnesota

Tamarack, Minnesota and Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands--(Newsfile Corp. - January 10, 2022) - Talon Metals Corp. (TSX: TLO), through its U.S. subsidiary Talon Nickel (USA) LLC (collectively "Talon" or the "Company"), has entered into an agreement with Tesla Inc. ("Tesla") for the supply and purchase of nickel concentrate to be produced from the Tamarack Nickel Project in Aitkin County, Minnesota. The execution of the agreement follows an extensive and detailed due diligence period performed by Tesla and lengthy negotiations between the parties.

"This agreement is the start of an innovative partnership between Tesla and Talon for the responsible production of battery materials directly from the mine to the battery cathode. Talon is committed to meeting the highest standards of responsible production that is fully traceable and that has the lowest embedded CO 2 footprint in the industry. Talon is excited to support Tesla's mission to accelerate the transition to renewable energy," said Henri van Rooyen, CEO of Talon.

"The Talon team has taken an innovative approach to the discovery, development and production of battery materials, including to permanently store carbon as part of mine operations and the investigation of the novel extraction of battery materials. Responsible sourcing of battery materials has long been a focus for Tesla, and this project has the promise to accelerate the production of sustainable energy products in North America," said Drew Baglino, SVP of Powertrain and Energy Engineering at Tesla.

Agreement Highlights:

Under the terms set out in the agreement, Tesla has committed to purchase 75,000 metric tonnes (165 million lbs) of nickel in concentrate, representing a portion of the metals projected to be produced from the Tamarack Nickel Project. Tesla also has a preferential right under the agreement to negotiate the purchase of additional nickel concentrate over and above the initial 75,000 metric tonne commitment.





The term of the agreement is six (6) years or until a total of 75,000 metric tonnes (165 million lbs) of nickel in concentrate has been produced and delivered to Tesla. The agreement is conditional upon: (i) Talon earning a 60% interest in the Tamarack Nickel Project; (ii) Talon commencing commercial production at the Tamarack Nickel Project; and (iii) the parties completing negotiations and executing detailed supply terms and conditions. Talon will use commercially reasonable efforts to achieve commercial production on or before January 1, 2026 at the Tamarack Nickel Project, which may be extended by the agreement of the parties for up to 12 months following which Tesla has a right to terminate the agreement and Talon may elect to sell to other parties.





Talon and Tesla will work together to optimize nickel concentrate grades and metal recoveries.





The purchase price to be paid by Tesla for the nickel in concentrate will be linked to the London Metals Exchange (LME) official cash settlement price for nickel. The parties have also agreed to share in any additional economics derived from by-products extracted from the nickel concentrate, such as iron and cobalt.

QUALIFIED PERSON

Dr. Etienne Dinel, Vice President, Geology of Talon, is a Qualified Person within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101. Dr. Dinel has reviewed, approved and verified the technical information disclosed in this news release, including sampling, analytical and test data underlying the technical information.

ABOUT TALON

Talon is a TSX-listed base metals company in a joint venture with Rio Tinto on the high-grade Tamarack Nickel Project located in central Minnesota. Talon currently owns a 51% interest in the Tamarack Project and has the right to increase its interest by 9% to 60%. The Tamarack Nickel Project comprises a large land position (18km of strike length) with numerous high-grade intercepts outside the current resource area. Talon is focused on expanding its current high-grade nickel mineralization resource prepared in accordance with NI 43-101; identifying additional high-grade nickel mineralization; and developing a responsible processing capability in the United States. In July 2021, Talon entered into an MOU with the United Steelworkers whereby the parties outlined a number of ways that they will work with, and support, one another. Talon has a well-qualified exploration and mine management team with extensive experience in project management.

For additional information on Talon, please visit the Company's website at www.talonmetals.com /.

Media Contact:

Todd Malan

1 (202) 714-8187

malan@talonmetals.com

Investor Contact:

Sean Werger

1 (416) 500-9891

werger@talometals.com

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains certain "forward-looking statements". All statements, other than statements of historical fact that address activities, events or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements reflect the current expectations or beliefs of the Company based on information currently available to the Company. Such forward-looking statements include statements relating to the timing and progress of the development of the Tamarack Nickel Project, including the commencement of commercial production, the Company's commitment to meeting the highest standards of responsible production that is fully traceable and that has the lowest embedded CO 2 footprint in the industry, and plans to permanently store carbon as part of mine operations; the detailed supply terms and conditions, and the timing of an agreement thereon, if at all. Forward-looking statements are subject to significant risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements, and even if such actual results are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on the Company.

Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. Although the Company believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such statements due to the inherent uncertainty therein.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/109583
CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - Australia will on Tuesday release November numbers for imports, exports, trade balance and retail sales, highlighting a light day for Asia-Pacific economic activity. In October, imports and exports were both down 3.0 percent on month, while the trade surplus was A$11.22 billion and retail sales climbed 4.9 percent. The Philippines also are scheduled to release November trade data; in October, imports were up 25.1 percent on year, exports rose 2.0 percent and the trade deficit was $4.016 billion. Japan will see November results for its leading and coincident indexes; in October, their scores were 101.5 and 89.8, respectively. South Korea will see November figures for current account; in October, the current account surplus was $6.95 billion. Copyright(c) 2022 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Meta Platforms Inc. (FB), the parent company of social media giant Facebook, has told its employees that booster shots would be mandatory to work from its U.S. campuses when it reopens. 'Boosters provide increased protection,' a Meta spokesman told the Wall Street Journal on Monday. 'Given the evidence of booster effectiveness, we are expanding our vaccination requirement to include boosters.' The company is planning to reopen its U.S. campuses on March 28. Meta is the latest American company to encourage its employees to take the booster dose as the onslaught of omicron variant has created a surge in number of infections and hospitalizations all over the globe. Copyright(c) 2022 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved 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.
Symplr, a Houston, TX-based global provider of enterprise healthcare operations including governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) software-as-a-service (SaaS ) solutions, raised new capital via a Clearlake-managed dedicated fund, Icon Partners V.

The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

The conmpany intends to use the funds to accelerate organic growth and acquisition strategy.

Led by BJ Schaknowski, CEO, symplr provides cloud-based data management, workforce and talent management, contract management, spend management, access management, and compliance, quality, and safety software solutions, which enable enterprise customers to efficiently navigate the complexities of integrating critical business operations in healthcare.

Since partnering with Clearlake in 2018, the company has grown its billings and earnings by 500 percent. In addition to consistent strong organic growth over the last three years, symplr has completed nine acquisitions to expand its software portfolio across workforce management, contract & spend management, and compliance, quality & safety SaaS solutions.

FinSMEs

10/01/2022
Crisp-Ellert Art Museum Announces Jillian Mayer Exhibition

The Crisp-Ellert Art Museum and Flagler College are pleased to announce Miami-based Jillian Mayers forthcoming exhibition New Sincerity 2.0. The exhibition will open on Tuesday, January 18 with a walkthrough with the artist at 5 pm, followed by an opening reception until 7 pm. This event is free and open to the public, and masks are required. New Sincerity 2.0 continues through February 24.

Mayers latest sculptures utilize materials such as glass, metal, and other industrial materials, building on previous bodies of work that explore myriad themes, including our relationship to technology and the digital world, environmental collapse, and prepper subcultures.

Glassy, 2021, glass, steal, and hardware, The piece is 18 by 15.5 inches.

Working across disciplines that include film, video, sculpture, painting and performance, Mayer is well known for tongue-in-cheek works that explore the complicated nature of our relationship to technology. Mayers work isnt a denunciation of technology but is regularly presented as a satirical value proposition to provoke conversation about identity, authenticity, and sincerity regarding our often-perverse engagement with the digital landscape, or what our relationship to the actual landscape might resemble in the absence of a techno-world.

Mayer often uses humor harnessed with sincerity to address monumental issues. Her 2011 film I Am Your Grandma, is an autobiographical video diary made for the artists unborn grandchildren, packaged as a viral-friendly YouTube video that the artist uses as a study in why people share extremely personal information with strangers via social media. Mayers Slumpies are a series of sculptures that position themselves as functional objects used to support our bodies as we interface with the digital world, i.e., scroll on our phones and take selfies. Frequently utilizing unpretentious, sincere, industrial materials such as epoxy resin, foam, fiberglass, plastic, and metal, the Slumpies awkward, ostensible lack of design stand in contrast to technologys sleek forms, and comedically implicates our collective role in a slick, pervasive marketing culture.

The artist expands these ideas even further, both conceptually and materially through new sculptures, and a body of abstract work made from kiln-worked fused glass that will be included in New Sincerity 2.0. Having spent the last two years outfitting a trailer as an off-the-grid bunker as artist residence as sculpture, Mayer has created two sculptures structured on a jet ski and a solar-powered cart. These items were created to function in the outside world, but here Mayer revisits them as art objects, as well as enters them into another conversation as human tools with a use, and relics that are obsolete. Through the glass series, the artist asserts that in both our physical and digital worlds, we are encapsulated in this material. Much of our reality is not experienced directly, but is mediated through glass, via corrective eyewear, windows, windshields, camera lenses, televisions, phones, and computer screens. And yet, there is an inherent fragility and vulnerability to glass, in which Mayer uses to explore the superficiality and accessibility of the self to others  not in polished squares, but in messy, overlapping, contradictory compositions and various opacities that allow for inconsistent visual access to the world around and within us. Perhaps this more sincerely reflect of our current tumultuous, splintered moment.

Jillian Mayer has held solo exhibitions including Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska (2019), Kunst Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark (2019), University of Buffalo Art Museum, Buffalo NY (2018), Tufts University, Boston, MA (2018); Postmasters Gallery, New York, NY (2018); Perez Art Museum, Miami, FL (2016); LAXART, Los Angeles, CA (2016); Utah Museum of Fine Art, Salt Lake City, UT (2014); and David Castillo Gallery, Miami, FL (2011 & 2016). She has exhibited, screened films, and performed at MoMA PS1 (2017); MoMA (2013); the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL (2013); the Bass Museum of Art, North Miami, FL (2012); the Guggenheim Museum (2010); and the Musee d'Art Contemporain de Montreal, Quebec as a part of the Montreal Biennial (2014). Mayers work has been featured in Artforum, Art Papers, Art in America, ArtNews, The Huffington Post, and The New York Times. Mayer is a recipient of the Creative Capital Fellowship, South Florida Cultural Consortium Visual/Media Artists Fellowship, Cintas Foundation Fellowship for Cuban Artists, and was named one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine.

Mayer has lectured at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, CalArts, the Sundance Institute, ICA Miami, Carnegie Mellon University, Otis College of Art & Design, Tufts University, Salt Lake Museum of Art, University of Nebraska, University of Texas Arlington, McCord Museum, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, SXSW, Portland State University, Museum of Fine Arts St. Pete, Pitzer University, MoCA North Miami and more.

Her films have screened at festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Rottenberg Film Fest, and the New York Film Festival. She is a fellow of the Sundance Institute's New Frontiers Lab and New Narratives on Climate Change Lab.

Mayer is represented by David Castillo Gallery, in Miami, FL.

This program is supported by a grant from the Dr. JoAnn Crisp-Ellert Fund at The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida.

For more information about our programming and upcoming events, please visit the website at www.flagler.edu/ceam, follow us on Instagram (@crispellertart) or Facebook (Crisp-Ellert Art Museum).

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Geneva, NY (14456)

Today

Mostly cloudy in the morning then periods of showers later in the day. High 69F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

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A steady rain in the evening. Showers continuing late. Low 56F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Mike Pence's former press secretary, Alyssa Farah Griffin, recently weighed in on the possibility of the ex-vice president testifying in the Capitol riot investigation.

During a recent interview, Griffin said that she believes that Pence would agree to testify upon committee Rep. Bennie Thompson's request. However, the representative needs to subpoena the former vice president.

Mike Pence's former press secretary releases statement

After all, Griffin said that it's out of character for Pence to testify voluntarily because it would seem as though he's supporting the committee and not his fellow Republicans.

"Were he to go in in a voluntary capacity, I think it could be perceived as he was trying to help the committee. I think he wants to do what he's obligated to under the Constitution... but I think they're more likely to get information from him with a subpoena," Griffin said via the Huffington Post.

Griffin also said that the most explosive information from Pence during the Capitol riot was already submitted to investigators by his former chief of staff, Marc Short. The latter also spoke with House investigators.

Pence's former press secretary has also spoken with the Republican members of the committee and told them that she's willing to testify before the full panel.

Read Also: Donald Trump Unveils New PAC Name That Favors Corey Lewandowski Following Allegations Of Sexual Misconduct

Bennie Thompson believes Trump put Pence in a tough spot

Last week, Thompson said that Donald Trump put Pence in a tough spot because he pressured him to break the law. However, Pence refused to follow Trump's demands not to certify the election results.

Thompson said that Pence's refusal to side with the ex-POTUS resulted in some Republicans threatening to kill him. This, among many other things, are just some of the reasons why the House select committee wants to hear Pence's accounts, according to USA Today.

Pence was whisked away by Capitol officers when Republicans flocked to the venue to try and stop the Senate from declaring Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.

Since the rioters were aware that Pence was still inside the US Capitol during the siege, some of them chanted for other Republicans to bring him out.

Capitol riot committee co-chair Liz Cheney called Pence a hero for his actions that day and said they are looking forward to continuing their relationship with the former vice president.

Mike Pence shouldn't be hailed a hero

Last year, CNN pointed out that Pence never really challenged Trump's false election result claims in public. He didn't also address the matter after certifying the results on Jan. 6.

Following the siege, he described the riot as tragic and said it deprived Americans of a substantive discussion in Congress about election integrity in the country.

A year later, Pence is still mum about the events during the Capitol riot. However, both Democrats and Republicans alike know that Trump was upset with his former vice president for not siding with him.

The ex-POTUS also showed support to the rioters that wanted to hang Pence by saying that he understood the remarks before they were angry, according to People.

Related Article: Former VP Mike Pence Faces Backlash For Calling Jan. 6 Capitol Riots 'Just One Day In January'

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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Fort Wayne, IN (46808)

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Rain and thunderstorms. High 67F. SE winds shifting to SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall possibly over one inch..

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Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson recently said that he hopes the Supreme Court would not approve Joe Biden's vaccine mandates.

Hutchinson has always opposed Biden's vaccine mandates for businesses saying that employers and business owners should have the ability to decide whether all their employees should get inoculated.

"They should wait until they get the Supreme Court decision, and of course, that's an individual business decision. This mandate of (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration), the federal government, needs to be struck down and that's why we're fighting against it," he said via CNN.

Supreme Court divided over vaccine mandates

On Friday, the Supreme Court heard arguments from those that do not support the vaccine mandate. They believe that this is Biden's most aggressive attempt to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Last year, OSHA introduced a rule that requires employees with 100 or more staff members to have their staff vaccinated or undergo regular testing. They are also required to wear a face covering, but there are also exemptions due to some religious reasons.

According to The Hill, the Biden administration first introduced the vaccine mandate in September. However, Hutchinson argued by saying that he doesn't think a vaccine mandate is needed right now because it will cause a spike in worker shortages and an increase in vaccine resistance.

Read Also: Arkansas Governor Allows State's Public Health Emergency For COVID-19 to End; Clarifies That the State Still Feels the Effects of Pandemic

The governor acknowledged that some local businesses have decided to impose vaccine mandates, and he supports them. But those that do not want to require employees to get inoculated should be allowed to make that decision.

According to NDTV, the recent discussions showed that the US Supreme Court is split over Covid vaccine mandates.

Justice Elena Kagan believes that the vaccine mandate is necessary to combat the further spread of COVID-19. But Scott Keller thinks that imposing the vaccine mandate would lead to thousands of employees quitting their jobs.

But Justice Stephen Breyer said that the rate of employees quitting their jobs is relatively low compared to the number of people that would be protected from the virus.

Benjamin Flowers believes employees could get the virus anywhere, so there's no reason to single out the workplace.

Various states have different vaccination rules

As of press writing, several states have a vaccination or termination policy for healthcare workers, namely, Colorado, Maine, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington.

California, District of Columbia, Delaware, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wisconsin have a vaccination or testing policy for healthcare workers, according to Leading Age.

Asa Hutchins refuses to call Capitol riot 'insurrection'

Hutchinson also made headlines during the Capitol riot anniversary other than his reactions to the vaccine mandate.

During an interview, Hutchins refused to label the siege as an insurrection. Instead, he called it interference with the lawful transfer of power using violence.

But the governor also urged everyone to accept the riot and not run from it. Hutchinson added that the goal is for the siege never to happen again because that is not how Americans transfer power, according to Business Insider.

Related Article: Arkansas Faces Allegations of Discrimination Against Mask Mandates in Public, Private Schools; Trial Goes Underway After a Lawsuit Was Filed

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Coronavirus

top story

Janesville, Milton school districts could change COVID-19 isolation times sometime within the next week

Anthony Wahl Janesville parent Tami Goldstein speaks during a Janesville School Board meeting about mask protocol during a public comment period earlier this fall. The school board has had regular discussions on COVID-19 policies. On Monday, the board will get a recommendation from district administration on changes to isolation guidelines to COVID-19 infection after the CDC recommended a shift from 10-day COVID isolation to five-day isolation.

The Janesville and Milton school districts have so far held off on making any wholesale changes to their COVID-19 isolation policies for teachers and students, but it appears both districts could reduce their current 10-day isolation requirement for infected individuals to a provisional five-day quarantine within a week or so.

Janesville School District spokesperson Patrick Gasper said Janesville schools plan within the next week to depart from the 10-day isolation period for those who test positive for COVID-19.

While Milton School District administrators initially told parents in an email last week that the district wouldnt put changes in place until at least Friday, Jan. 14, the district now intends to move forward a few days earlier. The changes, if the school board approves them, would be effective Wednesday.

The move would allow people who have had COVID-19 to return to school sooner if theyre well enough to do so.

In a recommendation to the Milton School Board dated Friday, Jan. 7, Milton Schools Superintendent Rich Dahman wrote that the new isolation/quarantine guidelines will allow students and staff to return to school or to work sooner, provided that they meet the stated criteria.

Under updated guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, students or staff who are isolating with COVID-19 infections could be allowed to return to school after five days of being diagnosed with COVID-19, as long as it has been five or more days since their last contact with anyone with a COVID-19 infection.

Milton school officials said their recommendation to the board is based on changes suggested by the CDC and the Rock County Public Health Department.

In tandem with the changes, the district also plans to recommend universal masking at all grade levels. Other social distancing guidelines now in place would remain in place.

This all comes after the CDC last month recommended a shift to a shortened five-day isolation period with masking for an additional five days as long as the person infected hasnt been subsequently exposed to anyone else with COVID-19 symptoms after the first five days of isolation.

The shift locally is intended to quell conflicting information and recommendations that came amid an surge in COVID-19 cases spurred by the highly contagious omicron variant spreading rapidly across parts of the U.S.

The changes also coincide with school districts struggle with shortages of teachers, support staff and school bus drivers who are staying home with COVID-19 symptoms.

State public health officials earlier this week lamented the upswing in infections. Wisconsin recorded its largest single-day number of new infections. Local COVID-19 infection case rates have reached record levels, quadrupling since Dec. 1.

Milton schools resumed in-person instruction after Christmas break with about 10 more students needing to be sent home with COVID-19 illnesses compared to the period just before break, according to district data. The district also reported 12 staff members in the past week were newly diagnosed with COVID-19.

Local school districts reviewing the CDCs shift in guidance face questions of whether and how to change their own COVID-19 policies.

Gasper noted that Janesville schools, as of Friday, had not revisited their COVID-19 isolation guidelines. He said the district was continuing late this week to monitor local and statewide public health data on the pandemic while consulting with the state department of public instruction and Rock County public health officials.

Gasper said he doesnt expect Janesville schools to make a decision until sometime next week.

Friday, Jan. 14, marks the end of a semester, and it's a day off for middle and high school students at Janesville and other districts. The new semester doesnt officially start until after Martin Luther King Day, which is next Monday, Jan. 17.

Janesville school district administrators on Tuesday, Jan. 11, will present their school board with a recommendation to change the isolation protocols, but the district as of Friday afternoon hadnt publicly posted its board meeting agenda.

Milton School District spokesperson Kari Klebba said the districts recommendations will be based on the Rock County Public Health Departments advice and understanding of the CDCs new guidelines. She said she was unable Friday afternoon to share what the recommendations would be.

The county health department doesnt appear to have updated its own list of school district COVID-19 protocols as of Friday.

Klebba said the district continues to offer COVID-19 testing by appointment at the district headquarters. The testing is available for students, staff and district families.

On average, Klebba said, the district continues to see between 40 and 60 people get tested each day.

Its in very, very high use, Klebba said.
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.
Gillette, WY (82718)

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Windy with partly cloudy skies. Low around 35F. Winds SSE at 20 to 30 mph..

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Windy with partly cloudy skies. Low around 35F. Winds SSE at 20 to 30 mph.
Passengers celebrate Laba Festival on bullet train

Ecns.cn) 14:31, January 10, 2022

Train attendants on Fuxing EMU (C5980) distribute Laba Congee in Bijie City, Guizhou Province, January 9, 2022. (Photo: China News Service/Qu Honglun)

Passengers on Fuxing EMU(C5980) celebrated the Laba Festival ahead of schedule on Sunday in Bijie.

Laba Festival is a traditional Chinese holiday celebrated on the eighth day of twelfth month of the Chinese calendar, January 10 this year. People usually eat Laba Congee and garlic preserved in vinegar on this day.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced to two more years in prison under the Export-Import Law of Myanmar for illegally importing walkie-talkies. She also received an additional year under the Telecommunications Law for possessing them.

On top of these charges, Kyi was also found guilty of breaking COVID-19 restriction guidelines during the campaign period under the Natural Disaster Management Law.

Aung San Suu Kyi could face 100 years in prison

According to reports, Kyi was convicted last month on two other charges and received a four-year prison sentence. However, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing ruled that her sentence should be reduced to two years.

If Kyi would be found guilty on all the charges, she could reportedly face up to 100 years in prison.

Following Kyi's imprisonment last month, Michelle Bachelet, the human rights chief for the United Nations, denounced the fallen leader's conviction.

However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Myanmar responded to Bachelet by saying that she could not make one-sided judgments against the court's decision to convict Kyi. After all, the decision falls under the domestic jurisdiction of a sovereign country, according to Reuters.

Read Also: Hong Kong Media Tycoon Sentenced to 13 Months in Prison for Participating in a Candlelight Vigil Commemorating the Tiananmen Square Crackdown

Aung San Suu Kyi's victory resulted in protests

In 2020, Kyi and her party made headlines for their record-breaking victory during the general election. However, their military counterparts argued that they committed fraud.

The military takeover in Myanmar resulted in the deaths of 1,400 civilians by security forces, even though most of the demonstrations were described to be non-violent.

As of late, peaceful protests continue to occur in the country, but armed resistance has also grown. Experts are convinced that if the issues are not addressed quickly, it could result in a civil war.

Kyi continues to have a strong support system in Myanmar. However, she's no longer regarded as the country's driving force amid their pro-democracy movement and anti-junta resistance.

At present, the country's future is in the hands of the people. And they have all been craving freedom and democracy.

On the other hand, Kyi ruled Myanmar with a cult-like personality and refused to accept other people's viewpoints.

Cambodian PM didn't meet with Aung San Suu Kyi

According to Al Jazeera, Kyi's holding place remains unknown, but reporters previously claimed that her sentencing would be applied at her current detention location.

Kyi's conviction also came in the heels of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's visit to Myanmar. During the trip, Sen met up with Min Aung Hlaing and received criticisms from civil society groups.

However, the publication confirmed that Sen didn't meet up with Kyi, and the latter wasn't also mentioned in the press release that was made public over the weekend.

"The Myanmar junta's courtroom circus of secret proceedings on bogus charges is all about steadily piling up more convictions against Aung San Suu Kyi so that she will remain in prison indefinitely. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and the junta leaders obviously still view her as a paramount political threat who needs to be permanently neutralized," a critic said via the Huffington Post.

Related Article: Nobel Peace Prize Recipient Aung San Suu Kyi Faces Multiple Charges Including Incitement, Breaking COVID-19 Rules, Could be Imprisoned

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
RADNOR, Pa., Jan. 09, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The law firm of Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP informs investors that a securities class action lawsuit has been filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California against Snap Inc. (Snap) (NYSE: SNAP). The action charges Snap with violations of the federal securities laws, including omissions and fraudulent misrepresentations relating to the companys advertising business. As a result of Snaps materially misleading statements made to the market, Snap investors have suffered significant losses.



CANNOT VIEW THIS VIDEO? PLEASE CLICK HERE

CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR SNAP LOSSES

LEAD PLAINTIFF DEADLINE: January 10, 2022

CLASS PERIOD: July 22, 2020 through October 21, 2021

CONTACT AN ATTORNEY TO DISCUSS YOUR RIGHTS:

James Maro, Esq. (484) 270-1453 or Toll Free (844) 887-9500 or Email at info@ktmc.com

SNAPS ALLEGED MISCONDUCT

Snap is an American camera and social media company that develops and maintains technological products and services such as the social media application Snapchat, an eyewear product that connects with Snapchat and captures video Spectacles, and advertising products including AR (augmented reality) and Snap ads.

In its filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Snap admits that it generates substantially all of its revenues by offering various advertising products on Snapchat and that it monetizes its business primarily through advertising based on its user data. In June 2020, as part of an ongoing privacy push, Apple Inc. (Apple), which developed and maintains the popular mobile operating system, iOS, for its mobile devices, publicly announced new data privacy features for iOS. Following this announcement, Snap continuously downplayed and misled investors regarding the impact that Apples new data privacy features would have on its business. In April 2021, Apple released the new data privacy features for iOS.

The truth emerged on October 22, 2021, when Snap filed its third quarter 2021 report for the period ending September 30, 2021 on a Form 10-Q, disclosing Snaps weaker-than-expected revenue and weaker-than-expected guidance because of its advertising business, due to Apples privacy changes. In the report, CEO Evan Spiegel disclosed that Snaps advertising business had allegedly been affected by recent privacy changes introduced by Apple in its iOS mobile operating system in June and July. Specifically, Spiegel claimed that the new Apple-provided measurement solution did not scale as we had expected, making it more difficult for our advertising partners to measure and manage their ad campaigns for iOS. Following this news, Snaps stock price fell $19.97 per share, or 26%, to close at $55.14 per share on October 22, 2021.

WHAT CAN I DO?

Snap investors may, no later than January 10, 2022 , seek to be appointed as a lead plaintiff representative of the class through Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP or other counsel, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent class member. Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP encourages Snap investors who have suffered significant losses to contact the firm directly to acquire more information.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE CASE

WHO CAN BE A LEAD PLAINTIFF?

A lead plaintiff is a representative party who acts on behalf of all class members in directing the litigation. The lead plaintiff is usually the investor or small group of investors who have the largest financial interest and who are also adequate and typical of the proposed class of investors. The lead plaintiff selects counsel to represent the lead plaintiff and the class and these attorneys, if approved by the court, are lead or class counsel. Your ability to share in any recovery is not affected by the decision of whether or not to serve as a lead plaintiff.

ABOUT KESSLER TOPAZ MELTZER & CHECK, LLP

Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP prosecutes class actions in state and federal courts throughout the country and around the world. The firm has developed a global reputation for excellence and has recovered billions of dollars for victims of fraud and other corporate misconduct. All of our work is driven by a common goal: to protect investors, consumers, employees and others from fraud, abuse, misconduct and negligence by businesses and fiduciaries. At the end of the day, we have succeeded if the bad guys pay up, and if you recover your assets. The complaint in this action was not filed by Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP. For more information about Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP please visit www.ktmc.com.

CONTACT:

Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP

James Maro, Jr., Esq.

280 King of Prussia Road

Radnor, PA 19087

(844) 887-9500 (toll free)

info@ktmc.com

A video accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ee1f1f93-b02b-4f3b-b635-74d7da035c64
OSLO, Norway (10 January 2022) - TGS, a global provider of energy data and intelligence, today announced a project designed to help drive exploration across the South Makassar and North East Java regions. Processing has begun on the East Java Sea 2D-cubed project. This project will utilize 2D-cubed technology to integrate all existing seismic data across a 270,000 square kilometer area to create a one-stop tool for regional evaluation.

The dataset will combine over 120,000 kilometers of 2D seismic data from over 80 legacy surveys into a single exploration tool and create a well data package comprising 88 wells. The final multi-client product, supported by Ditjen Migas, Pusdatin ESDM, SKK Migas and Pertamina, will be unrivaled in its coverage. A single conformable seismic volume will allow customers to develop structural and geological models in their pre-study evaluation process.

This project covers significant acreage in the 2nd 2021 Indonesian License round, including the Agung-I and Agung-II blocks. Early project deliverables are expected from Q2 2022.

2D-cubed is a unique technology from TGS that generates a 3D seismic volume from a set of 2D lines. It uses an advanced structurally conformable interpolation algorithm to maximize the potential of existing 2D multi-vintage and 3D data. The resultant volume can be used for both regional interpretation and the optimization of subsequent 3D and 2D survey designs. TGS has undertaken similar large-scale projects in other Asia Pacific basins in places such as Timor-Leste and Australia to industry acclaim. This technology has also been applied offshore Sakhalin, Russia, and throughout the Norwegian and UK North Seas.

Kristian Johansen, CEO at TGS, said: "TGS is committed to developing multi-client seismic projects that help drive exploration in Indonesia. This regional product will enable exploration companies to efficiently assess hydrocarbon prospectivity and initiate studies on vast volumes of data in unprecedented timeframes."

This project is supported by industry funding.

About TGS

TGS provides scientific data and intelligence to companies active in the energy sector. In addition to a global, extensive and diverse energy data library, TGS offers specialized services such as advanced processing and analytics alongside cloud-based data applications and solutions.

Forward Looking Statement

All statements in this press release other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements, which are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict, and are based upon assumptions as to future events that may not prove accurate. These factors include TGS' reliance on a cyclical industry and principal customers, TGS' ability to continue to expand markets for licensing of data, and TGS' ability to acquire and process data product at costs commensurate with profitability, as well as volatile market conditions, which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the severe drop in oil prices. Actual results may differ materially from those expected or projected in the forward-looking statements. TGS undertakes no responsibility or obligation to update or alter forward-looking statements for any reason.

For more information, visit TGS.com or contact:

Sven Brre Larsen

CFO

+47 90 94 36 73

investor@tgs.com

Attachment
English German

Total revenue of CHF 148 million exceeding 2021 financial guidance, driven by 65% increase in non-deferred revenue contributions from Cresemba and Zevtera

CHF 150 million year-end cash and financial investments above 2021 financial guidance

Ad hoc announcement pursuant to Art. 53 LR

Basel, January 10, 2022

Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. (SIX: BSLN), a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company committed to meeting the needs of patients with infectious diseases and cancer, announced today the unaudited preliminary revenue and year-end cash-position for the financial year 2021. Total revenue, non-deferred revenue contributions from Cresemba (isavuconazole) and Zevtera (ceftobiprole) and year-end cash and financial investments are all above guidance.

Non-deferred revenue contributions from Basileas marketed products, the antifungal Cresemba and the antibiotic Zevtera, are expected to have increased by 65% to approximately CHF 129 million (FY 2020: CHF 78.2 million). Total revenue, including revenue contributions from Cresemba and Zevtera as well as BARDA reimbursements, offsetting ceftobiprole phase 3 development expenses and other revenue contributions, is expected to amount to approximately CHF 148 million (FY 2020: CHF 127.6 million). Basilea also reported preliminary CHF 150 million cash and financial investments at year-end 2021 or CHF 173 million, excluding the impact from the reduction of outstanding convertible bonds.

At half-year reporting 2021, Basilea had guided for non-deferred revenue contributions from Cresemba and Zevtera of CHF 115  125 million, total revenue of CHF 134  144 million and a year-end cash position of CHF 142  147 million (CHF 165  170 million, excluding the impact from the reduction of convertible bonds in FY 2021).

David Veitch, Chief Executive Officer, commented: We are very pleased with the significantly increased non-deferred revenue contributions from Cresemba and Zevtera, which are reflecting the continued progress that we, together with our partners, are making in the commercialization of our brands. Global in-market sales of Cresemba have exceeded 300 million US dollars in the 12 months to the end of September 2021. The continued commercial success of Cresemba, as well as the progress made in making Cresemba available in Japan and China have triggered several sales, development and regulatory milestone payments to Basilea throughout 2021.

Adesh Kaul, Chief Financial Officer, added: The impressive growth in our Cresemba and Zevtera non-deferred revenue is indicative of the robust global in-market performance of our brands and the continued regulatory progress made by our partners with regard to accessing new markets. We are looking forward to the key milestones for our anti-infectives franchise in 2022, including anticipated regulatory decisions for Cresemba in China and Japan and the results of our phase 3 ERADICATE study with ceftobiprole. Positive outcomes for these key milestones could have a significant positive mid-term impact on our commercial anti-infectives business. Our strong year-end cash position and the reduction of the outstanding convertible bonds provide us with the required financial flexibility to execute on our strategic priorities.

The audited full financial statements as well as the annual report 2021 will be published on February 15, 2022. The final audited revenue for 2021 and the cash position as of year-end 2021 may differ from the preliminary reported numbers.

About Basilea

Basilea is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company founded in 2000 and headquartered in Switzerland. We are committed to discovering, developing and commercializing innovative drugs to meet the needs of patients with cancer and infectious diseases. We have successfully launched two hospital brands, Cresemba for the treatment of invasive fungal infections and Zevtera for the treatment of severe bacterial infections. We are conducting clinical studies with two targeted drug candidates for the treatment of a range of cancers and have several preclinical assets in both cancer and infectious diseases in our portfolio. Basilea is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (SIX: BSLN). Please visit basilea.com.

Disclaimer

This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements, such as "believe", "assume", "expect", "forecast", "project", "may", "could", "might", "will" or similar expressions concerning Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. and its business, including with respect to the progress, timing and completion of research, development and clinical studies for product candidates. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For further information, please contact:

Peer Nils Schroder, PhD



Head of Corporate Communications & Investor Relations Phone +41 61 606 1102 E-mail media_relations@basilea.com

investor_relations@basilea.com

This ad hoc announcement can be downloaded from www.basilea.com.

Attachment
English Finnish

HUHTAMAKI OYJ PRESS RELEASE 10.1.2022 AT 09:00

Huhtamaki China takes its first step towards Huhtamakis group target of using 100% renewable energy by 2030 by installing and commissioning solar panels

Huhtamaki has taken a significant first step in China towards its global sustainability ambitions by installing and commissioning its first solar panel arrays at its factories in Guangzhou and Shanghai and successfully connecting these to the electricity grid on January 1, 2022.

With a total 47,000 m2 of solar panels installed, the scheme is expected to generate 3,000,000 KWH per year, covering an initial 10% of the two factories energy use, and reducing emissions by 2,374 tonnes CO 2 annually. The project, which utilizes the latest Monocrystalline Silicon Cell technology, was carried out in partnership with ZSEN New Energy.

As a key global provider of sustainable packaging solutions, Huhtamaki aims to use of 100% renewable electricity and deliver carbon neutral production across all its global operations by 2030.

Huhtamakis targets to combat climate change are validated and approved by the Science Based Targets initiative. The solar power China project is another significant step towards Huhtamakis sustainability ambitions for 2030, building on the European VPPA agreement announced late in 2021. We believe our ability to reach our group target will be made possible by implementing solutions which make sense locally. Installing and commissioning our first solar panels at two of our four Chinese factories is an example of how we are making progress towards our group goals through a local initiative which makes a real difference in cutting back emissions and helping our ambition to achieve carbon neutrality, says Thomasine Kamerling, Executive Vice President, Sustainability and Communications.

China is striving to hit CO 2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Rooftop solar installation plays an important role in substituting renewable energy for fossil fuels and cutting carbon emissions in China.

Huhtamaki supports China's transition toward a low-carbon economy. Switching to renewable energy further strengthens our commitment to China by providing sustainable food packaging solutions to protect food, Chinese people and environment, said Daniel Chen, SVP Greater China, Fiber Foodservice Europe-Asia-Oceania.

For further information, please contact:

Arto Grondahl, Media Relations Manager, tel. +358 10 686 7107

HUHTAMAKI OYJ

Global Communications

About Huhtamaki

Huhtamaki is a key global provider of sustainable packaging solutions for consumers around the world, enabling wellbeing and convenience. Our innovative products protect on-the-go and on-the-shelf food and beverages, ensuring hygiene and safety, and help prevent food waste. We embed sustainability in everything we do. We are committed to achieving carbon neutral production and designing all our products to be recyclable, compostable or reusable by 2030.

We are a participant in the UN Global Compact and EcoVadis has awarded Huhtamaki with the Gold medal for performance in sustainability. To play our part in managing climate change, we have set science-based targets that have been approved and validated by the Science Based Targets initiative.

With 100 years of history and a strong Nordic heritage we operate in 36 countries and 84 sites around the world. Our values Care Dare Deliver guide our decisions and help our team of 19,400 employees make a difference where it matters. Our 2020 net sales totaled EUR 3.3 billion. Huhtamaki Group is headquartered in Espoo, Finland and our parent company, Huhtamaki Oyj, is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki Ltd. Find out more about how we are protecting food, people and the planet on www.huhtamaki.com.
PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bitcoin Latinum (LTNM), the next generation, insured, asset-backed cryptocurrency poised to revolutionize digital transactions is announcing its acquisition of cyberyachts.com in partnership with three time Grammy-nominated recording artist Quavo of Migos. Cyber Yachts will consist of NFT collections totaling 888 extraordinary yachts, and will be exclusively offered on the UnicoNFT marketplace for sale in Bitcoin and Bitcoin Latinum. Included in the collections are the Quavo branded Cyber Yachts.



The purchase of cyber yacht NFT's will come with experiential bonuses, such as access to Miami yacht parties and more. Bitcoin Latinum formed a partnership with A-list musical artist Quavo, of Migos, to co-brand the Cyber Yachts NFT collections.

For more information about Cyber Yachts, please visit cyberyachts.com

Unico, in partnership with Bitcoin Latinum, launched an NFT marketplace called UnicoNFT that features thousands of digital artworks that can be bought and sold exclusively with Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Latinum (LTNM), and will include the new collections of Quavo-branded Cyber Yachts. This is the world's first platform that enables the option of buying, selling and trading NFTs using cryptocurrencies other than Ethereum type currencies. The total market for NFT's reached $40 billion in 2021, up from $100 million in 2020. The market for NFT's is rapidly approaching that of the global fine art market, valued at $50 billion. Asset manager Grayscale says the metaverse is a trillion-dollar market opportunity.

For more information about UnicoNFT, please visit https://www.uniconft.com/

The increasing popularity of NFT's and metaverse assets has exploded in the past 6 months. Sales of virtual land have boomed in Nov 2021, bringing in $105.87 million for just four metaverse projects which include digital land, luxury yachts and other assets. A plot of virtual real estate just sold for $4.3 million and a metaverse mega yacht sold for $650,000.

Bitcoin Latinum currently trades publicly on HitBTC ($6.2 billion in daily volume), FMFW.com ($4.5 billion daily volume), Changelly ($2.71 billion in daily volume), Changelly Pro, LBank ($1.1 billion in daily volume), DigiFinex, Hotbit, AAX, and XT.com exchanges under the ticker LTNM. Monsoon Blockchain, Bitcoin Latinum's lead developer, has announced LTNM will also list on Bitmart ($1.6 billion in daily volume), and 10 additional global exchanges by the end of 2022. Bitcoin Latinum can be researched on Binance, CoinBase, Coin Market Cap, and Coin Gecko.

Bitcoin Latinum was built as an open-architecture cryptocurrency technology, capable of handling large transaction volume, cybersecurity, and digital asset management. Based on the Bitcoin ecosystem, Bitcoin Latinum was developed by Monsoon Blockchain Corporation on behalf of the Bitcoin Latinum Foundation. LTNM is a greener, faster, and more secure version of Bitcoin, and is poised to revolutionize digital transactions.

Unlike other crypto assets, LTNM is insured, and backed by real-world and digital assets. Its asset backing is held in a fund model, so that base asset value increases over time. It accelerates this asset-backed funds growth by depositing 80% of the transaction fee back into the asset fund that backs the currency. Thus, the more Bitcoin Latinum is adopted, the faster its asset funds grow, creating a self-inflating currency. This highlights Bitcoin Latinum Foundation's commitment to supporting the growth of a sustainable crypto ecosystem.

For more information about Bitcoin Latinum, please visit https://bitcoinlatinum.com

FOR EDUCATIONAL AND INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY; NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. Any Bitcoin Latinum offered is for educational and informational purposes only and should NOT be construed as a securities-related offer or solicitation or be relied upon as personalized investment advice. Bitcoin Latinum strongly recommends you consult a licensed or registered professional before making any investment decision.

Media contact

Brand: Bitcoin Latinum

E-mail: Kai.Okada@bitcoinlatinum.com

Website: https://bitcoinlatinum.com/

Address: 2100 Geng Road, Palo Alto, California 94303, USA

Telephone: +1 800-528-0985

SOURCE: Bitcoin Latinum Foundation
Pune, India, Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global biogas plant market size is anticipated to reach USD 6.52 billion by 2028 and exhibit a CAGR of 9.3% during the forecast period. The rising adoption of renewable energy sources to curb surging greenhouse emissions and energy demands are expected to boost the markets growth in the coming years. Fortune Business Insights has presented this information in its report titled, Biogas Plant Market, 2021-2028. The market size stood at USD 3.10 billion in 2020.

The growth is also attributable to increasing acceptance of the Paris Climate Agreement by several countries, including India, China, and the European Union. The agreement enforces the countries to augment their renewable energy consumption in total power generation. Biogas utilization is attracting considerable attention to minimize greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change.

COVID-19 Pandemic to Hinder Market Growth due to Lockdown Impositions

The unanticipated arrival of COVID-19 pandemic has hampered the growth of several industries and markets. The disruptions in supply chain networks and the ban on global trade implemented during the pandemic have negatively impacted the growth of the market. The unavailability of raw materials, technical support, and components has resulted in delayed projects and development activities. This has drastically affected the markets growth. Major business players halted their operations due to the adverse impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Nonetheless, the market is gradually recovering and is likely to prosper post-pandemic.

Request Sample PDF Brochure: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/biogas-plant-market-104667

Segmentation-

On the basis of Feedstock, the market is segmented into energy crops, agriculture residue, bio-municipal waste, and others.

On the basis of digester type, the market is bifurcated into dry anaerobic digestion and wet anaerobic digestion.

On the basis of application, the market is trifurcated into transportation, heat generation, and power generation.

Geographically, the market is classified into Latin America, Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and the Middle East & Africa.

Report Coverage-

The Biogas Plant Market Insights report highlights a detailed analysis of key players operating across different geographies.

The report provides insights into the regulatory scenarios of the market.

The report is based on historical data and provides methods and opportunities for future growth.

The Biogas Plant Market report also highlights the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ask For Customization: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/customization/biogas-plant-market-104667

Drivers & Restraints-

Rising Adoption of Renewable Energy Sources to Augement Market Growth

A massive portion of the total production worldwide is used for power generation and co-generation. According to the IEA, approximately 65% of the total biogas produced in 2019 were used for power generation and co-generation. The increasing energy demands and greenhouse emissions have been the primary concerns of governments across several countries worldwide. They are expected to boost the adoption of renewable energy sources and are likely to drive construction activities globally.

The growing migration of people from rural to urban areas has augmented the energy demand and also surged waste generation in recent years. The United Nations estimates that approximately 68% of the global population will live in urban areas by 2050. This will certainly ramp up waste treatment capacities and therefore fuel the global biogas plant market growth.

The increasing acceptance of the Paris Climate Agreement by several countries such as India, China, and the European Union is expected to augment the market growth. The agreement enforces the countries to augment their renewable energy consumption in total power generation. Biogas utilization is gaining considerable popularity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change.

However, the high initial investments to establish construction costs may restrain the markets growth.

Regional Insights-

Growing Investments in Bio-Related Energy to Foster Growth in Europe

Europe is projected to emerge dominant in the global biogas plant market share. The increasing investments in bio-related energy are expected to boost the market growth significantly. Sweden, France, Italy, Spain, the U.K., and Germany are the biggest consumers of bio-based energy sources. Germany is the largest producer in Europe, with more than 9,500 plants, which is more than fifty percent of the total installations operating currently in the European Union.

Asia Pacific is anticipated to witness spectacular growth due to the abundantly available organic waste and the increasing demand for sustainable energy sources. Thailand, India, and China have increased their investments towards constructing new plants in recent years and are likely to amplify the market growth in the coming years.

North America is expected to gain substantial growth in the global market. More than 2,200 plants produce biogas in the U.S. The American Biogas Council estimates the potential of adding 13,500 new systems in the coming years.

Have Any Query? Speak To Analyst: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/speak-to-analyst/biogas-plant-market-104667

Competitive Landscape-

Key Players Emphasize Organic & Inorganic Developments to Garner Growth

The Biogas Plant Market is highly consolidated and comprises several key players operating domestically and internationally. The key players focus on the expansion of production capacities or the introduction of new plants. The key players emphasize inorganic and organic developments to strengthen their market positions. For instance, in May 2020, Wartsila partnered with Vantaa Energy to co-develop a new plant that would produce carbon-neutral synthetic biogas.

Industry Developments-

June 2021: Future Biogas Limited revealed its plans to construct 25 new plants by 2028. The new plants would feature carbon capture and storage capabilities to supply green gas to the grid. The company is aiming to sell the carbon offsets generated by permanent geological CO2 storage to corporate buyers seeking to minimize their emissions.

Key Players in the Global Biogas Plant Market are:

Future Biogas Limited (U.K.)

PlanET Biogas Global GmbH (Germany)

WELTEC BIOPOWER GmbH (Germany)

Scandinavian Biogas Fuels International AB (Sweden)

EnviTec Biogas AG (Germany)

Ameresco (U.S.)

Quantum Green (India)

AB HOLDING SPA (Italy)

RENERGON International AG (Switzerland)

StormFisher (Canada)

Strabag (Austria)

Thoni (Austria)

Naskeo Environnement S.A. (France)

IES BIOGAS S.r.l (Italy)

FINN BIOGAS (Australia)

Buy Now  Biogas Plant Market:

https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/checkout-page/104667

Major Table Of Content Biogas Plant Market:

Introduction Research Scope Market Segmentation Research Methodology Definitions and Assumptions

Executive Summary

Market Dynamics Market Drivers Market Restraints Market Opportunities

Key Insights Key Emerging Trends  For Major Countries Latest Technological Advancement Regulatory Landscape Porters Five Forces Analysis

Qualitative Analysis  Impact of COVID-19 Impact of COVID-19 on the Biogas Plant Market Steps Taken by the Government to Overcome the Impact Key Developments in the Industry in Response to COVID-19 Potential Opportunities and Challenges due to COVID-19 Outbreak

Global Biogas Plant Market Analysis (USD Billion), Insights and Forecast, 2017-2028 Key Findings / Summary Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Feedstock Bio-Municipal Waste Agriculture Residue Energy Crops Others Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Digester Type Wet Anaerobic Digestion Dry Anaerobic Digestion Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Application Power Generation Heat Generation Transportation Biogas Plant Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Region North America Europe Asia Pacific Middle East & Africa Latin America

North America Biogas Plant Market Analysis (USD Billion), Insights and Forecast, 2017-2028 Key Findings / Summary Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Feedstock Bio-Municipal Waste Agriculture Residue Energy Crops Others Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Digester Type Wet Anaerobic Digestion Dry Anaerobic Digestion Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Application Power Generation Heat Generation Transportation Biogas Plant Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Country U.S. Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Application Power Generation Heat Generation Transportation Canada Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Application Power Generation Heat Generation Transportation



TOC Continued!

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Pune, India, Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global electric fencing market size is anticipated to reach USD 442.5 million by 2028, and exhibit a CAGR of 5.54% during the forecast period. The growing product adoption by farm owners and its increasing usage by armed forces to seal international borders. Fortune Business InsightsTM has presented this information in its report titled Electric Fencing Market, 2021-2028. The market size stood at USD 297.2 million in 2020 and is estimated to reach USD 303.4 million in 2021. According to the report, the increasing adoption of solar-based electric fencing and IoT-based solutions is expected to emerge as a key trend influencing the market growth.





List of Key Players in the Global Electric Fencing Market Research:

Dare Products (U.S.)

Gallagher Group Limited (U.S.)

High Tech Pet (U.S.)

Kencove (U.S.)

Parker McCrory Mfg Co. (U.S.)

PetSafe (U.S.)

Woodstream (U.S.)

Datamars SA (Switzerland)

AMAROK LLC (U.S.)

Nemtek (South Africa)





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Increasing Adoption of Solar-based Electric Fencing and IoT-based Solutions to Propel Market Growth

Electric-type fencing is used by several armed forces to prevent intrusion at international borders. For instance, Russian armed forces adopted an electric fence at the China-Russia border for enhanced security. Hence, the growing adoption of the product by armed forces is anticipated to drive the global electric fencing market growth. Also, the product provides improved security at farms against wild animals unauthorized entry. Electric fence produces minor shocks that prevent them from entering the premises. Hence, the rising adoption of the product by farm owners is likely to bolster the market growth in the coming years.

The increasing demand for the electric type of fencing systems for storage centers, farmland security, and warehouse security is expected to fuel the market growth in the coming years. Additionally, the increasing adoption of solar-based electric fencing in remote areas, where there is limited electricity supply, is anticipated to favor the market growth. The incorporation of IoT-based solutions and their rising adoption for warehouse security is also anticipated to be a key growth driver for the market. However, the high cost of maintenance may hinder the market growth.





Report Coverage-

It highlights the latest technological advancements and key trends of the market.

It assimilates the challenges and restraints to growth and advises strategies to

overcome those challenges.

It describes the consumption rates and patterns associated with the market.

It incorporates SWOT Analysis.

It showcases the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the market.





Regional Insights-

North America is projected to emerge dominant in the global electric fencing market share. The presence of numerous product suppliers and large defense expenditures are expected to fuel the growth of the market.

Europe is anticipated to exhibit substantial growth in the forthcoming years. The increasing product adoption for improved homeland security is expected to drive the regions market growth.

Asia Pacific is expected to exhibit the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The growing defense budgets of developing nations such as India and China are predicted to foster market growth. The large agriculture industry is likely to complement market growth.

South America is projected to gain considerable growth due to the increasing product adoption for military base security in the UAE.





Competitive Landscape-

Key Players Adopt Inorganic Strategies to Acquire Growth

The key players emphasize continuous research and development to produce technologically advanced fencing product that includes solar panels and cost-effective solutions for border security. They devise innovative growth strategies such as technological developments, new product launches, patents, partnerships, collaborations, and others. For instance, Woodtream acquired Dynamic Solutions Worldwide, an insect trap producer for outdoor and indoor applications, in November 2019.





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Major Table of Content:

Introduction Research Scope Market Segmentation Research Methodology Definitions and Assumptions

Executive Summary

Market Dynamics Market Drivers Market Restraints Market Opportunities

Key Insights Key Industry Developments Mergers, Acquisitions and Partnerships Latest technological Advancements Porters Five Forces Analysis Supply Chain Analysis

Qualitative Insights Impact of Covid-19 on the Global Electric Fencing Industry Steps Taken by the Industry/Government/Companies to Overcome the Impact Potential Opportunities due to COVID-19 Outbreak

Global Electric Fencing Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast, 2017-2028 Segmental Definitions Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Type Permanent Fence Portable Fence Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Application Agriculture Wild Animals Pets Security Others Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast  By Region North America Europe Asia-Pacific South America Middle East & Africa



TOC Continued!





Browse Summary of This Research Report:

https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/electric-fence-market-103521





Have a Look at Related Research Insights:

Fencing Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By Type (Metal, Wood, Concrete), By Application ( Commercial Use, Residential Use ), By Sales Channel (Online Stores, Retail Stores) and regional forecast 2021-2028





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Pune, India, Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global District Heating Market size is anticipated to reach USD 270.35 billion by 2028 and exhibit a CAGR of 5.8% during the forecast period. District heating systems provide heat to regulate temperature at commercial and industrial spaces and other hot water or steam applications. The rising demand for heating systems due to increasing population and swift urbanization is expected to bolster the markets growth. Fortune Business Insights presents this information in its report titled, District Heating Market, 2021-2028. The market size stood at USD 173.97 billion in 2020.

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Due to the exponentially increasing energy demand worldwide, the governments of major economies are emphasizing sustainable options to satisfy the growing energy demand. For instance, the U.K. announced a stimulus package worth USD 2 billion for the heating sector for 2015-2025. The governments of many countries are making huge investments to improve the heating sector. The favorable government initiatives are likely to complement the markets growth.

List of Key Players in the Global Market are:

Danfoss Group (Denmark)

Ramboll (Denmark)

Dall Energy (Denmark)

Veolia (France)

Helen (Finland)

Alfa Level (Sweden)

GE (U.S.)

COWI (Denmark)

Statkraft (Norway)

Uniper (Germany)

ENGIE (France)

ABB (Switzerland)

Kelvion (Germany)

GRUNDFOS (Denmark)

E.on Energy Services ( Germany)

FVB Energy Inc. (U.S.)

NextGen Heating (U.K.)

NRG Energy (U.S.)

Shinryo Corporation (Japan)

COVID-19 Impact-

The coronavirus pandemic has interrupted the growth of several markets and industries. Implementing strict curfews and lockdowns to curb the virus spread have affected the markets growth. The reduced construction activities and disrupted supply chain networks have negatively impacted the markets growth. However, investments in renewable energy have increased during the pandemic. The growth of energy production using renewable energy sources is likely to offer lucrative growth opportunities for the market.

Segmentation-

On the basis of heat source, the market is categorized into oil & petroleum products, renewable, natural gas, coal, and others. As per plant type, it is segmented into CHP, boiler, and others. Based on application, it is fragmented into industrial, commercial, and residential. Geographically, the market is grouped into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and the Rest of the World.

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Report Coverage-

The report provides a detailed analysis of the top segments and the latest trends in the market. It comprehensively discusses the driving and restraining factors and the impact of COVID-19 on the market. Additionally, it examines the regional developments and the strategies undertaken by the market's key players.

Drivers & Restraints-

Favorable Government Initiatives to Propel Market Growth

The worldwide population is growing astronomically, and so is the energy demand. Due to increasing population and swift urbanization, the rising demand for heating systems is expected to bolster the growth of the global market. Moreover, the increasing population results in the high migration of people from rural to urban areas. According to Oxford Universitys study, around two-thirds of the global population will reside in urban areas by 2050. This factor is likely to favor the growth of the market.

The governments of major economies are investing heavily to improve the heating sector. They are emphasizing sustainable options to satisfy the growing energy demand. For instance, the U.K. announced a stimulus package worth USD 2 billion for the heating sector for 2015-2025. Also, Germany plans to invest around USD 1 billion by 2030. Hence, favorable government initiatives are likely to complement the markets growth. Moreover, the governments also focus on reducing carbon emissions and adopting green energy targets to minimize greenhouse gas emissions. The green energy targets are likely to fuel the investments in this market and stimulate growth.

Regional Insights-

Growing Renewable Energy Installations to Drive Growth in Europe

Europe is projected to dominate the global district heating market share due to the year-round low temperatures in the region. Europe comprises large power plants and industries that generate heat usually wasted. The wasted heat meets the heating demand across the region. The growing installations of renewable energy sources are also expected to augment the demand for district heating systems and favor the markets growth in the coming years.

Asia Pacific is expected to witness the most lucrative growth in the global market due to the surging investments in heating networks by countries such as China.

North America is anticipated to gain considerable growth due to the growing investments in heating systems.

Quick Buy  District Heating Market Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/checkout-page/100097

The Rest of the World is likely to exhibit sluggish growth in the forthcoming years as the concept is still new to the region.

Competitive Landscape-

Key Players Adopt Ingenious Growth Strategies to Garner Growth

The market is fairly fragmented and comprises key players such as Danfoss Group, Veolia, and Ramboll. The key players emphasize growth by adopting ingenious growth strategies, including partnerships, mergers, acquisitions, collaborations, new product launches, technological developments, and others. For instance, in October 2019, Serbias Ministry of Mining and Energy announced that it will provide funding worth EUR 26.7 million by 2022 for heating plants in six municipalities.

Industry Developments-

December 2020: Fortum eNext Ireland was awarded a contract by South Dublin Country Council to construct the first large-scale DH scheme in Ireland, the Tallaght District Heating Scheme.

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Have a Look at Related Research Insights:

Briquette Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By Type (Spruce, Pine, Beech, Straw, Others), By Application (Heating of Residential and Commercial Buildings, District Heating And Electricity Production), By End-Use (Pharmaceutical Industry, Food, Chemical Industry, Dye and Pigment, Paper Mills, Textile Industry, Leather Manufacturing) And Regional Forecast 2021-2028

Thermal Energy Storage Market Size, Share and Global Trend By Storage Type (Water, Molten Salt, Phase Change Material (PCM), Others), By Technology (Sensible Heat Storage, Latent Heat Storage, Thermochemical Storage), By Application (Power Generation, District Heating & Cooling, Process Heating & Cooling), By End User (Residential, Commercial, Industrial) and Geography Forecast till 2021-2028

District Cooling Market Size, Share, and COVID-19 Impact Analysis, By Technology (Electric Chillers, Absorption Chillers, and Others), By End User (Residential, Industrial, and Commercial), and Regional Forecast, 2021-2028

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ranchero Gold Corp. (Ranchero or the Company) (TSXV:RNCH) is pleased to announce the appointment of Brian Szeto as President, effective immediately. Mr. Szeto is an accomplished mining executive with more than 20 years of experience in mining and finance gained from a series of progressively senior management roles with a TSX listed gold producer and leading independent brokerages in Canada.



Prior to joining Ranchero, Mr. Szeto was most recently a senior mining executive at a TSX listed producer and oversaw the development and construction of three mining operations in Western Australia. He was previously a Mining Analyst at a leading independent brokerage where Thomson Reuters recognized him as the top ranked Stock Picker in Metals and Mining in Canada in 2015. He was also the third ranked Stock Picker in Metals and Mining in Canada in 2016. Prior to being a top ranked Analyst, he held roles with National Bank Financial, Deloitte & Touche, and the Government of Ontario and was responsible for private and public transactions ranging up to C$1 billion. Mr. Szeto holds a Joint Honors Degree in Economics and Business, and a Masters Degree in Economics from the University of Waterloo, in addition to being a CFA Charterholder.

Bill Pincus, Rancheros President and CEO stated, We are excited to have an individual of Brians caliber to lead the Company along with myself as we continue to unlock the exciting exploration potential at the highly prospective Santa Daniela project. Brian brings with him a wealth of mining corporate, transactional, and capital markets experience that will be invaluable to the Company as we continue to work tirelessly to build a tier one exploration and development company with a high-quality gold asset located in the fastest growing and one of the most prolific regions of the Sierra Madre Occidental Gold Belt.

Brian Szeto stated, I am delighted to join the talented and experienced team at Ranchero that collectively has 175 years of mining and capital markets experience. The Santa Daniela project is a highly prospect gold asset that is surrounded by six significant gold deposits that are all currently in production. With a Board and management team that has collectively discovered more than 10 million ounces of gold across eight discoveries globally, we certainly have all the key ingredients to be extremely successful at Santa Daniela and have an opportunity to create significant value for our shareholders.

Qualified Person

Scientific and technical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by William Pincus, CPG, who is a "qualified person" as defined by NI 43-101.

About Ranchero Gold

Ranchero is a gold exploration and development company currently focused on its 100%-owned Santa Daniela project located in Sonora, Mexico. The Santa Daniela project consist of a large land package in excess of 22,000 hectares within Mexicos Sierra Madre Occidental  a newly emerging gold belt. The Santa Daniela project is also in close proximity to a number of major gold mining operations in the region. Maiz Azul is the Companys most advanced prospect where an inaugural drill program is underway.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Company:

William Bill Pincus

President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking statements. Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as expects or does not expect, is expected, anticipates or does not anticipate plans, estimates or intends or stating that certain actions, events or results  may, could, would, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release include, but are not limited to, the final acceptance of the TSXV to the Transaction.

Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to materially differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to: risks related to regulatory approval, including the approval of the TSXV. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statement will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipate in such statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or managements estimates or opinions should change except as required by applicable securities laws. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

For further information, please contact:

William Pincus

President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

+1 303 589 3734




FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Having been involved in real estate in one way or another since 1990, Ryan Kuhlman has established a reputation in Florida as someone who is highly successful at helping people. After buying the Broward Real Estate Investors Association (BREIA) and WJL Properties from Bill and Jan Leon in 2013, Ryan had excelled at mentoring local South Floridians who wanted to learn the trade of investing in real estate.

As BREIA earned a reputation as the best place to learn the ins and outs of real estate investing under Kuhlman's direction, he was appointed the position as President of the National Real Estate Investors Association in 2019 and his following carried BREIA through tough times, including a global pandemic.

It was during this pandemic that Kuhlman realized that his time spent mentoring students meant he wasn't doing what he set out to do in the first place - help homeowners. "Mentoring is great, and there is nothing better than seeing someone use your experience to go out and make a career for themselves, but for me, the true satisfaction lies in helping homeowners get out of tough situations," said Kuhlman.

The decision to sunset the BREIA brand was made much easier when he came to an agreement with two "super students" and a seasoned banking executive to team up with him on the new venture.

Jo Colonna, a South Florida native, spent the last 20 years working in hospitality, with a focus on the luxury market and operational transitions. In his 20 years, he worked to acquire travel and award industry accolades such as Forbes 5 Star and AAA 5 Diamond Awards. Jo brings his 20 years of hospitality experience to the real estate industry, where Florida Homeowner Solutions is redefining what it means to put homeowners above all else.

Victor Carrera a native of New Jersey, has resided in Florida for the last 10 years, handling millions in sales revenue across different countries, including South America(except Brazil), Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean market, focused on building brand recognition in each respective country. Victor is now focused on branding FHS and helping homeowners.

Brian Cardozo is a former banker who is proficient in MI & AI. Brian has created a proprietary software for FHS to quickly identify legal strategies for FHS. Brian is instrumental in running specific foreclosure cases through this software, which will compare it to thousands of past cases and come up with strategies to out-maneuver the foreclosing bank.

FHS is located in Broward County but assists homeowners across Florida.

Media Contact:

Ryan Kuhlman

1 (800) 300-4663

https://floridahomeownersolutions.com.

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A scientist that previously researched mRNA technology just voiced his skepticism when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines.

During an interview with Joe Rogan, Dr. Robert Malone claimed that millions of people across the globe were hypnotized into believing the mainstream ideas on how to combat the virus with testing and vaccination.

He described this theory using the words "mass formation psychosis" and captured the attention of over 20,000 people on Twitter.

Dr. Robert Malone slams Dr. Anthony Fauci

Shortly after, Malone appeared on "The Joe Rogan Experience," where he reiterated his claims about COVID-19. He also said that Dr. Anthony Fauci has seemingly hypnotized a third of the American population into believing everything that he says about the virus.

"When you have a society that has become decoupled from each other and has free-floating anxiety in a sense that things don't make sense, we can't understand it, and then their attention gets focused by a leader or a series of events on one small point, just like hypnosis, they literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere," he said via the Huffington Post.

Dr. Robert Malone criticzed over his 'mass formation psychosis' claims

However, psychology expert Jay Van Bavel said that there's no known evidence to support Malone's claims. He added that he has not encountered the term that was used by Malone in his tweet and interview.

Stephen Reicher, a social psychology professor at the University of St. Andrews in the UK also confirmed that Malone's theory has no academic credibility.

Richard McNally, a professor of clinical psychology at Harvard University, said that people that support vaccines and other measures are just responding to the arguments and evidence provided by experts. As such, they shouldn't be called delusional.

Read Also: Fauci Urges State Leaders To Consider Vaccination Mandates for Domestic Travel Amid Rising COVID-19 Cases

Scientist banned from Twitter, YouTube video taken down

According to The Independent, anti-vaxxers shared Malone's interview on social media days after it aired. However, YouTube took down the clip because it violated the platform's community guidelines.

YouTube doesn't allow the spread of medical misinformation that contradicts government health advice.

Malone's Twitter account has also been removed. Rogan, who interviewed Malone is also boycotting the platform after Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was banned from Twitter for spreading incorrect information about the virus.

In April, Greene claimed that people that are young and healthy do not need to worry about contracting the virus or getting vaccinated.

Donald Trump accused of spreading COVID-19 lies

Meanwhile, Malone isn't the only individual that has been spreading lies about COVID-19 and the vaccines.

While he was still in office, Donald Trump was also accused of spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines.

There were multiple times wherein the ex-POTUS claimed that the number of cases has been going down consistently. However, when he made the specific claims, the number of cases were increasing.

On July 4, 2020, Trump said that 99 percent of COVID-19 cases are harmless. However, millions of people around the world have already died after contracting the virus.

Trump also put the blame on Mexico after a COVID-19 surge in the Southwest was reported. However, US and Mexico were the first to restrict nonessential land travel between both territories, according to The Atlantic.

Related Article: COVID-19 Around the World: How Different Countries Are Dealing With Omicron Surge in January 2022

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Toronto, Ontario & New York, NY, Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hydrostor Inc. (Hydrostor), a leading long-duration energy storage solution provider, today announced a preferred equity financing commitment of US$250 million from the Private Equity and Sustainable Investing businesses within Goldman Sachs Asset Management (Goldman Sachs).

The investment proceeds will be used to support development and construction of Hydrostors 1.1GW, 8.7GWh of Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage (A-CAES) projects in Australia and California that are well underway, and to expand Hydrostors project development pipeline globally.

Goldman Sachs will fund its investment in tranches tied to project milestones to match Hydrostors capital needs and accelerate project execution throughout development, construction, and operations alongside Hydrostors development partners. The financing will also support Hydrostors global development and marketing initiatives, including expansion of its project pipeline and capabilities in markets with significant near-term demand for flexibly sited long-duration energy storage.

Curtis VanWalleghem, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of Hydrostor, said: We are delighted with this investment by Goldman Sachs. It is transformational for Hydrostor and validates the competitiveness of our proprietary A-CAES solution as well as the strength of our pipeline of potential projects.

Charlie Gailliot, Partner and Head of Energy Transition Private Equity Investing within Goldman Sachs Asset Management, said: As the world continues transitioning to sustainable and renewable energy sources, the need for utility-scale long-duration energy storage is clear, and Hydrostors A-CAES solution is well positioned to become a leading player in this emerging global market. We look forward to working with the Hydrostor team over the coming years and leveraging our firms global platform to support Hydrostors growth, which will play a central role in the ongoing energy transition.

Curtis VanWalleghem added: I would like to thank our existing investors, including ArcTern Ventures, Lorem Partners, Canoe Financial, and Business Development Bank of Canada, all of whom will remain our partners. Hydrostors evolution has been made possible by their support and support from various agencies of the Government of Canada. I would also like to thank outgoing directors Elisabeth Hivon and Tom Rand for their service and welcome Charlie Gailliot, Sebastien Gagnon, and Gunduz Shirin from Goldman Sachs to our board.

Fort Capital Partners and CIBC Capital Markets acted as financial advisors to Hydrostor, and Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP served as legal counsel.

About Goldman Sachs Asset Management Private Equity

Bringing together traditional and alternative investments, Goldman Sachs Asset Management provides clients around the world with a dedicated partnership and focus on long-term performance. As the primary investing area within Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), we deliver investment and advisory services for the worlds leading institutions, financial advisors and individuals, drawing from our deeply connected global network and tailored expert insights, across every region and marketoverseeing more than $2 trillion in assets under supervision worldwide as of September 30, 2021. Driven by a passion for our clients performance, we seek to build long-term relationships based on conviction, sustainable outcomes, and shared success over time. Goldman Sachs Asset Management invests in the full spectrum of alternatives, including private equity, growth equity, private credit, real estate and infrastructure. Established in 1986, the Private Equity business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management has invested over $75 billion since inception. We combine our global network of relationships, our unique insight across markets, industries and regions, and the worldwide resources of Goldman Sachs to build businesses and accelerate value creation across our portfolios. Follow us on LinkedIn.

About Hydrostor

Hydrostor is a long-duration energy storage solutions provider that provides reliable and affordable utility integration of long-duration energy storage, enabling grid operators to scale renewable energy and secure grid capacity. Hydrostor supports the green economic transition, employing the people, suppliers, and technologies from the traditional energy sector to design, build, and operate emissions-free energy storage facilities. Hydrostor has developed, deployed, tested, and demonstrated that its patented Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage (A-CAES) technology can provide long-duration energy storage and enable the renewable energy transition. A-CAES uses proven components from mining and gas operations to create a scalable energy storage system that is low-impact, cost-effective, 50+ year lifetime, and can store energy from 5 hours up to multi-day storage where needed. Hydrostor has projects worldwide in various development stages for providing capacity of over 200 MW each. Follow us on LinkedIn.

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SMITHFIELD, R.I., Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Branford Group ("Branford"), in partnership with Heritage Global Partners ("HGP"), announced today they will conduct a series of webcast auctions and private sales of surplus assets formerly used for Honeywell's N95 mask production. Honeywell operated two certified N95 mask manufacturing facilities in Smithfield, Rhode Island and Phoenix, Arizona. The offering contains pristine equipment, all of which was purchased new in 2020. Branford and HGP are currently accepting pre-auction offers on all items.

Scott Lonkart, Vice President and Partner at Branford stated, "To say this is a unique buying opportunity is an understatement. In my 30 years in the business, I have never seen such well-maintained, 'like-new' equipment that can be utilized across such a wide variety of industries. From mask making to plastics to electronic assembly, there is something here for everyone."

The first Webcast sale will be conducted January 19 at 12:00 p.m. (EST), including equipment from Honeywell's Rhode Island facility followed by a second Webcast sale for the Arizona facility, taking place February 17 at 10:00 a.m. (PST).

David Barkoff, Senior Vice President with Heritage Global Partners stated, "The concerning spike in COVID cases, the like-new condition of the assets, as well as the wide appeal for this type of equipment should be a great opportunity for the global buying community. This is a rare chance, especially with long lead times and supply chain issues, to procure such great manufacturing equipment immediately."

Spectacular Key assets available include:

Numerous Branson 2000X Series Ultrasonic Plastic Welding Systems, 2500-watt (yr. 2020)

Numerous Branson 2000X Series Rotary Ultrasonic Plastic Welding Assembly Systems, 4000-watt (yr. 2020)

Numerous Dukane iQ Series Ultrasonic Plastic Welding System, 2500-watt (yr. 2020)

Ace Controls Honeywell N95 Nose Clip & Print Systems, Featuring: (4) Dukane 2024.2Q-P10.S Ultrasonic Plastic Welding System (yr. 2020) and (2) Fanuc SR 3iA Robots

Calvary Robotics Honeywell N95 Nose Clip & Print Systems, Featuring: (3) Branson 2000X Series Ultrasonic Plastic Welding Systems (yr. 2020)

Markem Touch Dry High Resolution 5200 Inkjet Coder/Printers (yr. 2020)

Complete sale details for both auctions, including the Lot Catalog with equipment photos and descriptions, as well as, registration details can be found on Branford's website. https://www.thebranfordgroup.com

About The Branford Group

The Branford Group is a recognized leader in surplus industrial auction, disposition, and valuation services throughout the world. Its experienced team of certified and accredited auctioneers and appraisers buy, sell, and value nearly all types of assets including equipment, inventories, turnkey businesses, real estate, and intellectual property from a broad range of industries.

About HGP

Heritage Global Partners, Inc. Is a subsidiary of Heritage Global Inc. and one of the world's largest industrial auction firms, providing asset valuation, acquisition and disposition services.

About Heritage Global Inc.

Heritage Global Inc. is an asset services company specializing in financial and industrial asset transactions. The company provides a full suite of services including market making, acquisitions, dispositions, valuations and secured lending. Heritage Global focuses on identifying, valuing, acquiring and monetizing underlying tangible and intangible assets across twenty-eight global sectors. The company acts as an adviser, as well as a principal, acquiring or brokering turnkey manufacturing facilities, surplus industrial machinery and equipment, industrial inventories, accounts receivable portfolios, intellectual property, and entire business enterprises.

Media Contact

The Branford Group

Ali Wade, 203-483-2220

Director of Marketing

awade@thebranfordgroup.com

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HOUSTON, Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 547 Energy International LLC (547 Energy), the clean energy investment platform of Quantum Energy Partners (Quantum), today announced that it has formed NetOn, a renewable energy development platform focused on the development and operation of self-consumption energy projects for commercial and industrial (C&I) customers throughout southern Europe. NetOn is led by Alberto Martin, a leading executive in the clean energy industry, and will be based in Spain. The NetOn platform is already fully operational across the country with a strong and experienced local team, offices in Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona, and a solid network of engineering and commercial partners.



NetOn is well-positioned to capture the accelerating market for self-consumption of clean power. Self-consumption projects generate power from renewable energy sources connected directly to customers, allowing them to offset power purchases from their load serving entities and save on their electricity bill while enhancing the reliability of their energy supply. These projects bring the added benefit of aiding end-consumers in meeting their decarbonization or emission reduction targets, creating immediate impacts for customers double bottom line. NetOn, which focuses on serving the C&I market segment, will deliver comprehensive self-consumption solutions, which include the financing, installation, and operation of renewable energy facilities. Under NetOns business model, customers will not have to bear any investment costs associated with renewable installations, meaning no increased capital expenditures, yet will receive a stable, green, guaranteed long-term electricity price that will drive substantial savings on their electricity bills.

Alberto Martin, CEO of NetOn, has more than 25 years of experience in the energy industry, both in consulting as partner in charge of Energy for Spain at McKinsey and KPMG, and at Endesa, where he was CEO of Endesa France and SVP of International Business.

Gabriel Alonso, Founder and CEO of 547 Energy said, Alberto Martin and the NetOn team have assembled a first-class group of renewable energy professionals, and we are excited to partner with them to expand the suite of clean energy product offerings available to commercial and industrial power consumers in southern Europe. In a time when power prices are challenging the profitability of many established businesses, clean energy offers not only a greener alternative for power consumption, but also provides immediate and material cost savings for a range of potential customers, which can create real competitive advantages for consumers over the life of the assets. Alberto is a proven, execution-focused clean energy executive, and 547 Energy is looking forward to being a partner to the NetOn team and their future customers across southern Europe.

We are delighted to collaborate with Alberto Martin and his team to help NetOn establish a meaningful presence and accelerate its growth in the European distributed and sustainable energy market, said Wil VanLoh, founder and CEO of Quantum Energy Partners. NetOns renewable offering will provide C&I customers across Europe strategic access to low-cost clean power to drive their operations, which is a critical step forward for the global energy transition.

Alberto Martin, CEO of NetOn said, Our partnership with 547 Energy and Quantum Energy Partners provides NetOn the opportunity to be a meaningful participant in the full-cycle development of commercial and industrial clean power assets across southern Europe. Many countries in southern Europe have strong ambitions for commercial and industrial clean power, and our substantial capital commitment from Quantum through 547 Energy allows us to be a leading player in this growing segment of the renewable energy industry. I am excited to be leading this initiative alongside proven clean energy investors at 547 Energy and Quantum Energy Partners, and our team looks forward to developing projects that will provide economic and sustainability benefits to our customers and the broader communities where we operate.

Spains Self-Consumption Roadmap

In December 2021, the Government of Spains Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge released the Self-Consumption Roadmap for public consultation, which proposes that the country reach up to 14,000 megawatts (MW) of self-consumption power installed capacity by 2030. Spain and other southern European countries have been proactively removing barriers to developing self-consumption clean energy projects in recent years, and NetOn sees the growth of this industry segment as a critical development in meeting the European Commissions 2030 climate and energy framework targets. Spain, a core market for NetOn, already has more than 2,500 MW of self-consumption power projects in operation and is primed to become a leader in self-consumption clean power.

About 547 Energy

547 Energy aims to maximize value for its investors by partnering with leading entrepreneurs who are driving growth in the clean energy economy. To date, 547 Energy has invested in ConnectGen LLC, BlueFloat Energy LLC, Aer Soleir LLC, and certain affiliates of ENORA S.A. 547 Energy was founded and is led by industry veteran Gabriel Alonso and is backed by Quantum Energy Partners, a leading provider of capital to the global energy industry. For more information on 547 Energy, please visit www.547energy.com, email info@547energy.com or contact Travis Salinas at tsalinas@547energy.com.

Why the name 547 Energy?

The human eye sees color over wavelengths ranging approximately from 400 nanometers (violet) to 700 nanometers (red), with the green sitting at roughly 490 to 575 nanometers. A wavelength of 547 nanometers is visible as electric green, a color which represents the overarching aim of 547 Energy  to advance towards a sustainable energy future.

About Quantum Energy Partners

Founded in 1998, Quantum Energy Partners is a leading global provider of private equity capital to the responsibly sourced energy and energy transition & decarbonization sectors, having managed together with its affiliates more than $18 billion in equity commitments since inception. For more information on Quantum, please visit www.quantumep.com or contact Michael Dalton at +1-713-452-2110.

Media Contact

Ally Copple

Ally@InnovantPR.com

713.201.8800




English French

MONTREAL, Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NioBay Metals Inc. ("NioBay" or the "Company") (TSX-V: NBY) (OTCQB: NBYCF), a company focused on exploration, development and use of critical green metals with an Environmentally, Sustainable, Governance, and Indigenous (ESGI) focus, is pleased to announce the signing of a camp site rental agreement with Tribal Logistics/Expedition Helicopter to be used for its James Bay Niobium Project (the Project). The existing camp site is located and is a property of Ontario Northland Railway (ONR) and will be used by NioBay personnel and contractors working on the Project. NioBay will also use transportation services of ONR during the exploration and Prefeasibility study periods.



Environmental protection agreement

On December 7th, NioBay and Moose Cree First Nation signed an updated protection agreement to cover the 2022 drilling program.

Drilling program

The crew is coming back from Christmas holidays and is working to set up the new camp facility on the ONR site. The drilling crew will arrive when the camp is ready. The first drill was moved in December and we are expecting to get a second drill by the end of January.

It has been a very challenging time with logistics, COVID cases and availability of resources, but Im now pleased to say that we are in a good position to succeed in this new drilling program with the two signed agreements. Since we are behind scheduled, we were extremely pleased to get a second drill. Im sure many of our shareholders are waiting for results, as am I, says Jean-Sebastien David, NioBay CEO.

About NioBay Metals Inc.

NioBay will be a leader in the Environment, Sustainability, Governance and Indigenous inclusion supporting the development of smart mine(s) with low carbon consumption and responsible water and wildlife management practices. Critical to our success will be the consent and full participation of the Indigenous communities in whose territories we operate.

The Company holds a 100% interest in the James Bay Niobium Project located 45 km south of Moosonee, in the Moose Cree Traditional Territory of the James Bay Lowlands in Ontario. NioBay also holds a 72.5% interest in the Crevier Niobium and Tantalum project located in Quebec and on the Nitassinan territory of the Pekuakamiulnatsh First Nation and a 48% direct participation in mineral titles situated in the Chibougamau region, Quebec, under a joint venture agreement with SOQUEM.

About Niobium

Niobium is a naturally occurring element. It is a readily available, reliable, soft metal that is ductile, malleable, and highly resistant to corrosion. Because it enhances properties and functionalities, niobium is used in a wide range of materials and applications in the Mobility, Structural and Energy sectors. Niobium transforms materials. When added to materials like steel, glass and aluminum castings, niobium makes them smarter and lower environmental impacts, while also delivering other benefits like better performance, improved safety, and increased value.

Cautionary Statement

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information under the provisions of Canadian securities laws including statements about the Company's plans. Such statements are necessarily based upon a number of beliefs, assumptions, and opinions of management on the date the statements are made and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and future events to differ materially from those anticipated or projected. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors should change, 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) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

Paradox Public Relations

Tel: (514) 341-0408 or 1-866-460-0408

jfmeilleur@paradox-pr.ca

NioBay Metals Inc.

Jean-Sebastien David, geo.

President & CEO

Tel: (514) 866-6500

jsdavid@niobaymetals.com

www.niobaymetals.com
Brooklyn, New York, Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to a new market research report published by Global Market Estimates, the Global Smart Noise Monitoring Market is projected to grow at a CAGR value of 6.5% from 2022 to 2027. The smart noise monitoring market will grow rapidly during the forecast period owing to factors such as increasing adoption of cloud-based system for remote monitoring, rising requirement for noise monitoring for gunshot, rail transit, property noise management, tourist places, race track monitoring, mining, wind plant, petrochemical industry, rising demand for smart portable home based sensors to optimize profit and capacity on home properties, and rising risk of occupational/workplace hearing impairment.







Browse 151 Market Data Tables and 111 Figures spread through 181 Pages and in-depth TOC on Global Smart Noise Monitoring Market - Forecast to 2027





Key Market Insights

As per the type outlook, indoor segment is estimated to grow rapidly from 2022 to 2027

As per the application outlook, home security segment is expected to hold the largest share of the market

B2C stores segment will be growing with the highest growth rate in the market as per the business type classification

The Asia Pacific (India, China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Rest of Asia Pacific) region is expected to be the fastest growing segment in the smart noise monitoring market during the forecast period

North America (the United States, Canada, and Mexico) will have a dominant share in the smart noise monitoring market from 2022 to 2027

NoiseAware, Minut, Quietyme, Acoem, Roomonitor, Netatmo, Operto Connect Guest Technologies, Nuki, WoMaster, Urbiotica, Roomonitor, IoTSens, Alertify, BlueZoo, Inc., Hyper Tech, Noisemote, TNEI, Nevon Projects, CRYSOUND, and IoT SoundSensor are the key players in the smart noise monitoring market.





Request a Sample Copy of the Report @ https://www.globalmarketestimates.com/market-report/smart-noise-monitoring-market-3652





Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2022-2027)

Indoor

Outdoor

Component Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2022-2027)

Smart Phone App & Web

Smart Noise Sensors/Devices

Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2022-2027)

Home Security

Property Security

Medical Centers & Hospitals

Government

Business Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2022-2027)

B2B

B2C

Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2022-2027)

North America

The U.S.

Canada

Mexico



Europe

Germany

UK

France

Spain

Italy

Rest of Europe

Asia Pacific

China

India

Japan

South Korea

Australia

Rest of APAC

Central & South America

Brazil

Argentina

Rest of CSA



Middle East & Africa

Saudi Arabia

UAE

Rest of MEA





Website: Global Market Estimates


SAN RAFAEL, Calif., Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PAC Machinery, a leader in packaging equipment with one of the most diverse ranges of machinery, is celebrating a successful year and announcing a list of the most popular packaging machines purchased by customers in 2021. These best selling packaging machines will be the focus of digital campaigns as recommended machines throughout January and February 2022. Company leaders are also revealing top trends in the industry as they have observed from a very busy year in packaging equipment!



Top Equipment Categories

Machine categories include Automatic Baggers , Vacuum Sealers , Automatic Shrink Wrappers , Bag Sealers , and Flow Wrappers . We had an increase in bag sealers due to medical packagers, said Greg Berguig, VP Sales & Marketing, PAC Machinery. We have excellent options with the validatable medical seals that this market requires. As far as automatic baggers go, being our largest machine category in sales is no surprise with our versatile automatic bagger options that can do it all - including right sizing the bag to the product, printing on the package and an option to use poly bags or tubing, which saves on costs and material lead time, Berguig said.

Top Industries

Top Industries for PAC include ecommerce fulfillment, medical, food, industrial, electronics, and aerospace.

Top PAC Machine Models

Shrink Wrap Machines

6750EL Automatic L-Bar Sealer was a hit. This all-electric system is perfect for packagers on the entry-level side of automatic shrink wrapping

was a hit. This all-electric system is perfect for packagers on the entry-level side of automatic shrink wrapping 6800CS Automatic Side Sealer also saw extremely high demand, especially with the XL version, for large products

Automatic Baggers

Rollbag R785 All-Electric Bagger was a standout with customers looking for a workstation poly bagging solution. With the optional label printer applicator customers are able to print a scannable barcode onto clear stock bags as well as poly mailers for shipping

was a standout with customers looking for a workstation poly bagging solution. With the optional label printer applicator customers are able to print a scannable barcode onto clear stock bags as well as poly mailers for shipping There was high demand for the Rollbag R3200 , one of the most configurable automatic baggers on the market, as well as the Rollbag Magnum Horizontal . Both R3200 and Magnum Horizontal have the option to use poly tubing, which saves customers money, reduces material usage, and has a significantly shorter lead time than pre-opened poly bags

Vacuum Packaging

PVT Plus Tabletop Nozzle-Style Vacuum Sealer had extremely high sales due to being a well-optioned machine at a competitive price point, as well as being available with a short lead time

had extremely high sales due to being a well-optioned machine at a competitive price point, as well as being available with a short lead time Sales for chamber vacuum sealers were also extremely high for industrial packaging applications

Medical Packaging

PAC saw quite a bit of growth in this sector, including with Vertrod Medical Impulse Sealers (all models), PVK Med Vacuum Sealers with our MedLogic control system, as well as Rollbag Medical Baggers that make, label, load, and seal Tyvek poly pouches in one quick step.



These popular packaging machines are helping growing businesses spanning a wide range of industries. PAC Machinery has solutions for almost any type of packaging application and is a major contributing factor for PAC Machinery's continued growth.

Customer Trends

Jason Hudek, Regional Sales Manager in the Southeast, said business is booming from what he has seen, citing the following reasons: (1) An increase in online shopping since the Covid pandemic began (2) High demand for automated packaging solutions from new or growing online merchants (3) Changing requirements from Amazon and other trendsetting retailers along with the transition from boxes to poly mailers.

Fulfillment automatic baggers are on fire right now! I have helped many customers who have been bagging products by hand to automate their process, Hudek said. I am showing the Rollbag R785 Automatic Bagger to customers who are saying - I gotta have it! This machine reduces many headaches for them including doing more with less staff - helpful also as a solution to the labor shortage hurting businesses now. Our automatic baggers right size the bag to the product and print right on the bags - saving time and money with automation, Hudek said.

The pharma and fulfillment industry is another HUGE area of growth for PAC this year, especially for shipping of prescriptions in poly mailers. Hudek said there has also been growth in shrink packaging and flow wrapping machines with food industry clients, including energy bars, to cookies and bakeries. He also noticed an uptick in start-ups transitioning from manual packaging to automation to keep up with customer demand.

The demand for all things chip-related has grown tremendously over the last year and will continue to grow for years to come.

Whether its the auto industry, a computer manufacturer or any other manufacturer that requires a semiconductor for the production of their product, the semiconductor chip crisis has had a serious impact on our lives, said Sean Geniesse, Product Specialist, PAC Machinery. PAC Machinery is honored for the opportunity to assist some of the worlds leading semiconductor manufacturers with their vacuum packaging needs. The PVG Electro Pac Vacuum Sealer is specifically designed for applications in the electronics industry where seal integrity and consistent vacuum levels are critical, Geniesse said.

Growth through Marketing

This year was also the return to in-person large-scale events. PAC Machinery was an exhibitor at Pack Expo in September, the first large expo for the packaging industry. PAC gained a large number of leads and sales from being an exhibitor. Other areas that contributed to the growth included paid target ads, an expanded social media program, consistent email campaigns, new public relations efforts and programs and a robust video marketing program. All promotional efforts combined with buyers in need of PACs solutions, plus growth in key customer industries lead to new records for PAC Machinery.

ABOUT PAC MACHINERY

As a leader in the flexible packaging industry for over 50 years, PAC Machinery is a trusted partner for businesses desiring more from their packaging capabilities. From global companies, pharmaceutical and medical industry manufacturers to online retailers, PAC Machinery can transform packaging operations with customized systems that immediately improve ROI with versatile poly bagging, shrink wrapping, bag sealing, vacuum packaging, and flow wrapping systems. PACs solutions increase productivity through automation, reduce return rates with superior package integrity, minimize package volume to save shipping costs, and extend product shelf life for maximum freshness. With better choices and more experience, PAC Machinery creates the ideal solution for any packaging equipment need.

PAC Machinerys globally recognized brands known for long-lasting, flexible packaging equipment include: Packaging Aids, Vertrod, Clamco, Rollbag, and Converting Technology. Headquartered in San Rafael, California with additional manufacturing facilities in Berea, OH. and Milwaukee, WI. Contact PAC Machinery at 25 Tiburon Street, San Rafael, CA 94901. 1 (800) 985-9570. http://www.pacmachinery.com

MEDIA CONTACT:

Shannon Winans | PAC Machinery Marketing Director

1 (800) 985-9570 x261 | Shannonw@pacmachinery.com





Photos accompanying this announcement are available at:

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PEARLAND, Texas, Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Willie's Grill & Icehouse will officially begin serving its signature Texas comfort food in Pearland, Texas, on Monday, Jan. 17, 2022. The anticipated Pearland outpost is the 19th in the state for the Texas-based, Texas-grown brand, as well as the second location to feature an expansive full bar. The addition underscores Willie's reign as the region's top family-friendly haven, where a renowned scratch Texas kitchen and casual icehouse vibes offer wholesome fun for parents and kids.

Located at 2600 Smith Ranch Road in Pearland, Willie's Pearland is defined by the same mouthwatering menus, sprawling open-air patio spaces, and genuine friendliness that have endeared the brand to families for almost three decades. Retractable glass garage doors facilitate easy movement between outdoors and Willie's colorfully decorated interior, rooted in vintage-inspired nods to the Texas icehouse tradition. Outside, games, five massive flat-screen TVs, and ample seating beckon, providing plenty of room for relaxing, watching a game, and reconnecting with family over classic dishes always made from scratch, served with inspired craft cocktails, local brews, and more.

Willie's steadfast commitment to the community remains an anchor at Willie's Pearland as well. First up: substantial donations to Pearland Independent School District and the Pearland Police Department. Details will be announced soon. In addition to ongoing philanthropic efforts, Willie's presence in Pearland has also created more than 100 local jobs. Willie's actively promotes and hires from within, believing every position has the potential for long-term career growth.

The Willie's Pearland menu features what's made Willie's famous, including burgers so stacked with Texas housemade fixings that they nearly topple over, plus chicken fried steaks that are crispy outside, hot and tender inside, and almost spilling off the plate. Beloved options include Willie's Favorites: The Icehouse Willie, a half-pound beef burger smothered with cheese, bacon, and mushrooms; the Catfish & Shrimp Combo, featuring battered and fried catfish and shrimp, served with fries and cool coleslaw, plus cocktail and tartar sauces and lemon wedges on the side; and Chicken Tenders, hand-breaded and served with fries, with the option to spike the tenders' flavor profile by tossing them in buffalo, BBQ, garlic parmesan, or honey garlic sauces.

Willie's burgers are already legendary: The Cheese Willie, a half-pound patty cooked medium-well and topped with a choice of cheese, then classically finished with mayo, mustard, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and onions; the fiery Cheddar Pepper Burger, featuring roasted red pepper cheese mix and caramelized onions in a jalapeno cheddar bun; the Hickory Cheddar Burger, covered in BBQ sauce, cheddar cheese, pickles, and grilled onions; the Turkey Mushroom Burger, with Monterey Jack cheese, mushrooms, mayo, lettuce, and tomato; and many more. Hand-breaded Onion Rings, Sweet Potato Fries, and Loaded Fries join traditional Fries as mouthwatering side options, while any burger can be topped with mushrooms, jalapenos, grilled onions, or bacon.

Fresh Mahi Mahi Tacos are served grilled or blackened on warm corn tortillas with cilantro slaw and chipotle mayo and street corn plus chips and salsa on the side, while the Smoky Brisket Tacos feature grilled onions, jalapenos, queso, and pico de gallo over tender, slow-cooked brisket all wrapped in a flour tortilla. The Texas Fried Chicken Club, Philly Willie Cheesesteak, Shrimp Po' Boy, and more make the Po' Boys and Sandwiches Menu a heavy hitter, while Baby Back Ribs, the Chicken Fried Steak, the Top Sirloin, and other hearty options from the Butcher Block Menu are decadent comfort food, Texas-style. The Coastal Catch Menu satisfies every seafood craving, from Gulf Shrimp, grilled or blackened, to Fried Catfish and Fried Crawfish Tails.

Willie's Starters are a Texas finger-food gold mine: Willie's Nachos; Fried Jalapenos, Mushrooms, or Pickles; Loaded Fries with queso, bacon, green onions, and ranch; and of course, Icehouse Queso with ground beef number among the fan favorites. Desserts also offer something for everyone, from the Willie Wonka--a triple chocolate brownie with whip cream, chocolate sauce, pecans, and vanilla ice cream--to Peach Cobbler, Bourbon Bread Pudding, and the nostalgia-inducing Apple Sizzler.

"Pearland is the perfect home for Willie's: It's a family-driven, diverse, and welcoming community--all characteristics that define Willie's foundation as well," said Greg Lippert, CEO of Willie's Restaurants. "Through all the incredible challenges of the last couple of years, Willie's has grown and continues to grow. We believe that's a testament to our warm service, delicious food, and people-first culture, and we are thrilled to be able to bring it all to Pearland."

MEDIA CONTACT:

Rachel Austin, 713-305-0419

rachel@hometownsocial.net

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SAO PAULO, Brazil, Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- After many months of work in the pipeline, Nemus is preparing to launch its NFT platform which will provide a collectible NFT experience with various game mechanics that incentivize activity to conserve and preserve the Amazon rainforest.

Nemus differs from existing NFT land projects as it deals with actual land in the Amazon providing a critical extension into the "real" world. This is the logical and inevitable next step in the land-based NFT space as an increasing number of real-estate-based NFT projects launch globally.

Rooted firmly in conservation, Nemus aims to protect rainforest land and the various endangered species of flora and fauna in the Amazon through sustainable economic activities. So far, Nemus has secured 41,000 hectares of actual at-risk land in the Amazon rainforest, an area approximately equivalent to the size of Paris (40 sq mi), Amsterdam (84 sq mi), and San Francisco (46 sq mi) combined. An additional 6.1 million hectares (~15 million acres) is currently under negotiation and soon to be at the ready.

Forming a protective belt in one of the most threatened areas of the Amazon, Nemus will deter illegal loggers, ranchers and any other entity aiming to exploit the rainforest for personal gain. Nemus has prioritized its lands into regions, which are then divided into land "drops." The Genesis NFT Drop, scheduled to be held in Q1 of 2022, will feature ~10,000 NFTs tied to actual parcels of land in the rainforest.

Buying or holding a Nemus NFT makes you a Guardian - an automatic member of the upcoming Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), which also includes the founding and operational members of the Nemus Foundation. The implementation of the DAO will start simply as a sounding board for activity on the land, where Guardians can share their voice and signal toward specific proposals. Many of the decisions for economic activity will be led by the Nemus Foundation in an effort to exemplify the types of sustainable activities available.

As explained in detail in Nemus' litepaper, ownership of an NFT is not a claim to ownership of the land, however, NFTs can be used to earn the native NEA token, unlock ongoing game rewards, and foster sustainable activity on the land. Rewards come in the form of $NEA tokensNemus native tokenenhanced NFT features, and opportunities to mint entirely new NFTs, depending on the gaming mode one chooses to interact with.

About Nemus

Nemus is a DeFi and NFT project that facilitates conservation of the earth's natural resources and habitats. It purchases at-risk lands and protects them by implementing sustainable economic activities. Apart from being backed by several sponsors and partners, Nemus leverages a team of industry and technical experts to help steer its groundbreaking platform towards success.

Its founder and CEO, Flavio de Meira Penna, has owned several companies in Brazil focused on sustainable rainforest operations. He is also a serial entrepreneur, having headed diverse startups in finance and communications.

The team also includes several blockchain and web development experts with a history of success building innovative platforms, as well as several partners who will leverage their extensive networks to position Nemus at the forefront of conservation innovation.

For more information about Nemus, the Genesis NFT drop, and how to mint tickets, visit their website here.

Follow Nemus on Twitter

Take part in the Nemus conversation on Discord

Stay up-to-date with Nemus on Instagram

Media Contact Details

Contact Name: Bernardo Meira Penna

Contact Email: media@nemus.earth

NEMUS 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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WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Monday, Jan. 17, 2022, will mark the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service, the only federally holiday recognized as a National Day of Service. MLK Day encourages all Americans to honor Dr. King through service one another and their communities. Those who wish to serve will join thousands of others nationwide in answering what Dr. King called, lifes most persistent and urgent questionWhat are you doing for others?

AmeriCorps, the federal agency which leads the MLK Day of Service and the nations volunteer efforts, is providing tools and resources for volunteers to find service projects, service organizations to recruit members, and for the media to connect the public to volunteer opportunities in their area.

The MLK Day of Service follows the confirmation of AmeriCorps CEO Michael D. Smith who will help lead the annual day of service. In his first days as CEO, Smith joined The King Center to announce a slate of commemoration events for the Martin Luther King holiday.

Individuals can go to AmeriCorps.gov/mlkday to get involved:

Volunteer in person or virtually at an MLK Day service project

Organize a service event using the resources on AmeriCorps.gov

Pledge to serve with a nonprofit or organization throughout the year

Local service events can be found by visiting AmeriCorps.gov and entering a preferred zip code. Organizations can promote their volunteer opportunities by following instructions found on AmeriCorps.gov.

News outlets interested in covering the MLK Day of Service can:

Air the new MLK Day of Service PSA from AmeriCorps

Encourage audiences to volunteer on MLK Day by sharing service ideas from AmeriCorps.gov

Search our database of volunteer opportunities, reach out to a local nonprofit, or contact AmeriCorps for assistance in finding a local project

Download logos, graphics, images, and PSAs.

Americans in all 50 states will participate in projects that include delivering meals, refurbishing schools and community centers, collecting food and clothing, and building homes. Volunteers also will recruit mentors, provide services for veterans and military families, help citizens improve their financial literacy skills, and more.

In recognition of Dr. Kings legacy of service and leadership to gain equality for all Americans, Congress designated the Martin Luther King, Jr., federal holiday as a national day of service in 1994 and charged AmeriCorps, then known as the Corporation for National and Community Service, with leading this effort.

###

AmeriCorps, the federal agency for volunteerism and national service, provides opportunities for Americans to serve their country domestically, address the nations most pressing challenges, improve lives and communities, and strengthen civic engagement. Each year, the agency invests more than $800 million in grants for local nonprofit, community, tribal, and state organizations; places more than 250,000 AmeriCorps members and AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers in intensive service roles; and empowers millions more to serve as long-term, short-term, or one-time volunteers. Learn more at AmeriCorps.gov.

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CHICAGO, Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ArrowStream, Inc. ("ArrowStream"), the market-leading supply chain intelligence solution for the foodservice industry, announced the appointment of Raleigh McClayton as its new Chief Executive Officer. Raleigh joins ArrowStream after a distinguished career in the restaurant and food tech space.

"ArrowStream is in the right position to serve the foodservice industry that really needs us right now. There's no better person than Raleigh to understand this market, and work with the team to create the most benefit for our customers during these uncertain times," said Rick Willett, Chairman of the Board of Directors at ArrowStream.

Raleigh has led both B2B and B2C brands, most recently serving as President of LoopNet, the largest advertising platform for commercial real estate. Prior to this, he spent over 10 years in the Restaurant and Food Technology industries. He was a member of the leadership team at Grubhub for five years, helping extend Grubhub's products and services from small restaurant operators to larger Enterprise brands and opening new verticals for the business. Earlier in his career, he served as head of digital marketing and digital strategy for Restaurant Brands International for four years, overseeing the growth of brands such as Burger King, Popeye's, and Tim Hortons.

He will be taking over from Jeffrey Stone, who will be moving onto a PE role. ArrowStream is thankful for Mr. Stone's contributions over the last year.

"The breadth of ArrowStream's products empowers foodservice professionals and makes their lives easier. The company has done a tremendous job of building strong relationships with suppliers, distributors, and over 250 restaurant brands across the foodservice industry. I'm excited to work with our talented team and partner with clients to continue solving big problems that impact our daily lives," stated Raleigh. "It was incredibly appealing to lead a company that connects across the value chain to provide transparency, drive efficiency, and showcase opportunities throughout the supply chain. We're investing heavily in our platform to ensure ArrowStream continues to deliver innovative, mission-critical solutions for our clients."

Read more about how ArrowStream is poised for growth here.

About ArrowStream

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The United States has seen soaring numbers in COVID-19 infections in recent weeks, indicating that the end of the pandemic may still be far away. However, the public health emergency, which benefits many Americans amid the crisis, will expire in the middle of January.

Millions of people at risk across the United States could lose their Medical enrollment amid a record-breaking current surge in COVID-19 cases as the deadline of public health emergency approaches, unless President Joe Biden extends the duration of the public health emergency (PHE), which grants continuous coverage to Medicaid enrollees for the duration of the federally declared public health emergency, as per Salon report.

Experts warn Biden

Health experts and advocates warn that if the Biden administration does not renew the PHE, which has been renewed several times since the start of the pandemic in 2020 as per CNN, it could result in a massive disenrollment in Medicaid.

Mark Parkinson, president, and CEO of the American Health Care Association, wrote a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra this week saying that the assistance for people should not stop at this point when COVID-19 cases are fast rising due to omicron.

"We strongly encourage you to continue to extend the PHE declaration and maintain the related Section 1135 and Section 1812(f) waivers, enhanced Medicaid [assistance] to states, and state Medicaid policy flexibilities, such as the waiver for Medicaid determinations," he said in the letter.

Cambridge Health Alliance's Dr. Adam Gaffney said that the continuous coverage provision in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act has been able to help millions of people to maintain their insurance in the ongoing pandemic.

The critical care physician warned that the Biden administration should be extra careful for "kicking people out of Medicaid will kill many." He added that the refusal of Republican-led states to extend the measure has been deadly, based on research.

Washington DC-based think tank Urban Institute estimated that around 8.7 adults and 5.9 children are at risk of losing their Medicaid coverage this year if the Biden administration fails to renew the PHE, as per NBC.

Read Also: Justice Kagan On Vaccine Mandate: 'Extraordinary Emergency Needs Similar Action'

Expiration of PHE will worsen crisis

The situation is a serious concern for many individuals in the United States now who are struggling to keep themselves afloat in this time of health and economic crisis, according to Stan Dorn, director of the National Center for Coverage Innovation at Families USA, a left-leaning consumer health advocacy organization.

He said when the PHE expires, Medicaid beneficiaries might lose their enrollment from the program even for a minor issue such as not updating their data or missing a letter in their mail about their change of status due to eviction, bad internet access to upload paperwork, and difficulty in the English language.

"If English isn't your primary language if you have to upload paperwork and don't have good internet access if you're working multiple jobs, this isn't going to be an easy nut to crack," Dorn said.

Experts at the Commonwealth Fund explained in a blog post that when the PHE expires, there will be a redetermination of millions of Medicaid beneficiaries, resulting in coverage losses that could affect Black and Latinx individuals who have suffered from dislocation other risks during the pandemic.

They recommended that every sector of society and government agencies work together to ensure that millions will still be keeping assistance even after the PHE expires.

Related Article: Trump Administration Officials Prioritized Politics Over Science in COVID-19 Response, House Oversight Committee Says

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Phoenix, AZ, Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman , head of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) , joined Senator Mark Kelly in Arizona last week to meet with small business owners and local organizations working with the SBA's Community Navigator Pilot Program and other initiatives that are helping more entrepreneurs access valuable public resources.

Arizona's small business community has shown incredible grit and resilience throughout the pandemic, many of them tapping into vital federal COVID relief through SBA as they pivoted and adapted to drive the state's economic recovery," said Administrator Guzman. "My thanks to Senator Kelly, whose advocacy and leadership for Arizona has brought our Community Navigator program to life, and to all of our private partners who are helping America's small businesses and entrepreneurs connect and access the resources they need to grow and thrive, regardless of the zip code they are in. As part of this effort, we are continuing to streamline SBA programs and service as to make sure we meet our small businesses where they are and help them seize the opportunities ahead, whether that means helping them expand into e-commerce or rebuild and capitalize on improvements to Americas critical systems under President Bidens new infrastructure law."

Administrator Guzman kicked off her Arizona visit at Moreno's Mexican Grill in Mesa with Senator Kelly and restaurant owner Jose Moreno. Morenos survived the pandemic with support through the SBAs Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. During that stop, Administrator Guzman met with several participants in the SBA's new Community Navigator Pilot Program , which leverages organizations that have built trust in their local communities, to hear how they are helping businesses like Moreno's recover from the pandemic.

The Community Navigator Program will help Arizona small businesses cut through red tape to keep their doors open, workers on the payroll and growing into the future. I will continue to work with Republicans, Democrats, and this administration to ensure Arizonas small businesses get the support they need to recover from this pandemic, said Senator Kelly.

During the visit, Administrator Guzman also connected with Local First Arizona at Frances Boutique in Phoenix, AZ. Local First Arizona is a nonprofit organization committed to community and economic development throughout Arizona. While there, Administrator Guzman, Senator Kelly, and small business owners of Frances Boutique, Derek Sips, Linger Longer Lounge, and Voyce Threads and Root Salon spoke about the future of small business with the rise of e-commerce and how the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will increase broadband and internet access for underserved communities across the country.

The trip marks Administrator Guzman's first visit to Arizona since her confirmation. Since June, Administrator Guzman has visited 21 states and U.S. territories, including Puerto Rico.

###

About the U.S. Small Business Administration

The U.S. Small Business Administration makes the American dream of business ownership a reality. As the only go-to resource and voice for small businesses backed by the strength of the federal government, the SBA empowers entrepreneurs and small business owners with the resources and support they need to start, grow or expand their businesses, or recover from a declared disaster. It delivers services through an extensive network of SBA field offices and partnerships with public and private organizations. To learn more, visit www.sba.gov.

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A student wearing a mask looks out the window of a school bus as it pulls up to East Gloucester Elementary School on Sept. 16, 2020. Massachusetts ublic school students ages 5 and older, staff and educators are now required to wear masks indoors through Feb. 28, 2022.
From left, Anthony and Debra Velleman on the beach in Panama just days before they boarded a plane that crashed into the ocean. Debra is missing and Anthony was injured.
Goshen, IN (46526)

Today

A steady rain early. Showers with perhaps a rumble of thunder developing in the afternoon. High 57F. Winds ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall possibly over one inch..

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Showers in the evening, then cloudy overnight. Low 44F. Winds N at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
For Pierre Gasly, 2022 is an exciting year. The Frenchman will begin his third full season at AlphaTauri since his return in mid-2019. It seems to be his last season at his current team. The question is, therefore: where can Gasly go after 2022?

The return to AlphaTauri

After an unsuccessful adventure at Red Bull Racing, Gasly returned to what was then called Toro Rosso. Strong results and a first podium finish saw the Frenchman regain his form, which he took with him into 2020. Since then, no one can ignore Gasly's qualities.

Gasly qualified in the top ten time and time again and was even able to reach the top six on the odd occasion. In addition, he turned out to be a strong racer on the Sunday. When crazy things happened on the track, Gasly often managed to make the best of it. In Italy, for example, he scored his first victory after a crazy race and he managed to score another podium place after a crash by Max Verstappen and a mistake by Lewis Hamilton in Azerbaijan.

All-French team

There seem to be a few options for Gasly when it comes to a next team. The first of these is Alpine. Esteban Ocon has signed a long contract with the team, but Fernando Alonso is fixed until 2022. Moreover, the Spaniard will already reach the age of 41 in 2022 and seems to be embarking on his farewell tour.

The first of two problems with this switch could well be the relationship between Ocon and Gasly, as the two Frenchmen would not get along well. The second problem is Formula 2 champion Oscar Piastri who deserves a seat in Formula 1 after all his victories in the junior classes.

Replacing a multiple champion

Aston Martin is the next option, but only if Sebastian Vettel doesn't deliver or puts a stop to his career by himself. Lance Stroll will not be easily sidelined by father Lawrence who holds the reins at the British team. For Gasly it could initially be a step aside, but Aston Martin seems to be working hard behind the scenes. For example, the first steps are already visible when it comes to the team's new factory.

McLaren currently has no young drivers who have a serious chance of a seat in Formula 1 in 2023. The only driver currently under the McLaren Young Driver Programme is Ugo Ugochukwu. However, the American is only fourteen years old and has yet to make his debut with the cars. Should Daniel Ricciardo have a dramatic season, as the vast majority of 2021 was, Gasly looks like a serious option for the men in papaya.

Read more Zhou honours deceased athlete with choice of starting number

The outsiders

The rumour appeared earlier, but Mercedes also seems to be interested in Gasly's services. Lewis Hamilton is still keeping quiet when it comes to whether or not he will continue in Formula 1. Even if he continues in 2022, it remains to be seen whether he will continue in 2023. Gasly could be ideal for Mercedes. He knows how rival Red Bull operates and has shown great progression.

Last but not least, we must not forget Red Bull. Gasly has already had his first chance with the team and wasted it, but even Helmut Marko and Christian Horner cannot ignore the progression Gasly has made. Should Sergio Perez not deliver in 2022, Gasly is a very dangerous option who could just make his comeback at the Austrian top team.

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Kazakhstan officials reported on Monday that law enforcers detained almost 8,000 individuals during protests that turned into violent attacks last week, which President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev described as "terrorist aggression."

Kazakhstan's National Security Committee reported that the situation is now "stabilized" and "under control." At the same time, the Interior Ministry said that the police had detained a total of 7,939 people in the worst unrest in the country's history since it gained independence 30 years ago, according to the Associated Press.

On Monday, government officials have declared a day of mourning for the victims of the violent attacks that resulted in the death of 164 people, including three children.

The protests started on January 2 in the western area of Kazakhstan, when prices of liquified petroleum gas used to fuel cars soared. The demonstrations soon spread all over the country, reflecting the frustrations with the authoritarian rule of Tokayev.

The government declared a 180-day price cap on vehicle fuel and a moratorium on increasing utility rates. However, the unrest escalated and prompted the resignation of cabinet officials and the replacement of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev as chief of the National Security Council.

Eventually, the protests became more aggressive for several days, as attackers set buildings and vehicles on fire, forced cancellation of airport flights, and gunfires and explosions rocked the city walls.

Amid the turmoil, President Tokayev declared a state of emergency nationwide and sought the assistance of the Russia-led intergovernmental military alliance Collective Security Treaty Organization. Last week, the coalition deployed 2,500 to help stabilize the situation in Kazakhstan, as per the CNBC report.

Read Also: Kazakh Pres Orders Troops To Shoot 'Terrorists'; US Urges To Find Peaceful Solutions

'Demonstrators Instigated by Terrorists'

President Tokayev dismissed the reported attack of law enforcers on peaceful demonstrators as "disinformation." He claims that the protests were instigated by "terrorists" backed by foreigners.

On Monday, the Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan said in a statement that the peaceful protests were "hijacked" by extremist, terrorist, and criminal organizations. They reported that there were individuals who have military combat experience "in the ranks of radical Islamist groups" among the attackers.

On Friday, Tokayev ordered the military and police to shoot to kill "terrorists" involved in the violent uprising as per NBC News.

Tokayev Vows To Expose Masterminds Of Destabilization Attempt

In a special virtual summit of the CSTO on Monday, President Tokayev vowed to disclose further evidence of a "terrorist aggression" against his country to the global community. He insisted that the Kazakhstan government had met the protesters' demands and claimed that the attacks were made by armed militant groups that wanted to bring down the government.

Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his support to Tokayev and echoed the latter's sentiment. He called the unrest "an act of aggression" that originated externally. "We understand that the events in Kazakhstan are not the first and not the last attempt at interfering in the internal affairs of our states from the outside," Putin said during the special summit.

Meanwhile, the National Security Committee said that the terrorist "hotspots" in Kazakhstan have already been "neutralized." The panel also informed that the law enforcers had released Kyrgyz music artist Vikram Ruzakhunove, who got arrested due to his alleged involvement in the protests that sparked outrage in Kyrgyzstan.

Related Article: Russia Blames Washington Wars for Kazakhstan Crisis as US, NATO Take Firm Line Ahead of Talks About Ukraine Tensions

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Grand Haven, MI (49417)

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Rain likely. High 53F. Winds NE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

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Cloudy skies early, then partly cloudy after midnight. Low 41F. Winds N at 10 to 20 mph.
Top officials of the United States and Russia began the special talks that are expected to defuse the military hostility in Ukraine. However, due to high tensions and low trust, the discussions have produced no breakthrough yet.

The high-stakes meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, is a part of the European discussions on arms control and other significant issues that were kicked off by US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin in June 2021.

During the talks, US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman led the negotiations for the United States while Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov served as Moscow's lead negotiator.

Read Also: EU Urges Role in the Upcoming Russia-US Security Guarantee Talks Over Ukraine Crisis

Difficult talks between Washington, Kremlin begin this week

Ryabkov has expected that discussions in the Geneva summit will be "difficult" as Russia attempted to negotiate guarantees that NATO will stop its eastward expansion to the former Soviet states like Ukraine, according to a report by the Associated Press.

However, the US downplayed Russia's concern as it goes against the national security arrangements of countries.

According to State Department spokesperson Ned Price, Sherman has emphasized the United State's commitment to international principles of "territorial integrity, and freedom of sovereign nation to choose their alliances" during dinner on Sunday. In the past, Ukraine expressed its intention to join NATO.

US officials have also expressed their openness to the possibility of future deployments of offensive missiles in Ukraine and limiting American and NATO military exercises in Eastern Europe. The condition: Russia must withdraw from Ukraine.

US negotiators are expected to put Russia's real intent to the test during discussions during the Strategic Security Dialogue discussions, according to Al Jazeera. One analyst said that the best hope is that the two parties will be able to express their concerns and search for "possible common ground."

Blinken sees no significant results from US, Russia talks

However, Secretary of State Antony Blinken does not expect any breakthroughs from the talks this week. Instead, he sees positive development in agreeing to de-escalate tensions for a while, then resumes discussions in the future. But the United States must see tensions go down to determine progress, as per CNBC.

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg believes that the Geneva talks may not produce the expected resolutions, but it could start a journey to prevent conflicts.

"It is possible to make deals with Russia," Stoltenberg told the media members at the NATO headquarters in Brussels.

The Geneva talks will be followed by Russia-Nato negotiations in Brussels on Wednesday and a meeting Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) in Europe in Vienna on Thursday.

In recent months, Russia has been intensifying its military presence at its border with Ukraine. The move has led to concerns about the Kremlin's planned invasion of oil-rich Ukraine. However, Russie denied such claims, saying it had the power to position troops within its territory.

In December, Putin and Biden have engaged in discussions to assure that Ukraine's desire to join NATO will be rejected as Russia sees the expansion of the western military coalition as a security threat. However, Biden did not give such assurance.

Related Article: Joe Biden Outmaneuvered by Putin Regarding the Ukraine Border; Russia at an Upper Hand Advantage That Washington Will Regret

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David Carroll is a Chattanooga news anchor, and his new book Hello Chattanooga: Famous People Who Have Visited the Tennessee Valley is available on his website, ChattanoogaRadioTV.com. You may contact him at 900 Whitehall Road, Chattanooga, TN 37405, or at RadioTV2020@yahoo.com.
Greensburg, IN (47240)

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Becoming windy with showers and thunderstorms likely. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High around 75F. Winds SSW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

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A scientist in Cyprus claimed he had identified a new coronavirus variant that combines the traits of the dangerous Delta and highly contagious Omicron variants of COVID-19. It is called Deltacron.

Leondios Kostrikis, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus, said that he and a team of researchers had identified 25 cases of the new variant, resulting in the hospitalization of 11. However, he told Cypriot channel Sigma TV that there is no information yet on the possible impacts of Deltacron, according to CNBC.

"We will see in the future if this strain is more pathological or more contagious or if it will prevail," he said.

Read Also: Omicron Vs. Delta Variant: Which Could Harm Our Health Worse?

Deltacron Variant Was Actually a Laboratory Mistake

Kostrikis' discovery caused concerns on social media during the weekend, which prompted several experts to dismiss the so-called 'Deltacron.' They said what the Cypriot professor discovered was actually a laboratory mistake.

Among the critics of the Deltacron was UK virologist Tom Peacock, who doubts that the new 25 cases that Kostrikis presented to the media resulted from laboratory samples becoming contaminated.

"They do not cluster on the phylogenetic tree and have a whole Artic primer sequencing amplicon of Omicron in an otherwise Delta backbone," Peacock, who works at Imperial Department of Infectious Disease in London, posted on Twitter.

Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious diseases researcher of the World Health Organization, says Deltacron is fake. She explains in her tweet that it is possibly a result of "sequencing artifact" or "lab contamination of Omicron sequence fragments in a Delta specimen."

She even quipped to leave the merging of names to "celebrity couples."

A person with #COVID19 + #Influenza does NOT have #Flurona #Deltacron is not real and is likely due to sequencing artifact (lab contamination of #Omicron sequence fragments in a #Delta specimen)



Lets not merge of names of infectious diseases and leave it to celebrity couples  Krutika Kuppalli, MD FIDSA (@KrutikaKuppalli) January 9, 2022

New COVID-19 Still Needs Further Studies

Global medical expert Dr. Boghuma Kabisan Titanji also shares the same opinion that Deltacron was probably a product of contamination of lab samples. However, she added that with the soaring transmission level of COVID-19 globally, it is likely "that recombination is occurring," and it may lead to more results like this.

"Will this lead to more concerning variants? That is possible but nobody knows," Dr. Titanji said. But she added that instead of worrying about the emergence of a new variant with names sounding like Transformers protagonists, it is better to ensure the availability of vaccines for everyone, plus the implementation of other strategies that will effectively suppress the fast transmission of COVID-19.

However, Dr. Kostrikis answered his doubters via a statement sent to Bloomberg over the weekend. He explains that the cases he has identified as Deltacron show an "evolutionary pressure to an ancestral strain to acquire these mutations. He added that the mutations are "not a result of a single recombination event."

The Cypriot professor further stated that his research team came to their findings after processing the samples in multiple sequencing procedures in more than one country.

Dr. Kostrikis also said that at least one sequence from Israel shows traits of Deltacron. He disclosed to Sigma TV that they submitted their data to GISAID global database in Munich, as per Independent report.

Since the global pandemic started in 2020, the COVID-19 virus has already infected more than 307 million people worldwide, including more than 60 million infections in the United States.

Related Article: Study Identifies Certain Antibodies That can Stop Omicron Infection, Affect the Notorious Spike Proteins

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GREENWICH  With Greenwich expected to face frigid temperatures this week, the town is advising residents to take precautions.

A low of 11 degrees with wind chills of zero to 10 below zero were expected overnight into Tuesday morning, according to the National Weather Service. For Tuesday, the high temperature is forecast to be 18 degrees, with sunny skies but wind chills making it feel from -5 to 5 degrees. On Tuesday night, the low temperature will plunge to 12 degrees.

As the Arctic air moved into the region, Gov. Ned Lamont announced Monday that he had activated the states severe cold weather protocol, which allows local authorities to coordinate sheltering people who need it. Its the first time this winter the protocol has been activated.

While weve had relatively mild weather so far this winter, it looks like we are about to receive our first blast of freezing cold air beginning (Monday) evening, Lamont said in a statement. Being outdoors in these Arctic conditions for extended periods is not safe, and we must spread the word that shelters and warming centers are open all across Connecticut. If you or someone you know is in need of shelter, call 2-1-1 and they will direct you to a nearby location and they can also provide transportation if necessary.

The freezing temperatures also pose a significant threat for poorly insulated pipes to freeze and burst, the National Weather Service said. Those who have exposed pipes can let the water drip overnight to prevent freezing.

Overnight lows will be in the teens and low 20s for the rest of the week, according to the National Weather Service.

On Monday, the town Department of Health said residents need to be careful of hypothermia and frostbite during cold snaps.

Exposure to these weather conditions, whether indoors or outside, can cause serious or life-threatening health emergencies, the department said in a statement. Although anyone can be affected by the cold, infants, children, the elderly and those with medical conditions are particularly at risk.

Residents should limit their time outdoors, including for exercise, and wear layers of loose clothing with hat, gloves or mittens, heavy coat and insulated shoes, Frostbite can occur in a short amount of time, so make sure all exposed skin is protected.

To keep residents warm, the town suggests heading to Greenwich Library, its branches in Cos Cob and Byram, or the independent Perrot Memorial Library in Old Greenwich during regular business hours Tuesday. Also, the Margenot Atrium in the Greenwich Public Safety Complex is open every day 24 hours a day.

Masks and social distancing will be required, but Public Information Officer Capt. Mark Zuccerella said on Monday that residents can come in to sit, warm up and charge their phones quietly.

The building will always be a place of refuge from the elements, Zuccerella said. People cant take up residence there, but can use it as a respite.

There are people in town without places to live or who sleep inside their cars, which can be extremely dangerous in such cold weather, Zuccerella said. The GPD works with its community partners to help anyone in these types of living situations, he said.

We will always try and find someone a warm place to sleep, even if it is at headquarters until we find a hotel or a shelter, Zuccerella said.

The police work closely with the town Health and Human Services Departments, the local Red Cross chapter in Cos Cob, nearby shelters and, if needed, Liberation Programs Inc., which helps with addiction services, he said.

Staff Writer Peter Yankowski contributed to this story.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
A 9-year-old girl claims in a lawsuit that former CNN producer John Griffin repeatedly sexually abused her at his Vermont ski house.

The girl, identified in the lawsuit as Jane Doe, filed the complaint in state Superior Court in Bridgeport through a custodian listed in the filing as Janet Doe. The suit seeks unspecified damages.

This action is brought for personal injuries, including emotional distress and all other attendant consequences, caused by the horrific sexual abuse, sexual exploitation and sexual assault of the plaintiff, the lawsuit stated.

Joel Faxon, the New Haven lawyer who filed the lawsuit Monday on behalf of the girl, said the child is living with the custodian in Connecticut after moving from Nevada.

Griffin, 44, of Stamford, a long-time staffer and producer for CNN, was fired last month following his arrest by the FBI on federal charges, alleging he tried to lure women to his Vermont ski home to train their daughters to be sexually submissive.

Griffins attorney did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment.

Faxon confirmed that his client in the lawsuit is the same victim alleged to have been sexually abused by Griffin in the federal indictment.

We are seeking to restrain his assets so he doesnt have the financial wherewithal to abuse another child, Faxon told Hearst Connecticut Media Group.

Griffin has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Vermont and has pleaded not guilty to three counts of using a facility of interstate commerce to attempt to entice minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity.

According to the indictment, Griffin began using the alternative website, alt.com, to seek women who were submissive and open-minded.

Griffin, who moved to Stamford from Norwalk after separating from his wife about two years ago, then used messaging features on Kik and Google Hangouts to communicate with some of the women, pretending to be the parents of underage girls, according to the indictment.

In the communications, Griffin tried to persuade parents to let him train their daughters to be sexually submissive, the indictment stated.

In June 2020, Griffin told a mother of 9- and 13-year-old girls that she needed to have her daughters trained properly, the indictment stated. Griffin then transferred about $3,000 to the woman for plane tickets so she and her 9-year-old could fly from Nevada to Bostons Logan airport, the indictment stated.

The mother and child flew to Boston in July 2020. Griffin picked them up and drove them to his home in Ludlow, Vt., where prosecutors said the girl was forced to engage in illegal sexual contact.

After the trip, prosecutors said Griffin tried to bribe a family member of the girl who confronted him about the accusations.

The girls adoptive mother, whose name Hearst Connecticut Media is withholding to protect the childs identity, was charged in August 2020 with two counts of child abuse, two counts of sexual assault against a child under 14 and lewdness with a minor under 14. Her case remains pending in the Henderson Justice Court in Nevada.

Griffins indictment details allegations that he tried to entice two other children over the internet to participate in sexual activity.

In April 2020, Griffin coordinated a virtual training session, where he instructed a woman and her 14-year-old daughter to remove their clothes during the video chat, prosecutors said.

In June 2020, prosecutors said, Griffin offered a trip to a woman and her 16-year-old daughter to his Vermont ski house for sexual training involving the child.

In one of the conversations, Griffin told someone claiming to be the father of a child that he sexually trained girls as young as 7 years old, the indictment stated.
Apples iMessage introduced free messages between iPhone users a decade ago has been discriminating against Google users, and that has been affecting mental health of Android users, a recent report from The Wall Street Journal revealed.

Hiroshi Lockheimer, Senior VP at Google then took it to Twitter to address Apple. He stated that using peer pressure and bullying as a way to sell products is disingenious for a company that has humanity and equity as a core part of its marketing. Androids own account chimed in, saying texting should bring us closer together and there is a solution.

Users of iMessage on iPhone have other iMessage users' chat bubbles in blue, while messages from Android users appear green, and it has been like that since they were able to use their native messaging app on the Google OS back in 2016. According to WSJ, teens and college students dread the ostracism that comes with a green text.

Surveys among some users, such as a 24-year-old masters student from upstate New York, revealed people in her inner friend circle reacted with ew, thats gross when another user had green chat bubbles.

While the solution to this problem is pretty simple - just change the color or put the app on Play Store - Apple execs think differently. Their attempt is to make the messaging platform the industry standard, but without monetizing the app, it would hurt Apple more than it would help, emails linked with the Epic litigation revealed.

Source | Via
Tucked among the international luxury brands of Tumon Sands Plaza is a bright spot of decidedly local beauty. The Lees Reyes Art Gallery is now open in the space formerly known as Castro Art Gallery, and is under the ownership of local artist Dawn Lees Reyes.

Reyes has been a fixture on the Guam art scene since she moved to the island with her husband over 20 years ago. Her exhibit Mystical Places was on display in the space this past November when it was still known as Castro Art Gallery, and ownership shifted to her shortly thereafter.

When former owner Ric Castro decided to pass the torch, it was in the interest of growing the culture of visual arts on Guam.

Theres sort of a cultural renaissance beginning to happen with the visual arts, because we went from  pre-pandemic was really nothing for the visual arts. And then I opened my gallery that was sort of the seed being planted. ... So I think I just felt like it was time to open a second gallery, but still keep that one open. So now youve got two venues, Castro said.

He will be opening a hybrid gallery and studio space in Harmon this year called Napsand Art Studio & Gallery, and envisions future collaborations with the Lees Reyes Gallery and other local arts groups in the form of weekend long art celebrations. Castro is especially looking forward to the collective impact they can have on Guams art scene.

The visual arts is sort of rekindling, so to speak, within the art community. And I think all we really need now is just more art galleries and venues in which to tap into the local talent and start showcasing these new visual artists, he said.

Reyes shares this community-centered outlook, making her the perfect successor to the gallery.

Ric Castro decided to go do some other things for his art career, which is great ... (The mall) asked me if I would like to take over, which I thought was really nice of them, that they would put that kind of faith in me  It was a frenzy to get it all open in time for the first of January, but we did it, Reyes said.

The gallery is now open, and Reyes is proud to begin her time in the space with a group show called Celebrate 2022, which features seven artists who either live in or are connected to Guam. Their styles differ drastically, making a walk through the gallery a true visual feast. For Reyes, showcasing that diversity is a gift.

What I want to do with this gallery is make it an inclusive place where people can show their work. Artists often are very frustrated because they work and they work and they work, and then theres nowhere to put their work. So they dont get seen. It gets discouraging sometimes, Reyes said.

Of course, its a gallery, its a professional gallery. So theres certain standards about what can go in here. But I would like to open it up to lots of different types of artists, lots of different genres and just make it something where its exciting and its supportive of the creative community here.

Celebrate 2022 features work from Judy Flores, Ric Castro, Yeon Sook Park, Victor E. Consaga III, Olivia Newman, Snyder Macaraeg, Dorathina Herrero, and Reyes herself. Their work includes fine photography, abstract paintings, landscapes, and beyond.

Im very fortunate to have seven artists in here who were willing to support me on this beginning for the Lees Reyes Art Gallery. I have quite a few different artists in here, all professionals, some new ones  and then we also have a bargain back room where some artwork is hanging thats not framed, and so its lower priced. And so theres something here for everybody, Reyes said.

I am so thrilled to be able to support the arts here. And for me, its a way to give back to Guam because Guam has been very good to me in terms of the arts. Im a former teacher, and so I think its just all part of that thought process  The more we have out there, the better it is. Its not about competition, its about just being able to present what other people do. Theres so much talent here, and its very untapped, Reyes said.

Reyes is already dreaming up ways to tap into that talent, and envisions exhibits that will rotate roughly once every month or two, as well as demonstrations, work with local art groups, and partnerships with schools. When Celebrate 2022 closes on Jan. 29, Reyes will set to work setting up the gallerys next group show.

My next exhibit thats going up is going to be called Birds In Paradise, and its going to be about birds. So I was sitting around talking with my friend who is putting together a migratory bird presentation at Jeffs Pirates Cove  Thats going to happen February 5. And then I thought, What a great idea! Reyes said.

So the next exhibit will open here the week after, I think thats the 12th ... The whole idea is to promote birds and the fact that theyre an important element of our ecosystem, and theyre struggling to come back after so many years. So its just a good community awareness kind of thing. And another way for artists to get out there and get painting, or sculpting, or whatever they do.
Astronomers captured an image of a black hole eruption which has a size of 16 full moons in our sky. With regards to its location, it is in the nearest radio galaxy of the Milky Way.

Black Hole Image Shows Massive Eruption Equivalent to 16 Full Moons

In a study published on Nature Astronomy last December, scientists announced that they captured the most detailed image yet of a black hole eruption located in the galaxy Centaurus A.

The said galaxy contains the nearest actively consuming supermassive black hole, per EarthSky.

Wow! New images of huge jets of radiation in the most detailed picture yet of the supermassive black hole in galaxy Centaurus A. 



Find out more about this monster black hole: https://t.co/4clHepQKQh



 Ben McKinley/ ICRAR/ Curtin University/ Connor Matherne/ LSU. pic.twitter.com/NGhs5g1paW  EarthSky (@earthskyscience) January 9, 2022

To further explain, Centaurus A, also known as NGC 5128, is an elliptical galaxy that is the nearest radio galaxy of the Milky Way. It is an excellent way for astronomers to investigate the active supermassive black hole since it is relatively near Earth.

Moreover, this black hole discovered has a mass of 55 million Suns with remarkable jets that stretch for 1.8 million light-years.

On the other hand, with regards to the size of the black hole eruption, its eruptive radio bubble spans the size of 16 full moons in our sky despite its distance the fact that it is 12 million light-years away from Earth.

In terms of its creation, the gigantic radio bubbles were created as the black hole consumes stars and dust in this remote galaxy, producing jets that spew materials out at near light speed. The stated radio bubbles were reported to be hundreds of millions of years old and extend eight degrees across the sky.

In relation to this, a full moon only covers half a degree.

Read Also: Thanos vs. Kingpin: Wilson Fisk Actor Claims Thanos Will Lose!

How Did Astronomers Capture Black Hole Eruption Image?

For those curious to know how the black hole image was captured, the researchers explained that they took the image through the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope, which is operated by Curtin Observatory in Australia.

Furthermore, the new study that developed the black hole map was led by Dr. Benjamin McKinley of Curtin University.

According to McKinley, previous radio observations could not handle the extreme brightness of the jets, and details of the larger area surrounding the galaxy were distorted. However, their new image overcomes these limitations.

The lead author also explained that through this research, they were able to combine the radio observations with optical and x-ray data in order to help them better understand the physics of these supermassive black holes.

Furthermore, the astrophysicist from Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) Dr. Massimo Gaspari added that this study validated a novel theory known as "Chaotic Cold Accretion" (CCA), which is emerging in different fields.

Gaspari described that "In this model, clouds of cold gas condense in the galactic halo and rain down onto the central regions, feeding the supermassive black hole," per Good News Network.

The astrophysicist also said that the black hole, triggered by the rain, retaliates by blasting energy back by radio jets, inflating the magnificent lobes shown, which was clearly shown in the MWA image.

Through the MWA's extremely wide field-of-view, superb radio-quiet location and excellent sensitivity, MWA director Professor Steven Tingay remarked that the research was made possible.

Apart from this telescope used, the researchers expect to learn more about Centaurus A when the world's largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometer Array, goes online.

Related Article: SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Launch: NASA Satellite That Can Analyze Black Holes Going to Space, Watch Blastoff Here
The omicron variant is prompting more residents to be tested for COVID-19, according to Dr. Nathaniel Berg, chairman of the governors Physicians Advisory Group.

It is highly contagious, and people are understanding that their threshold for testing should be a bit lower than it was before, Berg said. They know that you dont have to have a prolonged exposure to people to get the omicron variant and to get infected with COVID-19 We had anticipated the demand (for testing) would go up dramatically.

Bergs Guam Radiology Consultants, in Tamuning, had a long line of residents Monday, waiting for free rapid COVID-19 testing, using the newly available Cue test, which gives faster results.

Berg said its possible some of those residents lined up at Guam Radiology Consultants after the government switched its free testing at the Tiyan carnival grounds from first-come, first-served to online appointments.

The change at the Tiyan testing site happened Monday, according to the Joint Information Center, in order to make the testing process more efficient and reduce long waits. Cars sometimes have been lined up for hours before testing began.

Residents can schedule a testing time online for Tiyan, at tinyurl.com/covidstopswithme, with limited drive-ups accepted.

I think their schedule (for Tiyan) got full so that we became the secondary choice, and some of the other testing options are not open, Berg said about the long line at his clinic. We opened up early, and were going to stay open later to accommodate the large demand.

The idea is to get tested and isolated, and thatll help slow down the transmission in the community, Berg said. Our threat right now is for those who are poor in terms of health care, and for those who are unvaccinated or are not fully vaccinated and have comorbid conditions.

Quarantine, isolation

Some of the 1,448 people who were in active isolation for COVID-19 on Sunday will be able to get out earlier than expected, following new guidance from the Department of Public Health and Social Services.

According to the guidance released Sunday night, those that test positive only need to isolate for five days, down from the previous ten, if they are fully vaccinated or boosted and are symptom-free.

We are working on the number of people who would meet that criteria, so well be contacting them and going through checking for symptoms, checking for vaccine status, making sure that they meet the eligibility, and then clearing them for isolation, Public Health spokesperson Janela Carrera said.

Public Healths guidance differs slightly from what the Centers for Disease Control and prevention recommends, and people who are unvaccinated still need to sit for the ten-day isolation.

The decision comes as more evidence suggests that COVID-19 spreads mainly in the early days of infection, said Bob Leon Guerrero, acting chief medical officer of Public Health, typically two days before symptoms begin and then two days after.

Usually, within a few days youre not spreading it. I think its true across the board but more so with (the omicron variant), Leon Guerrero said.

As for close contacts with a positive case, those who have gotten a booster, a second Pfizer or Moderna dose in the last five months, or the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the last two months will be exempt from quarantine. People who have had COVID-19 in the last 90 days are also exempt from quarantine, while a five-day quarantine is recommended for those who are vaccinated but waiting on a booster.

Close contacts who are unvaccinated must still quarantine for 10 days if identified by Public Health.

Despite soaring COVID-19 rates, the new quarantine protocols would still protect those who were vaccinated, social distancing and masked, Leon Guerrero said.

The likelihood of them catching it is not zero, but its still pretty low.

Most of the new cases were because of Christmas and New Years celebrations, he added.

Whether we had a quarantine for 10 days, 30 days, it wouldnt have made a difference because (people) were seeing their families.
Joyner Sked is requesting to have charges connected to the death of former Humatak mayor Daniel Sanchez be dismissed because the shorts of alleged co-defendant Rudy Quinata were not confiscated.

In the motion written by Skeds attorney, Terrence Timblin, he says the Guam Police Department made an astounding blunder in their failure to confiscate shorts worn by Quinata when he was arrested on Apr. 3, 2021.

Timblin discovered the shorts had not been confiscated, although they were presumed to be, when he visited the crime lab, according to the motion.

Timblin argued the shorts were not confiscated because Quinata had told officers at the time of his arrest that Sked committed the alleged murder.

The police knew that a dead body was found in Quinatas house on the same day of his arrest. They knew that blood was splattered throughout the house and near the entrance. They knew it was at least plausible that some of the blood could have ended up on the shorts, Timblin wrote in the motion. They knew Quinata was blaming Sked for the killing. And they knew that discovery of blood on the shorts would be vital to Skeds defense as it would deflect blame to Quinata.

Timblin did however also request if the case is not dismissed, the jury should be instructed to not take lost evidence into consideration at trial.

Alleged murder

In April 2021, Sanchez was found dead with blunt force trauma and stab wounds inside of Quinatas residence.

Quinata was the first to be arrested and at the time made a statement that Joyner did it, in relation to the alleged murder, charging documents state.

Sked was picked up a couple of days later and reserved her right to remain silent but police were told by a witness Sked bragged about killing someone, according to charging documents.

The two were indicted on charges of aggravated murder with special allegations of use of a deadly weapon in the commission of a felony.




Haiti - FLASH : Bus Hostages released by the PNH





The Haitian National Police (PNH) informs that following the hostage-taking on Saturday January 8, 2022, passengers of a bus at La Croix Perisse, a locality located between the commune of Estere and Gonaives (Artibonite) https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35671-haiti-flash-a-bus-hijacked-nearly-60-passengers-and-the-driver-under-hostage.html , a strong police operation was carried out a few hours later, which "led to the release of the hostages from the Saint-Jean Baptiste bus" according to a note from the PNH press coordination.



During the operation, several bandits were seriously injured in an exchange of fire with the security forces, and several weapons were seized, including a stolen assault rifle belonging to the PNH. One of the kidnappers is currently in the hands of the PNH.



Meyer, the leader of the "Kokorat sans ras" gang responsible for the hostage-taking, was reportedly injured during the shooting.



However, according to relatives of hostages, all the passengers would not have had time to flee during the police intervention and would still be in the hands of the kidnappers who would threaten to kill them if a ransom of US $50,000 was not paid for their release. Information that has not been confirmed from a police source.



Seee also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35671-haiti-flash-a-bus-hijacked-nearly-60-passengers-and-the-driver-under-hostage.html



SL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - FLASH : 3 Senate President security agents kidnapped





Saturday January 8 around 7:00 pm, at the 1ere ruelle Riviere (Bourdon, Port-au-Prince) armed individuals took control of a Jeep Toyota Land cruiser from the procession of Senator Joseph Lambert, President of the Senate, in which were 3 police officers from the Motorized Intervention Brigade (BRI) and the Departmental Unit for Maintaining Order (UDMO) assigned to the security of the Senate President efore fleeing with the vehicle and the 3 hostages, reported Senator Lambert who indicates that the kidnappers are demanding $ 5 million to free the 3 hostages...



Senator Lambert attributed the kidnapping to the situation of "general insecurity" in Haiti, without mentioning possible political motivations as tension mounts between the Executive and the Legislature. He says he will not be intimidated and will stand by his Senate speech on Monday, January 10.



A speech in which Lambert will defend, that the term of office of the ten senators still in activity ends in January 2023. Recall that the senators in office, the only democratically elected positions still remaining in power in Haiti, were elected in 2016 and have took office for 6 years at the start of 2017 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35634-haiti-flash-end-of-the-mandate-of-senators-in-2023.html However, some political sectors claim that the Senators' term expires on January 10, 2022, based on an interpretation of the Constitution. They calculate the start of the mandate on the date of publication of the results of elected senators and not from the time they take office with the taking of the oath. Recall that a similar process was used for the end of Jovenel Moise's mandate before he was assassinated. Others close to the Executive would simply like the Prime Minister to end senators' terms on January 10, 2022.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35634-haiti-flash-end-of-the-mandate-of-senators-in-2023.html



SL/ HaitiLibre






















A Turkish farmer is using VR headsets for cows to reduce their stress, making the animals believe that they are outside the field.

Surprisingly, the cows wearing VR goggles appear to produce more milk than other cows!

VR Headset for Cows: Reduces Their Stress?

Upon reading a study that claimed that VR goggles made cows happier, Izzet Kocak, from Turkey, decided to try it on his cows. By doing this, Kocak stated that the result showed that his animals are producing more milk than before, per Metro.

He explained that they get an average of 22 liters of milk per day from the cows in their business. The milking average of the two cows that have VR goggles were up to 27 liters.

"They are watching a green pasture and it gives them an emotional boost. They are less stressed," Kocak explained through Metro.

The farmer previously attempted to calm his cows by playing classical music. However, he claimed that the VR headset for cows has impressed him so much that he wants to purchase 10 more.

To further explain, Metro added that the headsets were created in collaboration with veterinarians, and these were tested on a RusMoloko dairy farm.

Read Also: 'Fortnite' XP Glitch Gives 300,000+ Experience Points! Special Code, How to Claim It Now

How Does VR Headset for Cows Works?

For those wondering how it works, IT professionals had to adjust the VR goggles color palette to match the animal's particular eyesight for the images to operate. The reason behind this is that cows cannot see red or green and they can only recognize yellow and blue in dull colors.

In addition to this, in consultation with veterinarians and production experts, the virtual reality studio's engineers customized human VR glasses to cater to the cow's unique head anatomy.

On the other hand, the Russian Ministry of Agriculture is sure that the strategy is effective.

According to their statement released in 2019, that "environmental conditions have a significant impact on the health of cows and, as a result, the quality and quantity of milk produced."

Based on interviews with farmers that use various animal welfare programs, a correlation was established between positive cow experiences, particularly emotional ones, and increased milk output.

Furthermore, the researchers also claimed that the headsets reduced anxiety and increased general emotional state in the herd.

VR Goggles: 'The Matrix For Cows'

Over a previous couple of years, images of the experiment have gotten a lot of laughs on social media, with many people calling it "The Matrix for cows."

ScreenRant also added that since cows have poor depth perception, a VR headset might help them improve their vision while also giving them the impression of beautiful weather, reducing their stress.

The procedure looks to have been a success, as specialists saw a significant decrease in anxiety and an increase in the cows' emotional state following testing.

"Examples of dairy farms from different countries show that in a calm atmosphere, the quantity, and sometimes the quality, of milk increases markedly," the researchers explained, per the Russian Ministry of Agriculture.

Related Article: Apple AR/VR Headset Rumor Reveals 15 Cameras-Ability to Track User's Eye Movement Teased!




Haiti - Insecurity : The OPC demands the protection of journalists





The Citizen Protection Office (OPC), an independent National Institution for the promotion and protection of Human Rights, condemns the assassination of journalists Wilguens Louissaint and Amady John Wesley in Laboule 12 on Thursday, January 6 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35656-haiti-flash-2-haitian-journalists-fall-under-gangs-bullets.html



The OPC recalls that the protection of journalists is the responsibility of the State which has the obligation "to guarantee the right to life, to health, to respect for the human person, to all citizens without distinction, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."



"Failure to protect the journalist in the exercise of his mission to inform public opinion constitutes an obstacle to press freedom, democracy and respect for human rights in general" underlines the Office, which calls on the constituted authorities to launch an investigation into the murder of the two journalists in order to identify the alleged perpetrators of these crimes and to prosecute them in accordance with the law



Journalists killed on duty :

6 journalists have been murdered in Haiti over the past 5 years :

Vladjimir Legagneur March 14, 2018. https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-31840-icihaiti-sos-journalists-hope-after-the-arrest-of-one-of-the-alleged-killers-of-vladjimir-legagneur.html

Petion Rospide, June 10, 2019 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27967-haiti-security-the-journalist-rospide-petion-murdered.html

Nehemie Joseph, October 10, 2019 https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-28979-icihaiti-flash-assassination-of-journalist-nehemie-joseph.html

Diego Charles, June 30, 2021 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34110-haiti-flash-carnage-in-delmas-32-at-least-15-dead-the-pnh-accuses-fantome-509.html

Wilguens Louissaint and Amady John Wesley, January 6, 2022 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-35656-haiti-flash-2-haitian-journalists-fall-under-gangs-bullets.html



S/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





Me Michel wants the senators' mandate to end

Me Andre Michel leader of the Radical opposition "Democratic and Popular Sector" (SDP) wants the end of the Mandate of the last third of the Senate on January 10, 2022 "The Government must note this fact for all intents and purposes. It is urgent to create the security and political conditions for good elections."



The "Kas Ble", openly extort the Haitians

"On the Haitian side, individuals, nicknamed 'Kas Ble', extort some Haitian migrants by making false promises of a happy crossing of the border to the Dominican Republic under the impassive eyes of the representatives of the law," informs the SJM-Haiti.



Qatar in the colors of Haiti

The Embassy of Haiti in Qatar wishes to thank the State of Qatar for its gesture testifying to the friendly and fraternal relations existing between the two countries, during the illumination of 2 of its emblematic buildings in the colors of Haiti, at the occasion of the 218th anniversary of Haiti's independence.



87 earthquakes in December 2021

The country recorded 87 earthquakes during the month of December 2021 of magnitudes between 1.6 and 4.7 on the Richter scale according to the Seismological Technical Unit of the Bureau of Mines. 46 earthquakes were recorded in Grand'Anse, 23 in the region of Nippes and 7 in the South.



Journalists killed : Words from Canada

"Canada condemns the murder of 2 journalists in Haiti by a local gang. Freedom of the media is the cornerstone of democracy. Journalists must be free to do their work without violence or fear. Our hearts go out to the families and the Haitian community."



AMIH asks to avoid collaborating with gangs

The Independent Haiti Media Association (AMIH) calls on all members of the corporation, especially those who work with social media, to avoid biased collaboration with gangs.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















By William Schwartz | Published on 2022/01/09

Detective Lee is the sole survivor of the mysterious ambush that killed Assemblyman Doh- as well as every other character in the prison transfer truck, except, rather conspicuously, for Detective Lee herself. This makes her the prime suspect. Inspector Ryoo, coward that he is, doesn't really want to get any more involved. But K has promised to abandon taking control of Inspector Ryoo's body if Inspector Ryoo can get her out of prison. So for once, Inspector Ryoo is determined to be a good cop.

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With very few suspects, it was probably inevitable that Detective Lee's boss Superintendent Kim would emerge as a person of suspicion. In previous reviews I misleadingly referred to him as Superintendent Kim. Up until now it wasn't clear that Superintendent Kim had a higher rank than any of the other cops he interacts with. The iQiyi translation is also starting to get on my nerves because they can't seem to decide whether to call our lead character Inspector Ryoo or Inspector Ryoo. I've seen them use both.

Anyway, whatever we call him, Inspector Ryoo manages to crack the case of who sold out the prison transfer truck's location and why. But he doesn't know everything, and what we've mainly learned so far is that there are a large number of characters with competing agendas, many of whom have to die for the sake of cleaning up these messes. As a cop, amd more importantly a corrupt cop, Inspector Ryoo is less expendable than other characters.

Patrolman Oh has only just now managed to return because the forces conspiring to make him a scapegoat were deemed less useful by their superiors further down the chain. But for Detective Lee the situation remains bleak. I like how the worldbuilding renders these false accusations completely plausible, because corruption is an undeniable problem in the police force. It's long been implied that K surfaced in part because of that, even we get further hints here about a deeper childhood trauma.

After watching the first episode of "Tracer" yesterday the difference in tone is especially stark. The sheer speed with which Inspector Ryoo can talk himself out of trouble, to the great disgust of K, emphasizes how Inspector Ryoo has agreed to become a part of the corruption just because its so endemic. This gives "Bad and Crazy" a cynical yet satirical bite that's well complimented by the as-usual exceptional fight scenes and sense of humour provided by Inspector Ryoo's alter ego.

Review by William Schwartz

___________

"Bad and Crazy" is directed by Yoo Seon-dong, written by Kim Sae-bom, and features Lee Dong-wook, Wi Ha-joon, Han Ji-eun, Cha Hak-yeon, Kang Ae-shim, Kim Dae-gon. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2021/12/17~Now airing, Fri, Sat 22:40 on tvN.
Korean Movie | 2009

 Melodrama  Romance

Directed by Kim-Jho Gwang-soo ()

Written by  Kim-Jho Gwang-soo ()  Min Yong-keun ()

54min | Release date in South Korea: 2009/12/17

In this cheerful romantic comedy about coming out of the closet, Seok-i (Lee Je-hoon) visits his boyfriend Min-su (Seo Ji-hoo) who is serving in the military. However, they run into Min-su's mother, and explain that they are 'just friends.' One funny episode involves the pair sleeping together, with Min-su's mother sandwiched between.

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Hello Mohave County. This month I am focusing on housing in Mohave County.
CES 2022 highlights the Self-Driving Formula 1 cars that are programmed by students from different parts of the world. These Formula 1 cars were raced on the track at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

CES 2022 Highlights

According to IoTWorld, the CES 2022 event allowed the concept of self-driving automobiles to be taken to a whole new level.

Several high-speed autonomous racecars were seen on the track at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway competing against one another head-to-head.

The gathering of these F1 cars is due to the competition, the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC).

The IAC is organized by Energy Systems Network and is also hosted by the association running CES 2022, the Consumer Technology Association.

The Energy Systems Network is an American firm that aims to accelerate the development of self-driving technology for commercial applications.

The competition was composed of nine teams made up of members from 19 colleges from eight countries around the world.

The teams are fairly and collectively given their self-driving cars which can reach speeds of 175 miles per hour to start with.

However, the competition is judged and focused more on the team's artificial intelligence and software that they will design in order to win the competition.

Self-Driving Formula 1 cars

As reported by Autoexpress, the Indy Autonomous Challenge is a competition of creating software for self-driving cars to take control of their vehicles.

The teams from different countries all competed using the Dallara AV-21, a single-seat race car equipped with autonomous driving gear.

The cars were cornering at almost 170 mph around the banked corners of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with PoliMOVE's car attaining an overall peak speed of 173 mph.

At the end of the competition, the PoliMOVE team from Milan took home a $150,000 award.

Energy Systems Network CEO, Paul Mitchell, stated that propelling autonomous technologies forward is his aim of showcasing the competition the world's most prominent technology innovation event (CES 2022).

To attract the smartest and brightest brains from across the world to advance state-of-the-art technology in automated vehicle safety and performance, their company is leveraging using prize competitions and their team just did that with the successful competition shown on the Las Vegas track.

Read Also: Tesla Model 3, Model Y Leak: Upgrades on EV's Battery, Computer With AMD Ryzen Chipset, and More!

Winner in Car Racing

However, as one of the CES 2022 highlights, the Indy Autonomous Challenge did not let the teams' effort go to waste and hailed all of the contestants' winners.

Tech Xplore stated that prior to waving the checkered flag in the race, IAC co-organizer Paul Mitchell declared that the whole event was a success.

The fact that they successfully created self-driving software that could take are capable to compete in high-speed competitions with the use of algorithms was recognized and praised by the organizers of the competition.

The IndyCar specialist Lee Anne Patterson stated that the students who participated knew nothing about racing and they were the ones who taught them, and the said participants are also not mechanics.

To put it simply, the students programmed software that allows the cars to self-drive fast by analyzing data from sophisticated sensors.

Should Tesla Be Worried?

It was reported in Business Insider that Steve Westly, a former Tesla board member stated that Tesla is facing numerous competition in the automobile market.

Particularly, the electric vehicle industry with big brands wanting to get in the EV industry, such as General Motors, Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche to name a few.

Tesla should take into serious consideration the brilliant minds and evolution of technology in this fast pace world, to remain the "King of the Block" in EVs.

Related Article: 2022 Toyota Tundra vs. 2021 Tundra Power Test, Speed Comparison: Which Is Better?
There is a wide campaign to be launched in Kurdistan and the world at large calling for the removal of Kurdistan Workers' Party from the U.S. and EU terrorist lists.

To shed light on the issue of de-listing Kurdistan Workers' Party from the black list, ANHA interviewed the Norwegian Professor in the Education Department in the University of Bergen, Karinae Westrheim, who said ''the ideology of the PKK and Abdullah Ocalan became a foundation of sustainability''.

Kariane says:

''We all know about the tragic historical oppression of the Kurds in Turkey and the betrayal they were subjected to in the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923. In this period and up to our days the Kurds have continued to oppose oppressive authorities. Even if they have experienced some better periods the situation under the Erdogan regime has been worse than ever  and especially after 2015. The Kurds in Turkey have been stripped of their political and cultural rights and the AKP regime, led by Erdogan, is changing the law as they wish and usually never to the benefit of the Kurds. But the Kurds have shown an impressive ability to develop a policy that benefits the individual and the collective, it is democratic, ecological, inclusive in terms of inviting in other ethnicities and peoples, and with a foundation of liberative equality between the sexes. In this development, the PKK has been a decisive factor. Although there have been many uprisings throughout history, the ideology of the PKK and Abdullah Ocalan became a foundation of sustainability - something to lean on and which increased the willingness to fight for something that was its own. Against this background, it is incomprehensible to those who know the Kurdish question that the EU and the US could place them on the list of terrorist organizations. The PKK and the Kurdish liberation movement represent the democratic card in the Middle East. If the PKK is removed from the list and considered a real partner in peace negotiations in Turkey and the rest of the region, one will experience the seriousness and willingness to negotiate that this party possesses. Delisting of the PKK and subsequent talks with the parties will show that there is great political expertise and competence among the Kurds to find a peaceful way to solve the problems.

On the chemical weapons use by Turkey Kariane says:

Regarding chemical weapons there is ample evidence and videos of Turkey's use of theses against the Kurds in their alleged struggle to eliminate the PKK. Turkey has signed the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997 which prohibits the signatories to use, develop, store and transfer chemical weapons. There have been wide-spread protests to draw international attention to claims of ongoing use by Turkish forces, latest in northern Iraq (South Kurdistan), of banned chemical substances against fighters of the PKK. The attacks are alleged to have taken place within the framework of the Turkish military operation in Northern Iraq, dubbed Operation Claw Lightning, which began on April 23, 2021. There has also been allegation of use of chemical weapons during Turkey forces attacks in Syria. Members of the European Parliament especially from the Kurdish Friendship Group, have called on called on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and UN to send a delegation to Iraqi Kurdistan to investigate any chemical weapons deployment by the Turkish army during its ongoing military operation. October 2021, 109 intellectuals from Iraq signed a joint letter addressed to the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) and the OPCW demanding an urgent field investigation into Turkeys alleged use of chemical weapons in northern Iraq in its ongoing operations targeting the PKK. Despite international political protests, nothing has been done so far

It seems that Turkeys attacks on their own citizens, occupation of foreign territories, their historical elimination of Kurdish land in Turkey, expulsion, assimilation and change of the demographics and Kurdish names - to the current mass arrests of Kurdish politicians in Kurdish areas to replace them with pro-government officials, is part of the plan to eliminate the PKK, the Kurdish freedom movement which is growing stronger and the Kurdish people as such. This is nothing less than genocide.

It is quite clear that it is the state of Turkey at the command of Erdogan and operationalized through the army that are the true terrorists here. I am certain that the governments of many countries are aware of this but are failing to act. A well-known explanation is that Turkey is an important NATO member but even NATO can act when a member state attacks a sovereign state without it being rooted in joint decisions. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is Norwegian, like me, he comes from a strong social democratic tradition in what is termed a peace-loving nation but he totally failed to hold Turkey accountable - on the contrary, he tried to please him by calling Turkey a friend and ally. Maybe he thought he could get Erdogan on his side with such a gesture but did not understand that Erdogan and his allies laugh behind their backs at such naivety. It is Erdogan who will lead the show if the West does not gather and show strength. Turkey is in a weak position now; this must be seen as an opportunity to get Erdogan to the table.

Responding to a question on the role played by intellectuals and academics among others she says:

''Firstly, it is of great importance that intellectuals, academics and analysts around the world engage in the challenge of removing the PKK from the list of terrorist organizations, but also of protesting Turkey's policies against the Kurds especially since 2015. We saw sign of this when more than 1128 signatories of a petition released by Academics for Peace in January 2016 called for an end to violence in the region. The signatories stated that they were condemning both the state violence against the Kurds and the Turkish states ongoing violation of its own laws and international treaties and the attacks on the Kurds in the south-east. Many of the signatories later lost their positions at the university, where persecuted, arrested og fled the country. We also saw signs of strong engagement when 109 intellectuals in Iraq called on the OPCW and UN to launch an investigation into Turkey's use of chemical weapons in Iraqi Kurdistan and asked, "the international authorities to act quickly and to send a delegation to investigate." The intention behind these initiatives is the desire to promote peace. People are tired of war and conflict which despite the PKK's repeated invitations to negotiations are met with more attacks and more conflict on the part of Turkey. Turkey must take a stand against itself, because even though the Erdogan regime has been totally devastating for the Kurds, history shows that the oppressive policy against the Kurds extends beyond Erdogan's period. It is not guaranteed that things will change for the Kurds if Erdogan leaves the scene. People in Turkey must open their eyes and protest, not only the Kurds as currently  but all people of Turkey. And of course, the work of academics, researchers, political analysts are also very important in this regard.

Turkey, Jabhat al-Nusra, ISIS, and other militant fundamentalist groups

Turkey claimed that Operation Olive Branch was aimed to establish security and stability along the Turkey-Syrian border and to protect the Syrian people from the cruelty of the terrorists and by that they mean the PKK/YPG/YPJ. The truth is that this military occupation was an act of terrorism. Afrin was surrounded and gagged, and in the long run thousands of civilians were injured and killed. The security that the SDA, YPG/YPJ and the self-governing authorities thought they had in USA disappeared when they withdrew its forces. I do not elaborate on this further, we know how devastating it has been for the whole region, but rather emphasize that the real terrorists here are not the PKK but the state of Turkey with one of the world's largest armys supplemented by foreign fighters, Jabhat al-Nusra, ISIS, and other militant fundamentalist groups. The world has watched with open eyes how Turkey has invaded, occupied, destroyed, and killed thousands of civilians - they have also tried to destroy much of the political and social foundation that was laid in Rojava and southeastern Syria  but I am certain that they will not succeed in this. Turkey's attacks and atrocities in the Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria are explained by the need to eliminate the PKK. A European Parliamentary Research Service Briefing paper (2019) stated that the EP President, David Sassoli, characterized the Turkish invasion as an 'act of war'. In his speech to the European Council on 17 October, he said: 'We must do everything in our power to stop this act of aggression and launch an initiative that can be thrashed out within NATO and submitted to the UN Security Council. The European Union would show itself to be speaking with one voice when working for peace in multilateral fora'. This clearly shows that the EP want to stop Turkey, but the problem is that that the EU does not decide what measures it can take against Turkey, meaning - there is no real political action.

Practical and legal ground for de-listing the party already exist

There are overwhelming practical grounds for delisting the PKK, and there are also legal grounds. When the validity of the terrorism designation was tested in the Belgian courts in 2020 it found that the PKK should not legally be considered a terrorist organisation, that the EU anti-terrorism legislation cannot be applied on PKK because it is a party in a non-international armed conflict, which makes it subject to the laws of war and not criminal law. Unfortunately, the Belgian Minster of Foreign Affairs, responded that the ruling would not affect the governments position. Members of the legal team in the court decision hoped that the Belgian court ruling would pave the way for the delisting of PKK  this has not happened.

We cannot be 100 % sure that removing the PKK from the terrorist list will open the road to an immediate solution but the possibilities for negotiated peace talks will increase significantly. To bring about peace talks that will hopefully lead to lasting peace, Turkey must be involved, voluntarily or under pressure from the EU, NATO, and it is desirable that the United States also joins such an initiative. But removing the PKK from the list in the EU and the US will undoubtedly be a necessary first step.

The campaign is aimed at anyone with a desire for support

The call for the removal of the PKK from the EUs list of terrorist organisations is timely and very important. The goal is that first and foremost the EU, but also the United States and NATO as well as states such as England and Germany that is heavily manipulated by Turkey will open their eyes, change their policies and act in relation to the political injustice and human rights violations that historically and daily is committed against the Kurds and their organizations and structures. The campaign is aimed at anyone with a desire for support - the goal is to collect one million signatures  this is ambitious and even if the campaign is well on the way - it needs more people on board.

Let me emphasize at once - the PKK is not a terrorist organization - nor has it ever been. The reason why the PKK was listed in the first place is purely political  meaning that the European Council decision from 2002 on listing the PKK in the EU terrorist list is mainly a political decision, and it gives legitimacy to Turkey's constant oppression and persecution of the Kurds first and foremost in Turkey, their parties, politicians, organizations, media houses, lawyers and everyone else - and it provides arguments for keeping Abdullah Ocalan isolated in Imrali. Secondly, Erdogan and the AKP use the terrorist-branded PKK to attack everything and everyone they claim is in cahoots with the PKK - in Turkey and abroad  in Rojava (North East Syria), South Kurdistan (Northern Iraq), but also in European countries such as Germany and England  in these countries people experience a growing political aggression against the Kurds, their political establishments, community houses, cultural and popular events  everything that the authorities in these countries can somehow link with the PKK. Behind this policy stands Turkey and its intelligence. Many organisations oppose and protest this very worrying development, but there is an urgent need for political action and a much more daring and fearless politics by the governments.

The impact of such campaigns

''There is a worldwide support for this campaign by popular and political movements, politicians, academicians, lawyers, artists, activists and many others and we must not forget that although the PKK is on the EU's and US list of terrorist organizations, there are far more countries that do not define the PKK in this way, but on the contrary regard the PKK as the spearhead of a comprehensive and ever-growing liberation movement. Unfortunately, the policy in Turkey has been so destructive towards the Kurds that armed defense has been necessary, as it once was in South Africa when ANC fought against the apartheid regime - and of course many other places in the world.

What is needed now to remove the name of the party from the terrorist list is that despite the terrible policies pursued by the AKP and Erdogan and the fact that our initiatives sometimes seem hopeless, it is crucial that we do not lose hope and give up. On the contrary, the more Turkey attacks and oppress the Kurds, the more resistance we must show. The Kurds need urgent international support and they have it, but it must be even stronger. The Kurds have excellent politicians and spokespersons, but non- Kurds must also stand up and raise the issue of the delisting of the PKK with our politicians and governments.''

L..A

ANHA
(The Center Square)  Rather than wait for Gov. Andy Beshear to give his budget address next week, Republicans in the Kentucky House of Representatives unveiled late last week their proposed spending plan for the next two years.

The move was swiftly condemned by House Democrats as a petty move.

A statement by GOP House leaders said the bill calls for more than $31 billion in spending for each of the next two fiscal years, including $13.9 billion in general fund monies.

House Appropriations and Revenue Chairman Jason Petrie, R-Elkton, said lawmakers have been working on the budget proposal since last spring.

The plan considers legislative priorities while also factoring in realities our state faces, he said.

The budget proposal includes increasing funding for public school districts and doubling the states funding for all-day kindergarten, which sponsors say will now cover the full cost of the program.

The funding for schools will help districts cover raises, Petrie said.

This budget proposal includes another record-high commitment to per-pupil funding, allocates considerable funding for transportation costs, and doubles kindergarten funding to pay for the entire day, Petrie added. We chose to allocate resources to local districts and allow them to create their own plans for raises since many have already used other sources of revenue to do so.

On Monday, Beshear introduced a number of education initiatives hes proposing in his budget and said he plans to hold similar briefings leading up to his address.

He called his spending proposal a bold plan that builds on the momentum of recent job announcements that have taken place across the state. Its needed to build on the transformation from a flyover state that Kentuckys currently undergoing.

There is no question that we have arrived, but having arrived, we have to make the investments necessary to stay, the governor said. To stay a world-class destination for world-class companies, we must have a world-class workforce, and that starts with education.

One education item Beshear said his proposal calls for that was not in the House plan is funding to fully implement pre-K classes statewide.

Another difference between the two proposals is in higher education, where Beshear wants to issue $1 billion in general fund bonds for 19 projects at state universities and postsecondary institutions.

Republican lawmakers included $50 million in additional funding in both years to the states public universities. That money will be awarded through a performance-based model.

The budget proposal comes during what has been a contentious first week in the House. Democrats, who were already upset at the Republican redistricting plan, protested a move to limit debate and floor discussions.

In a statement Friday, House Democratic Floor Leader Joni Jenkins, D-Shively, Caucus Chair Derrick Graham, D-Frankfort, and Whip Angie Hatton, D-Whitesburg, said the GOP move broke long-standing traditions and the spirit of the budget law.

We may as well wrap up the 2022 legislative session now because all of the major decisions apparently have been made, the Democratic leaders said. This is not good government; in fact, its barely government at all.

The governors budget address is scheduled for Thursday evening.

Beshear, a Democrat, had hinted at some of his budget proposal items during Wednesday nights State of the Commonwealth address to lawmakers. He also had announced some initiatives in recent weeks, such as raises for state workers and additional hires in key social service positions.

The governor on Monday said he had planned to brief legislative leaders this Thursday before his address, but that changed after the House bill was filed. He said it might have been a stunt designed to deflect from his address.

Beshear said he was disappointed legislators did not talk with him or his staff about the executive branch budget before the bill was filed and noted Osborne and Senate President Robert Stivers remarks last week about the lack of communication between the administration and the legislature.

My hope is that we can do that moving forward, the governor said.

However, one GOP lawmaker on Monday said the administration had the opportunity to engage with lawmakers during the interim committee meetings last year.

State Rep. Adam Koenig, R-Erlanger, said on Twitter he was involved in numerous Appropriations and Revenue subcommittee sessions last year where lawmakers asked for information and never received anything.

That is literally seeking the input of the executive branch, Koenig tweeted. When you are withholding information, you are thwarting the process for political gain.

Koenig called the process of the governor introducing the budget a remnant of a bygone era. Governors no longer yield that much power over the General Assembly, he said.

Thankfully, those days are gone, and the peoples branch is fulfilling its duties, Koenig said.

The GOP budget proposal calls for a 6% raise for all public employees for the 2022-23 fiscal year. It also calls on the states personnel secretary to devise a plan to change the worker classification and compensation model for the 23-24 fiscal year.

Kentucky State Police troopers would receive a $15,000 pay raise, while KSP telecommunicators would get an $8,000 hike.

State pension plans would also be fully funded.

Beshear, who gave current social workers a 10% raise last month, said at that time that he wanted to hire another 350 over the next two years. The House plan calls for the hiring of 200 new workers.

It also contains $86.7 million for salary raises and retention bonuses for social workers over the two budget years.

The budget also includes provisions for spending federal COVID relief and infrastructure funding. House leaders said their plan is not to use those one-time funds for recurring initiatives.

House Speaker David Osborne, R-Prospect, called it a responsible budget proposal.

We are in a strong financial position, but our economy is still in a precarious position, he said. I know there are those calling for us to spend federal dollars as fast as we receive them, but you cant spend the same dollar twice  we have to get it right the first time.
N.C. Supreme Court justices won't recuse themselves

N.C. Supreme Court Justices Tamara Barringer and Phil Berger Jr. confirmed on Friday that they will take part in a high-profile case involving two challenged amendments to the N.C. Constitution.



In separate orders, the two Republican justices denied motions seeking their removal from the case called NAACP v. Moore.

The orders mark an official end to a controversy Carolina Journal has documented since September at ExtremeInjustice.com.

"[A]fter months of thorough and thoughtful deliberation, I have concluded that I can and will be fair and impartial in deciding North Carolina State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Moore, et al.," Barringer wrote in her two-page order. "Accordingly, the 23 July 2021 Motion to Disqualify filed therein is denied insofar as it requested my disqualification."

Among the reasons for her decision, Barringer cited "my solemn oath to serve on our state's Court of last resort  rather than recusing myself or being disqualified to avoid controversy" and "my resulting judicial duty to all North Carolinians  including the 2,746,362 who voted for me and the 2,616,265 who did not  to prevent any ideological or political affiliation from tainting my legal analysis."

Barringer had been targeted for removal in the case because she served as a state senator in 2018 when the General Assembly placed the now-challenged constitutional amendments on North Carolina's statewide ballot.

"I am following a strong and firmly rooted tradition in reaching the conclusion not to recuse myself due to my prior legislative service," Barringer wrote. "As the 101st Justice on our Court since its founding in 1819, I am following the precedent established by the 51 of my 100 predecessor Justices who first served in the legislature and later went on to fairly and impartially judge various statutes that were passed or amended during their legislative tenure before they joined the North Carolina Supreme Court."

Critics had targeted Berger because his father serves as the top officer in the N.C. Senate. In that official capacity, Sen. Phil Berger is a named defendant in NAACP v. Moore.

"This Court has repeatedly held that '[a] suit against a public official in his official capacity is a suit against the State,'" Berger Jr. responded in his three-page order. "With this straightforward precedent, a reasonable person would understand that a suit against a government official in his or her official capacity is not a suit against the individual."

"More than 2.7 million North Carolinians, knowing or at least having information available to them concerning my father's service in the Legislature, elected me to consider and resolve significant constitutional questions like the one at issue here," Berger said. "The ultimate question, and indeed the touchstone of all recusal issues, is 'whether the justice can be fair and impartial?' Because this case is a suit against the State, and because I can and will be fair and impartial carrying out my duties in this case, plaintiffs motion is denied."

Barringer and Berger issued their orders 15 days after the full state Supreme Court issued an order dealing with the policy regarding recusal of justices. Under that Dec. 23 order, each individual justice maintains the ultimate decision-making authority. He or she can decide whether to take part in the deliberations and decisions about a particular case.

A justice may submit a decision about recusal to a vote of the rest of the court, but there is no obligation to do so. When a decision about recusal is finalized, the updated policy requires the court to indicate whether the justice made the recusal decision individually or left the decision to colleagues.

Berger will likely face similar decisions in other cases. Plaintiffs challenging North Carolina's new election maps and plaintiffs targeting the state's decades-old felon voting law have sought Berger's disqualification from their cases. In both cases, the challengers cite the role of Berger's father as Senate leader.

A motion filed Thursday asks Democratic Justice Sam "Jimmy" Ervin IV to recuse himself from the redistricting case. It's likely Ervin's decision about participation in that case will generate a court order as well.

Now that Barringer and Berger have confirmed their participation in NAACP v. Moore, the Supreme Court can return to considering the case's merits. The court will determine the fate of amendments guaranteeing voter ID for N.C. elections and lowering the state's cap on income tax rates.

There's no word on when the case will be rescheduled for oral arguments.
Case of accused wife abuser turns 8 with no end in sight

Leonard Schalow

The state of North Carolina v. Leonard Paul Schalow will turn eight years old next month with no end in sight.



The case has climbed up and down numerous times from the trial court to the N.C. Court of Appeals and state Supreme Court and, on Dec. 17, was sent back to the Court of Appeals in a state Supreme Court ruling that came down in favor of former District Attorney Greg Newman. The Supreme Court reversed the appeals courts decision in favor of Schalows motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that Newman had mounted a vindictive prosecution against him. But the high court also sent back to the lower court the defendants motion to dismiss the conviction on double jeopardy grounds, saying that still needs to be resolved.

The case had been one of three instances of possible willful misconduct that a judge considered in a hearing last April on Newmans removal as district attorney. Although Judge Robert C. Ervin cited legal errors Newman made in his prosecution of Schalow, he ruled that the prosecutors actions in the Schalow case did not constitute grounds for the D.A.s removal. Ervin did oust Newman from office, however, on grounds involving another case that was the opposite of Newmans persistent and aggressive pursuit of an alleged serial child abuser. Erwin ruled that Newman committed willful misconduct in the case of a child-sex abuse defendant by failing to notify the victim of a plea deal that gave the accused man a lenient sentence with no jail time and lied to a judge about whether the victim and her family wanted to be heard.

Newman has described Schalows alleged abuse of his wife, Erin, as particularly brutal and cruel, citing the fact that the abuse took place in front of their young son. Married in 1997, the defendant and Erin Henry Schalow moved to North Carolina in 2010. The state presented evidence at trial to show that the unemployed Schalow committed brutal acts of violence on an almost daily basis that resulted in multiple injuries to Erin, a hospice nurse. In February 2014, Schalow was charged with 14 counts of felony child abuse and later indicted by a Henderson County grand jury on a charge of attempted first-degree murder. After a Superior Court judge dismissed the murder charge as fatally flawed  the indictment failed to charge malice aforethought as required under state law  Newman obtained a second indictment on the same charge, this time with the required malice language. At that point, Schalows attorney began a long road of appeals seeking dismissal of the charge on the grounds that double jeopardy barred the state from re-indicting his client.

After the trial court and Court of Appeals denied Schalows double-jeopardy motion, he was convicted in November 2015 of attempted first-degree murder and sentenced to a prison term of 13 years, one month, to 16 years, nine months in prison. Schalow appealed the conviction at the Court of Appeals, again on double jeopardy grounds, this time successfully.

In March 2018, Newman obtained new indictments again, this time on three counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury, two counts of assault inflicting serious bodily injury and one count of assault by strangulation. Four months later, Schalow filed a motion to dismiss, again alleging double jeopardy plus vindictive prosecution grounds.

Regarding the vindictive prosecution claim, defendant argued the State indicted him because of his successful appeal from the attempted murder judgment, the Supreme Court said in its ruling three weeks ago. The defense attorney also cited Newmans statement to the Times-News that he had a plan in place to continue the prosecution, declaring that he would do everything that I can to see that [Schalow] remains in custody for as long as possible.

After a trial court denied Schalows motion to dismiss the new charges, the Court of Appeals reversed the lower court, upholding his vindictive prosecution argument. The state Supreme Court disagreed. It reversed the call, saying that Newmans comments did not indicate vindictiveness.

Although the prosecution obtained additional charges, the stated purpose was to ensure defendant was punished for his criminal conduct and to obtain a comparable sentence to the original one  not a substantially more severe sentence in retaliation for the appeal, the opinion by Justice Robin Hudson said. Thus, to the extent that the public statements of the prosecutor evidence any discernable motive to the re-prosecution attributable to the State, it is to punish defendant for his crimes and not for the successful exercise of his right of appeal.

Although Newman in an interview depicted the unanimous Supreme Court ruling as a clear victory for his handling of the Schalow prosecution, the case is not over yet. Because the Court of Appeals declined to take up the question of whether Schalow had been subjected to a barred double-jeopardy prosecution, the Supreme Court remanded his appeal back to the appeals court to consider the defenses double jeopardy claim.

According to the N.C. Department of Public Safety, Schalow, 54, was admitted to Mountain View Correctional Institute in Spruce Pine on Nov. 20, 2015, after his attempted murder conviction, and transferred back to the Henderson County jail on March 23, 2018.




Newest surge, workforce and testing shortage put Pardee under 'perfect storm' of stress, CEO says

Jay Kirby

It is rare that I personally reach out to members of our community to share a direct message from Pardee. Usually, it would be to share some good news about an award or a new service that weve added to our system. Unfortunately, that is not the case today.



Im writing to speak clearly and openly about the strain that our hospital is currently under. As we approach our second full year of battling this pandemic and navigating what feels like a never-ending cycle of surges, its important to understand the impact of this current surge and our ability to provide care to those who need it most.



In the past weekend alone, we have seen a 71 percent increase in patients hospitalized for Covid. As of Monday, Jan. 10, we were caring for 36 COVID-positive patients, with seven of those requiring care in our ICU and four on a ventilator. We anticipate this number will continue to climb until we get through this current wave of community transmission and the highly contagious Omicron variant. We are also seeing high numbers of influenza, RSV and other illnesses that compound our current situation and push our census much higher than normal. We do not expect the peak of omicron to arrive until a few more weeks.

As other area hospitals go on diversion, we continue to accept their patients and are more than happy to do so. But with each additional patient, we experience added strain on our system. To manage the flow and needs of this increase in critical care for our patients, Pardee has had to shift the overflow of critical, non-COVID patients from our ICU to our Post Anesthesia Care Unit, cared for by nurses skilled in the care of ICU patients. We may have to shift patients even more in order to adequately care for patients who require isolation. In addition, we have had to temporarily pause all elective inpatient and outpatient surgeries, as well as all elective cardiac procedures. We will continue to meet all emergent and critical surgery needs.



At the time of this writing, we have just over 40 of our team members out on quarantine, with that number fluctuating daily. As a result of team member illnesses, both COVID and non-COVID related, we have had to temporarily close two of our urgent care locations  eliminating two options for people seeking a test or care for their non-emergent needs.



As you have likely experienced, PCR COVID tests are in short supply. People want to find out if their sniffles, sore throat and body aches are COVID  and rightly so. Unfortunately, with fewer options available in our community  over the counter, pharmacy, and our urgent care locations people begin to show up in our Emergency Department, which is the least desirable option for an affordable or efficient test.

Add to that our own limited supply of PCR tests and our desire to reserve them for seriously ill patients already hospitalized and you have a perfect storm of frustration. ER wait times will continue to increase. To address this issue, we will reallocate primary care providers and staff to all urgent care locations to reopen all sites and relieve pressure on our ER.



Bottom line, this increase in patient census, levels of critical care needed and associated staffing issues have impacted care across our organization. What does that mean for our community? It means we are caring for more patients  patients that hospitals across the country werent designed to care for  with less staff and fewer resources.

Make no mistake, we are strong and we will weather this storm, but not without some collateral damage. What can you do? Please, if you havent already, get vaccinated or boosted and wear a mask. Daily percentages fluctuate, but on average, 90 percent of the COVID-positive patients in our care are unvaccinated. And unfortunately, the unvaccinated patients are the ones requiring the highest level of care.



Data shows that vaccinated people who also received a booster dose have stronger protection against the Omicron variant. Yes, you may still contract COVID, but the likelihood of your ending up in our Emergency Department or our ICU requiring care and battling for your life is far less than if you were unvaccinated. And when you are able to care for COVID at home, rather than in the hospital, youre freeing up a bed for your neighbor who may have a heart attack or stroke, or a loved one who may be in a serious accident.



These are truly trying times. I am honored to work with the most dedicated and caring healthcare professionals Ive ever encountered. They are doing the best they can, and they are tired. Please pray for their safety and stamina and support and thank them when you see them.

* * * * *

James "Jay" Kirby has served as the president and CEO of Pardee UNC Health Care since 2011, bringing more than 30 years of healthcare management experience to oversee the 222-bed acute care hospital, a comprehensive cancer center, four urgent care locations, six orthopedics clinics, and a physician practice network comprised of 341 physicians. Under his leadership, Pardee has expanded its services to include Board-certified interventional cardiologists and vascular surgeons, and only the second STEMI-certified emergency department in all of western North Carolina. Kirby also led Pardee to add pulmonology, neurology, oncology, thoracic surgery, infectious disease, and the regions second largest orthopedic group to better serve the people of western North Carolina.
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Elon Musk, Time Magazine's Person of the Year 2021 and being a captain planet through SpaceX and Tesla, went to Twitter and bluntly expressed his interest in his new venture that allows him to prove that traveling into space can assist the Earth as well.

Many in the government and the media are obsessed with human-induced climate change, which is produced by the production of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

With that, Musk suggested a very interesting solution in which he could help.

Musk tweeted "SpaceX is starting a program to take CO2 out of atmosphere & turn it into rocket fuel. Please join if interested".

SpaceX is starting a program to take CO2 out of atmosphere & turn it into rocket fuel. Please join if interested.  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 13, 2021

He believed that this venture of his is relevant in addressing both helping to alleviate the climate change experienced on Earth, and his desire to continue the exploration on Mars.

It was reported by Business Insider that the Falcon 9 rocket of SpaceX uses kerosene as fuel, which emits numerous chemicals other than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Sustainable SpaceX Rocket Fuel, Is It Possible?

According to The Hill, in Elon Musk's proposal of creating rocket fuel using carbon dioxide is the easy part.

There have been multiple attempts in the past that successfully converted carbon dioxide to rocket fuel. One of which is the century-old process of Paul Sabatier, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist, who formulated hydrogen with carbon dioxide, which later resulted in the creation of methane and water.

In fact, liquid methane and liquid oxygen are the chemicals burned by the SpaceX rockets develop in Boca Chica, Texas.

However, Euronews stated that it is not yet comprehensible how SpaceX would collect carbon dioxide and convert it into rocket fuel.

Nevertheless, there are scientific procedures that can be utilized to make liquid fuel.

An example of this is the method used by the Canadian business Carbon Engineering, which uses carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and then combines it with hydrogen from water.

In addition, NASA has also created a method for converting CO2 into gasoline that uses metal oxide thin film devices to transform the gas into fuel before it is released into the atmosphere.

Read Also: CES 2022 Highlights: Self-Driving Formula 1 Cars Race in Las Vegas; Should Tesla Be Worried?

How SpaceX Rocket Fuel Works

There is a company called Air Company as reported by Popular Mechanics, which also share the same vision on utilizing carbon dioxide for the health of the planet, and they have successfully proven how.

Co-founder, and CEO at Air Company, Stafford Sheehan stated that right now, both RP-1 [a rocket fuel blend] and methane in rocket fuel come from fossil fuels on the earth.

Instead, they use CO2 from the air, which is now biogenic since it is gathered as a byproduct of commercial alcohol plants; however, they can use CO2 from any place, including direct air capture.

Sheehan continued and said that the main driving force to electrify it in order to re-bond its molecules is carbon dioxide.

As a scientific fact, Di-Jia Liu, a senior chemist at Lemont, Illinois-based Argonne National Laboratory stated that carbon dioxide cannot be utilized as a fuel, hence, it is at the bottom of the energy hierarchy.

However, with the process of electrocatalysis or merging carbon atoms in CO2 and the hydrogen atoms in water, carbon dioxide can be transformed into hydrocarbons, such as ethanol or kerosene.

Related Article: High-Tech Haptic Vest Brings 'Ready Player One' To Reality: Price, Release Date, How to Pre-Order
Greenville, TX (75401)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms this evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low near 65F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms this evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low near 65F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
Anderson, IN (46016)

Today

Rain early...becoming windy with thunderstorms developing in the afternoon. High 72F. Winds SSW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Cloudy. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 48F. Winds NW at 15 to 25 mph.
Pregnant woman receives government's prompt help through Internet in virus-hit Shenzhen

Xinhua) 14:37, January 10, 2022

SHENZHEN, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- A pregnant woman in South China's Shenzhen asked for urgent help through the Internet and got timely assistance from the local government on Saturday.

With four locally transmitted COVID-19 cases reported in Shenzhen as of Sunday, epidemic prevention and control measures have been carried out in parts of the city. For hospitalization, a negative nucleic acid test certificate is necessary.

A 28-year-old pregnant woman felt unwell and went to the emergency clinic on Friday. She was told that she needed to be hospitalized on Saturday, so the woman had a nucleic acid test at 9 p.m. that Friday night.

However, the test result was still not available by 11 a.m. Saturday. The woman was not feeling well and needed to be hospitalized as soon as possible. Her husband, with the surname of He, decided to leave a message for help under the Shenzhen Municipal Health Commission's official Wechat account.

"When will the nucleic acid result come out? It has been 12 hours. My wife needs the result to get hospitalized," the message said.

The message was read by Wang Ling, head of the publicity and education department of the municipal health commission.

"Give me your phone number," Wang replied, six minutes after the husband called for help.

After getting in touch with He, Wang contacted Shenzhen Longhua District Hospital immediately, where the pregnant woman had the nucleic acid test. But the result was not found in the hospital's data system.

It turned out that the sample had been sent to a third-party test facility, which replied that the nucleic acid test result of the wife had not been approved due to the lack of manpower but they were going to do it immediately.

At 12:28 p.m. Saturday, the result came out. The woman's condition stabilized quickly after hospitalization, according to the husband. He said he didn't expect to get help from the government so soon. The whole thing was settled in just over an hour.

The local government's prompt response to the issue has been praised by netizens.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Rumors have it that the Samsung Galaxy S22 will be released early this year.

As mentioned by Sam Mobile, there was an absence of a Galaxy Note smartphone release from Samsung. However, as early as next month, consumers believe that the S22 will be unveiled together with a Samsung S Pen.

Samsung Galaxy S22

Samsung enthusiasts strongly believe that the next Samsung Galaxy devices are on their way sooner.

According to Samsung Galaxy S22 rumors, the Galaxy S22, S22 Plus, and S22 Ultra could be unveiled next month.

With that, consumers are speculating about the phone's specs.

During the last Samsung Unpacked, Samsung introduced foldable phones, the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3, alongside the company's latest smartwatch, the Galaxy Watch 4, and the Galaxy Buds 2. And Samsung showed out more customization choices for its foldable phones in October 2021.

In addition, the Galaxy S21 FE was released in the first week of January.

Furthermore, it is also believed that the flagship phones will be a little more affordable than usually priced Samsung devices.

According to CNET, as a result of the pandemic, the Galaxy S20 line didn't sell well, and it's likely that the high price tag in the devices caused it.

During the release of the Samsung Galaxy S20, the starting price was $1,000 in the United States, while the S21 starting price was $800.

Since we are still in the pandemic, experts believe that Samsung will continue to match or even lower this price for the Galaxy S22 devices.

Read Also: CES 2022 Highlights: Self-Driving Formula 1 Cars Race in Las Vegas; Should Tesla Be Worried?

Samsung Galaxy S22 Specs

A new video by YouTuber XEETECHCARE (Zaryab Khan) has shown the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S22 with numerous obvious new features.

One of the leaks that have surfaced on the internet regarding the S22 is the feature of the device having and 45 W wired charging and 108 MP main sensor in the camera.

For those looking to replace their Galaxy Note with the Galaxy S22 Ultra, the video leak offers some interesting information about the new phone that is yet to be released.

Another great feature of the device is that it is rumored to be three times faster than the Galaxy Note20 Ultra.

According to NotebookCheck, in terms of numbers when it comes to enhancing the handwriting experience with the future flagship phone, the S22 Ultra the S Pen's alleged input delay is just 2.8 milliseconds, stating that the device is just 2.8 milliseconds, with "the fastest, most realistic S Pen with 3x improved pen latency".

Launching In February?

Samsung normally updates its release of devices every 12 months, so the Galaxy S22 rumor reveal next month seems timely and fitting.

The South Korean giant usually releases its S-series phones in March, but in 2021, it defied the pattern by releasing the release of the S21 range in January.

On Jan. 4, Samsung gave a CES pre-show speech and unveiled the Galaxy S21 FE, a low-cost smartphone.

Jon Prosser, a well-known leaker, also believes the rumors that the Galaxy S22 will be announced on Feb. 8 during a Samsung Unpacked event, according to a new report from Korean publication DDaily.

As stated by the source, the company's forthcoming flagship phone range will be available for pre-order on Feb. 9 and will be launched in shops on Feb. 24.

Related Article: Afraid Data Brokers Are Selling Your Personal Information? This 1 Tool Prevents It From Happening
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Cloudy in the morning, then thunderstorms developing later in the day. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High 78F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

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Showers and thunderstorms likely. Low near 60F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
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The day of 5 January 2022 could have proven to be extremely dangerous for India due to the serious and unpardonable lapses in the security of the Prime Minister of the worlds largest democracy. Fortunately, nothing untoward took place. The incident took place during the Prime Ministers visit to the Ferozpur region in Punjab. While en route from the Bhatinda airport to Hussainiwala on the India-Pakistan border in Ferozpur, the Prime Ministers cavalcade was stranded on a flyover for a whopping 20 minutes! Any tragedy could have struck in this duration. The land of Punjab bearing seeds of turmoil is yet again witnessing chaos being perpetrated by the Khalistanis. The nation saw the prelude to this pandemonium and treason through protests in Delhi, NCR and Punjab to oppose three new farm laws proposed by the Centre. It became increasingly evident that those protesting comprised mostly Jihadis and Khalistanis, as opposed to farmers. The anti-national and anti-farmer protests that continued for two long years resulted in the Centre withdrawing the three farm laws that were in the best interests of farmers. As such, it is the nations and the farmers ill fate that the farmer issues continue to stay unresolved. The series of events that unfolded gave clarity about the capabilities of Khalistanis that enjoy the support of Canada, the US, the UK and, of course, Pakistan. The serious lapses in the security of the Prime Minister call for the mention of an eerie incident that took place in 1995. The then Chief Minister of Punjab, Beant Singh was assassinated by a suicide bomber belonging to the militant group, Babbar Khalsa International. Barely a month ago, on 8 December 2021, the nation lost its first CDS (Chief of Defence Staff), in a helicopter crash. With not even a month passed since the unfortunate incident, the callous lapses in the security of the Prime Minister have spawned reasons to worry in the minds of the nationalistic. Add to that the upcoming elections in the state of Punjab! In the context of all these, an incident like this exposing the sorry state of the Prime Ministers cavalcade is perhaps the first of its kind in the history of modern India.

Jihadi Paks role?

The lapses in the security of the Prime Minister are conducive to attacks from Khalistani terrorists; however, the possibilities of attacks from Jihadi Pakistan cannot be ruled out. The region that the Prime Minister was visiting is situated a mere 10 kms away from Pakistan. In the last two years, the serious security lapses in the state of Punjab, the bomb blast in the backdrop of the state elections, the lynching of two persons for supposed sacrilege, and the surveillance of Pakistani drones in Punjab in the past few days have become subjects of worry. In one incident, it has emerged that a drone even dropped some weapons on Indian soil. From this viewpoint, if the Khalistani and Jihadi forces had joined hands to create a disaster, who would have been responsible for it? The State needs to ponder over this. Perhaps this is why Home Minister Amit Shah clarified, the security lapses are unacceptable, and accountability will be ascertained.

Deplorable politics !

The Prime Minister had to cancel his Ferozpur programme and had to embark on a return journey of a whopping two hours ! Now politics over the incident has been triggered. Indian politicians have little shame of the topics they choose to play politics on; the less said about Congress, the better. It wont be an exaggeration to describe Congress as the official party working for the partition of India. Congress leader and Chief Minister of Punjab, Charanjeet Singh Channi has shrugged off his responsibility in the incident and made a laughable and highly irresponsible comment stating that the security lapses were caused due to the PMs last-minute decision to go to the designated venue by road instead of by air. BJP and other national parties are holding Congress responsible for the incident; however, Congress is running away from it. The security arrangements of a VVIP such as the Prime Minister have to be immaculate ! The Prime Ministers car and its modern hi-tech features often become topics of conversation; however, if there are lapses in the security procedure and if theres no accountability for the security breach, of what use are these advanced security features ? The Punjab Police was timely intimated about the changes in the Prime Ministers visit. How the protesting farmers found out the Prime Ministers route warrants a thorough investigation. The information pertaining to Prime Ministers visit was restricted to the concerned ministers in the Punjab government, administrative officers, and the top officials of Punjab Police only. Then how did this information get leaked ? An investigation should be carried out in the matter and the guilty be severely punished. The security of the nation and its highest representative is far more important than politics; that the Punjab government and its police are responsible for the security breach cannot be dismissed.

Source : Sanatan Prabhat
This handout image released by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) shows HFPA Grantee, Founder and Executive Director of Kids in the Spotlight Tige Charity, presenting the Best Performance by a Supporting Actor in a Series, Limited Series, or Television Movie Award on stage during the 79th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, Sunday. Korean actor O Yeong-su won the award at this year's Golden Globe Awards. AFP-Yonhap



By Lee Gyu-lee



Actor O Yeong-su has become the first Korean actor to clinch a Golden Globe Award for his role in the critically acclaimed Netflix original series, "Squid Game."





Actor O Yeong-su performs during Netflix's original series, "Squid Game." Courtesy of Netflix

During the 79th Golden Globe Awards, held behind closed doors without a broadcaster or streaming on Jan. 9 (PST), the actor won Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role on Television.



The smash-hit series become the first Korean series to earn three nominations at the Golden Globe Awards: Best Television Series, Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series for Lee Jung-jae, and Best Supporting Actor for O.



HBO's comedy drama, "Succession," won the Best Television Series and its actor, Jeremy Strong, won the Best Actor award.



Jung Duk-hyun, a pop culture critic, noted that the series' Golden Globes nominations itself have earned recognition for the Korean series.



"The fact that it was nominated (for the Golden Globes) in three categories has a huge meaning. Korean content used to be consumed by a specific group of fans," Jung told The Korea Times, Monday. "But last year, 'Squid Game' brought K-content to the global stage and allowed it to become universal. In that sense, it is such a meaningful series, and the Golden Globes has responded to that."









The dystopian series, directed by filmmaker Hwang Dong-hyuk, stirred up a global sensation, as the streaming service's most-watched series of all time, garnering a total of 1.65 billion hours of streaming in the first four weeks of release.



The nine-part series topped the service's global top 10 streaming chart for 46 consecutive days since it launched on Sep. 17. The number of subscribers who streamed the series within four weeks of its release was 111 million.



It also created a global craze for the props and games featured in the series, including "red light, green light" and the dalgona candy game.



Its record-breaking run has earned the series a number of awards and nominations at prestigious awards in the United States, including the Gotham Awards and the Golden Globes.



The suspense thriller, about cash-strapped people playing deadly Korean children's games for an enormous prize, garnered praise for its compelling twists in the plot and strong performances from its characters, with emotional subplots, touching on various issues, like socio-economic inequality.





A scene from "Squid Game" / Courtesy of Netflix
"Film Kiss with Protective Mask" (1937) / Courtesy of Imagno/Getty Images





By Park Han-sol







Who would have guessed that a picture taken more than eight decades ago of an intimate kiss intervened by antiseptic masks  an image that feels incredibly time-specific  would resonate with audiences today?







"Film Kiss with Protective Mask," which depicts a movie kiss rehearsal between Hollywood actors Betty Furness and Stanley Morner during the 1937 flu epidemic, encapsulates, through the click of the shutter, the statement that history repeats itself.







It is one of 330 photographic works from Getty Images' massive digital archive that has been brought to a brick-and-mortar exhibition, "Connecting the World," for the first time in Korea at the Seoul Arts Center.







The featured photos, both displayed in the form of framed prints and digital art, present in their own ways the compelling role of images in "connecting" people of different generations, cultures and nationalities.







Some have played this role successfully by becoming historic icons of the 20th century.







"Albert Einstein Sticking Out His Tongue" (1951) / Courtesy of Bettmann/Getty Images





On display is American photographer Arthur Sasse's "Albert Einstein Sticking Out His Tongue," an image of the Nobel-winning theoretical physicist that became forever seared into our collective memory.







On the night of his 72nd birthday on March 14, 1951, the world-famous scientist was walking back to his car, soon surrounded by a swarm of pesky, persistent reporters as usual.







"Professor, smile for your birthday picture, ya?" one shouted.







Out of weariness and annoyance, the eccentric professor quickly stuck his tongue out at them, thinking that the photographers couldn't possibly capture the cheeky gesture that lasted a mere second. Of course, we all know he was wrong.







In addition to presenting such monumental snapshots including "Migrant Mother" and "New York Construction Workers Lunching on a Crossbeam," the exhibition juxtaposes a series of photos taken from different eras to further visualize that history has and will continue to repeat itself.







Striking visual comparisons are made, for example, between the 1965 "Vietnamese Mother and Children Flee Village Bombing" and the 2017 "Rohingya Refugees Flee into Bangladesh to Escape Ethnic Cleansing."







Although the two images were taken more than five decades apart from each other and have been captured through the lenses of two different photographers, the subjects' harrowing journeys to escape unspeakable atrocities  the 1955-75 Vietnam War and Myanmar's crackdown on Rohingya Muslims, respectively  bear an uncanny resemblance.







But photographic snapshots of critically important moments in human history around the world are not limited to the past. They are part of the constant efforts made at this very moment, expanding further as photographers with more diverse backgrounds and perspectives are introduced to the scene day by day.







"Desperation Drives Women To Self Immolation In Herat" (2004) / Courtesy of Paula Bronstein/Getty Images





One contemporary player that the exhibition highlights is Paula Bronstein, an award-winning photojournalist who has focused for years on documenting the ordinary lives in the context of the Afghanistan War.







One of her series of photos turned to the unusual phenomenon surrounding Afghan women  specifically, a noticeable increase in the number of young wives who would set themselves on fire.







Eighteen-year-old Masooma in eastern Afghanistan, whose sky-blue burqa hides 70 percent of her severely burnt body, is one of many self-immolation victims who found such a painful attempt at suicide to be the only liberating element in their otherwise repressed lives.







Bronstein recounted that there was a whole ward designated to self-immolation victims at the hospital in the northwestern city of Herat.







"She is destroying herself so that no man really touches her again," she said in an interview with the South China Morning Post. Stuck in the endless cycle of poverty, childhood marriage or physical and psychological abuse, these women's desperation materializes into ultimate self-destruction.







With the Taliban having seized Afghanistan last year and seemingly signaling its turning back the clock on women's rights, her photos from the early 2000s ring differently once again.







"Connecting the World" runs through March 27 at the Hangaram Art Museum of the Seoul Arts Center.


Slated to open in 2025, the urban escape will bring thought-provoking design and innovative programming.

Marriott International, Inc. today announced it has signed an agreement with Nanjing OCT Properties to bring the W Hotels Worldwide brand to Nanjing. W Nanjing is set to become an awe-inspiring addition to eastern China with its anticipated opening in 2025, located along the southern bank of the iconic Yangtze River.

W Nanjing expects to be an exciting addition to the OCT FUNDLAND complex, bringing together culture and leisure into a one-stop destination with office buildings, cultural centers as well as luxury apartments situated on the bank of the Yangtze River.

W Nanjing will draw inspiration from local elements to offer guests a vibrant and lively urban escape. The hotel is expected to feature 257 stylish guest rooms and suites, four distinctive restaurants and bars, as well as a signature destination bar in W Nanjing that will serve as a dynamic daytime playground and a nightlife social hub. With nearly 1,700 square meters of multi-functional space equipped with the latest audiovisual technology, the hotel is slated to accommodate a wide range of events. Plans also call for a modern 24/7 FIT fitness center, an expansive pool (WET) and AWAY Spa.

Hotel website
Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, the world's largest hotel franchising company with approximately 9,000 hotels across nearly 95 countries, continues to expand its global footprint with its entry into Poland with the 205-room upscale Wyndham Wroclaw Old Town. Managed by Mogotel Hotel Group, a leading hotel operator in the Baltics, the property is expected to open early next month and will be located in the heart of Wroclaw's city center.

One of the largest cities in Western Poland and home to many renowned universities and research centers, Wroclaw combines rich history and charming architecture with a lively cultural scene across its museums, theatres, art galleries and workshops. Perfectly positioned for exploring the central, picturesque Old Town with many attractions and landmarks, the hotel will feature stylish guest rooms, an expansive atrium and a top floor wellness area, with a state of the art fitness room, sauna and steam bath.

The hotel will offer a wide range of food and beverage outlets including a gourmet restaurant, a cozy lounge and bar to relax and socialize. Those traveling for business will also have access the hotel's 11 meeting rooms, which accommodate a total capacity of over 400 attendees. In addition, the hotel is conveniently located just 10 miles from Wroclaw's International Copernicus Airport.

Hotel website
Originally from the Netherlands, Hans Heijligers spent 35 years of his hotel career abroad. He mainly settled in Asia where he led the entire Western region of Japan while serving as Managing Director at InterContinental Osaka for 3 years. Since 2016, he has held the position of Director of the InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG) in Japan. As of the start of the 2022 school year, he wanted to return to Europe to get closer to his family and to take up a new challenge: to promote the place of the prestigious and legendary InterContinental Geneva in the eyes of the whole world. He will also ensure the management of the newly renovated 4-star Crowne Plaza Geneva.
HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee, and MILWAUKEE - The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index jumped 12.7% in December to a level of 5,744. For 2021 as a whole, the stock index was up 25.6%.

Hotel stocks ended a volatile year with strong gains in December as the worst-case scenarios related to the Omicron variant appeared unlikely to unfold as initially feared, said Michael Bellisario, senior hotel research analyst and director at Baird. With the big rebound into year-end, the hotel brands ended up slightly outperforming the S&P 500 in 2021, while the hotel REITs  despite gaining 12% on the year  significantly lagged the RMZs best-ever annual performance. Turning the calendar to 2022, leisure travel strength is expected to persist, but the wildcard for the overall industrys continued recovery remains a more substantial return of the business traveler.

Holiday travel came through once again and drove U.S. hotel occupancy to an all-time Christmas high and ADR to record-highs leading up to New Years, said Amanda Hite, STR president. Despite disruptions in the airline industry, we have not seen a significant impact from the Omicron variant on the overall U.S. hotel industry. With the new year among us, we can expect a continued recovery in performance, with more pronounced upticks in urban locations when in-person meetings resume. The stronger-performing locations throughout the pandemic, beach and mountain destinations, are anticipated to keep that momentum into the new year as leisure travelers embark on spring break or quick weekend getaways.

In December, the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index outperformed both the S&P 500 (+4.4%) and the MSCI US REIT Index (+8.2%).

The Hotel Brand sub-index increased 13.2% from November to 10,390, while the Hotel REIT sub-index rose 10.9% to 1,253.

Source: STR

About the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index and Sub-Indices

The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index was set to equal 1,000 on 1 January 2000. Last cycle, the Index peaked at 3,178 on 5 July 2007. The Indexs low point occurred on 6 March 2009 when it dropped to 573.

The Hotel Brand sub-index was set to equal 1,000 on 1 January 2000. Last cycle, the sub-index peaked at 3,407 on 5 July 2007. The sub-indexs low point occurred on 6 March 2009 when it dropped to 722.

The Hotel REIT sub-index was set to equal 1,000 on 1 January 2000. Last cycle, the sub-index peaked at 2,555 on 2 February 2007. The sub-indexs low point occurred on 5 March 2009 when it dropped to 298.

The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index and sub-indices are available exclusively on Hotel News Now. The indices are cobranded and were created by Robert W. Baird & Co. (Baird) and STR. The market-cap-weighted, price-only indices comprise 20 of the largest market-capitalization hotel companies publicly traded on a U.S. exchange and attempt to characterize the performance of hotel stocks. The Index and sub-indices are maintained by Baird and hosted on Hotel News Now, are not actively managed, and no direct investment can be made in them.

As of 31 December 2021, the companies that comprised the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index included: Apple Hospitality REIT, Ashford Hospitality Trust, Chatham Lodging Trust, Choice Hotels International, DiamondRock Hospitality Company, Hersha Hospitality Trust, Hilton Inc., Host Hotels & Resorts, Hyatt Hotels, InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott International, Park Hotels & Resorts, Inc., Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, RLJ Lodging Trust, Ryman Hospitality Properties, Service Properties Trust, Summit Hotel Properties, Sunstone Hotel Investors, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, and Xenia Hotels & Resorts.

This communication is not a call to action to engage in a securities transaction and has not been individually tailored to a specific client or targeted group of clients. Research reports on the companies identified in this communication are provided by Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, and are available to clients through their Baird Financial Advisor. This communication does not provide recipients with information or advice that is sufficient on which to base an investment decision. This communication does not take into account the specific investment objectives, financial situation or need of any particular client and may not be suitable for all types of investors. Recipients should consider the contents of this communication as a single factor in making an investment decision. Additional fundamental and other analyses would be required to make an investment decision about any individual security identified in this release.

About Baird

Putting clients first since 1919, Baird is an employee-owned, international wealth management, asset management, investment banking/capital markets, and private equity firm with offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. Baird has approximately 4,500 associates serving the needs of individual, corporate, institutional and municipal clients and more than $350 billion in client assets as of December 31, 2020. Committed to being a great workplace, Baird ranked No. 32 on the 2021 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list. Baird is the marketing name of Baird Financial Group. Bairds principal operating subsidiaries are Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated in the United States and Robert W. Baird Group Ltd. in Europe. Baird also has an operating subsidiary in Asia supporting Bairds investment banking and private equity operations. For more information, please visit Bairds website at www.rwbaird.com.

About STR

STR provides premium data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights for the global hospitality industry. Founded in 1985, STR maintains a presence in 15 countries with a corporate North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, an international headquarters in London, and an Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore. STR was acquired in October 2019 by CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGP), the leading provider of commercial real estate information, analytics and online marketplaces. For more information, please visit str.com and costargroup.com.

Haley Luther

Communications Coordinator

+1 615 824 8664 ext. 3500

STR
Secures 58 new franchise and management contracts to add over 12,500 units across Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa

Continues to grow fee income through lodging operations

Singapore  CapitaLand Investment Limiteds (CLI) wholly owned lodging business unit, The Ascott Limited (Ascott) has secured 15,100 units across 72 properties globally in 2021. This marks the fifth consecutive year Ascott has achieved record growth in units organically despite COVID-19 headwinds in the past two years. Serviced residences continue to be Ascotts mainstay, making up over 60% of the new signings while the number of hotels secured grew in 2021.

Ascott also closed 2021 to achieve its highest-ever property openings, launching over 8,200 units in 40 properties across 25 cities and 10 countries. This is more than double the units opened in 2020. The properties opened in 2021 includes Ascotts first Adoor-branded rental housing property, Adoor Apartment Heda Hangzhou (Xiasha) and its first lyf-branded coliving property, lyf Mid-Town Hangzhou, in China.

Mr Kevin Goh, CLIs Chief Executive Officer for Lodging, said: In 2021, Ascott continued with our strong growth trajectory despite COVID-19. Our record signings for the fifth consecutive year anchors Ascotts market leading position as an international lodging operator. More than 80% of the new units secured in 2021 were under management and franchise contracts, in line with Ascotts asset-light growth strategy. We also opened a record number of units in 2021, readying ourselves for the recovery of travel in 2022. The newly signed and opened properties will be a welcome boost to our recurring fee income, as we build on this momentum to meet our target of 160,000 units globally by 2023.

Ascott named Worlds Leading Serviced Apartment Brand despite COVID-19

In 2021, Ascotts unwavering efforts to step up its operational excellence and offer guests a safe home away from home were recognised by its guests and the hospitality industry. In December 2021, Ascott won the coveted title of Worlds Leading Serviced Apartment Brand at the World Travel Awards 2021. Ascott also emerged the biggest winner at the World Travel Awards 2021 with a total of 28 accolades, the greatest number of awards won amongst serviced residence companies.

Furthermore, Ascott was recognised as the Best Serviced Residence Group  Asia Pacific at the Travel Weekly Asia 2021 Readers Choice Awards for the sixth consecutive year. Ascott also won Best Serviced Residence Brand in Asia Pacific and Best Serviced Apartment Company in the United Kingdom at the Business Traveller Awards 2021, retaining the former title for 18 consecutive years since the award category was introduced in 2004.

Mr Goh added: As a vertically integrated company, Ascott remains committed to delivering greater value for our guests, enhancing our loyalty programme, Ascott Star Rewards (ASR), providing our guests with more ways to enjoy ASR benefits, strengthening our corporate relationships and tapping on technology to provide us with an edge over our competition.

Ascott continues to see strong domestic demand in China; opens first rental housing property in the country

Out of the 28 newly signed properties in the last five months, 11 properties are located in China. Ascotts footprint in China is set to grow to more than 39,000 units in over 180 properties across more than 40 cities. Ascotts resilient base of long-stay corporate guests and the strong domestic leisure travel market have enabled Ascotts serviced residences in China to achieve robust occupancy rates. In 2021, Ascotts properties in Chinas tier one cities Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen achieved an average occupancy rate of over 80%, exceeding the market average of around 57% for the same period.

Ascott has also tapped on its expertise in the extended-stay segment to expand in the rental housing sector in China. In addition to opening its first rental housing property in the country, Adoor Apartment Heda Hangzhou (Xiasha), Ascott signed an Adoor-branded property in Xian in 2021 which is slated to open in 2023. Ascotts expansion in the rental housing sector leverages the growing demand from young and mobile professionals as well as returning students from abroad who are seeking to rent fully-furnished homes in the tier one and tier two cities on a longer-term basis in China. To date, Ascott has a total of 23 rental housing properties with over 3,200 units across 11 cities in China and Japan.

Ascott expands its global presence

Through the 28 newly secured properties, Ascott will expand its geographical reach to new cities such as Boao and Sanya in China; as well as Padang Pariaman and Tasikmalaya in Indonesia. Ascott has also entered Cameroon and Nigeria with the signing of its first property in the capital cities of Yaounde and Lagos respectively.

In addition, Ascott will further strengthen its presence in Melbourne in Australia; Vienna in Austria; Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Wuhan, Wuxi, Xian and Zhuhai in China; Addis Ababa in Ethiopia; Bandung, Bekasi, Jakarta and Yogyakarta in Indonesia; Bangkok in Thailand; and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. The properties are slated to open between 2022 and 2026.

Ascott achieves record growth in units in Vietnam

In 2021, Ascott secured a record of about 3,000 new units in Vietnam, exceeding its full year signings in the country in the previous years. This includes Ascotts partnership with Sun Group, one of the biggest real estate developers in Vietnam. Ascott will manage the countrys largest serviced residence integrated development, comprising 1,905 units across three distinct serviced residence brands within the Tay Ho View Complex in Hanoi. The iconic integrated development will be Hanois new landmark, transforming the citys skyline and rejuvenating the citys exclusive waterfront Tay Ho district. The three serviced residences are expected to open in phases from 1Q 2023.

About The Ascott Limited

The Ascott Limited (Ascott) is a Singapore company that has grown to be one of the leading international lodging owner-operators. Ascott's portfolio spans more than 200 cities across over 30 countries in Asia Pacific, Central Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the USA.

Ascott has more than 78,000 operating units and over 57,000 units under development, making a total of more than 135,000 units in over 800 properties.

The company's serviced apartment, coliving and hotel brands include Ascott The Residence, The Crest Collection, Somerset, Quest, Citadines, lyf, Preference, Vertu, Harris, Citadines Connect, Fox, Yello, Fox Lite and POP!.

Ascott's loyalty programme, Ascott Star Rewards, offers exclusive benefits to its members when they book directly with Ascott for their stays at its participating properties.

Ascott, a wholly owned subsidiary of CapitaLand Investment Limited, pioneered Asia Pacific's first international-class serviced apartment with the opening of The Ascott Singapore in 1984. Today, the company boasts over 30 years of industry track record and award-winning brands that enjoy recognition worldwide.

For more information, please visit www.discoverasr.com.

About CapitaLand Investment Limited

Headquartered and listed in Singapore, CapitaLand Investment Limited (CLI) is a leading global real estate investment manager (REIM) with a strong Asia foothold. As at 31 December 2021, CLI had about S$122.9 billion of real estate assets under management, and about S$86.2 billion of real estate funds under management (FUM) held via six listed real estate investment trusts and business trusts, and 29 private funds across the Asia-Pacific, Europe and USA. Its diversified real estate asset classes cover integrated developments, retail, office, lodging, business parks, industrial, logistics and data centres.

CLI aims to scale its FUM and fee-related earnings through its full stack of investment management and operating capabilities. As the listed investment management business arm of the CapitaLand Group, CLI has access to the development capabilities of and pipeline investment opportunities from CapitaLand's development arm. Being a part of the well-established CapitaLand ecosystem differentiates CLI from other REIMs.

As part of the CapitaLand Group, CLI places sustainability at the core of what it does. As a responsible real estate company, CLI contributes to the environmental and social well-being of the communities where it operates, as it delivers long-term economic value to its stakeholders.

Visit http://www.capitalandinvest.com/ for more information.

Joan Tan

Assistant Vice President, Corporate Communications

+65 6713 2864

The Ascott Limited

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Research and development labs arent just a thing for Big Pharma and Silicon Valley. The worlds largest hotel company has one mapping out its post-pandemic future.

Like a lot of companies, Marriott likes to keep things hush-hush at what goes on within its R&D team. But company leaders this week were willing to divulge employees at a 10,000-square-foot design lab set to open later this year at Marriotts new Maryland headquarters. Marriott is partnering with companies like LG Corp., appliance firm Carrier Global Corp., and several startups at the new lab.

While plans for the lab may have been in development prior to the pandemic, dont be shocked if the health crisis drives some of what gets explored and ultimately implemented at Marriotts roughly 7,800 hotels.

Blended business and leisure travel  or bleisure, as company CEO Anthony Capuano frequently calls it on earnings calls  roared to life over the last 20 months, and an R&D team can figure out how to make Marriott hotels run better with this demand sector dominating the travel landscape. The R&D lab will also tackle areas like construction, building operations, and sustainability.

We think theres a lot of fertile ground in a bunch of those areas, and our notion is that those areas of focus will shift somewhat each year, said Jeff Voris, Marriotts senior vice president of global design, during an interview with Skift. The melding of business and leisure travel together: What do we want to do about it? What things do we think are durable as opposed to what things are here for a minute.

The Marriott team wasnt ready to provide too much in the way of specifics of what might come out of the lab, as everything is still in preliminary stages. A company spokesperson declined to provide financial specifics as to how much of an investment Marriott is making to fuel the labs operations.

While company leaders tout this as a lab for the entire industry exploring similar trends and sustainability initiatives, its hard to imagine the phone lines will be open to share everything the Marriott lab develops with competitors a few miles down the road at Hilton headquarters in Virginia.

Leisure travel will be a vital factor in a lot of what gets researched. This sector is four times the size of business travel at Marriott International, the companys group president Stephanie Linnartz said during an appearance on Yahoo Finance Live this week.

Read the full article at Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from ethanol companies arguing for the reinstatement of a Trump-era policy allowing the year-round sales of E-15, a form of gasoline that contains a higher concentration of ethanol.

The decision leaves in place a ruling by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that the EPA under former president Donald Trump had exceeded its authority in granting E-15 an exemption from pollution rules that limit the amount of ethanol in fuel during the summer, when warmer temperatures cause ozone levels to increase, resulting in a variety of respiratory ailments.

REALTED: Will Biden come to refineries' aid on ethanol?

Federal law requiring the increasing blending of ethanol into the fuel supply has been a source of political tension ever since it was signed into law by former president George W. Bush in 2005.

Originally designed to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign crude - in the years before the hydraulic fracturing boom - the question of deciding how much ethanol to blend has stuck administrations ever since between the interests of midwestern farmers that grow the corn from which ethanol is produced and the refineries along the Gulf Coast and other regions that carry the financial cost of blending the ethanol.

The Renewable Fuels Association, which represents ethanol producers in Washington, declined to comment. But the group is already lobbying the EPA for a change to federal pollution rules they believe would allow E-15 sales without the need for an exemption.

The decision to allow the year round sale of E-15 - designating a 15 percent concentration of ethanol - came as part of a grand bargain orchestrated by Trump between ethanol producers and refineries, in which sales of E-15 were expanded at the same time exemptions to federal ethanol blending requirement were awarded to smaller refineries that could claim financial hardship.

But shortly after EPA finalized the policy change in 2019, refineries led by the trade group American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufactures challenged the decision in the D.C. Circuit.

In their appeal to that ruling, the ethanol firm Growth Energy, along with the trade groups Renewable Fuels Association and National Corn Growers Association, argued the decision was likely to suppress the future marketing of higher-ethanol concentration fuels, undermining Congress's 2005 decision to mandate the blending of ethanol into gasoline.

The Supreme Court did not issue an opinion on its decision not to intervene in the case.
Texas experienced a routine cold snap over New Years weekend, but it was enough to take up to a quarter of natural gas operations briefly offline, release tons of methane into the atmosphere and send prices higher, reminiscent of the freeze last year that killed 246 people.

No one died, nor did the systems burp cause power outages. But the dip does raise questions about what would happen if another polar vortex dropped into Texas and whether officials have done enough to protect the electric grid.

A team of reporters at the Bloomberg news agency first reported how instruments froze, output plunged and companies spewed a miasma of pollutants into the atmosphere in a bid to keep operations stable.

TOMLINSON S TAKE: How to fix the Texas power grid in 5 difficult steps

Texas natural gas suppliers released or burned nearly 1 million cubic feet of natural gas, according to compulsory filings with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

BloombergNEF data showed natural gas production sharply dropping at a rate unseen since last February.

The dozen or so affected facilities reported also releasing 85 tons of sulfur dioxide and 11 tons of carbon monoxide. All because corporations did not adequately prepare their equipment for temperatures frequently seen in West Texas.

The incidents show that our fossil fuel-dependent energy system continues to be unreliable, polluting, and unprepared for the impacts of the climate crisis, the Lone Star Sierra Club said in a statement. Not only did these incidents release pollution that harms public health, they led to a dip in supply that impacted gas and electricity prices for millions of Texans.

Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer

The Reuters news agency reported Monday that national natural gas prices rose 2 percent after the cold in Texas, New Mexico and Colorado.

Gas prices have been falling recently with the rise in production but gained on Monday as the freeze-offs disconcerted the market, John Abeln, senior analyst of natural gas research at data provider Refinitiv, told Reuters.

Natural gas production in the lower 48 states dropped by 2.8 billion cubic feet per day during the freeze. Most of that went offline in Texas, Abeln added.

The Texas Railroad Commission regulates natural gas production. Last year, commissioners announced new rules to improve reliability, but those will not take effect until 2023.

I asked the commission for their take on what happened and what it says about the resiliency of natural gas and its role supporting the electric grid in times of crisis. Spokesperson Andrew Keese said the commission had seen no indications of a problem over the weekend.

The agency has not received any information suggesting that production decreased anywhere near the extent some media outlets have reported, he wrote in an email. Pipeline nominations are not the best data source to estimate real-time production changes, especially given markets were closed for the holiday weekend.

During the weekend and after, producers did not report any major disruption of gas production, Keese added.

In other words, the Railroad Commission says there is nothing to see here. But thats not true.

Natural gas companies did report releasing dangerous and harmful gases because their equipment froze. Refinitiv, which supplies critical information to commodity traders, only makes money from providing accurate data.

Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

Railroad commissioners, meanwhile, have been trying to convince Texans to look the other way for decades. More than two-thirds of their campaign donations come from the industry they regulate, and their rules around safety and environmental protection are the weakest in the nation.

After the February freeze, then-Chair Christi Craddick denied the natural gas industry was responsible for the blackouts. Six months later, however, federal investigators proved they were the main trigger for the disaster.

Current Chair Wayne Christian distributes misleading statistics on social media, blaming wind and solar generation for the blackouts, doing his best to acquit his donors of any fault. He refuses to acknowledge how the Texas electric grid was designed to rely on natural gas in an emergency. When we needed them most, the companies he oversees failed to deliver.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: Overseers of Texas electricity moving fast and loose with grid changes

According to Bloomberg, Pioneer Natural Resources reported releasing most of the greenhouse gases over the weekend. I left a message with their media relations manager, who did not return my call, just as they ignored Bloombergs call.

Pioneers PAC was Christians largest donor at $10,000 during the 2020 election cycle, according to Open Secrets, a campaign finance tracking site.

Texans are unlikely to see another polar vortex this year. But that should not breed complacency.

The weekend burp proves the Railroad Commission is still doing more to protect the industry from regulation than Texans from frostbite. Voters should keep that in mind as Christian runs for reelection this year.

NOTE: Bloomberg issued a correction stating that natural gas companies released or burned 1 million cubic feet of natural gas, not 1 billion. This column was updated to reflect that correction.

Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and politics.

twitter.com/cltomlinson

chris.tomlinson@chron.com
Days before my grandmothers funeral, my eldest aunt  a true hoarder of memories  unleashed some of my familys most precious history on the dining room table.

Sprawled across the place where we shared many dinners were nearly a centurys worth of photos; a journal with my grandfathers last scribbles; and the many love letters my Nana had written my grandfather when he served in the Korean War.

I gently took the letters out of a Ziploc bag, unfolding them to read Nanas penciled words.

My Dearest Darling, Just a few lines to let you know that I am well.

I cant wait for you to come home. It seems like the days are just dragging by.

Honey, dont laugh, but I am sending you two dollars. I know that isnt much but its better than not having anything (smile)

I chuckled at what was my grandmothers 1950s equivalent of an emoji. I took her letters home with me, vowing to preserve them or to make a display that would make them easier to read.

Since I was little, Ive done my best to hold on to memories.

What started as a shoebox in middle school has evolved into two large plastic bins full of mementos. There are birthday and Christmas cards, love letters, encouraging notes, embarrassing journal entries, reporter notebooks, movie and concert tickets from nearly two decades ago, and photos I always seem to forget about.

Sifting through this unruly, unorganized collection of memories is always reviving. It reminds me of where Im from, where Ive been and the things Ive done. In my darkest hours, it reminds me of the important things  what I cared about and who cares about me, the history Ive witnessed and the history I am: I have my own history. I am a small, live piece of history.

Over time, though, Ive gotten lazy about keeping these treasures in one place. So many of them are scattered and shoved in dresser and desk drawers around the house: my own love letters to my husband and my grandfathers obituary buried in unopened mail; valuable pictures and videos hidden within the depths of my phone.

Ive made the effort in recent years to print out photos, creating a collage of loved ones I pass by as I wander around my house, but major life events within the past two years  a global pandemic, multiple funerals, my wedding  have had me thinking: Are my memories safe? How will I show and share what is happening in my slice of the world with the future? And the next time I pour through my memory box, will it be a disoriented, frantic search for comfort after losing another person I love?

I dont want that to be the case, and fortunately, it doesnt have to be.

Several resources within the state  from the Houston Public Library to the Texas State Library Archives and Commission  work to educate people about the benefits and methods of archiving, organizing and preserving our personal histories. And according to Miguell Ceasar, lead archivist at the African American Library at the Gregory School, and state archivist Jelain Chubb, its never too early to start.

Make your memories last with these tips:

Figure out an organization system. Knowing how youre going to organize the material is helpful. Are you organizing it by family member, by date, by activity? Chubb said. You may make some changes later on, but its good to have an organization scheme to start with.

Download your digital documents and organize them. If youve captured precious moments on your phone, heres your reminder to download them and/or back them up to the cloud. Chubb recommends going the extra mile to organize and identify them, which will make searching for certain documents easier in the future.

Digitize your photos and documents, and make several copies. At-home scanners and even cellphone cameras can simplify making digital versions of your most prized photographs or documents. And this is especially important in Houston.

You never know when the next flood is going to happen, Ceasar said. Something always happens here, and you could lose stuff in a blink of an eye.

Most recently, I used the mobile app Genius Scan to digitize pages in my grandfathers journal. Once you digitize, Chubb said its best to make several copies and save in several places  like your computer, on the cloud and on multiple USBs or hard drives that can be stored in different places. Chubb said shes used this method, too  scanning all her photos and backing them up on her computer and a thumb drive that she keeps in a zip-top bag should disaster strike. She shares additional copies with family members for safekeeping.

Be mindful of how you store your documents, and avoid sticky tape and glue at all costs. Its not uncommon to see families with photo albums with pictures adhered to the album using something sticky, but Ceasar and Chubb said thats a huge no-no. Often, chemicals in the glue or tape can eat at archival material  doing more harm than good. Instead, seek out archival-rated materials, like acid-free folders or photo books that allow you to place your items in plastic, protective sleeves. Chubb advises avoiding magnetic photo albums for pictures.

Wear gloves. Handle your memories with care, Ceasar said. Wearing gloves can protect fragile items from harsh chemicals or anything on your fingers that could contribute to items quickly breaking down.

Talk to your elders. Speaking with your family can be crucial to filling in the gaps or getting more detail about your archival materials. Family conversations are absolutely essential to really getting something about the people in the photos. Who were they? Chubb said.

Document the details. Make sure that as you collect photographs, you document where you got them, who they are, when it was taken and who you got it from, Chubb said. As much information as you can gather about photos is helpful. Chubb advises opting for pencils over ink when writing details about your archives. Using ink pens, which often require the user to apply pressure, can run, leave an indent or crack the photos emulsion. Lightly writing with a soft, No. 1 pencil is the best option for both photos and paper, she said.

Keep any prized possessions or archives in a controlled environment. In Houston, heat, sun, humidity, flooding and critters can threaten any valued family possessions  especially photos or paper. Be sure to keep your archives in dry, dark and cool spaces without too much light exposure, Caesar said. This means choosing somewhere other than the attic or garage.

Bring your memories to a trusted institution that will archive them. If you think some of your materials might fare better in the hands of a library or archivists, or you have a hunch that it might add some historical context to our understanding of the world, consider donating your items to a trusted institution. Local libraries, such as the African American Library, the Houston Public Library and many universities, including Rice University and University of Houston, have their own archives that accept submissions from the community.

When people come to donate, theres a myth that well take your stuff and youll have no rights or control, Ceasar said. But many archivists give options. At the library, for example, those willing to donate their items will get details on how the items are kept and cared for. Some institutions offer digital copies in exchange for digital archives, and for those who might be reluctant to part with their photographs or other documents, some institutions with settle for a digitized copy to add to their online collections.

Bring it to us and well help you out, Ceasar said.

brittany.britto@chron.com








Songdo international city in Incheon, west of Seoul. Courtesy of Incheon Free Economic Zone agency





Foreign direct investment (FDI) pledges made to South Korea surged 42.3 percent in 2021 from a year earlier to reach an all-time high, data showed Monday.







Foreign investors pledged to invest $29.51 billion in South Korea in 2021, compared with $20.7 billion a year earlier, according to the data from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.







The 2021 figure hit an all-time high, beating the previous record of $26.9 billion logged in 2018, it added.







The amount of investment that actually arrived in South Korea last year jumped 57.5 percent on-year to $18.03 billion.







By segment, the services sector saw its FDI pledges rise 64.2 percent year-on-year to reach $23.57 billion, particularly in information and communication, leasing service and retail sectors, according to the data.







But pledges made to the manufacturing sector decreased 16.2 percent to $5 billion.







By country, investment from the European Union nearly tripled to $12.8 billion, while that from Chinese-speaking nations advanced 38.1 percent to $7.54 billion.







FDI pledges from the United States inched down 0.9 percent to $5.26 billion, while investment from Japan went up 52.8 percent to 1.21 billion last year, the data showed. (Yonhap)


The African American Library at the Gregory School isnt your typical library.

In place of books available to borrow, the Fourth Ward library offers a view into Houstons past through archives.

The building, which once housed the citys first public school for Black students, now holds narratives of former slaves, memorialized love letters written by beloved pastor Rev. Bill Lawson and his late wife and photographs of everyday life in Freedmens Town, a prime destination for African Americans after emancipation that today is in Fourth Ward, just west of downtown.

To put it simply, its a treasure trove, says Houston Public Library director Rhea Brown Lawson. And in recent years, the African American Library has worked to become the first stop for Houstons Black history.

In 2021, the Houston Public Library system received $100,000 in grants to help with its archiving and preservation efforts, including $50,000 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to assist in the reformatting of the African American Librarys oral history collections.

Another $50,000 will help the African American Library digitize around 5,000 items related to Freedmens Town, including photo collections by former Houston Chronicle photojournalist Ben Tecumseh DeSoto and Vietnam War veteran and photographer Elbert Howze. A partnership with Houston Freedmen's Town Conservancy, a nonprofit that preserves and educates the public about the history of Freedmens Town, also is underway.

Miguell Ceasar, the librarys manager and lead archivist, said the recent initiatives could help fill gaps within the citys history.

African American history is everyones history, but a lot of African American history and the history of marginalized communities has not been well documented by the majority of institutions, Ceasar said. Members of the Black community have also commonly kept their archive-worthy documents in their own safekeeping or have passed on histories by word of mouth, which can make collecting archives difficult for many institutions.

Now, we have a place to collect them, said Ceasar.

NEWSLETTERS Join the conversation with HouWeAre We want to foster conversation and highlight the intersection of race, identity and culture in one of America's most diverse cities. Sign up for the HouWeAre newsletter here.

With three galleries  one dedicated to Freedmens Town, a second dedicated to Greater Fourth Ward and a third to a traveling exhibit focused on social clubs and economics  the library boasts around 500 collections and additional in-house resources such as reference books, newspaper clips on microfilm, and a reading room with Wi-Fi, where people can study the archives.

The librarys recording studio  home to its oral histories project  often invites community members to record accounts of their lives and experiences in Houston, Ceasar said. The librarys 80 processed audio archives include a race and social justice collection that most recently documented Houston residents thoughts about police brutality and the murder of George Floyd.

Launched in 2009, the library has accumulated thousands of photos, letters, flyers, old Bibles and other documents from everyday Houstonians, local churches and other organizations with close ties to the Black community. In some cases, Ceasar said people have relinquished the original forms of their archives entirely for the library to preserve, while others have allowed the library to make digital copies to add to their online collections.

Some of the most insightful submissions to date have been obituaries and funeral programs, documenting the lives of everyday Houstonians or those with city connections, Ceasar said. More than 100 were donated from Wheeler Baptist Church.

They give us so many leads, Ceasar said of the 10,000 obituaries collected so far. Often, they are the first and only time people from the African American community sit down to document family life, stories and lineage, including who is kin to who, education levels, military records.

Zion Escobar, director of Houston Freedmen's Town Conservancy, is hoping to put the librarys digitized archives to use when telling the stories of Freedmens Town.

Planned projects include an augmented reality app, which will offer a self-guided tour of Fourth Ward and curated content using archives; a web-based atlas project that will create a timestamped story map depicting Freedmens Town between 1865 and 2021; and public discussions on genealogy and family history led by the conservancys anticipated Visitor Center, she said.

Additionally, the conservancy will use archives to aid in its research on the 51-mile Emancipation Historic Trail, from Galvestons Reedy Chapel to Houstons Fourth Ward, potentially helping the National Park Service map communities and settlements along the historic migration route once used by newly emancipated African Americans.

We hope this inspires (residents) to look at their own family collections as an incredible treasure chest that can be shared, and that their legacy should be represented in perpetuity and celebrated as part of the story of Freedmens Town, Escobar said.

Lawson agreed, emphasizing that every Black Houstonian likely has a story that could be archived as history.

Theres an organized way to be a part of the fabric of our entire community by donating and allowing for your histories to be digitized either at the Houston Public Library or other archives of the city, Lawson said.

The point is for the history to be preserved.

brittany.britto@chron.com

twitter.com/brittanybritto
During a World Series game between the Astros and the Atlanta Braves last year, I shuffled to the rooftop bar at Buffalo Bayou Brewing and asked for a nonalcoholic drink. When I handed my credit card to the bartender to pay for my pink lemonade, he waved it off dismissively.

We dont charge for nonalcoholic drinks, he replied, terse. Its a bar, we dont care.

I applaud the brewerys decision to not charge for booze-free drinks and was certainly happy to be drinking for free that night (the Astros lost, badly). But the bartenders exasperated attitude stuck with me. This was a bar, and my nonalcoholic drink order existed outside the confines of that definition.

I'm not a teetotaler, but I plan regular dry spells throughout the year. Yes, I do Dry January  in fact Im doing it right now. For almost a decade, my work life has revolved around alcohol, having spent my entire career in food and drink journalism, with a stint in the restaurant industry to boot. Its become a ritual to introduce moderation into my life where I can.

I stop drinking alcohol for a month, or even just a week if thats all I can manage, to give my body (and liver) a rest, to feel healthier, have a clearer mind and sleep better. But if Im being honest, I also do it to prove I still can.

My encounter at the brewery was a simple annoyance. But I kept thinking how someone in recovery  whose sobriety is perhaps more permanent and fragile than mine  would have felt in that moment. An annoyance could quickly become a trigger.

One of the biggest challenges is actually just going against our societal norms, said Susie Loredo, addiction recovery social worker at Legacy Community Health. There is really an expectation to drink in kind of every social setting these days.

Whether its at parties, on dates, at networking events or happy hour with co-workers, Loredo says societal expectations are the biggest trigger for people in alcohol addiction recovery. Being in any place where others are making different choices than you  for example, not drinking at a bar where everyone else is  can be uncomfortable, she adds.

I typically dont go out much during my booze-free periods, to make it easier. But when I decided to do Sober October after a summer of drinking too much, it came at a time when I was socializing a lot. This was before any of us had heard the word omicron and there was a lull in coronavirus cases after the delta variant surge.

This will be a great test, I thought. Are my usual haunts accommodating to people who dont drink alcohol? How sober-friendly is Houstons bar scene?

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Of all the times Ive gone dry, this was by far the hardest. I begrudgingly knocked back cans of Busch NA at Wakefield Crowbar after the Chronicles Monday softball games, the tiny pieces of ice floating inside suggesting the can had been in the back of the bars cooler for a while. I quickly became bored of the Heineken 0.0 at Griffs during Thursday trivia games. Even my beloved West Alabama Ice House, where I spend much of my time, was only serving Big Swig key lime  the worst flavor. (They have since added a couple nonalcoholic beers.)

My experience wasnt all bad. While Houston bars have a ways to go, national trends are reshaping how local operators are approaching their nonalcoholic drink programs.

Loredo says the sober curious and mindful drinking movements are encouraging more people to examine their drinking patterns and move away from an all or nothing mentality. According to consumer research firm Nielsen, 47 percent of U.S. consumers attempted to reduce their alcohol consumption in 2019, including 66 percent of millennials. That same year, 21 percent  more than a fifth  of Americans participated in Dry January (or at least attempted to).

Sobriety, whether temporary or permanent, is bigger than a trend. The share of the population abstaining from alcohol at any one time is significant, whether someone is in recovery or pregnant, sober for medical or religious reasons, or because they simply dont feel like it. This presents a unique opportunity for bars, restaurants and retailers to cater to them.

To find nonalcoholic drinks that were a step above soft drinks and seltzer, I generally had to frequent Houstons more upscale bars. I met a friend one night at Julep for what she called a fake drink. The Washington Avenue bar, like its owner Alba Huerta, has an excellent reputation for spot-on, creative cocktails. While there were no zero-proof options on the menu, the bartender didnt bat an eye when I asked for something nonalcoholic. She asked what flavors I liked; I offered up the words spicy, smoky, citrus and herbal.

I received a concoction of orange, lemon, pineapple and habanero. The glass was adorned with orange and pineapple wedges and a generous bunch of mint. It was delightfully sour and spicy, and made me feel like I was having a proper cocktail worthy of a night out.

I had a similar experience at Hando, the sushi hand roll restaurant in the Heights. I simply pointed to two cocktails I would order if I were drinking alcohol, and the server brought me a very pleasant ginger beer, lemon and strawberry drink with a blood orange slice and dehydrated strawberries as garnishes. I also learned there is a very tasty strawberry-basil drink at Under the Volcano, the Chronicles go-to bar for departing colleagues. I was, however, asked if I was a minor.

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By far, my best experience was at Night Shift, a new bar in the East End. When I visited, booze-free cocktails had a dedicated category, and another section of the menu came with a note saying any of those drinks could be made nonalcoholic.

Having that spelled out on the menu, that those options are available, is a very welcoming and also destigmatizing way to run your bar, said Loredo.

When owners Justin Ware and Patrick Abalos conceived of Night Shift, they considered their core values. One of them was inclusion, which in their view encompasses people who arent drinking alcohol.

Ware says they wanted to put as much effort into their nonalcoholic drinks as the rest of their program, so customers forgoing booze can have the same experience. People can easily go to a corner store for a Sprite or Topo Chico, he adds.

Many Night Shift staffers are industry veterans and all have good friends who are sober but are still bartenders, Ware says. People abstaining from alcohol altogether is increasingly common, helping drink professionals normalize it, even at a bar. This concept is incorporated into the teams training.

Houston became even more sober-friendly in October with the arrival of Sipple, a nonalcoholic bottle shop in Rice Village. Owners Helenita and Danny Frounfelkner painstakingly source about 150 products, including booze-free wine, beer, spirits and other craft beverages. So often, people who arent drinking are relegated to what Danny calls the kids menu of juice and soda, but Sipple sells adult beverages that happen to not have alcohol in them.

On PreviewHouston.com: Recently opened Sipple is Houstons first non-alcoholic bottle shop

Danny Frounfelkner said they knew Houston was ready for a store like Sipple, the first of its kind in the city, but the response in the last few months far exceeded their expectations. He estimates between 50 and 75 percent who come in are return customers, and dozens shop here on a weekly basis.

The reasons for their visits are varied: theyre sober, theyve never drank, theyre drinking less, theyre religious  Danny says he meets a lot of Muslims.

We do not ask people if they drink alcohol or not, because its none of our business, he said. He lets shoppers drive that conversation if they want to: Some are very open and volunteer their story, while others dont share, and thats fine, he says.

Frounfelkner thinks 2022 will be the nonalcoholic spaces biggest year. Well start to see even more brands come onto the market, and he wouldnt be surprised if more booze-free bottle shops open in Houston.

Ware is hopeful Houston will continue to become more sober-friendly, but it will take more bars like Night Shift and other industry leaders to normalize not drinking alcohol while also enjoying the citys nightlife, he says. This means having both good nonalcoholic drink options and supportive bartenders.

emma.balter@chron.com
Alpha Foods Co., a family-owned business in Waller, has been busy keeping up with the pizza needs of school districts in 18 states. Among their Houston area customers is Cy-Fair ISD, which will order nearly 560,000 pizzas throughout the year.

Their business has been so crazy busy this year, Darin Crawford, CFISD director of nutrition services, said in a press release. They actually have added an extra shift on Saturdays, so they bring their production staff in on Saturday specifically to make pizza for Cy-Fair.

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The company was founded by George Sarandos and is run by his daughter and vice president Maria Bowen. Bowens parents are from Greece and her fathers passion for pizza making originated while serving in the U.S. military, she explained in the press release.

My dad, George, always had a passion for making pizzas, and that passion really came from when he was in the U.S. Army, he went to Germany, and that was the very first time hed ever laid his eyes on what pizza was, she said.

Alpha first helped Cy-Fair ISD during Hurricane Harveys aftermath in 2017, providing food for the school district and the community.

In the immediate aftermath I called Maria at Alpha and I said, Can you donate some pizza to us? said Crawford. She said, absolutely, I will send you a pallet of pizza. What makes it really special to me is at that particular point, we were not a customer of Alpha.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Cy-Fair ISD athletics programs look forward to continued success in new year

Along with Cy-Fair, Alpha provides pizza for several other school districts in the Houston area, and in 17 other states.

We especially love to give back, and as a local Texas pizza company, we want to support our school districts as much as possible, Bowen said. So, what we do at Alpha is much more than just make pizzas, you know, 24/7. We are feeding the children.

chevall.pryce@chron.com
A man found dead outside a southeast Houston business had been shot several times, Houston police said.

Employees at the business at 6301 Eppes Street found the man about 7:45 a.m. Saturday as they arrived to work, police said.

The man was lying in the parking lot of the business in Houstons Golfcrest community, near 610 South Loop near Wayside.

Authorities are now looking for a white Dodge Challenger with a stripe on the side that left the scene, possibly after the shooting.

Anyone with information should contact the HPD Homicide Division at 713-308-3600 or Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.
For almost a year, Leah Martin had held onto her tickets for the Carnival Dream. The 3,600-passenger cruise ship, with a crew of over 1,300, planned to sail out of Galveston for a 9-day Caribbean voyage on January 15.

Weeks before departure, the omicron variant sent case numbers surging in Houston and across the country. On Dec. 30, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised Americans not to cruise regardless of their vaccination status. The agency cited a "very high level" of risk for COVID spread onboard, even with nearly all crew and passengers vaccinated.

COVID HELP DESK: When is the omicron surge expected to peak?

But as the pandemic enters its third year, the agency's warning hasn't stemmed the flow of people flocking to Galveston for vacations at sea, according to the Port of Galveston. Martin said she and her husband, who are fully vaccinated with booster shots, were set on cruising. Their risk of serious illness seemed low, she said, and she felt "very confident" cruise companies would keep people safe.

"They are just as desperate to be successful as us cruisers are to cruise again," said Martin. "I personally think the CDC needs to find someone else to pick on."

As of Friday, every cruise ship sailing in the US had reported COVID cases onboard, according to CDC monitoring data, and some U.S.-based ships have been denied access to foreign ports due to too many infections onboard.

Aside from cruises, Galveston County itself is facing a wave of infections. The county reported an average of nearly 500 new cases per day since Jan. 1, about 50 percent higher than the daily average two weeks ago.

"Were seeing our numbers increase to the highest levels weve ever seen," said Dr. Philip Keiser, a virologist at UT Medical Branch who serves as the health authority for Galveston County. "Most are mildly ill, although were seeing our hospitalizations increase as well."

But Keiser said cruise ships, which mandate vaccinations for most passengers and require a negative COVID test result to board, aren't a significant source of those cases. About 1 percent of a cruise ship's population tests positive for COVID each week, he said.

"We are seeing numbers beginning to increase on cruise lines but interestingly, not to the same level weve seen in the general population," said Keiser, adding that he thinks infection risk might be higher at places like supermarkets.

Keiser said it's mostly crew members, not passengers, who have been falling ill onboard. The main concern cruise operators have is how to quarantine infected crew members, he said, and some have resorted to creative methods. Carnival, which sails the Breeze, Dream, and Vista out of Galveston, anchored the Carnival Sensation at the port as a floating quarantine facility, he said.

"We havent seen a big influx of people coming off the ships and needing to be in the hospital," said Keiser.

Compared to other cruise hotspots like Miami, one of Galveston's advantages is that many cruisers drive to the port, which makes it easier for passengers exposed to COVID to head home without needing to quarantine onshore before a flight, said Port of Galveston Director Rodger Rees.

"With omicron weve seen a surge of crew infection, but whats happening on the passenger side is theres a lot less - a ship may come in with 7-10 cases," said Rees. Passengers testing positive for COVID are required to leave through a different gate, he said.

Still, not everyone is comfortable with cruising amidst omicron. Austin resident Greg Hall moved his mid-January voyage to later in the year. Though he felt prior cruises had "done well" on safety, he felt rescheduling would make for a "less chaotic and more predictable cruise."

COMING SOON: New photos offer look inside Royal Caribbean's $125M cruise terminal in Galveston

But Hall is in the minority, according to Port of Galveston figures showing some cruises at 70 to 80 percent capacity barely a week after the CDC's advisory against cruising.

"From our perspective, the changes havent been as much," said Keiser. "People dont necessarily regard the CDC recommendations much down here."

Have you recently cruised, are planning to cruise, or decided not to cruise and want to share your experience? Please contact the reporter at the email below.

charlie.zong@chron.com
Former Galveston resident and convicted murderer Robert Durst has died at the age of 78.

The multi-millionaire was notorious for his bizarre life that includes three different murders spanning four decades and strange antics he made headlines for, including when he urinated on a cash register and candy display at a Houston drug store. He died of natural causes Monday in a hospital near the California prison he was serving a life sentence at, per the Associated Press.

See below for a look at Durst's bizarre life and the events leading up to his long-awaited conviction and death:

The web of murders Durst has been implicated in dates back to 1982 when his wife Kathleen disappeared from their New York home. Her body was never found but she was officially declared dead years ago, according to the Associated Press.

courtesy of HBO

Nearly 20 years after Kathleen's disappearance New York authorities re-opened the investigation in 1999. Durst then fled to Galveston, where he rented a low-cost studio apartment posing as an elderly mute woman with a fake name, the Houston Chronicle reported.

G. PAUL BURNETT/G. Paul Burnett/The New York Tim

Documents claim Durst killed his wife in their New York home "after years of exerting power and control" over her, the Houston Chronicle reported. Prosecutors hoped to tie Durst to Kathleen's death in the murder trial of his former friend and confidant, Susan Berman.

courtesy HBO

After his wife's disappearance in 1982, Berman served as Durst's unofficial spokesperson. Prosecutors alleged Durst traveled from Galveston back to Los Angeles in 2000 and shot Berman execution-style in her home in fear she would reveal his alleged involvement in his wife's disappearance.

courtesy HBO

Berman's body was found after a cryptic note (which Durst inadvertently admitted years later he wrote himself) told police where to find her body, according to the Associated Press.

.../NYT

A year after Berman's death, Durst was charged with murder in Oct. 2001 after the dismembered body of his 71-year-old neighbor, Morris Black, was found in Galveston Bay.

AP

After being released on a $300,000 bond, Durst became a fugitive on the run and fled Texas in a car rented under Black's name. In Nov. 2001, he was arrested for shoplifting Band-Aids and a sandwich at a supermarket in Pennsylvania, despite having $38,000 in the trunk of the car, the Houston Chronicle reported.

PETE SHAHEEN/AP

At trial in 2003, Durst claimed he killed Black (pictured above) in self-defense, but admitted to dismembering the body, bagging the parts and throwing them in Galveston Bay. Black's remains began turning up in Galveston Bay in September 2001.

DAVID J. PHILLIP/AP

Trash found near the body parts led police to this fourplex in Galveston, where Durst and Black were neighbors.

PAT SULLIVAN/AP

Despite the admission of dismembering Black's body, Durst was found not guilty in his murder on Nov. 11, 2003, in Galveston. The judge in a later Los Angeles trial agreed to allow prosecutors to include evidence from the Galveston trial, according to the Associated Press.

PAT SULLIVAN/AP

Durst's Houston-based defense attorney, Dick DeGuerin, previously told the Houston Chronicle the ruling could mean they're "going to have to try the Galveston case all over again."

LM OTERO/AP

Following the trial, Durst continued to make headlines for his strange antics. In July 2014, he was accused of exposing himself and urinating inside a Houston CVS store. He pleaded "no contest" and blamed the incident on a "medical mishap."

Mayra Beltran/Staff

In March 2015, Durst was arrested in New Orleans on a 1st-degree extradition warrant of out California for the shooting death of Berman, 15 years after her death, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Durst's 2015 arrest came just days before the final episode of a popular HBO documentary about his alleged involvement in the three murders. The documentary "The Jinx" concluded with Durst unknowingly saying on camera, "There it is. You're caught. "What the hell did I do? Killed them all of course," the Houston Chronicle reported.

courtesy of HBO

Durst's mysterious past has made for popular films. The 2010 film "All Good Things," starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst, was based on Kathleen Durst's disappearance.

...

Durst was convicted in September of shooting Berman and was sentenced in October to life in prison without parole, per the AP. He was later indicted by a New York grand jury in November for second-degree murder in his wife's death.
Three major Houston health care institutions will require employees to receive booster shots in the coming weeks, becoming some of the first in the nation to elevate vaccination requirements amid widespread worker shortages caused by the omicron surge.

Houston Methodist, Texas Childrens Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine announced booster mandates to little fanfare Friday, a marked change from last years contentious debate over the legality and efficacy of such policies in health care settings.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Omicron is sending vaccinated people to the hospital, but unvaccinated are more likely to end up in ICU

At Houston Methodist, managers must be boosted against COVID-19 by Jan. 31, with all other employees to follow by March, Methodist President and CEO Marc Boom wrote in an internal letter last week.

Like I said when we did this the first time, as health care workers weve taken a sacred oath to do everything possible to keep our patients safe and healthy  this includes getting a booster now, Boom wrote.

The updated policy comes seven months after the sprawling health system mandated vaccines for its 26,000 employees, setting off a high-profile battle in which some workers staged protests and filed a lawsuit against the hospital, claiming the policy violated their rights. The lawsuit was dismissed in June. That same month, more than 150 Houston Methodist workers resigned or were fired for refusing vaccination.

Hospital leaders do not appear to anticipate the same pushback earlier mandates received from a small, vocal minority of workers.

The Baylor community responded very positively to our COVID vaccination requirement last year, Baylor College of Medicine CEO Paul Klotman said Friday in a letter to employees. As we weather the surge caused by the omicron variant, we know through emerging and evolving science that boosters are now an important part of being fully vaccinated.

While Klotman did not specify a date, a spokeswoman said Baylor College of Medicine employees will likely have until April 1 to receive the booster shot. At Texas Childrens the deadline will be March 1.

The prevalence of omicron breakthrough cases is forcing hospitals and lawmakers to reconsider what it means to be fully inoculated against COVID, even as current guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continue to define full vaccination as two does of either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Drugmakers behind the nations three approved vaccines have said their booster shots raise antibody levels enough to keep most recipients out of the hospital. Antibodies stimulated by the COVID vaccine naturally wane over time, and studies show some people who received their initial shots more than six months ago are experiencing declining immunity.

Texas Childrens President and CEO Mark A. Wallace said his hospitals updated policy is about protecting its workforce at a time of mounting case counts.

While we recognize that there is still much to learn about COVID-19 and its fast-evolving variants, we do know that available vaccines, including the booster dose, have continuously proven themselves to be successful at preventing severe disease, he said.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Hidalgo returns Harris County to its highest COVID-19 threat level. Is anyone listening?

The unified announcements reflect a growing consensus among the scientific community that the initial doses of the Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Moderna vaccines no longer provide sufficient immunity to front-line workers who were among the earliest recipients of the shot. Unlike last years vaccine mandate saga, in which Houston Methodist spearheaded the push, with other Texas hospitals following months later, Fridays announcements may signal health officials increased willingness to act in tandem when rolling out new COVID-related policies.

While omicron appears to cause less severe illness than previous strains, experts said the sheer volume of new cases means the total number of people requiring acute care is likely to exceed that of previous surges.

Last weekend, the proportion of hospitalized Houstonians with COVID rose above 25 percent for the first time since the delta peak in early September, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

The daily number of Texans testing positive for the virus is already at an all-time high, with researchers predicting the state will shatter hospitalization records in the coming weeks without drastic social and behavioral changes. The greater Houston area averaged about 13,500 new COVID cases daily last week.

This post-holiday uptick in community spread is also fueling a rise in infections among health care workers: At Houston Methodist, about 2,700 front-line workers have caught omicron during the latest surge, officials said.

The hospitals did not say how many employees have received their boosters since the shots became available in September.

Memorial Hermann requires its 29,000 employees to be vaccinated but had not implemented a booster mandate as of Monday, Kathryn Williams, a hospital spokesperson, said in an email.

We are constantly evaluating our procedures and policies to ensure we are protecting the health and safety of our workforce and of all those we serve to the best of our ability, Williams said. We believe COVID-19 boosters are an important tool in the fight to end this pandemic and we strongly urge our employees, as well as all community members, to get boosted.

Vaccination will remain optional for employees of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, spokesman Clayton Boldt said Tuesday. Nearly 89 percent have been fully vaccinated.

St. Lukes is not mandating employees to receive a booster dose by a specified date, said Dylan Sandifier, a spokesman for the Catholic health care system. All employees were required to be vaccinated by Nov. 1, except those with an approved exemption.

nora.mishanec@chron.com

twitter.com/nmishanec
Tabitha Hobley woke in the middle of the night to the sound of her neighbors trash can rattling in the wind. The longtime Humble resident looked out of the window and saw outdoor chairs and tree branches strewn all over the back yard.

Hobley, 52, ran outside in the wind and rain to bring her last bit of Christmas decorations inside and went back to sleep. She was surprised when she ventured out Sunday morning to see trees down everywhere, on top of neighbors cars and homes. Fences were blown over and debris was scattered everywhere in her neighborhood, North Hollow Estates near George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

The National Weather Service confirmed a tornado with winds up to 85 miles per hour touched down in the vicinity of the airport. Hobleys home suffered minor damage in comparison to her neighbors: a few missing shingles and a leaking chimney, but she was without power going on 14 hours on Sunday.

Ive never seen it torn up like this, Hobley said. There were storage units that looked like they exploded.

Strong winds and torrential downpours wreaked havoc throughout the Houston area Saturday night, damaging buildings and flooding low-lying areas. The National Weather Service confirmed at least five tornadoes touched down in the region, including in Humble, Kingwood, Montgomery and the Dayton area. No injuries were reported.

Winds reached more than 85 miles per in some areas, blowing off roofs and knocking down trees and power lines. More than 4,000 CenterPoint Energy customers were without power Sunday evening, down from 7,000 outages in the morning. CenterPoint crews worked all Sunday to restore power to neighborhoods.

Roofing companies, including Elite Roofers in Montgomery County, were out helping residents put blue tarp on damaged roofs. Jordan Felder, whose wife owns Elite Roofers, said he expects a spike in repair calls over the coming weeks.

Our phone rings every day, but when we have storms of this nature, its not uncommon for the call volume to triple or more, Felder said. When your neighbors are in need, you want to do the right thing and help people.

Jarrah Owens said she slept through much of the storms wind, lightning and torrential rain. The 42-year-old Realtor said she only realized the extent of the storms damage when she drove to her storage unit off West Lake Houston Parkway in Humble Sunday morning to put away her Christmas decorations.

Nearly every row of the storage complex had roof damage, laying bare boats and personal possessions. Owens, a 42-year-old Realtor, said her unit was the only one out of the dozen units in her row that still had a roof.

We just got lucky, Owens said. Im from Arkansas and lived in Tornado Alley. It was surprising to see something like this happen in Houston with such high winds.

paul.takahashi@chron.com

twitter.com/paultakahashi




Exports of instant noodles reached an all-time high in the first 11 months of 2021 on their growing global popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic, data showed Monday.







South Korea exported $607.9 million worth of instant noodles, or "ramyeon" in Korean, in the January-November period, up 10.6 percent from the same period of 2020, according to the data from the Korea Customs Service and industry sources.







Last year's bumper record was attributed to the global popularity of Korean-made instant noodles as an emergency food in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak that forced people to stay home.







Also responsible were strong overseas shipments of "chapaguri," a signature noodle dish made popular by the Oscar-winning film "Parasite," according to the sources.







China was the largest overseas market with exports reaching $133.42 million.







The United States came next with $70.76 million, followed by Japan with $58.77 million, Taiwan with $29.18 million and the Philippines with $25.96 million. (Yonhap)


School staffers in Texas who have COVID-19 can return to campuses after at least five days since the onset of any symptoms if their condition has improved and they have remained fever-free for 24 hours without medicine, according to new guidance from the Texas Education Agency.

The guidance, published Friday, brings health recommendations for school systems in line with the latest guidelines for adults from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC officials two weeks ago said people with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID should isolate for five days, followed by another five days of diligent mask-wearing around others. Previously, the CDC had recommended a 10-day isolation period.

The updated TEA guidelines deferred to a Department of State Health Services rule for determining when students can return to instruction following an infection. As of Monday, that rule calls for schools to exclude a student  symptomatic or asymptomatic  from class for 10 days. The rules webpage says it last was updated Sept. 20.

On Monday, the health agency confirmed its rule was under review.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Confusion reigns as Houston schools make last-minute changes to COVID plans amid omicron wave

Staffers who test positive but do not present symptoms also may return to schools at least five days after the day they tested positive, under the new TEA guidance.

The changes come as school districts resumed instruction following winter breaks while the Houston region coped with the latest COVID surge being driven by the omicron variant.

Researchers have said cases and hospitalizations in Texas are expected to continue climbing with the latter potentially reaching new levels. Health experts have told school administrators that the surge is likely to get worse and could reach a peak this month.

The spread of COVID, particularly the highly transmissible omicron variant in the last month or so, has remained relentless.

The two-week average COVID-19 test positivity rate in Harris County reached 36.5 percent as of Monday, according to county figures. Roughly three-quarters of eligible individuals in the county had received at least one vaccine dose while 59.8 percent were considered fully vaccinated.

County Judge Lina Hidalgo on Monday increased the COVID threat level to its highest level, saying, the first time we went red was because we were helpless  but now were at red because of the lack of action among those who are refusing to get vaccinated.

In schools, the impact of the omicron variant began to become clearer as districts reported new case totals after their breaks. Houston ISDs data portal on Monday showed there were 1,111 active student cases and 397 staff cases. The district has about 195,000 students and 23,659 staffers.

Nearly 20,000 of the districts employees had submitted vaccination documents by early December, Superintendent Millard House II told the school board last month.

Per the new TEA guidance, staffers who were in close contact with a COVID-19-positive individual do not need to stay at home if they are older than 18 and have received all recommended vaccine doses, including boosters, or have fully recovered after having COVID-19 within the last 90 days.

For staff who meet the close contact threshold with a COVID-19 positive individual who are not in one of the above groups, it is recommended that the school system require that staff remain off campus during the stay-at-home period, but this is a local employment policy decision, TEA officials wrote. If these staff continue to work on campus, rapid testing must be performed periodically for five days post-exposure, with testing on the fifth day recommended.

At least one Houston-area district revised its safety plans following the TEAs new guidance.

Texas City ISD started using the five-day quarantine recommendation from the CDC on Monday, spokeswoman Melissa Tortorici said.

alejandro.serrano@chron.com
SpaceCom is no longer being held in Space City.

After five years in downtown Houston, the commercial space conference started by Houstons convention and tourism agencies is making its debut this week in Orlando, Fla.

Event organizers cited COVID-19 and different strategic directions for why the conference left Houston. Others said the event didnt fully live up to expectations. SpaceCom was designed to connect professionals from the aerospace industry to those in energy, health care, maritime, advanced manufacturing and other sectors. But in the end, SpaceCom attendees and exhibitors largely came from space organizations.

FROM THE FIRST CONFERENCE: SpaceCom explores an industry role in outer space

The goals that we set out at the beginning, we probably didnt achieve those, said David Alexander, director of the Rice University Space Institute. Its a real challenge to get major energy companies to spend their resources attending and exhibiting at what looks like a space conference.

Alexander is on the advisory board for SpaceCom, and he was among the group of people first brainstorming ideas for a space conference in Houston. They were looking for a unique angle that would differentiate SpaceCom from the many others space conferences held around the world.

They settled on the cross-pollination of industries because it would capitalize on Houstons broad economic base. Plus, deep-space exploration will require expertise from other sectors.

Were going to need a lot of those resources when we go back to the moon and Mars, said Bob Mitchell, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership.

The inaugural SpaceCom was held in November 2015, and roughly 1,700 people attended that event  far surpassing the 700 officials hoped to receive, Alexander said. The final in-person conference held in November 2019 attracted some 2,500 people.

The event was created by Houston First Corp., which manages more than 10 city-owned buildings and properties and underground and surface parking, Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau and National Trade Productions, which specializes in business-to-business trade shows and events. SpaceCom was hosted in partnership with NASAs Johnson Space Center.

Both the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau and National Trade Productions provided funding for the event. Houston First provided consultation and staff participation, among other things.

There was a five-year agreement to partner on the event; then that agreement could be reevaluated. Ultimately, it was not renewed. Houston First and the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau were not part of the 2020 SpaceCom held virtually. The Johnson Space Center provided speakers for the event.

Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa Wyche said the center is participating in another space conference, ASCENDxTexas, that will be held at the University of Houston-Clear Lake in April. The theme is Accelerating the Business of Space Exploration Moving Beyond the Now.

Im excited about what we were able to do, said Michael Heckman, president and CEO of Houston First, but even more so about what we will be able to do in the future.

Heckman said SpaceCom was worthwhile, but COVID and differing views on the conferences strategy clouded its future.

He said Houston First and other stakeholders are looking at creating another event that focuses on space commercialization but also possibly innovation and technology.

Houston First has also helped produce a health care conference, Medical World Americas, that has been discontinued. But Heckman pointed to Comicpalooza, which Houston First runs on behalf of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, as a success story with roughly 46,000 attendees in 2019.

Heckman did not directly answer if he was happy with the attendance at SpaceCom, instead saying Houston First had a different view of strategy and growth for the future.

You have to be able to try new things, he said. And not everything you try thats new and innovative is going to fully take. . . . This is just how you develop a structure in the future that can grow faster.

Robert Harar, chairman of SpaceCom and National Trade Productions, said the event met its goals for attendance and hotel room nights. He likewise praised the partnership with Houston.

We do shows all around the world, and Houston ranks right up there in terms of the type of support and cooperation that we received in developing SpaceCom, Harar said.

This years SpaceCom will be held in-person at the Rosen Shingle Creek hotel. Harar said multiple industries are still included in the event under a conference track called On-Planet Industry Applications that looks at how satellites and other space assets can enable innovation on Earth.

Alexander said the event in Houston attracted good speakers, including science educator and entertainer Bill Nye, and industry leaders. And although SpaceCom didnt attract many professionals from other industries, he was pleasantly surprised by the conferences international appeal.

Houston has an international reputation in the space industry, Alexander said. As the commercial space aspects grow around the world, many of them are looking to Houston to look at opportunities here.

Alexander and others are working to grow Houstons space reputation beyond being home to NASAs Johnson Space Center. They want the city to be a hub for commercial space activity, which is a major goal of the Houston Spaceport.

NEW ORGANIZATION: TexSpace debuts to solidify Houston as Space City

As we try to grow that, losing a major conference is a bit of a blow, Alexander said. I think we should establish that aspect of Space City. But these things are difficult to get off the ground.

Space Center Houston, a science center and the official visitor center for NASAs Johnson Space Center, might fill a sliver of that void. Its planning a business-to-business conference on June 9 for the local aerospace community. The invitation-only event would occur before a three-day public festival.

In no way is this meant to be a replacement for SpaceCom at this point, said Richard Glover, vice president of communications and marketing with Space Center Houston.

Mitchell, with the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, felt that SpaceCom was perhaps a little ahead of its time. He said space companies are partnering with other industries every day to overcome their challenges and tackle their big goals.

I just think that maybe we were a little early in trying to get the different industries involved, he said. Its a shame, too. Because if you look at the current activity going on in commercial space here, it would have, and will in the future, benefit these other industries that are in the region.

andrea.leinfelder@chron.com

twitter.com/a_leinfelder
If, God forbid, our intrepid Texas attorney general stays in office beyond this fall, hell need to update his cultural references. Fulminating a few weeks ago about a Texas high court ruling that went against him, Ken Paxton warned his fellow Texans that the ruling was likely to unleash George Soros against them.

Soros, the Hungarian-born American billionaire investor and reliable supporter of liberal and progressive causes, has long been a handy bete noire for the far right, but the man is 91 years old. At some point  unless he really is Satans seed, as his enemies have labeled him  Soros will be as dated as bell-bottom jeans and beehive hairdos. No one will know who the man is, or was. Those late and unlamented fashion trends may come back; George Soros will not.

Paxton evoked Soros in response to a Dec. 15 Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruling that the attorney general cannot unilaterally prosecute election fraud cases. The all-Republican court ruled 8-1 that the AG can only get involved in a case when a district or county attorney requests his assistance. If he barges in uninvited, the court ruled, hes violating the separation of powers clause in the Texas Constitution. The court got it right.

In response, Paxton took to Twitter, warning that Soros-funded district attorneys will have sole power to decide whether election fraud has occurred in Texas.

Last week Paxton urged the high court to reconsider. He didnt mention that he had just wasted $2.2 million of taxpayers money on a fruitless hunt for election fraud. And he certainly didnt admit that election fraud is about as common as a field of bluebonnets in January.

The court ruling was something of a surprise, but perhaps it shouldnt have been. Once upon a time, traditional conservatives believed in local control, but that was before Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and our states indicted attorney general assumed total control, principle be damned. They will override local officials whenever they please.

Thats why Paxton ended up in court. As Donald Trumps loyal lap dog, he hops down from his masters expanse long enough to trot after alleged cases of voter fraud, desperately seeking to validate the former presidents outlandish claims. When the Jefferson County district attorney declined to prosecute newly elected sheriff Zena Stephens over campaign-finance allegations stemming from the 2016 election, Paxton rushed in to bring his own case. Except, knowing he was unlikely to get an indictment in Jefferson County, Paxton went shopping for a more favorable forum. He landed next door in Chambers County, a more conservative venue he assumed would be amenable to his allegations. In 2018, a grand jury accommodated the AG with an indictment on three counts.

Four years later, Sheriff Stephens is still in office, and the AG has had his hand slapped by the high court. The attorney general, a member of the executive department, [may not engage in] the prosecution of election-law violations in district and inferior courts, the court held. That power, it continued, is more properly assigned to the judicial department.

The Texas statute that Paxton had relied on for his over-zealous prosecution is unconstitutional, the continued concluded.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee welcomed the ruling. This is a big win for local government and Texans who are tired of state officials exaggerating voter fraud claims to undermine elections, he tweeted.

Of course, Trumpian-style exaggeration is Paxtons specialty - that, and ruining peoples lives.

Consider Hervis Rogers, the 62-year-old Houston man who attracted national media attention when he waited six hours to vote during the 2020 Super Tuesday primaries. When he finally got to cast his ballot - the very last person in line to do so - he allegedly broke a Texas law forbidding people with felony convictions from voting until theyve completed every part of their sentence. Rogers had a few weeks left on parole after serving nine years of a 25-year prison sentence for a 1995 burglary.

Rogers lawyers said he didnt know he wasnt allowed to vote until his parole was completed. Texas law at the time made it a crime to knowingly cast a fraudulent vote, but appellate courts had interpreted that to mean only that the voter knew of their status  in Rogers case, that he had not yet completed his parole  and not that they had to know it was illegal for them to vote.

The Legislature tried to address criticism over the harshness of that interpretation in September, when it updated the language of the voter fraud statute to make it a crime only when a voter knowingly or intentionally votes while ineligible.

Meanwhile, those legal niceties never matter to a tough guy like Paxton (unless they involve his own indictments for securities fraud). He went after Rogers like a hound on a hare.

Hervis is a felon rightly barred from voting under TX law, Paxton tweeted. Rogers voted before his parole was scheduled to end, he was likely ineligible to cast a ballot on Election Day. I prosecute voter fraud everywhere we find it!

The Rogers prosecution came a few years after Crystal Mason of Tarrant County was sentenced to five years for voting illegally. Her crime was casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election - as she had been advised to do -- while on federally supervised release. Her vote wasnt counted. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has agreed to review her conviction, which also turned on the question of what was required to prove she knowingly voted illegally.

Mason is Black, as are Sheriff Stephens and Rogers.

With Rogers, as with the sheriff, Paxton had to find another venue to get the indictment he wanted. He chose Montgomery County. The fact that our fervid-red neighbor to the north is predominantly white was, of course, coincidental. Paxton also pushed for bail to be set at $100,000.

Yessir, that mans tough! The hapless fellow in his sights could have spent the rest of his life in prison. Fortunately, the high courts ruling may come to the aid of Hervis, as Paxton called Rogers in his tweet.

Meanwhile, we have another problem to stew about. No, not George Soros, but Briscoe Cain, the Republican state representative from Deer Park.

The young man whose over-sized cowboy hat covers a brain bursting with legal acumen - as we learned when he stumbled through an embarrassing effort to shepherd the GOPs voter-restriction package through the Legislature last session  has vowed to file a bill that would allow prosecutors to nose around in neighboring counties, hoping to catch the scent of election fraud and go after it.

If the attorney general cant, and a county wont, then prosecutors from an adjacent county should be able to do it, Cain tweeted.

Of course, those prosecutors might have better things to do in the jurisdictions they were elected to serve. Or, you never know, they might be addled by George Soros. Whoever he was.
Manuel Balce Ceneta, STF / Associated Press

Alternative universe

Regarding Jimmy Carter: I fear for our democracy, (Jan. 6): Now that we have heard, definitively, from President Jimmy Carter that our nation is in serious trouble, what do we do? Those of us on the left are asked to, as he put it, re-engage across the divide, respectfully and constructively, by holding civil conversations with people who believe Donald Trump won an election he lost? Really? These same people insist Jan. 6, 2021, was a valid protest and something that the left is blowing way out of proportion. Add in a Congress full of Republicans who are so terrified to oppose the constituents who keep them employed they will willfully join them in their alternate universe bubble. I absolutely agree with President Carters suggestions, but I also know that the delusional bubble is impenetrable. Many of us have tried, repeatedly, to have hard discussions and to listen. I dont know about them, but Im frustrated, angry, exhausted and very emotional about the state of the country I have always been proud to be a part of. Im not even sure about two things I was always sure of before  that the votes will count and that this, too, shall pass.
One of the many law firms advertising in Florida proclaims on a big billboard: Size matters. The crude innuendo is hackneyed. But Americas tiniest Founding Father, James Madison, would have agreed. Size matters a lot.

James Madison was 5 feet, 4 inches tall, but as the father of the U.S. Constitution, he was an intellectual giant who thought a great deal about size. In fact, Madisons reflections on size help explain why Americans today tend to be so disgusted with their political system but often seem at a loss over what to do about it.

When Madison and his fellow Founding Fathers proposed a new Constitution featuring a relatively powerful central government, anti-federalist critics said it would never work because republics had to be small, like Greek city-states. The proposed republic, stretching from New Hampshire to Georgia, was clearly destined to grow still larger. The anti-federalists dismissed Madison as a would-be power-centralizing aristocrat, and short too.

But Madison argued that small republics easily became corrupt or tyrannical because it was relatively easy for one special interest or group to form a majority, capture the government and oppress a minority. In a vast continental republic like the Unites States, however, there would be so many competing interests that none were likely to become powerful enough to take control of the government. Instead, those many interests would check each other. Our large American republic, Madison concluded, had a good chance of being just, stable and durable.

Madisons theory, outlined in Federalist No. 10, held up reasonably well for the first 60 years of the American republic, until an extremely powerful faction  the slave-based economy of the Southern states  rose up in rebellion, resulting in the American Civil War, which is to this day both the nations bloodiest war and its most epic contest with a special interest.

After the Civil War, the power of the federal government began to grow. Progressives demanded government oversight to combat various social problems. The New Deal and Great Society expanded the governments role in the economy and created large entitlement programs. The Cold War birthed the military industrial complex.

For good or ill, depending on ones politics, today the federal government is many orders of magnitude larger and more powerful than the one imagined by Madison and his fellow founders. And that reality throws a big monkey wrench into Madisons scheme for a government capable of resisting selfish interests. It is no longer necessary for a self-serving interest to gain majority support to corrupt the government, and thereby subvert the common good, because when government is immensely powerful it can serve innumerable selfish interests simultaneously.

Today, a voracious hoard of selfish corporate and political interests gorges itself at the trough of power at the publics expense. The common and long-term well-being of the American people is an afterthought, at best.

The public understands this well. When asked in an NBC/Wall Street Journal Survey, over 80 percent of respondents agreed with the following unattributed statement:

A small group in the nations capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.

The quote is from Donald Trumps inaugural address. Would 80 percent still agree if they knew Trump said it?

Probably not. Which points to another problem associated with size. In our time, its not only government that has become corrupted by interests. Large institutions that produce the knowledge, information and ideas that a republic depends upon are also compromised. Media, which once at least went through the motions of taking journalistic standards seriously, now relies on a views-and-clicks business model that sows division, and even hatred, among citizens. Tidal waves of corporate and politically driven government money have corrupted universities, funding narrowly confined agendas.

When politicians collude with corporate and other professional interests to form an entrenched political class, then the government no longer represents the people.

Madison feared this, though he never expressed it publicly, because it would have undermined his signature argument about the relative safety of a large republic. But, to his friend, Thomas Jefferson, Madison wrote:

As in too small a sphere oppressive combinations may too easily be formed against the weaker party, so in too an extensive one, a defensive concert (authors emphasis) may be rendered too difficult against the oppression of those trusted with administration.

By defensive concert, Madison means is that in a large and diverse society, people are easily splintered into squabbling factions when, instead, unity is needed to resist corruption, or worse. Madisons prescience is astounding since this is exactly where we the people find ourselves today  in need of concerted action against public institutions captured by special interests.

Today, whenever an isolated leader stands up to truly challenge the system, he or she is likely to be demonized and demonetized. Platforms are withdrawn, reputations attacked, voices censored, private lives harassed and employment terminated. For real leaders whose only desire is to serve the public, the public square has become an increasingly dangerous and authoritarian place.

We need, in Madisons words, a defensive concert.

The first step to ending this corruption and authoritarianism should be obvious: Real leaders, on left and right, need to form a unified opposition. Currently, dissenting voices are hunkered down in their silos, building their own brands when they should be uniting to build a movement together. Each voice alone is too puny to make a real difference but uniting and organizing could change everything. And it must.

Madison would argue that such a movement should have a clear overarching mission: to remove from the political system every incentive that favors service to selfish interests, or factions, over the common and long-term good of the American people.

Its an enormous and complicated task, but its the concerted action that Madison begs us to take.

Erickson is the founder of the American Common Ground Alliance, author of  What Would Madison Do? The Political Journey Progressives and Conservatives Must Make Together  and coordinator of a campaign to promote better representative democracy through small, decentralized, web-connected legislative districts. This piece was originally published by Zocalo Public Square.
A panel of experts tasked with recommending fixes to Texas troubled foster care system denounced the states mental health services as woefully inadequate on Monday, urging Texas officials to improve specialized care and work faster to get children out of unlicensed facilities where hundreds are being kept temporarily.

Gov. Greg Abbott agreed to establish the panel in October in response to a decade-long class action suit against the state alleging conditions in foster care violate childrens rights. The crisis reached new heights last year, as Texas closed down a number of facilities flagged for unsafe conditions  but didnt replace the beds lost, leading to a capacity crisis that reached all-time highs last summer.

The gap resulted in the foster kids  known as children without placement, or CWOP youth  staying for weeks in motels, churches, and office buildings. There, the state assigned untrained caseworkers to care for the children, creating a dangerous and chaotic situation for everyone involved.

The core failure is the absence of a fully developed system of care, including home and community-based resources, targeted and well-resourced treatment, and appropriate placement services matched to childrens needs, the three experts wrote.

IN-DEPTH: Foster care crisis is out of control in Texas, with both children and staff in danger

The expert panel consisted of Paul Vincent, an independent consultant who previously served as director of Alabamas Child Welfare Policy & Practice Group; Judith Meltzer, the president of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for the Study of Social Policy; and Ann Elizabeth Stanley, a senior director with Casey Family Programs, a nonprofit that conducts child welfare consulting work.

Their long-awaited report, originally due in December, lists about two dozen recommendations in total, which Abbott has not committed to enact. Some are short-term goals, like establishing a new interagency team that will oversee Texas efforts to lower the number of children without placement.

Another suggests that the Department of Family and Protective Services create individualized plans to get each child out of the temporary placements and keep them out  and calls for immediately prioritizing that work. The report does not address the potential cost of such measures.

The children in temporary placements are supervised by staffers working overtime who lack authority to enforce rules or discipline the children. Dozens of the workers have been assaulted, and property has been vandalized or destroyed. Those incidents have left some terrified to work CWOP shifts, and employees say morale is lower than ever.

The panel also asks that Texas establish a new statewide system to provide mental health services for children, which could help keep kids in their parents care. Since 2017, there have been nearly 4,700 children whose parents relinquished custody because of their childs behavioral and mental health issues, according to the report.

The current system of care in Texas is woefully inadequate, the experts concluded.

IN-DEPTH: Faced with similar foster care woes, Oklahoma made fixes while Texas keeps failing children

The children in temporary placements often need the most intensive care. Many have suffered from trauma or abuse, drug addiction or mental illness  but the unlicensed staffers who watch over them in the temporary placements are not equipped to handle their needs or de-escalate volatile situations.

The experts even suggest that the state stop using the term CWOP youth, arguing that it dehumanizes these children and carries the implication that they are troublesome, disruptive, and difficult to serve.

All stakeholders need to find a better way to describe these young people and to develop caring relationships with them, they wrote.

The number of children without placement peaked in July 2021, when 416 kids needed a temporary placement. By November, that count dropped to 236  an improvement, but still a sizable number, the report states.

Still, many are staying in temporary facilities for unacceptably long periods, according to the report. In November, 16 percent of children were in temporary placements for 36 nights or more, down from 27 percent in August.

At the same time, the rate of recidivism  the percent of children who leave temporary placements but subsequently return  is shockingly high, according to the report. More than 40 percent of children who left temporary placements in August came back within 90 days.

Children and youth who exit CWOP status to a licensed placement often do not achieve stability in their next placement, the experts wrote.

Those involved in the states foster care lawsuit will discuss the matter further on Tuesday, when a federal judge will hold a hearing on the subject at 9 a.m.

cayla.harris@express-news.net
Hudson, NY (12534)

Today

Cloudy skies. High 68F. NE winds shifting to SSE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy in the evening, then off and on rain showers after midnight. Low near 50F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Spotify delays HiFi launch indefinitely

Spotify has officially delayed the launch of improved audio indefinitely despite Apple Music, Amazon Music, TIDAL and other competitors offering the option at no additional cost to paid subscribers.

In February of 2021 Spotify announced that it would launch HiFi, CD quality lossless audio tier later in the year.

When it became apparent last month that the streamer would miss its own deadline, the press and social media were vocal in expressing disappointment. But Spotify remained silent.

Finally, in a thread on the Spotify Community website, Spotify has answered frustrated users: that it had no timeline for the release:

We know that HiFi quality audio is important to you.

We feel the same, and were excited to deliver a Spotify HiFi experience to Premium users in the future. But we dont have timing details to share yet.

We will of course update you here when we can.

After its competitors launched better audio for free, Spotify lost any financial incentive to add it too and likely decided to put precious developer time elsewhere.

Trouble Ahead?

But breaking a promise to paying users is seldom smart and if even one percent of paid and new users chose another service, it will exacerbate Spotifys already uphill battle to maintain user growth.

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Bruce Houghton is Founder and Editor of Hypebot and MusicThinkTank and serves as a Senior Advisor to Bandsintown which acquired both publications in 2019. He is the Founder and President of the Skyline Artists Agency and a professor for the Berklee College Of Music.

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Tunecores CEO on how fans, social media are leveling the playing field for all musicians

How independent artists are becoming successful by new ways. of rereleasing and promoting their music.

A guest post by Andreea Gleeson, CEO of Tunecore.

INDIE ARTISTS ARE ON THE RISE

In my role as CEO, I try to connect with artists as much as I can. I love hearing about their journeys, and what drives them. Lately, more often than not, I find that were talking about social media and virality. Having a song go viral is like catching lightning in a bottle  rare but very exciting!

Over the course of the last few years, independent artists have emerged as the fastest growing sector of the music industry. Specifically its DIY indie artists who are on the rise, growing 34% in 2020, according to research by MIDiA. These are the artists that TuneCore works with each day  artists who are not bound by the rigid structure of the old school music industry and who are releasing music on their own terms.

That MIDiA report showed that indie labels and artists outpaced the growth of the overall music industry, growing at 7%. The big breakout was the sector of DIY artists, which grew further over the course of the last year  ending 2020 with $1.2 billion and growing their collective market share by more than a whole point to 5.1%.

Todays indie artists are uniquely positioned to maximize the advantages that digital music platforms provide. And companies like TuneCore have the agility to accommodate these artists in a way that major record labels cannot.

SOCIAL MEDIA IS INCREASINGLY WHERE DISCOVERY IS HAPPENING

These days, discovery is taking place on social media. Take for example, TikTok, with over 1 billion users  three times the amount Spotify has. Last year 70 acts were discovered on TikTok and then signed to majors. 75% of TikTokers say they discover new artists through TikTok and 67% were more likely to seek out a song on a streaming platform if they heard it on the app (according to Music Perceptions Research, conducted by MRC Data, November 2020).

YouTube Shorts is the newest short form video platform, launched in 2020. As of this summer, YouTube Shorts was generating over 15 billion global daily views, more than doubling from 6.5 billion at the start of their global expansion in March 2021.

Instagram Reels launched in July 2020 and is now available in 50 countries worldwide. Videos now account for 50% of the time users spend on Facebook and Instagram, with Reels leading the charge.

Couple the rise of indie artists with the rise of social media  and you have myriad new opportunities for growth.

CASE STUDY: CHARLOTTE SANDS GOES VIRAL  AND LAUNCHES HER CAREER

In November of 2020, TuneCore artist Charlotte Sands was on her way home for Thanksgiving when she decided to post a demo of Dress, a song that she wrote about Harry Styles wearing a dress on the cover of Vogue. Just a few hours after posting, by the time she finished dinner, the TikTok video had gone viral. The comments section of her video was filled with requests for her to release the song: fans were desperate to hear the entire song, not just the snippet she posted.

Charlotte released the song a few days later as an indie artist through TuneCore and in less than 72 hours it gained major traction. Dress was featured on multiple coveted Spotify playlists including: New Music Friday, Teen Beats, New in Pop, Fresh Finds Pop  and she was the cover artist for that weeks Fresh Finds playlist.

Currently, Charlotte has over one million monthly listeners on Spotify, with Dress clocking in at 11 million streams, and the original video on TikTok at 1.3 million plays. Shes signed to TuneCores parent company Believe, and released a new EP earlier this fall. The rest of this year has her touring the country as the opening act for Yungblud.

And to think: it all started with testing a demo on TikTok.

THE SOLUTION: IF THE MUSIC IS GOOD, FANS WILL FIND IT AND CROWDSOURCE ITS POPULARITY

One thing that major record labels have that independents dont are huge promo departments whose only job is to push records to radio. As short form videos on platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Reels continue to grow in popularity, the importance of music discovery in traditional media channels like radio is declining. These days, music discovery is happening on social media: if the music is good, fans will find it and crowdsource its popularity.

TuneCore has always put artists first and for me, its an ongoing priority. We want to help more indie artists become working musicians  so we are constantly challenging ourselves to build solutions that make our artists lives better and solve their problems.

We saw a need in the market to reduce the barriers for artists to get their music into social platforms for discovery, and streamline the process of getting songs that go viral into the streaming and download platforms more quickly.

We are so excited to launch a new, first-of-its-kind service that productizes the usage of social media platforms  so indie artists can make money, while experimenting and testing their music. The fans will ultimately make or break an artists career so: why not let them decide what they want to hear from the outset? Its crowdsourcing at its best.

For no upfront charge, artists can distribute unlimited songs into the music libraries of social media platforms  TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook  taking a formerly messy, cumbersome process, and streamlining it.

So if an artist is not ready to release their music on digital music platforms like Spotify, through this new way to distribute, they can share early cuts of their songs with potential and existing fans  and gather feedback from social media audiences and influencers.

FINAL THOUGHTS: A SEA-CHANGE IN A&R PRACTICES IS HERE

After hearing so many stories about songs going viral, I thought: how can we help this along and leverage social media on behalf of our artists on two fronts  monetizing that virality and, much like Charlotte Sands did, testing new music?

And thats how distribution to social platforms as a pre-step to a wider release plan was born. If an artist posts a video of a new song on their social channel, they may get views and followers, but they arent going to make money from it. But by releasing to social media platforms through TuneCore, the songs make it into the music libraries and artists can start making money from their music right away, monetizing any virality. As the song gains traction, that artist can  with just a few clicks  distribute their music through TuneCore to over 150 stores and streaming platforms worldwide.

What this ultimately represents is a sea change in the A&R process. Unlike the majors, who spend tens  even hundreds  of thousands of dollars promoting artists songs, indie artists dont have those resources. But what they do now have is the opportunity to upload music directly to social media platforms and seek fan feedback, before investing in the promotion of the song. Its like having a focus group for each track. Previously artists didnt have the luxury of asking fans what they wanted to hear. The historical gatekeepers  record label executives, radio DJs  decided what major label artists released.

With social media, there are no gatekeepers, the fans decide what they like and what goes viral. TuneCore is harnessing the power of social media to enable indie artists to connect with fans directly. And I think the majors will follow suit.

Theres a reason that DIY indie artists are the fastest growing sector of the music industry. Theres more access than ever for indie artists and less gatekeepers along the way. The discovery of new music through social media and streaming makes it easier than ever to find new artists. With the rise of social media growing hand in hand with DIY artists, the playing field isnt really being leveled, its being re-created.

This is a post by Andreea Gleeson, Chief Executive Officer of TuneCore (pictured), who writes about what she sees as a sea change in A&R  how artists are now testing and releasing songs through the new musical gatekeepers of TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram; what that means for fans, artists and labels; and how DIY artists are now the fastest growing sector in the music industry.

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Employees from the tourism industry stage a rally in Jongno, central Seoul, for financial support from the government amid the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, Jan. 9. Yonhap





Daily COVID-19 infections stayed below 4,000 for the fourth straight day Sunday here amid tightened distancing rules to curb the spread of the coronavirus.







The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 3,007 new cases, including 2,768 local ones, raising the total caseload to 667,390.







South Korea also recorded 34 more deaths, raising the toll to 6,071 for a fatality rate of 0.91 percent.






Close to 200 residents at Hillcrest Commons received cards and gifts this holiday season from community members. Many of them were thanks to Kristen Vella Wiliams, who has organized the gift-giving for a number of years.

Hillcrest Commons Residents Receive Christmas Gifts & Cards



Hillcrest was able to accommodated visitors this holiday. PITTSFIELD, Mass.  Santa was good to the folks at Hillcrest Commons this year.

Each resident received a gift and a card or picture from generous people who enjoy giving back.

Almost 200 residents received presents thanks to Kristen Vella Wiliams, who began providing gifts to residents who did not have family members in 2014. The nursing and rehabilitation center could not be more thankful for Vella's program and the joy it brings to everyone at the facility.

"I really can't say enough as to what they do and how it's grown," Admissions and Marketing Director Deirdre Tozer Hayes said. "I mean, I think when she started it was like 24 gifts for the unit, Unit 3, that she started with."

One hundred and nine of the gifts were wish list items that residents requested, such as T-shirts, sweat shirts, and slippers. But the wish list items were not all apparel  one person requested a Chinese meal and received a gift certificate from Vella's elves.

The other residents were given items that anyone can appreciate such as blankets and stuffed animals.

"It also is a benefit to our staff," Tozer Hayes added. "Because when they see one of us or we give something to the staff to get to them, that reaction, that person being somebody they don't even know who's given them a card, even our staff talk about the joy that they see in that resident and how it warms them on that day as well."

For years now, residents at Hillcrest Commons have received holiday cards or pictures from people near and far. There were about 200 sent and every resident was able to receive one.

The facility has had a long-standing relationship with Crosby Elementary School, whose students send drawings. They are also sent cards from various individuals and this year, ones from a senior center in New Lebanon, N.Y.

The cards are sent yearly just by word of mouth. For the residents, it lets them know that strangers are thinking of them.

"It's amazing, we still get a variety of people and people from across the state to be honest, who send us cards, and send pictures and things like that," Tozer Hayes explained.

"That hasn't stopped, we've never made an additional request, I have one or two who might call saying, 'Would you still like them?' And we always say yes, because it really has a positive effect on our residents in terms of receiving that."

The week before Christmas, a DJ came in for a small party at which residents had egg nogand cookies.

For the holiday, Vella and her elves were able to personally deliver gifts to residents and there was a piano performance in the common area next to a Christmas tree.

In accordance with the state Department of Public Health, visitors are allowed with a screening at the front desk. Residents are also able to visit their loved ones.

This year's holiday festivities were especially important because the facility had to quarantine last year because of COVID-19.

At the end of 2020, the facility had a devastating surge and suffered the loss of 42 residents; 75 percent of residents were infected along with many staff members. The community stepped up during that time and Hillcrest Commons received more than 20 different forms of support from community members such as gifts, cards, food deliveries, caroling outside of residents' windows, and a parade around the building.

"We can't thank enough, people who take the time to send things into us, and are thinking of us," Tozer Hayes said. "And as I said, Vella and how she coordinates all her little elves, that purchase special gifts for our residents."
An artist's rendering of the planned River Lofts apartments at the Cable Mills complex on Water Street in Williamstown. The image is included in the developer's application to the town's Community Preservation Committee.

Williamstown's Community Preservation Committee Facing Four Applications

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  The Community Preservation Committee this month will meet to consider four requests for funding.

Three combine to fit under the amount of Community Preservation Act funds the town anticipates for fiscal year 2023. The fourth exceeds that total on its own, but the applicant is hoping to receive its funds over a period of years.

Last fall, the town manager reported to his fellow CPC members that the town expects to have about $258,000 in CPA funds available for FY23.

On Friday, the deadline passed for applications for the current funding cycle.

The town's Affordable Housing Committee is looking for $100,000 in unrestricted funds, $40,000 of which it intends to use to honor the second part of a two-year agreement it made with Northern Berkshire Habitat for Humanity to resolve a CPA funding issue last winter.

The Store at Five Corners Stewardship Association is seeking $50,000 for needed repairs to the South Williamstown landmark.

The Williamstown Meetinghouse Preservation Fund is asking for $50,000 toward a $2.5 million project to renovate and preserve the 1869 Main Street structure that currently is home to First Congregational Church.

By far the largest "ask" on the agenda for the CPC's Jan. 19 meeting comes from the developer of the Cable Mills housing complex on Water Street. Mitchell Properties is seeking $400,000 in CPA funds toward the $26.2 million third and final phase of the Cable Mills complex, a four-story, 54-unit apartment building that would include 27 income-restricted units with the rest rented at market rate.

The Community Preservation Act was adopted by the town in 2002. The local CPA account is funded by a 2 percent locally adopted surcharge on property taxes (with the first $100,000 in valuation exempted) plus state matching funds.

CPA funds can be used to fund projects that achieve the aims of historic preservation, open space and recreation or affordable housing.

The Community Preservation Committee vets requests for funding each winter and recommends applications to the annual town meeting, which has ultimate say on whether projects are funded. CPC approval is the only route to town meeting; proposals cannot come before the spring meeting via citizens' petition.

Mitchell Properties' David Traggorth indicated to the CPC in November that the request his office was developing likely would exceed the town's funding capacity in a given year and thus would need to be spread over a period of years.

That brought to mind town meeting's 2007 vote to approve $1.5 million in CPA funds for Phase 1 of the Cable Mills project, which ultimately led to a bond that was taken out in 2015 and is set to be paid off on May 1, 2025.

That initial CPA commitment satisfies all three aspects of the act, providing 13 income-restricted units (10 limited to occupants making up to 80 percent of the area median income), restoring an historic mill building and providing recreation opportunities in the form of a walkway along the Green River that is open to the public.

The current application falls under the act's affordable housing provision but arguably makes a much larger impact, creating 27 units (at a cost to local taxpayers of about $15,000 per unit if the application is approved). Mitchell Properties has said that 19 of the new River Loft units will be available to residents making 60 percent of the AMI; eight will be reserved for residents earning 30 percent of the AMI.

As with Phase 1 of Cable Mills, the development is contingent on much larger allocations of funding from the commonwealth, but Tragorth in the past  and likely will again this winter  argued that state funders look favorably on applications that have local taxpayers' support.

CPC Chair Philip McKnight said over the weekend that the committee and town will look at options to fund the $400,000 commitment if the committee chooses to support the request at that level.

"A bond may turn out to be the best solution, but at this moment it is too soon to tell," McKnight wrote in response to an email seeking comment. "We have to go through the application process to see what might work best at the lowest cost."

Like Mitchell Properties, the Affordable Housing Trust is a familiar applicant to the CPC. For nearly a decade, CPA funds have been the primary source of funding for the trust, which has supported first-time homeowners through its DeMayo Mortgage Assistance Program and homeowners and renters impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic through its Emergency Rental Assistance Program and Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program. Among other things, the AHT also has acquired four building lots in town for the purpose of building single-family homes for income-restricted residents; one home built by Northern Berkshire Habitat for Humanity already is occupied and another is under construction.

A third applicant, the Store at Five Corners Stewardship Association, is a new non-profit created last year to acquire the 18th-century store at the junction of Routes 7 and 43 and rent it to a shopkeeper interested in operating it as a community resource.

The fourth applicant on the agenda for Jan. 19 is both new and, in a sense, familiar to the committee.

In 2016 , First Congregational Church brought an application for $50,000 to help fund repairs to the structure, which has its roots going back to 1765, when the town was awarded its charter. At the time, the Massachusetts Bay Colony required that towns have "a church, the seat of town governance, and center of community activities." The original church was lost to fire; the current structure sits on land donated by Williams College in the 19th century.

The 2016 First Congo application narrowly passed a baseline vote to determine if it was eligible under the CPA. It was approved, 4-3-1, after some members raised concerns about the use of town funds for what is now a religious institution.

A second vote to recommend the application to the May 2016 annual town meeting failed, 5-2-1.

This time around, residents concerned with preserving the historic structure formed the Williamstown Meetinghouse Preservation Fund Inc.

"WMPF recognizes and respects the [Supreme Judicial Court's] Caplan v. Acton decision regarding use of public funds," the non-profit's application reads. "In order to emphasize separation between religious and community use of the Meetinghouse the request for CPA funding includes only areas of need that address community access and provide community benefit.

"The Meetinghouse has a distinguished architectural history and is visually and functionally central to Williamstown. Funds are needed to renovate, restore, and update the building, funds that are beyond the resources available from the congregation."
NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  A UN Climate panelist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning climate author and a zero carbon chair will discuss the fallout from the recent UN conference on the climate crisis, held in Glasgow, Scotland.

The Hoosic River Watershed Association (HooRWA) and the First Congregational Church, Williamstown, are co-sponsoring "Glasgow on the Hoosic: The Climate Crisis after COP26." This will be a virtual event hosted on Zoom on Saturday, Jan. 15, starting at 10:00am.

Register at least 24 hours in advance of this meeting at: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwucOGvpjkvHNASamf5fO0zbOclbvxsYZtm

After registering, attendees will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

William R. Moomaw was a member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. An emeritus professor at Tufts University and founder of its Center for International Environment and Resource Policy, Moomaw previously was professor of chemistry at Williams College and Director of the Center for Environmental Studies. He will speak on the international ramifications of the recent Conference of the Parties.

Elizabeth Kolbert, staff writer at The New Yorker, has written numerous articles on climate change for that magazine, including "The Climate of Man, which won many awards. Among her several books, "The Sixth Extinction won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. She will discuss U.S. national climate policy.

Wendy Penner chairs Williamstowns innovative COOL (CO2 Lowering) Committee. COOL brought a resolution to pursue a Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions goal to Town Meeting last July, which passed it overwhelmingly. She will describe how a town can respond.

Berkshire Eagle columnist and HooRWA board member Lauren R. Stevens will moderate the panel, which will take questions submitted on-line from event participants. The 1.5 hour meeting will also be broadcast live on WilliNet, the towns public broadcast station, and rebroadcast later on.
SVHC Medical Matters Weekly Welcomes KMarie King

BENNINGTON, Vt. Southwestern Vermont Health Care's (SVHC) Medical Matters Weekly with Dr. Trey Dobson welcomes KMarie King, MD, at noon on Jan. 12.

Dr. King is a pancreatic and liver surgeon and the chief of surgery at Albany Medical Center. She is notable for being the first black female chair of surgery at an academic health sciences center in the nation.

The show is produced with cooperation from Catamount Access Television (CAT-TV). Viewers can see Medical Matters Weekly on facebook.com/svmedicalcenter and facebook.com/CATTVBennington . The show is also available to view or download a podcast on www.svhealthcare.org/medicalmatters.

Dr. King is from Brooklyn, New York. She completed her medical degree at Washington University in St. Louis, a residency at the University of Pittsburgh, and a fellowship in pancreatic and liver surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where she also earned a master's degree in biomedical science. In addition, Dr. King holds a master's of business management from Brandeis University and served in the U.S. Army during Operation Desert Storm. She has worked as a professor of surgery at Morehouse School of Medicine and chief of surgery and medical director for surgical quality at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. She joined Albany Medical Center on Sept. 1.

After the program, the video will be available on area public access television stations. On CAT-TV, viewers will find the show on channel 1075 at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, 1:30 p.m. Monday, 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, 7:30 a.m. Friday, and 7 p.m. Saturday. GNAT-TV's Comcast channel 1074 airs the program at 8 a.m. Monday, 9 p.m. Wednesday, and 1 p.m. Saturday.

Medical Matters Weekly is an interactive, multiplatform, guest-driven, medical-themed talk show hosted by Dr. Trey Dobson. It provides a behind-the-scenes perspective on health care and the interesting personalities that drive positive change within the industry and its surrounding professions. Topics include behavioral health, food insecurity, equitable care, and the opioid crisis. The show is produced in partnership with Catamount Access Television (CAT-TV) and is broadcast on CAT-TV, Greater Northshire Access Television, Facebook Live, YouTube, and podcast platforms.






A healthcare worker disinfects a facility at a COVID-19 testing center in the Songpa District of southern Seoul, Jan. 10. Yonhap



Infections from the Omicron variant of COVID-19 had more than doubled to 456 in Seoul, Monday, from last week's 183 cases, according to the city government.



The variant makes up 0.2 percent of the total COVID-19 cases confirmed in the capital so far.






A woman scans the QR code of a vaccine pass app on a mobile phone to enter a large retail store in Daegu, Monday. Yonhap



By Lee Hyo-jin



Criticism is mounting over the COVID-19 vaccine pass mandate for large supermarkets, discount outlets and department stores, which came into effect from Monday, with critics calling on the government to justify the scientific grounds for implementing the new measure.



The vaccine pass system, which requires either proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test result to be presented to enter multiuse facilities, has been expanded to shopping malls, retail outlets, department stores and bookstores measuring 3,000 square meters or more in floor space.



These large stores have been freshly added to the list of multiuse facilities subject to the vaccine pass system, including eateries, cafes, libraries and indoor gyms.



But criticism is escalating over the system, among people who find it unscientific and excessive.



According to government data, 427 and 327 infections occurred at large retail stores and department stores, in 2021, respectively, whereas 7,491 cases were linked to churches. But religious facilities still remain excluded from the vaccine pass since it was introduced on Dec. 6.



Unvaccinated individuals protested the "unfair and unscientific" measures for limiting their civil liberties, with even some fully vaccinated people viewing the latest measure as excessive.



"I don't understand why the vaccine pass system is necessary here when the free sample corners are all closed and people are wearing their masks properly," said Park Jin-sook, a woman in her 50s who visited a department store in Yeongdeungpo District, Seoul, Monday.









Kim Jeong-mi, a housewife in Seoul, said, "My son suffered from heart inflammation after his second dose from Pfizer, so I'm opposed to vaccine mandates being expanded to everywhere. I think the government is trying to push unimmunized people into a corner so that they would rather choose to receive the vaccine in the end, but that seems like a very dangerous plan."





An employee at a department store in Seoul helps a visitor scan the QR code of a vaccine pass app on a mobile phone upon entering the facility, Monday. Yonhap
Name: Savio Lobo

Company: Ensono

Job title: CIO

Date started current role: April 2018

Location: Illinois, US

Savio Lobo brings over 20 years of experience in varying technology roles with growing accountability for building various functions and teams. Most recently, he was Vice President of Architecture and Infrastructure at NiSource, Inc. In that past, he led several successful IT integrations and delivered complex technology programs which enabled business growth and significant improvements in client satisfaction. He serves on the board of a not for profit called The Harbour which addresses the needs of Cook County youth at risk for homelessness. To unwind, Lobo practices Taekwondo and rides a motorcycle.

What was your first job? My first job was as an end user support and network engineer.

Did you always want to work in IT? After graduating college Ive generally worked in Information Technology. However, while I was studying for electrical engineering, I had two semesters when I worked in power plant operations and in pre-production planning for an air circuit breaker manufacturer.

What was your education? Do you hold any certifications? What are they? I hold a Licentiate in Electrical Engineering and a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Engineering.

Explain your career path. Did you take any detours? If so, discuss. The major detour in my career occurred when I pursued Computer Science after completing studies in Electrical Engineering.

With my first job out of college, I worked on solving end user IT issues but also repaired computers, servers, printers and installed network hardware and software. As I performed my work, I realised that the many businesses I visited really needed help with applications and processes. This led me to seek a job in programming where I went through some rigorous training on software development and was subsequently assigned to work with a 4 GL application development platform. It was a great experience after which I programmed on various other languages, platforms and systems from PC based to mainframes.

Modelling data and processes to meet the business needs gave me a lot of satisfaction, especially when this work helped drive significant business challenges. Soon I realised that enterprise architecture is critical to driving optimisation, innovation and long-term sustainable change and I spent many years leading that discipline while also managing teams that planned and executed large complex initiatives. This also fuelled my interest in managing financials for the large projects and for the IT department. It became apparent to me that strategic planning and financial management go hand in hand. I came to my current role by signing up to lead a complex integration resulting from a large acquisition. After executing the acquisition and integrating basic operations, we embarked on an ambitious transformation of the combined entities driving the need to create a dedicated program management office, consolidate internal IT application, infrastructure, security and data analytics teams. This is my first job working for a managed services provider after having worked for various businesses and my past experiences often help me represent a client perspective which is not always intuitive to those who have worked on the other side of the fence their whole careers.

What business or technology initiatives will be most significant in driving IT investments in your organisation in the coming year? Ill answer this question broadly in the context of the business. Key initiatives for us this year and over the next few years are:

Orchestration and Automation through use of workflows, integrations between SaaS applications, leveraging AI, RPA etc.

Delivering proactive business insights with Management and Operational analytics using data lakes, lake houses, analytical tools etc.

Enabling scale and agility with disciplined simplification of the processes and technology to conduct day to day business

Making our highly cyber secure practices easier to execute during day-to-day operations with the use of new security technology

What are the CEO's top priorities for you in the coming year? How do you plan to support the business with IT? Our business plans call for growth and 100% client retention by delivering the highest level of reliability and innovative products to support our clients growth at a competitive price point. To that end, IT is expected to support scaling the business and to enable agility while ensuring effective controls and delivering insights to proactively manage our business.

Does the conventional CIO role include responsibilities it should not hold? Should the role have additional responsibilities it does not currently include? Every organisation has different expectations of the CIO role, depending on what the business needs at a given point in time, and Id venture to say that there probably never been a conventional CIO role. As an example, when an organisation is in a start up mode, often the CIO is simply enabling the fastest path to get individual business functions up and running. As an organisation matures, they might need the CIO to drive integration across functions and drive efficiency beyond which they might want to enable scale through technology consolidation or migration to new enterprise solutions. If they acquire a large business, they might need a CIO who can drive business and technology integration.

When the product or value proposition is technology, the CIO must be a key business leader with product responsibility. For many corporations, the security function may report to the CIO while extremely large corporations which hold large volumes of personal data might require that the Chief Security Officer be a direct report of the CEO. Lastly, the role in an organisation also highly depends on the interest and capabilities of the CIO and division of labour at the executive level. Bottom line, while I personally believe that the CIO should be accountable for all systems, data and security of those systems I dont view the CIO role as one size fits all. On that note, in addition to system, data and security, our team has responsibility for program management of all significant initiatives regardless of whether they are IT or not and we deliver revenue generating client security services.

Are you leading a digital transformation? If so, does it emphasise customer experience and revenue growth or operational efficiency? If both, how do you balance the two? Who isnt? And it is always supposed to drive customer experience, revenue growth and efficiency. In addition, there needs to be a focus on internal associate experience. When that occurs, the others follow. I tend to use a combination of complexity, risk, financial benefit and time to achieve results and to prioritise initiatives, while balancing against the need to achieve long term strategy.

Describe the maturity of your digital business. For example, do you have KPIs to quantify the value of IT? We do not have a huge focus on KPIs that communicate value as yet. We do report on basic measurements such as financial, operational, project performance, security, client services delivered etc. In 2022 we will develop additional metrics and consider digitisation and automation of business processes as a potential metric.

What does good culture fit look like in your organisation? How do you cultivate it? A good cultural fit for someone coming into our organisation would be someone that demonstrates our core values of Collaboration, Passion, & Reliability. A leader these days must practice what they expect, and I do my best with simple things like communicating often and effectively, being responsive and available, being transparent, being empathetic and being genuine.

What roles or skills are you finding (or anticipate to be) the most difficult to fill? There are always some technical skills that are in demand  at the current time these include cloud and security. However, I find the most difficult roles to fill are leaders who have financial, planning, analytical, communication, collaboration, people management and relevant technical or functional skills. In addition, it seems too hard to find architects and analysts with the right balance of practical versus idealistic design perspectives who effectively question the expected outcome and develop right sized solutions commensurate with the business need.

What's the best career advice you ever received? A few things that people have told me that have stuck with me:

What got you here, wont get you there.

Do your job.

You can only control what you can control.

Do you have a succession plan? If so, discuss the importance of and challenges with training up high-performing staff. Yes. While we have several candidates on my succession plan, there is only one who I believe may be Ready Now. That being said, I could not have done what I do and expanded my responsibilities without standing on the shoulders of my team. Therefore, I continually work to hand over things I believe I should be able to delegate that will enrich their careers. As an example, it is such a relief when you can blindly trust your team to never be over budget or to raise critical business issues well in advance. It is my belief that succession planning highly depends on the development of all your leaders.

What advice would you give to aspiring IT leaders? Understand how you are supporting the business, prioritise your time by sizing the impact of your activities, distance yourself from specific vendor solutions, be clear that what you know gets old fast. Dont cling to the past, people are more important than technology (or as someone I know would saytechnology is easy, people are difficult)!

What has been your greatest career achievement? Ive never quite reflected on this before. Id say when I was offered mentorship by a CEO that everyone truly admired. I was completely and totally floored, and this stands out as a huge moment in my professional career because it meant more to me than any specific job. It was around the same time that I was promoted to the role of VP with responsibility for some very significant business outcomes and a large annual budget for the first time. This was a big leap from being in a Director role for the longest time in my career and began another phase of learning for me which continues to this day. Thats actually when that CEO told me What got you here, wont get you there I wish I understood more deeply and acted on his advice sooner!

Looking back with 20:20 hindsight, what would you have done differently? With the shift to remote working, I wish I had spent more time communicating externally and spending more virtual happy hours and 1 on 1 lunches or dinners with my team.
The United States is entering 2022 with a 3.8 million housing unit shortfall, even as home-buying has been on a major tear since Covid-19 began. As LinkedIn's 29 Big Ideas for 2022 post noted, home prices in growing cities like Austin, rose more than 40 percent.

The combination of high prices and remote work means that companies need to plan aggressively for a new environment in 2022. Here are three important decisions small business owners should focus on.

Adjust compensation to remain competitive.

Some professionals, particularly in the software engineering and data science spaces, are seeing their salaries rise 100 percent or more when switching jobs. Increased costs for housing will only fuel that fire, and companies that want to attract or retain talent need to be aggressive in pursuing information about competitive salaries and making competitive offers.

Embrace remote-first culture.

Many jobs that used to be thought of as simply impossible to do outside of an in-office culture now seem completely possible in remote-first and/or hybrid environments. Housing costs factor into that, as employees who don't have to be very close to their office might choose a less-expensive housing option farther away. Building a culture that embraces remote working allows you to keep those employees happy, and attract talent from a much larger pool.

Consider business locations carefully.
RST lndustries (RSTIL) signed a new annual contract with Huihai Group, Hong Kong for procuring 15,000 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) with an exclusive arrangement for Nigeria. This contract has exclusive arrangement with Rama Steel Tubes (RSTL) specifically for procurement and supply of 15,000 MTPA of specialized steel SKUs in Nigeria.

Meanwhile, in a separate announcement, RSTL stated that it is setting up a manufacturing facility of 20,000 MTPA at its step-down subsidiary, RSTIL in Nigeria, West Africa.

RSTIL has already commenced the expansion exercise for setting up the proposed facility in Nigeria, the expansion is expected to be completed in two tranches and will be fully operational by August 2022 and expects to operate at full capacity by Q3 FY23.

This additional capacity is mainly aimed at expanding its current repertoire of SKUs to include roofing sheets. The total capital outlay for this expansion will be Rs 20 crore and will be funded through a mix of internal accruals and partially through debt.

The companys consolidated net profit surged to Rs 7.09 crore in the quarter ended September 2021 as against Rs 3.45 crore during the previous quarter ended September 2020. Sales rose 48.57% YoY to Rs 192.99 crore in Q2 FY22.

The scrip hit an all-time high at Rs 455.15 during intraday trade. Rama Steel Tubes is a manufacturer of steel tubes. The company has 20% exports rate, with a global presence in more than 16 countries.

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By Kwon Mee-yoo







Kazakhstani Damir Kusheyev embarked on a bicycle trip across Korea, from Busan to Seoul, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Korea and Kazakhstan.







Kusheyev began his trip at Haeundae Beach in the southern port city of Busan on Saturday and plans to arrive in Seoul by Jan. 16. Kusheyev will cycle for 793.8 kilometers over nine days, passing through Samnangjin, Daegu, Mungyeong, Jeungpyeong, Daejeon and Jincheon before arriving in Seoul.







"This is my first visit to Korea. I wish to introduce beautiful sites of Korea to Kazakh people while I ride bicycle throughout the country. I am also excited to contribute to the amicable relations between Kazakhstan and Korea on the 30th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations," Kusheyev was quoted as saying by the Embassy of Kazakhstan to Korea.







During his trip, Kusheyev will make some special stops to promote ties between the two countries.







In Daejeon, he will pay tribute to Hong Beom-do, a Korean independence fighter whose remains were returned from Kazakhstan to Korea last year, at the Daejeon National Cemetery. He will also meet with Korean students learning Kazakh language at the Yongin Campus of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province.







He will wrap up his tour at Seoul Cyber University in Gangbuk District, Seoul, where the bust of Kazakh poet Abai Qunanbaiuly is installed. The statue was unveiled during Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev's visit to Seoul in August 2021.







Kusheyev, a former cyclist, is known for his bike trips, including a 36-day trip across Kazakhstan last year on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the country's independence.




remaining of

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"Being Brave Doesn't Mean You're Not Scared."

Horror movies have a niche yet loyal audience. The debate over what makes this genre so popular is never ending. Some like the adrenaline rush that these kinds of movies instill. For others, its like a coping mechanism - a way to deal with uncertainty, suspense and anxiety.

The Conjuring universe taps into this very section of the audience and has been uber successful from the word go. With seven sequels under its umbrella, it has managed to leave a lasting impact on peoples minds. It has hit the bulls eye - mostly because of the adaptations from true incidents. A horror film becomes 10 times more scary when the disclaimer reveals that it has been inspired by real life, doesnt it?

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Now, the latest offering of this franchise recently dropped on OTT and whats a better way to kickstart the New Year?!



The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It sees the return of the friendly demonologist couple - Ed and Lorraine Warren played by the talented Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. This time the demon that they are fighting is way more evil and destructive.

The third installment starts on a high note where we are introduced to the evil spirit that has possessed an eight-year-old boy David Glatzel who resides in Brookfield, Connecticut with his family. Warrens along with a catholic priest are seen performing an exorcism on the boy to release the spirit but it goes haywire when an unwarranted intervention leads to a disaster.

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The demon leaves the boy but possesses the body of Arne Johnson, his sisters boyfriend who then commits a murder. Inspired by real events, during the trial, the court is presented with the fact that it wasnt him but the spirit that made him commit the murder. In a quest to prove Arne as innocent, Ed and Lorraine unravel the mystery behind the curse that had been deliberately vexed on the Glatzel family.





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What worked in favour of this franchise? It has to be its versatile star cast and gripping story-telling. It wont be wrong to say that Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga managed to strike an unbreakable bond with the audience from the beginning.

While these two remain constants, the affected families keep changing and the cases keep getting murkier. In Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, it is the first time that the duo had to deal with actual murder and a court case. Since this case was reported to the authorities, the stakes were at an all time high.

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Just like the movie, the real life case garnered national interest from the citizens of the USA. Arne Johnson pleaded innocent as he claimed to have been possessed by a demon when he murdered his landlord, No points for guessing that the judge dismissed the claim saying that something like possession can never be proved, and is therefore, inadmissible in court.

Johnson was convicted from his crime and was sentenced to 10-20 years of imprisonment. He only served 5 years because he was an exemplary inmate as per the states chief of parole. The way the makers narrated the tale made for an intriguing edge-of-the-seat watch.

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The beauty of this Michael Chaves directorial is that it makes you believe that you are a part of it - an active participant on this crusade led by the Warrens.

Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It isnt a spoon-feeding overload of jump scares and chills. It has more long-shots, buildups, reading between the lines and silhouettes that act as a cherry on the cake.

Not many would know but background score is of utmost importance in any horror movie. The impact and the way it slowly yet steadily creates an atmosphere of curiosity and fear in this film is commendable. It wont be wrong to say that each Conjuring film is a complete package with a great start and a thrilling climax. Every movie that releases from this universe only tends to raise the bar higher.





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It has not only cast a spell on the viewers mind but also built a loyal fan base for this universe. The fact that people across the world eagerly wait for the release of its next movie is a testament to how much it is loved by the fans.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the dates for the Legislative Assembly elections for the states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa, and Manipur on Saturday, amidst an increase in the Covid-19 cases across the country.

The ECI also stated that the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) has taken effect as a result of this release. The MCC must be followed by all political parties, and it will remain in effect for all political parties and candidates until the election in the states set to vote is completed.

AFP

The Election Commission's letter to the Chief Secretaries of the states in question drew attention to the MCC's specific provisions relating to the 'party in power,' which state that the party in power must ensure that no cause is given for any complaint that it has used its official position for the purpose of its election campaign.

"In particular, the Ministers shall not combine their official visit with electioneering work and also shall not make use of official machinery or personnel during the electioneering work," it observed.

Assembly elections will be held in seven phases in five states: Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa, and Manipur. Voting will take place in Uttar Pradesh on February 10, 14, 20, 23, and March 3 and 7, while Punjab, Goa, and Uttarakhand will vote on February 14, and Manipur will vote in two parts on February 27 and March 3.

What exactly is MCC?

The MCC is a collection of guidelines established by the Indian Election Commission to ensure free and fair elections. It is a set of rules that have formed as a result of political parties agreeing to follow the values enshrined in the code. It also obligates them to respect and follow it in text and spirit.

When and where is MCC implemented?

The MCC is in effect from the date of the notification of an election, whether for the Parliament, the State Assembly, or the Districts, and lasts until the election is completed.

File Photo

The MCC is valid throughout the poll-bound state when it comes to Assembly elections. The MCC is valid throughout the country when it comes to Parliamentary or General Elections. In the case of district by-elections, the MCC applies throughout the district.

What role does the EC play in putting the codes into practice?

The Election Commission ensures that the code is followed by political parties at the national and state levels, including ruling parties. The EC ensures that Parliamentary and State Legislature elections are free, fair, and peaceful.

| AFP

It also ensures that government machinery is not abused for electoral objectives. Furthermore, it prevents election offences, malpractices, and corrupt activities such as impersonation, bribery and inducement of votes, as well as threats and intimidation of voters.

What limitations does the MCC impose on political parties throughout its implementation?

1. Ministers are unable to combine official visits with campaigning. During electioneering, they are also prohibited from using official equipment or employees.

2. No official aircraft, vehicles, or other modes of transportation may be used to promote the interests of any political party or candidate.

3. All officers/officials who are directly or indirectly involved in the election's conduct are prohibited from being transferred or posted. If a transfer or posting of an officer is deemed necessary, the Commission must first provide its consent.

4. No Minister, whether from the Union or from a state, has the authority to summon any election-related officer from the constituency or the state to any official meeting.

5. If a Union Minister must leave Delhi for purely official reasons that cannot be avoided in the public interest, a letter certifying this must be sent from the concerned Ministry/Secretary Department's to the Chief Secretary of the concerned state, with a copy to the Election Commission.

AFP

6. Misuse of official mass media and advertising about the party's achievements at the expense of the public purse are prohibited in print and electronic media.

7. If a state or federal government has issued an order for a scheme, but no work has begun on it until the MCC is in effect, no work in that regard shall be started. Work in the field, on the other hand, can be resumed if it has already begun.

8. Until the election is completed, no new funds under the MPs/MLAs/MLCs Local Area Development Fund of any scheme can be released in any area where the election is ongoing.

9. Financial institutions funded, partially or wholly by the Governments shall not take recourse to write off loans advanced to any individual, company, firm, etc. Also, the financial limits of such institutions, while granting or extending loans, should not be enhanced by issuing of loans indiscriminately to beneficiaries.
Woodbridge, VA (22192)

Today

Mostly cloudy skies early will become partly cloudy later in the day. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 76F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Rain. Thunderstorms possible...mainly late. Low 59F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
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President Moon Jae-in will make a three-country Middle East trip later this week as South Korea seeks to boost ties with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Egypt in the fields of energy, construction and infrastructure, officials said.







On the first leg of the trip, Moon will attend a business forum in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday as well as an official ceremony for "Day of Korea" at the Dubai Expo, the presidential office said.







The following day, Moon will hold talks with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan on how to further develop bilateral ties.







After the UAE, Moon will visit Saudi Arabia on Jan. 18-19 to hold talks with Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and to attend a business forum.







On Jan. 20-21, Moon will make a state visit to Egypt at the invitation of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.







Moon and the Egyptian president are expected to discuss ways to further develop the comprehensive cooperative partnership between the two nations.







After holding a summit with the Egyptian president, Moon will attend a business forum where he will discuss ways to promote cooperation in eco-friendly businesses.







Presidential spokesperson Park Kyung-mee said Moon's visit to the three Middle Eastern nations is expected to bolster bilateral cooperation in the fields of energy, construction and infrastructure as well as public health, science and hydrogen. Moon will return home on Jan. 22. (Yonhap)






In the summer of 2018, a senior anti money-laundering official at Swedbank AB appeared anxious as he read reports that its competitor Danske Bank A/S could be fined by U.S. authorities for alleged crimes in the Baltics.

Im afraid that if they are sentenced, we will be in focus, he wrote in an email to then-Chief Compliance Officer Cecilia Hernqvist. She replied: Fingers crossed.

Swedbank Slapped with Record $386M Fine for Money-Laundering Breaches

Danske, which has since admitted handling suspicious funds in one of Europes largest-ever money laundering scandals, is still awaiting judgement by regulators in the U.S. But Swedbank executives were right to be concerned. In the months that followed, Swedbank was also sucked into the maelstrom of the Nordic-wide revelations of dirty money flows from the former Soviet Union.

The lender has been fined in Sweden and remains under investigation by U.S. authorities.

Email exchanges, reports and witness testimonies released this week by Swedens Economic Crime Authority that run to almost 4,000 pages add to evidence that some Swedbank managers were aware of significant links to the potential laundering, including through Danske. Yet when pressed by outsiders, former Chief Executive Birgitte Bonnesen appeared to be less than forthcoming about those connections.

The documents (written mostly in Swedish) were made public as part of the indictment against Bonnesen for serious fraud. The ex-CEO is also accused of disclosing insider information when on Feb. 18, 2019, she gave the banks biggest investors advance notice of an investigative program aired by the public broadcaster two days later. Those revelations sent the lenders stock tanking, losses the shares have yet to recover.

Bonnesen, who was ousted in March 2019 after steering the bank for three years, denies the charges.

There is no doubt that Birgitte Bonnesen was made a scapegoat, her lawyers Per Samuelson and Christina Bergenstein, with legal firm SSW, said in the filing. They described her statements as completely normal elements of her work as CEO, adding it was simply her duty to comment.

Bonnesen had received reports drafted by the banks compliance officers on exposure to Danske  described by its author in an email as not looking good  in July of 2018 and a final report in September of that year, according to the investigation report released this week. But in the months that followed, she told Swedish media the bank found nothing when investigating transactions with Danske.

She also stressed in other interviews, statements and at quarterly earnings calls with analysts that Swedbanks business model was entirely different from Danskes and not focused on non-resident clients of the Baltics, which included those often implicated in laundering.

Swedish authorities in 2020 fined Swedbank a record 4 billion kronor ($440 million) for breaching money-laundering rules. Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri reported in December 2020 that federal authorities in the U.S., including the Justice Department, the FBI and a federal prosecutors office in New York are probing Nordic banks including Swedbank.

Unni Jerndal, a spokeswoman for the Stockholm-based lender, declined to comment on the released documents, saying those concern historical information in a legal process that does not involve the bank, and wouldnt specify the status of any ongoing probes.

Often regarded a model of successful transition from communism, the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were swift to reduce economic dependence on their former Soviet overlord after regaining independence in 1991. Yet the region remained a window for capital flight from Russia to the West long after the Nordic lenders came to dominate its financial sector.

Banks transferred money from east to west, often in dollars, and often with murky origins in what was a widely touted business model. That began to change in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea  triggering U.S. sanctions and closer scrutiny of financial flows. More scandals  such as the Russian Laundromat  emerged and lenders were shut. The U.S. Treasury proposed banning ABLV from the American financial system, designating it as a primary money-laundering concern in February 2018, sparking its demise. ABLV denied the accusations.

When Danske revealed in September 2018, that a large part of the 200 billion euros ($227 billion) in flows handled by the bank between 2007 and 2015 were suspect, the news triggered a surge in international scrutiny that also engulfed Deutsche Bank AG, the main correspondent bank for Danskes Estonian unit.

The newly revealed Swedbank documents seemingly point to repeated instances in which Swedbanks management tried to play down its potential role in money laundering.

Swedbank had been aware of shortcomings at its Baltic operations already in 2016, when an internal compliance report by Hernqvists predecessor pointed to problems in risk assessment, know-your-client processes as well as screening and transaction monitoring. The departments attention turned to the region in 2015, and its investigation found rather serious shortcomings, including transaction monitoring that was done by simply going through Excel spreadsheets, Hernqvists predecessor told the police in September 2019.

In 2017, an investigation for the bank by law firm Erling Grimstad showed a high risk of widespread money laundering and significant risk of Swedbank involvement in other criminal activity as the bank has no control of money flow in and out of accounts, triggering a purge of high-risk clients that year.

Another report commissioned from Grimstad at the end of 2018 said it found several similar risks in Swedbank Estonia as those identified at Danskes local unit, adding there were major breaches of core anti money-laundering obligations at Swedbank Estonia.

Oh f*ck, this is not sparing on Estonia, a senior Swedbank compliance officer said in an email to a colleague on Dec. 13, 2018. Point of no returnnasty times ahead.

Over the years, Swedbank had also attracted the suspicion of U.S. authorities.

In 2016, the New York Department of Financial Services had asked Swedbanks U.S. operation for details about its exposure to clients of Mossack Fonseca & Co., the law firm whose leaked files put a spotlight on offshore finance in what became known as the Panama papers.

Another letter from DFS in 2018 requested details on exposure for the global operations of Swedbank to the law firm, the indictment documents released this week show. Hernqvist, the chief compliance officer at the time, excluded the lenders Baltic subsidiaries from the banks response, according to an email dated Feb. 23, 2018. A month later, a senior officer wrote Just so you know, we do have a lot of hits on MF in the Baltics. Hernqvist replied, Thats why I wanted to get them out of the scope :).

Hernqvist, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, declined to comment when reached by Bloomberg News via LinkedIn.

Hernqvist also said in an email to Bonnesen dated Sept. 23, 2018, that the bank hadnt done much to prevent money laundering in the past and Im afraid there may be a lot of old/historic stuff so I think we should be a bit careful.

The banks senior management failed to establish clear lines of responsibility for preventing dubious flows, was the conclusion of an audit by law firm Clifford Chance published in March 2020, commissioned by Swedbank. It found that between 2007 and 2019 client transactions totaling $40 billion mainly at Swedbanks Estonian unit represented a high risk of money laundering.

With assistance from Rafaela Lindeberg.

Top photograph: A pedestrian casts a shadow on a sign featuring a Swedbank AB logo outside the venue for the banks annual general meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, on Thursday, March 28, 2019. Photo credit: Mikael Sjoberg/Bloomberg

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
Movo Investment Group Ltd., the parent company of the Movo Partnership network (Movo), announced it has completed the acquisition of three commercial brokers in the UK.

Chiltern Insurance Group, based in Reading; FLS General in Essex; and Kidd Insurance in West Lothian, have joined the group and network.

The three deals represent three different flexible exit routes for these SME brokers that are committed to protecting their staff and securing a successful future for their broking businesses without having to sell to a consolidator, said Movo in a statement.

Financial details of the deals were not disclosed. The acquisitions together bring an additional nine staff and 4.7 million GWP into Movo.

Movo joined with the existing directors at Chiltern to facilitate an MBO. Its managing director, Stephen Wallace-Madeley, who has been with the business for 15 years will remain as MD under its new ownership. We are very excited to join the Movo Group, before deciding on a partner, we looked far and wide and felt that the core values that Movo have fit in best with what we are trying to achieve, which is to respect the role of independent insurance brokerages in the community, Wallace-Madeley commented.

Effective from Jan. 1, 2022 FLS General now trades as Movo Colchester, with the managing director retaining a one day per month consultancy position, allowing him to semi-retire while still retaining an interest in this family business with a successful 65-year long heritage.

Kidd Insurance, previously an appointed representative of Momentum, will retain its brand name. Under the terms of the deal, it has been agreed that over a period of time its staff can themselves become shareholders if they choose.

We are thrilled to have completed on these three acquisitions  three very different but fantastic businesses, each with their own strategic priorities. Movo is committed to ensuring small independent brokers survive and thrive, commented Lea Cheesbrough, managing director of Movo Partnership.

For brokers looking for a way of growing their brokerage without selling out to the consolidators, we give them real options and an ideal home. We will help them to grow and to compete in todays market  our success is built on their success, added Cheesbrough.

The Movo Partnership was set up in 2019 by a collection of brokers to take advantage of sharing compliance and operational functions, improving buying power and to help its broker members have more time to do the most important element of their jobs, which is client servicing. Members retain 100% of commissions and any profits generated by the network are reinvested by the business for the benefit of the membership and the future of broking.

The Movo Partnership exists to be the most cost-effective way to run a brokerage and to encourage new start-up brokers, replacing the brokerages in the market being lost to M&A activity. The network expects to reach 75 broker members and 65 million GWP in 2022.

Since its launch in 2019, Movo has exceeded its targets, with 52 appointed representative broker members, 30 staff and writing in excess of 40 million GWP.

Source: Movo Investment Group

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Agencies Commercial Lines
This edition of International People Moves details appointments at re/insurer SiriusPoint, specialty MGA Banyan Risk and reinsurer SCOR.

A summary of these new hires follows here.

SiriusPoint Ltd., the Bermuda-based global specialty insurer and reinsurer, has appointed Ari Chester as head of U.S. and Canada Reinsurance.

Chester will be responsible for managing the U.S. and Canadian business across property treaty, casualty treaty, and other specialist lines. Chester moves into this role from chief operating officer, Americas Reinsurance, at SiriusPoint, replacing industry veteran Warren Trace who has retired.

Prior to joining SiriusPoint in early 2021, Chester was a partner at McKinsey & Co., where he held leadership roles in underwriting, risk and strategy, serving insurance and reinsurance companies in the U.S., Bermuda, London Market, and Europe. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from New York University and an MBA from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, Chester holds the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) designation and is currently on the 2022 Leadership Council for the Institutes CPCU Society.

Trace has retired after 38 years of service at Sirius Group and predecessor companies. Prior to the merger of Sirius Group and Third Point Re last year, Trace acted as president of North America Reinsurance and deputy CUO for the Americas at Sirius Group. Previously, he was the chief executive officer of Sirius Bermuda.

Warren has been a true industry leader. I value him as both a colleague and a friend, and we will miss his presence. I am grateful for Warrens passion, his dedication to our company and the numerous people he has mentored and generously shared his time and expertise with. We all wish him well in his retirement, commented Monica Cramer Manhem, president International Reinsurance.

She noted that Chester played an instrumental role in the launch of SiriusPoint.

***

Specialty MGA Banyan Risk Announces Ascots Horrobin as Co-Founder, Co-CEO

Banyan Risk Ltd., the specialty managing general agent (MGA) which launched in Bermuda in 2021, announced Peter Horrobins role as co-founder and co-chief executive officer.

Horrobin joins Tim Usher-Jones to lead Banyan Risk. The Bermuda-regulated MGA creates bespoke directors and officers (D&O) insurance risk solutions for life sciences, global initial public offerings (IPOs), the technology sector, and special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs).

Horrobin has 15 years of underwriting experience in professional liability and management liability. He takes his place as co-founder and co-chief executive at Banyan following three years at Ascot Bermuda, where he held the role of senior vice president. Previously, he served as managing director at Chubb Atlantic Indemnity, where he was also a board member.

Banyan Risk recently announced plans to expand its operations into Canada, subject to regulatory approval, with Michael Densham announced as president of the Toronto-based office.

I am delighted to be joining Tim to lead Banyan Risk at such an exciting stage in the companys growth, said Horrobin. It is clear that the opportunity we saw to develop a specialized platform is being embraced by clients and the broker community.

SiriusPoint Ltd. owns a significant minority stake in Banyan Risk and provides insurance paper and capacity to the MGA.

***

SCOR Reinforces Chief Sustainability Officers Teams

SCOR reinforces its Chief Sustainability Officers teams with the following appointments:

Michele Lacroix, as group head of sustainability. She will oversee an extended team of sustainability experts focused on sustainable business, corporate sustainability, reporting and ESG data. They will focus on how to support SCOR in its sustainable development which is a key success factor for its upcoming strategic plan. (See biographies below).

In this new team, Paul Nunn, currently head of ESG within the P&C Business Unit, is promoted to head of Sustainable Insurance and Yun Wai Song, currently head of Market Risk & Sustainability, is promoted to head of Sustainable Investment. Nunn and Song will use their expertise to reconcile business constraints with ambitious sustainability objectives. Andreas Frank, currently CEO of SCOR Switzerland and CFO of Switzerland and Germany, is promoted to Head of Corporate Sustainability. His strong knowledge in operations and finance will support SCORs sustainable journey.

Nathalie Mikaeloff, as group head of Communications & Marketing. Mikaeloffwill be in charge of internal and external communications as well as Global Marketing. By combining communications and marketing forces, new synergies will emerge through the management of the entire value chain: from strategic positioning to brand and content management, leveraging a multiformat and multichannel approach.

Within this new extended team, the current group communications team will work alongside Natasha Ashe-Suber, currently AVP Client Marketing and Communities for the U.S. Life & Health unit, who is promoted to head of Marketing for Life & Health, and Alixane Dauger, currently deputy head of Marketing P/C, who is promoted to head of Marketing Property & Casualty.

Biographies

Lacroix joined SCOR in 2008 as chief investment officer at SCOR Global Investments and has since held various roles within the Investments business unit. She became head of Group Investment Office in 2014 and became head of Group Investment Risk & Sustainability in 2019. She is a recognized expert in sustainability, having been appointed a member of the European Lab PTF on climate-related reporting in 2019, a member of the Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance at the European Commission in 2018. She also was a member of the Climate and Sustainable Commission at the French Financial Markets Authority since 2019. Lacroix is a graduate of HEC Business School and is based in France.

Nunn joined SCOR in 2011 as global head of Catastrophe Risk Modeling, following senior roles at Lloyds and in the London insurance market. Since 2019 he has been leading the development of ESG activities at P/C and is actively supporting SCORs participation in the Net Zero Insurance Alliance and other industry initiatives.

Song joined SCOR Global Investments in 2009 as head of Market Risk, following various roles in the asset management industry. Since 2016 he has participated in the development of sustainable finance at SCOR Global Investments and is actively supporting SCORs journey in sustainable investing.

Frank joined SCOR in 2007 with the acquisition of Converium and was director of SCORs Group Financial Planning & Analysis before being named CFO for SCOR in Switzerland in 2011. Since 2018 he has been CEO of SCOR in Switzerland. He is an active member of SCORs sustainability committee and has driven various sustainability initiatives in Switzerland.

Mikaeloff joined SCOR in 2014 as global head of Marketing for P/C, leading the client management initiative and developing a client engagement approach and tools, including CRM-Salesforce. More recently she was in charge of ESG business development, with a view to supporting the development of P/C business with social and/or environmental impacts. She has more than 20 years experience in marketing and communications in international B2B services companies.

Ashe-Suber joined SCOR in 2020 to lead client marketing & communities for SGL U.S. The team manages multichannel internal and external initiatives including publication/content development, sponsorships, advertising, events, media relations, and employee, community and client engagement; and promotes thought leadership strategies to increase awareness of SCORs expertise in the areas of health and wellness, research/innovation and client solutions. Ashe-Suber brings 20 years of marketing and communications experience leading high-achieving teams and award-winning campaigns.

Dauger joined SCOR in 2015 to support the transformation of the P/C marketing strategy and operations, from the roll-out and management of the CRM tool to the digitalization of global marketing tools and processes, including event management, content marketing, and operational support to global P/C business and underwriting teams. Dauger relies on her 18 years of experience in international B2B marketing and a solid team to adapt and develop new marketing approaches to engage with SCORs P/C clients and partners.

These new positions are key to drive our sustainability journey and to support our upcoming strategic plan. I am particularly proud that these new positions are being filled through internal promotions, demonstrating continuity and highlighting the groups deep talent bench, commented Claire Le Gall-Robinson, group chief sustainability officer.

Topics Reinsurance Canada
The Illinois attorney general is accusing a coal mine operator of polluting the area with toxic foam to try to stop an underground fire.

Exposure to such chemicals can cause long-lasting damage to the environment and poses a serious risk to public health, Kwame Raoul said.

Raouls lawsuit in Franklin County alleges that the Sugar Camp mine in August used firefighting foam containing PFAS compounds. There was no immediate comment from the owner, Foresight Energy.

The compounds are called forever chemicals because they dont break down in the environment or the human body and can accumulate over time. They have been linked to a variety of health problems.

State environmental regulators received complaints about foam in a farm ditch and a tributary to Akin Creek near the mine. The mine is 110 miles southeast of St. Louis.

The mines wastewater permit doesnt allow it to discharge PFAS, the state said.

It is critical that the state holds polluters accountable when violations occur in order to protect local watersheds and the health of nearby communities, said Andrew Rehn, water resources engineer with Prairie Rivers Network, an advocacy group.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Illinois Mining
Kansas highest court on Jan. 7 kept intact a law that allows people to sue counties over mask mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions and obtain quick trial-court decisions.

The Kansas Supreme Court declined to consider whether a law requiring trial-court judges to rule on such lawsuits within 10 days is constitutional. While the justices split 5-2 over the reasons, they were unanimous in concluding that a Johnson County judge had no business striking down the law in a case that dealt with another legal question.

The courts sidestep left in place a law seen by conservatives in the Republican-controlled Legislature as an important check on local officials power as Kansas experiences a surge in new COVID-19 cases. The surge is stressing hospitals and nursing homes, and Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly declared a state of emergency Thursday so that she could ease licensing regulations to make it easier for them to hire new employees or fill vacant jobs.

When the court heard attorneys arguments in the case in October, three justices expressed skepticism that the law was constitutional. In the majority opinion, Justice Dan Biles said that the law might fall in a different case, but the one before the high court compels the justices to follow the courts general rule of not ruling on constitutional questions when a case can be resolved in another way.

We recognize this decision may be just a temporary retreat from a raging storm, but it reflects necessary adherence to a long-standing doctrine of judicial restraint, Biles wrote.

In his ruling last summer, Johnson County District Judge David Hauber declared that the law denied counties their right to due legal process and interfered with the courts power to handle their own business. But he did so in a lawsuit against a mask mandate imposed by the Shawnee Mission School District in the Kansas City area _ not Johnson County.

School districts arent covered by the law that applies to counties, and a separate law mandating the same expedited legal process in lawsuits against school districts expired in June.

Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican who defended the law and argued that Hauber overstepped his authority, said the Supreme Court decision provides welcome clarity. But he added that state lawmakers, who convene their annual session on Monday, might want to review the issues raised by Hauber.

The school districts attorneys asked the Supreme Court to let Haubers ruling stand because counties can impose mask mandates that apply to schools and that counties still face an unworkable deadline for settling legal challenges to COVID-19 restrictions.

The district said in a statement that the case highlighted the highly problematic nature of the law and it anticipates that any future similar legislation will be challenged and likely struck down by the courts.

Biles wrote that Hauber decided to dive into constitutional waters without any of the parties in the case asking him to do so. Hauber ruled in a lawsuit brought by two parents upset with the Shawnee Missions mask mandate last year and denied their request to overturn it.

Our decision here should not be seen as sanctioning judicial timidity, Biles concluded.

The dissenters were Chief Justice Marla Luckert and Justice Caleb Stegall. They said the court simply should have ruled that Hauber didnt have any jurisdiction to rule on the law applying to counties and dismissed Schmidts appeal of Haubers decision.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Legislation COVID-19 Kansas
The U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development has halted the distribution of $1.95 billion that was approved for flood mitigation projects in Texas following Hurricane Harvey.

A news release from HUD said the Texas General Land Office failed to provide paperwork detailing how the money would be spent to help people and communities at risk of natural disasters and climate change and said the state has 45 days to provide the information.

We look forward to receiving and reviewing Texass submission of the additional information needed for approval, the Friday statement said. We are hopeful that Texas will take the steps needed to begin much-needed, forward-looking mitigation projects in the state.

Brittany Eck, spokesperson for Land Commissioner George P. Bush, told the Houston Chronicle that the agency provided a 628 page document to HUD that satisfied the required paperwork.

The partisan political game being played by the Biden Administration is putting Texans at risk, Eck said. HUD must approve this funding now, before the next storm hits.

Congress in 2018 approved about $4.3 billion in mitigation funding to Texas following Hurricane Harvey, which struck in 2017 and caused an estimated $125 billion in damage in the state, largely in Houston and Harris County.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Catastrophe Natural Disasters Hurricane
Remember George Costanzas trick in Seinfeld, the 1990s TV sitcom? When he couldnt (or didnt want to) pay his rent or other expense he would conveniently forget to sign the check, buying himself a little more time.

In a South Florida assignment-of-benefits case that turned into a bad-faith claim, a restoration firm argued that the insurer employed a similar tactic when it made the check out to both the construction company and to the policyholder.

In Expert Inspections vs. United Property and Casualty, the dissenting opinion from a judge at Floridas 4th District Court of Appeal pointed out that the insurer also sent the check to the wrong address.

Although neither party disputes that the insurer ultimately mailed a check for the $1,995.00 amount, the insurer sent that payment to the wrong party, Judge Alan Forst wrote in his dissent in the Jan. 5 decision. Under Florida law, the assignee could not endorse the check mailed by the insurer without the signature of both the assignee and the insured.

Nonetheless, the majority of the courts three-judge panel sided with United, affirming the trial courts decision that the insurer had followed the language of the policy and did not owe plaintiffs attorneys fees in the case.

It was not unreasonable for the insurance company to make the check payable to both the insured and the assignee, particularly since the AOB agreement did not assign all of the insureds interest in the insurance policy to the assignee, Judge Edward Artau wrote for the majority.

Some insurance attorneys have said this type of case exemplifies Floridas overly litigious environment, in which some restoration companies and their attorneys are too quick to file bad-faith actions, over small amounts and even when a claim has been paid. On many claims, insurers have less than two weeks to respond or inspect the property, which is often not enough time to make a clear determination. Yet plaintiffs attorneys often use that as a trigger for bad faith claims  simply to gain fees, insurance firms have complained.

The law, as it is now, benefits lawyers at the expense of consumers in Florida, said Julie Nevins, who handles bad faith matters for the Stroock & Stroock & Lavan law firm in Miami.

The United Property dispute stemmed from water damage caused by Hurricane Irma in 2017. The homeowner assigned benefits to Expert, a mold remediation company. The company, also known as MoldExpert.com, made the repairs and submitted an invoice to United, along with a copy of the AOB agreement.

United apparently did not pay the invoice immediately. But three months later, after a second email from the restoration company, the insurer wrote the $1,995 check, the court explained. A year later, Expert Inspection filed suit against United for breach of contract, arguing that the AOB agreement directed the insurer to pay the assignee, not the insured and not both parties.

United then asked the Broward County clerk of court to deposit the check and told the restoration company that it would re-issue the check to Expert if the company would drop its lawsuit. United also argued that Expert was not entitled to attorneys fees because the firm was never forced to litigate, and that it never notified the insurer of any disagreement prior to filing the breach-of-contract suit.

The circuit court granted summary judgment in favor of United, noting that the check was mailed well before the lawsuit was filed. The majority of the appeals court panel agreed.

The assignee alleges a breach of the insurance contract because the insurer did not abide by the instructions listed in the AOB agreement, the majority noted. However, the insurer cannot breach an agreement to which it has no privity.

An AOB agreement may give the assignee the right to enforce an insurance policy, but it does not give the contractor the right to enforce terms of the agreement that are extraneous to the policy, the court said. The majority also held that the Uniform Commercial Code, which generally provides that debtors cannot discharge their obligations by paying the assignor, does not apply to insurance claims.

In addition, the AOB agreement was a limited assignment, keeping the insured in the loop on benefits. It also granted the restoration company limited power of attorney, so that Expert Inspections could have cashed the check simply by having the homeowner endorse it, the court said. The agreement also obligated the insured to cooperate to ensure that payment was received from the insurance company.

In another bad-faith claim decision handed down the same day, the 4th District Court of Appeal sided against USAA Casualty Insurance.

In Wendy Firtell and Brian Firtell vs. USAA, the court reversed the Broward County Circuit Court, finding that the trial court should not have granted judgment for the insurer.

After the Firtells Pembroke Pines home was damaged in Hurricane Irma, they filed a claim. USAA inspected but did not pay the full amount the homeowners had asked for. Following an appraisal process, the Firtells filed a bad-faith claim. The trial court dismissed that and granted summary judgment for the insurer.

The family appealed and the 4th DCA agreed with them, noting that summary judgment is proper only if no issues of material fact exist.

The entry of summary judgment is  erroneous if different inferences can be drawn reasonably from those facts, the per curiam opinion said, citing previous court rulings. The court remanded the case, noting that the issue of bad faith should be resolved by a jury.

In the USAA case, it was Judge Artau who dissented.

The undisputed evidence shows that the insurer complied with the policy terms, reasonably investigated the claim, promptly participated in the appraisal process, and timely paid the appraisal award which was less than the amount its insured had claimed, he wrote. Under these circumstanceswith no genuine disputed issues of factthe trial court correctly concluded that no reasonable jury could find the insurer had engaged in bad faith.

Topics Carriers Florida Claims
The Tampa Tribunes final home, on Parker Street, was razed and replaced a few years ago with apartments after the newspaper was purchased by the Tampa Bay Times in 2016.

Now, one of its early homes  which is also linked to Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross  plus another century-old building with a connection to the newspaper might have similar fates.

Kolter Group purchased 514 N. Tampa St. and the neighboring 520 N. Tampa St. last month.

The Tampa Bay Times was unable to reach Kolter Group by email or phone. But, according to a Tampa Bay Business Journal article that Kolter Group posted to their website, they plan on demolishing the structures and erecting up to 200 condos.

Current tenants, such as First Watch, will remain open most of this year. Construction would begin in 2023.

Dennis Fernandez, the city of Tampas architectural review and historic preservation manager, said neither the city nor my division has received a demo request as of yet for those buildings.

Neither is designated as a local historic landmark. But, under city statute, permission to demolish any building that is 50 years or older needs an OK from the Historic Preservation Commission.

Once demolition is requested, the commission will schedule a public hearing. Residents can then request the buildings be designated local landmarks. That could protect them from being razed.

The commission can recommend that City Council rules on the request if they believe the buildings fit local designation criteria.

Still, historic preservationist Del Acosta recently told the Times that he cant recall the city ever forcing historic designation upon a property owner.

Typically, a property owner requests the historic landmark status.

Part of the history of 514 N. Tampa St. is painted on the side of the brick building.

Tampa Morning Tribune, is a ghost sign, defined as fading, hand-painted advertisements on a building which promote a business or organization that is no longer there.

The Tampa Bay History Centers Rodney Kite-Powell said that building was originally Hotel Arno and erected in 1895, the same year the Tampa Tribune was established.

It is among the oldest still standing in downtown Tampa, he said. There are a handful of others, but not many, and few have any protection from demolition.

Clara Barton was among those who stayed at the Hotel Arno, according to Times archives, doing so for at least one night during the time when her Red Cross used Tampa as a base for efforts in Cuba during the Spanish American War.

The Tampa Tribune purchased Hotel Arno in 1905 and converted it into their headquarters, Kite-Powell said.

The Tribune remained there through 1924, according to city directories, and then relocated a block away to 602 N. Tampa St.

Prior to that move, the Tribune bosses considered making 520 N. Tampa St. their new headquarters.

That four-story structure was erected in 1912 by the Tribune for another business and was designed by Bonfoey and Elliott, the architectural firm behind Old City Hall and the Centro Asturiano building.

Two bright young men of prepossessing appearance, aristocratic air, running over and bubbling out at the sides with enthusiasm, influence, affluence and energy, persuaded The Tribune management to build for them a new building to be occupied by their Tarr Furniture business, the Tribune reported in 1912.

The building will be the principal structure on Tampa St., both in size and appearance, the Tribune reported. It is of artistic design, of Roman bond brick, trimmed in Georgia marble and terra cotta.

Newspapers throughout Florida and beyond hailed it as an architectural achievement.

One of Tampas biggest assets, the Pensacola Journal wrote.

Another illustration that Tampa and Florida are prospering, Macon Telegraph reported.

The most modern in Florida, the Nashville Democrat said.

It was so popular that the Tribune had second thoughts about leasing it to the furniture store.

Shortly after signing the lease, they regretted it and wanted to keep it for their benefit to move the paper operations into, said Chip Weiner, whose book Burgert Brothers: Another Look contrasts old and modern Tampa through photographs.

Neither Tampa Street building is in that book, but will be featured in the follow up, he said.

The Tribune honored the lease but announced that they would move into the building when Tarrs contract was up.

They never did.

It later was the site of a short-lived bingo parlor, Weiner said. Then Havertys furniture.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
For some South Florida condo dwellers, that tap on the shoulder could lead to the deal of a lifetime.

The tri-countys white-hot real estate market is prompting developers to take stock of the regions older beach front high-rises as potential buyout candidates for redevelopment. While not new, the trend has taken on greater importance as vacant land disappears and more out-of-state residents move to South Florida in search of luxury digs.

Owners who would not have given a thought to selling previously are now taking the idea of moving seriously when confronted with lofty buyout offers, industry analysts and attorneys say. Consider:

In Pompano Beach, The Related Group recently bought out the owners of all 46 low-rise units at the Beach Villa at 900 North Ocean Drive. The complex was built in 1978. The company recently won city approval to rezone the property so it can build a 21-story luxury tower in the Beach Villas place.

In Miami Beach, owners of the Castle Beach Club, a circa-1966 17-story high-rise on Collins Avenue, received so many unsolicited offers from various unidentified suitors that they hired Colliers, the real estate services firm, to sort through them.

In Sunny Isles Beach, Related Group and Dezer Development are celebrating a sellout of their sleek new 55-floor Armani/Casa luxury tower. The project, which broke ground in 2016, came after the developers took over a site that was home to the decades-old Seashore Club, a low rise complex of 170 units, which they bought out.

Although the latter deal was roughly five years ago, its emblematic of how new upscale condo projects are increasingly displacing long-standing residential sites whose early years are distant memories.

It does seem to be a growing trend, said Gerard Yetming, executive managing director of Colliers, the real estate services company. Really there are very few opportunities to build a new high-rise somewhere as desirable as on the beach.

How it Works

Yetming said the obvious attraction for owners selling their older units is the premium prices developers are willing to pay for them.

They begin to realize this is something we should explore in an organized fashion, Yetming said. It is only with the right collective goals and an adviser where you can get something done.

He said there are a lot of buyout initiatives you dont hear about. Many fail, he said, amid bidding wars or internal disagreements over whether a sale should occur in the first place. It always takes a consensus among the unit owners to move forward, he said.

These are more the exceptions than the rule, he said of the successful buyouts.

This is not for every building, Yetming added. There are a lot of buildings that were well built and well located and well run that are probably not good candidates. There needs to be a very specific set of circumstances for these deals to work.

Once an older building is acquired, the time from sale to the construction of a new project runs from 18 to 24 months, said Eric Fordin, managing director of Relateds condo division.

After the buyout happens it takes anywhere from 6 to 9 months to obtain site plan approval, he said. Then, the sales and marketing process varies per market but generally takes 6 to 9 months as well. From the time we release construction documents to obtaining a permit generally takes 12 months as well.

The Champlain Towers Factor

Some sales drivers include the rising cost of maintenance for the buildings.

For years, members of many condo associations have deferred repair projects because of their expense. A potential consequence of deferred maintenance came into sharp relief after the terrifying collapse of the Champlain Towers in Surfside, which took 98 lives.

The disaster caused a major ripple effect of concern among residences of other older buildings along the Gold Coast.

The Champlain Towers incident really, really is pushing this trend, said Joseph Hernandez, partner and chair of the real estate practice group at the Weiss Serota Helfman Cole & Bierman law firm in Coral Gables.

The trends been going for some time, he said. Ive been doing these transactions for 10 years. The trend really started because were getting into the period where condos developed in the 70s or 80s are becoming functionally obsolete.

Now people are much more in tune to the issue, Hernandez said. Theyre focused on trying to band together and sell their property in a way they werent before.

He added that hes seen probably a two- to threefold interest in these transactions in the past year since Champlain Towers.

Normally I work on a couple of these transactions each year, he said. Im working on seven or eight major transactions right now.

Prime Prices

Still, its bottom-line economics that decides whether a deal will materialize, asserted Yetming of Colliers.

The only time this makes sense is when the value of the underlying land is significantly more than what the collective units are currently selling for, Yetming said. Why else would somebody want to sell their property unless they can make a significant profit?

Jamie Sturgis, founder and CEO of Native Realty Co. in Fort Lauderdale, said all-time records are being paid for multi-family buildings as new residents arrive in South Florida from out-of-town and out-of-country.

I would say the vast majority of the sites being targeted are on the beach, in light of what happened in Surfside, he said.

Many owners are snowbirds who see this as an opportune time  to cash out at the top of the market and avoid having to pay these special assessments for heavy repair projects in older buildings.

Nick Perez, a vice president at The Related Group, said the Beach Villa owners in Pompano sold after realizing they could double or even triple their money against their original purchase prices.

Ultimately it was the price they were getting for their units, Perez said. I would say they were getting well above their market price for their units. No one has to sell. Luckily, I was the only one trying to acquire all of the units and I didnt have a bidding war.

He said he met with 26 or 27 of the 46 owners.

There was a little bit of hand holding, Perez said. They didnt want to leave the beach.

Some wondered where they would live next. Related is allowing the sellers to stay through the end of winter season.

The ultimate deciding factor was if they were to sell to another end user versus the offer I was proposing, they would have gotten a substantially less amount of money, he said.

Perez did not provide any sales figures.

But sales data unearthed by Zillow, the national online real estate research and investment firm, found some owners received up to $800,000 for their 302-square-foot, one-bath, one-bedroom units with market values just below $200,000.

Its not hard to understand the attraction for Related. The 3.07-acre complex of one- and two-story buildings is located right on the beach between the Atlantic Ocean and State Road A1A. The property offers significant green space and a community pool in the back.

In its place: Related is planning a 21-story, mixed-use luxury condominium tower with 119 condo units and approximately 2,200 square feet of commercial space, according to a filing with the City of Pompano Beach.

A short distance to the north, Related is building another luxury high-rise called the Solemar, which the company says is 99% sold.

The swift sellout, the company says, is an example of the white hot demand for beachfront property.

There are really no true vacant lots that are ripe for development located right on the sand, Perez said. Forty-year-old low-rises are the next best thing.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Florida Condominium
Sex education gains steam in south China primary schools

Xinhua) 15:14, January 10, 2022

HAIKOU, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Li Li (pseudonym) has been distressed recently because she is often the butt of jokes of the boys in her class due to her puberty-related bodily changes.

Facing their ridicule, the 11-year-old girl rushes away from her classmates after school in search of solitude. "I feel like I have done something wrong, and it makes me feel embarrassed," Li said.

Discussions around sex are still considered taboo by many in China, where feudal values have shaped attitudes for thousands of years. Chinese parents are sometimes embarrassed to educate their children about sexuality, which leaves many children vulnerable to sexual abuse.

To improve sex education among young people, a school in south China's Hainan Province is promoting a unique awareness program, with teachers imparting knowledge about the private parts of the human body.

The mental health teaching team of Haikou Binhai No.9 Primary School, located in the provincial capital Haikou, has designed a series of lessons on sex education.

Liu Baojian, a mental health instructor at the school, is in charge of educating children about basic bodily knowledge. Liu's class is titled "I am responsible for my own body."

The class uses interesting activities to foster a better understanding among the students of their bodies.

The teacher uses "traffic lights" to help children understand and define the boundaries of physical contact with others. For example, body parts off limits are deemed "dangerous zones" and marked in red. Students make "body traffic lights" by themselves, Liu said.

Lin Chi, an expert in psychology, deems it a highly useful class. By creating their own 'traffic lights,' children understand their bodies better and exercise "self-sovereignty" over their own bodies, Lin said.

The earlier children receive sex education, the better it is for their physical and mental health, said Li Huijun, a mental health professional in Hainan.

"For many children, their biggest confusion often arises with the development of their bodies during puberty," Li said.

Sex education concerns childrens' physical and mental health, including the development of personality and self-identity, and is thus the most basic and necessary part of life education, Li added.

Wu Shaolan, vice president of the primary school, is behind this important initiative.

After years of teaching, Wu found that children are often intrigued and perplexed about sex. For instance, some children may be subjected to sexual harassment but are unsure what to do.

"Developing a systematic curriculum suitable for students was our initial goal," Wu said.

The program has been chosen as a key education project in Hainan and is being actively promoted, with authorities currently piloting it in more than 20 schools in the province.

Teachers and parents in rural areas often lack awareness of sex education, said Zeng Lingrong, headmaster of a rural school in the province's Chengmai County.

It's quite beneficial for students to imbibe awareness through these courses, which can help strengthen their self-protection against sexual abuse, added Zeng, whose school is also piloting the course.

He Ming, mother of a 9-year-old girl, said that while sex education was unthinkable in her parents' generation, it is crucial in reality. "Girls are often mocked by boys, inducing a feeling of distress, but they do not have to be ashamed of menstruation or breast growth," she added.

"I think it is necessary to start sex education in primary schools. It can help children realize that puberty is normal and that they are simply growing up," He said.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)








Ruling Democratic Party of Korea presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung meets with people at a subway station in Seoul, Jan. 9. Yonhap





Ruling party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung said Monday he will prevent the inheritance of debts by minors through an amendment to Korea's Civil Law.







In an election pledge posted on Facebook, Lee of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) said he will seek to protect young people from becoming credit delinquents before starting their careers due to debt inherited from their parents.







Lee noted about 80 minors filed for personal bankruptcy due to their inheritance of parental debt between 2016 and March 2021.







"Our Civil Act adopts the heir's limited liability system, in which heirs give up their inheritance or take responsibility for their parents' debts only within the limits of inherited property. But there are many cases in which parental debts are inherited (by minors) due to their legal representatives' lack of legal knowledge or ability to respond," said Lee.







"In November 2020, the Supreme Court pointed out the need for legal alternatives to protect minors from these problems," Lee said, promising to revise the law to help minors obtain limited liability even after they reach the age of majority. (Yonhap)


The state of Georgia has decided to join a proposed $26 billion nationwide settlement resolving lawsuits alleging that three large drug distributors and the drugmaker Johnson & Johnson fueled the deadly U.S. opioid epidemic.

Fridays announcement by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr marked the latest instance of a holdout state opting into the landmark agreements with J&J, McKesson Corp, AmerisourceBergen Corp and Cardinal Health Inc .

We are confident that joining the settlement at this time will prove beneficial to our state, our citizens and our communities, as we continue our fight to end this epidemic and address the widespread damage it has caused, Carr said.

AmerisourceBergen said it was pleased to see the increased commitment to participation in the global settlement process. J&J referred to an earlier statement saying the deal supports state and local efforts address the epidemic.

More than 3,300 lawsuits, largely by state and local governments, are pending seeking to hold those and other companies responsible for an opioid abuse crisis that led to hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths.

Under a proposal unveiled in July, the distributors and J&J agreed to pay up to $21 billion and $5 billion, respectively.

How much the companies ultimately must pay and how much outstanding litigation they will face depends on state and local government participation.

Settlement supporters recently extended to Jan. 26 a deadline for cities and counties in states that backed the proposal to opt-in to the deals, citing the potential for more states to join.

Topics Georgia
A Brightline higher-speed train fatally struck a pedestrian who walked into its path Tuesday, the fifth death involving the railroad since it recently resumed operations after being shutdown because of the pandemic.

Boynton Beach police said the pedestrian was struck about 7:50 a.m. Spokeswoman Stephanie Slater said no further details were immediately available.

The recent deaths have all occurred in the last month, continuing a trend that shows Brightline to have the worst fatality rate among the countrys approximately 800 railroads since it began test runs in mid-2017, according to an Associated Press analysis of Federal Railroad Administration data.

None of the 52 earlier deaths involving Brightline have been blamed on its equipment or crews. Investigations showed most victims were either suicidal, intoxicated, mentally ill or had gone around barriers at an intersection in an attempt to beat the trains, which travel up to 79 mph (128 kph) through densely populated areas between Miami and West Palm Beach.

Brightline officials did not immediately return a call and email Tuesday seeking comment. After a recent accident, the privately owned railroad issued a statement saying, safety is a topic that we will not stop talking about and we are asking the community, law enforcement, elected officials and members of the media to use their platforms and help amplify a consistent safety message: stay off the tracks and obey all warning signs.

Brightline has installed infrared detectors that will warn engineers if anyone is lurking near the tracks so they can slow down or stop. The company has added more fencing and landscaping to make track access more difficult and is also installing red-light cameras at crossings that will allow police to ticket drivers who go around guardrails. It is testing drones to monitor the tracks.

The first of the latest spate happened Dec. 7, when a pedestrian was struck in North Miami Beach. Four days later, a pedestrian was struck in Hollywood. On Dec. 30, a 68-year-old driver and his 58-year-old sister died when he drove around warning gates into the path of a Brightline train.

Brightline shut down its service from March 2020 until November, but one of its trains fatally struck a pedestrian in July during an engineer training exercise.

An ongoing AP analysis of federal data that began in 2019 shows Brightline trains strike someone about every 33,000 miles (53,100 kilometers) traveled.

Excluding five small railroads that average less than 100,000 miles (160,000 kilometers) traveled a year, where one or two fatal accidents skew their numbers, the railroad with the next worst rate to Brightline is central Floridas SunRail, which since mid-2017 has had at least 18 deaths or about one every 100,000 miles, according to federal records.

TriRail, a commuter service that operates in the same area as Brightline, averages about one death every 115,000 miles (185,075 kilometers).

Brightline plans to begin service connecting West Palm Beach and Orlando in about a year. On that new segment, trains will reach speeds of 125 mph (200 kph) when they travel through less densely populated farmland. It also is developing a line that will connect Southern California and Las Vegas.

About the photo: An Aventura Police Department traffic homicide investigator looks over an SUV which was struck by a Brightline train on Dixie Highway, at the Broward / Miami Dade county line Thursday, Dec. 30, 2021. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Florida
The Monsanto Co. pleaded guilty to illegally using and storing agricultural chemicals in Hawaii, and will pay $12 million in fines.

Monsanto, now owned by German pharmaceutical company Bayer, agreed to plead guilty to the charges in December. U.S. District Court judge Michael Seabright in Hawaii accepted the terms Thursday.

Monsanto was charged with 30 environmental crimes after allowing workers to go into corn fields on Oahu in 2020 after a product named Forfeit 280 was sprayed. Federal law prohibits people from entering areas where the chemical is sprayed within six days of application.

Monsanto was sentenced to three years of probation in addition to the fines and will continue an environmental compliance program overseen by a third-party auditor.

The company also pleaded guilty to two felonies related to the storage of a banned chemical on Maui and Molokai.

The company repeatedly violated laws related to highly regulated chemicals, exposing people to pesticides that can cause serious health problems, said U.S. Attorney Tracy Wilkison after the plea deal was made.

Monsanto said no adverse health effects were reported.

The conduct at issue in the agreement is unacceptable and contrary to the values and policies of the company, and we sincerely regret it, said Darren Wallis, Monsantos vice president of communications, in a statement.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Fraud
The Coast Guard has announced new safety rules following the deadly blaze that killed dozens of people on a scuba diving boat off the California coast more than two years ago.

The Labor Day 2019 fire that killed 34 people aboard the Conception off Santa Barbara marked the deadliest marine disaster in modern state history and led to criminal charges and calls for tougher regulations for small passenger vessels.

Under interim rules that take effect over the next two years, boat owners will be required, among other things, to install fire detection and suppression systems, provide better escapes and use devices aboard that make sure a night watchman is alert and making frequent rounds.

An investigation into the disaster blamed the Conceptions owners for a lack of oversight and the boats captain for failing to post a roving watchman aboard the vessel, which allowed the fire to quickly spread and trap the 33 passengers and one crew member below deck. Captain Jerry Boylan and four crew members, all of whom were sleeping above deck, escaped.

Boylan has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of seamans manslaughter. He is free on bond awaiting trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

The new rules were expected after Congress mandated in December 2020 that the Coast Guard review its regulations for small passenger vessels. The law, included in the National Defense Authorization Act, also added new requirements regarding fire detection and suppression.

The National Transportation Safety Board recommended in its investigation that the Coast Guard require boat owners to install more comprehensive smoke detector systems, upgrade emergency exists and make mandatory inspection checks on roving watches.

Since 1991, no owner, operator or charterer has been issued a citation or fine for failure to post a roving patrol, prompting the NTSB to fault the Coast Guard for not enforcing that requirement and recommend it develop a program to ensure boats with overnight passengers actually have watchmen.

The rules published late last month in the Federal Register begin taking effect March 28 and could be changed after a public comment period that ends in June.

They do not apply to ferries or fishing boats.

Other requirements include better training of crew, escape drills for passengers and guidance on how to handle flammable items such as rechargeable batteries.

While investigators said they couldnt determine what caused the fire because the boat burned and sank, they say the blaze started toward the back of the main deck salon, where divers had plugged in phones, flashlights and other items with combustible lithium ion batteries.

After the fire, the Coast Guard issued a bulletin recommending a limit on the unsupervised onboard use of lithium ion batteries and extensive use of power strips and extension cords.

Associated Press journalist Janet McConnaughey contributed from New Orleans.

Related:

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Topics California
Last weeks Colorado wildfire caused at least $513 million in damage and destroyed nearly 1,100 homes and structures, officials as they updated the toll of property lost in the most destructive wildfire in state history.

Boulder County released the new totals after further assessing the suburban area located between Denver and Boulder where entire neighborhoods were charred. Its the first estimate of economic damage for the Dec. 30 blaze.

A report last week from catastrophe modeler Karen Clark & Co. forecast the fire will result in roughly $1 billion in insured losses.

Authorities previously estimated that at least 991 homes and other buildings were destroyed. Two people are missing, though officials have found partial human remains at one location.

Investigators are still trying to determine what caused the wind-whipped wildfire, which forced thousands to flee on very little notice. The inferno erupted following months of drought and fed on bone-dry grassland surrounding fast-growing development in the area near the Rocky Mountain foothills.

Experts say similar events will become more common as climate change warms the planet and suburbs grow in fire-prone areas. Ninety percent of Boulder County is in severe or extreme drought, and it hadnt seen substantial rainfall since mid-summer.

The fire, which spanned 9.4 square miles, ranks as the most destructive in state history in terms of homes and other structures destroyed and damaged. A 2013 fire outside Colorado Springs destroyed 489 homes and killed two people.

In 2020, Colorado also suffered its three largest wildfires in recorded history as a prolonged drought holds its grip on the Western U.S.

The new totals include destroyed barns, sheds and other outbuildings, but the vast majority were residences, Boulder County officials said. The worst damage was in and around Louisville and Superior, neighboring towns about 20 miles northwest of Denver with a combined population of 34,000.

Seven commercial structures were destroyed and 30 damaged, the county said. Losses to commercial buildings were still being calculated.

Federal and state investigators have interviewed dozens of people as they work to determine what started the fire on a day when winds surpassed 100 mph. Their efforts are focused on an area near Boulder where a passer-by captured video of a burning shed on the day the fire began.

Disaster experts say the number of possible casualties is remarkably low given how fast the fire ripped through subdivisions and especially considering a public alert system did not reach everyone. Boulder County officials said Thursday that emergency alerts were sent to more than 24,000 contacts. Some 35,000 people fled their homes.

One of the destroyed houses was owned by Bill Stephens, the pastor at Ascent Community Church in Louisville, who said Thursday that at least 17 members of his congregation also lost their homes in the fire. Stephens was at a disaster assistance center picking up a $500 check from the Red Cross to help buy necessities.

The church itself, a renovated former Sams Club building, survived the fire but suffered extensive smoke damage. Church volunteers spent the day removing holiday decorations that reeked of smoke. Industrial fans and filters churned throughout the sanctuary to help remove the smell.

Although the congregation wont be able to hold services at the church for several weeks, Stephens said the wildfire will not stop them from worshiping. Theyll hold Sunday services at a local hotel until the church is cleaned up and ready to reopen.

Im trying my best to take care of the congregation. At the same time, were dealing with the fact that our own house is gone, Stephens said. Its just a community thats all been rocked by this.

Related:

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Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Wildfire Colorado
TROY, Mich., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- UMortgage, a fast-growing national mortgage company, continues its nationwide expansion - today, announcing that Troy, Michigan-based mortgage brokerage The Bally Team has joined its corporate portfolio.

The Bally Team, founded in 2018, has become one of the mortgage industry's biggest success stories - already the second-largest mortgage brokerage in Michigan, helping more than 2,000 families achieve the dream of homeownership. The company is spearheaded by 27-year-old Amer Bally, the top-ranked loan officer in Michigan and No. 83 overall loan officer in the country. In 2020, Bally was recognized as a "30 Under 30" winner by The Detroit Entrepreneur.

In addition to supporting homeownership and financial literacy throughout Michigan, The Bally Team has supported more than 15,000 Michigan families through charitable donations, as part of its "Bally Giveback" initiative with Detroit-based Gleaners Food Bank.

"Joining UMortgage is an exciting and humbling experience, and speaks to the importance of prioritizing your business around doing right by people," said Amer Bally, Branch Manager of The Bally Team. "At The Bally Team, we're passionate about going the extra mile to promote financial literacy and educate people on the affordable homeownership opportunities that exist. Knowing the UMortgage team operates on those same principles, this partnership will create even stronger, long-lasting benefits to Michigan residents."

Philadelphia-based UMortgage, operated by mortgage industry veteran Anthony Casa, has a mission of providing financial literacy to more consumers throughout the country, with an emphasis on underserved communities.

"Amer is one of the hungriest loan officers in the mortgage industry and his passion, both for his team and his clients, have made him a leader in the broker channel," said Anthony Casa, President of UMortgage. "His relentless drive for continued improvement and commitment to empowering people through financial literacy aligns perfectly with our goals at UMortgage."

The Bally Team will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark its official grand opening on Thursday, Jan. 27 at 5pm EST. The event will take place at 1050 Wilshire Dr., Suite 300, Troy, MI 48084.

About UMortgage

UMortgage is a purpose-driven mortgage company committed to serving their Loan Originators and community at large. Each Loan Originator offers consumers the personalized touch of working with a Broker in their backyard while maintaining the support and resources of a nationally licensed company. Licensed nationwide, they are trailblazing a path in the mortgage industry that is streamlined, modernized, and values-driven. For more information, visit umortgage.com or email media@umortgage.com.

Media Contact:

Corie Meredith

media@umortgage.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/1-michigan-mortgage-broker-joins-umortgage-301456407.html

SOURCE UMortgage
Introducing mandatory vaccines in Ireland could be difficult to achieve because of rights afforded by the Constitution, a legal expert has said.

David Kenny, associate professor of law at Trinity College in Dublin, said the State would have to show a very compelling and highly evidenced common good rationale to remove peoples decision-making rights.

Minutes from a meeting of the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) revealed the issue of mandatory vaccination is to be discussed by public health experts, it emerged today.

However, such a move could face challenges as the Constitution protects bodily integrity and autonomy and medical decision making.

The Irish Constitution also provides for strong protections for the rights of parents and guardians and children under Article 41 and 42.

While those rights are not absolute, it is possible to limit them for the common good.

But Prof Kenny said it would be challenging to do that in court.

As the virus threatens to overwhelm the health system, officials from the Department of Health are to produce a paper that will set out the relevant ethical and legal considerations.

The number of unvaccinated people are filling up hospital beds, prompting discussions around mandatory vaccines and how they could be introduced in Ireland.

Many scientists say increasing the number of vaccinated people will help reduce the number of people admitted to hospital with serious Covid-related issues.

Prof Kenny said the state would be expected to look into the move, as well as any legal and ethnical objections.

He said: The Irish constitution presents some potential difficulties for a policy proposal like this.

You would have to show a very compelling and highly evidenced common good rationale for taking away peoples decision-making rights in circumstances like this.

Thats something that I think in principle could be done," he continued.

I wouldnt say that the Constitution is such that we could never, in any circumstance, introduce a mandatory vaccination scheme  simply that you would have to be able to show a necessity and a very strong common good that would be done with the mandate, not a good that will primarily accrue to those people.

It would have to very much be a common welfare benefit.

Prof Kenny said the high numbers of vaccinated people in Ireland could pose another hurdle should the state wish to introduce such a measure.

He said the state would have to compare the current level of vaccination numbers with how mandatory jabs would help keep people out of intensive care.

It wouldn't be an easy legal fight for the state if there were a legal challenge and I assume there would be quite quickly.

They would have to show that, whatever extra percentage they think they would capture with a mandate, would be such that it would make a really marked difference to our public health outcomes in order to overcome the sort of consent and autonomy question, he added.

I would think that the state would want to be producing very compelling public health evidence in this. It wouldnt be an easy legal fight for the state if there were a legal challenge and I assume there would be quite quickly.

Prof Kenny said legislatures would have concerns about the likelihood of any move surviving a constitutional challenge.

The Government could also seek to change the Constitutional by way of a referendum but Mr Kenny said this could take a long time.

It would put the matter in a public debate, and we have to all consider if that is something we want to do, he added.

It would be a challenging process.
A search is expected to resume again today for a person reported to have been seen falling from a cliff in Co Clare on Monday afternoon.

The emergency response to the incident included members of the Doolin unit of the Irish Coast Guard which was stood down following a number of shock resignations in November.

Last month, all the units volunteers had their membership terminated with a commitment from the Department of Transport to reconstitute the service in the interim.

A small team of members was then contacted and requested to make themselves available to respond to calls if required as part of the temporarily reconstituted team.

These members responded to this afternoons incident after the alarm was raised at around 3.00pm. Emergency services received a report that a man was seen falling from the Cliffs of Moher.

Watch officers at the Irish Coast Guards marine rescue sub-centre on Valentia Island in Kerry mounted and coordinated the multi-agency search operation.

As well as the Doolin unit of the Coast Guard, the response included the Shannon-based Irish Coast Guard helicopter Rescue 115, the National Ambulance Service, An Garda Siochana and the Aran Islands RNLI lifeboat.

Weather and sea conditions in the area were reported to be very poor with low visibility and sea swells of up to five metres.

Soon after arriving at the scene, the Aran Islands lifeboat was stood down and returned to base while Rescue 115 was retasked to an incident on Inis Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands.

Members of the Doolin Coast Guard unit conducted a cliff-top search in an effort to locate the casualty believed to be at the base of 702ft cliffs.

As conditions were not safe enough to conduct a more detailed search or effect a recovery operation, the effort was stood down at around 4.30pm but is expected to resume in the morning.

Its also believed that divers from the Garda Water Unit will be requested to assist with the recovery operation.

The search is expected to resume on Monday for a person reported to have been seen falling from a cliff this afternoon. Photo: Press 22

In the meantime, a reconstituted Doolin team is now back on the board and available to respond to emergencies when requested.

In a statement following Novembers resignations of six volunteers, an Irish Coast Guard spokesperson said they acknowledged the divisions that have unfortunately existed within the unit for a number of years, and recognises the strenuous efforts and leadership displayed by many members of the unit, its management team in particular, and other stakeholders to address these difficulties.

Later, experienced mediator, Mr Kieran Mulvey was requested by the Department of Transport to visit Doolin and speak to the team members in an effort to find a resolution to the issues there.

Mr Mulveys report to the Department of Transport advised however that certain relationships within the Doolin Coast Guard Unit have irretrievably broken down and that the mutual trust, respect and confidence required to effectively operate a Coast Guard Unit does not exist within the Unit.

After Mr Mulvey completed his report, Minister of State in the Department of Transport, Hildegarde Naughton TD, asked the Irish Coast Guard to begin the process of reconstituting the Doolin Coast Guard.

In accordance with the recommendations of Mr Mulveys Report, members of the Doolin Unit were permanently stood down.

The Department confirmed that the unit would be re-constituted in the short term by temporarily appointing volunteers who Coast Guard believe can work and operate together.

This will address the situation presented by the absence of a functioning Doolin Coast Guard Unit, the Department said.

A broader appointment process will commence in due course with the view to permanently restoring the Coast Guard Unit in the Doolin area, the Department said.
Quite unusually for a Government statement, especially in current times, the announcement from Justice Minister Helen McEntee of a once-in-a-generation scheme on 3 December 2021 was welcomed in all quarters.

This once-off scheme would give long-term undocumented persons without a current permission to remain in Ireland the chance to regularise their status, access the labour market and begin their path to citizenship.

It would mean people who worked as carers, on building sites, in childcare  some of whom have lived in Ireland for many years  would get the chance to do some of the basic things many take for granted. Theyd be able to work and get paid at least the minimum wage, get a driving licence, be permitted to visit home and return to Ireland.

To meet the criteria, theyd have to have lived in the State without immigration permission for four years. Or three years in the case of those with children on the date the scheme opens for applications later this month.

And it wasnt just undocumented whod be able to access the scheme.

Justice Minister Helen McEntee: Said thousands of migrants and their families would be eligible.

Individuals with an outstanding application for international protection whod been in the asylum process for a minimum of two years could apply. This meant that the scheme would also apply to people living in direct provision for two years or more.

Ms McEntee said at the time that thousands of migrants and their families who are living in Ireland would be eligible for the scheme.

Given that those who will benefit from this scheme currently live in the shadows, it is difficult to say how many will be eligible, but we are opening this scheme for six months from January to allow people come forward and regularise their status.

It will bring some much-needed certainty and peace of mind to thousands of people who are already living here and making a valuable contribution to our society and the economy, many of whom may be very vulnerable due to their current immigration circumstances.

Ms McEntee said that undocumented persons may be reluctant to seek medical assistance when ill, support from the gardai when theyre a victim of a crime, or a range of other supports due to their status.

This new scheme would help to change that, she said.

Fiona Finn, CEO of NASC the Irish Immigrant Support Centre, said announcement would bring equal measures of joy and relief to individuals and families across Ireland.

Warm welcome

There was a warm welcome to the news from the NGOs working in this field, many of whom had been campaigning for the rights of migrants in Ireland for many years.

Nasc CEO Fiona Finn said the announcement would bring equal measures of joy and relief to individuals and families across Ireland who have been living in the shadows for years.

Ms Finn said the scheme would have a transformative impact on the lives of undocumented families who will be finally be able to take their full place in society.

The Immigrant Council of Ireland said it would be profoundly transformative for thousands of migrants.

The Migrant Rights Centre Ireland and Justice for Undocumented Group (JFU) called it a 'historic and life-changing scheme'.

The JFU chairperson Tjanasi Potso said: This scheme will allow us to live securely in our homes, no longer in fear that the next knock at the door will be someone to take us away.

We can stand up for our rights at work, our children can grow up safely, and we can visit our families for the first time in many years. We are grateful to all the supporters and allies who have campaigned with us.

On the back of the announcement, organisations in this field began to receive queries from those who may be eligible on what their next steps should be.

John Lannon is CEO of Doras, which provides support and advocates for people from a migrant background in Ireland.

He said that the response to the announcement of the new Government scheme has been huge.

We have had a lot of queries over the Christmas, he said. And a lot in the run-up to Christmas. We are going to have to do a lot of work now to help people process their applications.

Mr Lannon said that as the scheme is only open for six months, itll be important to spread the word far and wide to ensure no one misses out.

Who stands to benefit?

Well, its difficult to accurately say how many undocumented people there are in the country, but its safe to say many thousands could benefit from the scheme.

As many as 15,000-17,000 undocumented migrants could be living in Ireland according to some estimates, including 3,000 children, and that many could be in employment which is likely low paid.

Undocumented persons arent entitled to the minimum wage, cant avail of most social welfare payments and cannot leave the country as they may not be permitted to return.

According to a survey of 1,000 undocumented people living in Ireland from the Migrants Rights Centre in October 2020, three in four of the undocumented had been living here for five years or more.

Over nine in 10 (93%) were in employment to support themselves; 27% worked providing care to older people in private home settings; 10% worked in childcare; while 5% worked in construction.

If they are granted immigration permission under the new scheme, it will give them unrestricted access to the labour market and have those years theyve already been here reckonable for the purposes of pursuing Irish citizenship.

Thats not including the roughly 5,400 international protection applicants housed in Direct Provision at the end of November. To be eligible for the scheme, applicants must be living in such circumstances for at least two years.

So its clear that the number of applicants may run into a five-figure number for this scheme.

This will leave such a good impact on our lives

Syed* is a Bangladeshi national whos lived in Cork for almost six years.

The university-educated man was refused his first visa after a 10-month period.

He applied for a review of his case, but was left waiting three-and-a-half-years for this review to be completed.

When he was informed out of the outcome again in October 2020, he was disappointed to find again that it was a refusal.

At the time, they didnt give me a deportation letter, he said. Im not sure if it was because of Covid, but they didnt send one.

Syed and his friends closely watched the government formation talks as, about a month before the deal was finally agreed, it was reported that Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Greens were discussing plans for a regularisation scheme for the undocumented.

Weve been waiting on that scheme, from when it was first announced [in the programme for government], he said.

Some of my friends have been here 13, 14 years. Ive been away from home for 11 and a half years.

In all that time, hes not been able to go home. And, in that time, five of his close relatives have died.

When you have something important back home, parents or family members sick, you cant go visit them, he said. My cousin was 24 years old when he died. I can never forget that.

But, with the scheme that could now regularise his status, Syed is feeling a lot more positive. In particular, hes looking forward for the opportunity to visit Bangladesh again and then being able to return home to Cork.

Everyone I know, theyre all so happy, he said. We are grateful to Minister Helen McEntee, and Minister James Browne for pushing this. And were thankful to the Green Party for pushing this scheme.

When we will be [regularised] and in the system, itll be good for everyone. Good for us, good for the people, good for the government.

Access to healthcare will be a big factor, according to Syed. Particularly during Covid times where undocumented people with symptoms may have felt less willing to come forward for a test or others may have felt unwilling to come forward for a vaccine because they dont have a PPS number.

Getting their status regularised will give them the right to do things that others take for granted, he said, such as getting paid the minimum wage, getting a driving licence.

I know people who work hard, 12-14 hours a day who might get 5 or 6 an hour, Syed said. Getting the minimum wage [of 10.50 an hour] will make a big difference.

People in my position, we will work and we will give back. People will pay their taxes. Ive been thinking many times that when I start work properly, Ill pay my tax every week, keep my payslips and after a few years I can get my Irish passport.

Its so many things with it that will leave a very good impact on our lives.

I hope it works. I think I can make it

Zhang* is a Chinese national, who has lived in Ireland for nine years.

He first came on a student visa to study in Ireland, and had taken a separate course at the same time to improve his English.

For people outside Europe, the fees are very high to go to college here, he said. My family is not rich so I had to work hard at the same time to try to pay for college.

Zhang had to keep up with the pressures of his studies while attempting to earn the tens of thousands of euro to pay for these studies at the same time, and did not complete his course.

His visa then expired, and hes been living here illegally since 2017.

I havent been home for over five years, he said. All the while I was thinking of what to do. I was really anxious, worried about my situation.

He has worked jobs, mainly in hospitality, where he sometimes has gotten paid as low as 4 or 4.50 an hour.

But you have to do it, he said. Theres not a lot you can do about it. You cant legally get a job.

Left with no other real possibility of regularising his status, the new scheme will be a game changer for Zhang if he is approved for it.

I was really happy, and really excited, he said. I really cant wait. If I get this piece of paper, its the chance to get a job, do all kinds of things. There are other people with families in harder situations and this will help them so much.

Zhang said he loves living in Ireland and feels strong ties, having already gotten married while living here. But the opportunity to also visit home again, while being able to return again, is a tantalising prospect.

His grandmother has recently been unwell, and he is particularly excited at the prospect of seeing her again.

Theres been lots of crying [over the last while], he said. I really appreciate this. I hope it works. I think I can make it. I was looking at all the requirements. I know it takes time for the immigration to check all your papers. But I hope all the people can benefit soon. Itll make lots of people really happy.

John Lannon is CEO of Doras, which provides support and advocates for people from a migrant background in Ireland.

Issues to iron out

The Department of Justice said in a statement this week that further details on the scheme and when it would begin will be announced shortly.

While that information is awaited, there are a number of elements of the scheme that remain remain to be clarified. These include how long the process will take, if family reunification is possible for those awaiting results on their asylum bid who also apply for this scheme.

These further details will also be published on the Departments Irish immigration website shortly, a spokesperson said.

One notable reaction to the scheme also came from business group Chambers Ireland, which urged for the creation of a formalised process to fully regularise all undocumented persons from now on.

Chief executive Ian Talbot said a process needs to be in place for all undocumented people, not just those who meet the narrow requirements of this once-in-a-generation scheme.

What happens to those who fall just outside of these parameters to apply?

It makes little sense to exclude some undocumented people from this scheme and leave them to continue working in the shadows.

Providing a proper mechanism for workers and families to regularise their situation going forward would be crucial, he added. So far, no such initiative has been forthcoming beyond the upcoming six-month scheme.

John Lannon, from Doras, said that its important that the department does everything it can to make the scheme accessible so that organisations arent left picking up all the slack and risk some missing out on whats been dubbed a once-in-a-generation opportunity.

I think the department needs to be proactive in ensuring that everybody who deserves access to these schemes has the opportunity to do that, he said.

Such initiatives can put a strain on charities in the area, Mr Lannon said, particularly in the area of translation so it would be incumbent on the department to ensure the relevant information was readily available in a number of languages.

We now need in the first instance to make people aware of the scheme, he said. "We do find that were explaining it to people, in some cases making people aware of it in the first place.

Were stretched because theres a limit to the languages we have got as well. Every effort has to be made to ensure as many as possible avail of it.

*Names have been changed at individuals request

Members of the Gort migrant community campaigning for a regularisation scheme at Spanish Arch, Galway. Pictures for undocumented migrants feature, January 2022

'I remember how it was to be undocumented. It is just the worst feeling as you just don't know what tomorrow will be'

Lorna Siggins

The Brazilian community in the south Galway town of Gort has welcomed the Governments new scheme to regularise undocumented migrants and their families in Ireland.

Its amazing  Im so happy, Joyce Correa da Silva of the Gort Justice for Undocumented Campaign has said.

How lives are going to change, and it's all communities, not just the Brazilian community, Ms da Silva said.

I remember how it was to be undocumented. It is just the worst feeling as you just don't know what tomorrow will be," she added.

Ms Da Silva was responding to confirmation by Justice Minister Helen McEntee late last week that a time-limited regularisation scheme will open for online applications in January and applications will be accepted for six months.

The town close to the Burren on the Galway-Clare border was once home to 1,000 Brazilians, many recruited by Sean Duffys meat plant in better economic times.

When the factory closed in 2010 and work permits expired, there was no obligation on the employer to fly former staff home.

The Portuguese speakers had married, started families, put down roots. Those without papers were forced to take insecure and often low-paid cash jobs to survive, and have had no access to State supports and no right to medical cards.

Gort Justice for Undocumented campaign members (from left) Joyce Correa da Silva, Annie Rozario, William Silva and Obert Makaza who have welcomed the government's decision.

They risk deportation if their application for status is not successful, Da Silva, 39, who came over with her husband 18 years ago when he was offered work with horses in Co Kildare, applied for documentation after she separated and moved to Gort in 2009 with her teenage son.

She finally got papers, but over 70 people in the south Galway area who are undocumented have been seeking assistance from the Gort Resource Centre  with one man in Ireland for 18 years.

Margaret Brehony, who undertook a survey for the Gort Justice for Undocumented group, said undocumented migrants living outside the system have existed in constant fear, with neither shelter nor the right to food.

Applicants under the new scheme must have a period of four-years undocumented residence in the State, or three years in the case of those with children.

Successful applicants will receive immigration permission, access to the labour market and will be able to move towards citizenship application.

Gort Resource Centre chairperson Amy Bradley recalled the start of the Gort campaign over 10 years ago around a second-hand kitchen table at the resource centre.

Brave undocumented individuals from our community came together with the Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland (MRCI) to try to create national change to improve their lives, their families lives and for others who also found themselves living in the shadows," she said.

Through their hard work, dedication and selfless action in the face of so much personal risk they rose to the task and have made a difference, she said.

This would not have been possible without the driving force of this campaign Annie Rozario of the Gort Resource Centre, along with a team of dedicated volunteers who supported the group to succeed in having their voices heard,she said.

This news will certainly provide hope and peace for many individuals and families around the country this holiday season, Ms Bradley added.
There is a building at the end of my street that was used as a fitness studio until 2010 but has been left vacant since then.

It could be a home for a family. But it's not counted in official statistics as a vacant property, nor listed by Dublin City Council on the derelict register. It might be held by Nama, the banks, or the property owner might be just sitting on it.

It is part of the hidden dereliction crisis; tens of thousands of derelict and vacant commercial buildings not included in official vacancy or derelict figures. It highlights the inadequate data on the scale of vacancy and dereliction and the absence of penalties on property owners.

The proposed grant for homebuyers purchasing vacant or derelict homes is welcome, but without incentivising and requiring property owners to sell or rent their property, the problem of vacancy and dereliction will continue.

The grant could actually push up prices of the limited supply of derelict stock for sale.

Without additional measures, property owners, not home buyers, will benefit.

The impact of the vacant grant support will also be dependent on an individual or couples ability to source a mortgage (will banks lend for these more complex home purchases?) and pay the cost of purchasing the derelict or vacant property, and to pay for refurbishment costs (which can be very substantial depending on the level of remedial work required).

The grant beneficiaries are likely to be restricted to higher-income earners. But ultimately it is all dependent on whether the owner of the vacant and derelict property wants to sell. More is needed if we are to really unlock the potential of vacant and derelict property.

Derelict houses in St Mary's Park, Limerick.

Up to this point there has been little political will at Government level to tackle this issue. There has been inadequate planning, coordination, and ultimately, funding and implementation. Whether local authorities wanted to address it or not, there was no real impetus, and little sign of sufficient funding and initiatives to tackle it.

Thankfully it appears to be changing. Heightened public awareness is demanding action to turn derelict and vacant property into homes, particularly with half a million young adults living in their parents' house, and latest homelessness figures showing 2,548 children homeless with their families, a rise of 20% in just five months. There is a popular hashtag #DerelictIreland on Twitter where people across the country are posting images of derelict buildings in places like Cork, Kildare, Sligo, and Drogheda.

Government appears to be responding, at least at policy awareness level. Notably Fine Gael launched a new policy document in December dedicated specifically to vacant housing and renewal.

However, in order to systemically tackle the problem and avoid scenarios of home buyers with a new grant being fleeced by property owners, the State must act decisively and quickly.

Firstly, disincentivise the holding of vacant property, effectively forcing property owners to sell. Secondly, engage in the compulsory purchase and compulsory sale, of tens of thousands of vacant and derelict properties, and thirdly, fund the refurbishment of this property to become a large supply of affordable homes.

An effective vacant and derelict property tax is required to force the sale of the property by making it financially unviable to leave property vacant and derelict.

The vacant property tax currently under discussion must be extended to include all property, with no exceptions, from derelict homes to commercial property also.

The tax should be 10% of market value. It needs to be punitive to force either the use of the property, or its sale. The revenue commissioners should collect the tax and scale it upwards as the period of vacancy lengthens.

The tax should create a flood of vacant and derelict homes on to the market to add substantially to the supply of property for home buyers and help reduce house prices.

The tax has the potential to raise up to 1bn a year, based on a conservative estimate of 100,000 vacant and derelict properties, valued at an average value of 100,000 per property. This revenue raised could be ringfenced into a fund targeted for a new state home building and retrofit company to purchase property, refurbish and retrofit it and then sell at genuinely affordable rates to home buyers and housing associations for social and cost rental homes. That would increase government investment in house building by 50%.

Homebuyers on average incomes cannot be left to take on the risk and cost of buying vacant and derelict properties alone.

Current targets for local authorities to purchase just 2,500 vacant homes over the next five years is paltry.

The State has the finance to procure at scale and then sell the homes at genuinely affordable prices to home buyers. Along with compulsory purchase orders, which can be expensive and cumbersome, the state should use compulsory sales orders set at 50% below market value. A state-building and retrofit company would provide an important construction capacity to undertake the refurbishment and retrofit, delivering in reasonable costs for home buyers.

Proper coordination among government departments and local authorities is required to tackle this, with financial support for purchase and refurbishment. It should dovetail with the retrofit programme. Bringing derelict and vacant property into use as homes that are zero carbon, is a vital way to ensure new home provision is climate proofed.

Rory Hearne is assistant professor in Social Policy Department of Applied Social Studies at Maynooth University

The minister for housings intention to set up a vacancy team in the Department of Housing is great, but if local authorities are under-resourced to purchase and refurbish stock, then it will be limited in what it can achieve.

Frank O'Connor and Jude Sherry made the point in this newspaper that a far more strategic and holistic approach is needed to end dereliction and bring vacancy down to acceptable levels. They propose innovative measures such as mean while use and custodianship orders.

Ali Harvey of the Heritage Council highlights that the collaborative town centre health check programme, which advocated for a town centres first policy in 2019, is demonstrating what can be achieved through collaboration across the public, private and civic sectors.

The shortage of housing in this country is an artificial scarcity. There is an untapped supply of housing being hoarded by property owners, who allow it lie vacant or derelict. Policy half-measures will not suffice, it is time for action. Owners of derelict and vacant property can no longer be allowed to leave it unused. Use it, or lose it.

Rory Hearne is assistant professor in Social Policy Department of Applied Social Studies at Maynooth University
Lee Jae-myung, the presidential candidate of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, attends a press conference with female startup CEOs held in Seoul's Dongjak District, Monday. Joint Press Corps



By Jung Da-min





The rival candidates of the country's two major parties are promoting campaign pledges that are closely linked to people's daily lives, in a bid to appeal to the public by presenting plans on how to improve their welfare.



While some say these pledges are practical because they are closely related to people's daily needs, others say that the candidates are only focusing on "micro" and "populist" issues that get immediate and rave responses, without specific plans on how to secure the relevant budgets, and that they are failing to present promises on "macro" and "serious" issues that require long-term planning and discussions.



The competition involving such campaign pledges linked to people's daily lives and welfare is heating up, especially after ruling liberal Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) candidate Lee Jae-myung's pledge to expand national health insurance coverage to include hair regrowth treatments got considerable attention from voters with thinning hair.



The ruling party's election camp has since been promoting the campaign pledge, while also presenting other pledges that are closely linked to people's daily lives, such as financial support for those receiving dental implant treatments. Such pledges have yet to be announced as formal policy promises, but it is said that the ruling party side is actively considering doing so.



"I believe it is the duty of the state to alleviate and relieve any points that the people are suffering from," Lee said during his appearance in a TV debate hosted by local broadcaster MBC, Jan. 5, referring to his pledge to support those experiencing hair loss.



Addressing concerns of financial resources in carrying out such pledges, Lee said the coverage may require an annual budget of 100 billion won, which is not that large an amount.





Yoon Suk-yeol, the presidential candidate of the main opposition conservative People Power Party, presents his policy promises for Incheon residents at a square in front of Incheon Station, Thursday. Joint Press Corps
Burma 2,300 Myanmar Junta Troops Killed in Last Month: NUG

Seven junta soldiers seized by People's Defense Forces and the Karen National Liberation Army in Lay Kay Kaw, Myawaddy Township, Karen State, on Dec. 30. / PVTV

An estimated 2,380 Myanmar junta soldiers were killed and around 600 wounded during the last month, according to the parallel National Unity Government.

Between Dec. 7 and Jan. 6, 1,077 blasts and attacks targeting junta forces were reported across the country, except in Rakhine State.

The Irrawaddy could not independently verify the reports or the junta casualty numbers. The regime was unavailable for comment.

The shadow home affairs ministry, which charts reports from resistance groups, the media and residents, said there could have been more attacks which went unreported.

The preceding month, only 788 incidents were reported with 2,117 regime troops killed and 682 injured.

Sagaing Region, where peoples defense forces (PDF) are most active, reported the most attacks in December with 246 ambushes and explosions.

Sagaing resistance groups claim their hit-and-run tactics and landmine ambushes are inflicting heavy losses on the junta. The regimes air force has responded with airstrikes and by dropping reinforcements.

Sagaing Region reported the most attacks on regime forces in November, with 209 incidents.

In December, Karen State reported 244 incidents between the regime and PDFs and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), the armed wing of the Karen National Union.

Fierce clashes occurred in mid-December after junta troops raided Lay Kay Kaw in Myawaddy Township near the Thai border. The regime claimed democracy activists and PDF members were hiding in the KNLA-controlled new town.

Intense fighting and junta airstrikes have since been reported with large numbers of junta soldiers, including commanders, reportedly killed. Several thousand civilians have fled to Thailand to avoid the fighting.

The state only reported 22 clashes in November.

After reporting 45 attacks and 173 explosions targeting regime forces in Yangon, the city has become the third most violent area of the country.

Several resistance groups in the commercial capital have urged residents to avoid junta forces and regime-controlled government offices as they may be attacked.

Yangons resistance groups reported 32 attacks and 118 blasts targeting regime forces in November.

The junta continues to commit atrocities, including arrests, using hostages, arbitrary killings, burning alive, mass killing, using civilian detainees as human shields, shelling residential areas, looting and burning houses and sexual violence, especially in Sagaing and Magwe regions and Chin, Shan, Kayah and Karen states.



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Junta Court Sentences Myanmars Aung San Suu Kyi to Another Four Years

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Burma Junta Court Sentences Myanmars Aung San Suu Kyi to Another Four Years

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is seen at the Union Peace Conference in Naypyitaw in August 2020. / The Irrawaddy

A special court set up by the Myanmar junta in Naypyitaw sentenced detained State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to an additional four years imprisonment on Monday in three cases against her, including alleged illegal possession of walkie-talkies and breaching COVID-19 restrictions.

Sources close to the court told The Irrawaddy that the sentences comprised two years imprisonment for the illegal import of walkie-talkies under the Export Import Law; one year for the possession of these devices under the Telecommunications Law; and two years for the COVID-19 charge under the Natural Disaster Management Law.

The first two sentences are to be served concurrently.

The verdicts in the cases were announced after two hearing postponements last month.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, 76, who has been detained since the day of the Feb. 1 coup, has now been given a total of six years in prison by the junta.

The court handed her a four-year sentence on Dec. 10 on charges of sedition and breaching COVID-19 restrictions. On the same day, the junta leader commuted the prison sentence to two years.

She is facing another seven charges including alleged corruption and breaching the Official Secrets Act. She faces a potential combined prison term of over 100 years on all of the charges, which are widely viewed as trumped-up, politically motivated and an attempt by the junta to exclude her from Myanmar politics.

Junta forces raided Daw Aung San Suu Kyis residence in Naypyitaw in the early morning hours of Feb. 1 ahead of the coup, without a search warrant, and claimed to have found illegally imported walkie-talkies, which they said were used by her security forces.

Five police officers testified as prosecution witnesses in the two cases. But their testimony as to where and from whom they seized the walkie-talkies differed, sources close to the court said.

Todays verdict on the breach of COVID-19 regulations is based on Daw Aung San Suu Kyis door-to-door visits to party members ahead of the 2020 elections.

Since last months verdicts, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has appeared in court wearing a prison uniform: a white top and brown longyi.

The junta has barred all five of Daw Aung San Suu Kyis lawyers from speaking to the media since October, so details of the court hearings as well as her whereabouts are unknown to the public.



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Myanmar Military Regime Bombs Kayah State Capital From the Air

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Burma Myanmar Military Regime Bombs Kayah State Capital From the Air

Following the junta's aerial attacks on Loikaw, the capital of Kayah State, residents flee the capital on Jan. 8 and 9.

Myanmars military regime launched air strikes on Loikaw, the capital of Kayah State, on Saturday and Sunday, forcing thousands of local residents to flee their homes.

Fierce clashes broke out between resistance groups and junta troops in the town on Friday. Residents of at least three of 13 wards in Loikaw have fled since Saturday and more are fleeing, according to humanitarian groups helping the displaced people.

Around 2,000 people were evacuated on Saturday and Sunday. We evacuated them together with the Red Cross Society. Nearly half of the town has fled the fighting. Though the fighting took place in Mong Lone, Pan Kan and Ywa Tan Shae, people from the other parts of the town have also fled out of fear, a charity worker told The Irrawaddy on Sunday.

People who remain in the town are staying in their homes, and businesses have also closed, he said. While his group is helping to evacuate displaced people to churches, many others have also fled the town on their own, he said.

People dont go out because helicopters were hovering. The town is deserted. Those who were not able to flee in time remain in their homes. But we are evacuating people at their request. We pick them up at their homes when they phone us, he added.

Six civilians were killed in Fridays fighting as junta troops attacked civilian targets, said the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF). The following day, the regime shelled several wards in Loikaw as junta jets dropped bombs.

Some residents have fled to Shan State, Mandalay, Naypyitaw and other towns, but some are only taking shelter at local churches in Kayah.

Local administrators in Nyaungshwe in southern Shan State at the border of Kayah State have warned locals not to shelter displaced persons from Kayah, and displaced people were also not allowed to enter Taunggyi, the capital of Shan State, according to the Shan State-based news agency Shan Herald.

Junta troops and local Peoples Defense Force (PDF) members clashed in Loikaw, and junta helicopters were hovering over the town on Sunday morning.

Many people remain in the town, though others are fleeing. We have not yet fled. We have packed things up, and got the car ready to flee. If the situation is OK, we will move tomorrow. But we heard gunfire today, and choppers were hovering, a resident of Mong Lone ward told The Irrawaddy on Sunday.

More than half of Kayah States 300,000 population have already been displaced by fighting following the February coup, and the majority of Loikaws some 150,000 residents are fleeing the juntas weekend aerial attacks, according to locals.

A Loikaw resident told The Irrawaddy on Monday that the town is deserted and many more, including my family, are planning to leave today and tomorrow.

Junta attacks from the air were also heard in Demoso, Shardaw and Moebye and Pekhon towns. Helicopters could be heard hovering above Hpasawng Township, said the Loikaw resident.

At least 30 junta soldiers including a lieutenant died and many more were injured in Saturdays fighting, according to the KNDF. The group said it shot down a gunship and destroyed an armored vehicle in the fighting, and also seized weapons and ammunition from the regime.

Junta troops also clashed with resistance groups in Demoso on Sunday, and at least 10 junta soldiers died in the fighting despite air support.

Some 20 junta soldiers are believed to have been injured, and at least 10 are thought to have died. The regime fired artillery and also carried out aerial attacks. One of our comrades died and three were injured. One of them had to have one of his kidneys removed. He is stable now, a KPDF spokesman told The Irrawaddy.

Some civilian houses were damaged in the junta shelling and air strikes and junta troops also deliberately set some houses on fire to cremate their colleagues bodies, said the spokesman.

Junta troops burnt the bodies of their fellows in civilian houses. We have found three charred bodies of junta soldiers, he said.

The KPDF said it had also seized weapons and communications devices from the regime in the Demoso fighting. The military regime, according to Loikaw residents, has intensified its attacks in Loikaw, deploying helicopters to regain road access to other parts of Kayah State via Loikaw. Resistance groups have blocked road access since last month, preventing the regime from sending reinforcements and food supplies.



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Secretary of the State Administration Council Lt-Gen Aung Lin Dwe

Myanmars military has forced the judge advocate general of the military to step down and transferred him to the reserve force, according to sources at military headquarters in Naypyitaw.

Lieutenant General Aung Lin Dwe will however remain the secretary of the State Administration Council, the governing body of the military regime.

The lieutenant general, who will turn 60the retirement age in Myanmarin May, graduated as part of the 25th intake of the Defense Services Academy (DSA) and served as the commandant of the Defense Services Technological Academy and commander of the Western Command, which overseas Rakhine State in western Myanmar. He was appointed the judge advocate general in August 2016.

Aung Lin Dwes transfer to the reserve force has been remarked upon by political analysts, as it is somewhat premature. Normally, high-ranking military officials are transferred to the reserve force only after they reach the retirement age.

Lt-Gen Aung Lin Dwe has been replaced as judge advocate general by Lieutenant General Myo Thant Naing, who was promoted from the rank of major general and was formerly Director-General of the Directorate of Military Recruitment, according to the sources at the military headquarters.

The Myanmar militarys inspector and auditor general Lieutenant General Min Naing was also transferred to the reserve force, according to BBC Burmese.

He was replaced by Major General Soe Min Oo, who was formerly the head of the rocket-launcher unit and was promoted to lieutenant general, according to sources. He was from the DSAs 32nd intake.

On Jan. 6, Brigadier General Than Htike, who served on the General Staff of the Naypyitaw Military Headquarters, was named commander of the Northwestern Command. The former Northwestern commander, Major General Phyo Thant, was moved to become deputy minister of Border Affairs.

The appointment also deviates from longstanding tradition in Myanmars armed forces, said a striking military officer.

Traditionally, this position is only held by those who have served as regional commanders. And they are also promoted to the rank of lieutenant general to hold the post. But Min Aung Hlaing awards his confidants ranks though they have not served as regional commanders. There is no policy [on eligibility criteria for positions] now. He has appointed someone without a solid background as the judge advocate general, he said.

Maj-Gen Myo Thant Naing is the third military officer to hold the judge advocate general position under Min Aung Hlaing. Lieutenant General Ye Aung, the commander of Central Command, was serving as judge advocate general when Min Aung Hlaing became the military chief, and was succeeded by Lieutenant General Aung Lin Dwe.

In November, the Myanmar military forced into retirement Lieutenant General Sein Win and Lieutenant General Ye Aung, who served as defense and border affairs ministers respectively under the ousted National League for Democracy government from April 2015 to January 2021. They were appointed as the chairman and vice chairman of the Myanmar Veterans Association.



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Ten Civilians Murdered by Junta in Western Myanmar

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Burma Ten Civilians Murdered by Junta in Western Myanmar

The ten villagers who were arrested and killed by junta troops in Chin State's Matupi Township in January. / Matupi Cele

Myanmar junta troops murdered ten civilians, including a teenage boy, after detaining them last Thursday and Friday in several villages in Chin States Matupi Township.

A total of 11 civilians were detained on January 6 and 7 near Kihlun and LongHlaw villages on the Matupi-Hahka road. The bodies of ten of them have since been recovered.

Clashes between the Chinland Defense Force-Matupi (CDF-Matupi) and the Myanmar military have intensified in the area since the New Year.

The victims had been tortured and killed when we found their bodies on Friday and on the weekend in Kacae, Tibaw, Kihlun and Longhtaw villages. They were taken to be human shields and were killed at different times and in different places, said Ko Nway Oo Lin, a spokesperson for the CDF-Matupi.

The victims were traveling from one village to another, Ko Nway Oo Lin added, citing other villagers who saw them being arrested. One man on his motorbike was killed on the spot on January 7.

Their hands were tied behind their backs. We found cuts and bruises and injuries from them being hit with rifle butts as well as gunshots to their bodies. A 13-year-old boy had had his throat cut, said the spokesperson.

Ko Nway Oo Lin added that the CDF-Matupi was continuing to search for the one remaining villager out of the 11 detained, although they feared that he was dead.

One of the victims was Salai Tui Dim, the founder and former editor-in-chief of local news agency Khonumthung News.

Khonumthung Media Group condemned the juntas atrocities against the innocent civilians including forcing them to be human shields and urged the junta to stop such extra-judicial killings and inhumane acts.

Tensions remained high in the area on Monday with military regime forces being reinforced from both the ground and air.

Over 4,500 people from at least seven villages in Matupi Township have been forced to flee their homes due to the fighting and the arrival of junta reinforcements.

Locals and the Chin Human Rights Organization highlighted the fact that a convoy of around 90 military trucks and armored vehicles was on its way to Matupi from Magwe Regions Kyaukhtu to reinforce troops from the Southern Tactical Operations Command operating in the area.

Fighting has intensified in Matupi since the New Year. CDF-Matupi and junta forces clashed on January 3 on the Matupi-Paletwa road as regime reinforcements traveled from Falam and Mindat, according to CDF-Matupi

At least eight junta soldiers, including an officer, were killed in the clashes. One CDF-Matupi fighter was injured in a mine blast. Junta forces also lost one of their base camps on January 5.

More military regime soldiers died on January 6, but CDF-Matupi said they could not offer more details as fighting was continuing to rage.

Mountainous Chin State in western Myanmar has been restive since April, when locals began using traditional and homemade weapons to fight junta forces. The military regime has responded with atrocities such as the killing of civilians, burning and looting homes and artillery strikes on towns including Matupi, Mindat and Thantlang.

CDF-Matupi said that although the junta was employing air support and had more weapons and soldiers, they have vowed to carry on fighting until the military dictatorship is rooted out in Chin State and the rest of the country and a federal democratic state had been achieved.



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Well, its that time of the decade.

The Village of Key Biscaynes Charter Revision Commission meets Tuesday night to begin a three-month process that reviews some 25 pages of governmental procedures and demarcations, and suggests modifications, if any, to Council members in April.

The review is required at least every 10 years, ever since the initial Municipal Charter was adopted by voters on June 18, 1991 as the city became incorporated. That original committee was chaired by current Councilmember Luis Lauredo and included Betty Conroy-Sime, Michael Hill, Roberto Cambo and Ed Sawyer.

This time, second-term Council member Allison McCormick is responsible to lead the five-person commission, which includes notable residents with impressive backgrounds.

Those members are:

- Jud Kurlancheek, who spent 19 years as Key Biscaynes Building, Zoning and Planning Director and is a licensed real estate agent with more than 40 years as a professional.

- Joe Rasco, a former Village mayor and Village Councilmember and now the Director of Internal Governmental Affairs for Miami-Dade County; he also represents District 7 on the Virginia Key Advisory Board.

- Marco Gomez, a veteran businessman, has been the manager/owner for Samana Properties LLC since 2008, promoting land sales in the Dominican Republic, and for 28 years was a high-level executive with Bank of America, serving as Country Manager for Venezuela and Chile.

- Jennifer Stearns Buttrick, an attorney who grew up on Key Biscayne, is the daughter of Eugene Gene Stearns, a legendary local trial lawyer who was instrumental in helping the Village become incorporated. She now serves a of counsel role at Stearns Weaver Miller.

One of those members will be elected Vice Chair at Tuesday nights meeting, which begins at 7 in Council Chambers and is open to the public for comments (also on closed-circuit TV, Ch. 77).

Im not sure if there will be much detailed work that night, maybe some house cleaning, other responsibilities, said Village Manager Steve Williamson.

The commission will meet twice a month for the first three months before the Council approves any potential amendment to go on the ballot at the next non-primary election, in August or November. November is preferred since more people vote then.

Williamsons guess on the number of possible amendments?

Maybe three, five, seven, which would be substantial, he said. Its an important (part of our government), similar to how a constitution is set up. This is how the Village government is set up, and we have a good, solid committee in place, and the Council to direct it forward.

The first Charter Revision Commission met in 1997, when 23 amendments were ultimately approved by the electorate. The Village Council approved one additional amendment.

Charter revisions also took place in 2002, when five of 23 amendments approved, in 2007, when two of two amendments were approved, and in 2012, when five of six amendments approved.

Members of the public may attend Tuesdays meeting in person or remotely by calling (305) 365-7569 and entering Zoom Meeting ID 231 627 8415 followed by two # signs. There is no participant ID.
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An outdoor emergency services tent on the north side of El Centro Regional Medical Center. It is one of three the hospital erected earlier this fall in preparation for a possible increase in COVID-19 cases. IVP FILE PHOTO
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.
People Power Party presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol speaks during a seminar at the Sheraton Grand Incheon Hotel in Incheon, Monday. Joint Press Corps



Third-ranked Ahn's growing popularity raises possibility of fielding unified candidate



By Nam Hyun-woo





The main opposition People Power Party (PPP) faces growing pressure to form a coalition with Ahn Cheol-soo of the minor opposition People's Party for the March 9 presidential election, as surveys show that an alliance offers a greater chance for the opposition bloc to beat ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung.



So far, the PPP has been downplaying the recent rise in Ahn's support rate, saying it is a "temporary phenomenon" stemming from infighting in the main opposition party between its presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol and party Chairman Lee Jun-seok throughout last month. However, anticipation is growing that the main opposition party may make a decision in the coming weeks in order to grab the public's attention before the Jan. 31-Feb. 2 Lunar New Year holidays.



According to a Realmeter survey released Monday, the DPK's Lee was leading the pack with a 40.1 percent support rate, followed by the PPP's Yoon with 34.1 percent and Ahn with 11.1 percent. It was the first time that Ahn logged a double-digit number in the weekly survey conducted by the poll agency at the request of OhmyNews.



When asked about who should be the single candidate from the opposition bloc in case the PPP and the People's Party form a coalition, 35.9 percent of respondents picked Ahn and 32.5 percent preferred Yoon. The poll surveyed 3,042 adults from Jan. 2 to 7.



Voters' preference for Ahn over Yoon was better shown in a separate survey by Southern Post, released on Sunday. According to the poll requested by broadcaster CBS, the DPK's Lee secured a 34.1 percent support rate, followed by Yoon with 26.4 percent and Ahn with 12.8 percent.



The survey showed if Yoon and Ahn form a coalition and select Ahn as their single candidate, Ahn outpaces Lee by 42.3 percent to 28.9 percent. If Yoon becomes the single candidate, their chance of winning significantly drops as Yoon takes the lead over Lee by 34.4 percent to 33.6 percent.









The Southern Post survey questioned 1,002 adults from Jan. 7 to 8. Further details on the two surveys are available at the websites of the polling agencies or the National Election Survey Deliberation Commission.



With the polls adding pressure on the opposition bloc to form a coalition between Yoon and Ahn, both sides are still denying any chance of an alliance.





People's Party presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo speaks during a forum on Yeouido, Seoul, Monday. Joint Press corps
As the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard - who he is suing over her 2018 Washington Post domestic violence op-ed - continues, we take a look at 10 of the stars who have shown their support for the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' star. Click for more.
Funeral services for Marvin Smith Lloyd, age 77, of Rusk will be held Friday, April 29, 2022 at 2 p.m. at the Boren-Conner Funeral Home Chapel in Jacksonville with Bro. Don Copeland and Bro. Kevin Gentry officiating. Burial will follow at Rocky Springs Cemetery. Marvin Lloyd was born Septemb




Donate Now As a public service during this pandemic, the Jewish News is providing free, unlimited access to all articles. Jewish News is a nonprofit publication that is owned by the community and relies on community support.




A parliamentary committee on Monday approved a bill on lowering the age at which people can join a political party, a move seen as aimed at wooing young voters ahead of the March presidential election.







The Legislation and Judiciary Commission passed the revised bill that calls for lowering the age of eligibility for joining political parties to 16 from the current 18.







Under the bill, people aged 16 and older will be able to participate in the process of creating a political party and become a party member.







The move is a follow-up to the passage of a bill on lowering the age of candidacy for parliamentary and local elections to 18 from 25.







It marked the first time that the age of candidacy has been lowered since the country's Constitution was established in 1948.







In case of a presidential election, the age of candidacy is set at 40 or older. (Yonhap)






Johnson City, TN (37604)

Today

Partly cloudy in the morning followed by scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. High 83F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy in the evening with scattered thunderstorms developing after midnight. Low 63F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
Weather Alert

...FLOOD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT THROUGH TUESDAY MORNING... * WHAT...Flooding caused by excessive rainfall continues to be possible. * WHERE...Portions of southeast Kansas, including the following county, Cherokee. Portions of southwest Missouri, including the following counties, Barry, Christian, Douglas, Greene, Jasper, Lawrence, McDonald, Newton, Ozark, Stone, Taney, Webster and Wright. * WHEN...Through Tuesday morning. * IMPACTS...Excessive runoff may result in flooding of rivers, creeks, streams, and other low-lying and flood-prone locations. Low-water crossings may be flooded. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS... - http://www.weather.gov/safety/flood PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... You should monitor later forecasts and be alert for possible Flood Warnings. Those living in areas prone to flooding should be prepared to take action should flooding develop. &&
Workers walk near a vessel carrying coal at a port in Palembang, Indonesia, Jan. 4. Reuters-Yonhap



Korea calls on Indonesia to resume coal exports



By Baek Byung-yeul



The global economy is being affected once again by resource nationalism, which has reared its head since the beginning of the new year with mineral-rich countries closing their doors to exports and asserting control over their raw materials. This comes as a significant threat to Korea, which is heavily dependent on imports of natural resources to meet its energy and production needs.



The energy resource crisis stems from multiple factors, such as supply chain disruptions caused by the U.S.-China trade row, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the growing carbon neutrality trend which has increased the cost of metals and minerals that are essential for producing solar power, wind power, electric vehicles and other renewable energy technologies.



Experts said that countries with abundant resources will increasingly pursue more nationalistic strategies to exercise control over resources in 2022 and those suffering from a lack of raw materials like Korea should come up with measures to secure a stable supply of energy resource materials, such as helping private companies actively seek overseas resource development projects.



On Dec. 31, the Indonesian government announced it was banning coal exports for a month as supplies at its domestic power plants fell to critically low levels, which consequently raised risks of blackouts.



The decision to ban exports of the mineral stemmed mostly from China's increasing dependence on Indonesian coal after the world's second-largest economy stopped buying coal from Australia, amid strained diplomatic relations with the key U.S. ally.



Indonesia accounts for 20 percent of Korea's total coal imports followed by Australia and concerns are growing over a disruption in the country's power generation capacity.



An official from a local power plant company said that the export ban would have a negative impact in the long term resulting in a hike in coal prices.



"In the short term, there is no significant impact as we have enough inventory. But in the long run, coal prices may rise or there may be changes in supply, so we are keeping an eye on the situation," the official said.









On Friday, the government called on the Indonesian government to resume coal exports as Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo held a virtual meeting with his Indonesian counterpart, Minister of Trade Muhammad Lutfi.



In response, the Indonesian minister said he is well aware of Korea's concerns and added that his country will make efforts to resolve the issue smoothly, according to Korea's trade ministry. The trade ministers of the two countries also agreed on the importance of cooperation in global supply chains and emphasized the need to strengthen solidarity in the supply of raw materials in the future.



There are also fears that Korea could experience another shock like the urea water crisis in late 2021 as Russia has been restricting natural gas supplies to Europe since last year and Mexico recently decided to suspend oil exports from 2023.



Starting last October, Korea underwent a shortage of diesel exhaust fluid (DEF)  which is also called urea water and is an essential additive for diesel-powered vehicles  after China tightened its exports of fertilizers, including urea, as fertilizer prices soared. That shortage forced diesel trucks to be grounded, causing the country's logistics networks to grind to a virtual halt.



Korea is totally dependent on imports of urea water and fears mounted that the country could see acute supply chain disruptions from the shortage of DEF. Currently, the government is importing enough supplies from China and Australia to weather the next few months. But concerns have not eased that such a lack of resources could paralyze the country's economy again.



For now, the government said Indonesia's ban on coal exports will have only a minimal impact in the short term.



"Considering the amount of coal inventory already secured and the amount of coal imports from other countries such as Australia, Indonesia's move is expected to have a limited short-term impact on domestic electricity supply and demand," a trade ministry official said.





Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo speaks with his Indonesian counterpart, Minister of Trade Muhammad Lutfi, via an online conference at his office in Seoul, Jan. 7 to discuss the Southeast Asian country's recent coal export ban. Courtesy of Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy
U.S. Attorney William Ihelnfeld was announced as the newest chairperson for Appalachia High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, taking the position with an aim to bring all West Virginia task forces together as well as tackle fentanyl trafficking from an international standpoint.
A customer scans a QR code on a tablet PC to enter a grocery store in Seoul on Jan. 9. Korea Times file



By Kim Jae-heun



Local retailers are crying foul over a newly adopted pandemic measure that restricts people from visiting department stores, supermarkets and grocery stores if they cannot show vaccination certification or a negative PCR test result in the last two days.



The rule was introduced on Monday and will go into full force on Jan. 16. Retail firms say it will be hard to hire more workers to oversee the system, as they already lack the personnel needed for upcoming Lunar New Year promotional events. They also predicted difficulties securing new equipment needed to check the validity of visitors' vaccination certificates.



Many retail branches are spread across the nation and it is almost impossible for retailers to recruit enough new employees and deploy the vaccine-checking equipment in time.






Opinion Columnist

Chris Powell has worked for the Journal Inquirer since 1967, first as a reporter, then as an editor, and now as a columnist. He was managing editor from 1974 until retiring from that position in 2018.
The IRS will begin accepting and processing 2021 tax returns starting Jan. 24, the Service announced Monday.

In News Release IR-2022-08, the IRS stated the date will allow it time to perform necessary programming and testing in advance of return filing, which it urged taxpayers and paid preparers to do electronically.

"Filing electronically with direct deposit and avoiding a paper tax return is more important than ever this year," IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said in the release.

Rettig acknowledged that the Service is still processing some tax year 2020 returns. All paper and e-filed returns with refunds owed that were received before April 2021 have been processed if they did not contain any errors or require further review; however, as of Dec. 23, 2021, there were still some 6 million unprocessed individual returns. And the Service has struggled to answer a record number of taxpayer and preparer phone calls, Rettig said.

"In many areas, we are unable to deliver the amount of service and enforcement that our taxpayers and tax system deserves and needs," Rettig said. "This is frustrating for taxpayers, for IRS employees, and for me."

This year, return processing may be complicated for taxpayers claiming monthly advance payments of the child tax credit, who must reconcile the total advance amount against their child tax credit for all of 2021. The IRS noted that it began late last month and is continuing to send affected taxpayers Letter 6419, 2021 Advance Child Tax Credit, which reports their total advance payments for the year. Taxpayers may also verify their advance payments on the IRS's CTC Update Portal.

Taxpayers who received the third economic impact payment during 2021 should receive Letter 6475, Your Third Economic Impact Payment, to help them and their preparers determine whether they are eligible to receive a rebate recovery credit for missing stimulus payments.

The IRS Free File program, which allows taxpayers with income of $73,000 or less in 2021 to self-prepare and e-file their federal return using commercial tax preparation software for no charge, will open Jan. 14.

For more on preparing 2021 returns, see "Spotlight on Tax Season," JofA, Jan. 1, 2022.

Returns and payments for most individuals will be due April 18, 2022, because of a weekend and Emancipation Day, a Washington, D.C., holiday. However, taxpayers who live in Maine or Massachusetts must file their returns and pay tax by April 19 due to the Patriots' Day holiday in those states. The extended due date for individual returns is Oct. 17.

For 2020 returns, the IRS began accepting returns on Feb. 12, 2021, citing programming changes needed for tax legislation passed in late 2020.

The Service noted Monday that by law, it cannot issue refunds for returns that involve the earned income tax credit or additional child tax credit before mid-February, although taxpayers claiming those credits may file their returns as early as Jan. 24.

The AICPA continues to advocate for better IRS services; visit the webpage describing AICPA advocacy efforts to learn more.

 To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Paul Bonner at Paul.Bonner@aicpa-cima.com.
Today

Partly cloudy skies during the morning hours. Thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. High 84F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.

Tonight

Partly cloudy in the evening with more clouds for later at night. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low around 60F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.

Tomorrow

Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High near 85F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph.
There is one thing everyone in the courtroom agreed on after nearly two years of trial  prosecution, plaintiffs and judges, even the defendant and his lawyers: the Bashar al-Assad regime committed heinous crimes against its own population. They also agreed that thousands of prisoners were tortured and killed in secret service branches all over Syria, including branch 251 in its capital Damascus, where colonel Anwar Raslan was head of investigations until mid-2012. What they do not agree on, however, is the role played by Raslan. According to the indictment, 58 killings and 4.000 cases of torture happened under his watch. According to the defence, he is innocent.

If anything, they say, he helped as many prisoners as he could.

A week before the final verdict in the al-Khatib trial in Koblenz, the defence gave its closing arguments. Since April 2020, two former secret service officers from Syria had been accused of crimes against humanity for their contribution to the abuse and killing of prisoners in an infamous state security prison often referred to as al-Khatib after the area it is located in. The lower-ranking officer Eyad al-Gharib was sentenced to four and a half years in prison last February. Now, after 103 days of evidence collection, the trial against Raslan, the main accused, is about to come to an end.



Following the statements by the prosecution and joint plaintiffs, wo pleaded for a life sentence, the last word was given to the defence, last Thursday.

This is not a political trial

Both Raslans lawyers were careful to emphasize that they were not there to defend the Assad regime. The question is whether Raslan can be held accountable as a representative of the Assad regime and punished with the highest sentence, said attorney Yorck Fratzky, arguing that international law needed to be very careful when judging individual responsibility within a criminal, totalitarian system. We have to apply a different standard than we do with crimes committed in a constitutional state like Germany, he said, adding that for this reason international tribunals usually focused on the highest ranking political and military leaders, who organized the crimes, even if they did not execute them personally. It is Anwar Raslan sitting in the dock. I cannot see Bashar al-Assad there nor can I see Hafez Makhlouf [al-Assads cousin and former head of branch 251s subdivision number 40], Fratzky declared. And even if he had had authority, he said, he had acted under duress.

But he didnt, according to the defence. They recounted Raslans initial statement in which he explained how he lost all authority in the branch, after he had released too many prisoners and questioned the regimes violent reaction to protests more than once. Mister Raslan never denied knowing about torture, but he has explained that he did whatever he could to help, added Fratzky. Looking back at the many testimonies heard at the trial, he divided the survivor witnesses into three groups: those who had met Raslan and had been treated well by him; those who thought they had met him, but could not identify him with certainty; and those who heard about his name and position later and merely assumed that he had to have been the one in charge of their abuse.

Most of them had one thing in common: they cared about Syria, not about Raslan. They found a platform here to criticize the regime. Some needed the trial to process what they had suffered and find closure, said Fratzky. Even though he understood the victims urge to get the defendant convicted, because he had worked for the hated Assad regime, this is not a political trial, but a criminal procedure.

Caesar photos: Irrelevant to this trial

Fratzkys colleague Michael Bocker sought to highlight, in his speech, that throughout the trial all the information Raslan had given about his person and position in Syria had not been disproven: the way he risked his life by speaking out more than once against the arbitrary mass arrests, the way he kept releasing innocent detainees; and the way his situation as a Sunni Muslim working for an Alawite regime became more and more dangerous. No evidence was given for speculations about him defecting for opportunistic reasons or remaining a spy for the regime. Neither had the allegations been confirmed that he only helped prisoners who were famous artists or intellectuals. Then, how about the simple assumption that he helped people as many people as he could and that these were just some highlights among many others?, asked Bocker. According to the maxim innocent until proven guilty this should have been the most obvious conclusion, he argued.

Bocker expressed his disappointment with many of the witnesses and evidence presented. Expert witnesses as well as witnesses from the asylum authorities or police offices had remained vague and general in their testimonies. Raslan did his part by giving a statement, and the government offices should have done the same, but they were disappointing. They were of no use to us, but they also did not cause any harm. The Caesar photos, while shocking, had proven nothing about his clients personal involvement. They show a great deal about the Syrian system, but they are of no relevance for this trial, he said. They do not concern the al-Khatib prison during the time frame of the indictment.

I was convinced that I had to defect

Finally, it was Raslans own turn to speak. Those following the trial had hoped to finally hear him speak and see some emotion in his face or hear it in his voice. However, the defendants final words had been pre-translated to German and were read out by his personal translator. In my final words, I do not just want to focus on my defence, but also on the truth, he said, giving rise to hopes that he would reveal inside information or take responsibility of the crimes, as the plaintiffs had urged him to do in their final statements. But much of Raslans one hour speech merely repeated what he had said in his initial statement in May 2020.

He talked about the mass arrests that started in March 2011 and how the branchs prison was flooded by prisoners like a tsunami. At first, I tried to keep the numbers low, because the prison was not designed for such a large number, he said, once again displaying his more pragmatic than compassionate way of looking at things. He said he wrote daily protocols in which he suggested that most of the detainees be released, especially those who had been unarmed. He described several situations where that gotten him into trouble. At the same time, he said, he became suspicious to his superiors, because he was a Sunni Muslim from the opposition stronghold of al-Hawla. In spring 2011, his boss Tawfiq Younis called him. He said that 50.000 people from my hometown had protested and that they were traitors. After analysing the situation, I realized that he saw me as a traitor, as well, and I was convinced that I had to defect, explained Raslan.

I was not able to stop the killing machinery

According to the former secret service officer, it took him until the end of 2012 to prepare his safe departure together with his family. During these long months he claims to have risked his life by helping as many prisoners as he could, while increasingly losing the trust of his superiors. Another episode he recounted happened in May 2012, when the pro-regime militias committed a massacre against the population of Raslans hometown, killing more than a hundred civilians. Once again, Raslan was called into Younis office where he encountered a Russian television crew. They wanted me to give an interview and say that Islamists were responsible for the massacre, said the defendant. When he refused, his boss had said to him: Now all your cards are on the table, and they are all losing cards. Go back to your office. Soon after, Raslan was transferred to a different branch, from where he eventually defected.

While Raslan did acknowledge that prisoners arrived in the branch with injuries, were tortured there or even killed, he blamed someone else for each of those events: officers from other branches, his superiors, or the notorious Makhlouf, powerful and cruel cousin of al-Assad. And while he did apologize to the families of the victims, it was not for committing crimes, but for not being able to help more than I did, not being able to stop the killing machinery.

Finally, he said he was approaching his 60th birthday and was suffering a lot from a chronic disease, from the displacement from his homeland and from the separation from his children and grandchildren. He asked the court for a fair verdict, stressing that he believed in the German law and judiciary, and that he would accept whatever it will decide.
A growing number of cases are being brought in Europe, and especially Germany, against loyalists of Syrian President Bashar al-Assads regime on accusations of state-sponsored torture.

In the latest case, a court in the German city of Koblenz is set on Thursday to rule on the case of former Syrian intelligence agent, Anwar Raslan, who is accused of crimes against humanity, for which prosecutors are demanding a life sentence.

In February 2021, the court jailed a lower-ranking former Syrian intelligence agent, Eyad al-Gharib, for being an accomplice to crimes against humanity in the worlds first prosecution over the abuses.

Here is a snapshot of the cases:

 Germany 

Germany has used the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows a foreign country to prosecute crimes against humanity, including war crimes and genocide, regardless of where they were committed, after receiving complaints from Syrians who claim to have been tortured in regime jails.

In March 2017, seven Syrian torture survivors and a human rights group filed a criminal complaint in Germany against Syrian secret service officials.

Later that year nearly 27,000 photos taken by a former Syrian military photographer known as Caesar, who documented torture and death in regime jails, were also turned over to German courts, according to German rights group ECCHR.

In November 2017, the ECCHR announced that two new complaints for crimes against humanity and war crimes had been filed by 13 Syrians over alleged acts of torture.

Seven other Syrian men and women who claimed to have suffered or witnessed rape and sexual abuse in Assads detention centres also submitted a complaint to German prosecutors, the group revealed in June 2020.

They named nine senior government and air force intelligence officials, including top Syrian intelligence officer Jamil Hassan, already the subject of an international arrest notice.

The trial of a Syrian doctor accused of torture, murder and crimes against humanity is due to start in Frankfurt on January 19.

 France 

In September 2015, a Paris prosecutor opened a preliminary inquiry against Assads regime for crimes against humanity over allegations of abduction and torture.

The following July the family of a Syrian doctor who died in a government prison lodged a complaint in Paris over his torture and murder

Another French court opened an investigation in 2016 into the disappearance of Mazen Dabbagh and his son Patrick, two French-Syrian nationals who had been arrested in Syria three years earlier.

France issued its first international arrest notices for Syrian intelligence officials in 2018 for complicity in acts of torture related to the case as well as complicity in crimes against humanity and complicity in war crimes.

The warrants were for National Security Bureau director Ali Mamluk, Air Force Intelligence chief Jamil Hassan and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, who was in charge of the Damascus branch of the Air Force Intelligence investigative branch.

In April 2021, three NGOs that had lodged civil complaints managed to get a probe opened into chemical attacks in 2013 blamed on the Syrian government. The case, already filed in Germany, was lodged on behalf of victims of the 2013 attack and a 2017 attack using sarin gas.

In December 2021, a Franco-Syrian man was jailed, suspected of providing material to the Syrian army which could be used to make chemical weapons.

It is the first time that someone had been found charged in France with supporting Assads troops, judicial officials said.

 Other countries 

In July 2017, a Spanish court rejected a complaint filed by a Spanish woman of Syrian origin against nine Syrian government officials over the forced detention, torture and alleged execution of her brother in 2013.

Legal proceedings have also been launched in Austria, Norway and Sweden which was in 2017 the first country to sentence a former soldier for war crimes.

In Sweden, four NGOs lodged a complaint in April 2021 against Assad and several top officials after two chemical attacks in 2013 and 2017.

 UN mechanism 

In 2016, the United Nations set up its International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism, which is preparing war crimes charges against individuals over the Syrian conflict.

Since April 20 the body has been gathering evidence for use in possible future trials.
A major health care provider in Arizona will allow employees with mild or no symptoms of COVID-19 to continue working at its hospitals and facilities.

As the omicron variant spreads rapidly in Maricopa County and is expected to continue to increase, Dignity Health officials said they have instituted Tier 3 federal guidance for healthcare workers infected with the coronavirus.

These guidelines allow COVID-19 positive asymptomatic or mildly improving health care workers to work without a quarantine period, Dignity Health officials said in a statement. We are doing everything we can to ensure our employees can stay safe. return to work safely, while protecting our patients and staff from the spread of COVID-19.

A memo sent to Dignity Health staff said those infected with the coronavirus and feeling well enough to work may apply to their managers for work permits.

However, these employees are required to wear N-95 masks for 10 days after testing positive.

The omicron variant spreads more easily than other coronavirus strains and has become dominant in many countries. It is also more likely to infect those who have been vaccinated or who have previously been infected with the virus.

Hospitals across the state are still crowded, despite early research suggesting that omicron is less likely to cause serious illness and hospitalization than previous delta variants.

On Sunday, Arizona health officials reported 69 more deaths from COVID-19 as the omicron variant continued to spread.

The state also reported another 15,850 confirmed infections.

It follows a total of 88 deaths and 16,504 cases on Saturday, the most reported cases in Arizona in a single day of the year.

During the pandemic, the state has counted fewer than 1.5 million cases and fewer than 25,000 deaths.

Arizonas seven-day rolling average of daily new cases has tripled over the past two weeks, from 2,945.6 on Dec. 23 to 9,091.6 on Thursday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

During the same period, the states daily average of deaths fell from 60.9 to 55.3.
The UK government has awarded contracts worth 34.5m to companies to train new truck drivers to ease the ongoing supply chain crunch caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit.

Funding for HGV skill camps has been widely welcomed by the industry, with the number of drivers down by a quarter since 2019, gaping supermarket shelves and fueling a petrol shortage last October.

According to the data providers analysis, the government has invested more in one year than it has spent on HGV driver training in the past eight years combined Tussell. It is expected to provide training for up to 11,000 drivers.

Industry experts say the intervention is necessary because low profit margins and endemic poaching of drivers has not incentivised the industry to invest in training, which costs around 4,000 per driver.

The money is very welcome, said Sally Gilson, skills policy manager at the Road Transport Association. Our industry is razor-thin margins, 80% of our members own 15 trucks or less. They dont have 4,000 apiece for training.

Training providers say early signs are that rising wages and growing public awareness of the importance of logistics professionals are encouraging people to enter the industry.

Richard Weston, strategy manager at Manchester training firm Mantra Learning, which has been awarded a 5m contract under the scheme, said it had received 4,000 applications since it was launched on December 6.

The response has been excellent, he said, adding that Mantra is offering two to four-week courses to 50,000 drivers with HGV licenses who are not using them to enable them to reactivate their licenses.

Weston said the volatile driver market, with annual wages of up to 70,000 in hotspots, meant that demand for drivers had not translated into business investment in training.

If youre going to invest in training a driver, theres a good chance the driver will get up and leave when they get a higher wage. Its hard to make sure youre getting a return on your training investment, which is why you need some public money, he said.

according to Annual Skills Report Employment of lorry drivers has fallen by almost a quarter during the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of EU drivers has shrunk by a third and many older UK drivers have retired, according to industry body UK Logistics.

Austerity  from 308,000 drivers in Q2 2019 to 236,000 two years later  wages have risen by 8% over the same period to an average of 13.08 an hour, with drivers now earning an average of around 35,000  a year 40,000.

Rona Hunnisett of UK Logistics said the grants were part of the governments 2.5bn National Skills Fund, will help attract a new generation into an industry where the average driver is over 50 years old.

Its a great way to raise awareness of the industry and a great opportunity to show that there are good, meaningful jobs and good pay, she added.

admired

However, the industry did warn that the government should seek to maintain its investment outside the scope of this round of HGV boot camps, which will run until the end of November, with an option to continue for a second year.

The Department of Education is considering options to expand support for HGV training, officials said. Skills Minister Alex Burghart said the government was keen to push the courses forward. We want more adults to take advantage of these free courses and embark on a path to high-paying careers, he said.

Shane Brennan, chief executive of the Cold Chain Federation, warned of the risk of a sugar fever rise in wages, signing bonuses and training subsidies when many new entrants leave the industry within two years.

Our job as an industry is not just to get drivers in the door, but to make sure they see it as a career for life, he said.
A member of the Ukrainian armed forces stands guard at a combat position near the line of separation from Russian-backed rebels near Horlivka in the Donetsk Region, Ukraine, Jan. 9. Reuters-Yonhap





With the fate of Ukraine and potentially broader post-Cold War European stability at stake, the United States and Russia are holding critical strategic talks that could shape the future of not only their relationship but the relationship between the U.S. and its NATO allies. And prospects are looking bleak.







Though the immediacy of the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine will top the agenda in a series of high-level meetings that get underway Monday, there is a litany of festering but largely unrelated disputes, ranging from arms control to cybercrime and diplomatic issues, for Washington and Moscow to overcome if tensions are to ease. And the recent deployment of Russian troops to Kazakhstan may cast a shadow over the entire exercise.







With much at risk and both warning of dire consequences of failure, the two sides have been positioning themselves for what will be a nearly unprecedented flurry of activity in Europe this week. Yet the wide divergence in their opening positions bodes ill for any type of speedy resolution, and levels of distrust appear higher than at any point since the collapse of the Soviet Union.







Secretary of State Antony Blinken said bluntly Sunday that he doesn't expect any breakthroughs in the coming week. Instead, he said a more likely positive outcome would be an agreement to de-escalate tensions in the short term and return to talks at an appropriate time in the future. But the U.S. will have to see a de-escalation for there to be actual progress.







''It's very hard to see that happening when there's an ongoing escalation when Russia has a gun to the head of Ukraine with 100,000 troops near its borders, with the possibility of doubling that on very short order,'' Blinken said on ABC's ''This Week.''







U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks in the briefing room of the State Department in Washington, D.C. in this Jan. 7 file photo. AFP-Yonhap





U.S. officials unveiled some details of the administration's stance, Saturday, which seem to fall well short of Russian demands. The officials said the U.S. is open to discussions on curtailing possible future deployments of offensive missiles in Ukraine and putting limits on American and NATO military exercises in Eastern Europe if Russia is willing to back off on Ukraine.







But they also said Russia will be hit hard with economic sanctions should it intervene in Ukraine. In addition to direct sanctions on Russian entities, those penalties could include significant restrictions on products exported from the U.S. to Russia and potentially foreign-made products subject to U.S. jurisdiction.







Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who will lead Russia's delegation at the Geneva talks, responded harshly to Blinken's statement.







''Demands of the United States and other NATO countries that we carry out some de-escalation measures on our territory are excluded from the discussion. This is a non-starter in the literal sense of the word," Ryabkov said in an interview with the Tass news agency.







Russia wants the talks initially to produce formally binding security guarantees for itself with a pledge that NATO will not further expand eastward, and the removal of U.S. troops and weapons from parts of Europe. But the U.S. and its allies say those are non-starters intentionally designed by Moscow to distract and divide. They insist that any Russian military intervention in Ukraine will prompt ''massive consequences'' that will dramatically disrupt Russia's economy even if they have global ripple effects.







In a bid to forestall efforts by Russia to sow discord in the West, the Biden administration has gone out of its way to stress that neither Ukraine nor Europe more broadly will be excluded from any discussion of Ukraine's or Europe's security.







Biden administration officials allow that neither topic can be entirely ignored when senior American and Russian diplomats sit down in Geneva, Monday, ahead of larger, more inclusive meetings in Brussels and Vienna, Wednesday and Thursday, that will explore those issues in perhaps more depth.







Activists carry a huge banner during the "Say No to Putin" rally in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine, Jan. 9. EPA-Yonhap





Still, the mantras ''Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine'' and ''Nothing about Europe without Europe'' have become almost cliches in Washington in recent weeks, and senior U.S. officials have gone so far as to say they expect Russia to lie about the content of Monday's meeting to try to stoke divisions.







''We fully expect that the Russian side will make public comments following the meeting on Monday that will not reflect the true nature of the discussions that took place,'' said one senior U.S. official who will participate in the talks. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.







That official and others have urged allies to view with ''extreme skepticism'' anything Moscow says about the so-called Strategic Stability Talks and wait until they are briefed by the American participants to form opinions.







Blinken has accused Russia of ''gaslighting'' and mounting a full-scale disinformation campaign designed to blame Ukraine, NATO and particularly the United States for the current tensions and undercut Western unity. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin is engaged in an all-out war on the truth that ignores Russia's own provocative and destabilizing actions over the course of the past decade.







''Russia seeks to challenge the international system itself and to unravel our trans-Atlantic alliance, erode our unity, pressure democracies into failure,'' Blnken said Friday, going through a list of offending Russian activity ranging from military intervention in Ukraine and Georgia to chemical weapons attacks on Putin critics to election interference in the U.S. and elsewhere, cybercrime and support for dictators.







Despite several conversations between President Joe Biden and Putin, including an in-person meeting last summer, Blinken said such behavior continues, at increasing risk to the post-World War II global order.







Thus, the intensified U.S. and allied effort to forge common positions on both the warnings and the ''severe costs'' to Russia if it moves against Ukraine. While expressions of unity have been forthcoming, Blinken was not optimistic about prospects for success in the talks.







''To the extent that there is progress to be made  and we hope that there is  actual progress is going to be very difficult to make, if not impossible, in an environment of escalation by Russia,'' he said.







Russian troops take part in drills at the Kadamovskiy firing range in the Rostov region in southern Russia, Dec. 14, 2021. AP-Yonhap





Russia, meanwhile, has spun a narrative that it is a threatened victim of Western aggression and wants quick results from the meetings despite what appear insurmountable differences.







Putin has repeatedly warned that Moscow will have to take unspecified ''military-technical measures'' if the West stonewalls Russia's demands, and affirmed that NATO membership for Ukraine or the deployment of alliance weapons there is a red line for Moscow that it wouldn't allow the West to cross.







''We have nowhere to retreat,'' Putin said last month, adding that NATO could deploy missiles in Ukraine that would take just four or five minutes to reach Moscow. ''They have pushed us to a line that we can't cross. They have taken it to the point where we simply must tell them; 'Stop!'''







Ryabkov and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who will lead the U.S. delegation, met over a working dinner Sunday night to discuss the upcoming talks. (AP)


Chris Gerard, president and chief operating officer of Amedisys, will succeed Paul Kusserow as CEO on April 15, the for-profit home health and hospice provider announced Monday.

According to Amedisys, Cuseiro will remain chairman of the companys board of directors, and Gerrard will join the group. Press Releases.

Having the opportunity to be part of and lead Amedisys over the past seven years has really been the highlight of my career. Seeing what weve built since 2014, the talent weve cultivated, the patients we care for, and what weve delivered The focus and delivery of quality care is simply amazing, Cucero said in a news release.

Under Kusserows leadership, Amedisys added personal care, palliative care, home hospital and skilled home care facility services to its portfolio, increasing revenue by 74%, according to the company. Amedisys is one of them Modern Healthcares Best Places to Work in 2021.

Paul will be left with a very large shoe to fill, and I look forward to officially succeeding him in 2022 and navigating headwinds and many opportunities ahead of Amedisys. Our organization is uniquely positioned in the market and Im excited about the significant growth The opportunities in front of us and our ability to execute on them. Now is a great time to join Amedisys, Gerrard said in a news release.

According to the company, Amedisys has approximately 21,000 employees and 529 locations in 38 states and the District of Columbia, serving more than 418,000 patients annually.
Case preview

go through Shalini Bhargava Rai





12:40 PM

Supreme Court to hear oral arguments in two related immigration cases on Tuesday, Johnson v Artjaga-Martinez and Garland v. Aleman GonzalezIn both cases, deported non-citizens are challenging their prolonged detention  sometimes months or even years  without the guarantees of a bail hearing before an immigration judge. During such hearings, an immigration judge decides whether a noncitizen is entitled to release in exchange for bail, and if so, how much. Getting bail doesnt necessarily mean a noncitizen can avoid deportation; it simply allows the person to be released under federal supervision pending resolution of their potential immigration case. Gonzalez Another question was raised about whether district courts have the authority to issue class injunctive relief in class actions brought by detained non-citizens.

Mexican citizen Antonio Arteaga-Martinez has repeatedly entered the United States without authorization. After one such entry, the U.S. government deported him to Mexico. The last time he re-entered was sometime after 2012. In Mexico, a criminal gang targeted him and his family. He was beaten and robbed; his car was violently stolen. In search of safety, he returned to the United States. In 2018, immigration authorities arrested him. The government reinstated his previous deportation order. While in custody, Arteaga-Martinez expressed fear of returning to Mexico, with an asylum officer concluding that he had a reasonable fear of future persecution and torture there. He remains in custody until his claims for protection are resolved. Such claims can take years to adjudicate. Four months later, Arteaga-Martinez challenged his detention with a habeas corpus.

Gonzalez Consolidated two class actions on behalf of non-citizens in a similar situation to Arteaga-Martinez. While the Supreme Court has never set clear criteria for when a detainee is entitled to a bail hearing, both the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit and the Ninth Circuit have concluded that a bail hearing before an immigration judge is required after six months Yes, the government bears the burden of proving that non-citizens are in danger or at risk of flight. The Supreme Court will now review those decisions.

A complex statutory program defines the governments powers to detain non-citizens and the conditions of detention. When a non-citizen is ordered to be deported, a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 USC  1231, which requires a 90-day withdrawal period after the order becomes an administrative final order. The INA allows for a deportation period of more than 90 days for certain unacceptable non-citizens or persons who have been determined by the Attorney General to pose a risk to the community or unlikely to comply with a deportation order. those non-citizenspossible Detained beyond the expulsion period (emphasis added).

The Supreme Court has previously held that post-eviction statutes contain implicit time limits.exist zadvidas v davis, a 2001 ruling, read by the court, barred non-citizens ordered to be deported from being detained for more than six months if the deportation was not reasonably foreseeable. This happens, for example, when non-citizens are stateless (as in the case of Zadvydas himself) and no country would accept them.

The court adopted this interpretation in order to avoid constitutional problems. It begins by establishing that the word may makes post-removal statutes ambiguous about the scope of permissible detention. When statutory language is ambiguous, constitutional circumvention norm supports interpretations that avoid serious constitutional problems. The court reasoned that, given an individuals constitutionally protected interest in avoiding physical restraint, the due process clause requires the government to provide special grounds for prolonged civil detention, such as danger or flight risk. When deportation cannot be reasonably foreseen, the main reason for post-order detention  preventing non-citizens from absconding  disappears.

As a result, the court zadvidas By a vote of 5 to 4, Congress authorized only a presumed reasonable six months of detention for non-citizens whose removal could not be reasonably foreseen. After that, the government should release non-citizens under some form of supervision. Even for non-citizens whose deportation is reasonably foreseeable, courts consider some assessment of the danger or flight risk of detention for more than six months.

Federal regulations for two groups of non-citizens  those who are deported reasonably foreseeable and those who were removed no  Provides custody review by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but non-citizens do not have any right to a hearing, let alone before an impartial immigration judge.

The case now brought to court involves non-citizens who had their removal orders reinstated, who then claimed to be demanding a form of humanitarian protection known as deferred action. Deferred action is like asylum, protecting non-citizens from being sent to a country where they may face persecution or torture based on characteristics such as race or religion. But adjudication on those claims could take years. Does the statute authorize prolonged detention without an immigration judge holding a bail hearing?

government debate First, the plain text of the post-removal statute does not support the bail hearing system sought by detainees.rather than from zadvidas, The government requested a new interpretation of the statute. The administration has argued that when Congress wants to require immigration judges to hold bond hearings, it explicitly does so. Importing the requirement into the text rewrites the legal language rather than interpreting it. The government further argues that the detainees interpretation violates two recent Supreme Court rulings, Jennings v.Rodriguez and Johnson v. Guzman Chavez. exist Rodriguez, the court rejected a similar effort to introduce a bond hearing requirement into a different provision of the INA to avoid violating due process. Guzman Chavez The issue of bail hearings under the post-removal statutes was not directly raised, but the court dictated that they could not.

Rather, reinterpreting post-demolition regulations, Arteaga-Martinez debate The court shall apply its previous interpretation of the exact same statutory language.like the petitioner zadvidas, he argued that his removal was not reasonably foreseeable because his request for a stay of removal could take years to adjudicate and may ultimately not be removed at all. Therefore, the government has no right to continue to detain him for more than six months.even his dismissal Yes considered reasonably foreseeable, he read zadvidas Ask the government to specifically assess his danger or flight risk in a neutral bond hearing.

This Gonzalez detainee debate Post-removal statutes are vague about the procedures needed to justify prolonged detention. They argued that this could be interpreted as requiring a bond hearing, which the court must adopt to avoid a violation of due process. Without the guarantee of a bail hearing before an immigration judge, non-citizens who pose neither a danger nor a flight risk could spend years in immigration prison before finally winning humanitarian protection.This Gonzalez The detainees argued that when the USCIS requested a custody review elsewhere, it was referring to a bail hearing before an immigration judge. Here, by contrast, detainees argue that ICE is both a jailer and a judge, leading to a superficial, biased review of their detention.

Central to resolving these cases is how the court handles unconstitutional conduct and whether it believes it zadvidas related. The government denounced the lack of a clear statutory text mentioning a six-month deadline, a bond hearing or an immigration judge, but zadvidas itself reads the six-month deadline into the same statutory provisions. Arteaga-Martinezs main argument hinges on whether the court decides that the possibility of a future stay of removal would result in removal not being reasonably foreseeable.If the court disagrees, he and Gonzalez The detainee must convince the judge that the ICE guardianship review system does not comply with post-removal regulations.

Arteaga-Martinez and Gonzalez Detainees face headwinds as courts have recent Reducing the use of constitutional circumvention standards to provide procedural protections to detained non-citizens that the courts core textualists may hesitate to step up zadvidas Or find ambiguity in the procedural requirements of the post-removal statute. A key issue will be the sensitivity of the courts to the constitutional interests involved. Not all judges consider the improper choices faced by non-citizens  persecution or torture in their home country on the one hand, and prolonged incarceration in U.S. prisons on the other  as issues of any kind.In fact, Justice Samuel Alito recently suggestion Asylum seekers can avoid detention simply by flying back to the persecuted country.

Gonzalez Asked additional questions 8 USC  1252(f)(1) District courts are prohibited from granting class injunctions. The clause prohibits courts from prohibiting or restricting  [specified provisions] except to apply such provisions to individual aliens who have sued under this section.  government debate The clause prohibits the full class of injunctive relief because the injunction limits the operation of the covered INA terms and the full class of relief extends beyond individual noncitizens.However, detainees debate They only seek to prevent the government from taking action based on a misinterpretation of the post-relocation statute (hence, no statutory mandate), not to stop the working of the clause altogether. The courts decision on this important issue has the potential to affect immigrant rights litigation for years to come.
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Maria Munoz, a representative of Spains Ciudadanos political party, has proposed a bill to make Spain a bitcoin mining hotspot after the internet shutdown disrupted mining in Kazakhstan.

Attorney and Economist Munoz staunchly supports Spain as Bitcoin (bitcoin) destination, in a tweet on Friday:

The protests in Kazakhstan have had an impact around the world and also on Bitcoin. We recommend that Spain position itself as a safe destination for investing in cryptocurrencies in order to develop a flexible, efficient and secure industry.

A two-page open letter was accompanied by tweets aimed at the Spanish House of Representatives. First, Munoz stressed the importance of the protests and the governments response using the full force of the police and military before the government shut down the internet and the largest Central Asian economy.

She cited the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance learn This makes Kazakhstan the second largest Bitcoin miner in the world, contributing an estimated 20% of the hash rate in the second half of 2021.The governments decision to effectively remove the rug from Kazakhstans bitcoin miners leads to The hash rate reportedly plunged by 13.4%.

These events sparked related questions for pro-Bitcoin lawmakers:

What information does the Spanish government have on the impact of the Kazakhstan internet blackout on the Spanish crypto mining industry? Will the government take steps to attract investors and miners fleeing Kazakhstans mining industry? What data does the government have on Bitcoin energy efficiency and the development of the mining industry?

A proven Bitcoin network proponent, her party Ciudadanos, or Citizens, proposes a national strategy for cryptocurrencies October last year. Her party is trying to position Spain as a pole for the EU and the world to invest in cryptocurrencies  and bitcoin mining could be the catalyst.

As Bitcoin hash rate fluctuations have shown time and time again, mining infrastructure is not geographically restricted. Chinas mining ban, for example, to Kazakhstans interests and Kosovo.

Alan Konevsky, chief legal officer at PrimeBlock, explained last years mining changes to Cointelegraph: Mining companies, including those that relocated following regulatory changes in China, set up in countries like Kazakhstan and Kosovo because electricity costs are much cheaper than in North America.

This is shown in Kazakhstan hash rate growth in 2021. However, as a hunch about what might happen in Spain, Koniewski went on to explain:

If the mining industry fails to start at all in these countries, we may see miners relocate. The industry is fluid to some extent  ??but as it matures, it needs stability, including a stable political climate and stable inputs, including energy.

Munoz wants Spain to have these Bitcoin-friendly factors. However, one of the biggest resistances for BTC could be political. Her tweet drew ridicule from rival Green Party member Ernest Hurtasson, MEP.

Label her proposal a bad joke tweet, he said BTC mining is an environmental anomaly. Munoz and her Civic Party have clearly done their job.
Rep. David Osborne, R-Prospect, is sponsoring the legislation that would bring emergency relief to western Kentucky. It easily passed through committee and now goes to the House floor. (Kentucky Today file photo)




Israel will maintain "unrestricted freedom" to act against Iran regardless of any nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Monday.







Bennett made the comments to the Israeli parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee as an Iranian official said there had been "good progress" towards reviving a 2015 nuclear agreement during negotiations in Vienna.







"Regarding the nuclear talks in Vienna, we are certainly concerned. It is important for me to say here clearly and unequivocally: Israel is not a party to the agreements," Bennett said.







"Israel will maintain unlimited and unrestricted freedom of action, everywhere and at all times."







Negotiations to salvage the nuclear deal resumed in late November after they were suspended in June as Iran elected a new, ultraconservative president.







The deal  agreed by Iran, the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany  offered Tehran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.







But then-president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US in 2018 and reimposed biting sanctions, prompting Tehran to begin rolling back on its commitments.







Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said Monday that the progress made at the Vienna talks was "the result of the efforts made by all parties to reach a stable agreement", the latest in a series of positive comments on the negotiations.







Israel has broadly opposed a restoration of the 2015 agreement but high-ranking officials  notably Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid  have indicated the Jewish state could support a deal that it viewed as offering definitive checks on Iran's nuclear ambitions.





Iran insists its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes. (AFP)


Ketchikan, AK (99901)

Today

Rain likely. Becoming windy late. Low near 40F. Winds SSE at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall possibly over one inch..

Tonight

Rain likely. Becoming windy late. Low near 40F. Winds SSE at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall possibly over one inch.
Do we really know why they died? The inaccuracy on death certificates.

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Despite protests from the medical community contained in multiple amicus curiae briefs, the Pennsylvania Superior Court recently ruled that the term cause of death on death certificates is ambiguous and should include any physician errors that contributed to the death  they were correct.

What they failed to consider was that, without an autopsy, the listed cause of death is often wrong, so using it to determine precipitating factors is a logical fallacy.

The case they considered was that of an elderly woman who died at home several days after a CT scan in which the radiologist saw a poorly visualized abdominal aortic aneurysm. Although there was no evidence of an autopsy, her cause of death was listed as ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm.

While not ruling on the facts of the case (it was remanded for trial), the court linked the presumed cause of death with the radiologist and the primary care physicians alleged errors contributing to her death from a ruptured aneurysm. In ruling that a malpractice case could proceed, the court perpetuated the common and potentially dangerous misconception that the cause of death listed on death certificates is always accurate and complete.

There is reason to question many if not most causes of death and the precipitating factors listed on death certificates. Particularly when no autopsy is performed, research over many decades has shown that the presumed cause of death may be speculative or incorrect, making any listed precipitating factors suspect.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes the term cause of death as an etiologic explanation of the order, type and association of events resulting in death  [including] any medical complication or error contributing to the death.

They acknowledge, however, that without an autopsy, the causes of death on the death certificate represents a medical opinion that might vary among individual physicians.

More forthright, forensic pathologist Brad Randall wrote that no universally accepted formula exists for determining the cause of death, [which] is more art than science.

Death registration, and ultimately death certificates, were first required in the United Kingdom in 1874. Before 1910, when a standard death certificate was first developed, U.S. physicians rarely participated in determining death.

Today, signing a death certificate is a rite of passage for new physicians. Most have their first experience with this medicolegal procedure as residents, often while they are covering other physicians patients. However, most do this without receiving training in medical school or residency on how to pronounce death, complete the death certificate, and determine why their patient died.

If the patient is in an acute care hospital, the patients medical record may help provide some clues about a cause of death. Yet, even after clinicians scrutinize the patient with physical exams, laboratory studies, CT scans, MRIs, surgery, and similar modalities, many death certificates over-or under-report actual causes of death.

Death certificates tend to be even less accurate for those who die at home or in long-term care facilities, where physicians often sign the death certificate without examining the body.

Autopsies provide a definitive cause of death in 95% of cases were once routine medical procedures in the United States, with 50% of in-hospital deaths receiving postmortem examinations in the 1940s. By the late 1950s, some teaching hospitals autopsied up to 90% of all deaths.

Today, however, only about 12% of non-medicolegal deaths and less than 1% of those dying in nursing homes are autopsied. This drastic drop is the result of a variety of factors: minimal reimbursement for the significant time and costs required for pathologists to do autopsies, a lessened emphasis on getting autopsy permission from families, the elimination of a minimum autopsy requirement by hospital accrediting bodies, the negative attitude of funeral directors and embalmers, and a mistaken assumption that modern medical technology can provide most necessary diagnostic information.

Accurately determining causes of death in patients is vital to developing public health policies, identifying new or changing disease patterns, and generating health care budgets. Yet almost one-third of death certificates completed without an autopsy erroneously identified the cause of death.

Over the past decades, nearly 40% of autopsied cases had major unexpected (i.e., undiagnosed) findings contributing to the patients death; 24% had major unexpected findings not contributing to the death; and 17% had minor unexpected findings contributing to the death. This should caution courts as well as public health policymakers to carefully consider the accuracy of causes of death listed on death certificates of non-autopsied decedents.

Recognizing the scale of inaccuracy on death certificates for non-autopsied decedents should steer both courts and public health policymakers away from their reliance on potentially false presumptions about death causation when drafting their rulings and health policies.

Kenneth V. Iserson is an emergency physician.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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Stories of overworked and burned out, front line health care workers have been in the news since early in the pandemic. Job vacancies in health care and social assistance are at a record high, according to Statistics Canada data published in March of 2021.

At the same time, COVID has highlighted the persistent health disparities between white and Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities in Canada and the U.S. BIPOC health care providers play a unique role in closing this gap, but we are not immune to the effects of racism and colonialism. BIPOC physicians and nurses report experiencing racism at work, and it is contributing to burnout.

It is well-known that diversity in medicine improves cultural safety and subsequent outcomes and that BIPOC remain underrepresented in health care professions. Part of the approach to improving health outcomes of BIPOC has been to increase the numbers of BIPOC in health care. For example, the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (call to action #23) calls for an increase in the number of Indigenous professionals in health care, and retention of Indigenous providers in Indigenous communities. Medical and nursing schools have made efforts to increase the numbers of BIPOC students, and many universities have BIPOC-specific supports in place. But retaining these highly-skilled professionals in the workforce hasnt received as much attention.

As a white-passing mixed Indigenous physician, I acknowledge the privilege I carry both at work and outside of work. For many other BIPOC physicians, particularly Black physicians, the experience of racism is amplified. Ive frequently witnessed the mistreatment of other Indigenous people by other health care providers and dealt with inappropriate comments made by co-workers and patients who lack basic knowledge of the lived experience of Indigenous people. Its exhausting and demoralizing.

It started early in my medical education and continues still. In my first week of medical school, when we were instructed to introduce ourselves and include something we dont know about you, I included my Indigenous background. A fellow student asked me if thats how I got into medical school- implying that I must have received special treatment. During most of medical school, isolated from family and usual supports due to the time demands, the only people I saw from my background were patients. I couldnt wait to get out working in Indigenous communities. After four years of medical school and two years of residency, I did.

As I progressed in my career, much of my work was in Indigenous communities, both rural and urban. It was hard work, but fulfilling and often fun. As I gained more experience, I started being asked to be involved in various committees and take on leadership roles in Indigenous health. At first, I was thrilled- here was my chance to make a difference! But more often than not there were no resources available to implement changes, and higher-ups seemed more interested in the appearance of Indigenous involvement rather than the reality of it. I started to resent being the only Indigenous person in the room and being called on frequently to answer questions that a Google search couldve answered. During this time, my clinical practice remained busy. I took more time than some physicians on hospital rounds because I wanted to make my Indigenous patients feel safe. In clinic, I saw the persistent effects of colonization on my patients, daily: depression and suicidal thoughts, substance use disorders, child apprehension, infectious disease, diabetes- and it took time and emotional energy to address their concerns and advocate for additional services.

When I started to experience symptoms of burnout, I made changes to my practice to try to salvage my mental health and maintain the quality of my work. I left hospital practice. I gradually extricated myself from various leadership and advocacy roles and settled into working only part-time in an office-based practice. Then COVID hit. Locally, the First Nation council and health directors were leaders in developing a community response plan. They endeavored to protect their community by implementing a stay-at-home order and publishing community COVID infection rates well before non-Indigenous health leaders introduced these measures. This was met with hateful racism by some members of the larger community, who fell back on the old racist stereotype of the dirty Indian spreading disease. More recently, I had to gently correct a colleague who called me an Indian giver when I borrowed a piece of medical equipment. Each little event is manageable on its own, but they pile up. Im tired. My patients are wonderful, and they deserve an attentive physician, not an exhausted one.

The In Plain Sight Report recently shed light on Indigenous-specific racism in health care in British Columbia, including its effect on Indigenous health care workers. According to this report, 92% of Indigenous health care worker respondents reported their mental health was significantly affected by experiencing and/or witnessing racism or racial prejudice. Almost all (95%) reported their emotional health was affected. Most also reported their self-esteem (81%), spiritual health (80%), and job satisfaction (80%) were impacted by experiencing and/or witnessing racism or racial prejudice. In addition, data from the Statistics Canada Research Data Centre (RDC) at McMaster University suggest that while there are no differences in hours worked, the earnings of visible minority physicians in Canada are 10-15 percent less than their white colleagues. Similar earning disparities are seen in the U.S.

So how do we keep these skilled professionals, who are more likely to work in underserved communities and who contribute greatly to patient care, in the workforce?

First, we listen. We create safe spaces to talk about racism, and we believe BIPOC people when they talk about their experiences. We create policies that support people to bring their concerns forward without fear of job loss or intimidation. We hold everyone accountable for their words and actions.

Second, we support mentorship programs that connect BIPOC health care workers with colleagues from their communities. This includes supporting time away from work duties and financial compensation for mentors. Organizations such as the Indigenous Physicians Association of Canada and Black Physicians of Canada are already working to strengthen mentorship programs. Meanwhile, we continue to increase the numbers of BIPOC health care providers to better reflect the population our health system serves.

Third, we must recognize that it is not enough to just be not racist. We must require all health care staff to have basic cultural safety and anti-racism education so that BIPOC patients and staff do not have to deal with micro and macroaggressions daily. We must employ BIPOC-led educational and EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion) organizations to educate our staff rather than relying on BIPOC colleagues to provide this education and unpaid emotional labor.

As workforce shortages worsen, it becomes even more important to retain highly-skilled BIPOC health care providers to improve health outcomes for BIPOC patients and the health of all patients and the system itself.

Morgan Lindsay is a family physician.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
CDC officials may soon update mask recommendations to help slow the spread of the Omicron variant.
See how researchers determined dogs can tell the difference between languages








Kazakh policemen are deployed during protests over a hike in energy prices in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Jan. 5. Protesters stormed the mayor's office in Almaty, as Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev declared a state of emergency in the capital until Jan. 19. EPA-Yonhap





Kazakhstan authorities said Sunday that 164 people, including a 4-year-old girl, were killed in a week of protests that marked the worst unrest since the former Soviet republic gained independence 30 years ago.







The office of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said order has been restored in the Central Asian country and that the government has regained control of all buildings that were taken over by the protesters. Some of the buildings were set on fire.







Sporadic gunfire was heard Sunday in Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan, according to the Russian TV station Mir-24, but it was unclear whether those were warning shots by law enforcement. Tokayev said Friday he had authorized a shoot-to-kill order for police and the military to restore order.







The demonstrations, which began in the western part of Kazakhstan, began Jan. 2 over a sharp rise in fuel prices and spread throughout the country, apparently reflecting wider discontent with the authoritarian government. They prompted a Russia-led military alliance to send troops to the country.







U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Tokayev's order ''something I resolutely reject.''







''The shoot-to-kill order, to the extent it exists, is wrong and should be rescinded,'' he said Sunday on ABC's ''This Week.''







''And Kazakhstan has the ability to maintain law and order, to defend the institutions of the state, but to do so in a way that respects the rights of peaceful protesters and also addresses the concerns that they've raised  economic concerns and some political concerns,'' Blinken added.







Kazakh people drive next to a fire engine on the street in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Jan. 6, that was burned during protests over a hike in energy prices. EPA-Yonhap





The same party has ruled Kazakhstan since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Anyone aspiring to oppose the government has either been repressed, sidelined, or co-opted, amid widespread economic hardship despite the country's enormous reserves of oil, natural gas, uranium and minerals.







About 5,800 people were detained during the unrest, Tokayev's office said.







The death toll of 164, reported by the state news channel Khabar-24 citing the Health Ministry, was a significant increase from previously announced totals. It was unclear if that number referred only to civilians or if law enforcement deaths were included. Kazakh authorities said earlier Sunday that 16 members of the police and national guard had been killed.







The ministry said 103 of the deaths occurred in Almaty, and Kazakhstan's ombudswoman for children's rights said three of those killed were minors, including a 4-year-old girl.







The ministry earlier reported more than 2,200 people sought treatment for injuries, and the Interior Ministry said about 1,300 security officers were injured.







Almaty's airport, which had been taken over by protesters last week, remained closed but was expected to resume operations Monday.







Tokayev said the demonstrations were instigated by ''terrorists'' with foreign backing, although the protests have shown no obvious leaders or organization. Sunday's statement from his office said the detentions included ''a sizable number of foreign nationals,'' but gave no details.







It was unclear how many of those detained remained in custody.







The Almaty City Administration building burns during protests over a hike in energy prices in Kazakhstan, Jan. 6. EPA-Yonhap





The foreign ministry of neighboring Kyrgyzstan called for the release Sunday of well-known Kyrgyz musician Vikram Ruzakhunov, who was shown in a video on Kazakh television saying that he had flown to the country to take part in protests and was promised $200. In the video, apparently taken in police custody, Ruzakhunov's face was bruised and he had a large cut on his forehead.







The former head of Kazakhstan's counterintelligence and anti-terrorism agency has been arrested on charges of attempting to overthrow the government. The arrest of Karim Masimov, which was announced Saturday, came just days after he was removed as head of the National Security Committee by Tokayev.







No details were given about what Masimov was alleged to have done that would constitute an attempted overthrow of the government. The National Security Committee, a successor to the Soviet-era KGB, is responsible for counterintelligence, the border guards service and anti-terrorist activities.







As the unrest mounted, Kazakhstan's ministerial Cabinet resigned but remained in their posts temporarily. Tokayev spokesman Brisk Uali said the president would propose a new Cabinet, Tuesday.







At Tokayev's request, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russia-led military alliance of six former Soviet states, authorized sending about 2,500 mostly Russian troops to Kazakhstan as peacekeepers.







Some of the force is guarding government facilities in the capital, Nur-Sultan, which ''made it possible to release part of the forces of Kazakhstani law enforcement agencies and redeploy them to Almaty to participate in the counterterrorist operation,'' according to a statement from Tokayev's office.







In a sign that the demonstrations were more deeply rooted than just over the fuel price rise, many demonstrators shouted ''Old man out,'' a reference to Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was president from Kazakhstan's independence until he resigned in 2019 and anointed Tokayev as his successor.







Nazarbayev retained substantial power as head of the National Security Council. But Tokayev replaced him as council head amid the unrest possibly aiming at a concession to mollify protesters. However, Nazarbayev adviser Aido Ukibay said Sunday that it was done at Nazarbayev's initiative, according to the Kazakh news agency KazTag. (AP)


Kilgore, TX (75662)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening with thunderstorms becoming likely overnight. Low 68F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening with thunderstorms becoming likely overnight. Low 68F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi attends the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI) conference in Naypyidaw, in this Nov. 22, 2019 file photo. AFP-Yonhap





A court in Myanmar sentenced ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to four more years in prison Monday after finding her guilty of illegally importing and possessing walkie-talkies and violating COVID-19 restrictions, a legal official said.







Suu Kyi was convicted last month on two other charges and given a four-year prison sentence, which was then halved by the head of the military-installed government.







The cases are among about a dozen brought against the 76-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate since the army seized power last February, ousting her elected government and arresting top members of her National League for Democracy party.







If found guilty of all the charges, she could be sentenced to more than 100 years in prison.







Suu Kyi's supporters and independent analysts say the charges against her are contrived to legitimize the military's seizure of power and prevent her from returning to politics.







Monday's verdict in the court in the capital, Naypyitaw, was conveyed by a legal official who insisted on anonymity for fear of being punished by the authorities, who have restricted the release of information about Suu Kyi's trials.







He said she was sentenced to two years in prison under the Export-Import Law for importing the walkie-talkies and one year under the Telecommunications Law for possessing them. The sentences are to be served concurrently. She also received a two-year sentence under the Natural Disaster Management Law for allegedly violating coronavirus rules while campaigning.







Myanmar's ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, former President Win Myint and doctor Myo Aung appear at a court in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, May 24, 2021, in this still image taken from video. Reuters-Yonhap





Suu Kyi was convicted last month on two other charges  incitement and breaching COVID-19 restrictions  and sentenced to four years' imprisonment. Hours after that sentence was issued, the head of the military-installed government, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, reduced it by half.







Suu Kyi's party won a landslide victory in a 2020 general election, but the military claimed there was widespread electoral fraud, an assertion that independent poll watchers doubt.







Since her first guilty verdict, Suu Kyi has been attending court hearings in prison clothes  a white top and a brown longyi skirt provided by the authorities. She is being held by the military at an unknown location, where state television reported last month she would serve her sentence.







The hearings are closed to the media and spectators and the prosecutors do not comment. Her lawyers, who had been a source of information on the proceedings, were served with gag orders in October.







The military-installed government has not allowed any outside party to meet with Suu Kyi since it seized power, despite international pressure for talks including her that could ease the country's violent political crisis.







It would not allow a special envoy from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Myanmar is a member, to meet her. The refusal received a rare rebuke from fellow members, who barred Min Aung Hlaing from attending its annual summit meeting.







Even Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who took over as the regional group's chair for this year and advocates engagement with the ruling generals, failed to meet her last week when he became the first head of government to visit Myanmar since the army's takeover.







The military's seizure of power was quickly met by nonviolent nationwide demonstrations, which security forces quashed with deadly force, killing over 1,400 civilians, according to a detailed list compiled by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.







A protester holds a poster featuring Aung San Suu Kyi as they take part in a demonstration against the military coup in Yangon, in this March 2, 2021, file photo. AFP-Yonhap





Peaceful protests have continued, but amid the severe crackdown, an armed resistance has also grown, to the point that U.N. experts have warned the country could be sliding into civil war.







''Throwing a plethora of criminal charges at Aung San Suu Kyi ... reeks more of desperation than confidence,'' said Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, a democracy promotion group.







He said in an email interview after her first convictions that the military ''massively miscalculated'' in thinking that it could prevent protests by arresting Suu Kyi, her fellow party members and veteran independent political activists.







''A new mass movement was born which doesn't depend on a single leader. There are hundreds of small groups organizing and resisting in different ways, from peaceful protest, boycotts and armed resistance,'' Farmaner said. ''Even with more than 7,000 people arrested since the coup, three times the average number detained under the previous military dictatorship, the military have been unable to suppress dissent.''







Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi leaves the International Court of Justice after the first day of three days of hearings in The Hague, Netherlands, Dec. 10, 2019. AP-Yonhap





Suu Kyi was charged right after the military's takeover with having improperly imported the walkie-talkies, which served as the initial justification for her continued detention. A second charge of illegally possessing the radios was filed the following month.







The radios were seized from the entrance gate of her residence and the barracks of her bodyguards during a search Feb. 1, the day she was arrested.







Suu Kyi's lawyers argued that the radios were not in her personal possession and were legitimately used to help provide for her security, but the court declined to dismiss the charges.







She was charged with two counts of violating coronavirus restrictions during campaigning for the 2020 election, and found guilty on the first count last month.







She is also being tried by the same court on five counts of corruption. The maximum penalty for each count is 15 years in prison and a fine. A sixth corruption charge against her and ousted President Win Myint in connection with granting permits to rent and buy a helicopter has not yet gone to trial.







In separate proceedings, she is accused of violating the Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years.







Additional charges were also added by Myanmar's election commission against Suu Kyi and 15 other politicians in November for alleged fraud in the 2020 election. The charges by the military-appointed Union Election Commission could result in Suu Kyi's party being dissolved and unable to participate in a new election the military has promised will take place within two years of its takeover. (AP)


Shenandoah, IA (51601)

Today

Showers early, then cloudy overnight. Low 41F. Winds N at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Showers early, then cloudy overnight. Low 41F. Winds N at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Higher wind gusts possible.
Virus-hit Tianjin ensures necessity supply amid control of Omicron spread

Xinhua) 15:17, January 10, 2022

TIANJIN, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- North China's Tianjin Municipality which has witnessed the latest COVID-19 resurgence has launched an emergency response mechanism to guarantee the supply of daily necessities.

According to the Tianjin municipal bureau of commerce, local authorities have mobilized major wholesale suppliers, supermarkets and vegetable markets to add inventory in order to cope with the market demand for meat, eggs and vegetables.

The stock of vegetables has increased from two days to three to four days, and the stock of rice, flour and oil has increased from 20 days to 30 days in order to cope with the city's fight against the outbreak of the Omicron variant.

The municipality with 13.86 million people neighbors the national capital of Beijing. The local authorities said Sunday that it would launch a citywide nucleic acid testing after 20 people tested positive for COVID-19 from 6 p.m. Friday to 9 p.m. Saturday.

The infections were reported Saturday in Jinnan District, and the gene sequencing found the first two locally transmitted confirmed cases were the VOC/Omicron variant, said the municipal headquarters for COVID-19 prevention and control.

Currently, the city's major wholesale markets for agricultural products have a sufficient supply of goods.

After the report of the COVID-19 infections, some commodities such as vegetables, eggs and pork were out of stock for a short time on Sunday due to panic buying in some markets. However, all major supermarkets and vegetable markets replenished goods in time, and the market supply basically returned to normal on Sunday afternoon, according to the commerce bureau.

It said that the city now has ample stock of meat, eggs, vegetables, salt, milk, bottled water and instant food. The emergency mechanism would ensure the reserved commodities are sent out to maintain market supply in time once necessary.

The bureau monitors the inventories and commodity prices of over 180 suppliers of daily necessities to ensure market prices stable and check on price gouging and hoarding.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi / AFP-Yonhap



China is willing to increase "law enforcement and security" cooperation with neighboring Kazakhstan and help oppose interference by "external forces," China's foreign minister said on Monday, after violent protests in the Central Asian country.



Wang Yi, who is also a state councilor, made the comments in a call to Kazakhstan's foreign minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.



"Recent turmoil in Kazakhstan shows that the situation in Central Asia is still facing severe challenges, and it once again proves that some external forces do not want peace and tranquility in our region," the ministry quoted Wang telling Tileuberdi.



Government buildings in Kazakhstan were briefly captured or torched in several cities last week as initially peaceful protests against fuel price increases turned violent. Troops were ordered to shoot to kill to put down a countrywide uprising.



Authorities have blamed the violence on "extremists," including foreign-trained Islamist militants, for the violence.



Authorities also asked a Russian-led military bloc to send in troops, who the government says have been deployed to guard strategic sites, a move questioned by United States.



Experts say China worries instability in its neighbor could threaten energy imports and Belt-and-Road projects there, and security in its western Xinjiang region, which shares a 1,770-km (1,110-mile) border with Kazakhstan.



China was willing to "jointly oppose the interference and infiltration of any external forces," said Wang.



China's President Xi Jinping on Friday told Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev that China resolutely opposed any foreign force that destabilizes Kazakhstan and engineers a "color revolution," Chinese state television said.



China and Russia believe "color revolutions" are uprisings instigated by the United States and other Western powers to achieve regime change.



"China does not want to see an expansion of U.S. influence in Kazakhstan and Central Asia as a result of this unrest," said Li Mingjiang, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.



"If a color revolution in a nearby country leads to political democratization, it could encourage the liberal-leaning intellectual elite in China to try something similar," he said.



Since the Vietnam War in the 1960s, China traditionally does not send troops to other countries, citing its policy of non-interference, except under the United Nations Peacekeeping banner.



Last month it sent six police officers to the Solomon Islands to help train the police force and quell the riots sparked by the country's 2019 switch of diplomatic relations to Beijing from Taiwan. (Reuters)




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A list of all the products from each company competing in the state's Coolest Thing in Indiana contest.

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Kokomo Opalescent Glass, founded in 1888, is the oldest producer of hand cast, cathedral and opalescent glass in the United States. It can be seen in the Vatican, Disney World, Disneyland, The White House, DreamWorks Studios and St. Patrick Church in Kokomo.

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US says no breakthrough in 'frank and forthright' talks with Russia over Ukraine border crisis




South Korea's defense technologies were assessed to be the world's ninth most advanced as of last year, a triennial government report showed Monday, noting progress in artillery, submarines and other sectors.







According to the report by the Korea Research Institute for Defense Technology Planning and Advancement (KRIT), South Korea ranked ninth among 16 countries, compared with the previous report in which the country tied with Italy for ninth place in 2018.







The institute has published the report since 2008 to assess South Korea's comparative strengths and weaknesses to help craft strategies for its defense research and development.







Of 26 key defense technology areas, South Korea's capabilities improved in 10 areas, including artillery, submarines, command control, cyber weapons and underwater surveillance, according to the report.







But the report listed 11 areas, including radar and space weapons systems, as those that need "more attention."







"Its ranking in the artillery field rose to fourth place based on an improvement in the performance of self-propelled artillery, and autonomous and automation technology," KRIT said in a press release.







"Its technology level also improved in submarines, such as the successful SLBM underwater test launch," it added, referring to the South's test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile last year.







In the latest report, the United States took the top spot, followed by France and Russia, which tied for second. Germany and Britain took fifth place, trailed by China, Israel and Japan. (Yonhap)


A man stands on a boat as coal barges queue to be pulled along Mahakam river in Samarinda, East Kalimantan province, Indonesia, in this Aug. 31, 2019 file photo. Reuters-Yonhap



Indonesia's government may allow coal exports by Tuesday, a senior minister said on Monday, as pressure mounts on the world's biggest thermal coal exporter to end a ban imposed at New Year.



The suspension, which came after state power utility PLN reported critically low inventory levels of the fuel, sent global coal prices higher last week and prompted calls by Japan, South Korea and the Philippines for it to be eased.



"End of today or tomorrow we can release some of the big vessels," Coordinating Minister of Maritime and Investment Affairs Luhut Pandjaitan said in an interview with CNBC on Monday.



Energy Minister Arifin Tasrif had earlier on Monday told Japan's industry minister Koichi Hagiuda that he hoped Indonesia may come to a decision in the coming days.



Hagiuda said Japanese companies wanted clarity from Indonesia.



"Also, there are some Japanese ships that have already been loaded (with coal), so if it takes time to make an adjustment," he said. "We would like to ask you to at least allow those ships to leave for Japan."



Japan's embassy in Jakarta last week asked Indonesia to exclude from the ban high-calorific coal, which is not used by domestic power plants.



Although authorities have said the coal supply emergency was over at PLN, the government has said other issues needed to be addressed before lifting the ban.



Discussions were expected to resume on Monday, focusing on logistics issues, industry officials told Reuters.



Shipping companies were working to reach the best solution to meet PLN's coal demand, said Carmelita Hartoto, chairperson of Indonesia Shipowners Association.



A PLN spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for details on its latest supply situation.



Solution Sought



Pandu Sjahrir, chairman of Indonesia Coal Miners Association (ICMA), said PLN is estimated to have 10 days of coal supply.



The power company has said it had secured 13.9 million tons of coal but wants 20 million tons to reach a 20-day inventory level for its power plants.



"We are ready to supply coal for the amount that PLN wants," Pandu said. "The issue now is about shipment, but there should be a solution for this soon."



Fabby Tumiwa, executive director at the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), an energy think tank, said transporting coal to power plants could take up to 10 days, but during wet periods such as January, loading alone could take up to four days, depending on vessel size and infrastructure.



Fabby said smaller miners face risks of their coal not meeting the specifications of PLN, which has no coal blending facility.



"It is risky to ship their coal only to be rejected by PLN. They also cannot use small barges if they want to ship to PLN's plants in Java and Sumatra," Fabby said. "They need larger vessels, which mean they need to wait for their coal to be pooled together ... It is a complicated logistic challenge."



Meanwhile, Minister Luhut said Indonesia was drawing up a new pricing structure for the so-called Domestic Market Obligation (DMO), where miners are required to sell 25% of their output to the local market with a maximum price of $70 per ton for power generators.



"DMO is not going to be an issue anymore because we're going to make a new structure where PLN should buy at market price," he said. (Reuters)




By Javier Solana





MADRID  Liberal democracy is still alive, but showing clear signs of weakness. According to Freedom House, the world has experienced 15 consecutive years of global democratic backsliding.



In an attempt to tackle the rising tide of authoritarianism, U.S. President Joe Biden recently invited more than 100 world leaders to a virtual summit aimed at strengthening democracy globally. For a Spaniard of my generation, there are powerful reasons to highlight the value of democracy.



Having lived part of my life under Francisco Franco's dictatorship, I know what it means for a country to choose openness and prosperity. La Transicion, Spain's political process of regime change from dictatorship to constitutional democracy, was a historic feat, entailing the establishment of new representative institutions, the development of a welfare state, and integration into Europe.



But defending democracy as a moral, just, and practical political system should not make us define the international environment as merely a clash between democracies and autocracies. After all, there is nothing wrong with countries that have different political systems meeting to address concrete global problems. What matters is that these gatherings contribute toward solving them.



Although the Summit for Democracy participants made commitments to extremely important causes, such as protecting human rights, the event will be remembered more for its symbolic value than for its results. Proof of this is Biden's decision to invite Taiwan, which will have done little to de-escalate tensions with China.



On the other hand, the need for effective global governance is more urgent than ever in today's unpredictable and dangerous world. In addition to the nuclear threat that emerged in the last century, we must now contend with challenges such as cyberattacks, the weaponization of migration, the growing investment in military technology, and the malign potential of artificial intelligence.



Dividing the world into two ideologically opposed camps, as Biden's recent summit appeared to do, thus entails a major geopolitical risk. A split between free countries and autocracies could spill over into key international organizations, which are fundamental to resolving or managing global problems.



For example, the World Trade Organization long ago ceased to be functional, as a result of its inability to create international trade rules that accommodate different economic systems. Adding an element of ideological separation between democratic and non-democratic countries to the existing divisions within the WTO will only make it more difficult to find solutions.



Settling these disputes is vitally important if we are to avoid the dire consequences of an economic decoupling between the United States and China. Building the multilateral system after World War II was a historic achievement, but its institutions lack the tools to cope with an increasingly interdependent, complex, and dynamic world.



The COVID-19 crisis has made this clear. Humanity was unprepared to combat the pandemic, and the World Health Organization was clearly underfunded. When former U.S. President Donald Trump recklessly announced that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the WHO, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was poised to become the organization's largest single contributor.



So, rather than emphasizing their ideological differences with other countries, democracies should instead recognize their responsibility to themselves and the world. In particular, they must address two critical, overdue tasks in order to revive their domestic and international legitimacy.



The first task is to reduce domestic economic inequalities. Democracy proved itself after World War II by creating a welfare state that helped to ensure economic growth and social cohesion. But this cohesion has suffered major setbacks in recent decades, and was badly weakened by the 2008 global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.



The socioeconomic inequalities that characterize our societies are a threat to democracy, because living increasingly separate lives makes collective political participation more difficult. Ultimately, inequality erodes our ability to act as citizens. Democratic backsliding in many countries stems in part from the dissatisfaction of citizens who have lost confidence that the political system can reverse the long decline in economic security and living standards they have experienced. The resulting political disenchantment has been a major source of support for populist nationalism.



Democracies' second task is to take a clear lead in creating the socioeconomic conditions necessary for the further development of the Global South. This could also facilitate adherence to democratic values in developing countries.



As the rapid spread of the new Omicron variant has shown, we have a moral and practical imperative to ensure the equitable global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccination rates in Africa are dishearteningly low. While many citizens in rich democracies can now receive a third COVID-19 vaccine dose, only 8% of Africans are fully vaccinated.



Moreover, there could be no more effective global advertisement for democracy than enabling rapid vaccination of people in the most vulnerable countries. Given that vaccinating 70 percent of the world's population would cost only 0.13 percent of the G7's GDP, wealthier democracies have a golden opportunity to increase their international legitimacy.



Democracies could help their cause further by mustering the political will to fulfill their pledge to help the Global South finance its green economic transition. At the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, the richest countries promised to provide $100 billion per year to developing countries to help them meet the cost of mitigation and adaptation. But advanced economies have not kept their word.



By fulfilling his 2020 presidential election campaign promise to convene a Summit for Democracy, Biden has shown that he is no Trump. But that may prove to be insufficient. Cooperating with someone who is ideologically like-minded is complicated enough. Doing so with someone who has a different worldview, perhaps even contradicting one's own, is far more difficult.



While we clearly need to strengthen democracy, our fundamental values should not prevent us from working with other countries to resolve the most urgent global challenges. I sincerely believe that this is what democracy requires.





Javier Solana, a former EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, secretary-general of NATO, and foreign minister of Spain, is president of EsadeGeo  Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics and distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution. This article was distributed by Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).


By Stephen Zunes



The threat of further Russian aggression against Ukraine is very real. Unfortunately, the Biden administration is in a weak position to lead an international response.



In light of Russia's illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea and threats of further aggression against Ukraine, President Joe Biden has emphasized how "any use of force to change borders is strictly prohibited under international law."



This should not even be a question anymore. Preventing a country from expanding its territory by force was a founding principle of the United Nations, and it is embedded in its charter. It was this very principle, in fact, that led the United States to fight the 1991 Gulf War following Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.



Unfortunately, there are serious questions as to whether the Biden administration actually supports this bedrock international legal standard. Maps of North Africa from the United Nations, National Geographic, Rand McNally and elsewhere depict the nation of Western Sahara on the Atlantic coast wedged between Morocco and Mauritania; U.S. government maps, however, depict the country as part of Morocco, with nothing delineating the two.



Western Sahara  formally known as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR)  has been recognized at various points in time by 84 countries and is a full member state of the African Union. Morocco invaded that nation, then known as Spanish Sahara, just prior to its scheduled independence from colonial rule in 1975.



The United Nations Security Council, the U.N. General Assembly, and the International Court of Justice have all gone on record asserting Western Sahara's right to self-determination. For decades, no international body or foreign governments have recognized Western Sahara as part of Morocco.



However, in his final weeks in office, former President Donald Trump formally recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the occupied country, including roughly 25 percent of Western Sahara still under the control of the SADR government. The Biden administration has rejected bipartisan calls to reverse Trump's decision and the United States remains an international outlier.



Despite giving lip service to a moribund U.N.-sponsored peace process, the United States is effectively agreeing with the Moroccan monarchy that independence should not be an option for the Indigenous population, known as Sahrawis, who embrace a distinct history, dialect and culture. The Moroccan regime  emboldened by the U.S. recognition  insists that independence is completely off the table and is at most willing to offer a limited degree of "autonomy" under Moroccan rule.



Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other reputable human right groups have documented widespread suppression of peaceful pro-independence activists by Moroccan occupation forces, including torture, beatings, detention without trial and extrajudicial killings. Freedom House has ranked Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara as second only to Syria in its suppression of political rights.



As a result, Morocco's U.S.-backed "autonomy" plan not only fails to allow the Sahrawis any real act of self-determination, the ongoing repression raises serious questions regarding what it would look like in practice.



Biden's recognition of Morocco's illegal annexation of Western Sahara is a gift to Russia's autocratic president Vladimir Putin, who can now portray U.S. opposition to Russian claims on Ukrainian territory as simply rooted in geopolitical rivalry rather than principled opposition to illegal territorial expansion.



For the sake of the people of Western Sahara and U.S. credibility in the growing crisis over Ukraine, Biden must immediately rescind U.S. recognition of Morocco's conquest.





Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and co-author of "Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution." This column was produced for The Progressive magazine and distributed by Tribune News Service.


By John J. Metzler





As the New Year brings hope and possibility for a global reset and renewal, the tragic reality remains that the COVID-19 virus, with all its deadly variants, continues to plague the planet now fully two years after the malady emerged from Wuhan, China. Thus, despite much justified optimism over wider vaccinations, the pandemic has not broken its deadly grip on societies, economies nor the collective psychology of most people.







So here we stand more than a year after Operation Warp Speed produced three vaccines in record time saving millions of lives worldwide. Yet stunningly during 2021, and despite widespread vaccinations across America, the U.S. actually suffered more COVID deaths than in 2020! Fatalities in the U.S. now number a staggering 831,000!







The global toll remains grim; Brazil recording 620,000 deaths, India 483,000, the United Kingdom 149,000 and France 124,000.







Additionally, more than 20 countries on four continents have seen coronavirus surges recently. New York City has now become the epicenter of the Omicron variant surge in the U.S., though significantly, Omicron does not seem as lethal as the Delta strain.







Positively, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore have weathered the crisis with relatively small numbers of fatalities. As for the People's Republic of China, from where the virus originated, genuine data remains sparse and it would be a bad joke to accept official statistics.







Nonetheless, we lurch from one crisis to another and nervously react to the latest pronouncements from alphabet soup agencies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to the World Health Organization (WHO).







Yet, our once near-pavlovian responses to the guidance from Dr. Anthony Fauci with his scientific rectitude are now often viewed with little more than passing disdain. His ever-changing advice and edicts during the pandemic have become footnotes to the sad story. Mixed messaging only compounds a confused situation.







America suffers from an acute case of Pandemic Funk, a justifiable but overplayed fear stoked by some public health officials and government agencies and reflected by media malpractice. First people were encouraged to get two vaccines to be safe. Then, better get the booster! But has that solved virus transmission?







But beyond the obvious public health requirements needed to tackle the pandemic, there's a troubling political narrative that equates health security with social control. Vaccine mandates, be they here in the United States or throughout Europe, are based on levels of control not seen since WWII. We're talking about the restrictions, lockdowns, vaccine passes and electronic data scoops which have all become part of daily life. Worries of federal mandates loom.







The Geneva-based WHO concedes, "While there were 1.8 million recorded deaths in 2020, there were 3.5 million in 2021 and we know the actual number is much higher." This sobering worldwide tally has been rising amid the spread of the Omicron variant.







Yet, WHO Director General Tedros stated, "I still remain optimistic that this can be the year we not only end the acute stage of the pandemic but we also chart a path to stronger health security."







Dr. Tedros added, "Right now, Delta and Omicron are twin threats that are driving up cases to record numbers, which again is leading to spikes in hospitalizations and deaths. I am highly concerned about Omicron being more transmissible, circulating at the same time as Delta is leading to a tsunami of cases."







But beyond America's borders, the writ and power of central governments is clearly growing, from France to South Korea. Australia presents a travesty of vaccine lockdown and bureaucratic overreach.







In France, the government has announced that wearing masks in public spaces will become mandatory for children six years old or older. The Netherlands is currently under a lockdown. Austria's fourth national lockdown of the pandemic has ended, but tight restrictions remain for unvaccinated people. In various cases there have been anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown or anti-vaccine pass protests.







German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach told broadcaster ZDF, "At no point in time would there be a risk that the country's health system would be overwhelmed," referring to the system in Germany. He added with cautious optimism, "I do believe that we can live with the coronavirus. That we can get our normal life back completely, that's what we are fighting for."







Have we beaten COVID-19? Not yet, but keep calm and carry on.









John J. Metzler (





jjmcolumn@earthlink.net ) is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of "Divided Dynamism The Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China."
By Paul Tyson





Looking back at 2021, I think that one of the most remarkable  but least recognized  achievements that year was the mass evacuation of people from Afghanistan.



The event has been overshadowed by criticism that many of the Afghan citizens who worked for the Americans were left behind, caused by the chaos around the airport gates in Kabul. Nonetheless, getting more than 124,000 people out is impressive and will likely be recognized as such in future years.



To be sure, the Kabul Airport was not the beaches of Dunkirk. It was a functioning airport that the Taliban victors allowed the allied forces to use to withdraw Americans and the Afghani citizens who worked for them.



American military facilities in Qatar, Germany and in the U.S. became temporary refugee camps before the fleeing Afghans were relocated to other locations in America and around the world. Unfortunately, there was less televised coverage of this aspect of the operation compared to the dramatic pictures that were broadcast at Kabul Airport itself.



The evacuation brought back memories of when I served briefly as a State Department adviser in Afghanistan in 2006. I flew into the military section of Kabul Airport from Ramstein Air Base in Germany. While in Kabul, I made a trip by Blackhawk helicopter to Bagram Air Force Base, the biggest U.S. military facility in Afghanistan and comparable to Osan Air Base in Korea. The helicopter pilots loved Bagram since they could use multiple landing areas on the base.



When I left Afghanistan after a month's service, I experienced a "hot load" where a C-17 transport plane touched down at Kabul Airport and we were loaded onto the aircraft while its engines kept running before immediately taking off for Germany. This was similar to the procedure used in the evacuation.



The Afghan evacuation has been compared to the fall of Saigon in 1975 or the British retreat from Dunkirk in 1940. But those events were undertaken under more difficult circumstances. In contrast, American and Taliban officials were already negotiating in Doha, Qatar about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, although the agreed arrangements partially fell apart due to the swiftness of the Taliban takeover of Kabul and the rest of the country.



Compare that to the fall of Saigon. The North Vietnamese shelled and rocketed the airport and closed that option. That left helicopters, which needed to load those fleeing from the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy, to fill the gap. But that proved inadequate and many people were left behind.



The situation got so bad that South Vietnamese pilots flying their helicopters out to U.S. aircraft carriers offshore saw them being pushed into the ocean after unloading due to a shortage of hanger and deck space.



Dunkirk was a sea evacuation in a wartime environment with the beaches becoming a battlefield, with artillery shelling and strafing by the Luftwaffe. The only similarity between Dunkirk and Kabul was the masses of military equipment left behind to be picked over by the conquerors. German officers selected American-made staff cars. The Taliban picked over Humvees and drove them while dressed in confiscated U.S. uniforms.



Kabul's Hamid Karzai Airport was a much less hostile environment despite several suicide bombings at the gates and the occasional mortar and missile round targeting the airport. The situation could have been much worse since the airport was located in a built-up area of Kabul and was surrounded by high-rise urban development.



Being able to function from a small part of the larger Kabul airport was a logistical triumph that enabled operations to go on unimpeded and helped the evacuation to succeed.



Some analysts believe that more people could have been evacuated if the larger Bagram Air Base had been used. But Bagram was located too far from central Kabul.



The situation is analogous to the choices that Korea might face if there was ever an attack on Seoul. Do you evacuate from Gimpo Airport, which would save time, or else do you head for the bigger Incheon International Airport outside the city?



Now that the war is over, Bagram airport has taken on the air of a large scrap yard and open air market. The disabled and sabotaged equipment left in place will likely remain there for a while. Guns, ammo, uniforms and generators have been carried off by those Taliban fighters who were lucky enough to get the early pickings.



But Bagram has the potential to become Kabul's new international airport. It has two runways and a fuel and maintenance infrastructure. Although Bagram is far outside of Kabul, its distance to the city center is comparable to airports in many cities. It is likely that Kabul will expand in its direction as the city grows. Although the Taliban might now lack the technical skills to develop Bagram, no doubt Turkish airport construction companies will be eager to help.





Paul Tyson is a retired U.S. diplomat teaching diplomacy and government at New England College.


Some of the best years of my life  I miss those people.

Good times and memories, but I have moved on.

Not my best days, but I have made peace with them.

Glad to be away from those people  I dont miss the high school experience.

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Time for parties to discuss political reform agenda



Last week, an ad hoc political reform committee within the ruling Democratic Party of Korea proposed imposing a term limit on lawmakers. The proposal, which should be adopted through the revision of the party constitution, would limit lawmakers to three four-year terms in office in the same constituency. If the proposal is adopted, those who are subject to the new rule will be barred from applying for party nominations in their respective constituencies from the 2024 parliamentary election.



The proposal has a point, considering that many lawmakers in the country's southwestern and southeastern provinces have won elections largely based on regional rivalry. It will surely serve as an occasion for parties to give up their vested rights and make way for political rookies. It's no secret that some legislators elected for consecutive terms have controlled their local political arena while becoming involved in corruption cases.



Of course, the proposal is not without its problems. For one thing, limiting lawmakers to three terms may be unconstitutional. Few countries around the world impose term limits on lawmakers, regardless of whether they adhere to a parliamentary or presidential system. And lawmakers might face problems in carrying out their duties due to their insufficient political experience. This could weaken the legislature's power to hold the executive branch in check.



Well-timed political reform is an unavoidable task. On this occasion, it's also necessary to limit local council members to three terms. At the same time, the major political parties should discuss cutting the number of lawmakers and depriving them of privileges. Italy is a case in point in this matter. Italians voted in 2020 to cut the number of lawmakers by about one third. In 2012, our political parties had reached a tentative agreement to cut the number of legislators by 100, but the agreement fell through at the last minute. The ruling party should come forward to discuss political reform agenda with opposition parties so that the public can hold some hope for the future.


Angola, IN (46703)

Today

Rain early with thunderstorms developing in the afternoon. High 58F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall possibly over one inch..

Tonight

Cloudy. Periods of rain early. Low 44F. Winds N at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he plans to advocate for more funding for law enforcement, the developmentally disabled, and financial reserves when he reveals his balanced budget proposal to the Arkansas legislature on Tuesday. (Photo by KATV)
Orange County Sheriff's Department confirmed American actor and comedian, Bob Saget, was found dead at age 65.

The OCSD responded to a call at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes about an unresponsive man in a room there. Saget was pronounced dead on scene. While the cause of death has not been determined, detectives have said neither drug use nor foul play appear to be factors.

Saget is best known for his role in the sitcom Full House as the loveable single-father, Danny Tanner. The night before his death, he performed a stand-up show in Jacksonville. He leave behind his wife, Kelly Rizzo, and three children.
Have a news tip or would like to report a typo? Email Anthony Victor Reyes at areyes@kvoa.com.
Students return to school, just over one month after deadly shooting
New York real estate scion Robert Durst has died in a California prison hospital. He was 78.
2022 is here and as much as we all would have liked to have turned the page on COVID, unfortunately its not gone yet. In fact, more people than ever are in the hospital in connection to COVID and hospitals are stretched to the limit.

Going into the new year, one of the best things people can resolve to do is to either get their COVID 19 vaccine or get their booster.

As of Dec. 28, there were 48,086 people in Walworth County who had completed at least their two vaccine series, totaling 46.3% of the countys population. That is not good enough!

Walworth County drags significantly behind the rest of the state. In total, 62% of the states population is fully vaccinated.

Since the start of COVID in 2020, there have been 218 deaths connected to COVID in Walworth County alone and 669 hospitalizations, according to the Walworth County Public Health website.

As of Dec. 28 there were 33 current COVID related hospitalizations.

Last month, before the holidays Mercyhealth Vice President Jeni Hallatt warned that hospitals were experiencing a high volume of inpatients, limiting hospital beds and putting a strain on resources.

Due to these high volumes, overall bed availability is at critical levels, Hallatt said.

To help control this critical situation, Hallett asked the public to help with COVID-19 safety measures, which include getting vaccinated, wearing a mask and socially distancing when appropriate.

Advocate Aurora Health reported Monday, Jan. 3 that their hospitals are now treating more COVID-19 patients than they ever have before.

The numbers are rising very quickly to an all-time high, Auroras Chief Nursing Officer Dr. Mary Beth Kingston said on Jan. 3. The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Auroras 26 hospitals has doubled from 30 days ago and quadrupled from 60 days ago, she added.

Those numbers are very concerning.

Going forward, we still want schools to stay open. We still want people to be able to go to stores and restaurants.

But people need to be cautious and the vaccine is still the best way to prevent hospitalizations or death.

The Regional News editorial board consists of General Manager Robert Ireland, Editor Stephanie Jones and community members Patrick Quinn and Elizabeth Lupo DiVito.
A Dane County judge Monday rejected a request by Wisconsins Democratic attorney general to block former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gablemans demand to interview the states top elections administrator as part of his GOP-ordered review of the 2020 election.

Dane County Circuit Court Judge Rhonda Lanfords decision marks a win for Gableman, who was hired last year by legislative Republicans to review the election, an effort that has become bogged down in multiple court battles. Lanford also denied Gablemans request to dismiss the case entirely, a decision that leaves the door open for Attorney General Josh Kaul, who is representing the Wisconsin Elections Commissions nonpartisan administrator Meagan Wolfe, if he decides to continue to fight Gablemans subpoena.

Should Defendants seek to enforce the subpoenas before this case is decided on the merits through contempt, imprisonment or other means similar to the action pending in Waukesha County  plaintiffs can certainly file another motion for temporary injunction that the Court will schedule as soon as its calendar permits, Lanford wrote.

The reference was to another case challenging a separate request by Gableman for the Waukesha County sheriff to compel the mayors of Madison and Green Bay to meet with him or else face jail time. A Waukesha County judge has scheduled a hearing for Jan. 21 on the matter.

Lanfords decision stems from Kauls October request for a restraining order against a subpoena issued by Gableman seeking election-related documents and the interview with Wolfe.

In her decision, Lanford wrote that attorneys for Wolfe failed to show she would face contempt charges for refusing to comply with Gablemans subpoena.

In his initial lawsuit, Kaul contended that Gableman issued numerous subpoenas to state and local election officials in furtherance of an unlawful investigation focused on debunked theories about the November 2020 election.

Officials have said Wolfe is willing to meet with Gableman or his team, but only in a public setting. An attorney for Wolfe said last month state statutes require that any meeting with Gableman occur in a public setting before a legislative committee, while attorneys for Gableman have contended that the former justice is operating under the authority of the Legislatures Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections.

A primary issue with the subpoenas from the outset was the part about meeting in secret, Wolfe said in a statement. We continue to have a strong preference for providing testimony in public rather than behind closed doors. Weve already provided Special Counsel Gableman with documents and data, and conversations are ongoing regarding additional document production.

Gableman was hired by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, to investigate the election at a cost of $676,000 to taxpayers. His contract expired at the close of December, but Vos has said he hopes to have the review finished by the end of February.

It is my hope that former Justice Gableman will withdraw these unnecessary subpoenas rather than continuing to litigate over them, Kaul said.

Court battles mount

In late December, Gableman subpoenaed the elections commissions Democratic chair Ann Jacobs and Madison officials, demanding in-person testimony and a wide swath of election-related records including emails, internet logs and individual voter information. Gableman has also demanded records related to Dominion Voting Systems machines, though the city of Madison does not use those machines.

The subpoenas also request any records of payments from several nonprofit groups, including the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which is funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Republicans, including Gableman, have targeted CTCL funds as unfairly increasing turnout in the Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine.

In a separate case, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals on Monday denied a recent request from Vos seeking a stay to appeal Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihns order last week that Vos and his attorney need to sit for depositions on Wednesday as part of a liberal watchdog groups lawsuit seeking public records related to Gablemans review.

Vos requested the stay on Friday, a move that attorneys for American Oversight called a last-ditch attempt to avoid discovery in court filings Monday.

As it stands now, the depositions are still scheduled for Wednesday morning, and unless a court says otherwise, we expect Speaker Vos to appear and answer questions, American Oversight spokesperson Clark Pettig said in an email. This could have been avoided if Speaker Vos had released the records of his election investigation to the public as required by Wisconsin law, and its disappointing that hes now going to even greater lengths to conceal the facts from the public.

The case is one of three ongoing lawsuits brought by American Oversight following requests for records filed last year pertaining to Gablemans review. Attorneys for American Oversight have asked that Vos be held in contempt for not releasing the records sooner.

Attorneys for Vos have said all available documents have been provided, while attorneys for American Oversight have questioned whether additional documents exist.

If (American Oversight) believes that a particular document has been withheld it can move the Circuit Court for relief, but it has not even raised such an allegation, Vos attorney Ronald Stadler wrote in a Friday court filing.

In yet another case, Erick Kaardal, a Republican attorney for the conservative Thomas More Society and former secretary and treasurer for the Republican Party of Minnesota, last week filed an appeal in Dane County Circuit Court challenging the Elections Commissions decision in early December to throw out a complaint filed against CTCL grants provided to the states five largest cities to help administer last years election during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Court rulings have found nothing illegal about the more than $10 million in grants CTCL distributed to about 214 municipalities in 39 of Wisconsins 72 counties, including many in areas solidly won by Trump. Nor did CTCL turn down grant requests from any of the Wisconsin municipalities that made them.

A recount and court decisions have affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes.

An analysis by The Associated Press found only 31 potential cases of voter fraud in Wisconsins 2020 election, which represents less than 0.15% of Bidens margin of victory.

Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, on Monday requested that the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau conduct an audit of Gablemans ongoing review. Carpenter, who is a member of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, made the request to the committees co-chairs Sen. Robert Cowles, R-Green Bay, and Rep. Samantha Kerman, R-Salem.

A spokesperson for Cowles said the office had just received Carpenters request Monday afternoon and will give it a review. The committee would have to vote to request a formal audit from the Audit Bureau.

Reviews of the election by the Audit Bureau and the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty found no evidence of widespread fraud but did offer recommendations on how to improve elections.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources plans to allow one of the states largest dairies to nearly double its herd, prompting criticism that the agency is failing to use environmental protection powers granted just six months ago.

In July the Supreme Court affirmed the DNRs authority to cap the number of animals on a farm and require groundwater monitoring as conditions of a permit.

The case involved a decadelong fight over Kinnard Farms efforts to expand its feedlot operations in Kewaunee County, an area rife with groundwater contamination.

Based on the courts ruling, the DNR drafted new permit conditions for the farm, which has about 8,000 cattle and is expected to generate more than 103 million gallons of liquid manure, according to the agency.

The draft permit would give Kinnard Farms until March to come up with a plan for monitoring groundwater around more than 16,000 acres of land where it spreads manure. It would also allow Kinnard to expand its current herd by nearly 90%.

Tony Wilkin Gibart, executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates, said the draft permit is an egregious missed opportunity to use the authority confirmed in the Supreme Court decision to make headway in bringing clean drinking water to Kewaunee County.

Gibart said the animal limit is not based in science.

The proposed limit in no way responds to the extent of the contamination around Kinnard Farms, Gibart said. Or that the landscape in Kewaunee County cannot safely absorb additional manure spreading.

Jodi Parins, who lives about three miles from the Kinnard farm, said the current proposal represents a complete abdication of the DNRs responsibility and authority.

The court has given you the go-ahead, Parins said. Why wouldnt you use that authority to actually protect our water instead of continuing to protect the polluters? What happened to the year of clean water?

Parins, who previously served on the towns planning committee, noted the proposed cap is triple the number of animals Kinnard had in 2014 when a judge declared a massive regulatory failure had caused widespread contamination of the areas drinking water.

If you are going to put a cap, make it be meaningful, she said.

Kewaunee County resident Nancy Utesch called the proposed permit completely negligent.

Its inhumane, she said.

Chris Clayton, chief of the DNRs agricultural runoff section, said the cap is based on Kinnard Farms growth projections, although the farm would first have to show it has enough capacity to store and safely spread any additional manure before it could grow.

While it will be up to Kinnard Farms to design and carry out groundwater testing, Clayton said it will be subject to DNR review. A DNR hydrogeologist recommended the system include at least three monitoring wells in at least one field.

One thing we would look for is to make sure that data is useful as scientific information  for the impacts of manure on groundwater, he said.

Evan Feinauer, a staff attorney for Clean Wisconsin who argued the case before the Supreme Court, said its a huge deal that the DNR is requiring groundwater monitoring, but the proposed requirements dont go far enough.

We always knew that DNR would have to take a look at each farm individually to decide what conditions are needed, and that we would have to press DNR to do more than they have in the past, Feinauer said. We never stop advocating for DNR to improve these permits and better protect public health.

Have your say The Department of Natural Resources is proposing to modify a wastewater permit for Kinnard Farms that includes a limit nearly 90% higher than the Kewaunee County dairy's current 8,000 cows. To view the draft permit visit go.madison.com/kinnard-farms. Written comments can be submitted by email to Tyler.Dix@wisconsin.gov or mailed to Tyler Dix, CAFO Permit Coordinator, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, 101 S Webster St., Madison, WI 53707. The deadline for comments is Jan. 25.

Kinnard Farms did not respond to requests for comment on the permit or its expansion plans.

Kinnard is currently the states seventh-largest dairy farm, according to DNR records. Under the proposed permit modification it would be the largest by a margin of more than 40%.

According to the DNR, shallow and fractured bedrock make the landscape around Kinnard Farm particularly vulnerable to groundwater contamination, and water under the farm already exceeds state standards for nitrate and bacteria. During a 2014 hearing, a judge heard testimony that up to half of the wells in the town of Lincoln were contaminated.

The DNR is accepting comments on the draft permit through Jan. 25. Clayton said its not clear how long it will take the agency to issue the final permit.

We are receiving quite a bit of public comment, he said. Well have to review those and consider them.
On Oct. 26, nine organic organizations representing organic farmers and consumers delivered two petitions with 15,234 signatures asking Danone North America, owner of Horizon Organic, not to leave the northeast and leave 89 dairy farm families without a market.
The Pennsylvania milk industry is already being affected by labor shortages and supply chain issues. According to Carol Hardbarger of the Milk Marketing Board, things may get worse.
Spreading manure in the winter is discouraged, but if it's absolutely unavoidable on your farm, following the regulations for winter spreading in Pennsylvania will help to reduce the risk of nutrient losses.
Mumbai, Jan 10 (PTI) One person died and two others were hospitalised apparently after inhaling a gas which leaked in Ghatkopar area of Mumbai on Monday morning, a civic official said.

Also Read | Air Quality in Delhi Improves to Good Category After Rains.

The incident took place at Kurla Industrial Estate in Narayan Nagar at around 8.15 am when methanol and cyanuric chloride leaked there, he said.

Also Read | Mumbai Businessman Duped Of Rs 4.20 Lakh By Online Fraudster By Offering Him International Credit Card.

Three people were rushed to the nearby Rajawadi Hospital where doctors declared one of them as brought dead, the official said.

The deceased was identified as Ramnivas Saroj (36).

The two other two persons, Rubin Solkar (36) and Sarvansh Sonavane (25), were undergoing treatment and their condition was reported to be stable, the official said.

The cause of the gas leak was not yet known, he said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, January 10: Forty-six inmates and 43 staffers of three jails in Delhi have tested positive for COVID-19, officials said on Monday. "All the infected inmates as well as staffers have been under isolation and are recovering," said a senior jail official.

According to data shared by the jail authorities, 46 inmates tested positive till Sunday -- 29 inmates in Tihar and the remaining 17 in Mandoli jail. Among the 43 infected staffers, 25 are from Tihar, 12 from Rohini jail and six from Mandoli jail.

As part of the steps taken to contain the spread of the viral disease in Tihar, Mandoli and Rohini jail complexes, prison dispensaries have been turned into Covid care centres. An oxygen plant in Tihar will be functional soon, officials said. Maharashtra Reports 44,388 New COVID-19 Cases, 12 Deaths Reported in Past 24 Hours, Omicron Count in State at 1216.

Many medical isolation cells have been set up for inmates showing slight symptoms of COVID-19, they said. Those who test positive but are asymptomatic will be kept in separate isolation cells within the same jail.

The 120-bed hospital in Tihar and the 48-bed facility in Mandoli have been converted into Covid Health Centres. The jail administration said they have formed four committees to look after the infected inmates and staffers.

Social distancing among staff members and inmates is followed to the extent possible. Inmates are mostly restricted to their wards and awareness programmes about following Covid norms are carried out regularly, officials said. COVID-19 Booster Doses For Citizens Above 60, Healthcare Workers To Begin In India From Today.

The total number of prisoners in all the three jails of Delhi Prisons as of January 7 was 18,528. Tihar has a maximum of 12,669 inmates, Mandoli 4,018 and Rohini 1,841.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, January 10: Amid surging Covid-19 cases in Delhi, the dine-in service in restaurants is likely to be discontinued in the national capital, sources told ANI.

In its meeting, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) has decided to only allow the take-away services in the restaurants, sources added.

Also Read | COVID-19 in Mumbai: BMC Must Ensure Citizens Are Safe From Omicron Variant, Says Bombay High Court.

Earlier, the eateries and bars in the capital were allowed to run with 50 per cent capacity to curb the spread of coronavirus.

Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal chaired the meeting, which was held on Monday.

Also Read | 'Virgin Coconut Oil Dissolves COVID-19 Virus': Supreme Court Junks Plea on Seeking Addendum to NDMA.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia, Health Minister Satyendar Jain, Revenue Minister Kailash Gehlot, Chief Secretary Vijay Dev and other health department officials were present in the meeting.

The DDMA in its previous meeting, held on Tuesday, had decided to impose a weekend curfew in Delhi to avoid people crowding the markets and public places.

The authorities also ordered the closure of schools, colleges, cinemas and gyms besides putting various restrictions on the functioning of shops and public transport as a Yellow Alert was sounded under the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP).

The night curfew has is imposed from 10 pm (earlier 11 pm) to 5 am in the national capital.

Delhi had logged 22,751 new COVID-19 cases during the last 24 hours, the state health department informed on Sunday.

As per a bulletin issued by the health department, the positivity rate for the day stands at 23.53 per cent.

With this, the total cases of the COVID-19 in the city have gone up to 15,49,730 including 60,733 active cases.

As many as 10,179 people recovered from the infection during the last 24 hours, taking the total recoveries in the national capital to 14,63,837.

However, the city also reported 17 COVID-related deaths in the last 24 hours. So far, 25,160 people have succumbed to the infection in Delhi.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, January 10: A man was arrested after he allegedly murdered his paralysed son in Delhi's Bharat Nagar area, said the police on Monday.

According to Delhi police, they received information at 1.24 pm on Sunday from Deep Chand Bandhu Hospital regarding the admission of a patient named Paramjeet in an unconscious state.

Upon examination, the doctors declared him brought dead. The body of the deceased was shifted to another hospital for an autopsy. According to police, Rekha, sister of the deceased, informed them on Sunday, when she came to her home, his brother Paramjeet was lying on the bed and had sustained injuries. Jharkhand Shocker: Man Kills Son for Intervening in Row With Wife in Ratu; Absconding.

Rekha said, "My brother told me that father had come in an inebriated condition and beat him with wooden stick. Paramjeet was paralysed for the past 14 years and was bedridden." The accused has been identified as Ajmer Singh. Police have registered a case under section 302 of the IPC. Further investigation is underway.
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], January 10 (ANI): Karnataka Home minister Araga Jnanendra on Monday informed that an FIR has been registered against 30 people for violating COVID-19 protocols during Congress' Mekedatu padayatra amid the COVID-19 restrictions in the state.

"FIR has been registered against 30 people for violating COVID-19 protocols. Ramanagara district administration has taken action as per the law. We will not spare anybody who violates the law," Araga Jnanendra told ANI.

Also Read | PM Narendra Modi Security Lapse Case: Supreme Court Sets Up Panel Headed by Ex-SC Judge To Probe The Incident.

The Congress in Karnataka on Sunday began its 11 days padayatra, demanding implementation of the Mekedatu project across the Cauvery river, despite the government's COVID-19 restrictions.

Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai slammed Congress leader DK Shivakumar, who reportedly refused to take a COVID test after the padayatra.

Also Read | PM Narendra Modi Sends 100 Pairs of Jute Footwear for Those Working at Kashi Vishwanath Dham.

"This shows his culture; he is not bothered about the health of other people also," the Chief Minister said.

Shivakumar was leading the yatra.

The Home Minister had earlier informed that the state government have given free hand to the Ramanagar District Collector and Superintendent of Police to take action as per law.

The Karnataka government has imposed a curfew on weekends and restricted public gatherings to fight the third wave of COVID-19, till January 19. It has also imposed a night curfew and has prohibited all rallies, dharnas, protests, among others.

The Mekedatu balancing reservoir-cum drinking water project, to be constructed across the Cauvery river basin, has been at the centre of controversy between the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Earlier too on July 12, 2021, Bommai had said that the Centre will have to give clearance to the project as per law and there is no reason the state government will stop the project. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Idukki (Ker), Jan 10 (PTI) A Students Federation of India (SFI) activist was stabbed to death at the Idukki Engineering College here on Monday, allegedly by Youth Congress activists, police said.

Also Read | Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope Says Third Wave of Coronavirus Has Started, Will Peak by January-End.

Dheeraj Rajendan (21), a Kannur resident, and two others were attacked at around 1 PM, they said.

Also Read | Gangasagar Mela 2022: Eastern Railway to Run Special EMU Trains Between January 12-17.

"College election works have been going on in the college for the last few days. There were minor issues between both the student organisations. He was shifted to a medical college here but could not be saved," police told PTI.

Abjijith and Amal are the two other students who were injured in the attack. Police said the condition of one person is serious.

Police said as per preliminary investigation, it was a Youth Congress district leader Nikhil Paily who reached the college with a gang from outside and stabbed Dheeraj and others and escaped from the campus.

He was later taken into custody, police said.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan condoled the death and said attempts to create violence in campuses cannot be accepted.

"The murder of Dheeraj Rajendran, a student of Idukki Painavu Government Engineering College and an SFI activist, is extremely sad and highly condemnable. Attempts to create violence in college campuses will not be allowed under any circumstances. Police have been directed to bring Dheeraj's killers to justice as soon as possible," Vijayan said.

Higher Education Minister R Bindu said a gang led by a Youth Congress leader entered the college and attacked the students.

"A student was killed. Another is in serious condition in the hospital. The government will take all necessary steps to bring to justice those who were part of this brutal murder. We will ensure that such violent acts are not repeated on the campuses. Ideology should be fought with ideology and not with weapons," Bindu said.

CPI(M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan told reporters that the murder was pre-planned and this was the 21st Left worker killed in the state in the last six years.

"We condemn the murder of Dheeraj. When the Congress was sure that they would lose in the college election, the youth congress workers from outside attacked the SFI students. This is their plan to make campuses in the state a breeding ground for violence...21 CPI(M) workers have been killed in the state in the last six years by BJP, Congress and the SDPI. They should end the politics of violence," Balakrishnan said.

He alleged the Congress was trying to destroy the law and order situation in the state.

Meanwhile, state Congress chief K Sudhakaran said his party will not support any sort of violence.

"Let the people of Kerala decide who is more violent. Can anyone provide any details about any campus in the state where KSU (Students wing of Congress) has called for an attack. We all know who is behind all the attacks. It's the SFI which terrorises campuses. They don't have any right to blame us. They need to introspect the reason behind the murder," Sudhakaran told the media.

Hundreds of students and senior Left leaders, including MLAs, have gathered at the Idukki Medical college where the body of the student activist has been kept.

The incident also sparked protests by the activists of SFI and DYFI in other parts of the state.

Tension prevailed in Malappuram as a protest march organised by the DYFI activists passed near the venue of a Congress convention attended by KPCC chief Sudhakaran.

Youth Congress workers attending the convention countered the DYFI activists by raising slogans. Workers of the Youth Congress and the DYFI came close to exchanging blows, leading to a tense situation in the area.

Later, leaders of the Congress and the CPI(M) managed to pacify the groups.

In Ernakulam, activists of the SFI and the KSU clashed at a college.

Students injured in the clash have been admitted to various hospitals in Kochi, police said.

The Congress alleged that the protesting SFI and DYFI activists destroyed flag posts of the party and its student outfit KSU in many places including Pathanamthitta, Kollam and Idukki.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, Jan 10 (PTI) A majority of Covid patients during this Omicron-driven surge of infections have so far shown mild symptoms that can be managed at home with symptomatic treatment, an AIIMS doctor said on Monday and stressed that antiviral pill Molnupiravir is no magic drug for the disease.

There is no specific drug against COVID-19 as of now and the treatment still remains symptomatic, said Dr Neeraj Nischal, an additional professor in the Department of Medicine at AIIMS.

Also Read | Jammu and Kashmir: 2 Terrorists Killed by Security Forces in Encounter in Kulgam.

All that is needed is close supervision of patients, especially those who are at risk such as the elderly with comorbidities and those who are still not vaccinated, he said.

Dr Nischal said, "Pandemic does not mean that unless your doctor prescribes multiple drugs or fancy pills you are not going to get okay. At the end of the day, patience, a positivity of mind and paracetamol will see a majority of patients through."

Also Read | Mumbai Shocker: 19-Year-Old Woman Abandons Newborn Under Parked Car in Mira Road, Arrested.

"A majority of the infected patients during the third wave of Covid so far have shown mild symptoms which can be easily managed at home with symptomatic treatment," he said.

About the recently approved drug Molnupiravir, the doctor said it is being touted as a magic pill, which is not the case.

"Data of this particular molecule is not that robust as is being claimed. Most importantly, the population in which the trial was conducted and the type of virus variant prevalent at that time is entirely different from today's scenarios, Dr Nischal said.

A large portion of the population is now vaccinated and the prevalent coronavirus variant is Omicron.

Molnupiravir works by inducing mutation in the virus by substituting one of the components that is also present in human genetic material.

"So, apart from theoretical possibility of selecting a mutant virus which could be more dangerous, it can also affect rapidly dividing cells of human beings like cells of reproductive organs in male, foetus in pregnant women, bone and cartilage of young adults and children," the doctor explained.

People must remember that this drug has been given restricted emergency use authorisation in a very selective group of patients who are at risk of developing serious disease and have no other therapeutic options, he said.

"So efforts should be made to restrict the use of this drug as the known and unknown harm is much more than the limited benefit it may offer. It should not become an over-the-counter medicine and should be prescribed with due diligence."

Indian Council of Medical Research Director-General Dr Balram Bhargava had last week said Molnupiravir has major safety concerns and has not been included in the national protocol for the treatment of COVID-19.

Another drug that is being prescribed to patients is a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies (casirivimab and imdevimab). It must be remembered that this is not effective against Omicron and its use in the previously infected/vaccinated population is also not clear, Dr Nischal said.

So, in the present context it should not be used irrationally, he underlined.

One should keep faith in their immune response which can be boosted by a healthy lifestyle, vaccination and following covid appropriate behaviour, Dr Nischal said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
New Delhi, Jan 10 (PTI) The Rafale maritime fighter aircraft on Monday demonstrated its operational capability at a naval facility in Goa as the Navy plans to acquire a fleet of combat jets for its indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC) Vikrant, people familiar with the development said.

The demonstration by the naval variant of the Rafale jet took place at the shore-based test facility (SBTF) at INS Hansa, the naval air station in Goa, they said.

Also Read | Assembly Elections 2022: As EC Bars Physical Rallies Given COVID-19 Situation, Heres a Look at Twitter Numbers of Parties Before State Polls.

The Indian Navy is planning to procure a batch of fighter jets for IAC Vikrant that is likely to be commissioned in August.

IAC Vikrant is currently undergoing critical sea trials.

Also Read | No Blanket Ban on Cannabis, Have Allowed it For Medical Use: Centre Tells Delhi High Court.

Over four years back, the Indian Navy had initiated the process to acquire 57 multi-role combat aircraft for its aircraft carrier.

Four planes were in contention for the deal which included Rafale (Dassault, France), F-18 Super Hornet (Boeing, US), MIG-29K (Russia) and Gripen (Saab, Sweden).

In March, F-18 Super Hornet is likely to demonstrate its operational capabilities.

At present, the Indian Navy operates Russian-origin MiG-29K fighters from its sole aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya.

The Request For Information issued by the Navy for procurement of the deck-based fighter jets sought to know at what level of Transfer of Technology (ToT) the companies are willing to share with India.

India had signed an inter-governmental agreement with France in September 2016 for the procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets at a cost of around Rs 59,000 crore for the Indian Air Force.

The first batch of five Rafale jets, manufactured by French aerospace major Dassault Aviation, arrived in India on July 29, 2020.

Already 33 Rafale jets have been delivered to the IAF by the plane's maker Dassault Aviation.

French defence minister Florence Parly, during a visit to India last month, indicated that France will be interested to supply the carrier-based jets.

"We know that the aircraft carrier will soon be...that aircraft are needed. We are open and ready to provide any other Rafale if this is India's decision," she said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Patna (Bihar) [India], January 10 (ANI): After Bharatiya Janata Party MLA from Bihar's Narkatiaganj Rashmi Verma announces her resignation citing "personal reasons", party's state president Sanjay Jaiswal informed that the MLA wrote the letter due to some family issue but did not present it to the Legislative Assembly speaker.

"There were some family issues with Rashmi Verma. She had written her resignation letter but did not present it to the Legislative Assembly speaker. Her personal issues have nothing to do with her political career. She will come back," Jaiswal said.

Also Read | Jammu and Kashmir Weather Forecast: Climate in Union Territory to Remain Dry Till January 16.

Earlier on Sunday, Narkatiaganj's MLA wrote a letter to the Speaker of the Bihar Legislative Assembly which read, "I am resigning from the membership of Bihar Legislative Assembly because of my personal reasons. Kindly accept my resignation."

She was elected to Bihar Assembly from Narkatiaganj seat on BJP ticket in the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections.

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With the announcement of resignation by Rashmi Verma, the tally of BJP in Assembly will reduce to 73 if Speaker accepts her resignation.

The NDA had secured a 125-seat majority in the 243-seat strong Bihar Legislative Assembly in 2020, of which BJP won on 74 seats, JD(U) on 43 while eight seats were won by two other NDA constituents. The RJD, on the other hand, emerged as the single-largest party with 75 seats while the Congress only won 19 of the 70 seats it had contested on. (ANI)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Muzaffarnagar, January 10: Fifty-five companies of paramilitary personnel will be deployed in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh for peaceful conduct of assembly polls to be held on February 10, an official said. District Magistrate Chandra Bhushan Singh said the district has six assembly constituencies and 20,20,826 voters, including 9,37,688 women.

He said the district has been divided into 25 zones and 156 sectors to be overseen by zonal and sectoral magistrates. Fifty-five companies of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) personnel will be deployed in the district for peaceful conduct of assembly polls. Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections 2022 Dates And Full Schedule: Voting in 7 Phases on Feb 10, 14, 20, 23, 27, March 3, 7; Counting And Results on March 10.

One company of CAPF usually has around a hundred personnel. Senior Superintendent of Police Abhishek Yadav said 238 antisocial elements have been "expelled" from the district for six months and 200 more will be expelled as a preventive measure.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Mumbai, Jan 10 (PTI) Outward foreign direct investment by Indian companies fell by over 8 per cent to USD 2.05 billion in December 2021 in the current fiscal, data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) showed on Monday.

The domestic companies had invested USD 2.23 billion in their overseas joint ventures and fully-owned subsidiaries during December 2020 in the previous financial year.

Also Read | COVID-19 in India: 5-10% Coronavirus Cases Needed Hospitalisation So Far but Situation May Change Rapidly, Says Centre.

Of the total investment made by the Indian companies overseas during the month, USD 1.22 billion was in the form of issuance of guarantees, USD 464.39 million was equity participation and USD 367.17 million investment was made through loans, as per the RBI data on Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) for December 2021.

The major investors who infused capital in their overseas ventures included ANI Technologies -- the promoter of mobility solutions provider Ola -- which invested USD 675 million in its wholly-owned subsidiary in Singapore, and Dr Reddy's investment of USD 149.99 million in a joint-venture in the US.

Also Read | COVID-19 in Mumbai: BMC Must Ensure Citizens Are Safe From Omicron Variant, Says Bombay High Court.

Reliance New Energy Solar Ltd invested a total of USD 168.60 million in a JV and wholly-owned subsidiary in Germany and Norway, while energy PSU Gail India infused USD 70.17 million in a joint-venture and a wholly-owned unit in Myanmar and the US.

State-owned oil explorer ONGC invested USD 74.15 million in five different ventures in various countries during the month, as per the data.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Dhaka, January 10: Around 1,200 Rohingya refugees' homes were destroyed in a massive fire in the Kata area of Camp-16 refugee camp in Ukhiya of Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh on Sunday. The cause of the blaze has not been established yet. No casualty has been reported so far. The fire broke out around 4:55 pm, said Additional Superintendent of Police, Kamran Hossen, of Armed Police Battalion-8. He added that the fire rapidly spread and destroyed around 1,200 Rohingya refugee homes, reported The Daily Star.

It was doused around 9:10 pm, said Emdadul Haque, station officer of Ukhiya Fire Station in Cox's Bazar. Enamul Hossen, a firefighter, stated that soon after getting the information about the blaze around 4.50 pm, four units of the fire station and dozens more from Cox's Bazar were rushed to the scene. Rohingya Refugee Crisis: UN, Bangladesh Sign Deal to Aid Rohingya on Island in Bay of Bengal

Locals also said that at around 5:00 pm, they saw thick smoke billowing over the camp. Saddam Hossain, a local of Shafiullah Kata area, told The Daily Star that he saw hundreds of homes gutted in the fire. "Fire service, along with other Government agencies, are trying hard to douse the fire," he said last night. Fire in Rohingya Camp: Fire Guts Hundreds of Shelters and Leaving Thousands Homeless in Southern Bangladesh.

This is not the first time that a fire has broken out in the Rohingya camps. Incidents of fire have become common in the Rohingya camps in Cox's Bazar. Officials concerned have often attributed the origin of fires to gas cylinders. However, insiders in Rohingya camps have claimed that the fire is a result of arson. Notably, In March last year, 10,000 homes were gutted in a massive fire in four camps in Balukhali of Ukhiya, reported The Daily Star.
New Delhi, Jan 10: Observing the difference between married and unmarried relationships, the Delhi High Court said on Monday that marriage gives a legal right to expect reasonable sexual relations from the partner.

Hearing a batch of pleas on marital rape, Justice C. Hari Shankar noted that there is a qualitative difference and expectation of conjugal relationship for both parties.

"We are not recognising the difference if we are saying that they are at par. When a party gets married, each has an expectation, and to an extent a right also, to expect normal sexual relationship from each other, which does not exist if there is no marriage," observed the bench also comprising Justice Rajiv Shakdher. Andhra Pradesh: Youth Arrested for Blackmailing and Extorting Money From Over 300 Women in Kadapa.

However, Justice Shankar also said that there is no denying the fact that marital rapes should be punished.

"There is no compromise with a woman's right to sexual and bodily integrity. A husband has no business to compel," he said.

He also said that there is no concept of marital rape in India. "If it is rape -- marital, non-marital or of any kind -- it has to be punished. Repeated use of the word, according to me, obfuscates the actual issue," he added.

Further arguments will continue on Tuesday.

Recently, the Gujarat High Court had issued notices to the state and the Centre in response to a PIL challenging the constitutional validity of marital rape.

The PIL challenged Section 375(2) of IPC which exonerates a husband from the punishment of rape for forcible physical relations with his legally wedded wife without her consent.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 10, 2022 11:41 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Jodhpur, January 10: In a shocking incident, a class 11 girl was allegedly gangraped by her school teacher and two others in Rajasthans Jodhpur district on Thursday. The girl was abducted on Thursday night by an aide of the private school teacher on Thursday. The incident took place in Punasar village under the Matora police station in the Osain area of the district. The rape survivor was reportedly found in the house of the teacher in a semi-conscious state. Rajasthan Horror: Minor Girl Allegedly Gangraped By Five, Including Minor, in Nagaur; 2 Arrested.

According to a report published in The Times of India, the girl was abducted on Thursday when she had left her home for some work. As the girl did not return, her family started searching for her. The school teacher has been identified as Satya Prakash. On Friday morning, a villager heard screams of the girl from Prakashs home. When the rape survivors family and villagers entered the house, they found her locked inside the bathroom.

The police were then informed. The police arrested the school teacher. The girl revealed that the accused had been raping her for the past three years. They even threatened her not to tell anybody. The girls brother then lodged a complaint against the accused. Rajasthan: Minor Girl Gang-Raped in Alwar, Accused Shoots Video to Threaten Her Against Reporting the Incident.

On the basis of the complaint, a case of gangrape and abduction has been registered against all the three accused. As per the media report, the two accused first raped the girl on a farm and then took her to the teachers house and then again sexually assaulted her. A detailed investigation has been initiated in the matter. The police have launched a manhunt operation to nab the accused.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 10, 2022 10:33 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
What would you do if, when you were ten, you were left to fend for yourself, and, in order to survive, you had to undertake a harrowing journey all the way from Afghanistan to Italy?

In early 2002, Enaiatollah Akbaris village fell prey to the Taliban. His mother, fearing for his life, led him across the border. So began Enaiats remarkable and often publishing five-year ordealtrekking across bitterly cold mountains, riding the suffocating false bottom of a truck, steering an inflatable raft in violent watersthrough Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, and Greece, before he eventually sought political asylum in Italy, all before he turned fifteen years old.

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New Delhi, January 10: The Supreme Court on Monday junked a plea by a lawyer seeking directions to make a certain addendum to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) following research claiming that virgin coconut oil dissolves Covid-19 virus.

A bench comprising Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and M.M. Sundresh noted that the petitioner, who appeared in-person, wants certain addendums to the NDMA, based on a claim that a respectable scientist who had conducted research on a solution for Covid-19, claims virgin coconut oil dissolves the virus. "We cannot let every person who thinks he has a solution to the virus to come up in a petition under Article 32", said the bench. The petitioner had made the prime minister and others as respondents in the petition.

The petitioner Krishnaswamy Dhanabalan, who claimed to be an advocate enrolled with the Karnataka Bar Council, also sought top court's intervention to direct the Centre to take action against China for spreading Covid-19, as a biological weapon. The bench said: "To say the least, this is misconceived...as it is for the elected government to take action, if any action has to be taken..." PM Narendra Modi Security Lapse Case: Supreme Court Sets Up Panel Headed by Ex-SC Judge To Probe The Incident.

In another prayer in the petition, the petitioner sought court to pass direction to make certain addendums to NDMA, based on research claiming virgin coconut oil dissolves the virus.

Dismissing the plea, the bench said it was convinced that the petitioner was pulling off a publicity stunt by filing such a petition, however it allowed the petitioner to make suggestions before the concerned authority. "Nothing had prevented him from making suggestions to the appropriate authority...," noted the bench. COVID-19 in India: 4 Judges, 5% of Supreme Court Staff Test Positive for Coronavirus.

During the hearing, the petitioner, seeking admission of the plea, submitted that the petition is in the interest of the people amid the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

At the beginning of the hearing, the bench told the lawyer, "What kind of petition is this? You are a lawyer; you say that India has some right to control China...What is going on?" After a brief hearing in the matter, the top court dismissed the plea.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 10, 2022 02:57 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Mumbai, January 10: Samsung has shut down its Tizen app store for both its new and existing users. According to GSMArena, the company closed registrations and made the store available only to existing users and they could only get previously downloaded apps.

After December 31, 2021, the Tizen app store was permanently closed and Samsung Z series smartphone users were suggests to switch over to Android or iOS. Despite completely switching to Android for its phones and Wear OS for its smartwatches, Samsung recently unveiled its new smart TVs recently and they are still running Tizen OS. Samsung Launches Flagship Galaxy S21 FE 5G in India At Introductory Price Of Rs 49,999; Handset To Be Available From January 11.

Tizen OS for smart TVs is quite feature-rich and offers a collection of all popular audio and video streaming services. It even integrates Samsung Health, SmartThings, Samsung TV Plus, and various other gaming features.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 10, 2022 01:22 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
The Supreme Court has often dealt a big blow to presidents in their second term.

Harry Truman was rebuked for claiming the power to seize strike-bound steel mills during the Korean War. Richard Nixon resigned shortly after the court ruled unanimously he must turn over the Watergate tapes.

Bill Clintons impeachment was triggered by the courts decision that he must answer questions under oath in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. And George W. Bush lost before the court when he claimed his power as commander in chief gave him almost unfettered authority over prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Now, as President Obama begins his last year in office, the court is set to render a verdict on his use of his executive authority. The justices will decide whether he violated the law by authorizing more than 4 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally to come out of the shadows without fear of deportation and obtain work permits.

There are signs that at least some of the justices are ready to rein in the presidents ability to take such bold action without the approval of Congress.

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Never before has the high court ruled that a president violated his constitutional duty to take care that laws are faithfully executed. Yet when justices agreed to hear the immigration case, they surprised many by asking both sides to present arguments on whether Obamas actions violated the rarely invoked take care provision. That question had not even been at issue when lower courts blocked Obamas plan from taking effect.

In a separate pending case this term, the court also will rule on whether the president and his healthcare advisors went too far by requiring Catholic charities and other faith-based employers to formally opt out of providing a full range of contraceptives to their female employees by citing their religious objections.

The faith-based entities argued that by notifying the government of their decision to opt out  which triggers a process under which employees would get contraceptive coverage by other means  they would be complicit in supplying abortion-inducing drugs.

The decisions, both due by summer, will help answer a question that looms over Obamas presidency. Has he properly used his power as chief executive to circumvent congressional gridlock on issues such as immigration, climate change and healthcare, or has he gone too far and violated his duty to enforce the laws as set by Congress?

The cases come before the court with a backdrop of Republican claims that the president has overreached and abused his power. Former House Speaker John A. Boehner said Obama was acting like a king and damaging the presidency when he announced the deportation-relief plan now before the high court.

On the campaign trail, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas promises GOP voters that, if he is elected president, his first task on his first day in the White House will be to rescind every illegal and unconstitutional executive action of Barack Obama.

White House officials and supporters of the president counter that Obamas actions are not only legal and well within his discretionary authority, but that Congress has left him no choice by refusing to take action on pressing national problems.

Conservative scholars think Obama has left himself vulnerable by announcing broad executive actions on policies that had been considered and rejected by Congress, and which even he once said were beyond his authority.

In his first term, Obama told Latino activists who were pushing him to take unilateral action that he could not waive away the laws Congress put in place regarding the removal of immigrants who entered the country illegally. But later the president decided he did have the power to suspend deportation and offer lawful presence and work permits to as many as 5 million of those immigrants.

So far conservatives have mostly failed to derail Obama in the Supreme Court. Twice, the justices upheld the presidents healthcare law against conservative attacks, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. casting his vote with the courts four liberals.

Four years ago, in a key test of state-versus-federal power, the court ruled for Obama after his administration sued to block Arizona from enforcing a law to crack down on immigrants in the country illegally.

In 2011, Obama and then-Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. raised ruffles on the right when they announced the administration would not defend in court the Defense of Marriage Act, which recognized only marriages between a man and a woman. House Republicans took up the cause, but two years later the high court agreed with the administration and struck down key parts of the law as unconstitutional.

But the new immigration and contraceptive cases pose a tough test for Obamas lawyers. In last years healthcare case, they were defending a law that had won approval in Congress, when both chambers were controlled by Democrats. We must respect the role of the legislature and take care not to undo what it has done, Roberts said in upholding its system of insurance subsidies.

This year, by contrast, Obama is defending an executive action on immigration that was taken without the approval of Congress and in the face of fierce Republican criticism.

Similarly, the contraceptive mandate was not spelled out in the Affordable Care Act, as lawyers for Catholic bishops often point out. It was adopted later in a regulation issued by Obamas healthcare advisors.

But Obamas defenders, including immigration law experts, say the critics are missing the crucial point that the deportation laws give the chief executive a free hand to decide how or whether to deport those living here illegally. Contrary to what many assume, the law does not say federal officials must arrest and deport such people. Rather, it says they are subject to removal, based on policies and priorities set by the executive branch.

Obamas administration says it wants to focus on deporting criminals, security threats, gang members and drug traffickers, not parents and grandparents who have children in the United States legally.

The administration can quote a powerful voice to back up its view of the matter. Aliens may be removed if they entered the country illegally and committed crimes, said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, but a principal feature of the removal system is the broad discretion exercised by immigration officials.... Federal officials, as an initial matter, must decide whether it makes sense to pursue removal at all. As a general rule, it is not a crime for a removable alien to remain present in the United States.

Kennedy spoke for the court four years ago in rejecting Arizonas claim that immigrants who could not prove their citizenship should be arrested, and Roberts agreed. Kennedys explanation of the deportation system may also defeat any claims that Obama is violating his duty to faithfully execute the law.

The president is not claiming a constitutional authority to not enforce the law. Hes claiming authority based on the immigration statute, said Walter Dellinger, a White House lawyer under President Clinton. And if the court says he is wrong, then he will comply with that.

On Twitter: @DavidGSavage

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At least 10 people died in Brazil after a huge slab of cliff rock crashed down onto leisure boats in a lake at Capitolio on Saturday.

Al Jazeera reported that at least 32 were also injured after the rock smashed into the water, landing on two small tourist boats, while a number of other vessels sped away. But most of them have been released from the healthcare facilities by Saturday evening.

The said cliff wall is located in Brazil's Furnas Lake, a popular tourist attraction in Capitolio at Minas Gerais state, roughly 420 km north of Sao Paolo. The said lake was created in 1958 for the installation of a hydroelectric plant.

READ NEXT: Brazil: 18 People Dead, More Than 280 Injured in Floods as 2 Dams Break Amid Heavy Rains

Video Shows How Cliff Rock Fell on Brazil Lake

Videos of the incident showed a column of rock crashing down on tourist boats and sending a huge wave over the lake.

A Big block of rock from one of the canyons of Capitolio, in Minas Gerais, Brazil, broke free and hit at least two speedboats that were moored in Lake Furnas.



Firefighters from Minas Gerais were called to the region. Pray  pic.twitter.com/NEbRPt6cOT  Kennia Wiswesser  (@KWiswesser) January 8, 2022

Tourists could be heard screaming in the clip. At least one of the boats appeared to have sunk, while others have managed to escape from the huge wave the rock created.

According to BBC, the incident occurred at around 11 a.m. local time. Brazil's fire officials noted that the canyon wall collapsed after days of rains in Minas Gerais, making the cliffs more susceptible to collapse.

The bodies were reportedly taken to Passos city, where coroners were working to identify them. Regional civil police official Marcos Pimenta identified one of the victims as 68-year-old Julio Borges Antunes.

According to Pimenta, identifying the victims would be challenging due to the "high energy impact" of the rock on the boaters.

Brazil Authorities Conduct Search in Lake for Missing People

Aside from the injured and dead, there were also missing individuals due to the incident. The local fire department deployed helicopters and divers to rescue the stunned tourists and find the missing victims, USA Today reported.

Alessandra Barbosa, a relative of some of the missing victims, told news outlet EPTV that she was seeking news about her uncles, who were spending the weekend at the site and took a boat tour of the cliff.

"I called local hospitals. So far I haven't had any information about them. We are distressed, very concerned," Barbosa noted.

Twenty people were initially reported missing, but Lieutenant Pedro Aihara told reporters that most were accounted for after checking the hospital lists.

Minas Gerais Governor Romeu Zema said the state government has been present from the beginning through the Civil Defense and Fire Department.

"We are suffering the pain of a tragedy in our state due to heavy rains, which caused the loosening of a wall of stones in Lake Furnas, in Capitolio," Zema tweeted.

Zema then extended his support and sympathies with the families during this "difficult time."

"I stand in solidarity with the families at this difficult time. We will continue to act to provide the necessary support," the governor noted.

Os trabalhos de resgate ainda estao em andamento. Solidarizo com as familias neste dificil momento. Seguiremos atuando para fornecer o apoio e amparo necessarios.  Romeu Zema (@RomeuZema) January 8, 2022

READ MORE: Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro Back in Hospital Over Intestinal Obstruction

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Death Toll From Brazil Waterfall Rock Face Collapse Rises to 10 - From Global News
Former President Donald Trump has canceled his January 6 press conference and decided to watch the Capitol riot commemoration furiously at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

According to Newsweek, the former president watched as President Joe Biden criticized him, blamed him directly for the chaos, and branded him a threat to American democracy.

A friend of the former president told Newsweek that Trump watched cable news shows broadcasting the events commemorating the first anniversary of the Capitol riot and spent all day "stewing" at home.

The friend said that Trump did not watch all of the events, but what he did see made him angry. The friend added that Trump called the events, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a speech by President Joe Biden, as the "Biden-Pelosi show," Business Insider reported.

Trump's close friends and political allies all said that he still angrily rejects any culpability for the January 6 insurrection.

According to Newsweek, a Palm Beach friend of Donald Trump said the former president said his critics cannot talk about anything else because "the guy," referring to Biden, "is such a disaster."

Donald Trump has canceled his press conference on January 6 at his Mar-a-Lago home. Trump noted that he would be canceling the press conference in light of the "total bias and dishonesty" of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack.

The former president said he would discuss many "important topics" at his rally in Arizona on January 15, adding that it would be a big crowd.

But reports said that family members and political allies had warned Trump that the press conference would backfire, saying that whatever he said, the press would make him look like a "denier."

READ NEXT: Pres. Joe Biden Avoided Naming Donald Trump in Speech Marking Capitol Riot Anniversary, Here's Why

Joe Biden Blames Donald Trump for the January 6 Capitol Attack

In his January 6 speech at Statuary Hall outside the House chamber, Joe Biden said that for the first time in U.S. history, "a president not just lost the election, he tried to prevent a peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol."

Biden noted that the nation should make sure that it will never happen again. The president said that Trump, without mentioning his name, "values power over principle," and his "bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy." He added that the "defeated former president" could not accept he lost.

Biden further noted that Trump continued with the lie that he won the election because "he sees his own interest as more important than his country's interest, than America's interest."

Joe Biden added that Trump only sat in the White House while watching the event unfold on television, "doing nothing."

The president also decried the rioters for ransacking the Capitol and destroying property. Biden said he would defend the country and would not allow anyone "to place a dagger at the throat of democracy."

Reacting to Biden's statement, Donald Trump called Biden's speech "political theater" and said it was a distraction for his failures.

He also reiterated his false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election, which was rigged. He added that the Democrats wanted to own the day of January 6 "so they can stoke fears and divide America."

A friend told Newsweek that the reason Trump was so fixated on the so-called stolen election was that "he still can't believe he lost to that guy (Biden)," whom he thinks was "feeble and incompetent."

Capitol Police Officer Sues Donald Trump on January 6 Anniversary

A Capitol Police officer filed a lawsuit on the anniversary of the Capitol attack, accusing Donald Trump of contributing to injuries she sustained during the January 6 insurrection, NBC News reported.

In a 57-page lawsuit, officer Briana Kirkland alleged that Trump was the leader of the mob, who violently breached the Capitol grounds. The lawsuit added that his supporters took cues from Trump's campaign rhetoric and personal tweets.

The lawsuit noted that Trump was in a position of extraordinary influence over his followers, who had committed assault and battery on Kirkland. Trump's representative has yet to respond on the matter.

The January 6 House committee said they expect former Vice President Mike Pence to voluntarily appear this month. Donald Trump has reportedly pressured Pence to step out of his ceremonial role and reject Biden's election results in several key states, NPR reported.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the Democratic-led House select committee, described Pence's appearance as critical since the former vice president ultimately issued a letter before January 6 proceedings, saying that he would continue with his ceremonial role and would not be stepping down.

Thompson said the committee is meeting next week behind closed doors and expects to solidify final plans regarding Pence.

READ MORE: Justice Department Indicts Steve Bannon with Contempt of Congress for Refusing to Comply Capitol Riot Subpoena

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Biden Condemns Trump's Actions on Anniversary of Jan. 6 Attack - From ABC News






Nine bodies believed to have been killed by the Jalisco cartel gunmen were found piled up on a roadside in Mexico's state of Veracruz.

According to NBC Chicago, the state public safety department said the killings were a reaction to "the results of work being done to fight crime."

Veracruz Governor Cuitlahuac Garcia noted a total of nine corpses were left on a highway in the municipality of Isla in Veracruz and suggested the crime involved Mexican drug cartels.

Garcia said they would not allow any acts of revenge between the drug cartels. He added that previous Veracruz administrations had agreements with the Mexican drug cartels that operate in the state.

Garcia said they are going to take resounding action against all criminal groups that before had agreements with the previous state officials. He added that drug cartels "are a little angry" that such agreements ended with the current leadership.

Garcia noted that reinforcements were already being sent to the area to hunt for those responsible, vowing "no impunity,"

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Jalisco Cartel's Connection to the Murder of 9 People in Mexico

According to local media, a handwritten message was found at the scene, threatening authorities. The note purportedly left by the perpetrators was reportedly signed by "the four letters," commonly a reference to Jalisco Cartel, ABC News reported.

There are four letters in the initials of the cartel's formal name, Jalisco New Generation Cartel or Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG).

The message also said the dead victims found alongside the road included people connected to Veracruz state interior secretary Eric Cisneros, whom it accused of colluding with Mexican drug cartels. But Garcia dismissed the allegation, saying Cisneros "will continue working normally."

Other Bodies Found Left in SUV Outside Zacatecas State Governor's Office in Mexico

The state of Zacatecas in Mexico had found their own set of bodies left outside the state governor's office in a public square lit up with holiday decorations.

Ten bodies were crammed inside a Mazda SUV, which was abandoned in the main plaza of Zacatecas near a Christmas tree just before dawn.

Zacatecas chief prosecutor Francisco Murillo said seven of the 10 bodies were believed to have all died of "asphyxiation by strangulation."

Meanwhile, six of the bodies had shown injuries that implied that their feet and hands were tied, with one of the bodies showing signs of torture.

Zacatecas is reportedly being fought over by a number of Mexican drug cartels such as the Jalisco cartel, Sinaloa Cartel, Gulf Cartel, Northeast Cartel, and remnants of the Zetas cartel.

The Jalisco cartel is infamous for its public displays of extra violence and military power that experts say pose a growing threat to Mexico's nationalist president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

In June 2020, the Jalisco cartel's gunmen initiated one of the most brazen assaults in decades, with their attempt to assassinate Mexico City's security chief, according to The Guardian.

In March 2021, the body of a key defector, El Cholo, was dumped on a park bench in a tourist town near Guadalajara, Tlaquepaque.

Security specialist Eduardo Guerrero said authorities north and south of the U.S. border now consider the Jalisco cartel a national security threat.

Guerrero noted that the Mexican drug cartel has huge amounts of money armed with the latest weapons while possessing military-style paramilitary groups and vehicles.

The security specialist said the group represents a "very severe challenge" to the Mexican government. The Jalisco cartel is currently being led by Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, also known as El Mencho.

The Jalisco cartel boss continues to evade capture, and the U.S. government offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his arrest. El Mencho remains to be the most elusive criminal and is reportedly hiding in Mexico.

READ MORE: La Negra, Daughter of Jalisco Cartel Boss El Mencho, Gets 2 1/2 Years in Prison for Violation of Kingpin Act

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Mexican Cartels Are Arming Themselves With Powerful U.S. Sniper Rifles - From Vice News
To ensure there's enough staff to handle the surge of COVID-19 cases fueled by the Omicron variant, the California Department of Public Health issued new guidelines for COVID positive employees.

According to the department's guidelines issued on Saturday, health care workers who test positive for COVID-19 but are asymptomatic would be allowed to return to work in the hospitals. No quarantine or testing will be required, Daily Mail reported.

The guidelines noted that asymptomatic COVID positive workers should only interact with COVID-19 positive patients "to the extent possible."

The California Department of Public Health also said hospitals had "to exhaust all other options before resorting to this temporary tool."

Advocates for Health Workers Outraged by New Protocols in California

Advocates for health workers were outraged by the announcement, claiming that hospital employees had been carrying the burden of the pandemic on their shoulders and are now being put at risk, along with their patients.

"It doesn't make sense," said Melanie Reno, a cytotechnologist at Kaiser Permanente in Fresno. "We're treating people at their most vulnerable, at their sickest, and we're expected to still go to work sick."

Reno noted that she had seen the strain on her colleagues since the onset of the pandemic.

"They just want you to come in and do your job. It doesn't matter if you're sick. It doesn't matter if you're tired. It doesn't matter if you're overworked," she said.

The guidelines also said that positive healthcare workers must wear an N-95 respirator for source control and suggests that positive workers use a separate break room or restroom when possible.

In a statement, the California Department of Public Health said this tool "is to provide temporary help to hospitals and emergency care providers to adapt to an unprecedented surge and staffing shortages."

The new rules go into effect starting Saturday and continue until February 1.

READ NEXT: Mexico Popular Tourist Spots Become Hotspots for Rising COVID Infections

COVID Cases in California Continue to Surge

California has seen a seven-day average of 15,162 COVID cases, with over six million active cases reported in total. About 40 percent of hospitals are expected to face critical shortages.

The California Nurses Association (CNA) argued that the California Department of Public Health's measure would worsen the problem.

CNA president Sandra Reding said that instead of helping increase the number of healthcare workers, it would only increase the chance of nurses getting other nurses sick. She suggested setting up protocols to reduce transmission, which means not having COVID-positive people come to work.

The staffing shortages woes in California were reportedly exacerbated by Governor Gavin Newsom's vaccine mandate last year, which required health workers to get vaccinated or face termination.

It resulted in the suspension of more than 2,000 unvaccinated employees of the California health care consortium Kaiser Permanente in October.

Meanwhile, Newsom will deploy 200 California National Guard members to 50 testing sites across the state to serve as temporary clinical staff, while the permanent staff is hired in an effort to conduct more tests for more Californians.

READ MORE: Mexico Announces Newly Imposed Visa Requirements for Venezuelan Visitors

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Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: California Healthcare Workers Raise Concerns Over New State COVID-19 Protocols - From NBC Bay Area
Colombian Victor Escobar was the first person in Colombia without any terminal illness to die legally from euthanasia, his lawyer said.

In a video message sent to media by his lawyer Luis Giraldo, Escobar said, "we reached the goal for patients like me, who aren't terminal but degenerative, to win this battle," NBC News reported.

The 60-year-old Colombian noted that this battle "opens the doors for the other patients who come after me and who right now want a dignified death."

According to his lawyer, Escobar has suffered from end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and a number of other conditions. Escobar's procedure took place on Friday in a clinic in Cali, the capital city of Colombia's Valle del Cauca province.

The Colombian man noted that he is not saying goodbye, but rather "see you later." Escobar had fought for his right to euthanasia against doctors, clinics, and courts opposing it for two years.

Last year, the Constitutional Court recognized the procedure should be available for others besides the terminally ill.

Escobar described the injection of euthanasia as a "very tranquil death," according to a Click Orlando report. His family has declined to reveal the clinic's name where the euthanasia took place.

READ NEXT: DEA Agent Who Conspired With Colombian Drug Cartel Gets 12 Years in Prison

Another Person Died By Euthanasia in Colombia

Aside from Victor Escobar, a 51-year-old Colombian woman also died by euthanasia on Saturday after winning her legal fight to exercise the right.

Martha Sepulveda planned to become the first person in Colombia without a terminal prognosis to die by legally authorized euthanasia, Washington Post reported.

However, less than two days before she planned to die last October, a medical committee determined she no longer met the conditions and canceled the procedure. Reports said a judge eventually cleared the way for her to move forward.

In a statement, Sepulveda's lawyers' said that the mother and devout Catholic died based on her idea of autonomy and dignity. They noted that the procedure was carried out in the city of Medellin without any obstacles.

The Colombian woman suffered from the progressive neurological disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

She was diagnosed in November 2018 and started to lose control of the muscles in her legs. Her family and lawyers said that euthanasia offered her an escape from more suffering.

Sepulveda's lawyers noted that the fight to take control over the end of life continues and will not end until Colombians can access assisted medical death according to their will.

Sepulveda earlier spoke of her decision and her Catholic faith. She said that she knows God is the owner of life, but "God doesn't want to see me suffer."

The judge from Medellin, who ruled Sepulveda's entitlement to die by euthanasia, noted that patients who endure physical or mental suffering are legally allowed to access the procedure despite their prognosis not being terminal.

Euthanasia in Colombia

Colombia made euthanasia legal in 1997 for those considered to have fewer than six months to live. The legislature has not formally followed the court's lead by explicitly authorizing it, and some remain deeply opposing the matter.

In a statement in July, the Catholic Church noted that any "action or omission with the intention of provoking death to overcome pain constitutes homicide."

READ MORE: Colombia's Most-Wanted Drug Lord Dairo Antonio Usuga Arrested; Pres. Ivan Duque Likened It to Capture of Pablo Escobar

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: First Colombian Euthanized Without a Terminal Condition - From CGTN America






Queen Elizabeth II will be asked to help Prince Andrew to fund his multi-million dollar settlement with Virginia Roberts Giuffre if the Duke of York agrees.

Reports noted that the cost of the settlement could be around $6.794 million, with the Queen already funding the Duke of York's legal battle, according to an Insider report.

Andrew is also selling his $23 million Swiss Ski chalet to fund some of the fees. The property was owned by him with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson.

It was reported that Andrew is trying to speed up the sale of the property he bought in 2014. He had a dispute on the property with its former owner, Isabella de Rouvre.

de Rouvre claimed that the Duke of York still owed her 6.6million after allegedly missing the final installment for the property on Jan. 1, 2020.

The former owner agreed to drop the legal proceedings when it was shown that the property was close to selling for the asking price of 17.3million.

The Yorks are seen to repay the debt once the sale of the home goes through.

The monarch has been funding Andrew's legal fees since February when he first appointed a solicitor. The Queen's funds were sourced from the income from her private Duchy of Lancaster estate, according to a Daily Mail report.

READ NEXT: Prince Andrew Could Pay Virginia Roberts Giuffre $5 Million if Case Goes to Trial; Settlement Amount 10 Times the Sum Jeffrey Epstein Paid

Prince Andrew's Case Against Virginia Roberts Giuffre

Giuffre alleges that in 2001 when she was 17, she was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.

She noted that she was trafficked to have sex with the prince on three occasions, once in Maxwell's house in Belgravia. A picture was taken wherein the prince's hand was around Giuffre's waist.

The second time was said to be at Epstein's mansion in New York, while the third occasion was on Epstein's private island, Little St. James in the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to The Guardian report.

Meanwhile, the Queen's son consistently denied the allegations against him.

Andrew's lawyers have attempted to get the case thrown out on the grounds that Giuffre does not live in the United States.

They had also argued that the court summons had not been properly served.

One royal expert and author, Robert Lacey, said that he is quite sure that there would be some settlement out of court.

Catherine Mayer, the author of a biography of Prince Charles and co-founder of the Women's Equality party, noted that Buckingham Palace did "something very stupid" when the case first hit the spotlight in 2011.

Mayer said that the problem was that there had been no comprehensive strategy across the royal family on what to do.

Lacey also cited the instances when Andrew consorted with a couple whose lifestyle revolved around sexual exploitation for 10 years, noting the private plane nicknamed "Lolita Express," as well as inviting Epstein and Maxwell to stay at Balmoral.

Andrew is currently awaiting a ruling from Judge Lewis Kaplan to see if he can have the civil case against him dismissed.

READ MORE: Queen Elizabeth II Warns British Media to Stay Away From Balmoral - And Her Son Prince Andrew

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Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Prince Andrew to sell $32M Swiss chalet as Queen not paying legal fees - from Today Show Australia






The California-based pharmaceutical business, Moderna, provided Mexico with 2.7 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine as the country is currently threatened by a massive surge of COVID cases. Mexico's death toll has surpassed an alarming 300,000 mark.

Mexico recorded 300,000 test-confirmed coronavirus deaths, but a government review of death certificates puts the exact toll at roughly 460,000, owing to a lack of testing, US News reported.

Officials of the Mexican Government welcomed Saturday the shipment's arrival at Toluca Airport, west of Mexico City.

The donated vaccines will be used to inoculate teachers.

In April and May, over 2.7 million teachers received their first vaccines. However, the majority of them were given one dose of the Chinese CanSinoBIO vaccine, which appears to lose potency over time.

Mexico has received more than 200 million vaccination doses and is attempting to reopen its schools. The country tries to return to in-person learning at all levels.

The Secretary of Education, Delfina Gomez, expressed her delight at receiving this donation from Moderna, which would help more boys, girls, and teenagers feel safer and more confident in the classroom.

The donations came after Mexico's approval of the three-shot coronavirus vaccine in Cuba.

READ ALSO: Mexico Popular Tourist Spots Become Hotspots for Rising COVID Infections

COVID Cases in Mexico Rise During Holidays

After the busy holiday vacation season, coronavirus cases have increased, driven mainly by a large number of people in high-density tourist areas in the states of Cabo San Lucas, Cancun, and Mexico City.

In Mexico City, the number of daily new cases climbed from 276 on December 1 to 3,793 on January 3.

Quintana Roo, another state of Mexico, set a daily case record of 574 cases in March. On December 30, it came near to a record with 562 instances.

According to Mexico's tourism ministry, hotels in the farther south of Los Cabos were at 75 percent of their capacity during the week of Christmas. The waterfront and beaches in La Paz, Baja California Sur's capital, were also filled with tourists.

Mexico Lenient on COVID-19 Protocols

Mexico is one of the few countries that do not require travelers entering the country to have a negative COVID-19 test. This policy has boosted visitor numbers but incurred public health costs.

The country has kept its borders open; however, traffic at the common border with the United States was restricted to essential movements until November. Travelers were required to fill out a health form at airports, and many were monitoring their temperatures for a period.

Throughout the outbreak, Mexico has been welcoming travelers from around the world. The country has authorized the use of 10 different vaccines and has fully vaccinated 57% of its population.

With the spread of the new and highly contagious omicron variant, COVID-19 cases in Mexico continue to rise.

READ MORE: California Allows Hospitals to Make Asymptomatic COVID-19 Positive Employees to Work in Efforts to Curb Staff Shortage

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Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: Mexico surpasses 300,000 COVID-19 deaths - AlJazeera English
Bank of America clients looking to deposit or withdraw cash have a new destination to frequent in north Bethlehem.

The financial institution, serving about 66 million consumer and small business clients worldwide, in late November opened a drive-thru ATM at 1740 Stefko Blvd., according to Bank of America spokesperson Andy Aldridge.

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Bank of America, serving about 66 million consumer and small business clients worldwide, in late November opened a new drive-thru ATM at 1740 Stefko Blvd. in Bethlehem. (Ryan Kneller/The Morning Call)

The newly installed ATM is in the parking lot at the northeast corner of Stefko Boulevard and Bayard Street, next to a building housing a Planet Fitness gym and Family Dollar store.

It offers typical withdrawal, deposit and transfer services, giving clients 24/7 access to most of their financial needs, Aldridge said of the new ATM. It will dispense $10, $20 and $100 bills, and can be accessed using a debit or credit card, or by using a BofA card in their digital wallet, such as Apple Pay or Google Pay. The ATM on Stefko Boulevard was installed as a result of our ongoing evaluation into how to best serve our clients.

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Bank of America, serving clients through approximately 4,200 retail financial centers, about 17,000 ATMs, and digital banking with approximately 41 million users, also closed a north Bethlehem ATM in the weeks following Thanksgiving.

Bank of America, serving about 66 million consumer and small business clients worldwide, recently closed a drive-thru ATM at 1503 Linden St. in Bethlehem. (Ryan Kneller/The Morning Call)

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The recently shuttered ATM, at 1503 Linden St., is about a mile west of the Stefko Boulevard ATM.

The former Linden Street ATM had continued to operate following its accompanying branch closure in September 2019.

Bank of America, serving clients in the United States, its territories and approximately 35 countries, in recent years has also closed other Lehigh Valley locations, including former branches on Main Street in Hellertown and Larry Holmes Drive in Easton.

Prior to the Hellertown branchs closure in 2018, Bank of America spokesperson Trevor Koenig noted that the company constantly adapts its financial center network to fit clients changing needs and habits.

Bank of America, serving about 66 million consumer and small business clients worldwide, recently closed a drive-thru ATM at 1503 Linden St. in Bethlehem. The former ATM had continued to operate following its accompanying branch closure in September 2019. (Ryan Kneller/The Morning Call)

Clients increasingly prefer to do their everyday banking via their mobile devices or online, he said.

As more clients do their traditional banking outside of financial centers, financial centers are increasingly used to address more substantial yet infrequent client needs, like planning for retirement, securing a loan or establishing a banking relationship for their small business, Koenig explained.

Bank of America continues to operate seven financial centers along with 11 ATMs in the Lehigh Valley area, according to the companys website.
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has tested positive for COVID-19 and is "experiencing symptoms and recovering at home," according to a statement released by her office on Sunday evening.

The Bronx Representative, 32, announced on her official Twitter page, uploading a statement on the House of Representatives letterhead paper that said: 'Representative Ocasio-Cortez has received a positive test result for COVID-19.

AOC Fully Vaccinated Against COVID-19

According to the congresswoman's office, she took a booster shot last autumn and "encourages everyone to obtain their booster" and follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's guidance.

When or how AOC became infected is unknown.

During a trip to Florida with her partner in late December, Ocasio-Cortez, 32, was entangled in a social-media spat with Republicans about COVID-19.

Despite staunchly advocating for mask and vaccine mandates, AOC defied her rhetoric during a trip to Miami, Florida, last week, where she was seen without a mask at several locations.

She was photographed outside having drinks outside, prompting Republican accusations that she was breaking rigorous pandemic safety standards.

READ ALSO: California Allows Hospitals to Force COVID-Positive Asymptomatic Staff to Work to Address Staff Shortage

AOC's Infection Triggers Criticism Online

News of AOC's diagnosis triggered online mockery, with commentators saying she shouldn't have visited Florida, and another mocking the lawmaker about her trip to the Sunshine State, writing: "The virus just wants to date you."

Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has generally opposed most virus-related restrictions, tweeted a warm greeting, wishing her "a taste of freedom here in the Sunshine State."

"Hasn't Gov. DeSantis been curiously missing for like 2 weeks?" tweeted Ocasio-Cortez in response to photographs and criticism on social media.

"If he happens to be nearby, I'd be delighted to say hello. For weeks, his social media crew appears to have been posting old photos. In the meanwhile, I might be able to assist with local planning. People here are quite receptive," AOC added.

AOC's announcement on Sunday comes after Reps. Sean Casten, Young Kim, and Jim Cooper announced they also tested positive on Saturday.

All three have stated that they have had their booster shots and are feeling fine or suffering only minor symptoms.

Around the time of AOC's visit, Florida verified a record 150,251 COVID cases; the number has since declined dramatically, with 26,588 new cases reported Sunday.

Her visit to Florida, which she had previously criticized for inadequate coronavirus regulations during earlier waves of the pandemic, irritated some Republicans and conservative journalists, who were tired of her using the southern state as an example of "what to avoid doing."

The announcement also coincides with an increase in COVID-19 cases. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 831,304 new cases as of January 7.

Over the previous two years, the center of the US pandemic has shifted between New York and Florida, each with its own strategy to the infection.

READ MORE: Moderna Donates Vaccines to Mexico as COVID-19 Cases Continue to Rise

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Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tests positive to COVID - SkyNews Australia


U.S. senators Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) are applauding the House-passage of companion legislation to their bipartisan Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony (STOP) Act to prohibit the exporting of sacred Native American items and increase penalties for stealing and illegal trafficking.

READ NEXT: Senator Heinrich Gives Updates on the Efforts Helping New Mexico Combat COVID-19

In the 116th Congress, senators Heinrich and Murkowski successfully passed the STOP Act out of the Senate by unanimous consent. Heinrich and Murkowski reintroduced the legislation in April of this year. It was favorably reported from the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs over the summer and now awaits Senate approval.

"For years, I've been proud to work with Pueblos in New Mexico, the Jicarilla and Mescalero Apache Nations, the Navajo Nation, and Tribes across Indian Country to halt the trade of culturally significant items and repatriate stolen pieces to their rightful owners," said Heinrich. "I thank Representative Leger Fernandez for successfully taking up this fight in the House. It's clear that we have the support and the momentum to get the STOP Act across the finish line."

"Alaska Natives and American Indians experience loss of culture and heritage through the illegal exportation and overseas auctions of sacred objects with no recourse to repatriate these items back to the United States. These tribal cultural heritage items are vital to protecting the identity of Native people. I reintroduced the STOP Act with Senator Heinrich to prevent individuals from exporting sacred objects without the consent of tribal communities. The action taken by the House of Representatives is another positive step forward in safeguarding native cultures," said Murkowski.

The House companion is led by U.S. Representatives Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.), Don Young (R-Alaska), Tom Cole (R-Okla.), and Sharice Davids (D-Kan.).

"For years, many sacred, tribal cultural items not meant for commercial use were stolen, exported, and sold to the highest bidder," said Leger Fernandez. "Today, we acted to put an end to this and passed the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony (STOP) Act. This bill will provide American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and federal agencies the necessary tools to protect these sacred items. These cultural items should be with those who create them and know how to revere and protect them."

The STOP Act will help prevent instances like the auction of a shield stolen from the Pueblo of Acoma.

Heinrich played a role in the effort to bring the shield home by working with Governors Kurt Riley and Brian Vallo to call for its return.

The STOP Act has been endorsed by organizations and Tribes across Indian Country. Find a full list of supporters by clicking here.

Read the full text of the bill by clicking here.

READ MORE: Heinrich, Wyden Lead Introduction Of Pathways To Health Careers Act, Fight To Include In Build Back Better Plan
KEY TAKEAWAYS

Marriage cannot be interpreted as irrevocable implied consent.

Marriage should not be seen as a license for a man to rape his wife, regardless of his relationship with the victim, a rapist is a rapist.

There is a gross violation of natural justice principles and fundamental rights under Articles 14, 15, 19(1)(a) and 21 of the Constitution if marital rape isnt criminalized.

INTRODUCTION

Marriage is regarded as the most sacred institution in India. The Indian laws, however, have failed to protect the interests of married women under the guise of marriage. Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, defines rape as "nearly all types of sexual offenses." However, exemption 2 under this section exempts a man from prosecution if he has sexual relations with his wife who is over the age of 15. Legalizing forcible sexual intercourse with one's wife raises fundamental problems about whether the wife's permission is inferred after marriage and does a woman be counted as a husband's property. Marital rape is a heinous crime that has shattered people's faith in the institution of marriage. The non-criminalization of the practice has disproportionately affected women with the right to life, dignity, and personal liberty being violated. It is past time for the authorities to recognize this evil and take steps to defend married women's interests by removing the exception.

All forms of sexual assault involving nonconsensual contact with a woman are included in the definition of rape codified in Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code. But, unwanted sexual intercourse between a husband and a wife over a prescribed age is exempted and thus immunizes such acts from prosecution. Every country in the world recognizes unwanted sexual contact between a husband and a wife as a crime, but India is one of the thirty-six countries that has yet to prosecute marital rape. The Supreme Court of India and several High Courts are being inundated with writ petitions questioning the legitimacy of this provision and recently the Supreme courtcriminalized undesired sexual contact with a wife between the ages of fifteen and eighteen in a landmark decision. In this article critical analysis of the provision related to marital rape would be discussed in detail under the Indian Penal Code concerning judicial pronouncements.

INDIAN LAWS ON MARITAL RAPE

The most common kind of sexual assault against women occurs in the marriage home, where it is unrecorded, unreported, and there is no FIR. When one considers the overall number of married men and women, and the number of times this rape occurs within an institutional marriage, it's shockingly high and, unfortunately, it is never recorded, analyzed, or examined.

Rape is defined as non-consensual sexual intercourse with a woman under Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code. Before referring to the landmark cases related to marital rape and the interpretation made by the courts in India so far, it is pertinent to note that there was a recent case titled RIT Foundation v. UOI which is pending before the Delhi High Court on marital rape. The brief facts of the case were that NGOs RIT Foundation and All India Democratic Women's Association filed the PILs to have the exception provided to husbands under Indian rape legislation struck down. The petitioner claimed that courts all over the world have recognized marital rape as a crime and that the concept of a wife's irrevocable consent for sexual encounters has been abolished. It was argued on behalf of the Delhi administration that married and unmarried women were treated differently under every statute and that, In India, marital rape is a crime of cruelty. In addition to this case, there have been incidents of women who have been raped in their marriages, and neither their parents nor the police would assist them. The police would rather mock them, saying things like, "How can you come and file an FIR against your husband?"

Referring to a few judicial pronouncements, to begin with, in the case of State of Karnataka v. Krishnappa (2000), it was decided that sexual violence is an unlawful violation of a female's right to privacy and sanctity, in addition to being demeaning conduct. It is a tremendous insult to her supreme honor and dignity, and it degrades and humiliates the victims.

The Honble Supreme court so far at best has determined in the case of Independent Thought vs. Union of India & Anr. (2017) as stated earlier, that sex with an underage wife constituted rape. It weakened the exemption to section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, which stated that sexual intercourse between a man and his wife who is not under the age of 15 does not constitute rape. Hence, to put it in simpler terms, it has only increased the age limit from 15 to 18 years to effectively have a pass for marital rape.

In the same case of Independent Thought,some important statements about marital rape were observed. It was stated that a girl child has a fundamental right to live a life of dignity under Article 21 of the Constitution. A girl child's self-esteem and confidence are shattered by early marriage, and she is subjected to sexual assault. A traditional practice sanctioned by the IPC effectively destroys a girl child's right to keep her bodily integrity.The notion that raping a girl child in marriage has the potential to destroy the institution of marriage cannot be accepted. Marriage is personal, not institutional, and nothing can end the 'institution' of marriage except a law making it unlawful and punished.In this instance, it is also held that a female has the same constitutional rights as a male and that no statute may be interpreted or understood to change that. If there is a theory that promotes such an unconstitutional illusion, that theory should be invalidated altogether. But the Court did not make any comments about the marital rape of a woman over the age of 18 because it was not the issue before the court.

In the case title Nimeshbhai Bharatbhai Desai vs. State of Gujarat (2018), the Gujarat High Court made some interesting observations about the injustices of marital rape. The equal protection clause is violated by treating married rape cases differently than non-marital rape cases, according to the court. According to the Constitutional right to equal protection under the law, similar issues should not be treated differently to grant excessive favor to some while discriminating unfairly against others. By contracting marriage, women do not relinquish their human rights, which include the right to have control over and make freely and responsibly decisions about their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination, and violence, for the simple reason that human rights are inalienable.

Husbands must be reminded that marriage does not permit them to rape their women forcibly. Marriage does not give a husband ownership of his wife's body. The Court also stated that women should not be forced to tolerate rape and violence in their marriages and that the total statutory abolition of marital rape is the first step in teaching societies that dehumanized treatment of women will not be tolerated, and that marital rape is a violent act and an injustice that must be criminalized. Despite the Court's remark, the husband was not charged with rape since marital rape is not covered under section 375 of the IPC.

LEGAL STATUS OF MARITAL RAPE IN OTHER NATIONS

When looking at the legal status of marital rape in various nations, its becomea crime under at least one provision of the sexual offense laws. Previously, in England, a man could not have been found guilty of rape against his wife since the wife is unable to retract her permission to sexual intercourse, which is a component of the marital contract. In 1991, however, the marital rape exemption was completely repealed.The House of Lords invalidated the ancient common-law rule that marriage automatically conferred consent for sexual intercourse in the case of R v. R. (1992) 1 AC 599, holding that a husband may be guilty of rape or attempted rape of his wife if she refused to engage in sexual intercourse with him. Following that, the European Commission of Human Rights concluded in C. R. v. The United Kingdom (1995) that "a rapist is a rapist regardless of his relationship with the victim."

Apart from the aforementioned situations, by 1991, every state in Australia had repealed the marital rape exception. Even, in New Zealand earlier, a person under the age of 20 but over the age of 16 can only marry with parental consent, and the age of sexual consent for women was also 16 years. After 1985, there were no exceptions related to marital rape under the Crimes Act of 1961 in New Zealand as well.

In comparison with the Indian law, the point that needs to be understood here is that Exception 2 to Section 375 was drafted in the year 1860, which was during a period of Victorian patriarchy in which women were not seen as equals to men, and therefore it is necessary to acknowledge the flaw in the law, following the principles of the constitution which we have adopted in 1950 where the status of equality and dignity is bestowed on all the citizens. Additionally, the other key point is that sexual intercourse with a separated wife without her agreement was not made illegal until the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 2013. The victims of marital rape have some recourse under Sections 354 and 377 of the Indian Penal Code, but they still lack the protection required to confront this terrible injustice.

VIOLATION OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS: ARTICLE 14 AND 21

The lack of criminalization of marital rape results in a breach of India's Constitutional Right to Equality. Article 14 of the Indian Constitution states that no one should be denied equality before the law or equal protection under the law. This article of the Constitution ensures that everyone is protected by the law, yet Indian criminal law discriminates against female victims who have been raped by their husbands, which is a violation of the Constitution. A married woman was not regarded as an independent entity when the IPC was created as stated; rather, she was considered the chattel of her husband. However, circumstances have changed, and Indian law now recognizes husband and wife as separate legal entities.

To protect women, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 and the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and Redress) Act 2013 have been adopted by Parliament. Exception 2 violates Article 14 since it discriminates against married women by denying them equal protection against rape and harassment. It also differentiates between married and single women. The Hon'ble Supreme Court held in Budhan Chadhary v. State of Bihar (2016) and State of West Bengal v. Anwer Ali Sarkar (1952) that any classification made under Article 14 of the Indian Constitution is subject to a reasonableness test that can only be passed if the classification has some rational connection to the objective. It becomes far more difficult for a married woman to escape abusive situations than it is for an unmarried woman since they are financially and legally bonded, and it allows the husband to enter into a violent sexual relationship.

Further, the restrictions of Article 21 are also violated by Exception 2 of Section 375 as it affects the right to live in dignity, the right to privacy, the right to a healthy life, and the right to choose whether or not to engage in sexual activity. Therefore, due to the existence of exception 2, the law fails to deter husbands from making forceful sexual relations.

CONCLUSION

The analysis above demonstrates that the Supreme Court has recognized a woman's freedom to abstain from sexual behavior regardless of her marital status because forced sexual contact between husbands and wives harms women's physical and mental health, as well as their ability to live with dignity. Hence, as stated above Section 375, exemption 2, violates Articles 14 and 21 of the Indian Constitution as it infringes on the right to equal protection under the law as well as the right to a life of dignity and privacy and other fundamental rights such as Article 15 and 19(1)(a). To conclude, in a country like India, reform is a long way off since neither the lawmakers nor the Indian judicial systems are prepared to bridge the gap between marital rape and rape, where both of them being heinous crimes can leave a victim scarred for life. Although there is no doubt that India is making progress in terms of legal reform for women, more efforts are needed to achieve both legal and social reform, which would result in the punishment of marital rape and a shift in attitudes toward women in marriage.



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How and where to get a COVID-19 test in the Chippewa Valley

UW-Eau Claire Communications Staff administered COVID-19 tests for on-campus students at UW-Eau Claire fall 2020 at McPhee Physical Education Center. Testing demand across Wisconsin and in the Chippewa Valley has surged along with cases of the virus. Many PCR and rapid test opportunities are open in the region.

EAU CLAIRE  As cases of COVID-19 hit new highs in the Chippewa Valley, demand for tests is surging too  and many sites in Eau Claire, Chippewa Falls, Menomonie and beyond are offering free tests.

Heres information on finding testing opportunities in your area.

Many of these sites offer free testing. A handful charge a fee. At most sites, people will need to make appointments ahead of time, either online or via phone call.

The most common types of COVID-19 tests are antigen tests and PCR tests.

Antigen tests, or rapid tests, can quickly test for COVID-19, typically via a nasal or throat swab. They can give results in 15 to 30 minutes. Theyre generally less sensitive than PCR tests, which involve a nasal swab are considered the gold standard. PCR test results typically take longer to come back.

People who have any mild symptoms of COVID-19 should get tested, the Eau Claire City-County Health Department said. People should also get tested if its been five days since they were around someone with COVID-19.

Health care leaders have repeatedly asked people not to come to hospital emergency departments seeking tests, since hospitals are strained due to high COVID-19 hospitalizations.

At the following testing sites, tests are likely to be free and appointments are required, unless noted. Registering for an appointment or calling ahead is advised, since some testing sites are conducting in-vehicle or drive-through testing.

 Northwest Wisconsin community testing site at Jacobs Well Church: Drive-through PCR testing at Jacobs Well Church, 3211 N. 50th Ave., Lake Hallie for ages one and older. Register at the site or online at register.covidconnect.wi.gov. Hours are Mondays from 1 to 6 p.m. and Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The site is set to close after Jan. 28.

 UW-Eau Claires Hilltop Center Lounge: Rapid antigen testing, with immediate PCR test to confirm positive results, is available for people five and older. Appointments are required; testing will take about 30 minutes. Testing site is located at 15 Garfield Ave., Eau Claire. From Jan. 3 to Jan. 28, hours are Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., and Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. To schedule an appointment, visit uwec.vivi.healthcare and click on the Community or UW Subcontractor option, or call 608-855-9191. Visit www.uwec.edu/coronavirus-updates/community-antigen-testing/ for information on parking.

 Pablo Center at the Confluence: PCR tests may be available at 128 Graham Ave., Eau Claire from 12 to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Appointments are required. Make an appointment by visiting curative.com or by calling 888-702-9042. Only PCR tests are available currently; antigen testing is expected to resume in coming weeks.

 UW-Stout Sports & Fitness Center: Testing at 220 13th Ave. E, Menomonie is available for those five and older. Hours are Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 8 a.m. to 4:50 p.m. To make an appointment, visit wihealthconnect.com, select Testing Locations and select UW-Stout, or call 608-855-9191.

 Prevea Health: Testing is available at many Prevea locations, including in Altoona, Eau Claire, Chippewa Falls, Menomonie, Mondovi, Augusta, Rice Lake and Ladysmith. Visit www.myprevea.com to schedule an appointment. People will need to sign in or create a free account to make an appointment and complete a brief health screening.

 Marshfield Medical Center-Eau Claire: Visit www.marshfieldclinic.org or call 844-342-6276 to schedule a testing appointment.

 Mayo Clinic Health System: Call the COVID-19 nurse line at 507-293-9525.

 Walgreens: Visit www.walgreens.com to schedule an appointment. Both or either rapid or PCR testing may be available.

 Hy-Vee, 2424 E. Clairemont Ave., Eau Claire: Drive-through testing may be available on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 to 11 a.m. and Saturdays from 9 to 11 a.m. Testing prices vary. Visit www.doineedacovid19test.com to schedule an appointment, or visit hyvee.com/covidtesting for more information.

 LTC Rx pharmacy: In-vehicle PCR testing offered at 13 E. Spruce St., Chippewa Falls. Register before arriving by visiting register.covidconnect.wi.go.

 Simple Traditions Family Clinic: Testing at 152 Lincoln St., Augusta on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. There is a fee for testing. Call 715-286-2655 or email simpletraditionsclinic@gmail.com.

 Rapid RX Testing at 3410 Oakwood Mall Dr., Eau Claire: Rapid antigen tests cost $90; rapid COVID-19 and flu combination testing is $125. Visit www.rapidrxtesting.com and choose the Eau Claire option, or call 651-829-8229 to schedule an appointment.

Wisconsin residents can also request an at-home testing kit for free. They can do so by visiting www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/covid-19/collection.htm or tinyurl.com/yuxk32rb. The kit will be delivered directly to your home (kits cannot be delivered to P.O. boxes). People must collect a saliva sample while being supervised by a health care worker via a Zoom video call, then mail the test kit at a UPS dropoff location. For more information, visit the link above.

To find other testing opportunities across Wisconsin, visit www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/covid-19/community-testing.

NOTE: This story was updated Tuesday, Jan. 11 to correct testing hours on Saturdays at the Jacob's Well Church site. That site is open for testing on Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., not 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.
A number of politicians in the Clane-Maynooth Municipal District (MD) have said that the top of the is unsafe.

Kildare Mayor Naoise O Cearuil proposed the following motion at the latest MD meeting on Friday, January 7: "That the council assess the safety of the junction between Main Street, Convent Lane and the Dublin Road, in Maynooth, paying particular attention to the pedestrian crossing."

He told those in attendance: "What we are dealing with here is, to be frank, unsafe."

"Parents have been demanding changes (in this area) for years now," he added.

In its report, Kildare County Council (KCC) said: "This location is within the area to be examined as part of the Maynooth Town Centre Renewal Plan."

"This plan is to be progressed and developed in 2022 and will include an assessment of all junctions and pedestrian routes."

The Mayor however said that he didn't accept the report.

He added: "We should call a spade a spade and acknowledge that some people go through pedestrian crossings if they spot an opening."

His argument was supported by Labour Cllr Angela Feeney and Fine Gael Cllr Tim Durkan, the latter of whom said: "There has been too much area taken by the traffic... we need to start from scratch."

Mayor O Cearuil admitted that he is concerned that the matter won't be properly resolved, and called for the roads office of Kildare County Council (KCC) to look into the matter.

Fine Gael Cllr Brendan Wyse added that he supported this idea.

KCC confirmed that it would investigate conditions at the junction.
Chinese procurators help schools promote legal work, campus security

Xinhua) 16:38, January 10, 2022

BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Amid China's efforts to promote the rule of law and security on campus, over 39,000 procurators had been designated as deputy principals in over 77,000 schools by the end of September 2021, the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) said Monday.

The SPP and the Ministry of Education have jointly issued a regulation to further standardize the work of the deputy principals.

Prosecutors serving as deputy principals should supervise the implementation of the mandatory reporting system of offenses against minors and criminal background checks for faculty employment at schools.

They are also tasked with helping schools to establish and improve mechanisms that prevent sexual harassment and assaults, as well as bullying, according to the regulation.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
In this Dec. 21, 2016 file photo, Robert Durst sits in a courtroom in Los Angeles. (Jae C. Hong/Associated Press)

Robert Durst, the wealthy New York real estate heir and failed fugitive who was dogged for decades with suspicion in the disappearance and deaths of those around him before he was convicted of killing his best friend and sentenced to life in prison, has died. He was 78.

Durst died in a state prison hospital facility in Stockton, his attorney Chip Lewis said. He said it was from natural causes due to a number of health issues.

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Durst was convicted in September of shooting Susan Berman at point-blank range in 2000 at her Los Angeles home. He was sentenced to life Oct. 14. Two days later, he was hospitalized with COVID-19, his trial attorney Dick DeGuerin said.

Durst had long been suspected of killing his wife, Kathie, who went missing in 1982 and has been declared legally dead. He was finally indicted in November for second-degree murder in her death.

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But only after Los Angeles prosecutors proved he silenced Berman before she could tell police she helped him cover up Kathies killing was Durst indicted by a New York grand jury in November for second-degree murder in his wifes death.

Westchester County prosecutors, who had been trying to get Durst transferred there to face the charge, said they planned to reveal new details about the case in coming days.

After 40 years spent seeking justice for her death, I know how upsetting this news must be for Kathleen Dursts family, District Attorney Miriam Rocah said in a statement. We had hoped to allow them the opportunity to see Mr. Durst finally face charges for Kathleens murder because we know that all families never stop wanting closure, justice and accountability.

Los Angeles prosecutors also told jurors Durst got away with murder in Texas after shooting a man who discovered his identity when he was hiding out in Galveston after Bermans killing. Durst was acquitted of murder in that case in 2003, after testifying he shot the man as they struggled for a gun.

Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney John Lewin said jurors told him after the verdict that they believed Durst had killed his wife and murdered Morris Black in Texas.

[ From the archives: Robert Durst offered to wire Northampton County Prison for cable TV during his stay ]

Durst discussed the cases and made several damning statements including a stunning confession during an unguarded moment in the six-part HBO documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.

The show made his name known to a new generation and brought renewed scrutiny and suspicion from authorities. He was arrested in Bermans killing the night before the final episode, which closed with him mumbling to himself in a bathroom while still wearing hot mic saying: Youre caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.

The quotes were later revealed to have been manipulated for dramatic effect but the production  done with Dursts cooperation against the advice from his lawyer and friends  dredged up new evidence including an envelope that connected Durst to the scene of Bermans killing as well as incriminating statements he made.

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Police had received a note directing them to Bermans home with only the word CADAVER written in block letters.

In interviews given between 2010 and 2015, Durst told the makers of the The Jinx that he didnt write the note, but whoever did had killed her.

Youre writing a note to the police that only the killer could have written, Durst said.

His defense lawyers conceded in the run-up to trial that Durst had written the note, and prosecutors said it amounted to a confession.

Clips from The Jinx, and from the 2010 movie All Good Things in which Ryan Gosling played a fictionalized version of Durst, had starring roles at trial.

As did Durst himself. His attorneys again took the risk of putting him on the stand for what turned out to be about three weeks of testimony. It didnt work as it had in Texas.

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Under devastating cross-examination by prosecutor John Lewin, Durst admitted he lied under oath in the past and would do it again to get out of trouble.

 Did you kill Susan Berman? is strictly a hypothetical, Durst said from the stand. I did not kill Susan Berman. But if I had, I would lie about it.

The jury promptly returned a guilty verdict.

It long appeared he would avoid any such convictions.

Durst went on the run in late 2000 after New York authorities reopened an investigation into his wifes disappearance, renting a modest apartment in Galveston and disguising himself as a mute woman.

In 2001, the body parts of a neighbor, Morris Black, began washing up in Galveston Bay. Arrested in the killing, Durst jumped bail.

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Durst, a Lehigh University graduate, was arrested six weeks later outside a Wegmans store in Northampton County on a shoplifting charge that led to his extradition to Texas.

Durst was charged locally with shoplifting a $6 hoagie, a Band-Aid and a newspaper. He served more than two months in Northampton County Jail.

Durst later testified that Black had pulled a gun on him and died when the weapon went off during a struggle. He told jurors in detail how he bought tools and dismembered and disposed of Blacks body. He was acquitted of murder. He pleaded guilty to violating his bail, and to evidence tampering for the dismemberment. He served three years in prison.

Durst had bladder cancer and his health deteriorated during the Berman trial. He was escorted into court in a wheelchair wearing prison attire each day because his attorneys said he was unable to change into a suit. But the judge declined further delays after a 14-month pause during the coronavirus pandemic.

DeGuerin said Durst was very, very sick at his sentencing hearing and it was the worst he looked in the 20 years he spent representing him.

Durst entered the courtroom with wide-eyed vacant stare. Near the end of the hearing after Bermans loved ones told the judge how her death upended their lives, Durst coughed hard and then appeared to struggle to breathe. His chest heaved and he pulled his mask down below his mouth and began to gulp for air.

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The son of real estate magnate Seymour Durst, Robert Durst was born April 12, 1943, and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He would later say that at age 7, he witnessed his mothers death in a fall from their home.

He graduated with an economics degree in 1965 from Lehigh, where he played lacrosse. He entered a doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he met Berman, but dropped out and returned to New York in 1969.

He became a developer in the family business, but his father passed him over to make his younger brother, and rival, Douglas, the head of the Durst Organization in 1992.

Douglas Durst testified at trial that he feared his brother wanted to kill him.

Bob lived a sad, painful and tragic life, he said in a statement Monday. We hope his death brings some closure to those he hurt.

Breaking News Alerts As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

In 1971, Robert Durst met Kathie McCormack, and the two married on his 30th birthday in 1973.

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In January 1982, his wife was a student in her final year at medical school when she disappeared. She had shown up unexpectedly at a friends dinner party in Newtown, Connecticut, then left after a call from her husband to return to their home in South Salem, New York.

Robert Durst told police he last saw her when he put her on a train to stay at their apartment in Manhattan because she had classes the next day.

He would divorce her eight years later, claiming spousal abandonment, and in 2017, at her familys request, she was declared legally dead.

Robert Durst is survived by his second wife, Debrah Charatan, whom he married in 2000. He had no children.

Under California law, a conviction is vacated if a defendant dies while the case is under appeal, said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School.

Lewis said an appeal was filed for Durst.
An academic doctor at Maynooth University (MU) has been awarded a 1.5 million grant for her 'PatentsInHumans' biology project.

MU have confirmed that Dr Aisling McMahon, an Associate Professor in the School of Law and Criminology, was given a European Research Council (ERC) starting grant worth 1.5 million to undertake a five-year research project examining the bioethical implications posed by patents over technologies related to the human body.

Dr McMahon will lead a team of four researchers on the project entitled 'PatentsInHumans' which will investigate and potentially lay the foundation for the bioethical implications of patents over technologies which relate to the human body.

These ethical issues concern a myriad of factors relating to human biology, including: medicines, human genes, elements of diagnostic tests, prosthetic limbs, and human enhancement technologies for instance and potential future uses of brain implant technologies.

Patents allow rightsholders to control how patented technologies are accessed and by whom: therefore, patents granted over technologies related to the human body and how they are licensed can have significant implications for how we treat, use and modify our human bodies.

Upon receiving this award, Dr McMahon said: "I am delighted and honoured to be awarded this ERC grant, it will allow me to develop a comprehensive and much-needed analysis of the bioethical implications posed by patents over technologies related to the human body.

"Under the current European patent system, the human body itself is not patentable.... however, many technologies that relate to the human body, such as medicines, isolated human genes, and medical devices are patentable.

She continued: "Given the blurring between the human body and patentable technologies, such patents can pose significant bioethical implications affecting how we treat, use, and modify our bodies.

"We see this in many contexts including COVID-19; yet such bioethical implications are often marginalised within patent decision-making.

"This project aims to understand and bridge the disconnect between bioethics and patent law and ultimately, to reimagine European patent decision-making to incorporate bioethical considerations within it, Dr McMahon concluded.

Dr McMahon also paid tribute to the research environment in MU: I would like to acknowledge the strong research culture and environment provided by the School of Law and Criminology, led by Head of School Professor Michael Doherty, and MU more generally in encouraging and supporting this application.

"I am also very grateful for the incredible support and advice provided by our fantastic Research Development Office throughout the application process."

Professor Eeva Leinonen, President of MU, also commended Dr McMahon on her success.

ERC Starting Grants are designed to support excellent academics and researchers to help them establish their own independent research team or programme.

In fact, the highly prestigious ERC award is viewed as the "gold standard" for research funding in Europe.

Dr McMahon's ERC grant the second one to be awarded to members of the School of Law and Criminology at MU over the past two years, and follows a 2million ERC Consolidator grant awarded to Professor Delia Ferri in 2019 for her project DANCING.
The Boil Water Notice issued for some 5,700 homes in Monasterevin and surrounding areas last Saturday is still in place - and Irish Water will not be drawn on when it will be lifted.

The precautionary notice was issued after consultation between the Health Service Executive, Irish Water and Kildare County Council due to inadequate chlorination of the public water supply due to disinfection issues at the water treatment plant.

The notice affects those served by the Monasterevin public water supply, including Monasterevin, Kildangan, Kilberry and parts of North Athy and surrounding areas.

Map of areas affected:

A spokesperson for Irish Water said on Monday that an investigation is underway to find out the cause of the disinfection issues in this instance, and to mitigate against it happening in the future.

The spokesperson would not be drawn on when the issue would be resolved, but said they would be issuing updates on the situation every two days. They added that addressing the problem is a priority for Irish Water, and apologised for the inconvenience caused to Kildare locals affected.

Irish Water says that water is still safe to use for hygiene purposes, including handwashing, and advised customers to follow HSE Covid-19 advice.

Customers can also check if they are impacted by this Boil Water Notice by visiting www.water.ie/help/water-quality/ and entering their propertys Eircode in the search bar. (Click through the pink 'More Details' button after entering Eircode).

Vulnerable customers who have registered with Irish Water will receive direct communication on this Boil Water Notice and are reminded that the water is safe to consume once boiled and cooled. Those who have concerns can contact our customer care team on 1800 278 278.

Boil Water Notice advice

Water must be boiled for:

Drinking

Drinks made with water

Preparation of salads and similar foods, which are not cooked prior to eating

Brushing of teeth

Making of ice - discard ice cubes in fridges and freezers and filtered water in fridges. Make ice from cooled boiled water.



What actions should be taken:

Use water prepared for drinking when preparing foods that will not be cooked (e.g. washing salads).

Water can be used for personal hygiene, bathing and flushing of toilets but not for brushing teeth or gargling.

Boil water by bringing to a vigorous, rolling boil (e.g. with an automatic kettle) and allow to cool. Cover and store in a refrigerator or cold place. Water from the hot tap is not safe to drink. Domestic water filters will not render water safe to drink.

Caution should be taken when bathing children to ensure that they do not swallow the bathing water.

Prepare infant feeds with water that has been brought to the boil once and cooled. Do not use water that has been re-boiled several times. If bottled water is used for the preparation of infant feeds it should be boiled once and cooled. If you are using bottled water for preparing baby food, be aware that some natural mineral water may have high sodium content. The legal limit for sodium in drinking water is 200mg per litre. Check the label on the bottled water to make sure the sodium or `Na' is not greater than 200mg per litre. If it is, then it is advisable to use a different type of bottled water. If no other water is available, then use this water for as short a time as possible. It is important to keep babies hydrated.

Great care should be taken with boiled water to avoid burns and scalds as accidents can easily happen, especially with children.


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As the Covid-19 case numbers reach unprecedented levels, the Irish Red Cross has been called up to provide support to the National Ambulance Service in Donegal, Cavan and other counties.

A spokesperson said: "In response to challenges caused by the ongoing Covid-19 surge, the HSEs National Ambulance Service have asked the Irish Red Cross for their assistance in patient transportation and transfers to ensure continuity of service in the acute hospital sector.

"Our voluntary staff are well-trained, highly qualified and ready to go."

The Irish Red Cross is now providing ambulance assistance in Donegal, Dublin, Cork, Kildare, Tipperary, Cavan and Limerick. The voluntary organisation is also coordinating with the Order of Malta and St John Ambulance to ensure as wide a coverage as possible.

It is expected that this service could be extended to other counties in the week ahead.

The spokesperson said: "The Irish Red Cross are delighted to be in this position of being able to assist the HSEs National Ambulance Service and by extension to also be able to assist the government in this challenging period."
Pathway, a new online career planning tool  developed by the Irish consultancy firm Ingenium  for secondary school students to aid them in the decision-making process when choosing further education options and potential future careers, has launched in the Irish market.

The new Pathway survey is an academically validated tool that will assist Leaving Certificate students in choosing the best options for their CAO application, as well as assisting Transition Year students to select subjects that align with their ideal career path. The service was trialled in a pilot programme between 2018 and 2020 with 412 participants, with 98% of the students involved rating the platform as extremely useful.

The service involves a comprehensive survey, which can be completed by the student in less than 15 minutes. Designed around what the student enjoys, Pathways algorithm considers several key variables unique to each person, including the students favourite subjects in school, their hobbies, interests, passions and personality, assessed through their unique decision-making style.

Based on their survey answers, students are provided with a detailed report with an analysis of their unique decision-making style and personality traits as they relate to their career path, as well as a ranked list of twelve suggested courses that would best suit them at third level education. From there, students can research relevant courses in Irish and international universities using the suggested career paths provided in the report.

Pathway also provides students at graduate-level with assistance and support, to better focus their academic decisions and help set them up as future professionals passionate about their careers.

Janna Gasanova, one of Ingeniums organisational psychology leads and part of the research development team for Pathway, said The lead up to the Leaving Certificate, when students begin considering what path to take next, can be an incredibly uncertain and anxious time. Our ambition with launching Pathway is to provide a resource to make this difficult decision-making period easier, less stressful and more exciting. We also wanted to create an engaging report that facilitated new conversations, between students, parents and career guidance counsellors.

"I believe that students, universities and society as a whole can equally benefit from students choosing the path best suited to them on their first go. Our goal is that Pathway will help to minimise dropout rates and maximise the student experience. Courses applied for through Access Programs as well as STEM courses have higher dropout rates than average, and we sincerely believe that Pathway will help tackle this problem, ensuring students are pursuing courses that they will enjoy and find fulfilling.

Pathway is designed to help students in 4th, 5th, and 6th years, as well as offering a specialised toolkit for guidance counsellors to utilise in their work with students. Pathway also serves as an opportunity for corporate organisations and universities to engage with their communities by providing employees and community groups with the option of introducing Pathway to their family and community members, encouraging more informed discussions and opportunities for third level education in households.

Pathway has a free and premium version of their survey and report, both available through their website. Pathway also provides a number of additional resources including free articles and webinars, which are available at: https://mypathwayjourney.com/
ONE of the child victims in the Munster sexual abuse case has said he thinks his parents and other family members who abused him should go to jail for a long time.

In a victim impact statement which he prepared for the Central Criminal Court sentencing hearing, the eldest boy, who is now a teenager, wrote: What happened at home changed my whole life.

What happened to me and my brothers and sister should have never happened to no child. I'm trying to get over what happened for years, he said. He said it was not normal for a child to have to go to court and stand up for what was the truth.

He said that until he joined his foster family, he never knew what a normal life was like.

I'm clean and I'm happy and I'm never hungry and not afraid to go to sleep. I think my old family should go to jail for a long time for what they put me and my brothers and sister through, he wrote, adding that they should not be near children again.

The statement was one of several victim impact statements read out in court this Monday by the lead investigator in the case. None of the children were in court for the hearing.

The five children's parents and three other family members were found guilty of all but one of the 78 counts against them following a 10-week trial that took place between May and August last year.

The three men and two women, who cannot be named to protect the anonymity of the children, were found guilty of sexually abusing three of the children between 2014 and 2016. They are the parents, aunt and uncles of the children. They range in ages from 27 to 57.

All of the offences took place in Munster on unknown dates between August 2014 and April 2016.

The parents were also found guilty of wilfully neglecting five of their children while the father was found guilty of mistreating three of them by giving them medication. All of the defendants denied all of the charges against them.

Extensive reporting restrictions are in place to protect the welfare and identities of the children, who were taken into care in 2016. They were aged between one and nine at the time of the offending.

The eldest boy's younger sister and brother, who were also sexually abused, also wrote brief victim impact statements for the court.

The girl wrote: They ruined my childhood and didn't even care about me. I wasn't loved when I was younger. The brother wrote: I (didn't) feel safe about them not being in prison. I had no happy childhood.

The children's three sets of foster parents wrote lengthy statements in which they outlined the numerous challenges they have encountered in trying to help the children recover from their traumatic early childhood.

They described how the children arrived with only the clothes on their backs, filthy dirty and covered in faeces with various scars and bruises and no toileting skills.

The eldest boy's foster mother said he had suffered a horrendous childhood at the hands of those who should have been loving and caring for him.

She said that when the guilty verdicts came in, he told them he was so happy that he was believed, that his relatives were in jail and that they would never be allowed to contact him again.

He has more confidence and a spring in his step since the guilty verdicts, the foster mother said. She described him in loving terms as a beautiful, handsome boy who they are proud to have in their family.

The foster mother of the girl and second eldest boy said they were also very happy with the verdicts. She said they finally now feel safe and have expressed a wish to just have a normal life.

This foster mother described at length the numerous difficulties the two children have suffered since coming to live with her family, including behavioural and health issues.

She listed a long line of health professionals and therapists they have seen and continue to see regularly. She paid tribute to the hard work the children have put in to try and make up for their lost early childhood.

The foster mother described how when they first arrived in her home, the children regularly hid in the hot press, under the stairs or under tables and that they never asked for food. We think that hunger was so normal in their lives, they were unable to identify or address their own hunger needs.

She said both children slept with one eye open and suffered from terrible, recurring nightmares, including one where their parents were trying to break into the house in the dark and hurt them. She said that after they installed extra security in the house, the children were less fearful.

The foster mother to the two youngest boys also installed extra security to their home, which she said was done out of genuine fears for the safety of the children. She said that there had been incidents where cars containing unknown occupants pulled up outside their home and they were worried sick that the children would be taken.

This foster mother also outlined behavioural difficulties and therapies the children have received. She said that one of the boys in particular is extremely tense at night and it is only in the last year and a half that he has stopped jolting upright when she checks on him at night.

She said that after access visits to their parents were stopped, neither child ever asked to see them again.

The inspector in the case outlined the details of the evidence that was heard at trial last year. The trial heard from more than 30 witnesses, including the children themselves, social and family support workers, foster parents, teachers, medical professionals and gardai.

The court heard the family was on Tusla's radar as far back as 2011, but intervention was only stepped up in 2014, when a number of files were opened on the family.

The court heard the children were eventually taken into care 20 months later, after the father admitted to a social worker that he had been medicating the children to get them to sleep.

A sixth child was born after the children were taken into care in what was described as a concealed pregnancy. This baby was also removed from the family home.

The parents, uncles and aunt have been in custody since last August when the verdicts were handed down. They were all present in court for the sentence hearing. They remained expressionless as the victim impact statements were read out.

The court heard that they continue to maintain their innocence. Mark Nicholas SC, defending the father, said that despite this stance, the father has gained enormous satisfaction from learning that his children are now happy.

The court heard the father (57) has a mild intellectual disability and was found to be in the borderline range of intellectual functioning.

Dean Kelly SC, defending the mother (34), said her childhood was happy enough but it was marred by violence, which was commonplace in the home. She also has a mild intellectual disability.

Mr Kelly submitted that while male sex offenders are imprisoned in sexual offender units, there is no segregation in female prisons. As a result, she is confined to her room for most of the day for her own safety, he said.

Andrew Sammon SC, defending the mother's sister (35) said she also has limited intellectual functioning.

Andrew Sexton SC, defending her 49-year-old husband, said the fact his wife has also been incarcerated is an additional punishment for him, as they have only had one contact via video call since the verdicts were handed down last year.

Conor Devally SC, defending the children's 27-year-old uncle, said he has been employed his entire adult life.

None of the family members have any previous convictions, except for two minor road traffic offences, the court heard.

Mr Justice Paul McDermott adjourned the matter for finalisation on January 18.
THE Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering at University of Limerick has welcomed Dr Paddy Finn to the faculty as Adjunct Professor of Smart Energy Systems.

Together with business partner Duncan OToole, Dr Finn founded the Limerick-based smart grid business VIOTAS in 2013, with the goal of democratising electricity markets and enabling a more sustainable future.

The business, which is headed by Dr Finn, does this through developing industry-leading Demand Response technologies and services, which allow commercial and industrial electricity customers to get paid for automatically adjusting their electricity consumption to support the reliability, security and stability of national electricity grids.

VIOTAS services have been used extensively by EirGrid for a number of years and played a key role in curbing the effects of the widely-publicised power generation shortages last last year.

Headquartered in Castletroy, VIOTAS employs more than 80 staff in multiple countries around the world, including Australia

and Poland.

The newly-appointed adjunct professor previously spent a total of 12 years at the University of Limerick, where he attained his undergraduate and doctorate degrees. He also undertook two postdoctoral research fellowships au UL

Looking back on the time I spent at the University of Limerick, from undergraduate through to postdoctoral research fellow, I most fondly remember the teaching opportunities that allowed me share my own learnings, perspectives, and approach

to problem solving with others. I am now truly humbled and honoured by my appointment as adjunct professor of Smart Energy Systems at my alma matter," commented Dr Finn.

"I look forward to supporting the department in the enhancement of content relating to smart power systems, so a greater number of graduates can enjoy rewarding careers where they apply their skills and knowledge to solving the technical challenges associated with decarbonisation globally, he added.

Professor Colin Fitzpatrick of UL has welcomed Dr Finn's appointment. We are thrilled that he will be joining us as

an adjunct Professor. Our students will benefit enormously from working with a tech entrepreneur at the cutting edge of smart grid systems who is taking technology that was developed here in Limerick and rolling it out across the world," he said.

"As Ireland and countries across the globe strive to reach ambitious decarbonisation goals over the coming decade, it

is essential that our engineering students are exposed to the ideas, technologies and business models which are needed to get us on this sustainable pathway and this is one of many ways that we are embedding the UN Sustainable Development Goals across the curriculum here at UL.
TWO researchers at University of Limerick have been awarded highly prestigious grants, totalling almost 3m, to carry out two groundbreaking projects looking at male infertility and energy efficient electronics.

The European Research Council Starting Grants, worth 1.5m each, aim to help ambitious young researchers launch their own projects, form their teams and pursue their best ideas.

Dr Eoghan Cunnane, a senior research fellow at ULs School of Engineering and Dr Sarah Guerin, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Physics, have received ERC grants. Both are also researchers at ULs Bernal Institute.

Dr Cunnanes project is RE3MODEL - Representative, Reliable and Reproducible in vitro Models of the Human Testes while Dr Guerins project is Pb-Free - Piezoelectric Biomolecules for lead-free, Reliable, Eco-Friendly Electronics.

Commenting on the awarding of the grants, Professor Norelee Kennedy, Vice President Research at UL, said: The announcement of the two ERC starter awards to Sarah and Eoghan is a fantastic achievement for them and reflects their calibre as researchers. We are very excited at UL to support their novel and exciting research, which adds to the excellent research undertaken at the University."

Dr Guerin said her project would investigate if electronics could become lead-free, reliable and eco-friendly.

Piezoelectric sensors sound exciting, and indeed they are. Used to interconvert electrical and mechanical energy, they are essential to many common devices that we rely on - pacemakers, microwave ovens, sonar equipment, diesel fuel injectors in cars, she explained.

Piezo sensors are often used to measure a change in pressure, acceleration or strain by converting them into electrical charge. However, they also have a huge environmental cost. Their production involves using toxic lead oxide, and the main alternatives to lead involve using expensive, non-renewable materials  also quite undesirable," she added.

Dr Guerin, who is also a researcher at SSPC, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Pharmaceuticals at UL, added: In recent years, biological materials such as amino acids and peptides have been recognised as exciting new piezoelectrics. Gathering them into biomolecular-crystal assemblies could offer a revolutionary way to create these essential sensors.

Crystals can be grown at room temperature with no by-products, and do not require an external electric field to induce piezoelectricity. Right now, however, no one knows how to develop these crystals as reliable, solid-state sensors that could be used in conventional electronic devices."

She will take on the groundbreaking task of developing biomolecular crystals as a new type of piezoelectric sensor.

Such organic, low-cost, high-performance sensors, would out-perform and ultimately lead to the phasing-out of inorganic device components - with dramatically reduced environmental impact, she added.

Dr Cunnanes project will focus on the area of male infertility and he says he was thrilled to receive the award and to begin establishing his own independent research group.

Recent research has identified that the number of sperm cells present in male ejaculate has dropped considerably over the last 40 years and is projected to reach zero by 2045. Such an event would render the human species unable to reproduce due to male infertility, he explained.

Despite this approaching crisis, clinicians have no effective treatment for male infertility and no means to test new treatments beyond animal models that poorly represent humans. This project will develop a truly representative model of the human testes that can act as a platform for identifying effective treatments in a reliable and reproducible manner, he added.

Dr Cunnane (pictured) received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from UL in 2015 under the supervision of Prof Michael Walsh. He was subsequently awarded a Marie Curie Global Fellowship to transition his expertise from tissue characterisation to tissue engineering and modelling at the Macgowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Royal College of Surgeons.

He was then awarded a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Fellowship to develop a platform for automated Raman analysis of cancer cell derived nanoparticles at Imperial College London under the supervision of Prof Molly Stevens.

Dr Cunnane is also a co-founder of the start-up company Class Medical which was spun out of UL to commercialise a patented urinary catheter safety device that is currently being supplied to hospitals across Ireland. He recently joined the School of Engineering as a Senior Research Fellow.
A LIMERICK charity has appealed for someone to donate a base to help it carry out its vital work.

On a number of days a week, trained volunteers from Limerick Treaty Suicide Prevention (LTSP) carry out patrols of the banks of the River Shannon in a bid to help anyone in distress.

However, the charity is set to be without a base, with its one-year lease if a premises at John Street up this week. The annual rent of 6,000 is proving beyond its means as donations have dried up during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Chairman Matt Collins is urging anyone who has access to a building near the river to come forward.

"We are in a base at the moment, and it's costing us 6,000 a year. We were given a few bob to get into the base, but with Covid-19, the funding is low, so we cannot afford to keep it going this year, we are out. To be honest with you, it's not fit for purpose, it's a small square box. It's a place for us to keep our equipment," he said.

Matt added: "We are hoping to get a place where we can have meetings, do a bit of training. At this stage, just somewhere to keep our equipment. We'll have a meeting in a van if we have to. We don't mind about that. But we need storage. We need some place to keep the stuff, or we are on the street as usual."

He said the charity has even asked if the council would allow it to put a container at its grounds on the river to at least store their cycles in.

"We are going into our fourth year on the river, and we need a bit of help here. We need somebody to give us a room. Despite the pandemic, people are still helping us out, people are still very good to us. But we need to be prudent with money, and we do need to buy equipment for what we are doing. Equipment is expensive. We are looking at a piece of equipment which costs 10,000 up in Athlone. It is a game-changer. If we had it in Limerick, it would save lives," explained Matt.

LTSB is being supported by local Aontu activist Sarah Beasley, who said it's vital anyone who is being rescued on the river has a bit of privacy.

"I was only in with Mattie and he was telling me the horrific story of trying to take someone out of the river on Christmas Eve. It becomes a circus with people taking videos and pictures and people sharing it on social media because they do not have a base. While that person is waiting for the ambulance services, for the gardai, there is no privacy," she told the Limerick Leader.

"There has to be someone out there for the good of the people who could give them a cut-rent or free-rent, or perhaps people could donate on a monthly basis to help pay for the centre," Ms Beasley also suggested.

If you can help, get in touch with Matt Collins at 085-2216938.
Mandatory vaccination could be necessary for the overall good, one of Irelands leading immunisation experts has said.

Professor Karina Butler, chair of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC), said the controversial measure would have to be given careful consideration.

Her comments come after minutes from a meeting of the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) revealed the issue is to be discussed by public health experts.

I think this is something that really has to be thought about. There are pros and cons to mandatory vaccination, Prof Butler told RTEs Today with Claire Byrne on Monday.

I know this has been looked at by the department and a paper is being done on that and careful consideration will be given to it.

Its always preferable if people can look at vaccinations, have the information, and be able to make informed decisions for themselves and get it.

But there can be situations where making a vaccine a requirement is necessary for the overall good.

But thats being looked at at the moment.

The voluntary vaccination programme has served us well. Mandatory vaccination would be a mistake. People were given the opportunity to listen to the medical & scientific experts & made their own judgments. Vaccines work but the voluntary system in my view works best.  David Cullinane T.D. (@davidcullinane) January 10, 2022

Recently published minutes of Nphet on December 16 said the issue would be discussed at a later date.

A paper will set out the relevant ethical and legal considerations pertaining to this topic, the minutes state.

Sinn Feins health spokesman, David Cullinane, said he would not support the move.

The voluntary vaccination programme has served us well. Mandatory vaccination would be a mistake he wrote on Twitter.

People were given the opportunity to listen to the medical & scientific experts & made their own judgments.

Vaccines work but the voluntary system in my view works best.

Earlier, Health Service Executive chief executive Paul Reid indicated he would prefer vaccines to remain voluntary.

I would prefer to be winning peoples hearts and minds, he said, referring to Irelands already high take-up of vaccines.

Mr Reid said any decision would ultimately be up to the Government.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin has previously backed the voluntary system over compelling the public to get jabbed.

Speaking to Newstalk in December, less than a week after the Nphet meeting where the issue was raised, Mr Martin noted Irelands high vaccination levels and said there were no guarantees mandatory vaccination would work.

Im personally of the view that we stick with the voluntary system, he said.

Its worked in Ireland, more than anywhere else in the world, at 94% fully vaccinated.

You go across Europe and youre looking at 60% vaccination in some places.

Some of those countries are now talking about mandatory vaccination.

Theres no guarantee that will work, by the way, in itself.

I was listening to one prime minister talking about fines of 600 euros every three months  thats what a mandatory regime looks like.

In my view, we have to keep pushing the voluntary approach, which has achieved an enormous amount.

Mr Martin has previously hit out at those who have not been vaccinated, saying they were having a disproportionate impact on the health service and that it was clear as daylight they are endangering their own health and the health of others.
HARRISBURG  The concept of illicit drug users testing their personal stashes for fentanyl  an ultra-deadly synthetic opioid that many want to avoid  got strong support Monday in Harrisburg.

Many who testified before the House Judiciary Committee called for the removal of personal-use fentanyl test strips from the Pennsylvania definition of illegal drug paraphernalia. The change is proposed in a bill sponsored by Republican Rep. Jim Struzzi of Indiana County.

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Pennsylvania Physician General Dr. Denise Johnson said the strips cost about a dollar each and are as simple to use as a home pregnancy test.

A growing body of research has shown that making fentanyl testing strips available to people who used drugs can be effective in helping people reduce their risk of overdose, Johnson said.

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Gail Groves Scott, a Lancaster County mother of an adult son who survived an overdose, said some might ask whether it amounts to enabling drug users.

The answer, she told lawmakers, was an emphatic no.

Such harm reduction approaches, she said, enabled my child to stay alive long enough to get into treatment, Scott said.

The testimony came as Pennsylvania continues to be a national leader in drug overdose deaths.

The state has an estimated 5,494 overdose deaths in the 12 months ended in May, the third-highest total in the country, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The crisis has been overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic. And, the Democratic Wolf administration and Republican-controlled state Legislature have struggled to put together a comprehensive strategy to remove Pennsylvania from the list of worst-suffering states.

The fentanyl test strip packet displayed Monday to the House Judiciary Committee by Gail Groves Scott. (Morning Call/Ford Turner/Morning Call/Ford Turner)

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that had legitimate pain-killing medicinal uses before drug traffickers discovered it could be mixed with heroin and other drugs to increase their potency. An unprecedented surge in deaths ensued, making fentanyl responsible for 70% of illicit drug deaths, according to some estimates.

Philadelphia had nine deaths due to fentanyl in 2012 and 979 such deaths in 2020, according to Dr. Jeffrey Hom of the citys Department of Public Health.

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Fentanyl, it is simply a national emergency, Struzzi told the committee. I want to help people live.

The states Controlled Substance, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act includes a specific and lengthy definition of drug paraphernalia that is prohibited for use. Struzzis bill would add a line that says, This definition does not include fentanyl test strips for personal use.

Fran Chardo, Dauphin County district attorney and legislative chair for the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, said the PDAA backs the bill.

Last Call Daily Get top headlines from The Morning Call delivered weekday afternoons. >

It would literally save lives, Chardo said. Many who overdose from fentanyl had no idea they were ingesting fentanyl.

Gail Groves Scott of Lancaster County testifies Monday before the House Judiciary Committee. (Morning Call/Ford /The Morning Call/Ford Turner)

At least 18 states do not consider fentanyl test strips to be illegal drug paraphernalia, Scott said.

She acknowledged that some drug users might see the strips as an aid to their habit, but the data shows us the positive health impacts to the large community far outweigh that risk.

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In written testimony submitted to the committee, Scott cited a Pittsburgh-area report where an individual used a drug checking kit and a fentanyl test strip to test a sample that was believed to be a commonly abused drug.

Realizing that the pill actually contained fentanyl, the person chose not to use it, avoiding a potential overdose, Scott said.

Democratic Rep. Emily Kinkead of Allegheny County said Pittsburgh already has decriminalized personal use of the strips, and it is having an impact on our ability to prevent overdoses in Allegheny County.

Morning Call Capitol correspondent Ford Turner can be reached at fturner@mcall.com
Celebrities have expressed their shock and sadness over the sudden death of US actor and comedian Bob Saget.

The 65-year-old, who was best known for starring in the sitcom Full House, was pronounced dead in his hotel room in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday.

The stars exact cause of death remain unclear.

Whoopi Goldberg, Steve Martin, and Jim Carrey were among the high-profile celebrities to express grief and shock over the news.

British comedian and Great British Bake Off presenter Matt Lucas called Saget a magnificently naughty comedian.

In terrible shock of the horrible news of Bob Sagets sudden passing, Lucas tweeted.

He was a warm, kind, humble man and a magnificently naughty comedian, always treading the line so deftly. He will be greatly missed.

In a follow-up post Lucas added: Bob Saget was a powerhouse comedian who would make your sides hurt but he was so humble and unassuming about it.

He was so gracious to others and so excited and inspired by up-and-coming comedians. He really set a great example of how to be generous and encouraging to newcomers.

In terrible shock of the horrible news of Bob Saget's sudden passing. He was a warm, kind, humble man and a magnificently naughty comedian, always treading the line so deftly. He will be greatly missed.  Matt Lucas (@RealMattLucas) January 10, 2022

US TV host and actor Whoopi Goldberg wrote: Sail on my friend Bob Saget with your huge heart and abject lunacy.

My condolences to his daughters & other family.

Star Trek actor George Takei said that Americas Dad Bob Saget, had been a regular presence in his household.

Deeply saddened to learn of the untimely passing of comedian Bob Saget, he said.

Beloved by millions as Americas Dad, he was a regular presence in our living rooms, bringing to us the funniest videos and countless belly laughs.

Gone too soon, like so many of the brightest souls.

Deeply saddened to learn of the untimely passing of comedian Bob Saget. Beloved by millions as Americas Dad, he was a regular presence in our living rooms, bringing to us the funniest videos and countless belly laughs. Gone too soon, like so many of the brightest souls.  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) January 10, 2022

US actor Seth Green wrote: Damn it @bobsaget you left your body.

Ill forever celebrate your genius, your giant heart, and joy for life.

Thank you for helping me through the inevitable sadness of life with comedy.

At least now you can hang with Rodney & Don again. Love you forever.

Sail on my friend Bob Saget With your huge heart and abject lunacy,my condolences to his daughters & other family  Whoopi Goldberg (@WhoopiGoldberg) January 10, 2022

Comedy veteran Steve Martin responded to the news of Sagets death by saying it was a sad day for [the] comedy world.

Jim Carrey added his voice to the wealth of tributes, writing on Twitter: Beautiful Bob Saget passed away today at 65. He had a big, big heart and a wonderfully warped comic mind. He gave the world a lot of joy and lived his life for goodness sake.

Actor John Stamos, who starred alongside Saget on the sitcom Full House, also took to Twitter to express his grief.

I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby.

I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby.  John Stamos (@JohnStamos) January 10, 2022

Officers from Orange County Sheriffs Office confirmed the news of Sagets death early on Monday.

In a short statement posted to Twitter, they added that there were no signs of foul play or drug use.

Earlier today, deputies were called to the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes for a call about an unresponsive man in a hotel room, Orange County Sheriffs Office said.

The man was identified as Robert Saget & pronounced deceased on scene.

Saget had just begun his new 2022 stand up tour and had earlier tweeted about his show in Jacksonville, expressing his delight at being back performing.

Loved tonights show @PV_ConcertHall in Jacksonville. Appreciative audience. Thanks again to @RealTimWilkins for opening. I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight. Im happily addicted again to this shit. Check https://t.co/nqJyTiiezU for my dates in 2022. pic.twitter.com/pEgFuXxLd3  bob saget (@bobsaget) January 9, 2022

Loved tonights show @PV_ConcertHall in Jacksonville. Appreciative audience, he tweeted on January 9.

Thanks again to @RealTimWilkins for opening.

I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight. Im happily addicted again to this s**t.

Saget was best known in the US and around the world for portraying Danny Tanner, a widowed father of three daughters, in the sitcom Full House from 1987 to 1995.

He reprised the role in 2016 when Netflix revived the programme for a further five seasons.
Microsoft Corp.s augmented-reality team has lost around 100 people in the past year, many of them to Meta Platforms Inc., said former employees of the software company and online job profiles, as the battle heats up for workers with skills to build the metaverse.

Competitors have been snapping up people with experience developing Microsofts HoloLens augmented-reality headsets, sometimes offering to double their salaries, said former Microsoft employees. The Microsoft augmented-reality group employs around 1,500 people, they said.

The LinkedIn profiles of more than 70 former employees on the HoloLens team show they have left Microsoft in the past year. More than 40 joined Meta, formerly known as Facebook, which is making a big push into alternate-reality tech, the LinkedIn profiles show.

The departed staffers include some longtime leaders of the team. Charlie Han, who was responsible for taking customer feedback for HoloLens, left over the summer to join Meta. Josh Miller, who worked in the display team, became the display director at Meta in recent months. Mr. Han and Mr. Miller didnt respond to requests for comment about the moves.

A Microsoft spokesman said the company has been at the forefront of innovation in metaverse technology for years and will keep advancing state of the art hardware that is more immersive, affordable and in various form factors."

The company declined to share details about the HoloLens team but said that employee attrition is a regular challenge many teams face and that Microsoft does what it can to retain employees and hire new ones when needed.

Meta declined to comment about its recruiting practices.

Top tech companies poaching from each other and from smaller companies is nothing new. What is notable now is the scale and speed as a big company like Meta tries to grow quickly, said Matt Stern, chief operating officer at Mira Labs Inc., a startup that helps organizations adopt augmented reality for their workplaces.

Its driven up prices in the market," he said. Its difficult for smaller companies to compete."

In October, Facebook changed its name to Meta and said it would be repositioning the company around the metaverse. It said spending on the new unit for the effort would dent its total operating profit by around $10 billion in its 2021 results. The company said it plans to hire many more employees to build out its metaverse products, including 10,000 workers in Europe over the next five years.

Microsoft isnt the only company facing Metas growing appetite for talent. Apple Inc. is also losing employees to Meta, according to former Microsoft employees who have moved to Meta and LinkedIn profiles of former Apple employees. Bloomberg previously reported on Apples attempts to limit departures. Apple declined to comment.

The metaverse is a largely unrealized virtual realm where proponents say people will work, play, learn and shop. Tech leaders like Microsoft, Meta and Apple are pouring billions into building the augmented- and virtual-reality hardware and software that could become the building blocks of this emerging digital world.

Virtual reality completely immerses users in a virtual worlda videogame for examplewith a headset closed off from the real world. Metas Oculus dominates that headset market with around 75% share in 2021, according to research firm International Data Corp. There were 9.4 million VR headsets sold last year, a number that could rise to 13.6 million by the end of this year, according to IDC.

Augmented reality overlays digital content, such as 3-D images or visual instructions, onto a users view of the real world. Some in the tech industry see it as a bigger market opportunity than VR eventually but more difficult to develop. Only around 325,000 AR headsets were sold last year. That number could jump to 1.35 million units this year, according to IDC.

Most tech titans are now planning to release their own smart glasses, which are regular-size glasses that include some AR capabilities, so engineers with experience with AR and VR are seeing their profiles and salaries soar. The use of the term metaverse has skyrocketed in job listings. The share of job listings that mentioned the metaverse in December was more than 10 times the level a year earlier, according to the job site Indeed.

Microsoft was one of the first movers in augmented reality. HoloLens was first announced more than five years ago and has evolved into one of the worlds most advanced headsets. While it has focused on business applications, it is developing a lighter, more affordable version for consumers as well, though it is likely years away from hitting the market, said the former Microsoft employees.

Meta is also working on AR glasses, prompting its hiring binge, said the former Microsoft employees. In September, it made an early step into the market with a pair of smart glasses in a partnership with EssilorLuxottica SA, maker of Ray-Ban glasses. For now, they include more basic functions such as taking pictures and short videos.

Because Microsoft has been ahead of the competition on AR, its employees make particularly attractive targets for headhunting, said analysts.

Until someone else ships another AR product, Microsoft still has quite a bit of a head start in the AR space," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager at IDC.

Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella announced the first-generation HoloLens back in 2015. Rather than peddling its headset as a consumer platform for gaming and entertainment, Microsoft has focused on using it as a productivity tool for workplaces.

Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into developing the technology, but the HoloLens headsets, which cost $3,500 each, have sold little relative to popular consumer electronics.

Microsoft has shipped between 200,000 and 250,000 HoloLens units since launch, estimates IDC. Some senior leaders at Microsoft even considered reducing funding of the HoloLens program before the team won a big military contract, said people familiar with their thinking.

Last March, Microsoft won a U.S. Army contract to develop ways to use AR headsets to help soldiers see through smoke and navigate battlefields. The contract could be worth more than $20 billion over the next 10 years, said Microsoft.

Since then the company hasnt hired enough engineers to handle the additional work, said the former employees. This made some staff question Microsofts commitment to developing the technology, making them more likely to accept offers from competitors, they said.

The army project ran into unexpected technical difficulties. For example, bringing high-quality, night-vision capabilities into the HoloLens proved difficult, said the former employees. The departures could now make it more difficult to address these kinds of challenges, they said.

Microsoft said it has a strong team and is making progress on the project.
India and the UK will start active consultation this week to finalize a free trade agreement (FTA). UK secretary of state for international trade Anne-Marie Trevelyan and commerce minister Piyush Goyal are expected to discuss the removal of market access barriers. Mint explores:

Why is the FTA important?

A deal will be critical for India at a time when the country has walked out of key FTAs such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and begun to renegotiate others. India finds existing agreements to be not benefitting domestic industry. Imports had been rising over the past years and exports grew at a tepid pace. India has chalked out an aggressive Atmanirbhar Bharat plan which aims to make it an export powerhouse with $1 trillion exports by 2030. So fewer trade barriers with a large market like the UK could give a push to exporters.

What do the two countries want?

India wants enhanced mobility for its professionals and reduced fee for work and tourism visas, safeguards for agriculture, better market access for vaccines, basmati rice, wool, yarn, instant coffee, and tea pre-mix, among others. The UK, on the other hand, wants the ease of doing business, removal of tariffs of up to 150% on whisky and 125% on British-made cars. Also, removal of barriers to trade in services, food and drink, healthcare and medical devices. On the table is partnership on using green energy for industries and long-term academic collaborations between the two nations.

View Full Image Boosting exports

Whats the progress on other FTAs?

India is close to finalizing one FTA with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Talks are at an advanced stage with Australia on an interim agreement. With the UK, the idea is to have an interim agreement by March this year. India is in negotiations with Israel and hopes to launch discussions with Canada on the same in two or three months.

What is Trevelyans agenda?

During the two-day visit to India, she will hold talks with Goyal on easing trade barriers while they may also confirm the launch of official talks on the new FTA. On Thursday, Trevelyan and Goyal are set to co-host the 15th UK-India Joint Economic and Trade Committee which will review how businesses in both countries are benefiting from existing market access commitments under the UK-India Enhanced Trade Partnership agreed last May by Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Narendra Modi.

What about multilateral trade?

While India remains committed to trade multilaterism with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at its centre, it has renewed its efforts to strike bilateral trade deals with key countries. It believes exports could be further strengthened through an extensive set of preferential trade agreements. More FTAs will give Indian products more access to global markets and the opportunity that India missed by staying out from the RCEP. More-over, with multilateral trade talks at WTO stalled, it only makes sense to be part of large bilateral deals.

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Singapore saw the fewest deaths among those with the Moderna Inc. shot and the most among those with Sinovac Biotech Ltd.s vaccine, as the city-states highly inoculated population provides a glimpse into how different immunizations are holding up in the real world.

The data is likely to add to further concerns about the effectiveness of the widely-used Chinese vaccine, which studies have found to be inadequate against the omicron variant.

Still, the sample size is small, cautioned the countrys health minister Ong Ye Kung, who disclosed the data in parliament Monday. Nearly 70% of the 802 virus deaths recorded in the city-state last year were among unvaccinated individuals and the breakdown by inoculation does not account for other mortality factors like age and the timing of their shot.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.

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WASHINGTON : The Biden administration is ready to discuss the deployment of U.S. missiles in Europe as well as reciprocal restrictions on the size and scope of military exercises on the continent when it meets on Monday with Russian negotiators in Geneva, US officials said.

The Biden administrations efforts are an attempt to defuse tensions with Russia, which has deployed about 100,000 troops near Ukraines border. But they fall far short of Moscows demands that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization call a halt to its eastward expansion, and cease training, exercises and military support to Ukraine and other parts of the former Soviet Union.

Any concessions would have to be reciprocal," a senior administration official said Saturday. Both sides would need to make essentially the same commitment, and these discussions will also have to be conducted in full consultation with our partners and allies."

U.S. and European negotiators head into a series of meetings with Russia next week, which begin Sunday night in Geneva when Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has a working dinner with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. Formal talks open the next day. Ms. Sherman will then travel to Brussels for an expanded meeting between NATO allies and Russia on Wednesday. A third round of talks in Vienna Thursday will take place under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, of which Ukraine and Russia are members.

U.S. officials on Saturday outlined three areas in which they hope to make progress with Russia: weapons deployments in Ukraine, missile deployments in Europe, and military exercises on the continent.

Russian officials have repeatedly complained that the U.S. might deploy missiles on Ukrainian territory that could strike targets in Russia, though President Biden told President Putin last month that the U.S. has no intention of doing so.

On Saturday, the senior administration official said the White House is prepared to codify Mr. Bidens position formally if Moscow will make a reciprocal commitment.

U.S. officials also foresaw possible progress on intermediate-range missiles in Europe. The U.S. withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019 after accusing Moscow of violating the accord by deploying a prohibited cruise missile, the 9M729. Russia has denied the allegation.

The Trump administration rebuffed Russian proposals for a moratorium on the deployment of intermediate-range land-based missiles in Europe, saying such steps could tie the U.S. hands without leading to the elimination of 9M729 missiles. But the Biden administration is now open to exploring limiting such missiles the U.S. official said.

Russia has also expressed an interest in discussing the future of certain missile systems in Europe, along the lines of the INF treaty, which Russia violated and the previous U.S. administration withdrew from," the U.S. official said. We are open to discussing this possibility as well."

A third area in which it hopes there will be convergence with Russia involves scaling back military exercises in Europe. Such a step, which would need to be reciprocal, would reduce U.S. military operations in the region.

The U.S. is willing to explore the possibility of reciprocal restrictions on the size and scope of such exercises, including both strategic bombers close to each others territories and ground-based exercises as well," the senior administration official said.

Russia has cited U.S. and NATO military exercises across Europe as a red line" for Russia, particularly in Ukraine, which Mr. Putin has said pose a threat on his nations doorstep. U.S. officials say that Russia has carried out even larger and more provocative exercises near NATO territory; Moscow says it has a right to move troops around within its own borders.

The U.S. has already made some small steps in this regard: It hasnt carried out naval operations in the Black Sea since December, after conducting at least eight missions there last year.

Troop numbers and the elements of force posture in NATO countries will not be discussed in the coming meetings, the senior administration official added.

For Mr. Biden, this latest foreign-policy crisis presents an opportunity to restore Americas credibility and commitment to allies after the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last year created tensions with capitals across Europe.

While U.S. officials stress the need for coordination with allies, this has presented challenges where sanctions are concerned, according to several U.S. officials. The Biden administration has vowed to impose crippling punitive measures on Moscow if it continues its aggression along Ukraines border, but any sanctions targeting Russias financial system or energy sector would reverberate across Europe.

U.S. officials dont know if their proposals will satisfy Moscow, which has publicized its own proposal that would compel NATO to retract a 2008 statement that Ukraine and Georgia will one day become members of the alliance and forgo eastward expansion. The Russian proposal would also require NATO to roll back deployments on the territory of its new Central and Eastern European members.

We want to stop any expansion towards ourselves by NATO," Mr. Ryabkov told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. This is something that is regarded here in Moscow, including at the level of the president himself, as being quite urgent."
As the former owners of the Apollo Grill, a recent Facebook post criticizing the restaurants business practices motivated us to respond. The author complained that the Apollo should require proof of vaccination to dine, and was unhappy with the owners response.

We have commented often about how lucky we were to be out of the business these last two years. In fact, at our age, we dont think we could have done what the current owner, Rachel Griffith, has done to survive.

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She kept her entire staff fully paid with benefits throughout these two years, and spent thousands of dollars on tents, heaters, partitions and new ventilation, while being forced to shut down, either mandated or self-motivated because of an infected employee.

We eat at the Apollo once a week, and Rachel calls Dyanne frequently to discuss the countless issues a restaurant owner faces. She has gone to great lengths to protect the public, her staff, her young daughter and her parents.

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If they knew the stress, and constant fear she has that any of the above get COVID-19, people wouldnt criticize her on social media.

Dyanne Holt (CHRIS KNIGHT / SPECIAL TO THE MORNING CALL)

Rodney Holt (CHRIS KNIGHT / SPECIAL TO THE MORNING CALL)

Bethlehem's Apollo Grill installed an open-air tent behind the restaurant in the Sun Inn Courtyard. (Apollo Grill/Contributed photo)

Has our society lost all empathy and tolerance? Has political divisiveness infected every aspect of our daily lives? Has social media made us insensitive to someone elses needs or wants?

Are there no filters for proper, civilized discourse and behavior in public, or on social media?

At the post office recently, a woman standing in front of me was cursing up a storm because there was only one person working the window. There was a young mother with two toddlers behind me.

At the entrance to the post office on the wall is a 6-by-4 sign saying we are hiring. Has this person seen the help wanted signs on Route 22 and in the window of countless businesses?

Is this total lack of empathy and the sureness of ones opinion without any knowledge or understanding of what the business owner is dealing with our new norm? Can we adults stomp our feet, curse anywhere, because were not getting what we want, when we want it?

Is there no empathy for the shorthanded struggling restaurant, retail, service clerk or owner?

Early in the pandemic, the Apollo decided to require face masks. A regular of many years attempted to enter the restaurant not once, but twice without a mask. And the second time he stood in the doorway berating the owner, saying he will not come back until her hysterical behavior ends.

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This has happened countless times.

Recently, a group of women came for dinner, seemed to enjoy everything, but left a 3% tip, and followed up the visit, with a call to the owner, berating the server for making the group feel uncomfortable because the server wore a mask.

Some social media posts commenting on restrictions at local restaurants referred to New York City and Philadelphia restaurants requiring vaccination cards, suggesting that if it works there it should work in the Lehigh Valley. Maybe, but it is also possible it works there because those cities mandated it.

Other posts suggested the Apollo could set the standard by requiring vaccination cards to dine in. Would these writers care to put their paycheck on the line if some customers stopped coming?

Are any of those writers self-employed, responsible for the livelihoods of 50 employees and their families? Or are they just like so many  lacking the understanding of someone elses situation and empathy.

Twenty years ago, we took a moral stand to bar smoking in the Apollo before the state acted. Was it an easy decision? We agonized for months, and when we did it, we lost 30% of our bar customers, who just went down the street to restaurants where they could smoke.

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This vaccination and mask issue is even more divisive than our smoking ban, because it has been politicized.

Are these social media writers aware many people are opposed to masks and vaccinations? Have they contacted local or state government to ask them to mandate vaccinations in Bethlehem, and not just restaurants, but all businesses?

Have they read what is going on at school board meetings across the country?

Have these writers seen the horrific news where clerks, servers, airline stewardesses, etc. have been spit on, punched and shot for asking someone to put a mask on? Even health care workers are being abused.

Isnt this issue divisive enough, without criticizing a local business on social media? Criticize the food, or the service, or just dont patronize them. But dont add to their stress by expecting them to be the vaccine police.

In a perfect world, everyone would be vaccinated, and we would have stopped this virus in its tracks. Unfortunately, the Apollo is not alone in dealing with these issues. They are damned if they do and damned if they dont.

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Lets try for 2022 to be kind, show a little empathy, have some respect, put yourselves in their shoes. Do no harm.

Rodney and Dyanne Holt are the former owners of the Apollo Grill restaurant in Bethlehem.
It has been a year since the attack on the United States Capitol in Washington D.C. by a mob of supporters of former President Donald Trump, and the Congressman for the 28th District of Texas which represents Laredo, Henry Cuellar, is among those who were at the location during this incident.

In the wake of the one-year anniversary of the incident, Rep. Cuellar recalled his experience and shared details from inside the actions taken that day.

There have been protests in the past, but there is always a perimeter that people respect, he said. Those low barriers, you dont cross that. As I was looking, I could see the bleachers where the inauguration was going to be, and you could see the windows, and I saw they were already at the Capitol Building. And thats when I said, Theres a problem there, because they were not supposed to be there where the bleachers are  and then a little after that, I saw some white smoke, which is chili gas.

The bleachers were part of the inaugural platform for the official welcoming for now-elected President Joe Biden. The inaugural platform is constructed entirely from scratch for each inauguration ceremony and is designed to blend architecturally with the U.S. Capitol, according to the official Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.

Cuellar recalled seeing the mob going toward the Capitol and not into the office buildings, which was fortunately away from where he was at the time. He said he told his staff to leave the area but the Capitol police told everyone to stay, as no one could come in or out until around 6 p.m.

I sent everybody home, Cuellar said. I stayed there by myself because I said, I will wait here at the Capitol until we know when we are going to start voting.

Early evening, I called the Speakers office and I said I want to see this vote continue, because if we dont continue this vote, that means that they won, and we cannot let them win.

Staff remained alongside Cuellar for about 10 hours  approximately from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Afterwards, Cuellar recalls staying in the Capitol until he was called to vote  around 3 a.m.  before leaving the premises at 4:30 a.m. after the final votes were done.

I was concerned about staff, everybody was worried about their safety, Cuellar said. But as I was looking at the window, I didnt think they were coming toward our office building, they were just going in one direction: to the Capitol. Later, we found out that they wanted to disrupt the certification of the votes, the counting of the votes.

The atmosphere inside the building was tense, according to the Congressman. Along with his colleagues, Cuellar said that they were receiving call after call from loved ones worrying for their safety. Emotions filled the air as everything happening was being shared live and on social media, and no one could be certain how this series of events would unwind, he said.

The incident became major international news, with even a Congressman from Mexico  a friend of Cuellars  calling him to ask about his safety.

This happens in other places, it should not be happening in the U.S., Cuellar said. And thats when I said, Not only (are) the people in the U.S. shocked, but the rest of the world is shocked with the images that we are seeing. It was very surreal, because from my windows I could see everything happening.

Watching these people  they thought they could disrupt the certification of the votes and keep Trump as president. Its beyond me. They were breaking windows, breaking doors, trying to get on the House floor. They got to the Senate floor, but they did not break into the House floor.

Cuellar said he spoke with a French journalist, who was among the crowd inside the Capitol, and said attendants were prepared with walkie talkies to communicate and navigate the building strategically. With even veterans being among the crowd of intruders at the Capitol, coordination was present at all times.

After a long and tense night, Cuellar witnessed the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol when he encountered rioters at the airport ready to leave Washington D.C.

At the airport, you could see that some of these people were there, he said. They had Trump caps, masks, and I was sitting there listening to them, and they were talking about it like it was a walk in the park.

It was beyond me that they were bragging about what they had just done earlier the day before.  When I was flying home, I got to talk to one of my Republican friends from Texas.  It was just beyond me how my own colleagues in their minds felt that what they were doing was right.

Other attacks on U.S. buildings have occurred in the past, and this one  like many others  led to safety measures changing immediately and permanently. Cuellar said that afterwards they put up fencing around the Capitol and had National Guard and even Border Patrol present. He said he joked with one of the USBP agents about how he felt he was back at the border with the fencing and barbwire around the Capitol.

They did it afterwards, and they kept it for months, Cuellar said. It should have been done before, not after the situation. Certainly, theres a lot more of Capitol Police  the National Guard is gone, the fencing is gone. Youve got to find that balance between security and still have the Capitol open for tours to go see the biggest symbol that we have for our democracy.

Investigations on the attack are still active. And Cuellar shared his thoughts on the cooperation, or lack thereof, of his colleagues with the investigations.

People who are close to Trump are not cooperating on it. You can see that their loyalty to Trump is very strong, he said. I think people should provide the information that they have, because we need to first find out lessons learned to make sure this doesnt happen again.

And the other thing is know how high all of this was planned, because I can tell you, anybody that has been at the Capitol, its hard to maneuver around it. You have to know exactly where to go. There was without a doubt scouting as to where to go. You dont go into the Capitol knowing exactly where to go. Ive been around for a while, I know exactly where to go  but anybody that goes in the Capitol can get lost very easily, so they knew where to go.

Cuellar said he does not believe that justice has been served yet toward all attendants of the Capitol attack. He acknowledges that the Department of Justice has prosecuted many but stresses that he wants the investigation to continue to see how far it goes.

In reflection, Cuellar believes this is something that Americans survived  a moment in which they stood their ground for democracy and voted.

I think that every Jan. 6 we need to think about what happened, he said. There was a first-time attack on the U.S. Capitol by our own citizens that got so caught up in this Trumpism that they were willing to set aside the Constitution and put peoples lives at risk. I think every Jan. 6 we need to think about that there was an attack not only on the physical Capitol, but its an attack on democracy.

If they would have succeeded in what they were trying to do, they would have stopped the peaceful transition of a new president, and that basically to me is a coup.

cecilia.trevino@lmtonline.com

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3 1 of 3 Courtesy photo /U.S. Border Patrol Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Courtesy photo /U.S. Border Patrol Show More Show Less 3 of 3





The smuggling attempt of 10 migrants was stopped in northwest Laredo, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.

On Wednesday, Laredo North Station agents detected a suspicious minivan traveling through a subdivision in the northwest area of the city.
Laredo has one new financial company and lender in the city that hopes to help consumers get their financial needs in check and also help local retailers.

The company aims to help hundreds of customers during its first year in the city while also being able to assist businesses with several needs. The company extended its presence into the city due to the citys growing potential in the areas of business and housing.

Lendmark chose to extend its presence to Laredo, one of the largest cities in southwest Texas, because of the sheer number of consumers who may need better access to affordable household credit and personal loan solutions, Lendmark Financial Services SVP Communications Karen Blouin-Clay said. With the opening of the new Laredo branch, Lendmark now has a local, physical location that customers can visit for personalized customer service.

The company specializes in offering a variety of personal loans for home repair projects, unexpected emergency expenses and debt consolidation, as well as seasonal needs such as vacation, back-to-school and holiday purchases.

According to the company, the new Laredo branch will likely service between 500-600 customers in its first year.

The company also brings the added benefit that it also helps retailers as well, which could benefit the Laredo area as local retailers have seen a hit recently due to the economic effects of the pandemic that caused the international bridges to be closed for more than a year and a half.

In addition to serving consumers directly, Lendmark also provides financing solutions for 11,000-plus retailers and independent auto dealerships, allowing these businesses customers to apply for Lendmark financing, Blouin-Clay said. Local businesses that are interested in partnering with Lendmark to provide financing solutions for their customers, should contact our Laredo branch.

The company also helps in the fight against pediatric cancer, which has recently become a major topic in the city as there is no pediatric cancer facility in Laredo. Organizations like Smiles From Heaven and others have to help those families in need of treatment to go elsewhere in the state.

Blouin-Clay states that the company has an good reputation for fighting the disease and will make sure that their Laredo location also continues the good fight as well.

In addition to providing personal loans to those facing planned and unplanned life events, Lendmark also contributes to solving a pressing societal issue  pediatric cancer, Blouin-Clay said. Lendmark Climb to CURE (C2C) is the signature cause-related initiative of Lendmark Financial Services. Each year, Lendmark employees, their family and friends and business partners commit to raising money and awareness for pediatric cancer, research and financial support of families with children and teens battling cancer.

The company states that it launched the first fundraising and awareness effort in 2016, partnering with Atlanta, Georgia-based CURE Childhood Cancer). The nonprofit is dedicated to conquering childhood cancer through funding targeted research while supporting patients and their families.

To date, Lendmark and its partners have raised $3.5M for CURE. In 2021, Lendmark committed to raising $1M in a single year for the first time to mark the companys 25th anniversary and exceeded the goal by raising $1.1M, according to Blouin-Clay.

According to Blouin-Clay, the pandemic has affected their business as well in some ways just like any other business requesting their help or consumer due to the economic effects of the pandemic.

Like all businesses, weve had to monitor and adapt to a continually changing situation, Blouin-Clay said. In addition to adhering to any local and state rulings regarding COVID-19, we also have maintained our own set of policies and protocols in an effort to keep everyone safe while serving.

Currently, our branches request customers make an appointment to come into the branch. Our branch staff ask the standard COVID questions prior to letting the customer into the branch and conduct transactions behind a safety shield. Masks need to be worn by customers in the branch, and employees when customers are in the branch. We will also be fully compliant with the OSHA COVID-19 Vaccination and testing ETS order.

Considering the pandemic, the company also prides itself in being fully a company that can operate online as well for any customers inserted in online banking and transactions.

Lendmark operates with a brick and click-by-design approach, meaning we have both physical branches for in-person customer service as well as online and digital options for consumers on-the-go, Blouin-Clay said. Lendmark recently celebrated a customer milestone, with the 250,000th customer downloading and registering for the companys popular mobile application. The company reached this customer milestone less than a year after topping the 200,000th customer mark on its mobile app.

According to Blouin-Clay, Lendmark Financial Services is a company with 25 years of personalized lending that since 1996 the company has been providing consumer loans to help everyday Americans meet their financial needs for both planned and unplanned life events.

Currently, the financial company has over 430 branches in 19 states from coast to coast.

Lendmark continues to grow by providing trustworthy, reliable and consistent financial services in a personalized way that make a difference in peoples lives, Blouin-Clay said. We get to know our customers and the communities we serve.

Consumers interested in applying for a loan should visit lendmarkfinancial.com or visit the companys branch in Laredo. Interested people can also visit the branch directly by going to 2324 Bob Bullock Loop, Suite 120.

jorge.vela@lmtonline.com
Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office

Deputies responded to a call for service regarding a kangaroo in Mercedes, Texas about two miles from the ranch it belongs to, according to a Facebook post from the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office on Saturday.

"HSCO deputies and the owner of the kangaroo were able to recover the kangaroo without any incident," the post reads. "Details on how the kangaroo got loose are still being determined. No injuries or property damage has been reported."
A suspected drunk driver crashed several times before being arrested, according to Laredo police.

Jesus Emiliano Martinez, 21, was arrested on the charges of striking a fixture, driving while intoxicated, evading arrest with a vehicle and evading arrest on foot.

The case was reported at about 4:27 a.m. Jan. 2 in the intersection of Elm Street and McClelland Avenue. First officers on the scene encountered a gray vehicle. The vehicle refused to stop when officers attempted a traffic stop.

The suspect vehicle then crashed into a parked vehicle, a concrete pole and an apartment complex building. Police identified the driver as Martinez. He allegedly displayed signs of intoxication and was arrested after he tried to flee on foot.
As the City of Laredo begins to take steps to lower the risks of infections in the city and people cope with the ongoing fourth wave of COVID-19, across the Rio Grande, the City of Nuevo Laredo is going into near full lockdown mode.

As 2022 began, the state of Tamaulipas imposed restrictions on several gathering activities as ballrooms, movie theaters and even restaurants, capping them at around 50%. Meanwhile, it also prohibited the sale of alcohol on Sundays and after 10 p.m. the rest of the week. However, just a few days after those restrictions were implemented on Jan. 2, the city government announced new restrictions and policies put in place as Tamaulipas finds itself at the highest level of active infections, as recorded by the Mexican Health Ministry.

The states announcement it was at the Red level in terms of infections was made Thursday night on the traditional Dia de Reyes, or Three Kings Day, that is celebrated throughout Latin America, as 110 cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in the city in a two-day span. The municipal government of Nuevo Laredo recently even canceled a major event that had been planned for Jan. 7 to celebrate nurses.

Due to the dramatic change of the health ministrys stoplight indications of COVID infections in the area going from orange (medium level of infections) to red (highest level of infections) in just a matter of hours, the celebration organized by the municipal government for Jan. 7 at the Polyforum in efforts to celebrate nurses around the city has been suspended, said the city of Nuevo Laredo in a statement.

Laredo Health Authority Dr. Victor M. Trevino said the efforts being done across the river are something good in efforts to stop the spread of the virus during this fourth wave. He believes Nuevo Laredo needs to act more swiftly on this matter as vaccination rates are lower in the city than in Laredo.

Mitigation is always based on the level of vaccination and testing, Trevino said. In areas of lower vaccination, stronger mitigation is needed to protect against transmission, hospitalization and death.

The surges being seen in both Laredo and Nuevo Laredo are indicative of our challenges with variants and unvaccinated populations. For this reason, as a community, we need to come together and get everyone vaccinated to get out of this pandemic.

The news was also followed by the fact that now all schools will go remote for the next few weeks or possibly the semester as the wave of COVID-19 infections affects the city. All schools, both public and private, will offer distance learning in the city of Nuevo Laredo.

The announcement was made in conjunction by the states Secretary of Education, the government of the state of Tamaulipas and the Secretary of Health in Mexico.

In accordance with the current school state calendar, back to school from vacation time will still be held on Jan. 10, 2022; however, such return will be in its totality at long distance for both public and private schools at all educational levels, stated the new policy.

The statement further read that there is currently no timetable of when schools will be back fully face to face amid the growing number of cases seen in the city and elsewhere.

Colleges and universities in the area have not made a united announcement, but one local college student did say she was told they will continue to be studying remotely for at least the next semester while professors might be returning slowly back to campus.

We have not been told anything officially, but they are telling us that most likely only professors will be going to work as the level of infections continues to be high and might be returning the semester after this one. Maybe if things improve, Carmen Menchaca said.

Around the city, several stores have also adopted capacity limits of allowing several people inside the stores at a time. They have only allowed one person per family to go to stores, and some have even put a policy of not allowing young children into stores either.

Temperature checks at stores have also been imposed again. Some seem content the city is taking these proactive steps to stop the spread of the virus and the new variant, but they also feel the pandemic has no end in sight.

Starting the year with the pandemic as the No. 1 problem or issue is not good, Norma Villalobos said. By that time, we all thought that with the vaccines and many people still staying at home this would be over, but it is not the case. Many people are getting fed up with this, and I am too as we need to start comprehending that COVID is here to stay, and unfortunately it's going to kill many people that did not listen or allow their bodies to not be strong.

Villalobos says she does fear the fact many children in the city, who might not have good access to the internet or even a television set, are missing out on their education. This is why she believes pandemic restrictions should be reconsidered if a new wave after this one does come.

Another thing happening in the sister city of Nuevo Laredo is that vaccine drives are getting fuller than before, as people seek their first vaccines or their first vaccines for children. Meanwhile just like Laredo, testing sites in the city are being overwhelmed. In fact, some American citizens have stated that they have crossed into Nuevo Laredo to get a COVID-19 test because there was none available in Laredo.

I had to go into Nuevo Laredo to get tested as I could not find any place in Laredo to do so, and if I did not take my test, then I could not be able to go back to work, and I could not miss work if I was negative for two or three days until there were appointments in Laredo, Jose Santibanez said. Within 24 hours I got it from the test site in Nuevo Laredo, but I feel that now as more people are doing this and the people from over there are also getting tested a lot, then this might mean less availability as well.

Trevino sees nothing wrong with Laredoans going to Nuevo Laredo to get tested if they cannot find any on time in Laredo, as he believes the sharing of resources is what will most likely help bring an end to the pandemic.

The pandemic fate of our communities is intertwined, and therefore we share resources when possible, he said.

The health authority of the city predicts this fourth wave might be in the area of the two Laredos at least until mid-February or March based on estimates. However, he commends people who are now just getting vaccinated and their booster shots.

Since we have just started, this is hard to predict at this time, Trevino said. Projections and transmission modeling shows approximately five to seven weeks, but these are estimations. We could end this sooner if everyone decided to get vaccinated.

jorge.vela@lmtonline.com
Burley, ID (83318)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this evening will give way to occasional snow showers overnight. Low 34F. Winds WSW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of snow 60%. Higher wind gusts possible..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies this evening will give way to occasional snow showers overnight. Low 34F. Winds WSW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of snow 60%. Higher wind gusts possible.
U.S. Border Patrol agents discovered 24 migrants inside a tractor-trailer at the Interstate 35 checkpoint.

A white tractor-trailer arrived at the Interstate 35 checkpoint at about 10:15 p.m. Jan. 6. Authorities identified the driver as Erica Dominguez, of Lubbock, during an immigration inspection. She was directed to secondary inspection after a K-9 unit allegedly alerted to possible contraband within the 18-wheeler.

Agents then removed a security seal and opened the trailer doors to discover 24 people. All were migrants from the countries of Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Homeland Security Investigations special agents took over the case.

In a post-arrest interview, Dominguez stated that she traveled with friends from Lubbock to Laredo about two days prior to her arrest. She stated that while at a bar in Laredo, a man approached her and her friends asking if they wanted to make some money. This individual allegedly offered Dominguez $3,500 to transport brake rotors from Laredo to Dallas.

She agreed to the job and waited for instructions prior to her arrest. Dominguez stated she did not know the delivery address in Dallas. She expected to receive that information once reaching San Antonio. Further investigation revealed that she did not have a commercial drivers license, according to an arrest affidavit.

Dominguez was charged with transport, attempt to transport and conspire to transport the migrants.
As COVID cases continue to increase, United ISD stated it will continue to follow all CDC guidelines and dismissed the possibility of going back to remote classes for their students in a statement released Thursday.

The district announced it will continue sanitizing its campuses, classrooms and school buses, as well as the continued use of desk shields.

UISD employees returned to work on Friday as students return to campuses Monday. If a student is sick or COVID positive, the district is asking the parent or guardian to advise the childs teacher so the campus may provide temporary remote instruction for those who meet the required criteria.

We look forward to the safe return of our students and staff, and to the successful completion of this school year, UISD Superintendent David H. Gonzalez said. We are united in keeping our students and employees healthy and safe.

At this point, the state is not recommending a remote return to classes, UISD communicated, despite the increase of COVID due to the new omicron variant.

UISD assures parents it is taking every precaution to mitigate the spread of COVID. Temperature checks will be implemented as well as the cafeteria protocols that were used in the beginning of last year  specifically the six feet social distancing requirement  in order to minimize the number of students congregating for lunch. Social distancing will also be observed in classrooms, and mask wearing is strongly encouraged.

UISD shared its COVID Health & Safety Protocols which were updated Jan. 6, which explains the steps that should be taken for students who are either COVID positive or have been in close contact with someone else who has tested.

For COVID-positive students and staff members, either symptomatic or asymptomatic, an intake report will be created by the campus/department administration for students and campus/department administration for employees. After this, they may return to school/work when: they have been fever free for 24 hours without medication, have improved symptoms and at least 10 days have passed since symptoms first appeared. The start of isolation is considered the day after symptoms first appeared, meaning they may return to school/work on Day 11 if they are symptoms free.

Protocol for students and staff who have been in close contact with COVID differ with their status of vaccination and symptoms. For those vaccinated and showing no symptoms, after the intake report, they should get tested after seven days of last contact with a COVID-positive individual. Also, mask wearing is recommended for 10 days after said contact.

For those showing no symptoms but are not yet fully vaccinated, they must stay home and only return to campus after 10 days of being exposed if they are not getting tested. If the individual gets tested, they may return if the result is negative. However, for those showing symptoms, no matter if vaccinated or not, they should get PCR tested and stay home. The student or staff member may return to school when they receive a negative PCR result or they have been fever free for 24 hours without medication, symptoms have improved, and they have finished a 10-day quarantine.

cecilia.trevino@lmtonline.com

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Students at Johnson High School spent class time sitting in an auditorium on Friday because classes were without a teacher or a substitute. NEISD spokesperson Aubrey Chancellor says there were 672 teachers out district wide today, January 7, and the district has been unable to find substitutes for 300 positions. This has been a growing problem at school districts across San Antonio as COVID cases continue to rise.

Chancellor says she didn't know how many of the absent teachers have COVID-19 since they classify their time off under personal or family illness, but she knows the wave of absences came after winter break.

The students are sent to the auditorium, Chancellor says, and are given any work that was planned for the day but are not taught.

She says NEISD has had trouble finding substitutes since the beginning of this school year, the first time Texas schools brought back in-person learning since the pandemic started in March 2020.

Chancellor says it's been mentally taxing on staff.

"Its tough," she says. "Every time our employees think there is going to be a little bit of hope  that we're going to turn a corner  theres another challenge."

Superintendent Sean Maika emailed a statement to parents this afternoon talking about teacher shortage. Maika says that the district welcomes parents who want to volunteer, adding that they will be added to schools based on their skills.

But he reiterated the district's need for substitutes and included a link where one could apply.

"We have increased substitute pay and are in desperate need of subs who know this school district, our communities and most importantly, love helping children," Maika says.

Still, parents are concerned with the teacher absences and its effect on their children. Jeremy Polen's daughter attends Johnson High School. She sent texts to a group thread with Polen and his wife notifying them that her history class and others were sent to the auditorium instead of a classroom, adding that they were not being taught or doing work.

Classes ranged from English, math, history, or science. Chancellor says the size of the classes vary but did not give details on the numbers of students. There are 755 seats in the auditorium.

Polen says in an emailed statement that sending students to an auditorium during the spread of a highly contagious variant of COVID-19 was very concerning to his family.

NEISD follows Texas' executive orders and only recommends face masks while encouraging cleanliness and social distancing when possible.

"All we are asking as parents is to be informed about what is going on at school but it doesnt seem that communication is timely," Polen says. "But I also understand what the administration is going through and I know its difficult."
Shelley Luther, a Republican candidate for Texas House and hairdresser who became a hero of the anti-lockdown movement during the coronavirus pandemic, recently said in a since-deleted tweet that Chinese students should not be allowed to attend Texas colleges.

Chinese students should be BANNED from attending all Texas universities, Luther said in the Wednesday tweet. No more Communists!

In a follow-up tweet that is still online, Luther said the state's taxpayers "should not be subsidizing the next generation of CCP leaders," referring to the Chinese Communist Party. In a subsequent tweet, she said it is "common sense" that CCP members "should not have access to our schools."

On Friday, state Rep. Gene Wu, a Democrat from Houston who is Chinese-American, condemned Luther's comments and asked her to publicly apologize.

"Luthers statements are ignorant, hateful, and incite violence against not only Chinese Americans, but all Asian Americans," Wu said in a statement. "To casually conflate all Chinese students in America with actual registered members of the ruling party in the Peoples Republic of China is not only ignorance of an extreme nature, it is also the type of rhetoric that drives anti-Asian hate crimes."

Asked for comment Friday, Luther declined to apologize and attacked Wu, who was among the House Democrats who broke quorum and went to Washington, D.C., last year in protest of Republicans' priority elections bill.

"It doesnt surprise me that a socialist Democrat who doesnt even know how to show up to work thinks the position that communist Chinese citizens should not access taxpayer funded state institutions is racist," Luther said in a statement to the Tribune.

Luther's comments came as anti-Asian hate crimes have been on the rise. They increased by more than 73% in 2020, according to recent FBI data, far outpacing all hate crimes, which increased 13%.

Luther is challenging state Rep. Reggie Smith, R-Sherman, in the March primary. The district favors Republicans, so whoever wins between Smith and Luther is set to hold the seat after November.

Luther became nationally known at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 when she refused to shut down her Dallas salon in defiance of emergency orders. She was sentenced to a week in jail but was released after only a few days, via a motion granted by the Texas Supreme Court.

She became a vocal critic of Gov. Greg Abbott, a fellow Republican, and ran unsuccesfully for a state Senate seat in a special election later that year.

The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans  and engages with them  about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
"Today more organizations are promoting reading than at any other time in our country's history," said Center for the Book Director John Y. Cole on March 22 in welcoming participants to the center's annual "idea exchange" for its national reading promotion partners.

"Yet as a nation we continue to experience serious reading and literacy problems. Moreover, many observers worry that those who do not or cannot read in this technological age are rapidly falling behind the rest of society. Our job is to reach as far as we can into all walks of life in demonstrating the essential and practical value of reading to individuals of all ages. And the Internet gives reading promoters new opportunities."

More than 30 educational and civic organizations sent representatives to the meeting in the Library's Mumford Room, which was decorated with reading promotion posters and filled with descriptive literature about current and future promotion projects sponsored by the center's network of reading promotion partners. (For a full list of partners, visit the Center for the Book's site on the World Wide Web at: www.loc.gov/loc/cfbook).

Mr. Cole described the center's reading promotion network and partnership program, which was established in 1987 with the center's national "Year of the Reader" campaign (see LC Information Bulletin, March 1998). The network's annual meeting at the Library of Congress brings the partners together to describe their organization's activities and learn about reading and literacy programs in which they can become involved. A brochure distributed at the meeting outlined ways that partners and other organizations could use the center's current promotion theme, "Building a Nation of Readers." Center for the Book Program Specialist Anne Boni, who represents the center at many meetings organized by partner organizations, pointed out how mutual support of each other's projects and themes widened the audience for all projects and themes.

Center for the Book Program Officer Maurvene Williams discussed the growing importance of the center's Web site in providing information about organizations and their reading and literacy projects. In February 1998, for example, the site handled 15,000 transactions; in February 1999, 21,000. She announced a new "Building a Nation of Readers" feature that also will mark the Library of Congress's Bicentennial in the year 2000. Partner organizations as well as individual libraries, schools and government agencies are invited to describe one reading promotion project (in 50 words or less) for posting on the Center for the Book's Web site. The goal is to have 200 projects posted by April 24, 2000 -- the Library's 200th birthday.

Following the first presentation, by Carol Rasco, director of the U.S. Department of Education's "America Reads Challenge", each reading promotion partner made a brief presentation about his or her organization and its activities. Moderator John Cole introduced several new partners, including the Academy of American Poets, the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, the Children's Creative Writing Campaign, the National Center for Learning Disabilities, the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance, the National Endowment for the Arts, First Book and the National Geographic Society.

Center for the Book Consultant Virginia Mathews, who directs the Center for the Book/Viburnum Foundation Family Literacy Project, concluded the day's presentations. She summarized six important "current trends" or "hot topics" in reading promotion projects for young people. Ms. Mathews believes that these trends, if acted upon, could lead to new collaborative projects for their respective organizations. They are: family literacy projects; out-of-school reading and literacy programs; mentoring, particularly community-based mentoring programs; projects that include parental involvement; "very" early childhood projects, e.g. "Born to Read"; and cooperative projects with health organizations.

Back to May 1999 - Vol 58, No. 5
Lockport, NY (14094)

Today

Cloudy with rain developing later in the day. High around 65F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low 49F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Introducing mandatory vaccines in Ireland could be difficult to achieve because of rights afforded by the Constitution, a legal expert has said.

David Kenny, associate professor of law at Trinity College in Dublin, said the State would have to show a very compelling and highly evidenced common good rationale to remove peoples decision-making rights.

Teen to appear in court over alleged Longford row A teenager is to appear before a sitting of Longford District Court morning following an alleged public order incident in the county town earlier today.

Minutes from a meeting of the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) revealed the issue of mandatory vaccination is to be discussed by public health experts, it emerged on Monday.

However, such a move could face huge challenges as the Constitution protects bodily integrity and autonomy and medical decision making.

The Irish Constitution also provides for strong protection for the rights of parents and guardians and children under Article 41 and 42.

While those rights are not absolute, it is possible to limit them for the common good.

But Prof Kenny said it would be challenging to do that in court.

As the virus threatens to overwhelm the health system, officials from the Department of Health are to produce a paper that will set out the relevant ethical and legal considerations.

The number of unvaccinated people are filling up hospital beds, prompting discussions around mandatory vaccines and how they could be introduced in Ireland.

Many scientists say increasing the number of vaccinated people will help reduce the number of people admitted to hospital with serious Covid-related issues.

Prof Kenny said the state would be expected to look into the move, as well as any legal and ethnical objections.

He said: The Irish constitution presents some potential difficulties for a policy proposal like this.

You would have to show a very compelling and highly evidenced common good rationale for taking away peoples decision-making rights in circumstances like this.

Thats something that I think in principle could be done.

I wouldnt say that the Constitution is such that we could never, in any circumstance, introduce a mandatory vaccination scheme  simply that you would have to be able to show a necessity and a very strong common good that would be done with the mandate, not a good that will primarily accrue to those people.

It would have to very much be a common welfare benefit.

Prof Kenny said the high numbers of vaccinated people in Ireland could pose another hurdle should the state wish to introduce such a measure.

He said the state would have to compare the current level of vaccination numbers with how mandatory jabs would help keep people out of intensive care.

They would have to show that, whatever extra percentage they think they would capture with a mandate, would be such that it would make a really marked difference to our public health outcomes in order to overcome the sort of consent and autonomy question, he added.

I would think that the state would want to be producing very compelling public health evidence in this. It wouldnt be an easy legal fight for the state if there were a legal challenge and I assume there would be quite quickly.

Prof Kenny said legislatures would have concerns about the likelihood of any move surviving a constitutional challenge.

The Government could also seek to change the Constitutional by way of a referendum but Mr Kenny said this could take a long time.

It would put the matter in a public debate, and we have to all consider if that is something we want to do, he added.

It would be a challenging process.
A modified car which was lower to the ground was the cause of a young man being charged with having a dangerously defective vehicle.

However, this charge was struck out after the recent sitting of Longford District Court heard that the defendant had immediately sold the car.

Jordan Flynn (21) with an address at Finea, Mullingar, Co Westmeath, was also charged with having stickers on his car on June 27, 2020 at Ballinalee, Granard which incurred a 200 fine for him.

Explaining the modification of the car, defence solicitor John Quinn said a lot of younger drivers prefer to have a lower profile for their car because it looks good.

Its popular with young people - its a fad, Mr Quinn said.

However, garda sergeant Mark Mahon said the springs are cut in the car to lower it, which can damage tyres and wheels on the car.

He got rid of the car almost immediately, once he was made aware of the situation, Mr Quinn said. It was on this basis that the dangerously defective charge was struck out.

Mr Flynn, you have used up your good luck story today, Judge Bernadette Owens said.
: rzc (), : USANews

 : 

: BBS  (Sun Jan 9 19:09:40 2022, )



https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/rxwnbl/i_am_a_new_york_city_public_

high_school_student/



I Am a New York City Public High School Student. The Situation is Beyond

Control.

COVID-19

I'd like to preface this by stating that remote learning was absolutely

detrimental to the mental health of myself, my friends, and my peers at

school. Despite this, the present conditions within schools necessitates a

temporary return to remote learning; if not because of public health, then

because of learning loss.



A story of my day:



- I arrived at school and promptly went to Study Hall. I knew that some of

my teachers would be absent because they had announced it on Google

Classroom earlier in the day. At our school there is a board in front of the

auditorium with the list of teachers and seating sections for students

within study hall: today there were 14 absent teachers 1st period. There are

11 seatable sections within the auditorium ... THREE CLASSES sat on the

stage. Study hall has become a super spreader event -- I'll get to this in a

moment.



- Second period I had another absent teacher. More of the same from 1st

period. It was around this time that 25% of kids I know, including myself,

realized that there were no rules being enforced outside of attendance at

the start of the period, and that cutting lass was ridiculously easy. We

left -- there was functionally no learning occurring within study hall, and

health conditions were safer outside of the auditorium. It was well beyond

max capacity.



- Third period I had a normal class period. Hooray! First thing the teacher

did was pass out COVID tests because we had all been close contacts to a

COVID-positive student in our class. 4 more teachers would pass out COVID

tests throughout the day, which were to be taken at home. The school started

running low on tests, and rules had to be refined to ration.



- "To be taken at home." Ya ... students don't listen. 90% of the bathrooms

were full of students swabbing their noses and taking their tests. I had one

kid ask me -- with his mask down, by the way -- whether a "faint line was

positive," proceeding to show me his positive COVID test. I told him to go

the nurse. One student tested positive IN THE AUDITORIUM, and a few students

started screaming and ran away from him. There was now a lack of available

seats given there was a COVID-positive student within the middle of the

auditorium. They're now planning on having teachers give up their free

periods to act as substitute teachers because the auditorium is simply not

safe enough.



- Classes that I did attend were quiet and empty. Students are staying home

because of risk of COVID without testing positive (as they should) and some

of my classes had 10+ students absent. Nearly every class has listed myself

and others are close contacts.



- I should note that in study hall and with subs we literally learn nothing.

I spent about 3 hours sitting around today doing nothing.



- I tested positive for COVID on December the 14th. At the time there were a

total of 6 cases. By the end of break this number was up to 36. By January

the 3rd (when we returned from break) the numbers were up to 100 (as listed

on the school Google Sheet). Today there are 226. This is around 10% of my

school. As of Monday, only 30 (Edit: not sure of the specific number) or so

of whom were reported to the DOE ... which just seems like negligence to me

(Edit: from DOE official number. Id like to stress this isnt the fault of

the school just an overall system failure).



- 90% of the conversations spoken by students concern COVID. It has

completely taken over any function of daily school life.

--

 :WWW  mitbbs.com [FROM: 127.]


The parents of a Longford teenager who died from a rare form of cancer two years ago are on the cusp of ensuring sick children will be able to have their very own pet alongside them while undergoing life saving treatment.

Evelyn and Enda Neary will today see the first evidence of a near two year campaign to provide a purpose built free-holding kennels at Childrens Health Ireland (CHI) in memory of their 15-year-old son come to fruition.



The move follows a huge community effort and a national fundraising campaign after brave Cian died in September 2019 from lymphoma, having undergone treatment at CHI at Crumlin, formerly known as Our Ladys Childrens Hospital.

ALSO READ: Tributes flood in for very talented Longford teen Cian Neary

Now, Cians Kennels a charity set up by Evelyn and Enda in March 2020 with the help of a newly established board of directors, volunteers, other parents and friends, has led to the start of phase one of an ambitious and exciting plan to bring pets closer to sick children and their families.



Work began this morning to erect specially designed 100,000 holding kennels for pets, complete with a seating area for families, an indoor and outdoor area for pets and bathroom/toilet facilities which will allow children at the hospital to see their beloved pets on the campus in a controlled situation.



During this initial phase, pets will board at the nearby DSPCA pet hotel and will be transported by Cians Kennels over and back to the hospital to visit sick children and their families by appointment.



Our beloved 15-year-old son Cian loved life generally  his love of sport, fashion, food and socialising with his friends was clear to all who knew him but his greatest love was animals, of all shapes and sizes, said Cians mother Evelyn.



Our world fell apart when Cian was diagnosed with Hepatosplenic T-cell Lymphoma in September 2018 and, while in hospital in the early days of diagnosis, we asked him if there was anything we could get him to make him feel better.



We already knew the answer and a few weeks later Cooper, a gorgeous golden Labrador puppy joined our other dog and cat as part of our animal family.

Cian visited Cooper most days and, as the hospital continued treatment until the last week of his life, the fun-loving Killashee schoolboy still enjoyed many occasions and outings in Dublin, knowing Cooper was safe nearby.

It was that positive impact of having close at hand which ultimately led to the setting up of Cians Kennels following the fun-loving Longford schoolboys death over two years ago.



For us as a family, these outings and the time Cian spent with Cooper became the basis of lasting, precious memories when Cian sadly lost his battle for life in the early hours of September 23, 2019, said Cians dad, Enda.



We experienced first-hand the joy Cooper brought Cian and us during the most difficult days.



Cians family and the Cians Kennels team now want to get the message of awareness out to other parents and children around the country.



We want the word to go out to every child heading into hospital in Crumlin that, right now, you can avail of most of our services and we expect that the holding kennels will be up and running by mid/late February 2022, so spread the word, said Evelyn.



Our plan with Cians Kennels was to provide kennelling facilities close to the childrens hospital, providing this service in a structured, safe, practical way, free of charge to families and now, thanks to the efforts of so many, we are nearly there.



The new service will include full veterinary checks including vaccinations for the visiting pets before they arrive at the hospital. Transport from home to and from the kennels will also be covered.



Further information on all of the services of Cians Kennels is available on the website www.cianskennels.ie.



Families who wish to avail of services can contact the team by emailing info@cianskennels.ie or by phoning 085 1488660.
Depaul and the Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP) have reached an agreement for Depaul to take over the management of the SVP homeless service in Longford.

Both Depaul's St Martha's and Bethany House will have a capacity of 22, catering for both men and women and includes a transfer of nine staff for the service.

Today marked the handover of the management of homeless services across a number of locations around Ireland, with an event taking place at Deerpark House, Cork, attended by An Taoiseach Micheal Martin.

SVP announced in September 2020 that it was planning to transfer the management of its homeless services to other charities with specialist expertise in the sector.

Depaul is a leading provider of services for people experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of homelessness across both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Established in 2002 Depaul now manages over 30 specialised accommodation and outreach services and has been at the forefront of providing additional homeless services throughout the ongoing pandemic. Depaul provides over 600-bed spaces per night and in 2020 supported over 3,500 people.

The landscape of running homeless accommodation in Ireland has changed over the last number of years. This includes changes to government policy to a focus on housing-led solutions. SVP is transferring the management of seven hostels to Depaul due to its high level of specialisation in service delivery specifically in relation to the changes in government policy and the broader landscape. Crucially, the move benefits those who use the services.



Taoiseach Micheal Martin attended todays transfer of services at Deerpark House, which he opened in 2002, and said: "This transfer demonstrates the responsibility, foresight and vision of two organisations coming together to have a positive impact on people facing homelessness.

"Our Housing for All plan seeks to support our most vulnerable by significantly increasing the number of tenancies for those experiencing homelessness and who have more complex needs.

"Yet the pathway to eradicating homelessness is bound up with the constructive contributions of organisations like Depaul and SVP, working together in a progressive and transformational manner to meet the ever-changing needs of people facing homelessness.

Having originally opened this centre in 2002 as Minister for Health, I would like to commend and thank the staff and volunteers of the Society of St Vincent de Paul who have tirelessly worked over the years to support those affected by homelessness and housing insecurity.

"I know this work will continue through their social housing projects, and through the 1200 local Conferences working across the island of Ireland. I look forward to seeing the invaluable work Depaul will do into the future for this community and others."



Depaul CEO, David Carroll said, Depaul and SVP are values-driven organisations who always put the service user at the core of everything we do. Over the last 19 years, Depaul has grown in line both with the complex and changing demands of the homeless population, and the solutions outlined in Government Policy. The paramount consideration between both organisations is ensuring service continuity and the advancement of Housing led responses to homelessness in these regions.



He went on to say, This has been an extensive process to ensure the smooth transition of service delivery always with the service user in mind. We would like to acknowledge the work of SVP in these services for many years which have helped so many people affected by homelessness. SVP staff and volunteers at these hostels have brought comfort to many and brought many others into a more settled environment.



SVP National President Rose McGowan said, The Society of St. Vincent de Paul is proud of the services we have provided at Deerpark since it opened nineteen years ago. We know that Depaul will continue what we started and we wish them, the service team and service users the very best of luck in this next chapter.



For further information about Depaul and its services please visit https://ie.depaulcharity.org/ .
Scientists have just slotted into place a big piece of the puzzle that explains how our blood cells mount their first line of defence against viruses.

They hope this discovery will help them one day better control the response to either boost it or calm it down as appropriate.

The scientists behind the discovery include Andrew Bowie, Professor of Innate Immunology at Trinity College Dublin, who is based in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, and Drs Lili Gu and David Casserly (formerly at Trinity as postdoctoral and PhD researchers respectively).

Their findings, which provide a target for new therapies that could improve anti-viral responses in some patients and reduce autoimmune problems in others when immune responses run out of control, have just been published in leading journal Nature Communications. A copy of the paper is available on request.

Interferons are key proteins that tell our immune systems when viruses, germs or cancer cells are in our bodies. Type I interferons are produced when the innate immune system senses the presence of a virus. In such circumstances interferons trigger a complex chain of events in which other cells are kicked into gear to interfere with and fight those invaders .

Scientists dont fully understand how certain links in that chain of events are controlledmaking it difficult to stimulate or suppress an immune response with therapeutic interventionsbut this new research has provided key new insights into the process.

The scientists have discovered that another protein, myeloid cell nuclear differentiation antigen (MNDA), is needed for Type I interferon production from human blood cells in response to viruses. Their work shows that MDNA regulates a transcription factor, IRF7, which in essence drives Type I interferon production.

Professor Andrew Bowie said: We have been interested in better understanding how Type I interferons are produced from blood cells because they are required to fight viruses, and because too much of themwhen the production process runs out of control, for examplecontributes to nasty autoimmune diseases such as interferonopathies.

There is a family of proteins called PYHIN proteins which we have been working on for some time, as they are implicated in regulating innate immunity. To our surprise, one such PYHIN protein, called MNDA, turned out to be a big missing piece in the puzzle in understanding how type I interferon production is sustained, which makes this discovery all the more exciting.

If we can learn how to manipulate MNDA's activity it could be really beneficial  on one hand to boost an interferon response during a viral infection, for example upon COVID-19 infection, or on the other hand to supress interferon production and treat an autoimmune disorder.

The scientists are currently examining how MNDA contributes to innate immune responses to COVID-19.

This work was funded by the Irish Higher Education Authority (HEA), grants from Science Foundation Ireland, the National Institutes of Health, and by a Bio-technology and Biological Sciences Research Council-Science Foundation Ireland joint award.
Community, Charity & Cause

By Ls Cohen Published: January 10 2022

Gifts were given to kids in St. Charles Hospital on behalf of the Smithtown Senior Citizens Center.

Some very sick children got very special gifts this past Christmas thanks to a generous donation by an anonymous Town of Smithtown employee.

The employee said that they wanted to donate brand new teddy bears to children in St. Charles Hospital on behalf of the Smithtown Senior Citizens Center. So, on Christmas Eve, the Senior Citizens Center team delivered 50 teddy bears to St Catherines of Siena. From there, they were taken to St. Charles Hospital Pediatrics unit, where each one found a home next to a young child who spent Christmas in a hospital bed.

Members of the Smithtown Senior Center staff delivered the gift-wrapped teddy bears to St Catherines of Siena. The gifts were received by Lisa Mulvey, Executive Director at St. Charles Hospital Foundation at Catholic Health Services who delivered the teddy bears to the pediatrics unit on Christmas Eve. Community Outreach Coordinator, Mary Ellen McCrossen, worked with the Town of Smithtown to coordinate the special delivery.

This is a very special way to bring holiday cheer to some very worthy boys and girls, said Smithtown Town Supervisor Ed Wehrheim.
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(Alliance News) - Shares rose in Corcel PLC on Monday after signing a non-binding agreement with Shandong New Powder Cosmo Advanced Material & Technology for the supply of nickel from the company's projects.

Shares in the battery metals and energy investment firm were up 14% at 1.66 pence on Monday morning in London.

Corcel said the agreement was for the supply of nickel from its Mambare and WoWo gap nickel projects where it holds a 41% interest and full ownership respectively.

Corcel said Shandong New Powder is seeking to purchase up to 500,000 tonnes per annum of nickel direct shipping ore. The initial term of the offtake agreement will be for three to five years.

Pricing of the products will be linked to the underlying commodity prices on the London Metals Exchange or another mutually agreed index.

Shandong New Powder is a joint venture between Sentient Global Resources Funds, Shandong Dougide Group and Cosmo Advanced Material & Technology Co Ltd, which focuses on producing lithium battery cathode materials.

Shandong New Powder owns and operates a 5,000 tonnes per annum cathode plant in China which has plans to expand to 20,000 tonnes per annum in 2022.

By Heather Rydings; heatherrydings@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - Hummingbird Resources PLC said on Monday that construction at its Kouroussa gold mine project in Guinea has begun, but it admitted worries in Mali.

The London-based gold miner with projects in Mali, Liberia and Guinea said that construction had commenced at the Kouroussa site following the mobilisation of equipment and personnel in December.

From the site, Hummingbird said it has received 10,050 metres of assays from the 2021 drilling programme. It added that more was expected in the first quarter of 2022.

The KoeKoe deposit at Kouroussa has a current maiden reserve of 408,900 ounces at 4.38 grams of gold per tonne of ore, with upside potential once all the 24,000 metre infill drilling data from 2021 is analysed. This, the company explained, will feed into its updated 2022 resource and reserve statement that is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2022.

Hummingbird also noted the sanctions that have been imposed on Mali by the Economic Community of West African States. The sanctions restrict the movement of cash, people and goods across borders into and out of Mali from the wider West African States economic community region.

The sanctions were imposed over delays to a return to civilian rule by the Mali's military junta. ECOWAS, at a meeting on Sunday, also agreed to cut financial aid and freeze Mali's assets at the Central Bank of West African States, AFP reports.

Hummingbird said it is evaluating the immediate risks to its supply chain as a consequence and added that it is too early to say how these sanctions may potentially affect its business.

Shares in Hummingbird were down 3.8% at 13.95 pence on Monday afternoon in London.

By Heather Rydings; heatherrydings@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Hydrogen Utopia International PLC - London-based company specialising in turning non-recyclable mixed waste plastic into carbon-free fuels - Says its wholly-owned subsidiary Hydropolis United SP ZOO has signed a deal to develop a waste-to-hydrogen system in Poland. Hydropolis United signs the letter of intent with RZZO SP ZOO, a regional municipal waste company in Poland. Under the contract, RZZO has agreed that it will provide a plot of land at one of its facilities with the necessary utilities to operate a Hydrogen Utopia waste plastic to hydrogen plant. Hydrogen Utopia said is intended that the heat energy produced by a plant would be fed into a district heating system.

Current stock price: 13.03 pence, up 74% from IPO price

By Heather Rydings; heatherrydings@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
IGas Energy PLC - Lincoln, England-based oil and gas producer - Hires Chris Hopkinson as independent non-executive director, starting immediately, with plans for Hopkinson to take over from Cuth McDowell as chair. McDowell steps down as interim chair and non-executive director after 10 years on the board. Hopkinson is chair of AIM-listed Enwell Energy PLC. He was chief operating officer of JSC National Co KazMunayGas and previously worked for Royal Dutch Shell PLC, BP PLC and BG Group.

Current stock price: 12.95 pence, down 4.1% on Monday

12-month change: down 33%

By Tom Waite; thomaslwaite@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
North American Income Trust PLC - invests predominantly in S&P500 equities - Confirms Susan Rice succeeds James Ferguson as chair. Ferguson retired on December 31, with Rice succeeding him on January 1. Charles Park succeeds Rice as the senior independent director with immediate effect.

Current stock price: 285.00 pence

12-month change: up 17%

By Greg Roxburgh; gregroxburgh@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - ITM Power PLC announced on Monday its subsidiary, ITM Power GmbH, has won a EUR2.0 million award for a federally funded electrolysis project in Germany.

The Sheffield-based energy storage and fuel company said the Sinewave project was won as part of the German Federal Ministry of Education & Research's hydrogen project, H2Giga. This focusses on technology development for industrialisation of electrolysis systems.

The project runs to March 2025. ITM Power said it is the first time the company has accessed funding from the German Federal government.

ITM Power said that ITM Power GmbH will focus on education and training in the field of installation, maintenance and operation; researching safety training programmes for customers ad technical personnel; developing live monitoring and reporting of systems; developing improved reliability for systems; and developing a supply chain for large scale deployments.

ITM Power GmbH's partners in the project will be: Linde GmbH, ITM Linde Electrolysis GmbH, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden Rossendorf Institute of Fluid Dynamics, Technical University of Dresden Institute of Process Engineering and Environmental Technology, and Technical University of Munich Institute of Plant and Process Technology.

Shares in ITM Power were down 1.2% at 360.20 pence on Monday morning in London.

By Heather Rydings; heatherrydings@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Sharecast News) - London stocks were set to edge up at the open on Monday following a mostly positive Asian session.The FTSE 100 was called to open nine points higher at 7,494.

CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said: "When looked at in the round, Friday's [US non-farm payrolls] report would appear to suggest that while there are plenty of vacancies, there appears little appetite to fill them. In both November and December, the number of jobs added has been disappointing, which would suggest that even with US employers having to pay up to get people back into the workforce, workers don't appear to be in a hurry to return, despite over 10m vacancies, and only 3m fewer workers.

"This is something that could see further upward pressure on wages in the coming weeks and months and will certainly be food for thought for Fed officials when they look at the timeline for when to make their first move on rates.

"As such, as we look towards this week's market focus and today's European open, the primary focus is likely to be on this week's US CPI numbers for December, which are likely to add further spice to the discussion with estimates that we could see the headline number come in at 7.1%, up from 6.8% in November."

In UK corporate news, manufacturer Rotork tapped Kiet Huynh to take over as chief executive officer with immediate effect.

Huynh, the managing director of Rotork's water and power and its chemical, process and industrial divisions, will succeed Kevin Hostetler, who informed the board of his plans to return to the US in August 2021.

Primary care property investor Assura said it had completed 105m in acquisitions during the third quarter using proceeds from its November fundraising.

The company said it had an immediate development pipeline of 22 schemes, where it expected to be on site within 12 months, totalling a further 166m, up from 145m in the previous three months.

Assura in November launched a 190m placing to fund acquisitions.

Chief executive Jonathan Murphy said the company had provided its premises as major hubs for Covid vaccinations and booster jabs during the pandemic.

He added that the urgent need "for high-quality primary care capacity to support the significant effort required to address the backlog from the pandemic will be in even sharper focus in the coming months".
(Alliance News) - More than 1,000 people are now in hospital with Covid-19, Health & Safety Executive boss, Paul Reid, has confirmed.

The news comes after days of record Covid-19 case numbers in Ireland, following the arrival of the Omicron variant late last year.

Reid, who heads the UK government agency responsible for the regulation of workplace health and safety, said on Monday that there is a "continual strain" on the health system, in part due to rising hospital cases but also as a result of significant staff absences due to Covid-19.

He said that it was good news that the proportion of people entering hospital was "significantly down on what it would be in previous waves".

However, he said that despite indications that Omicron causes a less severe illness, "there is no-one in hospital with a mild illness".

"One good positive thing a we're not seeing the same level of patients needing advanced respiratory supports," he told RTE radio.

The HSE chief said that around 14,000 to 15,000 staff are absent due to Covid-19.

He said that the "pace" of the absences had been a challenge for the HSE.

Following the opening of vaccinations for children aged five to 11, 83,000 have been registered to received the vaccine, Reid said.

Around 27,000 had received a first dose of the vaccine, he added.

Reid was also asked about media reports that the National Public Health Emergency Team is due to consider mandatory vaccination.

He indicated that he would not personally support such a move.

"I would prefer to be winning people's heart and minds," he said, referring to Ireland's already high take-up of vaccines.

He also said that the HSE expects that people will be able to register positive antigen tests online from later this week.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin said he is confident that the current restrictions will withstand the current wave.

"That said, we want to give it another week or two," he added.

"We haven't peaked yet and Covid has had many twists and turns.

"I am confident that if we maintain the same focus we can get through this wave."

The Fianna Fail leader said that Cabinet is not reviewing the 8pm curfew for the hospitality sector.

He said he is also awaiting advice from the chief medical officer about the rules around close contacts.

Martin said it will kept under "close review".

"We have over 1,000 people in hospital.

"Thankfully the conversion to intensive care is not at the same level as it would have been last year or in different waves," he added.

"We do need a bit more time to await to see to be sure of that. We are still not at the peak of this wave, it's still on an upward trajectory.

"The country is managing this, we just need to keep at this. I would urge people in that context then to get the booster vaccine.

"It is absolutely clear that if you are vaccinated, you reduce you capacity to get very ill or end up in hospital or ICU.

"Given the extraordinary nature of Omicron, given how quickly it spreads and transmits, I think the country, prior to Christmas and over Christmas, has done very well.

"I think people have responded well in terms of behaviour, which has kept pressure on the virus from spreading even more."

He said that around 63% of the adult population have received their booster shot, but that the programme has been hampered by the large number of people contracting the virus.

"We want to keep people out of hospital and ICU. In our view the case numbers are very high and we believe we can manage those case numbers within the existing infrastructure," Martin added.

"The system will cope."

source: PA

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Greg Sukiennik has worked at all three Vermont News & Media newspapers and was their managing editor from 2017-19. He previously worked for ESPN.com, for the AP in Boston, and at The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass.
A new week has begun, and as usual, were kicking things off by shining the New Arrival spotlight on a bottle that were particularly excited about. Today its a very special rum from Guatemala: Ron Zacapa Reserva Limitada 2019!

Ron Zacapa does things a little differently to most Latin American rums. For a start, the team uses only the first press of sugar cane juice rather than the molasses commonly used in the industry. This is then concentrated to make what is known as sugar cane honey. They use over 20 different varieties of cane all grown in Guatemala. Thats the country just below Mexico, just in case your Central American geography is a little shaky.

History of Ron Zacapa

The family-run company behind it, originally known as Industria Licorera Guatemalteca, dates back to the early 20th century but the Zacapa brand itself was launched in 1976 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the town of Zacapa, about 70 miles east of Guatemala City. Currently, Diageo has a 50% stake in the brand and looks after distribution and marketing.

The process to turn that sugar cane honey into aged rum takes place under the watchful eye of master blender Lorena Vasquez, a former chemist and food technologist from nearby Nicaragua. Fermentation takes place over 120 hours using a proprietary yeast strain that is, according to this article, extracted from pineapples. Ron Zacapa is made in a column still with the alcohol coming off at between 88 and 92% ABV.

Solera ageing

But its maturation that gets Vasquez particularly excited: The fermentation and distillation are more of a mechanical process, the ageing process is where the passion comes in. The former is analytical whereas the latter is very creative and personal. Every day we blend rums and we have to try them halfway through the morning and halfway through the afternoon.

Ageing takes place at a different facility high up in the mountains, 2,300 metres above sea level. Here you have warm days and cool nights which means the rum ages more slowly. The new make is diluted down to 60% ABV before going into cask. Zacapa uses a solera-style system, which Vasquez explains is similar to making sherry, but with some slight differences.

We start by ageing [new make] in ex-bourbon American oak barrels. After that, we take it out of the cask and mix it with old rums. In this second ageing process, we use the same type of barrel but char it first for more vanilla, chocolate and toffee flavours. Then we take that rum out and mix it again with older rums, she says. For the final ageing process, we use barrels that held aromatic sherry, specifically Oloroso. And then we do a final mix in barrels that previously aged Pedro Ximenez wines. It makes the rum much more complex. The rums, therefore, are blends of various ages, usually between about six and 23 years, though longer for the XO bottling.

Ron Zacapa Reserva Limitada 2019 is here!

Ron Zacapa also makes limited editions that are highly sought-after by rum fans. The Ron Zacapa Reserva Limitada 2019 is finished in sweet Moscatel wine casks which impart a glorious balance of sweet, floral fruit and rich oak. Its bottled at 45% ABV, a little stronger than the core expressions.

This is the bottle that has just landed at Master of Malt today. As its name suggests, its strictly limited edition. When its gone, its gone. Its very much a sipping sort of rum though would be delicious in simple cocktails like a Palmetto or, Vasquezs choice, an Old Fashioned.

Salud!

Ron Zacapa Reserva Limitada 2019 is from Master of Malt. Click here to buy.

Tasting Note by The Chaps at Master of Malt

Delicately balanced with plenty of sweet caramel and warming oak, hints of berries and floral orchard fruits poke through, with woody vanilla chewy butterscotch.
McAlester, OK (74501)

Today

Thunderstorms, some strong during the evening will give way to cloudy skies after midnight. Damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado with some storms. Low 51F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms, some strong during the evening will give way to cloudy skies after midnight. Damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado with some storms. Low 51F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
McAlester, OK (74501)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms, some strong during the evening, will give way to cloudy skies after midnight. Damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado with some storms. Low 51F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms, some strong during the evening, will give way to cloudy skies after midnight. Damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado with some storms. Low 51F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Meadville, PA (16335)

Today

Cloudy with rain developing later in the day. High around 65F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Showers and thunderstorms likely. Low 52F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
Aanand L Rai directed Atrangi Re, featuring Sara Ali Khan, Dhanush, and Akshay Kumar in lead roles, premiered on Disney+Hotstar last month and has been receiving a positive response from fans. Upon its release, the film had the biggest opening weekend for the streaming platform. Several members of the film industry too praised the movie's unconventional plot and performances of the lead trio. Vicky Kaushal is the latest name who has joined the list of celebs who have appreciated Atrangi Re.

Taking to social media, the Masaan actor showered praise on the film, its cast, and director Aanand L Rai. Taking to his Instagram story, Vicky shared his thoughts about the film and requested the filmmaker to cast him in his next project. He wrote, "Kitni pyaari Film hai... mazaa aa gaya! @saraalikhan95 such a difficult role to play and how wonderfully you have surrendered yourself to it. He added, "@dhanushkraja absolutely genius. @akshaykumar Garda uda diye".

The actor further added, "@aanandlrai Cast me in your next Film Sir, please!"

Resharing Vicky's Insta story, Rai thanked him and replied, "Thank you mere bhai... Aur tu cast nahi hoga...tu jab bhi hoga kahani hoga (You wont be cast. Whenever you are there, you will be the story).

Sara, who played the role of Rinku in Atrangi Re, too shared Vicky's Insta story to thank him. In her post, she also requested the filmmaker to cast her opposite the Raazi actor, in case they decide to collaborate.

For the unversed, Vicky and Sara are already working together in Laxman Utekars next film. Recently, the duo was papped shooting in Indore, Madhya Pradesh for the untitled movie. After this, the actor even landed in legal trouble as a resident of Indore filed a police complaint against him for allegedly using a number plate belonging to his vehicle.

Coming back to Atrangi Re, the film tells the story of Rinku (Sara Ali Khan) and Vishu Dhanush) who got forcefully married to each other. But, after spending time together, they grow fond of each other. However, their life changes after the entry of Rinku's lover Sajjad (Akshay Kumar). While fans have loved Sara and Dhanush's onscreen chemistry, a section of viewers aren't happy with the film for trivialising mental health. According to them, the makers of Atrangi Re failed to do justice to the mental issues that the protagonist Rinku was going through in the movie.

Have you watched the film? If yes, share your views in the comments below.
If there is one film in recent times that created quite a stir amongst fans and clearly, was a heartwarming experience for them, it was the 2015 Salman Khan-starrer Bajrangi Bhaijaan.

The film had Salman play the role of a Lord Hanuman devotee, who after finding a young, speech-impaired Pakistani girl, Munni, chooses to do everything in his power to ensure that she is reunited with her family in her home country across the Indian border.

 Disney+ Hotstar

The movie, which was directed by Kabir Khan and also starred Nawazuddin Siddiqui, proved to be a massive hit amongst fans and critics, ensuring that Salman's status of being a top actor is crystal clear as ever.



With it almost being 6 and a half years since the release of the movie, Salman took to a press conference to announce that there will be a Bajrangi Bhaijaan sequel, with the movie instead of being called 'Pawan Putra Bhaijaan'.

However, now, director Kabir Khan has revealed that despite Salman announcing the film, the team is yet to even lock the script for it.

 Instagram/Kabir Khan

Speaking in an interview with Mid-Day, Kabir said that while the movie is happening, he hasn't even read the script yet.



Pawan Putra Bhaijaan is what Salman is calling it. It is definitely being written, He mentioned that it is happening because he is excited. I have not read the script, but Vijayendra sir will [always] write something exciting. The idea of [creating] a sequel never excites me. I will never make a sequel to my film only because [the original] was successful. If [I find] a great story, I will be happy to make one. said Kabir.

The filmmaker also jokingly mentioned how Salman really doesn't follow protocols of announcements.

 Instagram/Salman Khan

Salman doesnt follow [protocols] of formal announcements, he talks from his heart, said Kabir.



Salman, who will next be seen in Tiger 3, Shah Rukh Khan's Pathan, and Aamir Khan's Laal Singh Chaddha, had announced Bajrangi Bhaijaan 2 at a promotional event of SS Rajamoulis RRR last month.

Later, when Kabir was asked about the same, he instead revealed that there had been no script or idea regarding the film.

That announcement is something that Salman did. Neither the script is written, nor has the idea been formed really. There is literally nothing right now we can talk about. said Kabir, while speaking to India Today.

Well, let's hope we eventually get to see the movie in the halls!

Source: Mid-Day
Popular Hollywood actor and comedian Bob Saget, known for Full House and How I Met Your Mother passed away at the age of 65 on January 9, 2022. He was found dead in his hotel room in Orlando, Florida.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Bob was on a comedy tour across the US and on Sunday, he was found unresponsive in his room in Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes. The authorities revealed that the actor-comedian was pronounced dead on the scene.

The exact reason for his death has not been revealed yet, however, the authorities ruled out any foul play or drug use.

 Bob Saget Instagram

His family later released a statement confirming his death. The statement read, We are devastated to confirm that our beloved Bob passed away today. He was everything to us and we want you to know how much he loved his fans, performing live and bringing people from all walks of life together with laughter. Though we ask for privacy at this time, we invite you to join us in remembering the love and laughter that Bob brought to the world.



Hours before his sudden demise, Bob had tweeted about his stand up act and comedy tour. In the tweet, he had mentioned how he is enjoying the stint and was happily addicted again to doing stand up comedy.

His tweet read, Loved tonights show @PV_ConcertHall in Jacksonville. Appreciative audience. Thanks again to

@RealTimWilkins for opening. I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight. Im happily addicted again to this shit. Check http://BobSaget.com for my dates in 2022.

Loved tonights show @PV_ConcertHall in Jacksonville. Appreciative audience. Thanks again to @RealTimWilkins for opening. I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight. Im happily addicted again to this shit. Check https://t.co/nqJyTiiezU for my dates in 2022. pic.twitter.com/pEgFuXxLd3  bob saget (@bobsaget) January 9, 2022

Since then his tweet has gone viral with many fans and followers reacting to it. One user wrote, I'll give it 24 hours before I believe it, ffs we're off to yet another sh*tty start this year. Another user commented, Dude, you just tweeted this 16 hours ago This cant be true.

One tweet read, Truly sad I remember when I was driving through CA. for work and I had to stop in San Francisco and I couldn't not stop by and see this iconic home from my childhood. rip sir.

Take a look at some of the reactions below:

I'll give it 24 hours before I believe it, ffs we're off to yet another shitty start this year pic.twitter.com/Oy8eEwjtkK  agony agate (@h0lly_blue) January 10, 2022

Dude, you just tweeted this 16 hours ago This cant be true.  Kris Pangilinan (@KrisReports) January 10, 2022

Two legends gone few months apart pic.twitter.com/Ecym4j2O9p  SirDc (@DCsir92) January 10, 2022

Truly sad I remember when I was driving through CA. for work and I had to stop in San Francisco and I couldn't not stop by and see this iconic home from my childhood. rip sir pic.twitter.com/eOHKhRktWS  iTimmyD (@iTimmyD) January 10, 2022

Besides fans and followers, a lot of Hollywood celebs and Bobs friends from the industry too were left in shock after his demise.

His Full House co-star and close friend John Stamos was left gutted. He tweeted, I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby.

I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby.  John Stamos (@JohnStamos) January 10, 2022

Josh Radnor, who played Ted Mosby in How I Met Your Mother to Bobs Future Ted, wrote a beautiful tribute.

He tweeted a thread that read, Bob Saget was the older wiser me' for nine years on How I Met Your Mother. He was the kindest, loveliest, funniest, most supportive man. The easiest person to be around. A mensch among mensches. I had so much imposter syndrome when HIMYM started, thought Id be found out, kicked off set & sent home. When I'd run into Bob on the Fox lot in those early days he'd gush over my performance & tell me how he was studying me to make sure his vocal performance felt right.

He ended his thread with a picture with Bob and wrote, Im endlessly grateful that HIMYM brought Bob Saget into my life. Ill hear his voice in my head for the rest of my days.

I had so much imposter syndrome when HIMYM started, thought Id be found out, kicked off set & sent home. When I'd run into Bob on the Fox lot in those early days he'd gush over my performance & tell me how he was studying me to make sure his vocal performance felt right. 2/7  Josh Radnor (@JoshRadnor) January 10, 2022

We had a very special bond from Day 1, were never out of touch for long. We found a way to grab dinner once a year, even after HIMYM wrapped. We went to see each other in our Broadway plays. We talked a lot about how to live a meaningful life amidst all the chaos. 4/7  Josh Radnor (@JoshRadnor) January 10, 2022

There are people who leave the earth and youre haunted by all the things you didnt tell them, all the love that was unexpressed. Luckily that wasnt the case with Bob. We adored each other and we told each other. 6/7 https://t.co/U3WITMhP1C  Josh Radnor (@JoshRadnor) January 10, 2022

Im endlessly grateful that HIMYM brought Bob Saget into my life. Ill hear his voice in my head for the rest of my days. /end pic.twitter.com/ZmRyYiuaul  Josh Radnor (@JoshRadnor) January 10, 2022

Check out a few other social media posts below:

Just heard about Bob Saget. I sat next to him on a flight once. We were both headed to a gig. Him to a casino, me to a club. He was the nicest, warmest man. Gave me some great advice about comedy. Big loss for comedy today.  Vir Das (@thevirdas) January 10, 2022

This truly sucks sadness #RipBobSaget  Ralph Macchio (@ralphmacchio) January 10, 2022

He was an incredibly kind and funny person. https://t.co/tpzjY82Aw3  Ben Stiller (@RedHourBen) January 10, 2022

Beautiful Bob Saget passed away today at 65. He had a big, big heart and a wonderfully warped comic mind. He gave the world a lot of joy and lived his life for goodness sake. :^} pic.twitter.com/QVSITsfaVj  Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) January 10, 2022

Oh god. Bob Saget!!! The loveliest man. I was his TV daughter for one season and he was always so kind and protective. So so sorry for his family.  Kat Dennings (@OfficialKat) January 10, 2022

Im shocked and saddened to learn that Bob Saget is gone. A great friend and one of the funniest and sweetest people I have ever known. My love to his beautiful family.  Billy Crystal (@BillyCrystal) January 10, 2022

Apart from starring in Full House and How I Met Your Mother, Bob Saget is known for hosting Americas Funniest Home Videos, Entourage and Fuller House, among other shows and films.

 Bob Saget Instagram

Bob Saget is survived by his wife Kelly Rizzo, and three daughters from his first wife, Sherri Kramer.


You know how most of the time, Bollywood takes inspiration from real-life incidents and makes big blockbuster movies out of it?

Now imagine the opposite happening, except inspiration gets drawn not from the feel-good and motivational movies but from the twisted old Bollywood movies that left people wondering what just happened.

Wife swapping racket operating on social media busted in Kerala.



Till now 7 arrested



Many professionals, including doctors & lawyers, were part of social media groups & they operated through fake identities. Some groups had 5000 members



Some women were forced by their husbands  Anshul Saxena (@AskAnshul) January 10, 2022

We are talking about the hit movie Ajnabee starring Akshay Kumar and Bobby Deol that got famous for two things - Bipasha Basus horrific dance on the piano and the concept of wife swapping that gets introduced by Akshay Kumar in a gesture that went on to become iconic.

 DNA India

Turns out, something similar has transpired in real life as a wife-swapping racket has genuinely been uncovered through the help of social media where police found almost 5000 couples involved in this racket.



 iStock

The arrest took place on Sunday in the Karukachal town of Keralas Kottayam district where the police arrested a man and took six others into custody for allegedly being part of a racket that included couples swapping partners for illegal sexual activities.



Turns out, the racket was being operated through mediums like Facebook and Telegram.

The entire matter came to the fore after a wife had lodged a complaint with the police against her husband, accusing him of presenting her to his inline friends for such activities.

The police started digging into the matter and found a network operating out of Kottayam that dealt with wife-swapping. The statistics, as well as the details of this racket, have been downright horrifying.

 iStock

The 5000 people who were active on this network included several professionals, such as lawyers and doctors, who had joined using fake names and identities.



The activities would include wife swapping, cuckolding, threesomes and unnatural sex, according to TOI.

Some Bollywood movies leave a bad example.

Old movie of Akshay and Bobby was on this theme  Nirmal W (@nirmalw) January 10, 2022

Kuchh jyada hi progressive log hain waha!  Mr. X (@frnd899) January 10, 2022

Good to hear of swift action by police.

Only quick & stringent punishment to those caught will ensure safety of women from such hideous men.



Society needs to be vigilant and report abuse of women.



Seems to crop up across India.https://t.co/UACk1vACY9https://t.co/VpkCworHfx  Sunil Ramakrishnan (@schunell) January 10, 2022

A police officer who opened up on the case shared, Many wives who are forced into this against their wishes are showing suicidal tendencies and so we need to investigate with extreme care. Almost 90% of the women are not comfortable with it, they are brainwashed into this."

It is a shame that people would go to these lengths to force their own spouses into such a filthy business. Police are currently still investigating the matter.

Source: Times of India
One of the most famous names in the elite royal circle of Abu Dhabi and who was recently spotted at the Grand prix is a certain crypto currency billionaire and owner of Binance, Changpeng Zhao. He's known as CZ to cryptophiles and is literally the only person the world is talking about, when it comes to personal wealth.



His net worth is $96 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and that puts him ahead of Asia's richest person, Mukesh Ambani, Mark Zuckerberg and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin as well. This wealth estimate doesnt include his crypto holdings.

 Twitter

Binance is banished from China, where it was actually founded and the company has been at the heart of controversies ever since. It generated at least $20 billion of revenue last year. CZ was born in China and at the age of 12, he moved to Canada with his parents. After his father lost his job, Zhao worked at many odd jobs to make ends meet, including flipping burgers at McDonalds. He then went on to study Computer science at University level, and in 2005, he founded a company which catered as the fasting trading system for brokers.



 Twitter

Zhao entered the block chain and cryptocurrency world in 2013, even before the world actually got familiar with it. He founded Binance in 2017 and quickly climbed the money ranking chart in no time. He is currently the 11th richest person in the world.



Source: NDTV
A Memorial Service of Christian Burial will begin at 2 p.m., Saturday, May 7, 2022, at Robert Barham Family Funeral Home Chapel. Robert Barham Family Funeral Home is honored to be entrusted with the arrangements. Mrs. Cobb, 68, of Meridian, passed away Sunday, May 1, 2022, at Bedford Care Ce
TAIPEI, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Taiwan's exports to the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong totaled 188.91 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, a record high, according to the island's finance authority.

The figure represented a 24.8-percent increase from 2020 and accounted for 42.3 percent of Taiwan's total exports in 2021, the authority said in a press release.

In December alone, the island's exports to the mainland and Hong Kong stood at 17.09 billion dollars, up by 16.2 percent year on year, it said. The number accounted for 42 percent of Taiwan's total exports in December.

The island's imports from the mainland and Hong Kong in 2021 increased by 29.9 percent year on year to 84.17 billion dollars.

In December, the island's imports from the mainland and Hong Kong increased by 20.6 percent year on year to 7.68 billion dollars.

Taiwan's total exports in 2021 reached 446.45 billion dollars, up by 29.4 percent from 2020. Its total imports climbed by 33.2 percent year on year to 381.17 billion dollars.

The island saw a trade surplus of 65.28 billion dollars, while its trade surplus with the mainland and Hong Kong totaled 104.74 billion dollars.

Although the global supply chain may be held back by the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, the island's exports in the first quarter of 2022 will probably maintain stable growth due to the robust global demand, the authority said. 
Judy Van Veckhoven's art is among various media in Meridian Community Colleges Miller Art Gallery Permanent Collection, which will take the spotlight when the college hosts the first exhibition of 2022 from Jan. 12-Feb. 15.
For some of the good folks who take time to read this column, today, January 10, wont mean a lot. Oh sure, it will be somebodys birthday, the day somebody got married and, perhaps the day a family lost a loved one.

But in the long run, perhaps, the day will mean little more than 24 hours closer to spring. Just another Monday leading to another Tuesday.

But being a weekly column writer, its my responsibility to come up with something that will spark a memory or two or something very important coming up in a day or two.

In other words, its my job to make a little something out of nothing.

As far as I can recall, the date January 10 doesnt ring a lot of bells in my lifetime. On this date in 1932, I was all of 23 days old. I hadnt given much thought to becoming a journalist at that time, so my future was pretty much in disarray.

But the impossible won out, and 62 years is a measure of success in a profession I never dreamed of being a part of.

And all of those years produced some very simple, but enjoyable, moments.

Like the day a male deer found its way into downtown Hartford, where I served as editor of a weekly newspaper for more than 46 years.

With a camera in hand from an earlier assignment, I managed to get a picture of the deer standing in front of the Hartford Bank & Trust Company.

With plans to use the picture in the newspaper, I found myself having a difficult time giving the likeness an appropriate description. So an idea finally came forth, and I settled for: A deer looking for some doe.

Another interesting encounter in Ohio County involved myself and Less Smiley White, a good friend and longtime Ohio County Circuit Court clerk.

Both heavy smokers, Smiley and I got together one day and decided we would give up the terrible habit. And it was agreed that if either one caught the other smoking, the loser would have to push the winner from Hartford to Beaver Dam in a wheelbarrow.

As my luck would have it, I walked into Smileys office about a week later and caught my friend puffing away.

Not totally unexpected, Smiley failed to honor the wheelbarrow commitment, and I had to jokingly approach the sitting Circuit Court judge for a resolution to the problem. That judge, who happened to be Smileys upper hand, found in my favor, and the big push was scheduled and partially performed.

With me proudly nestled in the wheelbarrow, Smiley sorrowfully started his U.S. 231 journey from Hartford to Beaver Dam. About two blocks out of the Hartford city limits, Smiley steered the wheelbarrow off the road and into a water-filled ditch. And it was there he deposited his cargo.

Speaking of many years passed and years yet to come, how about the recent birthing of twins, a boy and a girl, in California.

The first one came into this world in 2021 and the other in 2022.

How about that for a passage in life that will be a part of two peoples lives forever?

Born in different years. Wow!
Colleges and universities in the county area are largely maintaining their COVID-19 protocols from last year for the spring 2022 semester, which is beginning for most of them.

Officials from Western Kentucky University-Owensboro, Kentucky Wesleyan College, Brescia University and the Owensboro Community & Technical College say classes will all be in-person, but there are virtual and remote learning opportunities available should students need them. Their protocols for handling the omicron variant include masking in buildings and in crowds.

KWC is requiring students who are not fully vaccinated to submit a negative COVID-19 test result before returning to classes. Beginning Monday, Jan. 10, Brescia will also have testing requirements for unvaccinated individuals.

Western Kentucky University is asking all of its school community to report or update their vaccination status at app.wku.edu/vaccine. Brescia and OCTC are not requiring vaccines for students and staff, but are strongly encouraging them and providing opportunities to receive the vaccine.

Kentucky Wesleyan has required its staff to be vaccinated, with medical and religious waivers considered with proper documentation, said Eddie Kenny, KWC vice president of advancement.

He said all students should refer to the schools COVID Response Team messaging regularly, which is updated often at kwc.edu/coronavirus/.

Lauren McCrary, Brescia vice president for executive affairs and chief of staff, said the most notable change this spring semester is the schools technology upgrade that allows for most classrooms to provide remote learning opportunities.

Bernie Hale, OCTC director of communication and marketing, said the school is continuing its recommendations for all other protocols, like safe distancing, hand washing and, especially, staying home when sick.

In a letter sent to WKU staff, WKU President Timothy Caboni said the strategies employed by the schools COVID-19 Task Force have proven effective, but sustained diligence is required to best protect our Hilltopper family.

The ever-changing nature of the pandemic and the arrival of new variants require continued flexibility and adaptability, he said.

Bobbie Hayse, bhayse@messenger-inquirer.com, 270-691-7315
The Evansville Shipyard was the largest inland producer of LST ships during World War II, Cory Burdette told a crowd at the Owensboro Museum of Science and History on Sunday.

Burdette, a tour guide with the USS LST-325 Memorial Museum located in Evansville, said the Evansville Shipyard created 167 of the vessels, which were paramount in the war effort. A lot of individuals in the tri-state area were employed at the shipyard, most of which were women because men were fighting in the war.

Burdettes program is part of the museums efforts to promote the history of the warships in the area. He has plans in the future to introduce the program to schools, area libraries, and other museums.

We have stories to tell, he said. Its our job to tell those stories and give younger generations an opportunity to learn.

The LST-325 is the only operational LST in WWII configuration still afloat in U.S. waters, Burdette said.

The ship was launched Oct. 27, 1942 and it participated in the war effort through 1946. It was reactivated for military service in 1951, and was taken out of service 10 years later.

Its third reactivation was from 1963 when it was transferred to the Greek Navy until 1999. In 2000, the ship was acquired by the USS Ship Memorial. It remains one of two WWII LSTs preserved in the U.S. and currently is docked at 610 NW Riverside Drive in Evansville.

The pandemic has inhibited a lot of promotion efforts of the memorial museum and the ship, but there are plans this year to reintroduce some of the programming offered. For example, the ship takes cruises throughout the eastern seaboard. This summer it will be visiting West Virginia, Cincinnati, and Ashland.

Hadley Rouse, OMSH assistant director, said the LST presentation is part of additional programming that is scheduled for this year.

While the pandemic may slow or adjust how programs are presented to the public, there is a schedule of events coming up. Some programs are returning after several years, like the upcoming Hobby Day on Jan. 15.

During that event, representatives from various hobby groups in the area and region will be available to showcase opportunities and share information for those interested in pursuing their particular interest. There will be individuals from the Daviess County Audubon Society, area beekeepers, artisans, stamp collectors, and more, Rouse said.

There will also be demonstrations and other hands-on activities for the whole family, she said.

We are hoping to do some kind of presentation once a month, she said.

Bobbie Hayse, bhayse@messenger-inquirer.com, 270-691-7315
Rural primary school in SW Chinas Yunnan rewards excellent students with little piggies

People's Daily Online) 17:50, January 10, 2022

A rural primary school in southwest Chinas Yunnan Province has rewarded 20 students with the best academic performance at the end of the winter semester by giving each of them a piglet.

The school hands out piggies to the students parents. (Photo/yunnan.cn)

In previous years, we awarded our outstanding students with school supplies. This year, some kindhearted personnel from Shanghai contacted us, saying they wanted to do something for the school. Besides, we thought that the rewards for this semester should be something associated with improving the livelihoods of the students families, said Hou Changliang, a teacher from the primary school in Yiliang county, Zhaotong city, explaining why they had chosen the little piggies as a reward for the students.

The childrens parents were very happy. These rewards have been earned by their kids through their hard work at school. This has a totally different meaning, Hou expressed.

The 20 piglets, weighing in between 10 and 15 kilograms, were awarded to the students by drawing lots.

Photo/yunnan.cn)

After Hou shared the video recording the award ceremony presentation on social media, the rewards aroused heated discussions about the creativity and goodwill the school had demonstrated, with some viewers of the video saying these piggies were a pragmatic kind of reward, while others exclaimed that when the piggies are raised big enough, the families could either sell them for extra money or slaughter them for their meat.

The primary school, called Xiangyangping Primary School, has only four grades, with the total number of students being only 65. Hou and his wife volunteered to teach at the school four and a half years ago.

Hou Changliang and his wife Lei Yudan take a photo with their students.Photo/yunnan.cn)

The wedding photo of Hou Changliang and Lei Yudan taken at the school. (Photo/yunnan.cn)

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese foreign ministry Monday urged the United States to unfreeze Afghanistan's assets and lift unilateral sanctions on the country as soon as possible.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, acting Deputy Prime Minister of the Afghan Taliban's interim government, is reported saying that the recent rain and snow have aggravated the plight of Afghan people in need of food and clothing, and the economic sanctions imposed by the United States have made Afghanistan face serious challenges.

When asked to comment on Baradar's remarks, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a daily press briefing that the Chinese people sympathize with the difficulties the Afghan people are suffering.

He said that although the U.S. military has withdrawn from Afghanistan, the sequela caused by its occupation of Afghanistan for 20 years continues and is further aggravated.

"We urge the U.S. side to deeply reflect on its mistakes, shoulder its due international responsibilities and lift its asset freeze and unilateral sanctions against Afghanistan as soon as possible," Wang said.

The U.S. side is also urged to take concrete actions to make up for the harm caused to the Afghan people, instead of sprinkling salt on the wounds of the Afghan people, according to Wang. 
While some dreams will most likely remain just that, for those who dream of taking to the clouds as a pilot, that dream can become reality with some time, money and hard work.

For Owensboro resident Richard L. Dixon, his interest in airplanes began during childhood, watching planes zip around the clouds. He was able to turn that passion into a profession after serving in the U.S. Air Force as an aircraft mechanic between 1961 and 1966.

I was pretty much all over the world as an aircraft mechanic, Dixon said Friday while standing in a hangar at Owensboro- Daviess County Regional Airport. I learned to fly after the Air Force.

An Owensboro resident since 1972, Dixon spent decades as a professional pilot before opting to build his own airplane about 12 years ago.

Dixon said that while the Vans Aircraft RV-7 single engine plane is a kit, it still took seven years and thousands of man hours to build.

This airplane does everything well, he said. It is good to take a friend or someone on a ride for a day of local flying. It is really good at cross-country flying, because it is about the fastest home-built out there.

Before finishing his plane about five years ago, Dixon said he had shares with other people in airplanes, and would maintain a plane in exchange for its use.

With more than 50 years of aviation experience, Dixon said he has certainly seen some changes in the industry through the years.

When I came into flying there were not that many jobs available, Dixon said. Need was being filled by ex-Air Force or people that went to college and had a degree in aviation and a pilots license.

Dixon said it is now easier for new pilots to get some experience and use that to get a job in the industry.

A lot of people retired during COVID-19, and when the airlines go back to full capacity, there is going to be a big demand for pilots, he said.

While many people building an airplane will keep track of exactly how much time and money the build ends up costing, Dixon said he has never added everything together and just enjoys the ride.

For local realtor Harini Cardwell, her dream of getting her pilots license goes back to her childhood in India.

I remember my Dad flew somewhere, and my Mom took me to the airport to drop my Dad off, and I saw the plane, she said. I was standing there and looking at planes takeoff and land. I was probably about four.

Cardwell said she decided now was the right time to take the steps to get her pilots license, and she began attending school and getting her flight hours last year.

I think the main thing for me was just getting in a plane and flying for the first time and taking off, Cardwell said.

She expects to earn her pilots license sometime this month. She has a goal of purchasing an airplane before the new year is out.

That is my goal for this year, Cardwell said. Four or five pilots can get together or friends can get together and get a plane.

Cardwell said she has been doing some work for Blackshape, an Italian based company that produces an ultralight aircraft, and would like to have a career in the aviation industry.

For Michael Boyd, a professor at Owensboro Community and Technical College, owning a small plane gives him the ability to visit family and friends more efficiently and quickly than if he had to drive.

The owner of a small experimental aircraft and a four-seater Rockwell Commander that flies at 150 miles per hour, Boyd said he first received his pilots license while he was still a teenager and has been flying since 1979.

Everyone can get into it, Boyd said.

Boyd said in years past, he has taught a private pilot ground school, which attracted a wide cross section of society.

You talk about interesting people, he said. I taught one class that had ages 14 to 80, and they just loved it.

After relocating to Owensboro in 1989 with the intention of staying one year to work for MidAmerica Jet flying pipeline patrol, Boyd said he has enjoyed a successful career in both education and aviation.

Having stored his airplane at a hangar at Owensboro-Daviess County Regional Airport for about 20 years, Boyd said Owensboros own airport is a gem of an airport, with leadership that understands the private aviation aspect of the industry.

Boyd said to him, as to a lot of pilots, the airplanes that carry them safely through the skies are more than just machines.

These airplanes tend to have souls, he said. I will say goodnight to them when I am leaving the hangar; you trust them.

Nathan Havenner, Messenger-Inquirer, nhavenner@messenger-inquirer.com, 270-228-2837
January 10, 2022

At an online event held jointly on January 10 (Mon.) by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI), the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), and the AEM-METI Economic and Industrial Cooperation Committee (AMEICC), METI Minister Hagiuda announced the ASIA-Japan Investing for the Future Initiative, a new initiative that provides the direction for economic cooperation in Asia, with a view toward the post-pandemic era.

Outline of the ASIA-Japan Investing for the Future Initiative

Related materials

Division in Charge

About the ASIA-Japan Investing for the Future Initiative

Asia and Pacific Division, Trade Policy Bureau

Asia and Pacific Division, Trade Policy Bureau About the Asia Energy Transition Initiative

International Affairs Division, Commissioner's Secretariat, Agency for Natural Resources and Energy

Related website Southeast Asia and the Pacific

On January 10 (Mon.), an online event was held jointly by METI, the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI), the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), and the AEM-METI Economic and Industrial Cooperation Committee (AMEICC). Minister Hagiuda attended as the representative from METI.In the event, Minister Hagiuda announced the ASIA-Japan Investing for the Future Initiative, a new initiative that provides the direction for economic cooperation in Asia, with a view toward the post-pandemic era.METI will work toward investing in the region's future through this initiative and the Asia Energy Transition Initiative (AETI) announced in May 2021.The ASEAN region is facing changes due to ever faster innovation (notably due to the march of digitalization) and increasing awareness of the importance of sustainability in urban and rural areas (including problems with transportation infrastructure and other issues arising from progress of climate change and urbanization). In light of these changes, this initiative aims to actively promote new future-oriented investment (future investment) based on three principles:(1) offer effective solutions to the reality faced by ASEAN countries;(2) create foundation for sustainable economic society, using private sectors innovation to the maximum extent; and(3) co-create the regions future through collaboration with local businesses and partnership between Japan and ASEAN countries.Specifically, the initiative will aim to strengthen investment in supply chains, connectivity, digital innovation, and human resources to bring about the following ideal images of the future:(1) improving attractiveness of the region as a hub of global supply chain; and(2) creating innovation to enhance sustainability and solve social challengesFor more information, see the related materials below.
Paducah, KY (42003)

Today

Thunderstorms likely - possibly strong, especially this evening. Low near 65F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms likely - possibly strong, especially this evening. Low near 65F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
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A Michigan based company is recalling its infant formula because of failure to meet nutrition and labeling requirements.

Moor Herbs, based in Detroit, is recalling its Angel Formula after testing by the Food and Drug Administration revealed that it didnt meet nutrition requirements despite marketing it as such, according to the recall notice from the FDA.

When the product was tested, the iron, sodium, and potassium content were well over the maximum allowed, which could potentially lead to iron overload and/or electrolyte imbalances, the FDA notice stated.

The product also doesnt contain vitamin D which could lead to a vitamin D deficiency, and in turn could lead to rickets and bone issues in infants, the FDA stated.

The company issuing the recall at the request of the FDA has run into issues over the past few months as well.

The company continues to manufacture products without a state license, and they are not registered with the FDA, a requirement for companies manufacturing infant formula, the notice read.

In August of 2021, the company was issued a cease-and-desist order from Michigan Department of Agriculture to keep it from producing its products. Despite this, the company has continued to sell its products in-store and online.

As of yet, there have been no documented adverse effects from the products. Anyone who has purchased the Angel Formula should discard whatever product they may have.

Those with concerns regarding their infants or their own health should contact their healthcare provider.
BEIRUT, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon and Iraq signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Sunday aimed at strengthening ties in the economic, industrial, scientific, environmental and technological fields, according to a statement released by Lebanon's Industry Ministry.

The MoU was signed by Iraqi Minister of Industry and Minerals Manhal Aziz al-Khabbaz and Lebanese Industry Minister George Bouchikian, who is on an official visit to Iraq to discuss ways of boosting ties between the two countries.

The MoU also intends to improve business cooperation between the two countries, according to the ministry's statement.

George Bouchikian said he discussed technical and economic issues with Iraqi officials in order to facilitate exchange and set up joint investments in the industrial and production sectors that meet both countries' demands, particularly in the pharmaceutical and food industries.

Iraq, according to al-Khabbaz, is looking forward to benefitting from Lebanon's pharmaceutical manufacturing expertise.

In addition, the two countries agreed to remove technical barriers to the flow of commodities between them. 
Get ready to bundle up - or just stay inside. Sub-zero wind chills are coming to many parts of Michigan this week, according to the National Weather Service.

The NWS issued hazardous weather alerts across the state to notify people of the coming below freezing temperatures and additional winds that further reduce what it feels like outside.

In the Thumb, Bad Axe is expected to see scattered snow showers with a high near 14 degrees on Monday. Wind chill values could reach as low as negative 7 degrees, with a west wind 13 to 20 mph and gusts as high as 29 mph.

In the Great Lakes Bay Region, the high is expected to reach about 15 degrees with wind chill values as low as negative 6 degrees on Monday. West winds of 10 to 16 mph will have gusts as high as 24 mph, the NWS stated. It said no hazardous weather is expected the rest of the week.

In northwest Michigan, the NWS calls for accumulating lake effect snow, blowing snow, and subzero wind chills Monday.

"The heaviest snow is expected to fall across the traditional snow belt locations of eastern upper Michigan and to a lesser extent across northwest lower Michigan," the NWS stated. "Pockets of significantly reduced visibility are likely."

It also noted that recent cold temperatures and rapid ice development on area rivers and streams may result in ice jams and localized flooding in the northwest lower peninsula.

In Manistee, the high Monday is expected to reach near 13 degrees but wind chill values could be as low as negative 11 degrees, the NWS stated.

In central Michigan, Mecosta County is expected to see a high near 11 degrees and wind chill values as low as negative 8 degrees on Monday.

"Light lake effect snow showers may bring localized accumulations of an inch or two today and tonight west of Highway 131, which could also lead to hazardous travel conditions," the NWS stated.
Editors note: If you have an event you would like to have included, please email the information to Reporter Victoria Ritter, vritter@mdn.net.

Tuesday, Jan. 11

Family Snowshoe Hike is set for 5-6:30 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Bring the whole family for an afternoon of exploration on snowshoes - no experience needed! The group will search high and low for signs of animals as they explore on and off trails. Please bring a sled to pull younger children. Pre-register for this free event and reserve snowshoes online or call 989-631-0830. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Thursday, Jan. 13

The Pendulum Lounge is open 4:30-8 p.m. at Midland Center for the Arts. Enjoy craft cocktails, small plates and hearty offerings while DJAM provides live music. This event is free to attend, small plates and drinks available for purchase.

An Evening Snowshoe is set for 5-6:30 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Come discover the beauty of a winter night! The group will look for signs of animals, study tree silhouettes and enjoy the winter sky. Bring a headlamp or flashlight. Pre-register for this free event and reserve snowshoes online or call 989-631-0830. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Saturday, Jan. 15

A History Hike is set for 1-2:30 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Start the new year with a casual trail hike and explore the natural resources that brought people to the region. Join CNC staff as we look for evidence of how nature has influenced our history and guided the settlement of our area. This event is free. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

The Grove Music Festival is presenting an evening of jazz by the John Hill Quintet at 7 p.m. at Meridian High School Auditorium, 3303 N. Meridian Road, Sanford. Tickets are available at the door for $10.

A Comedy Night is set for 8 p.m. at Sanford American Legion. The kitchen will be open 5-7 p.m. The public is welcome to enjoy some dinner and comedy, makes a great date night. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased in advance or at the door.

Sunday, Jan. 16

Snowshoe Sampler is set for 2-4 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. It's time to play outside! Drop by any time to give CNCs snowshoes a try, do a winter scavenger hunt or warm up by a campfire. Meet at the Homestead Cabin and come enjoy a winter afternoon in the snow. If snow conditions are unfavorable, the event will be canceled (based on the discretion of CNC). This event is free. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Monday, Jan. 17

A Full Moon Stroll is set for 5:30-7 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Join an Interpretive Naturalist for a hike to enjoy this months full moon. Learn how the tradition of naming moons began and what makes each month special. Please wear dark colors and bring a flashlight. We may use snowshoes if conditions permit. Reserve snowshoes online or call 989-631-0830. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Wednesday, Jan. 19

An Evening Snowshoe is set for 5-6:30 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Come discover the beauty of a winter night! The group will look for signs of animals, study tree silhouettes and enjoy the winter sky. Bring a headlamp or flashlight. Pre-register for this free event and reserve snowshoes online or call 989-631-0830. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Thursday, Jan. 20

Story Hour is set for 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Come spend an hour learning about nature! The hour will include a story, crafts and other age-appropriate activities. Dress for the weather for this outdoor program. This event is free. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

The Pendulum Lounge is open 4:30-8 p.m. at Midland Center for the Arts. Enjoy craft cocktails, small plates and hearty offerings while Jacob Wisenbach provides live music. This event is free to attend, small plates and drinks available for purchase.

Stories by the Fire is set for 6:30-7:30 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Drop by the Homestead and enjoy an early winter evening relaxing by the campfire, listen to tales of how settlers and animals adapt to survive a cold winter. This event is free. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Friday, Jan. 21

Survival of the Fittest is set for 2-3:30 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Winter is tough for wildlife. From freezing temperatures to low food availability, see how wildlife adapts to survive the harsh conditions. Dress with weather in mind for this outdoor hike and activities. This is a free event. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

REZA: Edge of Illusion is set to perform at 7:30 p.m. at Midland Center for the Arts. Reza takes the art of illusion to new extremes, delivering incredible cutting-edge magic, masterful comedic timing, and interactive and inspirational moments in a rock concert-style show that appeals to magic fans young and old! Tickets begin at $15. midlandcenter.org.

Saturday, Jan. 22

Yoga Coffee Hour is set for 9:15-11 a.m. at Mi Element Grains & Grounds. Join Sarah Nelson for the special Saturday morning version of our Yoga Happy Hour event series. Participants can enjoy a 45-minute all-levels yoga practice, then stay afterward to enjoy a drink and some friendly conversation between 10-11 a.m. Tickets are $18 (drink included), or $12 for yoga only; the ticket price includes one coffee, tea, or beer (must be 21+ for beer option) to enjoy during the event or take a voucher to enjoy your drink at a later date. Participants can bring their own mat and any yoga props to support their practice; a limited number of mats will be available to borrow. Register at sarahnelsonyoga.com/classes

Cardboard Sled Races are set for 1-4 p.m. at Midland City Forest. Hosted by the City of Midland. Pre-register online at www.cityofmidlandmi.gov/chill by Friday, Jan. 21. Registration will be allowed on the day of the event if space allows.

Tuesday, Jan. 25

Adventures for Women: Snowshoe Hike is set for 5-6:30 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Enjoy an afternoon hike on snowshoes as we notice birds, animal tracks and other points of interest in the woods and fields. Beginner and experienced snowshoers are welcome. Pre-register for this free event and reserve snowshoes online or call 989-631-0830. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

An Officer and a Gentleman is set to perform at 7:30 p.m. at Midland Center for the Arts. This musical, based on the Oscar-winning film starring Richard Gere, is a breath-taking production that celebrates triumph over adversity and includes one of the most iconic and romantic endings ever portrayed on screen. Tickets begin at $26.50. The show will also perform at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 26. midlandcenter.org.

Wednesday, Jan. 26

Zehnder's Snowfest is set to begin at 8 a.m. in Frankenmuth. Professional snow and ice carvers from around the world will create dazzling sculptures. Visitors can observe exhibitions and competitions between artists and students. Snowfest will continue through Sunday, Jan. 30. For more information, visit zehnders.com.

Thursday, Jan. 27

The Pendulum Lounge is open 4:30-8 p.m. at Midland Center for the Arts. Enjoy craft cocktails, small plates and hearty offerings while the Jim Pagel Trio provides live music. This event is free to attend, small plates and drinks available for purchase.

An Evening Snowshoe is set for 5-6:30 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Come discover the beauty of a winter night! The group will look for signs of animals, study tree silhouettes and enjoy the winter sky. Bring a headlamp or flashlight. Pre-register for this free event and reserve snowshoes online or call 989-631-0830. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Sound Community Music Series is set for 7-9 p.m. at Live Oak Coffeehouse. This live music series features classical and jazz musicians from the mid-Michigan area and will be held on the fourth Thursday each month at Live Oak Coffeehouse in Midland.

Saturday, Jan. 29

Kids Day at the Midland Mall from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. hosted by Midland Recyclers. More than 60 companies participate in this annual event that provides kids and their families with hands-on activities, information and performances.

Sunday, Jan. 30

Nature Book Club: Winter World is set for 1-3 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Come for a book club chat and naturalist led hike! Januarys book is National Bestseller Winter World: the Ingenuity of Animal Survival by Bernd Heinrich. Register by Jan. 28 for this free event. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Monday, Jan. 31

An Evening Snowshoe is set for 5-6:30 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Come discover the beauty of a winter night! The group will look for signs of animals, study tree silhouettes and enjoy the winter sky. Bring a headlamp or flashlight. Pre-register for this free event and reserve snowshoes online or call 989-631-0830. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Wednesday, Feb. 2

An Evening Snowshoe is set for 5:30-7 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Come discover the beauty of a winter night! The group will look for signs of animals, study tree silhouettes and enjoy the winter sky. Bring a headlamp or flashlight. Pre-register for this free event and reserve snowshoes online or call 989-631-0830. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Thursday, Feb. 3

Story Hour is set for 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Come spend an hour learning about nature! The hour will include a story, crafts and other age-appropriate activities. Dress for the weather for this outdoor program. This event is free. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Comedy Night is set for 8 p.m. at Midland Center for the Arts' Little Theater. Join us for an evening of laughs from nationally touring comics with our monthly comedy nights, with February bringing Steve Iott, featuring Will Green! Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 the day of the event. midlandcenter.org.

Saturday, Feb. 5

Snowshoe Sampler is set for 2-4 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. It's time to play outside! Drop by any time to give CNCs snowshoes a try, do a winter scavenger hunt or warm up by a campfire. Meet at the Homestead Cabin and come enjoy a winter afternoon in the snow. If snow conditions are unfavorable, the event will be canceled (based on the discretion of CNC). This event is free. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Sunday, Feb. 6

Winter at the Wigwam is set for 2-4 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Drop by the wigwam to get a glimpse into what it was like for the Ojibwa people to live in a wigwam along the Pine River several hundred years ago. Guests will have a chance to see some traditional tools used for hunting and preparing wild game, learn about the fur trade and see some plants used for making cordage and baskets. If there is enough snow, visitors can play a game of snow snakes outside. This event is free. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Tuesday, Feb. 8

An Evening Snowshoe is set for 5:30-7 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Come discover the beauty of a winter night! The group will look for signs of animals, study tree silhouettes and enjoy the winter sky. Bring a headlamp or flashlight. Pre-register for this free event and reserve snowshoes online or call 989-631-0830. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Thursday, Feb. 10

A Family Snowshoe Hike is set for 5:30-7 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Bring the whole family for an afternoon of exploration on snowshoes - no experience needed! We will search high and low for signs of animals as we explore on and off trails. Please bring a sled to pull younger children. Pre-register for this free event and reserve snowshoes online or call 989-631-0830 www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Saturday, Feb. 12

Kids Nature Art: Winter is set for 10-11 a.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Drop in with CNC staff at The Woods Nature Play area for a blast of winter art. Stations with different projects will be set up throughout the play area to allow young artists to experience art through winter and winter through art. This self-paced experience will allow children to create many projects or work hard on one masterpiece, whatever suits them best. This event is free. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Sunday, Feb. 13

Adaptations for Winter is set for 10-11:30 a.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Join an Interpretive Naturalist to experience nature in winter. Visitors will explore how animals and plants survive the harsh conditions through adaptations. This program will include a 2-mile hike. this event is free. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

An Introduction to Basket Making is set for 1-4 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Join Jenn Kirts, program director, in creating a solid-based basket. All materials, tools and instructions will be provided for each participant to create their own basket. Masks are required for this indoor program. Pre-registration is required. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Monday, Feb. 14

An Evening Snowshoe is set for 5:30-7 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Come discover the beauty of a winter night! The group will look for signs of animals, study tree silhouettes and enjoy the winter sky. Bring a headlamp or flashlight. Pre-register for this free event and reserve snowshoes online or call 989-631-0830. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Wednesday, Feb. 16

Chippewa Nature Center's Annual Meeting is set for 3:30-5 p.m. Join CNC staff and board for its annual business meeting and a special presentation on an overview of the 10-year Master Plan, along with and a 2020 Year in Review, financial report and the election of new Board members. CNC will also bid farewell to outgoing board member Nancy Carney who has completed nine years of service at Chippewa Nature Center. CNC staff will provide activities for children ages 3-12 whose parents/guardians are attending the Annual Meeting. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

A Full Moon Stroll is set for 6-7:30 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Join an Interpretive Naturalist for a hike to enjoy this months full moon. Learn how the tradition of naming moons began and what makes each month special. Please wear dark colors and bring a flashlight. We may use snowshoes if conditions permit. Reserve snowshoes online or call 989-631-0830. This event is free. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Thursday, Feb. 17

Story Hour is set for 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Come spend an hour learning about nature! The hour will include a story, crafts and other age-appropriate activities. Dress for the weather for this outdoor program. This event is free. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Stories by the Fire is set for 6:30-7:30 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Drop by the Homestead and enjoy an early winter evening relaxing by the campfire, listen to tales of how settlers and animals adapt to survive a cold winter. This event is free. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Sunday, Feb. 20

Snowshoe Sampler is set for 2-4 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. It's time to play outside! Drop by any time to give CNCs snowshoes a try, do a winter scavenger hunt or warm up by a campfire. Meet at the Homestead Cabin and come enjoy a winter afternoon in the snow. If snow conditions are unfavorable, the event will be canceled (based on the discretion of CNC). This event is free. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Tuesday, Feb. 22

An Evening Snowshoe is set for 5:30-7 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Come discover the beauty of a winter night! The group will look for signs of animals, study tree silhouettes and enjoy the winter sky. Bring a headlamp or flashlight. Pre-register for this free event and reserve snowshoes online or call 989-631-0830. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Thursday, Feb. 24

Adventures for Women: Snowshoe Hike is set for 5-6:30 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Enjoy an afternoon hike on snowshoes as we notice birds, animal tracks and other points of interest in the woods and fields. Beginner and experienced snowshoers are welcome. Pre-register and reserve snowshoes online or call 989-631-0830. This event is free. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Sunday, Feb. 27

Nature Book Club: World of Wonders is set for 1-3 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Join us for a book club chat and naturalist led hike! February's book is New York Times Bestseller "World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments" by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Register by Jan. 28 for this free event. www.chippewanaturecenter.org

Monday, Feb. 28

An Evening Snowshoe is set for 5:30-7 p.m. at Chippewa Nature Center. Come discover the beauty of a winter night! The group will look for signs of animals, study tree silhouettes and enjoy the winter sky. Bring a headlamp or flashlight. Pre-register for this free event and reserve snowshoes online or call 989-631-0830. www.chippewanaturecenter.org
Cassandra Day / Hearst Media Connecticut

MIDDLETOWN  The Community Health Center has announced a COVID-19 vaccine booster requirement for all employees during the highly transmissible Omicron wave.

By February 1, 2022, all clinical and patient-facing staff must receive the booster by Feb. 1, and all other employees, including those working remotely, must be fully inoculated by March 1, according to a press release.
For most public school students, remote learning is only permitted this year in COVID-related isolation or quarantine. But with the option available, questions about its other possible uses have started to brew.

Conversations around remote instruction were reignited last week as pandemic-related staff shortages and disrupted bus routes hampered schools ability to hold in-person classes. Stratford and Westport extended their winter breaks, while Ansonia and Danbury schools had to close as the week progressed. And rather than learn from home, those districts will likely make up missed classroom time at the end of the school year, like they do now for snow days.

Remote learning is generally not permitted during the 2021-22 school year on a district-wide, school-wide, or individual student basis, education commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker wrote last week in a letter to superintendents. However, COVID-19 health and safety concerns may dictate very limited exceptions.

At-home instruction counts as an official school day if active COVID cases or close contacts are involved, or if the legislature or governor requires it. Under some circumstances, students with disabilities or live-in family members with unusual vulnerabilities to COVID-19 could learn from home, too.

Otherwise, state officials have presented a united front on the importance of in-person learning, without much wiggle room for other considerations, like if a student catches the flu for a few days or other reasons for temporary absences.

Legislation enacted in the 2021 session has generally precluded remote instruction during the current, 2021-22 school year, said Eric Scoville, communications director at the education department.

Schools have to follow broad guidelines this year for remote learning for it to count as attendance. Students must engage with material for at least half a school day, though what that means could vary from district to district. Synchronous virtual classes and meetings, digital platforms, and paper or online assignments all qualify, so long as they take enough time to do.

Before the state can set into motion broader applications of remote instruction, officials are putting together more robust remote learning standards, to go into effect this fall for high school students. A state commission on the subject, which has already begun meeting, will also host public meetings on Monday afternoon and Jan. 25.

Districts could authorize the practice for the states oldest students as soon as next school year. But throughout Connecticut this week, as COVID-19, icy roads and inclement weather burdened in-person schooling, the change cant come soon enough.

In the Greenwich Public Schools, many students are on remote learning due to the spike in COVID cases. School district data on Friday morning showed 438 positive cases, including 391 among students.

More than half of cases this school year were new since the winter break, a Hearst Connecticut Media analysis found.

For grades 6 to 12, a student placed in quarantine for health-related reasons by the health care team should have access to watch their classes virtually, said Jonathan Supranowitz, director of communications for the Greenwich Public Schools.

For students in prekindergarten through fifth grade, work will be sent home for those in district-issued quarantines or isolations, Supranowitz said.

After extending the winter break by a day, Westport Superintendent Thomas Scarice on Wednesday announced temporary remote access to classes for students in isolation with confirmed COVID-19, in quarantine or with symptoms. The option is available to students in grades 6 through 12, and should make it easier for families  who may be inclined to send kids to school with a runny nose or minor sore throat  to keep them home.

We want all students and staff demonstrating any symptoms to stay home, Scarice reiterated to parents.

Remote access could also ease the burden on teachers catching students up after they return to school, when COVID cases are surging. More than 250 students and staff were reported positive this week, according to district data. Close to 29 percent of this school years total cases were new since Monday, according to the Hearst analysis of school data.

This accommodation will enable students to observe classroom instruction to remain current in the content taught, he said.

Danbury schools shut for three days this week for icy roads and staff shortages. By the weeks end, district officials and the citys legislative delegation were planning to advocate for the authority over remote options.

Superintendent Kevin Walston said all students have devices, while teachers union president Erin Daly added staff could have pivoted to remote instruction.

Even on the couple of days schools were open this week, not all Danbury students were learning. Student attendance was at 74 percent on Monday and 80 percent on Tuesday, down from the average of the mid-90s, according to the district.

This week, we could have had a very productive remote learning week, said Daly, who also teaches third grade. Thats very frustrating for me personally as a teacher, because I feel like my students are losing almost a weeks worth of instruction.

Staff writers Currie Engel, Katrina Koerting and Karen Tensa contributed to this report.
Sisters Charli and Dixie DAmelio went from Norwalk to Hollywood thanks to their stardom on video-based social media platform TikTok. That social media celebrity status has also placed them at the top of Forbes list of top-earning TikTok content creators.

Released on Jan. 7, Forbess list highlights the highest-earning TikTok stars of 2021, who collectively earned $55.5 million last year, marking a 200 percent increase from 2020, according to the report. At the top of the list is 17-year-old Charli, who raked in $17.5 million in 2021 and amassed 133 million followers. The no. 2 spot on the list belongs to 20-year-old Dixie, who earned $10 million and has 57 million followers on the social media platform.

Following the DAmelio sisters on Forbes list of top-earning TikTokers is Addison Rae, who earned $8.5 million in 2021 and accrued 86 million followers. Rae previously led a 2020 iteration of the Forbes list with $5 million at the time, while Charli came in second with $4 million and Dixie rounded out the top three with $2.9 million.

Matt Winkelmeyer/KCA2021/Getty Images for Nickelodeon

Its a long way from the DAmelio duos beginnings in Norwalk, where Charli first started creating TikTok videos in 2019. According to a 2021 interview on The Ellen Show, Dixie said Charli ultimately convinced her to start making videos on the platform, and was likely the one who made the app popular at their high school.

Now, the DAmelio sisters have a clothing line at Hollister called Social Tourist and a makeup collaboration with Morphe. Charli also has a Dunkin Donuts drink named after her (the Charli Cold Foam) and a collaboration with Pura Vida jewelry, while Dixie has launched a music career and collaborated with musicians like Whiz Khalifa and Ruby Rose.

Alongside parents Marc and Heidi, the sisters start in their own Hulu docuseries, The DAmelio Show, which premiered on Sept. 3, 2021, and "gives fans an inside look at the life of social media stars, according to Hulu.

Filming the familys Hulu show was a positive experience overall, according to Dixie.

It was cool to watch it back and see certain things that my parents or Charli did that I didnt know about while we were actually filming, so watching it back was fun to see what they did, she said in an email to Hearst Connecticut.

More for you Hear from TikTok star Charli D'Amelio about her fame, family and new TV show

While Charli told Hearst Connecticut that most of her life has been able to stay the same since she became famous, she notes one major change.

"I think the biggest difference is people caring more about what I am doing on a day-to-day basis," she said, while Dixie told Hearst Connecticut that their fame helped them develop "tougher skin."
A construction company owner who is neither a veteran nor a minority has been sentenced to 28 months in prison for defrauding the government out of $346 million in contracts meant for service-disabled veterans and minorities.

Matthew C. McPherson, 45, of Olathe, Kansas, was also ordered to pay the government back $5.5 million, which was his share of profits from the scheme, the Justice Department said in a news release.

"This contractor not only defrauded the government, but cheated to get contracts that should have gone to firms led by disabled veterans and minority owners," U.S. Attorney Teresa Moore said in the release Wednesday, the day McPherson was sentenced in federal court. "His greed and deception allowed him to enrich himself at the expense of disabled veterans and minority owners."

Read Next: Thousands of Afghans Remain Housed on US Bases Months After the Fall of Kabul

McPherson had pleaded guilty in June 2019 to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and major program fraud after admitting he participated in a plot from September 2009 to March 2018 to get federal contracts meant for small businesses owned and controlled by veterans, service-disabled veterans and certified minorities, according to the Justice Department.

McPherson's sentencing "sends a clear message that contractors unjustly enriching themselves at the expense of our nation's veterans will not be tolerated," Gavin McClaren, acting special agent in charge with the Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general's central field office, said in a statement.

McPherson and his co-conspirators were accused of setting up two companies using straw owners to fraudulently win the contracts.

The first was Zieson Construction Company in July 2009. Stephon Ziegler, 61, of Weatherby Lake, Missouri, a Black service-disabled veteran, was listed as the "nominal owner" of the business, but McPherson and his co-conspirators actually ran the company and received most of its profits, according to the Justice Department.

Zieson was awarded 199 federal contracts worth about $335 million meant for small businesses, minority-owned small businesses and veteran-owned small businesses, according to the news release. McPherson and his co-conspirators each got about $4.2 million through Zieson by using false and fraudulent invoices, the Justice Department said.

When Zieson grew too big for small business contracts in 2014, McPherson and his co-conspirators set up another company using the name of a Native American employee at Zieson, Rustin Simon, 45, of Smithville, Missouri.

Much like Zieson, the second company, called Simcon Corp., was actually controlled by McPherson and his co-conspirators, according to the Justice Department. Simcon also used the same office space and employees as Zieson, and Zieson falsely claimed to subcontract work to Simcon so Simcon would have a track record that made it able to better compete for federal contracts, the department said.

Simcon won a $4.4 million contract in July 2016 from the Air Force and a $6.9 million contract in September 2016 from the Army. McPherson and his co-conspirators each got about $319,866 from Simcon using false and fraudulent invoices, according to the Justice Department.

One of McPherson's co-conspirators, Patrick Michael Dingle, 50, of Parkville, Missouri, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire and major program fraud and is awaiting sentencing. A third conspirator, Matthew L. Torgeson, of Topeka, Kansas, had been indicted as well, but died in November 2019.

Ziegler has pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the VA and is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 20. Simon has pleaded guilty to two counts of making material false statements to the Small Business Administration and is awaiting sentencing.

-- Rebecca Kheel can be reached at rebecca.kheel@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @reporterkheel.

Related: A 79-Year-Old Alleged Mobster Has Been Indicted for Defrauding Tricare, CHAMPVA
Jim Absher is a benefits columnist for Military.com.

More than 100,000 military retirees living in five states will soon be seeing more money in their pockets, thanks to new laws that were passed in 2021 making their military retirement tax free.

Related: 2022 Brings New State Veterans Benefits for Many

While residents in two of those states will have to wait until the new year to stop paying taxes on their military retirement, retirees living in Arizona, North Carolina and Utah will see the changes take effect immediately. Indiana and Nebraska will see the changes become effective with the 2022 tax year.

The new additions bring the number of states that do not tax military retirement income to 26, while nine others offer partial exemptions and six states, plus the District of Columbia, fully tax military retirement. Nine states do not impose an income tax on their citizens.

See: Military Retirement and State Income Tax

In the past year, Arizona, North Carolina and Utah made military retirement and Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) payments tax free, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2021. That means retirees in those states may see a large refund when they file their state taxes this year. Previously in Arizona, up to $3,500 of military retirement pay was tax free, while Utah also limited the amount that could be deducted and North Carolina waived income taxes only on certain retirees.

Gov. Doug Duceys Arizona Fiscal Year 2021 Executive Budget fully exempts Arizona income tax on all retirement pay, North Carolina also passed legislation and Utahs Senate Bill 11 became law in March 2021, making all military retirement tax free.

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a state law in 2019 that gradually increased the exemption for military retirement income. That state will stop collecting taxes on military retirement and SBP payments in 2022; previously military retirees could deduct a percentage of their military retirement from their income when filing their taxes, with up to 75% of their retirement being deductible in 2021..

Approved last May, Nebraskas legislative bill 387 increased the amount of military retirement pay that can be deducted from gross income when filing state income taxes to 100% in 2022, meaning all military retirement becomes tax free. Previously, Nebraska excluded only a portion of military retirement from income taxes. However, survivors receiving SBP payments will still have to pay taxes on their payments.

See: State Tax Information for Military Members and Retirees

-- Jim Absher can be reached at Jim.Absher@monster.com.
GENEVA  The United States and Russia locked horns over Ukraine and other security issues Monday with no sign of progress from either side at highly anticipated strategic talks.

Low expectations from both Washington and Moscow about the high-stakes session in Geneva appeared to have been met as senior diplomats from the two countries emerged without offering any hint of success.

Neither side characterized the meeting as a complete failure, but neither did they offer any prospect of easing the increasingly worrisome standoff over Russias military buildup on its border with Ukraine that the West sees as a fundamental threat to European security. Nor was there any indication of movement on other, perhaps less-explosive matters that have vexed the U.S.-Russia relationship.

Moscow insists on guarantees to halt NATOs eastward expansion and even roll back the military alliances deployments in Eastern Europe, while Washington firmly rejects the demands as a nonstarter.

With both sides dug in on their positions and Ukraines future hanging in the balance, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said no progress was made on the central demand on NATO expansion, although he insisted: We have no intention to invade Ukraine. U.S. officials openly questioned that comment.

Ryabkov spoke following talks with his U.S. counterpart, Wendy Sherman  part of a flurry of diplomatic activity in Europe this week aimed at defusing the tensions.

Sherman called the talks a frank and forthright discussion" but would not, or could not, point to any progress.

It was not what you would call a negotiation," she told reporters. "Were not to a point where were ready to set down texts and begin to go back and forth.

We were firm, however, on pushing back on security proposals that are simply nonstarters for the United States, Sherman said, adding we will not allow anyone to shut NATOs open-door policy that extends to countries seeking to join the alliance.

She said Washington will not forgo bilateral cooperation with sovereign states that wish to work with the United States. And, we will not make decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine, about Europe without Europe or about NATO without NATO.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has described NATO expansion to Ukraine and other former Soviet states as a red line for Moscow, demanding binding guarantees from the West that they wouldnt become members of the alliance.

Moscow has sought to wrest a string of concessions from the U.S. and its Western allies, and has massed an estimated 100,000 troops near Ukraine in steps that have raised concerns about a possible military intervention there.

The situation now is so dangerous, and so -- I would say -- precarious that we cannot afford any further delays in resolution of this very fundamental question," Ryabkov said at a separate news conference at the Russian mission. "As President Putin said, on many occasions, we cannot backpedal. We cannot go backwards. There is no further space for us to do so.

Ryabkov rattled off Russian concerns and demands issued last month on subjects like NATO expansion and wanting Western commitments not to deploy offensive weapons near Russian borders.

The American side has treated the Russian proposals seriously and deeply studied them, he said, adding that he characterized Moscows demand for legally binding guarantees that NATO would not move eastward as an absolute imperative for us.

Ryabkov emphasized that it would be hard to work on other issues if the U.S. stonewalled on Russia's key demands.

If now NATO proceeds towards deployment of capabilities that are being developed very rapidly in the U.S., and will possibly be introduced somewhere in Europe, it would require a military response on the Russian part, that is a decision to counter this threat through means at our discretion," said Ryabkov, speaking in English. "That will inevitably, unavoidably damage security of the U.S. and its European allies.

He did not elaborate.

After Ryabkov stated that Russia had no intention to invade Ukraine, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, was publicly skeptical.

I wish to believe him, I wish that it is true that they have no plans, but everything weve seen so far indicate that they are making motions in that direction, she told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Echoing comments from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Sherman said progress could only happen if Russia stays at the table and takes concrete steps to de-escalate tensions."

De-escalation, she said, would include returning the Russian troops now deployed on Ukraine's borders to their barracks.

Weve made it clear that if Russia further invades Ukraine there will be significant costs and consequences well beyond what they faced in 2014, she said. Russia has a stark choice to make.

However, neither Sherman nor State Department spokesman Ned Price would say if the U.S. would move ahead with sanctions if Russia opts not to invade but also refuses to withdraw its troops from the border.

Monday's meeting was part of Strategic Security Dialogue talks on arms control and other broad issues launched by Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden at a June summit in the Swiss city. Talks between Russia and NATO are planned Wednesday in Brussels followed by a meeting in Vienna of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on Thursday.

The U.S. has played down hopes of significant progress and said some Russian demands  like a possible halt to NATO expansion  go against countries' sovereign rights to set up their own security arrangements and are nonnegotiable.

But U.S. officials have expressed openness to other ideas, like curtailing possible future deployments of offensive missiles in Ukraine and putting limits on American and NATO military exercises in Eastern Europe  if Russia is willing to back off on Ukraine.

Blinken said Sunday he didn't expect any breakthroughs, with a more likely positive outcome being an agreement to de-escalate tensions in the short term and return to talks at an appropriate time.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg similarly played down expectations ahead of the talks.

I dont think that we can expect that these meetings will solve all the issues," he told reporters in Brussels after talks with Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraine's deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration. "What we are hoping for is that we can agree on a way forward, that we can agree on a series of meetings, that we can agree on a process.

During a visit to Rome, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said dialogue offered the only way out of the crisis.

At the same time, its equally clear that a renewed breach of Ukrainian sovereignty by Russia would have grave consequences, she said.

Russia has said it wants the issue resolved this month, but NATO is wary that Putin might be looking for a pretext, such as a failure in the negotiations, to launch an invasion.

Ukraine was not present at the table Monday and won't be involved in discussions with Russia until Thursday's OSCE meeting.

Eager to keep Kyiv in the loop, the Pentagon said Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Gen. Mark Milley spoke with Ukraine's military chief Monday.

They exchanged perspectives and assessments of the evolving security environment in Eastern Europe, spokesman Col. Dave Butler said. Ukraine is a key partner to NATO and plays a critical role in maintaining peace and stability in Europe.

___

Lee reported from Washington. Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Frank Jordans in Berlin, Lolita C. Baldor in Washington, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.
Dr. Lena Surzhko Harned is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Political Science and a Senior Policy Analyst at the Public Policy Fund at Penn State University, Behrend College.

The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.

Add Kazakhstan to the list of former Soviet republics whose independence is now being threatened by Russia. Russian leader Vladimir Putin is using a similar playbook in Kazakhstan to one that he has used over almost a decade to threaten the sovereignty of Ukraine.

What began as protests over rising fuel prices on Jan. 2, 2021, quickly escalated into violent clashes on the streets of Kazakhstan. On Jan. 5, Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a firm ally of Putins, requested support from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, of which Putins Russian Federation is the leading member. Russia has responded decisively by sending paratroopers, special operations troops and equipment as part of a nearly 3,000-strong force to Kazakhstan.

Tokayev explained his request by claiming that protesters are really a band of terrorists trained abroad. On Jan. 7, Tokayev escalated the conflict: I have given the order to law enforcement and the army to shoot to kill without warning, Tokayev said.

As a scholar of post-Soviet Ukraine, Russias involvement in Kazakhstan looks very familiar to me. Its similar to what happened in Ukraine beginning in 2014, when peaceful protesters were met with violence by the government and a protest grew into a revolution that ultimately overthrew the Russian-backed leadership of the country.

Dangerous neighborhood

Seizing on that moment of domestic unrest in 2014, Putin gave direct orders to annex Crimea, a Ukrainian territory home to a key Russian naval base. Shortly afterward, he supported a war mounted by so-called Russian-speaking separatists in Ukraines eastern regions.

For more than eight years now, the Russian Federation has continued to support that conflict in Ukraine and has recently threatened Ukraine with a full invasion. This most recent version of Putins aggression toward Ukraine came in November 2021, when he staged 175,000 troops along the Ukraine border. His goal: to use a potential invasion as leverage to stop Ukraine from joining the alliance of Western countries known as NATO.

In Kazakhstan, as in Ukraine in 2014, the Russian government explains its military presence as appropriate and requested by a legitimate government. As in Ukraine, the Russian government emphasizes that external forces are responsible for unrest in the former Soviet republic. As in Ukraine, the Russian Federation has pointed out the need to protect a Russian-speaking population.

These tendencies of the Russian government to assert dominion over former territories that it lost during the breakup of the Soviet empire demonstrate that Russia is willing to act quickly and do anything to keep control of its neighborhood. I see this as an important message about what the Western leaders can expect from a meeting with Russian officials in Geneva on Jan. 10 to discuss the conflict building again along Ukraines border and Russias demands that NATO not expand to Ukraine.

Soviet and Russian legacies

Russia has long seen Kazakhstan as within its sphere of influence. In a press conference on Dec. 23, 2021, Putin called Kazakhstan a Russian-speaking country in every sense of the word.

Earlier Putin claimed that before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhs never had a state of their own. In December 2020, two members of Russias parliament claimed that territories of northern Kazakhstan were a big gift from Russia to Kazakhstan.

Such claims are reminiscent of the language that Putin has applied to Ukraine. He has often claimed that Ukraine was not a real country, including in an article published by the Kremlin in July 2021, in which he claimed that modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era.

The use of the same terminology does not bode well for Kazakhstan.

Putins references to a Russian-speaking population in Kazakhstan are reminiscent of the experience of Ukraines Crimea region. In April 2014, Russian soldiers appeared on the streets of Crimea, forced Ukrainian soldiers to leave their posts, and oversaw a so-called referendum that allowed for Crimea to be integrated into the Russian Federation. The Russian Federation said then, and continues to claim, that its interest in Ukraine is a continued concern for the welfare of the Russian speakers in Ukraine, which in Russias view is being oppressed.

Controversial Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovski claimed on Jan. 6, 2021, that Russian speakers in Kazakhstan are similarly oppressed by Kazakh language requirements. Zhirinovski is a radical figure in Russian politics, but it is usually assumed that he voices the more extreme claims of the Russian government.

Protecting from foreign invaders

Kazakhstans President Tokayev claimed that the protests in his country were fueled by the free press and foreign forces who were sponsoring terrorist activity in his country. The Russian government willingly accepted this terminology. Tokayev did not specify which external forces he meant.

Putin has long claimed that the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine in 2014, which ousted his ally, President Viktor Yanukovich, was really a coup sponsored and coordinated by the U.S.

Similar arguments about outside influences were made by the embattled Belarusian dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, about the anti-government protesters in Russia-aligned Belarus in 2020.

The spokesperson for the Russia Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said on Jan. 6 that there is a need to stop extremism in Kazakhstan. Her words came in response to European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrells concerns over the Russian troop deployment.

This consistent message supports Putins narrative about the need to protect Russia and the countries in its neighborhood against what he regards as destabilizing influences like the U.S. and NATO, which, according to Putin, support and promote anti-government extremists and revolutions in the region.

Show of strength

Putin continues to cultivate an image as a decisive leader who responded to a call from a neighboring country to help Kazakhstan overcome this terrorist threat.

His actions in Kazakhstan, I believe, are aimed at both internal and foreign audiences.

Domestically, Russian media see Russian troops as a part of a multilateral peacekeeping response, which includes troops from Belarus and Armenia. Deployment of so-called peacekeeping forces in Kazakhstan in the middle of instability and violence will be portrayed in Russia as a huge achievement for Putin.

This is also a message to Ukraine and the West. Putin will not hesitate to show strength to achieve Russias goals. Russia now has nearly 100,000 troops along the Ukrainian border. And while there was a reported withdrawal of 10,000 soldiers in late December in a de-escalation effort, most of the troops and military equipment remain.

Geneva outlook

Negotiations in diplomacy require compromise. However, Russia is entering the talks in Geneva with an ultimatum toward NATO and the U.S.

Russias demands, according to Reuters, include a halt to NATO enlargement, no deployment of its weapons systems in Ukraine and an end to "provocative military exercises" in the region.

Russian action in Kazakhstan should serve as a sobering reminder to Western countries that Russia is willing to act decisively to protect its interests and retain its influence in the neighboring countries.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
How to use the mindat.org media viewer

Click/touch this help panel to close it.

Welcome to the mindat.org media viewer. Here is a quick guide to some of the options available to you. Different controls are available depending on the type of media being shown (photo, video, animation, 3d image)

Controls - all media types

Zoom in and out of media using your mousewheel or with a two-finger 'resize' action on a touch device.

Use the mouse or your finger to drag the image or the view area of the image around the screen.

< and > at the left and right hand side of the screen move forwards and backwards for the other images associated with the media you selected. Usually this is used for previous/next photo in a gallery, in an article or in search results. Keyboard shortcuts: use shift + the left and right arrow keys.

< and > in the bottom center are used for switching between the photos of the same specimen. Keyboard shortcuts: use the left and right arrow keys.

> in the bottom center, raises the information box giving details and further options for the media, < at the top of this box then hides it. Keyboard shortcuts: use the up and down arrow keys.

? opens this help window. Keyboard shortcuts: use the H key or the ? key.

Other keyboard shortcuts:

1 Fit image to screen 2 Fill screen with image 5 Display at full resolution < Make background darker > Make background lighter space Hide/dim titles and buttons

Scalebar

If the field of view (FOV) is specified for the photo, the scalebar appears in the left bottom corner of the viewer. The scalebar is draggable and resizeable. Drag the right edge to resize it. Double click will reset the scalebar to it's default size and position. If the scalebar is in default position, double click will make it circular.

Controls - Video

Video files have a standard set of video controls: - Reset to start, - Skip back, - Play, - Pause, - Skip forwards. Keyboard shortcuts: You can stop/start video play with the P key.

Controls - Animation (Spin Rotation)

Animation (usually 360 degree spin rotations) have their own controls: - enable spin mode. Note that while images are loading this option will not be available but will be automatically activated when the animation has loaded. Once active you can spin the image/change the animation by moving your mouse or finger on the image left/right or by pressing the [ or ] keys.

The button switches to move mode so that you can use your mouse/fingers to move the image around the screen as with other media types.

The button, or the P key will start playing the animation directly, you can interrupt this by using the mouse or finger on the image to regain manual movement control.

Controls - 3D Stereoscopic images

If a stereoscopic 3D image is opened in the viewer, the 3D button appears in the bottom right corner giving access to "3D settings" menu. The 3D images can be viewed in several ways:

- without any special equipment using cross-eyed or parallel-eyed method

- with stereoscope

- with anaglyph glasses.

- on a suitable 3D TV or monitor (passive 3D system)

For details about 3D refer to: Mindat manuals: Mindat Media Viewer: 3D

To enable/disable 3D stereo display of a compatible stereo pair image press the 3 key. If the left/right images are reversed on your display (this often happens in full-screen mode) press the 4 key to reverse them.

Controls - photo comparison mode

If a photo with activated comparison mode is opened in the viewer, the button appears in the bottom right corner giving access to "Comparison mode settings" menu.

Several layouts are supported: slider and side by-side comparison with up to 6 photos shown synchronously on the screen. On each of the compared photos a view selector is placed, e.g.: Longwave UV . It shows the name of currently selected view and allows to select a view for each placeholder.

Summary of all keyboard shortcuts
Keokuk, IA (52632)

Today

Rain likely, heavy at times in the evening. Low around 50F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall possibly over one inch. Locally heavy rainfall possible..

Tonight

Rain likely, heavy at times in the evening. Low around 50F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall possibly over one inch. Locally heavy rainfall possible.
KATHMANDU, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- A government body in Nepal on Sunday recommended restrictive measures against large gatherings and in-person classes in response to rising daily COVID-19 cases.

The COVID-19 Crisis Management Coordination Center (CCMCC) suggested banning gathering of more than 25 people and closing primary and secondary schools till Jan. 29.

Within this period, the Ministry of Health and Population will have to supply vaccines to inoculate students aged 12-17 and fully vaccinate teachers and other staff members.

A senior CCMCC official told Xinhua that the decision was taken over suggestions by Health Ministry officials.

"There is a projection that the COVID-19 situation may worsen in the third week of January, so we decided to recommend restrictive measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19," said the official who declined to be named.

As suggested by the CCMCC, people need to present their vaccination cards for entering public places like offices, hotels, restaurants, cinema halls, stadiums, airports and parks.

The center also recommended the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation to arrange domestic flights so that there are no crowds in airports and make it mandatory for passengers to produce vaccination cards starting from Jan. 17.

The restrictive measures will go into force once government ministries decide to implement them.

Schools in the Kathmandu Valley reopened in late September last year after being shut down for some five months to curb a second wave of the coronavirus.

Nepal confirmed 24 new cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 on Friday, after three infections by the variant were identified in December last year.

On Sunday, the South Asian country reported 841 new COVID-19 cases, a sharp rise from 213 logged on Jan. 2. 
09.01.2022 LISTEN

A popular Accra-based local manufacturer, Madam Anastasia Acquah has observed that the developmental agenda of the country can be realized if government takes the necessary steps to support the local manufacturing companies who in her view, are making giant strides to help grow the country's economy.

Madam Aquah, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Anapat Choice Enterprise indicated that the manufacturing sector can create more job opportunities for the youth and generate more revenues for development if government provides the enabling environment for them to operate profitably.

She said this in an interview with this reporter on Saturday, December 18, 2021 at the Accra City Building Conference Hall (Accra Metropolitan Assembly).

This was after she received the Overall Best Manufacturing Entrepreneur Award of the year (2021) organised by Young Entrepreneurs, a youth group to recognise local young entrepreneurs and encourage them to impact positively in national development.

According to her, though it is important for government to continue to encourage young people especially graduates to venture into entrepreneurship, financial assistance must be made available for start-ups.

Madam Anastasia Acquah's outfit which produces quality liquid soap, toilet seat spray, toilet bowl cleaner, rubbing alcohols, hand sanitiser, thick bleach and concentrated disinfectants said government reduce the cost of doing business, low-interest loans and credit facilities to new and existing companies to compete with their foreign peers.

According to her, she started her carrier through the informal training of household chemicals production and medium scale household disinfectant and cleaning products with two workers in 2018. She now boasts of employing more permanent staff.

She appealed to financial institutions to provide support to young entrepreneurs to enable them create more jobs to curb the unemployment menace in the country.
Founder and leader of the Cornerstone Bible Church International sited at Ayiga in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region, His Eminence Apostle Godbless Boateng has asked Ghanaians to enter 2022 with a change of mindset.

Speaking to this reporter in an exclusive interview on Sunday, January 2, 2022 after church service, Apostle Godbless Boateng said Ghanaians have to forget the past and forge ahead.

According to him, people who hold on to the past misses the treasures of the future.

He indicated that one cannot be expected to reap from what lies ahead while still living in the past.

The man of God noted that the country stands to develop if people change their mindset or attitude towards how they perceive things.

On the rising cases of armed robberies and ritual murders in recent times, he urged authorities to act fast to clamp down on such bad nuts in society.

According to him, drug abuse, armed robbery, ritual murder, drug peddling among other criminal acts is the order of the day.

His Eminence Apostle Godbless Boateng advises the youth to be law abiding and stay away from actions that will cause them their life and future.
Managing Director of the Accra Digital Center, Mr. Kofi Ofosu Nkansah, has jabbed critics for complaining about the alleged huge sums of monies blown on Christmas trees by the Ghana Airports Company Limited whose board is led by ace broadcaster Paul Adom Otchere.

Ghana Airports Company Limited has been accused of blowing a whopping GH84,000 on four Christmas trees to decorate the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) for the festive season.

Adding his voice, Mr. Kofi Ofosu Nkansah noted that Ghanaians have taste for anything beautiful but turn around to complain about the cost.

"We want beautiful stuff but we complain about their cost," Mr. Nkansah noted in a social media post sighted by this portal.

Mr. Nkansah continued that some parts of the capital were made beautiful at night due to the mounting of Xmas decorations at those places.

Same beauty he believes the positioning of the four Christmas trees at various points in the arrival hall of the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) would bring to the vicinity.

"The parts of the city which has Xmas decorations look so beautiful when you drive by.

"The Liberation road from Airport to Tetteh Quarshie is one of the most beautiful. Roundabouts like Danquah, Ridge, 37 and others look so beautiful at night now," he added.

The young politician is also of the view that it is the same decorations and setups, which he believes Ghanaians are complaining about, that Dubai boasts of which makes it one of the world's most preferred destinations for tourists.

"What makes Dubai the preferred tourism destination for many? Same artificial designs and setups," he argues.

Source: // contributor on modernghana web
Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL) have been subjected to a heavy backlash over the alleged purchase of four Christmas trees at a total cost of Ghc84,000 to decorate the Kotoka International Airport during the festive season.

The amount involved angered some Ghanaians who took to social media to express their frustrations. Some of them believe the money could have been used on something far better than the Christmas trees that were just put at various points in the arrival Hall of the Kotoka International Airport (KIA).

Reacting to the scandal, Edem Agbana, the Deputy National Youth Organizer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), says Paul Adom Otchere who is the Board Chairman of the GACL, is copying the lavish spending lifestyle of his appointer, President Akufo Addo, whom he accused of continuously flying luxurious and expensive private jets to international meetings despite growing public outcry.

"The president himself, continues to fly the most expensive and luxurious private jets, regardless of the public outcry about his lavish lifestyle.

"Appointees like Paul Adom Otchere, are only learning and implementing what their leader is doing," Edem Agbana wrote in a post on his Facebook wall.

Read Edem Agbana's full post on Facebook below;

Ive always maintained that the biggest challenge facing our economy is not revenue generation but our inability to do proper public expenditure management.

At a time when the government is crying for funds and has decided to impose more taxes on the overworked, underpaid, over-taxed Ghanaians, the Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL) decided to spend GH118,000 on Christmas decorations at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) in December last year.

The president himself, continues to fly the most expensive and luxurious private jets, regardless of the public outcry about his lavish lifestyle.

Appointees like Paul Adom Otchere, are only learning and implementing what their leader is doing.

This is a wake up call to launch investigation into how much other public institutions spent on the Yuletide.

The grand corruption and mismanagement of the Akufo-Addo government that led to the loss of over 12billion Ghana Cedis last year, must not be allowed to continue.

Source: // contributor on Modernghana web
The 137 Members of Parliament of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) have been warned to take their personal security serious.

Godwin Ako Gunn who is the Deputy National Communications Officer of the NDC, cautions the NDC MPs that the Akufo Addo-led New Patriotic Party (NPP) government can do anything to reduce their number in parliament, hence the need for them to prioritise their personal security.

He noted that the numerical strength of NDC MPs is a treasure the party cherish in keeping the Akufo-Addo government on its toes.

"May I use this opportunity to humbly ask our Members of Parliament to guard their lives with all diligence. You are our pride and the only check on the free-spending and looting NPP government.

"The NPP government will do everything possible to reduce our numbers by foul means," Ako Gunn wrote in a lengthy write-up on his Facebook wall.

Ako Gunn was reacting to attack on the Speaker of Parliament Rt. Hon. Alban Bagbin and Charges against Cassiel Ato Forson and two other former appointees over the purchasing of some ambulances during the era of ex-president John Dramani Mahama.

He believes that NPP government has resolved to prosecute former appointees of ex-President Mahama, including the Speaker of Parliament who was then former Heath Minister, due to their failure in getting the Haruna Iddrisu-led minority group in Parliament to approve the controversial e-levy.

"...When persuasion fails, prosecution must be applied...," he noted.

Read Ako Gunn's full Facebook post below;

It remains a pride to enter public service and retire with no blemish. It becomes even better when people who worked against you rise in honor of your achievements and say in their hearts, we tried everything but you stood tall.

Being a speaker at a time when you didn't have the majority, nor the nominee of the president, takes something more than political backing of the minority. It takes personal character, achievements and peoples trust over the years to do it.

I have heard members of parliament on both sides singing his praise, father ooo father. This can only come with hard work and perseverance.

May I use this opportunity to humbly ask our members of parliament to guard their lives with all diligence. You are our pride and the only check on the free spending and looting NPP government.

The NPP government will do everything possible to reduce our numbers by foul means. May we at the constituency level, also have the wisdom to protect what we have as we pray for more in the days ahead.

Comrades, I laughed out loud when I heard the Attorney General has bought a new broom to reach out to every corner of the offices and ministries the RT Hon Alban Bagbin ever worked since independence to prosecute him along with some members of parliament.

Hon, the Prince of this world comes against you, but he has nothing in you. I love what 2022 brings along. Our elders say when the mouse becomes desperate and destructive, it falls into oil. I see Nana getting there this year.

I thought Nana Addo Danquah Akuffo Addo sent his Nephew Gabby to JM. I thought Nana Addo sent for Hon Haruna Iddrisu to appeal to him and other leaders of the party!!!

Thank God the line was drawn straight and clear to him !!! When persuasion fails, prosecution must be applied. Hahahahhahaaaa !!!

I love the unity, strength and cooperation from the minority side in parliament. I will salute you any day for the tenacity you have shown and I know bigger things are ahead of us. Let me humbly appeal to those who also make negative headlines with the least opportunity to attack our MPs, even when they are told it is a misleading story. That is not the spirit of comradeship.

But for the advisers of the president, I weep for you. This is the time to wear a wisdom cap not an arrogant one. At this time where your ministers in parliament are going up and down locally and internationally, you shouldn't be flexing muscle.

I love the heart warming warning from my general secretary on the 40th anniversary of the 31st Dec revolution. Whenever impunity becomes law, resistance becomes a duty. What a tone for ALUTA CONTINUA!!! To the oppressor, i say sorry, your days are numbered. To the oppressed, I say better days ahead.

Kun Fa Yakun

Source: // contributor on modernghana web
Hon. Amidu Chinnia Issahaku, the MP for the Sissalla East constituency has built an office in Tumu to keep in touch with the constituents.

The office, which began in the early part of 2021 forms part of the measures put in place to enable the MP interact with the constituents to promote development.

Speaking at the commissioning programme in Tumu on Friday, he pledged to run an open administration, which would ensure smooth development of the constituency.

He said though he was an MP on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), he was there to serve all in the constituency and stressed the need for unity of a purpose to develop the area.

He said Tumu was one with a common goal and appealed to all to join hands to build Tumu to be safe haven for investors to relocate to the area for job creation.

"This office is open to the public. My secretariat would be here and even if I'm in Accra and whoever has an issue must not hesitate to come to the office to complain. Officers will always be here to receive complaints on my behalf during my absence.

I am also accompanying it with a radio station and you can see the mast, which is almost completed. Very soon Sissalas will be getting a standard radio station that will match every radio station in Ghana and it's going to be one of the best in the North with a wide coverage, he added.

He thanked the leaders and the people of the area for their continuous unity despite their differences in politics and described himself as a worthy representative of the people participating actively in the discourse of Parliament and on weekly basis getting in touch with the constituents.

For one year I have visited all the heads of departments, visited most of the communities more than twice and acquainted myself with their needs and how I can be of support", he said.

For the promise of providing a farm mechanization centre, the MP promised it will be done this year and assured the constituents to remain positive.

Mr Chinnia said There are things that I have been able to do in different front either by myself, common fund or through lobbying, which included; interventions in the educational sector, where I chose to extend a lot of support to increase the human resource base of the constituency.

Dr Hafiz Bin Salih, the Upper West Regional Minister described the project as a novelty and needed to be emulated by other Members of Parliament in the Region.

GNA
Talks between US and Russian diplomats begin in Geneva on Monday after weeks of rising tension over Russian troop deployments near the border with Ukraine, with veteran envoys on each side trying to avert a crisis.

On Monday, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, the number two official at the US State Department, will face Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. Combined, the two envoys have more than half a century of diplomatic experience.

Russia, which deployed nearly 100,000 troops close to its border with Ukraine, says it is not preparing for an invasion but wants to see the West back off from its support for Ukraine's government and halt the eastward expansion of the Nato military alliance.

Washington has already dismissed some of Moscow's demands as untenable, making a swift resolution to the impasse unlikely.

US and Russia pitch their battle

Speaking last week, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said in a press briefing that the US approach would be pragmatic and results-oriented: We're not responding to them point-by-point."

In a recent phone call between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, Biden reiterated that the US and European allies would impose unprecedented sanctions if Russia chose to invade Ukraine.

Putin responded that sanctions could lead to a "complete breakdown in ties."

For Russia's part, Ryabkov has said that Russia's approach was necessarily tough, because its previous attempts at persuasion had been fruitless.

Ryabkov repeated Moscow's demands for a halt to NATO's enlargement, no deployment of its weapons systems in Ukraine and an end to "provocative" military exercises.

Other officials will also play lead roles when the talks move to Brussels for a NATO-Russia meeting on Wednesday and a meeting hosted by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe on Thursday.

Europe must be included

Meanwhile on Friday, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen insited that negotiations to resolve tensions between Russia and Ukraine must involve Europe.

Speaking ahead of the talks in Geneva, Von der Leyen told a press conference in Paris: "One thing is clear: no solution without Europe. Whatever the solution, Europe has to be involved."

Her comments came as French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian accused Russia of trying to bypass the European Union by holding direct talks with the United States over Ukraine.

With France having just taken over the six-month rotating EU presidency, Le Drian underlined that: "You can't envisage EU security without the Europeans."
The National Democratic Congress Communications Officer, Sammy Gyamfi, has lauded the Presidents directive for the suspension of the implementation of the reversal of the 50% benchmark value on certain imports.

Kudos to GUTA, the Importers and Exporters Association of Ghana and all those who stood against the callous decision by government to reverse benchmark value discounts on imports, Mr. Gyamfi said in a post on Facebook.

Together, we have averted what was going to be one of the most draconian and devastating economic policies in Ghana's history. We have demonstrated that the power of the people is powerful than the people in power.

Mr. Gyamfi however said, until this draconian policy is totally dropped by government, we must rest not.

The President in his directive to the Ghana Revenue Authority gave a deadline of January 17 for all consultations to conclude.

He expects the consultations to help all stakeholders understand the policy before it is rolled out.

The reversal would affect 43 items including rice, poultry, sugar, palm oil, toilet paper, mosquito coils, machetes, and vehicles.

The government introduced the benchmark policy in 2019 to benchmark certain commodities against world prices as a risk management tool.

It also factored in the protection of health, the environment, and security, as well as the protection of local industries.

The reversal of the policy was backed by the Association of Ghana Industries, who expect the local manufacturing industries to benefit from the higher cost of imports.

But Ghana Union of Traders Associations called on its members to oppose the development, arguing that importers have had to contend with increases in exchange rates, the cost of freight, among others.

The Importers and Exporters Association of Ghana also expressed fears that businesses in Ghana would be negatively impacted by the reversal.

citinewsroom
Emmanuel Macron has become the first head of state to be awarded the title of "personality of the year" by the Revue du Vin de France wine magazine. The title, for 2022, comes thanks to his support for France's wine industry, whose "extraordinary richness" he has praised.

"For the first time in 40 years, you can have the audacity to say, like d'Artagnan and Portos (referring to The Three Musketeers): 'I drink wine every day, at noon and in the evening', said Denis Saverot, editor of Revue du vin de France (RVF), during a ceremony in Paris earlier this week.

The honour was bestowed upon Macron because he "systematically defends wine", whereas his predecessors were either "indifferent" or "adversaries" of the drink, explained Saverot.

Macron made an especially good impression on the wine sector in 2018 when he made assurances that during his term in office there would be no changes to toughen the Evin law that regulates advertising alcoholic beverages since 1991.

This came to the great displeasure of organisations fighting against alcoholism.

Also, in 2019, the French government quietly abandoned a campaign urging people to refrain from drinking alcohol during the month of January. Dry January or janvier sobre' promoted "total abstinence" of all alcohol.

With its 85,000 farms and several billion euros of trade surplus, the wine sector makes up a significant part of the French economy.
Sudanese security forces fired tear gas Sunday as thousands rallied in the capital Khartoum and other cities to keep up pressure on the military after it launched a coup 11 weeks ago.

The October 25 power grab, led by army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, derailed a civilian-military power sharing transition established in the wake of the 2019 ouster of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir.

In the latest of many street protests since, pro-democracy demonstrators Sunday again headed towards the presidential palace in central Khartoum and also rallied in North Khartoum, witnesses said.

"No, no to military rule," they chanted as they waved the national flag.

Main streets around the capital have been sealed off in a bid to prevent people converging there and at army headquarters, which was the epicentre of the mass demonstrations that forced Bashir out.

Protesters also rallied in Omdurman, Khartoum's twin city across the Nile, and Wad Madani to the south, witnesses said.

Sudan's top general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, pictured on December 8, 2021, at the end of a military exercise in the Maaqil area in the northern Nile River State. By Ebrahim HAMID AFPFile

"We will not accept less than a full civilian government," said 27-year-old protester Ammar Hamed in Khartoum.

The protests since the coup -- one of several power grabs in Sudan's post-independence history -- have been met with a deadly crackdown.

At least 61 people have so far been killed.

The latest was a teenager who died Sunday from "live bullet" wounds to the neck sustained during protests on Thursday, according to medics.

Authorities have repeatedly denied using live ammunition in confronting protesters and insist scores of security forces have been wounded during demonstrations that have often "deviated from peacefulness".

Medics condemn hospital raids

A Sudanese protester at a protest against last year's military coup, pictured in the capital Khartoum, on January 9, 2022. By - AFP

Medics in white coats were seen joining Sunday's rallies to protest the security forces' storming of hospitals and other medical facilities during previous demonstrations.

The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors, affiliated with the protest movement, said Saturday that medics would deliver a memorandum to UN officials listing "assaults" against such facilities.

Last week, Sudan's civilian prime minister Abdalla Hamdok resigned saying the country was at a "dangerous crossroads threatening its very survival".

He had only taken his position back up on November 21, having originally been ousted along with his government in the October coup.

On Saturday, the United Nations said it would soon facilitate talks between key Sudanese stakeholders in a bid to resolve the crisis.

But the Forces for Freedom and Change, the civilian alliance which spearheaded the protests against Bashir and became integral to the transition government, said it had not received "any details" about the UN initiative.

There have been repeated protests in Sudan since the October 25 military coup. By - AFP

On Sunday, the Sudanese Professionals Association, which was similarly instrumental in the anti-Bashir protests, said it completely "rejected" the UN-facilitated talks.

"The way to resolve the Sudanese crisis begins with the complete overthrow of the putschist military council and the handover of its members to face justice over the killings committed against the defenceless (and) peaceful Sudanese people," the SPA said in a statement.

Burhan has insisted that the October military takeover "was not a coup" but only meant to "rectify the course of the Sudanese transition".

The UN Security Council is to meet on Wednesday to discuss the latest developments in Sudan.
West African leaders were expected to agree a response to Mali's crisis on Sunday despite the military's eleventh-hour timetable to restore civilian rule, after a transition of up to five years was rejected.

The extraordinary summit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) bloc in Ghana's capital Accra was expected to discuss possible sanctions on the Sahel state over potentially delayed elections, among other issues.

Regional leaders showed "firmness" against Mali's military-dominated government at a summit of the West African Economic and Monetary Union, a participant said under cover of anonymity before official measures were confirmed.

That summit immediately preceded the ECOWAS gathering and was seen as a way of preparing the ground for concerted action.

The ECOWAS meeting comes after months of increasing tensions over the timetable for restoring civilian rule in Mali after two coups and a military takeover.

In August 2020, army officers led by Colonel Assimi Goita toppled the elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita amid street protests against his unpopular rule.

Under threat of sanctions, Goita subsequently promised to restore civilian rule in February 2022 after holding presidential and legislative elections.

But he staged a de facto second coup in May 2021, forcing out an interim civilian government.

The move disrupted the reform timetable, and was met with widespread diplomatic condemnation.

ECOWAS insisted that Mali hold elections in February.

But the government then said it would only set an election date after holding a nationwide conference -- arguing a peaceful vote was more important than speed.

On December 30, after Mali's reform conference ended, the government suggested a transition period of between six months and five years, starting from January 1, 2022.

But ECOWAS mediator Goodluck Jonathan asked the regime to revise that plan during a visit last week, Mali's foreign minister said.

On Saturday, the junta submitted a new proposed timetable, Malian state television reported.

The move was intended "to maintain dialogue and good cooperation with ECOWAS", said Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop, without giving any details.

Potential sanctions

"Mali's counter-proposal is for a four-year transition. "It's a joke," said a senior official from Ghana, which holds the ECOWAS chair.

The ECOWAS summit was expected to discuss possible sanctions on Mali's junta. By Nipah Dennis AFPFile

The 15-nation grouping has led the push for Mali to uphold its commitment to stage elections early this year.

The return to civilian rule has put the bloc's credibility on the line as it seeks to uphold fundamental principles of governance and contain regional instability.

Swathes of Mali lie outside of state control, with the government struggling to quell a jihadist insurgency that has raged since 2012.

At a summit on December 12, ECOWAS leaders reiterated demands that the elections be held by February 27 as initially planned.

They maintained sanctions such as asset freezes and travel bans within the ECOWAS region against around 150 junta figures and their families, and threatened further "economic and financial" measures.

The possibility of fresh sanctions was expected to be on the agenda at Sunday's summit.

"The extension of the transition period to five years is causing concern in the whole west African region," the eight-member union's current chair, Roch Marc Christian Kabore, president of Burkina Faso, told the meeting.

Sanctions have proved effective in the past. ECOWAS responded to Goita's first coup in 2020 by shuttering Mali's borders, imposing trade restrictions and suspending the country from its decision-making bodies.

Mali's army installed a civilian-led government in response and pledged to hold elections, which led to a lifting of the economic sanctions, although Mali remains suspended from the bloc's main bodies.

ECOWAS did not impose sanctions immediately after the second putsch, but in November opted for targeted measures against individual junta members over perceived delays in the election preparations.

Analysts say regional leaders must take into account the risks of pitting Malians against ECOWAS.
A fugitive member of an eight gang armed robbers has been arrested by the Mpohor District Police Command in the Western Region after he exchanged gunfire with a police patrol team.

The suspect, 33-year-old Philemon Essien went into hiding after he and seven others attacked and robbed two scrap dealers who had gone to Mpohor to do business on Saturday, January 8, 2022.

A police report narrated that the scrap dealers [victims] Haruna Dayan and Abdul Rauf, both residents of Kansaworodo a suburb of Sekondi on Saturday went to the Mpohor Township to look for scraps to buy when they were attacked and robbed.

The former reported that same day at about 1200hrs whilst going round in search of scrap metals to buy they were attacked by eight (8) men armed with locally made pistol and cutlasses, on board opel taxi cab with reg no. WR 3186  14. That in the process, one of the armed men cut the complainants pocket with a knife and made away with his GHc1200, the report read.

Following the report, the Mpohor Police Command activated a search for the suspects.

While at it the youth of Ayiem a nearby town, who had also heard the news and had volunteered to help with the search for the suspects, alerted the police that they have been able to apprehend four of them except Philemon Essien who is armed with a locally manufactured gun.

The patrol team then proceeded to the River Butre where Philemon was being held up by the youth of Ayiem and after minutes of exchange of gunfire was overpowered and arrested.

In the course of the exchange of fire, Philemon Essien sustained a gunshot wound in his left hand.

According to the report, suspect Philemon Essien who sustained the gun shot on the hand and suspect Emmanuel Yaley who was severely beaten by the youth of Ayiem in the course of arrest were rushed to Effia-Nkwanta Regional Hospital where they were admitted for treatment under Police guard.

The Mpohor Police Command assured that efforts are being made to apprehend the two other suspects who are on the run.

In the meantime, all the arrested suspects will be arraigned before the District magistrate court on Monday 10/1/2022 on a holding charge of robbery to be remanded for investigation to continue.

They are Philemon Essien 33years, Emmanuel Yaley 25years, Mohammed Sumaila 29years, Evans Amarh 25years, Patrick Aboah 25years and Augustine Nana Abaka 27years.

---3news.com
Bishop Charles Agyin-Asare, the Founder and Head Pastor of Perez Chapel International, has urged the Police Administration to rescind its decision to analyse prophecies delivered on 31st December watch night services.

While commending the Police for cautioning the Church about prophecies that had the potential to cause fear and panic, he said the Police may end up legislating prophecies if it decided to analyse them.

Delivering a sermon at a church service at the headquarters of the Perez Chapel International on Sunday, Bishop Agyin-Asare said the Police directive, issued ahead of the 31st December 2021, was largely complied with by the Church.

His comments come on the back of a statement issued by the Police Administration on Friday, announcing that it had started analysing videos of prophecies made on the night of 31st December, 2021, to see if any of them was communicated in breach of the laws of the country.

The Police ahead of 2021 Watchnight and New Year church services, cautioned against the communication of prophecies that had the potential to cause fear and panic to the public or endanger lives.

The Police cautioned that anybody found culpable will be put before the court.

Bishop Agyin-Asare expressed concern about the posture of the Police, fearing that by analysing prophecies, the Police may interfere with the sermons of the Church.

The Police Administration had admonished us to be careful about prophecies that would cause fear and etc. By and large, the Church complied.

They should not use their scarce resources trying to analyse prophecies... If we are not careful, very soon they will be analysing our sermons and telling us what to preach, he said.

Bishop Agyin-Asare said delivering prophecies was not a wrong thing to do, explaining that in the New Testament, prophecies were for edification, exaltation and comfort.

As a Prophet, God can open my eyes to see that a church member may die if we don't pray. I will have to tell them in secret not to create confusion, he said.

GNA
Aid agencies have suspended their work in an area of Ethiopia's Tigray region after a deadly air strike on a camp for people displaced by the country's 14-month war, the UN said Sunday.

The raid came only hours after the Ethiopian government had issued a call for "national reconciliation", and sparked renewed calls from an alarmed international community for an end to the brutal conflict.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement to AFP that the attack at midnight Friday in the town of Dedebit in northwestern Tigray had "caused scores of civilian casualties including deaths", according to its preliminary information.

"Humanitarian partners suspended activities in the area due to the ongoing threats of drone strikes," it said.

Tigray rebels said Saturday that the attack had killed 56 people, while an official at the region's main hospital reported 55 dead and 126 injured.

It was not possible to independently verify the claims because access to the war-ravaged region is restricted and it remains under a communications blackout.

There was no response to requests for comment from Ethiopian government officials.

OCHA said the lack of essential supplies, especially medical supplies and fuel, was "severely disrupting the response to the injured, and (has) led to the nearly total collapse of the health system in Tigray".

"The intensification of air strikes is alarming, and we once again remind all parties to the conflict to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law," it said.

The fighting between forces loyal to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the rebel Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) has killed thousands of people and created a deep humanitarian crisis in the north.

Tigray itself is under what the UN calls a de facto blockade that is preventing life-saving food and medicine from reaching its six million people, including hundreds of thousands in famine-like conditions.

'Unacceptable'

The Dedebit strike came the same day that the Ethiopian government announced an amnesty for several senior officials from the rebel Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and other high-profile opposition leaders in what it said was a bid to foster national dialogue and "unity".

The amnesty has been welcomed by the international community as a possible way out of the fighting that has threatened to tear apart Africa's second most populous country.

It followed a dramatic turnaround in fortunes on the battlefield, with the rebels retreating to their Tigray stronghold at the end of December in the face of a military offensive that saw government forces retake a string of strategic towns.

Although there appeared to be a lull in fighting since, the rebels have accused the government of continuing to conduct deadly drone attacks on Tigray.

OCHA reported last month that dozens of civilians were reportedly killed in the last days of December in a barrage of air raids in Tigray.

And the United Nations reported this week that three Eritrean refugees including two children had been killed in an air strike Wednesday on a refugee camp in Tigray.

The US Bureau of African Affairs has described the attacks as "unacceptable".

"We redouble our call for an immediate end to hostilities, the prompt launch of an inclusive national dialogue, and unhindered access so aid can reach all Ethiopian communities in need," it said on Twitter.
West African leaders on Sunday decide to impose tough new sanctions on Mali including border closures and a trade embargo after its military rulers delayed a return to civilian rule.

The leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) also agreed to cut financial aid and freeze Mali's assets at the Central Bank of West African States, according to a final declaration.

And the bloc will recall its member states' ambassadors to Mali, the leaders decided at an extraordinary closed-door gathering in Ghana.

The meeting followed months of increasing tensions over the timetable for restoring civilian rule in Mali after two coups and a military takeover.

Map of Mali. By AFP

In August 2020, army officers led by Colonel Assimi Goita toppled the elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita amid street protests against his unpopular rule.

Under threat of sanctions, Goita promised to restore civilian rule in February 2022 after holding presidential and legislative elections.

But he staged a second coup in May 2021, forcing out an interim civilian government, disrupting the reform timetable, and provoking widespread diplomatic condemnation.

ECOWAS insisted that Mali hold elections in February.

But the junta then said it would set an election date only after holding a nationwide conference, arguing a peaceful vote was more important than speed.

'It's a joke'

On December 30, after Mali's reform conference ended, the government suggested a transition period of between six months and five years, starting from January 1 this year.

But ECOWAS mediator Goodluck Jonathan asked the regime to revise that plan during a visit last week, Mali's foreign minister said.

On Saturday, the junta submitted a new proposed timetable, Malian state television reported.

The move was intended "to maintain dialogue and good cooperation with ECOWAS", said Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop, without elaborating.

Army officers led by Colonel Assimi Goita toppled elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in August 2020. By ANNIE RISEMBERG AFPFile

"Mali's counter-proposal is for a four-year transition," said a senior official from Ghana, which holds the ECOWAS chair. "It's a joke."

The 15-nation bloc has led the push for the former French colony to honour its commitment to stage elections early this year.

The bloc's push to ensure a return to civilian rule has put its credibility on the line as it seeks to uphold fundamental principles of governance and contain regional instability.

'Concern' across the region

Swathes of Mali lie outside of state control, with the government struggling to quell a jihadist insurgency that has raged since 2012.

At a summit on December 12, ECOWAS leaders reiterated demands that the elections be held by February 27 as initially planned.

They maintained sanctions such as asset freezes and travel bans within the ECOWAS region against around 150 junta figures and their families, and threatened further "economic and financial" measures.

The ECOWAS summit followed months of increasing tensions over the timetable for restoring civilian rule in Mali. By Nipah Dennis AFPFile

"The extension of the transition period to five years is causing concern in the whole West African region," the eight-member union's current chair, Roch Marc Christian Kabore, president of Burkina Faso, told that earlier meeting.

Sanctions have proved effective in the past. ECOWAS responded to Goita's first coup in 2020 by shuttering Mali's borders, imposing trade restrictions and suspending the vast nation of 19 million people from its decision-making bodies.

Mali's army installed a civilian-led government in response and pledged to hold elections, which led to a lifting of the earlier economic sanctions, although Mali remains suspended from the bloc's main bodies.

ECOWAS did not impose sanctions immediately after the second putsch, but in November opted for targeted measures against individual junta members over perceived delays in the election preparations.

Analysts say regional leaders must take into account the risks of pitting Malians against ECOWAS.
The Association of Aggrieved teachers has disputed claims by President Akufo-Addo that teachers have been paid their legacy arrears.

According to the association, all efforts to have the government pay the arrears owed its members have proven futile.

The group in a statement said, We write with much pains in our heart to hear our president at the 6th Quadrennial (53rd) GNAT delegate conference held in Kumasi on 5th January 2022 say that his government has cleared all legacy arrears.

We dont want to say our president is a liar, but in all sincerity, we the affected teachers are yet to receive this promised legacy arrears.

The association posed some questions to the president following his claim that the arrears had been fully cleared by the government.

If our president purports to have paid this legacy arrears, then, he should please answer these questions for the public; When did he pay? Which year batch did he pay to? How did he pay it?

The legacy arrears fight continued in 2020 where writing of letters, consultations and engagement were made with the various stakeholders, yet, nothing good came out of it.

On the eve of 2020 elections (6th December), one Madam Mary Owusu called our PRO (Mr Kweku Tabiri Effah) to inform him that; the money has been paid into our accounts. We checked, and it was the salary arrears that he owed the 2016-year batch that he paid and even with that, he couldnt pay them all. So, which legacy arrears is our indefatigable president talking about? We even forwarded our grievances to CHRAJ of which acknowledgement was made that they are working on our case, Parliament was petitioned as well.

The association said it is ready to go the extra mile in all legitimate means to retrieve our hard-earned money.

It wants the government to stop aggravating the plights of teachers by spreading falsehood and focus on fulfilling its financial obligations.

Teacher unions in the country  the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), and the Coalition of Concerned Teachers (CCT)  have all, on several occasions, threatened to lay down their tools over the failure of the government to pay the legacy arrears.

The arrears, which include over two years' salary and promotion arrears, as well as allowances of some public school teachers, have sparked a series of demonstrations in the education sector.
The military leadership in Mali has made a further last-minute change to its timelines to restore civilian rule after its initial proposal of a transition of up to five years was rejected.

According to the Chair of the Economic Community of West African States, President Nana Akufo-Addo, the military leadership is proposing a four-year transition period to hand over power to a civilian government.

The official proposal, submitted to me by the transitional authorities under the hand of its head, indicated that the transition period should run for 5 years. Subsequently, by a letter to me dated January 7, 2022, the head of the Malian transition team stated that the period had now been modified to four years, President Akufo-Addo said at a gathering of West African leaders on Sunday to discuss Malis crisis.

The ECOWAS extraordinary summit was expected to discuss possible sanctions on Mali over potentially delayed elections.

The meeting comes after months of increasing tensions over the timetable for restoring civilian rule in Mali after two coups, and a military takeover in 2020.

In August 2020, army officers led by Colonel Assimi Goita overthrew elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

Colonel Goita subsequently promised to restore civilian rule in February 2022 after holding presidential and legislative elections.

But an interim civilian government was forced out in May 2021, disrupting the reform timetable, and was met with widespread diplomatic condemnation.

At a summit on December 12, ECOWAS leaders reiterated demands that the elections be held by February 27 as initially planned.

They maintained sanctions such as asset freezes and travel bans within the ECOWAS region against around 150 junta figures and their families and threatened further economic and financial measures.

The possibility of fresh sanctions was expected to be on the agenda at Sunday's summit.

By Citi Newsroom
The Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA), has welcomed the announcement by government for the suspension of the implementation of the benchmarks policy reversal directive to allow for broader consultations.

GUTA, which is a representative of Traders Associations in Ghana said many of its members are excited about the news.

President of GUTA, Dr Joseph Obeng told Citi News that the livelihoods of its members largely depend on this policy, and that the new government position will go a long way to protect their sources of income.

If you see the happiness that greeted this, it means that people's livelihoods actually depends on the maintenance of this benchmark policy rather than the reversal so we thank government for listening to our pleas, he said.

Dr. Obeng further expressed optimism about the wider consultations expected to take place on the reversal of benchmark values on various products at the ports.

President Akufo-Addo on Saturday directed the Ghana Revenue Authority to stay the rollout of the benchmark value reversal policy to allow for broader stakeholder engagement.

The President gave a deadline of January 17 for all consultations to conclude.

As part of the government's efforts towards promoting local production, the discounts on benchmark values for some elected items were announced in the 2022 budget were to be scrapped.

But the implementation of the policy was fraught with many challenges leading to calls by stakeholders including GUTA and the Ghana Importers and Exporters Association for its suspension.

Freight forwarders have also made similar calls.

Meanwhile, the Importers and Exporters Association of Ghana has s aid that the January 17 deadline given is not enough for wider consultations to be done.

Its Executive Secretary, Sampson Asaki Awin gobit said, I am looking forward to hearing the President actually suspending the programme and allowing for wider consultations. The January 17 deadline is too short a time for this to be done.

citinewsroom
10.01.2022 LISTEN

The Importers and Exporters Association of Ghana says the suspension of the reversal of the benchmark values by President Nana Akufo-Addo is clear indication that the policy was rushed.

At a meeting with officials of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and other stakeholders, President Nana Akufo-Addo directed GRA to suspend the planned implementation of the reversal of the benchmark val ues for further consultations.

The President also gave a deadline of January 17 for all consultations to conclude.

However, in an interview with Citi News , Executive Secretary of the Importers and Exporters Association of Ghana, Sampson Asaki Awin gobit, said the deadline given is not enough for wider consultations to be done.

I am looking forward to hearing the President actually suspending the programme and allowing for wider consultations.

The January 17 deadline is too short a time for this to be done.

The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), has for the second time deferred the implementation of the reversal of reduction of values of imports (known as Benchmark Values) on selected items, to Monday 17th January, 2022.

The Authority explained that the transitional arrangements are to ensure a smooth implementation.

It is also to allow a storage-free period for vessels that discharged on 31st December 2021 to go through clearance without being affected by the reversal of the policy.

citinewsroom
A court in Myanmar-Burma on Monday convicted Aung San Suu Kyi on three criminal charges, sentencing her to four years in prison in the latest of several cases against the ousted civilian leader.

Nobel laureate Suu Kyi has been detained since last February when her government was forced out in an early morning military coup, ending Myanmar's short-lived experiment with democracy.

The power grab by the generals triggered widespread dissent, which security forces sought to quell with mass detentions and bloody crackdowns in which more than 1,400 civilians have been killed, according to a local monitoring group.

Suu Kyi was on Monday found guilty on two charges of illegally importing and owning walkie-talkies and one of breaking coronavirus rules.

Junta spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun confirmed the verdicts and sentences and said Suu Kyi would remain under house arrest while other cases against her proceed.

The walkie-talkie charges stem from a military raid on Suu Kyi's home on the day of the coup, when the contraband equipment was allegedly discovered.

Monday's sentence adds to the penalties the court handed down in December when Suu Kyi was jailed for four years for incitement and breaching Covid-19 rules while campaigning.

Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing cut that sentence to two years and said she could serve her term under house arrest in the capital Naypyidaw.

Many cases still pending

Journalists have been barred from attending hearings, and Suu Kyi's lawyers have been prevented from speaking to the media.

Under a previous junta regime, Suu Kyi spent long spells under house arrest in her family mansion in Yangon, Myanmar's largest city.

Today, she is confined to an undisclosed location in the capital, with her link to the outside world limited to brief pre-trial meetings with her lawyers.

She still faces multiple counts of corruption -- each of which is punishable by 15 years in jail -- and of violating the official secrets act.

Last November, she and 15 other officials, including Myanmar's president Win Myint, were also charged with alleged electoral fraud during the 2020 polls.

Her National League for Democracy party won those elections in a landslide, trouncing a military-aligned party by a wider margin than the previous poll, held in 2015.
10.01.2022 LISTEN

The Ghana Police Service has confirmed the arrest of nine robbery suspects in the Western Region with the help of Wassa Appiahkrom and Ayiem communities.

The combined efforts of the police and members of Wassa Appiahkrom and Ayiem communities led to the arrest of mine (9) robbery suspects in two robbery attacks on 7th and 8th January, 2022 at Wassa Akropong and Mpohor in the Western Region, part of a statement issued by the Police on Monday has said.

According to the Police, the suspects attacked their victims with an array of weapons, made up of a locally manufactured pistol, cutlasses and a dagger.

The suspects subsequently bolted from the crime scenes with various items including a motorbike, mobile phones and a cash amount of GHS2,700.

The suspects including Godwin Boah, Philemon Essien, Emmanuel Yaley, Mohammed Sumaila, Evans Amarh, Patrick Aboah, Augustine Nana Abaka, Kwabena Acquah, and Godfred Akwah are currently in police custody.

Suspect Philemon Essien who sustained gunshot wound on his hand and suspect Emmanuel Yaley who sustained non-gun-shot related injuries during the arrest were sent to Effia-Nkwanta Regional Hospital where they were admitted for treatment while under Police guard.

Items retrieved from the suspects include a cash amount of GHS2,200.00, a motorbike, and an Opel taxi with Registration no. WR 3186-14 which have been impounded for further investigation.

Meanwhile, the police are on the lookout for two others suspects who managed to escape.

We highly commend community members of Wassa Appiahkrom and Ayiem for supporting the police in effecting the arrests.

We equally commend the personnel of the Western Regional Command for their patriotic services towards ensuring peace and security in the region.

Indeed, Police-Community partnership is the master key to crime fighting. Let us therefore continue to work together for safer communities, the Police statement concludes.
A group callibg itself Concerned Drivers Association has for the second time indicated its resolve to increase transport fares by 40%.

It said it will effect the fare increase from Monday, January 17, 2022.

According to the group, the decision to increase transport fares has been necessitated by the economic hardship the country is facing and its negative impact on their work.

The group in a statement said the high cost of fuel, high import duty on vehicles, increase in the cost of spare parts and vehicle lubricants are among the reasons for its decision.

We commiserate with Ghanaians on the current economic hardship but in order to keep us in business, we are left with no other option but to adjust transport fares a little upward which is a 40% increment It has become extremely difficult for us to manage our homes as prices of basic commodities including sachet water have also seen an upward increment, they said in the statement. Read the full statement below:

Notice of 40% increment of transport fares

We hereby communicate to Ghanaians to prepare for an upward adjustment of transport fares in the country with effect from Monday, January 17, 2022.

The increment, even though it cannot bring ultimate comfort, can only ameliorate the unbearable hardships facing drivers currently.

It must be noted that, we commiserate with Ghanaians on the current economic hardship but in order to keep us in business we are left with no other option but to adjust transport fares a little upward, which is a 40% increment.

Our resolve is inspired by the following factors, which are:

1. Price of fuel commodities at the pumps of the various Oil Marketing Companies. Ghanaians agree with us that, fuel commodities have seen a consistent upward increment and will even soon see another increment as predicted by the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC). It'll be recalled that a little over a month ago, drivers nationwide embarked on a sit-down strike, which negatively affected commuters. Even though the Chief of Staff, Frema Osei Opare on behalf of government met with driver unions and promised a reduction of the prices of petrol, but unfortunately that promise has not materialised. We are rather witnessing a consistent increment. Sadly, the government has blatantly refused to wave of the tax components on the petrol prices even.

2. Increment of Prices of Vehicles: The prices of cars continue to increase on daily basis due to high duty rates at the ports. This situation makes it even more difficult to defray the cost of vehicles, causing car owners to increase daily sales of drivers. In the end, drivers work virtually for nothing.

3. Increment of spare parts and lubricants: the prices of spare parts have also witnessed an upward increment. Coupled with poor roads in the country, drivers are heavily burdened as we have to rapidly change vehicle parts. Our partners, mechanics who replace these parts, have also increased their service charges. Essential engine parts and lubricants have also had their prices increased. For instance, a 4 and half litre engine lubricant which used to sell at GHC 65 is now sold to us at GHC 110.

It must be noted that, we also experience the economic conditions of the country. It has become extremely difficult for us to manage our homes as prices of basic commodities including sachet water have also seen an upward increment.

In view of this, we urge Ghanaians to side with us when the increment of transport fares takes effect from Monday, January 17, 2022.

We strongly encourage Ghanaians to avoid fighting drivers and their conductors when the new fares are implemented.

Two weeks ago, the group protested against the high cost of fuel and urged the government to scrap what they describe as nuisance taxes on the price build-up for petroleum products. Six months earlier, they threatened to increase their fares by 40%, but that threat was not carried out.

citinewsroom
Workers of the Ghana Airport Company Limited (GACL) have called board chairman Paul Adom-Otchere a liar following his claim that workers were paid salary and bonuses in December 2021.

In a statement from Paul Adom-Otchere via his Facebook wall last week, he stated emphatically that All salaries and or bonuses due staff for December have been paid.

This was part of a reaction to a claim that the GACL blew a whopping amount of GHS84,000 on Christmas trees to decorate the arrival hall of the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) during the yuletide period.

But the workers of Ghana Airport Limited have issued a statement insisting that Paul Adom-Otchere peddled lies.

It is never the case that GACL employees were paid bonuses at the end of the year 2021 as was put out there by the Board chairman. In actual fact, the last time bonuses were paid in GACL, was in 2017. Indeed as we speak 2018 bonus which was negotiated for is still in arrears, part of a statement issued by the Divisional Union has said.

It adds, for the records, employees December 2021, salaries were paid in January 2022, contrary to what was communicated by the Board chairman. This practice is so alien to GACL and is only gaining prominence in the last few months under the watch of the Board Chair.

Workers of Ghana Airport Limited note that any attempt to play with the future of the hardworking employees of GACL shall be fiercely resisted.

Below is the full statement from the Divisional Union:

Below are details of the statement

RE: PAYMENT OF BONUS & DEC. SALARIES TO GACL STAFF- BOARD CHAIR

The attention of the Divisional Union has been drawn to a statement circulating on social media attributed to the Board chairman of GACL.

The statement is putting so much pressure on staff leadership hence our decision to respond accordingly.

While staying away from the substantive issue which appears to border on abuse of office, we wish to correct some misrepresentations that were contained in the said release;

Fact 6,

It is never the case that GACL employees were paid bonuses at the end of the year 2021 as was put out there by the Board chairman. In actual fact, the last time bonuses were paid in GACL, was in 2017. Indeed as we speak 2018 bonus which was negotiated for is still in arrears.

Again, for the records, employees December 2021, salaries were paid in January 2022, contrary to what was communicated by the Board chairman. This practice is so alien to GACL and is only gaining prominence in the last few months under the watch of the Board Chair.

Such factually inaccurate statements only end up giving rise to staff agitations especially with the knowledge that the Board has failed to give mandate to management to commence negotiations on staff conditions of service with the Union after proposals were submitted in the middle of November, 2021.

We want to assure all that any attempt to play with the future of the hardworking employees of GACL shall be fiercely resisted.

Long live GACL.

By the Divisional Union.
10.01.2022 LISTEN

The Economic Fighters League (EFL) has reiterated its call for a review of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana.

According to the vocal advocacy group, the 1992 Constitution is a bogus and fraudulent document that needs to be killed with high level of urgency.

The Economic Fighters League argue that it is because of the 1992 Constitution that Ghana has endured retrogressive governance, constitutional dictatorship, poverty and underdevelopment in the last three decades.

The people of Ghana have endured 30 years of retrogressive governance, constitutional dictatorship, poverty and underdevelopment as a result of the 1992 Sakawa Constitution, part of a statement from the EFL released on Constitution Days reads.

It adds, The death of this bogus and fraudulent document is inevitable but we must not be complacent. We must continue our organization and political education. For as Kwame Nkrumah said, organization decides everything.

In a review of the Constitution, the EFL wants proportional representation to replace winner-takes-all for inclusive governance.

It also wants the dictatorial powers of the President to be drastically cut down and the ownership and control of the countrys resources vested in the Ghanaian people rather than rich foreign companies.

Read the full statement from EFL below:

07/01/2022

Press Release

THE IMMINENT DEATH OF THE 1992 SAKAWA CONSTITUTION

1. The people of Ghana have endured 30 years of retrogressive governance, constitutional dictatorship, poverty and underdevelopment as a result of the 1992 Sakawa Constitution.

2. Constitutions are the foundations upon which democratic countries are built. They are supposed to guard against oppression and be the source of hope for the less privileged. Unfortunately, we are being governed with a constitution that serves the interest of the few to the detriment of the majority.

3. For few years now, the Economic Fighters League has made it our foremost agenda to push for the abolishment of the 1992 Sakawa constitution because of our conviction that we cannot have a bad constitution and expect a good society.

4. It is gratifying that many have now joined the struggle, helped expand the conversation and Ghanaians are getting increasingly aware that their enemy is the 1992 Constitution and that it must die if we must live.

5. In its place, we must have a new constitution in which

i.Ex-gratia must be abolished

ii.Proportional representation should replace winner-takes-all for inclusive governance

iii.There should be provision for binding long-term

development plan

iv.The dictatorial powers of the President should be drastically cut down

v.The ownership and control of the countrys resources should be vested in the people rather than rich foreign companies

vi.African unity must be pursued to its logical conclusion

vii.The people must have the power to remove their President, ministers and MPs directly

viii.The IGP, Chief Justice and other Judges, DCEs, Heads of CHRAJ and NCCE should not be appointed by the President

ix.DCEs should be elected directly by the people x.Etc.

6. These are a few of the many proposals for the #NewConstitutionNow agenda

7. Due to the urgency of the need for a New Constitution, we have decided to form a coalition of willing individuals and organisations to challenge the NPP/NDC in 2024 elections who continue to benefit from the 1992 Constitution and are hellbent on protecting it.

8. This will enable us to fight the battle for New Constitution on two fronts in a coordinated fashion.

9. The death of this bogus and fraudulent document is inevitable but we must not be complacent. We must continue our organization and political education. For as Kwame Nkrumah said, organization decides everything.

10. #NewConstitutionNow #UntilweAreAllfree

#WeAreFighters

Nii Aryee Opare

National Spokesperson

0243057600

John Koomson

National Spokesperson

0554044663
The Community Focus Foundation Ghana (CFF-Ghana) has called on the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to call its Director of Communications, Mr. Yaw Buaben Asamoa to order over comments in defending the ruling government.

The Foundation in a press release dated Monday, January 10, 2022, cites multiple instances where Mr. Asamoa allegedly made insensitive statements at various media engagements.

..we are aware that during a press conference at the partys headquarters in Accra, on Friday, 20th August 2021, Mr. Yaw Buaben Asamoah made some disparaging and insensitive statements to the Ghanaian public on perception of hardship in the country. He said, We are not frightened of John Mahama, we know he cannot manage the economy, so we cant let him poison your minds because if youre sitting your somewhere and they keep telling you oh it is bad, Ghana is hard, there is corruption, Ghana is hard. Then sometimes, you think its true. So we have to speak back.

Secondly, in trying to defend his party and government on the excruciating economic hardship bedevilling Ghanaians, Mr. Yaw Buaben Asamoa in his usual faction has recently indicated that the high cost of living is being imported and no one dared blame the government, part of the statement from CFF-Ghana has said.

Appalled by the comments, the Foundation wants the leadership of the NPP to whip its Director of Communication into order.

The NPP leadership should whip Mr. Yaw Buaben Asamoa and other party or government communicators in line to appreciate and acknowledge the plight of the suffering Ghanaians when speaking in the media, the statement issued CFF-Ghana recommends.

Meanwhile, CFF-Ghana also wants the NPP to ensure that government communicators are guided by professional ethics in crisis communication to avoid the excesses being witnessed.

Below is the full release from CFF-Ghana:

10/01/2022

For Immediate Release:

The NPP must whip Yaw Buaben Asamoa to order; his insensitive public statements portray the regime as an insensitive one.

The Community Focus Foundation Ghana (CFF-Ghana) is deeply worried about some insensitive public statements alleged to have been made by Mr. Yaw Buaben Asamoa, former MP and Director of Communications of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) in recent times.

Though the Director of Communications in defence of his government continues to step on the toes of the Ghanaian masses, our statement herein seeks to remind the public about two (2) main instances he sheepishly took Ghanaians for granted.

Firstly, we are aware that during a press conference at the partys headquarters in Accra, on Friday, 20th August 2021, Mr. Yaw Buaben Asamoah made some disparaging and insensitive statements to the Ghanaian public on perception of hardship in the country. He said, We are not frightened of John Mahama, we know he cannot manage the economy, so we cant let him poison your minds because if youre sitting your somewhere and they keep telling you oh it is bad, Ghana is hard, there is corruption, Ghana is hard. Then sometimes, you think its true. So we have to speak back.

Secondly, in trying to defend his party and government on the excruciating economic hardship bedevilling Ghanaians, Mr. Yaw Buaben Asamoa in his usual faction has recently indicated that the high cost of living is being imported and no one dared blame the government.

Truth be told, we are living in very difficult times but that notwithstanding, it is critically important we take collective actions to put Ghana on the path of growth and sustained progress. Clearly, the attempt by Yaw Buaben Asamoa, to keep suggesting that the suffering masses are being brainwashed in believing that there is hardship in Ghana is the most crudest expressions to have been made by a man of his stature.

Indeed, Mr. Yaw Buaben Asamoa as the Director of Communications of the NPP is free to tout the gains made by the Akufo-Addo-led government, but in doing so, he needs to admit the challenges confronting the Ghanaian people and solicit public support in dealing with the myriad of challenges facing the citizens. He should not forget that ambitious promise of reducing the suffering of Ghanaians was what gave them political power.

In conclusion, we recommend the following;

1. That the NPP leadership should whip Mr. Yaw Buaben Asamoa and other party or government communicators in line to appreciate and acknowledge the plight of the suffering Ghanaians when speaking in the media;

2. That government communicators should be guided by professional ethics in crisis communication to avoid the excesses being witnessed;

3.That the Media, CSOs, and those who speaks and it matter in Ghana should continue their watchdog job in the nation building process;

Issued by CFF-GHANA Communications.

0549229107
THE AUTOMOBILE Dealers Union of Ghana, Importers of vehicles into the country says a recent engagement between the Finance Ministry and stakeholders on the issues surrounding the reversal of the reduction in benchmark values policy, will not yield any result.

The said meeting which was held on Thursday, January 6, 2022, and chaired by Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, saw about 8 different trade unions including the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA), the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), and the Importers and Exporters Association of Ghana among others, largely arguing for the scrapping of the revised benchmark value policy.

This followed the troubled implementation of the reversal of the reduction in benchmark values policy on Tuesday January 4, 2022 and the subsequent deferment of the implementation till the 6th of January, 2022.

Commenting on the said meeting, General Secretary of the Automobile Dealers Union, Clifford Ansu said the meeting was not going to yield any positive results for the importing community.

When this benchmark value reduction policy was introduced, the government also introduced a special import levy of 2.5% on duties charged at the ports. The government also brought in Africa Union Levy and network charges as well. When you put the charges introduced together, they exceed the 30% reduction for vehicles introduced in 2019. Now it looks like the 30% discount we enjoyed is going to be taken away from us which will ultimately increase the prices of imported cars. The situation is very bad. Meeting GUTA on this matter at this time is not necessary. This is because GUTA earlier met with the Finance Ministry and held several discussions on this matter. The government did not listen to the proposals made by GUTA back then. They went ahead to introduce the revised policy. Meeting them again will not lead to a reversal of the policy.

Mr. Ansu however charged the Ghana Revenue Authority to prioritize scrapping nuisance taxes in their line of work.

Some of the tax components that affect vehicle importers have to be removed. Like the network charges on all the taxes. You are paying a network charge on National Health Insurance, COVID-19 Recovery Levy, African Union Tax, among others. These network changes need to be removed. We want the whole policy reversal to be scrapped. Even after scrapping the reversal, they must make sure new taxes are not introduced into the system.

 Citibusiness
The Pharmaceutical Importers, Exporters, and Wholesalers Association of Ghana (PIEWAG) has frowned on the reversal of the 50% discounts on selected pharmaceutical products.

According to the association, Ghana is not self-sufficient in the production of pharmaceutical products.

The association further revealed that Ghana imports 80 per cent of its pharmaceutical needs.

Mr Joe Fifi Yamoah, the Executive Secretary of the association made this disclosure on the Ghana Yensom morning show hosted by Kwame Obeng Sarkodie on Accra100.5FM on Monday, 10 January 2022.

Speaking on the earlier decision by the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to reverse the 50 per cent benchmark value discount on selected items and 30 per cent on cars, the Executive Secretary said Ghana does not have the capacity to produce even 30 per cent of its pharmaceutical needs.

Ghana is not ready to fully produce all its pharmaceutical needs and, so, the reversal of the benchmark values will be devastating for the pharmaceutical industry, he said.

He noted that the importation of pharmaceutical products augments the countrys drug needs because Ghana is not self-sufficient in drug production.

The local pharmaceutical companies cannot meet the demands of Ghanaians in terms of drugs need, he added.

He warned that should the government reverse the 50 per cent benchmark value discounts, the price of common drugs such as Paracetamol, will be increased by, at least, 30 per cent.

He said it will take 30 to 35 years for Ghana to bridge the gap in pharmaceutical production, as all 22 local pharmaceutical companies cannot meet the demand of Ghanaians.

---Classfmonline.com
10.01.2022 LISTEN

Bangladesh is a developing country. Its economy is booming day by day. The pattern of crime is changing. Technological advancement has also changed the tendency of crime. One of the major obstacles to Bangladeshs progress is the volatile law and order situation. In such a situation when every member of the society was suffering from uncertainty, the government planned to form an elite force to make the activities of the police force more dynamic and effective. The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) has started its journey on March 26, 2004, by participating in the National Independence Day Parade. On 21st June 2004, RAB forces started full operational activities. Soon after birth, it has started to maintain peace, harmony in society. Since its inception, RAB has been working at the risk of its life. The RAB has been fighting terrorism and terrorists and has brought those involved in drug trafficking under the law. Which is one of the goals of the US administration. The United States also aims to curb illegal human trafficking and criminal activity. In fact, RAB is implementing the US policy in Bangladesh.

On the other hand, according to various media reports, the Special Task Force (STF) is an elite special forces unit of the Sri Lanka Police Service specializing in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations. It was formed in 1983 not as a military force but rather as a highly specialized police unit. Today it has developed into a major security arm of the state involved in VIP security, protecting sensitive terrorist targets and suppressing activities that pose a threat to national security. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh can work together in maintaining peace, harmony, law and counter-terrorism approach, intelligence sharing. The two special forces can exchange their experiences.

According to the website of Lankan police, at the beginning of the early 1980s, with the emergence of terrorist activities in the North and East, the Police in the course of their duties had to face armed attacks carried out by the terrorists. The terrorist attacks resulted in the killing of police personnel, attacks on Police Stations and assassinations of VIPP. Hence the necessity arose for the formation of a special military arm within the Police Service to counter terrorist activities. In the light of the above situation, a Special Committee was appointed to investigate the police functions in the past to combat terrorism and its shortcomings. STF and RAB can work together to counter terrorism and extremism.

According to various media reports and Wikipedia, the Sri Lanka Army has taken part in two peacekeeping missions with United Nations over the course of its history. The first assignment was in the Congo (ONUC) (19601963). Most recently, following the signing of a ceasefire agreement was signed between the government and the LTTE in 2002, Sri Lankan forces were invited by the United Nations to be part of the UN peacekeeping force in Haiti. In the process of peacekeeping operations, two soldiers were killed in a raid in Petit-Goave. After over 6 months of service, the first contingent of the peacekeeping force returned to Sri Lanka on May 17, 2005. In December 2007, the 7th rotation of the Sri Lankan contingent had been deployed with a force of 991 officers and other ranks, many of those deployed have been awarded the United Nations Medal for their services. In November 2007, 114 members of the 950 member Sri Lankan Army peacekeeping mission in Haiti were accused of sexual misconduct and abuse which resulted in 108 members, including three officers, being sent back after being implicated in alleged misconduct and sexual abuse where sex was exchanged. for money and valuable items, with some acts considered rape as they involved those under 18. In January 2019, a Sri Lankan army officer and trooper on peacekeeping duty in Mali were killed and three more wounded when their convoy came under an IED attack. The incident prompted the army to accelerate its Avalon program. On the wake of the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide attacks by ISIS-inspired terrorists, Sri Lanka continued efforts to enhance its CT capacities and architecture and improve border security, including through engagement with the United States and other international partners. Sri Lankan army and Bangladesh army can work together in the peace keeping mission to promote peace because the aim is the same.

Sri Lanka Army's newest contingent of 243 professionally-trained Army personnel in the Combat Convoy Company (CCC), well-prepared to serve in the United Nations (UN) Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) left the island on the 21st of April 2021.The 1st group of the 8th contingent of the Sri Lanka Army Medical Corps (SLAMC) bound for United Nations Peace-Keeping Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) have left the island from the Colombo International Airport early on December 28, 2021.

After the verdict in the seven murder cases in Narayanganj on January 19, 2017, the United States commented that the government of Bangladesh should abolish 'RAB. They called the RAB an "in-house death squad" and criticized the government's role in its involvement in extrajudicial killings, torture, and disappearances. However, 25 members of this force have been convicted for seven murders in Narayanganj. Of them, 16 have been sentenced to death and nine members have been sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. As a result, there was a tendency to underestimate the various achievements of the RAB achieved in the last 12 years. But the success of this organization is more than just a measure of failure. That is why RAB is an important organization.

RABs role in suppressing traditional crimes

Apart from suppressing militants and terrorists, Elite Force RAB is also playing a special role in suppressing traditional crimes. The organization has cracked down on members of the terrorist forces in different parts of the capital. They still maintain that continuity.

According to various media reports, RAB has so far arrested more than 1,200 criminals and rescued more than 1,000 victims in a crackdown on human trafficking. More than 16,000 firearms and more than 2.5 million rounds of ammunition were seized from the area-based terrorists and arms dealers. About 13,000 armed terrorists have been arrested.

More than 500 Sundarbans-centric pirates and bandits have been arrested in the southern part of the country and about 2,000 firearms have been recovered.

A top RAB official said that besides special operations, RAB has been conducting regular operations to unravel the mystery of clue-less murder and catch the fugitive accused. Apart from this, the mobile court of RAB has collected more than two and a half billion rupees in fines of Tk.

Role in Anti-Narcotics drive

According to the information of various law enforcement agencies, drugs are behind many crimes including theft, robbery, smuggling, and use of illegal weapons all over the country including the capital Dhaka. For this reason, RAB has been working in the light of a zero-tolerance policy against drugs since its inception.

On May 3, 2016, on the occasion of the 14th founding anniversary of RAB, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina directed to intensify zero tolerance for drug eradication. Following this, RAB launched a massive campaign across the country with the slogan 'Let's go to war, against drugs'.

According to RAB statistics, they have arrested about 55,000 drug dealers since May 3, 2016. About 1.5 lakh drug dealers have been arrested since its inception. Seized drugs worth three thousand crore rupees.

The company has recovered more than six and a half crore yaba tablets since its inception. In addition, about 800 kg of heroin and more than 3.8 million phencidyl were seized.

RAB officials say that Yaba is now the most used drug in Bangladesh. They are coming to the country by sea from Myanmar. In addition, yaba is constantly entering through the deep areas of the hilly region. RAB is working closely with various law enforcement agencies to close the routes of Yaba entry. At the same time, regular operations are being carried out by listing Yaba traders in and around Cox's Bazar. The militant attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery (Spanish restaurant) in Gulshan, an elite area of the capital, has brought Bangladesh to the forefront of global discussions. Twenty people, including 17 foreigners, were hacked and shot dead in the attack. Among the dead were nine Italians, six Japanese, and one Indian.

After that hellish attack, the government sat motionlessly. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina sat in meetings with the chiefs of all the forces of the country from time to time. Discussions are going on about how to free the country from the curse of militancy.

After lengthy discussions and consultations, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced the policy of 'Zero Tolerance' against militancy and extremism. After the Prime Minister's announcement, the law enforcement forces took to the field to fight militancy and extremism.

The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) has been seen playing the most effective role in the campaign against militancy since the Holy Artisan attack.

According to RAB sources, the organization has conducted 241 anti-militant operations since the Holy Artisan attack. In these operations, RAB has arrested a total of 809 militants. Twenty-five militants were killed in the gun battle. In addition, 7 militants have so far surrendered to the RAB, which is rare in the history of the world.

It is also learned that since the Holey Artisan attack, there has been one anti-militancy cell in each battalion of RAB. All the activities of the militants are monitored through that cell. RAB also has an anti-militancy app to raise awareness about militancy and extremism.

RAB's anti-militant campaign:

According to various media reports, On July 17, 2016, RAB raided a militant hideout in Ashulia, Savar. The RAB forced four militants to surrender during the operation.

On September 6, 2016, RAB conducted an operation in the Darussalam area of the capital Mirpur on suspicion of being a militant hideout. At one stage of the operation, the militants in the dormitory exploded. The blast killed six people, including militant Abdullah and his associates.

On April 29 in 2019, RAB raided a house suspected to be a militant hideout in Mohammadpur Basila of the capital. Two militants were killed on the spot in the operation.

RAB raided a suspected militant hideout in the Sonapahar area of Jorarganj in Mirsarai Upazila of Chittagong. Two militants were killed in the blast.

Regarding the RAB's campaign against militancy, RAB Director General (DG) Benazir Ahmed said, "Not only the campaign, but we are also constantly carrying out various activities with the militants. So far, eight militants have surrendered. But we have shown the way that the militants can also surrender.

"We are trying to prevent the militants from trying to incite people to extremism by misinterpreting the Holy Qur'an and its verses, but we are trying to convey the correct interpretation of various verses of the Holy Qur'an to the people," he said.

Referring to the people of Bangladesh as peace-loving, Benazir Ahmed said, "People of our country do not like bloody bloodshed. Militancy will never be able to rise fully in our country. Because the people of our country do not like them.

According to the media reports, A 9,000-member RAB force is working to protect human rights. Former RAB intelligence chief Lt. to protect human rights. 27 RAB members including Colonel Azad were martyred. More than a thousand members have been maimed in maintaining law and order and protecting human rights. At different times, more than two thousand members were injured while trying to maintain law and order.

The RAB has been established in the light of some mandates as a lit force. RAB has been established to suppress militancy, drugs, and terrorism. Today, due to the success of RAB's campaign, militancy and terrorism have come down to zero in the whole country including the North or the South. The Sundarbans has been freed from piracy due to the RAB's campaign. We have celebrated the third anniversary of the Sundarbans free of pirates this time. No other country in the world has been free of such pirates?

327 members of the 32 bandits had surrendered in the Sundarbans. RAB has also played a humanitarian role in their rehabilitation. In addition to government grants, RAB has provided houses and cows, and goats to bring them back to normal life. The pirates of Banshkhali have also been brought back to normal life. RAB was working to bring the surrendered militants back to normalcy. In very few countries in the world, law enforcement agencies like RAB have shown humanity.

Today, the contribution of 'RAB' in the socio-economic development of the country and in maintaining law and order in times of crisis is undeniable. Because the unstable law and order situation is one of the obstacles to our progress. This includes maintaining law and order, recovering illegal weapons, ammunition, explosives, and other such harmful substances, arresting armed terrorists, assisting other law enforcement agencies in maintaining law and order, providing intelligence on any crime and criminals, according to government orders. RAB is always engaged in performing other government duties.

In fact, RAB has received many accolades, including the Freedom Award for its bravery, heroic role, and public service in maintaining law and order. RAB officials have received various medals. Bangladesh today is on the highway of development. Therefore, the biggest need is to maintain the overall law and order situation in the country. Thus, we can say that RAB has been playing a significant role in maintaining peace law, harmony in our society in Bangladesh.

Jubeda Chowdhury from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The Bank of Ghana (BOG) will on Tuesday begin the multiple-price foreign exchange (FX) forward auction for the first quarter of 2022 with a proposed amount of $75 million.

The auctioning, which will be opened for only authorised foreign exchange dealing banks, is the first of six auctioning events to be held within the first quarter of 2022.

This is in line with the Bank's objective of periodically strengthening the local currency against the most common trading currencies, especially the US dollar through the release of $450 million into the foreign exchange market within the first quarter.

The multiple price FX forward auctions are aimed at aiding price discovery, deepening the FX market, and reducing uncertainty on the future availability of the FX to meet the need of the Bank's clients.

With the proposed amount fixed at $75 million per auction, the BOG announced the dates as follows: January 11, 2022, January 25, 2022; February 8, 2022; February 22, 2022; March 08, 2022, and March 22, 2022.

A press statement signed by the Secretary of the Bank, Ms. Sandra Thompson, indicated that bids in accordance with the Foreign Exchange Forward Auctions guidelines would be invited as per the prescribed format to purchase United States dollars against Ghana cedis, separately on each auction date.

It said the bids, should be submitted via the dedicated email, [email protected]

The statement also indicated that the receipt of bids would be between 9:30 am and 10:30 am of the date of the auction while the announcement of results would be done at 15:00 hours on the same day.

The Bank of Ghana will publish an auction calendar for the Foreign Exchange Forward Auction on a quarterly basis. The calendar will be published one week preceding the next quarter on the Bank of Ghana's website, it added.

According to the guidelines, each bank was permitted to submit a maximum of three bids per tenor in the auction while quoting their desired amount and at their freely determined exchange rate as per quotation convention.

The minimum bid size is $500,000 and in multiples of US$250,000 and expressed in numbers.

The maximum bid size of a single bid shall not exceed ten percent (10%) of the announced auction target.

The cumulative volume of all bids from any single bank shall not exceed 20 per cent of the announced target for the auction the guideline stipulated.

GNA
The Ghana Police Service has thanked the general public for its support in fighting crimes in the country.

A statement issued by the service said Police-Community partnership is the master key to crime fighting.

Let us therefore continue to work together for safer communities.

The Police had appealed to the general public to help find two robbery suspects who were part of nine suspects who attacked their victims with an array of weapons at Wassa Akropong and Mpohor in the Western region.
The United Nations will launch talks to help Sudan resolve its escalating political crisis triggered by last year's military coup, the UN envoy said Monday, earning a mixed response.

"It is time to end the violence and enter into a comprehensive consultative process," said UN special representative Volker Perthes, vowing at a press conference to facilitate "indirect talks" between all sides.

Perthes said consultations would be held with political and social actors and armed and civil society groups, but stressed that "the UN is not coming up with any project, draft or vision for a solution".

"These are all Sudanese issues for the Sudanese to agree on," he said, ahead of a scheduled meeting by the UN Security Council on Wednesday to discuss the crisis in the northeast African country.

Sudanese protesters walk past burning tyres as they rally against the October 2021 military coup, in the capital Khartoum, on January 9, 2022. By - AFP

Sudan was thrown into turmoil when army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan launched the power grab on October 25, detaining Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and his cabinet for several weeks.

The putsch derailed a fragile power-sharing transition between the military and civilian leaders that had been painstakingly put together in the wake of the 2019 ouster of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir.

Crowds of Sudanese have taken to the streets since -- sometimes in their tens of thousands -- to demand civilian rule, and at least 63 people have been killed in violent crackdowns according to medics.

'Towards democracy and peace'

The UN-facilitated talks now "aim to support the Sudanese to reach an agreement on a way out of the current crisis," said Perthes, who heads the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission Sudan (UNITAMS).

Crowds of Sudanese have taken to the streets since the coup -- sometimes in their tens of thousands -- to demand civilian rule, and at least 63 people have been killed in violent crackdowns according to medics. By - AFPFile

The UN envoy said there has been "no objection" from the military institutions. But the initial response from key civilian factions was lukewarm.

"We have yet to receive any details about the UN initiative," said Jaafar Hassan, a spokesman for the mainstream faction of the Forces for Freedom and Change, the leading civilian pro-democracy group.

"We are willing to take part in the talks on condition that the purpose is to resume the democratic transition and remove the coup regime, but we are against it if these talks seek to legitimise the coup regime," he told AFP on Monday.

The Sudanese Professionals Association, another key civilian faction, had however said on Sunday that it completely rejected the UN-facilitated talks.

Perthes on Saturday announced that the talks would aim at "supporting Sudanese stakeholders to agree on a way out of the current political crisis as well as a sustainable path forward towards democracy and peace".

The UN's move was welcomed by the United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. By ASHRAF SHAZLY AFP

The UN's move was welcomed by the United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Burhan has insisted that the military takeover "was not a coup" but only meant to "rectify the course of the Sudanese transition".

A November 21 deal saw Hamdok reinstated after he spent weeks under house arrest in the wake of the coup. But Hamdok resigned last week, warning that the country was now at a "dangerous crossroads threatening its very survival".
President Nana Akufo-Addo has tasked the Black Stars of Ghana to surmount any obstacle to win the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), which Ghanaians are hungry for, for the past 40 years.

The biennial continental competition ongoing in Cameroon would see Ghana begin her campaign against the Atlas Lions of Morocco at the Stade Ahmadou Ahidjo in Yaounde, Cameroon.

Ahead of the encounter, the President in a virtual message to the team in camp said, Like with every other edition of AFCON, the Ghanaian people demand nothing short of ultimate glory from the Stars.

The pressure to succeed is understandably high because of our status as four times winners and also because it has been 40 long years since we last lifted the trophy.

The target for you naturally is to bring the cup home, we have to go a step further in the second places recorded in 1992, 2010 and 2015. And bring the 40-year drought to an end.

He stressed that, though the task may be daunty, it is certainly not insurmountable, and believes the current crop of players have the quality to crush all the best teams involved in the tourney.

President Nana Addo added that the Black Stars have been penciled down as one of tournament's favorites and should work to bring the prediction to reality.

Ghana's chase for fifth AFCON trophy begins today, January 10 when they lock horns with Morocco in Group C match.

GNA
Mali is facing increasing isolation after the West African bloc ECOWAS imposed new sanctions, including border closures, a trade embargo and a freeze on state assets, over delays in restoring civilian rule.

Experts argue the measures may inflict significant damage to the Sahel state, which is already mired in poverty and fighting a jihadist insurgency.

What are the sanctions?

On Sunday, the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) slapped economic and diplomatic sanctions on Mali for its ruling military's failure to organise swift elections.

Mali's army initially promised to stage elections in February 2022, after staging a coup in August 2020.

But in December, it suggested staying in power for up to an additional five years, citing security concerns.

Mali has been struggling to contain a brutal jihadist insurgency that first emerged in 2012, before spreading to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

But the proposed elections delay angered Mali's neighbours and pushed them to impose sanctions.

ECOWAS leaders agreed to shutter the bloc's borders with Mali and impose a trade embargo.

They also pledged to halt aid to the country and freeze its assets at the Central Bank of West African States.

The leaders also decided to recall their ambassadors from Mali.

How will this affect Malians?

The sanctions are likely to hurt Malians financially, according to Ornella Moderan of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) think tank.

"We can expect a cash crisis, but that should occur in a few weeks' time because it's the beginning of the month," said the researcher, who is based in Mali's capital Bamako.

Junta leader Assimi Goita, centre, a former special forces colonel, pictured after the August 2020 coup. By Elonore HUGHES AFP

There are currently no banking problems, several bank officials told AFP.

Hamadoun Bah, the head of Mali's association of banks and financial institutions, said the state could survive "until the storm passes."

Not all of the state's assets are stored at the Central Bank of West African States, he noted.

The closure of land and air borders has already impacted travellers, however.

Several passengers due to travel between Paris and Bamako told AFP that their flight had been cancelled. A Bamako travel agent also said all flights from Mali to ECOWAS countries are "closed for the moment".

Mining operations in Mali "should prepare for significant disruptions to their export routes and logistical supply," said Alexandre Raymakers, an analyst at risk-assessment firm Verisk Maplecroft.

And the junta?

Relations between Mali and its neighbours have often been tense since the 2020 coup. But Moderan said there was reason to be concerned about the latest developments.

Positions on both sides are "quite firm and final," she said.

"We have to hope that this is an escalation phase that will lead to negotiation phase," the analyst added.

The junta -- some of whose members were already under sanctions -- is facing significant pressure.

It remains an open question whether Mali's other international partners will now follow the lead of ECOWAS in pressuring the junta.

Such a move would "further tighten the screws," said French researcher Yvan Guichaoua.

What next?

Several Malian experts told AFP they expected pro-army demonstrations to take place in Bamako over the next few days.

Similar rallies have taken place in the capital after previous diplomatic standoffs involving Mali's military.

Moderan suggested the sanctions risk may prove counter-productive, potentially gathering Malians behind the army.

French troops prepare to pull out of a base in Timbuktu, northern Mali, on December 14. The drawdown coincides with tension between France and Mali over the August 2020 coup. By FLORENT VERGNES AFP

She also warned that the current dispute may lead to "xenophobic tensions" between Malians and their West African neighbours.

Long term, there are also strategic concerns behind Mali's increasing isolation.

The country plays a key role in the anti-jihadist G5 Sahel military alliance, for example.

J. Peter Pham, the former US special envoy for the Sahel, tweeted: "I hope ECOWAS leaders have carefully considered the potential longterm geopolitical and security impacts of their decisions... not just their own immediate political fortunes."
Deputy Ranking Member on the Education Committee of Parliament, Dr. Clement Apaak, has charged government to find the financial resources required to meet the demands of striking public university lecturers.

Members of UTAG embarked on a planned industrial action today, Monday, in a bid to demand better conditions of service, which they describe as worsening.

The association over the period has been asking the government to restore the conditions of service agreed upon in 2012.

The conditions of service, then, pegged the Basic plus Market Premium of a lecturer at $2,084.

UTAG has complained about the fact that the current arrangement has reduced its members' basic premiums to $997.

Speaking on the issues, the Builsa South MP, who served as a lecturer before he got into politics, urged the government to prioritise the concerns of UTAG.

The issues are very clear. UTAG has issued a statement outlining why they have chosen to do what they are doing today. And it all boils down to the government finding the resources to address their needs because the issue of remuneration continues to be the bone of contention. The university lecturers over the period have also had their workload increased.

Strike is UTAG's only option

The University of Ghana Chapter of UTAG is asking its National Executive Committee to ignore any form of engagement with the government to call off the strike until their issues are addressed.

According to UTAG, the government has been laid back in delivering on agreed timelines for their Interim Market Premium and the implementation of the single spine pay policy.

The Secretary of the University of Ghana Chapter of UTAG, Professor Ransford Gyampo said it is regrettable that since 2013, negotiations with the government have not reached an amicable solution.

If they [government] call any meeting, I will advise that we don't honour such a meeting because we've been meeting in perpetuity since 2013. From 2013 to 2022 and we've been negotiating, and you want us to keep negotiating and keep talking? What else can we do besides the strike because we've been talking? he said.

---citinewsroom
10.01.2022 LISTEN

The Head of Halls at the University of Ghana, Dr. Wiafe Akenten, has revealed that the University has secured about 400 beds in private facilities within a 12 km radius of the school.

This he says is in a bid to ameliorate the accommodation challenges experienced by freshers and even second-year students. It has emerged that even second-year students have been hit by accommodation challenges.

But Dr. Wiafe Akenten explains that the situation is due to the end of the modular system where only two streams of students were in school during the height of COVID.

He told Citi News the 400-bed facility will be announced to the public soon.

A significant majority of students had beds last year because of the modular system. Two streams or two levels were on campus at the same time. Level 100 and 400, and then there was the 200 and 300.

However, this time around, there are more students without beds. In the l ong term, we are looking at private individuals who are going to provide hostels. We have the African Union, there is also the off-campus accommodation within a certain radius or meters of about 12 km. We advertised them in the dailies. There were a number of facility owners who applied. Our physical development office went to inspect the places, so we have an initial number of close to 400 beds from that. They will be made available on the Legon website, most likely by Tuesday.

When asked how the University intends to increase the current bed capacity of 20,000 for its growing population, Dr. Wiafe Akenten called for private partnership and also called on the public to accept a realistic increase in fees for traditional halls to help generate revenue for more facilities.

Sometimes we ask students to pay more, and it becomes a problem. I think that if we continue to pay 510 per semester for traditional halls, we are not going to make much progress.

Inasmuch as times are hard, we must be willing to invest in it. I suggest we pay more if possible so that existing facilities can be expanded.

A guardian and his ward from the Ashanti Region told Citi News the process of securing accommodation is frustrating.

The process of securing accommodation has been frustrating. The portal was opened but was closed in a few minutes. It kept jamming as well because of the pressure on the website.

By Citi Newsroom
A group calling itself NPP Youth For Victory 2024 has said Vice-President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is portraying himself as a chameleon, religion-wise, just so he can win the hearts and votes of both Muslims and Christians in his bid to become the flagbearer of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) ahead of the 2024 general elections.

At a press conference on Monday, 10 January 2021, the group told journalists at the Press Centre in Accra that we cannot finish this conference without mentioning the dangerous irresponsibility which, in recent times, has been the order of the campaign of the Vice-President.

We all know that the mantra of the second gentleman's campaign is hinged on digitisation; however, we find it irresponsible the number of complaints we have received from across the country that certain individuals moving round in the name of the second gentleman's campaign are campaigning on the fact that Ghana should support the Veep because he is a northerner and a Muslim, the group observed.

It said: We do not see how the Vice-President, who, in one breadth shows he is tolerant and even attends Christian church services, will be going around telling people to support him because he is a Muslim. Such chameleon attitude is not fit for nation-building.

The members said: Unfortunately, we have never heard the Vice-President calling any of the proponents of such irresponsibility to order.

According to the group, the latest of such behaviour is the campaign by the Deputy Majority Chief Whip of Ghana's Parliament, in the person of Hon Alhaji Habib Iddrisu, who is also the MP for Tolon Constituency in the Northern Region.

It must be noted that, as per the electoral rules laid down by the party, if it were a supporter of another potential candidate behind such heinous actions, that person would have been eliminated from the race before the campaign begins but the general secretary, who is already boot-licking the Veep, cannot do anything about this and even when other prominent members of the party commit themselves in such irresponsible manner because the executive is in bed with the Veep, they are unable to call such actions to order and crack the whip, the group complained.

It warned: Many African countries have been devastated by tribal and religious politics and we will not let any individual or group use such a slippery slope to dip Ghana's democracy and discredit our great party.

Read the groups full press statement below:

NPP YOUTH FOR VICTORY 2024

Press Conference

DR BAWUMIA AND HIS SUPPORTERS ARE DIVIDING AND DESTROYING NPP

INTRODUCTION

Ladies and gentlemen of the media fraternity, Fellow NPP lovers, other well-meaning Ghanaians who wish well for our beloved country, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen herein present; we are highly elated to welcome you all to this all-important press conference to address the NPP Fraternity and the General Public on the above subject and to set the records straight on the Tradition of the Party since its inception several decades ago. We have carefully selected you all for this all-important conference because of your unbiased reportage and the trust we have reposed in you for the past years.

PURPOSE OF THE GROUP

The NPP YOUTH FOR VICTORY 2024 is a group of experienced professional men and women of the NPP with a common purpose to pull resources together (financial, logistics, and manpower) to ensure that the NPP Breaks the 8 come 2024 general elections.

1. FLOUTING OF THE PARTYS CODE OF CONDUCT WITH IMPUNITY AND NO ACTION TAKEN BY THE PARTY DESPITE CLEARLY STIPULATED CONSEQUENCES FOR BREACHING THE CODE.

Ladies and gentlemen, prior to the recent National Delegates Conference a communique was issued from the NPP Headquarters pointing out clearly what each potential candidate and their supporters ought not to do. We found candidates complying with these directives and we want to commend all those who did, and to appreciate your respect for law and order.

However, supporters of our desperate vice president were spotted flouting the rules of engagement by wearing Bawumia-branded T-shirts to the grounds some of whom confided in us that they were given the T-shirt and GHS10 to come and cheer up the Vice-President. Amazingly, as though the Bawumia branded T-shirt was equivalent to an accreditation card, all those wearing the printed shirts were granted access to the conference grounds to come and deliberately disturb the peace of Delegates to think for the party.

We also saw billboards of the vice president raised by a group calling itself friends of Bawumia and our shameless national officers looked on and took no action to bring such nuisance to order.

A similar issue happened during the celebration of the final Adae Kese Festival, where supporters of Dr Bawumia displayed placards, t-Shirts and banners of the so-called Friends of Bawumia, even after the issuing of the code of conduct. This happened right in front of General Secretary John Boadu and Chairman Wuntumi and at no point did any of them call this action to order either at the event or even after the event. This shows a selective application of the code which is not proper for the development of our party.

Another issue we sadly observed at the conference is the intentional breach of protocol as a propagandist way of launching the Bawumia campaign. Protocol demands the President should be the last dignitary to be seated at such functions, yet for this staged Delegates Conference, the Vice-President, who seemed to have forgotten all proper protocols decided to come late to the conference after the president was seated and to disturb the sanctity of same. Up to this time, the leadership of the party has not even coughed about it.

2. SOME SELFISH PEOPLE OPENLY CAMPAIGNING FOR THE VICE-PRESIDENT

We have been watching the partys top hierarchy before and after the National Delegates Conference in Kumasi and how some Members of Parliament led by Hon. Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu (Majority Group Leader), Hon. Amin Anta (MP, Karaga), Hon. Habib Iddrisu (MP, Tolon), Hon. Farouk Mahama (MP, Yendi), Mr Anthony Karbo, Nana Boakye (Nana B), Chairman Wuntumi (the Ashanti Regional Chairman), Mr Mohammed A. Baantima Samba (Northern Regional Chairman), Mr Kwabena Nsenkyire among others have kept on violating the partys directives by openly declaring their support for the Vice-Presidents flag-bearership bid without any rebuke from the partys hierarchy. This is not the best for a party that is seeking to break the 8. So far as the party has stopped other potential aspirants from campaigning, such activities shouldnt be encouraged. It seems it is right for the Vice-President and his supporters to flout party rules but other candidates cannot do the same. This must stop.

3. TARGETING OF PERCEIVED ALAN SUPPORTERS WITH SUSPENSION

Our group has observed that there seems to be a grand scheme targeted at individuals who are perceived to be supporters of the Hon. Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Alan Kyerematen, to become the flag-bearer of the party and eventually the president of Ghana. It is rather worrying and an affront to our collective objective for known campaigners of Dr Bawumia to threaten and in some cases sack persons perceived to be loyal to Mr Kyerematen. Just last week, Alhaji Ibrahim Kaleem, a member of the Northern Regional Communication team of the party, and Mr Dawda Jentumah, Choggu West Electoral Area Coordinator in the Tamale Central Constituency, have been issued with suspension letters for discussing and advancing Mr Kyerematens contribution to the party since 1992. This selective canker must not be encouraged.

4. THE LOOMING DANGER OF TRIBAL AND RELIGIOUS POLITICS BEING PEDDLED BY SUPPORTERS OF THE VICE-PRESIDENT (ALHAJI DR. M. BAWUMIA)

Ladies and gentlemen, we cannot finish this conference without mentioning the dangerous irresponsibility which in recent times have been the order of the campaign of the Vice-President. We all know that the mantra of the second gentleman's campaign is hinged on digitisation, however, we find it irresponsible the number of complaints we have received from across the country that certain individuals moving around in the name of the second gentleman's campaign are campaigning on the fact that Ghana should support the Veep because he is a northerner and a Muslim. We do not see how the Vice-President, who, in one breadth shows he is tolerant and even attends Christian church services, will be going around telling people to support him because he is a Muslim. Such a chameleon attitude is not fit for nation-building. Unfortunately, we have never heard the Vice-President calling any of the proponents of such irresponsibility to order. The latest one is the Campaign by the Deputy Majority Chief Whip of Ghana's Parliament, in the person of Hon Alhaji Habib Iddrisu, who is also the MP for Tolon Constituency in the Northern Region.

It must be noted that, per the electoral rules laid down by the party, if it were a supporter of another potential candidate behind such heinous actions, that person would have been eliminated from the race before the campaign begins but the general secretary who is already boot-licking the Veep cannot do anything about this and even when other prominent members of the party commit themselves in such irresponsible manner because the executive is in bed with the Veep they are unable to call such actions to order and crack the whip.

Many African countries have been devastated by tribal and religious politics and we will not let any individual or group use such a slippery slope to dip Ghana's democracy and discredit our great party.

5. DEFILEMENT OF THE NPPS MOTTO: DEVELOPMENT IN FREEDOM

The key pillar on which the NPP stand is the motto Development in Freedom. We do acknowledge that the leadership of His Excellency Nana Akufo-Addo is doing well by providing development in Ghana, He has done so much that can help the party to retain power. However, the Freedom of expression in the New Patriotic Party has been defiled and abused, manipulated and misused by the holders of the keys to the powers that be. While it is a crime to openly support some other candidates, it is as if it is an acceptable norm to support some others, this is like the animal kingdom saying that all NPP members are equal but Bawumia is more equal than others. This behaviour seems to have amassed a lot of hatred for the Vice-President. His perceived presidential ambition should not become a reason to butcher others with similar or perhaps better chances to lead the great elephant party into the 2024 general elections.

Again, we have observed how the Campaign Team (for want of a better word) of Bawumia are moving from constituency to constituency campaigning, meeting delegates and potential delegates and giving them money to support the Vice-Presidents bid. It will be a dent on the integrity of national officers of NPP if they claim not to have seen this, but the question is what have they done about it? If it were another candidate, maybe that person would be suspended if not sacked from the party. Why are we killing those who bled for this party to stand for the sake of someone who came from nowhere to enjoy power and prominence in our party?

6. RECENT HAPPENINGS IN THE NORTHERN REGION

We cannot finish this meeting without speaking about the recent happenings in the Northern Region. The sad part is the Regional Chairman himself has confirmed supporting the bid of the Vice-President and yet, is sacking communicators from the party for attending events that are perceived to talk about Alan Kyerematen. Whether this is wizardry or myopia, we expect that as soon as the matter broke, the national secretariat should have called the parties to order and kill the hypocrisy before it is escalated, but, perhaps, because it is they who are behind such shameful dismissals, our national secretariat has been loudly quiet about the issues. Time will not permit us to go into the details, but we will leave this to the able decision of the Council of Elders to ensure that such issues are quickly resolved in order not to breed sharp divisions in the party which can affect our chance for a shot at another victory.

7. CONCLUSION

Another electoral victory for the NPP is an automatic key to ensure the continuity in the development of Ghana our motherland and we will not mince words but will speak directly to the powers that be, and boldly confront you to sit up, you stand to gain more if we win power and yet your attitude is less of bravado and more of puppets of mediocrity. This must stop before we start a campaign to ensure that no national officer is retained. You are therefore kindly advised to play by the very book you have written. For us, victory is all we need, and we will go at all ends to make sure it does not elude us.

Ladies and gentlemen, we want to thank you all for making time with us, we hope that when the respected H.E Akufo-Addo has finished serving Ghana as president, we will be able to get another son of the Elephant to continue the legacy and break the 8-year cycle of political rotation in the country.

We as a group will do everything to ensure that this is done and done well. The NPP must win and win again to keep Ghana on a continuous growth tangent.

Long Live Ghana

Long Live the NPP

Long Live the President of Ghana

SPEAKERS:

1. Name: Jerry John Campbell

Telephone number: 0550302299

Constituency: Okaikwei North

2. Name: Edward Adams

Telephone number: 054 796 1461

Constituency: Upper Denkyira East

3. Name: Frederick Opoku

Contact: 026 125 5255

Constituency: Weija Gbawe

---classfmonline.com
Over 100 people, including widows, the bed-ridden and the aged of Abirem in the Kwabre East District of the Ashanti Region, felt the true meaning of Christmas when Love Gives Foundation, donated several bags of rice, cooking oil, sardines and bags of sachet water to help them celebrate Christmas on December 25, 2021.

Founder and President of Love Gives Foundation, Lady Barbara Acheampong, and her team feted the vulnerable and underserved in the Abirem with what they believe will make the Christmas celebration a great one.

Lady Barbara indicated that the foundation has for the past two years been serving the Abirem Community by registering and renewing the Health Insurance for the underserved. This is because she believes that no one should be refused basic health care due to financial constraints.

She added that the reason for this gesture was the dire financial burden on the rural folks as a result of the covid-19 pandemic, and to alleviate some of the burdens, they felt the need to share with the needy and to put a smile on their faces which is the essence of Christmas.

The Operations Director of Love Gives Foundation-Ghana, Nana Akwasi Gyamfi, promised the community that this goodwill effort will not be a one-off exercise. He said Love Gives will work hard to make the needs of the community its priority.

The Assemblyman for the area, Hon Amos Owuo, the Kyedomhene of Abirem, Nana Poku Asenso I, and the development committee, who received the items on behalf of its citizenry, expressed their profound appreciation to Love Gives for this kind gesture and thanked them for reaching out to the vulnerable in the community especially during the Christmas Period.
Colonel Assimi Goita has stepped back from undertakings that there would be a return to civilian rule soon. - Source: Photo by Habib KouyateXinhua via Getty

10.01.2022 LISTEN

Tensions are mounting in West Africa as Mali resists pressure from the region, the EU and US, to come up with a firm timetable on how civilian rule will be restored after two coups and a military takeover.

The atmosphere has worsened in recent weeks in the wake of reports that Mali has entered into an arrangement with the Russian private military company  the Wagner Group .

In the first weeks of 2022 the regional body of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) announced that it was closing its borders with Mali. And that it was prepared to activate its standby force should the need to deploy it arise.

Ambassadors were withdrawn, with Mali retaliating in kind.

This ratcheting up was preceded in mid-December 2021 by French forces officially withdrawing from Timbuktu  the latest move in France's strategic draw-down in the Sahel.

Read more: France has started withdrawing its troops from Mali: what is it leaving behind?

The day after France's withdrawal, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken weighed in on Mali's looming deal with the shadowy Russian private military company. He stressed that the Wagner Group will not bring peace to Mali. He further urged the transitional government:

not to divert scarce budgetary resources away from the Malian Armed Forces' fight against terrorism

On December 23rd, 15 European states and Canada issued a joint statement condemning the Malian government's choice to pursue a deal with foreign mercenaries instead of supporting the Malian Armed Forces, a clear reference to the Wagner Group.

The EU also imposed sanctions against both Mali and the Wagner Group.

But reports emerged soon after that members of Wagner had arrived in Bamako via Libya where the group has been operating since at least 2015.

For its part, Mali's current regime continues to adamantly deny collaborating with Wagner.

If recent history offers any lessons, Mali's experiment with the Wagner Group should be concerning. The group actively seeks out political instability and has done little to genuinely remedy underlying issues in the states with which it contracts. It has arguably made things more volatile for clients.

One needs to look no further than the Central African Republic, where the Wagner Group has exacerbated tensions via summary executions and ethnic targeting. This has contributed to an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis.

Indeed, continued political strife may actually be good business for groups like Wagner. As I've suggested in my research , maintaining some degree of instability might ensure the longevity of contracts though private contractors have to be careful to ensure that their reputations aren't severely damaged by poor performance.

My ongoing work suggests that the political and social context in Mali provide just the right ingredients for the Wagner Group.

Instability in Mali

Mali has been politically volatile over the past two years.

The current political climate can largely be traced back to popular protests that began in 2020. Those resulted in a successful coup in August 2020 , led by Colonel Assimi Goita, that saw democratically elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (known by his initials IBK) deposed.

The country has since struggled both to find its democratic footing and to confront an increasingly active and violent Islamist insurgency.

Less than 10 months later Colonel Goita was sworn in as president following a second coup in May 2021. The country has officially been ruled by a military junta since June 2021.

Goita originally signalled a commitment to host elections by February 2022. But, unsurprisingly, he has since walked back this pledge. Recent indications point to a potential five-year delay until elections.

A coalition of political parties has understandably rejected this proposal.

The prospects of any return to democracy have been further dimmed by the arrival of the Wagner forces which have a history of human rights abuses including involvement in extrajudicial killings and torture.

The military junta may want Wagner's assistance in countering Islamist insurgents, but it is possible that it will simultaneously use the group to repress political opposition.

The Wagner Group

Wagner has operated across the African continent in countries including Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Madagascar, and Mozambique.

A deal with Mali's current regime is just the type of partner it is looking for.

With a military junta in a state rife with political fragility, uncertainty and a plethora of lucrative natural resources, Mali looks like a winning lottery ticket. It also helps that Western security force assistance is drying up while Russia appears to be using Wagner to sweep in and fill the void.

There is no guarantee that the group will make headway against Islamist Groups in Mali. It has suffered some setbacks in recent history. This has led to a willingness to quickly vacate when casualties rise and long term payoffs are unclear.

In late 2019 for instance, the group withdrew from Mozambique after suffering several casualties in the fight against Ahlu-Sunna Wa-Jama , an Islamic insurgency that has wreaked havoc in the Cabo Delgado province over the past two years.

Like its other ventures, the Wagner Group was most likely lured to Mozambique's natural-gas rich region of Cabo Delgado in search of contracts laden with resource concessions for Russian corporations.

In fact, in 2019 Russia's Vladimir Putin inked deals with Mozambique that included resource opportunities for Russian firms, but the instability in the country's north has stalled progress.

Private military and security companies are far from novel and Wagner's current modus operandi is not all that different from the first generation of similar companies that emerged in the immediate period following the Cold War.

Filling the security vacuum , these groups provided a diverse array of services to client states that had lost economic and military support from superpowers such as the US and Russia.

But comparing Wagner to first generation firms like the infamous South African company, Executive Outcomes , may not be entirely fair.

For instance, Wagner is almost certainly connected to the Russian government. The group's founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin , is a shadowy Russian oligarch with direct ties to Putin.

The relationship has led many to label Wagner a quasi-state actor offering the Russian government  quasi-deniability  in conducting military activities abroad.

Groups like Executive Outcomes, while drawing from former South African special operations forces, lacked such direct connections to their government.

While Mali's democratic future remains unclear, the presence of Wagner will only complicate matters. For Wagner, and Russia more generally, Mali is a yet another important outlet in the growing strategic tensions with the West.

The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not represent the Naval War College, Department of the Navy, or the US Government.

Christopher Michael Faulkner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

By Christopher Michael Faulkner, Postdoctoral fellow - National Security Affairs Department, US Naval War College
The Communist Party of South Africa was formed in July 1921. To mark its centenary last year, renowned South African historian Tom Lodge published Red Road to Freedom: A history of the South African Communist Party, 1921-2021.

It's a welcome addition to the literature on the oldest communist party in Africa.

Most of the existing literature on the Party is about its early history until 1950. Some of the books were written by party members such as Eddie Roux , Jack and Ray Simons , and Brian Bunting .

In the last two decades, a number of publications on the Party or leading members appeared. Eddy Maloka wrote two publications, Alan Wieder concentrated on Joe Slovo and Ruth First, while Steven Friedman concentrated on Harold Wolpe. Some (auto)biographical publications or memoirs also appeared in this period on Joe Slovo , Govan Mbeki, Chris Hani, Mzala , Moe Shaik and Bram Fisher .

Most of the publications are chronologically organised and few take a thematic approach. Policy analysis and exegesis are in most instances largely absent. A good example is what the party meant by its notion of colonialism of a special type . First formulated in 1950 and included in the party's 1962 party programme, it remains a major ideological pillar of the party.

But its ideological and strategic implications aren't explored. This includes explaining how the approach enabled a merger between socialism and liberatory nationalism, how it underscored the two-stage revolutionary strategy of a national democratic revolution followed by a socialist revolution, and for justifying the Tripartite Alliance between the party, the African National Congress and the trade union federation (first Sactu and later Cosatu).

Also largely absent is a history of the more recent developments, as well as a political analysis of the party's role between 1960-1990 and as part of government since 1994.

Lodge's book fills some of these gaps. It is therefore academically and historically very important. Eddy Maloka, also an author on the party's history, assessed its value as follows (on the book cover):

Tom Lodge takes us on a century-long tour of the history of the South African Communist Party, through the fractal coastline of this party's ideological evolution, to the hinterland of its organisational dynamics and relations with other actors.

The Cold War

The Communist Party of South Africa was banned in 1950 by the new National Party (NP) government, which believed that the Soviet Union's support for it would exploit South Africa's domestic politics for its own purposes. After the party reestablished itself underground as the South African Communist Party (SACP) in 1953, and after its ally, the African National Congress (ANC) was also banned by the apartheid regime in 1960, a close alliance between them developed.

After the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, followed by the banning of the ANC and other liberation organisations, and when the NP government refused to convene a national convention in 1961, leaders in the party and a number of prominent ANC leaders (but not the ANC's President Albert Luthuli) decided to establish an armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe . Its first sabotage acts were launched on 16 December 1961.

The resort to armed struggle and the party's involvement in the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, brought the two movements much closer together during their time in exile.

The members of Umkhonto we Sizwe's High Command were arrested in 1962 in Rivonia, a Johannesburg suburb. They were busy with Operation Mayibuye as a blueprint to stage a revolutionary insurrection in South Africa. They included Party members such as Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Ahmed Kathrada and ANC leaders like Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. They were charged with sabotage (and not treason) and therefore did not receive the death penalty but very long prison sentences.

If one looks at the Umkhonto we Sizwe accused in the Rivonia trial in 1963, most of them were also members of the Party. Former South African Communist Party leaders Joe Slovo, left, and Chris Hani in Soweto in 1991. Walter Dhladhla /AFP via Getty Images

During most of the Cold War, the South African Communist Party's close alignment to the Soviet Union and to the ANC, pulled the liberation struggle in South Africa into the global ideological camps of the Cold War, in the same way as the movements in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and other liberation wars. In this respect, the South African Communist Party was often regarded as the power behind the ANC's throne.

The 30 years in exile were divided between establishing bases in African countries, training Umkhonto we Sizwe mainly in Angola and establishing international relations with many continents. The Party's main base was in London but with close relations especially in the Eastern bloc. Peace processes in Southwestern Africa and the demise of the Soviet Union as its main sponsor, created new opportunities for dialogue and radical political changes.

After its unbanning in 1990 together with the ANC, the relationship continued but its nature changed dramatically. The liberatory strategy changed from targeting the National Party government, to being the government itself. Party leaders became members of that government.

What's covered, and what's not

Tom Lodge is a trained historian. Most of his early publications were good historiographies. He joined the University of the Witwatersrand's Department of Political Studies and in the 1980s, and testified for the defence in several ANC trials. He published extensively on the ANC's politics, and later also on elections.

This book is a return to his earlier works. In the more than 500 pages (excluding the end notes, index and bibliography) and in nine chapters, he presents the most extensive history of the South African Communist Party.

The first six chapters are focused on the period until 1950, and the last three chapters cover the last 70 years.

There are some areas and issues that could have done with more attention. For example, deeper political analysis of the latest 30 years after the Party was unbanned and decided to become a mass party as opposed to membership on invitation, as well as its role in the ANC governments. This would provide more insight into the party's political approach.

In addition, the Party's ideological evolution deserves special attention. For example, its 1962 party programme, The Road to South African Freedom, can be linked to the ANC's Morogoro programme (1969), The Strategy and Tactics of the South African Revolution. The two documents created a common approach to their revolutionary strategy, which is very important for understanding their longstanding alliance. But Lodge only briefly discusses this on pages 354-355.

Another omission in my view, concerns Joe Slovo's paper Has Socialism Failed? (1990). It is mentioned on page 457 but its implications for the party's reassessment of its ideological position after the fall of the Berlin Wall were not considered. More recently, the Party has revised The South African Road to Socialism (2007, 2012) as its programme. It receives more attention than the other programmes on page 479 but it does not explain how a communist party in a multiparty democratic dispensation sets out a vision for itself.

Chapter 9 distinguishes itself from the others and presents a political analysis of the party dynamics, such as its choice to participate independently in elections. It includes brief references to the party's milestones but a more in-depth discussion could have addressed the shortcomings of the older publications.

For readers who want a comprehensive, up-to-date and accessible publication on the South African Communist Party, this is without any doubt the best one. As a Wits academic, Lodge, who now is associated with Limerick University in Ireland, had many personal experiences with people and events discussed in this book. It was therefore not merely a research or academic exercise for him.

Dirk Kotze does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

By Dirk Kotze, Professor in Political Science, University of South Africa
Chief Inspector Samuel Agyakwa, the 14th Prosecution Witness in the trial involving the alleged murderers of late Major Maxwell Mahama, has told an Accra High Court that the crime scene of the late military officer was not cordoned.

He said as per the practice in criminal investigations, the police were to cordon off a crime scene anytime there was a crime but in the case of the late Maj. Mahama that was not the case.

Mr George Bernard Shaw, Counsel for six of the accused persons in a cross-examination, told the court that the crime scene was protected by both police and military officers, to which the witness agreed.

Fourteen persons are standing trial at an Accra High Court over the killing of Major Mahama, who was an officer of the 5th Infantry Battalion, at Burma Camp.

The late Major was on duty at Denkyira-Obuasi in the Central Region when on May 29, 2017, some residents allegedly mistook him for an armed robber and lynched him.

The mob had allegedly ignored Major Mahama's persistent plea that he was an officer of the Ghana Armed Forces.

The accused persons are William Baah, the Assemblymember of Denkyira Obuasi, Bernard Asamoah alias Daddy, Kofi Nyame aka Abortion, Akwasi Boah, Kwame Tuffour, Joseph Appiah Kubi, Michael Anim and Bismarck Donkor.

The rest are John Bosie, Akwasi Baah, Charles Kwaning, Emmanuel Badu, Bismarck Abanga and Kwadwo Anima.

The witness said the crime scene was not cordoned but the place was safe because the military and police were there.

Chief Inspector Agyakwa explained to the court that, he said the place was safer because the following day after the incident, being May 30, 2017, the police and military visited the scene and arrested some people.

He said before they got to the scene, the regional crime officers and Diaso police officers were on the ground being led by their Commander ASP Agyeman.

The witness explained that the town was empty because of the presence of the police and military.

The trial was adjourned to January 17, 2022, for continuation.

GNA
The Savannah Regional Minister, Saaed Muhazu Jibreal has hinted of plans to extend electricity to the Babato Farms Company Limited in the Bole-Bamboi District of the Savannah Region in order to help cut cost and boost production.

He made this remark when he paid a working visit to the Babato farms in the company of all the MMDCEs in the region and the various security heads as part of activities marking their annual retreat.

According to the minister, the farm has the ability to provide employment to the teaming youth in the Savannah Region and the Bono East Region when supported with the needed logistics.

"We are in the Bole District as Savannah Regional Coordinating Council. We actually came for a retreat to talk about government policies for the past year and what is ahead of us for 2022. Today was designed to see investments by private people and government projects within the Savannah Region.

"And as can be seen, Babato Farms is one of the biggest agricultural investment we have in the Savannah Region with employment potentials for the youth. One of the major problems of the farms is electricity. As can be seen, they have giant machines generating power for the irrigation plants, which in a day takes up to 1500 litres to 1800 litres of Diesel within 30 hours to irrigate this land.

"And so,there is the need for us to cut cost and by cutting cost means that government in its power will have to make sure that we bring the national grid to this facility here...So as I speak now, myself and my DCE for Bole are going to put our heads together to make sure that we go to see the minister of energy to speed up electricity connection to the farm. We intend to link the ongoing electricity extension work between Babato village and the next village where the farm is located so that they get access to electricity. We will make sure that the electricity is provided so that they are able to develop 50% of their underutilized land," he said.

Whilst encouraging other investors to take advantage of the many investment potentials in the region, the minister said the region was poised to reclaim its lost glory as the biggest maize producing region in Northern Ghana.

The manager of Babato Farms, Mahabaleshwar Hegde disclosed that the Babato farm was established in 2016 by a UK based African Agricultural Company, AgDevCo to lease 10,000 hectares of land from the people of Babato to setup a commercial farming hub. The farm in his narration is now being fully owned by Obaapack Ghana, a fruit and vegetable agribusiness conglomerate located at Techiman in the Bono East Region.

According to him, the Babato Farms Company Limited currently has about 353 hectares of land in utilization with 9,000 hectares of under utilized land. He added that, they intend to fill the shortage in maize production in Ghana.

He said they rotate four crops cycles in a year to reduce pest and disease build up in the soil i.e maize, soybeans, onion and banana with a major focus now on onion and soyabeans, which is the main focus of Obaapack.

Recounting the challenges of the farm, he said the high production cost from diesel for the plants and sometimes, the changing weather patterns affect output and profit margins.

The District Chief Executive for Bole-Bamboi, Veronica Alele Heming commended the management of Babato farms for the good work they were doing for the region and pledged the full support of the government.

The Babato Farms located in the Bole-Bamboi District draws water from the Black Volta through floating pipes to irrigate about 2 hectors of Banana field, 2.4 hectors of onion nursery among others.
The Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) is fighting government over its decision to suspend the planned reversal of the 50% benchmark value discount.

Leadership of AGI has warned of a possible collapse of indigenous manufacturing companies if the government go ahead with the 50% Benchmark Value reduction on imported products.

Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta during the 2022 budget presentation announced the reversal of 50% Benchmark Value and 30% on imported vehicles.

The announcement met the wrath of some groups in the country including the Automobile Dealers Union, Ghana Union of Traders GUTA among others, with the groups arguing that the move will inversely affect their business.

Following the agitations, president Akufo-Addo on Sunday, January 9, 2022,reportedly directed the Ghana Revenue Authority GRA to halt the implementation of the reversal of the benchmark values.

The move according to the president will help all players understand the policy before it is finally rolled out.

The government has however given a deadline of January 17, 2022 for all consultations to be concluded.

Speaking to Captain Koda, host of Kumasi based OTEC FM's social program "Nyansapo " on Monday, January 10, 2022, the Chairman of AGI of Ashanti, Bono, Ahafo and Bono East Regions Kwasi Nyamekye said the influx of imports at low cost is collapsing local manufacturing businesses.

"Locally produced products including those for which Ghanaian industries already has local production capacity have seen under serious threat from imports," he lamented.

He hinted that most of their members are laying off their workers due to the high competition from low foreign products.

He urges government to create enabling environment for Ghanaian manufacturers to grow and compete with their foreign counterparts.

About benchmark value reduction

The benchmark value, which is the amount taxable on imports, was reduced by 50 percent for some goods.

The import value for cars was also reduced by 30 percent.

The governments hope was that easing the import regime would make Ghanas ports competitive by increasing the volume of transactions and increasing revenue generated at the ports.
Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Elizabeth Kwatsoe Tawiah Sackey has asked the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), to remove all pipelines laid in drains at Agbogbloshie, a suburb of Accra, as it poses a health threat to the people and obstructs the free flow of wastewater.

Elizabeth Sackey said this on Thursday when she inspected the desilting of drains along the Agbogbloshie market stretch as part of efforts to improve sanitation in the area.

She bemoaned that the pipelines laid in the drains also tend to choke them, which makes it difficult for the smooth flow of run-off water as well as desilting hence the urgent need to remove them.

This is very critical and poses serious health threatsWe want to use this opportunity to appeal to the Ghana Water Company Limited to assist in the removal and redirection of the pipelines, she said.

She explained that since the pipelines were many and haphazardly laid in the drains, it makes it difficult for the backhoe to freely manoeuvre its way through the drains and remove the silt and refuse.

She said the Assembly was collaborating with the Ghana National Fire Service to help flash the drains after desilting to ensure that all the silt and refuse were cleared.

She also directed all the traders to stay behind the wall, desist from displaying their wares on the streets and dumping refuse into the drains.

Source: AMA
Mrs Anna Naa Adukwei Addo, the Chief Executive Officer (MCE) for Tema West Municipal Assembly (TWMA), has cautioned tricycle (Aboboya) drivers to desist from plying the Tema Motorway or face the law.

She said tricycle operations on major highways and the Motorway endangered other road users and contributed to the increasing numbers of road accidents.

Mrs Addo, who was speaking with the Ghana News Agency on Monday during a working visit to inspect the level of compliance on the Motorway, said Today I came out to see whether the law is being flouted or not and clearly you could tell that tricycle drivers are still using the Motorway."

She said there were alternative routes that the tricycle drivers could use and get to their destinations but because the Motorway was the shortest route for them.

"We cannot just create space on the Motorway. There are alternative routes that they can use and they know but because the Motorway is the shortest route they want to use, we told them to use other stretches that could take them to their destinations, she emphasized.

She said the Assembly would impound all tricycles caught on the Motorway and the owners would have to pay a fine before they would be released to them to serve as a deterrent to other tricycle users.

The MCE said the directive was formulated by the Greater Accra Regional Coordinating Council led by Mr Henry Quartey, the Greater Accra Regional Minister, to ensure that tricycles did not ply the Motorway.

Meanwhile, Mr Zakaria Alabanyo, a tricycle operator, who was caught in the act, said, he was not aware of the initiative hence the need for him to be pardoned.

He said the Motorway was the easiest route one could use to work efficiently as other stretches would incur additional financial losses.

Mr Frank Nii Ayeh, also a tricycle operator, who was also arrested by the task force of TWMA, said there was the need for a new stretch to be constructed on the Motorway for the tricycle drivers to help them go about their duty smoothly and effortlessly.

GNA
The National Labour Commission (NLC) has invited the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) and Government for a meeting on Thursday, January 13 at 1430 hours over the industrial action of the teachers.

A statement signed by Dr Bernice A. Welbeck, Director, Administration and Human Resource, NLC, copied to the Ghana News Agency, said the invitation was in line with the Commission's mandate under section 138 of Act 651 and in the exercise of its powers under section 139 of Act 65.

The statement said in view of the COVID-19 protocols, the representation by each side was restricted to a maximum of two persons.

It said UTAG should have complied with section 159 of Act 651 where the Commission would be served the required notice to enable it to intervene immediately.

UTAG, in a communique, announced the withdrawal of members' services across the country effective Monday, January 10, 2022.

The Association said the indefinite strike, was necessitated by Government's failure to address the worsening conditions of service of lecturers.

It said the Government also flouted the agreed timelines to address their concerns.

The statement called on the Government to, as a matter of urgency, restore members to the 2013 Interim Market Premium of 114 per cent of Basic Salary in the interim.

It also urged the Government to formulate guidelines to implement the appropriate recommendations to address the conditions of service of the university teacher.

GNA
The Africa Education Watch has commended the Ghana Education Service (GES) for dismissing staff who were caught in examination malpractices in the 2020 West African Senior Schools Certification Examination and Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

This was in a document made available to the Ghana News Agency as part of its New Year wishes to the Ministry of Education and all Education Stakeholders.

The Africa Education Watch said that in 2021 significant strides were made in securing commitments from the Ministry of Education and Parliament to reform the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and strengthen accountability and credibility in their examinations.

They further noted that while some issues were long-term, others could be achieved in 2022 and some of these include the need to commission an independent inquiry into the 2021 WASSCE leakages, prosecute staff and WAEC officials, whose actions or inactions may have led to the leakages.

They again stated that the introduction of serialized questions, amendment of the WAEC Act to criminalize examination malpractices and related activities, digitizing questions transmission.

It also noted that the establishment of a regulated external examination sector to regulate examining bodies in Ghana as compared with international standards could help solve examination malpractices.

The Africa Education Watch stressed that the Ministry of Education has to prioritize these key actions in 2022

GNA
The #FixTheCountry Movement says it has petitioned President Akufo-Addo for the removal of the Electoral Commissions Chairperson, Jean Mensa, and her two deputies over the inability of the residents of Santrokofi, Akpafu, Lolobi and Likpe (SALL) to vote for a representative in Parliament.

It contends that the conduct of the EC officials in the matter meets the threshold of stated misbehaviour and, or incompetence as required under Article 146 of the 1992 Constitution for the removal of these officials.

In a statement, the movement expressed hope that Ghanas laws will work in their favour.

The Petitioners have faith that the normal constitutional processes contemplated by the Constitution to avenge infractions against it and our democracy will be upheld without fear nor favour; and that their standing as mere citizens of this Republic does not disable them from obtaining justice, in the preserve of our Constitution.

The movement says there are 46 signatories to the petition, including residents of SALL.

Speaking on Eyewitness News, convenor of the #FixTheCountry Movement, Oliver Barker-Vormawor, complained about the lack of transparency from the EC since the 2020 election.

For over a year now, there has been no attempt to give clarity to why such grievous harm was done to our constitution, he said.

Mr. Barker-Vormawor further said the actions of his group were meant to safeguard Ghanas constitution.

Our commitment is to restore the constitution and ensure that the constitution continues to survive when it is under attack by persons as high as persons occupying the Office of the Electoral Commission.

Currently, SALL, which is in the Guan district, has no representation in Parliament after contentions over its inclusion in the Oti Region following its creation.

Some residents of Akpafu, then in the Hohoe Municipality, even boycotted the referendum that endorsed the creation of the Oti Region.

citinewsroom
Several bodies representing chartered accountants (CAs) from across the country have requested finance minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman to extend the deadlines for filing returns for income-tax (I-T) and other tax audit reports due to technical glitches and errors in the I-T portal and third wave of coronavirus (COVID-19).

In the joint representation, the CA bodies say, ...we regret to inform you that even after the expiry of approximately four months since the date 15 September 2021, the portal was expected to have become smoothly functional, taxpayers as on date still continue to face various technical issues while interfacing on the portal. Further, with the due date for filing the income tax returns and audit reports for assessment year (AY) 2021-22 approaching very close, these technical issues are causing panic and concerns amongst various stakeholders.

...although statistically, the number of income tax returns filed for AY21-22 may be in sync with the numbers for earlier years, however the ground reality as far as procedural difficulties are concerned, is far different and far from an ideal situation, the CA bodies says, while highlighting 11 issues on the new Efiling-2.0 portal of the I-T department.

The letter is signed by presidents of Bombay Chartered Accountants Society (BCAS), Chartered Accountants Association of Ahmedabad, Karnataka State Chartered Accountants Association and Lucknow Chartered Accountants Society, Association of Chartered Accountants, Chennai and The Chartered Accountant Study Circle, Chennai.

The CA bodies have been requesting an extension of deadlines from time to time. In the latest representation, they have requested the FM to direct the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) to extend the due dates for AY21-22 to 31 March 2022.

For example, the CAs point out login issues of the I-T portal. the new portal has been working erratically in terms of response speed. It works quite slowly at odd hours, and it takes multiple attempts to login into the portal to upload returns and audit forms, they say.

Further, the CA bodies say, There have been last-minute updations of utilities and instructions for e-filing the ITR forms and tax audit report. For instance, the latest schema of forms 3CA-3CD and 3CB-3CD was updated at the fag end on 6 January 2022 of the filing due dates. This leads to unnecessary duplication of work as old Json files are no longer accepted with change in the schema.

According to the CA bodies, registration of new assessee is an enormous challenge as registration is not getting accepted for unknown reasons. No proper and specific error message is being displayed describing the reason of error, and in case grievances are raised with reference to same, the support team seeks the screenshot of the error message which is causing undue delay in the registration process, they say.

Considering all the above difficulties being faced by all stakeholders, it is recommended that the due date for filing income tax returns and tax audit report for all the taxpayers for AY21-22 be extended to 31 March 2022. Consequently, the timelines for filing all the relevant reports and certificates under the Act which fall due and coincide along with or in connection with the ITR filing due dates may also be extended to 31 March 2022, the letter says.

It also requested deferment to 31 March 2022 in the due dates for filing Form 3CEB and all the associated compliances like filing Form 3CEAA. It says, The due date of filing Form 3CEAB, which needs to be filed one month before the above, due date be allowed to be filed on or before 28 February 2022. Consequently, the time limit for filing of country by country reporting (CbCR) may also be extended.

The CA bodies have highlighted 11 issues while filing returns for I-T and tax audit. This includes login issues, last-minute updates of versions of utilities, problems in accepting audit forms and reports, non-availability of acknowledgement for ITRs, registration of new cases and digital signature certificates, one-time passcodes (OTPs), ITR-6, AIS statement and forms 26AS, inability to upload audit report in form 10B for charitable organisations, and the non issue of form 3CEB utility for transfer price audit reports.

Here is the joint representation sent by the CA bodies to finance minister Sitharaman...
Several Supreme Court advocates on Monday claimed to have received an international call with a recorded message asking the apex court not to help the Central government by taking up a case connected with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's security breach in Punjab last week.

Speaking to IANS, Shivaji M. Jadhav, president Supreme Court advocates-on-record Association, said one of the executive members of the association has received the call. People familiar with the development said the recorded message also claimed responsibility for blocking the PM's passage last week.

According to sources, several advocate-on-record (AoRs) received calls from an unknown international number in the morning with a recorded message that Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) has taken responsibility of PM' security breach in Punjab. The recorded message added that the top court did not do enough with regard to killings of Sikh community members during the 1984 riots.

Senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, in a tweet, said: "The audio sent by the "Sikhs for Justice USA" to AORs in the SC must be treated with circumspection. The audio could be a hoax motivated by publicity or to blur the trail to the guilty. But since it contains a veiled threat to SC judges/AORs the NIA must investigate it forthwith."

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to set up a committee headed by a former top judge to probe the PM's security breach in Punjab.

Senior advocate Maninder Singh, representing the Delhi-based petitioner Lawyer's Voice, had mentioned the plea before the Supreme Court. He emphasised on the importance of protection to the PM of the country and cited previous top court ruling that looked at the SPG Act.

The plea sought an independent probe into the PM's security breach in Punjab. It sought a direction to the District Judge Bathinda to collect, preserve and present all material pertaining to the movement and deployment of Punjab Police in connection with the visit of the Prime Minister, and fix responsibility of the DGP and the Chief Secretary, Punjab.

On January 6, the Ministry of Home Affairs constituted a three-member committee to enquire into the "serious lapses in the security arrangements" during the PM's visit to Ferozepur, in poll-bound Punjab. The MHA said: "The committee will be led by Sudhir Kumar Saxena, Secretary (Security), Cabinet Secretariat, and comprising Balbir Singh, Joint Director, IB, and S.Suresh, IG, SPG."

Disclaimer: Information, facts or opinions expressed in this news article are presented as sourced from IANS and do not reflect views of Moneylife and hence Moneylife is not responsible or liable for the same. As a source and news provider, IANS is responsible for accuracy, completeness, suitability and validity of any information in this article.
January 10, 2022 The Russia-U.S. Talks In Geneva Are Likely To Fail Like Scott Ritter I am deeply skeptical that today's talks between the U.S. and Russia in Geneva will have any results: If ever a critical diplomatic negotiation was doomed to fail from the start, the discussions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine and Russian security guarantees is it. The two sides cant even agree on an agenda. From the Russian perspective, the situation is clear: The Russian side came here [to Geneva] with a clear position that contains a number of elements that, to my mind, are understandable and have been so clearly formulatedincluding at a high levelthat deviating from our approaches simply is not possible, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the press after a pre-meeting dinner on Sunday hosted by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who is leading the U.S. delegation.

...

All the U.S. has been willing to do, it seems, is to remind Russia of so-called serious consequences should Russia invade Ukraine, something the U.S. and NATO fear is imminent, given the scope and scale of recent Russian military exercises in the region involving tens of thousands of troops. This threat was made by Biden to Putin on several occasions, including a phone call initiated by Putin last week to help frame the upcoming talks. The U.S. continues with its false claim that Russia is ready to invade the Ukraine: In a move that has aggravated already tense relations between Washington and the Kremlin, Russia has mobilized more than 100,000 troops near its border with Ukraine. The United States has disclosed intelligence showing that Russia has a war plan envisioning an invasion force of 175,000 troops that Ukraines military, despite U.S.-provided equipment and training, would have little ability to stop. On Friday, the NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, warned that the risk of conflict is real. There are no 100,000 Russian troops near its border with Ukraine. In early December U.S. intelligence claimed only 70,000 troops: While Ukrainian assessments have said Russia has approximately 94,000 troops near the border, the U.S. map puts the number at 70,000  but it predicts a buildup to as many as 175,000 and describes extensive movement of battalion tactical groups to and from the border to obfuscate intentions and to create uncertainty. The extra 100,000 the U.S. intelligence mentioned were supposed to come from a Russian reservist force (BARS) which does not yet exist but is only planned for. The number is thus fake. The U.S. intelligence numbers were published on December 3. Three weeks later Russia announced that 10,000 of those 70,000 troops were removed: Ten thousand Russian military servicemen are reportedly returning to their "permanent deployment points" from field training on the border with neighboring Ukraine, according to Interfax news, which quoted statements from the Russian military. It means that there are currently only 60,000 troops in Russia's west mostly stationed in their normal quarters with some units undergoing rotational training as all military do. The media also claims that Russia has threatened to attack the Ukraine. Russia has no plans to do that unless the Ukraine tries to attack its rebellious eastern provinces of Luhanzk and Donetzk. The Ukrainian leadership knows that it can not do that. However the Russian security demands are serious. Either the U.S. and NATO retreat from their anti-Russian posture or Russia will take 'military-technical measures' to counter them. These MAY(!) include a sudden and swift neutralization of Ukrainian military capabilities: Russia will not get involved in a military misadventure in Ukraine that has the potential of dragging on and on, like the U.S. experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia has studied an earlier U.S. military campaignOperation Desert Storm, of Gulf War Iand has taken to heart the lessons of that conflict. One does not need to occupy the territory of a foe in order to destroy it. A strategic air campaign designed to nullify specific aspects of a nations capability, whether it be economic, political, military, or all the above, coupled with a focused ground campaign designed to destroy an enemys army as opposed to occupy its territory, is the likely course of action. Given the overwhelming supremacy Russia has both in terms of the ability to project air power backed by precision missile attacks, a strategic air campaign against Ukraine would accomplish in days what the U.S. took more than a month to do against Iraq in 1991. My hunch is that Russia will not do even that but that the 'military-technical measures' it says it will take should the talks fail will create a new threat to the U.S. itself. A repeat of the Cuban missile crisis by other means. The Cuban crisis led to the elimination of U.S. nuclear missiles stationed in Turkey and Italy and aimed at Moscow. A similar crisis today could likewise lead to a U.S. and NATO retreat from eastern Europe. Russia has won real and hybrid wars in South Ossetia, Crimea, Syria, Armenia, Belarus and now in its soft underbelly Kazakhstan after those countries came under attack. Leaders of the last four countries, all multi-vector politicians who were trying to play with the 'west' and Russia, have found out that Russia is their best and only friend and have decisively moved into its camp: Remember, the PSYOP narrative was that Putin is either stupid, or weak or sold out to the West, yet when we look at the before and after thingie, we see that while the West almost (or so they think) got Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and, now, Kazakhstan, the reality is that in each case it appears that the narcissistic megalomaniacs running the West have confidently waltzed into a carefully laid Russian trap which, far from giving the Empire the control of the countries it almost acquired, made them lose them for the foreseeable future. Russia has done this with little cost and to great effect. Meanwhile the U.S. and NATO have lost their wars, most recently in Afghanistan. It is time for the U.S. and NATO to acknowledge that. Posted by b on January 10, 2022 at 14:17 UTC | Permalink Comments next page  next page 
Moultrie, GA (31768)

Today

Partly cloudy in the morning followed by scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. High 88F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Isolated thunderstorms during the evening, then skies turning partly cloudy overnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
As COVID surges many American college and university students are learning online. By one recent estimate, the number of students enrolled exclusively in online programs had jumped 93% from 2019 to 2020, according to Global Editor in Chief for Newsweek Nancy Cooper.

To help students find a "quality online education," Newsweek and Statista, a market and consumer data company, ranked 150 colleges and universities offering degree programs online by "user reviews and additional institutional indicators," according to Cooper.

Overall, one Texas university took the top spot in the nation.

Texas Tech University claimed the top spot, ranking higher than 149 other universities including five from Texas: Texas State University (7), University of North Texas (23), The University of Texas Permian Basin (80), The University of Texas at Dallas (90) and Central Texas College (141).

Texas Tech University offers more than 100 online degree, certificate and licensure programs, which are showcased on the Texas Tech University website. It is also recognized as one of the top online disability-friendly institutions in the nation by guidetoonlineschools.com.

Additionally, online instructors are the same faculty that teach in traditional face-to-face programs, according to university's website.

Newsweek and Statista ranked the colleges after surveying more than 9,000 respondents who studied online to obtain academic degrees in the U.S.

Online learners who were surveyed evaluated their colleges and universities by rating their overall experience, overall satisfaction and to what extent they would recommend their institutions, according to the methodology listed on Newsweeks website.

Rankings also considered other institutional indicators that are publicly available, including enrollment, graduation statistics and research activity. Researchers gathered data from public sources, including the National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and the National Science Foundation.


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Muskogee, OK (74401)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms, some strong during the evening, will give way to cloudy skies after midnight. Damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado with some storms. Low around 50F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms, some strong during the evening, will give way to cloudy skies after midnight. Damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado with some storms. Low around 50F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
South Africa: Alleged gang members arrested in weekend blitz

At least four suspects allegedly belonging to a hijacking and armed robbery gang have been arrested by police in Johannesburg over the weekend.

Gauteng Police spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Mavela Masondo, said the four were arrested during crime prevention and raid operations conducted by police over the weekend.

Police have been searching for the gang after several cases of hijacking and robbery of bank cards were reported in Lenasia, Ennerdale, De Deur and Orange Farm.

A team consisting of members from Crime Intelligence, units of SAPS and Metro Police Departments, went out searching for the suspects until four of them were rounded up and arrested in Lenasia over the weekend. They will be appearing at Lenasia Magistrates Court [today] facing charges of car hijacking and armed robbery, Masondo said.

Elsewhere in the province, at least 1 400 suspects were arrested for various crimes including car hijacking, murder, rape, assault, drunk driving, armed robbery and possession of suspected stolen property.

Some 265 suspects were arrested in Johannesburg District for various serious and violent crimes. More than 565 suspects were nabbed in Tshwane during crime prevention operations.

In Ekurhuleni, joint intelligence-driven operations culminated in the arrest of more than 340 suspects.

In the West Rand District, 217 suspects were arrested in crime prevention operations, which included road blocks.

In operations in Sedibeng District, some 77 people were also arrested.

Police management in the province have noted with appreciation the involvement of the community in the fight against crime and efforts made by the members on the ground to bring crime to minimal in the province.

The arrested suspects will appear in various Magistrate Courts around Gauteng from Monday, Masondo said.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-01-10. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Fighting crimes, maintaining the momentum on virus prevention operations, patrolling cities, and serving the communities, the Chinese People's Police have a reason to be celebrated by the people they safeguard.

Monday marks the second Chinese People's Police Day, which falls on January 10 annually, corresponding with the country's emergency response number 110.

All around China, police officers are set to mark the special day in different ways.

On Friday, police officers at Yian police station in Tongling, East China's Anhui Province invited local primary school students to walk into the police station to experience a day in the life of a police officer as an activity to mark Chinese People's Police Day. The children were shown the typical weapons and police equipment.

In Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province, railway police officers presented a "show" of drills complete with weapons at the railway station. After the performance, the police officers sang in unison in front of travelers.

In Kashi, Northwest China's Uygur Autonomous Region, police officers walked into local campuses to celebrate Chinese People's Police Day with teachers and students.

The police officers showed their equipment and provided basic information about the police, including teaching young students how to call the police through 110 in a proper and efficient way.

On many occasions, sticking to their daily positions is also a way for China's police officers to celebrate the festival.

Ahead of the Chinese People's Police day, in Altay in the northern part of Xinjiang, the police squad from the border management detachment patrolled of the China-Mongolia border in line with their typical inspection work. They raised the national flag at the border.

Although the land is carpeted in snow, the patrol team perseveres in the harsh weather to eliminate any hidden dangers likely to cause insecurity and ensure the safety and stability of the front line.

The decision to introduce Chinese People's Police Day was approved in July 2020 in recognition of the extraordinary work by the country's public security guardians, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

With honorific traditions and fine conduct, the police force has sacrificed the most and contributed the greatest in times of peace.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, more than 14,000 police officers have laid down their lives, according to the Ministry of Public Security.




Vehicles owned by the city of Loris could soon include GPS systems to track each ones whereabouts.

Loris City Council was recently quoted the amount to purchase the software for the system, as well as the monthly fee for about 10 city vehicles. These vehicles include mostly public works and other non-police vehicles as police and fire vehicles already have GPS systems.

A one-time fee would be up to $1,200 to purchase the software and rights for the system and, after that, would cost the city about $20 to $30 per vehicle per month.

Loris Mayor Todd Harrelson said the GPS system will not only help track if an employee is doing proper rounds, but also for a number of other reasons.

From a safety standpoint, it can help you a lot, he said, adding if an employee was hurt, the tracking system could help the employee be found.

Its basically to help us keep up with the vehicles, he said. If we had one stolen for instance, wed be able to find it.

Council could see the item appear on a future meeting agenda for a vote to purchase the system and monthly subscriptions.
Illinois officials are seeking answers after the killing last week of a state child welfare worker during a home visit  the second such tragedy to occur in less than five years.

Deidre Silas, an investigator with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, was stabbed to death last Tuesday when she responded to a call of possible endangerment of children in a home in the central Illinois town of Thayer.

A man related to one or more of the six children who were at home at the time, 32-year-old Benjamin Reed, is being held in the Sangamon County Jail without bail on first-degree murder and other charges. An attempt by The Associated Press to reach Reed's attorney on Friday was unsuccessful.

Silas' death is the second time in four-and-a-half years that state officials and the social work community are asking what should have been done, but wasn't, to prevent it. DCFS investigator Pamela Knight, 59, died following a brutal beating while attempting to remove an endangered child from his father in September 2017.

Like Silas, Knight was alone when she was attacked. Officials at DCFS, which has 23,000 children under its care, have not released details about the circumstances behind Silas visit to the home in Thayer, located 23 miles (37 kilometers) south of Springfield, but DCFS Director Marc Smith said last week that agency protocol was followed.

The attack on Silas also marked the 21st time since 2017 that caseworkers were subject to threats or acts of violence during 2.5 million home visits in Illinois, agency spokesman Bill McCaffrey said.

Her death has raised questions of why case workers are sent into potentially volatile environments alone, and whether understaffing  a problem that has plagued DCFS for decades despite a federal consent decree regulating it  affects the response of caseworkers in the field.

DCFS, if youre sending someone into a situation like this, just send two at a time, Silas father, Roy Graham, said last week. Whether its a male and female or two males or two females, either way, but send two per visit, not just one.

Police agencies historically have been willing and able to help. That cooperation was strengthened after Knight's death. A law signed in 2018 allows law enforcement officers to cross into another jurisdiction to back up a home visit. Knight, who was based in Sterling, did have police backup initially.

But the boy Knight was seeking was not at his father's home, forcing Knight to check his grandparents' home in the next county. She decided that waiting for a new police agency to accompany her jeopardized the boy's safety. The boy's father met her at the second stop, and beat and kicked her so severely that she suffered brain damage and died five months later.

Arnold Black, a child protection specialist and supervisor in the DCFS Urbana office, said that any time a case worker or a supervisor believes there should be two workers on a home visit, it's approved. And there is no hesitancy to seek police backup, as outlined in the agency's administrative procedures on field safety.

Sometimes, taking the police can agitate the client. You've got to know the family. ... You have some families that are going to yell and scream at you for the first five minutes, but then theyre going to let you in," Black said. But if its a newer case, or if its in a rural area, I have no problem pulling another worker to go.

The problem, though, is that pairing workers stretches the workforce, sometimes resulting in plucking employees from other offices, Black said. The Urbana office has a worker shortage of more than 6% and agents on Black's team have caseloads of 30 to 50 families per worker, in many cases exceeding the limit of a 1988 federal consent decree that limits to 12 the number of new cases assigned monthly to each worker.

The Knight tragedy also resulted, with a push from the DCFS employees' union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, in office-based security guards and improved access to law enforcement records of people to be visited.

Black, a member of the AFSCME committee which quarterly discusses issues with DCFS management, said the workforce continues to push for other changes it supports.

Those changes include ongoing self-defense and de-escalation training from the Illinois State Police, public service announcements to familiarize the public with caseworkers and their duties and a law enforcement database like in Cook County that records not only arrests and convictions but any interaction police have with a particular address.

Newly hired investigators, who make about $55,000 a year, must successfully complete a six-week foundations training session that includes safety precautions, DCFS spokesman Bill McCaffrey said. Once in the field, they continue under a supervisor's tutelage and must complete a workplace and field safety training session within 90 days of starting.

Sen. Sara Feigenholtz, a Chicago Democrat and leader on child-welfare issues, said DCFS needs to build an infrastructure, with private sector cooperation, to recruit and retain employees. She anticipates more immediate safety legislation when the facts of Silas' death are public.

If there are any other resources we can give our frontline workers, youll be sure that were going to be looking to see how we avoid this kind of situation, Feigenholtz said.
If this proposed Congressional map is approved, all of Jefferson County would be in District 3.
Editor's note, January 11: This story has been updated with a statement from Via 313. It has also been updated to note that three employees were suspended, not four as we previously reported.

---

Employees of an Austin-based pizzeria that plans to open in San Antonio soon were on strike this weekend. About three dozen Via 313 workers were on strike Saturday, January 8, at its Austin location near the UT campus, protesting the alleged suspension of three workers after they submitted a petition, the Austin Chronicle reported.

Via 313 plans to open an Alamo City location in Medical Center at 8435 Wurzbach Road this March.

The petition asked for sick leave, hazard pay, enhanced COVID safety protocols, and more transparency around COVID-related communication from management as the case numbers continue to spike. Travis County has reported a total of 5,886 new COVID cases since January 7.

The petition was signed by 46 employees and eight of them presented it to Via 313s VP of operations Michelle Dahse. The workers told the Austin Chronicle that management suspended employees for creating a "hostile work environment."

One employee, Elyanna Calle, told the Chronicle that more than a dozen Via 313 employees have contracted coronavirus since Christmas. Calle said that the restaurant didn't have company-wide policies in place that notified employees they might have come into contact with a someone who was positive.

And so that created obviously a lot of long hours, a lot of picking up shifts," Calle told the Chronicle. "I worked with someone who tested positive a day later and I did not hear anything from my managers. I only heard it from my coworker. That's not how it should be happening."

In response, Via 313 issued the following statement to MySA:

"In the last few days, we have seen many untruths circulating about our restaurant Via 313. There are always two sides to a story, and wed like to share some facts to help provide a more complete picture.



Since inception, Via 313 has always been about positive company culture and supporting our team members with any concerns they might have. In no situation can we condone hostility in the workplace. As we mentioned before, we have always had an open-door policy at Via 313. As we continue to have one-on-one meetings with employees, before and after this unfortunate situation, we continue to reiterate our desire to answer any questions or concerns that may exist for our employees. Starting [Tuesday] morning, management is meeting with team members individually to discuss the current situation, how to reach a peaceful resolution, and how to maintain a positive work environment within Via 313."
On Wednesday, during an Indiana state Senate committee hearing about a proposed bill that would ban "divisive concepts" in school classrooms, Republican Sen. Scott Baldwin said teachers' lessons about fascism and Nazism should be impartial.

"Marxism, Nazism, fascism . . . I have no problem with the education system providing instruction on the existence of those 'isms,'" said Baldwin, who co-authored the bill. "I believe that we've gone too far when we take a position. . . . We need to be impartial."

Baldwin backtracked those comments on Thursday following criticism. In an email to the Indianapolis Star, Baldwin said he was focused on the "big picture" of preventing teachers from telling students "what to think about politics."

"Nazism, Marxism and fascism are a stain on our world history and should be regarded as such, and I failed to adequately articulate that in my comments during the meeting," Baldwin said. "I believe that kids should learn about these horrible events in history so that we don't experience them again in humanity."

A spokesman for the senator did not immediately reply to The Washington Post's request for comment late Sunday.

The controversy comes less than three months after a school administrator in North Texas apologized for instructing teachers to provide reading materials with "opposing" views on the Holocaust. Her comments followed a new state law requiring educators to provide multiple perspectives on "currently controversial" topics.

The next month, impartiality in school classrooms became a key issue in Virginia's close governor race. The winning candidate, Republican Glenn Youngkin, painted his Democratic rival as someone who wanted to keep parental feedback out of the classroom.

Baldwin's remarks about Nazism were in response to a high school teacher's concerns over the proposed legislation. Senate Bill 167 in Indiana resembles legislation proposed or passed in more than two dozen states banning critical race theory, an academic framework that examines the way policies and laws perpetuate systemic racism. The bill would also require schools to form committees so parents could review teachers' curriculums and weigh in on materials being used during lessons.

Several teachers voiced their concerns about the proposed legislation during last week's nearly eight-hour-long committee hearing. Matt Bockenfeld, a U.S. history and ethnic studies teacher in Fishers, a northeastern suburb of Indianapolis, said he was worried about a section of the bill that says educators cannot "affect the student's attitudes, habits, traits, opinions, beliefs, or feelings" when teaching what the Indiana GOP calls "divisive concepts."

Addressing Baldwin and other state senators, Bockenfeld said he was concerned about the vague wording, noting that teachers could be punished if students are outraged by, say, his lessons on Adolf Hitler's rise to power.

"For example, it's the second semester of U.S. history, so we're learning about the rise of fascism and the rise of Nazism right now," Bockenfeld said. "And I'm just not neutral on the political ideology of fascism. We condemn it, and we condemn it in full, and I tell my students the purpose, in a democracy, of understanding the traits of fascism is so that we can recognize it and we can combat it."

Bockenfeld went on to clarify that he agrees with the bill's proposed ban on teachers expressing opinions on political issues. But always requiring neutrality is flawed, he added.

"We're not neutral on Nazism. We take a stand in the classroom against it, and it matters that we do," Bockenfeld said.

Baldwin then responded with his comments about teachers remaining "impartial."

Baldwin, who was elected in 2020, has faced scrutiny in the past, the Star reported, after his name was included on a list of purported Oath Keepers members - a far-right, self-styled militia group accused of participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The state senator denied involvement, telling the newspaper he made a $30 donation to the group during an unsuccessful 2010 bid for county sheriff but had no interaction with the Oath Keepers since.

Baldwin said the point of Senate Bill 167 is to allow students to "formulate their own viewpoints."

"I'm not sure it's right for us to determine how that child should think, and that's where I'm trying to provide the guardrails," he said.

In a Twitter thread on Thursday, Bockenfeld said after hearing Baldwin's statements "my fears were confirmed."

"Is 2022 really the year that we'll punish teachers, maybe even strip them of their license, for opposing hateful ideologies?" he wrote. "Democracy is not value-neutral. Teachers cannot just mindlessly provide trivia facts about Nazism but attach no moral judgement to it."

On Thursday evening, Baldwin reached out to Bockenfeld, offering the teacher an opportunity to assist on the bill, according to the Star.
Robert Sharpe avidly collected family memorabilia, stockpiling thousands of pages of documents in safes, file cabinets and boxes at his house. Now, relatives wonder if the 69-year-old Colorado resident died trying to save his life's work as the devastating Marshall fire tore through his Boulder County home.

"Dear brother, this is such a catastrophic, unbelievably sad end to your story!" his brother Milton Sharpe wrote in his eulogy he shared with The Washington Post and the Denver Post. "I still can't wrap my head around it. You had many verses left to write, Robert."

Boulder County's coroner identified Sharpe on Friday as the first confirmed death from the most destructive wildfire in the state's history. How he died is pending investigation, authorities said. Meanwhile, officials are still searching for a woman in the town of Superior, identified by her family as 91-year-old Nadine Turnbull. Five people were initially reported missing, and three were later found, Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said last week.

The wind-fueled fire swept through the suburbs, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate in Boulder County, located less than 30 miles northwest of Denver. Investigators are still probing the cause of the blaze.

The fire charred a large swath of several communities, destroying 1,084 homes in the towns of Louisville and Superior, along with rural Boulder County. One was Sharpe's home, on the 5900 block of Marshall Road, not far from where the Dec. 30 fire began.

His family, in a statement, remembered Sharpe as a brother and uncle, as well as a naturalist and activist for children's rights. He worked in the construction industry, they said.

Milton Sharpe said his brother had other passions, including salsa dancing and participating in Native American traditions and ceremonies. He loved his home of four decades, his brother said.

"I knew as soon as I understood the fire had passed over his property he would not have fled," he said in his eulogy. "I told one of my brothers, 'They will find him dead in his driveway with a hose in his hand.'"

Seven years younger than Robert Sharpe, his brother recalled his patience avid reading and goal to be "a good steward of the environment, of his government and his community."

His family asked that people make donations to the Boulder County Wildfire Fund in his memory.

Vocal about many environmental issues, Robert Sharpe was a frequent caller to KGNU, a Boulder community radio station, and he had called into "A Public Affair" show "just a couple of hours before the fires consumed the area and his home from what we understand," the station's manager Tim Russo said.

On Friday, the Sharpe family thanked the Boulder County Sheriff's Office "for their untiring efforts and sensitive concern during this chaotic crisis."

"We will be forever grateful for their diligence, compassion, and understanding as they spared no effort to find the missing," the family said in the statement.

Searching for the missing was a mission complicated by several inches of snow that blanketed blackened debris following a dry winter. President Joe Biden surveyed the damage and consoled people in Louisville on Friday, saying the rare winter blaze that struck the suburban region over the holidays emphasizes the need to mitigate climate change.

Turnbull's family said she was last seen at the home she shared with her granddaughter in Superior, close to where authorities think the Marshall fire ignited.

"The front door was engulfed," Turnbull's grandson-in-law, Hutch Armstrong, previously told The Post. "And then they went to the back door and it was engulfed."

Her relatives have described a frustrating search for answers about what happened to her as conflicting information emerged in the initial days after the fire, while also acknowledging the overwhelming task authorities face.

"Obviously," Armstrong said, "they've got a lot on their plates."
ROME (AP)  Pope Francis took the first step Monday to reorganize the Vaticans powerful doctrine office, removing the No. 2 official widely believed responsible for a controversial document barring blessings for same-sex couples because God cannot bless sin.

Francis named Archbishop Giacomo Morandi, currently the secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, bishop of the Italian diocese of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla. The move amounts to a demotion since Morandi currently has the title of archbishop, yet is heading to a small diocese, not an archdiocese.

The Vatican said Morandi would nevertheless retain the title of archbishop ad personam.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or CDF, is one of the most important Vatican offices, interpreting doctrine for the universal Catholic Church, sanctioning dissenters and handling cases of clergy sexual abuse of minors. Morandi joined the CDF as an under-secretary in 2015 and was promoted to secretary, or the No. 2, in 2017.

He was widely seen as being behind the March 2021 document that outraged the gay community, which Francis has made pains to welcome into the church fold.

The document declared that the Catholic Church wont bless same-sex unions because God cannot bless sin. The document said Francis had been informed of the document and gave his assent to its publication, but Francis was apparently taken by surprise by its impact.

Francis has since made several gestures of outreach to the gay Catholic community and their advocates, including a recent letter congratulating an American nun once sanctioned by the CDF, Sister Jeannine Gramick, on her 50 years of LGBTQ ministry.

The CDF is currently headed by the Jesuit Cardinal Luis Ladaria, but he is expected to retire relatively soon since he turns 78 in April, three years beyond the normal retirement age for bishops.

Aside from Morandi, there are two additional secretaries in the CDF, including the American Archbishop Joseph Di Noia, who also is due to retire soon since he turns 79 in July. The other is Archbishop Charles Scicluna, but he has a full-time job as archbishop of Malta.

The impending retirements and transfer of Morandi thus suggests some management changes at the office, though they probably wont be announced until Francis releases the blueprint of his reform of the Vaticans overall bureaucracy, expected sometime this year.
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Bird Song of the Day

Winter birds: Songs and a few calls from an adult male perched at the top of a tall spruce.

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Politics

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? James Madison, Federalist 51

They had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Hunter Thompson

Capitol Seizure

January 6 Insurrection: One Year Later, Families Are Still Divided [Teen Vogue]. As the insurrection unfolded on television, Jackson says he got a phone call from the FBI asking him to confirm that his father was at the Capitol, which Jackson did. As he struggled with the idea that his father was part of an attempted coup of the United States government, Jackson says his father texted news reports to the family group chat with photos of himself at the Capitol. Friends texted, too, asking Jackson if the images they were seeing on television were really of his father. Even now, Jackson says, its difficult to conceptualize that his father was part of something like the insurrection.  As the insurrection unfolded on television, Jackson says he got a phone call from the FBI asking him to confirm that his father was at the Capitol , which Jackson did.  Teen Vogue going of the rails here; as one reader put it, if you want to see a real coup and a real insurrection, look at whats happening in Myanmar. Its not cosplay and LARPing there. Im also not super-enthusiastic about the society of snitches Teen Vogue implicitly endorses (cf. The Lives of Others). But I think Teen Vogue buries the lead, which I have helpfully underlined. Was the FBI simply working off a list of leads? Confirm would suggest not. So how pervasive was FBI surveillance and/or infiltration at the Capitol that day? Were they using facial recognition? Plausible answers include very and yes.. Florida leads nation in Jan. 6 Capitol riot cases [Axios].  Handy map: The concentration of deep color in OH, PA, NY, NY, VA, and MD is more interesting to me than the state at the top of the leaderboard. What does this auger for 2022 and 2024? (It could be that these states are simply closer to DC, but that CA, TX, and FL are also deep colored, suggesting the rioters were willing to travel.)

Biden Administration

Biden, health officials to lay out path out of Omicron winter [Politico]. Thats only fair, since they laid the path that got us into it. On Wednesday: Walensky has also come under fire in recent days from disability rights advocates for saying she finds it encouraging that deaths from Omicron have largely happened among people with multiple comorbidities. Walensky attempted a clean-up Sunday night, posting on Twitter that CDC is taking steps to protect those at highest risk, incl. those w/ chronic health conditions, disabilities & older adults.' So, that Walensky has gone all Lebensunwertes Leben Great Barrington is supposed to reassure us? I cant wait to see what happens next. And on Thursday: President Joe Biden will make a speech on his administrations whole-of-government COVID-19 surge response.'  Hes gonna make me pull on my yellow waders again, isnt he? Start with the fact that two years in, the Administration doesnt have a theory of transmission, and because they dont, they cannot explain to people what actions to take, and hence rely on their authority. Since Zeints, Fauci, Walensky, and Klain are all secure in their positions, I dont expect Bidens speech to be anything other than a warmed-over version of the same themeless pudding. A themeless lethal pudding. SALT Cap Limbo Threatens Suburban Swing District Democrats [Bloomberg]. Democrats risk losing their edge in key suburban districts amid a congressional stalemate over President Joe Bidens economic agenda that threatens plans to expand a tax break for well-off homeowners. Many voters in affluent suburbs across the country from New Jersey to Washington state abandoned the Republican party in the 2018 congressional elections, helping to swing the House into Democratic control one year after the GOP set a $10,000 limit on the long-standing federal deduction for state and local taxes, or SALT. Those same districts are once again up for grabs as Democrats wrangle over the details of the tax and spending package, including the fate of SALT relief. Uncertainty over when  or if  a package containing SALT could pass threatens to jeopardize Democrats chances of maintaining their slim congressional majorities. Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, who leads House Democrats campaign arm, says delivering relief from the SALT cap is essential for the partys election prospects.  Because tax relief is what liberal Democrats are all about! Idea: Tax breaks for In this house signs? Personnel are policy [Cory Doctorow, Medium]. Its hard not to freak out, watching Biden get punked by Joe Manchin over Build Back Better. Manchins transparent ruse  splitting the infrastructure bill from BBB  was obviously a prelude to a betrayal. Thanks to Dem leaderships foolish error, the party that holds the House, the Senate and the Oval Office will go into the mid-terms and the next presidential election having failed to deliver on the vast majority of their campaign promises. Having failed to deliver material improvements to voters lives, they are going to struggle to win elections. Joe Manchin seems hell-bent on electing Donald Trump president again in 2024. Its hard to say whether this is more disgusting or depressing. Maybe both. The sole thing keeping me going is the action in the administrative agencies, where genuine progressives with real political acumen have been promoted to positions of real power. Personnel really are policy, and the administrative agencies are where the rubber meets the road.  Heres a great example. Bidens National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is poised to turn worker misclassification into an unfair labor practice, which will give it scope to punish employers who treat their employees as contractors.  Something to watch

Democrats en Deshabille

Eric Adams taps younger brother Bernard as a deputy police commissioner [New York Post]. Mayor Eric Adams has tapped his younger brother to serve as a deputy NYPD commissioner, The Post has learned. Bernard Adams, a 56-year-old retired NYPD sergeant, will oversee governmental affairs, he confirmed Friday. But the full scope of his responsibilities was not immediately clear. Internal documents obtained by The Post show Bernard Adams listed as a deputy commissioner on the official NYPD roster. A civilian post, deputy police commissioners typically make around $242,000, although it was not yet known what his salary would be in the department. Bernard Adams LinkedIn profile lists his current job as assistant director for parking at Virginia Commonwealth University, where hes been employed since 2011.  So RFK Bernard Adams is not?

2022

Biden, Democrats head into 2022 midterms with feistier message and slightly better polls. Is it enough? [USA Today]. About as feisty as a soggy Saltine, if you ask me. The lead: Mary Ann Chaffin, an 86-year-old retired small-business owner from Aurora, Colorado, believes the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was disgusting and very disheartening. Shes concerned democracy in the U.S. is in peril. She wishes more brave Republicans would condemn the attack waged by supporters of former President Donald Trump one year ago.  I can believe that the Democrat leadership is confident that they dont have to deliver on anything because the Capitol Seizure is their ace in the hole (hence the 1/6 Committee retaining jurisdiction and not turning cases over to Garland for prosecution).

2024

Republicans narrow search for 2024 convention site to four cities [The Hill]. Republicans have winnowed down their list of potential host cities for the 2024 Republican National Convention, picking Milwaukee, Nashville, Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh as the finalists.  See map under Capitol Seizure, above. Id argue theyd do well to pick Pittsburgh.

Realignment and Legitimacy

Mass representative democracy [Interfluidity]. what if we elected representatives to participate in this kind of mass-democracy framework? Instead of electing one per 800,000 or one per 80,000, what if we self-affiliated into groups of common interest of no more than, say, 1000 souls, for whom personal, physical town meetings could be regularly arranged? Obviously, not everyone would wish to attend all of these meetings, but everyone could if they wished. With no more than 1000 constituents, an elected could become at least acquainted with her full constituency. She could be accessible and available to them all. She could maintain direct relationships with a substantial fraction of the people she represents, and be motivated and held to account by those relationships, by gratitude and shame experienced personally rather than by abstract shifts in what some consultant claims the polls say. Instead of a few hundred Congresspeople, wed have 250,000 representatives whose full-time job it would be to stay and live among and interact with their constituents, and participate in the online legislature. There would be no Congressional offices in Washington, no risk of going native among colleagues who become much closer than constituents. At a municipal level, there would be no councilmen or supervisors at City Hall. In my San Francisco, there would be roughly 800 legislators and any of us who cared to would know our representative and interact with her as much or as little as we pleased. This proposal recognizes that the hard part of being a representative, or at least what ought to be the hard part, is not fundraising, rising through committees, learning the personalities and peccadillos of influential colleagues so that you can legislate effectively. The hard part of being a representative is representing. So expand the House from 435 to, um, 250,000, and put it online. Cities should give mass representative democracy a try, soon. If you live in a city of any size, do you feel, today, like you are adequately represented in city government? If not, what hope do we have to make representative democracy work at a state or national scale? We are collectively, and correctly, coming to understand that weve never really had the kind of Our Democracy that talking heads on MSNBC are constantly telling us we must save. Its time to roll up our sleeves and build institutions well have reason to be less cynical about.  An interesting proposal by the always interesting Steve Waldman. Well worth a read (and no, he doesnt mean put representation on the blockchain, thank gawd). Sandel: Summon Chance to Chasten Meritocratic Hubris' [Equality by Lot]. [Michael Sandels] condemnation of actual existing Meritocracy is well worth a read, not least the societally damaging effects of hubris and self-worth among the elite winners; and the despondency and nihilistic voting for Brexit and Trump by the losers and indeed all the non-credentialled. Chapter 6 [of The Tyranny of Merit] makes a heartfelt and extended plea for the extensive use of lotteries for admission to not just Ivy League, but all selective colleges and universities. This Sandel says would summon Chance to chasten Merit. Election Fraud Cases [The Heritage Foundation].  Of all people. If their database is to be believed, theres really not a lot of fraud; onesies and twosies. (Note that election fraud and election theft are different. The first is done by individual voters, the second by party insiders. (In the past, the two blurred, as voters were bribed to vote a certain way, but now election theft takes place through control of the voting machinery, including ballot rolls, as in Florida 2000.)

#COVID19

Case count by United States regions:

More small jumps, but I think this is data, given that the CDC rapid riser counties show a collapse of reorting in a number of states. (I wrote: As happened in 2020, I would expect a second, higher peak, from Omicron if for no other reason. Here we very are. This chart is a seven-day average, so changes in direction only show up when a train is really rolling.) It would sure be nice if rise like a rocket (and fall like a stick) applied, but we cant know that yet. To be fair, previous peaks  how small the early ones look now  have been roughly symmetrical on either side. But the scale of this peak, and the penetration into the population, is unprecendented.

The official narrative that Covid is behind us, and that the pandemic will be over by January (Gottlieb), and I know some people seem to not want to give up on the wonderful pandemic, but you know what? Its over (Bill Maher) is completely exploded. What a surprise!

MWRA (Boston-area) wastewater detection:

The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) service area includes 43 municipalities in and around Boston, including not only multiple school systems but several large universities. Since Boston is so very education-heavy, then, I think it could be a good leading indicator for Covid spread in schools generally.

From CDC: Community Profile Report (PDF), Rapid Riser counties:

I have helpfully marked states where no data is being reported in gray. Systems are breaking down. The rest of the country looks somewhat worse (though in most of the country it couldnt be worse).

The previous release:

Hospitalization (CDC Community Profile):

Makes you wonder when the entire map will be orange, especially since hospitalizations lag cases (Note trend, whether up or down, is marked by the arrow, at top. Admissions are presented in the graph, at the bottom. So its possible to have an upward trend, but from a very low baseline.)

Death rate (Our World in Data):

Total: 859,356 855,843 .

Covid cases in top us travel destinations (Statista):

Might as well check out where we go, in case we bring something back (as from Italy to New York in 2020). This is a log scale. (Sorry for the kerfuffle at the left. No matter how I tinker, it doesnt go away. (The data is from 2019, and so subject to subsequent events, but this is the best I can find.)

The excess deaths charts will appear weekly, on Friday.

Stats Watch

There are no official stats of interest today.

* * *

The Bezzle: Fake COVID testing sites are popping up across the US, officials warn. How to spot one [Sacramento Bee]. So what are the tell-tale signs of a rogue testing site? If someone is asking for personal information, credit card information or asking you to pay, that might be a tip off to the rip off, Steve Bernas, president of BBB of Chicago & Northern Illinois, told WLS. Wait, what? Sounds like insurance companies! More: To protect yourself from being scammed, the BBB advises talking with your doctor about COVID-19 testing and where to find a legitimate testing clinic. What doctor? More: Avoid sharing sensitive information with strangers, the watchdog group warned, and dont be afraid to ask for credentials. Test providers should also be able to answer questions about whether the test is FDA-authorized and which laboratory will process your results.  Just spitballing here, but if some entity, an entity with some scale, were simply to  hear me out  mail free tests to every US resident, wouldnt this problem go away?

Tech: Taking a driverless Waymo in Phoenix over the holidays was fun but unsettling [CNBC]. Phoenix is the only market where Waymo is currently operating its self-driving ride-hailing service, Waymo One, to the general public, though test rides are available in San Francisco. Waymo only reaches a portion of the sprawling Phoenix area. I knew this because earlier in my stay Id tried to order a car, but the app told me I was outside its service region. According to its website, Waymo One operates in suburbs. So, Phoenix suburbs are a proxy for traffic in the test of the country? Wide roads, big grids are the training set? Two incidents, one at the start: I approached the van and was again surprised. It was illegally parked in a fire lane, which was apparent by the brightly painted red curb. It was also partially blocking a lane used by cars entering and exiting the shopping center. One car had to go around the Waymo to get into the parking lot. And the other at the end: Just as the car neared Trader Joes, it came to an abrupt stop, slamming the brake for an apparent pedestrian. It nearly gave me whiplash and made me particularly grateful for the working seatbelt. The jolt was surprising, as the car was going no more than seven miles an hour in a parking lot.  So, problems with parking lots, then? Good to know.

Tech: My first impressions of web3 [Moxie.org]. One thing that has always felt strange to me about the cryptocurrency world is the lack of attention to the client/server interface. When people talk about blockchains, they talk about distributed trust, leaderless consensus, and all the mechanics of how that works, but often gloss over the reality that clients ultimately cant participate in those mechanics. All the network diagrams are of servers, the trust model is between servers, everything is about servers. Blockchains are designed to be a network of peers, but not designed such that its really possible for your mobile device or your browser to be one of those peers. For example, whether its running on mobile or the web, a dApp like Autonomous Art or First Derivative needs to interact with the blockchain somehow  in order to modify or render state (the collectively produced work of art, the edit history for it, the NFT derivatives, etc). Thats not really possible to do from the client, though, since the blockchain cant live on your mobile device (or in your desktop browser realistically). So the only alternative is to interact with the blockchain via a node thats running remotely on a server somewhere. A server! But, as we know, people dont want to run their own servers. As it happens, companies have emerged that sell API access to an ethereum node they run as a service, along with providing analytics, enhanced APIs theyve built on top of the default ethereum APIs, and access to historical transactions. Which sounds familiar. These client APIs are not using anything to verify blockchain state or the authenticity of responses. The results arent even signed. An app like Autonomous Art says hey whats the output of this view function on this smart contract, Alchemy or Infura responds with a JSON blob that says this is the output, and the app renders it. This was surprising to me. So much work, energy, and time has gone into creating a trustless distributed consensus mechanism, but virtually all clients that wish to access it do so by simply trusting the outputs from these two companies without any further verification. It also doesnt seem like the best privacy situation.  Well worth a read.

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Todays Fear & Greed Index: 45 Neutral (previous close: 53 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 67 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jan 10 at 1:29pm.

Rapture Index: Closes up one on unemployment. Covid is causing more people to quit their jobs [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 186. (Remember that bringing on the rapture is a good thing, so higher is better.)

Games

You bought horse armor. You bought loot crates. Youll buy in-game NFTs [Quarter to Three (RH)]. The gold rush for gaming Non-fungible Tokens (NFT) is on! Ubisoft is the first big-name publisher dipping into the investment fad by introducing Ubisoft Quartz. Think of it as a way to make your digital in-game doodads, (now called Digits because everything needs a brand name) artificially scarce by adding unique serial numbers to them.  Libertarian brain geniuses have actually managed to create digital scarcity. Walter Benjamin would be stunned.

Class Warfare

Priorities:

The United States is the only major economy in the world where the economy as a whole is stronger now than before the pandemic.  Secretary Marcia L. Fudge (@SecFudge) January 8, 2022

And as a bonus, life expectancy is falling. And has been for years!

Workers across the US are rising up. Can they turn their anger into a movement? [Guardian]. Millions of workers are angry  angry that they didnt get hazard pay for risking their lives during the pandemic, angry that theyve been forced to work 70 or 80 hours a week, angry that they received puny raises while executive pay soared, angry that they didnt get paid sick days when they got sick. Out of this comes a question that looms large for Americas workers: will this surge of worker action and anger be a mere flash in the pan or will it be part of a longer-lasting phenomenon? So why isnt the labor movement seizing on this years burst of worker energy to build something bigger? I was discussing this with friend who is a professor of labor studies, and she said she thought that most of todays union leaders were constitutionally incapable of building big or being bold and ambitious. She said that after decades of being on the defensive, of being beaten down by hostile corporations, hostile GOP lawmakers and hostile judicial decisions, many labor leaders seem unable to dream big or think outside the box on how to attract large numbers of workers in ways beyond the traditional one-workplace-at-a-time union drives. But building big and outside the box isnt impossible for labor.  If Fight for $15 is outside the box, then heaven help us all. Outside the box would be  work with me, here  controlling the means of production.

The Double Bind Of Maintaining The Schismogenesis: A Theory Of Wokeness [Down with Tyranny]. The U.S. during the 1960s suffered an eruption of domestic rebellion, ranging from the civil rights movement and the feminist revolution to organized labor and the anti-war movement. Strangely enough, most of the leaders in these movements were assassinated (RFK, MLK, Malcolm X) or died under mysterious circumstances (Walter Reuther). Was it enough for the ruling elite that the leaders of these movements were dead (neutralized)? I contend that it was not and that the elites embarked on an additional strategy: capture of the movements to 1) prevent a resurgence of rebellion against the ruling elites and 2) prevent cross alliances between the various rebel factions, a reason theorized by some to explain the death of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, who was trying to unite the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, and the organized labor movement at the time of his death. From feminism, where a movement leader (Gloria Steinem) has been revealed to have worked for the CIA, to civil rights, where Black Lives Matters is subsidized by the Ford Foundation to the tune of $100 million, to organized labor, where the AFL-CIO provided assistance to various U.S. government regime change efforts, these movements are infested with corporate and state actors. Meanwhile, concrete measures of material progress, such as increased wages for the working class, universal healthcare, and support for organized labor remain curiously out of reach. There is a name for this highly effective signal jamming by government and corporate elites: maintaining the schismogenesis. Schismogenesis means the beginning of the breakdown of a relationship or a system. The elite project of maintaining the schismogenesis has been effective for generations and was put into overdrive by the wokeness campaign. Now, with the need for national solidarity to address existential threats to the nation, set against the rise of the populist Right, are U.S. elites capable of retiring wokeness as a weapon, surrendering some material power to the non-elites, and therefore saving themselves and everyone else from the fallout of national collapse?  Heres a straw in the wind

We have to be able to talk abtthe harms of remote learning in a society where vaccines are available for all teachers without being accused of being anti-union or anti-teacher. We can disagree on what is the best thing to do when there are no good options without that accusation.  Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) January 5, 2022

Hannah-Jones is, of course, toeing the party line

As More Teachers Unions Push for Remote Schooling, Parents Worry. So Do Democrats [New York Times]. in a number of other places, the tenuous labor peace that has allowed most schools to operate normally this year is in danger of collapsing. While not yet threatening to walk off the job, unions are back at negotiating tables, pushing in some cases for a return to remote learning. They frequently cite understaffing because of illness, and shortages of rapid tests and medical-grade masks. Some teachers, in a rear-guard action, have staged sick outs. A rear-guard action? Fighting against whom? More: National teachers unions continue to call for classrooms to remain open, but local affiliates hold the most power in negotiations over whether individual districts will close schools. Ah, here we go. Guess who the Democrats are really worried about: In Chicago and San Francisco, working-class parents of color disproportionately send their children to the public schools, and they have often supported strict safety measures during the pandemic, including periods of remote learning. And in New York, the nations largest school district, schools are operating in person with increased virus testing, with limited dissent from teachers. But the politics become more complicated in suburbs, where union leaders may find themselves at odds with public officials at pains to preserve in-person schooling.

What Is the Point of Economics? [Matt Stoller, BIG]. [T]his brings me to the point of economics, which has taken me a long time to understand. There are many economists who focus on trying to uncover important truths about the world, and there are many economists who seek to serve concentrated capital. There are smart ones, and dumb ones. But truth or falsehood, or empirical rigor, is besides the point. The point of economics as a discipline is to create a language and methodology for governing that hides political assumptions from the public. Truly successful economists, like Summers, spend their time winning bureaucratic turf wars and placing checks on elected officials.  Certainly true of mainstream macro. Not, in my view, true of MMT. Or other more. heterodox forms of economics.

News of the Wired

The triffids day has come: designing with invasive plants [Financial Times]. These designers have a simple proposition: in societys quest to find renewable raw materials, why not make use of sources that are abundant and unwanted, thereby also incentivising their removal? Their efforts fit into a counter-narrative outlined by the likes of the permaculture designer Tao Orion, whose 2015 book Beyond the War on Invasive Species describes the growth of the mechanical, chemical approach to managing weeds, arguing instead for a more pragmatic, incremental approach. After all, the term invasive, she says, is subjective. Many plants that are now considered invasive were transported deliberately during the Victorian era and, later, to tackle environmental inconveniences. The rapidly growing vine kudzu, for example, was promoted in North America in the 1920s and 1930s as a way of controlling soil erosion.  We dont sell anything that isnt invasive, say the ladies at the annual church flower sale.

Well, it works for us (dk):

A farmer in Turkey has fitted his cows with virtual reality goggles to make them think they are outside in summer pastures. Izzet Kocak found out the pleasant scenes make the cows happier and produce more milk.Future is metaverse! pic.twitter.com/DNZze8Wm5n  Shuja ul haq (@ShujaUH) January 8, 2022

Layered protection:

The first 6 bollards did everything they could but it was the 7th that got the glory. Can we all say thank you to the Magnificent Six.#WorldBollardAssociation pic.twitter.com/nKefwBxlTy  World Bollard Association (@WorldBollard) January 8, 2022

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(Natural News) French President Emmanuel Macron is proud of the fact that he is pissing them off, referring to the unvaccinated in his country who are being persecuted by the state for relying on their own God-given immunity to stay healthy.

In a recent interview with Le Parisien, Macron admitted that his extreme fascism with regard to the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) is tearing France to shreds, and that he is extremely happy to continue doing it.

The unvaxxed, I really feel like pissing them off, Macron stated. And so were going to keep on doing that, to the very end. Thats the strategy.

In other words, Macrons personal goal in all this is to make unvaccinated French peoples lives a living hell whenever and wherever possible.

When my liberty becomes a threat to the liberty of others, I become an irresponsible individual, he added. An irresponsible individual is no longer a citizen.

What Macron means by this, of course, is that all French people who still value their civil liberties are now a threat to his plandemic agenda. These same people, in Macrons eyes, are no longer even worthy of being called citizens of France.

They are undermining what constitutes the solidity of a nation, Macron added about the anti-vaxxers he simply cannot stand, whom he says have an immense moral fault.

Remember in 2020 when Macron promised that covid jabs would never be mandatory?

Keep in mind that this is the same Macron who gets a thrill out of opening up the borders of France to an endless stream of migrants, who as far as we can tell are not being subjected to the same vaccination requirements as actual French citizens.

As of this writing, as many as six million French people 12 years of age and older remain unvaccinated. This is upsetting to Macron, who says these people are no longer valid citizens with legal and constitutional rights.

When youre no longer a citizen, what are you? asked a commentator on the otherwise heavily pro-Macron new station BFMTV. Are you a sub-citizen, a fallen citizen, a nobody?

This same commentator pointed out that on Dec. 27, 2020, Macron promised French citizens that Fauci Flu shots would never, and I repeat it, he emphasized at the time, be mandatory.

Lets trust our researchers and doctors, Macron added in that same earlier speech. We are the land of the Enlightenment and of Pasteur. Reason and science must guide us.

Ivan Rioufol, one of the top columnists at Le Figaro, tweeted the following in opposition to Macrons latest fascist statements against the unvaccinated citizens of France.

Under the Terreur (1793), the Law of Suspects required good citizens to have a certificate of civism. The #VaccinePass that #Macron wants to impose is in keeping with that discriminatory logic. For him, an #unvaccinated is no longer a citizen. An arsonist is in the Elysee.'

Rioufol also added the hashtag MacronDestitution and impeach Macron at the end of his tweet.

It turns out that based on Macrons definition of unvaccinated, many French people who took the first two mRNA (messenger RNA) injections but stopped there might also be considered non-citizens.

In order to obtain the vaccine pass currently under debate at the National Assembly, full vaccination is required, reports LifeSiteNews.

This means having the original doses plus as many booster shots as the government deems necessary within a time lapse that is also determined by the authorities.

It is expected that very soon this pass will be required in order for the French to eat at restaurants and cafes, as well as to go to the movies or sporting events.

The latest news about Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) tyranny can be found at Fascism.news.

Sources for this article include:

LifeSiteNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Prof. Arthur Caplan, an ethicist at New York University (NYU), says that anyone who refuses to get vaccinated for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) should be punished by insurance companies with higher premiums.

Even though fully vaccinated people are the ones getting sick and dying in droves, Caplan personally feels as though the unvaccinated are responsible for the health woes of society right now, and he wants them to suffer for it.

By and large, if youre vaccinated and boosted, even if you get infected, youre going to be fine, Caplan, who heads up the medical ethics division at NUYs Grossman School of Medicine, insists.

Youre going to be fine here. Its the unvaccinated who are going to be hurt, so why should anyone who is boosted bother at this point to do anything that makes the unvaccinated more safe?

On top of having to pay more for insurance, the unvaccinated should also be ostracized and mistreated by the rest of society, in Caplans view.

Ill condemn them, he told CNNs John Berman in a recent interview. Ill shame them. Ill blame them.

We can penalize them more, say you will have to pay more on your hospital bill. You cant get life insurance, disability insurance at affordable rates if you arent vaccinated.

Branch Covidians are dangerous and must be resisted

Caplan is also upset that some people are choosing not to wear a mask at all times, or to attend crowded indoor events. In his opinion, only unvaccinated people are doing these things.

Because of his personal feelings on the matter, Caplan is publicly suggesting, for at least the second time now, that those who disagree with him about any of this be penalized and punished for it.

Back in August, Caplan was joined fellow ethicist Sarah Hull in calling for cities across the country to implement vaccine passport systems to discriminate against the unvaccinated by prohibiting them from entering buildings.

Since that time, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago have all done just that by requiring people as young as five years old to show proof of injection before being allowed to eat at a restaurant, work out at a health club, or see a movie.

This papers, please system is somehow ethical, according to Caplan and Hull, both of whom believe that people should be forced to get medically raped against their will in order to continue participating in society.

Neither of these two believe that it makes sense to conflate the concept of individual rights, which inform our liberties, with that of privileges, which are predicated on each of us upholding certain responsibilities.

In their minds, one such responsibility is to permanently damage ones DNA and immune system in order to please members of the Branch Covidian religion, to which both of these two belong.

The concept of requiring COVID-19 vaccination to access privileges involving social gathering similarly protects public health and prevents reckless individuals from harming others, particularly those who cannot receive vaccines due to age or underlying illness or those who are unable to respond to them due to immunodeficiency, the duo claims.

Back in August, Caplan further alleged that a successful covid injection campaign that results in everyone getting jabbed will liberate us  as individuals and as a collective  from the callous grip of a pandemic that just wont seem to end.

In other words, forced conversion to the religion of Branch Covidianism is the only way for people like Caplan and Hull to feel satisfied that success has been achieved.

The latest news about Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) tyranny can be found at Fascism.news.

Sources for this article include:

LifeSiteNews.com

NaturalNews.com
Sunday, January 09, 2022 by: Ethan Huff Tags: canceled , Collapse , COVID , fired , Ontario , Plandemic , surgeries , unvaccinated This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author

(Natural News) Ontarios Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore has announced that all non-urgent surgeries are being canceled throughout the province due to an overload of sick patients and not enough medical staff.

Because all unvaccinated nurses and doctors were recently let go from their jobs due to Canadas Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccine mandates, there are now not enough bodies on-site to handle the influx of sick patients, many of whom are fully vaccinated.

Effective Jan. 5, anyone needing a surgery that the Canadian government deems to be not that important will have to wait indefinitely to receive medical care. The rule applies to both hospitals and independent health clinics throughout Ontario.

Directive #2, as Moore calls it, stipulates that all non-emergent and non-urgent surgeries and procedures must be put on hold in order to preserve critical care and human resource capacity in the healthcare system in light of rising infection cases due to the Omicron variant, reports The Epoch Times.

Since most cases of Omicron (Moronic) are occurring in people who got vaccinated, this means that medical care at Ontario hospitals and health facilities is now being rationed strictly for the jabbed.

This is consistent with what was previously in place with Directive #2 and helps to ensure that health human resources remain available to support the provinces COVID-19 response, said a spokesperson from Ontarios Health Ministry about how all health facilities are basically now barred from providing non-urgent/non-emergency procedures that require surgical nursing support or anesthesia health human resources.

Certain dental procedures also now banned due to lack of staff caused by discrimination against the unvaccinated

Another casualty in Ontarios healthcare system is dental care that carries the risk of a patient requiring emergency medical services or other hospital services, or that require a sedation or anesthetic team.

Thanks to Ontarios discriminatory policies that resulted in unvaccinated medical workers basically being fired from their jobs, there are now not enough workers to even care for peoples teeth.

Surgery in a dental setting that meets these criteria must be urgent and emergent in order to proceed, the Times further revealed.

According to Moore, these bans on medical care are expected to free up anywhere from 1,200 to 1,500 beds, which are clearly need for all of the fully vaccinated patients who are flooding hospitals in need of emergency care for their vaccine injuries.

These beds, Moore insists, are needed to provide oxygen and care to people who test positive for Moronic or other variants of the Fauci Flu.

Moore expects a massive wave of new patients who need to be hospitalized in the coming weeks. After January, he says that wave will likely taper off.

Specifically, cases are at the highest level since the start of the pandemic (>18,000 per day) and a continued acceleration in cases, and increased hospitalizations are expected throughout January 2022, Moores directive further states.

Almost all of the experts seem to agree that Moronic is relatively mild, though. Very few people who catch it (or develop it, in the case of the fully vaccinated) end up requiring hospitalization, especially if they are otherwise healthy and do not have other preexisting conditions such as obesity.

Public health care now means no health care. The pandemic is 2 years old and no increased capacity (with declining covid hospital admissions from the omicron variant), wrote one commenter at the Times.

Hospitals are empty, wrote another. Its all lies.

I called our hospital, they have 2 hospitalized, serving 110,000 pop, added another, affirming that same claim. Total COVID ward is 4 beds. Hospital has over 120 beds.

The latest Chinese Virus news can be found at Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

TheEpochTimes.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) The farther we get from the 2020 elections, the more it appears as though President Donald Trump was right: His reelection was stolen from him thanks to vote fraud in key battleground states, including Georgia.

Reports noted last week that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) is opening an investigation after being given evidence of illegal ballot harvesting in the state by a voter integrity organization called True the Vote.

On the heels of those reports comes the revelation that one of the witnesses True the Vote interviewed and presented to Georgia election officials says he was paid tens of thousands of dollars to engage in ballot harvesting and ballot box stuffing of illegal votes, the majority of which went to Democrats.

Heres the bottom line. You cant ballot harvest in Georgia. What turned this around is that a whistleblower in Georgia came forward, radio host John Fredricks told top podcaster and War Room creator, Steve Bannon, last week.

On the tapes they identified 240 of the same people going around the state stuffing ballot drop boxes between 2 and 5 a.m.  where they were emptying backpacks out and they were dropping 50, 100 ballots into a dropbox. This is totally illegal, Fredricks added.

Heres the bottom line, right? The one whistleblower that came forward because allegedly his mom said, hey, what youre doing is wrong and you need to be honest about it. Own up to it. He said that he was paid $10 per ballot And he made $45,000 between November 3rd and the runoff. Two elections he made $45,000! Now do the math. He said this was the average payout. There were 240 people of the same ones over and over in the same car involved in it. You start doing the math here. 45,000 time 240 people Youve got $11 million distributed illegally. Then you take 4500 ballots by 240 people. Youre talking about a million ballots! he added.

Trump only lost Georgia by around 11,000 votes, but this makes clear he likely did not lose Georgia at all. And again, this is just one state.

Just the News added context to Fredricks claims:

According to interviews and documents reviewed by Just the News, Raffenspergers office received a detailed complaint from conservative voter integrity group True the Vote on Nov. 30 saying it had assembled evidence that scores of activists worked with nonprofit groups to collect and deliver thousands of absentee ballots, often during wee-hour operations, to temporary voting drop boxes distributed around the state during the pandemic.

The group informed the secretary its evidence included video footage from surveillance cameras placed by counties outside the drop boxes as well as geolocation data for the cell phones of more than 200 activists seen on the tapes purportedly showing the dates and times of ballot drop-offs, according to documents reviewed by Just the News.

Continuing, the outlet referenced the Georgia man Fredricks mentioned, who admitted to True the Vote that he was paid thousands of dollars to harvest ballots in the Atlanta metropolitan area during the 2020 election.

Atlanta, by the way, is in Fulton County, Ga., which has long been a Democrat stronghold, and its likely that Trump lost Michigan and Pennsylvania in the same manner, as similar shady vote-counting operations took place following the election in deep-blue cities like Detroit and Philadelphia.

Mind you, in addition to losing the presidential race, Georgians were cheated out of two U.S. Senate seats, both of which went to Democrats for the first time in decades in a Jan. 5 run-off.

Just the News reported that True the Vote has not yet identified the cooperating witness to state authorities, but that seems likely to change after Raffensperger confirmed to the outlet this week that he was launching an investigation.

Lets face it: The 2020 election was stolen from Trump because Democrats (and the GOP establishment) fear him like no other.

Sources include:

JustTheNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Despite getting jabbed at least three times for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has tested positive for the Fauci Flu, proving that the injections do not work.

AOC was spotted partying in Miami less than one week prior. Because she was partying without a mask, which is the norm in Florida, the media blamed this for her positive test result.

The only problem is that AOC should have been protected from the WuFlu regardless of whether or not she was wearing a face covering. The jabs save lives, right?

AOC also developed symptoms and is now said to be recovering at home. Her office issued a statement indicating that she got boosted in the fall and still encourages everyone to get their booster and follow all CDC guidance.

Unlike New York where she is from, Florida is wide open as normal. Florida also has way fewer cases of the Fauci Flu compared to New York, California and other states where mask and vaccine mandates are prevalent.

AOC was spotted partying in a bar maskless in the great free state of Florida. Absolute hypocrite pic.twitter.com/5lPEtPTnib  Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) January 2, 2022

AOCs hypocrisy exemplifies how politicians command obedience to rules they dont even follow themselves

Former Trump campaign advisor Steve Cortes tweeted a photo of AOC and her boyfriend enjoying drinks at a Miami cafe with not a mask in sight.

If Leftists like AOC actually thought mandates and masking worked, they wouldnt be frolicking in free FL, he wrote.

AOC responded in her usual childish manner, accusing Republicans of wanting to date her but not being able to, which in her mind is why they are tweeting her hypocrisy for the world to see.

Many responded in kind, suggesting that the only thing that wants to date AOC right now is covid.

Put her on a ventilator just to be sure she gets over covid, joked one commenter at Zero Hedge.

She just needs more boosters, wrote another.

As you may recall, California Gov. Gavin Newsom did a much worse thing last fall when he was caught attending a large mask-free birthday party at the French Laundry in California.

At the time, California was locked down and masked, but Newsom decided to break his own rules and party it up at a fancy restaurant.

At least AOC took her fun to Florida, where things are largely back to normal thanks to Gov. Ron DeSantiss efforts to keep the Sunshine State fascism-free.

She never got the jab to begin with, suggested another commenter about how AOC may not have gotten injected since Congress critters are exempt.

However, I am sure she will get hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, this same person added. Congress critters have special privileges.

Another person wrote at-length about how the whole thing is a farce, from the day-to-day news about covid numbers and percentages to these politicians supposedly testing positive.

The narrative is always mutating and always bad for the viewer / listener, this person further explained.

What is not a farce is the unprecedented erosion of freedom. Society is imploding with the permanent and expanding loss of all kind of acquired rights, he added.

The citizenry is divided, demoralised and pauperised, and democracy will not recover. Actual debate is dead. Rational thinking is dead. This will not be discussed out. A fight will be needed to keep your freedoms. Start now as were already past the point of no return.

To this, another commenter responded that he will never be convinced that anyone in the swamp actually got the real injections that everyone else is getting. Since there is no way to know what the vials given to the privileged actually contain, this person could be right.

The latest Fauci Flu news can be found at Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

ZeroHedge.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Robert and Jaime Agee have launched a mission called Banner4Freedom that aims to raise awareness about the dangers of Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccines.

Billboards all across America like the one shown above in the headline photo were designed to draw the attention of drivers and passersby to this and other major issues of our day.

Because the corporate-controlled media is unwilling to tell the truth, the Agees hope to do it instead. Their mission centers around Psalm 20:5 which reads: And in the NAME of OUR GOD we will raise OUR BANNERS.

One of the big issues the Agees want people to know about is the sheer number of people who are becoming injured from Fauci Flu shots. The photo below is an example of how this is displayed (though the current number is well over a million).

The billboards also feature other resources, including Brighteon.com, that are dedicated to spreading the truth.

Since the media wont tell the truth associated with these vaccines, we are attempting to bring this data, along with other messages and providers of truth, to our fellow Americans through these billboards by raising funds by The People!

Agees join ReAwaken America Tour to spread their banner messages

The Agees are also connected with the ReAwaken America Tour, which supporters claims represents a Great Spiritual Awakening across the country.

We have entered the time of a Great Spiritual Awakening where the Lord Jesus is establishing His Kingdom here on earth, they say.

We are taking authority over the tools the enemy has used to propagate his lies and are Raising a Banner of Truth in its place. With God nothing is impossible! To Him be the Glory!

The very first Banners4Freedom billboard appeared in Bonham, Tex., on Nov. 1. Thanks to donations from the local community, the billboard was put up without a hitch.

The next day, the Agees appeared in an interview with Clay Clark on his Thrive Time Show, which resulted in LT and AndWeKnow.com picking it up and featuring the couple on a Nov. 5 video entitled SOONER or LATER God will cut the DEEP STATE DOWN! Huge victories! BATTLES continue! PRAY!

Stew Peters also got in on the action, interviewing the Agees on Nov. 8, at which point they had already raised $52,000 for more banners.

On Nov. 12th, Clay Clark had us speak at the San Antonio ReAwaken America Tour Conference where we raised another $100,000! God is good! So far as on [sic] Dec. 1st we have raised a total of $156,967, the Agees reported in a letter update.

The initiative started in North Texas and is now spreading all across the country. As of Dec. 1, some 19 billboards were up and active, and another 20-30 more were expected to be done by Dec. 6.

Local news in Sioux Falls, S.D., reported that two controversial billboards from Banners4Freedom appeared in that area right around Christmastime.

We ended up raising 30 thousand dollars in two days without even requesting that to happen. The people just saw it and they wanted to get behind it, Robert Agee reportedly told Dakota News Now.

On the website, it shows that we have 66, we actually have over 74 billboards up right now.

Apparently some billboard companies are refusing to put up the banners because of the messages they contain.

Originally my wife and I started contacting these companies and of course, we go straight to the big name billboard companies, like Clear Channel and Lemar, Robert added. Some of the bigger billboard companies were not willing to put this message out.

More related news about covid shots be found at ChemicalViolence.com.

Sources for this article include:

Banners4Freedom.com

Brighteon.com

DakotaNewsNow.com
(Natural News) Any non-corporate, non-mainstream media news outlet in recent years has been hit with a so-called fact check from the social media behemoths that now serve as info-gatekeepers for the globalists, including the esteemed British Medical Journal.

In print since 1840, The BMJ, as it is now known, is one of the civilized worlds oldest peer-reviewed medical journals, but even this publication is no longer immune from being attacked by the global-corporate media censors when the outlet publishes information outside of the allowable groupthink when it comes to COVID-19.

In November, The BMJ published a piece detailing allegations made by a whistleblower who exposed Pfizers shoddy, curb-cutting pivotal research that allowed the vaccine maker to quickly get its jab authorized for emergency use in the United States. Specifically, according to a summary of the article, Revelations of poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry out Pfizers pivotal covid-19 vaccine trial raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight.

The piece noted that Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla pledged in the fall of 2020, As Ive said before, we are operating at the speed of science, in updating the world on when we could expect his companys vaccine to be approved.

But, as The BMJ reported, speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety.

The legacy journal added:

A regional director who was employed at the research organisation Ventavia Research Group has told The BMJ that the company falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizers pivotal phase III trial. Staff who conducted quality control checks were overwhelmed by the volume of problems they were finding. After repeatedly notifying Ventavia of these problems, the regional director, Brook Jackson, emailed a complaint to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Ventavia fired her later the same day. Jackson has provided The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails.

After the article, a Facebook-contracted fact-checker called Lead Stories published what amounted to a hit piece that contained no actual refutations of the information provided in The BMJ whistleblower article, just some nefarious references to unnamed medical experts and other pabulum  no actual data refuting the whistleblowers claims. In fact, the fact-check piece was absurdly headlined: Fact Check: The British Medical Journal Did NOT Reveal Disqualifying And Ignored Reports Of Flaws In Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trials.

Among Lead Storys claims:

Medical experts say the claims arent serious enough to discredit data from the clinical trials. (Medical experts? Which medical experts? Shouldnt fact-checkers get them on record? Of course they should, so right away, this smells like BS.)

The FDA said that the allegations dont change the agencys assessment of the vaccines safety. (So what? That doesnt mean the whistleblower is wrong. This is typical smoke/mirrors.)

A spokesperson for Texas-based Ventavia Research Group wrote in a November 10, 2021, email to Lead Stories that BMJ did not seek comment in advance of the report. (Again, so what? Pfizer would have simply denied the allegations.) If it had, it would have been told the employees report was investigated but found wanting. (Define found wanting. Again, this is not a refutation of the employees claims.)

The BMJs editors fired off a letter to Facebooks founder and CEO, 2020 election-fixer Mark Zuckerberg, listing all of the nonsensical non-fact-checks contained in Lead Storys report, demanding that the platform remove the fact-check and allow the article to be shared again. Also, the editors ripped the hit piece as inaccurate, incompetent, and irresponsible:

It fails to provide any assertions of fact that The BMJ article got wrong.

It has a nonsensical title: Fact Check: The British Medical Journal Did NOT Reveal Disqualifying And Ignored Reports Of Flaws In Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trials.

The first paragraph inaccurately labels The BMJ a news blog.

It contains a screenshot of our article with a stamp over it stating Flaws Reviewed, despite the Lead Stories article not identifying anything false or untrue in The BMJ article.

It published the story on its website under a URL that contains the phrase hoax-alert.

Needless to say, nothing has been done about the phony fact-check, and honestly, its unlikely that anything will be done. But The BMJ has expertly exposed the real hoax here, which is the social media behemoths role in serving as info-gatekeeper for the globalist deep state.

Sources include:

BMJ.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Its become clear that the COVID-19 vaccines are doing next to nothing to stop the spread of the virus, but that isnt stopping Canada from tripling down on them in an authoritarian fashion.

Canadian Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos has told the country to expect vaccine mandates in the coming days, even though the now-spreading omicron variant is less potent than most flu viruses.

I personally think we will get there at some point. I see it coming personally. Not now. I dont think we are there yet. But I think discussions need to be had about mandatory vaccinations because we have to get rid of Covid 19, Duclos said in an interview published in recent days, according to Infowars.

Canadian Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said Friday he believes a mandatory vaccination policy for all citizens is necessary, and will likely be coming to Canada in the months ahead. Help Us: https://t.co/oIPU6az6hO pic.twitter.com/nn719I23p8  Rebel News (@RebelNewsOnline) January 7, 2022

Our people are tired and the only way as we know through COVID19, be it this variant or any future variant, is through vaccination, he claimed, falsely.

This contradicts Fiji Public Health Professor Michael Baker, who told the world in October that you cant vaccinate your way out of an epidemic that is this intense.

For his part, Duclos said that any mandate would be left up to Canadas individual provinces.

Provinces and territories will continue to take decisions that are within their jurisdiction. As a government, we will continue to do everything we can within our federal authority to keep Canadians safe, he said.

His remarks and prediction of mandates were blasted on social media.

Fascist Liberal minister is preparing the ground for draconian violation of our fundamental rights and bodily autonomy. MY BODY DOES NOT BELONG TO THE STATEhttps://t.co/yFD5TbTQe7  Maxime Bernier (@MaximeBernier) January 7, 2022

Bullshit, Trudeau cant give the order as his Federal Employees only have to say they are vaccinated, he wants Premiers to start the war while he hides at home Mandatory vaccinations coming to Canada, say health minister Jean-Yves Duclos https://t.co/OYECVnq3yD #cdnpoli  Rex Glacer (@rexglacer) January 7, 2022

Provinces are likely to introduce mandatory vaccination policies in the coming months to deal with surging COVID-19 caseloads, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said  If youre not engaged yet, now is the time. Stand up, wake up, Canada. https://t.co/d2TvFRXjb4  Free to Fly (@f2fweb) January 7, 2022

MANDATORY VACCINATION OVER MY FOOKING DEAD BODY!!!https://t.co/T4nMAMPXfz  Nancy Mercier  Liberty Patriot ?? (@ArcadiaNancy) January 7, 2022

It seems millions of Canadians are about to become an enemy of the state. This may be the real reason for the recent calls to deploy military in QC/ON ?? is about to discover the price of freedom. Theres no one coming to help. Its up to you citizen.https://t.co/umzilWOTmp  Yukon Strong (@YukonStrong) January 7, 2022

Meanwhile, the Canadian federal government continues to resist pressure to lift its requirement that truckers coming into the country be vaccinated, which is only worsening Canadas supply chain crisis, according to Reuters:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is pushing ahead with a vaccine mandate for international truckers despite increasing pressure from critics who say it will exacerbate driver shortages and drive up the price of goods imported from the United States.

Canada will require all truckers entering from the United States to show proof of vaccination starting on Saturday as part of its fight against COVID-19.

That could force some 16,000, or 10%, of cross-border drivers off the roads, the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) estimates. The government estimates 5% of drivers will be impacted, according to a government source.

During the pandemic, Canada allowed trucks to cross freely, even as the border was essentially closed, because the government did not want to come under assault for allowing Canadians to starve to death. Truckers were considered essential. Now, not so much.

This pandemic will eventually test just how strong  or weak  Western democratic governments really are.

Sources include:

OANN.com

Infowars.com
(Natural News) In July, Natural News founder and editor Mike Adams reported on the Biden regimes intent to send strike forces of government agents into American cities and communities to ensure compliance with COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

The mandate had not yet been issued by King Biden, but it was obvious that the regime was already drafting the order and vetting it through various government legal agencies like the very politicized Justice Department.

Our work doesnt stop there and we are going to continue to press to get 12-18-year olds vaccinated thats one of the reasons why we initiated these strike forces to go into communities, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki admitted to reporters during a briefing.

Watch here:

Adams explained:

Strike forces is a military term that refers to armed squads who intend to destroy their target. In this case, the target is every American who refuses to be injected with spike protein bioweapons. The government has declared war on the American people.

Deployed domestically, these militarized strike forces will consist of FEMA enforcers and almost certainly armed federal agents. These might be more accurately called death squads, and their goal is to either inject people with deadly bioweapons or medically kidnap them and take them away to FEMAs covid death camps where they can be exterminated quietly, without making a scene on the street.

Anyone who resists this with a firearm will likely be executed on sight and labeled a domestic terrorist.

Now, Democrats  the real party of domestic terrorism  are taking their cue from this lawless regime, as evidenced by a bill introduced in Washington state that literally authorizes local health officials, at their discretion, to form strike forces so they can round up unvaccinated Americans and detain them for an unspecified amount of time, presumably until they are force-vaccinated, in special camps.

NewsPunch has the details:

Democrats in Washington State have introduced a new bill that will authorize the detainment of residents as young as 5 years old in Covid concentration camps, for failing to comply with the states draconian vaccine mandate.

If passed, WAC 246-100 will allow local health officers at his other sole discretion to issue an emergency detention order causing a person or group of persons to be immediately detained for purposes of isolation or quarantine.

The legislation also allows local health officials to commandeer police officers to assist them in this blatantly unconstitutional act, which is akin to what Democrats did to Japanese-Americans at the start of World War II (despite Democrats today pretending to denounce it).

According to W 246-100-040, a local health officer may invoke the powers of police officers, sheriffs, constables, and all other officers and employees of any political subdivisions within the jurisdiction of the health department to enforce immediately orders given to effectuate the purposes of this section in accordance with the provisions of RCW 43.20.050(4) and 70.05.120.

The emergency detention order essentially legalizes kidnapping and false imprisonment in the state of Washington, all under the phony guise of public health and safety. The detention is for a period not to exceed ten days, but, as News Punch notes, a judge can extend the imprisonment for a period not to exceed thirty days if the individual or family kidnapped by the state refuses to get the jab.

And if this legislation happens to pass legal muster, somehow, in federal courts, the next step these Democrat Nazis will take is permanent imprisonment of vaccine non-compliant citizens.

This has gone beyond merely authoritarian. The goal of the government is extermination. Mass depopulation by any means necessary. This is a declared war against humanity, Adams further explained.

Psaki didnt use the phrase, strike forces by accident. Thats not a phrase to be used lightly, either. It has a very specific meaning thats all about using militarized squads to destroy intended targets, he adds.

Watch his mid-July situation update for further details:

And heres Adams Situation Update podcast from today, which delves further into the strike force attack on Americans:

Sources include:

NaturalNews.com

NewsPunch.com
(Natural News) Someone on Twitter claims that he is now being forced to mask up on virtual Zoom call meetings with his company because one of his colleagues is petrified of unmasked human faces.

The man (watch below) says that a company-wide email was sent out to all employees informing them that, effective immediately, no noses and mouths are to be seen on the webcam any longer.

Masks required during zoom meetings. please tell me this is fake ?? pic.twitter.com/k5kKpUsiOV  Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) January 4, 2022

I work from home and today my boss sent an email saying that the whole team needs to wear masks during our Zoom meetings because one of the employees has a fear of unmasked people,' the man states.

Im trying to be respectful but

He then shows a screenshot of an email that reads as follows:

Team,

I am writing you all today to inform you of a new protocol for our staff zoom [sic] meetings. Moving forward, everyone will be required to wear a mask during our meetings. One of our team members has a fear of unmasked people, and I want to make sure everyone feels safe and comfortable. This requirement is effective immediately.

Best,

Ashleigh LeighAnn Davidson-Greene

Covid paranoia is spreading mass formation psychosis like a virus

Now, it could be that this man invented the story and sent an email to himself. This writer was unable to find any information online about an Ashleigh LeighAnn Davidson-Greene.

At the same time, crazier things have happened throughout the plandemic that would make this alleged new protocol unsurprising.

As we reported back in the summer of 2020, a professor at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City was accused of being a racist because she was caught resting her eyes during a Zoom town hall meeting about anti-racism.

Apparently one must be fully engaged with anti-white rhetoric at all times or else she hates black and brown people, which is what this professor was basically accused of signaling with her tiredness.

About a month later, all employees at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) were told that they had to make up on Zoom calls to set a good example for the public.

Even though none of the employees were ever in the same room with one another, their unmasked faces appearing on a computer or phone screen could scare someone into thinking that a real-life unmasked person possibly harboring the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) was present.

This is what you call mass formation psychosis and it really is happening in some places, or at least did happen early on in the plandemic. Because of this, the mans claim above is hardly far-fetched.

He doesnt want his computer to get a virus, joked one person on Twitter about the Zoom mask mandate. Whats the problem?

So tell everyone you have a fear of masked people, suggested another.

Why would you do that to your whole team over one person? asked someone else. Well, I always said you didnt need a brain to be a manager.

Even funnier when, apparently, he prefers naked Zoom meetings, said someone else about the man in the video who appears to not be wearing a shirt.

Not a single comment shows any support for wearing a mask while on a Zoom call because, quite frankly, doing so is utter insanity, apparently even to the most covid-deranged zombies out there.

Im required to wear gloves, a mask, and face shield while working from home, someone else joked. I live alone.

More news about plandemic hysteria can be found at Fascism.news.

Sources for this article include:

Twitter.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) The pro-life group March for Life has called off its annual Rose Dinner Gala expo due to COVID related complications, which we now know occurred because the group was demanding that attendees show proof of vaccination for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19).

The March for Life website explained in a January 5 website update post that:

In order to attend the Rose Dinner Gala or Capitol Hill 101, those 12 years and older must provide the Renaissance DC Downtown Hotel with proof of identification and either (1) proof of receiving one COVID shot by January 15; or (2) a medical or religious exemption together with proof of a negative COVID test within the last 24 hours.

Keep in mind that Fauci Flu shots contain ingredients made from aborted human fetal tissue, which goes against everything March for Life claims to stand for.

The event was scheduled to take place in Washington, which now has an indoor venue jab mandate. To stay compliant with it, March for Life reneged on its core values and sided with Mystery Babylon, to its detriment.

All of the coronavirus injections currently available in the U.S. were developed and / or tested with cells from aborted babies, reported LifeSiteNews.

Many of the more than 60 exhibitors slated to have been present at the Expo have invested in plane tickets, hotel reservations, and produced promotional items to be handed out to the activists visiting their booths.

March for Life has turned into a pro-death cult

Back in the fall, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano spoke out about how Chinese Virus injections are loaded with ingredients derived from murdered babies.

He further chastised the far-left Pope Francis for pushing the abortion-laced injections on Catholics and insisting that Jesus would want all of his people to get jabbed.

A medical exemption needs to be in writing from a medical provider and must be accompanied by a negative COVID test in the last 24 hours, March for Life explained on its website about the requirements that needed to be met in order to participate in its pro-life event.

A religious exemption may be stated verbally or provided in writing and must be accompanied by a negative COVID test in the last 24 hours.

PCR, antigen, and other tests available at drugstores are approved. Pictures of negative tests and emails of confirmed negative results are acceptable. Due to high demand, we recommend purchasing a test soon and bringing it from home as tests may not be readily available in Washington, D.C.

It is important to remember that Chinese Disease shots do not prevent infection or spread. At best, according to the government, they make symptoms milder, though there is really not proof to back this claim, either.

Most of the people getting sick now with covid are the fully vaccinated, which seems to prove the opposite of what the government claims. And yet March for Life has decided to embrace the lie and force its members to get injected or be rejected from attendance at its galas.

March for Life is also forcing attendees at its events to wear a mask when not eating or drinking.

March for Life masks and hand sanitizer will be available at the Renaissance D.C. Downtown Hotel and Rally Site, its website further states.

Interestingly, Washington, D.C.s indoor venue vaccine mandate does not apply to houses of worship. It also allows for the reasonable accommodation of those with medical exemptions, though it does not specify what this means.

In essence, March for Life decided of its own volition to not provide reasonable accommodation, and when that backfired it simply canceled its annual event. So much for being pro-life.

More stories about Fauci Flu shot ingredients can be found at Abortions.news.

Sources for this article include:

LifeSiteNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Welcome to Thunder Dome, also known as the Covidian Complex, where over sixty percent of Americans have already begun participating in a death trap game where they allow Big Pharma and Big Tech to control all of their major body functions using nano-technology delivered by inoculations. Now, one of the inventors of those very mRNA vaccines, Dr. Robert Malone, is blowing the whistle on the whole establishment, and this is NO conspiracy theory.

Remember when the terrorists were supposed to be of Arabian descent and had such a hatred for our country that they blew up buildings with airplane fuel? What happened to all that terrorism, did it just STOP when corona influenza was invented? The Covidian Complex knows that vaccines ARE the new terrorists. The new reign of terror is not Covid or some brown-skinned psychopaths from the Middle East, no.

Terrorism hidden inside the Covid Vaccines

The new world terrorists dont have faces or flags, and they dont blow themselves up or declare any religion. They are the fuel of political warfare, these new terrorists. There are billions of them hiding inside Trojan Horses in the form of graphine oxide, and they terrorize every working system of the human body.

Dr. Malone exposes the WEF, World Economic Forum, for leading the charge with Covid misinformation thats used by governments, hospital administrators, doctors, nurses, scientists, health agencies and news institutions (like fake news MSM) around the world in order to perpetuate the scamdemic.

Malone said the WEF advice that tells all the pharma goons and vaccine pushers what to say, exactly, was the nail in the coffin for him figuring out the these gene therapy shots (and Covid in general) are key to the full on globalist totalitarian vision.

Dr. Malone exposes how thoroughly more than half the US population has been manipulated by Covid propaganda and the vaccine shills

Dr. Malone is one of the most credible people in the world when it comes to infectious diseases and vaccination effects, yet now that hes alerting the world to all the Covid scams and vaccine dangers, somehow hes not credible anymore, all according to mainstream media and the Covidian Complex. Reuters and Twitter are on the attack to take down Dr. Malone and everything he says as he blows the whistle on the whole plandemic.

Were basically in a guerilla warfare situation and we have to play it smart, says Dr. Malone. The vaccine shills are going after the children now, who arent even at risk from Covid or its variants, and the vaccines themselves are deadly, leading to blood clots, myocarditis and various central nervous system malfunctions.

Fauci loves to talk data, but the data he refers to is all flawed and fictional, so of course he loves to refer to that as the science behind what he says, but it most certainly is not. If we had valid data, Dr. Malone tells us, and proper clinical trials and studies were done on these gene therapy jabs, then we certainly would NOT have mandates for these experimental vaccine products. Its all contrary to the Nuremberg Code. Now all the pharma shills want to put the children and babies directly in harms way.

Meme posted by Robert Malone on Twitter before they banned him:

Heres the full interview, worth the watch:

Add to your favorites and bookmark Vaccines.news for updates on experimental vaccines and boosters that can cause blood clots, ADE and other horrific side effects.

Sources for this article include:

Pandemic.news

TruthWiki.org

NaturalNews.com

ZeroHedge.com

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) The image above underscores the danger of big tech and MSMs refusal to allow any opinion other than their own narrative to be discussed, debated, searched for or shared, with social media terminating or suspending accounts with claims of misinformation, to articles and data that later the MSM and social media are forced to acknowledge were truths.

(Article by Susan Duclos republished from AllNewsPipeline.com)

What was called misinformation or disinformation just a year ago, considered conspiracies, have been proven true, which brings us to the new mass censorship push by big tech and social media, where phone services are editing out the links of certain Independent Media sites from their text messages, social media is once again terminating accounts of politicians on the right, online pay services are once again cutting off websites from using their services, and the biggest names in tech and largest search engine is deliberately under-ranking anything that questions the official narrative of the day or week, and removing their ads from dozens of articles and pages they claim are dangerous, derogatory or harmful because they discuss issues they dont want people to see.

Well be discussing all of the above as we show why 2022 will be the defining year of the information war and the critical importance of not only Independent Media, but even more importantly, Independent Media readers.

TECH OVERTHROWING THE LIBERTY OF AMERICA

A quick note on censorship because there is a difference between banning/blocking people for their opinion or political ideology, and doing so because they deliberately violated terms of services.

Example: Twitter, you cannot threaten to shoot up a school or business and still keep your account, because part of their terms of service explicitly forbid it and the same goes with threatening harm to other people. With that said, when an account is terminated without violating clear guidelines, that is censorship.

Recently Joe Rogan interviewed Dr. Robert Malone, who is is an innovator in the mRNA vaccine technology used in COVID vaccines, where they discussed a number of false assertions by the CDC, MSM, and Biden regime, as well as the term mass information psychosis.

Dr. Malone was banned from Twitter, a day before filming that interview.

Dr. Robert Malone played a key role in the invention of the mRNA vaccine, the type of vaccine that is being administered to many Americans in an effort to stave off COVID-19. Malone has often been critical of the use of the vaccines, as well those in the media and government who support them. He shared a great deal of research on his Twitter account, which had more than half a million followers. We all knew it would happen eventually, Malone said on his Substack. Today it did. Over a half million followers gone in a blink of an eye. That means I must have been on the mark, so to speak. Over the target. It also means we lost a critical component in our fight to stop these vaccines being mandated for children and to stop the corruption in our governments, as well as the medical-industrial complex and pharmaceutical industries.

After the interview, search engine users, of the worlds largest search engine, Goggle (Yes, that was on purpose) noticed and captured on video, the real-time censorship of the term mass information psychosis, used by Malone in the Rogan interview.

The video of the censorship is shown over at Twitchy in a piece titled Just. WOW > We are witnessing Googles real-time censorship of the term mass information psychosis as mentioned by Dr. Robert Malone (watch THIS!).

The person that shared the video, shared it on Twitter with the message  We are witnessing Googles real-time censorship of the term mass formation psychosis as mentioned by @RWMaloneMD on @joerogan podcast. Dont let them get away with it! Listen to the episode for yourself.

In the spirit of fighting this information battle, we agree with the suggestion to listen to the episode for yourself, which is why it is shown directly below.

Notice the use of the Rumble version of the interview. Two different versions of the YouTube version were removed, so we didnt want to chance the removal before folks got to see it.

Since we are talking about this particular big tech company, please note the screen shot below, from ANPs main page, which lists the titles of the latest articles from news and alternative news, some hot news around the web, and a list of top websites. No actual articles are published on that page, just the headlines, and as can be seen by the huge blank space at the top, and two on the sidebar, those pages have been demonetized, meaning no ads allowed from that ad service.

Read more at: AllNewsPipeline.com
(Natural News) Sen. Brad Hoylman, a Democrat, is pushing new legislation in New York that would make it a crime to share misinformation on social media.

If passed, S7568 would Hold Tech Companies Accountable for Promoting Vaccine Misinformation & Hate Speech on Social Media. This includes a false statement of fact or fraudulent medical theory that is likely to endanger the safety or health of the public.

It would of course then be up to government officials like Hoylman to decide what constitutes a fact and what constitutes a lie. As we have seen, this tends to vary based on a politicians political affiliation.

The bill has not yet advanced from committee and could end up getting killed just like other controversial ones have. It is still a potential threat, though, and New Yorkers need to know about it in order to oppose it.

According to Hoylmans office, the legislation focus[es] on the active choices these companies make when implementing algorithms designed to promote the most controversial and harmful content.

Holyman himself also made reference to last years insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 as substantiating the need for such a bill because the rioters supposedly used social media to plan their attack.

Leftists cant stand free speech and want it eliminated from American life

Hoylman conveniently ignored making any mention about Antifa or Black Lives Matter (BLM), though, even though these two domestic terrorist groups have committed much more violence over the years  and used social media to do it.

Even though the circumstances surrounding George Floyds death have largely been misreported by the corporate-backed media  meaning the official story itself is misinformation  Hoylman does not see any need to try to silence the propaganda that led to violent BLM and Antifa riots all across the nation.

It is clear, based on all of this, that Hoylmans bill was specifically crafted to target his and his fellow Democrats political opponents. It has nothing to do with stymieing the spread of misinformation, in other words.

It also takes aim at anti-vaxxers, who are quickly becoming enemy No. 1 in these Disunited States of America, where any opposition or even skepticism to Big Pharma is quickly becoming a criminal offense.

Even just sharing official data on vaccine injuries and deaths from the governments VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) database is a big no-no and something that Hoylman wants to punish.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) learned this the hard way recently after her Twitter account was banned for containing links to VAERS data.

Hoylman claims that Twitter and other social media platforms need to engage in this type of blatant censorship because to do nothing about it has real life costs to public health and safety.

So when social media push anti-vaccine falsehoods and help domestic terrorists plan a riot at the U.S. Capitol, they must be held accountable, Hoylman insists.

If Hoylmans bill somehow passes, New Yorks attorney general and lawyers for New York municipalities, along with individuals, businesses and associations harmed by this kind of free speech, would be allowed to sue in state and federal courts for damages.

Not only social media platforms are at risk but so are social media users. Anything deemed likely to endanger the public, no matter who posts or promotes it, could potentially be sued.

George Washington University (GWU) Prof. Jonathan Turley called Hoylmans proposed legislation perfectly Orwellian. He added that Hoylmans press release contained a mix of algorithmic conspiracy theory and anti-free speech doublespeak.

The latest news about the lefts crusade to stamp out free speech can be found at FirstAmendment.news.

Sources for this article include:

LawEnforcementToday.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) A pre-print study that shows positive health outcomes when taking low-dose ivermectin prophylactically has been banned from Twitter for being misleading.

The social media giant has decided that this actual science showing a 68 percent reduction in mortality when taking ivermectin cannot be allowed on the platform  though no clear explanation was given as to why, which suggests the fact checkers simply do not want people learning the truth about ivermectin.

The study involved 220,517 people in the Brazilian city of Itajai who were offered free ivermectin from the government. The goal of the research was to determine the impact of taking ivermectin for a Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) infection.

It turns out that in the real world, taking ivermectin  or what the lying mainstream media and FDA have been calling horse paste  helps to save lives from severe covid symptoms and death.

Each participants baseline personal and medical information was collected in order to dispense the appropriate dosages of prophylactic ivermectin, which was determined to be 0.2 mg per kilogram of body weight.

The participants were told to take this amount of ivermectin for two consecutive days every 15 days.

Among the 220,517 people in Itajai who were offered the remedy, 133,051, or 60.3 percent, accepted it while 87,466, or 39.7 percent, declined. Those in the group that declined were evaluated as control subjects.

In the end, it was learned that regular use of ivermectin led to a 68% reduction in COVID-19 mortality. After adjusting for residual variables, that percentage jumped to 70 percent.

Further, hospitalizations in the ivermectin group were 56 percent lower compared to the control group. When adjusting for those same residual variables, the hospitalization rate in the ivermectin group were determined to be 67 percent lower.

These results indicate that medical-based optional prescription, citywide covered ivermectin can have a positive impact in the healthcare system, the studys authors wrote.

Twitter is committing mass murder by preventing people from learning the truth about ivermectin

This is great news in the fight against covid, and is especially promising because the sample size evaluated was large. Twitter disagrees, though, and will not allow people to access the study on its platform.

This is despite the fact that the study is the worlds largest, according to co-author Dr. Pierre Kory, to look at the repurposing of the Nobel Prize-winning drug in the treatment of the Fauci Flu.

The paper meticulously collected data from hundreds of thousands of patients [and found] massive reductions in hospitalization & death, Dr. Kory tweeted before Twitter interjected to remove the misleading information. The Controversy [is thus] over.

Numerous other studies have shown promising results for ivermectin as well, demonstrating that it is exceptionally safe and powerfully effective. In fact, ivermectin is arguably the safest, cheapest and most effective way to stop covid, yet it is strictly forbidden in the United States.

According to Twitter, which claims to be the one true oracle of all things science, publishing real-world data that favors the use of ivermectin constitutes misinformation. Anyone who tries will have the tweet blocked from being replied to, shared or liked.

Wow, Twitter cant be bothered to explain why they disagree with the methodology of this research paper, tweeted Alachua Chronicle editor Jennifer Cabrera about Twitters censorship of the new Brazilian study.

They just label it misinformation. That probably means you should read it.

In the comment section over at LifeSiteNews, one person suggested that ivermectin is far safer than the DNA-mRNA vaccines being peddled by the government.

If FDA authorizes EUA vaccine use  they are GROSSLY negligent by not giving ivermectin a similar EUA, this same person added.

More related news about social media censorship can be found at Censorship.news.

Sources for this article include:

ResearchGate.net

LifeSiteNews.com

NaturalNews.com
In January, NASA warns that at least five asteroids will approach Earth, one of which is the size of Big Ben.

According to the space agency, at least five asteroids are nearing Earth in January, one of which is the size of a huge skyscraper. The study was issued by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a research development facility that is federally funded by NASA and operated by the California Institute of Technology.

JPL identified the alien objects using its Asteroid Watch dashboard, which identifies and tracks asteroids and comets scheduled to approach in close contact with Earth.

Smaller than a planet but larger than a meteoroid, asteroids are stony objects that circle the Sun and are smaller than a planet.

Related Article: Massive Asteroid Size of Golden Gate Bridge Will Pass by Earth on January 18



NEOs

Near-Earth Objects, or NEOs, constitute potentially catastrophic risks to our planet. An asteroid or comet that passes close to the Earth's orbit is a near-Earth object. Technically, a NEO has a course that gets it within 1.3 astronomical units of the Sun and hence within 0.3 astronomical units of the Earth's orbit, or around 45 million kilometers.

NEOs are created by objects that have been subjected to gravitational perturbations from surrounding planets, causing them to orbit closer to the Earth.

The International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) and the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG) were founded in 2014 due to United Nations-endorsed proposals. They serve as vital worldwide tools for improving planetary defense cooperation.

Planetary Defense

In 2022, NASA launched a refrigerator-sized spacecraft, setting it on a collision path with an asteroid - and it's all on purpose. If a large space rock is on our way, this planned self-destruction will inform us if smashing a spaceship into an asteroid is enough to preserve Earth in the future.

NASA deliberately launched a refrigerator-sized spacecraft setting it on a collision course with an asteroid. It will be determined whether crashing a spaceship into an asteroid is adequate to safeguard Earth in the future if a giant space rock comes our way.

DART, or the Double Asteroid Redirect Mission, and its objective is clear. The spacecraft will attempt to deflect an asteroid in space for the first time. The premise is very simple: DART will slam into the object, moving at around 15,000 miles per hour, transferring its velocity to the asteroid.

This body slam should be enough to deflect the asteroid a fraction of a percent off its original path. The asteroid DART aims at does not pose a threat to Earth, and the mission has no way of changing that.

The notion of planetary defense, which protects Earth against asteroids or other space objects that may cross paths with our planet, is an essential aspect of NASA's overall mission. It's also the aspect of NASA's mission that tends to pique the public's interest and Hollywood's attention the most.

Films like Armageddon and Deep Impact have depicted a variety of NASA strategies for preventing an asteroid or comet from colliding with our planet.

Although humans journey to the space rock that would bring our approaching death in both films, this scenario is unlikely to occur due to the huge complexity and safety difficulties such a trip would face.

Also Read: NASA Plans to Deflect Asteroids to Defend the Planet from Cosmic Disaster

For more Space news, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
Whale watchers walk the shore of Race Point Beach April 15, 2019 near Provincetown, Massachusetts. - The beach is a popular spot for whale lovers to spend time trying to get a glimpse of the North Atlantic right whale. (Photo : Photo credit: DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images)

A five-decade old discovery of teeth was re-investigated and discovered to comprise the bones of a land-dwelling whale from an archaic species present exclusively in Pakistan.

The finding is yet the first finding of this prehistoric mammal in North America, and it's a relative of certain other wandering whales in the Remingtonocetidae genus.

Furthermore, this new study opens up the possibility of similar species being found around the planet.

The Discovery of Walking Whales in North America Coastline

While it's remarkable to consider that, as massive as numerous dinosaurs got, the biggest illustration of the benefits of size to a sophisticated living species is still present today in the shape of the blue whale.

However, the whale ancestry had to undergo numerous detours prior to actually arriving at a blowhole and flippers, which also included limbs and a lengthy, nearly crocodilian snout due to its animal species background.

A premolar of a novel variety of wandering whale was discovered in 1973 in a granite pit in Castle Hayne, North Carolina.

During the year 2020, a group of multinational experts discovered that it more strongly resembles the Remingtonocetidae specimens discovered in Pakistan, rather than other ancient whale taxa believed to have lived near the ocean of what is now North America.

Remingtonocetids thrived in the Oceanic Crust, a peninsula that flourished for half a billion millennia along coast of Gondwana, a historical landmass that encompassed all of the territory that later become Australia, Africa, Antarctica, South America, and India.

The Tethys Ocean was a minuscule proportion of what it used to by the moment this distinct genus was identified, potentially permitting the traditionally maritime creature to abandon its Indo-Pakistan home and journey as far north as North Africa.

In 2008, Egyptian paleontologists uncovered a walking-whale in North Africa, and then another species was identified in Peru in 2019.

The creatures averaged roughly 10 feet in height and had formidable fangs that were thought to be sufficient to permit the creatures to hunt on alligators.

Also read: Paddleboarders Discovered Bizarre-Looking Giant Sunfish Washed Ashore in California

Experts Argues on Ancient Animals' Origin

More so, according to Professor Jonathan Geisler statement after the discovery of Phiomicetus, an Egyptian-based walking-whale, he stated that, "This specimen actually begins to convey a perspective about when whales went out of the Indo-Pakistan Sea territory and managed to start scattering around the planet."

However, to some experts instead of phiomicetus, Uhen argues the best dental resemblance is Remingtonocetus harudiensus, which was found in the 1980s by a couple of experts who characterized these unusual legged-whales.

If the latter is correct, it means that although some mammals traversed the Tethys to emerge around Egypt, or the entire Eocene Atlantic Sea to reach in Peru, a few of these proto-whales landed in North America directly from Pakistan.

"The very first stage of cetacean development is, for even the most least, the narrative of modification to the intertidal zone," argues George Mason University writer and paleontologist Mark Uhen.

"All species of middle Eocene cetaceans show changes in eating, sensory systems, and locomotor systems."

"The possible identification of a remingtonocetid from North America stretches a third genus of proto whales throughout the Atlantic and shows that remingtonocetids' hydrodynamic skills may have been somewhat established than originally believed."

Also read: Beavers Head Towards the Arctic Tundra as Heat Due to Climate Change Rises
Young people look at the rare sight of the setting sun appearing as crescent as the Moon moves in alignment between the Sun and the Earth during a partial solar eclipse, as seen from Manila Bay on January 26, 2009. The partial eclipse was visible from the southern third of Africa, Madagascar, Australia, Southeast India, Southeast Asia and Indonesia. (Photo : Photo credit: GIL NARTEA/AFP via Getty Images)

The two orbs humans' glimpse in the horizon throughout the daytime and nighttime, have a greater impact on Planet's creatures and vegetation than anyone might well realize.

Gravitational Pull Affects Activity on Earth

While gravity field of the Celestial bodies does seem to effect plant and wildlife activities, according to latest analysis the particular methods by which transpires persist to be unknown.

As per to a meta-analysis of prior studies, magnetic waves can influence how flora and fauna sleep, move, and develop - while other stimuli are taken into account.

Whereas the Sun's and Moon 's electromagnetic waves are quite modest, about a millionth of the force of Planet's rotation when merged.

The research reveals that these tidal currents are nevertheless a serious factor when considering microorganisms' behavioral patterns.

Cristiano de Mello Gallep from Brazil's University of Campinas (UNICAMP) once explained that, "All stuff on Earth, whether living and inanimate, suffers the impacts of the Sun and Moon's gravity gradient represented in the form of waves."

The researchers focused on three earlier investigations in specific, when geomagnetic tide analysis was done.

In year 1965 investigation on isopods, researchers discovered that the organisms' movement movements followed the flow of the sea's centrifugal tides even after they were relocated to waters in the laboratory with a synthetic tides.

"The periodical oscillations have two consecutive intervals and are regulated periodically and yearly by the movements of these two astronomical objects; all species on Earth have developed in this environment."

Additional reference was a marine proliferation and larval generation research conducted in 1985, which demonstrated that coral growth and larvae production matched local magnetic tides under the presence of the Celestial bodies.

Furthermore, 2014 research on seedling growth in sunflowers provides signs that sprouting was in sync with lunar and solar tidal trends, which was supported by fresh tests conducted by the writers of the meta-analysis.

Also read: Scientists Warn for Solar Storms That Could Cause "Massive Blackouts" and Threaten Life on Earth

Sun and Moon Influence Living Organism on Earth?

The experts also alluded to a number of earlier investigations.

"The statistics indicate that, in the utter lack of all other percussive factors including lighting or temperature, nearby force of gravity waves is adequate to assemble these living systems' cyclical habits," Gallep asserts.

In the instance of the isopods, in particular, the creatures were seen swimming in sequences that mirrored the magnetic waves of the habitat from which they were removed, even after being brought to the laboratory over several nights.

"This data calls into doubt the legitimacy of so-called free-run studies, in which multiple ecological parameters are managed but centrifugal vibrations are ignored. As these oscillations persist and may alter the activity of live creatures."

The impact of these waves on flora and fauna has been discussed in academic papers for several decades, however the goal of the current meta-study was to bring awareness to its iniquitousness and the necessity to address it more broadly in academic efforts.

We know that the Large Hadron Collider must be modestly but frequently modified to allow for gravitational waves, and that these delicate pressures can also impact individual sleeping patterns, particularly when we are unaware throughout the day and night.

Gallep finally ended the interview by expounding that, "What we tried to demonstrate in the study is that force of gravity tides is a noticeable and powerful factor that has always impacted the repetitive activity of these animals."

Also read: Does Size Matter? How Deadly a Meteorite is Depends More on Its Composition, Say Experts
AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS - DECEMBER 02: The passenger of a flight from South Africa is tested for the Coronavirus at Amsterdam Schiphol airport on December 2, 2021 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Netherlands and other nations worldwide temporarily banned most travellers from South Africa after a new variant of Covid-19 named Omicron was discovered. Omicron has sparked worries around the world that it could resist vaccinations and prolong the nearly two-year Covid-19 pandemic. (Photo : Photo by Pierre Crom/Getty Images)

A new study suggests that nose swabs alone might not properly detect Omicron variant in the early days of Covid-19 infection, and may need saliva for rapid tests. However, some experts disagree to this concept.

According to a group of US researchers, rapid tests with nasal swabs didn't detect Omicron for one to two days after initial infection, but a throat swab did. Four participants spread infection before their rapid tests showed as positive, the researchers said.

The study which is yet to undergo peer review seeks to reassess new variants of concern and describe the discordance in saliva SARS-CoV-2 PCR and nasal rapid antigen test results during the early infectious period.

Their findings add to emerging evidences that nose swab alone is not as effective in detecting Omicron than simultaneous throat and nose swabs.

Throat swabs are "more complicated"

According to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), self-collection of throat swabs was "more complicated" than nasal swabs, and should be taken and collected as per their instructions by a trained healthcare provider, as per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance.

The retrospective cohort study identified 30 participants from five workplaces in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco who were diagnosed with Covid-19 between December 1-31, 2021 during Omicron outbreaks, despite being fully-vaccinated and had received a booster dose.

In a sub-group of five participants, virus particles in saliva were found to have peaked one to two days before they were detected by a nasal rapid test, the researchers said.

Dr Michael Mina, a former associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, said of the findings: "Numerous reports show saliva comes up earlier and with Omicron there have been MANY anecdotes that throat swabs (which interact with saliva!) are turning positive BEFORE nasal swabs."

The study suggests people become infectious when saliva turns positive, he added.

Also read: Severe COVID-19 Symptoms From Omicron Could be More Dangerous Compared to Other Strains

Throat swabs could "potentially" outperform a nasal rapid test

Dr Peter M B English, a recently-retired consultant in communicable disease control, said in Twitter that the findings were "further confirmation that nose swabs alone do not effectively detect the Omicron variant. Test kit instructions which do not include throat swabs should be amended immediately."

In addition, Dan Lorremore, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and the BioFrontiers Institute, note that a rapid test using saliva could "potentially" outperform a nasal rapid test, but it wasn't clear from the data available how much earlier it would be able to detect it.

On the other hand, chief of the infectious diseases division of New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center Roy Gulick told Today that he couldn't recommend people using throat swabs.

"It's just not the way the tests have been authorized," he said. "Please don't take matters into your own hands. We need to wait to see if any of these tests will be valid to do a throat swab as well."

He added that if an at-home rapid test is positive, then "believe it". If tests say otherwise, then getting a lab test is necessary.

Also read: Chinese City With 1.2 Million Residents Locked Down After 3 Positive Cases Emerged
Robert Durst, who was facing charges in the 1982 death of his wife, Western Connecticut State University graduate Kathie Durst, has died.

Durst, 78, died Monday in a California state prison hospital, his attorney Chip Lewis told the Associated Press. Lewis said Durst, who previously had COVID-19, died of natural causes after suffering from numerous health issues.

Robert Abrams, an attorney representing Kathie Dursts family, said Monday they will continue their pursuit for justice in her death.

Although Robert Durst has died, the ongoing investigation into those who helped him cover up her murder continues, Abrams said in a statement. On January 31, 2022, the 40th anniversary of Kathies murder, we will provide a further update. In the interim, please say a prayer for Kathie and his other victims.

After Robert Durst was charged with Kathie Dursts death in October, Abrams and Kathie Dursts family vowed to hold accountable those they believe were involved in an effort to cover up the killing.

I think we basically made it very clear that were gonna go after everybody  lawyers, prosecutors, police, friends of Durst  who got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to participate in this cover up. Sometime in December, were going to present all of the evidence that we have, Abrams said in a November news conference in New York.

Abrams has not released any of the evidence he mentioned during that press conference. At the time, Abrams said much of the evidence he and the family had collected was shared with Westchester District Attorney Miriam Rocah.

On Monday, Rocah said her office was in the process of working with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to have Durst transferred to New York when he died.

After 40 years spent seeking justice for her death, I know how upsetting this news must be for Kathleen Dursts family, Rocah said in a statement. We had hoped to allow them the opportunity to see Mr. Durst finally face charges for Kathleens murder because we know that all families never stop wanting closure, justice and accountability.

Rocah said her office plans to hold a press conference in the coming days to release more information about the case they had built against Durst.

In September, a California jury found Durst guilty of the 2000 killing of a close friend, Susan Berman. During the Los Angeles trial, prosecutors said Robert Durst killed Berman because she was planning to come forward with information in his wifes disappearance. Berman had defended Robert Durst when he faced public allegations that he may have played a role in what happened to his wife.

Weeks after he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for Bermans homicide, authorities in New York charged Durst with the death of his wife, who disappeared after leaving a gathering with friends in Newtown in 1982.

A state police investigator alleged in charging documents that Robert Durst killed his wife at or near their home in South Salem, N.Y., records show.

In court documents filed by Kathie Dursts family in 2017 that sought to have her declared dead, they alleged Robert Durst was abusive and caused his wife to be hospitalized after one incident. The family alleged that the couple had fought the night she disappeared.

Kathie Dursts family said she was about to finish medical school to become a pediatrician at the time. She was close to her siblings and her mother, and would not have abruptly ended contact with them, according to the court documents.

Robert Durst was first charged in Bermans homicide in 2015 when the final episode of the HBO documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, was set to air. The series focused on Robert Dursts connection to three deaths in 40 years.

Robert Durst was acquitted in the 2001 killing of a neighbor in Texas, in which the victim was dismembered.

During an interview for the HBO series, Durst went to the bathroom with a microphone apparently still recording and said: What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.
New Castle, PA (16103)

Today

Showers developing during the afternoon with the possibility of a thunderstorm. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. High around 70F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms during the evening followed by occasional showers overnight. Low 54F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
Help support your local hometown newspaper/website. Independent local news reporting matters. Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription, for as little as $3, so we can continue to provide independent local reporting on our communities.
Using August 2021 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Ur
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Cloudy with periods of rain. Low 54F. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Cloudy with periods of rain. Low 54F. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
The economic benefit of the federal government providing all Australians with free rapid antigen tests (RATs)  by identifying asymptomatic positive cases to lower the spread of COVID-19  is highly likely to outweigh the cost saving of not providing the tests, new analysis by Flinders University researchers has revealed.

Following considerable public pressure over the past few weeks, the federal government has announced concession card holders will soon be able to collect up to ten free rapid antigen tests over three months.

Weve developed a model that estimates how cost-effective a policy of government-funded rapid antigen tests for all Australians would be. We found a policy of government-funded rapid antigen tests for all is highly likely to be cost-effective.

How does our analysis work?

We created a decision tree model, which represents the testing pathways for a hypothetical group of people without COVID symptoms. We used it to estimate the number of COVID-positive people isolating before developing symptoms. Its key people isolate as early as possible, to reduce the risk of spread to others.

What did we find?

In the group where everyone had access to free rapid antigen tests, the model estimates this policy would result in successfully isolating an additional 464 people early, compared with a group in which 20% purchased their own rapid antigen tests.

Providing free rapid tests for 10,000 people would cost the government $100,000, but spending less on PCR tests (which are about $150 each) reduces the additional costs to the government to around $52,000.

But the net effect is preventing an additional 464 people from infecting more people, thereby reducing costs to the economy of further infections. The costs of these people isolating only after developing symptoms would likely be far higher than the extra $52,000 spent on tests.

Dividing the $52,000 by the 464 earlier isolating cases gives us an estimate of the cost to the government per additional earlier isolating person with COVID  $112.

The less COVID circulating, the less effective a policy of free rapid antigen tests for all would be. But even with low prevalence, its still highly likely to be cost-effective.

Constraining the spread of COVID is important for many reasons, including avoiding short- and long-term health effects, reducing burden on the health system, and increasing availability of essential workers.

Easy and equitable access to testing is a cornerstone of the public health response to COVID. It also makes economic sense.

The article Free rapid antigen tests makes economic sense for governments, our analysis shows was published today on The Conversation.
A blood test, combined with a risk model based on an individual's history, more accurately determines who is likely to benefit from lung cancer screening than the current U.S. recommendation, according to a study published today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology led by researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

A personalized lung cancer risk assessment, combining a blood test based on a four-marker protein panel developed at MD Anderson and an independent model (PLCO m2012 ) that accounts for smoking history, was more sensitive and specific than the 2021 and 2013 U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) criteria. The study included participants from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial with at least a 10 pack-year smoking history. If implemented, the blood test plus model would have identified 9.2% more lung cancer cases for screening and reduced referral to screening among non-cases by 13.7% compared to the 2021 USPSTF criteria.

We recognize that a small percentage of people who are eligible for lung cancer screening through an annual low-dose CT scan are actually getting screening. Moreover, CT screening is not readily available in most countries. So, our goal, for many years, has been to develop a simple blood test that can be used first to determine need for screening and make screening for lung cancer that much more effective. Our study shows for the first time that a blood test could be useful to determine who may benefit from lung cancer screening." Sam Hanash, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Clinical Cancer Prevention and leader of the McCombs Institute for the Early Detection and Treatment of Cancer

The USPSTF recommends that adults at high risk for lung cancer receive a low-dose CT scan each year, which was shown to reduce lung cancer deaths in the 2011 National Lung Screening Trial (NLST). The 2021 USPSTF criteria applies to adults age 50 to 80 who have at least a 20 pack-year smoking history and currently smoke or have quit within the past 15 years.

Hanash and colleagues developed a blood test incorporating biomarkers that they previously identified as predictive of lung cancer risk. A multicenter team used a blinded study to evaluate the performance of this four-protein marker panel in combination with the PLCO m2012 model, which was independently developed and validated to predict a six-year risk for lung cancer among individuals who currently smoke or smoked formerly.

"When we began work on a blood test, there were many different types of markers," Hanash said. "We've done multiple analyses over the past decade to come up with a cost-effective test that's simple, yet robust, which has been the guiding principle of our research."

To test the combination of blood markers with the PLCO m2012 model, the researchers analyzed more than 10,000 biospecimens from the PLCO study, including 1,299 blood samples collected from 552 individuals who developed lung cancer and 8,709 samples collected from 2,193 people who did not develop lung cancer.

Among individuals with at least a 10 pack-year smoking history, the combined blood test with PLCO m2012 model showed overall improved sensitivity (88.4% versus 78.5%) and improved specificity (56.2% versus 49.3%), compared to the current USPSTF criteria. If implemented, the combined personalized risk assessment would have identified 105 of the 119 people in the PLCO intervention arm who received a lung cancer diagnosis within one year.

"A blood test would identify people who could benefit from lung cancer screening but are not eligible today," Hanash said. "Tens of millions of people worldwide could benefit from lung cancer screening. If you can improve screening eligibility by even 5%, that is incredibly impactful."

While the blood test could be implemented as a lab-developed test in the near future, Food and Drug Administration approval likely would require evaluation through a prospective clinical trial.

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute (U01CA194733, U01CA213285, U24CA086368, U01 CA200468), the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas and Lyda Hill Philanthropies. Additional research support was provided by the Lung Cancer Moon Shot, part of MD Anderson's Moon Shots Program, a collaborative effort designed to accelerate the development of scientific discoveries into clinical advances that save patients' lives.

Hanash is an inventor on a patent application related to the blood test. A complete list of co-authors, their affiliations and their disclosures is included in the paper.
A recent study shows how a novel and integrated lab-on-a-chip platform can represent a rapid, affordable, and exact molecular diagnostic tool for detecting severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The paper is currently available for free on the medRxiv* preprint server while it undergoes peer review.

As a response to the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and evident disparities of vaccination coverage in low- and middle-income countries, it is pivotal to adhere to a widespread testing and screening program for surveillance and control of infections in regions where there are limited medical resources.

The gold standard for diagnosing SARS-CoV-2 infection is the use of the real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) to detect viral ribonucleic acid (RNA) in specimens from the respiratory tract. But although the method is highly sensitive and specific, it necessitates expensive equipment and highly skilled personnel.

Several point-of-care RNA detection technologies circumvent the need for expensive instruments and simultaneously use reverse transcription and isothermal amplification; one notable example is loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) which is slowly gaining prominence for many different infectious diseases.

And then there are CRISPR-Cas-assisted SARS-CoV-2 detection assays, which are viewed as transformative methods for point-of-care COVID-19 diagnostics. However, they currently lack streamlined sample preparation and integration within the automated, portable system.

This new manuscript, first-authored by Dr. Bongkot Ngamso from the University of Hull in the United Kingdom, demonstrated the manual operation of a microfluidic-based CRISPR device as a molecular COVID-19 diagnostic tool by a semi-trained operator in resource-limited laboratories in sub-Saharan Africa (such as Kenya).

A combination of microfluidics and CRISPR-Cas

The researchers combined a microfluidic technique known as immiscible filtration assisted by surface tension (IFAST) with the recent developments in CRISPR-Cas12-based sensing, resulting in a sensitive, cost-effective, target-specific, and completely integrated device for COVID-19 diagnostics.

The device was dubbed IFAST-CRISPR. It streamlined sample preparation to enable rapid isolation and concentration of RNA directly from nasopharyngeal swab samples or saliva specimens, followed by CRISPR-Cas-assisted detection with lateral flow readout.

In a nutshell, the use of adequate functionalized magnetic particles permits isolation and purification of a magnetically responsive analyte directly from complex matrices, which is a technology that could be used in the future for other infectious diseases.

IFAST-CRISPR device for SARS-CoV-2 detection. (A) Design and (B) photograph of the IFAST-CRISPR device. Chamber 1 = sample + GuHCl + silica paramagnetic beads; chambers 2, 4, 6, 8 = mineral oil; chamber 7 = RT-LAMP reagent; chamber 9 = CRISPR-Cas12 reagent. (C) IFAST-CRISPR device detects SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA from unprocessed nasopharyngeal (NP) swab or saliva sample in a 1 h sample-to-answer workflow. Step 1: RNA is extracted from a sample via silica paramagnetic beads and 5 M GuHCl. Step 2: The MB-isolated RNA is in vitro transcribed and amplified into DNA amplicons via RT-LAMP. Step 3: The hybridization of the targeted DNA sequence activates the gRNA-Cas12a complex to digest ssDNA probe, thereby producing a test line (T) on the lateral flow strip which can be visualized by the naked eye. (D) Principle of the lateral flow readouts for SARS-CoV-2 detection. Control line (C) appears from the intact FAM-biotinylated ssDNA reporter. Test line (T) is present from cleaved ssDNA reporter following target dsDNA-gRNA hybridization.

High sensitivity and specificity

By combining the aforementioned LAMP with CRISPR-Cas12 assays targeting the nucleoprotein gene of SARS-CoV-2, the researchers achieved visual identification of more than 470 viral copies per mL in 45 minutes  without any cross-reactivity towards seasonal coronaviruses or influenza.

Furthermore, on-chip assays revealed the ability to detect and isolate SARS-CoV-2 from one thousand genome copies of replication-deficient viral particles in one hour, with the potential to be additionally optimized and refined.

In short, this affordable, simple, and yet highly integrated platform showed sensitivity and specificity characteristics comparable to the much more expensive gold standard that is RT-qPCR  requiring only a simple heating source.

Analytical validation of individual and combined on-chip assays. (A) On-chip RNA extraction, followed by RT-LAMP assays; gel electrophoresis results showing target dsDNA being amplified from MB-extracted RNA from  470 copies mL-1 initial concentrations, confirmed by test lines on lateral flow test strips (n=2). (B) On-chip CRISPR-Cas12 assays of amplicons from tube-based RNA extraction and RT-LAMP - collateral cleavage of lateral flow ssDNA reporters following the hybridization between the gRNA and dsDNA target showing a test line in positive sample from MB-extracted RNA (n=1). (C) On-chip integrated steps of RNA extraction, RT-LAMP and CRISPR-Cas-assisted detection from samples containing free genomic SARS-CoV-2 RNA (in a mixture containing HCoV-OC43 and H1N1 RNAs, n=2), and from viral particles containing SARS-CoV-2 genome (SARS-CoV-2 verification panel, n=1).

A future of diagnostics

The adaptability of this platform can definitely be implemented for CRISPR-Cas-based detections of other pathogens, which is a great promise as a future addition to the point-of-care diagnostic armamentarium, particularly in resource-limited and decentralized regions of low- and middle-income countries.

The platform required only a basic heating source such as simple incubators or hot plates which are usually available in most laboratories in low-resource settings, without the need for costly or specialized instruments, emphasize study authors in this medRxiv paper.

Further research on multiplexing and direct interfacing of the easily obtainable Swan-brand cigarette filter for saliva specimen collection could provide a steadfast workflow for COVID-19 diagnostics from saliva samples amenable for low-resource settings.

*Important notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
An emerging and complex health problem that remains poorly characterized and understood is long coronavirus disease 2019 (Long COVID). The rapid outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is responsible for the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Study: Association between vaccination status and reported incidence of post-acute COVID-19 symptoms in Israel: a cross-sectional study of patients infected between March 2020 and November 2021. Image Credit: Ralf Liebhold/Shutterstock

Long COVID is a post-infection condition in which individuals do not recover completely for several weeks or months after the acute episode. The effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against long-term symptoms of COVID19 is not well understood.

In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* preprint server, scientists examined whether vaccination was associated with reporting long-term symptoms post-SARS-CoV-2 infection. Within the subgroup of individuals previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, researchers compared those who were vaccinated and those who were not in terms of self-reported long-term symptoms.

Long COVID and SARS-CoV-2 vaccination

The World Health Organization (WHO) defined long COVID as A condition which occurs in individuals with a history of probable or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, usually three months from the onset of COVID-19 with symptoms that last for at least two months and cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis. Common symptoms include fatigue, shortness of breath, and cognitive dysfunction but also others involving the musculoskeletal, cardiac and central nervous systems, which generally have an impact on everyday functioning.

Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 is one of the most important interventions deployed to mitigate the pandemic. To date, over 58% of the global population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccines, accounting for 9.2 billion doses. In Israel, approximately 63.6% of the entire population have received a priming, two-dose course, and 45.6% have received a third dose. However, risk factors for developing long COVID have not been fully explored, and little is known about the impact of COVID-19 vaccination on long COVID.

A new study

The current study invited individuals at participating hospitals between March 2020-June 2021 to fill an online questionnaire. The participants had been PCR tested for COVID-19 infection. A total of 30,262 invitations were sent out. Two thousand three hundred forty-six individuals responded to the survey and agreed to participate. Of these, 951 individuals had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, and these were the individuals who were included in the study.

The details sought included baseline demographics, details of their acute infection episode, the number of doses of the vaccine (and when administered), and information about symptoms they were currently experiencing. Some of the common symptoms were fatigue, headache, weakness in the arms of legs, persistent muscle pain, etc. Next, a binomial regression technique was used to contrast vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals regarding self-reported symptoms post-acute infection.

Main findings

Researchers observed that full vaccination (two or more vaccine doses) overall led to a significant fall in reporting the most common post-COVID-19 symptoms and an increase in full recovery. This was specifically more prominent in individuals aged above 60 years. The above result was not observed among individuals who received a single dose of the vaccine. About a third of the participants continued to report symptoms post-COVID-19. The fact that the associations were stronger for senior individuals was inconsistent with previous research.

The vaccinated and unvaccinated groups were similar concerning sociodemographic characteristics, except for age. This is consistent with the COVID-19 vaccination strategy implemented by the Israeli Ministry of Health, which targeted the older population first. Some chronic conditions might have been present in the vaccinated (older) group, which were not considered in this study. However, scientists claimed that the results would get even stronger if these differences were considered because these conditions were more prevalent in the older, fully vaccinated group.

Concluding remarks

Long-COVID is a complex health problem that remains poorly characterized and understood. The current study provides novel insights into the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination on the long-term effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The main vaccine used in Israel was the one manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine). The results reported in this study suggest that besides preventing severe disease and death, the vaccines (or at least BNT162b2) could play a vital role in mitigating long-term outcomes COVID-19, particularly among older individuals.

More research is needed to objectively measure the long-term health outcomes in COVID-19 patients in a clinical setting. The authors of the current study are continuing to recruit participants and, in the future, hope to report with greater precision whether the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines protective effect is sustained or not. The researchers will also consider the effects of different SARS-CoV-2 variants and vaccination on post-COVID symptoms in further research.

*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.
This time, it didnt take much persuading for Mary Murphy to embrace home hospice. When her mother was dying from Alzheimers disease in 2020, she had been reluctant until she saw what a help it was. So when her husband, Willie, neared the end of his life, she embraced hospice again.

The Murphys house in a leafy Nashville neighborhood is their happy place  full of their treasures.

Hes good to me  buys me anything I want, she said, as she pulled a milky glass vase out of a floor-to-ceiling cabinet with mirrored shelves.

Willie bought Mary the display case to help her to show off the trinkets she picks up at estate sales.

Down the hall, Willie was lying in their bed, now unable to speak. His heart was giving out.

You gonna wake up for a minute? she asked, cradling his head. She patted his back while he cleared his throat. Cough it out.

Mary had been the primary caregiver for her husband, but she gets help from a new hospice agency in Nashville focused on increasing the use of end-of-life comfort care by Black families. Heart and Soul Hospice is owned and operated by people who share the same cultural background as the patients they aim to serve.

In their application to obtain a certificate of need in Tennessee, the hospice owners made it clear they are Black and intend to serve everyone but will focus on African Americans, who are currently underserved. Tennessee data shows that in Nashville just 19% of hospice patients are Black although they make up 27% of the capital city's population.

Though the area already had numerous hospice agencies, regulators granted Heart and Soul permission to operate, based primarily on the value of educating an underserved group.

In Murphys first hospice experience, her mother had been living with dementia for decades. Still, Murphy had concerns about transitioning her mother to hospice. She felt as if she was giving up on her mom.

My first thought was death, she said.

National data shows that Black Medicare patients and their families are not making the move to comfort care as often as white patients are. Roughly 41% of Black Medicare beneficiaries who died in 2019 were enrolled in hospice, compared with 54% of white patients, according to data compiled annually by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.

Murphys mother survived nearly three years on hospice. The benefit is meant for those in the final six months of life, but predicting when the end will come is difficult, especially in cases of dementia. Hospice provides palliative care for the dying and support for caregivers for a long as the process lasts.

Murphy did most of the caregiving  which can be overwhelming  but hospice helped with a few baths a week, medication in the mail and any medical equipment they needed.

And most important to Murphy was the emotional support, which came mostly from her hospice nurse.

Wasnt no doctor going to come here, hold my hand, stay here until the funeral home came for her, she said about the day her mother died.

Last year, on the day after Thanksgiving, Willie Murphy died. And the same hospice nurse was at the Murphy home within minutes. Shed already stopped by that morning to check on him and returned as soon as Mary called and told her he wasnt breathing.

If you dont feel like, Oh my God, thank God I have hospice, if you cant say that, then were doing something wrong, said Keisha Mason, Heart and Souls director of nursing.

Mason, like Murphy, is Black and said that in her view theres nothing fundamental keeping Black patients from using hospice except learning what the service can offer and that its basically free to patients  paid for by Medicare, Medicaid and most private health plans.

I say to them, If you see a bill, then call us, because you should not,' she said.

As Mason helped launch this new hospice agency, she began using new language, calling hospice more than a Medicare benefit. She describes it as an entitlement.

Just as you are entitled to unemployment, as you are entitled to Social Security, you are entitled to a hospice benefit, she said.

The investors in Heart and Soul include David Turner, owner of CNS Hospice in Detroit; Nashville pastor the Rev. Sandy McClain; and Andre Lee, a former hospital administrator on the campus of Meharry Medical College, a historically Black institution in Nashville.

Lee and Turner also started a Black-focused hospice agency in Michigan and have plans to replicate the model in other states.

More families need to consider home hospice as an alternative for end-of-life care, Lee said. Nursing homes are pricey. And even with Medicare, a hospital bill can be hefty.

Youll go in there and theyll eat you alive, he said. I hate to say [something] bad about hospitals, but its true.

Hospice research hasnt come up with clear reasons to explain the gap between white and Black families use of the benefit. Some experts speculate its related to spiritual beliefs and widespread mistrust in the medical system due to decades of discrimination.

The hospice industrys national trade group, the NHCPO, released a diversity and inclusion toolkit and a guide to reaching more Black patients. It recommends connecting with influential DJs, partnering with Black pastors and simply hiring more Black nurses.

Bridging the gap is not overly complicated, Lee said.

A lot of hospices dont employ enough Black people, he said. We all feel comfortable when you see someone over there that looks like you.

Well-established hospice agencies have attempted to minimize barriers with their own diversity initiatives. Michelle Drayton of Visiting Nurse Service of New York said her large agency has met with ministers who counsel families dealing with failing health.

Many of them did not fully understand what hospice was, she said. They had many of the same sort of misperceptions.

Every hospice company, whether it's an upstart or one of the nation's oldest, can promote end-of-life education and ease care disparities, Drayton said. Were not just handing out a brochure, she added.

This story is part of a partnership that includes Nashville Public Radio, NPR and KHN.
Researchers have discovered that a common member of the human gut microbiome has a specific preference for blood group A antigens.

This specificity may give it an advantage when foraging for sugars, allowing it to colonize the gut more easily. The presence of the blood group A antigen in mucus differs in different parts of the gut, so this could ensure that these microbes colonize the correct parts of the digestive system to maximize their benefits to our health.

Most people are familiar with blood types, which are determined by the presence or absence of molecules, known as the A and B antigens, on the surface of red blood cells. In the century since Karl Landsteiner first described this system, its become apparent that these blood group antigens can also be found on many other bodily surfaces and secretions. This depends on the individuals genetics, but around 80% of Caucasian people have this secretor status.

One of the places blood group antigens are found is in the mucus that covers the lining of the digestive system. This thick sticky substance provides an environment for the gut microbiome to live in, as well as sugars for nutrition. This community of microbes is vital for health and preventing disease and infection, and the body produces mucus as a protective barrier.

Professor Nathalie Juge and her team from the Quadram Institute have been studying how the bodys mucus layer encourages the optimal balance of microbes to colonize and flourish. Mucus is made of proteins called mucins, which are long chains heavily covered in sugars.

The mucin proteins are capped with a number of different molecules that prevent bacteria accessing the sugars unless they possess specific enzymes to break down the cap.

Previously, Prof. Juge and her colleagues found that the specificity of that cap means that only certain bacteria can access the mucin sugars, favoring bacteria to colonize particular niches in the gut.

Their work has focused on Ruminococcus gnavus bacteria, a prominent member of the gut microbiome. They are among the first bacteria to colonize the gut of infants, but are also found in 90% of adults, making them ideal for studying the mechanisms of how a healthy microbiome is established. Interestingly, R. gnavus has also been associated either positively or negatively with a range of human diseases and conditions from Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) to neurological disorders. There is therefore great interest in elucidating the mechanisms by R. gnavus strains adapt to the gut environment.

In a study published in the journal PLOS Biology, the researchers identified strains of Ruminococcus gnavus can make the enzymes used to break down mucin caps made from the blood group A antigen.

The activity is highly specific to the blood group A antigen; further analysis showed it wasnt able to act on other blood group antigens.

To understand the basis of the enzymes specificity for blood group A antigens, the team worked with colleagues from the Diamond Light Source and NMR experts at UEA to reveal the structural interactions of the enzyme with blood group A, and show how its shape fits perfectly with that of the antigen, which is crucial to its activity. From this they could identify the parts of the enzyme responsible for its activity, providing detailed information on how it works.

Genomics analysis showed that the gene for this enzyme is part of a cluster of genes that allow the bacteria to use mucins as an energy source, with the blood group A antigen enzyme as a key to unlock this potential.

The discovery of strains of bacteria in the gut microbiome that have this specificity for digesting mucins with blood group A antigens adds another layer to our understanding of how microbiomes establish.

But does it mean that people from different blood groups share characteristic gut microbiome profiles? Previous studies have looked at the occurrence of such associations, but with conflicting results.

This study provides mechanistic evidence that these bacteria interact with blood group A antigen which may have an advantage for colonization of babies and adults with blood group A, but the significance of this in humans remain to be demonstrated. Similarly, more detailed studies about the distribution of blood group A antigens in mucus in different part of the digestive system is needed to confirm whether this is a way to encourage these bacteria to take up residence in certain parts of the gut.

The knowledge from this study of the enzymes acting on blood group antigens may also be useful in combating infections, as they are thought to be targeted by a range of disease causing microbes. For example, norovirus and SARS-CoV-2 appears to have a preference for blood group antigens. The blood group A specificity discovered in this study could therefore have potential application for diagnostics or therapeutics.

This research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and Innovate UK, which are Part of UK Research and Innovation, as well as the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skodowska-Curie grant agreement and BBSRC Norwich Research Park Doctoral Training Studentships.
Scientists have just slotted into place a big piece of the puzzle that explains how our blood cells mount their first line of defense against viruses. They hope this discovery will help them one day better control the response to either boost it or calm it down as appropriate.

The scientists behind the discovery include Andrew Bowie, Professor of Innate Immunology at Trinity College Dublin, who is based in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, and Drs Lili Gu and David Casserly (formerly at Trinity as postdoctoral and PhD researchers respectively).

Their findings, which provide a target for new therapies that could improve anti-viral responses in some patients and reduce autoimmune problems in others when immune responses run out of control, have just been published in leading journal Nature Communications.

Interferons and MDNA  a major piece of the puzzle

"Interferons" are key proteins that tell our immune systems when viruses, germs or cancer cells are in our bodies. Type I interferons are produced when the innate immune system senses the presence of a virus. In such circumstances interferons trigger a complex chain of events in which other cells are kicked into gear to "interfere with" and fight those invaders .

Scientists don't fully understand how certain links in that chain of events are controlled-;making it difficult to stimulate or suppress an immune response with therapeutic interventions-;but this new research has provided key new insights into the process.

The scientists have discovered that another protein, myeloid cell nuclear differentiation antigen (MNDA), is needed for Type I interferon production from human blood cells in response to viruses. Their work shows that MDNA regulates a transcription factor, IRF7, which in essence drives Type I interferon production.

We have been interested in better understanding how Type I interferons are produced from blood cells because they are required to fight viruses, and because too much of them-;when the production process runs out of control, for example-;contributes to nasty autoimmune diseases such as interferonopathies. There is a family of proteins called PYHIN proteins which we have been working on for some time, as they are implicated in regulating innate immunity. To our surprise, one such PYHIN protein, called MNDA, turned out to be a big missing piece in the puzzle in understanding how type I interferon production is sustained, which makes this discovery all the more exciting. If we can learn how to manipulate MNDA's activity it could be really beneficial  on one hand to boost an interferon response during a viral infection, for example upon COVID-19 infection, or on the other hand to supress interferon production and treat an autoimmune disorder." Professor Andrew Bowie

The scientists are currently examining how MNDA contributes to innate immune responses to COVID-19.

This work was funded by the Irish Higher Education Authority (HEA), grants from Science Foundation Ireland, the National Institutes of Health, and by a Bio-technology and Biological Sciences Research Council-Science Foundation Ireland joint award.
Sisters Gray and Andrea Koesters honored the life of their father, Willi Hans Koesters, by creating an exhibit of his work at the Bourne-Schweitzer Gallery in New Albany.
(Newser)  Update: The Saudi princess who spent three years in state prison despite no charges having been filed against her is now free. Princess Basmah bint Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, an outspoken human and women's rights advocate and critic of her cousin the crown prince and the country's government, was released Saturday, her lawyer confirms. The 57-year-old's daughter, who was arrested with her, was also released, the Guardian reports. Both are home, and the princess, who expressed health concerns during her detention, will seek medical care, her lawyer says. It is not clear, however, whether she will be allowed to travel abroad to do so, the New York Times reports. Other prominent Saudi dissidents, activists, and even other members of the royal family are still detained; others who've been released are not allowed to go abroad. Our original story from June 15, 2020, follows:

The family of a Saudi princess who vanished in early 2019 and is believed imprisoned now has a new concern: that her health is failing, or even that she may not be around anymore. "[If] she's dead or alive, we have no idea, we literally have no single clue," a source tells NBC News, which noted it got no response from Saudi authorities about what's happened to 56-year-old Princess Basmah bint Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. It's widely thought Basmaha cousin of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and an outspoken women's rights advocateand her daughter were detained in March 2019 while trying to travel to Switzerland for what the princess said was medical care. She'd had sporadic contact since with relatives, but it wasn't until April, at the start of Ramadan, when she revealed via Twitter that she was being held against her will.

In her tweets and on her website, she begged the crown prince and King Salman to release her from prison, the South China Morning Post reported. Insider notes that the king pardons "hundreds" of prisoners during Ramadan each year "as a gesture of goodwill," but Basmah was apparently not among those recipients, and a source says her communications with the public were cut off soon after her plea. Just days before she made her online appeal, the source tells the NBC, she'd been "in a very bad condition [and] ... couldn't get out of bed," with contacts curtailed so she could correspond only with her daughter, thought to still be detained as well. Now, with outside contact cut off, those close to the princess are more worried than ever. The source, who says Basmah had part of her colon removed previously, says she's been hospitalized several times. (Read more Saudi Arabia stories.)
(Newser)  It might be the weirdest red flag for a public health crisis ever: It seems that negative reviews for scented candles correlate with a spike in COVID cases, notes IFLScience.com. The apparent reason is that COVID sometimes causes people to lose their sense of smell, meaning that a person with the virusand perhaps unaware of itmight buy a candle and think they got ripped off. It sounds goofy, but it turns out some hard data backs up the premise, as the Washington Post explained when writing about the phenomenon. It is rare, at least in my line of work, to stumble upon an anecdotal observation that can be examined using such vast amounts of easily accessible data, says Kate Petrova, a research assistant at the Harvard Study of Adult Development.

That anecdotal observation came in the form of a snarky tweet back in November that read: There are angry ladies all over Yankee Candles site reporting that none of the candles they just got had any smell at all. I wonder if theyre feeling a little hot and nothing has much taste for the last couple days too." The observation piqued Petrova's interest, and she dug in. As it turns out, reviews for the company's top scented candles consistently had 4 or 4.5 stars before 2020. After the pandemic hit, they lost about a full star. Equally telling: Non-scented candles did not suffer the same fate.

You can see all her charts in this Twitter thread, though Petrova herself cautions that it was more of a "fun exercise" than a rigorous scientific analysis. In its coverage, SFGate notes that more than 1 million people in the US have lost their sense of smell because of the virus. And while this "anosmia" typically goes away, studies suggest that if it's not back in six months, the odds of it coming back at all drop to 1 in 5. In regard to the candles, the post at IFLScience sees a clear takeaway: "If you find you can't smell your candle, it might be best to book a test before sending your disappointing review." (Read more COVID-19 stories.)
(Newser)  Flooding coursed over roads, inundated farmland and curtailed access to a Native American reservation in Washington state on Sunday as the Pacific Northwest slowly recovered from a series of storms that have engulfed the region with rain and snow. The swollen Chehalis River was expected to crest Sunday as the region enjoyed a dry weekend after a series of winter storms since Dec. 17, per the AP. Crews, meanwhile, worked to open several major highways connecting Seattle to the east that have been closed for days by heavy snow, avalanches, and debris. Southwest Washington has experienced its worst flooding in a decade and some rivers crested at more than 18 feet (5.5 meters) last week, the National Weather Service said. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee issued an emergency proclamation on Friday.

The weather service issued flood warnings Sunday for Grays Harbor and Thurston counties. It said moderate flooding in the Chehalis River was affecting road access to the Chehalis Reservation near Oakville. A flood warning continued for the Pudding River in Oregon's Clackamas and Marion counties. In Washington's Grays County, authorities were searching for a man reported missing after driving into floodwaters in Elma early Sunday, but it wasnt known if the man was swept away or walked out on his own, said Undersheriff Brad Johansson. The search came after emergency workers said Saturday they had recovered the body of a 72-year-old man whose vehicle was swept away by flooding near Cosmopolis.

Crews worked to open several major highways connecting Seattle to the east, including Interstate 90 over Snoqualmie Pass and US Highway 97 over Blewitt Pass, the Washington Department of Transportation said. US 12 over White Pass may reopen Monday, the department said. But avalanche danger and multiple snowslides reaching 35 feet (10.5 meters) made it unlikely that a 44-mile (70 kilometer) stretch of US 2 over Stevens Pass would reopen before Tuesday. At the eastern end of that stretch of US 2, the National Guard was deployed to the hard-hit city village of Leavenworth in the Cascade Mountains for snow cleanup, food delivery and other services. Mayor Carl Florea asked for Guard help after the resort received 4 feet (6.4 meters) of snow in 48 hours last week. (Read more Pacific Northwest stories.)
(Newser)  Desperate parents handed their baby handed over a barbed-wire topped wall to a soldier during the fall of Kabul Aug. 19, 2021, and couldnt find him afterward. Finally, they know where he is. Sohail Ahmadis parents handed their 2-month-old infant over out of fear he would be crushed in the chaos at the Kabul airport. But when they finally made it inside the walls, they couldnt find him anywhere. Meanwhile, Hamid Safi, 29, a taxi driver, found himself inside the airport walls after dropping off relatives who were being evacuated and found the baby, CNN reports. Safi says after he gave up looking for the infants parents, he took him home to his own wife and kids to raise as his ownat least until the family was located.

Mirza Ali Ahmadi, a US embassy security guard, and his wife, Suraya, were evacuated to the US. They searched for their son, Sohail, for months. Safis neighbors solved the mystery, noting the resemblance the sudden addition to the Safi family held to the missing child. Safi had renamed Sohail, calling him Mohammed, and was reluctant to part with him. Some of the delay came from Safi asking for his family to be evacuated, too, per the BBC. Local Taliban police brokered a deal compensating Safi for looking after the baby, and reunited him with his grandfather, still in Afghanistan. The next step, according to Mohammad Qasem Razawi, the overjoyed grandfather, is to get Sohail to Michigan, where his parents have settled. "We need to get the baby back to his mother and father. This is my only responsibility," Razawi said, per USA Today. (Read more Kabul stories.)
(Newser)  Update: Nearly one month after a judge approved the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office's search warrant for Alec Baldwin's phone, the actor has yet to turn it over to authorities. The sheriff's office released a statement Thursday detailing the timeline and noting that on Dec. 20, after getting the Santa Fe District Attorney's Office involved, they were told negotiations were underway for the phone to be handed overyet they still don't have it. In response to the press release, Baldwin's lawyer tells People that an agreement was just reached last weekend, and that the phone will be turned over this week. He says the "process" and "logistics" simply took a while: "Ever since this tragic incident, Mr. Baldwin has continued to cooperate with the authorities, and any suggestion to the contrary is simply untrue." Our original story from Monday follows:

Alec Baldwin is "1,000% going to comply" with authorities as they continue to probe the fatal shooting on the set of Rust, he insisted in a nearly 13-minute Instagram video over the weekend. "Any suggestion that I am not complying with requests or orders or demands or search warrants about my phone, thats bulls---, thats a lie," says Baldwin, who was holding the gun when it went off, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Authorities do indeed have a search warrant for his phone, but he says the process is taking a while because one state (New Mexico, where the movie was filming) is making the request of another state, New York (where Baldwin lives), ABC News reports.

Authorities also have to specify exactly what they want from his phone, he says: "They can't just go through your phone and take, you know, your photos or your love letters to your wife or what have you." But, he says, per People, once all the red tape has been cut through, "no one wants the truth more than I do." Per the New York Post, Baldwin vehemently pushed back on a prior Post story in which legal experts suggested he may not be turning over his phone because it contains "incriminating" evidence or other sensitive material. (Read more Alec Baldwin stories.)
(Newser)  Add Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the long list of lawmakers hit by COVID-19 infections in recent weeks. The New York congresswoman, who is fully vaccinated and got her booster shot in the fall, is currently experiencing mild symptoms related to a breakthrough case of COVID, her office announced Sunday. Three other members of the House of Representatives also announced breakthrough infections over the weekend, the Hill reports. Ocasio-Cortez is recovering at home and "encourages everyone to get their booster and follow all CDC guidelines," per a statement.

Fox News and other outlets on the right were quick to point out that AOC was recently spotted at an outdoor Miami bar sans mask, in a video that was widely circulated on social media. Other photos from her Florida trip, including one of her dining outdoors with her boyfriend on Dec. 30, were also circulated in places like the National Review. (Fox points out they were not widely reported on in the mainstream media.) TMZ says the trip was a New Year's vacation, and the New York Post rounds up reactions from conservatives who commented on AOC's choice of localepointing out the lack of mandates, including mask mandates, when compared to her home state of New York. (Read more Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stories.)
(Newser)  The Golden Globe Awards, Hollywoods so-called biggest party that regularly drew 18 million television viewers, was reduced to a live-blog Sunday night for its 79th edition, the AP reports. The embattled Hollywood Foreign Press Association proceeded with its film awards Sunday night without a telecast, nominees, a red carpet, a host, press, or even a livestream. Instead, members of the HFPA and some recipients of the groups philanthropic grants gathered at the Beverly Hilton Hotel for a 90-minute private event, announcing the names of the film and television winners on the organization's social media feeds. Steven Spielberg's West Side Story won several big awards, for best picture comedy or musical, best actress for Rachel Zegler, and best supporting actess for Ariana DeBose. Netflix's gothic Western The Power of the Dog was named best picture drama, along with other honors for Jane Campion's direction and Kodi Smit-McPhee's supporting performance.

Though announcing winners on social media might seem like a straightforward task, those following along on Twitter only might have been somewhat confused at times. The tweets often left out exactly which project a person had won for. To announce the winner for best actor, motion picture musical or comedy, the organization tweeted, It takes 43 muscles to smile. Thanks for the workout Andrew Garfield and congratulations for taking home the #GoldenGlobe for Best ActorMotion PictureMusical/Comedy," failing to mention that the award was for his turn in tick, tick...BOOM! Other times, the tweets were just downright baffling. In announcing the West Side Story win, the group initially wrote, If laughter is the best medicine @WestSideMovie is the cure for what ails you" about the drama that's full of death and tragedy. They later deleted the tweet and wrote a new one about music being the best medicine.

None of the winners appeared to be present at the event, nor did they immediately comment on their awards. Jamie Lee Curtis, however, chimed in with a video message shared on the group's Twitter, talking about the HFPA's charitable work. I just wanted to honor and stand with them in this continued advocacy, Curtis said. I'm proud to be associated with them in this venture. The HFPA enlisted leaders of groups to which it has given grants to announce the winners. Arnold Schwarzenegger chimed in with a video message as well, thanking the group for recognizing him as the new star of the year in 1977. (Full list of winners here.)
(Newser)  The body of a Virginia dad whose vehicle got stuck in a snowstorm has been found, and his family is now demanding answers from local law enforcement as to why he wasn't rescued in time. As motorists in the state were stranded in severe winter weather last week on I-95 near Fredericksburg, 34-year-old Jacob Whaley was having his own problems in Hanover County, where his car slid into a ditch on Monday evening about 6 miles from his home in Louisa County, per WTVR. WRIC posts a timeline of what happened next, including messages from Whaley to his family that he was going to try to walk home. "He got out of his car because he wanted to go home and ... see his dogs and his son," his sister, Angela Whaley, tells WTVR.

Jacob Whaley's last text was at 8:45pm to his mother, noting he was lost in the 17-degree weather. Whaley's family says they contacted the Louisa County Sheriff's Office and told them Whaley was wandering somewhere near Greene's Corner Road, and the sheriff's office says that it "immediately responded" to that notification, checking the area along that street and other roads leading to his home, per the New York Times. The Spotsylvania Sheriff's Office joined in the search and located Whaley's truck the next morning on Mount Olive Road in Hanover County, near the Spotsylvania County border. It wasn't until Thursday that a search party made up of law enforcement and volunteers found Whaley's body in a "very dense pine plantation" about 200 yards off Greene's Corner Road, the area where the family had first noted he might be.

In an email to the Times, a spokesman for the Louisa County Sheriff's Office says the roads were "impassable" and the power in the area was completely knocked out, and that a police search team did what it could to find Whaley but "had a hard time getting through." Whaley's family, however, is furious. "All they had to do was go out and holler for him," his mother, Shannon Whaley, tells WRIC. Sister Angela Whaley adds: "Louisa County let him freeze to death." Supporters of Whaley's family protested in front of the sheriff's office on Saturday, per WRIC. Whaley leaves behind a 2-year-old son, also named Jacob. "They were best friends," Angela Whaley tells WTVR. "How do you tell a 2-year-old that his dad is never going to see him again?" (Read more Virginia stories.)
(Newser)  It could be awhile before the Orange County medical examiner's office determines the cause of death for 65-year-old comedian Bob Saget, who was found unresponsive Sunday at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Orlando, Fla. Saget was back on tour with his standup and sounding pretty happy about it just before his death. Coverage and tributes:

Olsen twins: Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have added to the many, many tributes. "Bob was the most loving, compassionate and generous man," said the 35-year-old twins, per People. "We are deeply saddened that he is no longer with us but know that he will continue to be by our side to guide us as gracefully as he always has." Saget, of course, played their TV dad (they split the role of Michelle) in Full House decades ago.

Last posts: "I had no idea I did a two-hour set tonight," Saget wrote in his last Instagram post on Saturday, per Pop Culture. "I'm back in comedy like I was when I was 26. I guess I'm finding my new voice and loving every moment of it." He plugged some upcoming shows and joked that he's "addicted to this s---." Only days earlier, Saget posted a recap of the year with his wife, Kelly Rizzo, per Page Six. Saget had three grown daughters with his first wife. After news of his death emerged, 34-year-old Aubrey Saget posted a a screenshot of a text her dad recently sent her, possibly the end to their final exchange: Thank u. Love u. Showtime! it read, per Page Six.

"I had no idea I did a two-hour set tonight," Saget wrote in his last Instagram post on Saturday, per Pop Culture. "I'm back in comedy like I was when I was 26. I guess I'm finding my new voice and loving every moment of it." He plugged some upcoming shows and joked that he's "addicted to this s---." Only days earlier, Saget posted a recap of the year with his wife, Kelly Rizzo, per Page Six. Saget had three grown daughters with his first wife. After news of his death emerged, 34-year-old Aubrey Saget posted a a screenshot of a text her dad recently sent her, possibly the end to their final exchange: Thank u. Love u. Showtime! it read, per Page Six. Happy accident: Saget parlayed his early standup career to his gig as Danny Tanner on Full House in the late 1980s, then as host of America's Funniest Home Videos. "Full House was an accident," he once said, per CNN. "I got fired on CBS and was asked to be in Full House."

Saget parlayed his early standup career to his gig as Danny Tanner on Full House in the late 1980s, then as host of America's Funniest Home Videos. "Full House was an accident," he once said, per CNN. "I got fired on CBS and was asked to be in Full House." The raunch: As the Washington Post notes, Saget was famous for the contrast between his squeaky-clean TV image and his frequently raunchy standup. This "duality" is what made him special, writes Rob Harvilla in a tribute at the Ringer. The piece focuses on Saget's insanely dirty joke for The Aristocrats documentary in 2005. It's here and is most definitely not safe for work.

As the Washington Post notes, Saget was famous for the contrast between his squeaky-clean TV image and his frequently raunchy standup. This "duality" is what made him special, writes Rob Harvilla in a tribute at the Ringer. The piece focuses on Saget's insanely dirty joke for The Aristocrats documentary in 2005. It's here and is most definitely not safe for work. More on that joke: "Aristocrats couldnt be done now, Saget said in a 2018 interview, per Rolling Stone. But he said the point of the film was to explore censorship, freedom of speech, and art, as in, "Everybody paint the same painting and see what happens." (In the film, different comedians tell their version of the joke.) "I mean, Lenny Bruce went to jail for saying things that were said overtly in that film.

As a human: Reaction to Saget's death from fellow entertainers sounds the same theme over and over: Saget was seen as one of the nicest, kindest, most compassionate people in the industry. "Saget was as lovely a human as he was funny," wrote Norman Lear. "The kindest, warmest male comedian there ever was," wrote Chelsea Handler. "Just the funniest and nicest," wrote Jon Stewart. "Truly one of the nicest guys and so funny," wrote Marc Maron, who is replaying his podcast interviews with Saget.

Reaction to Saget's death from fellow entertainers sounds the same theme over and over: Saget was seen as one of the nicest, kindest, most compassionate people in the industry. "Saget was as lovely a human as he was funny," wrote Norman Lear. "The kindest, warmest male comedian there ever was," wrote Chelsea Handler. "Just the funniest and nicest," wrote Jon Stewart. "Truly one of the nicest guys and so funny," wrote Marc Maron, who is replaying his podcast interviews with Saget. The roast: That everybody in the business liked Saget was on full display in a 2008 Comedy Central roast of the comic, per the Daily Beast. That night, the late Norm McDonald famously ditched the usual insult format and instead told a series of corny jokes from the 1940s. Why? I talked to him a week before the roast and, and he said, I cant say mean things about you because youre my friend, Saget recalled.

(Read more Bob Saget stories.)
(Newser)  A Republican senator lost favor with Donald Trump over the weekend by uttering four words hated by the former president: "The election was fair." Mike Rounds of South Dakota went on ABC News and declared that Trump's claims of a stolen election do not hold up, reports the Washington Post. We looked at over 60 different accusations made in multiple states, Rounds said. "While there were some irregularities, there were none of the irregularities which would have risen to the point where they would have changed the vote outcome in a single state." Trump, he said, "simply did not win the election." On Monday, Trump fired back in a statement.

"Is he crazy or just stupid?" Trump wrote. "The only reason he did this is because he got my endorsement and easily won his state in 2020, so now he thinks he has time, and those are the only ones, the weak, who will break away. Even though his election will not be coming up for 5 years, I will never endorse this jerk again." He called Rounds "weak and ineffective" to boot. As the Hill notes, supporting Trump's claims of a rigged election has "become something of a litmus test" for GOP lawmakers or candidates these days.

Rounds voted to acquit Trump in his impeachment trial last year, and he did not rule out the idea of supporting a 2024 candidacy by Trump. If the former president runs, he will "take a hard look at it," said Rounds. However, he also said Trump could be prosecuted if the Justice Department finds evidence to do so, notes Axios. The "shield of the presidency does not exist for someone who is a former president," Rounds said. (Read more Donald Trump stories.)
(Newser)  Reality TV star Clay Aiken is taking another shot at running for Congressand this time, if he wins the Democratic primary, he'll have a strong chance of making it to Washington. The 43-year-old of American Idol fame said Monday that he is planning a run in North Carolina's redrawn and heavily Democratic 6th Congressional District, the Washington Post reports. Part of the Piedmont Triad-area district is currently held by 81-year-old Democratic Rep. David Price, who announced his retirement last year. "One of my first experiences in politics and government was asking Congressman Price to speak to my eighth grade classan invitation he graciously accepted, Aiken said. He is a legendary legislator ... and he leaves big shoes to fill. Id be honored to take his place."

Aiken lost a longshot bid in the state's conservative 2nd Congressional District in 2014. The Democratic primary in the district that year was too close to call, until Aiken's opponent died in a fall, and the 6th District primary is expected to be just as competitive. If Aiken does win the May primary, analysts predict he will win in November, which will make him the first openly gay member of Congress from the South. "There has never been an out lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans congressperson elected, from the South, in US history," former UNC political scientist Andrew Reynolds, who has been informally advising Aiken, tells the News & Observer.

In his campaign announcement video, Aiken said he was tired of divisive politicians like Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn, People reports. "These folks are taking up all the oxygen in the room and I gotta tell you, I am sick of it," he said. The Post notes that Aiken, Celebrity Apprentice runner-up in 2012, defended Donald Trump against accusations of racism in 2016but after the Unite the Right rally in 2017, he said Trump was "actually racist" and called himself a "dumb***" for defending him. (Read more Clay Aiken stories.)
Fairbanks, AK (99707)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 31F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 31F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The High Criminal Court will announce on Wednesday the verdict against a public employee accused of corruption.

The employee is serving at the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism and his misconduct was exposed after his illegal services were offered to an imitated products trader.

According to court files, the trader found himself facing violation after he was caught selling counterfeited products.

A clearance agent approached him and offered to remove the violation with the help of the Industry Ministry employee in return for cash money.

However, the trader informed the police who seized the phones of the pair and examined their communications.

It was established that they were receiving bribes to remove violations.

The Financial Crimes and Money Laundering Chief Prosecutor said earlier that the pair landed in the police net after a tip-off sent from the Anti-Corruption Department to the Public Prosecution revealing that business owners reported that the employee, with the help of clearance agent, were demanding bribes in return for removing the violations.

The Public Prosecution investigated the case, hearing witnesses and examining text messages traded between the pair.

It was established that the pair committed the wrongdoing, as a result of which they were detained.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Scammers are deploying the best social engineering skills to commit cybercrime and everyone using a digital wallet must be aware of this, said Ali Beshara, the Head of Information Security and Risk Management at The BENEFIT Company.

In an exclusive conversation with The Daily Tribune, the cybersecurity expert said BENEFIT and BenefitPay systems are very secure.

Our security system adheres to international standards and local security standards like PCIDSS and PCI-TSP.

In addition to that, BENEFIT has a team of experts and we are investing in knowledge updates and building the technical capacity of the team, Beshara said.

He attributed the rise in online fund transfer scams to a lack of alertness on the part of users.

The BENEFIT Company has been issuing frequent awareness campaigns on its own and in collaboration with the banking and financial sector, Bahrain TV, Radio Bahrain as well as the General Directorate of Anti-Corruption, Economic and Electronic Security and participated in national awareness campaigns and collaborated with the Central Bank of Bahrain, the Ministry of Interior and Bahrain Association for Banks, in light of rising cases involving the hijacking of user accounts after sending fraudulent links randomly to people through SMS, he said.

Beshara also pointed out that this kind of cybercrime involves social engineering  a term used by information security professionals to describe the action from the part of hackers, who deploy their highest social engineering skills to get information, which is supposed to be kept secret, private and never shared, from their victims.

It is in these situations, the hacker gets the password of the BenefitPay application and the OTP (One-Time Password), which is sent to the user in case of device change and money transfer.

Beshara stressed that users are almost totally protected if they dont click on links sent by fraudsters or share passwords with strangers.

He added that neither BENEFIT nor banks will call you and ask for password or OTP by phone.

There are other types of frauds like calls claiming that the potential victim has won a prize from a bank and needs to update their CPR with BENEFIT or another company.

There have been similar attempts to hijack money changers applications.

Also, one should beware of fake advertisements on buying and selling websites, he explained.

He said the bottom-line statement is Dont share your secret information with strangers and think before you act.

Users of the BenefitPay app can find security tips on Instagram @alibeshara and the BENEFIT Company account @ benefit.bh.

Of late, more victims of online payment transfer scams have taken to the social media platforms to air their woes.

And, it is learnt that fraudsters have been targeting victims by making calls or sending SMSs.

The Daily Tribune carried a report about fraudsters targeting the online banking and financial transaction network in the Kingdom.

The published article carried the plight of one Bangladeshi national, one Pakistani national and an Indian businessman, who together lost nearly BD1,500 to the scammers.

Most of the victims have launched a complaint with the police department, pleading for an intense probe into the matter.

The Central Bank of Bahrain, many a time, has carried out campaigns and circulated messages alerting over the possibility of falling victims to online fraudsters.
HRH Prince Salman orders distribution of 2,000 additional housing units to Bahrainis by next month

HRH Prince Salman orders distribution of 2,000 additional housing units to Bahrainis by next month

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister has directed the Housing Ministry to distribute 2,000 additional housing units to Bahraini citizens across the Kingdoms Governorates by next month.

HRH Prince Salman announced at the weekly Cabinet meeting which he chaired yesterday at Gudaibiya Palace.

It is part of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifas royal directives to build 40,000 housing units for Bahraini families.

The ministry has already made all the necessary preparations for the implementation of the royal order according to schedule, Housing Minister, Eng Bassim bin Yaqoob Al Hamer, confirmed.

The Cabinet congratulated the National Guard on the 25th anniversary of its establishment, and commended its readiness and efficiency in performing national duties, including its vital role in safeguarding the Kingdom.

To mark the Diplomatic Day, held annually in Bahrain on 14 January, the Cabinet noted the success of the Kingdoms diplomatic mission over the past 50 years.

It also affirmed Bahrains keenness to continue establishing and nurturing relations with other countries in the interest of national security and development.

Following a review of a memorandum submitted by the Government Executive Committee on the fourth edition of Government Innovation Competition (Fikra), the Cabinet noted that the competition received an impressive number of quality entries.

The benefits of the winning projects will be studied so that they can be implemented across ministries and government agencies.

The Cabinet noted the measures undertaken by authorities regarding consumer protection.

It directed the intensification of inspection campaigns to ensure the technical, organisational, and procedural aspects of consumer protection laws be implemented.

The Cabinet also reviewed the latest developments in the Republic of Kazakhstan.

It expressed its wishes for safety and stability for Kazakhstan, and for it to maintain peace which is in the best interest of the peoples well-being and the countrys prosperity
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Ithmaar Bank, a Bahrain-based Islamic retail bank, presented a $1 million grand prize to Bahraini mother of two, Fatema Al Alawi.

She won the Thimaar prize draw in December.

The draw was held remotely at the banks headquarters in Seef Tower and supervised by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism (MOICT), as well as external auditors BDO Bahrain and the Banks internal auditors.

On behalf of all of us at Ithmaar Bank, we congratulate Fatema and her family, said Ithmaar Bank Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Abdul Hakeem Al Mutawa.

We are pleased to be able to bring so much joy to so many families in Bahrain.

The Thimaar scheme is not only designed to encourage responsible financial behaviour by making saving more rewarding, but the prizes also have the potential to change lives.

The main reasons why I bank with Ithmaar Bank for the past 15 years is its courteous and friendly customer service.

The branch staff are very kind, helpful, attentive and are always available when I require any assistance, said Al Alawi.

When I received the call from the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the bank, I felt so great with his welcoming and passing the wonderful news.

This phone call came as a pleasant surprise to me as I didnt expect it at all, said Al Alawi.

Alhamdulillah, this is one of the many blessings of Allah.

I will invest the prize amount for the future of my daughters, and I thank Ithmaar Bank for giving me this great chance to win this prize of Thimaar.

Al Mutawa said: At Ithmaar Bank, we remain committed to improving our services and rewarding our loyal customers.

Ithmaar Bank offers the highest number of prizes of any similar scheme in Bahrain, making the Thimaar account one of the most rewarding saving schemes in the Kingdom.

This helps provide additional incentives for savers. Additionally, these potentially life-changing prizes can be won with a minimum of BD30 deposit only.

In 2021, a total of 2,271 prizes were awarded, the most offered by any bank in Bahrain.

Customers were able to win a $1 million grand prize, six quarterly prizes worth $100,000 each, along with many more cash prizes.

Customers can view the winner's list by visiting the banks website at: www.ithmaarban
Agencies | Washington

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The United Nations found thousands of weapons recently seized in the Arabian Sea likely came from a single port in Iran, evidence Tehran is exporting arms to Yemen and elsewhere, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Yemen has been wracked by civil war since 2014, pitting Iran-backed Houthi militia against the internationally recognised government.

The UN imposed an arms embargo on the Houthis in 2015.

Citing a confidential report by a UN Security Council panel of experts on Yemen, the Journal wrote that boats and land transport were used to smuggle weapons made in Russia, China and Iran into Yemen.

The arms included rocket launchers, machine guns and sniper rifles, which had been seized by the US Navy in recent months.

Boats used to transport the weapons had left from the southeastern Iranian port of Jask, the UN report found, based on interviews with the boat crew and data from the onboard navigational instruments, the Journal said.

The militias deputy information minister denied Iran was smuggling weapons into Yemen, according to the Journal, and Tehran said the weapons were not sold or transported to the country.

The UN estimates Yemens war will have directly or indirectly killed 377,000 people by the end of the year.

More than 80 per cent of the population of around 30 million require humanitarian assistance.
The Ministry of Science and Technology of China said in a recent statement that it supports the building of 25 national innovative cities, including Chuzhou, Bengbu and Tongling in Anhui Province.

Six cities in Anhui - Hefei, Maanshan, Wuhu, Chuzhou, Bengbu and Tongling - have started the program of developing themselves into national innovative cities, bringing the eastern Chinese province to the 5th place in the country in terms of total number.

Hefei, capital of the province, Wuhu and Maanshan have already passed acceptance checks conducted by the ministry.

The ministry launched the program as part of its effort to implement the innovation-driven development strategy.

Anhui has attached great importance to the program, taking it as a major part of the development of an innovative province.

It has introduced many innovation-related policies and stepped up effort to gather innovative resources, commercialize scientific and technological achievements, cultivate innovative enterprises and encourage talent.

The province has also improved services and increased investment in that field.




The dependable link between unionized workers and Connecticut Democrats is being tested in 2022 as the resurgent COVID pandemic and two years of sometimes controversial public health directives create political tension at the start of Gov. Ned Lamonts campaign for a second four-year term.

Lamont isnt likely to face a challenge to his partys nomination from the union ranks or from any factions on the left, even as he hews to a middle ground on public health, tax policy and other issues. Still, the stress and anger among workers and union leaders raises a question that could become crucial in a close race in November.

Will some previously reliable Democratic voters in professions such as teaching and nursing, overworked as the pandemic has surged and subsided, sit out Election Day without casting ballots, or even support a Republican challenger?

For now, ten months from the election, union leaders are not throwing their weight around with political threats. Theyre trying to get through the omicron surge and the rising tally of hospitalizations and absences forced by the highest positive COVID-19 test percentages weve seen yet.

This is obviously a crisis beyond anything we have dealt with, Rob Baril, president of District 1199NE SEIU, which represents 25,000 health care workers in Connecticut, said in a Saturday interview, speaking of the entire pandemic. The health care work force is coming apart at the seams.

Baril said his members are burning out and the state needs to invest more money in the workers who continue to work in the front lines as the worldwide virus starts its third year. There is a growing sense of futility as patients die, although certainly not at the rate of the spring of 2020.

Absolutely, the federal government and the state government has put significant amounts of money into hazardous pay and supplemental funding, but it is not enough, Baril said. The degree of despair cannot be overstated and well see how those consequences will play out in terms of elections. Talk all we want about shared sacrifice and the value of essential workers. Its no exaggeration to say a lot more is needed.

Too important to play politics

Many union leaders continue to praise Lamont and are likely to remind their members of Republican pledges in 2018 to renege on pension obligations. They will likely underscore the importance of supporting Lamonts bid for a second term, even as the national picture for congressional Democrats looks bad in the 2018 mid-term elections.

Lamont will need a solid, union-backed turnout to defeat a high-profile Republican such as Themis Klarides, the former House minority leader in the General Assembly, who has filed preliminary campaign documents; or Bob Stefanowski, who lost to Lamont in 2018 but is widely expected to try again.

In 2018, organized labor helped give Lamont the 694,510-to-650,138 vote victory over Stefanowski in heavy, 65-percent turnout. Oz Griebel, who ran for governor as a Republican in 2010, staged an independent run, garnering 54,741 votes, without which Lamont may well have held a thinner margin.

Three-plus years later, some health care workers feel whipsawed by state mandates. State teachers, even those who agree with Lamont, are watching more and more kids come down with COVID infections. Teachers have been critical of Lamonts handling of the pandemic and the pressure to keep in-school learning.

And parents of school kids may also let complaints on the handling of the pandemic carry over to the voting booths on Nov. 8.

Union leaders are dodging direct questions on the the election, as most say its too soon in the political cycle. On Dec. 9, the Connecticut State Building Trades Council became the first union to support a second term for Lamont and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz.

CSBT President, Keith Brothers, president of the 30,000-member union, praised Lamont.

They take the time to listen to our concerns and we can have a real conversation about how to get our industry moving again, Brother said in announcing the endorsement. This election is too important to play politics.

Teachers are not a monolith

During a news conference last week on COVID protocols, educators from throughout the state complained about a lack of face masks and tests, as well as the mandatory combining of classes in cases where staff shortages hit school buildings.

Kate Dias, president of the Connecticut Education Association, and Shellye Davis, a paraprofessional in Hartford representing the American Federation of Teachers, declined to say whether they would flex their political power and possibly threaten Lamont to get what they need.

Weve been talking with the governor and I think all of us are recognizing that we have to be working together, Dias said. I know that there has been a lot of conversation and a lot of sharing of plans and ideas. I think we really want to be mindful of how we approach this issue.

Were here today to bring attention to the dangerous conditions at the schools, across the state, Davis said. Were not here to discuss Gov. Lamonts campaign. Right now our priority has to be ensuring safety for the staff and communities.

Teachers have an overall commitment to keeping schools open for academic, social and mental-health reasons, despite the notable increase in COVID infections among students, said Bob Smoler, president of the 1,000-member Fairfield Education Association, in an interview on Saturday.

Everybody is a little bit dissatisfied with everything, said Smoler, a veteran math teacher at Fairfield Warde High School. But I dont think there is anything so big that it would change the way people vote. Teachers are not a monolith. We have Democrats, Republicans and independents. I dont see anything going on right now that would change peoples views. Were all looking forward to a less-scary environment.

Were going to evaluate

Ed Hawthorne, president of the 200,000-member AFL-CIO umbrella organization of state unions, also downplayed the importance of the election at this point in the calendar.

During a news conference last week held in conjunction with the public rollout of a new state benefit for essential workers who may be eligible for $34 million in relief - including $3,000 funeral payments for families of people who have died in the pandemic - Hawthorne was asked whether unionized workers resort to their election clout.

Were going to evaluate, Hawthorne said during the event, which was led by State Comptroller Natalie Braswell on her first day at work after former Comptroller Kevin Lembo resigned with health issues.

We have our process and everyone will have their say, Hawthorne added. I know people are frustrated a little bit with the new guidance and its something that were working with our affiliates to address and make sure that everyone works in a safe environment.

That concern over health measures emerges over and over in conversations with the people who represent front-line workers.

The labor movement often talks about pay, pension and healthcare but whats often overlooked is safety and the the most-important thing is coming home safe to your family, Hawthorne said. So its something were working actively with the governors office.

As the pandemic heads into its third year, the fatigue is palpable, Hawthorne said. One thing I can applaud the governor for is trying to get those masks out, he said. I know its been a struggle to get some of the supplies out, but he has been trying to get those essential personal protective equipment out to the people that need it the most: those people on the front lines. There are some good things that the governor is really trying to do.

I think we need to look back the two years, said state Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, a former high-ranking union leader who was on the same call with reporters and quickly responded to the potential gravity of the political moment.

I think the legislature, the governors office, everyone really pulled together and worked incredibly hard to keep the population safe, she said. Is there more we should be able to do? Yes. But we also have to look at the accomplishments and remember that weve done so much to save lives in this state.

Kushner, as co-chairwoman of the legislative Labor Committee, helped write the essential worker-benefit law, which took effect Jan. 1.

People have such short-term memories because just a few months ago, Connecticut was doing the best in the nation in terms of vaccination rates and our record-low positivity rate, she said.

Union contracts will be key

The Lamont administration is currently in the end game of extensive contract negotiations with the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, known as SEBAC, which represents about 30 state employee unions. The outcome of those talks as the General Assembly debates the expected agreements this winter and spring will weigh heavily on the elections.

COVID fatigue is a national issue, and if Lamont is to win again, he and union leaders will have to highlight his record in ways that average voters can understand, said Gayle Alberda, a political science professor at Fairfield University.

He needs to explain it more than he might normally do, Alberda said Friday, stressing the importance of union endorsements.

In late October, Lamont told the states unions that he is their friend. On Friday, his campaign reaffirmed what it hopes is a solid relationship.

We in Connecticut are incredibly proud of the men and women in the labor movement who keep our state moving forward  creating jobs, teaching our children, and keeping our communities safe, a spokesman for the Lamont campaign said. Gov. Lamont is focused on governing and not on politics, and we are proud to work with our partners in the labor community, from our teachers to our nurses to our carpenters, as we focus on getting COVID tests to cities and towns across the state, ensuring that schools are safe and open, and keeping our economy moving for working people.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT
RIDGEFIELD  Despite the added cost, local health club and gym owners are complying with a recent Connecticut law that was created to make the venues safer for customers and as a way to save lives.

Championed by a Ridgefield resident, the law that went into effect on Oct. 1 calls for all health clubs and gyms to have an automatic external defibrillator, or AED, on-site with at least one employee or volunteer trained to use it in the event of an emergency.

Suzanne Brennan, of Ridgefield, worked hard to get the law passed after her husband Edward died of a sudden cardiac event at a local gym in 2012. The gym didnt have an AED or trained person who knew CPR on site.

Sam Canale, owner of Affinity Studio in Ridgefield, added an AED in November.

When I opened the studio an AED was the first thing I checked out because the safety is important for our staff and our clients, Canale said. Previous to having an AED, all of our instructors needed to be CPR certified in order to work for us and they still do.

Still, he wishes the state offered a reimbursement plan to help smaller gyms cover the cost. The AEDs he researched cost from $1,500 to $2,500, he said.

For small businesses its a huge expense, Canale said. I understand for the bigger places like Edge Fitness and Planet Fitness its nothing money-wise. But for small ones out there it shouldnt be that expensive to be able to save a life.

Christian Oropeza, founder of EHP Fit in Danbury, agreed the cost could be prohibitive, although he plans to buy an AED.

AEDs I have seen start at around $500 depending on the size of your business, Oropeza said. With COVID impacting businesses, adding an AED is an added expense and some cant take on that expense. Because its a law and with the impact of COVID, it would help if AEDs were offered at a discounted price. Maybe the state could help offset the cost some way.

This bill will save lives

Brennan was excited when the bill she championed was signed into law by the governor in June and is happy to hear gyms are complying.

Im an ordinary person working through grief to make sense of it, but I believe you have to make your suffering mean something, Brennan said.

She emailed her state legislators in 2020, and State Sen. Will Haskell, D-Westport, was the only one to respond and he helped make this bill happen, she said.

Haskell, Brennan and State. Rep. Aimee Berger-Girvalo, D-Ridgefield, worked together to craft the bill.

Oropeza plans to add an AED this year and is certified to use it.

Well be adding one because I think its essential, Oropeza said. There are times when you are dealing with older customers with heart issues. Everyone should have an AED and know how to use it.

Oropeza said the state should do more to let gym owners know it is a law.

I think some gym operators look at it as being an option and dont realize its a law, Oropeza said. The state needs to reach out to gym operators and educate them. Right now, for some gym operators this is not high priority. Its not enforced and there isnt anyone who comes to your gym to check and see if you have an AED.

Haskell was taken aback when it was suggested that some gym operators may look at adding an AED as an option. The Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection and its investigators enforce the law, he said.

This should be made clear to health club owners, adding AEDs on-site is not an option, its a state law, Haskell said.

Gym owners shouldnt be left guessing about the requirement for an AED and possibly the DCP could help, he added. Im sympathetic to owners with concerns of the cost and Id be interested in finding a way to help. But this is not negotiable. This is part of needed equipment at a gym, this bill will save lives.

The state Department of Consumer Protection regulates health clubs. When it comes to renewing their license health club owners can do it online at the DCP website. Haskell believes adding information regarding the law on the website could be one way to inform gym owners of the need to add an AED.

On the DCP website at https://portal.ct.gov/DCP/License-Services-Division/License-Division/To-Renew-Online, on the renew online page under health clubs, AEDs are not mentioned on the license renewal prerequisite list.

Brennan was shocked to think there could be some health club owners who believe adding an AED is an option.

I want health club owners to know that in no way am I doing anything with the intent to hurt health clubs, Brennan said. Its just about saving lives. Morally, why would you consider an AED as an option knowing as a business owner you want to do the best you can to keep members safe?

She said the expense of an AED is not a valid reason to lack one.

There are organizations in Connecticut that help donate AEDs and there are ways to offset the cost, like holding a fundraiser, Brennan said.

Brennan said one way to inform health club owners of the law is to get local rotary clubs involved.

Rotary Clubs get involved in their communities and maybe they could take it on as an initiative to get the word out, she said.
DANBURY  The head of a New Haven charter school has been selected as the new operator of the proposed Danbury charter school.

Subject to state approval, John Taylor and his charter management organization would run the Danbury charter school should it open.

My vision for the Danbury charter school is that we provide families with a high-quality instruction and access to a vibrant learning environment where kids can maximize their potential, said Taylor, who has served as the executive director of the Booker T. Washington Academy in New Haven since 2014.

He was announced Monday morning by the Danbury Charter School Planning Team, which opted to drop Brooklyn-based Prospect Charter School in favor of a Connecticut-based operator that could better push for the state funding the school has waited on since 2018.

Taylor was selected after a wide-reaching and careful search that included touring his charter school in New Haven, said Stephen Tracy, chairman of the Danbury Charter School Planning Team.

Im very confident in the strength and the commitment that hes going to bring to Danbury, he said. I like his spirit. I like the climate that we saw in his school.

The group is pushing the governor to include the charter school in his budget for next fiscal year.

Were working hard to get in there, said Tracy, a former public schools superintendent.

The governors office did not say Gov. Ned Lamonts stance on the charter school.

To our knowledge there hasnt been any communication between the administration and the new operator, spokesman Max Reiss said.

Mayor Dean Esposito said he was pleased that Taylor has been brought on board.

I commend the Danbury Charter School Planning Team on their selection of John Taylor as the managing partner, he said in a statement. John's experience and record of success make him a perfect fit for the prospective Danbury Charter School. I look forward to working with him, and I am strongly advocating approval by the Connecticut Department of Education.

There appears to be no hard feelings between Prospect and local officials.

We are thrilled for the students of Danbury, a Prospect spokesperson said in a statement.

School operations

Danburys legislative delegation, the teachers union and others have opposed the school, preventing the state funding from being approved. But some state representatives indicated Monday theyre willing to hear the latest plan.

The mayor and many in the Latino community support the school, in addition to the parents on the planning team who successfully sought state Board of Education approval for a charter school to open in Danbury. They argue the school will provide families with choice on where to send their children and help address overcrowding in the public schools.

Im a huge advocate for parent choice, Taylor said. Any time you can provide a parent with a variety of choices determining whats the best fit school, best fit type of education for their child, thats a value add, and thats something thats currently limited in Danbury.

Taylors plans for the school are similar to what Prospect envisioned. The school would still serve 770 students in sixth through 12 grade, with 110 students in each grade. The school would open first to 110 sixth graders and add a grade in subsequent years. Students would be accepted into the school based on a lottery system.

The school would be built with help from a philanthropists $25 million donation on a property downtown at the corner of Main and Rose streets.

Were confident that there wont be a ton of changes to what was originally designed, Taylor said.

Taylor and the planning team are reviewing whether the school would offer an International Baccalaureate diploma, as Prospect envisioned.

Tracy said the planning team likes the International Baccalaureate curriculum.

But we also want to make sure that whatever we do can be fully successful and supported by Johns organization, he said. Were opened minded. Were really interested to hear the extent to which John and his team can support it.

The planning team considered how the new operator would represent Danburys diverse student population, said Jose Lucas Pimentel, a member of the planning team and head of Latinos for Educational Advocacy in Diversity, which has advocated heavily for the charter school.

Some of the things we wanted to make sure is we have a very diverse school, so one of our major priorities is to ensure the schools student population mirrors Danbury, so its very diverse, he said.

He said he was impressed with the great success Taylors New Haven school has had in supporting English learners.

Those opposed to the charter school have said theyre worried it would take resources away from Danbury Public Schools.

Its not a freebie to the city, said State Rep. Ken Gucker, D-Danbury.

Public schools are obligated to provide special education and transportation services to students. However, special education students may still attend the charter school, while busing costs would be worked out, Tracy said.

We would work in collaboration with Danbury Public Schools and the superintendent to figure out how that happens, he said.

Whats next

The state Department of Education and state Board of Education must approve Taylor as the new operator because the board previously approved Prospect specifically. Any curricular changes would need to be approved, too.

The group must submit in writing a request to amend its initial certification for the charter for the state Department of Education to review, a department spokesman said. The department would bring the request to the full state Board of Education for a vote no later than 60 days after the request.

If the state approves the new operator, the planning team would sign a contract with Taylors organization that would specify financial arrangements, Tracy said. A name would be selected for the school, too.

State funding would cover the schools budget, which would include the cost to run the school and hire Taylors organization as the operator. The planning team would become the Board of Trustees over the school.

Taylor, who led charter schools in Albany, N.Y. prior to coming to New Haven, is creating a charter management organization that would run the Danbury school and Booker T. Washington Academy in New Haven, he said.

He plans to restructure leadership at Booker so that hes no longer executive director, but the school would enter into a contractual agreement with his organization.

He holds an executive leadership certificate in strategic design for charter schools from Harvard University, in addition to his bachelors degree in education and his masters degree in educational leadership from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

Taylor said he was attracted to Danbury because he saw the passion of the planning team.

This is a group of folks that I think we will work well together with, and (Im) always excited about making a difference for more families, he said.
DDMA in its last meeting had decided to impose a weekend lockdown in Delhi. Over 300 Delhi Police personnel, including the Public Relations Officer (PRO) and Additional Commissioner Chinmoy Biswal have tested positive for Covid-19

The Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) will be meeting today to hold a discussion on the rising COVID-19 cases in the national capital and may take a decision on imposing some more restrictions, according to sources cited by ANI. DDMA in its last meeting had decided to impose a weekend lockdown in Delhi. A meeting was of DDMA was held today under the chairmanship of Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal.

Over 300 Delhi Police personnel, including the Public Relations Officer (PRO) and Additional Commissioner Chinmoy Biswal have tested positive for the virus. A large number of police personnel in all units and at all police stations, including the police headquarters have been hit by the COVID.

Delhi on Sunday reported 22,751 new COVID-19 cases in a span of 24 hours since Saturday morning, the highest since May 1 last year, according to the state health department.
Bench of Justices Rajiv Shakdher and C Hari Shankar will today resume hearing pleas seeking to criminalise marital rape. The petitioners include NGOs RIT Foundation and All India Democratic Women's Association among others.

A Delhi High Court bench consisting of Justices Rajiv Shakdher and C Hari Shankar will today resume hearing pleas seeking to criminalise marital rape. The petitioners include NGOs RIT Foundation and All India Democratic Womens Association among others. The Delhi Government on Friday told the Delhi High Court that marital rape has already been covered as a crime of cruelty under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Appearing for Delhi Government, advocate Nandita Rao had said that marital rape is a crime of cruelty in India and married and unmarried women are kept differently under every single law. She also apprised the Court that an FIR had been registered under Section 498A IPC on the complaint of one of the petitioners, who claimed a victim of repeated marital rape.

The advocate, representing one of the petitioner women, told the Court that figure of marital rape is never reported or analysed. How many times does rape take place in the institution of marriage and is never reported,  the lawyer submitted. The lawyer also cited various judgements passed by Courts in the US, UK, European Union and Nepal.
Eligibility of beneficiaries for the precaution dose will be based on the date of administration of 2nd dose as recorded in the Co-WIN system. Co-WIN system will send SMS to such beneficiaries for availing the precaution dose when the dose becomes due.

The administration of the precaution dose of COVID-19 vaccine to healthcare, frontline workers and those above 60 years in the country begins today. The online registration for precaution dose on the Co-WIN platform began on Friday (January 8). All HCWs, FLWs and citizens aged 60 years or above with comorbidities will be able to access the vaccination for precaution dose through their existing Co-WIN account. The precaution dose can only be taken after 9 months i.e., 39 weeks from the date of administration of 2nd dose.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare has recommended that precaution dose for healthcare workers, frontline workers and senior citizens with co-morbidities will be the same as given previously. It had also informed that the senior citizens with co-morbidities will not be required to produce a doctors certificate or prescription at the time of administration of the precaution dose.

Eligibility of beneficiaries for the precaution dose will be based on the date of administration of 2nd dose as recorded in the Co-WIN system. Co-WIN system will send SMS to such beneficiaries for availing the precaution dose when the dose becomes due. Registration and appointment services can be accessed through both, the online and the onsite modes. The details of the administration of the precaution dose will be suitably reflected in the vaccination certificates.

India reported 1,79,723 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the daily positivity rate in the country to 13.29 per cent, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Monday.

A total of 4,033 cases of the Omicron variant of coronavirus have been reported so far. Maharashtra has reported the highest number of cases (1,216), followed by Rajasthan (529) and Delhi (513). About 1,552 patients infected with the new variant have recovered.


The Supreme Court on Monday said that it will constitute an independent committee headed by a retired top court judge to investigate the security lapse during Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Punjab on January 5. A bench of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana, Justice Surya Kant and Justice Hima Kohli will pass a detailed order on the composition of the committee. However, it has been indicated that Committee will include DGP Chandigarh, IG National Investigation Agency, Registrar General of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and ADGP (security) of Punjab in the Committee.

In the meantime, the Bench asked both the Central government and the Punjab government to not go ahead with the inquiries by the Committees constituted by them. The top court was hearing a PIL seeking a judicial probe into the breach of the Prime Ministers security while on a visit to Punjab.

During the hearing, the Punjab government urged the apex court to set up an independent commission regarding the incident. DS Patwalia, Advocate General of Punjab, said that the Central governments Committee has issued seven show-cause notices to the officers of the Punjab government seeking an explanation why no action should be taken against them for the incident.

The Bench also questioned the Central government for issuing show-cause notices to the officials of the Punjab government over the security lapse, even as the matter was under the examination of the apex court. When the show cause notices have been sent to the officers with prima facie findings regarding their guilt over PMs security lapse, what is the purpose of this court considering the matter, the Bench asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who was appearing for the Centre. Solicitor General told the Bench that if the show cause notices pre-empt the final outcome, the Committee of Central government will examine the issue and report to Court and till then it will not act upon the notice.

Senior advocate Patwalia expressed his apprehension on the Centres Committee and argues that Punjab government officers may not get a fair chance to defend themselves. He said seven show-cause notices were sent, no inquiry was held, no opportunity of hearing given to them.

Punjabs Advocate General Patwalia told the Bench that the Central governments Committee consists of three members  Cabinet Secretary, IG SPG and the Director of IB. MHA head is heading the Committee and they are of prima facie opinion that States officials are guilty already, he added. Let the independent committee be appointed as State have no hopes from this Committee, Patwalia said. Hang me if I am guilty but dont condemn me unheard, he further argued.

Solicitor General said that the show-cause notices were issued before the order of the Court when it asked both the Committees not to go ahead with their inquires. Mehta then referred to the provisions of the Special Protection Group (SPC) Act and the Blue Book for PMs security. He said that PMs convoy had reached the place near to the protest area where crowds started gathering in the morning and there were no inputs from the Director-General of police which was his responsibility. There was a complete failure of intelligence and violation of protocols, he added.

During the hearing, the Bench questioned the Centre for setting up a Committee and issuing showcase notices to Punjab officers. Justice Surya Kant told Solicitor General, Your show cause notice is totally self-contradictory. By constituting a Committee you seek to inquire if there was a breach and then you hold state Chief Secretary and DG of Punjab guilty. Who held them guilty?

Mehta replied that PMs security is of paramount importance and the Centre has to look into the lapses. He added that the enquiry was against the officials who are responsible for the security protocols as per the Blue Book. The Bench told Mehta, Yes there is a breach and the State has too admitted it, but the other issues are questions of facts and they have to be seen by independent persons If you want to take disciplinary action against State officers what remains for this court to look into?

Patwalia also told the court that the records have been taken into consideration by the Registrar General of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. On the last date of the hearing, the apex court had asked the Registrar General to secure and preserve the travel records of the Prime Minister during his visit to Punjab forthwith.

Meanwhile, several advocates of the apex court claimed to have received an automated call from an international number with a recorded message asking the Supreme Court not to help the Modi regime by taking up a matter related to Prime Ministers security breach in Punjab. Lawyers say that caller claimed that he is calling on behalf of designated terror outfit Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) and the said organisation takes responsibility of PM security breach.

The plea in the top court was filed by Lawyers Voice alleging that PMs security breach was a deliberate lapse on part of the State and sought the preservation of evidence on security arrangements and action against erring officials of Punjab government.

It also sought direction to the district judge, Bhatinda to collect all official documents and materials from all possible sources pertaining to the movements and deployment of Punjab Police in connection with the visit at the earliest and produce the same before this court.

Issue a writ of mandamus or any other writ, order or direction fixing responsibility of Respondent No. 2 (chief secretary) and Respondent No.3 (DGP) and place them under suspension and further direct the Respondent No. 4 (Centre) to initiate departmental action against the same, it added.

The Prime Minister was stuck atop a flyover for 15-20 minutes while on his way to Ferozpur, Punjab earlier this month due to the road being blocked by some protesters. The Ministry of Home Affairs termed it as a major lapse in his security.
Ben Lambert / Hearst Connecticut Media

NEW HAVEN  A city man pleaded guilty Monday after allegedly being caught with fentanyl and cocaine in West Haven, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office for Connecticut.

Tashuan Minor-Davis, 24, pleaded to one count of possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, officials said. He faces up to 20 years in prison.
Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has been warned to be careful of Vice President, Yemi Osinbaj...

Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has been warned to be careful of Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo ahead of the 2023 presidential election.

This is coming after Tinubu informed President Muhammadu Buhari of his intention to vie for the presidential ticket of the party in 2023.

He, however, failed to comment on his position regarding Osinbajos candidacy for 2023.

I am still consulting. And I have no problem consulting. And Ive not set a parameter of limitation to the extent of how many people I will consult. You will soon hear, all you want to hear is the categorical declaration. You have gotten that truth from me that I have informed Mr. President of my ambition, I did not expect more answers than that, Tinubu said.

Reacting, Omokri warned that Osinbajos recent statements, pictures and mannerisms are suspicious.

According to him, the Vice Presidents attempt to distance himself from Buhari is a warning for Tinubu to be very careful.

On his Twitter page, he wrote: With the way and manner Vice President Osinbajo is packaging himself, carefully releasing scripted subliminal messages, and releasing staged un-staged photos, and attempting to distance himself from Buhari, one thing is VERY clear: Tinubu needs to be VERY careful.
A former governor of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso, has argued against the call for zoning the 2023 presidential ticket of the Peoples Democra...

A former governor of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso, has argued against the call for zoning the 2023 presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the Southern part of Nigeria.

Mr Kwankwaso made his position known in an interview with Channels Television on Sunday night where he also spoke about several political concerns ahead of the 2023 general elections.

In his argument, the two-term governor of Kano State condemned the insistence of the Southern Governors Forum in July 2021 that the next president of the country must come from their region rather than what is best.

He considered the call by the governors and other leaders as an attempt to intimidate the northern region into relinquishing its right to contest the seat.

Mr Kwankwaso said the decision to contest should be based on strategy rather than mere clamour or sentiments.

With reference to former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan, Mr Kwankwaso, who is eyeing the 2023 presidential ticket of the PDP, said the party had produced more southern presidents than the north.

You see many people are mixing what ordinarily shouldnt come together at all. We have PDP, we have APC, we have APGA and we have many other parties today in this country. And the issue of where a party put his presidency or vice presidency is a matter of strategy.

If you look at it from 1999, to date, or even after 2023, we have 16 years for PDP, eight years for APC. Now, in the 16 years of PDP, we had a situation where the presidency has been in the south for 14 years and only in the north for two years during the Umaru Musa YarAdua of blessed memory.

Now we see some people, maybe because they dont understand politics or they want to be mischievous, they keep on mixing the two issues of two political parties together. This PDP and APC are contestants in this game, he said.

As it stands, neither the APC nor PDP has announced the zoning of its presidential ticket for next years election.

The reluctance of the two major parties in the country to do so has provoked speculations that they may throw the ticket open to all aspirants.

Speaking on speculations of his possible defection from PDP to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Kwankwaso debunked the rumour and reiterated his commitment to ensure victory for his party in the 2023 polls.

In his explanation, he traced the genesis of the speculation to leave the PDP to the treatment meted out on him and his supporters during the partys congress in Kaduna in 2021.

As we speak, there is no plan for me to leave the PDP, to join APC, or any other party.

Of course, there were issues which are very clear to almost everybody; that we had congress in April last year in Kaduna, which I felt and many of my supporters in the North-west and even beyond felt that I was not being treated well and Kano was not being treated the way it should be.

And therefore, I believe that was the beginning of those issues to the extent that people thought because of that, we would leave the PDP for APC or any other party, he said, while noting the reconciliatory efforts of the party leaders.
Ben Ayade, governor of Cross River state, says the type of democracy being practised in the country lacks equity and fairness. Speak...

Ben Ayade, governor of Cross River state, says the type of democracy being practised in the country lacks equity and fairness.

Speaking on Sunday while addressing some stakeholders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) at the governors lodge in Calabar, the state capital, Ayade said democracy does not create the balance that is needed for natural justice.

The governor said the principle of zoning should be entrenched in the nations political system.

We inherited a brand of democracy which is not afrocentric, neither does it have the sensitivity of the African culture and morality, Ayade said.

Democracy is so primitively blind that it reduces itself to numbers. The higher your population, the more you win. So there is nothing like balancing, there is no equity in democracy.

There is no moral conscience. Democracy is blind to ethnicity, it is blind to religion, it is blind to fairness, it is repugnant to natural justice.

The governor reiterated his commitment to ensuring the zoning of the governorship ticket of the state to the southern senatorial district in 2023.

In December, while welcoming some members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the APC, Ayade had said it was the turn of the southern senatorial district to produce the next governor of the state.

The governor said the governorship rotational principle had been in place in the state since 1999.

It is against this background that I will keep to my words. 2023 is a harbinger of peace, equity and justice so that every one of us will have a sense of equity and sense of balance to maintain and sustain our politics, Ayade had said.

This will enable everybody to know his turn at every given time.

Ayade said his decision to return power to the south was based on morality and that the south had credible people with the capacity to be governor.
Instagram dancer and influencer, Jane Orezimena, has revealed what saved her from a s..3.x tape scandal, in which an allegation was placed...

Instagram dancer and influencer, Jane Orezimena, has revealed what saved her from a s..3.x tape scandal, in which an allegation was placed on her last year.

According to the dancer, having small b0obs saved her from all explanations following the accusation.

Taking to her Instagram page on Sunday night, the dancer wrote, When they brought fake tape and picture and said it was me, do you know what saved me from all explanations? My small b00bs.

Dem no dey fake am. Im super grateful for this body and I wouldnt change it for anything in the world. I love yall genuinely for riding with me. The real ones only.

Nollywood actress, Tonto Dikeh had in September 2021 claimed that her ex-lover, Joseph Egbri aka Prince Kpokpogri, had a s3x tape of Janemena who is married.

But Janemena had claimed that due to Dikehs allegation and the trauma it caused, she suffered a miscarriage, losing her one-month pregnancy.

As a result, Janemena sent a letter to Dikeh, demanding the sum of N500m for alleged libel and claiming on social media that Janemena has a s..3x tape.

The dancer also wrote a petition to the Office of the Inspector-General of Police demanding an investigation of criminal libel against Dikeh.
The Christian Association of Nigeria (Youth Wing) says they will mobilise to join Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto ...

The Christian Association of Nigeria (Youth Wing) says they will mobilise to join Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese in appearing before the Department of State Services, DSS.





Belusochukwu Enwere, the President of YOWICAN, in a statement on Sunday, titled We will mobilise Christian youths across the country to answer DSS invitation of Bishop Kukah, noted that Bishop Kukah was invited by the DSS for his comments on the state of the nation slamming.





The statement suggested to the DSS that the popular Islamic cleric, Ahmad Gumi, should be invited for questioning for what the youths called fraternising with bandits.





According to the statement, Bishop Kukah committed no offence.





It said the government should channel her energy in the fight to liberate the country from terrorists and bandits.





It regretted that recently, more than 200 people were killed in Zamfara State and villagers displaced.





The statement added, The DSS has extended her invitation to us, not Bishop Kukah, and we will honour it. The DSS should first invite Ahmad Gumi for questioning for interfacing with bandits.





The youths said that controversial Islamic cleric, Ahmad Gumi had advised people in the terrorised North-West of Nigeria on how they can live in peace with the armed bandits occupying their forests.





YOWICAN quoted Gumi as saying that people could develop mutual relationship with the bandits without being harmed.





The group lamented that Sheikh Gumi had been fraternising with the bandits and he had been working freely without any invitation from the DSS or police.





The DSS has invited Bishop Matthew Kukah for questioning, days after the prominent Catholic priest ramped up his criticism of President Muhammadu Buhari for failing to curb nationwide insecurity, the statement noted.





Recall that Bishop Kukah had slammed President Buhari in his Christmas sermon, saying the Nigerian leader had failed to show competence as terrorists, bandits and other violent criminals embark on a coordinated and relentless rampage across the country.
Watertown, NY (13601)

Today

Mostly cloudy. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 67F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Low 53F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
Attention aspiring movie extras: A Disney feature film set to shoot in New Orleans is looking for a lot of you.

The movie, with the working title Joyride, is apparently a reboot of a 2003 film based on Disneylands Haunted Mansion attraction. The production needs hundreds of locals, "males and females of all ethnicity and ages," to populate various scenes as extras and in background roles.

Extras will be paid $161 for a 12-hour day on set. They will also receive a $65 stipend every time the production requires that they take a COVID test.

The start date is Jan. 27.

Alessi Hartigan Casting, a firm that has worked on productions in Los Angeles, Honolulu, New Mexico, Georgia, Texas and Louisiana, is casting the extras for the project.

Aspiring extras should email ghostsinfilm@gmail.com with "NOLA extra" in the subject line. Include name, cell phone number, location, current photos (selfies are acceptable) and measurements, including shirt, pant and shoe size.

Go to the Louisiana page at AlessiHartiganCasting.com for more details.

Extras must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and be able to show proof of vaccination.

Various online reports indicate Joyride is a reboot of the 2003 movie The Haunted Mansion, which starred Eddie Murphy and was loosely based on the attraction that is part of the New Orleans Square area of Disneyland in California. New Orleans Square is also home to the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, itself a hugely successful movie franchise.

According to The Hollywood Insider, the Joyride cast includes Tiffany Haddish, LaKeith Stanfield, Owen Wilson, Rosario Dawson and Danny DeVito. Justin Simien, whose credits include Dear White People and Bad Hair, is reportedly set to direct.

Joyride will follow in the footsteps of last years Jungle Cruise, which, like Pirates of the Caribbean, was based on a Disney attraction.

The plot reportedly revolves around a mother and son who buy a New Orleans mansion, only to discover it is haunted. They encounter various eccentric characters (who are) key to unlocking the spooky mystery, the Hollywood Insider reported.

Those characters, according to a report last summer, include Harriet, a hapless psychic who is hired to speak with the spirits at the Haunted Mansion, and Ben, who was once an engineer working on a camera that could perceive paranormal activity, but after the death of his wife, his life fell to pieces. Now hes an unenthusiastic ghost tour guide in the French Quarter of New Orleans who no longer believes in the paranormal.

The production is also shooting in Georgia.
When New Orleans-based filmmaker Benh Zeitlin was a kid, he would scour his family VHS collection to pick out movies like The Neverending Story or The Little Mermaid.

I would watch the same films hundreds and hundreds of times, Zeitlin says.

Now Zeitlin  who made feature films Wendy and the twice-Oscar-nominated Beasts of the Southern Wild  gets to do a version of his childhood VHS screenings on a big scale, open to the public.

Zeitlin and a collective of local filmmakers launched a weekly film series Wildwood at Prytania Theatres at Canal Place on Jan. 6. Screenings will be $7.50 every Thursday, with moviegoers encouraged to buy food and drink.

The series will act as a kind of cinematic chain letter  a dialogue between filmmakers from across the world, with many of the featured filmmakers choosing subsequent screenings. Wildwood also will feature in-person discussions with some of the filmmakers.

We're gonna screen films that have been huge inspirations for our own work, Zeitlin says. Or just films that we think everyone should see and would enjoy, but possibly haven't yet.

Wildwood is partially a response to the pandemic, born out of Zeitlins experience of sitting in empty theaters after the ban was lifted. The pandemic era saw moviegoing stop dead in its tracks, but Zeitlin sees this moment as the cinematic experience getting its footing back.

A lot of films that came out right on the eve of the pandemic just didn't get to see the kind of life that they would if it hadn't happened, Zeitlin says.

The series features what Zeitlin describes as, daring films  that move, inspire and challenge the nature of what a film can be, paired with once-a-month screenings of films that detour out for the kitschy, the culty, the dance-along, sing-along, drink-along favorites  that are equal parts film and fete.

Before the Jan. 6 launch, Wildwoods first unofficial showing was Jessica Bashirs Faya Dayi, a docu-fiction about Ethiopias relationship with khat, a leaf that acts as a stimulant when chewed. They also showed Truth or Dare, a raw glimpse into Madonnas 1990 Blonde Ambition tour, and The Night of Kings, Philippe Lacotes magical realist film about a young man who arrives at an Ivory Coast prison, where he discovers that his life depends on his storytelling skills.

I really wanted to bring this film up first, Zeitlin said about The Night of Kings, the official Wildwood debut film. Because it says a lot about what Wildwoods about: challenging what a film is, but at the same time a visceral experience for audiences.

On Jan. 13, Wildwood will feature the Senegalese Bonnie and Clyde-like 1973 film Touki Bouki. The 1982 erotic horror film Cat People, which was filmed in New Orleans, screens on Jan. 20, with an in-person discussion with its director Paul Schrader. This months party film will be the 1996 cult classic The Craft on Jan 27. More information will be available on Wildwoods Instagram account, @wildwood.cinema.

While Zeitlin is excited to roll out Wildwoods programming, hes mostly just happy to help bring back the tradition of theatergoing.

It's a different feeling to watch a movie in a room with people, Zeitlin says. Its important to give a film the kind of focus that the art deserves.

Editor's note: This story is part of an ongoing series of pieces by young journalists that Gambit is running in partnership with JRNOLA, a local nonprofit that works with aspiring journalists in our area. Through this ongoing partnership, we hope to not only give JRNOLA students real-world experience, but to also provide them a platform to tell stories that are important to them. Please consider supporting them by donating here.
Between the pandemic and Hurricane Ida, students across Louisiana have been battling unprecedented levels of stress and mental health issues. Jefferson Parish Schools Chief of Schools Ajit AJ Pethe sat down with Gambit to share insight into the state of mental health resources available to the districts roughly 50,000 students. The following has been edited for brevity.

Gambit: What does your role as the Chief of Schools involve?

AJ Pethe: One of the things I do is serve as the second in command in the district after [Superintendent James Gray.] I also oversee the Student Support Unit. One of the main responsibilities is health and related services.

Gambit: What do those health responsibilities encompass?

Pethe: The health area has a couple of things. One is the medical side of it. The other side is the behavioral mental health support. This year has been especially challenging with [Hurricane Ida] impacting us, and we also continue to be in Covid. As a district, we already had 123 social workers in place, and we're able to contract for 10 additional social workers with Children's Hospital. So this contract allows us to provide additional support to our students.

Gambit: What impact have you seen Hurricane Ida and the pandemic have on the mental health of students in Jefferson Parish?

Pethe: It really impacts every student differently. But what we've noticed overall is kids are dealing with normal school life  so there's a bit of a stress in that. Then there was the hurricane, so some people had various damages to home, some had significant damage to their homes. But still, most people either had to evacuate or stayed home, and then didn't have power or were working on generator power and didn't have internet access. So that was part of the issue, too. That added stress to both students and our staff. Then on top of that, we're still in the midst of Covid.

All those things coming together has just increased our stress level for everyone  if you think about what's normal routine for kids  which is being in school, seeing your friends, seeing your teachers, being able to interact socially  when that's interrupted, that automatically causes a level of stress. The hurricane really contributed to that because you had students scattered all over  some evacuated from the state, others stayed within state, others stayed in their homes  but it affects your normal day-to-day routines. And Covid, in some ways, does that as well.

Gambit: As a student, I felt that not everyone knows the full range of mental health resources available. How does the school district plan to bring more awareness to the resources?

Pethe: You're right on point: Not everyone knows all the support that we provide. And that's something we do for our students, but then we also have some programs in place, one of which is called Leader In Me. Leader In Me not only focuses on mental health but also really focuses on how you become a leader as a student within the school system. That's really going to help you  not only in school but then also in life later on. Leader in Me was started at pre-K through eighth (grade) schools. But then we've added it to (high schools). This is the first high school in Jefferson Parish. And it really helps with learning to prioritize resolving conflict.

Second Step is a program for pre-K through fifth grade schools. That's a curriculum, and it really supports empathy, as well as learning skills and conflict resolution. For sixth grade students, we have something called Rethink Ed, and that supports students coping with grief and loss, hopelessness and resiliency.

The last thing we have is called Conscious Discipline, and that's for pre-K through fifth grade schools. It's building class family, learning, empathy, focus skills for learning.

Gambit: Parishwide, how is JP Schools planning to add more opportunities for students to socialize, especially since lunchtime has been shortened?

Pethe: One of the things in a classroom setting is that there are always opportunities to engage, and theyre through what you're learning in the classroom. I'm sure you've participated in different situations where you're debating or having conversations with your colleagues  we will continue to take feedback from stakeholder groups and modify if necessary and go back during the summer as we think about next year's planning.

Gambit: Some of these programs that you mentioned in middle and elementary schools, not many people may have heard of them yet. Why do you think that is?

Pethe: Yeah, it could be the terminology, too. At the elementary level, it can look like a social worker going into a particular class, or it could be at some other point that's agreed upon by the teacher and the social worker. They'll present lessons in that class to talk about different things. But the kids wouldn't walk away saying, Oh, we did Second Step. They know they engaged in some activity with a mental health provider, our social workers, but they may not have that name associated with it.

Gambit: Has there been evidence showing that these programs have boosted student outcomes and mental health?

Pethe:: Yes. When we implement programs like these, we call them research-based programs. There's research across the country, and they've collected the data to show when you implement these correctly, these are the benefits from the programs. Our next step is to then apply that to Jefferson Parish and be specific about what that looks like in Jefferson Parish.

Editor's note: This story is part of an ongoing series of pieces by young journalists that Gambit is running in partnership with JRNOLA, a local nonprofit that works with aspiring journalists in our area. Through this ongoing partnership, we hope to not only give JRNOLA students real-world experience, but to also provide them a platform to tell stories that are important to them. Please consider supporting them by donating here.
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Elaborate, hand-made superhero masks werent the only face coverings on display Sunday as fans of all ages gathered at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center for this weekends Fan Expo comic con.

The omicron variant is currently fueling a new surge in coronavirus cases. A handful of stars had canceled their planned appearances, and organizer Fan Expo has pulled the plug on next weeks show in Portland.

But on Sunday, the three-day fan frenzy formerly run by Wizard World went on as planned for attendees who could show proof of vaccination or a negative test result on entry. Roughly half wore masks to protect themselves from the coronavirus.

One of them was John Hensley, who flew in from California with his wife, Janell.

Dressed as a character from the video game Payday 2, Hensley had a Captain America shield and was near tears as he had it signed by Anthony Mackie, the New Orleans-born actor whose has starred in Marvel movies and television shows as Sam Wilson, the alter ego of The Falcon and Captain America.

Im a veteran who has had PTSD and his character helped me a lot, Hensley explained.

The best thing about it is meeting the other cosplayers, said Hensley, who attended Friday and Saturday dressed as The Mandalorian and Loki. People can be themselves without fear of being made fun of.

Fan Expo spokesperson Jerry Milani said that sense of community plays a major role the comic cons appeal.

No matter what you like, theres a thousand other people who like the same thing, Milani said.

Besides Mackie, another marquee celebrity was William Shatner, of Star Trek fame. Several others, including Ming-Na Wen, John Barrowman, Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes and David Hayter, cancelled for various reasons, some COVID-related, Milani said.

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But there were plenty of others on hand to pick up the slack, including Charles Martinet, the voice of the iconic video game character Mario, who slipped in and out of the plumbers high-pitched voice during a brief interview.

I love these shows, he said. One of the things about adulthood is that it puts everybody into a pigeonhole, whereas this freezes everybody. Its shedding off your adulthood for a while and just being a kid.

Fans included a 2-year-old dressed as Baby Yoda who was accompanied by his dad, Dominic Bergeron, a stormtrooper. Bergeron said they recycled Halloween costumes to accompany his brother, sister-in-law and their daughter Lily, 15, who was dressed as the Marvel character Loki.

Michael Rooker, known for roles on the Walking Dead and Guardians of the Galaxy, sat behind a table signing autographs for fans. A mother approached carrying her 2-month-old baby, who she said watched Guardians of the Galaxy with her every day. He gave her a signed picture of baby Groot, a character from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise

Yeah cause the kids got taste, Rooker said, joking that he should sign the babys head. A crowd gathered as he joked with a young fan that the blue makeup he wore as the character Yondu in the films was his real skin.

This is my human makeup, he insisted, grinning.

A few aisles away, Guy Gilchrist, the cartoonist for Jim Henderson whose illustrious career has included writing and drawing comic strips of The Muppets, as well as Nancy, drew pictures for fan requests. On Sunday morning these included sketches of the Muppet character Gonzo dressed as Batman and as a Ninja Turtle with a mohawk.

Booths were full of artists and vendors  some local, some who travel with the convention  selling art, collectibles, comics and costumes. At one booth, the Louisiana Ghost Busters group outfitted two young fans in ghostbusters get-up, complete with a proton pack. The boys posed for photos in front of a replica car. At another booth, three special effects artists sat dressed as a sandworm from Beetlejuice, Isabelle from Animal Crossing and Cinnamon Roll from Hello Kitty.

Sundays cosplay showcase, the last of the weekend, was a mashup of fandoms, as multiple versions of the friendly neighborhood Spiderman, Disney villains and heroes, League of Legends and Nintendo characters and several plague doctors for good measure  paraded down a red carpet, posing for the camera.

During Mackie's panel, a fan asked what he missed most about New Orleans. Noting he'd thought about the question extensively, he replied, shrimp po-boys, with extra pickles and hot sauce. At one point, he asked the crowd about the Saints score, and let out a gleeful whoop when several people shouted 14-6.
Veterans of Foreign Wars Homer Williams Post 8720 members in Abita Springs celebrated their 75th anniversary in style last month.

The mistress of ceremonies was Post 8720 Senior Vice Commander Veronica Bevans, who led the Diamond Jubilee program that included a heartfelt remembrance of the post's namesake, Homer Williams, and tribute to his descendants.

In addition to those family members, other honored guests for the evening included Abita Springs Mayor Dan Curtis, Louisiana and District 9 officers; Post 8720 officers; past post commanders; and the Post Citizenship Education Teacher Award winners, Theresa Curtis, a third grade teacher at Abita Springs Elementary, and Kim Gardner, a U.S. history honors teacher at Saint Pauls School. Both teachers won at the district level and are now competing statewide.

Bevans gave a history of the post and of Williams, a young Army private assigned to the 3rd Battalion of the 339th Infantry Regiment, which saw combat in Italy from March 1944 until the surrender of German forces in May 1945. It was during one of these many battles that Williams paid the ultimate sacrifice on Sept. 17, 1944. He died from wounds received in action and was awarded the Purple Heart.

After WWII officially ended on Sept. 2, 1945, returning veterans founded the post on Nov. 6, 1946, with 36 original members. Nine years later, in 1955, the Post Auxiliary was established.

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Over the next 75 years, the post would participate in numerous community activities, including Memorial Day services at the Abita Springs cemetery and the Covington Justice Center; creating care packages for deployed military members and for senior veterans in state war veterans homes; sponsoring local families in need during the holidays; and holding dinners and special events at the post.

Over the years, the post has been very active in the Americanism and youth programs of the VFW, including the Voice of Democracy and Patriots Pen, which the post and its representatives have won at the district, state and national levels. The post also sponsors and supports Scout Troop 8720 and Scout Troop 610, as well as the 1021st Engineer Company of the Louisiana Army National Guard.

Over the past couple of years, Post 8720 has become even more engaged with their community by hosting their own nationally recognized home-school, Patriots Pride; becoming a sponsorship group for Wreaths Across America; becoming recognized as a Purple Heart Post; and creating a social media presence with the post's own Facebook page and website.

Due to the dedication and commitment of the men and women of VFW Post 8720 and its auxiliary, all the work has not gone unnoticed. VFW Post 8720 has earned All-State and All-American status for four consecutive years.

The 75th Anniversary Diamond Jubilee Certificate was presented to the Post 8720 commander by a group of state VFW leaders.
LOS ANGELES  Robert Durst, the wealthy New York real estate heir and failed fugitive who was dogged for decades with suspicion in the disappearance and deaths of those around him before he was convicted of killing his best friend and sentenced to life in prison, has died. He was 78.

Durst died in a state prison hospital facility in Stockton, his attorney Chip Lewis said. He said it was from natural causes due to a number of health issues.

Durst was convicted in September of shooting Susan Berman at point-blank range in 2000 at her Los Angeles home. He was sentenced to life Oct. 14. Two days later, he was hospitalized with COVID-19, his trial attorney Dick DeGuerin said.

Durst had long been suspected of killing his wife, Kathie, who went missing in 1982 and has been declared legally dead. He was finally indicted in November for second-degree murder in her death.

Arrested in New Orleans

He was arrested in New Orleans in 2015 by authorities chasing him in connection with Bermans killing.

When authorities searched Dursts hotel room in New Orleans on March 14, 2015, they found a flesh-colored latex mask with salt-and-pepper hair, five ounces of marijuana, more than $100,000 in cash and a loaded Smith and Wesson .38-caliber revolver, authorities said.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles presented evidence Durst silenced Berman because she helped him cover up Kathies killing and was about to talk to investigators. They also argued he killed a Texas man who discovered his identity when he was living secretly in Galveston after Bermans killing. Durst was acquitted of murder in that case in 2003, after testifying he shot him in self-defense.

HBO documentary series called 'The Jinx'

Durst discussed the cases and made several damning statements including a stunning confession during an unguarded moment in the six-part HBO documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.

The show made his name known to a new generation and brought renewed scrutiny and suspicion from authorities. He was arrested in Bermans killing the night before the final episode, which closed with him mumbling to himself in a bathroom while still wearing hot mic saying: Youre caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.

+28 Robert Durst: L.A. cops arrested millionaire because of 'The Jinx' Robert Durst's arrest in a New Orleans hotel in March was the product of hype from the HBO mini-series "The Jinx," and not new evidence Durst 

The quotes were later revealed to have been manipulated for dramatic effect but the production  done with Dursts cooperation against the advice from his lawyer and friends  dredged up new evidence including an envelope that connected Durst to the scene of Bermans killing as well as incriminating statements he made.

Police had received a note directing them to Bermans home with only the word CADAVER written in block letters.

In interviews given between 2010 and 2015, Durst told the makers of the The Jinx that he didnt write the note, but whoever did had killed her.

Youre writing a note to the police that only the killer could have written, Durst said.

+12 Robert Durst questions 'cadaver' note handwriting analysis Lawyers for Robert Durst plan to challenge handwriting analysis that links the millionaire murder suspect to the so-called "cadaver" note that

His defense lawyers conceded in the run-up to trial that Durst had written the note, and prosecutors said it amounted to a confession.

Clips from The Jinx, and from the 2010 movie All Good Things in which Ryan Gosling played a fictionalized version of Durst, had starring roles at trial.

As did Durst himself. His attorneys again took the risk of putting him on the stand for what turned out to be about three weeks of testimony. It didnt work as it had in Texas.

Under devastating cross-examination by prosecutor John Lewin, Durst admitted he lied under oath in the past and would do it again to get out of trouble.

Did you kill Susan Berman? is strictly a hypothetical, Durst said from the stand. I did not kill Susan Berman. But if I had, I would lie about it.

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The jury promptly returned a guilty verdict.

It long appeared he would avoid any such convictions.

Durst went on the run in late 2000 after New York authorities reopened an investigation into his wifes disappearance, renting a modest apartment in Galveston and disguising himself as a mute woman.

In 2001, the body parts of a neighbor, Morris Black, began washing up in Galveston Bay.

Arrested in the killing, Durst jumped bail. He was arrested for shoplifting a sandwich six weeks later in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he had gone to college. Police found $37,000 cash and two handguns in his car.

He would testify that Black had pulled a gun on him and died when the weapon went off during a struggle. He told jurors in detail how he bought tools and dismembered and disposed of Blacks body. He was acquitted of murder. He pleaded guilty to violating his bail, and to evidence tampering for the dismemberment. He served three years in prison.

Durst had bladder cancer and his health deteriorated during the Berman trial. He was escorted into court in a wheelchair wearing prison attire each day because his attorneys said he was unable to change into a suit. But the judge declined further delays after a 14-month pause during the coronavirus pandemic.

DeGuerin said Durst was very, very sick at his sentencing hearing and it was the worst he looked in the 20 years he spent representing him.

Durst entered the courtroom with wide-eyed vacant stare. Near the end of the hearing after Bermans loved ones told the judge how her death upended their lives, Durst coughed hard and then appeared to struggle to breathe. His chest heaved and he pulled his mask down below his mouth and began to gulp for air.

The son of real estate magnate Seymour Durst, Robert Durst was born April 12, 1943, and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He would later say that at age 7, he witnessed his mothers death in a fall from their home.

He graduated with an economics degree in 1965 from Lehigh University, where he played lacrosse. He entered a doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he met Berman, but dropped out and returned to New York in 1969.

He became a developer in the family business, but his father passed him over to make his younger brother, and rival, Douglas the head of the Durst Organization in 1992.

In 1971, Robert Durst met Kathie McCormack, and the two married on his 30th birthday in 1973.

In January 1982, his wife was a student in her final year at medical school when she disappeared. She had shown up unexpectedly at a friends dinner party in Newtown, Connecticut, then left after a call from her husband to return to their home in South Salem, New York.

Robert Durst told police he last saw her when he put her on a train to stay at their apartment in Manhattan because she had classes the next day.

He would divorce her eight years later, claiming spousal abandonment, and in 2017, at her familys request, she was declared legally dead.

Robert Durst is survived by his second wife Debrah Charatan, whom he married in 2000. He had no children.

Under California law, a conviction is vacated if a defendant dies while the case is under appeal, said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School.

Lewis said an appeal was filed for Durst.

Associated Press writer Michelle A. Monroe in Phoenix contributed.
A 41-year-old man was shot to death Sunday night in the French Quarter, New Orleans police said.

Less than 10 minutes later, a woman was injured in a shooting a few blocks away in Treme.

Update: Baton Rouge man killed in French Quarter shooting

The French Quarter shooting was reported to police at around 10:30 p.m. at Burgundy and Conti streets. The victim was arguing with an unidentified man when police say the unidentified man pulled out a gun and shot him.

The man died at the scene, and his name has not been released.

Baton Rouge man, 41, shot to death in French Quarter on Sunday, family says A man shot to death in the French Quarter on Sunday night has been identified as 41-year-old Russell Ricou of Baton Rouge, according to a fami

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At 10:35 p.m., police were called to a shooting in the 1400 block of Bienville Street.

An unidentified man was firing a gun from inside a vehicle when his bullets grazed a 27-year-old woman, police said.

She went in a private vehicle to a hospital, and her condition was not available as of 7 a.m.

No other details were immediately available for either shooting, including a possible motive or a description of a potential shooter. Anyone with information is asked to call Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111.

Editor's note: This story has been updated with new information from authorities. It also has been updated to reflect that a woman, not a man, was shot on Bienville.
Political leaders and influential groups from Haiti will meet in Louisiana this week in hopes of planning a transitional government for the country, which is mired in a multi-faceted crisis including the assassination of its president last summer.

The Haiti Unity Summit starts Thursday at the Southern University Law Center in Baton Rouge and will end Jan. 19. Retired U.S. Lieutenant General Russel Honore, best known for leading military relief efforts around New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, will broker the sessions and direct security for the six-day conference.

With Haitian political institutions in a state of collapse and powerful gangs in control of parts of the country since President Jovenel Moises killing, the summit's goal is to bring together different political factions to help "solidify an interim government" that can organize elections, Honore said.

The concept of bringing Haitians here is to help Haitians develop a plan for Haiti, he said. They need the ability to have security in their country to the point that people can live and work, but thats only going to work if they have a functional government.

The summit will be hosted by the Southern University Law Center and the Haitian Diaspora Political Action Committee. Representatives of several Haitian political groups  which have varied, and often competing, ideas about the countrys future  will also be present for the summit, according to the groups website.

From its large community of Haitian immigrants to the Gulf Coasts own experience with rebuilding from cyclic natural disasters, Louisiana has deep ties to Haiti tracing back to the countrys early years as a republic of formerly enslaved people.

Those connections make Southern  a historically Black institution that has graduated many students of Haitian descent  well-suited to host talks about how to ameliorate the country's situation, believes John Pierre, chancellor of the universitys Law Center.

Theres a lot of connectivity between current Louisianans and the country of Haiti, even as it relates to our names  Pierre, Honore, Gaspar, Pierre said. All these names are tied to Afro-American or Creole families that arrived from France and made a direct connection to Haiti. I think we have a duty to promote peace there.

Pierre said the Law Center became involved in planning the summit out of a history of its professors working in the country on issues like land reform. The plan to host the summit grew from recent discussions of one of those projects, he said.

Negotiations between the varied groups invited to the summit about the country's future began even before Moises was killed, according to the Haitian Diaspora Political Action Committee's website.

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The university initially looped in Honore because of his experience with security planning, Pierre said. Politicians and members of interest groups in town for the summit will be provided security at Southern's campus, Honore said, and while they move to and from hotels.

The summit comes months after a group of assassins snuck into Moises private mansion in Port-au-Prince and shot him to death, also severely wounding his wife. Weeks later, a powerful magnitude 7.2 earthquake violently shook the country, much of which was still recovering from a massive, destructive quake in 2010.

More than 40 suspects have been detained in the search for Moises killers, including 19 former Colombian soldiers.

From a field of politicians who vied for power after Moises death emerged Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who has pledged to hold general elections this year. But he has not provided a specific date when people would head to the polls.

Elections were originally scheduled for last year, but were delayed by the pandemic, a spike in gang violence and Moises killing.

And Henry himself is now accused of having connections to Moises assassins.

Phone records show the prime minister spoke before and after the attack with Joseph Felix Badio, a former justice ministry official wanted by Haitian authorities on suspicion of plotting Moises killing, according to a report by the New York Times published Monday afternoon.

Honore spoke with the prime minister during the weekend, when Henry told him he would not be travelling to Baton Rouge for the summit, the retired general said Monday.

Representatives of Henrys administration will be present, however, Honore said. The retired general added that Haiti's ambassador will join the talks remotely from Washington, D.C.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell will be sworn in for her second term in a low-key ceremony at Gallier Hall on Monday, minutes before the scheduled separate inauguration of a City Council with five fresh faces.

Both proceedings were to be held in stripped-down style because of the latest COVID surge, in contrast to Cantrells grander first inauguration in May 2018.

Can't see the video above? Click here: Mayor LaToya Cantrell - Inaugural Ceremony 2022.

Cantrell sailed to a second term in the November election. Yet the Council that took shape in the December run-off, with only two holdovers out of seven seats, seems poised to take a more assertive role in its interactions with the administration.

Cantrells challenges for the immediate future include the pandemics fallout on the local economy, the recovery from Hurricane Ida and city sanitation contracts.

Can't see the live module below? Click here.

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The mayor will be sworn in on the steps of Gallier Hall in a ceremony with limited access.

Similarly, the new City Council will be inaugurated later Monday in chambers in a proceeding closed to the public.

Earlier Monday morning, Cantrell attended an inaugural mass at St. Patricks Church on Camp Street.

+6 New Orleans City Council set as final candidates elected in district seats New Orleans voters chose four new City Council members Saturday, returning Oliver Thomas to the city's political firmament and adding fresh fa
Wind-whipped flames are marching across more of New Mexicos tinder-dry mountainsides, forcing the evacuation of area residents and dozens of patients from the state's psychiatric hospital as firefighters scramble to keep new wildfires from growing. The big blaze burning near the community of Las Vegas has charred more than 217 square miles. Residents in neighborhoods on the edge of Las Vegas were told to be ready to leave their homes. It's the biggest wildfire in the U.S. and is moving quickly through groves of ponderosa pine because of hot, dry and windy conditions that make for extreme wildfire danger. Forecasters are warning of extreme fire danger across New Mexico and in western Texas.
Muncy, Pa.  A woman from Coatesville was charged after she allegedly attempted to smuggle heroin into the State Correctional Institute at Muncy.

Teena M. Keller, 51, now an inmate at SCI-Muncy, was brought to the prison for processing on Dec. 3, 2021. Parole agents who were escorting Keller asked twice if she had contraband, which she denied, according to the arrest affidavit.

Once Keller got into the admissions building, she once again denied having contraband. Upon searching Keller, a corrections officer found a plastic wrapper containing a Ziploc bag with a blue glassine bag of heroin, according to the affidavit written by Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Brian Siebert.

The substance seemed to be consistent with blue or purple heroin, which is typically mixed with fentanyl, Siebert wrote. When the corrections officer asked Keller what the substance was, Keller replied drugs but claimed she didnt know what kind.

Keller faces felony charges of possession of contraband. A preliminary hearing is scheduled at the Muncy district magistrate office.

Docket Sheet

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Lycoming County -- The Office of Voter Services has learned that one or more suspicious individuals may be going door-to-door and identifying themselves as Voter Services employees, according to the Lycoming County Board of Elections.

Lycoming County residents should be advised that Voter Services employees do not conduct door-to-door solicitation of any kind.

If a person knocks on your door and claims to be from Voter Services, be very skeptical of their questions  particularly any attempt to obtain personal identifying information such as your date of birth, drivers license number, or Social Security Number.

Call Voter Services at (570) 327-2267 to report any suspicious encounters. Voter Services is open Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

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With a fast-approaching deadline, Chesapeake Bay Foundation's assessment of multistate progress shows Pennsylvania, as a major polluter of the bay, remains far behind in meeting its clean water commitments.

The Chesapeake Bay Clean Water Blueprint has set a deadline for watershed states, including Pennsylvania, to have pollution-reduction practices in place by 2025.

A recent State of the Blueprint report by the foundation revealed the Keystone State continues to lag in reducing agriculture and urban-suburban pollution.

Allison Prost, vice president of environmental protection and restoration for the Foundation, said Pennsylvania's failure to act quickly threatens the blueprint's success.

"Equally as important, the ability to restore local waterways, because if the Pennsylvania waterways are not clean, the downstream bay will not be clean," Prost asserted. "But if action is taken on the ground in Pennsylvania, we'll see improvements in both."

Earlier this week, Pennsylvania revealed an updated version of its Phase 3 Water Implementation Plan, which it said would achieve 100% of its pollution-reduction commitments by 2025.

One step the state could take would be establishing an Agricultural Conservation Assistance Program (ACAP), which would fund projects for farmers to plant trees next to waterways and other pollution-reduction projects, which act as buffers to help filter out pollutants before they reach the local water and, ultimately, the bay.

Harry Campbell, Pennsylvania director of science policy and advocacy for the Foundation, said a proposed Clean Streams Fund would use a portion of the state's American Rescue Plan funds for the ACAP program.

"By passing that legislation to establish the Clean Streams Fund, Pennsylvania has the opportunity to substantially improve water quality," Campbell contended. "Not only in our own backyard, but meet our Chesapeake Bay commitments as well."

Agriculture in Pennsylvania is the main source of nitrogen pollution entering the bay.

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Napoleon, OH (43545)

Today

A steady rain early. Showers with perhaps a rumble of thunder developing in the afternoon. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. High 67F. ESE winds shifting to SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall possibly over one inch..

Tonight

Thunderstorms in the evening, then variable clouds overnight with still a chance of showers. Low 47F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
One mom said she feels like she's endangering her kids' health. Another said she feels lonely and exhausted by the pressure of what to do. And a father said he and his wife live in fear that their daughter's school will close.

"The world at large is forgetting about anyone with kids under 5," one mother, Rachel Lekherzak, said.

Their experiences represent a snapshot of the broader chaos facing the country as Omicron infects hundreds of thousands of people daily, creating major staffing shortages for schools, hospitals, airlines and emergency services.

Their perspectives help illustrate the tricky position that millions of parents are in. All acknowledged the value of in-person education; all also knew the risks that in-person class could present with this wave of cases.

Here is a sample of their stories.

'Mommy, I'm sorry I failed you'

When Jane Peng's 13-year-old daughter spiked a fever and started vomiting Monday, Peng quickly used a home test kit. The result was negative, but there appeared to be a shadow where the line should be, she said.

The eighth grader at Eisenhower Middle/High School in New Berlin, Wisconsin, has been isolating and wearing a KN95 mask at home since then, the same day that class reopened. On Tuesday and Saturday, home tests came back positive, her mother said. Peng asked that her daughter not be named in this story.

Peng scrambled to find her daughter a PCR test Monday, but all the local pharmacies and testing centers she tried didn't have availability until Friday. "I'm angry and frustrated," she said. "I'm almost unable to get my daughter a test at any official sites ... at the time when she got sick."

The family's doctor couldn't see her daughter until Thursday. On Saturday afternoon, her daughter's PCR test results came back positive. Her husband, a healthcare worker, has tested negative with tests at work.

"Mommy, I'm sorry I failed you, that I didn't protect myself, that I got this Covid and I put you and daddy into danger," Peng said her daughter told her, crying.

Peng told her daughter, who has been wearing a KN95 mask to school, it wasn't her fault. "It's our adults' fault. It's the CDC and school district and me, the mother, that we failed you," Peng said.

The timing of her daughter's illness stung. She tested positive one day before the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its recommendations for the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine booster to include children as young as 12.

Her daughter's school did a good job with Covid-19 safety measures last year with mask mandates, social distancing and glass dividers set up for lunch, she said. Her daughter was struggling with virtual learning, so Peng let her go back to in-person classes in March 2021.

But for this school year, the School District of New Berlin is recommending masks for students and teachers, as opposed to requiring them, according to a May letter from the superintendent.

CDC guidelines for isolation changed from 10 days to five days if you do not have symptoms, plus five days of wearing a mask around others. It makes Peng angry, she said. The school district sent an email to parents on December 30 saying it would adopt the same reduced isolation period, though not the mask requirement.

"This is like drinking the sea water when you are really thirsty, and your children got sick because of this policy change. I blame the CDC and I blame our school district," Peng said. "I want to send this message to a school district -- open your eyes, look at the data, protect our children."

'I feel like I'm endangering them'

Rachel Lekherzak, 40, and her husband decided to hold their 4- and 6-year-old kids back a grade last year, hoping the pandemic would be over by now. The rise of Omicron and decisions made by the Cobb County School District in Georgia have foiled that hope, she said.

"It just feels like a trap," she said. "I feel trapped by it. On one hand, I want my children to have an education. On the other hand, I feel like I'm endangering them by sending them there."

Lekherzak's 6-year-old is in kindergarten and fully vaccinated, but her 4-year-old is in pre-K and is not yet eligible for the shot. School reopened in person on Wednesday. Remote learning is an option in Cobb County, but they would have had to sign up months ago, she said.

"It really is just a series of bad options right now. (People say,) 'You're in a pandemic, what do you expect?' But at some degree it's infuriating," she said.

Lekherzak suspects that the school will be closed by next week due to staff shortages, so she planned to keep her kids home for now to at least keep them from getting sick. Her husband disagrees and wants to send them to class. The situation has caused constant stress, and she was hardly comforted by the knowledge that Covid-19 is generally milder for children.

"There are so many decisions that have been from this pandemic that just puts kids at the short end of the stick. It's like, 'oh they won't get it that bad.' For people who are parents, it doesn't matter how you minimize it, if your child is sick and gasping for air, I'm sorry it's scary," she said. "That's what happens with this virus. That's a normal symptom of a coughing fit."

In a statement Monday, Cobb County School District said schools would reopen after the holiday break on Wednesday and advised parents to "not send a sick child to school." The district strongly encourages students and staff to wear face masks but does not require them, and there are no vaccine or testing requirements, according to its policies.

The district on Thursday also said that they would not continue contact tracing and loosened its quarantine rules, citing new state guidance. "Cobb's Public Health Protocols are intended to balance the importance of in-person learning and the frequent changes associated with Covid-19," a district spokesperson said in a statement.

'Are you gonna wrap yourself in bubble wrap?'

Brian Nagele, of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, said he lives under the constant fear that his 6-year-old daughter's school will close due to Covid.

He and his wife aren't able to work from home, so closing in-person class means they have to scramble for day care or take the day off work. Sometimes his daughter's grandparents are able to babysit for the day, but not always.

"It's tough. There's nobody else that can help us out. If they can't do it, one of us has to take off work. Then we run the risk of losing our jobs or bringing less money in," he said. "We have options, but none of them are good."

Remote learning also has not worked for his daughter, he said.

"It's a constant (stress)," he added. "My wife is constantly worried about whether they're going to shut down. If they do, what do we do?"

Nagele and his wife are vaccinated, and their 6-year-old has gotten her first shot. He said safety has never been a concern and he trusted that his daughter's immune system was strong enough to keep her healthy.

He understands the idea of erring on the side of caution, but the district was being overbearingly cautious, he argued. People in a car should wear a seat belt, he said -- "but are you gonna wrap yourself in bubble wrap in the off chance you get in a crash? No."

'It wasn't a tough decision to send them back'

Timothy Lin lives in Cobb County, Georgia, and works as a pulmonologist in nearby Cartersville, so he treats patients sick and dying of Covid during his working hours. Talking to his kids after work about their time at school doesn't give him much of a reprieve from Covid issues.

"It's just hard. It's just in my face 24/7," he said.

Even so, he said it was not a hard choice to send his two vaccinated children, ages 8 and 10, back to Mountain View Elementary School on Wednesday with masks in hand.

"At the end of the day, with Covid here to stay for the foreseeable future, we really do need to do in-person learning," he said. "When they're just watching a video screen, I think there's a lot lost in that. It's valuable having peers who are with you, around you, (and) a teacher talking in front of you."

He expressed his ongoing frustration, though, that the school was not requiring students to wear masks.

"I think it's just a matter of heightened awareness and nervousness of them being at school. For us, it wasn't a tough decision to send them back in person because we felt the risks are outweighed by the benefits," he said. "That being said, you're just waiting to get the email saying, 'Hey, your kid needs to isolate for five days' or whatever."

'I'm not ... cool with getting Covid'

For single mom Anmari Linardi, it's all about her and her 14-year-old daughter, Diana Lesny, who has autism. She can't afford to get sick, and neither can her daughter, she said.

"I'm not one of these people that are cool with getting Covid, even though it's not going to kill us. I don't want it at all," the 51-year-old said. "I'm triple vaccinated, my daughter's double vaccinated. She's going to be getting her booster when it's available."

With the surge in Covid-19 cases, Linardi decided to pull Diana out of school just a couple days after she returned from the holiday.

Diana attends Springbrook, a private school for children with developmental disabilities. The mother and daughter live in Oneonta, New York, which is at the foothills of the Catskill Mountains.

"I have 100 percent confidence in the staff that they're doing everything they're supposed to be doing, but I know that kids who are autistic are not necessarily going to want to wear a mask," Linardi said. "I don't know if those kids' parents are vaccinated or are they as diligent about following the CDC guidelines as we are."

Diana has only five classmates, but Linardi also worries about what her daughter can't tell her. "My daughter is non-verbal, so it's not like she can tell me if her classmates are wearing masks or not, or if anyone's getting close to her face," she said.

Linardi said her daughter is at a kindergarten level of education, so she can supplement her education at home. She subscribes to an online learning tool called IXL for her daughter. Linardi has a flexible work from home situation, so she can spend time teaching her daughter, as well as doing yoga and other physical activities together.

She isn't sure when she will send Diana back to school, which has a year-long program. Linardi thinks it will be safer after the flu season, she said. "It's the outside world that determines how much we will experience."

'Trying to find that balance'

Micheal Garza, 46, said he and his wife are nervous about Omicron, but they decided they were comfortable sending their daughter Emma to her private preschool in Marietta, Georgia, on Wednesday.

Emma turned 5 last month and has received her first vaccine dose, so she has some protection. Still, Garza's elderly mother-in-law lives with them, so they plan to send Emma to school with an upgraded mask such as an KN95 or KF94.

"We're trying to keep her from getting this and also making sure she's in a good learning environment socially with other children, and trying to find that balance," he said. "We're making sure she's safe enough and making sure she gets educated. She loves pre-K, she loves her friends, and the idea that she wouldn't get to go back and see them is really too much for us to even consider pulling her out."

He praised her school, Holy Family Catholic Preschool, for hearing their concerns and making them comfortable with the decision.

"They may not put every measure we prefer in there, but we know they respect our wishes, and for us that means everything," Garza said.

'They missed their friends'

Aubree Norton, 43, is both a parent of two boys and a teacher at the Mercer County School District in Aledo, Illinois, a rural enclave near the Quad Cities. Her dual perspective has given her firsthand knowledge that remote learning didn't work for many kids last year, including her own.

"It's a very, very uneven playing field," she said, noting some students didn't have parents around or proper technology. "I saw my own kids struggle with remote learning. I saw their mental health decline. They missed their friends."

Her school is back in-person now, and while she had concerns about the spread of Omicron, she praised her district for keeping classes open and keeping people safe. Every family has different circumstances, she noted, and no one in her family is high-risk.

"I, of course, have a concern, but I don't think I have a concern as much as some people might," she said.

'It feels lonely, as well as exhausting'

Megan Dominy, of Marietta, Georgia, made a pros and cons list with her husband to decide whether to send their 5-year-old daughter to kindergarten on Wednesday. On the pro side, they noted their daughter is vaccinated and enjoys school.

"Our daughter absolutely loves social interaction with her peers, she craves interaction with other kids all the time. And she needs school," Dominy said.

The cons outweighed the pros, though. Covid cases are surging in Cobb County, and their 2-year-old daughter is too young to be vaccinated. Dominy also heard that another student's parents had contracted Covid but still planned to send their child to school.

Adding to her concern was a brief email from the Cobb County School District saying that classes would remain open, with little in the way of explanation or attempt to assuage concerns. The lack of specific guidance or support meant she and her husband were on their own.

"It feels lonely, as well as exhausting," she said. "Each family has to make their decision that's best for their family."

They ultimately decided to keep their daughter out of school on Wednesday. How long would she stay out? They weren't yet sure.

"Everybody has pandemic fatigue, but I feel like being a parent during the pandemic is a special sort of weariness," she said.

'Anger, fury, rage'

Patty Murphy, 47, of East Cobb, Georgia, has rheumatoid arthritis and takes medicine that suppresses her immune system. She said she's worried her two sons, ages 11 and 14, could catch Covid-19 at school and then infect the family, leading to a potentially serious case or even death.

"I understand it's statistically unlikely, but it's still a possibility," she said.

Still, she and her husband agreed to send them back to in-person class on Wednesday so that they don't fall behind in their studies.

"It was kind of an impossible decision. If I could have kept them home I would have," she said.

She supports in-person school but said she's frustrated by Cobb County's decision not to require masks or testing. The issue has so animated her that she has become an active critic of the school district and board and has emailed them ad nauseum about her concerns, she said.

"(I feel) anger, fury, rage. I feel despondent, helpless, hopeless, frustrated," Murphy said. "But also it motivates me. It encourages me to help be a voice for people who can't be a voice and want to say these things, or can't say these things, like teachers."

'We don't know how' Omicron will effect pregnancy

There's a new part of the equation for Kumar Santosh to consider when sending his child back to preschool: He and his wife are expecting a child in May, and they worry about the effects of Omicron on her pregnancy.

Santosh decided to keep his 4-year-old daughter, Akshara, out of school for one to two weeks to see what happens with Covid-19 cases in Austin, Texas. He said his wife's obstetrician suggested this measure as a precaution.

"That's one major concern that we don't know how this Omicron is having an effect on the pregnancy or the newborn," he said.

Before the holidays, the couple had been sending their daughter to in-person preschool at Casey Elementary School.

"She had been doing fine, but all of a sudden with this Omicron spread, that's the only thing we're worried about because it's something very contagious and it's spreading fast," Santosh said.

Santosh said he does have faith in his daughter's school. He said the spread of the variant and his wife's pregnancy weigh more on their decision to send their daughter back to school.

"I don't know how much we can stop the children from getting infected," Santosh said. "It's like kids to roll around and touch things."

The school has been using HEPA filters since school resumed in August, according to a district newsletter.

With the Omicron wave, the school clarified measures in place to protect the students, including extra ventilation and sanitization, as well as a mask mandate, social distancing and contact tracing, according to a January 5 school newsletter sent to parents. The principal urged students aged 5 and older to get boosted.

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CROWN POINT  Police wrestled with an injured man while removing him from a burning car following a pursuit and crash Friday, but they didn't learn the man's girlfriend had been decapitated and his child killed in the wreck until their bodies were found by others, court records show.

Eric K. White, 20, of Calumet City, was charged Saturday with felony neglect of a dependent resulting in death, two counts of resisting law enforcement resulting in a death and misdemeanor carrying a handgun without a license.

White's girlfriend, Britni Griffin, 20, and son Ky'Air Lucas, 1, who were passengers in White's 2010 black Audi, both died from blunt force trauma, according to the Lake County coroner's office.

Griffin and Ky'Air both lived in Matteson, Illinois, a coroner's release said.

White, who was booked into the Lake County Jail after being treated at a hospital Friday for head injuries, was being held on a bail of $150,000 surety or $15,000 cash. He has not yet entered pleas to the charges.

If convicted of his highest count, a level 1 felony, White could face 20 to 40 years in prison.

The pursuit started about 11:30 a.m. Friday, when a Lake County sheriff's officer patrolling Gary noticed a black Audi speed south on Broadway and run a red light while turning east on 25th Avenue, according to Lake Criminal Court records.

When the officer turned east from Broadway to 25th Avenue, the driver made a U-turn and began traveling west on 25th Avenue, records state.

The officer lost sight of the Audi as it traveled north on Broadway, but a second officer spotted it and gave chase.

The Audi's driver eventually headed back south on Broadway with both officers in pursuit, entered westbound I-80/94 and began weaving in and out of traffic and cutting off other vehicles in an attempt to evade them, records state.

A third sheriff's officer joined the pursuit on I-80/94 at Grant Street.

Police lost sight of the Audi for 20 to 30 seconds, spotted the car swerving around other motorists and saw a large amount of smoke and debris as multiple vehicles braked ahead, records state.

One of the officers noted the driver was traveling at more than 130 mph just before he hit the back of the semitrailer.

Indiana State Police, who conducted a crash reconstruction investigation, said the Audi spun across all lanes after rear-ending the semitrailer and hit a median wall. The Audi then continued back across all lanes before it was T-boned by the same semi it had rear-ended.

Griffin suffered fatal injuries during the initial impact and was ejected from the car, state police said. Ky'Air, who was in a car seat, also suffered fatal injuries.

The Audi sustained heavy damage and was missing its roof when sheriff's police approached it, records state.

Officers looked through the open roof and saw White slumped over the center console, records state. They did not notice anyone else in the car at that time.

White, who had a large cut on his face, began thrashing around when officers moved an airbag, court documents state.

The car's engine compartment caught on fire, so two of the officers began trying to remove him from the car as he clung to the steering wheel, records state.

Police found a handgun in White's left front pocket and removed its magazine and a live bullet from the chamber, records state.

Police told White to lie on the ground because of possible internal injuries and put the fire out with an extinguisher. At one point, an officer had to hold White down to prevent him from getting up, records state.

Someone in a passing vehicle told police about a body in the road, so the officer ran about 100 yards east and discovered part of a woman's body lying on the inside shoulder, according to court documents.

Police shut down traffic for further investigation. While one of the officers was washing up in an ambulance, he learned medics found a baby dead in the heavily damaged back passenger seat of the Audi, records state.

White consented to a blood draw to test for alcohol and other substances, documents state.

Police also were working to obtain a video from an on-board camera of a 2018 Kenworth semi-tractor and trailer that was involved in the crash, records state.

Lake County Sheriff Oscar Martinez Jr. said his officers previously arrested White on Nov. 24 following a pursuit. No charges related to that chase could be found in online court records.

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VALPARAISO  While a third mental health evaluation remains pending, a June trial has been set for Portage resident Charles Trumble, who is accused of striking his elderly mother with a sledgehammer and killing her.

A June 7 trial was scheduled by Porter Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Clymer during a short video hearing from the Porter County Jail.

Trumble was represented by defense attorney Mark Chargualaf, who confirmed the results of the latest mental evaluation are still pending.

Clymer granted a request from the defense for 61-year-old Trumble to again undergo a mental health evaluation, according to court records.

Trumble has notified the court of his intention to pursue an insanity defense at trial.

When asked during a past court hearing whether he was suffering from any mental issues, Trumble had responded, "Well, I think we all do at some level."

Trumble also refused to be sworn in for the hearing, saying his religion does not allow that. He did not elaborate.

Trumble is accused of murdering 91-year-old Dixie Trumble on Feb. 23, 2020, at the Portage home the pair shared.

He reportedly told police he killed his elderly mother because "he is about to be exposed for committing awful crimes" and wanted to shield her from the information, according to charging documents.

Officials said they are unaware of what crimes Charles was referencing.

Charles reported the beating, and when police arrived, they said they found Dixie lying on her back in the living room with Charles lying on his back next to her with a cellphone in his hand.

While a police officer performed CPR on Dixie, he said he heard Charles say, "My mom was a distinguished woman. I am about to be in trouble for some really bad stuff, and I killed her so she wouldn't be exposed to it."

A short-handled sledgehammer was found on the floor near Dixie's body, police said.

Police said Charles voluntarily waived his constitutional rights and admitted to killing his mother.

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The felony case against the 20-year-old Racine man who purchased the AR-15-style rifle used by Kyle Rittenhouse to shoot three people, including two fatally, during the civil unrest in Kenosha in 2020, ended quickly and quietly Monday morning in a Kenosha County courtroom.

A plea agreement offered Friday by Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger exchanges the two felony charges of intent to sell a dangerous weapon to a person younger than 18 filed against Dominick Black for two county citations of contributing to the delinquency of a child.

The status hearing, which lasted just a few minutes Monday morning, was heard in between jury selection for Rakayo Vinson, the Kenosha man charged with a triple homicide at the Somers House tavern in April.

Judge Bruce E. Schroeder, who presided over the Rittenhouse trial in November and will oversee the Vinson trial that begins with opening arguments Tuesday, accepted the plea agreement between Binger and Black's attorney, Anthony Cotton.

Black, who pleaded no contest as part of the deal, was not in court Monday.

Schroeder fined Black $1,500 plus court costs, which brings the total amount to $2,032.50. Black posted a $2,500 cash bond Nov. 20, 2020, which will be used toward the fine imposed Monday, with the balance being returned to the party who posted the bond.

During Rittenhouse's trial, a charge of carrying a gun while underage was dropped because of a vaguely written law intended to allow teenagers in Wisconsin to hunt that also allows those younger than 18 to carry long guns most anywhere in the state.

Binger in court Monday said he disagreed with that decision then but understood that ruling, and the fact that Rittenhouse was found not guilty of all charges made continuing to pursue felony charges against Black difficult.

"That is a legal issue," Binger said. "I personally disagree with the court's ruling, but I respect the ruling. While I do believe the charges (against Black) were (appropriate), things have changed since then ... Jurors found Mr. Rittenhouse not guilty. To go forward with these charges does not seem appropriate."

Binger added that he feels the fine imposed against Black still can send a message regarding those who may engage in future "straw" purchases of firearms.

Black testified in November that Rittenhouse gave him money to purchase the firearm, but the gun was kept in his stepfather's gun safe because Rittenhouse wasn't old enough to possess it.

"I believe (the fine) does serve as a form of punishment and deterrence," Binger said. "It is a serious offense. Our office will continue to prosecute (those cases)."

Pleased with outcome

Cotton spoke to several media members who converged on the courthouse for Monday's hearing.

The outcome of the Rittenhouse trial clearly was a positive turn of events for his client, Cotton said.

"I think it was definitely a good thing for our case," Cotton said. "I think the moment the jury acquitted Rittenhouse it made it pretty clear that (this case) would have to have a dismissal or a similar outcome.

"He (Black) told the truth. He did what was expected of him," Cotton continued. "The state subpoenaed him to come to court, and the law requires people to testify truthfully when they're subpoenaed. Dominick did everything that was expected of him."

The criminal case is now closed against Black, who cannot be charged again in the future on a state level because it was dismissed "with prejudice."

Cotton said after the hearing that he has heard nothing about any potential federal-level charges for making the "straw purchase."

"We don't know if they're going to do that or not," he said. "There's always a possibility that a person could face some additional charges, but I have no information as to whether or not that's going to happen. Nobody's reached out to me, and that's not part of any negotiation."

Cotton said his client is pleased to get past the situation and move on.

"He's glad to have this nightmare behind him," Cotton said. "It was a really a long road that he's been down here. We always felt all along the two charges were a bit of an overkill situation for him. That's why we filed a motion to dismiss right out of the gate here.

"It took a long time to get to this point. But I have to credit the District Attorney's Office. They really did the right thing and reached the right decision, ultimately."

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Many Australians feel betrayed by the governments sputtering vaccine rollout, which they say has squandered the sacrifices made last year. An inchoate blend of rage and sadness has settled over this normally cheerful country. Yet, even as Australians slip into muttering curses and snitching on lockdown violators, they are also seeking ways to help with grass-roots efforts to accelerate immunity and escape from the restrictions springing up around the country.

There are big gaps to fill. While case numbers in Australia are growing by just a few hundred each day, far fewer than in other countries dealing with the Delta variant, doctors, pharmacists and economists are all questioning the distribution, the messaging and other aspects of Australias glacial vaccination campaign.

Australias drug regulator approved the Moderna vaccine only this week, many months after the United States and other countries. Even as supplies of Pfizer and AstraZeneca doses have increased, pushing up vaccination rates, only 24 percent of adults are fully vaccinated, placing Australia 35th out of 38 developed countries. And thats up from dead last when the first Delta cases emerged in Sydney.

We had this incredible window that nobody else in the world had, with nearly a year of minimal Covid transmission, and we were told the whole time that its not a race, said Maddie Palmer, 39, a radio and events producer in Sydney. I didnt believe it then, and now weve been proven right. It was a race  and they screwed it up.
If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?

I would not like the president to be a one-book person. But if I am forced to choose only one book for the president, it would be hard to leave out King Lear. I wont go into an elaborate explanation here, but sympathy and solidarity are qualities that people do need.

Has a book ever brought you closer to another person, or come between you?

Suraj Yengdes recent book (Caste Matters) on the devastating effects of the severe practice of caste distinctions in some parts of India has made us appreciate more fully how pernicious this type of inequality is. Along with that comes the need for closeness with Dalits, who were relegated as untouchables until recently, and also the moral requirement to question those who have been enjoying  and still do  unequal political privileges.

Which writers  novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets  working today do you admire most?

This is a question for the very brave. Can we really rank superb writers against one another, and  to add to the difficulty  can we do that to people specializing in very different things? I cant answer these questions with confidence, but that need not stop us from the fun of being brave. Since I greatly enjoyed the company, when I could get it, of the Irish poet Seamus Heaney (aside from loving his poetry), I could express my admiration for him. He died, alas, in 2013, but despite those eight years, he is still a very contemporary writer:

And here is love

like a tinsmiths scoop

sunk past its gleam

in the meal-bin.

What moves you most in a work of literature?

I dont think there is a shared object that moves me in every case. Rather, it is how a book develops and makes room for interesting ideas. In one way or another, we should be able to accommodate Hamlet and the sonnets, Goethes Faust and the fifth-century Sanskrit poet and playwright Kalidasas Meghaduta. The memory of Kalidasas writings led E. M. Forster to a long train journey to the ruins of Ujjain, the town in which Kalidasa lived. As Forster describes it in Abinger Harvest, he took a small dip in Kalidasas favorite river, Shipra. Fondly evocative as it was, Forster kept wondering whether his clothes would dry by the time he was back on the train.

Do you prefer books that reach you emotionally, or intellectually?

This is a hard distinction to make, but I dont think I would be happy with only one without the other. If I am forced to choose, I may opt for intellectuality. However, I would hope that some of the attraction of emotions will be smuggled into that intellectual world.
On Full House, Mr. Saget played a widowed father who shared his house with his three daughters (Candace Cameron, Jodi Sweetin and, alternating as the youngest daughter, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen), his brother-in-law (John Stamos) and his best friend (Dave Coulier). The show, seen on ABC from 1987 to 1995, got consistently good ratings and made stars of Mr. Saget and his fellow cast members, including Lori Loughlin, who joined in the third season.

Robert Lane Saget was born on May 17, 1956, in Philadelphia. He graduated from Temple University in 1978 before finding his way into comedy clubs. In contrast to his squeaky-clean image on Full House and Americas Funniest Home Videos, he became known for raunchy, profanity-laden stand-up routines.

At Temple, Mr. Saget studied film, and in the year of his graduation he received a student Academy Award for documentary merit for his film Through Adams Eyes, about a nephew of his who had undergone facial reconstructive surgery.

But even then he was pursuing comedy. He told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2016 that he had won a local radio contest at 17 by singing a song about bondage, and that while he spent most of his time at Temple shooting film, he would also go to the University of Pennsylvanias campus to do improv.

After graduating, Mr. Saget moved to Los Angeles and became a constant presence at one of the citys main comedy clubs, the Comedy Store. I lived in that room for seven years, he said on the comedian Marc Marons podcast in 2010.
It would not be until later that Mamadou Wague realized hed suffered burns to his lips and nose  injuries he believes he received while pulling his daughter from her bed. I didnt think about anything except getting her out, he said.

Dana Nicole Campbell, 47, a groundskeeper, was working at a nearby park when one of her four teenage children called. Smoke was coming into their apartment on the third floor, they told her. Ms. Campbell told them to put damp towels at the doors and raced to the building.

She saw her children, one by one, leap safely out of their third-floor window onto a pile of garbage bags and a mattress. Deep relief washed over her.

In Mr. Pattersons smoke-filled apartment, he braved opening the hot window again when he saw the first firefighters arrive. Please help me! Please come get us! he shouted, but the firefighters were racing to the burning units next door. Minutes later, rescuers reached Mr. Pattersons window and pulled him and his companions outside to safety.

The firefighters had arrived to a chaotic scene. Smoke poured out of a second-story window and the one directly above  but also from different windows many stories higher and on the other side, as if various fires had started at the same time.
The high-rise in the Bronx where 17 people died in a fire on Sunday was home to many African immigrants who chose their apartments for the close-knit community and proximity to local mosques.

A significant number of the buildings residents were practicing Muslims and originally from Gambia, Mayor Eric Adams said at a news conference on Sunday.

He spoke about respecting cultural and religious needs, especially related to burial rites, and emphasized that support would be provided regardless of immigration status.

Gov. Kathy Hochul reassured residents of the building, on East 181st Street, that she would not forget them. She announced plans to establish a victims compensation fund to help secure new housing and pay for burials and other costs.
Mayor Eric Adams, setting aside prior misgivings, allowed a bill to become law on Sunday that would grant more than 800,000 noncitizens the right to vote in municipal elections.

I believe that New Yorkers should have a say in their government, which is why I have and will continue to support this important legislation, the mayor said in a statement.

I look forward to bringing millions more into the democratic process, he added.

The measure applies to legal residents, including those with green cards, and so-called Dreamers who were brought to the country illegally as children but were allowed to remain under a federal program known as DACA. Although the City Council approved the bill last month, New York law provides the mayor the opportunity to veto it within 30 days. Without any action, the bill passes into law automatically, as happened with this measure.

Because of the new law, an estimated 808,000 adults will be eligible to vote beginning Jan. 9, 2023, according to the City Council. They will be able to vote in primary and general elections for citywide contests, like those for mayor and public advocate, as well as in local races, like those for City Council and borough presidents. The law does not allow noncitizens to vote in state or federal elections.
Follow live coverage of the Bronx apartment fire.

Nineteen people, including nine children, were killed on Sunday when an apartment fire started by a malfunctioning space heater sent smoke billowing through a Bronx high-rise, officials said, in the deadliest fire New York City had seen in more than three decades.

An additional 44 people were injured, 13 of them critically, after the occupants of the third-floor apartment where the fire started fled without closing the door behind them, the fire commissioner, Daniel A. Nigro, said at a news conference at the scene.

Smoke spread throughout the building, thus the tremendous loss of life and other people fighting for their lives, he said.

The smoke from the fire spread to the top of the 19-story building, darkening hallways and stairwells and shocking residents who had heard the fire alarms but did not immediately react because they had grown accustomed to frequent alarms in the building. Firefighters found victims on every floor and worked to rescue them even as their own oxygen tanks ran low, Commissioner Nigro said.
WASHINGTON  Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, announced on Sunday that he was refusing to cooperate with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, joining a growing list of allies of former President Donald J. Trump who have adopted a hostile stance toward the panels questions.

In an effort to dig into the role that members of Congress played in trying to undermine the 2020 election, the committee informed Mr. Jordan in December by letter that its investigators wanted to question him about his communications related to the run-up to the Capitol riot. Those include Mr. Jordans messages with Mr. Trump and his legal team as well as others involved in planning rallies on Jan. 6 and congressional objections to certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.s victory.

Mr. Jordan  who in November told the Rules Committee that he had nothing to hide regarding the Jan. 6 committees investigation  on Sunday denounced the bipartisan panels inquiry as among what he called the Democrats partisan witch hunts.

It amounts to an unprecedented and inappropriate demand to examine the basis for a colleagues decision on a particular matter pending before the House of Representatives, Mr. Jordan wrote in a letter to Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and chairman of the committee. This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core constitutional principles and would serve to further erode legislative norms.
Luis Miranda, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, said the teams consist of highly trained evidence collection experts who gather and process evidence for investigations, including inquiries into human smuggling and drug trafficking. He also said the teams assist in investigations conducted by the agencys Office of Professional Responsibility, which looks into claims of agent misconduct and is akin to internal affairs divisions of police departments.

Another Homeland Security official, who was authorized to speak to a reporter about the teams on the condition that the officials name was not used, confirmed another role they have: collecting evidence that could be used to protect a Border Patrol agent and help deal with potential liability issues, such as a future civil suit.

Andrea Guerrero, who leads a community group in San Diego and has spent the past year looking into critical incident teams and their work, said it was an outright conflict of interest for the division charged with investigating possible Border Patrol misconduct to rely on assistance from Border Patrol agents on the teams. She has called on Congress to investigate and filed a complaint with the Homeland Security Department.

Customs and Border Protection officials said the El Paso sectors critical incident team merely helped with measurements for a reconstruction of the crash outside Las Cruces; the Office of Professional Responsibility, they said, is investigating the incident. Yet a member of the El Paso critical incident team reached out to the state police in the days after the crash seeking the departments full report for its own Border Patrol administrative review, according to an email released by the state police.

Few public answers

Border Patrol encounters that result in injury or death can be investigated by multiple entities: the F.B.I., state and local law enforcement, the Homeland Security Departments inspector general or Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and the Office of Professional Responsibility, where most such incidents land for review. But the findings on individual cases are rarely disclosed; such investigations tend to yield few public details beyond total numbers, which show only a fraction result in some type of discipline.

An incident in 2010 drew international attention and calls for change. A 42-year-old Mexican caught entering the country illegally died after he was hogtied, beaten and shocked with a Taser by Border Patrol agents. The Justice Department declined to investigate, but more than a decade later, the case will be heard this year by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights court  an apparent first for a person killed by a U.S. law enforcement officer.
Other parts of the state also saw closures. Crucial routes that cut through the Cascade Mountains and connect the east and west sides of the state were closed for days because of heavy snowfall: Snoqualmie Pass, the main route through the mountains, was expected to reopen on Sunday, according to the states Department of Transportation. Blewett Pass was also set to reopen for freight travel, but Stevens and White Passes will take longer to clear, the agency said. It has been over a decade since all four passes were closed for an extended time, the agency said.

The road crew on Stevens Pass said on Sunday that there was a four-inch-thick slab of ice on the lanes that were cleared of snow.

The Pullman campus of Washington State University, in southeastern Washington, canceled classes on Monday and Tuesday to allow students on the other side of the state to return.

Areas in Central Washington, including Leavenworth, got around three feet of snow on Thursday and Friday, with some pockets getting four feet, which the city described as record-breaking in a statement. The mayor of Leavenworth on Friday declared a state of emergency and called in the National Guard.
While Dohertys latest work, Lady Magma, is a bacchanalian exploration of female sexuality, she has become best known for her nuanced portrayals of a kind of toughened, working-class masculinity. In two solos that bookend Hard to Be Soft, she adopts the style and mannerisms of men from the streets of her home city  young lads, basically, in their track suits, she said in a video interview from Bangor, the seaside town near Belfast where she now lives and works. (She uses a local church, rent-free, as her studio.)

Through mercurial movement that suggests, at times, a body at war with itself, Doherty unveils a brokenness  and, though more elusive, an almost exalted levity  beneath her characters aggressive posturing. In the haunting score, by the acclaimed Belfast DJ David Holmes, what sounds like sacred choral music mingles with sparring voices that offer fragments of a narrative.

Watching Doherty in this role, you might begin to conflate the artist with the archetypes she embodies; her conviction is that complete, a form of faith. I wanted it all to be a physical prayer, she said. It was an attempt at healing.

Born in North London to parents from Northern Ireland, who left amid the violence of the 1970s, Doherty returned with them to Belfast when she was about 10. I went to a very big Catholic all-girls school, she said, which stays with you a bit, because girls can be vicious. Memories of her classmates gave rise, in part, to her vision for the Sugar Army as a defiant band of young women.
OLGA DIES DREAMING

By Xochitl Gonzalez



What is the American Dream these days, anyway? The term, as coined in 1931 by James Truslow Adams, described an idealistic vision of the United States as a true meritocracy, where opportunity was equally available to all. Ninety years and a whole lot of systemic racism and widening class divisions later, we have good reason to cast a more jaundiced eye on the concepts of opportunity and equality in this country, and, given how even the bootstrappiest of billionaires cant seem to find satisfaction in any amount of hoarded wealth, its worth wondering what, exactly, were supposed to be dreaming of.

Olga Acevedo, the title character in Xochitl Gonzalezs debut novel, Olga Dies Dreaming, struggles mightily with this question. The daughter of Puerto Rican activists  a mother who vanished into an underground life as a revolutionary when Olga was 12 and a father who became a heroin addict and died of AIDS  Olga was raised by her grandmother in Brooklyn, excelled at New York public schools and graduated from an unnamed Ivy League college. As the book opens in summer 2017, she is, at 39, a sought-after high-end wedding planner. Her older brother, Prieto, is a progressive congressman and divorced father who also happens to be a closeted gay man, a secret that has left him vulnerable to blackmail from nefarious (and very much not progressive) real estate developers.

Although she is, on paper, a self-made success story, Olga is also stuck and depressed. After a brief and disastrous foray into reality television, she has realized that shes allowed herself to become distracted from the true American dream  accumulating money  by its phantom cousin, accumulating fame. But the work of manifesting rich peoples matrimonial whims, even though shes figured out how to profit from it, has come to seem tedious and stupid. Disdainful of her clients and frustrated by the financial disadvantage of hewing to strict ethics, Olga enters into some shady business dealings: padding orders for liquor and caviar and selling the surplus. She does this even though shes noticed that money seems to bring her clients little contentment, that simply existing seemed an immense burden to them. She has no real friends, seeks loveless sex with an ultrarich libertarian whose daughters wedding she once planned, and, though shes enmeshed with and supported by her extended family in Brooklyn, is otherwise sleepwalking through a life as confined as her brothers.
Talks begin over crisis in Ukraine

Russian and American officials met last night to begin high-stakes negotiations over threats to Ukraine and a widening gulf between Moscow and the West. There was deep pessimism on both sides that a diplomatic solution was within reach.

Even before the talks began, the Russian deputy foreign minister warned that the U.S. had a lack of understanding of the Kremlins security demands. Though the U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken, voiced doubts over whether Russia was serious about de-escalating the crisis, he opened the door to mutual limits on where troops could be deployed.

The negotiations, Blinken insisted, are not about making concessions under the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, eight years after Russia annexed Crimea. Its about seeing whether, in the context of dialogue and diplomacy, there are things that both sides, all sides, can do to reduce tensions, he said. Weve done that in the past.

Washington memo: The current confrontation turns partly on what, if any, commitments a former U.S. secretary of state made in the waning days of the Cold War. Russia has asserted that the U.S. ruled out NATO expansion into Eastern Europe. No such provision was included in the final treaty.
Audie Cornish, who signed off as a host of NPRs news program All Things Considered on Friday, is heading to CNNs new streaming service.

The longtime NPR star, who had been a host of All Things Considered since 2012 and was a 17-year veteran of the public broadcaster, will host a weekly show for CNN+, as well as contribute to the streaming services slate of live programming, the network announced on Monday. She will also appear on the cable news network during breaking news stories.

I am very excited to join CNN and the CNN+ team, Ms. Cornish said in a statement. There are fresh stories to be told and new ways to tell them. CNN has a dynamic system of reporters and storytelling channels. I am thrilled to be a part of it.

The move comes as the CNN president, Jeff Zucker, builds a roster for CNN+, which is scheduled to debut in the spring.
The yacht maintenance business has been jumping. MB92, which also owns a smaller yard in La Ciotat, France, reported revenue of 191 million (about $215 million) in 2021, up from 150 million in 2019.

Even if a superyacht is a striking showcase of wealth, owners expect those working for them to keep silent about their assets and whereabouts. When asked about the Sea Rhapsodys destination once it left the yard, Henk Dreijer, the commercial director of MB92, demurred, suggesting that it was bound for the Caribbean, but it could also be the Seychelles or somewhere else.

We work for people who like to be very discreet, he added.

In Barcelona, which is led by a left-wing city government, not everybody welcomes the arrival of billionaires and their yachts, whose marinas are typically fenced off from the rest of the citys waterfront.

We are bringing in the richest people in the world, but they dont spend their money in our local neighborhoods, they have yachts that fly the flags of tax havens, and they hire crews who are not from Barcelona, said Gala Pin, a city lawmaker in Barcelona until 2019.

We have also allowed private and very opaque companies to squeeze profits from public land and instead fence off access to a port area that should be enjoyed by all the citizens of Barcelona, she added.

A decade ago, Ms. Pin and other residents held demonstrations to protest the initial project to develop Port Vell, a privately owned marina for luxury yachts. But Ms. Pin now concedes that the yacht business is very firmly anchored in Barcelona. Meanwhile, the citys dwindling fishing fleet is squeezed into a small enclave, sandwiched between MB92s yard and the superyacht marina.
Carl Bennett, who transformed an $8,000 investment in a second-floor Walk-Up-&-Save store in Port Chester, N.Y., in 1951 into Caldor, the regional discount powerhouse chain that he sold three decades later for $313 million, died on Dec. 23 at his home in Greenwich, Conn. He was 101.

His death was confirmed by his daughter, Robin Bennett Kanarek.

Mr. Bennett and his wife, Dorothy, blended their first names and business acumen to create one of the largest and most aggressive retailers in the Northeast, combining cut-rate pricing on quality brand-name goods with a liberal return policy.

Mr. Bennett retired as chairman and chief executive in 1985, four years after his company was purchased by Associated Dry Goods, the owner of Lord & Taylor and other high-end department stores. By then, 100 Caldor outlets in seven states together had reached $1 billion in annual sales (the equivalent of about $2.6 billion today).

Known as the Bloomingdales of discounting, Caldor reduced costs by paying suppliers promptly and thrived by stocking quality merchandise rather than irregular items and cheap goods from closeouts. They provided friendly and well-informed service, undercut competitors like W.T. Grant, Two Guys and Woolco and took over their stores when those retailers consolidated or went out of business.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, asked the Federal Reserve in a letter sent Monday to release more information about a series of financial trades that several top officials made in 2020, when the Fed was actively propping up markets.

The Fed has become embroiled in a scandal over the transactions, which occurred in the months around its no-holds-barred market rescue at the outset of the pandemic, raising the possibility that policymakers could have financially benefited from the information they held and the decisions they were making. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, has acknowledged that the trades were a problem and acted quickly to overhaul the central banks ethics rules.

But that has not stemmed the fallout. Mr. Powell, who was nominated for a second term as chair by President Biden, will almost surely face questions about the Feds ethics dilemma at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday before the Senate Banking Committee. Ms. Warren, who sits on that committee, is pushing for more details about Fed trading activity and new ethics rules, according to the new letter, which she sent to Mr. Powell. Ms. Warren, who previously requested that the Fed turn over information and documents surrounding the trades, is asking the Fed to release all available information about the trades by next Monday.

Ms. Warren said in her letter that the central bank had failed to fully respond to her previous requests for information.
Judge Bogas ruled in November that Google had improperly characterized 71 of 80 documents sought by the former employees as privileged. The latest report covers around 200 additional documents pertaining to communications around Googles hiring of IRI Consultants, a firm known for its anti-union work, as part of Project Vivian, an effort to fight labor organizing at the company.

Google must hand over nearly all of those 200 documents, Judge Bogas ruled. He also ordered the company to produce for his review more than 1,000 additional documents that it logged as privileged.

Googles argument that it had the right to withhold the documents was not persuasive, Judge Bogas said, because IRI assisted Google with messaging that did not include legal advice.

In one document that the judge said did not pass muster for confidentiality, a Google lawyer explained that the company wanted consulting help for Project Vivian to engage employees more positively and convince them that unions suck. The lawyer provided a long list of areas where IRI could help, including understanding the current sentiment around labor organizing/unionization efforts at Google. The lawyer did not mention assistance with legal help.

In another document that Google claimed was privileged, a different Google lawyer offered public relations advice but not legal counsel. The lawyer proposed that the company find a respected voice to publish an editorial about what a union would look like in a tech workplace to discourage employees of Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Google from forming one. A human resources director said that she supported the idea, but that it needed to be done without Googles fingerprints. IRI then sent a proposed editorial to the Google lawyer.
Twenty years ago, a recent college graduate named Jesse Watters joined Fox News as a production assistant. He finagled his way into an on-camera gig as a sidekick to Bill OReilly, before expanding his ambush-style man-on-the-street interviews into a weekend program and a role as co-host of the talk show The Five.

Now Mr. Watters, 43, is poised to enter the upper ranks of Fox News stardom, and all the influence that confers: Starting Jan. 24, he will have his own 7 p.m. program, Jesse Watters Primetime, which will serve as the lead-in to Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham, the highest-rated evening block on cable news.

The ascent of Mr. Watters  a conservative culture warrior who delights in bashing all things liberal  comes despite numerous controversies over his on-air antics. In a 2016 segment, he trafficked in crude and offensive Asian American stereotypes, prompting a protest at the Fox News offices and rebukes from elected officials. (I regret if anyone found offense, Mr. Watters replied in a tweet.)

Last month, he used notably violent language in urging a gathering of conservatives to ambush Dr. Anthony S. Fauci with tough questions that he deemed the kill shot. Dr. Fauci, who has faced threats of harm from right-wing activists, called for Mr. Watters to be fired; Fox News defended its host, saying his comments were metaphorical and twisted completely out of context.
Last year was Earths fifth hottest on record, European scientists announced on Monday. But the fact that the worldwide average temperature didnt beat the record is hardly reason to stop worrying about global warmings grip on the planet, they said.

Not when both the United States and Europe had their warmest summers on the books. Not when higher temperatures around the Arctic caused it to rain for the first time at the Greenland ice sheets normally frigid summit.

And certainly not when the seven hottest years ever recorded were, by a clear margin, the past seven.
Not that Mr. Kumar doesnt offer a few dishes that might make New Yorks new vegan mayor drop his fork. But while Dhamaka double-dog dares you to eat goat testicles, the most eyebrow-raising dish at Semma is probably kudal varuval, a dry curry of goat intestines. It is notable for the warm aura cast by the caramelized onions and coconut milk in its thick gravy, and for the easygoing texture of the guts, neither tough nor mushy but gently firm, like mortadella. You can even make a sandwich by folding some inside a soft triangle of the kal dosa served on the same plate. Id recommend one of these little canapes to anybody with an open mind about eating at the tail end of the digestive tract.

When Adda arrived in Queens in 2018, followed last year by Dhamaka in Manhattan, their striking visions of Indian cuisine seemed to be fueled by a personal creative breakthrough of their chef, Chintan Pandya. Instead of editing his native countrys vast repertory to suit American fine-dining values, as he had done at Junoon, or fusing it with other influences, as at Rahi, he went back to the source, locating street snacks and home-style recipes whose original power hadnt been refined out of existence by professionals in white jackets.

One thing that makes Semma so exciting is that it suggests that Mr. Pandya had more than a private epiphany. He seems to have hit on an approach that he can share with other chefs  the open source code of Unapologetic Foods. (Mr. Pandya is the corporate chef and a partner in the group, which is owned by Roni Mazumdar.)

Until last year, Mr. Kumar was the chef of Rasa, in Burlingame, Calif., where the most popular menu item was a potato fritter on a bun, called a Bombay Slider. He described the cooking in a phone interview as Southern Indian but with a lot of local California ingredients and a bit of modern technique. At Semma, he said, we are completely focusing on true southern Indian food, exactly how we grew up eating it back home.
Christy Smith has never been tested for the coronavirus. As a blind person, she cant drive to testing sites near her home in St. Louis, and they are too far away for her to walk. Alternative options  public transportation, ride share apps or having a friend drive her to a test site  would put others at risk for exposure.

The rapid tests that millions of other people are taking at home, which require precisely plunking liquid drops into tiny spaces and have no Braille guides, are also inaccessible to Ms. Smith.

Many people who are blind or have limited vision are not being tested as often as they would like  and some are staying isolated because testing is too difficult.

Not all of us have access to somebody sighted to help with things on a regular basis, Ms. Smith said. Its kind of a mix of frustration and just feeling a bit helpless, she added.
It was either die or do this transplant, Mr. Bennett said before the surgery, according to officials at the University of Maryland Medical Center. I want to live. I know its a shot in the dark, but its my last choice.

Dr. Griffith said he first broached the experimental treatment in mid-December, a memorable and pretty strange conversation.

I said, We cant give you a human heart; you dont qualify. But maybe we can use one from an animal, a pig, Dr. Griffith recalled. Its never been done before, but we think we can do it.

I wasnt sure he was understanding me, Dr. Griffith added. Then he said, Well, will I oink?

Xenotransplantation, the process of grafting or transplanting organs or tissues from animals to humans, has a long history. Efforts to use the blood and skin of animals go back hundreds of years.

In the 1960s, chimpanzee kidneys were transplanted into some human patients, but the longest a recipient lived was nine months. In 1983, a baboon heart was transplanted into an infant known as Baby Fae, but she died 20 days later.

Pigs offer advantages over primates for organ procurements, because they are easier to raise and achieve adult human size in six months. Pig heart valves are routinely transplanted into humans, and some patients with diabetes have received porcine pancreas cells. Pig skin has also been used as a temporary graft for burn patients.

Two newer technologies  gene editing and cloning  have yielded genetically altered pig organs less likely to be rejected by humans. Pig hearts have been transplanted successfully into baboons by Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, a professor of surgery at University of Maryland School of Medicine who established the cardiac xenotransplantation program with Dr. Griffith and is its scientific director. But safety concerns and fear of setting off a dangerous immune response that can be life-threatening precluded their use in humans until recently.
Jillian Gibson hasnt gotten a flu shot in some 25 years.

I dont get the flu, and Ive been exposed over and over, said Ms. Gibson, 75, a mostly retired office manager for a medical practice in Beverly Hills.

True, she endured one bout back in the 80s  I remember being dreadfully sick  and had a head cold a few years ago. Otherwise, despite urging by virtually every public health authority that seniors (and everyone else over six months old) be vaccinated against influenza annually, I just didnt do it because I dont get sick, she said.

Ms. Gibson doesnt mistrust vaccines in general, she added. Her three children were always up-to-date on immunizations, and she herself got flu shots decades ago when she worked with dementia patients at an adult day center.

Now she doesnt, even though she is more vulnerable to illness after two recent heart attacks.

People like Ms. Gibson make physicians like Dr. William Schaffner very uneasy, especially this year. The preoccupation with Covid and a certain vaccine fatigue mean that people need to be reminded about flu, said Dr. Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
Thats a good way of thinking about it, yes. Eight years ago, New York voters adopted a constitutional amendment to create an independent redistricting commission that was billed as a way to weed political self-interest out of the process once and for all and force bipartisan compromise to draw fair legislative maps.

In reality, the commission was never as independent as advertised  or as similar bodies in states like Colorado or California that have successfully depoliticized the process. Here in New York, the commissions members were appointed by partisan legislative leaders and basically became proxies for Democrats and Republicans in Albany. After months of work, the commissioners deadlocked along party lines.

The Democrats, who control the State Assembly and State Senate, will soon get to draw the lines without any G.O.P. input. This will give them a chance to wring as much political gain from the maps as they can.

Why is New York so important for Democrats nationally? How many congressional seats do they think they could win if the boundaries were different?

If you look across the country, it is hard to find a state that has as much at stake as New York.

Democrats are in an all-out fight to try to maintain control of the House of Representatives in Washington and with it, the fate of the Biden presidency and their liberal agenda. New York, it turns out, could play an outsize role.

Democratic leaders in Washington are counting on New York to help offset some gains Republicans are expected to make through redistricting in red states like Texas and Florida.

Political analysts I have talked to say that if Democrats in Albany are deft, they could win 23 of the states 26 House seats, picking up four seats for the party overall and taking five from Republicans. That would be much more aggressive than the map proposed by the Democrats on the commission, potentially robbing Republicans of any seats on Long Island or in New York City, and combining conservative territory upstate into just two or three districts.
Before he took office as mayor of New York City, Eric Adams repeatedly said that his top priority was to serve as the citys cheerleader and promote its recovery.

Mr. Adams has quickly begun to fulfill that vow. In his first week in office, he moved to buttress the citys health system during a surge in coronavirus hospitalizations. He fought to keep schools open even as they closed in other cities like Chicago.

And on Sunday, he faced a devastating new challenge when the city had its deadliest fire in decades, and at least 19 people died, including nine children. He held two news conferences at the site of the fire in the Bronx and called for unity at a time of horrific loss. During a tragedy, were going to be here for each other, he said.

Mr. Adams, a Democrat and former police captain, confronts the most daunting challenges to face a mayor since Michael R. Bloomberg was inaugurated shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. New York City had started to recover from the economic devastation of the pandemic this fall, but the Omicron surge in December led to the cancellation of some Broadway shows and emptied offices once again just as the new mayor took office.
The bizarre life of Robert A. Durst, the wayward scion of a vast New York real estate dynasty, ended on Monday when he died at 78 in a California hospital while serving a life sentence for murder.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, his death came with a twist.

In a potentially fitting coda to the notorious biography of a man who spent four decades eluding investigators as a suspect in three killings, his lone conviction in those crimes could well be vacated: He died before his appeal could be heard.

Under California law, the states Courts of Appeal can dismiss the appeal and order the trial court to set aside his September conviction, according to Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and the author of a treatise on the states criminal laws.

The whole world knows the jury found Durst guilty, Professor Levenson said, but thats not what the legal record will show. He didnt finish his appeal.
A year after North West opened, a top executive at the states Urban Development Corporation, which developed the sites, said the idea of social integration there had become hopeless. The state had set aside 69 apartments at two buildings for white residents but few people signed up for them and many who did moved out within the first years.

Of all the buildings at Twin Parks, North West was considered the most thoughtfully designed and innovative. Designed by the firm Prentice and Chan, Ohlhausen, Twin Parks North West was built as an angular structure that stood in contrast to the surrounding curved buildings and opened up to a park area with terraced play areas.

The North West building and the park were the most effective examples of trying to blend the affordable-housing complex into the neighborhood, critics said. A review in a 1973 edition of Architectural Forum praised the architects of Twin Parks North West for creating the most successful designs of all the buildings.

When it opened, the 120 units at North West included 20 unique layouts for the residences, which ranged from studio apartments to five-bedroom units in duplexes.

A review of Twin Parks in 2013, roughly four decades after it opened, said the celebration of the complex was an opening-day phenomenon. The project received much attention when it opened and became a case study of modern public housing, but the luster faded long ago, according to the 2013 review.
For all the garish headlines that attended his wifes disappearance and the gruesome killing of Mr. Black, it was the slaying of Ms. Berman that finally wrote an end to one of Americas longest running true-life crime thrillers, the case of a wealthy man who used many aliases in an odyssey that spun off books, films, television dramas and avalanches of online commentaries.

For years, Ms. Berman, a journalist, had been Mr. Dursts spokeswoman and staunchest defender in confrontations with reporters and his wifes family and friends after her disappearance. Yet Mr. Durst was belatedly charged with Ms. Bermans murder in 2015 in a reinvestigation of her killing, which had occurred 15 years earlier.

Prosecutors asserted that Mr. Durst had fatally shot Ms. Berman because she was about to tell investigators that Mrs. Dursts disappearance had been a hoax  that he had actually killed his wife and disposed of her body.

Mr. Durst had always denied involvement in his wifes disappearance and in the murder of Ms. Berman. After his arrest in the Berman case, he was not brought to trial for nearly six years. Held in custody at a medical facility of the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department, he underwent surgeries for esophageal cancer and fluid on the brain.

Undone by His Own Words

The long-delayed trial finally began in Los Angeles in early 2020, but after the selection of a jury and opening statements, it was postponed again in March, this time because of the coronavirus pandemic. The trial resumed in May 2021, and like almost everything else in the Durst saga, it was bizarre, with jurors spread across the courtroom gallery, prosecutors occupying the jury box and everyone, including the judge, wearing masks as a precaution against Covid-19.

During the trial, Mr. Dursts brother Douglas, who oversaw the familys $8 billion real estate empire, and Nick Chavin, a longtime friend of Mr. Dursts, were both witnesses for the prosecution. Mr. Chavin testified that in a 2014 sidewalk conversation in New York, Mr. Durst admitted that he had killed Ms. Berman, saying: It was her or me. I had no choice.

Prosecutors called 80 witnesses and introduced nearly 300 exhibits. But the most damaging evidence came from Mr. Dursts own mouth, as the jury heard him make a series of recorded acknowledgments  in an interview with John Lewin, a deputy prosecutor, after his arrest in 2015; in hundreds of jailhouse phone calls; and in 20 hours of interviews with a producer of a documentary on Mr. Durst.
But about Liz  Ill bet a lot of Republicans in Congress agree with her deep in their little Trump-terrorized hearts. Dont you think?

Bret: I used to think that. But now I think they are in denial so deep, its clinical. Theyve convinced themselves that the people who stormed the Capitol were misguided patriots, which is like saying that Harvey Weinstein was a clumsy romantic. They are keen to point fingers at Nancy Pelosi for not doing enough to secure the building, which amounts to indicting the victim for not doing enough to secure his possessions from thugs. They are upset that Democrats use the word insurrection, as if a violent attempt to overturn a democratic election ought better be described as a frat party that got a little outta hand. They fulsomely praise Mike Pence for doing his constitutional duty by refusing to interfere with the certification of the election but say nothing of the 147 congressional Republicans who would not accept the result. They carry on about Stacey Abrams refusing to accept her loss in the 2018 Georgia governors race but treat Donald Trumps incessant, obsessive, demagogic, destructive lying about 2020 as just one of his exuberant personality quirks.

Gail: It is amazing how we can come together on non-government-spending issues.

Bret: Theres an old expression, from Poland, I think, that goes, Not my circus. Not my monkeys. Unfortunately for the country, the G.O.P. has become our national circus, with Tucker Carlson as its scowling ringmaster. Now the question is whether Democrats can govern effectively to keep the clown show from coming back to power. Are you hopeful?

Gail: You know, President Biden is the opposite of a crowd rouser, but at this moment it might be OK to have a national leader whos just  sane and normal and principled.

Hes not going to lead the nation into any stupendous changes, but maybe right now the thing were looking for is that good guy like my eighth-grade teacher.

Bret: Even better would be a good guy who loudly insists that eighth-grade teachers in Chicago show up to work. Sorry, you were saying .

Gail: My actual eighth-grade teacher, as I have alluded to, was a nun who told us, Remember, the Romans killed Jesus, not the Jews. The fact that I still recall that means it was an actual piece of information back then.
When Covid hit, we were knee-deep in spoofed phone numbers slamming our cellphones about fake car warranties. We were wading through emails trying to steal our identities. We were triangulating Yelp reviews and Consumer Reports summaries with testimonials and marketing research just to buy a new mattress or an air fryer. We were checking out our own purchases at the grocery store and waiting on hold to replace the credit card that got hacked for the umpteenth time. We were staring, bleary-eyed, into apps that promised less friction in our everyday lives if we would just consent to tracking  not that we had a clue as to what exactly we were consenting to. The tiny boxes to sign up are labeled terms and conditions, after all, and not Here is how we are going to farm your personal data for profit. And when we complained  to a manager, to a clerk, to our spouses, to the internet  someone was all too glad to tell us how we could have prevented all of this if we had just become an expert in everything.

It is no wonder that so many of us think that we can parse vaccine trial data, compare personal protective equipment, write school policy and call career scientists idiots on Facebook. We are know-it-alls because we are responsible for knowing everything. And God forbid we should not know something and get scammed. If that happens, it is definitely our fault.

It does not have to be this way.

I revisited several books over the holidays to kick-start my thinking. One, in particular, is helpful for our discussion of scam culture. A Consumers Republic by Lizabeth Cohen is the best historical overview of the concepts of the consumer and consumerism. It is the book that first came to my mind when I was puzzling over why scams have scaled and diffused. Cohen gives us two concepts to mull over.

The first is the citizen consumer. Cohen says the modern citizen consumer is a self-interested citizen that increasingly view[s] government policies like other market transactions, and we judge the institution not by how well it serves those it governs, but how well it serves us personally. We are all, at this moment, citizen consumers. You can see this right now in debates over pandemic school closures. There are a lot of tensions at play in public education. Public schools are actually defined by those tensions, particularly the tension between schools need to serve the market and their need to serve the democratic good. But the pandemic has heightened these tensions. More people than I could have imagined want public schools to work like personal convenience stores that serve their needs at the expense of someone elses.

The second concept is consumerization of the republic. This is the idea that we perform our greatest service to the collective good not by voting or organizing or performing mutual aid but by pursuing our individual private consumption. We buy, therefore we are. (That should be said in Latin for gravitas, but I do not have the energy for a translation app.) The point is that we vote by buying, and that changes everything. A consumerized republic comprised of self-interested citizens who exercise their civic responsibility by satisfying their individual consumer desires is one in which we can all be convinced that we know what is best. Heres the connection to scams: Research says that the very best scams play on our overconfidence. So a citizen consumer who thinks he or she is an expert in all manner of everyday decisions is the perfect mark for an endless string of scams. Thats anything but an isolated social phenomenon.

Well continue to explore these ideas over coming weeks, but it wont be all scams all the time. I can only take so much.

While not riling people up about scams during the holidays I finished reading an essay about race, gender and contemporary country music. I am not a country music fan so much as I am a huge fan of storytelling and craft. Pop music, R&B and hip-hop are all about the producer. Country music, Americana and folk music are about the songwriter. I like that. What I dont like is how the genre has been divorced from its multiethnic roots to become what it mostly is today: a cultural playground for white identity politics dressed up as innocuous middlebrow culture. But a new wave of Black artists, queer artists, Native American artists and Hispanic artists are challenging countrys musics latent politics in a big way.
NASHVILLE  It was 78 degrees here on New Years Day, a record high for Nashville, and I broke into a sweat just packing for a weekend on the Cumberland Plateau. Did you remember to bring your coat? my husband asked when I got into the car.

It was not an unreasonable question, despite the heat. I hadnt packed my coat when we left for the Cumberland Plateau last month. It was warm that day, too. In fact, it had been so warm for so long that the cherry laurels were already in bud. Who thinks to pack a coat when cherry laurels are in bud?

But the next day the temperature dropped to 45, and there I was, stranded in the woods with no coat nor even so much as a sweater. Apparently, this is how winter works now. Daffodils out of the ground, Lenten roses in full bloom two months out of time, and then wham.

I remembered my coat at New Years, which is fortunate because the following day brought a winter storm. Snow billowed across the Southeast and up the Atlantic seaboard  an inch or two at home, more than four at the cabin where we were staying. That night, we lay in bed and listened to the wind howling up from Lost Cove, so loud that it drowned out even the coyotes howls. Between gusts, we could hear the bare trees creaking as they swayed.
To safeguard the most important royal correspondence against snoops and spies in the 16th century, writers employed a complicated means of security. Theyd fold the letter, then cut a dangling strip, using that as an improvised thread to sew stitches that locked the letter and turned the flat writing paper into its own envelope. To get inside, a spy would have to snip the lock open, an act impossible to go undetected.

Catherine de Medici used the method in 1570  a time she governed France while her ill son, King Charles IX, sat on its throne. Queen Elizabeth did so in 1573 as the sovereign ruler of England and Ireland. And Mary Queen of Scots used it in 1587 just hours before her long effort to unite Britain ended in her beheading.

These people knew more than one way to send a letter and they chose this one, said Jana Dambrogio, lead author of a study that details Renaissance-era politicians use of the technique, and a conservator at the M.I.T. Libraries. You had to be highly confident to make a spiral lock. If you made a mistake, youd have to start all over, which could take hours of rewriting and restitching. Its fascinating. They took great pains to build up their security.

Disclosure of the methods wide use among European royalty is the latest venture of a group of scholars, centered at M.I.T., into a vanished art they call letterlocking  an early form of communications security that theyre busy resurrecting. Early last year, they reported their development of a virtual-reality technique that let them peer into locked letters without tearing them apart and damaging the historical record.
Walking into Dress Shoppe II is like walking into an emporium of color and cloth. The shelves are overflowing with hand-embroidered fabrics and saris, the racks are tightly packed with kurtas and salwar suits, and even the ceilings are covered in intricate tapestries. Below the main floor of the shop, there are two storage floors packed with piles of additional product. All of it needs to go by Jan. 31.

After nearly 50 years of business, the treasured East Village store is shutting down. Following nearly two years of pandemic-related struggles, combined with a landlord dispute, the loss of her husband and her own health problems, Saroj Goyal, the owner, decided that closing the store was the best choice.

Every moment is special here, said Ms. Goyal, 72, as she sat sipping hot tea on a December afternoon. Every so often, she paused the conversation to help a customer who had wandered in, sharing suggestions and telling them to check out the shops Instagram.
Imagine youre at a restaurant one night, and after dinner you decide to order not one but two slices of cheesecake for dessert. Many would say thats unhealthy  or at least indulgent  but everyone deserves a treat once in a while. Right?

If you keep ordering two slices of cake for dessert every night for months, however, your health may suffer.

This is one analogy that Chitra Raghavan, a professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, used to explain how romantic behaviors can transform into a manipulative dating practice known as love bombing: lavishing a new romantic partner with grand gestures and constant contact in order to gain an upper hand in the relationship.

One partner, typically male but not exclusively, showers the other person with attention, affection, compliments, flattery, and essentially creates this context where she feels like shes met her soul mate and its effortless, Dr. Raghavan said in a phone interview. The reality is, the person who is doing the love bombing is creating or manipulating the environment to look like hes the perfect or shes the perfect mate.
I knew she had started a company, Ms. Stefanek said. I knew that it had failed. I knew she liked to wear black turtlenecks. That was about it.

Ms. Holmess trial began with opening statements on Sept. 8. That started a new routine for Ms. Stefanek: She often woke up at 5 a.m. to squeeze in some work and pack lunch for her 12-year-old daughter before driving from Mountain View, Calif., where she lives, to the San Jose courthouse.

During testimony, Ms. Stefanek said, she took 541 pages of notes. At times, she said, jurors struggled to stay awake. Other times, they were shocked to see star witnesses like James Mattis, the retired four-star Marine Corps general and former defense secretary, who had served on Theranoss board.

When he walked in the door, I kind of felt this rustle in the room and I couldnt believe it, Ms. Stefanek said. I was actually more excited about him than I was about Elizabeth Holmes, just because I knew who he was before.

Over time, the trials schedule became increasingly unpredictable. Judge Edward J. Davila of the Northern District of California, who presided over the case, tacked on extra court sessions and extended days in court, which initially were scheduled to end at 2 p.m., to 3 p.m. and then to 4 p.m.

That made it hard for me to commit to things at work and made it more challenging to get some things done, Ms. Stefanek said, adding that her manager at Apple was understanding.

After closing arguments concluded in December, the jury began deliberating a verdict. They had a method for discussions, Ms. Stefanek said, recapping each witnesss testimony on sheets of paper that were hung around the fifth-floor courtroom where they spent time when the trial was not in session. They also enlisted the courtroom deputy, Adriana Kratzmann, to make photocopies of one jurors handmade worksheet that listed the criteria for a conviction on each count.
This year, the second in a row, the Times Travel desk faced the challenge of creating one of our signature pieces of journalism, the annual 52 Places list, in a world turned upside down.

A year ago, with global travel at all but a standstill, we turned to readers to ask about the places that had sustained them in the darkest days of lockdown. That list included locations as varied as fantastical colored-rock formations in India and a humble brickwork church in South London. They were faraway destinations held dear in memory, or nearby spots that had offered solace, and they served as a reminder that the world was still out there, waiting.

Now, with the pandemic hitting its third calendar year, global travel is more possible, but it remains difficult and fraught with uncertainty. The populations of many countries outside of North America and Europe are largely unvaccinated, while China and other countries in Asia remain closed to most visitors. Shortly after the Biden administration loosened the rules around international travel to the United States, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus began spreading. Even vaccinated travelers who have received boosters are not immune to this latest twist in the virus. Travel restrictions for visitors from southern African nations were quickly put in place, then lifted.

Beyond the pandemic, there is a profound shift underway in the worlds understanding of climate change and the swiftness and degree to which we are already seeing its effects. Wildfires, floods, dangerous storms, rising water levels and temperatures: all remind us how fragile our world really is. The travel industry is responsible for somewhere between 8 and 11 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council, and at the Glasgow climate summit this fall, the tourism industry made its first commitment to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.
A former police officer in Tulsa, Okla., was sentenced on Friday to 25 years in prison for the 2014 killing of his daughters boyfriend after a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder in his fifth trial in the case.

Shannon Kepler, 60, was a 24-year veteran of the Tulsa Police Department when he shot and killed Jeremey Lake, 19, outside Mr. Lakes home near downtown Tulsa in August 2014, federal prosecutors said. Mr. Kepler tracked Mr. Lake down after running his name through a law enforcement database, the authorities said.

At the request of Mr. Lakes family, Judge Gregory Frizzell of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma also ordered Mr. Kepler to pay the cost of a headstone for Mr. Lake.

Mr. Keplers lawyer, Stan Monroe, did not immediately respond to an email and phone calls seeking comment on Sunday.
We urge Senator Manchin to revisit his opposition to this legislation and work with his colleagues to pass something that will help keep coal miners working and have a meaningful impact on our members, their families and their communities, Cecil E. Roberts, the president of the United Mine Workers of America, or U.M.W.A., said in a statement just before Christmas.

The far-reaching centerpiece of Mr. Bidens domestic agenda has passed the House, but with every Democratic senator needed to push it through the Senate, Mr. Manchins opposition has stopped the bill in its tracks. At this point, the president and the lawmaker standing in his way cannot even agree on whether negotiations continue: Mr. Biden says they do, but Mr. Manchin says they do not.

But the decision of the labor groups to come out forcefully in support of Build Back Better could be significant. Mine workers are likely to be more persuasive to Mr. Manchin than the progressive activists who kayaked to his houseboat at a Washington marina to harangue him or the colleagues buttonholing him at Senate votes.

Joe Manchin grew up with coal miners, said Jonathan Kott, a former aide to the senator who still advises him. His heart is with them. His sweat is with them  and in the end, Manchin will always be with the U.M.W.A.

But Mr. Manchin has also long been allied with the coal industry. His own family has profited from waste coal from abandoned mines, which the Manchins sell to a polluting power plant in his home state. And Mr. Manchin has received more campaign donations from the oil, coal and gas industries than any other senator in the current election cycle.
As the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol rushes to gather evidence and conduct interviews, how far it will be able to go in holding former President Donald J. Trump accountable increasingly appears to hinge on one possible witness: former Vice President Mike Pence.

Since the committee was formed last summer, Mr. Pences lawyer and the panel have been talking informally about whether he would be willing to speak to investigators, people briefed on the discussions said. But as Mr. Pence began sorting through a complex calculation about his cooperation, he indicated to the committee that he was undecided, they said.

To some degree, the current situation reflects negotiating strategies by both sides, with the committee eager to suggest an air of inevitability about Mr. Pence answering its questions and the former vice presidents advisers looking for reasons to limit his political exposure from a move that would further complicate his ambitions to run for president in 2024.

But there also appears to be growing tension.

In recent weeks, Mr. Pence is said by people familiar with his thinking to have grown increasingly disillusioned with the idea of voluntary cooperation. He has told aides that the committee has taken a sharp partisan turn by openly considering the potential for criminal referrals to the Justice Department about Mr. Trump and others. Such referrals, in Mr. Pences view, appear designed to hurt Republican chances of winning control of Congress in November.
With dramatic timing seen frequently in the movies but rarely with an actual life on the line, rescuers pulled a pilot from the wreckage of his planes crash landing just seconds before a train smashed into it in Los Angeles on Sunday.

Captured on bystander video and the body cameras of responding officers, the last-second rescue almost surely saved the life of the pilot, who was the only person on the small plane and was brought to a hospital. The Los Angeles Police Department said the man was saved by Foothill Division officers who displayed heroism and quick action.

The pilot, who was not identified, was medically evaluated, the Los Angeles Fire Department said, without describing his condition.

The body camera video, which includes images of the pilots bloodied face, shows at least three officers pulling the man from the mangled plane, dragging him as far away as possible as one of them shouted, Go! Go! Go! Go!
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti  After Haitis president was assassinated and the country slid into turmoil, Ariel Henry became head of the government, responsible for bringing the killers to justice and helping the country heal.

But new evidence suggests that Mr. Henry maintained communications with a prime suspect in the case  and that the two stayed in close contact even after the murder.

The assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July plunged an already troubled nation further into disarray, with many of its public institutions in tatters, a capital under siege by gangs, a collapsing economy and the few elected leaders left in the country sparring for control of the government.

Mr. Henrys ascension to prime minister promised to smooth some of the rifts, earning pledges of support from overseas and potentially paving the way toward elections. He pledged to bring the assassins to justice, curb the violence and usher in a period of political unity.
Health officials in India have reported an increasing number of people refusing to wear masks, despite rising case numbers fueled by the Omicron variant, with rule breakers excuses including seeing masks as a sign of weakness or as simply unhelpful in preventing infection.

When you hear people offer explanations like that, you want to bang your head against a wall, said Manish Chakraborty, a health official in the state of West Bengal who is part of a team of officers who impose fines on people for skirting Covid rules.

After the deadly wave of Covid caused by the Delta variant in India last year began to recede, mask wearing also declined. Crowded markets and tourist destinations again filled with people, mostly unmasked and not social distancing. Researchers say mask wearing in public in the country has fallen to the levels last seen in March.

As coronavirus cases started increasing in urban centers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told residents to be vigilant, and the chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, imposed a curfew, among other measures. But with the opening of election season a month off, both leaders have been seen campaigning in states that are going to the polls, holding rallies that packed in thousands of people, lots of them without masks.
Myanmars ousted civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was convicted Monday and sentenced to four years in prison for possessing walkie-talkies in her home and for violating Covid-19 protocols.

Altogether, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, 76, has been sentenced to a total of six years in prison so far, with many more charges pending against her.

Mondays guilty verdict on three counts comes on top of her Dec. 5 conviction on charges of inciting public unrest and a separate count of breaching Covid-19 protocols. Initially sentenced to four years on those charges, that sentence was cut in half by the army commander in chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the leader of the Feb. 1 coup that forced her from office.

As the first anniversary of the coup approaches, the court found Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi guilty of violating Myanmars import-export law and its telecommunications law by possessing the communication devices. Her defenders have said the walkie-talkies belonged to her security detail, and that the charges were bogus and politically motivated.
With four new families recently arriving, the remote and rainy island in the Hebrides is experiencing its version of a population surge, although residents new and old concede living here isnt easy.

ISLE OF RUM, Scotland  No doctors. No restaurants. No churches. And worst of all for some: no pubs.

Life on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides is not for everyone.

But Alex Mumford, one of the approximately 40 people living on the Isle of Rum, says he loves it, although he admits getting a drink could be an adventure, with the nearest pub on the neighboring island of Skye.

We thought about kayaking across and dropping in for a drink and then kayaking back, Mr. Mumford said. But its 10 miles over and 10 miles back, so its probably not ideal.

Despite all the challenges of making a home here, the island has seen something of a recent population explosion, at least in percentage terms.
We will give them the chance to do the right thing, he said of the development companies. I hope they take it. If they do not, and if necessary, we will impose a solution upon them in law.

Opposition lawmakers, however, called into question whether the new promises will spur real change. Lisa Nandy, the opposition Labour lawmaker responsible for housing, called the announcement a welcome shift in tone and said that she hoped the new measures would prove fruitful.

But the harder I look at this, the less it stands up, she added. We were promised justice and we were promised changes to finally do right by the victims of this scandal, but that takes more than more promises, it takes a plan.

While many leaseholders are hopeful that the announcement could alleviate both the financial burden and psychological burden of living in unsafe buildings, many have pushed for a legally binding plan for ensuring developers shoulder these costs.

I think most leaseholders, myself included, are kind of cautiously optimistic, said Sophie Bichener, 29, who owns an apartment in Stevenage, about 30 miles north of London. But, I think there are lots of details that we still dont know.

Ms. Bichener has been among a number of leaseholders who met with Mr. Gove in recent weeks, and she said she came out of a meeting with him just hours before the announcement feeling positive. She noted that the announcement definitely marks a new tone from the government about the building safety crisis, but it does not alleviate all of her concerns.

Two years ago, fire safety surveys determined that the building she lives in is unsafe and would need to be fixed. Not only is it wrapped in a potentially flammable material, but there are also a variety of other concerns. A cost of 208,000 pounds, around $280,000, was passed along to all leaseholders in her building, and they have also experienced increases in their insurance and fronted the costs for fire safety patrols.
MOSCOW  President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Monday that recent unrest in Kazakhstan had been caused by destructive internal and external forces and that more than 2,000 troops his country had sent as peacekeepers would leave only once their mission was complete.

Mr. Putin said the troops would remain for a limited time period. But he did not give any deadline for a withdrawal, saying that they would stay as long as President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan considers it necessary, raising the possibility they could be in the country indefinitely.

Mr. Putins comments, made at a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a body equivalent to NATO that includes six countries from the former Soviet Union, were his first since unrest engulfed Kazakhstan last week, with widespread protests over rising gas prices that began peacefully and then turned violent.
It felt like a scene from the Cold War, a perilous episode from a bygone era. An unpredictable Russian leader was amassing troops and tanks on a neighbors border. There was fear of a bloody East-West conflagration.

Then the Cold War turned hot: Vladimir V. Putin ordered Russian forces to invade Ukraine. The repercussions were immediate, and far-reaching.

Now, following the launch of Russias full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, the largest mobilization of forces Europe has seen since 1945 is underway. So far, Moscow has been denied the swift victory it anticipated, and has failed to capture major cities across the country, including Kyiv, the capital. It has been weighed down by an ill-prepared military and has faced tenacious resistance from Ukrainian soldiers and civilian resistance fighters. Still, Russia has superior military might, and Mr. Putin has indicated that his ultimate goal is to capture Kyiv, topple Ukraines democratically elected government, and subsume the country into Russias orbit.

The invasion threatens to destabilize the already volatile post-Soviet region, with serious consequences for the security structure that has governed Europe since the 1990s. Mr. Putin has long lamented the loss of Ukraine and other republics when the Soviet Union broke apart. Now, diminishing NATO, the military alliance that helped keep the Soviets in check, appears to be part of his mission. Before invading, Russia made a list of far-reaching demands to reshape that structure  positions NATO and the United States rejected.
Chioggia, Italy

Built on a cluster of islands in the Venetian lagoon, with centuries-old buildings rising from the canals in all their decadent glory, Chioggia is called piccola Venezia, or little Venice. Locals beg to disagree: If anything, they say, its nearby Venice that should be described as Chioggias larger doppelganger, and its true, Chioggia is older. Venice is so worried about being overwhelmed once again after the pandemic that it is planning to resort to surveillance cameras and cellphone data to control the crowds; visiting other culturally rich places like Chioggia can help relieve the pressure. Today, Chioggia is popular with Italian and German visitors, drawn both by the architectural beauties in the historic center and the family-friendly beaches of its mainland suburb, Sottomarina. The city, which has preserved a rough maritime vibe, can serve as an ideal base for bicycle tours. It is also known for its radicchio. During a time of increased awareness of overtourism, this miniature Venice is a delightful alternative for travelers looking for a lesser-known destination.

 Anna Momigliano

Susan Wright for The New York Times
Albert Zakirov, an artist from the Russian Federations Tatarstan Autonomous Republic has an original, albeit controversial painting technique  he uses womens naked bodies as his paintbrushes.

Albert Zakirov started drawing and painting at an early age and spent much of his childhood preparing for art school. After studying with an excellent teacher for a couple of months in tenth grade, he picked up the necessary knowledge to get admitted into art school, where he quietly studied the basics while experimenting with all sorts of unusual techniques and mediums. He never graduated from art school, but it was there that he first used a womans body to paint on canvas, and it was this experience that inspired him to make the technique his own.

I did my first body painting with a woman when I was in art college, in the 1980s, Zakirov told SNTAT. We rented a room with canvas and paints, and then we fooled around, smearing and painting before throwing away the artwork. At that time this method could not be shown to anyone. 

In the year 2,000, the Russian artist remembered his unusual painting technique and painted another picture 32-meter artwork using the bodies of two female bodies. He still keeps the piece in his collection, as it marks the start of his unique body painting method.

If youre wondering how Albert Zakirov paints with human bodies, the process is quite straightforward. He usually starts by smearing the body of his human paintbrush with oil, to make the cleaning process easier, then smears various body parts with acrylic paints, picks up the person, and applies them to the canvas. Zakirov doesnt use the model exclusively, sometimes adding his own touches to the artwork, but he claims that the unique brush transfers a sort of energy to the painting.

When I lift a woman, energy is exchanged during the interaction of two bodies, Zakirov claims. Idea, color composition  everything comes together during the process. Before the arrival of the model, I do not know what I will paint on the canvas. I dont prepare in advance, the models inspire me.

Interestingly, the Kazan-based painter says that he never selects his human brushes. They find out about him through acquaintances, from local galleries, or from the news, and they contact him. There is no audition or casting process.

In recent years, he started asking the women to wear ski masks over their faces, to avoid personal problems. Even if they are interested in being used to create art, their boyfriend, or future boyfriend may not share their enthusiasm, so concealing their identity prevents any future misunderstandings.

Albert Zakirov only uses women as paintbrushes, mainly because they are lighter, but there was one time between 2008 and 2009 when he used a couple of dancers, a man and a woman. He was thin, and his body was very elastic and graceful.

According to the Russian artist, the abstract paintings he creates with human brushes are sought by art collectors from Russia and various other European countries.
A convicted Italian mafia member who has been on the run for almost two decades was recently arrested after being spotted by chance on Google Maps in a small Spanish town.

Gioacchino Gammino, a convicted murderer listed among Italys most wanted gangsters, had been on the run for nearly 20 years when he was arrested in Galapagar, a town near Madrid, last month. He had escaped Romes Rebibbia jail in 2002 and in 2003 he had been sentenced to life in prison for a murder committed years earlier. A European arrest warrant was issued in 2014, and authorities had managed to track Gammino to Spain, but it was a Google Maps screenshot of two men chatting outside a fruit and vegetable shop that helped police confirm his exact location and make the arrest.

The photogram helped us to confirm the investigation we were developing in traditional ways, Nicola Altiero, deputy director of the Italian anti-mafia police unit (DIA), said.

Its not clear how authorities managed to spot the exact still of Gammino outside the El Huerto de Manu shop in Galapagar, but prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi confirmed that its not as if we spend our days wading through Google Maps to find fugitives. I guess they may have been tipped off by someone, which, again, is kind of weird, as the Italian mafia member had been very careful to avoid being discovered.

When Gammino was arrested on December 17, the first thing he asked the police was How did you find me? I havent even called my family for 10 years!. He had changed his name and was working as a chef at a local restaurant called La Cocina de Manu, where he cooked Italian food, including a dish called Cena Siciliana, or Italian Dinner.

After spotting Gioacchino Gammino on Gooogle Maps, prosecutors sought to confirm his identity and managed to do just that by checking the Facebook page of La Cocina de Manu. Gammino, who was posing as the chef, was recognized by a scar on the left side of his chin.



Gioacchino Gammino was wanted for murder and several other mafia-related crimes. He belonged to a mafia clan in Agrigento, Sicily, and was originally arrested and convicted in 1998. Four years later, he managed to escape Rebibbia prison in Rome, where he was serving a life sentence, taking advantage of the commotion caused by a film being shot there.

This is not the first time Google Maps made news headlines for accidentally blowing a persons cover, so to speak. In 2018, a Peruvian man divorced his wife after discovering her infidelity while casually looking around on Google Street View.
The Livingston Group, which is headed by former House Speaker-designate Bob Livingston has signed a one-year contract worth $500K to represent Iraq.

The firm will conduct outreach to the White House and Congress to boost Iraq's ties with the US.

It also will engage with US multinational companies, think tanks, policy institutes as well as Iraqs diaspora on behalf of the countrys Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Livingston, his former chief of staff J. Allen Martin, and Cathyrn Kingsbury, a former consultant at The Solomon Group, handle the Iraqi business.

They report to Iraqs US ambassador H.E. Fareed Yasseen.

TLG had represented Iraq from December 2017 until March 24, 2021, before re-upping on December 22.
Homes and businesses in an area in Offaly can look forward to a more reliable water supply with a further phase of water mains upgrade works due to get underway in the coming days.

Irish Water, working in partnership with Offaly County Council, is replacing 5km of aging water mains between Agall Pumping Station and the N52 road, and between the N52 and the Holmshill Road with new modern pipes to provide a more safe, secure and reliable water supply for the area.

The works will also involve laying new water service connections from the public water main in the road to customers property boundaries and connecting it to the customers water supply.

These works follow the completion last month of a project which involved the replacement of almost 8km of aging water mains between Newtown and Rahan, further reducing high levels of leakage and significantly improving the local water supply for customers.

Both projects will deliver significant improvements in the network performance and levels of service for customers in this area in terms of efficiency, reliability and security of supply.

Outlining the benefits of these works Joe Carroll, Irish Water, explained: The works will involve the construction of approximately 5km of new water mains to supplement the existing network between Agall Pumping Station and the N52 road, and also between the N52 to the Holmshill Road. The new water mains will reduce the high level of leakage in the area and will increase security of supply and reliability. Traffic management will be necessary and includes a road closure on the Holmshill Road, details of which will be communicated locally as the project progresses. Local and emergency access will be maintained at all times.

The works may involve some short-term water interruptions and the project team will ensure that customers are given a minimum of 48 hours notice prior to any planned water interruptions. We understand that this type of work can be inconvenient and works crews will make every effort to minimise any disruption these necessary works cause.

These ongoing projects are part of a significant investment by Irish Water to upgrade the water network in Offaly and we would like to thank customers for their continued cooperation and patience while we continue to upgrade and improve the water supply across the county.

The works will be delivered by Ward & Burke Construction on behalf of Irish Water and are expected to be completed in April 2022.

A further tranche of works is also due to get under way next week in the Fahy area which will see the replacement of 500 metres of problematic water mains with new modern pipes. These works and expected to be completed in early February.

These projects represent a significant investment by Irish Water, working in partnership with Offaly County Council, to upgrade Offalys water network and reduce high levels of leakage. Fixing leaks can be complicated with over 63,000km of water pipe in Ireland. Most leaks arent visible, resulting in precious water being lost but we are making progress. In 2018 the rate of leakage nationally was 46%, by the end of 2019 it was 42%, it had reduced further to 40% at the end of 2020 and we are currently on course to achieving a national leakage rate of 38%. For more information on reducing leaks visit our National Leakage Reduction Programme page on www.water.ie.

Customers can phone Irish Water on 1800 278 278 with any questions about the project or check out the Water Supply Updates section on www.water.ie for regular updates.

Irish Water is responsible for the delivery of all public water and wastewater services in Ireland. We are committed to continuously upgrading and developing critical infrastructure to support the growth needed in housing and across our economy, while protecting the environment and safeguarding water supplies.
A derelict eyesore in Offaly is set to be demolished after a massive funding boost.

Edenderry Fine Gael councillor Noel Cribbin has welcomed the news of over 2.6 million in funding for the demolition of the old Tesco site on JKL Street in the town and the design and consultancy services for a new library and arts performance area and land purchase.

Funding of 2.15 has been granted to Offaly County Council under the Rural Regeneration & Development Fund, (RRDF) with Offaly County Council contributing a further 500,000 towards the project.

Cllr Cribbin says he has "worked tirelessly over the last number of years to ensure that money was made available to allow the demolition of the building which had become an eyesore on the towns main street, to make way for the development of much-needed amenities in Edenderry."

Commenting further on the update Cllr Cribbin said: "I am delighted that this has progressed to a stage where we will soon see activity on the ground around the old Tesco site. Like all such projects, it has taken time and hard work but the results will have benefits for every resident of Edenderry."

Outlining the actions he took to make this progress happen, Cllr Cribbin said: "My work on this project started with putting forward the proposal for Offaly County Council to purchase the Tesco site and move our library, following the approval of 1.8 million for our present library to be upgraded. I then contacted the owner of the Tesco site who now resides in the US, and he agreed to come home to negotiate the sale to the council.

"On joining Fine Gael in 2018, I sought support for this project and met with Minister Ring in government buildings  a meeting which resulted in 100,000 being made available to initiate a feasibility study and resulted in a company being hired to carry out a very successful survey. It was at this stage that the people of Edenderry came on board with over 200 giving their views and suggestions as to how the site might be developed.

"A second application by the Council was also successful and resulted in a 700,000 grant to build a new link road, which is now open, between Granary Court and Fairgreen to open up access to backlands, including the Tesco site, William Wallers Store and OPW lands (30 acres) as well as improving connectivity and permeability for Edenderry town.

"In total over 3.2 million has been allocated for this project to date which will be a major game changer for Edenderry resulting in a new library and performance area, a new link road and a site of 30 acres opened up for development."

Cllr Cribbin also expressed his gratitude to the many people who have supported the progression of the project to date.

"I wish to sincerely thank Declan Conlon, former Director of Services at Offaly County Council, Council CEO Anna Marie Delaney and Minister Ring for their full support and Olwen Cummins in forward planning for her great work in putting together the successful applications to draw down up to 3.2 million to date."

In relation to the next steps for the project, Cllr. Cribbin said: "The demolition company is on standby to commence the demolition and clearance of the site. It will be a bittersweet day for many people in the town who worked at the site in its various guises, not to mention the thousands who came from all over North Offaly, Kildare and Meath to shop there over the years.

"However, for the last 20 years the building has sat vacant and a daily reminder of the economic decline in the town. I am happy to say that is now behind us. Its onwards and upwards for Edenderry with this positive news and the start of many new projects including the new inner relief road, the new 10 million Oaklands college ready to go to planning and now the start of this project which will breathe new life into the town," a delighted Cllr Cribbin concluded.
High pressure is set to dominate the weather for Ireland this week with Met Eireann forecasting a big change in the weather compared to the wintry conditions of last week.

According to Met Eireann, it will become gradually more settled this week as a ridge of high pressure influences Ireland's weather as we move towards midweek.

According to the latest Met Eireann weather forecast, any lingering patchy rain will largely clear early on Monday night as fresh and clear conditions extend from the west. However, some mist and fog will form as winds ease light. Temperatures will dip down to between -1 and +3 degrees overnight, leading to a touch of frost over the northern half of the country. Staying a little milder and cloudier in southern areas with patchy drizzle.

According to the latest Met Eireann weather forecast for Ireland, it will be a largely bright and sunny day on Tuesday, with long spells of sunshine. Cloudier conditions with spots of drizzle along the south coast at first tomorrow will clear later in the morning. There may be isolated showers on northwestern fringes later. Southwest winds will generally stay light too, with highest temperatures of around 6 to 9 degrees.

A dry night on Tuesday night with long clear spells and light winds too. This will allow temperatures to drop to -1 to 3 degrees so there will be a touch of frost mainly in the south. Some mist and fog patches also.

According to Met Eireann, Wednesday will be another dry and bright day with long clear spells and plenty of afternoon sunshine. There will be the odd shower or two along Atlantic coastal fringes where it will be a little cloudier too. Highs of 7 to 10 degrees and light winds.

Staying clear and dry for most on Wednesday evening with light winds. Temperatures will drop to around 1 to 4 degrees with patches of mist or fog forming for southern areas overnight.

According to the latest Met Eireann weather forecast for Ireland for Thursday, some of that mist or fog will be slow to clear in the morning. It will become a little cloudier in the afternoon as winds become more southerly. There will be an isolated shower or two for coastal areas with highs of around 6 to 9 degrees.

A cloudy night on Thursday night with a few showers lingering in the predominantly southerly flow. The extra cloud cover will make it a little milder than previous nights with lows of around 4 to 8 degrees. Some mist and fog patches also.

Friday will be a more settled day with some scattered cloud and a few showers. Highs of around 6 to 9 degrees and light winds.

According to Met Eireann, generally settled weather is on the way for Saturday and Sunday with just the odd shower about the coasts.
High pressure is set to move in across Ireland on Tuesday with the latest Met Eireann weather forecast forecasting a change in the weather this week compared to the wintry conditions of last week.

The latest Met Eireann weather forecast for Ireland states that it will become gradually more settled this week as a ridge of high pressure influences Ireland's weather.

That change is set to start on Tuesday as according to the latest Met Eireann weather forecast for Ireland, it will be a largely bright and sunny day on Tuesday, with long spells of sunshine. Cloudier conditions with spots of drizzle along the south coast at first tomorrow will clear later in the morning. There may be isolated showers on northwestern fringes later. Southwest winds will generally stay light too, with highest temperatures of around 6 to 9 degrees.

A dry night on Tuesday night with long clear spells and light winds too. This will allow temperatures to drop to -1 to 3 degrees so there will be a touch of frost mainly in the south. Some mist and fog patches also.

According to Met Eireann, Wednesday will be another dry and bright day with long clear spells and plenty of afternoon sunshine. There will be the odd shower or two along Atlantic coastal fringes where it will be a little cloudier too. Highs of 7 to 10 degrees and light winds.

CLICK HERE to read the weather forecast for the rest of the week from Met Eireann
THE Morrigan or Morrigan, also known as Morrigu, is a figure from Irish mythology. The name is Mor-Rioghain in Modern Irish, and it has been translated as "great queen" or "phantom queen".

The Morrigan is mainly associated with war and fate, especially with foretelling doom, death or victory in battle.

So goes the story and the artwork on the Larkin's Brewery Christmas gift set does the tale justice picturing the queen herself. I like seeing artwork on Irish craft beer cans and bottles, especially when it depicts Irish folklore in a non-cliche way.

This week's beer for review was a Christmas gift I gifted to myself as it's a very special set of unique barrel aged versions of the original Morrigan that has somewhat created its own folklore in the Irish craft beer scene.

There are a few beers like this in Ireland and avid craft beer consumers wait for their seasonal release each year and this is one of the best.

Seeing it barrel aged in four different representations is amazing and gives me the opportunity to sample and compare the flavour profiles. The branded glass is an added bonus!

At 12.5% abv Morrigan barrel aged stout pours jet black, thick and silky with a deep tan head of foam. The woody bourbon aroma is inviting and there's a warming note on the lift of vapours.

The taste is deep and decadent with a powerful hit of bourbon character to match. The roasty element is almost eclipsed by the levels of bourbon and American oak yet the beer as a whole is easily drinkable and not too thick or heavy. A deep earthy and mineral water profile of the beer shines through too.

There's very little in the way of hop profile thankfully other than enough bittering to balance the beer.

My wife remarked it tastes as strong as her red wines and that's a fair comment as this is a very strong beer, best enjoyed by two people in my opinion!

Brendan Sewell pens a weekly craft beer review for the Tullamore Tribune and Midland Tribune. A Tullamore-based chef, he is an award winning homebrewer, founder member of the Midlands Beer Club and creator of the YouTube channel Views on Brews.
It was a trip to France in 2015 that inspired Benedict Bryans human rights and humanitarian work.

Seeing first-hand the human rights consequences that migrants to France were facing at the time, on his return home, he set up an organisation  the Humanitarian Association of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago (HARTT) - that would provide humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable, with a focus on migrants and refugees.

I wanted to help people facing the same situation in my own country. One of the first things we did was collaborate with another local NGO and the University of the West Indies to launch the countrys first English language classes for migrants and refugees, Bryan explains.

Since HARTT was established, its work has evolved and expanded  they still work with migrants and refugees, but also have a wider ambition to improve social equality within communities in Trinidad and Tobago. One key area of work is womens rights and the rights of LGBTIQ people  Bryan is also an advisor with the UN Population Funds Youth Advisory Group and the Queens Commonwealth Trust.

Safety of young human rights defenders

Throughout his years of activism, Bryan has observed that space for young people to stand up for their rights is at best, limited and at worst, under threat.

If youre a young person and you want to challenge your government on their view, or ask really difficult questions, depending on who you are asking, there is a risk involved, he says. When you bring their interests into question in public, the risks are incredibly high.

Bryan explains that while avenues do exist for young people to voice their opinions, whether or not they will be taken seriously is another matter.

Although there is space, its not as empowering or as impactful as we would want, he says.

Risks young people may face are not necessarily direct violence, but can be emotional or even financial. Bryan recounts the story of a fellow activist who protested at the Trinidad and Tobago Hall of Justice to decriminalise gay sex on discovering his participation in the protest, the young mans parents forced him to leave the house, and he became homeless.

Stigma is a major contributing factor to the risks young activists can face, says Bryan. While the risk of violence remains real, we cannot forget about the more subtle risks, which can drastically impact young lives and livelihoods.

More engagement, more protection

Bryan is advocating for a more meaningful engagement with young people at the government level around the world .

Politicians everywhere need to ask themselves if they are engaging young people for engagements sake only, or if there is actually a thought process behind it which could lead to real policy change, he says.

To have more impactful conversations with young people, Bryan also believes governments need to be more aware of the life stage of the young person, and adapt their approaches accordingly. How you engage with someone who is 13 or 14, is not the same for someone who is 18, or 24.

At the same time, Bryan is calling for governments around the world to give better protection mechanisms for young people who decide to speak out. Legislation to protect individual activists or groups which focus on human rights is critical to achieve real freedom of speech, he says.

The importance of presence

Young people are agents of change, says Bryan, and have genuine capacity to influence policy and human rights.

While he believes in the strength of young peoples voices, he also says presence can be just as crucial. I do believe in just being there, he says. Standing by  either physically or online  can also help.

Being there, showing small signs of support  it could be an LGBTQ flag at your desk, it could be a statement promoting a cause in your email signature. These things may be small, but they can give strength to the people on the frontlines of the cause, and they can give hope to the people who may not have the courage to step forward, just yet.

ENDS

This story is part of Human Rights Champions  a recurring series featuring portraits of human rights defenders or organizations that stand up for human rights. Bryans story of activism is part of a series inspired by the first-ever global report looking at the safety and protection of youth in the civic space.

Disclaimer: The views, information and opinions expressed in this article are those of the persons featured in the story and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
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The United States has warned Iran of severe consequences if it attacks any American nationals, including the 51 people against whom Tehran imposed sanctions at the weekend. The warning by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan came in the wake of Iran targeting US officials over the killing of General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in 2020. Those sanctioned by Iran's foreign ministry includ
The US Secret Service arrested a 72-year-old man in New York on Monday after he allegedly phoned them threatening to kill ex-president Donald Trump, a criminal indictment showed.
Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia:

Spouting Rock Asset Management, a multi-boutique manager platform providing investment solutions and services, has bought a majority stake in Old Hill Partners, a Connecticut alternative asset manager focused on asset-based lending transactions with small and midsize businesses.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, though Old Hill has $230 million in assets under management and six employees who will operate as a subsidiary of Spouting Rock, which has $3 billion in AUM and roughly 30 employees.

Spouting Rock formed a new subsidiary, Spouting Rock Alternative Credit, which will "house the Old Hill asset-based lending business and serve as the investment adviser to Old Hill's existing funds and other investment vehicles," Spouting Rock said in a press release.

The new subsidiary will be operated by former Old Hill employees, Jeff Haas and Peter Faigl as president and chief investment officer, respectively. This acquisition will allow Spouting Rock to expand its platform of solutions and help complement clients' existing portfolio needs.

Spouting Rock Alternative Credit "will seek to identify opportunities for risk-adjusted returns in private debt well over those available to traditional credit investors," according to the release.

Currently, Old Hill's asset-based lending transactions target borrowers seeking $10-50 million in financing and typically carry floating rate coupons and interest rate floors to p......................

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Opalesque Industry Update, for New Managers - PEO Partners, LLC, a private equity liquid alternatives firm, has achieved a significant milestone of eight months of management of the PEO Private Equity Access Master Fund, its flagship fund launched in May 2021, and is experiencing strong momentum in growth of AUM. Founded by Jean-Louis Lelogeais, co-Founder of Strategic Value Partners, LLC, a leading distressed investment firm, and Randolph Cohen, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, PEO has pioneered a proprietary investment strategy to provide a broad spectrum of investors access to returns comparable to traditional private equity (PE) funds net of fees through public market investing. PEO Partners' strategy selects Russell 3000 public equities that mirror the industries that traditional leveraged buyout firms invest in and the company characteristics that these LBO firms target, namely high profitability, high payout ratio, and low multiples. It also involves a hedging strategy using S&P put options that seeks to reduce downside volatility and protect capital during significant market downturns. "Private Equity is arguably the best-performing asset class; it has delivered better average net returns than public equities with a much lower downside," said Mr. Lelogeais. "The strategy we have developed can achieve similar performance to median PE through public market investing and has the significant advantage of being liquid. We are very excited to be first to market in the U.S. and to be able to offer this strategy to a wide range of investors without the traditionally high barriers to entry of PE." "PEO fills a gap that exists for many investors looking to add private equity-like return exposure to their portfolio," Mr. Cohen added. "Importantly, PEO is not looking to replace PE; rather, for large institutional investors with established PE investment programs, our strategy provides an additional portfolio management tool. Liquid PE can help them handle their uncalled capital and make it easier for them to improve their "batting average" in selecting top quartile funds by being patient and passing on marginal re-ups. We believe the many other use cases for liquid private equity are so compelling that this nascent asset class has the potential to grow to over $1 trillion in the next ten years." The PEO team of seven brings together experienced professionals with highly complementary skillsets across investment management and academia. It is supported by an Advisory Board, a Research Council, and Special Advisors consisting of prominent investment professionals. It is also working with Gladius Capital Management, a leading provider of derivatives solutions and alternative funds for institutional investors, who is acting as sub-advisor. PEO is also a non-discretionary sub-advisor to Mackenzie Investments, a Canadian asset manager with over CAD $200 billion (US$158bn) in assets, for the Private Equity Replication mutual fund launched in December 2020 with CAD $15 million. info@peo-partners.com

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The firm expanded its 37-member team, promoting Bo Huang as Head of International Business to lead marketing and business development in Asia, Europe and the US, and hiring Jonathan Monat to support growth in North American markets.

The firm's investment strategy is designed to separate risks from opportunities and deliver an optimized risk-return profile. Led by co-founders Giuseppe Perrone, Marco Sormani and David Mellul, three veteran investors, the strategy combines four complementary investment frameworks: Long Equity, Short Equity, Merger Arbitrage and Tail Risk Hedging.

"We are proud to continue attracting top talent to join our diverse team, representing eight nationalities," noted Giuseppe Perrone, Varenne Capital President. "Bo Huang's promotion and Jonathan Monat's appointment complement our investment team of 15 professionals and strengthen the firm's business development objectives."

Varenne Capital's flagship fund, the Value Active Fund, delivered an annualized return of +14.4% since its October 1, 2007 inception and +38.2% in 2021.

Following asset-raising success primarily in European countries, the firm continues to expand its focus on other markets. In 2020, Varenne Capital launched a master-feeder and Delaware vehicle for US investors in the Value Active Fund. The firm plans to open an office in the US in 2022.

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Due to the Covid pandemic and the inability of customers to travel; Guyson International, the UKs foremost industrial finishing equipment manufacturer, has had to remotely pass off a number of machines destined for export markets. But with the cooperation of their customers and usage of the latest video conferencing software and hardware, the pass off trials were still able to successfully take place on time. So, through a combination of Microsoft 
Ottumwa, IA (52501)

Today

Rain showers early with overcast skies later in the day. High 52F. Winds N at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies. Low near 40F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.
MANISTEE COUNTY  The following includes reports made to the Manistee County Sheriffs Office from Dec. 11-15.

All calls may not be reported. This is part of a lengthy report and is compiled by assistant editor Arielle Breen.

Dec. 11

 A vehicle-deer accident was reported at 7:16 a.m. in Pleasanton Township.

 A family dispute was reported at 12:30 p.m. in Manistee Township.

 A suspicious situation on a property was reported at 12:37 p.m. in Springdale Township.

 A personal injury crash was reported at 1:28 p.m. in Onekama Township.

 A property damage crash was reported at 1:47 p.m. in Onekama Township.

 Animal control responded to a complaint at 2:58 p.m. in Marilla Township.

 Deputies conducted a well-being check at 12:57 p.m. in Marilla Township.

 Trespassing was reported at 12:12 p.m. in Dickson Township.

 A vehicle-deer accident was reported at 10:27 p.m. in Stronach Township.

 A verbal domestic incident was reported at 10:46 p.m. in Springdale Township.

 A suspicious vehicle was reported at 11:51 p.m. in Marilla Township.

Dec. 12

 A person was reported to have unlawfully driven a vehicle, and a probation violation was reported at 2:55 a.m. in Norman Township.

 A dog was impounded by animal control at 8:13 a.m. in Filer Township.

 A civil dispute was reported at 8:50 a.m. in Brown Township.

 Human remains were reported to have been found at 11:34 a.m. in Filer Township. According to previous News Advocate reporting, someone walking along the beach in Filer Township discovered what was potentially a very old Native American skull.

 Deputies conducted a well-being check at 11:09 a.m. in Manistee Township.

 A domestic incident was reported at 4:15 p.m. in Manistee Township.

 Deputies assisted a citizen at 5:31 p.m. in Norman Township.

 Deputies were called to dispatch a deer at 6:18 p.m. in Brown Township.

 A vehicle-deer accident was reported at 7:09 p.m. in Brown Township.

Dec. 13

 A person was reported to have been suicidal at 7:04 a.m. in Norman Township.

 Deputies assisted another agency at 10:37 a.m. in Filer Township.

 A breaking and entering was reported at 4:16 p.m. in Manistee Township.

 Deputies assisted another agency at 9:34 p.m. in Norman Township.

Dec. 14

 A 911 call was reported as being abandoned at 1:32 a.m. in Norman Township.

 A vehicle-deer accident was reported at 7:30 a.m. in Bear Lake Township.

 A traffic hazard was reported at 8:18 a.m. in Cleon Township.

 School threats were reported at 11 a.m. in Bear Lake Township.

 Deputies assisted a citizen at 12:30 p.m. in Dickson Township.

 An ATM debit card fraud incident was reported at 2 p.m. in Onekama Township.

 An incorrigible youth/missing person was reported at 5:30 p.m. in Norman Township.

 A vehicle-deer accident was reported at 6 p.m. in Manistee Township.

 A vehicle-deer accident was reported at 6:39 p.m. in Onekama Township.

 Animal control was called for a complaint at 11:10 p.m. in Springdale Township.

Dec. 15

 A juvenile was reported to have entered a location illegally at 11:46 a.m. in Norman Township.

 An incorrigible youth was reported at 12:56 p.m. in Norman Township.

 Deputies conducted a well-being check and a child abuse investigation at 3:41 p.m. in Bear Lake Township.

 A person was reported to have been unwanted at a location and deputies were on civil standby at 1:15 p.m. in Springdale Township.

 A vehicle-deer accident was reported at 4:29 p.m. in Onekama Township.
Bill G. Schuette officially announced his candidacy as a Republican for state representative Monday morning in a gathering at Pizza Sam's in downtown Midland, promising to push mid-Michigan forward.

Schuette is running in the 95th State Representative District. His announcement centered around flood recovery, ending government mandates, and a focus on families.

Bill G. Schuette, the son of Bill Schuette, former Michigan Attorney General and 2018 Republican gubernatorial candidate, said he will work towards collecting the minimum number of 200 signatures to get onto the primary ballot in August.

I am not satisfied with the status quo. And I want our next decade to be even better than the last, said Bill G. Schuette. Doing so will require the right candidate with the right vision for our future and dedicated to success. I am that candidate.

Current Midland County Clerk Ann Manary previously also announced her bid to run for state representative for the 95th District. Midland County is currently represented by Rep. Annette Glenn, R-Midland, who won reelection for her second term in November. Glenn has announced her intent to run for State Senate in 2022.

Midland will be under new legislative districts, which politicians will be vying for in this years elections. The 95th District will cover all of Midland County and a few townships in Gladwin County.

Bill G. Schuette's focus boils down to three main points: freedom, families, and future. In terms of freedom, he said the government needs to spend less, tax less, and end government mandates. He said the government also needs to step aside and allow Michigan to reopen and get back to work.

Schuette also believes the institution of families is "under attack," and said that they deserve safe neighborhoods. He vows to support law enforcement and oppose any attempts to defund the police. Defunding the police is a push by police reform activists with the goal of divesting funds from police departments to non-policing forms of public safety and community support.

He also brought up education, saying that parents deserve to have a voice about what their kids learn and that parents must be in charge in the curriculum in public schools.

No one cares more about their children than their parents, so we need to make sure they always have a seat at the table in the decision-making process for our education system, Schuette said. I want parents in charge, not state bureaucrats.

When asked by news media to clarify in what ways parents should have a say in the education process, Schuette would only add that he did not want critical race theory taught in public schools. Critical race theory is an academic movement that examines connections between race and law, primarily taught at the college level. Little evidence exists that it is taught in public schools, and locally, Midland Public Schools Superintendent Michael Sharrow has previously stated that MPS does not teach critical race theory.

Finally, looking at the future, Schuette said there should be common-sense voter I.D. requirements put in place and a push for rebuilding dams and flood reduction in Midland.

We cannot be fighting over a shrinking pie of resources, just holding our breath and hoping the next disaster passes us by, Schuette said.
There were many laughs, some groaning, but an entertaining evening at Creative 360 Saturday night for the debut of "Dad Jokes."

Host David King, joined by friends Todd Little and John McPeak, told some of the best and worst jokes. They were joined in the act by moderator Carol Rumba. Other jokesters were expected, but were unable to attend.

King said he got the idea for the show about six months ago, and the men had their first rehearsal only about two hours before the show.

If it seems disjointed, thats because it is, King said.

There were many knock-knock jokes, man-walks-into-a-bar jokes, and jokes using props.

McPeak asked the audience, Whats the opposite of telekinesis?

When the audience asked what, he said, "Telekinephews.

McPeak said he isnt a dad, but he is an uncle.

King told a story of a little moron and a big moron standing on a cliff. He said the big moron fell off. When asked why, he said because the other was "a little more on."

Little said that three vampires walked into a bar. The first one ordered a pint of blood, the second one ordered a pint of blood, the third one ordered a pint of plasma. The bartender said, So that will be two buds and a bud light.

King drew big laughs with "How do you get an MSU (Michigan State University) graduate off your porch?"

Pay him for the pizza, King said.

It is just delightful to see the respect and joy and groans of pain for this good clean fun, said Nicole King, who is King's daughter. Its nice to see people appreciate it.

Josh Schmidt, of Midland, said, Its fun to watch a bunch of energetic dads having fun.

Megan Young, of Midland, said she and her husband were having a good time.

Its given my husband some new material, she said.

This was something to do to get away from the kids, Young added with a smile. It was a fun night out.

Creative 360 Office Manager Laura Brigham said at intermission, I think its fun. It reminds me of my dad.

Also, Brigham said, people were laughing, which is something that we all need to do more.
A popular Coca-Cola beverage is getting involved in the cocktail game.

Fresca, the citrus-flavored soft drink, will be launching a line of canned cocktails called Fresca Mixed.

As we emerge from the pandemic and look to long-term growth, we recognize that we must evolve our business models to address the entire beverage experience, chief of New Revenue Stream, Coca-Cola North America Operating Unit Dan White said in a statement.

The new line of ready-to-drink cocktails is the product of a brand authorization agreement between The Coca-Cola Co. and Constellation Brands Inc., the producer and marketer of products like Corona, Modelo and Svedka.

The Coca-Cola Company and Constellation Brands have a shared passion for building some of the worlds most loved brands and for building best-in-class beverage experiences, White said.

While the company is taking its first steps into the scene of ready-to-drink cocktails, this is not its first foray into alcohol-based beverages in the United States. In 2020, the pop giant partnered with Molson Coors to produce Topo Chico Hard Seltzer.

Third-party relationships with licensed alcohol manufacturers show how we are following the consumer, taking an agile, experimentative approach to expanding our brands reach based on the evolving landscape, White said.

The alcoholic Fresca product is expected to be released later this year. The Adult Alternative Beverages and Ready to Drink cocktails project is worth $8 billion and is expected to grow at least 15% over the next three years with a 33% increase in volume annually in that same time frame, according to a release from the company.
The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department. Compiled by reporter Tess DeGayner.

Tuesday, Jan. 4

11:30 p.m.  Officers were dispatched for a death investigation near the 5400 block of Sunset Drive.

9:38 p.m.  A 36-year-old female was cited for a lack of insurance and other traffic offenses after a traffic stop in Jerome Township. The vehicle was impounded.

8:17 p.m.  Officers conducted a warrant arrest after being dispatched for a suspicious situation near the 7600 block of Eastman Avenue.

1:31 p.m.  Officers responded to a report of larceny near the 2200 block of Cleveland Avenue.

1:28 p.m.  A deputy was dispatched to a cemetery in the Village of Sanford for some damaged property. It is unknown who caused the damage or if the damage was done intentionally.

4:43 a.m.  Officers responded to a crash resulting in property damage near Isabella Street and Currie Parkway.

12:55 a.m.  Officers were dispatched for general assistance in the 2500 block of Abbott Road.

Monday, Jan. 3

10:55 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Jasper Township location for a 55-year-old female reporting her 41-year-old boyfriend was intoxicated and punching holes into their walls. Deputies arrived on scene and spoke with both parties. The male agreed that he would calm down and go to bed for the night.

9:27 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Midland Township residence for a report of an intoxicated male. A 61-year-old Midland Township man had called 911 in reference to his 64-year-old husband being highly intoxicated. He was transported to the ER by EMS for an evaluation.

7:24 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Jerome Township location for a report of a male and female screaming at each other. Deputies spoke to a 26-year-old Saginaw male and a 27-year-old Midland female. Both parties said they were having an argument about locking their key inside their vehicle, and no assaults occurred.

2:37 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to the Law Enforcement Center for a report of a fraud complaint. A 36-year-old Homer Township female said she lost $1,795.

11:46 a.m.  The Sheriff's Office assisted a local non-profit with delivering meals to a Midland County hotel for individuals who were in quarantine.

8:18 a.m.  Officers were dispatched for a false alarm near the 100 block of West Main Street.

7:57 a.m.  Officers responded to a crash resulting in injuries near Eastman Avenue and W. Sugnet Road.

6:16 a.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Warren Township location for a 40 year-old female who stated she was feeling suicidal. Deputies transported the female to MyMichigan Medical Center, where deputies completed a mental health petition.
Jadyn Randolph of Midland attended Calvary Baptist Academy from kindergarten through sixth grade. After that, she was homeschooled and participated in homeschooling groups until she graduated.

Currently, she is studying through Stratford University online. Randolph anticipates graduating this year with a business management degree.

Music is one of her hobbies. She plays the piano, guitar and drums and sometimes participates in her churchs worship music.

She also enjoys traveling. She has visited states including California, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky and Texas.

Some of her travel involves various business ventures. Randolph started a small business called Anthia Co. not long ago, through which which she sells jewelry and preserves flowers.

The idea for the business occurred to her during the pandemic, when many businesses were closed and people didnt have a way to preserve.

And she had some jewelry-making experience already.

My grandmother made jewelry for fun. She taught me when I was growing up and I used to make jewelry with her, Randolph said. We would go to jewelry shows together.

In addition, she can make other items, including plaques, coasters and bookends.

Randolph sells her jewelry and preservation items online and also through Elodie Boutique and Rebel Mamas, both located in Midland.

Randolph has three siblings who all live in town: an older brother, who is married with two children; an older sister, who is also married with two children; and a younger sister who is homeschooled.

A few years ago, Randolph started taking photos as well. She has taken pictures of engagements, families, newborns and weddings, among other occasions.

Randolph also helps out at her church, assisting with childrens ministry sometimes as well as financial bookwork. Her grandfather, Mark Barclay, pastors the church she attends, Living Word Church in Midland.

For more about her products, visit anthia_co on Instagram.
I recently served our country overseas as an intelligence officer with the Department of Defense. One important lesson I learned from briefing generals is to provide the Bottom Line Up Front."

So heres the bottom line: Im running for state representative because I want to move mid-Michigan forward. I am NOT content with the status quo and I want the next decade of our community to be even better than its last.

This will require leaders who are willing to fight for our freedoms, families and future. I am that candidate and I ask for your support.

This morning, I launched my campaign for state representative at Pizza Sams. It wasnt too long ago that quite literally a few blocks from there, peoples lives and livelihoods were drowning under the flooded Tittabawassee River, a sight so shocking that it made national news.

It is a testament to the strength of our community that we responded, in the depths of a global pandemic no less, to such a crisis with resolve. Weve been fortunate to be represented by strong leaders who understand our community and have done everything they can to improve mid-Michigan  and I will work hard to continue that tradition.

This is a community where roots matter, and mine run deep. I was born and raised here in Midland and graduated from Dow High School. After completing my education and gaining valuable life skills working for the Defense Intelligence Agency  I returned to where I want to be: Midland.

I purchased a home and began working for our hometown company, Dow. Midland was and is a great place to grow up, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to return to this wonderful community.

People are the heart and strength of our community. But there is no guarantee it will stay strong. Moving mid-Michigan forward will require sending leaders to Lansing who recognize the values and needs of our community.

Michigan has lost population over the last decade, and with that loss of people, weve lost opportunity. Weve lost the ingenuity needed to get Michigan to be competitive again.

We cant be satisfied with a next decade where we fight over a shrinking pie of resources and hold our breath hoping that the next disaster passes us by. Instead, we must move together and thrive as a community by focusing on three things: freedom, families and future.

Lets start with FREEDOM. From shutdowns and mandates to careless spending, Democrats in Lansing and Washington have used their time in power with reckless abandon. To put Michigan back on track, we need to get government out of your way. I believe that you know how to spend your dollars better than bureaucrats do. If you send me to Lansing, Ill advocate for fiscal conservatism that puts more money in your pocketbooks.

FAMILIES form the very fabric of a strong community like ours. Families expect safe communities and deserve a voice in their childrens education. In Lansing, I will be a strong advocate for our law enforcement and will make sure that parents always have a seat at the table for decisions about their kids' schooling.

Finally, we need a state representative who is laser-focused on our communitys FUTURE. This means both rebuilding the dams and investing in flood reduction infrastructure. We have more Ph.D.'s per capita in this region than anywhere else in the state  lets get these brightest minds together and solve this problem once and for all. Every Michigander should also have faith in the integrity of our elections, which is why we need to make sure voting is both honest and easy and to implement common-sense Voter ID requirements.

Moving mid-Michigan forward will require grit and determination by all of us. But together, we can make our next chapter better than the last. No one will work harder than me to earn your vote, and I look forward to seeing you on the campaign trail in 2022.

Bill G. Schuette is a Midland resident who announced on Monday morning his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the Michigan House of Representatives in 2022.
New York, US (PANA) - The UN children's fund, UNICEF, has expressed outrage at the recent airstrikes on camps for internally displaced persons and refugees in Tigray, northern Ethiopia
Chromebooks are fantastic PCs for people who just need the basics and a computer that doesnt require a lot of maintenace. Because of that philosophy, a Chromebook is already an ultra-secure computer straight out of the box.

But you can always do more, particularly if you want to minimize traces of your internet wanderings, or prevent your every online action from contributing to an advertising profile.

You may share a Chromebook with others or desire a setup thats protected against the latest security threats. Perhaps its time for a little de-Googling in your life, as the giant from Mountain View can collect a lot of information about you.

Whatever your reasons, here are some ways to fortify your Chromebooks security and privacy.

Own your Google security

Google Prompts are an easy way to add two-factor authentication to your Google Account. IDG

Chrome OS benefits from Googles ongoing security efforts to identify malicious websites and sandbox each browser tab so one site cant take down your whole computer.

Good security, however, includes you and how you manage your own data. In this case, it means ensuring that youve properly secured your own Google account. Your Google Account is the major gate to your Chromebook so you should have a solid password and use two-factor authentication.

Google now makes two-factor authentication extremely easy via Google prompts. Instead of getting a code from an authentication app, Googles prompts throw up an alert on your mobile devices running Android or iOS (iPhone 5S and up). You can then authorize signing in to your Google account by simply tapping Yes on your phone.

Another alternative is to use a security key such as YubiKey to sign in. This can also be assigned as a two-factor backup if your phone isnt nearby. You can set up security keys in the two-factor authentication section of your Google Account.

One thing you definitely dont want to do is use text or voice messages as two-factor authentication. Text messages arent encrypted, you can easily get phished, and the phone company can be fooled into transferring your phone number to an attacker. If you are using SMS authentication, turn it off in the two-factor authentication section linked above.

If you want a little more convenience for sign-in, however, your Chromebook can also use your phone as authentication instead of a password. Anytime your phone is near your Chromebook, it will just automagically unlock. Thats a nice convenience feature, but it may not be desirable for some. If you want to set this up go to Settings > Connected Devices > Android phone > Set up and follow the instructions.

In your Chromebook settings, you can also tweak a number of different features. For maximum security, restrict sign-in to just your account.

This means no one else can sign in and use your Chromebooknosy relatives or miscreant youth will be denied at every turn.

Chromebooks built-in security options allow you to manage who uses your device. IDG

If others are determined to use your Chromebook, you can at least assert a little more control by allowing only specific Google accounts to use your device. To start, go to Settings > Security and Privacy > Manage other people and then activate the option that says Restrict sign-in to the following users. Next, click Add user, and then enter their Google Account email address. Its also a good idea to deactivate the Enable Guest browsing option on this page for maximum user restriction.

If any of the people on your device are also children, you can enable Googles parental controls by going to Settings > Accounts > Parental Controls. Click Set up and follow the instructions.

If youre going to loan your Chromebook to someone else or plan to resell it, theres a very easy method to wipe your data from the device. Use the Powerwash feature in Settings > Advanced > Reset settings > Powerwash > Reset.

Resetting a Chromebook is different from doing this to a Windows PC since Chromebooks largely leave all important files in the cloud. Youll still want to check if you have any unique files saved to your laptop, but with 32GB to 64GB of storage its not like you can have that many in the first place.

Leave no trace

UBlock Origin at work on a Chromebook. IDG

Youve probably had the experience of checking out, say, a new tent on Amazon, and then suddenly ads for that shelter appear on every site you visiteven after youve bought it.

You can stop the madness with privacy-focused extensions like Privacy Badger, an extension from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and uBlock Origin. The latter is an explicit ad blocker, while the EFF extension is focused on blocking trackers. Both allow you to whitelist specific sites if you need to.

Another helpful extension from the EFF privacy advocates is HTTPS Everywhere, an extension that forces a secure HTTPS (the lock symbol) connection when available on sites you visit. HTTPS Everywhere isnt as necessary as it once was thanks to Google. The search giant basically forced any HTTPS holdouts to enable the security feature through warnings in Chrome, as well as considering it as a factor for search rankings.

Nevertheless, you will run across non-secure sites that dont default to HTTPS and this extension can help. Although if the site doesnt have an HTTPS option at all then this extension wont helpsite owners need to enable it and acquire an SSL/TSL certificate.

Also, keep a careful eye on your extensions. Google is better at vetting the extensions you can install in Chrome. Nevertheless, its still best to stick to well-known extensions. Check the reviews in the Chrome Web Store as well to see what others have to say.

Finally, you can also use a VPN.

A VPN wont protect you from advertisers (or Google or Facebook), but it can shield your activity from your internet service provider (if thats a concern for you), as well as add an extra layer of security when using public Wi-Fi networks.

Our favorite VPN provider for privacy and security is Mullvad, but we have tons of other recommendations as well in our best VPNs roundup.

Back off on the Google

Maybe you want to give Google a little less information to have on you (all those details can lead to some interesting results). One solution is to switch your default search provider to DuckDuckGo. Its a privacy-focused search engine that doesnt track your search history.

Chrome OS lets you change your default search engine. IDG

To do this, go to DuckDuckGo, right-click in the address bar, and select Edit Search Engines. Then, from the list of Other search engines, click the three vertical lines next to DuckDuckGo and select Make default. Now when you type a search query in Chrome, it will be powered by the quacky search engine that keeps your secrets safe.

Another alternative is to use Chromes Guest Mode, which enables you to browse with Chrome without attaching any of the history to your Google account. All you need to do is sign out of your current session and log in as a guest (unless you disabled it in the previous step). Its perfect for when you dont want your browsing history to follow you around for all time, though this feature does allow others to log in to your device and use it.

Finally, just like with Chrome on Windows or macOS, Chrome OS has an incognito mode where Chrome promises not to track or record your online activity in any way when using it.

Going darker

You can further minimize Googles hold on your personal information by turning off autofill and adjusting automatic sync in Chrome. While the autofill feature is definitely convenient, you may not want to have this feature at the ready to put in your name, address, email, and more in online forms. As for sync, well make it more secure since killing it off means your search browsing history, bookmarks, and other preferences will remain local to that machine, which is not particularly convenient.

To deal with Autofill you need to adjust the settings in Chrome itself by entering chrome://settings/autofill into the browsers address bar. Here, you can turn off the settings for Chrome that offer to remember or fill in passwords, payment methods, and addresses. If you want this feature but dont want Google to handle them, a password manager with a Chrome extension can take care of this for you. Check out our roundup of the best paid and free password managers to find one thats right for you.

To continue our journey, open the Chrome OS settings app and go to Settings > Accounts > Sync and Google services. Under Other Google services turn off the following: Autocomplete searches and URLs, Help improve Chromes features and performance, Make searches and browsing better, and Enhanced spell check. You can also turn off Google Drive search suggestions, but if youve already got your documents in Google Drive, well \_()_/.

Next, lets bump up your Google Sync settings in order to keep syncing but make your data more private. To do this go to Settings > Accounts > Sync and Google services again and under Encryption options select the radio button for encrypting with your own passphrase. The catch here is that youll have to remember your passphrase, but thats easily solved if you have a password manager.

Google Assistant can be turned off and adjusted in Settings. IDG

Lets also turn off one final key featurenamely, Google Assistant. Go to Security > Search and Assistant > Google Assistant. If you just want to forget the whole thing, turn the slider at the top of the screen to Off. If you want to keep Google Assistant activated, then at the very least turn off Screen context, which allows Google Assistant to take a screenshot of your display when you ask questions. I mean, what?

If you dont want the voice activation, then turn off Hey Google using the drop-down menu on this screen.

To go even deeper into the privacy woods, you can switch up your DNS server to a provider that wont log or retain these lookups. By default, your administrator or internet service provider may retain this information.

To change the DNS settings on your Chromebook, first head to the the Chrome menu, choose Settings > Network and select your active Wi-Fi connection.

Next scroll down to the Network tab and choose the radio button labeled Custom name servers. Four text entry boxes will appear below the button. Now its just a matter of choosing your DNS provider. There are a number of free services such as OpenDNS or DNS Watch. If you use OpenDNS then enter 208.67.222.222 or 208.67.220.220 in the first two boxes. Or if you want to use Family Shield DNS that blocks adult content use 208.67.222.123 and 208.67.220.123. Now you can close this up, and youre all set. If you want to be extra sure youre using the new DNS you could disconnect and reconnect to Wi-Fi, but its not necessary.

DNS settings are configured on a per-connection basis. If you use multiple networks regularly then youll have to edit the DNS settings for each to use your new DNS servers on them.

While your Chromebook is already about as secure a computer as you can get, it cant hurt to go the extra mile. With a few strategic moves, your Chromebook and your Google Account will be better protected against many of the dangers lurking on the web.
Some students in public Universities have appealed to the Government and teachers to settle their impasse for a smooth academic calendar.



The students said the ongoing strike by the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) was already affecting academic activities and called for early resolution of concerns.



Ms Faustina Agbanu, a student of the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ), in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said she was aware of the communique from UTAG, but there was no official communication from the Institute to the students.



"I am very disappointed because some of us are coming from far places. As a communication Institute, they should know better and do the needful to inform us about the strike," he said.



Mavis Obenewa, also from GIJ, expressed frustration, saying, "this strike took place last year and affected our time-table for the academic year and stressed us up.



We are appealing to our lecturers to, as a matter of urgency, return to the classroom and also the government should listen to the demands of UTAG.



Mr Festus Oppong, another GIJ student, said the COVID-19 pandemic had distracted the academic calendar for two years and feared the strike would make it worse with financial implications on both parents and students.



Mr Michael Atsu, a student of the University of Ghana, said: We have started registration today January 10, 2022, and Im hoping the issue will be resolved if not, it will disturb the students.



Students were busily registering for the academic year and hoping for lectures to begin next week when the Ghana News Agency visited the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA).



Mr Kwasi Kwarteng, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Education, said Government was working assiduously to engage stakeholders to resolve the issue as soon as possible.



Meanwhile, Dr Samuel Nkumbaan, UTAG President for the University of Ghana, said they were yet to hear from the Government and until their demands were met, the strike would continue.



UTAG, in a communique, announced the withdrawal of members' services across the country effective Monday, January 10, 2022.



The Association said the indefinite strike was necessitated by Governments failure to address the worsening conditions of service of lecturers.



It said the Government also flouted the agreed timelines to address their concerns.



The statement called on the Government to, as a matter of urgency, restore members of the Association to the 2013 Interim Market Premium (IMP) of 114 per cent of Basic Salary in the interim.



It also urged the Government to formulate guidelines to implement the appropriate recommendations to address the conditions of service of the university teacher.



Meanwhile, a statement from the National Labour Commission (NLC), signed by Dr Mrs Bernice A. Welbeck, Director, Administration/Human Resource, said UTAG should have complied with section 159 of Act 651 where the Commission would be served the required notice to enable it intervene immediately.



The statement said that notwithstanding, the Commission in line with its mandate under section 138 of Act 651 and also in exercise of its powers under section 139 of Act 651, was inviting the disputing parties on Thursday, January 13, 2022 at 1430 hours for a hearing of the issues in dispute.



It urged the parties to take note of the time and date and appear as scheduled.



The statement said in view of the COVID-19 protocols, the representation by each side was restricted to a maximum of two persons.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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A new study by the University of Oxford has revealed that a third dose of AstraZenecas COVID-19 vaccine significantly boosts the levels of antibodies against the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron.



The study indicated that the neutralisation titres for Omicron were boosted following a third dose with AstraZeneca, compared to titres after a second dose.



The levels seen after the third dose booster were higher than the neutralising antibodies found in individuals who had been previously infected with and recovered naturally from COVID-19 (Alpha, Beta, Delta variants and original strain), the study noted.



The study further explained that the blood serum obtained from individuals, one month after receiving the third dose booster vaccination, neutralised the Omicron variant to levels that were broadly similar to those observed one month after the second dose against the Delta variant.



The study analysed blood samples taken from individuals infected with COVID-19; those who had been vaccinated with a two-dose schedule and a third dose booster; and those who had reported previous infection from other COVID-19 variants of concern.



It included samples from 41 individuals who had received three doses of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZenea.



Potential to protect



Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford, UK, Professor Sir John Bell, who was one of the study investigators, said it was encouraging to know that the current vaccines had the potential to protect against Omicron, following a third dose booster.



He said those results support the use of third dose boosters as part of the national vaccine strategies, especially to limit the spread of variants of concern, including Omicron.



The Executive Vice President, BioPharmaceuticals R&D AstraZeneca, Mr. Mene Pangalos, for his part, said the AstraZeneca vaccine played an important role in vaccination programmes around the world.



He said this study gave the company the confidence that the vaccine should be given as a third dose booster.



It is also important to look beyond antibodies to better understand how vaccines offer protection against Omicron. As we better understand Omicron, we believe we will find that T-cell response provides durable protection against severe disease and hospitalisations, he stated.





Source: graphiconline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Founder and Executive Chairman of First Sky Group, Eric Seddy Kutortse has made a passionate appeal to the government to consider making at least two sessions of dialysis treatment cost, a part of the medical services covered by the National Health Insurance Scheme.



In 2017, the First Sky Group decided to support the Dialysis Unit of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra by paying off all the medical bills of all patients at the facility and instituted free dialysis for patients who frequent the Unit.



Making the appeal at the 19th Annual Thanksgiving service of the Group in Accra, Mr. Kutortse recalled that over the past three years First Sky Group has in collaboration with a team of kidney specialists and transplant surgeons from Transplant Links UK based in Birmingham, sponsored free kidney transplantation in Ghana for four patients with kidney failures.



According to Mr. Kutortse, the appeal has become necessary due to the numerous requests for financial support, First Sky Group has been receiving from other health facilities in the country since it adopted the Renal Dialysis Unit of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital four years ago.



But for our intervention, it is fair to say, that many beneficiaries would have either lost their lives or would have been incapacitated by challenges with their kidney dysfunction. Since the inception of the programme to date, the First Sky Group has spent Twenty Million Ghana Cedis (GH20,000,000.00) on the Free Dialysis Project. Mr. Kutortse noted.



First Sky Groups long term contribution to addressing the challenges associated with the treatment of kidney dysfunction in the country is to sponsor the establishment and operationalisation of a modern Kidney Transplant Centre in Ghana, the first of its kind in West Africa, to serve patients within the country and the sub-region who otherwise would have been flown to India, South Africa or elsewhere for medical attention. the First Sky Group Boss promised



He urged that this appeal was achievable because partial coverage of dialysis treatment cost is being practised in other counties including Kenya and South Africa and hoped that when done, it should go a long way to improve the quality of life of patients, the majority of whom are young and form the economically productive group of the Ghanaian society and who can potentially be integrated back into society with adequate treatment.



In a speech read on his behalf by the Minister for Sanitation and Water Resources, Hon, Cecilia Dapaah, the President His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo  Addo praised the First Sky Group for its contribution to national development assuring that Ghanaian companies which are doing well would be assisted to continue to capture the commanding heights of our economy.



Preaching the sermon, Founder and General Overseer of the Christina Action Faith Ministries International, Archbishop Nicholas Duncan Williams admonished congregants to develop a lifestyle of gratitude and appreciation to God for his unending mercy and towards humanity.



In attendance were senior members of the Clergy, Ministers of States, Members of Parliament, Staff of First Sky Group, Partners, Stakeholders and Media.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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When Minister of Defence, Dominic Nitiwul, appeared before Parliament to answer the issue of Presidential travels sometime last year, he disclosed that plans were afoot by government to acquire a new Presidential jet.



The Ghana Air Force has indeed written to the Minister of Defence to secure for the use of government business the main aircraft for the communications squadron for the Ghana Air Force. Mr Speaker, consultations are ongoing with Government, Parliament, religious bodies and trade unions on the purchase of Ghana Air Force and Navy assets to enable the Ghana Armed Forces to efficiently defend our nation as expected, the Minister announced on December 14, 2021.



Most media outlets subsequently reported that a presidential jet was what the Air Force was requesting for, but Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah says contrary to the reports, the Air Force had requested an Executive jet.



I would reiterate the point made by the Minister of Defence had told Parliament and he was quite clear, that he had received a request from the Ghana Air Force to procure an Executive carrier, and he was even clear on that day that it was not a presidential jet, it was an Executive carrier that he had received a request for, he said on Joy News The Probe show that aired on Sunday, January 9, 2022.



Asked about the difference between the Executive and Presidential jet, he explained that the former had broad usage criteria whereas the Presidential jet was limited to the use of the President and or his Vice President.



So for example, in America, they have the Air Force One which is the presidential jet, it carries the President and sometimes the Vice President. And no other persons are necessarily given access to that.



The Ghana Air Force also operates an Executive carrier service for Executives, Speaker of Parliament, Ministers of State, VVIPs, other Heads of State that for some reason or the other may have to be brought into the Ghanaian jurisdiction.



For that, they sometimes have an executive carrier which is used for that purpose, sometimes it can be reconfigured depending on the needs or whatever needs to be flown across.



With the above explanation, he concluded thus: The understanding we have is that that is what they have requested for, not an aircraft for the exclusive use of the president, that is what is referred to as a presidential jet.



Back and forth on presidential travels



The subject of presidential travels has become topical in recent months with the North Tongu MP accusing government of spending on luxury at a time when the country is grappling with a pandemic and struggling economy hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.



Government last month, through the Director of Communications at the presidency, announced plans to buy a new presidential jet.



Whereas Defense Minister Dominic Nitiwul admits the current presidential jet, the Dassault Falcon 900 EXE, was functional, he added in a response to Parliament that it was not fit for purpose.



An aide to Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, Gideon Boako, is on record as saying the President used the current jet for subregional travels and chartered jets for long haul travels, on advice of the National Security.





Source: 3 news









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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An Accra High Court has adjourned the trial involving Dr Stephen Opuni, the former Chief Executive of COCOBOD and two others, due to computer system failure.



Justice Clemence Honyenuga, a Supreme Court Judge, sitting as an additional High Court Judge, told the court that the system documenting the proceedings had crashed.



The court adjourned to Monday, January 17, 2022. The court was expected to continue with the hearing of the evidence-in-chief of Mr Charles Dodoo, the first Defence Witness.



The Judge told the parties that, he was informed, when he arrived in his Chambers about the crash of the hard disk in the systems unit of the computer, making it impossible to continue with proceedings.



He expressed the hope that the technical team of the Judicial Service would be able to resolve the issue for proceedings to resume.



Dr Opuni and Mr Seidu Agongo, Chief Executive Officer of Agricult Ghana Limited, are facing 27 charges, including defrauding by false pretenses, willfully causing financial loss to the State, money laundering, corruption by a public officer and contravention of the Public Procurement Act.



They have both pleaded not guilty to the charges and are on a GH300,000.00 self-recognizance bail each.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Senior Pastor of the Living Faith Church, Bishop David Oyedepo, has warned Christians to deviate from criticizing clergymen saying such attitude attracts dangerous punishment from God such as leprosy.



SaharaReporters reports that the renowned clergyman gave the warning during the Leadership Empowerment Summit at the churchs headquarters, Faith Tabernacle, Canaanland, Ota, Ogun State.



Oyedepo said many critics of his ministry must have been victims of the warning, stressing that the warnings are based on spiritual insights.



Beware of speaking hurt against the Ministry you claim to be part of advancing, its a risk. Beware of speaking hurt against a Prophet you claim to believe. It is dangerous. It can make a man leprous. It is dangerous. We dont have the data of how many victims may have come from this warning, but I know quite some would have been victims.''he said.







Source: LIB









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A Family of six (6) have been confirmed dead in a vehicle accident on the Kumasi Nkawie Sefwi highways on the evening of Saturday, January 8, 2022.



The victims include a couple, their mother-in-law and three children who were returning from a wedding when they met their untimely deaths.



The driver of the vehicle, according to reports, attempted an overtaking and saw another vehicle approaching him with equal speed.



In an attempt to swerve, they landed in a nearby river and got drowned in the process.



Ashanti Regional Police MTTD commander Chief Superintendent, Adu-Boahen has confirmed the incident.



He told EIB News that  Yes the report on the accident has come to my attention. Those six people have died in the Nkawie area. An investigation has commenced. Im yet to receive facts on the accident from my officers on the ground, he said.



One of the victims, Eunice Maame Fosua, was a Community Health nurse with Forifori Health Center in Afram Plains South District in the Eastern region but currently on study leave studying post-basic midwifery.



According to a close friend, they attended the wedding of Eunices sister-in-law (that is her husbands sister). They were six (6) in the car and all of them couldnt make it. Eunice, the husband, Eunices mother, their child and two other children. They were returning from the wedding and they met their untimely deaths. The husband attempted an overtaking and saw another car coming. In an attempt to swerve, they landed in a nearby river and got drowned.





Source: starrfm.com.gh









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There was drama in the courtroom of Koforidua Circuit Court B when the Presiding Judge, Kwame Polley described as twea poor police investigation into a land dispute between residents of Dedeso and Begoro Traditional Council.



The Judge blatantly told the police investigator in charge of the case that he did not do due diligence hence there are deficiencies in the charge sheet presented to the court.



According to the Judge, there is no link between the accused persons, the charges against them, and the facts supporting the case.



The Judge said the case is incompetent and cannot stand the test of judicial procedure therefore advised the investigator to go back and do a better job.



Fourteen residents of Dedeso, a VRA resettlement Community are standing trial at the Circuit Court for conspiracy, causing harm, and causing damage.



The accused persons are Michael Teye Sackey, a Teacher, Randolph Tetteh, Teacher, Samuel Batsa, farmer, and Simon Tetteh, a farmer, Richard Naakah, teacher and Bedasu Kofi Livingston, farmer.

The rest are Francis Mausor, farmer, Osom Akwetey, Alex Tetteh Bio, Partey Ben, Emmanuel Ahuble, Asare Kofi, Klodu Frederick and Samuel Agbeitor all farmers.



However, the 15th accused person identified as Bullet is still at large.



The Prosecuting Officer, Chief Inspector Owusu Ababio narrated to the court that, on June 26, 2021, at about 9am, the regent of the Begoro traditional area mobilized a group of men numbering about 20 from Begoro, Apaa, and Nsawam communities armed them with his pump-action gun and cutlasses, hired a Nissan Mini truck with registration number GW 1551-21 and two motorbike and delegated one Nana Barffuor Bimpong to take them onto the disputed land at Perteifoo junction.



On reaching Abuorso police station, Nana Baffour Bimpong Kwakye requested for police escort which Constable Kinni Daniel was detailed to escort the group.



The Chief asked the armed men to take the lead as he went to Dedeso Police station to request for more police officers.



The group upon reaching Ashaiman Kope, a village near Dedeso met three Krobo residents on a motorbike which they identified the rider as one of the people claiming ownership of the disputed land during their previous visit hence jumped off the truck and started beating them.



The Krobo inhabitants on hearing the incident mobilized and armed themselves with guns and cutlasses and rushed to the scene to fight the thugs.



They outnumbered the thugs, brutalized, and inflicted multiple cutlass wounds on two of the thugs namely Godfred Blewusi, 29, and Stephen Tetteh, 28.

The rioting residents drove two Hyundai mini Trucks to block the road and subsequently set fire into it.



They also allegedly ransacked a room belonging to Abu Madam a farmworker for the regent of Begoro and allegedly stole GHc15,000.



The arrival of Police personnel from Begoro helped to restore calm. The Police rushed the two victims to Begoro government Hospital where they were admitted, treated, and discharged.



Accused Michael Batsa, Samuel Batsa, and Simon Tetteh were arrested on August 9, 2021, at the premises of Begoro District Court.



Randolph Tetteh, Assembly Member was pointed out during a parade for his involvement.



They pleaded not guilty when put before Koforidua Circuit Court B.

The Presiding Judge Mercy Adei Kotei admitted each to GHC70,000 bails with two surety.



A bench warrant was issued on the rest of the suspects at large but all appeared in court Wednesday, December 5, 2022, except Bullet who is still at large.



They were also granted GHC70,000 bails each.



The judge adjourned the case to February 7, 2022.



Meanwhile, the docket has been forwarded to the Attorney Generals department for advice.









Source: Daily Guide









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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A 29-year-old self-styled medical doctor, Bright Afful who has been operating undercover mostly in the Agona-Swedru Municipality and across the Central Region was on Friday remanded in Police custody by a Cape Coast Circuit Court.



The accused has been charged on four counts of practicing medicine without authority from the Ghana Mental and Dental Council (GMDC) and willfully and falsely using the title 'Dr.' to practice medicine.



The rest are; engaging the services of non-registered health personnel to practice medicine and attempt to defraud by false pretenses.



He pleaded not guilty to all the charges and the Court presided over by Mrs Dorinda Smith Arthur adjourned the case to Tuesday, January 11.



The Prosecutor, Detective Chief Inspector John Asare Bediako, told the Court that the accused was reported by one Mr Bright Atsu-Fuglo, an Administrative Manager of GMDC that Afful had been providing medical services without authorisation.



According to the Prosecutor, the GMDC had received complaints from victims about the activities of fraudsters who said they could change their unsuccessful medical examination results to successful one for a fee.



The GMDC conducted investigations on the complaints and the accused was identified as the main brain behind the fraudulent activities.



The Prosecutor said on Wednesday, December 22, 2021, Mr. Atsu-Fuglo under the disguise of a foreign student who needed an authentic medical report, contacted the accused on WhatsApp for help.



He said shortly, the accused responded to Mr Atsu-Fuglo's message, claiming to be a Medical Doctor at the Agona-Swedru Municipal hospital, and demanded GH10,000.00 from the complaint for him to change his unsuccessful medical examination result to a successful one.



Afful then took an initial amount of GH200.00 from Mr Atsu-Fuglo and requested to meet him at Agona-Swedru for the remaining GH98,000.00.



Thereafter, Mr Atsu-Fuglo informed the Police who mounted surveillance on the accused leading to his arrest.



Police search in his room found 529 medical diagnostic and prescription forms, seven pieces of Ghana Health Services stickers, 26 pieces of "SAVE THE NATION" campaign flyers, and letterheads.



Others are; quantity of medical screening materials, medical doctor's stamp, and his medical identity cards.



The Prosecutor, said further Police investigations revealed that the accused also run an unregistered non-governmental organization with the name "SAVE THE NATION CAMPAIGN", which undertakes medical services in deprived communities.



The accused also represented himself as a medical doctor and recruited a team that conducted health screening in communities like Agona and Gomoa Dominase in the Central Region.



Others are; Akim-Anweaso, number 4, near Akwatia, in the Eastern Region, and prescribed several medications to victims for varying fees.





Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The founder and leader of the Ghana Union Movement (GUM), Reverend Christian Kwabena Andrews, is optimistic the party will bounce back and make inroads in the nations political landscape in the next general election.



Popularly known as Osofo Kyiri Abosom, he said the party would build on its exploits in the 2020 elections, if possible win the next elections and change the fortunes of the country so as to transform society.



GUM made huge waves with its first entrance during the 2020 elections as its flag bearer Rev. Andrews came third behind the two major political parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), defeating some already existing parties including the Peoples National Convention (PNC) and the Convention Peoples Party (CPP).



We are coming back stronger and better in the 2024 elections as we hope to change the economy of the country for the better, we will be coming like a wounded lion in the 2024 elections and rise to the first position to give Ghanaians better-living conditions, he stated at a recent interaction with journalists in Accra.



The party, Rev. Andrews explained, was focused on creating jobs, transparent leadership and ensuring economic freedom to the citizenry by attracting foreign investments.



On education, he noted that the party would move towards knowledge and skills training which was the way to go as was showcased by developed countries through adding value to raw materials and asked citizens not to accept the governments controversial E-levy as it would rather bring untold hardships to them and their dependents.



Government must work hard and create jobs for the people instead of taxing them unnecessarily, provide affordable houses to reduce the huge rent burdens on families, encourage the youth to venture into farming while they aim to rebuild the country, bring back the ideas and ideals of former President Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Rev. Andrews asserted.

Source: ghanaiantimes.com.gh









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The member of parliament for Bantama constituency in the Ashanti Region, Francis Asenso-Boakye has extended warm wishes to his constituents on the occasion of the new year.



The legislator who doubles as the minister of works and housing extended his warm wishes to his constituents through phone calls.



The lawmaker could be seen in a viral video calling constituents on phone to wish them a happy new year.



This is the second time that Mr. Asenso-Boakye has been seen with such an incredible act after the 2020 elections where he used the same method to canvass votes for President Akufo-Addo.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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Chairman of the Tema East constituency branch of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nene Agbadiagba Ofoe-Teye, has described the death of former Greater Accra Regional Minister, Ishmael Ashitey, as the loss of a piece of the soul of the NPP.



Speaking to the Ghana News Agency on Saturday in Accra, following the death of Mr. Ashitey on Friday, Nene Agbadiagba Ofoe-Teye said the loss was an inconsolable blow to the party.



We in Tema East are inconsolable because we know what this robbery by death has taken away from us. Also to the greater party, it is such a good chunk of its soul that has been taken away, Nene Ofoe-Teye wrote.



According to him, The NPP will find it difficult to replace this outstanding thoroughbred NPP stalwart and appointee of New Patriotic Party governments both in the past and in the present.



Mr Ashitey was said to have taken ill upon returning from the US, where he had gone to visit his wife and children. He was rushed to the International Maritime hospital (IMA) on Friday. However, he did not survive the emergency.



A respected stalwart of the ruling party, who was lacing his boots for the national chair of NPP, Mr. Ishmael Ashitey, is a former Greater Accra regional Chairman of the NPP.



He is also a former NPP MP for Tema East and got elected three times to Parliament on the partys ticket.



Ishmael Ashitey was a Minister of State in charge of Fisheries having been appointed so by former President John Agyekum Kufuor.



Under President Akufo-Addo, Mr. Ashitey was appointed Greater Accra Regional Minister and was only replaced recently by the current regional Minister, Henry Quartey.



The pedigree of Mr. Ishmael Ashitey makes his loss a huge one for the NPP as a whole and the Tema East branch of our great party in particular. Where are we going to get his type of dynamism and resourcefulness for the party again? Nene Agbadiagba Ofoe-Teye asked.



Even so, he sent condolences to the late Regional Ministers family and to the NPP family as a whole, adding that the Tema East NPP was ready and available to help give him a befitting funeral and burial.



As the longest-serving constituency executive committee member, I and others including Daniel Nii Kwartei Titus-Glover, who was at the labour front before travelling to the United Kingdom for further studies and a former deputy minister of transport, worked hard to ensure Ismael Ashiteys victory as MP from 1996 to 2008.



We were also part of the struggle that made him Greater Accra regional chairman of the new patriotic party because he was a good man. The legacy of Ishmael Ashitey will live on, we promise to ensure that. He himself will live in the best place in our memories forever.

Source: GNA









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Drama has trailed the news of the death and sudden resurrection of veteran Yoruba actress, Sidikat Odukanwi, popularly known as Iyabo Oko.



The actress, who started her acting career in 1973 on the platform of Eda Onileola theatre troupe, was announced dead on Wednesday by her daughter.



She gained prominence in the movie Oko, which was produced by Oga Bello. She earned the nickname Iyabo Oko from the movie.



However, contrary to news making the rounds on Wednesday that the veteran actress was dead, it is now confirmed that she is still alive.



Yoruba actress, Foluke Daramola-Salako, confirmed to Premium Times that her colleague is alive.



Although Ms Salako had posted via her Instagram page on Wednesday evening that Iyabo Okos transition was early, she has debunked the news about the veterans death.



She said, Iyabo Oko is very much alive, what happened was that her daughter had called me at about 11:00pm yesterday that her mother was pronounced dead, and she forwarded a WhatsApp message to me.



But at about 12:00am she (Iyabo Okos daughter) said that her brother confirmed that she was moving her hand, and they rushed her to the hospital where she is responding to treatment.



Salako also confirmed that the actress had been suffering from a stroke, but through her charity foundation and the support of Nigerians, they have been catering for the medical needs of the veteran, not until the surprise news of her death.



The death news



News about the death of the veteran began to make the rounds after Bisi Aisha, the actress daughter, posted on Instagram on Wednesday that her mother had died. She wrote: My mum is gone. Rest well mummy. May ur soul Rest In Peace mummy.



Shortly after her post, Salako also posted via her Instagram page that Iyabo Okos death was quite early.



The resurrection



According to Ms Aisha, in a video she shared on her Instagram page, while she was still mourning her supposed dead mother, she received a call from her brother that her mother had regained consciousness.



The actress returned to life three hours after being announced dead.



Wonderful being, she moved her hand after being confirmed dead three hours ago. God, we will forever praise your holy name, Aisha stated on Thursday morning.



She said: Yes she is already in the hospital as we speak. Thank you, everyone, we still need your prayers please.



Salako later updated her earlier report,  Just heard from her daughter again that she moved her hand and she is still alive. Hallelujah! She is alive.



Medical condition



It was reported by one of the veterans daughters, Olamide, that the actress was diagnosed with ischaemic stroke about five years ago but chose to keep her health issues away from the public.



She said: What affected my mum was the fact that she was not going for her medical check-ups. I want Nigerians to help provide a car for her. What happened (to her) could have been prevented but because of the unavailability of a car, things took a different turn. She lives very far from the hospital.



When she had her last attack, I had to get a motorcycle to convey her to the junction before I could get a cab to pick her. She was diagnosed with a right ischemic stroke some years back. The first health scare happened about five years ago but she did not want anyone to know about it. My elder siblings even flew her to China for better medical treatment and she got better. Sadly, she had two other attacks.



According to her, the 61-year-old actress had instructed her children not to tell anyone about her health conditions, unfortunately, the veteran had another attack that affected her limbs.



However, she is getting better. She can now talk and respond to people. The doctors have assured us that with the help of physiotherapy, she would be able to use her limbs again.



We spoke out because we now need financial help. Her children are doing their best but they cant do everything. Actresses like Foluke Daramola, Iyabo Ojo, Mercy Aigbe, and Biodun Okeowo have assisted financially in the past. She said.

Source: premiumtimesng.com









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Paramedics wheel a patient past ambulances outside a Toronto Hospital on Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2022. Hospitals in several parts of Canada are straining under the weight of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, with Quebec hospitalizations reaching an all-time high on Sunday and Ontario's admissions to intensive care units surging past the 400 mark. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
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Fifth Time's a Charm as Gottlieb Reels in $416K Score at GGPoker

January 10, 2022 Matthew Pitt Editor

Lev "LevMeAlone" Gottlieb was determined to take down the $25,500 Sunday Million Super High Roller event at GGPoker, so much so that he fired five bullets totalling a cool $127,500. Gottliebs persistence and obviously deep bankroll paid off because he finished in first place and scooped an impressive $416,751.

The super high roller saw 65 entries processed and a $1,625,000 prize pool created. Only the top eight finishers won a slice of the pot, so spare a thought for Michael Addamo, who was the unfortunate soul who finished ninth, bursting the money bubble.

Nick Petrangelo was the first in-the-money player out of the door. Petrangelo secured a $70,754 payday. Chinas Wenjie "Jerome001" Huang has been on something of a heater at GGPoker for a couple of months. it continued with Huang finishing seventh for a $91,153 addition to his bankroll.

Sam Greenwood could only muster a sixth place finish

Each of the remaining six players locked up a six-figure haul for their efforts. Sam Greenwood and Stephen Chidwick were the next two superstars crashing out. They added $117,433 and $151,289 to their lifetime winnings respectively.

Fourth-place and $194,906 went to Brazilian grinder Guilherme "bill2021" Cherman before Marius Gierse ran out of steam and had to console himself with a $251,097 third-place prize.

Heads-up saw Gottlieb fight it out with Andras Nemeth for the title and the monster-sized top prize. Gottlieb left Nemeth in his wake, and banked the $416,751 top prize, resigning Nemeth to a most respectable $323,489 runner-up payout.

WSOPC Series: $25,500 Sunday Million Super HR Final Table Results

Place Player Country Prize 1 Lev "LevMeAlone" Gottlieb Mexico $416,751 2 Andras Nemeth Hungary $323,489 3 Marius Gierse Austria $251,097 4 Guilherme "bill2021" Cherman Brazil $194,906 5 Stephen Chidwick Canada $151,289 6 Sam Greenwood Canada $117,433 7 Wenjie "Jerome001" Huang China $91,153 8 Nick Petrangelo Canada $70,754

Romanov Pads His Bankroll With a Six-Figure Sum

Alex Romanov is $120,920 richer than a few days ago courtesy of triumphing in the WSOPC Series: $525 Bounty Hunters HR Main Event. Romanov overcame a 2,834-strong field in this high-stakes PKO event to secure a total prize weighing in at $120,920.

Romanov got his hands on this substantial prize after defeating "Benlenuts" of Hungary heads-up. The Hungary-based star saw $73,278 head to their GGPoker account as a result of their second-place exit.

Several household names navigated their way through the minefield that is a large-field PKO tournament to take their seat at the final table.

2021 Was a Year of Milestones For GGPoker and Its Players

Justin Shin of Hong Kong was the first of these stellar names to crash out from the final table action. Shin had to make do with a $12,530 ninth-place prize.

Santtu "84562" Ojala finished eight for $10,993 with David Coleman running out of luck in seventh-place, a finish worth $16,079 with bounties included.

Belarusian star Dmitry Yurasov fell in fifth for $23,724 with the eliminations of "mayKKz_" and "Testosterone", finishes worth $37,892 and $54,501, leaving Romanov to beat benlenuts in the one-on-one section of the tournament.

WSOPC Series: $525 Bounty Hunters HR Main Event Final Table Results

Place Player Country Bounties Total Prize 1 Alex Romanov Russia $63,584 $120,920 2 Benlenuts Hungary $16,084 $73,278 3 Testosterone Austria $12,804 $54,501 4 mayKKz_ Brazil $7,531 $37,892 5 Dmitry Yurasov Belarus $1,617 $23,724 6 eqn778 Canada $7,438 $29,093 7 David Coleman Canada $17,373 $16,079 8 Santtu "84562" Ojala Finland $7,544 $10,993 9 Justin Shin Hong Kong $4,779 $12,530

Rudolph Finally Gets His Hands on a Super MILLION$ Title

Other Highlights From GGPoker Tournaments on January 9

Boris Kolev netted more than $110,000.

Boris Kolev  first-place in the WSOPC Series: $1,050 Sunday HR Main Event for $114,049

Conor Beresford  first-place in the WSOPC Series: $5,250 Bounty Hunters Sunday HR for $90,270*

Stephen Chidwick  first-place in the WSOPC Series: $5,250 Deepstack Sunday HR for $80,929

Conor Beresford  first-place in the WSOPC Series: $888 Crazy Eights HR for $66,816

Heisenbrum  first-place in the $150 GGMasters for $65,885

Andras Nemeth  first-place in the WSOPC Series: $5,250 Sunday PLO HR for $61,980

lordof0513  first-place in the $300 GGMasters Bounty for $60,502*

yulei1986  first-place in the WSOPC Series: $250 Sunday Main Event for $59,546

Jonah Silverstein  first-place in the WSOPC Series: $5,250 The Closer Sunday HR for $51,638

BobQhniq  first-place in the WSOPC Series: $210 Bounty Hunters Sunday Special for $41,750*

Matas Cimbolas  first-place in the WSOPC Series: $1,050 Sunday heater HR Bounty Turbo for $40,053*

Ben Wilinofsky  first-place in the WSOPC Series: $1,050 Sunday PLO Main Event for $38,654

*includes bounty payments

Get In On The GGPoker Action With a $600 Welcome Bonus

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Kasey Orr Win RunGood Poker Series Thunder Valley Main Event ($65,728)

January 10, 2022 Nicholas Baltz

Kasey Orr was a wrecking ball on the final day of the RunGood Poker Series (RGPS) $575 No-Limit Holdem Main Event $200,000 GTD from Thunder Valley Casino Resort and it resulted in him taking home $65,728 after a deal was made at the beginning of heads-up play.

It feels good because, one, its the biggest victory Ive ever had, and two, Ive been playing for ten years never cashed in a tournament this size, said Orr. My wife is here with me, she is my biggest motivator. Its an intense moment because I do want to start my poker career and this is definitely kicking that off. I could almost cry right now.

A new record was set this weekend at the RGPS. After three starting flights, there were 890 entries in the Main Event. That broke the previous record of 851 entries in Omaha, Nebraska at the Horseshoe Council Bluffs stop in June of 2021. The field also smashed the $200,000 guarantee, generating a prize pool of $445,000.

RGPS Thunder Valley Final Table Results



Place Player Prize 1 Kasey Orr $65,728* 2 Nicolaus Estrella $65,726* 3 Dustin Russell $34,815 4 Jack Jenco $26,075 5 Mike Hanson $19,760 6 Ryan Awwad $15,755 7 Theresa Cummings $13,040 8 Daniel Hatch $10,370 9 Balthazar Villa $7,790

*Denotes heads-up deal.

Some of the players to fall throughout the day included Eric Estrellado, Martin Abraham, Jeff Platt, Frank Saunders, Dustin Orozco, Tsolmon Jargalsaikhan, Blong Moua, Bernard Lee, and Julie Cornelius.

It took about six hours to narrow the returning field of 112 players down to the final two tables. Orr, 30, from Reno, Nevada, went on to knock out six players in a row as he built a chip lead heading into the final table. Orr never looked back as he used timely bluffs to separate from the pack and began to knock out even more players.

It wasnt too easy to read people but you basically know when someones shoving they arent shoving lightly, said Orr. There were a few spots where it got tricky, I folded a couple of good hands and I ran some massive bluffs. I basically almost bluffed my way through the entire final table in tricky spots because mostly I had the range advantage and position.

Kasey Orr & his wife celebrate.

Final Table Action

Balthazar Villa was the first to go in ninth when he shoved his short stack with ace-jack but Nicolaus Estrella paired a queen with queen-jack. Estrella also scored the next elimination when his jack-ten bested the ace-king of Daniel Hatch, who exited in eighth place.

Orr would take over from there, pulling off a big bluff with king-high against Estrella and then eliminating Theresa Cummings in seventh when his ace-jack got there against pocket sevens.

Estrella sent the next one out when Ryan Awwad shoved ace-eight. Estrella called with pocket sixes and made a set on the turn to send Awwad out in sixth.

From there, Orr knocked out the next three players while also mixing in some key bluffs. Mike Hanson found himself short and shoved queen-nine right into the king-nine of Orr and had to settle for fifth.

Next, Orr bluffed the river with ten-high against Jack Jenco to leave him short on chips. The two would get all the chips in shortly thereafter when Jenco held two pair against the flush draw of Orr. The flush came home on the river and Jenco exited in fourth. Dustin Russell went down in third shortly after he jammed king-nine into the ace-nine of Orr and could not improve.

Orr held about two-thirds of the chips after that, but he and Estrella agreed to a heads-up deal before another hand was dealt. Orr was declared the winner and also won a ticket into 2022 RunGood ProAM.

It was just crazy, said Orr. Going on a run like that on the final table is kinda what people dream of, where you can go on one of those runs.

Congratulations to Kasey Orr for taking down the RGPS $575 No-Limit Holdem Main Event $200,000 GTD from Thunder Valley Casino Resort.

RGPS Thunder Valley Winners

Tournament Prize Pool Entries Winner Prize $255 Fifty Five $55k GTD $93,955 437 Forrest Kollar $18,555 $300 PLO $19,500 75 Keith Hudson $5,000 $135 Ambassador Bomb Pot Bounty $25,000 250 DJ Huges $5,665 $300 HORSE $14,820 57 Graham Perry $3,055 $565 Main Event $445,000 890 Kasey Orr $65,728 $240 Finale $20k GTD $24,800 124 Charlito Aseberos $3,913

The RunGood Poker Series is returning to one of its popular destinations next month  Jamul Casino in San Diego. From February 1-6, players in Southern California can take a shot at the $575 buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament, which features a $100,000 guaranteed prize pool.

Sharelines Kasey Orr topped a record 890-entry field to win the @RGPokerSeries @TVPokerRoom for $65,728.
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GREENVILLE  A shopping center and a business center sitting on about 60 acres of property at the intersection of Woodruff Road and Interstate 385 has sold for $67.5 million.

The Merovan Business Center and The Shops at Merovan  located at 1200 Woodruff Rd. and originally developed in phases in the 1980s  consist of a nine-building office park with 135 units and an 11-unit retail shopping center, totaling almost 700,000 square feet. The shopping center is anchored by Northern Tool and Equipment.

The property is located along the path of a planned Woodruff Road Bypass. The bypass would add a four-lane road with a median from Verdae Boulevard to Smith-Hines Road. It would stretch 2.6 miles, cross over Interstate 385 and have eight connections to roads that lead to different sections of Woodruff Road.

Greenville-based commercial real estate firm Pintail represented both the seller and buyer in the transaction that closed on Dec. 28, 2021. Greenville-based real estate developer RealtyLink purchased the property, the Pintail Director of Marketing Miller Howard told The Post and Courier. The property was marketed nationwide and received more than 20 offers.

While we evaluated offers from across the nation, the company that purchased the asset is based in Greenville, which is a testament to the caliber of companies and opportunities that exist here in the Upstate. Their plans to improve the property will support the strategic growth of the Woodruff Road corridor in Greenville," Pintail broker Matt Vanvick said in a statement.

The Post and Courier has reached out to RealtyLink to learn more about its plans.
Kingstree, SC (29556)

Today

Sun and clouds mixed with a slight chance of thunderstorms during the afternoon. High 88F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Considerable cloudiness. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low around 65F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
City of Charleston voters on Daniel Island and the French Quarter will see five candidates on the ballot Jan. 11 in a special election for the District 1 City Council seat left vacant by Councilwoman Marie Delcioppo.

The candidates are retired CPA David Winkler, retired Charleston police officer and firefighter Tony Fogle, former prosecutor Shawn Pinkston, civil engineer Boyd Gregg and Trident Literacy Association Board member Jen Gibson.

Declioppo's seat has been vacant since October, when she resigned due to health concerns. The special election will go to a runoff Jan. 25 if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote.

The candidates have all distributed campaign materials laying out their platforms and recently spoke at a forum hosted by the Ansonborough Neighborhood Association. Ansonborough is part of the small portion of the Charleston peninsula located within District 1; Daniel Island makes up the rest of the district.

All five candidates are Daniel Island residents and most have zeroed in on easing traffic and flooding concerns.

Some have been vocal opponents of the current City Council. Pinkston's campaign materials criticize the council's vote to increase council members' pay, and he was a vocal opponent of the reinstatement of the city's Special Commission on Equity, Inclusion and Racial Conciliation.

The city formed the commission, which included volunteers and city council members, in response to George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police and the nationwide protests that followed. When the commission's recommendations were finalized in a 545-page report, city council initially rejected the report and a proposal to make the commission a permanent fixture among city commissions.

The task force was reinstated in an initial vote Dec. 21. Both the commission and its report have become a hot-button issue for candidates seeking local office.

Among the proposals that drew the most attention and opposition from Pinkston were the reports suggestions to teach critical race theory and The New York Times 1619 Project in schools, and for the city to come up with a reparations plan.

"We're heading in the wrong direction and we are never going to get back to the core functions of city government if we do not defeat the political agenda that is being pushed by the mayor and some members of the city council," Pinkston said.

Fogle has billed himself as a public-safety focused candidate, having served in both the city's police and fire departments. He said the June 2020 police brutality protests that spun off into vandalism on King Street were part of what prompted him to seek public office.

"We had Army tanks when Chief (Reuben) Greenberg and Mayor (Joe) Riley were here. Why? Because it was intimidating ... nobody is getting in the way of Army tanks. Nobody is getting in the way of horses," Fogle said of how he felt the protests along King Street should have been handled.

In a Jan. 5 editorial in The Daniel Island News, Delcioppo endorsed Gregg, a self-described "strong fiscal conservative." She wrote that he "has a willingness to learn."

In remarks to the Ansonborough Neighborhood Association, Gregg said he would bring his experience as a civil engineer working with the public sector to City Council. He, as well as Pinkston, said that he is skeptical of the Army Corps of Engineers' $1.1 billion sea wall proposal. As proposed, the sea wall would surround the Charleston peninsula to protect it from storm surge.

"Based on my 20 years of experience as an engineer and dealing with project exactly like this, I am highly opposed to it," Gregg said. "Its prohibitively expensive ... When you look at a big system like this, a flood wall, that requires buttressing and gates and motors and pump stations, all of that has to work together seamlessly or you end up with a bathtub ... and it's highly unlikely for all of that to work together seamlessly."

With experience living and dealing with flooding in Baton Rouge, La., Winkler said he is open to alternate proposals for the sea wall but will also spend his time in office "listening to the experts."

He said that was also why he received the COVID-19 vaccine. For city governments, however, he said he did not support vaccine mandates because of the potential to lose public safety personnel.

"I do not think they need to be mandated by governmental entities. Do I think that employers have that right to come in and say if you want to work for me, you have to be vaccinated? That's an individual, employer-level decision," he said.

Gibson, as someone who formerly owned a travel agency, said she understands both the pros and cons of promoting tourism in Charleston. She began her career in insurance and interior design before starting her travel agency before selling it in 2016. Much of her campaign focuses on the environmental needs of Charleston and reigning in real estate development interests.

"We've made a lot of mistakes with tourism in downtown Charleston, and its not too late to fix that," she said.

One way to address that, she said, is to reel in the city's support of cruise ships. Of concern for Ansonborough residents is a new cruise ship terminal proposed at Union Pier, replacing the existing 1970s-era building. Plans for the proposed terminal were put on hold due to the pandemic and have met pushback from historic and environmental preservation groups.

Election Day is Jan. 11. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Charleston County is hosting one polling site at Memminger Elementary School (20 Beaufain St.). Berkeley County will host three polling sites at Philip Simmons Elementary School (2095 Seven Sticks Drive), Daniel Island Elementary School (2365 Daniel Island Drive) and the Daniel Island Recreation Center (160 Fairbanks Drive). More information can be found at www.vote.charlestoncounty.org or www.berkeleycountysc.gov/dept/elections.
NORTH CHARLESTON  Four South Carolina activist groups and the family of Walter Scott are urging the city to create an independent body to oversee the implementation of the recommendations found in the recent racial bias audit.

The organizations include the Charleston Area Justice Ministry, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Charleston's Black Lives Matter chapter and the American Civil Liberties Union. In a letter read to City Council last month, the organizations said they believe public oversight is needed to ensure that the city maximizes its ability to reduce racial disparities in the police department.

"The city has invested substantial taxpayer funds in the audit process and is accountable to the community for those expenditures," Suzanne Hardie, with CAJM, said. "We urge City Council to establish this independent body, which should include members of the public who are invested in equitable public safety practices."

The city contracted with Virginia-based CNA for $283,000 to audit the agency. The report, finalized last fall, found racial disparities in many department practices, including field interviews, use of force, arrests and traffic stops. The audit offered more than 100 recommendations in areas of law enforcement operations, community-oriented policing practices, complaints, hiring, training and accountability.

The report also recommended the city revisit the concept of a community advisory committee "with the goal of re-establishing such a board."

Chief Reggie Burgess has begun gathering necessary information to create a citizens group, city spokesman Ryan Johnson said.

"Nothing has been formalized," Johnson said.

City Council members welcomed greater public involvement.

Councilman Bob King, who chairs the city's Public Safety Committee, said he particularly wants to see the entire police department embrace the concept of community policing. The racial bias audit found some members of the agency either didn't understand community policing or haven't fully welcomed the idea.

"I think the management of the police department needs to implement some type of system to make sure everybody is on the (community policing) wavelength," King said. "If everybody has their own agenda, youre not going to get anything accomplished. They need to be serious about that. I think the chief is doing that.

Burgess welcomes the idea of increased community participation. The chief is open to having members of the public help implement some of the recommendations suggested by CNA in the audit, said Harve Jacobs, a police spokesman.

The city created a citizens advisory commission in 2017 that sought to improve police department transparency. This came two years after Walter Scott, a Black man, was murdered by a White police officer while Scott fled during a traffic stop. The officer is serving time in a federal prison.

The citizens group, made up of community members, was disbanded in 2019 after calling on the city to conduct a racial bias audit of its police department.

Activists say the city also needs a permanent group overseeing law enforcement. That organization would be similar to the citizens group that existed years ago. The new group should have more authority, such as subpoena powers, Hardie said.

Social justice advocates are concerned with the audit's implementation. Part of their concern is driven by their displeasure at the way CNA handled the racial bias report.

Community groups met with CNA frequently throughout the auditing process to try to get the nonprofit company to engage directly with impacted communities in North Charleston, Hardie said.

The finalized audit showed the firm still didn't interview enough North Charleston residents for its report, and CNA often ignored activists' recommendations for additional residents to engage, Hardie said.

CNA did extend the audit's public comment period after it came under fire from City Council for lack of attendance at some of its community gatherings during the audit.

CNA didn't respond to requests for comment.

Jocelyn Grzeszczak contributed to this report.
History isnt always easy to access or appreciate. We catch glimpses of it, consider certain episodes, sometimes engage in conversations about its meaning and influence. But generally it remains distant, obscured by contemporary life.

The South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust and its partners plan to bring the states Revolutionary War history alive though reality technology and a $250,000 grant from the National Park Service to help kickstart the effort.

The first project on the list is the 18th-century fortification that was located at what is today Marion Square. This was the gate to the city, 30 feet tall and 600 feet wide, with cannons lined across the top to defend against the British.

A 12-foot-long remnant of the tabby hornwork remains on the site, but the information available is minimal and leaves passersby with no idea of what was once there, said Doug Bostick, executive director of the S.C. Battleground Preservation Trust.

Augmented reality can change that, he said. And it has the potential to generate interest in American history among young people.

The new technology is part of an effort to interpret history at several sites that are part of the Liberty Trail, a network of Revolutionary War-era places secured preserved by the Trust in partnership with the American Battlefield Trust.

For the Charleston project, Bostick has been working with scholars such as Carl Borick, director of the Charleston Museum; Nic Butler, a historian with the Charleston County Public Library; and John Marcoux, director of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, a collaboration between Clemson Universitys School of Architecture and the College of Charleston.

The Trust currently is on the hunt for technology vendors to build the augmented reality applications that would make these past events and spaces electronically visible today.

Ground-penetrating radar has revealed the precise footprint of the old fortification, and that in turn will enable programmers to recreate the structure virtually. Visitors to the site can access the feature via the Liberty Trail website, or perhaps through a specially developed app on their smartphones and tablets, then hold up their devices to understand what the area looked like in the 1770s and 1780s.

Youll be able to see it, Bostick said.

Visitors might be able to spot Gen. William Moultrie and Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln standing atop the gate watching British troops advance toward the city. They will be able to imagine Patriot fighters at their surrender on May 12, 1780, marching out through the gate and laying down their arms about where the restaurant Virginias on King now stands.

And theyll be able to visualize the British retreat on Dec. 14, 1782, when the Siege of Charleston came to an end.

Its a critically important place in the history of Charleston, and to actually be able to see this fortification and see the gate of Charleston  we think will be an extraordinary experience for people, Bostick said.

Another site that will see an enhancement thanks to augmented reality is Fort Watson, north of Santee, just off Interstate 95. There, the British built a palisade fort atop an old Native American mound.

On April 15, 1781, Continental Army forces under the command of Henry Light Horse Harry Lee and South Carolina militia leader Francis Marion, launched an attack.

The initial effort failed, but the attackers then constructed a tower for sharpshooters who at an elevated height could fire into the fort. The barrage from the tower forced a British surrender.

Now more than ever, we know how modern technology can bring people together, National Park Service Deputy Director Shawn Benge said in a statement. Harnessing powerful stories at these battlefields and sites of armed conflict can open our eyes to the lessons from the past and lead us to greater understanding of our shared history.

Other sites likely to get the augmented reality treatment include Fort Fair Lawn in Moncks Corner and the site of the Battle of Eutaw Springs.

Several years ago, when Bostick and his team first were dabbling in augmented reality technologies, he showed his 20-year-old son Taylor virtual renderings of the Union ironclad Keokuk guns located at The Battery in Charleston.

Dad, Taylor said, youre finally doing something thats cool.
The agency that owns and operates the Port of Charleston will pay $40 million to the city of North Charleston to settle a nearly decadeslong dispute involving overpasses on city streets where miles-long trains regularly block traffic.

The State Ports Authority's board of directors approved the settlement during a Dec. 14 meeting. The money would be paid in four annual installments of $10 million apiece, and the settlement will be codified as part of a lawsuit the city filed against the SPA on Dec. 13. That suit seeks to have the settlement agreement put on the record as part of a court proceeding.

The rail issue stems from the SPA's development of the Leatherman Terminal in North Charleston and that city's efforts to minimize the traffic impact of trains serving the terminal and an adjacent rail yard that's under construction. The city and the SPA started negotiating how the overpasses would be funded in 2002 after the state Legislature nixed plans for a container terminal on Daniel Island, instructing the maritime agency to build one at the former Navy base in North Charleston instead.

The settlement follows the SPA's agreement with Charleston officials to pay $11.5 million for 2.5 acres of city-owned property where the rail yard's southern loop will be built. At least $4.9 million must be used to mitigate traffic and other impacts from the rail yard, said Chip McQueeney, assistant city attorney.

The rest of the money can be used to help pay for city facilities that are no longer viable at the site. The city had planned to build new public service, fire and vehicle-storage facilities on the property, but all of them might not fit once the SPA carves its portion out of the 16.5-acre tract.

The original agreement with North Charleston called for three overpasses to be built: at Rivers Avenue and Harley Street; at Rivers and Durant Avenue; and at North Rhett Avenue and Interstate 526. The settlement announced Dec. 14 will cover only some of the costs for the overpass and intersection improvements at Durant Avenue.

North Charleston spokesman Ryan Johnson declined to say what improvements might be made at the other sites until after City Council votes Dec. 16 on whether to accept the settlement agreement.

Traffic patterns and other factors have changed since the original agreement was signed nearly 20 years ago, and studies have identified less-expensive alternatives to the rail issues at those sites.

Johnson said the lawsuit filed on Dec. 13 "is to accommodate settlement and get it on file, if all parties choose to settle."

The rail yard  officially known as the Navy Base Intermodal Facility  will be linked to the new Leatherman Terminal by a private road, and it will give the Norfolk Southern and CSX Corp. railroads a place to load and unload cargo containers moved to and from the port by rail cars.

A barge system is also proposed for the SPA's Wando Welch Terminal in Mount Pleasant, where containers would be sent by water to the Leatherman site and then loaded onto trains.

The combined price tag for both projects is $593.4 million. The Legislature included $200 million toward the rail and barge project in this year's budget and is expected to fund another $350 million in coming years. The rest of the money will come from "value engineering"  a process in which a developer and contractors seek less-expensive materials and processes without sacrificing functionality  and other cost cuts. The reluctance to finance it all at once has pushed the rail yard's opening date back to 2025.

The SPA took over the rail project this year from Palmetto Railways, a division of the state's Commerce Department, saying the facility is needed to compete with other ports in the Southeast.

The rail yard has received approval from the Federal Railroad Administration and the Army Corps of Engineers and would round out roughly $2 billion in improvements at the port, including the new terminal, cranes and other equipment, and the deepening of the Charleston Harbor shipping channel so that it can accommodate heavier ships.
U.S. and allied military forces have kicked off this year's Exercise Sea Dragon 22, the first among a series of planned military exercises in Guam and the Marianas.

Six major military training exercises are planned for this year in Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and the region from January through June to include Sea Dragon, Cope North, Cobra Gold, Carrier Air Wing Strike Fighter Advanced Reediness Program, Naval Surface Warfare Advanced tactical Training and Valiant Shield, according to a press release from Joint Region Marianas.

While in the region and on respective islands, all exercise participants will carefully adhere to COVID-19 mitigation measures to protect the civilian and military communities.

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"The safety and health of our military and civilian communities is a top priority while we conduct essential military exercises and training in Guam, the CNMI and the region," said Commander of Joint Region Marianas Rear Adm. Benjamin Nicholson.

Sea Dragon

The P-8 Poseidon Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft with Patrol Squadrons 47 and 26, were deployed to AAFB to hone their skills with members of the Royal Australian Air Force, Royal Canadian Air Force, Indian Navy, Japan Maritime Self Defense Force, and Republic of Korea Navy, according to a Commander Task Force 72 press release.

Sea Dragon 22, primarily centering on anti-submarine warfare training and excellence, culminates in over 270 hours of in-flight training; ranging from tracking simulated targets to the final problem of tracking a live U.S. Navy submarine. During classroom training sessions, pilots and flight officers from all countries build plans and discuss tactics incorporating the capabilities and equipment of their respective nations.

As [officer-in-charge] OIC, I am eager for the opportunity to further develop our partnerships with Australia, Canada, India, Japan, and Korea while at Sea Dragon 2022. The continued growth and increasing complexity of this exercise affords an opportunity to practice ASW tactics, techniques, and procedures with allies and partners that we dont often get a chance to work with, said Lt. Cmdr. Braz Kennedy, OIC for the U.S. detachment from VP-47.

Each event will be graded, and the nation scoring the highest total points will receive the coveted Dragon Belt award. Last year, the Royal Canadian Air Force won the belt and will bring it back to Sea Dragon 2022 to defend the title.

This exercise is an annual, multi-national high-end ASW training exercise, said JMSDF Cmdr. Michiyama Tomoyuki, commanding officer of Flight Division 31, Air Patrol Squadron 3. I believe that by conducting a wide range of training, from classroom training on the ground to actual training targeting submarine, we will be able to improve our tactical skills. In addition, through training, exchange of opinions, and various type of exchanges, we expect to strengthen cooperation and deepen mutual understanding among the participating navies and air forces.

The Golden Swordsmen of VP-47, part of Commander Task Force (CTF) 72, are stationed at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Wash., and are currently deployed to Misawa Air Base in Aomori, Japan. Throughout the deployment, they will be conducting maritime patrol and reconnaissance and theater outreach operations within the 7th Fleet area of operations.

The Tridents of VP-26, part of Commander Task Force (CTF) 72, are stationed in Jacksonville, Florida, and are currently deployed to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. Throughout the deployment, they will be conducting maritime patrol and reconnaissance and theater outreach operations within the 7th Fleet area of operations.
The Work Zone

Many of us didnt grow up with a strong male influence in the home. My parents split before I was 10, so the majority of the wisdom I picked u Read more
My friend who reads the New York Times has been waiting for it to provide frontpage coverage of Manhattan DA Alvin Braggs memo instructing prosecutors not to seek jail or prison time for all but the most serious crimes and to cease charging a number of lower-level crimes. Having previously relegated the matter to page 18, the Times finally elevates it to the front page in discussing pushback by New York Citys new chief of police.

The new chief, Keechant Sewell, expressed what the Times describes as severe dissatisfaction with the DAs soft-on-crime approach in an email she sent to all city police officers. Sewell is Black, by the way, as is Bragg.

Sewell takes particular offense at Braggs decision not to charge individuals who resist arrest. Stating the obvious, she observes that this policy sends a message to police officers, not to mention law breakers, of an unwillingness to protect those who are carrying out their duties. She adds:

I strongly believe that this policy injects debate into decisions that would otherwise be uncontroversial, will invite violence against police officers and will have deleterious effects on our relationship with the communities we protect.

Braggs message of unwillingness to protect police officers, along with others he communicated  e.g., that the race of criminals should factor into prosecutorial decisions and that poverty can be an excuse for crime  makes a mockery of the Times attempt to downplay the disagreement between Sewell and Mayor Eric Adams on the one hand and Bragg on the other. The Times states:

Such disputes [between the police and prosecutors] are not uncommon. There is an ingrained tension between the police and prosecutors that often centers on what charges to bring and, at times, whether there is sufficient evidence to make an arrest. For the police, in some measure, the job ends with handcuffs, while prosecutors are left with proving a case beyond a reasonable doubt or finding some other resolution. But such arguments do not often became public at all, let alone so early in a new administration.

But the dispute between Bragg and Sewell has little relation to this ingrained tension. The disputes the Times describes in the quoted passage are pragmatic. They are over what is possible in a court of law.

The dispute between Bragg and Sewell is clearly ideological. Its over what is just.

Bragg thinks its consistent with justice  as well as pragmatic, I suppose  to let large numbers of criminals walk, especially if they happen to be minority group members, and to turn a blind eye to most property crimes and to resisting arrest. His references to crimes of poverty, to impacts of incarceration, and to racial disparities make this clear.

Sewell disagrees.

The Times is closer to the mark when it acknowledges that theres a political argument between centrist Democrats across the nation looking to soothe voters worried about crime and progressive prosecutors who favor leniency for criminals. There can be no doubt about which side of the argument the Times is on, and no doubt that the Times understands the politics of the argument well enough to prefer that it not break out in full cry in New York City.

My friend the Times reader makes the point succinctly:
Yesterday I focused on Elviss recorded work while nodding to Peter Guralnicks two-volume biography of Elvis  Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love  to tell the life. Guralnick has made himself the essential Elvis historian.

Guralnick of course recounts the true story of the day in December 1970 when Elvis met Nixon in the White House. The story of the visit provides insight into Elviss patriotism as well as comic relief in the denouement of Elviss life. I last extracted the story from Guralnicks account five years ago, when the film Elvis & Nixon was playing in theaters. The film is based on a true story, as they say. The film, however, played it strictly for laughs. This is my short rendition of the true story drawn from Peter Guralnicks invaluable account.

Elvis admired law enforcement officers and collected the badges of police departments he visited. In Los Angeles on a secret getaway from tensions at home in Memphis, Elvis became inflamed with the desire to be deputized by the federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD). He inveigled his friend Jerry Schilling to join him on a quick trip to Washington. Bodyguard Sonny West would fly in from Memphis to meet them. Elvis asked Schilling to take out some cash for the trip; Elvis ended up giving it away to soldiers returning from service in Vietnam.

California Senator George Murphy was coincidentally on the flight from Los Angeles to Washington. Elvis sought out Murphy back in tourist to enlist his assistance. On the flight Elvis wrote out a letter to President Nixon (Ive added paragraphing in the interest of readability):

Dear Mr. President First I would like to introduce myself. I am Elvis Presley and admire you and Have Great Respect for your office. I talked to Vice President Agnew in Palm Springs a week ago and expressed my concern for our country. The Drug Culture, The Hippie Elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc do not consider me as their enemy or as they call it The Establishment. I call it America and I Love it. Sir I can and will be of any Service that I can to help the country out. I have no concerns or motives other than helping the country out. So I wish not to be given a title or an appointed position, I can and will do more good if I were made a Federal Agent at Large, and I will help out by doing it my way through my communications with people of all ages. First and Foremost I am an entertainer but all I need is the Federal credentials. I am on the Plane with Sen. George Murphy and We have been discussing the problems that our country is faced with. Sir I am Staying at the Washington hotel Room 505-506-507. I have 2 men who work with me by the name of Jerry Schilling and Sonny West. I am registered under the name of Jon Burrows. I will be here for as long as it takes to get the credentials of a Federal Agent. I have done in depth study of Drug Abuse and Communist Brainwashing Techniques and I am right in the middle of the whole thing, where I can and will do the most good. I am Glad to help just so long as it is kept very Private. You can have your staff or whomever call me anytime today tonight or Tomorrow. I was nominated the coming year one of Americas Ten Most outstanding young men. That will be in January 18 in my Home Town of Memphis Tenn. I am sending you the short autobiography about myself so you can better understand this approach. I would love to meet you just to say hello if youre not to[o] busy. Respectfully, Elvis Presley

Upon his arrival in Washington on the morning of December 21, Elvis dropped the letter off at the White House and went off to a meeting (arranged by Murphy) with the director of the BNDD to seek a badge. He instead met with BNDD deputy director John Finlator, who refused Elviss request for a badge. Back in the hotel room, however, Schilling received a call inviting Elvis to the White House for a meeting with the president.

Elviss letter had prompted internal deliberations over the wisdom of a presidential meeting. Dwight Chapins memo to Bob Haldeman summarizing Elviss request is a bit clueless. The second page of the memo has Chapins earnest advice and Haldemans somewhat more astute response. Chapin writes: [I]f the President wants to meet some bright young people outside of the Government, Presley might be a perfect one to start with. Haldeman responds: You must be kidding. The meeting was nevertheless promptly approved and arranged. Elvis, Schilling, and West met up with White House aide Bud Krogh for Elviss 12:30 meeting with the president in the Oval Office.

Bud Kroghs memo summarizes the meeting:

Presley indicated to the President in a very emotional manner that he was on your side. Presley kept repeating that he wanted to be helpful, that he wanted to restore some respect for the flag, which was being lost. He mentioned he was just a poor boy from Tennessee who had gotten a lot from his country, which in some way he wanted to repay.

Elvis thought he could be helpful to Nixon in his drug drive and Nixon expressed his concern that Presley retain his credibility. It was at this point that Elvis made his pitch for the BNDD badge. Nixon told Krogh that he would like Elvis to receive a badge. Krogh wrote in a subsequent account of the meeting:

Elvis was smiling triumphantly. Thank you very much, sir. This means a lot to me.Elvis then moved up close to the President and, in a spontaneous gesture, put his left arm around him and hugged him.

Not done yet, Elvis asked the president if he would see his friends Schilling and West: It would mean a lot to them and to me. Schilling and West were ushered into the Oval Office. Nixon gave them the same tie clasps and cuff links with presidential seals that he had already given Elvis.

Elvis prompted Nixon: You know, theyve got wives too. Elvis and Nixon then rummaged through Nixons desk for suitable presents for the wives.

The White House photographer took several photos to document the occasion. In the photo below West and Schilling have joined Elvis in the Oval Office with Nixon.

The storied photo below is the one with which we are all familiar. It is one of the most popular photos at the National Archives.

After lunch in the White House mess and a tour of the White House, Elvis was presented with the BNDD badge by Finlator at Kroghs office. Finlator promised to send along additional credentials.

Leaving the White House, Guralnick writes, Sonny and Jerry never stopped to ponder the many strange things that had occurred on this day. As far as they were concerned, there was one thing, and one thing only, responsible for whatever had happened to them, good or bad: they were with Elvis Presley.

At least this particular chapter of the Elvis story had a happy ending.
My Quest for Nigerias Rebirth elucidates on the nitty-gritty of our sociopolitical and economic problems, and the onus of the book centres on the transparency and accountability of leaders and the utilisation of our Gods given potential to ensure the realisation of the good society.

Recently, I received a copy of My Quest for Nigerias Rebirth written by our egbon, an astute accountant and savvy political analyst, Mr Bolutife Oluwadele (PhD). I quickly read through the entire book, which flows as the deeply researched advice of an expert in economics and accountancy on how to turn the lot of our great country around, and to pole position. Interestingly, even though the author currently resides in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he couldnt be more rooted in the reality of his homeland beleagured by need and dysfunction, and his patriotic zeal that drives this unique advocacy for change  the real and not cosmetic one proclaimed so often  comes across so forcefully.

Mr Bolutife Oluwadeles new book is a thought-provoking one that serves as another essential prescription for Nigerias numerous, self-inflicted, and seemingly intractable problems. The arguments in the book are carefully Marshalled from chapter to chapter in a manner thats cuts straight to the chase and enables quick comprehension. Even then, the astuteness of the analysis and propositions are anything but pedestrian. In this intellectual tour de force put together by Oluwadele, a resounding counsel that shines through is the advice for Nigerians to use what they have to get what they want and stop being saboteurs of their own collective future.

From nuts and bolts expositions on budgeting to bookkeeping and accounting for sustainable growth and development in our economy, Mr Oluwadele elucidates upon and prescribes what we need to do to grow on our income as a people and country. But then, the big and pertinent question is: Will the stakeholders in our political and economic spheres, and beyond, embrace the counsel given in this resourceful distillation, for the good of society?

My Quest for Nigerias Rebirth elucidates on the nitty-gritty of our sociopolitical and economic problems, and the onus of the book centres on the transparency and accountability of leaders and the utilisation of our Gods given potential to ensure the realisation of the good society. The author calls for the painstaking reordering of our social and moral codes and values  particularly from our beautiful past, and for these to be re-inculcated towards the reoreintation of our worldview from the mire it is caught up in presently.

The author speaks to the pervasive and crosscutting notion of the Kabiyesi, i.e., He who nobody can query or demand accountability from in most of us in Africa as the crucial bane of our leadership. To him, there is a huge moral and practical need to this dictatorial outlook and tendency down, for Africa to start reaching its potentials.

In a nutshell, and quite unfortunately, you will never understand a typical Nigerian/African  even the one claiming a great public purpose or even spewing out Messiahnic rhetoric  until you give him or her power or authority. And then the nightmare starts. As Oluwadele puts it: Even normal queries that are officially designed to seek clarification about dereliction of duty, other misconduct of subordinations, an unusual occurrence, etc. (are)turned to a massive weapon of intimidation and oppression in the hands of the authoritarian bosses in the workplace.

If Nigeria and the larger Africa must move forward and break the hold of economic stagnation, we must scrap the unworthy legacy and convention of political brigandage, corruption, and moral bankruptcy, which are prevalent across the continent.

I am highly impressed by the simple and clear messaging of the impeccable chartered accountant throughout this book. The author proves his invaluable knowledge of budgeting and accounting as essential in reengineering the fortunes of our country through the activities of governmental agencies, the private sector, and individuals. There are endless possibilities and opportunities in Nigeria. But, unfortunately, the chronic greed and corrupt practices of everyone have cummulatively impeded the growth and development of our country.

I will urge each and everyone to seek our copies of My Quest for Nigerias Rebirth from Amazon and other retailers to gain from the deep insights that Oluwadele has marshalled as a way out of the economic and political quicksands that Nigeria is currently trapped in but can get out of with the right amount of information/knowledge, commitment to change and hardwork.

Yahaya Balogun wrote from the United States of America.
Operatives of the Lagos Command of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, have re-arrested a suspected internet fraudster, Ismailia Mustapha popularly known as Mompha.

The anti-graft agency, in a statement on Monday, said Mompha was re-arrested for laundering funds obtained through unlawful activities and retention of alleged proceeds of crime.

Mompha was arrested on Monday. He announced his trip to Nigeria with an Instagram photo captioned, About to make some billions in Lagos.

The suspect is currently standing trial alongside his company, Ismalob Global Investment Limited on an amended twenty-two-count charge bordering on cyber fraud and money laundering to the tune of N32.9bn brought against him by the EFCC.

It will be recalled that Mompha had earlier been arrested on October 18, 2019, at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport while boarding an Emirates Airline Flight to Dubai by the staff of the Nigeria Immigration Service, following a watch list by the EFCC.

Offence

Mompha is alleged to have used his registered companies to receive illicit funds on behalf of yahoo yahoo boys from across the world in return for a commission.

The account of one of his companies, Ismalob Global Investment Limited Bank, a Bureau de Change company, domiciled in Zenith Bank Plc, was allegedly used to launder funds derived from unlawful activities.

An investigation has revealed a fraudulent transfer slip of $92, 412, 75 found in the suspects iPhone 8 device.

The EFCC says he will soon be charged to court.

Run-in

Mompha has had several run-ins with the EFCC in the last two years.

The Nigerian anti-graft agency dissociated itself from claims by Mompha after he claimed they advised him to maintain a low profile in the wake of the indictment of his friend, Abbas Ramon alias Hushpuppi in a $1.1m international fraud conspiracy by US Law enforcement.

Wilson Uwujaren, the EFCC spokesperson, debunked Momphas claims in a statement.

The incident happened in August 2021.

PREMIUM TIMES reported Mompha as saying that the anti-graft agency contacted him after Hushpuppi was apprehended abroad.

He claimed that the EFCC asked him to delete his social media pages and maintain a low profile after the incident. Mompha made the remarks during an Instagram live show with a controversial broadcaster, Daddy Freeze.

Mr Uwujaren said: The (Momphas) claim, which did not mention the official of the Commission who supposedly gave the advice, is spurious and should be discountenanced.

The Commission is not in the business of advising suspected internet fraudsters and it is far-fetched that it would counsel one against whom it has a pending criminal charge in court.
Many commuters and students were forced to trek long distances in Kano on Monday as commercial tricycle operators withdrew their services for the first day of a planned one-week strike.

The operators are protesting against government levy of N8, 000 for the renewal of tricycle number plates.

Tricycles, locally called Adaidaita Sahu in Kano, are the dominant mode of intra-city transportation in the commercial nerve centre of Northern Nigeria.

The protest of the operators began after the states Road Traffic Agency (KAROTA) announced the N8,000 renewal register aside from daily levy of N120 on each tricycle.

Students who coincidentally resumed school on the day were greeted by the face-off between the government and the tricycle operators.

There were long lines of commuters, especially students, stranded or trekking along roads in the metropolis.

The head of KAROTA, Baffa Danagundi, insisted on Monday that the government will not back down on its levy.

PREMIUM TIMES observed that the development reduced traffic gridlock normally experienced in the city as a result of high number of tricycles.

Habu Danmalam, a trader, lamented that commoners wiill feel the brunt of the face-off between the government and the tricycle operators.

Tricycle is our only means of transportation. These people (government) want to kill us because we are of no use to them, Mr Danmalam said

He begged the government to consider the plight of commoners and resolve the issue amicably.

Buhari Ibrahim, another Kano resident, said the strike would affect students because many parents rely on tricycles to convey them to schools.

However, the Secretary, Kano State Transport Associations Forum, Ashiru Sallau, told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the union did not ask its members to embark on the strike.

Mr Sallau said: The Union did not direct their members to go for the strike but some of our members resolved to take the decision, not under our umbrella.

We discussed with the government when it introduced some measures regarding our operations. We asked the government to remove some of the levies to enable our members continue to earn their livelihood, Mr Sallau said.

It is in the process that some members decided to go for the strike, and not with our mandate. We are seeing what is happening in other states where they banned tricycle operations.

The strike is the decision of some members who dont want to be obedient to the rules and regulations, Mr Sallau told NAN.

Not the first time

PREMIUM TIMES reported early last year how commercial tricycle operators withdrew their services in the city to protest government levy.

In the previous protest, the operators were against the tax policy of the government that requires each tricycle operator to make a bulk payment of N18,000 as the daily levy for six months, before transiting to daily N100 levy.
After months of speculation, the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, has formally declared his intention to run for the countrys president in 2023.

He disclosed this to journalists after a closed-door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja on Monday.

In his interview with State House reporters, Mr Tinubu said it has been his age-long ambition to lead the country one day.

I have informed the President of my ambition but I have not informed Nigerians yet, I am still consulting. And I have no problem consulting. And Ive not set a parameter of limitation to the extent of how many people I will consult.

You will soon hear. All you want to hear is the categorical declaration. Youve gotten that truth from me that I have informed Mr President of my ambition, and you dont expect more answers than that, he said.

His position was also confirmed to PREMIUM TIMES by his spokesperson, Tunde Rahman, who implored this reporter to wait for a full transcription of his boss interview with state correspondents.

TVC News, a television station believed to be owned by Mr Tinubu, also confirmed in its report that Mr Tinubu made the statement to reporters.

While the former Lagos governor could not disclose Mr Buharis position on his decision to run to journalists, his statement however, suggests the presidents compliance with his vow not to openly canvass support for any candidate.

Thats our business. He is a Democrat. He didnt ask me to stop. He didnt ask me not to attempt and pursue my ambition, it is a lifelong ambition. So, why do I expect him to say more than that? You are running a democratic dispensation, and you must adopt the principles and the values and the virtues of democracy. Thats it, Mr Tinubu said in response to a question on what transpired at the closed-door meeting with the president.

When asked to comment on his chances if he runs against the duo of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and Governor Yayaha Bello of Kogi State, who has since declared his intention to run for president at the party primary, Mr Tinubu dodged the question but instead stated that he hopes to replicate his feats in Lagos as a governor and also build on the infrastructural achievements of the current administration.

Role of Kingmaker

Without denying his role as a kingmaker in the Nigerian political space, the APC chieftain reiterated his rights to contest for any seat in the country.

About the cap of the kingmaker. Ive never seen the cap of a kingmaker before. That is the truth. And Ive never seen where it is written in the rule book anywhere in any country that a kingmaker cannot be a king unless you commit murder.

So, whatever is your attribute is your own opinion. I want to pursue my ambition without the title of a kingmaker. You can write your literature and your story based upon your own perception, Mr Tinubu said.

With his declaration, Mr Tinubu will be among the frontrunners to succeed Mr Buhari whose tenure as president ends in May 2023.

While Mr Bello declared last year to run for the nations top political seat, Mr Osinbajo has not made his intention public, despite the support he is getting from his allies.
BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- As a permanent comprehensive strategic partner of Kazakhstan, China is willing to firmly support Kazakhstan in maintaining stability and stopping violence at this critical moment concerning Kazakhstan's future, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Monday.

Wang made the remarks during a phone conversation with Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi.

Wang stressed that, three day ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a verbal message to Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, publicly expressing his support.

This fully reflected the high-level development of the China-Kazakhstan permanent comprehensive strategic partnership, Wang said, adding that it once again proved the profound friendship between the two countries sharing weal and woe at this critical moment.

China stands ready to work with Kazakhstan to implement the important political consensuses reached by the two heads of state, and do its best to provide necessary support and assistance to Kazakhstan, Wang said.

For his part, Tleuberdi sincerely thanked President Xi for sending the important verbal message to President Tokayev when Kazakhstan was in times of danger, and for being among the first to express support for President Tokayev and the Kazakh people.

Today is the national day of mourning in Kazakhstan, on which the phone conversation with the Chinese foreign minister once again showed China's firm support for Kazakhstan and the brotherhood between the two countries, Tleuberdi said.

Tleuberdi briefed Wang on the details and latest developments of the situation in Kazakhstan, saying that Kazakhstan had suffered well-planned terrorist attacks that broke out suddenly and simultaneously at many places across the country, with thousands of law enforcement personnel, military police and medical staff under attack.

The Kazakh authorities have taken timely and decisive measures and the situation has been under effective control, while peace and calm are being restored, Tleuberdi said.

He promised that Kazakhstan will fully guarantee the security of foreign institutions and personnel as well as foreign investment, and continue to fulfill its international obligations and agreements.

On the occasion of the national day of mourning in Kazakhstan, Wang said that China would like to pay tribute to the front-line law enforcement personnel who died in the fight against violence and terrorism in Kazakhstan, and express condolences and sympathy to the innocent dead and injured.

At this moment, the Chinese government and people stand firmly together with the Kazakh government and people, Wang stressed.

"After the storm comes the rainbow," Wang said, adding that he believes that under the strong leadership of President Tokayev, Kazakhstan will be able to fully restore peace and stability, overcome this "darkest moment" and make Kazakhstan more resilient and stronger.

Wang said that the sudden change and chaos in Kazakhstan shows that the situation in Central Asia is still facing severe challenges, and it also proves once again that some external forces do not want peace and tranquility in this region.

As a neighboring country, China hopes, more than anyone else, that Central Asia will maintain long-term stability and achieve development and prosperity, Wang said.

The Chinese foreign minister said that China is willing to increase cooperation with Kazakhstan in law enforcement and security departments, boost bilateral cooperation in anti-interference, safeguard the security of the political systems and governments of the two countries, prevent and oppose any attempt of "color revolution," and jointly oppose the interference of any external forces.

Expressing confidence for Kazakhstan in ensuring the safety of Chinese institutions and personnel in Kazakhstan, Wang also called for ensuring the safe and smooth operation of major Chinese-Kazakh cooperation projects.

Tleuberdi fully agreed with China's proposals and expressed his willingness to communicate closely with the Chinese side, strengthen security cooperation and jointly combat the "three evil forces."

The two sides also communicated on the next stage of high-level exchanges between the two countries.

Wang said that the Chinese side welcomes Tokayev to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics and will ensure the safety, smoothness and complete success of the Kazakh side's trip to the event.

Tleuberdi said that the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics is a world event with international influence and important symbolic significance, which will promote world peace and cooperation and enhance mutual understanding between peoples.

He stressed that the Kazakh side will work with the Chinese side to complete the relevant preparatory work.
Although I saw a lot of commitment, when you look at the statistics, it is very much shocking and so we need to work on that together. We saw that there are laws that are being domesticated at the state level but I think there is a lot to do and I feel the media should do more.

And something also which we will have to work on which is also linked to sexual and gender-based violence is womens participation in politics. If you look at the statistics, you see that womens representation in politics is extremely small.

So, there as well, something needs to be done. We hope that in the framework of the next election cycle, some progress can be made. We hope that Nigeria will also find its own way not necessarily following the example of others but having more women in parliament and other positions is something that will be good for the country.

PT: In light of supporting the establishment of special SGBV courts, what is the EU doing about mechanisms or systems that allow or make it easy for women and girls to come forth to report these cases? Are you looking at working with CSOs in creating a framework for safe spaces, sexual assaults referral centres (SARCS) in Nigeria and so on?

Isopi: This is exactly what we are trying to do with the referral centres. I visited one of these centres just outside of Abuja a few weeks ago, because I wanted to touch the reality. I think women and girls do not know enough about the existence of these centres and about what the centres are supposed to offer.

The idea of the centre is exactly for victims of gender-based violence to have a place where they can go, where they can be received, where they can receive some medical consultation and advice, where they can receive some kind of psychological support and where they can also stay.

This is something that needs to be improved; which means once you go to the centre, then you get some medical advice, psychological support, and then what? So, maybe something that needs to be developed at least is also to have more safe havens where women who are victims of gender-based violence or boys can actually stay because what happens in most of the cases is that people are sent back to their families or their communities.

However, the fact that the centres now have moved in eight years from one to 32 is really very good progress and I think you, our friends from the media, might help inform the public about the existence of these centres, and about the role that the centres play.

I think we also need to support the establishment of these centres in states where they do not exist. What is important of course, and what we are asking the government to do (federal and state level) is to support financially, because these centres are not private centres, they are part of the health system. This is the kind of community we are pushing for, and of course, pushing also for the specialised courts.

We are not there yet but I think if we put the right steps in place, one after the other; and the different components of the system slowly. We face the same problems in our countries. Gender-based violence is a problem in Europe as well as in my country but creating awareness for our women not to feel ashamed and not to feel guilty is important.

PT: Within the framework of the new EU-ACP partnership, a major priority area is human rights, democracy, and governance in people-centred and rights-based societies. Having mentioned that the media needs to partner more to report SGBV, what is the EU doing to promote media freedom and freedom of expression in turn?

Isopi: You mentioned yourself that human rights are actually one of the main areas for us, not only one of the main areas in terms of cooperation but most of all, one of the main areas in terms of dialogue with the authorities.

I think this is the very first mechanism that we have in place, the dialogue that we have with the government and authorities at all levels. We have a formal mechanism once a year to discuss with the authorities about human rights issues. And freedom of the media, freedom of speech is always something that is always very much on the agenda and of course, gender issues.

So this is the main mechanism, but also at the same time we have this dialogue which is continuous and regular with authorities and we always try to bring these issues forward in our discussions. In terms of concrete programmes on media, apart from the cooperation we already have with the media, with the new cooperation programme, we will have more opportunities to partner with media on key issues and on campaigns like campaigns on human rights. We do not have to my knowledge specific programmes for media, but as I said, the European Union considers media as human rights defenders and I am not talking about Nigeria, I am talking globally. There are guidelines that are even available online about guidelines on the protection of freedom of the press that outlines exactly what the EU does and what the EU delegations have to do to help protect space for media.We did this in some countries when we have journalists that are under threat and we are talking about the specific cases, there are things that we can do. There is a platform, there are mechanisms that we can put in place and use to actually protect these people as we do normally with human rights defenders, activists.PT: Talking about putting pressure on the government to respect human rights, respect press freedom amongst others, many Nigerians feel that the EU and many other Western powers do not use their influence enough to pressure the government to act right. For example, perpetrators of electoral violence and human rights abuses are not denied Schengen visas like the U.S. sometimes does.

Isopi: First of all, we did not have the framework for doing that and this is something that the European Union at the central level is starting to develop. That is to have a legal framework in place to be able to adopt sanctions on human rights violations basis.

I think this is relatively recent, last year. It was a decision made by member states of the (European) council to put in place a mechanism which is similar to the one that is used by the United States.

I think the discussion is still ongoing with member states to implement this new system. The first step is to have the framework, which did not exist before; the second thing would be how to use it and in which cases.

But you know about elections, of course, I just arrived here in Nigeria, so I can only talk about the experience that I have had in other countries.

In elections, we have other ways. We have a dialogue and other ways as well to raise all the issues you are talking about. It is not only by imposing sanctions, which sometimes is the very last resort.

So that (sanctions) is something new for us. Now we have that and I guess we would use that. I am not aware of cases where the sanctions have already been used and already been adopted. I would guess that this will be used in very serious cases. But you will be informed of the first human rights sanctions proposed by the European Union about wrongs of human rights violation from now.

PT: What will be your definition of success at the end of your time as ambassador to Nigeria?

Isopi: You know, it is not easy because the task is very big. There are things you cannot change at all, and that you cannot change in three or four years. If I think about the next priorities, I would say, as we support the electoral process, to help Nigerians to have good elections.

Our role is simply to provide our expertise to the institutions, INEC, the other institutions, civil society to play their role, this is our role  to very much support those Nigerian mechanisms that exist.

If we can help those institutions to fully play their role in the next electoral cycle, that for me will be a success to the country and to the European Union. I think this is very much a priority for us or we can support the country in that regard.

We have been talking about gender issues. To see some of these challenges and some of the commitments that I believe are very much genuine commitments to materialise and to have more convictions for gender-based violence and to have more women in parliament, more girls in school.These are things that I would consider as progress and a successful Nigeria and a success for us.

On a purely bilateral basis, we would like to see our bilateral cooperation to be strong; trade to be strong; I would like to see more European companies coming here to invest, which will be a win-win situation because that will not only bring some European know-how but will create good jobs, respect environment, transfer technology and develop the national industry.

I think that will be something extremely strategic because this is something that can change a lot of things but it is not easy because there are a lot of issues we have to look at together.This is not something you can do in three or four years, but I think increasing the number of European companies in Nigeria will for me, be a huge indicator of success. PT: How do you strike a balance between this sort of partnership and ensuring that there is also respect for human rights. For instance, when there was a coup in Chad, one of the countries that did not condemn it is France and that is perhaps because there is a relationship between both governments. Some will also say it is because of the bilateral relationships between countries that prevent them from condemning such acts. How will the EU ensure a balance between the strategic priorities and respect for democratic norms?Isopi: The European Union is not shy in expressing itself on human rights.

PT: Are you sure of that, ma?

Isopi: Youre talking about Chad, I think the position of the European Union was quite clear.

PT: Actually, no western organisation or group called it a coup when actually it is, of course.

Ms Isopi: Of course it is a coup. When I was ambassador of Italy to Cameroon, I was also attending to Chad, so it is a country that I know relatively well.

I accompanied the president of Cameroon for a visit to Chad in 2017. Theres always a way to be more vocal, but I think the European Union is among Western organisations that are more vocal than others.

And if you look at situations in Africa, we are quite vocal. And now Chad, maybe we did not call it a coup but there were declarations and pressure for some of the things that the government has done.

There were many things that were done because of the pressure from France, maybe you are also looking at the things made public, and also the strong pressure from the European Union.One thing which is important for us, even more important is for African institutions and African countries to speak in all these cases, and we want to see more African governments take their positions on these issues and not only and not always European Union or the West.

PT: Experts believe the EUs role in Libya and the events that followed led to the proliferation of arms, which has contributed largely to security issues in Nigeria today. So the question for the EU on security in Nigeria is how and what role is the EU playing in helping Nigeria tackle its security challenges?

Ms Isopi: We are not a state but a group of states. As a group of states, we do not have an army ourselves. What we do in many countries is to deploy training missions like when I was in the Central Africa Republic, we had a European mission training and developing the army. We did the same in Mali and developing the internal security forces. We do not do this here in Nigeria.

Apart from the Gulf of Guinea where we have developed something new with five to six member states. We developed what we call the coordinated maritime presence, where naval assets of member states coordinate themselves in order to make for a safer Gulf of Guinea.

This is relatively new and it is not a (military) mission, it is not an operational mission but only a deterrent.

What we do in Nigeria mostly since we do not have this military mission is to try to address the root causes, because insecurity always has root causes  poverty, social services, education amongst others.

On the Lake Chad Basin, maybe this is something that people do not know, the multinational joint task force, which is composed of the five countries, is one of the initiatives we support.

Also, what member states (of the EU) do here is part of what we are doing for Nigeria.
The police in Ebonyi State on Sunday confirmed the killing of a member of Ebubeagu Security Network.

Ebubeagu is a security outfit set up by the Ebonyi State Government to help in the fight against insecurity in the state.

The victim, Ifeanyi Orogbo, 32, was killed and his remains partially burnt by the assailants, the police said.

The police spokesperson in Ebonyi State, Loveth Odah, said the incident occurred on Saturday night in Igweledeoha, Amagu, in Ikwo Local Government Area of the state, according to a report by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

The Divisional Police Officer of Ikwo Police Division received a phone call from Igweledeoha informing him about the killing of the Ebubeagu operative, said Ms Odah, a deputy superintendent of police.

He was partially burnt by the unknown persons in his beer parlour shop on Agubia Road.

The DPO said that he quickly mobilised a team of police operatives to the area but the culprits had deserted the place when they got there.

ALSO READ: Police arrest two persons over missing corpse in Ebonyi

He said the corpse has been taken to the General Hospital for preservation and autopsy, the police spokesperson said.

Ms Odah said two suspects have been arrested in connection with the crime.

She said the Commissioner of Police, Garba Aliyu, has expressed dismay over the killing and promised to bring the perpetrators to book.

(NAN)
Leaders of West African countries have rejected the transition announced by the military government in Mali and have decided to impose tough sanctions on the country.

The West African leaders met at a summit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) held in Accra on Sunday.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the military junta in Mali, which took over through a coup last year, announced a five-year transition plan that would see the junta be in power for at least five years.

The ECOWAS leaders rejected the announcement and imposed tough sanctions on Mali including the closure of all land and air borders with the country, recall of ambassadors and freezing of all Malian assets in West African countries.

Details of the resolution were contained in a statement by Laolu Akande, the spokesperson to the Nigerian Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo. Mr Osinbajo represented President Muhammadu Buhari at the event.

Read Mr Akandes full statement below.

ECOWAS COUNTRIES TO SHUT ALL BORDERS AGAINST MALI, RECALL AMBASSADORS, REJECT JUNTAS TRANSITION SCHEDULE

With its latest stand against unconstitutional seizure of power, leaders of member states in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have shown strong resolve and commitment to issues of good governance and democracy in the sub-region, according to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.

Mr Osinbajo stated this on Sunday in Accra, Ghana, where he represented President Muhammadu Buhari at an Extraordinary Summit of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government to discuss the political situation in the Republic of Mali.

At the Summit on Sunday, ECOWAS agreed to impose additional sanctions on the military junta in Mali, withdraw all ECOWAS Ambassadors in the country, and also close land and air borders between ECOWAS Member States and Mali.

The vice president disclosed that there is a strong resolve by ECOWAS Member States to stand against coup detats in the sub-region.

Speaking to journalists after the summit, Mr Osinbajo said: what is being done is unprecedented. In the years gone by, the African Union, then known as OAU and ECOWAS, never came down heavily on Coups detats; but there is evidence now that there is a very strong resolve that ECOWAS and, indeed, AU and the international community will not accept unconstitutional takeover of government.

Continuing, Mr Osinbajo said, its very evident that there is very strong resolve, which is why we are here today. We expect that the actions that will be taken will point the junta in Mali in the right direction.

I think ECOWAS has shown that it has not lost its bite where there are concerns about issues of good governance and democratic enterprises in the sub-region, which is why sanctions against Guinea and Mali were imposed.

After reviewing the situation in Mali at the Extraordinary Summit, the sub-regional leaders rejected the transition schedule proposed by the Malian military junta, noting that the proposed chronogram for a transition is totally unacceptable.

The body also imposed additional sanctions on the junta, including the following:

a) Withdrawal of all ECOWAS Ambassadors in Mali;

b) Closure of land and air borders between ECOWAS countries and Mali;

c) Suspension of all commercial and financial transactions between ECOWAS Member States and Mali, with the exception of the following products: essential consumer goods; pharmaceutical products; medical supplies and equipment, including materials for the control of COVID-19 products, and electricity

d) Freeze of assets of the Republic of Mali in ECOWAS Central Banks;

e) Freeze of assets of the Malian State and the State Enterprises and Parastatals in Commercial Banks

f) Suspension of Mali from all financial assistance and transactions from financial institutions.

The communique also disclosed that the Authority of ECOWAS Heads of State and Government instructs all Community institutions to take steps to implement these sanctions with immediate effect.

It noted that the sanctions will only be gradually lifted after an acceptable and agreed transition chronogram is finalised and monitored-satisfactory progress is realised in the implementation of the chronogram for the elections.

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Regarding Guinea, ECOWAS noted that it remained concerned about the slow progress of the transition process four months after the coup.

According to the communique issued at the end of the meeting, The Authority regrets the absence of chronogram for the election and the non-setting up of the National Council of Transition (CNT). It also directs that a mission be fielded to Conakry to discuss the transition.

Earlier in his remarks at the opening session of the Summit, Chairman of ECOWAS, President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana, praised the commitment and support of West African leaders to the progress and prosperity of the sub-region.

Recalling the efforts of the leaders in resolving the crisis in parts of the sub-region, President Akufo-Addo said, as you did through the entire year of 2021, you continue to demonstrate your commitment to responding to urgent and critical evolving situations in the region.

This is the 6th Extraordinary Summit since I assumed the chair of the Authority that Your Excellencies have participated in concerning the vexed issues of Mali and Guinea. It is a strong testimony to your leadership and concern to the progress of ECOWAS.

Aside from Vice President Osinbajo and the Ghanaian President  who presided at the Summit  other West African leaders present at the Summit were Presidents Macky Sall of Senegal; George Weah of Liberia; Patrice Talon of Benin Republic; Roch Marc Christian Kabore of Burkina Faso, and Alassane Ouattara of Cote dIvoire.

Other Heads of State present include Umaro Embalo of the Republic of Guinea Bissau; Mohamed Bazoum of Niger Republic; Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone, and the Vice President of The Gambia, Isatou Touray.

The session was also attended by former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who is the ECOWAS Mediator for Mali; the President of the ECOWAS Commission, Jean-Claude Kassi Brou; among other representatives of international organisations.

Laolu Akande

Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media & Publicity
The African Union (AU) will mark its 20th anniversary in 2022, and as pressure to perform better increases, the upcoming heads of state summit from February 5 to 6 will be crucial. Following the election of two commissioners in October 2021, the new AU Commission is now fully operational and must show progress on implementing long-running reforms.

The AUs leadership in addressing COVID-19 came into focus again at the end of 2021. After the Omicron variants discovery, travel restrictions inflicted on several Southern African countries saw African governments, activists, and citizens looking to the AU for a response. The continent was being punished for transparency, while Omicron rapidly spread worldwide.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control (Africa CDC), the AU vaccine acquisition task team led by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and the AUs vaccine delivery task team have been applauded for their work. Yet the continent still is not sufficiently vocal and united to speak with one voice against unfair treatment.

Apart from in a select few countries, far too few vaccines are available for Africa. By January 5, only 9.5 per cent of Africans had been vaccinated, according to the Africa CDC. This is expected to be a major theme of the February summit.

A common African position is also needed on the climate debate. The continents foreign affairs ministers stressed the importance of this at the executive council meeting in October 2021. While some progress was made at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow a month later, African states should present a united front at this years November COP in Egypt.

There, the AU needs to change the perception of Africa as a climate change victim. Instead, the focus must be on the continents contribution to cleaner energy by, for example, producing key minerals to spearhead new technology. The rainforests of the Congo Basin and other parts of the continent are also crucial sources of CO emissions needed to reach the global goal of net-zero emissions.

Several conflict flashpoints are also expected to be on the February summit agenda  if not formally then in the corridors, if the meeting doesnt take place virtually. Among the most pressing is the conflict in Ethiopia, which has plunged the host of the AU into crisis and political uncertainty. Mediation by AU envoy, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, has been unsuccessful. Finding a peaceful solution will be a crucial test for the AU.

The rise in unconstitutional changes of government and the threat of terrorism will also probably be discussed. The AUs newly constituted Political Affairs, Peace and Security department needs to show member states what it has achieved and how the AU reform process ultimately serves citizens interests. The controversial decision by AU Commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat to grant observer status to Israel will also be on the agenda.

During the summit, the 15 new members of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) will be elected  five positions for the three-year seats and 10 for the two-year seats. Each of Africas five regions chooses candidates using its preferred methods. Nigeria  the only country thats been a council member uninterruptedly since the PSCs creation  is expected to remain. This complete renewal of members could see the emergence of new dynamics in the continents premier peace and security body.

A final decision is also needed on the AU Peace Fund, which has more than $230 million thanks to contributions by member states. Despite the urgency of achieving peace and security on the continent, there have been delays in establishing modalities and criteria for disbursements. The management of the fund must be resolved.

At the October 2021 executive council meeting, ministers approved an overall AU Commission budget for 2022 of just over $650 million. This comprises $176 million for operations, US$195 million for programmes and $279 million for peace support. International partners are expected to fund 66 per cent of the budget and member states 31 per cent. The remaining 3 per cent will come from the administrative and maintenance reserve funds.

Ministers commended member states for contributing 72 per cent of 2021s regular budget (operations and programmes). This is, however, far from the AUs goal of self-financing its total regular budget and at least 75 per cent of its programme budget, which is still fully funded by partners.

For years, states have been reluctant to name and shame those who do not pay their dues. Now the AU has decided to accept submissions for delays and payment plans to clear arrears. Fourteen countries received cautionary sanctions for not paying at least 50 per cent of their 2021 fees.

As part of the effort to ensure full member state payments, ministers and ambassadors in Addis Ababa are insisting that the AU Commission and AU organs eradicate corruption and irregular expenditure. For example, before receiving new funds, AU organs will have to show that recommendations of previous audit reports have been taken on board.

The AU theme for 2022 is Building resilience in nutrition on the African continent: Accelerate the human capital, social and economic development. This expands on previous AU decisions such as those establishing an African task force on food and nutritional development and an Africa regional nutrition strategy (2016 to 2025).

Across the continent, the COVID-19 pandemic has compounded an already dire situation of food insecurity and malnutrition. While child mortality rates in Africa dropped dramatically from 106 per 1 000 births in 1990 to 51.7 in 2019, undernutrition is still a major cause of child death.

The AU, chaired by Senegal this year, can use its 2022 theme to emphasise the importance of linking agricultural production and food security to health and nutrition. In doing so, its crucial that efforts by other continental bodies are not duplicated and that this statement of intent goes beyond mere meetings and events.

PSC Report, Institute for Security Studies

(This article was first published by ISS Today, a Premium Times syndication partner. We have their permission to republish).
A former governor of Kano State, Rabiu Kwankwaso, has argued against the call for zoning the 2023 presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the Southern part of Nigeria.

Mr Kwankwaso made his position known in an interview with Channels Television on Sunday night where he also spoke about several political concerns ahead of the 2023 general elections.

In his argument, the two-term governor of Kano State condemned the insistence of the Southern Governors Forum in July 2021 that the next president of the country must come from their region rather than what is best.

He considered the call by the governors and other leaders as an attempt to intimidate the northern region into relinquishing its right to contest the seat.

Mr Kwankwaso said the decision to contest should be based on strategy rather than mere clamour or sentiments.

With reference to former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan, Mr Kwankwaso, who is eyeing the 2023 presidential ticket of the PDP, said the party had produced more southern presidents than the north.

You see many people are mixing what ordinarily shouldnt come together at all. We have PDP, we have APC, we have APGA and we have many other parties today in this country. And the issue of where a party put his presidency or vice presidency is a matter of strategy.

If you look at it from 1999, to date, or even after 2023, we have 16 years for PDP, eight years for APC. Now, in the 16 years of PDP, we had a situation where the presidency has been in the south for 14 years and only in the north for two years during the Umaru Musa YarAdua of blessed memory.

Now we see some people, maybe because they dont understand politics or they want to be mischievous, they keep on mixing the two issues of two political parties together. This PDP and APC are contestants in this game, he said.

As it stands, neither the APC nor PDP has announced the zoning of its presidential ticket for next years election.

The reluctance of the two major parties in the country to do so has provoked speculations that they may throw the ticket open to all aspirants.

Speaking on speculations of his possible defection from PDP to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Kwankwaso debunked the rumour and reiterated his commitment to ensure victory for his party in the 2023 polls.

In his explanation, he traced the genesis of the speculation to leave the PDP to the treatment meted out on him and his supporters during the partys congress in Kaduna in 2021.

As we speak, there is no plan for me to leave the PDP, to join APC, or any other party.

Of course, there were issues which are very clear to almost everybody; that we had congress in April last year in Kaduna, which I felt and many of my supporters in the North-west and even beyond felt that I was not being treated well and Kano was not being treated the way it should be.

And therefore, I believe that was the beginning of those issues to the extent that people thought because of that, we would leave the PDP for APC or any other party, he said, while noting the reconciliatory efforts of the party leaders.

Allies turned rivals

When asked about his feud with Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, who was his deputy while in office, Mr Kwankwaso maintained a neutral tone.

However, without stating the real cause of their prolonged differences, Mr Kwankwaso chronicled his contributions to Mr Gandujes political growth.

He said Mr Ganduje never visited him since he assumed office as governor in 2015 until last December.

The governor, in December 2021, visited Mr Kwankwaso at his Bompai residence in Kano, over the death of his brother, Inuwa Kwankwaso.

The duo had worked together for years before falling out in 2015.

Mr Ganduje had served as Mr Kwankwasos deputy during his first and second terms in office. He also worked as a Special Adviser to the former governor when he was appointed as Minister of Defence in ex-President Olusegun Obasanjos government.

As a sitting PDP governor, Mr Kwankwaso had joined the APC in 2014 and contested for the partys presidential ticket in 2015 but lost to Mr Buhari.

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He returned to PDP in 2018 and contested in its presidential primaries which he also lost to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
The Lagos State Government has denied the report of a threat to seal up schools that failed to resume on January 4 as directed, saying it would rather deploy dialogue than force.

The Office of Education Quality Assurance (OEQA) unit of the states ministry of education, in a statement issued on Sunday, said 640 schools out of 720 visited by its inspectors complied with the directive.

According to the statement, which was signed by the spokesperson for the office, Emmanuel Olaniran, and a copy of which was obtained by PREMIUM TIMES, the official noted that the percentage of those who complied with the directive stands at 89 per cent.

The OEQA director general, Abiola Seriki-Ayeni, commended the schools that complied with the directive, saying the measure was simply aimed at regulating the states school calendar and recovering the lost ground that was occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic.

She said only 80 schools of the 720 visited could not reopen as instructed, adding that clamping down on them would be counter-productive to learning.

Rather than that, the OEQA only issued letters and placed stickers of non-compliance on the gates of schools that disobeyed the directive, the statement said.

Collaboration

The director general, who said the directive for public and private schools to maintain a uniform calendar was not new, noted that it had been the tradition for many years.

She said the renewed enforcement was imperative because of the interruptions to school calendar occasioned by COVID-19 and the accompanying lockdowns.

Mrs Seriki-Ayeni also clarified that in June 2021, there were meetings between representatives of the government, private school proprietors, private school associations, and other relevant education stakeholders where it was agreed that the January 4 date would be adhered to.

The OEQA boss implored public and private school administrators to work with families to ensure that children are in school and start the new term on a sound note.

Just like we have always done in the past, the state government expects compliance and will continue to dialogue with all schools on matters relating to the progress of education in the State, Mrs Seriki-Ayeni said.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has showered encomium on the Chairperson of its Governors Forum, Aminu Tambuwal, on the occasion of his birthday anniversary.

Mr Tambuwal, who is the governor of Sokoto State, on Monday, clocked 56 years, an opportunity the party again explored to recognise his contributions so far.

In a statement signed by its spokesperson, Debo Ologunagba, the PDP described Mr Tambuwal as a very humble, versatile and dynamic leader who has played a significant role in the unity of Nigeria and the stability of the party.

Governor Tambuwal is an outstanding nationalist and courageous democrat who over the years, as Speaker of the House of Representatives and now two-term state governor, continues to play key roles towards the unity, peaceful co-existence and development of our dear nation.

As the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Governor Tambuwal with excellent political dexterity, deepened our democratic practice for more transparent and productive governance by reinforcing the principle of separation of powers as well as asserting the independence of the legislature as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution (as amended).

As Governor, Rt. Hon. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal continues to display a remarkable commitment towards the wellbeing of his people as evident in his developmental projects in critical sectors including education, healthcare, agriculture, infrastructure and urban and rural development among others, the party said.

Mr Tambuwal is believed to be one of those jostling for the partys presidential ticket in the 2023 poll.

The two-term governor of Sokoto and 10th Speaker of Nigerias House of Representatives came a distant second to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar in the 2018 PDP primaries in Portharcourt, Rivers State.
In 2021, Nigeria lost no fewer than 102 persons to Lassa fever even as the country grappled with the rampaging COVID-19 pandemic.

This has indicated as much as about a 120 per cent drop from the 244 deaths recorded from the viral disease in 2020, according to the latest weekly situation report on Lassa fever by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).

The data, published on Sunday by the disease centre, revealed that as of Week 52, spanning December 27- January 2, there had been a decline in Lassa fever infections reported yearly.

According to the report, which ended the epidemiological cycle for 2021, Nigeria in the year recorded a total of 4,654 suspected cases out of which 510 were confirmed. The cases were reported in 17 states and 58 local governments.

Meanwhile, in 2020 Nigeria recorded a total of 6,732 suspected cases of Lassa fever with a total of 1,181 infections in 27 states and 131 local governments, the NCDC data revealed.

This indicated that there was an almost 50 per cent decline in suspected cases and about 115 per cent decrease in confirmed infections when the 2021 data is compared with that of 2020.

Health experts attributed the disparity in figure of 2021 and 2020 to two factors: the huge challenge posed by the COVID-19 war in its first year, which drew attention away from the usual reaction to Lassa fever and the confusion by patients as to whether they were dealing with COVID-19 or Lassa fever.

Breakdown

According to NCDC figures, in the reporting week 52 ,the number of new confirmed cases decreased from 29 in week 51, 2021 to 28 cases. These were reported from Ondo, Edo, Bauchi, Kaduna, Taraba States and the FCT.

Cumulatively, from week 1 to week 52, 2021, 102 deaths were reported with a case fatality rate (CFR) of 20.0 per cent which is lower than the CFR for the same period in 2020 (20.7 per cent).

In total for 2021, 17 states recorded, at least, one confirmed case across 68 local government areas.

Of all the confirmed cases, 84 per cent were from three states with Edo State contributing 42 per cent; Ondo (34 per cent) and Bauchi (eight per cent).

The predominant age-group affected was 21-30 years with the male to female ratio for confirmed cases put at 1:0.9.

The number of suspected cases decreased compared to that reported for the same period in 2020.

No new healthcare workers were affected in the reporting week 52.

Lassa fever

Lassa fever is a severe viral hemorrhagic disease that was first reported in 1969 in an American missionary nurse who worked in Lassa town in Borno State of Nigeria.

It includes a spectrum of illness which could be mild, severe or even fatal in some cases. Nigeria has since 1969 recorded repeated outbreaks of the disease.

Lassa fever is transmitted from the excreta or urine of the multimammate rat. Anyone who is suspected of being in contact with a Lassa patient needs to be presented to health facilities within a period of 21 days.

Signs and symptoms

The early stages of Lassa fever present symptoms similar to febrile illness such as malaria.

Symptoms of the disease generally include fever, headache, sore throat, general body weakness, cough, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, muscle pains, chest pain, and in severe cases, unexplainable bleeding from ears, eyes, nose, mouth, vagina, anus and other body orifices. It could also present persistent bleeding from sites of intravenous cannulation.

Early diagnosis and treatment increase a patients chances of survival.

Lassa fever is said to spread through direct contact with urine, faeces, saliva or blood of infected rodents; ingesting food and drinks contaminated with urine, faeces, saliva or blood of infected rats; contact with objects, household items or surfaces contaminated with urine, faeces, saliva or blood of infected rats, and person-to-person transmission can also occur through contact with blood, urine, faeces, vomitus and other body fluids of an infected person, particularly in an environment where infection prevention and control practices are not optimal.
Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State says some individuals misinterpreted his delay in visiting the family of the late Oyewumi Ajagungbade, the Soun of Ogbomosoland.

Mr Makinde made the clarification on Monday when he led his cabinet members to the palace of Soun of Ogbomosoland on an official condolence visit to the family and people of Ogbomoso.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that Mr Ajagungbade joined his ancestors on December 12 at the age of 95 years and was buried same day according to Islamic rites.

Mr Makinde said his late visit to the palace was not a sign that he does not like Ogbomoso people.

The truth is that all those people that misinterpreted my delay visit doesnt know how close I was to the palace.

The initial arrangement was that we would attend the eight day Fidau since I couldnt come the exact date that baba died.

But, I was later informed that the eight fidau was not appropriate for the type of burial that Soun deserved.

So, I was told that we should take a bit more time and suspend it to be 40 days Fidau and outing.

And one thing after the other, I had to travel, but Im here today, he said.

Mr Makinde said the late first class traditional ruler deserved state burial, adding that his government would accord it to the late traditional ruler.

The governor said his coming to the palace was to have discussion with the late traditional rulers family on the planned state burial.

Officially, on behalf of the Government and people of Oyo State, I condole with the family and the people of Ogbomosoland over the demise of Oba Oyewumi.

Baba used the position of Soun very well for the development of Ogbomosoland and Oyo State in general.

He was a firm personality who never hid his feelings, but always speaking the truth; his demise is a celebration of a fulfilled and impactful life.

So, we will miss baba for those qualities, he said.

Mr Makinde further prayed that the good dreams the late traditional ruler had for Ogbomosoland would come to reality.

He also condoled with the family over the recent death of Taibat Danmole, the first child of Oba Oyewumi, who died at the age of 71.

Speaking on behalf of the family, Aderemi Oyewumi, appreciated the governor for the visit.

Mr Oyewumi urged the governor to expedite action on the process of installing another king in Ogbomosoland.

He said that it would not be good for the vacuum to be too long.

Mr Oyewumi advised the governor not to play politics with the the issue of who becomes the next Soun of Ogbomosoland.

According to him, the next Soun should be someone that would bring development to Ogbomosoland.

He should not be person that will bring retrogression to all the developments initiated by the late Soun, but somebody that can keep the legacy going forward, Mr Oyewumi said.

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He described the governor as the ultimate consentium authority who has vital role to play in the selection of the next Soun.

Mr Oyewumi also thanked Mr Makinde for resolving the issue of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso, now solely owned by Oyo State.

(NAN)
Governor Dapo Abiodun on Monday signed the controversial Ogun State Chieftaincy Bill into law.

The bill titled Obas, Chiefs, Council of Obas and Traditional Council law of Ogun State, Bill 2021, is aimed at respecting human dignity and promotion of modernity in the installation and burial of traditional rulers.

The law is also aimed at curbing fetish practices in the process of installing and burying traditional rulers in the state.

While the Muslim community described the bill as a welcome development, traditionalists in the state kicked against the move, describing it as tactics of an influential monarch in the state to dabble into tradition and rearrange it to suit his personal interest.

On July 14, 2021, traditionalists clad in white attires stormed the states house of assembly to protest the passage of the bill.

The bill was initiated by the 87-year-old Awujale and paramount ruler of Ijebu-land, Sikirulahi Adetona, in June 2020.

The bill suffered set back before it was readjusted in 2021 and finally signed into law today.

On Monday, Mr Abiodun took the bill to the aged monarchs private residence in Ijebu Ode GRA to assent to the bill.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Mr Abiodun said, The traditional institution is the oldest form of administration and a very dependable and reliable one at that.

This law was promoted by Kabiyesi, the Awujale during his tenure as the Chairman of the Ogun State Traditional Council.

I believe that one of the unique things about this law, besides the fact that it spells out a method of selection Obas and chiefs, is a clarity that this law now provides as it relates to the passage rites of our Kabiyesis (monarchs).

Explaining the details of the bill, the governor stressed that, This law seeks to improve on previously existing Western region laws or where there had been ambiguity as it relates to how our Kabiyesis will be buried, henceforth, this law now empowers the families to determine how our Kabiyesis will be interred, will be buried.

Of course without prejudice to traditional rites that is meant to be performed by the customary, but it clarifies and removes any ambiguity about the fact that the families of our Kabiyesis (monarch) now have a say in how they want our royal fathers to be buried and I think this is very laudable.

Mr Abiodun also thanked both the Awujale and members of the state Assembly saying their insistence made the bill a reality.

I want to again thank Kabiyesi Awujale because he was very persistent and insistent to ensure that we review the existing law in consonance with the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Like the speaker said, this bill before it became law went through a very rigourous exercise. It was subjected to inputs from the public, there was a public seating and I understand that public seating drew more attention than any public seating that the Assembly has had in the recent times because of the interest our people had in how our Chiefs and Obas will be appointed and how our Kabiyesis will be interred on their eventual passage.

I know that they must have been under a lot of pressure but the leadership of the House stood their ground for what is right, what is just, what makes sense, for what is modern and what is in line with the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Reacting, Mr Adetona appreciated the governor, saying the signing of the bill is an approval of Mr Abioduns second term in office.
The imprisoned Iranian writer and filmmaker, Baktash Abtin, has died in a Tehran hospital days after contracting COVID-19 in detention.

Mr Abtin was transferred to a hospital in the capital Tehran but the treatment did not succeed and he died, Al Jazeera network quoted the semi-official ISNA news agency as saying on Saturday.

The network reported that the 48-year-old was transferred to a hospital from the Evin Prison in mid-December and was placed in a medically induced coma a week before his death on Saturday in an attempt to help him recover from a severe case of the coronavirus.

Rights groups said authorities wasted time in offering him medical assistance when he first started showing symptoms of the disease more than a month ago.

Our worst fears materialized today, as we mourn the utterly preventable death of Baktash Abtin, PEN America, a human rights group, said in a statement.

COVID is a natural killer, but Abtins death was aided and abetted by the Iranian government every step of the way.

The organisation said Tehrans Evin prison was a perpetual super-spreader event, making his unjust imprisonment since September of last year an effective death sentence.

Abtin was denied medical treatment, his comorbidities were ignored and at times he was shackled to his bed, the statement read.

On Friday, a day before his death, PEN America and 18 other non-governmental organisations had asked Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to provide him with the best medical care, and to also refrain from summoning political prisoners to serve sentences while conditions in Iranian prisons are unsafe.

Unfortunately, mistreatment of prisoners and denial of medical care is a systemic problem in Iranian prisons.

It is high time the Iranian state respects the free expression rights of Iranian writers, poets, and thinkers and recognises the rich traditions of Irans diverse literary community, said the letter, posted on the website of Human Rights Watch.

Iran, however, denies any mistreatment saying Mr Abtin was granted furlough 35 days ago to be moved to a private hospital by his relatives, state media reported.

The organisation in charge of the prisons said the writer was serving a five-year sentence for propaganda against national security.

It said he was in the hospital for 35 days, during which time judicial officials decided to grant him temporary reprieve from prison, but the doctors were unable to save him.

Tens of thousands of posts about Abtin flooded Twitter and other social media platforms within hours of his death.

One image accompanying the many posts shows his ankles chained to a hospital bed as he is reading in a blue prison uniform. Another shows him in a coma, with breathing tubes and other equipment keeping him alive.

Dying in chains in jail is brutal. Health complications are the major cause that the Iranian regime is using to let their most important & valuable opponents die, said Mustafa, Albanian journalist, and activist.

They deprive them of necessary care & use the sickness as a weapon. The inadvertent sickness becomes a mask for execution, he posted on Twitter.
After nearly a year of hearings, including five months in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the ground-breaking trial of Gibril Massaquoi, a Sierra Leonean rebel charged with committing war crimes in Liberia, looks set to end this month. From there the fate of the 51-year-old former commander of the Revolutionary United Front will be in the hands of four judges of the District Court of Tampere, Finlands second largest city.

Since the trial resumed in Tampere in October, after a second, unexpected set of hearings in Liberia, there have been just four sessions. The prosecution and defense teams have wrestled with new evidence, including notes, Finnish police say were illegally obtained, from an interrogator of the United Nations-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone after the interrogation of a Liberian witness who has accused Massaquoi of torturing him.

The court has also sought to have two key officials from the Special Court appear. Alan White, the former Chief Investigator of the Special Court, and Saleem Vahidy, the former chief of the courts Witness and Victims Unit, are seen as key to answering a central, explosive question of this trial: did Massaquoi escape the Special Court witness protection program in Sierra Leone where he was giving evidence against Liberian President Charles Taylor and others about their crimes in Sierra Leone, to travel to Liberia between June and August 2003 to commit war crimes on behalf of Taylor?

After months of negotiations, both men have declined to appear according to Presiding Judge Juhani Paiho. White was not willing to testify said the judge by email and Vahidy is not able to testify due to personal reasons not related to the case.

The idea the Special Court would have a protection system in place that allowed their star witness to leave the safehouse to travel to Liberia at the risk murder by Taylor (who, according to testimony in the trial had already killed others he suspected of informing to the Special Court, including RUF general Sam Bockarie) or to inform Taylor what was happening inside the investigations, would seem preposterous.

Massaquoi took the stand himself to tell the court as much. Under questioning by defense lawyer Kaarle Gummerus, Massaquoi systematically rejected the prosecutions accusations.

No one in their right mind would do something that the prosecutor and the witness has said, Massaquoi told the court. It does not make sense.

A Finnish researcher, who has appeared in the trial previously, returned to repeat his assertions that travel on main routes between Monrovia and Freetown at that time would have been nearly impossible because of the heavy presence of LURD, the opposing rebel group that would go on to overwhelm Taylors forces and force the president into exile in August.

And yet dozens of Liberian witnesses in the Liberia hearings were adamant that they had seen Massaquoi, whom they knew by the name Angel Gabriel, murdering civilians and directing the murder, rape and torture of civilians in Bo Waterside in Monrovia and in villages in Lofa County between June and August 2003 as the forces of the LURD rebel movement closed in on President Taylors last strongholds.

In earlier testimony former Massaquoi allies had described the Special Court security as lax, saying people came and went from the safe houses where Massaquoi and his family were held. In the final hearing of 2021 the court heard from a former guard of the safe houses in which Massaquoi and his family lived from 2004 until they were relocated to Finland in 2008 in a widely criticized immunity deal with the Special Court. The witness, whose identity is being withheld by the court for his security, did not guard Massaquoi during the 2003 period in question. He described a witness protection program that gave Massaquoi surprising freedom given his admissions of violence, the threats to his life and the importance of his testimony. He testified that the security would not have been any better during the June to August 2003 period in question.

New Narratives was unable to travel to the court because of Covid restrictions but relied on court transcripts provided by Civitas Maxima, the Swiss-based justice advocates that helped gather evidence for the investigation of Massaquoi that are regarded as accurate by court watchers. They record the witness saying Massaquoi was protected by just one guard, who was not armed, in the first years of his detention which began in March 2003. Only later, after an attack on the safehouse that the witness believed was staged, did the Special Court move Massaquoi and his family to a more secure house and assign an armed guard around the clock.

[Special Court] knows that the safe house was not protected well enough, the witness said.

Under prosecution questioning the former guard said there was definitely a possibility for Massaquoi to leave the houses that the witness guarded without the protection officers knowing.

Prosecutor Laitinen: How did Massaquoi have the possibility to leave without the security coming aware of it?

Witness: Sometimes the protection officer was present, sometimes not.

Laitinen: How did you make sure that whether Massaquoi was present in the Kington safe house or not?

Witness: When he came downstairs, or I went upstairs. There were no cameras in the safe house and no device on Massaquoi to monitor if he went out or not.

Laitinen: Did Massaqoui have an obligation to let you know that he was there?

Witness: No. We have a notebook in which we sign when a protection officer comes to work.

Laitinen: Was Massaquoi able to leave the safe house  just by notifying you so that you were aware that he leaves?

Witness: Yes, if he notified that he wanted to go somewhere he was picked up.

Laitinen: So he did not leave alone but with another protection officer?

Witness: He might have been there or might have not. We did not have a device to monitor him.

The witness told the court that Saleem Vahidy, the Witness Unit chief, was ultimately responsible for loopholes in the safe house.

The courts finding on that matter could have much bigger implications for international justice and the Special Court.

If new evidence determines that, though Massaquoi was a high-profile witness, his protection was porousthe next question would be, how widespread was this practice? asked Aaron Weah, an expert on transitional justice in Liberia and Sierra Leone when this question first arose in hearings last year.

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If the court finds that Massaquois witness protection scheme was violated on the watch of the Special Court monitoring, it raises a much bigger questions about the Courts integrity and how it impacted on certain outcomes.

The Special Court convicted nine men of crimes against humanity, war crimes and/or violations of international law for their roles in Sierra Leones civil war. They included former Liberian President Charles Taylor who is serving a 50-year prison term in the United Kingdom. Several others are serving sentences in excess of 50 years in Rwanda.

The courts return visit to Liberia in August 2021 came after prosecutors amended the dates of the indictment to include the June to August 2003 period once it became clear that dozens of Liberian witnesses were adamant that Angel Gabriel whom the prosecution allege is Massaquoi, had directed atrocities on Taylors behalf in the Waterside area of Monrovia as the then-President was defending the city against the advancing forces of the LURD rebel group that eventually drove Taylor into exile in August.

ALSO READ: Massaquoi lawyer confident of acquittal in war crimes trial

The role of Special Court Chief Investigator Alan White, already under a cloud over the question of Massaquois escape from the safe house, became even more murky after three witnesses came forward to accuse Hassan Bility, head of the Global Justice Research Project and a key player in gathering evidence to support the Finnish prosecutions case, of offering them bribes to testify against Massaquoi and two other alleged war criminals facing prosecution in international jurisdictions. Bility strongly rejected the accusations and Milton Blahyi, another former warlord whom the witness alleged was also offered bribes, denied he had ever met Bility, let alone been offered a bribe.

Bility has been such a key figure in the convictions of war criminals in the United States and Switzerland and in ongoing cases in Europe and the United States, that prosecutors there became alarmed that the accusations could taint their cases. But Whites actions came into question again when all three witnesses admitted that the American, who is based in Texas, had called them before they testified to discuss the case.

Another controversial element in these hearings was the defense teams submission of notes taken by a Special Court interrogator of his interrogation of a key Liberian witness during the investigations of the Special Court. The Finnish police and prosecutors strongly opposed the admission of the notes which they said had been obtained illegally. Interrogation notes are not publicly available or admissible as evidence and were seen only by a small group of key Special Court officials. The defense did not divulge who provided it to them.

The judges allowed the document as evidence and defense lawyer Gummerus used it to question the credibility of the witness (identity concealed) who had a key role in implicating Massaquoi and in gathering evidence for the case against him. In earlier testimony the witness had told the court that Massaquoi had tortured him at Taylors direction. But the interrogator in these notes said the witness had said that a woman had tortured him as Massaquoi looked on.

The court heard the following passage from the document:

About an hour later, Taylor stopped. If he wouldnt stop, Taylor would give him to someone else who could get him to talk. He invited someone else. A person and his/her husband seriously tortured the witness by using electric shocks to his testicles. He was also hit with a stick. He was held captive for six months. He was transferred to 13 different prisons, especially a place called Clays. He was tortured several times.

Prosecutor Tom Laitinen rejected Gummeruss assertion, underscoring that these were the notes taken by the interrogator only and were not signed by the witness. Laitinen also argued that, given the focus of the interrogation was Taylor and not Massaquoi, it was not reasonable to rely on this evidence in Massaquois case. He also said this was just one of more than fifty torture and interrogations endured by the witness.

The case resumes on Monday but, with the refusal of the Special Court officials to appear, it is not clear there will be any more witnesses. If that is the case, the court will move to final statements before the judges begin their deliberations.

This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Reporting Project.
The National Security Adviser (NSA), Babagana Mongono, has said the appointment of the Director General of National Intelligence Agency (NIA) is exclusively the prerogative of President Muhammudu Buhari as the commander-in-chief of armed forces.

The NSA stated this on Thursday in a statement by Zakari Usman, Head, Strategic Communication, in response to a petition by some former directors of the NIA.

The former directors had alleged in the petition that the DG of the agency, Ahmed Abubakar, failed various exams but was still appointed as head of the agency.

In his response, the NSA said Mr Abubakar never failed any promotion examination and that he had constantly been an outstanding officer contrary to allegations that he lied to get his appointment.

He described the former directors as unnamed persons who lied and misled the National Assembly, adding that the office of the NSA was satisfied with the level of consultations between the two offices.

Read full statement:

APPOINTMENT OF NIA DG, EXCLUSIVE PREROGATIVE OF THE PRESIDENT AND COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF

ABUJA , FCT, 7 JANUARY, 2022 The attention of the Office of the National Security Adviser has been drawn to recent reports in the social media credited to some unnamed former directors of the National Intelligence Agency over the appointment of the Agencys Director General.

To set the record straight, by the provisions of the Instrument establishing the Agency under the National Security Agencies Act 1986 ( Cap 278 LFN), the appointment and tenure of the Director General of the National Intelligence Agency is the exclusive prerogative of the President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The appointment of the Director General of the National Intelligence Agency was made in full compliance with the relevant law.

Reported speculations by the unnamed former directors that the National Security Adviser had told the National Assembly that he was unaware of the Director Generals appointment in 2018 is false. This office wishes to note that a Federal High Court presided over by Justice Okon Abang has already dismissed a suit challenging the appointment of the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency.

The general public and indeed all stakeholders in the Security and Intelligence sector are advised to disregard the unfortunate falsehood being peddled by these shadowy groups.

Furthermore, groups and individuals who use pseudonyms to issue false claims are cautioned against violating the secrecy upon which the Intelligence Community functions. Appropriate action is being taken to unmask them and bring them to justice

The intelligence Community is pleased with the work of the Director General, Ambassador Ahmed Rufai Abubakar since his appointment. The National Security Adviser is equally satisfied with the level of consultations between his office and the Director General in achieving the functions of the National Intelligence Agency. Contrary to these false claims Ambassador Abubakar never failed a promotion exam and has consistently been an outstanding officer.

SIGNED:

ZAKARI USMAN

HEAD, STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION

OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER
Some witnesses have narrated how herdsmen attacked a community in Ondo State on the night of January 6, killing at least three people and razing several buildings.

Felix Olabode, the Akarigbo of Ute Land, said he was at home when the attack happened.

We came here immediately and we met a dead body. These buildings have not been razed, he said.

When we alerted the police, the DPO came and we didnt know that those people were still around. Not less than 30 minutes after the police evacuated the dead, the gunmen came back and razed these buildings.

They always use guns to scare people away here and then brought their cows to graze on peoples farm and drink water.

When they are leaving too, they also use guns to scare people away and leave. We have seen the level of damage here. People have left here. We are begging the government to come to our rescue.

The Coordinator of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) in the area, Folorunso Olofe, disclosed that the gunmen were always attacking with AK-47.

This has been happening for long. They are always coming with AK-47. They were more than 50. One Amotekun officer was hit with a bullet during the attack. They came and killed the Baale. Police came and evacuated the dead and not up to 15 minutes, they came back and razed this place, he said.

According to the villagers, the gunmen attacked the community following the refusal of the residents to allow the herdsmen to graze on their farms.

Governor visits

Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu on Sunday visited Omolege Junction, near Ute where the attack happened..

The governors visit is contained in a statement made available on Sunday in Akure by Richard Olatunde his Chief Press Secretary.

Mr Akeredolu, who commiserated with the people over the incident, particularly the death of community head, said no government would be happy with the killings of its people.

The governor visited the scene in company of the state Commissioner of Police, Oyediran Oyeyemi; Commander of Amotekun Corps, Tunji Adeleye; and some members of the State Executive Council.

Mr Akeredolu, while describing the attack on the community as unfortunate, vowed that concerted efforts would be made to ensure that such attack did not reoccur in the state.

I commiserate with you on the death of your loved ones. May their souls rest in peace. No government will be happy with this kind of development.

You have to be prepared. These herdsmen are becoming too problematic. We are not sleeping. You can see the police and Amotekun here. With this one they have done, we will ensure that it is their last evil act here.

Those behind this are criminals. Those supporting them are all criminals too. Anyone who commits crime will answer for it. The police and Amotekun, with other security agencies, will set out and bring them to justice. We will treat them as criminals.

Both the police and Amotekun have briefed me that they were being shot at. But for their boldness and courage, the criminals would have overwhelmed them.

I want to assure you, dont be scared. We are still on their track. They have ran to Edo now. But for the houses that were raised down, government will bring relieve materials. We will rebuild the ones that were razed completely.

(NAN)
Troops operating in some parts of Kaduna State have foiled an attack and also neutralised five terrorists in Kwanan Bataro, Giwa Local government area of the state.

The states Commissioner for Internal Security and Homeland Affairs, Samuel Aruwan, in a statement on Monday said the government was informed of the troops activities by the military authorities.

The statement noted that according to the operational feedback, the troops who were conducting clearance patrols in Giwa LGA received credible intelligence of terrorists movement towards Fatika town.

Mr Aruwan said the troops then mobilised to Marke and Ruheya in response to the attack.

 The outlaws were sighted and attempted to escape the advancing forces. The troops however cut off their escape route at Kwanan Bataro, and engaged them in a firefight, during which five of the terrorists were neutralized. The troops returned to base after clearing the area, the statement read.

Mr Aruwan said Governor Nasir El-Rufai expressed satisfaction at the operational feedback and commended the troops for their proactive and sharp response to the intelligence received, saying he encouraged them to keep up the intensity in the ongoing offensives against terrorists in the area.

 Security forces are sustaining monitoring and patrols in the general area.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the Kaduna Government confirmed on December 19, 2021 that at least 20 people were killed in an attack in the same Giwa Local Government Area.

The commissioner said the December 19 attacks left more than 20 people dead.

He said houses, trucks, and cars were also burnt, along with agricultural produce at various farms by the rampaging killers.

Kaduna is one of the North-west states most affected by banditry where terror groups kill and kidnap residents at will.

Other states affected by such attacks are Katsina, Sokoto and Zamfara as well as Niger in the North-central region.
Apart from security, there may be no other sector of Nigerias national economy that has been hard hit in the past two years than the health sector.

Nigeria started 2021 with the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, recording over a thousand cases on the first day of the year.

With the second wave having spread virulently, particularly during those first three weeks of January 2021, the spike in infections fed through into fatalities as hospitals and isolation centres increasingly became overwhelmed.

Infections had jumped more than six fold from December 2020, forcing the government to reopen isolation centres that closed as the disease appeared to have ebbed.

Unlike its initial clumsy and snail-paced response to the outbreak of the pandemic in early 2020, the Nigerian government through the presidential steering committee, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) as well as agencies in some of the sub-national units, took numerous urgent steps and activated various policies geared towards the containment of the contagion.

But some of the policy responses have weaknesses and, taken together, are not commensurate with the magnitude of the problem, health experts say.

Although daily infections reduced as from early March when Nigeria flagged off its vaccination campaign, the outbreak regained momentum in early July with the discovery of the Delta variant. In August, the nation announced it had drifted into the third wave of the disease, with a spike in cases of Delta variant.

The NCDC announced the fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria on December 20, 2021. It said the country recorded a 500 per cent increase in the number of confirmed cases within two weeks.

The Director-General of NCDC, Ifedayo Adefila, in a statement noted that the rise in infections has been linked to both the Delta and the recently discovered Omicron variants of the rampaging virus.

Nigeria on December 22 recorded its highest daily infection figure of 4,035 since the outbreak started just 24 hours after more than 2,000 cases were reported. The development simply indicated how fast the fourth wave was spreading.

Beyond COVID-19

Nigeria, in 2021, had an unprecedented spate of deaths from infectious diseases as more focus was channelled towards tackling coronavirus.

In fact, cholera alone claimed more lives in Nigeria than the dreaded coronavirus pandemic in 2021.

NCDC director, Mr Adetifa, in an interview during a TV program in December, said the country recorded a little more than 3,600 deaths from cholera in 11 months in 2021 while the total fatalities recorded from coronavirus since 2020 when the index case was recorded still stands at 3,045 as of January 4, 2022.

Aside COVID-19 and cholera, suspected cases of Yellow fever and Lassa fever also claimed people across the country. For instance, the latest data from the disease centre indicates that 92 persons died of Lassa Fever in 2021, with states such as Ondo and Edo States accounting for most of the cases.

Doctors strike

Industrial crisis is a common occurrence within Nigerias health and education sectors, and 2021 was not different for the nations healthcare providers.

The prolonged strike action embarked upon by the National Association of Resident Doctors, NARD, in August, which lasted 63 days, was another major development that threatened the progress recorded in the fight against the pandemic during the year.

It was the fourth and longest industrial action by doctors since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

The complaints of the striking doctors include poor remuneration and poor working conditions.

NARD first protested against the delayed payment of salaries and allowances, the non-implementation of life insurance for doctors treating patients with COVID-19; non-funding of their residency programme, hazard allowances and some other unpaid arrears before finally embarking on the strike action.

During this period, the government of Nigeria activated the no work no pay policy after failing in its attempts to reach an agreement with the NARD. Not even the decision to approach the National Industrial Court helped to resolve the crisis.

Brain drain

While the disagreement between the doctors and the government was still lingering, many health workers heeded the call by the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to migrate to the Arabian land for greener pastures.

Saudi Arabia, in partnership with some recruitment consultants, in August, ran a recruitment exercise in Nigeria.

In a widely circulated Important Notice in the media, the Saudi Arabian authorities, declared, There will be an interview session with the Ministry of Health delegates, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for consultants and specialists in all specialities, slated for 24th August 2021 at Sheraton Hotel, Abuja. Earlier, it had held the Lagos leg of the exercise without much fuss.

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The recruitment exercise saw Nigerian doctors trooping in their hundreds for the opportunity.

It was not the first time authorities of foreign countries would enter Nigeria to hunt for medical professionals.

Aside Saudi Arabia, Nigerian doctors have been migrating to the U.S., Canada, the UK, India and many other nations across the globe.

It is estimated that at least 12 Nigerian doctors leave the shores of this country to practise overseas, weekly.

Sadly, the Nigerian government, on the other hand, has kept downplaying the crisis of brain drain in the country.

The Minister of Labour, Chris Ngige, in 2019 had controversially claimed the country had enough medical doctors to attend to the needs of Nigerians but did not provide any evidence to back his claims.

Meanwhile, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has revealed that Nigeria currently has one doctor for every 7,690 patients.

This is a far cry from the recommendation of the United Nations and the WHO of one doctor to 600 patients.

Consequently, the spate of medical tourism which reduced due to lockdowns and flight restrictions in 2020 resumed in 2021.

President Muhammadu Buhari during the year resumed his frequent visit to the UK for medical care.

Other key highlights

One of the key moments of 2021 in the health sector was the appointment of Mr Adetifa to replace Chikwe Ihekweazu as the the head of the NCDC following the appointment of the latter as an assistant director-general of the global health body- WHO.

As NCDC director-general, Mr Ihekweazu had led the response to large outbreaks of infectious diseases such as yellow fever, Lassa fever and monkeypox.

Since the coronavirus outbreak in early 2020, Mr Ihekweazu led Nigerias public health response to the pandemic through the NCDC.

So when in September his appointment by WHO and the selection of his replacement was announced, it became a topic in the health sector.

Another key moment in the year was the 2021 National Council on Health (NCH) conference which was held early December in Abuja.

The two-day annual conference concluded with a resolution for a deliberate investment on Nigerias health security starting with drawing support for pharmaceutical and research agencies to produce locally developed vaccines.

The minister of health, Osagie Ehanire, in his opening remarks at the meeting, gave an update on various steps the government was taking on local vaccine production in the country.

On 13 April, Nigeria joined other African countries in pledging to increase the share of vaccines manufactured in the continent from one per cent to 60 per cent by 2040. This includes building factories and bolstering capacity in research and development.

But for this ambitious goal to succeed, health experts say authorities in Africa must contend with several challenges that hindered the development of vaccines in the continent for decades.

The year also saw a lot of international aid organisations withdrawing their funding for several health issues they initially supported.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the UK government ended its annual three million pounds to fund family planning in Nigeria early in the year.

Experts speak

In a telephone interview with PREMIUM TIMES, the vice-chancellor of Ondo State University of Medical Science (UNIMED), Adesegun Fatusi, said for the year 2022 to be better for the health sector, it is important for the government to back its promises with action.

He said, while that is easy to say, it may be misleading to argue that the failure of the government to do so automatically amounts to insincerity without taking into consideration the overall macroeconomic dynamics.

To move forward, the government needs to continue to robustly engage with healthcare workers to find common grounds and a greater degree of flexibility from both parties is required for harmonious relationships, the vice-chancellor said.

Immediate past Chairman, Lagos Medical Guild, Sodipo Oluwajimi, spoke to PREMIUM TIMES on the performance of the health sector in 2021, and some expectations for 2022.

The former chairman listed lack of political will and poor funding as major challenges confronting the sector and which he would want to be tackled head on.

Mr Oluwajimi said there is a need for constant reminder to the Nigerian leadership that health is a critical component that must be given the priority that it deserves.

He said: So the funding now comes into play because we have seen that government funding for health drops year in year out. It dropped in 2021, both at the federal and state levels and for a lot of states, it was abysmally low apart from a few exceptional cases.

The states had very, very low investment in health and of course, that played out by a lot of challenges that came up with a lot of industrial action and of course, the citizens were the ones that suffered for it.

On health funding strategies

Continuing, he said Nigeria needs to adopt the World Health Organisation (WHO)s recommendations for funding of the budget for health and look at all the innovative ways to ensure that healthcare is funded.

Some of those ways include health insurance. Nigeria is still performing very badly in terms of provision of health insurance for the citizens. Most people still pay out of pocket and we are having an increase in the number of non-communicable diseases.

When COVID came, the emphasis shifted to infectious diseases. Malaria, HIV, waterborne diseases, which have always been traditionally what we face also suffered because a lot of funding was diverted from there to COVID-19, Mr Oluwajimi said.
About 10 hours after the commencement of its three-day warning strike, the Lagos State council of the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives (NANNM) has announced the suspension of the industrial action.

The chairman of the association, Olurotimi Awojide, who announced the decision in a video obtained by PREMIUM TIMES, said it was the decision of the deliberation at an emergency congress meeting of the union which held at its secretariat Amara-Olu Street on Agidingbi Road in Ikeja on Monday.

The congress, which was scheduled to hold by 12 noon, could not commence until around 4 p.m. as a result of the unions request for documentary evidence.

The union, however, said the details of the agreement entered with the government will be released soon.

The new development followed a two-hour meeting on Sunday between Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and the leadership of the nurses union at the state house.

A statement on Sunday by the chief press secretary to the governor, Gboyega Akosile, confirmed the approval of the striking workers requests by the governor.

According to Mr Akosile, most of the requests by the nurses that could be approved immediately were granted by the governor, and those requiring further deliberations have also been approved for further discussion.

In a short message shared with our reporter, Mr Akosile wrote that; Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu held a closed-door meeting with members of the Nigerian Association of Nurses and Midwives, Lagos State Council at the State House, Marina on Sunday evening. The meeting was called by the Governor to address the grievances of the nursing workforce in the State.

At the end of the two hours meeting, both the Government and the union agreed on a number of issues that had been causing disaffection between the two parties. Governor Sanwo-Olu pledged Governments sincerity in the implementation of all that was agreed on, to the delight of the representatives of the nurses.

More details later 
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said on Monday that it quizzed 22 suspected oil thieves who were arrested for alleged illegal dealing in petroleum products.

The commission said this in a statement by its spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren.

According to Mr Uwujaren, the suspects were handed over, along with their vessel, MT. TIS IV, to the Port Harcourt zonal command of the EFCC by the Nigeria Navy.

Read EFCCs full statement below:

EFCC Press Release

EFCC Grills 22 Suspected Oil Thieves in Port Harcourt

Twenty two suspected oil thieves and a vessel: MT. TIS IV handed over to the Port Harcourt Zonal Command of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, by the Nigeria Navy are being quizzed in connection with alleged illegal dealing in petroleum products.

The suspects, arrested by the Nigerian Naval Ship, (NNS) Soroh, Naval Base, Camp Porbeni, Yenagoa along Akassa Rivers, Bayelsa state, on December 6, 2021 and handed over to the EFCC on Friday, January 7, 2022, include: Levi Jonathan; Eze Kenneth; Enemari Peter James; Sunday Ereku; Emmanuel Ogbonna; Timi Amos; Fatai Kareem; Chuks Egbo, Tony Atawo and Saviour Martin.

Others are: Yoosu Alex; Isac Iboro; Bassey Okon; Kingsley Edet; Taye Poto; Saturday Sobere; Alfred Atiemie; Owei Ibolo; Felix Onome; Odus Osita, Etim Edet and Mudashird Tarheed.

Representative of Nigeria Navy, Navy Commander P. E Effah, who handed over the suspects and the vessel MT. TIS IV to the EFCC, said they were arrested for alleged involvement in illegal oil bunkering activities. At the time of arrest, the vessel was laden with about 700,000 litres of products suspected to be illegally sourced crude oil.

Both the vessel and the suspects were remanded at Brass for safekeeping and preliminary investigations. However, today, we are handing over the vessel and crew members to the EFCC for proper investigation, he said.

Representative of the EFCC who took over the suspects and the vessel on behalf of the Commission, Assistant Superintendent of the EFCC, ASE Anthony Mark, thanked the Navy and promised diligent investigation and possible prosecution of the suspects.

Wilson Uwujaren

Head, Media & Publicity

10 January, 2021
Just like in Enugu State, there have been reports of shootings in Anambra State on Monday morning by gunmen suspected to be members of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).

The Anambra shootings happened in some communities around the boundary of two local government areas  Orumba North and Aguata  in the state.

The gunmen were said to be enforcing the Monday sit-at-home order, which IPOB had cancelled in September, last year.

A resident of the area, Oluchukwu Victor, told PREMIUM TIMES the gunmen fired gunshots in the air before setting ablaze a Sienna vehicle.

Mr Victor, a printer, said one of his workers who first heard the gunshots on his way to the shop had called his telephone line to inform him of the shooting, but that he did not pick the call.

We dont really know who they are. When I got to my shop around 8 a.m., people were running, he said.

The police spokesperson in Anambra, Toochukwu Ikenga, has confirmed the incident.

He said the police were already on ground and that normalcy has been restored in the area.

The spokesperson said the state commissioner of police has ordered reinforcement teams from the police headquarters to intensify patrols around major areas in the state like Onitsha, Nnewi, Ihiala, Aguata, and Awka.

The growing insecurity in the South-east has been linked to IPOB, accused of being responsible for the deadly attacks in the region.

The IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, is being held by Nigerias secret police, SSS, in Abuja, where he is facing trial for alleged treason.
As he celebrates his 56th birthday, it appears there is still one ladder he intends to climb; the presidency. Oh, please dont tell him it cannot be done!

Those who know Aminu Waziri Tambuwal well enough know there is a stubborn streak beneath that humble, obliging mien. Now and again that willful, defiant side shows up, astonishing allies and rivals alike. It has always been like that with him.

Growing up in the village of Tambuwal, Sokoto State, he was not exactly spoilt for choice. In 1966 when he was born, there was only so much available in terms of schools, professions or opportunities. So, he went to the Tambuwal Town Primary School, and then the Government Teachers College, Dogon Daji, to prepare for a professional teaching life. But afterwards, he decided he wanted to become a lawyer instead.

They told him it could not be done, not with a teachers certificate, not with the extant law curriculum, not and swish, that non-compliant side showed up, and he went on to study law.

Thus began a trait that has become a trend in the life of this accomplished lawyer, parliamentarian and politician. He would begin a course of action, and suddenly change direction, with close friends and associates urging him not to take the risk, not to rock the boat, and to be content with what was already at hand. He would listen, he would probe, he would go back to restrategise, and then he would rise up to do what he had wanted to do, and do it so well that people would wonder why anyone thought it could not be done in the first place.

He is a great one for consensus, but in the end, he is his own man.

After his law degree, he went to the Nigeria Law School, Lagos and was called to the bar In 1992. He seemed to have loved the Law, the sheer combativeness of it, the fact that it was such a great leveler. If you find that grainy clip of the Oputa Panel that seemed to be making the social media rounds these days, you will see a young Tambuwal, looking serious and brave, appearing for the accused. But a few years later, he decided he wanted to be in politics instead. Soon after the return of Nigeria to democratic governance, he had grappled with a certain restlessness, the desire to exploit opportunities that could make him even more useful to more people in his environment. In 2003, he finally quit his job to contest elective office into the House of Representatives. He was going up against an incumbent in the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party, and he had neither a sizeable warchest nor a godfather to speak of.

They told him it was a bad idea, a lost cause, that he could not win.

Yet, he went ahead and won, on the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), becoming the representative of the people of Kebbe/Tambuwal Federal Constituency. Two years later, he was the Minority Leader of the House, beloved by his colleagues from every shade of the political divide. His humility and deft intelligence aside, his ability to read the mood of the House, to take advantage of the eternal wrangling between the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)-led executive and its majority members in the legislature, made him critical to the passage of every bill or motion brought to the floor.

It was no surprise when Tambuwal won the 2007 elections back into the House, but then he decided he wanted to leave the opposition, to join the party in power, the PDP.

They told him he was presuming too much, that he couldnt stake his fortunes on promises and friendship, that it would be a betrayal of sorts, that it would send the wrong message. Besides, it would mean leaving his leadership position with its attendant privileges. It took courage to leave, but he has always had that in huge measure. He again crossed the floor, was lucky enough to be made the Deputy Chief Whip of the House (2007 and 2011), becoming one of the most influential men to have held that position. He brought to the leadership of that House not only his experience as a former leader of the opposition but a clarity of thought and a personal integrity that was unsullied by politics.

Perhaps that is the one thing that made it easy for him to leave any political grouping which no longer shared his vision; his allegiance to policy and the people he represents trump his allegiance to parties.

In joining the PDP in 2007, Hon Aminu Tambuwal returned to a party that was set in its ways, however dated. As a progressive parliamentarian in a nation where the legislature is sometimes considered an unnecessary appendage, he had witnessed some of the most brutal battles for independence by a parliament.

In returning to the House for a Third Term in 2011, so many things troubled him and he believed that either things are done differently or the nations democratic journey would stagnate and rot.

Too many years of dictatorial rule had made the executive too arrogant to respect the other arms of government as being separate but equal, and the party, which should normally serve as the impartial umpire in any dispute between the executive and the legislature, had too often taken the side of the former to be trusted by the latter.

Moreover, the 2011 elections were the most divisive, and the PDP faced a great deal of internal crisis, not helped by its handling of the controversial zoning arrangement. It seemed that zoning was no longer as sacrosanct as everyone thought. Worse, there was the result of the parliamentary elections in the South-West where the redoubtable Action Congress of Nigeria made it impossible for the PDP to produce more than half a dozen members to the House of Representatives in that zone. The consequence of all these on the zoning arrangement of the PDP, which set aside the Speakership of the House to the South-West, was soon apparent.

In any case, the new House apparently had its own agenda. The members were determined to assert their independence. They were not going to just rubberstamp some name submitted by some party caucus. And just like that, the battle line was drawn.

What remained was for someone to step forward and be the symbol of the new determination to do things the right way, someone with enough experience and integrity to go against his own party, against the candidate chosen by the powers that be. Hon. Aminu Tambuwal stepped forward.

He was on familiar territory: The party was against him; the Presidency was against him, the system was against him. Indeed, even close friends and associates felt the odds were too much, that the deck was stacked too high. So they told him it could not be done, that it had never been done, that he should not do it.

And as we have seen over and over again in the life of this man, that was the wrong thing to say to him. Of course, he went ahead and did it, and won the Speakership  against his partys own candidate. How he did it, the sheer courage and will power it took, the great mobilising that had to be done, that is a story that has already been told and will be told for a long time still. Suffice it to say that the stages, which have now revealed themselves to be the plot of destiny in the affairs of Tambuwal were again repeated: First, his decision to go against the grain, then the plethora of obstacles, and finally his resolve and victory, almost occurring in tandem.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is not one to mince words, was to say a couple of years later at a public forum in Sokoto, Mr Speaker, I was one of those who didnt like your emergence as Speaker. But I have watched you and I like what you are doing. You have done well.

He had indeed. By the time he completed his tenure, the House of Reps on his watch had become the true bastion of democracy, a veritable peoples parliament. It even managed to acquire the wholesome reputation of being more focused on issues that affect the people than on its leadership or financial squabbles.

Tambuwal has always said that power is transient and should be used for any other purpose than the protection of the peoples welfare. We forget too easily that we are mere trustees. The people are the real owners of power.

Few jobs could have been as difficult as managing the affairs of 360 members of the House of Reps, each representing a federal constituency whose priorities were as different as any other can be. To do it while being under constant scrutiny by almost everyone; to do it while fighting a rearguard battle with elements in your party determined to see you fail; and to do it on a lean purse at a difficult time in the nations history, required courage and a strength of character that was nothing less than phenomenal.

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Tambuwal did it, helped by his strong moral upbringing and a personal rectitude that does not permit him to be associated with shady business. I am a trained lawyer, he said to me once, what will be my excuse?

Yet, even before his tenure ended, he had already set his eyes on other things. Ambitious and energetic, he had considered making a run for the presidency in 2015 but he was, in that rare instance, prevailed upon to contest for the gubernatorial election for Sokoto State instead. As his first tenure as governor was ending, he took another stab at the presidency but he lost out in the primaries, so he went back to complete his second tenure  on the platform of another party, and he won.

Now as 2023 approaches, there are indications that he would again contest for his partys ticket for the presidential elections. He seriously believes that this country deserves better, and that he could do better. As he said recently, he left the APC because the party and its presidency failed to live up to its promises.

His tenure at the Sokoto State Government House has been a difficult one, largely because of the security situation in the State. Bandits appear determined to make the state ungovernable, culminating in the horrendous, monstrous killing of dozens of people, recently burnt to death in a bus on December 6, 2021. They are enemies of humanity, said Tambuwal when a delegation from the Nigeria Governors Forum led by its chairman Governor Kayode Fayemi visited to commiserate with him over the murders.

As with the nation, the violence has overshadowed his tenure, a tenure that would have been remarkable for his revolutionary effort to make education both accessible and qualitative. His policies and programmes in that regard are solid: Increased budgetary spending, mass enrollment of pupils, heavy recruitment and training of teachers, palatable incentives for female education, the revamping of infrastructure.

There have been similar efforts in agriculture and water resources and the health sector but eventually the full scale of what his years as governor amounts to would only be clear after the detritus of this war by bandits clears.

He is not one for grandstanding, so he may not have been able to elicit the praise due him. In any case he believes that the people he serves know that he would always do the best he can for them. He has always tried to remain the same hardworking, humble and meticulous man he was before all the titles and offices came, believing that unless you are the same in your private life as you are in public, one day you will unravel.

As he celebrates his 56th birthday, it appears there is still one ladder he intends to climb; the presidency. Oh, please dont tell him it cannot be done!

Olu Jacob wrote for Abuja.
Moderna and Pfizer are racing to get an omicron-specific booster.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said Monday the pharmaceuticals shot could be ready as early as March, while Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said his company is looking at the fall.

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The hope is that we will achieve something that will have way, way better protection, particularly against infections, because the protection against the hospitalizations and the severe disease  it is reasonable right now, with the current vaccines as long as you are having lets say the third dose, Bourla said on CNBCs Squawk Box.

Pfizer has already started manufacturing doses, he said.

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Modernas version is about to enter clinical trials.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

We need to be careful to try to stay ahead of a virus and not behind the virus, Bancel said on Squawk Box.

The current Moderna booster shot, a half dose, increases neutralizing antibody levels against omicron 37-fold over the second shot. A full dose increases effectiveness 100-fold.

Omicron is more transmissible than the previous delta variant, and the skyrocketing cases have shut down hospitals, schools and other businesses. But the availability of the vaccine has meant infections are causing less severe symptoms or presenting as asymptomatic altogether.

Moderna is preparing an omicron-focused COVID-19 booster shot. (Charles Krupa/AP)

Moderna has already signed advanced purchase agreements worth $18.5 billion with the United Kingdom, South Korea and Switzerland for shots as soon as theyre available.

The struggle, Bancel said, has been getting the vaccine to less developed countries. Of the 807 million doses delivered by Moderna so far, only about 25% have gone to low- and middle-income countries.

Moderna is also expanding its mRNA technology to try to treat other illnesses, the company announced Monday, including other respiratory viruses.

We look forward to further leveraging our mRNA technology and delivery into gene-editing and other ways to impact human health, Bancel said in a statement.
To mitigate these challenges, farmers must continue to innovate and embrace digital technology to improve productivity to meet domestic and external demand. Hence, the need for the transformation to digital or smart agriculture.

Agriculture is going through a revolution. As the worlds population estimates increase from seven billion to ten billion by 2050, the demand for food and agricultural produce will certainly continue to be on the ascendance.

While demand for food is growing, the supply side faces the challenges of changing environmental and climatic conditions, dwindling water supply, shortage of arable land and farming inputs, the rapid rate of urbanisation thats reducing available land for agriculture, and a host of other problems.

To mitigate these challenges, farmers must continue to innovate and embrace digital technology to improve productivity to meet domestic and external demand. Hence, the need for the transformation to digital or smart agriculture.

Digital agriculture refers to practices that digitally collect, store, analyse, and share electronic data and information along the agricultural value chain.

It is the use of digital technologies, integrated into one system, to enable farmers and other stakeholders to improve agricultural production from the farm to the consumer.

Technologies such as mobile telephony, robotics, remote sensor technology, the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, artificial intelligence, and many others, provide the agricultural industry the tools and information to make more informed decisions and boost productivity.

Digital technologies can be part of the solution because they have the potential to provide farmers with the information and ability to address challenges and harness opportunities for growth.

Significant economic, social, and environmental benefits are delivered through the application of digital technologies, thereby transforming agriculture by offering new opportunities to improve efficiency, policy, and the performance of the agricultural value chain.

The FAO notes that the next wave of technological efforts to sustain the fast-growing global population will leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to improve the precision and sustainability of farming techniques.

Digital technologies help to improve the traceability of agricultural products and increase value for farmers across the four main branches of livestock production, crop production, agricultural economics, and agricultural engineering.

For instance, the spread of mobile technologies and remote-sensing services are helping to improve the access of smallholder farmers to information, inputs, markets, finance, increasing productivity, while reducing operational costs.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reports that achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal of a world with zero hunger by 2030 will require an urgent transformation of the current agri-food system.

The FAO notes that the next wave of technological efforts to sustain the fast-growing global population will leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to improve the precision and sustainability of farming techniques.

For this reason, the global agri-food organisation, in partnership with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), developed the E-agricultural Strategy Guide to assist countries in developing their national e-agricultural strategy and master plan.

Agricultural activities provides livelihoods for many Nigerians. These are important activities for the countrys economy after oil and gas. Between July and September 2021, the agricultural sector contributed almost 30 per cent of the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Nigeria.

Although digital transformation has impacted key sectors of the economy, the same cannot be said about the agricultural sector. Sadly, the incessant insecurity in many parts of the country has worsened by the fare of farmers.

In the face of these challenges, the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, through its agencies, has introduced several initiatives to create opportunities that attract younger persons to gainfully engage in the agricultural ecosystem.

There is no doubt that digital agriculture is here to stay. So, NITDA should redouble efforts towards effectively bridging the digital divides by promoting rural digital literacy, gender inclusion, and the Nigerian Agricultural Platform initiatives as outlined in the NDAS.

One of such initiatives is the recent partnership between the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and three federal universities in Nigeria to advance research into and the application of digital technology in farming to speed up the actualisation of the countrys food security.

The pilot schemes are slated to commence at the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), Federal University, Dutse (FUD), and University of Abuja (UNIABUJA), as part of the strategies to digitally transform activities along the agriculture value chain in Nigeria.

Speaking on the partnership, the Director-General of NITDA, Mallam Kashifu Abdullahi noted that the application of digital technologies in farming would reduce the quantity of water, fertilisers, and labour required, while also increasing yield and creating sustainable wealth.

Using technology in farming will help the country optimise this sector, improve production, reduce waste, facilitate access to markets, and thereby put Nigeria on the path of food security and substantial income generation.

The NITDA boss expressed optimism that digital agriculture would attract Nigerias younger population to farming and boost the countrys National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy to properly position a leading player in the global digital economy.

Agriculture remains a critical source for livelihoods and employment and the transformative power of digital technologies is bringing agriculture back to youths.

Additionally, the Nigeria Digital Agriculture Strategy (NDAS; 2020-2030) provides the policy direction for collaboration among key stakeholders in the agriculture value chain to boost domestic food security and gain access to global markets.

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There is no doubt that digital agriculture is here to stay. So, NITDA should redouble efforts towards effectively bridging the digital divides by promoting rural digital literacy, gender inclusion, and the Nigerian Agricultural Platform initiatives as outlined in the NDAS.

Inyene Ibanga writes from Wuye District, Abuja; email: inyeneibanga@yahoo.com.
The Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) in Nsit Ibom Local Government Area, Akwa Ibom State, has ordered teachers in public primary schools to stay away from school premises over nonpayment of November 2021 salary.

In a notice of non-resumption of duty, jointly signed by Ekom John and Michael Ukana, the NUT branch chairman and secretary, the union said primary schools in the local government area were not going to re-open along with other schools.

The Akwa Ibom State Government through the state Commissioner for Education, Idongesit Etiebiet, in a press release, on Friday, directed that all public and private schools in the state should resume on January 10.

But the NUT said that primary schools in the area would remain closed until the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) pays the outstanding salary owed to the teachers.

This is to notify teachers in this school that public primary schools are not yet reopened in Nsit Ibom Local Government Area until the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) pays the November, 2021 salary to us as they had paid to teachers in other local government areas.

Until that is done, stay away from this premises till otherwise directed, the NUT stated in a notice pasted in schools in the area.

In a letter to SUBEB chairman, dated January 7, the NUT accused the board of deliberately withholding the salary of teachers in the local government area despite continuous dialogue and passionate appeal.

The leadership of the NUT, Nsit Ibom Branch observed with great consternation the flagrant perversion of the welfare of teachers under the employ of your Board.

The State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) devoid of human sympathy has the mind to withhold the payment of November, 2021 salary to Primary School Teachers in Nsit Ibom Local Government Area up till date, in spite of our continuous dialogue and passionate appeal to the Account Section of the Board to address such magnitude of injustice.

We wish to notify your good offices that no public primary school in the Local Government will be reopened for whatever reason on Monday 10th January, 2022 until the said month salary is paid, it added.

Both the Chairperson and the Permanent Secretary of SUBEB, Paul Ekpo and Abasiekeme Essien, respectively did not respond to calls and text messages seeking comment from them.

We have paid salary to all teachers  SUBEB

Mr Ekpo later called back the reporter to give his response a few hours after PREMIUM TIMES had published the story.

He denied the claim that teachers in Nsit Ibom have not been paid their November salary.

We have 31 local government areas in the state. There is no way we can pay selected salaries because the salary slip has one approval that contains everybody.

How is it possible to pay someones salary in December but didnt pay in November? It has nothing to do with our office (SUBEB). I strongly believe that it may not even be all the teachers in the local government.

So, let the individual teachers find out what happened with their bank because the salary left us and was paid as at when due and even December (salary) has been paid, he said.

Editors note: This report has been updated to include SUBEBs reaction which came in after the news report had already been published.
STOCKHOLM, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Polygon has signed an agreement to acquire SAT France and SAT Luxembourg specialized in asbestos removal and decontamination. The two companies have approximately 110 employees and annual sales of 10 MEUR.

SAT France was founded in 2003 by Patrick Glange and Stephan Huber and in 2012 they started SAT Luxembourg. SAT operates in various sectors, with focus on the energy sector and offers a large range of services such as asbestos and toxic substances removal and decontamination.

"This is a great opportunity for us to expand our service offering in France, while at the same time we see opportunities to collaborate with Polygon Germany on major and complex claims", says Damien Comandon Country President of Polygon France.

"Working cross borders is something we have done in Germany for a long time. I am really looking forward to the collaboration with Polygon France", says Andreas Weber Country President of Polygon Germany.

"We are looking forward to this merger and the benefit of being part of a large international company as Polygon. We will benefit from the complete service range offered in France and Germany and be able to offer our customers an even wider range of services", says Patrick Glange and Stephan Huber.

"I am happy to announce that we are acquiring a company in two countries at the same time, with such an attractive service portfolio. I would like to welcome our new skilled colleagues in France and Luxembourg", says Axel Granitz CEO and President of Polygon Group.

CONTACT:

For more information, please visit www.polygongroup.com or contact Martin Hamner, Chief Financial Officer, martin.hamner@polygongroup.com, +46 70 607 85 79

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/polygon/r/polygon-acquires-sat-in-france-and-luxembourg,c3483239

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/5752/3483239/1518347.pdf PR-acquisition France Luxembourg

SOURCE Polygon
OSLO, Norway, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Norwegian Energy Company ASA ("Noreco" or "the Company") is pleased to announce a successful delivery from yard and sail away of the three Tyra West wellhead and riser topsides. The topsides were fabricated at Sembcorp Marine Ltd in Singapore and will be transported by HTV (Heavy Transport Vessel) BIGROLL BEAUFORT. The transportation of the topsides will take a planned pit stop at the Tyra site in the Netherlands to accommodate for an optimal installation window in the North Sea, expected in April.

In addition, Noreco completed the scheduled semi-annual borrowing base redetermination under the Company's Reserve Based Lending Facility (the "Facility" or the "RBL"), with the borrowing base remaining above the Facility's maximum cash drawing capacity of USD 1.0 billion. As of 31 December 2021, Noreco has drawn USD 900 million with USD 100 million available undrawn cash drawing capacity under the Facility.

In line with the Company's hedging policy, and as a result of the positive commodity price environment in Q4 2021, Noreco has entered into fixed-price swap contracts for additional oil and gas volumes from 2022 to 2024. The Company has hedged c. 415,000 MWh (c. 245,000 boe) of gas in summer 2022 at an average price of c. EUR 50/MWh and c. 720,000 bbl of oil in 2023 and 2024 at prices from $65 to $71/bbl.

Further, Noreco is pleased to announce that Cathrine Torgersen has been appointed the Company's Head of ESG, through her new role as EVP Investor Relations & ESG. This reflects the importance that Noreco places on being both an active participant in the Energy Transition and doing so in a meaningful, but measured manner.

"The sail away of the topsides is an important Tyra Redevelopment milestone for us and it further progresses the project towards first gas in the middle of next year. Despite COVID-19 challenges, Sembcorp Marine has demonstrated strong and resilient performance by delivering the new topsides for Tyra  last year for Tyra East and today for Tyra West. With a timely sail away from the yard in Singapore, we are excited to welcome the new modules at the Tyra field later this year after a safe voyage. The remaining two 2022 deliveries from the yards in Rosetti and Batam will complete what will be a state-of-the-art facility in the North Sea," said Euan Shirlaw, Acting Managing Director & CFO in Noreco

"We continue to focus on maintaining a strong capital structure to secure delivery of the Tyra project, with the recent successful redetermination outcome and additions to our hedging programme demonstrating this. By hedging, we seek to maximise pre-Tyra cashflow visibility with an approach that is also mindful of the prevailing market conditions. While this will continue, we do expect to increase our spot market exposure as Tyra first gas approaches in Q2 next year and beyond," he adds.

"Cathrine has been actively involved in our sustainability activities to date, and her appointment as the Company's Head of ESG will help ensure the sustainability-focused activities we develop are right for Noreco and for our shareholders. Our participation in the Tyra Redevelopment Project was an early demonstration of our commitment to the Energy Transition, by ensuring essential gas supply is available, and we intend to continue to progress in line with this theme where it makes sense for us to do so," he concludes.

An updated investor presentation is attached and will be made available at the Company's website, www.noreco.com.

Contact:

Cathrine Torgersen, EVP Investor Relations & ESG

Phone: +47 91 52 85 01

Email: ct@noreco.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/noreco/r/sail-away-of-tyra-topsides--corporate-update-and-appointment-of-head-of-esg,c3483277

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/4225/3483277/1518357.pdf Noreco Investor Presentation 10 January 2022

SOURCE NORECO
An average film can produce 50 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of running 11 cars for a year. With its new campaign, TBD Media is embracing its responsibility within the industry to replenish the environment. By developing carbon sinks in these new regions through tree planting, all films produced under this campaign will be completely carbon neutral.

To achieve the offsetting of emissions from the content produced for the opening week of Dubai Expo 2020, TBD is partnering with locally-based Olive Gaea to both plant hundreds of trees in the Emirates and retire carbon credits from certified projects. Through this, TBD Media is able to continue to make films concerning sustainable innovation, without worrying about its own footprint.

Vivek Tripathi, Founder and CEO of Olive Gaea, says: "With the UAE having recently announced their commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, it is paramount for businesses operating in the region to align with the government vision and take a leadership position in the sustainability field. We are therefore proud and excited to partner with TBD Media & Gulf News supporting their sustainability strategy, leading the way for carbon neutral video productions in Dubai."

TBD Media is determined to give back to Dubai and the wider region via a method that supports climate resiliency in the area, having always shown enduring commitment to carbon offsetting, both domestically and internationally. The new campaign builds on this already robust support of ecological awareness, presenting an opportunity to commit to the positive future of the region.

Paolo Zanini, TBD Media Group's CEO, says: "We are excited to provide our filmmaking expertise to companies around Dubai, whilst committing to the longevity and the economic growth of the MENA region."

About TBD Media Group:

TBD Media Group is an international, purpose-driven, media developer that helps companies, organizations and governments tell their brand stories in a human and direct way. Learn more at https://www.tbdmediagroup.com/cnp

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1722936/TDB_Media_Group_Pic1.jpg

Media Contact:

Jenna-Leigh Soobramoney

Head of Marketing

TBD Media Group

j.soobramoney@tbdmediagroup.com

SOURCE TBD Media Group
Implementation at the Bangladeshi Bank produced 100% digital transaction growth and 36% manual to digital conversion

DUBAI, UAE, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Clayfin Technologies, a leading customer experience focused digital solutions provider for financial institutions, and BRAC Bank, have been awarded the 'Best Digital Channel/Platform Implementation Award  Most Impactful Platform' at IBSi Global FinTech Innovation Awards 2021.

The award has been given in recognition of the collaborative implementation of BRAC Bank's new digital platform called 'Astha'. Mobile Banking App 'Astha' comprises of a wide spectrum of digital services and engagement tools in retail banking. This is a prime example of digital infrastructure overhaul targeting superior customer experience, higher adoption rates and market impact. In less than a year of going live, Astha has made a significant impact adding 30% on digital customer growth, 100% in digital transaction volumes and 36% conversion from manual transactions to digital channel.

Recognizing the impactful solution implementation, Robin Amlot, Managing Editor of IBS Intelligence, said, "I am thrilled to announce Clayfin Technologies along with BRAC Bank Limited as winners of the Most Impactful Project Award part of the Best Digital Channel/Platform Implementation category at the 3rd edition of the IBS Intelligence Global FinTech Innovation Awards 2021. The solution was highly impactful and resulted in an astounding 100% growth in digital transactions. Congratulations to the duo."

On the occasion, Md. Sabbir Hossain, DMD and COO of BRAC Bank, said, "We are immensely honoured to have received this international award. The new Astha digital platform is part of our strategic digital system overhaul for delightful and convenient banking experience for the customers. Over a short period of time, the implementation of the app with the tagline 'Bank Smart' has helped us achieve a significant impact on our customer base. The award will help us launch more digital initiatives to take customer experience to newer heights."

Rajesh BLN, CEO of Clayfin added, "We are proud and thankful to receive this award with BRAC Bank. Astha platform for BRAC Bank is functionally rich, intuitive, easy to use, safe and secure. For BRAC Bank, this is just the beginning of a journey. Through its digital initiatives, BRAC Bank will stay ahead of times, and will keep impacting the lives of more and more customers."

About IBSi Global FinTech Innovation Awards 2021

IBS Intelligence is a pure-play Financial Technology focused research, advisory, and news analysis firm, with a 30-year track record and clients globally. The third edition IBSi Global FinTech Innovation Awards attracted global attention with over 190 participants from 48 countries.

About BRAC Bank

BRAC Bank Limited traded as ' BRACBANK ' on Dhaka Stock Exchange has been one of the country's fastest-growing banks in Bangladesh with a particular focus on the small and medium enterprise (SME) segment.

Taking inspiration from its parent organization BRAC, the largest NGO in the world, it focused on Small and Medium Enterprises. Based out of Dhaka, the bank offers SME Banking, Retail Banking, Wholesale Banking & Custodial Service, Treasury and Foreign Exchange & Related Services through 187 branches, 650 Agent Banking Outlets and digital channels. With more than 1.1 million customers, the bank has already proved to be the largest collateral-free SME financier in just 20 years of its operation in Bangladesh and continues to serve as a benchmark for governance, transparency and compliance in the banking sector.

About Clayfin

Clayfin is a leading provider of Digital Customer Experience solutions for Banks and Financial institutions. Clayfin works across geographies, and currently supports 80+ implementations across 30+ customers in APAC, Middle East and Africa.

Contact:

Mr. Jishith Gangadharan

[email protected]

+91-8593931693

SOURCE Clayfin and BRAC Bank
SWANSEA, Wales and TEL AVIV, Israel, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Severe heart failure is the most life-threatening medical condition in all age groups across the globe. Implantable heart pumps, known as Ventricular Assist Devices (or VADs), have proven to sustainably increase long term survival. However, due to the need for tethering to an external power source using a cable exiting the body through the abdomen, these devices have not yet been fully accepted as mainstream therapy.

Now, for the first time globally, a compact, fully implantable VAD (FiVAD) has been successfully implemented by combining the Calon Cardio MiniVAD with the versatile, fully implantable wireless energy recharging system of Leviticus Cardio. Completion of a 60-day in-vivo pre-clinical study of this FiVAD has successfully validated the integration of these two innovative technologies.

This new disruptive technology, FiVAD, will allow a patient a full day without a cable or connection to any external equipment whatsoever. The recharging process itself only requires a light belt around the patient's chest during the night. The successful elimination of the electric power cable is a major step forward leading to a near-normal quality of life for these severely ill patients. It will convince physicians around the world that VAD therapy has reached the point of routine use and will lead to widespread application of this life saving therapy.

The trial was conducted at the internationally recognised Centre of Excellence at the Catholic University of Leuven, in Belgium. The success of this ground-breaking study marks a further step in the integration of the two companies who are committed to taking this life changing innovation in partnership to patients across the globe.

Stuart McConchie, CEO of Calon Cardio-Technology Ltd: "The combination of our MiniVAD, designed to optimize blood handling, and the Leviticus wireless technology provides a safe and usable truly wireless VAD system, representing major progress in blood pump technology. Together this FiVAD will significantly improve the lives of vast numbers of late-stage heart failure patients."

Michael Zilbershlag, CEO of Leviticus Cardio Ltd: "Our study has demonstrated that the combination of the very effective Calon MiniVAD and the Leviticus FiVAD offers for the first time a fully functioning heart pump without the need to be recharged for more than 10 hours allowing freedom from any external equipment for a whole working day."

Marc Clement, Chairman of Calon Cardio-Technology Ltd: "I am sure I speak for both companies when I say how delighted we are with the outcome of the integration of our respective ground-breaking technologies. We are committed to a long-term relationship that will improve the quality of life of thousands of patients across the world."

"The successful 60-days preclinical milestone of the MiniVAD and FiVAD platform poses an encouraging accomplishment in further integration of these two innovative technologies," states Professor Ivan Netuka, Cardiac Surgeon, a Chairman in the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine (IKEM), Prague, Czech Republic.

Professor Stephen Westaby, renowned heart surgeon (now retired) and a founder of Calon Cardio impresses that "The critical importance of the integration of the Calon Cardio and Leviticus Cardio technologies is the elimination of driveline infection. Infection destroys quality of life, promotes thrombosis and stroke, and too often results in substantial early mortality. The integrated FiVAD is a system that has the potential to supersede cardiac transplant as the preferred intervention in advanced heart failure, without needing someone else to die first."

"A system like this will give patients the freedom to do what they like for more than a whole working day without any external cable connections. When in clinical practice, this is more than we as physicians could have ever dreamed for VAD patient quality of life," adds Professor Stephan Schueler, Head of Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at The Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, United Kingdom.

About Calon Cardio-Technology Ltd

Calon Cardio was founded by Professor Stephen Westaby, Cardiac Surgeon, and Professor Marc Clement, Physicist, to optimise the heart failure therapy provided by early ventricular assist devices. The focus of this work was on reducing damage caused by shear forces during the passage of blood components through a pump. By achieving this objective, the clinical value of VAD therapy is increased, and at the same time, the overall cost is reduced. The Company has been supported financially by the Development Bank of Wales, by UK Government Grants, Longbow Capital, and more recently by the UK Future Fund program. Calon has drawn significant support from UK, US, and EU equity investors.

About Leviticus-Cardio Ltd.

Leviticus Cardio is a medical device company dedicated to improving the clinical outcome for patients with an implanted left ventricular assist device (LVAD) for the treatment of impaired cardiac function. The Leviticus FiVAD received several innovation awards, was implanted in humans in 2018/9 and received Breakthrough Device Designation from the FDA in 2019. The Company has received funding from The Trendlines Group (SGX:42T) (OTCQX: TRNLY), a consortium of acclaimed cardiovascular physicians, private investors, and Israel's Innovation Authority.

Contacts:

Stuart McConchie

CEO, Calon Cardio-Technology Ltd

+1 (212) 444-2346  Mobile

[email protected]

Michael Zilbershlag

CEO, Leviticus -Cardio Ltd.

+972-50-8807135  Mobile

[email protected]

SOURCE Calon Cardio-Technology Ltd.; Leviticus-Cardio Ltd.
FORT WORTH, Texas, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- AZZ Inc. (NYSE: AZZ), a global provider of metal coating solutions, welding solutions, specialty electrical equipment and highly engineered services today announced financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2022, ended November 30, 2021.

Third Quarter Overview:

Strong year-over-year financial results

Diluted earnings per share of $0.85 , up $0.09 , or 11.8%

, up , or 11.8%

Sales of $231.7 million , up 2.3% versus last year

, up 2.3% versus last year

Net income of $21.1 million , up $1.4 million

, up

EBITDA of $39.8 million , up 0.5%

, up 0.5% Metal Coatings segment versus same quarter, prior year:

Sales of $133.4 million , up 15.4%

, up 15.4%

Operating income of $32.7 million , up 14.1%

, up 14.1%

Operating margins of 24.5%

Infrastructure Solutions segment versus same quarter, prior year:

Sales of $98.4 million , down 11.4%

, down 11.4%

Operating income of $9.2 million , up 5.4%

, up 5.4%

Operating margins of 9.3%

Repurchased $7.6 million shares during the third quarter; year-to-date we have repurchased 564,279 shares of common stock, totaling $28.9 million fiscal year to date

Management Discussion

Tom Ferguson, President and Chief Executive Officer of AZZ, commented, "We continue to deliver solid results in fiscal 2022 with strong operating performance in the third quarter, driven by sales increasing 2.3%, operating income up 8.0% and net income up 7.0%, compared to the same quarter last year. The continued success of our businesses is due to our teams executing at a high level to drive growth and profitability across all business segments."

"Our Metal Coatings segment delivered great operating results generating sales of $133.4 million, up 15.4%, and operating margin of 24.5%, down slightly versus prior year due to increasing labor and material costs. Improved sales were driven by strong demand for hot-dip galvanizing within the renewables, utility, OEM, and construction end markets. I am pleased with the team's ability to continue to manage the increasing costs of materials and labor, through value pricing and operational improvement initiatives, while focusing on providing outstanding customer service. Additionally, and subsequent to our quarter-end, the team acquired Steel Creek Galvanizing in South Carolina."

Mr. Ferguson continued, "During the third quarter, our Infrastructure Solutions segment generated sales of $98.4 million, up $11.5 million sequentially but down $12.6 million or 11.4% compared to the same period last year. Several business units were affected by material delivery delays, including customer supplied components, and labor shortages. Operating margin of 9.3%, improved 140 basis points compared to operating margin of 7.9% for the same period last year. I would like to thank our employees for their hard work in delivering these third quarter results and continuing to provide exceptional service to our customers."

Third Quarter Results

For the third quarter of fiscal year 2022, the Company reported sales of $231.7 million compared to $226.6 million for the comparable period last year, an increase of 2.3%. Operating income increased to $30.1 million, or by $2.2 million, compared to net income of $27.9 million during last year's comparable third quarter period. Net income for the third quarter increased $1.4 million to $21.1 million, or $0.85 per diluted share compared to net income of $19.7 million, or $0.76 per diluted share for the third quarter in the prior fiscal year. The provision for income taxes of $6.0 million reflects an effective tax rate of 22.0% for the three months ended November 30, 2021, as compared to $6.6 million, or 25.1%, for the prior year comparable period. Bookings for the three-month period increased to $248.0 million, compared to $194.4 million for the third quarter last year. The book-to-sales ratio improved to 1.07, compared to 0.86 in last year's comparable period. Backlog at the end of the third quarter was $217.7 million, an increase of 24.9% as compared to backlog at the end of the third quarter in the prior year. The increase in backlog versus prior year is largely attributable to growing demand for our electrical products. Sequentially, backlog was up $16.2 million, or 8.1% from the prior year third quarter ended August 31, 2021.

Metal Coatings Segment  Year to date Summary (1)

For the nine months ended November 30, 2021, Metal Coatings segment sales increased 11.1% to $390.7 million and operating income increased 38.3% to $95.9 million compared to $351.6 million and $69.4 million, respectively, for the third period in the prior fiscal year. On an adjusted basis, operating income increased 19.3% to $80.4 million compared to the prior year-to-date period.

Year-to-date operating margins through the third quarter were 24.5%, a 480 basis points improvement compared to operating margins of 19.7% generated for the third quarter of the prior fiscal year. On an adjusted basis, current year operating margins improved 160 basis points from the adjusted prior year operating margin of 22.9%.

Infrastructure Solutions Segment  Year to date Summary (1)

For the nine months ended November 30, 2021, Infrastructure Solutions segment sales decreased 1.5% to $287.3 million as compared to $291.6 million for the same period in the prior fiscal year. The decrease in net sales for the Infrastructure segment was primarily attributable to supply chain disruptions within our electrical platform and COVID-related disruptions on customer locations within our welding solutions platform. Year-to-date operating income totaled $25.8 million, an increase of $22.5 million, or 668.1% compared to operating income of $3.4 million in the prior year. On an adjusted basis, operating income for the segment increased 105.2% to $12.6 million compared to the prior year-to-date period.

Year-to-date operating margins were 9.0%, an increase of 780 basis points over the prior year. On an adjusted basis, current year operating margins improved 470 basis points from the adjusted prior year operating margin of 4.3%.

(1) See "Non-GAAP Disclosures" section included in the attached Financial Tables for a reconciliation of non-GAAP Adjusted Earnings Measures for the three and nine months ended November 30, 2020.

Subsequent Event

On January 3, 2022, AZZ announced it acquired all the assets of Steel Creek Galvanizing Company, LLC ("Steel Creek") on December 31, 2021. Steel Creek is a privately held hot-dip galvanizing company based in South Carolina and will be reported within the Metal Coatings segment. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. AZZ expects the acquisition will be accretive to earnings within the first year of operation.

Fiscal Year 2022 Guidance

Mr. Ferguson added, "Due to the consistent operating performance in our business segments, we are reaffirming our sales guidance and anticipate annual sales to be in the range of $865 million to $925 million and are narrowing earnings per share to be in the range of $3.00 to $3.20 per diluted share for fiscal year 2022, which excludes the impact of any future divestitures or acquisitions".

"As we have previously stated, for the balance of fiscal 2022, we remain highly focused on growing our Metal Coatings segment, completing and integrating the recently announced hot-dip galvanizing acquisitions, and will continue to focus our Infrastructure Solutions team on supply chain improvements and increasing its craft pool. The underlining fundamentals of our business remain strong and provides us a good foundation to aggressively pursue growth opportunities that fit our strategic plan. As part of our corporate commitment to Trust, Respect, Accountability, Integrity, Teamwork and Sustainability ("TRAITS"), we continue to carefully manage our workforce to ensure a safe and healthy operating environment, while leveraging our operational capacity to match our customers' solid demand for our products and services."

"We continue to actively pursue initiatives to drive growth and enhance shareholder value. Previously, we have disclosed a desire for AZZ to become a predominately metal coatings company and over the past two quarters have meaningfully advanced our work on specific strategic options designed to achieve this commitment," concluded Mr. Ferguson.

Conference Call Details

AZZ Inc. will conduct a conference call to discuss financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2022 today, Monday, January 10, 2022, at 11:00 A.M. ET. Interested parties can access the conference call by dialing (844) 855-9499 or (412) 317-5497 (international). A webcast of the call will be available on the Company's Investor Relations page at http://www.azz.com/investor-relations.

A replay of the call will be available at (877) 344-7529 or (412) 317-0088 (international), replay access code: 2330111, through January 17, 2022, or by visiting http://www.azz.com/investor-relations for the next 90 days.

There will be a slide presentation accompanying today's event. The Company's slide presentation for the call will be available on the Investor Relations page at http://www.azz.com/investor-relations.

About AZZ Inc.

AZZ Inc. is a global provider of galvanizing and a variety of metal coating solutions, welding solutions, specialty electrical equipment and highly engineered services to a broad range of markets, including but not limited to the power generation, transmission, distribution, refining and industrial markets. The Company's Metal Coatings segment is a leading provider of metal finishing solutions for corrosion protection, including hot dip galvanizing, spin galvanizing, powder coating, anodizing and plating, to the North American steel fabrication industry. The Company's Infrastructure Solutions segment is dedicated to delivering safe and reliable transmission of power from generation sources to end customers, and automated weld overlay solutions for corrosion and erosion mitigation to critical infrastructure in the energy and waste management markets worldwide.

Safe Harbor Statement

Certain statements herein about our expectations of future events or results constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "may," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential," "continue," or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. Such forward-looking statements are based on currently available competitive, financial, and economic data and management's views and assumptions regarding future events. Such forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain, and investors must recognize that actual results may differ from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Certain factors could affect the outcome of the matters described herein. This press release may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, changes in customer demand for our products and services, including demand by the power generation markets, electrical transmission and distribution markets, the industrial markets, and the metal coatings markets. In addition, within each of the markets we serve, our customers and our operations could potentially continue to be adversely impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, including governmental issued mandates regarding the same. We could also experience additional increases in labor costs, components and raw materials, including zinc and natural gas which are used in our hot-dip galvanizing process; supply-chain vendor delays; customer requested delays of our products or services; delays in additional acquisition or disposition opportunities; currency exchange rates; availability of experienced management and employees to implement AZZ's growth strategy; a downturn in market conditions in any industry relating to the products we inventory or sell or the services that we provide; economic volatility or changes in the political stability in the United States and other foreign markets in which we operate; acts of war or terrorism inside the United States or abroad; and other changes in economic and financial conditions. AZZ has provided additional information regarding risks associated with the business in AZZ's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended February 28, 2021, and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), available for viewing on AZZ's website at www.azz.com and on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. You are urged to consider these factors carefully in evaluating the forward-looking statements herein and are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. These statements are based on information as of the date hereof and AZZ assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

---Financial tables on the following page---

AZZ Inc. Condensed Consolidated Statements of Income (dollars and shares in thousands, except per share data) (unaudited)





















Three Months Ended November 30,

Nine Months Ended November 30,



2021

2020

2021

2020 Sales

$ 231,737



$ 226,623



$ 678,010



$ 643,287

Cost of sales

174,773



171,948



508,004



500,311

Gross margin

56,964



54,675



170,006



142,976



















Selling, general and administrative

26,872



25,228



82,674



79,867

Restructuring and impairment charges





1,576







20,269

Operating income

30,092



27,871



87,332



42,840



















Interest expense

1,630



2,272



5,081



7,376

Other (income) expense, net

1,413



(724)



1,362



823

Income before income taxes

27,049



26,323



80,889



34,641

Income tax expense

5,964



6,620



18,489



11,187

Net income

$ 21,085



$ 19,703



$ 62,400



$ 23,454



















Earnings per common share















Basic

$ 0.85



$ 0.76



$ 2.51



$ 0.90

Diluted

$ 0.85



$ 0.76



$ 2.48



$ 0.90



















Diluted weighted average shares outstanding

24,945



26,051



25,132



26,177



AZZ Inc. Segment Reporting (dollars in thousands) (unaudited)





















Three Months Ended November 30,

Nine Months Ended November 30,



2021

2020

2021

2020 Sales:















Metal Coatings

$ 133,373



$ 115,616



$ 390,701



$ 351,643

Infrastructure Solutions

98,364



111,007



287,309



291,644

Total sales

$ 231,737



$ 226,623



$ 678,010



$ 643,287



















Operating income:















Metal Coatings

$ 32,724



$ 28,671



$ 95,888



$ 69,355

Infrastructure Solutions

9,189



8,722



25,838



3,364

Corporate

(11,821)



(9,522)



(34,394)



(29,879)

Total operating income

$ 30,092



$ 27,871



$ 87,332



$ 42,840





















AZZ Inc. Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (dollars in thousands) (unaudited)













November 30, 2021

February 28, 2021 Assets:







Current Assets (1)

$ 349,535



$ 303,492

Property, Plant and Equipment, Net

199,886



205,909

Other assets, net

488,155



487,041

Total assets

$ 1,037,576



$ 996,442











Liabilities and Shareholders' Equity:







Current liabilities

$ 118,657



$ 113,850

Long-term debt due after one year, net

191,468



178,419

Other liabilities

79,407



80,881

Shareholders' equity

648,044



623,292

Total liabilities and shareholders' equity

$ 1,037,576



$ 996,442

(1) Includes assets held for sale of $4,409 and $3,684 as of November 30, 2021 and February 28, 2021, respectively.

AZZ Inc. Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (dollars in thousands) (unaudited)













Nine Months Ended November 30,



2021

2020 Net Cash Provided by Operating Activities

$ 49,668



$ 59,394

Net Cash Used in Investing Activities

(16,425)



(14,987)

Net Cash Used in Financing Activities

(29,167)



(64,229)

Effect of Exchange Rates on Cash

1,442



2,330

Net Increase (Decrease) in Cash and Cash Equivalents

5,518



(17,492)

Cash and Cash Equivalents at Beginning of Period

14,837



36,687

Cash and Cash Equivalents at End of Period

$ 20,355



$ 19,195



AZZ Inc.

Non-GAAP Disclosure

Adjusted Operating Income, Adjusted Earnings and Adjusted Earnings Per Share

(dollars in thousands, except per share data)

(unaudited)

In addition to reporting financial results in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles in the United States ("GAAP"), the Company has provided adjusted operating income, adjusted earnings and adjusted earnings per share (collectively, the "Adjusted Earnings Measures"), which are non-GAAP measures. Management believes that the presentation of these measures provides investors with a greater transparency comparison of operating results across a broad spectrum of companies, which provides a more complete understanding of the Company's financial performance, competitive position, and prospects for the future. Management also believes that investors regularly rely on non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted operating income, adjusted earnings and adjusted earnings per share, to assess operating performance and that such measures may highlight trends in the Company's business that may not otherwise be apparent when relying on financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP.

In the second quarter of fiscal 2021, the Company developed and began the implementation of a plan to divest certain non-core businesses and later, divested several non-core businesses. During the six months ended August 31, 2021, the Company did not recognize any restructuring and impairment charges. The following tables provides a reconciliation for the three and nine months ended November 30, 2021 and 2020 between the various measures calculated in accordance with GAAP to the Adjusted Earnings Measures (dollars in thousands, except per share data):





Three Months Ended November 30,

Nine Months Ended November 30,



2021

2020

2021

2020 Metal Coatings Segment















Sales

$ 133,373



$ 115,616



$ 390,701



$ 351,643

Segment operating income:















Metal Coatings

$ 32,724



$ 28,671



$ 95,888



$ 69,355

Impact of restructuring and impairment





(281)







11,043

Metal Coatings, as adjusted

$ 32,724



$ 28,390



$ 95,888



$ 80,398

Operating income as a % of sales

24.5 %

24.6 %

24.5 %

22.9 %

















Infrastructure Solutions Segment















Sales

$ 98,364



$ 111,007



$ 287,309



$ 291,644

Segment operating income:















Infrastructure Solutions

9,189



8,722



25,838



3,364

Impact of restructuring and impairment





1,857







9,226

Infrastructure Solutions, as adjusted

$ 9,189



$ 10,579



$ 25,838



$ 12,590

Operating income as a % of sales

9.3 %

9.5 %

9.0 %

4.3 %





Three Months Ended

Nine Months Ended



November 30, 2020

November 30, 2020



Amount

Per Diluted Share

Amount

Per Diluted Share Net income and diluted earnings per share

$ 19,703



$ 0.76



$ 23,454



$ 0.90

Adjustments (net of tax):















Restructuring and impairment charges:















Metal Coatings

(281)



(0.01)



11,043



0.42

Infrastructure Solutions

1,857



0.07



9,226



0.35

Subtotal

1,576



0.06



20,269



0.77

Tax benefit related to restructuring and impairment charges

(347)



(0.01)



(4,459)



(0.17)

Total adjustments

1,229



0.05



15,810



0.61

Adjusted earnings and adjusted earnings per share

$ 20,932



$ 0.80



$ 39,264



$ 1.50



















(1) Earnings per share amounts included in the table above may not sum due to rounding differences.

SOURCE AZZ Inc.
TORONTO, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Canntab Therapeutics Limited (CSE:PILL.CN) (OTCQB:CTABF) (FRA:TBF1.F) (the "Company" or "Canntab"), a leading innovator in cannabinoid and terpene blends in hard pill form for therapeutic applications, is pleased to provide an update on its recent product deliveries for Ontario and Australia.

On January 7, 2022 Canntab completed its first shipment of 5 mg THC tablets to the Ontario Cannabis Store ("OCS"). Additionally, in early December 2021, Canntab completed its second shipment of both THC and CBD tablets to Australia.

Larry Latowsky, Chief Executive Officer of Canntab commented "Our initial delivery to the OCS is a first for us and marks the beginning of a productive and growing relationship. Our product will be available to all Ontario Cannabis stores for purchase in addition to being available for sale via the OCS website. We will support the sales and distribution of the Canntab brand with strong marketing materials and point of sale programs, engaging expert teams to educate all Ontario budtenders about the unique nature of Canntab's products and its patented delivery system. We are encouraged as well with our future listing of CBD products which will ship to the OCS in early spring 2022."

Latowsky further stated that "Our second shipment to Australia is a signal of the acceptance and success of our product in the Australian market. We anticipate an ongoing flow of orders from this market as our partners now have the confidence to roll our products throughout the country. This really is the beginning of our full-scale commercialization with these shipments; our announcements of affiliate partnerships and the anticipated hard launch of our website later this month, that will permit all Canadians access to our products for ease of online purchase and direct to home delivery via www.canntab.ca."

Since receiving a Medical Sales License from Health Canada on November 11, 2021, Canntab has been focused on the full commercialization of its brand and products. The OSC initial shipment and Australian 2nd shipment are just 2 examples of what is expected to be numerous developments in the very near future. In addition, affiliates across Canada like pharmacy groups, health and wellness practitioners, sleep and pain clinics and other medical professionals will now be able to recommend or prescribe our product and be fully compensated.

About Canntab Therapeutics Limited

Canntab is a Canadian phytopharmaceutical company focused on the manufacturing and distribution of a suite of hard pill cannabinoid formulations in multiple doses and timed-release combinations. Long referred to as Cannabis 3.0 by the Company, Canntab's proprietary hard pill cannabinoid formulations provide doctors, patients and consumers with medical grade solutions which incorporate all the features one would expect from any prescription or over the counter medication sold in pharmacies around the world. These include once a day and extended release formulations, both providing an accurate dose and improved shelf stability.

Canntab holds a Cannabis Standard Processing & Sales for Medical Purposes License, and a Cannabis Research License from Health Canada.

Canntab trades on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol PILL, on the OTCQB under the symbol CTABF, and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the symbol TBF1.

Notice Regarding Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "could", "intend", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected", "estimated" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on the Company's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. The forward-looking information and forward- looking statements contained herein include, but are not limited to, statements regarding: the adoption of the Company's products; the future plans of the Company, including the marketing and utilization of the OCS as a distribution channel for the Company and the growth of the Australian market; affiliates recommending and prescribing the Company's products; and the future product offerings and distribution channels of the Company, including the Company's website, OCS and Australia and the anticipated timelines.

Forward-looking information in this news release are based on certain assumptions and expected future events, namely: the Company's ability to continue as a going concern; the continued commercial viability and growth in popularity of the Company's products; continued approval of the Company's activities by the relevant governmental and/or regulatory authorities; the Company continuing to develop products; growth of the Company through the OCS and Australia; affiliates will recommend and prescribe the Company's products; and the Company's website launching on its anticipated timeline.

These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements, including but not limited to: the potential inability of the Company to continue as a going concern; risks associated with potential governmental and/or regulatory action with respect to the Company's operations; competition within the industry; risks that the Company will be unable to execute its plans; risk that the Company will not grow as anticipated; risks that consumers will not purchase its products through the OCS or in Australian; risks that affiliates will not recommend and prescribe the Company's products; and risks that the Company will not meet its anticipated timelines.

Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list is not exhaustive. Readers are further 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 placed will occur. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated.

Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement and reflect the Company's expectations as of the date hereof and are subject to change thereafter. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, estimates or opinions, future events or results or otherwise or to explain any material difference between subsequent actual events and such forward-looking information, except as required by applicable law.

SOURCE Canntab Therapeutics Limited
Emergency first responders remain at the scene after an intense fire at a 19-story residential building that erupted in the morning on Jan. 9, 2022, in the Bronx borough of New York City. Reports indicate over 50 people were injured. (Scott Heins/Getty Images)

A day after a deadly Bronx fire killed 17 people, Yusupha Jawara frantically searched local hospitals and called government information lines trying to find out what happened to his missing younger brother and sister-in-law.

He came up empty-handed but feared the worst, knowing he would have to return to his own nearby apartment where his nieces and nephews were waiting for news about their missing parents.

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The minimum we want is information, Jawara said. We went to the hospital, sitting there for 11 hours. Nobody slept, just calling and calling.

Yusupha Jawara speaks to reporters about his desperate search for missing relatives after the deadly Bronx fire. (Brittany Kriegstein/New York Daily News)

Hes been fielding frantic calls from friends and family trying to learn what happened to the missing couple.

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The names of the 17 victims who all died of smoke inhalation from the Fordham Heights high-rise fire sparked by a faulty space heater have not been released. On Monday afternoon, Mayor Adams revised the number to 17 from 19 after officials double-counted some fatalities.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams holds a press conference outside the Twin Parks North West building Monday afternoon. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

Many members of the families displaced by the blaze were still wondering where to turn for answers.

Jawara, 46, said he has been back and forth from the hospital and called 311 almost a dozen times only to be told there is no new information to share.

He stood outside the Masjid Ar-Raham mosque on Webster Ave., where many of the buildings residents worship, hoping to learn some information.

We want to know who is alive and who is dead, Jawara said. That is all we want to know.

Isatou Jabbie in an undated photo.

By nightfall, Jawara learned the awful truth about the deaths of his brother Hagi Jawara, 47, and sister-in-law, Isatou Janie, 31, in the smokey blaze.

They both passed away, a devastated Jawara said Monday night. Its Gods will. We have to take it in faith and pray for them.

They leave two sons and two daughters behind, their ages ranging between 4 and 14.

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The four children dont know about it yet, Yusupha Jawara said. Were still trying to figure out how to break the news.

The family had recently returned from Gambia, where they were visiting Janies mother.

My brother worked two jobs, one as a construction worker and the other in a fried chicken place, Yusupha Jawara said. His wife was a home health aide. They were good hard-working people.

Earlier Monday, the thought of having to return to his apartment with bad news for his two nieces, ages 14 and 11, and two nephews 4 and 7, overwhelmed him. He broke down in tears.

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A woman cries Monday as she walks past the site of the historic deadly Bronx fire. (TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)

The mosques imam, Musa Kabba, 62, said he was doing his best to pass the information along to Jawara and others at the mosque but is facing the same obstacles.

Its like red tape, said Kabba. Nobody is telling us anything. They told us to call 311  we called them six more times from yesterday.

Kabba read from a preliminary list of victims he obtained from police. He paused in pain at almost every entry, their names familiar to him.

Were still looking for them, he said of the victims families.

Clean-up crews arrive at the burned out building early Monday morning. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

Miguel Ramos, a car dealer from Mount Vernon, Westchester County, stopped by St. Barnabas Hospital Monday looking for a friend and his friends wife. But the hospital refused to provide any information because Ramos isnt considered next-of-kin.

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Hes such a good person. Like my little brother, Ramos said of the missing man feared dead. He loves everyone.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

Community groups have pitched in to bring relief to the survivors. A GoFundMe set up by the Gambian Youth Organization raised over $500,000 in less than 24 hours. The groups headquarters are just a few blocks from the burned building.

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Weve set up a fund-raiser so that we could get funds directly to all victims, said Salim Drammeh, 26, president of the Gambian Youth Organization. We opened our community center to take in donations. We are taking donations of food and clothes.

An FDNY firefighter looks out from a burned apartment at the Twin Parks North West building Monday afternoon. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

The group has run a food pantry since the start of the COVID pandemic and now serves more than 16,000 families. Some of those families lost members in Sundays fire.

We contacted a mother yesterday, and she told me she lost two of her kids, Drammeh said. These are our people, these are our families.

Salim said that its not just food and clothing that the families need but emotional support as well.

A partial view of broken apartment windows and the interior at the Twin Parks North West building early Monday morning. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

You have families that lost every single thing, Drammeh said. But within that shock, the community again really came out, came through and provided support for each other even though this is something thats been really hurtful. 

Theres a guy that came in, his wife passed away last year. He came in and donated his wifes coat, Drammeh added. You can tell that comes from the heart. So this community, even though weve been going through a lot right now, people have come together. Thats the one amazing thing.
HOUSTON, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (NYSE: CNP) today announced that it has successfully completed the previously announced sale of its natural gas distribution utilities in Arkansas and Oklahoma to Summit Utilities, Inc. The assets include approximately 17,000 miles of main pipeline in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texarkana, serving more than 500,000 residential and business customers.

The transaction received all necessary federal and state regulatory approvals, including from the Arkansas Public Service Commission, Oklahoma Corporation Commission and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Summit will immediately assume responsibility for serving CenterPoint Energy's former customers in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texarkana.

CenterPoint Energy Executive Vice President, Utility Operations Scott Doyle said, "We want to thank our employees and those of Summit for the successful completion of this transaction. We will be working together for a seamless transition for the benefit of the customers throughout the service territories."

CenterPoint Energy President and CEO Dave Lesar said, "Completing the sale of these natural gas distribution businesses will help us achieve a number of our strategic goals, including efficiently funding our long-term capital investment plans across our regulated utility businesses without issuing external equity, driving industry-leading rate base growth, and allowing us to focus our efforts on executing our plan across fewer jurisdictions."

Lesar added, "At our recent Analyst Day, we outlined a pathway towards becoming a premium utility, including an updated five-year capital plan of more than $18 billion, as well as a first-ever 10-year capital plan of more than $40 billion to serve our growing customer base. These investments will be dedicated to safety, reliability, growth and enabling clean energy investments to benefit our customers and investors."

About CenterPoint Energy, Inc.

As the only investor-owned electric and gas utility based in Texas, CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (NYSE: CNP) is an energy delivery company with electric transmission and distribution, power generation and natural gas distribution operations that, after the closing of the Arkansas/Oklahoma transaction, serve nearly 7 million metered customers in Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas. As of September 30, 2021, the company owned approximately $37 billion in assets. With approximately 9,000 total employees after the closing of the Arkansas/Oklahoma transaction, CenterPoint Energy and its predecessor companies have been in business for more than 150 years. For more information, visit CenterPointEnergy.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. When used in this news release, the words "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "goal," "intend," "may," "objective," "plan," "potential," "predict," "projection," "should," "target," "will" or other similar words are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based upon assumptions of management which are believed to be reasonable at the time made and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual events and results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Any statements in this news release regarding future events, such as CenterPoint Energy's capital investments, rate base growth and its ability to achieve it, financing plans (including future equity issuances), and future financial performance and results of operations and any other statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Each forward-looking statement contained in this news release speaks only as of the date of this release. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the provided forward-looking information include risks and uncertainties relating to: (1) the impact of COVID-19; (2) financial market conditions; (3) general economic conditions; (4) the timing and impact of future regulatory and legislative decisions; (5) effects of competition; (6) weather variations; (7) changes in business plans; and (8) other factors, risks and uncertainties discussed in CenterPoint Energy's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, CenterPoint Energy's Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the quarters ended March 31, 2021, June 30, 2021 and September 30, 2021 and other reports CenterPoint Energy or its subsidiaries may file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

For more information, contact

Media Relations

[email protected]

Investor Relations

Jackie Richert

Phone: 713.207.6500

SOURCE CenterPoint Energy, Inc.
ZURICH, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Chubb Limited (NYSE: CB) today announced that Julie Dillman has been appointed Executive Vice President, Chubb Group and Digital Transformation Officer. Currently, Senior Vice President, Chubb Group and Global Head of Operations and Technology, Ms. Dillman in her new role will partner and work closely with Chubb's Chief Digital Business Officer, Sean Ringsted, and the company's senior business executives to lead the company's transformation, including how work gets done and the skills and technology employed to serve customers and distribution partners. Ms. Dillman will continue to have executive oversight for the company's global operations and technology.

Julie Dillman Thomas Kropp

Thomas Kropp, who currently serves as Deputy Global Operations and Technology Officer, has been named Senior Vice President, Chubb Group and Global Head of Operations and Technology, and will report to Ms. Dillman. In this capacity, Mr. Kropp will have global responsibility for technology, service operations, business resiliency, procurement, real estate and general business efficiencies. Ms. Dillman will retain direct responsibility for certain operational areas including workplace experience and flight operations.

The appointments were effective January 1, 2022. Ms. Dillman will continue to report to Evan G. Greenberg, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and John Keogh, President and Chief Operating Officer.

"Chubb is transforming itself to a company built to thrive in the digital age. With her proven experience, character and leadership, Julie is the right executive to lead these core foundational aspects of our transformation," said Mr. Greenberg. "For a number of years, Julie has led our significant investments in technology and talent, building new tools, developing new skillsets and ways of doing business. We are changing how insurance operates enterprisewide. I have every confidence in Julie's ability to accelerate our progress and help us achieve this important strategic objective."

"Thomas is an accomplished technology and operations executive," said Ms. Dillman. "We are delighted to appoint him to this global senior leadership role. His deep engineering background, international experience and demonstrated leadership across all facets of technology strategy and execution make him the ideal candidate to lead our global operations and technology organization."

Ms. Dillman joined Chubb in 2016 from Travelers Insurance, where, as Executive Vice President, Operations, eBusiness and Analytics, and a member of the company's management committee, she led operations and corporatewide digital and analytics delivery. Ms. Dillman began her career as a personal insurance underwriter and held positions of increasing responsibility including product development leadership and integration leadership roles through multiple platforms. She was appointed Senior Vice President, Chubb Group in 2016. Ms. Dillman received a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin  Eau Claire.

Mr. Kropp joined Chubb in 2020 from Zurich Insurance, where he served as Group IT Services Officer. In that role, he drove the company's simplification and digitization strategies. Before Zurich, Mr. Kropp held senior technology positions at Allianz, and at Lufthansa Systems, where he led global digital workplace services, the enterprise data center and introduced a new passenger services system. He received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University in Mannheim, Germany.

About Chubb

Chubb is the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company. 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: www.chubb.com

SOURCE Chubb Limited
An experienced leader in both operations and service, Ms. Albert build her career by inspiring vision, effectively leading teams, and developing future leaders through training and mentoring. Prior to joining the Home2 Suites El Reno, Albert served in various leadership roles with the Home2 Suites Oklahoma City South, The Hampton Inn & Suites Oklahoma City South, and Kusum Hospitality. Ms. Albert resides with her family in Mustang, Oklahoma.
Endear Health Announces $4M in Seed Funding, Led by 8VC, Appoints Former Aetna Medicare CMO to Advisory Board Tweet this

Endear Health transforms how value-based entities engage with innovative digital health programs

Through recent regulatory and legislative action, Medicare Advantage plans now have greater flexibility to offer a number of previously uncovered supplemental benefits. Plans offer these benefits  including meal provision, transportation, in-home support services, and more  through a combination of disparate platforms, which place the onus on the member to access and utilize the most applicable benefit at the appropriate moment. This fragmented benefit structure drives member confusion, low program engagement, and a high degree of administrative cost and burden.

With Endear Health, organizations can offer members a comprehensive and intuitive platform, purposefully designed for seniors, which integrates educational resources, core benefits and supplemental benefits into a single location. Additionally, through a marketplace of scalable integrations with third-party digital health vendors, Endear Health empowers payors to quickly deploy innovative programs in an efficient manner.

This initial funding round allows Endear Health to deliver on its early commercial commitments and scale its team to meet the growing needs of value-based care focused health plans and providers, while enabling continuous innovation in the digital health space.

Endear Health welcomes Dr. Bob Mirsky to its growing advisory board

In addition to closing its funding round, Endear Health also welcomes Dr. Bob Mirsky to its advisory board. Dr. Mirsky brings over 35 years of healthcare experience, most recently serving as Chief Medical Officer and Vice President Medical Operations, Aetna Medicare. Previously, Bob held leadership roles as CMO for North Shore-LIJ Insurance Company, as CMO for the Mid-Atlantic Region of Coventry Health Care, as CMO Gateway Health Plan in Pittsburgh, as Senior MD Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, and as CMO Tenet Health System Florida.

Bob has seen firsthand the challenges facing seniors as they attempt to navigate an increasingly digital world, both from his time practicing family medicine and serving Medicare members at Aetna.

"While the array of digital solutions and core and supplemental benefits has grown exponentially, so has the complexity of understanding and accessing those offerings," said Dr. Mirsky. "By partnering with health plans, Endear Health endeavors to simplify the process for members thereby unlocking the value to improve outcomes and quality of life. I am excited to join the Endear Health team to help bring this vision to reality."

The Leadership team at Endear Health, including co-founders Chris Boudreaux and Michael Chappelear, could not be more excited to welcome Dr. Mirsky to the team.

About Endear Health

Endear Health, the first digital engagement platform built for the rapidly evolving value-based landscape, is on a mission to fundamentally improve the Medicare experience. Founded in 2021 and backed by 8VC and GreatPoint Ventures, Endear Health is focused on reducing the hurdles seniors face while navigating an increasingly digital world through development of innovative consumer-centric engagement solutions. Endear Health believes that seniors who are accustomed to receiving assistance and care across nearly all facets of their daily lives should receive that same high level of support when it comes to how they access healthcare.

For more information, visit: endearhealth.com

Contact

[email protected]

SOURCE Endear Health
This landmark acquisition is a strategic move by both companies and one that enables Foodics to consolidate the market, as well as take market leadership position in Egypt, Kuwait, Oman and Jordan on top of the dominant position it already had in the rest of GCC. This first acquisition also opens the door to further upcoming M&A activities and international expansion from Foodics.

Founded in 2016 in Jordan, POSRocket offers cloud-based POS software for restaurants and retailers, allowing owners to remotely manage operations in real-time. The acquisition will allow POSRocket merchants to benefit from Foodics' ecosystem in managing payments, supplies and capital lending infrastructure.

Ahmad Al-Zaini, Foodics CEO and Co-founder commented, "We are delighted to welcome the POSRocket astronaut team, its clients and partners to the Foodics family and look forward to growing together for the benefit of the wider ecosystem. Our acquisition of the fast growing and second largest restaurant Cloud technology provider in the region is very strategic as it naturally establishes our position as the dominant player across MENA and beyond."

Zeid Husban, POSRocket Chief Executive Astronaut and Founder commented, "Foodics is a natural fit for POSRocket, as both brands are driven by helping business owners grow their operations. Bringing our talented teams together is a strategic move that yields us a unique competitive advantage. Now powered by Foodics, the POSRocket astronauts are delighted to be joining a larger team and brand, and with access to funding, we are looking forward to a bright future together."

Since its inception in 2014, Foodics has successfully already processed over US$5 billion worth of orders through its platform, and is targeting 150,000 terminals by the end of 2024.

More information about FOODICS :

https://www.foodics.com/

SOURCE Foodics
The 2021 OC 500 list is created by the Orange County Business Journal to highlight the 500 most influential leaders in Orange County, Calif. Cotner is highlighted in the technology category for her leadership of Infinite Electronics. The company is a global supplier of electronics components for wired and wireless communications networks with a dozen brands under its umbrella, estimated to have annual sales approaching $400M. Also noted in Cotner's profile is Infinite Electronics' recent expansion with the purchase of NavePoint LLC, an online provider of networking equipment and services. Additionally, in March, Infinite Electronics was acquired by private equity giant Warburg Pincus.

"I am honored to be included in this year's OC 500 list. It's an impressive group of leaders and businesses all contributing to the economy and community in Orange County, and to the greater technology arena. I'm very proud that the Infinite Electronics team is among them," said Cotner.

Cotner joined Infinite Electronics in 2013 and became president and CEO in 2018. Under her leadership, the company has enjoyed consistently high revenue growth and continued to grow through acquisition. Cotner has more than 25 years of experience in the electronics industry, including early engineering positions at Hughes Aircraft Company and with Rockwell's Space Station Program, and multiple leadership roles with Fortune 500 global distributor Arrow Electronics. She holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from California State University, Northridge, and an MBA from the University of California, Irvine.

For additional information about Infinite Electronics, please visit www.infiniteelectronics.com.

About Infinite Electronics:

Based in Irvine, Calif., Infinite Electronics is a Warburg Pincus portfolio company, and offers a broad range of components, assemblies and wired/wireless connectivity solutions serving the aerospace/defense, industrial, government, consumer electronics, instrumentation, medical and telecommunications markets. Infinite's brands include Pasternack, Fairview Microwave, L-com, MilesTek, ShowMeCables, NavePoint, INC Installs, Integra Optics, PolyPhaser, Transtector, KP Performance Antennas, RadioWaves and Aiconics. Infinite Electronics serves a global engineering customer base with deep technical expertise and support, with one of the broadest inventories of products available for immediate shipment.

Press Contact:



Peter McNeil

Infinite Electronics

17792 Fitch

Irvine, CA, 92614 USA

(978) 682-6936

SOURCE Infinite Electronics, Inc.
CBM will leverage this investment to enhance its fully integrated pre-clinical through commercial manufacturing capabilities with world class automation and infrastructure. Existing and future capabilities include process development, viral vector manufacturing, cell processing, plasmid DNA, cell banking, and a full suite of complimentary analytical development and testing capabilities.

"This investment enables CBM to further accelerate and scale our capabilities, putting us at the forefront of solving manufacturing challenges in collaboration with our cell and gene therapy product development partners," said Joerg Ahlgrimm, President and CEO, Center for Breakthrough Medicines.

"We chose to partner with SK based on our shared deep desire to cure cancer and eradicate genetic disease," said Brian O'Neill, Chairman, Center for Breakthrough Medicines. "Thousands of people are dying every day, and we have the ability to cure patients by manufacturing these new technologies. This unprecedented collaboration will allow us to bring over 700,000 square feet of capacity online, and hire 2,000 of the world's most brilliant, advanced therapy experts, all at the Discovery Labs site in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania."

"SK is the perfect strategic partner to enable CBM's core mission of expediting approval for cell and gene therapies," said Audrey Greenberg, Co-Founder, Center for Breakthrough Medicines. "SK's mission of delivering value and happiness for all, their emphasis on a culture of safety and quality, and their global reach creates an ideal match for CBM allowing us to scale and deliver in an unprecedented manner."

In addition to supporting lab and GMP suite build-out, this investment will also enable strategic joint ventures, sponsored research agreements, and development of proprietary technology platforms.

"People of all ages are suffering from cancer and genetic diseases around the world. Our partnership with SK accelerates our ability to bring together the world's most brilliant minds to develop and manufacture cures," said Joerg Ahlgrimm, President and CEO, Center for Breakthrough Medicines. "The partnership with SK, Inc. allows us to more fully realize our mission to save lives by accelerating the development and manufacturing of advanced therapies. This mission is the foundation of our company culture  we always put our partners and patients first, it is the premise of CBM and why we come to work every day."

"CBM's strong management team and geographic location in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the cell & gene therapy industry, were core elements in our desire to invest in the company," said Mr. Dong Hoon Lee, Executive Vice President of SK Inc., "Through our investment in CBM, which was made through SK Pharmteco, an SK holding company, we have secured a crucial foundation for realizing SK pharmteco's vison in 2025 to become a global top-tier CDMO."

Incentrum Group acted as exclusive financial advisor on the transaction.

About The Center for Breakthrough Medicines

CBM is a horizontally integrated cell and gene therapy contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO). CBM offers fully integrated, bench to bedside, pre-clinical through commercial manufacturing capabilities including, process development, plasmid DNA, viral vector manufacturing, cell banking, cell processing, and a full suite of complimentary testing and analytic capabilities. CBM's innovative horizontal integration enables the utmost quality and accelerates time to market and affordability of advanced therapies from discovery to commercialization without compromising quality through a single-source, end-to-end solution, providing the opportunity for incubators, academics, researchers, and companies small to large to align with the most comprehensive manufacturing partner in the industry.

About SK Inc. & SK Pharmteco

SK Inc. is a diversified, publicly-traded (KRX: 034730), investment holding company for SK Group, a leading conglomerate in Seoul, South Korea with major operating companies in energy, semiconductors, telecommunications and life sciences, with significant investments in BioPharma cell and gene therapies. SK pharmteco, a holding company of SK CDMO business based in California, consolidates the operations of AMPAC Fine Chemicals, SK biotek, SK bioteck Ireland, and Yposkesi. The company has global manufacturing facilities with demonstrated capabilities in process development, scale-up, and cGMP-compliant commercial production of active pharmaceutical ingredients and registered intermediates for pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers worldwide.

Media Contact:

John F. Kouten, DeFazio Communications

(o) 609-241-7352 (c) 908-227-4714

[email protected]

SOURCE Center for Breakthrough Medicines
WILMINGTON, Del., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Delaware's premier nonprofit coding school, Zip Code Wilmington, announced today it will receive $4.5 million over three years from the State of Delaware to provide tuition and living stipends to qualifying Delaware residents. The 'Break Into Tech' Scholarship will support more than 200 Delaware residents as they reskill into the technology industry as Java software developers, data analysts and data engineers through Zip Code Wilmington's 12-week bootcamp.

"We need to make sure that Delawareans have the skills needed to compete for good-paying jobs of the future," said Governor John Carney. "That's why we're targeting these workforce development investments in industries like technology and engineering that are in-demand today, and growing. Zip Code Wilmington is a perfect example of the kind of program that works. These investments will help low-income Delawareans who were most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, by getting them the skills they need to start a career that can support their families over the long run. That's a big deal. I want to thank everyone at Zip Code Wilmington for their important work."

Break Into Tech Scholarship

The Break Into Tech Scholarship expands upon Zip Code Wilmington's successful efforts under the 2020 Forward Delaware program by providing scholarship recipients with a stipend while attending Zip Code Wilmington. This means the $15,000 cost of training (specifically, the $6,000 upfront tuition paid by the students and the $9,000 remaining tuition balance paid on behalf of the student by the corporate partner employers on behalf of the student) will be paid in full by the State of Delaware, which is a benefit to both the scholarship recipients and to potential employers seeking to hire them upon completion of their training. For the students, they will receive an added benefit  more than $1,000 each month to offset living expenses while attending the program full-time.

"This grant will make it possible for unemployed or underemployed Delawareans, including those working at minimum wage jobs, to transition into salaried tech careers and transform their lives forever," said Executive Director Desa Burton, Zip Code Wilmington. "Zip Code Wilmington will receive $1.5 million each year for three years from the State of Delaware. This generous grant will make access to high quality tech training a reality for many Delaware residents living in poverty and impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and thereby help lift residents into good paying, high demand, financially stable tech careers."

Application Process

Applications are being accepted now for the Summer session, which runs from June 20, 2022 - September 9, 2022. During the application process, low to middle income Delaware residents will be given an opportunity to submit a request for the Break Into Tech Scholarship. Zip Code Wilmington currently offers three cohorts per year, and estimates welcoming an additional 25 students within each cohort for the next three years through the new Break Into Tech Scholarship.

"Unfortunately, many low-income residents fall within the financial assistance gap that exists and are forced to find their own way to secure funding needed for education and reskilling programs like Zip Code Wilmington," commented Claire DeMatteis, special assistant to the Governor, State of Delaware. "We are proud to fund such an esteemed and well-respected program like Zip Code Wilmington, and we have confidence they will not only provide top notch tech training, but will also be a partner in helping to place graduates in long-term careers. We've seen their positive outcomes firsthand and are looking forward to getting more Delaware residents into tech jobs that are in high-demand in our state."

Zip Code Wilmington has successfully trained nearly 500 software developers and, more recently, data engineers, since it launched in 2015. An estimated 85% of its graduates have secured developer jobs with Delaware-area employers.

To learn more about Zip Code Wilmington or to apply, please visit www.zipcodewilmington.com .

Zip Code Wilmington

Zip Code Wilmington is a 12-week software coding bootcamp located in Wilmington, Delaware, that gives adult learners the technical, interpersonal and leadership skills needed to secure a competitive software developer job and increase their earning potential. Zip Code Wilmington's program prepares its students to become highly qualified and trained technology talent, while connecting students with corporate partners throughout the program. Co-founded in 2015 by Ben duPont, Jim Stewart, and Porter Schutt, the program has nearly 500 alumni. To learn more about Zip Code Wilmington, please visit www.zipcodewilmington.com .

SOURCE Zip Code Wilmington
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Turo Inc. ("Turo") today announced that it has publicly filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") relating to the proposed initial public offering of its common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. Turo intends to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "TURO".

Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan will act as lead book-running managers and as representatives of the underwriters for the proposed offering. Allen & Company and Citigroup are acting as book-running managers. Cowen, D.A. Davidson & Co., Wolfe | Nomura Alliance, LionTree Advisors, Loop Capital Markets, Ramirez & Co., Inc., and Siebert Williams Shank are acting as co-managers for the proposed offering.

The proposed offering will be made only by means of a prospectus which may be obtained from Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 180 Varick Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10014; J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Attention: Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717 or by telephone at 866-803-9204 or by email at [email protected] ; Allen & Company LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 711 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10022 or by telephone at (212) 339-2220 or by email at [email protected]; or Citigroup Global Markets Inc., c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717 or by telephone at 1-800-831-9146 or by email at [email protected].

A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the SEC but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold, nor may offers to buy be accepted, prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, and shall not constitute an offer, solicitation or sale in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of that jurisdiction.

About Turo

Turo is the world's largest car sharing marketplace where you can book any car you want, wherever you want it, from a vibrant community of trusted hosts across the US, Canada, and the UK. Whether you're flying in from afar or looking for a car down the street, searching for a rugged truck or something smooth and swanky, guests can take the wheel of the perfect car for any occasion, while hosts can take the wheel of their futures by building an accessible, flexible, and scalable car sharing business from the ground up.

Contacts

[email protected]

[email protected]

SOURCE Turo
DUBAI, UAE, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The global wind power coatings market is estimated to expand a 11.3% CAGR over the forecast period between 2021 and 2031, finds Future Market Insights (FMI) in a recent market analysis. Increasing focus on alternate sources of energy has led to surge in wind turbine installation worldwide. This has in turn created conducive environment for sales of wind power coatings.

The installation of wind turbines has risen in tandem with the demand for cleaner energy sources. Application of wind power coatings is the essential step within wind turbine manufacturing. Besides protecting such a large and costly structure, wind power coatings also ascertain longer life span of wind turbines protecting them from corrosion, erosion, and wear and tear.

However, application of wind power coatings require skilled labor and advance equipment. Unavailability of the same could hamper growth of the market.

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Key Takeaways:

Global wind power coatings market value is expected to surpass US$ 3.5 Bn by the end of the forecast period.

by the end of the forecast period. The onshore coatings segment is expected to register maximum sales.

East Asia is expected to be the dominant region in terms of production and consumption of wind power coatings.

is expected to be the dominant region in terms of production and consumption of wind power coatings. Demand from Japan and China will support sales of wind power coatings in East Asia.

and will support sales of wind power coatings in East Asia. Demand in the U.S. will grow by 9.8% year-on-year in 2021 backed by surging focus on expanding the renewable energy infrastructure.

backed by surging focus on expanding the renewable energy infrastructure. The U.K. and Germany will emerge as highly lucrative market for sales of wind power coatings within Europe .

"In order to gain competitive edge, the market players are eyeing at strategic collaboration. Besides this, they are expanding their portfolio to include coatings with advanced features. This is expected to aid the expansion of the market in the coming years," says an FMI analyst.

Reports [email protected] https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/wind-power-coatings-market

Competitive Landscape

Leading manufacturers of wind power coatings are laying emphasis on research and development activities to strengthen their product portfolio and comply with changing consumer preference

For Instance,

In October 2019 , Akzo Nobel launched a new powder coatings range 'Interpon Redox' for corrosion protection. It covers a full array of substrates, surfaces and environments, including wind turbines.

, Akzo Nobel launched a new powder coatings range 'Interpon Redox' for corrosion protection. It covers a full array of substrates, surfaces and environments, including wind turbines. In October 2021 , Aerox Advanced Polymers developed AROLEP, a coating with tailor-made modifications of polymer properties that can absorb high-speed and high-frequency impacts.

, Aerox Advanced Polymers developed AROLEP, a coating with tailor-made modifications of polymer properties that can absorb high-speed and high-frequency impacts. In September 2020 , Teknos Group Oy launched a new version of edge repair solutions, Teknoblade repair 9000-20, for wind turbine rotor blades. This coating shows good rain erosion test results according to DNVGL- RP-0171 _2018 test standard and is available with an improved system for easy and safe application.

Key manufacturers of wind power coatings Includes Hempel A/S, PPG Industries, Inc., Covestro AG, Akzo Nobel N.V., BASF, The Sherwin-Williams Company, Jotun Group, Teknos Group Oy, 3M, Sika AG, Thomas Industrial Coatings, Mankiewicz Gebr. & Co. (GmbH & Co. KG), Bergolin GmbH & Co. KG, Duromar, Inc. and others.

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More Insights into the Wind Power Coatings Market Report

In its latest report, FMI offers an unbiased analysis of the global wind power coatings market, providing historical data for the period of 2016-2020 and forecast statistics for the period of 2021-2031. In order to understand the global market potential, its growth, and scope, the market is segmented on the basis of type, coating method, application, utilization, and Region

Wind Power Coatings Market by Category

By Type

Polymer Coatings

Ceramic Coatings

Metal Coatings

By Coating Method

Spray

Roller

Others

By Application

Offshore

Onshore

By Utilization

OEM

Maintenance

By Region:

North America

Latin America

Europe

East Asia

South Asia & Pacific

& Pacific Middle East & Africa

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Explore FMI's Extensive Coverage on Chemicals & Materials Domain

Sulphur Coated Urea Market: Growing concerns over sustainability and cost minimisation in the agriculture sector is driving demand for sulphur coated urea globally.

Alumina Trihydrate Market: The market is forecast to exhibit compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.7% during the forecast period, reaching a volume of around 11,098.9 KT by 2031 end.

Pearlescent Pigment Market: Globally, the revenue generated from sales of pearlescent pigment is estimated to be around US$ 2,705.2 Mn in 2015, and is projected to expand at a CAGR of 4.1%, during the forecast period 2015-2025.

About Future Market Insights (FMI)

Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in Dubai, and has delivery centers in the UK, U.S. and India. FMI's latest market research reports and industry analysis help businesses navigate challenges and make critical decisions with confidence and clarity amidst breakneck competition. Our customized and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. A team of expert-led analysts at FMI continuously tracks emerging trends and events in a broad range of industries to ensure that our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.

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A dozen New York City lifesavers were so sickened by COVID-19 they cant do their jobs  and now theyre in desperate need of a lifeline, the Daily News has learned.

The sickened FDNY emergency medical technicians and paramedics suffered extensive damage to their lungs and hearts after contracting coronavirus at the start of the pandemic and have been out of work for nearly two years.

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Since EMS employees do not have unlimited paid sick leave like firefighters and police officers, some of the long-haul COVID sufferers have already exhausted their 18 months of sick leave and are no longer being paid, union officials said.

FDNY Paramedics Kim Benson and Chris Feliciano carry equipment back to their ambulance outside the home of a COVID-19 patient in Queens in May 5, 2020. (Angus Mordant/for New York Daily News)

When their line-of-duty injury clock ran out, they fell off payroll, Oren Barzilay, the president of Local 2507 told The News. The dozen EMS members disabled by the disease were revealed following an internal survey of union members, he said.

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Its disheartening that the city is not doing much to help them. We dont even know if they will be eligible for workmans compensation because workmans comp is denying these claims as well.

We were exposed to COVID more than anybody else in society, Barzilay added. This needs to be addressed, just like 9/11 illness. I just hope we dont have to wait 20 years for these benefits to kick in.

Some of the disabled COVID-19 sufferers are receiving grants from the FDNY Honor Emergency Fund to cover their monthly expenses, but that can only last for so long.

We have one guy who is 28, and he now has the heart function of an 80-year-old, said Gary Smiley, a former city paramedic and World Trade Center liaison for Local 2507 who is helping the long haulers. I have another member whose lung function is so bad that he cant catch his breath walking from his car to headquarters.

Some of the long haulers are so badly off theyre applying for a tax-free three-quarters disability pension from the New York City Employees Retirement System, commonly known as NYCERS.

But their push for a NYCERS pension will be an uphill battle.

At this time, there is no presumptive disability law regarding COVID, said a NYCERS spokeswoman.

In other words, theres no automatic pension for EMTs and paramedics who contracted COVID-19 on the job.

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Theres also no state law indicating that if a first responder caught the virus, they probably caught it while working.

We tried to pass that legislation last year, but the state didnt move on it, thinking it would be too expensive, Barzilay said.

NYCERS will still process any properly filed disability application, including where an applicant claims COVID as a cause of the disabling condition, the spokeswoman said.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

An FDNY official said there are 10  not 12  EMS members unable to work after being stricken with COVID-19. All of them are currently reviewing their retirement options.

FDNY Paramedics outside the home of a COVID-19 patient in Queens in May 2020. (Angus Mordant/for New York Daily News)

Its not immediately clear how many city firefighters are in the same situation, but they can remain on sick leave indefinitely.

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Firefighters can also easily apply for a disability pension through the lung bill, which considers reduced lung function  a common side effect of the virus  as an on-the-job injury for a firefighter, another FDNY official said. The lung bill does not apply to EMS members.

Our members bravely showed up for New York City during the worst of times, through the height of the pandemic and beyond, FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said. We hope the most needy among them are given the care and compensation they rightly deserve.

FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro (Jeff Bachner/for New York Daily News)

James McCarthy, president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, said hundreds of his members have been sickened by coronavirus.

A bunch of them have been out since March of 2020, McCarthy said. Its actually easier to count the people who havent had it.
Experienced technology executive David Pais joins as the Company's new Chief Financial Officer

VANCOUVER, BC, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Wishpond Technologies Ltd. (TSXV: WISH) (OTCQX: WPNDF) (the "Company" or "Wishpond"), a provider of marketing focused online business solutions, is pleased to announce the appointment of David Pais as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), effective immediately. Reporting directly to Ali Tajskandar, Chairman and CEO of Wishpond, Mr. Pais will have responsibility for all finance, accounting, financial reporting, audit, tax and capital planning functions. He will assume the Chief Financial Officer role from Juan Leal, who will continue to support the Company in an M&A related advisory role.

Mr. Pais is an experienced, growth-oriented CFO, having worked at several technology companies in Vancouver over the last twenty years, including PHEMI Systems, Fortress Blockchain (TSXV: FORT), Nuri Technologies, Apivio Systems (TSXV: APV), UTStarcom, and Star Solutions. He was intimately involved in equity and debt financings as well as the execution of numerous corporate finance transactions in each of these companies, including spin-offs, acquisitions, and divestitures and executing a reverse take-over transaction. Mr. Pais has extensive public market experience from his time as CFO of both Fortress Blockchain and Apivio Systems. Most recently, Mr. Pais was the CFO of PHEMI Systems, a venture capital backed company with a big data platform for health data that enables analytics and artificial intelligence. In addition, Mr. Pais has broad exposure to the technology industry including software and hardware products, telecom infrastructure, VoIP, cybersecurity, and cryptocurrency mining.

Previously, Mr. Pais also worked at Ernst & Young LLP's corporate finance group, advising clients with merger and acquisition, financing, valuation, and due diligence., and Mr. Pais has experience working at a private equity firm in Los Angeles. He holds a Master of Business Administration degree in Finance and a Master's Degree in Accountancy from the University of Missouri and has passed the CPA examination in the US.

"We are thrilled to welcome David to Wishpond's executive team. His deep financial experience in the technology sector will be a valuable asset to the company as we enter Wishpond's next stage of growth," said Ali Tajskandar, Chairman and CEO of Wishpond. "I also want to thank Juan Leal, who served as our CFO since January 2020 and was instrumental in our public listing process and in executing the four acquisitions completed to date. I am pleased that Juan is able to continue to assist us with our strategic acquisitions and corporate development activities."

Mr. Pais commented, "I am very excited to be joining Wishpond and leading the strong financial team that Juan has built. I was drawn to Wishpond because of the exceptional team and opportunity to be a part of a rapidly growing technology company. I look forward to working with the Wishpond team as it achieves its milestones in the years ahead."

WISHPOND TECHNOLOGIES LTD.

Per: "Ali Tajskandar"

Ali Tajskandar, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

About Wishpond Technologies Ltd.

Based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Wishpond is a provider of marketing-focused online business solutions. Wishpond's vision is to become the leading provider of digital marketing solutions that empower entrepreneurs to achieve success online. The Company offers an "all-in-one" marketing suite that provides companies with marketing, promotion, lead generation, and sales conversion capabilities on one integrated platform. Wishpond replaces disparate marketing solutions with an easy-to-use product, for a fraction of the cost. Wishpond serves over 3,000 customers who are primarily small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in a wide variety of industries. The Company has developed cutting-edge marketing technology solutions and continues to add new features and applications with great velocity. The Company employs a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model where substantially all the Company's revenue is subscription-based recurring revenue which provides excellent revenue predictability and cash flow visibility. Wishpond is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker "WISH", and on the OTCQX Best Market under the ticker "WPNDF". For further information, visit: www.wishpond.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

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 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. The Company undertakes no obligation to comment analyses, expectations or statements made by third-parties in respect of the Company, its securities, or financial or operating results (as applicable). Although the Company 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 the Company's control, including, but not limited to, the risk factors discussed in the public disclosure documents of the Company which such risk factors are incorporated herein by reference and are available through SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking information contained in this press release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement and are made as of the date hereof. The Company 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.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Wishpond Technologies Ltd.
TROY, Mich., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- UMortgage , a fast-growing national mortgage company, continues its nationwide expansion - today, announcing that Troy, Michigan-based mortgage brokerage The Bally Team has joined its corporate portfolio.

The Bally Team, founded in 2018, has become one of the mortgage industry's biggest success stories - already the second-largest mortgage brokerage in Michigan, helping more than 2,000 families achieve the dream of homeownership. The company is spearheaded by 27-year-old Amer Bally, the top-ranked loan officer in Michigan and No. 83 overall loan officer in the country. In 2020, Bally was recognized as a "30 Under 30" winner by The Detroit Entrepreneur.

In addition to supporting homeownership and financial literacy throughout Michigan, The Bally Team has supported more than 15,000 Michigan families through charitable donations, as part of its "Bally Giveback" initiative with Detroit-based Gleaners Food Bank.

"Joining UMortgage is an exciting and humbling experience, and speaks to the importance of prioritizing your business around doing right by people," said Amer Bally, Branch Manager of The Bally Team. "At The Bally Team, we're passionate about going the extra mile to promote financial literacy and educate people on the affordable homeownership opportunities that exist. Knowing the UMortgage team operates on those same principles, this partnership will create even stronger, long-lasting benefits to Michigan residents."

Philadelphia-based UMortgage, operated by mortgage industry veteran Anthony Casa, has a mission of providing financial literacy to more consumers throughout the country, with an emphasis on underserved communities.

"Amer is one of the hungriest loan officers in the mortgage industry and his passion, both for his team and his clients, have made him a leader in the broker channel," said Anthony Casa, President of UMortgage. "His relentless drive for continued improvement and commitment to empowering people through financial literacy aligns perfectly with our goals at UMortgage."

The Bally Team will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark its official grand opening on Thursday, Jan. 27 at 5pm EST. The event will take place at 1050 Wilshire Dr., Suite 300, Troy, MI 48084.

About UMortgage

UMortgage is a purpose-driven mortgage company committed to serving their Loan Originators and community at large. Each Loan Originator offers consumers the personalized touch of working with a Broker in their backyard while maintaining the support and resources of a nationally licensed company. Licensed nationwide, they are trailblazing a path in the mortgage industry that is streamlined, modernized, and values-driven. For more information, visit umortgage.com or email [email protected].

Media Contact:

Corie Meredith

[email protected]

SOURCE UMortgage

Related Links

https://umortgage.com/


ROCKVILLE, Md., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- America is getting older faster. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of people aged 65 or older in the United States will grow to 95 million by the year 2060 and will account for nearly one-quarter of the population. Artificial intelligence (AI) and technology solutions have a significant potential to transform quality of life and improve health care outcomes for older Americans, including those with Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (AD/ADRD).

a2PilotAwards.ai and the NIA to fund $40M for innovators in AI and Aging a2Collective.ai - Empowering Innovation in AI and Aging

To meet this challenge, the AI/Tech + Aging (a2) Collective is announcing the a2 Pilot Awards, a national competition that will earmark $40 million over the next 5 years for promising pilot projects that leverage AI and other transformative technology to support healthy aging and persons living with AD/ADRD. The a2 Collective represents the National Institute on Aging's (NIA) Artificial Intelligence and Technology Collaboratories for Aging Research (AITC) program, which is dedicated to helping Americans live longer, better through the application of AI and emerging technologies.

"AI and transformative technology that supports America's aging population is projected to be a multi- trillion dollar market opportunity," says Stephen Liu, a2 Collective's Managing Director  Head of Marketing & Business Development. "Tech giants and AI startups cannot afford to overlook how this demographic will interact with the emerging #AgeTech economy."

The a2 Pilot Awards is funded by the NIA through three AITCs at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and the University of Pennsylvania, with coordination support provided by Rose Li & Associates, Inc. Pilot applicants can request up to $200,000 in non-dilutive direct costs to be expended within a 12-month period, with multi-year commitments and time extensions determined by the awarding AITC.

Each AITC will offer pilot awardees access to a wealth of resources, translational services, and state-of the art facilities, including software and hardware platforms, data sets, and population study sites.

Awardees will also be eligible to apply for $10,000 in AWS credits.

Applications for the inaugural a2 Pilot Awards will be accepted from January 10 through February 18, 2022. Please visit our a2 Pilot Awards website for eligibility requirements.

CONTACTS:

Stephen C. Liu, Managing Director

Head of Marketing & Business Development

[email protected]

1.310.210.7066

Robert Verhein, Managing Director

Head of Operations

[email protected]

1.240.552.9224

SOURCE a2 Collective
PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research published a report, titled, "Airborne L-Band SATCOM Market by Platform (Commercial Aircraft, Wide-Body Aircraft, Narrow-Body Aircraft, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Military Aircraft, and Others), Component (Transceivers, Airborne Radio, Modems and Routers, SATCOM Radomes, SATCOM Terminals, and Others), Application (Government & Defense, and Commercial) and Installation Type (New Installation and Upgradation): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20212030." According to the report, the global airborne L-Band SATCOM industry generated $0.73 billion in 2020, and is anticipated to generate $1.22 billion by 2030, witnessing a CAGR of 5.6% from 2021 to 2030.

Download Report (308 Pages PDF with Insights, Charts, Tables, Figures) at https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/9566

Prime determinants of growth

Increase in demand for SATCOM on-the-move (OTM) solutions, rise in adoption in high-altitude, long endurance (HALE) and medium altitude, long endurance (MALE) UAVs for surveillance applications, and modernization of air traffic management system drive the growth of the global airborne L-Band SATCOM market. However, cybersecurity issues and backend operations hinder the market growth. On the other hand, development of ultra-compact SATCOM terminals and increase in demand for long-haul flights present new opportunities in the coming years.

Covid-19 Scenario

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic led to the global lockdown, which in turn, forced the airborne L-band SATCOM providers to partially or completely shut their operations. This resulted in a loss in revenue.

Moreover, authorities started using airborne L-band SATCOM to broadcast messages & information about lockdown measures, especially in rural areas that lack open communication channels for health information.

However, governments & local authorities opted for the use of drones for surveillance to prevent people from gathering. They entered into multiple agreements with different companies for the implementation of L-band SATCOM services that can operate on a wider location.

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The commercial aircraft segment to maintain its leadership status throughout the forecast period

Based on platform, the commercial aircraft segment held the highest market share in 2020, accounting for around one-third of the global airborne L-Band SATCOM market, and is estimated to maintain its leadership status throughout the forecast period. This is due to major SATCOM companies being working together to create SATCOM solutions for the growing commercial aviation industry. However, the UAV segment is projected to manifest the highest CAGR of 7.5% from 2021 to 2030, owing to increase in demand for UAVs in various applications.

The new installation segment to maintain its lead position during the forecast period

Based on installation type, the new installation segment accounted for the largest share in 2020, contributing to nearly two-thirds of the global airborne L-Band SATCOM market, and is projected to maintain its lead position during the forecast period. This is due to rise in deployment of modern airborne SATCOM systems across commercial and military applications as well as increased demand for new commercial aircraft orders. Moreover, the upgradation segment is expected to portray the largest CAGR of 6.0% from 2021 to 2030, as the government and commercial aviation businesses are upgrading their existing aircraft to provide reliable mobile ad-hoc networking and data, voice, and picture communication beyond line-of-sight.

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North America to maintain its dominance by 2030

Based on region, North America held the highest market share in terms of revenue 2020, accounting for around one-third of the global airborne L-Band SATCOM market. This is due to an increase in demand for military satellite systems and equipment in the U.S. and Canada. However, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to witness the fastest CAGR of 6.6% from 2021 to 2030. This is due to increase in focus on strengthening various military industries in emerging nations such as China and India.

Leading Market Players:-

ASELSAN A.S.

Ball Corporation

Cobham Ltd

Honeywell International Inc.

Hughes Network Systems, LLC

Inmarsat Global Limited

Iridium Communications Inc.

Raytheon Technologies Corporation

Teledyne Technologies Incorporated

Thales Group

Viasat Inc.

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Similar Reports We Have on Aerospace & Defense Industry:

Airborne C-Band SATCOM Market by Platform (Commercial Aircraft, Wide Body Aircraft, Narrow Body Aircraft, UAV, Military Aircraft, Business Jet, Helicopter and Regional Transport Aircraft), Component (Transceivers, Airborne Radio, Modems & Routers, SATCOM Randomes, SATCOM Terminals and Others), Application (Government & Defense and Commercial), and Installation Type (New Installation and Upgradation): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202030.

Airborne Ka-Band SATCOM Market by Platform (Commercial Aircraft, Wide Body Aircraft, Narrow Body Aircraft, UAV, Military Aircraft, Business Jet, Helicopter and Regional Transport Aircraft), Component (Transceivers, Airborne Radio, Modems & Routers, SATCOM Randomes, SATCOM Terminals and Others), Application (Government & Defense and Commercial), and Installation Type (New Installation and Upgradation): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202030.

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Airborne UHF-band SATCOM Market by Platform (Commercial Aircraft, Wide Body Aircraft, Narrow Body Aircraft, UAV, Military Aircraft, Business Jet, Helicopter and Regional Transport Aircraft), Component (Transceivers, Airborne Radio, Modems & Routers, SATCOM Randomes, SATCOM Terminals and Others), Application (Government & Defense and Commercial), and Installation Type (New Installation and Upgradation): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202030.

Airborne X-Band SATCOM Market by Platform (Commercial Aircraft, Wide Body Aircraft, Narrow Body Aircraft, UAV, Military Aircraft, Business Jet, Helicopter and Regional Transport Aircraft), Component (Transceivers, Airborne Radio, Modems & Routers, SATCOM Randomes, SATCOM Terminals and Others), Application (Government & Defense and Commercial), and Installation Type (New Installation and Upgradation): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202030.

Airborne SATCOM Market by Platform (Commercial Aircraft, Wide Body Aircraft, Narrow Body Aircraft, UAV, Military Aircraft, Business Jet, Helicopter and Regional Transport Aircraft), Component (Transceivers, Airborne Radio, Modems & Routers, SATCOM Randomes, SATCOM Terminals and Others), Application (Government & Defense and Commercial), Installation Type (New Installation and Upgradation), and Frequency (C-Band, L-Band, X-Band, Ka-Band, S-Band, Ku-Band and UHF-Band): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202030.

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SOURCE Allied Market Research
In May 2021, Alliance Residential Company launched Houston-based Alliance Industrial , focused on essential warehouse logistics and distribution space development  a high demand and growing commercial market as e-commerce market share expands. Alliance Industrial is led by President and CEO Cyrus Bahrami. The Southeast Region is Alliance Industrial's first strategic expansion outside of Texas.

"Frank and his team did a tremendous job during his time at CHI and he has strong relationships and experience in the region," said Alliance Industrial Company President and CEO Cyrus Bahrami. "We look forward to partnering with Frank to build Alliance Industrial's reach and scope in the growing Southeast market. Recruiting experienced industrial market leadership is a key element to launching Alliance Industrial."

"I'm excited to join Alliance Industrial Company's leadership team at this early stage and to launch the Alliance industrial platform in the Southeast," said Fallon. "The Southeast Region continues to benefit from strong population growth, pro-growth municipalities and robust transportation infrastructure. In addition, the Southeast is one of Alliance Residential Company's most active regions, which allows us to leverage Alliance's reputation, capital relationships and geographic footprint."

Fallon started his career at Exeter Property Group in Dallas where he sourced acquisition opportunities and was responsible for the planning, implementation and accountability of all Southwest Region leasing efforts. He returned to Atlanta with Crow Holdings Industrial in 2017 to help start its Southeast industrial division. Since 2017, he has been involved in the development of more than $465 million in industrial projects, representing more than 7.3 million square feet across 15 projects. Fallon earned a bachelor's degree in Finance and Real Estate Finance from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and grew up in the Atlanta area.

"E-commerce, as a percentage of national retail sales, continues to grow at a significant rate creating a critical need for more quality industrial warehouse and distribution space," said Bahrami. "We see that trend continuing and look forward to leveraging Alliance's national footprint, decades-long track record with top investment partners, and expertise as a premier developer to address the growing industrial market demand."

Houston-based Alliance Industrial Company provides hands-on targeted industrial real estate investment, development and construction capabilities focused on key distribution hubs throughout the nation. Through a combined 200-year track record of raising $17 billion in institutional-grade capital and debt, the opportunity to leverage Alliance Residential Company's national acquisition, development and construction infrastructure, and leadership with local expertise and relationships, Alliance Industrial Company is positioned for long-term national growth. For more details, visit www.allindustrialco.com or contact [email protected] or [email protected]

Alliance Residential Company is one of the largest and most active rental residential real estate developers in the United States. Headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona with 19 regional offices, Alliance is focused on the development, construction and acquisition of residential communities across 17 states and 33 metropolitan markets. Alliance develops high-end Broadstone multifamily communities, Holden senior housing communities, and workforce housing properties through its Prose brand. For more information, visit www.allresco.com

Contact:

Marcia Scott, [email protected]

President, Clearwater Communications

602-451-4550

SOURCE Alliance Industrial Company
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Land Title Association (ALTA) Good Deeds Foundation, the registered 501(c)(3) charitable organization founded by ALTA, the national trade association of the land title insurance industry, today announced it was awarding a $10,000 emergency grant to the Community Foundation of Boulder (Colo.) County for the Boulder County Wildfire Fund.

The Foundation Board decided to award the grant, which is one of the Foundation's largest individual charitable contributions to date, to the Community Foundation of Boulder County because the wildfire was determined to be the most destructive in Colorado's history. The "Marshall fire," as the wildfire is known, destroyed nearly 1,000 homes in Boulder County on Dec. 31.

"This is exactly why we created the ALTA Good Deeds Foundation," said Foundation Board Chair Mary O'Donnell, president and CEO of Westcor Land Title Insurance Co. in Maitland, Fl. "Almost 1,000 families have been displaced because of the Marshall fire. Our hope is this grant will go straight to the people who need it the most."

"Through the ALTA Good Deeds Foundation, ALTA members are able to uplift local communities in times of crisis in addition to supporting our members and the communities in which they are doing good deeds," said ALTA CEO Diane Tomb, Foundation Board member. "This year, we will continue to raise funds so the Foundation can support our members' volunteer efforts and strengthen communities across the country as well as be able to respond to crises like the Marshall fire."

About the ALTA Good Deeds Foundation

Founded in 2020 by the American Land Title Association, the ALTA Good Deeds Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Its mission is to support the charitable efforts of title professionals as they work to build and strengthen their local communities and exemplify the title industry's values of We Lead, We Deliver, We Protect.

About ALTA

The American Land Title Association, founded in 1907, is the national trade association representing the land title insurance industry, which employs more than 120,000 people working in every county in the United States.

Media Contact:

Megan Hernandez

[email protected]

SOURCE American Land Title Association
NEW YORK, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- American Jewish Committee (AJC), the leading global Jewish advocacy organization, is partnering with IsraAID, the Israeli humanitarian relief group, in delivering urgent aid to people in areas of the Philippines devastated by Super Typhoon Rai, known locally as Odette.

The AJC donation will help IsraAID provide psychological first aid and distribute urgently needed relief items, including fresh water, food and hygiene items. The typhoon, which made nine landfalls over two days, left more than 1.8 million people affected by severe flooding, landslides and large-scale destruction. It was the fourth destructive typhoon to hit the island nation since 2013.

"Our longstanding friendship with the Philippines, and our Jewish values to assist those in need, summon us to respond with empathy and generosity. We are pleased to join with IsraAID, as we have done in previous crises in the Philippines, in delivering urgent humanitarian assistance," said Shira Loewenberg, Director of AJC's Asia Pacific Institute.

AJC supported IsraAID's relief efforts in the Philippines after Typhoon Mangkhut in 2018, Typhoon Hagupit in 2014, and Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.

"Once again, together with AJC, our long-term partners, we are responding to a terrible disaster that claimed the lives of so many," said IsraAID CEO Yotam Polizer. "Thanks to AJC's leadership we are able to provide both immediate relief and long-term recovery that is so desperately needed in the Philippines."

AJC's donation to support IsraAID' s efforts in the Philippines came from the agency's Heilbrunn Humanitarian Relief Fund.

Humanitarian relief has been a core of AJC's work for more than a century, and has long partnered with IsraAID in crises around the world.

SOURCE American Jewish Committee
LONDON, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Apollo Galleries, London's premier source for authentic, fully vetted ancient art and antiquities, will host its first auction of the New Year on Sunday, January 16, with absentee and Internet live bidding through LiveAuctioneers. The breathtaking assemblage of rarities from legendary civilizations is offered with authoritative descriptions and assessments from a newly-engaged team of specialists whose experience at the highest echelons of the art trade is amply documented.

D-shape Roman gold ring with sardonyx cameo of Mars, Julio-Claudian Period, circa 100AD. Sculpted in four layers with articulated eye, crested helmet ornamented in relief. Provenance: London private collection, acquired from East Coast US estate collection formed before 1979. Estimate 6,000-9,000 Early Greek Chalcidian hoplite bronze helmet, circa 550-450BC. Expressive form with deep crescentic cheek-guards, small teardrop-shape nose-guard, carefully cut-out eyes with brows in ridged relief, flaring neck-guard. Of a type still in use by soldiers in the time of Alexander the Great. Museum quality. Provenance: a collection of Roman and Greek arms and armor formed in the late 1970s/early 1980s; property of a London gentleman. Estimate 45,000-85,000

The auction opens with a stunning selection of ancient ceramics, glass and metalware that includes many unusual items, such as a colorful Egyptian faience-beaded mummy shroud and mask, and silver letters used to spell out a good-luck message on Roman soldiers' belts. Leading the group is a rare and important Neo-Assyrian vessel, circa 800-600 BC, which was cut and hollowed out from a single large piece of solid rock crystal  a feat that would have required considerable skill. Few examples of its type are known. Its lineage can be traced back to the 1960s and it is similar to a work that sold in 2012 at Christie's London. Accompanied by a CIRAM lab authentication test and its original 1990s scientific report from Professor W.G. Lambert, it is estimated at 40,000-80,000.

Another stellar piece is a circa 550-500BC blackware bucchero kantharos from Etruria. Distinctly burnished, bucchero is considered the signature ceramic of the Etruscans and was mostly used by the elite class. The bucchero offered by Apollo Galleries has been held in several prestigious European collections and was also sold by Christie's London, in 1998. It comes to auction with a 10,000-20,000 estimate.

Designed to hold wine, a handsome Etruscan-Corinthian pottery olpe vessel with incised decoration on its ovoid body comes from a private collector who acquired it directly from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology in 1965. Estimate: 6,000-9,000

Wearable ancient jewelry of extraordinary beauty includes rings, pendants, amulets, earrings, necklaces and bracelets, many of them crafted of gold and adorned with precious or semiprecious stones. A circa 300-400AD Roman sardonyx cameo pendant features the carved head of Medusa is estimated at 6,000-9,000. A fabulous Roman gold ring with a sardonyx cameo of Mars dates to the Julio-Claudian Period, circa 100AD. It is sculpted in four layers, with an articulated eye and a crested helmet ornamented in relief. Estimate: 6,000-9,000

Arms and armor always play a commanding role at Apollo Galleries' auctions, with helmets consistently ranking amongst the most sought-after items. The January 16 sale includes several exceptional examples: a circa 550-450BC Greek Chalcidian bronze helmet of a type that was still in use by hoplite soldiers in the time of Alexander the Great, 45,000-85,000; and an impressive and well-preserved medieval iron helmet with ventilation holes and a shaped nose-guard, 15,000-30,000.

Premium-quality Asian antiquities include a circa 200-300AD grey schist Gandharan upper torso of Bodhisattva that is similar to an example sold at Sotheby's in 2007. Estimate 40,000-80,000. Another standout, a Late Shang Dynasty (circa 1300-1200BC) jia, or ritual wine vessel, is offered with a 20,000-40,000 estimate.

Apollo Galleries ships worldwide. All packing is handled by white-glove specialists in-house. Questions: call +44 7424 994167; email [email protected]. Visit www.apollogalleries.com

Apollo Galleries is a member of the British Numismatic Trading Association (BNTA) and the Art Loss Register (AR).

Rate of conversion (approx.): 1 = US$1.35

Media Contact:

Dr. Ivan Bonchev +44 7424 994167

[email protected]

SOURCE Apollo Galleries
INDIANAPOLIS, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Ardagh Glass Packaging (AGP), part of Ardagh Group, will celebrate the United Nations International Year of Glass throughout 2022, commemorating the essential role of glass packaging in a sustainable society.

The International Commission on Glass (ICG), the Community of Glass Associations (CGA) and ICOM-Glass are promoting 2022 as the United Nations International Year of Glass (IYOG) to underline the scientific, economic and cultural importance of glass in all its forms in our everyday lives.

The year-long celebration will result in a range of events across the world, including fairs and exhibitions, seminars and social media campaigns, to inform and educate communities everywhere of the rich history that glass has and its enormous beneficial contributions in areas such as sustainability, health, culture and art, to name a few. AGP is looking forward to supporting some of the events taking place in our own regions in recognition of this significant milestone for our industry. These include the National Day of Glass on April 5-7, 2022 at The Madison in Washington, D.C., and the Glasstec Exhibition on Sept. 20-23, 2022 in Dusseldorf, Germany.

The very first glass bottles and jars were made in Egypt more than 2,000 years ago. Today, glass packaging is made from 100% natural and sustainable raw materials  recycled glass, limestone, soda ash and silica sand.

Glass is sustainable and infinitely recyclable, making it the perfect material for a circular economy. Additionally, glass is the only widely-used food packaging granted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) status of 'GRAS,' or Generally Regarded As Safe  the highest standard.

AGP has a long and proud history of glassmaking dating back more than 300 years. All of AGP's glass bottles and jars contain recycled glass (cullet), and, in Europe, AGP uses up to 90% recycled content in the manufacturing process.

"AGP is a leading supplier of sustainable, infinitely recyclable glass packaging, that plays a key role in the circular economy," said Mike Dick, Chief Commercial Officer for Ardagh Group. "In this IYOG, AGP is focused on product and process innovations, as well as working on breakthrough projects which will help to achieve our 2030 sustainability targets outlined in Ardagh Group's latest Sustainability Report."

These targets include zero waste to landfill, a 26% intensity reduction in water usage, a 23% intensity reduction in NOx emissions, a transition to 100% renewable electricity and maximizing the use of recycled glass in our furnaces. We are also aligned with the Science Based Targets Initiative for Greenhouse Gas emissions and are committed to delivering CO 2 reduction through a continued focus on developing lower carbon glass packaging via both new and existing technologies.

Eight facilities across AGP are already using renewable electricity: Limmared, Sweden; Barnsley, Doncaster, Irvine and Knottingley in the U.K., and Bridgeton, New Jersey; Burlington, Wisconsin; and Madera, California in the United States. To support AGP's emissions reduction strategy, major off-site renewable energy projects are under development in three European facilities  one in Germany and two in the U.K.

Aligned with these sustainability targets, AGP  North America (NA) has diverted waste from landfill at its Burlington, Wisconsin and Ruston, Louisiana facilities by diverting 100% of their non-hazardous oily debris from landfill and converting it for energy recovery and alternative use. In the future, this same methodology will be implemented at additional facilities throughout AGP  NA.

For more on Ardagh's sustainability progress and to read our 2021 Sustainability Report, please visit ardaghgroup.com/sustainability.

Further information

Gina Behrman, Vice President, Marketing, Communications & NPD at Ardagh Glass Packaging  North America, [email protected] , +1.317.558.5717

Sharon Todd, Head of Marketing at Ardagh Glass Packaging  Europe, [email protected] , +44. (0) 7768718941

Download images here.

Notes to the editor

Ardagh Group is a global supplier of infinitely recyclable metal and glass packaging for the world's leading brands. Ardagh operates 57 metal and glass production facilities in 12 countries, employing more than 16,000 people with sales of approximately $7bn.

SOURCE Ardagh Group
PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research recently published a report, titled, "Artificial Intelligence Chip Market by Chip Type (GPU, ASIC, FPGA, CPU, and Others), Application (Natural Language Processing (NLP), Robotics, Computer Vision, Network Security, and Others), Technology (System-on-chip, System-in-package, Multi-chip Module, and Others), Processing Type (Edge and Cloud), and Industry Vertical (Media & Advertising, BFSI, IT & Telecom, Retail, Healthcare, Automotive & Transportation, and Others): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20212030". As per the report, the global artificial intelligence chip industry was accounted for $8.02 billion in 2020, and is expected to reach $194.9 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 37.4% from 2021 to 2030.

Drivers, restraints, and opportunities

Rise in need for smart homes & smart cities, advent of quantum computing, and surge in investments in AI startups drive the growth of the global artificial intelligence chip market. However, dearth of skilled workforce hinders the market growth. On the contrary, development of smart robots and rise in adoption of AI chips in the developing regions would open new opportunities for the market players in the future.

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Covid-19 scenario:

The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in sudden decline in development of artificial chip across the globe, especially in China , the U.S., and across Europe . This made a negative impact on product sales.

, the U.S., and across . This made a negative impact on product sales. The prolonged lockdown across the globe disrupted the supply chain and increased the prices of raw materials.

The CPU segment held the largest share

By chip type, the CPU segment held the largest share in 2020, accounting for nearly two-fifths of the global artificial intelligence chip market, due to ability of CPU to process sequential code. However, the ASIC segment is expected to register the highest CAGR of 39.8% during the forecast period, owing to increase in investment and low cost of production, less power consumption, reduced footprint, and increased reliability of ASIC chips.

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The natural language processing segment dominated the market

By application, the natural language processing segment held the lion's share in 2020, contributing to more than one-fourth of the global artificial intelligence chip market, due to rise in demand for chatbots and online channels such as Facebook Messenger, Skype, Slack, and others that use NLP to analyze user messages and conversational logic. However, the robotics segment is estimated to manifest the highest CAGR of 41.4% from 2021 to 2030, as it increases employee satisfaction, productivity, and engagement.

North America held the largest share

By region, the market across North America dominated in 2020, holding more than one-third of the market, due to advancements in sensory technologies, increase in applications of deep learning, and need for large internet-enabled data sets. However, the global artificial intelligence chip market across Asia-Pacific is projected to portray the highest CAGR of 41.3% during the forecast period, owing to adoption of new technologies and increase in appeal for online videos and smartphones.

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Major market players

Advanced Micro Devices

NXP Semiconductors N.V.

Apple

Intel Corporation

Analog Devices, Inc.

NVIDIA Corporation

Mediatek, Inc.

Microsemi Corporation

Qualcomm Incorporated

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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.

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SOURCE Allied Market Research
A terrifying Bronx blaze Sunday is feared to be among the deadliest in New York City history.

FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro compared the tragedy to the Happy Land inferno, where 87 people died in a fire deliberately set in an illegal Bronx dance club.

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The last time we had a loss of life that may be this horrific was at Happy Land fire over 30 years ago, also here in the Bronx, he told reporters.

Cuban refugee Julio Gonzalez started the March 25, 1990 fire in a jealous rage following an argument with his ex-girlfriend, who worked in the social clubs coat-check room.

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Happy Land Social Club fire. (David Handschuh/New York Daily News )

At the time, it was the biggest mass murder in modern U.S. history and the deadliest fire in the city since 1911 when 146 people were killed at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a sweatshop in Greenwich Village.

After arguing with his ex, Gonzalez left Happy Land but returned with gasoline that he poured around the building. He then pulled down the metal gate in front of the only exit and set the fuel ablaze.

The clubs patrons, most of them young Hondurans, were trapped on the buildings second floor with no way out.

Within minutes, 87 people died from burns, smoke inhalation or from being trampled in a panicked stampede to get out. Only six people survived  including Gonzalezs former girlfriend.

Gonzalez, who was 36, was convicted of 174 counts of murder, two for each of the victims. He was given the maximum sentence, which totaled 4,350 years. He was in prison at Clinton Correctional in Dannemora when he died of an apparent heart attack in 2016.

Happy Land, on Southern Blvd. in East Tremont, had been operating illegally after it was cited for a lack of exits and ordered to close in 1988. Of the victims, 48 were sent home to be laid to rest in Honduras.

The street outside the former club was renamed The Plaza of the Eighty-Seven in memory of the fire victims.

The Happy Land horror took place exactly 79 years to the day after the fire at Triangle, where doors to stairwells and exits were locked to keep workers inside. Many of those victims, most of them young immigrant women, jumped to their deaths from the buildings windows.

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 24 On March 25, 1990, Julio Gonzalez deliberately set alight illegal Bronx dance club Happy Land in a deliberate jealous rage after an argument with his ex-girlfriend. At the time, it was the biggest mass murder in U.S. history. After failing to win back his ex as she worked at the venue's coat-check room, Gonzalez left and returned carrying gasoline and a grudge. He poured the fuel inside the building and around the club's only exit before setting it alight with two matches and pulling down the metal front gate. Gonzalez's ex-girlfriend was one of only 6 people that made it out of the flame-filled inferno alive. In this photo, firefighters stand near bodies of some of the victims outside of Happy Land. (Nicole Bengiveno/New York Daily News)

The Triangle fiasco raised public awareness of the dismal and dangerous conditions suffered by many workers in the city. Likewise, Happy Land prompted officials to seek ways to improve safety regulations at social clubs.

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New York has been the scene of several other catastrophic deadly fires.

In 1876, a fire started by a gas stage light broke out at the Brooklyn Theater, which had just one staircase and no fire escapes; 278 people died, some of them trampled to death.

A century later, in 1976, an unemployed salesman and a teenager killed 25 people when they spread gasoline in a Bronx nightclub. They drenched the buildings only staircase in gasoline, forcing partygoers to leap out a second-story window.

In Manhattan in 1966, 12 firefighters were killed when the floor of a renovated drug store collapsed on E. 23rd St. at Broadway. They had been trying to make their way into a brownstone on E. 22nd St.

Of 10 victims of an apartment building fire in the Highbridge section of the Bronx in 2007, nine were children, including two infants.

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And seven children died in 2015 when an early-morning blaze sparked by a hot plate left on for the Sabbath tore through a Borough Park home.

With John Annese and Kate Feldman
BATTLE CREEK, Mich., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) will virtually host its sixth annual National Day of Racial Healing , an afternoon of music, conversation and solidarity. Building on the success of the past five years, with hundreds of thousands participating in events online and around the country, this year's program features leading advocates, artists and influencers engaging in critical discussions about racial equity and racial healing with a timely call to action for positive change.

The 75-minute online event will be hosted by Soledad O'Brien, broadcast journalist & founder of Soledad O'Brien Productions. The program will feature panels and conversations with actress Julissa Calderon, author & activist Heather McGhee, Detroit's Director of Arts and Culture Rochelle Riley, and more. W.K. Kellogg Foundation president and CEO La June Montgomery Tabron will participate in the event, which will include performances by Grammy Award-winning artist John Legend, poet Michael Reyes, Supaman and the Ndlovu Youth Choir.

The event will feature compelling talks from innovative leaders in the field of racial equity, exploring the systemic inequities exposed by the pandemic and discussing how we can combat racial divides to achieve lasting transformation. The event will also recognize work done by grantees implementing the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) process in communities across the U.S.

WHAT: A 75-minute virtual National Day of Racial Healing event with panels, discussions, videos, music and creative artistic performances.

WHERE: To RSVP for the event, please visit: www.dayofracialhealing.org

WHEN: Tues., Jan. 18, 2022 from 3:00 p.m.- 4:15 p.m. EST / Noon 1:15 p.m. PST

WHO: Hosted by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and featuring: Connie Brownotter (Indigenous scholar), Julissa Calderon, Quyen Dinh (Southeast Asia Resource Action Center), Rachel Godsil (Perception Institute), John Legend, Heather McGhee (activist + author), Ndlovu Youth Choir, Soledad O'Brien, Dr. Diane Paloma (Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum), Michael Reyes (poet), Rochelle Riley (director of Arts + Culture, City of Detroit), Favianna Rodriguez (artist), Linda Sarsour (activist), Dr. Denese Shervington (psychiatry specialist), Supaman, La June Montgomery Tabron (W.K. Kellogg Foundation), Dr. David Williams (Harvard University), Kent Wong (former WKKF fellow & UCLA Labor Center).

Visuals: Speakers, panelists, musical & artistic performances, dance and spoken-word poetry.

Visit www.dayofracialhealing.org for a complete list of events taking place around the country in Detroit, Mich.; White Plains, New York; Haddonfield, New Jersey; Harrisonburg, Virginia; Phoenix, Ariz.; Austin, Texas; and more. Join the conversation on social media via the hashtag #HowWeHeal.

About National Day of Racial Healing

The annual observance of the "National Day of Racial Healing" was created with and builds on the work and learnings of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) community partners. TRHT was established in 2017 to promote racial healing as a critical path for ending racial bias and creating a society in which all children can thrive. It is a national and community-based process designed to bring transformational and sustainable change to communities, while addressing the historic and contemporary effects of racism.

About the W.K. Kellogg Foundation

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, founded in 1930 as an independent, private foundation by breakfast cereal innovator and entrepreneur Will Keith Kellogg, is among the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States. Guided by the belief that all children should have an equal opportunity to thrive, the Kellogg Foundation works with communities to create conditions for vulnerable children so they can realize their full potential in school, work and life.

Based in Battle Creek, Michigan, the Kellogg Foundation works throughout the United States and internationally, as well as with sovereign tribes. Special attention is paid to priority places where there are high concentrations of poverty and where children face significant barriers to success. WKKF priority places in the U.S. are in Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and New Orleans; and internationally, are in Mexico and Haiti.

SOURCE W.K. Kellogg Foundation
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Asklepios BioPharmaceutical, Inc. (AskBio), a leading, clinical-stage adeno-associated virus (AAV) gene therapy company and a wholly owned and independently operated subsidiary of Bayer AG, today announced that Philip Dana has been appointed to its executive team as Chief Human Resources Officer. Mr. Dana joins AskBio from Dendreon, where he served as Vice President and Head of Human Resources for the biopharmaceutical company. In his new role at AskBio, Mr. Dana will have responsibility for all aspects of human capital management, including talent acquisition and engagement, colleague development and learning, compensation and benefits, and diversity and inclusion efforts for the Company.

Phil Dana, CHRO, AskBio

"I am excited to welcome Phil to AskBio, and I believe his experience in building and shaping teams globally, as well as his strategic leadership, will be a significant asset as we continue to grow the AskBio organization as a leader and pioneer in gene therapy," said Sheila Mikhail, CEO and co-founder of AskBio. "Over the course of his career, Phil has earned a reputation as a mission-driven leader, highly respected for his ability to help organizations build and engage high-performing teams."

"I am honored and excited to become part of the team behind the groundbreaking work at AskBio," said Mr. Dana. "I look forward to collaborating with this extremely talented team to help advance the boundaries of scientific innovation and bring transformative gene therapies to patients suffering from devastating diseases."

Mr. Dana joins AskBio following a 17-year career in increasingly senior human resources roles for companies in biotech, medical device, nutraceuticals, technology and the non-profit sector, as well as a 14-year career serving in the United States Navy. Most recently, Dana served as Vice President & Head of Human Resources at Dendreon. Prior to his time at Dendreon, Phil served as Vice President of Talent, Human Resources Operations, & Total Rewards at Bridgepoint Education / Zovio, an educational technology services company. Earlier in his career, Dana held increasingly senior roles in human resources operations and talent acquisition and management at multiple companies and non-profits, including The Honor Foundation, Intuit, NuVasive, Life Technologies and Amazon.

Mr. Dana began his career serving as an enlisted Navy Aircrewman during Desert Shield and Desert Storm. He later served as a Commissioned Officer in the United States Navy following graduation from the United States Naval Academy where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree with honors. He currently serves on the Board of Directors at CommSafe AI, a communications monitoring platform.

About AskBio

Asklepios BioPharmaceutical, Inc. (AskBio), a wholly owned and independently operated subsidiary of Bayer AG acquired in 2020, is a fully integrated AAV gene therapy company dedicated to developing life-saving medicines that have the potential to cure genetic diseases. The company maintains a portfolio of clinical programs across a range of neuromuscular, central nervous system, cardiovascular and metabolic disease indications with a clinical-stage pipeline that includes therapeutics for Pompe disease, Parkinson's disease and congestive heart failure, as well as out-licensed clinical indications for hemophilia and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. AskBio's gene therapy platform includes Pro10, an industry-leading proprietary cell line manufacturing process, and an extensive AAV capsid and promoter library. With global headquarters in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and European headquarters in Edinburgh, UK, the company has generated hundreds of proprietary third-generation AAV capsids and promoters, several of which have entered clinical testing. Founded in 2001 and an early innovator in the gene therapy field, the company holds more than 800 patents in areas such as AAV production and chimeric and self-complementary capsids. Learn more at www.askbio.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About Bayer

Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the life science fields of health care and nutrition. Its products and services are designed to help people and the planet thrive by supporting efforts to master the major challenges presented by a growing and aging global population. Bayer is committed to driving sustainable development and generating a positive impact with its businesses. At the same time, the Group aims to increase its earning power and create value through innovation and growth. The Bayer brand stands for trust, reliability and quality throughout the world. In fiscal 2020, the Group employed around 100,000 people and had sales of 41.4 billion euros. R&D expenses, before special items, amounted to 4.9 billion euros. For more information, go to www.bayer.com.

Find more information at https://pharma.bayer.com/

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Follow us on Twitter: @BayerPharma

AskBio Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements." Any statements contained in this press release that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Words such as "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "will," "intends," "potential," "possible" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements regarding AskBio's pipeline of development candidates. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond AskBio's control. Known risks include, among others: AskBio may not successfully be able to execute on its business plans and goals, including meeting its expected or planned regulatory milestones and timelines, its reliance on third-parties, clinical development plans, manufacturing processes and plans, and bringing its product candidates to market, due to a variety of reasons, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, possible limitations of company financial and other resources, manufacturing limitations that may not be anticipated or resolved in a timely manner, potential disagreements or other issues with our third-party collaborators and partners, and regulatory, court or agency feedback or decisions, such as feedback and decisions from the United States Food and Drug Administration or the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Any of the foregoing risks could materially and adversely affect AskBio's business and results of operations. You should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. AskBio does not undertake any obligation to publicly update its forward-looking statements based on events or circumstances after the date hereof.

SOURCE Asklepios BioPharmaceutical, Inc.

Related Links

www.askbio.com


LONDON, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Middle East ,Africa and Europe Bearing Market in terms of revenue was worth of USD 21.75 Billion in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 26.59 Billion in 2027, growing at a CAGR of 2.67% from 2021 to 2028.

Europe is set to dominate the bearing market and is poised to maintain its dominance owing to the presence of many leading companies. Major players like SKF, NSK, and Schaeffler group have well-established production facilities for different kinds of bearings in Europe. Europe is followed by Turkey, which is the leading market in the region, representing around one-third of the total regional demand.

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Scope of Bearing Market:

Bearing is a key component in all kinds of machinery including but not limited to automobiles, airplanes, industrial machinery, turbines, and even satellites far away in space. Momentum towards low to no friction bearings is enhancing the market value for itself. Improvement in growth and evaluation efficiency by utilization of artificial intelligence and simulation is making bearings more significant across the EMEA. Voluminous bearings also facilitate the desired motion as much as possible, such as by creating the latest innovations like sensorized bearings, IoT-related bearings, etc.

Bearings are developing its strength in each business including the automotive business, industrial machinery business, hydrogen industry, and others. Regarding the core products, key shaft bearings for wind turbines are becoming larger as wind turbines become larger. It is essential to develop manufacturing technologies, such as advanced efficient heat treatment technology. Since the introduction of renewable energy is expanding to achieve carbon neutrality and realize a decarbonized society. As rolling bearings are fundamental components of renewable energy systems. As well, spherical roller bearings from Schaeffler are previously playing a significant part in numerous high profile European wave and tidal energy systems, comprising the Pelamis P2 wave energy converter. New bearing designs can be industrialized and tailored to specific wind turbine necessities across the EMEA region in the coming years as well.

Besides, hydrogen is also drawing attention as a next-generation energy source, and a number of peripheral devices are being considered and developed. Bearing is not only used in fuel-cell vehicles but also in infrastructural systems like compressed pumps. The pressure in these devices is higher than that of conventional nitrogen. Hence, higher reliability and durability are needed for mechanical elements such as bearings. SKF has collaborated to accelerate the enlargement of fossil-free bearing steel using hydrogen. In this partnership, the company is designing vigorous, reliable hydrogen systems, with the lowest possible effect on the environment and on the overall cost of operation. This has led to considerable demand for bearings notably within the hydrogen industry in this region.

Over and above that, 4th stage of industrial revolution wherein technologies such as internet of things (IoT), connectivity, automation & etc. are approved for better flexibility in production and also led to profit maximization of bearings. The rise of revolutionary technologies and developments in IT systems has the factual potential to deliver enhanced effectiveness for suppliers. The journey of manufacturing automotive bearings and related components has already started and expanded across the world as well as the EMEA region. One of the leading companies, NSK has developed sensor bearings that have a magnetic encoder to detect rotating speed and direction. The megatrend of digitalization and climate crisis throughout the regionalized world are sturdily influencing manufacturers of bearings in this region. In addition to the above segment, precisely designed bearings are used to advance robot reliability. As robot bearings are used to manage the balancing act between zero clearance, low friction, high load capacity, as well as small installation space. At manufacturing sites, there is a rising demand for manpower savings and further efficiency enhancement due to labor shortages. Numerous manufacturers are contributing to labor-saving and automation through the use of high value-added products such as bearings with manifold modern technologies and innovations.

Furthermore, the world is constantly moving to the tune of electrification, miniaturization, and digital transformation. Due to these eras, the technical need for automotive parts such as bearings are becoming higher in terms of high-speed rotation, need for lighter weight as well as durability. Based on the design, the number of bearings used per unit in hybrid electric vehicles is generally expected to increase. Eastern Europe has displayed the maximum growth in the electric vehicles industry. Since the demand for bearings is predicted to grow moderately over the next 10 years owing to the growth of hybrid electric vehicles. However, it is assumed that the demand for bearings may decrease due to the further expansion of battery electric vehicles. Withal, the trend of lightweight and miniaturization is driving the manufacturers to tailor specialized bearings across the EMEA region. In addition to this, the latest generation of spherical bearings industrialized by the German company Hirschmann Spherical Bearings is constructing its own noteworthy contribution to this trend: aluminum-titanium low-weight bearings which accomplish just as well as the generally used standard bearings but with only half the weight. Such developments in diverse segments are creating tremendous opportunities for bearing.

Moreover, by admiring all aforementioned aspects and the use of bearings in a range of segments, the masses of leading market players are potentially investing in the bearing market. Major international players (SKF, NSK, Schaeffler group, Timken, NTN, and JTEKT) who have a huge presence in the EMEA region are showing their great interest in innovating specified bearings. These top bearing manufacturers are representing more than half of the global rolling bearing market. For instance, SKF, the leader in the bearing market itself manufactured more than 7 million bearings till now. Also, NSK has also industrialized a third-generation ultra-high-speed ball bearing for electric vehicle motors. This new bearing is the world's fastest grease-lubricated deep groove ball bearing for automotive applications. Along with this, NTN Corporation is building sales and technical service systems in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates with the aim of escalating sales in the Middle East and Africa.

Get Access of All Players: https://brandessenceresearch.com/heavy-industry/bearing-market

The Middle East ,Africa and Europe Bearing market research reports segments as follows:

Bearing Market: By Product Type

Ball

Roller

Others

Bearing Market: By Application

Automotive

Mining & Construction

Agriculture

Railway & Aerospace

Electrical

Steel Industry

Paper and Pulp Industry

Petrochemical

Automotive Aftermarket

Others

Bearing Market: By Distribution Channel

OEM

Aftermarket

Get Methodology @ https://brandessenceresearch.com/requestMethodology/PostId/1812

Market Trends of Bearing Market

Bearings are the staple of the industry which is basically used to reduce the mechanical friction. Bearings are known as the most critical components of all machinery and are also a component that just on its own merit is said to be "eco-friendly". They not only facilitate the desired motion as much as possible but also support load, maintain alignment, transmit power, and therefore facilitate the efficient operation of equipment. The bearing sector is deliberated as a traditional industry dominated by firms in the business, functioning resourcefully for manifold decades. Preceding few years have been more vigorous than before, few industry trends are noticeable and playing a momentous role in shaping the industry in this decade. Certain metallurgy processes, new materials, innovations, are creating emerging trends in the bearing market across the globe. This will generate a plethora of opportunities for loads of businesses in the forthcoming years in EMEA bearing market.

The Megatrends of Digitalization, and the Movement towards a Regionalized World Making Bearing Market in Trend in EMEA

Customization:

There is an intensifying trend in industry (mainly automotive & aerospace) for integrated bearings where the nearby components of the bearings become a fundamental part of the bearing itself. Such kinds of bearings are industrialized to diminish the number of bearing components in the ultimate assembled product. As a consequence, usage of integrated bearings lessens the equipment cost, upsurges reliability, delivers ease of installation, and increases service life. Necessities for application-specific solutions are gaining thrust and boosting customer interest worldwide. The overall bearing industry is shifting to developing novel kinds of applications particularly bearings. As specially designed bearings aid motor racing teams to respond to definite conditions within high-performance cars.

Withal, an internal geometry of bearing can be tailored to specific applications. For instance; when great axial stiffness is required, the contact angle of an angular contact ball bearing can be augmented without disturbing other bearing desires. NSK has produced a customized ball and roller bearing which includes highly specialized designs. Similarly, SKF Company also designed specialized custom bearings which optimize performance in a variety of separate applications such as a wheel or gearbox bearing. Accordingly, customized rolling bearings enrich the performance in applications. Thus, bearing suppliers are proposing particular bearings to suit precise necessities in applications like weaving looms in the textile sector, agricultural machinery, and turbocharger in an automotive application.

Rotary Bearings with IoT Functionality and Predictive Maintenance:-

The prevalent implementation of condition monitoring technologies such as vibration analysis is a testimony to the initial adopters who pioneered their use within the business in this region. Most significantly, the industrial internet of things (IIoT), coupled with lessening sensor costs, has further accelerated the adoption of these technologies. They also allowed remote monitoring of real-time data, automated analysis, and instantaneous alerts. One challenge that is normally seen is customers becoming disenfranchised with the technology since it wasn't applied appropriately to the asset and, as a result, does not deliver a progressive warning of faults or deprivation.

Materials Science Leads Bearing Innovation & Coatings:

Machinery probably has the risks of contamination from neighboring moving parts. Single bearings are reaching their boundaries in terms of material, geometry performance, or heat treatment. Hence to go beyond these physical limits, bearing manufacturers are developing coatings and thermochemical procedures. By far, the greatest momentous aspect of manufacturing high-quality ball bearings is the materials that are used. The bearing commerce is now using hard coatings, ceramics, and novel specialty steels. Improvements in materials have prolonged the working life of bearings, even under severe operating situations. These numbers of materials along with exact heat treatments and precise geometry are able to handle extremes in temperature as well as cope with situations like particle contamination & extreme loads. Timken uses polymers that are optically noticeable as well as bearing inserts with all stainless-steel constituents for metal detectability. These engineered polymer bearings are both optical and metal detectable. Novel and improved materials and metallurgy procedures have produced a number of innovations in ball bearing manufacturing. Here are the top three innovations and evolving trends in bearing materials:

Tungsten Carbide Increases Durability:

Chrome Steel:

Advances in Plastic:

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On Special Requirement Bearing Market Report is also available for below region:

North America

U.S, Canada

Europe

Germany , France , U.K., Italy , Spain , Sweden , Netherland, Turkey , Switzerland , Belgium , Rest of Europe

Asia-Pacific

South Korea , Japan , China , India , Australia , Philippines , Singapore , Malaysia , Thailand , Indonesia , Rest Of APAC,

Latin America

Mexico , Colombia , Brazil , Argentina , Peru , Rest of Latin America

Middle East and Africa

Saudi Arabia , UAE, Egypt , South Africa , Rest Of MEA

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VANCOUVER, BC, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd. (TSX: ASM) (NYSE American: ASM) (FSE: GV6) ("Avino" or "the Company") is pleased to announce continued drill results from Phase 2 of the drill campaign which was announced as part of the Company's exploration plans for 2021.

Over 15,500 metres of drilling were completed in 2021. This drill program was one of the Company's main focuses for the year.

"The results from Phase 2 of the drill campaign are highly encouraging as we have intersected some significant widths with mineralization on the Brecha de Bajo vein which are in close proximity to our current underground workings at ET. In the process of testing this vein, we discovered a new vein splay which appears to be mineralized, and has been named the Bart vein, after the geologist at site who discovered it. In addition, two areas that are showing promise with high gold and silver grades are the Nuestra Senora vein and the La Malinche vein" said David Wolfin, President and CEO. "Our exploration strategy is a two-pronged approach based on the different styles of mineralization. We continue to look for economic high grade, narrow vein low sulphidation style deposits near surface similar to our San Gonzalo mine, and to add large volume, minable, resources around the current ET mine by exploring the consistent Avino vein, and its vein splays at depth and along strike. As we have mentioned previously, we have been test targeting a few holes at a time for a methodical approach to building our database of geological information. These are the kinds of veins that have sustained the Avino mine for last 40 years."

The reported results below are from the El Trompo Vein, the Santiago Vein and the La Malinche Vein and additional areas including the Nuestra Senora and the area below Level 17 at the current ET mine. The tables below include previous results achieved in 2021 and the latest new holes. In addition, we have completed drilling on the oxide tailings resource but are waiting for assays on a number of outstanding holes.

Results from previously announced El Trompo, Santiago and La Malinche Veins are summarized in a table at the end of this news release.

Brecha de Bajo Veins:

This vein is located Northeast of the Avino Vein at the eastern end. This vein is within 20m of the current mine working into the footwall and shows some potentially large, strongly mineralized widths with a 15.4m and 32.2m intersections. In addition to a showing of gold and silver grades, there is massive specularite (iron ore) mineralization. More work is planned in this area.

Table 1: The Brecha de Bajo and Bart Vein  Summary of Drilling  3 holes and 843 metres

Hole

Number From

(m) To

(m) Length1

(m) Au

(g/t) Ag

(g/t) Cu

(ppm) PB

(ppm) Zn

(ppm) AgEq2

(g/t) NBX-21-02 259.10 260.30 1.20 0.06 151 3,743 614 1,807 211 And 276.60 284.40 7.80 0.08 21 5,550 66 1,611 103 And 300.40 301.05 0.65 0.06 48 7,565 128 3,063 159 NBX-21-03 184.05 185.55 1.50 0.14 84 3,236 762 2,491 147 And 186.90 202.30 15.40 0.27 72 2,569 2,808 1,326 141 Including 189.60 190.65 1.05 0.30 380 11,980 4,230 1,838 573 And 222.60 254.80 32.20 0.84 44 2,173 1,906 1,698 151 Including 247.85 249.80 1.95 1.58 120 1,187 1,355 453 267

1. True Widths cannot be determined with the available information 2. AgEq in drill results above assumes $1,750 Au and $22.00 Ag per ounce, and $4.30 Cu, $1.25 Pb, and $1.50 Zn per pound, and 100% metallurgical recovery

Below Level 17 and West of the Current ET Mine Workings:

Eight holes were drilled to identify the continuity of the ET vein to the west and below the current mine workings on Level 17, and five assays have been received. ET-21-01 to 04 correspond to the area west of the current workings and it appears that the vein narrows significantly; however, more work is needed to understand the extent of the ET mineralization. ET-21-05 corresponds to the area below the current workings. It was redrilled (ET-21-05B) due to the original hole trending off target. The number of intersections correspond to offshoot vein and veinlets that make up the stockwork system of the Avino vein. The remaining outstanding assays are for holes below the current mining works.

Table 2: Below and Beside the ET Vein  Summary of Drilling  8 holes and 3,170 metres

Hole

Number From

(m) To

(m) Length1

(m) Au

(g/t) Ag

(g/t) Cu

(ppm) PB

(ppm) Zn

(ppm) AgEq2

(g/t) ET-21-01 309.80 320.60 10.80 0.11 7 537 50 154 23 ET-21-02 364.65 365.85 1.20 0.03 9 84 165 302 14 ET-21-03 288.40 288.95 0.55 0.15 58 459 469 283 79 ET-21-04 303.00 310.50 7.50 0.85 8 210 46 116 79 including 309.30 310.20 0.90 2.59 15 513 44 115 228 ET-21-05 182.15 183.15 1.00 0.57 62 17,514 71 71 322 ET-21-05B 180.75 181.90 1.15 0.20 16 4,785 65 127 90 And 459.15 466.20 7.05 0.03 10 3,513 37 363 57 And 489.25 489.85 0.60 0.04 17 15,150 19 83 205 And 494.50 508.20 13.70 0.07 14 5,222 185 292 85 including 494.50 494.80 0.30 0.07 54 49,200 121 246 662

1. True Widths cannot be determined with the available information 2. AgEq in drill results above assumes $1,750 Au and $22.00 Ag per ounce, and $4.30 Cu, $1.25 Pb, and $1.50 Zn per pound, and 100% metallurgical recovery

La Malinche Vein:

The La Malinche vein has been tested by six holes and the assays are shown in Table 3. The style of mineralization intersected resembles the low-sulphidation epithermal San Gonzalo vein, which was the main source of the Company's production from 2012 to its closure in 2019. This vein may represent a northwestern fault-dislocated extension of the San Gonzalo vein.

More exploration work will be conducted to confirm this concept and broaden the understanding of the system.

Table 3: La Malinche  Summary of Drilling  8 holes and 820 metres

Hole

Number From

(m) To

(m) Length1

(m) Au

(g/t) Ag

(g/t) Cu

(ppm) PB

(ppm) Zn

(ppm) AgEq2

(g/t) LM-21-07 29.90 30.10 0.20 7.87 100 2,710 27,700 2,880 870 LM-21-08 5.75 6.40 0.65 6.04 173 697 6,100 1,350 689 And 13.75 14.90 1.15 0.41 29 470 3,190 1,292 85 including 14.60 14.90 0.30 1.44 50 1,270 2,020 1,240 193 LM-21-08 16.60 16.65 0.05 1.49 320 2,650 75,400 1,800 746 And 86.98 87.03 0.05 0.42 61 2,890 99,600 17,300 557

1. True Widths cannot be determined with the available information 2. AgEq in drill results above assumes $1,750 Au and $22.00 Ag per ounce, and $4.30 Cu, $1.25 Pb, and $1.50 Zn per pound, and 100% metallurgical recovery

These drill results are encouraging as the presence of mineralized material in the La Malinche Vein has been shown to extend along a strike distance of 250 metres and to a depth of 75 metres from surface. The 650 metre gap between the La Malinche vein and the northwest termination of the San Gonzalo vein remains prospective.

Nuestra Senora Vein

The Nuestra Senora structure is another example of an epithermal, low sulfidation vein. This structure ranges from 0.10 to 0.90 m wide, composed of white, gray, and banded quartz, abundant galena, sphalerite, and moderate argentite. Disseminated pyrite is also observed, as well as scarce chalcopyrite in some areas.

Table 4: Nuestra Senora  Summary of Drilling  2 Holes at 340 metres

Hole

Number From

(m) To

(m) Length1

(m) Au

(g/t) Ag

(g/t) Cu

(ppm) PB

(ppm) Zn

(ppm) AgEq2

(g/t) NS-21-01 145.80 146.10 0.30 0.03 71 2,480 26,300 29,700 324 And 148.20 149.20 1.00 0.99 82 604 38,292 12,986 360 including 148.20 148.50 0.30 2.99 135 880 56,300 21,800 676 including 149.00 149.20 0.20 0.16 184 712 104,000 26,500 688 And 149.55 149.70 0.15 0.31 143 426 90,600 111,000 968 NS-21-02 154.30 154.55 0.25 0.10 206 73,400 521 930 1,116 And 157.65 157.75 0.10 0.08 174 63,200 643 702 958 And 157.90 158.20 0.30 0.04 100 41,200 333 456 609 And 159.25 159.75 0.50 0.06 106 14,200 436 701 289 And 160.25 161.15 0.90 0.17 268 20,928 6,288 10,121 603 including 160.25 160.50 0.25 0.06 192 24,200 1,300 2,440 508 including 160.50 160.70 0.20 0.12 323 22,300 1,470 1,770 618 including 160.70 161.15 0.45 0.26 285 18,500 11,200 18,100 649

1. True Widths cannot be determined with the available information 2. AgEq in drill results above assumes $1,750 Au and $22.00 Ag per ounce, and $4.30 Cu, $1.25 Pb, and $1.50 Zn per pound, and 100% metallurgical recovery

Santiago Vein:

The Santiago vein lies north of the ET Mine in an area of narrow veins that average 1 to 2 metres in width, and it intersects the San Gonzalo vein with similar style of mineralization to the historically exploited at San Gonzalo Mine. The San Gonzalo Mine previously produced 6 million ounces of silver equivalent until it closed in 2019. The continuity of the mineralization of the Santiago vein is being tested as well as a possible offset displacement by the San Gonzalo fault. This target was drilled from surface. Because of the proximity to San Gonzalo underground infrastructure, mining access would be relatively easy, if significant mineralization is found.

Table 5: Santiago Vein  Summary of Drilling  7 holes and 1,717 metres

Hole

Number From

(m) To

(m) Length1

(m) Au

(g/t) Ag

(g/t) Cu

(ppm) PB

(ppm) Zn

(ppm) AgEq2

(g/t) ST-21-04 202.60 203.40 0.80 2.62 643 2,500 2,605 2,918 904 including 202.90 203.20 0.30 6.24 1,000 1,010 3,710 6,080 1,548 ST-21-07 211.2 211.4 0.2 0.16 46 2740 3480 262 106

1. True Widths cannot be determined with the available information 2. AgEq in drill results above assumes $1,750 Au and $22.00 Ag per ounce, and $4.30 Cu, $1.25 Pb, and $1.50 Zn per pound, and 100% metallurgical recovery

El Trompo Vein:

The El Trompo Vein is an offshoot of the Avino Vein. Historical data suggests that there are narrower high-grade areas within the broader vein volume. Also, existing underground infrastructure adjacent to the El Trompo vein, potentially provides rapid and easy access for mining. The structure has already been exposed and developed on the upper levels in the ET Area of the Avino Vein. Drilling on this vein has been from surface to confirm the continuity of the mineralization at depth.

Table 6: El Trompo Vein  Summary of Drilling  9 hole and 1,569 metres

Hole

Number From

(m) To

(m) Length1

(m) Au

(g/t) Ag

(g/t) Cu

(ppm) PB

(ppm) Zn

(ppm) AgEq2

(g/t) TR-21-09 178.50 180.00 1.50 0.01 6 416 42 3,187 26

1. True Widths cannot be determined with the available information 2. AgEq in drill results above assumes $1,750 Au and $22.00 Ag per ounce, and $4.30 Cu, $1.25 Pb, and $1.50 Zn per pound, and 100% metallurgical recovery

The recent El Trompo drilling has demonstrated continuity along 250 m of strike at a depth of 120 m below surface.

San Jorge Vein:

The San Jorge vein appears to be an extension of the Santiago vein across a known fault. Only one exploratory hole has been drilled to date.

Table 7: San Jorge Vein  Summary of Drilling - 1 hole and 133 metres

Hole

Number From

(m) To

(m) Length1

(m) Au

(g/t) Ag

(g/t) Cu

(ppm) PB

(ppm) Zn

(ppm) AgEq2

(g/t) SJG-21-01 83.30 85.50 2.20 0.02 10 100 55 433 15

1. True Widths cannot be determined with the available information 2. AgEq in drill results above assumes $1,750 Au and $22.00 Ag per ounce, and $4.30 Cu, $1.25 Pb, and $1.50 Zn per pound, and 100% metallurgical recovery

Current Drilling Highlights

As of Dec 31, 2021, the total meterage drilled was 15,583 and is as follows:

El Trompo Vein  1,569 metres

1,569 metres Santiago Vein  1,717 metres

1,717 metres La Malinche  820 metres

 820 metres Nuestra Senora  340 metres

San Jorge  133 metres

 133 metres Below and Beside ET  4,082 metres

Brecha de bajo and Bart Veins  895 metres

de bajo and Bart Veins  895 metres La Potosina  2,382 metres

Oxide Tailings  3,645 metres

Assays are pending due to long turnaround times at the laboratories for some of the Oxide Tailings drilling as well as the holes at La Potosina, Brecha de Bajo and 3 holes below ET.

The table below summarizes the previously announced Phase 1 drill results from El Trompo, Santiago and La Malinche Veins

Hole

Number From

(m) To

(m) Length1

(m) Au

(g/t) Ag

(g/t) Cu

(ppm) PB

(ppm) Zn

(ppm) AgEq2

(g/t) El Trompo Vein TR-21-01 182.00 183.85 0.95 0.56 177 35,000 540 670 577 TR-21-02 228.45 231.00 2.70 0.03 32 3,000 180 1,900 71 TR-21-03 101.80 104.55 2.75 0.42 276 1,000 2,900 1,000 322 TR-21-04 139.80 141.65 1.85 0.08 37 1,000 1,200 2,700 64 TR-21-05 115.00 116.00 1.00 0.02 8 1,300 40 3,500 33 TR-21-06 161.35 165.75 4.40 0.11 47 2,100 1,600 700 82 TR-21-07 124.35 127.15 2.80 0.01 2 170 100 1,600 9 TR-21-08 182.05 183.90 1.85 0.01 1 0 20 5600 4 Santiago Vein ST-21-01 158.35 160.10 1.75 0.09 25 1,720 315 1230 53 ST-21-02 171.00 171.60 0.60 0.18 33 154 712 2080 55 ST-21-03 124.15 125.85 1.70 0.13 16 234 661 3420 39 ST-21-04 202.60 203.40 0.80 2.62 643 2,500 2,605 2,918 865 ST-21-05 Did not intersect the vein ST-21-06 198.75 199.50 0.75 0.01 6 724 66 191 59 La Malinche Vein LM-21-01 53.35 53.85 0.50 0.44 9 630 5,724 18,248 114 LM-21-02 77.60 77.85 0.25 0.12 23 2,980 539 282 64 LM-21-03 76.05 77.45 1.40 0.12 5 475 451 402 20 LM-21-04 81.05 81.15 0.10 1.68 252 11,700 9,390 103,000 820 And 89.80 90.50 0.70 0.19 30 3,480 3,456 5,635 81 LM-21-05 70.75 72.10 1.35 0.65 61 4,914 4,716 5,674 185 LM-21-06 85.30 86.20 0.90 1.56 364 28,778 7,411 616 786

1. True Widths cannot be determined with the available information 2. AgEq in drill results above assumes $1,800 Au and $26.00 Ag per ounce, and $4.25 Cu, $1.00 Pb, and $1.25 Zn per pound, and 100% metallurgical recovery

Sampling and Assay Methods

Following detailed geological and geotechnical logging, drill core samples are sawed in half. One half of the core is submitted to SGS Laboratory facility in Durango, Mexico, and the other half is retained on-site for verification and reference. Gold is assayed by fire assay with an AA finish. Any samples exceeding 3.0 grams/tonne gold are re-assayed and followed by a gravimetric finish. Multi-element analyses are also completed for each sample by SGS ICP14B methods. Any copper values exceeding 10,000 ppm (1%) are-assayed using ICP 90Q. Silver is fire assayed with a gravimetric finish for samples assaying over 100 grams/tonne.

Avino uses a series of standard reference materials (SRMs), blank reference materials (blanks), and duplicates as part of their QA/QC program during analysis of assays.

Qualified Person(s)

Avino's projects in Durango, Mexico are under the geoscientific oversight of Michael O'Brien, P.Geo., Senior Principal Consultant, Red Pennant Communications, and under the supervision of Peter Latta, P.Eng, Avino's VP, Technical Services, who are both qualified persons within the context of NI 43-101. Both have reviewed and approved the technical data in this news release.

About Avino

Avino is primarily a silver producer with a diversified pipeline of silver, gold, and base metal properties in Mexico. Avino produces from its wholly owned Avino Mine near Durango, Mexico. The Company's silver and gold production remains unhedged. The Company's mission and strategy is to create shareholder value through its focus on profitable organic growth at the historic Avino Property and the strategic acquisition of mineral exploration and mining properties. We are committed to managing all business activities in a safe, environmentally responsible and cost-effective manner, while contributing to the well-being of the communities in which we operate. To view the Avino Mine VRIFY tour, please click here.

On Behalf of the Board

"David Wolfin"

________________________________

David Wolfin

President & CEO

Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd.

This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (together, the "forward looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities laws and the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the amended mineral resource estimate for the Company's Avino Property located near Durango in west-central Mexico (the "Avino Property") with an effective date of January 13, 2021, prepared for the Company, and La Preciosa's updated October 27, 2021 resource estimate and references to Measured, Indicated, Inferred Resources referred to in this press release. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release and the dates of technical reports, as applicable. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the future circumstances, outcomes or results anticipated in or implied by such forward-looking statements will occur or that plans, intentions or expectations upon which the forward-looking statements are based will occur. While we have based these forward-looking statements on our expectations about future events as at the date that such statements were prepared, the statements are not a guarantee that such future events will occur and are subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors which could cause events or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. No assurance can be given that the Company's Avino Property nor the La Preciosa Property have the amount of the mineral resources indicated in their reports or that such mineral resources may be economically extracted. Such factors and assumptions include, among others, the effects of general economic conditions, the price of gold, silver and copper, changing foreign exchange rates and actions by government authorities, uncertainties associated with legal proceedings and negotiations and misjudgments in the course of preparing forward-looking information. In addition, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Known risk factors include risks associated with project development; the need for additional financing; operational risks associated with mining and mineral processing; the COVID-19 pandemic; volatility in the global financial markets; fluctuations in metal prices; title matters; uncertainties and risks related to carrying on business in foreign countries; environmental liability claims and insurance; reliance on key personnel; the potential for conflicts of interest among certain of our officers, directors or promoters with certain other projects; the absence of dividends; currency fluctuations; competition; dilution; the volatility of the our common share price and volume; tax consequences to U.S. investors; and other risks and uncertainties. Although we have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. We are under no obligation to update or alter any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable securities laws. For more detailed information regarding the Company including its risk factors, investors are directed to the Company's Annual Report on Form 20-F and other periodic reports that it files with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

References to Measured & Indicated Mineral Resources and Inferred Mineral Resources in this press release are terms that are defined under Canadian rules by National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101"). U.S. Investors are cautioned not to assume that any part of the mineral resources in these categories will ever be converted into Reserves as defined under SEC Industry Guide 7.

SOURCE Avino Silver & Gold Mines Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.avino.com/


CHARLOTTE, N.C., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Bank of America Corporation today announced the Board of Directors has authorized regular cash dividends on the outstanding shares or depositary shares of the following series of preferred stock:

Series of Preferred Stock

Dividend per Share

or Depositary Share1

Record Date

Payment Date Floating Rate Non-

Cumulative, Series E

$0.25556

January 31

February 15 Floating Rate Non-

Cumulative, Series F

$1,000.00000

February 28

March 15 Adjustable Rate Non-

Cumulative, Series G

$1,000.00000

February 28

March 15 Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-

Cumulative Preferred Stock,

Series X

$31.25

February 15

March 7 Floating Rate Non-Cumulative

Preferred Stock, Series 1

$0.1875

February 15

February 28 Floating Rate Non-Cumulative

Preferred Stock, Series 2

$0.19167

February 15

February 28 Floating Rate Non-Cumulative

Preferred Stock, Series 4

$0.25556

February 15

February 28 Floating Rate Non-Cumulative

Preferred Stock, Series 5

$0.25556

February 1

February 22 Cumulative Preferred Stock,

Series AA

$30.50

March 1

March 17 Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-

Cumulative Preferred Stock,

Series DD

$31.50

February 15

March 10 Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-

Cumulative Preferred Stock,

Series FF

$29.375

March 1

March 15 6.000% Non-Cumulative

Preferred Stock, Series GG

$0.375

February 1

February 16 5.375% Non-Cumulative

Preferred Stock, Series KK

$0.3359375

March 1

March 25 5.000% Non-Cumulative

Preferred Stock, Series LL

$0.3125

March 1

March 17 4.250% Non-Cumulative

Preferred Stock, Series QQ

$0.3276042

February 1

February 17

Bank of America

Bank of America is one of the world's leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving approximately 66 million consumer and small business clients with approximately 4,200 retail financial centers, approximately 17,000 ATMs, and award-winning digital banking with approximately 41 million active users, including approximately 32 million mobile users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. Bank of America offers industry-leading support to approximately 3 million small business households through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and approximately 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock (NYSE: BAC) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

For more Bank of America news, including dividend announcements and other important information, register for news email alerts.

Investors May Contact:

Lee McEntire, Bank of America

Phone: 1.980.388.6780

[email protected]

Jonathan G. Blum, Bank of America (Fixed Income)

Phone: 1.212.449.3112

[email protected]

Reporters May Contact:

Jerry Dubrowski, Bank of America

Phone: 1.646.855.1195 (office) or 1.508.843.5626 (mobile)

[email protected]

Christopher P. Feeney, Bank of America

Phone: 1.980.386.6794

[email protected]

1 Each series of preferred stock, other than Series F and Series G, is represented by depositary shares. Dividend payments are made on a quarterly basis for each series of preferred stock, other than Series X, Series AA, Series DD, and Series FF, for which dividends are paid on a semi-annual basis.

SOURCE Bank of America Corporation
GREENSBORO, N.C., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Bell Partners Inc. ("Bell Partners" or the "Company"), one of the nation's leading apartment investment and management companies, today announced transitions in its executive team in accordance with its long-planned leadership succession goals.

The Company named Lili F. Dunn as Chief Executive Officer in addition to her current role as President. Ms. Dunn joined Bell Partners in 2010 as Chief Investment Officer and has served as President of the Company since 2016. She was recently named 2021 "Executive of the Year" by Multi-Housing News. Jon D. Bell was named Executive Chairman, transitioning from his previous role as CEO. Mr. Bell joined Bell Partners in 2001, became President in 2008, and was named CEO in 2016. Steven D. Bell was named Chairman Emeritus, transitioning from his previous role as Chairman. Mr. Bell founded the Company in 1976 and has served as Chairman since 2016.

In addition to the leadership transitions, the Company has expanded its Executive Committee with the addition of Nickolay N. Bochilo, Executive Vice President of Investments, and Joseph F. Cannon, Executive Vice President of Portfolio Management. Mr. Bochilo joined the Company in 2001; Mr. Cannon joined the Company in 2009.

The leadership transitions are effective on March 1, 2022 and follow a record year of investment activity for the Company, with approximately $4.8 billion of apartment transaction volume completed in 2021. The transaction volume represents the Company's strategic focus on deepening its investment and management platform in 14 target markets nationwide. Bell Partners currently owns and/or manages approximately 70,000 apartment homes throughout the U.S. and is actively investing in markets located in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Texas, and West Coast.

Commenting on the announcement, Jon Bell said, "These promotions are part of a deliberate strategic plan to continue Bell's successful evolution well into the future. We have a deep bench of experienced leaders and are well-positioned to continue our 45-year history of strong results."

"I am grateful and honored to expand my leadership role at Bell Partners," commented Lili Dunn. "I am fortunate to work with an outstanding team and together, we will continue to deliver strong performance for our residents, partners and clients."

The implementation of the Company's leadership succession plan will not result in changes in ownership of Bell Partners. The Bell family will remain the combined majority owners of the Company. Shares representing approximately 25% of the Company's ownership were transferred to non-Bell family executives beginning in December 2019.

About Bell Partners Inc.

Established in 1976, Bell Partners Inc. is a privately held, vertically integrated apartment investment and management company focused on high-quality multifamily rental communities throughout the United States. The Company currently manages approximately 70,000 apartment homes nationwide with over 1,600 associates and ten regional offices (in addition to its headquarters in Greensboro, N.C.). Bell Partners offers an extensive full-service platform of expertise in acquisitions and dispositions, construction, financing, property operations, accounting, risk management, and related support functions. The Company is led by a senior management team with an average industry experience of over 20 years. Bell Partners has invested throughout all phases of the real estate cycle and has completed over $22 billion of apartment transactions since 2002. For more information, visit www.bellpartnersinc.com .

Contact:

Josette Thompson / John Perilli

Prosek Partners for Bell Partners Inc.

(212) 279-3115

[email protected] / [email protected]

SOURCE Bell Partners Inc.
KATONAH, N.Y., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Black Talon Security, a leading NY-based national cybersecurity firm, has announced its Top 10 best practices that all businesses should follow to keep data secure and protect customers.

"Preventing the theft of data and protecting business continuity must be a primary focus for owners of businesses of all sizes; 75% of ransomware attacks in particular result in the theft of most or all of the business data," said Gary Salman, CEO of Black Talon Security. "The average cyberattack will force a business to shut down for two weeks, as well as negatively impact its integrity and reputation. This does not even factor in the potential for ransomware attacks which could cost businesses anywhere from $30,000 up to millions of dollars."

There are many technologies and solutions that businesses can implement to help prevent the theft and encryption of data. Black Talon Security's top 10 best practices to help enhance the security of an organization's network include:

Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) or Two Factor Authentication (2FA) for any application or website that supports it. MFA sends a unique code to your phone or activates an authentication APP to validate your login. Use strong passwords everywhere. Create strong passwords by combining a minimum of 12 characters, numbers and special characters such as @, $, #, & and !. Never use the same password across multiple websites or applications. Every website and/or application should have a unique password. Implement password management tools such as LastPass or Dashlane to manage and create strong/unique passwords. Utilizing remote access tools can present tremendous risk to your organization. Make sure you are using the paid business versions of these technologies as well as MFA and strong passwords. Train your entire organization to recognize threats such as phishing, spear phishing, social engineering, business email compromise (banking wire fraud) and proper use of removable devices. Test them using a phishing simulator. Employ a cybersecurity firm to evaluate your firewall(s) and perform real-time vulnerability management to uncover exploitable devices on your network that may expose you to a breach or ransomware attack. Conduct an annual penetration test performed by a third party ethical hacker to identify risks and how you might be breached. Perform a security risk assessment to evaluate how and where your business may be attacked. Deploy Artificial Intelligence (AI) based threat detection and mitigation technology known as Extended Detection and Response software on all computers and servers.

Black Talon Security secures 25,000 devices across the country and has trained over 13,000 business professionals on current cyber threats, including ransomware, phishing emails and social engineering.

About Black Talon Security, LLC

Black Talon Security (headquartered in Katonah, NY) is a cybersecurity company focused on protecting business professionals from cybersecurity incidents while helping them with compliance through education, training and documentation. Information on Black Talon's services can be found at www.blacktalonsecurity.com.

SOURCE Black Talon Security
The outbreak of the novel COVID-19 virus has negatively impacted the blast chiller market worldwide. Majority of governments imposed strict lockdown in 2020 across countries to curb the virus transmission. This impacted the manufacturing of the blast chillers owing to the unavailability of raw materials, workers, and components. Additionally, disturbance in the global supply chain on account of the restrictions on international transportations affected the import and exports of blast chillers.

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However, governments allowed blast chiller imports & exports as well as their production credited to their ability to preserve medical essentials and vaccines, effectively. This market is expected to witness slow recovery in the F&B industry such as hotels & restaurants, food malls, and bakeries post-pandemic.

Increasing demand for blast chillers in the beverage industry and growing restaurants in Europe is creating a demand for blast chillers in the region. These companies are adopting several business strategies to expand their business operations in the region. For instance, in November 2021, Electrolux received a loan of USD 285 million from European Investment Bank (EIB) for R&D to enhance energy-efficiency of appliances such as refrigerators and blast chillers.

Key players operating in the blast chillers market include Infrico S.L., Hobart Dayton Mexicana, Irinox S.p.A., Fulgor Milano, Master-Bilt Products, Friginox, RETIGO s.r.o., Electrolux, SMEG S.p.A., American Panel Corporation, Tecnomac (Ali Group), Alto Shaam, Inc., Williams Refrigeration, Traulsen & Co., Inc., and Victory and Victory Refrigeration LLC.

Industry participants are adopting unique business strategies, such as product launches, distributor partnerships, and new technology innovations, to accelerate their net sales. Market leaders are expanding their dealerships for their business operation expansions. For instance, in June 2021, Friulinox appointed Hubbard Systems as its authorized distributor of blast chillers in the UK.

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Some major findings in the blast chillers market report include:

Supportive government initiatives for food rescue and supermarket business strategies to minimize food wastage are driving the market progression in North America . Significant urbanization and growing demand for frozen food will further drive the industry growth.

. Significant urbanization and growing demand for frozen food will further drive the industry growth. The implementation of stringent food regulations for food safety and beverage industry proliferation is creating significant market opportunities in Europe . Additionally, the availability of established blast chillers market players, such as Electrolux, SMEG S.p.A., Irinox S.p.A, and Friginox, is accelerating the sale of blast chillers in the region.

. Additionally, the availability of established blast chillers market players, such as Electrolux, SMEG S.p.A., Irinox S.p.A, and Friginox, is accelerating the sale of blast chillers in the region. Increasing population at a significant pace is encouraging supermarkets and hotel & restaurant companies to expand their business operation in Asia Pacific . In addition, the increasing demand for packaged frozen food will provide robust market opportunities in the region.

. In addition, the increasing demand for packaged frozen food will provide robust market opportunities in the region. Shifting consumer focus toward smart kitchen establishments is propelling the blast chiller demand in the region. The rising demand for bakery & confectionary products and expansion of hotel chains will further impel the blast chiller acceptance in the region.

The development of the hospitality & tourism sector in Latin America is creating a favorable environment for blast chillers in the region. The expansion of catering service companies in metro cites due to remarkable urbanization will create growth opportunities in the region.

Table of Contents (ToC) of the report:

Chapter 3 Blast Chillers Market Insights

3.1 Industry segmentation

3.2 Impact of COVID-19 on blast chillers market landscape

3.2.1 Global outlook

3.2.2 Regional impact

3.2.3 Industry value chain

3.2.3.1 Research & development

3.2.3.2 Manufacturing

3.2.3.3 Marketing

3.2.3.4 Supply

3.2.4 Competitive landscape

3.2.4.1 Strategy

3.2.4.2 Distribution network

3.2.4.3 Business growth

3.3 Industry ecosystem analysis

3.3.1 Component suppliers

3.3.2 Technology providers

3.3.3 Manufacturers

3.3.4 End use landscape

3.3.5 Distribution channel analysis

3.3.6 Vendor matrix

3.4 Technology & innovation landscape

3.5 Regulatory landscape

3.6 Industry impact forces

3.6.1 Growth drivers

3.6.2 Industry pitfalls & challenges

3.7 Growth potential analysis

3.8 Porter's analysis

3.9 PESTEL analysis

Browse Complete Table of Contents (ToC) @ https://www.gminsights.com/toc/detail/blast-chillers-market

About Global Market Insights Inc.

Global Market Insights Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider, offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy, and biotechnology.

Contact Us:

Arun Hegde

Corporate Sales, USA

Global Market Insights Inc.

Phone: 1-302-846-7766

Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Global Market Insights Inc.
"During my blind tasting, Russell's Reserve 13 Year Bourbon showed power and elegance in a single glass," said Fred Minnick, co-founder of the American Spirits Council of Tasters and world-renowned Bourbon curator, taster and Wall Street Journal-bestselling author,. "It is layered with so many flavors that I would love to sip this every day for the rest of my life. Of course, given the greatness of the Wild Turkey Distillery as of late, I am not surprised the Russell family and their team made this. It's a once in a lifetime bourbon."

Straight out of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Russell's Reserve 13 Year Old is one of the boldest smoothest bourbons the iconic distillery has ever released. Honoring the family ties that bind, Eddie Russell introduced the new Russell's Reserve 13 Year Old in June 2021, releasing a 114.8-proof Kentucky Straight Bourbon that exemplifies the Russell family's mastery of bourbon-making. In the ultimate distilling challenge, Eddie aged this one-of-a-kind release for at least 13 years, maintained the barrel proof and opted not to chill filter the whiskey, creating a more robust mouthfeel and authentic bourbon experience.

"Crafting Russell's Reserve 13 Year Old turned out to be one of my most rewarding experiences as a distiller," said Eddie Russell, who celebrated a remarkable 40 years of bourbon making at the Wild Turkey Distillery last year. "This release embodies our commitment to creating uniquely satisfying flavors, and hands down, it's one of our most rare bourbons. I would happily join Fred in sipping from this bottle for the rest of my life as well."

Savoring Russell's Reserve 13 Year Old is an experience like no other. The barrel-proof bourbon coats the palate with sweet and warming flavors rising from the harmonious marriage of dried dark fruit and charred confectionary notes. Those sweet and woody notes give way to rich flavors of honey, chocolate and nougat throughout, followed by a strong and lasting finish. Best enjoyed neat or on the rocks, Russell's Reserve 13 Year Old is available in the United States for a limited time only. For more information, please visit www.russellsreserve.com .

About Campari America

Campari America is a wholly owned subsidiary of Davide Campari-Milano N.V. (Reuters CPRI.MI - Bloomberg CPR IM). At the heart of Campari America are two legends in the American spirits industry. The first, Skyy Spirits, was founded in San Francisco back in 1992 by the entrepreneur who invented iconic SKYY Vodka. The second is the world-famous Wild Turkey Distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, where they have been making the world's finest whiskies since the 1800's. Both companies were purchased by Davide Campari-Milano and together they form Campari America, which has built a portfolio unrivaled in its quality, innovation and style, making it a top choice among distributors, retailers and consumers. Campari America manages Campari Group's portfolio in the US with such leading brands as SKYY Vodka, SKYY Infusions, Grand Marnier, Campari, Aperol, Wild Turkey Kentucky Straight Bourbon, American Honey, Russell's Reserve, Glen Grant Single Malt Scotch Whisky, Forty Creek Canadian Whisky, BULLDOG Gin, Cabo Wabo Tequila, Espolon Tequila, Montelobos Mezcal, Ancho Reyes Chile Liqueur, Appleton Estate Rum, Wray & Nephew Rum, Coruba Rum, Ouzo 12, X-Rated Fusion Liqueur, Frangelico, Cynar, Averna, Braulio, Cinzano, Mondoro and Jean-Marc XO Vodka.

Campari America is headquartered in New York, New York. More information on the company can be found at www.campariamerica.com , www.facebook.com/campariamerica , Twitter: @CampariAmerica , Instagram: @CampariAmerica , and www.camparigroup.com . Please enjoy Campari America brands responsibly and in moderation.

About Fred Minnick

World-renowned spirits critic and best-selling author Fred Minnick has been deemed a leader in the bourbon and spirits industry by The TODAY Show, Men's Health, Forbes and many others. Minnick continuously revives the age-old traditions and cultures of bourbon and spirits through his media empire which includes the Bourbon Pursuit Podcast, DASH Radio's "Minnick Minute" show and his Hermes Creative Awards Platinum-winning Podcast The Fred Minnick Show (PodcastOne). A Louisville, KY-based father of two, Minnick is also an avid music fan, curating his annual Bourbon and Beyond festival which has welcomed acts like Lynn Kravitz, John Mayer and Stevie Nicks to its stages. He has authored several books including Wall Street Journal best-seller Bourbon Curious.

For the full list of Minnick's Top 100 American Whiskeys of 2021, visit fredminnick.com/2021/12/30/best-american-whiskeys-of-2021.

SOURCE Russells Reserve
Growing favorable policies promoting breastfeeding in developing countries along with supportive initiatives in order to increase awareness among population will surge the demand for breastfeeding accessories. For instance, The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is intended to promote breastfeeding and support related educational and counseling programs. Further, the WHO and UNICEF collaboratively spearheaded a complex hospital-based promotion program named the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) to encourage breastfeeding throughout the maternity and birth delivery care in hospital settings.

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Need to increase breastfeeding rate with rising women population facing breastfeeding difficulties will spur the demand for accessories during the forecast period. Several conditions such as poor attachment, breast engorgement, breast refusal, and nipple soreness cause issue in breastfeeding among women. Insufficient breastfeeding lead to poor health and lack of nutrition in children. According to the World Health Organization, around 44% of newborns aged between 06 months are exclusively breastfed that helps to improve child survival and enables healthy development.

Nursing pads segment held more than 12% of the breastfeeding accessories market share in 2020. Nursing pads or breast pads offers convenient option to lactating mothers for breast milk leakage. Benefits associated with these pads offering high convenience, reliability and easy disposal will further boost the product adoption. Additionally, increasing demand of nursing pads among lactating mothers as it offers relief between feeding sessions will positively impact the industry growth.

Asia Pacific breastfeeding accessories market is anticipated to witness 10.8% growth rate through 2027 led by the progressive breastfeeding cultures in countries such as India and Japan along with rising awareness about breastfeeding in other Asian economies. Further, the growing number of specialized hospitals providing support services to lactating mothers, initiatives and programs sensitizing the population about the need and importance of breastfeeding are some of the factors that are predicted to foster the product demand. Moreover, the extension of breastfeeding support to rural areas through implementation of various programs will benefit the industry expansion.

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Major players operating in the market include Acute Ideas Co. Ltd., Ameda AG, Ardo Medical, Bailey Medical and Buttner-Frank GmbH among others. Prominent market leaders are adopting numerous strategies such as product launches, partnerships, merger and acquisitions to strengthen their industry presence.

Table of Contents (ToC) of the report:

Chapter 3 Breastfeeding Accessories Market Insights

3.1 Industry segmentation

3.2 Industry landscape, 2016  2027 (USD Million)

3.3 Industry impact forces

3.3.1 Growth drivers

3.3.2 Industry pitfalls & challenges

3.4 Growth potential analysis

3.4.1 By product

3.5 COVID-19 impact analysis

3.6 Regulatory landscape

3.7 Porter's analysis

3.8 Competitive landscape, 2020

3.9 PESTEL analysis

Browse Complete Table of Contents (ToC) @ https://www.gminsights.com/toc/detail/breastfeeding-accessories-market

About Global Market Insights Inc.

Global Market Insights Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider, offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy, and biotechnology.

Contact Us:

Arun Hegde

Corporate Sales, USA

Global Market Insights Inc.

Phone: 1-302-846-7766

Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Global Market Insights Inc.
A Queens man has been arrested for making numerous threats to kill former President Donald Trump, federal investigators said Monday.

I do not want to hurt anyone but I will stand up to fascism, said the 72-year-old Rockaway Beach resident, Thomas Welnicki, during a voluntary July 2020 interview with law enforcement.

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When Welnicki was interviewed by the United States Capitol Police he told them that if Trump lost the election but refused to leave office Welnicki would acquire weapons and take him down, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in Brooklyn Federal Court Monday.

The complaint does not name Trump, referring to him instead as Individual 1, but a law enforcement source confirmed the target was the former president.

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I really hope God takes [Individual 1] out, Welnicki also said, according to the complaint.

FILE - In this Dec. 31, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump arrives on the South Lawn of the White House, in Washington. (Evan Vucci/AP)

On Jan. 4, 2021, Welnicki called the Secret Services Long Island Branch and left voicemails saying he would kill Trump as well as 12 other people who supported the former president, including congresspeople and senators, the complaint says.

Oh yeah, thats a threat, come and arrest me, Welnicki allegedly said in the voicemail. I will do anything I can to take out [Individual 1] and his 12 monkeys. If I had the opportunity to do it in Manhattan that would be awesome.

Even after Trump left office, Welnickis threats did not abate, the feds said.

I will do everything I can to make sure [Individual 1] is dead, Welnicki said in a call to the Secret Services New York City Duty Desk on Nov. 8, 2021, during which he repeatedly referred to Trump as Hitler, according to prosecutors.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

The next day, Welnicki admitted to law enforcement that he made the call to the secret service, prosecutors said.

Welnicki was arrested by Secret Service police Monday and made his first appearance in Brooklyn Federal Court that afternoon.

Brooklyn Federal Judge Vera Scanlon ordered him released on $50,000 bond signed by his brother. Prosecutors agreed to the release and requested that Welnicki receive a mental health evaluation and alcohol treatment. Welnicki will be GPS monitored while he is out on bail.

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We do believe that the nature of these crimes are serious, Assistant U.S. Attorney Victor Zapana said in court. They are dangerous.

But Welnickis attorney Deirdre Von Dornum said her client is not a threat to Trump or anybody else.

If there were any actual danger here I am certain that they would have arrested him sooner, Von Dornum said in court.

Mr. Welnicki intended no harm to anyone and posed no actual threat, she told the Daily News. He was expressing how distraught he was at what he saw as the attempted murder of Lady Liberty.
BEVERLY, Mass. , Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Brookwood Financial Partners, LLC ("Brookwood"), a nationally-recognized private equity investment firm, announced today that it has sold 300 Jubilee Drive, a 163,067 square foot "best-in-class" industrial facility located in Peabody, MA. Brookwood originally acquired the property for $8,000,000 on December 28, 2009 and sold the property for $43,155,000 to an affiliate of Lincoln Property Company.

Located in the prestigious Centennial Park, 300 Jubilee is situated in a premier "last mile" industrial campus located within a quarter mile of the Route 1 and I-95/Route 128 interchange, only 15 miles north of Logan International Airport, and 18 miles from downtown Boston. The building provides ideal space for high-tech businesses involved in R&D, medical, manufacturing, or healthcare. Existing long-term tenants include Thermo Fisher Scientific, International Transportation Group (ITG), and Barton Associates.

"300 Jubilee is extremely well-situated in the greater Boston industrial market. Given its superior location, the capital improvements we have made to the property, and the excellent work of our management and leasing teams, we were able to grow occupancy to 97%," said Kurt M. Zernich, Brookwood's Senior Managing Director and Director of Asset Management. "We are pleased with the successful execution of our value-add strategy at the property and the excellent returns we are delivering to our investors."

Brookwood holds a long and successful history of investing in Massachusetts. Since 2005, the firm has acquired 26 properties in the state totaling nearly 2.2 million square feet of office and industrial buildings, including: 75 Sylvan in Danvers; 2189 Westover Road in Chicopee; the aforementioned 300 Jubilee Drive in Peabody; Brookwood Business Center in Billerica; Cherry Hill Portfolio in Beverly; Norwood Park South in Norwood; One Alewife in Cambridge; and Vantage Place in Milford. Brookwood's current New England portfolio consists of nearly 1.2 million square feet in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Colliers International represented Brookwood in the sale.

About Brookwood Financial Partners, LLC  Brookwood is a private equity investment firm that specializes in acquiring and managing commercial real estate and real-estate related operating businesses on behalf of its investors, which include Wall Street investment banks, sovereign wealth funds, college endowments, public and private pension funds, family offices, and high net worth individuals. Since its founding in 1993, Brookwood has invested over $1.7 billion of equity to acquire a portfolio of over 200 commercial real estate properties, seven operating companies, and 451 gas stations and convenience stores. Its $4.2 billion historical portfolio has spanned multiple asset classes, geographical markets, and industries across the United States. To find out more about Brookwood, visit www.brookwoodfinancial.com

Media Contact:

Erin Vadala, Warner Communications

(978) 468-3076; [email protected]

SOURCE Brookwood Financial Partners, LLC
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The global building acoustic insulation market size is expected to reach USD 6.2 billion by 2028, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 5.3% from 2021 to 2028. Rising investment in infrastructure, stringent building code, energy efficiency, and increasing living standards are augmenting the growth of the market.

Key Insights & Findings from the report:

By product, foamed plastic held the largest revenue share in 2020 owing to its low cost and high performance. The material provides excellent comfort by providing efficient sound absorption and vibration dampening

The non-residential application segment led the market in 2020. Growing noise pollution and increasing concerns over the comfort levels have triggered the demand for building acoustic insulation materials

Asia Pacific is expected to register the fastest growth rate over the forecast period owing to growing residential and commercial construction and remodeling, coupled with rising awareness regarding product benefits among the urban population

The market is competitive due to the presence of major companies involved in product manufacturing. The market is characterized by a significant consumer base across the globe, with the companies operating their businesses through dedicated distribution networks

Read 90 page market research report, "Building Acoustic Insulation Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Product (Glass Wool, Rock Wool, Foamed Plastic), By Application (Residential, Non-residential), By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028", by Grand View Research

The market is witnessing significant growth on account of an increase in regulatory standards related to noise pollution and stringent energy efficiency and fire safety policies, which often call for greater insulation usage in buildings. These products are anticipated to gain popularity owing to the growing construction projects in the residential, commercial, educational, and industrial sectors.

The market is expected to witness internal substitution, wherein aerogel is expected to act as a replacement for glass wool as the product offers ease of installation and high performance in terms of durability and efficiency. However, the product is currently being used only in high-end applications owing to its high cost. With R&D initiatives in place to significantly reduce its cost, aerogel is expected to act as an excellent substitute for current materials.

The industry is concentrated with a few top players and is characterized by a diversified product portfolio, continuous developments, and increasing regional reach. However, a large number of small players are expected to enter the market owing to the increasing product demand in the non-residential sector.

Market Segmentation:

Grand View Research has segmented the global building acoustic insulation market on the basis of product, application, and region:

Building Acoustic Insulation Product Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

Glass Wool



Rock Wool



Foamed Plastic



Others

Building Acoustic Insulation Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

Residential



Non-residential

Building Acoustic Insulation Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

North America



U.S.





Canada





Mexico



Europe



U.K.





Germany





France



Asia Pacific



China





India





Japan



Central & South America



Brazil



Middle East & Africa



Saudi Arabia





UAE

List of Key Players of Building Acoustic Insulation Market

Compagnie de Saint-Gobain S.A.

Owens Corning

Rockwool International

Armacell International S.A.

Kingspan Group plc

Knauf Insulation

BASF

Johns Manville

Fletcher Insulation

CellectaLtd.

International Cellulose Corporation

Hush Acoustics

Siderise

L'Isolante K-Flex S.p.A.

Arabian Fiberglass Insulation Company Ltd.

Check out more studies related building and construction materials, published by Grand View Research:

Acoustic Insulation Market  The global acoustic insulation market size was valued at USD 9.33 billion in 2015. Increasing awareness regarding noise pollution, health awareness, and rising standard of living are likely to have a remarkable impact on the global acoustic insulation industry growth.

 The global acoustic insulation market size was valued at in 2015. Increasing awareness regarding noise pollution, health awareness, and rising standard of living are likely to have a remarkable impact on the global acoustic insulation industry growth. Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) Market  The global insulated concrete form (ICF) market size was estimated at USD 815.5 million in 2020 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.7% from 2020 to 2028. Rising acceptance of insulated concrete forms in temperate regions including Europe and North America on account of their superior thermal insulation properties is expected to drive their demand.

 The global insulated concrete form (ICF) market size was estimated at in 2020 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.7% from 2020 to 2028. Rising acceptance of insulated concrete forms in temperate regions including and on account of their superior thermal insulation properties is expected to drive their demand. Glass Facade Market  The global glass Facade market size was valued at USD 67.9 billion in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.9% from 2021 to 2028. Growing investments in green building construction projects are anticipated to propel product usage over the forecast period.

Browse through Grand View Research's coverage of the Global Advanced Interior Materials Industry.

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About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, U.S.-based market research and consulting company, provides syndicated as well as customized research reports and consulting services. Registered in California and headquartered in San Francisco, the company comprises over 425 analysts and consultants, adding more than 1200 market research reports to its vast database each year. These reports offer in-depth analysis on 46 industries across 25 major countries worldwide. With the help of an interactive market intelligence platform, Grand View Research helps Fortune 500 companies and renowned academic institutes understand the global and regional business environment and gauge the opportunities that lie ahead.

Contact:

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Grand View Research, Inc.

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SOURCE Grand View Research, Inc.
SAN DIEGO, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Cardea Bio, Inc. - the world's only mass producer of biocompatible semiconductors - announced a collaboration agreement with Siemens Healthineers' Center for Innovation in Diagnostics (CID) to assess feasibility of developing real-time biosensor applications using Cardea's BPU (Biosignal Processing Unit) Platform.

Cardea's BPU Platform

The technical teams from Siemens Healthineers and Cardea will work side-by-side optimizing and testing the capabilities of a next generation SARS-CoV-2 immunoassay. This includes transferring hardware, software, wetware and know-how to Siemens Healthineers facilities for their hands-on use and experimentation with Cardea's BPU Platform. If successful, Siemens Healthineers and Cardea have ambitions to potentially expand their collaboration to other areas which may include simultaneous measurement of antigen and amplification-free RNA detection to demonstrate the combined power of PCR-level sensitivity and speed of immunoassays in a single test.

CEO of Cardea, Michael Heltzen, adds, "We're very humbled and proud that Siemens Healthineers has identified the transformational capabilities that our BPU Platform can bring to several areas across their existing and future product portfolios, and we look forward to the opportunity of realizing the potential of our technology together with the impressive team at Siemens Healthineers that has product development and marketing capabilities like few others in the world."

Senior Vice President and Head of the CID at Siemens Healthineers, Rangarajan Sampath, PhD continues, "My team was impressed by Cardea's scientific and technical teams with world-class experience and a significant number of peer-reviewed publications, giving us every confidence that Cardea can realize desired products across multiple markets."

Chief Business Officer at Cardea, Rob Lozuk, states, "Our commercial partners will allow the world to see the immediate benefits of Cardea's BPU Platform now and in the years to come by bringing 'Powered by Cardea' solutions to their respective markets. Our BPUs are not siloed to any one industry. Anywhere there is life; nature; biology; BPUs can be used to gain valuable insights - and the ultimate goal of this project together with Siemens Healthineers is creating a multiomics diagnostic platform for point-of-care use cases."

About Cardea

Cardea Bio, Inc. is the world's only mass producer of biocompatible semiconductors, the BPU (Biosignal Processing Unit). The BPU is the first and only semiconductor capable of translating real-time streams of multiomics signals into digital information.

Through the BPU platform, Cardea's long-term vision is to democratize access to the biosignals and insights behind the most advanced technology on our planet: Nature and biology. The Internet of Biology is that way becoming possible.

Cardea is headquartered in San Diego and has additional activity in Los Angeles. Cardea is a 100% American developed and built biocompatible semiconductor technology for applications across a variety of sectors including human health, agriculture, molecular diagnostics, biotechnology, environmental monitoring, and animal health.

Contact Cardea

Lasse Gorlitz, VP of Communications

US phone: +1 858 319 7135

EU phone: +45 2758 2601

[email protected]

SOURCE Cardea Bio
NASHVILLE, Tenn., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Carpet and upholstery cleaning franchise leader Chem-Dry experienced the demand for safe, quality, in-home cleaning services first-hand in 2021, leading the brand to leverage the surge in home services spending and provide a means for giving customers cleaner, drier, healthier alternatives to cleaning. The brand closes out a successful year in both franchise development and same-store-sales growth, having exceeded its expansion goal with 72 signed agreements and 65 openings.

"Many of our franchisees are labeling 2021 as their best year yet," said Ed Quinlan, President of Chem-Dry, part of the BELFOR Franchise Group family of brands. "The past year and a half has shown us just how much our customers are looking for home service capabilities from someone who is local, who they can trust in providing consistent and high-quality services. Our teams continue to work tirelessly to keep our brand and our franchisees ahead of the curve in providing innovative, personalized, high-quality care that delivers on our commitment to making spaces cleaner and healthier. We look forward to another year of growth as we help our franchisees strengthen their community relationships and continue to build on their tremendous success."

Chem-Dry, the Healthy Home Authority, currently serves more than 11,000 homes and businesses each day across 55 countries. Over the next 12 months, the 44-year-old brand aims to further increase its North American coverage by adding 75 franchises across the United States and Canada, and expand its global footprint by signing four more international master franchises. Chem-Dry plans to meet this development milestone by mapping out its 2022 business theme, 'New World of Opportunities.'

While Chem-Dry continues to grow its global footprint, it remains focused on the hyper-local success of its franchisees. Part of the brand's 2022 vision forward centers on empowering franchisees with additional revenue streams to bolster growth and meet the demands of today's modern customer.

Chem-Dry creates cleaner, healthier indoor environments with its proprietary equipment and solutions for carpet, upholstery, granite countertops and hard floor surfaces, such as wood, tile and laminates. In further testing of its processes, a study conducted by a leading independent laboratory concluded that the Chem-Dry Hot Carbonating Extraction cleaning method removes an average of 98% of common household allergens from carpets and upholstery. Chem-Dry has a national partnership with the Indoor Air Quality Association (IAQA), working to raise awareness and provide education on the importance of indoor air quality in maintaining the health and safety of homes and businesses.

Since its launch in 1977, Chem-Dry has become the recognized market leader by building a robust network of 1,800 franchises across the country. Most recently, the brand was recognized as one of the top 500 franchises in Entrepreneur's Franchise 500, the world's first, best and most comprehensive franchise ranking. Chem-Dry ranked on this prestigious list for its outstanding performance in unit growth, financial strength and stability, and overall brand power. To meet the growing demand for its innovative services, the company is actively seeking community-minded entrepreneurs to join the mission of delivering safer, healthier spaces across the globe.

With territories available in prime markets nationwide, Chem-Dry is an industry-leading brand in a large and growing category, that offers its franchise network world-class training and support.

For more information about the franchise opportunity, call 877-450-4874 or visit chemdryfranchise.com

About Chem-Dry

Founded in 1977, Chem-Dry is the world's leading carpet and upholstery cleaning service with a network spanning 55 countries and serving over 11,000 homes and businesses a day worldwide. Its green-certified core cleaning solution and proprietary Hot Carbonating Extraction cleaning process provide a deeper clean, allow surfaces to dry faster, and leave homes and workplaces healthier. In addition to being ranked one of the top three maintenance franchises by Entrepreneur magazine in 2021, and ranked among the top 10 concepts in the magazine's list of Top Home-Based Franchises for 20 consecutive years, Chem-Dry was ranked #39 in the 2020 Top Global Franchises category. Chem-Dry is part of the BELFOR Franchise Group family of residential and commercial services brands. For more information about Chem-Dry and to find a local operator, visit www.chemdry.com, or for more information on franchise opportunities, visit www.chemdryfranchise.com.

Media Contact: Kelly McNamara, Fishman Public Relations, [email protected], 847-945-1300

SOURCE Chem-Dry
Over the last year, as travel began to resurge in the U.S., restless Americans  and bed bugs  were hitching rides across the country for a getaway. As consumers plan for travel in 2022 amid the evolving pandemic, it's easy to forget that bed bugs are still very much a threat. Taking into consideration the staffing shortages associated with the hospitality industry, it might be the case that bed bug introductions are not being monitored as often as desired, which is why diligent examination is key.

The list is based on treatment data from the metro areas where Orkin performed the most bed bug treatments from December 1, 2020  November 30, 2021. The ranking includes both residential and commercial treatments.

Chicago Philadelphia (+12) New York (+9) Detroit Baltimore (-3) Indianapolis (+1) Washington, DC (-4) Cleveland, OH (-2) Columbus, OH (-4) Cincinnati (-2) Grand Rapids, MI (-1) Los Angeles (-3) Champaign, IL (+2) Atlanta (-1) Charlotte, N.C. (-4) Dallas-Ft. Worth Denver (+3) St. Louis, MO (+7) San Francisco (+3) Pittsburg (-1) Greenville, S.C. (+2) Charleston, W.V. (-4) Flint, MI (-2) Raleigh, N.C. (-7) Norfolk, VA (-1) Richmond, VA Omaha (+3) Buffalo, N.Y. (+1) Knoxville (+7) Cedar Rapids, IA (+5) Toledo, OH (-4) Dayton, OH (-4) South Bend, IN (+8) Nashville (-3) Davenport, IA (+3) Ft. Wayne, IN (-3) Youngstown (+3) Milwaukee (-6) Miami (+8) Tampa (-1) Houston (-4) Harrisburg (new to list) Greensboro, N.C. (-9) Seattle Peoria, IL (+4) Orlando (-1) Lexington, KY (-4) Lansing, MI Louisville, KY (-3) Lincoln, NE (new to list)

Typically, bed bugs are 3/16 inch long, red to dark brown in color and are mostly nocturnal insects that come out of hiding to take blood meals from sleeping humans. These pests are hematophagous, which means blood is their only food source. They can travel from place to place with ease, clinging to items such as luggage, purses and other personal belongings.

"Bed bugs are a concern for everyone because they are master hitchhikers, traveling home with people when they likely don't realize it," said Ben Hottel, an Orkin entomologist. "Their nature of hiding in difficult-to-find cracks and crevices can make them hard to control, which is why involving a trained professional at the sight of an introduction is recommended."

Bed bugs are known for rapid population growth. Females can deposit one to five eggs a day and may lay 200 to 500 eggs in their lifetime. They can survive for several months while waiting for their next blood meal, so they're likely to emerge when a food source, e.g., humans, become available.

"Unfortunately, many hospitality businesses are facing staffing shortages, and while the industry remains committed to cleanliness, now more than ever, travelers should be mindful of bed bug sightings and proactive in inspection efforts." said Hottel.

Here are proactive tips Orkin recommends for homeowners and travelers to prevent bed bugs:

At Home:

Inspect your home for signs of bed bugs regularly. Check the places where bed bugs hide during the day, including mattress tags and seams, and behind baseboards, headboards, electrical outlets and picture frames. Inspect when you move in, after a trip, when a service worker visits or after guests stay overnight.

Decrease clutter around your home to make it easier to spot bed bugs on your own or during professional inspections.

Examine all secondhand furniture before bringing it inside your home.

During travel, remember the acronym S.L.E.E.P. to inspect for bed bugs:

S urvey the hotel room for signs of an infestation. Be on the lookout for tiny, ink-colored stains on mattress seams, in soft furniture and behind headboards.

urvey the hotel room for signs of an infestation. Be on the lookout for tiny, ink-colored stains on mattress seams, in soft furniture and behind headboards. L ift and look in bed bug hiding spots: the mattress, box spring and other furniture, as well as behind baseboards, pictures and even torn wallpaper.

ift and look in bed bug hiding spots: the mattress, box spring and other furniture, as well as behind baseboards, pictures and even torn wallpaper. E levate luggage away from the bed and wall. The safest places are in the bathroom or on counters.

levate luggage away from the bed and wall. The safest places are in the bathroom or on counters. E xamine your luggage carefully while repacking and once you return home from a trip. Always store luggage away from the bed.

xamine your luggage carefully while repacking and once you return home from a trip. Always store luggage away from the bed. P lace all dryer-safe clothing from your luggage in the dryer for at least 15 minutes at the highest setting after you return home.

With well over a century of knowledge and experience with bed bugs and state-of-the-art tools and products, Orkin is well-equipped to assess your bed bug problem, offer trainings for short-staffed hospitality teams and mount a strategic response to rid your home of the pest and provide maximum protection.

For more information about bed bug prevention and bed bug control, visit Orkin.com. You can also find additional detection tips in Orkin's video on "How to Check for Bed Bugs in Hotel Rooms."

About Orkin, LLC

Founded in 1901, Atlanta-based Orkin is an industry leader in essential pest control services and protection against termite damage, rodents and insects. The company is committed to excellent service and operates more than 400 locations with more than 8,000 employees. Through Orkin's Points of Service process  Investigate, Protect, Fortify, Keep Watch, Report and Follow Up  Orkin provides customized services to approximately 1.7 million homeowners and businesses in the United States and has nearly 100 international locations in more than 65 countries. Orkin is committed to studying pest biology and applying scientifically proven methods. The company collaborates with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and eight major universities to conduct research and help educate consumers and businesses on pest-related health threats. Learn more about Orkin at Orkin.com. Orkin is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rollins Inc. (NYSE: ROL). Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram.

SOURCE Orkin, LLC
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), issued the following statement in response to New York City Mayor Eric Adams allowing a bill to become law that would permit citizens of other nations including some illegal aliens  to vote in citywide elections:

"America was founded on the principle that sovereign people should determine their own destinies. Yesterday, the new mayor of our nation's largest city unequivocally rejected that founding principle by empowering citizens of other nations to determine the outcome of local elections.

"The right to vote is at the very core of the principle of self-determination and what it means to be a citizen. By allowing this extreme voting bill to become law, Mayor Eric Adams has taken the most damaging step in the Democratic Party's ongoing efforts to erase any distinction between American citizens, green card holders, guestworkers, and those here illegally.

"About 1.1 million votes were cast in the recent mayoral election. With the addition of some 800,000 foreign nationals to the voter rolls, they will almost certainly have an impact on the outcome of future elections. This number is sure to grow due to an increase in all forms of immigration under President Biden, as well as the fact that you only have to live in the city for 30 days to be eligible to vote.

"The actions of the City Council and new Mayor Eric Adams will harm all Americans in New York City, as citizens of other countries will decide how they are governed  which is the very antithesis of self-determination. We encourage New Yorkers to challenge this measure in court, as it violates the state's constitution and election law."

Contact: Matthew Tragesser, 202-328-7004 or [email protected]

ABOUT FAIR

Founded in 1979, FAIR is the country's largest immigration reform group. With over 3 million members and supporters nationwide, FAIR fights for immigration policies that serve national interests, not special interests. FAIR believes that immigration reform must enhance national security, improve the economy, protect jobs, preserve our environment, and establish a rule of law that is recognized and enforced.

SOURCE Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)
Despite the challenges of pandemic disruptions, drug developers advance promising therapies for conditions, including Alzheimer's, diabetes and asthma

Report also examines key therapeutic development areas to watch including mRNA, CRISPR, AI-driven drug discovery and more

LONDON, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Clarivate Plc (NYSE: CLVT), a global leader in providing trusted information and insights to accelerate the pace of innovation, today announced the release of its annual Drugs to Watch report, identifying drugs entering the market or launching key indications in 2022 which are predicted to achieve blockbuster status by 2026. Leveraging Clarivate data and insights, analysts identified seven late-stage experimental treatments that they forecast will deliver annual sales of more than $1 billion within five years. These treatments span a remarkably diverse set of therapeutic areas, from conditions like Alzheimer's disease (AD), asthma and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), which afflict tens of millions of patients worldwide, to rare diseases, such as transthyretin amyloidosis (ATTR), among others.

The report also offers an in-depth analysis of key COVID-19 vaccines and therapies along with key therapeutic development areas to watch, such as cell and gene therapies, CRISPR, drug discovery driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning, RNA and targeted cancer therapies. In addition, the report examines blockbuster drugs and biologics facing generic competition due to U.S. patent expirys in 2022.

Navigating the global healthcare landscape is increasingly complex, and discovering, developing and commercializing successful treatments that change patient lives can be challenging, especially during today's unprecedented times. The Drugs to Watch report highlights experimental treatments with great promise to realize improved patient outcomes and efforts to finance the next generation of innovative medicines. Through adaptation, improvisation and crowdsourcing solutions, the companies behind these promising treatments are advancing a broad array of innovative treatment candidates  leveraging deep expertise in their relevant therapeutic areas and long-term strategies for pursuing therapeutic solutions for these conditions.

Among new drugs and biologics that have either won approval or are poised to do, Clarivate has identified seven treatments that it believes are likely to achieve blockbuster status in the next five years. The 2022 Drugs to Watch, include:

Adagrasib, developed by Mirati Therapeutics Inc and Zai Lab Limited - This long-awaited, targeted treatment will likely be the first such treatment option in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) with the KRASG12C mutation, who historically have had very few treatment options. The common variants of the KRAS oncoprotein are traditionally considered intractable drug targets which makes the forecasted entry of a KRAS inhibitor for patients with mutation-positive solid tumors so monumental.

- This long-awaited, targeted treatment will likely be the first such treatment option in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) with the KRASG12C mutation, who historically have had very few treatment options. The common variants of the KRAS oncoprotein are traditionally considered intractable drug targets which makes the forecasted entry of a KRAS inhibitor for patients with mutation-positive solid tumors so monumental. Faricimab, developed by Roche and Chugai Pharmaceutical - For patients with diabetic macular edema (DME) or wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), faricimab offers a potentially more convenient option as it will be administered less frequently, on average, than the standard of care. As the first bispecific antibody to launch in ophthalmology, it also has the potential to be more efficacious than current standard of care, although data so far indicates it is non-inferior to the standard of care. Faricimab is the first dual VEGF/Ang-2 inhibitor to treat DME and wet AMD (and the first bispecific MAb in the ophthalmology therapeutic area overall).

- For patients with diabetic macular edema (DME) or wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), faricimab offers a potentially more convenient option as it will be administered less frequently, on average, than the standard of care. As the first bispecific antibody to launch in ophthalmology, it also has the potential to be more efficacious than current standard of care, although data so far indicates it is non-inferior to the standard of care. Faricimab is the first dual VEGF/Ang-2 inhibitor to treat DME and wet AMD (and the first bispecific MAb in the ophthalmology therapeutic area overall). Lecanemab, developed by Eisai Co Ltd and Biogen Inc, and donanemab, from Eli Lilly and Company - In this underserved market, anti-A MAbs lecanemab and donanemab are poised to follow on the heels of the U.S. FDA's landmark accelerated approval of ADUHELM for the treatment of AD. Lecanemab and donanemab could offer differentiated clinical profiles, which may be bolstered by phase 3 results that are expected to be reported beginning in late 2022. Data across clinical trials suggest that sufficient exposure to optimal doses of anti-A MAb therapy could be clinically effective in early AD.

- In this underserved market, anti-A MAbs lecanemab and donanemab are poised to follow on the heels of the U.S. FDA's landmark accelerated approval of ADUHELM for the treatment of AD. Lecanemab and donanemab could offer differentiated clinical profiles, which may be bolstered by phase 3 results that are expected to be reported beginning in late 2022. Data across clinical trials suggest that sufficient exposure to optimal doses of anti-A MAb therapy could be clinically effective in early AD. Tezepelumab, developed by Amgen and AstraZeneca - Approved by FDA in December and marketed under the brand name Tezspire, the tezepelumab is the first biologic treatment in its class for this patient population. It will likely be a first-line biologic for severe TH2-low asthma and a treatment option for patients with TH2-high asthma for whom existing therapies have been less successful. However, the FDA approval was received in December 2021.



- Approved by FDA in December and marketed under the brand name Tezspire, the tezepelumab is the first biologic treatment in its class for this patient population. It will likely be a first-line biologic for severe TH2-low asthma and a treatment option for patients with TH2-high asthma for whom existing therapies have been less successful. However, the FDA approval was received in December 2021. Tirzepatide, developed by Eli Lilly and Company - Tirzepatide offers indication-leading reductions in weight loss and improvements in glycemic control in a growing patient population, which has the potential to reduce the incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM)-related complications. A new treatment that can more effectively address both weight loss and glycemic control than existing treatments would potentially be of great benefit to patient outcomes.

- Tirzepatide offers indication-leading reductions in weight loss and improvements in glycemic control in a growing patient population, which has the potential to reduce the incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM)-related complications. A new treatment that can more effectively address both weight loss and glycemic control than existing treatments would potentially be of great benefit to patient outcomes. Vutrisiran, developed by Alnylam Pharmaceuticals - For a progressive disease with a lot of unmet need, this drug brings efficacy, a generally favorable safety profile, and improvements in delivery that will benefit patient quality of life. This patient population has few treatment options, especially for those with wild-type ATTR. Not only does this drug enter a relatively underserved market overall, it also has more convenient dosing than other ATTR-specific drugs on the market.

Mike Ward, Global Head of Life Sciences and Healthcare Thought Leadership, Clarivate: "While pharmaceutical and biotech companies have invested substantial intellectual capital in the past two years tackling the challenges wrought by COVID-19, they have also continued to harness new technologies to create medicines that will provide options for patients with poorly or currently untreatable diseases that still represent a significant medical burden. This year's drugs-to-watch picks, as well as the technologies-to-watch selections, highlight the robust innovation that is at the heart of the pharma and biotech sector and will underpin better outcomes for patients in the future."

Despite the COVID pandemic having disrupted the drug industry in many ways, from supply chain collapse-induced shortages of key components1 to clinical trial delays2, pharma and biotech companies continue to drive major advances in medicine. Drugmakers are making great strides towards unlocking technologies that will facilitate personalized medicines. Regulators are showing an openness to new technologies and methodologies and an eagerness to address diseases for which there are few or no treatments. However, it remains critical for companies to prove their value to win market approval and make them accessible to patients.

Clarivate is committed to comprehensively supporting customers across the entire drug, device and medical technology lifecycles to advance human health. By combining patient journey data, therapeutic area expertise, artificial intelligence and analytics in ways that unlock hidden insights, data-driven decisions and accelerating innovation, Clarivate's end-to-end research intelligence is designed to enable customers to make informed evidence-based decisions.

The full Drugs to Watch Report is freely available online here.



For more Drugs to Watch updates and analyses throughout the year, visit the Drugs to Watch web page and follow Clarivate for Life Sciences & Healthcare Twitter and LinkedIn . #DrugstoWatch2022

Methodology for the Clarivate Drugs to Watch 2022 Report

To identify this year's Drugs to Watch, we drew from the expertise of over 160 analysts covering hundreds of diseases, drugs and markets and eleven integrated data sets that span the R&D and commercialization lifecycle, including: Cortellis Competitive Intelligence, Disease Landscape & Forecast, BioWorld, Drug Timeline & Success Rates, Cortellis Clinical Trials Intelligence, Cortellis Generics Intelligence, Cortellis Deals Intelligence, Access & Reimbursement payer studies, Clarivate Real World Data and Analytics , Web of ScienceTM, Derwent Innovation and other industry sources including biopharma company press releases, filings and peer-reviewed publications. Candidate drugs in phase 2 or phase 3 trials, at pre-registration or registration stage, or already launched early in 2021 were selected for analysis, including drugs launched for a new indication that could be particularly impactful on the industry; drugs launched prior to 2021 were excluded. The dataset was filtered for drugs that had total forecast sales of $1 billion or more by 2026. Clarivate experts and analysts evaluated each drug in its individual context, based on factors such as expected approval or launch dates, competitive landscape, regulatory status, trial results, market dynamics and other key factors. Please note that Clarivate analysts generated the data shown in this report prior to December 24, 2021.The Drugs to Watch 2021 Report and the treatments referenced in this release are based on Clarivate's current expectations based on existing data, but actual results derived from the drugs identified in the Report and herein may differ significantly.

To learn more about how the evolving R&D landscape creates many new opportunities and challenges to the traditional blockbuster model, join Michael Ward and Kenneth Beers of Clarivate on January 20, 2022 for a presentation on "R&D in an Age of Multiplying Modalities and Targets," during 2022 Fierce JPM Week. Visit https://www.fiercejpmweek.com/ for more information.

To learn more about Clarivate data products, visit www.clarivate.com.

About Clarivate

Clarivate is a global leader in providing solutions to accelerate the lifecycle of innovation. Our bold mission is to help customers solve some of the world's most complex problems by providing actionable information and insights that reduce the time from new ideas to life-changing inventions in the areas of science and intellectual property. We help customers discover, protect and commercialize their inventions using our trusted subscription and technology-based solutions coupled with deep domain expertise. For more information, please visit clarivate.com.

Media Contact

Catherine Daniel

Director, External Communications, Life Sciences & Healthcare

[email protected]

1 Source: Regulatory response to the COVID-19 pandemic: Careful planning to minimize disruptions. Clarivate. 2021. https://clarivate.com/blog/regulatory-response-to-the-covid-19-pandemic-careful-planning-to-minimize-disruptions/

2 Source: Delays in clinical trials present opportunities for pharma companies to evolve. Clarivate. 2021. https://clarivate.com/blog/delays-in-clinical-trials-present-opportunities-for-pharma/

SOURCE Clarivate Plc
NEW YORK, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- ColorComm, Inc., the nation's leading women's platform addressing diversity & inclusion across the communications, marketing, advertising, and media industries, will host the 5th Annual NextGen Fellows Program on February 25, 2022, with a summit & recruiting component to allow Fortune 500 companies, agencies, brands, and corporations to recruit students for internships and full-time positions.

ColorComm's 5th Annual NextGen Fellows Program will focus directly on current students and recent graduates of Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs). The year-long program will provide mentorship, professional development seminars, access to the full ColorComm Network, and a direct pipeline for leading media companies and brands to hire the next generation of leaders. The HBCU Fellows Program is an exclusive program where applicants will be evaluated on academic achievement, community give back, extracurricular activities, and their professional goals.

The virtual program and recruitment summit will bring together the best and brightest HBCU students from across the nation, and will reach ColorComm's Community of more than 100,000 multicultural professionals.

There is no cost associated when applying for fellowship consideration.

As a proud graduate of Spelman College, I can recall the challenges entering the communications industry as a student looking for a full-time position in the industry. HBCU Students often face greater challenges to land top media and communications positions as the same companies frequent the same schools and often overlook the wide variety of HBCUs, said Lauren Wesley Wilson, Founder and CEO, ColorComm, Inc. The 5th Annual ColorComm NextGen Fellows Program will give greater access to companies to engage with the best talent and will provide students with the access, resources, and knowledge to succeed after graduation, said Wesley Wilson.

Participating HBCU Schools Include:

Alabama A&M University

Bowie State University

Claflin University

Clark Atlanta University

Florida A&M University

Hampton University

Howard University

Jackson State University

Lincoln University

Morehouse College

Morgan State University

North Carolina A&T State University

Spelman College

Tuskegee University

For more information:

www.colorcommmediagroup.com

www.colorcommnetwork.com

www.colorcommhbcufellows.com

SOURCE ColorComm, Inc.
WALTHAM, Mass. and BRISBANE, Australia, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Constant Contact , a digital marketing platform trusted by millions of small businesses, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Vision6 . The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Vision6 is a trusted SMS and email marketing platform in Australia serving thousands of customers including small businesses, government departments, nonprofits, and marketing agencies. Vision6's suite of marketing solutions, local customer support and data security enable marketers and agency professionals alike to help customers grow their businesses. The acquisition of Vision6 provides Constant Contact with a platform for growth in the Australian market and will enable Vision6 customers to enjoy the benefits of Constant Contact's comprehensive digital marketing software platform.

"Both Constant Contact and Vision6 are designed to help small businesses, government agencies and nonprofits connect with their customers and grow their businesses," said Frank Vella, CEO, Constant Contact. "The acquisition of Vision6 will bring us a strong management team with a deep commitment to serving Australian customers. I look forward to working with the Vision6 team to lead investment and growth within the Australian market."

"We are honored to join forces with the Constant Contact team to further our shared mission," said Mathew Myers, co-founder and CEO, Vision6. "Constant Contact is not only a leader, but a pioneer in the industry, and I look forward to leveraging the depth of their solutions to bring increased value to our customers and partners in Australia."

About Constant Contact

Constant Contact offers a powerful suite of digital marketing software tools that simplify online marketing for small businesses and nonprofits. Whether it's driving sales, growing a customer base or engaging an audience, we combine the right tools, advice and award-winning support that deliver results. For more information, visit www.constantcontact.com .

About Vision6

As Australia's most reliable email and SMS marketing software, Vision6 is passionate about helping marketers and agency professionals to get more customers and grow their business. Since 2001, Vision6 is relied upon by thousands of businesses for its industry-leading marketing solution, real person local support, data sovereignty and security. For more information, visit www.vision6.com .

SOURCE Constant Contact
PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research published a report, titled, "Container Glass Market by Glass Type (Borosilicate-Based and Soda-Lime-Silica-Based), Forming Method (Blow & Blow, Press & Blow, and Narrow Neck Press & Blow), and End User (Foods & Beverages, Cosmetics & Personal Care, Pharmaceuticals, Chemicals, and Others): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20212030". According to the report, the global container glass industry generated $82.2 billion in 2020, and is anticipated to generate $155.9 billion by 2030, witnessing a CAGR of 6.7% from 2021 to 2030.

Prime determinants of growth

Increase in demand from the food & beverage and pharmaceutical sectors drive the growth of the global container glass market. However, environmental hazards associated with the manufacturing of container glass hinder the market growth to some extent. On the other hand, emergence of lightweight container glass products creates new opportunities in the coming years.

Request PDF Brochure: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/9992

Covid-19 Scenario

The implementation of the global lockdown led to temporary closure of all food and beverage manufacturing hubs, which in turn, declined the demand for container glass for storage and packaging applications.

Furthermore, temporary shutdown of construction and infrastructure activities during the lockdown period reduced the consumption of container glass for interior and exterior decor purposes.

However, the global container glass market is expected to recover soon post Covid-19 era, owing to increase in dependency on healthcare & pharmaceutical, e-commerce, foods & beverages, and other sectors.

The press & blow segment to maintain its leadership status throughout the forecast period

Based on forming method, the press & blow segment held the highest market share in 2020, accounting for nearly half of the global container glass market, and is estimated to maintain its leadership status throughout the forecast period. This is due to increase in trend of using reusable bottles in the foods & beverages industry. Moreover, the narrow neck press & blow segment is projected to manifest the highest CAGR of 7.2% from 2021 to 2030, owing to rise in consumption of alcoholic drinks that need narrow neck bottles for packaging and increase in fashion consciousness.

Get Detailed COVID-19 Impact Analysis on the Container Glass Market @ https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-for-customization/9992?reqfor=covid

The food & beverages segment to maintain its lead position during the forecast period

Based on end use, the food & beverages segment accounted for the largest share in 2020, contributing to more than three-fourths of the global container glass market, and is projected to maintain its lead position during the forecast period. This is attributed to increase in utilization for food storage purposes and rise in demand for premium alcoholic beverages. However, the pharmaceuticals segment is expected to portray the largest CAGR of 7.5% from 2021 to 2030, owing to increase in severity of diseases that led to increased adoption of container glass for storage and packaging of pharmaceuticals and rise in research and development (R&D) activities for producing highly efficient medicines in which glass-based equipment is used for product sampling, storage, and other applications.

Asia-Pacific, followed by Europe & North America, to maintain its dominance by 2030

Based on region, Asia-Pacific, followed by Europe & North America, held the highest market share in terms of revenue in 2020, accounting for more than two-fifths of the global container glass market. Moreover, the same region is expected to witness the fastest CAGR of 7.3% from 2021 to 2030. This is due to utilization of container glass in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, foods & beverages, and chemical manufacturing, rise in demand for packaged food items, and storage of a wide range of food items for long durations.

Leading Market Players:-

Amcor Limited

FrigoGlass

Owens-Illinois Inc.

Consol Glass Pty Ltd.

Central Glass Co. Ltd.

Vitro

S.A.B de C.V.

Vidrala

Hindusthan National Glass

Industries Limited

Interested in Procuring This Report? Visit Here:

https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/container-glass-market/purchase-options

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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.

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United States

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SOURCE Allied Market Research
A teen motorist faces manslaughter and drunk driving charges after he T-boned an 18-wheeler truck, killing his passenger in a horrific Bronx crash.

TAndre Hatcher was behind the wheel of a silver Infiniti when he crashed into the truck on Manida St. and Oak Point Ave. in Hunts Point about 4:15 a.m. Saturday, according to cops.

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The impact sheared most of the roof off the luxury sedan, which was crushed by the tractor trailers undercarriage.

A passenger riding in a silver Infiniti Q50 sedan was pronounced dead at Harlem Hospital after the car crashed into a tractor trailer on Oak Point Avenue at Manida Street in the Bronx on January 8, 2022. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

Medics took Hatchers passenger, Frankely Nunez-Payano, 20, to Harlem Hospital but he could not be saved.

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Hatcher, 19, of Chesapeake, Va., has been charged with manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, driving while intoxicated and driving while ability impaired, cops said Sunday.

On Sunday afternoon, Nunez-Payanos friends and relatives lit dozens of candles and wrote messages at a makeshift memorial inside his Lower East Side apartment building.

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

The victims 17-year-old brother described Nunez-Payano as kind and generous.

People around him, if they needed something he was there for them every time, the brother said. Every time he would go somewhere to the store or to get food he would ask, You want something?

He described Hatcher as a cousin of one of Nunez-Payanos friends and said the two were headed out to go meet some girls or something.

The makeshift memorial for Frankely Nunez-Payano, 20, at his Lower East Side apartment building. He was killed in a crash in the Bronx Saturday. (Haley Brown/for New York Daily News)

Nunez-Payanos sister wept as she paid her respects at the memorial Sunday.

Im telling you he was loved, she said. Im not just saying that because, you know, everybody does. He was. He was.

The fatal crash happened just minutes after an alleged drunk driver slammed into a pole and a parked van in Queens, killing one of his five passengers.

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The driver in that crash, Gilberto Cordova, 23, was charged with vehicular manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, vehicular assault and driving while intoxicated.
BRENTWOOD, Tenn., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Currax Pharmaceuticals, LLC ("Currax"), a specialty biopharmaceutical company dedicated to expanding access to clinical differentiated medicines  both branded and generic  today announced the appointment of Dr. Michael Kyle to the role of Senior Vice President (SVP), Chief Medical Officer, reporting to Currax's President and Chief Executive Officer, George Hampton. Dr. Kyle will have responsibility for Currax's regulatory, medical affairs, clinical development/operations, as well as the pharmacovigilance organization for the company. He will also lead Currax's exploration of smoking cessation opportunities through the CX-101 program.

"Dr. Kyle brings a wealth of knowledge and industry expertise to Currax and I'm confident that he'll play a key role in our efforts to support a variety of patient needs across our portfolio," said Currax President and CEO, George Hampton. "Michael joins the organization at a critical juncture as we expand our efforts and support the launch of CX-101 for the indication of smoking cessation."

"I am thrilled to be joining Currax at this exciting time for the organization and the patients it serves," said Dr. Kyle. "With a strong portfolio, complemented by the work the firm is doing in new areas, I am looking forward to building upon the efforts underway and supporting the company's mission to deliver clinically differentiated, life-changing medicines to patients in need."

Prior to joining Currax, Dr. Kyle was the Head of Development at Jiangsu HengRui Pharmaceuticals, and before that he held various roles in both clinical development and medical affairs at Pfizer, including: US Medical Director of Established Products, Medical Affairs; Chief Medical Officer, Pfizer Consumer Health; and Vice President, Head of Global Clinical Services and Operations of Upjohn, a Pfizer Division. Throughout his pharmaceutical career, he has provided oversight and leadership for more than 300 phase I-IV trials as well as investigator-initiated studies. Dr. Kyle earned his BS in Psychology from Loyola University and his Medical Degree from Rush Medical College. He is a board-certified family physician and completed his residency training at West Suburban Family Medicine Residency Program in Oak Park, Illinois. Dr. Kyle started his career in clinical practice and as a principal investigator and has also held various faculty appointments at Loyola University Medical School and West Suburban Residency Program.

About Currax Pharmaceuticals LLC:

Currax Pharmaceuticals LLC is a specialty pharmaceutical business focused on acquiring and commercializing prescription Medicines worldwide. Currax distributes a range of both branded and generic pharmaceutical products, including CONTRAVE (naltrexone HCl/bupropion HCl), ONZETRA Xsail (sumatriptan nasal powder), Silenor (doxepin), Treximet, (sumatriptan/naproxen sodium), and the authorized generic of Treximet. For more information, please visit http://www.curraxpharma.com/.

Media Contact:

Shannon Susko

Edelman Financial Communications & Capital Markets

[email protected]

SOURCE Currax Pharmaceuticals, LLC
DALLAS, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- FOHBOH, the world's first digital community for restaurant operators and executives, announces the acquisition of 214EATS, a Dallas-based, full-service digital marketing agency for restaurants. This appropriately timed union positions FOHBOH (industry slang for "Front of House, Back of House") as a first-in-kind, intelligence-based digital marketing, and operational consulting agency for the embattled hospitality industry.

FOHBOH to assist the hard-hit restaurant industry by launching digital marketing and ResTech consulting platform. Tweet this FOHBOH Executive Team from left, Drew Pickard, Terrence Gordon, Michael Atkinson

"The proliferation of the restaurant technology space has restaurant operators inundated with constantly emerging ResTech systems and new sources of data," says Michael L. Atkinson, an industry insider and FOHBOH's original founder. "Operators are expected to ditch their legacy systems and take on new technologies that may not be in their long-term interest. FOHBOH assists operators with navigating a custom-fit tech-stack, which in turn leads to the harvest of essential bits of actionable data that will guide them into better decisions."

By offering consultative-based services, driven by the restaurant's historic data, FOHBOH provides a unique model featuring the combination of "front of house" marketing analytics with "back of house" operational insights.

"Our restaurant clients have been forced to pivot and question everything from their profit centers, staffing, purchasing, and customer behavior," says Terrence Gordon, FOHBOH's President & Founder of 214EATS. "This merger combined with our unique tech-stack enables us to provide answers through data, and guidance that complements the services they rely on us for."

Datassential estimates 80 percent of restaurants use outdated legacy solutions. Yelp predicts the addition of 76,800 restaurants per year (even with COVID) with an addressable market of almost 800,000 locations  many of which seek a marketing and technology refresh. FOBOH's clientele includes Chilis, Golden Corral, and Cheesecake Factory while also catapulting emerging brands like Torchy's Tacos, Front Burner Concepts, United Franchise Group, and others.

"The restaurant industry is creative and fun," says Gordon. "We want operators to focus on what makes them great, while we help them navigate new technologies and make decisions based on data trends, not guesses."

About FOHBOH

FOHBOH helps forward-thinking restaurant organizations take action by merging marketing insights with operational data to elevate them to the next level. For more information, visit FOHBOH.com .

Media Contact

Stacey Kam

[email protected]

SOURCE FOHBOH
DENVER, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Rueth Team, the No. 1 loan originator in Colorado and No. 1 producer at Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation nationally, will host "The Next Big Thing," an industry-wide event featuring leaders and pioneers to discuss the future of real estate and how real estate professionals will define success. The event will be held on Thursday, Jan. 20 and Friday, Jan. 21 at The Denver Marriott Westminster and is open for registration.

Register today: www.TheNextBigThingColorado.com

Over the course of the two-day event, 28 industry experts will discuss topics that are currently shaking up the real estate industry including but not limited to, the merging of Denver commercial and residential markets, harnessing tomorrow's technology, the real future of real estate and the millennial attraction. Nicole Rueth, Producing Branch Manager and SVP of The Rueth Team, will host The Lending Landscape in 2022: Rate Projections and Market Outlook discussion on Thursday, January 20 at 3:30 p.m.

"The past two years have been anything but easy and while we are grateful for what the past has taught us, 'The Next Big Thing' offers the opportunity for attendees to not only build comradery within the industry but forecast the market, anticipate the landscape and prepare for the future," said Rueth. "Our team is thrilled to host this event and we are looking forward to welcoming 450 industry professionals later this month to build connection and instill inspiration for 2022."

Headlining the event is keynote speaker, Ryan Serhant, real estate broker, CEO and founder of SERHANT., a vertically integrated mega brokerage comprising an in-house film studio, education arm, marketing division and technology platform. He is also a best-selling author and star of Bravo's "Million Dollar Listing New York" and "Sell It Like Serhant."

Registration for the event is now open and tickets are available for purchase here. Tickets are $497 through January 19. Tickets will be available day of the event for $597.

For additional details on "The Next Big Thing" or The Rueth Team, please visit www.theruethteam.com.

About The Rueth Team

Founded in 2013, The Rueth Team of Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation, Denver's top mortgage company, is committed to solving the lack of wealth problem in this country, by educating consumers and introducing them to the most effective and available wealth-building opportunities in America: real estate. Led by Nicole Rueth, Producing Branch Manager, SVP and one of the top 200 Mortgage Advisors in the country, The Rueth Team supports those who seek their help with trusted advice, proven strategies, and an unwavering dedication to deliver excellence regardless of the difficulties that may arise. Since inception, The Rueth Team has assisted Denver area homeowners and agents looking to build wealth with buying homes, refinancing, property investment and agent education. Regarded as the No. 1 loan originator in Colorado and No. 1 producer at Fairway Mortgage nationally, The Rueth Team is enthusiastically committed to providing the gateway into real estate heightened by remarkable client experience.

For more information on The Rueth Team, please visit https://www.theruethteam.com/.

Media Contact: Jackie Dadas-Kraper

Senior Director, Interdependence Public Relations

[email protected]

248.842.0597

SOURCE The Rueth Team
MILWAUKEE, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Dykema, a leading national law firm, today announced that it is expanding its platform with the addition of a capital markets team and the opening of an office in Milwaukee, the firm's first in the state. The incoming capital markets team is an integrated and seasoned group of M&A, securities, finance, and health care attorneys including Kate Bechen, who will serve as the Office Managing Member. The office will be located in the Milwaukee Center at 111 E Kilbourn Avenue.

"We're thrilled to announce our expansion into Milwaukee and welcome this multidisciplinary team to our Business Services Department," said Len Wolfe, Dykema's Chair & CEO. "Given our strong presence in the Midwest, we've looked at opportunities to move into markets that are home to a number of Fortune 500 companies and large private businesses and that align with our platform from a cultural, practice, and client representation perspective. Very soon after meeting this talented team we understood they would be an excellent fit for our platform and our existing client base, while also creating opportunities for additional growth in the region and nationally."

The incoming team joins from Husch Blackwell and, in addition to Bechen, includes Steven Laabs, Andrew Frost, Jessica Zeratsky, Julie D'Angelo, Robin Lehninger, and Eric Lenzen.

"It's exciting to add an energetic team of this caliber to our practice," said Jin-Kyu Koh, Director of Dykema's Business Services Department. "The team is nimble, and the sophistication and scope of their practice, and their diverse client base coming from nearly every sector with varied needs from small domestic deals to large multinational transactions, complements the work being performed by our corporate finance group. Our lawyers in key practice areas such as M&A, securities, employee benefits, real estate, lending, L&E, and antitrust consulting will no-doubt embrace near-term opportunities to collaborate on behalf of our clients."

The capital markets team focuses their practice on six core verticals (buying, selling, financing, securities issuance, insurance, and investment) and counsels a wide range of clients that all engage in these activities. Those clients include public and private entities, private equity groups, bank and non-bank lenders, insurance companies, family offices, and high net worth individuals. The team focuses on transactional matters including strategic M&A, specialty and healthcare M&A, M&A involving Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs), finance transactions, cross border transactions, transactions involving private equity, venture capital and emerging companies, family offices, fund formations, and Initial Public Offerings (IPOs).

"Our clients are based across the country and operate around the globe and require a law firm that supports the most sophisticated corporate needs while maintaining a pragmatic value-driven approach. We have found that at Dykema and we are making this move in furtherance of our unwavering commitment to those clients. It was quickly clear that Dykema offers both a best-in-class practice platform and culture that shares our values of teamwork, service and collaboration," said Kate Bechen. "As the firm continues to cement its presence in Milwaukee, we look forward to deepening our bench of talented attorneys and supporting an ecosystem that empowers us to best serve our clients and their growth."

Advancing Dykema's National and Midwest Strategy

As a premier firm with Midwestern roots, Dykema has developed a national footprint focused on serving Fortune 1000 and middle-market companies. Building on its roots and driven by the needs of its clients, the firm has extended its platform nationally by developing sophisticated practices in areas including automotive, consumer financial services, energy and electric distribution, international counsel, infrastructure finance, intellectual property, and pharmaceutical/medical device litigation. With over 370 lawyers and government policy advisors, Dykema continues to engage in strategic expansion discussions with leading attorneys who can add further depth to key practices.

Throughout 2021, Dykema strategically added bench strength in key regional markets including Austin, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Lansing, and Washington D.C.

Situated between existing Dykema offices in Chicago and Minneapolis, Milwaukee has a robust and dynamic legal market, and the new office creates opportunities for the firm to share work across the region and continue its growth trajectory in key Midwest markets. Dykema has been active in Milwaukee and Wisconsin broadly and this combination and the opening of a physical office significantly enhances that existing presence.

About Dykema

Dykema serves business entities and individuals worldwide on the broadest range of complex corporate transactions and litigation matters. Dykema lawyers and other professionals in 13 U.S. offices coast-to-coast work in close partnership with clients  from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies  to deliver exceptional results, unparalleled service, and unrivaled value in every engagement.

SOURCE Dykema
DENVER, CO, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Enlighten Innovations Inc. ("Enlighten," the "Company"), a developer of next-generation clean energy solutions, is pleased to announce the appointment of Todd Mooney as Chief Financial Officer, effective today.

Mr. Mooney previously served as Vice President, Finance and Administration for Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp. Prior to his time at Algonquin, he held senior roles in finance at Psion PLC and Zenon Environmental Inc. He received his Master of Accounting degree from the University of Waterloo and is a CPA-CA.

In Mr. Mooney's role as Chief Financial Officer, he will oversee financial reporting, accounting, tax, treasury, risk management, and financial planning and analysis, as well as investor relations. Mr. Mooney's proven track record of developing and financing large-scale renewable energy projects in multiple jurisdictions will help to accelerate Enlighten's market presence.

"Todd's international experience will help shape Enlighten's next chapter of rapid growth, and we look forward to benefiting from his leadership and expertise. We are delighted to welcome him to the team," said Steve Reynish, CEO of Enlighten.

"I am very excited to step into the CFO role to help the Enlighten's execute its strategic plan, accelerate its growth and deliver value for its shareholders. I look forward to partnering with the entire team to build on the Company's strong momentum and business fundamentals," said Todd Mooney, CFO of Enlighten.

About Enlighten Innovations Inc.

Enlighten Innovations Inc. is a leading clean-energy technology company headquartered in Alberta, Canada, and Denver, Colorado. The team has extensive expertise in building companies and large projects and has deep experience in sodium battery technology and applications. The Company is engaged in the research and development of clean energy technology to meet ever-changing global energy needs and accelerate a net-zero world.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information in this communication may constitute "forward-looking" information which involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Enlighten, or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. When used in this news release, such information uses words such as "may", "will", "could", "would", "expect", "believe", "plan", "intend", and other similar terminology. This information reflects current expectations regarding future events and operating performance and speaks only as of the date of this new release. Forward-looking information involves significant risks and uncertainties, should not be read as a guarantee of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be an accurate indication of whether or not such results will be achieved and, accordingly, undue reliance should not be put on such statements. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking information. Furthermore, the recent world-wide pandemic relating to the Covid-19 virus has had a material and adverse effect on the world economy. The future impact of this outbreak is highly uncertain and cannot be predicted and there is no assurance that the outbreak will not have a material adverse impact on future results. Although the forward-looking information contained in this document is based upon what representatives of Enlighten believe are reasonable assumptions, Enlighten cannot assure readers that actual results will be consistent with the forward-looking information.

Learn more: https://enlighteninc.com/

Contacts:

Investors:

Steve Reynish President & CEO

Enlighten Innovations Inc.

[email protected]

Media:

Kaeli Gattens

JDS Group of Companies

[email protected]

SOURCE Enlighten Innovations Inc.

Related Links

https://enlighteninc.com/


"Each of these employees has a proven track record of skillfully leading treatment teams and operations that's backed not only by their extensive expertise, but also by their passion in providing clients outstanding care," said Milch. "Our organization is in an exciting time of growth and opportunity, and I am confident in this group's ability to ensure we offer the best treatment possible to our clients while meeting and exceeding our evolving operation needs."

Milch also announced that Chief Operating Officer Ambrozino Storr, MSBM, ACHE is leaving the organization in January to pursue other opportunities. Storr has been with the treatment centers since October of 2019 overseeing business operations, managing staff, and supporting new program launches.

"Having Zino at the helm of operations allowed me to focus on expanding the organization. A lot of our recent growth was possible because of his contributions," said Milch. "I will always be grateful for what he accomplished in his time here. I consider him a friend and confidant and knowing Zino's vision for himself and my vision for our organization, I fully expect we'll work together in a different capacity down the road."

About Footprints to Recovery

About Vogue Recovery Center

About South Coast Behavioral Health

About Royal Life Centers

Media Contact:

Nicole Piechowski

Vice President of Branding & Creative

609-488-0557

[email protected]

SOURCE Footprints to Recovery

Related Links

footprintstorecovery.com


CINCINNATI, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati's Board of Directors announced the results of the FHLB's 2021 director elections. Members elected two directors from Kentucky, as well as one Independent director. An incumbent director from Ohio was declared elected as the only candidate nominated to run for the open Ohio Member director seat. Each director will serve a four-year term that began January 1, 2022. The Board also elected James J. Vance as vice chair and appointed two Independent directors to fill unexpired terms.

Elected to the Board as Kentucky Member directors are J. Wade Berry and incumbent Greg W. Caudill.

Mr. Berry is President and CEO of Farmers Bank and Trust Company headquartered in Marion, Ky. He joined Farmers Bank as a Loan Officer in 1993 and became President & CEO in 2011. He is a 1991 Economics graduate of Western Kentucky University and a graduate of numerous banking schools including Louisiana State University's Graduate School of Banking and the University of South Carolina's Graduate School of Bank Investments and Financial Management. Mr. Berry has volunteered countless hours in support of his industry including service as 2020-2021 Chairman of the Kentucky Bankers Association. A partial list of his community involvement includes stints as chairman of a local hospital board, president of his hometown chamber of commerce and service on numerous foundation boards.

Mr. Caudill is a Board Member of Farmers National Bank in Danville, Ky. He attended Transylvania University and graduated from the University of Kentucky. He is also a graduate of the Kentucky School of Banking and the Graduate School of Banking at Louisiana State University. He is a member of the Centre College Board of Trustees where he chairs the Audit Committee. Additionally, he serves as Chair of the Boyle Co. Industrial Foundation and is a board member of Bluegrass Tomorrow, a regional planning organization.

Declared elected as an Ohio Member director is incumbent Kathleen A. Rogers. Ms. Rogers serves as Executive Vice President at U.S. Bank. She has more than 30 years of experience at U.S. Bank and its predecessor organizations Firststar, Star Bancorp and First National Bank of Cincinnati. She has held various positions within the company's financial organization including serving as the company's Chief Financial Officer. Ms. Rogers was elected by the FHLB Board in 2019 to fill the vacancy of a retired director. A Cincinnati resident, Ms. Rogers holds a degree in Business Administration and Accounting from the Ohio State University. In the community, Ms. Rogers has served on numerous boards focused on educational and other opportunities for at risk children.

Newly elected as an Independent Public Interest director is Danny J. Herron of Nashville, Tenn. Mr. Herron serves as President and CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Nashville. Mr. Herron brings extensive community banking experience to the Board, having served as President and CEO of Cumberland Bank, Franklin, Tenn. and Regional President of GreenBank, Greenville, Tenn. for a combined 15 years. Additionally, Mr. Herron has served on the FHLB Affordable Housing Advisory Council as a member since 2014 and as Council Chair from 2019-2020.

James J. Vance was elected to serve as vice chair of the board. Mr. Vance is Senior Vice President and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Western-Southern Life Assurance Company in Cincinnati. He was first elected to the Board in 2017. He joined Western & Southern in 1994 after eight years at Eastman Kodak Co. in Rochester, New York. Mr. Vance earned his bachelor's degree in business administration from Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio, a law degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Law and an MBA in finance from Indiana University. He is a member of the Ohio Bar Association. Mr. Vance is involved in a number of civic and charitable organizations in Greater Cincinnati including Cincinnati Children's Hospital and St. Elizabeth Hospital, and previously The Beechwood Home, the Urban League of Greater Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Nature Center. His two-year term as board vice chair commences January 1, 2022 and expires December 31, 2023.

Additionally, the Board appointed Lewis Diaz and L. Scott Spivey to fill two unexpired Independent director terms left vacant by retiring directors.

Mr. Diaz of Covington, Ky. is a public finance attorney and Partner at Dinsmore & Shohl, LLP. Mr. Diaz concentrates his practice on affordable housing and traditional governmental finance. He works with diverse participants in housing transactions including multi-family housing sponsors, for-profit and non-profit developers and underwriters. His extensive legal housing finance career was built on a foundation of housing advocacy for residents of Kentucky through seven years of service, including interim Chief Counsel, with Kentucky Housing Corporation, the state's housing finance agency. Mr. Diaz will serve as an Independent Public Interest director effective January 1, 2022 through December 31, 2023.

Mr. Spivey is Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer for First Student, Inc., Cincinnati, the largest North American provider of school bus transportation, with $2.5 billion in annual revenues. A Cincinnati resident, Mr. Spivey has more than 40 years of financial and business management experience in publicly traded companies with revenues over $1 billion. His extensive global financial and management experience crosses multiple industries ranging from transportation and logistics to telecommunications and packaged goods. His diverse skill sets include financial and organizational management, auditing and accounting, strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, and supply chain management. Mr. Spivey will serve as an Independent director effective January 1, 2022 through December 31, 2022.

The FHLB is a wholesale cooperative bank owned by 625 member financial institutions, including commercial banks, thrifts, credit unions, insurance companies and community development financial institutions in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. The FHLB provides members access to products and services and a competitive return through quarterly dividends on their capital investment in the FHLB. It has contributed nearly $827 million for the creation of more than 102,000 units of affordable housing through its Affordable Housing Program since 1990. Additionally, the FHLB's Board of Directors has voluntarily contributed $25 million from profits in response to members' community needs including natural disaster home reconstruction, foreclosure mitigation, emergency repair and accessibility rehab for special needs and elderly populations. The FHLB System includes 11 district Banks, is wholly owned by its nearly 6,700 member institution stockholders and does not use taxpayer dollars.

This news release may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, the effects of economic market conditions on demand for the FHLB's products, legislative or regulatory developments concerning the FHLB System, competitive forces and other risks detailed from time to time in the FHLB's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements speak as of the date made and are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results or developments may differ materially from the expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements, and the FHLB undertakes no obligation to update any such statements.

SOURCE Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati
BALTIMORE, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- b.well Connected Health , the digital transformation platform providing consumers a new front end to health care, today announced that it has been named by Fierce Healthcare as one of the 2022 Fierce 15 companies, designating it as one of the most promising healthcare companies in the industry.

Fierce Healthcare evaluated hundreds of companies from around the world for its annual Fierce 15 list, which is based on a variety of factors such as strength of its technology, partnerships, venture backers and its innovative approach to solving some of the most complex and longstanding problems in the health industry.

"b.well is helping health systems, employers and pharmacy chains across the country to deliver the personalized healthcare experience that consumers have been demanding so they can get care when, where and how they want it," said Kristen Valdes, CEO and Founder of b.well. "We are honored to be included in the Fierce 15 among some of the most innovative companies from across healthcare."

The Fierce 15 celebrates the spirit of being "fierce"  championing innovation and creativity, even in the face of intense competition. This year's Fierce 15 represents many corners of the industry from digital health to pharmacy benefit management to social determinants of health.

"During an especially challenging time as we are two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, this group of Fierce 15 winners are reimagining the path forward for healthcare and leading the changes that will shape how healthcare of the future is delivered," said Paige Minemyer, Fierce Healthcare senior editor.

Continuing an Award-Winning Trend

The Fierce 15 award is the capstone to a year of unprecedented recognition for b.well Connected Health. The company won several notable awards in 2021, while Valdes was recognized for her leadership by inclusion in several prestigious lists. These included:

The Digital Health 150, by CBInsights

UCSF Health Award 2021 (finalist), by UCSF Health Hub

"Best digital health data management solution 2021," (with partner Mastercard), by Juniper Research

"Overall winner" of the CareTech competition, by the Louisville Healthcare CEO Council

Diverse & Inclusive Employer Award, by The Startup Weekly

Baltimore "Growth Company of the Year," by Technical.ly

Best Places to Work in Baltimore 2021, by Built-In

2021, by Built-In Best Places to Work in Texas 2021, by Built-In

2021, by Built-In "Women in Health IT to Know in 2022," by Becker's Hospital Review

"Top 100 Women in Maryland ," by the Maryland Daily Record

Kristen Valdes speaking at JPM Healthcare Conference Jan. 11

Valdes will share her insights on building exceptional consumer experiences in healthcare during the Digital Health Pioneers Forum hosted by McDermott and EY at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.

Valdes will be joined in the virtual fireside chat, "Connectors  Bridging Industry Players", by Deborah Kilpatrick, co-CEO of Evidation. The Digital Health Forum runs from 11:00am to 1:30pm PST, January 11.

About b.well Connected Health

b.well Connected Health is a healthcare technology company providing platform services comprised of five core capabilities that work together to enable health systems, payers, and employers with a configurable and personalized digital health experience for their populations. The b.well technology platform is transforming how consumers interact with the healthcare system by integrating data, insights, and partners into a single customized solution that helps people take control of their healthcare experience. Visit www.icanbwell.com for more information.

About Fierce Healthcare

Fierce Healthcare is the healthcare industry's daily monitor providing the latest news and information at the intersection of healthcare business and policy. With an audience of more than 160,000 top healthcare professionals, Fierce Healthcare delivers insights that power decisions and experiences where communities thrive. We are Fierce  everywhere you need us to be. #BeFierce

Subscriptions are free at www.fiercehealthcare.com/signup .

Media Contact:

Todd Stein

Todd Stein Communications

[email protected]

510-417-0612

SOURCE b.well Connected Health
SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- FlyFin, a fintech company, announced it is offering complete Crypto Taxes as part of its A.I.-powered tax service. The company is also launching a free, advanced Crypto Tax Calculator that is simple, accurate and secure. FlyFin's Crypto Tax Calculator raises the bar on available options by enabling people to capture multiple crypto transactions simultaneously to determine tax amounts owed. People can also file their crypto taxes with a FlyFin CPA available to help immediately.

With the January 15 quarterly tax deadline around the corner, individuals need to plan their tax filings and associated payments. They can use FlyFin's AI-based tax engine to file their crypto taxes. For those users who want to get a quick sense of how much they might owe, they can use FlyFin's crypto tax calculator to simplify the overwhelming complexity that cryptocurrency gains may pose. FlyFin's AI-based tax engine combines the human expertise of real CPAs to eliminate 95% of work required for self-employed individuals filing their taxes. FlyFin is ideal for freelancers, creator economy free agents, gig workers, and self-employed individuals with a higher level of tax complexities.

Mainstream interest in cryptocurrency investment among ordinary investors has exploded. Thirty-one percent of Americans, ages 18 to 29, have invested in, traded, or used a cryptocurrency . Meanwhile, the IRS has sharpened its sights on taxing investors with cryptocurrency income. The U.S. Treasury now requires any transfer worth $10,000 or more to be reported to the IRS. Tax filers who don't pay crypto taxes on time can be assessed up to 100% penalties, leaving a lot of crypto traders with a rude shock.

Trading Crypto, Self-Employment and Taxes

Trading crypto is similar to trading stocks and other securities, so many of the same tax rules apply. Crypto traders must pay taxes on the profits they earn. Traders can also write off their trade as a capital loss if they lose money. People who are self-employed or have significant earnings from investments and day trading may generate more income than can be covered from payroll withholding. Therefore, they need to estimate their tax liability quarterly and then pay taxes for those amounts. Otherwise, penalties may apply at the time of tax filing.

About FlyFin.Tax

FlyFin is an AI-powered, SaaS platform that provides freelancers, self-employed, and creator economy workers with a convenient, easy, affordable answer to maximize deductible expenses and manage tax filings. FlyFin's 'Man + Machine' approach leverages the power of A.I. paired with CPA expertise to deliver automation that eliminates 95% of work required for an individual to prepare their taxes, with tax filing led by world-class CPAs. FlyFin is a privately-held, venture-backed company, based in San Jose, California.

Press Contact:

Carmen Hughes

Ignite X

c: 650.576.6444

[email protected]

SOURCE FlyFin
Focus Brands Sold Record-Breaking Number of Franchises Across Family of Brands in 2021 Tweet this

To help its brands grow, Focus Brands and its franchise companies have prioritized meeting the ever-evolving demands of today's consumer. Key initiatives include leveraging technology and digital innovation to increase customer accessibility, and introducing new and modernized prototypes to promote convenience and support the industry-wide shift to off-premise dining. Focus Brands has also looked for opportunities to accelerate its co-branding franchise development efforts. To that end, in 2021, Jamba and Auntie Anne's opened a co-branded location in Wylie, Texas featuring the first-ever Auntie Anne's drive-thru and subsequently sold 33 franchises for additional Jamba and Auntie Anne's co-brand locations across the country. Auntie Anne's and Cinnabon recently signed a deal to bring 10 co-branded stores to New York City. McAlister's Deli also announced this year that they are on-track to be a billion-dollar brand by 2024, a first for one of Focus Brands' restaurant concepts.

Non-traditional restaurant expansion also played a major role in Focus Brands' growth in 2021. Deals were signed to open future locations in convenience stores, airports, amusement parks, colleges and universities, ghost kitchens and more. Today, across the entire family of brands, there are 972 non-traditional units open throughout the U.S. with an additional 270 units in the pipeline. This includes the recent opening of Jamba's second robotic kiosk pilot, Jamba by Blendid, with more locations in the pipeline.

In addition to the franchises sold in the US and Canada, Focus Brands International sold more than 225 commitments for international expansion and opened more than 215 stores in 2021. In particular, Cinnabon saw impressive growth with key milestones in the Middle East, including the opening of the first ever Cinnabon drive-thru in the region, located just outside of Cairo, Egypt. The brand also signed a deal with the Innovative Union Company to bring 130 new Cinnabon bakeries to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia within the next five years.

All seven brands within the Focus Brands portfolio are looking to grow with qualified franchisees. To learn more about franchising opportunities with each of the brands, visit https://www.focusbrands.com/franchising/.

About Focus Brands

Atlanta-based Focus Brands is a leading developer of global multi-channel foodservice brands. Focus Brands, through its affiliate brands, is the franchisor and operator of more than 6,000 restaurants, cafes, ice cream shoppes, and bakeries in the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and over 50 foreign countries under the brand names Auntie Anne's, Carvel, Cinnabon, Jamba, Moe's Southwest Grill, McAlister's Deli and Schlotzsky's, as well as Seattle's Best Coffee on certain military bases and in certain international markets. Please visit www.focusbrands.com to learn more.

Contacts:

Nate Rubinstein

Fish Consulting

954-893-9150

[email protected]

SOURCE Focus Brands
COVID-19 ended their careers  and now a small group of New York police officers hopes the city grants them the same disability pensions they would get for any other injury suffered in the line of duty.

I have an oxygen tank with me 24/7 and I need assistance with everything  to take a shower, to walk, to go up and down the staircase, said Lt. Yvan Pierre Louis, a 31-year veteran who was given last rites when he got COVID early in the pandemic and was in a coma for 168 days.

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Whether Pierre Louis and other cops badly sickened by coronavirus will be granted pensions will be decided by the board of the city Police Pension Fund.

In the last months of former Mayor Bill de Blasios administration, city officials declined to approve COVID-19 pensions until disabilities linked to the disease can be studied further.

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It is not clear yet how Mayor Adams administration will deal with this issue. But the cops involved say they cant work, and would like to provide for their families as best they can while they grapple with life-changing medical woes.

Lt. Yvan Pierre Louis (Courtesy of Louis)

Im not the same person I was before, said Pierre Louis, 60, who took sick in March 2020 while working with prisoners at Manhattan Central Booking, at 100 Centre St.

There were no masks, he said. The only people who had masks were the judges and the lawyers. I worked there one day, but one day was enough to make me sick.

Hes been out sick ever since and will likely be ruled disabled by the NYPD when he files for retirement.

Whether Pierre Louis gets a disability pension could hinge on what the Pension Board decides in the case of Detective Mike Smith.

The veteran Bronx detective boasts he never took a sick day in more than 30 years on the force until he was stricken  which he thinks might have happened either when he interviewed a stabbing victim at St. Barnabas Hospital, or on a visit to Rikers Island.

Like Pierre Louis, Smith, 58, ended up on a ventilator and was given last rites, and still pulled through.

Detective Mike Smith (Courtesy of Smith)

Hes a shell of his former self, and at one point was so weak he couldnt lift the iPad his family gave him while he was in the hospital. He has Stage 4 kidney disease, nerve damage in his feet and hardened arteries in his ankles.

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Weve made a lot of progress, but Im one blood test away from being back on dialysis, Smith said. The old saying: Can you walk and chew gum at the same time? I cant, because I have stabilization issues. I have to concentrate when I walk because if I dont, I stumble.

NYPD doctors declared him disabled, unable to ever work again as a cop. But for now, he is out sick, and also waiting to see if the Police Pension Fund approves his disability pension.

To get a pension, Smith and other COVID-stricken cops will need a majority vote from the Pension Funds 12-member board of trustees. The police unions have six votes on the board, and various city officials, including the mayor and police commissioner, have the other six votes.

Nick Cifuni, a disability lawyer who works for four of the police unions, said the city in recent months appeared concerned that approving forever-sick cops for disability pensions could open the floodgates if other officers are similarly afflicted.

A NYPD ambulance driven and staffed by Emergency Service Unit officers return Lt. Yvan Pierre Louis to his Hempstead, Long Island home after recovering from a five-month, COVID-19 hospitalization. (Barry Williams/for New York Daily News)

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

A key question, Cifuni said, is whether Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell will side with the unions. The NYPD on Friday wouldnt say if Sewell has taken a position on the issue.

Lou Turco, who heads the Lieutenants Benevolent Association, noted that cops have not had the luxury of working from home or not coming to work.

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Smith, who on some days exercises as much as possible and on others spends 20 hours in bed, hopes the city realizes he and others like him are not looking for a handout  rather a just compensation for working through a pandemic while much of the city was shut down.

I did what I was supposed to do, he said. All of us did.

NYPD officers lined the street outside Lt. Yvan Pierre Louis' home when he returned after a five-month hospitalization with COVID-19. (Barry Williams/for New York Daily News)

Paul DiGiacomo, head of the Detectives Endowment Association, said the city has an obligation to provide Mike every and any type of line-of-duty benefit possible.

He earned it, and deserves nothing less, DiGiacomo said.

With Michael Gartland
MENLO PARK, Calif., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Silicon Valley-based venture capital (VC) firm Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV) announced today that Patrick Nicolet, the former CTO and Executive Board Member of Capgemini, joined its investment team as an Operating Partner. Additionally, BGV welcomes incoming CFO Sai Sood, the former lead Controller at Sapphire Ventures, along with new associate Romain Lenoir, as it strengthens its team and moves into a new office in Menlo Park, on the heels of closing its fourth fund, BGV IV.

At $110M, and 60% larger than its predecessor fund, BGV IV marks a new chapter for the global firm, which focuses on the intersection of Enterprise 4.0 and cross-border innovation. With its growth, the firm is expanding its footprint in Europe. Given Patrick Nicolet's extensive experience establishing CapGemini's presence outside of France, he brings strong leadership credentials and operational expertise, as well as a deep specialization in distributed computing, digital transformation and decentralized architectures.

"BGV's technical focus and cross-border philosophy align with my outlook on the innovation landscape," explains Nicolet. "My experience as CTO of CapGemini, and then as an entrepreneur with Linebreak Capital, leads me to believe that Europe - and France in particular - is a land of excellence in terms of innovation. I am joining BGV, alongside Sarah Benhamou and Romain Lenoir, to work on sourcing and supporting companies which, tomorrow, will deploy their activities across the Atlantic to become global leaders."

Nicolet joins an investment team made up of six French experts, including new Associate Romain Lenoir, who recently graduated with an MBA from Ecole Superieur, and BGV Principal Sarah Benhamou, who has been spearheading BGV's investment efforts in France.

Sai Sood, Sapphire Ventures' former finance executive, brings proven experience in scaling a global venture capital firm. He will lead BGV's operations, finance, and investor relations teams and is based in Silicon Valley. With the ability to execute consistently, Sai brings a wealth of knowledge in valuations, accounting, tax, and venture capital operations.

"The recent additions to BGV's core team reflect the expansion of our platform in several dimensions," explains Eric Benhamou, Founder and President of BGV. "With Patrick joining our investment team in Europe, we are materially expanding our ability to grow our portfolio companies born in Europe and ready to cross the Atlantic to become a true global leader in their category. We are also expanding our ability to engage European Limited Partners on the ground and attract them to our platform. With Sai joining as our CFO in Silicon Valley, we bring an experienced executive with a proven ability to scale cross-border venture funds and meet the expectations of demanding LPs around the globe. We are delighted to be able to attract talent of this caliber and welcome these new additions to our team."

About BGV

BGV is a venture capital firm with deep Silicon Valley roots and an exclusive focus on global Enteprise 4.0 technology innovation. The partnership sources companies from innovation hubs around the world and deploys financial and human capital from seed stage to IPO. With offices in Palo Alto, Tel Aviv, Paris and Mumbai, BGV has championed a cross-border venture investing model with a portfolio representing businesses in the US, Israel, Europe and India. Visit www.bgv.vc to learn more.

Press Contact

Emmanuel Benhamou

[email protected]

+1.202.341.0269

SOURCE Benhamou Global Ventures
TYSONS, Va., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Divaris Real Estate, Inc. is pleased to announce Frontline Community Services acquisition of 6900 Virginia Manor Road ('Building F') in Beltsville, Maryland.

Frontline Community Services purchased the 53,173 square foot, two-story office building located within the Ammendale Business Campus for $4.8 Million or $90.27 PSF. 92% vacant at the time of sale, Frontline will occupy and use the building for onsite training and administrative purposes.

Joe Farina of Divaris Real Estate, Inc. represented Frontline Community Services in their search to expand their philanthropic reach and remarked - "The Ammendale Business Campus will make a perfect home for Frontline Community Services as they continue and expand their mission in the greater DC region."

The not-for-profit agency services the DC area and works with people with disabilities and the less fortunate in the District of Columbia and the state of Maryland. Motivated to enlarge their reach of services, the agency will relocate from their existing headquarters at 11720 Beltsville Drive to the Ammendale building in early 2022.

For more information regarding this transaction or the DC Commercial Real Estate Market, please contact Joe Farina at 571-620-5142 or visit us at http://www.divaris.com.

About Divaris Real Estate - DC Office

The Divaris Real Estate, Inc. Tysons Corner Office services the greater Washington DC Metro Region. Led by Joe Farina, the DRE DC Office specializes in Retail and Office leasing and sales for regional, national, private, and institutional clientele.

About Divaris Real Estate

Divaris Real Estate, Inc. is headquartered in Virginia Beach, VA with offices in Newport News, Norfolk, Richmond and Roanoke, VA; Charlotte, NC; Beverly Hills, CA; and Washington, DC. Divaris Real Estate and Divaris Property Management Corp. are divisions of The Divaris Group, an international real estate brokerage and property management company that currently manages and/or leases over 31 million square feet of prime office, retail, and industrial space from New Jersey to Florida. Gerald S. Divaris is Chairman of the Board, and Michael B. Divaris is President of Divaris Real Estate, Inc.

Connect with us

http://www.divaris.com

https://www.linkedin.com/company/divaris-real-estate

Contact: Eden Heflin

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Divaris Real Estate, Inc.
PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research published a report, titled, "Glaucoma Surgery Devices Market by Surgery Type (Conventional Glaucoma Surgeries and Minimally Invasive Glaucoma Surgeries), Product (Implants & Stents, Glaucoma Drainage Devices, and Glaucoma Laser Devices), and End User (Eye Hospital & Ophthalmology Clinic, Ambulatory Surgical Centers (ASCS), and Outpatient Surgical Centers): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20212030." According to the report, the global glaucoma surgery devices industry generated $818.46 million in 2020, and is estimated to reach $6.51 billion by 2030, witnessing a CAGR of 24.6% from 2021 to 2030.

For Right Perspective and Competitive Insights, Get Sample Report at:

https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/2950

Drivers, restraints, and opportunities

Increase in prevalence of glaucoma, rise in demand for minimally invasive glaucoma surgery (MIGS) procedures, and technological advancements drive the growth of the global glaucoma surgery devices market. However, reimbursement issues regarding MIGS devices, risks related to post-operative complications, and lack of adequate skilled professionals hinder the market growth. On the other hand, supportive programs and initiatives to reduce burden of glaucoma present new opportunities in the coming years.

Covid-19 Scenario

There has been postponement of elective surgeries and specific medical procedures to avoid possibility of cross-contamination and shift in resources in hospitals to take care of Covid-infected patients.

According to a study released in the British Journal of Surgery in May 2020 , it was found that around 28.4 million elective surgeries across the world are expected to be canceled or postponed in 2020.

, it was found that around 28.4 million elective surgeries across the world are expected to be canceled or postponed in 2020. Moreover, disruptions in manufacturing activities and supply chain hampered the glaucoma surgery devices market growth during the pandemic.

The conventional glaucoma surgeries segment to continue its leadership position during the forecast period

Based on surgery type, the conventional glaucoma surgeries segment accounted for the highest share in 2020, holding more than half of the global glaucoma surgery devices market, and is expected to continue its leadership position during the forecast period. This is due to increase in success rate in intraocular pressure reduction and low treatment cost of conventional glaucoma surgery. However, the minimally invasive glaucoma surgeries segment is expected to register the largest CAGR of 25.2% from 2021 to 2030, owing to benefits such as reduced surgery time, rapid recovery, affordability, and low risk of complications.

Do You Have Any Query Or Specific Requirement? Ask to Our Industry Expert: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/2950

The implants & stents segment to maintain its lead in terms of revenue during the forecast period

Based on product, the implants & stents segment held the highest share in 2020, accounting for more than half of the global glaucoma surgery devices market, and is estimated to maintain its lead in terms of revenue during the forecast period. This is due to increase in demand for implants & stents in glaucoma surgeries as its application reduces the intraocular pressure and increases the outflow of intraocular fluid. However, the glaucoma laser devices segment is expected to portray the fastest CAGR of 25.0% from 2021 to 2030. This is attributed to surge in application of lasers for the treatment of glaucoma.

North America to maintain its dominant share by 2030

Based on region, North America contributed to the highest market share in 2020, accounting for more than two-fifths of the global glaucoma surgery devices market, and is expected to maintain its dominant share by 2030. This is due to presence of major market players in the region and increase in prevalence of glaucoma. However, Asia-Pacific is expected to manifest the highest CAGR of 25.1% during the forecast period, owing to improvements in healthcare infrastructure, surge in incidences of glaucoma, and ease in availability of glaucoma surgery devices.

Leading market players

Abbvie Inc. (Allergan)

Alcon Inc.

Glaukos Corporation

Johnson & Johnson (Abbott Medical Optics)

iStar Medical SA

Lumibird Medical (Ellex Medical Lasers Ltd.)

Lumenis Ltd.

New World Medical, Inc.

Santen Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.

Topcon Corporation

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"We have also published few syndicated market studies in the similar area that might be of your interest. Below are the report title for your reference, considering Impact of Covid-19 Over This Market which will help you to assess aftereffects of pandemic on short-term and long-term growth trends of this market."

Trending Reports in Healthcare Industry (Book Now with 10% Discount):

Minimally Invasive Glaucoma Surgery (MIGS) Devices Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20202028

Glaucoma Surgical Equipment Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2019-2028

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Eye Care Surgical Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20192028

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Ophthalmology Devices Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 20192028

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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.

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.

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SOURCE Allied Market Research
DUBLIN, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Alcoholic Ingredients Market (2021-2027) by Type of the Ingredients, Type of Beverage and Geography, Impact of Covid-19, Ansoff Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Global Alcoholic Ingredient Market is estimated to be USD 4.15 Bn in 2021 and is expected to reach USD 7.04 Bn by 2027 growing at a CAGR of 9.2%.

Some of the companies covered in this report are Sensient Technologies Corporation, Ashland Inc., Cargill, Incorporated, Archer Daniels Midland Company, and Chr. Hansen Holdings A/S.



Ethanol is used in the manufacturing process of denatured alcohol along with other sugar contents through a fermentation process. Various other ingredients such as fruits grains like barley, wheat, and rye etc. are also used for the production of several alcoholic beverages such as wine, beer and other spirits. Alcohol, with its bactericidal properties has its implication in other sectors like pharmaceuticals, cosmetics (lotions, perfumes), as well as a chemical intermediate either alone or through different mixtures.



With a rise in the change of the demographics behaviour and the consumption patterns, there has been increased levels of alcohol consumption across the world owing to rise in social drinking, experiential drinking leading to permissible indulgence amongst diverse age groups.

This has further led to the ingredient manufacturers to innovate in order to meet the consumer demands. The consumption patterns of different alcoholic beverages across the globe has driven the growth of this market.

On the contrary, factors like the government imposed regulations and research and development cost for manufacturing unique flavoured alcohol poses a major challenge for the ingredient manufacturers.

Market Dynamics

Drivers

Increasing Consumption of Alcoholic Beverages

Increasing Global Trade in Alcohol

Emergence of breweries and distilleries across the world

Increase in the number of Pubs, Bars, and Liquor-Serving Cafes and Lounges (PBCL) outlets

Restraints

High Cost of Raw Materials and R&D

Stringent regulations and Legislations

Increased awareness about the harmful effects of alcohol consumption

Increased competition from non-alcoholic beverages

Opportunities

Changing patterns of consumption

Trends

Rise in craft breweries

High demand for alcohol made of plant-based ingredients

Key Topics Covered:



1 Report Description

1.1 Study Objectives

1.2 Market Definition

1.3 Currency

1.4 Years Considered

1.5 Language

1.6 Key Shareholders

2 Research Methodology

2.1 Research Process

2.2 Data Collection and Validation

2.2.1 Secondary Research

2.2.2 Primary Research

2.3 Market Size Estimation

2.4 Assumptions of the Study

2.5 Limitations of the Study

3 Executive Summary

4 Market Overview

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Market Dynamics

4.2.1 Drivers

4.2.2 Restraints

4.2.3 Opportunities

4.2.4 Trends

5 Market Analysis

5.1 Porter's Five Forces Analysis

5.2 Impact of COVID-19

5.3 Ansoff Matrix Analysis

6 Global Alcoholic Ingredients Market, By Ingredient Type

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Yeast

6.3 Enzymes

6.4 Colorants, Flavours & Salts

6.5 Others

7 Global Alcoholic Ingredients Market, By Beverage Type

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Beer

7.3 Wine

7.4 Spirits

7.4.1 Whisky

7.4.2 Brandy

7.4.3 Others

8 Global Alcoholic Ingredients Market, By Geography

8.1 Introduction

8.2 North America

8.2.1 US

8.2.2 Canada

8.2.3 Mexico

8.3 South America

8.3.1 Brazil

8.3.2 Argentina

8.4 Europe

8.4.1 UK

8.4.2 France

8.4.3 Germany

8.4.4 Italy

8.4.5 Rest of Europe

8.5 Asia-Pacific

8.5.1 China

8.5.2 Japan

8.5.3 India

8.5.4 Australia

8.5.5 Rest of APAC

8.6 Middle East and Africa

9 Competitive Landscape

9.1 Competitive Quadrant

9.2 Market Share Analysis

9.3 Competitive Scenario

9.3.1 Mergers & Acquisitions

9.3.2 Agreements, Collaborations, & Partnerships

9.3.3 New Product Launches & Enhancements

9.3.4 Investments & Fundings

10 Company Profiles

Archer Daniels Midland Company

Cargill, Incorporated

Chr. Hansen Holdings A/S

Koninklijke Dsm N.V

Sensient Technologies Corporation

Ashland Global Specialty Chemicals Inc.

D.D. Williamson & Co., Inc.

Dohler Group

Kerry Group PLC

Treatt PLC

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/wdqbqp

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets
SOLON, Ohio, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- HDT Global (HDT), the leading manufacturer of highly-engineered, mission-capable infrastructure solutions across defense, aerospace and government markets, announced today the appointment of Juan Navarro as the new President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Navarro brings over 30 years of experience in high technology businesses and has held various executive leadership roles in both government contractor enterprises and consumer operations across the US and internationally.

"After a detailed and conscientious search, we believe we've found the ideal candidate in Juan," stated Vincent Buffa, HDT Chairman of the Board of Directors. "His record of engaged leadership and passionate customer focus is a perfect fit for HDT's strategic objectives."

Prior to joining HDT, Mr. Navarro was the CEO of Domo Tactical Communications (DTC), a private equity-backed technology firm specializing in communications and secure surveillance products for the Department of Defense and law enforcement agencies. During his tenure, he realigned DTC to focus on key programs of record in DoD and US law enforcement markets, achieving success in capturing several large opportunities in both sectors; while positioning the company to expand its worldwide operations. Mr. Navarro successfully guided the sale of DTC to a strategic acquirer in May of 2021.

Prior to DTC, Mr. Navarro was the President of Chemring Group North America, and also Chemring Sensors and Electronics Systems (CSES). As head of CSES, he was responsible for developing and implementing the strategy to expand Chemring's global footprint in electronics, CBRN, ground penetrating radar (GPR), and specialized counter-IED detection sensors. Mr. Navarro joined Chemring as a result of the 2008 acquisition of NIITEK, the leading US producer of vehicle-mounted GPR sensor systems. For his work in supporting the counter-IED mission, the US Army Corp of Engineers awarded Mr. Navarro the de Fleury Bronze Medal.

Before NIITEK, Mr. Navarro held several senior management positions at SER Solutions, concluding as the CEO responsible for its ultimate divestiture. He also held senior management positions at the Xerox Corporation where he was responsible for Systems Solutions and Professional Services. Mr. Navarro spent the early part of his career managing and developing software on electronic and signal processing systems for various US customers.

Mr. Navarro earned his bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of Maryland. He is a US Air Force veteran.

"I'm thrilled to join HDT Global, a leader in mission-critical infrastructure solutions, as they enter their 85th year of operations," said Mr. Navarro. "Along with HDT's leadership team and dedicated employees, I look forward to expanding the integration of HDT's infrastructure solutions across a host of domains, including unmanned systems and C4ISR. As a US manufacturer of proven expeditionary systems, HDT is properly positioned to support our US and international customers to safely achieve their objectives."

About HDT: Headquartered in Solon, Ohio, USA, HDT Global is widely recognized for its industry-leading production of state-of-the-art, fully integrated expeditionary solutions, including shelters, generators, heaters, air filtration devices, robotics, specialty transport vehicles and other engineered technologies, currently used by U.S. and allied military units worldwide, as well as civilian government and commercial customers. Proven solutions for extreme environments. We're there with you. For more information, visit www.hdtglobal.com.

SOURCE HDT Global
ATLANTA, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Chicken Salad Chick , the nation's only fast-casual chicken salad restaurant concept, announced today its continued string of developments in the greater Houston area with its newest restaurant in Pasadena, TX. The Pasadena restaurant marks Chicken Salad Chick's 11th location in the greater Houston market and its 21st location in the State of Texas, with plans to open additional Texas locations later this year. Located at 5409 Crenshaw Rd, Chicken Salad Chick Pasadena will celebrate its grand opening on Wednesday, Jan. 12, and will offer free chicken salad for a year to the first 100 guests.

During grand opening week, guests will experience the Southern hospitality that Chicken Salad Chick is known for, with giveaways and specials that include:

Wednesday, Jan. 12  Free Chicken Salad for a Year  The first 100 guests will receive one large Quick Chick of chicken salad per month for an entire year, with one of those lucky guests randomly selected to win one large Quick Chick of chicken salad per week.* Guests may arrive starting at 7 a.m. for grand opening day only.

  The first 100 guests will receive one large Quick Chick of chicken salad per month for an entire year, with one of those lucky guests randomly selected to win one large Quick Chick of chicken salad per week.* Guests may arrive starting at for grand opening day only. Thursday, Jan. 13  The first 100 guests to purchase a Chick Special will receive a free Chick Special for their next visit.

 The first 100 guests to purchase a Chick Special will receive a free Chick Special for their next visit. Friday, Jan. 14  The first 100 guests to purchase a Chick Trio will receive a free Chick tumbler.

 The first 100 guests to purchase a Chick Trio will receive a free Chick tumbler. Saturday, Jan. 15  The first 50 guest to purchase two large Quick Chicks will receive a free Chick cooler.

The Pasadena restaurant is owned and operated by multi-unit franchise owners Kim and Clarke Hayes of H7 EATS, LLC. The Houston locals were first introduced to the brand after hearing founder Stacy Brown's story on NPR's podcast How I Built This. Inspired by Stacy's story, the Hayes jumped at the opportunity to join the fast-growing brand and opened their first restaurant in Pearland just last year. After receiving overwhelming support and encouragement from their community, they decided to open their second location in Pasadena. Today, as they celebrate their first anniversary with the brand, the Hayes are thrilled to welcome new guests and introduce Pasadena residents to Chicken Salad Chick's flavorful, made-from-scratch menu.

"Over the past year, our love for Chicken Salad Chick has grown tremendously, and our dedication to serving others continues to flourish," said Kim Hayes. "In our first year, we faced many challenges brought on by the pandemic, but it was the support of the Pearland community and Chicken Salad Chick team that carried us through. With their love for The Chick, our decision to open a second location came naturally, and we're excited to not only continue our growth with the brand but create a new family of customers in the Pasadena community."

Chicken Salad Chick in Pasadena will be open Monday  Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. For more information, visit http://www.chickensaladchick.com . Follow Chicken Salad Chick on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram for the latest news and trends.

*Guests should arrive starting at 7am to get checked in. The first 100 guests will be assigned a number and designated return time between 9:45-11:15am. Upon return, guests will make a purchase of "The Chick" or anything of greater value and enter a code on the CravingCredits app to officially secure your spot. If you are late, or miss return time, your spot will be awarded to next in-line. Guests must be 16 years or older, redemption begins 1/17/21.

For more information on giveaways and specials, visit https://www.facebook.com/ChickenSaladChickPasadenaTX/

About Chicken Salad Chick

Chicken Salad Chick serves full-flavored, Southern-style chicken salad made from scratch and served from the heart. With more than a dozen original chicken salad flavors as well as fresh side salads, gourmet soups, signature sandwiches and delicious desserts, Chicken Salad Chick's robust menu is a perfect fit for any guest. Founded in Auburn, Alabama by Stacy and Kevin Brown, in 2008, Chicken Salad Chick has grown to more than 200 restaurants in 17 states. Today, under the leadership of Scott Deviney and the Chicken Salad Chick team, the brand is continuing its rapid expansion with both franchise and company locations. Chicken Salad Chick has received numerous accolades including rankings in the 2021 Entrepreneur Franchise 500, Franchise Times' Fast & Serious for the second consecutive year, Fast Casual.com 's top Movers and Shakers from 2018 to 2021, QSR's Best Franchise Deals in 2019 and 2020, and Franchise Business Review's Top Food Franchises in 2020. See www.chickensaladchick.com for additional information.

Contact:

Ashley Bennett

Fish Consulting

954-893-9150

[email protected]

SOURCE Chicken Salad Chick
DUBLIN, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Fibre to the X (FTTX) Market (2021-2026) by Architecture, Distribution Network, Product, Vertical, and Geography, Competitive Analysis and the Impact of Covid-19 with Ansoff Analysis" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The Global Fibre to the X (FTTX) Market is estimated to be USD 13.29 Bn in 2021 and is expected to reach USD 21. 67 Bn by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 10.27%.



The factors such as constant demand for faster application performance, improvement of interactivity in devices, increased data transfer capability, faster data transfer speed, reduced busy signals, support multiple concurrent sessions, stream videos faster have increased the demand for higher bandwidth. These factors have prompted the demand for the Global Fiber to the X (FTTX) Market. The increasing use of fiber for cloud computing and the rising demand for triple and quad-play services will increase the market further. However, some factors, such as time, cost, and complexity in infrastructure, may hinder market growth.



The increasing need for internet-enabled devices and Internet connectivity is expected to generate untapped opportunities for market participants.



The Global Fibre to the X (FTTX) Market is segmented further based on Architecture, Distribution Network, Product, Vertical, and Geography.



Company Profiles

Some of the companies covered in this report are BASF, Commscope, Corning, DuPont, Fujikura, Fiberx, Transform - X, Huawei, etc.



Competitive Quadrant

The report includes a Competitive Quadrant, a proprietary tool to analyze and evaluate the position of companies based on their Industry Position score and Market Performance score. The tool uses various factors for categorizing the players into four categories. Some of these factors considered for analysis are financial performance over the last 3 years, growth strategies, innovation score, new product launches, investments, growth in market share, etc.



Why buy this report?

The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the Global Fiber to the X (FTTX) Market. The report includes in-depth qualitative analysis, verifiable data from authentic sources, and projections about market size. The projections are calculated using proven research methodologies.

The report has been compiled through extensive primary and secondary research. The primary research is done through interviews, surveys, and observation of renowned personnel in the industry.

The report includes an in-depth market analysis using Porter's 5 forces model and the Ansoff Matrix. In addition, the impact of Covid-19 on the market is also featured in the report.

The report also includes the regulatory scenario in the industry, which will help you make a well-informed decision. The report discusses major regulatory bodies and major rules and regulations imposed on this sector across various geographies.

The report also contains the competitive analysis using Positioning Quadrants, the analyst's Proprietary competitive positioning tool.

Key Topics Covered:



1 Report Description



2 Research Methodology



3 Executive Summary



4 Market Influencers

4.1 Drivers

4.1.1 Acceleration in Demand of Higher Bandwidth

4.1.2 The Growing Use of Fiber for Cloud Computing

4.2 Restraints

4.2.1 Time and Cost Required in the Installation

4.2.2 The Complexity of Fiber Deployment

4.3 Opportunities

4.3.1 The Growing Need for Internet-Enabled Devices

4.3.2 Rising Need for Internet Connectivity

4.4 Challenges

4.4.1 Management of Post Fiber Deployment



5 Market Analysis

5.1 Regulatory Scenario

5.2 Porter's Five Forces Analysis

5.3 Impact of COVID-19

5.4 Ansoff Matrix Analysis



6 Global Fiber to the X (FTTx) Market, By Architecture

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Fiber to the Premises/Home/Building (FTTP/FTTH/FTTB)

6.2.1 Fiber to the Desktop (FTTD)

6.2.2 Fiber to the Office (FTTO)

6.3 Fiber to the Node/Curb/Kerb/Closet/Cabinet (FTTN/FTTC/FTTK)

6.4 Fiber to the Antenna (FTTA)



7 Global Fiber to the X (FTTx) Market, By Distribution Network

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Passive Optical Network (PON)

7.3 Active Optical Network (AON)



8 Global Fiber to the X (FTTx) Market, By Product

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Optical Line Terminal (OLT)

8.3 Optical Network Terminal/Unit (ONT/ONU)

8.4 Optical Splitter

8.5 Others



9 Global Fiber to the X (FTTX) Market, By Vertical

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Industrial

9.2.1 Telecommunications

9.2.2 Railway

9.2.3 Energy & Power

9.2.4 Others

9.3 Commercial

9.3.1 Malls

9.3.2 Offices

9.3.3 Others

9.4 Residential



10 Global Fiber to the X (FTTX) Market, By Geography

11 Competitive Landscape

11.1 Competitive Quadrant

11.2 Market Share Analysis

11.3 Strategic Initiatives

11.3.1 M&A and Investments

11.3.2 Partnerships and Collaborations

11.3.3 Product Developments and Improvements



12 Company Profiles

12.1 Alfocom Technology

12.2 Allied Telesis

12.3 AT&T

12.4 BASF

12.5 CenturyLink Fiber Gigabit

12.6 Commscope

12.7 Corning

12.8 Crown Castle Fiber

12.9 DuPont

12.10 EarthLink Fiber

12.11 Fiberhome

12.12 Fiberx

12.13 Frontier Communications

12.14 Fujikura

12.15 Furukawa Electric

12.16 Hengtong

12.17 Huawei

12.18 Johns Manville

12.19 Owens Corning

12.20 PacTech

12.21 Prysmian

12.22 Sumitomo Electric

12.23 Sun Telecommunication

12.24 Transform - X

12.25 YOFC



13 Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/4nig9p

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Insurance companies who profit by denying fair compensation to patients injured or killed by medical malpractice have put up $27.8 million to oppose the Fairness for Injured Patients Act. Insurance money accounts for two-thirds of the $43.8 million raised to oppose the Fairness Act, a measure that seeks to restore accountability for injured patients on the November 2022 California ballot.

TOP TEN DONORS OPPOSING FAIRNESS ACT AMOUNT THE DOCTORS COMPANY $14,800,000.00 CALIFORNIA MEDICAL ASSOCIATION $9,025,312.70 KAISER FOUNDATION HEALTH PLAN, INC. $6,500,000.00 CALIFORNIA HOSPITALS COMMITTEE ON ISSUES $5,000,000.00 MUTUAL PROTECTION TRUST $3,500,000.00 MEDICAL INSURANCE EXCHANGE OF CALIFORNIA $1,000,000.00 NORCAL MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY $1,000,000.00 THE MUTUAL RISK RETENTION GROUP, INC. $1,000,000.00 CALIFORNIA DENTAL ASSOCIATION $1,000,000.00 CEP AMERICA-CALIFORNIA, DBA VITUITY $1,000,000.00

$43,825,312.70

"California insurance companies will spend whatever it takes to protect their golden goose  California's cap on compensation for those injured, maimed or killed by medical malpractice that prevents many patients from ever seeking justice," said Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog. "The $250,000 cap on damages for a person's lost quality of life, disability and death hasn't gone up a dime since 1975, and that means insurance companies never have to compensate patients who are harmed or killed in a medical facility they trusted to make them better. The cap is a gold mine for insurance companies and the Fairness Act will level the playing field for injured patients who have been denied justice for too long."

The Fairness for Injured Patients Act would index California's $250,000 cap on compensation for malpractice victims' lost quality of life, disability or death, and allow judges or juries to decide fair compensation in cases of catastrophic injury. The cap has not increased since it was enacted in 1975, and is worth just $50,000 in today's dollars.



Sarah Hitchcock-Glover's son Adam was just twelve years old when his physician's failure to order simple lab tests after surgery caused her to miss clear signs of septic shock and cost Adam his life. His parents went to court to prevent this from happening to another family, and quickly learned how the law stacks the deck against patients.

"We brought suit to hold the surgeon accountable for the errors that led to Adam's death, but her insurance company did everything they could to delay and drag out the case. As we neared trial, the money available to pursue the case ran out because California caps recovery for a child's death at $250,000. We were devastated that the cap forced us to abandon the case, so close to getting answers and accountability, because of costs. The insurance company paid nothing and no one was never held responsible. Nothing changed," said Hitchcock-Glover, of Los Gatos, California.

Watch Adam Glover's story: https://www.patientsforfairness.org/adamglover/



Medical malpractice insurance companies exist to compensate patients when they are harmed by a hospital or medical provider's negligence. Yet in California, they use just a fraction of the premium dollars they collect to compensate injured patients. From 2008 to 2018, California malpractice insurers spent an average of just 37 cents of every premium dollar they collect to pay malpractice claims to victims, according to data reported to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.



The medical malpractice insurance industry is more profitable than other lines of insurance. Medical malpractice insurance companies in California made an average 10.7% return on net worth between 2008 and 2018. Across all lines of insurance in California, return on net worth was an average 6.9% in the same time period, according to data reported to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Return on net worth is a measure of profitability that includes premiums and investment income.



The medical malpractice damage cap disproportionately harms California's most vulnerable patients, including children like Adam, and Black mothers who experience higher pregnancy and childbirth-related injuries and deaths than other women. In California, Black mothers are 4-6 times more likely to die in childbirth than white women.



Charles Johnson, Chair of the Fairness for Injured Patients Act campaign, lost his wife Kira after she gave birth to their second son. Her surgeon cut her bladder during a C-section but Kira was allowed to bleed internally for ten hours as her husband pleaded for help but was ignored. When Kira was finally taken back for emergency surgery it was too late to save her life.



Watch Kira Johnson's story: https://www.patientsforfairness.org/kirajohnson/



"This ballot initiative will fix a system that does not provide Black and brown families with a fair day in court when they face gross medical negligence. The insurance companies are to blame for a system that's stacked against us, and we are standing up with the Fairness Act to say no more," said Johnson.



Meet the coalition of families supporting the Fairness for Injured Patients Act at: https://www.patientsforfairness.org/



Learn more about the Act at: https://fairnessact.com/

Paid for by Consumer Watchdog Campaign for the Fairness for

Injured Patients Act

Committee major funding from: Consumer Watchdog Campaign Nonprofit 501(c)(4)

SOURCE Consumer Watchdog
"Csaba's passion for technology and data, combined with his wealth of experience growing international teams, make him a great fit for IAS," said Chance Johnson, Chief Revenue Officer, IAS. "With Csaba at the helm of our EMEA team, we will continue to deliver more products that our customers need in this region, while delivering excellent service."

Szabo brings more than fifteen years of experience in scaling global software and technology companies to his new role at IAS. Most recently he was the VP, EMEA at Shutterstock where he helped grow the company's international footprint. Previously, he helped drive the European sales strategy for mid-market and resellers at Yahoo as Senior Commercial Director, EMEA. Prior to that role, he was the Pricing Manager at Orange.

"I'm passionate about using technology and data to build superior product experiences for our customers at IAS, and look forward to continuing our growth across EMEA," said Szabo. "I joined IAS because I see great opportunity to build on the powerful product suite and talented team to make digital advertising more efficient and impactful, while ensuring the internet is safer as well."

About Integral Ad Science

Integral Ad Science (IAS) is a global leader in digital media quality. IAS makes every impression count, ensuring that ads are viewable by real people, in safe and suitable environments, activating contextual targeting, and driving supply path optimization. Our mission is to be the global benchmark for trust and transparency in digital media quality for the world's leading brands, publishers, and platforms. We do this through data-driven technologies with actionable real-time signals and insight. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in New York, IAS works with thousands of top advertisers and premium publishers worldwide. For more information, visit integralads.com .

Media Contact

Julie Nicholson

[email protected]

SOURCE Integral Ad Science, Inc.
PITTSBURGH, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- "We had a desire to change the look of our glasses depending on our mood or events," said inventors from Hanover, Pa. "This inspired us to develop prescription glasses featuring an appearance that could easily be altered."

They developed the patent-pending CONVERT-A-LENZ to provide a fashionable and versatile pair of prescription glasses that may coordinate with a plethora of outfits, events or the wearer's mood. This invention may be an eye-catching conversation piece that allows the wearer to display his individuality. Additionally, it would be easy to use and reasonably priced.

The original design was submitted to the Lancaster sales office of InventHelp. It is currently available for licensing or sale to manufacturers or marketers. For more information, write Dept. 20-LBT-101, InventHelp, 217 Ninth Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15222, or call (412) 288-1300 ext. 1368. Learn more about InventHelp's Invention Submission Services at http://www.InventHelp.com.

SOURCE InventHelp

Related Links

http://www.inventhelp.com


A man has been arrested for the fatal shooting of a Bronx dad gunned down while celebrating his birthday in November, police said Sunday.

Kadeem Edwards, 21, was charged with murder and attempted murder for the Nov. 13 slaying of Jonathan Pena.

Advertisement

Pena, 32, was fatally shot on Macombs Road near Inwood Ave. in Mount Eden after a trio of robbers backed the victim and his 46-year-old friend against a storefront and robbed Pena of his 18-karat gold chain.

Jonathan Pena (Courtesy of Family)

The muggers shot Pena in the chest and his friend in the buttocks.

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Medics took the older man to Lincoln Hospital, where he recovered. Pena was taken by private means to BronxCare Health System, but he could not be saved.

Pena was the father of two daughters with his longtime girlfriend Zayerelin Figueroa.

Hes a loving, caring father, Figueroa told the Daily News at the time. A home guy. He was always there for us and would never harm anybody.

Edwards arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court was pending late Sunday.

Police are still searching for the other men involved in the attack.
Rash brings over 30 years of experience in technology and telecoms, with senior leadership positions at Cirrus Logic, Motorola and Ericsson. His knowledge of the telecoms industry and hands on experience of launching new products and services in multiple markets and accelerating growth will benefit Isotropic Systems as it gears up for a transformation year and enters commercial production.

"Isotropic is on the verge of its most significant milestone, as our groundbreaking terminals start to be deployed to customers and end-users. We are excited to welcome Rash on board at this time to support the roll out and deliver sustainable growth. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience across the technology and communications ecosystem which will be hugely valuable as we accelerate our growth and penetrate new markets." said John Finney, Isotropic Systems Founder & CEO.

Rash Sahota said: "I'm delighted to join Isotropic at this fascinating time. The integration of satellite communications with broadband and mobile is the final frontier for global connectivity, and I am excited to help bring John's vision to reality and ensure our groundbreaking multi-link antenna reaches its commercial potential and brings benefits to users across the globe."

Rash Sahota was previously Vice President and General Manager at Cirrus Logic, and has significant engineering, operational and leadership experience in Telecoms, Smartphones, IOT, Wearables, Gaming, Consumer products, Automotive and Semiconductors across Asia, US, and European markets.

About Isotropic Systems

With offices in the UK and U.S., Isotropic Systems is developing the world's first multi-service, high-bandwidth, low power, fully integrated high throughput terminals designed to support the satellite industry to 'reach beyond' traditional markets and acquire new customers with a full suite of high throughput services. The company's team of industry experts and scientists has pioneered several firsts in satellite terminal design resulting in a line of terminals that are customizable to meet the performance, cost and power requirements of countless applications  from the most complex government defence systems and mobile backhaul solutions capable of extending 5G, to next-gen connected experiences aboard commercial airliners, cruise ships, offshore rigs, and even small fishing boats at sea.

Investors in Isotropic Systems include Boeing HorizonX Global Ventures, SES and Promus Ventures through its Luxembourg based space investment fund, Orbital Ventures, Seraphim Capital, Firmament Ventures, Space Angels and family office investors such as Waterlow Management Limited. Further information is available at www.isotropicsystems.com

SOURCE Isotropic Systems
DUBLIN, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Israel Data Center Market - Investment Analysis & Growth Opportunities 2021-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Israel data center market size by investments to reach USD 795 million by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 17% during 2021-2026.



This report analyses the Israel data center market share. It elaboratively analyses the existing and upcoming facilities and data center investments in IT, electrical, mechanical infrastructure, general construction, and tier standards. It discusses market sizing and investment estimation for different segments.

Israel is an emerging data center market in the Middle East and has witnessed a significant digital acceleration in the last few years. Many upcoming colocations data centers are being built below the ground to ensure data security continuity in Israel. The country is aiming to generate around 20% of its energy from renewable energy solar power by 2025.

The data center market in Israel includes about six unique third-party data center service providers operating over 15 facilities. ABB, Mitsubishi Electric, Caterpillar, Schneider Electric, and Rittal are some of the major infrastructure vendors providing installation and commissioning services with a strong presence in the country. With the entry of cloud service providers in Israel, the revenue share of colocation operators in the overall market is expected to increase significantly.

WHY SHOULD YOU BUY THIS RESEARCH?

Market size available in the investment, area, power capacity, and data center colocation revenue.

An assessment of the data center investment in Israel by colocation, hyperscale, and enterprise operators.

by colocation, hyperscale, and enterprise operators. Data center investments in the area (square feet) and power capacity (MW) across cities in the country.

A detailed study of the existing Israel data center market landscape, an in-depth industry analysis, and insightful predictions about the Norwegian data center market size during the forecast period.

data center market landscape, an in-depth industry analysis, and insightful predictions about the Norwegian data center market size during the forecast period. Snapshot of existing and upcoming third-party data center facilities in Israel

Facilities Covered (Existing): 16

Facilities Identified (Upcoming): 7

Coverage: 8 Cities

Existing vs. Upcoming (Data Center Area)

Existing vs. Upcoming (IT Load Capacity)

Data center colocation market in Israel

Market Revenue & Forecast (2021-2026)

Retail Colocation Pricing

Wholesale Colocation Pricing

The Israel data center market investments are classified into IT, power, cooling, and general construction services with sizing and forecast.

data center market investments are classified into IT, power, cooling, and general construction services with sizing and forecast. A comprehensive analysis of the latest trends, growth rate, potential opportunities, growth restraints, and prospects for the industry.

Business overview and product offerings of prominent IT infrastructure providers, construction contractors, support infrastructure providers, and investors operating in the industry.

A transparent research methodology and the analysis of the demand and supply aspect of the market.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS OF THE REPORT

Google is currently investing around USD 400 million in the deployment of the Blue-Raman submarine cable that will connect India and Italy via Israel , which is expected to connect to Israel in 2022

in the deployment of the Blue-Raman submarine cable that will connect and via , which is expected to connect to in 2022 Bezeq, one of the largest telecom operators in Israel , is involved in the development of solutions for smart city technology such as the use of the internet to operate street lighting and pollution regulation.

, is involved in the development of solutions for smart city technology such as the use of the internet to operate street lighting and pollution regulation. The majority of the data centers in Israel use 42U rack cabinets, which are expected to dominate the market throughout the forecast period.

use 42U rack cabinets, which are expected to dominate the market throughout the forecast period. Most projects operating across Israel fall under the Tier III category.

ISRAEL DATA CENTER MARKET OUTLOOK

Israel is witnessing high adoption of IoT and cloud-based services, which is accelerating the growth of the Israel data center services market.

is witnessing high adoption of IoT and cloud-based services, which is accelerating the growth of the data center services market. In Israel , the healthcare sector is moving toward the adoption of Big Data solutions to provide a wider range of health services, by analyzing the data, which is provided by the local institutions.

KEY QUESTIONS ANSWERED:

1. How big is the Israel data center market?

2. Who are the key investors in the Israel data center industry?

3. How many existing and upcoming data centers facilities are in Israel?

4. What are the investment opportunities in the Israel data center market?

5. What are the different segments covered in the Israel data center market report?

REPORT SCOPE



IT Infrastructure Providers

Broadcom

CISCO Systems

DELL Technologies

Fujitsu

Hitachi Vantara

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

IBM

JUNIPER NETWORKS

NetApp

Oracle

Construction Constructors & Sub-Contractors

M+W Group (Exyte)

Mercury Engineering

Saan Zahav

Support Infrastructure Providers

ABB

CATERPILLAR

Delta Electronics

EATON

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Rittal

Rolls-Royce Power Systems

Schneider Electric

STULZ

Vertiv Group

Data Center Investors

Amazon Web Services

Adgar Data Center

Bynet Data Communications

EdgeConneX

Global Technical Realty (GTR)

MedOne

Serverfarm

Google

Microsoft

REPORT COVERAGE:



EXISTING VS. UPCOMING DATA CENTERS

Existing Facilities in the region (Area and Power Capacity)

Petah Tikva

Tel Aviv

Other Cities

List of Upcoming Facilities in the region (Area and Power Capacity)

ISRAEL DATA CENTER INVESTMENT COVERAGE

Infrastructure Type

IT Infrastructure

Electrical Infrastructure

Mechanical Infrastructure

General Construction

IT Infrastructure

Server

Storage Systems

Network Infrastructure

Electrical Infrastructure

UPS Systems

Generators

Transfer Switches and Switchgears

PDUs

Other Electrical Infrastructure

Mechanical Infrastructure

Cooling Systems

Rack Cabinets

Other Mechanical Infrastructure

Cooling Systems

CRAC and CRAH Units

Chillers

Cooling Towers, Condensers, and Dry Coolers

Other Cooling Units

General Construction

Building Development

Installation and Commissioning Services

Building & Engineering Design

Physical Security

Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM)

Tier Segments

Tier I & Tier II

Tier III

Tier IV

for more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/err6xc

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

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SOURCE Research and Markets
NEW YORK, Jan 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Colbeck Capital Management and Jason and Anita Colodne, proudly support NewYork-Presbyterian's mission for quality healthcare as well as their work with the Weill Cornell Hypertension Center. Every patient at NewYork-Presbyterian receives world-class and compassionate care. Colbeck Capital Management supports the life-saving efforts at NewYork-Presbyterian and the medical professionals that make a positive difference in people's lives every day.

Last year, more than two million people came to NewYork-Presbyterian for help. Through donations, NewYork-Presbyterian can attract and retain the best physicians and surgeons and provide state-of-the-art technology and tools that save lives. Many of the innovations first created at NewYork-Presbyterian serve as models for providing best-in-class medical treatment and help raise the standard of quality healthcare in communities around the world.

Founded in January 1998 with the merger of New York Hospital and Presbyterian Hospital, the roots of NewYork-Presbyterian go back to 1771 when New York Hospital was first chartered. NewYork-Presbyterian is a nonprofit, academic medical center and is building the future of medicine with three current campaigns:

The NewYork-Presbyterian Alexandra Cohen Hospital for Women and Newborn, a state-of-the-art facility designed for the healthcare of pregnant women and newborns.

The Dalio Center for Health Justice, focused on reducing health disparities that are disproportionately affecting communities of color

The NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital Center for Community Health (CCH), the largest ambulatory care facility in Brooklyn .

Jason and Anita Colodne are supporters of NewYork-Presbyterian. During the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, the Weill Cornell Hypertension team at NewYork-Presbyterian worked to address hypertension related to COVID-19 and collaborated with scientists at Weill Cornell who developed a rapid, saliva test to diagnose COVID-19. This research helped the hospital to continue to provide clinical care throughout the pandemic.

About NewYork-Presbyterian

NewYork-Presbyterian is one of the nation's most comprehensive, integrated academic health care delivery systems, dedicated to providing the highest quality, most compassionate care and service to patients in the New York metropolitan area, nationally, and throughout the globe.

In collaboration with two renowned medical schools, Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, NewYork-Presbyterian is consistently recognized as a leader in medical education, groundbreaking research, and innovative, patient-centered clinical care. Contributions can be made out to Hypertension Center Research, NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine. NewYork Presbyterian and Weill Cornell 501 C3 organizations, and contributions are tax-deductible as allowed by law.

About Colbeck Capital Management

Colbeck Capital Management ( colbeck.com ) is a leading, middle-market private credit manager focused on strategic lending. Colbeck partners with companies during periods of transition, providing creative capital solutions. Colbeck sponsors its portfolio companies through consistent engagement with management teams in areas such as finance, capital markets and growth strategies, distinguishing itself from traditional lenders. Founded in 2009 by Jason Colodne and Jason Beckman, the principalshave extensive experience investing through market cycles at leading institutions including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

About Jason Colodne

Jason Colodne co-founded Colbeck as a Managing Partner in 2009. Mr. Colodne is the senior transaction partner at Colbeck and oversees all aspects of investment execution and portfolio management.

Mr. Colodne's special situations investment experience runs over two decades. Mr. Colodne joined Goldman Sachs after gaining distressed investment and investment banking experience at UBS and Bear Stearns. Mr. Colodne became the Head of Proprietary Distressed Investing and Hybrid Lending at Goldman Sachs before launching Strategic Finance at Morgan Stanley. Mr. Colodne was a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley and founder of the division.

Mr. Colodne has held board seats on multiple portfolio companies and participated in numerous restructuring steering committees. Mr. Colodne is a member of the Young Professionals Organization-Metro New York (YPO), is a Board member of the Centurion Foundation, and a Committee member at the Children's Tumor Foundation. Mr. Colodne is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.

SOURCE Colbeck Capital Management
CALGARY, AB, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Calgary based businessman, Jay Modi has been awarded the Business Excellence Award for 2020 for the founding of some of Canada's top online FinTech Platforms.



"Thank you to AI Global for this award, I appreciate the recognition and award". says Jay. "Today's business environment is ever more competitive, so this award is welcomed and received with thanks and gratitude to all the people collectively that have worked towards building this within our group" says Jay Modi, recipient of the Award.



Jay Modi has been involved in multiple industries through his journey in the business world and like many founders & entrepreneurs, has experienced wins and losses in his strive for a solid business foundation and diversity amongst the businesses he owns. In speaking with Jay, it is clear that he has learnt a multitude of aspects when it comes to the complicated world of business over the past few years that not even a decade at a university or college could have taught him what he has experienced in the real word of business.

"I dropped out of University within my first 6 months" says Jay. "For me, it just wasn't the right fit, I needed to jump right into business and make my own mistakes. I was self-taught and read multiple books on business and innovation. I consistently spoke to people that had made it in business and at a young age I made it a mandate to surround myself with older, smarter business people to absorb their advice and wisdom, then I just dived right into the real world and rolled with the punches "says Jay.

Jay has continued to stick to his commitments to all the people that have supported him in the past and has a bright future ahead of him in the Technology and Fintech sector, having helped build the sales and revenue division for some of Canada's Top Fintech Platforms.

AI Global Media is the Awards Administrator. Since 2010 AI Global Media has been committed to creating engaging B2B content that informs readers and allows them to market their business to a global audience. AI has 12 unique brands, each of which serves a specific industry or region. Each brand covers the latest news in its sector and publishes a digital magazine and newsletter which is read by a global audience. The flagship brand, Acquisition International, distributes a monthly digital magazine to a global circulation of over 108,000 businesses, who are treated to a range of features and news pieces on the latest developments in the global corporate market. Alongside this, AI has a luxury-lifestyle magazine, LUX Life, which appeals to a range of high-net-worth individuals, offering them insight into the latest products, experiences, and innovations. AI also owns brands such as Global Health & Pharma focuses on the medical and pharmaceutical industry.

AI Global says "Showcasing the companies who have worked hard in striving to give their clients the best service and products is important to us. We know and understand how tough making a successful business can be, and so everyone at AI Global Media takes great pride in our awards programmes". Steve Simpson, spokesperson for the Business Excellence Awards says, "We are excited to hand the Business Excellence Award to Jay for founding some of the best online personal finance platforms in Canada" Jay has worked relentlessly over the past few years to aid all of those around him in creating a sustainable, thriving business in the Financial Technology world. We at AI Global believe that Jay has accomplished that and has much more growth ahead of him" says Steve.

About Jay Rasik Modi

Born in London, United Kingdom, Jay Modi moved to Canada in 1997. He attended Western Canada High School in Calgary, Canada, and subsequently went onto the University of Calgary. Jay started his first business, an Organic Pasta Company, while attending the University of Calgary, which subsequently took off and was very successful. Jay made the decision to focus on that business, and not to complete his degree, which he sites as one of the best decisions he ever made. That decision blazed a path forward and led to Jay now having more than 20 years of business experience under his belt within multiple business sectors. Jay has been involved in Foods Manufacturing, Asset Management, Movie Production, Real Estate and now focuses heavily on the FinTech and Technology Industries.

About AI Global



Since 2010 AI Global Media has been committed to creating engaging B2B content that informs readers and allows them to market their business to a global audience. AI has 12 unique brands, each of which serves a specific industry or region. Each brand covers the latest news in its sector and publishes a digital magazine and newsletter which is read by a global audience. The flagship brand, Acquisition International, distributes a monthly digital magazine to a global circulation of over 108,000 businesses, who are treated to a range of features and news pieces on the latest developments in the global corporate market. Alongside this, AI has a luxury-lifestyle magazine, LUX Life, which appeals to a range of high-net-worth individuals, offering them insight into the latest products, experiences, and innovations. AI also owns brands such as Global Health & Pharma focuses on the medical and pharmaceutical industry.





SOURCE BFC Media Corp.
NEW YORK, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Jewish Communal Fund, one of the largest donor advised funds in the country, released its fifth annual Giving Report, providing insight into the demographics and charitable trends taking place among its generous funder network of more than 8,500 people. JCF's data offers a rare look into the funding preferences and giving trends of American Jews throughout the country.

JCF Fundholders are some of the most generous donors in the nation. JCF Fundholders granted $520 Million to charities in every sector.

"The 2021 JCF Giving Report highlights the extraordinary generosity of our Fundholders, who recommended a record-breaking 72,000 grants to charities in all sectors," said Sue Dickman, the Executive VP & CEO of Jewish Communal Fund. "In addition to Fundholders' robust grant-making, JCF offers an increasing number of Jewish values impact investments that align with our mission as the largest Jewishly-affiliated donor advised fund in the country."

Here are highlights from the report:

JCF Fundholders make an average of 17 grants per fund per year, with a median grant amount of $501 .

. JCF Fundholders distributed 22% of charitable assets, as a collective, in FY 21

Nearly one-third of funds distributed 50% or more of the balance in their funds to charities in FY 21.

The sectors that received the largest number of dollars from JCF Fundholders in FY 21 were education, community/human services, and Israel (these same categories topped the chart in previous years, too).

(these same categories topped the chart in previous years, too). 70% of all grants where directed to Jewish organizations, totaling $256 million .

. JCF provided $700,000 in Special Gifts Fund grants in FY 21 supporting the creation of a sensory gym, scholarships to Jewish day camp, and upgrading a digital choice kosher food pantry.

To delve into this report and learn more about the JCF philanthropic community and the ways in which they are making our community and the world a better place, visit https://jcfny.org/app/uploads/2021/12/2021-JCF-Giving-Report.pdf to download the Giving Report. Or email [email protected] for a copy of the report.

About JCF

Jewish Communal Fund is one of the largest and most active networks of Jewish funders, currently managing over $2.7 billion in charitable assets for more than 4,350 donor advised funds. JCF's donor advised funds make giving easy, flexible and efficient. Learn more about JCF by visiting www.jcfny.org. Visit JCF on LinkedIn, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Ellen Smith-Israelson, CMO

Jewish Communal Fund

[email protected]

212-752-8277

SOURCE Jewish Communal Fund
DENVER, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, King Soopers and City Market filed unfair labor practice charges against UFCW Local 7 for refusing to bargain in good faith. Additionally, Local 7 today rejected mediation services to help aid in a peaceful resolution.

The company remains committed to negotiating and reaching an agreement that significantly invests in associates by putting more money in their pocket while maintaining affordable healthcare and a pension for their retirement. However, Local 7 appears dead set on inciting disruption and restricting the community's ability to access fresh food and essentials.

"After three days of refusing repeated requests to return to the negotiating table, Local 7's Kim Cordova has now rejected a reasonable request for mediation to work together toward a contract that will put more money in our associates' pockets," said Joe Kelley, president of King Soopers/City Market. "If Local 7 does not want to negotiate then they should at least have the decency to allow our associates to vote on the current proposal. Our associates should be treated fairly and transparently and should have the opportunity to decide what is best for them and their families. Right now, Local 7 is using our associates' livelihoods as pawns in their political gamesmanship."

The time is now.

Local 7 has given no indication of when they will reengage in the negotiation process. Kim Cordova, president of Local 7 has only said she is willing discuss details again "at an appropriate time in the future." Respectfully, King Soopers/City Market believes the time is now as our associates are currently working without a contract and under threat of strike. The company is eager to invest more money into associates' paychecks as soon as possible.

King Soopers/City Market remains committed to the negotiation process and to settling an agreement that is good for our associates while keeping groceries affordable.

Attached is an independent analysis from economist Nam Pham, managing partner at ndp | analytics, commissioned by the Kroger family of companies, that demonstrates the company's long-standing commitment to our associates and the communities they serve.

For additional information on the unfair labor practice charges click here.

About King Soopers/City Market

At King Soopers/City Market, a company of The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR), we are Fresh for Everyone and dedicated to our Purpose: To Feed the Human Spirit. We are 22,502 associates who serve customers daily through a seamless shopping experience throughout Colorado. We are committed to creating #ZeroHungerZeroWaste communities by 2025. To learn more about us, visit our newsroom and investor relations site.

SOURCE The Kroger Co.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Many emergency departments are at capacity due to high COVID case counts, staffing challenges and increasing demand for testing. The Omicron variant is extremely contagious and that makes it important for everyone to get vaccinated and know when to go to the emergency department for COVID concerns, according to the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP).

"Emergency departments in many communities are stretching to their limits," said Gillian Schmitz, MD, FACEP, president of ACEP. "You can be sure that an emergency physician is ready to care for anyone who needs immediate medical attention. Whether it's COVID-related or not, do not ignore the signs of an emergency. But, for those seeking routine COVID tests, it may be more efficient to visit a testing site or take a test at home."

Emergency physicians continue to voice concerns about capacity issues and resource constraints. One way to ease the strain on health systems is to recognize when to treat a potential case of COVID-19 at home, and when to seek emergency care. "Fortunately for those who are vaccinated, many of the symptoms that distinguish the Omicron variant appear to be mild and can be monitored and managed at home," said Dr. Schmitz.

If you think you have COVID-19 or may have been in close contact with somebody who has the virus, it is time to get tested and contact a primary care physician to discuss treatment options. Emergency physicians report that common symptoms associated with the Omicron variant include head or body aches and similarities with the common cold but may not include loss of sense of taste or smell. Symptoms consistent with COVID-19, regardless of variant, include:

Fever

Coughing

Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing

Fatigue

Muscle or body aches

New loss of taste or smell

Sore throat

Congestion or runny nose

Nausea or vomiting

Diarrhea

Consider managing mild or moderate symptoms at home, similar to the way a cold or flu is treated, with over-the-counter medication as directed by a primary care physician. If positive for COVID, follow the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines for isolation or quarantine.

Call 911 or go to the emergency department for severe illness, difficulty breathing, intense chest pain, extreme weakness, or disorientation, especially for those at high risk of COVID complications, which includes anyone older or with a weakened immune system.

Emergency physicians remind everyone that it is still important to observe local safety guidelines and take all available precautions to avoid getting or spreading the virus. Wear a mask in crowded indoor spaces, social distance, regularly wash hands, and stay home if you are sick. It is recommended that everyone eligible get the vaccine and a booster shot. Anyone who has COVID can spread it, even if symptoms are mild.

"The choices we make to stay safe and protect each other can save lives," said Dr. Schmitz. "Everyone can do their part to slow the spread of the virus and help make sure that emergency departments remain accessible for those who are severely ill with COVID or other emergencies," said Dr. Schmitz.

The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) is the national medical society representing emergency medicine. Through continuing education, research, public education, and advocacy, ACEP advances emergency care on behalf of its 40,000 emergency physician members, and the more than 150 million Americans they treat on an annual basis. For more information, visit www.acep.org and www.emergencyphysicians.org.

SOURCE American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP)
GREENVILLE, S.C., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Laura LeBel, MD, is being recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Trusted OBGYN for her work in the Medical field and in acknowledgment of her work at her nonprofit organization, Elle OB/GYN.

Laura LeBel

From the age of 14, Dr. LeBel knew she wanted to be an OB/GYN and deliver babies. Practicing Medicine since 2002, Dr. LeBel is an experienced OBGYN who is currently treating patients at her private practice, Elle OB/GYN. She provides comprehensive care for her patients, using the newest technology and doing minimally invasive procedures to minimize pain and downtime.



Dr. LeBel enjoys working with pregnant patients, advising them throughout their pregnancy, and delivering their babies at the time of birth. She opened Elle OB/GYN in 2018 in order to provide compassionate care to every patient. She is able to get to know them personally, and she is dedicated to her patient's well-being at every stage of their lives. Dr. LeBel is proud to help her patients start or grow their families by providing the best care possible.



Dr. LeBel has years of expertise in the areas of urogynecology, menopause, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and adolescent medicine. She specializes in treating women and patients of all ages, from adolescence through menopause, which includes preconception counseling, menstrual dysfunction, and vaginal revitalization. Dr. LeBel has additionally received training in minimally invasive robotic surgeries, endometrial ablation, and tubal occlusions.



In addition to medical treatments, Elle OB/GYN offers aesthetic therapies so patients can feel and look their best. She offers laser hair removal treatments, stretch mark treatments, Fractora radiofrequency (RF) to treat fine lines, and the Icon Laser Aesthetic System to treat age spots, sun damage, scars, hair growth, and more.



To achieve her career in Medicine, Dr. LeBel first attended Furman University, where she earned a Bachelor's degree in Biochemistry n 1993. She next attended the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, SC, graduating with her Medical degree. Dr. LeBel then completed a General Surgery internship, followed by an OB/GYN residency program at the Oakwood Hospital System in Detroit, MI. She is board certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology by the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and she is a Fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.



Looking to the future, Dr. LeBel plans to expand her practice. She is in the process of constructing a new building to expand Elle OB/GYN. After construction is completed, she plans to bring in more physicians to become one of the largest OB/GYN practices run entirely by women in South Carolina.



She has been honored and awarded for her excellence in Obstetrics and Gynecology with a profile feature in Health News Today.



In her spare time, Dr. LeBel enjoys spending time with her husband, who is a Gastroenterologist, and her family.



For more information, visit www.elleobgyn.com.

Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected]

SOURCE Continental Who's Who
Clara is a partner at Alvarium Investments, an international multifamily office with over $27 billion in AUM

in AUM Clara co-founded TheVentureCity, a technology focused accelerator with over 75 investments

Clara is an advocate for Women in Blockchain, a non-profit organization that focuses on increasing diversity in crypto through education and community building

TORONTO, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Liquid Meta Capital Holdings Ltd. (NEO: LIQD) ("Liquid Meta" or the "Company"), a decentralized finance infrastructure and technology company, today announced the appointment of Clara Bullrich to the Company's Board of Directors. This follows the appointments of Stephen Harper and Tom Kang to the Company's Board on December 23, 2021.

"I am very pleased to welcome Clara to our Board of Directors," said Jonathan Wiesblatt, CEO. "Clara has been instrumental in providing strategic guidance to many early-stage tech companies across Europe, the United States and Latin America. We believe Clara's depth of experience will be invaluable as Liquid Meta scales our liquidity mining operations and overall DeFi market strategy over the coming year."

Clara Bullrich added, "I am very excited to join Liquid Meta's Board as the Company continues to grow their liquidity mining operations and develop technology for the DeFi market. I look forward to contributing my experience to Liquid Meta as it seeks to benefit from the rapid changes in the financial industry."

Clara is a partner at Alvarium Investments, where she manages relationships with several UHNW clients, heads the Digital Assets committee, and is a member of the Investment Committee. Alvarium is an international multifamily office with assets under management in excess of $27 billion.

In 2017, Clara co-founded TheVentureCity, a venture capital firm with a fund and an accelerator. The accelerator has focused on early-stage tech with over 75 investments. As general partner of the fund, Clara is instrumental in the investment into early-stage tech companies across Europe, the United States and Latin America. In the last three years the venture fund has invested in 20 companies globally, co-investing with funds such as Kleiner Perkins, Andresseen Horowitz, Emerson Collective, and many others.

Clara has a passion for digital assets and is an active investor in the sector, helping companies on WEB3 and leveraging her expertise in DeFi & NFTs. She is a strong supporter for Women in Blockchain which is a non-profit organization that focuses on increasing diversity in crypto through education and community building.

About Liquid Meta

Liquid Meta is a decentralized finance infrastructure and technology company that is powering the next generation of open-access protocols and applications. The Company is creating the bridge between traditional and decentralized finance while ushering in a new era of financial infrastructure that benefits anyone, anywhere.

To learn more visit: Website | LinkedIn | Twitter

Cautionary Notice

Neo Exchange has not reviewed or approved this press release for the adequacy or accuracy of its contents.

Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Information:

This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release. Any statement that involves discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as "expects", or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans", "budget", "scheduled", "forecasts", "estimates", "believes" or "intends" or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results "may" or "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Liquid Meta to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements are described under the caption "Risks and Uncertainties" in the Company's Filing Statement dated as of December 17, 2021 which is available for view on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking statements contained herein are made as of the date of this press release and Liquid Meta disclaims, other than as required by law, any obligation to update any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, results, future events, circumstances, or if management's estimates or opinions should change, or otherwise. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, the reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

Liquid Meta's operations could be significantly adversely affected by the effects of a widespread global outbreak of a contagious disease, including the recent outbreak of illness caused by COVID-19. It is not possible to accurately predict the impact COVID-19 will have on operations and the ability of others to meet their obligations, including uncertainties relating to the ultimate geographic spread of the virus, the severity of the disease, the duration of the outbreak, and the length of travel and quarantine restrictions imposed by governments of affected countries. In addition, a significant outbreak of contagious diseases in the human population could result in a widespread health crisis that could adversely affect the economies and financial markets of many countries, resulting in an economic downturn that could further affect operations and the ability to finance its operations.

SOURCE Liquid Meta Capital Holdings Ltd
Lucas Sure Start Premium Starting Fluid was specifically formulated to help start stubborn engines and is compatible with both diesel and gasoline engines in passenger cars, diesel engines, lawn mowers, chainsaws, outboard motors and fractional horsepower engines. The 50% ether blend goes well beyond other leading national brands by also including an effective lubricant, resulting in the ideal starting fluid to keep on hand for starting sluggish motors and limiting the impact of extreme cold weather on vehicle batteries.

This latest addition joins a number of best-in-class Utility products currently available to motorists, including Lucas Complete Engine Treatment, Diesel Deep Clean, Engine Oil Stop Leak, Fuel Stabilizer and Heavy Duty and Pure Synthetic Engine Oil Stabilizer.

"Starting fluid is an essential troubleshooting and utility tool for any vehicle owner, especially during cold weather or in engines that are difficult to start using conventional starting procedures," said Shane Burns, Vice President of Sales, Lucas Oil Products. "We're proud to offer a new premium product that not only applies to a diverse range of engine types, but also incorporates the best-in-class ether levels needed to start even the most stubborn engines. Sure Start delivers reliable performance that car enthusiasts have come to expect from Lucas Oil."

Lucas Sure Start Premium Starting Fluid, available at select retail stores , features an easy-to-use hose applicator that is perfect for use without using any tools.

About Lucas Oil

Founded in 1989 by Forrest and Charlotte Lucas, Lucas Oil Products was created with the simple philosophy of producing the best lubricants and additives available anywhere. Lucas Oil offers the most diversified range of innovative engine oil, gear oil and additive products refined by years of specialized research, development and testing. The company's high performance engine oils and gear oils are widely recognized as best-in-class in the automotive, powersports, marine, industrial, outdoor, and motorsports marketplaces. In total, Lucas Oil boasts more than 300 premium products, representing the largest variety of shelf products of any oil company in the United States with a distribution network across 48 different countries.

The company also maintains a significant commitment to motorsports and its local community in Indiana via support for The Home of the Indianapolis Colts, Lucas Oil Stadium and MAVTV, a Lucas Oil owned and operated television network that offers an unparalleled line-up of exclusive motorsports from across the globe, including drag boats, sprint boats, drag racing, pro pulling, drifting, dirt racing, ice racing and everything in between. For more information, please visit www.LucasOil.com.

Contact: Lucas Oil Corporate Communications

310-374-6177

[email protected]

SOURCE Lucas Oil Products
HONG KONG, Jan. 10 -- Major General Peng Jingtang, former deputy chief of staff of the People's Armed Police Force (PAP), has been appointed as the commander of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Hong Kong Garrison, according to the news released by Colonel Wu Tao, spokesperson for the PLA Hong Kong Garrison, on January 9.

The appointment order was signed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, also chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) , and declared by General Wang Xiubin, commander of the PLA Southern Theater Command.

The newly-appointed Commander Major General Peng Jingtang said that he is ready to work with all the members of the PLA Hong Kong Garrison to profoundly implement the policy of "one country, two systems", perform defense duties in accordance with the law, resolutely defend national sovereignty, security and development interests, and firmly safeguard Hong Kong's long-term prosperity and stability.
A city sanitation worker was arrested early Monday for assaulting a co-worker in lower Manhattan, police said.

Brett Cohen, 41, allegedly shoved a female colleague to the ground during an argument at a sanitation garage on South S St. near Clinton St. on the Lower East Side about 2 a.m.

Advertisement

Cohen was issued a desk appearance ticket to appear in court at a later date to face a misdemeanor assault charge.
CHICAGO, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Maleic Anhydride Market by Raw Material (n-butane and Benzene), Application (Unsaturated Polyester Resin (UPR), 1,4-butanediol (1,4-BDO), Lubricating Oil Additives, and Copolymers)), and Region - Global Forecast to 2026", published by MarketsandMarkets, the Maleic Anhydride Market is projected to reach USD 3.4 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 4.2% from USD 2.8 billion in 2021. Maleic anhydride is an organic compound produced by the vapor-phase oxidation of n-butane or benzene. It is a colorless solid with an acrid odor. Maleic anhydride acts as a chemical intermediate. It is used to manufacture various end-use products, such as Unsaturated Polyester Resins (UPR), 1,4-BDO, lubricating oil additives, and copolymers. Maleic anhydride can be derived from the raw materials such as n-butane and benzene. UPR is the largest application segment of the maleic anhydride market. Asia Pacific was the largest market for maleic anhydride in 2020, in terms of value. The growth of the market in Asia Pacific is primarily propelled by the growing building & construction and automotive industries. The growth of end-use industries, rapid industrialization, availability of feedstock, and improved living standards of people in Asia Pacific are among the factors driving the maleic anhydride market.



Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=31705758

Browse in-depth TOC on "Maleic Anhydride Market"

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View Detailed Table of Content Here: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/maleic-anhydride-market-31705758.html

n-butane is estimated to be the fastest-growing raw material in the maleic anhydride market for the forecast period.

The n-butane-based maleic anhydride accounted for the larger share, in terms of both volume and value, in 2020. This dominance is expected to continue during the forecast period, owing to its high demand from the growing building & construction and automotive industries. The n-butane segment is projected to witness higher growth, in terms of both volume and value, during the forecast period, owing to stringent policies and regulations on the use of benzene for maleic anhydride production.

The use of benzene to produce maleic anhydride has decreased considerably due to US EPA - 54 FR 38044 standards, which include national emission standards for hazardous air pollutants, benzene emissions from maleic anhydride plants, and other reasons, such as high production cost, complex operation, and costly process control, due to which, the n-butane-based maleic anhydride is being used by industries on a large scale

1,4-BDO was the second major application for the maleic anhydride market in 2020 in the world.

The maleic anhydride market size for 1,4-BDO accounted for the second-largest share of global maleic anhydride after UPR, in terms of value, in 2020 this was led by the demand from various industries.

1,4-BDO is a colorless, viscous liquid derived from butane by the placement of alcohol groups at each end of its molecular chain; it is one of the four stable isomers of butanediol. 1,4-BDO is used in the production of spandex fibers, urethane elastomers, and copolyester ethers. It is used for the synthesis of gamma-butyrolactone (GBL). In the presence of phosphoric acid and high temperature, it dehydrates to the solvent tetrahydrofuran (THF). GBL is used in various industries, such as electronics, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and high-performance polymers.

THF, Polybutylene Terephthalate (PBT), GBL, and PU are the major products of 1,4-BDO. It can be used as a plasticizer, an adhesive (in leather, polyurethane footwear, and plastics), a carrier solvent in printing inks, and as a cleaning agent. The increase in population is expected to drive the consumption of 1,4-BDO in the textile industry, which, in turn, will increase the consumption of maleic anhydride in this segment.



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Asia Pacific is estimated to be the largest region in maleic anhydride market in 2020.

Asia Pacific is projected to be the largest maleic anhydride market, in terms of value, in 2020 due to the rise in the automotive production. The maleic anhydride market in the Asia Pacific is also projected to grow at the highest CAGR, in terms of value, during the forecast period. This dominance is attributed to the growing domestic industries, increasing demand from end-use industries, and growing use of maleic anhydride in different applications, such as agricultural chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The demand for maleic anhydride is growing and is expected to register higher growth in Asia Pacific and the Middle East & Africa than in the other regions.

The key market players profiled in the report include Huntsman Corporation (US), Changzhou Yabang Chemical Co., Ltd. (China), Shanxi Qiaoyou Chemical Co., Ltd. (China), Polynt-Reichhold Group (Italy), Zibo Qixiang Tengda Chemical Co., Ltd. (China), Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (Japan), Nippon Shokubai Co., Ltd.(Japan), LANXESS AG( Germany), Gulf Advanced Chemical Industries Co., Ltd. (Saudi Arabia), Ningbo Jiangning Chemical Co., Ltd. (China), China Bluestar Harbin Petrochemical Co, Ltd.(China), Nan Ya Plastics (Taiwan), Shijiazhuang Bailong chemical Co., Ltd.( China), Yongsan Chemical Co., Ltd.( South Korea), IG Petrochemicals Ltd.( India), MOL Plc( Hungary), PT Justus Sakti Raya (Indonesia ), Global Ispat Koksna Industrija d.o.o. Lukavac (Bosnia & Herzegovina), Tianjin Bohai Chemical industry group Co., Ltd.( China), Cepsa (Spain), Ruse Chemicals (Bulgaria), Yunnan Yunwei Company Limited (China), Shanxi Taiming Chemical Industry Co., Ltd.( China), Huanghua Hongcheng Business Corp., Ltd. (China), and Aekyung Petrochemical Co., Ltd. (South Korea).

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FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Farmington Kids First and Moms for America, two nonprofit organizations, and concerned parents of students enrolled in the Farmington Michigan Public School District, will hold a press conference and peaceful rally on Tuesday, January 11, 2022, prior to the regularly scheduled meeting of the Board of Education. This is the first school board meeting since the revelation that the district sponsored a "21-Day Equity Challenge" promoting racial division and political indoctrination in the district's public schools. Several parents will express their opposition to the board's actions at the media event and will address the board directly during the public meeting.

WHO Parents of K-12 students in the Farmington Public School District

Farmington Kids First, a nonprofit organization

Moms for America, a nonprofit educational organization



WHAT A press conference and peaceful rally featuring parents of students in the Farmington Public School District with comments and signs. Following the press conference, parents will attend the Board of Education meeting, where they will express their concerns to the school board directly.



WHERE North Farmington High School

32900 W 13 Mile Road

Farmington Hills, MI 48334



WHEN Tuesday, January 11, 2022, 5:00 pm EST

- Set-up time for media: 4:00 pm

- One-on-one interviews with parents: 5:00 pm

- Press conference: 5:30 pm

- Conclude media event: 5:50 pm



INTERVIEWS To book interviews with Farmington Kids First, Moms for America, or local parents, contact: Hannah Blair, M 973-525-6318, [email protected].



DETAILS The Farmington Public School District recently hosted a "21-Day Equity Challenge" that was riddled with divisive political messaging  "white privilege checklists," a list of "microaggressions to avoid" such as calling America the "land of opportunity," and calls to "join a BLM or affiliated protest" and donate to bail funds for violent rioters. Parents are objecting to this program saying it inflames racial divisions, promotes anti-American concepts, and detracts from the educational mission of the school district.





Concerned parents can go online to: http://www.familychoicematters.com/





For more about Moms for America, a national nonprofit 501(c)(3) educational corporation rooted on the principles of liberty and virtue our nation was founded on, go to: https://momsforamerica.us/get-to-know-us/our-team/.

SOURCE Moms For America
DUBLIN, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Medtronic plc (NYSE:MDT), a global leader in healthcare technology, today announced it has received approval from Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare for the sale and reimbursement of the Micra AV Transcatheter Pacing System (TPS), and the company will launch the product this month.

This approval expands the number of patients in Japan  one of the largest markets in the world  who are eligible to receive the Micra TPS, the world's smallest pacemaker. The Micra AV is indicated for the treatment of patients with AV block, a condition in which the electrical signals between the chambers of the heart (the atria and the ventricle) are impaired. The Micra TPS is the first-ever leadless pacemaker; its first version (the Micra VR) was approved in Japan in 2017 for patients who only require single-chamber pacing.

"Pacemakers have made significant progress over their approximately 60-year history, including miniaturization, improvements in pacing technology, MRI compatibility, and remote monitoring," explained Kyoko Soejima, professor of cardiovascular internal medicine at Kyorin University Hospital and a member of the Micra TPS Global Clinical Trial steering committee. "The first Micra system transformed the concept of pacemakers by eliminating surgical pockets and leads, and Micra AV promises to deliver the benefits of leadless pacing to a larger number of patients because ventricular pacing can be performed synchronously with the atrium."

Historically, patients with AV block have been treated with traditional dual-chamber pacemakers which are implanted in the upper chest, under the skin below the collar bone, and connected to the heart using thin wires called "leads." Identical in size and shape to the original Micra TPS, Micra AV has several additional algorithms which detect cardiac movement, allowing the device to adjust pacing in the ventricle to coordinate with the atrium, providing "AV synchronous" pacing therapy to patients with AV block.

The Micra AV approval is based on data from the MARVEL 2 (Micra Atrial Tracking Using A Ventricular accELerometer) study, which evaluated the safety and effectiveness of accelerometer-based atrial sensing algorithms. The study evaluated the ability of the Micra's internal sensor to monitor and detect atrial contractions and enable coordinated pacing between the atrium and ventricle, thereby providing AV synchrony.

"Since introducing the first battery-powered external pacemaker in 1957 to the innovative Micra leadless pacemaker portfolio, Medtronic continues to pioneer pacing innovations for physicians and their patients," said Rob Kowal, M.D., Ph.D., chief medical officer of the Cardiac Rhythm Management business, which is part of the Cardiovascular Portfolio at Medtronic.

About the Micra Transcatheter Pacing Systems (TPS)

The Micra TPS received CE Mark in April 2015 and U.S. FDA approval in 2016. Comparable in size to a large vitamin, Micra is less than one-tenth the size of traditional pacemakers yet delivers advanced pacing technology to patients via a minimally invasive approach. During the implant procedure, the device is attached to the heart with small tines and delivers electrical impulses that pace the heart through an electrode at the end of the device.

Unlike traditional pacemakers, Micra does not require leads or a surgical "pocket" under the skin, so potential sources of complications related to leads and pockets are reduced, and there is no visible sign of the device.

About Medtronic

Bold thinking. Bolder actions. We are Medtronic. Medtronic plc, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is the leading global healthcare technology company that boldly attacks the most challenging health problems facing humanity by searching out and finding solutions. Our Mission  to alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life  unites a global team of 90,000+ passionate people across 150 countries. Our technologies and therapies treat 70 health conditions and include cardiac devices, surgical robotics, insulin pumps, surgical tools, patient monitoring systems, and more. Powered by our diverse knowledge, insatiable curiosity, and desire to help all those who need it, we deliver innovative technologies that transform the lives of two people every second, every hour, every day. Expect more from us as we empower insight-driven care, experiences that put people first, and better outcomes for our world. In everything we do, we are engineering the extraordinary. For more information on Medtronic (NYSE:MDT), visit www.Medtronic.com and follow @Medtronic on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Any forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties such as those described in Medtronic's periodic reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Actual results may differ materially from anticipated results.

Contacts:





Tracy McNulty Ryan Weispfenning Public Relations Investor Relations +1-612-819-2190 +1-763-505-4626

SOURCE Medtronic plc
Baker will report to Misti Meggs, Managing Partner, who will continue to supervise strategy and growth overall for Mohr Partners.

"Ruth's strong knowledge of Mohr Partners unique full-service corporate real estate platform makes her an ideal professional to help both our existing and new clients drive cost savings throughout their entire real estate portfolios," Chairman and CEO Robert Shibuya said.

Meggs commented, "I am excited to partner with Ruth to grow our overall global corporate services client base and to help our existing clients navigate the challenges they face as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic."

Baker previously served as Mohr Partners' Director of Transaction Services where she was responsible for over 24 million square feet of clients' portfolio and transaction work. She also managed a team of account managers who served multiple Global Corporate Service clients.

"I am excited to leverage my 15 years of hands-on corporate real estate experience to grow Mohr Partners' market share in our core business segment," Baker said.

Baker joined Mohr Partners in 2015 as a Senior Account Manager before earning a promotion to Associate Director for Business Development & Client Services in March 2019. She entered her previous role as Director of Transactions Services shortly after in July 2019.

About Mohr Partners, Inc. Mohr Partners, Inc. is a global corporate real estate advisor, providing corporate tenants with an integrated set of portfolio services including strategic planning, business intelligence, lease administration/accounting & FASB ASC 842 compliance, research and site selection, labor analytics, project and construction management, comprehensive demographics analysis, economic incentives negotiations and transaction management. Since 1986, Mohr has been managing real estate portfolios for corporations, and each year completes transactions for its clients in all 50 U.S. states, all provinces of Canada and locations around the world. Mohr seamlessly provides corporate real estate services globally through its strategic alliance partners in Canada, Mexico/Latin America, EMEA and Asia Pacific. For more information on Mohr, please visit www.mohrpartners.com.

SOURCE Mohr Partners, Inc.
TORONTO, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company today announced that it has appointed Murilo Portugal to its Board of Directors.

The Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company acts as a guardian of the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Established in 1941, the Trust Principles are designed to preserve Thomson Reuters independence, integrity and freedom from bias in the gathering and dissemination of information and news. The new appointment takes immediate effect.

Mr. Portugal has a long and established career across both the public and private sectors in Brazil, and in international organizations. From 1980 to 1984, he was an adviser at the Office of the Chief of Staff to the President of Brazil, and then served as Chief Economic Advisor at the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic of Brazil from 1990 to 1992. He was then appointed Secretary of the National Treasury, where he played a key role in implementing the Real Plan of economic stabilization. He also served as Deputy Finance Minister from 2005 to 2006.

In addition to his experience in Brazil, Mr. Portugal served as an Executive Director at the World Bank Group and as Executive Director and Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). At the IMF, he oversaw Fund relations with 81 countries across five continents. He has also served as President of the Brazilian Federation of Banks, and served on the boards of Banco do Brazil, Caixa Economica Federal, Electrobras and IRB Brazil RE.

Kim Williams, Chairman of the Founders Share Company's Board, said, "I am delighted to welcome Murilo Portugal to the Trustees of the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. I am sure he will make a fine contribution to our thinking in defending the Principles and ensuring that we act at all times in a way that is consistent with the best ethical practice, ensuring that values core to the successful sustenance of the Principles over the last 80 years are maintained through sensitive, and sustained, vigilance."

Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters is a leading provider of business information services. Our products include highly specialized information-enabled software and tools for legal, tax, accounting and compliance professionals combined with the world's most global news service  Reuters. For more information on Thomson Reuters. For more information on Thomson Reuters, visit tr.com and for the latest world news, reuters.com.

CONTACT

Andrew Green

Senior Director, Corporate Affairs

+1 332 219 1511

[email protected]

SOURCE Thomson Reuters
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA will host a media teleconference at 11 a.m. EST Tuesday, Jan. 11, to introduce and discuss the role of the agency's new chief scientist and senior climate advisor. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced that Dr. Katherine Calvin will serve the agency in dual roles as chief scientist and senior climate advisor effective Monday.

Audio of the teleconference will stream live on the agency's website.

To participate in the teleconference, media must contact Faith McKie at: fai[email protected] at least two hours prior to the start of the event for dial-in information.

Participants in the briefing will be:

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson

Kate Calvin , NASA chief scientist and senior climate advisor

As chief scientist, Calvin will advise agency leadership on the agency's science programs and science-related strategic planning and investments. As senior climate advisor, she will provide insights and recommendations for the agency's climate-related science, technology, and infrastructure programs.

In February 2021, NASA joined the National Climate Task Force established by President Biden, which encourages a governmentwide approach to address climate change. In October, NASA issued a climate action plan aimed at continuing critical Earth science and climate research and averting mission impacts due to climate change. With more than two dozen satellites and instruments observing key climate indicators, NASA is the premier agency in observing and understanding changes to Earth.

For more information about NASA's programs, missions, and activities, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov

SOURCE NASA
WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) today released its annual list of top investor threats and urged caution before purchasing popular and volatile unregulated investments  especially those involving cryptocurrency and digital assets. NASAA also announced guidance for investors, including steps to take to protect from fraud in the new year.

"The most common telltale sign of an investment scam is an offer of guaranteed high returns with no risk. It is important for investors to understand what they are investing in and with whom they are investing," said Melanie Senter Lubin, NASAA President and Maryland Securities Commissioner. "Education and information are an investor's best defense against investment fraud."

The top threats to investors were determined by surveying North American securities regulators to identify the most problematic products, practices or schemes. The following were cited most often by state and provincial securities regulators:

Investments tied to cryptocurrencies and digital assets, Fraud offerings related to promissory notes, Money scams offered through social media and internet investment offers and, Financial schemes connected to Self-Directed Individual Retirement Accounts.

"By far, NASAA's securities regulators revealed that investments related to cryptocurrencies and digital assets is our top investor threat," said Enforcement Section Committee Co-Chair Joseph P. Borg, Alabama Securities Commission Director. "Stories of 'crypto millionaires' attracted some investors to try their hand at investing in cryptocurrencies or crypto-related investments this year, and with them, many stories of those who bet big and lost big began appearing, and they will continue to appear in 2022."

Many of the fraud threats facing investors today involve private offerings, as federal law exempts these securities from registration requirements and preempts states from enforcing important investor protection laws. Borg added, "Unregistered private offerings generally are high-risk investments and don't have the same investor protection requirements as those sold through public markets."

Digital assets do not fall neatly into the existing investor regulatory framework, and it may be easier for the promoters of these products to fleece the public. All investments carry the risk that some, or all, of the invested funds could be lost.

"Before you jump into the crypto craze, be mindful that cryptocurrencies and related financial products may be nothing more than public facing fronts for Ponzi schemes and other frauds," said Enforcement Section Committee Vice-Chair Joseph Rotunda, Texas State Securities Board Enforcement Division Director. "Investments in cryptocurrency trading programs, interests in crypto mining pools, crypto depository accounts and securitized tokens should be seen for what they are: extremely risky speculation with a high risk of loss."

Information about each of the 2022 investor threats and contact information for all state and provincial securities regulators can be found on NASAA's Fraud Center.

Investors are urged to practice the following tips to identify and avoid investment scams:

1. Anyone can be anyone on the Internet. Scammers are spoofing websites and using fake social media accounts to obscure their identities. Investors should always take steps to identify phony accounts by looking closely at content, analyzing dates of inception and considering the quality of engagement. To ensure investors do not accidently deal with an imposter firm, pay careful attention to domain names and learn more about how to protect your online accounts.

2. Beware of fake client reviews. Scammers often reference or publish positive, yet bogus testimonials purportedly drafted by satisfied customers. These testimonials create the appearance the promoter is reliable  he or she has already earned significant profits in the past, and new investors can reap the same financial benefits as prior investors. In many cases, though, the reviews are drafted not by a satisfied customer but by the scammer. Learn how to protect yourself with NASAA's Informed Investor Advisory on social media, online trading and investing,

3. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Bad actors often entice new investors by promising the payment of safe, lucrative, guaranteed returns over relatively short terms  sometimes measured in hours or days instead of months or years. These representations are often a red flag for fraud, as all investments carry some degree of risk, and the potential profits are typically correlated with the degree of risk. Learn more about the warning signs of investment fraud.

NASAA recommends investors independently research registration of investment firms. They should not use hyperlinks provided by the parties and instead contact their state securities regulator, search the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website or FINRA's BrokerCheck platform. Investors should be aware that scammers may misappropriate the CRD numbers of registered firms and individuals. Investors should contact their regulator if they suspect the firm is engaging in this type of tactic.

Individuals offering investments are obligated to truthfully disclose all material facts, and they must disclose the risks associated with each product. On the other hand, bad actors will often minimize or conceal risks, and use hyperbole to tout profits and payouts. Investors should pay attention to these details, as they can provide clues about the potential illegitimacy of a scam.

Bad actors may be impersonating licensed parties by using phony websites that place viruses or malicious software on victim's computers. Investors should continue to observe best practices for cybersecurity. The FDIC has issued guidance to assist consumers in protecting themselves from cyber-attacks .

About NASAA:



Formed in 1919, NASAA is a nonprofit association of state, provincial and territorial securities regulators in the United States, Canada and Mexico. NASAA has 67 members, including the securities regulators in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands with a shared mission of protecting investors from fraud and abuse. For more information, visit: www.nasaa.org.

SOURCE North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA)
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Education nonprofit Gradient Learning today released results from a national survey indicating that teachers believe in the value of 1:1 mentoring for students. Conducted in partnership with Project Tomorrow, the Gradient Learning Poll surveyed 1,418 teachers across the country to better understand their views on the state of mentoring in K-12.

Social and emotional well-being is a top priority for educators, families, and caregivers. A recent Speak Up survey found that two-thirds of parents with school-aged children are concerned about their child's emotional well-being as a result of COVID-driven disruptions.

"We have found as educators that the relationships must come first, and kids are not going to learn if we don't have an established relationship with them," said Heather Brown, Assistant Principal at Royal Spring Middle School in Georgetown, Kentucky. "Kids want to be here if they have a meaningful relationship with somebody. It improves student learning and it's a way for teachers to get to know their studentswe need it now more than ever."

Other key findings from the Gradient Learning Poll: The Power of Mentoring :

88% of teachers said one-on-one mentoring provides value to their students

82% said mentoring time with their students results in positive changes in academic performance

83% shared that mentoring is helping students learn to succeed on their own

As one teacher from Texas shared, "I like getting to know my students as humans rather than just as students. I enjoy being a mentor and seeing them grow and succeed over the year."

About Gradient Learning

As a nonprofit organization led by educators, Gradient Learning is a trusted partnerto communities, schools, educatorsthat creates captivating solutions to meet the holistic needs of every child while fostering success for all. We are empowering an underpowered educational system to work for students of today and tomorrow. Our offerings include the Summit Learning programa research-based approach to education designed to drive student engagement, meaningful learning, and strong student-teacher relationshipsand Along .

SOURCE Gradient Learning
A decline in telehealth utilization was seen in all regions in October but the Northeast, where telehealth utilization remained stable at 4.8 percent of medical claim lines. The greatest decline, 11.4 percent, occurred in the South.

From September to October 2021, mental health conditions, which remained the top-ranking telehealth diagnosis nationally and in every region, increased in percentage share of all telehealth claim lines nationally (by 1.5 percent) and in every region. Similarly, the procedure code CPT2 90837, 60-minute psychotherapy, increased as a share of all telehealth claim lines nationally and in every region by about one percent, while remaining the top-ranking procedure code nationally and in every region.

In October 2021, COVID-19 dropped out of the top five telehealth diagnoses in the Midwest, the only region where it had ranked in the top five in September. As a result, COVID-19 was no longer in the top five telehealth diagnoses nationally or in any region in October. In that same month, substance use disorders joined the top five at number four in the Midwest. The Midwest joined the Northeast in having that condition among its top five telehealth diagnoses.

In October 2021 in the South, encounter for examination joined the top five telehealth diagnoses at number three, while joint/soft tissue diseases and issues dropped out of the top five.

About the Monthly Telehealth Regional Tracker

Launched in May 2020 as a free service, the Monthly Telehealth Regional Tracker uses FAIR Health data to track how telehealth is evolving from month to month. An interactive map of the four US census regions allows the user to view an infographic on telehealth in a specific month in the nation as a whole or in individual regions. Each infographic shows month-to-month changes in volume of telehealth claim lines, top five telehealth procedure codes and top five telehealth diagnoses (or diagnostic categories), along with that month's top five granular diagnoses within the most common diagnostic category.

FAIR Health President Robin Gelburd stated: "As the COVID-19 pandemic and telehealth utilization continue to evolve, FAIR Health's Monthly Telehealth Regional Tracker serves as a window into that evolution. This is one of the many ways we pursue our healthcare transparency mission."

For the Monthly Telehealth Regional Tracker, click here.

Follow us on Twitter @FAIRHealth

About FAIR Health

FAIR Health is a national, independent nonprofit organization that qualifies as a public charity under section 501(c)(3) of the federal tax code. It is dedicated to bringing transparency to healthcare costs and health insurance information through data products, consumer resources and health systems research support. FAIR Health possesses the nation's largest collection of private healthcare claims data, which includes over 35 billion claim records and is growing at a rate of over 2 billion claim records a year. FAIR Health licenses its privately billed data and data productsincluding benchmark modules, data visualizations, custom analytics and market indicesto commercial insurers and self-insurers, employers, providers, hospitals and healthcare systems, government agencies, researchers and others. Certified by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as a national Qualified Entity, FAIR Health also receives data representing the experience of all individuals enrolled in traditional Medicare Parts A, B and D; FAIR Health includes among the private claims data in its database, data on Medicare Advantage enrollees. FAIR Health can produce insightful analytic reports and data products based on combined Medicare and commercial claims data for government, providers, payors and other authorized users. FAIR Health's systems for processing and storing protected health information have earned HITRUST CSF certification and achieved AICPA SOC 2 compliance by meeting the rigorous data security requirements of these standards. As a testament to the reliability and objectivity of FAIR Health data, the data have been incorporated in statutes and regulations around the country and designated as the official, neutral data source for a variety of state health programs, including workers' compensation and personal injury protection (PIP) programs. FAIR Health data serve as an official reference point in support of certain state balance billing laws that protect consumers against bills for surprise out-of-network and emergency services. FAIR Health also uses its database to power a free consumer website available in English and Spanish, which enables consumers to estimate and plan for their healthcare expenditures and offers a rich educational platform on health insurance. An English/Spanish mobile app offers the same educational platform in a concise format and links to the cost estimation tools. The website has been honored by the White House Summit on Smart Disclosure, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), URAC, the eHealthcare Leadership Awards, appPicker, Employee Benefit News and Kiplinger's Personal Finance. FAIR Health also is named a top resource for patients in Dr. Marty Makary's book The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Careand How to Fix It and Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal's book An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back. For more information on FAIR Health, visit fairhealth.org.

Contact:

Rachel Kent

Senior Director of Marketing, Outreach and Communications

FAIR Health

646-396-0795

[email protected]

1 A claim line is an individual service or procedure listed on an insurance claim.

2 CPT  2021 American Medical Association (AMA). All rights reserved.

SOURCE FAIR Health
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Skincare products are a hot-button issue for many modern, informed consumers. As the information age has progressed, a growing amount of data has revealed the harm caused by the chemical compounds and other nasty ingredients that are pumped into various cosmetic and health-based topical products.

It's an issue that lies at the heart of everything that Natralus Australia does. The indie beauty brand operates in the Land Down Under where it has developed a line of Australian-made skincare products that focus on using natural and organic ingredients to deliver effective results to those who need them.

The family-owned business has a long history of helping others in the pharmaceutical and health and wellness worlds. Natralus Australia CEO John Rowe remembers hearing vivid stories of how his grandfather helped others as a respected chemist practicing retail pharmacy in Adelaide from the 1920s onward.

"At one point, Grandfather Rowe got a prescription from a doctor that just said 'ADT' on it," Rowe reminisces. He goes on to explain that the "code" stood for "any damn thing," indicating that the customer's doctor had no idea what the solution was to the patient's problem. Rather than falling in line and giving her a placebo, Grandfather Rowe deliberately created something that he thought would solve her problem. "Sure enough, she came back and said she needed more," Rowe says, adding that, "She said she had never felt so good in 20 years."

Rowe has brought this century-old family tradition of empathy and problem solving into Natralus Australia. Efficacy and real-world solutions continue to remain at the heart of Rowe's flourishing Adelaide enterprise. "For ourselves, we use the product. It has a 'from our family to yours' approach," the CEO explains, adding that, "If I don't use it myself or my family, I'm not going to give it to anybody else."

This mindset has infused all of Natralus Australia's skincare products with a creative energy that leads to tangible benefits. This starts with the company's use of natural, organic, chemical-free ingredients. These include a variety of plant-based superfood active ingredients sourced from many of Mother Nature's finest elements, such as Pawpaw (Carica papaya), Shea butter, and Calendula.

In addition, everything that Natralus sets out to create must lead to real results. As Rowe says, "Everything has to have a purpose." This combination of natural ingredients and purposeful solutions has fueled Natralus' impressive growth  both in Australia as well as via its recent entry into the U.S. There's no end to the number of skincare solutions out there. And yet, Natralus Australia has managed to stand out as one of the few companies that offers genuine, ethical, real-world solutions designed "from our family to yours."

About Natralus Australia: Indie beauty brand Natralus Australia was established in 2010 and operates out of Adelaide, Australia. The company focuses on empowering women and parents to use a more natural approach throughout their skincare and wellness activities for both themselves and their families. Learn more about Natralus at natralus.com.au .

Please direct inquiries to:

Warner Procter

(954) 714-4663

[email protected]

SOURCE Natralus
A 6-year-old boy was forced into a freezing shower as a punishment by his mother and siblings, then dumped in an abandoned building and left to die, according to prosecutors.

Damari Perry was found dead Friday night in Gary, Ind., two days after his mom, Jannie, and brother reported him missing, according to the Lake County States Attorneys Office.

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The relatives initially told police that Damari might be missing in Skokie, Ill., but a search there contradicted their story and investigators moved instead to his home in North Chicago.

Eventually, the investigation and interviews with witnesses pointed to Jannie and two of Damaris brothers, 20-year-old Jeremiah and a minor who has not been publicly identified. All three were arrested Friday night.

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Damari Perry was found dead Friday. (Chicago Police Dept.)

In court Sunday, prosecutors laid out a horrifying story of punishment gone wrong, alleging that one of Damaris family members had forced him into the shower on Dec. 29 after he misbehaved, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Damari began vomiting and lost consciousness, but no one sought medical help.

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

Instead, according to prosecutors, they let Damari die and then dumped his body at an abandoned building in Gary.

A cause of death is awaiting an autopsy.

Our hearts ache over the murder of 6-year-old Damari Perry. We would not have reached the awful truth of this case without the work of the FBI, the North Chicago Police Department, and the investigators and staff at the Lake County Childrens Advocacy Center, Lake County States Attorney Eric Rinehart said in a statement.

Prosecutors, investigators, and victim support professionals worked late into the night and into the early morning to make sure we understood this tragic crime now, because of their rigorous and detailed investigation, we will be able to bring Damaris killers to justice in a courtroom.

Jannie Perry, 38, has been charged with first-degree murder, concealment of a homicidal death and obstructing justice.

Jeremiah Perry was charged with aggravated battery causing great bodily harm to a child under 12, concealing a homicidal death and obstructing justice. He is being held on a $3 million bond.

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The second sibling faces charges in Lake Countys Juvenile Court.
DURHAM, N.C, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- John Snyder, CEO of Net Friends, Inc., in Durham, NC, was recently invited to join the National Small Business Association (NSBA) Leadership Council. NSBA is a nonpartisan council and the nation's oldest small-business advocacy organization. John Snyder plans to channel his leadership in the small-business community to promote the interests of small business with policymakers in Washington, D.C.

NSBA is actively building a nationwide network of small business leaders who regularly interact with their congressional representatives. As a member of the Leadership Council, Snyder intends to advocate for laws to improve cybersecurity and address supply chain issues. His goal is to ensure that lawmakers consider the needs of small businesses during key debates and while drafting federal laws and regulatory policies.

John Snyder is also looking to start conversations with other small business owners in the technology sector. The goal of these peer-to-peer conversations will be to discover the concerns and top priorities he can champion at NSBA events and with our policymakers in Washington.

"I joined the NSBA to advocate for concerns that impact small businesses like Net Friends," stated Snyder. "By influencing laws and regulations that intersect with technology, finance, procurement, and staffing, I can make sure that challenges unique to small business are fully understood and considered by Congress."

"I am proud to have John Snyder as part of our Leadership Council," stated NSBA President and CEO Todd McCracken. "He came to us highly recommended, and I look forward to our coordinated efforts for years to come."

For more on the NSBA Leadership Council, please visit www.nsba.biz

About Net Friends

Net Friends provides comprehensive managed IT services, cybersecurity services, IT staffing, and managed infrastructure services to businesses and organizations in North Carolina and across the U.S. We are your technology partners, delivering reliable, flexible, and effective technical expertise and solutions that have fueled our clients' success for 25 years. We believe in people, and we love to see our customers and community thrive. Learn more at www.netfriends.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

Media Contact:

Neelesh Patel

President, Net Friends

(919) 680-3763

[email protected]

SOURCE Net Friends
Dr. Agadjanyan said, "The development of a safe and immunogenic vaccine targeting all forms of pathological -Synuclein is IMM's goal. Importantly, our most effective vaccine, PV-1950, generated strong antibody production, reducing pathological -Synuclein and improving motor deficits in a mouse model of disease is ready to be tested in preventive clinical trials". He continued, "The PV-1950 has two versions  one based on DNA and one on recombinant protein. Complementary prime-boost immunization with heterologous DNA and protein vaccines is an alternative and promising approach to elicit greater antibody responses."

PD is the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disorder of aging that affects both motor and cognitive function. The institute looks to the vaccine-based preventative treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as PD, DLB, and AD. An immunogenic vaccine could be the most effective way to block/inhibit the aggregation of toxic -Synuclein protein from the accumulation and spreading in the brains and halt or delay the disease, said IMM.

"-Synuclein is a neuronal protein that is linked genetically and neuropathologically to various -synucleopathies, including Parkinson's disease (PD). Once pathology begins, it becomes virtually impossible to stop it, so using MultiTEP platform-based vaccine from IMM Nuravax want to halt or delay the disease in people at risk of -synucleopathies," said Roman Kniazev.

About the Institute for Molecular Medicine (IMM):

IMM is a non-profit organization with the mission to contribute to the understanding of and the prevention and cure of catastrophic human chronic diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, cancer, fatigue illness, etc. These goals are accomplished through innovative basic and translational research programs.

About Nuravax, Inc.

Nuravax aims to create a new segment in the market for the preventive treatment of AD and PD. This segment requires the combination of safe and highly immunogenic preventive vaccines for preclinical PD/DLB and AD people based on a set of novel non-invasive and accurate disease biomarkers. The company estimates the size of this market in the United States as ~40 million preclinical AD people at risk of disease.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that are often identified by the words "may", "might", "believes", "thinks", "anticipates", "plans", "expects", "intends" or other similar expressions. In addition, expressions of our strategies, intentions, or plans are also forward-looking statements. Although forward-looking statements contained herein are based upon what Nuravax and IMM believe are reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. IMM and Nuravax undertake no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change except as required by applicable securities laws. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

SOURCE Institute for Molecular Medicine
TOMS RIVER, N.J., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Ocean County Prosecutor's Office is increasing its commitment to fighting the statewide opioid epidemic by teaming with the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey (PDFNJ) to provide free opioid prescribing education to healthcare providers within the county.

The Prosecutor's Office will be awarding 500 scholarships for Ocean County prescribers to participate in PDFNJ's continuing education webinar, "Do No Harm: Exploring Strategies for Safer Prescribing of Opioids." Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley Billhimer and his office are the first prosecutor's office in New Jersey to collaborate on providing continued education to local prescribers.

The webinar features medical, law enforcement and legal experts discussing the impact of the opioid epidemic on New Jersey and providing information on how to safely and responsibly prescribe opioids to patients. It also fulfills New Jersey's requirement that prescribers receive one hour of continuing education requirement concerning prescription opioids to renew their licenses.

"From its innovative recovery programs to engaging the business community, the Prosecutor Billhimer and the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office have emerged as a leader in the fight against the opioid epidemic," PDFNJ Executive Director Angelo Valente said. "Now, by making prescriber education more accessible to providers in the county, the office is providing a vital prevention service that will positively impact county residents."

"The Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey has been a trusted ally in our ongoing battle against opioid abuse," Billhimer said. "We are always looking for opportunities to leverage our resources when it comes to opioid education and substance abuse prevention. This unique approach, providing continuing medical education to prescribers is a natural intersection for law enforcement and the medical community. This collaborative approach is essential in our seemingly never-ending battle against opioid abuse."

In June 2019, PDFNJ and Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey (BCBSNJ) launched the webinar, which has provided information vital to responsible prescribing practices that keep patients safe from opioid misuse and addiction. The knowledge from the course has benefitted an estimated 2.6 million patients.

The webinar is specifically tailored for healthcare professionals including doctors of medicine, doctors of osteopathic medicine, dentists, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, residents, fellows and medical students. The accredited curriculum is accessible through the website, www.KnockOutOpioidAbuse.DrugFreeNJ.org/NJSafeRx.

SOURCE Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey
SHANGHAI, Jan. 9, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- OneConnect Financial Technology Co., Ltd. (NYSE: OCFT) ("OneConnect"), a leading technology-as-a-service platform for financial institutions has today announced it has entered into a strategic partnership with Chengfang Financial Technology Co. Ltd., (abbreviated as "Chengfang Financial Technology"), a financial technology company established by the People's Bank of China ("PBOC"). Working with shared principles of equal collaboration, joint development, honesty and trustworthiness, both parties will work together to address common pain points in the financial industry, deliver technological innovations, and enhance data processing and governance.

Under the agreement, OneConnect and Chengfang Financial Technology will harness cutting-edge technologies -- including AI, cloud computing and big data -- to explore new applications for data privacy technology in bank surveillance systems, promote the introduction and sharing of new data standards, and identify the financial data collaboration and circulation models needed by businesses to meet the requirements for secure cloud computing. In addition, the two parties will carry out research and development in areas such as secure computing technology, blockchain, and graph data; as well as nurture and cultivate new FinTech talents for the future.

"This partnership with Chengfang Financial Technology is a significant step forward for OneConnect. China's digital banking sector has continuously remained at the forefront of digital transformation, and technology is at the core of its integrity and innovation. As a FinTech B2B business, OneConnect upholds its responsibility to promote the development of the financial services sector. Together with Chengfang Financial Technology, we will continue to adhere to our ongoing mission: to develop and empower the industry with our unique combination of professional expertise and technology, in order to build a new way forward for digital banking," said Wangchun Ye, Chairman of OneConnect.

A subsidiary of PBOC, Chengfang Financial Technology is entrusted with the construction, operation, and maintenance of the digital banking system for China's central bank. The company performs resource scheduling and operation management for PBOC's network and data centers, and operates its data transfer management platform to provide the entire system with services ranging from network communications and infrastructure to systems maintenance and data transfer. Its partnership with OneConnect promises to accelerate the digitalization of China's banking sector, and cements OneConnect's position as a leader in digital financial development.

As the world's leading technology-as-a-service platform for financial institutions, OneConnect harnesses cutting-edge technologies to improve efficiency and services for banks, government agencies and exchanges, while also reducing costs and minimizing risk. OneConnect helps providers accelerate digital transformation across four key pillars: the construction of a digital ecosystem, the cultivation of green finance, the integration of the Greater Bay Area, and the continued development of the FinTech sector.

In addition to its partnership with Chengfang Financial Technology, OneConnect has established strategic alliances with the China Securities Regulatory Commission's Technology Supervisory Bureau, Insurance Asset Management Association of China, and China Insurance Asset Registration and Trading System Co., Ltd. The company has also successfully implemented major FinTech projects around the world, including the Hong Kong Stock Exchange's FINI IPO settlement platform, Singapore Stock Exchange's ESG platform, a corporate financing platform for small to medium-sized enterprises in the Guangdong province, Hong Kong's trade finance linkage platform, Guangxi Province's cross-border digital finance platform, the Hainan Provincial Financial Supervisory Bureau's smart integrated financial services platform, and more.

OneConnect has also been aggressively exploring and leading the development of privacy computing in recent years, leveraging its advantages in privacy computing technology and cooperation practices. The company has won China Merchants Bank's bid for the "Privacy Computing Platform Interoperability" project, and the two companies will begin working together closely to build China's first multi-party cross-heterogeneous privacy computing platform. The project will be applied to financial scenarios such as financial risk control, anti-fraud, and blacklist query. By collaborating on this platform, both parties will jointly activate the full potential of big data and boost customer business value on the basis of meeting regulatory data privacy protection regulations.

Looking ahead, OneConnect plans to continue exploring new partnerships with domestic and foreign organizations, government agencies and financial exchanges; strengthen its technological innovation and IP protection; and improve its R&D capabilities in technology in order to accelerate the digitalization of the global financial services sector.

SOURCE OneConnect
John Hope Bryant lauded for improving the lives of Georgians through financial literacy and economic inclusion in every corner of the Peach State. Tweet this

John Hope Bryant is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Atlanta-based Operation HOPE, Inc., a leading national non-profit dedicated to financial literacy and economic empowerment. Operation HOPE served over four million people and has directed billions in economic activity into disenfranchised communities.

Over three decades ago, Bryant founded Bryant Group Ventures, for which The Promise Homes Company is now its largest division. Since then, Promise Homes has grown to become one of the largest minority-controlled owners of institutional-quality, single-family residential rental property in the US with a focus on working and middle-class communities. Bryant is also a bestselling author of books on economics and leadership.

Additionally, Bryant served as a member of the President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy under President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. As a champion for financial wellness and economic equity, he has also advised President Bill Clinton. At Bryant's recommendation, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew renamed the former U.S. Treasury Annex Building the Freedman's Bank Building, which was established by President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, to help develop newly freed African Americans as they endeavored to become financially stable.

"As I work to move America from civil rights to silver rights, I know Georgia is the birthplace of many movements that have changed the lives of the underserved. At Operation HOPE, we do not take that legacy lightly," said John Hope Bryant. "I am honored to be listed among this notable group of changemakers and follow in the footsteps of those who have made our home statenotably the city of Atlanta one of the greatest places in the world. Our work here is just beginning."

About Operation HOPE, Inc.

Since 1992, Operation HOPE has been moving America from civil rights to "silver rights" with the mission of making free enterprise and capitalism work for the underserveddisrupting poverty for millions of low and moderate-income youth and adults across the nation. Through its community uplift model, HOPE Inside, which received the 2016 Innovator of the Year recognition by American Banker magazine, Operation HOPE has served more than 4 million individuals and directed more than $3.2 billion in economic activity into disenfranchised communitiesturning check-cashing customers into banking customers, renters into homeowners, small business dreamers into small business owners, minimum wage workers into living wage consumers, and uncertain disaster victims into financially empowered disaster survivors. Project 5117 is our multi-year four-pronged approach to combating economic inequality that aims to improve financial literacy, increase business role models and business internships for youth in underserved communities, and stabilize the American dream by boosting FICO scores. Operation HOPE recently received its sixth consecutive 4-star charity rating for fiscal management and commitment to transparency and accountability by the prestigious non-profit evaluator, Charity Navigator. For more information, visit, OperationHOPE.org . Join the conversation on Twitter , Facebook and Instagram .

Media Contacts:

Lalohni Campbell, Operation HOPE

404-593-7145

[email protected]

SOURCE Operation HOPE, Inc.
VANCOUVER, BC, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Orea Mining Corp. ("Orea") (TSX: OREA) (OTCQX: OREAF) (FSE: 3CG) reports that the Supreme Court of France (Conseil d'Etat) has denied a petition by an NGO to join the French Government's appeal against the renewal of the 5-million-ounce Montagne d'Or Gold Deposit mining titles, located in French Guiana, France, owned 44.99% by Orea and 55.01% by Nord Gold plc (the "JV").

France Nature Environnement ("FNE"), has been the principal and leading NGO opponent of the Montagne d'Or gold project. The Supreme Court decision is final and cannot be appealed.

Orea and the JV are awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court on whether it will admit and hear a final appeal by the French Government. On July 16, 2021, the Court of Appeal in Bordeaux rejected the French Government's appeal and its request for a stay of execution of the initial court rulings of December 24, 2020, in favor of Orea and the JV.

If the mining titles are renewed, Montagne d'Or will be subject to various regulatory requirements prior to proceeding with the construction and operation of a mine, which include but are not limited to, the grant of mining and environmental authorizations and construction permits by the State.

Additional updates will be provided by Orea when available.

About Montagne d'Or

Montagne d'Or is a permitting-stage open pit gold deposit that hosts Measured Mineral Resources of 10.3 Mt at 1.804 g/t gold (600,000 oz), Indicated Mineral Resources of 74.8 Mt at 1.350 g/t gold (3.25 Moz) and additional Inferred Mineral Resources of 20.2 Mt at 1.48 g/t gold (960,000 oz), prepared in accordance with the requirements of National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"). The Mineral Resources are confined within a pit shell defined by a gold price of US$1,300/oz and a cut-off grade of 0.4 g/t gold. Mineral Reserves have also been defined with Proven Mineral Reserves of 8.25 Mt at 1.99 g/t gold (530,000 oz) and Probable Mineral Reserves of 45.87 Mt at 1.50 g/t gold (2.2 Moz). The Proven and Probable Mineral Reserves were estimated using a gold price of US$1,200 per ounce at varied cut-off grades from 0.552 to 0.665 g/t gold, dependent on lithological rock types, economics and estimated metallurgical recovery. Montagne d'Or ore can be readily processed to recover the contained gold and silver values using unit operations considered standard to the industry. For more information, see Orea's news release titled "Columbus Gold Announces Positive Bankable Feasibility Study for Montagne d'Or Gold Project, French Guiana" dated March 20, 2017 and filed on SEDAR and the technical report prepared in accordance with the requirements of NI 43-101 titled "NI 43-101 Technical Report, Bankable Feasibility Study - Montagne d'Or Project, French Guiana" by SRK Consulting for Columbus Gold (now Orea Mining) and Nordgold with an Effective Date of March 6, 2017, and a report date of April 28, 2017, which was filed on SEDAR on April 28, 2017.

Qualified Person

Rock Lefrancois, President & Chief Executive Officer of Orea and Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed this news release and is responsible for the technical information reported herein, including verification of the data disclosed.

About Orea Mining Corp.

Orea is a leading gold exploration and development company operating in a prospective and underexplored segment of the Guiana Shield, South America. Its mission is to develop gold deposits with a reduced environmental footprint using innovative technologies, upholding the highest international standards for responsible mining. In French Guiana, Orea holds a major interest in the world-class Montagne d'Or mine development project and is also advancing the Maripa and Suriname gold exploration projects.

For more about Orea visit the company's website at www.oreamining.com

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD:

Rock Lefrancois

President & CEO

Forward-looking statements

Certain statements made herein, including statements relating to matters that are not historical facts and statements of the Company's beliefs, intentions and expectations about developments, results and events which will or may occur in the future, constitute "forward looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation ("forward-looking statements"). Forward-looking statements relate to future events or future performance, reflect current expectations or beliefs regarding future events and are typically identified by words such as "anticipate", "could", "should", "expect", "seek", "may", "intend", "likely", "budget", "plan", "estimate", continue", "forecast", "believe", "predict", "potential", "target", "would", "might", "will", and similar words, expressions or phrases (including negative variations) suggesting future outcomes or statements regarding an outlook. These include, but are not limited to, statements and information regarding: the Company's plans to construct and develop the Montagne d'Or project, including anticipated timing thereof; the timing, processes, outcome and other matters related to the renewal of the Montagne d'Or concessions, including the appeal from the French Government; the satisfaction of regulatory requirements in respect of the permitting, construction and operation of the Montagne d'Or project, including but not limited to, the submission and processing of mine permit applications, the timing thereof and the timing of completion of environmental and engineering studies; the Company's ability to renew the concessions for the Montagne d'Or project and to comply with the conditions thereof; economic analysis for the Montagne d'Or project and related exploration objectives and plans; the conversion of mineral resources into mineral reserves and the conversion of inferred mineral resources into higher resource classification categories; the Company's objective of become an emerging gold producer; the acquisition of exploration projects including terms of acquisition, exploration or development plans, intentions to acquire additional exploration or development interests and the implications thereof; the production capacity and potential of future plant and equipment; future exploration and mine plans, objectives and expectations and corporate planning of the Company, future studies and environmental impact statements and the timetable for completion and content thereof and statements as to management's expectations with respect to, among other things, the matters and activities contemplated in this news release.

Forward-looking statements are made based upon certain assumptions and other important factors that, if untrue, could cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Such assumptions and analyses are made by the Company's management in light of their experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors management believes are reasonable and appropriate in the circumstances. All assumptions and analyses are those of the Company's. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate. Forward-looking statements are based on numerous assumptions regarding present and future business strategies, local and global economic conditions, and the environment in which the Company will operate in the future, including compliance by the Company with regulatory and permitting requirements applicable in French Guiana, the sufficiency of Company's working capital; the Company's ability to secure additional funding for the continued exploration and development of its properties; the price of gold and other metals; and the Company's ability to retain key personnel. You are hence cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

Certain important factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include, among others, political and economic risks in France, political and economic risks in French Guiana, risks related to the renewal applications for the Concessions and the possible outcomes thereof; possible negative outcomes of any appeals from the decision of the Administrative Court of Cayenne in French Guiana; regulatory risk including but not limited to unforeseen changes in regulatory requirements, the Company's ability to enforce its contractual and other legal rights to explore and exploit its properties, risks related to exploration and development, permitting and licensing risk, the estimation of mineral resources and mineral reserves and related interpretations and assumptions, future profitability of the Company, the ability to obtain additional financing on a timely basis, the price of gold and marketability thereof, government regulations including with respect to taxes, royalties, land tenure and land use, title to the Company's properties, currency exchange rates and fluctuations, environmental risks, dilution resulting from the issuance of additional securities of the Company, joint venture risks, reliance on Nord Gold plc as operator of the Montagne d'Or project, the availability of equipment, conflicts of interest, competition in the mining industry, uninsured risks, market fluctuations, global financial conditions, credit risk and risks arising from pandemics and epidemics such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. These statements, however, are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve numerous assumptions, inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, which contribute to the possibility that the predicted outcomes will not occur. Events or circumstances could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those estimated or projected and expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements are included in the "Risk Factors" section in Company's annual information form dated December 15, 2021 for the year ended September 30, 2021 ("AIF").

Readers are further cautioned that the list of factors enumerated in the "Risk Factors" section of the AIF that may affect future results is not exhaustive. When relying on the Company's forward-looking statements and information to make decisions with respect to the Company, investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and potential events. Furthermore, the forward-looking statements and information contained herein are made as of the date of this document and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update or to revise any of the included forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. The forward-looking statements and information contained herein are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

SOURCE Orea Mining Corp.
This is the first win for DDB Chicago following an agency transformation and number of new hires under the leadership of CEO Andrea Diquez, including CCO Rodrigo Jatene, CSO Milo Chao and Head of Business Leadership Sandra Alfaro.

DDB Chicago CEO Andrea Diquez said, "I am so happy to be adding Orkin to the portfolio, and I couldn't be prouder of the entire team. It has truly been a collaborative effort from the very beginning. Our foundation is in place, and we are well on our way to delivering on our goals as an agency, with some incredible clients."

DDB Chicago's remit is to deliver breakthrough creative and business solutions fuelled by data and deep insights, further solidifying Orkin as America's first name in pest control and driving memorability for the brand.

Orkin Vice President of Marketing Cam Glover said, "Andrea and the team at DDB Chicago truly understood the Orkin brand and our goals. Their great thinking, creative ideas and collaborative nature stood out from the rest. I am looking forward to building upon our already strong relationship."

ABOUT DDB WORLDWIDE

DDB Worldwide ( www.ddb.com ) is one of the world's largest and most influential advertising and marketing networks. DDB has been named 2021 Network of the Year by D&AD and ADC, as well as numerous times by the Cannes International Festival of Creativity and the industry's leading advertising publications and awards shows. WARC has listed DDB as one of the Top 3 Global Networks for 12 of the last 15 years. The network's clients include Molson Coors, Volkswagen, McDonald's, Unilever, Mars, Peloton, JetBlue, Johnson & Johnson, and the U.S. Army, among others. Founded in 1949, DDB is part of the Omnicom Group (NYSE: OMC) and consists of over 10,000 employees across 149 offices in over 63 countries, with its flagship office in New York, NY.

ABOUT OMNICOM

Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE  OMC) is a leading global marketing and corporate communications company. Omnicom's branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, digital and interactive marketing, direct and promotional marketing, public relations and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 70 countries.

CONTACT: Donna Tobin, Global Chief Marketing & Communications Officer; [email protected]

SOURCE DDB Chicago
"Our travelers are very optimistic about 2022," said Brian FitzGerald, Chief Marketing Officer of O.A.T. Tweet this

O.A.T. resumed travel in July 2021 and brought 11,000 travelers to more than 30 countries. In 2022, nearly 69,000 travelers have reserved travel with O.A.T., which typically offers travel to 85 countries.

O.A.T. Top 4 Travel Themes for 2022:

Solo surge  Never dreamt of traveling solo? 2022 could be your year to test the waters. Many people who put their dreams on hold because a friend or spouse couldn't join are no longer waiting. They are stepping out of their comfort zones and booking solo. Blame it on the pandemic and being cooped up for too long.



O.A.T. has seen a 17% uptick in the number of solo travelers since 2019. The company just added 2,000 more single spaces in 202292% of which have free single supplements.



Solo travelers -- the majority of whom are women with O.A.T. -- often find small group tours appealing because they meet and spend time with others easily when they want.

Small ships  Sailing with fewer people is attractive to travelers in 2022. At O.A.T., bookings for small ships in 2022 are up 10% compared to 2019. More than 14,000 travelers are scheduled to travel with O.A.T. through 2022.



Travelers are attracted to travel by small ship for the opportunity to visit more remote and smaller ports with smaller vessels. There is also the chance to mingle in small groups with locals in a less touristy way. That doesn't happen when hundreds of passengers disembark from a large ship.

Sustainable travel  "How can we travel more responsibly?" It's a many-faceted question that is gaining traction with travelers of all ages. Travelers' interest in environmental travel dovetails with initiatives such as the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism, which is spurring on the travel industry to track and improve travel's impact on the environment.



For some travelers, sustainable travel involves ecological conservation. For others, it is seeking out destinations where their travel dollars will have a positive impact on the local community  for example, benefitting its economic development.



Travelers are highly interested in O.A.T.'s Arctic Expedition: Untamed Norway & Svalbard and Ultimate Galapagos Exploration & Ecuador's Amazon Wilds , for example.

Longer trips  Some travelers want to make the most of the airfare. Others feel the urge to make up for lost time due to the pandemic. They want to feel truly immersed in a different culture and have more opportunities to engage with the locals. The result? Longer trips planned for 2022.



At O.A.T., 55% of solo travelers reserved for future travel have opted to arrive early before a trip or stay later after the tour concludes. Extending a trip by arriving early can help a traveler to acclimate before a tour begins. Staying later after the group departs allows time for a traveler to do some independent exploring and savor the experience a bit longer.

More than 87,000 travelers  nearly half of them solo travelers  currently have reservations with O.A.T. across 85 itineraries. With 2023 departures of many adventures already open, nearly 9,000 are looking ahead to traveling then.



O.A.T. provides travelers over 50 with impactful, intercultural experiences that help change people's lives. O.A.T. fosters an intimate and accessible experience, with groups limited to 16 travelers (average of 13) by land and 25 (average of 22) by sea.

For a free catalog or more information about O.A.T., please visit www.oattravel.com or call 1-800-955-1925.

CONTACT: Ann Shannon, [email protected], 617-346-6649

SOURCE Overseas Adventure Travel
LONDON, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Park Square Capital ("Park Square" or "the firm"), one of Europe's leading credit investment firms with approximately $10 billion in assets under management, today announces that Bonaccord Capital Partners ("Bonaccord"), a private equity firm focused on acquiring non-control equity interests in leading mid-size private markets sponsors, has invested in a non-voting, passive minority stake in the firm. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.

Bonaccord's investment marks a further step forward in the institutionalization of Park Square by aligning the team as substantial equity holders, creating a balance sheet to support the future growth of the firm, and enhancing its governance structures. The investment will have no impact on the day-to-day management or operations of Park Square and is non-voting, which means the firm's investment and decision-making processes will remain unchanged.

"We are delighted to welcome Bonaccord as a long-term strategic investment partner. Bonaccord's experience and track record of supporting leading alternative asset managers will be helpful to us as we continue to strategically build and scale our platform to better serve our limited partners," said Robin Doumar, Managing Partner of Park Square.

"We are thrilled to have the opportunity to partner with Park Square Capital in support of its institutionalization and long-term strategic initiatives. We believe that Park Square has built a leading platform among European private credit sponsors and is well-positioned for continued success." said Ajay Chitkara, Head of Bonaccord.

Park Square has experienced significant growth since its inception in 2004, with AUM increasing to over $10bn. It provides credit solutions to high-quality and stable companies across Europe and the United States and has invested more than $19bn in senior and subordinated debt. The firm has an experienced team of over 100 people based across London, New York, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Paris, Stockholm and Seoul.

Goldman Sachs acted as financial advisor and Kirkland & Ellis acted as legal advisor to Park Square. Fried Frank acted as legal advisor to Bonaccord on the transaction.

About Park Square

Park Square Capital is a leading private debt manager, providing senior debt, subordinated debt and mid-market direct loans to companies in Europe and the US.

Park Square provides financing for high-quality companies backed by leading private equity sponsors. The firm has a selective, long-term and flexible investment approach, aimed at delivering attractive risk-adjusted returns across the market cycle.

Park Square currently manages approximately $10bn of capital on behalf of its investors, which include global public and private pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, family offices and asset managers. The firm was founded in 2004 and remains fully independent. Park Square has over 100 staff, with offices in London, New York, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Paris, Stockholm and Seoul.

For more information, please visit www.parksquarecapital.com

About Bonaccord

Bonaccord focuses on making strategic minority investments in leading mid-sized alternative asset managers across private equity, private credit, real estate and real assets globally. Bonaccord's minority investments support the creation of long-term strategic value for these leading managers enhanced by leveraging Bonaccord's strategic development capabilities and broader global network. Bonaccord is a subsidiary of P10, Inc.

About P10

P10 is a leading multi-asset class private markets solutions provider in the alternative asset management industry. P10's mission is to provide its investors differentiated access to a broad set of investment solutions that address their diverse investment needs within private markets. As of September 30, 2021, P10 has a global investor base of over 2,400 investors across 46 states, 29 countries and six continents, which includes some of the world's largest pension funds, endowments, foundations, corporate pensions and financial institutions. Visit www.p10alts.com.

Media contacts

For Park Square enquires:

Greenbrook

Alex Jones / John Hamlin

[email protected]

+44 207 952 2000

For Bonaccord enquiries:

[email protected]

SOURCE Park Square Capital
Poseida announces President Mark Gergen to serve as CEO, effective 2/1. Eric Ostertag named Executive Chairman. $PSTX Tweet this

As Poseida's founder and CEO, Ostertag directed the Company's spin out in early 2015 from parent company Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals, Inc., a biotechnology company that commercialized gene editing technology in research applications. Ostertag also founded Transposagen, where he was CEO from 2003 to 2015. Ostertag earned his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Under his leadership, Poseida grew to over 250 employees, raised significant private capital and successfully completed an IPO in 2020. The Company has also built a significant global intellectual property portfolio; received FDA clearance on four Investigational New Drug (IND) applications for novel cell therapies, dosing over 100 patients in clinical trials; and established multiple collaborations, including the recently announced gene therapy collaboration with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited ("Takeda"), which has a potential total value of up to $3.6 billion.

"It is a privilege to take on the role of CEO and lead the organization as we continue our progress toward our mission to redefine cell and gene therapy. The partnership Eric and I have built in guiding the company will continue," said Mark Gergen, Poseida's President and Chief Business Officer. "I am very excited about 2022 and the opportunities we will have to differentiate our platforms in both cell and gene therapy. We are highly focused on getting to key inflection points on our solid tumor and allogeneic CAR-T programs as well as advancing our gene therapy efforts, including those associated with our recent collaboration with Takeda."

Gergen joined Poseida in February 2018, serving as Chief Business Officer and Chief Financial Officer before being appointed President and Chief Business Officer in July 2020. During his career in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, Gergen has provided strategic leadership to companies as they scale, grow, and execute on the promise of their technologies. Before joining Poseida, he held key leadership roles including that of Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Halozyme, Inc., Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Mirati Therapeutics, Inc. and as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He has also served in senior management positions at CardioNet Inc., Advanced Tissue Sciences, Inc., and Medtronic, Inc. Gergen received a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School and a B.A. in business administration from Minot State University in North Dakota.

Both Ostertag and Gergen will continue to serve as members of the Company's Board of Directors.

Business Update and 2022 Preview

Annual R&D Day

The Company will soon host its second annual R&D Day, scheduled for Wednesday, February 23, 2022. Dr. Ostertag will lead the event, featuring presentations highlighting the current product pipeline, advancements in early discovery and research programs, and detailing novel next generation approaches and technology applications. To register for the webcast, please visit the Investor Relations section of the Poseida website.

P-PSMA-101 Autologous CAR-T for Prostate Cancer

A Phase 1 trial evaluating P-PSMA-101, the Company's autologous CAR-T candidate for the treatment of metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) is ongoing. Initial clinical data was presented in late August 2021 at the CAR-TCR Summit demonstrating encouraging early results at low doses in this difficult to treat patient population with high unmet need. The Company will be presenting additional data during the ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium taking place February 17-19, 2022, in a poster titled, "Phase 1 study of P-PSMA-101 CAR-T cells in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC)."

P-BCMA-ALLO1 Allogeneic CAR-T for R/R Multiple Myeloma

The Phase 1 trial of P-BCMA-ALLO1, an allogeneic CAR-T product candidate for the treatment of relapsed refractory multiple myeloma, is currently initiating with a clinical data update expected later in the year. In addition to the continued product manufacturing at the current contract manufacturing organization, the Company is exploring a parallel path to enable manufacturing of P-BCMA-ALLO1 at its in-house GMP manufacturing pilot plant in San Diego, following successful manufacturing runs of the allogeneic CAR-T product candidate P-MUC1C-ALLO1.

P-MUC1C-ALLO1 Allogeneic CAR-T for Solid Tumors

The Company announced on December 20, 2021 that the IND submitted for the P-MUC1C-ALLO1 product candidate had been cleared by the FDA. The Phase 1 clinical trial start-up is underway and will evaluate P-MUC1C-ALLO1 in various solid tumors, including breast, ovarian, lung and colorectal cancers. P-MUC1C-ALLO1 is manufactured at the Company's in-house GMP manufacturing pilot plant in San Diego. Initial clinical data from P-MUC1C-ALLO1 is expected to be presented at a scientific meeting this year.

Dual P-CD19CD20-ALLO1 Allogeneic Car T for B-cell Malignancies

Due to the prioritization of the lead allogeneic programs and the focus on achieving associated milestones in 2022, the Company is shifting expectations for an IND filing of its first dual CAR-T program from the end of 2022 into 2023.

P-OTC-101 In Vivo Liver Directed Gene Therapy for OTC

The Company's leading internal gene therapy program, P-OTC-101, an in vivo liver-directed gene therapy for ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) deficiency, continues with IND enabling activities and evaluation of both a fully nanoparticle delivery approach as well as a hybrid nanoparticle/AAV approach. A decision of whether to pursue the fully nanoparticle or hybrid approach going forward is expected by mid-year.

Partnerships and Collaborations

The Company's research collaboration with Takeda focused on nonviral in vivo liver- and HSC- directed gene therapies is underway. The collaboration, announced in October 2021, provides validation of Poseida's genetic engineering technology and approach. In 2022, the Company will continue to evaluate and explore additional opportunities for collaboration and partnership enabled by the breadth and versatility of the piggyBac, Cas-CLOVER, nanoparticle and other technology platforms.

About Poseida Therapeutics, Inc.

Poseida Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to utilizing our proprietary genetic engineering platform technologies to create next generation cell and gene therapeutics with the capacity to cure. We have discovered and are developing a broad portfolio of product candidates in a variety of indications based on our core proprietary platforms, including our non-viral piggyBac DNA Delivery System, Cas-CLOVER Site-specific Gene Editing System and nanoparticle- and AAV-based gene delivery technologies. Our core platform technologies have utility, either alone or in combination, across many cell and gene therapeutic modalities and enable us to engineer our portfolio of product candidates that are designed to overcome the primary limitations of current generation cell and gene therapeutics. To learn more, visit www.poseida.com and connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Forward-Looking Statement

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. Such forward-looking statements include statements regarding, among other things, the potential benefits of Poseida's technology platforms and product candidates, Poseida's plans and strategy with respect to developing its technologies and product candidates, future roles and contributions of Poseida's executive officers, and anticipated timelines and milestones with respect to Poseida's development programs and manufacturing activities. Because such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based upon Poseida's current expectations and involve assumptions that may never materialize or may prove to be incorrect. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of various risks and uncertainties, which include, without limitation, risks and uncertainties associated with development and regulatory approval of novel product candidates in the biopharmaceutical industry and the other risks described in Poseida's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statement contained in this press release speak only as of the date on which they were made. Poseida undertakes no obligation to update such statements to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made, except as required by law.

SOURCE Poseida Therapeutics, Inc.
Comedian Bob Sagets cause of death remains a mystery.

An autopsy was performed this morning on Robert Lane Saget. Mr. Saget is a 65-year-old male, who was found unresponsive in his hotel room, said a statement from Orange County medical examiner Joshua Stephany.

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Saget was found in an Orlando, Fla., hotel room Sunday. He had performed a stand-up comedy act Saturday night in Jacksonville.

Bob Saget attends the Build Series to discuss "Benjamin" at Build Studio on April 23, 2019 in New York City. (Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images)

At this time, there is no evidence of drug use or foul play, the medical examiners office added. The cause and manner of death are pending further studies and investigation which may take up to 10-12 weeks to complete.

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More information is expected once the autopsy report has been finalized.

Our condolences go out to Mr. Sagets loved ones during this difficult time, the medical examiners office concluded.

The Orange County Sheriffs Office said Sunday that Saget had been found unresponsive at a Ritz-Carlton hotel. They, too, found no evidence of drug use or foul play.

There was no indication of trouble when Saget said after his Friday night show in Orlando that his new year was off to a solid start.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

A perfect first show of 2022!! he tweeted. That was the fastest Hour & 45 minutes ever.

He was equally upbeat following his final show on Saturday.

Im back in comedy like I was when I was 26, he tweeted. I guess Im finding my new voice and loving every moment of it.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 27 Bob Saget, beloved actor, host and stand-up comic, was found dead on Jan. 9, 2022. He was 65. Take a look back at life and career to remember America's funniest and sweetest sitcom dad. Pictured, Bob Saget performs at the "Boys Night Out" comedy benefit at The Laugh Factory hosted by talk radio host Tom Leykis on Oct. 11, 2001, in Hollywood, Calif. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the September 11 relief efforts. (Jason Kirk/Getty Images)

Sagets family became concerned when they couldnt reach him and contacted hotel staffers, according to a police report. People reports that his body was found by a hotel housekeeper. His unexpected death shattered the comedy world.

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Im shocked and saddened to learn that Bob Saget is gone, Billy Crystal tweeted. A great friend and one of the funniest and sweetest people I have ever known. My love to his beautiful family.

Jon Stewart called him just the funniest and the nicest in a tweet.

I know that people lose loved ones, good people, every day. No one gets a pass, Jason Alexander added. But the loss of Bob Saget hits deep. If you didnt know him, he was kind and dear and cared about people deeply. He was the definition of a good egg. Too soon he leaves.
Two new executives enhance PYA's capabilities and reach further into the Upper Midwest. Tweet this

Jane Jerzak has joined PYA as a Consulting Principal. Jerzak brings three decades of audit and healthcare consulting experience to her work with PYA healthcare clients in the areas of financial modeling, clinical data analytics, and strategic advisory support. Along with the PYA Business Intelligence and Managed Care service lines, she assists health systems, hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, and physician clinics to recognize appropriate reimbursement. As a recognized thought leader, she has authored articles on topics such as value-based care, strategic hospital analytics and pricing, clinical integration, population health, and more.

Deborah Biggs will also join PYA as a Principal and the Director of Academic Medicine Consulting Services. Biggs brings more than two decades of academic medicine experience to this role, having served as the chief operating officer at the University of Wisconsin (UW) and Central Michigan University (CMU). Her previous experience includes working as a founding team member of a new medical school (CMU) and working at three research-intensive universities (UW, University of Michigan, and University of North Carolina). She has extensive experience in governance models, healthcare regulatory compliance, mergers and acquisitions, strategic and financial planning, organizational and program development, policy and procedure development and implementation, and healthcare operations improvements.

Jerzak and Biggs are both located in Wisconsin, expanding PYA's reach in the Upper Midwest.

PYA also announces the promotion of Patrick Lewis to Principal. As a corporate accounting and financial executive, Lewis has nearly four decades of experience providing accounting and business advisory services. He oversees PYA's accounting services team, which provides financial statement compilation and preparation services to clients.

The following professionals have also been promoted: Aaron Newcomer, Consulting Manager; Tim Partridge, Audit & Assurance Manager; Brian Raabe, Consulting Manager; Laura Sharp, Audit & Assurance Manager; Dwight Tarwater, Consulting Manager; Colby Terry, Consulting Manager; Maddy Caruthers, Audit & Assurance Senior; and Debbie Underwood, Tax Senior.

About PYA

PYA assists clients in all 50 states from offices in Atlanta, Helena, Kansas City, Knoxville, Nashville, and Tampa. PYA was named one of America's Best Tax and Accounting Firms of 2022 by Forbes and is ranked among the Top 20 healthcare consulting firms in the U.S. by Modern Healthcare. PYA is also ranked by INSIDE Public Accounting as one of the Top 100 largest accounting firms in the U.S.

More at pyapc.com.

SOURCE PYA
MIAMI, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Ken Klein of QKapital Group is celebrating a landmark 20th anniversary as a successful and iconic leader in the real estate market in Florida. At the height of his career, he is now launching a new commercial real estate division with Berk Ocal. As a reflection of the real estate boom in the southern state, the focus on larger commercial projects will serve foreign national commercial investors and developers investing in American properties.

Ken Klein QKapital Group Commercial Division Berk Ocal QKapital Group Commercial Division

The company owned by QKapital partners Mauricio Ordonez, Gaston Schneider and David Hassan is a top business to lend to foreign national buyers to buy in America. Klein is now being honored for his legacy in the industry and work with the company.

"It's been 20 years in business and finance. And in that period of time, I had the opportunity of meeting a lot of interesting people and helping them capture their dreams in developing in the real estate arena," reflects Klein.

QKapital ranks among the top lending companies in Florida because of the dedication it has made to the business. With a network of more than 30 American and international banks, the future only paves a way for prosperous growth.

The businessman has a deep understanding of the power of international commercial real estate investments and what is destined to stand out in future markets. Klein has many creative ideas when it comes to business and how to have meetings with other potential dealmakers. He and his partners at QKapital, work together harmoniously at the mortgage lender firm in Florida.

QKapital has captured over $400 million in residential and commercial loans combined in the past year alone. Their expansion in the recent quarter is impressive with closing over $3 billion with over 1,900 global loans that include financing with Latin America, Asia, Europe, and North America.

What differentiates Klein and his company from other mortgage companies is that we care about the client. The boutique company is transparent throughout the entire process. They do work with traditional mortgages and banks like Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, but they also have other options. They can qualify the client from different angles and different avenues. That together helps them approve the loan with a dedicated team that works 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Currently, Klein has several exciting financing deals that are bringing high-end projects to the Miami area. Lucrative projects include the Serena Hotel Aventura, which is a new state-of-the-art, mixed-use project featuring retail and office spaces. He is also helping launch the groundbreaking Michael Krymchantowski Wynwood luxury hotel project, which the media has enthusiastically been discussing in headline news. And, this is just the beginning of more great things to happen.

As the businessman explains on his anniversary the grand hope that this grand growth will continue is on target. The evolution of finance has changed. It used to be that you had to go to one bank and get money in one way, and now a lot more involved and more possible ways to make dreams come true.

"There is no set format anymore," It's just amazing how many people out there are looking for money. The mortgage broker can give the individual choices when the bank will only take you down one road. Being a mortgage broker has become a hot profession and they can source various forms of money for the borrower to make key decisions."

For more information on QKapital please visit https://qkapital.com/

CONTACT:

Glo Creative

Michael Glovaski

[email protected]

786-623-3911

SOURCE QKapital Group
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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

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Contacts:

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SOURCE SpendEdge
NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Global law firm Ropes & Gray today announced that its industry-leading intellectual property and technology transactions practices are expanding again with the arrival of two leading lawyers: Edward H. Sadtler as partner in New York and Emily M. Karlberg (Lieberman) as counsel in San Francisco.

"Dealmaking shows no signs of slowing in 2022. Market-leading IP advisers like Edward and Emily are integral to help our clients understand and execute the complexities of the red hot tech market. Each has a strong, technical background and deep market knowledge that benefit our clients in their most challenging and complex tech deals. We are excited to welcome them to the firm," said David Djaha, managing partner.

Edward joins Ropes & Gray's 500-lawyer New York office as a partner in its intellectual property transactions and technology, media and telecommunications industry group. Ropes & Gray's global team is renowned for providing first-rate counsel to groundbreaking technology companies, and their investors, on transactional, regulatory, litigation and investigative matters.

With more than 20 years of experience representing leading technology companies and private equity firms, Edward has become an indispensable advisor for clients faced with complex legal challenges.

Edward has counseled clients on IP and technology aspects of M&A transactions and private equity investments, including many cross-border deals and matters involving unique transaction structures. He also serves as lead counsel on a wide range of strategic transactions, including, licensing and collaboration matters involving IP and technology in a wide range of industries. These industries include financial services, software, fintech, consumer brands, hospitality, media, energy, communications and health care.

In addition, Edward has guided fund managers and private equity firms on legal issues related to data strategies that include monetization of data, as well as cybersecurity and privacy issues. His experience also extends to providing IP advice in financings, securitizations, public offerings and restructurings.

Emily, who will be based in San Francisco, also has established a reputation for handling sophisticated transactions. Her practice is focused on IP and carve-out aspects of mergers and acquisitions, including complex business divisions, spin-offs, and joint ventures. In addition to conducting IP diligence, Emily also advises on licensing arrangements, services agreements, and other commercial agreements, both within the context of mergers and acquisitions and on a stand-alone basis.

Emily has also counseled emerging growth clients in IP and technology matters arising from entity formation, corporate partnerships and other strategic and complex transactions. She is a Certified Information Privacy Professional, and conducts privacy diligence in addition to IP diligence on transactions.

"Edward and Emily are leading technology lawyers joining a sophisticated team," said Ed Black, co-head of Ropes & Gray's global technology, media and telecommunications practice.

Black continued: "In 2021, Ropes & Gray guided complex and record-breaking technology transactions, including McAfee Corp.'s $14 billion sale, and the $40 billion SPAC merger and IPO of Southeast Asian super-app Grab. Edward and Emily are a perfect fit for the complex work we're doing in the field of global tech."

"Tech dealmaking is on a tear right now. To meet that demand, Ropes & Gray is further strengthening its deal teams. Edward and Emily are a perfect complement to our practice. They understand the most complex technology, M&A and IP matters," said Megan Baca co-head of Ropes & Gray's global IP transactions practice.

Said Melissa Rones, co-head of Ropes & Gray's IP transactions practice: "At a time when more and more corporate deals involve matters related to IP, which is where Edward and Emily specialize, we are very pleased that they have decided to join our team."

Edward said: "I'm excited to be a part of the continued growth of the firm's renowned IP and technology practice and feel privileged to be joining this remarkable team of attorneys. The deep industry experience across the firm's practice groups offers clients access to one of the best platforms for handling matters where IP and technology are critical."

"It's an exciting time to join Ropes & Gray, especially with the firm's announcement that it is adding a third California office," Emily said. "This is a premier firm serving leading clients in IP and M&A, and I am proud to be part of the team."

Ropes & Gray has announced the firm will open its 12th office, and third in California, in 2022, and that private equity partner Brandon Howald, based in Los Angeles, has joined the firm.

About Ropes & Gray's Technology, Media & Telecommunications Practice

Ropes & Gray's technology, media & telecommunications group consists of a multi-disciplinary team of attorneys with years of experience handling matters in the areas of technology transactions, M&A, data privacy and cybersecurity, intellectual property, finance, fintech, capital markets, antitrust, regulatory and tax. The firm advises TMT clients across the full gamut of subsectors including automotive and aeronautical, consumer technology, energy technology, fintech, AI, big data, gaming, hardware, semiconductors, software, internet and e-commerce, digital health and telecommunications. The award-winning TMT practice is regularly ranked among the world's leading practices by high-profile publications such as U.S. News & World Report, Legal 500 and Chambers USA.

About Ropes & Gray

Ropes & Gray is a preeminent global law firm with approximately 1,600 lawyers and legal professionals serving clients in major centers of business, finance, technology and government. The firm has offices in New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo and Seoul, and has consistently been recognized for its leading practices in many areas, including private equity, M&A, finance, asset management, real estate, tax, antitrust, life sciences, health care, intellectual property, litigation and enforcement, data, and business restructuring.

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SOURCE Ropes & Gray
NEW YORK, Jan. 9, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --

WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, reminds purchasers of the securities of Lightspeed Commerce Inc. f/k/a Lightspeed POS Inc. (NYSE: LSPD) between September 11, 2020 and November 3, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period"), of the important January 18, 2022 lead plaintiff deadline.

SO WHAT: If you purchased Lightspeed securities during the Class Period you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement.

WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the Lightspeed class action, go to http://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-register-2166.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. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than January 18, 2022. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation.

WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified counsel with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, firms issuing notices do not have comparable experience, resources, or any meaningful peer recognition. Many of these firms do not actually litigate securities class actions. Be wise in selecting counsel. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. Rosen Law Firm has achieved the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company. Rosen Law Firm was Ranked No. 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The firm has been ranked in the top 4 each year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the firm secured over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs' Bar. Many of the firm's attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers.

DETAILS OF THE CASE: According to the lawsuit, defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) Lightspeed had misrepresented the strength of its business by, among other things, overstating its customer count, gross transaction volume (GTV), and increase in Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), while concealing the Company's declining organic growth and business deterioration; (2) Lightspeed had overstated the benefits and value of the Company's various acquisitions; (3) accordingly, Lightspeed had overstated its financial position and prospects; and (4) as a result, the Company's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages.

To join the Lightspeed class action, go to http://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-register-2166.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.

No Class Has Been Certified. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. You may select counsel of your choice. You may also remain an absent class member and do nothing at this point. An investor's ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff.

Follow us for updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosen_firm or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rosenlawfirm/.

Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Contact Information:

Laurence Rosen, Esq.

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The Rosen Law Firm, P.A.

275 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor

New York, NY 10016

Tel: (212) 686-1060

Toll Free: (866) 767-3653

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SOURCE Rosen Law Firm, P.A.
Jon Ferrando, Chief Executive Officer and President of RVR stated, "The acquisition of Country Camper kicks off 2022 where we left off in 2021 with strong growth and momentum. We are excited to enter New England and serve customers in that region, it has attractive RV demographics. This gives us a strong platform for growth in the Northeast United States when combined with our existing stores where we already rank as the #1 dealer in New York."

"Country Camper has been operating in the New England market since 1996," said Raul Rodriguez, SVP Corporate Development for RVR. "We thank Layne, Cindy and Logan Gregoire for selecting us to acquire Country Camper. The stores will be re-branded under the RV One Superstores name and will be part of RVR's East Region under the direction of Don Strollo, East Region President."

"We had choices and there was no better partner to select to acquire Country Camper than RV Retailer," said Layne Gregoire. "They are true professionals and will provide exceptional growth opportunities for our associates and take our business to another level in the New England market."

"Country Camper RV primarily sells towable RVs with strong brands like Grand Design, Keystone, and Forest River Rockwood," said Don Strollo. "We will be adding key brands which is part of our strategy to drive growth. We are excited for the new store to open in Connecticut this spring along with driving substantial growth in the stores in Vermont and New Hampshire. I look forward to working with Logan Gregoire who will serve as the market leader for us in New England. We welcome all the team members of Country Camper to the RV Retailer family."

Country Camper is in Epsom, New Hampshire on the north side of US Highway 202/Franklin Pierce Highway just east of I-93 outside of Concord. The East Montpelier, VT store is located east of US Route 2 and east of Burlington. The Newtown, Connecticut location opens in Q2 of 2002 east of Danbury and centrally located in relation to Boston, MA and New York City, NY.

To learn more about Country Camper RV and RV Retailer, please visit: https://www.countrycamper.com/ or https://rvretailer.net/

About RV Retailer, LLC



RV Retailer, LLC is a leading recreational vehicle retail company in the United States with a focus on providing an outstanding experience for recreational vehicle customers in new and used sales, service and parts, and customer financial services. RV Retailer has 93 RV stores in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming. Regional store brands include: RV One Superstores, Motor Home Specialist, ExploreUSA, Sonny's Camp-N-Travel, Cousins RV, Camper Clinic, Lifestyle RVs, Family RV Group, Northgate RV, Tom's Camperland and Blue Dog RV, which sell a wide range of new and used RV brands with thousands of RVs in inventory.

RV Retailer is led by co-founders Jon Ferrando, Chief Executive Officer and President, and John Rizzo, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Jon Ferrando and John Rizzo were instrumental in building America's largest automotive retailer from start-up to over $20 billion in revenue. RV Retailer's leadership team has over 250 years of automotive and RV retail industry experience.

SOURCE RV Retailer, LLC
MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Council on American-Islamic Relations ("CAIR"), a powerful lobbying and advocacy organization which describes itself as a civil rights organization representing Muslim-Americans, has withdrawn the federal lawsuit it filed in May 2021 in the United States District Court in Minneapolis against its own former national Board member and employee over her public statements alleging sexual harassment and discrimination.

CAIR had accused defendant Lori Saroya, a nationally-respected civil rights advocate on behalf of Muslims, of defamation for statements she made about evidence that the organization had engaged in sexual harassment and discrimination and that it had deceived the public and donors about its fundraising practices. Ms. Saroya filed a lengthy response to this lawsuit which included exhibits, placing on the public record the evidence supporting each of the statements that she had made.

On January 7, 2022, CAIR notified the Court and Ms. Saroya that it was dropping all of its claims against her, dismissing them with prejudice.

Ms. Saroya, who had founded the Minnesota chapter of CAIR before being asked by CAIR to serve on its national board in 2015, resigned from the organization in May 2018. She is among a growing chorus of former CAIR personnel and other Muslim-Americans around the country who have spoken out about the conduct they've experienced and witnessed at CAIR. CAIR also sought a Court order prohibiting Ms. Saroya from speaking out about her concerns about sexual harassment, discrimination and fundraising practices at CAIR, and alleged that she had breached the confidentiality agreement that it required her to sign when she commenced her employment with CAIR.

Ms. Saroya said: "The reason I have refused to accede to CAIR's demand that I stay silent and that I have defended myself against this retaliatory lawsuit is this: I wanted to send a strong message that women will not be silenced. Those of us who have spoken up about CAIR intend to continue to do so, more vigorously than ever. Indeed, CAIR's unsuccessful lawsuit has inspired me, and others like me, to do more to amplify the voices of victims of sexual abuse, gender discrimination and sexual harassment within the CAIR network, and to help them get the justice, the accountability, and the healing that those victims deserve."

CAIR's withdrawal of its lawsuit against Ms. Saroya comes while her motions for Court orders requiring the organization to turn over documents and other evidence that it had been withholding were pending before the Court. CAIR's decision to drop its case comes before any of the sworn depositions of its officers and Board members about the subject matter of Ms. Saroya's statements had taken place.

"First and foremost, this is a victory for Ms. Saroya and those who, like her, have had the historic courage to challenge a powerful organization over issues of sexual harassment, sexual discrimination and retaliatory conduct. It sends a message that voices like that of Ms. Saroya can't easily be silenced, as CAIR obviously hoped to silence Ms. Saroya here. And it is a victory for the First Amendment, which exists precisely to protect all Americans against heavy-handed attempts to stifle criticism," said Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr attorney Jeff Robbins, who led Ms. Saroya's legal team.

Ms. Saroya's legal defense team consisted of national law firm Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr attorneys Jeff Robbins, Alain Baudry, Steven Kerbaugh, Joseph Lipchitz and Kelsey Marron. Mr. Robbins, Mr. Lipchitz and Ms. Marron practice in the firm's Boston office; Messrs. Baudry and Kerbaugh practice in the firm's Minneapolis, Minnesota office.

The case is CAIR Foundation, Inc., d/b/a Council on American-Islamic Relations, & CAIR v. Lori Saroya in the United States District Court District of Minnesota.

ABOUT SAUL EWING ARNSTEIN & LEHR

The 400-plus attorneys of Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr are dedicated to providing client-centric counsel to businesses throughout the United States and internationally from 16 offices stretching down the East Coast from Boston to Miami and extending into the Midwest by way of Chicago and Minneapolis. We work with well-known corporations, exciting start-ups and an array of closely held and privately held companies, as well as institutions of higher education, nonprofits and governmental entities. As a full-service law firm, we handle matters involving bankruptcy, business and finance, estates and trusts, litigation and real estate services. We also advise on intellectual property, immigration and foreign investment services. Energy, higher education, insurance and life sciences are among our core industries of focus.

SOURCE Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP
Capital delivers a true, configuration controlled, E/E system digital twin, supported by a comprehensive digital thread throughout the E/E system development, manufacturing and operational life cycle. Additionally, the open IT architecture and multi-domain integrations within Capital enable straightforward deployment into Airbus' Lean PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) environment and provides the backbone for E/E systems design and electrical harness manufacturing engineering across its multi-country development team.

E/E groups will work in a highly unified design environment that facilitates faster product development, optimized manufacturing of electrical systems, improved first-time-right electrical harness quality and smoother supply chain integration to generate architecturally-optimized design proposals, wiring and service documentation.

"Capital enables customers to establish digital continuity within the electrical domain to compress development cycle time and deliver significant cost reductions," stated Martin O'Brien, senior vice president of Siemens Integrated Electrical Systems business group. "This is a game-changer in an industry looking to recover quickly from unprecedented challenges. By realizing the benefits of a model-based development process, Capital helps world-class companies like Airbus reduce complexity, lower risk and boost overall productivity."

To learn more about the Capital solution, visit: www.siemens.com/capital

Siemens Digital Industries Software is driving transformation to enable a digital enterprise where engineering, manufacturing and electronics design meet tomorrow. The Xcelerator portfolio helps companies of all sizes create and leverage digital twins that provide organizations with new insights, opportunities and levels of automation to drive innovation. For more information on Siemens Digital Industries Software products and services, visit siemens.com/software or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Siemens Digital Industries Software  Where today meets tomorrow.

Siemens Digital Industries (DI) is an innovation leader in automation and digitalization. Closely collaborating with partners and customers, DI drives the digital transformation in the process and discrete industries. With its Digital Enterprise portfolio, DI provides companies of all sizes with an end-to-end set of products, solutions and services to integrate and digitalize the entire value chain. Optimized for the specific needs of each industry, DI's unique portfolio supports customers to achieve greater productivity and flexibility. DI is constantly adding innovations to its portfolio to integrate cutting-edge future technologies. Siemens Digital Industries has its global headquarters in Nuremberg, Germany, and has around 76,000 employees internationally.

Siemens AG (Berlin and Munich) is a technology company focused on industry, infrastructure, transport, and healthcare. From more resource-efficient factories, resilient supply chains, and smarter buildings and grids, to cleaner and more comfortable transportation as well as advanced healthcare, the company creates technology with purpose adding real value for customers. By combining the real and the digital worlds, Siemens empowers its customers to transform their industries and markets, helping them to transform the everyday for billions of people. Siemens also owns a majority stake in the publicly listed company Siemens Healthineers, a globally leading medical technology provider shaping the future of healthcare. In addition, Siemens holds a minority stake in Siemens Energy, a global leader in the transmission and generation of electrical power.

In fiscal 2021, which ended on September 30, 2021, the Siemens Group generated revenue of 62.3 billion and net income of 6.7 billion. As of September 30, 2021, the company had around 303,000 employees worldwide. Further information is available on the Internet at www.siemens.com.

This document contains statements related to our future business and financial performance and future events or developments involving Siemens that may constitute forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by words such as "expects," "looks forward to," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," "estimates," ....

Note: A list of relevant Siemens trademarks can be found here. Other trademarks belong to their respective owners.

SOURCE Siemens Digital Industries Software
SpringML is honored to announce we've achieved Data Analytics Partner Specialization renewal, as we are among a group of Google Cloud partners that have demonstrated technical proficiency and proven success in specialized solution and service areas. Partners with the Data Analytics Specialization have proven success from ingestion to data preparation, storage, and analysis.

Data-driven decision making is one of the top priorities for enterprises as they think through cloud adoption. Generating meaningful insights for internal and external data sources provides the edge to compete and sustain.

"SpringML has proven expertise in data analytics. This is our third renewal and we have expanded to provide end to end data services for our customers. We are thankful for our customers' ongoing trust in us to deliver mission critical, data-driven, digital transformation projects," said Amit Deshpande, India Delivery Head, SpringML. "Google Cloud BigQuery and Looker provide a comprehensive data platform to deploy large scale analytics quickly and efficiently."

"We're thrilled that SpringML has renewed its Data Analytics Partner Specialization in the Google Cloud Partner Advantage Program," said Nina Harding, Chief of Global Partner Programs & Strategy, Google Cloud. "Achieving this renewal points to SpringML's commitment to providing our customers with the tools and expertise they need to succeed along every step of their digital transformation journeys."

As enterprises look for new ways to engage with customers, providing creative digital experiences is key. SpringML is a trusted partner for data-driven digital transformation projects. We help enterprises build applications with an agile, iterative, and incremental delivery model.

About SpringML, Inc.

SpringML delivers data-driven digital transformation outcomes with an experimentation and design thinking mindset. We provide Google Cloud consulting and implementation services and industry-specific analytics solutions that deliver high-impact business value from data. SpringML is a premier Google Cloud partner with capabilities to plan, assess, deploy, and manage data-driven engagements. We have been awarded Google Cloud specialization based on our expertise and customer portfolio for Data Management, Application Development, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, and Marketing Analytics.

For more information on SpringML, visit https://www.springml.com/ .

SOURCE SpringML
DUBLIN, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Taiwan Data Center Market - Investment Analysis & Growth Opportunities 2021-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Taiwan data center market size will witness investments of USD 4.47 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 23.60% during 2021-2026

This report analyzes the Taiwan data center market share. It elaboratively analyzes the existing and upcoming facilities and data center investments in IT, electrical, mechanical infrastructure, general construction, tier standards, and geography. It discusses market sizing and investment estimation for different segments.



Taiwan is one of the major connectivity hubs in secondary APAC markets. The country is connected to data center markets in Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia via 14 submarine cables The data center market includes around 35 unique third-party data center service providers operating around more than 8 facilities. The country is currently witnessing investments in 4 facilities, which is expected to be operational in the next 2-3 years.

TAIWAN DATA CENTER MARKET VENDOR LANDSCAPE

Some key IT infrastructure providers are Atos, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Dell Technologies, Extreme Networks, Fujitsu, etc. Taiwan cloud data center market services have gained importance after COVID-19. Some companies providing cloud colocation services are Netapp, Mitac Holdings, Hitachi Vantara, Dell Technologies, etc. Modular design and construction of data centers are increasingly adopted in Taiwan to increase scalability and reduce construction costs for operators.

WHY SHOULD YOU BUY THIS RESEARCH?

Market size available in the investment, area, power capacity, and colocation revenue.

An assessment of the investment in Taiwan by colocation, hyperscale, and enterprise operators.

by colocation, hyperscale, and enterprise operators. Data center investments in the area (square feet) and power capacity (MW) across cities in the country.

A detailed study of the existing market landscape, an in-depth industry analysis, and insightful predictions about the data center in Taiwan market size during the forecast period.

market size during the forecast period. Snapshot of existing and upcoming third-party facilities in Taiwan

Facilities Covered (Existing): 11

Facilities Identified (Upcoming): 1

Coverage: 4 cities

Existing vs. Upcoming (Data Center Area)

Existing vs. Upcoming (IT Load Capacity)

Data center colocation market in Taiwan

Market Revenue & Forecast (2020-2026)

Retail Colocation Pricing

Wholesale Colocation Pricing

Classification of the Taiwan market investments into multiple segments and sub-segments (IT, power, cooling, and general construction services) with sizing and forecast.

market investments into multiple segments and sub-segments (IT, power, cooling, and general construction services) with sizing and forecast. A comprehensive analysis of the latest trends, growth rate, potential opportunities, growth restraints, and prospects for the industry.

Business overview and product offerings of prominent IT infrastructure providers, construction contractors, support infrastructure providers, and investors operating in the industry.

A transparent research methodology and the analysis of the demand and supply aspect of the market.

KEY QUESTIONS ANSWERED:

How big is the Taiwan data center market?

data center market? Which city has the highest number of data center facilities in Taiwan ?

? Who are the key investors in the Taiwan data center industry?

data center industry? How many existing and upcoming data center facilities are in Taiwan ?

? What are the investment opportunities in the Taiwanese data center market?

What are the different segments covered in the Taiwan data center market report?

TAIWAN DATA CENTER MARKET INSIGHTS

Taiwan is one of the major connectivity hubs in secondary APAC markets. Over USD 1 billion will be invested in data center development across Taiwan during 2021-2026.

is one of the major connectivity hubs in secondary APAC markets. Over will be invested in data center development across during 2021-2026. In Taiwan , Taipei city and New Taipei city are favorable locations for the development of data center facilities, as they are the most connected locations and the economic hubs in Taiwan . Locations such as Taichung city and Kaohsiung city are upcoming data center hubs that expect to grow during the forecast period

KEY HIGHLIGHTS OF THE REPORT

In May 2021 , a telecom operator, Chief Telecom, announced its plans to build a fourth data center facility (LY2) in Taipei , which is expected to be operational by 2023.

, a telecom operator, Chief Telecom, announced its plans to build a fourth data center facility (LY2) in , which is expected to be operational by 2023. Hyperscale operators in Taiwan are developing their own data centers and collocating their workloads with local colocation operators. For instance, Microsoft is building its own data center in the country, which is expected to be operational by 2022.

TAIWAN DATA CENTER INVESTMENT COVERAGE

Infrastructure Type

IT Infrastructure

Electrical Infrastructure

Mechanical Infrastructure

General Construction

IT Infrastructure

Servers

Storage Systems

Network Infrastructure

Electrical Infrastructure

UPS Systems

Generators

Transfer Switches and Switchgears

PDUs

Other Electrical Infrastructure

Mechanical Infrastructure

Cooling Systems

Rack Cabinets

Other Mechanical Infrastructure

Cooling Systems

CRAC and CRAH Units

Chillers

Cooling Towers, Condensers, and Dry Coolers

Other Cooling Units

General Construction

Building Development

Installation & commissioning Services

Building Design

Physical Security

Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM)

Tier Standards

Tier I & Tier II

Tier III

Tier IV

Key Investors

Chunghwa Telecom

Chief Telecom

Far EasTone Telecommunications

Taiwan Mobile (TWM)

IT Infrastructure Providers

Atos

Broadcom

Cisco Systems

Dell Technologies

Extreme Networks

Fujitsu

Hitachi Vantara

IBM

MiTAC Holdings

Pure Storage

Lenovo

NetApp

Quanta Cloud Technology

Super Micro Computer

Wiwynn

Data Center Construction Market Contractors & Sub Contractors

AECOM

M+W Group (Exyte)

Pacific Engineers and Constructors (PECL)

MAA Group

Support Infrastructure Providers

ABB

ATEN

Caterpillar

Cummins

Delta Electronics

Eaton

HITEC-Power Protection

Mitsubishi Electric

Legrand

Rittal

Schneider Electric

STULZ

Trane

Vertiv Group

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/obtiai

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets
Richard Dick Carson, a five-time Emmy Award-winning director who was also the younger brother of late-night TV icon Johnny Carson, has died. His family wrote that the 92-year-old who made his living behind the scenes died peacefully in his Studio City, Calif., home after a brief illness on Dec. 19.

Among Carsons many credits was a directing gig he landed on The Tonight Show in 1962 shortly before his big brother took over as the programs host when that show filmed in New York City. In 1968, Carson left to work on the short-lived The Don Rickles Show, which took him back to Los Angeles, where he first got involved in showbiz after serving in the navy over a decade earlier.

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Dick Carson is pictured in this file photo. (Nati Harnik/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

He worked steadily in his return to L.A., including a 14-year run with The Merv Griffin Show, where Carson won three Emmy Awards before leaving in 1986 when the host retired. That CBS show was positioned to compete with NBCs The Tonight Show.

During a Directors Guild of America interview in 2015, Carson recalled phoning his older brother, whom he called his hero, to ask how he might feel about the competition in the 11:30 p.m. time slot.

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How does that affect you? he asked, What do you think?

According to Carson, his big brother encouragingly said Hey, its work!

The Merv Griffin Show took Carson all over the world, filming in cities including Paris, Venice and the city-state of Monaco. Carsons relationship with Merv Griffin Enterprises led to his directing the classic gameshow Wheel of Fortune, which he began while working on The Merv Griffin Show.

Breaking News As it happens Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts. >

After more than 20 years with that popular program  where he won a couple more Emmy Awards  Carson called it quits in 1999.

His first marriage was to Patricia Ann Gundy, his high school sweetheart from Norfolk, Neb., whom he wed in 1952. That was also when Carson graduated from the University of Nebraska, where he was active in theater and broadcasting. Carson and his first wife remained together until her death in 1986.

According to his obituary, they started their family, which included three children, when he began serving in the U.S. Navy. He became a lieutenant in 1953.

His Naval service was a source of pride for Dick, the obit said.

He left the Navy in 1956, but spent more than another decade in the Retired Reserve.

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Carson married a second time in 1988, this time to interior designer Karlyn Kuper, who is also from Nebraska. Thats where Carson will be buried. He is survived by Kuper and their three children.

Johnny Carson, who died in 2005, was four years older than Dick Carson.
LEXINGTON, Ky., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Tempur Sealy International, Inc. (NYSE: TPX, "Tempur Sealy" or "Company") today issued its 2022 Corporate Social Values Report. The Company made significant progress on its ESG initiatives in 2021, including the following highlights:

Environment

Achieved an 8.4% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per unit produced at our wholly owned manufacturing and logistics operations compared to the prior year, furthering our progress towards our goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2040

Improved the percent of waste diverted from landfills from our U.S. wholly owned manufacturing operations to 94% for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2021 , compared to 91% in 2020, furthering our progress towards our goal of achieving zero landfill waste by the end of 2022

, compared to 91% in 2020, furthering our progress towards our goal of achieving zero landfill waste by the end of 2022 Installed multi-million dollar solar panel technology at our largest manufacturing site, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico , which is expected to reduce the annual electric consumption purchased from public utility by over 3 million kWh

Social

The Tempur Sealy Foundation made its largest gift yet in the form of $2 million to support the establishment of the Tempur Sealy Pediatric Sleep Center at Kentucky Children's Hospital

to support the establishment of the Tempur Sealy Pediatric Sleep Center at Kentucky Children's Hospital Designed and developed Sealy Naturals, a responsibly-built mattress line made with sustainable materials, that will launch in the U.S. in 2022

Developed accessible marketing material and shopping experiences by implementing a bilingual marketing program and reflecting our diverse consumer base in advertising campaigns

Governance

The Nominating Corporate Governance Committee of our Board of Directors established oversight of our practices and positions relating to ESG issues

Embedded ESG as a metric in executive leadership's compensation for 2021

Increased the ratio of women represented on our Board of Directors by 50% to represent 33% of the Board's composition

Tempur Sealy Chairman and CEO Scott Thompson said, "Our commitment to improving the sleep of more people, every night, all around the world was especially rewarding, albeit challenging, during this past year. In 2021, we experienced record demand for our brands and products amid a challenging supply chain environment. Despite the many changes and challenges that we undertook in 2021, we remained steadfast in our commitment to protecting our communities and the environment."

Thompson continued, "Our global organization continues to embrace our ESG ideals through driving initiatives that further our social values. We firmly believe that ESG initiatives create value for our stakeholders and contribute to the financial success of our business. We look forward to sharing updates on our future social values progress with you."

To view the full 2022 Corporate Social Values Report, please refer to the Tempur Sealy Investor website, http://investor.tempursealy.com/.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains statements that may be characterized as "forward-looking," within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Such statements might include information concerning one or more of the Company's plans, guidance, objectives, goals, strategies, and other information that is not historical information. When used in this release, the words "commitment," "plans," "intends," and variations of such words or similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements relating to the Company's expectations regarding its sustainability initiatives. Any forward-looking statements contained herein are based upon current expectations and beliefs and various assumptions. There can be no assurance that the Company will realize these expectations or that these beliefs will prove correct.

About the Company

Tempur Sealy is committed to improving the sleep of more people, every night, all around the world. As a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of bedding products, we know how crucial a good night of sleep is to overall health and wellness. Utilizing over a century of knowledge and industry-leading innovation, we deliver award-winning products that provide breakthrough sleep solutions to consumers in over 100 countries.

Our highly recognized brands include Tempur-Pedic, Sealy featuring Posturepedic Technology, and Stearns & Foster and our non-branded offerings include value-focused private label and OEM products. Our distinct brands allow for complementary merchandising strategies and are sold through third-party retailers, our Company-owned stores and e-commerce channels. This omni-channel strategy ensures our products are offered where ever and how ever customers want to shop.

Lastly, we accept our global responsibility to serve all stakeholders, our community and environment. We have and are implementing programs consistent with our responsibilities.

Investor Relations Contact

Aubrey Moore

Investor Relations

Tempur Sealy International, Inc.

800-805-3635

[email protected]

SOURCE Tempur Sealy International, Inc.
Jan 21st-23rd, 2022, a Virtual Event - International researchers aim to improve the writing development of all learners! Tweet this

That is why over 30 leading international researchers in the fields of literacy education, psychology, neuroscience, occupational therapy, and more will share the findings of their most recent work at the 2022 International Conference on the Science of Written Expression. This virtual conference, on ALL aspects of the science of writing, will be held online January 21st-23rd, 2022.

"We are dedicated to providing educators with access to the research and the resources that are key to improving the writing development of all learners," said Kathleen Wright, Executive Director of The Handwriting Collaborative. "Our team provides the professional development training and consultant services needed to assist educators at all levels in aligning instruction and practice with current academic research."

About the Conference

The virtual conference will showcase three (3) full days of presentations from over 30 internationally recognized researchers from a host of world-renowned universities. Oxford Brookings University (UK), Teachers' College Columbia (U.S.), Texas A&M (U.S.), University of California, Irvine (U.S.), University of Porto (Portugal), University of Antwerp (Belgium) as well as the National Institute for Health (U.S.) are just a few of the educational institutions who will be represented by our speakers. For a complete list of the speakers and their sessions visit: https://conference.handwritingcollaborative.org/speakers

Keynote Speakers for January 21  23, 2022

Friday, January 21, 2022 : " The Science of Writing", Young-Suk Grace Kim , PhD ., Senior Associate Dean, School of Education, University of California, Irvine

: ., Saturday, January 22, 2022 : " Knowledge, Strategies, and Metacognition in Learning to Write", Charles MacArthur , PhD., University of Delaware

: " Sunday, January 23 , 2022:" Handwriting and Typing in Students with Handwriting Difficulties", Anna Barnett , PhD., Oxford Brookes University

The cost of the three-day event is $355 per person or $195 per day.

Register here: https://conference.handwritingcollaborative.org/register/

About The Handwriting Collaborative

The Handwriting Collaborative, founded in 2019, is a diverse team of handwriting curriculum specialists, educators, academic researchers, and school-based occupational therapists who are committed to supporting children, parents, teachers, and school administrators with writing skill development. For more information, visit https://handwritingcollaborative.org/about-us. Follow The Handwriting Collaborative on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/handwritingcollaborative or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-handwriting-collaborative.

SOURCE The Handwriting Collaborative, LLC
MILWAUKEE, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- With decades of experience serving the real estate community with innovative security products, The Master Lock Company is announcing a new partnership to become the new official electronic lock box provider of MIBOR REALTOR Association, the professional association representing central Indiana's REALTORS. Citing integrations with BrokerBay, strong brand reputation and expertise in global supply chain, MIBOR will now offer Master Lock's Bluetooth-enabled lock boxes and Master Lock Vault Enterprise software to its Broker Listing Cooperative beginning in 2022.

"As technology evolves, we must move together, forward and consistently review the products and services we provide to ensure we are offering best-in-class solutions to meet our members' needs," said MIBOR's Chief Executive Officer, Shelley Specchio. "With this as our motivation, MIBOR is pleased to partner with Master Lock as our electronic lock box solution provider."

Together, MIBOR and Master Lock represent two of the most venerated names in real estate and security. MIBOR, founded in 1912, is a leading association dedicated to providing their members with leading tools, training and technology. Master Lock, founded in 1921, has been the longtime leader in security and safety products, continuously updating their lock box products to serve the real estate industry.

"We've spent years interviewing key contacts across organized real estate, in order to better understand their product and integration needs," said Brian Smith, Master Lock Connected Products Business Development Manager. "This latest partnership with MIBOR, a top-40 MLS, is proof-positive that we are meeting the needs of the industry at a critical time. With experience in global supply chain management, our expertise in technology integrations and our truly flexible, secure product line, we are confident that Master Lock will continue to be the preferred vendor for leading MLSs across the U.S."

The Master Lock Advantage

After much consideration, Master Lock was identified as the best solution for MIBOR's growing marketplace. Master Lock's real estate solution includes a variety of features and integrations that enable REALTORS to run their businesses more efficiently and securely.

Showing solution integration

With the option to fully integrate with popular showing solutions including BrokerBay, Master Lock offers a simplified experience for MIBOR's members, who can use one convenient solution to manage the entire property showing process, from scheduling to accessing properties.

With the option to fully integrate with popular showing solutions including BrokerBay, Master Lock offers a simplified experience for MIBOR's members, who can use one convenient solution to manage the entire property showing process, from scheduling to accessing properties. Flexible, secure access

With Master Lock, REALTORS can access listings via Bluetooth-enabled technology or manual keycodes provided by the listing agent. This allows the lock box to work even if there is a technology failure, spotty service, or if the lock box needs to be accessed by someone without Bluetooth or app access.

With Master Lock, REALTORS can access listings via Bluetooth-enabled technology or manual keycodes provided by the listing agent. This allows the lock box to work even if there is a technology failure, spotty service, or if the lock box needs to be accessed by someone without Bluetooth or app access. Expertise in supply chain management

As global supply chain issues continue to affect the production and issuance of many items, including lock boxes, MIBOR stated that Master Lock's reliability and experience in global distribution and supply chain management was a primary factor in the newly announced partnership.

For more information on Master Lock's Bluetooth-enabled lock boxes and Master Lock Vault Enterprise software solution, visit www.masterlockvault.com

About The Master Lock Company

The Master Lock Company is recognized around the world as the authentic, enduring name in padlocks and security products. The Master Lock Company offers a broad range of innovative security and safety solutions for consumer, commercial, and industrial end-users. The Master Lock Company LLC is an operating unit of Fortune Brands Home & Security, Inc., a leading consumer brands company. Headquartered in Deerfield, Ill., Fortune Brands Home & Security Inc. (NYSE: FBHS), is included in the S&P 500 Index. For more information about Master Lock visit www.masterlockvault.com.

About MIBOR

MIBOR is the professional association representing central Indiana's REALTORS. Founded in 1912, MIBOR was established by 43 charter members and today serves the needs of over 9,000 members in Boone, Brown, Decatur, Hamilton, Hancock, Hendricks, Johnson, Madison, Marion, Montgomery, Morgan, and Shelby counties. In addition to serving these counties, MIBOR also provides a Broker Listing Cooperative listing service to REALTORS in Bartholomew, Jennings, and Putnam counties. For more information about MIBOR REALTOR Association, visit www.mibor.com

Media Contact:

Wes Richter

Zeno Group For Master Lock

[email protected]

(312) 826-3582

SOURCE Master Lock
DUBLIN, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Fiber Bragg Grating Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis by Type (FBG Sensor and FBG Filter & Others), Application (Sensing, Measuring, Monitoring, and Others), and Industry (Telecommunication, Aerospace, Energy and Utilities, Transportation, and Others)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global fiber bragg grating market was valued at US$ 1,500.6 Million in 2021 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 25.7% during the forecast period of 2021 to 2028 to reach US$ 7,435.3 Million by 2028.



A fiber bragg grating is a few millimeters long, very reliable, and highly sensitive product used for measuring, sensing, and monitoring application among diversified industries. Fiber bragg grating gives advantages to devices such as immunity to electromagnetic & radio frequency interference, low loss relative to fiber length, and small size & weight; and it is safe for operation in an environment consisting of hazardous materials.



The rise in application areas of fiber bragg grating for temperature and strain measurements and the development of automated fiber bragg grating production systems are boosting the market growth. Also, the emergence of ultra-long fiber bragg grating is further accelerating market growth. Due to their direct absolute measurement and unique wavelength multiplexing capability properties, their adoption in aerospace, telecom, security & monitoring sectors is expanding. All the factors mentioned above are positively impacting the fiber bragg grating market growth.



Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Fiber Bragg Grating Market

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken several industries. The tremendous growth in the spread of the virus has urged governments worldwide to impose strict restrictions on vehicle and human movement. Due to travel bans, mass lockdowns, and business shutdowns, the pandemic has affected economies and countless industries in various countries. The lockdown imposition has resulted in the lesser production of commodities, goods, and services.

Manufacturing, automotive, semiconductor and electronics, oil & gas, mining, aviation, and other industries have witnessed a decline in their operations due to the temporary shutdown of activities. The FBG market players also experienced a decrease in volumes because the manufacturing facilities had a limited workforce. This has had a negative impact on the market. The COVID-19 outbreak might impact the market in the first six months of 2021 as well.



Reasons to Buy

Save and reduce time carrying out entry-level research by identifying the growth, size, leading players and segments in the global fiber bragg grating market.

Highlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies.

The key findings and recommendations highlight crucial progressive industry trends in the global fiber bragg grating market, thereby allowing players across the value chain to develop effective long-term strategies.

Develop/modify business expansion plans by using substantial growth offering developed and emerging markets.

Scrutinize in-depth global market trends and outlook coupled with the factors driving the market, as well as those hindering it.

Enhance the decision-making process by understanding the strategies that underpin commercial interest with respect to client products, segmentation, pricing and distribution

Key Topics Covered:



1. Introduction



2. Key Takeaways



3. Research Methodology



4. Fiber Bragg Grating Market Landscape

4.1 Market Overview

4.2 PEST Analysis

4.2.1 North America

4.2.2 Europe

4.2.3 Asia-Pacific

4.2.4 Middle East and Africa

4.2.5 South America

4.1 Ecosystem Analysis

4.2 Expert Opinion



5. Fiber Bragg Grating Market - Key Market Dynamics

5.1 Market Drivers

5.1.1 Rising Application Areas of Fiber Bragg Grating

5.1.2 Increasing Adoption of Fiber Bragg Grating Due to Their Advantages

5.2 Market Restraints

5.2.1 High Production Cost

5.3 Market Opportunities

5.3.1 Fiber Bragg Grating Production System is Automated

5.4 Future Trends

5.4.1 Development of Ultra-Long Fiber Bragg Gratings

5.5 Impact Analysis of Drivers and Restraints



6. Fiber Bragg Grating - Global Market Analysis

6.1 Global Fiber Bragg Grating Market Overview

6.2 Global Fiber Bragg Grating Market Revenue Forecast and Analysis

6.3 Market Positioning - Five Key Players



7. Global Fiber Bragg Grating Market Analysis - By Type

7.1 Overview

7.2 Fiber Bragg Gratings Market , By Type (2020 and 2028)

7.3 FBG Sensor

7.3.1 Overview

7.3.2 FBG Sensor: Fiber Bragg Gratings Market Revenue and Forecast To 2028 (US$ Million)

7.4 FBG Filter and Others

7.4.1 Overview

7.4.2 FBG Filter and Others: Fiber Bragg Gratings Market Revenue and Forecast To 2028 (US$ Million)



8. Global Fiber Bragg Grating Market Analysis - By Application

8.1 Overview

8.2 Fiber Bragg Grating Market , By Application (2020 And 2028)

8.3 Sensing

8.3.1 Overview

8.3.2 Sensing: Fiber Bragg Grating Market Revenue and Forecast To 2028 (US$ Million)

8.4 Measuring

8.4.1 Overview

8.4.2 Measuring: Fiber Bragg Grating Market Revenue and Forecast To 2028 (US$ Million)

8.5 Monitoring and Others

8.5.1 Overview

8.5.2 Monitoring and Others: Fiber Bragg Grating Market Revenue and Forecast To 2028 (US$ Million)



9. Global Fiber Bragg Grating Market Analysis - By Industry

9.1 Overview

9.2 Fiber Bragg Grating Market , By Industry (2020 and 2028)

9.3 Telecommunication

9.3.1 Overview

9.3.2 Telecommunication: Fiber Bragg Grating Market Revenue and Forecast To 2028 (US$ Million)

9.4 Transportation

9.4.1 Overview

9.4.2 Transportation: Fiber Bragg Grating Market Revenue and Forecast To 2028 (US$ Million)

9.5 Energy and Utilities

9.5.1 Overview

9.5.2 Energy and Utilities: Fiber Bragg Grating Market Revenue and Forecast To 2028 (US$ Million)

9.6 Aerospace

9.6.1 Overview

9.6.2 Aerospace: Fiber Bragg Grating Market Revenue and Forecast To 2028 (US$ Million)

9.7 Others

9.7.1 Overview

9.7.2 Others: Fiber Bragg Grating Market Revenue and Forecast To 2028 (US$ Million)



10. Fiber Bragg Grating Market - Geographic Analysis



11. Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic

11.1 Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Global FBG Market

11.1.1 North America: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

11.1.2 Europe: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

11.1.3 Asia-Pacific: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

11.1.4 Middle East and Africa: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

11.1.5 South America: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic



12. Industry Landscape

12.1 Overview

12.2 Market Initiative

12.3 Merger and Acquisition



13. Company Profiles

13.1 AOS GmbH

13.1.1 Key Facts

13.1.2 Business Description

13.1.3 Products and Services

13.1.4 Financial Overview

13.1.5 SWOT Analysis

13.1.6 Key Developments

13.2 Alnair Labs Corporation

13.2.1 Key Facts

13.2.2 Business Description

13.2.3 Products and Services

13.2.4 Financial Overview

13.2.5 SWOT Analysis

13.2.6 Key Developments

13.3 FBGS Technologies GmbH

13.3.1 Key Facts

13.3.2 Business Description

13.3.3 Products and Services

13.3.4 Financial Overview

13.3.5 SWOT Analysis

13.3.6 Key Developments

13.4 HBM FIBERSENSING S.A.

13.4.1 Key Facts

13.4.2 Business Description

13.4.3 Products and Services

13.4.4 Financial Overview

13.4.5 SWOT Analysis

13.4.6 Key Developments

13.5 ITF Technologies Inc.

13.5.1 Key Facts

13.5.2 Business Description

13.5.3 Products and Services

13.5.4 Financial Overview

13.5.5 SWOT Analysis

13.5.6 Key Developments

13.6 iXblue Photonics

13.6.1 Key Facts

13.6.2 Business Description

13.6.3 Products and Services

13.6.4 Financial Overview

13.6.5 SWOT Analysis

13.6.6 Key Developments

13.7 Luna Innovations Inc.

13.7.1 Key Facts

13.7.2 Business Description

13.7.3 Products and Services

13.7.4 Financial Overview

13.7.5 SWOT Analysis

13.7.6 Key Developments

13.8 Proximion AB

13.8.1 Key Facts

13.8.2 Business Description

13.8.3 Products and Services

13.8.4 Financial Overview

13.8.5 SWOT Analysis

13.8.6 Key Developments

13.9 Technica

13.9.1 Key Facts

13.9.2 Business Description

13.9.3 Products and Services

13.9.4 Financial Overview

13.9.5 SWOT Analysis

13.9.6 Key Developments

13.10 TeraXion

13.10.1 Key Facts

13.10.2 Business Description

13.10.3 Products and Services

13.10.4 Financial Overview

13.10.5 SWOT Analysis

13.10.6 Key Developments



14. Appendix

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/xvvtno

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



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SOURCE Research and Markets
MORRISVILLE, N.C., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- TrialCard Incorporated, a full-service life sciences commercialization partner, today released its 2021 annual highlights, detailing the organization's impressive growth and performance over the past year.

"2021 was another phenomenal year for TrialCard," said Scott Dulitz, TrialCard's President and Chief Strategy Officer. "We added several new customers to our market-leading patient access and affordability business segments and saw impressive double-digit growth within our Policy Reporter and Engage HCP by TrialCard segments. Last year alone, TrialCard supported over 400 life science companies by helping to simplify access to their life-changing products."

Some of the more newsworthy items from 2021 include:

The successful August launch of Engage HCP by TrialCard, a new expanded suite of services that serves as a complement to a biopharma brand's field teams. These augmented services, which include Field Reimbursement Managers, Clinical Nurse Educators, Medical Science Liaisons, Pharmaceutical Institutional, Sales, and Specialty Representatives, Rare Disease Professionals, and Telepromotion Agents, strengthen TrialCard's original position in virtual detailing, which began several years ago.

The November acquisition of Archer Healthcare, a Wilmington, North Carolina -based company that helps address challenges pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers face in accessing providers, engaging with patients, and improving outcomes, further bolstered the Engage HCP by TrialCard offering. This marked TrialCard's sixth acquisition in the past three years.

-based company that helps address challenges pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers face in accessing providers, engaging with patients, and improving outcomes, further bolstered the Engage HCP by TrialCard offering. This marked TrialCard's sixth acquisition in the past three years. Impressive YOY growth of Policy Reporter, a company acquired by TrialCard in November 2019 . Policy Reporter provides a cutting-edge service that automates the necessary, but often challenging need to stay abreast of policy and formulary information across the payer landscape, which improves patient access and payer intelligence. In February 2021 , Policy Reporter launched its Coverage Viewer Pharmacy Edition, becoming the first and only provider in the marketplace to offer detailed policy coverage criteria layered with both pharmacy and medical covered lives data. Then, in September, a new strategic consulting practice, Access Acuity by Policy Reporter, was introduced. These consulting services assist life science companies with managing the commercialization and market access strategies for healthcare products and services, including biopharmaceuticals, medical devices and technology, and diagnostics.

. Policy Reporter provides a cutting-edge service that automates the necessary, but often challenging need to stay abreast of policy and formulary information across the payer landscape, which improves patient access and payer intelligence. In , Policy Reporter launched its Coverage Viewer Pharmacy Edition, becoming the first and only provider in the marketplace to offer detailed policy coverage criteria layered with both pharmacy and medical covered lives data. Then, in September, a new strategic consulting practice, Access Acuity by Policy Reporter, was introduced. These consulting services assist life science companies with managing the commercialization and market access strategies for healthcare products and services, including biopharmaceuticals, medical devices and technology, and diagnostics. In October, TrialCard named Scott Dulitz as President & Chief Strategy Officer, and Joe Abdalla President & Chief Commercial Officer.

as President & Chief Strategy Officer, and & Chief Commercial Officer. After a rigorous recertification process, TrialCard once again achieved the coveted ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation for its Information Security Management System (ISMS). ISO/IEC 27001 certification is the gold standard in data security management and places TrialCard among the industry's best in data security and privacy. TrialCard has held this certification since 2018.

TrialCard was recognized as the fifth fastest growing privately held company in the Triangle area by the Triangle Business Journal (TBJ). This marks the eleventh time in its twenty-one-year history that TrialCard has been named a Fast 50 winner and marks two consecutive top five finishes for the company, who notched a second-place finish last year.

consecutive top five finishes for the company, who notched a second-place finish last year. In April, TrialCard announced that it had raised $108,000 for Ronald McDonald House of Durham and Wake (RMH), surpassed its anticipated fundraising goal, an ambitious task made even more difficult by the COVID-19 global pandemic.

"TrialCard's success would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of its employees," added Joe Abdalla, President & Chief Commercial Officer. "Our organic growth, coupled with strategic acquisitions within the past three years, has allowed TrialCard to provide an unsurpassed patient experience. Our goal is to help patients obtainand remain onvital medications that improve quality of life. We look forward to continuing this trend in 2022 and beyond."

About TrialCard

TrialCard Incorporated is a full-service life sciences commercialization partner that provides comprehensive solutions that span the entire biopharmaceutical value chain. In addition to a foundation of fully integrated, digitally enabled patient support services, its broader offerings include everything from late-stage clinical trial management to post-marketing HCP engagement services and proprietary data-as-a-service payer intelligence and insights. Founded in 2000, TrialCard provides commercialization needs for more than 400 life science customers and has connected nearly 36 million patients with more than $22 billion in branded drug savings to date. The company is headquartered in Morrisville, North Carolina. For more information about TrialCard, please visit www.trialcard.com.

Contact:

Landy Townsend

VP, Marketing & Communications

TrialCard Incorporated

[email protected]

SOURCE TrialCard Incorporated
Hosted by Masdar, ADSW 2022 will be the first major sustainability event after the COP26 climate change conference, and will act as a global catalyst for COP27, which will be held in Egypt in 2022, and COP28, which will be hosted by the UAE in 2023. Held annually since 2008, ADSW has become one of the latest sustainability platforms in the world, with more than 45,000 people from 175 countries participating in ADSW 2020.

HE Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, Special Envoy for Climate Change, and Chairman of Masdar, said: "The next few years will be pivotal as we work together across policy, business and industry to accelerate progressive climate action that will deliver economic opportunities and prosperity for current and future generations.

"The UAE has a long-term vision that will build on our longstanding track record in innovating climate solutions across the entire energy spectrum. Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week continues to offer an ideal platform for promoting, deploying and taking these climate solutions to scale around the world. Aligned with the UAE's 'Principles of the 50,' it provides opportunities for global collaboration, knowledge sharing, investment and advancing new technological innovations that will take the global sustainability agenda forward and turn plans into action."

In addition to heads of state, leaders confirmed to participant at ADSW included HE Mr Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary General; Ms Damilola Ogunbiyi, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for all, Chief Executive Officer of Sustainable Energy for All SEforAll; John Kerry, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate; HE Sameh Shoukry, Minister of Foreign Affairs, President Designate COP27; Rt Hon Alok Sharma MP, COP26 President; Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization; Francesco La Camera, Director-General of International Renewable Energy Agency; Ferid Belhaj, Vice-President of the World Bank Group; HE Ban Ki-moon, President of the Assembly and Chair of the Council of the Global Green Growth Institute, Eight Secretary-General of the United Nations; Rishi Kapoor, Co-Chief Executive Officer, Investcorp; and Karen Wong, Global Head of ESG and Sustainable Investing, State Street Global Advisors, one of the world's largest asset managers with US $3.90 trillion under its management.

Commenting ahead of her appearance at the ADSW, HE Halimah Yacob, President of the Republic of Singapore, said, "To deliver a sustainable future for our planet, the collective action of all stakeholders is needed. Even as we tackle the pandemic, we must not lose sight of other equally pressing global challenges. Governments, businesses, researchers, communities and individuals all have a role in addressing the challenges of climate change.

"The ADSW provides us a timely opportunity to exchange views on our collective response, and the urgent steps needed. I thank His Highness Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, for inviting me to speak at the Summit."

The hosting of ADSW is a key component in the UAE's positioning as a regional and global leader in sustainability and climate action. Last October, the UAE announced its Net Zero by 2050 Strategic Initiative, a national drive to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, the first such initiative in the MENA region. The UAE was also the first Arab country to set voluntary clean energy targets, and the first Gulf state to sign the Paris Agreement.

Further demonstrating the UAE's leading role in driving action on climate change, at home, in the region, and throughout the world, the ADSW Opening Ceremony and the Zayed Sustainability Prize Awards Ceremony will take place at Expo 2020 Dubai on Monday January 17 to coincide with Global Goals Week. All other ADSW events will take place in Abu Dhabi or virtually.

Since its inception, ADSW has reflected the changing global sustainability landscape, broadening its scope from renewable energy and water, to include new global trends and topics like artificial intelligence, space and mobility. The number of ADSW events has also expanded over time, with the additions of the IRENA Assembly in 2010, the Women in Sustainability, Environment and Renewable Energy' (WiSER) Forum in 2015, Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum in 2017, Abu Dhabi Sustainable Finance Forum 2019, and the virtual ADSW Summit in 2021.

Taking place virtually on January 17, the ADSW Summit will bring together global leaders to engage in dialogue and outline actions to achieve a net-zero future. Delivering global net zero commitments and the journey to the COP28 climate change conference will be key topics for discussion at the ADSW Summit.

The World Future Energy Summit exhibition and forums, which take place at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC) during ADSW from January 17-19, will showcase exhibitors from nearly 1,000 international companies, supporting the global energy transition. Exhibiting companies will showcase the latest innovations for clean energy, water, smart cities, and ecowaste. Country pavilions participating at the World Future Energy Summit include China, India, Japan, South Korea, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland and Nigeria.

Key ADSW dates include: January 15-16 - IRENA Assembly, January 17  Opening Ceremony and the Zayed Sustainability Prize Awards Ceremony, ADSW Summit, January 17-19  World Future Energy Summit, Innovate, Youth 4 Sustainability Hub, January 18-19 Atlantic Council Forums January 18  WiSER Forum, January 19, Abu Dhabi Sustainable Finance Forum.

Delivering ADSW 2022 successfully can only be achieved by the ongoing support of our global sponsors and partners; Abu Dhabi Department of Energy; Aramex, Bee'ah, Credit Agricole, Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation; Engie, Etihad Airways, General Electric, InvestCorp, McKinsey & Company, Mubadala Investment Company, Pepsico, Power China; Tabreed, and the UAE Space Agency.

Registration details for ADSW events can be found on www.adsw.ae.

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1723120/Abu_Dhabi_Sustainability_Week.jpg

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1723119/Abu_Dhabi_Sustainability_Week_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week
"We know that this year has been trying for many and that independently-owned businesses continue to face significant business challenges. From natural disasters to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Uber and Visa are committed to supporting SMBs, especially through unexpected events, when they may need us most," said Sarfraz Maredia, VP of US and Canada Delivery at Uber.

Grants can be used for all immediate needs including payroll, vendor debt, upgrading technology infrastructure, and more

Restaurants active on Uber Eats since January 1, 2022 in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Miami, Detroit, the NYC metro/New Jersey area, the San Francisco Bay Area, Philadelphia, and Boston are eligible to apply for the program. Grant recipients will be independently selected by LISC, using criteria to give preference to veteran, minority, women, and LGBTQIA+ business owners. For a complete list of eligibility criteria visit lisc.org/uber.

"Independent restaurants are a vital and vibrant part of their communities, and the pandemic continues to impact far too many of them," said Mary Ann Reilly, SVP and Head of North America Marketing, Visa. "Together with Uber, we're proud to help give merchants the support and funding they need, now."

"The United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce applauds our partners at Visa and Uber for launching this important grant program. Small businesses, especially minority-owned businesses, continue to struggle to survive during this pandemic and are working to overcome new challenges," said Ramiro A. Cavazos, President & CEO, USHCC. "As small businesses reopen their doors and look towards recovering, they need access to capital as well as resources and tools now more than ever before. This program comes at the perfect time."

Through Grants for Growth, 100 merchants will receive grants of $10,000, which can be used toward immediate needs such as payroll, paying outstanding debt to vendors, upgrading payment technology infrastructure, and other immediate operational costs. In addition to financial support, selected merchants will receive placement in the Uber Eats app and disaster recovery and resiliency guides from Uber and LISC. Merchants interested in applying for the Grants for Growth program can apply at lisc.org/uber from January 17-24, 2022.

Additional details about eligibility and the Grants for Growth program can also be found at lisc.org/uber .

About Uber

Uber's mission is to create opportunity through movement. We started in 2010 to solve a simple problem: how do you get access to a ride at the touch of a button? More than 15 billion trips later, we're building products to get people closer to where they want to be. By changing how people, food, and things move through cities, Uber is a platform that opens up the world to new possibilities.

Media Contact

Uber

[email protected]

About Visa Inc.

Visa (NYSE: V) is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating more than 215 billion payments transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses and economies to thrive. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere and see access as foundational to the future of money movement. Learn more at Visa.com.

Media Contact

Visa

Kryssa Guntrum

[email protected]

About LISC

LISC is one the country's largest community development organizations, helping forge vibrant, resilient communities across America. We work with residents and partners to close systemic gaps in health, wealth and opportunity and advance racial equity so that people and places can thrive. Since our founding in 1979, LISC has invested $24 billion to create more than 436,320 affordable homes and apartments and develop 74.4 million square feet of retail, community and educational space. For more, visit www.lisc.org.

Media Contact

LISC

Colleen Mulcahy

[email protected]

SOURCE Uber
RALEIGH, N.C., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) presented its highly coveted John E. Hughes Award for Entrepreneurial Advocacy, the Max S. Wortman, Jr. Award for Lifetime Achievement in Entrepreneurship, and the Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year Award during its annual conference in North Carolina today. These three awards provide USASBE's highest recognition to individuals who have demonstrated a significant leadership role in promoting entrepreneurship through their work and contributions to the field.

"Their authentic commitment to advancing entrepreneurship education and impact in developing entrepreneurs is felt both in their communities and throughout the world. The students they have directly and indirectly influenced through their ability to empower and engage other educators is immeasurable and USASBE is proud to honor them," says Julienne Shields, president and CEO of USASBE.

Entrepreneurship has become an important component of collegiate education and is now being taught at more than 3000 universities around the world. Over the past 40 years, USASBE has been a critical player in the broader adoption of entrepreneurship in collegiate programs.

2022 Entrepreneurship Lifetime Achievement and Advocacy Award Winners:

USASBE Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year Award - Heidi M. Neck, Ph.D.

The recipient of the USASBE Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year award is Heidi M. Neck, Ph.D., the Jeffry A. Timmons Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies, Babson College. Dr. Neck is the Academic Director of the Babson Academy for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurial Learning, a dedicated unit within Babson that inspires change in the way universities, specifically their faculty and students, teach and learn entrepreneurship. The Babson Academy builds on Dr. Neck's work starting the Babson Collaborative, a global institutional membership organization for colleges and universities seeking to increase their capability and capacity in entrepreneurship education, and her leadership of Babson's Symposia for Entrepreneurship Educators (SEE) programs designed to further develop faculty from around the world in the of art and craft of teaching entrepreneurship and building entrepreneurship programs. Dr. Neck has directly trained over 3,000 faculty around the world in the art and craft of teaching entrepreneurship. Dr. Neck cites Babson Academy, Babson Collaborative, and especially carrying on the legacy of SEE as her greatest achievements - the ripple effect of educating educators extends far beyond her classroom.

The USASBE Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year is awarded annually to an individual who has provided distinguished leadership over a number of years within the field of entrepreneurship education. Winners have contributed substantive advancements to the way in which scholars think about and approach entrepreneurship teaching and learning.

"This award, particularly from USASBE, is truly special," said Neck. "I've always believed that how you teach is just as important as what you teach. Given the impact of entrepreneurship on the world, teaching this discipline comes with a different level of responsibility. We have to inspire our students to take action to change their world. I'm energized to keep moving forward and figure out what's next in entrepreneurship education."

Neck is the third Babson professor honored with the Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year award, following in the footsteps of esteemed professors Jeffry A. Timmons (2004) and William Bygrave (2008), whom Neck describes as "fathers of entrepreneurship at Babson."

John E. Hughes/USASBE Award for Entrepreneurial Advocacy - J. Fielding Miller

This year's recipient of The John E. Hughes Award for Entrepreneurial Achievement award is J. Fielding Miller, co-founder and CEO of CAPTRUST, an independent registered investment advisor. In 2015, Miller and his wife Kim funded the Miller School of Entrepreneurship at his alma mater, East Carolina University. The school was the first entrepreneurship program in the region and Miller has continued to be an active part of the program, in addition to serving on the Board of Trustees for the university.

Newly established in 2018, The John E. Hughes Award for Entrepreneurial Achievement recognizes an individual who, through significant and sustained entrepreneurial initiatives, has demonstrated a unique ability to accept and manage risk, exercise personal control, and acquire personal reward. The recipients should be an entrepreneur (new venture, corporate, and/or social) that is committed to entrepreneurship education and has demonstrated impact on the field of entrepreneurship, community leadership and philanthropic giving.

"I am honored to receive the John E. Hughes Award for Entrepreneurial Advocacy, especially for an initiative that is so near and dear to my heart. As entrepreneurs, it is critically important that we share our success and give back to the communities we serve. And one of the most important ways to give back is through helping to educate the next generation of entrepreneurial talent," said Miller.

Max S. Wortman/USASBE Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship - Dr. Donald F. Kuratko

This year's Max S. Wortman/USASBE Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship award went to Dr. Donald F. Kuratko of the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, also known to many as "Dr. K." He has led the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation as its executive and academic director since 2004. During his tenure, the center has become a leader in entrepreneurship education, supporting groundbreaking faculty research that appears in top journals, books adopted by universities worldwide and through the Kelley School's degree programs.

Established in 2004, The Max S. Wortman, Jr./USASBE Lifetime Achievement Award for Entrepreneurship was instituted on the occasion of the 22nd anniversary of the founding of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE). The award is presented to a worthy recipient in recognition for a lifetime of entrepreneurial achievement that encompasses the ideals of entrepreneurial activity. Eligibility extends both to those whose life's pursuits supported and advocated entrepreneurial ideals as well as those who have pursued a lifetime of successful venture creation. The Awards Committee shall consider the originality, depth, breadth and impact of the entire body of the nominees' entrepreneurial pursuits and impact.

The award is especially meaningful to Kuratko because it is named for Wortman, a friend who was an early innovator who made a lifetime commitment to teaching and research in entrepreneurship.

"To receive this award is very special because of my friendship with Max. It's not just a name on an award, but it is an honor that reflects his values and what he stood for," Kuratko said. Anyone who receives this award gets attached to him in some way. His legacy will live on through each recipient of this honor and I feel I have contributed to his legacy. I also appreciate that it represents a body of achievements over a lifetime of work. It means the world to me."

The 2022 annual conference was the first hybrid conference in the organization's 40-year history and was an outstanding testament to USASBE's culture of inclusivity, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit to carry forward the annual gathering as safely as possible.

About USASBE

Founded in 1981, the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) is an inclusive community of educators, researchers, and entrepreneurs advancing entrepreneurship education through bold teaching, scholarship, and practice. Membership is open to all, as is attendance at USASBE's hallmark annual conference. USASBE also publishes a peer-reviewed academic journal, Entrepreneurship Education & Pedagogy, and develops a variety of helpful resources and professional development opportunities for entrepreneurship educators as they create a positive impact. For more information, visit the USASBE website at USASBE.org or contact USASBE CEO Julienne Shields at [email protected] .

SOURCE Babson College
SAN ANTONIO, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- In response to increasing interest in a simplified application process and lower prices, USAA Life Insurance Company (USAA Life) today announced its new digital life insurance product that requires no medical exam is now available in 47 states.

According to USAA's "Life Can't Wait" survey, monthly cost and no medical exam requirement are important factors when deciding on a life insurance company. Approximately 58 percent of respondents said that cost was the single most important factor. Not requiring a medical exam was cited by 24 percent of respondents.

Addressing those specific needs, USAA Life's Essential Term Life Insurance (ETLI) is available to consumers ages 21-35 starting at $15 per month, with small cost increases each year and only requires the completion of nine simple health questions. If eligible, the $100,000 policy is approved instantly and coverage lasts until the policy anniversary following the insured's 39th birthday.

"We know that one of the biggest pain points in getting life insurance is a medical exam," says Rob Schaffer, vice president and general manager for life insurance at USAA Life. "With this new product, we're making it easier for younger consumers to get the life protection they need."

To learn more about USAA Life's Essential Term Life Insurance, visit usaa.com/worthit.

About USAA

Founded in 1922 by a group of military officers, USAA is among the leading providers of insurance, banking and investment and retirement solutions to 13 million members of the U.S. military, veterans who have honorably served and their families. Headquartered in San Antonio, TX, USAA has offices in seven U.S. cities and three overseas locations and employs more than 35,000 people worldwide. Each year, the company contributes to national and local nonprofits in support of military families and communities where employees live and work. For more information about USAA, follow us on Facebook or Twitter (@USAA), or visit usaa.com.

Life insurance and annuities provided by USAA Life Insurance Company, San Antonio, TX. All insurance products are subject to state availability, issue limitations and contractual terms and conditions.Rates shown for $100,000 Essential Term Life Insurance for 21-year-old female at standard plus risk class available for this product. Risk class for this product is fixed. Quotes provided are intended for estimate purposes only. Rates may vary by state. Essential Term Life Insurance: an annual renewable term life insurance product, premiums remain level for one year, then increase annually while benefits remain the same until policy expiration. Form ICC2199869 04-21 (varies by state). Not available in all states.

Contact: Brad Russell

[email protected]

830-358-3423

USAA on Twitter: @usaa

SOURCE USAA
Manhattan is getting a new COVID recovery czar charged with helping New Yorkers come back from the ravages of the pandemic.

Former Deputy Manhattan Borough President Aldrin Bonilla is set to take up the new position on Monday as head of the COVID Recovery Task Force created by Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine.

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Our city is still in the grip of this pandemic, with deep health and economic inequalities exposed and exacerbated by our two-year battle with the virus, Bonilla said in a statement.

The task force will bring experts in health care, public health and key industries critical to our economy together to identify strategies to help bring about Manhattans comeback and to monitor our progress toward this vital goal, he said.

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Bonilla, 51, was born and raised in Washington Heights. Before serving as a deputy for former Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, he ran CUNY in The Heights, an educational program reaching Inwood, Washington Heights and the Bronx. Most recently, he worked for the nonprofit Fund for the City of New York, a job he will keep while serving as COVID czar.

Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, left, and former Deputy Manhattan Borough President Aldrin Bonilla. (New York Daily News)

With wide swaths of Manhattan offices still empty, Bonilla and his team will come up with return-to-work proposals, said Levine.

While Im really optimistic about the return of in-person work, I think ultimately we might see a lot more hybrid working arrangements, Levine told the Daily News on Sunday.

The task force, which will have about six members, also will focus on helping small businesses with policies like outdoor dining and the logistics of narrow streets, Levine said. Another focus will be helping the arts sector get financial assistance.

Levine wants the task force to help city government detail health protocols as well.

Its helpful to individual institutions to have standards set by local government because it removes the pressure of having to figure it out, he said.

Levine, the former head of the City Councils Health Committee, recently called for a stronger response to the ongoing rise in COVID cases caused by the omicron variant. His proposals included creation of a website to self-report positive test results and expanding the definition of what constitutes being fully vaccinated.

Government has to make it safe for people to come back, Levine said. I am optimistic. City government is going to need to support this comeback in many ways.
VALLEY FORGE, Pa., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Vanguard today announced plans to launch Vanguard Target Retirement 2070 Fund and Vanguard Target Retirement 2070 Trusts. The newest vintage in Vanguard's industry-leading Target Retirement lineup, the 2070 Fund and Trusts are designed to provide the youngest members of the workforce with an all-in-one, low-cost portfolio solution as they begin saving for retirement.1

"Vanguard's Target Retirement lineup sets a solid foundation for young investors as they begin their retirement journey by providing a broadly diversified, professionally managed, indexed-based investment portfolio that encourages long-term discipline and seeks to deliver risk-adjusted returns over time," said John James, managing director and head of Vanguard Institutional Investor Group.

The 2070 option is designed for younger investors with long time horizons that enable them to withstand equity market risk and benefit from decades of potential growth and compounding. Informed by more than four decades of investment management expertise and behavioral research, Vanguard Target Retirement's glidepath begins with a significant equity allocation (90% stocks, 10% bonds). Over time, as an investor approaches retirement, the glidepath gradually reduces exposure to equities and increases exposure to fixed-income investments. The portfolio reaches its most conservative allocation seven years after retirement (30% stocks, 70% bonds). Vanguard Target Retirement 2070 Fund and Vanguard Target Retirement 2070 Trusts will launch by mid-2022 with the following asset allocation:

Underlying Asset Class Initial Allocation U.S. stocks 54% Foreign stocks 36% U.S. fixed-income securities 7% Foreign fixed-income securities 3%

Vanguard Target Retirement 2070 Fund will be available to individual investors with a $1,000 minimum initial investment. The fund's investment minimum is waived for financial advisors, intermediaries, and for participants in a qualified retirement plan. The fund is expected to have an expense ratio of 0.08%, representing one-fifth the cost of the average target-date fund.2

Vanguard Target Retirement 2015 to retire

The 2015 vintage is approaching the end of its lifecycle with an asset allocation of 70% bonds and 30% stocks, mirroring the allocation of Vanguard Target Retirement Income, and will close to new investors on February 14, 2022. To maximize portfolio management and cost efficiencies for shareholders, the firm plans to merge Vanguard Target Retirement 2015 Fund into Vanguard Target Retirement Income Fund and Vanguard Target Retirement 2015 Trusts into Vanguard Target Retirement Income Trusts. The mergers are anticipated to be completed in July 2022.

Dedication to improving retirement outcomes

Vanguard's unique investor-owned structure has enabled the firm to consistently return value and pass on economies of scale to Target Retirement investors in the form of lower-costs, expanded access, and continued innovation.3 As part of Vanguard's commitment to further improving investors' retirement outcomes, Vanguard announced a series of enhancements to its Target Retirement lineup and retirement income capabilities that are expected to result in an estimated $190 million in savings to Target Retirement investors.4 As part of these enhancements, Vanguard launched an additional retirement income solution for eligible defined contribution plans, Vanguard Target Retirement Income and Growth Trust. Designed as an opt-in alternative to Target Retirement Income, Target Retirement Income and Growth provides a higher equity allocation upon retirement (50% stocks, 50% bonds) and is designed for investors whose wealth, risk tolerance, and/or additional sources of income allow for a higher risk tolerance in retirement.

Investments in Vanguard Target Retirement Funds and Trusts are subject to the risks of their underlying funds. The year in the fund or trust name refers to the approximate year (the target date) when an investor in the fund or trust would retire or leave the workforce. The fund or trust will gradually shift its emphasis from more aggressive investments to more conservative ones based on its target date. Vanguard Target Retirement Income Fund and Trusts and Vanguard Target Retirement Income and Growth Trusts have fixed investment allocations and are designed for investors who are already retired. An investment in a Target Retirement Fund or Trust is not guaranteed at any time, including on or after the target date.

About Vanguard

Vanguard is one of the world's largest investment management companies. As of November 30, 2021, Vanguard managed $8.2 trillion in global assets. The firm, headquartered in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, offers 421 funds to its more than 30 million investors worldwide. For more information, visit vanguard.com.

All figures as of November 30, 2021 unless stated otherwise.

For more information about Vanguard funds, visit vanguard.com to obtain a prospectus or, if available, a summary prospectus. Investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses, and other important information about a fund are contained in the prospectus; read and consider it carefully before investing.

A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) but has not yet become effective. The SEC has not approved or disapproved these securities or passed upon the adequacy of this prospectus. Any representation to the contrary is considered a criminal offense. These securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This communication shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of, these securities in any state in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state.

All investing is subject to risk, including the possible loss of the money you invest.

There is no guarantee that any particular asset allocation or mix of funds will meet your investment objectives or provide you with a given level of income. Diversification does not ensure a profit or protect against a loss.

Vanguard Target Retirement Trusts are not mutual funds. They are collective trusts available only to tax-qualified plans and their eligible participants. Investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses, and other important information should be considered carefully before investing. The collective trust mandates are managed by Vanguard Fiduciary Trust Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Vanguard Group, Inc.

Vanguard Marketing Corporation, Distributor.

1 Vanguard and Morningstar, as of September 30, 2021. Vanguard is the largest TDF manager in the industry.

2 Morningstar, as of December 31, 2020

3 Vanguard is investor-owned, meaning the fund shareholders own the funds, which in turn own Vanguard.

4 Estimated savings is inclusive of expected savings realized by Target Retirement Trust minimum investment reduction to $100 million from $250 million and anticipated expense ratio reduction of Target Retirement Funds to 0.08% (8 basis points). Expense ratio savings reflects difference between prior and current expense ratios multiplied by average AUM. Average AUM is based on daily average assets during a month, which are then averaged over the 12-months of the fiscal year.

SOURCE Vanguard
January 10, 2022

Dear Fellow Griffon Shareholders,

Voss Capital, LLC ("Voss") is a Houston-based investment partnership that has made a significant investment in Griffon Corp. ("Griffon" or the "Company"). We have nominated two directors whose mission, if elected, would be to work alongside the other members of Griffon's Board of Directors (the "Board") to improve value for all Griffon shareholders. We discovered Griffon by looking at companies related to our high conviction thesis on home remodeling and immediately saw opportunities for value creation. Griffon has a collection of attractive businesses whose valuation is being depressed due to an outdated conglomerate structure and one of the worst corporate governance profiles in the entire public market prior to our engagement with the Board. We have a history of successfully working with company boards to unlock value. While we do not normally launch proxy contests, in Griffon's case we felt compelled to do so, as management and the Board have refused to acknowledge the need for change at the Company.

We are writing to you today to outline our plan for value creation and demonstrate the urgent need for true independent oversight in the Boardroom. Our five-step plan for the Company, as set forth below, would unlock tremendous value for shareholders if appropriately and promptly implemented. In fact, we believe approximately $50 per share could be created for investors following its execution. We urge you to compare the prospects of our five-step plan with the value-destructive status quo under the watch of the current Board and management which has yielded only an 8% total return over the past five years, 61% underperformance versus the proxy peer group, and 171% underperformance versus the peer group under Ron Kramer's tenure.

Voss nominees Charlie Diao and Levi Winn are committed, if elected, to overseeing this plan and ensuring that shareholders are prioritized while overseeing Griffon's management team. You can only vote for our nominees on the enclosed BLUE proxy card. If you have already voted a white card from Griffon, a later-dated vote on the BLUE card will revoke your prior vote. Only your latest dated card counts.

Hunter Fan Deal

Nowhere is Griffon's disregard for shareholders more apparent than in the Company's recently announced acquisition of Hunter Fan for $845 million from MidOcean Partners. With minimal due diligence, it became clear that MidOcean Partners had been trying to exit Hunter Fan for years. James "Ted" Virtue, the founder of MidOcean Partners, Kevin Sullivan, Griffon's Lead "Independent" Director and MidOcean Managing Director, and Ron Kramer all have ties going back decades through their time at Deustche Bank and Wynn Casinos, respectively. Mr. Virtue and MidOcean must have been thrilled to finally get bailed out and offload Hunter Fan at the expense of Griffon's shareholders. Rather than use MidOcean's desperation to negotiate an attractive valuation, Griffon is instead paying 9.4x FY2023 EBITDA, a lofty multiple that baffles every industry insider we spoke with. For Mr. Kramer to disregard the rights of Griffon shareholders at an inflection point in Griffon's history when a number of shareholders, including Voss Capital, have raised serious questions around the conglomerate structure of the business not only demonstrates Mr. Kramer's brazen desire for entrenchment, but also the Griffon Board's complicit nature and lack of independence. This cannot continue.

We recently attended the Dallas International Lighting Show where the Hunter Fan deal was the butt of many jokes. If Griffon was so determined to enter the ceiling fan business, there were much better options than bailing out Mr. Kramer's old banking buddies. With minimal effort, we uncovered leads on multiple similar-sized companies for sale within the fan and lighting industry that had better reputations, cheaper asking prices, and would have diversified the CPP segment away from margin-squeezing Home Depot and Lowe's. Management acknowledged this lack of loyalty from the big box retailers on its last earnings call: "our customers who are, as we said, desperate for inventory, have been looking for other options to fill their shelves."

Despite levering up and taking substantial risk with shareholder capital to make the largest acquisition in Company history, the management team was so ill-prepared for the Hunter Fan M&A call that Mr. Kramer seemed to not know which period they were talking about when giving the EBITDA numbers, requiring the Griffon CFO to correct him. Even more shocking, Mr. Harris admitted that "we expect first once we own the business to really understand the business." Call us old fashioned, but we believe the order should be the other way aroundthorough due diligence and deep understanding should come first, before engaging in such a sizeable and potentially risky transaction.

The Company misinterprets Griffon's stock performance after the deal announcement as a sign of investors' approval. The reality is the stock was down on December 20th and only rose in the following days after Voss vocally opposed the deal and highlighted our plan to unlock value.

Weak Performance with No End in Sight

The Hunter Fan deal is representative of this management team's value destructive M&A strategy - doing deals for the sake of doing deals. This Board appears unwilling or incapable of grasping one of finance's most elementary concepts: return on invested capital must exceed the cost of capital in order to create sustainable value.

[please refer to the Return on Invested Capital Below Weighted Average Cost of Capital chart]

Griffon's outdated conglomerate structure costs shareholders nearly $50 million per year and is a significant drag on the company's ROIC. It shrouds the true value of the underlying businesses, and we believe each business could operate more efficiently as a standalone entity.

The Company points to its 3-year revenue growth in its proxy as evidence of its success. However, the 11% revenue growth number cited by the Company includes contributions from at least four acquisitions, including CornellCookson, and excludes the declining Defense business. This type of financial chicanery is reminiscent of tactics one might find in the book, "How To Lie With Statistics." The true organic growth rate is nearly half the figure the Company cites.

The Company is also three years deep into a margin improvement plan at the Consumer segment (CPP), costing $130 million with seemingly zero to show for it. In fact, the Company is guiding for margin declines for the business segment in FY 2022. To add insult to injury, in the middle of this multi-year operational consolidation initiative at CPP, the management team decided they would toss the largest acquisition in their history into the mix with Hunter Fan.

Voss's 5-Step Plan to Unlock Shareholder Value

To unlock the value currently trapped in Griffon's conglomerate structure, we believe the Company must take advantage of the favorable market environment for its assets. Significant value can be realized if the company immediately implements the below five steps:

1. Sell Defense Electronics

2. Explore alternatives for Home and Building Products

3. Use cash to reduce debt and pay a special dividend

4. Right-size corporate overhead

5. Improve margins at the Consumer segment

We see the correct implementation of this plan as yielding ~$50 per share in value for investors . This compares to the status quo which we believe will only further destroy value and enrich insiders.

Ongoing Compensation Concerns

With Say on Pay voting results in the bottom 7th percentile of Russell 3000 companies, it is evident that for years shareholders have been trying to convey their dissatisfaction with Griffon's executive compensation. Instead of heeding this sentiment from the Company's true owners, the Board repeatedly slaps shareholders in the face by rubber-stamping sham bonus metrics and ratcheting up pay for a CEO with a long history of poor performance. It is hardly challenging to uncover evidence of the Company's appalling corporate excess, such as the nearly $160,000 per year for Mr. Kramer's car and chauffeur. Meanwhile, former employees within the Home and Building Products division expressed frustration at being under-resourced, stretched thin, and unable to fully capitalize on the growth potential.

We have heard that Mr. Kramer spends an inordinate amount of his time meeting with lawyers to devise compensation plans with bonus metrics that are easily manageable. Case in point, the Company inexplicably issued $172 million in equity in August 2020, weeks before the fiscal year end, for seemingly no reason. This conveniently allowed Mr. Kramer to collect another $867,000 in cash compensation for exceeding the arbitrary working capital threshold for bonuses. It appears Griffon shareholders were diluted for the purpose of management hitting a bonus target. Another highly suspect metric is the share price appreciation bonus target  a temporary 20% rise in GFF's stock price at any point during a four-year period. We engaged a third-party data scientist to run Monte Carlo simulations, wherein they calculated that Mr. Kramer has a 75% - 83% chance of hitting this bonus threshold regardless of fundamental results based purely on the stock's natural volatility.

It gets worse. After Griffon bought ClosetMaid in 2018, the Board set a $1.5 million bonus payout for Mr. Kramer should ClosestMaid achieve a cumulative 2-year EBITDA of $50 million. At the time of acquisition, ClosetMaid was generating $30 to $31.5 million in annual EBITDA, or a $60+ million 2-year run rate. Being paid a bonus for not immediately running a newly acquired business into the ground is the corporate equivalent of a participation trophy.

Griffon's Entrenched Board of Directors

These easily manageable bonus metrics are undeniable proof of a Board that lacks sufficient independence, accountability, and fortitude. Our interactions with the Board reinforced our suspicions certain Board members are oblivious to modern corporate governance practices. Statements such as, "we put women on the board before it was fashionable" when the first woman joined the Board in 2018, show just how out of touch they really are.

According to Board member Tom Brosig, members of the Board felt, "Griffon has the best corporate governance they've ever seen." With an ISS Corporate Governance rating of 9 out of 10 (10 being the worst), this is an objectively foolish statement. This level of ignorance when it comes to governance standards in the boardroom is downright scary for shareholders and is but one more sign Griffon desperately needs new truly independent shareholder representatives.

The two Board members with the closest ties to Mr. Kramer, Kevin Sullivan and Tom Brosig, are in the two most important positions of Lead Independent Director and Chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee, respectively. This effectively cements Kramer's control in the boardroom, and we can't keep letting Mr. Kramer handpick Board members.

We are asking you to help elect two new directors on a 14-member Board in order to ensure, among other things, that the Board begins taking its fiduciary duties to its shareholders more seriously.

Giving Shareholders a Voice  Voss's Nominees

Our nominees, Charlie Diao and Leviathan Winn, are truly independent directors with no personal ties to management. Both Mr. Diao and Mr. Winn bring extensive experience optimizing businesses to unlock value for shareholders. Their expertise and independent viewpoints will offer a much-needed voice of reason in the boardroom. It is imperative we refresh the Board with objective directors who will work diligently to maximize shareholder value and not solely Mr. Kramer's bank account.

Conclusion

Griffon's counterarguments are weak and unsupported by relevant data. They say they have performed well and cite a 3-year TSR that begins right after a ~60% drop in the stock in the middle of 2018. This is the rare interval they can point to because the TSR has badly lagged peers for any period longer than three years. They say they have already begun refreshing the Board and feign a desire to clean up their act, but their proposed half-baked measures only kick the can down the road. They say we haven't owned the stock very long. This is true, but it doesn't take much time to see the obvious problems with the Company's governance and the opportunity for value creation. Furthermore, far from being short-term oriented, we have held some core positions in our portfolio for over seven years.

The Company cannot justify its outdated conglomerate structure, and we already know from our conversations that the Board cannot defend the executive compensation in any coherent fashion. Our modus operandi and message to the Griffon board is straightforward  if you fulfill your fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value, you will have our support. If you do not, we will exercise our rights as shareholders to hold you accountable.

While many of you have voiced your dissatisfaction through Say on Pay voting to no avail, this contested election represents an opportunity to directly hold this Board accountable. It is critical you vote the BLUE Proxy card to send the current Board a message and replace conflicted incumbent directors with two new independent members who will work diligently to maximize the Company's value while seeking to provide much-needed shareholder-focused oversight in the boardroom.

Sincerely,

Travis Cocke

Chief Investment Officer

Voss Capital

Follow our campaign and sign up for updates at www.renovategriffon.com

If you have any questions or need assistance voting your shares, please call the firm assisting us in the solicitation, Saratoga, at (888) 368-0379 or (212) 257-1311 or by email at [email protected]

Media Contact:

Serena Koontz

Head of Investor Relations

Voss Capital, LLC

[email protected]



SOURCE Voss Capital
The brief asserts that a district court erred in dismissing a suit brought by the attorneys general of the last three ratifying statesNevada, Illinois, and Virginiaand in concluding that a seven-year time limit stands in the way of the ERA. The suit asks the court to compel Archivist David S. Ferriero to comply with his statutory duty to publish and certify the ERA as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

At stake is constitutional equality (particularly for women and sexual minorities in underrepresented and marginalized groups) and the integrity of the ratification process.

Winston's team was led by Linda T. Coberly, chair of the firm's Appellate & Critical Motions Practice and chair of the ERA Coalition's Legal Task Force. She was joined on the brief by partner Christopher Man and associates Johanna Rae Hudgens, Linda A. Greene, and Courtney S. Block.

The ERA satisfied all constitutional requirements in January 2020, when Virginia became the 38th state to ratify it. The amicus brief argues that the seven-year time frame for adoption that Congress unilaterally imposed in 1972 cannot stand in the way of the ERA, as that timetable does notand cannotalter or override Article V's crystal-clear provisions, all of which the ERA has already met.

Article V leaves no room for time limits. Unless the language of an amendment specifically contains such a limit, none exists. In this case, Congress's arbitrary seven-year time limit appears, not in the text of the amendment itself, but in the resolving clause of the 1972 session's joint resolution. By electing to place the time limit there, Congress made it merely advisory. A time limit created unilaterally by Congress cannot stand in the way of an amendment that has satisfied all requirements of Article V.

In addition, the brief asserts that the district court erred in finding that the Archivist's refusal to publish the ERA makes no difference. While it may have no legal effect, publication by the Archivist is important. Among other things, the Archivist's refusal to comply with his statutory duty to publish the amendment will stand in the way of efforts to press for revision of state statutes that continue to discriminate on the basis of sex.

"The ERA Coalition is proud to sign on to the amicus brief in support of the lawsuit the Attorneys General of Illinois, Nevada, and Virginia have filed. We need to remedy the systemic causes of sex inequality in this country, and you don't get more systemic than the Constitution. This is where it all begins, and the Equal Rights Amendment can help end it," stated Carol Jenkins, President and CEO of the ERA Coalition/Fund for Women's Equality. She added, "There is no time limit on equality."

"The ERA Coalition is glad to be able to present the views of the women's movement in this case. All the constitutional requirements for an amendment have been met, and the failure of the Archivist to publish the ERA is a dereliction of duty that we hope the court will address. Women have waited far too long for constitutional equality, a fundamental human right recognized in other constitutions around the world," said Jessica Neuwirth, co-founder and President Emerita of the ERA Coalition.

Represented on the brief are advocates who have been fighting for the ERA for decades, as well as others who are new to the fight. They include national feminist groups, advocates for immigrant women and women of color, religious organizations, and LGBTQ+ advocates.

Among these groups is the Feminist Majority Foundation, founded and led by Eleanor Smeal. "This amazing amicus brief reviews the nearly 100 years of feminist struggle for the ERA as well as its need, relevance, and popularity today. The diverse array of women's rights, civil rights, social justice, professional, and equality groups representing millions of people throughout the nation signing on to the brief also speaks volumes for the ERA's long-overdue need," she said.

"The need for the Equal Rights Amendment has never been greater," said Winston partner Linda Coberly. "Women are consistently underrepresented, underpaid, and subjected to a national epidemic of domestic and sexual violence. The ERA has already met all constitutional requirements for an amendment, and the Archivist's refusal to publish it runs counter to the will of people and is an inappropriate intrusion by the Executive Branch into the ratification process."

Winston & Strawn is a proud and active supporter of the ERA and the present-day efforts to make it part of the Constitution. The firm's involvement began in 2017 when Winston joined the revived campaign for ratification in Illinois. The firm has since hosted events, coordinated activists, published legal research, led webinars, submitted witness slips, and testified at a legislative hearing. After Illinois' historic ratification in 2018, Winston joined the national ERA Coalition as a Lead Organizationthe first law firm to do so. Linda Coberly continues to serve as chair of the Coalition's Legal Task Force, a group of constitutional scholars working toward ratification.

Support for the ERA from Big Law has never been stronger, as women in leadership positions continue to increase momentum for adoption through a series of supporting briefs. Prominent partners at a series of major law firms are expected to file briefs today.

Winston & Strawn LLP is an international law firm with 15 offices located throughout North America, Asia, and Europe. More information about the firm is available at www.winston.com.

Complete list of participants in today's amicus brief:

Alice Paul Institute

American Association of University Women

American Medical Women's Association

Association of Flight AttendantsCWA

Brooklyn for Reproductive and Gender Equity

for Reproductive and Gender Equity The Black Women's Roundtable

The Dolores Huerta Foundation

The Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project

Downtown Women for Change

Equality Utah

ERA Coalition

ERA Minnesota

ERA-NC Alliance

ERA Task Force AZ

Feminist Majority Foundation

Fund for Women's Equality

GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders

Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, Inc.

Justice Revival

League of Women Voters of the United States

Legal Momentum

The Loretto Feminist Network

Michigan ERAmerica

Michigan Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, Inc

Mormons for ERA

National Association of Social Workers

National Association of Women Lawyers

National Council of Jewish Women, Inc.

National Council of Negro Women, Inc.

National Immigrant Women's Advocacy Project, Inc.

National Organization for Women

National Women's Political Caucus

National Women's Political Caucus Foundation

NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice

Oklahoma Women's Coalition

Project 28 MO

Service Women's Action Network

Shattering Glass

Sisters of Loretto  Loretto Community

 Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

of Carondelet South Carolina Equal Means ERA

U.S. Women's Caucus at the UN

VA NOW, Inc.

VoteEqualityUS

Voto Latino

Women Employed

Women Lawyers on Guard Inc.

Women Matter

Women's Equality Coalition

Women's Law Project

Women's Media Center

Zonta USA Caucus

Contact:

Michael Goodwin

646-502-3595

[email protected]

SOURCE Winston & Strawn LLP
For over 20 years, the Norman Parathyroid Center's surgeons have been the highest-volume parathyroid surgeons in the world, performing nearly 3,800 parathyroid operations annually. The center established an international reputation following Dr Jim Norman's development of a minimal parathyroid operation while the Director of Endocrine Surgery at the University of South Florida in the mid-1990s. This patented operation, which is performed as an out-patient surgery, carries an expected cure rate of 99% and typically lasts just 30 minutes.

"The surgical practice is unique in that each surgeon is highly specialized within endocrine surgery," said Dr. Jim Norman, founder of the practice. "Our seven parathyroid surgeons perform parathyroid surgery exclusively, the thyroid surgeons perform thyroid surgery exclusively, and the adrenal surgeons concentrate on adrenal tumors. This is a huge benefit to patients because of the extensive experience we have in each field. It is likely that our surgeons have seen every permutation of these endocrine tumors."

Combined, the parathyroid, thyroid, and adrenal surgeons have a global reputation and international reach with just over 50% of patients traveling from outside the state of Florida and nearly 10% from out of the country for expert surgical care of thyroid cancer, parathyroid gland and adrenal tumors. With close proximity to Tampa International Airport, the campus is expected to attract patients from across the state, nation and the globe for both extensive inpatient and more routine outpatient procedures.

Endocrine tumors can cause significant health issues due to excessive hormone production. Academic literature suggests that more than 50% of parathyroid tumors and more than 75% of adrenal tumors are underdiagnosed. The Hospital for Endocrine Surgery will allow these surgeons to reach even more patients who are desperately seeking a cure and relief from their life altering symptoms.

The Hospital for Endocrine Surgery is the first of its kind and the only hospital in the world dedicate to thyroid, parathyroid and adrenal and tumors and cancers. This brand-new hospital, which opened January 3 at 6001 Webb Road, is a 75,000 sq. ft. campus of HCA South Tampa Hospital.

"The new Hospital for Endocrine Surgery was specifically built to serve patients with tumors of the parathyroid, thyroid, and adrenal glands," added Dr. Norman. "It will offer endocrinologists and other physicians a single center where they can refer their patients with endocrine tumors for surgery, regardless of the complexity. In fact, nearly 15% of our patients have had a failed operation at another institution before being referred to us."

The hospital features beautifully appointed private patient rooms and eight ultra-modern operating rooms supported by 38 pre/post-surgery bays. Significant infrastructure upgrades will support specialized thyroid, parathyroid and adrenal surgery, including radiology, nuclear medicine, laboratory, and pathology  all with an emphasis on endocrine tumor diagnosis and treatment. Advanced treatments such as radiofrequency ablation (RFA) of thyroid tumors, minimally invasive scarless robotic thyroid surgery and single visit adrenal vein sampling and curative surgery will be offered.

About the Norman Parathyroid Center: Located in Tampa, Florida, the Norman Parathyroid Center is the leading parathyroid gland tumor treatment center in the world, performing nearly 3,800 parathyroid operations annually. Well known for cure rates over 99% via an operation that typically lasts about 20 minutes, the Norman Parathyroid Center's success centers on a teamwork approach by the most experienced parathyroid surgeons in the world.

www.parathyroid.com | (813) 972-0000

About the Clayman Thyroid Center: Founded by one of the nation's best-known thyroid surgeons, the Clayman Thyroid Center is the highest volume thyroid cancer referral center in the United States. The Center boasts the most experienced thyroid surgeons in the US who provide personalized care allowing the greatest opportunity for cancer cure, wellness, and cosmetic and functional outcomes via all types of thyroid surgery from minimal incision to scarless thyroid surgery to advanced cancer care.

www.thyroidcancer.com | (813) 940-3130

About the Carling Adrenal Center: Founded by Dr. Tobias Carling, one of the world's leading experts in adrenal gland surgery, the Carling Adrenal Center is a worldwide destination for the surgical treatment of adrenal tumors. Dr. Carling spent nearly 20 years at Yale University, including 7 as the Chief of Endocrine Surgery before leaving in 2020 to open to Carling Adrenal Center, which performs more adrenal operations than any other hospital in the world.

www.adrenal.com | (813) 972-0000

Contact: Julie Canan, Director of Marketing

(941) 468  3002

[email protected]

SOURCE Norman Parathyroid Center
Canadian Overseas Petroleum Limited (LSE:COPL, CSE:XOP, OTC:VELXD) has raised US$13mln through a bookbuild placing at 20p per share, around a 15% discount to the previous close.

Each new share comes with half a warrant exercisable at 24p (for a whole warrant) within six months.

The net proceeds in conjunction with COPL's other financial resources are intended to be used for facility upgrades and drilling activities, and for general working capital.

COPL expands footprint in Wyoming with Cuda buy
What it does

Eco Atlantic Oil & Gas Ltd (LON:ECO) owns a 15% stake of the Orinduik licence offshore Guyana in the Atlantic Ocean, developed with French giant Total and Irish explorer Tullow Oil.

A farm-out with Total saw its stake reduced from 40% in return for a cash payment of US$12.5mln.

Away from Guyana, Eco owns four licences off the coast of Namibia including 57.5% of the Cooper Block

In January 2021, the company launched a new renewable energy business.

It owns a 70% stake in Eco Atlantic Renewables and has funded the new venture with a US$6mln loan  the first US$1.1mln paid for the first acquisition, a ready-to-build 10.57 MW project in Greece.

How is it doing?

Previously, Eco and its partners made two discoveries in the Guyana licence though the oil was found to be heavier than expected.

The next phase of exploration drilling is due to be decided over the coming months, with news expected in the latter part of the second quarter.

A 2020 competent persons report upgraded the amount of oil at Orinduik by 29% to 5.14bn barrels (p50) or a net 771mln barrels to Eco for its stake.

The report saw 22 prospects of which 11 are in the upper cretaceous horizon, where oil is expected to be lighter and more commercial than the heavy oil discoveries in the tertiary layer.

Leads in the tertiary horizon are estimated to contain 1.2bn barrels while the cretaceous section contains an estimated 3.94bn barrels with two targets in this section (Amaila/Kumaka and Iatuk-D) each containing 725mln barrels.

Over half of the 22 prospects have a 30% chance of success or greater, said the CPR.

In 2021, further third-party drill activity nearby can continue to bolster Guyanas emerging offshore oil industry.

Renewables opportunity

Eco has set up a new company, Eco Atlantic Renewables, which will seek to source, acquire, and develop exclusive renewable solar energy projects.

The new company is a joint venture with Nepcoe Capital Partners, a UK based renewables investment firm, which is providing exclusive access to a pipeline of opportunities with potential for up to 2 gigawatts of solar generation capacity.

Most of the projects are located in Southern Europe's high solar hours' sunbelt.

The ventures first acquisition is the Kozani project in Greece which is fully licensed, permitted and ready-to-build. The 10.57 megawatt project was acquired on Monday, with 1.1mln paid by Eco Atlantic Renewables.

Eco Atlantic Renewables envisages further deals  with the company targeting 100 MW worth of operating and grid-connected projects in its first year of operation, plus up to 800 MW of in-development assets.

What management says

"We are not a management team that likes to sit and wait for outcomes, said Gil Holzman, Eco chief executive in a statement.

Following several months of extensive strategic work and identification of multiple projects by the management team and Board of Directors, this exciting opportunity has crystalised.

Our decision to form this new majority held renewable energy company was partly driven by a lack of oil and gas acquisition opportunities that are as good and as prospective as the ones we already hold, Holzman added.

Video

What brokers say

Stockbroker Peel Hunt sees the offshore explorer as a buy, in September 2020, pointing to substantial upside to the current price. Analyst Matt Cooper initiated Peel Hunts coverage of Eco with a 100p price target, compared to a prevailing market price of 22.7p per share.

Cooper, in a note, described the companys upcoming exploration campaign as one of the most exciting slated for 2021.

In November, a note from Align Research described the prevailing share price as a good buying opportunity whilst setting a 123.54p price target, compared to a market price of 24.35p.

Previously SP Angel highlighted that Ecos success as a frontier explorer has not been reflected in its share price at all. The juniors two large discoveries at Orinduik will be followed by two further wells planned for next year while drilling offshore Namibia is also due to accelerate this year.

SP Angel says the discoveries have been misunderstood by the market.
Sativa Wellness Group Inc (AQSE:SWEL, CSE:SWEL, OTC:SCNNF) is to change its name to Goodbody Health Inc, adopting the name of its main brand.

The new ticker symbol on the AQSE Growth Market and Canadian Securities Exchange will be GBDY.

The company's web address will change as of 12 January 2022 to www.goodbodyhealth.com.

"Following the huge successes of 2021 in delivering health and wellness products and services, we are extremely keen to make sure all of our investors and other stakeholders understand the strategic direction of the company," said Geremy Thomas, executive chairman.

"The repositioning of our brand as Goodbody Health, combined with our key customer proposition of 'Know More - Live Better better reflects our mission to be a major provider of wellness products across our ever-expanding distribution channels. We are very positive about the opportunities this will bring in 2022 and beyond.

In 2020, the company set up Coronavirus (COVID-19) testing clinics for travellers in response to the pandemic to supplement the existing wellness business. The success of these clinics continues to evolve into a range of wellness testing products and services in addition to the COVID-19 testing and cannabidiol (CBD) products, with the realisation that customers are looking for wellness management as well as symptom diagnosis, the company said.

This has yielded strong sales growth through the local independent pharmacies who are proactive in helping their community as well as directly to corporate and individual customers, it added.
Eco (Atlantic) Oil & Gas Ltd (AIM:ECO, TSX-V:EOG) said it is to buy Azinam Group Ltd, including Azinam's entire offshore asset portfolio, in return for a 16.65% equity stake in the enlarged group.

The deal gives Eco a material offshore petroleum exploration asset base in Namibia and South Africa.

Under the terms of the agreement with seller Azinam Holdings Ltd, Eco will issue new shares, equating to around 16% of the enlarged company.

It gains access to a 50% interest in Block 2B, in South Africas Orange basin, where alongside Africa Energy and Panoro Energy a well is slated for the second half of 2022.

In Namibia, Eco acquires additional working interests in its current blocks (Petroleum Exploration Licenses #97, #98, #99) which will rise to 85%.

"We are delighted to update the market on this exciting transaction and welcome the stronger alignment with Africa Oil Corp (TSX-V:AOI) and the broader Lundin Group, said Eco chief executive Gil Holzman.

"The acquisition strengthens our long-term and strategic position in Namibia, giving us 85% and operatorship in four highly prospective blocks, and gives us added versatility as we look to partner with a major player to help accelerate further exploration activities in the country's burgeoning energy industry.

Holzman added: The Azinam acquisition requires no cash funding to close, and positive discussions have been ongoing with Eco's key existing stakeholders in relation to underwriting the funds required to participate directly in 2022 South Africa drilling activity.

Eco told investors it expects that South Africa drilling will be closely followed by an exploration well in Guyana.

These activities come at a time when global discovered resources volumes and access to energy in southern Africa is at an all-time low and hydrocarbons are desperately required as the world navigates the path of successfully achieving the energy transition, Holzman highlighted.

We firmly believe that companies such as ours that explore for oil in and around emerging economies will play a vital role in reducing energy poverty.

Eco chief operating officer Colin Kinley, meanwhile, looked to the programme in South Africa: These activities come at a time when global discovered resources volumes and access to energy in southern Africa is at an all-time low and hydrocarbons are desperately required as the world navigates the path of successfully achieving the energy transition.

We firmly believe that companies such as ours that explore for oil in and around emerging economies will play a vital role in reducing energy poverty.
Thor Explorations Ltd (TSX-V:THX, AIM:THX, OTC:THXPF)'s (Thor Explorations Ltd (TSX-V:THX, AIM:THX, OTC:THXPF)) (Thor Explorations Ltd (TSX-V:THX, AIM:THX, OTC:THXPF)) Segun Lawson joins Proactive London to talk about their operational update and gold production guidance for the first three months 2022 and the rest of year.

He says the supply chain issues reported in the company's announcement on November 30 2021 have been resolved, the laboratory has been fully commissioned and gold shipments have been made successfully.
European truck makers could face up to 13bn in damages after they were accused of price fixing, the Telegraph reported.

British law firm Weightmans is applying to lodge a class action suit against Volvo, Daimler (ETR:DAI), Iveco, MAN and DAF, according to the paper.

Buyers of the trucks could have been ripped off to the tune of 20,000, Weightmans estimates.

It said that 650,000 trucks were sold during the time the cartel existed, meaning the claim could be as large as 13bn.

Five years ago, the European Commission said that the five truck firms colluded to fix prices over the course of 14 years from 1997 to 2011.

Weightmans has applied to the Competition Appeal Tribunal to bring a collective claim for damages on an opt-out basis. That means claimants can go their own way if they wish, but that the company will seek compensation on their behalf if they do not.

The hearing was in April and the firm is waiting for a decision, said Laurence Pritchard, head of competition law at Weightmans.

A Daimler (ETR:DAI) Trucks spokesman said: We thoroughly assess all customer claims and will vigorously defend ourselves against unjustified claims. The European Commission has not made any findings in its decision with respect to possible damage to customers.

This also illustrates the high hurdles that exist for plaintiffs. Plaintiffs must demonstrate in detail that the exchange of information in fact led to a concrete damage. Considerable internal time and effort will be required to furnish that proof and customers will ultimately not be in the position to meet that threshold.
Mayor Adams new chief of staff managed a medical company that remains in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to a Brooklyn landlord struggling to recover the money and evict its tenant for more than a year, the landlord claims in court records.

The landlord, Bridge Street Offices, alleges in court documents that CHC Surgical Center owed $224,000 in back rent as of September 2020  and that the total debt has ballooned to more than $600,000.

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Until recently, one of CHCs managing partners was Frank Carone, who now serves as Adams chief of staff. Before joining Adams administration, Carone was a partner at the politically powerful Abrams Fensterman law firm and served as chief lawyer for the Kings County Democratic Party, a role that gave him power over which Democratic judicial nominees appear on the ballot.

Then-Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams (left) is pictured with Frank Carone (right) and Howard Fensterman (center). (Harbor Group Communications, Inc.)

Carone has been a kingmaker in Brooklyn politics for years, counting both former Mayor Bill de Blasio and Adams as friends. He has also courted controversy. He served as the attorney for Jay and Stuart Podolsky, two shady landlords who received $173 million in a deal with the de Blasio administration to convert 17 cluster-site apartment buildings for the homeless into affordable housing.

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The Podolsky brothers pleaded guilty to dozens of felonies in 1986 in relation to their illegal treatment of tenants.

Carones involvement with CHC  and the current legal controversy regarding the companys place of business  now represents another potential political liability for him.

But the landlords concern in the matter is more of a practical one.

They abused the emergency COVID protection laws intended for people who really need relief to drag out the eviction proceeding. Theyve remained in business and havent paid any rent or use-and-occupancy in almost two years, said Mitchell Haddad, the attorney for Bridge Street Offices.

Haddad said his client simply wants to get whats owed to them and move on.

Thats what they want  and thats what theyre entitled to, he said.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

The lawyers who represent CHC, Warren and Alex Estis, view things differently. They contend its their client whos been wronged, that CHC  a pain management center  actually has been paying rent on the property and that the landlord is now trying to drive them out after they made improvements to the property.

The landlord and its counsel acted in an unscrupulous and unethical manner in an attempt to extort additional monies from CHC, they said in a written statement. CHC signed a renewal lease tendered by the landlord, performed under the renewal lease by paying the new rents and made valuable alterations and improvements to the space.

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Carone began putting his assets in a blind trust with his City Hall appointment and resigned as counsel to the Kings County Democratic Party. Abrams Fensterman, where Carone served as an executive partner, is also buying him out.

Max Young, a spokesman for Mayor Adams, told the Daily News on Friday that Carones divestment from all of his business  including CHC  is now complete.

What limited stocks and real estate he owns with his wife are now in a blind trust, said Young. As he takes on this high-profile civic role, hes gone above and beyond to avoid any real or perceived conflict of interest.

His legal entanglement with CHC, though, is still ongoing given the fact that he could be called to testify if the matter goes to trial.

According to public records, the court dispute between the Carone-affiliated surgical center and its landlord began in November 2020 when Bridge Street Offices filed a petition in Brooklyn civil court to remove CHC from 79 Bridge St. in Brooklyns Vinegar Hill.

79 Bridge St. in Brooklyns Vinegar Hill. (Google)

In the petition, the landlord claims it terminated the tenancy on the rental property in September 2020 after CHC stopped paying rent. According to an affidavit from Bridge Street principal John Fox, withholding payment began in December 2019  months before COVID hit the city in March 2020.

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According to court records, the monthly rent on the disputed property is $20,556. CHC submitted a hardship declaration during the pandemic in an attempt to put a hold on the eviction proceeding  a statement that was signed by Carone and dated March 12, 2021  but the landlord challenged it in court in September, arguing that CHC remained in operation for most of the pandemic.

It is respectfully submitted that tenants hardship declaration is a sham and has been used to continue to occupy the premises rent and [use and occupancy] free, Fox said in an affidavit about Carones declaration. The court should therefore find tenants hardship declaration to be invalid.

Ultimately, Carone withdrew it, court records show.

Frank Carone, main, and pictured on the front page of the New York Daily News on April 7, 2019. (Bryan Smith/New York Daily News)

In his sworn statement, Fox noted that CHC got a $34,100 Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, loan in April 2020 but used none of it to begin to pay off back rent. He also cited several other examples of spending that indicate, to him at least, that CHC had cash coming in to pay its bills.

Patients have been coming to the premises throughout the COVID-19 pandemic for treatment, he said in an affidavit. Tenants doctors and employees have been at the surgical facility on a regular basis at least three to four days a week. I have personally observed both doctors and patients in and out of the premises.

Fox contends that CHC has been doing business out of the Bridge St. location since 2014, except for a brief period between mid-March and June 2020.

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Just recently, tenant hired new employees, including an office manager; upgraded the air-conditioning unit serving the subject premises; and purchased and received delivery of new sophisticated medical equipment, he said in a sworn statement on Sept. 28. I have been often asked by patients to direct them to the premises on numerous occasions.

One month after CHC and Carone withdrew their hardship declaration, CHC filed a new lawsuit in Brooklyn Supreme Court, resulting in a lower civil court proceeding stay. In it, CHC attorney Alex Estis contends his client and its landlord agreed upon a new lease in or about October 2018 and that CHC signed off on the lease that month. Still, according to an affidavit signed on Nov. 8., Carone noted that a representative from Bridge Street Offices never signed off on the agreement.

Estis requested that the initial civil court case between CHC and Bridge Street be consolidated in Brooklyn Supreme Court in his legal filings. That matter is pending, but the Supreme Court judge handling the case, Wayne Saitta, issued a temporary restraining order in November, barring the landlord from evicting CHC, at least for the time being.

The request to consolidate the cases is expected to be heard on Jan. 18.

If granted, the matter will essentially return to square one, but it would be heard in the higher court. The case will likely proceed in the lower civil court if it isnt.

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Carone seconds Estis request that the case be fully transferred to Supreme Court.

They should be heard by one judge with the power to resolve all those disputes with a unified and consistent result, he said in his affidavit.

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Private investors become increasingly involved in voting on companies annual meetings when the process is made a little easier.

This is one of the main findings of the UK's second largest investment platform, Interactive Investors, which took the step of automatically opting customers into all votes for companies in which they own shares, reversing the usual industry practice of opting them out.

Last year, the first year after this change, the number of votes processed was up 110% from the year before up to 161,904.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC (LSE:RDSB), Lloyds Banking Group PLC (LSE:LLOY) and BP PLC (LSE:BP.) were the companies where most retail investors cast votes at general meetings in 2021, with Vodafone, AstraZeneca and Aviva also making the top 10 list.

The broker said that shareholder activism is a powerful tool in creating long term change, and with the growing focus on environmental, social, and governance issues, private investors are getting involved to hold large companies accountable.

Its become easier to express personal opinions publicly and most of us now do it every day, so why shouldnt shareholders have their thoughts heard by more of the big corporations they own a stake in? said Lee Wild, ii's head of equity strategy.

With strength in numbers, theres a real opportunity to hold businesses and the people who run them to account.
CV Check Ltd (ASX:CV1) ended 2021 strongly being cash flow positive from operations during the first half of FY2022 and notching up record quarterly and half-year revenue, setting itself up for further growth in the second half of the financial year, which is traditionally the companys stronger period.

This provides a very strong footing as CV1 moves further into the execution phase of growing the SaaS business already established and towards further international expansion.

Record revenue

The company recorded revenue of $6.5 million in the December quarter, which is an 83% rise on the prior corresponding quarter, and total revenue of $12.8 million for the first half of the year, an 84% rise on the previous corresponding period.

This includes SaaS revenue of $1.2 million from CV1's real-time monitored compliance product, Cited.

The revenue drove cash receipts of $8.3 million for the quarter, which is up 35% on the previous corresponding period.

CGI strategy showing results

CV1s CEO Michael Ivanchenko said, The completion of the integration of Bright People Technologies and the commencement of execution of the company CGI (Consolidate the base, Grow new markets and Innovate) strategy is showing results.

"We continue to see strong growth in the pre-employment screening market through our returning business customers utilising more of our screening services including our COVID Vaccination checks.

"We are experiencing unprecedented interest in our SaaS real-time compliance monitoring product, Cited, and progress continues on key innovations which we look forward to announcing soon.

Strong cash position

The groups strong performance during the half came despite the effects of the repeated lockdowns and uncertainty related to the pandemic and whilst completing the integration of Bright People Technology.

CV1 generated $1.2 million in cash from its operating activities across H1FY22, with a closing cash balance of $12.2 million at the end of calendar year 2021.

The cash position includes one-off payments made during the first half of the year including the finalisation of the BPT acquisition which reduced the cash balance by $1 million.

"The operating activities of the business continue to generate cash, Ivanchenko said.

"The business is exceptionally well placed as we move into Q3 and Q4, which have historically been CV1s strongest quarters for revenue.

About CV Check

CV1 is a leader in the provision of real-time workforce compliance management and reporting technology.

Its cloud-based product suite is used internationally for dedicated pre-employment screening and daily workforce compliance management.
Astro Resources NL (ASX:ARO) is encouraged by the initial signs revealed in ongoing diamond drilling at the Needles Gold Project in Nevada, USA.

The company last month intersected zones of propylitic alteration containing finely disseminated pyrite from its first drill hole, as well as veining with up to 10% pyrite, which is consistent with the main DC/IP chargeability anomaly that it is testing.

In drill hole 2, Astro has intersected 80 metres of andesite containing generally 5% to 10% of pyrite and a further 33 metres of brecciated andesitic volcanics containing up to 10% to 20% pyrite.

Looking ahead, the company expects initial assay results of priority samples from both drill holes during February.

Drill hole 1

Astro completed drilling drill hole 1 to a depth of 1,259 feet (384 metres) and intersected zones of propylitic alteration containing finely disseminated pyrite.

Aside from pyrite and minor marcasite, initial logging has not detected other sulphide minerals and, without assays, it is too early to determine if these rocks contain gold.

Drill hole 2

To date, Astro has completed 1,390 feet (424 metres) at drill hole 2 where it has also intersected pyritic intervals.

Within these pyritic intervals, propylitic alteration intensity was generally moderate to strong, with argillic and /or phyllic alteration encountered in the deepest intercepts

The strong pyrite content of both holes is consistent with the strong DC/IP chargeability anomaly but, until assays are received, the company cannot know whether or not there is gold mineralisation within the target zone.

Drilling recommenced on January 5, 2022, and the second hole has a planned depth of 2,000 feet (610 metres), by which point it is expected that the full thickness of the target volcanic sequence will have been tested.
Little contemporary thought is given to construction materials outside the carbon cost of cement, but they are quite literally the backbone of modern society.

Suvo Strategic Minerals Ltd (ASX:SUV) saw an opportunity in the large and ever-increasing global consumption of both high-grade kaolin and silica sands and the depleting global resources available to be mined.

The company has now acquired several assets in this sector with multiple product streams, positioning them to take advantage of looming supply shortages both locally and throughout the Asia Pacific region.

Suvo executive chairman Robert Martin spoke to Proactive about the companys opportunities, advantages and forward outlook.

In this article:

Clay and sand are not sexy.

They dont glitter like gold or hold the dangerous fascination of uranium, but the profit margins for industrial materials like kaolin and silica sands are certainly attractive.

The global kaolin market size was estimated at US$3.1 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach US$4.1 billion by 2025, at a compounding annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.5% from 2020 to 2025. The material is mostly used in ceramics, paper, fibreglass, paints and coatings, rubber, pharmaceuticals and plastics.

In recent years high-purity alumina (HPA) has been synthesised from kaolin deposits, for use in lithium-ion batteries and other similar emerging technologies that have been taking the market by storm.

While currently occupying a smaller market share  US$1.3 billion in 2019, expected to reach US$4.8 billion by 2026  HPA has been predicted to grow at a CAGR of 20.7%, trouncing even the lithium-ion markets growth of 19%.

Silica sand has also experienced a major supply squeeze in the last few years, holding the crown of second most consumed raw material on the planet after water. Its used in a wide variety of applications including construction, glass, computer chips, solar panels and even electric vehicles.

Silica sand is in short supply after several countries banned the mining of river sand, after the overexploitation of the resource caused devastating erosion on coastlines and riverbanks. This supply pressure has pumped up demand, netting silica sand a CAGR of 7%.

Altogether these industrial materials represent a market experiencing increasingly high demand, sharp supply shortages and the potential for impressive EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes and depreciation) numbers.

Suvo Strategic Minerals is a dual-commodity mining company based in Australia, looking to take advantage of this emerging market space with operations in Victoria and the kaolin and silica sand projects in Western Australia.

The company was catapulted into 'Producer' status following the acquisition of the Pittong Hydrous Kaolin Project in Victoria (pictured), originally owned by French multinational company Imerys S.A, one of the worlds largest kaolin miners.

Originally purchased seeking a ready-made team of experts to help develop its White Cloud kaolin deposit in Western Australia, Suvo instead found it had acquired a fully operational kaolin mine, complete with processing facilities, multiple baked-in offtake partner, including Imerys, and a site that only required small upgrades to push decades more life out of the operation.

We ended up spending A$1.88 million on the purchase, so we didn't pay a lot of money for it, it really was a steal. Suvo Strategic Minerals executive chair Robert Martin said.

We thought it could be full of problems, but the upside was, it offered us Australias only hydrous kaolin personnel ... nevertheless the more we got under the hood and started having a look, the more we started to realise this is a really good asset with a very long mine life that could be and currently is very profitable.

In the first nine months we made about A$2.5 million in EBITDA, so it's paid for itself already, Martin explained.

The Pittong Kaolin Projects product stream was well developed when Suvo obtained it, with 21 top quality products developed by global leaders in the field, Imerys.

Now the proud owners of the only operational hydrous kaolin processing facility in Australia, Suvo made the strategic decision to not only continue operations at Pittong, but to expand its offerings through the leveraging of a kaolin/halloysite deposit on the project grounds and upgrades to its processing plant.

Finding Halloysite at our yet to be mined Trawalla deposit was one of the bonuses when we bought Pittong from Imerys, because when they originally drilled that deposit, they drilled it looking for kaolin for paper, paint and coating applications which is a flat, platey kaolin, while halloysite is more cylindrical in shape and very good for ceramic applications, a product line that is not yet produced from Pittong.

Kaolin has been a hot topic in the market as the new core feedstock of high-purity alumina (HPA), a highly sought-after material that has a subjective price based in very specific quality requirements.

The other benefit from our Pittong operations is our ability to produce high-quality pharmaceutical-grade kaolin that sells for between $2,500 to $3,000 per tonne, finding deposits that can do this are rare and there are not that many good quality ones left. Martin highlighted.

In June 2020 Suvo announced a maiden JORC resource for the White Knight Project, which holds the White Cloud deposit, of 35.1 million tonnes kaolin, with an average ISO brightness of more than 80% and yield of 40%.

The company has been developing HPA from White Cloud kaolin, so far achieving 99.992% purity with an ISO brightness of 89.2%, a rating of 4N.

While testing is ongoing, this places Suvos HPA just below the second-most valuable form of HPA, 5N, which boasts 99.999% purity.

HPA with a purity of 4N nets a price of US$15-US$40 per kilogram, coming in at about US$15,000US$40,000 a tonne. HPA N4 is the most widely consumed form of HPA on a global basis, especially in the Asia-Pacific, which cornered 61% of the HPA market in 2020.

Ceramics is another area of kaolin/halloysite demand, with supply shortages underscored by a tightening of regulations for Chinese kaolin miners, causing several mines to close in what is historically both the source and market for halloysite and kaolin, especially in ceramics.

Given Suvo is currently the only hydrous kaolin producer in the country  and the prime location of its White Cloud Project near several Western Australian ports with good infrastructure  the company has already secured multiple established export options, with a hungry market to feed their product into.

By the companys account, the in-ground value of Suvos Nova Silica Sand Project could be in the tens of billions.

We have something there that is multi-generational, very large, with infrastructure we can lean on. If you look at it from that perspective, it's very valuable, Martin explained.

It's so big we have just stopped drilling, because we just don't need to do anymore.

In October 2021 Suvo released a mineral resource estimate for Nova, defining its JORC-compliant inferred resource at 216 million tonnes, comprising silica glass sand, silica flour and coarse silica sand up to 99.24% silicon dioxide (SiO2) depending on its form.

You can make a lot of money for a low capex (capital expenditure) spend, especially on the silica side of the business, Martin said.

Youre talking $40 to $50 million to build a large, good quality plant. It's not difficult mining, it's not difficult processing, it's more like a bulk earthmoving operation.

Depending on the composition and form, silica sand can net anything from US$38 a tonne to US$250 at the highest quality requirements.

At high purities, its used in a wide variety of products, including semiconductor moulding compounds, optical fibres, electric vehicles and also more importantly in the manufacture of solar panels, a market that is expanding rapidly and will require a quality supply of silica.

Fifteen years ago, you probably werent exporting kaolin, and you definitely werent exporting silica sand in any bulk form, but as those assets deplete globally and the prices come up, Australia and in particular Suvo is in the box seat to fill the void, Martin explained.

There's an increasing demand for good quality silica and we are seeing an increased demand for quality kaolin. We're full at Pittong, thats why we are in the process of upgrading, so we can meet demand, its also the reason we are working so hard in WA to bring our other deposit online.

Suvo looks to be shaping up into a global kaolin and silica sand producer with long mine life, low capital expenditure projects and multiple revenue streams.

The company currently has about A$5.37 million in the bank, amounting to an impressive 23 quarters of funding even without taking into account ongoing revenue from its operations.

Suvo also appears to be taking its environmental, social and governance responsibilities very seriously, looking to develop the White Cloud and Nova projects with ESG in mind from the ground up.

We're aiming to be as compliant as possible. We have two full-time people working for us, we take it extremely seriously and we'll be coming up with a lot of initiatives between now and March next year, Martin said.

During the 2021 calendar year, Suvo signed multiple memorandums of understanding and cooperation agreements with large, well-known global producers and research and development organisations.

These include LIXIL AS Sanitary Manufacturing (Tianjin) Co Ltd which has an annual turnover of A$20 billion and Rezel Catalysts Corporation a leading global catalysts, zeolite and molecular sieve producer.

Rezels first 1,000-tonne order of refined kaolin product was shipped ahead of schedule from Pittong, with further work underway to increase these numbers over the coming year.

Being the only hydrous kaolin producer in Australia with material offerings, multiple established offtake partners, two promising projects in Western Australia and with potentially excellent ESG credentials, Suvo is certainly strategically placed to take advantage of a red-hot global market.
District Metals Corp. (TSX-V:DMX) has announced final airborne electromagnetic (EM) and magnetic data results from its polymetallic Gruvberget property in Sweden, identifying numerous conductive EM and magnetic high anomalies that are prospective for polymetallic mineralization along the 15-kilometre (km) geological trend within the property.

The Vancouver-based resource project developer said the SkyTEM survey identified 13 conductive targets on the property, including a 1.2 km long trend with magnetic highs and conductive anomalies that is associated with the Gruvberget North and South zones, where significant polymetallic mineralization has been historically drilled and mined.

Interpretation of the detailed airborne electromagnetic and magnetic survey at our Gruvberget Property has reinforced some of our known polymetallic targets, and has also identified some exciting new targets, District Metals CEO Garrett Ainsworth said in a statement.

Importantly, the Gruvberget North zone shows positive conductive and magnetic anomalies that suggest mineralization extends far beyond the historical mineralized drill intercepts, Ainsworth added.
Chariot Limited's (Chariot Ltd (AIM:CHAR, OTC:OIGLF), Chariot Ltd (AIM:CHAR, OTC:OIGLF)) Adonis Pouroulis joins Proactive London's Katie Pilbeam after confirming a 'significant' gas discovery with the Anchois-2 appraisal and exploration well, at the Anchois gas project offshore Morocco.



Anchois-2 well was drilled to a total depth of 2,512 metres and encountered significant gas accumulations with the appraisal target, Sand B, marking some 50 metres of net pay across two stacked reservoirs  the uppermost was the reservoir seen in the original discovery well.



Also, the well saw exploration success with three targets  Sands C, M and O  representing 250 metres of gross pay, exceeding expectations. All reservoirs were described as high quality.
Canadian Overseas Petroleum Limited (LSE:COPL, CSE:XOP, OTC:VELXD) shares surged more than 30% in Mondays early deals thanks to what stockbroker SP Angel has called an impressive and significant new discovery onshore USA, in Wyoming.

It creates the potential for the company to grow to a scale many multiples greater than previously forecast, according to COPL.

The discovery, comprising 1.5bn to 1.9bn barrels of oil in place, was identified spanning Converse and Natrona Counties, Wyoming  with the majority of the estimated 1.275bn to 1.64bn barrels present across the companys leasehold.

It comprises multiple zones and production has already begun from the lowermost, Dakota Fm, with the discovery well BFU-14-30VF flowing between 100 and 120 barrels of oil per day.

Conventional light oil discoveries of this magnitude have been rare in continental North America for years if not decades, SP Angel analyst Sam Wahab said in a note.

COPL controls the majority of this discovery as it is coincident with its large contiguous lease block.

SP Angel noted that COPL has so far successfully increased production from existing wells in Wyoming.

This highlights the potential for the Wyoming asset to generate long-term production on a scale many multiples greater than previous forecasts in our view.

COPL chief executive Arthur Millholland told investors that the company plans a phased production program to develop the resources, applying for four permits to drill horizontal wells.

We will start exploiting the discovery this year," Millholland said.

He added: "This is a significant oil discovery and the size of the upside at our Wyoming asset was a surprise to us all, said chief executive Arthur Millholland.

"We acquired Atomic Oil & Gas in January 2021 aware of the significant exploration upside, however the acquisition rationale and financial model reflected a long-term production flow from existing wells of 5,000 barrels per day, Millholland said.

Since then, we have increased production from the existing wells and accelerated our exploration program which has resulted in today's announced discovery.

COPL in December raised US$8mln to expand its operations in Wyoming - supporting a deal for Cuda Energy LLC.

Previously, in November, COPL was boosted as it confirmed increased oil production volumes from the Barron Flats project in Converse County.

There, production averaged 700 barrels of oil per day, marking a 35% improvement from volumes reported earlier that month.

Its performance was the result of new facilities coming online to reduce the surface working pressures on the most capable producing well in the field.

The well - a horizontal well that has produced at a restricted rate of 150 bopd in the period between August and November  exhibited an exceptional response to its miscible flood scheme.
Micron Technologies manufactures medical grade face masks at its facility in Delta, BC under its license from Health Canada

Beyond Medical Technologies Inc. (CSE:DOCT), through its medical face mask manufacturing subsidiary Micron Technologies Inc, urged its clients to utilize medical-grade face masks in social settings as the highly contagious Omicron coronavirus (COVID-19) variant sweeps across the world.

Since August 2020, Micron Technologies has been operating at its facility in Delta, British Columbia, where it manufactures medical-grade face masks under its Medical Device Establishment license issued by Health Canada. Micron is also registered with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The company focuses on three key product lines:

Three-ply medical grade face masks, which conform to ASTM F2100 medical-grade level 3 standards;

N95 Model 8800 face masks, which have been approved by Health Canada and the FDA; and

Face mask filters.

Micron Technologies' three-ply medical-grade face masks and N95 Model 8800 face masks are available for purchase on Amazon, Shopify (TSX:SH., NYSE:SHOP), and at Walmart. Face masks can also be purchased directly from Micron Technologies.

Beyond Medical also has an investment in digital telehealth platform Kayan Health, an artificial-intelligence-powered health communications platform that allows doctors to communicate with their patients and monitor them remotely.

Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter: @UttaraProactive
District Metals Corp has reported new assay results from its Svardsjo property in the Bergslagen Mining District of south-central Sweden that showed high grades of polymetallic mineralization.

Chip sampling from the Kompanigruvan pit near the historic mine returned 37.3% zinc equivalent, comprised of 253 grams per ton (g/t) silver, 22.8% zinc, 8.6% lead, 0.1 g/t gold and 0.02% copper.

In addition, grab samples from mine dumps at the Stormyrgruvan showing and a historic pit at the Hagsfallgruvan showing included 29% zinc equivalent (133 g/t silver, 15.7% zinc, 7.8% lead, 0.1 g/t gold and 1% copper) and 18.3% zinc equivalent (58.2 g/t silver, 9.8% zinc, 7.1% lead, 0.1 g/t gold and 0.2% copper), respectively.

Vancouver-based District Metals told investors that Svardsjo  which was mined for nearly 200 years until 1989  has excellent potential for extensions of the known polymetallic mineralization, and for new mineralization to be discovered within the wider property.

"These assay results from Svardsjo show very high grades of polymetallic mineralization which supports the exceptional potential of the property, CEO Garrett Ainsworth said in a statement.

Significant mineralization remains open beneath and southwest of the historic Svardsjo and Kompanigruvan Mines, which represents walk up drill targets. Also importantly, numerous other historic mines and showings are strewn across the Svardsjo property that appear to have seen little to no modern work.

Ainsworth singled out the Stormyrgruvan showing, which returned exceptionally high silver-zinc-lead values from a mine dump rock sample, as especially impressive given the location and size of this showing where no records of modern exploration exist.

We are keen to obtain the interpreted data from our recently flown SkyTEM 312 HP electromagnetic and magnetic survey at Svardsjo, which will provide important layers of information to advance existing targets and identify new targets, Ainsworth added.

Vancouver-based District acquired the Svardsjo property in late 2021.

The firm is focused on advancing its flagship Tomtebo property, which comprises 5,144 hectares and is situated between the historic Falun Mine and Boliden's Garpenberg Mine in south-central Sweden.

Contact Angela at angela@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter @AHarmantas
CytoDyn Inc has highlighted a research paper which indicates that its flagship drug leronlimab shows activity against 4-Class drug-resistant HIV-1 from heavily treatment-experienced (HTE) subjects.

The Vancouver, British Columbia-based company noted that the research paper entitled Leronlimab (PRO 140) activity against 4-class drug-resistant HIV-1 from Heavily Treatment Experienced Subjects has been accepted, peer-reviewed and is available as a journal pre-proof on ScienceDirect.

We would like to thank our Italian colleagues for understanding the importance of leronlimab in the treatment of HIV. This is further proof that leronlimab can benefit CCR5 tropic HIV patients, including those patients with multidrug resistance. HIV patients deserve the opportunity for multiple, effective treatment options, said Scott A. Kelly, CytoDyns chief medical officer.

The project was a collaborative effort among scientists and researchers from Italy  including the University of Milan, Italy; University of Siena, Siena, Italy; University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy; San Raffaele Vita-Salute University, Milan, Italy; Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases, Rome, Italy; Azienda Ospedaliera San Paolo, Milan, Italy; University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy; and Santa Maria Annunziata Hospital, Florence, Italy; University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy.

We believe leronlimab has many advantages, including protecting healthy cells from viral entry, prevention of HIV transmission, convenience, lower toxicity, and the ability to treat patients across the full spectrum of disease from treatment-naive to 4-class resistant HIV, said Nader Pourhassan, CytoDyns CEO in a statement.

He added: Many HIV patients could also be in danger of developing NASH and, with our recent 350 mg open-label Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) trial having achieved its primary and secondary endpoints, we believe that all HIV patients may benefit from a CCR5 product as part of their medication.

Pourhassan noted that leronlimabs potential role in cancer treatment could help HIV patients with a long history of HIV (especially heavily treatment-experienced HIV), which increases their risk of developing cancer.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted CytoDyn Fast Track designation to explore two potential indications using leronlimab to treat Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and metastatic cancer. The first indication is combination therapy with Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) for HIV-infected patients, and the second is for metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (mTNBC).

Leronlimab, among various potential applications, is a viral-entry inhibitor in HIV/AIDS. It binds to CCR5, thus protecting healthy T cells from viral infection by blocking the predominant HIV (R5) subtype from entering those cells.

Contact Ritika at ritika@proactiveinvestors.com
Fresh off a holiday trip to Florida, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has tested positive for COVID, according to a memo from the New York congresswomans office released Sunday.

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Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has received a positive test result for COVID-19, says a missive sent to the House of Representatives and posted on the liberal lawmakers official Twitter feed.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) prepares to speak during a rally for immigration provisions to be included in the Build Back Better Act outside the U.S. Capitol December 7, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

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She is experiencing symptoms and recovering at home, the memo continues. The congresswoman received her booster shot this Fall, and encourages everyone to get their booster and follow all CDC guidelines.

Ocasio-Cortez and her boyfriend started the New Year in Miami, where they were frequently trolled by right-wingers on social media who blasted the New Yorker for vacationing in the red state run by conservative Gov. Ron DeSantis.

She was spotted maskless at venues including a crowded outdoor bar in Miami. The 32-year-old Bronx native and her significant other, Riley Roberts, were also photographed eating at an al fresco sushi joint.

If I had a dollar for every lockdown politician who decided to escape to Florida over the last two years, Id be a pretty doggone wealthy man, De Santis joked last week.

Vaccinated California congressman Eric Swalwell was photographed maskless in the lobby of a four-star hotel in Miami Beach last week.

They got me! the Democrat tweeted once photos started making the rounds. Maskless, juggling a baby and a coffee while meeting with a Congolese queen.

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Swalwell has pushed for vaccinations to be required for air travel. DeSantis opposed vaccine mandates overall. In November, he signed legislation prohibiting business, government agencies and schools from requiring vaccinations.

[ Henry Winkler reacts to Scott Baio COVID tweet: Why is this funny? ]

The ongoing COVID spike, fueled by the omicron variant, is crossing party lines. On Saturday, Republican lawmakers Jim Cooper of Tennessee and Young Kim of California announced theyd tested positive for coronavirus. They were joined by Democrat Sean Casten of Illinois on that list.

Omicron was first observed last month in the U.S. Its unclear if thats the variant with which Ocasio-Cortez was infected or what symptoms shes experiencing.
FinnCap has doubled its price target for Chariot Ltd (AIM:CHAR, OTC:OIGLF) as it confirmed the Anchois field as a significant discovery, with an appraisal well encountering multiple pay zones.

Jonathan Wright, analyst at FinnCap, in a note, called it excellent news which has seen the companys transformational gas strategy come good at the first time of asking.

The Anchois-2 appraisal/exploration well on the Lixus licence, offshore Morocco, has come up trumps, significantly exceeding expectations with multiple high-quality gas reservoirs encountered.

Further analysis will be needed to fully understand the positive implications of the well on the gas resources of the expanded Anchois field and its development scale.

However, even without fully de-risking the Anchois deep discoveries or raising resource estimates, and still giving zero value for the significant number of similar prospects identified on the licence.

As a result, FinnCap has hiked its prior price target. At 54p the brokers new target suggests more than 400% upside to the current price of 10.05p.

"This well result transforms Chariots Moroccan gas ambitions and sets it firmly on a path to becoming a strategically important transitional gas producer, Wright said.

Peel Hunt analyst Werner Riding, meanwhile, echoed the sentiments  similarly calling it a potentially transformational well result that confirms a new commercial development and de-risked further substantial exploration upside.

In addition to the positive appraisal outcome, several exploration targets also yielded new discoveries, with gas encountered in various separate, high-quality reservoirs, Riding said.

The Anchois-2 well has therefore exceeded pre-drill expectations, with further analysis likely to confirm an increased estimate of recoverable resources.

Anchois-2 was drilled to a total depth of 2,512 metres and encountered significant gas accumulations with the appraisal target, Sand B, marking some 50 metres of net pay across two stacked reservoirs  the uppermost was the reservoir seen in the original discovery well.

The well saw exploration success with three targets  Sands C, M and O  representing 250 metres of gross pay, exceeding expectations. All reservoirs were described as high quality.

It will now be suspended for potential completion as a production well in the development of the field, subsequently, the Stena Don rig will move to the Anchois-1 gas discovery well which will be re-entered to assess the integrity of the previously drilled well. It potentially allows it to be included in the development of the field.

Chariot chief executive, Adonis Pouroulis, in this mornings statement told investors that the result had materially exceeded expectations.

We continue to conduct further analysis on the data collected from the well, but as it stands, we believe the result is transformational for the company.

Pouroulis added: With the recently announced key terms of gas offtake with a prominent international energy group, interest from two highly regarded institutional lenders to provide debt finance, an ongoing collaboration with a leading constructor of offshore gas projects and now this successful gas well result, the Anchois project is getting closer to helping provide a clean transitional fuel to support Morocco's industrial and economic growth.
CEO Branden Haynes called 2021 a pivotal year but acknowledged that the year did not come without challenges

Hawkmoon Resources Corp (CSE:HM) CEO Branden Haynes has told shareholders that the exploration firm is well-funded to progress drilling at its primary Wilson property in the Abitibi greenstone belt in Quebec.

The junior company raised C$3.4 million in 2021, it's first as a publicly-traded entity following its initial public offering on the Canadian Securities Exchange in April.

The Wilson property features a cluster of seven gold showings in the prolific gold district of Quebec.

Haynes said that Hawkmoon is planning to drill another 5,000 metres at Wilson in 2022, having secured its first choice of drilling contractor.

In a letter to shareholders, Haynes called 2021 a pivotal year but acknowledged that the year did not come without challenges.

In Hawkmoons view, the companys market performance did not mirror its technical and corporate successes on the Wilson and Lava projects, Haynes wrote.

Hawkmoon has accomplished a great deal in less than a year of being a public company and will continue to learn from the lessons of last year through dedication and creative dynamic thinking. The companys management will continue to guide Hawkmoon through careful planning and execution, recognizing that we must always adapt to find new and better ways to add value.

Vancouver-based Hawkmoon is focused on advancing three gold projects in Quebec.

Contact Angela at angela@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter @AHarmantas
NetCents (CSE:NC, OTCQB:NTTCF, Frankfurt Code :26n) Technology Inc has announced the appointment of Gaurav Mohan as its chief revenue officer.

The company noted that Mohan, who has previously served as the director of customer and partners success at Ripple, will oversee revenue operations and facilitate long-term strategic planning. He will fill the vacancy created by the promotion of Jenn Lowther to president of the company.

As chief revenue officer, NetCents (CSE:NC, OTCQB:NTTCF, Frankfurt Code :26n) said Mohan brings his extensive fintech and cryptocurrency skillset, as well as his deep relationships across the industry. Apart from Ripple, it noted he has previously worked in progressive technology and financial services roles at a variety of fintech companies, including Clovity, and HSBC.

Mr Mohan joins NetCents at a moment in the payments industry as businesses are experiencing a need to adopt modern payments technologies as customer behavior continues to evolve, the company said in a statement.

NetCents Technology provides the transactional hub for all cryptocurrency payments, equips forward-thinking businesses with the technology to seamlessly integrate cryptocurrency processing into their payment model without taking on the risk or volatility of the crypto market.

Contact the author at stephen.gunnion@proactiveinvestors.com
The company said the inclusion of the full-sized air classification system at the Akum project is a first for the mining industry

Gratomic Inc. (TSX-V:GRAT, OTCQX:CBULF) has announced that it has initiated manufacturing on the Air Classification units for its Aukam Graphite Project processing plant in Namibia.

The Toronto-based company said the secondary enrichment program completes engineering of the upgrading circuit on the refining section of the plant.

It noted that Air Classification is a unique feature of the Aukam processing plant, allowing the company to take advantage of the singular properties of vein graphite in a very effective and ecologically friendly manner, upgrading the carbon content at both the feed-end of the plant, and at the final upgrading circuit post-processing.

Air Classification is one of the many things that surfaced from the out-of-the-box thinking mentality of our team, and will help set us apart from the pack in the graphite community, Gratomics chief operating officer and head of graphite marketing and sales Armando Farhate said in a statement.

Gratomic said the Air Classification technology is patented (application pending) under US Patent 63/286,005, and the construction drawings for the required units were commissioned to D.E.N.M Engineering in Toronto.

It noted that the technology was designed and developed by Robert Rice, an accomplished metallurgical engineer, with over 50 years of experience in the development of many mining and milling engineering projects.

Rices development of the air classification system was designed to eliminate the screening process for crushed ore, which is limited to material size. Air classification separates the ore by size, weight and shape, allowing for the fully disseminated minerals to be released and separated from the waste material, Gratomic explained.

The company said the inclusion of the full-sized air classification system at the Akum project is a first for the mining industry. The system has two main objectives: to separate waste material and remove any free-flowing material at the front end of the mill, and to raise the purity of the graphite to the industry standard for anode material at the finishing end.

"Technological advances in mineral processing continuously shape the way in which graphite is economically upgraded into commercial specifications, the companys president and CEO Arno Brand added.

"We consider that this Air Classification technology will revolutionize Gratomic's approach in further industrializing assets around the world in an environmentally friendly manner.

Gratomic is focused on introducing an exceptional anode material to the global electric vehicle and energy storage supply chains. It is aiming to achieve full operational capabilities in 2022 on its Aukam graphite project and continues to diversify its assets into a multi-national company with various projects globally.

Contact the author at stephen.gunnion@proactiveinvestors.com
Jerusalem, Jan 10 : Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has warned that 2 million to 4 million Israelis are predicted to be infected with coronavirus during the current outbreak mainly caused by the highly infectious Omicron variant.

"Information presented at a cabinet meeting indicates that in Israel, overall 2-4 million citizens will be infected in the current wave," Xinhua news agency quoted Bennett's statement on Sunday on his Facebook page.

Addressing a wide public criticism of the government's complicated and frequently changing restrictions, Bennett explained that Omicron is "contiguous to an extent we did not know", saying the restrictions have been frequently updated to adapt to the fast spread of Omicron.

Bennett has led a policy based on keeping the economy open while aggressively promoting vaccination.

The total number of Covid-19 cases in Israel, with a population of 9.45 million, surpassed 1.5 million on Sunday, according to the latest figures issued by the country's health ministry.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Brussels, Jan 10 : A large protest march was staged in the streets of Brussels to demonstrate against the latest round of health restrictions, according to local media.

Called "Together for Liberty", this new protest movement on Sunday rallies together people "to make it clear that we will not tolerate the Covid Safe Ticket", Xinhua news agency quoted as organiser Ezra Armakye as saying.

"It is not forbidden," said Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo to Belgian Media group VTM on Sunday. "But there is a very large silent majority doing the right thing." About 5,000 people took part in the demonstration at the capital's North Station, and more than 30 people were arrested, said the Brussels police.

Belgium has so far recorded more than 2.23 million Covid-19 infections and 28,459 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to data published Saturday by the Sciensano Health Institute.

The numbers were still climbing as the Omicron variant was spreading across the country with about 11.5 million population.

The government has implemented strict rules to curb the spread of the virus, including mandatory use of the Covid Safe Ticket for many public occasions.

However, several rounds of large demonstrations, some turned violent, have been staged in Brussels to protest against the government's measures since last November.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Srinagar, Jan 10 : Two terrorists were killed in an encounter between terrorists and security forces at Hasanpora area in South Kashmir's Kulgam district, officials said on Monday.

"Two unidentified terrorists killed. Identification and affliation being ascertained. Incriminating materials including arms and ammunition recovered," police said.

The firefight between terrorists and security forces took place on Sunday after a joint team of the police and the security forces cordoned off the area and launched a search operation on the basis of specific information about presence of terrorists.

As the security forces zeroed in on the spot where terrorists were hiding they came under a heavy volume of fire that triggered the encounter.
Accra, Jan 10 : The leadership of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has announced a flurry of 'harsher' sanctions on Mali.

Leaders of ECOWAS gathered in an extraordinary summit to deliberate on the situation in Mali, Xinhua news agency reported.

In the communique after the summit, the regional body said the proposed chronogram by the Malian transitional authorities that set the duration of the transition for a total of five and a half years is "totally unacceptable." The communique said all ECOWAS member states would immediately withdraw their ambassadors from Mali.

"The other sanctions include the closure of land and air borders between ECOWAS countries and Mali, the suspension of all financial and economic transactions between ECOWAS member states and Mali, with the exception of essential consumer goods," said the communique.

The sanctions specifically excluded the supply of pharmaceutical and medical supplies, including materials needed for the control of Covid-19, petroleum products, and electricity.

ECOWAS instructed the freeze of all assets of Mali in the ECOWAS central bank, a freeze of assets of the Malian state, state enterprises, and parastatals in commercial banks, and the suspension of Mali from all financial assistance and transactions from all financial institutions.

The ECOWAS authority instructed all community institutions to take steps to implement the sanctions with immediate effect.

"The sanctions will be gradually lifted only after an acceptable and agreed chronogram is finalized and monitored satisfactory progress is realized in the implementation of the chronogram for the elections," the communique added.

ECOWAS explained that the sanctions were necessary to facilitate the process of the return to constitutional rule in Mali, which is necessary for peace, stability, and growth as well as to protect the populations.

Last November, ECOWAS imposed sanctions on the Malian transitional authorities in response to their claim of inability to meet the transition deadline of February 2022 for holding elections, including a travel ban and a freeze on financial assets.
Mathura, Jan 10 : The woman who set herself on fire in front of a police station in Mathura on Saturday, succumbed to her burn injuries on Sunday night.

She had attempted self-immolation in protest against police inaction in a molestation case where she was the victim. Her molester had allegedly been harassing her to withdraw a five-year-old complaint against him.

The woman had suffered 96 per cent burn injuries when she was brought to the district hospital for treatment, according to the emergency medical officer.

Later, she was referred to S.N. Medical College in Agra where she succumbed during treatment.

The police have registered an FIR under Sections 306 (abetment of suicide) and 511 (attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life) of the IPC against four persons, including the village pradhan's father, for allegedly pressuring her to withdraw the complaint against the accused.

A panchayat was allegedly held in the woman's village earlier this month, in which 50 residents had participated. The members, along with the accused, pressured the woman to withdraw her complaint as the matter was still pending in court. They allegedly threatened her with dire consequences if she did not do so.

Superintendent of police Gaurav Grover said that one of the four accused has been arrested and remanded to judicial custody on Sunday.

A manhunt has been launched to arrest the others, he added.

According to police reports, in July 2017, the woman was allegedly molested by a local. He was arrested by the police after the registration of an FIR under Section 354 (criminal force to outrage the modesty of a woman) of the IPC. He was later released on bail after 15 days.
Washington, Jan 10 : Security talks between the US and Russia in Geneva scheduled for Monday have drawn attention from the international community.

The talks are expected to focus on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the rising tensions in Ukraine, as well as arms control, cybersecurity and climate change, Xinhua news agency reported.

While calling the dialogue a positive signal to improve frayed US-Russia relations, experts are cautious about its outcomes.

"We have to manage expectations," Thomas Greminger, director of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy who previously served as secretary general of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe from 2017 to 2020, told Xinhua in a virtual interview.

"It's obviously great that we will see another round of this Strategic Stability Dialogue on Monday here in Geneva. I think it's good that they meet and talk, but clearly for the issues on the agenda there are no quick fixes," he said.

"I would expect the meeting on Monday to be an opportunity to spell out mutual concerns, to spell out mutual expectations," said Greminger.

Keith Krause, a professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, told Xinhua: "I'm not very optimistic. I think that it's more the beginning of a longer-term conversation.

"I know that certainly (US President Joe) Biden attempted to reset the relationship with the Russians last year, and I believe that's a long and slow process because there are many, many very clear differences between the two. Ukraine being one of them, but there are a number of other issues that are quite conflictual at this point.

"On the nuclear dialogue, perhaps I would be a bit more optimistic that they will begin to have some conversations." In a year-end telephone call between Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, the two leaders discussed the decision to launch the negotiations under which Russia's security would be ensured in a bid to prevent a further escalation of tensions.

Biden emphasized that Russia and the US bear a special responsibility for ensuring stability in Europe and the world.

The two permanent members of the UN Security Council have vowed to de-escalate the standoff over Ukraine. Amidst heightening tensions, the Biden administration had previously threatened Russia with fresh, sweeping sanctions.

Russia responded that further large-scale economic sanctions would lead to a severing of relations between Moscow and the West.

On Friday, the Foreign Ministers of NATO member states held an extraordinary virtual meeting to discuss "Russia's continued military build-up in and around Ukraine" and broader European security issues.

For Ukraine, seeking NATO membership has become one of its foreign policy priorities.

In February 2019, the Ukrainian Parliament adopted amendments to the constitution, securing the country's aspiration to join the alliance.

"Even without these current tensions and without this meeting about to happen, NATO membership of Ukraine couldn't be expected any time soon since there is a de facto moratorium on this issue in a few very important Western capitals," Greminger said.

Krause agreed with Greminger, saying: "I don't think that Ukraine will join NATO any time soon. I do think that the country itself is in some sense divided." Greminger warned that geopolitical tensions between Washington and Moscow are likely to continue this year.

However, at least some common ground for cooperation could be found, the expert added.
President Biden and his Democratic allies face a crucial week as they seek to push new voting rights measures through a divided Congress.

After using the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as a springboard, Democrats are up against a self-imposed deadline of Jan. 17, the national holiday dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr., to pass sweeping measures that they say are needed to keep American democracy strong.

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Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will journey to battleground Georgia on Tuesday to spotlight the fight for fairness as the midterm elections loom.

President Joe Biden (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

In the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is onboard to push the voting package.

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He has the support of all 50 Democrats and might even pick up a Republican or two. But Democrats would need to tweak the Senate rules to allow passage with a simple majority vote to overcome a certain Republican filibuster to block it.

If Republicans continue to hijack the rules of the chamber to prevent us from protecting our democracy, then the Senate will debate and consider changes to the rules, Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Friday in a preview of this weeks showdown.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and fellow moderate Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have repeatedly insisted they will not support such a change, although the mercurial Manchin has insisted he hopes to find a way to pass voting rights protections.

Republicans denounce the proposals as a partisan power grab by Democrats hoping to cling to control of Congress in the midterms and beyond.

Activists attend a "Defend Democracy" vigil near the U.S. Capitol on January 06, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Democrats voting legislation would amount to the biggest overhaul of U.S. elections since the Voting Rights Act was

It would set national minimum standards for voting rules and limit partisan gerrymandering by the states, a process that Republicans have used to give themselves a huge edge in Congressional elections. It would also restore the ability of the Justice Department to oversee election laws in states with a history of racial discrimination, a key tool that the Supreme Court stripped out of the Voting Rights Act.

Democrats say the changes are essential to ensure the peoples will is upheld in the face of Trumps unprecedented failed effort to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election.

Since Jan. 6, 2021, Republicans have launched a state-by-state campaign to make it more difficult to vote and are seeking to use their control over many big battleground states like Florida, Texas, Georgia, Ohio and North Carolina to pad their numbers in Congress. Politicians in states with GOP-majority legislatures have written dozens of bills that give them control over elections by purging impartial administrators.

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Democrats in turn have gerrymandered districts in blue states like New York and Illinois.

Acting before the midterms offers Democrats perhaps their last best chance to pass protections because the GOP is favored to retake the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate this fall.

Ken Freedland, of Warson Woods, Mo., and several other advocates demonstrate for new voting laws on Thursday, Jan. 6, 2022, at Brentwood and Eager Roads in Brentwood, Mo., to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. and push for voting rights protection. (Christian Gooden/AP)

At the very least, Democrats want to tighten up the laws related to the presidential elections to prevent Trump from seeking again to overturn the results if he or another Republican candidate loses again in 2024 and beyond.

Biden and Harris will use their speeches in Atlanta, the cradle of the civil rights movement, to stress the connection between reforms and racial discrimination.

Schumer is making the same point by using the national holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader as a deadline.

All eyes remain on Manchin, who may at least be willing to support a change that would allow bills to be debated on the floor even if they cannot be enacted without 60 votes.

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The Senate already allows passage of budget bills and confirmation of cabinet members and federal judges with a simple majority vote.

Im not going to say yes or no, because I dont know what votes will come to the floor, Manchin said last week.

Republicans say the voting reforms have little to do with either civil rights or Trumps big lie, although most of them refuse to denounce his bogus claims. They accuse Democrats of simply wanting to change the rules to make it easier for them to win.

With News Wire Services
Gaza, Jan 10 : The coastal enclave of Gaza has witnessed a huge hike in population, which might be a bane rather than a boon for the overcrowded and besieged area, according to officials and analysts.

"As of the end of 2021, the population has reached 2,313,747," the Hamas-run General Administration of Civil Status at the Ministry of Interior said in a statement.

Some observers said the situation is alarming as residents of the coastal Strip are facing dire economic conditions that are expected to deteriorate if the population continues to grow.

Amjad al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian Non-governmental Network in Gaza, told Xinhua news agency that the Gaza Strip is living its "worst humanitarian crisis" as a result of the 15-year long Israeli siege and the internal Palestinian division.

"The large shortfall in international financing has also greatly affected the reality," al-Shawa said.

"Since the start of the new year, the situation is becoming more difficult and does not spell any good for an immediate improvement in light of figures indicating high rates of unemployment, poverty, and deteriorating economic conditions," he added.

Hamed Gad, a Gaza-based economist, told Xinhua that the Strip needs to create more than 60,000 jobs as thousands joined the unemployed annually.

He said the ongoing Israeli blockade on the Strip has left numerous "scars" on the lives of the residents, who hope that the situation would change for the better.

"Unfortunately, the young generation is the most affected group, as the unemployment rate among them is about 70 per cent," he said, calling on the government to take measures to support those in need.

Maher al-Taba'a, director of the Chamber of Commerce in Gaza, told Xinhua that the Israeli military actions on the Strip "deepened the economic crisis as a result of the massive destruction they left in the infrastructure and various sectors".

Al-Taba'a cited that the recent round of tensions cost the Strip $500,000,000 in losses, at a time when the reconstruction process has not yet begun.

The business leader stressed that this coincided with an unprecedented trade stagnation due to the continuation of the blockade and the restrictions on import and export, which led to a slump in imports for 2021 compared to previous years.

This, in turn, has caused other social problems, such as more beggary in public places, the increase in divorce cases, the financial failure of merchants and businessmen, and bankruptcy, he added.

Officials and observers in Palestine are calling for effective international intervention to lift the blockade and introduce comprehensive measures to ensure a great improvement in people's lives.
Cape Town, Jan 10 : Former South Africa pacer Fanie de Villiers feels the hosts' have worked out on how to bat against India pacer Jasprit Bumrah. He added that Bumrah wasn't able to make the batters play enough.

Bumrah had a forgettable outing against South Africa in the second Test at the Wanderers. In the first innings, he took the wicket of Keshav Maharaj while conceding 49 runs in 21 overs while in the second essay, he conceded 70 runs for no wickets in 17 overs.

"I don't think it is a question of him lacking ability or he bowled badly. I think South Africa has worked him out. Since he has been India's most important bowler, lots of team discussion has gone on how to tackle and survive Bumrah. I think South Africa has learned their lessons from the first Test," de Villiers was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

He then went on to point out what was lacking in Bumrah being effective at the Wanderers. "This is where he lacked in the second Test as South African batters were leaving so many deliveries from him. Even Elgar played him better than before, although he got hit a couple of times." The action in the three-match series between South Africa and India is now set up for a winner-takes-it-all decider at Cape Town, starting from Tuesday. It is also the place where Bumrah made his Test debut in 2018 and since then, has become an integral part of the Test side.

De Villiers reckons the pitch will suit the fast bowlers and will not be an easy one for batting. "It is not going to be easy for the batters at Newlands. That has been the case for many years now. Bowlers, who can swing the ball, move the ball, and have variations are going to be the most effective." He signed off by saying India's bowling attack has got a very good chance to clinch their first-ever series win in the Rainbow Nation. "India's bowlers have got an excellent chance to win it because there are a lot of variations in the Indian bowling attack. It is fantastic to see Bumrah and Shami bowl, and especially your all-rounder (Shardul Thakur) is bowling better than ours. India have got a very good chance to win the match and series."
Jaipur, Jan 10 : In the wake of the rising Covid-19 cases, the Rajasthan government has the announced closure of all schools and colleges till January 30.

Besides, the state government has also imposed a weekend curfew and has limited the number of guests at a wedding to 50 from the earlier 100.

Marriage halls flouting the norms will be sealed for seven days.

The guidelines for educational institutes will be implemented immediately and weekend curfew will come into effect from Saturday 11 p.m. to January 17 5 a.m.

Meanwhile, night curfew will continue everyday from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Religious places will be open from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. and only 20 people will be allowed to attend cremations.

Restaurants and clubs will be allowed to operate with 50 per cent capacity till 10 p.m., while lso cinema halls, theatres multiplexes can remain open till 8 p.m. with 50 per cent capacity also.

Meanwhile, all eligible persons will have to get vaccinated against Covid-19 by January 31 and those who do not by the mandated deadline will not be allowed in offices.
Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 10 : Kerala Police have booked a Youth Congress worker for sharing pictures of the marking stones which were pulled out of the ground, through which the K-Rail project is expected to pass. This is seen by many as a blatant violation of freedom of expression.

If completed the pet project of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will see a 529.45 km corridor connecting Thiruvananthapuram to Kasaragod and a high speed train will run this distance in around four hours.

For the past two weeks the situation in the state is fluid with numerous protests breaking out wherever the K-Rail officials are going about doing the alignment of land by putting the marking stones.

Last week, State Congress president K. Sudhakaran warned Vijayan that they are going to see the real face of the Congress party and their party workers will pull out the marking stones wherever they have been put as part of the land alignment.

And the very next day after Sudhakaran made this statement, pictures of the marking stones which were pulled out at Madayipara, a place near Kannur were seen on various TV news channels.

It was this picture which P.P. Rahul, a Youth Congress worker shared on the social media.

"The Pazhyangadi Police have registered a case against me under charges of inciting violence. Am really surprised as this picture has been shared by thousands, I fail to understand why a case was registered against me only. I will take legal steps on this," said Rahul.

Incidentally, the local police went ahead to register a case after it received a complaint from a local CPI-M worker.

Expressing surprise at the turn of events, veteran Congress leader and former State president of the party V.M. Sudheeran reminded those in power that what they have done is a blatant violation of all the basic rules as it reminds of what happened in the erstwhile princely states during the pre-Independence period, where freedom of expression was not allowed.

The Congress and the BJP have already staged a few protests against the K-Rail project and have announced further protests also.

Metroman E. Sreedharan has described it an idiotic proposal and has warned Vijayan will be isolated if he goes ahead with this project.
Suva, Jan 10 : The Fijian government has tightened measures to contain spread of the Omicron Covid-19 variant in the South Pacific island country.

Addressing reporters here, Minister for Commerce, Trade, Tourism and Transport Faiyaz Koya said that with a rapid spread of the Omicron variant confirmed in the country, the key measures against the virus should be tightened to contain its transmission, reports Xinhua news agency.

According to the Minister, people who fail to comply with the health protocols will face fines from Monday.

Koya said those who fail to wear a mask in the required settings will be fined 250 Fijian dollars ($117).

For failing to conduct temperature checks, the fine for individuals will be 250 Fijian dollars and 1,000 Fijian dollars for businesses.

High-risk businesses failing to verify vaccination status will face 1,000 Fijian dollars in fine.

Among other measures to be strengthened From Monday, group gatherings in homes, communities, and community halls will be limited to 20 persons.

Koya said the authorities will not hesitate to fine people or shut down businesses, including hotels, if necessary.

The Minister also urged Fijians to take the booster shots.

Meanwhile, Permanent Secretary for Health Ministry James Fong reported five new deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of Covid deaths to 709.

With 1,280 new confirmed cases, the island nation's infection tally to 57,187.

Currently, 94.2 per cent of the adult target population in Fiji are fully vaccinated, while 97.9 per cent have received at least one dose.

Fiji, which has a population of around 900,000, reported its first confirmed coronavirus infection in March 2020.

It was hit by the second wave in April last year.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Chennai, Jan 10 : The indefinite strike of the power loom workers of Tiruppur and Coimbatore from January 9 is likely to cripple the export industry. The strike for hike in wages continues for the second day.

C. Palanisamy, president of the job working power loom unit weavers association in Coimbatore and Tiruppur told IANS, "There are more than 2 lakh power loom workers directly employed and 3 lakh indirectly in Somanur and Palladam and there has been no wage revision since 2014. The condition of the workers is pathetic and hence we decided for an indefinite strike to open the eyes of the authorities and the weavers who provide job to these power loom units." He said that during a tripartite meeting between master weavers, job workers, and the labour department of Tamil Nadu, a wage revision was agreed upon in November 2021. However, there was no progress and the revision of wages was not implemented leaving the job workers in dire straits.

In Coimbatore and Tiruppur districts of Tamil Nadu, more than 95 per cent of power looms are operated by job workers or rather piece workers.

Master weavers supply cotton yarn to the job workers and pay them conversion charges of weaving fabric from these yarns. There was a wage revision expected for the past several years and even after waiting for several months since the tripartite talks of November 2021, the workers had to resort to an indefinite strike.

The tripartite talks held between master weavers, power loom job workers, and representatives of the labour department held in November 2021 had agreed upon a 20 to 25 per cent hike in wages and it was to be implemented and executed in December 2021.

M. Manoharan, a power loom worker in Tiruppur told IANS, "We are treated badly, we weave the cotton yarn into beautiful material or rather convert the cotton yarn to the beautiful cloth materials, but we are never given any recognition and we don't want that. However, we need a hike in our wages that was stagnant since 2014, and even after the tripartite talks deciding that wages would be hiked by 20 to 25 per cent, nothing happened and we had to resort to this strike. Hope the authorities will open their eyes at least now."
New Delhi, Jan 10 : Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has asked China to restructure the crisis-hit island nation's debt repayments as part of efforts to help the South Asian country navigate its worsening financial situation, the BBC reported.

Rajapaksa made the request during a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Sunday.

In the last decade, China has lent Sri Lanka over $5 billion for projects including roads, an airport and ports, the BBC report said.

China is Sri Lanka's fourth biggest lender, behind international financial markets, the Asian Development Bank and Japan.

But critics say the money was used for unnecessary schemes with low returns.

"The President pointed out that it would be a great relief to the country if attention could be paid on restructuring the debt repayments as a solution to the economic crisis that has arisen in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic," Rajapksa's office said in a statement.

The statement also said China was asked to provide "concessional" terms for its exports to Sri Lanka, which amounted to around $3.5 billion last year, without providing further details, the report added.

Rajapaksa also offered to allow Chinese tourists to return to Sri Lanka provided they adhere to strict coronavirus regulations.

Before the pandemic, China was Sri Lanka's main source of tourists and it imports goods from the Asian giant more than from any other country.

In recent months, Sri Lanka has been experiencing a severe debt and foreign exchange crisis, which has been made worse by the loss of tourist income during the pandemic, the BBC report said.

The country has received billions of dollars of soft loans from China but the island-nation has been engulfed in a foreign exchange crisis which some analysts have said has pushed it to the verge of default, as per the BBC report.

Sri Lanka has to repay about $4.5 billion in debt this year starting with a $500 million international sovereign bond, which matures on January 18.
Patna, Jan 10 : Three persons, including a prominent doctor, succumbed to Covid-19 in the last 24 hours in Bihar Patna, the state health department said on Monday.

The deceased doctor Dr Pramila Gupta was the former head of department of gynecology of PMCH. Her report came positive on Sunday.

The other two deceased were identified as SP Singh, a native of Hathidah in Mokama, and Manoj Kumar Singh, a resident of Phulwari Sharif in Patna district.

Infection rate in Bihar has witnessed a huge spike in the last 24 hours with the health department registering 21.94 per cent surge compared to the previous day.

The infection is rapidly spreading among medical staff of Bihar with 7 doctors on PMCH, 13 medical staff including three doctors of NMCH, 30 medical staff including 17 doctors in Mahaveer cancer hospital and 20 medical staff of Patna AIIMS testing Corona positive on Sunday.

Omicron cases are also being reported from Patna after genome sequencing tests started in Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS).

The test reports of 27 persons came positive on Sunday. The doctors have also confirmed delta variants in 4 persons.

Dr Manish Mandal, the medical superintendent of IGIMS said: "A total of 31 samples were brought to the lab of IGIMS, of which 27 tested positive for the Omicron variant Of the total, 20 patients belong to Patna while one each belong to Madhubani, Gaya, Seikhpura, Vaishali, East Champaran and Purnea. Another came from another state. The Delta variant appeared in patients of Buxar, Vaishali and Madhubani district." "The third wave of Corona could severely affect persons having high blood pressure, diabetes and other diseases. People should also save themselves from excessive cold weather," he said.

The health department has detected 5,022 cases in Bihar, including 2018 in Patna district.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to extend the limitation period of filing cases across judicial and quasi-judicial fora in the country.

A bench headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana will issue a detailed order later in the day. The bench, also comprising Justices L. Nageswara Rao and Surya Kant said, "we are accepting the prayer.".

The Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association (SCAORA) had moved the top court seeking restoration of a March 2020 order through which the court had directed the suspension of the limitation period in the backdrop of difficulties faced by the litigants amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Advocate Shivaji Jadhav, President SCAORA, submitted that Covid cases have been increasing across the country over the past few days and urged the court to restore the limitation extension orders. Attorney General K.K. Venugopal supported the SCAORA plea.

The SCAORA filed the application in the suo motu case "In Re Cognizance for Extension of Limitation", seeking restoration of the order dated March 23, 2020 and April 27, 2021, through which limitation period for filing of cases was extended.

The SCAORA's application contended that there has been a drastic change in the Covid pandemic situation, in the view of a new variant, more particularly Omicron.

The plea added that considering the alarming rise in the Covid cases, it becomes necessary to restore the relaxation with regard to the period of limitation.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
New Delhi, Jan 10 : The excellence of the arts of Kashmir is generously reflected in the decorative and ornamental elements found in the architecture of its mosques and shrines, where attention is focused on the delicate details, innovative patterns and motifs that combine to create a unique style. With the motifs a blend of geometric and floral forms sensitively used to create a sense of unity of nature and creativity, they have for centuries addressed the spiritual and devotional urge and longing of worshipers and visitors.

The sacred and the secular typologies also have a deep imprint of cross-cultural influences in both form and style.

"In harmony with the vernacular style of construction using wood, the historic shrines and mosques of Kashmir bear characteristics of building in stone from early Hindu and Buddhist times, combining with the advent of Islamic traditions in the 14th century," says author-photographer-researcher Qamoos Bukhari, who has collaborated with the INTACH Kashmir Chapter for "Architectural Ornamentation in Shrines & Mosques of Kashmir" (Roli Books) that brings alive an enduring legacy of the past.

The book came about after he met the Chapter's convenor, M. Saleem Beg, at a calligraphy exhibition at Srinagar's Jamia Masjid.

"There we interacted for the first time and exchanged our thoughts about the heritage and crafts of Kashmir. For taking our conversation forward, he invited me over to his office one day. In 2016, I had published a book on Kashmiri artisans, 'Borderless: The Artisans of Kashmir'. He showed his interest in seeing the book and asked me to bring my book along to his office," Bukhari, who studied English Literature at Delhi University's Hindu College, told IANS in an interview.

"At the office, he showed me the work they were doing and asked if I can do a somewhat similar visual-arts book for the Kashmir Chapter of INTACH. So after several successive meetings, I put across my concept, which he liked, and from then on, we began working towards realizing the project," he added.

Meticulous research has gone into the book.

"To start with, I had to go through the technical documentation of some shrine and mosque buildings done by INTACH in 2011. Taking reference from that, I had to plan and design new surveys across the monument locations in Kashmir. That included visiting sites many times for identifying, photographing, and taking measurements for the drawings.

"Since the project focused on the decorative elements, therefore, for the book, the architects had to create a new set of drawings that did not exist in their earlier 2011 documentation. Also, to bring variety to the work, I commissioned an artist to create watercolour and pen and ink illustrations," Bukhari explained.

A significant amount of effort also went into archival research, both physical and virtual.

"To find the images of the shrines & mosques, sometimes for days, I had to sift through a large chunk of historical material about Kashmir, which at the end included nothing of the kind I was looking for. Having said that, apart from what I have used in the book, the archival material that I discovered at institutions, and of which I have acquired a copy for the INTACH Kashmir Chapter, will surely come in handy to someone in the future," Bukhari added.

The lavishly illustrated book is divided into two chapters: "Understanding Kashmir's Islamic Religious Architecture in Continuity and Change" and "Patterns of Culture -- Understanding Craft through Mathematics" -- each with a lengthy introductory essay.

The first chapter details nine mosques and shrines: Khanqah-i-Maula, Mir Masjid, Jamia Masjid, Madin Sahab, Aali Masjid, Makhdoom Sahab, Khanqah-i Naqshband, Thag Bab Sahab, and Pathar Masjid. The second chapter details another nine mosques and shrines: Khanqah-i-Masood, Akhund Mulla Shah Masjid, Dastgeer Sahab, Imambara Hassanabad, Kreeri Aastan, Dadsar Aastan, Aishmuqam, Srigufwara, and Janbaaz Sahab.

The obvious questions would be why are there no visual chapters on Hazratbal and Charar-i-Sharif.

"We haven't done visual chapters because there doesn't exist anything of the past. Both are new constructions with no or less resemblance with the early aesthetics of the buildings," Bukhari said.

In the essay on chapter 1, Hakim Sameer Hamdani, Design Director at INTACH's Kashmir Chapter, explains: "Within the wide swath of land that has been associated with Islam, Kashmir occupies a marginal and somewhat remote image. Traditionally it has been seen as a provincial part of the wider Indian sub-continent, with its claim to fame based mostly on its geographical location- the abundance of bountiful water, snow clad mountains and a pleasant climate. Within the Indian context, the region is also renowned for its crafts of which the shawl making has been famed at the court of Asian as well as European kings. Yet, the architectural outpourings of the area linked with its Islamic traditions have for the most part remained unexplored.

"The traditions of Kashmir's Islamic religious architecture may be seen as the physical representation of a syncretic culture, which was based on assimilation and adaptation while also forging continuity with established building features and elements. The strength of these local traditions was strong enough to outlive the powerful image of the Imperial Mughal rule which in the 16th century brought a building style that was developed outside the confines of the valley.

Historically, the period of Kashmir's Muslim Sultans (1322-1548), spanning almost two centuries, forms the formative period of Kashmir's Islamic religious architecture. Though after the fall of the Kashmiri Sultanate to Mughals, these traditions no longer formed part of the building projects executed under royal supervision, yet local patronage and preference ensured their survival. In a strange twist of fate, the mosques built by the Mughals in their Imperial traditions remained for most part abandoned.

"The building traditions of the region were revived during the fall end of the 19th and early part of the 20th century, which witnessed a reawakening of the collective Muslim conscience. Most of the constructions that took part in this period were part of independent and localized projects funded by the community under the supervision of elite of the society. In some cases prominent traders financed the construction or repair work. Members of Kashmiri Diaspora in the Indian plains were also responsible for funding major religious buildings in Kashmir.

"The latter part of the 20th century saw not only the introduction of new building material and loss of traditional building knowledge but also the emergence of a new middle class spirit, which looked down upon anything old as being representative of an image that is in essence 'poor and backward'. Consequently a number of old buildings were demolished and new 'modern' structures constructed in their place, a majority of which lack any contextual connection with their surroundings as well as the required 'aesthetes'. What has emerged in the recent past is a popular image of what Islamic religious architecture showcasing the appeal of a more widely recognizable 'Islamic' building, an appeal which became more and more widespread with every passing decade.

"In this new image of Muslim religious architecture of Kashmir a sustained attempt has emerged at drawing cultural inspirations from what is seen as the traditional heartland of the Muslim world, areas of Arab and Iranian influence. This paper presents a chronological study of this architectural genre in Kashmir as well how it has been popularized in the community both through processes of continuity as well as change," Hamdani concludes.

In the second essay, Fozia S. Qazi, a mathematician whose current research on patterns in the arts of Kashmir uses the mathematics of symmetry analysis to understand cultural order and interactions in the region, explains: "Throughout the history of material culture, human beings have displayed a preference for symmetries and visual regularities. This preference manifests itself in myriad mediums and decorated forms with the earliest use of symmetry evident in tools made some 1.4 million years ago. This use of symmetry (especially that of repeated geometric patterns) can be seen as a mode of communication that conveys cultural information and preferences.

"But the study of proportion, form and symmetry present in material culture, cannot provide a full understanding of cultural order unless one also understands the underlying mathematical principles involved in the creation of the symmetries present in the patterns. Mathematics provides a language to understand the pattern at its most fundamental level. So to study the language of patterns certain mathematical tools can be used, that rely on the mathematical classification of symmetry, to systematically describe the precise nature of the patterns.

"Although the mathematical classification of symmetries has been known for a while it is only recently that it has been used as a tool for cultural study. The presence or absence of certain symmetries in the material culture of a people or the frequency of their use has become an important tool in understanding cultural preferences or cross-cultural interaction," Qazi concludes.

(Vishnu Makhijani can be reached at vishnu.makhijani@ians.in
U.S. troops stationed in Japan will be confined to their base except when absolutely necessary under a plan reached over the weekend to fight the spread of COVID.

Japan has had record numbers of COVID infections recently, with more than 8,000 cases reported Saturday.

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The United States and Japan are committed to working together to protect the health of the Japanese people and U.S. service members, said a joint statement issued Sunday from both countries.

Details were still being worked out, Japans Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told Fuji TV.

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People walk past the gate of the U.S. Marine Corps' Camp Hansen in Okinawa, Japan, on Jan. 6, 2022.(Kyodo News via AP) (AP Photo)

Last week, the U.S. military announced tighter COVID rules for troops, including mandatory mask use when leaving the base and stronger testing requirements.

The restriction on troop movements is set to last two weeks beginning Monday.

With News Wire Services
New Delhi, Jan 10 : The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to examine a plea seeking criminal action in connection with hate speeches made at Dharam Sansad in Haridwar against the Muslim community.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal mentioned the matter before a bench headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana for urgent listing.

Sibal submitted, "We're living in different times where slogans in the country have changed from Satyamev Jayate". The bench told Sibal, "We'll look into it". The bench also asked Sibal whether some inquiry is going on? Sibal replied that FIRs have been filed, but no arrest has been made so far and added that without court's intervention no action will be taken. After a brief hearing, the bench agreed to take up the matter.

The petitioners - a journalist, a judge, and a Supreme Court advocate - have moved the apex court seeking urgent intervention in the matter pertaining to the hate speeches delivered between December 17-19 last year, in separate two events -- one organised in Haridwar by one Yati Narsinghanand. Reportedly, several Hindu religious leaders, who addressed the gathering, called upon the community to take up arms against Muslims.

The petition seeks independent and impartial investigation into the incidents of hate speeches against the Muslim community by an SIT.
Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 10 : At times it blows hot and cold in the Kerala unit of the CPI-M. State party secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan on Monday made it amply clear that the CPI-M does not have any problem if its party members are believers.

Speaking at the inaugural meeting of the Kozhikode district party meeting, Balakrishnan said the CPI-M will give membership to believers.

"The CPI-M is not against any religion and even Comrade Lenin had said that Christian priests can join the party," said Balakrishnan.

The open call given by Balakrishnan is meant to invite the EK faction in the Samastha Kerala Jamiat-ul-Ulema who have of late shown a pro-Pinarayi Vijayan attitude, especially after he held discussions with the Samastha Kerala Jamiat-ul-Ulema leaders and decided to put on hold the earlier decision that was taken to hand over all the appointments in the Kerala Waqf Board to the Public Service Commission.

Incidentally, the Indian Union Muslim League is the second biggest party in the Congress led Opposition and the relation between them and the EK faction is also blowing hot and cold and it's here that the CPI-M is trying to extend the olive branch by making it very clear that CPI-M does not have any bar on believers.

Going back into history what happened in the 80s, was when party ideologue, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, had then asked Kerala Congress (Joseph) leader P.J. Joseph, to disown the bishops in public before letting him join the Left Democratic Front.

The Kerala unit of the CPI-M is firing on all cylinders as in the country, it's only in Kerala where they rule, as the party has virtually disappeared into thin air in West Bengal after ruling the state for 34 years, likewise, their position has become weak in Tripura.

All this is happening at a time when the party's state conference is scheduled to be held at Ernakulam shortly and the Party Congress to be held in April at Kannur.
Kolkata, Jan 10 : With nearly 25,000 fresh cases on Sunday, the highest single-day spike since the outbreak of Covid-19, West Bengal registered the second highest number of active cases after Maharashtra, accounting for more than 13 per cent of the national tally.

According to the data released by the state health department, the state recorded 24,287 fresh cases on Sunday taking the total number of active cases to 78,111 - the second highest in the country after Maharashtra that recorded 2,05,973 active cases. Incidentally, this is the highest number of cases recorded on a single day since the outbreak of the disease in February 2020. The previous highest number of daily cases was 20,846 recorded on may 14 during the second Covid wave in the country.

What can provide a little relief to the administration and the health department is that the death rate is much lower this time than that was during the second wave. When in West Bengal there were 132 deaths on May 14 this time it is just 14. Not only in West Bengal but the death rate has been surprisingly low throughout the country.

Kerala with 36,601 active cases recorded 44 deaths on Sunday - the highest in the country. Even Maharashtra with more than 2 lakh active cases has recorded only 12 deaths. Similarly, Delhi with 60733 active cases registered only 17 deaths.

But there are certain areas of concern that the state health department will have to address. In the last seven days, West Bengal has reported a high case positivity rate at 19.68 per cent, which is amongst the highest in India.

The number of Covid-19 cases in Kolkata has risen nearly 49 times over two weeks -- from 178 on December 23 to 8,712 on January 9 and in North 24 Parganas it has risen more than 57 times from 88 on December 23 to 5,053 on January 9.

"Our vaccination programme has been carried out very successfully and so we could control the death rate this time. It is true that the number of cases is rising alarmingly but most of them are mild cases with hardly any symptoms. Naturally all these cases can be treated at home. People are requested to stay in isolation at home and because of this there is hardly any pressure on the hospitals. Our stock of oxygen is also satisfactory," a health department official said.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Kathmandu, Jan 10 : A government body in Nepal has recommended restrictive measures against large gatherings and closing of schools as the latest measures against the latest Covid-19 resurgence.

The Covid-19 Crisis Management Coordination Centre (CCMCC) suggested banning gathering of more than 25 people and closing primary and secondary schools till January 29, reports Xinhua news agency.

Within this period, the Ministry of Health and Population will have to supply vaccines to inoculate students aged 12-17 and fully vaccinate teachers and other staff members.

A senior CCMCC official told Xinhua that the decision was taken over suggestions by Health Ministry officials.

"There is a projection that the Covid-19 situation may worsen in the third week of January, so we decided to recommend restrictive measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19," said the official.

As suggested by the CCMCC, people need to present their vaccination cards for entering public places like offices, hotels, restaurants, cinema halls, stadiums, airports and parks.

The Centre also recommended the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation to arrange domestic flights so that there are no crowds in airports and make it mandatory for passengers to produce vaccination cards starting from January 17.

The restrictive measures will go into force once government ministries decide to implement them.

Schools in the Kathmandu Valley reopened in late September last year after being shut down for some five months to curb a second wave of the pandemic.

Nepal has so far confirmed 24 new cases of the Omicron variant.

On Sunday, the South Asian country reported 841 new Covid-19 cases, a sharp rise from 213 logged on January 2.

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Chennai, Jan 10 : Tamil Nadu Police have arrested five accomplices of history-sheeter Guna, who is absconding after jumping bail for the past six months.

The arrests were made on Sunday. Guna is a habitual offender and is an accused in 24 criminal cases, including murder, attempt to murder, extortion, kidnapping, and landgrab in various police stations in the districts of Kancheepuram Chengalpattu and Tiruvallur.

The police had on Thursday met the industrial groups at Sriperumbudur and asked them to inform the police of any rowdy elements trying to extract money as a monthly fee.

Guna, who is also a scrap dealer in Kancheepuram, was controlling his business through his accomplices, the police said. His wife Elammal is a ward councilor at Sriperumbudur Panchayat Union and was picked up by the police for questioning on Sunday morning from her residence at Maduramangalam in Kancheepuram district.

She was detained till evening and after the police team got the details regarding the accomplices of Guna, she was let off.

Police arrested Yuvaraj, Bhaskar, Thignanasambandan, Jothi, and Subash from various parts of Kancheepuram, Chengalpattu, and Tiruvallur districts for harbouring the history-sheeter while he has jumped bail.

The police arrest and detaining Elammal was days after the former Union Minister and senior leader of the BJP, Pon Radhakrishnan paid a visit to the residence of Guna and met his wife. Speculations were rife that Guna would be joining the saffron party soon.
Chennai, Jan 10 : Stating that the journey from being a victim to becoming a survivor hadn't been easy, the Kerala actress on Monday said that she would continue this journey to see justice prevail and to make sure no one else went through such an ordeal again.

The victim, whose post was shared on social media by a number of celebrities from the Malayalam film industry, said, "This has not been an easy journey. The journey from being a victim to becoming a survivor.

"For five years now, my name and my identity have been suppressed under the weight of the assault inflicted on me.

"Though I am not the one who has committed the crime, there have been many attempts to humiliate, silence and isolate me. But at such times, I have had some who stepped forward to keep my voice alive. Now, when I hear so many voices speak up for me, I know that I am not alone in this fight for justice.

"To see justice prevail, to get wrongedoers punished and to ensure no one else goes through such an ordeal again, I shall continue this journey. For all those who are standing with me - a heartfelt thank you for your love." Meanwhile, on Sunday, the Kerala police registered a fresh non-bailable case against Malayalam actor Dileep.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Tashkent, Jan 10 : Uzbekistan is tightening Covid pandemic restrictions as the first case of Omicron variant was confirmed in the country, the Health Ministry said.

A foreign citizen who arrived in Uzbekistan on January 7 was confirmed to be infected with the Omicron variant, the Ministry said, noting that pandemic restrictions, such as wearing masks, keeping social distance and checking body temperatures, will be tightened, reports Xinhua news agency.

The Uzbek Republican Special Commission announced that starting from January 15, foreign visitors will have to submit a negative PCR test for coronavirus infection taken within 48 hours before arrival.

"In the absence of PCR test results, it is necessary to take an express test for coronavirus infection at airports, railway stations and border checkpoints," it said.

Uzbekistan has so far registered 200,341 Covid-19 cases and 1,494 deaths.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Bengaluru, Jan 10 : Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Monday flayed state Congress President D.K. Shivakumar for refusing to undergo Covid-19 tests.

"Without seeing our concern, Shivakumar has spoken at his will, it shows his culture," he said.

While interacting with reporters, he said: "The government is concerned about the health of Shivakumar. He had walked for so long and it was necessary to conduct his tests. The health checkup of all those who are taking part in padayatra is important." Carrying out tests on him and others is the duty of the Health department. He is not understanding this, it can't be helped, he added. "The cases will be lodged against those who participate in padayatra besides those who flout Covid guidelines." Once the case is registered, automatically the law will take its own course. Whichever action is supposed to be taken under particular IPC sections, they would be initiated. There is no discrimination between a big leader and common man here, he stated.

Based on the situation evolving out of Covid-19 pandemic in the state, the decisions of lockdown and restrictions are taken. "As we are seeing 12,000 cases have been reported in the state. In Bengaluru, the cases have reached 9,000 marks. The state is recording a positivity rate of 6.8 per cent and in Bengaluru it is 10 per cent. We are in third position in the country. There is a need to take more precautionary measures in the state," he explained.

Karnataka police have lodged an FIR against State Congress President D.K. Shivakumar and Opposition leader Siddaramaiah and 30 others on Monday carried out Padayatra demanding speedy implementation of the Mekedatu Project by the government despite curfew orders.

The case has been registered in Sathanur police station of Ramnagar district. The case has been lodged under IPC Sections 141 (by means of criminal force or show of criminal force to compel any person to do what he is legally bound to do), 143 (unlawful assembly), 290 (public nuisance) and 336 (whoever does any act so rashly or negligently as to endanger human life or personal safety of others). They have also been booked under the Disaster Management Act.

Home Minister Aragra Jnanedra has stated that if at all there is any situation arises to announce lockdown in the state, the Congress should be held responsible for carrying out padayatra during this time.

State Congress has launched a 10-day padayatra demanding speedy implementation of the Mekedatu project by the ruling BJP government in the state. The padayatra was inaugurated on Sunday and it has entered its second day. Thousands of people are participating in the protest causing worry of a rapid spread of pandemic. Congress leaders, however, justified that BJP is trying to show wrong numbers and scuttle padayatra. They have also questioned that BJP central leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi have participated in rallies in Uttar Pradesh defying Covid norms.

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Patna, Jan 10 : In a bid to apply pressure on the BJP to get some seats in Uttar Pradesh, Janata Dal-United (JD-U) has claimed to contest on 12 seats in the Bihar Legislative Council (MLC).

The JD-U has put Upendra Kushwaha to work on the issue, sources said. Kushwaha on Monday claimed that JD-U wanted to contest on the formula of 50:50 seat sharing for the upcoming MLC election in Bihar.

At present, 13 seats are with the BJP, 8 JD-U, 2 RJD and 1 is with the Congress party. In the 2020 Assembly election, the JD-U had the upper hand. It had won 122 seats out of 243 of the Bihar Vidhan Sabha and given 7 seats to the Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) from its quota. The BJP had contested on the remaining 121 seats and gave 11 seats to VIP.

"JD-U under the 50:50 formula, wants to contest on 12 seats out of 24," Kushwaha said. Sources have said that JD-U will adjust the HAM.

The whole idea behind the JD-U theory is to attract the attention of the BJP top leadership, which is currently busy with the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. The model code of conduct is in vogue in Uttar Pradesh and the JD-U wants BJP to give it some seats.

Sources in JD-U said that the party has launched Upendra Kushwaha because Union Minister R.C.P. Singh turned out to be a weak force for the JD-U to apply pressure on the BJP. The JD-U national president Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh has already said that his party is interested in seat sharing with the BJP in Uttar Pradesh and wants to contest election under the umbrella of NDA.
Mumbai, Jan 10 : Actor Angad Hasija was last seen in the show 'Waaris', and he returns to Hindi television with the youth-centric show 'Ziddi Dil Mane Na' after a four-year hiatus.

The actor, who plays the character of Kundan in the show, is quite keyed up about his new journey.

"I am coming back after four years, the first year went into lockdown and in the second year, I was doing a Punjabi show called 'Tera Rang Chadeya', which is coming soon on ZEE5. I have joined 'Ziddi Dil Mane Na' to play a character role and it really feels amazing. I was waiting for quite a long time to do something different. Whatever characters I have played till now, they all have been different, even Kundan is a new experience. As an actor, I felt it would help me grow and I would learn from it a lot," he says.

As per the story, Kundan is a village boy and is very particular about what he believes in.

"Usually, in small villages and towns the family conditioning is such where you have to follow what your parents tell you, and girls should not go out and work. Kundan's character is not like that. Instead, he thinks that even girls have the right to enjoy their lives as we are there to work. His thinking is quite different and he respects his mother a lot. His points are very clear but there is a gap between his thinking and the modern generation," adds the actor, who enjoys interior designing and now runs an architecture and interior business.

The show has an Army backdrop and Angad found the concept different. He says: "I took up this show as it is a wonderful new-gen story and then suddenly a boy, who has a different thought process, arrives and how that affects the present set-up. Kundan also develops a good friendship with Siddharth (Kunal Karan Kapoor)." Angad shares that he relates to Kundan, as much like the latter his family values are strong and he is strongly attached to his mother.

The story of 'Ziddi Dil Maane Na' revolves around the cadets of the Parakram Special Action Force. It features Kunal Karan Kapoor, Shaalien Malhotra, Kaveri Priyam, Simple Kaul and Aditya Deshmukh.
A sickened New York mourns the deaths of at least 19 Bronxites, including nine children, from an apartment fire that poured smoke throughout a Fordham Heights high-rise. While the city digests the magnitude of the tragedy and speedily aids those whose lives are suddenly torn apart, it must work hard to fully understand what if anything might have prevented a loss of life on this scale.

An electric space heater caught fire in a duplex apartment spanning the second and third floors of the 19-story building. When the occupants fled, the smoke followed them through the open door. Firefighters who rushed to the scene found victims on every floor.

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Thirty people including several children were critically injured, with firefighters making dramatic rescues using tower ladders and ladders, after a fire broke out inside a third floor duplex apartment at 333 East 181st Street in the Bronx on Sunday. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

Weve stressed this over and over, said Fire Commissioner Dan Nigro, the door to that apartment was left open causing the fire to spread and the smoke to spread. Let every New Yorker absorb that message: Only by closing doors can the smoke be contained and the fire be deprived of oxygen.

Every potentially life-saving lesson must be learned and acted upon as soon as humanly possible. FDNY and city officials must reeducate the public on the proper and improper use of space heaters, as the devices have long been known to create serious fire risk when not carefully monitored. Investigators must determine whether any other factors contributed to the carnage. The Bronx building has multiple units converted into duplexes, with many spaces hard to reach for firefighters. It was built, says the fire union president, under federal guidelines way back when, so its not up to New York City fire codes.

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We must also pause to honor the 200 firefighters and emergency medical responders who rushed to the scene and raced throughout the building, rescuing more than 40 people who surely would have perished. Many of the rescuers pressed on after their air tanks were depleted.

The worst fire in more than three decades leaves families in ruins and a city in deep distress. Mourn the dead. Help the living. Hail the heroes. Learn the lessons.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : To avoid contempt, DMRC on Monday filed an urgent affidavit in Delhi High Court disclosing details of all its bank accounts having funds worth Rs 6,208 crore.

In an earlier affidavit filed on January 5, DMRC had made partial/limited disclosure of bank account with respect to only Rs 1,642 crore.

According to the new affidavit filed today, DMRC has Rs 6208 crore in its various bank accounts as on January 3, 2022.

DMRC has to pay Rs 6,268 crore to Delhi Airport Metro Express Ltd. (DAMEPL) as a part of Supreme Court's Rs 7,200 money decree.

Earlier, Delhi Airport Metro Express Pvt. Ltd. (DAMEPL) filed an application in the Delhi High Court on January 7 stating that DMRC, in blatant disregard and contempt of Delhi HC, had failed to comply with the last order of the court passed on December 22 that had directed DMRC to make full disclosure of their all bank accounts and the funds lying in those accounts, within one week.

The application filed by DAMEPL was in response to DMRC's belatedly filed affidavit on January 5 in which it has made a partial/ limited disclosure of its bank accounts only with respect to Rs 1642.69 crore out of the total funds of Rs 5800.93 crore that it had disclosed in its last affidavit submitted in the court on December 21, 2021. Notably, from December 17 to January 3, DMRC has spent a further sum of Rs 122.06 crore out of Rs 1642.69 crore.

DAMEPL said DMRC had intentionally not provided details of its remaining funds and bank accounts, which is blatant disregard and contempt of the Delhi HC order.

DAMEPL said the conduct of DMRC clearly exhibited that it was deliberately trying to defeat and delay the execution process of the Arbitral Award, and also ensure that the next hearing scheduled on January 11 became ineffective. It will be the seventh hearing in the execution process and DMRC is nowhere near complying with the Supreme Court decree.

DAMEPL in its application had also stated that delay in the payment of Arbitral Award by DMRC was costing the taxpayer an additional interest burden of almost Rs 1.75 crore per day.

It may be noted that DMRC in its last affidavit dated December 21 had informed the court that it had total funds worth Rs 5,800.93 crore as on December 17, 2021. Out of this, Rs 1,642.69 crore were classified as DMRC funds, Rs 2,412.12 crore as Project funds, and balance Rs 1,746.12 crore as other than DMRC funds.

DAMEPL had requested Delhi HC to direct DMRC to comply with the previous order passed by the Hon'ble Court in letter and spirit and furnish complete details of all its bank accounts and the funds lying in those accounts along with the respective bank statements, on or before the next date of hearing, i.e., January 11.

The Supreme Court (SC), on September 7, 2021, had upheld the arbitration award of Rs 7,200 crore in favour of DAMEPL.

DAMEPL then filed an execution petition in the Delhi HC on September 12, 2021, seeking court's directions to DMRC for honouring the SC order and pay Rs 7,200 crore to the company. DMRC, out of Rs 7,200 crore, has so far paid only Rs 1,000 crore.
Washington, Jan 10 : Republican Congressman Jim Jordan has rejected a request from the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot to voluntarily cooperate with the probe.

"This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core Constitutional principles, and would serve to further erode legislative norms," Xinhua news agency reported citing a letter Jordan wrote to Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi who chairs the committee.

"As you well know, I have no relevant information that would assist the Select Committee in advancing any legitimate legislative purpose," Jordan said in the letter sent on Sunday.

The committee in late December wrote to the Republican House member, requesting an interview with him about the riot, claiming that Jordan, as a staunch ally of Donald Trump, regularly interacted with the former President both in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election and in the aftermath of it.

"We understand that you had at least one and possibly multiple communications with President Trump on January 6. We would like to discuss each such communication with you in detail," Thompson wrote in his letter.

The committee requested that the interview be arranged on either January 3 or 4, or that Jordan meet investigators during the week starting January 10.

Jordan has repeatedly blasted the committee's effort as politically motivated, once acknowledging that he did speak with Trump on the day of the riot.

"I spoke with him on January 6. I mean, I talked with President Trump all the time and that's ... I don't think that's unusual," he said in an interview with Spectrum News in the summer of 2021.
Lucknow, Jan 10 : After initially welcoming the Covid protocols announced by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in campaigning, political leaders are now developing cold feet on the issue.

The temperature in political circles has fallen with the mercury, while apprehensions are growing.

A sitting MLA, waiting in his car outside the BJP state headquarters, said: "We cannot publicly oppose the ECI's decision on virtual campaigning but the fact remains that this will not work in semi-urban and rural constituencies. The reality is that even those who have smartphones, use them only to watch movies and web series. My own driver says that he will not recharge his data to watch political events." While all parties claim to have a definite presence in the virtual world and exude confidence about campaigning on social media, it is the candidates and aspirants who are worried.

"Now that even cycle rallies have been banned, how do we connect with our voters? Electioneering involves a personal touch where you go and meet voters, seek their support and blessings. You cannot expect to get votes through WhatsApp message and Facebook," said a Samajwadi Party (SP) legislator.

He said that there was insufficient time for door-to-door campaign too.

"My constituency goes to polls in the first phase and I cannot cover the entire constituency in this manner. People want to meet their candidates and virtual rallies by leaders are not enough." Several candidates are now apprehensive that if the curbs continue beyond January 15, it could impact voter turnout.

A BSP candidate from Kanpur said that since there was no physical campaigning, voters cannot be mobilised only through the social media.

"We know how difficult it is to get voters-especially those from educated class-to come out and vote on the polling day. Most people prefer to relax at home since it is a holiday," he said.

Political analysts, on the other, are still unsure about the impact that virtual campaigning will have on voter turnout.

Senior journalist R.K. Singh said: "We still do not know how virtual campaigning will impact voter turnout. There are still people even in urban areas who are not active on the social media. The virtual campaign will have an impact on young voters but there is doubt about the elderly ones who may not be enthused enough to come out and vote." An election official, however, said that virtual campaigning will lead to a rise in voter turnout because voters in the state are "mature and smart".
Phnom Penh, Jan 10 : Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Monday urged high-risk groups in capital Phnom Penh to receive the fourth dose of the Covid-19 vaccine starting from Friday onwards.

The fourth-dose campaign will begin with frontliners including leaders of the government, the senate, the National Assembly, frontline doctors, government officials, the army and police, local authorities and the elderly, according to the Health Ministry.

Staff of embassies and both national and international organisations as well as journalists and celebrities are also invited to join the campaign, Xinhua news agency quoted the Ministry as saying.

The kingdom has reported three more local cases of the Omicronvariant, bringing the total number to 183, Hun Sen said in a live broadcast.

"Omicron has now spread in our community. On Saturday, the first case was confirmed and on Sunday, three more cases were detected," he said.

Meanwhile, Hun Sen announced the start of the new academic year 2022, saying that more than 3 million students would return to school for the new academic year, beginning from Monday.

Cambodia has reopened all socio-economic activities since November 2021, buoyed by its high vaccination rates.

The country had so far administered at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccines to 14.28 million people, or 89.2 per cent of its 16-million populatio.

Of them, 13.68 million, or 85.5 pe rcent, were fully vaccinated, and 3.91 million, or 24.4 percent, have received booster shots.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : Several Supreme Court advocates on Monday claimed to have received an international call with a recorded message asking the apex court not to help the Central government by taking up a case connected with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's security breach in Punjab last week.

Speaking to IANS, Shivaji M. Jadhav, president Supreme Court advocates-on-record Association, said one of the executive members of the association has received the call. People familiar with the development said the recorded message also claimed responsibility for blocking the PM's passage last week.

According to sources, several advocate-on-record (AoRs) received calls from an unknown international number in the morning with a recorded message that Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) has taken responsibility of PM' security breach in Punjab. The recorded message added that the top court did not do enough with regard to killings of Sikh community members during the 1984 riots.

Senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, in a tweet, said: "The audio sent by the "Sikhs for Justice USA" to AORs in the SC must be treated with circumspection. The audio could be a hoax motivated by publicity or to blur the trail to the guilty. But since it contains a veiled threat to SC judges/AORs the NIA must investigate it forthwith." The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to set up a committee headed by a former top judge to probe the PM's security breach in Punjab.

Senior advocate Maninder Singh, representing the Delhi-based petitioner Lawyer's Voice, had mentioned the plea before the Supreme Court. He emphasised on the importance of protection to the PM of the country and cited previous top court ruling that looked at the SPG Act.

The plea sought an independent probe into the PM's security breach in Punjab. It sought a direction to the District Judge Bathinda to collect, preserve and present all material pertaining to the movement and deployment of Punjab Police in connection with the visit of the Prime Minister, and fix responsibility of the DGP and the Chief Secretary, Punjab.

On January 6, the Ministry of Home Affairs constituted a three-member committee to enquire into the "serious lapses in the security arrangements" during the PM's visit to Ferozepur, in poll-bound Punjab. The MHA said: "The committee will be led by Sudhir Kumar Saxena, Secretary (Security), Cabinet Secretariat, and comprising Balbir Singh, Joint Director, IB, and S.Suresh, IG, SPG."
Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 10 : A young student of the Government Engineering College - Idukki was murdered on Monday, said the principal of the institute.

Neeraj Rajendran was a member of the Students Federation of India.

The principal of the college Prof Jalaja said the incident occurred outside the college gate of the main campus.

"The student who has lost his life was of 7th semester Computer Science stream and we are told another student is also injured," said Jalaja to the media.

A local village council member of Idukki -- K.G. Sathyan said he was on his way to the village council when he was asked by students to take one student to the hospital who was badly injured.

"The badly injured Neeraj according to the doctors had suffered deep injury on his chest," said Sathyan who also pointed out that Neeraj was attacked by a Youth Congress worker who does not have a good credibility and is not a student.

The election to the College Union was being held on Monday and according to reports coming from the college there were issues associated with the college union election.

And the issues took a turn for the worse when the SFI and Youth Congress workers started another round of trouble that took place outside the campus, which led to the murder of Neeraj.

Reports point out the condition of two other students is not serious.
Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 10 : The ongoing tiff between Governor Arif Mohammed Khan and Pinarayi Vijayan-led state government over the denial of giving the Honorary D.Litt to President of India took a turn for the worse, with the former slamming the Kerala University Vice-Chancellor.

Speaking to the media soon after arriving from Delhi, Khan said he is ashamed and has to hang his head in shame.

"Kerala University is one of the oldest universities in the country and the Vice-chancellor cannot even write five lines correctly. He also cannot even speak properly. I was really ashamed," said Khan.

Khan said he was surprised to find out that no convocation has been held at the Kerala University for the past 10 years, so he told the Vice-chancellor (V.P. Mahadevan Pillai) to hold one.

"After a month he came back to me and I told him that I will personally go to the President of India to come and attend the convocation. But on 5th December he calls the Raj Bhavan and I was shocked to hear what he was saying. It took me 10 minutes to regain myself when I heard what he was saying. Soon after that I called the Chief Minister," said Khan.

A handwritten letter on a piece of paper of the Kerala University VC to Khan has now come out which contains mistakes and it states that the syndicate had turned down the decision to confer the D.Litt to the President.

Khan also slammed the way the Vice Chancellor of the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit was selected.

"I was given just one name and I was told that six others who applied were not eligible. What does this mean , the 6 professors who applied are not at all eligible. This shows the quality of the higher education standards in Kerala," added Khan.

It was on December 31 that former Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala asked Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to come clean on why the recommendation of Khan as chancellor to confer Honorary D.Litt to President Ram Nath Kovind was shot down.

On Monday, Chennithala said the silence of Vijayan is dangerous.

"Time has run out and Vijayan cannot remain silent like this anymore. He has to tell what has happened," said Chennithala.
Chennai, Jan 10 : The Foxconn company plant at Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, is likely to resume operations from January 12 with a small workforce.

The company which employs a 15,000 workforce will have a full-fledged operation in a phased manner and in all likelihood, only 100 workers will join duty during the first phase when it resumes operation on January 12.

The plant was shut down after food positioning was reported of about 100 women workers on December 18. It may be noted that Apple had put the plant on probation and Foxconn had apologised for the incident.

A spokesperson for Apple on Monday said: "For the past several weeks, teams from Apple, along with independent auditors have been working with Foxconn to ensure a comprehensive set of corrective actions are implemented in the offsite accommodations and dining rooms in at Sriperumbudur. Workers will start to return gradually as soon as we are certain that our standards are being met in every dormitory and dining area.

"Foxconn's Sriperumbudur facility is on probation and we will continue to monitor conditions very closely." Foxconn in a statement on Monday said: "We have been working on a series of improvements to fix issues we found at the offsite dormitory facilities at Sriperumbudur and to enhance the services we provide to our employees. We have implemented a range of corrective actions to ensure that this cannot happen again and a rigorous monitoring system to ensure workers can raise any concerns that they may have including anonymously." Tamil Nadu health and labour department officials were in touch with the Foxconn management and directed them that all safety measures are in place.

Chief Minister M.K. Stalin had informed the Legislative Assembly on January 7 that the Foxconn plant would open soon with 500 employees.
San Francisco, Jan 10 : A Tesla owner has revealed that he was making $800 every month using his Model 3 EV to mine Bitcoin and Ethereum.

According fo CNBC, Siraj Raval said through 2021 he made $400 to $800 a month, mining cryptocurrency using his car. He said that he was making $800 a month when the price of ETH peaked last year.

Raval connected a series of GPUs to the "frunk" of his Tesla. The car's large battery essentially acted as the source of power that may comparatively help reduce maintenance costs.

However, it also affects the warranty of Tesla cars but Raval said that it is worth it.

When the official talks more about this to Raval for using the Tesla car, he said, adding that "it is a computer with wheels, it is too easy to hack into the computer of the car".

His setup includes free bitcoin mining software on his Mac mini M1, which is powered by plugging an inverter into the 12-volt power socket in the center console of his Model 3.

Apart from Raval, Alejandro de la Torre, who mines bitcoin, said that mining from a Tesla is just like connecting to any other power source.

"The main component is the price of the electricity. If it's cheaper doing it through an electric vehicle, then so be it."
Amaravati, Jan 10 : Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy inaugurated 144 Pressure Swing Absorption (PSA) Oxygen Plants, in virtual mode, on Monday. The oxygen plants have been setup at various government hospitals across the state.

Speaking on the occasion, the chief minister said that the government has been taking all measures to contain coronavirus ahead of the third wave and as part of it, 144 oxygen plants have been set up in government hospitals at a cost of Rs 426 crore.

Besides establishing 144 oxygen plants, the government is also providing a 30 per cent subsidy to private hospitals with over 100-bed capacity to set up an oxygen plant. He said that steps were taken to achieve self-sufficiency of oxygen, as the entire country faced severe shortage of oxygen during the second wave.

The chief minister mentioned that the government had purchased 25 oxygen cryogenic ISO containers for transporting Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO), along with 74 LMO tanks. Oxygen pipelines were set up to 24,419 beds in various government hospitals at a cost of Rs 90 crore and Pediatric Care Units with 20 beds have been set up at community health centers.

Recalling the initial days of Covid, he said that 20 state-of-the-art VRDL labs have been set up in the state, increasing the testing capacity from zero to one lakh tests per day. With the possible threat from Omicron, a genome sequencing lab has been set up in Vijayawada, which is second in the country after Kerala.

On the occasion, Reddy inspected 20 types of advanced medical equipment brought by the Medical and Health Department and showcased at the camp office here, and enquired about their functioning.

Deputy chief minister Alla Kali Krishna Srinivas, municipal and urban development minister Botsa Satyanarayana, and other senior officials were present on the occasion.
By Wang Li, Zou Yanning

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart Joe Biden had another phone call on the European security issue recently. Such intensive interactions between the two major powers exposed the awkward position of the EU  as a direct stakeholder concerning Europes security interests, it is more like an "outsider" that has no say over its own destiny.

In response to Moscows previous suggestion on having bilateral discussions with the US on the European security, Washington once declared on a high profile that there would be no negotiations on European security with Europe's absence, and pledged with such certainty to intensify communication with its European allies and keep it on the loop. However, it didnt refuse Moscows invitation to the bilateral negotiations, and the two sides have basically agreed to kick off a string of meetings starting from January 10 between themselves, within the framework of NATO-Russia Council, and among the US, Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Obviously the first meeting will be the main act setting the tone for the negotiations, while the other two will very likely just be a show staged by the US to placate the European allies.

European security is of great importance for the EU. The European External Action Service (EEAS) already released a statement announcing the EUs stance and principles and stressing its determination to safeguard the unions interests. Yet such a seemingly firm and clear-cut statement cannot gloss over Europes dilemma.

First, it is not strong enough to stand up against Russia. Europe has a wish to steady the ties with Russia, the strong neighbor it cannot evade, but it cannot make the policies independently. Ever since 2020, it has been increasingly dancing to Americas tune while taking a tough stance against Russia, and Russia, having seen through what Europe is doing, obviously has no more patience with it, rendering what little remaining initiative Europe holds completely useless.

Second, it feels insecure about America. Not being strong enough to arm-wrestle with Russia, Europe has a strong need to contain it leveraged on Americas strengths, but it doesnt feel all secure when the US speaks on its behalf. In particular, Europe feels more distrustful of the US amid the constant changes in the global security situation, worrying that it would reach some kind of deal with Russia at the expense of European interests.

Third, it is unable to forge a united front within the EU. While Europe as a whole is getting tougher on Russia, there are differences between East and West Europe. The pragmatic faction represented by France and Italy advocates some leeway. Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi calls straight out that the energy sanctions launched by EU against Russia was nothing but a bluff, but the hawkish faction in Central and Eastern Europe insists on toughening it out. The energy price is spiking, but Europe seems determined to be on Russias bad books when it still depends on it for energy supply  no wonder Russia said it would fry in its own grease.

In recent years, Europe has been intensifying its strategic independence as an important way to deal with the profound changes on the global stage. Regarding Russia policy, French President Macron once said publicly that a friends enemy isnt necessarily ones own enemy, and that Europes anti-Russia policy is becoming ineffective. Brussels knows perfectly well that taking the initiative to plan and mend the relations with Moscow holds the key to reducing its security reliance on Washington and consequently achieving genuine strategic independence. The new Chancellor Olaf Scholz previously urged for resuming the Normandy-style negotiation on the Ukraine issue within the four-member framework of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine.

In general, the EU has hardly a say over the security issue due to its lack of strengths, and Russia and the US remain dominant on security in the continent. In the meantime, Europe remains highly pro-US and anti-Russia given the internal division. Its foreseeable that for a long time to come, Europes Russia policy will be largely subject to the America, and it wont be easy to change its passive position of taking a back seat to the US on the security issue either.

(The authors are a researcher from the Institute of European Studies, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations and a scholar on the international studies, respectively)
Its a new day  or so they say when there is a new mayoral administration ready to take hold of what the last has not accomplished. Since the New Deal, America has seen an increase of agencies, siloed from one another, on the local, state and federal level, each responsible for their own narrow charge, with their own budget. This model has served us well for decades. However, the climate crisis requires a new way of governing.

This fall, Hurricane Ida inundated our region, sending record-breaking rainfall into our streets and resulting in 43 deaths in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut  the same number as those who died in New York City from Hurricane Sandy. Yet there is still no single agency responsible for addressing the effect that flooding has on our communities. NYCs Department of Environmental Protection is only responsible for rain after it hits our sewers. The Department of Transportation is responsible for moving cars, bikes and pedestrians, not building streets that absorb rain and keep water out of the basements of small businesses. The list goes on.

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MTA bus and other cars caught in flood water on Queens Boulevard in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Ida in New York City on Thursday September 2, 2021. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News)

Every year, more than 600 people in the United States are killed by extreme heat, which is the number one climate killer. In 2021, New York City had 17 days in which the city hit 90 degrees or higher. There is no single agency responsible for addressing the effect that increased heat has on the most vulnerable. The Parks Department provides shade through street trees and maintains extended hours in city pools. The Human Resources Administration distributes air conditioners to New Yorkers who have medical conditions that are made worse by heat, and a myriad of agencies, including those responsible for seniors, public housing and libraries, operate cooling centers giving the most vulnerable a safe place of refuge.

Right now, the Mayors Office of Resiliency must negotiate with city agencies to change the status quo, as they have neither the budget nor authority to implement policy. This has caused rifts between policymakers and agency implementers, such as we experienced with the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project. Instead of having agencies pitch in what they can, creating a hot potato of climate infrastructure that no agency wants to fund or maintain, Mayor Adams can develop a more sensible path to climate resilience.

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Our city could be divided into regions, or groupings of neighborhoods with similar climate vulnerabilities. Agency experts from the Department of Transportation would be paired with experts from the departments of Environmental Protection, Parks, Economic Development, Small Business Services and others to be tasked with collaboratively developing climate solutions that are responsive to community needs, not single agency agendas.

Guided by the NYC Panel on Climate Changes predictions and managed by a new Mayors Office of Climate (which is now two separate offices of Sustainability and Resilience), these neighborhood teams would work with small businesses and community organizations to understand their regions specific vulnerabilities and existing needs, working side by side with community members and tackling these issues head-on. The result would be neighborhood-level plans, with a citywide view, that will collaboratively determine how the neighborhoods will need to respond to climate change as they also tackle todays biggest problems of housing affordability, homelessness and transportation.

This model was tested nine years ago in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The federal government launched Rebuild by Design, an interdisciplinary design challenge that connected global expertise with local communities and local governments to design and build large-scale climate infrastructure. The effort, which brought together more than 200 experts  architects, engineers, hydrologists, academics and community specialists  worked with 535 community organizations and 181 government agencies resulting in seven projects that were awarded $930 million of the federal Sandy recovery funds. This effort gave way to some of the largest climate projects in our nation, totaling over $3.6 billion, and the approach has been replicated in other U.S. regions and internationally.

Was it always smooth sailing? No it wasnt. All the projects have changed from their initial visions, some quite significantly. However, even as they are designed today, they represent a suite of projects that would have never been built if the government was left to plan as it traditionally does, using new approaches such as developing acres of resilient parks in Hoboken, and breakwaters enhanced with reef ridges to attract oysters and reduce the impact of flooding in Staten Island.

For nearly 10 years, the city has primarily approached climate resilience as building back from Hurricane Sandy instead of comprehensively understanding how climate change will affect each neighborhood. Its time to stop making the same mistake. Mayor Adams must commit to working with the community to develop solutions to problems that continue to plague our city and do what New York does best: set an example for the rest of the world.

Chester is managing director of Rebuild by Design.
Mumbai, Jan 10 : In latest update in Bulli Bai controversy, Vishal Kumar Jha, 21, an engineering student who was the first one to be arrested by Mumbai Police from Bengaluru, has tested positive for Covid-19. He has been sent to a quarantine centre by the BMC. His lawyers and family members have been informed by the Police.

He was arrested on January 3 by the a Mumbai Police team from Bengaluru following technical inputs.

On January 4, Mumbai Police arrested one Shweta Singh, a resident of Uttrakhand. She was second person who was arrested in the controversy. Mayank Rawal was the third person who was arrested by Mumbai police.

Apart from Mumbai Police, the Special Cell of Delhi Police which was doing a parallel probe has made two arrests. The special cell arrested Niraj Bishnoi, the main accused of Bulli Bai and Aumkareshwar Thakur the main accused behind Sulli Deal.

On January 1, Bulli Bai app which was on GitHub's space posted the photos of a number of women of a particular religion including of journalists, social workers, students and famous personalities. It happened six months after the controversy of Sulli Deals.

Jha was one of the followers of Bulli Bai which led the Police team to other accused.

Hosting platform GitHub provided space to Sulli Deals and this time too the Bulli Bai was created on GitHub platform. Later, after the controversy, GitHub removed the user from its hosting platform.

But by then Bulli Bai had sparked a nationwide controversy.

The Bulli Bai app was also being promoted by a twitter handle with the name @bullibai, with the display picture of a Khalistani supporter.

This twitter handle was endorsing the Bulli Bai app saying the women can be booked from the app. This handle was also promoting Khalistani content at the same time.
Patna, Jan 10 : The supporters of Jan Adhikar Party (JAP) stopped trains at 60 places across Bihar on Monday. Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, the president of JAP, was present at Patna Sachiwalay Halt railway station and was leading the protest.

"We have a long standing demand for special status for Bihar. Besides, we also want law on MSP followed by its implementation on the ground, easy availability of fertilizers and permanent jobs for ward secretaries of Bihar," Yadav said.

Besides Sachiwalay Halt, the JAP supporters also stopped trains at Masaudhi, Daniawa, Patna city and Fatuha in Patna district. Overall, JAP supporters stopped trains at 60 places across the state. The idea is to attract the attention of Narendra Modi government at the centre and Nitish Kumar government of Bihar to address this issue," Yadav said.

In Rohtas, the supporters of JAP stopped Howrah-Delhi-Kalka mail at Bhabua road station. The GRP and local police managed to remove them away from the railway track and allow the train to pass.

The GRP official at Bhabua road claimed that the train was not delayed due to the protest.
Bengaluru, Jan 10 : The final rites of renowned Kannada writer and literary critic professor Chandrashekar Patil, popularly known as Champa, would be performed with full police honours, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai said on Monday.

Speaking to mediapersons here, Bommai said, "Our popular 'Champa' has left us. His writings with independent thought were sharp. He used to hold a mirror to the system through his insightful presentation of issues." Champa had served in the All India Kannada Sahitya Parishat and was honoured with the Rajyotsava award, Bommai said, as he recalled that the writer had close association with his family.

"He was close to my father. The demise of Champa, who was a guiding light for me, is a big loss for the literary world," he said.

Bommai prayed to the Almighty to give strength to the family and followers of Champa to bear this loss.

Bommai said, "Champa hailed from Hattimattur village in Haveri district. He was a revolutionary litterateur. His contributions to Kannada literature are immense. He fought for the supremacy of the language of the land all through." Chandrashekar Patil (83) passed away on Monday at a private hospital in Bengaluru owing to age-related ailments.

He was a well-known poet, playwright and intellectual who wrote in Kannada. He is considered as one of the foremost voices of the Bandaya movement, a progressive, rebel literary movement.

Champa was the editor of the influential literary journal 'Sankramana'. He was known for leading many social and literary movements such as the Gokak agitation, Bandaya movement, anti-Emergency movement, agitation for the implementation of Mandal report, and farmers' movement, among others.

After retiring as professor of English from the Karnatak University in Dharwad, Champa served as the president of the Kannada Sahitya Parishat and as the Chairman of the Kannada Development Authority. He had returned his Pampa Award, the highest literary honour of the government of Karnataka, protesting the assassination of scholar M.M. Kalburgi.
Chandigarh, Jan 10 : Punjab Police have cracked the case of hand grenade attacks, including the attack at the Pathankot army camp, by busting a major terror module backed by International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF) with the arrest of its six operatives.

The SBS Nagar police have also recovered six hand-grenades, one pistol (9 mm), one rifle (.30 bore) along with bullets and magazines from their possession, Director General of Police (DGP), V.K. Bhawra, said here on Monday.

Those arrested have been identified as Amandeep, Gurwinder Singh, Parminder Kumar, Rajinder Singh, Harpreet Singh and Raman Kumar, all from Gurdaspur.

As per the information, in two instances, some unidentified persons had hurled hand grenades at Pathankot -- one near Chakki Pull on November 11, 2021 at about 9.30 pm, another outside Triveni Dwar, 21 sub-area of the army in Pathankot, on November 21 at about 9 pm.

Separate FIRs in this regard were registered in Pathankot.

The DGP said during preliminary interrogation, the accused revealed that they were directly in touch with self-proclaimed chief of ISYF (Rode), Lakhbir Singh Rode, and his close aides, Sukhmeetpal Singh alias Sukh Bhikhariwal and Sukhpreet alias Sukh, for planning the terror attacks.

"The entire cache of the recovered hand grenades, arms and ammunition were pushed in from across the international border by Lakhbir Rode, and the arrested accused persons had been tasked for further attacking the pre-identified targets which were mainly police and defence establishments, religious places etc.," the DGP said, adding that the accused also confessed to have lobbed hand grenades twice in Pathankot.

SBS Nagar SSP Kanwardeep Kaur said the police have also registered a case at a police station in Nawanshahr. "Further investigations are on," she added.

Notably, the role of Lakhbir Rode was also found in the killing of Comrade Balwinder Singh at Bhikhiwind on October 16, 2020, besides in the recovery of IED, RDX, arms and ammunition from his relative Gurmukh Singh Rode from Jalandhar in August 2021.

Sukhmeetpal Singh, alias Sukh Bhikhariwal, who is presently lodged in Tihar Jail in Delhi, was also involved in the killing of Comrade Balwinder Singh and in the case of murderous attack on Honey Mahajan at Dhariwal on February 10, 2020.

He was deported from Dubai in December 2020. Sukh Bhikhariwal provided foot-soldiers, arms and ammunition, logistics, funds etc. for the execution of the criminal acts.
New Delhi, Jan : Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday said that he had tested positive for Covid.

In a tweet, he said, "I have tested positive for Corona today with mild symptoms. I am under home quarantine. I request everyone who have recently come in my contact to isolate themselves and get tested." Former Union Minister and Lok Sabha member Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore also tested positive for Covid on Monday.

Union Minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar tested positive on Sunday. In a tweet, he had said: "And after succeeding in avoiding #COVID19 for last 21 months, it finally catches up wth me tdy as I tested +ve tdy." Recently several Union Ministers tested positive for Covid. These include Mahendra Nath Pandey, Raosaheb Patil Danve, Bharti Pawar, Nityanand Rai, and S.P. Singh Baghel.

BJP MPs Varun Gandhi and Manoj Tiwari also tested positive for Covid. Tiwari, however, has recovered from infection as recent report on Saturday came negative.

Today, India registered single-day rise of 1,79,723 new Covid cases and 146 deaths.

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Christchurch, Jan 10 : New Zealand ended the second day of the Christchurch Test firmly in control after taking a 395-run lead over Bangladesh, here on Monday Bangladesh were bowled out for 126 by the end of the day - trailing New Zealand's 521/6 by a mammoth 395 - with Boult going past the milestone of 300 Test wickets with his 5/35.

New Zealand resumed on the second morning on 349/1, with Devon Conway bringing up his third century in only his fifth Test match. Captain Tom Latham brought up his double century at the other end, as New Zealand continued their domination in the first session.

Conway was eventually run out for 109, ending a 215-run partnership with Latham. In walked Ross Taylor to a standing ovation and a guard of honour, the veteran playing his final Test.

Taylor cracked four fours during his 39-ball stay, as New Zealand looked to up the ante. That meant the wickets flowed as well, and Bangladesh picked up four in the first session, including that of Taylor's.

The Black Caps picked up the scoring rate after Lunch. Latham was the aggressor, and eventually got out for 252, the highest individual score at the Hagley Oval.

New Zealand declared at 521/7, but not before wicketkeeper Tom Blundell joined the party and scored a quickfire 57 (not out) off just 60 balls.

Bangladesh were looking to build on their historic Test win at Mount Maunganui but Boult and Southee came out firing, claiming four wickets before Tea to leave the visitors struggling at 27/4. Boult picked up his third wicket of the first innings shortly after the break, inducing an edge from Liton Das for nought.

From 27/5, Bangladesh found some fight in Yasir Ali (38*) and Nurul Hasan (41). The two steadied the ship with a 60-run partnership for the sixth wicket before Southee got the crucial wicket of Nurul, trapping in front.

Boult then returned for another spell, and soon had Mehidy cleaned up for his 300th Test scalp -- he became just the fourth New Zealander to take 300 Test wickets, after Richard Hadlee, Daniel Vettori, and Southee. The rest of the Bangladesh line-up crumbled, and the visitors now face a huge task to stay alive on the third day.

Brief scores: New Zealand 521/6 dec. (T Latham 252, Conway 109, Young 54, Ross Taylor 28; Shoriful Islam 2-79, Ebadot Hossain 2-143) v Bangladesh 126 all out in 41.2 overs (Yasir Ali 55, Nurul Hasan 41; Trent Boult 5-43, Tim Southee 3-28).
Bengaluru, Jan 10 : The Cyber Crime Police in Karnataka have arrested a person for allegedly cheating as many as 26 women on the pretext of marriage.

The accused used matrimonial sites to find his victims. He landed in prison after making an attempt to dupe a woman who works in the police department.

The accused has been identified as Jai Bheem Vittal Padukoti (33), a resident of Vijayapur. The police have seized a luxury car from his possession besides freezing his bank accounts.

The accused got a job in Hescom as a lineman after the death of his father. He was married to Kavitha in 2013 and reportedly killed her following a quarrel. He was imprisoned for two years for this.

Coming out of the prison after securing bail, he resorted to cheating women on the pretext of marrying them to lead a luxurious life. The accused had created fake accounts in matrimonial sites, claiming that he was a section officer in Hescom.

He used to send messages to women that he had liked their profile. Later, he would visit their houses to win the trust of the parents and relatives of the victims. He also took lakhs of rupees from the girls' relatives promising them government jobs.

The accused managed to get the details of the bank accounts of the girls who agreed to marry him. Whenever the victims asked him to return the money, he would threaten them.

The police gathered evidence against the accused for cheating three women after developing physical intimacy with them on the pretext of marrying them.

The accused had cheated 26 women in Shivamogga, Haveri, Bengaluru, Mysuru, Dharwad, Hubballi, Yadgiri and Raichur districts. He had also taken Rs 21.30 lakh from the victims.

The accused ran out of luck after sending a similar request to a woman who worked in the police department. After observing his moves, the victim grew suspicious and informed the police.
Mumbai, Jan 10 : Actor Vishal Jethwa, who made his debut with 'Mardaani 2' and is now awaiting the release of his upcoming series 'Human', had a gala time working with Vipul Amrutlal Shah and Mozez Singh, the directors of the show.

The actor enjoyed the process of working under two perspectives of both Vipul and Mozez.

Sharing his shooting experience with both of, Vishal said, "After working with Gopi Sir on 'Mardaani 2', I thought there's no other cool director but when I worked with Vipul Sir, I realised he is so easy to work with and not only Vipul but also Mozez Sir." Bifurcating the creative process of two directors, the actor said, "I just love the combination of these two directors because wherever practicality is needed, Vipul Sir is there and wherever emotionality is needed Mozez sir is there. That's why I loved the bifurcation as the initial two to three episodes of 'Human' are directed by Vipul sir, and then Mozez Sir directed the other 5 episodes." The series, which stars Shefali Shah, Kirti Kulhari, Vishal Jethwa, Seema Biswas, Aditya Srivastava and Mohan Agashe, will be available to stream on Disney+ Hotstar from January 14.
Mumbai, Jan 10 : On World Hindi Day, 'Bhabiji Ghar Par Hain' actress Shubhangi Atre urges Indian parents to teach their children to speak in Hindi to communicate in daily life.

World Hindi Day or 'Vishwa Hindi Divas' is celebrated every year on January 10 to mark the first World Hindi Conference that was held on January 10, 1975 in Nagpur. The main motive is to promote the usage of Hindi language across the world.

She says: "Hindi being my mother-tongue, and our national language is very important to us. But today it's disheartening to see how parents pay more attention in teaching English to their kids instead of Hindi. Many among us are used to using English in our daily communication. I'm not against speaking English but we must not forget our values and morals. Hindi must be our priority. I feel proud to flaunt my Hindi-speaking abilities. And to the maximum I enjoy and choose to approach others in Hindi only." The actress further expresses her worry on how Hindi as a language is getting no attention.

"Hindi is certainly the home language of we Indians. Hindi is a very beautiful language, it's very aesthetic in its tone. Now, though learning Hindi comes across as less fashionable, people are getting more fascinated by foreign languages and forgetting the essence of Hindi. The emphasis on English is widely growing and that's causing a major threat to the importance and the significance of Hindi. Hindi has become an alien language in its own territory," she adds.

Shubhangi, known for her acting in 'Kasturi', 'Do Hanson Ka Jodaa', 'Stories by Rabindranath Tagore' among others, roots for Hindi and says: "Hindi is the language that keeps us connected to our roots. Yes, English is indeed a global language, it gives you a way to reach out to the diverse domains and spheres, but one should not forget the importance and the identity of Indians that is very much inherently rooted in the language Hindi."
New Delhi, Jan 10 : The Centre has asked the states and UTs to deploy the final year MBBS students, resident doctors, and nursing students to augment the human resources and particularly the healthcare workers amid rising Covid cases.

In two different guidelines issued to states and UTs on January 8 and 9, the Union Health Ministry has sought regarding the utilising the services of final-year MBBS students, interns, senior Re and junior Residents and the third and fourth year of B.Sc Nursing students, along with M.Sc first and second year nursing students.

The ministry has said that the active cases that needed hospitalisation care was 20 to 23 per cent during the second Covid surge. However, only 5 to 10 per cent of active cases need hospital administration presently, though, the situation is evolving and the need for hospitalization care can change dynamically, it said.

The states have been told to keep regular watch on the number of active cases, cases under home isolation, number of hospitalised cases, cases on oxygen beds, ICU beds and on ventilator support. Citing that human resources have limitations, the government has asked states to conserve healthcare workers by initiating staggering wherever possible and by restricting elective procedures in the hospitals.

The government has asked to earmark different categories of beds in private hospitals and to ensure that charges levied by them is reasonable. The states have been asked to upgrade the beds to oxygen-supported beds wherever possible at Covid Care Centres and to train community volunteers in basic care and management there. The Centre has also asked to engage retired medical professionals and MBBS students for provision of tele-consultation services.

It has also asked that hospitals be divided into three different zones of non-Covid areas, Covid area looking after patients with mild to moderate illness, and critical area like ICUs. In addition, a triage area needs to be developed in the emergency where patients with accute severe respiratory illness will be coming, said the ministry.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Bob Saget, beloved actor, host and stand-up comic, was found dead on Jan. 9, 2022. He was 65. Take a look back at life and career to remember America's funniest and sweetest sitcom dad. Pictured, Bob Saget performs at the "Boys Night Out" comedy benefit at The Laugh Factory hosted by talk radio host Tom Leykis on Oct. 11, 2001, in Hollywood, Calif. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the September 11 relief efforts. (Jason Kirk/Getty Images)

They thanked him for the laughter, through their tears.

Fellow comedians and actors took to social media Sunday to offer condolences and bittersweet reminiscences of Bob Saget, who died suddenly at age 65.

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Led by his co-stars on Full House, the sitcom that launched Saget to fame, fellow actors, comedians and the celebrities who knew him paid tribute.

Bob Saget attends the "Shameless" FYC event at Linwood Dunn Theater on Wednesday, March 6, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Richard Shotwell/Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

Sagets Full House co-stars expressed their shock at the sudden and unexpected death. Saget had played Danny Tanner, a widower who gets help raising his three daughters from his brother-in-law and a college pal, for eight seasons from 1987 to 1994. He reprised the role in the Netflix reboot, Fuller House, which ran from 2016 to mid-2020.

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John Stamos, who played brother-in-law Jesse Katsopolis, was caught off-guard.

I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock, he tweeted. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby.

I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby.  John Stamos (@JohnStamos) January 10, 2022

Candace Cameron Bure, who played Sagets teen daughter on Full House, was left speechless.

I dont know what to say, she tweeted. I have no words. Bob was one of the best humans beings Ive ever known in my life. I loved him so much.

I dont know what to say . I have no words. Bob was one of the best humans beings Ive ever known in my life. I loved him so much.  Candace Cameron Bure (@candacecbure) January 10, 2022

An onscreen offspring from another series also grieved her TV father.

Oh god. Bob Saget!!! The loveliest man, tweeted Kat Dennings, who starred on a single-season sitcom on the WB network, playing a 15-year-old raised by her widowed father, played by Saget, on Raising Dad. I was his TV daughter for one season and he was always so kind and protective. So so sorry for his family.

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Like Bure, Sagets fellow funnyman Jon Stewart too seemed at a loss for words.

Bob Saget Just the funniest and nicest he tweeted.

Other comedians could not believe he was gone so suddenly.

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Still in shock, Gilbert Gottfried tweeted, along with a photo of the pair. I just spoke with Bob a few days ago, We stayed on the phone as usual making each other laugh. RIP to friend, comedian & fellow Aristocrat Bob Saget.

Still in shock. I just spoke with Bob a few days ago. We stayed on the phone as usual making each other laugh. RIP to friend, comedian & fellow Aristocrat Bob Saget. pic.twitter.com/TDKT8JoULq  Gilbert Gottfried (@RealGilbert) January 10, 2022

Jason Alexander, of Seinfeld fame, wrote of his friends caring nature and the loss to the world.

I know that people lose loved ones, good people, every day, he tweeted. No one gets a pass. But the loss of Bob Saget hits deep. If you didnt know him, he was kind and dear and cared about people deeply. He was the definition of a good egg. Too soon he leaves.

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I know that people lose loved ones, good people, every day. No one gets a pass. But the loss of Bob Saget hits deep. If you didnt know him, he was kind and dear and cared about people deeply. He was the definition of a good egg. Too soon he leaves. #RipBobSaget  jason alexander (@IJasonAlexander) January 10, 2022

TV writer and show creator Norman Lear, who counted Saget as a close friend, lauded a dear and decent human.

Bob Saget was as lovely a human as he was funny, the 99-year-old tweeted in sorrow and appreciation. And to my mind, he was hilarious. We were close friends and I could not have loved him more.

Bob Saget was as lovely a human as he was funny. And to my mind, he was hilarious. We were close friends and I could not have loved him more. pic.twitter.com/TM8r1hzCfO  Norman Lear (@TheNormanLear) January 10, 2022

Patton Oswalt bemoaned a coffee the two never got to share.

Bob was at my house in October interviewing me for a documentary, the comedian tweeted with stills from the shoot. He was sharp and dark and funny as always and we were gonna catch up over coffee when he was done editing, and now Im crying.
Lucknow, Jan 10 : The Uttar Pradesh government has brought in additional restrictions with immediate effect to check the spread of Covid.

According to the official spokesman, all government and private offices will function with 50 per cent strength at a time. The government is also encouraging work from home module and has urged to implement a rotation system at the workplace to bring the transmission levels down.

While reviewing the Covid condition in the state with senior officials in a high-level meeting on Monday, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has said that efforts should be made to save both "lives and livelihoods".

Underlining the need to promote 'work from home' culture so that there is no inconvenience in the work, he also directed to implement a rotation system in the offices.

According to the new Covid control guidelines of the state government, if an employee serving in private sector offices turns out to be Covid positive, then he will also be given 7-day leave with no deduction in salary.

Additional Chief Secretary, Health, Amit Mohan Prasad said that a total of 8,334 new patients were found Covid positive on Monday in the state.

At present, the total number of active cases is 33,946, out of which 33,563 people are in home isolation.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
New Delhi, Jan 10 : A group of students on Monday approached the Delhi High Court claiming that AYUSH courses cannot come under National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) as the examination is restricted to Modern Scientific medicine and does not include traditional medicine courses.

Seeking the stand of the Centre and National Testing Agency in this regard, a division bench headed by Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh issued notice on the plea filed by six AYUSH aspirants.

Further, the court said it will hear the matter on March 30 along with another plea filed by a group of Allopathic doctors who have moved the Court against allowing AYUSH practitioners to perform some surgeries. It also asked Centre's counsel Monika Arora to furnish details of allopathic doctors' plea.

During the course of the hearing, the court also remarked that there is a double standard in the plea. "On a lighter side, you on one hand are saying you are competitive. But when asked to appear in NEET, you are saying we are not," the court said while listing both the matters for the next hearing.

In the AYUSH aspirants' petition, it was contended that their courses operate differently and they are fundamentally different from Medical Institutions that grant degrees, diplomas, or licenses in Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, or Homoeopathy medicines.

They also said that the common entrance test is not structured to take into account the eligibility criteria for admission to AYUSH courses.

Claiming that NEET for AYUSH courses is in violation of Article 14 which provides equality before the law or equal protection of the laws, the aspirants said they are not against the entrance test system but against NEET for taking admission to AYUSH courses--Ayurveda, Homoeopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Sowa Rigpa.
Chandigarh, Jan 10 : In a major reprieve to Akali leader and former Punjab Cabinet minister Bikram Singh Majithia, the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Monday granted interim anticipatory bail to him in a drug case.

Justice Lisa Gill asked him to join investigations in the case.

In his petition, Majithia said:"It's more than apparent that the present FIR has been registered against the petitioner keeping an eye on the forthcoming elections. The petitioner's fundamental rights are at stake." Sitting MLA Majithia, who is the brother-in-law of Shiromani Akali Dal President Sukhbir Badal, had moved the high court after a Mohali court dismissed his anticipatory bail petition in a case under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act registered on December 20.

In a 49-page FIR filed by the state police Crime Branch at the Mohali police station, the SAD leader has been booked under sections 25, 27A and 29 of the NDPS Act.

Majithia's case was argued by senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi, while the Punjab government's case was represented by former Union Minister P. Chidambaram.

His counsel D.S. Sobti told the media that Majithia would join the investigation on Wednesday.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : After a continuous sell-off in the past three months or so, foreign portfolio investors have turned net buyers in the first week of January in the Indian equity segment, data showed.

So far in 2022, FPIs have infused Rs 3,695 crore in the Indian equity.

The recent correction in domestic equity markets provided them a good buying opportunity, analysts opined.

"This (buying by FPIs) comes at a time when the market has recovered after a fall of almost 12 per cent from the high of 18,604 to a low of 16,410. FIIs seem to be more comfortable buying now with the start of the new rally post the correction ahead of the Q3 earnings," said Jayesh Bhanushali, AVP, Research at IIFL Securities.

"Also, with the run-up to the budget, we expect the FII buying trend to continue and the market to have a positive bias in the short term." During October-December period, foreign investors made a net outflow of Rs 38,521 crore from the Indian markets.

"Anecdotally, FIIs remain sellers in the last month of the calendar year and they start to buy again from the 2nd or 3rd week of January. Union budget and State elections along with Central banks' policies will also play an important role in the directions of FIIs' flows however I am optimistic about the market outlook and their stance," said Parth Nyati, Founder of Tradingo.
New delhi, Jan 10: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is sadly confused and clueless on how to appease the religious zealots in his country while appearing progressive, has made a mess of prevailing Islamic thinking in Pakistan.

Khan went on-air last week speaking on Islam, society and ethical values, while answering questions. It was broadcast live on the Pakistani state television too. He was perhaps prompted by a set of advisors to touch upon Islamic society in his country. Was such an address really needed? As a result of Khan's half-hearted and half-baked address (general people are alluding it to "little knowledge is dangerous"), the show created more confusion leading to ambiguity rather than shedding light on a roadmap for the future.

Noted "Dawn" columnist and political commentator and author Zahid Hussain described the show as a demonstration of Khan's own ideas, bereft of any solid theological moorings. Hussain feels that in the Pakistani Prime Minister's worldview, corruption and rising sex crimes are the only two evils that ail the minds of the Muslim youth in his country.

Khan conspicuously had nothing to say about burning issues such as economic backwardness afflicting the Muslims or their lack of any interest in modern scientific and technological education, which is rendering the country's youth completely isolated in a competitive world.

Imran also came under criticism for blaming the young generation for engaging in pornographic activity in the social media. Such outbursts by the Pakistani PM are unbecoming of a top post he is saddled with.

Elaborating on the lack of scientific education amongst the Pakistani Muslims, Zahid Hussain opines that as a 75-year-old independent nation, only three Muslims have won Nobel prize in science, two in chemistry and one in Physics. The lone Pakistani physicist is Dr Abdus Salam who was ostracised for belonging to the Ahmadiyya community, and never got the recognition he deserved in his own country.

The youth missed an opportunity to draw inspiration from such a high achiever, thus causing more setback to the cause of scientific education. This has seen a marked decrease in the Pakistani students pursuing science in the international realm. In other words, Imran Khan the PM, also missed a grand opportunity in stirring his youth to try and come at par with the progressive societies of the world.

In a separate but Islamic related articulation, Talat Masood, another distinguished political commentator and columnist, has very categorically deplored Pakistan's poor state of economy, despite years of being an independent nation. He says that it is sad to see Pakistan still struggling and seeking monetary assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other institutions. Other than taking a swipe at Pakistan for its economic downslide, Masood also tries to nail a deeper problem that is preventing several other Muslim countries to compete in a globalized world.

Significantly, according to Masood, out of nineteen Muslim majority countries in the continent of Africa, which include Tunisia, Egypt, Mali, Somalia, Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, and Libya, all are literally struggling to survive economically.

Referring to the poor state of economy in Pakistan, Talat Masood blames the antiquated education system of the country for its stunted economic growth. Highlighting the importance of science and technological education in Pakistan, he squarely blames Imran Khan for all the ills and for focusing only on Riyasat-e-Madina concept, instead of prioritising quality science-based education. Such assessments by independent commentators really explain what ails the major Muslim societies today, especially in Pakistan.

It would, therefore, appear that instead of concentrating on religious forces driving Pakistan towards an entrenched theocracy, the country could now shift its focus on good education for a future that promises prosperity and political stability as well.

(The writer is a retired IPS officer, a security analyst, and a former National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of Mauritius. Views are personal) (The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative
New Delhi, Jan 10: The political unrest in the natural resource rich Kazakhstan could have a direct bearing on China, though the situation has been somewhat brought under control. China has large investments in Kazakhstan, which also serves as a vital link between Beijing and the rest of Europe. The multi trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) too runs through the country.

"The unrest has stirred concerns about the impact on Chinese companies operating in the country, which has been showered with investment under President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative," South China Morning Post said in a report.

The Chinese embassy in Kazakhstan has already issued an advisory, asking its companies and citizens residing in the Central Asian country to continuously monitor the situation.

Experts told India Narrative that Beijing's concerns would increase further if protests continue as the two countries share a common border. "The Chinese would be worried, not only has Beijing made huge investments in the Central Asian country, the two have a common border. Also protests in Kazakhstan could have a ripple effect across the other Central Asian countries," an analyst said.

In 2019, the Kazakh government was forced to publish details on the Chinese investments. China Dialogue revealed, there were 55 Chinese projects with half of the investment totalling about $27.6 billion in the oil and gas sector and the rest are in mining and ore processing, machine manufacturing, energy and food production.

Trade between the two countries stood at $21.43 billion in 2020, according to Beijing based Global Times.

Despite this, anti-China protests in Kazakhstan are not uncommon.

In September, 2019, anti-China protests broke out across several cities Kazakhstan. Claiming that the Chinese companies were eating into their jobs market, protestors held banners saying "No to China expansion." In 2016 too, anti-China protests erupted "against a planned land reform which its opponents said would have allowed foreigners to scoop up huge swathes of Kazakh farmland," news agency Reuters reported.

Lack of transparency in the style of operation has also resulted in discomfort and anxiety for the local Kazakhs. Many of them are worried about the environmental implications.

The mounting unrest within the country has forced its government to seek help from Russia, something that may not go down well with China.

An India Narrative report earlier said, "Interestingly, the jury is out on whether Russia's audacious move may also have a message for China, which shares a border with Kazakhstan and threatens to intrude into Moscow's backyard, right now with its economic heft, but which could easily mutate into rival political influence. Russia and China are already engaged in a low intensity battle between Moscow's vision of the Eurasian Economic Union and China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) across the Eurasian mainland." Global Times, in an editorial published a day ago, noted that given the importance of Kazakhstan to the BRI and its energy imports, the Central Asian state's stability represents a high stakes issue for China. The news organisation even advocated assistance by Beijing to restore law and order in the country.

"The fact is that as of now China has not been involved and Beijing cannot unilaterally involve itself in restoring peace, we need to watch the developments in the coming days," the analyst added.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative
New Delhi, Jan 10 : With questions being raised on the safety of Molnupiravir - an oral antiviral pill approved for treating Covid-19, Indian health experts have pointed out that the benefits of the drug outweigh the potential risks it may have in the case of high-risk patients.

Developed by US-based drug company Merck, Molnupiravir is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration against Covid-19. It is approved by the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for the treatment of mild-to-moderate Covid-19 in adults with a high risk of progression to severe disease, mainly those with pre-existing (comorbid) conditions.

India has also approved the drug amid rising cases of new Covid variant Omicron in India. An expert panel of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation had recently approved the antiviral Molnupiravir for restricted use in emergency situations. The antiviral drug will be manufactured by 13 companies in India.

However, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Director General, Balram Bhargava, said that the Molnupiravir is not included in the national Covid taskforce treatment as it has major safety concerns like teratogenicity, mutagenicity, muscle and bone damage among others.

"More importantly contraception has to be done for three months if this drug is given for male and female as the child born could be problematic with teratogenic influences," he said at a press briefing.

Medical experts, on the other hand, have pointed out that the benefits of the drug outweigh the potential risks it may have in the case of high-risk patients.

But they say as there are very limited options of medicines to treat Covid patients, hence the new approved medicines should be given a try under strict treatment regime protocols.

"Physicians have to keep in mind their patient profiles while prescribing any drug. If the patient is high-risk that is more than 60 years of age, is obese or having cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and/or has chronic lung or kidney or liver disease, then not treating when the disease is mild or moderate can take extreme turns, putting the patient in risk of hospitalisation and as we have seen at the time of Delta variant, even possible death," said Dr Deepak Talwar, Senior Consultant, Pulmonology and Sleep Medicine, and Chairman, Metro Respiratory Centre.

"We have to use the available therapy rather than counting its side-effects, that too which are potential, but not known," he added.

According to Dr Dhruva Chaudhry, Head - Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at PGIMS, Rohtak, while giving approval, the US FDA as well as the DCGI have gone through the safety data of the drug. "Only once satisfied, this drug has been approved." "Even in the phase 3 clinical trials Molnupiravir demonstrated a significant reduction in the risk of hospitalisation or death with no observed safety concerns when compared to the placebo group," Chaudhry said.

Molnupiravir inhibits the replication of certain RNA viruses. It is basically to be used in treating Covid-19 infected people of more than 50 years of age and in those with multiple comorbidities. The recommended dose of Molnupiravir 800 mg is twice a day for five days. A patient needs to take 40 capsules containing 200 mg of medication.

Over a dozen pharma companies including Torrent, Cipla, Sun Pharma, Dr Reddy's, Natco, Mylan, and Hetero are in the process to manufacture the oral pill. Cipla, Sun Pharma, and Dr Reddy's Laboratories are also expected to release Molnupiravir capsules in the coming weeks.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Chennai, Jan 10 : Expressing his anger at the havoc being wreaked by Covid on the masses, especially the poor, Tamil film actor and music director Vijay Antony on Monday, said it would be better if somebody dropped a bomb on the world and destroyed it once and for all.

The usually soft-spoken actor, who is known for being careful with his choice of words and statements, took to social media to express his anger at repeated waves of the pandemic forcing frequent lockdowns and thereby badly affecting the livelihoods of the poor.

Writing in Tamil, he said,"Corona will make the rich become richer and will change the poor into becoming beggars. Just like how someone dropped a bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it would be great if somebody dropped a bomb on the world and destroyed it once and for all. Long live with prosperity." The actor, who has been delivering hit after hit, is considered to be a producer's delight. In fact, Vijay Antony was the only actor in the Tamil film industry who chose to take a pay cut during the previous lockdown, in a bid to help out his producers, who would have otherwise suffered losses.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : Over 160 persons have reportedly died in several days of unrest in Kazakhstan, Central Asia's largest country, which has been rocked by a week of turmoil.

Internet services were resumed after five days in Kazakhstan on Monday, where 8,000 people have been detained by the security forces led by the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The nation is witnessing a massive upheaval since January 2, when violence erupted in all the major cities against the government's decision to hike fuel prices.

Responding to media queries on the recent developments in Kazakhstan, Arindam Bagchi, official spokesperson in Ministry of External Affairs, said, "India is closely following the recent developments in Kazakhstan. We express our deepest condolences to the families of innocent victims who have lost their lives in the violence. As a close and friendly partner of Kazakhstan, we look forward to an early stabilisation of the situation. Coordination with authorities has helped ensure the safety and security of Indian nationals. They are advised to follow local security instructions and get in touch with the Embassy of India for any assistance." Without naming anyone, Kazakhstan President Kassym Jomart Tokayev has accused some groups of staging unrest to disturb the democratic government, terming it as an attempted coup, after giving 'shoot to kill' order to restore peace in the country.

Tokayev's statement was soon seconded by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said Kazakhstan has been targeted by international terrorism, and assured that Russia will not allow any kind of revolution or uprising in the region.

Putin said the way violence erupted in Kazakhstan clearly shows that it was pre-planned and led by trained militants believed to be trained and equipped by the West.

On the other hand, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken questioned the Kazakhstan government's decision to seek Russia's help in the country's internal matters and allow Russian troops in Kazakhstan, where more than 2,000 Russian military personnel have arrived.

Blinken urged Kazakhstan government to respect the rights of the protesters after Tokayev called the protesters 'terrorists' and passed 'shoot to kill' order, which resulted in over 160 deaths so far.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : The Kalinga Literary Festival (KLF) has decided to launch Bhasha Utsav to strengthen dialogue among languages and literature within India and beyond.

The Utsav will have award-winning laureates and young minds in literary fields to blend rich experience with new energy to take forward the task of dialogue among languages and literary traditions, thereby promoting dialogue among societies, nations and civilisations. All major Indian and global languages including those official languages recognised by the Indian government and the United Nations will have dedicated sessions.

The Bhasa Utsav is a unique initiative, first-ever, conceptualized by any literary festival platform to include all major Indian and global languages to map their existing dialogue and contribute to positively shaping the future of their dialogues.

KLF Founder and Director, Rashmi Ranjan Parida said that many non-Indian and diaspora writers have contributed to Indian languages and literature and deserve their due place in the annals of Indian literature. Similarly, he thinks many Indians have contributed to foreign language and literature and they need their due place as well. He added that a platform like Bhasha Utsav which is an attempt to remedy the above anomalies and create a unique platform for vibrant cross-cultural dialogue.

The Utsav, which will include 30 Indian and global languages will have perspectives from rural life, gender equality, children and the differently challenged. It will partner with societies, foundations, government agencies and academic institutes.
The category is: Diversity and inclusion.

Although Sunday nights Golden Globe awards ceremony was mired in controversy, one glimmer of hope came when Mj Rodriguez made history.

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The Pose star became the first transgender actor to win the award for best actress in a TV drama for her role as housemother and nurse Blanca on the Steve Canals, Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk-produced FX series.

Mj Rodriguez arrives at the 25th annual Critics' Choice Awards on Sunday, Jan. 12, 2020, at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, Calif. (Jordan Strauss/Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

The honor is also the first Golden Globe win for Pose, which premiered in 2018.

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The groundbreaking series, currently streaming on Netflix, also starred Billy Porter, Indya Moore, Dominique Jackson, Ryan Jamaal Swain, Charlayne Woodard, Hailie Sahar, Angelica Ross, Angel Bismark Curiel, Dyllon Burnside, Sandra Bernhard, and Jason A. Rodriguez.

Pose follows a group of queer and transgender friends-turned-family in the ballroom scene of Harlem and the Bronx at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

This image released by FX shows Billy Porter as Pray Tell, right, and Mj Rodriguez as Blanca in a scene from "Pose." (Eric Liebowitz/AP)

On Sunday, Rodriguez  who also made history last summer after becoming the first transgender performer to be nominated for a lead acting Emmy Award  celebrated her win on social media.

Wow! You talking about sickening birthday present! Thank you! This is the door that is going to open the door for many more young talented individuals, she wrote on Instagram.

They will see that it is more than possible. They will see that a young Black Latina girl from Newark, New Jersey who had a dream, to change the minds others would WITH LOVE. LOVE WINS. To my young LGBTQAI babies WE ARE HERE the door is now open now reach the stars!!!!!

The 31-year-old Newark, N.J., native also shouted out to her fellow nominees: Uzo Aduba, Jennifer Aniston, Christine Baranski and Elisabeth Moss.

To the nominees we are Queens, she wrote. Im so happy to share space with you! Each and every last one of you women are phenomenal.

This image released by FX shows Mj Rodriguez as Blanca in a scene from "Pose." (Eric Liebowitz/AP)

The Daily News Flash Weekdays Catch up on the days top five stories every weekday afternoon. >

The scandal-scarred 2022 Golden Globe awards were unveiled Sunday, with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) announcing winners on the official Golden Globes website and on its social media pages.

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The event became a stripped-down affair as a result of backlash from last years Los Angeles Times expose that revealed the HFPA didnt have a single Black member.

The Los Angeles-headquartered organization also drew criticism after the outlet reported that 30 members of the organization were wined and dined during a set visit for the HBO series Emily in Paris, which later received two surprise nominations at the 2021 ceremony.

NBC, which typically broadcasts the Dick Clark Productions-helmed ceremony, pulled out of airing the awards show this year due to the controversy, while celebrities from more than 100 public relations companies boycotted the event.

Adding to the drama, Philip Berk  who lorded over the nonprofit organization that governs and votes for years  was put out to pasture after sending an email that called Black Lives Matter a hate movement.

In response to the blowback, the HFPA said it is committed to transformational change and delivered an action plan that it had promised in late February.

In October, the group announced that its 105-member panel now included six people who identify as Black, 18 who identify as Asian, 12 as Latino and nine as Middle Eastern.
Hyderabad, Jan 10 : In a suspected case of human sacrifice, decapitated head of an unidentified man was found at a temple in Telangana's Nalgonda district on Monday.

The severed head was found at the feet of the deity at the Mettu Mahankali temple on the outskirts of Kurmedu village in Gollapalli mandal of Nalgonda.

The temple priest was shocked to see the head at the feet of the deity when he reached there early Monday and informed the police.

The police officers, who rushed to the spot, cordoned off the area and began an investigation. Police did not find any signs of the murder in the temple premises or the surrounding areas.

A police officer said they suspect that the man, believed to be in his 30s, was murdered at some other place and his head was dumped at the temple.

Police formed five special teams to trace the victim's identity and recover the torso. Dog squads were also pressed into service.

As the spot is close to Hyderabad-Nagarjuna Sagar Highway, police suspect that the killers carried the head of the victim in a vehicle and dumped it there.

The police teams were scanning CCTV footage in the area and working on some other clues.

A case of murder has been registered at Chintapalli police station. A police officer said they have alerted surrounding police stations to identify the victim.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : Among the several challenges that Covid-19 has posed to businesses, there is little question that the pandemic will continue to wreak havoc on the world of events. The previous two years have put the flexibility and agility of planners all over the world to the test, as numerous major festivals, international shows, sporting events, exhibitions, and concerts have been cancelled in order to prevent the virus from spreading.

As the new year begins, event professionals believe there are many reasons to be cautiously hopeful about the future. Despite these issues, the sector will recover in the near future and gain traction in both the ongoing pandemic and the post-covid period.

The event sector is accustomed to adapting to new situations. It's possible that it's one of the industries that has undergone the most significant transformations. With the rise of hybrid models and technology, virtual events and the era of digitalisation have changed the industry, but they haven't eliminated people's need to interact face to face. People want to experience the thrill of a live networking event and believe in the power of the human spirit. The fundamental values of events and functions have not changed, and there is no reason to believe that they will change in the future.

We've all been busy adapting to our 'new normal' and crafting a new future for ourselves across all facets of our lives and enterprises while the world has been in and out of lockdowns and limitations. This is also true in the events industry. Despite concerns about Omicron, we believe the events sector is ready to rebound, stronger and better than ever, and this has resulted in new trends predicting to drive the market well into 2022.

Most importantly, it has been an era of learning lessons and starting the new year with high hopes of taking a bigger leap and returning wiser, with the aim of not forgetting those teachings. People became creative, shifted gears, and showed a lot of love and support for one another.

The road ahead for the event industry When the virus fades, events will witness a resurgence, as contactless virtual events and meetings will decline, people's interest in concerts and live shows will pique, as long as they were as free as they were before. Once covid-19 is under control, the significance of safety, security, and flexibility will clearly be top objectives for event organisers for the foreseeable future, and the desire for businesses to foster human relationships through meetings and events will return. Event planners and attendees are eagerly anticipating the return of in-person gatherings to pre-pandemic levels, as face-to-face interactions foster stronger collaboration and a feeling of community.

If there's one thing the pandemic has taught us, it's that we need to find ways to limit touch points. Having a well-thought-out health and safety plan in place for every event is not only a requirement now, but a moral necessity in the future. It can no longer be an afterthought; instead, the event planner must examine the risks in all aspects of the planning process and take all necessary efforts to mitigate them as much as possible. We predict that devotion to advancement and innovation will continue into the new year, and that activities in 2022 will thrive as a result. It doesn't necessarily imply a return to 'normal,' but we may use the lessons learnt to create something even better.

One thing is certain: events will never be the same again. However, with the announcement of a new Covid variation, we are reminded that we are still living in unpredictable times, and planners must continue to consider all eventualities. Our greatest goal is that we can all take what we've learned over the last two years and be ready to get back to work. Our predicament is no longer novel, and it is no longer a 'pivot.' There is no such thing as a free lunch. It is incumbent upon everyone of us to be prepared to generate and execute in light of the current environment.

Change is becoming the only constant. It's all around us, everywhere, and it's continuously chipping away at our sense of normalcy. We're all adjusting to this new normal, and 2022 will be another year of trial and error, exploration, and growth. While 2021 was a difficult year for all of us in the events sector, we expect to see the same level of innovation and originality in 2022, as each new year brings fresh chances to push the boundaries of imaginative tenting and layouts.

(Sharad Chaudhary, Founder, Dreamz Production House)

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Koppal, : Jan 10 (IANS) Head priest of the temple at Anjanadri hills, believed to be the birth place of Lord Hanuman near Gangavathi town in Koppa district of Karnataka, on Monday alleged illegal and immoral activities in the pilgrimage centre.

Stating that there was no check on the elements indulging in such activities, Vidyadasa Baba said he would soon approach the court seeking solution to the problems.

"Tehsildar and Revenue Inspector have joined hands to carry out many illegal activities at the pilgrimage centre. Parking fee has been charged illegally at the foot of the hill. The Revenue Inspector has given the contract to one of his relatives," Vidyadas Baba alleged.

"I am rendering services at the temple as per the court orders. The Revenue department had appointed another priest earlier. Now, they are appointing a few more priests unlawfully and trying to take off huge money that is contributed to the temple by devotees," he explained.

There is corruption in the purchase of materials for providing food for pilgrims at the temple. Almost the raw material rates are quoted double. A complaint had already been filed with the Religious and Endowment department.

However, the District Commissioner of Koppal, Assistant Commissioner has not initiated action in this regard. Hence, he is preparing to wage a legal battle, he explained.

Anjanadri Hills or Parvatha is believed to be the birthplace of Lord Hanuman according to myths. The pilgrimage centre is located close to the world heritage site Hampi. Lakhs of devotees from across the country visit the place including Bollywood bigwigs. It is 350 kilometers away from Bengaluru and 21 kilometers away from Hampi.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : The Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association (SCAORA) has written to the Secretary General of the Supreme Court seeking action against anonymous caller, who took responsibility for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's security breach in Punjab last week.

In a communication, SCAORA Secretary Joseph Aristotle S. said several advocates-on-record of the top court received an anonymous automated pre-recorded call from +447418365564, one at 10.40 a.m. and another call at about 12.36 p.m. on Monday. "Fastening responsibility for Prime Minister Modi's security breach during his visit to Punjab on January 5, on Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) from USA, wherein it was stated that SFJ is responsible for blocking PM Modi's cavalcade at Hussaininwala flyover in Punjab," added the communication.

The caller warned the top court judges to refrain from hearing the PIL by NGO Lawyer's Voice seeking probe into the security breach on the ground that the Supreme Court has not been able to punish the culprits of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. "In view thereof, it is requested that immediate action be initiated as this is a violation of privacy of the advocates on record as their mobile numbers are out in public domain and have been compromised as all confidential data and sensitive information pertaining to cases before the Supreme Court and banking details are stored on their respective mobile phones and the miscreants may misuse the sensitive data, if the mobile phones are hacked," added the communication.

Senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, in a tweet, said: "The audio sent by the "Sikhs for Justice USA" to AORs in the SC must be treated with circumspection. The audio could be a hoax motivated by publicity or to blur the trail to the guilty. But since it contains a veiled threat to SC judges/AORs the NIA must investigate it forthwith." The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to set up a committee headed by a former top judge to probe the PM's security breach in Punjab.

Senior advocate Maninder Singh, representing the Delhi-based petitioner Lawyer's Voice, had mentioned the plea before the Supreme Court. He emphasised on the importance of protection to the PM of the country and cited previous top court ruling that looked at the SPG Act.

The plea sought an independent probe into the PM's security breach in Punjab. It sought a direction to the District Judge Bathinda to collect, preserve and present all material pertaining to the movement and deployment of Punjab Police in connection with the visit of the Prime Minister, and fix responsibility of the DGP and the Chief Secretary, Punjab.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : While back pain has been a common symptom of viral diseases, doctors are witnessing an increase in the case of severe back pain among Omicron patients, even after recovery.

The four most common symptoms of the Omicron variant are cough, fatigue, congestion and runny nose, according to US CDC analysis. Recently, the UK-based Zoe Covid app study added new symptoms such as nausea and loss of appetite.

"Back pain, though common in most viral fevers, but compared to Delta, Omicron patients tend to have more back pain and less loss of smell and taste," Dr Ann Mary, Consultant, General Medicine, Amrita Hospital, Kochi, told IANS.

"A significant number of these patients are having back breaking pain in the lower back and severe myalgia which is adding to the patient's woes," Mary added.

Omicron is a variant of global concern due to its high transmissibility. Emerging research has revealed that the Omicron variant causes less damage to the lungs and less severe disease when compared to other variants.

"It's a well known fact that myalgias are commonly seen in viral infections. Covid is not an exception but we are seeing more cases of back pain with Omicron even after recovery which patients label as weakness," Dr. Arun Chowdary Kotaru, Consultant, Respiratory/ Pulmonology and Sleep Medicine, Artemis Hospital, told IANS.

However, since data on Omicron is limited and gene sequencing is costly, the reason is "difficult to explain", Kotaru said.

First detected in South Africa and Botswana in late November, Omicron has been discovered in more than 100 countries and across all seven continents, as per the open access data sharing platform GISAID.

India on Wednesday registered 4,033 Omicron cases from 27 states. Of these, 1,552 have been discharged from hospitals.

Meanwhile, scientists at Department of Biotechnology's Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) in India said that the highly transmissible Omicron with three sub-variants - BA.1, BA.2 and BA.3 - is likely replacing the previously dominant Delta strain in India, pushing the daily tally of Covid cases in the country.

Among the three sub-lineages, the scientists have noted the significant presence of both BA.1 and BA.2 in genone tests conducted in the country. BA.1, in particular, has been co-circulating with Delta and also replacing it in Maharashtra and several other states. BA.3 has not been detected so far in the country, media reports said.

"The rapidity with which the infection is spreading, it looks like the Omicron is replacing the other variants in India, like the Delta variant. So we can say that it will be the predominant variant," Dr Rahul Pandit Director-Critical Care, Fortis Hospitals Mumbai, told IANS.

"However, the Delta variant is still there and contributes to some amount of infection," added Pandit, who is also Member of National and Maharashtra's Covid-19 Taskforce. He said that Omicron is also causing the reinfection because we can see that most of the patients still remain asymptomatic.

"With the sudden surge, and if the South African trend is to be looked at, we can expect that cases will go up rapidly in the next 4 to 6 weeks, and come down rapidly as well," Pandit said.

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New Delhi, Jan 10 : The BJP-led alliance in Uttar Pradesh is projected to win 229 seats in the Assembly elections scheduled to be held in seven phases from February 10 to March 7, as per the ABP-CVOTER Battle for the States survey. The counting of votes will take place on March 10.

The numbers are as many as 96 less than the 2017 figures, but will still give the BJP a comfortable simple majority in the 403-seat Uttar Pradesh Assembly, as per the survey.

The Samajwadi Party-led alliance is projected to win 151 seats, a big jump of 103 seats compared to the 2017 results. But it is still far away from the majority.

The sample size for the survey was 61,802 across 403 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh.

The Samajwadi Party alliance led by Akhilesh Yadav has made a remarkable recovery, from an actual of 23.6 per cent vote share in the 2017 elections to a projected 33.5 per cent vote share, as per the latest opinion poll numbers made available on January 6.

The tracker also exposes the upper circuit that the SP alliance has been unable to breach. In their best possible upswing, they could not breach the 35 per cent mark, which is critical to bring the BJP down.

It seems the swing from BSP to SP+ has saturated and now Akhilesh Yadav will have to work on the 7 per cent odd votes that are parked with Congress to swing towards SP+ if he wishes to breach the 35 per cent-mark.

The BJP, at projected vote share of 41.5 per cent, seems to have maintained its vote share of 41 per cent secured in the 2017 Assembly elections even in the latest projections.

The worst seems to be over for the BJP as it trimmed and capped its decline at 40 per cent vote share.

It is to be seen how many non-performing MLAs are denied tickets because maximum anti-incumbency is working against the sitting MLAs in Uttar Pradesh. Add to this the campaign of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the BJP seems to be on the path of recovery at the moment.

Incumbent Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath leads the pack with 43 per cent of voters preferring him as the CM, while Akhilesh Yadav gets the support of 34 per cent of the voters. Former Chief Minister Mayawati trails way behind with 14 per cent, while Priyanka Gandhi manages a little more than 3 per cent.

The virtual absence of Mayawati and the BSP from being a serious contender in the race is startling for her supporters. The BSP vote share is projected to fall from 22.2 per cent in 2017 to a projected 12.9 per cent in the 2022 elections. If these projections hold, the BSP seems headed for a terminal decline in Uttar Pradesh.

This has made the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections a two-horse race between Yogi Adityanath and Akhilesh Yadav. When the latter started gathering momentum in late 2021 and went on to stitch alliances with smaller parties, it looked like Uttar Pradesh could be headed for a close contest. There was a time when the vote share difference between the two fell to just about 6 per cent, but the Akhilesh juggernaut seems to have failed to gain more pace.

One reason for this could be what analysts and pundits were saying about the impact of the farmers' agitation on BJP's fortunes, particularly in western UP. There were reports from the ground that the Jats and the Muslims could bury the memories of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots and vote for the SP-RLD combine. The poll tracker shows that the projected vote share of BJP in the region is 41.2 per cent, far ahead of the projected 33 per cent for the SP-RLD combine.

Even in Purvanchal, considered to be a region where the BJP seemed vulnerable, the SP alliance has made considerable inroads; but not enough perhaps to dislodge the BJP.

As per the latest projections, the BJP gets a vote share of 40 per cent while the SP alliance gets a little more than 35 per cent. In the Awadh region of course, the BJP is more than 10 per cent ahead of the SP alliance.

Despite her brave efforts and imaginative slogans like 'Ladki Hoon, Lad Sakti Hoon', along with myriad promises of welfare schemes, Priyanka Gandhi doesn't seem to be able to stop the terminal decline of the Congress in the state. The Congress vote share is projected to increase marginally, while the number of seats could decline from 7 in 2017 to 5 this time.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : A plea was listed on Monday before the Delhi High Court which sought framing of guidelines to regulate the activities of private detectives as they remain outside the existing statutory framework.

A division bench presided over by Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh adjourned the petition for further hearing on February 21 as the petitioner's counsel was unwell.

Petitioner Radha Bisht through Adv Preeti Singh stated that although the Private Detective Agencies (Regulation) Bill was introduced before Rajya Sabha in 2007, no progress was made in this regard after that.

The plea also contended that a victim of domestic violence, having a strained relationship with her husband, who allegedly appointed a private detective for following the petitioner and sending goons to follow her.

It was also highlighted that people being cheated or offended by the activities of private detectives, saying such inability to make them liable before any court of law or authority enables them to operate in any manner which they feel to be suitable for them.

A work of a private detective lacking accountability with respect to its modus operandi enables violation of fundamental rights of the citizens of enriched under Article 21 of the Constitution. The petitioner like many others is a victim of the unregularised activities of a private detective.

It further said that due to no law governing the activities of private detectives, the petitioner is unable to resort to any authority with her grievance.

It also pointed out through the internet, one can observe that there are innumerable freelancers and private detective agencies which take pride in the crafty ways in which they bend and break the law to track others.

The work of a private detective, when done without accountability, poses a threat to the citizen's fundamental rights, the plea said.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : The elections in Uttarakhand will be a close contest with both BJP and Congress literally running neck and neck, as per the ABP-CVOTER Battle for the States survey.

The 70-member Uttarakhand Assembly will go to the polls on February 14, while the votes will be counted on March 10.

As per the survey, the BJP is projected to win 34 seats, one more than Congress' 33.

The sample size for the survey was 7,304 across 70 Assembly seats in Uttarakhand.

The most interesting aspect of the elections is who is the preferred chief ministerial candidate. Veteran leader and former CM Harish Rawat of the Congress with 37 per cent backing is miles ahead of incumbent Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, who gets the support of approximately 29 per cent of the voters.

The numbers for Rawat have grown continuously since late 2021 from 30 per cent as his starting point. It is rare for an incumbent Chief Minister to trail so far behind an opposition leader, but given the rapid change of three CMs within a year by the BJP in the state, this is hardly surprising.

In normal circumstances, this should have led to a comfortable victory projection for the Congress in Uttarakhand. But the poll tracker has consistently shown the fight to be an extremely close one with both parties literally running neck and neck.

There can be no doubt that the BJP has gone through a big-time erosion in voter support in the state. In the 2017 elections, the party had secured 46.5 per cent vote share, which is projected to fall by 8 per cent this time around. It had won 57 seats in the 2017 elections. It is projected to go down by 23 seats this time.

The erosion is acute in the Kumaon and Terai or the plains in the state. While they run neck and neck in Kumaon, Congress with 40.1 per cent vote share is far ahead of the BJP, which is projected to get 35.6 per cent. It is the Garhwal region that seems to be saving the BJP with 41.1 per cent vote share compared to 36.1 per cent for the Congress.

There seem to be many contenders for the top post in the BJP with Anil Baluni, Bhagat Singh Koshyari, Major General B.C. Khanduri and Satpal Maharaj getting meddling to decent support from the voters. The frequent changes in chief ministership seem to have confused the voters. But if you add up their numbers, the grand total of BJP candidates as the CM choice is ahead of Harish Rawat.

A few recent decisions by the BJP seem to have helped the saffron party. The first was picking up a grassroots worker like Dhami as the Chief Minister. The second was the revocation of the order and a Bill passed in the Assembly to take over control of 52 temples, including the important ones like Kedarnath and Badrinath. The last is the appeal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi whose campaign there is picking up momentum.

Just some time back, Harish Rawat had created a storm by sending out cryptic social media messages on the eve of the New Year, hinting at intense in fighting within the Congress. Subsequently, he came to Delhi and met the party high command and went back pacified. But if infighting persists, the Congress might lose a state it has a decent chance of winning.

Without the Aam Aadmi Party factor, it is possible that the Congress could have comfortably won Uttarakhand. The poll tracker clearly shows that the AAP is getting a large chunk of anti-BJP votes, apart from creating its own new base of voters like it seems to be doing in Goa.

The AAP had zero vote share in 2017 since it did not formally contest the elections. But for the 2022 Assembly elections, it is projected to garner a vote share of 12.9 per cent. As is known, a vote share below the threshold of 15 per cent doesn't translate into many seats. So, the AAP is projected to win just 3 seats. The more important point is, in how many seats will it ensure a Congress loss.

In the plains the Congress appears comfortably ahead, but could have been sweeping the elections if new entrant AAP was not eating up the anti-incumbent votes there. In many ways, the numbers suggest that if the Congress house was in order and Harish Rawat would have been given enough time to focus on Uttarakhand rather than pathing up things in Punjab, this could have been a different story now.

While everyone has to wait for the 2021 Census results, there are indications that there has been a change in the demography of the plains since 2011. If true, this could play a big role.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is projected to get a simple majority in Goa in the upcoming Assembly elections with 32 per cent vote share, while the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is projected to emerge as the main opposition with 23 per cent vote, as per the ABP-CVOTER Battle for the States survey.

The 40-member Goa Assembly will go to the polls on February 14, while the counting of votes will be taken up on March 10.

The sample size for the survey was 3,970 across all the 40 Assembly seats in the coastal state.

The erstwhile prime contender Congress is projected to poll just a little more than 19 per cent vote share. It is clear from the vote share that Goa is heading for a split verdict that could eventually lead to the advantage of the BJP.

Stemming the vote and seat erosion faced in the last few rounds of the tracker, the BJP has started to consolidate again in Goa. Currently, it is projected to win 21 seats, just ahead of the halfway mark of 20 seats. AAP is the surprise of the pack and is expected to win 7 seats, higher than the 6 seats projected for the Congress.

In normal times, the anti-incumbency in the state would have been sufficient to sink the fortunes of the BJP. However, the incompetence of state Congress and better groundwork of AAP has split the anti-incumbency votes, pushing the BJP into an advantageous position.

The stabilisers in this scenario will be the other smaller parties that are currently projected to poll 26 per cent vote share and win 6 seats. In the less likely case of a hung Assembly just like the previous Vidhan Sabha, the government formation will be a messy process with some twists and turns.

BJP's incumbent Chief Minister Pramod Sawant is the most popular leader for the CM's post among Goans with 34 per cent approval. The second spot is held by AAP's unnamed leader with 19 per cent approval. Digambar Kamat of the Congress is their most popular leader with 9 per cent approval.

If AAP is currently doing well without a face, will it stand to gain from projecting a strong leader? The question is better answered by the static trend of seats and votes in Goa for AAP. An absence of strong leadership is perhaps impeding galvanisation of more voters in their favour.

The much-talked about entry of Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress is likely to be a non-starter. Its alliance with the MGP is still struck with approximately 8 per cent vote share, with almost 5.5 per cent showing their support for MGP and hardly 2.5 per cent expressing their support for the Trinamool.

The fact is that popularity of MGP head Sudin Dhavalikar has come down from 8 per cent to 5 per cent in recent months after declaring his alliance with the Trinamool.

The fact that the "unnamed face" of AAP is getting 19 per cent traction in the polls suggests that AAP has consolidated in Goa as the local party now. Ironically, it's the entry of Trinamool that has helped APP in scrubbing away the "outsider" tag.

The Congress meltdown is weird in the state. Majority of the leaders have already left the party, yet the symbol still commands approximately 20 per cent votes, primarily consisting of minorities. It will depend on candidate selection if they can really take their vote share up by couple of notches.

Whatever is the loss for in terms of votes, is a direct gain for AAP. It is no more the 'new kid on the block'. Its vote share has stabilised at around 23 per cent and it all depends on the local candidates if AAP can convert this base into a winnable vote share. Ironically, it's the fragmentation of opposition which is helping the BJP. Had the main opposition parties in Goa joined forces, it could have been game over for the BJP.
Patna, Jan : Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar tested positive for coronavirus on Monday.

The Chief Minister's Office, announcing the development, has uploaded his health status on different social media platforms and asked people to stay safe.

Nitish Kumar has isolated himself in his residence.

Sources have said that he will soon shift to a 7 Circular Road bungalow on a temporary basis so that sanitation of his present residence at 1 Anne Marg can take place.

The CMO has appealed to people of Bihar to stay indoors as much as possible and go to the market only for necessary work.

At present, many ministers in the Nitish Kumar government have already tested Corona positive and are staying in home isolation. Deputy CMs Tar Kishore Prasad, and Renu Devi, as well as ministers Ashok Chaudhary, Santosh Kumar Suman and others tested corona positive and are in home isolation.

Meanwhile, the cases in the state are rising every day. On Monday, the Health Department had registered 4,737 cases in Bihar including 2,566 from Patna. With this, total active cases reached to 20,938 in Bihar. On Sunday, 5,022 cases appeared across the state.

According to a Health Department official, five deaths were reported from Patna including three from Patna AIIMS, and one each from the PMCH and the IGIMS.
Robert Durst married Kathie McCormack (later Durst) in 1973 and she was last seen alive on January 31, 1982. According to Durst, his wife got on a Metro-North train near their home in South Salem, New York and headed to their Upper West Side apartment, but she never arrived. Durst did not report his wife missing until Feb. 5, 1982. (Courtesy of HBO)

Robert Durst, the eccentric New York City real estate scion who left behind a trail of corpses and the mystery of a body never found, died Monday at age 78.

Mr. Durst passed away early this morning while in the custody of the California Department of Corrections, said Dursts lawyer, Chip Lewis, in a statement to the Daily News. We understand that his death was due to natural causes associated with the litany of medical issues we had repeatedly reported to the court over the last couple of years.

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In March 17, 2015, file photo, New York real estate heir Robert Durst smiles as he is transported from Orleans Parish Criminal District Court to the Orleans Parish Prison after his arraignment on murder charges in New Orleans. (Gerald Herbert/AP)

Durst was convicted of the murder of a friend in 2000, who prosecutors said he killed to cover up the slaying of his wife nearly two decades earlier. Durst, prosecutors argued  and jurors believed  shot pal Susan Berman to keep her from singing to the cops.

The wheels of justice finally caught up to Durst in 2021, when he was convicted on Sept. 17 in the Dec. 23, 2000 killing of Berman after a trial in Los Angeles. Authorities contended Durst killed his wife Kathie in 1982. Her body was never found, and Durst took whatever knowledge he had of the crime to his grave.

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Susan Berman and Robert Durst were friends - until Durst killed her. (HANDOUT)

Susan Berman was a witness to a crime and was intentionally killed, the jury forewoman said when announcing the guilty verdict against Durst.

The Westchester County district attorney announced on Oct. 2 it had charged Durst in Kathie McCormack Dursts killing and had been working to transfer Durst to New York.

After 40 years spent seeking justice for her death, I know how upsetting this news must be for Kathleen Dursts family, Westchester County DA Miriam Rocah said in the statement.

On Oct. 14, Durst was sentenced to life in prison for the Berman slaying, with Deputy District Attorney John Lewin calling Durst a narcissistic psychopath.

Robert Durst is seen in a Galveston, Texas, mug shot. (Handout/Obtained by Daily News)

Hes 78 years old, Lewin said. Hes been walking around for a long time. He had a lot more of a life ... Kathie didnt make 30. On balance, considering what hes done, he got a lot more of a life than he was entitled to.

An appeal had been filed for Durst, but his death now vacates his conviction, Neama Rahmani, former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told The News. If a criminal defendant dies before he can exhaust all appeals, the conviction is negated ... The doctrine comes from common law and has been criticized by victims of crime, so some states have abandoned it. It remains the rule in California, though.

Durst became notorious nationally in 2015 when HBO aired The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, a six-part documentary that detailed his wifes disappearance, Bermans execution-style shooting and Dursts killing and dismembering of a Texas man in 2001.

Durst was born in Manhattan, the eldest of four children of real estate magnate Seymour Durst and his socialite wife Bernice Herstein, who died in a fall when Robert was 7. He grew up in swanky Scarsdale in Westchester County.

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Robert Durst leans forward in order to hear a question from a prosecutor during cross examination in 2003, in Galveston, Texas. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan) (PAT SULLIVAN/AP Photo)

He originally passed on going into the family business, opening a health food store in Vermont in the early 1970s. He closed it in 1973, when his father convinced him to come back to the city and work for the Durst Organization. But he was stepped over when Seymour selected Roberts brother Douglas to run the company.

Robert Durst walks through the hallway of Northhampton County Court for a hearing. (Ron Antonelli/for New York Daily News)

Robert met Kathleen McCormack in Vermont, and they married in New York on April 12, 1973, Roberts 30th birthday. Durst and his wife lived in South Salem, Westchester County, when she was last seen alive in 1982. Three weeks before she vanished, Kathie was treated at a Bronx hospital for facial bruises. She told a friend Robert had hit her but declined to press charges.

Eight years after Kathie vanished, he divorced her, citing abandonment. At her familys request, Kathie was declared legally dead in 2017.

Her fate remained a mystery, with the theory being that Durst killed her and disposed of her body in New Jerseys Pine Barrens.

Millionaire Robert Durst (center in green plaid shirt) leaves Manhattan Criminal Court with his lawyers on Friday, Aug. 16, 2013. Durst had been arrested for trespassing after approaching his brother's house in Hell's Kitchen. At left is his lawyer, Steven Rabinowitz. (Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News) (Jefferson Siegel)

One person who might have known what happened was Berman. She was a longtime friend of Durst who helped provide him for an alibi for the time Kathie vanished. When cops began probing the case in 2000, she was a loose end too dangerous for Durst to dismiss.

On Dec. 23, 2000, he went to the L.A.-area home of his longtime ally  the daughter of mobster David Berman, a partner-in-crime of Bugsy Siegel  and pumped a slug in the back of her head.

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It would take two decades for Durst to pay for that crime, which gave him time to kill Morris Black in Texas in 2001. Black was a neighbor of Dursts, until his body parts were discovered in Galveston Bay.

Multimillionaire murder defendant Robert Durst is escorted from the courtroom after being found not guilty Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2003, in Galveston, Texas. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan) (PAT SULLIVAN/AP Photo)

Durst claimed the shooting was self-defense and was acquitted of homicide. He was convicted of dismembering the corpse  doing such a good job with a knife, two saws and an ax that Blacks head was never found.

As a criminal, he seemed to be leading a charmed life, until The Jinx changed his luck. Durst seemed eager to tell his version of the truth, speaking with director Andrew Jarecki. But the story didnt portray Durst in the light hed hoped.

In this Dec. 21, 2016 file photo, Robert Durst sits in a courtroom in Los Angeles. (Jae C. Hong/Associated Press)

On March 14, 2015, the day before the last episode aired, Durst was arrested and charged with Bermans murder.

In the series, Bermans stepson gives the documentarians an envelope Durst sent to his mother, with the handwriting matching that of an anonymous letter sent to cops to alert them to Bermans murder. Both letters also misspelled Beverly Hills as Beverley Hills.

FILE - New York real estate scion Robert Durst, 78, sits in the courtroom as he is sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole, Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021 at the Airport Courthouse in Los Angeles. (Myung J. Chun /AP)

Confronted with the letters, Durst asked the movie makers for another interview. After the interview ended, Durst went to the bathroom unaware that his microphone was still recording. In a rambling, off-camera diatribe to himself, he closed with, What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.

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Little did he know he was writing his own epitaph.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : The BJP and the Congress are locked in a close battle in Manipur, as they are projected to poll 36 per cent and 33 per cent votes in the upcoming Assembly elections, respectively, as per the ABP-CVOTER Battle for the States survey The 60-member Manipur Assembly will go to the polls in two phases on February 27 and March 3, while the counting of votes will be taken up on March 10.

The sample size for the survey was 2,100 across 60 Assembly seats in the state.

The BJP has led over the Congress consistently, albeit with a wafer-thin margin. The trend observed so far seems to be crystallising and the BJP's edge has withered over the Congress from the previous round of tracker.

It is currently expected to win 25 seats while the Congress is close on the heels with 24 seats. The Naga ethnic party NPF is expected to mop up 4 seats and "others" could tag around the 7 remaining seats.

The crystallisation of electoral trends has a lot to do with polarisation along ethnic lines witnessed in the state. The renewed Naga assertion and reaction to it from Manipuri tribes is the defining feature of the coming elections.

In case the BJP loses its slender edge or if there is a sudden surge from Congress, we may observe yet another hung Assembly with the role of kingmaker resting with NPF and others. The probability of that happening is more than what it was a month ago.

Manipur polls are important for the BJP to show its continued dominance in Northeast India, especially with the worsening internal security situation casting a shadow over its track record. A pacified and progressive Northeast has been an important pillar of BJP's national messaging, predicated on security and national assertions.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : Restaurants in Delhi have been closed for dine-in options amid surge in the Covid-19 cases and only takeaways are allowed, Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal said here on Monday.

Baijal, after chairing the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) meet this afternoon, tweeted: "In view of the increase in positive cases, it has been decided to close the restaurants and bars and to allow 'take away' facility only." Only one weekly market per day per zone will be allowed to operate, he added.

Besides, the health department has been advised to make adequate arrangements for the additional manpower in hospitals and to scale up the vaccination efforts, including those in the population between 15 and 18 years.

"After detailed discussion with experts it was advised to adhere to the strategy of Test, Track & Treat with emphasis on enforcement of Covid Appropriate Behaviour to contain the spread of infection," Baijal further tweeted. The LG also emphasised the extra vigilance and importance of strict adherence to the Covid-19 guidelines.

The DDMA meeting decided that the restrictions will be tightened further in the national capital amidst the spike in Covid-19 cases, but there will be no lockdown for now.

According to the Delhi Health Department, the city's positivity rate has climbed to 23.53 per cent. On Sunday, the national capital reported 22,751 fresh Covid-19 cases, highest in the last eight months, after recording 25,219 cases on May 1. With this, the infection tally has now reached 15,49,730, and active Covid cases stand at 60,733, highest since May 16.

Meanwhile, a weekend curfew along with a few restrictions under the yellow alert during the weekdays are already in place. The pandemic-related restrictions depend on the severity of the infection rate and is decided under the Graded Action Response Plan (GRAP) - approved by the DDMA.

There are four levels of colour-coded alerts namely, yellow, amber, orange and red.

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New Delhi, Jan 10 : The Tea Board of India has proposed to bring in a new Act by replacing the current Tea Act, 1953 for the betterment of the tea industry.

"After more than 68 years, some of the existing provisions of the Tea Act, 1953 have become redundant by efflux of time, for which it has been proposed to bring in a new Act in place of the present Act under which the Tea Board will act as a facilitator for the benefit of the tea industry," the proposed draft bill read, as reviewed by IANS.

The Board, through the bill, intends to remove the "archaic" provisions which have become irrelevant in today's context.

Besides, it proposes to introduce new objectives, functions, and powers for the Board so that it can act as a facilitator for optimising the development, promotion and research in tea industry and help improve production, export and quality of Indian tea.

The proposed draft bill is named Tea (Promotion and Development) Bill, 2022.

The Board invited people to submit their views and suggestions on the draft Bill. However, the Parliament's approval would be needed thereafter for it to become an Act.

The Board aims to optimise the production, sale (including through e-commerce platforms) and consumption of tea.

Besides, it will focus on promoting the quality of tea cultivation and tea which is consumed in India and exported from the country, promoting branding, product diversification, value addition, packaging etc.

It also intends to encourage fair and remunerative prices for tea growers while safeguarding the interests of tea plantation workers; and increasing awareness among the general public about the tea industry in India.

Scientific and technical research in the tea industry will be introduced for the greater interest of the industry.

The Indian tea industry has been stuck in a perfect storm for the past several years on concerns such as uncompetitive prices, lack of quality crops, rising labour costs as well as subdued export demand.

Tea production is a high-cost business, with 60-65 per cent of the input costs going into labour wages. The rest goes into coal, gas, fertiliser and other machinery.

The Covid pandemic further exacerbated the industry's prospects. Also, some other major tea producing countries are giving Indian tea producers a tough competition, especially on the price front.

India produces on an average 1,380 million kg of tea annually, and is one of the top growers of the commodity in the world.

The country's tea sector employs around 1.2 million workers and contributes 23 per cent to the global output.

(Animesh Deb can be contacted at animesh.d@ians.in)
New Delhi, Jan 10 : The Supreme Court on Monday slammed the Gujarat government for failing to file an appeal against the high court order, granting bail to two persons, accused of flogging a Dalit man to death, on the outskirts of Rajkot, in 2018.

According to the police, Mukeshbhai, was tied to the gate of a factory owned by Jayshukh Radadiya and allegedly beaten to death by Radadiya, Chirag Vora, Divyesh Vora, Tejas Zala and a minor. The entire incident was recorded on the CCTV footage and the mobile phone.

A bench comprising Justices M.R. Shah and B.V. Nagarathna set aside the high court order granting bail to Zala and Radadiya, and criticised the state government for failing to file an appeal against the order in such a serious matter.

"We may observe that by not filing the appeals by the state against the impugned judgments and orders releasing the accused on bail in such a serious matter, the state has failed to protect the rights of the victim. We are of the opinion that this was the fit case where the state ought to have preferred the appeals challenging the orders passed by the High Court releasing the accused on bail," it said.

The bench observed that in criminal matters, the party who is treated as the aggrieved party is the state which is the custodian of the social interest of the community at large and so it is for the state to take all the steps necessary for bringing the person who has acted against the social interest of the community to book.

"The state ought to have been very serious even to maintain the rule of law in a serious matter like this where a person was brutally murdered/killed while he was just collecting scrap outside the factory with his wife and aunt. It is the duty of the Director of Prosecution and the state to ensure that the guilty are booked and punished," it said.

The bench said: "We hope and trust that in future, the state government or Legal Department of state government and the Director of Prosecution shall take prompt decision in matters such as this and challenge the order passed by the trial court and/or the High Court as the case may be where it is found that the accused are released on bail in serious offences like the present." The top court judgment came on an appeal by the widow of the deceased against the judgments of the Gujarat High Court. The accused were murder facing charges and also charges under SC/ST Act, for allegedly killed the deceased who was collecting scrap from an open space behind a factory. The accused were denied bail by sessions court. Zala moved the High Court which allowed the plea and granted him bail and Radadiya was also granted bail mainly on the ground that Zala was on bail.

The top court said the high court order was unsustainable in law since it was "most perfunctory and casual" as it ignored the gravity of the offence. It also did not accept submissions of the accused who claimed more than two and a half years have passed, since they were granted bail, and there are no allegations of misuse of liberty and therefore, the bail may not be cancelled.
Bengaluru, Jan 10 : Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday after attending the funeral of Kannada litterateur Chandrashekar Patil in Bengaluru.

Meanwhile, with 146 new cases, the Omicron tally swelled to 479 in the state. Karnataka reported 11,698 new Covid cases on Monday and Bengaluru Urban district reported 9,221 cases.

"I have tested positive for Covid-19 with mild symptoms. My health is fine, I am under home quarantine. I request everyone who has recently come in contact with me to isolate themselves and get tested," Bommai said. All scheduled programmes of CM Bommai have been temporarily cancelled.

As many as 146 new cases of Omicron were confirmed in Bengaluru on Monday taking the overall tally in Karnataka to 479, Health Minister K. Sudhakar said.

"We have completed 50 per cent first dose vaccination for children in the age group of 15 to 17 years. 15.60 lakh children in this age group are administered with the first dose to date in the state," he stated.

Meanwhile, in Bengaluru Police department's West Zone alone, 27 Covid positive cases were reported taking the tally in the division to 87.

Karnataka reported 11,698 new Covid cases on Monday taking the positivity rate of the state to 7.77 per cent. 1,148 persons have been discharged and four Covid deaths are reported across the state, according to the Health and Family Welfare department bulletin.

The total active cases in the state swelled to 60,148. Bengaluru Urban district reported 9,221 cases and the number of cases in Mysuru stood at 309. Mandya (306), Udupi (219), Hassan (171) also reported more cases.

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New Jan 10 : After the Apex court agreed to hear a PIL on hate speeches, Jamiat ulema-i-Hind on Monday demanded stern action against the hate mongers.

Welcoming the Chief Justice of India's agreement to hear a petition filed in the Haridwar Dharma Hate Speech case, President of Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind, Maulana Arshad Madani said: "The state and central law enforcement agencies have not fulfilled their duties, which has created a very depressing situation in the whole country." Hate speeches and statements against Muslims have suddenly intensified in the country in as seen in Delhi and Haridwar. Unfortunately, no legal action has been taken in both the cases so far, he alleged.

"We hope that justice will be served in this case as well as in other cases because it is not just a matter of Muslims, it is a matter of constitution, law, unity and integrity," he said.

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to examine a plea seeking criminal action in connection with hate speeches made at Dharam Sansad in Haridwar against the Muslim community.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal mentioned the matter before a bench headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana for urgent listing.

Sibal submitted, "We're living in different times where slogans in the country have changed from Satyamev Jayate". The bench told Sibal, "We'll look into it".

It also asked Sibal whether any inquiry in the matter was on? Sibal replied that FIRs have been filed, but no arrest has been made so far and added that without court's intervention no action will be taken.

After a brief hearing, the bench agreed to take up the matter.

IANS miz/shb/
Mumbai, Jan 10 : After nearly two weeks of rising, Covid-19 cases in Maharashtra suddenly plummeted by 10,000, and Omicron cases also dropped below 50, on the day when the state implemented night curfew, health officials said here on Monday.

After a stupendous 44,388 Covid infectees on Sunday, the state recorded 33,470 and fatalities also dropped from 12 to 8 on Monday, with the mortality rate falling from 2.04 per cent to 2.03 per cent.

From a height of 207 Omicron cases on Sunday, the state infections of the variant also came down steeply to 31 - all from Pune district, but Mumbai remained at the top position with a tally of 606.

Omicron has spread extensively across several districts in the state, and out of the 1,247 cases till date, 467 have recovered.

Mumbai accounts for the bulk of Omicron cases, at 606, followed by 354 in Pune, 76 in Thane, 59 in Sangli, 51 in Nagpur, 18 each in Raigad and Kolhapur, 11 in Osmanabad, ten in Satara, nine in Amravati, six each in Palghar and Buldhana, five in Akola, three each in Nanded, Aurangabad, and Gondiya, two each in Ahmednagar, Gadchiroli, Latur and Nandurbar, and one in Jalna.

The health authorities are continuing the intensive surveillance of passengers arriving at the three international airports - Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur - since December 1.

A total of 38,450 travellers have landed here from the "high risk" countries of which 449 have tested positive and 493 from other countries, with all their reports sent for genomic sequencing to confirm if they are afflicted by Omicron.

Besides, another whopping 3,868 positive samples from field surveys conducted since November 1 have been sent for genomic sequencing with the results of 97 awaited, the officials said.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Gandhinagar, Jan 10 : Owners of old vehicles in Gujarat will now be able to retain their old vehicle numbers after their scrapping, the state government informed on Monday.

The decision was taken after demands were raised seeking similar provisions effective in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

Announcing the decision, state Transport Minister Purnesh Modi said, "After Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, considering the demands of applicants, Gujarat has also decided to implement vehicle number retention policy. The vehicle owners will now be able to retain their vehicle number twice as per this policy." The retained number will be allocated to the newly-purchased vehicle, and a new number will be allocated to the old vehicle which has undergone transfer of ownership. In the case of scrapping the vehicle, the retained number will be allocated to the newly-purchase vehicle and another number will be given to the old vehicle that has been scrapped.

It is also mandatory that the ownership of the vehicle whose number is to be retained and the vehicle on which the number is to be retained belong to the same person.

The vehicle owner should have the ownership for a minimum of one year for retaining the number. The process of allocation of the retained number to the new vehicle should be completed within 15 days.

The Gujarat government has decided that the fees will be similar to the provisions of the fee decided for choice numbers in the state. For two wheelers, it will be Rs 8,000 for golden number, Rs 3,500 for silver number and Rs 2,000 for other numbers. For other vehicles, the fees will be Rs 40,000 for golden number, Rs 15,000 for silver and a minimum of Rs 8000 for other numbers.
Jaipur, Jan 10 : Rajasthan Governor Kalraj Mishra and First Lady, Satyavati Mishra were administered the third dose at Raj Bhavan here on Monday after the commencement of the precautionary dose of Covid-19 vaccine campaign.

On this occasion, he appealed to all eligible senior citizens, health workers, and corona warriors to get the Covid-19 vaccine dose to avoid the third wave of corona. He also called for getting maximum corona vaccination of children, from 15 to 18 years of age.

The Governor said that the spread of new variant of Corona is increasing rapidly. "To check its spread, everyone should wear masks, maintain a safe distance of two yards and keep washing hands frequently." He appealed to children and the elderly should stay at home as much as possible. Other people should also not come out of the houses unnecessarily and follow the guidelines issued by the state government, he added.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : The Income Tax Department said on Monday that it has detected unaccounted cash transactions of Rs 800 crore in raids during the past five days, which were conducted at the premises of three real estate firms based in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

The firms were engaged in the business of land development as well as construction activities in the town of Kurnool (Andhra Pradesh) and other mofussil areas of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

The raids started on January 5 and went on till Monday.

"So far, the search action has led to the seizure of unaccounted cash worth Rs 1.64 crore. The searches have resulted in the detection of unaccounted cash transactions to the tune of Rs 800 crore," said an IT official.

More than two-dozen premises were covered in the search operations in Kurnool, Ananthapur, Kadapa, Nandyal and Bellary.

An I-T official said that during the course of the search operations, several incriminating documents were recovered by the I-T team.

"Digital data was seized from a specialised software application as well as from other electronic gadgets. It has been found that in the case of one of the assessee groups, it was using a software which has been systematically modified to eliminate the unaccounted cash element of the consideration received and to record in the regular books of account the sale consideration that matches with registered sale price," said the IT official.

These groups were found to be accepting cash over and above the registered value of the properties. Such unaccounted cash was used for payments of on-money towards the purchase of lands and incurring other expenditure.
Bob Saget  a comedic legend who rose to fame on the hit TV show Full House  was found dead Sunday at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando. He was 65.

MONDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: Bob Saget death: New details released by authorities, autopsy conducted

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The cause of death was unclear, but detectives found no signs of foul play or drug use, according to the Orange County Sheriffs Office. No additional details were released Sunday, and the medical examiners office will determine the cause of death, according to the agency.

Saget, who was on a tour of Florida cities with his stand-up comedy act, performed Friday night at Hard Rock Live at Orlandos Universal CityWalk and then at a show Saturday night in north Florida.

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On Sunday, deputies said they responded about 4 p.m. to a call from the Ritz-Carlton related to Saget.

Earlier today, deputies were called to the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes for a call about an unresponsive man in a hotel room, the agency wrote in a social media post. The man was identified as Robert Saget & pronounced deceased on scene. Detectives found no signs of foul play or drug use in this case.

After his last performance on Saturday night in Ponte Vedra Beach as part of his I Dont Do Negative Comedy Tour, he tweeted at 3:42 a.m. Sunday, expressing how much he enjoyed performing.

I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight, he wrote.

Loved tonights show @PV_ConcertHall in Jacksonville. Appreciative audience. Thanks again to @RealTimWilkins for opening. I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight. Im happily addicted again to this shit. Check https://t.co/nqJyTiiezU for my dates in 2022. pic.twitter.com/pEgFuXxLd3  bob saget (@bobsaget) January 9, 2022

He also wrote about his performance Friday in Orlando in a post on Facebook, including a photo of himself on stage before the show.

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A perfect first show of 2022!! That was the fastest Hour and 45 minutes Ive ever lived through. Excluding surgery, he wrote. So great to make people laugh and have a good time.

The next stop on Sagets comedy tour was Jan. 28-29 in West Palm Beach, according to the tours schedule.

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Tributes from fellow comedians and celebrities poured in on social media following news of Sagets death.

John Stamos, who co-starred with Saget on Full House wrote, I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby.

The comedian Gilbert Gottfried recalled that he spoke on the phone just a few days ago with Saget and was in shock. We stayed on the phone as usual making each other laugh. RIP to friend, comedian & fellow Aristocrat Bob Saget, he wrote.

TV producer Norman Lear, who called Saget a close friend, wrote the comedian was as lovely a human as he was funny. And to my mind, he was hilarious.

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In often a ruthless business he was historically not just hilarious but more importantly one of the kindest human beings I ever met in my career, actor Richard Lewis wrote on Twitter.

Saget was best known for playing Danny Tanner, a widower and father to three young girls, on Full House. The sitcom ran on ABC from 1987-1995, and Netflix revival called Fuller House ran from 2016-20.

He also served as the host of Americas Funniest Home Videos and later was the unseen narrator on CBS How I Met My Mother.

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Acting on Full House and as host of AFV, Saget cultivated a squeaky image. But his stand-up comedy showed his naughty side, which was highlighted on what became a much-talked-about cameo in the 2005 documentary The Aristocrats  in which 100 comics riffed on the worlds dirtiest joke. It revealed his notoriously filthy sense of humor.

In a 2019 interview with the Orlando Sentinel TV critic Hal Boedeker, Saget discussed how his very adult stand-up act was in stark contrast to TV characters.

Im still an R-rated act. Im South Park, Im a 9-year-old kid that learned all the words, Saget said, chuckling. Ive got a certain amount of wisdom from being 62. Theres a little more parenting in what I do in a joking way. I think Im more myself than I ever have been onstage.

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Saget said he was hopeful that the Orlando audience he was going to perform for in 2019 would be varied. It looks like my kind of crowd. I get anyone from 18 with a fake ID to 90, he said. So I hope a bunch of 90-year-olds come as a mosh pit.

Saget is survived by his wife, Kelly Rizzo, and three children.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

sswisher@orlandosentinel.com
New Delhi, Jan 10 : Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member Derek O'Brien has written a letter to Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs requesting for a meeting to discuss the "Tek Fog" app which he termed a "threat" to national security and privacy of citizens.

Alleging that through the app, social media trends are being manipulated, O'Brien on Monday said there was an urgent need to discuss this "manipulation" of social media. This happens to be his second letter to Congress leader and panel chief Anand Sharma in the matter.

Citing a news report, the MP said that some people associated with BJP's IT cell used to send messages to people through inactive WhatsApp accounts and control the social media trends. All this was done with the help of "Tek Fog" app, he claimed.

Not just this, messages containing spyware were sent to people through the app to hack their accounts or phones. The app messages were also sent from phones that were not in use anymore, he added.

O'Brien said as per reports, the app is capable of sending automatic messages to WhatsApp groups or any private number.

The app, he alleged, can also modify existing news articles and their links, styling the fake news articles. Some technologies have been created by companies such as OpenAL and Salesforce, which have expertise in artificial intelligence.

The application can spread misinformation on social media though fake news, mislead individual citizens and manipulate political narratives, he added.

"Since the Tek Fog app is a threat to national security, the rights of expression and free media besides the privacy and security of citizens, I request you to convene a meeting of the Standing Committee," the letter stated.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : Observing the difference between married and unmarried relationships, the Delhi High Court said on Monday that marriage gives a legal right to expect reasonable sexual relations from the partner.

Hearing a batch of pleas on marital rape, Justice C. Hari Shankar noted that there is a qualitative difference and expectation of conjugal relationship for both parties.

"We are not recognising the difference if we are saying that they are at par. When a party gets married, each has an expectation, and to an extent a right also, to expect normal sexual relationship from each other, which does not exist if there is no marriage," observed the bench also comprising Justice Rajiv Shakdher.

However, Justice Shankar also said that there is no denying the fact that marital rapes should be punished.

"There is no compromise with a woman's right to sexual and bodily integrity. A husband has no business to compel," he said.

He also said that there is no concept of marital rape in India. "If it is rape -- marital, non-marital or of any kind -- it has to be punished. Repeated use of the word, according to me, obfuscates the actual issue," he added.

Further arguments will continue on Tuesday.

Recently, the Gujarat High Court had issued notices to the state and the Centre in response to a PIL challenging the constitutional validity of marital rape.

The PIL challenged Section 375(2) of IPC which exonerates a husband from the punishment of rape for forcible physical relations with his legally wedded wife without her consent.
Hyderabad, Jan 10 : The alleged suicide by a teacher due to her transfer following a controversial order issued by the Telangana government has provided fresh ammunition to opposition parties to target the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).

A woman teacher of a government school in Nizamabad district hanged herself allegedly over her transfer to another school in Kamareddy district under the Government Order (GO) 317 issued recently for transfer of employees and teachers.

B. Saraswati's relatives and other teachers alleged that she was upset over her transfer under the new zonal regulations. The woman had two children while her husband works in Qatar. Her family members said she was worried over being transferred to a distant place.

The incident in Babapur village in Bheemgal district came at a time when the BJP, the Congress and other opposition parties have been staging protests over GO 317.

Tension prevailed in the village on Monday when police stopped leaders of opposition parties from reaching the village to console the family of Saraswati.

Congress legislator Jeevan Reddy was arrested while he was on his way to the village. Some other leaders were placed under house arrest to stop them from visiting the village.

Meanwhile, the teachers' union staged a protest at the Telangana Secretariat, demanding the government to withdraw the GO. The protestors tried to lay siege to B.R.K. Bhavan but were detained by police.

Some of the teachers broke down while speaking about the hardships they faced due to transfer to far off places.

In another incident, though not apparently related to the controversial GO, a police constable committed suicide in Khammam town on Monday. Hours before his engagement, Ashok Kumar (29) was found dead in a lodge.

He was allegedly upset over his recent transfer from Bhadradri Kothagudem district to Mulugu district, as part of the transfers carried out recently in the Police Department.

Meanwhile, Telangana Congress chief A. Revanth Reddy slammed the TRS government for preventing party leaders from visiting Babapur village.

He alleged that the TRS government has caused a rift among employees by bringing the GO. He said the TRS and the BJP were supporting two rival groups.

The MP questioned the sincerity of the BJP over the issue and pointed out that it was the BJP government at the Centre which allowed the TRS government to implement the new Zonal system under the Presidential Order.

The Congress leader wondered how BJP can protest a problem which was created by it by allowing the Telangana government to implement GO 317. "If the GO is against the interests of employees and teachers, why did the BJP government allow it in the first place," he asked.

He also criticised BJP for bringing party leaders and Chief Ministers of other states to Telangana. "What is that BJP state chief Bandi Sanjay has achieved for which BJP leaders from outside are coming here and felicitating him," he asked.

The saffron party has been staging protests for the last few days against the 'illegal' arrest of Bandi Sanjay during a protest against GO 317.

Sanjay was arrested in Karimnagar on January 2 when he was sitting on a 'night vigil' at his camp office. Revanth Reddy said the TRS government tried to prevent a 10-hour protest by Sanjay at his office but allowed the party to stage protests for several days.

Meanwhile, Finance and Health Minister T. Harish Rao dismissed the criticism of the opposition over Go 317. He claimed that the TRS government is friendly towards employees.

Stating that only 11 per cent employees will be transferred under new guidelines, he wondered how BJP can stage a protest over implementation of Presidential Order.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : The Centre seems to have acceded to the demands from Telangana vis-a-vis paddy procurement.

As on January 10, the Centre has continued to procure paddy from last season, i.e. Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) 2020-21 concurrent with this season (KMS 2021-22) with Telangana emerging as the state where the largest number of farmers, over 20 lakh, have benefitted with paddy procurement under Minimum Support Price (MSP).

The Centre procured a total of 8,95,83,293 metric tonnes paddy from 1,31,12,282 farmers at MSP worth Rs 1,69,133.26 crore from 22 states and UTs.

The development comes after paddy procurement had become a widely discussed topic in Telangana in recent days and trading of charges between that state and the Centre.

A delegation of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) ministers and MPs had camped in Delhi for six days in December end but could not extract a written commitment from the Centre to procure the entire stock of kharif rice.

Earlier, Union Food and Public Distribution Minister Piyush Goyal had assured in Rajya Sabha during a debate that the entire stock of Kharif rice would be procured by the Centre.

However, according to the Ministry's data for state-wise paddy procurement in KMS 2020-21 (upto January 9, 2022) as on January 10, 2022, as many as 21,64,354 Telangana farmers benefitted with paddy procurement at MSP, followed by Chhattisgarh (20,53,490), Odisha (13,94,647), Punjab (10,57,674), Uttar Pradesh (10,22,286), West Bengal (9,49,362), Tamil Nadu (8,52,152), Andhra Pradesh (8,03,945), Maharashtra (6,24,292), Madhya Pradesh (5,87,223) and Haryana (5,49,466) The largest procurement for the KMS 2020-21 (upto January 9, 2022) as on January 10, 2022 was from Punjab (2,02,82,433 MT) followed by Telangana (1,41,08,787 MT), Andhra Pradesh (84,57,120 MT), Odisha (77,32,713 MT), Chhattisgarh (71,24,639 MT), Uttar Pradesh (66,84,277 MT), Haryana (56,54,735 MT), Madhya Pradesh (37,26,554 MT), Bihar (35,58,882 MT), West Bengal (27,79,064 MT), Tamil Nadu (44,90,222 MT), Maharashtra (18,98,993 MT), Uttarakhand (10,72,158 MT) and Gujarat (1,10,244 MT).

This procurement for KMS 2020-21 was done along with KMS 2021-22. A quantity of over 532.86 (LMT) of paddy has been procured in KMS 2021-22 in 22 procuring states and UTs up to Sunday, January 9 with about 64 lakh farmers benefitted with Minimum Support Price (MSP) worth over Rs 1 lakh crore.

The highest quantity has been procured from Punjab (1,86,85,53 MT) followed by Chhattisgarh (67,65,986 MT) and Telangana (65,54,739 MT) while the highest number of farmers benefitted in are Chhattisgarh (16,90,459), Telangana (9,67,134) and Punjab (9,24,299).
New Delhi, Jan 10 : India's Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and South Korea's Trade Minister Han-koo Yeo will hold a meeting on Tuesday to discuss bilateral trade-related issues.

The discussion will focus on addressing the large trade deficit, market access issues, and non-tariff barriers faced by Indian exporters, as well as investment-related issues. The meeting is expected to further boost India-Korea trade relations in an equitable and balanced manner to the mutual advantage of both countries, according to the Commerce Ministry As per the Ministry of External Affairs, the trade and economic relations between India and South Korea have gathered momentum in recent years with annual bilateral trade reaching $21.5 billion in 2018, crossing the $20 billion mark for the first time. Bilateral trade in January-December 2020 was recorded $16.9 billion. The bilateral Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CEPA), set in place since 2010, has spurred trade and investments both ways.

In 2018, South Korea's investment in India crossed the $1 billion mark for the first time, recording $1.053 billion.It's total FDI to India up to September 2020 stands at $6.94 billion. Investments from India in South Korea are to the tune of approx $3 billion led by Tata Daewoo, Ssangyong and Novelis.

According to data from the South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy, the bilateral trade in the first half (January-June) of 2021 was recorded at $10.97 billion, an increase of 38 per cent compared to the same period of the previous year.

South Korea's exports to India increased 38.5 per cent ($7.4 billion), imports increased 37.4 per cent ($3.6 billion), and the trade balance recorded a surplus of $3.8 billion.

The growth of exports and imports was rapidly improving aided by the strong base effect from a year ago, when the Indian government implemented the national lockdown to combat the first Covid-19 wave. While a severe second Covid-19 wave hit India in April last year, the localised restrictions of economic activity were not as adversely affected as the previous year.
New Delhi, Jan 10 : India's Environment, Forest, and Climate Change Minister Bhupender Yadav on Monday had a telephonic call with US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry where the two of them discussed wide range of issues including India's ambitious climate action targets announced during the COP26.

Taking to Twitter after he spoke with Kerry late in the evening, Yadav tweeted: "Productive phone call with US Climate Envoy Mr John Kerry. We agreed to take forward India-US Climate Actions & Finance Mobilisation Dialogue. a India is on track to achieve Paris Accord & COP26 commitments in accordance with PM Shri Narendra Modi ji's LIFE mantra. (sic)" Both the leaders discussed taking forward the India US Climate Action and Finance Mobilisation Dialogue (CAFMD) through the four identified pillars, Climate Ambition, Finance Mobilisation, Adaptation and Resilience, and Forestry, a statement from the Environment, Forests and Climate Change Ministry said.

Yadav highlighted the importance and need to focus on L.I.F.E i.e., Lifestyle For Environment, the one-word campaign championed by Prime Minister Modi at Glasgow during the high-level segment at the annual climate change summit COP26.

The leaders also discussed the upcoming meeting of the Major Economies Forum (MEF), the statement said.

The US on November 10 had joined the International Solar Alliance (ISA) as the 101st member country. Kerry had signed the framework agreement of the ISA to catalyse global energy transition through a solar-led approach.

Prior to it, on September 13, Yadav and Kerry had jointly launched the CAFMD, which is one of the two tracks of the India-US Climate and Clean Energy Agenda 2030 partnership launched at the Leaders' Summit on Climate in April 2021 by Prime Minister Modi and US President Joe Biden.
New Delhi, Jan 11 : The Congress on Monday rejected claims that the party is mulling over a possible alliance with the Trinamool Congress in poll-bound Goa after the partys former President Rahul Gandhi held a virtual discussion with senior Congress leaders P. Chidambaram and K.C. Venugopal.

Chidambaram is the party's senior election observer for Goa.

After the meeting, Venugopal tweeted, "The rumour in circulation that a possible alliance with TMC was discussed by Shri @RahulGandhi in today's meeting is completely baseless & untrue. Let me assure that the Congress party is confident - we will put Goa back on the path to progress soon." Rahul Gandhi, who recently returned from a personal visit abroad, has started meeting people in the poll-bound coastal state, holding discussions on new possible new entrants after some MLAs in the state left the BJP.

The ruling BJP in Goa lost two MLAs in quick succession on Monday, after Pravin Zantye, sitting MLA from the Mayem, resigned as a legislator and let go the party's primary membership.

The resignation followed hours after Ports Minister in the BJP-led government, Michael Lobo, resigned as a minister and MLA from the party.

"The party I had joined on the word and assurance of former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar is not the same today," Zantye told reporters after resigning from the party.

Zantye said that he would be joining the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) soon.

Earlier on Monday, Lobo had said that he was quitting as minister and from the BJP, accusing party leaders of sidelining grassroots workers.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, Jan 11 : External Affairs Minister Dr S. Jaishankar on Monday discussed various issues including trade, investment, and security with his UK counterpart Liz Truss.

Jaishankar invited her to visit India for bilateral talks.

According to the UK's Department for International Trade, the total trade in goods and services (exports plus imports) between the UK and India was 19.8 billion pounds in the four quarters to the end of Q2 2021, a decrease of 7 per cent from the four quarters to the end of Q2 2020.

Of this, the total UK exports to India amounted to 7.3 billion pounds in the four quarters to the end of Q2 2021 (a decrease of 9.5 per cent compared to the four quarters to the end of Q2 2020), and the total UK imports from India amounted to 12.5 billion pounds in the four quarters to the end of Q2 2021 (a decrease of 5.5 per cent compared to the four quarters to the end of Q2 2020).

India was the UK's 15th largest trading partner in the four quarters to the end of Q2 2021 accounting for 1.6 per cent of total UK trade.
New Delhi, Jan 11 : The Income Tax (I-T) Department has carried out search and seizure operations on two groups engaged in quarry operations at more than 35 premises spread across Kottayam, Eranakulam, Thrissur, Palakkad and Kannur districts in Kerala.

The action resulted in the seizure of unaccounted cash to the tune of over Rs 2.30 crore. So far, the searches have led to the detection of estimated unaccounted transactions amounting to Rs 200 crore.

During the course of the search operation, various incriminating documents and digital evidence have been found and seized, including a parallel set of books of account recording the entries of actual sales and receipt of cash.

These evidences have revealed the modus operandi being followed by the quarry operators who indulged in large-scale suppression of sales made in cash, including the fact that these transactions were not recorded in the regular books of account of the groups, the I-T Department statement.

The correlation of these evidences also indicates that the unaccounted cash generated was systematically invested in acquisition of immovable properties, used for the business of cash loans, and unrecorded capital investments in other businesses.

The search team has also gathered evidences of on-money payment for purchase of properties and substantial cash deposits in undisclosed bank accounts. The assessees of the group have been found to have sold immovable properties without duly accounting for the capital gains arising from such transactions.
New Delhi, Jan 11 : Around 1,000 Delhi Police personnel have got infected with Covid-19 since January 1, officials said on Monday.

A Delhi Police official said that all these police personnel are home quarantined and recovering well.

The affected comprise 18 IPS officers - a Joint CP, four Additional CPs, and 13 DCPs.

"As of now, no one has been hospitalised. Police Department is taking all the precautions to make sure virus doesn't spread more. Delhi Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana is personally looking into the matter," the official said, adding that they are providing all kinds of help to their affected personnel.

"This is the third wave of Covid. We have faced two waves, controlling law and order. But this time, we are suffering more," said the police official.

The Delhi Police officials were the first to take Covid vaccines as frontline workers. The total strength of the Delhi Police, which is around 90,000, has been given both the doses of the vaccine Not only the Delhi Police, but the Mumbai Police Department is also facing a tough time in the third wave, with at least 523 cases of coronavirus among its ranks, including 114 in the last 48 hours.

Meanwhile, DG Prison, Sandeep Goel said that 46 prisoners and 43 officials, across the three jails, tested positive for Covid.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
A retired human resources investigator who says he faced retaliation over pushing for a comprehensive investigation of a principals controversial Holocaust remarks is now suing the district over the incident.

Robert Pinkos, who previously worked as an investigator in the school districts Human Resources department, seeks over $30,000 in damages from the school district under the Florida Public Whistle-Blowers Act, according to the lawsuit. He says the school district retaliated against him after he reported school officials for covering up their lack of punishment of the principal, who told a parent via email that he couldnt say the Holocaust was a historical fact.

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Because the district opened an investigation into Pinkos, the retired investigator has been unable to work as a contractor, the lawsuit says.

Pinkos first filed a whistleblower complaint with the school districts Inspector Generals office, which investigates allegations of fraud and employee abuse. The office makes recommendations to the School Board.

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[ RELATED: Whistleblower alleges cover-up over how principal was fired ]

The controversy stems back to 2018, when former Spanish River High School Principal William Latson emailed a parent, who was seeking information about Spanish Rivers Holocaust curriculum. Latson wrote that he had to remain politically neutral  sensitive not only to advocates of Holocaust education but to those who deny the annihilation of 6 million Jews during World War II.

I cant say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee, Latson wrote to the parent, whose name is redacted from the emails released by the district.

Latsons attorney said the district was punishing Latson for a poorly worded email and said there were multiple levels of culpability, including school district staff who knew about the emails for 16 months before deciding to discipline him.

Politicians from across the state were calling for Latsons termination or resignation, as did the Anti-Defamation League, a national civil rights group with an office in Boca Raton.

Pinkos claims district officials tried to cover up their lack of punishment of Latson  after the community uproar, school officials wanted Pinkos to find other reasons to fire Latson that wouldnt reveal the districts inaction.

Pinkos refused to pursue the case, based in part on what he considered trumped-up charges that had nothing to do with the original anti-Semitism allegations against Latson. Thats when he says the retribution began, including his office location being changed from West Palm Beach to Boca Raton.

Pinkos, a former teacher and school district employee recruiter, says a supervisor told him to limit the scope of his investigation to whether Latson had filled out the right forms for his July vacation and whether Latson stayed in communication with his supervisors when he was gone.

Pinkos, on the other hand, wanted an investigation to look at what he saw as the key issue: the principals remarks about the Holocaust and whether he should face punishment for his comments.

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Pinkoss boss, Vicki Evans-Pare, told him Latson would be able to remain a principal, just not at Spanish River, according to the complaint.

Mr. Pinkos voiced that Dr. Latson should not be a principal anywhere for essentially being a Holocaust denier, according to the complaint. Mr. Pinkos expressed his concern that it appeared rather disingenuous that district administrators, who knew about Dr. Latsons comments for over a year and did not report the misconduct to HR, now were apparently filled with righteous indignation.

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Pinkos describes how he endured several tumultuous interactions, including how he faced the threat of being fired before his scheduled retirement in September 2020. He eventually retained a lawyer. In response, the District retained outside counsel to investigate Pinkos, the complaint says.

The complaint labels Evans-Pares efforts as a smear campaign against Pinkos that follows him in his professional capacity, preventing him from working as a consultant. Hes demanding trial by jury.

[ RELATED: Ex-principal who made Holocaust comments fired ]

Latson was fired in 2019 for being unavailable after his comments about the Holocaust generated a national uproar the previous summer.

In a 5-2 vote, the School Board accepted the recommendation of former Superintendent Donald Fennoy, who said Latson had committed ethical misconduct by being unreachable when all hell broke loose after his emailed comments to a Spanish River parent became public.

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The school district declined to comment on the lawsuit, but stated some of its claims were false.

While the District will not discuss the specifics of pending litigation, we look forward to correcting misstatements that are presented in this lawsuit in court, the statement said.

Brooke Baitinger can be reached at: bbaitinger@sunsentinel.com, 954-422-0857 or on Twitter: @bybbaitinger
Patna, Jan 11 : Patna police on Monday arrested seven persons for smuggling in liquor from neighbouring Jharkhand.

The police said that the kingpin of the smuggling racket is the son of a former block president of Raghopur in Vaishali district, who is still at large.

The accused kept the liquor consignment under tomatoes in a pick-up van which was escorted by a Mahindra Scorpio and Maruti Alto. The pick-up van was intercepted near Supan Chak under Fatuha police station in Patna, located on NH-30.

"We had installed a check-post at Supan Chak after receiving inputs about huge liquor consignment passing through this route. When we saw a pick-up van coming towards the check-post, we signalled the driver of the van to stop for checking. During checking, a huge quantity of tomatoes was found in the van. When we removed them, 258 cartons of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) worth Rs 22 lakh were found under the baskets," said Manoj Kumar, SHO of Fatuha police station.

During a brief interrogation, the driver of the van revealed that six persons were escorting him in two cars.

"We immediately chased the two vehicles and nabbed the accused persons. At present, some districts in Jharkhand are supplying tomatoes to Bihar. The smugglers used this as a shield to smuggle in liquor," Kumar said.

"Three of the arrested persons belong to Fatuha, while four are from Dhanbad. We have also seized Rs 5.72 lakh in cash. The liquor is made in Arunachal Pradesh and it was purchased from Dhanbad. The Scorpio belongs to a person named Bablu Yadav, the son of former block president of Raghopur in Vaishali district," Kumar said.

"Bablu was earlier booked in March 2021. On that occasion, he was involved in smuggling liquor hidden in boxes of mustard oil," he said.
New Delhi, Jan 11 : Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Monday reviewed the situation and the status of public health preparedness for containment and management of Covid in the six states and UTs.

"Let there be no lapses in our preparedness as we battle this surge of the pandemic. Holistic synergy between Centre and states is most vital for seamless and effective pandemic management," he said, while virtually interacting with his state counterparts and senior officials of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Goa, and the UT of Dadra & Nagra Haveli and Daman & Diu.

Reiterating that the Centre is dedicated to supporting states in containing the pandemic, Mandaviya said that it has provided support under ECRP-II for strengthening the health infrastructure across the country and urged the states to make robust preparation in terms of physical infrastructure and efficiently utilise the approved funds.

The status and analysis of Covid in the six States/UT was made by the Health Ministry officials covering the trajectory of total and new cases, active cases, weekly and daily positivity, weekly tests conducted with proportion of RT-PCR and RAT testing, deaths, Cases per Million (CPM), Tests per Million (TPM) and Omicron case status. This was followed by a comprehensive and detailed discussion on various aspects of Covid management including effective implementation of surveillance and containment activities, ramping up of hospital infrastructure, increased testing, enforcement of stringent restrictive measures for breaking the chain of transmission, and stress on Covid Appropriate Behaviour among the masses.

The Union Minister advised the states to increase vaccination of all eligible population, especially in low vaccination coverage areas, and districts, stressing that vaccination against Covid results in low hospitalisation and severity, as is seen globally. He emphasised on administration of 'precaution dose' for the identified categories and urged the states to ensure full coverage of the vulnerable population. He also requested them to expedite full coverage of the eligible age group of 15-18 years at the earliest.

Mandaviya said that irrespective of the variants, 'Test-Track-Treat-Vaccinate' and adherence to Covid appropriate behaviour continue to form the pivotal foundation for Covid management. He urged the states to re-invigorate their teams to work at the ground level and strengthen monitoring and containment mechanisms. States were advised to hold regular meetings with regional officers of theICMR, the NCDC, Airport Public Health Officers (APHOs) and the State Surveillance Officers.

He highlighted the importance of tele-consultation through platforms such as eSanjeevani and advised the states to establish tele-consultation hubs in every district. "They should work round the clock such that those who seek expert advice do not have to travel to the district but can be advised at the block levels, through a hub and spoke model.

"It is important that people know about the available health infrastructure and healthcare services available at various levels starting from the block level, such as hospital beds, testing facilities, ambulance services etc. States need to publicise their availability in public domain through various means and also establish Control Rooms to monitor them." The easy availability of information in public domain will result in avoiding clogging of beds by patients due to panic, he added.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
New Delhi, Jan 11 : Concerned with the rising number of Covid cases in the national capital, Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Monday directed the Secretary Generals of both the Houses to suggest measures for the safe conduct of the upcoming Budget session.

Sources said that Naidu and Birla have asked the Secretary General of both the Houses to review the prevailing Covid situation and suggest measures for the safe conduct of the Budget session.

"Both Naidu and Birla have asked the Secretary Generals to review the adequacy of the Covid protocol followed during the last Winter Session. Both the Secretary Generals have been asked to submit a proposal in this regard at the earliest," sources said.

After over 400 Parliament staff tested positive for Covid-19 during random testing and with the rise in the number of cases in the national capital, meetings of several parliamentary committees were cancelled on Monday.

The Parliamentary standing committees on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, Urban Development, and Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology decided to cancel their meetings on Monday, the sources said.

Over 400 Parliament staff have tested positive for Covid-19 during random testing. Among those who tested positive, 65 are from the Rajya Sabha, 200 from the Lok Sabha and 133 belong to allied services.

Random testing was conducted after a sudden spike in cases in the national capital, and most of the staff who tested positive did not show any symptoms.

"More random testing will be conducted for those coming to the Parliament to control the spread of the infection," sources said.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
New Delhi, Jan 11 : Union Science and Technology Minister Dr Jitendra Singh on Monday called for closer Centre-State coordination for technological solutions and science-based remedies for state-specific or UT-specific problems and requirements.

An extensive exercise is being undertaken separately with each of the states and Union Territories to identify the areas where technological interventions can help in resolving diverse problems to enable ease of living for common man, Dr Singh said and cited the example of how the Jammu and Kashmir government will be assisted through the latest snow clearing technology while Puducherry and Tamil Nadu are being assisted in restoration and renovation/rejuvenation of sea beaches.

Singh was presiding over a high-level joint meeting of all the Science Ministries and Departments, in hybrid mode, at Prithvi Bhawan here. The meeting was attended by Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government, Prof. K VijayRaghavan, Secretary, Earth Sciences, Dr M Ravichandran, Secretary, Science & Technology, Dr S. Chandrasekhar, Secretary, Biotechnology, Dr Rajesh Gokhale, Secretary, Space and ISRO Chairman, Dr K. Sivan, Secretary, Atomic Energy, Dr K.N. Vyas; Secretary, CSIR, Dr Shekhar Mande, Secretary, Capacity Building Commission, Hemang Jani, and other senior officials, a release from the Science and Technology Ministry said.

Dr Singh said that a series of meetings with state governments are planned, starting next week for Centre-State collaboration for 'solution-based' approach to identified S&T problems and to improve the use of Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) in states and local governments.

"The Ministry will soon write to all Chief Secretaries along with a proforma for specific proposals or requirements by the state governments and to designate a Nodal Officer for smooth coordination," he said, adding that he is planning a National Science Conclave after completion of roundtable meetings with states involving Science Ministries and Departments from the Centre and all states and UTs to deliberate upon pressing problems facing India and effective solutions for the same.

he said that the move comes in the wake of the success of such an experiment with Central Line Ministries and Departments, wherein 168 proposals/requirements were received from 33 Ministries for providing technological support and solutions by all the six S&T departments including Space and Atomic Energy.

Science Ministries and Departments concerned have started working on different scientific applications for sectors like agriculture, dairy, food, education, skill, railways, roads, Jal Shakti, power, and coal.

With the help of the Capacity Building Commission, a template is also being prepared to take up theme-wise deliberations between Centre and States/UTs depending on specific needs, from place to place, the Minister said.

This initiative was launched by himin September last year, wherein representatives from all the Science Ministries including Science & Technology, Earth Sciences, Atomic Energy, Space/ISRO, CSIR, and Biotechnology separately engaged in extensive brainstorming with each of the different Ministries of the Centre to work out which scientific applications could be utilised in which sector.
Guwahati, Jan 11 : Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday said that due to lack of proper procurement mechanism and committed efforts, majority of the paddy produced in the state is procured by middlemen depriving the farmers of fair price.

He said that the state government, in a bid to remove the middlemen system, has therefore decided to bring an end to such a situation so that farmers could be economically benefited.

In a bid to sensitise the farmers on the paddy procurement drive and to expedite the process, the Assam government would organise special 'Gaon Sabhas' across the state on January 16, he announced this while interacting with Deputy Commissioners, Circle Officers of the districts, agricultural officers through video conference from Janata Bhawan, the state government headquarters.

The Chief Minister said that due to dedicated efforts of the state government, Central and various other government agencies including Food Corporation of India, 10 lakh MT of paddy would be procured from farmers at minimum support price of Rs 1,940 per quintal.

He said that the state government has geared up to carry out the paddy procurement in a mission mode and has notified 194 paddy procurement centres in the state, out of which 166 have been already opened.

He also informed that realisation of the target of procurement would greatly benefit the farmers apart from infusing over Rs 2,000 crore into the state economy.

The Chief Minister directed formation of a standing committee with Principal Secretaries of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Agriculture, and Revenue Departments to guide the DCs and other officers and to sort out all issues relating to paddy procurement.

Underlining the need for massive awareness among farmers for the success of the initiative, the Chief Minister also urged the MPs and MLAs to take active part in the 'Gaon Sabhas' to turn the procurement drive into a major success.

While Food and And Civil Supplies Minister Ranjeet Kumar Dass and Revenue Minister Jogen Mohan were present along with others at Janata Bhawan, Agriculture Minister Atul Bora joined the video conference from Golaghat.
New Delhi, Jan 11 : Listenership of All India Radio (AIR) live-streams on the 'NewsOnAir app witnessed a jump of two million within a span of one month in December last year, with about 18 million listeners tuning into the app.

In a statement issued on Monday, the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting said, "For the first time ever in the world of radio, listenership is being quantified in absolute numbers by the Prasar Bharati audience research team. Listenership of AIR live-streams on 'NewsOnAir' app saw a jump of two million within a span of one month with 18 million listeners tuning into the app in December last year. The figures for November were 16 million." "In city-wise monthly listenership measurement of AIR live-streams on app, listenership in Pune, Bengaluru, Indore and Nagpur were in millions, while Patna, Lucknow and Delhi-NCR were close to a million," it added.

In the latest rankings of top cities in India where AIR live-streams on the app are most popular, Jaipur has made a comeback by displacing Ernakulam from the top list.

In major changes in rankings of top AIR streams in the country, FM Rainbow Mumbai has found its way back into top 10, while AIR News 24X7 has slipped off the list. AIR Pune has climbed up the ladder from ninth to third spot, while AIR Malayalam slid down to seventh from third rank. These rankings are based on data from December 16 to December 31 last year.

More than 240 radio services of AIR are live-streamed on the 'NewsOnAir' app. The All India Radio streams on the app have a large number of listeners not just in India, but globally, in more than 85 countries across the world.
Amazon Bay Airport, Amazon Bay, Papua New Guinea [ AZB / ]

If you are planning to travel to Amazon Bay or any other city in Papua New Guinea, this airport locator will be a very useful tool. This page gives complete information about the Amazon Bay Airport along with the airport location map, Time Zone, lattitude and longitude, Current time and date, hotels near the airport etc... Amazon Bay Airport Map showing the location of this airport in Papua New Guinea. Amazon Bay Airport IATA Code, ICAO Code, exchange rate etc... is also provided.

Amazon Bay Airport Info:

Amazon Bay Airport IATA Code: AZB Amazon Bay Airport ICAO Code: Latitude : -10.3 Longitude : 149.333 City : Amazon Bay Country : Papua New Guinea World Area Code : 804 Airport Type : Small Amazon Bay Airport Address / Contact Details :

Amazon Bay (AZB), Papua New Guinea Timezone : Pacific/Port_Moresby Amazon Bay Airport Timezone : GMT +10:00 hours Current time and date at Amazon Bay Airport is 15:07:50 PM (+10) on Tuesday, May 3, 2022

Looking for information on Amazon Bay Airport, Amazon Bay, Papua New Guinea? Know about Amazon Bay Airport in detail. Find out the location of Amazon Bay Airport on Papua New Guinea map and also find out airports near to Amazon Bay. This airport locator is a very useful tool for travelers to know where is Amazon Bay Airport located and also provide information like hotels near Amazon Bay Airport, airlines operating to Amazon Bay Airport etc... IATA Code and ICAO Code of all airports in Papua New Guinea. Scroll down to know more about Amazon Bay Airport or Amazon Bay Airport, Papua New Guinea.

Amazon Bay Airport Map - Location of Amazon Bay Airport Load Map Papua New Guinea - General Information Country Formal Name Independent State of Papua New Guinea Country Code PG Capital Port Moresby Currency Kina (PGK)

 1 PGK = 0.284 USD

 1 USD = 3.525 PGK

 1 PGK = 0.27 EUR

 1 EUR = 3.706 PGK

 More PGK convertion rates Tel Code +675 Top Level Domain .pg

This page provides all the information you need to know about Amazon Bay Airport, Papua New Guinea. This page is created with the aim of helping travelers and tourists visiting Papua New Guinea or traveling to Amazon Bay Airport. Details about Amazon Bay Airport given here include Amazon Bay Airport Code - IATA Code (3 letter airport codes) and ICAO Code (4 letter airport codes)

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Yuzhny Airport, Tashkent, Uzbekistan [ TAS / UTTT ]

If you are planning to travel to Tashkent or any other city in Uzbekistan, this airport locator will be a very useful tool. This page gives complete information about the Yuzhny Airport along with the airport location map, Time Zone, lattitude and longitude, Current time and date, hotels near the airport etc... Yuzhny Airport Map showing the location of this airport in Uzbekistan. Tashkent Airport IATA Code, ICAO Code, exchange rate etc... is also provided.

Tashkent Airport Info:

Tashkent Airport IATA Code: TAS Tashkent Airport ICAO Code: UTTT Latitude : 41.2579 Longitude : 69.2812 City : Tashkent Country : Uzbekistan World Area Code : 788 Airport Type : Large Tashkent Airport Address / Contact Details :

Tashkent International Airport (TAS), Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Phone: 998 (71) 140 28 01, Email: info@uzairways.com Tashkent Website : http://www.uzairways.com/ Airport Type : Public Owner : Government of Uzbekistan Operator : Uzbekistan Airways Hub for : Uzbekistan Airways No. Of Terminals : 2 Timezone : Asia/Tashkent Yuzhny Airport Timezone : GMT +05:00 hours Current time and date at Yuzhny Airport is 10:07:51 AM (+05) on Tuesday, May 3, 2022

Looking for information on Yuzhny Airport, Tashkent, Uzbekistan? Know about Yuzhny Airport in detail. Find out the location of Yuzhny Airport on Uzbekistan map and also find out airports near to Tashkent. This airport locator is a very useful tool for travelers to know where is Yuzhny Airport located and also provide information like hotels near Yuzhny Airport, airlines operating to Yuzhny Airport etc... IATA Code and ICAO Code of all airports in Uzbekistan. Scroll down to know more about Yuzhny Airport or Tashkent Airport, Uzbekistan.

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TAS - Yuzhny Airport IATA Code and UTTT - Yuzhny Airport ICAO code
ICON Information Consultants, LP (ICON), a Houston-based group of companies offering a suite of consulting, staffing, direct sourcing and independent contractor compliance services announces that CEO and trail blazer, Pamela ORourke, has received WBEAs Cutting Edge & Connection Advocate of the Year Award. In addition, ICON proudly took home the WBEAs Supplier of the Year Award.

WBEAs Cutting Edge Awards recognizes members and Women Business Enterprises for the amount of business they have done with women-owned businesses. These businesses are on the "cutting edge" of shaping supplier diversity and leveling the field for women-owned businesses to compete. The Connection Awards recognizes corporate members and WBEs for their engagement with the WBEA and those that exemplify their mission to increase business opportunities for women owned businesses.

ORourke is honored to be recognized among her peers and other women entrepreneurs and minority business owners by WBEA as Advocate of the Year. Criteria for being awarded WBEAs Advocate of the Year included financial support to the organization, WBEA involvement and servitude as well as the level of support to other minority owned businesses and advocacy organizations for supplier diversity. ICON has been a Certified Womens Business Enterprise since 2001 and ORourke continues to support and mentor other women business owners through donations, scholarships and serving on various WBEA boards and committees.

ICON was recognized for its innovation in human capital solutions. Founded by ORourke in 1998, ICON provides Fortune 500 clients with the latest in direct sourcing AI, powered by Opptly, that enhances the talent acquisition process using transformative technology, turnkey recruitment automation, and a constantly growing candidate community. In addition, ICON has developed ICONpliance which is a proprietery technology for independent contractor compliance. ICONpliance resolves the compliance challenges and concerns relating to the engagement and management of independent contractors. ICON continues to invest in exceptional services and technology that only they can offer the marketplace.

The late 2020 acquisition of Vendorpass (formerly an Adecco Company), a strong provider of EOR and IC Compliance services to enterprise companies, is a prime example of ICONs commitment to growth. This has expanded ICON and its subsidiaries' total contingent labor spend under management by approximately 60% making ICON one of the largest providers of EOR and IC Compliance services for enterprise companies throughout North America. ICONs innovative business approach and dedication to client satisfaction has resulted in ICON reaching over $650 million in revenue, with more than 6,000 consultants across the US and Canada.

About ICON Information Consultants:

ICON Information Consultants, LP is a Houston based, women owned (WBENC Certified) staff augmentation and direct sourcing firm founded in 1998 by Pamela ORourke, providing recruitment and payroll solutions for over twenty-three years with over 6,000 contractors on staff within the US and Canada. Specializing in human capital solutions, ICONs services also include consulting, independent contractor management and direct sourcing. https://www.iconconsultants.com/

About WBEA:

The Womens Business Enterprise Alliance is committed to increasing business opportunities for women-owned businesses and corporate members through education, programs, and professional networking. As an affiliate of the Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), the WBEA serves as a third-party certifying organization for women-owned business enterprises (WBEs) in south Texas.
SimpliGov is committed to helping the public sector not only address the unique challenges brought on by the pandemic but also to helping to create lasting digital innovation in government

SimpliGov, the leader in government workflow automation solutions, today announced that it has been named to the prestigious GovTech 100 list from Government Technology magazine. This is the 2nd year in a row that SimpliGov had landed on the list.

Through Simpligovs platform, government agencies are able to accelerate their digital transformation by increasing the adoption of automation technology in government which significantly improves the citizen digital experience and underlying business process efficiency.

We are honored to be recognized by Government Technology magazine again this year, said Gary Leikin, CEO of SimpliGov, SimpliGov is committed to helping the public sector not only address the unique challenges brought on by the pandemic but also to helping to create lasting digital innovation in government."

In 2021, SimpliGov saw new customers achieve unmatched time to value across the nation. Customers across all levels of state and local government addressed both citizen-facing and internal, administrative business process automation oftentimes in just a matter of days and weeks. A prevailing theme of 2021 was timeliness when providing essential government services such as child support, emergency rental assistance, or COVID-related support. SimpliGov had customers continue to expand traditional permitting and administrative use cases on their platform and push into new application areas traditionally reserved for legacy, purpose-built software solutions.

Simligov also saw widespread adoption of SimpliSign, its eSign solution

across their customer base in 2021. By offering all in a native, a one-SKU solution which minimal to no-coding required, SimpliGov solved a number of challenges for governments in a year where time was in short supply and needs across government were as widely varying as the constituents they serviced. The was one of the key reasons that SimpliGov was named to the GovTech100 for the second year in a row.

The GovTech 100 is an annual list compiled and published by Government Technology as a compendium of 100 companies focused on, making a difference in, and selling to state and local government agencies across the United States.

See the entire list here:http://www.govtech.com/100. The GovTech 100 will be featured in the January/February issue of Government Technology magazine.

About Us:

SimpliGov is the leading government workflow automation, secure digital forms and electronic signature platform. SimpliGov empowers state and local governments to automate manual, repetitive workflows, accelerate and optimize business processes, and improve experiences for both employees and constituents. SimpliGov easily integrates with existing system infrastructure, and the no-code intuitive platform includes SimpliSign, the e-signature solution thats purpose-built for the government from SimpliGov.
South Florida voters will be asked to approve a property tax this year to avoid major cuts in teacher pay and safety initiatives enacted since the Parkland tragedy.

In Broward County, this could mean an average tax increase of $150 for the average homeowner if voters say yes in the August primary. Palm Beach County voters will be asked during the November general election to continue an existing tax. Details for Miami-Dade werent available.

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The tax would be a renewal or expansion of a property tax approved in 2018, during a time of heightened concern over school safety and teacher retention.

[ RELATED: Broward teachers, district agree to $2,000 bonus and salary increases in 2021-2022 school year ]

School districts wanted money to put more police officers, security guards and mental health counselors in schools after a troubled former student killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland on Valentines Day in 2018.

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That same year, teacher discontent nationwide over pay and safety was growing, with teachers in some states going on strike.

So all three South Florida counties, as well as many other districts, asked voters to approve referendums to raise taxes. The money paid for teacher supplements and security personnel in all three counties and mental health counselors in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Palm Beach County also uses a portion of its tax to pay for art and music teacher positions.

[ FROM 2018: Broward voters approve property tax for teacher raises, security ]

Under state law, the money only lasts for four years, unless voters approve the tax again in a new referendum.

Its important for the community to know if the referendum were to go away, all these individual [allocations] would go away, teacher supplements, safety and security and mental health, said John Sullivan, legislative liaison for Broward schools.

A Broward sheriff's deputy, in red, trains students, wearing yellow shirts, during an armed guardian program July 30, 2018, at the firing range in Markham Park in Sunrise. (Joe Cavaretta / Sun Sentinel)

The school district has been widely criticized for how it executed a 2014 referendum for school renovations. But Sullivan said the district has spent the 2018 money as promised.

The community can see the impact of their investment, Sullivan said. The security presence in schools has been greatly enhanced.

[ FROM 2020: Broward teachers allege waste in district ]

Broward voters agreed four years ago to levy $50 on every $100,000 worth of assessed property, but the School Board now wants to raise that to $100. That would be an increase from $150 to $300 for the owner of a $325,000 home.

If voters fail to pass the tax increase, that same homeowner would pay $150 less.

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Broward school officials say a major reason a higher tax is needed is because of a law passed by the Legislature in 2019 that requires school districts to share referendum dollars with charter schools. About 20% of Broward students attend charter schools, and Broward would have to share $23 million if it asked voters for the same tax as last time.

[ RELATED: Palm Beach County voters approve tax increase to improve schools. ]

Palm Beach County is actually not affected by this law. Charter schools sued that school district to receive a share of its 2018 referendum dollars and won.

We are looking to renew the referendum. We arent seeking an increase, Palm Beach County Superintendent Mike Burke said. Charter schools represent 11% of our enrollment, and weve already been forced to start sharing that money. Weve been forced to work them into our budget.

He said the cuts were offset some by rising property values.

Palm Beach Countys tax of $100 per $100,000 of assessed property is twice the $50 that Broward levies. Miami-Dade homeowners pay $75.

[ FROM 2020: DeSantis signs bill to raise starting teacher pay to $47,500. ]

The higher tax has enabled the other districts to offer larger supplements.

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Palm Beach County pays veteran teachers supplements of up to $10,000 and Miami-Dade $18,5000. Browards supplements were generally $8,000 or less with a few high-paid teachers getting more.

We need to be competitive with our surrounding districts and compensate out teachers appropriately, School Board member Lori Alhadeff said.

The money also pays for bonuses for teacher aides, bus drivers and cafeteria workers. Several School Board members say they would like to expand that to other employees who work at schools, including custodians, clerical and administrators, although no decisions have been made yet.

Anna Fusco, president of the Broward Teachers Union, said the money from the 2018 referendum has helped, but it still needs to be better and more competitive.

But the bonuses have caused some friction among teachers. The union negotiated the allocations, and while some veteran teachers got supplements of $8,000 or more, teachers hired in the last decade were given less than $2,000.

[ RELATED: Charter schools to collect at least $45 million in tax dollars after court win ]

Waldo Jude Mirambeau, a teacher at McArthur High in Hollywood, said he only receives $71 a paycheck, while some higher-paid teachers are getting closer to $500, which he finds disheartening.

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He said he unsuccessfully tried to persuade the union and School Board to give more money to teachers with less seniority, who are struggling with the rising cost of living in South Florida.

Leaders from Broward Teachers Union, which negotiated the supplements, have argued many veteran teachers were promised raises years ago that they never got when the district eliminated guaranteed pay raises for experience.

Union leaders also say newer teachers, some who had been making less than $44,000, were all raised to a minimum salary of $47,500 due to a recent state law.

[ RELATED: Were facing heftier property taxes this year. Here are some useful tips for paying. ]

Still, Mirambeau said hes reluctant to approve this years referendum.

Im a homeowner. I have to pay those taxes, he said. Im getting $72 a paycheck, which is barely covering my union dues. Id rather my taxes not go up.

School Board members say they hope with an increased tax, all teachers will get a significant boost to their salaries.

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If this were not to pass, its a lot of money thats going to our teachers that would greatly impact them, School Board Chairwoman Laurie Rich Levinson said.
Solar One is a leader in building a sustainable New York City for future generations.

Solar One is pleased to announce the appointment of Stephen Levin as Chief Executive Officer. Stephen joins Solar One after 12 years as a member of the New York City Council for District 33, serving neighborhoods of Brooklyn including Greenpoint, parts of Williamsburg, Vinegar Hill, Dumbo, Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, Boerum Hill, and parts of Bedford-Stuyvesant.

As an award-winning New York City nonprofit, Solar One is dedicated to sustainability and resiliency in urban neighborhoods and delivers a wide array of programming providing environmental education services to diverse program participants. Solar One welcomes Stephen to lead the organization in its next phase of growth, building on a strong financial foundation, highly regarded programs, strong partnerships with government agencies and community partners.

During his tenure as a Councilmember, and as Chair of the New York City Councils General Welfare Committee, Stephen focused on ensuring homeless families and individuals have access for permanent housing and guaranteeing long term support for those in the foster care system. During his tenure, Councilmember Levin served on multiple committees including the Environmental Protection, Land Use, Cultural Affairs, Education, and Transportation committees, as well as the Land Use Subcommittee on Landmarks and Public Siting.

Among other accomplishments, Stephen negotiated multiple land use projects, expanded affordable housing, and increased access to open spaces. He was instrumental in the development of the 27-acre Bushwick Inlet Park in Williamsburg. He sponsored legislation to remove PCBs from NYC schools and cosponsored the Climate Mobilization Act, the largest climate solution put forth by any city in the world, consisting of a slate of climate laws designed to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions in New York City.

A graduate of Brown University, Stephen started his career in New York City as a community organizer in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, managing programs for lead safe houses and anti-predatory lending. Stephen later worked with the New York State Assembly for three years, with a focus on affordable housing.

Sara Queen, Chair of the Board of Solar One and Managing Director and Head of Real Estate Equity at MetLife Investment Management welcomes Stephen Levin as the new CEO. "Stephen's passion for the environment, leadership experience, and deep commitment working to improve communities makes him an excellent choice to lead Solar One. His time with the New York City Council uniquely qualifies him with great understanding of the imperatives of building more resilient communities and will guide him to utilize the many initiatives and programs of our organization to do so. Stephen, along with our talented and professional staff, will be opening our new Workforce Training Center and offices in 2022.

Keith Powers, New York City Councilmember for District 4 and one of Solar Ones City Council representatives, shares his support, saying "Congratulations to my friend and colleague Steve Levin! In the City Council, Steve has been a formidable partner for years and a proven champion on behalf of our citys environment. I look forward to continuing to work with him as he begins this new chapter.

I am thrilled to be joining the amazingly talented Solar One team, Stephen says. In order to confront the existential challenges of climate change, we must do our part in New York City to move to a sustainable future right here, and Solar One has been at the forefront of this movement for years. The Green Design Lab is bringing experiential learning around green technology to thousands of New York City K-12 students. The Green Workforce program has delivered green construction, operation and maintenance skills and certifications to hundreds of New Yorkers per year, which will be essential in the years to come. Here Comes Solar is performing the integral job of establishing affordable solar power in buildings and communities across New York City and continues to grow. Through the NYC Retrofit Accelerator and NYSERDA Clean Energy Programs, Solar One is partnering with New York City and New York State to bring new renewable energy strategies to our city, and through the stewardship of Stuyvesant Cove Park, Solar One is putting sustainable practices in action. Across all these program areas, Solar One is a leader in building a sustainable New York City for future generations, and I salute Chris Collins for his years of service in building and leading this wonderful organization. The future at Solar One is bright and I am so excited to join this effort.

Stephen will provide critical leadership as the organization supports a transition to clean energy and creates a more sustainable urban environment through skills and technology. Stephen will lead in the dynamic partnership Solar One has with the Economic Development Corporation, facilitating the stewardship of Stuyvesant Cove Park on the East River below 23rd Street, and a new Solar One Environmental Education Center to be built at the park in the near future, establishing an accessible solar-powered facility providing programming for all New Yorkers.

About Solar One

Solar One is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization whose mission is to design and deliver innovative education, training, and technical assistance that fosters sustainability and resiliency in diverse urban environments. We empower learning that changes the way people think about energy, sustainability, and resilience by engaging and educating a diverse set of stakeholders and beneficiaries. Our programs help individuals and communities explore new ways of living and working that are more adaptive to a changing world. Visit our website at http://www.solar1.org

Contact: Michael Barry, Communications Manager, Solar One

barry@solar1.org (646) 741-5225
This is a firm that values hard work and getting results just as much as they value their attorneys and their families.

Shipkevich, PLLC, a rapidly growing law firm specializing in capital markets, foreign exchange, debt relief and digital currency law is thrilled to announce the expansion of their Miami office with the addition of Senior Attorney, Melanie Trogolo.

Ms. Trogolo is a known litigator whose practice focuses on alternative dispute resolution, transactional matters in the global financial, Fintech, debt relief, emerging digital currency sectors, and white-collar crime.

Prior to joining the Firm, Ms. Trogolo represented a broad range of clients ranging from individuals involved in state and federal crimes, all the way to defending hospitals, physicians, and one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the United States in liability matters.

I am overjoyed to be joining this talented team of attorneys in the firms quickly expanding Miami office. Under the leadership of our branch partner Krystina Endara, my goal is to continue to grow this wonderful firm and to focus on taking our white-collar crime practice to a national level, said Ms. Trogolo.

Ms. Trogolos extensive experience within a broad range of practice areas makes her a well-rounded attorney who is capable of handling even the most unique and complex legal matters. Notably, Ms. Trogolo has tried over 10 jury trials to verdict and defended thousands of satisfied clients.

Felix Shipkevich recognizes the evolving nature of todays law firms and has been a pioneer in modernizing the way firms operate and treat their clients and attorneys, said Ms. Trogolo.

Ms. Trogolo is the latest attorney to join Shipkevich PLLCs Flexibility & Family First Initiative which gives attorneys the flexibility to work when and wherever they prefer.

The reality for the majority of females in this profession is that they are forced to choose between succeeding in their career or at home if they choose to have a family. As a single mother, I would not be able to achieve what I am able to in my career and at home without the flexibility that our firm provides. This is a firm that values hard work and getting results just as much as they value their attorneys and their families, said Ms. Trogolo.

Ms. Trogolo is fluent in both English and Spanish.

Shipkevich PLLC is a hyper-growth, forward thinking law practice with a team of world-class, diverse professionals relentlessly surpassing the outdated model of a traditional law firm.
Harbor Village is a drug and alcohol rehab center in Miami, Florida It is an honor to be among the first addiction treatment facilities to receive this distinction from our partners at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida. Harbor Village has been dedicated to providing comprehensive and effective treatment to our clients since the day our doors opened.

To help patients suffering from a substance use disorder find facilities that deliver quality treatment and care, BCBSFL recognizes Harbor Village as one of the first facilities to receive the Blue Distinction Center for Substance Use Treatment and Recovery (BDC Substance Use Treatment and Recovery) designation  a new designation under the Blue Distinction Specialty Care program.

Blue Distinction Centers are nationally designated facilities that show a commitment to delivering improved patient safety and better health outcomes, based on objective measures that were developed with input from the community and leading accreditation and quality organizations.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 130 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose, which highlights the seriousness of the opioid epidemic and how critical it is for patients to receive comprehensive, meaningful care. The BDC Substance Use Treatment and Recovery program requires designated facilities to deliver coordinated multidisciplinary care to patients and provide timely access to quality medical and psychosocial care in all phases of treatment. Designated facilities must also offer medication-assisted treatment (MAT)  a way to treat opioid addiction that includes a medication component and behavioral therapy.

Michael Boland, Chief Operating Officer at Harbor Village states:

It is an honor to be among the first addiction treatment facilities to receive this distinction from our partners at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida. Harbor Village has been dedicated to providing comprehensive and effective treatment to our clients since the day our doors opened. We maintain that commitment through our person-first approach to care and individualized treatment plans. In a recent study, 50 percent of our clients reported a decrease in anxiety while nearly 65 percent noted a decrease in depression -- this is something we are extremely proud of. Our rehab programs offer the full continuum of behavioral health services for clients at all stages of the recovery process. As a Blue Distinction Center for Substance Use Treatment and Recovery, Harbor Village furthers its mission to provide accessible, reliable, and effective behavioral health treatment options nationwide for any moment, in anyones recovery journey. We are also proud to offer BCBS of FL members our unmatched, industry-leading 60 plus 60 treatment guarantee.

Since 2006, the Blue Distinction Specialty Care program has helped patients find quality specialty care in the areas of bariatric surgery, cancer care, cardiac care, cellular immunotherapy, fertility care, gene therapy, knee and hip replacements, maternity care, spine surgery, substance use treatment and recovery, and transplants, while encouraging health care professionals to improve the care they deliver. Research for many programs shows that, compared to other providers, those designated as Blue Distinction Centers demonstrate better quality and improved outcomes for patients.

For more information about the program and for a complete listing of the designated facilities, visit http://www.bcbs.com/bluedistinction.

About Harbor Village

Harbor Village is a leading Joint Commission accredited rehab center in Miami, FL providing evidence-based, outcome driven, and affordable addiction treatment. With a full continuum including medical detoxification, inpatient and outpatient programs, we can offer the right level of care at the right time for adults struggling with substance use and co-occurring mental health disorders. Harbor Village is a preferred and trusted provider with insurance companies who value our clinical excellence and remarkable results. We are committed to the ongoing success of our clients, offering a treatment guarantee, extensive aftercare planning services, and lifelong alumni support to ensure all clients continue to grow and thrive beyond treatment completion. For more information, visit our website at http://www.harborvillageflorida.com.

About Blue Cross Blue Shield Association

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is a national federation of 36 independent, community-based and locally operated Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies that collectively provide health care coverage for one in three Americans. BCBSA provides health care insights through Blue Cross Blue Shield, The Health of America Report series and the national BCBS Health IndexSM. For more information on BCBSA and its member companies, please visit BCBS.com. We also encourage you to connect with us on Facebook, check out our videos on YouTube and follow us on Twitter.

About Blue Distinction Centers

Blue Distinction Centers (BDC) met overall quality measures, developed with input from the medical community. A Local Blue Plan may require additional criteria for providers located in its own service area; for details, contact your Local Blue Plan. Blue Distinction Centers+ (BDC+) also met cost measures that address consumers need for affordable healthcare. Each providers cost of care is evaluated using data from its Local Blue Plan. Providers in CA, ID, NY, PA, and WA may lie in two Local Blue Plans areas, resulting in two evaluations for cost of care; and their own Local Blue Plans decide whether one or both cost of care evaluation(s) must meet BDC+ national criteria. National criteria for BDC and BDC+ are displayed on http://www.bcbs.com. Individual outcomes may vary. For details on a providers in-network status or your own policys coverage, contact your Local Blue Plan and ask your provider before making an appointment. Neither Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association nor any Blue Plans are responsible for non-covered charges or other losses or damages resulting from Blue Distinction or other provider finder information or care received from Blue Distinction or other providers.
The National Director of Accounts George Fox is pleased to announce that RDS Services, LLC has recovered more than $2,172,886 in additional Federal Retiree Drug Subsidies for the City of Boston. This Federal Subsidy recovery represents a 12.32% increase in the prior Federal funding received by the City of Boston. Because the recovered funds go directly into the City of Boston General Fund, critical fiscal supports are enhanced for city-wide staffing and taxpayers benefit directly from the subsidy recovery.

In 2003, the United States Congress passed the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA 2003) and with it, the Retiree Drug Subsidy. The MMA 2003 legislation enabled important financial support to municipal governments and the retiree benefit obligations. Specifically, the law contained an unprecedented effort in Federal subsidy funding to support legacy obligation of municipal governments, Unions and Enterprise employers to fund Retiree Drug benefits, or what is commonly known as Part D.

The City of Boston provides Part D drug benefits to thousands of retirees and relies upon the Federal Retiree Drug Subsidy to offset a large portion of the drug benefit expenditure. In early 2019, the City of Boston employee benefits administrators took the important step of having a thorough audit conducted of the Federal Retiree Drug Subsidy that was being received by the City. The audit serves the best interest of the taxpayers of the City of Boston and illuminates the commitment of the City of Bostons administration to their fiduciary responsibilities on behalf of the people.

The City of Boston engaged RDS Services, LLC, after an extensive and in-depth review of the several vendors who have the capabilities to conduct audits of the Retiree Drug Subsidy. The superior enlargement and recovery capabilities of RDS Services, LLC, in comparison to other pseudo vendors, has enabled the City of Boston to recover more than $2,172,886 in new Federal Retiree Drug Subsidy funding in 2020. Only RDS Services, LLC can conduct the Retiree Drug Subsidy audit of all eligible plan years, because of the superior data management technology, proprietary analytical software capabilities and fully documented subsidy enlargement and recovery performance.

The RDS Services, LLC National Director of Accounts George Fox, in discussing the results of the City of Bostons Retiree Drug Subsidy Reopening on a recent innovation in benefits and Human Resources best practices call stated that:

Only because Director of Benefits, her Administration, and the Human Resources Department having taken the action of reviewing the prior years of Federal subsidies by RDS Services, LLC, are the taxpayers of the City of Boston being optimally supported by the Retiree Drug Subsidy program. The City of Boston administrative leadership should be praised for their actions of engaging with RDS Services, LLC and commended for their leadership that made this significant recovery of additional Federal funds possible. (George Fox, 2020)

As clearly demonstrated by the recent Retiree Drug Subsidy enlargement and recovery for the City of Boston, Only RDS Services, LLC superior recovery systems, specifically the Benchmark 360 analysis has the ability to obtain millions of additional dollars in Federal subsidy payments for plan sponsors across the country. The enlargement and recovery of the additional federal funds significantly reduces the drug cost structure of retiree and active employee prescription drug plans. With the potential of lowering the annual cost of drug plans by 10% to 50% of more, only RDS Services, LLC can deliver the critical advantages of the Federal Governments Retiree Drug Subsidy program.

Moreover, only RDS Services, LLC can provide the exclusive Enhanced Care Management Program ECMP which adds a Guaranteed 15% in Federal subsidies to retiree plan sponsors Retiree Drug Subsidy funding and can now offset up to 43% of the cost of providing retiree drug benefits.

To find out more, call the RDS Services, LLC National Sales Director, George Fox at (516) 361-9404 or email gfox@rdsservices.us Visit our webpage at http://www.rdsservices.us

RDS Services, LLC is the preeminent Federal Retiree Drug Subsidy Recovery Specialist in the nation with offices based in Troy, Michigan and New York City, New York. To request your plans Benchmark 360 report on how much additional drug subsidy your retiree plan is due, or RDS Effect, RDS Plan 360 report, or any of the other reports available from RDS Services, LLC, please call to speak with George Fox, National Sales Director or visit http://www.RDSServices.us for more information. RDS Services, LLC was founded by Mark Manquen, a Certified Public Accountant who also holds a Master of Science in Taxation.

Inquires: Patty Kanaras, Director of HR (248) 878- 2162 http://www.rdsservices.us

RDS Services, LLC

50 West Big Beaver, Suite 220

Troy MI 48084

(516) 361-9404

gfox@rdsservices.us
Harri, the revolutionary Human Capital Management platform serving over 20,000 restaurant and hotel locations and 4 million hospitality employees globally, today announced the appointment of Wendy Harkness as Chief Compliance Officer.

Wendy brings broad and deep experience across the compliance, legal, and HR landscape, most recently serving as the Chief Administrative Officer & General Counsel for Restaurant Growth Services, where she led the national legal, risk, and HR teams.

As Harris Chief Compliance Officer, Wendy will lead the advancement of Harris industry-leading Workforce Compliance Platform supporting a rapidly expanding community of global enterprise clients, across multiple compliance functions including wage & hour, payroll, and training.

Rapid growth in the Harri Compliance Platform over the course of 2021 and early 22 has significantly expanded functionality, including configurable rules engines for all labor markets at a federal, state, and local level across the US and UK. Additional markets across Europe will follow.

Additionally, as part of a multi-million dollar investment in AI-powered analytics, Wendy will be leading the development of Harris Predictive Compliance products. This first-in-market suite of solutions allows HR, legal, finance, and operations executives to better monitor, mitigate, and plan for employee risk across their organization. "Compliance can be tricky, time-consuming, and expensive for businesses - especially when mistakes are made. As the executive/attorney responsible for compliance at several companies throughout my career, I know first-hand how numerous, far-reaching, and ever-changing employment regulations are, said Wendy Harkness, incoming Chief Compliance Officer at Harri, I was first introduced to Harri as a prospective client and was incredibly impressed with the compliance products available, so much so that I wanted to be a part of the cutting-edge advancement in Harri's suite of products and services. There's simply no comparison in the current marketplace. I'm delighted to be on team Harri!"

Were thrilled to welcome yet another highly talented individual with a proven track record of success to our executive team. Wendys extensive legal and restaurant compliance experience will be an invaluable resource as we continue the rapid expansion of our employee experience offerings, said Luke Fryer, Founder & CEO at Harri. Bringing Wendy on board presents a unique opportunity to advance our deep commitment to actionable and relevant compliance products, further strengthening our market advantage."

Harri recently announced a $30M growth funding round led by Golub Capital. During this pivotal period, Wendys leadership will greatly contribute to Harris goal of providing the best-in-class labor solutions to service-driven businesses.

For more information, please visit http://www.harri.com

About Harri

Harri is a Verticalized HCM platform that helps service-driven businesses build, manage, and engage their teams. Interconnecting the entire employee journey, the Workforce Operating System provides integrated solutions for talent acquisition, onboarding, hiring, employment branding, applicant tracking, scheduling, time & attendance, communications, compliance, analytics, and much more. With 300+ enterprise customers, Harri is a best-in-class verticalized platform helping organizations to solve labor-related challenges and drive optimal business performance across the globe.
Start every year with Olympia LePoint's science-based, daily planning system and picture calendar designed for creating your best future yet.

Designed by rocket scientist and author Olympia LePoint, the Quantum Deciding Planner is a new, science-based daily planning system that helps leaders create the future they want. The 12-month planner can be started in any month, and the system inspires executives to create their best calendar year. This science-backed system reveals 6 key decisions that empower you to reprogram your brain to invest into your core values and priorities. In doing so, you create the foundation for innovative results. Starting in January 2022, the Quantum Deciding Planner is updated and released yearly.

Olympia LePoint gives TED-like virtual talks on how to use this new Quantum Deciding Planner system which has 6 decision blocks.

1. LP = LIFE PURPOSE (Values)

2. ID = IDENTITY (Branding)

3. IT = INTENT (Prioritizing)

4. LN = LEARNING (Gathering Data)

5. RS = RESOURCES (Building)

6. LVT = LOVE IN TIME (Task Success)

Leaders create their future success with Olympia LePoints decision-making science called "Quantum Deciding" explained in her third book, Answers Unleashed II: The Science of Attracting What You Want. The Quantum Deciding Planner takes this knowledge and activates success with a 3-step planning system. For each month, the planner contains future-thinking prompts, beautiful calendar pictures of Olympia LePoint accompanied with journaling exercises for leaders to reach their goals. Professionals use this system for personal success. Organizations use this system for company-wide leadership and innovation. The Quantum Deciding Planner is based on Olympia LePoints latest book and science discovery. Olympia LePoint and her book are featured on NBC News, CBS News, ABC News, CW News, FOX News, Cheddar News, NBC Peacock, in Newsweek, USA Today, Amazon Prime, and The Doctors TV talk show.

Download the Quantum Deciding Planner starting January 11, 2022 on AnswersUnleashed.com/QuantumDecidingPlanner. View more information on AnswersUnleashed.com/ScienceNews

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ABOUT OLYMPIA LEPOINT

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Hailed the "New Einstein" by her fans, and named the "Modern Day Hidden Figure" by People Magazine, Olympia LePoint is an award-winning rocket scientist, author and TED speaker seen by over 26 Million viewers. She gives the TED talk "Reprogramming Your Brain to Overcome Fear" which has gained more than 1 Million views. Her Impact Theory episode and related clips has more than 2 Million views. LePoint helped launch 28 NASA Space Shuttle missions into space. Today, LePoint's Mission Control Room desk is a science exhibit at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. In her youth, she overcame severe poverty, and failing math scores by reprogramming her brain, which led her to graduate Top 5 from a 6,500 graduating class with advanced degrees in Mathematics from California State University Northridge.

In 2021, she was featured on numerous TV news programs and in Newsweek, Atlanta Black Star, and USA Today news. As a guest space flight expert, LePoint appears on numerous CBS News and Cheddar News segments describing the science in Jeff Bezos Blue Origin, Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic and Elon Musks SpaceX commercial space flights. On NBC Peacock, LePoint is recognized as a leader like the late, award-winning NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson. Olympia LePoint and her books have appeared on NBC News, CBS News, ABC News, PBS, CW News, FOX News, Cheddar News, Amazon Prime Video, NBC Peacock, The Doctors TV talk show and Impact Theory. She explains science and the contents from her books Mathaphobia: How You Can Overcome Your Math Fears and Become a Rocket Scientist; Answers Unleashed: The Science of Unleashing Your Brains Power; and Answers Unleashed II: The Science of Attracting What You Want. Read more about her amazing story on OlympiaLePoint.com.
WHEN TO RUN, BORN SCARED By Stephanie King I refused to give up, and my childhood is now a testament to the strength, courage, and success that I have made for myself today, devoid of any further fears.

Having grown up in an unsafe and unpredictable household with an abusive father and equally violent sister, Stephanie King describes herself as being born scared. However, as detailed in her debut memoir, WHEN TO RUN, BORN SCARED, it was through these experiences that she sharpened her instincts and forged an indominable will to survive.

WHEN TO RUN, BORN SCARED is the first in a series about Kings life, offering a window into the early experiences that shaped her lifes trajectory. She begins by recounting the story of how her parents met, her father a deceptively charming man with sociopathic characteristics and her mother a sweet and loving woman who tried her hardest to protect her daughters. King chronicles the near-constant terror and horror both she suffered from infancy until early adolescence when she escaped home and sought refuge into the streets of downtown Toronto, and into a life so many feared, and few knew how to survive.

While communal life was a better alternative than her fathers wrath, it also exposed her to drugs, alcohol, sexual predators, and the overdosed deaths of friends she couldnt escape from. Despite the continual trauma she endured, King remained focused on improving her circumstances by any means necessary. She proudly returned to finish school, acquired her own apartment, and fought to stay alive to pave her own success in the world where all the odds were stacked against her.

In writing WHEN TO RUN, BORN SCARED, King reminds readers that tenacity and courage are the most powerful resources that anyone can have at their disposal. Ultimately her book offers much-needed hope to anyone in a similar situation and demonstrates that, even if the bad parts are overwhelming, it is possible to find happiness, accomplishments, and a productive place in society. Although the fight was unfortunately rough, its not the journey, it wasn't the journey, but the destination to survive and succeed.

I was a very young child, alone to fight in a world I had no idea how to fight, but something inside of me knew I had to survive or die trying, wrote King in the books prologue. I refused to give up, and my childhood is now a testament to the strength, courage, and success that I have made for myself today, devoid of any further fears.

WHEN TO RUN, BORN SCARED

By Stephanie King

ISBN: 9781665506823 (softcover); 9781665506830 (electronic)

Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and AuthorHouse

About the author

Stephanie King is an author and abuse survivor who uses her stories to inspire others to tap into their inner strength and resilience and overcome the unthinkable. WHEN TO RUN, BORN SCARED is the first book in a three-part series about her life.

Review Copies & Interview Requests:

LAVIDGE  Phoenix

Becca Armentrout

480-998-2600

barmentrout@lavidge.com
Founded in 1997 by Mark Lacy and Scott Barrett in Fort Worth Texas, Benchmark Research now spans 8 cities within 3 states and is home to over 150+ employees. Since Benchmarks incipience, the team has conducted more than 1,200 trials with 50,000+ participants in partnership with the private and public sectors at clinics located in California, Louisiana and Texas. It is an astonishing track record of success, which is why the team has earned a reputation of excellence over the years.

In 2004, when the team first moved into vaccine research, the field was not as desirable in the research industry. It was the vision of CEO Mark Lacy that initiated the team to make the decision to dive into these uncharted territories and make the best-in-class processes possible, playing a crucial role in what would become the most important therapeutic area in the industry. While Benchmark leaped into vaccine research, they continued building experience in device and diagnostic trials targeting a wide range of therapeutic areas.

The world of clinical research has never been more interesting, with rapid developments happening by the day, the team at Benchmark Research have played a crucial role in studies over the last quarter decade. The experience and expertise Benchmark has earned is best reflected in the over 600+ vaccine trials and almost 100 device and diagnostic trials they have conducted. Last year, Benchmark has conducted a wide variety of preventative vaccine and prophylactic antibody studies for COVID-19, Anthrax, Zika, CMV, hMPV/PIV3, RSV, Flu, C. Diff, E. Coli, Meningitis & Pneumococcal.

Benchmark Researchs superior team of motivated and focused investigators are largely part of the reason behind Benchmark Researchs success in the last 25 years. Across leadership, Doctors, CCRCs, Site Directors and more the team is composed of experts in the field which is why Benchmark employees have been awarded Clinical Researcher of the Year five times in eight years. The teams sites are seen as hubs of leading research in a variety of different fields. Over the years, Benchmark has been awarded by ACRP, INC Research, PharmaVoice Magazine, PharmaTimes, Pfizer, and many others and continues to receive global recognition for our quality and innovation in the field. In 2019 Benchmark received the greatest accolades in World Vaccine Congress history having become the largest vaccine or runner up in World Vaccine Award history.

While they have achieved some incredible feats over the years, the spirit of the team at Benchmark never rests and they are always looking to the next big venture. One of which is M.A.C.R.O. (Minorities Advancing Clinical Research Operation), which revolves around bringing more minorities into clinical trials and creating more trust and transparency.

As we reflect and celebrate the last 25 years as a company, I am reminded of how much we have achieved. Benchmark will continue to do great things in the future and I feel blessed to be the CEO and Founder of such an incredible company, and at the heart of it there are even more incredible people who encompass it. - Mark Lacy, CEO and Founder
CAN Community Health announces the appointment of veteran pharmaceutical industry executive Marlon Pittman to its Board of Directors.

Mr. Pittman has 30 years of sales and market development experience in the pharmaceutical industry with expertise in the HIV healthcare and 340B pharmacy segments. From 2009 to 2018 he led the ViiV Healthcare sales team at GlaxoSmithKline, participating in the launch of several HIV medications, including Tivicay, Triumeq, and Juluca.

In 2019 Mr. Pittman served as Business Development Director for CAN Community Health, assisting with the nonprofits expansion into the Southern and Western United States. He currently serves as Sales Vice President for New Jersey-based Aquestive Therapeutics.

Jackie Rogers, Chairwoman of the CAN Board of Directors, said, Marlons clearly demonstrated experience in the medical and pharmaceutical industries has been invaluable in fortifying our ongoing expansion into new communities that have been identified as HIV hot spots. His ability to communicate clearly with subject matter experts in 340B practices is helping us refine patient care strategies. Were delighted to welcome him to the Board.

About CAN Community Health:

CAN Community Health (CAN) is a not-for-profit, community-based organization with clinics in Florida, Arizona, New Jersey, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. CAN provides medical, pharmacy, dental, case management, mental health, and comprehensive prevention and services such as nPEP, PrEP, and education. CAN also provides screening and treatment for Hepatitis C and STDs, as well as transgender health services.

CAN provides services through Ryan White grants, STD prevention funding and the 340B Federal Drug Discount Program, which is a vital lifeline for safety-net providers caring for vulnerable communities, including HIV/AIDS providers participating in the Ryan White and STD programs. 340B covered entities provide high quality, accessible and affordable health care regardless of patients ability to pay. The 340B program allows CAN to stretch resources and provide a full continuum of care to underserved and uninsured patients, including people living with HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C.

With access to programs like these, CAN is able to provide quality care, increase viral suppression, lower rates of STD/Hep C infections and improve quality of life in communities, and continues to seek collaborative relations with local, state and national partners to remove treatment barriers for all individuals in care.
While Canada does promote ease of application for potential immigrants, it can still be overwhelming for our clients to navigate a system they are not familiar with.

As 2021 came to an end, PM Justin Trudeau released his mandate letters guiding Canadas immigration priorities for the coming year. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada has faced a backlog of applications for permanent residency. Trudeaus instructions for ministers outlined his goals to reduce this backlog and enable potential immigrants to settle in Canada through new and more efficient pathways.

Canadian immigration consultancy firm CIXA welcomes these changes and offers its immigration assistance services to new applicants. Trudeau plans to create a new Municipal Nominee Program, and to introduce additional immigration express pathways for international students and temporary foreign workers, stated Ade Babaniji, a partner/co-founder at CIXA. This shows that Canada continues to be a beacon of progressive immigration policy in a world where others have closed their doors.

Other immigration policy goals included in the mandate letters were as follows:



Application processing times will be reduced.

Family reunification applicants will soon be allowed to apply electronically.

Canadian citizenship fees will be waived.

Canada aims to resettle 40,000 Afghan refugees within their borders.

Pilot programs to identify and regularize undocumented workers will be extended.

We think that these changes are a net positive for both Canada as a whole and potential immigrants to Canada, continued Ade Babaniji. Canada continues to experience a labour shortage, which presents opportunities for foreign workers to resettle in Canada, bringing with them much-needed skills. Trudeaus continued policy of welcoming these skilled workers promotes Canadian economic growth and innovation.

Over the coming months, Canadas new immigration minister Sean Fraser and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), will be tasked with the implementation of these changes. This will affect both federal immigration policies and provincial ones, as the federal government has the power to make changes to both.

Due to Canadas ageing population, the country has been experiencing a labour shortage for more than a decade. 23% of the working population will be over 64 by 2024, so this trend is expected to continue. There are currently more than 870,000 vacant jobs in Canada, across industries such as healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, and construction. The government aims to fill this gap by continuing to encourage skilled immigrants to resettle in Canada.

Under Trudeaus leadership, immigration targets in previous years for new arrivals were between 300,000  400,000 arrivals per year. In 2022, Canadas PM plans to increase this to 411,000. CIXA believes that this will lead to an increase in demand for their immigration consultancy services.

While Canada does promote ease of application for potential immigrants, it can still be overwhelming for our clients to navigate a system they are not familiar with, said Ade Babaniji. This is especially true for businesses that need to make multiple applications each year. Our service aims to streamline the process for our clients.

Due to current trends, CIXA expects to expand their business capacity in 2022, enabling them to take on more clients than in previous years.

For more information about CIXA, you can visit cixa.ca or contact the company on +1-647-370-CIXA.

About CIXA:

CIXA (a Cantova Immigration Company) is a boutique immigration consultancy that aims to streamline the immigration application process for clients and increase their chances of entry clearance. CIXA delivers services for clients of every scale including solo applicants, small, medium, and large businesses, as well as companies with in-house immigration operations. As part of the process, CIXA maps out immigration case plans against client goals and credentials, reviews applications, and assists with any immigration queries.
Florida candidates increasingly remind contributors they can write checks in unlimited amounts, which makes a total mockery of contribution limits to campaigns. Senate President Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby, a candidate for agriculture commissioner, sent this invitation to an event in November. (Special to the Sun Sentinel)

Lobbyists in Tallahassee call it the shakedown.

In the days before the start of the annual legislative session, lawmakers are filling lobbyists inboxes with texts, calls and emails begging for money. The pleas intensify because rules prohibit soliciting or accepting money during the 60-day session that begins Tuesday, Jan. 11.

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At a time when many Floridians struggle with the costs of housing, insurance, food and other necessities, their elected representatives and senators can literally dine at the trough of well-heeled political donors. Its unethical. Its unseemly. Its also unlimited  and it must end.

State law prohibits lobbyists and their clients from buying a meal for a legislator, and the law caps individual hard money contributions to campaigns at $1,000 per election, or $3,000 for statewide candidates such as governor. Those limits have lost all meaning. A grotesque loophole allows officeholders to also operate political committees, or PCs, that can accept soft money, in any amount. They operate as personal slush funds, and the money can be spent on polling, consultants, travel, meals, charity events, youth sports, legal fees  you name it.

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The skys the limit. The result is an open sewer of special interest influence with no boundaries.

Individual elected officials control tens of millions of dollars from a spigot thats a whos who of influence: U.S. Sugar, Seminole Tribe of Florida, Florida Blue, GEO Group, Publix, Walmart, Florida Power & Light, labor unions, insurance companies, Big Tobacco, car dealers, casinos, HMOs and others. The largest political committee, Friends of Ron DeSantis, has raised $111 million and has $67 million in the bank nearly a year before the 2022 election.

Both parties to blame

Its legal. Its obscene. Both political parties are guilty.

Raising money is obviously necessary in Americas political system, but it should be done with reasonable contribution limits and maximum transparency. Floridas Capitol is like a house of ill repute where everybody knows whats going on but nobody will say or do anything about it.

Senate President Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby, opens a special session on gambling, Tuesday, May 18, 2021, in Tallahassee. (Steve Cannon/AP)

Senate President Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby, is listed as having ties to six political committees that have raised more than $28 million combined, according to state records. The money helped preserve the Republican Senate majority in recent elections and will aid Simpsons campaign for statewide office next fall.

U.S. Sugar has contributed at least $650,000 to Simpsons biggest committee, Jobs for Florida, which is helping him chase his next job as state agriculture commissioner. If Simpson wins the Cabinet post, does anyone doubt whose side he will be on when Big Sugars interests are at stake?

FPL has written multiple checks totaling nearly $500,000 to Simpsons committee. The utility needs Senate goodwill more than ever amid persistent and troubling questions over its well-documented role in a ghost candidate scheme to rig election outcomes, which remains under criminal investigation. Simpsons office did not respond to two requests for pre-session interviews on this and other topics.

Worse, the unlimited cash cows perpetuate state-sanctioned money laundering. Committees make six-figure cash transfers between and among themselves to disguise the origins of influence. David Ramba, a lobbyist who keeps records for many PCs, has bluntly told us that the transfers are to make it more difficult for you guys [reporters] to figure it out.

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The result is a system far beyond the financial reach of most people and controlled by mega-donors looking out for themselves. Is it any wonder that Tallahassee pays so little attention to the real-life problems of real people?

That word: unlimited

This corrupting practice of lawmaker-controlled slush funds is so deeply ingrained into the system that political novices, running for the first time, are creating them. Dozens of PCs formed in 2021 alone, and they will keep proliferating. Even former lawmakers, long out of office, continue to live off the largesse they stockpiled when they were casting votes affecting special interests.

Fundraising come-ons routinely use the word unlimited on invitations, as Simpson did for a November event. In that month alone, the Friends of Wilton Simpson committee got 16 checks of $10,000 to $50,000 each, six of which were from other committees. His smallest November check was for $2,000.

Florida lawmakers could begin to clean up this sordid mess by taking three simple steps. They should immediately prohibit the practice of unlimited contributions to political committees, impose sensible limits on how much money any committee can contribute, and ban the untraceable money laundering of cash transfers between committees.

Sen. Joe Gruters of Sarasota, targeted by hidden money in a 2016 race, is the rare lawmaker who has tried repeatedly to restrict the money laundering. Even though Gruters also chairs the Republican Party of Florida, his proposal was resolutely ignored and could not even get a hearing in a Republican-controlled Senate in 2019 or 2020. Gruters tried to break the code, but his colleagues wouldnt let him.

Floridas campaign finance system is broken, and every legislator who benefits is responsible. Their collective shame is  whats the word?  unlimited.

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The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
Central PA 401(k), by Conrad Siegel Launches for Small Businesses Our new pooled employer plan enables businesses with under 70 employees to offer a 401(k) that is simple, flexible, affordable, and most importantly can help them compete for top talent.

Conrad Siegel, delivering comprehensive employee benefits and investment advisory services, today announced the launch of Central PA 401(k), by Conrad Siegel, the first Central Pa.-based pooled employer plan (PEP).

The SECURE Act, which became law on Jan. 1, 2020, created a new type of 401(k) called pooled employer plans and paved the way for Pooled Plan Providers to begin offering PEPs in 2021. These plans allow multiple small employers of any industry to join one single retirement plan rather than having to each start their own plan.

It can be hard for small businesses to attract and retain good employees without a benefits package, especially in todays competitive staffing environment, said Trevor Bare, FSA, Partner and Consulting Actuary at Conrad Siegel. But, starting a 401(k) can be expensive and time consuming for small businesses, putting it out of reach for most. Our new pooled employer plan enables businesses with under 70 employees to offer a 401(k) that is simple, flexible, affordable, and most importantly can help them compete for top talent. Conrad Siegel also serves as a fiduciary, meaning we will always act in the best interest of plan participants.

Central PA 401(k) is a turnkey retirement plan that is fully managed by Conrad Siegel. The plan is designed for small business budgets and is hands-off for business owners. Conrad Siegel handles the plan administration, recordkeeping, investment advisement, investment education, obtaining ERISA bond coverage and fiduciary oversight.

Additionally, the plan allows for employees to save in a variety of ways. Saving under the plan can be optional for employees and employers may choose their preferred level of employer contribution. Contribution options include safe harbor matching and profit sharing, and employees may make either traditional pre-tax or Roth contributions.

Central PA 401(k) is designed with the small business owner in mind, said Jim Kehr, CRSP, Director of Business Development at Conrad Siegel. Weve heard from so many local employers that they are stretched thin and have so many roles to fill that managing a retirement plan is not always feasible. Our pooled employer plan simplifies the process for business owners and provides a benefit to their employees.

Employees enrolled in Central PA 401(k) will receive online and personalized investment education to help them reach retirement goals and build a secure, comfortable future for themselves.

For more information on Central PA 401(k), by Conrad Siegel, visit centralpa401k.com.

About Conrad Siegel

Conrad Siegel is an employee benefit and investment advisory firm headquartered in Harrisburg, Pa. that provides customized retirement, healthcare benefit and investment planning solutions for businesses and individuals. The firm offers unbiased, fee-based services backed by careful attention to detail. Its investment advisors are independent of any financial institution and do not receive commissions, positioning them to make recommendations in their clients best interests. Conrad Siegel partners with its clients to serve as a comprehensive source for all employee benefit and investment advisory needs. For more information, please visit http://www.conradsiegel.com.

Investment Advisory Disclosure

All investment advisory services are provided through Conrad Siegel Investment Advisors, Inc., a fee-for- service investment adviser registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission serving as a fiduciary for its clients. Investing in securities involves the potential for gains and the risk of loss. Past performance may not be indicative of future results. Any testimonials do not refer, directly or indirectly, to Conrad Siegel Investment Advisors, Inc., or its investment advice, analysis or other advisory services.
Cannabis enthusiasts have a lot to be happy about as the beloved plant continues to make headway into the mainstream and an increasing number of states across the country decriminalize its sales, use and possession. Yet, even as cultural attitudes and legislation shift in favor of cannabis, thousands of Americans are still serving extended prison sentences for previous possession of the plant, even in states where marijuana is no longer criminalized. To lend a hand in correcting that injustice, Cheba Hut, the cannabis-themed sandwich concept with more than 45 shops spread across the U.S., is joining forces with Last Prisoner Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to cannabis criminal justice reform.

As part of the initiative, Cheba Hut has made its anniversary, January 20th, SmokeOut InJustice Day. Launching this year and continuing annually, participating Cheba Hut shops will donate $1 per sub sold on the 20th to Last Prisoner Project, with the brands headquarters matching all donations.

According to Brian Loeb, Cheba Huts vice president of marketing, that one-day effort alone could raise as much as $45,000 for the non-profit and is also likely to increase overall sales for individual owners.

We are doing a major marketing push to get the word out, and all signs point to January 20 being one of our busiest days of the year, said Loeb. We should see a meaningful increase in sales per store while making a significant contribution to Last Prisoner Project and raising awareness of their cause.

Last Prisoner Project leverages legal intervention, public education and legislative advocacy in support of a single mission: to set free every last one of the more than 40,000 prisoners locked up for nothing more than possession of cannabis.

According to Marc Torres, Cheba Hut CEO, the brands partnership with Last Prisoner Project is the perfect exemplification of Cheba Huts core values.

One of our core values is Pay it Forward, so were always looking for ways to lend a hand, said Torres. As a brand that has found a lot of success in part because of our association with cannabis, we are not satisfied to reap the benefits while non-violent offenders sit in jail for something that is no longer considered a crime. Last Prisoner Project is doing fantastic work in that regard, and we are adamant about providing our support.

For more information about Cheba Hut and Last Prisoner Project Day, visit: https://chebahut.com/ and follow Cheba Hut on Facebook and Instagram.

About Cheba Hut

Cheba Hut has been escaping the established and getting toasted since 1998. Breaking the mold of mundane fast-casual concepts by becoming the first marijuana-themed sandwich joint, Cheba Hut is dedicated to providing customers with delicious and memorable sandwich and munchie options in a chill, eclectic environment where made-to-order food is served by genuine people. Cheba Huts fun and authentic dining experience includes a full-service bar and highlights its menu because its not about getting high, its about epic food and legendary service!

About Last Prisoner Project

The Last Prisoner Project (LPP) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to cannabis-related criminal justice reform. As the United States moves away from the criminalization of cannabis, giving rise to a major new industry, there remains the fundamental injustice inflicted upon those who have suffered under Americas unjust policy of cannabis prohibition. Through intervention, advocacy, and awareness campaigns, the Last Prisoner Project works to redress the past and continuing harms of these inhumane and ineffective laws and policies. Visit http://www.lastprisonerproject.org or text FREEDOM to 24365 to donate and learn more.


The Pinkerton and The Wizard By Harvey Hetrick I felt compelled to write a mystery, but I wanted it to be about unconventional characters that could have played a role in history.

In Harvey Hetricks newly released book, The Pinkerton and The Wizard, readers will embark on a mystical journey through the eyes of a medieval wizard and Victorian-era Pinkerton detective. Hetrick blends classic crime fiction elements with familiar mythological characters that will appeal to both young adult and adult readers of mystery and fantasy.

Throughout the book, readers will witness Merlin Pendragon escaping a trap set by the evil sorceress Morgana by transporting himself and his wife, Gwen, to 19th century Philadelphia. The two settle into a room above a bookstore owned by one of Merlins descendants and cross paths with Adam Blake, who is grieving many losses, including that of a fellow detective. After Adam miraculously survives a serious accident and stops an assassination attempt, he finds himself drawn more and more to the mysterious Merlin.

I wrote The Pinkerton and The Wizard to entertain young adult and adult readers with a story that blended mystery and magic using mythological and 19th century characters, said Hetrick. I felt compelled to write a mystery, but I wanted it to be about unconventional characters that could have played a role in history.

Readers will be hooked throughout each page as they learn more about Adams detective work and how Merlin joins him as he adapts to make his way in a new world. With Adams astute eye and Merlins powers, the unlikely duo set out to investigate a series of museum robberies and solve a long-standing mystery that has been weighing on Adams chest.

The Pinkerton and The Wizard will have readers entering a new world of excitement and wonder as they follow Adam and Merlin throughout their investigations. Hetricks novel provides a clever twist on familiar topics that will leave readers entertained.

The Pinkerton and The Wizard

By Harvey Hetrick

ISBN: 978-1-6632-0089-1 (softcover); 978-1-6632-0090-7 (hardcover); 978-1-6632-0088-4 (eBook)

Available at iUniverse, Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the author

Harvey Hetrick, a retired engineer, uses aspects of his background and imagination to create stories with a unique blend of medieval intrigue, mystery, myth, magic and buried treasure. After having earned bachelors degrees from Mississippi State University and the University of Utah, he now resides in Texas and has three daughters.

General Inquiries:

LAVIDGE  Phoenix

Grace Connor

gconnor@lavidge.com | 480-998-2600


Peter Giese Appointed as CEO of Engel & Volkers Florida The momentum Peter generated in his position as Chief Growth Officer and his excellent leadership skills were key factors in our decision to promote him to CEO

Engel & Volkers Florida, the master franchisor for the international real estate brand in the State of Florida, today announced it has named Peter Giese as their Chief Executive Officer. Giese has been part of the executive team since 2019, acting as Chief Growth Officer. The appointment comes as Managing Partner, Timo Khammash and Co-Owner, Oliver Tonn have decided to step back from their daily roles.

I will continue to be involved with the company that I am so proud to have founded, but now in a different capacity, said Khammash. Over the last two years, Engel & Volkers Florida has grown to new heights, achieved impressive milestones, and surpassed our goals. I am confident that Peter has settled into a leadership position within our team, and is ready to take the already excellent results and continue to grow to an even higher level.

Giese came to Engel & Volkers Florida from United Real Estate where he served as President & Managing Partner, delivering record industry growth by expanding the company from a startup company-owned brokerage to over 80 franchise locations with more than $4.5 billion in annual sales in under five years. Prior to his position at United Real Estate, he was Senior Vice President of Franchise Sales and Development for Fortune 500 company, Realogy, where he led the global company in new franchise sales, mergers and acquisitions.

The momentum Peter generated in his position as Chief Growth Officer and his excellent leadership skills were key factors in our decision to promote him to CEO, said Tonn. Im looking forward to working closely with him to continue our success in the State of Florida.

Engel & Volkers Florida aims to expand its franchise presence in several untapped markets and submarkets, as well as gain additional market share in existing territories over the next two years. Giese is hyper focused on the following initiatives: opening 12 New Engel & Volkers shops in 2022; surpassing 1,000 real estate advisors affiliated with Engel & Volkers in Florida; closing over 10,000 transactions annually, and reaching $200 million in gross commission income within the next 2 years.

I am both honored and energized to continue working with our great team in this new capacity, said Giese. There are tremendous growth opportunities for Engel & Volkers in the State of Florida. I look forward to working more closely with our franchisees, shop management and advisors to build on the impressive growth we have achieved thus far, and continue to focus on the brand's promise to deliver a bespoke and luxurious experiences for our clientele.

Press contact:

Linzee Werkmeister, Junior Vice President, Marketing & Franchise Support

Email: Linzee.Werkmeister(at)evrealestate.com

Tel: (239) 348-9000

About Engel & Volkers:

Engel & Volkers is a global luxury real estate brand. Founded in Hamburg, Germany in 1977, Engel & Volkers draws on its rich European history to deliver a fresh approach to luxury real estate in the Americas with a focus on creating a personalized client experience at every stage of the home buying or selling process for todays savvy homeowner. Engel & Volkers currently operates approximately 240 shop locations with 5,000 real estate advisors in the Americas, contributing to the brands global network of over 14,000 real estate professionals in more than 30 countries, offering both private and institutional clients a professionally tailored range of luxury services, including real estate and yachting. Committed to exceptional service, Engel & Volkers supports its advisors with an array of premium quality business services; marketing programs and platforms; as well as access to its global network of real estate professionals, property listings and market data. Each brokerage is independently owned and operated. For more information, visit http://www.evrealestate.com.

About Engel & Volkers Florida:

Engel & Volkers Florida is the Master License Partner of the global luxury real estate brand Engel & Volkers in the state of Florida. Recognized for uniquely recruiting, training and equipping some of the top professionals in the real estate industry, Engel & Volkers Floridas exclusive business model positions its franchisees at the top of the premium market to gain market share and support their bottom line. The company represents franchise locations in 44 markets: 30A Beaches, Amelia Island, Belleair, Boca Raton, Bonita Springs-Estero, Cape Coral, Clermont, Delray Beach, Destin, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers Downtown, Gainesville, Hollywood Beach, Islamorada, Jacksonville, Jacksonville Beach, Jupiter, Madeira Beach, Marco Island, Melbourne Beachside, Melbourne Central, Melbourne Downtown, Miami Coconut Grove, Neptune Beach, Ocala, Olde Naples, Orlando, Orlando Downtown, Orlando-Winter Park, Palm Beach, Palm Coast, Pompano Beach, Ponte Vedra Beach, Sarasota, South Tampa, St. Augustine, St. Pete, St. Pete Beach, Stuart, Tampa Water Street, Venice Downtown, Vero Beach, Wellington, and Windermere.

Engel & Volkers Florida is continuing to strategically strengthen and expand its presence in premium real estate markets across the state of Florida. If you would like to know more about the Engel & Volkers brand or how to join its global networkwhich is known for demonstrating competence, exclusivity and passion, feel free to call our corporate office, located at 633 Tamiami Trl N, Suite 201, Naples, FL 34102 USA. Tel: +1 239-348-9000.

For more information about Engel & Volkers Florida, please visit http://www.florida.evrealestate.com
The new Goody Business Book Awards is now accepting nominations for their 2022 First Annual Awards program January 1  September 30, 2022, for any book published within five years. With the U.S. publishing 4+ million books in 2019 alone (according the ProQuest), these Goody Business Book Awards can add great value to book marketing and public relations campaigns. - Goody PR & Goody Business Book Awards Founder Liz H. Kelly

Goody Business Book Awards opens 2022 book nominations by launching a new program designed to "Uplift Author Voices" making a difference with words! While many book awards highlight writers who are a force for good, this First Annual Goody Business Book Awards program will honor 100% social impact books in 50 categories. The goal is to amplify authors in their niche area to better attract potential new readers, fans and clients.

Goody PR and Goody Business Book Awards Founder, Award-Winning Author and Podcast Host Liz H. Kelly explains; After nominating many clients for business book awards and extensive research as a bestselling author (8-Second PR), we saw a need for a more comprehensive program focused on helping thought leaders magnify their book messages and stories through the power of recognition.

Kelly adds, With the U.S. publishing 4+ million books in 2019 alone (according the ProQuest), these Goody Business Book Awards can add great value to book marketing and public relations campaigns.

Any book that is improving lives is eligible if published within 5 years. For 2022, any book published in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, can be nominated. These unique awards can help authors increase awareness of their book, build credibility as a trustworthy source, increase sales, and attract more raving fans and business clients.

Anyone can nominate a book in 10 genres and 50 award categories. The ten areas include Business, Childrens Books, Entrepreneur, Health, Leadership, Marketing and Sales, Money and Wealth, Real Estate, Self-Help and Technology. Authors, publicists, publishers, readers and fans can nominate books.

When submitting a nomination, authors will be asked 2 short questions (150-word maximum answer) about the books impact, including:



1. What is the Authors WHY? (What compelled the author to write this book?)

2. How is the book making a Positive Impact  with Words? (Does the book help people save money, start a business, be a better leader, market products, build wealth, invest in real estate, live healthier and more?)

Goody Business Book Awards  2022 Nomination and Awards Timeline:



January 1 - September 30, 2022 - Nominate your Books

November 15, 2022 - Award Winning Authors Announced

November 15 - December 31, 2022 & Beyond  Promote Award-Winning Authors

100 Award-Winning Authors (50 Winners and 50 Finalists) will be announced by the Goody Business Book Awards on November 15, 2022. These Winners and Finalists can promote their book award on their front cover, website, social media, blogs - and even distribute a press release announcing the news!

The Goody Business Book Awards logo is a hot air balloon with a book as the basket to symbolize Uplifting Author Voices. Kelly adds, Similar to how each patch in a balloon lifts up its' passengers, each page in a book can tell a powerful story. All authors are like balloon pilots driving a narrative. Help us shine a light on authors doing good with words by nominating your book and/or your favorite book.

A Goody Business Book Awards Honorary Board of Advisors has been established with successful founders and experts in the marketing, public relations, publishing, and media industries, including Carl Starr Taylor (Star House Publishing), Mary Rau (Mary Rau Public Relations), Michele Weisbart (Michele Designs), Richard Winfield Lewis (The Lewis Group), Ryan Treasure (VoiceAmerica), Susan Bejeckian (SA/SB Public Relations), Tara Coomans (Avaans PR & Social Media), and Wendy Guarisco (Guarisco Group).

NOMINATE BOOKS:

Anyone can nominate a book for 2022 Goody Business Book Awards here: https://goodybusinessbookawards.com/nominate-book

FOLLOW NEWS:

Instagram @GoodyBusinessBookAwards

https://www.instagram.com/goodybusinessbookawards

Facebook @GoodyPR

https://www.facebook.com/GoodyPR

ABOUT: The Goody Business Book Awards are presented by Goody PR to Uplift Author Voices with social impact book awards. Goody PR Founder, Award-Winning Author (8-Second PR) and Podcast Host Liz H. Kelly designed the Goody Business Book Awards program to amplify authors making a positive impact with words. This annual awards program is an extension of Goody PRs Mission to Magnify Good. Kelly works primarily with clients who are Authors, Businesses, Business Professionals, Business Owners, CEOs, Founders, Entrepreneurs, Speakers, CEOs, Thought Leaders, Experts, and Causes. To amplify their story, Goody PR is grateful to have booked thousands of interviews on major media, including the TODAY Show, CNN, BBC World News, NPRs Marketplace, TIME Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, WOR 710 AM, Fast Company, and hundreds of local TV, radio shows and podcasts. For more information about Goody PR and the Goody Business Book Awards, visit https://goodypr.com and https://goodybusinessbookawards.com


Adapt is a publication for communicators who want to improve their own storytelling craft. This focus on storytelling is taking us down an exciting path. At Hiker were reading, writing, and discussing storytelling every day. Its in our DNA. Its thrilling to bring that lens to the content were publishing on Adapt, Amber Yoder, Content Director, Hiker

Creative agency Hiker is launching a new content program focused on the art and craft of storytelling through Adapt - a digital publication about communication in times of change. The focus on narrative and storytelling includes a wide new range of written content aimed at inspiring and informing content creators.

The Storytellers is an interview series that examines what it takes to tell better stories from the perspectives of individuals from all walks of life, storytellers in their own right whether they realize it or not. Featured interviews include poet James Nave, philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, scientist Adam Ruben, and playwright Madhuri Shekar among others.

In the Storycrafting series different writers explore the tools of the trade employed by some of the best storytellers. Each article unpacks the different techniques and approaches in a specific book, film or show to uncover what it takes to craft an impactful story.

Narrative Tools is a collection of op-ed style pieces that seek to tackle some of the biggest questions in storytelling like How do you define a story? or What makes a story? In the series, different writers ruminate on tools humans use to create narratives.

Other content on Adapt extends the focus of storytelling into different territories, ranging from non-fiction storytelling, flash fiction, and reports on pop culture and current events. Adapt is a destination for communicators who want to improve their own storytelling craft, as well as readers who just enjoy a good story.

This focus on storytelling is taking us down an exciting path. At Hiker were reading, writing, and discussing storytelling every day. Its in our DNA. Its thrilling to bring that lens to the content were publishing on Adapt, says Amber Yoder, Content Director at Hiker.

Since its initial launch in 2020, Adapt has published a wide range of content focused on the changing nature of storytelling and brand communications. From the rebranding of West Virginia, to blackface in voice over, and narratives in sustainability the content on Adapt seeks to plumb the depths of current culture to identify emerging adaptations in communications.

About Hiker: Hiker is an Emmy, Telly, and Webby-award winning creative agency based in NYC. Located at the intersection of animation, interactive design, live action, and digital innovation, Hiker creates content across many disciplines to help non-profit, agency, and brand marketers stand out, deepen engagement, and unlock their potential for authentic and compelling digital storytelling. Hikers commitment to social justice and social impact has spanned a range of engagements with clients including New Teacher Center, FoodCorps, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and UCSCs Center for Public Philosophy. Most recently, Hiker helped launch brand newsrooms for clients including Under Armour and RE/MAX.
Being able to have the opportunity to help our clients achieve their goals is a great privilege and makes our job so rewarding!

Founded in Bozeman, Mont., Holmes & Turner has been providing the highest level of service to clients since their inception in 1972. They provide quality, innovative, creative and diverse accounting and financial services, while maintaining a local accounting firm atmosphere.

It starts and ends with the strong relationships that we have with our clients and working with great people, said Holmes & Turner shareholder, Duane Moulton. Being able to have the opportunity to help our clients achieve their goals is a great privilege and makes our job so rewarding!

Holmes & Turner prides themselves on being partners with their clients and the community. They also strive to attract the brightest employees, providing them with training, unique challenges and fostering advancement so that they can achieve their career goals.

Holmes & Turner has been a proud member of CPAmerica, Inc., one of the largest associations of independent CPA firms in the world, since 2019.

Congratulations to CPAmerica member firm, Holmes & Turner, CPA for reaching this exciting milestone, said CPAmerica president, Grace Horvath. Fifty years in the business is no small feat, the entire Holmes & Turner team should be proud of achieving this accomplishment.

Their overall goal is to create a legacy and promote firm growth that will continue into perpetuity.

I want to thank Ernie Turner, Larry Oddy, Bill Hebron and Carol Dismore, as well as everyone weve worked with through the years to help make this such a great firm, continued Moulton. Here is to another 50 years!

About Holmes & Turner, CPA:

Holmes & Turner has been exceeding client expectations since 1972. Our Mission is to provide the highest level of service to our existing and future clients. We achieve this by providing quality, innovative, and diverse accounting and financial services to our clients to meet their financial goals. Our firm is proudly affiliated with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), Montana Society of Certified Public Accountants (MSCPA) and CPAmerica, Inc. Learn more about Holmes & Turner at http://www.holmesandturner.com.

About CPAmerica, Inc.:

An accounting association made up of independent certified public accounting firms that built on four key goals: to continuously improve; to make more money; to strengthen relationships among member firms; and to bring prestige to firms both domestically and internationally. As a member of Crowe Global, a top-10 global accounting network, CPAmerica expands to over 286 independent accounting and advisory services firms in 130 countries and has a combined firm revenue of $4.2 billion. Learn more about CPAmerica at http://www.cpamerica.org.
Ideal Option, a national leader in outpatient medication-assisted treatment for opioids, methamphetamine, alcohol and polysubstance, will host an open house at their clinic in Eugene on Friday, January 21st.

After almost two years of quietly seeing over 200 patients during the pandemic, Ideal Option invites community members to drop by to learn more about addiction medicine, meet their staff and discuss ways to tackle the worsening opioid crisis in Lane County.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, substance use and overdose deaths have skyrocketed exponentially across the nation, and Oregon is no exception. According to the CDC National Center for Health Statistics, there were 549 drug overdose deaths due to opioids reported in OR during the 12-month period ending in March 2021, a 59% increase from the 345 deaths reported during the same period the year before.

The most dangerous opioid is fentanyl, a plentiful, inexpensive synthetic drug 50 times more potent than heroin. Many illicit substances such as heroin, pain pills, and even marijuana are now commonly laced with fentanyl, often without the knowledge of the user.

A little bit of fentanyl  were talking about just grams of salt-sized (fentanyl)  is actually enough to be fatal, stated Alex Speldrich, a patrol sergeant with the Lane County Sheriffs Office, in a recent article. According to the Eugene Police Department, 441 overdose calls were logged in 2020 and in 2021, 407 calls had already been logged by October.

Ideal Options own lab testing data, collected from patients across its five clinics in Oregon, show in May 2021, 55% of patients tested positive for fentanyl at enrollment, a 157% increase compared to January 2021.

On Friday, January 21, from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m., all members of the community are invited to drop by the Ideal Option clinic in Eugene located at 1201 Oak Street.

During the open house, attendees can enjoy refreshments, learn more about Ideal Option and their specialized protocols for treating fentanyl use, pick up materials, and meet their staff.

For questions about this event, email Senior Marketing Manager Olivia Easly at oliviaeasly@idealoption.net.

About Ideal Option

Headquartered in Kennewick, Washington, Ideal Option was founded in 2012 and has since helped nearly 50,000 patients through a network of over 70 office-based medication-assisted treatment (MAT) clinics across 10 states. With a mission to serve under-served communities, Ideal Option accepts all forms of insurance including Medicaid and Medicare. Financial assistance and payment plans are also available.

Ideal Option's team of medical providers carry certifications in Addiction and Emergency Medicine, Internal, OB/GYN, and Family Medicine, among other specialties. The company also employs social workers, caseworkers, counselors, and mental health practitioners. This holistic approach helps drive positive outcomes, including family stability, stable housing, improved overall health, and reduced rates of recidivism.

In all the communities it serves, Ideal Option collaborates with existing stakeholders and providers to improve the continuum of care. This approach includes partnerships with emergency rooms and county jail systems, where individuals with substance use disorder often appear, as well as collaborating with numerous support agencies and municipal programs addressing social needs such as housing, mental health, and nutrition support.
Infinite Electronics President and CEO Penny Cotner Featured in OC 500 List I am honored to be included in this years OC 500 list. Its an impressive group of leaders and businesses all contributing to the economy and community in Orange County, and to the greater technology arena. Im very proud that the Infinite Electronics team is among them, said Cotner

Infinite Electronics, Inc., a leading global supplier of electronic components serving the urgent needs of engineers through a family of highly recognized brands, has announced that the companys president and CEO, Penny Cotner, is featured in the newly released OC 500 list of leaders.

The 2021 OC 500 list is created by the Orange County Business Journal to highlight the 500 most influential leaders in Orange County, Calif. Cotner is highlighted in the technology category for her leadership of Infinite Electronics. The company is a global supplier of electronics components for wired and wireless communications networks with a dozen brands under its umbrella, estimated to have annual sales approaching $400M. Also noted in Cotners profile is Infinite Electronics recent expansion with the purchase of NavePoint LLC, an online provider of networking equipment and services. Additionally, in March, Infinite Electronics was acquired by private equity giant Warburg Pincus.

I am honored to be included in this years OC 500 list. Its an impressive group of leaders and businesses all contributing to the economy and community in Orange County, and to the greater technology arena. Im very proud that the Infinite Electronics team is among them, said Cotner.

Cotner joined Infinite Electronics in 2013 and became president and CEO in 2018. Under her leadership, the company has enjoyed consistently high revenue growth and continued to grow through acquisition. Cotner has more than 25 years of experience in the electronics industry, including early engineering positions at Hughes Aircraft Company and with Rockwells Space Station Program, and multiple leadership roles with Fortune 500 global distributor Arrow Electronics. She holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from California State University, Northridge, and an MBA from the University of California, Irvine.

For additional information about Infinite Electronics, please visit http://www.infiniteelectronics.com.

About Infinite Electronics:

Based in Irvine, Calif., Infinite Electronics is a Warburg Pincus portfolio company, and offers a broad range of components, assemblies and wired/wireless connectivity solutions serving the aerospace/defense, industrial, government, consumer electronics, instrumentation, medical and telecommunications markets. Infinites brands include Pasternack, Fairview Microwave, L-com, MilesTek, ShowMeCables, NavePoint, INC Installs, Integra Optics, PolyPhaser, Transtector, KP Performance Antennas, RadioWaves and Aiconics. Infinite Electronics serves a global engineering customer base with deep technical expertise and support, with one of the broadest inventories of products available for immediate shipment.


Inflow, a market-leading, innovative provider of strategic advisory, consulting, professional and managed services for contact center and unified communications technologies, announced today that they have acquired EPIC Connections. The partnership accelerates Inflows expansion of consulting, outsourcing and technical services offerings for contact center operations and technologies.

Based in Omaha, Nebraska, EPIC Connections is an experienced and proven industry-leading consulting, outsourcing and professional services firm, with a core focus on contact center operational and technology consulting, outsourcing strategy, and customer experience technology implementation services. EPIC supports organizations from Fortune 500 to SMB clients to enhance the people, processes, and technologies that power their clients customer experiences.

Inflows CEO, Ken Smith, said Inflows expanding service offerings provided a natural fit for EPICs experience in operational consulting, outsourcing, and customer experience technology implementation. As a market leader, Inflow is always focused on building out our portfolio of services to best meet our clients evolving needs. The EPIC Connections team complements us well, and furthers our ability to deliver an expanded suite of value creating services for our clients, and our technology partners.

Bill Pieper, President of EPIC Connections stated, EPIC has long been recognized as a trusted implementation and professional services partner in the CCaaS industry, and Inflow adds immediate scale to that line of business. Im particularly excited to accelerate the momentum that EPIC has had in the operational and outsourcing consulting, with Inflows expanded reach and scale.

Inflow is a portfolio company of Renovus Capital Partners, a Philadelphia area private equity firm specializing in the Knowledge and Talent industries. More information can be found at http://www.renovuscapital.com

About Inflow

Based in Portland, Oregon, Inflow is an innovative provider of strategic advisory, consulting, and managed services for contact center, customer experience, and unified communications solutions to over 1,000 customers nationwide. Inflow has grown to be a trusted advisor in its market through the high caliber of its work, problem-solving approach, and focus on client satisfaction. More information can be found at http://www.inflowcomm.com

About EPIC Connections

EPIC Connections is an experienced and proven industry-leading contact center consulting and professional services firm. EPIC focuses on contact center operational and technology consulting, outsourcing (BPO) strategy and management, and customer experience technology implementation services. EPIC Connections supports companies from Fortune 500 to SMB clients in enhancing the people, processes, and technologies that power their clients customer experiences. Learn More About EPIC Connections at https://epicconnections.com/

About Renovus

Founded in 2010, Renovus Capital Partners is a private equity firm specializing in the Knowledge and Talent industries. Renovus, from its base in the Philadelphia area, manages $1 billion across several investment vehicles. The firms current portfolio includes over twenty U.S. based businesses specializing in educational technology and content, higher education, corporate learning and development, healthcare services and technology services. Renovus typically partners with founder-led businesses, leveraging its industry expertise and access to debt and equity capital to make operational improvements, pursue tuck-in acquisitions and oversee strategic growth initiatives. More information can be found at http://www.renovuscapital.com
Imagine getting ready to leave work when you suddenly get a call that your mother has been in a serious car accident and is in the hospital. At the emergency room, the nurses tell you that she has been rushed into surgery. After several hours, her surgeon comes out and tells you that she survived in large part due to blood donations from strangers.

Blood transfusions can mean life or death. As many as 5 million people receive blood transfusions each year for reasons such as surgeries, injuries, cancer, anemia and sickle cell disease. In order to keep up with demand, about 9,667 people would need to donate blood every day.

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I recently received an email from University of Chicago Medicine encouraging me to donate amid a critical nationwide blood shortage. I looked up the eligibility requirements and was disappointed, but not surprised, to find that the Food and Drug Administration deferral policy remains outdated and homophobic. It bans blood donations from men who have had sexual contact with men in the past three months.

Restricting millions of people in the U.S. from donating blood based on fear over HIV is unethical and unfair to gay and bisexual men and, most importantly, to the millions of patients who desperately need blood transfusions.

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This kind of policy was first introduced amid the early stages of Americas HIV/AIDS epidemic when we knew very little about HIV. In the early 1980s, there was no reliable test for HIV, and scientists were still trying to determine the route of transmission. Thousands died from this devastating disease at the time, and around 12,000 blood transfusion patients contracted HIV.

Though the majority of HIV cases in the U.S. occur in gay or bisexual men, the effectiveness of screening for HIV has improved massively. Current HIV tests have an accuracy of 99% to 100%, and the risk of acquiring HIV through a blood transfusion is 1 in 1.5 million. Our scientific progress has pushed us past the need for this precaution.

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Those who argue that this restriction is based on a concern for safety rather than homophobia need only compare how the FDA treats HIV versus another bloodborne disease, hepatitis B. The tests used to detect HIV in blood donations are effective following a seven- to 10-day window after first exposure to the virus. For hepatitis B, an incurable disease, this window is a full 12 days.

Furthermore, around 67% of people with hepatitis B do not know they have it, while only 15% of people with HIV are unaware of their positive status. Additionally, 60% of Americans with hepatitis B are Asian, yet the FDA correctly chooses to not place a blanket ban on blood donations based on ethnicity, due to the agencys ability to accurately screen for this disease.

It becomes clear that some of the criteria that determine blood donation eligibility are rooted in social demographics and anti-LGBTQ attitudes rather than an accurate assessment of risky individual behavior. To put this into perspective, a man who has sex only with his husband of 10 years is banned from donating blood while a heterosexual man could engage in sexual behavior with multiple female partners in a week and donate blood freely.

The FDAs criteria make it seem as if heterosexual people are immune to contracting HIV, despite the fact that they made up 23% of new U.S. cases in 2019.

The need for blood is more dire than ever, especially amid the pandemic and holiday season. Research has shown that by lifting a blood donation ban for men who have sex with men, an additional 360,600 men would donate, leading to an additional 615,300 pints of blood per year. This is enough blood to save the lives of more than a million people.

Lifting this ban would not only increase the amount of blood available for those in need, but also would help reduce the social stigma on LGBTQ individuals. How can we expect full equality for LGBTQ Americans when we are seen as less than in the eyes of the medical community and government?

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Christian Carrier is a medical student at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and co-leader of OUTPatient, the schools LGBTQ+ student group.
The Last Dance: A True Story of Courage, Faith, and Love By Fr. Eddie Martin Through my love story with Jennie, I want readers to see the joy and fullness that a covenant mar-riage brings to your life and also bring solace and hope to those diagnosed with a terminal illness and to their loved ones, said Fr. Martin.

This is mainly a love story. Its not about dying, but about living to the fullest, said author Fr. Eddie Martin. And honoring my late wife Jennie Martin, whose courage, faith, and love shone all the brighter as her lifes light faded away. In Fr. Eddie Martins new book, The Last Dance: A True Sto-ry of Courage, Faith, and Love, he pays tribute to his best friend, wife, and mother of his children to honor the legacy she left not only in his heart but in the world through her charitable acts of kind-ness and faith in God.

Fr. Martin and Jennie were married in 1978 and enjoyed 35 years of becoming one. However, their lives changed forever in 2010 when Jennie was diagnosed with cancer. After receiving the devastat-ing news she only had two years left to live, Jennie did not wallow away in despair, instead, she con-tinued to live life to the fullest and did not take a single moment for granted. During the 55 years that Jennie walked this earth, she was a true Southern belle and loving mother, wife, friend, and woman of God who devoted her life to serving others including leading missions to Honduras for ten years and much more.

Through my love story with Jennie, I want readers to see the joy and fullness that a covenant mar-riage brings to your life and also bring solace and hope to those diagnosed with a terminal illness and to their loved ones, said Fr. Martin. I want my book to encourage those who lose faith because they cant understand bad things happening to good people.

The Last Dance will make readers laugh as they cry while they fall in love with this joyful wife, mom, and spirited woman with an incredible zest for life that simply could not be defeated, not even in death. This romantic tale of loves triumph will inspire readers to build, refine, or elevate their own relationships to the depths of intimacy and completeness we all yearn for. To learn more, please visit TheLastDance.store.

The Last Dance: A True Story of Courage, Faith, and Love

By Fr. Eddie Martin

ISBN: 978-1-6632-1685-4 (sc); 978-1-6632-1686-1 (e)

Available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iUniverse

About the Author

Fr. Eddie Martin is a Louisiana native who met the love of his life, Jennifer Ann Nates at the University of South Carolina. She was studying pharmaceuticals and he was studying chemical engineering. They wed in 1978 and were blessed with four children, three of whom are still alive today. Eddie worked as a chemical engineer until their first child arrived. Shortly thereafter, they created a family business, Greetings of the Heart, based on Eddies artistic skills and Jennies entrepreneurial energy, which eventually evolved into Louisiana Gifts and Gallery, Inc. just outside Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In 2003, Eddie felt a strong pull to give his life more fully to service others through the church and enrolled in the diaconate formation program and was ordained as a deacon of the Cath-olic church in 2010. Following the birth of Jennie to eternal life, he returned to seminary and was ordained into the priesthood in 2016. Fr. Martin currently serves as Pastor to the wonderful people of the Bayou Cluster of St. Anne in Napoleonville, Louisiana, St. Philomena in Labadieville, and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mother in Plattenville. His is a unique priestly perspective with his family background and the five grandchildren he enjoys today.

For Interview & Review Copy Requests:

LAVIDGE Publicity

Becca Armentrout

barmentrout@lavidge.com

480-998-2600


Today, we are proudly adding Barrett to our name in recognition of the growth and success we have realized under Bill Barretts leadership and to celebrate his vision forward for our firm as we continue to adapt to meet the needs of our business and personal clients.

Mandelbaum Salsburg PC has changed its name to Mandelbaum Barrett PC in a historic move to recognize the contributions of CEO William S. Barrett. The rebrand represents the first time in 42 years that a name has been added; the full-service law firm has changed its name only six times in its 92-year history to reflect a generational or leadership change.

The legal profession has changed significantly since 1930, when our founding partner, Irving Mandelbaum, began practicing law, said Barry R. Mandelbaum, Chairman of Mandelbaum Barrett, and son of its Founder. Mandelbaum continues to Chair the Firms Real Estate Practice in addition to the Executive Committee. Today, we are proudly adding Barrett to our name in recognition of the growth and success we have realized under Bill Barretts leadership and to celebrate his vision forward for our firm as we continue to adapt to meet the needs of our business and personal clients. Some of our clients are fourth-generation clients of the firm. This rebrand serves as a bridge from our past to our future, Mandelbaum noted.

I am humbled by this recognition and excited for what lies ahead for the firm, said Barrett. "Since being named CEO in 2018, the firms revenue has grown year over year, and the firm has expanded its practice offerings to continually keep pace with client needs. In recent years, the firm has expanded its dental, veterinary, healthcare and emerging markets groups to name a few, as well as added to its cannabis, elder law and special needs practices. The firm has also continued to strategically grow its attorney count.

Even as we experience this period of deliberate, purposeful growth to better serve our clients needs, we remain laser-focused on maintaining the unique culture and quality of life that has always made our firm such a desirable place to work and practice law at the highest levels. We care about our employees well-being as much as we do our clients, said Barrett. Testimony to this is the fact that more than 50 of our 170 employees have been with the firm for more than 10 years, and our entire leadership team has been with the firm for more than 20 years.

Other firm highlights include:



The addition of a new C-suite position: Chief Culture Officer. This very deliberate move signals the firms prioritization of its sacred culture that celebrates accomplishments and differences and understands the value of regular team-building events for all attorneys and staff alike.

Barrett spearheaded the firms National Dental Law Center, a national practice that has served the dental industry for over 20 years and has handled more than 1,000 dental practice transactions. The team currently comprises 13 attorneys, and Barrett just published his second book for the dental industry on the sometimes-controversial DSO (dental support organization) side of the industry.

The firms Healthcare practice has grown: eight additional attorneys and six staff have joined the practice during the last four years to become one of the firms largest and rapidly growing practice areas.

The firm has made significant investments in technology with the addition of a Chief Information Officer who has worked to build out a state-of-the-art technology platform and cyber security awareness program for staff and clients.

Launching in 2022 is the firms new Unique Client Experience platform to ensure a timely response to client needs, scheduled and accurate follow-up, and enhanced client communications. The firm also launched an Intranet to improve inter-office collaboration and streamline communication.

In 2022, the firm will launch and publish Mandelbaum Barrett Core Values, for Mandelbaum Barrett employees that sets forth the guiding principles that should shape client service; it outlines the seven pillars of the firms Unique Client Experience approach, another Barrett initiative.

We dont ever want our success to become our failure. We will continue to look for ways to meet evolving client needs and cultivate a workplace culture that allows our employees to thrive and advance, while attracting exceptional new talent to the firm, Barrett added.

About William S. Barrett

In addition to serving as CEO, Barrett co-chairs the Corporate Law practice. With 25 years experience, he has a unique specialty in mergers and acquisitions and provides strategic advice to companies of all sizes from formation to dissolution and every stage in between. Barrett often serves in the role of outside general corporate counsel to his clients and advises them on issues concerning contracts, policy development, executive compensation programs and agreements, as well as business succession and related planning. His representative clients include commercial organizations and entrepreneurs in the areas of manufacturing, service, banking, finance, insurance, construction, and real estate development, as well as healthcare professionals of varying disciplines and organizations. Throughout his career, he has successfully managed the purchase or sale of hundreds of businesses, professional practices, and facilities.

Barrett, who also co-chairs the firms National Dental Law Center, is a nationally recognized transactional lawyer in dental and medical practice transitions, practice sales and purchases, associate buy-ins, startups, and the structuring of DSOs and management services organizations (MSOs).

In addition to the recently published The DSO Decision, Barrett is the co-author of Pain Free Dental Deals. Admitted to the New Jersey and New York state bars, he earned his J.D. from University of Virginia School of Law and B.A. from Boston College.

About Barry Mandelbaum

Barry Mandelbaum is a founding member and Chairman of the firm and has more than five decades of legal experience. He chairs the firms Real Estate group and concentrates his practice on real estate development, land use, financing, and commercial real estate, as well as corporate and transactional law. Mandelbaums corporate, transactional real estate and land use practices involve representing private and public companies in all aspects of their business, finance, joint ventures, mergers, purchases, and sales.

About Mandelbaum Barrett PC

Mandelbaum Barrett PC is a full-service law firm serving both personal and business clients. Recognized as one of the Northeast regions premiere full-service law firms by U.S. News & World Report, with nearly 30 practice areas and close to 100 attorneys, the firm and its attorneys have been recognized by clients and peers alike in The Best Lawyers in America, Chambers USA, and New Jersey Super Lawyers. Mandelbaum Barrett is headquartered in Roseland, N.J., with offices in Edison, Eatontown and Elizabeth, plus New York City, Denver, and Boca Raton, Florida. For more information, visit http://www.mblawfirm.com.

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"We are excited to Introduce our new Mercury@Home offerings to customers across all of our service areas, including our new Missouri region", said Mr. Wiseman.

Garrett Wiseman, Founder and Chief Executive of Mercury Broadband announced today the companys introduction of a new suite of Residential Broadband Services that provide customers with better visibility, enhanced security, and easier control of their High-Speed Internet connections through new Mercury@Home packages.

The new Mercury@Home packages will provide customers with an easy-to-use smartphone application, a customized home network installation, a state-of-the-art Wi-Fi 6 router, and additional mesh home network extenders as required to maximize Internet speeds and quality of service within the customers residence. Initially, the company will offer two new Mercury@Home packages called Mercury Essentials and Mercury Enhanced. Customers will be able to enjoy new features at their fingertips such as advanced service analytics, performance data, content and parental controls, device bandwidth consumption management, and enhanced security and privacy protection ---all from the convenience of their smartphone and the Mercury@Home application. Future enhancements will include smart appliance management, home security, and video surveillance, etc.

In addition to the introduction of the new Mercury@Home packages, Mr. Wiseman also announced the expansion of the companys services into the St. Joseph, Missouri area. The companys new Missouri market will provide Broadband services to homes and businesses in the rural and surrounding areas of St. Joseph across Buchanan County - including the areas of Atchinson, Brown and Doniphan Counties in Kansas. Brett Rhodes has been named the new General Manager for Mercury Broadband in this area and will lead the companys efforts in the new service center region.

We are excited to introduce our new Mercury@Home offerings to customers across all of our service areas, including our new Missouri region, said Mr. Wiseman. We believe in helping our customers manage how they use their Internet connection rather than just providing the access connection itself. Our Mercury@Home solutions provide a smarter Internet solution ---a complete, turnkey service that offers them convenient and easy access to track and manage all their various Internet devices, electronics and interfaces within their home, said Mr. Wiseman.

Finally, the company also announced the celebration of their new 32,000 sq. ft. office facility at 3400 Southwest Van Buren Street in Topeka, Kansas. An official ribbon cutting ceremony will be held later today at the location which will house close to 200 employees, including both the companys National Customer Support and Inside Sales Centers. Company executives, customers, local officials and representatives of the Greater Topeka Partnership will participate in todays celebration and tour the new facility.

New Mercury@Home services are available immediately across all qualified company service areas in Kansas, Indiana and Missouri. Interested customers should visit http://www.mercurybroadband.com or call tollfree 1-800-354-4915 for more information.

About Mercury Broadband

Mercury Broadband is a leading provider of high-speed Internet and digital phone services for homes and business across select rural markets in the Midwest. The company was founded in Topeka, KS., after recognizing a need for broadband services in these underserved markets. A hybrid approach to serving these last mile customers was developed by extending high-capacity fiber optic networks with the range, reliability, and flexibility of carrier-class wireless technologies to provide next generation services to customers.

Media Relations Contact:

Greg Crosby

Chief Revenue Officer

Phone: 1-319-621-2424

Email: greg.crosby@mercurybroadband.com
"We know that most patients do not call their doctors on their 50th birthday to schedule a colonoscopy, so we will need to be diligent to reach this much younger cohort before they turn 45, says lead author Steven H. Itzkowitz, MD, Professor of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

In a study published in the journal Gastroenterology, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai describe a troubling increase in early-onset colorectal cancer and precancerous polyps, based on a large, nationally representative study of patients under age 50 who underwent colonoscopy. It was the first large-scale study to look at precancerous polyps in this age group.

We have known for many years that rates of colorectal cancer are rising in individuals younger than 50, prompting several medical organizations to recommend lowering the screening age from 50 to 45. What has been missing until now is confirmatory data of the prevalence of precancerous polyps in younger individuals. Because precancerous lesions are not reportable to regional or national health agencies, we have not had this degree of information to guide our recommendations. Our study provides an important piece of the puzzle and supports the recommendation changing the screening age to 45, says lead author Steven H. Itzkowitz, MD, FACP, FACG, AGAF, Professor of Medicine (Gastroenterology), Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Our findings also suggest that messaging aimed at young individuals should begin in the years leading up to this new screening age. We know that most patients do not call their doctors on their 50th birthday to schedule a colonoscopy, so we will need to be diligent to reach this much younger cohort before they turn 45, says Dr. Itzkowitz.

Increasing age, being male and white, having a family history of colorectal cancer, and having had colonoscopies for reasons of bleeding or screening, were all associated with higher odds of advanced premalignant lesions (APLs) and colorectal cancer. Among patients aged 45-49, 32 percent had neoplasia (precancerous or cancerous lesions considered forerunners to colorectal cancer). Nearly 8 percent had APLs, and 0.58 percent had colorectal cancer. Importantly, the researchers found that the prevalence of neoplasia and APL among those 45-49 were almost as high as those of 50-54-year-olds, and the rates of colorectal cancer were even higher. Moreover, among 40-44 year olds, rates of APL were almost as high as for those aged 45-49, and colorectal cancer rates were comparably high.

The study, titled Prevalence and Predictors of Young-Onset Colorectal Neoplasia: Insights from a Nationally Representative Colonoscopy Registry, was published today.

Early-onset colorectal cancer accounts for approximately 12 percent of all colorectal cancer cases, with incidence increasing by 2.2 percent annually from 2012-2016, and mortality increasing by 1.3 percent per year from 2008-2017.

The big driver of this study was the need for really good real-world data to inform screening recommendations, says Dr. Itzkowitz, noting that a recommendation to begin screening at age 45 was put forward by the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) for African Americans in 2009, but only more recently for all individuals regardless of race/ethnicity by the American Cancer Society (2018), the United States Preventive Services Task Force (2021), and the ACG (2021). The data confirm what we have been seeing in the clinicthat 45 is now the new 50, says Dr. Itzkowitz. Colon cancer used to be considered a disease of old age, and that is no longer true.

The team analyzed data collected between January 1, 2014, and February 5, 2021, from high-quality colonoscopies from 123 AMSURG (a division of Envision Healthcare) ambulatory endoscopy centers across 29 states that report their results in the GI Quality Improvement Consortium (GIQuIC) Registry. To our knowledge, this is the largest study to date investigating the prevalence of precancerous and cancerous lesions in the colon in this age group. We studied approximately 131,000 patients ages 40-49, which represents a significant increase over previous studies which have been limited by small sample sizes, underrepresentation of several racial/ethnic groups, or came from a single institution, says first author Parth D. Trivedi, a fourth-year medical student at Icahn Mount Sinai, who helped design the study and provided statistical analysis.

To generate a dataset that best represents the general population, we used several exclusion criteria, including colonoscopies performed for surveillance or therapeutic reasons in addition to higher-risk patients with a personal history of polyps, colorectal cancer, or a hereditary colorectal syndrome, says Mr. Trivedi. It is also the first to provide more granular information, such as the types of lesions detected, the indication for the procedure, and demographics such as age, race, and ethnicity. This information will ultimately inform decision making by primary care doctors on whom to screen and how early.

Many clinicians are surprised when they find a precancerous polyp in someone younger than age 45. Our data provide new insights into how common these lesions are. Our data also suggest that clinically important lesions occur about five years earlier in individuals with a family history of colorectal cancer, compared to those without a family history, says Dr. Itzkowitz. That is why it is very important to take a good family history.

The teams findings reiterate the importance of colorectal cancer awarenessboth among patients and clinicians, said study co-author, Jay Popp, MD, Medical Director for AMSURG, a leading provider of colonoscopies. Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States, but it is one of the most preventable cancers. The more patients know about their bodies and risk for colorectal cancer and the more clinicians can do to help patients receive routine and timely screenings, the more lives we can save. Everyone can play a role in helping a loved one or neighbor prevent colorectal cancer.

About the Mount Sinai Health System

The Mount Sinai Health System is New York City's largest academic medical system, encompassing eight hospitals, a leading medical school, and a vast network of ambulatory practices throughout the greater New York region. Mount Sinai advances medicine and health through unrivaled education and translational research and discovery to deliver care that is the safest, highest-quality, most accessible and equitable, and the best value of any health system in the nation. The Health System includes approximately 7,300 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture ambulatory surgery centers; more than 415 ambulatory practices throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked on U.S. News & World Report's "Honor Roll" of the top 20 U.S. hospitals and is top in the nation by specialty: No. 1 in Geriatrics and top 20 in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Neurology/Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology/Lung Surgery, Rehabilitation, and Urology. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked No. 12 in Ophthalmology. Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital is ranked in U.S. News & World Reports Best Childrens Hospitals among the countrys best in four out of 10 pediatric specialties. The Icahn School of Medicine is one of three medical schools that have earned distinction by multiple indicators: ranked in the top 20 by U.S. News & World Report's "Best Medical Schools," aligned with a U.S. News & World Report "Honor Roll" Hospital, and No. 14 in the nation for National Institutes of Health funding. Newsweeks The Worlds Best Smart Hospitals ranks The Mount Sinai Hospital as No. 1 in New York and in the top five globally, and Mount Sinai Morningside in the top 20 globally. For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the worlds most dangerous, deadly and enduring struggles. For decades it has eluded all efforts to resolve it with a just and lasting peace.

William Lee Goffs novel, Visions of the Holy Land, offers an imaginative and hopeful resolution to the conflict.

The story is told by a naive 28-year-old Presbyterian minister named Bill DeQuill from Alexandria, Virginia. He makes his first trip to Israel to explore biblical sites he has heard about all his life. On his flight to Israel, Bill meets a genial Jewish professor from whom he later hears the Zionist perspective. On the same flight, he meets a young Muslim woman who grew up in the West Bank. Her uncle later gives Bill the Palestinian viewpoint. The book is unusual if not unique in presenting both Zionist and Palestinian perspectives objectively and sympathetically.

Initially Bill is discouraged by these compelling, but conflicting narratives. But then he starts having strange visions of the Holy Land in year 2043. The astonishing visions first take him to Gaza which has become the Riviera of the Middle East. They also transport him to Akko, Hebron, Jordan as well as a tour of the Temple Mount in Jerusalemthe epicenter of the conflict. Along the way, Bill is confronted with contemporary issues including the treatment of African Americans and members of the LGBTQ community. By the time he heads for home, Bill is full of hope for the future of all the people of the Holy Land.

This is an engrossing tale of discovery and reflection, of ancient history and current events, of violence and peace, of despair and hopeand even a little romance. It all leads to an inspiring new and hopeful vision of the Holy Land.

Visions of the Holy Land has received praise on Amazon. A very interesting read full of interesting facts and interpretations about historical events, religions, cultures and human nature.

Another reviewer wrote, Thankful for the gift of insight, wisdom and hope that this book offers. Highly recommended.

Visions of the Holy Land

By William Lee Goff

ISBN: 9781489738370 (softcover); 9781489738363 (hardcover); 9781489738356 (electronic)

Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and LifeRich Publishing

About the author

William Lee Goff is a retired Presbyterian minister who has pursued his fascination with the lands of the Bible for decades. He earned his bachelors degree in English literature at UCLA and then attended Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena where he earned his Doctor of Ministry degree. He has made seven trips to Israel. For ten months he lived and studied in Jerusalem, traveled from Dan to Beersheba, visited Gaza and camped out in the Sinai. Goff has also enjoyed shorter trips to Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. For many years he has studied both Hebrew and Arabic. While not claiming fluency in either language, he says that both Semitic languages have given him a new way of looking at the world. He enjoys reading, playing the cello and occasionally performing in local theatre productions. In addition to his novel, Visions of the Holy Land, Goff is the author of a memoir entitled Adventures of an Ordinary Man." He grew up in Southern California where he currently resides with his Russian-born wife.

General Inquiries:

LAVIDGE  Phoenix

Meghan Bowman

480-306-6597

mbowman@lavidge.com


Ranking among the top one percent of all organizations within the staffing industry, while also maintaining our position among Entrepreneur's elite, is a testament to our strength as a franchise opportunity.

PrideStaff, a nationally franchised staffing organization, is pleased to announce that they were named a top 500 franchise by Entrepreneur for the tenth year in a row. Since entering at number 319 on the 2013 Franchise 500 list, PrideStaff has made the list each year and is now ranked number 305 on the 2022 list.

For more than four decades, Entrepreneur has studied the franchise industry and honed their proprietary ranking formula to build the world's first, best, and most comprehensive franchise ranking. This year's list shows just how varied the franchise world has become, offering prospective franchisees a myriad of choices from restaurants and employment agencies, to axe throwing and cryotherapy.

In Entrepreneurs continuing effort to best understand and evaluate the ever-changing franchise marketplace, the companys 43-year-old ranking formula continues to evolve as well. The editorial team researches and assesses several factors that go into the evaluation, including costs and fees, size and growth, support, brand strength, and financial strength and stability. Each franchise is given a cumulative score based on an analysis of more than 150 data points, and the 500 franchises with the highest cumulative scores become the Franchise 500 in ranking order.

"With each year, the Franchise 500 ranking becomes increasingly competitive, so making this esteemed list for a decade straight proves how excellent an opportunity PrideStaff franchise ownership presents," said PrideStaff VP of Franchise Development, Paula Pizarro, CFE. "When people ask us how we've sustained our success over the years, I point to four things: our unique franchise model, which offers the best of national resources and local ownership; our organizational agility, which allows us to pivot operations to thrive in any economy; our unparalleled technology, which gives us a decided edge over our competitors; and our commitment to living our corporate mission to 'Consistently provide client experiences focused on what they value most,' which keeps us focused on delivering exceptional results for customers."

"Ranking among the top one percent of all organizations within the staffing industry, while also maintaining our position among Entrepreneur's elite, is a testament to our strength as a franchise opportunity," continued Pizarro. "We are thrilled to once again be ranked a top franchise, and we're looking forward to growing our presence across the nation in the robust staffing industry."

This latest honor is one of many PrideStaff has received for franchise excellence within the past twelve months. In addition to making the 2022 Franchise 500 ranking, PrideStaff also distinguished itself by being named to Entrepreneur's Top Franchise for Veterans for a fourth consecutive year, Entrepreneur's Top 100 Franchises for Less than $150,000, and the Franchise Times Top 400 list for a third consecutive year.

The success of PrideStaff's approach is evident, as they consistently rank among the highest 1% of staffing firms in the industry. According to ClearlyRated, a business intelligence firm specializing in the staffing industry, PrideStaff earned a client Net Promoter Score (NPS) as high as or higher than other well-known brands that are recognized for providing best-of-the-best service and customer loyalty in their respective fields.

Follow this link to learn more about becoming a Franchisee/Strategic-Partner with PrideStaff.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

About PrideStaff

PrideStaff operates over 85 offices in North America to serve over 5,000 clients. With 40 plus years in the staffing business, and headquartered in Fresno, CA, 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, click here.
The Day Chosen by God: an intriguing discussion of why God shows such importance to a specific lunar cycle. The Day Chosen by God is the creation of published author Rick Cunningham, a loving husband, father of three, and grandfather to four. Rick graduated from Abilene Christian University and Sunset International Bible Institute in Lubbock, Texas.

Cunningham shares, The Day Chosen by God explains how Gods creation reveals a single day of great significance in Biblical history. From the time of Moses to the crucifixion of Jesus to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, this day is highlighted in the scriptures. The day is the first full moon after the first new moon after the first day of spring. This book points out how the heavens declare the glory of God.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Rick Cunninghams new book is a uniquely enjoyable discussion of events occurring during the Passover moon throughout history.

Cunningham offers readers an articulate and informative guide to learning about the importance of Gods chosen day.

Consumers can purchaseThe Day Chosen by God at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about The Day Chosen by God, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.


A Tale of the Little Child Jesus: a delightful narrative for juvenile believers. A Tale of the Little Child Jesus is the creation of published author Rodrigo D. Cruz, a loving husband, father and grandfather who retired after forty-five years as a financial analyst.

Cruz shares, Jesus was five years old then.

When Jesus heard from his father, Joseph, and mother, Mary, that they were to return to Nazareth, the little boy was excited. He has not seen his parents hometown. He wanted to see their house. He wondered if Galilee was just like Egypt.

But not long after they arrived in Nazareth, his parents said they needed to go to Jerusalem for the Passover. He also learned that they would pass by the Dead Sea, which was a sea of salt. Little Jesus wondered how Jerusalem would look like. He heard that the great temple was in the heart of the city. Would it be as big as the pyramids in Egypt that Jesus has seen? How and how long would it take to get there? Would he meet new friends there? His father, Joseph, said that they would acquire a little lamb for the sacrificial offering. Would there be many people there? So many questions to ask.

To the astonishment of Jesus, he heard he would also see Bethlehem, his town of birth. The family will spend the night there for the Passover. Again, more questions to ask. What sort of adventure would be in store for them? Would they find a place to stay? Would he see his actual birthplace?

Last but not least, how and when will they return home to Nazareth? There are many routes to take to return home. Some many stories to tell.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Rodrigo D. Cruzs new book will offer a unique perspective on the life experiences of a young Jesus.

Cruz shares in hopes of bringing a new understanding of the real-life potential of a young boy with a significant destiny.

Consumers can purchase A Tale of the Little Child Jesus at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about A Tale of the Little Child Jesus, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.


RoviSys teams have completed Ignition deployments on five continents, and RoviSys maintains certified engineers at offices in North America, Europe (EMEA), and Asia-Pacific (APAC) Offices.

Inductive Automation has designated RoviSys as an Inductive Automation Premier Integrator. This is the highest level of integrator certification recognized by Inductive Automation, a leading industrial automation software company. Its key product, Ignition by Inductive Automation, is used across every industry, worldwide.

RoviSys was previously recognized as a Gold Certified Integrator for Ignition, demonstrating the experience and ability to design, develop, and implement Ignition solutions for customers. The promotion to Premier Integrator status is an esteemed and sought-after designation awarded to integrators demonstrating a high level of commitment, professionalism, and competency using Ignition software. It confirms the ability to provide consistent, high quality work and a commitment to being an active member of the Ignition community.

"Enabling our customers to recognize & resolve inefficiencies, gain productivity, save money, and apply technology across manufacturing and building automation operations is a constant focus of ours, commented Danny Dylong, Director of Discrete Manufacturing at RoviSys. Inductive Automation has allowed us to do just that. We've leveraged Ignition to drive measurable results and clear ROI. We're committed to enriching our technology expertise and knowledge, and reaching the premier partner level affirms that RoviSys has the skills needed to continue delivering value to our customers.

Since 1989, RoviSys has focused on principles that put customers first and recognize that every project is unique. Our experts weigh benefits and risks in order to provide every customer solutions that meet or exceed desired outcomes. RoviSys has successfully designed and implemented a wide range of Ignition projects including traditional SCADA & historian systems, Sepasoft MES solutions, reporting and analytics environments, mobile-first Perspective solutions, and IIoT solutions leveraging Ignition Edge, as well as custom solutions that meet business and production needs. Additionally, RoviSys is one the few premier integrators with demonstrated global reach. Engineering teams have completed Ignition deployments on five continents, and RoviSys maintains certified engineers at offices in North America, Europe (EMEA), and Asia-Pacific (APAC) Offices.

About RoviSys

RoviSys is an independent systems integrator that provides process automation, building automation, and discrete manufacturing automation solutions. We support digital transformation, industrial network solutions, and artificial intelligence, bringing information from, plant floor to top floor. Industries include: Chemical, Petrochemical, Life Science, Mission Critical Data Center, Distribution & Fulfillment, Transportation, Consumer Packaged Goods, Glass, Metals, Power & Energy, Water & Wastewater, Paper & Wood, Oil & Gas, and Semiconductor. For more information on RoviSys & Inductive Automation visit this page.
ZiphyCares blend of virtual and in-person care and SafrCares mission to provide accessible and affordable non-emergency medical transportation overlap in their unique ability to provide health services to chronically ill and vulnerable underserved patients while lowering costs.

The Safr team is proud to announce our partnership with ZiphyCare, a healthcare technology company on a mission to transform healthcare at home.

Safr Care is a non-emergency rideshare technology platform catering to patients who face barriers in getting to routine medical appointments, providing a unified technological backbone to manage reliable transportation for individual patients and Medicaid members. Using proprietary rideshare and transportation technology, Safr Care links Medical Care Providers and patients with seamless door-to-door service, alleviating stress and complications for both medical providers and patients.

ZiphyCare is a technology solution that enables patients to receive comprehensive medical care at home, while also providing medical professionals with enhanced remote examination tools and unified patient data. A medical staff member visits the patient at home while an experienced physician examines the patient onscreen, using ZiphyCares patented medical kit. Visits are covered by Medicare and Medicaid.

Medicare and Medicaid populations have the highest rates of chronic illness in America. They also show the lowest use of telehealth, sometimes from a lack of technology skills or access to WIFI. As the pandemic continues to make travel difficult, these patients are increasingly difficult to reach and don't receive regular ongoing care.

ZiphyCares blend of virtual and in-person care and SafrCares mission to provide accessible and affordable non-emergency medical transportation overlap in their unique ability to provide health services to chronically ill and vulnerable underserved patients while lowering costs. Safr Care will provide transport assistance through its technology network throughout ZiphyCares markets. Integrated ride scheduling and dispatch will allow ZiphyCare management to book Safr drivers and partner networks for their patients healthcare transportation needs.

Safr is proud to join ZiphyCare in its mission to bridge the gap between telemedicine and in-person medical care.

About ZiphyCare

ZiphyCare is a proprietary software and technology platform bridging the gaps between patients, primary care, and specialty care. Developed by medical industry professionals, technologists, and digital health experts, Ziphy delivers affordable, patient-oriented healthcare directly to every home. For more information about us and our services, visit our website at https://ziphycare.com/

About Safr

Safr is a ridesharing service focused on the safety and empowerment of women. Built with the needs of women in mind, Safr aims to improve the lives of women everywhere through safe transportation, job creation, and financial security. Safr's drivers are personally vetted and undergo comprehensive background checks so that riders can have peace of mind knowing they meet Safr standards. Safr's multiple in-ride app features aid in the protection of your safe arrival. For more information, please visit http://www.gosafr.com

About Safr Care

Safr Care is a healthcare technology platform focused on the Non-Emergency Medical Transportation (NEMT) market. The mission of Safr Care is to help improve the healthcare transportation market while empowering women. Safr has been at the forefront of transportation technology since 2017. See https://gosafr.com/care/web; https://youtu.be/ZuSmZ7hv7vQ
An organization that gave more than $1 million in 2020 to the dark-money nonprofit at the center of Floridas ghost candidate scandal is seeking to block the public disclosure of bank records that would reveal its donors.

The Miami-Dade State Attorneys Office obtained the bank records for Lets Preserve the American Dream, a nonprofit with close ties to Associated Industries of Florida, the states largest business lobbying group whose donors include Florida Power & Light and Florida Crystals.

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The nonprofit was recently informed that it is being investigated for potential violations of elections and campaign finance laws, according to court records in the case against former state senator Frank Artiles, who is accused of bribing a friend to run as an independent candidate in a 2020 South Florida state Senate race.

After the Orlando Sentinel submitted a public record request for the bank documents, attorneys representing Lets Preserve the American Dream filed a motion seeking to block their release.

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The attorneys for the nonprofit argue that neither the entity nor its executive director have been accused of wrongdoing and that news stories linking Lets Preserve the American Dream to Artiles have caused reputational and financial harm.

Tim VanderGiesen, a public-corruption prosecutor in the Miami-Dade State Attorneys Office, acknowledged last week during a hearing that the bank records arent relevant to the case against Artiles. Rather, he said, theyre part of a parallel investigation into Lets Preserve the American Dream and several people who have a business relationship with Artiles.

Lets Preserve the American Dream received a letter last month from the State Attorneys Office concerning possible violations of Florida elections laws and campaign finance laws, according to the motion filed Monday seeking to shield the bank records.

Ryan Tyson, Lets Preserve the American Dreams executive director, voluntarily sat for a Sept. 30 interview with VanderGiesen and the organization has cooperated with prosecutors, attorneys Matthew Baldwin and Mohammad O. Jazil wrote in the filing dated Monday.

Tyson is a former vice president for Associated Industries of Florida and Lets Preserve the American Dream operates out of the lobbying organizations Tallahassee headquarters.

Artiles has been accused of paying his friend Alex Rodriguez nearly $45,000 to file as an independent candidate in a 2020 South Florida Senate race in an attempt to siphon votes from his Democratic opponent. Though Rodriguez did no campaigning, he received more than 6,000 votes in a race in which Republican Ileana Garcia prevailed by just 32 votes.

During the same time period Artiles is accused of bribing Rodriguez, Lets Preserve the American Dream was paying Artiles $5,000 per month for consulting services. Tyson said the organization canceled Artiles contract after his arrest.

Lets Preserve the American Dream also sent $1.15 million in 2020 to Grow United, a dark money nonprofit that provided all of the funding for two political committees that sent advertisements championing Rodriguez and two other state senate candidates.

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The independent candidates featured in those ads included Jestine Iannotti, who filed to run in Central Floridas District 9 even as she was in the process of moving to Sweden. Republican Jason Brodeur ultimately defeated Democrat Patricia Sigman in that race.

In addition to Lets Preserve the American Dream, three individuals with ties to the 2020 ghost candidate scheme also received prior to letters, which typically alert someone they are the target of an investigation, according to a document first made public last week in a court filing.

One of those people, political operative Alex Alvarado, ran the two political committees that sent out ads promoting Rodriguez and the two other independent candidates. Alvarado works closely with Tyson and used Associated Industries of Floridas Tallahassee headquarters as the primary mailing address on bank records for his committees.

The chairman of Grow United, Richard Alexander, and former Democratic fundraiser Dan Newman, who raised nearly $1 million into Grow United in 2020, also received prior to letters from the State Attorneys Office, the court filing from Artiles attorneys said.

Though a motion from Artiles attorneys temporarily delayed the public disclosure of the prior to letters and other records, attorneys representing the Sentinel and other media organizations intervened and Artiles attorneys said during a hearing last week they did not object to making those documents public. A judge has yet to rule on a request by Artiles lawyers to block the disclosure of Artiles credit report and files collected from his personal laptops and cell phone.

Its not yet clear when the prior to letters will be available publicly. No hearing has yet been set on Lets Preserve the American Dreams request to keep its bank records private.

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anmartin@orlandosentinel.com
Shawn King, father, from West Monroe, Louisiana; has completed his new book The Journey is Just as Important as the Destination: a motivating piece that encourages readers to keep moving forward no matter how steep the road may be. Its a beautiful personal narrative of a man whose lifes adversities strengthen his resolve and hold onto his belief that better days are coming to those who never succumb to darkness.

King shares, The title of my book is The Journey Is Just as Important as the Destination. Its about a little boy in search of the truth on how to live and sustain happiness for life because I believe that everyone deserves to live a happy life. And once I found the truth, I was going to share it with everyone. I grew up in a small town, where we didnt have a lot of heroes, and we struggled with hope. But along this journey, you walk with me through bad choices, pain, anger, heartache, fun, greatness, squander, adversity, inspiration, all the way to redemption; and I share my heart, my mindset, and the knowledge that I gain along the way. Its a heck of a journey, and along the way, I cross paths with Shaquille ONeal, Odell Beckham Sr., Kevin Greene, Peyton Manning, and John Jacobs and the Power Team. And while on that journey, I was introduced to a man that changed my life forever, and I believe what he did for me can change your life for the better also. This book is an inspiration on so many levels, and it has the power to captivate all generations because at some point, you will be able to relate to this journey, and its powerful and life-changing. It also teaches you to never give up and know that a brighter day is coming and to keep fighting the good fight. Love and do not hate because when it boils down to its simplest form, its just good versus evil. Whose side are you on?

Published by Page Publishing, Shawn Kings engaging account aims to captivate readers of all ages. This work is a relatable, powerful, and life-changing read that will draw lots of emotions from anyone who gets ahold of it.

There are lots of valuable wisdom hidden inside this amazing exposition that one shouldnt miss.

Readers who wish to experience this relevant work can purchase The Journey is Just as Important as the Destination at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes Store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708.

About Page Publishing:

Page Publishing is a traditional, full-service publishing house that handles all the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create, not mired in logistics like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and so on. Pages accomplished writers and publishing professionals allow authors to leave behind these complex and time-consuming issues and focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com.
Today the Weed Science Society of America (WSSA) and the Canadian Weed Science Society (CWSS) announced details for their upcoming joint annual meeting, scheduled for February 21-24 in Vancouver, Canada.

Four special symposia are planned, including:



The North America Kochia Committees priorities for coordinating research, communication, and outreach

The challenges and opportunities presented by biological weed management

The Agricultural Research Services weed science research initiatives

The current regulatory and legal environment for weed control products

Breakouts and poster sessions offered throughout the meeting will feature scientific data of interest. In addition, special networking events are planned for both graduate students and for women in weed science careers.

Two plenary speakers are on the agenda. Steve Novak, Ph.D., will share lessons learned from a long-running battle with cheatgrass in the Pacific Northwest. Conrad Berube will share his experience with the first Asian giant hornet nest discovered in North America  a case study on the importance of early intervention in the management of invasive species.

To support those unable to attend in person, WSSA and CWSS will live-stream their annual awards ceremony and announcement of student contest winners.

Registration and further information are available online.



Other upcoming annual meetings planned by WSSA affiliates

Southern Weed Science Society (SWSS). The SWSS annual meeting will be held January 24-27, 2022, in Austin, Texas. The agenda features sessions on the soil and environmental aspects of weed science, new technologies, forest vegetation management, weed management in horticultural crops, weed management in pastures and rangeland, weed management in turf, weed management in agronomic crops, the educational aspects of weed control, invasive species, the regulatory aspects of weed control, and the physiological and biological aspects of weed control.

The meeting will include an awards luncheon and special events for graduate students and for women in weed science. In addition, a silent auction is planned to benefit the SWSS Endowment.

Registration and further information are available online.

Western Society of Weed Science (WSWS). The WSWS will hold its 75th annual meeting March 7-10, 2022, in Newport Beach, California. The theme for the meeting is the The Past, Present and Future of Weed Science. A symposium on new technology for physical weed control will be offered, as well as a workshop (available in-person or virtual) on weeds and wildfires in the West. The 75-year history of the organization will be highlighted in both poster and oral presentations.

Further details will be posted online as they become available.

About the Weed Science Society of America

The Weed Science Society of America, a nonprofit scientific society, was founded in 1956 to encourage and promote the development of knowledge concerning weeds and their impact on the environment. The Society promotes research, education and extension outreach activities related to weeds, provides science-based information to the public and policy makers, fosters awareness of weeds and their impact on managed and natural ecosystems, and promotes cooperation among weed science organizations across the nation and around the world. For more information, visit http://www.wssa.net.
Purdue University is updating its procedures for addressing the safety of minors on its campuses. The result is a new policy with revised operating procedures effective Saturday (Jan. 15) for programs that take place on or after May 1.

The policy and procedures establish a tiered system of requirements based on the type of program. Programs referred to as custodial programs  those that assume responsibility for the care, custody or control of a minor for at least a portion of the program  will have additional training, registration and planning requirements. Noncustodial programs will have fewer requirements to meet. All programs will need to ensure that the faculty, staff, students and volunteers who help to facilitate the program have passed a check of the national and Indiana sex offender registries. This is a change from the previous procedures, which addressed checks of faculty, staff and students through a different process.

University-recognized student organizations, which were previously exempt from the process, now will be required to follow the policy and procedures. Some of these organizations have frequent contact with minors who are not students of the University, so it is important that they know what is expected of them.

With the new and revised policy and procedures, the Office of the Vice President for Ethics and Compliance and the Office of Risk Management have entered into an agreement to acquire program registration software. The software will provide a central repository for program information and allow the University to meet certain reporting mandates. The software will be available for use by programs on all campuses.

View Policy III.A.6 and its supplemental operating procedures online. Comments and questions may be sent to youthprotection@purdue.edu.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.  Indianas top two public research universities are joining forces to keep more graduates in the state and fill the Hoosier talent pipeline with highly skilled workers.

Purdue University and Indiana University have partnered with Ascend Indiana, the talent and workforce initiative of the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership. Through the Ascend Network, the initiatives online job matching platform, Purdue and IU will be able to more effectively connect students with Indiana career opportunities that match their skill sets and interests, as well as offer increased one-on-one career guidance and job search support. This partnership provides Indianas leading employers with a unique platform for hiring the states college students for internships and jobs.

Since its inception in 2017, Ascend has connected more than 2,200 Indiana college students and recent graduates with jobs and internships in all sectors across the Hoosier state. Almost one-third of those are students from Purdue and IU, including regional campuses throughout Indiana. More than 550 employers are using the network.

This new partnership augments the portfolio of resources for students and alumni looking for post-collegiate careers right here in Indiana, said Steve Abel, Purdues associate provost for engagement. Purdue has long been a positive contributor to the workforce pipeline in multiple sectors throughout the state. Employers continually say Purdue grads are among the most employable in the nation.

IU and Purdue both recognize the major opportunity we have to drive brain gain in our state and build a healthy, innovative and internationally competitive economy, said Bill Stephan, Indiana Universitys vice president for government relations and economic engagement. We know that as many as 80% of graduates at our regional campuses around the state stay in their home regions after they complete their education. These alumni continue to make vital contributions to the economic growth and vitality of their communities. We are committed to bringing more talented graduates back to the state and to ensuring that we keep Indianas talent pipeline full of employees equipped with the skills that our states leading employers need and demand.

The Ascend Network is a resource offered on campus and via career services offices at no cost to students. Through the network, students receive personalized job and internship recommendations that lead to meaningful careers in Indiana. During the job search, application and interview process, a career mentor provides free, one-on-one support and educational resources. The platform adds a robust resource to the schools efforts to help students navigate the labor market to find jobs and internships in Indiana that align with their career goals. Students can find out more information here.

Both Purdue and IU have made major contributions already to contribute to the brain gain in the state, including their engagement in the states Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative, or READI. Multiple Purdue and IU campuses submitted proposals for projects to enhance regional prosperity across the state. Both schools participate in other brain gain initiatives like TMap, an alumni recruiting organization based in Indianapolis.

Purdue, recently named a Brand That Matters by Fast Company and continually ranked in the Top 10 as one of the Most Innovative Schools by U.S. News & World Report, is Indianas land-grant institution and has successfully launched numerous economic development projects through Purdue Research Foundations research parks, as well transforming the West Lafayette campus. Purdue and Purdue Research Foundation are increasing the number of people living and working in the Discovery Park District through remote working opportunities, partnerships with leading high-tech and research corporations such as Saab, Rolls-Royce and Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, and more.

Purdue is finding innovative ways to collaborate with communities and businesses through the Indiana Data Mine Initiative, funded by a $10 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. Purdue is also helping communities and education leaders rethink the high school experience through the success of Purdue Polytechnic High Schools, with two locations in Indianapolis and one in South Bend. Purdue expands its statewide presence through Purdue Fort Wayne, Purdue Northwest, Purdue Extension and several research parks.

Read more about IUs partnership with Ascend Indiana here.

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/.

About Indiana University

Founded in 1820, Indiana University is one of the worlds foremost public institutions of higher education, with seven campuses and two regional academic centers across the state and a network of five Global Gateways around the world. IU is ranked in the top 100 worldwide for U.S. patent grants and offers nationally ranked health and business programs, training more physicians than any other medical school in the country and offering one of the best online MBA programs in the world. For more than 200 years, IU faculty and students have led cutting-edge research to improve the well-being of our state, nation and world, including the discovery of life-saving umbilical cord blood transplants and mapping the human genome.

About Ascend Indiana

An initiative of the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, Ascend Indiana is committed to making Indiana a place of economic opportunity for all. Ascend connects job seekers to good and promising career opportunities through an innovative job matching platform, the Ascend Network; catalyzes partnerships and provides consulting services to meet high-demand workforce needs through Ascend Services; and conducts research through Ascend Insights to enable systems-level change that positively impacts individuals throughout the state through Ascend Insights. To learn more, visit ascendindiana.com.

Writers, Media contacts: Matthew Oates, 765-586-7496 (cell), oatesw@purdue.edu, @mo_oates; Teresa Mackin, 317-274-5432, tmackin@iu.edu, @teresa_mackin

Sources: Steve Abel, abels@purdue.edu; Bill Stephan, wstephan@iu.edu
Monterey, CA -- Dole Fresh Vegetables, Inc. is recalling all Dole-branded and private label packaged salads processed at Springfield, OH, and Soledad, CA facilities. A detailed list of affected products is provided on the FDA website.

Any salad varieties containing iceberg lettuce were recalled, as the lettuce carries risk of contamination with Listeria monocytogenes.

Listeria monocytogenes is an organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Although healthy individuals may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea, Listeria infection can cause miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women.

Products subject to the voluntary recall from Springfield, OH are identified by a product lot code beginning with the letter W and a Best if Used By date between Dec. 22, 2021 and Jan. 9, 2022.

Products subject to the voluntary recall from Soledad, CA are identified by a product lot code beginning with the letter B and a Best if Used By date between Dec. 23, 2021 and Jan. 8, 2022.

The product lot codes are located in the upper-right-hand corner of the package (see example below). Consumers who still have any of these products in their refrigerators are urged not to consume the product and to discard it immediately. No illnesses have been reported with the products being recalled to date.

This voluntary recall notification is being issued after harvest equipment used in the harvesting of the raw iceberg lettuce material used in these finished products was tested by Dole and found to contain Listeria monocytogenes.

Recalled salad items from the Springfield facility and the Soledad facility were distributed in Pennsylvania.

Listing of products subject to each of these recalls can be found on the FDA website. No other Dole products, including fresh fruit and field-packed fresh vegetables, are part of these voluntary recalls and are safe to consume.

Dole retailers have been advised to check store shelves and warehouse inventories to confirm that no recalled product is available for purchase by consumers.

Retailer and consumer questions about the voluntary recalls should be directed to the Dole Consumer Response Center at 800-356-3111, Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Pacific Time.

Dole Fresh Vegetables is coordinating closely with regulatory officials.
Jason Monteiro, a senior media executive with OTT leadership experience across Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, has been named general manager of HBO Max Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Monteiro will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of WarnerMedias Direct-to-Consumer business, leading content experience, brand, marketing, subscriber management, digital partnerships and data analytics. Based in Singapore, he will oversee the existing HBO GO streaming service and the eventual launch of HBO Max in the region, building and leading a team of cross-functional executives to maximise the streamers success.

Johannes Larcher, head of HBO Max International, commented: Jason arrives at HBO Max with a proven track record of building and growing subscription services across Asia and other important global markets. Hes a passionate leader known for building and inspiring high-performing teams, and Im eager to see his leadership in action as he steps into his new role today.

Monteiro will temporarily report to Larcher until a new managing director for the broader INSEAK region (India, Southeast Asia and Korea) is appointed.

Monteiro has extensive experience in streaming, most recently serving as the director of AVOD at Shahid, the leading Arabic content streaming platform. In this role, he was responsible for the general management of the streaming platforms free tier, covering user growth and engagement, overseeing the content catalogue and monetising through effective advertising solutions.

Prior to Shahid, Monteiro was general manager of Indonesia and Malaysia for iflix, and he also ran marketing as the companys chief marketing officer. In both roles, he helped guide iflix to impressive user growth. He has also held leadership roles at a number of telecoms companies across Southeast Asia and the Middle East, as well as in Australia and New Zealand.

Said Monteiro: I could not be more excited to be joining this amazing organisation and in particular to lead the charge for HBO Max. Its going to be such a thrill to work with the people across WarnerMedia to bring the likes of Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, DC, Warner Bros, HBO favourites, new Max Originals and many more, to the viewers in Southeast Asia.

HBO Max launched in the US in May 2020 and began its global roll out last year, launching in 39 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean in the summer. The streaming platform arrived in Europe in October with launches in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway, as well as Spain and Andorra. It will continue to launch in additional European countries this year.

While no dates have been confirmed for the arrival of HBO Max in Asia, WarnerMedia remains focused on the growth of HBO GO, the companys existing streaming service in the region. Recent upgrades to the service include the addition of all new Warner Bros. Pictures, which will stream on HBO GO following their 45-day exclusive theatrical window, featuring titles such as The Suicide Squad, Dune and the upcoming The Matrix Resurrections; series such as the HBO Original Succession, The Vampire Diaries, the Max Originals Gossip Girl and And Just Like That, the next chapter of Sex and the City, Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts; and the introduction of new multi-month subscription plans.
Peacock is giving a glimpse of the new series Bel-Air.

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The streaming service shared a trailer for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reboot Monday featuring Jabari Banks as Will Smith

The preview shows Will (Banks) go to live with his uncle Phil (Adrian Holmes) and aunt Viv (Cassandra Freeman) in Bel Air, Los Angeles, after a dangerous altercation in his hometown of Philadelphia.

Will's cousins Carlton (Olly Sholotan), Hilary (Coco Jones) and Ashley (Akira Akbar) help introduce him to his affluent new neighborhood and school.

"This town will try to make you forget who you are and where you came from. Don't let it do that," a character tells Will in the opening scene.

Bel-Air is based on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which starred Will Smith as Will and had a six-season run on NBC from 1990 to 1996. It is also inspired by Bel-Air, a 2019 short film written and directed by Morgan Cooper that gives a darker, more dramatic imagining of Fresh Prince.

The new series is directed by Cooper, who co-wrote the show with T.J. Brady and Rasheed Newson. Brady and Newson serve as co-showrunners and also executive produce with Cooper and Smith.

Bel-Air premieres Feb. 13 on Peacock.
XINING, Jan. 10 -- An earthquake of magnitude 6.9, at a depth of 10km, struck the Menyuan Hui Autonomous County in Haibei Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Northwest China's Qinghai Province, at 1:45 am, January 8.

After the quake, the PLA Western Theater Command quickly rallied more than 1,200 professional rescuers stationed around the epicenter to get ready as the vanguard force. It also directed the Qinghai Provincial Military Command to dispatch service members and militia to assist the local government in disaster relief and rescue.

The Haibei Military Sub-command of the Qinghai Provincial Military Command sent an emergency contingent to towns closest to the epicenter to check the situation, evacuate residents, dispose of hidden hazards, and set up tents.

The first group of rescuers from the Haibei detachment of the People's Armed Police Qinghai Corps arrived at the area around the epicenter at 5:00 am on January 8, where they checked the safety of every housing building and cleared collapsed sheepfolds.

In the meantime, six transport helicopters attached to an army aviation brigade were on standby.

As of press time, no casualties have been reported. The PLA Western Theater Command is closely following up on the situation in the quake-hit area through real-time communication with local authorities, and will put in more relief and rescue resources whenever needed.
Rick Hoye, Broward Countys newly elected Democratic Party chair, knows hes running against the clock. In the past months, he helped lead voter outreach for a congressional special election primary in an overwhelmingly blue seat. Now, he has two more special elections in his county to mobilize voters for  a task that will prove difficult in elections with historically low turnout.

Its not an easy task but its our task, said Hoye. We dont have that much time  the average person doesnt follow this thing the way I do. For a party that has for years struggled to counter Republican-led bills and priorities, Florida Democrats are facing an added hurdle in this years legislative session. Three safely Democratic districts in Broward and Palm Beach counties are likely to go unfilled during most of the legislative session that starts on Jan. 11.

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The unfilled positions would possibly leave more than 700,000 residents without representation in one or both chambers, a scenario where major swaths of both South Florida counties will not have advocates for local projects and priorities  especially in a year when the state budget is expected to benefit from a windfall of money from federal funds and local tax revenue.

The vacancies  in Senate District 33, House District 88 and House District 94  are the result of three lawmakers who resigned to run for Floridas Congressional District 20, a void left by the death of former U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings.

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For Democrats, it means they will now have 15 members to the 24 Republican lawmakers in the Senate. But in the House, the vacancies are more drastic for the likely 40 Democrats who will be in office during the session, a scenario that renders the party a so-called super minority in what is regularly a 120-member chamber, and deepens Republican power to easily bypass opposition.

Thats a big deal, said Hoye. We wish we had as many people holding the line for us as possible. ... Its bad that we wont have our full regiment, but we will be doing everything we can to make sure that were not mistreated.

Mail ballots started going out on Jan. 1, but the special elections primaries, which will be held at the same time as the general election for the 20th Congressional District, are scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 11, the first day of the legislative session, with the general election scheduled for March 8.

Although Browards House District 94 will have no general election, it is unclear whether House leaders will allow the victor to be sworn in and serve for the remainder of the 60-day legislative session.

The other two districts will have to wait until after the March 8 general election to be filled, just three days before the end of the legislative session. The timing of the elections, which were fixed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, drew plenty of controversy late last year from Democrats.

Many community leaders, including some of the candidates who had resigned their seats, criticized DeSantis decision to wait 87 days before declaring the dates for the special elections, instead of pegging the special election dates to the congressional primary that took place in November, as politically motivated. DeSantis was ultimately sued over the controversy.

DeSantis spokeswoman, Christina Pushaw, said the governor fulfilled his constitutional and statutory duties, by scheduling the elections to coincide with the upcoming FL-20th general election that was set to take place at the same time.

Some Democratic leaders have argued that the election dates left three majority-Black districts without any representation, during a crucial year of redistricting  the once-in-a-decade redrawing of district maps  and legislation related to Critical Race Theory, voting rights and immigration. Senate District 33, for example, includes the heart of much of Browards Caribbean immigrant community and organizations that help fund social services for underserved residents.

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Im the only Black senator who well have to defend on the [Senate] education committee because Senator [Perry] Thurston will be gone off that committee, said Sen. Shevrin Jones, whose district straddles south Broward and north Miami-Dade. Its sad thats the representation thats needed at the table. Its there, but its one less because of politics, in my mind.

Representing those constituents

Florida House leaders may have some discretion in determining when the victor in HD 94 will be allowed to be sworn in, said Mark Herron, a Tallahassee elections lawyer.

The governors executive order scheduling the special elections says that a general election shall be held on March 8, 2022, if necessary, to select the State Senator for Senate District 33, the State Representative for House District 88, and the State Representative for House District 94.

By presuming that a general election may not be necessary, the language assumes that the victor may be chosen in the primary, and therefore eligible to take office during the legislative session.

But, Herron said, state law says that even if a candidate is not on the ballot in the general election, they are assumed the victor by a vote of one to nothing. That gives House leaders the option of waiting until the general election to swear in the winner of the HD 94 seat, he said.

Lawmakers relied on that interpretation of the law when former state Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Coral Springs Democrat, was appointed by DeSantis to be director of the Division of Emergency Management in 2019. Moskowitz was replaced in a special election by Rep. Dan Daley and, although Daley was elected in the primary, he was not sworn in until after the general election.

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Meanwhile, there are some efforts from the Broward legislative delegation to advocate for appropriations to benefit the vacant districts, including from Jones and Minority Leader Sen. Lauren Book.

Former Rep. Omari Hardy, who left Palm Beachs HD 88 to run for Hastings seat, said he asked House leadership to retain his staff during the two-month gap so they can answer calls from constituents seeking help.

Hardy said his staff received a lot of calls in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to help people in his district access unemployment benefits and utility assistance.

In our case, the unemployment system was designed to fail. It was designed to frustrate folks who were trying to access their benefits when they needed them most, said Hardy. That will continue to happen during the pandemic. Its just kind of unfortunate that weve had to make these contingency plans.

Spokespeople for both Republican leaders, Senate President Wilton Simpson and House Speaker Chris Sprowls, did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the vacant seats. Sprowls office also did not respond to questions about whether the speaker intends to allow the winner in HD 94 to take the seat immediately following the election next week.

Cities, organizations may be hurt

Still, some South Florida officials dont think filling in for constituent services in the two-month gap is enough.

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Democratic Rep. Marie Woodson, whose district includes Miramar and Hollywood, pointed to a series of voting restrictions that DeSantis wants the Republican-led Legislature to consider as an example of legislation that Democrats wont have the numbers to credibly oppose.

Everything that impacts our peoples daily lives are at stake and it will be impacted because you dont have the numbers, said Woodson. We dont know what to expect.

They need somebody who understands the culture, somebody who understands the community. And go and fight for them. And guess what? They dont have that person.

This is why you have representation, for legislators to talk to their constituents, go into their communities, find out what their needs are, Woodson said.

Hardy said that while he agreed with the concept of having representation, he was equally skeptical that adding two Democrats in the House would present any significant resistance to bills driven by DeSantis political priorities.

I, again, believe folks should have strong representation but I dont want folks to think that our mere presence is enough to stop or shed the roughest edges from these bills, Hardy said. We should not kid ourselves; Republicans run Tallahassee.

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The effect might not be as noticeable in the short term for local governments who depend on lobbyists to advocate on their behalf. Melissa Dunn, vice mayor of Lauderhill, one of the cities located within the vacant Broward districts, said its city manager works with a lobbying firm that helps coordinate their appropriation requests.

But Dunn admitted they are hoping for at least one of both Broward seats to be filled before the end of session. Anything beyond the short-term, then I think well really feel the impact, said Dunn.

Its always very helpful when you can pick up the phone and call a Senator Thurston or State Representative [Bobby] DuBose. The impact of the vacancies is more direct for organizations that depend on yearly state funding, and are accustomed to lobbying legislators to advocate for their causes.

The concern was enough for Germaine Smith-Baugh, president and CEO of the Urban League of Broward County, to bring up the lack of representation during a meeting with the Broward legislative delegation.

The Urban League is a civil rights organization that assists residents in Black communities with job training, housing, entrepreneurship and education. The Broward branch of the nonprofit, which is located in the center of the vacant seats SD 33 and HD 94, has received millions of dollars in appropriations in years past.

I have really taken the stance of encouraging and challenging our Broward delegation to be representative of these areas, to be advocates for these areas, said Smith-Baugh, adding that shes received a positive response from elected officials since she raised concerns.

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Organizations will find a way to be represented and advocate. But the regular Jill and Jane, whether they have been very politically involved or not, I think thats where those conversations need to be had, she added.

Maria Meyer, chief development officer at the community early education center Jack and Jill, said her Broward-based organization hasnt yet come to terms with how it might be affected by the vacancies. While the group was about to receive state funding last year for the first time, it was one of several smaller nonprofits cut from the state budget when it reached the governors desk.

But since then, Meyer said efforts have been made to appeal to state lawmakers. And while Jack and Jill depends on other sources of income for its operational budget, like fundraisers and community partnerships, there is hope that this session will prove fruitful.

Weve spent a lot of time educating the legislators, said Meyer, mentioning Broward-based Rep. Evan Jenne and Miami-Dade Rep. Vance Aloupis, in particular. It is not lost on Hoye, the Democratic chair in Broward, that the lack of representation for the districts in his county is happening in a year when Critical Race Theory and the power of local government will be debated in the Legislature. Hoye, who is the first Black person to chair the Broward Democratic Party, is also an American History teacher.

I take it on both sides of my face, Hoye said. You have a war on minorities and educators and people who work in public education in general. ... Were reinforcing the fact that we still need representation and we need people to come out and vote.

Miami Herald Tallahassee Bureau Chief Mary Ellen Klas contributed to this report.

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Dozens of celebrities took to social media Sunday night to mourn the death of Bob Saget at the age of 65.

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The comedian and Full House alum was found dead in his Florida hotel room, just hours after he performed a 2-hour stand-up set.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office said neither drugs nor foul play were suspected in his death, but the cause has not yet been disclosed.

"Sail on my friend Bob Saget With your huge heart and abject lunacy, my condolences to his daughters & other family," Whoopi Goldberg said.

"I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby," lamented John Stamos.

"I'm sitting here in utter shock and supreme sadness. Bob? Bob??? Howww??? This makes zero sense! There's so much to say and I will at a later time but right now my love goes out to his wonderful wife and his 3 wonderful daughters. I am so very sorry," Jamie Kennedy said in a post.

"Bob Saget. A good hang, a good chat. Kind, funny, generous. RIP," wrote Russell Crowe.

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"I just can't believe it. What a wonderful guy. He always went out of his way to make me comfortable and talked nonstop about his kids. Such a loss," tweeted Kat Dennings

"I wanna share the voice texts I'm listening to that we were leaving each other this week. I'm laughing and crying. Im beyond sad. I can not believe this. I loved you Sag. We all did," wrote Dane Cook.

"Devastated by the loss of my friend @bobsaget. He was not just funny, but truly one of the good guys. I love this picture. Hopefully, they are laughing together," said Melissa Rivers, who shared a photo of Saget with her late mom, Joan.

"Bob Saget was as lovely a human as he was funny. And to my mind, he was hilarious. We were close friends and I could not have loved him more," offered Normal Lear.

"I'm shocked at such a loss," said Howie Mandel.

"I truly loved this man. I met him 40 years ago doing standup in Toronto. We both continued to have very busy lives and didn't get together much. The thing about bob was,as little as we were able to connect, each time we did, was so precious to me. We would talk about life family and all the the things that were so much more important than show business. I don't know anyone with a bigger heart. He'd show up every time I asked and gave of himself so much more than expected. He suffered great loss in his life with the passing of his sisters parents and friends. This was always handled with such, grace humor, and class. The laughter and joy he gave the world was paled in comparison to the time and dedication he gave to family, friends, and charities such as scleroderma. He was just here doing what he loved. This is beyond comprehension. I just need to cry. I love you Bob."
Jennie Nguyen thinks her Real Housewives of Salt Lake City co-star Jen Shah put Lisa Barlow in the "middle" of her feud with Meredith Marks.

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The television personality appeared on Sunday's episode of Watch What Happens Live, where she discussed Shah and Barlow's physical altercation.

Sunday's RHOSCL showed Shaw and Barlow clash on a bus while on the way to Zion National Park with the cast. The fight got physical, with producers restraining Shah at one point.

Shah was upset with Barlow because she believes Barlow has a double standard when it comes to her friendship with Marks versus Shah. Shah and Marks have been feuding since Season 1.

Nguyen weighed in on the drama on WWHL.

"Well, Lisa is a friend of Meredith and with Jen. So she's stuck in the middle trying to make sure that the relationship works," Nguyen said.

"You know, Jen kind of put her in the position of pick sides -- 'Pick me or pick Meredith, you can't have both.' Lisa's like, 'I can't do that. You guys are both my friends and you can't make me pick sides, because that's not fair,'" she added. "And Jen was unhappy and I guess it escalated."

Barlow gave an update on her friendship with Shah on WWHL in December amid Shah's legal issues. Shah and her assistant Stuart Smith were arrested in March and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.

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On WWHL, Barlow was asked to explain why she considers herself a better friend to Shah than Shah is to her.

"You know, with my conversations with Jen, mostly they revolve around Jen," Barlow said. "I'm a great friend to her."

Barlow confirmed she is still in touch with Shah, despite upsetting Shah with her previous comments about the legal situation on WWHL.

"I used to speak to Jen a lot. Since I was here last, we don't speak as much," she said. "I think I upset her."

Real Housewives of Salt Lake City is in its second season on Bravo.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 01/10/2022



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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

bachelorette Teddi Wright has opened up about her decision to be a virgin and why she considers herself "different" from other people who are virgins.Teddi, a 25-year-old surgical unit nurse from Highland, CA, explained why she's waiting to have sex and how long she plans to wait during a Thursday appearance on the "Click Bait with Bachelor Nation" podcast co-hosted by Joe Amabile Tia Booth and Natasha Parker For starters, Teddi insisted she had no reservations or fear about sharing she's a virgin right away on 's 26th season starring Clayton Echard "I'm very open about that, so I had no issues about saying that," Teddi said "And I say that really early on with guys I've dated in the past. I tell everyone that I know [that I'm a virgin]."Teddi, who received Clayton's First Impression Rose on Night 1 after essentially taking his breath away, noted how she's "not a very stereotypical virgin.""No one really expects that I am," Teddi pointed out to Joe, Tia and Natasha."I'm not waiting until marriage, so that's why it's a little bit different than other people that are virgins.""When I was in college," she elaborated, "I thought I was maybe going to wait until marriage. I grew up in a very Christian household and I'm still Christian. The college that I went to is Christian."However, some major self-reflection and being honest with herself apparently led Teddi to an epiphany."I think after I graduated, I kind of was looking back at all of my values and beliefs, and that was the one I always went back to," Teddi recalled.Teddi said she questioned herself, "Am I actually doing this because I feel like it's bettering myself or am I doing it because there's a lot of shame associated with women having sex and it changing the identity of the person?""And I felt like for me," Teddi explained, "it was connected more to not wanting it to be taken away from my identity. And that's just not a good enough reason for me."Also, Teddi revealed she is "a sexual person," even though she hasn't had sex yet."I think that women should be [sexual] and they should be okay and happy and proud of that. So, yeah, I changed [my mindset] to, 'I waited this long, I want to wait until I'm in love.'"Natasha gathered that Teddi seems to be waiting for a "real" and "mature" love, and Teddi nodded her head in agreement.When Teddi introduced herself on premiere , which aired on January 3, she explained to viewers how she wants to be in love when she has sex for the first time.Teddi also warned her family members that if Clayton ended up inviting her into an overnight Fantasy-Suite date, she would take advantage of that intimate off-screen time."I think Clayton could be my person. He checks off all the boxes that I feel like I have... When I look at him, I'll know if he's The One," Teddi told the cameras.Not only did Teddi receive the first rose of Clayton's season on Night 1, but she also snagged the first kiss. Clayton said that meeting Teddi stopped him in his tracks and left him speechless."Teddi, you make me feel some type of way!" Clayton gushed.Once Clayton gave Teddi a rose and she kissed him for the second time, Clayton said he felt like he was on Cloud 9, "or Cloud 10," if a person can get there."I felt that spark right away and it's wild," Clayton confirmed of the pair's connection, later adding, "Kissing Teddi, I feel complete... It just feels right. I don't know. I'm going to be thinking about that kiss for a while!"Teddi is one of 22 women remaining heading into 's second episode airing on Monday, January 10 at 8PM ET/PT on ABC.Interested in more news? Join our The Bachelor Facebook Group
After a fire destroyed the Georgia Theatre in 2009, a documentary detailing the event and its aftermath was released in 2011, the same year the venue was reopened. Over a decade has passed since the documentary's release, and today, it serves a reminder of what the theater means to the Athens community.
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - Parliament's Roadmap Committee has agreed with the Chairman of the High National Electoral Commission (HNEC), Imad Al-Sayeh, to provide him with a timetable for the electoral process with the provisions of the constitution on which a referendum will be held
People gathered in Harmony Parking lot in Brattleboro on Friday, April 22nd for a street festival and parade in celebration of Earth Day. According to Nancy Braus of 350 Brattleboro, the goal was to celebrate the ways in which the community is working towards climate justice and to empower 
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Brattleboro, VT (05301)

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TORRINGTON  The Torrington Savings Foundation awarded grants totaling $119,995 during its fall grant cycle.

The awards sustain the mission of investing in community revitalization through neighborhood renewal and education initiatives, according to a statement.

One grant was for the Womens Business Development Council, whose mission is to strengthen economic success for women through entrepreneurial services that launch and grow businesses across Connecticut. The council added 115 education programs as a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic and helped women owned businesses access over $12 million in relief funds to keep them working.

Additional grants were awarded to local nonprofits such as FISH of Torrington, to support needed upgrades in the heating system for the shelter; and a grant to Prime Time House to support the rehabilitation of a building on the campus in Torrington.

Grant recipients in the education focus area included the Litchfield Aid of the Connecticut CJR to support expansion of much-needed mental health services in local schools; ASAP!, an after-school arts program for the Torrington schools; Junior Achievement of SW New England, which helps build financial awareness and career paths for high school students; and the White Memorial Conservation Center, to eliminate financial barriers for children to attend the facilitys nature programs.

Other grant recipients included Friendly Hands Food Bank, Helping Hands Chore Service, the CAHS VITA tax assistance program, and continuing support for Habitat for Humanitys Torrington project.

These grants align with the Foundations mission to revitalize the communities it serves and improve the quality of life for low-to-moderate income individuals and families, said Lesa Vanotti, president and CEO of TSB. We are proud to partner with organizations that provide such meaningful services in our area.

For more foundation updates including application guidelines for non-profit applicants, go to TorringtonSavings.Bank/foundation
LITCHFIELD  The Board of Warden and Burgesses will explain their reasoning for removing the yellow ribbons honoring the military affixed to trees on the town green at their next meeting.

On the agenda of the meeting, which is set for Tuesday, the boards special counsel, Thomas Gerarde will discuss the section of the boroughs code that prohibits signs, ribbons and postings on the town green.

The board decided last year that the ribbons, because they had meaning, were signage that violated section 72 of the boroughs code and were prohibited from being posted on the green. The board then voted in September to have the ribbons removed.

The boroughs code states that no person in a park shall ... paste, glue, tack or otherwise post any sign, placard, advertisement or inscription whatsoever, nor shall any person erect or cause to be erected any sign whatsoever on any public lands or highways or roads adjacent to a park.

In December, the board reversed its previous decision to have the ribbons removed by Jan. 2. The ribbons remain  for now.

The Facebook page Keep Our Yellow Ribbons in Litchfield is hoping its strength in numbers will save the ribbons.

We have to let them know we are serious about keeping the yellow ribbons displayed to honor our active military, the group said. Our military is willing to fight to keep us safe. We need to show our military our commitment in honoring them.

The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Litchfield Fire House at 258 West St. The meeting has been shifted to a larger venue to accommodate the large crowd expected. Masks will be required at the meeting. The meeting will also be held on Zoom.
Lebanon, IN (46052)

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Becoming windy with showers and thunderstorms likely. High 69F. Winds SSW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

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This article is part of a yearlong reporting project focused on redistricting and gerrymandering in Pennsylvania. It is made possible by the support of Spotlight PA members and Votebeat, a project focused on election integrity and voting access.

Harrisburg, Pa.  The state House is expected to vote on a proposed congressional map this week, as spring primary deadlines and a lawsuit that asks Pennsylvanias highest court to take over the highly consequential process loom large.

A spokesperson for House Republicans told Spotlight PA the chamber will likely consider amendments to the proposal Tuesday, with a final vote expected Wednesday.

The preliminary map was approved by the House State Government Committee in December along partisan lines.

Embed #1

The panels chair, Rep. Seth Grove (R., York), first put forth a map drawn by a well-known redistricting advocate  former Lehigh County Republican Commissioner Amanda Holt  and hailed it as a response to public pressure to remove lawmakers from the redrawing process.

After complaints from some of the panels members, the committee advanced an altered version of that map a week later, before the public could review it.

Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, who must approve the map for it to take effect, said in a letter the map falls short in partisan fairness and creates a result that isnt proportional to the balance of Democratic and Republican voters in the state.

The decennial process of drawing new political boundaries helps determine the balance of power in Harrisburg and Washington. In the past, it has been an extremely politicized process that has been subject to lawsuits and accusations of gerrymandering  when a map is drawn to benefit one political party.

While Republicans controlled both the executive and legislative branches a decade ago, Wolfs role as governor gives Democrats the opportunity to reject the proposal.

Despite the maps importance, Wolf and the legislature are running up against the clock.

The states top election official has asked to receive the final congressional map by Jan. 24 in order to meet the first deadline associated with the spring primary.

Unlike the state House and Senate maps, the current congressional map is unusable because the state lost one of its 18 seats due to sluggish population growth.

Anticipating that Wolf and the Republican-controlled legislature wont be able to come to an agreement on the congressional map in time, concerned citizens and redistricting advocates are lobbying the state Supreme Court to take over.

Two lawsuits targeting the map  one from a group of residents who live in population-dense areas, the other from mathematicians and scientists seeking a data-driven process  were filed in Commonwealth Court in December.

The suits, since merged into one, argue that the courts should intervene in the process and ban the state from using the current map for the 2022 election.

In late December, Commonwealth Court gave Wolf and the legislature until Jan. 30 to enact a plan, while it asked interested parties to submit proposals. Should they fail, the court will begin considering submitted maps the following day.

The parties who brought the suit have also asked the state Supreme Court to immediately take over the case. The court could issue a ruling on the request at any time or decline to respond to it.

A number of people  including Wolf and the top Democratic and Republican leaders  have asked to intervene in the case, as have members of fair redistricting advocacy groups who are represented by the Public Interest Law Center.

The center handled the case that saw the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2018 adopt a new congressional map, finding the one approved by former Republican Gov. Tom Corbett in 2011 was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

Should the state House approve a map, it will then go to the state Senate for consideration. Lawmakers in that chamber are expected to release their own proposed congressional map this week.

Embed #2

Pennsylvanias state House and Senate maps are drawn through a separate process controlled by the Legislative Reapportionment Commission, a five-person panel made up of the four top legislative leaders from both major parties and a nonpartisan chair.

The commission released initial state House and Senate maps in December that are now under a 30-day public comment period that ends Jan. 18. You can see how your district would change under those proposals by using Spotlight PAs map comparison tool at spotlightpa.org/mydistrict.

After that, the commission has another 30 days to make adjustments. Anyone who objects to one or both of the maps can file an appeal with the state Supreme Court within 30 days.

Spotlight PAs Danielle Ohl contributed reporting.

WHILE YOURE HERE... If you learned something from this story, pay it forward and become a member of Spotlight PA so someone else can in the future at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.
The East Carolinian has created a forum that centers around topics within the community where readers can express their experiences and concerns. With Valentine's Day coming up, do you think the ECU community and the City of Greenville is doing all they can to make people feel loved and supported?

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In the latest development in the 'Bulli Bai' app case, the three accused Vishal Kumar Jha, Shweta Singh and Mayank were presented before the Bandra Court on Monday. Jha was sent to judicial custody, while Shweta and Mayank have been sent to the custody of Mumbai Police Cyber Cell till January 14.

Mumbai Police had arrested engineering student Vishal Kumar Jha from Bengaluru and Shweta Singh (19) and Mayank Rawat (21) from Uttarakhand in connection with the Bulli Bai case. Earlier, all three accused were sent to police custody till January 10. The accused were arrested after police stations across the country were flooded with complaints regarding the 'auction' listing of Muslim women on GitHub's 'Bulli Bai' mobile application. The app also used photographs of the women without their consent.

Bulli Bai case: Alleged Mastermind Niraj Bishnoi claims he's hacking since age 15

Apart from three accused arrested by Mumbai Police, Delhi has also nabbed the alleged mastermind behind the Bulli Bai app, Niraj Bishnoi. During the interrogation, Bishnoi allegedly revealed that he has been hancing since the age of 15. He also claimed to have hacked/defaced websites of schools and universities in India and Pakistan. Cops are trying to verify his claims.

Bishnoi claimed that he used the Gurmukhi script in the app calling it "more impactful than the Devagnari script". He also disclosed that he was in touch with other accused arrested by Mumbai Police and used to chat with them on Twitter.

The alleged mastermind of the Bulli Bai app also revealed that he was in touch with the creator of Sulli Deals. "His claim has been verified from the involvement of a Twitter account used by him in an FIR registered at PS-Kishangarh, Delhi. In the said FIR, the Twitter account used by him had tweeted the photograph of a woman for auction. His claim of being in touch with the creator of the Sulli Deals app is being verified. Further technical analysis is being done to identify the culprit. Forensic examination of the technical devices is underway," Sources said.

Notably, Delhi Police has also arrested the alleged mastermind behind the 'Sulli Deals' Aumkareshwar Thakur on Sunday. He has been sent to four days in police remand. According to police, he had developed the code for Sulli Deals on GitHub.
Amid the ongoing investigation in the Prime Minister Narendra Modis security breach in Punjab, another compelling angle in the matter has come to the fore on Monday as several Supreme Court lawyers and judges have been threatened by an anonymous caller from the UK between 9-11 am on Monday.

Speaking on the issue with Republic Media network, former Additional Solicitor General Atmaram Nadkarni said, The Prime Minister security is of prime importance because a country's Prime Minister is a supreme leader of the country and there cannot be any compromise whatsoever with that securities concern. Someone rightly approached the Supreme court and reported the matter and issued notice and had set the matter for hearing today."

"Our SC lawyers & judges won't cow down to threats"

The former ASG Nadkarni went on to say that, "Giving threatening calls or messages to the lawyers and asking judges not to take up this matter before It starts with the case is a serious matter. I must tell you that Supreme court judges and lawyers are made of very robust and very firm staff and they are not someone who would cow down to this."

Overseas angle to be probed: Fmr ASG

"This definitely has some overseas angle and that angle should be probed by the cybercrime of an international repute or a foreign agency. It must be found out and we should go to the root of the matter as to why this happened. A number of things have taken place till now, Prime minister's cavalcade was stranded on a bridge, which is hardly 10 or 15 km away from a very friendly neighbouring country (sarcastically referring to Pakistan) for about fifteen or twenty minutes. And then a serious violation of the blue book security was done. These violations happened and taking these things very casual thereafter is very dangerous, he added.

"Former PMs Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi died earlier, don't take it lightly"

Don't forget the country has lost two prime ministers earlier, a sitting Prime Minister was shot down and another Prime Minister succumbed to the bombing later. Therefore, Prime Ministers security is a matter of national importance it is something which is required to be looked into each and every aspect of the matter and the sovereignty of the country, the dignity in the country and the national flag cannot be compromised, ASG spoke reminding of the death of the Former PMs Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.

Former ASG further added, A committee to be created by a retired Supreme court judge must be given assistance by the governments to find who was at the root of the matter, to find out who are the persons those were involved in this. No one can tell the apex court of a country which matter should or should not be heard, you are nobody to tell the courts.

NIA Probe is a must in the matter: Atmaram Nadkarni

Asserting on the demand of the NIA probe in the matter, ASG Nadkarni said,  Absolutely, NIA should probe the matter, we must rise above our own prejudices forget everything else and remember India is like a mother and the Prime minister of India is a constitutional post, he heads the government which is an elected government and we can't we cannot afford to politicize this in any manner whatsoever whether at press or at the court. Therefore, it should be taken seriously and the NIA probe is a must in this.

Highlighting that the threat calls were deliberately made an hour before the Supreme Court hearing, to sabotage the hearing of the PM Modis security breach, he said, Sending messages at 9 o'clock before hearing at 10:30, it is obvious that it was time for this matter to come up and they were trying to destabilize the hearing of the matter, but as I said before them that our Supreme court and the judges and lawyers are of such robust staff that these kinds of threats dont matter and our country and the country's interest or mightier than the sword.

Many Advocates on Record in the Supreme Court got a threatening call from the UK pertaining to PM Modi's security breach. As per sources, the call contained a pre-recorded message by an unnamed organization that claimed responsibility for blocking the PM's route on January 5. It also warned the SC against hearing a plea seeking an independent inquiry into this matter, citing that it was yet to provide "justice" to the victims of the anti-Sikh riots of 1984.
Marking a new cosmic discovery, an international team of astronomers has discovered a new kind of nebula around a binary star system. Led by Stefan Kimeswenger from the Innsbruck University in Austria, the team has named the entity galactic emission nebula consisting of the binary star YY Hya. For the unversed, a nebula is a giant cloud of dust and gas in space and some of them are formed from the gas and dust emerging from the explosion of a dying star, such as a supernova. Interestingly, nebulae can also be called cosmic factories as their dust churns out infant stars.

More about the nebula

Lead author Kimeswenger revealed that the diameter of the main cloud of this nebula is 15.6 light-years across, which makes it almost 1 million times larger than the distance of the Earth to the Sun. Besides, the galactic emission nebula resides slightly above the Milky Way and its fragments are as much as 39 light-years apart. According to the experts, the nebula was able to develop undisturbed by other clouds in the surrounding gas owing to its location over the Milky Way.

The discovery of the nebula is part of a study based on data gathered by amateur astronomers years ago, as per the Innsbruck University's official report. Now published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the study is titled "YY Hya and its interstellar environment', after the binary star system. The YY Hya is the system that is composed of a K dwarf star and a hot white dwarf (WD) partner and currently is a fully developed shell of a common envelope system (CE).

"Toward the end of their lives, normal stars inflate into red giant stars. Since a very large fraction of stars are in binary stars, this affects the evolution at the end of their lives. In close binary systems, the inflating outer part of a star merges as a common envelope around both stars. However, inside this gas envelope the cores of the two stars are practically undisturbed and follow their evolution like independent single stars", Kimeswenger explained in an official press release. Shedding more light on the gas enveloping the stars, Kimeswenger said that they are extremely important for studying the evolution of stars in their final phase and how they sprinkle heavy elements into their surrounding. It is worth mentioning that the nebula's existence was confirmed after combining observational data from the Chile-based Chilescope observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope and NASA's TESS over two decades.

Interestingly, a model created by scientists based on the observations has revealed that the two stars orbit each other extremely closely in only 8 hours and 2 minutes. Besides, the white dwarfs temperature is about 66,000 Celsius whereas the K dwarf is burning at about 4400 degrees Celsius.

Image: Innsbruck University
The James Webb Space Telescope, which underwent over two decades of development and saw a nearly $10 billion budget spent on it, has finally been fully deployed in space. Scientists are celebrating the deployment milestone as they are now past the riskiest stage of the mission, where they unfurled Webbs sunshields and opened the telescopes golden mirrors each of which had multiple single-point failures. Launched on December 25, 2021, the telescope is bound to the second Lagrange point (L2), away from the sun, where it will be installed to observe the universe in infrared wavelengths of light.

#NASAWebb is fully deployed! 



With the successful deployment & latching of our last mirror wing, that's:

50 major deployments, complete.

178 pins, released.

20+ years of work, realized.



Next to #UnfoldTheUniverse: traveling out to our orbital destination of Lagrange point 2! pic.twitter.com/mDfmlaszzV  NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) January 8, 2022

Whats next for Webb and its operators?

Now that Webbs developers- NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), are past the riskiest parts of the mission, there is still a lot of work pending to do. It is pertinent to mention here that, unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, Webbs orbit is 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth and as of January 10, the telescope has covered 78% of its journey. Meanwhile, as per the schedule, Webb is right on track as scientists had planned to fully unfold the telescope within the first month of its launch.

Once the telescope is unfolded, it will enter its orbit at L2 approximately 29 days after launch, the period about which the engineers were most worried. Following the installation of the telescope into its orbit, scientists will then turn on the science instruments approximately two to three months after the launch. The Webb telescope is equipped with four main instruments that include a Near Infrared Camera, a Mid Infrared Instrument, a Fine Guidance Sensor and two different Near-Infrared Spectrographs each of which will be activated for testing.

As per ESA, each of these instruments will then be tested for at least another two to three months after being activated in order to make sure they are fit for operations after their month-long journey. Finally, it will be after the testing of these instruments when the science observations will begin in full swing, somewhere around six months after the launch. Considered a successor of the Hubble telescope, Webb will also succeed as the most powerful telescope ever built owing to its unmatched capacity to detect infrared light and the 21-foot gold plated mirrors that would help it in doing so. Tap here to know all about whats special about Webbs golden mirrors.

Image: Twitter/@ESA
Police in Italy have launched an investigation into the vandalisation of the landmark tourist spot in southern Sicily called the Scala Dei Turchi, or Stair of the Turks. The popular white marl cliffs on the coast of Realmonte were defaced with red paint and plaster dust by the vandals, Italian newspaper Corriere Di Sicily reported. The Prosecutor's Office of Agrigento announced that it has launched a manhunt for those behind the damage of the Italian assets having landscape value.

Chief Luigi Patronaggio told the paper that he lodged an official complaint and has been inspecting the images and the video acquired from the surveillance system. The Italian police are also examining the material used to deface the popular tourist attraction and are trying to find the sales and the list of buyers. Italys Scala Dei Turchi is a set of a huge staircase jutting into the Mediterranean from the coast of Realmonte in southern Sicily and is mentioned in some of the popular Italian novels and notable authors.

A group of young volunteers is trying to whitening back the "Scala dei Turchi" (Turkish Steps), after the vandalism. When common sense, sharing & love for the beauty prevails #ScaladeiTurchi https://t.co/qBcC9T3069 pic.twitter.com/l5aopivC7z  Valeria Giannotta (@valegiannotta) January 9, 2022

Volunteers in Realmonte clean red iron oxide powder

The police found that some perpetrators defaced the cliff with red iron oxide powder, which may not be so difficult to remove. The Volunteers in Realmonte on Saturday started the work of removing the red powder and restoring the beauty of the site. Scala Dei Turchi has also been a one-time entry for Unesco's world heritage status in 2019. In 2020, though, due to its poor preservation, the government had closed the site for its preservation as the cliff had suffered natural erosion. Tourists had also earlier stolen the rocks from the cliff that is said to contain the soft white limestone.

Are we joking????? Deface and thus ruin the milestone of Sicily, Scala dei Turchi? Here only one measure is needed to eradicate bitchy people and empty pumpkins without souls, feelings and respect for people and places. lock them up for life and throw away the key pic.twitter.com/3FtVvYtN6t  Samantha Rizza (@lionsam88) January 9, 2022

The splendid white marl cliff of the Scala Dei Turchi, an attraction of the Agrigento area for visitors from all over the world, has been shamefully defaced, said Nello Musumeci, Sicilys president on social media. We condemn the perpetrators of this cowardly gesture. It constitutes an outrage not only to an asset of rare beauty but also to the image of our island. I hope the judiciary quickly identifies those responsible. Twitter expressed outrage at the vandalism, as one wrote:  What is happening in Italy: discontent; vandalism; lack of ethics. The national heritage & natural reserve of "Scala Dei Turchi" (Turkish steps) has just been damaged by the red painting by unknowns. Such a huge shame!
Switzerland's Army has reportedly barred its security personnel from using Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram and similar messaging applications while they are on duty. The Swiss Armed Forces have now advised their security personnel to use the Swiss-made app Threema instead of the other messaging apps, reported Sky News. The new rules will result in the security information not getting exposed to foreign parties.

The people serving in the Swiss Army have already been using Threema Work, the enterprise edition of the app, Sky News cited spokesman Daniel Reist. Reist further added that the new rule is applicable for the use of applications on private devices of soldiers when they are on service operations. However, there is no punishment available for those who continue to use other messaging services.

Swiss Army to pay the cost for downloading Threema application

Daniel Reist told Sky News that Switzerland's military is advising the use of Threema which is a paid Swiss messaging app and is end-to-end encrypted based on servers in the country. Furthermore, the Swiss Army will pay for the cost of downloading Threema for its professionals. As per the news report, the Threema app does not come under the US Cloud Act that allows US authorities to ask the companies to hand over the user information in response to a court request.

The new development comes after the Army leaders in a letter to top commanders in December 2021 called for the use of messaging app Threema. For the new rule, the Swiss officials have cited the need for secure communication as the Swiss Army carries out operations during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In the letter sent to Army Chiefs in December, it has been mentioned that Threema must be used for all service communications, as per the AP report. The letter sent to Army Chiefs further insisted that no other messaging service will be authorized. As per the AP report, for using the Threema app, the user is not required to give a phone number or email id. Reportedly, the Swiss army will also reimburse its soldiers the annual cost for the use of the Swiss app, which is around 4 Swiss Franc.

(Inputs from AP)

Image: AP, Pixabay
On Sunday, 9 January, a committee was formed by the Pakistan government to investigate the deaths of at least 23 people who were stranded in their vehicles in the snow-covered Murree region. Following the finalisation of the members' names, a notification was issued appointing Additional Chief Secretary Home Zafar Nasrullah as the convener of the committee. Members of the committee also include provincial secretaries Ali Sarfaraz Asad Gilani, as well as Assistant Inspector General Farooq Mazhar news agency ANI reported citing Geo News.

As per the report, the parameters of reference under which the committee will work were also specified in the notification. The committee will determine which government departments were liable for the crisis situation that took place Murree. It will also examine the steps taken to manage the influx of tourists and vehicles. In addition, the committee will investigate what preventative actions institutions took in light of the Met Office's weather advisory. It will evaluate if a media warning was issued to stop people from visiting the tourist attraction. The committee will also look into what traffic control measures adhered to during the snowfall and what safety precautions were undertaken after reports of severe weather conditions were received, the report stated.

Committee to submit report within one week

The committee is expected to submit its report to the provincial government within seven days. According to the initial report submitted to the Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar, deaths occurred owing to carbon monoxide poisoning. Meanwhile, Buzdar also announced Rs 17.6 million in financial aid for the families of deceased people, Geo News reported. Buzdar claimed in a statement that there were 33,745 automobiles in Murree as of Saturday night (8 January), far more than the hill station can accommodate. According to the report, 162,000 vehicles entered the city between 3 to 7 January.

Pakistani PM expressed grief over the tragic incident

Earlier on Sunday, 9 January, Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed said that a travel ban to Murree and Galiyat will be extended for another 24 hours, despite police clearing snow from all key roads in the hill region to restore traffic flow. He further stated that only residents of Murree and the surrounding areas would be permitted to travel on these roads upon showing their national identity cards, the Pakistani news outlet reported. It should be mentioned here that Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had also expressed grief over the tragic incident. "I have ordered an inquiry and am putting in place strong regulations to ensure the prevention of such tragedies," he tweeted.

(With inputs from ANI)

Image: AP
At least 9 were killed and four others were left wounded on Monday in an explosion near a school in Afghanistans Nangarhar province, reported Sputnik citing a local source. The fatal incident reportedly took place around noon (local time) in Lalpur County when a mortar shell reportedly exploded. The source revealed to the news agency, The explosion killed nine people and injured four more and the injured were taken to a hospital.

The explosion near a school in Nangarhar province of the war-ravaged nation came after at least two people were killed and five were injured in a clash between two Taliban groups in the northeastern region. The country has been engulfed in chaos ever since the Taliban took over the nation forcing the previous government of Ashraf Ghani to fall on 15 August 2021. The Talibans march into the nation was met with mass evacuations from the country.

Landmine explosion in Kabul

Just last week, on 3 January, an explosion took place in the 11th police district of Kabul. According to Pajhwok Afghan News, Maulvi Nasir Ahmad Ahmadi, 11th police district chief said that a land mine exploded right in front of the district office around 6 AM (local time) last Monday. Now one was injured in the incident. In December 2021, an explosion swept through a wedding party in the southern part of Afghanistan. The blast claimed the lives of two children and wounded at least eight others.

Xinhua had reported last month that the blast took place during a wedding reception in Khalach village of Gizab district in the country's Uruzgan province. Prior to the explosion at the celebration, two separate bomb attacks in Kabul claimed two lives on 10 December 2021, stated Taliban Interior Ministry spokesman Sayed Khosti. The first explosion occurred on a minibus in the Dasht-e-Barchi area, near the Iraqi Police recruiting centre in Kisak, and another explosion took place in western Kabul.
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Amid the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, nearly 30,000 school students of the Northern Province of Kunduz region are forced to stay away from attending classrooms, TOLO News reported on Monday. According to local media reports, the education department cited the recent political violence as one of the major reasons that the schools and colleges are shutting their doors for students. While speaking to TOLO News, Mawlawi Ismail Abu Ahmad, head of the provincial education department said that the recent outbreaks of violence forced at least 30,000 school children from joining the classroom. He said that most of the schools are located in areas where clashes between the former security forces and the Taliban become a "new normal".

According to the local media outlet, Alchin Female High school was among one of the best schools in the region. However, the deadly clashes between Taliban forces and the former government lead to the destruction of the school building. The building is now under construction. The education department said that the war has squandered education opportunities for around 30,000 students. The department added that efforts are underway to make education available to all the children in the region. Notably, in December last year, the extremist outfit announced a new 170 member policy unit for the security and protection of educational institutes.

Taliban also imposed draconian laws on women education

It is worth mentioning the condition of the educational institutes have been under severe turbulence since the Taliban ousted the democratically elected government in August last year. Since then, schools, college students, and teachers have been protesting against the Taliban to resume the education institutes. They called the closing of schools and universities a matter of grave concern that said that it can deeply alter the future of learning for students in the war-torn country. "Education is the Islamic and legal right of female students and that no one could take this right from them. Taliban should give serious attention to it," a female protestor told TOLO News who was protesting against the Taliban's anti-female education policy. Apart from education, the Taliban also barred women from resuming their works.

With inputs from ANI

Image: Representative Image Unsplash
Sri Lanka on Sunday, January 9 sought to reschedule the payments of its mounting Chinese debt in view of the sluggish economy due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. During the talks with the visiting Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa requested his Chinese counterpart to defer the payments of the loans that the cash-strapped Southeast Asian nation is unable to pay. The President of Sri Lanka, therefore, asked China for the restructuring of its loans as well as the access to preferential credit for imports of essential goods, Associated Press reported. Furthermore, the agency reported that Sri Lankas Beijing-financed projects dont generate revenue and hence the country now needs the concessionary credit facility for imports so that the industry can operate without disruption.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa told visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that it would be a great relief to the country if attention could be paid on restructuring the debt repayments as a solution to the economic crisis that has arisen in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, a statement from Sri Lankan Presidents office read on Sunday.

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, inspect the Chinese-funded sea reclamation Port City project in Colombo, Sri Lanka. (Image: AP/Eranga Jayawardena)

Sri Lankan leader also requested Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi for assistance in order to restart the Chinese travel to Sri Lanka within a secure bubble amid the pandemic for the country to secure revenue out of tourism. During his visit, the Chinese minister accompanied the Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, the presidents brother to Colombos Port City, the reclaimed island built with Chinese investment.

China and Sri Lanka launched 65 boats in the waters to commemorate the 65 years of diplomatic bilateral relations. In his speech at Port City Wang agreed that the COVID-19 pandemic has made economic recovery difficult but did not announce any relief measures. Chinese foreign minister arrived in Sri Lanka during his multi-national trip from the Maldives. His trip includes visits to Eritrea, Kenya, and Comoros in East Africa.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi attends a bilateral meeting with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo, Sri Lanka. (Image: AP/Eranga Jayawardena)

China's 'debt trap' policy

China has carried out several infrastructure projects in Colombo as the country's leadership invited the Chinese communist regime to implement its ambitious expansionist Belt and Road project with several projects, a matter that has long caused concerns in India. Columbo, now unable to pay the debt back would be recent in the Chinese 'premeditated scheme' of a debt trap, like the Panama that shifted to Beijing's domino effect, and some 15 Latin American nations that also welcomed Chinas BRI, according to reports.

Beijing has been on the aggressive campaign of pursuing a global infrastructure under the B&R Initiative. Several nations like Sri Lanka have borrowed millions in loans for large-scale infrastructural projects with Chinese firm involvement. Last year, after Uganda was unable to pay its debt to China, a US$207M loan that it took in November 2015 from the Chinese Exim Bank, China struck an agreement that would require the country to surrender its only international airport to the Chinese lenders.

"Ugandan government has failed to convince the Chinese lenders to renegotiate the toxic clauses of the 2015 loan, leaving Ugandan President, Yoweri Musevenis administration in limbo," Guayana news agency Kaieteur reported. It cited the Uganda Civil Aviation Authority (UCAA), as rebuking China for some provisions in the Financing Agreement that "required the Entebbe International Airport and other Ugandan assets to be attached and taken over by Chinese lenders upon arbitration in Beijing."

Image: AP
Nearly four days after the Thailand government announced to tighten the COVID-related restrictions, it has announced to reopen tourist places completely for the international vaccinated people. The announcement came at a time when the country is reporting a record number of COVID cases, driven by the Omicron variant. However, the tourists need to undergo the COVID test at the airports and have to stay at the government hotel until their test result turns negative.

Earlier on Friday, the government has announced tightening virus-related regulations while expanding its "sandbox" quarantine program. The government also appealed to tourists and its people to follow social distancing and face mask rules in order to control the latest COVID variant.

As per the latest order, the Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration has suspended the "test-and-go" program in which the tourists are allowed to move freely after getting tested for the COVID virus. Earlier, the tourists were allowed to roam after completing one-day quarantine. "All other people arriving in Thailand must either go into hotel quarantine or use the sandbox program. The program will be extended next Tuesday from the island of Phuket to the provinces of Pang-nga and Krabi and three islands in Surat Thai province  Koh Samui, Koh Tao and Koh Phangan," AP quoted CCSA spokesperson Taweesin Witsanuyothin as saying.

What is Thailand "Sandbox" program?

It is a program announced by the Thailand government under which fully vaccinated people are allowed to enter specific locations such as Phuket. Under the sandbox rule, a tourist needs to spend a week in government-approved hotels. The tourists are only allowed to move out of the quarantine room once they complete their mandatory isolation phase. However, their movements will be tracked until they tested negative on the seventh day.

What is the "test-and-go" scheme?

Under the test-and-go system, only those who are vaccinated against the COVID are allowed to enter the country. The individual will have to go COVID test at airports on arrival. Later, the individual will have to undergo a second COVID test after spending seven days in the country. "If the first test was negative, they could travel freely. They had to spend their first night in a government-approved hotel awaiting their test results," according to the government order.

It is worth mentioning Thailand crawling economy has once again been hit by the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron. According to the country's health ministry, it has reported more than 8,000 cases in the past 24 hours. As of today, it has 54,000 active cases in the country. It eased restrictions after a successful vaccination program in which 100 million doses have been administered to its population of about 60 million people. Booster programs are underway around the country, according to AP.

(With inputs of AP)
Amid the rise in COVID-19 cases, the United Kingdom government has urged pregnant women to take a booster dose of the vaccine. The UK government, together with experts from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), have launched a new campaign to encourage pregnant women to get vaccinated.

The UK government in the advertising campaign have highlighted the serious risks of getting infected with COVID-19 and the benefits of receiving the vaccines against COVID-19 to protect both mothers and their babies. In the ad campaign, the government has called on pregnant women to receive the vaccine by saying, dont wait to take the vaccine". The Department of Health and Social Care cited data from the UK Obstetric Surveillance System which showed 96.3% of pregnant women admitted to hospital with COVID-19 symptoms between May and October were unvaccinated, a third of whom needed respiratory support.

UKHSA data shows COVID-19 vaccines safe for pregnant women

The most recent data from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) shows that vaccinations provide strong protection to pregnant women against COVID-19. Furthermore, the data shows that the vaccines are safe for pregnant women, with similar birth outcomes for those who have received the vaccines and those who have not been jabbed. Since April 2021, around 84,000 pregnant women have received the first dose of the vaccine and more than 80,000 have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Dr Jen Jardine, from the RCOG, who is also 7 months pregnant and has received a booster shot of the vaccine, has strongly called on all pregnant women to receive the coronavirus vaccines.

Dr Edward Morris, President of the RCOG, in the press release welcomed the campaign calling on pregnant women to receive the vaccines. Morris urged pregnant women to get vaccines and receive booster doses of vaccines after 3 months of getting fully vaccinated. Morris raised concern over many women who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 and expressed hope that the campaign would help in assuring pregnant women about the safety of the vaccine. Gill Walton, Chief Executive and General Secretary of the RCM, in the press release, informed that many pregnant women are getting admitted to hospital with COVID-19 and added that 93% of them have not received the vaccine.
The former chairman of the United Kingdom's vaccine task force stated that COVID-19 should be treated as an endemic virus akin to flu, and the government should stop mass immunisation after the booster campaign. Dr Clive Dix urged for a significant rethink of the UK's COVID-19 strategy, effectively reversing the approach of the past two years and returning to a "new normality," The Observer reported. His statement comes as health chiefs and senior Conservatives also batted for a post-pandemic plan for a strained National Health Service (NHS).

"We must examine if we should use the current booster campaign to ensure the vulnerable are safeguarded. It's also time to phase out the mass vaccination in the United Kingdom," Dr Dix was quoted as saying by the British news outlet. He further stated that lawmakers should support research into COVID-19 immunity that goes beyond antibodies to encompass B-cells and T-cells (white blood cells). According to him, this will aid in the development of vaccines for vulnerable patients specific to COVID-19 variants. "We must now focus on disease management rather than virus spread. As a result, the goal for the future should be to prevent vulnerable groups from developing severe diseases," the vaccine expert remarked.

COVID-19 has taken a terrible toll on the country: PM Johnson

Dr Dix put forward his opinion after it was found that COVID-19 has killed over 150,000 people in the United Kingdom. According to the report, official numbers released on Saturday, 8 January revealed that there had been another 313 deaths, the biggest daily total since February 2021, when the last peak was beginning to fade. It brings the overall number of people who died within 28 days of testing positive to 150,057. Prime Minister Borish Johnson also stated that COVID-19 has taken a terrible toll on the country. "Each and every one of those is a profound loss to the families, friends and communities affected and my thoughts and condolences are with them. Our way out of this pandemic is for everyone to get their booster or their first or second dose if they havent yet," he tweeted.

Huge amounts of funds being granted for NHS backlogs and social care: Govt

According to NHS officials, patient safety has been jeopardised this winter due to a severe health and social care workforce crisis that will require a million additional workers over the next decade. The pandemic has exposed "its weakest links," stated Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, as per The Observer. Meanwhile, a government spokesperson claimed that huge amounts of funds are being granted for NHS backlogs and social care. "We are also expanding NHS capacity by constructing onsite Nightingale centres and 2,500 virtual beds where people may be treated safely at home," he added as per the British news outlet.
The CCP wants 'severe punishment' for Cathay executives after the airline is linked to three COVID-19 outbreaks.

Beijing has asked Hong Kongs leader to take swift action against officials embroiled in a scandal around a birthday party at the center of a large cluster of COVID-19 cases, local media reported on Monday.

The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is stepping up pressure on the administration of chief executive Carrie Lam, warning that any delay could hurt the government's credibility, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported, citing government advisers as saying that suspension, demotion, pay cuts or even dismissal are all possibilities.

Meanwhile, a CCP-backed Hong Kong newspaper on Monday called for criminal prosecution and swift retribution for senior executives at the city's flagship airline after its employees were fired for breaking quarantine rules.

"Loopholes need to be plugged, and the offenders need to be severely punished to prevent others from doing the same," the Ta Kung Pao said in an editorial after the airline was identified by an anti-epidemic taskforce from Beijing as a weak point in Hong Kong's COVID-19 defenses.

"As a major [Hong Kong] company, Cathay Pacific must fulfill its social responsibilities in the fight against COVID-19, not least because it received nearly H.K.$30 billion in government funding during the early stages of the pandemic," the article said, blaming Cathay for involvement in three out of five waves of coronavirus infections in Hong Kong.

"The facts have proved that Cathay's repeated negligence has led to deaths in Hong Kong," it said.

Lam has ordered an inquiry into the behavior of 13 senior government officials who attended the Jan. 3 birthday party of National People's Congress (NPC) delegate Witman Hung, after which two party guests tested positive for COVID-19.

Photos of the party showed Hung and many of his guests warbling into karaoke microphones into the early hours with no masks on at a bash that was attended by dozens of high-ranking establishment figures.

"I have instructed all officials being subject to quarantine that they should not continue to discharge their duties and that they are required to take their own vacation leave for quarantine," she said on Jan. 8.

Also at the party were 19 members of Hong Kong's new "patriots-only" Legislative Council (LegCO) who have so far tested negative.

All party guests and hundreds of their close contacts have now been sent to compulsory government quarantine facilities as the city scrambles to contain a fresh wave of COVID-19 infections.

Senior officials who attended included Home Affairs Secretary Casper Tsui, Director of Immigration Au Ka-wang, police commissioner Raymond Siu and the head of the city's Independent Commission against Corruption, Simon Peh, all of whom have made public apologies along with Witnam Hung.

Au has already paid a fine last year for attending a dinner in a luxury private club in a breach of a COVID-19-related ban on public gatherings of more than four people.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
The naval exercise near Keelung was part of three days of multi-disciplinary drills at different locations.

A Taiwanese Tuo Chiang-class corvette is seen during an annual New Year's Navy drill in Keelung, Taiwan, Jan. 7, 2022.

Taiwan has showcased some of its indigenous-built warships at an event designed to send a message of deterrence to China, local officials and analysts said.

Over the weekend, the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense held a naval exercise off the coast of Keelung in northeastern Taiwan, part of three days of multi-disciplinary drills at different locations to demonstrate the militarys combat readiness, the ministrys news service said.

We want the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) [of China] to think twice before it acts, Col. Sun Li-fang from the Taiwanese Army Commands Political Warfare Bureau told media at one of the drills.

The Defense Ministry said two Taiwanese-designed corvettes, including the newly commissioned Ta Chiang, took part in the naval exercise on Friday. They were seen conducting tracking and firing simulations in rough seas conditions.

The 500-ton corvettes, dubbed aircraft carrier killers, were built by the Lung Teh Shipbuiding Company in Yilan County. They are armed with Sea Sword II medium-range air defense missiles, anti-ship missiles, 76 mm cannons and close-in weapons systems.

Shu Hsiao-huang, an analyst at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, was quoted by the state-run Central News Agency (CNA) as describing the ships as "mobile, stealthy, fast, and powerful."

The corvettes can be fitted with missile launchers if needed, but Shu was quoted as said that at the meantime, they are well suited for gray zone patrols, including in the South China Sea. Gray zone activities are generally not explicit acts of war but harmful to the security of a nation.

In 2011, the Taiwanese parliament approved a budget of over US$850 million to build up to 12 new warships to deal with new maritime challenges mainly from China. With around 360 ships at the end of 2020, China has the largest navy in the world, according to a U.S. Defense Department report.

Beijing regards Taiwan, a self-governing island located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) off the mainland, as part of China. It has stepped up military drills in the islands vicinity. Taiwan views itself as a sovereign state. It is also a claimant in the South China Sea, along with Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

At the naval drill, the Taiwanese navy also showcased for the first time its home-designed, automatic minelaying system used aboard new Min Jiang-class vessels. These mine-laying vessels are not large but have hi-tech navigation capabilities that said to facilitate fast and accurate mine-laying operations in enemy waters.

The islands navy has four indigenous-built rapid minelaying ships  two of them delivered only last month.

Last weekends exercise was conducted using a worst-case scenario  a PLA attack - explained Qi Leyi, a Taipei-based military analyst and commentator for RFA Mandarin.

The new fast minelaying boats can greatly prevent the enemys beach-landing operations and become a reliable combat force for Taiwan's multi-domain deterrence, Qi said.

Taiwan cannot compare with China in terms of the number of warships, so its got to look for a better technology, he added.

Mine warfare has become increasingly important in maritime conflicts, as sea mines are among the most dangerous naval weapons. The PLA Navy last month conducted a large-scale bomb dropping and sea mine-laying exercise on islands in the South China Sea.

China conducts frequent military drills in disputed waters, but it's unusual for the PLA to deploy warplanes to drop bombs and lay mines in a live-fire exercise.
Terms for having illegal walkie-talkies and breaking Covid-19 rules raise her jail time to six years.

Detained Myanmar State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi (L) and president Win Myint (R) during their first court appearance in Naypyidaw, May 24, 2021.

Updated at 02:25 p.m. EST on 2022-01-10

A military court sentenced deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi to four years in prison Monday for the illegal possession of walkie-talkies and breaking Covid-19 rules, raising to six years the jail time imposed on her in closed-door proceedings, sources familiar with the trial said.

Nearly a year after she was overthrown and arrested by the army, the 76-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi got two years for violating export-import laws and one year for violating the communications law for the walkie-talkies, and two years for violating the natural disaster management law.

Mondays sentenceswhich for the walkie-talkies will be served concurrentlyare the latest of a dozen charges that could bring combined maximum sentences of more than 100 years, sources close to the court told RFAs Myanmar Service.

On Dec. 6 Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint received two years for incitement against the military and two years for violating coronavirus restrictions, which the junta chief reduced to two years of house arrest.

The former State Counselors lawyers have been barred since October by Myanmars military rulers from releasing information or speaking publicly about the two cases being tried.

She has rejected all allegations, which her supporters, rights groups and foreign governments have condemned as political.

Kyaw Htwe, a member of the Central Committee of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, criticized the verdicts given by the court, calling them unjust.

"They had plotted to do this right from the beginning, and they built up their cases and prosecuted her only after her arrest," he said. "The courts and judges are acting in accordance with the junta's wishes instead of giving decisions in accordance with the law."

Myanmar's courts and the ruling military "State Administration Council" should be separate entities, according to the provisions of the 2008 Constitution which the military says it respects, added veteran Myanmar lawyer Kyee Mint.

"The military said that they staged their Feb. 1 coup in accordance with the 2008 Constitution, but nothing we are seeing now is line with that constitution," he said.

The Myanmar juntas courtroom circus of secret proceedings on bogus charges is all about steadily piling up more convictions against Aung San Suu Kyi so that she will remain in prison indefinitely," said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

The fear of her continued political power explains the juntas willingness to appear as global laughingstocks as they secure convictions in a kangaroo court on the flimsiest, politically motivated charges," he said in a statement from Bangkok.

The Myanmar military junta is running roughshod over the human rights of everyone, ranging from Suu Kyi and other elected officials of the previous government to the CDM [Civil Disobedience Movement] activists on the street, added Robertson.

Former Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi is shown in a file photo. RFA





Charles Santiago, a Malaysian parliamentarian and member of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, called Monday's verdicts "a travesty of justice by a judicial system that is proving to be a mere pawn of the Myanmar military, and further evidence that the junta is determined to eliminate the political opposition after their resounding victory in the 2020 elections."

Aung San Suu Ky is one of more than 8,000 people currently under detention for opposing the Feb. 1, 2021 military coup that overthrew civilian rule in Myanmar, Santiago said.

"The international community must take immediate and proactive measures to protect the people and support the pro-democracy movement -- including by establishing a coordinated global arms embargo, and recognizing the National Unity Government formed by elected representatives of the people."

According to the Association Assistance for Political Prisoners (AAPP), the military regime has handed out 577 sentences among more than 8,500 civilians arrested or detained since the Feb. 1 coup that deposed Aung San Suu Kyi and her elected government. The junta has killed 1,459 civilians, the Bangkok-based group says.

Reported by RFA's Myanmar Service. Written in English by Paul Eckert.
Authorities said the statue's housing lacked a fire escape, but Tibetans see a crackdown on their religion.

In this satellite image slider shows the before and the after the destruction of Dragos Gaden Namgyal Ling monastery in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. The right image of the site was taken on Jan. 1, 2022. Credit: Google Earth and Planet Labs with analysis by RFA

RFA has verified the destruction of a second Buddhist statue revered by Tibetans since late last month in western Chinas Sichuan province, part of an campaign the ethnic minority says is targeting its religion and traditions.

RFA has analyzed commercial satellite imagery to verify the destruction of a three-story statue of Maitreya Buddha at Gaden Namyal Ling monastery in Drago (in Chinese, Luhuo) county in the Kardze (Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.

The confirmation of the removal of the statue of Maitreya, believed by Tibetan Buddhists to be a Buddha appearing in a future age, follows RFA's verification last week of the destruction of a 99-foot tall statue 900 meters (2,700 feet) away.

Chinese authorities forced monks from local monasteries and Tibetans living in nearby towns to witness the demolition of the statue and were 45 traditional prayer wheels, which began on Dec. 12 and continued for the next nine days, Tibetan sources in exile said, citing contacts in the area.

The three-story statue and the structure housing it were both torn down around the same time as the 99-foot Buddha, which authorities said was too tall, a Tibetan living in exile told RFA, citing contacts in Drago.

Chinese authorities have again given unbelievable reasons for the destruction, saying there was no fire escape in the temple housing the three-story high statue of Maitreya Buddha, but these arent valid excuses, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect his sources in Drago.

The Chinese government is just continuing to Sinicize Tibets religion by not allowing Tibetans the freedom to practice their own religion and faith, the source said.

Satellite photo: Planet Labs with RFA analysis

Drago county chief Wang Dongsheng had been present at the statues destruction and witnessed the brutal police beating of local Tibetans objecting to the demolition, he added, citing local sources.

Wang had also directed the destruction in December of a 99-foot Buddha statue in Drago and had earlier overseen a campaign of destruction of Sichuans sprawling Larung Gar Buddhist Academy in a move that saw thousands of monks and nuns expelled and homes destroyed, sources told RFA in an earlier report.

The brutal attacks on Tibetans still continue in Drago, and sources in Tibet say they have seen Wang Dongsheng taking part in these activities, a second source in exile told RFA, also asking for anonymity to protect his sources in the region.

Tenzin Lekshey, a spokesperson for Tibets Dharamsala, India-based exile government, the Central Tibetan Administration, told RFA that Chinas continuing encroachment on Tibetans religious freedom will further complicate the troubling issue of Chinas rule in Tibetan areas.

This forceful behavior by the Chinese government in Drago clearly shows the governments mistreatment of Tibetans and their religion, and the Central Tibetan Administration is very concerned about what is happening in Drago, he said.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFAs Tibetan Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.
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Police officers stand at the outer entrance of the Urumqi No. 3 Detention Center in Dabancheng in northwestern China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, April 23, 2021. Urumqi No. 3, China's largest detention center, is twice the size of Vatican City and has room for at least 10,000 inmates.

A Uyghur post office retiree interned in a detention camp in Chinas far-western Xinjiang region in 2018 on suspicion of religious extremism died in December 2021 following his release, Uyghurs and local officials with knowledge of the situation said.

Ghiyasidin Abla, 69, was from Suntagh village in Atush (in Chinese, Atushi), capital of the Kizilsu Kyrghiz Autonomous Prefecture, and was abducted by authorities while he attended a circumcision ceremony in his neighborhood, said a Uyghur from Atush who now lives in exile abroad.

Ghiyasidin had no health issues when he was arrested, but when he was released in September 2021, he was unable to walk. He died a month later of unknown causes, said the source who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal by Chinese authorities.

RFA listeners have provided many tips on Uyghurs who were arbitrarily detained in 2017 and 2018. In the past two years, reports of serious illness or death among the detainees have increased. As many as 1.8 million Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities have reportedly been sent to a network of camps China built in Xinjiang.

The reports indicate that Chinese authorities have targeted ordinary Uyghurs suspected of crimes related to terrorism or religious extremism as well as prominent Uyghur businesspeople, cultural figures, academics and religious leaders.

At the time of Ghiyasidins arrest, Chinese authorities had limited the number of Uyghurs who could attend weddings, funerals and other religious ceremonies, such as circumcisions, at any one time. Ghiyasidin was detained along with other attendees of the ceremony because they had exceeded the allowed limit, the source said.

Ghiyasidins children had expected their father to be released after a few days but they received no information about him for three months, the source said. They eventually discovered he was sent to a detention camp.

After Ghiyasidin was released and returned to his family, authorities told his relatives that they could not discuss his health condition and that no more than 15 people would be allowed to attend his funeral if he died, the source said.

The local police department said it had no information to release about Ghiyasidin. One policeman said public servants arrested by authorities were taken to training in Atush and that Ghiyasidin was the most recent detainee to die after being released.

The womens affairs director and the security director of Suntagh village both each confirmed the circumstances of Ghiyasidins arrest and his later death.

He died at home, said the security director. He was 69. He used to work at the post office. He was a retiree from the post office.

Besides attending the circumcision ceremony, they arrested him for also growing a beard, he said.

Authorities in Xinjiang have apprehended and detained Uyghurs for praying and growing beards, which are both seen as signs of extremism. Earlier reports by RFA indicated that men over 65 years old who lived in Atush were allowed to grow beards and enter a mosque, though those who were civil servants were not, regardless of their age.

Translated by the Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
While Lithuania is one of the harshest critics of hard-line leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the small Baltic state continues to cash in on trade with Belarus -- along with other EU nations and companies, despite several rounds of Western sanctions.

Lithuanian companies continue to ship Belarusian potash products, a key ingredient in fertilizer, through its rail network and port of Klaipeda to markets in the EU and elsewhere, despite the Belarusian state-run potash giant, Belaruskali, being sanctioned. The continuing trade with the Lukashenka regime has sparked a scandal in Lithuania, with even calls for the government to step down.

Lithuania is not alone. Fresh data shows that trade between the EU and Belarus almost doubled in 2021, triggering some to question whether Western sanctions are strong enough, including the exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who says Lukashenka has exploited "loopholes" to circumvent them.

And despite calls by Tsikhanouskaya and other Belarusian pro-democracy supporters for stronger EU sanctions, there appears little appetite for that. A European agro-giant, Yara, continues its purchases of potash from the Belarusian state-run giant, although technically through a subsidiary not under sanctions.

"I don't believe we will see any stronger economic sanctions, unless Lukashenka steps over certain red lines," said Pavel Slunkin, a policy analyst at the Brussels-based European Council on Foreign Relations, in a telephone interview with RFE/RL. "We are seeing now that countries like Italy, Hungary, Austria, and Belgium oppose tougher economic sanctions because it will hurt them."

Lukashenka, in power since 1994, has benefited from skyrocketing commodity prices, meaning Belarus is selling its main exports: petroleum and potash products, as well as wood and metals, at much higher prices amid pent-up demand during the COVID-19 era.

"Lukashenka was lucky in the sense that Belarus was able to sell goods that in the past few years he was unable to sell and at much higher prices," Slunkin said.

The Belarusian leader also got a hefty financial injection last year when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) allocated his government $1 billion in new funding meant to help countries navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, which Lukashenka had dismissed as a "mass psychosis" as he refused to institute lockdown measures.

Lukashenka, 67, has faced five rounds of punitive Western measures since an August 2020 election that was widely seen as rigged extended his decades-long rule, triggering an unprecedented wave of protests that the Belarusian strongman has brutally suppressed.

Thousands of his opponents have been locked up and several killed. Opposition leaders have been imprisoned or forced to flee, including Tsikhanouskaya, who left for Lithuania days after the presidential vote that supporters say she won. NGOs have been pressured, shut down, and independent media silenced.

The Numbers

In the first three quarters of 2021, the EU imported 96.1 percent more from Belarus than the same period in 2020, according to Belstat, the official Belarusian statistics agency. The EU's statistics agency, Eurostat, doesn't have a full set of comparable figures. But according to its data, imports from Belarus to the 27 EU states grew 58 percent in January to August 2021, compared to the same period in 2020, according to Bloomberg.

Data from the three Baltic states show some of the highest rises in trade with Belarus. Latvia imported nearly 407 million euros ($460 million) worth of goods from Belarus during the first 10 months of 2021, two thirds more than in 2020. More than half of the imports were wood and its products, according to data from Latvia's Central Statistical Bureau. Estonia imported 522 million euros worth of goods from Belarus over the same time period, double the amount for the same period in 2020.

Lithuanian imports from Belarus in 2021 reached 1 billion euros, an increase of 50 percent over 2020.

The robust trade between Belarus and the Baltics is striking given that two of them, Lithuania and Latvia, have accused Lukashenka of directing thousands of people -- many flown into Minsk from Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere -- toward their common border, fomenting a migrant crisis that has angered not only the Baltic states but Brussels as well.

Lukashenka vowed to flood the EU with "migrants and drugs" after the EU passed in June 2021 a fourth and arguably toughest round of sanctions to date against him and key businesses for scrambling a military jet in May 2021 to force a Ryanair flight between Athens and Vilnius to divert to Minsk to arrest a popular blogger and critic, Raman Pratasevich.

Lithuania called it a state hijacking and Brussels quickly moved to close off EU airspace to the Belarusian state airline, Belavia. A month later, the EU and United States slapped a fourth round of sanctions on Belarus, followed by Canada and Britain in what was a coordinated move.

However, at least one economist has questioned the degree to which trade between the Baltic nations and Belarus has increased, chalking up the higher numbers to a rise in commodity prices.

"Knowing what is imported from Belarus in general, they are mainly goods whose prices have risen very, very rapidly during 2021. They are timber, fertilizer, and fuels. Even if, in terms of physical volume, imports remained unchanged, the amounts could indeed be much higher last year, in terms of money," Peteris Strautins, an economist at the Luminor Latvija bank, said in comments to Latvian public radio on January 5.

'Too Many Loopholes'

Tsikhanouskaya and other opponents of Lukashenka say so far Western sanctions haven't gone far enough.

"Too many loopholes have been left and Lukashenka and his thugs are using these loopholes, misusing international laws, and they know how to circumvent the sanctions," Tsikhanouskaya said in an interview with Euractiv in December 2021.

For example, restrictions on EU imports of potash from Belarus, Minsk's main foreign currency earner, were crafted to exempt the grade it mainly produces -- potash with 60 percent potassium content.

"The sanctions on potash are limited in scope to only about 20 percent of Belarusian potash exports, and many EU countries like Belgium want to see even those sanctions lifted," explained Kateryna Bornukova, a research fellow at the Belarusian Economic Research and Outreach Center, which has moved from Minsk to Kyiv amid the current crisis in Belarus.

"Those EU countries importing Belarusian potash (although in small amounts compared to world volumes where Belarus is among the largest players) are not ready to see even minimal profitability losses as they are forced to buy from more expensive suppliers," Borunkova wrote in e-mailed comments to RFE/RL.

Harsh Lukashenka critic Lithuania is cashing in on trade with Belarus, particularly from shipping potash from Belaruskali that was sanctioned by the United States in August 2021. The ban on sales of potash took effect on December 8, 2021, after a four-month wind-down period, but potash continues to be transported via Lithuania.

A Lithuanian government commission said on December 21, 2021, that an agreement signed by the state-run railway in 2018 to transport potash from Belarus goes against national-security interests, opening the door for the government to terminate it.

The continuation of the deal caused a public outcry in Lithuania, prompting calls for Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte to resign, although she announced on December 14, 2021, that she and her government would not step down.

"It looks like the Lithuanian government was hoping that the U.S. sanctions would cause Lithuanian companies to stop the transit, and yet it is completely incapable of stopping this transit on its own. That was really surprising," said researcher Bornukova.

The Norwegian-based agro-giant Yara has faced calls and even an online petition to halt its purchases from Belaruskali. In December 2021, Tsikhanouskaya made a direct appeal in a telephone call with Svein Tore Holsether, the director-general of Yara, who reportedly told her that his business would review its cooperation with the Belarusian company.

Technically, Yara is not violating U.S. sanctions against Belaruskali, as its purchases are made through a subsidiary, BKK, which will not come under U.S. sanctions until April, explained analyst Slunkin.

Yara did announce on January 10 it will wind down its purchases of Belarusian potash by April 1.

Despite the apparent shortcomings, Western sanctions, in particular financial ones, are impacting the Belarusian economy, argued Bornukova, "significantly limiting the ability of Belarusian banks to seek financing."

She pointed to a potassium-chloride mining and processing

plant in Belarus belonging to Slavkali, a company owned by Mikhail Gutseriyev, a Russian businessman and Lukashenka crony who has been sanctioned by the West. The plant, estimated at $2 billion, had been called the biggest investment project in Belarus. In December 2021, however, its Chinese backers pulled out, putting the project in limbo.
MINSK -- Belarusian authorities say a man in the eastern city of Mahilyou was handed a two-year prison sentence for online comments that insulted a KGB officer who was killed in a police shoot-out at a Minsk apartment that also killed an IT worker in late September.

Details remain unclear around the September 28 shooting that resulted in the death of Andrey Zeltsar, a man working for a major U.S.-based IT company called EPAM and a KGB officer, Dzmitry Fedasyuk.

The Prosecutor-General's Office said on January 10 that the 45-year-old defendant pleaded guilty to the charge of insulting the officer.

It was not clear exactly what the defendant, whose name was not released, wrote other than defending Zeltsar and criticizing the KGB team involved in the shoot-out.

It is the first court ruling in the case, which the Investigative Committee said in October involved dozens of individuals.

Authorities claimed at the time that "an especially dangerous criminal" had opened fire on security officers after they showed up at his apartment looking for "individuals involved in terrorist activities."

Authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka slammed people who posted comments on social media praising Zeltsar and criticizing Fedasyuk, saying that "we have all their accounts, and we can see who is who."

Belarus witnessed unprecedented anti-government protests after a presidential election in August 2020, in which Lukashenka claimed reelection.

Opposition groups say the vote was rigged, while many Western governments have refused to recognize Lukashenka as the winner.

In response to months of street protests, the government has arrested thousands. Fearing for their safety, most of the top opposition figures have left the country.
Norwegian chemical firm Yara International has announced it is gradually reducing its imports of potash fertilizer from Belarus as a result of international sanctions on the regime of authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

The European Union, United States, and key Western allies have slapped several rounds of sanctions on Belarus's political and economic elite after a crackdown on protests triggered by Lukashenka's widely disputed reelection in August 2020 and amid an ongoing crisis over thousands of Middle Eastern migrants amassed at Belarus's border with EU member Poland.

The punitive measures targeted Belarusian entities including a complete asset freeze on OJSC Belaruskali, a global leader in potash fertilizer -- one of Belarus's main exports. Estimates from Yara say the company buys about 10 to 15 percent of Belaruskali's output.

The Norwegian fertilizer producer said in a statement published on January 10 that "the effects on the supply chain from the current sanctions on Belarus have forced Yara to initiate a wind-down of its sourcing of Belarusian potash, a key ingredient for the production of mineral fertilizers used in food production."

Although the chemical firm's activity in Belarus is currently complying with international sanctions, "other parts of the supply chain are withdrawing essential services required to enable potash exports from Belarus, as a result of which Yara has initiated a wind-down in sourcing activities," the company said.

"The wind-down is expected to be completed by 1 April 2022," Yara International said, adding that it will "continue to monitor for any changes in the situation, including sanctions, as part of its ongoing sourcing operations."

Despite the phasing out of potash imports, Yara International pledged not to abandon its efforts to improve work safety for Belaruskali employees.

"Yara aims to continue the industrial safety program initiated in 2021, in close cooperation with the independent trade union in Belaruskali and in full compliance with applicable sanctions, the company said.
SOFIA -- Bulgaria's President Rumen Radev said on January 10 that officials in Sofia want "real results" from Skopje toward the conditions of a 2017 treaty on good relations before they drop their opposition to North Macedonia's European Union membership talks.

Speaking after a meeting of Bulgaria's National Security Advisory Council (NSAC) on relations with North Macedonia, Radev said all NSAC members agreed that the start of North Macedonia's EU membership talks should be tied to achieving conditions set out in the 2017 Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighborliness.

That suggests that the Bulgarian presidency, the cabinet of ministers, and the political opposition in Sofia all agree on conditions for lifting the veto on EU talks.

A key issue for Sofia is that Bulgarians in North Macedonia must be equal to other constitutionally recognized peoples there.

Radev says there must be full equality and that the rights of Bulgarians in North Macedonia must be guaranteed under the constitution and the "institutional architecture" of the country.

Only then, Radev says, will Bulgaria give its approval for the start of Skopje's EU membership negotiations.

The issue is nonnegotiable, Radev added.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov's coalition government also has cited progress on the treaty between Sofia and Skopje as crucial.

Petkov's government has promised to work on resolving remaining disputes between the two Balkan countries, indicating that a six-month deadline for normalizing relations was realistic.

The NSAC meeting in Sofia was held a week before Petkov makes his first official visit to North Macedonia since taking office in December.

Petkov is due in Skopje on January 18 to mark the 30th anniversary of Bulgaria's recognition of North Macedonia's independence from the former Yugoslavia.
Only a dozen Asiatic cheetahs are left in the wild in Iran, the deputy environment minister said, describing the situation for the highly endangered species as extremely critical.



"The measures we have taken to increase protection, reproduction, and the installation of road signs have not been enough to save this species," Hassan Akbari told the Tasnim news agency on January 9.



He said there are believed to be only nine male and three female Asiatic Cheetahs in the country, compared to an estimated 100 in 2010.



Environmentalists say the worlds fastest animal has been the victim of drought, hunting, habitat destruction, and scarcity of prey due to hunters in the remote and arid central plateaus.



The Iranian Cheetah Society says the only remaining habitats left for the majestic cats is the Miandasht Wildlife Refuge and Touran Biosphere Reserve in northeast Iran.



Asiatic cheetahs once lived across the grasslands of India, Pakistan, Russia, and the Middle East, but have been entirely wiped out except in Iran. The cheetah species is slightly different than those found in parts of southern Africa.



The Iranian government became the target of a domestic and international outcry when a revolutionary court in November 2019 imprisoned at least six conservation experts who are members of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, a local group focused on biodiversity protection, especially for Asiatic cheetahs.



The Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Organization arrested seven of the defendants in January 2018, as well as Kavous Seyed Emami, an Iranian-Canadian university professor.



The environmentalists were accused of spying for the United States and Israel, seeking proximity to military sites with the cover of the environmental projects and obtaining military information from them.



Environmental and rights groups condemned the allegations as fabricated and the trial unfair.



The only "classified dirt" that the conservationists were likely to have accessed in their work is the "dried stool" of cheetahs they were fighting to protect, Mojgan Jamshidi, an Iranian journalist who covers environmental issues said in 2018.



Emami died in detention in February 2018 under suspicious circumstances. Iranian authorities claimed that he committed suicide, a scenario people who knew him said was impossible.



Iran frequently levels espionage charges against political and human rights activists and also dual nationals without publicly providing evidence.

Prosecutions in Iran's so-called revolutionary courts are frequently kept secret from defendants' families and even lawyers. Torture, mistreatment, and forced confessions are also common, according to rights groups.

With reporting by AFP
Kazakhstan has been experiencing the worst violence in its 30-year history in the last week after a popular uprising led to mayhem.

Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has blamed foreign-trained terrorists for the unrest and subsequent casualties.

State television channel Qazaqstan showed a video of one of the alleged foreign terrorists on January 9.

With clear marks of a recent beating on his face, a young man said: On [January 1], unknown people contacted me and offered me 90,000 tenge (about $207) to take part in meetings [in Kazakhstan]. And since Im unemployed in Kyrgyzstan, I agreed.

This was supposedly the face of one of the foreign terrorists the president had mentioned, except the man on Kazakh television was not a terrorist.

The video made the rounds on social media and people in Kyrgyzstan recognized the man as Vikram Ruzakhunov, a well-known jazz pianist who regularly traveled to Kazakhstan.

It touched off anger in Bishkek, where fellow musicians came out in support of Ruzakhunov and people demonstrated outside the Kazakh Embassy.

The head of Kyrgyzstan's State Committee for National Security, Kamchyek Tashiev, said there is no way Vikram Ruzakhunov can be prosecuted as a terrorist. We cannot and will not sit still when our citizen is being accused, especially of terrorism.

The incident has created a rift in Kazakh-Kyrgyz ties at a time when Bishkek authorities just approved sending 150 soldiers to join Russian-led peacekeepers in Kazakhstan, a decision that upset many people in Kyrgyzstan as being unnecessary and unjustified.

Nur-Sultan's publicized version of recent events in Kazakhstan has been unconvincing to many.

Small-scale, peaceful protests that started in western Kazakhstan after the new year in response to a sudden steep hike in the price of auto fuel in the region sparked other rallies that spontaneously spread across the country. And while the protests generally focused on government failures to make socioeconomic and political reforms, there were no leaders and many of the demands differed from region to region.

With protests having broken out in almost every major city in the country in just a few days, the situation changed overnight on January 5-6 when groups that do not appear to have been part of the original protests showed up and started violent actions.

Toqaev suddenly used the violence to claim it was being led by foreign-trained and -funded terrorists, and he appealed for help from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, which quickly complied by sending troops to a member state for the first time in its 30-year history.

Who were the people who carried out the violent acts and what was their purpose?

After seeing the Kazakh state TV video of Ruzakhunov, there is reason to wonder if the truth will ever be known.

Ruzakhunovs alleged "confession" in front of the camera was quite elaborate.

Besides saying he was invited to come to Kazakhstan by unknown people who bought him a ticket for January 2, the musician also said he was taken to a room where there were Tajik and Uzbek citizens -- about 10 of them -- and that he was frightened and decided to return to Kyrgyzstan before he was detained in the village of Samsy, some 70 kilometers west of Almaty, on January 3.

Ruzakhunovs relatives said he bought a plane ticket to Almaty on December 16 so he could attend a concert.

It was a rough beginning for Kazakh authorities, who will be expected by their citizens to prove the claims of foreign terrorists being responsible for what many think was violence sparked by rivalries between government factions.

Ruzakhunov was released from custody on January 10 and returned to Kyrgyzstan, where he told journalists he had not been tortured. He said he sustained the injuries on his face when Kazakh police detained him.

Asked about his videotaped "confession," he said the men filming him told him if he admitted to taking money to participate in the "meetings" he would be deported immediately.

And while Kyrgyz officials have already expressed their dissatisfaction and concern about what seems an attempt to frame Ruzakhunov for terrorism, his comments implicating Tajik and Uzbek citizens could be an indication that some of the thousands of Central Asian migrant laborers from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan could become the scapegoats to "prove" Toqaevs assertions that "foreign terrorists" are behind Kazakhstans recent problems.

Most migrant laborers from Central Asia go to Russia to find work but some only go as far as Kazakhstan, where wages are still significantly higher than at home.

There are already reports that at least five Kyrgyz have been detained in Kazakhstan in connection with the violence, though one report said 38 Kyrgyz citizens were being held just in the southern city of Shymkent. A later report said they had been released.

The Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry said Kazakh authorities are preventing lawyers from seeing the detained Kyrgyz citizens and the ministry had sent a note of protest to Kazakhstans prosecutor-general over Ruzakhunovs case.

Tajik and Uzbek officials have been quiet so far about the fate of their citizens working in Kazakhstan, but judging by Ruzakhunovs seemingly coerced confession, the coming days may see many migrant laborers detained.
At a crossing on the Kazakh-Russian border, travelers described the mood after days of violence and a Russian-led military intervention in Kazakhstan. Some were fearful, others complained about the Internet blackout and high-level corruption that fueled anti-government protests. It's not clear how many people died: An initial official report said there were 164 deaths but this was later denied.
Surprising photos of soldiers in Almaty wearing UN peacekeeping helmets spark a response from the United Nations. Images released by the Associated Press on January 8 show several soldiers in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, wearing helmets with "UN" stenciled on them in the unmistakable colors of United Nations peacekeeping forces. The photos, made by photographer Vladimir Tretyakov and shared by independent journalist Jake Hanrahan, have added to questions over what exactly is happening in the restive Central Asian country. Since protests set off by gas prices broke out across Kazakhstan last week, Internet blackouts, unidentified gunmen, disputed official claims, and winter fog have made events on the ground increasingly murky.

A UN peacekeeping spokesperson on January 10 confirmed to RFE/RL by e-mail that the armed men seen in the images shared by AP were not part of a UN peacekeeping mission, saying, "We have conveyed our concern to the Permanent Mission of Kazakhstan on this issue." The spokesperson wrote that "United Nations troop and police contributing countries are to use the UN insignia only when they are performing their mandated tasks as UN peacekeepers, in the context of their deployment within a United Nations peacekeeping operation as mandated by the UN Security Council." Kazakhstan's military does have a United Nations-backed unit of English-speaking peacekeepers known as KAZBAT who are authorized to wear blue UN helmets, but only while on parade or during a UN peacekeeping mission.

A spokesman for Kazakhstan's Department of Defense in Almaty responded to a telephone query about the UN helmets on January 10. First the man identified the blue-helmeted soldiers as being part of the UN-linked KAZBAT battalion, before saying they were not part of any UN mission and had a mission of "guarding strategic objects, airports, and governmental buildings." He then said: "You may have seen online that KAZBAT has been to Libya. It's our peacekeeping corps," before adding: "you can also look up the Indian peacekeeping forces. Half of KAZBAT is now in Libya with [the Indian forces], the other half is here [in Kazakhstan]." Kazakh forces joined an Indian battalion for a peacekeeping mission in Lebanon in 2018 and the two countries' peacekeeping forces are closely linked.

Eric David, an expert in international humanitarian law and peacekeeping operations at the Free University Of Brussels, says the Almaty images appear to capture "a gross misuse by the authorities of the troops who wore these helmets." David told RFE/RL that if those behind the use of the blue helmets are Kazakh officials, "they trigger the international responsibility of Kazakhstan for an internationally wrongful act." Any unauthorized use of United Nations uniforms that results in death or serious injury constitutes a war crime in international conflicts. But David says despite the presence of foreign troops in the country, the current violence in Kazakhstan will almost certainly be classed as an internal, rather than international conflict by the International Committee of the Red Cross. David believes therefore, that use of the blue helmets in Kazakhstan is "unlawful, but not a war crime." The expert in international law says he doesn't have the "slightest idea" why the helmets may have been used in Almaty but that it's possible that a massive call-up from the military may have resulted in a shortage of hardware, or it could be a deliberate attempt "to give the impression that real UN troops are with the Kazakh government."

Adding to the questions over the blue helmets in Almaty, photos and video appeared on Belarusian state media on January 9 showing Belarusian troops sporting arm badges that some have claimed to be muted United Nations insignias. Belarus and other countries of the Russian-led CSTO military alliance sent contingents to Kazakhstan after President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev requested the bloc's assistance in quelling the unrest in his country.
NUR-SULTAN -- Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has blamed "a single center" for trying to seize power in the oil-rich Central Asian state in recent unrest as a Russian-led military alliance met for talks to update the situation around a wave of deadly public unrest sparked by a fuel price hike last week that shook the region.

In a speech to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) on January 10, Toqaev said calm had returned to the country after protests calling for reforms in the tightly controlled authoritarian country erupted into a spasm of violence, the worst in the Central Asian state's 30 years of independence.

In Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, protesters stormed and briefly seized the airport. For several days, sporadic gunfire was reported in the city streets.

The Interior Ministry said on January 10 that 7,939 people had been detained during the unrest that started on January 2. The Health Ministry said the day before that 164 people were killed in the violence, including three children. Toqaev, however, said the exact number of people killed during the unrest remained unclear as investigations are under way.

Toqaev did not produce any evidence to back up his claim that foreign terrorists were behind the protests. He also dismissed as disinformation some reports and eyewitness accounts that authorities had attacked peaceful demonstrators.

Meanwhile, Toqaev's office said in a statement that he told European Council President Charles Michel in a January 10 telephone call that militants from Central Asia, Afghanistan, and the Middle East were behind the recent violence.

The statement said Toqaev told Michel he had "no doubt that it was a terror attack" that was "well organized" and involved "foreign fighters."

Kazakhstan, an oil-and-gas-rich country the size of Western Europe, was thrown into turmoil in the past week after protests over a sharp hike in the price of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in the remote western region of Manghystau spread across the country all the way to Almaty.

In the face of mounting unrest, Toqaev declared a state of emergency and on January 5 the CSTO -- a six-member alliance made up of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Armenia -- quickly agreed to help provide security.

At the same time, he also tried to quell dissent by announcing a six-month price cap on fuel and a halt to any increases in utility prices, while also replacing former President Nursultan Nazarbaev as head of the National Security Council.

Many protesters blamed Nazarbaev, who served as president from Kazakhstan's independence until he resigned in 2019 and hand-picked Toqaev as his successor, for the country's woes. Nazarbaev had retained substantial power as the leader of the council.

Toqaev has sought to frame the violence in Almaty as an attack by "terrorist groups" and expressed anger at foreign and independent media coverage of the events, which killed dozens of people and injured hundreds more including members of the security forces.

He praised the CSTO for what he called a "prompt response" to his request to intervene in the situation, adding that a total of 2,050 peacekeeping troops from CSTO members were on Kazakh soil.

"In the nearest future, the wide-scale anti-terrorist operation will be over and along with that the successful and effective mission of the CSTO's troops will end as well," Toqaev said, adding that his government will provide the world with "evidence proving international terrorists" attacked Almaty and 11 other regions in the country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed the CSTO troops would stymie any attempts by external forces to topple governments within the alliance while accusing "terrorists" of using social media to bring people out into the streets of Kazakhstan as a cover for their attacks.

That allegation, which Putin did not back up with evidence, was refuted by Kazakh opposition politician Zhasaral Quanyshalin.

He told RFE/RL on January 9 that Internet and telecommunications services were switched off across the country to block peaceful demonstrators from communicating with each other. He also accused the authorities of planting troublemakers in the demonstrations to discredit the peaceful protests and justify government actions such as shooting into crowds by security forces and extending an invitation to CSTO troops to enter the country.

"People have demanded that the power-holders who have become used to stealing from them must go. The authorities used their own people to destabilize the situation to turn the protests into chaos and started shooting to kill people," Quanyshalin said, though he did not produce evidence to back up his claim.

As of January 10, Internet service had been restored to most areas, though it remained sporadic in some places.

In the wake of the unrest, Toqaev also dismissed the head of the countrys National Security Committee (KNB), longtime Nazarbaev ally Karim Masimov. Official media reports said Masimov was detained on a high-treason charge.

On January 10, one of Masimov's close allies, KNB Colonel Azamat Ibraev, was found dead near his high-rise apartment block in Nur-Sultan, the capital. Preliminary investigations indicated that he jumped from his apartment window. They did not say whether they suspected foul play.

Authorities in the southern region of Zhambyl said on January 10 that regional police chief General Zhanat Suleimenov was found dead as well. Media reports say he committed suicide after a probe on unspecified charges was launched against him.

Kazakh authorities also declared January 10 a day of mourning for those killed during the violence.
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Some myths go back millennia.

This myth, if it is one, goes back to 1990 -- and just over three decades later, it continues to form a central grievance in Russian President Vladimir Putin's testy narrative about Moscow's ties with the West.

It's the question of NATO expansion -- an unhealed scab that, with Russian-Western relations at their lowest ebb since the Cold War, has been picked off yet again and is now bleeding into public view.

Casting the issue into the spotlight this time was not an angry tirade from Putin but a report by the London-based think tank Chatham House, which, in a May 13 publication, aimed to dispel a host of what it called "myths and misperceptions" that have shaped Western thinking and kept it from establishing "a stable and manageable relationship with Moscow."

One "myth" in particular kicked off a furious debate in e-mail threads, chat rooms, listservs, and on Twitter: "Russia was promised that NATO would not enlarge."

"The U.S.S.R. was never offered a formal guarantee on the limits of NATO expansion post-1990," John Lough, the research associate who authored the section, wrote. "Moscow merely distorts history to help preserve an anti-Western consensus at home."

Nikolai Sokov, a former Russian diplomat who served in the Foreign Ministry in Moscow between 1987 and 1992, disagrees. "The Chatham House piece is very bad -- it sounds to be as a piece produced by the Ideology Department of the Central Committee" of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he told RFE/RL.

"We didn't have to come to this, though, and the issue could have remained a small script in history that does not need to be resolved," he said. "It is more about the manner of NATO enlargement and the arguments used to promote enlargement."

And so, more than two decades after NATO's original 16-member Cold War composition was first enlarged to take in three former Warsaw Pact states, and with Putin poised to potentially stay in office into the 2030s, the past is very much present.

"We are still debating it because the proponents of enlargement believe they acted honorably and helped millions of people who had been under Soviet domination achieve their freedom," said Jim Goldgeier, who served on the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

"The Russian narrative is the West deceived them and acted in a way that left them out of post-Cold War Europe. It's just very hard to bridge these positions, and emotions do run high, given that the hopes 30 years ago of Russia being part of Europe didn't materialize," Goldgeier told RFE/RL. "So there are those who want to blame the West, and those who want to blame Putin."

'Not On The Agenda'

For many Cold War scholars, the genesis of the narrative can be primarily traced back to a February 1990 visit by James Baker, the U.S. secretary of state under President George Bush, to Moscow, where Baker met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

The Berlin Wall had come down three months earlier, and Western leaders were openly discussing whether a divided Germany would be reunified, something that Moscow feared -- and if that happened, whether NATO forces would ultimately be stationed in what was then East Germany, something that terrified Moscow.

According to transcripts released years later by the United States and Russia, Baker broached the subject with the argument that it was better to have a unified Germany within NATO's political and military structure than outside of it.

"At no point in the discussion did either Baker or Gorbachev bring up the question of the possible extension of NATO membership to other Warsaw Pact countries beyond Germany," according to Mark Kramer, director of the Cold War Studies Project at Harvard University's Davis Center, who reviewed the declassified transcripts and other materials.

"Indeed, it never would have occurred to them to raise an issue that was not on the agenda anywhere, not in Washington, not in Moscow, and not in any other Warsaw Pact or NATO capital," Kramer wrote in a April 2009 journal article.

Gorbachev met with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl the day after the meeting with Baker. According to Kramer's research, the subject of German unification was more prominent on the agenda than it had been with Baker. "Gorbachev did not seek any assurances about [NATO enlargement] and certainly did not receive any," Kramer wrote.

Ultimately, according to Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador who was serving at the State Department at the time, the United States, France, and Britain, along with Germany, agreed not to deploy non-German NATO forces in the former East Germany.

In 1999, years after German reunification and the withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Eastern Europe, NATO admitted three former Warsaw Pact countries: Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.

Ten years later, in an interview with the German newspaper Bild, Gorbachev complained that the West had tricked Moscow. "Many people in the West were secretly rubbing their hands and felt something like a flush of victory -- including those who had promised us: 'We will not move 1 centimeter further east,'" he was quoted as saying.

Gorbachev later appeared to reverse himself, saying the subject of enlargement in fact never came up in 1989 or 1990. "The topic of 'NATO expansion' was never discussed; it was not raised in those years. I am saying this with a full sense of responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country brought up the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact had ceased to exist in 1991," he told the newspaper Kommersant in October 2014.

Gorbachev could not be reached for comment. A spokesman did not immediately return an e-mail.

'The Spirit Of The Treaty'

Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin, was wary about NATO expansion but did not oppose it, according to declassified memos. "We understand, of course, that any possible integration of East European countries into NATO will not automatically lead to the alliance somehow turning against Russia," Yeltsin wrote in a September 1993 letter to U.S. President Bill Clinton. "But it is important to take into account how our public opinion might react to that step."

But Yeltsin also cited what he cast as assurances given to Soviet officials during the negotiations on German unification, writing that "the spirit of the treaty on the final settlement...precludes the option of expanding the NATO zone into the East."

Four years later, in an effort to assuage Moscow's concerns, NATO and Russia signed the NATO-Russia Founding Act, a political agreement stating, among other things, that "NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries." In 2002, NATO and Russia agreed to set up a joint consultative council, ostensibly as a venue to resolve disagreements. But the council was seen as ineffectual by many in Moscow.

Then, two years later, NATO underwent the largest expansion in its history, admitting seven more Eastern European countries, including the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which had been republics of the Soviet Union and chafed under Moscow's rule. While it wasn't the first time a NATO member bordered Russia or the Soviet Union, now a NATO member's troops potentially could be located just 625 kilometers from Moscow.

In 2007, at the Munich Security Conference, an annual high-level gathering of officials, diplomats, and experts from both sides of the Atlantic, Putin unleashed a broadside against NATO, as well as the United States, accusing the alliance of duplicity and of threatening Russia.

"I think it is obvious that NATO expansion has no relation with the modernization of the alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust," he said.

"What happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today?" Putin asked -- a remark that prompted some head-scratching, because the debate has focused almost exclusively on remarks made before the Warsaw Pact fell apart. "Where are these guarantees?"

A year after Putin's speech, at a Bucharest summit in April 2008, NATO declined to offer Georgia and Ukraine a fast-track path to membership but assured the two countries that they would eventually join the alliance.

Four months later, Russia invaded Georgia, destroying its armed forces, occupying two regions that had already had near complete autonomy, and humiliating the country's then-president, Mikheil Saakashvili, who had openly called for Georgia to join NATO.

In 2014, after Russia seized Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula and equipped, financed, and provided military support to separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine, stoking a war that continues today, NATO called off any consultations with Russia.

Shortly after Russia's parliament endorsed the takeover of Crimea, Putin said in a speech that Russia was humiliated by NATO's expansion. "They have lied to us many times, made decisions behind our backs, placed us before an accomplished fact," he claimed.

'Selling The Narrative'

Among those who have fueled Russian claims of a promise was the last U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, who has repeatedly insisted, both in congressional testimony and more recently, that Gorbachev had received assurances that if Germany united, and stayed in NATO, the borders of NATO would not move eastward.

But Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador and deputy foreign minister who is now head of the Munich Security Conference, said that agreements on German reunification, including the 1990 treaty known as the 2+4 Treaty, which formally paved the way for the two countries to become one again, made no mention of NATO enlargement.

"Russia has been quite successful in selling the narrative that, in exchange for their acceptance of German unification via the 2+4 Treaty, they were promised that there would be no NATO enlargement," Ischinger told RFE/RL. "Russia presents herself as the victim."

"Whatever promises about non-enlargement may have been discussed...in 1990, the hard fact is Russia accepted enlargement, with detailed conditions, and in writing, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was agreed," Ischinger said in an e-mail. "Later Russian claims that different promises had been made in 1990 are therefore simply not relevant. In fact, this is propaganda, and it is in bad faith!"

Sokov, the former diplomat who is now at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, said the biggest issue was that NATO's enlargement could have been "managed" to minimize misunderstandings.

A Missed Chance?

The initial expansion, in 1999, came around the time of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, aimed at stopping advances by Serbian forces against the Kosovar population. Russia's outrage over the campaign was crystallized by the decision of then-Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov to turn his U.S.-bound jet around over the Atlantic Ocean in protest. The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was another action that raised Moscow's ire.

"It is wrong to wave away Russian concerns," Sokov said.

The 1997 Founding Act was well-intentioned, as was the 2002 creation of the NATO-Russia Council, he said. But he argued that these agreements have "never worked," arguing that the alliance often takes actions that affect Russian or regional security without consulting Moscow.

"The procedure that is used instead is that NATO makes a decision and then tries to convince Russia that [the] decision is good and should be accepted. The latter is a formula for disaster," he said. "I strongly believe that it was possible to both enlarge NATO and avoid conflict. The chance was missed and today we see a worsening conflict of which the question about guarantees given by Baker is nothing but a symbol."

But for other scholars, the problem lies mainly in Moscow, with the way Putin and the Kremlin perceive the history of NATO enlargement and the way they present it to the Russian public and the West.

"The notion that NATO made and broke a promise that it would not accept any new member states in Eastern Europe is one of the core ideas driving Russia's view of a hostile West," said Keir Giles, a consultant and co-author of the Chatham House report.

And that seems unlikely to change anytime soon.

In an article for the Brookings Institution in 2014, Pifer, the former ambassador, predicted that for Putin, "The West's alleged promise not to enlarge the alliance will undoubtedly remain a standard element of his anti-NATO spin.

"That is because it fits so well with the picture that the Russian leader seeks to paint of an aggrieved Russia, taken advantage of by others and increasingly isolated -- not due to its own actions, but because of the machinations of a deceitful West," Pifer said.
A Russia theater and film director who faces a travel ban imposed by a Russian court has shocked co-workers in Hamburg, Germany, by unexpectedly turning up there for stage rehearsals.

Kirill Serebrennikov has been working at Hamburg's Thalia Theater in recent days in order to direct rehearsals of a production of Anton Chekhov's The Black Monk.

Serebrennikov has been under a strict travel ban for the last four years by courts in Russia who found him guilty on embezzlement charges. Critics say the case against him was politically motivated and meant to stifle other potential critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Despite the travel ban ordered by the Russian courts, Serebrennikov has continued to direct productions outside of Russia by using remote video conference technology.

Serebrennikov is hailed as a daring and innovative force on Russia's modern art scene, putting him at odds with cultural conservatives there. He also has publicly criticized Russian government policies.

At his trial, he suggested the security forces and a "culture of loyalty" within Russia's Culture Ministry were behind his prosecution.

According to a statement by Hamburg's Thalia Theater, Serebrennikov arrived at Hamburg's international airport on January 8.

The statement quoted Serebrennikov as saying upon arrival that he was "very, very happy and fortunate that Hamburg is the first European city" where he is allowed to work again after more than four years.

Thalia's artistic director, Joachim Lux, said Serebrennikov's return was "encouraging for the idea of freedom and an encouragement for art as well."

Rehearsals for the international production began in Moscow on November 8 with Russian, German, American, Armenian, and Latvian actors.

Rehearsals have continued since January 4 in Hamburg, where a premiere of the production is scheduled for January 22.

With reporting by dpa
Russia's military intervention in Kazakhstan to support the country's embattled regime was an effort by Moscow to help head off a popular revolt attempting to unseat a friendly autocrat in a neighboring country.

And a week after mass protests and subsequent riots first swept Kazakhstan, the Kremlins gamble appears to be working.

Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev, who launched a crackdown to quell the unrest that he claims was the result of foreign-backed terrorist aggression and an attempted coup, says calm has returned and that Russian forces -- which arrived under the guise of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) at Toqaevs request -- have succeeded in supporting the Kazakh government.

Now, as a series of high-level talks open between the United States and its European allies with Russia over mounting pressure from Moscow, analysts are divided over how the Kremlins response to the unrest in Kazakhstan could impact tensions with Ukraine, along whose border Russia has amassed some 100,000 combat-ready troops.

It could make Moscow more open to compromise because it feels it needs a free hand to deal with a crisis in Kazakhstan. Or it could make Russia believe it needs to be more assertive after feeling its interests are threatened on another front, former French diplomat Marie Dumoulin, a program director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told RFE/RL.

Ukraine and Kazakhstan are a continent away and separated by thousands of kilometers, but the two countries are linked by a shared Soviet past and complex relationships with Moscow as the Kremlin has used its military strength and energy influence to try and reclaim its lost geopolitical clout since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Leading into the talks -- which began in Geneva on January 10 between a Russian delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and a U.S. delegation helmed by Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman -- the Kremlin has laid out a list of demands, such as seeking guarantees that NATO wont look to expand any further eastward into countries like Ukraine and Georgia.

Those Russian demands for security guarantees are seen by some analysts as part of a larger bid by Moscow for a recognized sphere of influence, which Russias swift intervention into Kazakhstan may help support.

In some ways, it strengthens [Russian President Vladimir] Putins hand going in, Angela Stent, a former U.S. national intelligence officer on Russia and a professor at Georgetown University, told RFE/RL. It reinforces the idea that Putin has been hammering home for years, which is that Russia has a special relationship with former Soviet states and that he wants the outside world to respect that.

Watching Ukraine

The stakes are high for all involved, with Russia building up its forces along Ukraines borders in what U.S. intelligence says are preparations for another possible invasion.

Moscow occupied and annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and is also backing forces in the countrys east in a war that has killed more than 13,000 people.

With that in mind, concerns over escalation of the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine have followed the talks to Geneva and will also loom over discussions later this week at a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels and at the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe in Vienna.

The United States and other Western allies have pledged severe costs to Russia if it moves against Ukraine, with the United States and its allies reportedly assembling a punishing set of financial, technological, and military sanctions against Russia that would go into effect shortly after a renewed invasion of Ukraine.

Oleksandr Danylyuk, the former secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said Putin put himself in a corner by issuing what he described as an ultimatum to the West over security guarantees and demands to curtail NATO expansion and that the intervention in Kazakhstan has provided a chance for the Russian leader to now calm tensions.

Kazakhstan offers him now the opportunity to step back, if he believes that he's kind of overstepped his real abilities, Danylyuk told an Atlantic Council conference on January 6. [It] gives us Ukrainians some breathing space, but not for long.

But while the crisis in Kazakhstan and Russias intervention through the CSTO may draw Moscows attention away from Ukraine, it may only be temporary, says Paul Stronski, a former director for Russia and Central Asia on the U.S. National Security Council who is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The Russian-led CSTO deployment is 2,500 troops and both Toqaev and Putin have said that their mission in Kazakhstan will be temporary.

It certainly could be an off-ramp for the Kremlin, Stronski told RFE/RL. This adds to what is already on their plate, but its also a small contingent and shouldnt affect what theyre doing along Ukraines borders.

Spheres Of Influence

Putin has long accused the West of trying to curtail Moscows reach and the push for guarantees from the United States and NATO comes as Kremlin-friendly, authoritarian regimes in countries such as Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, and now Kazakhstan have been toppled or threatened by popular revolts in recent years.

By moving into Kazakhstan at the governments request, analysts say Putin opted to help quell the protests before they could threaten another government in a country the Kremlin views as strategic, while also building a deeper loyalty to Moscow in the process.

The action also marked the first time the CSTO, which was fashioned after the NATO military alliance and created in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, acted collectively to launch a mission on one of its members territory.

That marks a new identity for the organization, which Putin alluded to during remarks at a January 10 videoconference with other leaders from the CSTO, which includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

Echoing previous remarks by Toqaev, Putin then claimed the unrest in Kazakhstan that was reported to have killed some 164 people was the result of foreign meddling and said the CSTO should take steps to ensure that future attempts at interference in the region will fail.

The measures taken by the CSTO made it clear that we would not let anyone destabilize the situation at our home and implement so-called color-revolution scenarios, Putin said, in reference to the wave of protests that removed pro-Kremlin leaders from Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2005.

The fast-moving events in Kazakhstan took the Kremlin and other regional players by surprise, but Moscow appears to have adapted quickly.

What the intervention in Kazakhstan shows is that Russia is a nimble actor and that it continues to surprise, Stronski said. Maybe this causes Moscow to refocus its attention for a bit, but the Kremlin can handle two things at once.

RFE/RL senior correspondent Todd Prince contributed to this report.
KYIV -- A Kyiv court has extended the house arrest of Kremlin-friendly tycoon and politician Viktor Medvedchuk, who is being held under suspicion of treason.

Renat Kuzmin, a former Ukrainian prosecutor-general and Medvedchuk ally, wrote on Telegram that the Pechera district court on January 10 had extended Medvedchuk's house arrest for another 60 days.

Kuzmin called the decision illegal as pretrial house arrest cannot exceed six months, while Medvedchuk's is now set to last for at least 10 months.

Medvedchuk, who has been held under house arrest since May, was initially targeted with allegations of treason in a case that has added to tensions between Moscow and Kyiv.

In October, prosecutors announced that he is also accused of colluding to finance Russia-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.

Medvedchuk, who has a deep personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his pro-Russia Opposition Platform -- For Life party have both made statements rejecting the charges and calling them politically motivated.

Last year, Ukraines National Security Council announced sanctions against Medvedchuk, his wife Oksana Marchenko, and several other individuals and entities.

The sanctions froze the couples assets for three years and prevented them from doing business in the country.

In February 2021, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's government also sanctioned three television stations believed to be owned by Medvedchuk. The move came shortly after talks between the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

Medvedchuk's relationship with Putin runs so deep that the Russian leader is the godfather to Medvedchuks daughter.

Medvedchuk was sanctioned by the United States in 2014 for undermining democracy in Ukraine.

The sanctions were tied to an investigation into exports of coal to Russia from separatist-held regions in eastern Ukraine.

Fighting between Ukrainian government forces and the Russia-backed separatists who control parts of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions has killed more than 13,200 people since April 2014.

Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014 and instigated separatist clashes in Ukraines east after anti-government protests toppled Ukraine's Russia-friendly former president, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014.
The state has yet to make a decision on one of several plans to use the former Lighthouse Inn property.
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2021 Bilateral Trade Grew By 24%

Russia and Mongolia have adopted a declaration that sets clear targets in terms of boosting cooperation between the two countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced following talks with his Mongolian counterpart Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh late last month.

President Khurelsukh and I have adopted a joint political declaration as a follow-up to the Treaty on Friendly Relations and Comprehensive Strategic Partnership signed in 2019, Putin said. He specified that the document sets clear targets in terms of deepening bilateral ties in various fields of cooperation.

Putin added that Russia and Mongolia had prepared and planned to sign a number of intergovernmental and interagency documents covering many areas of cooperation, including the economy and trade.

According to Putin, the fact that the Mongolian president chose Russia as the destination for his first foreign visit (Khurelsukh was elected in June 2021) makes it clear that Mongolia places much importance on promoting good-neighborly ties with Russia. Certainly, we are interested in close cooperation with our Mongolian friends, the Russian leader said, adding that 2021 marked the 100th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Putin stressed that Russia was the first country to recognize Mongolias independence and since then, bilateral interaction had been progressing based on mutual respect and the willingness to take each others interests into account.

When speaking about economic cooperation, Putin emphasized that Russia was one of Mongolias major trade partners. According to him, despite the difficulties created by the coronavirus pandemic, trade between the two countries grew by 24% in the first nine months of the year. Putin also pointed to the effective work of the intergovernmental commission on trade, economic, research and technical cooperation. The Russian president noted that at a meeting in November, the commission had outlined new specific plans for cooperation in the fields of infrastructure, mining, energy, agriculture, and digital technologies.



The Ulaanbaatar Railway is a successful flagship joint commercial project. In the past ten years, its annual freight turnover doubled from 15 to 30 million tonnes, he specified. Putin also said that in the previous years, much had been done to modernize railway tracks and ensure the companys financial stability. We expect that these measures will make railroad freight traffic through Mongolia even more attractive and profitable. Putin stated. The trans-Mongolian railway serves both Russian and Mongolian trade but also provides a route through to China.

During 2021, the main exports of Russia to Mongolia were Refined Petroleum, Raw Iron Bars, Railway Freight Cars, Electricity, and Insulated Wire. The main imports by Russia from Mongolia were Feldspar, Knit Socks and Hosiery, Knit Sweaters, Other Engines, and Railway Freight Cars. Bilateral trade is currently running at about US$1.8 billion.

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A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
After five seasons of being the first face that an average 13 million Americans see when they tune into Downton Abbey, Darlene Shiley is still struck by how many people recognize her from a 10-second introductory spot.

They come up to her in airports and on cruise ships to thank her for her financial support of the public television cultural phenomenon. A friend attending a convention sent her a video of strangers exclaiming, Louisiana loves Darlene Shiley! Shes been approached in restaurants, at her hair salon in Valley Center, and was greeted a few weeks ago with Hi Darlene, Im such a fan! as she was leaving the doctors office.

Now Shiley is bracing for a different kind of onslaught.

Tonights episode of Downton Abbey on PBS Masterpiece marks the beginning of the end for the British costume drama, which enters its sixth and final season.

Im scared to death, Shiley, 69, said only half kidding, predicting those same admirers will turn on the benefactor as fast as the Dowager Countess can say What is a weekend?. Im going to take the hit for it going off the air. Im going to get nasty, terrible letters saying, Why did you stop supporting it?

For decades as one of San Diegos most high-profile and prolific philanthropists, Shiley  with her late husband, heart-valve inventor Donald Shiley  has given away upward of $100 million to science, educational and arts organizations. The Shiley name is everywhere  including the UCSD Shiley Eye Center, the Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage at The Old Globe Theatre, the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimers Disease Research Center, San Diego State Universitys Donald P. Shiley BioScience Center, and as of last month, The Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre (MFA) Program.

But its been the one-time actress record-breaking gifts to the fundraising Masterpiece Trust, more than $5.2 million to date, that have made Shiley nearly as famous as a Crawley family member. Along with other major local contributors, notably Conrad Prebys and Debbie Turner, about $8 million of the $12 million-plus that Masterpiece has raised since it was created in 2011, has come from here, making San Diego a virtual sister city with the fictional Downton country estate in Yorkshire, England.

Darlene Shiley Born: Aug. 23, 1946 Education: San Jose State University, theatre arts and humanities Work experience: Acting, semiconductor industry, television public service director, accounting firm, public relations., President, Shiley Foundation Family: Married Donald Shiley, who died in 2010, in 1978; four children from his previous marriage. Civic involvement: Founding donor of the County of San Diegos Alzheimers Project. Past service on boards of national Alzheimers Association, National Corporate Theatre Fund, Old Globe Theatre, Scripps Clinic, KPBS, UC San Diego, Salk Institute, and San Diegos Arts and Culture Commission. Current member of University of San Diego Board of Trustees (past board chair emeritus), and a regent for University of Portland.

And in that rarefied, aristocratic world, Shiley, who has traveled to the set, mingled with the cast and is contributing to the preservation of one of the buildings used as a location, would be San Diegos unofficial Duchess of Downton.

Darlene is a wonderful ambassadress for the show. People recognize her everywhere and she handles it with such warmth and grace, said Rebecca Eaton, executive producer of Masterpiece and one of Downtons executive producers.

Its television and millions of people see her image every week, which is a very powerful thing. As many people go past the Shiley Eye Center or the Old Globe in San Diego every day, its exponential.

Thats exactly why former University of San Diego President Mary Lyons said she hopes Shileys generosity that extends beyond the TV screen isnt overshadowed.

The fact that shes become so well known for her philanthropy because of Downton Abbey, she (Shiley) kind of shakes her head. But shes had such a long history in our region for philanthropy  if that were only the thing she was known for, it would really miss the point of her and Donalds focus, Lyons said.

In recent years, its been very much in the national media, the pledges for giving wealth away, with Bill Gates and others. Donald and Darlene did it before it was quote unquote the thing to do. Long before, just a handful of people had already begun a long history of generosity, without attention. Irwin and Joan Jacobs come into that category, she said.

The example that these folks have shown for many years shouldnt be lost.

Hes still everywhere

Darlene and Donald Shiley were married for 32 years, until his death in 2010 from vascular dementia. She was almost 30 years younger than him when they met after a performance in Berkeley of The Lion in Winter, in which she played the role of the wealthy and powerful Eleanor of Aquitaine.

This 2006 photo of Darlene and Donald Shiley, taken on the terrace of their San Diego penthouse, is the first image guests see when they visit the home. Crissy Pascual San Diego Union-Tibune file photo

She was just acting. While Donald Shiley was already a successful engineer and self-made businessman with a Ferrari and a private plane, Darlene grew up in working class Alameda County and considered her five-year-old yellow Karmann Ghia to be the epitome of luxury.

It wasnt only their income levels that differed. A widower, he was reserved, quiet, deeply religious and not particularly happy. She was the show-woman, gregarious, funny and outspoken. But they clicked and after a false start when he didnt call for six months between their first and second dates (he was afraid shed say no), the couple was all but inseparable for the decades to come.

Darlene Shiley, as well as several of her longtime friends, say theirs was a love story that not even Downton creator Julian Fellowes could have concocted.

Everyone could see what a great relationship we had, Shiley said, sitting in the living room of a two-story San Diego penthouse apartment she shared with her husband. Hes still everywhere for me.

Whether in casual conversation, delivering testimony at a government meeting or addressing a group of Alzheimers researchers, Shiley is quick to tear up when talking about my Donald.

People say, Look, you had 32 years. You should be happy about that. No. I wanted more. I didnt want to lose it. Its crushing. Everybody talks about wanting that one great love  I got it, she said, her voice cracking. I dont know how it happened. We were on such different paths. ... We were so different. But we shared the same philosophies and values.

About six months after they were married, Donald Shiley, creator of the groundbreaking Bjork-Shiley heart valve, sold his company to the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, netting the newlyweds a sizable, but undisclosed, fortune.

The joke at the time was that Shiley couldnt handle both the company and Darlene at the same time and he was going to have to get rid of one of them. And he kept me! she cracked.

The Shileys enjoyed traveling, particularly cruises, that took them to all corners of the globe. (Today, when she goes on a cruise, she wont get off the ship in cities the couple visited together so as not to tarnish the memory, she said.)

Bucking the fineries of their lifestyle  his luxury cars, her Steinway grand piano chosen by the Old Globes Jack OBrien himself  it was decided early in their marriage that their riches would all be given away.

Darlene Shiley, with the Steinway piano chosen for her by The Old Globes Jack OBrien.  Eduardo Contreras

And it was Darlene, whose mother instilled in her an ethic of giving back, who suggested they not wait until after they were gone to bequeath their wealth. He agreed, as long as she would be the one to research and vet their philanthropic causes.

It was at their Queen Anne Victorian ranch house in Julian where the couple shared their simplest moments and made some of their biggest decisions.

Those quiet times, when it would be snowing out, we would sit by the fireplace, where we loved to laugh and read and have our coffee, and we decided as a team where the money should go, she said, her voice disappearing into a whisper. We were a great team.

Former San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, who became close to Shiley through his wife, Rana Sampson, described her as a down-to-earth, self-deprecating, master raconteur, whose life continues to be committed to her relationship to her husband.

Shes still very passionate; I can tell she misses him incredibly, Sanders said. It informs a lot with her giving, whether to caregivers, or to Alzheimers, or biotech, he said.

She thinks its her job to live up to the standards that he set  that they set as a couple  and I just find that really heartwarming.

Steely steward

Sanders and Sampson have Shiley over for dinner about once a month and one of the things they like to rib Shiley about when they make the occasional visit to her in the Pauma Valley is how she doesnt even know where her kitchen gadgets are.

We love to tease her, Hey, did you find your spatula yet? Sanders said.

In fact, she did find her spatula. And she used it just a few weeks back  as a fireplace poker. Local PBS affiliate KPBS, which shares in the largess Shiley donates to Masterpiece, was there to shoot some promos.

They wanted a fire in the fireplace. I bought this house three years ago and had never used the fireplace and I had to use a spatula to move the logs around, Shiley said. Yep, thats me.

A self-described goofball who is quick with a one-liner but who also has a penchant for dissolving into tears wouldnt appear on the surface like a steely steward of donated millions.

Philanthropist Darlene Shiley (right), talking with USD president Jim Harris at a recent USD Trustee Dinner, is a boardroom powerhouse with a deceptively gregarious persona.  Eduardo Contreras

Underestimate me at your own peril, Shiley says with eyebrows raised. It fools people into thinking Im fluff because Im approachable. It makes some people think Im not strong because Im very outgoing. Thats a very, very bad thing to think.

In the boardroom, shes not afraid to be the lone no vote. Shell go up against organizations who keep coming to her with their hand outstretched even though they didnt hold up their end of the donation deal.

If you say, If you give me this, Ill do X, you better do X, said Shiley, with frustration. And dont get her started on people trying to pitch her.

I worked in charitable organizations before, so Im hell and a half for some poor development director to come after because theres nothing they can say to me that I havent said to somebody, Shiley said.

Im a nightmare when it comes to being a donor. Generally speaking, youve only made it through the front door because Ive already decided to give you the money. Nobodys ever worked me for a donation. Im either going to do it or not do it  and you wont be talking to me unless Im going to do it.

Masterpieces Eaton learned that one night at dinner with Shiley at the San Diegans favorite restaurant, Mr. As. Shiley had already given the public television station $250,000 because she loved such programming as Prime Suspect, with Helen Mirren.

The Cosmos were flowing and Eaton broached the topic of Shiley renewing her pledge and upping it to a $1 million donation to help finance PBS costly Edwardian drama Downton Abbey (which producers decided to end after six seasons).

Thats a lot of money, Eaton recalled Shiley responding.

Well, that didnt go well, the TV producer thought.

Then, using a phrase that would surely make the irascible, high-brow Dowager Countess shudder, Shiley simply answered, Lets do it.
Actor Sonu Sood's youngest sister Malvika Sachar on Monday joined the Congress and would be the party's candidate from her hometown Moga in the February Punjab Assembly polls.

State Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu and Chief Minister Charanjit Channi reached Sood's residence and met the brother-sister duo.

"The aim of politics is to serve the people and I am sure that Malvika would serve the people with full honesty and integrity," Channi said, adding "Now there should be no doubt about who will be the Congress candidate from Moga."

Describing her induction into the party a game-changer, Sidhu told the media that her presence would leave a positive on other seats too.

"It is very rare that a party chief and the Chief Minister both have gone to someone's home to grant the honour, and she deserves it," he added.

Sachar, 38, who is married and running her parental family business in Moga, said she has taken the political plunge to dedicate herself to serve the people.

Sood's old-time friends and well-wishers in his hometown, some 175 km from the state capital Chandigarh, described him as the messiah of tens of thousands of desperate migrants in Maharashtra amidst pandemic, while his family believes his philanthropy spirit comes from his ancestry.

"I am proud that my brother is giving succour and strength to those who have been ruined by the pandemic," Sachar had told IANS.

Born to a business family, the siblings' father was in the cloth business and mother was an English lecturer in Moga's oldest D.M. College of Education.

Their eldest sister is settled in the US.
"We're going to listen to Russia's concerns" about NATO military exercises in central and eastern Europe, Blinken said, but added, "They're going to have to listen to ours" about the 100,000 troops Russia has amassed along Ukraine's eastern flank.

"It's hard to see we're going to make any progress with a gun to Ukraine's head," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN's "State of the Union" show.

Top U.S. and Russian diplomats expressed little optimism Sunday that tensions between their countries would be eased at high-level discussions this week in Europe over Moscow's massive troop buildup along its Ukraine border and Russian demands for Western security guarantees.

Meanwhile, Russia's state-owned RIA news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov as saying it was entirely possible that the U.S.-Russia talks could end abruptly after a single meeting. "I can't rule out anything; this is an entirely possible scenario and the Americans... should have no illusions about this," Ryabkov was quoted as saying. Officials from the two countries held a working dinner Sunday night ahead of the more formal talks on Monday in Geneva.

"Naturally, we will not make any concessions under pressure and in the course of threats that are constantly being formed by the Western participants of the upcoming talks," Ryabkov said.

Blinken said, "I don't think we're going to see any [immediate] breakthrough" in the U.S.-Russia negotiations that continue along with other countries in Brussels and Vienna throughout the week. But he said, "Ultimately this is up to President [Vladimir] Putin. It's his actions [with the Ukraine troop buildup] that are precipitating what he says he doesn't want," furthering conflict with the United States and its allies.

Blinken reiterated the U.S. threat to impose severe economic sanctions against Moscow in the event it invades Ukraine eight years after its 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. "Our strong preference is a diplomatic solution, but that's up to Russia," Blinken told ABC's "This Week" show. He said there is room for negotiations over military exercises in Europe and renewed arms limitations that he accused Russia of violating in the past.

The top U.S. diplomat, however, said Russia cannot violate other countries' borders or dictate whether NATO might accede to Ukraine's request for membership in the seven-decade-old Western military alliance. He said 60 percent of Ukrainians favor the country joining NATO.

Russia has denied it plans to invade Ukraine and has demanded an end to NATO expansion and a halt to the alliance's military exercises in central and eastern European countries that joined it after 1997. The United States and NATO have said large parts of the Russian proposals are a non-starter.

Aside from Blinken's Sunday talk show interviews, a senior official in President Joe Biden's administration on Saturday anonymously laid out the U.S. stance on the talks with Russia. "The main threats to European security over the past two decades have come from Russia and the forces with which it is aligned," the official said. "Russia has twice invaded and occupied its neighbors. It's interfered in a myriad of elections, including our own."

"It's used chemical weapons to conduct assassinations and violated foundational arms control treaties... So, any serious conversation with Russia about European security is going to have to address those issues...," the official said.

The official said the U.S. is not willing to restrict NATO's membership options. "It is not up to Russia, for example, to decide for other countries who they can be allies with," the official said. "Those are decisions only for those countries and the alliance itself." But the official said the U.S. was ready to talk about the possibility of each side restricting military exercises and missile deployments in the region.

After the Geneva talks, Russia is also due to hold negotiations with NATO in Brussels on Wednesday and at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna on Thursday.


The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to set up a panel, headed by a former apex court judge, to probe the Prime Minister Narendra Modi security breach in Punjab last week.

After a detailed hearing in the matter, a bench headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana and comprising Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli said the court will set up a committee headed by a retired top court judge to probe the PM's security breach and asked both the Centre and Punjab government to not move ahead with their respective inquires into the matter.

The bench said it will pass a detailed order in the matter. During the hearing, the bench orally proposed that other members of the committee would be Director General of Police (DGP) Chandigarh, Inspector General (IG) National Investigation Agency (NIA), registrar general ( Punjab and Haryana High Court), and Additional DGP (security) Punjab.

The bench said: "We are taking the PM's security breach very seriously". The bench added that it will ask the committee to submit its report to it within a short span.

Advocate General D.S. Patwalia, representing the Punjab government, complained against show-cause notices to its chief secretary and DGP. He urged the top court to form an independent committee to probe the matter. "Hang me if I am guilty... but don't condemn me unheard," submitted Patwalia.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Centre, defended the show-cause notices issued by the Central government. However, the top court expressed its displeasure at Centre's stand, questioning what is the point of asking the court to examine the matter if the Centre wanted to go ahead on its own.

Senior advocate Maninder Singh, representing the Delhi-based petitioner Lawyer's Voice, emphasised on the importance of protection to the PM of the country and cited previous top court ruling that looked at the SPG Act.

The plea sought an independent probe into the PM's security breach in Punjab. It sought a direction to the District Judge Bathinda to collect, preserve and present all material pertaining to the movement and deployment of Punjab Police in connection with the visit of the Prime Minister, and fix responsibility of the DGP and the Chief Secretary, Punjab.

On January 6, the Ministry of Home Affairs constituted a three-member committee to enquire into the "serious lapses in the security arrangements" during the PM's visit to Ferozepur, in poll-bound Punjab. The MHA said: "The committee will be led by Sudhir Kumar Saxena, Secretary (Security), Cabinet Secretariat, and comprising Balbir Singh, Joint Director, IB, and S. Suresh, IG, SPG."
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Californias public schools would see more than $20,000 per student in state funding under Gov. Gavin Newsoms $102 billion education budget proposal, with significant funding to help districts weather the ongoing pandemic.

School funding is expected to increase by $8.2 billion based on minimum funding guarantees under state law, according to the governors proposal, with an additional $7.9 billion in one-time funds for facilities, transportation and career development, among other programs.

California schools would get a combined $119 billion next year from local, state and federal education funding  the most ever.

The education budget reflects a healthy state economy with increasing revenue and a pot of leftover funds that the governor and Legislature have to work with for the 2022-2023 budget year.

For schools, that means a 5.33% cost of living increase for education is the largest since 2008.

During his nearly three-hour press conference Monday morning in Sacramento, Newsom touted plans to expand early childhood education, as well as to bolster summer-school, after-school and student enrichment programs, such as music and arts.

State lawmakers for years have tried to expand these offerings, particularly subsidized preshool eligibility, and theyve taken greater importance, Newsom said, as the states educators work to catch up students who fell behind academically during the pandemic.

Your kids deserve what every fancy family gets, which is those extra supports, Newsom said. You deserve that, especially with all the social emotional damage thats been done. ... Fancy families can afford those summer enrichment programs, but a lot of folks who are living paycheck to paycheck cant.

Still, the governors plans to expand these programs comes as many districts across the state face massive deficits, including San Francisco, which has proposed $50 million in classroom cuts to help mitigate a $125 million shortfall next year. The sunny fiscal outlook for the state is likely to help ease some of the burden.

The governors proposal acknowledges some of the strain public schools have faced during the pandemic, including a loss of enrollment and attendance, which affect how much districts and charter schools get in state funding.

The last two years have created unprecedented challenges for schools, teachers, families and children, according to the governors budget document. The COVID-19 pandemic has stretched the capacity of public schools like never before.

This year, the state did not withhold money for declining enrollment related to in-state migration, birth rate declines and parents opting for alternatives to their local public schools.

Many districts would face a precipitous drop in revenue if the state reverts to funding based on how many students are enrolled next fall.

The governor proposed softening that blow by funding districts based on whichever is greatest: enrollment from the current year, the prior year or the average of the three prior years. The plan would cost the state an estimated $1.2 billion.

But the debate in Sacramento over how California funds its public schools is likely to continue throughout the legislative session. Before the pandemic, the state Department of Finance projected steady student enrollment declines over the next decade and schools collective enrollment loss was exacerbated during the pandemic.

Now, some state lawmakers support legislation to overhaul Californias school finance by tying it to districts student enrollment  a method supporters say gives districts more stability to plan budgets  as opposed to the states decades-long approach of funding schools largely based on students daily attendance.

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.

The governors proposed temporary tweak to school finance would nonetheless benefit school systems grappling with dire budget shortfalls, such as San Francisco and Oakland.

SFUSD is working tirelessly to implement immediate and ongoing solutions to address our structural deficit. The governor's education budget proposal would provide much-needed improvements in our fiscal outlook, SFUSD spokesperson Laura Dudnick said in a statement. Our staff will review the details of the proposal and update our budget projections in the coming days and weeks.

Newsoms budget also focuses on the states youngest, with $1.02 billion to expand transitional kindergarten to all students turning 5 between Sept. 2 and Feb. 2, and to add an additional teacher to all TK classrooms to keep class sizes at state preschool levels.

Before- and after-school programs would also get a huge infusion of cash under the proposal, with an additional $3.4 billion on top of existing funding for these expanded learning opportunities. Many after-school programs, including in San Francisco, struggled to hire this year, forcing them to take fewer students and further stressing families in need of care.

Schools would also get $939 million in one-time money to purchase supplies and other needs for art and music programs.

The $7.9 billion in one-time funds also includes $1.5 billion to support busing, including money to make bus fleets environmentally friendly; $1.5 billion over four years for career programs in technology, health, education and climate; $1.3 billion for new construction and modernization of facilities.

The Legislature would still need to approve the budget by mid-June.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Ricardo Cano contributed to this report.

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker
Faced with an exponential rise in COVID-19 cases across California, the states Department of Public Health now says that health care workers who test positive for the virus can remain on the job  at least through Feb. 1.

The policy shift is prompted by the need to keep hospitals functioning during the current surge, the department said. Allowing infected health workers to continue their duties is needed due to the critical staffing shortages currently being experienced across the health care continuum, according to the health departments letter, posted online Saturday, to acute care and psychiatric hospitals and skilled nursing facilities.

The loosened requirements apply only to health care workers who are asymptomatic, and they will need to wear N95 respirators rather than standard medical face masks. The department wants such workers to treat only patients who already have tested positive, the letter said, although it acknowledges that this may not always be possible in settings such as the emergency department where everyones infection status is not always known.

Experts believe the surge driven by the highly infectious omicron variant of the coronavirus will peak within a couple of weeks, based on patterns elsewhere.

Until now, anyone on a hospital staff who tested positive was required to stay off work for five days and not return until after testing negative. That will not apply during the duration of the interim guidance, which is set to expire on Feb. 1. Nor will medical workers need to spend time at home quarantined if they are exposed to someone with COVID, assuming the workers show no symptoms.

In a statement Sunday, the state health department said the new temporary flexibility is due to an unprecedented surge amid staff shortages making it difficult to treat those who need essential care.

Unions representing hospital staff voiced opposition to the new policy.

When we got wind of this decision, we were beyond appalled, Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, president of the California Nurses Association, said Sunday. For COVID-positive nurses to (probably) deal with uninfected patients, that will only lead to more illness.

The association called on the department and Gov. Gavin Newsom to rescind the new guidance. The same request was made by the Service Employees International Union, which represents many health care workers.

Allowing employers to bring back workers who may still be infectious is one of the worst ideas I have heard during this pandemic, and thats really saying something, Bob Schoonover, president of SEIU California, said in a statement.

California guidance for the general public still calls for people testing positive to remain in isolation for five days and exit isolation only after testing negative.

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.

The restrictions that are being waived were aligned with standards set by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state said. Those have not been loosened.

One expert in infectious diseases who reviewed the changes expressed concern about adding flexibility without spelling out exactly when such flexibility might be allowed.

I can think of a situation where we might want to relax some of the testing requirements because staffing situations are dire, but in general, we should be more cautious, said Robert Siegel, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University. Its clear that a great deal of (COVID) transmission occurs from asymptomatic people.

An earlier version of this story used imprecise language for the mask that infected health care workers must wear under state guidelines. It is an N95 respirator.

John King is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com
California has shattered a pandemic high for positive coronavirus test results with more than 1 out of 5 tests showing COVID-19 infection. Amid the omicron-driven surge, many health experts say theres reason to be hopeful that the Bay Area will come out the other side of this wave better protected than before. Californias attorney general says people should be on guard against price gouging for at-home COVID-19 test kits, with Gov. Gavin Newsom signing an executive order limiting seller markups.

Resources on COVID-19 in California: For detailed maps and city-by-city Bay Area data, check out The Chronicles Coronavirus Tracker.

Latest updates:

COVID hospitalizations in U.S. reach a record high: There were a record 141,385 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States on Monday, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services. The surge of hospitalizations driven by the highly contagious omicron variant surpassed the previous peak of 132,051 set during the winter surge last January. Nearly 20% of all hospitalizations in the country are for complications related to COVID-19. Many hospitals nationwide have already suspended non-essential procedures as cases continue to rise unabated.

New isolation guidance for health care workers offers short-term flexibility, state says: Californias new guidance that allows infected, asymptomatic health care workers to stay on the job is meant to provide over-burdened hospitals with more options for maintaining critical staffing; it should not be used to require infected people to return to work, said Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of California Health and Human Services, on Monday. He noted the guidance, which expires Feb. 1, is a short-term solution to what could be a very challenging few weeks. Were providing the latitude, the flexibility, to have certain individuals who are asymptomatic and willing to come back to work to help serve patients, Ghaly said. Nobody at the state is requiring health care workers to come back who are infected or quarantining.

Sonoma County bans large gatherings during omicron surge: Citing a rapid rise in COVID-19 cases, Sonoma County health officials on Monday asked residents to stay home as much as possible for the next 30 days and limit interactions with people outside their immediate household. Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase also issued a health order prohibiting large gatherings of more than 50 people indoors or more than 100 people outdoors. Sonoma County is the first in the Bay Area to reinstate such a ban in response to the omicron surge. Shelter-in-place orders were used statewide before vaccinations became widely available to curtail spread of disease, in particular during the first wave of disease in March 2020 and during last winters surge. Sonomas order is in effect Wednesday through Feb. 11. Our case rates are at their highest level since the pandemic began and our hospitalizations are climbing at an alarming rate as well, Mase said in a statement. We are seeing widespread transmission occurring within unvaccinated groups as well as some transmission among vaccinated individuals.

California averaging 100,000 cases a day: The state has been reporting roughly 100,000 cases each day for the last several days as the omicron surge continues to explode, Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of California Health and Human Services, said during a news briefing Monday afternoon. COVID once again with omicron is gripping our state, challenging our health systems and impacting communities that have already been hard hit, Ghaly said. When COVID cases are added to the rest of the hospital population, the state is knocking on the door of nearly 52,000 people hospitalized, only about a thousand fewer than last winters peak.

California surpasses 6 million cases total: California marked a pandemic high for positive coronavirus test results on Monday with more than 1 out of 5 tests showing COVID-19 infection, as hospitals braced for an even greater influx of new patients. The state has surpassed 6 million cumulative coronavirus cases reported since the pandemic began. Californias most recent 7-day average hit a rate of 22% positive results on Jan. 5, according to the most recent state data compiled by The Chronicle. That surpasses Californias previous 7-day high of 17.1% recorded during last years winter surge, and is dramatically up from 5.4% just two weeks ago. Read the full story here.

Insurance to cover COVID tests: Starting Saturday, private health insurers will be required to cover up to eight home COVID-19 tests per month for people on their plans. The Biden administration announced the change Monday as it looks to lower costs and make testing for the virus more convenient amid rising frustrations. Under the new policy, first detailed to the Associated Press, Americans will be able to either purchase home testing kits for free under their insurance or submit receipts for reimbursement. With the limits, a family of four could be reimbursed for up to 32 tests per month. PCR tests and rapid tests ordered or administered by a health provider will continue to be fully covered by insurance with no limit.

Wachter questions CDCs quarantine policy: Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of medicine at UCSF, said the federal CDCs updated isolation and quarantine guidance is sowing confusion  including for him. CDC guidance says infected people should isolate for 5 days and if they are asymptomatic or their symptoms are resolving (without fever for 24 hours), they should wear a mask around others to minimize the risk of infecting them. Posting a picture of a positive antigen rapid test result on his Twitter feed, Wachter, whose son recently tested positive, said, My sons now 5d since symptoms. Hes better (now mild sore throat, no fever). Binax is below. I study this for a living & am confused by CDC recs. Work (with mask) wouldve been OK if we didnt test, but since we did, he should stay home 5 more days? Huh?

Rapid tests reliable in detecting omicron, UCSF study finds: Using data from COVID-19 testing at a walk-up San Francisco community site that administered simultaneous nasal rapid antigen BinaxNow tests and laboratory PCR tests in 731 patients, UCSF researchers found the at-home tests to be effective in detecting the omicron variant of the virus. Out of the 296 positives detected by PCR testing, researchers found when stratified by symptom status, the BinaxNOW detected 43 of 59 RT-PCR positive persons who were asymptomatic for a sensitivity of 89.8%; sensitivity was 97.6% for persons with symptoms. In a Twitter post, UCSFs Bob Wachter called the results, Reassuring (albeit confusing given prior concerns).

Childrens COVID cases swell to close to 600,000 in a week: There were 580,247 child COVID-19 cases reported nationwide for the week ending Jan. 7, with children representing 17.3% of the weekly reported cases in the United States, according to data published Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Childrens Hospital Association. Among states reporting, children ranged from 1.7%-4.3% of total cumulated hospitalizations, the report says. The latest tally represents a substantial increase from the 325,340 pediatric cases tallied last week  and the peak of 251,781 recorded during the summer delta surge in 2021.

Latest wacky COVID conspiracy touts hypnosis notion: An unfounded theory taking root online suggests millions of people have been hypnotized into believing mainstream ideas about COVID-19, including steps to combat it such as testing and vaccination, the Associated Press reports. In widely shared social media posts, efforts to combat the disease have been dismissed as mass formation psychosis. The term gained attention after it was floated by Dr. Robert Malone on The Joe Rogan Experience Dec. 31 podcast. Psychology experts debunk the concept.

Palo Alto seeking parent volunteers to keep schools open: Palo Alto schools are getting traction on a call to action, pleading for parent volunteers to help out while staff members are out due to the COVID-19 crisis. Parents are needed in designated roles that are coordinated by PTA and school leadership, Palo Alto Unified officials said on the district website. We need your help to volunteer as never before, Superintendent Don Austin said in a video message emailed to parents on Sunday night. The district said it had responses from 360 parents by Monday morning. Jobs include helping with coronavirus testing, lunch and recess duty, light custodial duties, office work and classroom support.

S.F. says processing delays limit hours at 4 test sites: Increased nationwide demand for lab processing of test results is what has led to a temporary reduction in hours at four San Francisco coronavirus test sites, city health officials said Monday. That will reduce overall capacity in the city by about 4%, or about 250 tests per day out of the current 7-day average of 6,000 tests per day at sites affiliated with the S.F. health department  which account for about 60% of tests conducted in the city  they said. After Monday, reduced hours are planned for the Ella Hill Hutch, Alemany and SOMA (7th/Brannan) sites. Southeast Health Center was affected Monday morning only, and resumes normal hours Tuesday.

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.

Health care workers push back against new CA return-to-work guidance: Organizations representing health care workers reacted strongly against California health officials new guidance saying these workers can stay on the job if they are infect with COVID-19 but do not have symptoms. Health care unions predicted that foregoing more strict precautions will increase workplace outbreaks and put vulnerable patients at risk. SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West said hospitals should reject the guidance and maintain stricter precautions such requiring a negative test before a COVID-19 positive or exposed healthcare worker returns to work. Our union will fight for safe working conditions for hospital workers who have continuously put their lives on the line during this pandemic, said union president Dave Regan.

Pfizer and Moderna say omicron vaccines are on the way: Pharmaceutical companies are racing to develop omicron-specific COVID vaccines boosters. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said on Monday that its version could be ready in March. The hope is that we will achieve something that will have way, way better protection particularly against infections, because the protection against the hospitalizations and the severe disease  it is reasonable right now, with the current vaccines as long as you are having lets say the third dose, Bourla said on CNBC. Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said its booster is already in trials. As you know, were working very actively on an omicron-specific vaccine as a booster, Bancel said in a separate CNBC interview Monday. That should be in the clinic very soon and we are discussing with public health leaders around the world to decide what we think is the best strategy for a potential booster for the fall of 2022.

California schools risk colossal loss of dollars as enrollment drops: School districts across California are worried about losing millions of dollars all at once, resulting in staffing cuts in a time when students need more attention than ever. After two years of not being penalized for declining enrollment during the pandemic, school districts are bracing for a sudden drop in revenue next year as their funding gets recalibrated to match current enrollment, which plummeted since COVID-19 first closed Californias schools. Read the full story here.

Coronavirus-infected hospital staff without symptoms can stay on the job in California: Faced with an exponential rise in COVID-19 cases across California, the states Department of Public Health now says that health care workers who test positive for the virus can remain on the job  at least through Feb. 1. The policy shift is prompted by the need to keep hospitals functioning during the current surge, the department said. Read the full story here.

Some S.F. testing sites temporarily cut hours: San Franciscos health department issued a notice that some coronavirus testing sites affiliated with the city on will temporarily limit their hours of operation Monday due to challenges beyond our control. A list of testing sites with updated hours can be found at http://sf.gov/gettested, the agency tweeted Sunday. Officials urged people to check with their own health provider first for testing. Do not go to the ER for tests, they said  echoing recent calls to reserve emergency departments for people who are critically ill. For more information about when you should go to the ER with COVID symptoms, go here.

Wachter says his sons COVID case is improving: UCSF chief of medicine Dr. Bob Wachter, who Saturday on Twitter recounted his sons coronavirus infection in a detailed and personal 25-tweet thread, reported Sunday that the 28-year-old is improving. Thanks, folks, for asking about my son, Wachter tweeted. Better today, though throats still bad. Many going through far worse. He said that while hed encountered some nasty people (and bots) on Twitter, Ive been impressed more by the kindness.

Milpitas Unified reverses course, will keep classrooms open: Milpitas Unified School District says classes will be in-person this week, reversing plans for a districtwide quarantine announced Friday. In a letter to the community on Saturday, the superintendents office said that the Santa Clara County Office of Education told the district that only the county Public Health Department could declare a community quarantine. Parents and caregivers concerned about health and safety may choose short term or long term independent study for their children, the district said, adding that those interested should contact their principals.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has COVID-19: The office of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said Sunday that she has tested positive for the coronavirus. She is experiencing symptoms and is recovering at home, her office said on Twitter. The Congresswoman received her booster shot this Fall, and encourages everyone to get their booster and follow all CDC guidance.

Dont call 911 for non-emergencies, S.F. officials urge: San Francisco officials are warning that, due to high demand and staffing shortages fueled by the omicron surge, people should only call 911 for life threatening emergencies. People should not call 911 or go to the emergency room seeking a COVID-19 test or for mild flu-like symptoms, they said. Please help us keep ambulances available for medical emergencies, said San Francisco Fire Department Chief Jeanine Nicholson at a virtual news conference Saturday. Nicholson said a surge in 911 calls is putting a strain on the system, with the city recently logging more than 400 emergency calls a day, compared to the usual 300 to 330. Read the full story.
Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

Federal prosecutors have charged an Oakland man with weapon and drug charges in what they called an apparent road-rage shooting that led to seizure of a fentanyl cache in the Tenderloin District.

Wilmer Arteaga, 29, was charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm and for possession of more than 40 grams of fentanyl with the intent to distribute it, according to a previously sealed Dec. 27 complaint that was announced Friday by the U.S. Attorneys Office for Northern California after Arteaga appeared in federal court to face the charges.
After a scientist in Cyprus claimed that his team has identified a new Covid-19 variant being dubbed as 'Deltacron', Indian-origin Covid expert at World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Krutika Kuppalli, has said that Deltacron is not real.

Talking to Twitter, Kuppalli, who is part of the Covid Technical Team, said: "# Deltacron is not real and is likely due to sequencing artifact ( lab contamination of #Omicron sequence fragments in a #Delta specimen).

"Let's not merge names of infectious diseases and leave it to celebrity couples."

Earlier, Tom Peacock, a virologist at the Imperial College London, had said that the Cypriot 'Deltacron' sequences reported by several large media outlets look to be quite clearly "contaminated".

"When new variants come through sequencing lab contamination isn't that uncommon (very very tiny volumes of liquid can cause this) - just usually these fairly clearly contaminated sequences are not reported by major media outlets," Peacock said in a Twitter thread on Sunday.

According to him, Omicron has likely not circulated for long enough, in a large enough population, to produce a true recombinant.

True recombinants don't tend to appear until a few weeks/months after there's been substantial co-circulation.

"We're only a couple of weeks into Omicron - I really doubt there are any prevalent recombinants yet," he said.

Martin Michaelis, Professor of Molecular Medicine at the University of Kent, told The Mirror that it is not yet clear whether the samples are real, or the rest of a sequencing error or contamination.

He said: "As far as I can tell, researchers from Cyprus have sequenced samples of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid, and received genomic sequences that combine features of the Omicron and Delta variants. It is not yet clear whether this is real or a sequencing error or the consequence of contamination."

Earlier, Leondios Kostrikis, the head of the laboratory of biotechnology and molecular virology at the University of Cyprus, had claimed that his team had detected a new variant "Deltacron" in 25 people.

According to Kostrikis, of the 25 samples taken in Cyprus, 11 were hospitalised due to the virus, while 14 were from the general population.

However, the new variant was not something to worry about at the moment, Cyprus Health Minister Michalis Hadjipandelas was quoted as saying.

It is "quite possible" that the new strain has not been found elsewhere, and the sequences of the cases have been sent to GISAID, an open access database that tracks developments in the coronavirus, the Cyprus Mail reported.
The year had barely started when a major Bay Area freeway saw its first burst of gunfire, right at the onset of rush hour.

On the afternoon of Jan. 4, a bullet fired by a yet-unknown shooter hit Alameda County sheriffs recruit David Nguyen as he drove his Toyota Prius west on Interstate 580 toward the Bay Bridge toll plaza. Nguyen apparently slumped over the wheel and crashed his car into a guardrail, becoming one of the latest victims of a surge in highway violence.

Over the past three years, shootings have more than tripled on the arterials that knit the region together  from 49 Bay Area freeway shootings in 2018, to 165 through October last year, according to the California Highway Patrol in response to a public records request from The Chronicle. Limited available records also show a spike in deaths  from two fatal freeway shootings for the whole Bay Area in 2018, to six gun deaths on Oakland freeways alone in 2021.

Among the lives claimed by these attacks were a toddler strapped in his car seat, teenagers packed onto a party bus and Amani Morris, a mother on her way to a job orientation. Their stories reflect the human toll of a trend that presents galling challenges for law enforcement.

It just angers me so much, said Alicia Benton, Morris mother. The two were FaceTiming minutes before gunfire killed Morris on I-80 near the Bay Bridge on the morning of Nov. 18.

The 29-year-old Antioch mother was riding in an SUV to a training for her new job at a child care service. Morris fiance drove while her two sons, ages 5 and 3, sat in the back seat. Police have made no arrests in the case.

Each roadside crime scene is perplexing, law enforcement officials say: By the time officers arrive, the perpetrator may be long gone, the bullet casings scattered far away, the witnesses elusive.

While officials hope the escalating bloodshed of recent years doesnt carry into 2022, the I-580 shooting served as a terrifying portent.

Sgt. Raul Gonzalez of the California Highway Patrol attributed many shootings to road rage incidents or targeted gang violence, and said the chance of a bystander being shot is extremely rare. Nonetheless, several recent, high-profile incidents appear to be innocent victims caught in the crossfire.

Records from the California Highway Patrol illuminate the depth of the quandary for officers, who make arrests in only a portion of cases. For example, the agencys Golden Gate division  which covers the Bay Area  documented 49 shootings in 2018, which led to two homicides, 23 injuries and eight arrests.

The largest share of shootings took place in Alameda County, where the CHP said they received reports of 74 incidents by the end of 2021. Highway Patrol officials did not provide arrest numbers for that year.

Interstates 580 and 880 in Oakland saw the most shootings of any Bay Area freeway in 2018 and 2019, the years for which such data was available.

With most of these cases unsolved, law enforcement and criminologists are left to speculate about motives. UC Berkeley criminal law Professor Jonathan Simon said that only two criminal scenarios come to mind in freeway shootings: road rage assaults or calculated attacks against a motorist who the perpetrator already knew. Such encounters could be aggravated by the growing number of people who are armed, Simon said.

Stanford University law professor Robert Weisberg ascribed the vast increase in shootings to a tragic exacerbation of gang disputes made more volatile by the proliferation of guns. He noted that freeways are sites of repeat behaviors, where many drivers cross the same stretch of road at the same time each day. A person wanting to ambush a driver could analyze that persons movements, and then follow them.

Then its just a relocation of street shootings, in some ways, Weisberg said, adding that retaliatory shootings beget more retaliatory shootings, a ruthless cycle of self-reinforcement.

Oakland has been a perpetual hot spot for freeway shootings, even in 2018, a year in which the citys homicide rate went down. Almost half of the 20 freeway incidents recorded that year occurred on Interstate 580, which stretches east from the MacArthur Maze, bifurcating the citys hills from its flatlands.

Yet gun violence also plagues the regions more rural highways, including Highway 4, which branches from I-80 into the tawny landscape of Contra Costa County, toward the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

The alarming number of shootings along this route began worrying prosecutor Mary Knox in 2015, when she ran the Community Violence Reduction Unit in the Contra Costa District Attorneys Office. Around that time, Knox reached out to private companies to develop a freeway security network, an intricate system of cameras, license plate readers and ShotSpotter gun detection devices used to pinpoint the exact times and locations of shootings and alert officers as soon as a gun was fired. The camera feed is so powerful, Knox said, it can capture the muzzle flashes from suspects cars.

In 2017, Contra Costa County law enforcement agencies secured $3.5 million from then-state Transportation Secretary Brian Kelly to turn the security network into a three-year pilot program, installing a wireless backbone from I-80 in Richmond to Highway 4 in Antioch to feed data into a command center. By 2019 it was fully operating and serving as a deterrent, Knox believes, though data shows that shootings more than quintupled in Contra Costa County the following year. Knox currently is running for district attorney in Contra Costa County.

Caltrans extended the freeway security network pilot program last June, and officials hoped to develop technology that would bolster investigations of organized retail theft caravans. But critics, including Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission Chair Brian Hofer, question whether the technology has an impact.

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.

Hofer sued Contra Costa County in 2019, alleging that sheriffs deputies pulled guns and illegally searched his car following a traffic stop on Interstate 80, when a license plate reader identified Hofers rental car as stolen. Hofer settled with the sheriff for almost $50,000 last year, though the experience led him to conclude that freeway surveillance technology is intrusive, prone to errors, and could lead to racial profiling.

I havent seen sufficient data to believe that its an effective solution, he said. It clearly doesnt have a deterrence effect because theres been an increase in shootings.

Other counties seek to replicate some of the efforts of Contra Costa County, despite misgivings from privacy advocates. In December, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf wrote to Gov. Gavin Newsom, asking for more assistance from the Highway Patrol on arterial streets, as well as license plate readers on freeway on- and off-ramps.

For Carl Chan, a prominent public safety advocate and president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, surveillance equipment on freeway ramps is just the beginning. He wants to see the same technology deployed at busy city intersections.

Chan is close to the family of Jasper Wu, the 23 month-old toddler who was killed in November while sitting in his familys car, traveling south along Interstate 880 in Oakland. Police say a stray bullet flew into the car from the opposite side of the freeway.

At this point, the family is trying to move away from the home they rent in Fremont, Chan said, because everything reminds them of Jasper. The wounds reopen each time they hear about another freeway shooting  and the violence shows no sign of abating.

A week before Wus death, on Oct. 27, 27-year-old Monnie Price Jr. was shot and killed as he drove onto the I-580 on-ramp at 98th Avenue. His father, Rev. Ramon Price Sr., works at a funeral home in Oakland and has now lost two sons to gun violence. When he got a call from the coroner about Monnie, Price said he recognized the number immediately, and began weeping.

Within nine days, a gunshot had struck and killed Wu, and on Nov. 18 an unknown assailant slayed Morris, the devoted mother who was giddy about her new job, Benton said. Wracked with grief, Benton prepared to raise her two grandsons at her home in Georgia.

Then, four days into the new year, Nguyen was killed in the thick of afternoon traffic.

This has been a whirlwind, and its not over, Benton said. Because Im coming to get two little people at the end of the month  Im going to raise my grandkids now.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
Family Cafe, the charming daytime Japanese restaurant in San Franciscos North Beach, is permanently closing Jan. 29.

Co-owner Jessica Furui, who runs the cafe with her ex-husband and executive chef Tadayuki Furui, said the business wasnt financially healthy due to inconsistencies created by the pandemic.

Family Cafe opened in the fall of 2019 inspired by kissatens, traditional Japanese cafes where people gather for tea, sweets and quiet conversation. Jessica, who was previously the beverage director at San Francisco sushi destination Akikos, whisked ceremonial-grade matcha by hand and decorated the sunny space with flowers. She hosted people for lunch, bringing out vegan Japanese curry and sandwiches on fluffy milk bread. The cafe gained acclaim and has been named one of the Bay Areas best Japanese restaurants by Chronicle critic Soleil Ho.

But to get more business, the restaurant needed to expand into the evening hours. Logistically, it was tough because the pantry and dishwashing stations were on the ground floor while the kitchen sat upstairs, with diners spread throughout. It was also challenging for Jessica and Tadayuki emotionally, physically and mentally to manage everything on their own, Jessica said.

Neither of us had it in us to hustle that nighttime concept, she said. Were just so tired. Were physically in pain.

Even after the pandemic hit, there were beautiful moments at Family Cafe. Jessica started making vegan sushi platters that showcased the bounty of the farmers market, and the results earned a reputation for being among the top sushi offerings in the city. Jessica called it soul sushi, named after the first Japanese restaurant she worked at, in Truckee in 1999. It was an ode to that restaurants owner, Gary Flood, a mentor who died in 2008.

Some of the most incredible sushi rolls he made were vegetable sushi rolls that were so incredibly balanced in flavor, texture and color, Jessica said. He was the one who made me want to pursue becoming a sushi chef.

Provided by Family Cafe

She also started offering custom chiffon cakes in flavors such as matcha coconut and strawberry with preserved cherry blossoms, always decorated with fresh flowers. She made a few every month in 2020 and found joy in knowing people were still celebrating something.

Family Cafe may return as a new concept later this year from co-owner Ray Lee of Akikos, according to Jessica. But she and Tadayuki wont be involved. Jessica plans to move into horticulture, while she described Tadayuki as a master craftsman who is looking forward to more time for sewing and embroidery. Its possible, however, that Jessica will continue making vegan sushi platters on a small scale.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Shes been thinking about something a mentor once told her, about how people only have a short period of time together to do the best they can.

Its a fleeting moment, she said. Its like a cherry blossom in the spring, then boom, its gone. Appreciating what we have and what we created is enough for me.

Family Cafe. Closing Jan. 29. 362 Columbus Ave., San Francisco. https://family-cafe-sf.square.site/

Janelle Bitker / The Chronicle 2019

Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker
SACRAMENTO  Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a budget Monday that would use Californias repeat surplus to help combat the thorniest problems facing the Bay Area and the state, from a lack of affordable housing to growing street encampments to organized retail theft.

Newsom proposes spending tens of billions of dollars from the states $286.4 billion budget to confront disparities laid bare by the coronavirus pandemic. His plan calls for $2 billion in new funding to provide housing for mentally ill people and to clear homeless encampments, which comes on the heels of record spending for unhoused people in the current budget. He also proposes $2 billion in grants and tax credits to speed up construction of affordable housing.

Im not naive, I see exactly what you see, Newsom said during a news conference in Sacramento. And thats the need to do more and better because we still have tens of thousands of others struggling and suffering.

All told, he said the state proposes spending about $14 billion to confront the homelessness crisis, including $12 billion in funding that was part of the budget approved last year. He said the plan includes 55,000 new homes and treatment slots.

Newsom said his budget will also include controversial elements, including leaning into conservatorships, a form of court-ordered treatment for those with mental illness or addiction problems. He declined to elaborate on his proposal, saying he would talk more about it in the coming weeks. He also proposes spending $500 million to clear street encampments, signaling the Democratic governor is leaning toward a tougher approach to stopping the spread of tent settlements on sidewalks.

We, with respect, need a few more tools to help those that cant help themselves, Newsom said. I dont want to see more people die on the streets.

Newsoms ambitious spending proposal comes as California projects it will have a $45.7 billion budget surplus heading into the 2022-23 fiscal year, which starts July 1, due to another year of higher-than-expected tax revenue fueled by a rapid economic rebound.

About $21 billion is a discretionary surplus, while $16.1 billion must be set aside for education programs, according to the state Department of Finance. Newsom also proposes setting aside $9 billion to grow the states reserve accounts and pay down its pension debt.

The governors proposal kicks off budget negotiations with state legislators for the next year. He typically puts out a revised spending plan in May, and the Legislature must approve a balanced budget by June 15 or have its pay cut.

Many lawmakers in the Democratic-dominated Legislature applauded the broad strokes of Newsoms plan on Monday. But his efforts to expand conservatorship and clear homeless encampments could be met with reluctance from some advocates and progressive lawmakers.

Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco, was pleased to see increased funding for the rebuilding of a shattered mental health system. But she was dubious about directing more money for sweeps of homeless encampments when there isnt enough housing or services for those swept out of the camps.

We do not think that forcibly removing encampments when there is nowhere for people to go achieves anything but more misery for the folks living on the streets, Friedenbach said.

Newsom also faces resistance from some Republican legislators, who questioned whether the money would help compel people into treatment. Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber (Tehama County) said he was not very confident that the new expenditures on combating homelessness would be well spent.

Historically, and even currently, most of what were doing in California for homeless is just throwing dollars out there and not really counting for how it is being used, said Nielsen, vice chair of the Senate budget committee.

The governor has proposed spending much of the one-time surplus focusing on five key areas, which his office called the states greatest existential threats: combating the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, homelessness, wealth inequality and crime.

Over the weekend, Newsom announced he wants to spend $2.7 billion to ramp up Californias efforts to fight the pandemic amid a surge in cases due to the the omicron variant, including expanding testing, vaccinations and support for overwhelmed hospitals, as well as a public-information campaign to fight misinformation about the virus. He said he will ask the Legislature to immediately set aside $1.4 billion for such efforts.

Newsom said he will then use much of the surplus to confront systemic inequities in health care, education and housing that have only been underscored by the public health crisis.

His budget would expand access to Medi-Cal, the health care program for low-income Californians, to all people regardless of their immigration status, starting by around Jan. 1, 2024. Last year, the state expanded such coverage to undocumented seniors. The state projects that expanding coverage further, to about 764,000 undocumented immigrants, would have an annual cost of about $2.7 billion.

To provide more equitable access to education, Newsom proposes spending $639 million so the state can continue the move to universal pre-kindergarten, with an additional $383 million to hire more teachers. The state will also expand access to subsidized child care, spending an additional $824 million.

Newsom wants to double down on the states efforts to combat catastrophic wildfires, with an additional $1.2 billion for wildfire prevention programs such as efforts to clear brush from dangerously overgrown forests. This comes on top of $1.5 billion California set aside for forest management in the current budget.

The governor also proposes beefing up funding for CalFire, to better prepare the agency to fight any fires that inevitably spark. Newsoms plan would include $648 million to hire more firefighters and buy more equipment like helitankers, bulldozers and fire engines.

After a series of record-setting temperatures last summer, Newsom wants to set aside $800 million to help communities to deal with extreme heat through urban greening and building-retrofitting programs.

The governor said his budget will also include about $300 million to combat organized retail theft, increasingly brazen smash-and-grab crimes that have drawn national attention. Newsoms plan includes $255 million for a grant program to give police more tools to arrest and investigate thieves.

We recognize this moment requires us to do more, Newsom said when he announced the effort in December. These organized efforts have created tremendous fear and anxiety to many Californians.

But some criminal justice advocates are skeptical that putting more funding into policing efforts is the right approach, saying the budget for law enforcement is already inflated and that concerns about theft are driven by a national media frenzy.

We urge the governor to resist the fearmongering by police associations and listen to voters who want continued prioritization of community support alternatives that work, like his investment in mental health crisis hotline infrastructure and mobile crisis response services, said Kevin Baker, director of governmental relations for ACLU California Action.

Unlike last years budget, Newsom hasnt called for any direct stimulus payments to Californians. But he does propose giving residents some minor relief through a gas tax holiday. His plan would freeze, for one year, the inflationary adjustment to the states gas tax, which was set to take effect July 1, saving drivers about $523 million total.

Senate Republican leader Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County), called the gas tax relief an example of how Newsom has given Democrats credit for ideas that originated within the Republican Caucus.

This budget includes many commonsense Republican requests such as a gas tax holiday, wildfire prevention and forest management ... but so much more needs to be done, Wilk said in a statement.

Dustin Gardiner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer and Joe Garofoli is its senior political writer. Email: dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com, jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dustingardiner, @joegarofoli
Dr. Bob Wachter, the chair of the department of medicine at UCSF, has been tweeting about COVID-19 for nearly two years, sharing regular updates with his views on the state of the pandemic in San Francisco and worldwide.

Over the weekend, Wachter's Twitter account with 245,000 followers got a little more personal when he revealed that his son tested positive and had symptoms. In a series of 25 tweets, he touched on many of the issues around the omicron surge, including the scarcity of at-home tests and testing appointments and the supply shortage of treatment options for symptomatic patients.

With his son's permission, Wachter posted details about his 28-year-old son as a sort of case study. Wachter, 64, assumed his son has omicron and did the calculation for his chance of serious illness. With the omicron variant, most cases in the vaccinated population are milder than with previous variants. Wachter deduced his son had a 0.3% chance of needing hospitalization. "I knew, deep down, that odds of a bad case were low," he wrote. "But when its your kid, you freak out a bit."

Wachter shared that his son caught the virus last Monday while watching a movie with a fully vaccinated friend at home in San Francisco. Wednesday morning, 36 hours later, his son woke up feeling awful, with a sore throat, dry cough, muscle aches, chills, no taste and smell abnormalities. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study suggested omicron's incubation period is just three days.

The doctor told his son to stay home, drink fluids and take Tylenol or Advil. Local pharmacies were sold out of rapid tests, but Wachter had one stashed away at home.

"He came outside (I wore an N95) & we ran it, w/ a nasal swab," Wachter wrote. "It was negative. I was a little reassured, though he was not  'Dad, it feels just like I felt after my vaccine,' he said. He seemed sick enough to be infectious; I wondered if hed be an example of the newly reported problems with false-negative rapid tests in the first days of an Omicron infection."

A call was made to the UCSF COVID hotline to get a PCR test and the soonest an appointment was available was four days.

"I heated up some chicken soup, bought an oximeter (97%, whew  though his heart rate was 120: concerning) & told him to call me if his symptoms changed or his O2 sat fell <95%," he wrote.

Even though his son had an initial negative test, the next day it became clear the odds of Wachter's son having COVID were high  the friend who the son watched a movie with called to say she tested positive.

Another test was done, but this time Wachter advised his son to swab both his nose and throat as early reports indicate that swabbing both "improves yield for omicron" versus the nose alone. This time, he tested positive. "We cancelled the PCR test (now 3 days away) since the diagnosis seemed secure. So one more case omitted from the public #'s (which makes skyrocketing case counts even more amazing)," Wachter wrote.

Wachter posted the news on day four of his son's case, stating that "flu-ish" symptoms had subsided but his throat still "hurt like hell."

Wachter said the plan is to test on day five, and his son will leave isolation and wear a KN95 mask if he tests negative.

The California Department of Public Health's quarantine guidelines ask people who test positive to isolate for at least five days. They can end their isolate on day five if they test negative, or wait until day 10 when you can leave isolation without a test.
After much deliberation over how to stream or broadcast this year's Golden Globe Awards, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association selected the most obvious choice: not to do so at all. The Globes, once an opportunity to witness celebrities let loose and poke fun at one another, were reduced to a series of social media posts.

Unlike the shows upended by the omicron coronavirus variant, however, Sunday's Globes were never going to look like they did before. Most of Hollywood shunned the HFPA after the Los Angeles Times published an expose in February about the 87-member organization's questionable practices and lack of Black members. The HFPA and its iffy press credentials were never considered as prestigious as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which comprises more than 8,000 voters across 17 branches, but the telecast itself was widely watched - and considered a valuable publicity opportunity for studios and celebrities alike.

But major industry figures, from powerful publicists to studio heads, deemed the Times report the last straw. Facing pressure, NBC announced in May that it would not be airing the 2022 Globes, stating that "change of this magnitude takes time and work, and we feel strongly that the HFPA needs time to do it right."

What was the HFPA to do? After pledging to make "transformational change," the group hired its first-ever "chief diversity officer" and adopted new rules barring members from accepting studio gifts or favors. It also got a new president, German journalist Helen Hoehne, and added 21 members - 29% of whom identify as Black.

There was, in fact, a Globes ceremony held at the Beverly Hilton hotel Sunday night, but it was attended by select HFPA members and grant recipients. (An HFPA representative told The Washington Post that its main focus this year was philanthropy.) Variety recently reported that a Globes talent booker tried reaching out to multiple publicity agencies to determine whether their clients would be willing to take part, but nobody seemed to bite.

The posts announcing the night's winners were as strange as the journey to the 79th Globes itself, sometimes omitting the project titles in favor of corny jokes: "It takes 43 muscles to smile. Thanks for the work out Andrew Garfield," the account tweeted of the "Tick, Tick. . . Boom!" star, who won best actor in a motion picture, comedy or musical. "If laughter is the best medicine, ["West Side Story"] is the cure for what ails you," wrote someone who doesn't seem to have seen either version of the classic musical. (They later deleted the tweet and, in its replacement, updated the word "laughter" with "music." Good call.)

At several points throughout the night, the HFPA's live blog also quoted actress Jamie Lee Curtis speaking about the group's philanthropic efforts, sans context. The group then tweeted a video she filmed for them - after quickly deleting a post in which they used the wrong handle for the star.

But that's enough of that. Without any further ado, here are the winners from the Globes that nobody could watch.

Best motion picture, drama

"The Power of the Dog"

Best actress in a motion picture, drama

Nicole Kidman, "Being the Ricardos"

Best actor in a motion picture, drama

Will Smith, "King Richard"

Best motion picture, comedy or musical

"West Side Story"

Best actress in a motion picture, comedy or musical

Rachel Zegler, "West Side Story"

Best actor in a motion picture, comedy or musical

Andrew Garfield, "Tick, Tick. . . Boom!"

Best director, motion picture

Jane Campion, "The Power of the Dog"

Best supporting actress in a motion picture

Ariana DeBose, "West Side Story"

Best supporting actor in a motion picture

Kodi Smit-McPhee, "The Power of the Dog"

Best TV series, drama

"Succession" (HBO)

Best actress in a TV series, drama

Michaela Jae Rodriguez, "Pose"

Best actor in a TV series, drama

Jeremy Strong, "Succession"

Best TV series, comedy or musical

"Hacks" (HBO Max)

Best actress in a TV series, comedy or musical

Jean Smart, "Hacks"

Best actor in a TV series, comedy or musical

Jason Sudeikis, "Ted Lasso"

Best limited series or TV movie

"The Underground Railroad" (Amazon)

Best actress in a limited series or TV movie

Kate Winslet, "Mare of Easttown"

Best actor in a limited series or TV movie

Michael Keaton, "Dopesick"

Best supporting actress in a TV series

Sarah Snook, "Succession"

Best supporting actor in a TV series

O Yeong-su, "Squid Game"

Best original score, motion picture

Hans Zimmer, "Dune"

Best screenplay, motion picture

Kenneth Branagh, "Belfast"

Best animated feature film

"Encanto"

Best foreign language film

"Drive My Car" (Japan)

Best original song, motion picture

"No Time to Die," from "No Time to Die"
San Francisco homes are full of old charm, from the vintage Victorians to early Craftsman-style houses to the storybook Tudor Revival. Each style of home has its own quirks and characteristics, many of which showcase technological advances at the time that were often considered luxury items. While the sound of the quintessential ding-dong of your childhood doorbell may not seem like an exciting tech product, these vintage door chimes, more formally called longbell chimes, were a must-have trendy item beginning in the 1930s.

The first electric doorbell was invented in 1831, but most made a simple buzzing noise until the longbell chimes came into fashion. Longbells used an electromagnet called a solenoid to hit the tubes to create a melody. The old door chimes usually have a wooden rectangular base at the top with two or three long cylindrical, typically brass tubes that hang down asymmetrically. The whole apparatus often sits neatly within an alcove carved out of the wall purposefully for the door chimes opulent display, showcasing its modern style.

Some of the existing longbells in the Bay Area still function, while others have been removed by the homeowner or landlord and you may notice an empty alcove in the home. Alternatively, the longbell may have been left as a decorative feature of the house, even if it lost its functionality over the years.

In San Francisco, youll most often see them in the Sunset and the Richmond, corresponding with much of the building that happened in those areas in the 1930s. It was a technology of that time period that anyone who wanted a modern doorbell added them, said local real estate agent Bonnie Spindler. They were an advance to the door knocker and the turn screw bell.

One 1937 advertisement for Rittenhouse Electric Door Chimes proclaimed that these new doorbells aimed to replace the irritating, nerve-wracking noise of the ordinary buzzer and even named it as an ideal Christmas gift. It would have been a fairly generous present that year  the same advertisement prices them at $7.00, complete with the transformer, which is about $138 in todays dollars.

But by the 1960s, demand for these doorbells was essentially gone and the owners of one of the largest manufacturers, NuTone, sold their stake in the business. Cheaper alternatives were available and homeowners didnt like such a large fixture taking up wall space.

While longbell chimes didnt originate in the Bay Area, much early chime development was done in California, according to longbell expert Tim Wetzel. He said the most significant patent for multi-note chimes was filed in Los Angeles in 1930, and a few Bay Area manufacturers picked up the trade toward the end of the decade.

Wetzel remembered seeing these doorbells at friends homes in his youth, but he first owned one when he purchased a 1959 home in Eureka, California. He and his wife were remodeling the house and the bell didnt fit the aesthetic, but that didnt stop him from trying to fix it. Once hed refurbished it he sold it on eBay, getting his first glimpse into what he called an untapped market at the time. He started fixing up any longbell he could find and selling them, and even starting building a few of his own. I started doing more of it and more of it and suddenly I had a three-car garage full of old doorbells, Wetzel said with a laugh. I was surprised how much people were willing to pay for them.

That was in 2002, and he began fixing up longbells for people across the country as a side gig under his company Knock Doorbells. Wetzel said the people coming to him are usually either looking for something historically correct for their older home or they just want the nostalgic feeling they get from the look and sound.

He said hes often asked for local recommendations for people that may be able to fix them, but he said usually, there isnt anyone. Its not rocket science to make one work, but the people that have the basic mechanical skills arent applying them to doorbells, Wetzel said.

Robert Dobrin

The mechanisms were built to last, he said, but likely would have needed some maintenance after 20 to 30 years of use. But by that time, they were going out of fashion, and so many people didnt bother to fix them, even though there were plenty of handymen that knew how.

He said its rare to get a door chime he hasnt seen before and worked on at this point, so hell ask the inquirer for photos and details before pricing out the repair. For a basic repair on a two-note chime he usually charges $150, whereas a four-note will run $300. Anything more complicated or custom might cost more.

Through his work at furniture and antiques store Rejuvenation, Wetzel created a doorbell for them in 2015 that you can still buy today  for $402. You can even hear an MP3 of the chime on the website.

Wetzel is retired now and moved up to Longview, Washington, and still restores and sells the doorbells as a hobby that pays some bills, he said. Demand is still high, he said, and he usually has to tell people a repair will take at least six months. He said he sees a bit more demand from people on the West Coast, though he gets requests from across the U.S.

There is still demand for these new longbell chimes, too. Marin County resident Robert Dobrin had always had a fascination with them, and when he was young, he remembers visiting a house once a year on Halloween that had a longbell door chime. He decided then he wanted to have one in his home when he grew up. In 2004, he finally bought the Marin home where he thought one would fit the aesthetic and set out to find an original one. He couldnt find anything in good shape at the time, so he decided to build his own.

A friend soon saw it and asked Dobrin to make him one. Then, another friend asked. He figured that was enough of a market to try his hand at making these and started ElectraChime, a company that specializes in longbell door chimes. As the Chief Ding Dong Officer, he now has a shop in Marin Country  though its not open to the public  where he manufactures and ships new longbell chimes worldwide.

He said the Bay Area is one of his strongest markets, largely because a lot of the housing in the Bay Area was built during this time so there are a lot of empty niches out there, but hes now shipped a door chime to every continent except Antarctica.

He even gets requests to connect the old longbell chimes to new, WiFi-enabled doorbells like Ring more frequently these days, which is possible. Its an interesting juxtaposition between the old technology and new technology, he said. But they also add a sculptural element to your wall. Mine are meant to be seen and heard. Now people barely even come up to your doorbell, they just text you when they get there.

Dobrin also does occasional restoration work but primarily focuses on the new bells. He also has a separate website, dubbed The Doorbell Museum, to showcase the history of the bells, in addition to his extensive archive and years of documentation. Hes even proposed doing an exhibition at the museum at San Francisco International Airport, bringing many of his chimes to the airport to showcase and connecting the Bay Area history.

He joked hes never going to get wealthy off his business, but he just truly loves the chimes and thinks they bring something special into the home. I think there is sort of a zen to ringing the doorbell and hearing a nice door chime on the inside, because it bridges the inside with the outside and invites the visitor into your home, Dobrin said.

And apparently, small children like them, too.
By Peggy Kelly

Santa Paula News

The procession Saturday at 3:00 p.m. will no doubt draw thousands when one of Santa Paulas favorite saints, El Santo Nino de Atocha returns for a visit to what is now considered the icons second sanctuary, Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.

The doll of The Holy Child of Atocha, nicknamed El Nino Azul because its usual garb is blue, depicts the Christ Child and is the Catholic Churchs third-most cherished religious icon in Mexico

This is the 10th year that El Santo Nino has been on loan from its shrine in Plateros, Mexico. The sacred doll is enshrined in Santa Paula to allow visits by pilgrims who cannot travel to Plateros to visit the original and draws worshippers from throughout Southern California, the western states as well as Mexico. The number of visitors and how far they travel to see El Santo Nino de Atocha depends on the icons schedule.

The Little Saint will be in Santa Paula from May 28 to June 5, City Manager Jaime Fontes told the City Council at the May 16 meeting.

The closing Mass can draw 5,000 people, as can the opening ceremonyweve had over 50,000 people come into Santa Paula, for the week the icon is at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.

On Saturday the procession will gather at Harding Park (also home to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Clara Valley Clubhouse), 1400 E. Harvard Blvd. and travel to Our Lady of Guadalupe, 427 N. Oak St. where a Mass and Novena will be held at 6 p.m.

Father Aureo Gerardo Armas Garcia, OFM Basilica of Our Lady of Zapopan, will lead the Novenas.

On Sunday May 29 there will be Masses at 8 and 10 a.m. in English, 11:30 a.m., 1, 4 and 6 p.m. (Novena); Monday, May 30 Masses will be held at 7:30 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. (Novena).

Novena Mass in Spanish will be held weekdays at 7 p.m. and on Saturday June 4 Masses will be held at 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. On Sunday, June 5 leading up to the 4 p.m. Farewell Mass Masses will be held at 8 and 10 a.m. (English), 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. Night Vigil Mass will be at 8 p.m. on the last day of the Novena.

The Sunday, June 5 Farewell Mass will be celebrated by the Most Rev. Jose H. Gomez, the Archbishop of Los Angeles. The Mass will start at 4 p.m. at Las Piedras Park. The procession will leave the church at 3 p.m.

Father Charles Lueras will be busy the week of The Little Saints visit: many worshipers bring clothing for the icon to be changed into.

During the processions the tiny wood-and-plaster doll is carried on a bed of flowers and traditionally dressed in Renaissance clothing.

The arrival procession features scores of participants that dance, play instruments, sing and ride horses to accompany El Nino Azul who is carried above the crowd resting on a bed of flowers.
Archaeologists excavating the Medieval Park in Oslo, Norway, have unearthed two objects  pieces of bone and wood  inscribed with runes.

The first find is a piece of bone with 13 runes on one side and a single rune on the other, said Professor Kristel Zilmer, a researcher at the University of Oslo.

The main inscription reads basmarrbin which can either relate to the name of a person who owned (i.e. used) the bone or can describe the type of bone.

According to the team, the last four runes bin  Old Norse bein which means bone  refer to the bone itself.

But our understanding of the whole text depends on how we interpret the first part of the inscription, Professor Zilmer said.

Basmarr may contain the genitive form Marar, which can be explained as the Scandinavian personal name Mar / Mard. To this, one has added the name element bas.

Bas as the first element in names is unusual. However, something similar can be found in a gravestone inscription from Skalvoll, as a spelling for Bats, genitive of the nickname Batr, i.e. boat. If this is the case, then the text can mean Boat-Mards bone.

The reason for writing on the bone was not necessarily to show ownership of it, but maybe Mard sat there with free time after eating a meal, and used the opportunity to turn the leftover dinner into a writing tablet?

The other possible interpretation is the slightly funny word composition bas-mararbein, meaning boose(barn)goats bone.

Morr occurs in Old Norse as a peculiar poetic label for ram, Professor Zilmer said.

Although the bone does not appear to be a sheep bone, it cannot be ruled out. If the bone comes from a horse or a cow, is the misleading inscription meant to entertain?

The second artifact the archaeologists found is a flat piece of wood with inscription on three of its sides.

They think that the text combines religious texts in both Latin and Old Norse.

On one side, we notice two words in Latin: manus and Domine or Domini. Manus means hand and Dominus Lord, God, they said.

This is part of a well-known Latin prayer formula: In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum (Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit), known as Jesus last words on the cross.

The Old Norse text on the second side includes the name Bryngrr.

On the third (narrow) side 8 small runes can make sense either as a statement in Latin or a continuation of the text in Old Norse. In the latter case, this may be the phrase it is true.

A possible interpretation is that the inscription contains a short prayer telling the reader about Bryngrr who commended herself into the hands of God.

Both artifacts were from refuse layers, possibly related to land reclamation in Oslos areas subject to flooding.

The bone may relate to the earliest period of settlement as it was found close to the natural deposits, said Dr. Mark Oldham, leader of the excavations.

We cannot yet say exactly how old these two rune finds are, but scientific tests will hopefully provide the answers.

Similar runic finds in Norway date to the period 1100-1350 CE, while some are older. It may be possible however, to date the texts by examining the spelling and use of certain characters.

The use of so-called dotted runes on the wooden stick, as well as the distinction between a-rune and -rune on the bone are characteristic features of medieval runes, Professor Zilmer said.
On January 9, 2022 local time, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, along with Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, attended the launching ceremony of the celebrations marking the 65th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Sri Lanka and the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Rubber-Rice Pact in Colombo.

Wang Yi said, the friendship between China and Sri Lanka dates back to ancient times. Faxian and Zheng He left a long-lasting imprint on the exchanges between the two peoples. The Rubber-Rice Pact fully demonstrated our national spirit in the fight against hegemony and power politics. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1957, the two sides have always respected and supported each other. In 2014, President Xi Jinping paid a historic state visit to Sri Lanka, opening a new chapter of friendly cooperation between China and Sri Lanka.

Wang Yi said that China and Sri Lanka are good friends standing together with mutual assistance. After the outbreak of the pandemic, President Gotabaya donated Ceylon black tea to China twice on behalf of the Sri Lankan government and people, and Prime Minister Mahinda personally led his cabinet members to chant prayers for China. China has provided a large number of COVID-19 vaccines and anti-pandemic supplies to Sri Lanka.

China and Sri Lanka are good partners for common development. Sri Lanka is an important part of China's Belt and Road cooperation in South Asia. The first phase of the Colombo Port City has been successfully completed, and new projects are ready to be launched. Achievements have been made in our cooperative operation of the Colombo Port time and again, bringing important benefits to Sri Lanka. The cargo throughput of the Hambantota Port has reached record highs, and the industrial park has been developing in full swing.

China and Sri Lanka are good brothers supporting each other. The Sri Lankan side always abides by the one-China principle and supports China's legitimate position in international and regional affairs. China firmly supports Sri Lanka in safeguarding national sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity and in following a development path suited to its national conditions. The strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries featuring sincere mutual assistance and enduring friendship has kept developing in depth.

Wang Yi stressed, at a time when the global pandemic is spreading and the economic recovery is tortuous and difficult, we need to work together more closely than ever. Both sides should take the 65th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries and the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Rubber-Rice Pact as an opportunity to carry forward the spirit of the pact, which is characterized by independence, self-reliance, unity and mutual support, jointly address challenges, share opportunities, seek common development, and consolidate and expand the China-Sri Lanka strategic cooperative partnership, so as to better serve the interests of the two countries and two peoples.

We should further deepen political mutual trust, and firmly support each other's core interests, major concerns and national dignity. We should further join hands to fight against the pandemic. China will continue to provide anti-pandemic supplies according to the needs of Sri Lanka, and cooperate with Sri Lanka on vaccines and specific medicines. We should seek further synergy between our development strategies. China will firmly promote high-quality Belt and Road cooperation and help Sri Lanka realize its "Vision of Prosperity and Glory". We should further promote multilateralism, adhere to openness, inclusiveness and mutual benefit, oppose isolation, conservatism and zero-sum games, and jointly build a community with a shared future for mankind.

Wang Yi said, I wish China-Sri Lanka friendship everlasting vitality. China is ready to join hands with Sri Lanka to push bilateral relations to a new level.

( Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the People's Republic of China)
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Norwegian club celebrates first 100 years

The Norwegian 'Bergensgruppen av NRRL' celebrates its first 100 years.

The club was founded in 1922 under the name Bergens Radio Amatr Klub.

It was only fitting that the club was founded in Hotel Transatlantic, only few months after the first transatlantic contact between radio amateurs.

Centenary activities will be based in the club station in Totland, Bergen, grid locator JP20RH.

LA100B will be activated throughout the year in many modes on HF and 6m. During contests expect to also hear the callsign LN1B

IRTS
Three local contests in the next two weeks There are three South African contests scheduled for the next two weeks. The PEARS National VHF/UHF Contest will be run from 16:00 UTC on Friday 14 January until 12:00 UTC on Sunday 16 January 2022. Unfortunately, no news item was received from the hosting Club about the contest. Turn to page 26 of the 2022 Blue Book for further information.



The first leg of the SARL Wednesday 80 m Club Contest will be run from 17:00 to 18:00 UTC on Wednesday 19 January with phone, CW and digital activity. The exchange is a RS, RST or RSQ report, your four-character grid square and the name or abbreviation of your Club. You score two points for a phone QSO, three points for a CW and digital QSO, two points for each new grid square and one point for each new Club worked. The format has changed to a contest because South African radio amateurs are not ready to operate sprints. Submit your MS Excel log by 21:59 UTC on Monday 24 January to contest@sarl.org.za. Your call sign must appear in the name of the file, e.g., ZS4BS 2022 Wednesday 80 m Club Contest.xlsx. On page 57 of the 2022 Blue Book, you will find a list of Clubs and their abbreviations.



The first leg of the SARL QRP Contest, the Summer contest, will be on the air from 12:00 to 13:30 UTC on Saturday 22 January 2022. More detail in next weeks bulletin.



Clubs and individuals who are the hosts of the contests in the 2022 Blue Book are referred to Rule 2 of the General Rules. They are requested to advertise the contest by submitting a news item to SARL News for at least 2 Sundays before the contest. Upload the news item, in English and Afrikaans, to www.sarl.org.za/NewsInbox.asp. South African Radio League
IN SUMMARY

A state law gave California workers as much as two weeks additional paid sick leave during COVID-19, but it ended Sept. 30 as a federal tax credit that offsets the cost for employers also expires. Labor groups say the extra leave should be restored. And Gov. Gavin Newsom now says the Legislature should do so. UPDATED JAN. 8.

By Sameea Kamal

CalMatters

California requires employers to provide at least three days of paid sick leave each year to full-time workers. But when the pandemic hit, that wasn't enough to cover 14-day quarantine requirements. Many workers had to either come in sick or take time off without pay.

So in March 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law requiring companies with more than 25 employees to offer as much as 80 hours of supplemental sick leave related to COVID-19, either for quarantines or vaccine side effects.

On Sept. 30, the program ended. The state's business lobby said it was time, because many companies can't afford the leave without a federal tax credit that offsets their costs, which is also expiring. It's also a relief for some business owners struggling to find workers.

But some worker advocates warned that it was too soon, even though California was reporting the lowest COVID-19 case rate in the country in September.

And now with the omicron variant sweeping the state, progressives and labor groups say it's essential for the Legislature, which reconvened Jan. 3, to restore the extra paid sick leave.

Newsom now agrees. On Jan. 8, his office announced that in his proposed budget out on Jan. 10, the governor will call for new legislation to reinstate the supplemental paid sick leave "to better protect our frontline workers" during the omicron surge.

Bob Schoonover, president of SEIU California, applauded the move. "We appreciate that supplemental paid sick leave, which should never have been allowed to expire, might soon be renewed," he said in a statement. "This is a critical piece of the protection that workers and the public need. We also need to recognize that healthcare workers and caregivers are exhausted and at the end of their rope. Their hard work and sacrifices need to be recognized."

At the same time, he and other union leaders blasted guidance issued Jan. 8 by the state Department of Public Health that allows hospitals and skilled nursing facilities to immediately bring back infected healthcare workers, who have no symptoms, without isolation or additional testing. Exposed health care workers may also work under the new guidelines, which are in effect until Feb. 1.

The return of students to classrooms means the end of the additional leave could be "a crisis for many working families," said Katie Waters-Smith, political organizing director for the California Work & Family Coalition.

"Parents can't leave small children at home, so paid sick leave is even more important than usual on two fronts -- making sure parents don't feel like they have to send sick children to school, and making sure that parents can stay home when their children are sent home because of exposure without losing their income or pay," Waters-Smith said in an email.

Alex Huth, whose 8-year-old son Leo had to stay home from a summer day camp after a COVID-19 exposure, said being able to take time off was a big help, with limited childcare options in the Sacramento area where they live.

Leo's after-school childcare program is at his school, so if there's a classroom exposure, the only option is to take more time off work. Huth said even for parents working from home, child care can be difficult to balance.

"We're there, but we're in another room with the door closed," said Huth, an engineer for the California Air Resources Board. "It really wears on him, and it wears on us, and being able to just say, you know, for these three days I am a parent and I'm going to be available for my 8-year-old ... it means a lot."

Failed efforts to extend leave

California's sick leave law took effect in 2015. Last year during the pandemic, an executive order gave food workers supplemental leave for COVID-related reasons, and a state law later extended the leave to non-food employees at large companies. But those requirements expired at the end of 2020.

Under the supplemental leave program passed in March, employees qualify if they are unable to work, even remotely, because they're in quarantine or isolation, they're caring for a family member who is, or they're getting a vaccine or having side effects. Workers can receive as much as $511 a day, or a maximum of $5,110 total, with hours accrued retroactive to Jan. 1. Employers who provide the additional leave receive a federal tax credit equal to the worker's paid time off, including any healthcare costs.

The state does not track how many employees have used the leave. Independent contractors and employees at smaller businesses that don't opt in are not covered. Some cities and counties have also required supplemental sick leave for COVID-related reasons.

There were a few failed attempts to expand sick leave in the Legislature in the 2020 session. Assemblymember Evan Low, a Democrat from Silicon Valley, said draft legislation on sick leave due to the surging delta variant of the coronavirus wasn't ready before the session ended on Sept. 10.

"I'm disappointed we don't have a bill to extend paid leave to support workers during the pandemic," Low tweeted. "But we will not stop trying."

Assembly Bill 995, authored by then-Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego, sought to increase the 24 hours of paid sick leave to 40 hours.

Read the rest of the story at https://calmatters.org/economy/labor/2021/09/california-sick-leave-covid-extra-time-ending/.

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By Bay City News

Crews from three agencies rescued a mountain bike rider who was injured in a fall Sunday afternoon on the Coastal Trail in Marin County.

A helicopter with the California Highway Patrol assisted crews from California State Parks and the Marin County Fire Department, according to a 2:22 p.m. post on social media from the CHP's Golden Gate Division.

The female cyclist suffered minor injuries and was transported to a local hospital by Southern Marin Emergency Medical Paramedic System.

Copyright  2022 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

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By Eli Wolfe

San Jose Spotlight

Advocates are upset that San Jose lawmakers have spent months denying body camera footage to a survivor of domestic violence, forcing her to argue her case in a public forum.

The city's Rules and Open Government Committee agreed Wednesday to address a California Public Records Act request filed by a survivor of domestic violence in closed session. The requester wants the city to turn over body camera footage as part of a complaint she filed with the San Jose Police Department concerning an officer who allegedly failed to report a violation of a domestic violence restraining order she has against her husband. San Jose Spotlight is not naming the requester due to concerns for her safety.

"We believe that our client is entitled to the footage of that video," said Esther Peralez-Dieckmann, executive director of Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence. "I don't understand what the hesitation is with releasing the video to her."

The requester's ordeal started in July 2020 after she contacted the police when her husband allegedly purchased a large number of guns in violation of a domestic violence restraining order. It's unclear how she learned of the purchase, but she told city officials the firearms were discussed in court. She claims the officer who responded to her call failed to report the violation and she filed a complaint with internal affairs at SJPD.

Advocates say SJPD determined the officer violated department policy by not taking a police report for the restraining order violation, but not for violating "courtesy" standards. The requester later made a Public Records Act request for body camera footage to substantiate her complaint that the officer was discourteous to her when she reported the restraining order violation. SJPD spokesperson Christian Camarillo told San Jose Spotlight the department does not provide information or comment on administrative investigations.

Last July, San Jose denied the request, citing a section of the California Public Records Act that generally exempts most law enforcement investigative records from public disclosure. The city claimed in a memo the incident cited by the requester does not meet the definition of a crime, and therefore she is not entitled to the footage. The requester appealed the denial in October.

Legal concerns

On Wednesday, the rules committee approved a staff recommendation to move the appeal into a future closed session given the potential for litigation between the city and the requester.

"This is an issue I've always felt belonged at least at first in closed session and not in open session because of the potential exposure of the survivor of this incident," Councilmember David Cohen said. "I don't think it's been fair necessarily to have a lot of this aired publicly."

City Attorney Nora Frimann said she had legal concerns about the appeal, and that it will be easier for councilmembers to discuss it in closed session.

"This doesn't mean there won't be a further hearing before this committee on this issue, but it's a way to provide information and background to the council in a way that is hopefully less invasive than this process," she said.

Councilmember Sylvia Arenas voiced frustration and apologized for how the appeal process has dragged out in public. She also seemed puzzled SJPD couldn't show the requester the footage.

"Since there was a valid restraining order, and a purchase of those guns was made, that could qualify as a crime," Arenas said. "I'm still not clear about why we couldn't qualify it as a crime and then allow (the requester) to view the video?"

Going to closed session would allow the department to share more details about the case that could clear up some confusion, SJPD Deputy Chief Elle Washburn said.

Amanda Gould, a case manager at Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence who spoke on behalf of the requester during the meeting, noted city officials previously justified not turning over footage by claiming the requester did not have a restraining order, even though she did.

Gould told San Jose Spotlight all restraining orders are supposed to show up in the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, used by law enforcement agencies to check people's criminal histories. She said the system apparently sometimes fails to track temporary restraining orders, which can put domestic violence survivors at risk.

"It feels like the goalposts just keep moving as an excuse to not give her what is rightfully hers," Gould said.

Copyright  2022 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

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Washington, 10 January 2022 (SPS)  The American expert in international law, Stephen Zunes, has called on US President Joe Biden to "immediately" reverse the unilateral decision of his predecessor, Donald Trump, to recognize Morocco's alleged "sovereignty" over Western Sahara, as the "credibility" of the United States and the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination are at stake.



"For the sake of the people of Western Sahara and the credibility of the United States (...), Biden must immediately annul the U.S. recognition of Morocco's conquest," said Stephen Zunes, author and professor of political science at the University of San Francisco. In a recent article in the American magazine "The Progressive", the international law expert recalled that President Joe Biden had stressed that "any use of force to change borders is strictly prohibited by international law". "Preventing a country from expanding its territory by force was a founding principle of the United Nations, and it is enshrined in its charter," Zunes reminded.



In the same article, the expert focused on the human rights situation in the occupied territories of Western Sahara. Based on reports from Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International and other human rights groups, the American professor drew attention to the widespread repression of peaceful activists for the independence of Western Sahara. He denounced the use by Moroccan occupation forces of "torture, beatings, detentions without trial and extrajudicial executions" against Sahrawis.



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Sharon, PA (16146)

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Cloudy skies with showers and a possible thunderstorm in the afternoon. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. High 69F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

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Thunderstorms during the evening followed by occasional showers overnight. Low 53F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
The Shelton Fire Department responded to the following calls this past week.

At 5:24 p.m., the Pine Rock Park Co. No. 4 responded with a ladder truck to a public service call at a Lynn Terrace address.

At 6:15 p.m., the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1, Huntington Co. No. 3 and the White Hills Co. No. 5 responded with an engine to an odor of smoke at the Shelton Lakes Health Care Center, 5 Lake Road. There was no fire. An electrical problem in a heating unit caused the odor.

Wednesday, Jan. 5

At 7:22 a.m., the White Hills Co. No. 5 and the Huntington Co. No. 3 responded with an engine to a car fire on Beardsley Road. The fire, that destroyed the vehicle, was the result of the vehicle hitting a utility pole. The utility pole was also destroyed.

At 9:40 a.m., the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1 responded with a unit to a motor vehicle accident on Coram Avenue at Kneen Street.

At 8:10 a.m., the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1 and the Pine Rock Park Co. No. 4 responded with an engine to a fire alarm activation at a Waterford Lane address. There was no fire. Smoke from cooking caused the alarm.

At 8:17 a.m., the Huntington Co. No. 3 responded with a unit to Cali Drive for a tree and power lines down in the roadway.

At 8:35 a.m., the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1 and the Pine Rock Park Co. No. 4 responded with an engine to a motor vehicle accident on Route 8 southbound near Exit 13.

At 11:34 a.m., the White Hills Co. No. 5 and the Huntington Co. No. 3 responded with two engines to a Stendahl Drive address for a carbon monoxide alarm sounding.

At 1:22 p.m., the Pine Rock Park Co. No. 4 responded with a unit to assist EMS at a Murphys Lane address.

At 2:38 p.m., the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1 and the Pine Rock Park Co. No. 4 responded with an engine to a fire alarm activated at the Oakdale Self Storage, 486 River Road. There was no fire.

At 5:47 p.m., the Pine Rock Park Co. No. 4 responded with an engine to a tree on power lines in the area of Seneca Road at Algonkin Road.

Thursday, Jan. 6

At 12:54 p.m., the White Hills Co. No. 5 and the Huntington Co. No. 3 responded with an engine to a fire alarm activated at the 400 block of Leavenworth Road. There was no fire.

At 10:33 a.m., the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1 and the Huntington Co. No. 3 responded with an engine to a fire alarm activated at the Newtown Savings Bank, 815 Bridgeport Ave.

At 3:25 p.m., the Huntington Co. No. 3 and the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1 responded with an engine to a Maggie Lane address for a fire alarm activation. There was no fire.

At 3:52 p.m., the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1 and the Pine Rock Park Co. No. 4 responded with an engine and a ladder truck to a fire alarm activated at the Richard Belden Cultural Center, 54 Grove St. There was no fire.

At 6:54 p.m., the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1 and the Pine Rock Park Co. No. 4 responded with an engine to a Bridgeport Avenue address for a fire alarm activated. There was no fire.

Friday, Jan. 7

At 9:40 a.m., the Huntington Co. No. 3 and the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1 responded with an engine and a rescue truck to a fire alarm sounding at the Extended Stay America Hotel, 945 Bridgeport Ave. There was no fire.

At 12:33 p.m., the White Hills Co. No. 5 and the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1 responded with two rescue trucks and an ATV Unit to assist EMS at a Meadow Street address.

At 4:59 p.m., the Huntington Co. No. 3 and the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1 responded with two rescue trucks to BTX, 12 Commerce Drive, for an odor of a gas in the building. Firefighters arrived and found a discarded gas container in a trash compactor was the cause of the odor.

At 9:43 p.m., the Huntington Co. No. 3 and the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1 responded with an engine and a ladder truck to a fire alarm activated at the Chilis Restaurant, 828 Bridgeport Ave. A small fire on a kitchen stove caused the alarm.

Saturday, Jan. 8

At 12:56 p.m., the White Hills Co. No. 5 responded with an engine to assist EMS at a Rugby Road address.

At 1:09 p.m., the White Hills Co. No. 5 responded with an engine to a motor vehicle accident on East Village Road at Wabuda Place.

At 2:30 p.m., the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1 and the Pine Rock Park Co. No. 4 responded with an engine and a ladder truck to the Helen DeVaux Housing Complex, 91 Howe Ave., for a fire alarm activated. There was no fire.

At 4:05 p.m., the White Hills Co. No. 5 and the Huntington Co. No. 3 responded with an engine to a motor vehicle accident on Leavenworth Road near Walnut Tree Hill Road.

Sunday, Jan. 9

At 12:34 a.m., the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1 responded with a rescue truck to a Grove Street address for a carbon monoxide alarm sounding.

At 8:57 a.m., the White Hills Co. No. 5 and the Huntington Co. No. 3 responded with an engine to a Rodia Ridge Road address for a fire alarm activation. There was no fire. Smoke from cooking caused the alarm.

At 8:21 p.m., the Echo Hose H & L Co. No. 1 and the Pine Rock Park Co. No. 4 responded with a rescue truck to a Hillside Avenue address for an odor of gas in the building.
Ned Gerard / Hearst Connecticut Media

SHELTON - Shelton Public Schools kindergarten registration will be an open enrollment beginning Feb. 1.

The enrollment period runs through March 1. Parents should contact the elementary school their address is assigned to schedule a registration appointment.
Ludington, MI (49431)

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Washington, 10 January 2022 (SPS) -The former United Nations (UN) Envoy for Western Sahara, Christopher Ross, called on the United States to give the new Personal Envoy, Staffan de Mistura, a "broader" mandate, similar to the one James Baker worked with from 1997 to 2004.

If the existing negotiating process remains stalemated, the United States should work with the other members of the Security Council to give the new envoy a broader mandate similar to the one James Baker worked with from 1997 to 2004. During those years, the search for a settlement was in the hands of the Personal Envoy, not the parties, Ross said at a webinar held recently by the US NGO Defense Forum Foundation themed Western Sahara: The Ongoing Human Rights Tragedy in North Africa.

The US should support the new envoy fully as he tries to revive the existing negotiating process. The US should try to convince Morocco to negotiate without preconditions and to engage on the Polisario's proposal, he affirmed.

In 2007, after James Baker had resigned, the Security Council called for negotiations without preconditions between Morocco and the Polisario. And the purpose of these negotiations was to arrive at a mutually acceptable political solution, which will provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara.

From 2007 to 2019, my predecessor, my successor, and I sponsored 15 sessions between these two parties with Algeria and Mauritania present as the neighboring states. Unfortunately, nothing that could be called negotiations took place during those meetings. You may ask why. Well, its fairly simple. The Polisario came to each session ready to discuss both proposals, but Morocco came with a major precondition: that it would discuss only its own proposal, he stated.

To break out of this stalemate, I pushed for discussions on various issues outside the two proposals. These included confidence-building measures, natural resources, and human rights. I mentioned human rights. To deal with this problem, the Secretary-General in each of his reports to the Security Council called for independent human rights monitoring, but to no avail. Morocco refused to permit it in that part of Western Sahara under its control, claiming this would violate its self-proclaimed sovereignty, recalled Ross.

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IoT is saving fishermen at sea and giving farmers daily updates about the nutritional status of their land. Angira Agrawal of Skylo Technologies speaks to sify.com on how narrowband IoT is enabling traditionally 'analog' industries and governments to digitize operations.

Angira Agrawal is COO of Skylo Technologies, the world's first company that connects end-to-end machine and sensor data via satellite. In a career spanning 24 years, Angira has brought disruptive transformation to businesses through constant innovation, strategic insights and seamless execution. In an exclusive interview to Prasanna Kr. Srivastava, Angira Agrawal speaks on how narrowband IoT is enabling traditionally 'analog' industries and governments to digitize operations. Excerpts from the interview:

Tell us about Skylo's India vision and journey so far

Skylo is driven by the ability to make smart, immediate decisions powered by data transmitting from machines and sensors, everywhere. Skylo enables traditionally 'analog' industries and governments to digitize operations, increase employee and operational safety, and ultimately increase profitability, through machine and sensor visibility.

We formally launched our satellite-based solution in India in December 2020 as a recognized government partner through our partnership with BSNL, India's government-owned telecommunications provider. We connect millions of sensors and machines, so that business owners can understand, manage, and predict what is happening with their assets located anywhere in the country.

Imagine fishing boats that now can sell their catch while at sea, thus improving profitability by 30-50%. They can send an SOS signal during a distress situation. Smart farming equipment notifies farmers of soil's nutritional status on a real-time basis, helping the farmers take steps to improve yield and productivity. Imagine trucks that provide early warnings before overheating and causing a critical delay in delivery. Or government workers who can get instant alerts and pre-emptive information about natural disasters such as fires and floods. And all of this happening no matter where the fishing boat, the farming equipment, the truck, or the weather monitoring equipment is located.

Skylo's end-to-end connectivity solution also has the potential to support India's plans for continuously and securely monitoring the logistics associated with the COVID-19 vaccine, Liquified Medical Oxygen, and other life-saving supplies.

Skylo serves customers across public and private sectors in logistics, agriculture, maritime, healthcare, defense, among others, on land and in the surrounding seas.

What is the USP of your Satellite NB-IoT offering?

Existing cellular networks are designed to connect people. Machines require a different kind of network, one that operates reliably even in the 80 percent of geographies that are sparsely unpopulated or, like the ocean, entirely unconnected. Satellites are needed to offer broad coverage, and narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) is needed to handle low power, low bandwidth data traffic.

NB-IoT is a wireless communication standard for low power wide area networking (LPWAN) technology developed to enable a wide range of new IoT devices and services. NB-IoT provides significantly improved communications between machines while lowering device power consumption and data throughput needs. NB-IoT creates new connected business models for traditionally 'analog' industries such as fisheries, agriculture, and logistics/supply chain enabling a digital multiplier effect on the Indian economy.

Our USP lies in making the solution affordable, accessible, and ubiquitous.

Skylo's full-stack end-to-end solution  consisting of the Skylo Hub, Skylo Connect & Skylo Apps  works together to connect the world's machine data so critical information can be communicated anywhere on earth.

Skylo helps people and businesses benefit from secure, 2-way data connectivity through the Skylo Hub, a rugged modem-sized device that transmits sensor data via Skylo Connect, our always-on satellite network that provides real-time communications even when there is no cell coverage. Customers can manage their operations from the palm of their hand using Skylo Apps, available on mobile or web, giving teams the ability to take immediate action. For organizations having existing applications or platforms, Skylo offers easy-to-use APIs allowing businesses to integrate critical data streams.

How much does this technology cost and who are your partners in India?

Skylo costs 95% less than any solutions offering ubiquitous IoT connectivity  and is the first company to leverage the NB-IoT protocol for satellite communications. For less than a cup of 'chai' per day, customers can get 100%, always-on connectivity anywhere under the sky.

Since our launch in December 2020, we have been working with BSNL and its customers across India. In February 2021, Skylo and Beetel partnered to rapidly scale the adoption of end-to-end IoT solutions across India. Beetel provides sales, customer support, and product fulfillment to support Skylo's fast-growing customer progress. We recently announced a partnership with Inmarsat. We announced our partnership with Omnicomm for fuel sensors, which helps logistics companies monitor fuel levels anywhere in the country, reducing operational costs. Also announced recently, Softbank will work with Skylo to offer satellite-based IoT to Japanese customers.

What is the ROI period and where have you implemented this in India?

IoT is playing a pivotal role in India's digitalization story. It is estimated that the IoT investments in India will triple, to touch ~USD 15 Billion this year by 2021 across both technology products and services components.

Skylo's NB IoT solution has been deployed in Indian hinterlands and Exclusive Economic Zones and high seas where cellular networks fail or are not available. By getting 100% access to data, no matter where the machine is, businesses can make even more effective decisions, thus driving higher productivity, yield and efficiency. Fishermen can save anywhere between 30-50% of their catch by selling them remotely at sea, thus increasing their earnings from every trip.

Skylo has received particularly encouraging responses from fishermen for whom the technology has been a saving grace. Last year, seven fishermen aboard a small fishing boat were saved. A nearby boat equipped with Skylo's 2-way communication technology was able to raise an alarm with the boat owner and the Maharashtra Coastal Security when their boat was destroyed and sank.



We recently introduced our Skylo Fish Catch Reporting App - the world's first mobile communications solution, allowing fishermen to easily update and send details of their catch by initiating the selling process while they are still hundreds of nautical miles out at sea, giving them the opportunity to secure the best prices for their catch and increase earnings.



Individual fishermen across Pondicherry, Karnataka, Andaman & Nicobar are excited about their increased earnings, and we are also actively working with State Governments and Fishermen Cooperatives and Associations for creating awareness about the benefits of Skylo.



We have partnered with India's National Federation of Fishers Cooperatives Ltd. (FISHCOPFED), the apex institution of the Indian Fisheries Cooperative Movement, to deliver our IoT-based solutions to marine fishing and aquaculture sectors, including monitoring oxygen and pH levels of water in ponds across the states (aquaculture and inland fisheries) and enhancing fish yields and profitability for the fish farmers.



Skylo is helping the Government and various industries monitor critical operations, especially in remote areas. Recently, ONGC Tripura deployed Skylo for improved control over their vehicles and goods, faster response to emergencies with SOS alerts, and better safety of the drivers, and at the same time efficient utilization of vehicles, route optimization, and real-time demand and delivery insights.

What challenges have you encountered while implementing this technology?

The word "satellite" conjures up images of something quite expensive, meant for the highly technologically advanced users, and difficult to deploy and integrate. Removing these perceptions about costs and deployment for satellite-based IoT solutions is where we are creating awareness. In addition, being able to reach customers and serve use cases across every region, especially those who are not connected on a regular basis, is also something we are solving, engaging with distribution and SI partners, and even directly.

Our priority is to help organizations find tremendous value through our solution. Especially post-pandemic, as people adopt remote asset management, connectivity has become crucial across the globe.

Where do you see Skylo two years down the line in India?

We believe we can become the de-facto standard for space-based IoT solutions. We'll continue to advance our solution to meet customer needs, and we will continuously add important features, akin to our fish catch reporting app, equipment rental app, and others. We see the adoption over the last 6 months resulting in a transformative change in the way Digital India connects machines and sensors and uses the 100% available data to make decisions that benefit businesses and the economy.

Sify

Responses to be attributed to Angira Agrawal, COO Skylo.


In a new development in the Amazon vs Future Group legal battle, the global e-commerce company has moved the Supreme Court against the Delhi High Court order, which stayed the ongoing arbitration proceedings with the Future Group, in connection with the 2019 deal between the firms.

According to sources familiar with the development, the special leave petition challenging the Delhi High Court order has been filed in the apex court. The source said the counsel are trying to list this matter for this week.

On January 5, the Delhi High Court stayed further arbitration proceedings between the parties before the Singapore tribunal till February 1.

A bench headed by Chief Justice D.N. Patel and comprising Justice Jyoti Singh issued notice on the two appeals filed by Future Retail Ltd. and Future Coupons. The notice has been made returnable on February 1, 2022. The court also stayed the single judge order, which dismissed the Future Group's plea against the two orders passed by the tribunal. The Future Group sought termination of the arbitration proceedings instituted by Amazon.

Citing the Competition Commission of India (CCI) order, the high court noted that there is a prima facie case made out in the favour of appellants, and that it will stay further proceedings of the tribunal till the next date of hearing.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, representing the Future Coupons Pvt Ltd, cited the CCI order, which kept in abeyance the approval granted for Amazon's deal with Future Group, and added since approval is gone, the agreement automatically loses its value. He argued that the single judge of the high court failed to appreciate the application and also the fact that agreement will have no effect after the CCI's order.

Senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, appearing for Amazon, had argued that it was not fair to say that tribunal was not taking cognisance of application to terminate the arbitration proceedings.

The Future Group moved the high court seeking direction for the Singapore tribunal to hear termination application ahead of the scheduled hearings in the arbitration case.

In December last year, the CCI had imposed a penalty of Rs 202 crore on Amazon and suspended its approval for the e-tailer's deal with Future Coupons, a promoter firm of the group's public listed company Future Retail Ltd, seeking more information. The Singapore tribunal had held that it could not accommodate its termination application ahead of the scheduled hearings on the main case.

Citing the CCI order, the Future Group argued the agreement which provided for the arbitration proceedings itself is rendered invalid and as such, the ongoing proceedings, too, would be irrelevant. Amazon opposed it, saying that arbitration and the underlying contract are independent of each other, and also cited legal options, such as appeals, available against the CCI order.
After setting up a financial technology unit back in 2018, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said it will now put together a separate fintech department in view of the segments rapidly changing landscape.

In an internal circular, the central bank said it decided to set up the department to further focus and facilitate innovation in the Indian fintech sector. Accordingly, a new department has been created with effect from January 4, 2022, by subsuming the fintech division of DPSS, CO. The department will not only promote innovation in the sector, but also identify the challenges and opportunities associated with it and address them in a timely manner, RBI said in the circular.

DPSS is the department of payment and settlement systems, which works on policy formation and authorisation of payment and settlement system operators in the country, among other things.

Along with identifying challenges and opportunities, the new fintech department will also provide a framework for further research on the subject that could aid policy interventions by the central bank, RBI said in the circular, as per a review.

Accordingly, if matters related to the facilitation of constructive innovations and incubations in the fintech sector, which may have wider implications for the financial sector/markets and fall under the purview of the Bank, will be dealt with by the fintech department, it said.

According to the central bank, the fintech department will be administratively attached to the centralised administrative division (CAD) of the central office.

The fintech sector has faced several regulatory changes as new-age startups enter the financial services sector. Last month, RBI extended the deadline for card tokenisationfrom January 1, 2022, to June 30, 2022after several companies and industry bodies said they needed more time to make the necessary changes.

As part of the new rules, online merchants are barred from storing card details of users on their platforms. This is meant to curtail online payment fraud, but will also increase friction in online payments with users having to re-enter their card details for every purchase.

Prior to that, in October, card-based recurring payments saw disruption, with customers having to reauthorise standing instructions for recurring payments or online subscriptions up to Rs 5,000.

In 2020, the central bank released a framework for new umbrella entities (NUE) to increase competition in digital payments. The decision saw several industry heavyweights from Tatas to Reliance, and new-age companies such as Paytm and Ola, apply for the licence.

Recently, RBI also made the decision to allow payments of up to Rs 200 to be made through offline channels, without the need for an active internet connection.
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Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 48F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph..

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Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Queensland cattle farmer Melinee Leather has seen permanent creeks dry up, temperatures soar to new highs and flooding in areas that dont usually flood. As the weather becomes more unpredictable and extreme, Leather has trained herself to stop being surprised. We started to think, theres nothing that couldnt happen, she says. That thought process of, that wouldnt happen here, is probably not true. Queensland cattle farmers Robert and Melinee Leather. Over the past two decades, Leather has become a leader in sustainable agriculture. Diesel generators on the property have been replaced with solar-powered pumps. Cattle rotate through paddocks to graze and Leather has ramped up planting of Leucaena, a fast-growing crop that tackles soil health, water retention, cattle emissions and biodiversity all in one hit. The changes are partly driven by shifting consumer demand that favours ethical farming, partly because Leather believes its the right thing to do, and partly because banks and investors have started to require it. To have a successful business, you have to protect your environment, she says. Without doing that, youre putting yourself at financial risk.

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Farmers are at the forefront of an emerging type of financial risk that investors are starting to factor into decisions around whether to provide finance, and at what price. Nature risk is related to climate risk, but looks beyond carbon emissions to measure how a company is impacting a broader range of natural assets, including biodiversity, water, soils and landscapes. Cattle that feed on Leucaena release between 2 and 14 per cent less methane emissions. Credit:Melinee Leather The World Economic Forums Global Risks Report this year ranks two nature risks - biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse - as among the top five economic risks for this decade. Similar to how financiers have divested from industries such as thermal coal to reduce climate risk, farmers could soon find it harder to secure a loan if they fail to address nature risk. World Economic Forum research found $44 trillion, more than half of the worlds total gross domestic product, is moderately or highly dependent on nature, with agriculture being in the top three industries that are most exposed to nature loss. With such a big chunk of GDP dependent on nature, it poses incredible financial risks, First Sentiers responsible investment specialist Kate Turner says. Its very connected to climate change. but its very much a risk in its own right. Much like climate risk, Turner explains there are three main types of nature risk: physical risks through the degradation of natural assets that a company relies on for profits, transition risks including harsh penalties for damaging natural assets or new regulations, or systemic risks.

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The current health crisis is one key example of systemic nature risk. Without commenting on the origins of COVID-19, Turner says there has been an extraordinary increase in the number of zoonotic diseases, where germs are spread between animals and people. What the research is suggesting is, as there is more and more loss of nature and the habitat for wildlife, then wildlife is coming into closer contact with humans, and were seeing a much higher instance of diseases being transferred from animals to humans. At the heart of the problem, Turner says, is that nature has been under-valued. We dont properly value nature in an economic sense. Nature has been providing us with all these goods and services for free, therefore it is open to exploitation, and we have exploiting it for many years now and weve landed in this situation where demand is outstripping supply. So we need to start to value nature more appropriately. The National Australia Bank is the largest lender to the countrys agricultural industry and the only major bank to sign the Natural Capital Declaration in 2011  a commitment from CEOs around the world to integrate nature risk into decision-making. NABs head of sustainability governance and risk, Rosemary Bissett, says biodiversity is the canary in the natural capital coal mine. For example, species extinction among animals that pollinate plants is a major risk to profitability for farmers.

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The National Australia Bank is the largest lender to the countrys agricultural industry. Credit: Much of our system of food is dependent on pollination, she says. Two thirds of the worlds pollinators are at risk. These are material issues, theyre being noted and now coming to prominence. NAB is now working with its agricultural customers to ensure theyre businesses are protected against biodiversity loss, as well as other natural capital risks, such as soil health and water availability. If you think about it, 60 per cent of Australias land and natural capital is in the hands of our farmers. And 70 per cent of our water resources are used by farmers. Theyre critical stewards of Australias natural capital assets and really important customers to us, Bissett says. Loading If recognising the risk is the first step towards minimising it, measuring the risk is the next. In September, Australian executives from Macquarie Group, Deloitte and KPMG joined a global group working to develop standards for disclosing nature risks. Much like the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, which is now used by more than 1000 financial institutions in 89 countries, responsible for assets of $194 trillion, the Task Force on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures will be released within the next two years.

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While Europe has already mandated corporate disclosure on biodiversity, Turner says there is a long way to go. In Australia and globally, were still at the very beginning of our journey on this, she says. As disclosure gets better, that will set the path for being able to manage the risks better. This year, COP15, the UN Convention of Biological Diversity, is regarded as the most important biodiversity conference in a decade. In a parallel meeting to COP26, countries worked on a post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework  a set of goals and targets for the next 10 years that countries, including Australia, will seek to deliver together. Theres always a risk of regulation if we do nothing. We as an industry need to be proactive. We need to be transparent. Melinee Leather, Cattle farmer As governments prioritise protecting biodiversity, Turner says this draws attention to the broader suite of nature risks for investors. She provides the example of washing machine manufacturers that have been hit with greater regulations to protect oceans. Turner says First Sentier Investors has been engaging with these manufacturers to encourage the use of filters that prevent microplastics from being released into the oceans. Because one, it will reduce a major source of pollution, but also because were seeing countries have either introduced or are starting to introduce regulation to require them to do this. Thats obviously a big commercial risk for the washing machine manufacturers we invest in. Large investors are also taking note. The Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) released a report in November calling on its members, which manage more than $1 trillion, to start prioritising biodiversity loss in boardroom conversations. The investor response to climate change risks and opportunities holds several lessons for the treatment of biodiversity. The two risks are closely interlinked, and are similar in scale and urgency, the report said.
Hedge fund VGI Partners is reviewing a merger or a sale of its business with several parties including Regal Funds Management interested in progressing a deal.

The group, led by Robert Luciano, said on Monday it had held preliminary discussions with a number of parties regarding a range of potential transactions.

Rob Luciano, VGI Partners executive chairman. Credit:Andrew Quilty

Shares in VGIs listed head company rocketed up 9.2 per cent following the announcement to trade at $5.20.

That rise was a welcome boost for VGI which has seen its shares slump 40 per cent in the past 12 months amid concerns about the performance of its funds.
For now, though, the money is pouring in. Binance generated at least $US20 billion of revenue last year, according to a Bloomberg analysis of its trading volume and fees. Thats almost triple what Wall Street analysts expect Coinbase Global, a publicly traded firm with a market value of $US50 billion, will collect for 2021. Loading Coinbase might appear to be the 800-pound gorilla from a US perspective, but Binance is significantly bigger, said DA Davidson & Co. analyst Chris Brendler. Zhao declined to comment for this story, and Binance disputed the accuracy of Bloombergs estimates of the firms market value and his net worth.

Crypto is still in its growth stage, Binance said in a statement. It is susceptible to higher levels of volatility. Any number you hear one day will be different from a number you hear the next day. Im not an anarchist A month before watching Formula One stars Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen battle it out on the Yas Marina Circuit, Zhao spoke at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, where he rattled off the numbers behind the meteoric rise of the firm he created in 2017. In one recent 24-hour span, Binance completed $US170 billion of transactions. On a really slow day, he said, its about $US40 billion  and thats up from as little as $US10 billion two years before that. In the crypto world, these are gargantuan numbers. Binance routinely facilitates as much trading as the next four largest exchanges combined.

When Bloombergs Erik Schatzker asked the billionaire about his wealth during the November interview in Singapore, Zhao demurred. I dont care about wealth, money, rankings, he said. The slender crypto entrepreneur, donning rimless glasses and a slightly oversize striped tie, added that such matters are a distraction and that hes prepared to give away almost all of his fortune before he dies. Whether Zhao can hang on to what hes gained remains to be seen, and he has plenty of reason to be concerned about his firms unbridled growth. In addition to the DOJ and IRS investigation, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is probing possible market manipulation and insider trading within Binance, and whether it illegally allowed US clients to trade derivatives tied to cryptocurrencies, according to people familiar with the matter. The CFTC declined to comment. Binance also has been the subject of consumer warnings in the UK, Japan and Germany, among other countries. On December 30, a Canadian securities regulator reprimanded the company for telling users of its trading platform that it was allowed to continue operations in the country when it still lacks a registration to do so.

A spokesperson for Binance said the company is working with regulators around the world and we take our compliance obligations very seriously. Zhao has said he welcomes  and wants  regulation. Until recently it was rare for a crypto entrepreneur to appear on global wealth rankings. An increasing number are making the cut as more firms in the industry tap venture-capital funding or public markets, bringing greater transparency into the value of these businesses. Im not an anarchist, he said at the Bloomberg forum. I dont believe human civilisation is advanced enough to live in a world without rules. Fortunes built on crypto have ballooned along with the value of digital tokens, which totalled $US2.09 trillion on January 7, up from $US135 billion three years ago.

Until recently it was rare for a crypto entrepreneur to appear on global wealth rankings. An increasing number are making the cut as more firms in the industry tap venture-capital funding or public markets, bringing greater transparency into the value of these businesses. Exchanges such as Coinbase, Gemini, FTX and Kraken have attracted hefty valuations in public and private markets, and Binances popularity with users and myriad products may be even more enticing to investors. Crypto fortunes, however, are volatile. Bitcoin has slumped more than 11 per cent this year to about $US41,000 and is well below early Novembers highs of nearly $US69,000. Coinbase shares have tumbled about 35 per cent over the past two months. And some businesses have run afoul of regulators. BitMex, once the worlds largest crypto-derivatives exchange, is a cautionary tale. The volatility of cryptocurrecnies have made estimating personal fortunes difficult. Credit:AP

In August, BitMex paid $US100 million to settle cases with the CFTC and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network over claims that it allowed illegal derivatives trades and violated anti-money laundering laws. The firm didnt admit or deny the allegations. Founders Arthur Hayes, Samuel Reed and Ben Delo are awaiting trial after entering not guilty pleas in a separate Justice Department case that accuses them of violating the Bank Secrecy Act. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated Binances 2021 revenue using its US dollar-denominated spot and derivatives exchange volumes as published by industry researchers Coingecko and Nomics, and its advertised trading fees. The calculation doesnt include the firms other revenue sources, such as margin lending, technology, consulting and NFTs. Its valued using the enterprise value-to-sales multiple of publicly traded peers. It assumes Zhao owns 90 per cent of the firm, based on his public statements and regulatory filings in jurisdictions where that information is required to be disclosed. Binances revenue is realised across hundreds of crypto tokens, which the firm doesnt convert to traditional currencies, Zhao told Bloomberg during the November interview. We just hold them, he said. If you calculate the number today, its one number, and 5 minutes later its a different number because every price is changing. Road to crypto riches

Zhao, a Canadian citizen, was born in Chinas Jiangsu province. His father, a university professor, was exiled to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution and, when CZ was 12, moved the family to Vancouver. Exposed to technology at a young age, Zhao later studied computer science and eventually landed finance jobs in Tokyo and New York, including a four-year stint at Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News. Loading His road to crypto riches began in Shanghai in 2013 during a friendly poker game with Bobby Lee, then CEO of BTC China, and investor Ron Cao, who both encouraged him to put 10 per cent of his net worth into Bitcoin. After spending some time studying it, he took the plunge and ended up selling his apartment for Bitcoin. In 2017, he founded Binance (a portmanteau of binary and finance) and it quickly blossomed into a crypto powerhouse. Zhao even got the companys logo tattooed on his arm.

Binance has become the top destination for trading alternative coins  cryptocurrencies that are less liquid than more established tokens such as Bitcoin and Ethereum and have become some of the most speculative corners of the market. The firm offers trading in more than 350 coins on its international exchange, more than double of whats offered by Coinbase, according to Coingecko. Binance succeeded in creating user stickiness, in part by allowing clients to use Binance Coin to reduce trading fees, said Tim Swanson, head of market intelligence at Clearmatics, a London-based blockchain firm. They dont even have to be the first to list a coin anymore for liquidity to aggregate there, Swanson said of Binance. Zhaos firm is also the largest provider of derivatives trading by volume, letting users speculate on crypto with even more risk and potential reward. Initially, Binance allowed clients to open accounts with nothing more than an email address. It focused on crypto-to-crypto transactions, limiting its interactions with traditional banks and their regulators. In August, the company announced that all new users must verify their identity, and existing users who havent will be limited to withdrawals.

It has never had a formal headquarters. Binance was founded in China, banished to Japan and self-exiled to Malta, whose financial regulator later denied having oversight of the exchange. While the firm has a major presence in Singapore, it was dealt a setback last month when its local unit withdrew an application to run an exchange in the city-state. In one recent 24-hour span, Binance completed $US170 billion of transactions. On a really slow day, Zhao said, its about $US40 billion. Credit:Bloomberg Now Binance is trying to settle on a location, Zhao said during the November interview, adding that an announcement about the headquarters would be coming in a very short period. Thats an about-face from 2020, when Zhao said that the companys headquarters was wherever he happened to be. In legal filings, the firms lawyers have said that its incorporated in the Cayman Islands, which is well-known for being an offshore tax and regulatory haven. Binances ability to operate just about anywhere has made it difficult for regulators to establish jurisdiction over the company.

Their approach was, We dont need a regulator, we are decentralised, said Brendler, the DA Davidson analyst. That worked really well for growing and scaling and product innovations. Zhaos freewheeling approach may need to change as Binance seeks to raise money from outside investors, who typically want some measure of government oversight as an assurance that a business is legally sound. Zhao is driven to find a supportive regulatory regime, according to people familiar with his discussions in the UAE. Binance has been filling senior posts with former employees of UAE regulators, and it signed an agreement with the Dubai World Trade Centre authority to help craft a crypto regulatory framework. Not all of Binances efforts to ingratiate itself to regulators have gone smoothly. Last year, Binance.US, a separately managed trading operation associated with the exchange, hired a former US acting comptroller of the currency as CEO. His appointment was seen as a positive step toward addressing regulatory concerns, but he lasted just three months, departing in August after citing differences over strategic direction.

Despite its legal challenges, investors may be tempted to take a chance on the worlds most successful crypto exchange. Late last year, Binance was seeking to raise money from sovereign wealth funds, and its US affiliate was also pursuing investors with the goal of an initial public offering. In November, the Wall Street Journal reported that former executives estimated the company could be worth as much as $US300 billion. Loading To raise capital, we believe that the company needs to show a path to settling on a global headquarters and consolidating operations, said Robert Le, an analyst for Pitchbook. If Binance pulls it off, it could make Zhao even richer than Elon Musk, currently the worlds wealthiest person, and No. 2 Jeff Bezos, whom Zhao said he admires. I dont know him personally, Zhao, speaking at the November Bloomberg event, said of the Amazon.com Inc. founder. But I would love to be associated with him in the future.
If the Golden Globe Awards aren't on television, will anyone care? That's just one of the uneasy questions facing the embattled Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which is proceeding with its film awards Sunday night without a telecast, nominees, celebrity guests, a red carpet, a host, press or even a livestream. In a year beset by controversy, the self-proclaimed biggest party in Hollywood, has been reduced to little more than a Twitter feed.

Members of the HFPA and some recipients of the group's philanthropic grants are gathering at the Beverly Hilton Hotel for a 90-minute private event starting at 9 p.m. ET Sunday. The names of the film and television winners will be revealed to the world in real time on the organization's social media feeds and website. Special emphasis, they say, will be given to their charitable efforts over the years.

That the organization is proceeding with any kind of event came as a surprise to many in Hollywood. The HFPA came under fire after a Los Angeles Times investigation revealed in February ethical lapses and a stunning lack of diversity -- there was not a single Black journalist in the 87-person group. Studios and PR firms threatened to boycott. Tom Cruise even returned his three Golden Globes, while other A-listers condemned the group on social media.

They pledged reform last year, but even after a public declaration during the 78th show, their longtime broadcast partner NBC announced in May that it would not air the 2022 Golden Globes because, "Change of this magnitude takes time and work." The broadcaster typically pays some $60 million for the rights to air the show, which ranks among the most-watched awards shows behind the Oscars and the Grammys.


After taking a break for the holidays, state inspectors hit the kitchens again in late December, red-flagging pest problems at a quintet of restaurants temporarily ordered shut over the past two weeks.

Arguably the biggest name on this list, upscale restaurant Chops Lobster Bar in Boca Raton was shut down three times before the state let it reopen. Other restaurants closed included Kussifay in Hollywood, Mini Pita in Pompano Beach, New York Diner in Fort Lauderdale and Taqueria El Jovenazo in North Lauderdale.

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The South Florida Sun Sentinel highlights restaurant inspections in Broward and Palm Beach counties from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. We cull through hundreds of restaurant and bar inspections that happen weekly and spotlight places ordered shut for high-priority violations, like improper food temperatures or dead cockroaches.

[ FULL DATABASE: See Florida restaurant inspection reports from the last 30 days ]

Sun Sentinel readers can browse full Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade county reports on our state inspection map, updated weekly (usually Monday) with fresh data pulled from the Florida DBPR website.

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Any restaurant that fails inspections must stay closed until it passes a follow-up state inspection. If you spotted a possible violation and wish to file a complaint, contact Florida DBPR here. (But dont contact us: The Sun Sentinel doesnt inspect restaurants.)

[ Lee en espanol: Moscas vivas en panes, agujeros de roedores obligan a cinco restaurantes del sur de Florida a cerrar temporalmente ]

Taqueria El Jovenazo, North Lauderdale

7130 Kimberly Blvd.

Ordered shut: Dec. 27, reopened Dec. 28

Why: 11 violations (two high priority), such as an infestation of 26 live cockroaches found inside a kitchen cooler where uncovered food items are stored, as well as two reach-in coolers. The state also found 28 dead roaches on glue trap in oven, next to the kitchen refrigerator and the reach-in coolers. Finally, inspectors spotted grease and food buildup inside the microwave, oven and reach-in coolers. The taqueria reopened Dec. 28 with zero follow-up issues. The restaurant was last ordered shut Oct. 25 for similar pest problems.

New York Diner, Fort Lauderdale

925 NE 62nd St.

Ordered shut: Jan. 3

Why: Seven violations (three high priority), including 60 live flies observed landing on clean dishes in the wait station, kitchen, food prep, food storage and beneath the dishwasher. The inspector did not witness any flies landing on food, however. Although the state didnt post a follow-up inspection at the restaurant on its website, a Jan. 10 phone call to New York Diner revealed that it had reopened.

Chops Lobster Bar in Boca Raton was one of five South Florida restaurants ordered shut by state inspectors over the past two weeks. (Carline Jean / Sun Sentinel)

Chops Lobster Bar, Boca Raton

101 Plaza Real South

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Ordered shut: Jan. 3 and Jan. 4 (twice), reopened Jan. 5

Why: The state discovered 15 violations (three high priority) at this fine-dining restaurant, led by 35 live flies inside bag of bread in the kitchen, landing on dirty glass racks in dish area outside the kitchen, and on cloth napkins near the water pitchers. The state also discovered one dead roach in ice machine. Obviously, the restaurant was ordered to stop selling and trash its crushed ice and bread due to food not being in a wholesome, sound condition. A pair of follow-up inspections on Jan. 4 revealed more live flies landing on kitchen equipment, and the restaurant stayed shut. The restaurant finally reopened Jan. 5 with a handful of minor issues.

Kussifay, Hollywood

2652 Hollywood Blvd.

Ordered shut: Jan. 5, reopened Jan. 6

Why: Seven violations (three high priority), led by 27 rodent droppings found on the floor behind the dough mixer in the kitchen, on a shelf where flour, sugar and milk are stored, and in a back-room storage area for pizza boxes and chickpea flour. The states follow-up inspection on Jan. 6 revealed no new issues, and the restaurant was allowed to reopen.

Mini Pita, Pompano Beach

2555 E. Atlantic Blvd.

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Ordered shut: Jan. 4

Why: 18 violations (five high priority), including 12 to 15 live flies near the dishwashing machine and dry storage area in the kitchen, along with 25 to 30 live roaches on the wall on left side of ice machine in kitchen, and on the dry storage containers in the kitchens freezer. The state also spotted 12 dead roaches next to the water heater, dishwashing machine and freezer. The inspector spotted one employee who failed to wash hands before putting on gloves to prepare food, and red-flagged a kitchen hole in the wall along with several surfaces covered in grease and food debris, including the floor and microwaves. The restaurant was allowed to reopen Jan. 5, during which inspectors found a single basic issue.

[ RELATED: South Florida restaurants: Now open, coming soon and closed | PHOTOS ]
Heres a question I dont ask myself enough: what did Ye - or, the artist formerly known as Kanye West - do this week?

I know were less than a fortnight into 2022, but strap yourself in.

Kanye West, pictured here in the upcoming documentary Jeen-Yuhs, is back in the spotlight, post-divorce. Credit:Netflix

Oh no, what have I started

Over the weekend, Interview Magazine published a Pulitzer-worthy piece titled Date Night by actor Julia Fox, in which she described in detail her second (!) date with West.

Remarkable not just for its jarring length (barely two paragraphs), the article explains how Fox and West met in Miami on New Years Eve, returned to New York City to watch Broadway production Slave Play, then had dinner at upscale restaurant Carbone where West directed Fox in a public photoshoot before whisking her off to a hotel room suite full of clothes to give her a fashion makeover.

Oddly enough, this already sounds familiar.

Youre right, its basically an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians - the one where Kanye shipped in a roomful of clothes to re-style his now ex-wife Kim. In any case, Foxs article also included very intimate photos from their dress-up date.
Young Sydneysiders travelled across town on Monday for the opportunity to receive their first vaccine against COVID-19, after widespread delivery delays and staff shortages saw many appointments cancelled.

Alan Martin, pharmacist at Priceline Penrith Southlands, said among the 27 children he vaccinated were residents of Little Bay and Randwick, in the citys east.

Emily Hyslop, 8, received her COVID-19 vaccine from pharmacist Alan Martin at Penrith on Monday. Credit:Flavio Brancaleone

People were willing to come a long way for it, he said, noting most of the children were well behaved and not upset at their appointment.

If you sit down and you talk to them, and ask them about things first, that settles them down a bit.
NRL player Tui Kamikamica did not show up to a Brisbane court on Monday for the first mention of an assault charge related to an alleged incident involving a woman outside a Brisbane hotel.

The 27-year-old Melbourne Storm prop was issued with a notice to appear last year after the alleged incident outside an Ann Street business in Fortitude Valley on November 13.

Tui Kamikamica playing for the Storm against the Canberra Raiders on May 22, 2021. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Police will allege a 30-year-old woman was involved in the alleged incident, and she was not known to Mr Kamikamica.

The Storm player did not appear in Brisbane Arrests Court as required on Monday, but his Melbourne-based lawyer Bernie Balmer did phone in to the court to represent him.
Cleo Smiths alleged abductor, Terence Kelly, has been charged with assaulting a public officer the day after the four-year-olds dramatic rescue from his Carnarvon home in WAs north.

Mr Kelly, 36, was arrested on November 3 after police stormed his property and allegedly found Cleo locked inside a bedroom 18 days after she disappeared from her familys tent while sleeping at the remote Blowholes camping ground.

Terence Darrell Kelly a day after the alleged assault on a public officer. Credit:Tamati Smith/Getty Images

In the days that followed, WA Police claimed Mr Kelly self-harmed twice and had to be taken to hospital for treatment before he was flown to Perth on November 5 to a Perth prison.

He was recently charged with assaulting a public officer on November 4, which was the same day he made his first court appearance in Carnarvon.
Labor foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong says she is deeply concerned about Russian threats to Ukraine and has requested the federal government consult the Opposition on any changes to Australias position heading into this years election.

Senator Wong also said China should use its close relationship with Russia to convince it to respect Ukraines sovereignty, as concern grows of a major conflict amid a build-up of more than 100,000 Russian troops near its border with the former Soviet republic.

Penny Wong says China has a unique responsibility to convince Russia to respect Ukraines sovereignty. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

Crucial talks are being held between American and Russian diplomats this week, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warning Moscow of massive consequences if the build-up continues.

Ukraine and Russia have been in conflict since 2014, when Moscow annexed Ukraines Crimean Peninsula. Tensions have escalated in recent months, with Russia sending thousands of troops to the border, sparking fears of a Russian invasion.
Quarantine rules could be eased for essential workers in transport and aviation in the next phase of a federal plan to fix chronic staff shortages that have disrupted food supplies and intensified a political storm over the blame for soaring coronavirus infections.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants state and territory leaders to back plans to ease restrictions on more workers in essential jobs when they become close contacts of a confirmed COVID-19 case, as industry chiefs prepare for a meeting on Tuesday to make the case for shorter isolation periods.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has flagged changes to the rules governing close contacts. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

But the government is being accused of bungling the response to the surge in cases from the Omicron variant, with the peak shop workers union claiming negligence and failure by Mr Morrison because he did not ensure the supply of rapid antigen tests.

With pharmacies telling Australians they have run out of the rapid tests and supermarkets warning about food shortages, Labor leader Anthony Albanese intensified his claim that Mr Morrison was taking a let it rip approach to allow infections to surpass 500,000 active cases, the tally reached on Monday.
Singapore: The Chinese city of Tianjin has been effectively sealed off as authorities implement exit controls on its 14 million people.

The move follows 21 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Sunday and 18 on Saturday that have triggered compulsory mass testing of all the citys residents in an attempt to maintain the countrys COVID-zero policy in the face of a growing global Omicron wave. Only two Omicron cases have been confirmed so far, but authorities fear the variant may have been spreading through asymptomatic cases in the northern port city.

Chinese state media has been portraying the policy as a success after Western countries re-imposed limited restrictions to curb surging Omicron case numbers, but some residents have been dismayed by ongoing lockdowns in Xian and Tianjin.

A cyclist walks through disinfectant spray in northern China. Credit:AP

In Xian, where restrictions are stretching into their third week, residents confined to their apartments have complained about running out of food and basic supplies. The case of one pregnant woman bleeding outside a hospital sparked national outrage after she miscarried while being unable to enter the ward because her COVID-19 test status had expired. In a sign of how seriously Beijing took the growing backlash Chinese Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan said she was deeply ashamed by the medical shortcoming.
A former Coral Springs police officer has been sentenced to more than a year in state prison after authorities said he solicited sex acts from a child.

Steven Daniello, now 64, remained in the Broward County Jail on Monday, awaiting transfer to prison, Sheriffs Office records show. He pleaded guilty last week to two felony charges of soliciting a minor for unlawful sexual conduct using a computer device.

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Daniello will get prison credit for four days previously served in jail, and when he finishes his sentence hell be on probation for more than 3 years.

Court records show he must register as a sex offender and was forced to give up his law enforcement certification, must have no contact with his victim, and owes $10,680 in restitution.

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Daniello most recently worked as a school resource officer for Westchester Elementary School in Coral Springs. He was arrested in January 2021, months after speaking to a family friend online.

[ RELATED: Coral Springs officer accused of soliciting a child for sex ]

In the conversations, Daniello offered to pay the victim for nude photos, and Daniello and the victim discussed the victim performing sexual acts on Daniello, according to the Sheriffs Office.

An undercover detective, posing as the child, then began talking to Daniello. As Daniello spoke with the undercover detective, he wanted the victim to perform oral sex on him, the Sheriffs Office said.

Immediately after his arrest, Daniello received notice he would be terminated from his job at the Coral Springs Police Department, where he had worked since 2017. Before that he had worked at the Coconut Creek Police Department.

Daniellos defense attorney, Jeremy Kroll, could not be reached for comment Monday.

Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com or 954-572-2008 or Twitter @LisaHuriash
New York: Prince Andrew could call on one of Ghislaine Maxwells alleged victims as a witness in his defence after she claimed Virginia Giuffre boasted to her of a night with him.

The Duke of York, who is being sued for sexual assault by Giuffre, may seek to depose Carolyn Andriano about fresh claims she made of being recruited aged 14 by Giuffre for abuse by the late American financier and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his employee and one-time girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.

Prince Andrews lawyers could call a witness who testified at the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell to aid his case against Virginia Giuffre. Credit:PA/AP

Andriano, who waived her anonymity in an interview with the UKs Daily Mail, said: I asked her if shed been to the palace. And she said, I got to sleep with him. I said, What? Youre f------ with me, and she said, No, I got to sleep with him. She didnt seem upset about it. She thought it was pretty cool.

Sources close to the case told the London Telegraph that Andrew, who is still hoping the suit is dismissed before it reaches trial, could seek to use her as a witness to prove Giuffre was not a victim.
Deputy Los Angeles District Attorney John Lewin said jurors told him after the verdict that they believed Durst murdered Morris Black in Texas and had killed his wife. Durst discussed the cases and made several damning statements including a stunning confession during an unguarded moment in the six-part HBO documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. Loading The show made his name known to a new generation and brought renewed scrutiny and suspicion from authorities. He was arrested in Bermans killing the night before the final episode, which closed with him mumbling to himself in a bathroom while still wearing hot mic saying: Youre caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course. The quotes were later revealed to have been manipulated for dramatic effect but the production  done with Dursts cooperation against the advice from his lawyer and friends  dredged up new evidence including an envelope that connected Durst to the scene of Bermans killing as well as incriminating statements he made.

Police had received a note directing them to Bermans home with only the word CADAVER written in block letters. Robert Durst is seen with his wife Kathie in this wedding photo. She vanished in 1982. Credit:HBO In interviews given between 2010 and 2015, Durst told the makers of The Jinx that he didnt write the note, but whoever did had killed her. Youre writing a note to the police that only the killer could have written, Durst said. His defence lawyers conceded in the run-up to trial that Durst had written the note, and prosecutors said it amounted to a confession.

Clips from The Jinx, and from the 2010 movie All Good Things in which Ryan Gosling played a fictionalised version of Durst, had starring roles at trial. Loading As did Durst himself. His attorneys again took the risk of putting him on the stand for what turned out to be about three weeks of testimony. It didnt work as it had in Texas. Under devastating cross-examination by prosecutor John Lewin, Durst admitted he lied under oath in the past and would do it again to get out of trouble. Did you kill Susan Berman? is strictly a hypothetical, Durst said from the stand. I did not kill Susan Berman. But if I had, I would lie about it.

The jury promptly returned a guilty verdict. It long appeared he would avoid any such convictions. Robert Durst was linked to three deaths in the documentary The Jinx. Credit:AP Durst went on the run in late 2000 after New York authorities reopened an investigation into his wifes disappearance, renting a modest apartment in Galveston and disguising himself as a mute woman. In 2001, the body parts of a neighbour, Morris Black, began washing up in Galveston Bay.

Arrested in the killing, Durst jumped bail. He was arrested for shoplifting a sandwich six weeks later in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he had gone to college. Police found $US37,000 cash and two handguns in his car. He would testify that Black had pulled a gun on him and died when the weapon went off during a struggle. He told jurors in detail how he bought tools and dismembered and disposed of Blacks body. He was acquitted of murder. He pleaded guilty to violating his bail, and to evidence tampering for the dismemberment. He served three years in prison. Durst had bladder cancer and his health deteriorated during the Berman trial. He was escorted into court in a wheelchair wearing prison attire each day because his attorneys said he was unable to change into a suit. But the judge declined further delays after a 14-month pause during the coronavirus pandemic. DeGuerin said Durst was very, very sick at his sentencing hearing and it was the worst he looked in the 20 years he spent representing him. Durst entered the courtroom with wide-eyed vacant stare. Near the end of the hearing after Bermans loved ones told the judge how her death upended their lives, Durst coughed hard and then appeared to struggle to breathe. His chest heaved and he pulled his mask down below his mouth and began to gulp for air.

The son of real estate magnate Seymour Durst, Robert Durst was born April 12, 1943, and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He would later say that at age 7, he witnessed his mothers death in a fall from their home. He graduated with an economics degree in 1965 from Lehigh University, where he played lacrosse. He entered a doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he met Berman, but dropped out and returned to New York in 1969. He became a developer in the family business, but his father passed him over to make his younger brother, and rival, Douglas the head of the Durst Organisation in 1992. In 1971, Robert Durst met Kathie McCormack, and the two married on his 30th birthday in 1973.

In January 1982, his wife was a student in her final year at medical school when she disappeared. She had shown up unexpectedly at a friends dinner party in Newtown, Connecticut, then left after a call from her husband to return to their home in South Salem, New York. Robert Durst told police he last saw her when he put her on a train to stay at their apartment in Manhattan because she had classes the next day. He would divorce her eight years later, claiming spousal abandonment, and in 2017, at her familys request, she was declared legally dead. Robert Durst is survived by his second wife Debrah Charatan, whom he married in 2000. He had no children. Under California law, a conviction is vacated if a defendant dies while the case is under appeal, said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School.
Washington: Russia has told the US it has no intention of invading Ukraine, as the two nations met for high-stakes talks designed to de-escalate military action against the Eastern European nation.

After a day-long meeting Geneva, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov insisted the US had nothing to fear, despite his country deploying more than 100,000 troops near the Ukraine border  a move many in Washington view as a precursor to war.

A Ukrainian soldier mans a trench at the line of separation from pro-Russian rebels in the Donetsk region, Ukraine. The US has voiced doubts over whether Russia was serious about de-escalating the Ukraine crisis. Credit:AP

There is no reason to fear some kind of escalatory scenario, he told reporters after the meeting with US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on Tuesday (AEDT).

However, Sherman remained sceptical, saying at a separate news conference that while the discussion was frank and forthright it was too soon to know whether Russia was genuine about scaling back.
~CPS delays detrimental to the economy and SZV~

PHILIPSBURG:--- The drastic increase in active COVID-19 virus mainly the Omicron variant will place a dent on St. Maartens economy and the medical funds of USZV.

There are close to 2000 persons that are currently active with the coronavirus, the last update distributed on Saturday states the active cases were 1477. This does not include the persons that did their self-testing and did not report it to CPS or any of the laboratories on St. Maarten, nor the results of persons that were tested over the weekend.

There are persons who were tested over a week ago and to date they have not received their results, contact tracing for those persons whose results are pending has not been conducted. The consequences of the increased cases will place a dent in the economy in several ways, government institutions, schools, and businesses will feel the effects due to the sick leave payments that have to be made by the businesses and SZV and loss of business. USZV has to pay all persons on sick leave as of the 4th day when they are placed in quarantine or isolation when they are tested positive, Persons tested positive are asked to isolate or quarantine for a minimum of 10 days, six of which have to be paid by USZV.

These establishments including the government do not have the money available to hire more people to replace all those that are out on sick leave. Already St. Maarten is not receiving any liquidity support for the first quarter of 2022, also government cannot assist with food vouchers or food bags because the Netherlands already indicated that the program must come to an end even though St. Maarten has some extra funds to continue.

These consequences in the end might even affect the economy more severely, especially if the CDC (Center for Disease Control), classifies St. Maarten as a level 4 country as it did with Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao. Should this happen then this will definitely affect the cruise season due to negative advice from the CDC. Currently, the CDC lists St. Maarten and stage "3" which means travelers should reconsider their travel plans.

Minister of VSA Omar Ottley said in an invited comment that CPS had an average of 70 positives per day but that has since jumped to 400 to 500 daily or literally overnight due to the delay in processing the results in a timely manner. Ottley said that CPS has since hired some extra staff and they were also allotted extra phone lines so that they can contact persons that were tested with their results. Ottley said on Saturday and Sunday CPS focused on calling people with their results. He said everyone has to bear in mind that CPS has to deal with COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, vaccines, recoveries, and the baby clinic. Basically, CPS is overwhelmed with its workload, but they were given extra manpower recently.

The Minister has said on several occasions that everyone needs to place their hands on deck and act responsibly if St. Maarten is to survive this epidemic.

As the Minister of Labor Affairs, he is obliged to take labor matters into consideration when making decisions for St. Maarten. Ottley said that he was advised by the RIVM to shut down St. Maarten even though the country is not receiving any liquidity support. This advice I cannot take, I have to work in the interest of my country and its people, he said on Monday.

Several persons that have tested positive for refusing to test for the coronavirus continue to spread the virus because they are still moving around.

Businesses have been lax when it comes to maintaining the protocols in place even though they are set guidelines.

Entities like the Police Station had to close their doors overnight to sanitize while GEBE has since closed its Simpson Bay office to the public, yet their staff continues to move around as though they are not concerned about the fast-spreading of the coronavirus.
Somerset, KY (42501)

Today

Cloudy early with partial sunshine expected late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 83F. Winds SW at 15 to 25 mph..

Tonight

Variably cloudy with scattered thunderstorms. Low 56F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
South Florida voters will be asked to approve a property tax this year to avoid major cuts in teacher pay and safety initiatives enacted since the Parkland tragedy.

In Broward County, this could mean an average tax increase of $150 for the average homeowner if voters say yes in the August primary. Palm Beach County voters will be asked during the November general election to continue an existing tax. Details for Miami-Dade werent available.

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The tax would be a renewal or expansion of a property tax approved in 2018, during a time of heightened concern over school safety and teacher retention.

[ RELATED: Broward teachers, district agree to $2,000 bonus and salary increases in 2021-2022 school year ]

School districts wanted money to put more police officers, security guards and mental health counselors in schools after a troubled former student killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland on Valentines Day in 2018.

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That same year, teacher discontent nationwide over pay and safety was growing, with teachers in some states going on strike.

So all three South Florida counties, as well as many other districts, asked voters to approve referendums to raise taxes. The money paid for teacher supplements and security personnel in all three counties and mental health counselors in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Palm Beach County also uses a portion of its tax to pay for art and music teacher positions.

[ FROM 2018: Broward voters approve property tax for teacher raises, security ]

Under state law, the money only lasts for four years, unless voters approve the tax again in a new referendum.

Its important for the community to know if the referendum were to go away, all these individual [allocations] would go away, teacher supplements, safety and security and mental health, said John Sullivan, legislative liaison for Broward schools.

A Broward sheriff's deputy, in red, trains students, wearing yellow shirts, during an armed guardian program July 30, 2018, at the firing range in Markham Park in Sunrise. (Joe Cavaretta / Sun Sentinel)

The school district has been widely criticized for how it executed a 2014 referendum for school renovations. But Sullivan said the district has spent the 2018 money as promised.

The community can see the impact of their investment, Sullivan said. The security presence in schools has been greatly enhanced.

[ FROM 2020: Broward teachers allege waste in district ]

Broward voters agreed four years ago to levy $50 on every $100,000 worth of assessed property, but the School Board now wants to raise that to $100. That would be an increase from $150 to $300 for the owner of a $325,000 home.

If voters fail to pass the tax increase, that same homeowner would pay $150 less.

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Broward school officials say a major reason a higher tax is needed is because of a law passed by the Legislature in 2019 that requires school districts to share referendum dollars with charter schools. About 20% of Broward students attend charter schools, and Broward would have to share $23 million if it asked voters for the same tax as last time.

[ RELATED: Palm Beach County voters approve tax increase to improve schools. ]

Palm Beach County is actually not affected by this law. Charter schools sued that school district to receive a share of its 2018 referendum dollars and won.

We are looking to renew the referendum. We arent seeking an increase, Palm Beach County Superintendent Mike Burke said. Charter schools represent 11% of our enrollment, and weve already been forced to start sharing that money. Weve been forced to work them into our budget.

He said the cuts were offset some by rising property values.

Palm Beach Countys tax of $100 per $100,000 of assessed property is twice the $50 that Broward levies. Miami-Dade homeowners pay $75.

[ FROM 2020: DeSantis signs bill to raise starting teacher pay to $47,500. ]

The higher tax has enabled the other districts to offer larger supplements.

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Palm Beach County pays veteran teachers supplements of up to $10,000 and Miami-Dade $18,5000. Browards supplements were generally $8,000 or less with a few high-paid teachers getting more.

We need to be competitive with our surrounding districts and compensate out teachers appropriately, School Board member Lori Alhadeff said.

The money also pays for bonuses for teacher aides, bus drivers and cafeteria workers. Several School Board members say they would like to expand that to other employees who work at schools, including custodians, clerical and administrators, although no decisions have been made yet.

Anna Fusco, president of the Broward Teachers Union, said the money from the 2018 referendum has helped, but it still needs to be better and more competitive.

But the bonuses have caused some friction among teachers. The union negotiated the allocations, and while some veteran teachers got supplements of $8,000 or more, teachers hired in the last decade were given less than $2,000.

[ RELATED: Charter schools to collect at least $45 million in tax dollars after court win ]

Waldo Jude Mirambeau, a teacher at McArthur High in Hollywood, said he only receives $71 a paycheck, while some higher-paid teachers are getting closer to $500, which he finds disheartening.

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He said he unsuccessfully tried to persuade the union and School Board to give more money to teachers with less seniority, who are struggling with the rising cost of living in South Florida.

Leaders from Broward Teachers Union, which negotiated the supplements, have argued many veteran teachers were promised raises years ago that they never got when the district eliminated guaranteed pay raises for experience.

Union leaders also say newer teachers, some who had been making less than $44,000, were all raised to a minimum salary of $47,500 due to a recent state law.

[ RELATED: Were facing heftier property taxes this year. Here are some useful tips for paying. ]

Still, Mirambeau said hes reluctant to approve this years referendum.

Im a homeowner. I have to pay those taxes, he said. Im getting $72 a paycheck, which is barely covering my union dues. Id rather my taxes not go up.

School Board members say they hope with an increased tax, all teachers will get a significant boost to their salaries.

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If this were not to pass, its a lot of money thats going to our teachers that would greatly impact them, School Board Chairwoman Laurie Rich Levinson said.
With snow five feet deep and temperatures expected to drop to minus-2, the rescuers hurried.

They put on snowshoes and gathered equipment, including a headlamp, blankets and a sled. Then, in darkness, they trekked over the steep terrain of the Sierra Nevada, tracking their quarry.

After slogging up into the mountains and following tracks through the snow, Leona Allen spotted a dark shape under a tree.

It wasn't moving.

But it was what she looking for: a pit bull mix she would later learn was named Russ. A skier had spotted him that morning and, after Russ growled at him, took photos and posted about it on Facebook, telling people he'd come across a dog trapped in the snow and unable to move, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. That sparked Allen's rescue effort on behalf of Tahoe PAWS and TLC 4 Furry Friends, an animal search-and-rescue nonprofit based in South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

As Allen stood there, she couldn't tell if the pet dog was dead or alive.

"And then he opened his eyes, and I'm pretty sure I screamed," Allen told KOVR.

So ended Russ's four-month odyssey in the wilderness of the Lake Tahoe area, one in which he braved wildfires, snowstorms and perhaps even a standoff with a coyote, Tahoe PAWS executive director Wendy Jones told The Washington Post.

It started in August when Russ got spooked and ran away from his owner, a traveling nurse from Southern California who had been working temporarily at a nearby hospital, Jones said. After Russ bolted, his owner filed a report with animal services authorities and hung fliers. None of it brought his dog back.

Then the Caldor Fire, which would burn 222,000 acres and destroy more than 1,000 structures over 67 days starting in mid-August, prompted mandatory evacuations and forced Russ's owner to flee the Tahoe area. Nursing jobs elsewhere kept him away, Jones said. He figured he'd never see his dog again.

"It was assumed that Russ had been lost for good," according to a post on the Tahoe PAWS Facebook page.

Then came Dec. 16 and the rescue mission coordinated by Jones, who guided Allen and fellow rescuer Elsa Gaule in the search for Russ.

"We knew time was [of] the essence, because the dog had been out in the snow all day. And we knew how cold it was. So it was pretty intense, pretty emotional, a lot of adrenaline," Jones told The Post.

After they found Russ, Gaule established a rapport with the dog "immediately," without which the rescue would not have been possible, Allen told the Chronicle. Gaule suggested Allen get on the sled and put Russ in her lap. Once she did, they covered him in a blanket and started a roughly two-hour return trip.

"The trek down the mountain was slow and methodical," the Tahoe PAWS Facebook page says.

Once Allen and Gaule returned, they gave Russ to animal service officials, who took him to a veterinarian to make sure he was healthy. Over the next several days, officials found a microchip in Russ, allowing them to find his owner in Riverside County, Calif.

"He was ecstatic," Jones said.

Jones said she wasn't surprised Russ survived four months in the unforgiving wilderness of the Sierra Nevadas. Dogs are strong and go into survival mode, finding shelter, food and water, when they have to.

"They're smarter than we give them credit for," she said.

She gave fresh evidence: On Saturday, she rescued a dog that was an 8-month-old puppy when it went missing more than two months ago on Halloween.

Allen said she was grateful she was able to help save Russ.

"As a rescue organization . . . this is what we're supposed to do," she told the Chronicle. "I've worked some pretty gnarly rescues, this probably being the top. I keep reliving the moment when he opened his eyes and lifted his head, and just the joy and elation inside of me was overwhelming. It's one more life that gets to live happy and warm and safe."
STAMFORD  For decades, the city has attempted to solve one of its longest-running problems: what to do with the West Main Street Bridge.

On Monday, the newly-elected Board of Representatives made its first attempt to decide on replacing or repairing the historic, dilapidated Rippowam River overpass.

Closed off to cars since 2002, the old Purple Bridge has featured over the years in questions of historic preservation, pedestrian safety and municipal finance with no clear path forward.

While the newly seated board initially sought to encourage Mayor Caroline Simmons to act on the contentious bridge rehabilitation project during its first full board meeting of 2022, the debates quickly became a crash-course in local political history for new representatives, all while rehashing familiar questions over what the best choice is for the West Side and the city as a whole.

After an hour of heated discussions, the board unanimously voted to direct talks on the bridge back to the Operations Committee and gather more information from constituents and the new mayoral administration. Though a bevy of board members, new and old, backed the move, freshman Representatives Bonnie Kim Campbell and Melinda Baxter, both of District 5, spearheaded the effort.

A simmering sense of urgency from many of the representatives complicated the decision to punt the item back to a subcommittee. While many seemed determined to push the resolution forward and solicit input from the new mayor, other board members argued that bringing Simmons down to the committee level would produce a better dialogue between the administration and the board.

Simmons has yet to take a public stance on how the bridge should look going forward but spoke broadly about soliciting more community input during her election campaign. When asked about her position on the bridge, Simmons said in a statement via email that she appreciates the opportunity to discuss with stakeholders the options for the West Main Street bridge, and that she looks forward to moving forward with a plan that addresses this longstanding issue.

Baxter and Campbell, who together ousted the former longtime city representatives from the West Side, established themselves as fierce advocates for restoring the bridge to its vehicular capacity on the campaign trail and at subcommittee meetings.

While only Baxter sits on the Operations Committee  the body tasked with overseeing public works  the two delivered impassioned remarks at its last meeting in favor of building back for cars.

If we dont get to a place where that bridge is open for vehicular traffic and pedestrians like it was  feet and wheels  there is going to be problems, demonstrations on that bridge and people at the ballot box, Campbell urged at the Operation Departments Dec. 20 meeting. Subcommittee members voted overwhelmingly to support restoring the West Main Street Bridge to its original foot and wheeled state, with only Rep. David Watkins, R-1, abstaining.

But as the situation currently stands, creating a pedestrian-only pathway from the West Side into Dowtown with enough room for emergency vehicles would prove to be the faster solution, according to current and former city officials. City engineer Lou Casolo told the Operations Committee in December that a 10-foot wide pedestrian bridge set to go just north of the current structure is completely designed and ready to take competitive bids.

According to retired city policy advisor Robin Stein, who spoke during the public comment session of the Board of Representatives meeting, any other alternative would take years. Stein pointed to various factors including new engineering plans and approvals from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers at minimum. Stein estimated that creating a bridge for cars would take upwards of four years to complete, not including construction time.

Though Stein was one of the most prominent figures to speak on Monday in favor of a pedestrian bridge, he wasnt the only one. During the meeting and in emails sent to the board, members of urbanist advocacy group People Friendly Stamford advocated staunchly for making the bridge open to people and emergency vehicles only. In a December email, Mill River Collaborative President Arthur Selkowitz also supported a pedestrian bridge, further cementing the Collaboratives longstanding position in the debate.

In light of the firmly held beliefs on both sides, representatives strongly rejected a move from Rep. Jonathan Jacobson, D-12, to move the resolution forward with more ambiguous language.

I think that we can settle the divide tonight, Jacobson said early in discussions. I think that there is room to amend the language this evening... to take the focus away from whether or not (it) should be vehicular or not, and say that this bridge needs to be addressed first and foremost.

Though the proposal to act swiftly earned Jacobson support from Reps. Susan Nabel, D-20, and Monica Di Costanzo, D-7, the pushback was reciprocal and just as fast.

I still feel like, with the amendment, the West Side is still being ignored, Rep. Baxter said in response.

Given the unanimous vote, the Operations Committee at its next meeting  tentatively scheduled for Jan. 25  will take up the West Main Street bridge once more and reopen the floor for debate.

Editors Note: This story has been updated to reflect Rep. Melinda Baxter is a member of the Board of Representatives Operations Committee. Rep. Bonnie Kim Campbell is not a member of the committee.

veronica.delvalle@hearstmediact.com
The recent COVID-19 surge appeared to show little sign of slowing through the weekend after the state reported Monday that the positivity remained above 20 percent and hospitalizations continued to edge closer to a pandemic high.

Since Friday, an additional 31,405 COVID cases were discovered in 132,606 tests for a positivity rate of 23.68 percent, one of the highest on record. Hospitalizations increased a net of 79 patients for a total of 1,889  the highest census since April 23, 2020, when the number was 1,947.

Since the Christmas holiday, infections across Connecticut have been surging amid a substantial demand for testing. Through all of last week, the positivity rate remained above 20 percent and hospitalizations continued to increase to highs not seen since the early weeks of the pandemic.

Despite a rampant increase in the number of infections and hospitalizations, state officials have been reluctant to revive mandates used early in the pandemic to limit the spread of the virus. Gov. Ned Lamont has repeatedly said he has no intentions to institute a broad indoor mask mandate, saying he would rely on local municipalities instead to determine whether residents should wear masks.

All of our densest communities have put in place a mask mandate. As you know, its those communities that are responsible for enforcing something like that. I think you will find that right now, we have the ability to keep ourselves safe, Lamont said Monday. If you go into a store, I can get vaccinated, I can get boostered, Ive got access to a N95 mask. This is a very different situation than we were in a year and a half ago  and I think thats reflected in our policies.

But this latest surge comes as the state logs an increasing presence of the omicron variant, first discovered in November and believed to be highly infectious.

The latest figures from a statewide surveillance effort show that 53 percent of all cases submitted for genomic sequencing in recent weeks have been the omicron variant, with the remaining cases identified as the highly infectious delta strain.

But experts have cautioned that this process takes time, and noted that an early detection method, which requires confirmation from sequencing, has identified 93 percent of recent samples as omicron.

Amid the rash of new cases, officials have been optimistic in noting that it appears infections from omicron are less severe than those from previous variants, especially delta.

But hospitalizations, once considered a top metric for state officials, have been rising sharply in recent weeks.

In a briefing Monday morning, officials at Hartford HealthCare, one of the states largest hospital networks, said there were a total of 501 COVID patients  the most it has seen during the pandemic  in HHC facilities.

Dr. Ajay Kumar, HHCs chief clinical officer, said 65 patients were in the intensive care unit, and 50 of them were on ventilators.

We are patiently waiting the peak of the curve, and hopefully that will be soon, said Dr. Ulysses Wu, chief epidemiologist for HHC.

But, unlike earlier in the pandemic, a portion of the cases are considered incidental  when someone comes to the hospital for a separate reason and then tests positive for COVID-19.

Similarly, at Trinity Health of New England, which runs major hospitals in Connecticut and Massachusetts, the number of COVID-19 patients has been climbing.

At Trinity Health New England, we continue seeing a brisk uptick in our hospitalization numbers. And our positivity rates, as you all know in Connecticut and Massachusetts, are quite high, the highest they've been throughout the course of this pandemic, said Dr. Syed Hussain, chief clinical officer for Trinity Health of New England.

Child care faces latest surge

While much of the focus has fallen on public preK-12 schools, state officials and providers said there is an increased effort to keep students safe in early childhood facilities.

We work with one of the most vulnerable populations ... children 5 and under and they cannot be vaccinated, said Monette Ferguson, executive director of Alliance for Community Empowerment in Bridgeport.

She said her organization is requiring a five-day isolation for staff members who test positive.

For us to keep a workforce going, we have to respect those protocols. Is it injuring? Of course it is. Does it bruise the workforce? Of course it does. But we cannot help our families get back to work ... unless we respect these protocols.

David Morgan, president and chief executive officer of the Waterbury-based human services agency Team Inc., pointed to the effort to get COVID-19 testing kits to providers early last week, similar to what was being done in public schools.

We were challenged by everyone needing testing kits from all sectors, not just child care, school districts and beyond. We had some challenges accessing the testing kits, but make no mistake, we were able to utilize those testing kits in real time, Morgan said, highlighting incidents in which children and workers were identified as being COVID-19 positive.

Our ability to respond in real-time and increase health precautions and protocols, with CDC and public health guidance, that would not have been possible if we did not get those testing kits early last week, Morgan said.

Officials said further distribution was done regionally over the weekend, and have since been able to go out to child care settings.

We need more testing kits, and we need them more frequently, Morgan said.

Keeping child care facilities open during the pandemic has been a focus of Lamonts administration. Lamont remained committed to that Monday, acknowledging that keeping day cares and other facilities open allows doctors and nurses, and other key workers, on the job instead of home having to care for their children.

Speaking to the pandemic broadly, Office of Early Childhood Commissioner Beth Bye said: Its been a real challenge that the providers have met.
The mishap that hampered Gov. Ned Lamonts efforts to ease spiking demand for at-home COVID tests over the holidays has become the target of a new political attack ad released Monday by the state Republican party.

The ad spotlights the nearly two-week-old issue, faulting Lamont for failing to procure 500,000 at-home COVID test kits when it mattered most over the holiday season and for vacationing in Florida as the situation unfolded.

The criticism comes as the Lamont administration works to overcome the bad start to its efforts to get test kits to residents, delivering nearly 1.8 million tests in the last week, outpacing New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

This isn't the first time the Republican party has lied about Governor Lamont and it won't be the last," Dan Morrocco, manager for the Lamont campaign, said in a written statement shortly after the ads release. "The Governor is providing the strong, steady leadership we need to keep schools open and the economy running  getting 1.8 million tests and 5 million masks into Connecticut in the last week alone.

The 30-second video, named Ned Lamonts COVID Failures, which is posted on the state GOPs YouTube channel, is an indication that Republicans plan to go after Lamonts handling of the pandemic as they seek to challenge him for the governorship and take back seats in the General Assembly in the 2022 election. The ad, paid for by the Republican State Central Committee, directs people to a website where they can donate to the party.

COVID is clearly going to dominate the 2022 election, Ben Proto, chairman of the Connecticut Republican party, said by phone Monday. Its dominated half of his term.

Lamont launched his reelection campaign in November. His potential GOP contenders include Former House Minority Leader Themis Klarides and Bob Stefanowksi, the Republican nominee in 2018 who is likely to seek the nomination again.

Lamont has largely received high marks for his response to the pandemic, even from some Republicans. But the GOP has seized on his vaccine mandates and his emergency powers, still in effect nearly two years into the pandemic, as government overreaches, calling him King Ned.

The governor dismissed the ad as cheap political hay in comments Monday following an online press conference on COVID safety protocols at child care centers.

I think were still in a war. Were in a war against an invisible enemy, COVID, Lamont said. Usually a state and a country, when theyre in a war, they rally together and they speak with one voice. We dont take cheap political shots for political advantage, not when were trying to get everybody through a tense situation.

The attack from Republicans come after theyve downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic and undercut common sense health measures, the head of the state Democratic Party said.

Instead of being concerned about a public health crisis, the GOP is gaslighting Connecticut with name-calling and lies to politicize a global pandemic and fundraise, Nancy DiNardo said in a statement Monday.

In the ad, the GOP takes aim at Lamont over another testing controversy  investments by his wife Annie Lamonts venture capital firm in SEMA4, the Stamford-based laboratory that received a state contract for COVID-19 testing. Ned Lamont, who has recused himself from state dealings involving his wifes investments, has said his family has not made a profit from SEMA4 and that any earnings would be donated to charity.

The ad also ties Lamont to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whom he closely coordinated with early in the pandemic, saying he sought Cuomos advice then cutting to a clip with text from an April 9, 2020 NBC article about the tri-state region having the highest COVID death rate in the nation.

Proto said many of the deaths in the early days of the pandemic were older adults in nursing homes and pointed to a March 2020 directive from Cuomo to admit COVID-19 patients to nursing homes. Connecticut is now asking nursing homes here to do the same, he said, referring to new guidance from the state Department of Public Health.

In his statement, Morrocco, the governors campaign manager, urged bipartisan cooperation in this latest phase of the pandemic.

Instead of lying about COVID to raise campaign money  the GOP should join Governor Lamont in working to end this pandemic by promoting vaccines and boosters so we can continue to educate our children, grow our economy, and keep Connecticut moving forward," he said.

Staff writer Ken Dixon contributed to this report.

julia.bergman@hearstmediact.com
Broward Sheriffs Office deputies launched a search for two unidentified suspects Sunday after a man was found shot in Lauderdale Lakes.

Deputies found the victim suffering from a gunshot wound near the 3300 block of West Oakland Park Boulevard around 3 p.m., said spokeswoman Claudine Caro-Guaraldi in an emailed statement.

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She said the man, whose identity was not made public, was taken to a local hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening.

Meanwhile, deputies cordoned off the area and summoned a SWAT team, dogs and aircraft to help search for two men whom they believe were involved in the shooting.

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Detectives from BSOs violent crimes unit are investigating.
kali9 / Getty Images

EAST HARTFORD  Police said they have identified a person of interest in the killing of a man Sunday on Westbrook Street.

In an email, Deputy Chief Joshua Litwin said officers were called to Westbrook Street around 2:45 p.m., and found an unresponsive man who appeared to be the victim of gunshot wounds.
The U.S. is on the verge of a major health-care achievement, and no one seems to have noticed
Milton, PA (17847)

Today

Mostly cloudy skies. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 71F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Rain. Low 53F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Ashtabula, OH (44004)

Today

Rain. High 66F. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Thunderstorms in the evening, then variable clouds overnight with still a chance of showers. Low 48F. S winds shifting to NW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
A man has died of his wounds after being shot multiple times in the southern Broward County city of West Park.

The shooting occurred Saturday night near Southwest 21st Street and 59th Terrace, according to the Broward Sheriffs Office.

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The victim, an adult male who has yet to be identified, was rushed by the departments Fire Rescue to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead,

Homicide detectives used a helicopter and search dogs to look for the gunman, according to WPLG television.

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[ RELATED: Coral Springs man shot and killed outside his home, police say ]

No arrests or descriptions of the shooter had been announced as of late Sunday.

People with information about the case are encouraged to contact Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS.

West Park, which was formed as a municipality in 2005, is bordered by Pembroke Park on the east, Hollywood on the north and Miami-Dade County on the south.
This is archive content that is no longer updated. Go to the up-to-date statistics page.

A more recent publication of this set of statistics is available. Latest publication: Foreign Shipping Traffic 2022, January

Published: 10 January 2022

Sea transport increased in November

The goods volume of foreign sea transport was in total 8.3 million tonnes in November 2021. Sea transport increased by six per cent from last year's November. Exports increased by eight per cent and were 4.6 million tonnes. Import volume increased by three per cent and amounted to 3.8 million tonnes.

Foreign sea Transport by month (tonnes) in 2019 to 2021

General cargo was transported most, in total 1.5 million tonnes, which was 19 per cent of all transport. The second most transported were oil products, 1.1 million tonnes, and crude oil, 0.8 million tonnes.

Container transport

A total of 0.9 million tonnes of containers were transported through Finnish ports in November 2021, which was 7 per cent less than in November 2020. The number of containers transported was 62,169 (110,393 TEU containers) 1) . Exports of containers went down by 14 per cent measured in tonnes and imports went up by 10 per cent compared to November 2020.

Vehicle transport

A total of 229,688 transport equipment were transported in foreign sea traffic in November 2021. Most transports of transport equipment were cars belonging to passengers. In November, 119,529 cars belonging to passengers were transported. The second most transported were trucks, 63,251 and truck trailers, 42,651.

Passenger traffic

A total of 772,456 persons were transported in passenger traffic in November 2021. In all, 400,006 passengers between Finland and Sweden, 316,504 passengers travelled between Finland and Estonia and 5,943 passengers between Finland and Germany. Compared with November 2020, the number of passengers more than doubled. Compared with November 2019, the number of passengers was, however, just 59 per cent. In November 2021, no passengers of foreign cruise ships arrived in Finland.

Vessel traffic and goods volume in the Saimaa Canal

A total of 87,863 tons of transport were registered through the canal in foreign traffic. Crude minerals and cement were transported most in vessels in foreign traffic, in total 29,094 tonnes. The second most transported was timber.

1) TEU, the basic measurement unit of container traffic, refers to one container that is twenty feet long, eight feet wide and 8.5 feet high.

Source: Transport and tourism, Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Henna Ylimaa 029 551 3709, Matti Kokkonen 029 551 3770, henna.ylimaa@stat.fi

Head of Department in charge: Hannele Orjala

Publication in pdf-format (166.6 kB)

Updated 10.01.2022

Referencing instructions: Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): Foreign Shipping Traffic [e-publication].

ISSN=2670-2002. November 2021. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 3.5.2022].

Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/uvliik/2021/11/uvliik_2021_11_2022-01-10_tie_001_en.html
Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu said in a joint news conference with his Pakistani counterpart, Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Hussain Qureshi, on Monday that "a new chapter" in the relationship between the two countries is beginning.

"We are starting a new chapter in the bilateral relationship, a chapter of close contacts, both at the political level as well as with a projection on the economic area, on the investment area and we want to go step by step, but at a very fast pace in developing the dynamics of our bilateral relationship," said the head of the Romanian diplomacy.

He stressed that the current visit to Romania of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan is the first in a period of more than two decades.

"I thank the Minister for the essential support that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and himself have given to Romania's efforts to repatriate some of the 49 Romanian citizens who were evacuated from Afghanistan, some of the citizens of other allied states who were also evacuated by the Romanian authorities from Afghanistan, as well as of 156 Afghan citizens in situations of risk, in August and September 2021," Bogdan Aurescu specified.

According to him, a "collective approach of the international community in Afghanistan" is needed.

Makhdoom Qureshi also spoke of "a new era in bilateral relations." "I see a promising environment, many opportunities in the future," he said. At the same time, the Pakistani minister stressed that "the private sector is and will be the driving force behind economic relations" between the two countries.

"We have discussed how to promote our economic relations. In the past fiscal year, our trade has increased, despite the pandemic, by 50.6%. But it is far from the potential that exists between us and in the context of the European Union. We want to seize the potential and the opportunities that we have overlooked. It is the right time to move forward," said Makhdoom Qureshi.

Prior to the press conference, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the Polytechnic University of Bucharest and Pakistan's Embassy to Romania, in the presence of the two ministers, Agerpres informs.
The chairman of the Save Romania Union (USR), Dacian Ciolos demands that Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca get involved in the National Strategic Plan for Agriculture.

On Monday, during a press conference, Ciolos underlined that National Strategic Plan would bring to Romania 22 billion euros, through the Common Agricultural Policy, in the coming years. He mentioned that the issues related to agriculture should be discussed at the level of the Government, not only of the ministry, including in view of the fact that Romania exports raw materials and imports expensive finished products.

"I urge the Prime Minister to focus on the National Strategic Plan for Agriculture. It is about 22 billion euros for the next few years and (...) I expect him to have an eye also on what is happening in Ministry of Agriculture. We somehow have the impression that the problems related to agriculture are only of the farmers and they are sectoral problems and the minister solves them. That is not what the minister is solving, especially when we have a minister who let it go to his head and who intends to revolutionize everything in a few weeks' time," said the USR leader.

Although the member states are not directly penalized for failing to meet the deadline of 31 December 2021 to submit the National Strategic Plan for Agriculture to the European Commission, Ciolos stressed, those at risk of being affected are the beneficiaries of the funds.

"There is a risk of delays in implementing these support measures in the coming months and years," he said.

On Monday, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Adrian Chesnoiu, started the consultations for drawing up the National Strategic Plan 2023-2027, the meeting being attended by over 80 participants, both experts from the relevant ministry and representatives of farmers' associations, local action groups and agricultural distributors, the ministry said, Agerpres informs.
The COVID-19 incidence rate calculated at 14 days for Bucharest is, on Monday, 2.57 per thousand population, up from 2.17 the day before, informs the Public Health Directorate.

The highest infection rate with SARS-CoV-2 in Bucharest was reached on October 22 - 16.54 per thousand population.
The General Prosecutor's Office announced on Monday that it has opened a criminal case to investigate into the press release issued by AUR (Alliance for the Union of Romanians) that minimizes the Holocaust.

"On January 6, 2022, following the ex officio notification in accordance with Article 292 of the Criminal Procedure Code, a criminal case was registered with the Criminal Investigation and Forensic Section of the Prosecutor's Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice to investigate into a press release issued on January 3, 2022, by the AUR party, entitled "Ideological experiments on children in Romania must stop!". The investigation will be carried out in rem under article 6 paragraph 1 of the GEO No. 31/2002, and will focus on the variant - obviously minimizing, by any means, in public, the Holocaust or its effects," the General Prosecutor's Office said in a press release.

Article 6 paragraph 1 of GEO No. 31/2002 stipulates: "Denying, contesting, approving, justifying or minimizing obviously, by any means, in public, the Holocaust or its effects shall be punished by imprisonment from 6 months to 3 years or by a fine."

On January 3, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians sent a press release requesting the Minister of Education, Sorin Cimpeanu, to include the Romanian Language, History and English in the list of subject matters for which national competitions (Olympiads) will be organized in the school year 2021 - 2022 and in the years to come.

AUR also claimed that, in recent years, there has been a "systematic action to undermine" the quality of education in Romania by raising to the rank of subject matters some "minor topics or which may be the subject of simple lessons in existing subject matters (eg "sex education, the history of the Holocaust, etc.), in parallel with the reduction of the importance given to the fundamental subject matters for the formation of the new generations: the exact sciences, the Romanian language and literature, the national history".

Later, on January 4, the Israeli Ambassador in Bucharest, David Saranga, vehemently condemned "the attitude and insulting statements of some political leaders who considered it appropriate to describe the Holocaust genocide as a "minor issue' to be addressed in the Romanian education system., Agerpres informs.
Culture Minister Lucian Romascanu noted on Monday the "exceptional success" of the exhibition titled "Archeological treasures from Romania. Dacian and Roman roots," opened at the National Archeology Museum in Madrid, Agerpres reports.

"I found out with great joy of the exceptional success of our exhibition in Spain. Joy, pride even, but without it being a surprise whatsoever, because the National History Museum of Romania has always delivered high quality events. I cannot forget the success of the 'Ancient gold. From the Black Sea to the Atlantic Ocean' exhibition in Lisbon, in 2017, and many, many more. I must convey the warmest congratulations to Mr. Ernest Oberlander Tarnoveanu, the MNIR manager, but also to the Romanian Embassy in Madrid., to Her Excellency Gabriela Dancau, an impeccable, energetic and dedicated ambassador. Congratulations to all those involved and we await the exhibition at home, in order for it to be visited by history-loving Romanians," said Romascanu, according to a release of the Culture Ministry.The National Archeology Museum in Madrid, institution that is hosting "Archeological treasures from Romania. Dacian and Roman roots," has recorded the highest number of visitors in national museums, 329,714 persons, in 2021, the Ministry mentions, quoting a release of the Spanish Government.The increase in the number of visitors is due to temporary exhibitions, as is the Romanian one, but also the professionalism of the organizers, despite the difficult period we are still going through, due to the COVID-19 restrictions, shows the Culture Ministry.The exhibition marks 140 years of diplomatic relations between Romania and the Kingdom of Spain and was successful since the beginning. The Romanian Embassy in Spain announcing that in October 2021, the first month since the opening, no less than 16,111 persons visited."Archeological treasures from Romania. Dacian and Roman roots" is coordinated by the National History Museum of Romania, institution subordinated to the Culture Ministry, and comprises 838 exceptional artefacts from the collections of 39 museums from Romania. The exhibition will remain open until the end of February 2022.
There is a legitimate concern on the part of the allied states, including Romania, regarding the massing of Russian forces in the vicinity of Ukraine, in the Black Sea region, a massing of troops that is substantial, unprovoked and unjustified, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, said on Monday, Agerpres reports.

Minister Aurescu held a joint press conference with Pakistani counterpart Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Hussain Qureshi on Monday.He said that "a number of conditions imposed by Russia tend to change the parameters of the European security architecture.""We are open to dialogue, and this is the position that both I and my other NATO colleagues expressed on Friday at the special meeting of foreign ministers, because dialogue is part of NATO's dual approach with respect to Russia. It is an approach that combines, on the one hand, defence and deterrence and, on the other hand, dialogue. In what Romania is concerned (...), we support this dialogue, but at the same time we think that this dialogue must be based on a series of firm and credible deterrence measures," the head of the Romanian diplomacy pointed out.Aurescu underscored that the dialogue with the Russian Federation "must take place without affecting the principles, values and commitments that represent the foundation of the Alliance, because there are a number of proposals of the Russian Federation that are certainly very difficult to accept, if not unacceptable for allies.""The most important thing is for the dialogue to take place, for it to be presented with all the arguments of the parties, and the aim of this dialogue, which is taking place in several stages and on various components, must be to de-escalate the security situation. We need the situation to de-escalate, concretely, we need to see it in the field, we need to see a withdrawal of these Russian troops and equipment, and on the other hand we need to put an end the use of threat with using force. This is unacceptable from the point of view of international law," he pointed out.He also noted that "openness to dialogue has always been present with the Russian Federation."Minister Aurescu added that these days "we speak of a dialogue and not of a negotiation," a dialogue that could lead to "a clarification of positions."Tense talks between Russians and Americans began on Monday morning in Geneva amid fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, while Russia claims a limitation of Western influence on its borders, reports AFP.The meeting, which began at 8.55 local time (7.55 GMT) at the US headquarters in Geneva, is being held at the level of Deputy Foreign Ministers, with US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Riabkov to participate, said a spokesman for the US State Department.
NEW YORK  New York Citys deadliest fire in more than three decades, killing 19 people including nine children Sunday at a Bronx apartment building, was caused by a faulty space heater, officials said.

Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said the fire started in a malfunctioning electric space heater in an apartment unit spanning the second and third floors of the 19-story building. The door of the apartment was left open, allowing smoke to quickly spread throughout the building, Nigro said.

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Some residents, trapped in their apartments, broke windows for air and stuffed wet towels under their doors. One man rescued by firefighters said hed become numb to fire alarms because of frequent false alarms.

Stefan Ringel, a senior adviser to Mayor Eric Adams, confirmed the death toll. He said the children killed were 16 years old or younger.

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Thirteen people remained hospitalized in critical condition, Ringel said. In all, more than five dozen people were hurt. Most of the victims had severe smoke inhalation, Nigro said.

Adams called the fires toll horrific and said this is going to be one of the worst fires that we have witnessed during modern times.

Firefighters found victims on every floor and were taking them out in cardiac and respiratory arrest, Nigro said. That is unprecedented in our city.

Approximately 200 firefighters responded to the building on East 181st Street around 11 a.m. Sunday. Initial reports said the fire was on the third floor of the 19-story building, with flames blowing out the windows.

News photographers captured images of firefighters entering the upper floors of the burning building on a ladder, multiple limp children being given oxygen after they were carried out and evacuees with faces covered in soot.

A ladder leads up to a window after a fatal fire at an apartment building in the Bronx on Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022, in New York. The majority of victims were suffering from severe smoke inhalation, FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)

Resident Vernessa Cunningham, 60, said she raced home from church after getting an alert on her cellphone that the building was on fire.

I couldnt believe what I was seeing. I was in shock, Cunningham said from a nearby school where some residents gathered. I could see my apartment. The windows were all busted out. And I could see flames coming from the back of the building.

Sundays fire originated in a duplex apartment spanning the second and third floors, Nigro said. Firefighters found the door to the apartment open, he said, which apparently allowed the fire to quickly accelerate and spread smoke upward.

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The fire is not believed to be suspicious, but the cause is under investigation, officials said.

Building resident Cristal Diaz, 27, told the New York Post she started putting wet towels at the bottom of her door after smelling smoke while drinking coffee in her living room.

Everything was crazy, she said. We didnt know what to do. We looked out the windows and saw all the dead bodies they were taking with the blankets.

The 120-unit building in the Twin Parks North West complex was built in 1973 as part of a project to build modern, affordable housing in the Bronx.

Theres no guarantee that theres a working fire alarm in every apartment, or in every common area, U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat who represents the area, told The Associated Press. Most of these buildings have no sprinkler system. And so the housing stock of the Bronx is much more susceptible to devastating fires than most of the housing stock in the city.

Nigro and Torres both compared the fires severity to a 1990 blaze at the Happy Land social club where 87 people were killed when a man set fire to the building after getting into an argument with his former girlfriend and being thrown out of the Bronx club.

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Sundays death toll was the highest for a fire in the city since the Happy Land fire. It was also the deadliest fire at a U.S. residential apartment building since 2017 when 13 people died in an apartment building, also in the Bronx, according to data from the National Fire Protection Association.

That fire started with a 3-year-old boy playing with stove burners and led to several law changes in New York City, including having the fire department to create a plan for educating children and parents on fire safety and requiring certain residential buildings to install self-closing doors.

Sundays fire happened just days after 12 people, including eight children, were killed in a house fire in Philadelphia. The deadliest fire prior to that was in 1989 when a Tennessee apartment building fire claimed the lives of 16 people.

Associated Press reporters Michael R. Sisak and Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.
Minister of Health Alexandru Rafila declared on Sunday night for the private TV broadcaster Antena 3 that, from his point of view, vaccination will not be mandatory in Romania, mentioning that the obligation is not appropriate in our country and more work must be done on informing citizens, Agerpres reports.

"Vaccination is extremely important at the moment for reasons other than those in the beginning of 2021. In the beginning of 2021 vaccination, following clinical trials, it was recommended to stop transmission. At present, vaccination is recommended to avoid serious cases and to avoid deaths," Rafila said.At the same time, the Minister of Health stated, answering a question, that vaccination will not be mandatory in Romania, from his point of view.He added that he recommends vaccination, especially for those at risk, with chronic pathologies."Just as it is not documented, for example, that Arbidol would have any effect, there is no paper, not even one in the world showing that Arbidol could have a favorable effect on infection with the novel coronavirus, likewise there is evidence, every day, I have from the hospital, from the other hospitals in Romania, which shows me that 9 out of 10 people who are in intensive care or who die are unvaccinated. Then it is clear that if 9 out of 10 people are seriously ill or die that the vaccine has an effect. That's a provable thing. There are a lot of scientific papers on this. And obviously, in this circumstance, I recommend vaccination very seriously, especially to people who are at risk. Meaning what categories? Those who could do it because of their age, because of other diseases they have," minister Rafila added.He also said that vaccine protection has decreased and it would be very difficult to vaccinate people three to four times a year.The Minister of Health also referred to the wearing of face masks, mentioning that the simple medical mask FFP1 ensures a degree of filtration of about 80 percent of the virus, and the FFP2 of up to 95 percent.He explained that as the transmissibility of the virus increases, the mechanical barrier should be as tight as possible."Whereas a cloth mask is very variable, first of all the quality and the degree of filtration. In addition, there is another element, if at the Alpha strain we had a basal transmission of 3, here we are approaching 15. And with the Delta it was 7-8. The cloth then protected to a small extent," Alexandru Rafila also explained.The Minister of Health also noted that many people wears the mask incorrectly, "with their noses out", and, practically, the effectiveness of filtering in such a situation, and respectively the protection for the person they come in contact with, is null.
Health Minister Alexandru Rafila said that that the 5th wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is already underway in Romania, adding that although the transmission of the Omicron variant is just sporadic at this moment, in one or two weeks it could develop to community spread level, Agerpres reports.

"From a few hundred cases a day, we are now talking about a few thousand cases a day, and even if the situation appears to have stabilized in the last four or five days, this doesn't mean that things have returned to normal. We are on one of the fastest growing trends in Europe and I don't mean just the European Union, we are on the second or third spot, so we have no reason to relax yet, on the contrary, we need to be extremely careful. Hopes are that these new cases don't get the health system in a tough situation," Rafila told private TV broadcaster Antena 3 on Sunday.He said he has developed a very clear patient circuit and that the country's testing capacity will get a boost by a 10-fold increase in the number of testing locations.The Minister also described two of the typical symptoms of the Omicron infection - "sore throat, yet less intense, rather like an itch, and profuse sweating during the night". Other symptoms include asthenia, muscle aches, myalgia, fever, sometimes a digestive syndrome, added Minister Rafila.He said that testing is spearheading the plan for fending off the anticipated Omicron wave."One more thing, from the end of this month we will have innovative antivirals available that will be administered only to patients with moderate forms and risk factor. We have estimated (...) around one million cases and we are trying to get antiviral treatment for about 250,000 of these," he said.The Health Minister explained that this treatment will be offered to outpatients and should be administered in the first days of illness.
President Klaus Iohannis on Monday sent a video message to the participants in the 4th edition of the World Youth Forum, taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt, underscoring the major role of the youth in the peace building and keeping efforts.

"I wish to highlight the major role of the youth in peace building and keeping efforts, as a democratic right and imperative meant to make our societies more inclusive. Romania appreciates the resilience of the youth in facing conflicts and violence. The youth fight for peace and they should be provided with significant opportunities of playing a role in this area. This needs inclusive political systems, high quality education on a primary, secondary and tertiary level, including in the refugees and relocated persons, as well as dignified employment opportunities," Iohannis underscored.

He added that the World Forum has become an important elements of the international youth movement, providing an important platform of civic involvement, in the context in which young generations, as well as the entire world are confronted with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We often hear that the youth are our future. We must fully understand the essential role of the young generations in shaping the development of our societies and in finding solutions to the current challenges," Iohannis added.

Iohannis showed that Romania's Government is preparing a new National Youth Strategy 2022-2027, focused on the emancipation of young people, education, increase in the employment rate among youth and their active participation in the economic, social, cultural and political life.

Moreover, the brought to mind that Romania has endorsed the EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027 and the active participation of young people in the Conference on the Future of Europe.

"Romania will also bring its contribution to the 2022 European Year of Youth, with concrete projects and public debates meant to offer the young people a so necessary post-pandemic perspective," Iohannis also said, Agerpres informs.
The Minister of Justice, Catalin Predoiu, met on Monday with Laurence Auer, the French Ambassador to Romania, in which context they discussed, among other things, the abolition of the Justice Crimes Investigation Section (SIIJ), amending the Laws of Justice and the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure.

According to a press release sent to Agerpres, Minister Predoiu reiterated his support for the objectives of the current French presidency of the EU Council, in particular combating hate speech, dialogue between the constitutional courts and the CJEU, modernization of the judiciary and protection of the environment through criminal law. He also confirmed his participation in the Informal Meeting of Ministers of Justice, scheduled for 4 February in Lille.

"The two officials appreciated the good cooperation between the two states in both civil and criminal matters, but stressed the need to strengthen the activity of the joint investigation teams, especially in organized crime cases. The Minister of Justice recalled that he agreed on a bilateral meeting with the French counterpart in Paris in March to discuss issues of interest to the judiciary in both states, such as the digitalisation of the judiciary, the fight against corruption and organized crime, the protection of victims of crime, but also France's support for a correct evaluation of the field results obtained by Romania over the years within the CVM, in the perspective of Romania's entry in a single monitoring, together with all other EU member states, within the Rule of Law Mechanism," the press release informs.

Also, according to the quoted source, the topics on the agenda of the Ministry of Justice, relevant from the perspective of CVM, were addressed: the abolition of the SIIJ, the amendment of the Laws of Justice, the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure.

"The French presidency comes at a key-time when the Ministry of Justice resumes and accelerates judicial reforms, primarily on urgent and unresolved projects in 2021, namely the abolition of the SIIJ, the adoption of justice laws and amendments to the new Criminal Codes. The French presidency's priorities are of great interest to the Romanian Ministry of Justice, we will continue our intense cooperation in the cross-border fight against organized crime and trafficking in human beings, including the protection of victims. I welcome the French concern and initiative in the field of combating hate speech, xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Also of great interest to us it is the French initiative to support and organize, through a first conference in Paris in February, the dialogue between the Constitutional Courts and the CJEU, in the context of recent jurisprudence on the interaction between European law and national law, a harmonization of visions being possible, in our opinion, based on a structured and constructive dialogue," said Catalin Predoiu at the end of the meeting.
Most new cases of infection with SARS-CoV-2 since the last reporting are in Bucharest - 720 and the counties of Cluj - 440, Timis - 327, Constanta - 318, Suceava - 233 and Ilfov - 196, the Strategic Communication Group informed on Monday, Agerpres reports.

The Capital City is in the yellow scenario regarding infection rate, having an incidence of 2.57 cases per thousand inhabitants, rising from the previous day, when a value of 2.17 per thousand inhabitants was registered.The county of Cluj entered the red scenario, having an infection rate, cumulated at 14 days, of 3.44 cases per thousand inhabitants.
The Foreign Minister of the government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Hussain Qureshi, is paying on Monday an official visit to Romania, where he will have meetings with Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Bogdan Aurescu, Agerpres reports.

The Pakistani official will be received on Monday, at 10:00, at the Victoria Palace, by Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca, according to the schedule announced by the government.Also, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Aurescu, who has invited Qureshi to Romania, will also have political consultations with his Pakistani counterpart on Monday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) informs.According to the source, it is the first visit to Romania of a Pakistani foreign minister in the last two decades and takes place in the context of a "positive dynamic" recently recorded in the Romanian-Pakistani relations, considering the "essential support" that Pakistan has given to Romania's efforts to evacuate from Afghanistan its own citizens, other citizens from allied countries and 156 Afghan citizens in risk situations, in August and September 2021."During the political consultations of the two foreign ministers, the ways of developing the bilateral relationship, deepening the political dialogue, as well as the economic and sectoral cooperation between the two countries will be discussed. Also, aspects such as strengthening the dynamics of EU-Pakistan relations and the main developments of common interest for the two states will be addressed, with a focus on the Indo-Pacific region and the situation in Afghanistan," the MAE said.On the occasion of the visit, a cooperation agreement will be signed between the Chamber of Trade and Industry of Romania and the Association of Chambers of Trade and Industry of the Republic of Pakistan and a framework cooperation agreement providing for an exchange of scholarships between the Polytechnic University of Bucharest and the University of Islamabad, the source said.
On Monday, OMV Petrom representatives presented to Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca the development plan for investments in Romania for the 2030 horizon, considering the objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

According to a press release sent to Agerpres by the Government, the Prime Minister had a meeting with Christina Verchere, CEO of OMV Petrom.

The meeting was also attended by the Minister of Energy, Virgil Popescu, the Minister of Environment, Barna Tanczos, and the Vice-President of OMV Petrom, Alexandru Maximescu.

"In this context, OMV Petrom representatives presented the investment development plan in Romania for 2030, in line with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Discussions also focused on the government's priorities in terms of the need to boost investments in the energy sector, especially to encourage transition to green energy, efficient and produced according to the conditions for as clean as possible an environment. The PM pointed out that the Government's priority is to maintain a stable and predictable business climate that encourages investments with a multiplier effect in the economy and to contribute to the creation of new jobs," reads the press release.
Prospects for expanding and consolidating Romanian-Pakistani bilateral relations were on Monday's agenda of talks at Victoria Palace of Government between Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca and Foreign Minister of Pakistan Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Hussain Qureshi.

The head of diplomacy of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is visiting Bucharest at the invitation of Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister Bogdan Aurescu. It is the first visit carried out by a Pakistani foreign minister to Romania, after a break of more than two decades.Prime Minister Ciuca thanked Minister Qureshi for his personal role, along with the Pakistani state, in repatriating Romanian citizens with the Taliban regime's seizure of power in Kabul, shows a government press release sent to AGERPRES, which further specifies that 49 Romanian citizens, another seven European citizens and 156 vulnerable Afghans were also brought to Romania.The Romanian prime minister underlined the good bilateral relations and the prospects for their expansion and consolidation in the future, welcoming the visit of the head of Pakistani diplomacy in Bucharest.In his turn, the guest noted the "very good" relations between the two states and the opportunities for their development in the field of economy, defense industry, investment and trade, education and labor."Pakistan could be, according to Foreign Minister Qureshi, an important starting point for Romania's exports to the South Asian region. The Pakistani Foreign Minister thanked Romania for the donation of 500,000 vaccines offered by our country and which is due to arrive, in the next period, in Islamabad," the cited release further shows.
Romania's mergers and acquisitions (M&A) market saw a record high number of transactions last year - 137, for a total estimated value of over four billion euros, shows a survey by Deloitte Romania, Agerpres reports.

The total estimated market value for deals with disclosed price tags and undisclosed price deals was of approximately 4.44 billion euros, while the deals in the first category amounted to 2.3 billion euros, the company said in a statement. For comparison, the market value in 2020 was 3.9 - 4.1 billion euros and 2.5 billion euros, respectively."2021 and 2020 were very good years for Romania's M&A market. Our survey suggests that the positive momentum will continue, therefore we anticipate an unprecedented activity in the coming years," said Iulia Bratu, Deloitte Romania Corporate Finance manager.In the Deloitte ranking of the largest 2021 transactions, the one whereby state-owned Romgaz agreed to acquire 50 percent of ExxonMobil's stake in the Black Sea offshore gas project Neptun Deep holds the top position with a reported value of 920 million euros (the completion of the transaction is expected in the first quarter of 2022).Other A-class transactions are the acquisition of gambling operator MaxBet Romania by the London-based Novalpina Capital for an estimated 250 million euros; the takeover by Glovo of Delivery Hero's operations in the Balkan region for a reported value of 170 million euros; the purchase by the Hungarian private equity fund Adventum of Hermes Business Campus from Atenor for an estimated 150 million euros; Hidroelectrica's takeover of the Crucea Wind Farm and Steag Energie for a reported value of 130 million euros.The most active sectors by transaction volumes were real estate (including construction), technology, energy and industry, which jointly account for 76 transactions. By the value of the deals, real estate was the most active sector, followed by energy, retail and distribution.
Arxia, a Romanian company specialized in creating information solutions and consultancy in the area of digitization, announces its expansion on two markets in Eastern Africa and South America, namely Uganda and Chile.

According to a press release sent by the company to AGERPRES on Monday, the company aims, through its projects developed in these regions, to contribute to the digital transformation of societies and constructing digital ecosystems in Eastern Africa and Latin America, on two fronts: institutional digitization and local IT industry's development."The markets in South America and Africa need the transfer of expertise and knowledge which Romanian and European companies can put at their disposal, in countries that are just beginning the digitization area and IT industry development. We can contribute to a quick and massive efficiency of administrative processes in these states, and the Government sector is open to new approaches. There is an extraordinary potential in these markets, for both their evolution, as well as the internationalization opportunities of Romanian IT companies that aim to expand in these markets," Daniel Homorodean, CEO of Arxia, said.The Romanian company has been working for several years in projects for institutional digitization carried out in Uganda, Rwanda, Chile and Peru, in both the government sector, as well as in the banking and logistics industries. Thus, Arxia has won, through public auctions, consultant contracts worth over 300,000 Euro, for projects carried out in Rwanda and contributed to the implementation of 150 government and institutional websites, a number which this year will exceed 300.Arxia, with over 20 years experience on the market, coordinates and implements complex digitization missions, offers technical mentorship and matchmaking events for companies in emerging states on the African continent, such as Rwanda, Kenya or Uganda.Among the close collaborators of the company there are Rwanda Information Society Authority (RISA), National Information Technology Authority (both equivalent to the Authority for the Digitization of Romania) and the German Agency for Development - GIZ.
Robert Durst, the wealthy New York real estate heir and failed fugitive who was dogged for decades with suspicion in the disappearance and deaths of those around him before he was convicted of killing his best friend and sentenced to life in prison, has died. He was 78.

Durst died in a state prison hospital facility in Stockton, his attorney Chip Lewis said. He said it was from natural causes due to a number of health issues.

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Durst was convicted in September of shooting Susan Berman at point-blank range in 2000 at her Los Angeles home. He was sentenced to life Oct. 14. Two days later, he was hospitalized with COVID-19, his trial attorney Dick DeGuerin said.

Durst had long been suspected of killing his wife, Kathie, who went missing in 1982 and has been declared legally dead. He was finally indicted in November for second-degree murder in her death.

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Prosecutors in Los Angeles presented evidence Durst silenced Berman because she helped him cover up Kathies killing and was about to talk to investigators. They also argued he killed a Texas man who discovered his identity when he was living secretly in Galveston after Bermans killing. Durst was acquitted of murder in that case in 2003, after testifying he shot him in self-defense.

Durst discussed the cases and made several damning statements including a stunning confession during an unguarded moment in the six-part HBO documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.

[ Notable deaths of 2022 ]

The show made his name known to a new generation and brought renewed scrutiny and suspicion from authorities. He was arrested in Bermans killing the night before the final episode, which closed with him mumbling to himself in a bathroom while still wearing hot mic saying: Youre caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.

The quotes were later revealed to have been manipulated for dramatic effect but the production  done with Dursts cooperation against the advice from his lawyer and friends  dredged up new evidence including an envelope that connected Durst to the scene of Bermans killing as well as incriminating statements he made.

Police had received a note directing them to Bermans home with only the word CADAVER written in block letters.

In interviews given between 2010 and 2015, Durst told the makers of the The Jinx that he didnt write the note, but whoever did had killed her.

Youre writing a note to the police that only the killer could have written, Durst said.

His defense lawyers conceded in the run-up to trial that Durst had written the note, and prosecutors said it amounted to a confession.

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Clips from The Jinx, and from the 2010 movie All Good Things in which Ryan Gosling played a fictionalized version of Durst, had starring roles at trial.

As did Durst himself. His attorneys again took the risk of putting him on the stand for what turned out to be about three weeks of testimony. It didnt work as it had in Texas.

Under devastating cross-examination by prosecutor John Lewin, Durst admitted he lied under oath in the past and would do it again to get out of trouble.

Did you kill Susan Berman? is strictly a hypothetical, Durst said from the stand. I did not kill Susan Berman. But if I had, I would lie about it.

The jury promptly returned a guilty verdict.

It long appeared he would avoid any such convictions.

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Durst went on the run in late 2000 after New York authorities reopened an investigation into his wifes disappearance, renting a modest apartment in Galveston and disguising himself as a mute woman.

In 2001, the body parts of a neighbor, Morris Black, began washing up in Galveston Bay.

Arrested in the killing, Durst jumped bail. He was arrested for shoplifting a sandwich six weeks later in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he had gone to college. Police found $37,000 cash and two handguns in his car.

He would testify that Black had pulled a gun on him and died when the weapon went off during a struggle. He told jurors in detail how he bought tools and dismembered and disposed of Blacks body. He was acquitted of murder. He pleaded guilty to violating his bail, and to evidence tampering for the dismemberment. He served three years in prison.

Durst had bladder cancer and his health deteriorated during the Berman trial. He was escorted into court in a wheelchair wearing prison attire each day because his attorneys said he was unable to change into a suit. But the judge declined further delays after a 14-month pause during the coronavirus pandemic.

DeGuerin said Durst was very, very sick at his sentencing hearing and it was the worst he looked in the 20 years he spent representing him.

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Durst entered the courtroom with wide-eyed vacant stare. Near the end of the hearing after Bermans loved ones told the judge how her death upended their lives, Durst coughed hard and then appeared to struggle to breathe. His chest heaved and he pulled his mask down below his mouth and began to gulp for air.

The son of real estate magnate Seymour Durst, Robert Durst was born April 12, 1943, and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He would later say that at age 7, he witnessed his mothers death in a fall from their home.

He graduated with an economics degree in 1965 from Lehigh University, where he played lacrosse. He entered a doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he met Berman, but dropped out and returned to New York in 1969.

He became a developer in the family business, but his father passed him over to make his younger brother, and rival, Douglas the head of the Durst Organization in 1992.

In 1971, Robert Durst met Kathie McCormack, and the two married on his 30th birthday in 1973.

In January 1982, his wife was a student in her final year at medical school when she disappeared. She had shown up unexpectedly at a friends dinner party in Newtown, Connecticut, then left after a call from her husband to return to their home in South Salem, New York.

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Robert Durst told police he last saw her when he put her on a train to stay at their apartment in Manhattan because she had classes the next day.

He would divorce her eight years later, claiming spousal abandonment, and in 2017, at her familys request, she was declared legally dead.

Robert Durst is survived by his second wife Debrah Charatan, whom he married in 2000. He had no children.

Under California law, a conviction is vacated if a defendant dies while the case is under appeal, said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School.

Lewis said an appeal was filed for Durst.

___

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Associated Press writer Michelle A. Monroe in Phoenix contributed.
The Startup Ingenium project, co-financed by the European Social Fund through the Human Capital Operational Programme 2014-2020, with a total value of 9.681 million lei (of which 9.661 million lei non-reimbursable financing) will be implemented over January 2022 - December 2023, informs the National Council of Small and Medium-Sized Private Enterprises in Romania (CNIPMMR), Agerpres reports.

According to the quoted source, the general objective of the project is to encourage entrepreneurship and employment among students by supporting the establishment of enterprises operating in economic sectors with competitive potential."The target group of the project consists of a number of 350 people from the following categories of eligible target groups, defined according to the specific conditions guide: Students (International Standard Classification of Education - ISCED level 5-7) and PhD students in the doctoral studies cycle (PhD students, ISCED level 8) with domicile / residence in the less developed regions of Romania (respectively North-East, South-East, South Muntenia, South-West Oltenia, West, North-West and Center), as well as in the more developed region Bucharest - Ilfov," the release reads.The project will include training courses, internships and mentoring and 29 people who will participate in a business idea competition to obtain funding between 40,000 euros and 60,000 euros (the first 13 business plans that propose 2 jobs will get 40,000 euros and the first 13 business plans that propose 3 jobs will get 60,000 euros).According to CNIPMMR, the results of the project implementation will be: 350 people tested in order to assess their entrepreneurial potential and 350 graduation certificates issued by ANC attesting to the improvement of skills in the entrepreneurial field. There will also be 65 jobs created and maintained, 29 internship reports for people whose business plans have been selected for de minimis aid plus 3 more reserves, as well as 29 persons who will benefit from personalised counseling / consulting / mentoring services and 26 enterprises established according to Law 346/2004.
Homes are often just too expensive in many cities for people trying to buy their first house in todays red hot market. But if youre hoping to buy for your first home this year, dont despair: There are still places out there that are hidden gems  with affordable listings (and plenty of them on the market), plus good job opportunities and other amenities.

New research from Realtor.com evaluates more than 1,000 cities to find best markets for first-time homebuyers in 2022. The firm says its picks have affordable prices, good job markets, short commutes, plentiful food and drink options, younger residents and a large inventory of available homes in real estate markets that are expected to grow.

Meanwhile, many real estate experts are predicting that mortgage rates will inch higher in 2022, but will still likely be near historic lows in the months ahead.

The first step to a new home is putting in the work and finding out how much you can afford. Mortgage Experts are available to get you started on your home-buying journey with solid advice and priceless information. To find out more, click on your state today.

Magna, Utah, took the top spot thanks to its affordable prices, close proximity to Salt Lake City and plentiful dining options. The median home price in Magna is $367,900, according to Realtor.com.

Salt Lake City, with its relatively low cost of living, easily accessible skiing and hiking, good schools and strong local tech industry, also took the top spot on Realtor.coms list of the hottest housing markets for 2022. Two other Utah towns in the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Syracuse and South Jordan, made it to Moneys list of the Best Places to Live in 2021.

Best markets for first-time homebuyers

Here are the top 10 best markets for first-time homebuyers, according to Realtor.com:

Magna, Utah Chalco, Nebraska Mauldin, South Carolina Beech Grove, Indiana Portsmouth, Virginia Cottage Grove, Wisconsin Grimes, Iowa Kuna, Idaho Ferndale, Michigan Maitland, Florida

Realtor.com says the cities on the list have a forecasted unemployment rate of 2.7%, compared to the national forecasted rate of 3.6%. They also had significantly more active listings than the national average last year (79.2 listings per 1,000 households compared to 44.9 listings per 1,000 households nationally). Home sales in these 10 markets are expected to grow 10.2% in 2022, compared to 6.6% across the entire country.

Its always a challenge to buy your first home, and its been especially challenging the last couple of years because the housing market has been so competitive, said Danielle Hale, Realtor.coms chief economist. Despite that, there are pockets and neighborhoods across the country where its a little easier for first-timers to get their foot in the doorand where theyd want to live, too.

Whether it's your first home or your next one, Quicken Loan experts can walk you through the process. Click below to consult a mortgage expert today!

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 Copyright 2021 Ad Practitioners, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

This article originally appeared on Money.com and may contain affiliate links for which Money receives compensation. Opinions expressed in this article are the author's alone, not those of a third-party entity, and have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed. Offers may be subject to change without notice. For more information, read Moneys full disclaimer.
Every state requires children to receive an array of vaccinations before they enroll in school. Typically, those inoculations are for protection against polio, diphtheria, pertussis, measles, rubella, mumps, tetanus, meningitis and chickenpox.

Even though COVID-19 has claimed around 830,000 lives in the United States, including fewer than 700 children, only two states  California and Louisiana  have added COVID-19 vaccines to the list of immunizations mandated for schoolchildren. Both requirements would be enforced next school year, and then only if the vaccines receive full authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has granted emergency authorization and asserted that the vaccines are safe and effective for children.

The virus is much less deadly for children than adults, and federal regulators continue to review the vaccines for most school-age kids, though final approval is likely coming. There also are bureaucratic complications: Children typically receive the other required vaccines before they enter kindergarten and dont require additional doses, while at this point, multiple doses of the COVID-19 vaccines are needed to achieve immunity.

But the main reason states are shying away from a vaccine requirement for schoolchildren, public health experts say, is that they are wary of opening yet another front in the wars that have raged over a wide range of COVID-19 rules and restrictions since the pandemic started.

Remote teaching and school masking policies have sparked ferocious conflicts in many communities. And many Republican officeholders and conservative media figures have railed against governments and private businesses for pressuring people to get the shots.

The polarization describes a lot of why were not seeing vaccine requirements, said Christine Pitts, a policy fellow at the University of Washingtons Center on Reinventing Public Education, which tracks COVID-19 policies in the countrys 100 largest school districts.

Pitts and other policy experts say they dont see signs that the opposition to COVID-19 vaccine requirements is morphing into generalized pressure on schools to get rid of longstanding requirements for other vaccines. Nevertheless, the anti-vaccine movement has gained strength during the pandemic. For example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.s anti-vaccine organization, Childrens Health Defense, doubled its donations in 2020, raising $6.8 million, while greatly expanding its reach over the past two years, according to a recent investigation by The Associated Press.

Were being very careful not to be intentionally overbearing and allowing school systems to take the lead in their individual jurisdictions, Dennis Schrader, Marylands health secretary, told The Baltimore Sun in September when he was asked about a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Were being very deferential to them. Were giving them our guidance and our best advice, but we dont want to be interventionists in terms of school policy.

Waiting for final approval

Last summer, the U.S. Justice Department issued a memo saying public and private entities, including schools, could make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory under the emergency authorization granted by the FDA.

California and Louisiana have said they wont enforce their COVID-19 vaccine requirements until next school year, and only if the FDA fully authorizes the vaccines for children. The FDA has fully authorized the Pfizer vaccine for those 16 and over, and granted emergency authorization for children between 5 and 16. The agency hasnt authorized, even on an emergency basis, either the Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccines for those under 18.

Washington, D.C., also has adopted a COVID-19 school vaccination requirement that will take effect in March, but again, only if the vaccine is fully authorized. In New York, Democrats in the legislature also have introduced measures that would institute a COVID-19 vaccine requirement after full FDA approval.

Some large districts, such as the Los Angeles Unified School District, have instituted vaccine mandates that arent dependent on the FDAs full approval. The Los Angeles district planned to shift unvaccinated students to online schooling beginning this month. But last month, faced with 30,000 unvaccinated students, it pushed back the deadline until the fall.

The Oakland, California, school district enacted a similar policy with a deadline of Jan. 1, which it recently extended until the end of this month.

Some other large districts, including New York City, the District of Columbia and some or all districts in California, Hawaii and Maryland, have imposed a vaccine requirement for students who want to participate in extracurricular activities or sports.

Ten states, Washington, D.C., and more than a dozen of the nations 100 largest school districts require all teachers and staff to be vaccinated, and hundreds of colleges and universities have mandatory COVID-19 vaccination requirements for students and staff.

Many parents who have not gotten their children vaccinated say the absence of full FDA authorization is a factor, since it suggests that the vaccines have not been fully vetted.

There are folks that have concerns that this was approved quickly and hasnt been around very long, so thats different from the measles vaccine or mumps or tetanus, vaccines that have been around for a long time, said Hemi Tewarson, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy.

According to an analysis by the American Academy of Pediatrics, as of late December, 53% of kids between 12 and 17 had been fully vaccinated, and 23% of those between 5 and 12 had received at least one dose. The Pfizer vaccine for the younger children received emergency authorization late in October; it was approved for older children in May.

Resistance in red states

While few states are adding COVID-19 vaccinations to their list of required school vaccinations, some are taking steps to block any requirements. According to tracking by the National Academy for State Health Policy, 17 states, most of them dominated by Republicans, have passed legislation banning COVID-19 vaccine requirements for school attendance.

Oklahoma state Sen. Rob Standridge, a Republican, sponsored the measure that became law in his state last year.

Standridge said that while he doesnt consider himself anti-vaccine, he regards vaccine mandates as discriminatory. The concern for me is that they were going to target the unvaccinated, said Standridge, who is a pharmacist.

He cited several reasons for opposing a student COVID-19 vaccine requirement, including reports that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were followed by higher-than-expected incidents of temporary myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, in males between 16 and 29. (The researchers noted that COVID-19 is much more likely to cause heart problems than the vaccinations.)

He also noted that children have generally had a milder experience with COVID-19 than adults. Consequently, he said he doesnt feel the government should be forcing parents to vaccinate their children against COVID-19.

Philosophically and as health professional, these types of medical decisions should be left up to parents for their children, he said. Still, Standridge said hes not interested in rolling back other school vaccine requirements.

New Hampshire state Rep. Timothy Lang Sr., also a Republican, sponsored a new law that prevents any public facility, including prisons, government offices, universities and public schools, from requiring a COVID-19 vaccine. However, the law does contain a provision that would allow the state commissioner of Health and Human Services to add the COVID-19 shots to the list of mandatory K-12 inoculations.

Lang, too, said, the decision whether to inoculate should be up to individuals, not government.

This really comes down to body autonomy, Lang said, though he added that people who choose not to be vaccinated should be even more scrupulous about observing masking and social distancing measures.

New Hampshire is among the 44 states that allow parents to opt out of school vaccinations for religious reasons or personal beliefs. Lang noted that such requests typically are granted, even in the case of infectious diseases such as measles and mumps. But he fears that would not be the case with a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

In Louisiana, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards in November imposed a school COVID-19 vaccine requirement, over the objections of a legislative panel. The policy will go into effect next fall, assuming the FDA has granted full authorization.

It is worth noting, Edwards wrote to legislators, that while many of the diseases on the public health immunization schedule were once both rampant and deadly, they are no longer serious risks for school age children in Louisiana. This is true because almost everyone was vaccinated against these diseases, many as a condition for attending elementary school.

The history of one of those diseases, polio, suggests that it may be several years before schools across the country mandate a COVID-19 vaccine.

As of late December, COVID-19 had killed 678 children, according the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  only 0.08% of the total U.S. deaths. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, fewer than 1.7% of child COVID-19 cases have resulted in hospitalization and fewer than 0.03% have ended in death.

By contrast, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, before the introduction of the polio vaccine, most of the roughly 35,000 Americans disabled each year by the dreaded disease were children. In the summer, when the virus seemed to peak, many terrified parents were scared to let their kids go to pools, beaches, movie theaters or other community gathering spots.

The polio vaccine was widely hailed as a scientific miracle, and many parents rushed to have their children inoculated as soon as it became available. And yet by 1963, only 20 states plus the District of Columbia had mandated that children get the polio vaccine, or any other vaccine, to attend school.

2022 The Pew Charitable Trusts. Visit at stateline.org.
Gun deaths continue rising trend in America's cities

A temporary falloff in the number of Americans who kill themselves and others with guns is over, newly released U.S. government data show.

It noted that guns were involved in 75% of all homicides and 91% of homicides involving youths between 2018 and 2019 -- a rate basically unchanged from 2016.

But those new numbers represent a significant and troubling uptick from a decade before, said Kegler, from the CDC's Division of Injury Prevention.

Read more:

COVID-19 vaccination linked to small changes in menstrual cycle length

COVID-19 vaccination is associated with a small change in menstrual cycle length, but not in menses length, according to a study published online Jan. 5 in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Alison Edelman, M.D., M.P.H., from the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, and colleagues prospectively tracked menstrual cycle data among U.S. residents aged 18 to 45 years with normal cycle lengths (24 to 38 days) for three consecutive cycles before the first vaccine dose and three additional cycles following the first dose (including the vaccination cycle), or for six cycles over a similar time period among unvaccinated individuals. The mean within-individual change in cycle and menses length was calculated among 3,959 individuals (2,403 vaccinated and 1,556 unvaccinated).

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Zoo study finds animal DNA floating in the air

Sampling the air from local zoos, two teams of researchers collected enough DNA to identify the animals nearby. They say their study could potentially become a valuable, noninvasive tool to track biodiversity.

Capturing airborne environmental DNA from vertebrates makes it possible for us to detect even animals that we cannot see are there, said researcher Kristine Bohmann, head of the team at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

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Children's behavior is reportedly worse at home during remote learning

Parents report that their children's health at home is worse during remote learning than with in-person learning, according to a research letter published online Jan. 10 in JAMA Pediatrics.

Emily C. Hanno, Ph.D., from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and colleagues administered online surveys four times to 405 parents of children in Massachusetts from Jan. 4 to May 23, 2021.

Parents indicated their child's current learning format in each wave and then reported their child's behavioral health on three measures: general behavioral health in the last month; number of maladaptive behavioral changes in the previous month; and frequency of dysregulated behaviors. Overall, 348 parents reported on 356 children's behaviors in at least one of the surveys.

Read more:

Exercise can save your brain, scientists say

Exercise helps you stay fit, hale and hearty, and researchers say it may also help you stave off dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Now they have a better understanding of the hidden benefits that aid the brain.

Older folks who are more physically active have higher levels of a protein that promotes better communication between the brain's synapses, a new study reports.

Read more:
MONDAY, Jan. 10, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- It's a COVID phenomenon that had, until now, gone relatively unnoticed: You can be infected with COVID-19 and the flu at the same time.

Thanks to the internet, it even has a name -- "flurona." And it will likely happen much more often this particular winter, as the flu season kicks into gear and the highly contagious Omicron variant continues to surge.

While the idea of battling both the flu and COVID-19 might sound terrifying, the same measures used to prevent the spread of COVID-19 also work against the flu, including masking and social distancing. And crucially, there are vaccines available for both viruses. The vaccines guard against severe infection, even if you are unlucky enough to catch flurona.

Flurona is not a distinct disease or a new variant, said Dr. Allison Messina, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins All Childrens Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla. The proper term is "co-infection," which describes when a patient is diagnosed with more than one pathogen simultaneously.

Co-infections are more common than you might think. You can catch two, three or more viruses simultaneously, including COVID-19. "Probably everyone has had a co-infection at some point," Messina said.

Long before the recent wave of flurona coverage, doctors were encountering all different types of COVID-19 co-infections. In a Journal of the American Medical Association study published in April 2020, researchers identified COVID-19 patients who were co-infected with viruses including rhinovirus and enterovirus (which are often the culprits behind the common cold), adenovirus (which can cause cold or flu-like symptoms), and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which can cause severe disease in young children and older adults.

Cases of flurona have also been reported throughout the pandemic, even as early as February 2020, when a man in Queens, N.Y. tested positive for the flu and COVID-19. Widespread awareness of the phenomenon started to pick up last week, after the Times of Israel announced that a pregnant woman came down with a co-infection that the publication dubbed flurona. Other cases have been reported in various parts of the United States, including Houston, Florida and Los Angeles.

Still uncommon

For the time being, co-infection with COVID-19 and influenza is rare, and it will likely remain that way if flu activity continues to be suppressed.

During the past two years, the United States and much of the rest of the world have experienced historically low influenza levels. The flu seemed to be kept at bay by all the COVID precautions used during the pandemic, such as lockdowns, masking and social distancing.

"All of those things that you're doing to prevent yourself from getting COVID are probably the same things you can do to prevent flu as well," Messina said.

As social distancing measures relaxed in the fall of 2021, many experts feared the flu season would return with a vengeance, considering that flu vaccinations were down and the general population had reduced immunity to the virus.

While the flu season has so far been less severe than many feared, that could quickly and easily change.

"In most years, we typically see flu peak kind of anywhere between November, December, and into January and February, so I don't think that we can say yet how bad the flu season is going to be," Messina said. "It still could get worse."

Flurona will likely become a more common occurrence if it does, said Dr. Soniya Gandhi, infectious disease specialist and associate chief medical officer at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.

"If we start to see a lot more flu in the community, it's possible that we could start to see co-infections if COVID is still very widespread," Gandhi said.

But some flurona cases may fly under the radar. As respiratory viruses, COVID-19 and influenza tend to cause similar symptoms. It would be challenging to know that you have a co-infection without being tested for both, and a health care provider typically conducts flu tests. Patients with a mild COVID-19 infection who aren't admitted to a hospital may never find out if they had a case of flurona.

Future uncertain

Due to the low level of flu activity, too few cases of flurona have been studied to grasp its potential effects on patients. But experts seem to agree that having COVID-19 and influenza together is not ideal.

"Generally speaking, being co-infected with two potentially fatal respiratory pathogens is never a good thing," Gandhi said. "I think theoretically you can imagine if your immune system is trying to fight off two serious infections, that's going to be taxing."

Influenza and COVID-19 are respiratory viruses that attack the same region of the body: the nose, throat and lungs. Also, patients with compromised immune systems or underlying medical conditions are more susceptible to severe infections with both viruses.

"What we worry about with coronavirus and flu is that they both have the potential to be more serious viruses than some of the other viruses we see. Will that spur more severe disease? I think the jury is still out on that, but that's the fear," Messina said.

Fortunately, there are treatments available for both viruses. To avoid the possibility of flurona altogether, or to blunt its potential harms, vaccines make all the difference, according to Messina.

"Everybody over the age of 6 months is eligible to get their flu vaccine. And, of course, kids over the age of 5 can be vaccinated for coronavirus as well," Messina said. "So, I think the best thing you can do to try to avoid that from happening is to be up to date on both of those vaccines."

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on influenza and COVID-19.

SOURCES: Soniya Gandhi, MD, vice president, medical affairs, and associate chief medical officer, Cedars-Sinai, Los Angeles; Allison Messina, MD, chief, pediatric infectious diseases, Johns Hopkins All Childrens Hospital, St. Petersburg, Fla.

Originally published on consumer.healthday.com, part of the TownNews Content Exchange.
UPDATED to specify that his charge was amended to involuntary manslaughter

TROY, Mo.  A felon paroled last summer in an involuntary manslaughter case was back in jail Monday after authorities say he slashed the throat of a man who staggered into the sheriffs office for help.

Lincoln County prosecutor Michael Wood charged Timothy Merle Wolf Jr., 42, with first-degree assault in Saturdays attack.

The prosecutor told the Post-Dispatch he was shocked that the state had granted Wolf parole 4  years into a 13-year sentence for three felonies. Wolf was convicted of hitting his girlfriend in the head, causing her death, in 2017 in St. Charles County. The 13 years includes convictions for drugs and stealing.

Wood, the Lincoln County prosecutor, said in a message to the Post-Dispatch that the girlfriends death in St. Charles County seemed pretty violent. Wood said he cant speak to why the Missouri Parole Board makes the decisions it does.

Maybe theyre way more lenient these days, Wood said.

No one from the state Probation and Parole Board was available Monday to explain the decision.

Wolf was held on the assault charge Monday at the Lincoln County Jail. His bail is set at $1 million cash. He lives in the first block of Robin Hood Drive, where the mans throat was slashed. Court records Monday did not list an attorney for Wolf.

The prosecutor said the attack appears to be drug-related and that Wolf and his 41-year-old victim had been using drugs throughout the day.

After the attack Saturday, the victim, bleeding profusely, managed to drive to the Lincoln County sheriffs office about 7 miles away and walk into the lobby for help.

Deputies Steve Pinkerton and Chris Walter gave first aid to the man, said Sheriff Rick Harrell. The victim gave them crucial detail about who stabbed him and where, police said.

The victim has undergone surgery for his injuries and was stable.

Robin Hood Drive is east of Highway J in Troy. Municipal officers had been called to the home and were there about the same time the victim walked into the sheriffs office. Troy police havent said precisely why they were called there. Once the victim in the sheriffs lobby relayed who had hurt him, police at the home arrested Wolf.

Wolf was described as a methamphetamine and steroid user after the death of his girlfriend, 39-year-old Marivic Basas, in St. Charles County. She died on Jan. 6, 2017. Police said Wolf hit her in the head at a home on Hickory Lane near OFallon, Missouri. Authorities originally charged Wolf with second-degree murder but amended the charge to involuntary manslaughter.

Wolf entered an Alford plea, which means he admitted no guilt but agreed that prosecutors had sufficient evidence to get a conviction. He received a seven-year prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter, said Corrections Department spokeswoman Karen Pojmann. Missouri law defines involuntary manslaughter as recklessly causing the death of another person.

Even though he was paroled after about three years in prison, Pojmann said Wolf actually had been behind bars longer, spending 390 days in jail before coming to prison. Thats why, she said, the total time locked up amounts to about 4  years.

The Missouri Department of Corrections said he was sentenced to 13 years total for three cases combined: manslaughter, drug possession and stealing. He was in prison from April 2018 until he was paroled in June 2021. Wolfs parole goes until 2024 in the manslaughter and stealing cases, and until 2030 on the drug case.

Wolf and Basas had a volatile relationship, police said, and the teenage son of Basas had heard yelling coming from the bedroom and a loud thump the day she died.

The Parole Board wouldnt talk to a reporter Monday, referring questions to Pojmann, the Corrections Department spokeswoman. But Pojmann said the seven-member Parole Board, whose meetings are closed to the public, operates independently from the Department of Corrections, so she cant speak for the board to explain its decisions.

Shake off your afternoon slump with the oft-shared and offbeat news of the day, hand-brewed by our online news editors. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
MADISON, Wis.  Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, one of former President Donald Trumps biggest backers, announced Sunday that he will seek reelection in the battleground state, breaking his promise not to seek a third term.

Johnson announced his decision via email two days after a pair of Republicans with knowledge of his decision told The Associated Press that he was close to launching a bid. Johnson over the past year has been a leading voice in downplaying the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and the coronavirus pandemic, in addition to remaining a vocal Trump supporter.

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The race is sure to be one of the most hotly contested in the country next year in purple Wisconsin. President Joe Biden won the state by fewer than 21,000 votes in 2020 after a similarly narrow win by Trump in 2016. Johnson won by nearly 5 points in 2010, his first race for office, and then by just over 3 points in 2016. Both times he defeated Democrat Russ Feingold.

Johnsons announcement that he will run again came a day after Republican Sen. John Thune, of South Dakota, said he would seek a fourth term. No other Senate retirements are likely beyond the five Republicans and one Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who have already announced plans to step down.

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Johnson, 66, had long said his preference was to serve just two terms and pledged in 2016 not to run a third time.

But Johnson rescinded the pledge in the lead-up to announcing his reelection bid, saying circumstances have changed after Democrats won the White House and control of Congress.

Much as Id like to ease into a quiet retirement, I dont feel I should, Johnson wrote in an editorial announcing his reelection bid. He said the response to the coronavirus pandemic also played a part in his decision to run again.

Johnson, who contracted COVID-19 in October 2020 and is not vaccinated, has cast doubt over the efficacy of vaccines and pushed for unproven treatments. Just last week, Johnson on conservative talk radio said, Why do we think that we can create something better than God in terms of combating disease? Why do we assume that the bodys natural immune system isnt the marvel that it really is?

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., speaks at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on March 3, 2021. (Greg Nash/AP)

Johnson has espoused conspiracy theories related to last years Capitol raid that attempted to shift blame for what happened away from Trump supporters.

Johnson has since downplayed the violence, saying it didnt seem like an armed insurrection to me.

Just before the U.S. Capitol was stormed a year ago, Johnson objected to counting the Electoral College votes from Arizona. Last year, he told Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature that they should take over control of federal elections. Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told the AP on Friday that there is zero chance of the Legislature taking over the awarding of the states 10 presidential elector votes in 2024.

Johnson said he did not make the decision to run again lightly.

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Having already experienced a growing level of vitriol and false attacks, I certainly dont expect better treatment in the future, he said in his announcement.

Johnson said he never voted with reelection in mind.

An extension of that promise is that I dont conduct myself worrying about re-election, he wrote. When re-election is not your primary motivation, those are easy promises to keep -- and I have faithfully done so.

Johnsons opponent wont be known this time until after an Aug. 9 primary. Several high-profile and well-funded Democrats are running, including Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is seeking to become the states first Black senator; Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry; state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski and Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson.

The only people celebrating Ron Johnsons announcement are his donors and the corporate special interest groups hes bailed out time and time again, Barnes said in a statement. Lets get to work and retire this failed senator.

Barnes, Godlewski, Nelson and other Democrats faulted Johnson for breaking his promise to serve only two terms.

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Johnsons decision also has ripple effects on Wisconsins governors race. Kevin Nicholson, a former Marine who ran for U.S. Senate and lost in the GOP primary in 2018, has said he would run for governor if Johnson sought reelection.

Nicholson had been focused on running for Senate. His website urges supporters to help Kevin take back Washington. In a series of tweets Sunday, Nicholson said it was no secret he was mulling a run for governor and would announce a decision soon.

Earlier this week, former U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy bowed out of running for Senate or governor.

History is on Johnsons side in the midterm election. The party that does not hold the White House generally gains seats in midterm congressional elections. Former President Barack Obamas Democratic Party, for example, lost 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate in 2010.

Johnson, who rose out of the tea party movement in 2010, has long been aligned with Trumps hardline policies and politics. The two have remained close following Trumps defeat, with Trump in April endorsing Johnson for a third term and encouraging him to run.
A woman from Sullivan pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor charge in Washington Monday and admitted entering the Capitol and taking signs during the Capitol insurrection.

Emily E. Hernandez, 22, will now also be subject to a range of new restrictions on her behavior after her involvement in a Jan. 5 accident in which the Missouri Highway Patrol said she was drunk and driving the wrong way on Interstate 44 when she hit and killed a woman.

In a court hearing held by video, Hernandez pleaded guilty to entering and remaining in a restricted building.

She admitted traveling to Washington with her uncle, William Bill Merry and his friend, Paul Scott Westover, of Lake Saint Louis. While there, they attended a Stop the Steal rally that pushed false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

The three then crossed through police barricades that had been breached by others and entered the Capitol about 2:20 p.m., Hernandez admitted. While in House Speaker Nancy Pelosis suite of offices, Hernandez took a piece of a broken sign bearing Pelosis name.

Hernandez later took a large red Keep Off Fence sign and a smaller Please Do Not Touch sign. The three left through a broken window in the building.

A smiling, flag-wrapped Hernandez was later photographed with the Pelosi sign outside the Capitol. Hernandez and her companions left at 2:55 p.m. and drove overnight to return to the St. Louis area.

After she was charged, Hernandez told Bill McClellan of the Post-Dispatch that she is not interested in politics and simply accepted the invitation to accompany her uncle and his friend to Washington.

Merry and Westover have also pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor, Merry to theft of government property and Westover to demonstrating in the Capitol.

The maximum sentence for the misdemeanor is a year in jail, although recommended guidelines call for six months or less. At her sentencing in March, Hernandez also will have to pay $500 toward repairing damage to the Capitol.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg on Monday agreed with prosecutors and pre-trial services officers, who recommended mental health evaluation and treatment and drug and alcohol testing and treatment. Hernandez is banned from driving, drinking and possessing firearms. She also has to turn over her passport.

The new restrictions follow a crash Wednesday night in Franklin County.

The Missouri Highway Patrol said Hernandez was driving west in the eastbound lanes of Interstate 44 just after 7 p.m. in a 2014 Volkswagen Passat when she hit a 2019 Buick Enclave driven by Ryan E. Wilson, 36, of St. Clair. Ryan Wilson was seriously injured. Wilsons wife, Victoria N. Wilson, 32, was killed.

Hernandez was issued a citation Wednesday night at the hospital for two felonies: driving while intoxicated resulting in death and driving while intoxicated resulting in injury. Troopers have said they will seek charges from the Franklin County prosecutors office.

Ethan Corlija, one of Hernandezs lawyers, said Monday that no charges have been filed. He said officials may also seek to revoke her license.

Hernandez needed surgery to close a head wound, Corlija said last week. He said the crash was not intentional.

Victoria Wilson was the mother of two boys, ages 15 and 10. She was a home health care aide who worked primarily with people with disabilities.

The couple was heading home from an early anniversary celebration when Victoria Wilson died. In an interview last week, Victoria Wilsons mother, Tonie Donaldson, blasted the fact that Hernandez had been out of jail at the time of the crash.

With what she did to the government, why is she still walking the street? she asked.

Donaldson said the family has set up a GoFundMe account to help cover funeral expenses.

Woman tied to Capitol riots was wrong-way driver in fatal crash in Franklin County Emily E. Hernandez, scheduled to plead guilty Monday for her role in the riots, has been arrested on suspicion of DWI for the fatal wreck Wednesday.

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JEFFERSON CITY  Lamar Johnson, a St. Louis man imprisoned for a 1994 murder in the Dutchtown neighborhood, may be headed back to trial this year.

Johnson, 47, has been behind bars for more than a quarter century but maintains he did not kill 25-year-old Marcus Boyd on the front porch of a home in Dutchtown. His efforts to prove his innocence and be released have been thwarted through numerous appeals.

Cole County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Green on Monday evaluated the states motion for a summary judgment, a response to Johnsons petition to overturn his conviction, which would effectively deny Johnson this latest bid for freedom. Though Green did not issue a ruling, he said he was unlikely to grant the states motion, discussing the possible length of a trial as well as potential dates this summer.

Johnsons case caught the attention of the Midwest Innocence Project, which is currently involved in Johnsons legal representation. In 2019, it was brought to St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner.

Gardners subsequent yearlong inquiry with her newly formed Conviction Integrity Unit uncovered, she wrote in court filings, evidence of government misconduct, perjured testimony, concealed exculpatory and impeachment evidence that is clearly material, and evidence of innocence.

Gardner previously sought a new trial for Johnson in collaboration with his lawyers at the Midwest Innocence Project, but the trial was denied based on limitations to a prosecutors power to overturn a conviction. Since that attempt, the Legislature passed a law giving prosecuting attorneys in the jurisdiction of the original crime the power to file a motion to vacate wrongful convictions. Last year, Kevin Strickland, who spent 43 years in prison, was the first person to use this law to seek a new evidentiary hearing and was released.

Johnsons latest bid is taking another route: The motions filed by his lawyers will not be assessed by the prosecuting attorney in St. Louis, where the crime occurred, but in Cole County where Johnson is incarcerated.

In court filings, Johnsons attorneys told Judge Green that the case is about an innocent man, a grossly unfair trial and the burial of exculpatory evidence that would have destroyed the States case.

Lamar Johnson did not kill Marcus Boyd and had nothing to do with his death. In the quarter-century since Johnson was wrongly convicted, the evidence of his innocence has steadily mounted while the evidence of guilt has totally collapsed, the filing notes.

And yet today he will serve his 9,744th day in a Missouri prison. Johnson now comes to this Court, with evidence in hand, asking for an end to this injustice, the attorneys add.

Johnson received a life sentence in 1995. The other suspect, Phil Campbell, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge in 1996 in exchange for a seven-year prison term.

The only eyewitness, who said Johnson shot Boyd, recanted his identification in 2003. The witness identification was tainted by allegations of police coercion, and Gardners investigation uncovered undisclosed payments totaling over $4,000 and favors to the witness by police.

Questions have also been raised about the testimony of a jailhouse informant, who wrote a letter to assistant prosecutor Dwight Warren directing racially based animus at Johnson. This evidence was also not disclosed.

The attorneys said no physical evidence connected Johnson to the crime and he was with three other people more than 3 miles away when Boyd was shot on a poorly lit porch by two men wearing black masks.

Johnson did not testify at his 1995 trial. Johnsons then-girlfriend testified he spent the evening with her and friends at a home at 3907 Lafayette Avenue  about 3 miles from the scene of the homicide at 3910 Louisiana Avenue. She said Johnson left the house on Lafayette around 9 p.m. for about five minutes to meet someone at a nearby liquor store. She acknowledged on cross-examination he could have been gone longer but no more than 10 minutes.

The killers, Phillip Campbell and James Howard, have both credibly confessed  repeatedly  over the course of more than two decades. Their confessions are supported by the physical evidence and by other witnesses at the scene, the filing added.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitts office urged Green to deny Johnsons bid for freedom, saying evidence shows Johnsons involvement in the murder was possible.

Johnsons alibi was far from rock-solid, Assistant Attorney General Patrick Logan wrote in a lengthy brief.

Johnsons push for freedom has generated widespread attention, with nearly 200 prosecutors, legal scholars and retired judges across Missouri and the nation filing court briefs in his previous appeals and weighing in on the limits of prosecutorial power to overturn convictions.

Activists have also latched onto the case, pushing for the firing of the original investigations lead detective Joseph Nickerson.

Johnson has lost state and federal appeals three times, but the trajectory of this latest bid may be set to go farther than prior attempts.

Green is set to rule on the motions in late February, with the likely trial to be set further into the year.

Kurt Erickson of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

Originally posted at 5 p.m. Monday, Jan. 10.

Grace Zokovitch gzokovitch@post-dispatch.com
JEFFERSON CITY  Republicans on Monday raised doubts about pursuing a congressional map that eliminates one of two Democratic districts in Missouri despite a push to do so by many in the party.

GOP members of the House Redistricting Committee questioned the concept in response to comments by Susan Klein, executive director of Missouri Right to Life, who said Republicans should pursue a 7-1 map comprised of seven Republicans and one Democrat.

Weve seen Missouri grow more conservative and I believe that right now is the time to fight for a 7-1 map, Klein told the House Redistricting Committee.

But Rep. Dan Shaul, chairman of the panel who has proposed a map that likely maintains the status quo in Missouris U.S. House delegation  six Republicans and two Democrats  said he doubted a 7-1 map could pass the Senate.

The Imperial Republican also raised concerns about a possible court challenge.

Is it worth the risk for the reward? Shaul asked.

Rep. Travis Fitzwater, R-Holts Summit, said he would love a 7-1 map but noted the GOP needed to place an emergency clause on the draft that is approved for it to take effect immediately, before the Aug. 2 primaries.

Republicans currently lack the votes to place an emergency clause on legislation by themselves, meaning Democratic support would be required.

If we dont get the emergency clause attached to this bill, if it were a 7-1 map, how does that play out? Fitzwater asked. Because the map wouldnt go into effect until Aug. 28, which is after the primary.

Klein said Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, should call a special legislative session, to run concurrently with the regular legislative session, so that the 7-1 map can be approved.

It is possible to do this, Klein said. Republicans across this state are looking to the leaders that we put in place to make this happen.

Rep. Shamed Dogan, R-Ballwin, said to Klein every single thing that youve been talking about is conflating pro-life with Republican and I have a problem with that.

The pro-life movement and the pro-life cause is too important to just say that its a partisan issue, he said.

Shouldnt we try and change hearts and minds (among Democrats)? Dogan asked.

Rep. Ben Baker, a Neosho Republican and one of the most conservative members of the GOP caucus, also questioned the 7-1 approach.

Im all for the cause when it comes to pro-life, Baker said. If this goes to the courts, what could the result be for the cause?

I think in just about every scenario that Ive tried to play out in my mind of a 7-1 map, it seems to me that we lose, and we could be in a worse situation for the cause, he said.

The discussion occurred as Shaul was presenting his 6-2 map to the committee on Monday.

Shaul introduced the plan Dec. 30 with his Senate counterpart, Sen. Mike Bernskoetter, R-Jefferson City, who is leading the upper chambers redistricting efforts.

It preserves the 1st District, currently represented by Rep. Cori Bush, D-St. Louis, and the 5th District, by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Kansas City, for the Democrats.

The map is drawn to achieve the greatest amount of consensus possible, Bernskoetter said last month, emphasizing the great care that went into drawing a map we were confident could survive legislative, judicial and public scrutiny.

Republican hard-liners blasted the draft, calling for a 7-1 map that torpedoes Cleavers district.

Democrats, satisfied that Cleavers Democratic district is intact under Shauls plan, have focused on tinkering with the 2nd Congressional District, held by Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Ballwin, to maximize the partys chances there over the next decade.

House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, D-Springfield, introduced her own draft map last week that she said makes the 2nd more competitive than under the GOP proposal.

It also adjusts the 1st so that it takes in parts of St. Charles rather than the Democratic precincts in mid and south St. Louis County envisioned in the GOP proposal.

Rep. LaKeySha Bosley, D-St. Louis, on Monday questioned the best way to keep the 1st a majority-minority district for the next decade. The Republican plan extends the 1st to cover parts of St. Louis County such as Webster Groves, which votes Democratic but is majority white.

What do we do to make sure 10 years from now that that still holds  that minority-majority truth? Bosley asked.

I think this will stay that way, Shaul said.

Shaul said the committee planned to vote on his map Wednesday morning.

The legislation will then move to the House Rules Committee before advancing to the House floor for debate.

The legislation is House Bill 2117.

Originally posted at 4:20 p.m. Monday, Jan. 10.

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ST. LOUIS  Alderman Heather Navarro is resigning to take a job as director of a new regional organization working to respond to climate change.

Navarro is leaving the post shes held since mid-2017 to avoid a potential conflict of interest with her new position with the Midwest Climate Collaborative.

That could occur, she said, because the collaborative is closely associated with Washington University, and she will be a university employee.

The university, she pointed out, is a major institution in the 28th Ward she represents at City Hall and often is involved in development and other issues in the ward.

As the alderperson, I have a duty to my constituents to advocate on their behalf, said Navarro, whose last day in office will be Jan. 24.

Navarro said her decision to leave has nothing to do with the recently passed ward redistricting bill, which cuts the number of wards to 14 from 28 as required by a city charter amendment approved by voters in 2012.

If this opportunity had not come along, I would still be preparing to run for reelection next year, she said.

As with many other aldermen, the redistricting plan created a potential reelection fight for Navarro against a fellow incumbent. The plan put both Navarro and Alderman Shameem Clark Hubbard, of the current 26th Ward, in a newly reconfigured 10th Ward.

Navarro has held the 28th Ward post since July 2017, when she was chosen in a special election to succeed Lyda Krewson, who became mayor a few months earlier. Navarro was reelected to a four-year term in 2019.

Gary Stoff, a director with the city Election Board, said the boards attorney is researching whether and how a special election would be held to pick someone to fill the last year in Navarros term. Navarro said the city counselors office also is looking into the issue.

Under the 2012 charter amendment, the recently drawn boundaries for the new 14 wards went into effect this year, but aldermen to represent them wont be elected until April 2023.

That means 28 ward aldermen will continue to serve this year but only 14 wards legally exist.

Meanwhile, Aldermanic President Lewis Reed has said the board will operate this year with the 28 continuing to represent their old areas.

Navarro, a former executive director of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, has been active on environmental issues on the board.

She sponsored a successful bill to require new construction in the city to be compatible with hosting rooftop solar energy arrays. She also passed measures requiring some new construction and major building rehabs to include outlets that accommodate electric-car charging stations.

Last year, Navarro was campaign manager for Alderman Cara Spencers unsuccessful mayoral bid.

Originally posted at 3 p.m. Monday, Jan. 10.

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ST. LOUIS  Calls to a human trafficking hotline are on the rise in Missouri, Illinois and the U.S., according to a recent report by the nonprofit that runs the hotline.

The Washington-based anti-trafficking group Polaris said the number of calls and cases has risen steadily in the two states and the nation over five years, an increase particularly pronounced in Missouri, according to the data.

Polaris National Hotline for Human Trafficking fields sex- and labor-trafficking hotline complaints via phone, email and online forms, then identifies substantiated complaints as individual cases. In its most recent report, which charts data through 2020, the nonprofit found that complaints rose again across the country, though cases dipped for the first time in years. Complaints in Illinois also rose, and cases also dipped.

But in Missouri, complaints have skyrocketed, almost doubling in two years, to 750 in 2020. And identified cases continued to rise, too, hitting 260, a rise of more than half again from two years prior.

Officials said that work by nonprofits, social service providers and law enforcement has helped more people recognize signs of trafficking when they see them, which likely prompted more calls to the hotline.

Theres a more concentrated effort on this topic, and so were able to address the tips that come through the hotline, said U.S. Assistant District Attorney Dianna Collins, who works in the Eastern District of Missouri, based in St. Louis. And its been in the news more because of us actually prosecuting these cases.

Calls to the national hotline rose to 51,667 in 2020, more than double that of five years prior. And the number of cases nearly doubled, to 10,583.

Women represented more than 80% of identified victims, and most of the complaints were for sex trafficking, as opposed to labor trafficking.

Illinois was eighth in the nation for calls to the hotline, Missouri 13th. The largest percentage of calls in the U.S. and in Missouri came from the pornography industry. In Illinois, calls came largely from prostitution, plus illicit spas or massage businesses.

But Polaris also found a striking uptick in online sex trafficking during the pandemic: Complaints involving online situations increased by more than 45%. The report compared two six-month periods prior to shelter-in-place orders to one after the orders took effect. In the same time frame, traditional forms of commercial sex trafficking, such as street-based prostitution, dropped by about 30%, per the report.

Sex trafficking situations involving online exploitation reported to the Trafficking Hotline increased from around 400 situations in both 6-month periods before the pandemic to more than 600 during the first 6 months of the pandemic, the report said.

The pandemic created a perfect storm of circumstances for online child exploitation, said Cindy Malott, director of the U.S. Safe program for Crisis Aid International, dedicated to helping sex trafficking victims find a way out of the life. Malott also works with the Eastern District of Missouri Human Trafficking Task Force, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice. The task force is led by Collins office, the St. Louis County Police Department and the International Institute.

Part of Malotts work is preventing children from being groomed into trafficking in the first place. Much of the grooming process now can and does happen online, she said.

More adults were home and online, and more children were, too, Malott said. Kids would log on to find connection while isolated during shutdowns. There, she said, predators masquerading as peers would make friends, offer incentives, such as free advances to the next level of a game, then move the conversation to another platform.

And then you see the sales or the pictures, Malott said. So its either child exploitation by pornography or by trying to meet with them to abuse them or for trafficking, she said.

The National Hotline for Human Trafficking is the most complete data available, said Linda McQuary, director of the Missouri Coalition Against Trafficking and Exploitation, based in St. Louis. But McQuary wants to work with the many agencies that serve victims  from nonprofits to police departments  to create a database that tracks victims, demographics and services provided.

McQuary said such a system could help train law enforcement to recognize trafficking and code it as such in the data.

It will give us a much better perspective of whats happening across the state, McQuary said. So many people reach out for supportive services and want to get out.

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Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz rarely earns credit from this newspaper for anything he says or does, but he was 100% correct in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection when he labeled it a despicable act of domestic terrorism. On last weeks anniversary of the insurrection, Cruz reiterated his reference to terrorism  a word that conjures images of 9/11 hijackers and bombers. Does the comparison accurately apply to the insurrection?

Under U.S. law, it absolutely does. But Tucker Carlson of Fox News took offense at the word choice and denounced Cruz. Instead of standing up for his beliefs and defending the law, Cruz buckled. He asked to appear on Carlsons show so he could publicly apologize for what he termed his sloppy and frankly dumb language.

The sheepish and cowardly retreat by Cruz is emblematic of the GOP leaderships wholesale abandonment of integrity. Cruz is a Harvard-educated lawyer. He knows how to read laws as well as write them. So how could he have possibly overlooked 18 U.S. Code Section 2331, which defines domestic terrorism as activities by non-foreign actors that involve acts dangerous to human life that violate state of federal criminal laws and appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction.

The Jan. 6 attack met all the criteria under that definition. But as has been so painfully obvious since the insurrection, the law doesnt matter when it comes to Republican leaders standing up to former President Donald Trump and his supporters. Even when a service was held on the steps of the Capitol last week to honor those killed in the attack, Republicans refused to attend except for Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney  a conservatives conservative who stated that he was deeply disappointed we dont have better leadership in the Republican Party to restore the Constitution.

Carlson incorrectly told his viewers that this was not terrorism, speaking with the pseudo-intellectual confidence that somehow has convinced viewers that he actually knows what hes talking about. When Cruz made his first attempt to walk back his statement, Carlson interrupted, You told that lie on purpose, and Im wondering why you did. Its worth noting that, in a 2020 slander lawsuit against Carlson, a federal judge ruled that on his show, Carlson is not stating actual facts about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in exaggeration and non-literal commentary. In other words, he is a liar.

Instead of going on Carlsons show to defend the law, the facts and the foundations of American democracy, Cruz begged forgiveness for having offended Carlson and the viewers who believe his lies. George Orwell would have been mightily impressed.
Concerned about the possibility of another election in which mail ballots arrive after the deadline and go uncounted, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Broward Elections Supervisor Joe Scott on Monday inspected the big mail processing center that handles Browards mail.

The issue burst into public attention in November when the Broward-Palm Beach County special Democratic primary election for Congress was decided by five votes  after almost 300 mail ballots arrived late and were disqualified.

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After their tour, Wasserman Schultz and Scott reported they were somewhat satisfied.

The police didnt meet me at the front door this time, so that was comforting, Wasserman Schultz said. Mr. Scott and I were allowed into the facility, and we had an opportunity to not only tour the facility, the entire facility, but particularly focus on the process that the U.S. Postal Service goes through when processing mail-in ballots. We had a chance to really dig fairly deep.

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[ RELATED: Uncounted vote-by-mail ballots could have changed outcome in ultra-close South Florida congressional contest ]

It wasnt a surprise visit, however. The tour was arranged about a week in advance with the Postal Service, which has previously blocked both from getting inside the Royal Palm Processing and Distribution Center.

Browards mail is handled by the Royal Palm center in Opa-locka. In 2012, as part of a nationwide cost cutting move, the Postal Service closed the mail processing centers in Fort Lauderdale and Pembroke Pines and shifted the work of sorting Browards mail to Miami-Dade County.

Mail ballot timing

Timely handling of mail ballots  long known to election insiders  has become a more critical issue.

Voting by mail has grown in popularity after its widespread use was authorized by Florida two decades ago. Its use skyrocketed in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic convinced more people than ever to vote from home.

Mail service has slowed in the last two years, especially since the June 2020 appointment of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was a supporter of former President Donald Trump. DeJoy remains in office, and on Oct. 1 put in place his plan to save money by lengthening times for mail delivery and cutting post office hours.

Florida has a strict deadline for mail ballots. They must be in the hands of county supervisors of elections offices at 7 p.m. on Election Day, or they wont be counted. Postmarks dont count.

[ RELATED: Tuesday is unusual January Election Day in Broward and Palm Beach counties ]

The confluence of those factors came together during the Nov. 2, 2021, special primary election to pick candidates to compete to replace the late U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings in the Broward-Palm Beach county 20th congressional district.

A total of 297 mail ballots  287 of them from Broward County voters  were postmarked on or before Monday, Nov. 1, but didnt arrive at the supervisors of elections office until after Election Day, Nov. 2. Under Florida law, they werent counted.

Obviously this was a serious problem, Wasserman Schultz said. Something happened, and we were asking what steps theyve taken to prevent a repeat.

Wasserman Schultz and Scott said Postal Service officials they met with during the tour didnt agree that anything went wrong in November, at least from the perspective of the Postal Service.

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Broward Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-23) hold a news conference on Monday Jan. 10, 2022 after touring the U.S. Postal Service Mail Processing Facility in Opa Locka, Fl. During the special congressional primary last November, hundreds of mail ballots went uncounted even though they were postmarked before election day, Florida law doesn't allow those ballots to be counted. Officials toured the facility to ensure timely ballot deliveries for Tuesday's special general election. (Susan Stocker / South Florida Sun Sentinel)

Theyre not even acknowledging thats what happened, Scott said.

Postal Service spokeswoman Debra Jean Fetterly said by email Monday night there were no ballots remaining at the Opa-locka facility at the deadline on Nov. 2. Regarding ballots in elections for Floridas 20th Congressional district, a representative of the Broward County elections office collected all ballots at the Royal Palm processing center on Nov. 2, as per the prearranged process.

The elected officials met with Robert L. Johnson, the Royal Palm plant manager, and regional Postal Service officials. Fetterly the Postal Service welcomed the visit  and others from our external stakeholders on a pre-approved basis.

The Postal Service has a robust and tested process for the proper handling and timely delivery of election mail, Fetterly said.

The Postal Service has a robust and tested process for the proper handling and timely delivery of Election Mail, @USPSDebraJean says in response to @DWStweets-@JoeScottSOE visit. https://t.co/3OEO4X1K61 pic.twitter.com/EvzCvuMQA2  Anthony Man (@browardpolitics) January 11, 2022

The elected officials said the Postal Service gave them a tour of the facility and explained how they handle ballots. Were not here to attack them. We want to work with them, the congresswoman said, adding she hopes that there is now the start of a trust relationship.

The relationship is going to be closer, Scott said.

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He said his office would continue longstanding policy of having staffers at Opa-locka to pick up any ballots that arrive at the center close to the 7 p.m. deadline so theyre in the possession of his office and can be counted.

But he acknowledged its inevitable that some ballots will arrive after the deadline.

Changes

Both Scott and Wasserman Schultz repeated Monday what theyve said before: theyd like to see Florida law changed so that ballots postmarked by Election Day are counted even if theyre received at the election office after 7 p.m. that day.

Thats something that should be changed, Scott said, standing outside the postal center. if they find a bin [of ballots] in this building Wednesday morning I cant count them. He said that state law works to disenfranchise voters.

He and Wasserman Schultz spoke with reporters outside the mail processing facility, after their tour.

[ RELATED: Proposed law would impose deadline for governor to set special elections, preventing delay DeSantis used in South Florida ]

Democrats would like the state Legislature to make that change, but it has no chance of becoming law. The leading Republicans who work on election issues in the Florida House and Florida Senate have said they see no reason to change the deadline. Republicans control both the House and Senate.

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Wasserman Schultz is a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. One change she said Monday shed like to see has to do with the Postal Service: the independent agencys Board of Governors should fire DeJoy, the postmaster general. Thats something many Democrats have long sought.

[ RELATED: Nation's first congressional election of 2022 pits a progressive Democrat vs. a Trump Republican vs. vaccine skeptics ]

Unsuccessful visits

On primary day in November, Scott said he visited the Postal Service sorting facility in Opa-locka. He said his staff reached out to the Postal Service in the morning to say hed like to see inside the Opa-locka facility that afternoon.

After waiting for an hour after arrival, he said the plant manager denied him access.

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-23) talks with U.S. Postal Inspection Service officer Gus Cabanas, left, at the U.S. Post Office Miami Processing & Distribution Center in Miami, where she was denied entry on Friday, Sept. 4, 2020. (Amy Beth Bennett / South Florida Sun Sentinel)

Wasserman Schultz has toured the postal center before. But in September 2020, Postal Service police blocked her from the Royal Palm center when she showed up for what was supposed to be a 4 a.m. tour. She was told that national Postal Service leadership ordered her barred from the building. The Postal Service said at the time she hadnt provided sufficient advance notice.

The incident came after members of Congress had been investigating growing delays at the postal service, raising concerns about whether it would be able to handle the heavy number of mail ballots in the presidential election.

She said she would continue her efforts to change federal law to make clear that members of Congress dont need to provide advance notice to inspect Postal Service facilities.

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Holness

An uninvited guest turned up at the Wasserman Schultz-Scott visit. On his last day as a Broward County Commissioner, Dale Holness arrived and attempted to participate, arriving in one area of the facility where the others were meeting with Postal Service officials.

Holness wasnt invited but gained access to the postal facility without our awareness and he left, Wasserman Schultz said. He was there briefly. Scott said he was talking with Johnson, the plant manager, when he looked up and saw Holness. The next time he looked in that direction, he said Holness was gone. He said Holness heard through the grapevine that the meeting was taking place.

Holness has a particular interest in ballot handling. He lost the Nov. 2 Democratic primary to Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick by five votes. If the late arriving ballots had been counted, the results might have been different.

Holness was in his final hours as a County Commissioner because he had to resign from office to run for Congress.

[ RELATED: Candidates in Broward state Senate primary similar on issues, differ on experience and dont like each other ]

Turnout so far

Mail ballots were sent out in early December to voters in the Broward-Palm Beach County 20th Congressional District for the Jan. 11 special general election.

Some Broward and Palm Beach county voters are also voting in primaries to pick replacements for three state lawmakers who resigned their seats so they could legally run for the congressional nomination. All three lost, but their resignations were irrevocable.

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Through Sunday, Broward voters had returned 30,782 mail ballots, according to a report posted online by the Florida Division of Elections. That represents 26% of the 120,444 mail ballots that were sent to Broward voters.

Palm Beach County voters had returned 12,205 mail ballots through Sunday, representing 26% of the 46,181mail ballots that were sent to county voters eligible to vote in Tuesdays elections.

Far fewer people used in-person early voting for the nine days it was offered, ending Sunday. In Broward, 3,983 people voted early, the state Elections Division reported. In Palm Beach County, 1,220 people voted early.

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com or on Twitter @browardpolitics
LONDON MARKET CLOSE: Johnson Matthey up as investor builds stake

Friday, April 29, 2022 - 17:12

Stocks in London on Friday ended a volatile month of April in a positive fashion, with a strong first quarter performance from Smurfit Kappa allowing other packaging firms to rise in a positive read-across.

The FTSE 100 index closed up 35.36 points, or 0.5%, at 7,544.55 - ending the week overall up 0.3%. Over the month the UK flagship index lost 0.5%.

The mid-cap FTSE 250 index ended up 89.09 points, or 0.4%, at 20,708.71 and lost 0.8% over the past 5 days.

The AIM All-Share index finished up 7.40 points, or 0.7%, at 1,022.26 - closing out the week 2.3% lower.

The Cboe UK 100 index closed up 0.5% at 750.31. The Cboe 250 closed down 0.6% at 18,265.99, and the Cboe Small Companies closed down 0.2% at 15,139.35.

In mainland Europe, the CAC 40 stock index in Paris ended up 0.4%, while the DAX 40 in Frankfurt up 0.8%.

As China's lockdowns continue and new infections continue to spread in Beijing, the central government outlined wide-ranging economic stimulus plans to temper expected losses. The government will subsidise businesses, pausing unemployment insurance payments if companies avoid mass layoffs, as well as electricity and internet charges.

In the FTSE 100, Smurfit Kappa closed up 4.3% after the paper and packaging firm reported first quarter earnings growth despite headwinds at the start of 2022.

The Irish firm reported year-on-year revenue growth of 33% to 3.02 billion in the first quarter of 2022, with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rising at the same rate to 514 million. Its Ebitda margin was flat at 17% despite inflationary pressures in the period.

Rivals Mondi and DS Smith rose 3.4% and 1.6% respectively in a positive read-across.

Pearson closed up 1.9% after the educational materials publisher provided a positive update on first quarter trading, while also announcing a new acquisition.

Pearson has agreed to buy Mondly, an online language learning platform. It provided no financial details, but said it expects the purchase to accelerate revenue growth for its English Language Learning division from 2023 onward. It expects mid-teens margins for the division by 2025.

Turning to its own recent trading, Pearson reported underlying sales growth of 7% in the first quarter. It reaffirmed its guidance for adjust operating profit in 2022.

Pearson added that its 350 million share buyback programme has begun, with 75 million already completed.

AstraZeneca added 0.5% after the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker reported a sharp rise in first-quarter revenue.

Quarterly pretax profit shrank 66% to $553 million from $1.61 billion a year ago. Revenue rose by 56% to $11.39 billion from $7.32 billion. Revenue from its oncology arm grew by 21% to $3.64 billion from $3.02 billion.

AstraZeneca completed its $39 billion takeover of Boston-based rare diseases firm Alexion Pharmaceuticals in July last year, helping to boost its top line.

In the quarter, AstraZeneca generated $1.09 billion in sales from its Covid-19 vaccine Vaxzevria, ups sharply from a year prior. Contracts with the vaccine are expected to complete delivery by the second half of the year, the firm added.

Astra backed annual guidance. It tips revenue to rise by a high teens percentage and core EPS to climb by a mid-to-high twenties percentage.

At the other end of the large-caps, Hikma Pharmaceuticals ended the worst performer, down 7.2%, after the drugmaker noted its Generics business has experienced some headwinds.

Hikma explained its Generics business has been hurt by increased competition and a challenging pricing environment, resulting in a slow start to the year.

Nonetheless, Hikma said it continues to expect full-year Generics revenue growth between 8% to 10%, though it noted this would likely be weighted towards the second half of the year.

Conversely, Hikma reported its Branded business is performing well.

Vodafone closed down 4.3% after Bank of America downgraded the telecommunications firm to 'neutral' from 'buy'.

NatWest Group lost 2.2% despite reporting largely positive first-quarter numbers.

In the three months to March 31, the Edinburgh-headquartered bank recorded an operating pretax profit of 1.25 billion, surging 41% from 885 million in the same period a year prior. Attributable profit rose 36% to 841 million from 620 million.

NatWest - formerly Royal Bank of Scotland - saw total income rise 17% to 3.03 billion from 2.59 billion. Net interest income rose to 2.05 billion from 1.86 billion, while non-interest income increased to 982 million from 727 million.

Looking ahead, NatWest said its 2022 income excluding notable items will be comfortably above 11.0 billion in the 'go-forward group' - advancing at least 4.7% from total income of 10.51 billion in 2021.

In the FTSE 250, Johnson Matthey ended the standout performer, up 19%. A regulatory filing on Friday showed industrial investor Standard Investments LLC has built a 5.2% stake in the specialist chemicals firm. Standard Investments is based in New York.

The pound was quoted at $1.2568 at the London equities close, up from $1.2458 at the close Thursday.

The euro stood at $1.0547 at the European equities close, up from $1.0524 late Thursday. Against the yen, the dollar was trading at JP129.68, down sharply from JP131.00.

On the continent, the eurozone's economy grew at a slower pace than expected in the first quarter of 2022, while separate data showed inflation picked up slightly in April.

According to Eurostat, eurozone gross domestic product grew 0.2% quarter-on-quarter in the first three months of 2022. The figure fell short of an FXStreet cited estimate of 0.3% growth. In the fourth quarter of 2021, GDP had expanded by 0.3%.

Annually, first quarter economic growth from the single currency area was 5.0%, accelerating from the fourth quarter's 4.7% rise. Annual growth came in line with FXStreet cited consensus.

Separate figures from Eurostat showed inflation accelerated to another record high in April, as expected. The eurozone annual inflation rate for April was 7.5%, an uptick from 7.4% in March. The April figure was in line with FXStreet cited consensus. On a monthly basis, consumer prices grew 0.6%.

New York was sharply lower at the London equities close amid disappointing corporate earnings reports.

The DJIA was down 1.1%, the S&P 500 index down 1.6% and the Nasdaq Composite down 1.7%.

Amazon.com plunged 13% after reporting its first quarterly loss since 2015 as sales growth slowed while the company faces challenges with rising costs.

Intel was down 5.6% after the semiconductor maker warned the global chip shortage will remain a challenge for the industry until at least 2024, particularly in areas such as foundry capacity and tool availability.

Brent oil was quoted at $110.30 a barrel at the equities close, up sharply from $106.55 at the close Thursday.

Gold stood at $1,906.75 an ounce at the London equities close, higher against $1,887.75 late Thursday.

The economic events calendar on Monday has manufacturing PMI readings from the Germany at 0855 BST, the eurozone at 0900 BST and US at 1445 BST. Financial markets in the UK are closed on Monday for the Early May bank holiday.

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
The U.S. Marine Corps motto is Semper Fidelis, which means always faithful to the United States, fellow marines and a continued record of success at overcoming adversity on and off the battlefield. In peacetime one of the major threats are the major threats periodic efforts to eliminate the Marine Corps. There is another such effort underway, all in the name of efficiency and reducing costs. This time the proposal involves eliminating Marine Corps aviation and incorporating marine ground troops into the army as the 19 th Marine Amphibious Corps, with three divisions and the three marine air wings transferred to the navy, if not just eliminated. Since World War II the army has had the 18 th Airborne Corps. Originally this unit contained airborne troops, most of them capable of parachuting into combat. That changed over the years and currently there are no parachute units in the 18 th Corps, which now consists of four divisions; the 3 rd Infantry, the 10 th Mountain and the 81 st and 101 st Airborne. Helicopters now carry out airborne operations. Many SOCOM units are qualified to use parachutes, which is now considered a special operations skill.

Disbanding the Marine Corps has been proposed many times since World War I, when the marines demonstrated the ability to organize larger combat units and outperform their army counterparts. The marines demonstrated an extraordinary ability to muster enough public support to remain. During World War II the marines were even larger than the one brigade formed for World War I. By the end of World War II there were six marine divisions and even more popular support.

Despite the continued popular support, the marines have opposed becoming too large and treated like an elite ground combat force. In 2010 the marines proposed a sharp reduction in its size. Senior marine commanders expressed a preference for a smaller force, one that concentrated on its main mission; amphibious operations. The current proposals take that further and want the marines to become soldiers in a new Army Amphibious Corps. That misses the point about what makes the marines special.

Currently the marines were still dissatisfied with the way they have been used as an army auxiliary since 2001. The marines consider themselves specialists, while the army proved adaptable in major wars. It was the army, for example, that carried out more amphibious operations than the marines did during World War II. A 1956 law specified the minimum size of the Corps as three divisions and three air wings. While this law could be changed by Congress, it also allows the marines to reorganize themselves. For over a decade the marines have been asking for the 1956 law to be amended to allow a smaller minimum size of the marine corps. The marines point out that they have come to comprise a quarter of America's ground combat forces. That's active duty, when you count the much larger army reserve force, the marines were 18 percent of ground combat forces in 2010 and that has not changed much since then. The marines never wanted to be just another part of American ground combat forces, even if they were still marines. Among many liberal politicians, efforts to eliminate the marine corps entirely is always a good way to get some attention.

For over a decade the marines were also concerned about their relationship with the U.S. Navy, which formed another ground combat force in 2005. To understand how this came about, you have to understand the relationship between the navy and the marines. The marines are not part of the navy, as they are often described. Both the navy and marines are part of the Department of the Navy. The Department of the Army and Department of the Air Force each have only one component.

Over the years, the marines have acquired more and more autonomy from the navy. When the U.S. Marine Corps was created at the start of the American Revolution, marines were sailors trained and equipped to fight as infantry, and they were very much part of the navy, and a standard component of ship crews. This changed radically in the late 19th century, when all-metal steam ships replaced wooden sailing ships. The new "iron ships" really didn't need marines, and there were proposals to eliminate them. In response, the American marines got organized and made themselves useful in other ways. For example, the marines performed very well as "State Department Troops" in Latin America for half a century, from the late 19th century to just before World War II. This was a period when American troops were frequently used to deal with civil disorder abroad, and attempts at nation building. During World War I (1914-18), they provided a brigade for ground combat in Europe, where they demonstrated exceptional combat skills.

During the 1930s, as World War II approached, the U.S. Marine Corps really ran with an opportunity they were given when the navy realized they would have to use amphibious assaults to take heavily fortified Japanese islands in any future war. Thus, once the U.S. entered World War II, the marines formed their first division size units, and ended the war with six divisions, organized into two corps.

At that point the Marine Corps was no longer just a minor part of the navy, but on its way to being a fourth service. Over the next half century, it basically achieved that goal. But in doing that, the navy lost control of its ground troops. Navy amphibious ships still went to sea, each with a battalion of marines on board. But because the marines are mainly an infantry force, and the war on terror was basically an infantry scale battle, the marines spent a lot more time working alongside the army in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Between 2005 and 2010, the Navy created a new ground combat force, staffed by 40,000 sailors. Known as NECC (Navy Expeditionary Combat Command), it was organized to operate along the coast and up rivers, as well as further inland. NECC units served in Iraq, and were ready to deploy anywhere else they are needed. NECC included the 1,200 sailors in the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) teams. EOD specialists were particularly sought after, because of increased use of roadside bombs and booby traps by the enemy. NECC has also organized three Riverine Squadrons, and these served in Iraq. NECC basically consists of most of the combat support units the navy has traditionally put ashore, plus some coastal and river patrol units that have usually only been organized in wartime.

The need for 40,000 NECC personnel quickly disappeared after most American troops left Iraq in 2011 and no other similar threat appeared. NECC soon shrank to about 21,000 personnel. This new navy organization, and the strategy that supported it, came as a surprise to many people, especially many of those in Congress who were asked to pay for it. It came as a surprise to many NECC sailors as well. The navy even called on the marines to provide infantry instructors for the few thousand sailors assigned to riverine (armed patrol boat) units. The navy already had infantry training courses for Seabees (naval construction personnel) and members of EOD teams. NECC combined all that in the new Expeditionary Combat Skills (ECS) course, which was conducted at a base in Mississippi.

With the marines appropriated by the army for land combat, the navy still wanted and needed land forces and that led to NECC. The navy still considers the marines its primary "amphibious infantry force", but NECC will contain sailors trained and equipped for land operations the navy believes it should be involved in. Some of these are still on the water, like "riverine operations" (small gunboats and troop carriers to control rivers and coastal waters against irregulars), and "naval infantry" to defend navy land bases in hostile territory.

The U.S. Marine Corps had mixed feelings about NECC, for the marines have long been the navy's ground combat troops. The navy says that the USMC mission will remain. That was one of the reasons why marines wanted to shrink so they become small enough to handle anticipated navy amphibious operations, and not large enough to have troops available for large-scale support of army operations.

In effect, the American marines want to be more like the British marines. That's interesting, because British marines are called Royal Marine Commandos, and are quite different. Britain, which invented the modern concept of the commando, disbanded it's ten army commandos, as the battalion size commando units were called, at the end of World War II. The Royal Marines, however, saw the commando concepts as a welcome addition to their own amphibious doctrine and retained three of their nine Royal Marine Commandos. Since World War II, the Royal Marines have maintained at least three commando battalions. Artillery and engineer units are supplied by the army.

Like the U.S. Marines, the Royal Marines realized that assault from the sea was always a commando operation, requiring special training, bold leadership and an aggressive spirit. The Royal Marines, like their American counterparts, continued to innovate. In 1956, it was a Royal Marine Commando that launched the first helicopter assault from ships against a land target during the invasion of Egypt. The Royal Marine Commandos were used extensively to keep the peace in Ireland during the 1970s and 80s. In 1982, it was two Royal Marine Commandos and one parachute battalion that did most of the fighting to retake the Falkland Islands from Argentina. The Royal Marines have performed peacekeeping duty in the Balkans and Africa, and served as an amphibious fast reaction force.

While the U.S. Marines made a name for themselves with multi-division amphibious operations in the Pacific during World War II, the Royal Marines stuck with the commando type operations that characterize what marines spend most of the time doing between major wars. An important aspect of this is that the last large scale amphibious operation took place seventy years ago when American marines, accompanied by South Korea marines they had trained, led a daring operation to seize Inchon, Korea in 1950. That was deemed impossible by the invading North Koreans, who did not leave a large force to defend Inchon from such an attack. Because of the marines, and the army divisions who came in behind them, the North Korean forces further south were cut off from supplies and reinforcements and soon defeated. As remarkable as the Inchon operation was, since then, the typical marine mission has been a quick assault using a small (usually battalion size) force.

In anticipation of this, the U.S. Marine Corps Special Operations Command (MARSOC) was created in 2006. Over the next four years MARSOC sent some of its 2,400 personnel on over thirty deployments to South America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and Southeast Asia. MARSOC is organized into a headquarters, a two battalion Special Operations Regiment, a Foreign Military Training Unit, and a Marine Special Operations Support Group. There are 3-4 Special Operations companies in each battalion. The marines basically lost two of their four Force Recon companies in order to build MARSOC. Meanwhile, more troops have been added to division level reconnaissance units, to take up some of that slack. The marine Special Operations troops provide a combination of services roughly equal to what the U.S. Army Special Forces and Rangers did, as well as some of the functions of the marine Force Recon units.

All the other services, except the marines, contributed to the formation of SOCOM in the late 1980s. The marines finally got around to working with SOCOM in 2005, when it was agreed that they would create a marine special operations command (MARSOC). The Marine Corps had long resisted such a step, largely because of its belief that marines are inherently superior warriors, capable of highly specialized missions. This attitude began to change during the fighting in Afghanistan, when marines were assigned to support SOCOM troops there.

As a result of that experience, marines were attached to SOCOM for liaison and observation purposes. In 2004, the marines organized a company sized unit of commandos, "Detachment One", using volunteers from their Force Recon troops, the closest thing the marines had to commandos. Detachment One was sent to Iraq, where it's performance convinced SOCOM that marines could operate at the SOCOM level.

The marines see their future as a smaller, by up to a third, or more and even more elite force that is better equipped. The marines want to get back to sea, and the post 2011 reduction in force (RIF) could be done without losing a lot of the valuable combat experience the marines have gained in the previous nine years. Recruiting was to be reduced for a few years, and some marines could transfer to the navy in jobs that both sailors and marines handle, especially the NECC force. Marines have long moved over to the army, and the army would be glad to get an infusion of combat experienced marines, especially NCOs and officers. The marines may also expand their reserve force, and marines who decide to get out can simply move over to the reserves.

The marines who remain with the Corps will probably continue the more extensive training marines have been getting for several decades now. This makes the marines an even more elite and very resourceful force, which is what many marines are fine with. That does not impress many peacetime critics who forget how marine attitudes and improvisations proved invaluable time and again in wartime.
Jason Mariner, congressional candidate for district 20, in a video posted to his YouTube account, Mariner For Congress on Aug 16, 2021. (YouTube of Mariner For Congress/Courtesy)

No matter who wins this Tuesdays special elections in South Florida, there is reason to celebrate. The reason to celebrate is the fact that people with past convictions, or returning citizens as we call ourselves, are running for office in both the Democratic and Republican primaries. Such an expansion of democracy would not have been possible just a few years ago.

More returning citizens running for office in Florida is a reason for all of us to celebrate. After all, when returning citizens are able to fully reintegrate into society, including running for office, everyone benefits. Study after study shows us that economic growth goes up and crime goes down in communities where people impacted by the criminal justice system are able to quickly and fully reintegrate into society.

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Desmond Meade, right, is the executive director, and Neil Volz is the deputy director, of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition.

Look at Jason Mariner. Mariner is the Republican nominee in the race for Floridas 20th Congressional District. He has openly shared about how his drug use led to time in prison, and how he has used that past pain to create a new life as a nonprofit leader, family man and contributing member of the community.

Ive been addicted to drugs, Ive spent time in a cell. Multiple times. Ive had a knee on my neck. I know what its like, Mariner said in a campaign video. His story is a strong reminder for all of us about the power of forgiveness, redemption and restoration.

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[ RELATED: 2022s first South Florida election will pit a progressive Democrat vs. a Trump Republican vs. vaccine skeptics ]

Then there is Rod Kemp. Kemp is a Democrat running in the open primary for state representative in District 94.

Kemp also talked in a video after losing his voting rights because of his conviction: Ive been the one out recruiting people and doing registration drives so how could this happen to me  what happened 32 years ago came rushing to the forefront of my mind.

Like Mariner, Kemp is open about how past mistakes transformed his life into that of a local business leader, activist and well respected member of the community.

Whether Kemp or Mariner win  and we are not here making an endorsement  we believe their efforts should be applauded as examples of the kind of more-inclusive democracy we can have in our state. An inclusive democracy that leads to policies that put the real lives of people first. Policies that include stronger voting laws and the development of a more humane reentry system based on the fundamental understanding that returning citizens are more than what any of us did on our worst day.

Helping people reintegrate into society is not only good for the individual returning citizen, or even their family, but is good for everyone. We all benefit when returning citizens are able to flourish and break down barriers to opportunity. Data shows that formerly incarcerated individuals who are able to become active members of the community are much less likely to reoffend than those who are not. Its good for local businesses, public safety and the overall community.

The progress we are seeing in our communities since the passage of Amendment 4 in 2018, when Florida voters ended the states lifetime ban on voting for people with past convictions, is encouraging. Seeing leaders like Kemp and Mariner embrace community reintegration and leadership will help encourage others to do the same.

And win or lose at the polls, that is worth celebrating.

Desmond Meade is the executive director, and Neil Volz is the deputy director, of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition.
Baltic nation Lithuania, one of the latest (2004) and smallest (2.7 million) East European NATO members is one of the three Baltic States that must innovate to deal with the growing threats from Russia, as well as China, which is a major supporter of Russian expansion efforts. The Baltic States have adopted a fearless and practical attitude towards the Russian threat and Lithuania was one of the first NATO countries to realize that China was a major threat as well. China is accustomed to compliance from EU (European Union) nations. China makes requests, suggestions or demands backed up by economic and diplomatic retaliation. That usually works with even the largest EU states. The Baltic States are different, as China discovered when they demanded that Lithuania bar Taiwan from opening an unofficial embassy, as a representative office in Lithuania. This came after Lithuania opened a similar office in Taiwan. This should have not been a surprise because Lithuania had long been critical of Chinese imperialism and tendency to use threats to silence foreign criticism or support for Taiwan. Lithuania had long been critical of Chinese mistreatment of their non-Han (ethnic Chinese) citizens; especially Turkish Moslem Uyghurs and Tibetan Buddhists. Lithuania also took the lead, among EU nations, by investigating the security implications of new Chinese communications technology, particularly what telecoms giants Xiaomi and Huawei. These two firms sold smartphones that contained hidden features that can be turned on or off from China and export user data to China or governments that request access to these features. There are also accusations of Huawei network hardware and software having similar capabilities.

China thought economic threats would work, because in the last decade Chinese trade with Lithuania has grown to nearly $2 billion, which is five percent of Lithuania foreign trade. China stands ready to advise and assist opposition political parties in Lithuania seeking to replace the current government. That may also backfire because the latest Chinese move was to downgrade the Lithuanian embassy in China to a lesser status that would include Lithuanian diplomatic personnel losing their diplomatic immunity. Before that could happen, Lithuania flew all its diplomatic personnel out of China and declared their embassy temporarily closed. China was not amused and fellow EU nations were impressed. More attention was also focused on growing Chinese misbehavior in Europe, something few of the larger EU members were willing to raise, much less call out China on these matters.

The Baltic States have been equally outspoken about the Russian threat, if only because the Baltic States would be one of the first NATO members hit by any Russian attack. That is one reason the Russians have combat troops in Syria. These needed an opportunity to put their post-Cold War military to the test. What the Russians were preparing for was the possibility of clashes between Russian and NATO forces in Eastern Europe. Both NATO and Russia are not sure how their respective post-Cold War forces would do against each other. Most East European nations are preparing for the worst and pay close attention to whatever Russia does in Ukraine and Syria.

The most likely targets for Russian invasion are the three small nations (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) on the south coast of the Baltic Sea between Russia and Poland. In the 18th century the Baltic States were forcibly incorporated into the expanding Russian empire. They became independent after World War I (1914-18) but were taken over by Russia in 1940. It wasn't until 1991 that the Baltic States regained their independence and they are determined to keep it this time.

The Baltic States have only six million people and fewer than 45,000 active-duty troops. Well aware of their vulnerability the three Baltic States along with neighboring Poland joined NATO in 2004. This was done in the hope that the mutual defense terms of the NATO alliance would dissuade Russia. It did that, but it also angered many Russians. Government leaders there, like Vladimir Putin, considered it an act of NATO aggression.

All three Baltic States are rapidly upgrading their armed forces and building a reserve army similar to what Switzerland, Sweden and Israel have long used. In the event of a Russian invasion (or threat of one) enough armed and trained personnel would be deployed to make Russia think twice about going in. This modernization and build up is also considered aggressive by the Russians because given the forces available to Russia and NATO, the 50,000 or more trained and organized reservists in the Baltic States make a big difference.

In effect, now that Russia has threatened the Baltic States enough to trigger a modernization and expansion of Baltic States forces and for NATO to revise its joint defense plan for the Baltic States, the chances of Russian success are declining. That is why Syria was so important to Russia. The Russian problem is that while they, and all other European nations greatly reduced their armed forces after the Cold War ended in 1991, Russian forces were hurt most of all. The forces of the now defunct Soviet Union were, by the end of the 1990s, reduced to 20 percent of their Cold War size. Worse, very little new equipment was purchased for about 15 years after 1991. And a lot of the Cold War era weapons and equipment were questionable even when new.

Not only had Russian forces shrank but they had less training because there was no money for it and less capable officers. Many of the best ones left for more lucrative and fulfilling civilian jobs. Since 2005 Russia has been trying to modernize its forces while also providing adequate training and better leadership. It is questionable if the Russians have succeeded. The ground forces can only muster about 55 brigades, compared to 175 divisions (each the equivalent of about two current brigades) and over a hundred reserve divisions in 1990. The Russian reserves disappeared in the 1990s, along with their weapons and equipment. A new, smaller reserve force is now being developed.

Military simulations (wargames) of a Russian invasion of the Baltic States indicated that if everything went in Russias favor the Russian troops would overrun the three Baltic States in two or three days. This assumes that NATO only gets about a weeks warning that the Russians are massing forces (20-25 brigades and several hundred aircraft) on the borders of the Baltic States. NATO already has about a dozen infantry brigades ready to be rapidly (by air) moved to the Baltic States in an emergency. Heavier brigades, with tanks and other armored vehicles would take longer to reach the area. The Russians would seek to occupy the Baltic States, and defeat twenty or so combat brigades of the Baltic States and NATO within a few days. This would require Russian air power to be capable of neutralizing NATO air power for a few days. That is a major unknown and one reason Russia has several dozen of its newest warplanes in Syria operating under wartime conditions. But it is still unclear if Russian aircraft and anti-aircraft systems could defeat NATO air power. Russia is also testing new artillery, other weapons, communications and electronic countermeasures gear. All would be used for a go at the Baltics and Russian or NATO simulations of such an attack are much more accurate if you know how new Russian equipment and forces perform under fire.

Meanwhile Lithuania adopted successful American practices, like building a realistic infantry training center. Lithuania, like many other nations, began building an urban training area in 2016, in this case a small village consisting of 26 structures representing building types typical in Lithuanian urban areas. Some training exercises will employ civilians hired to represent themselves when caught in the middle of a battle. Russia and China had already adopted this practice, which the Americans pioneered in the 1980s. The Baltic States share their military innovations, especially training methods and Baltic State troops train hard because the threat to their prosperity and independence is real and only a determined and well thought out defense plan will keep the Russians out. It worked in Finland and one of the Baltic States, Estonia, is ethnically related to the Ural-Altaic Finns. The Lithuanians are also outsiders or, in their case, original Europeans. Lithuanians speak an ancient language (Baltic) that predates the appearances of the Indo-European Germans, Celts, Slavs, and other similar groups in southern Europe.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) talks on the phone before the start of the Senate Democrats weekly policy lunch at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, U.S., December 14, 2021. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

(Reuters) - U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren sharpened her criticism of the Federal Reserve on Monday over its handling of an ethics scandal at the central bank ahead of the renomination hearing of Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

Warren, a Democrat and member of the Senate Banking Committee, is one of the lawmakers Powell will appear before on Tuesday as the committee considers whether to progress his renomination. She has already said she will not support his reappointment to the post. Powell is expected to be reconfirmed.

"I am deeply concerned that your continued refusal to release information about Fed officials' trading is at odds with your stated commitment to address the scandal 'forthrightly and transparently' and... it raises suspicions that the Fed may be failing to disclose the full scope of the scandal to the public," Warren wrote in a letter to Powell.

Her new letter, following two earlier requests for information from the central bank last year, comes after a report in the New York Times last week that Fed Vice Chair Richard Clarida had corrected his previous financial disclosure late last month. The updated disclosure showed he sold a stock fund and then swiftly rebought it shortly before the Fed announced a barrage of rescue programs to stem the economic fallout from the pandemic.

The latest controversy follows the resignations of two regional Fed bank presidents, Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan and Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren, last year in the wake of an outcry over their trading activities during the pandemic.

Powell has since announced new ethics rules governing financial holdings and dealings at the central bank but Warren has requested a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into Fed officials' trading activity to determine if any trades violated insider trading rules.

In her letter, Warren renewed her calls for the Fed to disclose all ethics communications provided to Fed officials in 2020 and 2021. She requested a response by Jan. 17.

(Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
NEW YORK, Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Greystone, a leading national commercial real estate finance company, announced it has arranged a $30 million construction loan for affiliate entities of The Manhattan Building Company (MBC). The construction loan was originated by White Oak Real Estate Capital, an affiliate of White Oak Global Advisors (WOGA or White Oak), to finance the construction of a 6-story, ~150,000 GSF mixed-use residential development comprised of 80 market rate rental apartment units, 80 parking spaces, and approximately 3,200 SF of ground-floor commercial space located at 40 Center Street in Jersey City, NJ. Greystones Drew Fletcher, Matthew Hirsch, and Bryan Grover served as the exclusive advisors in arranging the financing for the development.

MBC has been one of Jersey Citys most active and transformative developers over the last few decades. The project is located less than two miles from MBCs prior Class A residential developments, Soho Lofts and Cast Iron Lofts, and their upcoming, 4-tower, +1 million SF multiphase development Hudson House. 40 Center is situated in the Bates Street Redevelopment Area, for which MBC has been named master redeveloper by the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency. MBC is committed to Jersey City and is one of the citys premier developers with an understanding of the market dynamics that are driving continued growth in demand for high-quality multifamily housing. 40 Center will be the first out of multiple phases in the area.

40 Center is designed to appeal to young professional renters by providing a more affordable, high-quality product designed with larger than average unit sizes in response to tenants demand for more space in the current market. MBC will deliver a comprehensive amenity package including a fitness center with sauna, full parking garage, and a rooftop lounge with seating areas, grills, fire pits, and sweeping views of Jersey City and Manhattan.

MBC is a leading owner, developer, and builder of apartments in Jersey City. We are pleased to have started our relationship with them on this transaction and are happy to have brought together MBC and White Oak on an excellent execution, said Mr. Fletcher, President, Greystone Capital Advisors.

Greystone Capital Advisors did a fantastic job advising us through this process, and we are very fortunate to have launched a relationship with White Oak, said John Palumbo, Vice President of Real Estate Development at MBC.

We are excited to support MBC on this high-quality project in the growing Jersey City multifamily market. Greystone was instrumental in driving the transaction closing and we are thankful for the rigor and thoughtfulness they demonstrated throughout the process, said Eric Tanjeloff, Managing Principal of White Oak Real Estate Capital.

About GreystoneGreystone is a private national commercial real estate finance company with an established reputation as a leader in multifamily and healthcare finance, having ranked as a top FHA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac lender in these sectors. Loans are offered through Greystone Servicing Company LLC, Greystone Funding Company LLC and/or other Greystone affiliates. For more information, visit www.greystone.com.

About The Manhattan Building CompanyFounded in 1994 as an integrated group of companies with a common purpose, Manhattan Building Company has grown into a premier, full-service commercial real estate development, construction and management company serving primarily Jersey City and Hoboken. Headquartered in New Jersey, MBC ensures its success by emphasizing experienced judgment and focusing on creating efficient, attractive, boutique multifamily units and lofts. MBC has been involved in over one billion dollars of real estate development throughout Jersey City and Hoboken. Sanford Weiss, the principal of MBC, has been active in Jersey City and Hoboken since 1978 with the primary goal of creating multifamily housing in this high growth corridor serving Manhattans workforce. The company prides itself in its ability to identify, design, develop and build multifamily homes in concert with a superb team of professionals that creates a contemporary, luxury rental experience that satisfies the needs of both the present-day consumer and institutional investors. For more information, visit www.themanhattanbuildingcompany.com.

About White OakWhite Oak Real Estate Capital, LLC (WOREC), an affiliate of White Oak Global Advisors, LLC is a lender to the commercial real estate industry specializing in originating bespoke financing solutions secured by transitional assets. WOREC offers loans across the capital structure, from first lien stretch senior loans to special situations bridge loans. The company is headquartered in New York City.

White Oak Global Advisors, LLC (WOGA) is a leading alternative debt manager specializing in originating and providing financing solutions to facilitate the growth, refinancing and recapitalization of small and medium enterprises. Together with its financing affiliates, WOGA provides over twenty lending products to the market, including term, asset-based, and equipment loans, to all sectors of the economy. Since its inception in 2007, WOGA and its affiliates have deployed over $9 billion across its product lines, utilizing a disciplined investment process that focuses on delivering risk-adjusted investment returns to investors while establishing long term partnerships with our borrowers. For more information visit, www.whiteoaksf.com.

PRESS CONTACT:Karen MarottaGreystone212-896-9149[email protected]

Source: Greystone
(Tribune News Service)  A realistic guerrilla war will be fought across two dozen North Carolina counties this month, with young soldiers battling seasoned freedom fighters, according to the U.S. Army.

The two-week unconventional warfare exercise will be staged Jan. 22-Feb. 4 on privately owned land. And it will be realistic enough to include the sounds of gunfire (blanks) and flares, the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School said in a news release.

Exact times, locations and exercise specifics are not provided.

However, advance publicity is intended to make sure civilians  including law enforcement officers  dont mistake the fighting for terrorism or criminal activity, which has happened in the past.

Residents may hear blank gunfire and see occasional flares. Controls are in place to ensure there is no risk to persons or property, the warfare center said.

Residents with concerns should contact local law enforcement officials, who will immediately contact exercise control officials. ... For the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, safety is always the commands top priority during all training events.

Called Robin Sage, the exercise serves as a final test for Special Forces Qualification Course training and it places candidates in a politically unstable country known as Pineland.

The candidates face off against seasoned service members from units across Fort Bragg, as well as specially trained civilians, officials said. The setting is characterized by armed conflict, forcing the students to solve problems in a real world setting, the center says.

These military members act as realistic opposing forces and guerrilla freedom fighters, also known as Pineland resistance movement, the center said.

To add realism of the exercise, civilian volunteers throughout the state act as role players. Participation by these volunteers is crucial to the success of this training, and past trainees attest to the realism they add to the exercise.

Advance public notice of the U.S. militarys premiere unconventional warfare exercise became a priority in 2002, after one soldier was killed and another wounded when a Moore County sheriffs deputy mistook Robin Sage exercises for criminal activity.

Pineland covers counties primarily in southeastern North Carolina, as well as Chesterfield, Dillon and Marlboro counties in South Carolina. The full list in North Carolina: Alamance, Anson, Bladen, Brunswick, Cabarrus, Chatham, Columbus, Cumberland, Davidson, Guilford, Harnett, Hoke, Lee, Montgomery, Moore, New Hanover, Randolph, Richmond, Robeson, Rowan, Sampson, Scotland, Stanly, Union, and Wake.

All Robin Sage movements and events have been coordinated with public safety officials throughout and within the towns and counties hosting the training, officials said.

Among the safety protocols implemented:

 Formal written notification to the chiefs of law enforcement agencies in the affected counties, with a followup visit from a unit representative.

 All civilian and non-student military participants are briefed on procedures to follow if there is contact with law enforcement officials.

 Students will only wear civilian clothes if the situation warrants, as determined by the instructors, and will wear a distinctive brown armband during these instances.

 Training areas and vehicles used during exercises are clearly labeled.

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A Fort Bliss judge has delayed a trial that was scheduled to begin Monday for a soldier charged with the murder for the death of a child, officials at the Texas Army base said.

Col. Robert Schuck, a judge in the Armys 4th Judicial Circuit, issued a continuance late Friday for Sgt. Justin Cope, who is charged in the death of a child in El Paso in 2019. Cope also faces an aggravated assault charge from events in 2017 that involved a second child in Wiesau, Germany, according to an Army charging sheet.

Cope, who is assigned to the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Armored Division, was expected to plead guilty, according to an online Army court docket. However, the records do not specify to which charges he intended to plead guilty.

As part of the continuance, no guilty plea has been entered, according to Lt. Col. Allie Payne, spokeswoman for the 1st Armored Division and Fort Bliss.

Cope is accused of causing the death of a child younger than 16 years old, according to the Armys charging document. Authorities have said the child suffered head trauma and he or she was squeezed or shaken on or about Feb. 10, 2019. Cope is also accused of squeezing the face of a second child in December 2017 and causing head trauma.

The names and ages of the victims and their relationship to Cope were not included in the documents provided by Fort Bliss officials. The documents also do not include Copes age or whether he has been placed in pre-trial confinement.

A new trial date has not been set, Payne said.
Starting with the new year, the Navy is requiring senior enlisted sailors and some officers to use a government travel charge card to pay for a permanent change of station.

A PCS can cost thousands of dollars for travel, lodging and vehicle rentals, along with an untold cost in stress. Paying those expenses with a government card is designed to reduce the burden on sailors and improve government accounting, according to a Navy financial specialist.

"It will help sailors to have a better PCS experience, providing a reliable and interest-free means of financial support to all sailors," Yeoman 2nd Class Paulino Gonzales Ramirez of American Forces Network Pacific in Tokyo told Stars and Stripes in an email Thursday. "Especially when it comes to submitting travel claims, which they can use MyPCS Travel Voucher."

Since Jan. 1, enlisted sailors in paygrades E-9 and above and officers O-6 and above have been required to pay their PCS and other travel claims using a government travel charge card, or GTCC, and submit travel claim vouchers via MyPCS, according to a Navy administrative message. Sailors in all paygrades will be subject to the same requirement staring July 1.

Gonzales Ramirez said a government travel card provides sailors with an easier, burden-free financial alternative to paying out-of-pocket expenses associated with PCS travel.

MyPCS also allows sailors to submit their travel vouchers in a fully automated format on personal and government mobile devices, tablets, laptops and desktop computers.

This new requirement will make the administrative workload easier when sailors arrive at their next command, Gonzales Ramirez said. But that depends on how the sailor prepares for the PCS move.

"The more that the sailor prepares and plans out their move and keeps up with receipts and travel vouchers, the faster the process of reimbursement will be," he said. "That is why sailors need to understand how they can use their GTCC.

Also, submitting a MyPCS travel voucher ensures that sailors have everything they need to fill out and submit their travel claims, he said.

Service members are expected to understand the rules for using a government travel card and submitting a travel voucher, which the government relies upon to pay the travel claims. For example, a sailor making a PCS may be authorized a rental car on one trip but not on the next trip.

"At the end of the day, the responsibility is on the sailor to pay off any balance on their GTCC account," Gonzales Ramirez said. Failure to ensure the balance is paid within 60 days of the end of a PCS or Mission Critical status may result in a delinquency, he said, and may adversely impact the sailors assignability, security clearance and credit history.
South Vietnam, May 1968: Refugees flee gunfire and burning buildings near Tan Son Nhut air base on the outskirts of Saigon. South Vietnamese authorities said at noon on May 9 that about 46,000 people had taken refuge in central Saigon since the beginning of a Viet Cong offensive five days earlier; they estimated that another 14,000 would arrive by nightfall.
Time and distance separate the legendary Oracle at Delphi from decision-making in the District of Columbia, yet a closer look reveals similarities between Ancient Greece and Modern America.

Mythology, democracy and bureaucracy loom large, but undergirding it all is this basic truth: Times may change  human nature doesnt. Thats especially evident in the pending case of the proposed $4.4 billion acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne by defense giant Lockheed Martin.

Washington does not rely on a solitary high priestess  Pythia  to serve as Oracle; thats a duty democratized within our government. But just as the powerful descended on Delphi and the Temple of Apollo to make requests of the Oracle and interpret responses, so too do they flock to government shrines with requests and interpretations.

The obvious distinction separating modernity from antiquity is our existence in the Information Age; nearly instantaneous communication via the internet and electronic media prompt prospective predictions  commonly called spin and speculation. As 2021 has given way to 2022, those activities are on the rise. Among those in the defense community, this proposed merger has been the talk of the town for over a year and leads the pack today, as Defense One correctly observes.

A review of recent press coverage reveals interesting strategies and tactics. The position of the pro-merger faction is to emphasize the Lock in Lockheed Martin, and imply the inevitability of the outcome.

One mid-December report appearing on a financial website did not utilize typical journo-speak. Rather than using unnamed sources, the writer opted instead for someone. It then reported a boost in the stock price of Aerojet Rocketdyne after a report earlier that someone who has been opposed to the Lockheed Martin acquisition believes it will likely not be blocked by antitrust regulators.

Another financial news outlet report from October noted that the Pentagon had just sent a letter with its view to the Federal Trade Commission. At the very top, the article included Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclets optimistic comments about anticipation of closing in the first quarter of 2022, seeming to imply the Department of Defenses view was favorable. But was it?

I hope the media got it wrong here and the reality is that DOD officials understand that continued defense industry consolidation will only lead to increased costs and less innovation.

Most assuredly this process does not occur in a vacuum; advocates of the anti-merger position have emphasized correspondence late last summer between Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and FTC Chair Lina Khan. The senators letter advocated a stronger antitrust stance on defense deals by the FTC; Khan responded that antitrust enforcers should take action to block such deals.

I believe the antitrust agencies should more frequently consider opposing problematic deals outright, Khan wrote.

Some observers believe that the current composition of the FTC is problematic; as it stands, the commission consists of two Democrats and two Republicans, with the Senate confirmation of a third Democrat delayed after Democrat Rohit Chopra departed a few months ago. Thus if a vote comes down to party lines right now, it would be deadlocked at two each.

Yet it is worth remembering that Republicans have traditionally taken the lead in antitrust initiatives. History recalls that GOP President Theodore Roosevelt was Americas Trustbuster.

Corporations engaged in interstate commerce should be regulated if they are found to exercise a license working to the public injury, said the nations 26th president. One way to define public injury is an increase in costs to taxpayers and a diminution of quality as industries are consolidated.

The proposed merger between Lockheed Martin and Aerojet Rocketdyne would result in such a public injury. Thats because it would cause a duopoly in the missile defense business  Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman would own Americas only manufacturers of solid rocket motors. American taxpayers are already on the hook for $770 billion in defense spending this year; we dont need to see those costs rise any higher, nor quality to be diminished.

Were already behind international rivals in some defense key areas. Per Space Force leaders, the U.S. is not as advanced as Russia and China in nuclear-capable hypersonic programs. This ought to set off alarm bells and underscore the importance of the first duty of our government  protection of the citizenry.

Back at Delphi, Croesus of Lydia sought success going into battle with the Persians.

He asked the Oracle if he would be victorious in a war against Persia. The Oracle responded that Croesus would destroy a great empire.

Croesus took that to mean that he would be successful; instead, he found out too late that he was the one who would face defeat at the hands of the Persians, and in so doing, destroy a great empire  his own.

The United States can ill afford to stifle innovation by curtailing competition in our defense sector.

The stakes are too high.

J.D. Hayworth represented Arizona in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2007.
Corry, PA (16407)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 43F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 43F. Winds light and variable.
CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea  The latest surge of COVID-19 cases in South Korea has prompted the U.S. military to elevate its health-risk level and enact additional restrictions, including a ban on nonessential travel to Seoul.

U.S. Forces Korea, which is responsible for about 28,500 troops on the peninsula, moved to condition Bravo-plus on Saturday, signaling an elevated risk of the coronavirus respiratory disease spreading in the community.

The move means a host of off-base activities are no longer authorized. These include dining in at restaurants, along with visits to shopping malls, bars, clubs, gyms, movie theaters, amusement parks and festivals. Off-installation overnight stays are also prohibited.

The restrictions will last until further notice, USFK said in an announcement posted on its website.

Personnel on the peninsula are, however, clear to travel between installations. They can also go off base for things like grocery shopping, takeout food, medical care, child care, religious services, auto repair and for exercise.

USFK counted 682 new COVID-19 cases between Dec. 28 and Jan. 3, up from its previous high of 467 cases the prior week. All but one of the new infections were community generated, according to the command.

Gyeonggi Province reported higher infection numbers than any other area of the country Sunday with 1,014 new cases, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. The province is home to Camp Humphreys, the largest U.S. military base overseas, and Osan Air Base, home of the 7th Air Force.

Eighth Armys commander, Lt. Gen. Willard Burleson, met Friday with Pyeongtaek City mayor Jung Jang-seon to discuss the militarys pandemic response.

All members of the Eighth Army are aware of the critical situation and are operating [within] strengthened quarantine guidelines, Burleson said at the meeting.

Visits to Seoul are limited to official duty due to the associated risk of potential exposure to the virus, USFK said in Saturdays announcement. The capital city, which frequently counts higher case numbers than other provinces, reported 781 new infections on Sunday.

The surge of new cases comes after the country reported a one-day record of 7,849 infections on Dec. 15. The uptick prompted the government to roll back its plans to loosen social distancing restrictions by reenacting business curfews and limiting private gatherings to four people.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday addressed USFKs influx of positive cases and said the government must work closer with the command to control the spread.

The government should cooperate closely with [USFK] for more rigorous disinfection management of U.S. military bases in Korea and their service members, Moon said in a statement issued by his spokeswoman, Park Kyung-mee.

South Koreas response to the uptick in U.S. military infections stands in contrast to that of Japanese officials. U.S. Forces Japan, dealing with its own surge, has agreed to restrict troops to their military bases, excluding essential off-base activities, for 14 days starting Monday.
Concern among some big European nations about economic fallout raises the risk of a split with the U.S. on how strongly to hit Russia with fresh sanctions if it invades Ukraine, according to people familiar with the matter.

Western allies are united in their desire to prevent a war as they hold high-stakes talks this week aimed at defusing tensions with Russia, warning it faces massive penalties for any incursion. Actions that have been discussed include export controls, curbing Russias access to technology, and even cutting it out of the global system for financial payments.

But while the major Western European members of the European Union remain committed in principle to a significant response, some have aired worries with the U.S. about the potential for damage to their own economies, the people said. The group is still working through economic and legal assessments of the potential sanctions, they said.

European nations also fret that Russia would likely retaliate, possibly even cutting crucial gas supplies to a continent already grappling with record high energy prices. The bulk of any EU-wide response would also have to be unanimously agreed by all 27 member states, a group with differing views on Russia in general.

The U.S. has been consulting with European nations, including what is known as the Quint grouping in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which involves France, Germany, the U.K. and Italy. It has also held talks with Eastern European states.

The EU is Russias biggest trade partner, accounting for about 37% of the countrys total trade with the world in early 2020, according to the European Commission. Russia was also the origin of about 25% of the blocs oil imports.

Translating well-coordinated words into a joint agreement on some of the specific measures being explored could prove tricky, the people said. The differences underline the challenge the U.S. and its allies face as they try to pressure President Vladimir Putin into reversing his troop buildup near the Ukraine border.

The countries have discussed options including cutting Russia out of Swift, the international payments system, limiting Russian banks ability to convert currencies and imposing export controls on advanced technologies used in aviation, semiconductors and other components, as well as computers and other consumer goods in more extreme scenarios.

The curbs could hit everything from aircraft avionics and machine tools to smartphones, games consoles, tablets and televisions, another person familiar with the discussions said. Under some actions, Russia could face export controls as stringent as those for Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria, which have been largely cut off from global trade and financing, according to the person.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels on Monday that allies were ready to listen to Russias concerns in the talks. At the same time, we need to be prepared for that Russia once again chooses to use armed force, chooses confrontation instead of cooperation, he said.

One former official with ties to the current U.S. administration said a point of concern is how much Germany, which has just completed the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia, would be on board. The recent departure of Angela Merkel as German chancellor after 16 years has also left a gap in terms of a European leader who can both navigate the EU into an agreement and engage directly with Putin, the person said. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline has not started pumping gas and is still awaiting regulatory approvals from Berlin and Brussels.

Officials from Russia and the U.S. are holding talks Monday in Geneva, with a Russia-NATO council meeting also on the slate for this week, plus talks in Vienna under the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Putin has said he does not currently plan to invade Ukraine, but is also demanding NATO provide him security guarantees.

U.S. officials are pinning their hopes for common ground on issues such as arms control and greater communication between their militaries, according to people familiar with the plans, given the NATO guarantees that Putin seeks are a non-starter. Theyre willing to explore reciprocal restrictions on strategic bombers and ground-based military exercises, a senior administration official said.

Still, the U.S. will hold off on making firm commitments during the talks, and plans discussions with allies before any agreements, the official added. It wont negotiate scaling back troop deployments in Eastern Europe, they said, denying an NBC News report.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov had dinner with Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on Sunday in Geneva and told reporters afterward the initial discussions were businesslike but the issues for the countries were complex. It cant be easy. But in principle, it was businesslike and I dont think we will be wasting our time tomorrow, Ryabkov said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ABC News on Sunday he didnt expect a breakthrough this week. National Security Council spokeswoman Saloni Sharma said there was broad consensus between Washington and allies in Europe on the need for a high impact, quick action response that would inflict significant costs on the Russian economy and financial system if Putin invaded Ukraine.

Intelligence assessments and satellite images show there are now more than 100,000 Russian troops in the vicinity of Ukraine. Russia has also developed capabilities to deploy more units in a short period of time, from one to two weeks, according to a military assessment seen by Bloomberg. Russia has shown no sign of de-escalating, officials have said, and is ramping up efforts to target Ukraine with disinformation.

One of the people said a separate military assessment pointed to the possibility Russia moves into the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine before the northern hemisphere spring, rather than a large-scale invasion from multiple locations.

Ukraine and Russia have been in conflict since Putin responded to the 2014 Ukrainian revolution that ousted the pro-Moscow president by seizing Crimea. Russia also backed separatists in eastern Ukraine by sending personnel and weapons, helping stoke a conflict that has killed more than 14,000 people.

Bloombergs Ilya Arkhipov, Bryce Baschuk and John Follain contributed to this report.
Rescue crews saved 27 people stranded on a large piece of ice floating off the shore of Point Comfort in Green Bay, police in Wisconsin said.

The ice broke away from the shoreline, carrying dozens out over the frigid bay waters, according to the Brown County Sheriffs Office.

Police, firefighters and the Coast Guard responded Saturday morning, the sheriffs office said.

Barge traffic yesterday appears to have weakened the ice along the east shore of the Bay, therefore, the ice should be avoided for all recreational use, the BCSO wrote in a Facebook post, warning others to stay clear of the area.

One man caught on the ice floe, Shane Nelson, was ice fishing with a friend when a loud noise caught their attention, WLUK reported.

It sounded like, almost, somebody fired a gun out there, Nelson told the TV station. We thought it was interesting, got out of our shanty, took a look and people were yelling on the ice were separating.

Nelson and the other castaways were rescued in a matter of hours, ferried back to shore a boatload at a time, police told WLUK.

No injuries were reported.

2022 The Charlotte Observer.

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(Tribune News Service)  They arrived as guests to the United States, but now, dozens of Afghan refugees are calling Indianapolis home.

For months, that word has shaped how Afghan people have been welcomed here in the U.S.

Afghan guests have the opportunity to learn ... a Camp Atterbury Facebook post shared in October .

We remain focused on fostering a positive cultural environment for our guests, Col. Mike Grundman, Camp Atterburys installation commander, told reporters in November.

Other officials  from the U.S. Army and the Indiana National Guard, even Gov. Eric Holcomb  have all used that expression when referring to the thousands of Afghan people beginning the next chapter of their lives here, in the Crossroads of America.

In their eyes, they arent refugees or evacuees  theyre guests.

With that hospitality, Camp Atterbury began welcoming Afghan people in September after the violent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. The Johnson County base was one of eight nationwide sites designated to be a safe haven, offering temporary refuge for Afghans while they awaited permanent resettlement across the U.S.

How many Afghan refugees are in Indiana?

At the peak of its operations, the base housed about 7,200 evacuees. That number combined with hundreds of soldiers and personnel transformed the Johnson County base into a mini-city of its own.

People moved out of the camp at various times, depending on their individual cases and resettlement agencies capacities, but by late November, nearly half the population had been resettled across the U.S.

How many Afghan refugees remain at Camp Atterbury? Today, the majority have been resettled, and about 1,200 evacuees remain at the base, Public Affairs Officer Maj. Jennifer Pendleton told IndyStar on Thursday.

You see how excited people are to finally leave, Pendleton said. They get to start anew and its great ... Its really promising and fills you with a lot of positive vibes.

Resettlement agencies across the country, including Exodus Refugee Immigration in Indianapolis, have ramped up efforts to welcome the influx of new residents.

The pace of arrivals has been high and sort of nonstop, Cole Varga, executive director for Exodus, told IndyStar. But the staff has been unbelievable ... to help make sure people are welcomed well to Indianapolis.

Since September, theyve been welcoming about 20-50 Afghan people per week in Indianapolis, Varga said, though there have also been some families going to other cities such as Bloomington and Muncie.

By the end of this week, Exodus will have helped 280 people resettle in the Indianapolis area, Varga said. For context, in all of 2020, the agency helped resettle 175 people.

In addition to Exodus, other statewide agencies include Catholic Charities in Indianapolis and Catholic Charities-Fort Wayne, and officials hope to eventually have about 700 Afghan evacuees resettled across the state. So far, about 450 of them have made Indiana home, according to Pendleton.

At Camp Atterbury, as operations are winding down, Pendleton said they are optimistic about getting everyone resettled by the end of January.

So far, three other nationwide sites have had their final group of Afghan evacuees depart  Fort Lee, Virginia; Quantico, Virginia; and Fort Bliss, Texas.

To date, more than 52,000 Afghan evacuees have been resettled across the U.S., according to DHS.

How to help Afghan refugees in Indiana

Team Rubicon, a nonprofit focused on disaster response, was collecting and coordinating donations for evacuees at Camp Atterbury. Though donation efforts have ended as of Dec. 7, the nonprofit organization will send all remaining donations to various resettlement agencies. Visit teamrubiconusa.org/resettlement to learn more.

Exodus Refugee Immigration accepts donations online and welcomes contributions through its Amazon Wishlist .

Visit dhs.gov/allieswelcome to learn more about Operation Allies Welcome. DHS is also partnering with Welcome.US, a national non-profit initiative to welcome and support Afghan nationals. Visit welcome.us to learn more.

Individuals and community organizations can also apply to form a sponsor circle to directly support Afghan evacuees. Visit sponsorcircles.org to learn more about the Sponsor Circle Program.

rjaipuriar@gannett.com

2022 The Indianapolis Star.

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International Real Estate advisor Savills has announced it has opened in three locations in Pakistan effective January 1, 2022.

The real estate advisory firm, which formerly operated as Colliers International franchise in Pakistan, will join Savills with its 42-strong team.

The existing business, established in 2007, will give Savills extensive national coverage, operating out of three offices in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad.

It will form part of and further strengthen Savills market leading Middle East operation and connect both East and West with our regional businesses as we continue to grow our global network.

Savills Pakistan will offer services including sales, leasing and investment advisory, valuation, research and development as well as project management. The teams existing client base includes the largest commercial bank in Pakistan, Habib Bank Ltd, Bank Alfalah and Standard Chartered Bank; one of Chinas largest state-owned enterprises China Road & Bridge; telecommunications company Etisalat; one of the largest local listed developers TPL Properties and International companies including Royal Dutch Shell, Novartis, Maersk, GlaxoSmithKline and Pepsico International.

Mark Ridley, CEO of Savills, says: Pakistan is the fifth largest country by population, of which over a third reside in urban areas. With the government promoting the construction and housing industry we see huge opportunity in this market and are really excited to be working with our new colleagues.

Steven Morgan, CEO of Savills Middle East, adds: Forming a business in Pakistan is a key strategic move as we further grow in this geographical area. We are already advising clients across the Middle East, Africa and Asia on extensive growth projects and we are looking forward to sharing this expertise with our team in Pakistan.

Hammad Rana, Director of Savills Pakistan adds: Savills global platform represents an established and market leading advisory service. Our clients are set to benefit from the experience of the wider business as we collaborate closely to achieve the best results.

Savills Middle East business now spans the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Oman, and Pakistan.

-- TradeArabia News Service
Chelsey Brown was at a Manhattan flea market last summer when she saw an old handwritten letter. On a whim, she decided, Im just going to buy this item for a dollar, take it home with me, and try to trace it.

Within half an hour on a genealogy site back at her New York City apartment, she found the descendants of the person to whom the letter was addressed. She reached out to them and offered the long-lost letter, which they enthusiastically accepted.

From that moment on, I just never stopped, said Brown, 28, explaining her unusual hobby.

To date, she has returned hundreds of heirlooms; she stopped counting after she hit 190 in September.

As an interior designer specializing in budget-friendly decorating, Brown has long been a flea market fanatic. Now, though, she primarily uses her thrifting skills to sleuth for meaningful mementos  and reunite forgotten family heirlooms with their rightful owners.

She and her father, who is a trained genealogist, started working on genealogy cases as a father-daughter duo in 2019. They began with finding the family of a baby girl who was buried in 1938 in a New York cemetery, right next to Browns grandparents.

The Browns made it their mission to trace the baby girls lineage, and eventually they were able to find her living relatives, who knew she existed but did not know where she was buried. In an email response to the Browns, the babys niece said she is grateful to finally be able to visit the grave.

Now she does not have to be alone, the niece wrote to the Browns, they said.

Thats when it all started for me, Chelsey Brown said. Those reactions are exactly what fuel me. Thats why I keep doing it.

Each weekend, Brown visits thrift stores in search of heirlooms such as long-lost love letters, books, high school diplomas and photo albums, which usually cost her between $1 to $5 each, depending on the vendor and the item. Brown covers the cost of the objects, as well as the postage fees to mail them to the descendants, which is usually an additional $8. She estimates shes spent thousands of dollars on returns at this point.

Its something I love doing, and Im happy to pay for it, Brown said, adding that she has also partnered with MyHeritage, a genealogy platform, to work on some research projects.

Theres nothing quite like the feeling of satisfaction that comes from returning a lost item to its owner, said Roi Mandel, director of research at MyHeritage.

Brown said she is able to track down the descendants of about 80% of the items she finds, as she typically opts exclusively for things that contain some form of a clue, be it a name, date or other identifying marker. She then uses MyHeritage to build a family tree and scour for potential descendants.

Recently, she found an old Valentines Day card written by a woman to her husband, and returned it to the couples granddaughter. She also returned love letters from the 1960s to the woman to whom they were originally written  marking the first time Brown gave back an item to its original owner and not a descendant. She is now working on returning a baby journal from 1908.

Theres an element of mystery to it, Brown said. Every possible story you can think of, I have probably come across it. Its all about finding magic in everyday human lives.

Of the hundreds of heirlooms she has collected so far, there has not been one person that hasnt wanted an item Ive found, Brown said. That says something.

Mary Jane Scott, who grew up in Arlington, Va., and now lives in Columbia, S.C., was one of Browns recipients of a long-lost heirloom. She received a message from Brown around Thanksgiving last year, asking if she was related to Hans Wittstock  who, indeed, was her grandfather.

Brown explained that she had retrieved ration books from World War II belonging to Hans Wittstock and other members of his family.

I couldnt believe it, said Scott, 72. I was tremendously excited. I couldnt believe she would take the time to do that.

Given that the holiday season was approaching, it was like a present, Scott said. We spent a lot of Christmases with my grandparents.

Evan Konecky, who lives in Seattle, was equally thrilled to receive an unexpected message from Brown, explaining that she had found a letter addressed to Koneckys mother from the late 1940s.

It was a bit of a miracle, said Konecky, 68.

Although Konecky does not know who the letter came from, the sender does thank my mother for her generosity and kindness, so I know it was real, she said.

It brought my sweet mom back to me for those minutes when I held that letter in my hand and was able to read it, Konecky said. Chelsey seems to derive a great amount of pleasure, but I think its nothing compared to the pleasure that she gives the recipients of these long-lost memories.

Brown credits her father with getting her interested in the pursuit. For the past 25 years, he has had a personal pastime of helping strangers uncover their lineage.

He has taught me so much, Brown said of her father, who lives in Falls Church, Virginia, where she grew up and still regularly visits to see family and scavenge for more relics.

I think there must be something in our genetics that we have a shared excitement about genealogy, said Bruce Brown, 75. Chelsey is experiencing the same joy I do.

She said she wholeheartedly agrees.

These arent just items, she said. Theyre treasures.
(Tribune News Service)  Yama Meerzada dug through boxes of diapers on Sunday morning outside of a hotel in La Jolla, confirming in Pashto with the parents of a 1-year-old which size they needed.

The family was one of 20 attending a donation distribution event by San Diego Afghan Refugees Aid Group in a grassy space next to the hotel parking lot. The group formed as Afghanistan fell under Taliban rule last year, anticipating many Afghan newcomers would be arriving in San Diego.

Meerzada said that when he saw news footage of a woman in Afghanistan handing her child over a wall to a U.S. Marine in August, he felt like he had to do something to help.

"That literally shook me," he said.

He found that many in San Diego's Afghan and Afghan American community felt the same way and soon the aid group was formed. Initially, its founders thought that it would exist only temporarily, ending its work by December at the latest. But they soon realized that the amount of new arrivals paired with short-staffed resettlement agencies and an ongoing housing shortage meant that many would need long-term community support.

They offer food and clothing donations, as well as furniture and household items after families manage to move into homes. Volunteers transport families to medical appointments and translate conversations with the doctors into Dari and Pashto, the two main languages spoken in Afghanistan. The organization is also connecting newcomers with jobs in local restaurants and other businesses.

On Sunday, the group hosted its second donation distribution event, with more than a dozen volunteers setting up a series of canopies and tables filled with toys and clothing at one of the hotels currently housing many Afghan families. ICNA Relief provided bags of groceries for the families as well. About 120 people  parents and children  showed up from their hotel rooms to get help.

The family of seven that Meerzada was guiding around the donation tables had been living in a hotel room in San Diego for about a month after spending four months on a military base in Indiana.

Because of San Diego's housing shortage, resettlement agencies have long struggled to place refugees into long-term living situations quickly. That challenge only grew more intense with the sudden arrival of hundreds of Afghans late last year.

Shafiqullah Fazli, the father of the family that Meerzada helped, said he was grateful for the aid group.

"We're happy to have this support," he said, with Meerzada translating for him. "We don't have anyone else."

Fazli said he'd been injured, lifting his shirt briefly to reveal a thick scar down the length of his torso. He'd also hurt his leg, he said.

"I didn't know I would come out alive, but now I'm here with the kids," he said. "I'm happy."

One of his sons selected a Lincoln Logs set from the table of toys and hugged the box close, following Fazli through the event.

Meerzada said that visiting families and hosting events where they are staying have helped the aid group figure out what families need.

"The whole dynamic of the culture, although poverty is there, they are very proud. They can't ask for help," he said. "If you ask, 'Do you need anything?' They say, 'No, I'm fine.' But if you go check their household, they have nothing."

Volunteer Waheeda Noor said she had already been to deliver items to one family before the event. She planned to deliver items to eight more families later in the day and possibly take another family that has moved into an apartment to buy a rug if she had time.

She spends her spare time looking for free furniture on apps like OfferUp, she said, and volunteers with the aid group several days a week.

She feels called to help because of her own experience coming to the United States as a refugee in 1990.

"I've been there," Noor said. "This is all culture shock for them."

Many volunteers are storing donated clothing in their homes, according to Hossai Tahnas, who helped organize Sunday's event. Since the aid group members live all over the county, they're able to gather items in their area to bring to the newcomers. She said that most volunteers have full time jobs as well.

That includes Rashid Paband, who is a doctor at a local hospital and came to San Diego from Afghanistan decades ago. He said despite being busy and short-staffed because of the most recent wave of COVID-19, he manages to volunteer 10 to 20 hours a week with a couple of community organizations, including San Diego Afghan Refugees Aid Group.

The organization recently applied for 501c3 status as a nonprofit, Meerzada said. The group has used almost all of the money that it received through individual donations in its first months. He's hoping to reinvigorate the organization's fund now that it is an official, long-term group.

He's worried that because of the speed of the news cycle, many have already forgotten about the needs of Afghan refugees.

2022 The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Visit sandiegouniontribune.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
A federal court in South Carolina is allowing a group of Americans to go ahead with their lawsuit against a contractor over a 2016 suicide attack at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, that killed or injured nearly two dozen people.

Texas-based Fluor Corp., which the military hired to provide services like construction and security at bases throughout Afghanistan, was seeking dismissal of the suit. On Thursday, a judge ruled for the 13 plaintiffs, who allege that Fluor was negligent.

Fluors responsibility included monitoring and supervising its employees and subcontractors. Fluor utterly failed in this regard, allowing this terrible tragedy, attorney Tony Buzbee, whose firm is lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said in a statement Friday.

Thursdays ruling means the consolidated cases can now be tried before a jury. The plaintiffs have yet to quantify their damages, Buzbee told Stars and Stripes.

The company argued that a trial could expose sensitive military information. It also contended that South Carolina is an improper forum for the complaints, as none of the plaintiffs are from that state.

However on Thursday, Judge Joseph Dawson III of the U.S. District Court in Greenville ruled that the companys contracted work was administered in South Carolina, albeit remotely.

Fluor Corp. was unable to immediately comment when contacted Monday by Stars and Stripes.

Ahmed Nayeb, an Afghan who, according to court documents, worked for Fluor subcontractor Alliance Project Services, Inc., blew himself up Nov. 12, 2016, ahead of a Veterans Day run at Bagram Airfield.

The attack killed five people, in addition to Nayeb, and injured 17 others. Three American service members were among the dead.

Nayebs shift had ended, and he was not supposed to have been on base then, according to court documents.

A 2016 Army investigation found that Fluor had not properly supervised Nayeb and had negligently entrusted him with tools he used to make a bomb vest, even though he didnt need those tools for his job.
With weather conditions in the Coromandel expected to remain dry and hot for at least another week, Thames-Coromandel District Council is urging people to be aware of their surroundings.

While making for excellent beach days, this weather poses two significant risks to the community: increased fire risks and added pressure on the region's water supplies.

"We have a high risk of scrub fires this summer so please be considerate," says our Civil Defence Controller Garry Towler.

"The Coromandel has experienced a number of scrub fires these past two weeks and with some key risk indicators now at or approaching extreme it is everyones responsibility to ensure fire safety protocols, inside, outside and on the water are in place."

The district is currently in the prohibited season.

This means: no open-air fires can be lit anywhere in the district (or the surrounding islands off the Coromandel), fireworks are banned as are sky lanterns (sometimes called Chinese lanterns). Dont launch flares off your boat unless youre calling for emergency help.

These can drift onto land and cause fires.

Check the Fire and Emergency New Zealand website for more information on fire safety: checkitsalright.nz/

Image: TCDC.

Water supplies are experiencing increased pressure due to the number of visitors coupled with dry, summer days.

"Pressure on our water supplies always occurs at this time of year, due to the peak demand from the 200,000 or so visitors who pass through the Coromandel from late December to February," says Towler.

"Again, we are asking everyone to help out by taking personal responsibility for their water use. If it is not essential, leave the tap off."

Check water restrictions in your area here: tcdc.govt.nz/waterrestrictions

Also, remember that Covid-19 is still a factor. It is important to get tested and follow self-isolation guidelines if you are feeling unwell. Check the governments Unite Against COVID-19 website for more information
Following several serious incidents at beaches in the Coromandel and Bay of Plenty, Surf Life Saving New Zealand is urging beachgoers to take care in the water.

Beaches across the Bay of Plenty have been extremely busy with the hot weather weve seen this summer, says Surf Life Saving NZ Eastern Region Life Saving manager Chaz Gibbons-Campbell.

People are flocking to the sea to keep cool and have fun.

Lifeguards have been extremely busy with the high numbers of beachgoers, carrying out countless preventative actions to keep people out of trouble.

Eastern Region lifeguards have also been involved in almost 100 rescues and serious incidents this summer, and tragically there were recent fatalities at Whangamata, Pauanui and Omanu.

This is devastating for the families affected, and our thoughts are with them at this sad time.

While the beach is a wonderful summer playground, it can also be deadly, says Chaz.

Presently many beaches in the region have strong rip currents and lots of water movement, especially on the outgoing tide, which can sweep people out of their depth.

Pick a Patrolled Beach

One of the best things people can do to keep themselves, their family and friends safe when visiting the beach is to choose a lifeguarded beach, says Chaz.

Ideally, choose a beach with lifeguards on patrol as they will be close by if anyone gets into trouble.

Go to www.safeswim.org.nz to find out which beaches are patrolled and the times lifeguards are on duty.

When arriving at the beach, look for the red and yellow flags and swim between them. This part of the beach has the safest swimming conditions and is always monitored by lifeguards. Other parts of the same beach may be dangerous to swim or paddle in, even if they are close to the flags.

Always listen to instructions given by lifeguards. If a lifeguard waves at someone to come out of the water or asks them to swim at another part of the beach, people should follow their instructions. Lifeguards have the publics safety in mind and are there to keep people out of trouble. They know about risks and hazards that swimmers may not be aware of.

Chaz says lifeguards are a friendly bunch, and the public can ask them questions if theyre unsure of anything or want to find out about the conditions of the beach they are visiting.

People should remember these important safety messages when visiting the beach. Carrying out this advice can help make sure Kiwis get home safely after enjoying a trip to the beach this summer.

Beach Safety Messages

 Choose a lifeguarded beach and swim between the flags

 Read and understand the safety signs  ask a surf lifeguard for advice as conditions can change regularly

 Dont overestimate your ability or your childrens ability to cope in the conditions

 Always keep a close eye on very young children in or near the water  always keep them within arms reach

 Get a friend to swim with you  never swim or surf alone

 Watch out for rip currents, they can carry you away from shore. If caught in a rip current remember the 3Rs: *Relax and float, *Raise your hand and *Ride the rip

 Be smart around rocks: When fishing never turn your back towards the sea and always wear a lifejacket

 If in doubt, stay out!

 If you see someone in trouble, call 111 and ask for the Police

 Be sun smart  slip, slop, slap and wrap to protect your skin and eyes from the suns damaging rays.
There are two Covid-19 cases to report in the Western Bay of Plenty today.

One of todays case is a household previously reported cases, and one is still being investigated for potential links, says a statement from the Ministry of Health.

Both cases are isolating at home.

"At this stage, no further positive Covid-19 test results have been received associated with the drum and bass festival in Taurangas Wharepai Domain on January 3 which had been attended by a person with Covid-19.

"All those who attended the festival should monitor for symptoms and get tested if any symptoms develop, no matter how mild."

The Ministry says no further cases have been linked to the festival and the initial test results of the 11 close contacts of the Wellington case are all negative.

See below for a full breakdown of today's numbers;

Vaccination rates by DHB with active cases (percentage of eligible people)

Northland DHB: First doses (89%); second doses (85%)

*Auckland Metro DHBs: First doses (96%); second doses (94%)

Waikato DHB: First doses (94%); second doses (91%)

Bay of Plenty DHB: First doses (94%); second doses (90%)

Lakes DHB: First doses (92%); second doses (88%)

Taranaki DHB: First doses (93%); second doses (90%)

Tairawhiti DHB: First doses (92%); second doses (87%)

Hawkes Bay DHB: First doses (95%); second doses (91%)

Canterbury DHB: First doses (98%); second doses (96%)

Capital and Coast DHB: First doses (98%); second doses (96%)

Hutt Valley DHB: First doses (96%); second doses (94%)

Hospitalisations

Cases in hospital: 35; Northland 1; North Shore: 6; Auckland: 12; Middlemore: 13, Tauranga: 3.

Vaccination status of current hospitalisations (Northern Region wards only): Unvaccinated or not eligible (9 cases / 30%); partially immunised <7 days from second dose or have only received one dose (8 cases / 27%); fully vaccinated at least 7 days before being reported as a case (12 cases / 40%); 1 unknown (3%).

Average age of current hospitalisations: 55

Cases in ICU or HDU: 1 (Middlemore).

Cases

Seven day rolling average of community cases: 30

Number of new community cases: 27

Number of new cases identified at the border: 33

Location of new community cases over past two days: Auckland (16), *Waikato (5), Bay of Plenty (2), Lakes (1), **Hawkes Bay (2), Wellington (1)

Number of community cases (total): 11,169 (in current community outbreak)

Cases epidemiologically linked (total): 8,426

Number of active cases (total): 1,073 (cases identified in the past 21 days and not yet classified as recovered)

Confirmed cases (total): 14,358

Contacts

Number of active contacts being managed (total): 6,196

Percentage who have received an outbound call from contact tracers (to confirm testing and isolation requirements): 66%

Percentage who have returned at least one result: 69%

Tests

Number of tests total (last 24 hours): 10,519

Tests rolling average (last 7 days): 12,345

Auckland tests total (last 24 hours): 5,587

Wastewater

There were no unexpected wastewater detections.

NZ COVID Tracer

Poster scans in the 24 hours to midday yesterday: 1,957,979

Manual diary entries in the 24 hours to midday: 37,784

My Vaccine Pass

My vaccine pass downloads total: 4,710,766

My vaccine pass downloads (last 24 hours): 8,041

Todays cases

The Minsitry is reporting new community cases in Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Lakes and Wellington.

"We ae also reporting two cases in Hawkes Bay, as outlined below.

"They tested positive in Waikato but have Hawkes Bay addresses. We are also reporting one case in Northland today which will officially be added to tomorrows numbers."

Auckland metro vaccination update

Today, the Ministry is reporting 96 per cent first dose and 94 per cent second dose in Auckland metros figures.

"These percentages are lower than those we reported in yesterdays update. Yesterdays percentages reflected the current situation in the Auckland DHB area only.

"Todays numbers reflect the combined percentage for Auckland, Waitemata and Counties Manukau DHBs."

Regional updates

"We are continuing to ask anyone in New Zealand with symptoms  no matter how mild  to get tested, even if youre vaccinated.

"Please stay at home until you return a negative test result. We are also asking people to regularly check the locations of interest as these are regularly updated and to follow the advice provided."

Testing and vaccination centre locations nationwide can be found on the Healthpoint website.

Please also continue to check for any updated Locations of Interest and appropriate health advice, updated regularly on the Ministrys website.

Northland

There is one new case to announce in Northland today  in the Hokianga area.

This case was reported after the daily cut-off and will be included in tomorrows figures.

This case is linked to a known case in the Hokianga and was already in isolation as a close contact when they tested positive.

Further investigations are underway to confirm any potential exposures from this case

Auckland

There are 16 cases to report in Auckland today.

Health and welfare providers are now supporting 944 people in the region to isolate at home, including 204 cases.

Waikato

There are five new cases in the Waikato today, three are unlinked.

Two are in Hamilton, one in Ngaruawahia, one in Whitianga, one in Coromandel town.

Pop-up testing sites are operating in Whangamata and testing is available at general practices in Whangamata, Whitianga and Te Awamutu by appointment.

For details of all dedicated testing sites including other general practices, please visit Healthpoint, the DHB webpage or DHB Facebook page.

In the Waikato, Public Health, primary care and manaaki providers are supporting 36 cases to isolate at home.

Lakes

There is one case to report in Rotorua today.

The case is still being investigated for links to previously reported cases.

**Hawkes Bay

There are two Hawkes Bay residents who have tested positive while in Waikato.

Both cases are previously linked to reported cases in Waikato.

Both cases are currently isolating in Te Kuiti. There are no known exposure events associated with these cases in Hawkes Bay.

Wellington

There is one new case to report in Wellington.

The case attended the Britomart Block Party in Auckland on New Years Eve.

Anyone who attended this event between 11.15pm on 31 December and 2.30am on 1 January are advised to immediately get tested then self-monitor for Covid-19 symptoms for 10 days after you were exposed. If you have symptoms get tested, stay home until you receive a negative test result.

The case is in isolation and, at this stage, no associated locations of interest have been identified in the Wellington region. Locations of interest for other Wellington cases are published on the Ministry website and we encourage people to check these and follow the instructions for symptoms and testing.
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Kuwaiti authorities have given the go-ahead for the construction of a new airport in the northern part of the country, reported the state news agency Kuna.

This comes following media reports last week stating that the Municipal Committee Council of the Jahra Governorate is coordinating with the Directorate- General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on allocation of a site for the construction of the new airport.

Kuwait currently has an international airport located 9.6 miles south of Kuwait City, which serves as the hub for Kuwait Airways and Jazeera Airways.

The setting up of the new airport comes in line with the studies and proposals of the fourth structural plan for Kuwait, sated the report.

However, the authorities did not disclose the completion date of the project nor the value of investment.
Tahlequah, OK (74464)

Today

Cloudy skies early will become partly cloudy later in the day. High 68F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy with late night showers or thunderstorms. Low 53F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Dodge_Viper BHPian



Join Date: Feb 2013 Location: Vashi Posts: 565 Thanked: 692 Times

View My Garage





How I ended up with my childhood crush - Maruti Gypsy



Then came the biggest news of my life in 2010/2011 when Mahindra launched its "JEEP" again. THAR. But given my fresher salary I was not able to afford anything above 4.5 lakhs. Forget the thought of having one primary vehicle and one secondary weekend fun vehicle. Thar was 7 lakhs on road. Obviously my first showroom visit was Mahindra to check out the Thar but paying 7 lakhs for such a horrible barebones vehicle was definitely out of scope. Still sat in the vehicle and said, some day. Gypsy was the same case. Out of budget. The purchase of either of them was put on hold and for indefinite period. All along these years, drooling over Thar and Gypsy threads on TeamBHP, the itch was still there. But I was not in a position to keep a second vehicle. Going through the used car route was the only option. Close friends knew my love for Thar, but probably didn't know the equal love for Gypsy. BHPian sierrakamat had got a Gypsy in the meantime. Drove it and decided please let me be the first to know when you decide to sell it. Then started the countless number of hours spent on OLX hunting for Gypsy and Thars. Ads used to get exchanged between me and sierrakamat almost every week. But still the decision making thing was lacking. Sierrakamat one day gave up and said, you are not going to buy anything don't waste my time. Depressed I left the search. But destiny came knocking in the form of one army restored Gypsy. It was beautifully done. Went to see it, test drove it and decided to go ahead. Finalized on the price and came a bummer, no RC. There was no point in taking risk with such restored vehicles without documents. Left it there and went on the hunt again. At the same time, sierrakamat messaged about a known Gypsy on sale. The Doctor owner was going for higher studies and was planning to sell it. It was the same Gypsy which was with us during one of the OTR session I had attended with sierrakamat. So I knew it very well. I did not give a second thought and went to see it. Drove it, and as sierrakamat had already approved it, paid the token then and there. Special thanks to sierrakamat!



And thus a long 20+ years of dream came true .



After payment, I had handed over the transfer papers to agent and kept her at sierrakamat's place. Was waiting for an auspicious day to get her home.



Blessed:





About the vehicle:

This particular model is 1.3 MPFI Gypsy King hardtop civilian version. Registration of May 2000, almost 21 years old. RC is valid till December 2025. Engine was in top condition. It obviously needed basic touch up things to get it in perfect shape. The previous owner had done quite a useful set of mods as below:



1)AC

2)Carbon Fibre rear leaf springs

3)Monroe Gas shocks

4)Full redone wiring with extra relays and fuses

5)Original Hella 7" headlamps with 110/90 All weather lights

6)Anti corrosion under body treatment

7)Aux fan with custom radiator

8)Brand new MGP rims

9)And the biggest of them, brand new Yokohama Geolanders A/T



The only thing needed was a basic service, some tin work and AC service. The brand new tyres saved 40k of expenses then and there.



Post delivery, took her to the garage and got the below work done:

1)Full service, changed all oils and filters

2)Got the hardtop repainted as the fibre top paint had peeled off at some places

3)Rear door hinge had bent, so fixed that as well

4)Change the entire seat upholstery, new foam and new covers. changed the door trim as well to match seat fabric

5)Carpeting done with heatlon

6)Cleaned the radiator

7)Got a family lock set installed, one key for all

8)Silencer had a hole which caused a free flow type drone. Previous owner enjoyed it, however I didn't want it. Replace the end can

9)Got the Ac fixed as well



Painted Fibre Top:





Changed the entire seat foam and covers:





Rear side facing seats changed as well:





Full carpeting done with heatlon:





Got these 7" HID spot beam lights from sierrakamat:





Rise and Shine :









Total damage to wallet was about 40k including all.



Customary Ritual:





As all the work was done, took her for the first long drive to my native Satara during Diwali.



Its fun at petrol pumps where the attendant expects me to handover the key to open fuel lid but, "are usko direct kholo no key" (Open it directly, no key)







Was on a constant lookout for any overheating issues, but luckily did not face anything.



Little one loves it too!





A head turner for sure:





First trip to Kaas Plateau:

























There are still few things pending to do cosmetically. Planning to either get an offroad bumper or get the existing one painted.



There is one irritating earthing issue which needs to be fixed. It causes flickering of indicators and the fuel and temperature gauge shoots up to the max. Yet to take her off-road, although I have not bought her strictly for off-road use. I will be using for touring as well.



Future mods planned:

Offroad bumper

Snorkel (Wont go water wading but for show purposes, lol) There are specific set of vehicles which are termed immortals. They were present since Jurassic age probably and will stay till the end of Kalyug. These timeless beauties are a sight to behold when you see them on roads. For me these were the "JEEP" and "GYPSY". Love them both. Die hard fan of both. Getting a new Jeep was out of the question since Mahindra no longer manufactured these. Circa 2000 when we got our first vehicle a humble Santro, Gypsy was still available off the showroom brand new. But imagine mentioning at home to buy such a vehicle. A barrage of chappals would come crashing down on you. "You" want such a vehicle, grow up, start earning and buy with your own money. Fair point. Some day, said to myself.Then came the biggest news of my life in 2010/2011 when Mahindra launched its "JEEP" again. THAR. But given my fresher salary I was not able to afford anything above 4.5 lakhs. Forget the thought of having one primary vehicle and one secondary weekend fun vehicle. Thar was 7 lakhs on road. Obviously my first showroom visit was Mahindra to check out the Thar but paying 7 lakhs for such a horrible barebones vehicle was definitely out of scope. Still sat in the vehicle and said, some day. Gypsy was the same case. Out of budget. The purchase of either of them was put on hold and for indefinite period. All along these years, drooling over Thar and Gypsy threads on TeamBHP, the itch was still there. But I was not in a position to keep a second vehicle. Going through the used car route was the only option. Close friends knew my love for Thar, but probably didn't know the equal love for Gypsy. BHPian sierrakamat had got a Gypsy in the meantime. Drove it and decided please let me be the first to know when you decide to sell it. Then started the countless number of hours spent on OLX hunting for Gypsy and Thars. Ads used to get exchanged between me and sierrakamat almost every week. But still the decision making thing was lacking. Sierrakamat one day gave up and said, you are not going to buy anything don't waste my time. Depressed I left the search. But destiny came knocking in the form of one army restored Gypsy. It was beautifully done. Went to see it, test drove it and decided to go ahead. Finalized on the price and came a bummer, no RC. There was no point in taking risk with such restored vehicles without documents. Left it there and went on the hunt again. At the same time, sierrakamat messaged about a known Gypsy on sale. The Doctor owner was going for higher studies and was planning to sell it. It was the same Gypsy which was with us during one of the OTR session I had attended with sierrakamat. So I knew it very well. I did not give a second thought and went to see it. Drove it, and as sierrakamat had already approved it, paid the token then and there. Special thanks to sierrakamat!And thus a long 20+ years of dream came trueAfter payment, I had handed over the transfer papers to agent and kept her at sierrakamat's place. Was waiting for an auspicious day to get her home.Blessed:About the vehicle:This particular model is 1.3 MPFI Gypsy King hardtop civilian version. Registration of May 2000, almost 21 years old. RC is valid till December 2025. Engine was in top condition. It obviously needed basic touch up things to get it in perfect shape. The previous owner had done quite a useful set of mods as below:1)AC2)Carbon Fibre rear leaf springs3)Monroe Gas shocks4)Full redone wiring with extra relays and fuses5)Original Hella 7" headlamps with 110/90 All weather lights6)Anti corrosion under body treatment7)Aux fan with custom radiator8)Brand new MGP rims9)And the biggest of them, brand new Yokohama Geolanders A/TThe only thing needed was a basic service, some tin work and AC service. The brand new tyres saved 40k of expenses then and there.Post delivery, took her to the garage and got the below work done:1)Full service, changed all oils and filters2)Got the hardtop repainted as the fibre top paint had peeled off at some places3)Rear door hinge had bent, so fixed that as well4)Change the entire seat upholstery, new foam and new covers. changed the door trim as well to match seat fabric5)Carpeting done with heatlon6)Cleaned the radiator7)Got a family lock set installed, one key for all8)Silencer had a hole which caused a free flow type drone. Previous owner enjoyed it, however I didn't want it. Replace the end can9)Got the Ac fixed as wellPainted Fibre Top:Changed the entire seat foam and covers:Rear side facing seats changed as well:Full carpeting done with heatlon:Got these 7" HID spot beam lights from sierrakamat:Rise and ShineTotal damage to wallet was about 40k including all.Customary Ritual:As all the work was done, took her for the first long drive to my native Satara during Diwali.Its fun at petrol pumps where the attendant expects me to handover the key to open fuel lid but,(Open it directly, no key)Was on a constant lookout for any overheating issues, but luckily did not face anything.Little one loves it too!A head turner for sure:First trip to Kaas Plateau:There are still few things pending to do cosmetically. Planning to either get an offroad bumper or get the existing one painted.There is one irritating earthing issue which needs to be fixed. It causes flickering of indicators and the fuel and temperature gauge shoots up to the max. Yet to take her off-road, although I have not bought her strictly for off-road use. I will be using for touring as well.Future mods planned:Offroad bumperSnorkel (Wont go water wading but for show purposes, lol) Last edited by Dodge_Viper : 9th January 2022 at 16:29 .
nissar Newbie

Join Date: Aug 2021 Location: Bangalore Posts: 20 Thanked: 226 Times

From a different era - My preowned 2010 Honda Accord 3.5 V6



Background

It was 2019, I had driven my 2013 Jetta Comfortline MT TDI for about 5 years now (was my dad's car but I was pretty much the only one using it after its 2nd year). The Jetta was a wonderful vehicle and was serving my purposes well. My usage was ~20km commute in Bangalore + highway and out-of-station trips almost monthly. The beauty of the TDI is excellent power with excellent mileage. In the city (in my case 14-16 kmpl) and on the highway (16-18 kmpl) with a heavy foot. On a light foot, I even got 27 kmpl on the drive from Bangalore to Kodaikanal once! On a personal front, I had recently completed my part-time masters program and it had been a few years since my father's passing and having worked for 5 years by then there was an itch and the ability to have another car. My itch involved aimlessly scrolling through used cars listings looking for anything interesting. I had made peace with the higher prices in KA in general. Once I came across the Accord it did seem rational to me due to the following reasons (and my opinion or learning in retrospect in brackets) I was terrified of the costs of maintenance of luxury brands. And this was just a Honda. (this is true the parts and service are very reasonable being close to the Jetta but the service advisers almost apologize to me about the parts being expensive compare to other hondas) I didn't want anything flashy (but the accord also turns heads due to its sheer size and rarity these days) I love the low seating position of sedans and was not nervous of ground clearance issues I figured I can live with it (compare to the Jetta which I almost never scrape, need to be sure to slow down with the accord, else the soft suspension can bounce causing an avoidable scrape, otherwise no problems if you are careful) fuel efficiency was not a concern as I planned to hold on to the Jetta and still use it as my primary for commutes (turns out I love the accord so much that I use it more than I should cause me some shockers in my month-end expense checks) it was a significant power upgrade over the Jetta that is quite hard / impossible to find in the budget (with the accord I actually enjoy when I need to slow down due to slow overtaking vehicles because this just means I get a reason to accelerate to speed again) naturally aspirated V6 petrol engines are a dying (already dead in India) bread will probably not have a reason/chance to own one in the future (the warm sound and the smooth reeving is something I still appreciate after owning the car for a while now) I have the extra parking and have another car for city runs (this is not the one practical do-it-all car)

So I knew I was only looking for more reasons just to rationalize my decision. From here it was quick. The car was a 2010 first owner company maintained car sitting on a used dealer's lot it had done 84,000 km at this point. Was allowed to take it to Honda and do a full inspection and was able to see the full history. The car mostly had a clean history (except one left fender accident which was fixed under insurance and didn't seem serious). The alternator was replaced once (saved me the potential headache). The front dampers were nearing the end of life apparently but I didn't feel any concern in the test drive. What was bad was the steering rack and pump needed an immediate fix and it was bothersome. Front tires also were almost bald and needed immediate replacement. Honda provided me with an estimate of around 2L after a thorough half-day inspection and road test. This estimate was used to negotiate the price down by 1L (kudos to honda for being so thorough and the used car dealer for the transparency). The dealer keen to close the deal provided me a reference to an independent garage to get another quotation. The quotation was not much lower but he was offering to repair the steering rack pump if possible. Lucky for me that worked saving me almost 50,000. I replaced the front tires with a "sporty" Micheline Pilot Sport 4. Also changed the engine oil. All in all, after around 80k post-purchase the car was all good and felt good too!



Pros and Cons (from the perspective of 2022)



Pros 272bhp is still a good number today. (just cruising on the highway but that <read huge SUV> driving too close? you obviously don't want to do illegal speeds so you just wait till all of you need to slow down at the next truck or speed breaker, floor it and problem solved he ain't catching you) big engines are not always bad for efficiency! Highway mileage is 9kmpl and under similar driving style, even a similar 2.0 turbo petrol would not be much better. Given the same power, there exists a driving style where a naturally aspirated 3.5L V6 provides the same efficiency as a 2.0 turbo 4 cylinder. If you are that driver the bonus is you get to enjoy that warm engine note of the V6 guilt-free while revving it to 6500 rpm! soft suspension and low ride height eat highway. And with power whenever you need to overtake even two-lane state highways also make a comfortable journey. The ride is not sporty but very stable the rear multilink suspension keeps that car planted at high speed and even when you make quick maneuvers so you can still enjoy those spirited drives. (I would say it is as planted as the Jetta but not as confidence-inspiring) benefit of naturally aspirated engines apply. Immediate response at low RPM. Linear and gradual acceleration on a light foot. I have had many novice drivers who claim there are scared to cross 100kmph touch 160kmph without realizing how the speed crept upon them. I do have to put a lot of attention on that speedo do not do illegal speeds used car values are low (if you can find one that is not shady but still expect to pay some premium over the 4 cylinders. After all the few first owners paid 6L more initially). Also, Honda's service has been great in my experience, and unless the dealer wants you to replace something that can be repaired you will find the cost to be similar to a Jetta let's say. wide car gives a sense of space width-wise, dash sits low adding to the effect powerful AC and blowers feel like a breeze through the cabin headlights have great throw front parking sensors (really useful for large cars) real leather seats and soft-touch material on the door feel good 6 airbags, ABS, VSA (stability control) ensure the car is not significantly lacking in comparison to modern cars ration wheel size at 17 inches for the V6, tire size is 225R50 17, I may not be comfortable with let's say 225R45 18 driving over our roads minimal technology - no turbo, no dual-clutch auto, no infotainment, no digital console, no drive modes. The less there is less that can go wrong, this is all old school. Aftermarket android auto unit gives 90% of the utility of modern infotainment without the potential complications of integrating car settings directly to the infotainment. this generation of the accord seems to be reliable globally that provides some comfort for long term ownership in the age of turbo petrols not clear on the impact of ethanol blends and diesels with DPF complications, the accord V6 is E10 ready and doesn't need any premium fuel, so I will not be filling premium fuels for a few more years at least.

Cons city mileage can be between 6-8kmpl (smaller turbo petrol will do better here - personally I use my Jetta for city runs). Highway mileage will probably not be any better than 10kmpl, it's better to just drive it at a swift pace and still get 9kmpl! But I have noticed that very hard highway driving (keeping it in the 4000-6500 rpm band) can even drop mileage to 6kmpl (not a real-world case though) car is hard to maneuver in the city and park. even though the car is huge you find the back seat legroom the same as a Jetta and boot space has a high floor making it overall smaller than Jetta. Poor use of space. apart from the leather on the seats and soft-touch door the dashboard feels much less premium than the Jetta. As a buyer during 2012, it would have been hard to choose the accord over the Jetta if interiors were important to you. if you are a sedate driver and do not drive above 100kmph the V6 offers little performance advantage over the diesel Jetta and a lot worse mileage. Let me explain. The V6 when floored responds with more instant torque compared to the diesel up to 2000rpm, from 2000 to 3000rpm both give the same performance, with maybe the diesel punch a little stronger. 3000rpm-4000rpm the diesel continues to give power but the power/noise ratio drops hence most of us prefer to gear up at this point as the fun is over. But here is when the V6 starts to breathe, as the rpm climbs up from 4000rpm you get even increasing power till the redline at 6500rpm. So if you drive with the light foot speed gradually increases, whereas in a diesel even with a light foot you get the mid-range punch. In this use case, the V6 feels slower even with almost twice the power on paper. even though the car is very planted and smooth at high speed on the highway I feel sound insulation could have been better to complement that. I think the Jetta has marginally lesser wind sound. One of the factors could be the accord is lesser covered up underneath the car compared to Jetta. this model comes with active cylinder deactivation up to 3 cylinders, and also sounds the part in this mode which is not great. I also read on US forums this can cause uneven cylinder wear when driven at a constant speed. Luckily this is India so I don't see long periods of constant speed so the engine just pops in and out of ECO mode, so hopefully should be lesser of an issue for my case. even though I mentioned the lack of technology as a pro, it is also a con, you miss out on the latest active safety systems that started appearing on newer cars like brake boost, automatic emergency braking. Also, you cannot compare the crash test rating of 2008 with 2022, so we do not really know how safe the accord is compared to the new honda city for example. one con with my particular car - lumbar seat adjustment is dead and stuck at max setting, I have used a seat cushion to avoid back pain and it's all good since then. This is my first post on the forum though I have visited the forum for many years now. Felt compelled to post my experience as there is no other ownership report on this car in the forum and less material in general (apart from bashing Honda for the high pricing for the V6. I wonder how we all feel in retrospect?). Hope this helps someone that comes across an opportunity to own this car. I refer to the Jetta a lot so that I can compare the Accord to a car that many of us already understand due to the excellent content already available on the forumIt was 2019, I had driven my 2013 Jetta Comfortline MT TDI for about 5 years now (was my dad's car but I was pretty much the only one using it after its 2nd year). The Jetta was a wonderful vehicle and was serving my purposes well. My usage was ~20km commute in Bangalore + highway and out-of-station trips almost monthly. The beauty of the TDI is excellent power with excellent mileage. In the city (in my case 14-16 kmpl) and on the highway (16-18 kmpl) with a heavy foot. On a light foot, I even got 27 kmpl on the drive from Bangalore to Kodaikanal once! On a personal front, I had recently completed my part-time masters program and it had been a few years since my father's passing and having worked for 5 years by then there was an itch and the ability to have another car. My itch involved aimlessly scrolling through used cars listings looking for anything interesting. I had made peace with the higher prices in KA in general. Once I came across the Accord it did seem rational to me due to the following reasons (and my opinion or learning in retrospect in brackets)So I knew I was only looking for more reasons just to rationalize my decision. From here it was quick. The car was a 2010 first owner company maintained car sitting on a used dealer's lot it had done 84,000 km at this point. Was allowed to take it to Honda and do a full inspection and was able to see the full history. The car mostly had a clean history (except one left fender accident which was fixed under insurance and didn't seem serious). The alternator was replaced once (saved me the potential headache). The front dampers were nearing the end of life apparently but I didn't feel any concern in the test drive. What was bad was the steering rack and pump needed an immediate fix and it was bothersome. Front tires also were almost bald and needed immediate replacement. Honda provided me with an estimate of around 2L after a thorough half-day inspection and road test. This estimate was used to negotiate the price down by 1L (kudos to honda for being so thorough and the used car dealer for the transparency). The dealer keen to close the deal provided me a reference to an independent garage to get another quotation. The quotation was not much lower but he was offering to repair the steering rack pump if possible. Lucky for me that worked saving me almost 50,000. I replaced the front tires with a "sporty" Micheline Pilot Sport 4. Also changed the engine oil. All in all, after around 80k post-purchase the car was all good and felt good too!ProsCons Last edited by nissar : 9th January 2022 at 17:42 .
Sanidhya mukund BHPian



Join Date: Jun 2019 Location: New Delhi Posts: 420 Thanked: 3,908 Times

Treasured Wheels | A vintage car collection in Guwahati



Which is why, for a vintage car enthusiast, the best way to spend a Saturday is at a place with cars from the bygone era. Most places in India that display vintage cars dont really have too wide a range of cars. Most of the vintage car displays we get to see in India are at hotels, malls, tourist places etc. and are generally comprised of one or two automobiles. Of course, there are museums like the heritage transport museum at Gurgaon, the Hyderabad Nizams collection and the famous Auto worlds collection at Ahmedabad, but those are exceptions rather than the rule. Also, most such museums have been receiving support from the tourism departments of their respective states.



The collection that I am going to talk about here is a little different from the ones mentioned above. What makes it unique is the fact that it is being run by a one man army, a very passionate man who has been genuinely working towards the preservation and propagation of automotive history of this region. Mr. Palash Deka, an engineer at the Assam Power Generation Corporation Limited has been spending out of his own salary for the preservation of these vintage cars. A passionate enthusiast, he has a very wide range of vintage cars, bikes, artefacts, articles of war, clocks, radios, gramophones and a lot more to display. However, maintaining such a wide collection is not an easy job, not in the least for one single man. As a result of this, even though he has a great collection, some cars are in desperate need of some tender love and care. Nevertheless, it was a very enjoyable visit for me- A vintage car collection on display in the lap of natural beauty is something that one rarely gets to see. What Mr. Deka has been able to achieve all by his own self is something that really must be appreciated. Some of the items on display at the museum are extremely rare as well.



The museum is located at Sonapur, Kamrup (M) Assam, about 45 minutes away from Guwahati. It lies on the way when enroute to Shillong.

It is really worth a visit for Vintage car enthusiasts and those who are passionate about cars.





The cars: Please note that the cars arent in a condition that we expect from a typical Museum, but please consider the fact that here, it is one single man doing all this from his own pocket. Some of them are in running condition as well!



1. Standard-10:







2. Standard Herald:







3. A 1970s Hilman Minx:







4. An early American car: (Chevy?)







5. A phase-III Standard Vanguard:







6. An early Oldsmobile that had to literally be dug out of the ground:







7. An Austin A40:







8. An early 70s Ford Fairline. This one has a V8 under the hood!









9. The ever green Premier Padmini:







10. The reverend Citroen Traction Avant. According to Mr. Deka, this one still runs!



Dont we all love vintage cars? Looking at them lets us get to know about how our roads would have looked decades ago, they give us a perspective of how far weve come in terms of technology and most importantly, they evoke emotions in ways that modern cars dont. For most of us, owning and driving one such car is a distant dream, thanks to factors like prohibitive costs, part scarcity, lack of time and the colossal amounts of efforts that running such cars requires.Which is why, for a vintage car enthusiast, the best way to spend a Saturday is at a place with cars from the bygone era. Most places in India that display vintage cars dont really have too wide a range of cars. Most of the vintage car displays we get to see in India are at hotels, malls, tourist places etc. and are generally comprised of one or two automobiles. Of course, there are museums like the heritage transport museum at Gurgaon, the Hyderabad Nizams collection and the famous Auto worlds collection at Ahmedabad, but those are exceptions rather than the rule. Also, most such museums have been receiving support from the tourism departments of their respective states.The collection that I am going to talk about here is a little different from the ones mentioned above. What makes it unique is the fact that it is being run by a one man army, a very passionate man who has been genuinely working towards the preservation and propagation of automotive history of this region. Mr. Palash Deka, an engineer at the Assam Power Generation Corporation Limited has been spending out of his own salary for the preservation of these vintage cars. A passionate enthusiast, he has a very wide range of vintage cars, bikes, artefacts, articles of war, clocks, radios, gramophones and a lot more to display. However, maintaining such a wide collection is not an easy job, not in the least for one single man. As a result of this, even though he has a great collection, some cars are in desperate need of some tender love and care. Nevertheless, it was a very enjoyable visit for me- A vintage car collection on display in the lap of natural beauty is something that one rarely gets to see. What Mr. Deka has been able to achieve all by his own self is something that really must be appreciated. Some of the items on display at the museum are extremely rare as well.The museum is located at Sonapur, Kamrup (M) Assam, about 45 minutes away from Guwahati. It lies on the way when enroute to Shillong.It is really worth a visit for Vintage car enthusiasts and those who are passionate about cars.The cars: Please note that the cars arent in a condition that we expect from a typical Museum, but please consider the fact that here, it is one single man doing all this from his own pocket. Some of them are in running condition as well!1. Standard-10:2. Standard Herald:3. A 1970s Hilman Minx:4. An early American car: (Chevy?)5. A phase-III Standard Vanguard:6. An early Oldsmobile that had to literally be dug out of the ground:7. An Austin A40:8. An early 70s Ford Fairline. This one has a V8 under the hood!9. The ever green Premier Padmini:10. The reverend Citroen Traction Avant. According to Mr. Deka, this one still runs! Last edited by Sanidhya mukund : 8th January 2022 at 17:30 .
Download notes: Alternatively you can download the latest Windows version of this software.

Features:

Can encode directly from DVDs (even encrypted ones) or from VIDEO_TS folders

Supports AC3, LPCM and MPEG audio tracks

Outputs MP4, AVI or OGM files

Outputs AAC, MP3 or Vorbis audio

Supports 2*pass encoding

Supports encoding of two audio tracks

Includes a bitrate calculator

Supports picture deinterlacing, cropping and scaling

What's New:

This is a rebuild of HandBrake 1.5.0 with no functional changes.

Build system

Fixed an issue with the source tarball that broke Flathub Builds.

Windows

The Windows UI is now .NET 6.0 only. (.NET 5.0 is no longer additionally required)

HandBrake 1.5.0

All platforms

Video Fixed an issue on older Intel CPUs causing the CLI to fail to initialize (#3924) Updated video engine to preserve chroma sample location information Updated Intel Quick Sync to use the Intel oneAPI Video Processing Library (oneVPL)

Audio Fixed MP2 audio sources not utilizing the fallback encoder when pass through is disabled (#3863) Fixed FFmpeg AAC audio encoder quality mode scale range (#1295)

Subtitles Fixed an issue with captions pass through durations (#3764)

Build system Fixed multiple potential race conditions in Flatpak build process Updated mac-toolchain-build script with newer tool versions

Third-party libraries Updated libraries FFmpeg 4.4.1 (decoding and filters) FreeType 2.11.1 (subtitles) Fribidi 1.0.11 (subtitles) HarfBuzz 3.1.2 (subtitles) Jansson 2.14 (JSON architecture) libass 0.15.2 (subtitles) libdav1d 0.9.2 (AV1 decoding) libjpeg-turbo 2.1.2 (preview image compression) libogg 1.3.5 (Xiph codecs support) libvpx 1.11.0 (VP8/VP9 video encoding) zimg 3.0.3 (color conversion)



Linux

Fixed a filter settings issue that resulted in incorrect filters being added to jobs (#3910)

Updated Intel QSV Flatpak plugin to use Intel MediaSDK 21.3.5

Updated Flatpak dependencies

Freedesktop Platform 21.08

GNOME 41

Added Corsican (Corsu) translation

Updated translations

Simplified Chinese ()

Dutch (Nederlands)

French (Francais)

Korean ()

Spanish (Espanol)

Swedish (Svenska)

Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements

Mac
Why it matters: Apple's focus on privacy may have won some loyalty points with its customers, but telecom companies now want to push back against features like "Private Relay" just as much as regulators and law enforcement. This isn't the first time encryption tech is being criticized for its potential to hide "digital footprints" for criminals, but now it's also being portrayed as something that can harm competition in some digital markets.

Last year, a group of Republican senators proposed a new bill that would end what they called "warrant-proof" encryption, adding to a never-ending headache that affects both tech companies and consumers. In the case of Apple, even the FBI has asked it to break the encryption on iPhones on several occasions over the last few years. As of late, it's been toning down its requests and expressing them in a more diplomatic manner.

Lately, some European mobile operators have been joining regulators in their battle against encryption technologies. According to a report from The Telegraph, several companies are urging regulators to render encrypted browsing and other similar technologies illegal, as they essentially break broadband and mobile providers' ability to assist law enforcement in their investigations into suspected terrorists and child abusers.

Back in August 2021, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, and Telefonica signed a joint letter to the European Commission where they asked regulators to stop Apple from using "Private Relay" as it undermines their "digital sovereignty." In other words, the companies believe it takes away control over the networks they operate and could "impair others to innovate and compete in downstream digital markets."

Private Relay is a beta feature for paid iCloud users on iOS 15 and macOS Monterey that encrypts your web browsing traffic and routs it through two internet hops or "relays." What this does is hide your browsing activity from ISPs, as well as your precise location from trackers found on the websites you visit, thus preventing them from creating a profile of who you are and what you do online.

It only works with Safari, however, and websites can easily identify it as a "proxy server." And unlike a VPN, it doesn't offer the ability to access region-locked content.

Telecom companies in Europe are now urging regulators to pass legislation that would classify Apple as a "digital gatekeeper." This will most likely happen under the EU Digital Markets Act, which is expected to come into effect later this year. In the meantime, some mobile operators such as T-Mobile have started blocking iPhone users from enabling Private Relay in the US and the UK.
The increase in demand for genetics and infectious disease tests in the region has prompted South Koreas GC Labs, a leading clinical diagnostics company, to plan further expansion in the Middle East.

Currently offering their services in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the company is in talks with regional partners to expand their services to more countries in the Middle East.

More than 800 employees at GC Labs offer over 5,000 tests and test combinations, ranging from routine tests to highly esoteric molecular and genetic assays.

To create further awareness of their services, GC Labs will participate in the 2022 edition of Medlab Middle East at Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC) from January 24 to 27. At the event, GC Labs will highlight its smart lab concept that provides an automated test system to improve speed and efficiency of tests, allowing the company to report results in just a day or two.

Eun-Hee Lee, President at GC Labs, says: The Middle East is an important market for us, and participating in Medlab will help us to share our best practices in clinical diagnostics with the regional health community. Over the past two decades, the world has achieved important success in the fight against pandemics like Covid 19 and in mobilising global response against HIV-Aids, TB, Malaria and other infectious diseases.

Medical laboratories play a key role in this fight by providing high quality diagnostic testing and by working in partnership with the health authorities. To highlight the importance of private and public partnership in the fight against infectious diseases and pandemics, we are organising a seminar during Medlab to bring together international experts to share their own experiences and expertise, focus on lessons learned, and discuss how to best manage public and private partnerships to successfully fight against pandemics and infectious diseases in the future.

GC Labs will host its seminar on Public-Private Partnership in Global Health: bringing the best of both worlds to improve testing on January 25 at the Bubble Lounge in Medlab.

The seminar has an impressive line-up of speakers with globally renowned specialists including Lelio Marmora, former CEO in Unitaid; Michel Kazatchkine, former executive director the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria; Dr Eskild Petersen, MD, Editor-in-chief of IJID Regions, an official journal of the International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID); Dr Amina Al-Jardani, Director of Central Public Health Laboratories (CPHL), Directorate General for Disease Surveillance and Control, Ministry of Health, Oman; and Lee. The seminar will be an interactive session with an opportunity for attendees to ask questions.

From January 24 to 27, GC Labs will be present at booth Z4.E42 in Medlab where they will offer a smart experience for visitors to learn more about the diagnostic services the company offers. -- TradeArabia News Service
Why it matters: Remember those EVGA RTX 3000 cards that were stolen from a truck on the way to California back in October? It seems some of them have finally surfaced in an unlikely location: around 8,000 miles away, in Vietnam.

On October 29, 2021, EVGA Product Manager Jacob Freeman revealed that a shipment of EVGA GeForce RTX 3000-series cards had been hijacked while en route from San Francisco to EVGA's Southern California distribution center.

Freeman said the stolen cards' values started at $329.99--- likely the RTX 3060---and went all the way up to $1959.99---the RTX 3090. Those are the MSRPs, so their actual selling prices, and value, would have been a lot higher.

EVGA warned people to be on the lookout for any of the cards on auction sites such as eBay. We haven't heard much about them since the heist took place, but it's now been reported that a Vietnamese retailer, NCPC, was selling some of the items in question.

A user who bought two RTX 3080 Ti cards, which came with a one-month warranty, verified the serial codes for any potential future claims and discovered, via the EVGA website, that they were from the stolen batch.

The retailer replied to the customer in a letter confirming that they would refund the cards' cost and return them to the supplier who provided the stolen items. NCPC said it was also a victim in the incident as it was unaware the cards had been stolen, though not checking the serial numbers first is a surprise, especially as the cards appear to have been bought for less than the usual selling price.

It's suspected that the stolen cards were purchased from sources in China by the supplier. EVGA is likely investigating the reports, and it could make an official announcement soon.
In a nutshell: Most people are aware of the inherent risks that come with cryptocurrency. The dangers were illustrated yet again when exchange BitMart suffered a hack last month that saw $200 million worth of digital assets stolen. The company said it would reimburse all those impacted, but victims are still waiting for their money back five weeks later.

On December 4, 2021, BitMart announced that it had identified a large-scale security breach resulting from someone using a stolen private key to access two of its internet-connected hot wallets. The company assured impacted users that it would use its own money to compensate them.

But a new CNBC report reveals that some of those who lost a substantial amount of money five weeks ago have yet to see anything returned. Many of the victims lost SafeMoon tokens---more than 45 were stolen---including a Toronto-based Iranian refugee who had $53,000 worth of the coin stored in his BitMart wallet, $40,000 of which came from a loan that he has to pay back with 4% interest. He says the experience has left him close to suicide.

Another user lost $30,000 that came from himself, his mother, and his mother-in-law. And a Kansas-based investor who lost $35,000 says that he and 6,800 other investors are considering filing a class-action lawsuit against BitMart if the situation isn't remedied in the next week.

WE AINT SLOWING DOWN  KEEP TWEETING #WENBITMART --- SAFEMOON SQUAD (@SAFEMOONSQUAD) January 4, 2022

Even if BitMart does pay everyone back by repurchasing the lost tokens, it could do so at their current prices, which in some cases are a lot higher. Many are also asking why the company hasn't gone through insurance to reimburse the funds.

BitMart has reportedly been evasive when answering questions about returning the stolen funds, leading to a #WenBitMart Twitter campaign to draw attention to the situation.
In context: As 2022 begins, Activision Blizzard is trying to put a year of scandal behind it as it begins to fulfill its settlement with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). However, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) is doing everything it can to see that settlement does not occur.

Last September, Blizzard agreed to a settlement with the EEOC that included an $18 million victim relief fund and measures to stop the harassment and end the toxic workplace culture. Even before the settlement, CEO Bobby Kotick began making changes to the company to address the issues raised by the EEOC and others.

Less than a month after the ruling, the DFEH filed to intervene in the settlement, saying that the consent decree would release Activision Blizzard from its ongoing lawsuit and potentially open the door for the company to destroy evidence that the DFEH could use in its case. It maintained that intervention is necessary for "protecting the interests" of California workers, commenting on the consent decree, and requesting a fairness hearing.

District Judge Dale S Fischer disagreed with the DFEH's argument and denied the motion in December. Judge Fischer ruled that the department was not an interested party in the consent decree. He said the scope of its argument would have allowed the DFEH to "intervene in almost any employment action in California." Fischer also wrote in his opinion that its assertion that Activision Blizzard would be free to destroy evidence was speculatory "at best." On Friday, the DFEH filed its intention to appeal Judge Fischer's order denying its motion to intervene (above).

Activision Blizzard has seen no end to the controversy raised by the workplace scandal. Employees and others have called for CEO Bobby Kotick's resignation, and many of the company's long-running partnerships are strained. The negative sentiment has even bled into seemingly unrelated incidents, such as the company's decision to lay off several temporary QA employees at its Raven Software studio. So far, the board of directors has stood behind Kotick, allowing him to work through the negative press and litigation at a reduced salary.
Bottom line: Sony's planned reboot of vehicular combat franchise Twisted Metal is no longer happening under the direction of Lucid Games. Fret not, however, as the series is still in development albeit at a different studio.

Sources familiar with the matter recently told Video Games Chronicle that Sony has moved the project to an unnamed first-party studio in Europe. It was first reported in October that Lucid Games had been given the nod to develop the revival, and that it might utilize a free-to-play model in the image of Destruction All-Stars.

Sony's motivation behind the move is unclear, although one person suggested it might have to do with the poor reception of Destruction All-Stars. Neither Sony nor Lucid commented on the matter when pinged by the publication.

VGC further notes that Sony is still planning for the reboot to drop alongside the premiere of its live-action television series adaptation. That project was first announced in mid-2019 from Sony Pictures Television and PlayStation Productions.

Just last week at CES, Sony during its keynote confirmed the TV series was still on track and even showed off some artwork from the show.

According to Variety, Michael Jonathan Smith of Cobra Kai fame was brought on to write and executive produce the Twisted Metal series. It'll star a "motor-mouthed outsider" who receives an opportunity for a better life, so long as he can successfully deliver a mystery package across a post-apocalyptic wasteland littered with characters that aren't fond of trespassers.

A launch window hasn't been provided but VGC claims the TV series could premiere sometime in 2023.
(Photo : iotex.io)

 2,000% Increase in IoTeX wallets addresses

 Over 100 positions in token rankings on CoinMarketCap

 40x in Market Capitalization

 Over 250,000% social growth, according to LunarCrush ranking

The year 2021 has almost come to an end. The cryptocurrency and blockchain space hit many milestones these past 12 months. It's been a record year for the crypto market, which briefly surpassed $3 trillion in November. In February, Bitcoin's market cap went over $1 trillion for the first time in history. The NFT market saw its best year yet with over $23 billion in trading volume, and blockchain-based metaverses had over $500 million in trading volume. And the introduction of the Metaverse promises an even bigger year for the blockchain space in 2022.

As a proverbial dark horse of the IoT race, IoTeX too saw 2021 blanketed with record-breaking milestones as it galloped out of nowhere, proclaiming its leadership as an IoT-focused blockchain company with the most innovative and cutting-edge devices live on the market.

As the world heads into 2022, IoTeX is poised, better than ever, to reach even higher peaks as tens of billions of smart devices enter the MachineFi revolution. Hundreds if not thousands of decentralized apps will start joining the vast IoTeX ecosystem this coming year and benefit from the machine economy that McKinsey forecasts will reach a value of $12.6 trillion by the end of the current decade.

In 2021, the IoTeX ecosystem became one of the fastest-growing in the blockchain space as it started the year with only a couple of dozen projects to over 126 by Q4 2021, including massive DeFi solutions, play-to-earn games, exchanges, and wallets to actual blockchain-powered devices, such as the Ucam and Pebble.

Also, in the last quarter of the year, we heard from Nathan Miller, the Consensus Network CEO and Founder, and how far the HealthNet project has progressed. This groundbreaking US Navy-funded project will monitor the health of nearly 700,000 sailors and marines in real-time. It will enable a secure, auditable layer of trusted data from Internet-of-Medical-Things devices that provides medical stakeholders with real-world data for improved decision-making and efficiency.

Once completed in 2022, the HealthNet project will serve as the basis by which many medical legacy systems worldwide will be brought out of the "dark ages" they find themselves in currently.

2021 will also go down as the year when IoTeX introduced MachineFi, as machines make their way towards becoming the world's primary workforce. MachineFi is a new paradigm fueled by Web3 that underpins the new machine economy. In the world of MachineFi, machine resources and intelligence can be financialized to deliver value and ownership to the people, not centralized corporations. This further step into the machine economy marks the advent of millions of users and machines starting in 2022.

Growth: literally, exponentially

IoTeX wallet addresses grew a staggering 1,880% from the end of 2021 until today. The Silicon Valley-based blockchain project saw the number of IoTeX wallet addresses go from just over 18,000 to more than 360,000 today, setting the scene for meteoric growth in 2022.

So, it's of no surprise IoTeX jumped the ranks as well, going from a top 300 to a top 70 token on Coinmarketcap.com, where it currently stands at number 85. Its market capitalization went from just under $31 million on the last day of 2020 to a current $1.4 billion, an increase of more than 40x.

New IoTeX website visitors skyrocketed this year, as did newsletters subscribers, Reddit members, and followers across other social media platforms. This all is a clear indication of the greater investor interest in IoTeX, a token that saw a forty-fold increase in 2021 as it went from $0.0063 on December 31, 2021, to its all-time high of $0.2611 on November 13, 2021.

People felt compelled to follow the IoTeX journey more closely and rushed over to the website and signed up for its newsletter in record-breaking numbers. In 2020, the IoTeX website reported 42,495 new users. In 2021, this number blew up to nearly 700,000, growing by 1,541%. The newsletter subscriber base went from 2,850 in 2020 to 90,180, an annual growth of 3,064%.

IoTeX Twitter followers also showed staggering growth. New followers climbed by nearly 1,800%, from 7,885 in 2020 to almost 149,470 in 2021. That means, IoTeX now has some 196,000 Twitter followers. YouTube subscribers also saw significant growth. In 2020, the IoTeX official YouTube channel had 305 subscribers. Today it has 14,434, an increase of 6,473%.

The enthusiasm and interest in the project did not stop there. It saw its Discord channel jump 1,000% from 1,500.

Telegram users went from 3,000 to 48,000. IoTeX's call for Ambassadors turned out to be a massive success with over 1,500 applicants from 30 plus countries.

LunarCrush - the respected crypto industry-standard platform for social metrics with one of the highest levels of credibility in the market - had IoTeX as one of the most popular tokens in the last four months on ten occasions, outperforming Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, Axi Infinity, DogeCoin.

Total LunarCrush engagement across four categories -social volume, engagement, contributors, and shared links - grew an epic 243,190% from approximately 6,000 to 15 million.

LunarCrush defines social dominance as the market cap for social media, explained IoTeX Head of Growth Art Malkov. "It measures a coin's social media activity relative to the entire market. Considering that social interest is a key early indicator of long-term growth of crypto projects, we are excited and optimistic to see what 2022 will hold for IoTeX."

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Usually, things you do not need or are unnecessary are forgotten, right? The answer to that is actually a no if you are Matty Benedetto, better known as the YouTuber behind "Unnecessary Inventions."

The inventions by the YouTuber are "unnecessary" for a reason but they hook people into watching them and even wishing for their commercial availability.

Who is Behind YouTube's Unnecessary Inventions?

Behind the YouTube channel Unnecessary Inventions is Matty Benedetto, a content creator based in Burlington, Vermont. This location also houses the studio where all the bizarre inventions of Benedetto come to life. The YouTube page now has one million subscribers, with 503 million views and counting.

The influencer first started his YouTube career in April 2019.

Unnecessary Inventions also has an equally-famous Instagram page, which has 1.2 million followers and links to their online shop. Here, popular and favorite inventions are available for purchase.

Benedetto's career with Unnecessary Inventions only shows that anything is possible on the platform, including being able to create unnecessary stuff and gaining recognition from it.

Read Also: [Viral Culture] Fictional Influencers on TikTok Attract Followers Through Compelling Storytelling | What Are They?

How Unnecessary are the Inventions?

The inventions are truly unnecessary, but the YouTuber makes it a point that he convinces people why they are essential. One example would be a plug-in keyboard that types the "Password" for one's account. It promises an easily usable password-typer to input it fast and secure.

A person can still use their keyboard for this, so it is unnecessary.

However, another invention that rides between the lines of necessary and unnecessary is a blanket with a leg hole for when it gets hot that was created by the YouTuber.

Matty Benedetto and his Career

Benedetto built his career on making non-sensical things and for this, he gains applause from viewers and fans. The so-called "unnecessary technology" that the YouTuber makes is like a parody of the original item or tech. Benedetto takes on a funny approach, exposing its flaws and giving it another purpose, which the content creator enjoys.

Some inventions from the YouTuber are helpful in the sense that they could have been the next big thing if these had been released years ago. One example would be the mailbox with a built-in shredder for junk mail. However, a person still needs to determine if it the mail they are about to shred is actually junk and not important.

Moreover, snail mail is scarce these days and not many people do it, even for credit card statements or the like.

Matty Benedetto is not only making these inventions for the sake of creating content or money, but it genuinely shows that the YouTuber is enjoying his life in making satirical takes on objects. More importantly, his page contributes to thousands of smiles every day, without even trying that much, as he comes as a natural.

Related Article: 'Unnecessary Inventions' YouTube Channel's Inventions You Might Think are Necessary After All

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Isaiah Richard

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A new COVID-19 variant called Deltacron was discovered by medical experts in Cyprus. As of the moment, this new virus has already infected 25 individuals.

This is alarming because it combines the strains of Omicron and Delta, which are among the most infectious COVID-19 variants right now.

If Deltacron infects more people, government officials and healthcare workers will have difficulty decreasing the rising COVID-19 cases, especially since they are still dealing with the patients infected by Omicron.

Recently, TechTimes reported that another variant, IHU, was identified by the World Health Organization. On the other hand, Flurona, a co-infection between COVID-19 and influenza, was also spotted in some U.S. states.

New COVID-19 Deltacron

According to NDTV's latest report, Professor Leondios Kostrikis, a biological expert at the University of Cyprus, discovered the new Deltacron variant.

Also Read: Amazon Lends Hand to Washington For the Distribution of 5.5 Million COVID-19 Rapid Tests Following All-Time Case Counts

"There are currently omicron and delta co-infections and we found this strain that is a combination of these two," said Kostrikis, who is also the head of the Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology.

At first, the new Deltacron variant was suspected as a result of laboratory contamination. However, Leondios clarified that the new strain was created by evolutionary pressure and not by a recombination activity, as reported by Bloomberg.

This simply means that the new COVID-19 variant is not a result of laboratory error.

How Serious is Deltacron?

Since the new Deltacron is a new variant, medical experts in Cyprus are still observing it. Although its severity and infectivity are not yet confirmed, Kostrikis said it might be more contagious than Omicron.

Right now, this new strain is mostly found in hospitalized patients. But, experts did not clarify if the hospitalization is one of the main factors why Deltacron appeared.

For more news updates about COVID-19 and other new virus strains, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

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Written by: Griffin Davis

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Kosovo banned crypto mining altogether in the entire country, which, in turn, seized hundreds of mining rigs in southeastern Europe country.

Kosovo Bans Crypto Mining

The latest move of Kosovo to crackdown on crypto mining adds to the list of countries that have been banning it already. It includes countries like China, Egypt, Iraq, Qatar, and Kazakhstan, as well as other locations, such as Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.

This time around, Kosovo went on to ban crypto mining in its jurisdiction following the raging energy crisis in the country, as per the report by Futurism.

It is worth mentioning that the government of the European country has previously declared a state of emergency due to its problem with energy due to the shutdown of its coal power plant in December.

The country is now experiencing blackouts throughout its territory. As such, there have been various protests from its citizens, denouncing the move by Kosovo to import electricity due to its alleged high prices.

That said, the European nation decided to completely ditch crypto mining with the ongoing energy problems that the country is currently facing.

Hundreds of Crypto Mining Rigs Seized

Meanwhile, according to the news story by WCCFTech, Kosovo authorities have already seized hundreds of machines that are being used to mine cryptocurrencies as part of its ongoing crackdown.

Aside from the seized mining rigs, the authorities of the country arrested a single individual for mining crypto.

The law enforcement of Kosovo relieved in a statement that the crackdown has already successfully taken more than 300 crypto mining devices in the country.

On top of that, the government authorities in the capital of Kosovo, Pristina, have already halted all of its crypto mining operations amidst the ongoing power crisis in the country.

Read Also: Alleged Crypto Mining Farm Catches Fire In Thailand--High Energy Requirements To Blame?

Kosovo Crypto Ban and Power Crisis

The Finance Minister of Kosovo also released a statement on Facebook following the crypto ban in the country, noting that the power consumption of crypto mining could instead power hundreds of homes in the European nation.

To be more precise, the Kosovo Finance Minister further shared his estimation, which showed that the monthly energy consumption of crypto miners is equal to the power needs of about 500 homes.

Crypto Mining vs. Energy

As mentioned earlier, it is not the first time that a country has completely bid farewell to crypto mining. It comes as the said activity is notably energy-hogging.

In fact, Futurism noted in the same report that Bitcoin mining back in 2017 already accounted for the energy consumption of 159 countries combined.

Related Article: Tesla Model 3 as a Crypto Mining Machine? But, This Can Void Your Car Warranty

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Teejay Boris

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
International public services company, Serco, has welcomed Natasha Bothma as Growth Director as it eyes significant growth across the region.

As Growth Director, Bothma will join Serco Middle Easts Executive Leadership team and work to deliver an effective business growth strategy for each of the companys key sectors; transport, citizen and government services, defence, healthcare and justice and immigration.

Bothma will work alongside the business development team and operation directors as well as lead Sercos ExperienceLab, with particular focus on strategy execution, key account management, external communications and proactive stakeholder engagement.

Bothma joins the business from NATS services in Asia Pacific where she most recently held the title of Operations Director. A previous Serco employee, her Middle East experience spans over ten years.

Bothma commented: Im very excited to be joining the ever-growing and diverse team of Serco Middle East again and be part of the companys business growth within the region. I look forward to bringing my 25 years of global and regional expertise to the table and not only provide the business with innovative growth strategies, but also provide our clients with solutions that add real value.

Phil Malem, CEO of Serco Middle East added: As the UAE market continues to recover and the major giga projects in Saudi Arabia progress, we have seen a real resurgence in our business activities. We expect significant growth in the region over the next five years and Natashas experience, energy and professionalism make her the right person to lead those efforts.

The fact that she is a returning Serco colleague says a lot about our brand and Im proud to welcome her back to the team.

When asked about her key focus areas Bothma said: Its important to me that our clients understand how our wider capabilities can help them transform their services. The addition of ExperienceLab to Sercos proposition offers the first end to end integrated research, design and delivery offering in the region and I am really excited to work with our clients as an end-to-end partner.-- TradeArabia News Service
Madisonville, KY (42431)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. High 78F. Winds SW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

A few clouds from time to time. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 52F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
People who lived in ancient north-west Arabia built long-distance funerary avenues, archaeologists from the University of Western Australia (UWA) have determined.

Those are major pathways flanked by thousands of burial monuments that linked oases and pastures suggesting a high degree of social and economic connection between the regions populations in the 3rd millennium BCE.

Publication of the findings in the journal The Holocene caps a year of tremendous progress by the UWA team, working under the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), in shedding light on the lives of the ancient inhabitants of Arabia.

The existence of the funerary avenues suggests that complex social horizons existed 4,500 years ago across a huge swathe of the Arabian Peninsula. The finding adds to the steady progress by archaeologists working under the auspices of RCU in understanding the hidden story of the ancient kingdoms and earlier societies of north Arabia.

The UWA teams work is part of a wider effort that includes 13 archaeological and conservation project teams from around the world collaborating with Saudi experts in AlUla and neighbouring Khaybar counties in Saudi Arabia.

Amr AlMadani, CEO of RCU, said: The more we learn about the ancient inhabitants of north-west Arabia, the more we are inspired by the way our mission reflects their mindset: they lived in harmony with nature, honoured their predecessors, and reached out to the wider world. The work done by our archaeological teams in 2021 demonstrates that Saudi Arabia is a home for top-flight science  and we look forward to hosting more research teams in 2022.

Dr Rebecca Foote, Director of Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Research for RCU, said: Projects that have been conducting fieldwork in AlUla and Khaybar for over three years, such as the UWA team, have started publishing their results, and it is terrific to see how analyses of the data are elucidating so many aspects of life from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in north-west Arabia. These articles are just the beginning of the many publications that will advance our knowledge of prehistoric to modern times and have significant implications for the wider region.

The new article is the UWA teams fourth publication in less than a year in a peer-reviewed scientific journal on research at AlUla and Khaybar:

In August in the journal Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy the team dated the pendant-shaped tombs of the Khaybar Oasis to the 3rd millennium BCE  the first published radiocarbon evidence dating the tombs. This was also the first article in a peer-reviewed journal regarding the Bronze Age in Khaybar. Archaeological exploration of the mysteries of Khaybar is still in its infancy.

In April the team wrote in the journal Antiquity that the monumental structures known as mustatils are much older than previously believed, dating as far back as 5,200 BCE, and appear to have had a ritual function.

In March the team reported in the Journal of Field Archaeology that they had discovered the remains of the oldest known domesticated dog in Arabia.

The UWA teams latest research, with Dr Matthew Dalton as lead author, used satellite imagery analysis, aerial photography, ground survey and excavation to locate and analyse funerary avenues over an area of at least 160,000 square km in north-west Arabia.

They recorded more than 17,800 pendant tombs in their primary study areas of AlUla and Khaybar counties, of which around 11,000 formed part of funerary avenues.

Whether on basalt plains or mountain passes, the densest concentrations of funerary structures on these avenues are located near permanent water sources. The direction of the avenues suggests that many were used to travel between major oases, including those of Khaybar, AlUla and Tayma. Other avenues fade into the landscapes surrounding oases, suggesting they were used to move herds of domestic animals into nearby pastures during periods of rain.

Dr Hugh Thomas, project director, said: The research by the UWA team and our colleagues working across AlUla and Khaybar shows how important the archaeology of this region is for our understanding of the Neolithic and Bronze Age across the Middle East. Our findings demonstrate that these structures linked various populated oases, situated across a vast area, and that the funerary avenues were established around 4,500 years ago. They are especially dense around Khaybar, which is one of the densest visible funerary landscapes anywhere in the world.

The RCU has embarked on a 15-year masterplan, The Journey Through Time, to regenerate AlUla and parts of Khaybar as a leading global destination for cultural and natural heritage.

The archaeological research in AlUla and Khaybar counties by teams from Saudi Arabia and abroad is deepening and nuancing The Journey Through Time narrative of the region and providing a foundation for the Kingdoms Institute, a world-class centre for archaeological and conservation research with a focus on AlUlas 200,000 years of human history.

This flagship institution, now active as a research organisation, will open its doors to the public as a permanent physical presence at AlUla by 2030. Its most prominent buildings will be established at the red sandstone mountains opposite the archaeological site of Dadan, with design inspired by the Dadanite civilisation that prospered during the heyday of the incense trade in the 1st millennium BCE.

Jose Ignacio Gallego Revilla, RCUs Archaeology, Heritage Research and Conservation Executive Director, said: There is much more to come in 2022 and the years ahead as we reveal the depth and breadth of the areas archaeological heritage, which for decades was underrepresented but which will finally have the showcase it deserves in the Kingdoms Institute.-- TradeArabia News Service
Omicron cases in Louisiana ICE detention centers are under control, the agencys data showed. But migrant advocacy groups operating statewide claimed the low numbers presented by the agency are not credible in facilities where social distancing is not possible and the use of face masks is reportedly often not respected.

Only 17 immigrants detained in the 10 Louisiana ICE detention facilities, under the supervision of the New Orleans ICE Field Office, were positive as of Jan. 5. The ICE Integrated Decision Support numbers showed that an average of 3,768 immigrants were detained in Louisiana facilities as of Dec. 13, which means that less than 1% of the total population is currently positive.

Thousands of medical experts have repeatedly warned that social distancing is impossible for people in crowded detention conditions, a reality made even more dire by the highly transmissible nature of the omicron variant, said Layla Razavi, interim co-executive director at Freedom for Immigrants, a non-profit organization devoted to ending immigration detention. The virus has changed, but the advice of doctors, epidemiologists, and public health officials has not, she added.

+6 13 nurses sued Louisiana ICE facility saying mold made them sick; judge throws out 12 of the claims Three years ago, 13 nurses who worked at the LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, filed a lawsuit against GEO Group, the private company that r

According to the ICE database, eight people are isolated for COVID in Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, while six more are under isolation or monitored in both LaSalle ICE Processing Center, in Jena and the Alexandria Staging Facility. Five immigrants tested positive and are isolated at Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center.

On Jan. 7, the COVID positivity rate in Louisiana hit 20% again, with 14,802 new COVID cases out of the 70,645 tests statewide.

Freedom for Immigrants said that people detained, including those in Louisiana's facilities, continued to call the organization's hotline to report unsanitary and uninhabitable living conditions and denial of adequate PPE and COVID-19 safety measures.

Advocates and lawyers also accused ICE of failing to provide adequate access to the vaccinations from qualified health professionals and information about vaccinations in languages that people detained speak.

In a letter sent Dec. 15 to ICE, the American Civil Liberties Union criticized the agency claiming that it hasnt a coordinated strategy to ensure that detained people can receive COVID-19 booster shots. ICEs inadequate provision of COVID-19 vaccines endangers the health and safety of detained people, in continued violation of their constitutional rights, ACLU wrote.

An ICE spokesperson told The Advocate on Wednesday that the ICE COVID database is the only official source for information related to the detention facilities. Confirmed case information is pulled from a live database from medical professionals and is updated daily as information becomes available, the spokesperson said. The agency continues to conduct COVID testing on all individuals during intake at all facilities, ensuring newcomers are isolated and monitored in accordance with CDC guidelines.

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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

Data provided to The Advocate by ICE also showed that the average population inside the ICE detention facilities nationwide was 20,762 in December 2021. Only 938 people tested positive nationwide as of Friday.

Since the onset of the pandemic, ICE has taken proactive measures to tailor conditions across its detention network to maintain safe and secure environments for detainees and staff, while adhering to guidelines for the prevention and control of infectious and communicable diseases from the CDC, the ICE spokesperson added.

This has included reducing the overall detained population, providing appropriate hygiene and personal protective equipment (PPE), suspending social visitation, and maximizing social distancing practices with staggered meals and recreation times.

+5 DOTD cites 'increase in concerning driving behavior' as traffic fatalities climb in Acadiana It's been a particularly bad year for fatal car crashes in Lafayette Parish, according to data from the Louisiana Department of Transportation

The agency has consistently defended its strategy against COVID-19. In a previous report by The Advocate, a spokesperson said that ICE screens, tests, and houses separately from the general population for 14 days all new individuals who arrive at ICE facilities to detect and monitor COVID-19.

But advocates say ICE officers do not always follow those guidelines and claimed that they often use the practice of quarantine for secondary purposes.

ICE and local jails do not follow proper quarantining procedures with these transfers, and people continue to be subjected to the severe harms of solitary confinement as an ineffective, dehumanizing, and unlawful quarantining method, said Jeff Migliozzi from Freedom for Immigrants. ICE continues to conduct needless cross-country transfers across immigrant detention centers and prisons, further spreading the virus.

A September 2021 report by the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security observed that staff and detainees failed to wear masks and respect social distancing inside of Richwood Correctional Center, one of the facilities inspected in Louisiana, run by the private company, LaSalle Corrections.

We observed a video of staff, particularly medical personnel, not wearing facemasks while interacting with detainees during sick calls, the report stated. Specifically, we requested video imaging of specific operations to ensure staff and detainees were wearing masks and maintaining social distancing. One of our requests included a 10-minute span of sick-call operations in which we observed unmasked medical personnel screening detainees, who were also unmasked.
In Louisiana, Bob Dean achieved the sort of infamy no one wants after Hurricane Ida, when he ordered hundreds of nursing home residents evacuated to a squalid, ill-prepared warehouse.

Dozens of patients later died, and state officials  who took away his nursing home licenses  have said at least five deaths were "storm related."

Dean has now achieved a similar level of notoriety in Oregon's ranching community. Out west, he is accused of neglecting animals, not senior citizens.

As the first major snowfall of the year hit Oregon's Wallowa Valley in December, dozens of cows  and some calves, as well  were left in a massive expanse in the mountains that the U.S. Forest Service leases out to ranchers in the spring. Wallowa County Sheriff Joel Fish said there could be as many as 200 cattle that were stranded in the snow.

Long before disastrous Ida evacuation, data show Bob Dean's nursing homes were deficient Long before Evelyn Harden was evacuated to an ill-prepared warehouse in a botched evacuation for Hurricane Ida, her family had concerns about 

Craig Stockdale, a resident of Enterprise, Oregon, was among the first to come across the cattle left in the snow. He got close enough to one, almost entirely buried in the snow, to see its ear tag: Bob Dean Oregon Ranch.

I didnt know who Bob Dean was, I didnt know how to get ahold of him," Stockdale said in a phone interview.

Oregon business filings show that Dean created Dean Oregon Ranches LLC in June 2020. He listed his Baton Rouge business address when creating the company.

After Stockdale and several friends found the cattle last month, an expansive rescue operation and investigation ensued. It was chronicled by the Wallowa County Chieftain newspaper, which reported that Dean's ranch manager, B.J. Warnock, said 10 of the cows were found dead or needing to be euthanized. Warnock also said that 34 mother cows had been rescued  26 of which belonged to Dean Oregon Ranches, while the rest belonged to other ranches.

Warnock told the Chieftain they were still searching for 29 additional mother cows.

+6 'One fiasco after another': How Bob Dean lost a nursing home before Hurricane Ida scandal Notorious Louisiana nursing home owner Bob Dean plans to wage a legal fight to restore the licenses of seven nursing homes the state wrested f

The Wallowa County Sheriff's Office, Humane Society and others volunteered to help rescue the cattle, some of which were stranded in up to 7 feet of snow. For some of them, it was too late and more were euthanized after they were recovered.

Anna Butterfield, a rancher who lives in Joseph, said she took in six calves after they were rescued from the snow. Their mothers had to be euthanized. One of the calves she took in was so small that she still had her umbilical cord attached. She also needed to be euthanized, Butterfield said.

I was trying so hard to keep her alive, I just needed her to live," Butterfield said in a phone call. "She was so tough, and so little.

She does not place all of the blame for the tragedy on Dean. She also blames the people Dean hired to run his ranch, members of her local community.

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Both she and Stockdale said it's well-known that cattle need to be out of the mountains by Oct. 15 so that they won't get stranded in snowfalls.

We live in a small town where the entire community would have helped get those cattle out of there in November," Butterfield said. Were pretty on fire about just the neglect.

Fish, the sheriff, confirmed that he's opened a criminal investigation into the matter as officials continue to try to rescue the remaining cattle  some of which are being fed via helicopter as the cows remain in the mountains.

There have been cows that died out there and cows that had to be put down because of their condition," Fish said in a phone call. "So were looking at whether theres any criminal neglect or anything in that.

Baton Rouge nursing home owner Bob Dean has drawn regulators' ire on numerous occasions Bob Dean, the Baton Rouge developer whose Louisiana nursing home empire is at the center of controversy after four patients died in an Indepen

He said he has not made contact with Dean yet, but that he plans to interview several ranchers and Dean's employees to determine if there's a criminal case to be made. An attorney for Dean did not return a message for this story.

Butterfield is hoping for accountability. It's not uncommon, she said, for a few cows to go missing in the 72,000 acres that ranchers can lease. But the number of missing cattle this time makes the situation particularly disheartening, she said.

Stockdale said he was not trying to "destroy anybody" when he raised the alarm on social media about the cows left in the snow. But he agreed that consequences are needed.

"They werent taking care of their cows," Stockdale said.

Warnock, the ranch manager, told the Chieftain that the cattle were not familiar with the terrain where they went missing.

We truly appreciate the effort the community has shown in this final push to gather the remaining cows, he said.

Dean remains under criminal investigation by the Louisiana Attorney General's Office, and is facing dozens of lawsuits over his botched attempt to evacuate more than 800 residents of nursing homes he owns to a warehouse in rural Tangipahoa Parish. Louisiana health officials said Dean left his residents in inhumane conditions and refused to ask for help  or to allow inspections  once conditions inside the warehouse began going downhill after the storm passed.

State health officials revoked his licenses and shut down his seven nursing homes last year. Dean is appealing to get them back.

Dean has a long history of facing questions about his commitment to taking care of the people entrusted to him. Data from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services show that Dean's nursing homes ranked among the worst in the nation, with lower staffing levels, high complaint numbers, more fines and more problematic inspections than the vast majority of similar facilities.
Senate hopeful Luke Mixon labeled his opponent, U.S. Sen. John N. Kennedy, a threat to democracy for sowing doubt about the outcome of the 2020 election and said Louisiana deserves a representative that will fight to secure needed federal funding for roads, bridges and more.

Speaking Monday before the Baton Rouge Press Club, Mixon, a Democrat and veteran fighter pilot, said the Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol, and subsequent decision by Kennedy and other Republicans to object to the election results, motivated him to enter the race.

[Kennedy] was given an opportunity to tell the truth, to defend democracy, but instead he chose the lie. He was weak. He lacked the moral courage to do the right thing. He betrayed his oath to the Constitution. He betrayed every American voter who participated in the election, Mixon said.

Im not going to stand by and watch people spit in the face of democracy, he added.

A Kennedy spokesperson did not return a request for comment.

Mixon also targeted Kennedy for voting against the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a $1.2 trillion spending plan that aims to upgrade highways and bridges, improve ports, rescue failing water systems and expand access to high-speed internet.

Now you ask yourself: why would Sen. Kennedy vote against those things? I dont know. I can only assume that hes more interested in partisanship and sound bites than in solving problems, Mixon said.

A Bunkie native, Mixon graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2001 and was deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, flying F/A-18 Hornets off aircraft carriers. He earned three Air Medals during that time was recognized as the F/A-18 Attack Aviator of the Year.

U.S. Sen. John Kennedy draws Democratic opponent A combat veteran Baton Rouge fighter pilot who now flies commercial airlines announced Tuesday he is challenging the reelection of Republican 

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It disheartens me to see all the American treasure that was invested in building roads and bridges and drainage and sewage in countries on the other side of the world, Mixon said. Meanwhile, we try to do it here in the United States, in Louisiana, where its needed, and we have people like John Kennedy calling it wasteful and stupid. Its not.

Mixon, 42, described himself as a moderate Democrat, and said his ideology most clearly aligns with Gov. John Bel Edwards, who he said, does a fantastic job of always putting the people of Louisiana over his political party and his politics.

If elected, Mixon said hed operate with bipartisanship in mind, referencing Kennedys counterpart, U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican who voted to impeach President Donald Trump following the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and was instrumental in negotiating the bipartisan infrastructure package.

Im not looking to pander to the extremes, Mixon said, acknowledging that he would need support from Republicans to beat Kennedy. I believe that the 70% of us in the middle are being overlooked and being screamed over.

Mixon said Congress should prioritize making daycare affordable, investing in early childhood education and finding ways to lower prescription drug costs. He supports a carve-out to the filibuster to allow the Senate to advance the John Lewis Voting Rights Act with 50 votes but is against abolishing the filibuster altogether.

Mixon is up against a formidable challenger in Kennedy, who was state treasurer for 17 years before winning the U.S. Senate seat vacated by David Vitter in 2017. The 69-year-old Republican from Madisonville is a prolific fundraiser and has a whopping $9.7 million in campaign cash on hand, according to the latest campaign finance reports.

But Mixon isnt fazed.

Im not naive. I think there are three things necessary: a good message, a good messenger, and the way things are today, you need a lot of money to spend that money, Mixon said. Im very confident were going to raise enough money to be competitive in this race.
The cafeteria of West Jefferson High School is allowed to have 25 students at a time in the configuration seen during a tour showing coronavirus precautions of the campus in Harvey, La. Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020. If a divider is installed in the cafeteria, 50 students will be allowed in the room at the same time. The school is scheduled to open on August 26. (Photo by Max Becherer, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
Baton Rouge criminal court Judge Beau Higginbotham, who claims he was unlawfully passed over for a seat in civil court despite his seniority, is suing the entire 19th Judicial District Court bench and three of its former judges.

Higginbotham initially sued East Baton Rouge Parish Clerk of Court Doug Welborn last December, citing the clerk's refusal to assign civil cases to him after longtime 19th JDC Judge Janice Clark retired at the end of 2020.

A special judge appointed by the state Supreme Court to hear the case ruled in February that Higginbotham needed to add his fellow judges as defendants because they are "indispensable" parties to the case.

Higginbotham appealed that issue to the state 1st Circuit Court of Appeal and then to the Louisiana Supreme Court, and after both courts let that portion of retired Judge Emile St. Pierre's ruling stand, Higginbotham amended his lawsuit July 22 to add his 14 19th JDC colleagues as well as former 19th JDC Judges Bonnie Jackson, Richard Anderson and Clark as defendants.

+2 Judge Beau Higginbotham must add his fellow judges to lawsuit over seniority, civil seat A Baton Rouge criminal court judge must add his 19th Judicial District Court colleagues to a lawsuit in his seniority-based fight for a civil 

Higginbotham's amended lawsuit referenced a portion of St. Pierre's ruling.

"In this Court's February 2, 2021 judgment, this Court recognized that `the evidence adduced at hearing seems to support the argument that the right of Judge Higginbotham to be assigned to a civil docket may have been denied by the actions of a majority of the judges of the 19th Judicial District Court by their not following their own previously-established policies,'" wrote Higginbotham's attorney and sister, Whitney Higginbotham Greene.

Beau Higginbotham is the son of former 1st Circuit Judge Toni Higginbotham and ex-19th JDC Judge Leo Higginbotham. Whitney Greene is currently running for a vacant Baton Rouge City Court seat.

Clark, who was forced to retire at the end of December due to her age, said Thursday said had not been served with a copy of the lawsuit.

"I will accept service and do what needs to be done," she added.

Jackson said she was aware of the lawsuit but had no comment.

The lawsuit explains that at a Dec. 9 meeting of the 19th JDC judges, Higginbotham formally moved to be assigned to the civil bench, and Judge William Morvant seconded the motion, but it did not pass. Judge Don Johnson then offered a motion to assign the civil spot to his twin brother, Judge Ron Johnson, and the motion was approved.

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Morvant declined comment Thursday on being named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

Higginbotham, who has served on the 19th JDC criminal bench since 2015, claims he was "next in line" based on seniority to move to the civil bench.

+3 Judge Higginbotham presses his claim to the civil docket. Could it be a stepping-stone move? Baton Rouge state Judge Beau Higginbotham told a special judge Monday that a majority of his 19th Judicial District Court colleagues ignored t

Welborn had told Higginbotham that he lacked the authority to assign civil cases to the criminal court judge after a majority of Higginbotham's fellow 19th JDC judges passed him over for a civil seat on the court when Clark retired.

Higginbotham was elected to the 19th JDC Division M seat in fall 2014, then to the Division C seat nearer to his home in fall 2019.

A majority of Higginbotham's colleagues decided he lost his seniority on the court when he switched criminal divisions, and lost his right to lay claim to Clark's old civil seat.

Higginbotham's lawsuit, however, argues there was "no gap" in his service on the court.

Higginbotham's lawyers have argued that Welborn declined to perform his "clear and specific ministerial duty" to begin allotting civil cases to Higginbotham. The clerk of court denies that allegation.

Nine of Higginbotham's 19th JDC colleagues told Welborn's office in a Jan. 4 order to allot the civil cases that formerly would have gone to Clark to Judge Ron Johnson, who was elected in fall 2019. A week later, a second order from 10 of the court's 15 judges informed the clerk's office that Ron Johnson and fellow 19th JDC Judge Kelly Balfour would evenly share those civil cases while also splitting a criminal docket.

+3 Why judge Beau Higginbotham is suing to move into a vacant civil seat in Baton Rouge Judge Beau Higginbotham, who has sat on the 19th Judicial District Court's criminal bench for six years, is fighting for what he calls his "ri

Higginbotham's lawsuit claims the two January orders were "unlawful."
Baton Rouge state Judge Beau Higginbotham told a special judge Monday that a majority of his 19th Judicial District Court colleagues ignored their own seniority rule when they rejected his request last month to move from the criminal bench to a vacant seat on the civil bench.

Higginbotham, who has served on the 19th JDC since January 2015 and has handled a criminal docket the entire time, told an ad hoc judge that he was "next in line" for the civil docket that 19th JDC Judge Janice Clark relinquished when she retired Dec. 31.

"We go by seniority. That didn't happen in this case," he testified just down the hall from his own 19th JDC courtroom at a hearing in his lawsuit against East Baton Rouge Parish Clerk of Court Doug Welborn.

+3 Why judge Beau Higginbotham is suing to move into a vacant civil seat in Baton Rouge Judge Beau Higginbotham, who has sat on the 19th Judicial District Court's criminal bench for six years, is fighting for what he calls his "ri

Higginbotham, a former East Baton Rouge assistant district attorney who is the son of former state 1st Circuit Court of Appeal Judge Toni Higginbotham and former 19th JDC Judge Leo Higginbotham, claims Welborn unlawfully failed to perform his ministerial duty when he refused to allot civil cases to the judge.

Welborn had told Higginbotham in a letter that the clerk of court lacked the authority to do what the judge had requested.

Higginbotham is asking Emile St. Pierre, an ad hoc judge appointed by the state Supreme Court to hear the case, to recognize his seniority on the 19th JDC and order Welborn to allot civil cases to him.

St. Pierre, after listening Monday to arguments from attorneys for Higginbotham and Welborn as well as the testimony of Higginbotham and a Clerk of Court administrator, took the case under advisement.

"I won't be long with it," he told the parties.

In a Jan. 4 order from nine of the 19th JDC judges, Welborn's office was told to allot the civil cases that formerly would have gone to Janice Clark to Judge Ron Johnson. A week later, a second order from 10 of the court's judges informed the clerk's office that Johnson and fellow 19th JDC Judge Kelly Balfour would evenly share those civil cases while also splitting a criminal docket.

Veteran defense attorney Ron Johnson wins seat on 19th Judicial District Court, beating Trae Welch Veteran defense lawyer Ron Johnson, the twin brother of 19th Judicial District Court Judge Don Johnson, defeated East Baton Rouge Metro Counci

Higginbotham contends he has more seniority than both of those judges and should handle Clark's former civil docket.

"The clerk of court is caught in the middle. He just wants to abide by the law," Jeff Cody, one of Welborn's lawyers, told St. Pierre.

Cody argued that the 19th JDC's seniority rule is "merely a policy," not a law that authorizes Welborn to do what Higginbotham has requested.

Stuart Kottle, one of Higginbotham's attorneys, said the 19th JDC's seniority rule is clear and not discretionary when it comes to what the clerk of court must do.

"Judge Higginbotham had the right to move to the civil seat," Kottle told St. Pierre.

Higginbotham has declined comment on the pending litigation and has not commented publicly on why he wants to move to the civil bench.

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Former 19th JDC Judge Todd Hernandez, who retired in 2019 after serving eight years on the criminal bench and another 10 years on the civil bench, said in a phone interview Monday that what makes a civil docket more desirable than a criminal docket, or vice versa, "is in the eye of the beholder."

There is no difference in pay between judges who handle either a civil or criminal docket.

For him, Hernandez said moving from the criminal bench to the civil bench was about "a change in the types of proceedings."

"It was just a desire to see different things, hear different types of cases," he said.

A civil docket involves no less work than a criminal docket, he added.

Hernandez acknowledged that some district court judges who have a desire to someday move up to an appellate court want to have both criminal and civil court experience on their resume' before they make such a move.

"Certainly the experience in both bodes well for that endeavor," he said.

Higginbotham was elected to the 19th JDC Division M seat in fall 2014, then to the Division C seat nearer to his home in fall 2019. Ron Johnson, the twin brother of longtime 19th JDC Judge Don Johnson, also was elected in fall 2019.

+5 Metro Councilman, twin brother of 19th JDC judge headed for judicial runoff Baton Rouge City Court Judge Tarvald Smith was elected Saturday to the 19th Judicial District Court, while Metro Councilman Trae Welch and law

There are 15 judges on the 19th JDC bench  eight with a criminal docket and seven with a civil docket.

A majority of Higginbotham's colleagues decided he lost his seniority on the court when he switched criminal divisions and, therefore, lost his right to lay claim to Clark's old civil seat.

Higginbotham's lawsuit maintains there was "no gap" in his service on the court.

The 19th JDC approved a new policy in mid-2019 that said judges are allowed, on the basis of "overall seniority," the opportunity to move from their present section to take over a vacant section.

The policy also provided that once a judge exercises the option to move from their present section to take over a vacant section, he or she will not retain seniority for the purpose of future moves and, instead, will go to the bottom of the "Seniority for Moves" list.

Higginbotham's lawsuit claims he has a "rightful claim to the civil bench."

Higginbotham's attorneys argued that even if his seniority began on Oct. 21, 2019, the date of his oath of office in Division C, he still has more seniority than Ron Johnson and Balfour because their oaths were dated after his.
Judge Beau Higginbotham, who has sat on the 19th Judicial District Court's criminal bench for six years, is fighting for what he calls his "rightful claim to the civil bench."

What had been an in-house dispute among Higginbotham and his 19th JDC colleagues over who had the most seniority  and the right to move into a vacant civil seat on the Baton Rouge-based state court  has gone public. Higginbotham has sued.

A majority of Higginbotham's colleagues snubbed him for the civil seat vacated by retired 19th JDC Judge Janice Clark, instead allowing Judge Ron Johnson to move from the criminal bench to the civil bench, taking Clark's spot. Higginbotham has, in turn, sued East Baton Rouge Parish Clerk Doug Welborn, saying the longtime clerk rejected Higginbotham's request that Welborn assign civil cases to him.

Welborn told Higginbotham that the clerk of court lacked the authority to do what the judge had requested.

A hearing in the case is scheduled Monday.

Higginbotham was elected to the 19th JDC Division M seat in fall 2014, then to the Division C seat nearer to his home in fall 2019. Johnson, the twin brother of longtime 19th JDC Judge Don Johnson, also was elected in fall 2019.

+5 Metro Councilman, twin brother of 19th JDC judge headed for judicial runoff Baton Rouge City Court Judge Tarvald Smith was elected Saturday to the 19th Judicial District Court, while Metro Councilman Trae Welch and law

There are 15 judges on the 19th JDC bench  eight with a criminal docket and seven with a civil docket.

A majority of Higginbotham's colleagues decided he lost his seniority on the court when he switched criminal divisions and, therefore, lost his right to lay claim to the vacant civil seat.

Higginbotham, however, argues there was "no gap" in his service on the court.

The 19th JDC approved a new policy in mid-2019 that said judges are allowed, on the basis of "overall seniority," the opportunity to move from their present section to take over a vacant section.

The policy also provided that once a judge exercises the option to move from their present section to take over a vacant section, he or she will not retain seniority for the purpose of future moves and, instead, will go to the bottom of the "Seniority for Moves" list.

"Because Judge Higginbotham had no gap in service ... Judge Higginbotham's 'overall seniority' remained as December 30, 2014 because ... Judge Higginbotham's uninterrupted service on the bench began on December 30, 2014," he claims in a lawsuit filed against Welborn on Dec. 23 and amended Jan. 4.

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Higginbotham's motion to be assigned to the civil bench failed at a Dec. 9 meeting of the 19th JDC judges.

Judge Don Johnson then moved to assign the vacant civil bench seat to his brother, and the motion was approved, the lawsuit says.

+4 How twin brothers went from inner city Baton Rouge to making history as judges Growing up poor in Baton Rouge's poverty-stricken inner city with their nine siblings during the civil rights era, twins Don and Ron Johnson n

Higginbotham is asking an ad hoc judge, Emile St. Pierre, appointed by the Louisiana Supreme Court, to hear the case to recognize his seniority on the 19th JDC and order Welborn to allot civil cases to him.

"The 19th Judicial District Court is moving forward with the process to allot civil cases to Judge Ronald Johnson despite Plaintiff's rightful claim to the civil bench," Higginbotham's amended lawsuit claims.

Higginbotham argues that even if his seniority begins on Oct. 21, 2019, the date of his oath of office in Division C, he still has more seniority than Ron Johnson because his oath is dated Dec. 12, 2019.

Veteran defense attorney Ron Johnson wins seat on 19th Judicial District Court, beating Trae Welch Veteran defense lawyer Ron Johnson, the twin brother of 19th Judicial District Court Judge Don Johnson, defeated East Baton Rouge Metro Counci

Welborn said Wednesday in a written statement that his office enjoys "great working relationships" with all of the 19th JDC judges and "we strive to be as accommodating to them as possible."

The clerk noted that Higginbotham's litigation against the Clerk of Court's Office involves a dispute among the judges concerning court sections and divisions.

"It is hoped that the lawsuit will ultimately result in providing clearer guidance concerning our role and authority in that process, and we will follow the decision of the Court," Welborn said. "Regardless of the outcome in this matter, we look forward to continuing a successful working relationship with all of the judges and their staffs."

Higginbotham said Sunday he could not comment on pending legislation, as Ron Johnson did previously.

In a Dec. 10 email, Don Johnson explained to his fellow 19th JDC judges that when a judge resigns from an elected office, there is no continuous service, according to the lawsuit. Don Johnson explained in a later Dec. 18 email that Higginbotham's seniority began anew when he resigned from his Division M seat and assumed the Division C seat on Oct. 21, 2019.

Higginbotham claims Welborn erroneously concluded that he did not have the authority to allot civil cases to Higginbotham. He adds that the clerk of court failed to perform his ministerial duty required by law.
Bahrain International Airport is taking significant steps to enhance runway safety by implementing the Global Reporting Format (GRF), a globally harmonized methodology for assessing and reporting runway surface conditions, reported BNA citing the Bahrain Airport Company (BAC).

This comes in line with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) regulations and Bahrain Civil Aviation Affairs (CAA) Civil Aviation Publication 111.

The GRF became globally applicable in November and will help mitigate the risk of runway excursions, which are the most common cause of runway accidents. This methodology will improve runway condition reporting and notify pilots about any significant changes, it stated.

BAC Acting Chief Airport Operations Officer Hitarth Mankodi said: "The introduction of this methodology will help to ensure that Bahrains gateway to the world continues to operate safely and efficiently. Many airports around the world are now entering the winter season, which will provide important opportunities to review and enhance the implementation of the GRF."

"As a proactive member of the global airport community, BAC looks forward to sharing its findings with other airports to help refine the GRF process," stated Mankodi.

BAC Officer (Aerodrome Safety) Omar Seyadi and Manager (Airside & Landside Maintenance) Saroj Jha have developed standard operating procedures, training plans, and trials, and managed all associated coordination efforts with stakeholders and the CAA to ensure that the format is implemented effectively, said the BNA report.

Accurate and up-to-date runway condition reporting is critical to reduce the risk of runway excursions as this information allows flight crews to make informed decisions on take-off and landing conditions, it stated.

Standardized reporting ensures a common language between all stakeholders. The harmonization of the assessment and reporting of runway surface conditions will not only benefit runway safety, but also operational efficiency and business sustainability, it added.
Virgin Australia has cancelled almost one-in-four of its flights scheduled for January and February as the Omicron COVID-19 outbreak disrupts crew availability and dents travel demand.

The airline said it would operate at reduced frequency on busy routes and temporarily suspend 10 routes from late January, as it continues to lose staff who are forced into isolation due to COVID-19 rules.

Virgin said COVID isolation requirements have wreaked havoc on staff availability. Credit:Kate Geraghty

Virgin Australia is dedicated to the communities that we serve and will resume these flights as soon as possible, Virgin chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka said in a statement.

Although we dont know when this wave will pass, we do know that as we make the shift to living with COVID-19 there will continue to be changes in all our lives.
Immigration Minister Alex Hawke is considering whether to use his personal power under the Migration Act to cancel Novak Djokovics visa after a court ruled that he needs to released and is allowed to play in the Australian Open.

Federal Circuit Court judge Anthony Kelly has ordered the immediate release of the tennis world no.1 from immigration detention after overturning the federal governments decision to cancel his visa.

But in the dying minutes of the hearing, the lawyer acting for the government, Christopher Tan, told the court that Mr Hawke will now consider whether to exercise his personal power of cancellation under section 133C(3).

Immigration Minister Alex Hawke. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Sources confirmed that Mr Hawke now has four hours to decide whether to use the power, and it is under consideration.

If Mr Hawke uses the power, Djokovic could contest the cancellation.

However, the power is extremely broad and discretionary, and it would be more difficult to argue against it.

Djokovic could be banned from re-entering Australia for three years if the personal power of the minister is used.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison stresses that on the best medical advice, we need to push through and open up despite being forced to ride the wave of Omicron infections. But the truth is that to safely do all these things we need to be equipped with our best armour  vaccines.

In that light, yesterdays opening up of vaccination for five to 11 year olds got off to a shaky start, making the Prime Ministers urging ring a little hollow to anxious parents who are having difficulties getting access to jabs for their children.

Kato Di Natale,10, gets his jab at Frankston Community Vaccination Hub yesterday. Credit:Joe Armao

The government has been nothing but reassuring. Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said on Sunday that there was enough supply of vaccines for primary school-aged children, and that every child that wants to be vaccinated can be vaccinated. The head of the governments COVID-19 vaccine taskforce, Lieutenant General John Frewen, said on Monday parents need to be persistent, and if GPs did not have appointments available, they should try pharmacies.

But as The Age has reported, vaccine supplies have been patchy and appointments hard to nail down. Some parents in Melbourne who arrived with their children for appointments on Monday were turned away after it was discovered that the vaccine delivery that arrived on Friday had already expired. In Sydney, GPs and medical practice managers have said they had to push back their first appointments for vaccines for children by a week.
Some very clever readers have written in to remind Granny that they know the eleventh day of January is a special day for Column 8, and that today is even more significant  it is the 75th anniversary of Grannys first appearance in the eighth column of the old broadsheet page of the Sydney Morning Herald. Its a diamond of a day for your dear old Granny, 75 years young! With particular thanks to Andrew Leventhal of St Leonards, Don Bain of Port Maquarie and Allan Gibson of Cherrybrook for their birthday greetings, Allan noting with consternation that the 2022 Leunig calendar included the birthdays for the Herald, Age and AFR but not Column 8. I am on the case to have you recognised in the 2023 calendar!

Graeme Finn of Summer Hill may not be able to come up with any upside-down years other than 1961 (C8), but he does know those born in that year will turn 61 this year.

Don Leayr of Albury remembers Mad Magazine celebrating 1961 as an upside-down year (C8), the first since 1881, and the last until 6009 . Andrew McPherson of Kalaru reckons that with 6009, and 6119, being nigh on 4000 years away, there is no guarantee they will happen.

Thanks to our groceries getting squashed either at the checkout or when crammed into the car, we now pay full price for packets of partially broken biscuits (C8), laments Joan Brown of Orange.

Maintaining todays numerical theme, Patricia Fairall of Goulburn recalls that while chatting with her son Jon, he remarked, I am 47 and was born in 1974. To which Patricia replied, I am 74 and was born in 1947. Patricia wonders if there are any other Column 8 readers who share those significant digits within their family.
Pumps have been placed in Maryboroughs CBD in a bid to help floodwater in the south-east Queensland city recede, as crews were still searching for a 14-year-old girl washed away in a torrent at the weekend.

The river peaked on Sunday night at 10 metres in Maryborough, short of the 10.7-metre peak following Tropical Cyclone Oswald in 2013, and the weather bureau expected the water to drop throughout Monday.

Council has put in 12 pumps to help reduce flooding in Maryborough.

The Fraser Coast Council put 12 pumps around the CBD, which is believed to have about 80 premises affected, after floodwater breached the temporary levee.

Mayor George Seymour posted online overnight that each of the pumps moves about 120 litres a second.
The Luxembourg Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai, one of the most popular pavilions, has announced that it is close to hitting the half million visitors milestone.

The pavilion has also revealed that it is one of the most Instagrammable and family friendly pavilions at the Expo 2020 Dubai.

From its launch in October 2021, the pavilion has accomplished many milestones including welcoming up to 8,000 visitors on a single day. Since then, the pavilion has played a prominent role in bringing together different cultures and minds under its roof.

The pavilion has not only hosted prominent dignitaries such as Prince Guillaume, Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai but also invited businesses and individuals to discover the beauty and potential of Luxembourg. These efforts reflect the countrys commitment towards developing collaborations, partnerships and solutions for a better tomorrow.

Shaped as a Mobius ribbon, an infinite form, symbolizing circular economy, the pavilion has also led an array of initiatives to promote emerging entrepreneurs. For instance, the Made in Luxembourg Week showcased the countrys vast array of creative, technological, and entrepreneurial talents through a curated exhibition. In that context, the Knowledge and Learning Week presented a fun and inventive way of upscaling skills.

And naturally, one of the most popular elements of Luxembourgs participation proved to be through The Schengen Lounge. Headed by Michelin-starred chef Kim Kevin de Dood, the restaurant played a crucial role in introducing Luxembourg fusion cuisine to Dubai. Over the past months, the restaurant has welcomed thousands of visitors who had the opportunity to sample the delights of the countrys cuisine including quality Luxembourgish wines made available to the region for very first time.

As an added attraction, the pavilion also features the only slide built inside a pavilion during the history of World Expos, as a fun nod to Schueberfouer, Luxembourgs traditional fair which dates back to 1340.

It is therefore no surprise that the Luxembourg Pavilion is one of the most popular destinations at Expo 2020 Dubai. Through its collaborative approach, the Luxembourg Pavilion continues to grow on its successes and foster a nurturing and strong relationship with the UAE.-- TradeArabia News Service
Staff Reporter

Nyamekye Daniel has been a journalist for five years. She was the managing editor for the South Florida Media Network and a staff writer for The Miami Times. Daniel's work has also appeared in the Sun-Sentinel, Miami Herald and The New York Times.
Maryland Department of Labor implores lawmakers to hold off on UI tax changes during tenuous economic time
State patrol police officers standing guard toward Minneapolis riots and controlling demonstrators and protestors for George Floyd on May 29, 2020.
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Brent Addleman is an Associate Editor and a veteran journalist with more than 25 years of experience. He has served as editor of newspapers in Pennsylvania and Texas, and has also worked at newspapers in Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Kentucky.
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Abu Dhabis Etihad Airways has launched a Global Sale with exclusive offers for travellers looking to explore new destinations or visit friends and family overseas in 2022.

From Abu Dhabi, guests can fly to any of Etihads select destinations, such as London, Paris, New York and more, with fares starting as low as AED795 ($216) in Economy and AED3,995 in Business. The Global Sale will run until January 21, 2022, for travel until May 31, 2022.

Travellers wishing to explore London in Etihads Business class can take advantage of the sale from as little as AED9,995, or travel in Economy from AED1,995. Economy fares to Amman start at AED995 and Islamabad start at AED795.

Guests travelling with Etihad can make use of the airlines innovative service to simplify the process of authenticating travel documents. With Verified to Fly, travellers can validate their documents before arriving at the airport, giving them the confidence that they have met all essential government and airline travel requirements before travelling to the airport.

Those wishing to book are advised to visit etihad.com or the Etihad app to view the latest sale fares, and to remain informed on the appropriate entry regulations at their end destination.-- TradeArabia News Service
DuBois, PA (15801)

Today

Cloudy with occasional rain in the afternoon. High 69F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Cloudy with periods of rain. Low 59F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
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Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixons White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at

www.creators.com.
Forest City, NC (28043)

Today

Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High around 85F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies during the evening will give way to cloudy skies overnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 64F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
A protest group called Hot Mess hold up signs of Jeffrey Epstein in front of the federal courthouse in New York City on July 8, 2019. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

Advocates for EpsteinMaxwell Abuse Survivors Petition DOJ for More Prosecutions

While touting the conviction of sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell as a victory for survivors, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) has launched a petition for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to prosecute the many suspected clients and co-conspirators who participated in Maxwell and Jeffrey Epsteins notorious pedophile ring.

Maxwell was found guilty on Dec. 29, 2021, of five charges related to her role in Epsteins sex-trafficking network. The list of her and Epsteins alleged clients is a whos who of global power brokers, from Prince Andrew to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and billionaire Leon Black; the men have denied the claim.

NCOSE and sexual abuse survivors want the DOJ to investigate the credible claims made against those men and so many others.

Without a network of eager exploiterswho are also sex traffickers under federal lawthe scheme would not have continued for as long as it did.  And the Epstein-Maxwell sex trafficking scheme was not an isolated incident, the petition states. The Department of Justice should create a cross-jurisdictional task force to investigate, identify, and prosecute all perpetrators engaging in similar conduct as Epstein and Maxwell.

By all accounts, prosecutors have ample evidence with which to pursue Epstein and Maxwells suspected clientsincluding survivors willing to testify, as well as reams of contemporaneous records from over the last two decades of Maxwells and Epsteins activities.

NCOSE Vice President Eleanor Gaetan said prosecutors also have the legal tools to pursue Maxwells alleged clients, noting that Congress passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act in 2000, which defines sex trafficking to include the solicitation of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act.

This means that with the Maxwell case, there was an invisible party to the crime: those that solicit or patronize. Where NCOSE is concerned, the attention to Maxwell and Epstein is obscuring what drove this crime. And that is those that were party to it, Gaetan told The Epoch Times. Without those eager exploiters, this scheme would not have gone on for as long as it did.

Not all survivors or advocates have hope that the DOJ will pursue Maxwells clients. Nick Bryantwho obtained and eventually had published Epsteins infamous black booktold The Epoch Times in December that the governments handling of the Maxwell case is an abomination of justice.

She should be indicted on scores of child-trafficking counts. But shes only indicted on one, which shows me that this is a coverup, Bryant said.

While the Maxwell-Epstein scandal has been a wildly popular topic online across the political spectrum, government officials and politicians have been largely silent on the controversies surrounding how the DOJ has handled the investigation and prosecution. One of the few to speak out following the Maxwell verdict was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)she said on Twitter that Epsteins entire network should be made public and his fortune should go to his victims. She has since been booted from Twitter for comments about COVID-19.

But despite the apparent uphill battle, Gaetan said shes optimistic that the Maxwell-Epstein network will eventually be brought to justice.

Were convinced that this is the beginning of justice, not the end, she said.

Gaetan pointed out that it took decades for Maxwell to be prosecuted. Even though many may question the governments handling of the Maxwell-Epstein investigations, Gaetan said their arrests still marked a major step in the right direction.

There was a lot of spin around the trial, but at the end of the day, Maxwell was found guiltyshes a pimp, Gaetan said. She may not be your stereotypical pimp, but she is absolutely a pimp. She procured, solicited, and groomed women for Jeffrey Epstein and his friends.
Life on the Nova Esperanza was about helping people living on the Amazon River. The Warners opened health clinics and started schools and churches. (Courtesy of David Warner)

Americans are People Who Care, Amazon River Folk Say After Warners

Arizona native David Warner was used to traveling over great distances of water serving America as a petty officer aboard the aircraft supercarrier USS Independence (CV-62) in the 1970s.

But his most demanding and daring mission was being captain of his own 50-foot boat, the Nova Esperanza, traveling up the Amazon about a week upriver from the last major outpost of civilization, Manaus, Brazil.

There was no way to tell how many miles that was, David Warner said, but if you travelled downriver for a few days, youd reach Manaus. Thats how distances are measured there. If you got sick up river, or had a bad accident, you were on your own.

Nothing he learned in the Navy, he said, prepared him for what he would do, see and feel in the 12 years he lived on the riverfrom 1985 to 1997with his young California wife and his two children born in the Amazon region.

The mission of the Independence was to keep the international peace in dangerous waters, he said. The mission of the Esperanza was to bring peace and health to peoples so remote, some of them had no idea who the president of their country was; or had ever seen a doctor, or received basic medicines.

The remotest river people we worked with could not read or write. In a small village of 70 people, maybe a single person could read. As a result, they had no records.

They didnt know when they were born, how old they were, when they were married, or for how long. There were no medical records. We implemented the first records for many small villages when we vaccinated them for malaria, mumps, measles, and chicken pox.

The Warners were full-time unpaid volunteers financially supported, not by large organizations, but by individuals who knew what they were doing and sent money so they could work. Family members in Arizona sent their own money, raised more money from friends and, through word-of-mouth, came up with the $25,000 for the double decker Nova Esperanza, draft six feet, for shallow waters.

Both our families got so behind what we were doing, David Warner said, that they sent a lot of money our way and got all their friendsand those friends got more friendsto support us.

In that way, they kept going for 12 years.

Our mission was to bring hope and help to people who had precious little of either, he said. Most of them had never been to school, so we built schools and taught them to read. No one had a Bible, of course, so we gave them those.

We worked alongside them planting in their fields, fixing their boats, healing their wounds, whatever was needed.

Elizabeth Warner said, It was hard work, it was draining sometimes, dangerous at other times, but we loved being there because it was all about bringing hope, and thats what God is all about. Hope.

One of the benefits of their work was the impact it had on the locals about Americans, Elizabeth Warner said.

We were in Manaus in a restaurant and there was an American there who was kind of talking down to the wait staff, she said. I could see the looks and almost sneers of the local people looking on.

We found out that was not an uncommon scenario, sadly.

After we had been in the area for a couple of years, some of the people we helped came to us and said, You have really changed our idea of what Americans are like. You came to help us and live alongside us, not look down on us.

That really blessed me to represent our country in a positive way to them. We may be the only Americans they ever really get to know, and will always think Americans are people who care.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks in the briefing room of the State Department in Washington on Jan. 7, 2022. (Andrew Harnik/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Another Affront Against Universal Rights: Blinken Criticizes Beijing for Using Sanctions to Intimidate US Critics

Beijings recent sanctions on U.S. religious freedom officials mark its latest affront against universal rights and will only spur further global scrutiny of its human rights violations, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Jan. 10.

Blinken was referring to sanctions Beijing announced last month targeting four commissioners of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which the Chinese foreign ministry said at the time were enacted in response to recent U.S. actions on Xinjiang.

Thats in addition to another three current or former members from the panel the Chinese regime sanctioned last year, as well as of dozens of U.S. officials and organizations that promote democracy and respect for human rights around the worldsanctions which Blinken described as without merit.

The regimes retaliatory sanctions wont deter the United States from deploying all diplomatic and economic tools to promote accountability over human rights, he added.

Beijings continued attempts to intimidate and silence those speaking out for human rights only contribute to the growing international scrutiny of the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, Blinken said.

He called on Beijing to cease its acts of transnational repression, including coercive practices of imprisoning and denying freedom of movement to family members of Uyghur American activists, including individuals serving the American people.

Beijing has drawn growing international condemnation for putting more than 1 million Uyghurs in internment camps in the far west Xinjiang region and subjecting them to forced labor, torture, and political indoctrination.

A perimeter fence is constructed around what is officially known as a vocational skills education center in Dabancheng in Xinjiang Uyghur region, China, on Sept. 4, 2018. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

The U.S. government and some Western parliaments have labeled the treatment of Uyghurs a genocide. In December 2021, the United States and several allies announced that they wont send official delegates to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics to boycott the repression.

Over the past month, Washington also leveled bans on dozens of Chinese individuals and entities for their role in supporting the regimes abuses in Xinjiang, including the Chinese artificial intelligence firm SenseTime and a number of tech firms it found to be aiding surveillance efforts in the region. President Joe Biden also signed a bill into law to ban all imports from the region over forced labor concerns.

The regime nonetheless has continued to portray the region as free from abuse. Just before Christmas, Chinese state media Xinhua ran a video ad in New York Citys Times Square showing one Xinjiang city as a place with sweet fruits and a happy life of people, which an activist said was an attempt to whitewash the genocide accusation.
Protesters attempt to pull down the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square near the White House in Washington on June 22, 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Antifa Activist Who Tried to Topple Statue Near White House Avoids Jail Time

A member of the far-left Antifa network avoided jail time after admitting to participating in the attempted teardown of a statue near the White House in Washington.

Jason Charter was arrested for trying to topple a statue of former President Andrew Jackson on June 22, 2020. Charter, authorities said, entered Lafayette Park decked out in all-black clothing and was later seen on video wrapping ropes around the statue that other people pulled during the toppling attempt.

Charter, 27, faced up to 21 years in prison but prosecutors recommended no jail time after he pleaded guilty to violating a law that entering or remaining on restricted grounds.

The charge carries a maximum punishment of one year of imprisonment, one year of probation, and a fine of $100,000.

Charter, through his attorney, asked the court to sentence him to only probation, arguing the offense was non-violent and that it shouldnt result in time in prison.

Mr. Charter understands the seriousness of his engagement in this form of protest. He was simply trying to shed light on a figure in American History who should not be lauded as a hero. Andrew Jackson was a slave owner who profited and gained influence from the use of free human labor, a sentencing memorandum stated.

The government asked the court to impose three years of probation, including 45 days of home detention, and $3,100 in fines and restitution.

The bid to take down the statue resulted in about $34,000 in damage.

While the nature of the offense was serious, and Charters actions demonstrated a clear disregard for lawful limitations on conduct in Lafayette Park, and for the value and dignity of the property of others, prosecutors expressed concern about Charters conduct later in 2020, including allegedly assaulting a Park Police officer.

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump nominee, agreed in court on Monday not to impose jail time, but went beyond the prosecutorial recommendations.

Theres a line that he crossed here in this case, she said in court, Ford Fischer, editor-in-chief of News2Share, reported.

Jason Charter in still images from surveillance video. (FBI)

Friedrich sentenced Charter to three years of probation, including 60 days of home detention, and to pay $2,600 in restitution. He must also engage in mental health treatment.

Charter told the court before the sentence was handed down that the Jackson statue he tried tearing down belongs in a museum but he is committed to getting members of Congress to remove it through legislation.

However, Charter said his actions, despite breaking the law, were morally justified.

The judge thought about adding two extra years of probation but said Charters comments convinced her against that path.

Charter said in a statement on social media before the sentencing that he was looking forward to the case being over.

I look forward to a new chapter in my life, but I will always believe that we cant glorify and erect statues of awful people like Andrew Jackson. However I am willing to face the consequences of my actions, he said.
A supporter of presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori holds a banner that reads "Communism Never!" in a march to the government palace in Lima on July 14, 2021, demanding the National Jury of Elections (JNE) investigation allegations of election fraud for leftist candidate Pedro Castillo. (GIAN MASKO/AFP via Getty Images)

Perus Attorney General Opens Probe of President Over Alleged Contract Collusion

Perus Attorney General Zoraida Avalos announced on Jan. 4 the opening of a preliminary investigation into President Pedro Castillo for alleged collusion and influence-peddling with companies over government public works contracts.

The latest investigation by the attorney generals office focuses on meetings held by the president with corporate lobbyists in November 2021.

Castillo held meetings in the Government Palace, and also in the private home of businesswoman Karelim Lopez, over the construction of a bridge in one of the nations central Amazonian departments. Lopezs employer, Puente Tarata III, won the project by underbidding the competition by only 27 cents.

The president also met privately with representatives from Heaven Petroleum Operation, who also won a bid to sell 280,000 barrels of biodiesel to the state-owned company PetroPeru for $74 million.

Castillo stands accused of improper intervention in the bidding process for the projects. An investigation will remain in limbo until his presidential term ends, since article 117 of the Peruvian constitution prevents criminal proceedings against a president while he holds office.

Its the latest in a series of corruption charges and government pushback against Castillos administration since he took office in July last year.

Last August, Prime Minister Guido Bellido and the leader of Castillos socialist Peru Libre party, Vladimir Cerron, were indicted along with 15 others for money laundering.

During an investigation of former minister of defense Walter Ayala and former secretary-general of the presidential office Bruno Pacheco, Avalos summoned Castillo to give a statement regarding any involvement in the alleged abuse of authority and illegal patronage on Dec. 14.

Later that month, Castillo faced impeachment by congress on grounds of permanent moral incapacity. However, the measure failed to pass, securing only 46 of the 52 required votes.

Adding fuel to the fire, Pacheco was found hiding $20,000 in his bathroom, which he claimed were his personal savings.

On Dec. 28, Castillo said he received the emissaries of the attorney generals office and cooperated with their questions regarding the investigation of Ayala and Pacheco and would do his constitutional duty when it came to Peruvian laws.

And the public ministry has come knocking on Castillos door yet again, this time for influencing the awarding of contracts.

Its not a surprise theyre going after him for this too, political analyst Fernando Menendez told The Epoch Times.

According to Menendez, under-the-table deals are to be expected when the government has too much power over who gets jobs.

Its easy for corruption to occur in those scenarios. If everything, including job contracts, is done through the state, then corruption is inevitable.

However, Peruvian lawyer and congresswoman Susel Paredes suggested a way around the dilemma: an amendment to article 117 in the constitution.

Lets get it right. If the president is a criminal, then he is accused during his term of corruption crimes, then he is convicted and removed, Paredes said.

Castillo closed 2021 with a dismal 25 percent approval rating, which fell from 35 percent in October, according to a report from the Institute of Peruvian Studies.
NSW Governor, David Hurley attends the Wugulora Ceremony at Barangaroo on January 26, 2018 in Sydney, Australia. (Cole Bennetts/Getty Images)

Australias Governor-General Positive for COVID-19 Despite Having Received Three Shots

Australias Governor-General has joined the group of high-profile Australian officials who have tested positive for CCP virus, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

Government House confirmed late on Sunday that Governor-General David Hurley had tested positive to COVID-19.

His Excellency is experiencing only slight symptoms, a statement reads. He is isolating at Admiralty House and will continue to follow all health advice and directions.

The governor-general has received three shots of the COVID vaccine, including a booster. He will continue his work in isolation.

Meanwhile, New South Wales (NSW) Deputy Premier Paul Toole has also tested positive for the virus.

Toole, the MP for Bathurst, announced the news on social media, revealing that his wife and three children had already contracted the virus in the past week.

NSW Governor Margaret Beazley and Deputy Premier Paul Toole at a swearing in ceremony at at Government House on December 21, 2021 in Sydney, Australia. (Mick Tsikas  Pool/Getty Images)

Today my results have come back, and I have tested positive too, he posted on Facebook on Sunday night. Fortunately, I have very minor symptoms including a sore throat and a little bit of a temperature from time to time.

Whilst Ive been in isolation for the week because I was a close household contact  I now have to do another seven days from my test.

This comes as NSW recorded its deadliest day on Monday with 18 new deaths, including a young child.

The state recorded 2,030 hospitalised people, an increase of 103. Of those, 158 are in ICU, an increase of eight from the previous day.

A total of 20,293 new infections were reported from PCR lab tests. However, the online system to report rapid antigen tests (RATs) results is not yet available in the state until mid-week.

The two are among the latest high-profile political figures who have tested positive for COVID amid the Omicron breakout in Australia.

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull revealed on Saturday that he tested positive for COVID-19.

Australian former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull gestures during a joint news conference with U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) at the White House in Washington on Feb. 23, 2018. (Jonathan Ernst/File Photo via Reuters)

Like hundreds of thousands of other Australians, I have tested positive for COVID. Symptoms moderate so far. Isolating as required, Turnbull wrote in a post on Twitter.

This pandemic and especially this latest wave has put our health professionals under enormous pressure  please be polite and considerate

Like hundreds of thousands of other Australians I have tested positive for covid. Symptoms moderate so far. Isolating as required. This pandemic and especially this latest wave has put our health professionals under enormous pressure  please be polite and considerate .  Malcolm Turnbull  (@TurnbullMalcolm) January 7, 2022

Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg also announced he had tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Friday night.

Like thousands of Australians, I tested positive today to COVID-19, he wrote in a Twitter post. I have the common symptoms and am isolating with my family.

My thoughts are with all those who have COVIDthis is a difficult time, but we will get through this.
Noah Justice travels to Arches National Park and Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah where explores how catastrophic erosion has produced these incredible rock structures. At Arches hell see how sediments were laid down quickly, then were eroded by water catastrophically, leaving behind these arches. Hell show how the simple rate of erosion should have destroyed these arches long ago if naturalism were true. Then he travels to southern Utah to go under some of the largest natural bridges in the world. Hell see how the global flood and subsequent flash floods carved these amazing geologic features. Finally, hell explore evidence for early Americans living along side dinosaurs here at the monument.

Noah continues to explore Arches National Park and Natural Bridges National Monument in Utah where explores how catastrophic erosion has produced these incredible rock structures.



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A Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldier guards the entrance to the PLA Hong Kong Garrison headquarters in the Central Business District in Hong Kong, on Aug. 29, 2019. (Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters)

Beijing Appoints Former Paramilitary Chief as New Hong Kong Garrison Commander

SHANGHAIBeijing has appointed a former paramilitary chief, Peng Jingtang, as the new commander of the People Liberation Armys (PLA) garrison in Hong Kong, state broadcaster CCTV reported late on Sunday citing the PLAs spokesman.

Peng, who holds the rank of major general, was previously the deputy chief of staff of Chinas paramilitary police force, the Peoples Armed Police. His appointment was signed into order by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, state media said.

According to another state-run media Global Times, published by the Chinese regimes mouthpiece Peoples Daily, Peng was previously also chief of staff of the Armed Police Force in Xinjiang, where victims, activists, non-profits, and several western governments including Washington says Beijing is committing genocide against Uyghurs and other minority ethnic groups. The regime denies abuses in Xinjiang.

The PLA maintains a garrison in Hong Kong, but its activities are largely low-profile. Under the global financial hubs mini-constitution, the Basic Law, defence and foreign affairs are managed by communist party leaders in Beijing.

CCTV also quoted Peng as saying that he would in his new appointment work with all members of the garrison to follow the command of the ruling communist party and its leader Xi, and resolutely defend national sovereignty and security interests.

Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 with the promise that the communist party would not interfere with local governance for decades, and that wide-ranging individual rights would be protected.

But pro-democracy activists and rights groups say freedoms have been eroded, in particular since Beijing imposed a the parts so-called national security law after months of pro-democracy protests in 2019.

Hong Kongs pro-Beijing authorities and Beijing deny curbing freedoms and say the law was necessary to restore order after prolonged anti-Chinese regime protests.
Former police officer Harry Miller speaks to the media outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Dec. 20, 2021. (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Being Offensive Is Part and Parcel of Freedom, Says Former Policeman Tackling Woke Authorities

Fresh from a successful legal challenge against a national policy that would have seen police forces record gender-critical views as non-crime hate incidents, former police officer Harry Miller is taking on the forces once again.

His organisation Fair Cops latest case involves a member of the public being threatened with a public order offence over an edited image that was shared on Facebook. The offence usually refers to the use of or threat of violence or harassment towards someone else in a public place.

I would say it surprises me but I am not surprised. The police are so poorly educated, theyve been wrongly educated, which is how we got the ridiculous situation, Miller told The Epoch Times.

Fair Cop was set up in response to what it calls Big Brother overreach of various police forces and other authorities in England.

Being Offensive Is an Offence

Miller highlighted that last year in Merseyside, northwest England, police pulled a 10-foot-wide ad through a car park that had the words being offensive is an offence on it. Police eventually apologised after widespread criticism.

If you look at the picture closely, there was an inspector by it. Youd expect ignorance from a brand new police officer, you wouldnt expect it from someone of rank, said Miller.

So being offensive is not an offence. In fact, being offensive is part and parcel of freedom, because any freedom that does not allow offence is none at all, he added.

Non-Crime Hate Incident

Millers own journey started in 2019 when he brought judicial review proceedings against the National College and the Humberside Police after he was contacted by the police at work for reposting a limerick that was critical of transgender people.

No crime had been committed, but Humberside Police still recorded Millers post as a non-crime hate incident. Miller then won a challenge to Humberside Polices actions at the High Court, but his challenge to the guidance itself was dismissed, with the judge finding that it serves legitimate purposes and is not disproportionate.

Millers landmark case in December 2021 brought by the Court of Appeal ruled that the recording of non-crime hate incidents is an unlawful interference with freedom of expression and contrary to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Judges added that knowledge that such matters are being recorded and stored in a police database is likely to have a serious chilling effect on public debate.

What will happen now I imagine will be that the College of Policing will have to amend its guidance and that will filter down through the forces, said Miller. Nevertheless, its not down to the College of Policing to make the police obey the law. It is the unquestionable law that being offensive is not an offence.

They are not only stepping outside their authority, but they are stepping outside of the boundary of the law because derogatory speech falls under the heading of critical or offensive speech. And our courtrooms show that being critical or derogatory is not criminal, he added.

He claimed that some forces dont mind derogatory speech as long as its facing the right direction.

PABEST Police forensic officers in Hurst Walk in Birmingham, UK, on Sept. 6, 2020. (Jacob King/PA)

Miller said that gender-critical women should even be wary of contacting the police in some cases. He said one woman was threatened online with a pipe bomb by a transgender activist, but when she contacted the police, they asked her what she had done to prompt the threat.

We got here because Stonewall [the LGBTQ rights charity] has managed to convince the police that any form of criticism of trans ideology is akin to racism. Thats how we got here, he said. Being black is an objective fact, being trans is not, it requires belief in trans ideology so they are not remotely the same.

He said that woke influences operate at different levels in different police forces.

For example, North Yorkshire Police hosted a 15,000 ($20,000) intersectionality conference where officers were taught about privilege.

Surrey Police

Miller said that he is in contact with Surrey Police over the Facebook image case.

The person in question is refusing a voluntary interview and there has been no arrest. Its clear that threats such as these are meant to intimidate, said Miller.

The charges were subsequently dropped by Surrey Police, with the force saying in an emailed statement: Officers visited an address in Bagshot on 3rd December 2021 in connection with an alleged public order offence. This related to the sharing of a photograph on Facebook. As part of enquiries, a man was invited to attend a voluntary interview but declined. The matter was later reviewed to assess the evidence and it was determined that further action would not be proportionate. The complainant has been informed of this decision.

Miller said: Had we not stepped in, they would have harassed that man. The vast majority of people would do precisely what the police asked them. The police are abusing their position as police officers and are taking advantage of the peoples ignorance in order to intimidate people with who they dont agree with.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about the recently passed $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act at the Port of Baltimore on November 10, 2021 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Biden Turning Export-Import Bank From Weapon Against Chinese Communist Party Into Beijing Ally

Commentary

While its bad enough that President Joe Biden has nominated in Reta Jo Lewis a longtime, committed appeaser of the oppressive, genocidal, and expansionist Peoples Republic of China to chair the Export-Import Bank of the United States, its probably worse that prominent U.S. business entities continue to gulp the Kool-Aid about the long widely-accepted but now thoroughly discredited notion that capitalism is wooing China into democratic reform and lawfulness.

Or, worse still, prominent businesses themselves actively taking part in Beijings bloody persecution of its own people.

Placing Lewis at the helm of EXIM is comparable to Chamberlain taking over from Churchill against the Nazis, instead of the other way around. President Donald Trumps EXIM chairman, Kimberly Reed, secured unprecedented broad bipartisan support within Congress for the export credit agency with a multi-pronged commitment to comprehensive reform of EXIM, including increased transparency, strengthened taxpayer protections, zero tolerance for bad actor corruption, and preventing the displacement of private investment for exports; plus, most importantly, the launching of a Program on China and Transformational Exports, a project thats unlike anything EXIM had done since its establishment during the New Deal.

EXIMs China Program, mandated by Congress, was intended to make EXIMs private loan guarantees and other products for U.S. exporters fully competitive with rates, terms, and other conditions established by the Peoples Republic of China for its export business interests, utilizing 20 percent of EXIMs total financing authoritysome $27 billion out of $135 billionand to advance competition with China in innovation, employment, and technological standards focused on 10 industries ranging from 5G to fintech to renewable energy to biotechnology.

Bush Treasury Department veteran Reed soon poached a heavyweight from the Pentagon to run EXIMs China Program, the chief of staff of the undersecretary of defense for policy, who had also been juggling the handling of international security affairs at the Pentagon and had held senior positions at defense contractors Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

At variance to someone as serious in recognizing the China threat as Reed, Lewis has spent many years accommodating Beijings economic warfare against the United States. She is a strategic adviser to the United States Heartland China Association, an organization with links to communist Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs and headed by former Missouri Democratic Gov. Bob Holden, whose moral equivalency mantra regarding America and China is that there are scoundrels, so to speak, in China; sadly, theres also scoundrels in our own culture.

Holden has also done the bidding of the many Confucius Institutes, a prime tool of infiltration in U.S. educational institutions that a bipartisan Senate committee in 2019 found to be completely controlled by the Chinese Communist Party in all its U.S. activities. In Holdens remarkably naive perspective, What weve got to do is find the good people in both cultures, build those relationships, and then the rest will take care of itself, because the politics will react to what the people want done long term.

But the long term has arrived. Next month will mark a half-century since the Nixon administrations Shanghai Communique with Beijing, in which the Communist Party promised that China will never be a superpower and it opposes hegemony and power politics of any kind, that the people of all countries have the right to choose their social systems according to their own wishes, and that Washington and Beijing will both facilitate the progressive development of trade between their two countries.

In the 50 years since, communist China has gone far in implementing a military and economic strategy with the objective of superpower status, seeking by 2050 to become a prosperous, modern, and strong socialist country with a world-class military, has squashed Hong Kongs system of economic and civil liberties, and has used trade to devastate the U.S. manufacturing sector.

Peter Navarro, National Trade Council director in the Trump White House, contended that mainland China has well over 50 percent market share in most of the traditional manufacturing industries; they have become the factory floor of the world through executing more than 50 policies and practices with the goal of advancing their own economic dominance, which has, in itself, military implications, including the forced use of Chinese brands and stealing or forcing the transfer of technology and intellectual property.

As Lewiss USHCA bio boasts, she has traveled extensively throughout China, meeting with Party secretaries, mayors, governors, and city secretaries of trade and investment and education, in more than 12 provincial localities. In the Obama administration, Lewis was the principal negotiator between the United States and China in establishing the first U.S. Governors Forums with China.

That initiative, in particular, demonstrates the PRCs proficiency in jumping over Washington heads and infiltrating U.S. economic lifewith little disguise. Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went so far as to appear before the National Governors Association in 2019 and devoted his entire speech to Chinas insidious efforts to persuade state chief executives and regional business leaders that Beijings interests were also theirs.

Pompeo told the governors that a Chinese government-backed think tank in Beijing produced a report that assessed all 50 of Americas governors on their attitudes towards China. They labeled each of you friendly, hardline, or ambiguous.  and, in fact, whether you are viewed by the CCP as friendly or hardline, know that its working you. Know that its working the team around you.

How far can state governments be bamboozled by the Chinese Communist Party? Far beyond, say, helping a state firm use a factory in mainland China, Pompeo pointed out that, for instance, Californias pension fund, the largest public pension fund in the country, is invested in companies that supply the Peoples Liberation Army that puts our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines at risk.

Pompeos speech has conveniently vanished from the State Departments website. Fortunately, the public can still read it here or watch it on YouTube.

As The American Interests Ellen Bork has pointed out, the PRC works overtime to project its influence into American societyat universities and think tanks, newspapers, radio and television, business, as well as national, state, and local governments. Bork cited a U.S. government official who warned that The PRC is targeting states, trying to integrate their economies as closely as possible with Chinas to make them dependent on the Chinese economy.

A year ago, Lewis proposed that the State Department reinstate the U.S.-China Governors Forum to Promote Sub-National Cooperation, for which U.S. participation was discontinued in 2020  strengthening bilateral trade, investment, and technology exchanges by locales on both sides.

Nothing could be more in line with Beijings economic strategy against the United States.

And its nothing new for Lewis. Eleven years ago, when she was the State Departments special representative for global intergovernmental affairs, Lewis said of the U.S.-China Governors Forum this is the start of the relationship. She pointed to over 36 state-to-provincial relationships that have been going on for years. And we want to continue to encourage that  we are operating as a whole-of-government approach in this effort.

Later, at the U.S.-China Governors Forum in July of 2011, Lewis outlined the goal to draw our states, territories, and provinces closer together and help us build a brighter world for future generations.

This is par for the course for the Biden administration. In September, Biden Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told the Wall Street Journal, I actually think robust commercial engagement will help to mitigate any potential tensions between the United States and Communist China, remarking that part of her job is to encourage American businesses to engage with mainland Chinaas if the cheap labor there wasnt incentive enough.

Unfortunately, much of corporate America either cannot see the threat or only see dollar signs.

World peace through world trade, declares Apple CEO Tim Cook, who argues that the company has a responsibility to do business in as many places in the world as it can, and, of course, make countless billions doing so. In May 2021, The Information revealed that seven companies supplying device components, coatings and assembly services to Apple  are linked to alleged forced labor involving Uyghurs and other oppressed minorities in China. At least five of those companies received thousands of Uyghur and other minority workers at specific factory sites or subsidiaries that did work for Apple.

Why settle for cheap labor when you can get slave labor?

The notion that Lewis, who for so long has been blind to the destructive influence of the PRC upon the U.S. economy, and who fails to see Beijings underlying objectives of expansionism in sync with its economic warfare, can now pivot and oversee an agency whose explicit objective is to counter the PRC threat on a global economic playing field tilted against the United States, with at least 116 rival export credit agencies of other nations also opposing EXIM, is ludicrous.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Canadas Dicey Plan to Build a Munitions Factory in Ukraine

Commentary

Apparently Canada has a solution to the Ukraine crisis after all. Unfortunately it involves being somewhere else when the trigger, to torture a phrase from Orwell, isnt pulled. Which wont save our ally or our credibility.

Back in 1994, as it fled the squalid wreckage of the Soviet Union, various nations promised that if Ukraine gave up the nuclear weapons it inherited, they would ensure that it was never devoured by Russian revanchists. With Russia looking mostly harmless, it seemed like resolve on the cheap. But then along came Vladimir Putin with his characteristically parochial belief that the collapse of the USSR was the greatest geopolitical disaster in history. So now what?

To retort that the collapse of the Soviet Union wasnt even bad, let alone worse than the fall of Rome, Nazism, or communism, seems insufficient. Like NATOs options now that Putin is moving to save history from itself.

Admittedly Russia holds a strong hand. In addition to flat-out invasion with its massive military, the Kremlin can undermine Ukraine by arming local pro-Russian forces and sending in special forces hard to distinguish from same because there are many Russians in Ukraine for all kinds of reasons, from marrying a local to Stalin sending their ancestors to administer the Holodomor. History is messy and so is geopolitics, including guerrilla wars. But you must play the cards you have, not the ones you wish you had.

Or should have. Many NATO governments, including Canadas, have long scorned to draw military cards of real value. Believing our superior enlightenment rendered force obsolete, we are now in no position to fight anybody over anything. And the make-believe that can buy time in domestic politics only buys trouble abroad.

Decades of American nagging allies about defence spending have extracted promises impressive only in their insincerity. To my astonishment, France now spends 2.01 percent of its GDP on the military. But the only others over 2 percent not currently breathing fetid bear breath are the United States (duh), Britain (pip pip, though just 2.29) and Greece (3.82, ahead of the Americans 3.52). Canada at 1.39 percent lags military giants Italy, Turkey, and Denmark, though we lead Spain (1.02) and Luxembourg (0.57).

Yeah yeah, you say. So wheres this famous Canadian solution? Well, it was apparently hatched in a meeting room, nurtured on stale coffee and desperation, and led blinking into the light of day as a PR strategy so puny and misshapen you wonder why nobody said anything. Its to help finance a small-arms munition factory in Ukraine.

Their old one, alas, was in a region glommed by Russian-backed separatists. And since its easier to fight wars, from skirmishes to full-blast battles, if you have bullets, actually building the factory would be some use, though not as much as fielding five divisions.

Dont laugh. We did it in World War II, with just 11 million people. Now do laugh, because were about as ready to deploy that factory as 58 infantry regiments. The Ukrainians have been lobbying for it since 2017, apparently not realizing Canadian governments think its reasonable for Access to Information requests to take 80 years and shiny new COVID vaccine plants to lack even a timetable for producing medicine two years into a pandemic. Although now, as the crisis intensifies, we have leaped into committee.

The Jan. 10 National Post says this initiative is now being planned and involves a number of Ontario companies and the [government] Canadian Commercial Corporation in Ottawa. CCCS support to Ukraine is currently at the exploratory stage, confirmed Mouktar Abdillahi, a spokesperson for the corporation. Mind you admitted might be a better word than confirmed, especially as nobody seems sure whether the companies in question are still in business.

The Post adds, In December 2017, the House of Commons defence committee recommended the Canadian government provide weapons to Ukraine, provided it demonstrated it was working to eliminate corruption at all levels of government. Which is a classic case of politicians playing a card they havent got.

Its not that the problem isnt real. On the contrary, its so real that waiting until corrupt Ukrainian politicians uproot endemic corruption isnt a plan. Not even a cynical one.

You might think theyre deliberately stalling with Yes Ministers four stages of a crisis where first you say nothing is going to happen. Then you admit it is but we should do nothing about it. Then you go maybe we should do something about it, but theres nothing we can do, and finally maybe there was something, but its too late now. But at a certain point fatuity isnt a strategy, its a way of life.

So our leaders combine fierce rhetoric about diplomatic pressure with a scheme that, even if somehow carried out, wouldnt arm Ukraine sufficiently to fight off an attack, let alone stand with them in doing so. A very Canadian solution.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Members of the Chicago Teachers Union and supporters stage a car caravan protest outside City Hall in the Loop in Chicago, Ill., on Jan. 5, 2022. (Ashlee Rezin /Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

Chicago Cancels Classes for 4th Day as City, Teachers Union Fail to Reach New Deal

Chicago officials canceled classes citywide on Jan. 10 as they failed to reach a new agreement with the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).

Union members voted last week to abruptly shift to virtual teaching, a move rejected by Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. City officials instead canceled classes and have been seeking to convince teachers to get back in the classroom.

Thus far, they havent been successful, leading to the fourth day of canceled classes.

Although we have been negotiating hard throughout the day, there has not been sufficient progress for us to predict a return to class tomorrow, Pedro Martinez, CPS chief executive, told parents in a letter on Jan. 9. We appreciate your patience and will continue providing you with updates as soon as they become available.

Martinez and Lightfoot, a Democrat, say CTUs actions amount to an illegal work stoppage because the union cant, under state law and the current collective bargaining agreement, unilaterally decide to not teach in person.

What the Chicago Teachers Union did was an illegal walk-out. They abandoned their posts and they abandoned kids and their families, Lightfoot said on NBCs Meet the Press.

The union stated that the move was necessary because of the spike in COVID-19 cases and because there allegedly arent sufficient safety measures in place at schools.

The Chicago Teachers Union has been at the bargaining table for the past six monthsbefore the discovery and spread of the Omicron variantwith CPS and Mayor Lightfoot asking for collaboration and well-thought-out mitigation strategies to keep students, families and educators safe. Regrettably, these requests have fallen upon deaf ears, resulting in attacks on teachers and a five-day lockout that has disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of students and families, CTU said in a Jan. 10 statement.

The Union wants to reassure the parents and guardians of Chicago that we will remain at the bargaining table until we reach an agreement that will return us all to in-person learning safely and equitably.

Over the weekend, CTU floated the idea of holding classes virtually through mid-January, a proposal that was quickly rejected by Lightfoot.

The union is facing an unfair labor practices complaint from the city and a lawsuit from a group of parents, who also allege that the union is conducting an illegal strike.

Parents are outraged. And they are making their outrage known to the teachers union, Lightfoot said.

Union members planned to go to various neighborhoods on Jan. 10 to sign up students for COVID-19 testing before launching car caravans that would converge on City Hall as part of their effort to pressure the city into acquiescing to their demands.
Workers in protective suits stand at an entrance to a university's residential area under lockdown, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, China, on Dec. 20, 2021. (China Daily via Reuters)

Chinese Migrant Workers Stuck in Xian Struggle to Get Through Total Lockdown

Its been more than two weeks since Xian city in Chinas Shaanxi Province was put under complete lockdown on Dec. 23, 2021. The communist authorities draconian pandemic control measures have left many residents starving, and even people with other medical needs are unable to seek treatment in time. Migrant workers stuck in Xian are especially vulnerable and a number have revealed their plight to The Epoch Times.

Some migrant workers in the province have been stuck in temporary housing on construction sites since the lockdown measures began. They are not allowed to return to their homes even if theyve had negative nucleic acid test results on multiple occasions. Now many of them have told The Epoch Times that they are running out of money and if they fall ill they wont be able to afford to go to a hospital.

Huang Asi (a pseudonym), a migrant worker isolated in the western district of Nanyaotou Community, said that after the outbreak, he and his coworkers were not allowed to leave their construction site. Huang said there was no food at the construction site, and the only food they got was from the local government which on one occasion sent a small amount of vegetables.

Huang and other workers couldnt get through a telephone hotline to seek help and so, he and others, had to leave their site at night to buy instant noodles which they then ate for several days.

The supermarkets and groceries in the community are all forced to close. Some are selling food secretly, but the prices are very expensive, Huang said.

Although our rent is paid by the boss, the living expenses have to be paid by ourselves. Now we eat one meal a day, sometimes two meals a day, just to save money, he said, adding that the government doesnt provide aid.

We migrant workers dont earn much money in a year, and the money we earn is not enough for living expenses, and we are running out of money, he said.

How can we go back home for Chinese New Year? Migrant workers here have no money to go home, he said referring to the festival which falls this year on Feb. 1.

We have done nucleic acid tests more than ten times, all of which are negative but are still stuck here, he said. The government should let people who have not been infected go back home as soon as possible. It also reduces the burden on local areas.

Lin Qing (a pseudonym), a coworker of Huangs, told The Epoch Times that there are a lot of migrant workers in Xian, about three to four million people. If they are stuck here for longer, people who are healthy will also be infected by the coronavirus, Lin said.

When we sneak out to wait in line to buy food, people are all in groups. Itd be better to let us go home and quarantine at home, he said.

Lin was also worried that if they stayed at the construction site for another two months, they would run out of money and not be able to afford the travel expenses to go back home. Now, Lin said he only has a few hundred yuan (less than $100) left.

A security guard checks information of a resident at the entrance of a residential area that is under restrictions following a recent coronavirus outbreak in Xian, in Chinas northern Shaanxi Province, on Dec. 23, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Wang Shicai (a pseudonym) went to work in Xian from Luoyang, Henan Province in mid-November. He told The Epoch Times that he originally planned to do home remodeling work for people in the urban village of Baqiao District to earn some money to go home for the Chinese New Year but he has been stuck due to the lockdown.

All villages and towns have been sealed off, and people are not allowed to go out, including many migrant workers who live in the village, Wang said. They have done nucleic acid tests 12 times, and the results were all negative, but they are still not allowed to leave, he said adding that the village committee of his hometown also told them they are not allowed to return, in case they bring the virus back.

Wang said that there were also many migrant workers who were locked up in their construction sites. Their situations are even worse and they have nothing to eat. I hope the outside world will pay more attention to them, he said.

Xia Yu (a pseudonym), a migrant worker at the Silk Road Happy World Project in Qindu District of Xianyang City in Shaanxi Province, told The Epoch Times that Xianyang now is also under strict control.

After Xian locked down on Dec. 23 last year, Xianyang was also shut down. More than 1,000 people at Xias construction site were locked in the dormitory of the prefabricated building complex and could not get out.

Construction site and dormitory of Silk Road Happy World Project in Qindu District of Xianyang City in Shaanxi Province, China. January 2022. (Image supplied)

Xia said that they have done more than a dozen nucleic acid tests so far, and there are no confirmed cases, but they are still not allowed to work or leave. They only temporarily leave their dorm room to get meals on the site, he said.

Yesterday a person fainted while waiting in line to get his meal, and no one sent him to the hospital. Other workers carried him back to the dormitory and let him lie down, Xia said.

I told the boss that we have obtained more than a dozen nucleic acid test certificates. Asked him: Can he talk to the authorities to allow us to return to our home? But he said no and told me to only call for help if theres an emergency, and he didnt even tell me the phone number for help, he said.

In a few days, we wont have any money left to buy food. In the end, when there is really no way out, the only option is to escape. If you cannot escape, you will be dead. Now the city management personnel are ferocious.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Xianyang Center for Disease Control and Prevention to confirm this matter but was unable to get through.

Gao Miao, Gu Xiaohua, and Hong Ning contributed to the report.
South Africa: Motshekga to brief on schools reopening

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga will on Tuesday hold a media briefing on the opening of schools for the 2022 academic year.

Schools are set to reopen from Wednesday, 12 January.

The briefing is scheduled to take place from 10:00 at the Ronnie Mamoepa Press Room, Tshedimosetso House, in Pretoria.

Members of the media may view the briefing via live stream on the South African Government and Department of Basic Education social media channels.

Government is ready to receive millions of learners for the 2022 academic year, as learners across the country will report for the start of the new school year between 12 and 17 January.

Pupils in inland provinces are expected to return to school on Wednesday, while schools in coastal areas will only resume a week later.

The Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) said on Monday that government is committed to every learner receiving the best possible education.

We call on families to assist learners by providing support systems. It is essential that we encourage learners and instil in them the importance of education, GCIS said.

Government has called on everyone to play their part to ensure the safety of learners and educators in schools.

COVID-19 is still with us. Vaccination remains our best defence and we urge all learners aged 12 and older to vaccinate as soon as possible. Wearing of masks remains mandatory and all learners, teachers and other school staff must continue to do so. Together, we can make our schools safer for all, GCIS said.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-01-10. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
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A police officer speaks to people sitting outside a pub in Soho in London on Sept. 24, 2020. (Peter Summers/Getty Images)

COVID-19 Rules Distracted UK Police From Tackling Crimes: Study

The need to enforce COVID-19 restrictions has distracted British police from tackling serious offences even though recorded crime fell during the pandemic, a new study has found.

Even though police in England and Wales recorded fewer crimes during the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, they did not appear to get extra time to investigate more serious offences, according to a joint report (pdf) by the Police Foundation, the UKs policing think tank, and the Crest Advisory consultancy.

They found that the fall in crime was largely offset by the rise in non-crime demand, much of which was linked to the enforcement of COVID-19 rules.

According to the report, by the end of March 2020, most police forces in England and Wales were experiencing dramatic reductions in recorded crime.

The restrictions on movement and gathering, the closing of non-essential shops, and the complete suspension of the night-time economy radically changed the opportunity structures for committing and reporting most offences, said the report.

At the time, policing leaders saw this as a unique opportunity to free up police resources and to conduct proactive investigations into more serious offences such as drug-related gang crime.

But as the study found, the optimistic view of a COVID-19 dividend was never really borne out, as the police forces came under increased pressures of enforcing the COVID-19 legislation and navigating the new public health role for policing.

Another major factor that prevented British police from capturing the COVID-19 dividend, according to the authors, was the pattern of anti-social behaviour incidents.

While anti-social behaviour typically makes up 89 percent of all incident demand during normal times, it rose to a peak of 17 percent during the pandemic, the study found.

Rick Muir, director of the Police Foundation, said the study showed police had responded well to the operational challenges of the pandemic.

Despite coming under considerable pressure, the consent-based approach, the cornerstone of British policing, held firm, he said.

But Muir said the grey area between the law and government guidance caused difficulties. It is inevitable that law and guidance will have to change during a pandemic. Nevertheless, the frequency of changes made it difficult for the police to enforce the law.

The report said that police forces must urgently focus on boosting the skills and expertise of the workforce to deal with new types of crime, as the pandemic has accelerated pre-existing trends of crime moving online and becoming more complex.

The government has been trying to increase capacity across the 43 forces in England and Wales by recruiting new officers through the uplift programme.

But the report concluded that there is little evidence that the 20,000 officer uplift is geared up to respond to that challenge.
Cyprus Scientists Discover Combined Delta and Omicron COVID-19 Variant Dubbed Deltacron

A team of scientists in Cyprus has identified a strain of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus that reportedly combines many of the characteristics of the Delta and Omicron coronavirus variants, according to a professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus.

Leondios Kostrikis, whos also head of the Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology at the university, told Cyprus TV network Sigma TV on Jan. 7 that the discovery was named Deltacron because of the identification of Omicron-like genetic signatures within Delta genomes.

There are currently Omicron and Delta co-infections, and we found this strain that is a combination of these two, Kostrikis said in the interview, Bloomberg reported.

Kostrikis and his team have identified 25 such cases, according to the report. Statistical analysis shows that individuals who were previously hospitalized with COVID-19 are more likely to be reinfected with the new variant than those who havent. Kostrikis said it wasnt yet known exactly how infectious or pathological the newly discovered combined strain is.

The researchers sent their findings to GISAID, an international database that tracks viruses, on Jan. 7, according to Bloomberg.

We will see in the future if this strain is more pathological or more contagious or if it will prevail against the two dominant strains, Delta, and Omicron, Kostrikis said. The professor said he personally believes that the highly-transmissible Omicron variant will also overtake Deltacron.

However, World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 expert Dr. Krutika Kuppalli said she believes that the new variant is not real and is likely due to sequencing artifact [lab contamination of Omicron sequence fragments in a Delta specimen].

Lets not merge of names of infectious diseases and leave it to celebrity couples, Kuppalli wrote on Twitter.

Kostrikis didnt respond to a request for comment by press time.

In December 2021, researchers at Mediterranee Infection University Hospital Institute discovered another variant of COVID-19 with a large number of mutations.

In a study published Dec. 29, 2021, researchers wrote that the variant, known as B.1.640.2 or colloquially as IHU, was found in 12 people living in the same area of southeastern France in 2021 who tested positive for COVID-19.

The first identified case in the group was a vaccinated male adult who had returned from travel to Cameroon three days before in mid-November and had begun to develop mild respiratory symptoms the day before diagnosis. Genome sequencing was carried out and revealed an atypical combination of mutations.

An analysis of the variant revealed that it has 46 mutations along with 37 deletions to its genome.

However, scientists are urging people not to panic, with Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, noting that there had been no new sequences of B.1.640.2 reported before Christmas.

This virus has had a decent chance to cause trouble but never really materialized (as far as we can tell at least ), Peacock wrote on Twitter.

As of the week that ended on Jan. 1, the Omicron variant accounted for 95.4 percent of COVID-19 cases in the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yet researchers at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital believe that the Omicron variant outbreak thats currently spreading across the globe may in fact signal the end of the acute pandemic phase of COVID-19, with the endemic phase following.

The wave increased at a faster rate than previous waves, completely displacing the Delta variant within weeks and began its decline in both cases and hospital admissions in the fifth week following its commencement, researchers wrote in their study, which was published in December 2021.

They noted that there are clear signs that case and admission rates in South Africa may decline further over the next few weeks.

If this pattern continues and is repeated globally, we are likely to see a complete decoupling of case and death rates suggesting that Omicron may be a harbinger of the end of the epidemic phase of the COVID pandemic ushering in its endemic phase, the researchers wrote.
Musician Harrison Ponce and a guest at the Miami performance of Shen Yun on the evening of Jan. 8, 2022. (Teng Dongyu/The Epoch Times)

MIAMI, FloridaHarrison Ponce is a composer, pianist, and cellist. He attended the Jan. 8 evening performance of Shen Yun at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. The New York-based classical Chinese performance company introduced him to a deeper look at Chinese music and dance.

For instance, the erhu, a two-stringed instrument played with a bow. Shen Yun features an erhu solo as one of its pieces.

There is so much expression you can make through that with just two strings, he marveled. So it was really nice to see that. I think it was nice to see the audience connect with [the erhu soloist], when they maybe havent seen an instrument like that.

Shen Yuns signature sound is composed of quintessential Chinese instruments like the erhu, pipa, and suona, working in conjunction with a classical Western orchestra. The live orchestra forms the backdrop for the dance performances, which take audiences to faraway locales and historical periods.

I also do ballet dancing so it was nice to see how similar and not [classical Chinese dance] is, Ponce said. Ive also taken some Chinese dance lessons so I was familiar with a lot of the feet patterns and the hand gestures.

Classical Chinese dance is has a rich repertoire of difficult flips, turns, and jumps, and has a history of thousands of years. Many other Chinese traditions, such as martial arts and acrobatics, borrow moves from Chinese dance.

Though much of this legacy has been lost throughout the years, Shen Yuns mission is to revive italong with the rich spiritual and cultural heritage that goes with it. As such, some of the dance pieces highlight the true story of cultural and religious persecution happening in China today.

Becky Miller and David Lauderback at the Shen Yun performance in Miami on Jan. 8, 2022. (NTD)

David Lauderback and Becky Miller, who work in real estate development, attended Shen Yun for the first time and had many reflections about what they saw.

Im very impressed, said Mr. Lauderback. I think we are living through it in the United States right now and I hope that this play will bring everyones attention to freedom, and to religious freedom in particular.

Ms. Miller said she saw the progression of history in Shen Yuns presentation, from ancient times to today.

There were parts I wanted to cry; it was just beautiful.  Becky Miller

There were parts I wanted to cry; it was just beautiful, she said. I could see how it was beforehand  but somehow in the time of communism, everything changedPeople were not in tune with other people.

Ultimately, Shen Yun is about hope. Its closing act is one of redemption and salvation. Ms. Millers takeaway:

I think if we dont get along somehow we are going to destroy ourselves really, so with the Creator coming down he was trying to send a message to the people: everybody had to change, and it starts with you.

Reporting by Teng Dongyu and NTD.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yuns inception in 2006.
Rachel first met Sonny under the sparkling turquoise waters of French Polynesia. To say she met Sonny, you might think him to be a person, but Sonny is not a person at all, but a tiny, bright-yellow racoon butterfly fish, who became her friend over the last two years.

The research diver from Ventura, California, whos sailed and dived all around the world, shared how their unusual and enlightening underwater friendship formed and blossomed.

We had just arrived in Moorea and it was one of our first dives there and immediately I saw this little fish just come straight up to me, and I thought that was weird, Rachel told The Epoch Times. Other parts of the island where theyre diving that we visit, sometimes they feed fish and the fish are very friendly; they come up looking for food. But on this dive site, they dont feed the fish.

It was just unusual to have a wild animal approach you like this. And he followed us for almost 45 minutes. It was a unique experience.

This unusual encounter with a butterfly fish might have been just a one-off accident of nature, but on her next dive outside the reef, where she first met Sonny, he appeared again.

(Courtesy of Rachel Moore)

It was about a couple weeks later, three or four weeks later, we went back and sure enough the same little fish comes up. And at first, I didnt believe it was the same one, and my husband was like, Theres no way its the same fish, she recalled. I compared his markings to the video from the first dive, and sure enough, it was him.

Then after that, we just kept going back to visit him and hes always there after two years. So even when were gone for six months, well come back and hes just as eager to see us.

Rachel examined the markings on Sonnys head taken in several videos, and Sonny had a unique yellow spot on his forehead and lines that were straight on other racoon butterfly fishs temples but werent on Sonnys.

I think originally he liked me and because I had very bright orange fins and a yellow tank. But since then, over the last two years, Ive switched out equipment and now I have white fins and a silver tank, and he seems to recognize me just fine, she said. I think its probably because Im the only one that talks to him and waves at him. I always wave. So, I think as soon as he sees the wave I do, he just comes swimming super fast to say hello.

He goes from my fins straight up to my chest, and will look me in the eye. And usually, hell just hang out right in my lap. Ill kind of curl up into a little ball and he just will sit right next to my chest.

That whole dive, I just couldnt believe what was happening, she added. And I have close to 2,000 dives all over the world, and Ive never experienced anything like it. Its a gift every time I see him. Its a special memory, and Im so thankful for it; because Ive never fed him. He just chooses to come and interact because he seems to enjoy it as much as I do.

If I hadnt experienced it, I would think I was crazy. But after two years, I still cant believe it. I love getting to dive with him.

And just like any other friendship, Rachel and Sonnys developed over time. In fact, as unbelievable as it sounds, Sonny even took Rachel and her husband on a tour of his underwater home.

After a while, I started noticing his behaviors, I would see what was normal and what wasnt, and every once in a while, he would do this weird behavior, she said. He turned on his side kind of and he went really fast through the water column, straight down to the reef. I followed him down and then he moved his body away from this hole, and right inside of it was this little baby eel. And hes taken us to show us turtles and all kinds of other little critters on the reef.

Rachel, who likes to collect shells from the ocean floor, had once shown Sonny one of her shells, and to her surprise, one day he brought her right to what she was looking for.

At the end of my dives ,I usually like looking for seashellsdead ones that have washed up on the bottom. And so usually when I find a seashell, if hes around, Ill hold it in my hand and show it to him. And after several months of doing this, one day, he was doing this weird dancing thing down on the reef, and I followed him down there and sure enough, theres a seashell like right next to my hand that I didnt see. I dont know if Im crazy or if hes actually learning my behaviors or trying to show me things on the reef. But I spent a lot of time with other raccoon butterfly fish and they dont seem to do this. So, I dont know if hes just special or Im crazy.

(Courtesy of Rachel Moore)

(Courtesy of Rachel Moore)

That a little fish, with a tiny brain, could form a friendship and change someones life as much as Sonny has Rachels is remarkable. Its even changed her perspective on life.

Hes changed my beliefs on so many things. Part of that feels like hes a little soulmate. Its really hard to describe, because Ive taken other people out to meet him. It seems like we have a really special connection, she said. I dont know if it was predestined or something that we just created. And I dont know how many people would go out over two years to hang out with a fish, but maybe because I am willing to go and spend the time with him. Hes willing to spend the time with me.

(Courtesy of Rachel Moore)

Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Epoch Inspired newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter
People queue for swab test for COVID-19 in Beijing on Nov.1, 2021. (Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images)

Experts Reveal How China Uses Grid Management System to Surveil Populace

News Analysis

Since the pandemic, Chinese media have often attributed the Chinese regimes questionable pandemic containment success to grid management, which was said to be an advantage of the socialist Chinese society.

By March 2020, around 4.5 million grid staff served as Chinas first line of defense in the pandemic, like in a wartime state, state-run media reported; they are the grassroots intelligence, interpreters, and gatekeepers of national policy.

Take Haiyan County of the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang as an example.

The local government mobilized 10,000 grid staff to guard communities with door-to-door visits, taking temperatures, and ensuring residents wear masks and are up-to-date with current policy, in an effort to serve a population of 160,000 of a local township, Wuyuan. These grid staff often introduce themselves as the warriors of the nations line of defense.

China adopted digital grid management in urban housing and development in 2005 as part of its smart cities system. With the grid, the central governance penetrates the grassroots via residents cellphones, TVs, and computers.

Grid staff are designated work within a set geographical range and function as the peripheral nerve of governance, state-run media reported. They help to ensure the effectiveness of the governance, serve the people, and build a society of Chinese socialist characteristics.

Tang Ao, a China affair analyst, told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times that grid staff are entitled to the job category of service and can deprive people of their basic rights to conduct personal daily activities.

They, in fact, monitor and control the public; following the regimes strict zero-COVID policy, and restrict peoples freedom to move about in the name of containing the pandemic, Tang said.

Tang explained that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has extended its surveillance of the masses from community-level in the 60s to individual homes with the implementation of the grid.

He said, Grid management, in the name of governance by the masses, actually functions to spy on people through so-called public service, as the masses become part of the CCP spy mechanism.

Take Shandong, an eastern coastal province, as an example. According to Issue 4 of its 2021 party branch magazine (pdf), the party branch is secured on the grid. Shandong Province was divided into 168,000 grid cells, with 257,000 grid staff registered to oversee the province, and at least 97,000 party grid branches established throughout.

The magazine listed a pilot in a local district, Fushan, where one grid staff member was assigned for every 50 households, and up to three grid assistants for each village; it formed a five-in-one network of local party branchesfrom town to district and village level; along with grid staff and grid assistants. Together, the grid staff eliminated governance loopholes in the countryside.

It also stressed the successful combination of big data, AI, and the network to ensure 100 percent surveillance coverage, and stability maintenance.

In recent years, Chinas surveillance cameras have been extended to the countryside through the Sharp Eyes project, with cameras installed on every street corner; resulting in the whole of China coming under the CCPs one big monitoring net, while achieving the combined benefits of intelligence and stability maintenance.

Schoolchildren walking below surveillance cameras in Akto, south of Kashgar, in Chinas western Xinjiang region on June 4, 2019. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

Stability Maintenance

The CCP is using the term stability maintenance to maintain power and control over any unstable factor of the society, some experts said.

Wu Zuolai, a Chinese scholar and writer, told The Epoch Times that people are the CCPs main enemy.

In March 1998, the CCP established a stability maintenance work leading group when Jiang Zemin was the leader of the regime.

In September 2001, the CCP publicized an opinion to strengthen stability maintenance, which demanded concrete surveillance into the village, household, and individual.

The opinion listed several unstable factors, such as hostile forces,  separatists,  engaging in activities involving in ethnic, religious, and human rights  in an attempt to undermine social stability.

The opinion also listed Falun Gong as one of its so-called unstable factors.

Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that was introduced to the public in 1992, after which it spread widely throughout Chinese society. It was banned in 1999 when the CCP regime saw it as a threat to their control over the masses.

The CCPs grid management was first piloted in Dongcheng District, Beijing, in 2004.

In 2013, China initiated a nationwide grid management program. Grid management centers can been seen throughout the country.

Take a local district in Hunan Province, south-central China, as an example. Wuling District has a population of 420,000. In 2014, the local government divided the district into 577 grid cells with an average of 350-500 households per cell, and hired 550 grid staff. The local official claimed the system was a well-constructed example of a one grid staff-one Party branch work model.

In 2018, Luohe City in central Chinas Henan Province, adopted a four staff per grid cell model: one community service assistant, one institution service staff, one police officer, and one supervising cadre. The official insisted on tying party, government, and service in one grid through big data networks and applications. The entire 19 urban communities in the region were divided into 78 grid cells.

To date, Chinese media have reported some regions employing up to 10 staff per grid cell for better community service.

Chaoyang Masses

The CCP has touted the contributions of ordinary citizens to neighborhood surveillance efforts and publicized them using different names.

In Beijing, for example, the Chaoyang masses are an example of a grid management group.

Chaoyang is a core district in Beijing; the Chaoyang masses, the most famous neighborhood watch group in China, worked hard to report on the misconducts of stars and celebrities but never on CCP officials.

A Chinese report from November 2021 indicated that the Chaoyang masses had evolved into a large organization with 140,000 registered members, covering an area of 183 square miles in Chaoyang District, which is equivalent to 765 volunteers or grid staff per square mile.

The report read, on the streets of Chaoyang District, there are gatekeepers, security guards, retired elderly, volunteers, delivery guys, and white-collar workers; they are the Chaoyang masses.

In an earlier interview with the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times, Wu Shaoping, a Chinese human rights lawyer, described the Chaoyang masses as an organization with a terrorist nature.

In a September 2019 issue of the Chinese human rights watch magazine, Bitter Winter, it was stated that grid staff are in fact tasked with monitoring unstable factors, such as dissidents, religious believers, and petitioners in the grid area; and reporting on them in a timely manner with mobile phones.

The magazine revealed that grid staff are punished if they fail to report within 2 hours of any petitions, protests, or mass incidents; the punishment will be doubled if they fail to control the unstable factors such as Falun Gong adherents. Therell be an award when one Falun Gong adherent or a lead to petitioners whereabouts is reported; the grid staff will be rewarded with 1,000 yuan ($156.87) for each person detained.

In August 2021, the Bureau of Ethnic and Religious Affairs of Taiyuan, a city in north China, announced a campaign of awarding so-called reporting on illegal religious activities, with a price tag of 200 yuan ($31.38) up to the maximum of 2,000 yuan ($313.76).

Haizhong Ning Follow Haizhong Ning was a state employee and worked for a real estate company in China, before moving abroad and working as a reporter with a focus on Chinese affairs and politics for more than seven years.
The U.S Food and Drug Administration approved prescription eye drops, called Vuity, to treat presbyopia, commonly known as age-related farsightedness. People with presbyopia have trouble focusing on objects close up, and it commonly affects people beginning in their early- to mid-40s, progressively worsening until about age 65.

If you have presbyopia, you may find that you need to hold books farther and farther away in order to see them clearly. The solution, until now, is typically reading glasses, which those affected may keep with them throughout the day  in the kitchen, the car, the office and the bedroom  just to go about their daily activities.

Vuity may change that, offering presbyopia patients an option to see nearby objects clearly without a need for glasses, but it does come with some risks that glasses do not.

Prescription Eye Drops Could Replace Reading Glasses

Vuity is the first FDA-approved eye drop to treat presbyopia in adults. Its active ingredient is pilocarpine HCl ophthalmic solution 1.25%, a muscarinic receptor agonist. The drug itself is not new; its commonly used by eyecare practitioners to lower intraocular pressure, constrict pupils following dilation and treat dry eye.

For presbyopia, Vuity works by reducing your pupil size. By contracting certain muscles in your eyes, it helps you to focus on nearby objects. Reducing the pupil size expands the depth of field or the depth of focus, and that allows you to focus at different ranges naturally, Dr. George Waring, the principal investigator for one of Vuitys clinical trials, told CBS News.

Two phase 3 clinical trials, involving 750 people, compared Vuity to a placebo drop. Although they havent been published in a peer-reviewed journal, the trials reportedly found that Vuity led to a statistically significant improvement in vision compared to placebo.

One trial participant told CBS News the eye drops are a life changer, adding that once she started using them, I would not need my readers as much, especially on the computer, where I would always need to have them on.

Vuity is intended to be used once daily, with one drop in each eye. It takes effect in about 15 minutes and lasts for six to 10 hours. A 30-day supply costs $80 and is said to work best in people aged 40 to 55 years.

What Are the Signs of Presbyopia?

An estimated 128 million Americans have blurry near vision, most of them aged 40 and older. The term presbyopia comes from the Greek word for old eye, alluding to the fact that many people have trouble seeing close-up objects clearly as they age. As for what causes it, the American Academy of Ophthalmology calls it a normal part of the aging process, explaining:

Your clear lens sits inside the eye behind your colored iris. It changes shape to focus light onto the retina so you can see. When you are young, the lens is soft and flexible, easily changing shape. This lets you focus on objects both close-up and far away. After age 40, the lens becomes more rigid. It cannot change shape as easily. This makes it harder to read, thread a needle, or do other close-up tasks.

If youve found that you need to hold reading material farther away in order for the letters to be clear, its a sign of presbyopia. Other symptoms include blurred vision at a normal reading distance and eyestrain or headaches that occur after youve been reading or doing close-up work. The blurry close-up vision may be worse when youre tired or in a dimly lit area.

Age is the greatest risk factor for presbyopia, with the Mayo Clinic stating, Almost everyone experiences some degree of presbyopia after age 40. However, certain medical conditions, including diabetes, multiple sclerosis and heart disease and drugs, including antidepressants, antihistamines and diuretics, increase the risk of premature presbyopia, which occurs in people younger than 40.

Vuity Might Not Work in Advanced Cases

Presbyopia is typically a progressive condition, and the eye drops may not work as well in people with more advanced cases. Speaking with Eyes on Eyecare, Sathi Maiti, OD with the Periman Eye Institute, stated that the eyedrops would appeal to many of her patients:

If Vuity works well it could be a game-changer in terms of how we treat presbyopia. As eye doctors, because it is so common I think a lot of the time we forget how much presbyopia really impacts the quality of life of many of our patients, and this is a type of solution that many of them might be seeking out.

However, its possible that not everyone will benefit to the same degree. Maiti said:

It will likely work best for those who dont have very precise vision needs and are okay with some compromise or fluctuation in clarity. Since I havent had the chance to see how it works in real life yet, its a little hard to say, but my best guess would be for early presbyopes who dont need super high adds yet.

Alanna Nattis, DO, a refractive cornea surgery specialist at SightMD, also speaking with Eyes on Eyecare, echoed Maiti, stating:

I believe the drop will have the strongest effect on early presbyopes with minimal refractive error. That being said, I do think there is room for use of this drop in patients who prefer to wear distance-only and reading-only spectacles or contact lenses  I do not believe this eye drop will be as efficacious for patients who have advanced presbyopia, nor those with relatively dense cataracts.

What Are the Risks?

Vuity is not a cure for presbyopia; its a temporary fix that stops working after a set number of hours  until you add more drops. Further, it may not allow you to get rid of your reading glasses entirely. Even the Vuity website states, VUITY is not intended to replace other options for presbyopia.

By shrinking your pupils, Vuity also affects low-light vision, which is why its maker warns that the drops should be used with caution in night driving and other hazardous activities in poor light. They also warn that temporary problems may occur when changing focus between near and distant objects, so you shouldnt drive or use machinery if your vision isnt clear while youre using the drops.

The most common side effects reported were headache and eye redness, although a risk of retinal detachment was also reported in rare cases. Theres also a potential for eye injury or contamination, particularly if the dispensing bottles touches the eye or other surfaces. During clinical trials, 1% to 5% of patients also reported:

Blurred vision

Eye pain

Visual impairment

Eye irritation

Increased lacrimation (flow of tears)

Cost will also be a factor for many, as the drug isnt currently covered by insurance because its considered not medically necessary since glasses are widely available and less expensive. I dont think anyone knows yet how much it will cost to patients and if it will be covered by insurance. I think many doctors are wondering how we will bill for it as well, Maiti said.

As for other options for treating presbyopia, reading glasses are the least invasive option. Contact lenses, refractive surgery and even lens implants are also available, as are corneal inlays, in which a small plastic ring is inserted into the eyes cornea. The opening in the ring acts like a pinhole camera, which allows focused light to enter so you can see nearby objects more clearly.

Google has also invested in smart contact lenses for people with age-related farsightedness, and other eye drops that work similar to Vuity are in trials. While the eye drops are convenient and potentially could reduce reliance on reading glasses for a sizeable number of middle-aged adults with presbyopia, their usefulness must be weighed against the potential for adverse effects.

Glasses do not come with a risk of retinal detachment, for instance, however rare it may be. That being said, I recommend avoiding reading glasses as much as possible.

Try This Instead of Reading Glasses

There is some evidence that training your brain, namely targeting perceptual learning by repeatedly practicing a demanding visual task, may improve visual performance in people with presbyopia. In one study, the brain training enabled subjects to overcome and/or delay some of the disabilities imposed by the aging eye.

A number of apps are available that offer this form of brain training for improved vision. In a study published in Scientific Reports, researchers explained that the vision benefits seemed to stem from changes in the brain  not in the eye itself:

This improvement was achieved without changing the optical characteristics of the eye. The results suggest that the aging brain retains enough plasticity to overcome the natural biological deterioration with age.

For presbyopia, I recommend not wearing sunglasses and avoiding reading glasses. As you age, theres a tendency to want to make that font bigger to see text better, but I recommend resisting that temptation, as its only going to make matters worse.

Also, avoid squinting and simply blink instead. Blink multiple times until the text becomes clear, then relax your eyes to refocus. Brighter light may also help you read without increasing the font size on your tablet or computer, or using reading glasses.

References:
Pharmacists transport a cooler containing the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at the West Wales General Hospital in Carmarthen, Wales, on April 7, 2021. (Jacob King/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Fast-Spreading Omicron Variant Leaves Europes Health Care System Strained Amid Shortages

Europes health care systems are reportedly feeling the strain of the fast-spreading and highly transmissible Omicron variant of COVID-19, which has led to chronic staff shortages in hospitals amid rising case numbers.

Despite early studies indicating a lower risk of severe disease or hospitalization from Omicron compared to the previously-dominant Delta variant, nations across Europe are said to be struggling under the weight of staff shortages, driven by a surge in infections which has seen key staff members sick or forced to self-isolate.

As of Jan. 9, UK government data shows that there have been 141,472 daily new cases of COVID-19 in England, while 1,217,097 people have tested positive for the virus within the last seven days.

Last week, Britains Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced it would begin deploying two hundred Armed Forces personnel to support NHS hospitals in London amid record case numbers and staff shortages.

The MoD said it will provide 40 Defence medics and 160 general duty personnel to support NHS hospitals across the capital city with a range of tasks such as patient care, checking in patients on arrival, and conducting basic checks.

Omicron means more patients to treat and fewer staff to treat them, National Health Service (NHS) Medical Director Professor Stephen Powis said in a statement on Friday. In fact, around 10,000 more colleagues across the NHS were absent each day last week compared with the previous seven days and almost half of all absences are now down to COVID.

While we dont know the full scale of the potential impact this new strain will have its clear it spreads more easily and, as a result, COVID cases in hospitals are the highest theyve been since February last yearpiling even more pressure on hard-working staff, Powis said.

In the Netherlands, where infection rates are also rising sharply among hospital staff, particularly nurses and nursing assistants, hospitals are considering changing their quarantine rules to allow infected employees who do not display symptoms to return to work in an effort to ease staff shortages, Reuters reported, citing Dutch daily De Telegraaf.

A survey of eight major Dutch hospitals showed that in the worse cases, one in four staff members tested positive for COVID-19 in the run-up to Christmas. In Amsterdams University Medical Centre, 25 percent of staff are now testing positive, compared to 5 percent a week ago.

A pedestrian stands in a street of Rome, on Dec. 23, 2021. (Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images)

Monica (L), a nursing assistant and the youngest worker at the residence, and Araceli Hidalgo, 96, a resident of Los Olmos nursing home for the elderly, are the first people to receive the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in Guadalajara, Spain, on Dec. 27, 2020. (Pepe Zamora/Pool/Getty Images)

Elsewhere in Italy, supporting auxiliary facilities have been set up outside some hospitals in Palermo, Sicily, to take the weight off emergency rooms amid an influx in virus case numbers.

Tiziana Maniscalichi, director of Cervello and Civico Palermo hospitals, said most of those hospitalized with serious symptoms were not vaccinated.

We are absolutely under pressure, Maniscalichi told The Associated Press.There are at least 70 new cases a day to be hospitalized. We were forced to set up an additional emergency unit in a tent, because the capacity of the ordinary emergency unit was not enough.

Meanwhile, the Spanish nursing union SATSE said in a statement that front-line workers such as nurses and physiotherapists are the hardest hit.

Nine out of ten physiotherapists said they were unhappy with the actions and measures that have so far been taken to strengthen and improve the countrys health system during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, SATSE said, citing a survey of physiotherapy professionals in the whole of the country.

Rafael Bengoa, co-founder of Bilbaos Institute for Health and Strategy and a former senior WHO official, told Reuters that Spain had failed to take sufficient measures to reinforce vital services and that health care systems would continue to witness an increase in pressure. However, he remains hopeful that the end is near with regard to the pandemic.

Spain has several weeksbasically all of Januaryof rising cases  then hopefully well hit a plateau that goes down just as fast, he said, adding that he does not believe there will be a more deadly variant than Omicron.

Pandemics dont end with a huge boom but with small waves because so many have been infected or vaccinated  After Omicron we shouldnt have to be concerned with anything more than small waves, Bengoa said.

Yet according to preliminary studies, Omicron is much more likely to infect the throat compared to the lungs, which makes it less deadly than previous variants, but more infectious, which may account for the increase in case numbers.

A preprint of an animal-based study conducted by researchers from the University of Liverpools Molecular Virology Research Group said that mice infected with Omicron lose less weight, experience milder pneumonia, and carry less viral loads.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Florida Man With Antifa Gear Arrested After Allegedly Targeting Jan. 6 Rally

Update: Most of the charges were dropped.

Original story below.

A Florida man has been arrested for allegedly planning to attack a rally being held in support of a man whos in jail on charges linked to the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach.

Law enforcement officers arrested Garrett Smith in Clearwater, Florida, on the evening of Jan. 6 after spotting him sprinting away from the rally.

They found explosives in his backpack, fireworks in his nearby vehicle, and additional explosives at his home after his parents gave law enforcement officers permission to search the premises.

A helmet Smith was wearing contained a logo that has been linked to Antifa, a far-left network that has repeatedly committed crimes in recent years.

Smith, 22, had recently traveled from Portland, Oregon, a hotbed of Antifa activity, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told reporters during a briefing.

Smith was found with a direct action checklist, according to authorities. Direct action is a term favored by members of Antifa: It refers to carrying out nefarious activities, such as looting stores.

The checklist contained the clothing Smith was wearingall black with a black face covering, an ensemble Antifa members often donas well as accessories such as a black helmet, an armored black vest, knee guards, and a personal shield. The bottom of the list included gear such as a gas mask, smoke rockets, and flammable rags.

After deputies found the explosives, the sheriffs bomb squad was called in and it was determined that the device in the backpack was active. Deputies cleared the area as a precaution.

No bombs were set off.

Smith has refused to talk to law enforcement.

So we really have no idea as to what his political leanings are and whether he supported or opposed the protesters at the jail, Gualtieri said. We also dont know exactly what his plan was or why Smith was running away from the protest area when he was apprehended by deputies and before he had an opportunity to detonate the explosive device.

Explosives and other gear were found on Garrett Smith and at his home in Clearwater, Fla., after his arrest on Jan. 6, 2022. (Pinellas County Sheriffs Office)

He was all dressed. He had the device. He had his plan. He had his written document that explains it all. He had more at home. But why he actually didnt do itsomething happened because it caused him to flee, and based upon what the deputy saw, he was running fast, he was running away from something. But I dont know what it is.

According to a criminal complaint, a deputy observed Smith running along a woodline away from the protest. The deputy caught up with Smith and detained the defendant, who was trying to obscure himself behind a tree upon seeing law enforcement.

When asked where he was running from, Smith said the county.

Smith was charged with loitering and prowling, a misdemeanor, and three counts of felony making/possessing/discharging a destructive device, according to court records.

He was being held on a $300,250 bond.

A public defender was appointed and entered a not guilty plea. The attorneys name wasnt listed on the court docket.

Gualtieri said Smith, who has no criminal record, gave no indication of what he was planning on social media, and wasnt familiar to law enforcement, is what we call a sleeper, and these are the most concerning individuals, because theres no opportunity to intervene and thwart their criminal activity until they actually act.
Employees of Nomi Health check in a long line of people for COVID-19 tests in North Miami, Fla., on Dec. 21, 2021. (Marta Lavandier/AP Photo)

Houston Teacher Charged After Allegedly Putting COVID-19-Positive Son in Car Trunk

A Houston school teacher has been charged with child endangerment after allegedly putting her COVID-19-positive son in the trunk of her car to prevent catching the infection from him while taking him to a test center.

According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Sarah Beam, a teacher at Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District, stopped at the Pridgeon Stadium drive-thru COVID-testing center located in northwest Harris County on Jan. 3 and informed the school district director of health services, Bevin Gordon, that her child was in the trunk of the car.

When Gordon asked to see the boy, Beam unlatched the trunk, and the 13-year-old was found inside. Gordon informed Beam that she wouldnt carry out the test unless the child was transferred into the vehicle. Surveillance footage shows the child exiting the trunk and sitting in the car.

Gordon informed the police about the incident. After law enforcement arrived, Beam explained that she put her son in the trunk to prevent him from spreading the infection. The police issued an arrest warrant for the 41-year-old teacher for the crime of child endangerment.

The high school teacher was taken into custody at 3 p.m. on Jan. 8 and has since been released after posting a $1,500 bond around 4:45 p.m. the same day. Beam has been working in the school district since 2011. She has now been placed on administrative leave.

The school district told KPRC in a statement: CFPD was alerted that a child was in the trunk of a car at a drive-thru Covid-19 testing site earlier this week. Law enforcement conducted a full investigation, resulting in a warrant for arrest. Thankfully, the child was not harmed.

According to local TV station KHOU-11, Sgt. Richard Standifer with the Texas Department of Public Safety said, I have never heard of somebody being put in a trunk because they tested positive for anything.

Standifer said the boy could have been seriously hurt if there was an accident, since the trunk doesnt provide the passenger safety that seats do, and the child wasnt protected by a seat belt as required by law.

In the event that the vehicle is in a crash, theres no way to really secure a person in a trunk, he said.

Most of your vehicles are constructed with crumple zones in the front and rear of the vehicle, so if the individual is in the rear of the vehicle and theyre involved in a crash, theyre probably at greater risk of being injured because theyre designed to absorb energy in the front and the rear.
Jim and Kathe Schuchert at the Shen Yun Performing Arts performance at The Long Center for the Performing Arts in Austin, Texas, on Jan. 8, 2022. (Sally Sun/The Epoch Times)

AUSTIN, Texas Sometimes people mistake Shen Yun Performing Arts as a production coming from contemporary China. But Shen Yun is actually based in New York and the company is dedicated to depicting China before communism.

After some research, Jim and Kathe Schuchert decided to attend a Shen Yun performance at The Long Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday and they found the experience to be one filled with positivity and kindness.

I [had thought] that this is communist, this is China. But then after reviewing and seeing what the show is about [I] changed my mind because theyre about peace and love and kindness, Mr. Schuchert said.

The Chinese before the CCP are beautiful, beautiful people, added Mrs. Schuchert.

After the performance, they expressed how much they enjoyed it.

I love it because I feel the optimism  I felt like we can hope, like we can do this, Mrs. Schuchert said.

As the couple watched the performance, they saw the spirituality in Shen Yun and shared their thoughts on the importance of spirituality.

Spirituality is of God. Spirituality is of who created you and I, and the entire world entire heavens, and all that. Evil is [to] take over the world in order to dominate it, Mr. Schuchert said.

Tracey and Jerry Hendrix at the Shen Yun Performing Arts performance at The Long Center for the Performing Arts in Austin, Texas, on Jan. 8, 2022. (Sonia Wu/The Epoch Times)

Jerry and Tracey Hendrix came to see the performance as a group of nine. They were delighted to spend a Saturday evening with family and friends experiencing Shen Yun.

I really expected it to be goodtheres no way I could expect it to be as good as it was! When they opened the first curtain, and everybody was on a cloud and it was just vivid and beyond anything I could have expected, Mr. Hendrix said.

They were particularly impressed with the digital backdrops. Shen Yun uses their own patented technology to extend the stage endlessly. The performers have the perceived ability to fly high into the sky or dive deep into the sea using animated backdrops.

The backdrop where they would go in and off was looking like they were going into the sky or back in and they would just do it seamlessly, Ms. Hendrix said.

Its like theyre on the stage and now theyre on the screen and then theyre on the stage and you see how they do it but at the same time you dont see how they do itbecause it is seamless!

Reporting by Sally Sun, Sonia Wu, and Maria Han.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yuns inception in 2006.
Syringes at a COVID-19 vaccination site at Kedren Community Health Center, in South Central Los Angeles, Calif., on Feb. 16, 2021. (Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images)

Illinois Adopts Bidens Private Employer Vaccine Mandate

Illinois has adopted the Biden administrations vaccine-or-test requirement for private employers, according to new rules announced by state authorities on Jan. 7, the same day the Supreme Court heard arguments challenging the federal mandate.

The Illinois Department of Labor (DOL) said in an announcement that it had filed rules adopting the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard, which imposes a vaccination requirement with a test-out option on private companies employing 100 or more people.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as SARS-CoV-2.

The OSHA rule applies to some 84 million U.S. workers who would be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or wear masks and be tested weekly.

The Illinois DOL said the rules are effective immediately, but give employers in the jurisdiction until Jan. 24 to begin coming into compliance, with a Feb. 24 implementation deadline for a workplace vaccinate-or-test policy.

OSHA earlier announced a six-day grace period beyond the Jan. 4 deadline for compliance with the private employer mandate, saying it would not issue citations to give employers more time to adjust. That announcement came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th District in Cincinnati ruled that the private employer mandate could proceed, reversing a previous court decision that blocked the measure in the face of legal challenges by 27 Republican-led states, conservative groups, business associations, and some individual firms.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Jan. 7 heard oral arguments pertaining to legal challenges to the lawfulness of the private employer vaccinate-or-test mandate and to a separate vaccine requirement for workers in federally funded health care facilities.

In regards to the OSHA rule case, National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) v. Department of Labor, NFIB attorney Scott A. Keller argued that the one-size-fits-all mandate covering 84 million Americans is not a necessary, indispensable use of OSHAs extraordinary emergency power, adding that the requirement would drive some workers to quit, exacerbating the labor crunch.

Thousands of Americans have been confirmed by various companies as quitting or getting fired over COVID-19 vaccine mandates. An October survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that five percent of unvaccinated workersor around 1 percent of all adultshave left their jobs over vaccine requirements.

The argument that the OSHA mandate would hurt the economy was earlier made by a coalition of nearly 100 business groups, including key supply chain stakeholders, in an open letter to the Biden administration that called for flexibility in applying the rule.

The coalition, representing industries like foodservice, trucking, and warehousing, urged the Biden administration to exempt transportation and supply chain essential workers from the private employer mandate.
An experimental COVID-19 treatment pill, called molnupiravir and being developed by Merck & Co. Inc. and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP. (Merck & Co. Inc./Handout via Reuters)

Italy to Receive 40,000 Merck Antiviral Drug Doses Next Week: Official

MILANItaly will receive around 40,000 doses of Merck & Co.s COVID-19 antiviral drug next week, which will add to nearly 12,000 already distributed to hospitals, the special COVID-19 commissioner said on Sunday.

They are intended for clinical cases that risk a serious outcome of the disease, Commissioner Francesco Figliuolo told a television program on Italys RAI 3 channel.

Italy will also get 200,000 courses of Pfizers COVID-19 drug in February, Figliuolo said, adding that Rome had an option to buy additional 400,000 doses of Pfizers Paxlovid.

The office of the special commissioner for the COVID emergency said in November it had received a mandate from the health ministry to buy 50,000 courses of Mercks pill and another 50,000 of Pfizers one.
Kazakhstan Government Says It Has Detained Over 5,000 Protesters as Clampdown Worsens

The Kazakhstan government has declared it has detained over 5,000 people as political unrest continues to unfold around the country.

In an official update from Kazakh President Kassem-Jomart Tokayev on Jan. 9, Kazakh authorities announced that they had detained 5,800 people, many of whom they labelled foreigners.

The news of the arrests comes after Kazakh officials said that 164 people have officially died in the ongoing violence.

However, there are unconfirmed reports from Kazakhs on social media sites like Twitter that the actual death toll is much higher as government forces implement Tokayevs shoot without warning order.

Msg from #Taraz, Southern #Kazakhstan, local rumours: special police force (SOBR) raid the city & check phones for video recordings. Two guys filming a police raid were shot dead. Allegedly 25 ppl were killed, not verified. State of total terror in a complete information vacuum. pic.twitter.com/nm9ZVjVC4f  Bota Jardemalie  (@jardemalie) January 9, 2022

The shoot-to-kill order from Tokayev has come under international criticism from both human rights groups like Amnesty International and the United States government, with Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin stating on Jan. 9 he completely rejects the concept.

The shoot-to-kill order, to the extent it exists, is wrong and should be rescinded, Blinkin said. Kazakhstan has the ability to maintain law and order, to defend the institutions of the state, but to do so in a way that respects the rights of peaceful protesters and also addresses the concerns that theyve raisedeconomic concerns, some political concerns.

State Calls Unrest Hybrid Terrorist Attack

It comes as Kazakh Secretary of State Yerlan Karin told national TV channel Khabar 24 on Jan. 9 that the original protests were large-scale and peaceful, but that they had been hijacked by what he termed a hybrid terrorist attack.

The ultimate goal is difficult to say now, but I think that we are faced with a hybrid terrorist attack on Kazakhstan, with the ultimate goal of general destabilization and the implementation of a possible coup detat, Karin said, reported Tengrinews.

He said that the current government assessment was that it appeared some unknown force wanted to start a revolution in the country, but it was not able to and resorted to the current unrest.

The circumstances in our country are different: The position of the authorities is quite stable. They would not allow the implementation of the classic versions of a color revolution, Karin said. This led them to try another way of destabilizing the situation, but with the use of radical and terrorist groups.

The comments have been refuted by Kazakhs on social mediaparticularly those in the city of Almaty, which has seen the bulk of the security forces attentionwho argued there are not any terrorists on the streets in the countrys largest city.

Comms still down in Almaty. How can any government cut off a city for days to conduct anti-terrorist operations? Who are these so-called terrorists? Nobody in Almaty knows or has seen them.  James Kilner (@jkjourno) January 9, 2022

A burned car is seen in front of the mayors office building which was torched during protests triggered by a fuel price increase in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Jan. 6, 2022. (Pavel Mikheyev/Reuters)

The Kazakh government is being supported by the Russian-backed Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), of which Kazakhstan is a member. The CSTO has sent in peacekeeping troops from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Belarus, and Russia, while the Russian Ministry of Defense has said that it is deploying more than 70 Il-76 and five An-124 aircraft of the Russian contingent of the CSTO peacekeeping forces to Kazakhstan around the clock.

Meanwhile, Kazakhstan is also facing a cash and food shortage after the KazakhTelecom, the government-owned telecommunication giant, began throttling Internet access on Jan. 4, leaving residents unable to get access to their money after debit card terminals, which rely on the Internet and dominate retail outlets across the country, were shut down.

This has left Kazakhs little choice but to form long lines at ATMs across the country.

Nurserik Zholbarys, a resident of the countrys capital Nur-Sultan, told Eurasianet that he waited over 30 minutes in a line to withdraw 10,000 tenge ($23) from a SberBank ATM, the daily limit allowed in the country.

Zholbarys said he was doubtful he would be able to get more after banks started to temporarily shut down ATMs due to the inability to transfer funds to the machines.

The ongoing crisis has also claimed the jobs of the former government, which resigned on day three of the protest, as well as seen the arrest of the former head of the national security committee and former prime minister Karim Massimov, on suspicion of high treason on Jan. 8.

Karim Massimov, chairman of the National Security Council of Kazakhstan, meets with Chinese deputy leader Wang Qishan at Zhongnanhai in Beijing on April 8, 2019. (Kenzaburo Fukuhara/Pool via Reuters)

Massimov, who was fired after the protest erupted around the country, is a long-term ally of the former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose continuing influence over the state has been a target of the protesters, with many demonstrations featuring the chant Old Man Go in reference to Nazarbayev. In other parts of the country, protesters have posted images on Twitter of pulled down statues of Nazarbayev.

The protests, which started on Jan. 2 in the west of the country in the city of Zhanaozen and the Mangistau region, began in response to an increase in fuel price to 120 tenge (27 cents) from last years 60 tenge (14 cents).

Kazakh petroleum prices had previously been regulated and subsidized in the country. However, in 2019 the government decided to institute an electronic pricing system to end subsidies for domestic liquefied petroleum gas customers and allow the market to dictate prices instead, and in some provinces like Mangistau, there have been steep jumps in prices.
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)

Kids COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout begins in Australia Ahead of School Term

Australias vaccination rollout to children aged between five and 11 has begun ahead of the return to school on Jan. 28.

Children aged five to 11 are now eligible to receive two doses of the Comirnaty (Pfizer) vaccine, eight weeks apart, and the dose will be one third that of kids aged 12 and over.

This comes after the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) provisionally approved the Pfizer vaccine for this age group on Dec. 5.

In a media release on Monday, Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt said that three million doses of the vaccine are being distributed around the country, enabling the two point three million children in this age group to get their first inoculation.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison further elaborated at a press conference on the same day, saying that two million of the three million doses procured are in the country and 835,000 vaccines are already in fridges at the 6,000 locations across Australia where children can go to be jabbed.

However, reports of supply issues have already emerged, one from Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Victorian chair Anita Munoz, who said that supply was sporadic.

She told AAP on Monday that some GP practices were given 100 doses a week, and others just 100 doses a fortnight.

That is, really, terribly inadequate numbers for general practices to vaccinate kids, she said.

The supply itself is unreliable and sporadic, and we understand thats in part because the logistics industry is affected by COVID itself.

Munoz added that in Victoria, the average GP has around 1,500 children on their books.

So you can imagine how slow that means general practice will be forced to go based on the paucity of supply, she said.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant General John Frewen, head of Australias vaccine rollout, said on Monday that as well as the 835,000 doses that were readily available, another 400,000 were in transit.

I do want to emphasise again that there is enough paediatric doses in the country to offer every 5 to 11-year-old a first dose before they commence school this year, he said.

He also said that there was a huge uptake of bookings prior to Jan. 10, and he understood the frustration of getting bookings for some, advising parents who could not book a shot through their GP to try pharmacies and vaccination hubs.

The concern about immediate COVID-19 vaccine supply for 5 to 11-year-olds comes as children are set to return to school on Jan.28.

In a social media post on Jan.7, Professor Kerryn Phelps said that it makes no sense to send primary school children back to school at the peak of this wave of the pandemic and when the vaccination rate amongst this age group is low.

Primary school children are still mostly unvaccinated and there are supply issues with the vaccine, and that means that most children will not be vaccinated before the start of term, she said.

The long-term implication of even mild COVID infection for a child, including long COVID, are still largely unknown.

She continued that even if a child is vaccinated, they can still pass on the infection to teachers, parents, and grandparents, some of whom could be medically vulnerable.

Its a recipe for chaos, she said.

However, former Deputy Chief Health Officer and infectious disease expert Dr Nick Coatsworth told the Today Show on Monday that the most important cohort to have vaccinated was always going to be the adult population.

And I wanted to remind parents of that, that this is primarily a disease that affects adults severely and affects children mildly, so if youre a parent, as I am, I dont think we need to get concerned about how quickly we get our 5 to 11-year-olds vaccinated, he said.

In particular, do not be concerned if you cant get an appointment before school goes back.

Coatsworth said that although there is concern about children catching COVID-19 and passing it on to members of their family, there neednt be such a concern.

The United States just released their data on mortality, on death in fully vaccinated individuals, and across an entire community, he said.

Its 0.003 percent.

We have got to leave this fear behind and replace it with facts.
Leading London Hospital May Lose More Than 1,000 Staff Over Vaccine Mandate

One of Londons largest and busiest hospitals could lose over 1,000 staff over the governments CCP virus vaccine mandate for frontline health workers, the head of the hospital acknowledged on Sunday.

Dr. Clive Kay, chief executive of Kings College Hospital, confirmed that around 10 percent of the hospitals 14,000 staff have not received the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus vaccines as the mandate deadline approaches.

From April 1, COVID-19 vaccination will become a condition of deployment in the health and social care sector, except for those clinically exempt and those participating in a clinical trial. To meet the requirement, staff will need to receive their first dose by Feb. 3 to allow an eight-week gap between the doses, according to guidance from NHS England.

The single-dose Johnson&Johnson vaccine has been approved by the UKs medicines regulator but is not available in the UK.

Kings College Hospital on Friday said nearly 90 percent of its staff had been vaccinated after one of the hospitals ICU doctors confronted Health Secretary Sajid Javid with his scepticism about the mandate.

Speaking to the BBCs Sunday Morning show, Kay declined to comment on individual cases but said it was ultimately the choice of staff members whether or not they choose to comply.

If, ultimately, at the end of the day an individual is fully informed and we feel weve done all our very best to encourage them to have a vaccination and theyve decided not to, that is their choice, he said.

The hospital chief said he and his colleagues have been encouraging staff to be vaccinated, but not forcing them to do so.

We must treat them with kindness, with compassion. We must give them every single opportunity to talk throughif theyve dont want the vaccine, if theyd like to talk, if they need any help or clarificationbut ultimately, it is their choice, Kay said.

But he also acknowledged that unvaccinated staff will lose their jobs if the hospital cant find that opportunity to redeploy them.

Kay said he was confident the number of staff losses wont reach 1,400 as the hospital is already seeing a number of staff [members] choosing to be vaccinated.

Speaking on the same show, Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi defended the requirement for NHS staff to be vaccinated.

I think when you work with the most vulnerable peopleand those going into hospital are very vulnerable, as are those in our care homesyou have a duty of care, the former vaccines minister said.

Steve James, a consultant anesthetist at Kings College Hospital, told Javid on Friday that he doesnt believe the science for mandating the vaccines is strong enough, arguing the vaccines efficacy in preventing the transmission of new variants is limited and short-lived, and that natural immunity should be acknowledged.

An earlier version of this report misstated the deadline for health workers to get their first CCP virus vaccine dose. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
The Food and Drug Administrations request for 75 years to fully release the information on how it approved the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine has been shot down by a federal judge.

The FDA now has just over 8 months to provide these documents for public review. U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman ordered the FDA to produce more than 12,000 pages of these documents before Jan. 31, and then release 55,000 pages every 30 days until all the documents are made public.

Judge Pittman stated, the court recognizes the unduly burdensome challenges that this FOIA request may present to the FDA  But, as expressed at the scheduling conference, there may not be a more important issue at the Food and Drug Administration  than the pandemic, the Pfizer vaccine, getting every American vaccinated, [and] making sure that the American public is assured that this was not rush[ed] on behalf of the United States. Accordingly, the court concludes that this FOIA request is of paramount public importance.

Meanwhile, shares in Trumps upcoming social network TRUTH Social jumped close to 20 percent on Thursday, after an update on the apps Apple store page showed that it is expected to be released on Feb. 21, which is Presidents Day.

And in other news, the Supreme Court is showing signs it may overturn Bidens vaccine mandates on private sector employees and on federally funded health care facilities.

The Epoch Times reports, In a rare Friday sitting the high court seemed broadly receptive to the idea that states have authority to impose vaccination mandates but questioned the ability of federal agencies to do the same.

The general tone of the justices is that the Biden administration is running these mandates as a workaround, and that it should instead be left to Congress and state law.

In this live Q&A with Crossroads host Joshua Philipp, well discuss these stories and others, and answer questions from the audience.

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A shopper is seen looking at the empty shelves inside the Coles Supermarket at Kedron in Brisbane, Australia, on Jan. 8, 2021. (AAP Image/Darren England)

New Critical Worker Isolation Rules in Australian States to Ease Mounting Pressure on Supply Chain

The national cabinet is set to approve changes to isolation rules for critical workers in New South Wales (pdf) and Queensland after it was approved by the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

The new changes allow asymptomatic workers in critically essential roles that are not customer facing, such as food distribution, to leave isolation and continue to attend work.

It comes in response to bare supermarket shelves due to supply chain issues as many workers began self-isolating due to the CCP virus.

As the case numbers continue to rise, the volume of cases will, of course, have an inevitable impact on the workforce. So were looking to maximise those who can remain in the workforce, Morrison said.

The prime minister said it wasnt practical to shut down everything and lock everyone at home, as there would then be no food on the shelves, no children getting taught, and no one providing healthcare.

So what we have done as a government has always sought to balance the various demands and pressures on the system with the health imperative, he said

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks to the media during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra on Jan. 6, 2022. (Stringer/AFP via Getty Images)

Australian Industry Group said the new guidelines balanced the need to keep the economy functioning while factoring in health risks and should be adopted nationally as soon as possible.

There is no doubt that the new less impactful variant and the response to it has seriously hobbled our economic recovery and prospects, Ai Group CEO Innes Willox told The Epoch Times.

The desire of some jurisdictions to shut down again for fear their health systems wont cope will only lead to poorer long term economic outcomes. All state governments have had two years to prepare their health systems for what was going to be inevitable new waves of contagion.

However, the Transport Workers Union (TWU) said it was a reckless decision that would threaten the health and safety of workers and exacerbate disruption within the supply chain.

To rebuild a healthy workforce, we need to have isolation requirements and rapid testing working togetherwe cant have one without the other, TWU National Secretary Michael Kaine said in a statement.

Another union, the Shop, Distributive, and Allied Employees Association (SDA), said retail and warehouse workers should get priority access to free rapid antigen tests for their safety.

This is a community health issue, and governments at all levels must support the health and safety of these essential workers as much to ensure families access to essentials as for the viability of the workforce, SDA National Secretary Gerard Dwyer said.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said Australians need to accept that Omicron is everywhere and need to just get on [with] our lives.

People in the food industry are isolating, of course, this causes problems in the delivery of a crucial outcome, which is groceries, but were dealing with that, and were making sure that we keep people at work because thats how we keep food on the shelves, Joyce told Seven network.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) takes a photo of, from left, Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) during a meeting to discuss a COVID-19 relief package, in the Oval Office of the White House on Feb. 3, 2021, in Washington. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)

Senate Confirmations Increase in Bidens 1st Year Following Trump Dip: Report

The Senate has confirmed more nominees in the first year of the Biden administration than it did for the same period in the Trump administration, according to a report from the nonprofit Partnership for Public Services Center for Presidential Transition.

However, the number of confirmations lagged those for both the Obama and Bush administrations, the report said.

The report, dated Jan. 10, tracked nominations and confirmations for all civilian positions in the new administration from Jan. 20, 2021, to Dec. 31, 2021, and compared the number and rate of successful appointments to the first years of previous administrations.

While President Joe Biden has nominated a higher number of individuals for government positions, 644 compared to Trumps 555, Congress has only confirmed 355 of Bidens nomineesa significant drop from the 505 confirmed for President George W. Bush and 450 for President Barack Obama, according to the report.

The Epoch Times counted more confirmations for Biden, 389, by Dec. 31, 2021.

Congress only confirmed 317 for Trump in the same time frame. However, because Trump nominated 89 fewer officials under his policy of less waste in government, the rate of confirmation for Bidens nominees has been slower than that of the Trump administration with its greater number of candidates.

In Bidens first year, the Senate confirmed only 41 percent of his nominations, the report reads. By contrast, 75 percent of Bushs first-year nominees were confirmed, compared with 69 percent for Obama and 57 percent for Trump.

It noted that 118 nominations were procedurally returned to the White House on Jan. 3, as the Senate adjourned at the end of the congressional session, while a small number were withdrawn by Biden.

Of those, 29 nominees had been waiting between 200 and 300 days to receive a vote, 40 had been waiting between 100 and 200 days, and 49 had been waiting less than 100 days, it reads.

The constitutional requirement of Senate oversight for presidential appointments is designed to keep the presidents powers in check.

While vacancies are not unusual with political appointments, some critics have argued that increasing delays to confirmations impacts key agencies and risks leaving the government open to issues of understaffing and diminished accountability to Congress and the American people.

The authors of the report suggested that reforms need to be agreed on by both the executive and legislative branches, calling the current situation an unsustainable status quo.

According to estimates by the Congressional Research Service, the executive branch has around 1,200 to 1,400 positions that require Senate confirmation, leaving the Senate tasked with scrutinizing nominees for several hundred positions every year.

The delays were already becoming pronounced during the Obama administration, when filibusters and cloture motions made news headlines as Congress stalled, and confirmation times took a hit.

There was an attempt to address the delays experienced in 2009 by the new Obama administration, when, according to the report, the average confirmation time almost doubled from 48 days under Bush to 80 days. Congress passed the Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act in 2011, which saw requirements for Senate confirmation cut for 163 lower-level positions. Another 272 positions were earmarked for expediency, barring any unusual circumstances.

But the trend of a hyperpoliticized Congress has only continued since then, and along with it, an increase in the average time needed for a nominee to be confirmed by the Senate. Trump nominations took an average of 100 days to be confirmed, while Biden nominations have faced an average of 103 days.

In his 2019 State of the Union address, Trump urged a divided Congress to unite.

This new era of cooperation can start with finally confirming the more than 300 highly qualified nominees who are still stuck in the Senatesome after years of waiting, he said. The Senate has failed to act on these nominations, which is unfair to the nominees and to our country. Now is the time for bipartisan action.

In an August 2021 report, the Center for Presidential Transition recommended streamlining the appointment process by either reducing Senate confirmation of presidentially appointed positions, introducing more fixed-length terms, or eliminating redundant and consistently vacant appointments across the federal government.
New York real estate heir Robert Durst is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing his best friend Susan Berman at the Airport Courthouse in Los Angeles, on Oct. 14, 2021. (Myung J. Chun/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

NY Real Estate Heir, Convicted Killer Robert Durst Dies in Prison

LOS ANGELESNew York real estate heir Robert Durst, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing a friend in her Benedict Canyon home, died Jan. 10 in prison.

According to Chip Lewis, one of his attorneys, the 78-year-old Durst died of natural causes associated with the litany of medical issues we had repeatedly reported to the court over the last couple of years.

Lewis said attorneys would have no further statements about Dursts death.

Durst was convicted Sept. 17 of first-degree murder for shooting Susan Berman in her home in December 2000. Prosecutors said Durst killed Berman to prevent her from incriminating him in a renewed police investigation into the disappearance of his first wife, Kathie Durst, in 1982.

Durst was the grandson of Joseph Durst, founder of the Durst Organization, one of Manhattans largest commercial real estate firms.

Prosecutors estimate that Robert Dursts share of the family fortune was $100 million.

Kathie Durst was 29 when she disappeared on Jan. 31, 1982. Her body was never found and she was declared legally dead, at her familys request, in 2017. Robert Durst divorced Kathie Durst in 1990 citing abandonment.

He was never charged in her disappearance despite a number of efforts to close the case. Investigators reopened the case in 1999, searching a lake and the couples home. During his Los Angeles murder trial, Durst repeated denied having any involvement in his wifes disappearance and presumed death.

Durst has been behind bars since March 14, 2015, when he was taken into custody in a New Orleans hotel room hours before the airing of the final episode of the six-part HBO documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, which examined the disappearance of Kathie Durst and the shooting deaths of Berman and Morris Black, Dursts then-neighbor in Texas in late 1982.

Durst was tried for Blacks killing and dismemberment, but he was acquitted, arguing that the gun went off accidentally during a struggle.

Prosecutors in that case also alleged that Black had figured out Dursts true identity. Durst was in hiding at the time.
Omicron First Ray of Light Toward COVID-19 Turning Endemic: UK Scientist

A British doctor has forecast COVID-19 evolving to become less severe and endemic, and said the highly-transmissible but milder Omicron variant is the beginning of the process.

The thing that might happen in the future is you may see the emergence of a new variant that is less severe, and ultimately, in the long-term, what happens is COVID becomes endemic and you have a less severe version. Its very similar to the common cold that weve lived with for many years, Dr. Mike Tildesley, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M) and a University of Warwick professor, told Times Radio on Saturday.

Tildesley said that the latest variant is different from the previous Delta strain, but that the time for normalcy has not been reached. Were not quite there yet, but possibly Omicron is the first ray of light there that suggests that may happen in the longer-term. It is, of course, much more transmissible than Delta was, which is concerning, but much less severe.

Natural immunity has been found to offer better protection against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus than the vaccines, according to an Israeli study involving around 5.7 million people. The theory is that a highly-transmissible version of the virus would infect people rapidly but leave behind a more resistant population.

Tildesley added: Hopefully, as we move more towards the spring and we see the back of Omicron, we can get more inter-relationships of living with COVID as an endemic disease and protecting the vulnerable. Any variant that does emerge which is less severe, ultimately, in the longer term, is where we want to be.

Tildesley pointed to the number of cases, which was flat-lining in the UKs capital city London, and lower hospital admissions, as encouraging signs that the situation may be starting to turn around.

On Jan. 9, the number of new cases in England was 121,228 with a seven-day average of 140,256, which is an increase of over 200 percent from Dec. 14, when the spike began and the seven-day average was 45,489.

However, the number of deaths not only did not go up in proportion to the case counts, it actually went down. On Dec. 14, the number of deaths was 138, with a seven-day average of 95 in England, while on Jan. 9, it was 84, with a seven-day average of 164.

Similarly, in the United States there was an increase of more than 450 percent from Dec. 14, when the seven-day average was 119,379, and 668,497 on Jan. 7, while the number of deaths recorded a much smaller change from an average of 1,143 on Dec. 14 to 1,513 on Jan. 7.

On the slightly more positive side, so it doesnt sound all doom and gloom, what we are seeing from hospital admissions is that stays in hospital do appear to be on average shorter, which is good news, symptoms appear to be a little bit milder, so this is what we are seeing consistently with the Omicron variant, Tildesley added.

According to preliminary studies, Omicron is much more likely to infect the throat compared to the lungs, which makes it less deadly, but more infectious. A preprint of an animal-based study conducted by researchers from the University of Liverpools Molecular Virology Research Group said that mice infected with Omicron lose less weight, experience milder pneumonia, and carry less viral loads.

Its one piece of the jigsaw, professor James Stewart said, according to The Guardian. The animal model does suggest that the disease is less severe than Delta and the original Wuhan virus. It seems to get cleared faster and the animals recovered more rapidly, and that ties in with clinical data coming through.

The early indications are that its good news, but thats not a signal to drop our guard, because if youre clinically vulnerable, the consequences are still not greatthere are deaths from Omicron. Not everyone can rip their masks off and party.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, cautioned at a media briefing last month against terming the Omicron variant mild.

Were concerned that people are dismissing Omicron as mild. Surely, we have learned by now that we underestimate this virus at our peril. Even if Omicron does cause less severe disease, the sheer number of cases could once again overwhelm unprepared health systems, he said.
PM Modi invites German business leaders to invest in India's youth 02 May 2022 | 11:28 PM New Delhi, May 2, (UNI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi while co-chairing a Business Round Table with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday "invited the business leaders to invest in Indias youth."

"In his remarks, Prime Minister emphasised on the broad-based reforms carried out by the government and highlighted the growing numbers of start-ups and unicorns in India. He invited the business leaders to invest in Indias youth," the PMO said. see more..

RaGa, Kejriwal extend wishes for Eid-ul-Fitr 02 May 2022 | 10:41 PM New Delhi, May 2 (UNI) Opposition leaders on Monday extended greetings to the people on the eve of Eid-ul-Fitr as the month of Ramzan came to an end here on Monday. see more..

Ukraine finds mention in joint statement, Germany condemns Russian aggression 02 May 2022 | 9:52 PM Berlin/New Delhi, May 2 (UNI) Germany reiterated its strong condemnation of the unlawful and unprovoked aggression against Ukraine by Russian Forces even as India and Germany condemned the civilian deaths in Ukraine and both sides agreed to remain closely engaged on the issue, the joint statement said. see more..

PM Modi stresses India's position on Ukraine, as India, Germany ink green partnership agreement 02 May 2022 | 9:36 PM Berlin/New Delhi, May 2 (UNI) The Ukraine conflict found prominent mention in the deliberations between India and Germany today, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasising Indias position that no party would emerge winner and that India is for peace, even as the two sides inked nine agreements, including one on green energy partnership. see more..
John Sullivan said his few Satan-themed songs are meant to evoke imagery like the Book of Revelation in the Bible. "It's art at the end of the day," he said. (Press Kit/JaydenX)

Photographer Who Filmed Ashli Babbitts Killing Remains a Man of Contradictions

John E. Sullivan, the social-justice provocateur who filmed the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, at times says he doesnt believe in God, yet at other times, he does believe.

He recently produced a series of Satan-themed music videos, but says he doesnt idolize the devil. Despite the troubling and graphic imagery in some of his music, Sullivan said his work is artistic social commentary about the state of society and human relations.

He is often a polarizing figure, yet he insists hes nonviolent and desires peace in American society.

A year after the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol, Sullivan in many ways is a man of contradictions. Some of his music has dark, satanic themes, but he says he believes in God. Society is heading for dark times, he says, given the prevalence of anger and hatred in the public square.

He sometimes says the shooting of Babbitt outside the Speakers Lobby at the Capitol was justified, but his public comments over the past year indicate that her death affected him more than most people realize.

Not What Youd Expect

Sullivan, 27, who uses the trade name Jayden X, is not what you might expect, based on his public persona and the ire he has drawn from the right and some on the left.

Sullivan was arrested in January 2021 and charged with a variety of federal crimes for being at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. He is among the 725 people arrested across nearly every state since the FBI launched a dragnet immediately after the Capitol incident.

Sullivan said the widely circulated story that he dressed as a Trump supporter at the Capitol isnt true. The selfie of him wearing a Trump cap was taken on Jan. 5.

John Sullivan took this selfie on Jan. 5, 2021, but didnt wear Trump gear at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (John Sullivan)

Sullivan filmed the Jan. 6 protests and rioting while seeming to encourage people to vandalize the Capitol and burn this [expletive] down. He said that what might have sounded like inciting was him covering himself so he didnt become a target of violence.

Anything that I might have said was to protect me among a crowd of Trump supporters, white supremacists, and terrorists, he told The Epoch Times. I am not about to have my black [expletive] lynched by a mob of raging idiots.

Sullivan filmed the chaos in the hallway outside the Speakers Lobby the afternoon of Jan. 6. Shortly before Babbitt was fatally shot by U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, Sullivan told two officers guarding the doors to leave.

Sullivan then told the men nearby. Go! Go! Lets go! Get this [expletive]! Two men then attacked the glass in the double doors. Babbitt, whose husband believes she was trying to escape the chaos, climbed through a broken window and was shot in the shoulder. She fell back to the floor, mortally wounded.

An ambulance rushes a mortally wounded Ashli Babbitt to the hospital after she was shot outside the Speakers Lobby at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (CapitolPunishmentTheMovie.com/Bark at the Hole Productions)

Sullivans views on the shooting of Ashli Babbitt have run the gamut. During the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, Sullivan wrote on Twitter: Whoever shot her, maybe should be held accountable. I guess thats up to the law to decide.

In 2022, he wrote in a pinned tweet on Twitter: The Capitol police officer is a hero and did the right thing in shooting Ashli Babbitt. If he didnt, Trumps terrorist would have never stopped!

That is a very different tone than he used shortly after the shooting when he told Rolling Stone magazine that witnessing Babbitts death was very upsetting to him.

The guy who was pointing a gun at her was leaning with an intent to shoot; he was not playing, Sullivan told the magazine. Theres a difference between holding a gun up and warning somebody versus, like, really leaning into it. I was like, All right, Im going to show the world why she died. And Im not going to let her death go in vain. Because I didnt think that she deserved to die. She didnt have a weapon. She didnt have anything.

Sullivan said he wasnt prepared for what he saw.

I remember she dropped to the ground, and I dont think thats the part I was ready for. That was emotional for me. I remember just like looking into her eyes, like she was staring at me.

Shes just staring straight at me, and I just see her soul leave her body, just the light just leave her eyes. I felt a lot of anger, I felt a lot of sadness and sorrow, frustration. I dont think I could ever have prepared myself for it. This was the first time I saw somebody die. Im still trying to deal with it.

Despite now saying Babbitts shooting was a heroic act, in a Jan. 9 exchange on YouTube, Sullivan said he wanted to prevent the shooting.

I tried to save her, and the least I could do was document it for everyone to witness, regardless of political discretion, he wrote on Twitter. I believe you have the right to see the truth, regardless of my input, and I did exactly that. I could have run from those guns. But I thought of someone other than myself.

Sullivan said he doesnt bear responsibility for Babbitts death.

I didnt pull the trigger, so, no, he told The Epoch Times. I know who should feel guilty though, Trump and all the political figures who were at the Ellipse rallying the crowd to Stop The Steal. They single-handedly imprisoned hundreds of their supporters, killed six people, and then left them out to dry.

Not Embraced by the Left

In the public realm, while Sullivan has often been associated with Black Lives Matter and Antifa, many on the left reject him and his tactics, according to a 2021 profile on the journalism site The Grayzone. The profile said Sullivan is viewed by some on the left as a dangerous provocateur and someone seeking profit from societal upheaval. Sullivans online store at one time sold black riot-gear clothing; the site is no longer accessible.

On his new Twitter account (a previous one was suspended), Sullivan calls himself Antifa Superman aka Jayden X, and refers to his occupations as Music and VFX Artist, Video Journalist, Social Justice Activist. He said the Antifa reference is a jab at Alex Jones of InfoWars, who called Sullivan the Antifa Superman.

Sullivan told The Epoch Times that hes not a BLM member.

I believe that black lives matter and that there needs to be police reform, but past that point, I am not a member of the organization BLM. Antifa is not an organization, so no. I do love to have a good laugh and troll idiots who think so. Hence, my Twitter bio.

Sullivan founded Insurgence USA, an organization promoting racial justice and police reform, after the 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Police tactics used in Floyds arrest sparked outrage and a summer of rioting across the country.

Sullivans Satan-themed music video was greeted with hostility on YouTube. Commenters noted his role at the U.S. Capitol and his federal charges.

Youre going to experience the same hell you created on earth forever, a YouTube user named Lauren D wrote. Literally. You wont ever be able to escape it or leave. You will have to see all the problems you created and relive it forever. And feel what you did to everyone else.

When another reader objected to Laurens harsh comments, she replied: He can take honest feedback. He doesnt have a soul, so everything bounces right off him.

Jayden X responded, Bingo.

Sullivan was criticized on Twitter by Joseph McBride, the New York attorney who represents a number of Jan. 6 defendants, including Victoria White, whose beating captured on video at the Capitol sparked a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia.

McBride decried the fact that Sullivan is free pending trial, while many other defendants have been held for up to a year in pretrial detention under brutal conditions.

January 6th detainees are held in solitary while this demon walks the earth, McBride wrote.

Sullivan replied: This right-wing nut thinks I dont have due process. Also, he thinks I worship Satan because I have lyrics in my music about Satan. Logical connection.

Sullivan added later: Nor are you God and nor can you cast stones. Ill let the everlasting determine my fate and judgment, not man.

Musical References to Hell

Some of Sullivans music speaks graphically about the netherworld. The Last Goodbye music video includes satanic imagery, although he curiously misspells the devils name in the lyrics on YouTube:

Satin [sic] is waiting

In his kingdom

So that he burn your body

Liberate you from Jesus

Get on your knees [expletive]

And beg him for mercy

The song is full of dystopian lyrics that speak of pain, suicide, gun violence, and hell:

Go and find a gun

So that you can

Blow their mind

Going on a killing spree

Just to kill some time Destroy the world

Purge the populace

So that we all can go to hell

In the music video, Sullivan dons all-black riot gear similar to what he wore at Black Lives Matter and other racial-justice protests in 2020. In an August 2020 protest in Washington, Sullivan told participants to rip Trump right out of that office right there. He started a chant with the crowd: Its time for revolution.

Sullivan said hes not a satanist, but uses dark imagery with a message.

I sing about Satan as it gives a real-world perspective on where the world is headed if we dont change as a society, he told The Epoch Times.

I wish that I had happier things to talk about, but I feel too deeply for people and situations in general and it affects me greatly, Sullivan said. He said hes especially disheartened by the events I witnessed at the Capitol. It was sickening to see so much hatred, racism, and evil in this world displayed so openly.

John Sullivans new music video Last Goodbye includes satanic lyrics and images. He sings purge the populace so that we can all go to hell. (Jayden X/YouTube)

Sullivan has more than 30 songs on his website and on music platforms, including Apple Music and Spotify. He says he left his sales job at age 24 and dedicated himself to music.

His music often references pain and contains suicidal ideation. In several songs, he uses the words Dont give up on me.

He has several songs dealing with hell. In one, Depths of My Soul, he says, You are about to realize that nothing is really as it [expletive] seems. You are about to realize that you made me into this. You turned me into this demon. You turned me into this [expletive] dark soul, on the edge of losing [expletive] control.

His most disturbing music video, Gates of Hell, shows female figures swaying in a line of fire.

Welcome to the gates of hell. Sorry, I really tricked you with a spell, so come on down, its warm in here, no need to fear because your soul is going to burn in eternal fire with the devil.

His song, Second Advent, is liberally sprinkled with expletives.

Jayden X is my name, your [expletive] king. [Expletive] bow down, youre in the presence of a god. Pray for mercy or face my [expletive] iron rod.

On Jan. 16, Twitter users challenged Sullivan to explain his behavior on Jan. 6, to which he replied: I cannot confirm or deny, everything will be told at my trial. Youll get your answer then.

He said hes not and has never been an informant for the FBI or other law enforcement entity. There has been online speculation amid evidence that seeming agents provocateur such as Ray Epps encouraged people to go inside the Capitol.

Sullivan was a 2018 U.S. Olympic speed skating hopeful and was a salesman who achieved $3 million in sales in one year, according to his video biography.

His brother James is a major Trump supporter. The brothers seemingly opposing political views led videographer Jade Sacker to spend months documenting the brothers lives. Sacker accompanied Sullivan to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and they both filmed the unrest.

Sullivan said that despite the assumptions, he is not a political person.

I dont care about politics, people keep trying to force that down my throat, he said. I only have personal quarrels with political figures that have targeted me. That has nothing to do with politics at all. Thats personal.

Correction: A previous version of this story gave an incorrect description of John Sullivans attire on Jan. 6. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) prepares to speak during a rally outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Dec. 7, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Tests Positive for COVID-19

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has tested positive for COVID-19, her office has said in a statement on Sunday night.

She is experiencing symptoms and recovering at home, it said briefly of the breakthrough case while encouraging everyone to get a booster and follow guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on minimizing the spread and infection risk of the virus.

It added that the congresswoman received a COVID-19 vaccine booster in the fall.

Ocasio-Cortezs infection comes as the Omicron variant is sweeping the country and the world.

The Omicron variant, which was discovered in southern Africa in November, is now the dominant strain contributing to new COVID-19 infections across the United States, according to CDC data. The variant has supplanted the previously dominant Delta variant, accounting for more than 95 percent of all cases as of last week.

However, according to mounting evidence, Omicron appears to cause milder illness than previous variants.

Several hospital doctors around the United States told The Associated Press in a report published on Wednesday that many COVID-19 cases requiring hospitalization were sent to hospital due to conditions other than the virus.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul told a briefing on Friday that in her state, 42 percent of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 were admitted for other reasonsa sign of how raw case numbers in hospital may not be giving the clearest picture of Omicrons impact in terms of severe disease.

While hospitalizations continue to rise in New York, Hochul and other state officials expressed optimism that the worst of the Omicron wave could pass in the coming days.

We need a couple more days to be able to tell that it has peaked, said Dr. Mary Bassett, New Yorks acting Health Commissioner. I think that we can expect a difficult January but that things should be much better by February.
Rep. Jordan Indicates He Wont Cooperate With Jan. 6 Committee as It Isnt Fair-Minded and Objective

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) says he wont voluntarily cooperate with the select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, calling the request unprecedented and inappropriate in a Jan. 9 letter.

In the letter to committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Jordan wrote that he has no relevant information that would assist them in their investigation or in advancing any legitimate legislative purpose.

The American people are tired of Democrats nonstop investigations and partisan witch hunts, Jordan wrote. Your letter of December 22, 2021, unfortunately, continues this Democrat obsession. It amounts to an unprecedented and inappropriate demand to examine the basis for a colleagues decision on a particular matter pending before the House of Representatives.

This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core Constitutional principles, and would serve to further erode legislative norms.

The Ohio Republican cited a number of reasons why he doesnt need to cooperate with the investigation, which has so far appeared to focus on individuals who previously served in the Trump administration, including those who were no longer in the White House during the Jan. 6 breach.

Jordan wrote that he cannot speak to Speaker Nancy Pelosis failure to ensure the Capitol building had adequate security in advance of the breach and that he has nothing to add to the bipartisan, comprehensive findings of the Senate investigative committees or to those issued by federal inspectors general.

The congressman said he was performing official duties as a lawmaker at the time the Capitol building was breached.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House of Representatives panel investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol breach, sitting beside panel Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), speaks in Washington on Oct. 19, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

People gather near the east front door of the U.S. Capitol after groups breached the buildings security in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

He wrote that even if he had information to share with the House committee, the actions and statements of Democrats in the House of Representatives show that you are not conducting a fair-minded and objective inquiry.

Thompson sent a letter to Jordan in December 2021 making a formal request on behalf of the committee for Jordan to testify (pdf).

We write to seek your voluntary cooperation in advancing our investigation, the letter states. We understand that you had at least one and possibly multiple communications with President Trump on January 6th. We would like to discuss each such communication with you in detail.

The letter also states that despite the urgent requests that the President speak and instruct the rioters to leave, President Trump did not make such a statement for multiple hours as rioters attacked police and invaded and occupied the Capitol.

Lawmakers have accused the former president of encouraging violence at the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol, a claim Trump strongly denies.

His last Facebook post called for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful and nonviolent and to respect law and order. Trump also has repeatedly insisted that he requested to bring in the National Guard ahead of the Jan. 6 demonstration, but that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rejected the request.

A spokesman for the committee told The Epoch Times the Ohio Republicans response fails to address the principal bases for the Select Committees request for a meeting, including that he worked directly with President Trump and the Trump legal team to attempt to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election.

Mr. Jordan has admitted that he spoke directly to President Trump on January 6th and is thus a material witness. Mr. Jordans letter to the committee fails to address these facts. Mr. Jordan has previously said that he would cooperate with the committees investigation, but it now appears that the Trump team has persuaded him to try to hide the facts and circumstances of January 6th. The Select Committee will respond to this letter in more detail in the coming days and will consider appropriate next steps.

Jordan is the second congressman to be asked to cooperate with the partisan House committees investigation into the events, after Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) in December 2021 said he doesnt intend to accept the committees requests, calling the committee illegitimate.

The nine-member committee, which includes seven Democrats, has subpoenaed a number of people as part of its investigation, including Trumps former national security adviser Mike Flynn, former adviser Stephen Bannon, and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Earlier this month, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell sued the House select committee in an effort to stop telecommunications company Verizon from sharing his information with the panel. The committee had issued Verizon a subpoena for all of Lindells records for a cellphone he used regularly during the period of Nov. 1, 2020, to Jan. 31, 2021.

The committee has yet to find substantial evidence that high-ranking Republican officials participated in or had any prior knowledge of the events of the Capitol breach.
Report: Bob Saget Found Dead Lying in Hotel Bed, No Trauma

ORLANDO, Fla.Comedian and actor Bob Saget was found dead lying face up on his bed in a luxury hotel room in Florida with no signs of trauma, according to an sheriffs office report released Monday.

There were no signs of foul play, and the room itself was in order, with items owned by Mr. Saget on the nightstand, television stand, closet, and bathroom, according to the report from the Orange County Sheriffs Office.

Sagets left arm was across his chest and his right arm was resting on his bed when deputies and paramedics arrived Sunday at his room at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando and pronounced him dead, the report said.

Saget was best known for his role as beloved single dad Danny Tanner on the sitcom Full House and as the wisecracking host of Americas Funniest Home Videos. He was 65.

Saget had been scheduled to check out of his room on Sunday, and when family members were unable to get in touch with him, they contacted the hotels security team, which sent a security officer to his room, the report said.

When the security officer, Jody Lee Harrison, entered the room, all the lights were off. He found Saget on the bed and cold to the touch, Harrison told deputies, according to the report.

Harrison checked Saget for breathing and a pulse, and when he found none, he had the hotels security dispatch call 911, the report said.

We have an unresponsive guest in a room, an unidentified man from the hotel said in a 911 call. Not responsive. No breathing and no pulse.

Saget was declared dead shortly before 4:20 pm ET. His room key indicated he had entered the room a little before 2:20 a.m. ET, according to the report.

His body was sent to the local medical examiners office, which said in an email that it could take up to four months from the date of exam to complete an autopsy report.

Saget was in Florida as part of his I Dont Do Negative Comedy Tour. After warm audience receptions to his gigs Friday in Orlando and Saturday in the Ponte Vedra Beach resort area, he celebrated online.

Im back in comedy like I was when I was 26. I guess Im finding my new voice and loving every moment of it, he posted Saturday on Instagram.

Host Bob Saget poses alongside an Oscar statue before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 40th Student Academy Awards at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, Calif., on June 8, 2013. (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

In a statement Sunday, Sagets family members said they were devastated to confirm that our beloved Bob passed away today. Though we ask for privacy at this time, we invite you to join us in remembering the love and laughter that Bob brought to the world.

The sheriffs office report said hotel management notified Sagets wife, Kelly Rizzo, about her husbands death.

Fellow comedians and friends praised Saget not only for his wit, but his kindness.

I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him, wrote John Stamos, who co-starred with Saget on Full House. I love you so much Bobby.

By Mike Schneider
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel speaks during a press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington on Nov. 9, 2020. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Republicans Sue New York Officials Over Allowing Noncitizens to Vote

New York Mayor Eric Adams, the New York City Council, and New York Citys Board of Elections were sued Monday over a new law that lets noncitizens vote in elections.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) filed the suit in New York Supreme Court along with City Council Minority Leader Joseph Borrelli, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), and other Republicans.

Plaintiffs say a new bill that was passed by the Democrat-controlled City Council and allowed to become a law by Adams, a Democrat who took office on Jan. 1, violates the state Constitution and election law.

The bill, if allowed to take effect, would let about 800,000 noncitizens such as illegal immigrants who arrived in the United States as children vote in local elections.

New York law says that No person shall be qualified to register for and vote at any election unless he is a citizen of the United States and the New York Constitution says that voters must be citizens.

Thats two reasons the new bill is illegal, the suit states.

By dramatically increasing the pool of eligible voters, the Non-Citizen Voting Law will dilute the votes of United States citizens, including the Plaintiffs in this action, it says.

American elections should be decided by American citizens. If Democrats can subvert elections this flagrantly in Americas largest city, they can do it anywhere. The RNC is suing to protect the integrity of our elections, and we stand ready to do the same wherever Democrats try to attack the basic security of your ballot, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement.

Plaintiffs are asking the court to declare the bill as violative of the state Constitution and election law and permanently prohibit defendants from registering noncitizens to vote and from counting votes cast by noncitizens.

A City Council spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email: The bill was passed by a majority of the City Council, the citys duly elected legislative body that represents all New Yorkers. In accordance with city statute, the legislation has become city law.

Adams and the Board of Elections did not respond to requests for comment.

New York Mayor Eric Adams talks to reporters in the Bronx, New York on Jan. 10, 2022. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Adams defended the bill in a brief statement over the weekend, saying his earlier concerns about provisions in the bill had been alleviated in talks with local lawmakers.

I believe allowing the legislation to be enacted is by far the best choice, and look forward to bringing millions more into the democratic process, he said.

The City Council passed the bill 3314 last month.

Councilwoman Margaret Chin, a Democrat, told colleagues before the vote that many noncitizens struggle to become citizens but should still be able to vote in the meanwhile because they pay taxes and live and work in the city.

They want to be citizens, they want to be able to vote for the president, but at least we have the opportunity to allow them to vote for the elected officials that are representing them in the city, said Chin, who voted for the measure.

Borrelli, who voted against it, noted the state Constitutions definition of a voter was approved in 1938 and affirmed multiple times since.

This is not legal, what we are doing, he said.
Real estate heir Robert Durst appears in a Los Angeles Superior Court Airport Branch for a pre-trial motions hearing in Los Angeles, on Jan. 6, 2017. (Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times via AP)

Robert Durst, Real Estate Heir Convicted of Murder, Dies

LOS ANGELESRobert Durst, the wealthy New York real estate heir and failed fugitive who was dogged for decades with suspicion in the disappearance and deaths of those around him before he was convicted last year of killing his best friend, has died. He was 78.

Durst died of natural causes Monday in a hospital outside the California prison where he was serving a life sentence, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Durst had been held in a hospital lockup in Stockton due to a litany of ailments.

Durst was convicted in September of shooting Susan Berman at point-blank range at her Los Angeles home in 2000. He was sentenced Oct. 14 to life in prison without parole.

Durst had long been suspected of killing his wife, Kathie, who went missing in New York 1982 and was declared legally dead decades later.

But only after Los Angeles prosecutors proved he silenced Berman before she could tell police she helped him cover up Kathies killing was Durst indicted by a New York grand jury in November for second-degree murder in his wifes death.

Susan Berman (L) and Robert Durst pose sometime in the mid- to late 1990s. (Courtesy of Sareb Kaufman/HBO)

Los Angeles prosecutors also told jurors Durst got away with murder in Texas after shooting a man who discovered his identity when he was hiding out in Galveston after Bermans killing. Durst was acquitted of murder in that case in 2003, after testifying he shot the man as they struggled for a gun.

Deputy Los Angeles District Attorney John Lewin said jurors told him after the verdict that they believed Durst had killed his wife and murdered Morris Black in Texas.

Durst discussed the cases and made several damning statements including a stunning confession during an unguarded moment in the six-part HBO documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.

The show made his name known to a new generation and brought renewed scrutiny and suspicion from authorities. He was arrested in Bermans killing the night before the final episode, which closed with him mumbling to himself in a bathroom while still wearing hot mic saying: Youre caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.

The quotes were later revealed to have been manipulated for dramatic effect but the productiondone with Dursts cooperation against the advice from his lawyer and friendsdredged up new evidence including an envelope that connected Durst to the scene of Bermans killing as well as incriminating statements he made.

Police had received a note directing them to Bermans home with only the word CADAVER written in block letters.

In interviews given between 2010 and 2015, Durst told the makers of the The Jinx that he didnt write the note, but whoever did had killed her.

Youre writing a note to the police that only the killer could have written, Durst said.

His defense lawyers conceded in the run-up to trial that Durst had written the note, and prosecutors said it amounted to a confession.

Clips from The Jinx, and from the 2010 movie All Good Things in which Ryan Gosling played a fictionalized version of Durst, had starring roles at trial.

As did Durst himself. His attorneys again took the risk of putting him on the stand for what turned out to be about three weeks of testimony. It didnt work as it had in Texas.

Under devastating cross-examination by prosecutor Lewin, Durst admitted he lied under oath in the past and would do it again to get out of trouble.

Did you kill Susan Berman? is strictly a hypothetical, Durst said from the stand. I did not kill Susan Berman. But if I had, I would lie about it.

The jury promptly returned a guilty verdict.

It long appeared he would avoid any such convictions.

Robert Durst leaves Federal Court in an Orleans Parish Sheriffs vehicle after his arraignment, in New Orleans, on April 14, 2015. (Gerald Herbert/AP Photo)

Durst went on the run in late 2000 after New York authorities reopened an investigation into his wifes disappearance, renting a modest apartment in Galveston and disguising himself as a mute woman.

In 2001, the body parts of a neighbor, Black, began washing up in Galveston Bay.

Arrested in the killing, Durst jumped bail. He was arrested for shoplifting a sandwich six weeks later in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he had gone to college. Police found $37,000 cash and two handguns in his car.

He would testify that Black had pulled a gun on him and died when the weapon went off during a struggle. He told jurors in detail how he bought tools and dismembered and disposed of Blacks body. While he was cleared of murder, he pleaded guilty to violating his bail, and to evidence tampering for the dismemberment. He served three years in prison.

Durst had bladder cancer and his health deteriorated during the Berman trial. He was escorted into court in a wheelchair wearing prison attire each day because his attorneys said he was unable to change into a suit. But the judge declined further delays after a 14-month pause during the coronavirus pandemic.

DeGuerin said Durst was very, very sick at his sentencing hearing and it was the worst he looked in the 20 years he spent representing him.

Durst entered the courtroom with wide-eyed vacant stare. Near the end of the hearing after Bermans loved ones told the judge that her death upended their lives, Durst coughed hard and appeared to struggle to breathe. His chest heaved and he pulled his mask down below his mouth and began to gulp for air.

He was hospitalized two days later with COVID-19 and DeGuerin said he was on a ventilator. But Durst apparently recovered and was transferred to state prison where mug shots showed no sign of a ventilator.

The son of real estate magnate Seymour Durst, Robert Durst was born April 12, 1943, and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He would later say that at age 7, he witnessed his mothers death in a fall from their home.

He graduated with an economics degree in 1965 from Lehigh University, where he played lacrosse. He entered a doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he met Berman, but dropped out and returned to New York in 1969.

He became a developer in the family business, but his father passed him over to make his younger brother, and rival, Douglas the head of the Durst Organization in 1992.

In 1971, Robert Durst met Kathie McCormack, and the two married on his 30th birthday in 1973.

In January 1982, his wife was a student in her final year at medical school when she disappeared. She had shown up unexpectedly at a friends dinner party in Newtown, Connecticut, then left after a call from her husband to return to their home in South Salem, New York.

Robert Durst told police he last saw her when he put her on a train to stay at their apartment in Manhattan because she had classes the next day.

Prosecutors said Berman, the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster, posed as Kathie Durst to call Albert Einstein College of Medicine the next morning to say she was sick and wouldnt be at her hospital rotation. The call provided an alibi for Robert Durst because it made it appear his wife made it safely to Manhattan after he saw her.

He would divorce her eight years later, claiming spousal abandonment, and in 2017, at her familys request, she was declared legally dead.

Kathie McCormack Dursts family said they plan to provide an update on Jan. 31the 40th anniversary of her disappearanceinto an investigation of others who helped cover up her killing, attorney Robert Abrams said.

Robert Durst is survived by his second wife Debrah Charatan, whom he married in 2000. He had no children.

Under California law, a conviction is vacated if a defendant dies while the case is under appeal, said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School.

Attorney Chip Lewis said an appeal was filed for Durst.

By Andrew Dalton and Brian Melley
This still image taken from a video shows Russian citizens boarding a military evacuation plane as authorities have their documents checked in Kazakhstan on Jan. 9, 2021. (The Russian Defense Ministry via AP)

Russia Evacuates More Than 1,400 Citizens Amid Kazakhstan Unrest

Russian military forces evacuated more than 1,400 of its citizens from Kazakhstan over the weekend as political unrest continues to unfold across the central Asian republic, authorities announced on Jan. 10.

The transport aviation planes delivered a total of 1,461 Russian citizens from the Republic of Kazakhstan to Russia, the Russian Ministry of Defense told a news conference, media outlet TASS reported.

The federal agency revealed that 1,422 Russians were flown to Moscow on Jan. 9, while 14 were flown to Yekaterinburg, Russia. A total of 25 tourists who opted to return from Kazakhstan were transported as well.

The evacuation order comes amid massive protests in Kazakhstan that descended into violence last week, marking the worst unrest the former Soviet nation has faced since gaining its independence 30 years ago.

Authorities declared on Jan. 10 that Kazakh police have detained nearly 8,000 people thus far in the unrest that has seen 164 people officially killed during the ongoing violence.

There are unconfirmed reports from Kazakhs on social media sites such as Twitter that the actual death toll is much higher, as government forces implement President Kassym-Jomart Tokayevs order to shoot to kill, without warning.

Nationwide protests, which started on Jan. 2 in the city of Zhanaozen in Kazakhstans Mangistau region, began in response to an increase in the price cap for propane gas to 120 tenge (27 cents), from 2021s price of 60 tenge (14 cents).

Protesters attend a rally triggered by energy price hikes in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Jan. 4, 2022. (Abduaziz Madyarov/AFP via Getty Images)

Riot police gather to block demonstrators during a protest in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Jan. 5, 2022. (Vladimir Tretyakov/AP Photo)

Kazakhstan is also facing a cash and food shortage after Kazakhtelecom, the government-owned telecommunication giant, began throttling internet access on Jan. 4, leaving residents unable to access their money after debit card terminals, which rely on the internet and dominate retail outlets across the country, were shut down.

Authorities have declared a state of emergency over the ongoing violence, and Tokayev has requested help from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russian-aligned bloc of former Soviet countries, for international support.

The CSTO has sent in peacekeeping troops from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Belarus, and Russia, while the Russian Ministry of Defense has said that its deploying more than 70 Il-76 and five An-124 aircraft of the Russian contingent of the CSTO peacekeeping forces to Kazakhstan around the clock.

Victoria Kelly-Clark contributed to this report.

From NTD News
Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, Calif., on April 5, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Ruth Ann Moriarty, Matriarch of Orange Countys Segerstrom Family, Dies at 99

SANTA ANA, Calif.Ruth Ann Moriarty, considered the matriarch of one of Orange Countys most prominent families and a noted philanthropist in her own right, has died at the age of 99.

Moriarty was the older sister of Henry T. Segerstrom, who developed South Coast Plaza and the adjacent Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa.

She died Tuesday, Jan. 4, two weeks shy of her 100th birthday.

We are deeply saddened that our mother, Ruth Ann, is no longer with us, but are very grateful to have been part of the long and vibrant life that she shared with us and others, her children said in a joint statement issued Friday, the OC Register reported. We will always treasure her incomparable legacy of service to communities in need.

The Segerstrom family emigrated from Sweden in 1882. Moriartys grandparents worked in the dairy industry before becoming one of the largest independent producers of lima beans in the nation.

Moriarty graduated from Santa Ana High School and received registered nurse credentials at USC, where she trained as a World War II cadet nurse.

While at USC, she also met her husband, Eugene Moriarty, who died in 2011. They were married for 60 years and had three children.

While Henry T. Segerstrom, who died in 2015, earned considerable notoriety for his role in Orange Countys growth, Ruth was a major figure in many local charities and community groups, and also served as the familys historian, helping to curate the 2017 exhibition, Segerstrom Pioneering Spirit: An American Dream.

She was a founding member of the Womens Auxiliary of Orange County, a board member of the Visiting Nurses Association of Orange County, a supporter of the Assistance League of Santa Ana, and a member of Ebell Society of Santa Ana.

Moriarty was also a lifetime member of the Salvation Armys Orange County Advisory Board, served on the Humanities Board of UC Irvine and was a patron of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

In 1999, she was honored at the Salvation Armys Spirit of Giving Awards.

She was very committed to serving the homeless. She was extremely outgoing, friendly, and she was deeply passionate about our work, the Salvation Armys Justin Coleman told the Register.

Moriarty is survived by her daughter Jean; sons Richard and Donald; six grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.

No services are scheduled at this time, but memories and expressions of sympathy can be shared at www.fairhavenmemorial.com.
A "Welcome Back to School" banner hangs on the fence as students in years 2 to 11 return to school at Fairvale High School in Sydney, Australia, Oct. 25, 2021. (AAP Image/Bianca De Marchi)

Schools Should Be the Last to Close and the First to Open: Australian Expert

Australias former deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth said no state should delay the return to school to wait for higher vaccination rates of children aged 5 to 11.

Every government and medical expert in this country needs to follow the lead of the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Childrens Fund, which both state that schools should be the last to close and the first to open, Coatsworth told Nines, Today Show. We are not in a situation in Australia that requires a delay to school opening.

He said vaccinations were more critical for the adult cohort, so parents should not stress over getting their children vaccinated before class starts.

We have got to leave this fear behind and replace it with facts, Coatsworth said, noting that data from the U.S. showed that mortality rates among fully vaccinated individuals was 0.003 percent.

He wrote on Twitter, calling on parents to resist calls for hybrid or remote learning, saying there was no justification for it.

New South Wales (NSW) Premier Dominic Perrottet said the government was completely committed to getting kids back to school on day one, term one.

We are finalising our back-to-school plans at the moment, Perrottet told reporters on Jan. 9. That is exactly the focus of the NSW government. It is crucial that kids are back in school on day one.

The premier said it was clear that it was best to ensure children are back in the classroom, but there would be bumps along the way.

Additionally, the NSW government has mandated booster shots for school staff as part of new measures to curb the spread of Omicron.

As we prepare for the start of term one, our focus remains on keeping our staff and students safe. Adding a booster shot to the vaccination mandate will help maintain confidence that schools are a safe place to learn and work, NSW Department of Education Secretary Georgina Harrisson said.

The governments return to school plan will rely on rapid antigen testing after it secured its first batch of 100 million tests.

The procurement of these additional rapid antigen tests will support the NSW public sector workforce, support our return to school plan and provide support to those most in need, Trade and Investment Minister Stuart Ayres said.

Coatsworth said this plan was the only sustainable option and parents should be reassured that a test to stay has been in place throughout countries in Europe and the United Kingdom already. It involves testing the rest of the classroom when there is one positive case and allowing those with negative results to stay in the classroom.

And thats the way to have the balance, he said.
A selection of IVF hormone bottles and syringes are seen, at the Science Museum in London, on July 23, 2018. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Scotland Defers Fertility Treatment for Unvaccinated Women

Unvaccinated women in Scotland have found their NHS fertility treatment appointments cancelled due to their CCP virus vaccination status.

The Scottish government said its taking a more cautious approach because of the increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virusamong unvaccinated pregnant women, as well as the uncertainty around the Omicron variant of the virus.

But the policy is criticised as being inhumane by the Scottish Labour Party.

The Scottish government published Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Gregor Smiths letter of recommendation on Jan. 7.

The letter said NHS fertility treatment aimed at creating a pregnancy should be deferred for patients who are not fully vaccinated against COVID-19, but fertility-preserving treatment is exempt from the deferral.

According to local media reports, a number of couples received phone calls on Christmas Eve telling them their fertility treatment appointments were cancelled because the women werent fully vaccinated.

Jemma McDonald and Hayden Brown, a couple who found out their appointment was cancelled a couple of days before Christmas, told Scottish tabloid the Daily Record that they had been trying for a baby for five years.

The 25-year-olds were scheduled to sign the consent forms to begin in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment after going through a yearslong process of preimplantation genetic diagnosis.

I spoke to a receptionist who said there were some phone calls being made because if you hadnt been vaccinated you were no longer eligible to get IVF, McDonald said.

The nursery teacher said she had hoped to be pregnant by March or April and the setback felt really upsetting.

The couple decided not to get vaccinated because the Scottish government had initially advised pregnant women and women preparing for pregnancy against taking the shots.

McDonald said she personally felt that there is not enough evidence about what could potentially happen to a baby in three or four years time.

I feel it is a complete breach of our human rights, the young woman said.

Another woman, who didnt get the CCP virus vaccines after hearing they affected her friends menstrual cycle, told the newspaper that she was heartbroken upon hearing the news and cried for two hours.

Jackie Baillie, deputy leader and health spokesperson for the Scottish Labour Party, slammed the SNP government for the policy which she said was inhumane.

Of course I would encourage everyone to get vaccinated as the best protection against the virus, but the rules were confusing at the start and treating these women in this way is inhumane, she said.

A Scottish government spokesman said: Due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases, and concerns about the impact on unvaccinated women, ministers have taken a decision to temporarily defer fertility treatment for women who are not fully vaccinated. We continue to review the evidence and will look to review this decision early this year.

A health worker administers a dose of a CCP virus vaccine to a pregnant woman at a pop-up vaccination centre at the Redbridge Town Hall, east London, on Dec. 25, 2021. (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)

The deferral of fertility treatment for unvaccinated women came after the UK governments Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) designated pregnant women as a clinical risk group and urged them to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

Smith said recent UK data showed that unvaccinated pregnant women and their babies have died after admission to hospital with COVID-19 and 98% of pregnant women in ICU with COVID-19 were unvaccinated.

According to data from NHS Scotland, in August, the percentage of pregnant women who got vaccinated during pregnancy was 15.6 percent.

JCVIs COVID-19 subcommittee chair Professor Wei Shen Lim said on Dec. 16, 2021, that there was no evidence to suggest that COVID-19 vaccines used in pregnancy increase the risk of miscarriage, stillbirths, congenital abnormalities, or birth complications.

Having a UK-approved COVID-19 vaccine is safer than having COVID-19 itself, he said.

According to the latest analysis of Yellow Card data from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), reports of miscarriage and stillbirth are  low in comparison to how commonly these events occurred in the UK outside of the pandemic.

The report also said there were a few reports of commonly occurring congenital anomalies and obstetric events, but no pattern suggested the vaccines had increased the risks of miscarriage, stillbirths, congenital anomalies, or birth complications.

The MHRAs Yellow Card reporting site holds self-reported suspected adverse reactions to medicines, vaccines, medical devices, or test kits.

The agency published an update in May 2019 urging people to diligently report suspected adverse drug reactions after a fall in reporting, saying it was estimated that only 10 percent of serious reactions and between two and four percent of non-serious reactions were reported.

But it said the estimate should not be used as indicators of the reporting rate for COVID-19 vaccines, for which there is high public awareness of the Yellow Card scheme and the reporting of suspected reactions.

The UK Health Security Agencys COVID-19 vaccination guidance on pregnancy and breastfeeding said theres no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines have any effect on fertility or your chances of becoming pregnant.

A new study published on Friday said the mRNA vaccines are associated with a change in menstrual cycle length, but no population-level clinically meaningful change was found.

The researcher added that questions remain about other possible changes in menstrual cycles, such as menstrual symptoms, unscheduled bleeding, and changes in the quality and quantity of menstrual bleeding.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
Ex-MP of Afghanistan attacked by gunmen : Media

Kabul, Jan 9 (UNI) Abdul Hadi Safi, ex-Member of Parliament from Afghanistan, was attacked by unknown gunmen in Kabul, media reported.

He was attacked on his return to home from mosque after Friday prayers.

"The Islamic Emirate should make it clear whether they did it or someone else," said Abdul Basir Safi, Safis son was quoted as saying by TOLO news.
Signs of Inbreeding Among SoCal Mountain Lions Raise Extinction Fears

LOS ANGELESScientists tracking two local mountain lion populations, one in the Santa Monica Mountains and the other in the Santa Anas, have identified the first reproductive signs of inbreeding among these groups, which are cut off from breeding options by busy freeways.

Led by the University of CaliforniaLos Angeles (UCLA), the studywhich is available online and will be published in the January 2022 edition of the journal Theriogenologyreported that the animals averaged a 93 percent abnormal sperm rate, while some also displayed physical signs of inbreeding, like deformed tails or testicular defects.

Researchers have long had genetic evidence of inbreeding, but the malformed sperm may be the first evidence that inbreeding is manifesting in the reproductive system.

This is a serious problem for an animal thats already endangered locally, said the studys lead author, Audra Huffmeyer, a National Geographic Explorer and a UCLA postdoctoral researcher who studies fertility in large cat species. Its quite severe.

Researchers said the results lend urgency to the need for wildlife crossingsstructures that allow the mountain lions and other animals to roam further and find a broader pool of potential mates.

Mountain lions, also known as cougars, are a bellwether species, making them a leading indicator that inbreeding could soon cause problems for other species in the Santa Monica and Santa Ana mountains, the authors said.

Two of three 11-month-old rescued cougar cubs play together at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, Calif., on April 26, 2007. (David Paul Morris/Getty Images)

The California Department of Transportation has scheduled groundbreaking for early 2022 on one such wildlife crossing, a bridge over the Ventura (101) Freeway in Agoura Hills, thanks to a mix of public and private funding.

Biologists and land managers hope this project will lead to more crossings. Early plans are being formulated for a possible structure over Interstate 15 in Riverside County.

The latest study draws on work by scientists from UCLA, the National Park Services (NPS) Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and the University of CaliforniaDavis (UC Davis) Wildlife Health Center. Both the NPS and UC Davis are carrying out long-term studies of Southern California mountain lion populations, currently following 17 cats.

Over the past year, the research team identified nine adult males from the Santa Monica and Santa Ana ranges with signs of inbreeding, including the first evidence of reduced fertility.

Their findings are similar to the signs of severe inbreeding seen early on among most Florida panthers in the 1990s, including the kinked tails, undescended testes, and teratospermia (60 percent or more abnormal sperm), Huffmeyer noted. The Florida panther population only recovered with the introduction of mountain lions from Texas.

The Florida panthers were also severely isolated and severely inbred, so the fact that were seeing the same traits in our mountain lion population is alarming, she said. If we dont do anything to introduce more genetic diversity to the Southern California mountain lions, we will have more males with reproductive problems, fewer kittens, and a lower rate of kitten survival.

The scientists cited a real risk of extinction for the mountain lions in the Santa Monica and Santa Ana ranges. Once significant inbreeding depression is foundmeaning decreased fertility and reduced kitten survivalextinction is predicted to occur within 50 years, according to 2016 and 2019 papers evaluating population viability that included scientists from UCLA, NPS, UC Davis, the University of Wyoming, and the University of Nebraska.

While a few mountain lionsin particular the cougar known as P-22, which frequents Griffith Parkhave successfully crossed freeways, far more have been killed trying to do so.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch delivers remarks after taking the judicial oath during a ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington April 10, 2017. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Supreme Court Corrects Transcript to Show Gorsuch Didnt Make False Flu Claim

The Supreme Court has updated its official transcript of court proceedings that took place last week, clarifying that Justice Neil Gorsuch did not make a false claim about the flu.

The nations top court heard oral arguments on Friday for and against two Biden administration COVID-19 vaccine mandates, including one promulgated against every business with 100 or more workers by the Department of Labors Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Gorsuch, a Trump nominee, during questioning of Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, said that polio was a terrible scourge on this country for many years but that the federal government has never mandated it for workers through OSHA.

We have flu vaccines. The flu kills, I believe, hundreds of thousands of people every year. OSHA has never purported to regulate on that basis. What do we make of that when were thinking about what qualifies as a major question and what doesnt? Gorsuch was quoted as saying.

Critics noted that hundreds of thousands of people are not killed by the flu every year in the United States, but some people noted that Gorsuch had not appeared to say hundreds of thousands.

The Supreme Court on Monday quietly updated the transcript (pdf), with Gorsuch being quoted now as saying, The flu kills, I believe, hundreds, thousands of people every year.

The court did not alert the public to the change and spokespersons have not responded to emailed questions regarding the sessions on Friday.

Several news outlets that had reported Gorsuch as falsely saying hundreds of thousands of people die annually from the flu corrected their stories, including Newsweek, after the clarification.

During the arguments on Friday, multiple judges promoted misinformation about COVID-19, including Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer.

Sotomayor, an Obama nominee, falsely claimed that 100,000 children are seriously ill with COVID-19. The figure is actually around 3,500.

Breyer, a Clinton nominee, falsely said that 750 million new COVID-19 cases were recorded on Jan. 6. The United States has a population of 331 million people, and recorded just under 792,000 cases on Jan. 6.

Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama nominee, also drew criticism for claiming we know that the best way to prevent spread is for people to get vaccinated and to prevent dangerous illness and death is for people to get vaccinated and that the second best is to wear masks.

Vaccines do not prevent transmission of the virus that causes COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though they do help prevent severe illness.

Many types of masks, meanwhile, have little effect on the virus, studies have found. A growing number of experts have recently acknowledged the research and are encouraging people to buy and use rated masks like KN95s.

During the sessions, justices appeared skeptical of the Biden administration having the authority to put forth the mandates, but the court has not yet intervened even as they have come into effect.
Supreme Court to Review Washington State Workers Comp Law for Federal Contractors at Former Nuclear Site

The Supreme Court agreed to review a Washington state law that extended workers compensation benefits to workers at a decommissioned federal nuclear production facility where employees suffered exposure to radioactive waste and toxic fumes.

The case could have expensive consequences for U.S. government contracts related to hazardous work conducted on federal property. The Biden administration argues that the state law impermissibly intrudes on federal authority.

The decision to hear the case, United States v. Washington, court file 21-404, an appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, came Jan. 10. The high court didnt provide reasons for its decision, according to its custom. The case likely will be heard in the coming months.

Since 1989, the U.S. Department of Energy has been overseeing the cleanup at the Hanford Site, a 600-square-mile site along the Columbia River in Washington state, which made weapons-grade plutonium for the Manhattan Project, the nations nuclear program during World War II and the Cold War. The remediation of the site is anticipated to span the coming six decades and involve about 400 department employees, along with another 10,000 contractors and subcontractors, according to a Bloomberg Law summary.

The Hanford Site was chosen because it had a ready supply of cold river water needed to cool nuclear reactors, plenty of hydroelectric power, mild climate, good transportation facilities, and was far away from major population centers. Workers there built and operated the worlds first nuclear production reactors that generated the plutonium used in the Trinity Test and in the atomic bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 9, 1945, according to the National Park Service, which runs a visitors center there.

In 2018, Washington state enacted House Bill 1723, which created a legal presumption that some medical conditions affecting workers involved in remediation efforts at the site are occupation-related diseases that can lead to workers compensation benefits. Workers have to demonstrate they were injured on the job before they can seek benefits. The law was passed after reports emerged that workers in Hanford had become sickened but were denied workers compensation benefits because they were federal contractors.

Federal employees at Hanford, like all other federal employees, receive workers compensation coverage through the Federal Employees Compensation Act, according to the U.S. governments petition to the Supreme Court.

The FECA does not apply to individuals, including federal contract workers, who are directly employed by entities other than the federal government, the petition states. Absent congressional consent, States generally have limited authority to enforce their laws at federally owned facilities or on federal land.

The federal government sued, claiming the statute discriminates against it and the firms employing federal contract workers, and citing the intergovernmental-immunity principle of the supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution. A U.S. district court granted summary judgment to the state and a panel of the 9th Circuit upheld that decision. The panel later amended its decision and, over the dissent of four judges, the circuit court denied a petition that would have had the full appeals court rehear the case.

The Biden administration said the reasoning behind the 9th Circuits decision could encourage other states to enact laws targeting operations at federal facilities.

Congress did not permit States to adopt laws that impose unique burdens on the United States and the firms that it engages to carry out federal functions, administration lawyers argued. The practical consequences of the panels mistake are far-reaching. Even if the Hanford site is considered in isolation, the decision is likely to cost the United States tens of millions of dollars annually for the remainder of the 21st century.

In September 2021, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, called out the Biden administration, saying it was involved in a cruel effort to invalidate the state law.

The Trump administration attempted to gut Washingtons protections for Hanford workers that get sick on the joband my legal team beat them twice. We defeated the Trump administration in a federal court in Yakima, and again at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, he said.

Now the Biden administration is continuing Donald Trumps cruel effort to eliminate these critical protections for the hardworking men and women at Hanford.

Ferguson didnt respond to a request from The Epoch Times for comment before press time.
A sign is posted in front of a Taco Bell restaurant in Novato, Calif., on Feb. 22, 2018. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Taco Bell Employee Shot Dead at Drive-Through Window

LOS ANGELESAn employee at a Taco Bell in South Los Angeles was shot dead by a man in a black sedan who tried to pay for his meal with a counterfeit bill at the restaurants drive-through window, authorities said Jan. 9.

Police were dispatched shortly before 11 p.m. Saturday to the 9900 block of Avalon Boulevard, said Officer Norma Eisenman of the Los Angeles Police Departments Media Relations Division.

The victim was shot multiple times and pronounced dead at the scene, Eisenman said.

CBS2 identified the victim as 41-year-old Alejandro Garcia, who was working with his 19-year-old son.

The son was the one who denied the counterfeit money, according to CBS2.

We are shocked and saddened to hear that this happened, Taco Bell said in a statement. Our deepest condolences go out to the family and friends of the team member in this difficult time. We understand the owner and operator of this location is working with the local authorities in their investigation and has reached out directly to the affected family to offer support.

Breanna Leonard, who lives near the Taco Bell, told CBS2, Its not safe nowhere, no more. Thats somebodys child. Its over food. Oh my gosh. I just dont know. Theres no point in taking somebodys life, over a fake $100 bill.

Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore is calling for people who know who shot and killed an employee at a Taco Bell in South Los Angeles to step forward.

We can not become desensitized to this violence, Moore tweeted Sunday, calling the killing senseless. There are those who know who did this. Humanity demands that you step forward.
Frances Widdowson, a former associate professor in the department of economics, justice, and policy studies at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, in an undated photo. (Courtesy of Frances Widdowson)

Tenured Professor Critical of Identity Politics Fired by University

A tenured professor known for speaking out against wokeism and identity politics was fired by her university just before Christmas, which she says happened amid a campaign to have her terminated because of her views.

Frances Widdowson, an associate professor in the department of economics, justice, and policy studies at Mount Royal University (MRU) in Calgary, was informed of her termination on Dec. 20, effective immediately.

Widdowson says MRU, like many other universities and various areas of society, has embraced identity politics that has become totalitarian.

Identity politics has been around for quite a long time. But more recently, it started to assert itself by saying that you must accept the claims that are made by certain identities, and if you dont, youll be considered an oppressive person and you should really be prevented from speaking and pushed out of the university. And thats basically what happened to me, she told The Epoch Times.

So in my case, when I criticized various ideas that are being put forward that are associated with wokeism, Ive been told that this constitutes hate, this constitutes harassment, this constitutes denying the humanity of various groups and so on.

MRU says it cant comment as to why Widdowson was let go as it involves private personnel issues. The professor says she also cant reveal specific details of her firing at this time as the case is going to arbitration.

Widdowson, who had worked at Mount Royal since 2008, is a board member of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship and a core member of the Rational Space Network, a faculty group at MRU that promotes open inquiry, critical thinking, and evidence-based approaches in post-secondary education.

She says that although I was never a popular figure [at MRU], it was recognized that I had my place and I could raise questions and criticize various policies.

But after the killing of George Floyd during his arrest in Minnesota in May 2020, the shift toward wokeism completely went off the rails [and] things became much more extreme in terms of the attempts at censorship and preventing me from operating in the university, she says.

In September 2020, after Widdowson commented in a Western Standard article that the Black Lives Matter movement had destroyed the culture at MRU and that she doesnt recognize the institution anymore, it led to a petition to have her fired, which garnered over 6,000 signatures.

The petition called for Widdowson to be terminated for her racist remarks and racist actions.

There was a campaign by about 30 faculty members to try to get me fired, she says.

She notes, however, that she was never opposed to fighting racism but objected to the promotion of critical race theory (CRT) and the insistence that people must agree with it.

What was happening is that a number of groups were claiming that there should be these totalitarian types of initiatives that should be brought in, like mandatory anti-racism training, and it was claimed that if you challenge ideas of systemic racism, this was itself racist, she said.

Even more disturbingly, its now being claimed that this is actually a violation of the lawto criticize the ideas that are being put forward by people who belong to certain groups.

CRT redefines human history as a struggle between oppressorswhite peopleand the oppressedeverybody elsesimilar to Marxisms reduction of history to a struggle between the bourgeois and the proletariat. Proponents of CRT say the theory demonstrates how pervasive systemic racism truly is. Critics say its argument about systemic racism is riddled with fallacies and includes totalitarian elements of coercion and suppression of dissent.

Indigenous Issues

Widdowson has spent over 20 years studying and writing about indigenous issues and policies.

She has authored two books on indigenous issues. The 2008 book Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The Deception Behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation, which she co-wrote, argued that decades of current policies have failed to address the fundamental economic and cultural basis of problems faced by indigenous peoples.

In her 2019 book Separate but Unequal: How Parallelist Ideology Conceals Indigenous Dependency, she analyzed the concept of parallelism, the prevailing view that indigenous cultures and the broader Canadian society should exist separately from each other in a nation-to-nation relationship, and argued that the pursuit of this ideology has distorted Canadians understanding of indigenous-non-indigenous relations.

She edited Indigenizing the University: Diverse Perspectives, a book published in March 2021 that provides diverse perspectives on how current efforts impact indigenous and non-indigenous peoples and universities as a whole.

Actually, to me, indigenization is anti-indigenous because its denying indigenous people the high-quality education that they are entitled to, she said. I think if people really did take the time to read my work, they would realize that Im very concerned about the circumstances of indigenous people.

Widdowson says that because of her views on indigenous issues, her life at MRU became increasingly difficult over the past five years, particularly after Indigenizing the University was published, which directly criticizes MRUs indigenization initiative.

The fact that I published that book and hold the views that I do led a whole bunch of my colleagues to create a toxic workplace for me, she said.

In an email statement to The Epoch Times, MRU said it will not be providing specific details on the matter of Widdowsons termination but affirmed that it unequivocally supports academic debate and will always defend the rights of faculty related to academic freedom.

However, academic freedom does not justify harassment or discrimination, the statement said.

Mount Royal employees have the right to work in an environment that is respectful and free from harassment. The collective agreement and MRU policies outline a process for resolving issues of workplace conduct, and decisions are always made following rigorous due process.

Widdowson says her union is taking the case to arbitration and she will demand to be reinstated.

Ive done nothing wrong.  I dont see why I should show remorse for defending myself from being smeared by many faculty members and the anonymous supposedly student-led group that exists, she said.

I have kept documentation of everything that has happened since 2016, and in arbitration those documents will all be released. So the public can begin to understand the terrible circumstances that have been unfolding at Mount Royal University.
Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos speaks during an update on the governments response to the pandemic, in Ottawa on Dec. 10, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Justin Tang)

The Scary Ramifications of Making COVID Vaccination Compulsory for Everyone

Commentary

If we dont have the right to bodily autonomy, we have no rights at all. There is no right more sacred than that of the individual to choose what may or may not be imposed upon their physical being.

Two years ago it would have been unimaginable to consider any developed nation violating this most fundamental of rights. Now, however, we are seeing a handful of nations as ostensibly democratically advanced as Austria imposing mandatory vaccination upon its citizens while Canadas federal health minister has proposed similar incursions upon our bodies.

This is a troubling new development in a world gone mad over the COVID-19 pandemic, and we need to pay attention. If we let go of the right to control what goes into our bodies, we will not easily get it back.

When Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos pitched mandatory vaccinations for Canadian citizens, I was enraged but not surprised. Authoritarians will never stop working to extend government control upon citizens. The Trudeau administration has hardly hidden the contempt it feels for citizens who have chosen not to get vaccinated.

Prime Minister Trudeau made international news when he likened the unvaccinated to racists and misogynists in an interview last September. There has been a concerted attempt to villainize and even dehumanize Canadians who have thus far chosen not to get vaccinated. When the prime minister is willing to make the absurd comparison between the vaccine-hesitant and racists, it is hardly shocking that his senior ministers are feeling inspired to infringe upon the rights of this new underclass of citizens.

My expectations for the federal government when it comes to respecting human rights are low, and the government has been meeting them. What has me more concerned is the docile response from Canadian citizens as they passively shrug off a proposal from the federal government to mandate medication upon the citizenry. We should be screaming our opposition to forced vaccinations from the rooftops, yet our collective silence is deafening.

It was good to see premiers Jason Kenney and Scott Moe quickly expressing opposition to Ducloss musings. Kenney tweeted: Albertas Legislature removed the power of mandatory vaccination from the Public Health Act last year and will not revisit that decision, period.

While its nice to see premiers expressing opposition to mandatory vaccinations, it cant be forgotten that Kenneys words were just as uncompromising when he opposed the imposition of vaccination passports. Alberta later embraced vaccination passports despite Kenneys vows not to. We cant rest assured that our premiers will protect us from forced medication.

The erosion of our rights has been an incremental thing. In the last two years, we have suspended rights to freedom of movement, association, and commerce in the name of fighting the pandemic. We let those rights go with nary a whimper so we shouldnt be startled when the state seeks to take away our very sovereignty of person.

We cant let the discussion over forcing medical treatment upon unwilling citizens get sidetracked into debates over the efficacy of vaccinations. How good or bad vaccines may be is irrelevant. We must remain focused on the right and ability for citizens to choose what may be done with their bodies.

The state has created and identified a minority within its citizenry, and is blaming that minority for the ills of the nation. Political leaders are inflaming the population and working to turn the majority against the minority in order to justify the suspension of individual rights. This is a very dangerous road we are travelling down.

Whatever happened to the rallying cry of My body my choice!

In our society today it is considered inconceivable to force a woman to carry a child to term if she doesnt want to, and of course it would be horrific to force an abortion on a woman. A womans right to choose is considered inviolate, and yet if some politicians get their way, that same woman may be forced to accept a vaccination she doesnt want.

Most of those who now remain unvaccinated will not willingly get vaccinated under any circumstances. They have been banned from travel, locked out of business establishments, and put out of work. They have been ostracized and demonized. Do we really want to see scenes where people are physically restrained and injected or perhaps jailed until they comply? That is the only way we will see a fully vaccinated population.

I got vaccinated, and I honestly hope that more people choose to do so. But I would never consider for a second abiding by my fellow citizens being vaccinated through force. The loss of the right to control my body scares me much more than any virus ever will.

If we allow mandatory vaccine mandates to happen, we wont be on the slippery slope of losing rights. We will have already hit bottom.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R) (R-Ohio) questions top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., and Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs George P. Kent testify before the House Intelligence Committee in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill November 13, 2019 in Washington. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Thompson Says Jordans Refusal to Testify Before Jan. 6 Select Committee Fails to Address the Issues

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, said through a spokesman Monday that a response by Rep. Jim Jordan to his panels request the Ohio Republican appear before the panel failed to address the issues at hand.

Jordan in a letter made public late Sunday rejected the invitation. A spokesman for the committee told The Epoch Times the Ohio Republicans response fails to address the principal bases for the Select Committees request for a meeting, including that he worked directly with President Trump and the Trump legal team to attempt to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election.

Mr. Jordan has admitted that he spoke directly to President Trump on January 6th and is thus a material witness. Mr. Jordans letter to the committee fails to address these facts. Mr. Jordan has previously said that he would cooperate with the committees investigation, but it now appears that the Trump team has persuaded him to try to hide the facts and circumstances of January 6th. The Select Committee will respond to this letter in more detail in the coming days and will consider appropriate next steps.

Jordan described the panels invitation as unprecedented and inappropriate. In a searing four-page, single-spaced letter to Thompson, Jordan said the panels request that he answer questions about his discussions on and before Jan. 6 with President Donald Trump and several of his advisors violates congressional prerogatives.

It amounts to an unprecedented and inappropriate demand to examine the basis for a colleagues decision on a particular matter pending before the House of Representatives. This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core Constitutional principles, and would serve to further erode legislative norms, Jordan told Thompson.

Jordan, who is the Ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, was reacting to a lengthy list of requests in a Dec. 22 letter from Thompson, who said we understand that you had at least one and possibly multiple communications with President Trump on January 6th. We would like to discuss each such communication with you in detail.

And we also wish to inquire about any communications you had on January 5th or 6th with those in the Willard War Room, the Trump legal team, White House personnel or others involved in organizing or planning the actions and strategies for January 6th.

Thompson also noted that the events on the day of January 6th are not our only focus. We also must learn about the activities that led to the attack on January 6th. Public reporting suggests that you may also have information about meetings with White House officials and the then-President in November and December 2020, and early-January 2021, about strategies for overturning the results of the 2020 election.

But Jordan responded Sunday by pointing out that Thompsons request amounted to an unconstitutional attempt to undermine an elected representatives confidential decision-making process about an issue before Congress.

At the time of the security breach of the Capitol, I was present in the House chamber performing my official duties pursuant to the U.S. Constitution and federal law. The other topics referenced in your letter likewise relate to the performance of official duties, Jordan told Thompson.

Your attempt to pry into the deliberative process informing a Member about legislative matters before the House is an outrageous abuse of the Select Committees authority. This unprecedented action serves no legitimate legislative purpose and would set a dangerous precedent for future Congresses, Jordan continued.

Thompsons panel has issued subpoenas for former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The panel has also sought to question Fox News opinion host Sean Hannity and Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who declined almost immediately upon being asked. The panel has not subpoenaed or requested testimony from any Democrats.

It is telling that the Select Committee has chosen only to target Republican Members with demands for testimony about January 6. Unlike many senior Democrats, I have been consistent in denouncing political violence and supporting law enforcement personnelwhether the violence occurred on Jan. 6 at the Capitol or in the summer of 2020 in cities across the country, Jordan told Thompson in his letter.

I am aware of no effort by the Select Committee to solicit testimony from Speaker Pelosi, House Administration Chair Zoe Lofgren, or any other Democrat Members with responsibility for or oversight of the security posture at the Capitol complex on January 6. This double standard confirms our suspicion that Democrats are using the Select Committee as a partisan cudgel against their political adversaries and not to advance any legitimate legislative purpose, Jordan said.

Jordan was originally slated to be a member of the Thompson committee, along with House Republican Study Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), but Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) refused to allow either congressman to participate.

As a result, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) withdrew all five of his GOP nominees in protest of Pelosis action. Pelosi then appointed Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) to serve on the January 6 panel. Cheney and Kinzinger had voted to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol.
A fire at a Balukhali refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on March 22, 2021. (Courtesy of Rohingya Right Team/MD Arakani/Handout via Reuters)

Thousands of Bangladesh Rohingya Refugees Left Homeless After Fire Sweeps Camp

More than 5,000 people were displaced after a massive fire swept through a Rohingya refugee camp in southern Bangladesh on Jan. 9, police said.

The fire broke out at Camp 16 in Coxs Bazar, where more than a million Rohingya refugees live, a spokesman for the Armed Police Battalion, Kamran Hossain, said. About 1,200 houses were reportedly engulfed in flames, although there have been no reports of casualties so far, he said.

The cause of the fire is not yet clear, according to Mohammed Shamsud Douza, a government official in charge of refugees.

The fire started at 4:40 p.m. and was brought under control at around 6:30 p.m., Hossain told reporters, according to The National News.

Everything is gone. Many are without homes, said Abu Taher, a Rohingya refugee.

The Rohingya refugees came from Burma, also known as Myanmar, and have been denied citizenship since a Burmese citizenship law was enacted in 1982. The United Nations said more than 700,000 Rohingya people fled to Bangladesh due to a military clampdown in 2017.

Another fire ripped through a COVID-19 treatment center for refugees sheltering in Bangladesh on Jan. 2. The U.N. migration agency IOM said in a Twitter post that while no casualties were reported as a result of the fire, some parts of the hospital were badly damaged.

IOM and partners have worked hard to put out the fire and assist those in need, the agency said.

A similar incident occurred last March in Bangladesh, when a massive fire ripped through a Rohingya refugee camp, killing at least 15 people and injuring 560 others. A U.N. official said that around 45,000 people have been displaced, and approximately 10,000 shelters damaged or destroyed as a result of the fire.

Meanwhile, more than 3,000 Rohingya businesses in Bangladesh have been demolished by authorities since last month as the illegal shops have sprouted as the countrys Rohingya population has increased.

Human rights groups had previously accused Bangladeshi authorities of forcing hundreds of Rohingya refugees to relocate to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal. Douza rejected that claim, saying that all 379 refugees voluntarily chose to relocate to Bashan Char Island in search of a better and more secure life.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Calumny of Apelles, circa 1496, by Sandro Botticelli. Tempera on panel; 24.4 inches by 35.8 inches. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy. (Public Domain)

The information age has also brought about a massive amount of misinformation. Theres so much available information that its difficult to know what is true and what is false, and because of this, some of us might fall victim to what we call fake news.

Its not only the media that spreads misinformation. A coworker, a friend, or even a family member does so, too. More specifically, someone may spread lies about us. How should we handle these circumstances? The painting Calumny of Apelles by Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli might offer us some insights.

Lucians Apelles

Before we can interpret Botticellis painting, it is necessary to know a little about what inspired it.

Botticelli was inspired by the story of the ancient Greek painter Apelles. Apelles was considered one of the greatest painters of his time. He was so great, in fact, that some of his contemporaries became jealous of him. One of these artists, Antiphilos, sought to ruin Apelles by telling King Ptolemy I that Apelles was involved in a conspiracy against him.

As a result, Apelles was thrown in jail and was nearly executed. Some accounts suggest that Apelles painted Calumny as an argument for his innocence, but its unclear how he would have done this from prison. Others suggest that Apelles was freed after the real conspirators testified in favor of his innocence. Either way, Apelles painted Calumny because of the spread of misinformation.

One of the few known descriptions of Apelless Calumny was offered by the Greek writer Lucian. Around 1,500 years later, Botticelli would come across Lucians description of Apelless painting and would try to re-create it himself from the description alone.

Botticellis Calumny of Apelles

Detail of Calumny of Apelles, circa 1496, by Sandro Botticelli. Tempera on panel; 24.4 inches by 35.8 inches. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy. (Public Domain)

In Calumny of Apelles, Botticelli reinterpreted Lucians description of Apelless painting. A group of 10 figures are painted in an environment of ornate, classical friezes depicting stories from Christianity and Greek mythology on columns that open out onto a calm seascape.

Instead of painting King Ptolemy as the arbiter of Apelless fate, however, Botticelli painted King Midas. In Greek mythology, Apollo turned King Midass ears into donkeys ears when King Midas suggested that Pan was a better musician than Apollo. And here, at the far right side of the composition, Botticelli painted King Midas with donkeys ears.

Two women hold up Midass ears and whisper the lies about Apelles into them.

Detail of Calumny of Apelles, circa 1496, by Sandro Botticelli. Tempera on panel; 24.4 inches by 35.8 inches. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy. (Public Domain)

King Midas outstretches his hand toward Rancor, who is represented as a male figure in black clothing. With a furrowed brow, Rancor juts his fingers toward the eyes of King Midas as if to blind him.

Rancor leads Calumny, a woman dressed in white and blue, by the arm. She holds a torch in one hand and pulls an almost nude Apelles by the hair. Two women representing Fraud and Perfidy are adorning Calumnys hair with braids and flowers.

Detail of Calumny of Apelles, circa 1496, by Sandro Botticelli. Tempera on panel; 24.4 inches by 35.8 inches. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy. (Public Domain)

Behind these figures, dressed in black, is an older female figure called Remorse. She looks back at Truth, who points and looks up toward the heavens as she modestly covers herself.

The Stages of Misinformation

In order for us to come to an understanding of this painting and how to handle misinformation, it is first necessary to have a fuller understanding of what these figures represent.

The fact that King Midas has been substituted for King Ptolemy I colors the story considerably. It is no longer just a crime against one artist, Apelles, but also implicates Ptolemy in a sin against the divine. King Midass inability to adequately judge the musical contest between Apollo and Pan suggests that he was either unwilling or unable to recognize divine truth and excellence. His presence in this painting may even symbolize resistance to divine truths.

The two women, Ignorance and Suspicion, whisper into King Midass donkey earssymbols of the divine retribution placed upon Midas for his inability to properly discern the divine. The fact that they hold up his donkey ears to whisper into them reiterates the ignorance and suspicion that King Midas used to judge divine truth. Midass ignorance and suspicion cause him to judge poorly in both the contest between Apollo and Pan and here where Apelless life is at stake.

Ignorance and suspicion of divine truths are the beginning of Midass misinformation. Ignorance and suspicion also cause him to lean forward and point to the figure Rancor. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, rancor suggests a long-standing feeling of resentment and animosity.

The fact that Rancor represents a long-standing feeling of resentment instead of a momentary lapse in judgment suggests several things. First, it suggests the power of our ignorance and suspicion in leading to and maintaining resentment and animosity over time.

Second, it suggests that this painting is about an attitude toward the divine that goes beyond the moment of Apelless imprisonment; it suggests that this painting is about long-standing resentment and animosity toward divine truths.

Finally, Rancors body languagethe fact that his hand juts out toward Midas as if to attack his eyes or obscure his visionalso suggests that long-standing resentment and animosity can eventually make one blind with hatred toward the truth.

Rancor leads Calumny by the arm, which suggests that resentment and animosity are precursors to calumny. Calumny represents the malicious and false representation of something toward the aim of damaging its representation. Perfidy and Fraud beautify Calumny, which suggests that calumny must be beautified if its lies are to be believed.

Calumny also holds a torch in her hand. A torch typically represents illumination and knowledge; it represents the counterpart of ignorance. Here, however, Calumnys so-called illumination is not the counterpart of ignorance but supports ignorance. Her flame suggests that her falsehoods are mistaken for illuminating truths.

So far, it appears that Botticelli painted for us the stages that occur when misinformation spreads. First we are ignorant and suspicious of the truth, and not of any truth but of divine truths. Second, our ignorance and suspicion of the truth cause us to develop long-standing resentment and animosity toward divine truth, and this further blinds us from seeing the truth. Finally, with divine truth so fully obscured, we easily accept misinformation as if it were the truth.

Toward the Love of Truth

So what is truth according to Botticellis painting? Botticelli painted two representations of truth: Apelles is the first, and the second is Truth herself. Apelles, like Truth, is almost completely bare. Every other figure in the painting is completely clothed, but Apelles and Truth are exposed, which lets us know that they are presenting themselves authentically and with integrity.

Also, Apelles places his hands in prayer. Despite the onslaught of lies around him, he doesnt plead with any of the other figures. He doesnt turn toward Calumny to extinguish her flame, nor does he bow at the feet of Midas to beg for his life. Instead, he prays, and this suggests that he recognizes an authentic truth beyond his immediate environment. It also suggests that the truth cant be found in this hubbub that is resistant to the divine but must be found in the divine itself.

Calumny pulls Apelles by the hair with her other hand. She pulls Apelles behind Rancor toward Midas to be judged. Of course, any judgment cast upon Apelles by Midas wouldnt be based on truth because Midas is surrounded by so many representations of falsehood and misinformation, and is himself a representation of someone misled and manipulated.

At the compositions far left side, Truth looks and points up to the heavens. As she is a representation of Truth, it seems that Botticelli has her point directly to where he believed truth dwells, which is with God in heaven. Despite everything that happens with Apelles below, the representation of Truth reminds him that actual Truth exists with the divinebeyond this onslaught of misinformation.

Remorse looks back at Truth as she slowly moves her way toward King Midas. We can presume that Remorse will make her way to the king at some point, when all the other figures have dispersed. With her focus on Truth, Remorse will expose the lies and misinformation, and confound Midas with remorse for falling victim to calumny. In the end, we presume, truth will prevail.

In the midst of so much misinformation, how might we turn to God to discern what is true and what is false? How might we align with truth despite the falsehoods we might have to endure? How can we learn to live with a love of divine truth?

Have you ever seen a work of art that you thought was beautiful but had no idea what it meant? In our series Reaching Within: What Traditional Art Offers the Heart, we interpret the classical visual arts in ways that may be morally insightful for us today. We try to approach each work of art to see how our historical creations might inspire within us our own innate goodness.
"The gates of hell" gas deposit, near Derweze, Turkmenistan, has been burning since 1971. (Wikimedia Commons)

Turkmenistans President Seeks End to Fire at Gas Crater Dubbed Gates of Hell

President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan has reportedly ordered officials to find a way to finally put out a fire in a vast natural gas crater that has been burning since 1971 and is known locally as the gates of hell, citing environmental and health concerns.

Berdymukhamedov said in a televised address on Jan. 8 that the fire in the Darvaza crater in the Karakum desertofficially named the Shining of Karakummust be extinguished as it negatively affects both the environment and the health of the people living nearby.

The president also noted that the crater is a waste of valuable natural gas resources from which the country could profit, local reports stated.

We are losing valuable natural resources for which we could get significant profits and use them for improving the well-being of our people, Berdymukhamedov said.

The crater was formed during the former Soviet Unions rule, when a Soviet drilling rig hit an underground cavern, which collapsed into a pit about half a mile across. Soviet miners set fire to the pit to burn off the toxic gases, and the fire was expected to go out shortly afterward.

But the crater has remained ablaze ever since and has grown to become one of the countrys most popular tourist attractions.

Berdymukhamedov, who has been in power since 2006, previously commissioned a team in 2010 to find ways to extinguish the fire.

Canadian explorer George Kourounis, the first person to descend into the crater in November 2013, discovered that there are no records of the craters formation. He noted that some local Turkmen geologists have said the crater was actually formed in the 1960s.

Ive heard from the local Turkmen geologists, who have been there for decades, that the collapse may have happened in the 60s and that it went unlit until the 1980s, Kourounis told National Geographic in a 2014 interview.

There are no records. We tried to find any old incident reports or anything like that, and the department of geology just didnt have anything that dated back that far. Part of it still remains a mystery.

Kourounis described the crater as a coliseum of fire, where he found signs of some bacteria thriving in a fiery ecosystem at the bottom.

We did find some bacteria living at the bottom that are very comfortable living in those high temperatures, and the most important thing was that they were not found in any of the surrounding soil outside of the crater, he said.

Tara MacIsaac contributed to this report.
New Delhi, Jan 10 (UNI) Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla on Monday called on visiting Bhutanese Minister for Economic Affairs Lyonpo Loknath Sharma and discussed economic cooperation, with special focus on the hydropower sector.

Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi tweeted:

Foreign Secretary @harshvshringla called on Lyonpo Loknath Sharma @BhutanMoea Minister for Economic Affairs of Bhutan of Bhutan during the Ministers visit to India.

Discussions covered economic cooperation, with special focus on the hydropower sector.

The hydropower sector is the primary area of cooperation between the two countries. India has funded four hydropower projects in Bhutan, which include 36 MW Chukha hydropower project, 60 MW Kurichhu hydropower project, 1,020 MW Tala hydropower project, and 720 MW Mangdechu hydropower project totaling about 2.1 GW of hydroelectric power.

The Mangdechhu Hydroelectric project which is a success story of India Bhutan cooperation in the Hydropower sector won the prestigious Brunel Medal-2020.

In July 2020, the two countries formed their first-ever joint venture to develop a hydropower project  a 600 MW project to be located on the Kholongchhu river in Trashiyangtse district of eastern Bhutan. The project is to be developed by Kholongchhu Hydroelectric Limited, a joint venture formed between Druk Green Power Corporation of Bhutan and Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Limited of India. The project is expected to be completed in the second half of 2025.

UNI/RN
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks with pupils in a maths class as he makes a constituency visit to Oakwood School in Uxbridge, England, on Jan. 10, 2022. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

UKs Johnson Under Pressure to Relax COVID-19 Restrictions

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under pressure from his backbench Conservative MPs to commit to ending restrictions and start managing COVID-19 as an endemic disease like flu.

Former chief whip Mark Harper, an influential lockdown-sceptic, warned Johnson that he could suffer a significant rebellion later this month if he tries to extend the Plan B measures, which were introduced late last year to slow the spread of the Omicron variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.

Under Plan B, people in England 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.

As many as 100 Conservative MPs rebelled against the government last month by voting against the measures, which were eventually approved with support from the opposition Labour Party.

Harper, the chair of the COVID Recovery Group of Conservative MPs, warned the rebellion could be even larger if the prime minister tries to extend Plan B beyond Jan. 26.

I think there will be even more people against it, he said in an interview with the Financial Times. I think the intellectual argument now is even weaker.

Asked when Johnson should formally declare an end to the restrictions, the MP said, If thats not now, when is it?

Calls for reduced state invention are also coming from some individuals within the mainstream scientific community.

Clive Dix, former chairman of Britains vaccine taskforce, told The Observer that mass vaccination against COVID-19 should come to an end and the UK should focus on managing it as an endemic disease like flu.

Its pointless trying to stop infection with it, which is sort of what mass vaccination is all about, because its not doing it. Were seeing a lot of infection, Dix told Channel 4 News on Jan. 9.

Dix also said mass testing will no longer be needed in a couple of months time, as it doesnt help anybody.

Cabinet minister Michael Gove also agreed that the country was moving to a stage where it can live with COVID.

Gove was one of the voices around the Cabinet table arguing for tougher measures when Omicron emerged. But he told the BBC on Jan. 10 that the restrictions should be eased the sooner the better, though it would have to be guided by science.

Also on Jan. 10, the prime minister confirmed that ministers are considering reducing the self-isolation period for fully vaccinated people who test positive for COVID-19.

Speaking to broadcasters during a visit to a vaccination clinic in Uxbridge, Johnson said the government is looking at scientific evidence and considering whether to cut the isolation period from seven to five days.

PA Media contributed to this report.
The drive from Portland to Mt. Hood follows the Columbia River to Hood River. This was taken near the Bridge of the Gods, which connects Oregon with Washington. (Anita L. Sherman)

US, Canada Continue Negotiations Over Columbia River Treaty

The United States and Canada have entered their 12th round of negotiations on the Columbia River Treaty, a 1960s-era agreement between the two countries that covers flood control, hydroelectric power generation, and other facets of water resources management in the massive, cross-border Columbia River Basin.

The agreements flood control provisions are set to expire in 2024, 60 years after the treatys 1964 ratification, with the latest round of negotiations starting on Jan. 10. Initial negotiations over the new agreement started in May 2018 under U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Key to the negotiations are transboundary water flows from one U.S. damthe Libby Damand three Canadian damsthe Duncan, Mica, and Keenleyside (or Arrow) dams.

Under the terms of the original treaty, Canada provided 15.5 million acre-feet of storage for Columbia River flow at those dams. In exchange, the United States paid Canada $64.4 million for flood control until 2024, along with half of the downstream hydropower energy produced in the United States as a result of the water released at those Canadian dams.

That 5050 split has been a point of contention for the United States. A 2013 recommendation on the future of the treaty after 2024 by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), part of the U.S. entity charged with treaty implementation, stated that an imbalance has developed in the equitable sharing of the downstream power benefits resulting from the treaty.

According to a U.S. Department of State webpage, one major focus of the talks is improving the ecosystem in a modernized Treaty regime, alongside flood risk management and hydroelectric power.

The BPAs 2013 recommendation noted that the treatys original language does not identify ecosystem considerations.

The document goes on to advise that such considerations ought to form the basis of a third main purpose of a modernized treaty, noting that the Columbia River Basins environmental well-being should be a shared benefit and cost of the United States and Canada.

The Province of British Columbia, which has the bulk of the rights and obligations associated with the treaty on the Canadian side, has emphasized similar concerns.

The key areas of interest are flood risk management, hydroelectric power and ecosystems. Canada has also raised the issues of increasing co-ordination of Libby Dam operations and increasing flexibility for Canadian operations, Katrine Conroy, the minister responsible for the Columbia River Treaty, said in a November 2021 statement prior to negotiations on Dec. 9.

In a 2012 review of the treatys effects, the Canadian Ministry of Energy, Mines and Natural Gas stated that with the construction of the Canadian treaty dams and reservoirs during the 1960s and 1970s, entire ecosystems were removed.

Barbara Cousens, an emerita professor at the University of Idaho who has written extensively about the treaty, told The Epoch Times that the Canadian dams created as a result of the treaty have been a major hindrance to efforts to reintroduce salmon above the Grand Coulee Dam. She said that people living near the dams were also displaced.

The building of the dams in Canada flooded those valleysand those valleys were made up of small communities, she said. The valleys were the only place for agriculture, because then you [only] have steep, forested mountains. So it really took away that livelihood for the local communities.

The original treaty was spurred by 1948s devastating Vanport Flood, which wiped the Portland, Oregon-area community of Vanport off the map.

We saw that we urgently needed to address flooding and prevent the loss of life and property as the region developed, Jill Smail, chief U.S. negotiator on the treaty at the State Department, said in remarks to the Second Columbia River Treaty Town Hall in September 2018.

Cousens said: The people in the basin phrased it two ways. One is they said that the United States had moved the floods from Portland upstream to Canada.

The other way they phrased it was that all of the hydropower benefits flowed to the coastand by that they meant Victoria and Vancouver.

Negotiations on both sides are being informed by local tribes and First Nations. In the case of the United States, representatives of the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation are part of the State Departments negotiating team. On the Canadian side, tribes in the Columbia Basin Indigenous Nations have participated.

Interestingly, a lot of bringing ecosystem function to the table was driven by the tribes, Cousens said.

The Columbia River Treaty Review, which conveyed British Columbias decision to continue with the treaty, states that the construction of the Treaty dams and reservoirs caused much hardship to communities and First Nations that were directly affected.

Officials with the Province of British Columbia and the U.S. Department of State were unable to comment by press time.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken (3rd left), Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo (2nd left), and Trade Representative Katherine Tai (right) meet with European Union commissioners Valdis Dombrovskis (right) and Margrethe Vestager for a virtual roundtable with stakeholders as part of the inaugural US-EU Trade and Technology Council in Pittsburgh, Penn., on Sept. 29, 2021. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

US and EU Should Enhance Joint Economic Countermeasures Against China

The American and European economies are together unbeatable

News Analysis

The European Union is finally marshaling its massive economic force to hit back at Beijing. Meanwhile, America is waiting in the wings to join the Europeans in making their two massive economieseach of which rivals China aloneunbeatable in pressuring Beijing to improve its human rights, or even democratize.

A case in point is Lithuanias courageous backing of a Taiwan rather than Taipei de facto embassy in Vilnius, Lithuanias capital. In retaliation, Beijing blocked Lithuanias access to the massive Chinese market, and began pressuring companies around the world to stop doing business with the small Baltic nation.

Beijing even threatened the diplomatic immunity of Lithuanian officials in the country. To protect them, Lithuania had to pull its embassy staff from China on Dec. 15, leaving Lithuanian citizens and businesses in the country with little diplomatic recourse should the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) target them directly.

The EUwhich is supposed to protect its member states, including Lithuaniadid little to nothing in response. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis criticized the EU on this, rightly demanding better protection by Brussels.

European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on May 5, 2021. (Yves Herman/Reuters)

Philippe Le Corre, a senior research fellow at Harvard Universitys Kennedy School of Government, wrote in an email that due to electoral pressures, both France and Germany are not in a position to compromise on the China issue.

Le Corre said that French President Emmanuel Macron is seeking reelection in April, and he cannot afford to appear as weak. Meanwhile, Germanys new Chancellor Olaf Scholz will face similar pressures, according to Le Corre, due to the chancellors junior status.

Le Corre wrote that The Lithuania situation has deepened the anti-China sentiment in parts of Europe. In Lithuania itself, according to Le Corre, the overall attitude remains 50 percent in favor of confrontation with Beijing, and 50 percent in favor of engagement.

The Beijing-Vilnius dispute is raising public awareness of the CCP threat to Europe, and forcing the hand of the EU toward greater centralization of its trade power and coordination with the United States in order to defend its smaller nations. This was already in process in September, with the first meeting of a new U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council.

The Council will help counter Beijings economic coercion and non-market practices, such as extraterritorial sanctions on countries like Lithuania, and subsidies and dumping of cheap goods on foreign markets to destroy their industries. It will give economic muscle to joint U.S. and E.U. values like democracy, human rights, freedom, and privacy.

The U.S.-EU Council will cooperate on, and regulate, artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors, and new industrial standardsall of which will have effect on the trans-Atlantic relationship with China.

The Council is aimed at strengthening and integrating U.S. and EU supply chains, research and development, export controls, investment screening, and leadership in emerging technologies generally. But it is also designed to use the combined weight of the U.S. and E.U. economies to counter Beijing.

In a joint September statement, the Council said that Washington and Brussels will seek to strengthen their competitiveness and technological leadership by developing common strategies to mitigate the impact of non-market practices at home and in third countries.

Nonmarket practices are code for what communist economies, especially Beijing, do in terms of international economic bullying for illiberal political purposes.

Europe is not only depending on greater coordination with the United States, however. It is also strengthening internal EU coordination against Beijing. This will be done in part by following through on the EU goal of combining the continents economic power to control foreign access to the blocs 27 countries and nearly 450 million consumers.

Greater EU economic coordination against outside threats like Beijing was already in process in early December. Now, the EUs trade czar, Valdis Dombrovskis, is getting good press for his work on the issue.

Dombrovskis acknowledges that the EU sees China as a competitor in commerce and a systemic rival on social and economic matters.

The new laws he advocates, along with closer coordination with the United States, will help European nations defend themselves against Beijings retaliatory and predatory trade practices.

Dombrovskis is a former Latvian prime minister, so he knows the threat of communism and dictatorship due to his countrys border with Russia and proximity to Germany. In 1940, the former Soviet Union occupied Latvia, which was then conquered by Nazi Germany. The end of World War II did not mean freedom for Latvians, but rather, a return to the Soviet yoke in 1944.

EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis speaks during a press conference at the Europa building in Brussels, on Dec. 7, 2021. (Olivier Matthys/AP Photo)

Today, Russia continues to threaten its neighborsmost seriously nearby Ukraine. A flight from the capital of Latvia to the capital of Ukraine, which is in an ongoing war with Russia over Crimea and its industrial and energy-rich eastern region, called the Donbass, is just 650 miles.

Greater American, European, and allied unity against Moscow and Beijings predatory military and economic policies will be critical to defending democracies in the next decade. Dombrovskis supported this goal in June and October where he defused, along with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, U.S.-EU conflicts over airline and steel subsidies.

Dombrovskis is also in frequent talks with Tai to reform the World Trade Organization (WTO), which is currently being manipulated by Beijings unexpectedly persistent hybrid of capitalism and state control.

The Wall Street Journal quoted Dombrovskis on Jan. 5 as saying that Theres no doubt the WTO is in crisis. The EU and the United States share concerns that the WTO rulebook is out of date on the issue of Chinas economy, according to Dombrovskis.

The EU is also exploring tougher rules against China because Beijing excludes European companies from government contracting, and uses tariffs and export blocks against countries like China that use border checks, boycotts, and safety inspections coercively and for illiberal purposes.

Dombrovskis told the Journal that the EU measures allow us to act in a more autonomous way, if needed, by using access to the blocs economy as an incentive or disincentive to illiberal behavior or those which are against European interests. We are committed to multilateralism but we are ready to act autonomously, he said.

To be effective against Beijing, the 27 EU countries must delegate more of their foreign trade decision-making power to the EU in Brussels, which will be yet another step in thousands of years of history toward a concentration of power. But to defend themselves from an even worse concentrationthat of BeijingEuropean countries will need to remove the ability of just a few relatively pro-Beijing EU nations, like Hungary, to veto EU decisions.

While the concentration of trade power in Brussels is in some ways regrettable for economic and political diversity in Europe, it is at the same time necessary for the defense of the continent from the CCPs authoritarianism.

To ensure that diversity is protected and can return after the threat from Beijing has been removed, Brussels should consider implementation of grandfather clauses so that trade power reverts to the national level. This would encourage the return of small businesses that tend not to survive in competition with large multinational corporations that have an advantage under global free trade.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, left, and Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov attend security talks at the United States Mission in Geneva, on Jan. 10, 2022. (Denis Balibouse/Pool via AP)

US, Russia Conclude Talks in Geneva With No Major Breakthrough in Sight

U.S. and Russian negotiators on Monday concluded special talks aimed at de-escalating ongoing tensions over Ukraine and a rise in military activity near Russias western border.

Not much information on the outcome of the bilateral talks, which lasted over seven hours in the Swiss city of Geneva, was immediately released. Senior diplomats on both sides appear to indicate that no major breakthrough is immediately in sight.

Unfortunately we have a great disparity in our principled approaches to this, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said during a news conference on Monday. The U.S. and Russia in some ways have opposite views on what needs to be done.

Although not many details were provided, Ryabkov stressed after the meeting that Moscow has no plans to invade Ukraine.

Ryabkov and his team met with Wendy Sherman, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, as part of Strategic Security Dialogue talks aimed at arms control and other broad issues launched by Presidents Joe Biden and President Vladimir Putin during a June summit in Geneva.

U.S. Department of State spokesman Ned Price said in a statement that the deputy secretary is willing to listen to Russias concerns while welcoming genuine progress through diplomacyshe is not willing to discuss matters related to European security without its partners present.

State Department spokesman Ned Price speaks on the situation in Afghanistan at the State Department in Washington, DC, on Aug. 18, 2021. (Andrew Harnik/Pool via Reuters)

Moscow released publicly a list of demands from the United States and its Western allies about a week before the talks, which included security guarantees that urged NATO to no longer expand eastward into former Soviet states like Ukraine.

Price said discussions related to European security will be reserved for the NATO-Russia Council meeting, which will take place in the capital of Belgium on Jan. 12, as well as during the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Vienna the day after.

Some of the guarantees proposed by Russia are simply non-starters for the United States, Sherman said on a conference call with reporters, while Ryabkov thought Mondays talks were optimistiche doesnt see an understanding from the U.S. side that satisfies Moscow.

Ryabkov also underscored that it is absolutely mandatory to make sure that Ukraine never, never, ever becomes a member of NATO.

We do not trust the other side, so to say. We need iron-clad, waterproof, bulletproof, legally binding guarantees. Not assurances, not safeguards, guarantees with all the words shall, must, everything that should be put in, never ever becoming a member of NATO. Its a matter of Russias national security, he said.

Sherman, in response, said that U.S. officials will not make decisions about Ukraine without their consent and it will not forego bilateral cooperation with sovereign states that wish to work with the United States.

The Jan. 10 meeting was followed by an informal working dinner on Jan. 9, where Ryabkov already predicted difficult talks that are still to be followed by the NATO-Russia meeting in Brussels.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday that he doesnt expect the scheduled meetings to solve all issues, but it can open a path to receive a better understanding of each other.

I dont think that we can expect that these meetings will solve all the issues, Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels. What we are hoping for is that we can agree on a way forward, that we can agree on a series of meetings, that we can agree on a process.

Russia has said that it wants all issues resolved this month, but NATO is wary that Putin might be looking for a pretext, such as a negotiating failure, to launch an invasion.

A view of the joint strategic exercise of the armed forces of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus Zapad-2021 at the Mulino training ground in the Nizhny Novgorod region, Russia, on Sept. 11, 2021. (Vadim Savitskiy/Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

Western nations raised concerns after nearly 100,000 Russian troops gathered within reach of the border with Ukraine eight years after Russia seized the Crimea peninsula from the former Soviet republic.

Russia has repeatedly denied invasion plans and said it is responding to what it calls aggressive behavior from the NATO military alliance and Ukraine, which has tilted toward the West and aspires to join NATO.

Biden, the EU, and the Group of Seven nations have warned Putin previously that Russia would face massive consequences and economic sanctions in the event of further aggression against Ukraine.

Ryabkov again laid out Moscows three demands on Jan. 9, saying they are seeking no further NATO expansion, no missiles on Russias borders, and for NATO no longer to have military exercises, intelligence operations, or infrastructure outside of its 1997 borders.

The Russian side came here with a clear position that contains a number of elements that, to my mind, are understandable and have been so clearly formulatedincluding at a high levelthat deviating from our approaches simply is not possible, Ryabkov said.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

From NTD News
People walk past the gate of the U.S. Marine Corps' Camp Hansen, in Kin, Okinawa prefecture, southern Japan, on Jan. 6, 2022. (Kyodo News via AP)

US Troops in Japan to Be Kept Within Base Amid COVID-19 Spread

TOKYOThe United States and Japan on Sunday agreed to keep American troops within their bases amid a rise in COVID-19 cases in Japan.

The restrictions starting Monday will last 14 days, confining U.S. military personnel to base facilities except for essential activities, a statement from the U.S. Forces in Japan said. The Japanese Foreign Ministry released the same statement.

The allies will share information and cooperate on COVID-19 measures, given the extraordinary virulence of the Omicron variant spreading throughout Japan, the statement said.

U.S. military members will wear masks, both on and off base, when outside their homes, and will continue to carry out strict testing before leaving for, and after arrival in Japan, it said.

New COVID-19 cases have spiked in Japan. The spike has been most pronounced in areas near U.S. bases. Last week, Japan asked the United States for cooperation in keeping its military personnel on base.

Okinawa, a southwestern group of islands that houses most of the 55,000 U.S. troops in Japan, is among the three prefectures where separate government restrictions kicked in Sunday. The measures, which last through the end of the month, include the early closing hours for restaurants, at 8 p.m. or 9 p.m. Some restaurants also must stop serving alcohol.

The restrictions also went into effect in Yamaguchi prefecture, where Iwakuni base is located, and nearby Hiroshima. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which documents the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan at the end of World War II, and Hiroshima Castle are both closed to visitors.

Other regions may see similar restrictions if cases keep rising.

People have been warned to stay home and avoid travel. Until recently, bars, shrines, and shopping districts have been jam-packed with year-end shoppers, and New Years holiday travelers.

Throughout the pandemic, Japan has never imposed a lockdown, but has implemented varying levels of restrictions, including school closures and event cancellations.

Japan has set up stringent border controls, barring most incoming travel except for returning residents and citizens.
Connecticuts legislative leaders on Monday agreed to try one more time to come to bipartisan agreement on a new map of the states five congressional districts after a court-appointed special master warned he was in the process of redrawing the boundaries himself.

Speaker of the House Matt Ritter and state Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly now have a noon deadline on Wednesday to haggle over the final districts where cities including Torrington, New Britain and Meriden will be placed after a western shift of Connecticuts population in the past 10 years.

But both Democrats and Republicans, including GOP State Chairman Ben Proto, seemed steadfast in their disagreement, especially as it relates to the makeup of the 1st and 5th districts.

While Connecticuts decennial reapportionment process has been smoother than many states  mostly where Republican majorities in legislatures have gerrymandered districts to benefit GOP interests  Connecticuts state House and Senate districts were agreed upon late last year, with incumbents generally protected.

But changes to the current congressional map, which still bears a so-called lobster claw in the Hartford area dating back from the loss of a seat in 2000, has been stalemated. The state Supreme Court named Stanford University Law School Professor Nathaniel Persily as special master.

During an hour-long virtual public hearing on Monday, Persily, who took a similar job 10 years ago when state lawmakers deadlocked, said that he is already drafting him own map, but wanted to give Connecticut Democrats and Republicans one more chance for a meeting of the minds. The states high court has given him until Jan. 18 to finalize the new map.

In a national perspective  as you know I am doing this around the country  you all are pretty close to each other, Persily said. If you cannot come up with a full plan that you could agree upon, I would ask whether there are sections of the plan you could agree upon.

Persily asked the state lawmakers, leaders of the Reapportionment Commission, to file with him either a partial or complete map. I am eager to see what the commission can come up with in the next 48 hours, Persily said during the virtual hearing.

Persily added: In developing the plan the court has ordered me to modify the existing districts only to the extent reasonably necessary to comply with the following legal requirements. Districts shall be as equal in population as practicable; districts shall made of contiguous territory; the plan shall comply with the Voting Rights Act.

In particular, Persily mentioned the boundaries that currently split Shelton into the 4th and 3rd districts, or the 1st and 2nd district split in Glastonbury.

I cant tell from the briefs whether you all are committed to one way or slicing those towns as opposed to another, Persily said.

Kelly defended the Republican proposal, which would have near-equal populations of about 721,189 residents per district.

He recalled that the map developed by lawmakers after the 2020 Census resulted in the elimination of the states 6th District, lawmakers drew up a new 5th District that included both Danbury and New Britain, because the incumbent U.S. representatives, a Democrat and Republican, lived in those towns.

It is our duty not to turn a blind eye to past failures to fulfill our redistricting principles but rather to confront them and correct them, Kelly said. The Republicans submitted two maps, a least-change map and a good government map.

When the ultimate goal is to have the least amount of change possible, the end result preserves the status quo, Kelly said. When the status quo includes gerrymandered districts as well as well-recognized reduction in competition, the status quo cannot be allowed continue unchallenged.

The problem with the (1st District) claw, as everyone I think will admit privately, is that it is political, Proto said in the virtual hearing. It is politically gerrymandered to fix a problem that occurred in 2001. Simply because something was good in 2001, or the politically expedient thing to do in 2001, does not mean it is the correct thing or the politically expedient thing to do in 2021 or 22, other than to protect the interest of five sitting congressmen, which shouldnt be a consideration.

Ritter, speaking for Democrats, noted that under the current maps, the Republican candidate, Bob Stefanowski of Madison, won both the 2nd and 5th districts.

So, the idea there is no competition, I dont think the stats back that up, Ritter said. But candidates do matter, I will acknowledge that.

Ritter said that the Democratic proposals for new district lines would shift 71,736 people to new districts, while the Republican plans, with a unified Torrington, which is currently split into the 5th and 1st districts, would move 125,000 people. The amount of disruption, I believe, is significant, Ritter said.

Ritter noted that the state House and Senate maps were unanimously approved, culminating a year in which the Census totals were months late in arriving, putting lawmakers drastically behind schedule.

I am personally disappointed, Mr. Special Master, that were at this process, but its not from not trying, Ritter told Persily. We all worked very, very hard to get there, but these things are very difficult to do, particularly in a tight time frame.

Persily said it might be worth the wait if the lawmakers could come to a deal.

I wanted to try just one more time because I do think it could be a model for the country as well, Persily said. You all have worked through the legislative process in a way that is admirable.
UN/Austria Symposium 2021 Post-Symposium Capacity Building Event UNOOSA-ESA-ISRO-NASA Earth Observation Training for Agriculture

Space radar image of Dnieper River, Ukraine. Credit: NASA/JPL

Introduction

From the monitoring of natural resources to precision agriculture, Earth Observation (EO) and remote sensing play a fundamental role as enabling space-based technologies to achieve sustainable solutions in the global agri-food systems. EO technologies can be a powerful tool for decision makers in agriculture, government, and humanitarian fields to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Following the UN/Austria Symposium 2021 on the theme of "Space Applications for Food Systems", UNOOSA is partnering with the European Space Agency (ESA), the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to provide a variety of training courses on the application of EO technologies for agriculture. These online courses aim to raise awareness of the use of EO technologies and remote sensing for agriculture and enhance participants' capabilities to use them.

The trainings are conducted exclusively online and include demonstrations using open source data and software. The trainings consist of both theory and practical applications to consolidate the concepts learnt. The trainings are delivered by subject-matter experts from ESA, ISRO, and NASA. By providing collaborative and interactive learning platforms, the trainings aim to connect participants from across the globe with experts and encourage exchange and flow of knowledge and ideas.

Participation in the training is free of charge.

Target Audience

The level of difficulty of the courses ranges from beginner to expert. For more information regarding the eligibility criteria and prerequisites for each course, please refer to the respective websites.

Format

The trainings are offered by ESA/NASA jointly and by ISRO in the form of LIVE webinars. The link to the webinar will be provided upon successful registration at their respective websites. Some courses and courses material will be available for viewing after the event has closed.

Course Information

1. Geospatial Application for Disaster Risk Management

Training provider: UNOOSA and the Centre for Space Science and Technology Education for Asia and the Pacific (affiliated to the UN)

Course description: The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs and the Centre for Space Science and Technology Education for Asia and the Pacific have launched a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on "Geospatial Applications for Disaster Risk Management". This MOOC is a free and flexible online training programme available to everyone who wants to enhance their capabilities related to the use of geospatial and Earth observation technologies in disaster risk management.

The MOOC is structured into two tracks consisting of several modules. Track-1 (Basic) targets professionals interested in enhancing awareness of the latest trends in disaster risk management and how geospatial and Earth observation technologies contribute to it. Track-2 (Advanced) targets professionals interested in sharpening skills in use of geospatial and Earth observation technologies in all phases of disaster management.

Dates: The course must be completed within three months from the time of registration. The course ends on 30 November 2021.

Target audience: This course is suitable for government officials and professionals, educators, university students and other stakeholders working in the field of disaster management.

Prerequisites: Track-2 can only be undertaken once Track-1 is completed. There is no prerequisite for Track-1.

Language: English.

Registration: Please click here to register. Registration is open until 15 November 2021.

For more information, please visit the UN-SPIDER website.

2. Agricultural Crop Classification with Synthetic Aperture Radar and Optical Remote Sensing

Training provider: ESA and NASA

Course description: This five-part, intermediate webinar series will focus on the use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) from Sentinel-1 and/or optical imagery from Sentinel-2 to map crop types and assess their biophysical characteristics. The webinar will cover a SAR and optical refresher along with pre-processing and analysis of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data using the Sentinel Application Platform (SNAP) and Python code written in JupyterLab, a web-based interactive development environment for scientific computing and machine learning. The webinar will also cover an operational roadmap for mapping crop type, including best practices for collecting field data to train and validate models for classifying crop types on a national level. The final session of this series will cover crop biophysical variable retrievals using optical data.

Languages: The course is available in English and Spanish.

Dates:

Course in English: October 5, 7, 12, 14, 19, at 14:00hr - 16:30hr (UTC) [or 10:00hr - 12:30hr Eastern Time]

Course in Spanish: October 5, 7, 12, 14, 19, at 17:00hr - 19:30hr (UTC) [or 13:00hr - 15:30hr Eastern Time]

Target audience: This webinar series is intended for local, regional, federal, and non-governmental organizations from agriculture and food security related agencies to use radar and optical remote sensing applications in the domain of agriculture for crop type mapping.

Prerequisites: Participants with no experience in remote sensing or synthetic aperture radar are encouraged to view these webinars prior to the trainings.

Registration: Please click here to register for course in English. Please click here to register for the course in Spanish. Registration is open until the day of training or until the maximum capacity of the course has been reached.

For more information about the course, please visit the NASA website and ESA website.

3. Remote Sensing Applications for Crop Mapping and Monitoring

Training provider: ISRO

Course description: This two-day short training programme will provide an overview of remote sensing and EO systems and its applications to agriculture, and focus on remote sensing for rice crop mapping and monitoring using SAR and optical data, global crop mapping concepts (for major crops such as rice, wheat, rapeseed/mustard etc.), techniques, tools and their relevance for various stakeholders. The training includes hands-on demonstrations on image interpretation, digital image processing, rice crop mapping and deriving inputs for yield modelling using optical and SAR data, on Google Earth engine.

Dates: October 5 and 7, 04:30hr to 11:00hr (UTC) [or 10:00hr to 16:30hr Indian Standard Time]

Prerequisites: Fundamental knowledge of remote sensing is desirable.

Language: English.

Registration: Please click here to register for the ISRO training. Registration is open until the day of training or until the maximum capacity of the course has been reached.

For more information about the course, please visit the ISRO website.

Introduction Webinar

A joint webinar took place on 9 September 2021 from 12:00 to13:00 UTC (14:00 to 15:00 CEST) to inform interested participants about the content of the training opportunities. Registration for the introduction webinar has closed.

Please click on the links in the programme below to view the presentation slides.

Video recording of the webinar is available here.

Programme
EDWARDSVILLE  Madison County Board members expressed anger Friday morning at legislation approved by the Illinois General Assembly creating judicial subcircuits in Madison County, calling it a power grab by the Democratically-controlled legislature.

The legislation, which changes how judges would be elected in a few Illinois counties, was approved by state lawmakers late Wednesday evening with little notice. It was signed Friday by Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

Its a sad day when the legislature overrides the voters will, said Mike Walters, R-Godfrey, chairman of the Madison County Boards Judiciary Committee.

As Madison County moves more red, the state legislature decides to change our judicial boundaries," he said. "What these three counties have in common is that they are all Republican counties."

House Bill 3138 creates four judicial subcircuits in the 3rd Judicial Circuit, which includes Madison and Bond counties, as well as the 7th Circuit in Sangamon and surrounding counties and DuPage County. The bill also changes subcircuits in Cook, Kane, McHenry and Will counties.

The bill originally dealt with court security and was introduced in the House in February 2021 by state Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville and sponsored in the state senate by Sen. Rachelle Crowe, D-Glen Carbon.

On Jan. 5, the bill was amended by state Senate President Dan Harmon, D-Oak Park, before winning approval in both houses Wednesday on a party-line vote.

The proposal, introduced on the first day of the General Assembly's 2022 session, appeared to take Republican lawmakers by surprise. They argued there had been little focus on creating additional subcircuits outside of Cook County during public hearings of the House and Senate Redistricting Committees in recent months.

Democrats, however, said the idea had long been on the table since the General Assembly passed a law mandating the redrawing of existing subcircuits following the 2020 census.

The law did not mandate that anything be done in these other counties, but it did elicit a conversation about subcircuits across the board, Harmon said during a committee hearing.

Harmon said the proposal does not add any new judges to the states trial court system and only changes the way some judges are elected. Most of the changes would not go into effect until the 2024 elections.

However, in Madison County the bill will impact the 2022 election cycle which begins Jan. 13 with the circulation of nominating petitions.

State Rep. Amy Elik, R-Fosterburg, opposed the bill.

The legislative Democrats plan to create judicial subcircuits in Madison County is all about securing more Democrat judgeships, Elik said in a released statement. This plan adds more politics in the courtroom and seriously threatens the fairness and integrity of the judiciary.

The bill divides Madison County into three subcircuits, with Bond County being a separate subcircuit.

In other counties when subcircuits were created, judges were elected in rotating order among the circuits, according to information provided at the county committee meeting Friday morning. Under the new law the next three judges up for retention would come from the 1st Subcircuit, then three from the 2nd Subcircuit, and two from the 3rd Subcircuit.

It was noted the 1st Subcircuit is heavily Democratic, the 2nd is somewhat split and the third is rural and Republican.

In Friday's committee meeting, Chief Circuit Judge Williams Mudge noted two sitting circuit judges  Amy Sholar and Christopher Threlkeld  will now have to move to be able to run to retain their seats. It was also pointed out that they would have to move before circulating nominating petitions begin next week, on Jan. 13.

If they want to run for these vacancies, they will have to move, Mudge said.

Mudge has been trying to stay out of the political debate on the issue. On Thursday he emailed a response to questions about the bill to several media outlets.

Per the Illinois Constitution, the makeup of judicial circuits is a legislative matter, not the courts, he said. HB 3138 is a comprehensive bill addressing the creation or modification of sub-circuits in numerous circuits and counties throughout the state, including the Third Judicial Circuit.

While it does not affect the number of circuit judge positions, or sitting elected circuit judges or retention races, it does come into play in electing circuit judges for both current and future judicial vacancies.

Currently there are no circuit judges living within the new first subcircuit, Mudge stated. The next three vacancies will be elected from the second subcircuit. The following two vacancies will be filled from the third subcircuit and one judge is elected from Bond County, which is currently filled by Judge Chris Bauer.

Mudge said where the judges come from will not impact service.

Regardless of where any of the judges reside, they all will preside in our courthouses in the county seats and provide for the administration of justice just as they always have, he stated.

Other county officials waded in to the political aspects of it.

This is an insult to every judge, every citizen, Walters said. This is a power grab. This is whats wrong with politics.

Walters said this is not the first time bills introduced by local legislators have been hijacked and used to diminish political power in favor of other counties or agencies. He cited 2019 bills that took representation from Madison County and gave it to other local governments, specifically related to the Bi-State Development Agency and Metro East Sanitary District.

Madison County Board members Mike Babcock, R-Bethalto, and Jamie Goggin, R-Edwardsville, also were highly critical of the legislation. Member Eric Foster, R-Granite City, questioned whether any local officials, including Mudge, were consulted.

Both Mudge and Madison County Circuit Clerk Tom McRae said they were not.

At Friday's meeting, several board members said they wanted a special county board meeting to consider action on the issue. As of Friday afternoon Madison Board Chairman Kurt Prenzler said no meeting had been called.

Prenzler was also critical of the General Assembly, saying the General Assembly's action this week reminded him of the action they took on MESD and Bi-State.
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Elizabethtown, KY (42701)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning, then mainly cloudy during the afternoon with thunderstorms likely. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High 79F. Winds SSW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms in the evening, with mostly cloudy skies overnight. Low 51F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
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That release could not be found.
The Nigerian Association of Nurses and Midwives, Lagos State Council have suspended their planned strike action. This was revealed yesterday evening after Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu held a closed-door meeting with members at the State House, Marina.

The National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives (NANNM), Lagos State Council, had ordered its members to embark on a three-day warning strike from January 10, over unmet demands by the Lagos State Government.

The meeting was called by the Governor to address the grievances of the nursing workforce in the State.

At the end of the two hours meeting, both the Government and the union agreed on a number of issues that had been causing disaffection between the two parties.

Sanwo-Olu pledged governments sincerity in the implementation of all that was agreed on, to the delight of the representatives of the nurses.

On his part, chairman, Lagos State Council of the Nigerian Association of Nurses and Midwives, Comrade Olurotimi Awojide thanked Sanwo-Olu for acceding to most of their requests.

He described the governor as a true leader and father who cares about his children.

Awojide promised to call an emergency congress of the association on Monday, where the union will announce her decision to call off the planned industrial action.
As part of my continuous education on the benefit of fuel subsidy removal, I will be looking at the impact of Market Forces on Subsidy Removal.

First of all, what is a subsidy?

Subsidy is aimed at lessening the burden or cost of certain products and an attempt at financial support by the government.

There are two types of subsidy; they are direct and indirect subsidies. Direct subsidies are targeted towards a particular group, individual or sector.

Indirect subsidies on the other hand include activities such as price reductions for required goods or services that can be government-supported.

Indirect subsidies lead to subsidized products being bought below-market rates. In this case, the government fixes the price of petrol below the international rate and pays the difference.

Subsidy means that a fraction of the price meant to be paid by consumers is paid by the government to ease the burden off consumers. For petrol, the argument is that the amount paid for petroleum by Nigerians is lower than international benchmarks.

Subsidies were first introduced in Nigeria in the 1970s as a response to the Oil Price shock of 1973. The situation of the shock led to a global rise in oil prices and if the international rates were to be used would have made Nigerians pay more, thereby forcing the government to regulate local prices for energy products. A decree which was further enacted in 1977 institutionalized subsidies in Nigeria.

If subsidy is removed, for instance, it means that the international market determinants will also decide what the price of petroleum will be in the country.

The removal of subsidy is expected to open up the market to more private competition even as the government may still intervene in regulating the market when needed, due to the essential nature of petrol.

The amounts spent on petrol subsidy have been questioned by stakeholders including Trade unions, Civil society organisations among others.

Nigerias refined petroleum import is put at $10 billion by the Observatory Economic Complexity widening Nigerias subsidy requirement.

Earlier in March 2021, the country was said to be spending N102.4 billion monthly on fuel subsidies. The figure increased to N150 billion in June 2021, when the NNPC GMD, Mele Kyari was quoted as stating that the government was subsidizing petroleum by N92/litre.

The amount spent on subsidy has been varying due to varying market conditions at the international market; especially as the amount that will be spent on subsidy is largely dependent on what the price of petroleum is at the international market in the prevailing time.

What Are Market Forces?

Market Forces are the actions of buyers and sellers that cause the prices of goods and services to change without being controlled by the government: the economic forces of supply and demand.

Market forces push prices up when supply declines and demand rises, and drive them down when supply grows or demand contracts. When demand equals supply for a product or service, the market is said to have reached equilibrium.

Supply and demand for products, services, currencies and other investments creates a push-pull dynamic in prices. Prices and rates change as supply or demand changes. If something is in demand and supply begins to shrink, prices will rise. If supply increases beyond current demand, prices will fall. If supply is relatively stable, prices can fluctuate higher and lower as demand increases or decreases.

It is to the credit of this present Federal Government, under President Buhari and the National Assembly under Ahmed Lawan that the Petroleum Industry Act was enacted.

The sole aim of the Act is to ensure that the NNPC Limited conducts its affairs on a commercial basis in a profitable manner without recourse to government funds and their memorandum and articles of association shall state these restrictions.

Also to grant licences to capable persons to be part of the management of the oil industry. This in effect should usher in the liberalisation and commercialisation of the oil industry, which the country desperately needs. It is summarily called deregulation.

The success or failure of this scheme will depend on the transparency of the licensing regime.

We experienced incredible success in our telecommunication when competent persons and companies were granted licences and this crashed the prices of buying a telephone line from hundreds of thousands of Naira, when it was the exclusive privilege of NITEL, and when a sitting Minister of Communication proclaimed that telephone was not made for poor people, to free of charge, within two years of the licensing.

The price of making calls fell from N50.00 per second, when licences were issued, to about 8k per second today, on some networks. Theres no reason the price of petroleum products wouldnt have been one of the cheapest in Nigeria today but for the corruption in that sector.

It is with indignation that the entire Nigerian people welcomed the news of a possible increase in the price of fuel from the present N165.00 to about N340.00 or N420.00 in the first quarter of 2022.

No doubt there is a sound economic and business case in favour of fuel subsidy removal. But the social and political contexts are equally critical.

What Nigeria is yearning for is deregulation not price hike. If deregulation is perfectly carried out, although there might still be a mild increase in prices initially, the prices will soon come down when more experts flood the petroleum sector with better technological ways of refining oil.

Can you imagine how low the price of fuel will be in Nigeria if the cost of shipping our crude abroad and the cost of shipping the refined oil back to Nigeria are removed because the entire oil required for domestic use will be domestically refined?

Discontinuation of fuel subsidy is an economic imperative but the petroleum industry and electric power industry need to be fully deregulated first.

Deregulation means that the government will no longer monopolise the management of the oil sector. It will imply that our refineries should be working in full capacity. It is in this regard that the recent decision by the current Minister of Petroleum to invest $1.5b of borrowed foreign money to the refurbishment of our refineries is an avoidable waste of resources.

Telecommunication is a more security prone product, yet the Government is not interfering with the services of the private telecom providers. Oil should be treated the same.

The Government should refrain from mentioning premeditated high prices, because that is a testimony that it is not deregulating. In a fully deregulated economy, it is the market forces that determine the price not the Government.

It is high time the government borrows a leaf from other countries that have had policies on making the Oil sector better.

I will also advise that there is a need to invest in Education, Infrastructure and creating employment, that way, people can be empowered to economically make decisions and fend for themselves, instead of paying subsidies that only a few enjoy and also giving grants that reach a few persons or more places than the others.

The removal of subsidy was long overdue as the introduction of subsidy in the 1970s was meant to be short term.

The subsidy regime has encouraged corruption and the amount spent on subsidies is alarming when Nigeria cannot even finance its budget.

Adewole Kehinde is the Publisher of Swift Reporters. He can be reached via 08166240846 and 08123608662
Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) came on stream on 1 November 2013. AEDC has a franchise for the distribution and sale of electricity across the Federal Capital Territory, Niger, Kogi and Nassarawa States.

As the electricity company wrestle her internal crisis, customers become helpless victims. On 6 December 2021, barely a month ago, workers shut down electricity facilities in Abuja and neighbouring states, accusing the company of failing to remit the pension contributions deducted from employees salaries to their Pension Fund Administrators for 20 months. Consequently, the Federal government of Nigeria suspended the management of the Company.

The intervention of the Federal government helped halt the strike , which had triggered blackouts within AEDC states.

However, the services of the Company continues to nosedive and remorselessly, customers are made to bear the brunt of their inefficiency.

Since yesterday, 9 January 2022, all the prepaid vendor platform of the Company have collapsed, meaning that no prepaid customer in their operational states can purchase electricity. It is a bizarre situation that with all the technology available today, AEDC is not able to implement a backup system that could hold skeletal service while the main system is being restored.

Federal government of Nigeria should as a matter of urgency investigate the incompetency of some of the nation's critical service providers. AEDC officials should understudy Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company for efficiency in overall services.
In the heat of the 2018 killings by criminals, I received a deluge of broadcast messages steeped in conspiracy theories of how the government was backing certain criminal groups in their festival of bloodletting. According to one of the well-noised fibs, the government was paving the way, through militias, for the occupation of Nigeria and for the domination of ethnic nationalities by the Fulani.

One notorious conspiracy theory claimed the killings were the surreptitious agenda of a powerful clique in government who were working at conquering territories and forcibly converting Nigerian locals to Islam. Another canard said the government was contriving how to take over lands of citizens and hand them over to the Fulani by stoking the crisis. Too many lies.

Doctored videos and photos rippled on social media purportedly showing the military dropping arms and supplies from helicopters to bandits. The criminals were alleged to be enjoying protection as ancillaries of the government.

Really, conspiracy theories in Nigeria come with the ethnic origin of the leadership of the day. The administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, who is Ijaw and from the south-south, was accused of sponsoring Boko Haram to depopulate the north. Murtala Nyako, former governor of Adamawa state, at a meeting with Susan Rice, former US national security advisor; US officials and some northern leaders, at the White House on March 8, 2014, said Jonathan was eternalising the Boko Haram crisis to whittle down the voting power of the north ahead of the 2015 elections.

Azubuike Ihejirika, former chief of army staff, who was the first army chief of Igbo extraction since the civil war of 1967-1970, was also accused of sponsoring Boko Haram as a way to exact vengeance for the perils the Igbo suffered in the war. He was alleged to be deploying arms and ammunition to the insurgents. Nigeria has always been fertile with conspiracy theories.

Since 2017, the Buhari administration has been accused of angling to Islamise and Fulanise Nigeria. In fact, the allegation was so intense that some Nigerians wrote to foreign bodies asking them to sanction the country. In September 2017, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) claimed the governments issuance of N100 billion Sukuk bonds (an instrument of Islamic financing) was an attempt to pawn the country to Arab nations. According to the association, the government was accelerating the process of islamising the country.

Islamic financing is celebrated globally for its interest-free and equitable fundamentals, and has been advanced as a better financing alternative for developing countries. Ironically, the Sukuk funds over which CAN raised a hue and cry have been used to finance the construction of a road (Kolo-Otueke-Bayelsa Palm road) in former President Jonathans hometown. 44 other road projects have also been funded with Sukuk.

Instead of uniting against the bogey of kidnapping and banditry, Nigerians were divided  and some coloured the tragedies in ethnic complexions. Ethnic knights rose up, threatening the survival of the country. Nigeria was in chaos. Only the heavens know how the country escaped the plunge to certain doom.

And all of this for what? Politics? Because the president is of Fulani ethnic origin? I believe our predatory and pernicious politics was at the heart of the labelling and conspiracy theories. It is nearly seven years in the life of the Buhari administration and about a year to the next presidential election, but the conspiracy theories of Islamisation and Fulanisation appear to be vapourising. Perhaps because the government is inching towards the departure lounge and the ruses no longer serve any political purpose.

The Buhari administration is at its twilight, but Sunday is still a holy day for Christians. The foundational Christian elements on which Nigeria is built are still the same  and Islamisation has not happened. There is no Fulanisation or Islamisation of the civil service, the military or anywhere. It has been all propaganda.

As I have always said, Nigeria is a Christianised country. This is largely due to British colonialism. Islam had made an in-road into northern Nigeria by the 11th century  before Uthman Dan Fodios Jihad of 1804, which was the climactic denouement. Borno was among the first disciples of Islam in the 11th century. There was a literate population, a well defined system of government and codified laws. But the British yanked off a prodigious part of this heritage, imposing its own systems which were fore-grounded in Christian values and practices.

We have become so used to our Christian ways that any blip of the obverse sends us, top gear, into panic and revulsion.

President Buhari has left the orthodoxies the way he met them  and by dint of that, I think he has contributed in the Christianisation of Nigeria.

Fredrick Nwabufo; Nwabufo aka Mr OneNigeria is a writer and journalist. Twitter/Facebook/Instagram: @FredrickNwabufo
People's Democratic Party, PDP, Ebonyi State Chapter has expressed worry over the security situation in the state, alleging that "Ebubeagu" Security operatives were used to abduct the Publicity Secretary of party, Mr Nwoba China Nwoba on Sunday afternoon along Abakaliki/Enugu expressway.

Chairman, Peoples Democratic Party, Ebonyi state, Mr Tochukwu Okorie made this known while briefing newsmen on the alleged abduction of the Publicity Secretary.

Mr. Okorie said that the state publicity secretary was driving in the company of the State Deputy Chairman of the party, Barr. Ifeanyi Nworie when the young man was abducted and thrown into the boot of a Siena bus which the abductors came with at about 13.00hrs of the day.

"Mr. Nwoba was riding in the company of the State Deputy Chairman, Barr. Ifeanyi Nworie, who courageously resisted the kidnappers from taking away Mr. Nwoba in their vehicle.

"Barr. Ifeanyi Nworie now put a call across to the Officer Commanding the Anti Kidnapping Unit of Ebonyi State Police Command, Mr. Bruno who promptly sent a team. The abductors were intercepted and Mr. Nwoba was subsequently rescued from the abductors by the anti kidnapping operatives. So far, Mr. Nwoba has been taken into custody by the police".

"It is unfortunate that rather than arresting the abductors whom they met on ground while Mr. Nwoba was still being held in the boot of a vehicle, they took Mr. Nwoba into custody instead and allowed the abductors to go.

"Upon inquiry, we were informed that those were the gang of criminal elements. A group of terrorists codenamed Ebubeagu. Now, Mr. Nwoba who was the victim has now become the accused in this circumstance", he explained.

Also, the State Chairman of the party explained that he was denied assess to see Mr. Nwoba at the police custody, adding that he called the state commissioner of police on phone and briefed him of the development but he told him that he was not around, which according to Mr. Okorie was part of the gimmicks to keep the victim into hostage.

He called on President Muhammadu Buhari and other relevant authorities including the Attorney General of the Federation, the National Security Adviser and the Inspector General of Police to take judicial notice of what is happening in Ebonyi State.

Mr Okorie expressed fear that if nothing is done to curb the excesses and nefarious activities of the Ebubeagu security operatives that Ebonyi State would soon become a breeding ground for criminals stressing that Ebonyi old Government House and Ebonyi Hotels have been turned to torture chambers where the Ebubeagu usually take their preys for undue harassment and brutality.
Abuja, January 10, 2022  Nigerian authorities should investigate the recent attack on the offices of the Thunder Blowers news website, and hold those responsible to account, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

At around 8:15 p.m. on January 3, eight men entered the outlets office in Gusau, the capital of Nigerias northern Zamfara state, and demanded to see Abdul Balarabe, the websites Hausa-language editor, who was not present, and attacked Mansur Rabiu, also an editor, according to Rabiu and Thunder Blowers managing editor and team lead, Anas Sani Anka, both of whom spoke with CPJ by phone.

Rabiu said the men beat him with sticks for over five minutes, injuring his left arm, and said they only stopped when he escaped into a nearby room and locked the door until they left.

The men also smashed eight desktop computers and an internet server, and stole technical equipment from the outlet, according to Rabiu, Anka, and a police complaint filed by Thunder Blowers, which CPJ reviewed.

Police have opened an investigation into the attack, Anka said.

Nigerian authorities must immediately investigate the attack on the Thunder Blowers news website and the assault of editor Mansur Rabiu, and ensure that the perpetrators are held to account, said Angela Quintal, CPJs Africa program coordinator, from New York. The outlets equipment must be returned immediately, and authorities should make sure that such attacks do not go unpunished.

Thunder Blowers covers politics and general news in Nigeria on its website and YouTube channel, where it has about 1,000 followers.

Rabiu told CPJ that the men approached him immediately after entering the office and inquired about Balarabe; after one of the men demanded Rabiu show his ID to confirm that he was not Balarabe, they began hitting him with sticks.

The men stole three laptops, four cameras, a server decoder with a hard disk, four lights, five phones, two radio transmitters and sound mixers, and two camera memory cards from the office, according to Rabiu, Anka, and the complaint.

In the police complaint, Thunder Blowers alleged that the men attacked the building on behalf of Musa Ardo, a youth leader for the ruling All Progressives Congress party in Zamfara, and identified one of the attackers as Zayyanu Abdullahi, a member of the state APC.

When CPJ called Ardo for comment, he denied any involvement in the attack and said he had never heard of Abdullahi. CPJ called and texted the APCs spokesperson for Zamfara state, Yusuf Idris, but did not receive any reply.

Following the attack, Abdullahi called the outlet and said the raid was in response to recent interviews that criticized the state government, according to the police complaint and Anka, who listened to the call on speakerphone. Abdullahi offered to return the stolen items, but Anka told him that the matter was out of his hands and the police would handle it.

CPJ was unable to find contact information for Abdullahi. Anka told CPJ that the police had invited Abdullahi and Ardo for questioning in the case.

Balarabe told CPJ via phone that he received a call on January 2 from a friend saying that people planned to attack him the following day; he said he decided to avoid the office on January 3 and was not in Zamfara state at the time of the attack.

Balarabe posted about the warning on his Facebook page and said he discussed the threats with Anka before the men arrived at the office, and they planned to report the threats to police the following day.

CPJ called and texted Zamfara state police spokesperson Muhammad Shehu for comment, but did not receive any reply.
Competing for customers at heart of Phuket market slayings

PHUKET: Escalating arguments over customers and setting the price of shrimps being sold sparked the shootings at a main fresh market in Phuket Town that left two people dead and three injured.

murderhomicidepoliceviolenceeconomics

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Monday 10 January 2022, 06:21PM

Maneenop confessed to the charges in light of the evidence against him. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Maneenop confessed to the charges in light of the evidence against him. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Relatives of the victims presented flowers to the police officers. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Relatives of the victims deep in grief arrive at the press conference. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Region 8 Police Commander Lt Gen Amphol Buarabphon speaks to the press after the press conference today (Jan 10). Photo: Phuket Police

Region 8 Police Commander Lt Gen Amphol Buarabphon speaks to the press after the press conference today (Jan 10). Photo: Phuket Police

Region 8 Police Deputy Commanders Maj Gen Wankai Ekaphonphit and Maj Gen Naphanwut Liamsanguan explained the motive for the shootings at a press conference held at Phuket City Police Station in Phuket Town today (Jan 10).

The press conference was held as the arrested  and now confessed  killer, Maneenop Meethong, was escorted to a meeting room on the second floor, where he was questioned by Region 8 Police Commander Lt Gen Amphol Buarabphon.

Maneenop was arrested in his hometown of Hat Yai, in Songkhla province, on Saturday. He was brought back to Phuket to face charges yesterday, the officers reconfirmed.

Maneenop has confessed to fatally shooting Sarayuth Thinsathan, 47, and Toi Limpananurak, 53, and injuring three other people at the Phuket City Municipality Fresh Market 2* on Ong Sim Phai Rd in the heart of Phuket Town at about 10am on Friday (Jan 7).

Maneenop, registered as living in Rassada, and the five people he shot were all shrimp vendors at the market.

The vendors had shrimp stalls next to each other for many years. Often there were conflicting problems with setting the price of products and undercutting each other, the officers explained.

Frustration over customers moving from one stall to the next on a regular basis led to the vendors getting angry at each other, they added.

On the day of the shooting an argument broke out between the vendors and the Maneenops wife, resulting in Maneenop going home to fetch his revolver and return to shoot the five other vendors.

Maneenop fired five to six times before fleeing the scene in his black Toyota Fortuner, the officers continued

Maneenop, today confirmed as 49 years old (not 47 as previously told to the press), parked his car near the Laem Hin Pier in Rassada and boarded a passenger boat to the Bang Mad seafood raft off the east coast.

From there he hired a passenger boat to take him to Klong Muang Beach Pier in Krabi. During that part of the journey Maneenop threw his gun into the bay.

On arriving in Krabi, Maneenop made his way to the Krabi Bus Terminal, where he boarded a passenger van to Hat Yai, Songkhla. Officers tracked him down and arrested him at 6pm Saturday, the officers said.

Maneenop has admitted to all charges against him in light of the witnesses and CCTV footage police had as evidence, the officers said.

Maneenop has been charged with murder, illegal possession of firearms and ammunition and illegally carrying a firearm in a public area.

Region 8 Police Commander Lt Gen Amphol, who today received flowers from relatives of the two people slain in the attack, said he will pursue legal proceedings to the utmost.

The relatives do not need to worry that the gunman [sic] will be released on bail and return to attack them. Everyone will be in good police care, he said.

The officers today gave no update on the condition of the survivors of the shooting: Ms Aporn Thansathan, 52; Kriengkrai Limpananurak, 56; and his son Pornchai.

* Not Phuket City Municipality Fresh Market 1 on Ranong Rd, as originally reported. The error is regretted.
Huge patient data leak from Siriraj Hospital

BANGKOK: About 39 million purported patient records from Siriraj Hospital have been offered for sale on an internet database-sharing forum in what appears to be the latest hack of the countrys public health sector.

crime

By Bangkok Post

Monday 10 January 2022, 03:34PM

Patients pass through thermal scanning as they enter Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok. Their records may be among the reported huge data theft from the hospital. Photo: Chanat Katanyu / file

Authorities are investigating the post, which was on raidforums.com. The leak is said to include records of VIP patients, reports the Bangkok Post.

There was no clear indication whether the person who yesterday (Jan 9) offered to sell 38.9mn patient records really had such a huge trove of data.

However, the poster said a sample file was available. Contact could be made through a Telegram app account.

The data supposedly comprises names, addresses, Thai IDs, phone numbers, gender details, dates of birth and other information, according to the poster, who used the name WraithMax.

The poster said the price for the data was negotiable and it would go to only one buyer.

There was a large data leak concerning Sirirajs patient records that has been offered for sale, said Dr Sutee Tuvirat, an information systems security professional.

The data is not only from Siriraj Hospital but also from nearby Siriraj Piyamaharajkarun Hospital, which has records of VIP patients, he said.

Most local hospitals still had no cybersecurity teams or chief information security officers who could monitor threats.

Even some department stores which invested in cybersecurity have been hacked, but hospitals which keep a great deal of sensitive data still do not make investment in this area a priority, Dr Sutee said.

This latest possible leak from the public health sector follows a series of hacks over the past couple of years.

In October last year, another post on raidforums.com offered data on 100,000 people from 11 Thai hospitals.

Last September, state-run Phetchabun Hospital saw the theft of the data of more than 10,000 patients through its web-based app, which was said to be below standard.

In September 2020, at Saraburi Hospital, a hacker blocked access to patients medical records and shut down the hospitals telephone lines. The hacker demanded the hospital pay B63 billion in Bitcoin.

Healthcare is one of the targeted sectors as it contains a lot of sensitive information, said Dr Sutee.

Victims may not even know their data has been misused.

Once data is breached, hackers will steal all the data. They work professionally, making money and gaining creditability.

The acting deputy secretary-general of the National Cyber Security Agency, Grp Capt Amorn Chomchoey, said he was aware of the Siriraj case and was investigating it.
Ministry of Interior orders Governor to fight COVID

PHUKET: The Ministry of Interior has issued an urgent notice for all provincial governors to ramp up measures to counter the current outbreak of COVID-19 infections, including to implement integrated control measures for the opening of premises, businesses and activities for tourism in situation areas classified as surveillance zones.

COVID-19Coronavirushealthtourism

By The Phuket News

Monday 10 January 2022, 11:00AM

The notice was issued by Ministry of Interior Permanent Secretary Suthipong Juljarern yesterday (Jan 9), and released by the Phuket office of the Public Relations Department (PR Phuket) yesterday afternoon.

Buried in the three-page order, marked as Final Release, is Section 3, Improving the provincial area according to the situational area and the designation of tourism pilot areas for provinces that have been re-adjusted to the situation areas according to the Order of B.C.C. No. 1/2565 issued under the regulations.

This ordinance (No. 41) shall be given to the provincial governor. and competent officials involved in preparing personnel, premises, and public relations to alert the public and officials to prepare for the implementation of measures, prohibitions and practices, the order noted.

The order marked that provincial governors were empowered to take necessary action to improve the situation in their areas under Section 9 of the Emergency Decree on Public Administration in Emergency Situations B.E. 2554 (No. 37) dated October 30, 2021.

The order issued yesterday follows Phuket Vice Governor Pichet Panapong last Wednesday (Jan 5) confirming a slew of critical issues affecting tourists that Phuket provincial officials were powerless to act on due to the level of inter-departmental coordination required.

However, the order did not explicitly define the extent to which provincial governors may implement their own measures to counter the spread of infections while improving the situation tourists are finding themselves caught up in.

UNCLEAR AUTHORITY

Over the past two years, Bangkok officials have repeatedly made such announcements allowing provincial governors to take measures specifically to counter the COVID-19 situation in their areas, but officially have never been allowed to ease measures more than the central government has allowed.

Regardless, Phuket officials have repeatedly exceeded that mandate in many areas, with no action taken by Bangkok officials, indicating a history of silent consent.

Phuket provincial officials are expected to hold a meeting today (Jan 10) to further explore what options are now available to them, considering the direct order from Mr Suthipong.
Sandbox tourists may not transit in Bangkok to Phuket, but can to Samui

PHUKET: Sandbox tourists travelling to Phuket, including those coming to stay in Phang Nga and Krabi, are not allowed to transit through Bangkok, an official announcement issued by the Royal Thai Embassy in Berlin has revealed.

COVID-19Coronavirushealthtourism

By The Phuket News

Monday 10 January 2022, 03:11PM

The announcement, titled Measures for entering Thailand for Thais and foreigners wishing to travel to Thailand, was marked as accurate as of Jan 8 and posted online by the Phuket Info Center, operated by the Phuket office of the Ministry of Interior, yesterday (Jan 9).

All travelers entering Thailand must register through the Thailand Pass system (http://tb.consular.go.th) at least seven days before travelling. Successful registrations will receive a QR Code via electronic mail for use in travel, said the notice.

Those who have registered through the Thailand Pass system before Dec 22 and been issued a QR code, or have been approved and are still waiting for their QR code, can use the QR code to travel to Thailand according to selected projects according to the original date and time that has been approved, the notice confirmed.

The approved entry still applies to those who have already been approved under the Test & Go scheme, the notice confirmed.

On the day of travel, travelers must show their RT-PCR test results issued no later than 72 hours prior to travel. Exempted from having to present PCR test results are children under 6 years old traveling with parents and people who have recovered from infection not less than 14 days but not more than three months before travelling. Documents confirming recovery can be used if the RT-PCR test results are positive.

Upon arrival in Thailand, arrivals must undergo a second COVID-19 test by RT-PCR method at a place designated by the government free of charge. Travellers can enquire about the location and process of the second infection test from the first hotel, the notice explained.

With the Test & Go entry scheme now suspended until further notice, those still wanting to travel to Thailand may do so under the following entry schemes:

ALTERNATIVE QUARANTINE (AQ)

AQ entry arrivals must have been fully vaccinated in accordance with the criteria prescribed by the vaccine manufacturer at least 14 days prior to travel.

A minimum of seven nights in an AQ Hotel quarantine must be reserved and paid in full, or at least B15,000 deposit paid. Proof of reservation must include 2 RT-PCR checks and airport pickup.

People who have not been vaccinated or who have not been vaccinated but do not meet the guidelines set by the vaccine manufacturer at least 14 days before departure must book a reservation to quarantine in an AQ hotel for a minimum of 10 nights. The booking must be prepaid in full, or a deposit of not less than B15,000 baht must be paid. Proof of hotel reservation must include the cost of 2 RT-PCR checks.

Those arriving at Suvarnabhumi Airport or Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok must select an AQ Hotel in Bangkok or the immediate surrounding area, or Chon Buri, Prachinburi or Nakhon Nayok.

Those arriving at Phuket Airport can choose an AQ Hotel only in Phuket and Phang Nga.

Travelers can reserve AQ hotel rooms by contacting the hotel directly. The notice provided the following web addresses to help travellers in making their selection:

www.agoda.com/quarantineth

https://asq.locanation.com

https://asq.ascendtravel.com

https://asqthailand.com

https://entrythailand.go.th

Foreigners entering Thailand must have health insurance covering treatment in Thailand of not less than US$50,000. This requirement does not apply to Thai nationals.

SANDBOX

Sandbox entry is only for those who have been fully vaccinated in accordance with the criteria prescribed by the vaccine manufacturer at least 14 days prior to travel. Travelers under 18 years of age who have not been fully vaccinated and traveling with parents can travel under the Sandbox scheme under the same conditions as parents, the notice said.

PHUKET SANDBOX

For travellers entering Thailand under the Phuket Sandbox scheme, the notice said plainly: Book direct flights from outside Thailand to Phuket. Unable to transit in Bangkok.

Book a room at SHA Extra+ (https://web.thailandsha.com/shaextraplus) in Phuket for at least seven nights with proof of payment of 2 RT-PCR appointments from www.thailandpsas.com, it added.

Travelers do not have to detain themselves in hotel rooms [during the seven days]. but must stay only in Phuket until the due date to be able to travel to other provinces, the notice confirmed.

However, the notice did not mention that all arrivals must remain in their hotel rooms until they received the results of their first swab test taken after landing at Phuket airport.

SAMUI, PHANG NGA AND KRABI

The Sandbox schemes for Surat Thani Province (Koh Samui, Koh Pha-ngan and Koh Tao), Phang Nga Province and Krabi Province are only for those who have been fully vaccinated in accordance with the criteria prescribed by the vaccine manufacturer at least 14 days prior to the trip).

Thailand Pass registration will open tomorrow (Jan 11) for entry to these Sandbox areas.

Book direct flights from outside Thailand to Phuket and continue to travel to the Phang Nga or Krabi by car, the notice said.

Those traveling to Surat Thani are able to stop and change planes (transfer) in Bangkok, and connect to domestic flights PG5125/ PG5151 or PG5171 only, by having single tickets for Europe - Bangkok - Samui with a single booking issued by the airline only, the notice confirmed.

Travellers entering Thailand under these Sandbox entry schemes must book a hotel room at a SHA Extra+ accommodation (https://web.thailandsha.com/shaextraplus) for at least seven nights. The proof of reservation must include 2 RT-PCR checks and airport pick-up.

Travelers do not have to detain themselves in the hotel room for the seven days, but must remain in the specified Sandbox area until the due date to be able to travel to other areas and provinces.

On the day of travel, travelers must show their RT-PCR test results issued no later than 72 hours prior to travel. Exempted from having to present PCR test results are children under 6 years old traveling with parents and people who have recovered from infection not less than 14 days but not more than three months before travelling. Documents confirming recovery can be used if the RT-PCR test results are positive, the notice repeated.

Foreigners entering Thailand under these entry schemes must have a health insurance covering treatment in Thailand of not less than US$50,000. This requirement does not apply to Thai nationals,the notice also repeated.
Raised COVID alert will not impact overall economy, says private sector

BANGKOK: With the COVID-19 alert level having been raised to Level 4 from 3 last week amid the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant, concerns are circulating about whether tourists will hesitate to travel to Thailand.

CoronavirusCOVID-19economicstourism

By National News Bureau of Thailand

Monday 10 January 2022, 08:49AM

Photo: NNT

However, businesses say the latest wave of infections is not causing significant economic losses just yet.

Asst Prof Dr Thanavath Phonvichai, president of the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce (UTCC), acknowledged that the heightened alert level could prompt hesitation among foreign tourists looking to travel to Thailand.

However, he noted that Omicron cases were on the rise globally and it was within expectations that the number of COVID infections would rise after the New Year holiday period. The government has also asked employers to implement Work From Home plans and suspended the Test & Go entry scheme for international travelers in order to mitigate the situation.

Dr Thanavath also said the spread of the Omicron variant should not have significant effects on economic activity, as more foreign tourists are expected to arrive in the latter half of this year rather than during the first half.

Dr Thanavath, who is also the chief advisor to the UTCCs Center for Economic and Business Forecasting, explained that the economic impact would depend on whether lockdowns are implemented.

He noted that in 2020, lockdowns caused B800 billion to 1 trillion in damages, while partial lockdowns in 29 provinces last year during the months of July and August caused about B300 to 500bn in economic losses. The UTCCs economic forecasting center is currently maintaining its GDP growth target for 2022 at 4%, but Dr. Thanavath said growth may be trimmed to 3.5% if the Omicron situation worsens.

Federation of Thai Industries (FTI) Chairman Supant Mongkolsuthree also affirmed that the private sector is not in a panic, but said he wanted to ask that the government avoid implementing some of the disease control measures seen in the past, especially lockdowns. He said he believed the measures were too draconian and affected too many businesses. He also said he did not believe the Omicron variant would cause as much harm as the previous Delta variant, despite being more transmissible.
Clearfield, PA (16830)

Today

Considerable cloudiness. Occasional rain showers in the afternoon. High 69F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low 58F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Today

Clear to partly cloudy. Gusty winds during the evening. Low 42F. Winds SSE at 20 to 30 mph.

Tonight

Clear to partly cloudy. Gusty winds during the evening. Low 42F. Winds SSE at 20 to 30 mph.

Tomorrow

Partly cloudy skies during the morning hours will give way to occasional showers in the afternoon. High 58F. SSW winds shifting to NW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)

Today

Overcast. Slight chance of a rain shower. High near 18C. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Rain. Low 11C. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
When we last left the debacle of the leaning Millenium Tower of San Francisco a few weeks ago (quickly becoming the new Pisa, Italy of the United States) engineers were certain they had a fix for the billion dollar building. Until they didnt.

After prescribing a cant miss fix by sinking massive piles into an already shaky foundation, they found that the building started leaning even further. Now they have concluded that fewer piles were needed than thought, since they found that each can bear more weight, in a sense over-correcting the correction. I guess theyre treating the solution to the buildings tilt like a work of art; theyre making it up as they go along.

Rumors are that after several all-night strategy sessions involving drinking, playing cards and throwing darts in smoke-filled rooms, engineers have come up with a new radical idea to help right the tower, but are keeping it under wraps until they sober up enough to re-examine it in the light of day. In a seemingly unrelated development 100 million tons of industrial strength duct tape arrived by boat a from Asia at the port of Oakland across the bay.

Property values have naturally started sinking along with the building itself. Some condos that were worth $2 million have dropped 25% in value causing the citys tax revenue income to start sliding like the tower. However, the city (without hiring any high-price engineers) has proposed a fix by installing tax increases of over 33% in the other direction thereby correcting the drop and leveling the income out nicely. If they could only do that as easily for the building itself.

Engineers claim that the building is continuing to tilt at the rate of 3 inches per year. At this rate it will go from being the tallest condo complex in San Francisco to the longest one in a few years. Reportedly, an owner in one of the penthouses is so angry about the debacle that he is considering installing giant neon letters similar to the famed Hollywood sign on the roof spelling TILT which would be viewable from anywhere in San Francisco to voice his frustration.

Then there is a city supervisor who is very outspoken about his skepticism regarding the proposed solution. Im glad to see someone with such integrity and courage in city government for a change. I wonder how long it will be until the administration rewards him for his candidness by placing him in charge of the buildings sanitation engineers. His new office will probably be in the basement nearer to the sinkhole the building finds itself falling into.

And lastly, some independent engineers think they have finally figured out what caused the building to start listing in the first place. It seems the developers didnt pay the construction firms all the money they originally owed them. So they got with their lawyers and placed a lien on the building. I guess that explains everything.
London, KY (40741)

Today

Mostly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 84F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms mainly before midnight. Low 57F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
MADDY BARRETTE, Chariho, Softball, Sophomore; Barrette hit a two-run single in the seventh inning, lifting Chariho past Cumberland. For the week, Barrette was 4 for 8 with three RBIs and a double in three games.

MADDIE STEPSKI, Stonington, Softball, Senior; Stepski hit two home runs in back-to-back games for the Bears. In three games during the week, she was 10 for 13 with four homers, two doubles and 12 RBIs. Stepski is hitting .750 for the season with 22 RBIs and six home runs.

MICHAEL POOLE, Westerly, Baseball, Freshman; Poole struck out 14 Rogers batters to earn his second win of the season. Poole pitched a four-hitter and allowed just one earned run. For the season, Poole has 19 strikeouts in 12 innings with a 1.14 ERA.

SEAN BERGEL, Wheeler, Baseball, Sophomore; Bergel pitched a complete-game two-hitter in a 1-0 win against Putnam. Bergel struck out seven and did not walk a batter. He is 2-1 with a 1.68 ERA this season.

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The wheels of British financial justice move at a snails pace. In the US, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought the first charges against Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Silicon Valley start-up Theranos, in March 2018.

Federal prosecutors brought the first criminal charges within a year, although court hearings were postponed several times because of Covid.

Nevertheless, the whole affair was largely done and dusted, after a jury trial, by January this year. All that is now awaited is sentencing for Holmes on four federal counts of fraud.

Some two-and-a-half years after the implosion at Neil Woodfords investment empire around 300,000 investors are still waiting for answers

Contrast this with the UK. An FCA investigation into management culpability for the near collapse of HBOS in 2008 was completed in 2015. But it has been tied up in legal wrangling since then.

A separate inquiry into who, at the top of HBOS/Lloyds, knew what and when about large-scale fraud at the banks Reading branch is still in abeyance.

This is despite the fact that fraud convictions in the 245million case were obtained in 2017.

Some two-and-a-half years after the implosion at Neil Woodfords investment empire around 300,000 investors are still waiting for answers as to who was responsible for the collapse and failures in the regulation.

In a procedural note, City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, has told the Treasury committee that after seeking 45 information requirements it completed most of the investigatory work by the end of 2021.

If anyone involved might have thought that justice and potential compensation for their lost savings could be around the corner, there will be disappointment.

Woodford is said to be advising Acacia Research on life sciences investments. Those of us exposed to his Patient Capital fund, now managed by Schroders and more than 60 per cent down on its asset value, will wonder how on earth that is permitted.

There are also questions to be asked about investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown which exposed around a quarter of its clients to Woodford funds.

Authorised manager Link was meant to be there to protect savers interests, but clearly fell short.

No disciplinary action is possible yet because of the need for counsel to evaluate the evidence. It will then require legal analysis to assess what regulatory action, if any, is required.

These steps are not a public process. Beyond that, there are many hoops to be passed through before matters reach a Regulatory Decisions Committee and eventually the Upper Tribunal, which has court-like powers.

As we know from HBOS and other inquiries, legal hoops are formidable, and armed with the help of City law firms the opportunities to obfuscate and delay are enormous.

One way around all of this (used in the case of RBS) is for the Commons to take control of the FCAs report and publish it using parliamentary privilege.

Known facts are then put into the public arena. It provides a great opportunity for Treasury committee chairman Mel Stride to align himself with damaged savers.

Cleaning house

Auditors KPMG have been involved in so many accounting pratfalls, ranging from the Co-op bank debacle to the Fifa bribery scandal, that it is hard to keep track.

Its position as a Big Four audit firm only remains intact because there is so little competition in the sector.

Nevertheless, it is refreshing that UK chief executive Jon Holt decided that the best response to its mishandling of the audit of collapsed construction and engineering group Carillion is to make a clear breast.

Rather than tie up the Financial Reporting Council tribunal in legal knots, he acknowledges that the case against his firm, its partners and some junior staff is both disturbing and upsetting.

Instead of KPMG partners drawing attention to bad behaviour among others  the real job of an audit  the mistakes were allowed to take place with disastrous consequences for jobs, customers and shareholders.

Restoring KPMGs reputation will be a long-haul. Recognising the scale of wrong-doing will help.

Price right

If the private-equity backed owners of Morrisons and Asda were hoping to escape wounding grocery price wars in 2022, they will be disappointed.

German-owned Aldi has thrown down the gauntlet by promising it will always offer the lowest prices for groceries, no matter what.

That is terrific for consumers but not for owners loaded up with expensive short-term debt.
As more investors get materials and voting information, here's what they need to know about the AGM process and what some of the key resolutions to look out for are, according to ii.

1. Getting involved virtually and in person

Getting involved with the AGM of companies you own shares in has never been easier now that more events are being held virtually as well as in person.

Savings on time and travel are usually accompanied by the benefit of a more engaged meeting, as Marks & Spencer found out in 2020 when it hosted 1,500 shareholders on its digital platform compared with 561 at the physical AGM the previous year. Some 86 questions were put forward, an increase of 28 from the year before.

Through attendance, you will be doing your bit for shareholder democracy as well as improving your understanding of the business where your money is invested.

2. What happens at an AGM?

The event is an opportunity for the board to present company strategy and performance, for shareholders to hold directors to account through Q&A discussion and for them to subsequently vote on various resolutions based on all the information presented. The chair will usually deliver a speech and companies will sometimes use the AGM as an opportunity to update on trading so far in the new financial year.

3. How do I find out about an AGM?

The Companies Act 2006 requires a UK-incorporated public company to hold an AGM within six months of its financial year-end. The notice of an AGM must be sent at least 21 days in advance of the meeting being held. It contains all the information a shareholder needs to participate in the meeting, including a list of resolutions and explanatory notes.

4. Can I attend the meeting online?

Jimmy Choo held the UKs first wholly virtual AGM in 2016, but until Covid-19 the pace of digital adoption was slow. Pandemic requirements forced many events to take place with the minimum quorum of two board members in attendance. Engagement events were held online in advance of some AGMs so that shareholders had the information they needed before voting remotely. In-person only meetings are now making a return, but other firms have been happy to continue hybrid meetings allowing shareholders to attend in person or virtually. Marks & Spencer now holds its AGM under studio conditions and found that three times as many as shareholders engaged with its digital meeting in 2020.

5. How do I vote?

Shareholders who do not wish to attend the actual meeting can appoint the chairman as proxy to cast votes on their behalf. The deadline for submitting the voting forms is usually 48 hours before the start of the meeting. If you have already voted by proxy, you will still be able to vote at the AGM in person should you wish by completing the paper poll card so that your vote on the day replaces your previously lodged vote.

6. Can I ask a question?

Big institutions regularly get the chance to talk with companies through investor relations teams, whereas the AGM usually offers the once-a-year opportunity for shareholders to question the board and to seek further information prior to voting. Shareholders are often asked to submit their questions in advance so they can later read the answers on the company's website before casting their votes. It also enables companies to group answers by theme in order to avoid repetition at the meeting.

7. How should I vote?

The annual report contains everything you need to know, ranging from full disclosure on the remuneration decision-making through to how the company is doing on boardroom diversity or climate change targets. Taking time to read the report ahead of the AGM also serves as a great opportunity to understand why you're invested in the company in the first place!

Governance experts from voting advisory services such as Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services go through the reports in great detail before providing recommendations to their clients on how to vote on each resolution. Their views can be very influential and will often be picked up in the press ahead of the meeting. interactive investor follows up on many of these reports in our weekly AGM previews.

8. How do I find out the AGM result?

Companies publish the result on the regulatory news service immediately after the meeting. The 'fors' and 'againsts' are usually expressed as a number as well as percentage, but look out for occasions where there is a high figure of withheld votes. If there's been significant dissent, the chair of the meeting will often include some remarks and a pledge to seek feedback from shareholders. Where a single party controls more than 30 per cent of the votes, such as Mike Ashley at Frasers Group, certain resolutions will need approval by a majority vote of independent shareholders as well as the usual vote by all shareholders.

9. What are the key resolutions?

The agenda usually starts with those resolutions that appear every year, the so-called ordinary resolutions such as to receive the annual report, re-appoint the auditor or to approve the annual remuneration (director pay) report. There may also be some special resolutions to consider as one-off business, for example the BHP climate change action plan.

Some of the resolutions to look out for are:

10. Remuneration report

Plenty of companies have suffered 'bloody noses' in the past when shareholders have felt boardroom pay and bonuses don't adequately reflect the performance achieved in the year. But this is an advisory vote and won't change what's already been paid. However, if enough votes go against the report, there's an obligation under good governance for companies to understand the cause of discontent and possibly take action in future pay awards.

11. Remuneration policy

The framework for salary, bonus and long-term incentive plan  so-called LTIPs - is set out every three years and is subject to a binding vote of shareholders, although companies are free to change policy and hold an AGM vote more often if they feel there is a need. There's usually plenty of consultation in advance to take on board the views of major shareholders.

12. Election of directors

Non-executive and executive board members retire and offer themselves for re-election, while those who joined the board in the period since the last AGM stand for election. These votes are not always a formality, for example if shareholders are concerned a director has too many other commitments or if they want to send a message to the chair of the nomination committee about a lack of boardroom diversity. Serving too long on a board is another issue because directors are then seen as losing their independence.

13. Political donations

In reality, most companies have no intention of making donations, but the Companies Act of 2006 is broadly drafted and may catch the funding of seminars and events where politicians are invited. The amount under the authority is capped for the coming year and is then disclosed in the subsequent annual report.

14. To declare a dividend

Occasions where shareholders believe a company doesn't have the resources to fund a dividend might trigger a vote against this resolution, but unsurprisingly that's a rare event.

15. Authority to purchase own ordinary shares

Plenty of companies are using surplus cash at the moment to buy their shares, which are then cancelled. The idea is that fewer shares in circulation will have a benefit on the companys earnings per share. The resolution gives them the flexibility to do so at some point in the year ahead. Note the word 'authority' though, as it doesn't mean it will happen. When companies scrambled to conserve cash during the pandemic the idea of a share buyback was the last thing on their minds, but this resolution still appeared on AGM agendas to the bemusement of shareholders.
Kimberly-Clark, the US owner of Kleenex, is cleaning up its carbon footprint by using a Scottish windfarm to power its UK factories.

The Texas-based personal care giant has signed an agreement with renewable energy firm Octopus, which will supply green electricity from an onshore windfarm at Cumberhead in South Lanarkshire.

Thinking outside the box: Kleenex owner Kimberly-Clark has signed an agreement with renewable energy firm Octopus, which will supply green electricity from an onshore windfarm

Once the 75million windfarm is complete next year, it will supply 80 per cent of the electricity at Kimberly-Clark's three UK factories and fully power its two main distribution centres.

Octopus is funding construction through its London-listed investment fund, Octopus Renewables Infrastructure Trust.

The power purchase agreement is the first for Kimberly-Clark outside the US.

The firm, whose brands also include Andrex and Huggies, called it a 'significant step' in decarbonising its UK operations.
WEST HARTFORD  The town has received nearly $1 million in grant funding from the state to clean up the blighted parcel that once housed Puritan Furniture on New Britain Avenue.

The property, at 1051 and 1061 New Britain Ave., was home to Puritan Furniture before it closed in 2020 and is now owned by NASRA WH LLC.

The group intends to redevelop the 2.97-acre site into a $34 million 131-unit mixed-income, mixed-used transit-oriented development, according to Kristen Gorski, the towns economic development coordinator.

The project is still in the proposal phase with developers still needing to acquire land-use approvals from the town

The town was awarded $953,646 as part of a statewide rollout of $17.9 million in funding provided by the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Developments Brownfield Remediation Program. The state said the money will be used to remediate 40 blighted parcels in 13 municipalities across Connecticut.

Cleaning up blighted properties that have been vacant for decades and putting them into productive use will ultimately generate back many more times the amount of these grants through private investments, Gov. Ned Lamont said in a statement. If we remediate these properties now, we can turn an eyesore into an asset, revitalize neighborhoods and transform otherwise unusable property into new space for businesses and residents.

Gorski said the town applied for the grant as a public-private partnership with the property owner. They will likely also seek funding from the newly created CT Communities Challenge Grant program.

We will pass through the funding to the private partner who is the property owner so they can remediate the property, Gorski said.

The building is home to an Ashley HomeStore Outlet, which developers intend to keep after the redevelopment as part of their vision to have commercial businesses on the ground floor of the building. Gorski said the developers have expressed interest in having retail and possibly restaurants located on the property.

But before that can happen, Gorski said, the parcel needs some major work.

The property is quite old, Gorski said. There are contaminated materials that are currently on the property. Those materials consist of some basic things like asbestos. There are damaged materials. Theres also some underground storage tanks that were abandoned that need to be removed.

The town, though, said they are excited about what the building owner and developer have planned. They see it as a boost to the Elmwood section of West Hartford.

Were very excited about this at town hall, Town Manager Matt Hart said. This project should play a prominent role in the development of this transit corridor and add to Elmwood and the towns vitality.

Gorski said the property being a few hundred feet away from a CTfastrak stop brings the possibility of alternative transportation.

This particular site is really exciting because of its proximity to the CTfastrak station, Gorski said. Were hoping that people who live in those units or even people who may commute to the commercial space, that they might be able to also use that and alternate modes of transportation.

Gorski said adding 131 mixed-income housing units to West Hartford is also an important part of this plan.

Vacancy is at an all-time low, Gorski said. Those are units that we could really use to cater to the residents we currently have as well as attract some new residents.

Gorski said these kinds of projects are very important to West Hartfords interest in transit-oriented development.

It will overall enhance the already vibrant neighborhood we have in Elmwood and on New Park Avenue, Gorski said. When you look at the project as a whole, its really exciting to see these mixed use projects in Elmwood that are transit-oriented developments. Were just really excited for the level of investment that this project will bring to Elmwood.

Connecticut Media Group
Housebuilding companies helped drag the FTSE lower today after the UK Government told them to come up with a fully-funded plan to remove dangerous cladding from residential housing, a project that could cost at least 4billion.

The FTSE 100 has ended the day down 0.5 per cent at 7,445.3, while the FTSE 250 closed down 1.5 per cent at 23,001.8.

In the US, stocks were nursing heavy losses as expectations of rate hikes this year worried investors, with all main indexes down more than 1 per cent just after London market close.

Secretary of State for Levelling Up Michael Gove said that property developers had until early March to agree a plan to deal with cladding on buildings that are between 11 and 18 metres high.

In company news, online trading platform Plus500 expects its annual results to exceed market expectations even as it reported a slower fourth-quarter growth as compared with the previous quarter on weak customer trading performance.

Elsewhere, bitcoin briefly dropped below $40,000 today to its lowest in over five months as volatility continues.

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KPMG has confessed to a disturbing case of misconduct after it was accused of forging documents relating to its audit of Carillion.

In a rare admission of guilt during the first day of a legal hearing, the Big Four accountant said it was clear that misconduct had occurred when it was questioned by the industry watchdog over the quality of its audits into the collapsed engineering giant.

But despite KPMGs apology, the case is set to continue for up to five weeks as six former employees attempt to absolve themselves of responsibility.

Apology: Big Four accountant KPMG said it was clear that misconduct had occurred when it was questioned by the watchdog over the quality of its audit of bust outsourcer Carillion

Regulator the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has accused KPMG and several former staff of misleading it when it tried to check their audits of Carillion and another outsourcer, Regenersis.

As the case kicked off yesterday, the FRCs barrister Mark Ellison QC claimed the six former workers  including partner Peter Meehan, who led KPMGs audits of Carillion  colluded to create documents that made it look like they did more work on the audits than they had.

Audits are supposed to check a companys financial statements and flag to investors, customers and suppliers if anything appears awry.

Every so often, the FRC asks to check a select few probes to make sure the accountancy firms are doing their jobs correctly.

But Ellison claimed that the individuals at KPMG, when asked about their 2016 audit of Carillion and 2014 audit of Regenersis, invented documents to show the inspectors  and they tried to pass them off as though they were made at the time of the audits.

Just two years after the probe, Carillion tumbled into administration in the UKs biggest corporate collapse in decades. It failed under the weight of a monstrous debt pile, after having to write down the value of swathes of its contracts.

Investors, suppliers and customers  including the Government  were left millions of pounds out of pocket.

Mehta analysis: KPMGs chairman Bina Mehta (pictured), who was appointed last February, faces a headache

The FRC is still running two other investigations into possible failings in Carillions audits, while the companys liquidators are preparing a separate 250million negligence claim against KPMG.

But the accountancy giant could be slapped with a multi-million-pound fine in a matter of weeks if the disciplinary tribunal agrees that it misled the FRCs audit quality inspectors.

Jon Holt, chief executive of KPMG UK, said: The misconduct that this tribunal will hear about over the coming weeks is disturbing and upsetting for me and for my colleagues.

This misconduct is a violation of our processes and clearly against our values.

It is unacceptable, we do not tolerate or condone it in any way, and I am very sorry that it occurred in our firm.

The chief executive explained that KPMG had discovered the misconduct in its own internal investigations, and immediately reported it to the FRC.

Holt, who was appointed last April, added: It is, of course, for the tribunal to reach a conclusion on the allegations as they relate to the individuals concerned. Nevertheless, it is clear to me that misconduct has occurred and that our regulator was misled.

I very much regret that individuals involved in this case failed to act properly or to call out the inappropriate behaviour of others, and I am saddened that some relatively junior former members of staff are facing very serious regulatory sanction at an early point in their careers.

The case will cause a headache for Bina Mehta, KPMGs UK chairman, appointed last February, who has vowed to put the businesss house in order.

Three months ago, the FRC accused the group of lying in an investigation into the sale of bed makers Silentnight, which it advised on. KPMG was hit with a bumper 13million fine over the Silentnight scandal.

Mehta became the first woman to take the role of KPMG chairman when Bill Michael was forced to resign after telling young staff to stop moaning and playing the victim card about the impact which lockdown was having on them.
Housebuilders saw 1.6billion wiped off their value after the Government demanded they foot a 4billion bill to remove unsafe cladding from tower blocks.

In an open letter to property developers yesterday, Housing Secretary Michael Gove warned he was prepared to take all steps necessary to force the industry to contribute towards the cost of safety works, including restricting access to government funding.

He added that the Government may ultimately resort to laws or the courts to force developers to cough up the cash.

Repair bill: Housing firms have until early March to agree on a plan to cover the costs associated with removing dangerous cladding from buildings between 11 and 18 metres high

Housing firms will have until early March to agree on a fully-funded plan to cover the costs associated with removing dangerous cladding from buildings between 35 and 60 feet high.

Gove also said in a speech to MPs that the Government will crack down on rogue firms responsible for building unsafe homes.

I am putting them on notice, he said. If you mis-sold dangerous products like cladding or insulation, if you cut corners to save cash, we are coming for you.

The strong words sent shares in FTSE 100 property firms tumbling, with Persimmon dropping 5.1 per cent while Barratt Developments fell 4.9 per cent, Berkeley slumped 3.6 per cent and Taylor Wimpey sank 3.5 per cent.

The pain was also felt among the mid-cap developers, with Redrow sliding 4.5 per cent while Bellway shed 4 per cent, Crest Nicholson lost 1.8 per cent and Vistry Group dropped 2.9 per cent.

It is the third time property companies have had to dip into their pockets to fund cladding removal, having already set aside almost 1billion to fix existing buildings while another 2billion is expected to be raised from a cladding tax that comes into force in April.

The removal of unsafe cladding has been a key aim for the Government following the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, in which 72 people died.
Ministers are preparing to make a U-turn and include investment scams in the Online Safety Bill.

Hundreds of thousands of would-be investors are being conned out of their savings every year by internet adverts purporting to be from legitimate financial services firms.

The Government previously shied away from forcing internet giants to check the validity of adverts on their websites.

Online fraud: The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport has maintained that most financial harms will not be included in the Online Safety Bill

But ministers are under pressure to include online scams in the Bill to halt a pandemic of fraud. Whitehall and City sources told the Mail they are expecting paid-for adverts, hosted by the likes of Google, Bing and Facebook, to be included in the Bill.

This would force internet firms to check whether adverts they show are real  and stop taking money from criminals.

Some of these scammers pose as household names, such as Aviva or Hargreaves Lansdown, while others use their own name but set up a professional-looking website.

Savers click on the adverts, thinking they are investing their money in a legitimate business  and often only find out months later that in fact they gave all their cash away to a criminal.

Conmen stole a total of 753.9million from British savers through fraud in the first half of this year alone, according to trade association UK Finance  and most of these scams originated online.

Under former culture secretary Oliver Dowden, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)  which is leading on the creation of the Bill  maintained that most financial harms will not be included.

But Nadine Dorries, who took over last September, is understood to be more receptive to the idea.

Two sources in the banking industry told the Mail that Treasury ministers have also come round to including rip-offs such as investment fraud and mobile phone text scams in the Bill, and are lobbying their counterparts in other government departments.

One source added that Treasury ministers were leaning on their ministerial colleagues in the DCMS.

A joint committee of MPs and peers released a report last month urging ministers to broaden the scope of the up-coming legislation.

DCMS said it would consider the recommendations of the committee, and is expected to issue a response around February.

The Treasury declined to comment last night.
Nvidia and Arm have defended their blockbuster chip deal just months before the Government decides whether or not to block the takeover.

The proposed acquisition of British chip designer Arm by its American rival is under investigation by regulators around the world amid fears it could hit competition.

But in a document submitted to the Competition and Markets Authority, the firms argue that the 31billion deal is the best option on the table, adding that it is the only way for Arm to find the investment it needs.

Competition fears: The proposed acquisition of British chip designer Arm by its American rival Nvidia is under investigation by regulators around the world

The deal has faced a wave of criticism with many in the industry calling for Arm to be listed on the London Stock Exchange instead of sold off to a US tech rival.

But in the document both rule out the option, stating that Arm is not in a fit state to be floated and accusing opponents of romanticising Arms past.

The document said: In the media deal opponents urge the CMA to block the deal so that Arm can pursue an initial public offering. They equate Arms popularity with a high market valuation and success, but the public markets are unsentimental.

Arm has endured flat revenues, rising costs, and lower profits that would present challenges for a 30-year-old public company.

The capital markets would expect Arm to make significant strategic changes, including cutting costs to maximize Arms value.

Arm chief executive Simon Segars added: We contemplated an IPO [initial public offering] but determined that the pressure to deliver short-term revenue growth and profitability would suffocate our ability to invest, expand, move fast and innovate.

The defence has been published two months after ministers ordered a full-blown investigation into Nvidias takeover of Arm on competition and national security grounds. But yesterdays document failed to mention security even once.

When the investigation was launched in November it was off the back of findings from the National Cyber Security Centre, the Government organisation which provides cyber security guidance, who had identified a number of potential risks to national security.

However, the two companies did address competition concerns, in particular the idea that Nvidia would cut off competitors from essential Arm technology  ending Arms history as a neutral supplier.

The document said: The theory does not hold up to scrutiny.

Trying to foreclose Arm licensees would immediately reduce Arms licensing revenue, immediately damaging Nvidias investment. No economically rational, publicly traded entity would embrace such a self-defeating strategy.

Nvidia  which is based in California agreed to buy Cambridge-based Arm from Japanese giant Softbank in September 2020 and had wanted to close the deal by March this year.

That deadline will not be met as the Government is set to make a decision in May, while regulators in China, the US and EU are also scrutinising the deal.
The City watchdog has been urged to act swiftly as it weighs up legal action following the collapse of Neil Woodfords investment empire.

Nearly three years after Woodfords flagship fund was suspended, the Financial Conduct Authority said it has finally finished gathering evidence into the scandal.

And with thousands of savers still waiting for answers, MPs on the Treasury Select Committee called for a swift conclusion to the investigation.

Probe: Nearly three years after Neil Woodfords flagship fund was suspended, the Financial Conduct Authority said it has finally finished gathering evidence into the scandal

But savers who lost millions of pounds when the firm imploded in 2019 will have to wait a little longer to find out whether the regulator will pursue anyone through the courts  including Woodford himself.

The FCA said it was still weighing up whether to take legal action, and even if it did, it would not be able to tell Woodfords long-suffering customers until certain stages have been completed.

MPs, experts and investors have been piling pressure on the FCA to complete its long-running probe into the collapse of Woodfords empire.

Tory MP Mel Stride, who is chairman of the Treasury Committee, said: The collapse of the Woodford fund led to significant losses for many retail investors.

The FCAs investigation is set to move into a new phase, and I have written to the FCA to urge them to allocate the resources required to enable as swift a conclusion to their investigation as possible.

Woodfords flagship fund, Equity Income, was suspended in June 2019 following a run of poor performance.

Too many savers were trying to pull out their cash and Link, the firm which was supposed to be keeping an eye on Woodfords management of the fund, eventually made the decision to shut it down.

Link fired Woodford, and appointed new managers to sell off the assets and return money to investors.

The move resulted in the downfall of the rest of Woodfords empire. His smaller Income Focus fund was taken over by what is now Abrdn, and his Patient Capital Trust by Schroders.

Claims soon emerged that Woodford had been sailing close to the wind in his running of the flagship fund.

He had invested in many smaller, riskier firms which were not listed on the stock market.

And in an attempt to dodge City rules designed to protect savers, dictating how many of these stocks he could hold, he listed their shares on the obscure Guernsey stock exchange.

The fund had a value of 3.7billion when it was suspended. Around 2.5billion of savers nest eggs has been returned, and another 124million is still locked inside  meaning investors have lost around 1billion in just over 36 months, as the assets have been sold for bargain basement prices.

Savers have been desperate for the FCA to complete its probe into the Woodford debacle, hoping it might help them understand what went wrong.

Some saw their lifes savings dwindle when the fund was shuttered. Many want the FCA to point the finger at someone, as this would give them a better chance of claiming damages.

In a letter to Stride, published yesterday, the FCAs chief executive Nikhil Rathi said the watchdog was analysing evidence collected during its interviews of people connected to Woodford and Link.

But he explained that even if the FCA did decide to take legal action, the regulator would be unable to identify who it is against and what the allegations are until certain stages have been completed.
Cumberland, MD (21502)

Today

Mostly cloudy in the morning then periods of showers later in the day. High 74F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Thundershowers following a period of rain early. Low 58F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%.


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TRIPOLI, Dec. 30 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Thursday said it has evacuated 177 asylum-seekers from Libya to Niger.

"In the last evacuation flight of the year out of Libya, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has brought 177 vulnerable asylum seekers to safety in Niger. It is the second evacuation flight to Niger this year, since the Libyan authorities lifted a blanket ban on humanitarian flights in October," the agency said in a statement.

This is the 30th evacuation flight to Niger organized since the Emergency Transit Mechanism was established, according to the statement.

The mechanism was established in 2017 by the government of Niger, which agreed to temporarily receive on its territory asylum seekers and refugees facing a life-threatening situation in Libya, the UNHCR said.

So far, a total of 3,710 refugees and asylum seekers have been evacuated from Libya to Niger, of whom 3,255 have departed from Niger to third countries on resettlement or complementary pathways.

"These life-saving flights bring hope of a better future for some of the most vulnerable people urgently seeking security and protection", said Jean-Paul Cavalieri, the UNHCR chief of mission for Libya.

Those evacuated to Niger include families and young children. Some have just been released from detention, while others have been living in urban areas. Many are victims of smuggling or trafficking and have experienced violence in Libya, the statement revealed.

Many illegal migrants, mostly from Africa, chose to cross the Mediterranean Sea to European shores from Libya due to the state of chaos that has plagued the country since 2011. Enditem
Kingsport, TN (37660)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 84F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early. Scattered thunderstorms developing later at night. Low 63F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
The Bangladeshi government signs a contract with a Chinese consortium in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Jan. 9, 2022, to turn a major road in the eastern part of capital Dhaka into a four-lane expressway. (Xinhua)

DHAKA, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Bangladeshi government Sunday signed a contract with a Chinese consortium to turn a major road in the eastern part of capital Dhaka into a four-lane expressway.

Abdus Sabur, chief engineer of Bangladesh's Roads and Highways Department (RHD), and a representative of the consortium of China Communications Construction Company Ltd and China Road Bridge Corporation signed the contract at a ceremony in capital Dhaka.

The Chinese consortium will implement the construction work of the four-lane project on the public private partnership (PPP) basis.

Under the deal, the Chinese consortium will build and maintain the expressway for the next 25 years under the PPP model.

The consortium will invest 20.94 billion taka in the project, while the Bangladeshi government will invest 12.09 billion taka. (1 U.S. dollar equals about 86 taka) 
Webster Groves, MO (63119)

Today

Showers in the morning, then cloudy in the afternoon. High around 65F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Considerable cloudiness. Low 48F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph.
Russia said on Sunday it would not make concessions under U.S. pressure and warned that this weeks talks on the Ukraine crisis might end early, while Washington said no breakthroughs were expected and progress depended on de-escalation from Moscow.

The hard line from Moscow underscored the fragile prospects for negotiations that Washington hopes will avert the danger of a new Russian invasion of Ukraine, at the tensest point in U.S.-Russia relations since the Cold War ended three decades ago.

Talks begin on Monday in Geneva before moving to Brussels and Vienna, but the state-owned RIA news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying it was entirely possible the diplomacy could end after a single meeting.

I cant rule out anything, this is an entirely possible scenario and the Americans  should have no illusions about this, he was quoted as saying.

Naturally, we will not make any concessions under pressure or amid constant threats from participants in the talks, said Ryabkov, who will lead the Russian delegation in Geneva.

Moscow was not optimistic going into the talks, Interfax news agency quoted Ryabkov as saying.

The U.S. prognosis was similarly gloomy.

I dont think were going to see any breakthroughs in the coming week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a CNN interview.

In response to Russian demands for Western security guarantees, the United States and allies have said they are prepared to discuss the possibility of each side restricting military exercises and missile deployments in the region.

Both sides will put proposals on the table and then see if there are grounds for moving forward, Blinken said.

To make actual progress, its very hard to see that happening when theres an ongoing escalation, when Russia has a gun to the head of Ukraine with 100,000 troops near its borders, Blinken said in an interview with ABC News.

Tens of thousands of Russian troops are gathered within reach of the border with Ukraine in preparation for what Washington and Kyiv say could be an invasion, eight years after Russia seized the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine.

The comments from Russias Ryabkov, who has compared the situation to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war, were consistent with the uncompromising line Russia has been signalling for weeks.

Russia denies invasion plans and said it is responding to what it calls aggressive and provocative behavior from the NATO military alliance and Ukraine, which has tilted toward the West and aspires to join NATO.

Further complicating the picture, Russia sent troops into neighboring Kazakhstan last week after the oil-producing former Soviet republic was hit by a wave of unrest. Russias foreign ministry reacted furiously on Saturday to a jibe by Blinken that once Russians are in your house, its sometimes very difficult to get them to leave.

RED LINES

Last month, Russia presented a sweeping set of demands including for a ban on further NATO expansion and an end to the alliances activity in central and eastern European countries that joined it after 1997.

The United States and NATO have dismissed large parts of the Russian proposals as non-starters.

The United States was not willing to discuss pulling some U.S. troops out of eastern Europe or rule out expanding NATO to include Ukraine, Blinken said.

To abandon its demands for a more-limited agenda would be a major climb-down that Russia seems unlikely to make, especially after weeks of troop movements near Ukraine and a series of tough statements from President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin leader has said that after successive waves of NATO expansion it is time for Russia to enforce its red lines and ensure the alliance does not admit Ukraine or station weapons systems there that would target Russia.

Ukraine won a NATO promise back in 2008 that it would be allowed to join one day, but diplomats say there is no question of that happening any time soon.

NATO said it is a defensive alliance and Moscow has nothing to fear from it. That is far from Putins world view, which sees Russia as under threat from hostile Western powers he says have repeatedly broken promises given as the Cold War ended not to expand toward its borders. The United States and its allies dispute such pledges were given.

In two conversations over the past five weeks, U.S. President Joe Biden warned Putin that Russia would face unprecedented economic sanctions in the event of further aggression against Ukraine. The Group of Seven nations and the European Union have joined in threatening massive consequences.

Putin said that would be a colossal mistake that would lead to a complete rupture of relations.

Russias foreign ministry said the team led by Ryabkov had arrived in Geneva. Russia is also due to hold negotiations with NATO in Brussels on Wednesday and at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna on Thursday.

SOURCE: REUTERS
Sudanese security forces fired teargas at activists protesting in their thousands against the countrys military rulers on Sunday, according to three witnesses in major cities.

Thousands of demonstrators marched from Omdurman to Bahri, two cities adjoining the capital Khartoum, chanting slogans denouncing military leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who took power in a coup on Oct. 25 that upended a transitional power-sharing deal with civilians.

Separate protests were held in Khartoum and cities in other regions of Sudan. One witness in Khartoum and one in Bahri said security forces also threw stun grenades at protesters.

One man was killed after being hit in the neck by a teargas canister, said a Sudanese doctors association aligned with the protest movement, though it did not specify where the death took place.

That brought the number of civilians killed by security forces to 62 since the coup, according to the doctors, who have also accused the military of repeatedly raiding medical facilities treating injured protesters and attacking staff.

A police spokesman contacted by Reuters for comment about the reports of violence said a statement from security forces was expected, declining to comment further.

The military has justified the coup as a correction needed to stabilise the transition to elections from a power-sharing arrangement the military and civilians struck following the toppling of former President Omar al-Bashir in 2019.

It has said that peaceful protests are permitted and that those responsible for causing casualties will be held to account.

Omdurman has recently seen more violence than other areas because authorities have moved to suppress frequent rallies against the coup, said Sahar, a young woman protesting there who declined to give her full name.

In the last few demonstrations theres been a lot of violence: teargas, stun grenades, gunfire, people being run over, and we saw women being targeted, she said.

On Saturday, a member of the military-appointed ruling council who had threatened to resign over violence against protesters chaired a meeting of the Khartoum state security committee, state news agency SUNA reported.

The committee expressed regret over attacks on health facilities and pledged to protect them, SUNA said.

The United Nations said on Saturday that it would invite military leaders, political parties and other groups to take part in talks aimed at resolving the crisis.

SOURCE:- REUTERS
MALTA - GlobalFoundries was planning to formally unveil construction plans for its new Fab 8.2 computer chip factory at the Luther Forest Technology Campus to the towns of Malta and Stillwater last month.

The project - which might cost GlobalFoundries between $5 billion and $10 billion - would translate into 1,000 new jobs, adding to the 3,000 positions at the company's current Fab 8 factory and global headquarters at Luther Forest.

But the unveiling of details of Fab 8.2 hasn't happened yet.

GlobalFoundries, however, says it's just a matter of time until it does submit its plans for Fab 8.2.

Currently, the company is waiting on the $52 billion semiconductor manufacturing subsidy bill that is stalled in Congress. The measure is designed to combat China in the race for chip-making supremacy. It would provide companies like GlobalFoundries up to $2 billion each to build new chip factories.

The bill - championed by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer as the CHIPS Act - has already passed the Senate, and was expected to have passed the House by now.

But it has languished for the time being.

At the same time, GlobalFoundries has decided to hold off on submitting its Fab 8.2 plans to the planning departments of Malta and Stillwater. However, company officials say it's not connected to the inaction in Congress.

"This is an ongoing process where we are partnering closely with town boards and town planning officials as we prepare a complete and well thought out application for the expansion of Fab 8," the company said in a statement provided to the Times Union by spokesman Michael Mullaney.

The reality is that GlobalFoundries is likely waiting for Congress to pass the CHIPS Act before it moves forward with Fab 8.2, which would greatly increase its manufacturing output at Fab 8. GlobalFoundries CEO Tom Caulfield has been one of the biggest champions of the CHIPS Act, hosting Schumer numerous times at Fab 8 to promote the bill.

Back in July, Schumer joined Caulfield at Fab 8 to promote the CHIPS Act, which is now part of a new, larger piece of technology manufacturing legislation known as the United States Innovation and Competition Act; Schumer also got that legislation passed by the Senate.

"This is going to mean thousands of good paying J-O-B-S, jobs, in the Capital Region," Schumer said at the time. "Today is the day we have been waiting for."

Last week, when asked if the holdup of the CHIPS Act had delayed plans for Fab 8.2, GlobalFoundries sounded confident the passage of the bill by the House was not a long-term issue.

"At the federal level, we anticipate Congress advancing legislation to expand domestic semiconductor manufacturing capacity through USICA and the (CHIPS Act) to address both the ongoing and prevent future chip supply challenges," GlobalFoundries continued in its statement to the Times Union.

New York state officials - which are also hoping that the CHIPS Act could fund a $2 billion national semiconductor manufacturing lab at Albany Nanotech - are hopeful too that the funding will be passed and signed by President Joe Biden.

During her State of the State presentation last week, Gov. Kathy Hochul said attracting new chip fabs to upstate New York would be one of her top priorities during the upcoming session of the state Legislature.

She plans to help attract chip fabs by investing in building infrastructure at so-called "shovel-ready" tech parks across upstate that target chip fabs, including the Luther Forest Technology Campus where Fab 8 is located.

Hochul has not said how much money she wants to allocate toward the infrastructure improvements, but Luther Forest for instance would need tens of millions of dollars in upgrades to water and electric utilities to allow for a second fab at Luther Forest.

"GlobalFoundries applauds Gov. Hochul for her strong leadership and for her timely plan acknowledging and investing in New York State as a national focal point of semiconductor manufacturing and innovation," the statement provided by Mullaney says.
ALBANY  A COVID-19 testing site in downtown Albany that has a $20.8 million contract with the health department to quickly test state employees for coronavirus has opened up to the public. It follows low, in-person turnout from state employees and a high demand among the public for access to coronavirus testing.

VISIT Healthcare, a California-based company, was one of three testing labs to secure contracts with the state Department of Health in October, which the Times Union reported last month.

The decision by the state to spend up to $62 million for testing followed a decision by the executive chamber to require state employees to either be vaccinated or subject themselves to weekly testing. The health care sector was not given a test-out option by the state; state unions vigorously fought vaccine mandates for public employees.

Officials for the lab said it is currently handling about 25 tests a day under its contract to service state employees. VISIT Healthcare expects it could handle up to 200 tests a day. It is offering both rapid and PCR tests, which have a turn around of one to three days for results, the company said.

Walk-ins are welcome at the lab on 412 Broadway, but the company is encouraging people to pre-register for a test to ensure they can get in and limit their wait time.

VISIT Healthcare was contracted with the state to provide testing for employees at $75 a test, as long as results were produced in a short timeframe, according to a copy of the contract obtained by the Times Union.

At the time of the bid for the contract, VISIT Healthcare was told by the state that it would need to be able to distribute and process about 36,000 testing kits statewide, per week. The number was an estimate of 30 percent of the roughly 120,000 members of the state workforce that would need coronavirus testing.

As of late December, about 22,000 state employees remained in the weekly testing program. About 12,000 state employees were tested in one week in late December, nearly all of whom are not in compliance with the state's vaccination standards, according to the governor's office.

Albany County is experiencing high rates of COVID-19 tied to surge in the omicron variant. Access to testing, particularly prior to the holiday season, was limited and led to long lines in the cold. Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state have since opened additional testing sites, including at the State University of New York at Albany.

The governor's office on Monday announced that an additional 10 SUNY campuses will open testing sites, after 10 other college campuses opened testing sites last week.

Capital Region hospitals continue to take on additional patients with the coronavirus. Although the total number of COVID-19 -patents are lower than this time last year, the rates of daily new admissions have surpassed the record levels from a year ago, according to state data.

Last week, Capital Region hospitals admitted 399 patients with coronavirus, discharged 316 and reported 30 had people tested positive for the virus while in the hospital, according to a review of state data.
SCHENECTADY  Officials in Schenectady are unlikely to have been surprised to learn an apartment building fire that killed 17 people in New York City was made more deadly by residents who left the door open when they fled their apartment.

A similar problem was at play when four people died in a March 6, 2015, fire at a Jay Street apartment building across from City Hall.

With the Jay Street fire, the fire doors were being painted at the time of the fire, said the citys Chief Building Inspector Christopher Lunn. They were all removed and the fire traveled through the building.

The fire alarm system also was not working and there were no fire doors in the stairwells.

By leaving that door open, youre feeding fire with oxygen and allowing smoke to travel throughout the building, Schenectady Fire Department Assistant Chief Don Mareno said of the Bronx fire, and thats exactly what happened there.

Corridors in larger apartment buildings are separated by fire-rated doors that are required to be closed. If tenants see those doors propped open with a wedge, authorities should be notified, Lunn said. All doors for residential units should also close by themselves.

Thats going to give you extra time in case of a fire, said Lunn, who was brought on to reform the citys Building Department in the aftermath of the deadly blaze.

Officials are urging residents to take precautionary safety measures, including ensuring smoke detectors are operational, doors are up to code and developing fire escape plans.

City of Albany Fire Chief Joseph W. Gregory said the past week has been "devastating" for fire tragedies, citing a fire that killed 12 after ripping through a Philadelphia row house and one fatality following a single-family house fire on Tampa Avenue in Albany.

In the Bronx, some residents said they initially ignored smoke alarms because false alarms were so common in the 120-unit building, according to the Associated Press.

Lunn said its not an uncommon occurrence.

Oftentimes with large-unit buildings, people become complacent with the amount of false alarms, many generated by cooking because the inter-connected alarms are often located too close to the kitchen.

A downtown residential building, Crescent Park Apartments, drew his departments scrutiny last year when residents disabled the units.

Its a common thing were constantly battling, Lunn said. Tenants are always covering up smoke alarms in units and its a problem.

But, he said, fire and carbon monoxide alarms are the first line of defense. People should always vacate the building once they go off.

Mareno said Red Cross guidelines call for one detector to be installed in every living space, including one each in the attic and basement  and multiple varieties.

Gregory urged people to familiarize themselves with the sounds of the devices and test them monthly.

Many times if a smoke detector goes off in the middle of the night, many people equate it with an alarm clock, Gregory said. It could make the difference between life and death.

Investigators said the Bronx fire was triggered by a malfunctioning electric space heater.

The results are in See the winners of each category of the 2022 Best of the Capital Region contest, as determined by popular vote.

Older buildings were only made to draw so much electricity, Lunn said, and its also not rare to see tenants misusing the devices or operating them carelessly.

One of the highest causes of fire in wintertime is temporary heat and not using them how theyre supposed to be used, Lunn said. People are overloading circuits in buildings.

Space heaters should not be plugged into an extension cord, but rather the wall, Mareno said. Newer units have safety devices.

Lunn also advised residents to check their windows to ensure their functional operation, including opening and closing without effort.

Dont duct tape an air-conditioning unit in a building and expect to get out, Lunn said.

Mareno advised all households to develop escape plans, including determining a minimum of two ways out and setting up a meeting spot, planning that also helps first responders account for all occupants.

And while neither the Bronx or Jay Street fires were caused by candles, Mareno said they should never be left unintended or placed in usual places  including underneath cabinets, which he has personally witnessed.

A grand jury report later faulted the operation of the city of Schenectady's code enforcement bureau, saying failures to confront code violations at 104 Jay St. "directly contributed" to the fire, which also hospitalized seven and left 60 people homeless.

That conflagration was caused by someone smoking in an armchair. But it was entirely preventable, Mareno said.

A series of unfortunate events occurred," Mareno said, "and we all know the results.
A singer of Yi ethnic group performs on D843 "Fuxing" bullet train, in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Jan. 10, 2022.(Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing)

CHENGDU, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- A "Fuxing" high-speed Electric Multiple Unit (EMU) left Xichang City in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Sichuan Province, for Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, on Monday.

It marked the departure of the first "Fuxing" bullet train from the prefecture in the remote Daliang Mountain, one of China's most recent areas to shake off abject poverty.

The high-speed train operates at a speed of 160 km per hour on the new Chengdu-Kunming railway, which runs almost parallel to an existing railway between the two cities.

Running via tunnels and bridges, the high-speed train can reduce the travel distance between the two cities by about 236 km.

Thanks to the new bullet train service, local fresh cut flowers from Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture are estimated to reach the Kunming Dounan Flower Market, Asia's largest fresh cut flower trading market, in roughly four hours.

This new train service is also regarded as another effort to consolidate the country's achievements in poverty alleviation. 

Aerial photo taken on Jan. 8, 2022 shows a test bullet train running on the new Chengdu-Kunming railway in Dechang County, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Sichuan Province. (Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing)

Students from Xide County who used to take the "slow train" for school pose for a group photo in front of D843 "Fuxing" bullet train at Xichang West Railway station in Xichang, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Jan. 10, 2022. (Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing)

Photo taken on Jan. 10, 2022 shows Xichang West Railway station in Xichang, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Sichuan Province. (Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing)

Passengers are seen at Xichang West Railway station in Xichang, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Jan. 10, 2022.(Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing)

Photo taken on Jan. 10, 2022 shows people of Yi ethnic group performing to celebrate the operation of "Fuxing" bullet train at Xichang West Railway station in Xichang, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Sichuan Province. (Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing)

People of Lisu ethnic group from Dechang County perform on D843 "Fuxing" bullet train, in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Jan. 10, 2022.(Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing)

D843 bullet train is seen at Xichang West Railway station in Xichang, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Jan. 10, 2022. (Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing)
ALBANY  COVID-19 fatalities statewide have now hit levels not seen since almost a year ago.

The state reported 154 deaths on Saturday, the highest number since Feb. 6, 2021 when there were 158 deaths. The number of New York residents who contracted coronavirus and died dipped back to 138 on Sunday.

Last winter fatalities gradually began to recede following the post-holiday surge and the introduction of vaccines. 2022 is different as more than 70 percent of New Yorkers are vaccinated, but the new highly contagious omicron variant is enveloping the nation as many pandemic protocols have ceased.

But the steady increase of fatalities statewide does not tell the whole story.

As a percentage of total cases, deaths are much lower than a year ago  perhaps a sign that the omicron variant is highly contagious, but less deadly.

The state reported 79,777 new cases on Sunday  thats seven times higher than the 11,252 cases reported from Feb. 6, 2021.

More people are now being tested, and a larger percentage of cases are being found: 401,466 results were reported on Sunday compared to 261,285 reported on that date last February, a 57 percent increase. New York is seeing 21.7 percent of tests coming back positive on a seven-day average, compared to 4.6 percent around this time last year.

While more people are currently hospitalized compared to nearly a year ago  statewide, 11,747 people were hospitalized on Sunday compared to 7,804 patients on Feb. 6, an increase of one third, or 34 percent  they constitute a smaller part of the total caseload (hospitalizations also fell overnight Sunday, decreasing by 96 people).

Gov. Kathy Hochul also said Friday that there is another wrinkle in the hospitalization statistics - that 42 percent of patients as of Jan. 5 went to the hospital for another condition, and tested positive for COVID-19 - meaning they are not there because they were sick from the virus.

The number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units is comparable: 1,519 on Sunday compared to 1,481 on Feb. 6. But as a percentage of all people hospitalized, it represents a lower number than last year.

The results are in See the winners of each category of the 2022 Best of the Capital Region contest, as determined by popular vote.

Despite the signs of encouragement, both the state and nation continue to smash new positive case records amid a surge that public health officials say wont peak until late-January.

It will also be weeks before the true picture emerges as to how severely omicron will impact those in the hospital. Capital Region school districts are also going remote as staffing is impacted by cases.

The U.S. will likely regularly hit one million new daily cases as the wave peaks, Dr. Anthony Fauci told NBC New York Friday, comments echoed by Centers for Disease Control Director Rochelle Walensky.

"We are not defenseless against this winter surge," Hochul said on Sunday. "We have the tools to bring down the numbers and we need everyone to do their part. Please get your second dose and booster if eligible, get your children vaccinated if you haven't already, wear your mask, and stay home if you're feeling unwell."

Lauren Stanforth contributed to this report
Jane Hirschmanns letter "It's not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel's actions," Nov. 25, is filled with misinformation. It is false that Boycott Divest Sanction (BDS), which targets Israel, is not anti-Semitic. BDS demonizes and delegitimizes Israel, claiming Israel occupies Arab territory. BDS tries to deny the Jewish people the right to live in their ancestral homeland where Jewish identity, religion, culture and language originated more than 3,000 years ago. One cannot distinguish between Israels existence and that of the Jewish people. Hirschmann repeats BDS' big lie that Israel practices apartheid. South Africa's apartheid was a social order affecting all activities. Not one apartheid practice applies to Israel. Israel is the most racially tolerant nation in the Middle East, with Israeli Arabs (about 20 percent of the population) enjoying the same rights as their fellow Jewish citizens, including voting rights. Israeli Arabs are in Israels Knesset, the Supreme Court and the Israeli Defense Forces. Israel enforces the borders of Samaria and Judea as the United States enforces its borders. Israel has offered territory to Arab Palestinians numerous times, for peace and a separate state, but these offers have all been refused. Israel's enemies respond with terrorist attacks, including suicide bombers, underground attack tunnels and rockets. The propaganda principle of repeating a false claim over and over until it is accepted as truth is obvious in Hirschmann's letter.

Elliott Greene
ALBANY  Two Republican members of the state Board of Elections, citing recent criminal investigations involving alleged absentee ballot fraud, issued a statement Monday criticizing Gov. Kathy Hochul for recently signing into law two pieces of legislation they say "are a direct threat to the integrity of the election process."

The statement from co-Chairman Peter S. Kosinski and Anthony J. Casale, a commissioner and former state assemblyman, said Hochul had pledged on Dec. 16 to allow every New York voter to vote absentee, "despite the fact that the New York state Constitution restricts absentee voting to people unable to vote in person due to illness or being out of their county of residence on Election Day."

In a related news conference on Monday, Senate Democrats said they will continue to push to expand voter access in New York.

"We will redouble our efforts," state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said, acknowledging that those opposed to expanding mail-in voting had invested in an advertising campaign last year to counter the issue on the ballot. "They are willing to put their money, obviously, into making sure people do not vote. We on the other hand will continue to educate. ... We must continue to push."

Stewart-Cousins said New York last year joined dozens of states that had already approved mail-in voting in order to give voters more options to submit their ballots during the pandemic.

"I dont believe this is counter to what New Yorkers want at all," she said. "Its very, very sad that people think that this is the way to run a democracy, or that a democracy is better when less people are involved in it."

The statement from Kosinski and Casale noted that voters in November had rejected the proposal to amend the Constitution to allow "no-excuse" absentee voting. They say the legislation signed by Hochul will expand the ability of political operatives to harvest absentee ballots and restrict public access to observe counting of those ballots.

"The first bill allows third parties ... political operatives, to apply for absentee ballots for voters by doing away with the requirement that the voter sign the absentee ballot application prior to the ballot being sent to the voter," their statement reads. "We have seen in various parts of New York ... the manipulation of this process which was allowed by an Executive Order by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in response to the COVID-19 pandemic."

The State Police and FBI have been investigating widespread allegations of ballot fraud by Republican operatives in Rensselaer County since shortly before the November election. No charges have been filed but multiple public officials have been a focus of that ongoing investigation.

A portion of that investigation includes examining whether any of dozens of residents at a public housing complex in north Troy were pressured to vote by absentee ballot.

"Allowing third parties to submit applications for absentee ballots on behalf of voters without the voters knowledge or consent, furthers those who seek to unduly influence how people vote," the statement from Kosinski and Casale said. "Since the third party who has submitted the application on the voters behalf knows you are going to receive an absentee ballot, they can seek to influence your vote."

Another outcome of the legislation signed by the governor will be to require boards of election to begin opening absentee ballots at least 40 days before the election and to continue opening them until 17 days following an election. The current law sets out that absentee ballots are opened after polls close and upon notice to candidates and interested parties. The current law allows observers to challenge ballots that do not meet the legal requirements of voting.

"This due process right and important check on the accuracy of the count has been eliminated by the new legislation. Why eliminate the challenge process?" they said. "The only conclusion is to rush the counting of absentee ballots regardless of their legitimacy. It is noteworthy that the legislation continues to allow challenges to persons voting in person at the poll sites."

Kosinski and Casale contend the measures are intended to shift from in-person to absentee voting that they say will result in less integrity in the voting process.

Rensselaer County Republican leaders previously told the Times Union that they were unaware of any fraudulent activity during the election by their party, and that they had simply taken advantage of the directive from the state Board of Elections that allowed individuals to use absentee ballots if they did not want to vote in-person due to the pandemic.

The accusations of ballot fraud in that county had been leveled by opposing Republican and Democratic camps after a high number of absentee ballots were issued to political operatives and campaign volunteers on behalf of voters who authorized others to handle their ballot.
ALBANY  The state's approach to gun violence during the COVID-19 pandemic included declaring it both a public health crisis and an epidemic.

Those official declarations freed up tens of millions of dollars and bolstered state-run programs and community-based organizations that advocates have said can reduce gun violence if those programs are fully funded.

With much of the funding set to run out, Gov. Kathy Hochul said she intends to sustain most of the community-based funding while expanding resources for law enforcement and local governments to battle gun violence.

When it comes to gun violence, research shows that community-based, public health-centered violence intervention programs have some of the strongest results in reducing gun crimes and homicides," Hochul's State of the State book reads. "But these programs often do not receive the investments they need to scale up and save lives.

Hochul's policy book laid out a plan to reduce violent crime through a mix of programming and law enforcement initiatives. The details are likely to be fleshed out in the state's budget negotiations  and may be included in the executive budget the governor will release later this month.

"New Yorkers tell me that they dont feel safe, that they dont like what they see on the streets and that things feel different right now  and not for the better," Hochul said in her State of the State address.

She noted that the rise in gun violence has been seen in cities across the country during the pandemic, potentially alluding to the fact she does not view changes to the bail laws as the driver of the spike.

"Now, this isnt a return to the dark days of the '70s, 80s and 90s," Hochul said. "But thats not our metric for success. We need to get back on track."

Hochul's plans for public safety include a piece related to the state's changes to its bail laws, which have been the subject of constant criticism by Republicans, who said they have contributed to the rise in violent crime.

A Times Union analysis showed that nearly 100,000 cases over 12 months fell under the umbrella of changes to the bail laws and about 4 percent of them led to a person charged with a violent felony while released pending trial  and before their case from their initial arrest was closed. Nearly a third of the cases led to some type of rearrest.

Progressives immediately noted that means that more than 96 percent of those individuals were not charged with a subsequent violent felony while released pending trial. Republicans took up the raw number, about 3,500 cases, that led to a violent felony charge as a sign of a need to walk back some of the changes; less than 800 cases were a violent felony with a firearm.

Hochul avoided the use of the word "bail" in her 237-page State of the State book. Instead, she offered a narrow plan to build on "pretrial reform."

"Statewide pretrial reform was implemented without the necessary resources or coordination needed to help localities adopt new approaches to pretrial services that ensure public safety," the book reads.

Hochul wants more funding for pretrial reforms, which includes not only changes to bail but also discovery and other elements. She specifically is targeting money for counties outside of New York City, which already puts its own money toward certain pretrial services, to implement pretrial services.

The governor is looking to "implement a comprehensive continuum of pretrial services."

The strategy can look like additional money to support screening and assessments, supervision, a centralized case management system and certain information to the court system. The goal would be to provide additional supports to people in the pretrial service program to help ensure they show up for their court date, but also potentially reduce any potential, additional violence.

Community-based plans

Hochul is planning potentially $15.9 million for SNUG street outreach programs, which work under the Division of Criminal Justice Services. The program originally received nearly $5 million, but was increased to $10.6 million during the pandemic, under the administration of former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who had declared a gun violence state of emergency.

The broadened program would help open three additional community programs in Niagara Falls, Utica and Schenectady.

The governor is also looking to expand the hospital-based community gun violence programs from eight state trauma centers to all 22 trauma centers.

Hochul wants to sustain the new emergency funding for a New York City hospital-based responder program. The intervention begins when someone is hospitalized for a gunshot wound, to prevent retaliatory violence.

In Brooklyn, where the gun violence crisis has been among the most acute in the state, a litany of community-based programs, focusing on violence interruption, were funded. Murders have declined in the borough.

"This is proof positive that gun violence can be reduced with a sustained, multi-pronged approach," state Sen. Zellnor Y. Myrie, D-Brooklyn, said in a statement.

Jobs for at-risk youth is also on Hochul's agenda, although the level of funding was unclear from her initial plans. The effectiveness of the job programs that came out of Cuomo's state of emergency was raised by the Times Union after few of the promised jobs were delivered during the crisis. At least one contract went to strong supporters of the former governor at a time when he was in political peril from multiple scandals.

Law enforcement plans

Hochul is seeking to add a team of analysts to investigate gun crimes and form a gun-tracing consortium that would allow better crime-solving techniques across municipal and state boundaries.

She also wants law enforcement to monitor black markets involving cryptocurrency; to establish "crime gun intelligence centers" in every region of the state, and to modernize the State Police's forensic lab that has a "494 percent increase in the backlog cases awaiting analysis in the last five years."

The governor wants the state to staff a team of analysts that focus on monitoring social media posts, particularly among young people, to "tie information back to existing criminal investigations, initiate new investigations and communicate information on threats to appropriate field personnel."

The governor is seeking to implement a "swift, certain and fair" model at a pilot program level.

The model is recognized by the U.S. Department of Justice and uses law enforcement for community supervision with "sanctions proportionate to negative behavior and rewards appropriate to positive behavior," according to the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance. Monroe County ran a version of the program from 2012 to 2015 with varying success, according to the state.

Hochul is seeking to beef up the partnerships between State Police and local law enforcement to address community violence, including by doubling the number of "community stabilization units" to 16.

"The proposed public safety initiatives will equip our law enforcement officials with the tools necessary to curb the violence and make our communities a safe place," state Sen. Roxanne J. Persaud said in a statement.
ALBANY  Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed a bill aimed at setting retirement eligibility for forest rangers and environmental conservation officers on par with other state law enforcers.

Hochul attributed her rejection to her view that benefit adjustments should be bargained. She added that the state budget did not include funds to offset the cost.

The bill called for a one-time contribution of $48.2 million. The first annual contribution ending in March would have cost about $4.7 million, according to the legislation text.

Hochuls dismissal disappointed lawmakers and the Police Benevolent Association of New York which said the longer service time needed for retirement benefits makes it more difficult to recruit and retain environmental officers, especially downstate. An override vote appears unlikely.

State Sen. Andrew Gournardes, a Brooklyn Democrat, introduced the measure to make the benefit available after 20 years of duty, five years sooner than now. It would have covered environmental conservation officers, forest rangers, police officers in the state Department of Environmental Conservation, regional state park police and university police.

Matthew Krug, director of environmental conservation officers and investigators for the PBA, said State Police and other agencies get far more candidates for jobs that pay more and allow for earlier retirement. Fewer than 2,000 candidates took the Civil Service exam for conservation officers in 2019, Krug said, while 18,000 people took the State Police exam. The governors veto was another blow to his colleagues, who are working their shifts with more than 60 vacancies statewide, Krug said.

The bill would be most beneficial for recruiting officers for the New York City area, Krug said, where more investigators are needed to collect evidence for industrial pollution crimes and policing illegal trade in endangered species. It would also help with recruitment upstate, he said, where job duties continue to grow.

At the end of last year, Hochul signed a bill giving DEC officers the task of inspecting boats for invasive species. Similar regulations around the transportation of firewood were passed a couple of years ago.

Theyre not giving us additional people for enforcing it, Krug said. You cant keep piling on more stuff.

Krug, who covers the Washington County region, said a retirement after 20 years of service is desired because of the toll the job can take on officers. He and colleagues have sustained injuries from incidents such as helping hikers off mountains and chasing trespassers.

In her Dec. 29 veto, Hochul said she was aware of a growing concern about the current level of retirement benefits and its impact on the agencies ability to recruit and retain the best officers. She suggested meeting this year to discuss the issue.

Michael Bucci, spokesperson for the police union, said they are ready to negotiate a contract with the governor, saying a deal is nearly three years overdue. He envisioned the retirement plan becoming part of the upcoming budget negotiations.

In an emailed statement, Gournardes said he looks forward to the meetings and does not expect the state Legislature to override Hochuls veto despite the bills overwhelming legislative support. Two thirds of the Legislature would have to vote in support of overriding a veto, a rare event and unexpected in this case, said Assemblyman Billy Jones, D-Chateaugay Lake.

I think were looking at going back at it and working on it, Jones said. We want to keep that workforce. We need that workforce, especially here in the Adirondacks.

State Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, said he understood Hochuls position about the expense but still felt she should have signed it. We should be trying to be supportive of law enforcement in any way we can, he said.

A version of this story appeared in AdirondackExplorer.org.
From hospitals and long-term care facilities to private homes, nurses are in high demand. They're also severely burnt-out as health care personnel prepare to face a third year of almost unrelenting pandemic-related stress.

Still, a new generation of students hasnt been deterred from rising to the challenge.

Looking back on his long career, Maria College President Thomas Gamble believes the field remained relatively stable over the years. New technologies, enhanced education, telehealth and teaching simulations all came into play without dramatically altering the profession. COVID-19 is a different story entirely, and Gamble believes it has and will continue to change the vocation of nursing.

It's a really fraught situation: There's a lot of emotion, a lot of turmoil, a lot of turnover," said Gamble, who will step down from his role at Maria in 2022 after six years at the helm of the nursing school. "The profession is a strong profession, full of really dedicated and gifted people, but we can't beat them up the way we've been doing."

Gamble has yet to see a slowdown in students who want to go into the field, but his biggest fear is that the current upheavals may lead to less interest in nursing education in the years to come.

And in the near term, he's concerned academia cant educate enough nurses to meet employers needs.

One major challenge: Because present-day nurses are already overworked, its hard for them to supervise students in their clinical rotations, too. Schools could really educate a whole lot more students to become nurses if we had more options in terms of clinical experience, Gamble said.

Jeanine Santelli, executive director of the American Nurses Association in New York, agreed. We need to see more opportunities for nurses to get their clinical experiences as nursing students so that they're ready to work when they graduate and get their license, she said.

One option is doing more in what might be described as the virtual clinical realm. While simulations are not a replacement for clinical education, Santelli and Gamble think they can surely supplement students learning for the limited amount of experience available to them right now.

High-fidelity simulation, as Gamble described it, has proven a solid resource for students to understand patient outcomes. Santelli said simulations allow students to step back after making a mistake, see how it worked out and what could have been done better.

Some states, including New York, allow simulations to supplement students clinical learning hours; the American Association of Colleges of Nursings Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education has encouraged the use of simulations so long as it's paired with direct-care learning.

Glenda Kelman, a nursing chairperson and professor at Russell Sage College, recalled a decade-old prediction that there would be a nursing shortage; the pandemic only served to exacerbate the problem.

The key to improving and potentially resolving the problem, according to Kelman, is to foster more pathways to nursing beyond improved clinical availability. To her, that includes developing more scholarships and nurse educators, increasing loan forgiveness, helping others who come in with other scientific degrees make the transition to nursing quicker and attracting those who dont traditionally see nursing as a career. (All are similar to prescriptions that have been put forth to address a similar lack of fresh troops in the education field.)

Santelli had a similar outlook regarding the need to strengthen the workforce by diversifying it, and cultivating a labor pool that reflects the patient populations it serves.

We're still ... majority white women, and that's not reflective of the population, Santelli said of the profession's demographics.

More men are becoming nurses, but the percentage remains small: Data from the National Forum of State Nursing Workforce Centers shows that in 2017, men accounted for about 9.1 percent of registered nurses in New York compared to the 8 percent total in 2015. The same study determined approximately 19.2 percent of registered nurse respondents were minority members.

Santelli believes one of the major challenges to diversifying nursing is ensuring science, technology, engineering and mathematics  the so-called STEM fields  are boosted throughout primary education. She said young people who dont see nurses who look like them wont be inclined to consider it as a career or pursue other STEM-related careers.

We're trying to work on that a little bit by little bit, but these are important initiatives, she said.
In such a tumultuous and historic year in the New York state Capitol, the members of the Legislative Correspondents Association have been covering the breaking news and long-term investigations that narrate the statewide political scene.

The women who are members of the LCA have a specific perspective on the past year. We spoke with a few on the historic first female governor and their own expectations for the new year.

Q: How has the work culture changed, if at all, since the sexual harassment allegations against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the subsequent shift to our first female governor?

Susan Arbetter, Political Anchor, Capital Tonight on Spectrum News 1: Nothing changed work culture more than COVID. I havent been back to the state Capitol since COVID hit in March 2020. After working remotely for 17 months, I returned to the Spectrum News 1 studio in late August. My first foray back to the state Capitol will likely be in January for the State of the State, and I will have my mask firmly in place.



One change I have noted since Kathy Hochul became governor is that many public information officers and agency commissioners have become more accessible. It could be that the new governor has a different management style thats less controlling, or it could be that there are fewer restrictions around speaking to the press. Perhaps its a little bit of both. The upshot is that its easier to get answers to emails and phone calls under this administration, at least so far.

Bernadette Hogan, Albany bureau chief, New York Post: The new administration has made a major push to emphasize the phrase: life goes on. They've been focused on running an exhausted state workforce depleted by the prior administration's demands -- and the pandemic -- as well as campaigning for a full 4-year term. They're mostly focused on the work that needs to be put into those dueling priorities, rather than the exhibition aspect.

Kate Lisa, Statehouse reporter, Johnson Newspaper Corp.: The work culture in the Capitol has changed since former Gov. Cuomo left office and Gov. Hochul took the helm in subtle, but critical ways. There seems to be a more general respect toward women in the workplace. If you take a look around, especially the second floor, there are substantially more women or people of color staffers of all ages than there was previously. I've also found I am ogled far less frequently, and with seemingly reduced lechery, by executive aides, officials and others in the months following the changeover. For female reporters, there's an improved "What do you want?" versus a "What do you think you're doing here?" attitude. We all have a job to do, and mutual respect seems to be a conscientious part of the conversation now, or at least the demeanor, if left unsaid.

Women are, of course, still met with heavier pushback or regular condescending questions compared to our male counterparts. But the evolving shift is there and things seem to be improving at their core. As long as condescending or disparaging remarks and glances persist, so will we. We will never forget those who paved the way before us, or the importance of our work to make a permanent mark on state history and leave it better than we found it.

Q: What are the key issues you'll be following in 2022?

Arbetter: This will be the busiest political year in New York in a decade. Every statewide seat is up for reelection, as is every congressional and legislative seat. Plus, there are new district maps to navigate. 2022 will provide a cornucopia of political news.

This may also be the year that we see the legislature and the executive tackle ethics reform in a serious and substantive way. Gov. Hochul has indicated that she wants to rebuild the Joint Committee on Public Ethics from the ground up in order to put some political distance between herself and the former governor. Good government groups and reformers will be watching what she decides to support very closely.

While there are plenty of issues that the Capital Tonight team will be following, I will be especially interested in whether (and how) the Legislature funds efforts to meet the goals of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which was passed in 2019. At some point, the transition to a green economy has to be funded. How the Legislature decides to do that will affect whether New York becomes a key player in this new world or a follower.

Hogan: I'll be focused on Albany's relationship with incoming New York City Mayor Eric Adams. What kind of power dynamic will he introduce to the Democratic-run Legislature and new Democratic governor fighting for reelection? He's already said he wants to change bail policies  and Gov. Kathy Hochul has repeatedly said she'd defer to his priorities there  and will that upset the more left-leaning members of the Legislature diametrically opposed to said alterations. Democrats are already worried about next year's elections following the losses on Long Island, plus near-losses in New York City, so what kind of advantage will Republicans gain?

Lisa: Like everyone else, focusing on the 2022 gubernatorial and legislative races will be paramount. New Yorkers will be watching Hochul, the state's first female governor, closely as they decide if she should be the 57th governor for a full four-year term. It will be important to keep an eye on the culture of Albany's legislative leaders under Hochul's administration. I'm eager to see what becomes of reinvigorated charges for state ethics reform in the wake of Cuomo's departure.

Also, the Assembly failed to move the Adult Survivors Act modeled after the Child Victims Act last session. Many conclude it would have opened the door for scores of lawsuits against staffers and state employees to accuse them of sexual abuse or misconduct. With Cuomo out, does the legislation, which unanimously passed the Senate last year, have renewed hopes in becoming law? If the culture is truly changing, support for that measure will be a telltale sign.

3 1 of 3 Amanda Fries / Times Union Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Provided, photo by Lucy Shepherd Show More Show Less 3 of 3




Farmington, WV (26555)

Today

Cloudy early with thunderstorms developing later in the day. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High 79F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms likely. Low around 60F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
by Martina Fuchs

GENEVA, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The security talks between the United States and Russia in Geneva scheduled for Monday have drawn attention from the international community.

The talks are expected to focus on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the rising tensions in Ukraine. Such issues as arms control, cybersecurity and climate change may also be raised. While calling the dialogue a positive signal to improve frayed U.S.-Russia relations, experts are cautious about its outcomes.

NO QUICK FIXES

"We have to manage expectations," Thomas Greminger, director of the Geneva Center for Security Policy who previously served as secretary general of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe from 2017 to 2020, told Xinhua in a virtual interview.

"It's obviously great that we will see another round of this Strategic Stability Dialogue on Monday here in Geneva. I think it's good that they meet and talk, but clearly for the issues on the agenda there are no quick fixes," he said.

"I would expect the meeting on Monday to be an opportunity to spell out mutual concerns, to spell out mutual expectations," said Greminger.

Keith Krause, a professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, said, "I'm not very optimistic. I think that it's more the beginning of a longer-term conversation."

"I know that certainly (U.S. President Joe) Biden attempted to reset the relationship with the Russians last year, and I believe that's a long and slow process because there are many, many very clear differences between the two. Ukraine being one of them, but there are a number of other issues that are quite conflictual at this point," he told Xinhua via video.

"On the nuclear dialogue, perhaps I would be a bit more optimistic that they will begin to have some conversations," Krause said.

In a year-end telephone call between Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, the two leaders discussed the decision to launch the negotiations under which Russia's security would be ensured in a bid to prevent a further escalation of tensions.

Biden emphasized that Russia and the United States bear a special responsibility for ensuring stability in Europe and the world.

TENSIONS IN UKRAINE

The two permanent members of the United Nations Security Council have vowed to de-escalate the standoff over Ukraine. Amidst heightening tensions, the Biden administration had previously threatened Russia with fresh, sweeping sanctions.

Russia responded that further large-scale economic sanctions would lead to a severing of relations between Moscow and the West.

On Friday, the foreign ministers of NATO member states held an extraordinary virtual meeting to discuss "Russia's continued military build-up in and around Ukraine" and broader European security issues.

For Ukraine, seeking NATO membership has become one of its foreign policy priorities. In February 2019, the Ukrainian parliament adopted amendments to the constitution, securing the country's aspiration to join the alliance.

"Even without these current tensions and without this meeting about to happen, NATO membership of Ukraine couldn't be expected any time soon since there is a de facto moratorium on this issue in a few very important Western capitals," Greminger said.

Krause agreed with Greminger, saying, "I don't think that Ukraine will join NATO any time soon. I do think that the country itself is in some sense divided."

POTENTIAL COOPERATION

Greminger warned that geopolitical tensions between Washington and Moscow are likely to continue this year.

However, at least some common ground for cooperation could be found, the expert added.

"I have no doubt that this geopolitical competition, this geopolitical rivalry will continue throughout 2022. But I would hope to see in these talks in Geneva an indicator of the will of the great powers to at least manage this competition, perhaps even manage this competition carefully," he said.

"This would imply that they identify areas of common interest where they would agree to cooperate despite the geopolitical competition. There are some obvious potential areas of cooperation," he said, referring to issues ranging from climate change, technology and artificial intelligence to the global fight against COVID-19.

"These very difficult issues can only be addressed through dialogue and diplomacy," Greminger said. 
The price of the average three-bed semi in County Tipperary is expected to rise by 6% in the next 12 months, according to a survey by Real Estate Alliance.

Three-bed semi-detached homes in the county now cost an average of 201,750, up 15% on the December 2020 average of 175,125, the REA Average House Price Index shows.

The survey concentrates on the actual sale price of Ireland's typical stock home, the three-bed semi, giving an up-to-date picture of the second-hand property market in towns and cities countrywide.

Landlords exiting the market have accounted for almost one in four home sales over the past three months, the data shows.

Prices in Nenagh rose by 27.8% in 2021, but eased back slightly by 2.1% to 230,000 in the final three months of the year.

The final quarter of 2021 has not been as hectic as Q3, but there is still a very limited supply of houses available and anything that comes up for sale is being snapped up straight away, said Eoin Dillon of REA Eoin Dillon, Nenagh.

Clonmel prices saw a growth of 5.1% over quarter four to 205,000, representing an annual increase of 15.5%.

There are no new developments due to be launched in Clonmel and demand far exceeds supply, said John Stokes, REA Stokes & Quirke, Clonmel.

Demand has increased substantially because there is limited supply in the rental and sales markets, and many small investors are exiting the market due to changes in regulation.

Prices in Newport remained at 197,000 this quarter, increasing annually by 9.4%.

There is limited supply, with anything priced right coming on the market being sold very quickly, said James Lee of REA John Lee, Newport.

Some vendors expectations are too strong, which is making some sales at higher price-points slower.

Roscrea prices rose 2.9% to 175,000 in Q4 2021, representing an annual increase of 7.4%.

There are no new developments in Roscrea, and the supply of three-bed semis is just about meeting demand, with little to no stock currently available, said Seamus Browne of REA Seamus Browne, Roscrea.

I feel we will see further price increases in 2022 due to lack of supply.

Average house prices rose by 2.24% nationally in the last three months of 2021, half the rise experienced between June and September as demand eased and the market calmed.

The price of a three-bedroomed semi-detached house across the country rose by 5,900 over the past three months to 269,963  representing an annual increase of 13%.

Selling prices rose in commuter areas (3.34%) and the countrys large towns (2.57%) as buyers continue to move out further from the capital in anticipation of long-term remote and hybrid working situations.

The commuter area increases are treble those in Irelands major cities, with Dublin increasing by 1% and Cork Limerick and Galway by an average of 0.8% as agents reported a quieter quarter.

In Dublin city, house prices rose by over 4,000 in Q4, compared to more than 10,000 in Q3, increasing from 467,000 in September to a present rate of 471,667.

Three bed semis in commuter counties rose 3.34% by over 9,000 in the past three months to an average of 291,944  with the average home selling in just three weeks.

As the flight to rural locations continues, prices in the rest of the countrys towns rose by 2.6% in Q3 to 190,138.

Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford cities shared a combined increase of 0.8% in the past 12 weeks with the average three bed semi now costing 283,000.

While Cork (335,000), Galway (302,000) and Waterford (250,000) were relatively static, prices in Limerick rose by 2.1% to 245,000.
Crawford House Distillery owner Liza Zeilinski (foreground) and head distiller, Teo Underhill, are pictured adjusting their stills on Thursday. The couple is opening their distillery today on West Spring Street. This will be the first legal distillery in Titusvilles long history.
A policeman in protective gear patrols at a COVID-19 testing site in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Jan. 10, 2022. Monday marks the second Chinese People's Police Day. It falls every Jan. 10, corresponding with the country's emergency call number of 110. Policemen in Xi'an stick to their posts on the day to secure the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

A policeman talks with a driver at a tollgate in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Jan. 10, 2022. Monday marks the second Chinese People's Police Day. It falls every Jan. 10, corresponding with the country's emergency call number of 110. Policemen in Xi'an stick to their posts on the day to secure the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

A policeman in protective gear checks the health QR code of a driver at a tollgate in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Jan. 10, 2022. Monday marks the second Chinese People's Police Day. It falls every Jan. 10, corresponding with the country's emergency call number of 110. Policemen in Xi'an stick to their posts on the day to secure the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

Policemen patrol in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Jan. 10, 2022. Monday marks the second Chinese People's Police Day. It falls every Jan. 10, corresponding with the country's emergency call number of 110. Policemen in Xi'an stick to their posts on the day to secure the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

Policemen in protective gears are on duty at a tollgate in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Jan. 10, 2022. Monday marks the second Chinese People's Police Day. It falls every Jan. 10, corresponding with the country's emergency call number of 110. Policemen in Xi'an stick to their posts on the day to secure the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

A policeman conducts vehicles to pass at a tollgate in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Jan. 10, 2022. Monday marks the second Chinese People's Police Day. It falls every Jan. 10, corresponding with the country's emergency call number of 110. Policemen in Xi'an stick to their posts on the day to secure the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

Policemen in protective gears patrol in a community in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Jan. 10, 2022. Monday marks the second Chinese People's Police Day. It falls every Jan. 10, corresponding with the country's emergency call number of 110. Policemen in Xi'an stick to their posts on the day to secure the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

A police officer explains COVID-19 prevention and control rules to a resident in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Jan. 10, 2022. Monday marks the second Chinese People's Police Day. It falls every Jan. 10, corresponding with the country's emergency call number of 110. Policemen in Xi'an stick to their posts on the day to secure the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

Policemen in protective gears are on duty at a tollgate in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Jan. 10, 2022. Monday marks the second Chinese People's Police Day. It falls every Jan. 10, corresponding with the country's emergency call number of 110. Policemen in Xi'an stick to their posts on the day to secure the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)
 

1
For early morning readers . . . More than a few quick hits concerning community news, pop culture and top headlines . . .



Check TKC news gathering . . .

Delivering Supplies To Fight Pandemic

Shatto Home Delivery offers more than groceries, now delivers masks and COVID-19 testing kits KEARNEY, Mo. - Taking the idea of a milkman to the next level, Shatto Home Delivery offers not only Shatto Milk and local groceries to doorsteps but masks and COVID-19 home testing kits, too.

EPIC PAYOUT UNDERWAY!!!

Kansas City, Kansas, will pay more than $813,000 to retiring county administrator The Unified Government of Kansas City, Kansas and Wyandotte County will pay over $813,000 to its outgoing administrator, who left his role three weeks after new Mayor Tyrone Garner was sworn in. The Unified Government announced Douglas Bach would be retiring from his role in late December, but according to a separation agreement obtained by KCUR, he indicated his intent to retire on Dec.

Show-Me Jeff City Agenda

HEART OF THE MATTER: Journalist roundtable previews Missouri legislative session Hide Transcript Show Transcript WE JUST HEARD FROM MISSOURI LAWMAKERS. LET'S BREAK DNOW THEIR COMMENTS AND WHAT TO EXPECT IN JEFF CITY WITH OUR ROUND TABLE OF JOURNALISTS. WELCOME AGAIN, KMBC9 POLITICAL REPORTER MICHEAL MAHONEYND A BRIAN ELLISON HOST CONTRIBUTOR WITH KCUR FIRST OFF REPUBLICANS BECAUSE OF RESIGNATIONS AND SOME POLITICAL APPOINTMENTS ARE NOW JUST SHY OF THE VOTES.

Flyover Country Legislation Look

What to expect from the Kansas and Missouri legislatures The 2022 legislative sessions have begun in Kansas and Missouri, with issues such as abortion, taxes, education and redistricting at the top of the to-do lists. We'll break down what to expect from state lawmakers on both sides of the border.

Police Note Shared

KCK police looking for individual in connection to kidnapping KANSAS CITY, KS (KCTV) --- The Kansas City, KS., Police Department is looking for an individual in reference to a kidnapping. Police say the kidnapping happened on Jan. 1, 2022 in the area of 10th Street and Central Avenue. Anyone with information is asked to contact the KCKPD Detective Bureau at 913-573-6012.

Dealing With Vlad

As the U.S. and Russia prepare to talk, hopes to resolve heightened tensions are low U.S. and Russian officials are gathering in Geneva on Monday to kick-off a series of high-stakes talks as tensions remain higher than ever over Ukraine. Russia has been building up its military presence at its border with Ukraine in recent months, leading to concerns that Russia President Vladimir Putin is planning on invading the country.

Supreme COVID Mistake?!?

CDC Director Corrects Sonia Sotomayor Claim That 100,000 Kids in 'Serious Condition' With COVID-19 CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on Sunday corrected claims made by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who said Friday that "we have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators." Walensky explained on a segment of Fox News Sunday that though pediatric hospitalizations have been rising, numbers are still "about 15-fold less" than for older age groups.

Welcome New Friends To Ballot Box

New York will allow non-citizens to vote under controversial law More than 800,000 non-citizens and "Dreamers" could vote in New York City municipal elections as early as next year, after Mayor Eric Adams allowed legislation to become law on Sunday. Opponents have vowed to challenge the law, which the city council approved a month ago.

Gift Of Life Needed

MO, KS state representatives launch #GiveLifeKC to encourage blood donations amid supply crisis In light of National Blood Donor Month this January, 13 state representatives from Kansas and Missouri kicked off the #GiveLifeKC campaign. In partnership with the Community Blood Center, state leaders are hoping to spread awareness about the dire need for blood donations and recruit more donors.

Wild Card Considerations

5 winners and 4 losers from the Chiefs' win over the Broncos It wasn't always pretty - and it was more difficult than it should have been - but the Kansas City Chiefs pulled out a 28-24 win against the Denver Broncos on Saturday, making some huge plays when it mattered the most. There were some frustrating flashbacks to early-season defensive struggles - and some penalties that could have been costly.

Walking Tour In The Dotte

Residents of Kansas City, Kansas, are helping create a heritage trail worthy of their history For years, residents have heard they're getting more green space, walking trails and projects to preserve their rich history. Now, community groups and the Unified Government are planning a trail and green infrastructure connecting Kaw Point to the Quindaro Townsite.

Somewhat Warmer Week

Your Storm Track 5 Daily Forecast A cold front moved through overnight, and a north wind has been rather gusty in its wake. Our temperatures are falling through the 20s this morning and wind chills are in the single digits. We'll get some sunshine later this morning and afternoon, but our warmup will be limited by the colder and drier air mass that moved in.

Alok - Sky High is the song of the day and this is the OPEN THREAD for right now.
A quick peek at angel Candice along with community news pop culture and top headlines.



Here's TKC news gathering . . .

Kansas City COVID Trouble Cont'd

Omicron variant continues to reduce staff, increase testing demand across metro If you can find a COVID-19 test right now, expect long lines. For some, it means an hour-and-a-half wait.Blue Valley parents experienced that Sunday as they overwhelmed the school-sanctioned COVID-19 testing site.There was bumper-to-bumper traffic in a line that stretched 1/3 of a mile.

Baller Fate Almost Revealed

Titans get AFC's No. 1 seed; Chiefs are No. 2 seed The AFC playoffs will be running through Music City, and the Tennessee Titans should have Derrick Henry back for their first game this postseason. The Tennessee Titans, who've used an NFL-high 88 players and most ever in a non-strike season, clinched their first No. 1 seed since 2008 and third overall.

Shooting Rings Out In The Dotte

Robbery at Matney Park in KCK leaves one victim with a gunshot wound KANSAS CITY, Kan. - The Wyandotte County Sheriff's Office is investigating a robbery at Matney Park, near 39th and Shawnee Drive, Sunday afternoon. Just after 3:00 p.m. deputies were called to Matney Park to investigate a shooting. When they arrived, they found a victim with a gunshot wound.

What Panty Profits A Man If He Loses His Soul?!?!

Victoria's Secret shares rise after retailer touts strong holiday season, unveils stock buyback plan Victoria's Secret shares rose early Wednesday after the lingerie retailer announced share buybacks and said it had strong sales over the holidays. Its stock was up more than 11% in morning trading. On Tuesday, the shares closed at $48.58, giving it a market value of $4.29 billion.

Prez Fights For Votes

'We are going right to the belly of the beast:' Biden takes on Georgia Fresh off a high-profile speech in which he warned that a dagger had been placed at the throat of American democracy, President Joe Biden will travel to the state that White House officials view as "ground zero" for Republican-led election suppression efforts. Biden will speak in Georgia on Tuesday.

Newsies Jealous Of Access

Trump would dial Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs into Oval Office meetings, report says Fox News's top hosts served as a "Cable Cabinet of unofficial advisers," said the Washington Post. There was an intimate relationship between the network and the Trump administration, it said. Former administration officials told the paper that Fox hosts were dialed into Oval Office meetings.

AOC PLAGUED BY COVID!!!

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announces positive Covid test The Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has tested positive for Covid-19. In a statement on Sunday evening, the office of the New York progressive said she was "experiencing symptoms and recovering at home. "The congresswoman received her booster shot this fall and encourages everyone to get their booster and follow all Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance".

Keeping The Faith

Author contemplates Catholic Church's future by examining its recent past Benedictine Sr. Patricia Crowley currently serves as a spiritual director, as a team member with the Ignatian Spirituality Program, and as board president of Bethany House of Hospitality in Chicago (for young women seeking asylum in our country). Enter your email address to receive free newsletters from NCR.

Last Laugh

Bob Saget Dead at 65 Bob Saget has died at the age of 65 ... TMZ has learned. Multiple sources connected to the iconic comedian and actor -- most famous for his starring role as Danny Tanner in 'Full House' -- tell us he passed away Sunday at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando.

Sunday Remembrance

Friends gather to remember teens killed in south Kansas City crash Friends and family gathered for a candlelight vigil Saturday night for two teens killed in an early morning crash in south Kansas City, Missouri.The vigil was held at House of Boost in Belton. The crash happened around 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning at E.

Local Tribute Tonight

St. Luke's Hospice employees honor local woman with brain cancer SHAWNEE, KS (KCTV) --- In Shawnee on Sunday, there was a small piece of a joy for a well-deserving member of the community. Nancy Dixon has battled glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, for three years Current and former employees from St. Luke's Hospice held a car parade in Dixon's honor.

Kansas City Warmup This Week

Warmer temperatures are ahead this week Hide Transcript Show Transcript JUST A FEW HIGH CLOUDS DRIFTING FROMHE T NORTHWEST. THAT IS ABOUT IT. YOUR EVENING FORECAST, A LIGHT WIND. MOSTLY CLEAR SKY. BRIDGERS WILL SLOWLY COOL DOWN A FEW DEGREES. EVENTUALLY, WE WILL BE IN ETH LOW 20'S AS WE HEAD TOWARD MIDNIGHT.

And this is the OPEN THREAD for tonight . . . Hopefully, we'll have more for the morning update . . .
Brevard, NC (28712)

Today

Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High near 80F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 62F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.
Johnstown, PA (15901)

Today

Cloudy in the morning, then off and on rain showers during the afternoon hours. High 72F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

A steady rain early. Showers with perhaps a rumble of thunder developing late. Low 61F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
A volunteer (R) gives citizens tips on nucleic acid test at a testing site in Nankai District, north China's Tianjin, Jan. 9, 2022. (Xinhua/Sun Fanyue)

TIANJIN, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- North China's Tianjin Municipality reported 20 new domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases from 9 p.m. Saturday to 9 p.m. Sunday, local authorities said Sunday.

Two of the 20 cases were identified as asymptomatic cases, said the municipal headquarters for COVID-19 prevention and control.

All patients were transferred to municipal hospitals for further diagnosis and treatment.

Residents in Tianjin are asked not to leave the city unless necessary. People who have to leave the city must hold negative nucleic acid test certificate and green health code within 48 hours. The regulation will take effect from the end of Sunday.

Citizens with fever are not allowed to leave Tianjin or enter Beijing, the Chinese capital neighboring virus-hit Tianjin, until the risk of infection has been ruled out.

Related epidemiological investigations are underway. 
If youre reading this you probably also took in the first half of my annual feature that celebrates books last week; thanks for coming back for more. It was the great Western writer, Louis LAmour who said that once youve read a book you care about,  some part of it is always with you.
BLANFORD [mdash] Eric Todd Vandevender, 60, of Blanford and formerly of Cayuga, passed away at 7:55 a.m. EDT Saturday, April 16, 2022 at Clinton Gardens in Clinton, Indiana. Eric was born on May 6, 1961 in Danville, Illinois, the son of the late Floyd A. and Irma Jean (Weir) Vandevender. Sur
BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said Monday that China is ready to work with Belarus to take the 30th anniversary of their diplomatic ties as a new starting point to further promote bilateral relations.

In a phone conversation with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Xi called for joint efforts to enhance political mutual trust, deepen mutually beneficial cooperation, and push for new results in the China-Belarus comprehensive strategic partnership.

Saying he is glad to talk on the phone with Lukashenko at the beginning of the new year, Xi pointed out that the past year was of great significance to both China and Belarus.

He added that he stands ready to maintain close communication with Lukashenko through various means to push forward the China-Belarus relationship.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of China-Belarus diplomatic ties, Xi said, adding that over the past 30 years, China-Belarus relations have achieved fruitful results, and the two sides have become comprehensive strategic partners of mutual trust and win-win cooperation.

He noted that between the two countries, Belt and Road cooperation has registered steady progress; trade has increased 50-fold in 30 years; a number of large projects, including the China-Belarus industrial park and the China-Europe Railway Express, have taken root and borne fruit; and exchanges have grown deeper in such fields as science and technology, education, culture, tourism and medical care.

The China-Belarus relationship has set a good example of friendly exchanges and mutually beneficial cooperation between countries, he stressed.

The two sides should expand the scale of bilateral trade, strengthen cooperation in areas such as innovative, green and digital development, and ensure the stable operation and sustainable development of the China-Europe Railway Express, Xi suggested, adding that they should also continuously enhance vaccine cooperation.

Citing the complex changes in the current international and regional situation, Xi stressed that the two countries have cooperated effectively on multilateral occasions including the United Nations, and firmly supported each other in safeguarding their core national interests, which has demonstrated the strategic value of China-Belarus cooperation.

Under the new circumstances, the two sides should continue to cooperate closely, practice true multilateralism, safeguard the international system with the United Nations at its core and the international order based on international law, and uphold international fairness and justice, Xi said.

China, he added, opposes external forces interfering in Belarus' internal affairs, and, as always, supports Belarus in pursuing a development path suited to its own national conditions.

Xi said the two sides should advocate the common values of mankind, guide the international community to adopt a correct approach to democracy and human rights, and promote the implementation of the Global Development Initiative and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

For his part, Lukashenko once again extended congratulations on the centenary of the Communist Party of China.

Noting that the Belarusian people always have sincere and friendly feelings towards the Chinese people, Lukashenko thanked China for always providing firm political and moral support for Belarus.

Facing the profound and complex changes of the current international and regional situation, Belarus hopes to maintain close communication and coordination with China, he said.

Belarus, he added, stands ready to take the 30th anniversary of diplomatic ties this year as an opportunity to elevate bilateral relations to a new level.

He said his country hopes to work with China to promote the development of the Belarus-China industrial park and deepen cooperation in such fields as pandemic response, traditional Chinese medicine, trade, investment and education.

Belarus will always be a staunch cooperation partner of China, he said, also wishing the Chinese people a happy Spring Festival. 
Tucson, AZ (85741)

Today

Mainly clear skies. Low 63F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mainly clear skies. Low 63F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
In the past 24 hours, on January 9, the Russian occupation forces twice violated the ceasefire, using weapons proscribed by the Minsk agreements.

Thats according to a morning update by the Joint Forces Operation Commands press service, Ukrinform reports.

In the direction of Popasna, Russias armed groups opened fire using 120-mm mortars, anti-tank grenade launchers, anti-tank missile systems, and large-caliber machine guns.

Near Katerynivka, the occupiers fired at Ukrainian defenders employing 120-mm mortars, automatic easel-mounted grenade launchers, and small arms.

As a result of enemy attacks, a Ukrainian military serviceman sustained combat injuries. The soldier has been evacuated to a medical facility in satisfactory condition.

Ukrainian defenders returned fire without using weapons banned by the Minsk accords and forced the enemy to cease shelling.

Over the past day, Ukrainian units held their ground in the zone of hostilities, the report underlines.

As of 7:00 on January 10, no new ceasefire breaches were reported.

The Joint Forces are monitoring the situation in the zone of hostilities, remaining ready to deter and repel Russias armed aggression.

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Russia is a party to the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, while any talks concerning Ukraine must include the countrys officials.

This was stated by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Joseph Borrell in an oped published by the EU External Action Service, according to Ukrinform

"There can be no doubt that Russia is a party to this conflict, and not a mediator as it often claims," Borrell said.

According to the high representative, any negotiations on Ukraine must include the countrys representatives. "Our main interest, concern and purpose is to get Russia to de-escalate tensions," Borrel said.

The official added that dialogue is needed, while dialogue with Russia is a must, so is deterrence and resolve through firm support of Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Any further aggression against Ukraine will have massive consequences and severe costs for Russia, Borrell wrote.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, on January 4-6, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell visited Ukraine for the third time, at the invitation of Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

Photo: European Union

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RAMALLAH, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Ishtaye on Monday warned that Israel's attempts to implement five new settlement plans in Jerusalem would undermine the vision of the two-state solution.

An official statement said that Ishtaye made the warning at the end of the weekly meeting of the Palestinian Authority cabinet held on Monday in the West Bank city of Jericho to discuss the expansion of Israeli settlement.

"The five new settlement plans include the building of more than 3,000 settlement units," Ishtaye said, calling for an "immediate international interference."

He stressed during the cabinet meeting that the Palestinian people are sticking to establishing their independent Palestinian state, adding that "our people will never stop asking for their rights of freedom, independence, and self-determination."

On Wednesday, a local Israeli committee approved the building of 3,557 settlement housing units in East Jerusalem, according to media reports. 
The demands Russian President Vladimir Putin put forward to the United States, NATO, and the European Union to recognize Russia's neighbors as the Kremlins sphere of influence are illegitimate.

Thats according to Ukraines Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who addressed the issue via Twitter, Ukrinform reports.

"Lets call a spade a spade. Putin demands the U.S., NATO & the EU to accept Russias sphere of influence over sovereign neighboring states. But the Cold War is over, and so are spheres of influence, wrote the foreign minister.

Also, Kuleba underscored the point that Putin's demands are illegitimate and harmful to international peace and security.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, EU High Representative Josep Borrell said the European Union saw the main goal of diplomatic efforts in reducing tensions around Ukraine and ensuring that Russia de-escalates. At the same time, he said that, while dialogue with Russia is a must, so is deterrence and resolve through firm support of Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity. Any further aggression against Ukraine will have massive consequences and severe costs for Russia, Borrell wrote in an oped.

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The European Union sees the main goal of all diplomatic efforts in reducing tensions around Ukraine and making Russia de-escalate, but in this context any dialogue with Russia must be accompanied by tough deterrence and a clear stance on the high cost of its further military aggression.

EU High Representative Josep Borrell wrote about this in a blog published on the website of the European External Action Service following his recent visit to Ukraine, which included a trip to the line of contact in the zone of hostilities.

"Overall, tensions have been building up with respect to the European security. () I stressed that our main interest, concern and purpose is to get Russia to de-escalate tensions. The full implementation of the Minsk agreement by Russia remains a fundamental condition. We will continue to support diplomatic efforts to revive conflict resolution in the framework of the Trilateral Contact Group (Russia, Ukraine and OSCE) and the Normandy format (Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany). It is equally important that the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission can fully undertake its mandate," Borrell said.

He stressed that dialogue is a must, but so is deterrence and resolve through a firm support of Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Any further aggression against Ukraine will have massive consequences and severe costs for Russia, Borrell wrote, adding that the EU is coordinating our approach closely with transatlantic and other like-minded partners.

There is no security in Europe without the security of Ukraine. Beyond Ukraine, the whole European security architecture is at stake. The Russian leadership, by deliberately excluding any reference to the EU from the draft treaties they presented last December, seems to intend to turn the clock backward to the old times of Cold War logics. The Russian proposals reflect indeed the position of Russian authorities aiming to roll back evolutions that took place since 1990, the EU high representative wrote.

He stressed that through such moves, the Russian leadership aims to undermine European unity, violating the independence and sovereignty of the former Soviet nations. According to him, this type of delimitation of spheres of influence does not belong in 2022: there cannot be a Yalta 2.

These times have definitely passed and we need to be clear that nothing will be discussed about the security in Europe without the Europeans. We agreed with the US and our partners that such discussions will continue in coordination with, and participation of the EU. In addition, there should be no limits placed on Ukraines independence or its right to determine its foreign policy choices. And, of course, any discussion about Ukraine must require Ukraine to be at the table, the EU top diplomat wrote.

As reported earlier, on January 4-6, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell paid a visit to Ukraine where, together with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, he took a trip to the line of contact in Luhansk region.

The EU chief diplomat was briefed on the current security situation in the zone of the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict.

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High Representative of the European Union for Foreign and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission Josep Borrell and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed on Saturday night the security situation in connection with ongoing Russia's military build-up near Ukraine's borders and in its temporarily occupied territories.

High Representative Borrell shared his assessment of the situation following his visit to Ukraine, including the line of contact They reaffirmed the European Union and U.S. support to Ukraines sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity and emphasised the need for Russia to de-escalate and fully implement the Minsk agreements. They underlined that any further military aggression against Ukraine will have massive consequences and severe cost, reads the press release published on the website of the European External Action Service on January 8.

As noted, Secretary Blinken and High Representative Borrell discussed the bilateral and multilateral diplomatic engagements following the proposals presented by the Russian Federation regarding Russias views about the security arrangements in Europe.

They underlined the United States and the EUs enduring partnership and shared commitments to Transatlantic security and to confronting common security challenges.

In particular, the parties agreed that any discussion about European security will happen in coordination and with the participation of the European Union.

As noted, the EU and the US agreed to keep in close touch on all these priority areas.

As reported, on January 4-6, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign and Security Policy Josep Borrell paid a visit to Ukraine and visited the contact line in Luhansk region where he got acquainted with the current security situation in the area of the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict.

This week, a number of important diplomatic events will take place to resolve tensions over Russia's military build-up along Ukraine's borders. In particular, on Monday, Foreign Minister of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba will visit NATO Headquarters to attend a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission. The meeting will take place before the NATO-Russia Council, convened at NATO's initiative on 12 January.

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The United States has prepared an additional package of military assistance to Ukraine and mulls over the supply of Stinger surface-to-air missiles.

As NBC News reports citing sources, the Biden administration has prepared a new U.S. package of military aid for Ukraine, in addition to the American military assistance that is already flowing to Kyiv. In particular, the United States is working with other NATO alliance members to arrange for the delivery of Stinger shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles requested by the government in Kyiv. Ukrainian officials believe the Stinger surface-to-air missiles would help its military defend the country against low-flying Russian helicopters and drones, reads the article.

According to sources, the United States is ready to provide this assistance to Ukraine, as well as to support NATO's eastward enlargement in case of the Russian invasion.

As reported, Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks assured Ukrainian Ambassador Oleksandr Mishchenko that the Baltic country would provide assistance to Ukraine in the form of weapons and military equipment.

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Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly says the possibility of supplying weapons to Ukraine amid the build-up of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border cannot be ruled out.

The top diplomat stated this in an interview with CTV News, Ukrinform reports.

The most important thing right now is really to work with Ukrainians to deal with their security threats. That's what we'll be doing. My colleague Anita Anand, the defense minister, is actively on this file as well with alliesUkraine's security is Europe's security and therefore it is the world and Canada's security, Joly said.

According to the foreign minister, the most important thing now is for Moscow to stop amassing its troops near the Ukrainian border.

We call on Russia, along with all NATO allies to stop their military buildup next to Ukraine when it comes to dealing with the threat that Russia poses right now, that is exactly why I had on Friday, an important meeting with all the foreign ministers of NATO because it is important as an alliance that we show strength and unity and resolve, she said.

Earlier, NBC News, citing sources among U.S. officials, said that the United States has prepared an additional package of military assistance to Ukraine and is considering the supply of Stinger MANPADS.

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A series of diplomatic events in Europe this week, including Russia-U.S. talks in Geneva, the NATO-Russia Council, and the OSCE European Security Discussion, is unlikely to address all existing issues but will help start the negotiation process to prevent a new armed conflict in Europe.

This was stated by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg who answered an Ukrinform correspondents question during todays press briefing ahead of a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission with the participation of Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, Olha Stefanishyna.

Stressing that he welcomes the meetings set to be held this week, Stoltenberg said he doesnt think we can expect that these meetings will solve all the issues.

What were hoping for is that we can agree on a way forward, that we can agree on a series of meetings, that we can agree on the process. So its not unrealistic to expect that, when we have finished this week, when we have finished meetings already scheduled, that all problems will be solved. But I hope that there is will on both sides, including on the Russian side and also on the NATO side, to engage in the process that can prevent a new armed conflict in Europe," said Jens Stoltenberg.

At the same time, he said, everyone must be prepared for Russia, again, choosing the path of using its armed forces, choosing confrontation over cooperation.

"We also need to send a very clear message to Russia that we are united, that there will be severe economic and political costs for Russia if they again use military force against Ukraine. We provide support to Ukraine, helping them to uphold the right to self-defense, Stoltenberg said, adding that NATO is very clear about the commitments to protect and defend all Allies.

He noted that the current situation with Russia's military build-up around Ukraine only confirms the relevance and importance of NATO's two-track approach to Russia, with the Alliance pursuing a strong deterrence and defense policy while seeking a meaningful dialogue.

"I believe that the NATO-Russia Council is an important platform. All these platforms for consultations, for dialogue with Russia are especially important when tensions are high, when we see threats and challenges as we see now () Its important that we have these institutions, that we use them and that we talk. () These are important efforts to try to make sure that we have a political solution, that we prevent an armed conflict. Therefore, we are going into these talks in good faith, ready to address options and of course ready to listen to Russia's concerns," said the NATO secretary general.

As previously reported, in December last year, Russia unveiled drafts of the two "agreements" on security guarantees for Russia from the United States and NATO, demanding a waiver of the Bucharest NATO summit decision on future membership of Ukraine and Georgia, non-expansion to the east, and curtailment of the Alliances activity in the former Soviet nations.

Russia, meanwhile, continues to deploy troops in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and around its borders, using these military preparations to blackmail the United States and NATO. If the West refuses to accept such Russian "proposals," the Kremlin authorities are publicly threatening measures of a "military and military-technical nature."

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NATO-Ukraine Commission is a timely opportunity to exchange assessments on the situation and to coordinate ahead of diplomatic engagements with Russia.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg made a corresponding statement at a joint briefing with Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Olga Stefanishyna ahead of the NATO-Ukraine Commission meeting.

Our meeting in the NATO-Ukraine Commission is a timely opportunity to exchange assessments on the situation. To express Allies strong political and practical support to Ukraine. And to coordinate ahead of diplomatic engagements with Russia We will listen to Russias concerns, but any meaningful dialogue must also address our concerns about Russia's actions. And it must take place in consultation with Ukraine, as we are doing today. We are also consulting closely with other partners, including Georgia, Moldova, Finland, Sweden, and the European Union, NATO Secretary General said.

Stoltenberg noted that todays meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission came at the start of an important week for European security.

The United States and Russia are currently meeting in Geneva, NATO-Russia Council will meet in Brussels on Wednesday. On Thursday, the situation around European security will be discussed within the OSCE.

NATO Secretary General welcomed the fact that Russia had agreed to NATOs offer to hold a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council this week. The parties will focus on European security issues, transparency related to military activities, risk reduction and arms control.

NATO Allies are united in their support for all nations to choose their own path as this has been a fundamental principle of European security for decades, Stoltenberg underscored.

Ukraine is a valued and long-standing partner to NATO. We [Stoltenberg and Stefanishyna] just addressed the evolving situation in and around Ukraine. Russias military build-up continues. With tens of thousands of combat-ready troops, armed with heavy capabilities. On Friday [January 7], NATO Foreign Ministers called again on Russia to remove its forces from Ukraine and from your [Ukraines] borders. Demonstrate transparency. And de-escalate. Any further aggression against Ukraine would come at a high political and economic price, Stoltenberg stressed.

In December 2021, Russia released two draft "agreements" on security guarantees for Russia to be given by the United States and NATO, demanding to revoke decisions of the Bucharest NATO summit on future membership for Ukraine and Georgia, to stop NATOs eastward expansion, and to curtail NATOs activities in the territory of former USSR.

Meanwhile, Russia continues to amass troops in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and around its borders and uses these military preparations for direct blackmail against the United States and NATO. If the West refuses to accept Russian "proposals", the Kremlin authorities publicly threaten to take measures of "military and military-technical nature."

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Germany must abandon its policy of blocking defensive arms supplies to Kyiv and help Ukraine fend off Russian aggression.

This was stated by Ambassador of Ukraine to Germany Andrij Melnyk, who spoke with the Funke Mediagruppe newspapers, Ukrinform reports.

The envoy called on the newly-appointed government to "abandon the existing policy of blocking, which in terms of morality is completely wrong, and urgently provide Ukraine with the required defense weapons" because Ukrainians have every right to self-defense.

According to the ambassador, Germany bears the same historical responsibility to Ukraine for the crimes of Nazism as it does to Israel. That is why, according to the diplomat, Ukraine has the right to count on "massive military support" from Germany immediately to significantly increase the cost of Putin's attack on Ukraine and to have enough time to prevent it.

The Ukrainian diplomat stressed that the threat of Russia's full-scale military invasion of Ukraine still remains relevant and that Putin has not abandoned plans to destroy Ukrainian statehood. Berlin, Melnyk stressed, should not underestimate this permanent threat of war and ignore it.

In addition, the diplomat called on the German government to lobby for Ukraine's accession to NATO and the EU as soon as possible. In his opinion, only Ukraine's membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will repel Putin from any temptation to invade Ukraine.

Commenting on talks between the West and Russia, scheduled for this week, Melnyk said it would be naive to hope for any breakthroughs. He recommended that the Western allies instead impose immediate sanctions on Moscow before it is too late. He called the ultimate halt to the Nord Stream 2 project an integral part of the sanctions catalog.

Melnyk warned Germany against "a policy of appeasement towards an increasingly aggressive Russia." He called on the West to "treat Moscow as a leper, a pariah state that must be subjected to international isolation."

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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has taken note of the deployment in Kazakhstan of foreign military forces, dominated by the Russian contingent.

Thats according to a statement released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine on Monday, January 10, Ukrinform reports.

The Foreign Ministry condemns the violence that has erupted in a number of Kazakh cities and resulted in numerous casualties. The diplomats also expressed condolences over the death of Kazakhs, with whom Ukrainians have long-standing ties of friendship and mutual respect.

"At this critical time, it is extremely important for the people of Kazakhstan to take ultimate measures to de-escalate and avoid further violence, guarantee respect for human rights, and ensure that critical infrastructure and communication systems are restored," the statement says.

Read also: Blinken reminds Kazakh foreign minister of Russian aggression against Ukraine

The Foreign Ministry noted that they had taken note of the deployment in Kazakhstan, at the invitation of the Kazakh authorities, of foreign military forces, dominated by the Russian contingent.

"Foreign troops must respect the independence, sovereignty, and national legislation of Kazakhstan and international law, while their stay must not go beyond the declared limited period," the statement reads.

The Foreign Ministry also stressed it would continue to protect the interests of Ukrainians in Kazakhstan, in particular to assist them in returning home. "We maintain special control over the situation of our citizens in Almaty," the ministry said.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, rallies against the sharp rise in gas prices kicked off in Kazakhstans Zhanaozen (a city in the Mangistau region in the countrys west) on January 2. They escalated into mass protests, despite government resignation and a decision to roll back prices.

Authorities have called on the Collective Security Treaty Organization to help quell the protests. The CSTO has officially confirmed the deployment of a Russian military contingent and their allies in Kazakhstan.

At least 30 have been killed in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, where mass protests are ongoing.

Deputy Health Minister Ajar Giniyat said more than 1,000 had been injured and about 400  hospitalized.

A state of emergency has been declared throughout the country.

On January 7, Kazakh President Kasim-Zhomart Tokayev ordered that the military open fire at rioters without notice.

On January 9, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kazakhstan said 7,939 persons had been detained.

January 10 has been declared a Day of Mourning.

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In response to the latest call by Ukrainian Ambassador Andrij Melnyk to provide Kyiv with defensive weapons, the German government said that the country was already helping Ukraine in the military sphere and that it would not change its policy.

This was reported by an Ukrinform correspondent.

In particular, German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Andrea Sasse told a briefing: "Regardless of our restrictive policy on export controls, the fact is that we provide multilateral support to Ukraine, including in the military field."

In this regard, she mentioned the construction of a military hospital in Ukraine, supplies of medical equipment and sanitary materials, as well as the treatment of wounded Ukrainian servicemen, including in Bundeswehr hospitals.

Read also: Ukraine ambassador demands that Germany stop blocking arms supplies to Kyiv

For her part, a spokesperson for the federal government reiterated Berlin's position that the conflict over Ukraine should be resolved exclusively by political means, not military ones. Germany unequivocally supports the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, she stressed.

The spokeswoman for the German government also reminded that Ukrainian issues are being actively discussed around the world this week. In this regard, she mentioned today's talks between Russia and the United States in Geneva, Wednesday's meeting of the NATO-Russia Council and Thursday's discussion of European security within the OSCE.

As reported earlier, Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk in an interview with Funke Mediagruppe called on Germany to abandon the policy of blocking the supplies of defensive weapons to Kyiv to counter Russian aggression.

In late December, Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov, announced that the Ukrainian Air Force would receive from the German government a mobile field hospital in January 2022. According to the defense chief, since 2014, more than 160 wounded servicemen have undergone treatment in Germany. Also, throughout the entire period since the onset of Russian aggression, Germany has transferred to Ukraine more than EUR 13 million for medical needs and procurement of equipment.

Earlier, Reznikov said Germany s had blocked defensive arms supplies to Kyiv, earlier agreed within NATO.

According to Bild, since May 2021, Germany has been using NATO's mechanism to prevent other Allies from selling weapons to Ukraine for the country to exercise its right to self-defense.

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BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- "The essence of governance is livelihood, and the right way to ensure people's livelihood is to understand the hardships in their lives" -- President Xi Jinping has cited this ancient proverb to underscore the people-centered philosophy in governance.

The proverb originates from a policy proposal from Zhang Juzheng, a statesman of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). He carried out a series of "livelihood-centered" reforms in politics, the economy, and national defense to ease social conflicts and save the crisis-ridden dynasty after nearly 200 years of rule.

The proverb appeared in a collection of Xi's speeches and articles during his stint in the then poverty-stricken prefecture of Ningde from 1988 to 1990. The book revolved around how Xi was concerned about the people living in poverty and what he had done to help them relieve the hardship.

After being elected general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee in 2012, Xi told the press that Chinese people's aspiration for a better life is the goal to strive for.

The better life he described included better education, more stable jobs, more income, reliable social security, better medical and health care, improved housing conditions, and a beautiful environment.

In the following years, the CPC leadership has highlighted the people-centered philosophy of development, and through persistent efforts, extreme poverty was eliminated in China.

In his New Year address to ring in 2022, Xi reviewed his field trips to different places in 2021. "Every time I visit people in their homes, I would ask if they have any more difficulties, and I would remember everything my folks had to share with me," he said.

He repeated the vow to strive for the aspirations of the people. Xi further pledged that to ensure that everyone leads a better life, the CPC must never rest on past achievements. 
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the security situation around Ukraine and the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic with President of the Swiss Confederation Ignazio Cassis.

I congratulated Ignazio Cassis on taking office of President of Switzerland. We discussed security situation around Ukraine. We exchanged views on the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. We agreed to continue cooperation in preparation for the 5th Ukraine Reform Conference in Lugano, Zelensky posted on Twitter.

As reported, the 5th Ukraine Reform Conference will be held in the Swiss city of Lugano on July 4-5, 2022, with the participation of representatives of the Ukrainian authorities of all levels.

In December 2021, the Parliament of Switzerland elected incumbent Minister of Foreign Affairs Ignazio Cassis as the President for 2022.

The President of Switzerland is elected according to the "first among equals" principle among the Government members. Each minister becomes president for one year at least once every seven years. The President of Switzerland is not the head of state as the functions of the head of state are performed collectively by all members of the Federal Council.

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Allies at the NATO-Ukraine Commission meeting were unanimous that Russia's threats to unleash a new armed conflict in Europe should not deflect attention away from the formats of de-occupation of Donbas and Crimea, including the Crimea Platform.

Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olga Stefanishyna made a corresponding statement at a briefing following a meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brussels.

"We discussed this during the meeting a few minutes ago. Many NATO countries raised the issue of the Crimea Platform, saying they support this instrument. We emphasized that the starting point for the functioning of this institution is the declaration endorsed by NATO countries and the Alliance itself. Therefore, no issues on revision or concessions in this format are raised," the official said, answering a question from an Ukrinform correspondent whether Russia will be able to make Western partners give up their support for Ukraine's efforts within the Crimea Platform through blackmail.

According to the Deputy PM, the Allies share Ukraine's opinion that Russia could not be allowed to shift focus and divert attention from the processes of de-escalation in eastern Ukraine, peaceful settlement, and complete withdrawal of Russian troops from the temporarily occupied territories because of its threats to unleash new armed conflicts.

"This was the key and principled position of Ukraine. It was announced and supported by all Allies, including France and Germany, which now work in the Normandy format," Stefanishyna said.

Responding to a clarifying question from Ukrinform about the date of the next Normandy format meeting, Deputy Head of the Presidents Office Ihor Zhovkva, who was present at the briefing, said that work in this area continues but the date now depends on Russia.

"Both the President of France and new German Chancellor are determined to continue the activities of the Normandy format in full at the highest level. Unfortunately, such a summit was not held last year, although Germany, France, and Ukraine were ready for it. Consultations at the level of political advisers of the three parties will take place in Kyiv today They will discuss the necessity to hold a summit. Nobody will tell you the exact date, because it depends on another, the fourth party. There is reason to hope that a full-fledged summit will still take place," Zhovkva said.

As reported, a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission was held in Brussels on January 10, attended by Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraines Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration. Its main purpose was to coordinate positions ahead of the NATO-Russia Council meeting slated for January 12.

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A flight carrying Ukrainians and a number of Kazakhstan nationals has arrived in Boryspil International Airport from Nur Sultan.

This was reported by Ukraines Public Broadcaster UA:PBC, Ukrinform reports.

According to one of the passengers, Tamirlan, the flight had initially been scheduled to depart January 6 before being delayed.

According to the passenger, the situation in Nur-Sultan was calm in the past days, while the situation was pumped up artificially.

"There was no need to cut off the Internet, cancel flights, etc. This all led to unnecessary panic We always have a lot of police in the city, plenty of security. There was no looting in town. Life is calm as usual," said Tamirlan.

However, he confirmed there was unrest in Almaty, from where all flights were suspended.

It should be recalled that Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said 33 Ukrainians were on board the plane that took off from the Kazakh capital on Sunday, January 9.

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The end of the fighting in Afghanistan this summer came as a relief to farmer Sayed Mohammad*. It meant that he and his family could return to their house in Marja  a war-ravaged farming town in southern Helmand Province  after six years of moving between temporary dwellings every time the fighting got too close.

This is the first time Ive been home in six years, says Mohammad, 70.

But the sight that greeted them on their return a few weeks ago was one of devastation. The entire back section of the house, which is located near a now-abandoned military base, had been reduced to a rubble-filled husk.

Much of Marjas population was displaced over the past decade, as it became the scene of intense fighting between the Taliban and coalition and former government forces. There is hardly a building in the town that does not bear the scars of the conflict.

Together with his wife and six children, Mohammad has moved into the one room of their house that still has a roof, fixing plastic sheets over holes in the walls. Weve put the door back, but its freezing at night, he says.

Like tens of thousands of other internally displaced people (IDPs) now back home in former battleground districts in Helmand and elsewhere in Afghanistan, he is faced with a challenge bigger even than rebuilding: keeping his family fed.

Sometimes we get vegetables, but mostly we are living on bread and tea, he says. All the children are hungry.

Adbul Wadood* 13 (right), stands in his partially damaged home in Marja. His father, Sayed Mohammad*, along with his mother and five siblings returned to rebuild after six years of displacement.  UNHCR/Andrew McConnell

Other people in this shattered town give similar accounts. Families cannot afford to buy enough food and those, like Mohammad, who returned in recent months will have to wait until the spring before they can start farming, and only then if the current drought eases. It is a microcosm of a nationwide crisis, with the UN World Food Programme warning that across the country only 2 per cent of the population have enough food to eat, and more than half of children under five are at risk from acute malnutrition this year.

See also: Displaced families in Kabul caught in downward spiral

Every week, Dr Mohammad Anwar  himself a recently-returned IDP  sees more malnourished children in the small private clinic he runs in Marja. Babies are being brought in half the weight they should be, he says. He estimates that at least 2,000 children across the Marja area are now severely malnourished and at risk of dying.

Food shortages are a perennial problem in impoverished rural areas of Afghanistan. Even with outside donor support, the previous government struggled to tackle the issue, but without much of the foreign aid that paid most government salaries, the banking system paralysed by financial sanctions, and a prolonged drought that has withered crops and pastures, the situation is now far worse.

Many IDPs who have returned to Marja and other war-torn districts are now deeply in debt, after borrowing money to buy food or repair their homes. Sayed Mohammad says he owes shopkeepers and other creditors at least 50,000 Afghanis (about US$500). I need food. I need cash, but no one has given us any help so far.

Children shelter in what remains of their family home in the Bolan area of Helmand, near Lashkar Gah city.  UNHCR/Andrew McConnell

Mohammad Sadiqi, an assistant liaison officer for the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, Helmand, says the signs are pointing to more malnutrition cases in all districts affected by heavy fighting.

If the situation carries on like this over the winter, most families in Helmand will become poorer than they have ever been, and many will die, he says.

Working with local partner organizations, the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, is responding to the needs of some 22,000 IDP families that have returned to Helmand. The focus has been on helping them to stay warm this winter as well as supporting them to repair their homes and reintegrate into communities.

A UN-wide US$4.4 billion plan for responding to humanitarian needs in Afghanistan in 2022, is due to be launched on 11 January. If funded, it will scale up delivery of food and agricultural support, health services, emergency shelter and water and sanitation.

UN and partners launch plans to help 28 million people in acute need in Afghanistan and the region (Producer, Jens Laerke; Various, Camera; Marion Viguier, edit )

The key factor in rising child malnutrition is insufficient food for mothers, says Dr Anwar. They are not getting enough protein, so they cant feed their children properly. He adds that a lack of clean water  exacerbated by the drought  is also playing a role, leading to diarrhoea and further weight loss.

In their weakened state, malnourished children are more vulnerable to illnesses that can quickly lead to irreversible decline and death. Most children also lack the warm clothes that would provide a defence against sub-zero winter temperatures. Some malnourished kids have been getting pneumonia, Dr Anwar says.

He does what he can in his small clinic, but much more assistance is needed, and the root causes of the widespread hunger remain.

The arid landscape of Helmand where the effects of a severe drought are apparent everywhere.  UNHCR/Andrew McConnell

The effects of a crippling drought are apparent everywhere. Irrigation canals have dried up and crusts of salt cover many fields. The use of solar-powered pumps to tap ground water in order to grow opium  the raw material for heroin  has pushed the water table lower, drying up the soil and leaving salt deposits behind that make it even harder to grow legal crops.

"All of our youth are leaving."

The start of the year finally brought rain, but in such large quantities that it caused flash flooding in both Helmand and neighbouring Kandahar, washing away homes and fields. Much of the water was lost rather than being stored and so any mitigating effect on the drought situation is likely to be temporary.

If the water stops for good, well have to go to Iran or Pakistan, says Fazl Mohammad, another former IDP, who returned to Marja in November. Or we will just dig graves for ourselves.

Many are already on the move  no longer fleeing war, but the combined effects of climate change and economic collapse. All of our youth are leaving, says UNHCRs Sadiqi. What else can they do?

* Names have been changed for protection purposes.

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UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is calling on the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU), and the Czech Republic which will assume the Presidency in July, to prioritise the better protection of refugees in Europe and globally.

While many EU countries remain committed to European and international human rights and refugee laws and principles, in 2021, violent pushbacks of asylum seekers at EUs borders continued. These practices endanger lives and undermine fundamental human rights, including the right to seek asylum.

Increasing xenophobic political narratives, physical and legislative barriers to accessing territory for the purpose of seeking asylum in the EU have continued to erode the rights of people fleeing war, conflict and persecution.

The right to seek asylum is a fundamental human right. It must be preserved, especially in extraordinary situations or times of emergency, said Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCRs Representative for EU Affairs. The EU is a Union based on the rule of law, but we have too often seen divisive and politicized positions and practices that seek to evade asylum obligations. Mixed movements of refugees and migrants pose challenges to asylum systems. However, these challenges never justify responses that run counter to international law and negate asylum obligations.

The European Commissions proposed Pact on Migration and Asylum presented in September 2020 offers an opportunity to move from an ad hoc crisis-driven approach to asylum and migration in the EU to a common one that is more comprehensive, well-managed and predictable, both within and beyond the Union. Progress on ending pushbacks, the establishment of Independent National Monitoring Mechanisms to investigate them, and measures to enhance search and rescue and ensure predictable disembarkation of those rescued at sea is urgently needed. With manageable numbers of new arrivals of refugees and migrants to Europe, now is the time for common action.

UNHCR urges the Presidencies to promote sustainable asylum reform and achieve progress on key issues such as intra EU solidarity, adequate reception conditions as well as fair and fast asylum procedures to quickly determine who needs international protection and who does not, in line with legal safeguards. Dignified returns for people wishing to go back to their countries of origin or who are found not to be in need of international protection are equally crucial for a credible and well-managed system.

In the absence of consensus on a common EU asylum framework, UNHCR is concerned that further detrimental practices including proposals to externalize or outsource asylum obligations to other countries will ensue. Such efforts would run counter to the spirit of the Refugee Convention and the Global Compact on Refugees, thus undermining refugee protection.

At a time when the number of forcibly displaced people in the world is at an all-time high, when humanitarian needs are increasing, and crucially, when numbers of arrivals to the EU remain manageable, it is essential for the EU to recommit to solidarity  towards people, between states and with countries that host the majority of refugees, said Vargas Llosa. No matter how high barriers  physical and legislative  may be, desperate people will seek ways to reach safety. Managing borders, sharing responsibility and respecting human rights are compatible.

With nearly 90 per cent of refugees living in low and middle-income countries, UNHCR encourages the Presidencies to strengthen global solidarity by providing more support to the countries and regions where most forcibly displaced people are.

UNHCR remains ready to support the EU Presidencies, EU Institutions and Member States to better protect refugees in the EU and globally.

The UNHCR recommendations to the 2022 French and Czech Presidencies of the Council of the EU can be found here

For more information, please contact:

In Brussels: Maeve Patterson: [email protected] , +32 470 99 54 35

, +32 470 99 54 35 In Paris: Celine Schmitt: [email protected] , +33 6 23 16 11 78

, +33 6 23 16 11 78 In Budapest: (For Czech Republic) Zoran Stevanovic, [email protected] , +36 305 309 633

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BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Monday sent a congratulatory message to Mark Rutte on his reelection as the Dutch prime minister.

In his message, Li said that China and the Netherlands are important partners of each other, adding that in recent years, China-Dutch relations have maintained a good momentum of development and practical cooperation in various fields has been deepening.

Li said that he looks forward to continuing to work hand in hand with Rutte to promote the open and practical comprehensive cooperative partnership between China and the Netherlands to achieve more results for the benefit of the two countries and their people. 
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from a rockfall in Lake Furnas, Brazil, has risen to eight, with two people still missing, rescue teams said on Sunday.

The incident occurred on Saturday afternoon when several large rocks fell onto four boats sailing on Lake Furnas in the municipality of Capitolio, about 300 km from Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais state.

The four boats were carrying tourists at the time of the incident. On Saturday, six bodies were discovered, with authorities finding another two on Sunday.

Authorities said the deceased included four men and four women, although they have not yet been identified, and another two people are still missing.

A total of 32 people were injured, 27 of whom have already been discharged.

There had been heavy rains in the region on Saturday morning, which geologists believe may have caused the rocks to fall. 
CAPE TOWN, Jan. 10 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Jan, 2022 ) :Nine people were killed when two minibuses collided head-on Sunday night in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, local authorities said on Monday.

The collision happened when a fully-loaded minibus taxi heading for the seaport city of Gqeberha on the N2 road hit another minibus taxi with two occupants travelling in the opposite direction between Makhanda and Nanaga towns, Eastern Cape's Department of Transport said on its Facebook page.

Seven people in the first vehicle and the two, who were suspected to be a couple, in the second one died in the collision, it said, adding that the killed included two children between the age of one and four years.

The accident came days after six people died and nine others were injured in another head-on collision of two minibus taxis in the same province.

South Africa is now at the end of the festive season when more people are travelling.

The official figures released on Dec. 22, 2021, showed that the number of fatalities in car accidents in South Africa dropped marginally, from 848 in 2020 to 822 in 2021. The government said it is concerned about the high number of major crashes where five or more people perish in a single accident.

The figures also showed that car crashes with multiple fatalities increased to 17 from severn over the same period, and the number of fatalities from major crashes increased to 111 in 2021 from 34 in the previous year.
Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Stanislav Zas has said that he would fly to Kazakhstan on Tuesday to study the situation in the country amid the nationwide protests caused by a twofold rise in gas prices

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th January, 2022) Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Stanislav Zas has said that he would fly to Kazakhstan on Tuesday to study the situation in the country amid the nationwide protests caused by a twofold rise in gas prices.

"To study the state of affairs on the spot, to meet with the commander, the leadership of the Republic of Kazakhstan, I will fly to Kazakhstan tomorrow in agreement with the president of Kazakhstan," Zas said during an extraordinary session of the CSTO Collective Security Council on Monday.

He added that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the UN Security Council had been informed about the mission of CSTO peacekeepers in Kazakhstan.

"The members of the UN Security Council were informed about the decision to conduct a peacekeeping operation on the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan through the UN Secretary General. I also informed the OSCE and SCO Secretaries General," he said.
An indigenous Malaysian villager has been killed in a tiger attack, with government rangers shooting dead the critically endangered creature after it also charged them, authorities said

Kuala Lumpur, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Jan, 2022 ) :An indigenous Malaysian villager has been killed in a tiger attack, with government rangers shooting dead the critically endangered creature after it also charged them, authorities said.

The 59-year-old victim, Anek Along, was attacked Friday near the town of Gua Musang in the northern Malaysian state of Kelantan.

The 120-kilogram (264-pound) creature then rushed other villagers who threw spears to fend the creature off, wounding its face, according to wildlife officials.

Rangers arrived a few hours later and shot dead the tiger after it charged them.

Kelantan wildlife department director Mohamad Hafid Rohani told AFP authorities were "sad" they were forced to kill the creature "as tigers (in Malaysia) are dying out".

The Malayan tiger is classified as critically endangered by protection group the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

WWF Malaysia estimates there are fewer than 200 of the animals still left in the wild.

Attacks on humans by the tiger are rare, but such incidents have been known to occur in areas where developments encroach on the animals' habitat.

In mid-July, rangers captured a female tiger near Gua Musang after it attacked and seriously injured a local.

Some 3,000 Malayan tigers once roamed the country's jungles in the 1950s, and the big cat is regarded as Malaysia's national animal.

However, its population declined over the decades due to a loss of habitat from development and agricultural expansion, as well as poaching.




HOUSTON, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Six migrants, including a baby, on Friday crossed the Rio Grande River from Mexico, trying to seek asylum in the United States.

The crossing is just one of the hundreds that happen every day along the border in the U.S. state of Texas.

But the circumstance still pales in comparison to what federal, state and local officials faced in September when about 15,000 Haitian migrants descended on Del Rio, Texas.

Texas has been building its own border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in response to illegal border crossings.





Produced by Xinhua Global Service








Polish Foreign Minister and Chairperson-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Zbigniew Rau said on Monday that he discussed the unrest in Kazakhstan with Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi, urging him to respect the country's human rights commitments

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th January, 2022) Polish Foreign Minister and Chairperson-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Zbigniew Rau said on Monday that he discussed the unrest in Kazakhstan with Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi, urging him to respect the country's human rights commitments.

"The situation in #Kazakhstan was a topic of my phone call with FM Mukhtar Tileuberdi.

As the (OSCE) Chairman, I stressed the need of upholding the OSCE commitments, including those relating to human rights," Rau tweeted.

A wave of protests swept across Kazakhstan earlier this week following a sharp rise in gas prices. In view of the violence that followed, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev declared a nationwide state of emergency, effective until January 19, and invited the Collective Security Treaty Organization peacekeeping forces to help bring the situation under control.
Scientists with the USF Genomics program and the Center for Global Health and Infectious Disease Research have taken a significant step in providing the people of Rwanda the scientific tools they need to help address mental health issues that stemmed from the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi ethnic group.

In a first-of-its-kind study, Professors Monica Uddin and Derek Wildman of the College of Public Health looked at the entire genomes of Tutsi women who were pregnant and living in Rwanda at the time of the genocide and their offspring and compared their DNA to other Tutsi women pregnant at the same time and their offspring, who were living in other parts of the world.

In the study published in Epigenomics, they found that the terror of genocide was associated with chemical modifications to the DNA of genocide-exposed women and their offspring. Many of these modifications occurred in genes previously implicated in risk for mental disorders such as PTSD and depression. These findings suggest that, unlike gene mutations, these chemical epigenetic modifications can have a rapid response to trauma across generations.

Epigenetics refers to stable, but reversible, chemical modifications made to DNA that help to control a genes function, Uddin said. These can happen in a shorter time frame than is needed for changes to the underlying DNA sequence of genes. Our study found that prenatal genocide exposure was associated with an epigenetic pattern suggestive of reduced gene function in offspring.

The team, which includes Clarisse Musanabaganwa, a visiting scholar from the University of Rwanda and her colleagues, came to their conclusion following the review of DNA from blood samples from 59 individuals  about half exposed personally or exposed in utero to the genocide. Exposure is defined as being impacted by genocide-related trauma, such as rape or evading capture, witnessing murder or serious attack with a weapon and seeing dead and mutilated bodies.

The novel study is part of a larger consortium, the Human, Heredity & Health in Africa (H3), which is funded by the National Institutes of Health. Its an effort to empower scientists in Africa in genomics, increasing their independence and ability to build the infrastructure needed to enhance genetic studies across the continent, and ultimately better capture data on the human genome across the world.

The Rwandan people who are in this study and community as a whole really want to know what happened to them because theres a lot of PTSD and other mental health disorders in Rwanda and people want answers as to why theyre experiencing these feelings and having these issues, Wildman said.

While this study looks specifically at the impact of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, it supports previous studies that show what occurs during pregnancy when one is a fetus can have long-term impacts  many symptoms not appearing until later in life. Such evidence proves the need to enhance efforts to protect the safety and emotional and psychological wellbeing of pregnant women.

Researchers point out that individuals who were in utero during the genocide are starting to have children of their own and they hope to soon look at whether that trauma has had an epigenetic impact on the third generation. Theyre now awaiting a new, larger batch of DNA samples to find out how trauma can impact risk for specific mental health disorders, such as PTSD.
Valdosta, GA (31601)

Today

Partly to mostly cloudy with scattered showers and thunderstorms developing in the afternoon. High near 90F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Widely scattered showers or a thunderstorm early. Then partly cloudy. Low 64F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Kazakh service members stand guard at a checkpoint following the protests triggered by fuel price increase in Almaty, Kazakhstan, January 7

Pope Francis prays for the numerous people who have died whilst protesting in the streets of Kazakhstan.

By Francesca Merlo

Following the recitation of the Angelus prayer, Pope Francis turned his thoughts to victims of protests in Kazakhstan.

The Pope noted that it was with "sorrow" that he heard of the numerous people who died in protests, which began in response to a rise in fuel prices in Kazakhstan.

"I pray for them and their families," continued the Pope, expressing his hope that social harmony might be redoscovered through dialogue and justice.

Pope Francis concluded by entrusting all the people of Kazakhstan to Mary, Queen of Peace.

Protests in Kazakhstan

Protests in Kazakhstan began in response to fuel hikes but grew to reflect discontent at the government and former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who led the country for three decades and is still thought to retain significant influence.

Over 150 people have died in clashes, according to the Interior Ministry, and more than 4,000 people detained.
Protesters continue to fill the streets of Khartoum to call for an end to military rule, as Pope Francis urges both sides to seek reconciliation and peace.

By Devin Watkins

Protests continue to roil Sudan in the wake of an October coup, with demonstrators calling on the military to return to the democratic transition.

Security forces killed at least one protester in the capital, Khartoum, on Sunday.

Sudans doctors committee said the man was killed after being hit by a tear gas canister in the neck. His death brings the tally of casualties since the 25 October coup to 62.

Popes concern

Pope Francis weighed in on the internal conflict on Monday, expressing his concern.

The Pope urged all sides to find once again the path of reconciliation and peace through a forthright encounter that places the needs of the people above all else.

He was speaking to diplomats accredited to the Holy See during his annual state-of-the-world New Year address .

Read also 10/01/2022 Pope to diplomatic corps: Great challenges of our time are all global Pope Francis gives his annual state of the world address in his greetings to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See that takes place at the beginning of the year.

Efforts for transition talks

The Popes appeal came on the heels of a UN-backed initiative to kick start talks between opposition groups and the ruling generals.

The UN envoy to Sudan offered on Saturday to host meetings to seek a sustainable path forward towards democracy and peace in the country.

Volker Perthes, the UN envoy, added that all parties would be invited, including the military, rebel groups, political parties, and protest movements, as well as womens groups and civil society.

His offer came one week after the resignation of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who cited failure to reach a compromise between the pro-democracy movement and the military as the reason for his departure.

Sudanese protesters surrounded by tear gas on streets of Khartoum

Opposition to dialogue

However, already on Sunday, a leading Sudanese protest group rejected the UN-backed initiative.

The Sudanese Professionals Association refused to participate in talks, saying their only goal was to remove the generals from power.

The group said it seeks a completely civilian government to lead the democratic transition, and holds the motto: No negotiations, no compromise, no power-sharing with the military.

The association led the charge in 2019 to overthrow longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir and his Islamist government.

Al-Bashirs ousting by the military led to a civilian-army power-sharing agreement that was supposed to lead to elections in 2022.

But last years coup scuppered many hopes of a peaceful transition to democracy in Sudan.
Amongst the diplomats gathered in the Vaticans Hall of the Benediction (Aula delle Benedizioni) on Monday to receive the Popes greetings for the New Year, and listen to his State of the World address, was the British Ambassador to the Holy See, Christopher John Trott. He talks about his impressions.

By Linda Bordoni

Its an extraordinary privilege to be sitting in that room when the Holy Father does 'a review of the world', said Ambassador Christopher John Trott as he revealed how impressed he was by the sheer breadth of Pope Francis vision and by his very tangible concern for the state of the world.

Its the first time for this British Ambassador to live such an experience as he only began his mandate in the Vatican in September after a long career in the diplomatic service, a career that has taken him to Sudan, South Sudan, Burma, Japan, Afghanistan, the South Pacific, and both West and Southern Africa.

Notwithstanding over thirty years in the job, he spoke of genuine pleasure and emotion in hearing "in the Popes voice," his deep concern for the things that matter to him, both personally and to the Vatican as a State and as the Catholic Church.

Listen to the interview with Ambassador Chris Trott

Focus on moral obligation to get vaccinated

One issue Ambassador Trott focused on at length was the power of the Popes appeal to ensure that everyone has access to vaccines, and then on top of that, that everyone takes their vaccine.

In his discourse, Pope Francis described vaccination as a "moral obligation" for the common good, and he called for a comprehensive commitment on the part of the international community so that the entire world population can have equal access to essential medical care and vaccines.

Read also 10/01/2022 Pope to diplomatic corps: Great challenges of our time are all global Pope Francis gives his annual state of the world address in his greetings to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See that takes place at the beginning of the year.

I think there was a very deliberate choice of words to remind people that you're protecting not just yourself when you have a covid vaccine, but you're actually protecting the people around you and you're making a contribution to the society's health by having the vaccine, the Ambassador said, commenting on how the Popes message today is a very clear invitation and a reflection of where we are in the Omicron wave.

The British diplomat noted that the Holy Father tackled the issue at an individual level, at a societal level, at a regional level, and at a global level. It was a reminder, he said, that we all have various levels of responsibility: from the individual needing to be vaccinated, all the way through to governments in the North, including my own, and ensuring that people in the global South have access to vaccines in order to be able to stop the spread of the current wave.

Our common home

Ambassador Trott said he was not surprised to hear the Popes appeal to do more to stop climate change and to move things forward after the COP26 meeting in Glasgow.

He noted that the Pope makes his appeals even more powerful by referring to people and places that we can all relate to, like the suffering of the people in the Philippines recently struck by a devastating hurricane, and by referring explicitly to the loss of islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Ambassador Trott said that particular reference to nations in the Pacific, made vulnerable by the negative effects of climate change, which endanger the lives of their inhabitants, most of whom are dependent on agriculture, fishing and natural resources, was particularly meaningful to him as, during his tenure in the South Pacific, he visited the Solomon islands  where some lands have already disappeared below sea level - and he witnessed, first-hand, the sorrow and disorientation of people whose home is no more: All that is left is a number of house posts sticking up from where the island had been.

Dialogue and multilateralism

Ambassador Trott expressed appreciation for the Popes focus on the importance of dialogue and on the importance of the multilateral Fora that we have in existence, and on his invitation to not squander the opportunities that these different Fora offer us."

He reminded us that solving problems through dialogue is so much more effective, in the long run, than a standoff on a frontier (and he talked about a frontier that I think was Belarus/Poland) and the fact that migrants are being used as pawns in a battle. He talked about tension, and I think he was referring for example to the tension between Russia and Ukraine; and he talked about the importance of not resorting to further conflict, but sitting down and resolving your differences through discussion, the Ambassador said.

He also talked about two countries that mean a lot to Chris Trott: Sudan and South Sudan and the ongoing conflicts that we are seeing there.

I think that was particularly relevant given what's happened over the last fortnight in Sudan, but we can't afford to forget that there are conflicts, like in South Sudan, that might be on the back burner, but are at risk of blowing up again in our faces unless we redouble our efforts as an international community to try and resolve them, he said.

The other situation mentioned by Pope Francis that the Ambassador resonated profoundly with, is the situation in Myanmar: my first job in the Foreign Office was in Burma, Myanmar, 30 years ago," he recalled noting that "the conflict between the army and the Burmese people existed then and it exists now: there must be a better way forward for the people of that country.

You really felt he feels for the victims in these situations, he said, and his appeal is for us not to forget that ordinary people are victims.

Reflecting on the global reach of the Popes remarks and on his call to act together, the Ambassador highlighted the fact that although many of the issues mentioned appear to affect primarily single countries and their people, they need regional solutions and the region needs the support of the international community of the globe to try and encourage, cajole, the finding of a viable solution that doesn't involve one side winning and one side losing, because that never is a durable answer.

Ambassador Chris Trott presents his credentials to Pope Francis in September 2021

The role of diplomacy

Ambassador Trott concluded with a reflection on the role of diplomatic dialogue in the context of our daily work, which is a sort of a private dialogue between States, but he explained, is also about public dialogue: It's about me talking to you today; it's about what I say on Twitter; it's about what my government puts out in terms of statements on the situation, for example, on the border of Ukraine and Russia right now, and the tension that's being encouraged there, which means we have a duty or responsibility to try and help build this common understanding and then to sit down and try and resolve problems together.

Its a huge privilege to be able to represent Her Majesty in the context of this engagement with the Holy See and to recognise the power of the Holy See, the global voice and the global impact of Pope Francis and the things that he says and the things that he does, the Ambassador said, revealing that the discourse on Monday was a reminder of why he wanted to do this job in the first place: Its because I want to engage on global issues with the Holy Father, with the team around him, with the Secretary of State, with Archbishop Gallaghers team in the Foreign Ministry equivalent, to see if we can find common solutions to what are common problems.

Its about committing to work for a whole range of things from the pandemic to peace in South Sudan, to progress in tackling climate change, and issues pertinent to migration, and in the words of the Pope, of seeing the eyes of people that speak of the effort of their journey, their fear of an uncertain future, their sorrow for the loved ones they left behind and their nostalgia for the homeland they were forced to depart: all these things deserve to be treated with a great sense of urgency.
Vietnam has emerged as one of the leaders in wind capacity and renewable energy adoption among ASEAN countries.

Investors should be aware of the significant potential for renewable energy, especially wind capacity in Vietnam due to its geographic features and natural resources.

Following Vietnams net-zero pledge at COP26, Vietnam Briefing examines why wind energy has the potential to become the primary renewable energy source.

Following Vietnams recent net-zero pledge by 2050 at the Conference of the Parties (COP26), to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC), Vietnam has been making significant progress in renewable energy adoption, particularly in wind energy.

With rich wind resources and accelerating power demand, the country is expected to lead the green transition in Southeast Asia, marking its presence as a key player in solar and wind power uptake.

In recent years, Vietnam has been capitalizing on the potential of a diversified energy mix, exploiting renewable sources including biomass, solar and wind power, and hydroelectricity.

Vietnam has the most ambitious wind power development plan in ASEAN, with a target of 11,800 megawatts (MW) of wind power capacity by 2025. This is about four times that of Thailand (3000 MW) by 2036 and five times that of the Philippines (2378 MW) by 2030, respectively.

At the start of 2021, the government released a draft of the eighth national power development plan (PDP 8) for 2021, with a vision to 2045. This plan outlines the countrys targets for renewable energy to become the primary source, with an upper limit of 18.6 gigawatts (GW) of solar and 18.0 GW of wind by 2030, with respect to no new coal plants planned for the next years.

Wind power capacity

Vietnam has a favorable natural potential for wind capacity with a long coastline of 3,000 km and winds that blow from 5.5 to 7.3 meters per second. By the end of 2020, Vietnams installed wind power capacity reached 600 MW, behind only Thailand among ASEAN countries.

The countrys offshore wind potential generated from the wind at sea is much larger than onshore wind. According to the World Bank Offshore Wind Roadmap for Vietnam, Vietnam can witness an increase in offshore wind power capacity to 5  19 GW from 1 GW and in onshore wind power capacity to 17.34 GW from 1.26 GW by 2030. This will likely generate around US$60 billion in gross value added (GVA) for the country.

From a provincial perspective, wind development has witnessed the most growth in 15 provinces located along Vietnams coastline. Vietnams coastal provinces in the Mekong Delta region, one of four key economic regions (KERs), are key locations for wind projects.

The region has a coastline and islands with a length of about 700 km and a marine exclusive economic zone of up to 360,000 km2. For example, Soc Trang province holds great potential for wind power development with a long coastline of 72 km and constant strong winds. To date, the government has approved 20 wind power projects to be installed in Soc Trang in 2022 and 2023.

Most recently, Orsted, one of the largest offshore wind farm companies, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to develop several offshore wind projects in Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan provinces.

In 2021, in Ninh Thuan, Vietnams largest wind power plant, spanning 900 hectares with a total capacity of 151.95 MW and total capital investment of US$173.4 million (VND 4 trillion), began operation. This adds to the provinces leading position with 32 solar power projects with a total capacity of 2,257 MW, and three wind power projects with an accumulative capacity of 329 MW.

Favorable feed-in-tariff (FiT)

Vietnams growth in the sector is attributed largely to the governments strong support and implementation of generous feed-in-tariffs (FiTs). Since 2018, the government offers a FiT of US cents 8.5 per kilowatt-hour (KWh) (VND 1.927) for onshore wind projects and US cents 9.8/KWh (VND 2.223) for nearshore ones as per a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA). This was applied to all projects starting before November 2021.

However, due to COVID-19, most onshore wind projects were postponed and struggled to meet the November 2021 deadline. Therefore, the government has proposed extending the FiT deadlines from 2021 to the end of 2023, highlighting its support and commitment to reducing financial risk for wind projects commissioned before the new deadline.

After the FiT rates expire, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) has proposed an auction system from 2023 onwards similar to that for solar power projects. It offers two options: an auction among developers to sell electricity to a local distributor or an auction among investors to start their projects on the acquired land.

However, as there is yet a confirmation from the government on whether tariffs or an auction-based system will be implemented after 2023, the future remains uncertain.

Opportunities in wind power

With growing industrialization and economic modernization, energy demand is predicted to increase by over eight percent per annum during the 2021-2030 period.

In recent years, renewable projects in Vietnam recorded a relatively high FDI attraction and private-sector investment, implicating their financial viability. The next investment wave is predicted to include significantly larger projects, especially offshore wind projects. These tend to provide more generation capacity than solar or onshore wind projects.

Also, despite their higher cost and added complexity, offshore wind projects offer an opportunity to add capacity while providing more relief to the power grid than other renewables.

In addition, the government does not put foreign ownership restrictions on renewable energy projects while tax exemptions are in place for wind developers within the first four years of operation. Additionally, a tax reduction of 50 percent will be implemented for the next 10 years of operation.

Inadequate regulations, complex technology, costs add to challenges

However, Vietnamese wind power investors have received little support from the government. According to state-owned Electricity of Vietnam Group (EVN), from October 2021, only five more wind power plants with a total capacity of 170MW were recognized for commercial operation by the commercial operation date (COD).

Further, Vietnam does not have adequate regulations to develop large offshore infrastructure projects such as offshore wind farms. This derives from a restricted legal framework on the use of offshore sea areas under the 2012 Law on Sea of Vietnam and Decree 11/2021/ND-CP which is inadequate.

These laws require investors to pay US$125/ha/year to US$300 which would result in significant costs in developing a wind farm. Offshore oil and gas development on the contrary are exempt from such payments.

Wind projects, compared to other renewable projects, are more complex and financially demanding. The operation and maintenance (O&M) agreements for an offshore wind farm is a complex process that requires different levels of skills and long-term commitments from the wind farm operator.

O&M costs of offshore wind farms are significantly higher than onshore. These cover a range of relevant services to ensure asset integrity of components such as offshore wind turbines, foundations, and the offshore and onshore transmission system. Thus adequate expertise and know-how along with a necessary supporting industry is pertinent to developing not just offshore wind farms but renewable energy in general.

Moving forward

Nevertheless, Vietnam has made increasing progress in building renewable-energy capacity recently. With a supportive investment environment and various government incentives and policies, the sector will likely continue to entail larger, more capital-intensive, and more technically complex projects in solar, onshore, and offshore wind.

The government needs to adopt a price plan so that investors would be aware of expected price hikes in the future. In addition, if Vietnam can introduce bankable power purchase agreements (PPAs), it could lead to an increase in international financing, which would help the country to meet its renewable energy goals.

As wind projects require large scale, are emissions-free, and have significant potential to attract FDI, they have the potential to fit into regional power plans. In preparation for its net-zero commitment by 2050, Vietnam should also consider more innovative technical solutions to complement wind storage at low investment cost and with great flexibility at multiple timescales.
China is now allowing couples to have up to three children, but skepticism remains after the 2016 two-child policy failed to produce the desired upsurge in births prompting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to urge party members to set an example.

The new regulation was implemented in August 2021 and, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency, the new regulations will come with supportive measures, which would be conducive to improving our countrys population structure, fulfilling the countrys strategy of actively coping with an aging population and maintaining the advantage, the endowment of human resources.

The new law provides several measures to stimulate childbirths, such as spurring local governments to grant parental leave to married couples who give birth to children in compliance with laws and regulations, among other social welfare benefits.

Lukewarm responses

Xinhua, the Peoples Daily, and state broadcaster CCTV have all posted cheerful cartoon images of children on their social media announcing that the new policy had arrived.

The topic has already created a stir on popular Chinese social media, Sina Weibo with most comments being either lukewarm or outright cold, while other comments have been hostile garnering tens of thousands of views and hundreds of thousands of replies.

There are too many big pressures in life at the moment, one user said, Young people are not willing to have kids.

Yi Fuxian, a U.S.-based demographer and long-time advocate of abolishing Chinas one-child policy, said:

The 2019 Year of Pig stamp features 3 little pigs, heralding Three-child policy in China. The 2021 Year of Tiger stamps feature 2 baby tigers, as Chinas two-child and three-child policies have gone bankrupt. it [is] impossible for mainstream families to afford 2 children.

The 2019 Year of Pig stamp features 3 little pigs, heralding Three-child policy in China. The 2021 Year of Tiger stamps feature 2 baby tigers, as China's two-child and three-child policies have gone bankrupt. it impossible for mainstream families to afford 2 children. pic.twitter.com/bZMyGtPEzR  YI Fuxian (@fuxianyi) January 5, 2022

In a December editorial, the party-affiliated China Reports Network urged Communist Party members to get married and have three children, stating there is no excuse for them to have only one or two children.

Insufficient incentives

However, the encouragement stirred little excitement among the majority of Party members. They can try to force us all they want, but theres nothing we can do without better financial assistance, a father of one in his mid-30s commented.

China already dropped its one-child policy in 2016, swapping it for a two-child variation. However, a small initial uptick in the birth rate did not prevent it from plummeting over the past few years.

Yue Su, a principal economist from The Economist Intelligence Unit, told The BBC: While the second-child policy had a positive impact on the birth rate, it proved short-term in nature.

In 2020, some 12 million babies were born in China, a decline of 18 percent from the previous year. By 2021, the number continued on the same trend, with many forecasting it would fall below the all-time low of 11.97 million births tallied in 1961.

Most couples simply cannot afford more than one child, let alone three, and the provided incentives often do not go beyond extending maternity leave a few months and simply do not make up for the extra costs.

READ MORE:

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Marriage License Applications Fall to 13-Year Low in China

In order to lift birth numbers, its important to provide cash incentives for a third child, Beijing University professor Liu Qiao said in a December speech according to Nikkei.

On top of that, If relaxing the birth policy was effective, the current two-child policy should have proven to be effective too, Hao Zhou, a senior economist at Commerzbank, said according to Reuters.

But who wants to have three kids? Hao added. Young people could have two kids at most. The fundamental issue is living costs are too high and life pressures are too huge.

The countrys continual adaptation of its family planning policies may also be a way for the party to admit that government intervention in family planning simply does not work and is also an offense against sexual and reproductive rights.
After the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense revealed that the Mi 10T 5G smartphone sold by Chinese company Xiaomi in Europe 2021 could censor approximately 450 words and phrases, the Taiwan National Communications Commission of Taiwan (NCC) has commissioned Telecom Technology Center (TTC) to test the same Xiaomi mobile phone sold in Taiwan.

More than 2,000 censored words and phrases

According to the NCC, investigations revealed that seven application software were installed within the Xiaomi phone. The censorship features are suspected of blocking Internet access or relating browsing data back to Mainland China.

It also contained more than 2,000 censors for words in simplified and traditional Chinese, as well as English terms with relation to topics of government, religion, political organization, social movement, and names of political figures.

The censored words included: Free Tibet, Taiwan Independence, American Institute in Taiwan, Hong Kong Independent Media, June 4th Incident, Jinping, Hu Jintao, Tsai Ing-wen, Lee Teng-hui, Bahamut, PTT Gossip Edition, Freedom Times, Chinese KMT , Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), People First Party etc.



In theory, mobile phones from various countries should have the option of turning off this feature according to the users privacy-related information, but this Xiaomi model does not provide this option.

In fact, it was revealed that the censors could be activated remotely at any time, raising concerns that users private information could be sent to the Chinese government.

Moreover, Chinese citizens and companies have to follow the provisions of Article 14 of Chinas National Intelligence Law. The provisions state that users have the obligation to support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence work.

The NCC sent inquiries to Xiaomis headquarters in Taiwan as soon as the findings were released in September last year.

Xiaomi replied in an email that the Xiaomi 10T 5G mobile phones sold in Taiwan are different from the European Xiaomi 10T 5G (international version.) The statement added that Xiaomi smartphones in Taiwan will not censor users browsing access. However, upon further investigation, this was found to not be the case.

Executive Yuan, R.O.C. (Taiwan) reiterated in a letter on Dec. 18, 2120, that the public agencies equipment must not originate from Chinese brands, and this applies to official mobile phones. However, Executive Yuan did not regulate ordinary users mobile phones. With this NCC investigation, NCC raises the publics awareness of their personal information and privacy protection.

To counteract the censors, one suggested method is to check whether there is a message that informs the user whether data collection is active and to see if there is a function to turn the App off.

For example, the Chrome App for iPhone has a website tracking data collection, returning related notification messages, and provides an option to turn the function off. The user can also choose to turn off the function in advance.

Will Xiaomi phones be sold in the U.S.?

Users like JohnnyH believe Xiaomis low price point is attractive to consumers, compared with Apple and Samsungs more expensive products. Xiaomis Redmi 10 model retails for $225ish and is affordable to most people, JohnnyH said.

When discussing whether Xiaomi phones could be sold in North America with carrier adaptations, one user in the U.S. going by the name of Syaoran said in April,  It probably wont happen.

The most important reason being that Chinese companies do not respect or follow the US and International patent laws, preventing them from ever selling their devices officially in North America.
Northwest China's Xi'an is battling the resurgence of COVID-19.

Medical staff, community workers and volunteers spare no effort to keep residents' life going despite citywide lockdown.

Medical workers are carrying out mass nucleic acid testing round the clock. The city has carried out rounds of mass testing of all residents.

People line up for nucleic acid test at a mobile testing site in Xincheng District of Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Jan. 2, 2022. (Xinhua/Tao Ming)

A kid receives nucleic acid test at a testing site in Xincheng District of Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Jan. 4, 2022.(Xinhua/Tao Ming)

A volunteer helps a senior take nucleic acid test at a residential area in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Dec. 31, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

Essential medical services are ensured while hospitals adopt strict epidemic prevention and control measures to prevent cross-infection.

Patients can go to hospital with negative nucleic acid test result. Others are shuttled in government bus to designated sites. Hotlines are set up for easier access to medical services from home.

A medical worker examines a patient at the 1st Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Dec. 27, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Yibo)

Medical staff give an infusion to a patient at the 1st Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Dec. 27, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Yibo)

A medical worker checks on a patient transported by an ambulance at the 1st Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Dec. 27, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Yibo)

Community workers and volunteers play a key role in keeping the city alive amid strict lockdown measures. With shops closed, they send food, groceries and medicine to people staying at home. They also help organize nucleic acid testing and vaccination.

A volunteer informs residents to take nucleic acid test at a community in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Dec. 29, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

A volunteer arranges packed vegetables in Yanta District of Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Jan. 5, 2022.(Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

Delivery riders escort medical staff to a nucleic acid sampling site in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Dec. 30, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Yibo)

The city has taken every measure to prevent the pandemic from disrupting young peoples future. It adopted stringent and considerate measures to ensure smooth postgrad exams, such as offering masks and hand sanitizers, and organizing taxis and cars through ride-hailing platforms to provide rides for examinees.

Examinees leave a venue of the postgraduate entrance exam at Xi'an University of Technology in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Dec. 26, 2021. (Xinhua/Tao Ming)

A staff member checks the nucleic acid test result of an examinee (1st L) for postgraduate entrance exams in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Dec. 25, 2021. (Xinhua/Tao Ming)

An invigilator checks the information of an examinee taking the national postgraduate entrance examination at a quarantine exam room in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Dec. 25, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Xiao)

As the capital city of Shaanxi Province, Xian has abundant medical and production supplies to meet the needs of its residents.

Volunteers unload anti-epidemic supplies from a van in Yanta District of Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Jan. 6, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

Staff examine epidemic prevention supplies at a pharmaceutical company in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Dec. 28, 2021. (Xinhua/Shao Rui)

Thanks to the sacrifice and cooperation of residents in Xian, the threat of a major resurgence in Xi'an has been mostly brought under control. Daily cases in Xi'an began to drop since the start of this year and soon slipped to two-digit numbers, with 30 new cases, all in centralized quarantine, reported on Saturday.
The president of Sri Lanka has asked Beijing to restructure its debt repayments as part of efforts to help the South Asian country navigate a worsening financial crisis.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa made the request during a meeting with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi on Jan. 9. The meeting comes at a time when international ratings agencies have hinted at the possibility of Sri Lanka defaulting on its debt.

The islands tourism-dependent economy has been hammered by the pandemic and its depleted foreign exchange reserves have led to food rationing at supermarkets and shortages of essential supplies. Critics also say rampant corruption within its government has contributed to large amounts of capital being used for unnecessary schemes with low returns.

Sri Lanka is facing one of its worst economic crises to date. It has to repay $4.5 billion in foreign debt this year starting with a $500 million international sovereign bond due on Jan. 18 and an additional $1 billion in July.

The countrys central bank has repeatedly assured investors that all of its debt repayments will be met and said funds for this months bond repayment have already been allocated.

China is Sri Lankas largest bilateral lender

In the last decade, Beijing has lent Sri Lanka over $5 billion for projects aimed at improving the countrys infrastructure  including roads, an airport and ports. After being unable to repay a $1.4 billion loan for the construction of one of these ports in 2017, the Sri Lankan government was forced to lease the facility to a Chinese enterprise for 99 years.

The president pointed out that it would be a great relief to the country if attention could be paid on restructuring the debt repayments as a solution to the economic crisis that has arisen in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, Rajapaksas office said in a statement released on Jan. 9.

The statement also added that China was asked to provide concessional terms for its exports to Sri Lanka, which amounted to approximately $3.5 billion last year, without providing further details.

Sri Lankas foreign reserves dropped to just $1.5 billion at the end of November  enough to pay for only about a months worth of imports. Furthermore, the islands main energy provider began rationing electricity on Jan. 7 after running out of foreign currency to import oil in order to operate its thermal generators.

As of April 2021, China accounted for about 10 percent of Sri Lankas $35 billion foreign debt, according to government data. However, financial experts say Chinas total lending could be much higher when taking into account loans given to state-owned enterprises and the countrys central bank.

Technically we can claim we are bankrupt now

Before the pandemic, China was one of Sri Lankas main sources of tourism and imported goods. Tourism accounts for over 12 percent of the countrys overall GDP and has struggled to regain balance in this sector since the pandemic began in 2020.

During Sundays meeting with Wang, Rajapaksa offered to allow Chinese tourists to return to Sri Lanka provided they adhere to strict COVID-19 regulations.

Technically we can claim we are bankrupt now, Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, principal researcher at the Point Pedro Institute of Development said. When your net external foreign assets have been in the red, that means you are technically bankrupt.

Western concerns

Sri Lanka is a key part of Chinas Belt and Road Initiative, a long-term plan to fund and build infrastructure linking China to the rest of the world. Some experts have pointed out that Chinas control of the Hambantota port, located along vital east-west international shipping routes, could give it a military advantage in the Indian Ocean.



Last month, it was also reported that Chinas Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) Navy has been scoping the Central African country of Equatorial Guinea in hopes of establishing its first permanent military presence on the Atlantic Ocean.

Chinas military base in Africa, if granted permission, would be the PLAs second installation in Africa, after a US$590 million facility it currently operates in Djibouti. That base gives the PLA valuable access to the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal. Approximately 30 percent of the worlds seaborne petroleum and natural gas pass through these vital waterways everyday.

Some countries, including the U.S., have expressed concerns that the project is a debt trap for smaller and poorer nations.



READ MORE:

China Eyeing First Atlantic Military Base in Africa
A recent preprint study examining Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) patient data collected by the Canadian province of Ontario found that takers of a two-dose course of either the Moderna or Pfizer messenger RNA gene therapy injections generated negative vaccine efficacy against Omicron as little as 60 days after receiving the second dose.

The Jan. 1 study, conducted by almost entirely Toronto-area scientists and funded by grants from the Ontario Ministry of Health and the Public Health Agency of Canada, examined provincial SARS-CoV-2 laboratory testing, reportable disease, COVID-19 vaccination, and health administrative databases, among those aged 18+ who underwent a PCR test between Nov. 22 and Dec. 19, 2021.

The methodology used in the study notably excluded residents of long-term care homes, those who had only received one dose of injection or the second dose within 7 days of their test, and those who had accepted the AstraZeneca adenovirus vector double-stranded DNA injection from its cohort.

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All positive tests were considered confirmed COVID-19 cases irrespective of symptoms or severity, while negative tests among those who also tested positive within the previous 90 days were excluded from the control group.

In the 27-day-period the analysis examined, 471,545 negative tests were registered, alongside 9,201 Delta variant and 3,442 Omicron variant positives.

Notably, Omicron positives were younger, had less comorbidities, and were almost entirely double vaccinated individuals compared to the Delta-positive control.

The bulk of Omicron positives were in those aged 18 to 29 at 44.4 percent, followed by 21.6 percent 30 to 39, and 18.5 percent 40 to 49. Cumulatively, 84.5 percent of all positive Omicron cases were aged between 18 and 49.

By contrast, the Delta control registered only 66.6 percent positives in the 18 to 49 category, and only 21.8 percent of all positives were in the 18 to 29 age bracket.

The Delta control also contained patients tagged as possessing any comorbidity at 43.3 percent, compared to only 35.3 percent for Omicron.

Researchers also found that not only did 90.1 percent of Omicron positives occur in double-vaccinated individuals, only 5.1 percent, or 176 cases in total, occurred in unvaccinated individuals.

Data from an Ontario Ministry of Health and Public Health Agency of Canada funded study showing both Omicron and Delta infections occurred primarily in the vaccinated at a ratio of almost 20:1 between Nov. 22 and Dec. 19, 2021. (Image: Screenshot)

In comparison to the Delta control, 64.6 percent of all cases occurred in double vaccinated individuals and 33.1 percent in the unvaccinated.

Booster recipients amounted to 2.3 percent of all Delta positives and 4.8 percent of all Omicron positives.

The study notes, however, that Ontario did not make booster injections available to those under 70 until Dec. 13 when it decreased the age to 50. The Province made boosters available to everyone 18+ on Dec. 18.

A majority of double vaccinated individuals tested positive for Omicron between 120 and 179 days after receiving their second dose at 65.6 percent. This measure of waning efficacy is contrasted by only 47.2 percent in the Delta and 60.0 percent in the negative-test controls during the same period.

In using this data to assess vaccine effectiveness (VE), the paper gives the following methodology employed via SAS:

We used multivariable logistic regression to estimate odds ratios comparing the odds of vaccination in each time since latest dose interval among cases with the odds among controls, while adjusting for all listed covariates and a categorical variable for week of test. VE was calculated using the formula VE=(1-OR)x100%. For both Omicron and Delta infections, we estimated VE by vaccine schedule and time since latest dose.

Covariates employed included not only 2019-2021 influenza season vaccination status, but somewhat extraneous factors such as, Neighbourhood-level information on median household income, proportion of the working population employed as non-health essential workers, mean number of persons per dwelling, and proportion of the population who self-identify as a visible minority.

While the calculation showed that VE for two doses of injection against Delta was as high as 84 between 7 and 59 days post injection, waning to 71 after 240 days, the measurement against Omicron was anything but confidence inspiring.

The study found VE against Omicron between 7 and 59 days post double-injection was only 6, falling into the negatives at -13 between 60 and 119 days, -38 between 120 and 179 days, and -42 between 180 and 239 days.

Data from an Ontario Ministry of Health and Public Health Agency of Canada funded study showing the double vaccinated are actually at greater risk of testing positive with Omicron than the unvaccinated. While this figure improved slightly after taking a booster, third doses were only available to those aged 50+ on Dec. 18. The study concluded on Dec. 19. (Image: Screenshot)

Although researchers calculated the VE generated by booster recipients against Omicron as being as high as 34 for Pfizer and 59 for Moderna 7 days after injection, data nonetheless showed that 4.8 percent of all Omicron positives and 2.3 percent of all Delta positives were boosted.

The above is significant since the majority of all infections occurred in age brackets that did not have access to boosters until Dec. 18 in a study that finished collecting data only a day later on Dec. 19.

Roughly 64.5 percent of boosted Omicron positives recorded in the study had received their booster 7 to 59 days prior.

In the Discussion portion of the paper, researchers noted that in circumstances wherein vaccines are not effective against Omicron, vaccine passports may actually be contributing to the spread, The behaviour of individuals who are vaccinated, and the policies that apply to this group, may differ from those who are unvaccinated such that vaccinated status could be associated with an increased risk of exposure, authors stated.

Younger adults may be more likely to frequent such venues and have more social contacts (and Omicron cases in our study were younger). As such, the exposure risk of vaccinated individuals may be higher than unvaccinated individuals since vaccination is a requirement to participate in these social activities.

This may explain the negative VE following 2 doses observed for Omicron during this early study period.
On Jan. 6, Taiwanese armed forces conducted a mock urban street battle that featured troops and armored vehicles as preparation against a potential mainland Chinese invasion of the island. The focus on urban combat is a critical component of Taiwans military preparedness.

Soldiers from two platoons took part in the drill that saw them shooting at each other in a simulated battle while hiding inside homes and behind sandbag barricades. A mock-up town was set up for the exercise.

Taiwanese soldiers operate an indigenously produced CM-32 clouded leopard armored vehicle (L) during a demonstration at an army base in Kaohsiung on January 6, 2022. (SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images)

Any future battle to protect Taiwan will be an urban warfare The Chinese communist troops battle plans will be invading and landing firstly from coastal towns, then the fighting will progress into more populated residential and commercial areas and lastly push into mountainous villages, Kiwi Yang, an instructor at Army Infantry School, told reporters while noting that the majority of Taiwans 23 million people live in cities.

The communist Peoples Republic of China (PRC) claims Taiwan as an integral part of its territory. The island is currently governed as the Republic of China (ROC), which ran all of China until 1949, when it was driven off the mainland by communist armies in the civil war.

ROC forces have recently been forced to contend with the prospect of imminent military conflict, as the communist Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) steps up its aggression near Taiwan.

A day before the urban warfare drills, on Jan. 5, Taiwanese air force jets were involved in a warfare simulation drill.

A database compiled by AFP showed that the PLA sent 970 aircraft into Taiwans air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in 2021, a far higher number when compared to the 380 mainland planes that entered the ADIZ in 2020.

A Taiwanese Air Force staffer guides an US-made F-16V fighter at an air force base in Chiayi, southern Taiwan on January 5, 2022. (Image: SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images)

With the very high frequency of Communist planes entering our ADIZ, pilots from our wing are very experienced and have dealt with almost all types of their aircraft, Major Yen Hsiang-sheng told reporters.

Taiwans drills come after the PLA held a similar mock battle last month. The military exercise featured several dozens of tanks and hundreds of troops tasked with simulating the capture of the island. A team that represented the PLA removed several roadblocks like landmines to capture a mock city in just under three hours.

In addition to bombardment and direct amphibious assault on Taiwan, the island can also expect the PLA to drop paratroopers or special forces in and near Taiwans cities, which would complicate defense efforts and cause chaos among the civilian population.

A Taiwanese soldier throws a smoke bomb during a demonstration at an army base in Kaohsiung on January 6, 2022. (Image: SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images)

Beijing denies the legitimacy of the ROC and claims that Taiwan is a part of a unified Peoples Republic. Taiwans current leadership maintains that the ROC is an independent country, and encourages a non-Chinese identity for Taiwan. PRC leaders, however, have hinted that they would use military force if required to annex the island should it attempt to declare formal independence.

In her New Year speech, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen demanded Beijing cease its military activity near the island.

We must remind the Beijing authorities to not misjudge the situation and to prevent the internal expansion of military adventurism The military is definitely not an option for solving cross-strait disagreements. Military conflicts would impact economic stability [Both Taipei and Beijing must] work hard to take care of peoples livelihoods and calm the hearts of the people, Tsai said.

The PRC responded strongly to Tsais speech, with Zhu Fenglian, spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing, warning that if Taiwan seeks to cross any red line or if the islands separatist forces continue to provoke and coerce, the Chinese regime will take decisive measures.

Seeking Taiwans independence will only bring about a profound catastrophe and throw the island into a deep chasm, Zhu said.

In a recent report, the ROC Defense Ministry had said that the PLA would face immense difficulties if it plans for a full invasion of the island. Such an operation would require rapid capture of Taiwans ports and airports, and not be easy to pull off.

However, the nations military strongly defends ports and airports, and they will not be easy to occupy in a short time. Landing operations will face extremely high risks, the report, released December 2021, said.

The PLA is also limited in how many forces it can realistically land on Taiwan, due to limited capacity and transport options. Aerial and seaborne invasions are notoriously difficult and costly undertakings, as experiences in past conflicts such as World War II have shown.
She was recognized by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees as a political refugee after fleeing to Thailand, yet was still deported to Cambodia in November on criminal charges of incitement to commit a felony or cause social unrest, a charge widely used to silence critics, according to her lawyer, Sam Sokong.

Thavry the mother of a boy and girl, who are now living with her ex-husband, was among dozens of activists and opposition members who fled to Thailand to avoid political prosecution under Hun Sens government amid its crackdown on voices of dissent in Cambodia.

But her time in office was short lived, as the CNRP was dissolved in 2017 and the government immediately stripped the party 5,007 commune councilors of their elected positions. Now that shes jailed in Phnom Penhs Prey Sar prison, after being deported from Thailand in November 2021, Than hopes his sister may finally heed his warning. But he knows she might not.

But Lanh Thavry, now 33, didnt listen to her brother. Instead, she became the chief of Russey Kroak commune in Banteay Meanchey province, along Cambodias western border with Thailand.

It is risky, Than, 35, who works as a driver for a private company, said during a recent interview with VOA Khmer.

BATTAMBANG PROVINCE  Lanh Than never wanted his sister to be involved in politics. He advised her against joining the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party years ago, and then urged her to defect to the ruling party when Prime Minister Hun Sen moved to crush the CNRP.

The move by Thai authorities has been condemned by the U.N. refugee agency and Human Rights Watch, which said it showed a blatant disregard for international principles of human rights and political freedom.

She just listened but she didnt follow

After the Supreme Court ruled to dissolve the opposition party on November 16, 2017, Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia for 36 years, asked all opposition members to defect to secure position at the communes.

Than advised his sister to make the leap to the party she had been struggling against for years.

She just listened but she didnt follow. She said she couldnt betray voters will, he said in a recent interview at his rented room in Battambang City.

Not only she didnt follow me, but also she fled the country, he added.

Than hasnt met with Thavry since she won her commune post in the June 2017 local election. He said he is strangely happy that she is back in Cambodia.

I am happy that she has been jailed here. It is very weird that I say so. But when she is released she will have freedom to live in Cambodia, said Than, a father of two. She doesnt need to be worried all the time that she cant come back to Cambodia, fearing arrests.

Thavry finished high school in Battambang province, and then got married and settled down with her husband in Banteay Meanchey province, where she started her political life as a grassroots activist of CNRP in 2016 and a year later contested the local elections.

When she studied at high school, she was not interested in politics. I dont know why and how she became interested after she got married, Than said.

Thavry called him during those early days of activism and asked what he thought about her involvement with the opposition party.

She told me that she joined politics. I told her that it is your right since you have a husband. I can only prohibit you if you are under my responsibility, he said.

Not long after that, she was placed at the top of the CNRPs candidate list in Russey Kroak commune and then became commune chief when the CNRP won six commune council seats to Cambodian Peoples Partys five  receiving 4,868 votes to CPPs 4,003, according to the data of the National Election Committee.

She told me that she won the commune post. I was not happy at all, he said.

She was still young and had no experience of how to lead a commune, he added. But I told her to work well and respect the elderly people [from the ruling party].

Across the country, the opposition party won close to 500 commune chief positions  short of their expectations but far more than the few dozen seats won by the Sam Rainsy Party and Human Rights Party, combined, in 2012.

The local election was a warning shot for Hun Sen and his ruling party, already reeling from their narrow victory in the 2013 national election, in which the CNRP won 55 seats in the National Assembly and nearly 45 percent of total votes, forcing the CPP into a short-lived power sharing deal.

Around two months after their impressive showing in local elections, opposition leader Kem Sokha was arrested in a midnight raid and whisked away to the Trapaing Plong prison along the Vietnamese border.

Senior CNRP leaders quickly left the country fearing they were next, and lower-level officials quietly slid into Thailand  with many more following them after the dissolution of the party weeks later.

I think it is a charge against her ideas

The last message Than exchanged with his sister was on October 19, 2021, when she asked him to transfer money to be treated in Thailand for her chronic lung disease.

My party always gives me money when I get sick, reads the Facebook message she sent to her brother. But this time I dont want to tell them. [I feel] ashamed.

Although Than never wanted his sister to get caught up in politics, he defended her freedom to express herself, and urged the court to speed up her trial so that the family knows how long she will remain behind bars.

I think she does not commit any treason. I think it is a charge against her ideas. This is a charge against her support for the opposition party, he said.

I think it is very unfair to bring charges of treason against the political supporters or those who dare to express opinion in democratic society, he added.

Thavry was deported back to Cambodia along with CNRP members Voeun Veasna and Voeung Samnang, ostensibly for violating immigration laws though they were quickly jailed for serious criminal charges upon returning to their home country.

Voeung Samnangs wife, Teang Chenda, 34, says she doesnt know much about her husbands political activities with CNRP, adding that her husband lived in Thailand for around four years.

If he doesnt commit anything wrong, I call for his release, said the mother of a 7-year-old daughter, in an interview with VOA Khmer.

Samnang is jailed on charges of alleged plotting and incitement to provoke chaos, according to Chhay Kimkhoeun, spokesman of Cambodias National Police.

Other Cambodian political refugees in Thailand say they are living in fear after the deportations.

Ron Chanthy fled the country in 2019 when he was told that he was wanted by the authorities, and was later sentenced in absentia to one year and a half in prison on charges of incitement and plotting.

We live under pressure now, Chanthy told VOA Khmer. The government is worried about the opposition democratic politicians trying to grab their power. So, they break us.

The Thai embassy in Phnom Penh has not responded to VOA Khmers emails requesting comment on the arrests.

Nowadays, we cant say anything

A number of villagers in Russey Kroak commune, where Thavry was elected as the leader, said that they didnt want to talk about politics or the opposition when approached by VOA Khmer reporters.

VOA Khmer reporters asked about 10 people to be interviewed, but they refused to talk even without giving names.

However, after about 10 people refused to speak with VOA, even without using their names, a rice farmer who was surveying his field agreed to talk.

Marn Torb, 62, said he wanted top politicians to be comprising, which he said will be beneficial for the country and his rice production as well, as it would avoid potential EU sanctions on rice coming from the country.

The rice farmer said he had learned of Thavrys arrest and return to Cambodia through the news.

I am afraid of talking [about politics] since I am concerned about disappearance, he said. When they got along with each other, there was no problem when we said something. Nowadays, we cant say anything. We pretend to completely ignore, he said.

There is no democracy. How can we have since the opposition party was dissolved?

As Torb was giving the interview, a neighbor was listening in. Before driving off, he told reporters You interview him, but dont put my name. I am afraid that when I leave here, you will ask my name since I didn't participate in the interview.

Than says that he is very worried about Thavrys health.

She needs to be treated well and live in a favorable condition. She still uses regular medicines. Otherwise, she coughs with blood, he said.

Than says he will again ask his sister when she is out of jail to end her political life.

I again insist that she stops. This is my public call. I hope my sister will hear this after she gets out of jail, he added.

I dont prohibit her, but as her only brother, I ask her to stop, but if she doesnt stop, it is her affair, he said. But if she denies again, I only have one final word: regret.
Kazakhstans President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said Monday that his country had weathered an attempted coup coordinated by what he called a single center after the most violent unrest since the former Soviet Republic gained independence.

He said, "It became clear that the main goal of recent protests was to undermine the constitutional order and to seize power."

Tokayev spoke at the virtual summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Eurasian intergovernmental military alliance.

The leader of the former Soviet republic had asked Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, for help in quashing the demonstrations. Russia and several other members of the CSTO responded by sending troops.

The Russian leader told the summit, "Of course, we understand the events in Kazakhstan are not the first and far from the last attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of our states from the outside.

In an effort to halt the protests, President Tokayev issued a shoot-to-kill order, enabling security forces to open fire on demonstrators without warning.

Monday was declared a day of mourning for victims of the unrest.

The protests were prompted by a fuel price increase but grew over dissatisfaction with the countrys authoritarian rule.

Kazakh state media reported that 164 people had died in the protests, but on Sunday retracted that number, blaming a technical mistake. The ministry also reported that 26 armed criminals and 16 security officers had died in the violence.

The ministry said Monday that nearly 8,000 people were detained.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday on ABC-TVs This Week program that Kazakhstan has the ability to maintain law and order, to defend the institutions of the state, but to do so in a way that respects the rights of peaceful protesters and also addresses the concerns that theyve raised  economic concerns, some political concerns.

The demonstrations prompted Tokayev to dismiss both his Cabinet and his mentor, former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, as head of the countrys security council. Nazarbayev had led Kazakhstan from its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990 until 2019.

Authorities also announced the arrest of Karim Massimov, former head of the National Security Committee, on suspicion of high treason. Masimov, 56, led the committee, which is responsible for counterintelligence, until Tokayev removed him last week.

Erica Marat, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington, told The New York Times that Tokayev traded his countrys sovereignty to Russia for his own power and the interests of kleptocratic elites.

(Some material in this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse)
U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Monday, expressing his concern about ongoing hostilities in the country and recent airstrikes that killed dozens of civilians in the Tigray region.

The White House said the two leaders "discussed ways to accelerate dialogue toward a negotiated ceasefire" after a year of civil war in the country that has left thousands of people dead and forced more than two million from their homes.

The White House said Biden stressed "the urgency of improving humanitarian access across Ethiopia, and the need to address the human rights concerns of all affected Ethiopians, including concerns about detentions of Ethiopians under the state of emergency."

The Biden administration gave no indication of Abiy's reaction to the U.S. leader's concerns.

The White House, in a statement about the call, said Biden "expressed concern that the ongoing hostilities, including recent air strikes, continue to cause civilian casualties and suffering, and he reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to work alongside the African Union and regional partners to help Ethiopians peacefully resolve the conflict."

"Both leaders underscored the importance of the U.S.-Ethiopia relationship, the potential to strengthen cooperation on a range of issues, and the need for concrete progress to resolve the conflict," the White House said.

Biden made the call as aid agencies ceased operations in a northwest area of Ethiopia's Tigray region, near the border with Eritrea, after an airstrike there late Friday killed 56 civilians displaced by the conflict and wounded 30 others.

"Humanitarian partners suspended activities in the area due the ongoing threats of drone strikes," the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement Sunday.

The Tigray People's Liberation Front, the party that has ruled Tigray for decades, condemned the airstrike.

In statement Saturday, the TPLF accused the Ethiopian government of targeting civilians and also accused Eritrean forces of attacking Tigrayan fighters in northwest Tigray.

Ethiopia's federal authorities did not immediately comment on the accusations or the U.N. announcement on the aid groups' withdrawal.

But, since the outbreak of the war with Tigrayan rebels in November 2020, authorities have denied targeting civilians.
Authorities in Cameroon authorities say at least 25,000 villagers in the northeast who fled communal fighting to neighboring Chad last month have returned. But hundreds were left homeless by the fighting between ranchers and fishers, and more than 75,000 are reluctant to go home.

Cameroons ministry of territorial administration says at least 25,000 civilians who fled intercommunal violence along its northern border to Chad have returned home.

A statement read on Cameroon state radio CRTV on Monday said the civilians are returning because the area is once again peaceful.

The governor of Cameroon's Far North Region, Midjiyawa Bakari, said a December peace mission to convince armed men to drop their weapons was a success.

He spoke to VOA via messaging application from Maroua, the capital of the Far North Region.

Bakari said thousands of civilians who fled to Chad because of the intercommunal violence between Arab Chao and ethnic Mousgoum have been returning to Cameroon each week since December 16. He said the returnees are responding to Cameroon President Paul Biyas appeal for them to return home, seek peace, and develop their communities.

But Bakari said several hundred returnees were left homeless because their houses were torched in the conflict.

Authorities say clashes between ranchers and fishers over water and land erupted along the border on December 7, leaving at least 10 people dead and scores wounded.

The U.N. says the violence between the two communities pushed at least 102,000 civilians to flee to neighboring Chad.

Among the civilians who escaped to Chad is 41-year-old mother of two Anne Djigoue.

She told CRTV she returned from the Chadian capital N'djamena on January 2 when envoys sent by Cameroons government convinced her it was safe.

Djigoue said fighting between Arab Choua ranchers and ethnic Mousgoum fishers has brought agony to both communities. She said a few returnees are privileged to live in tent houses while a majority sleep in the open air. She said all of them need houses, water, and food.

Cameroonian authorities say many of those left homeless were able to stay with relatives or in village mosques or churches.

Mounouna Foutsou is minister of youth affairs and civic education in Mayo Danay on Cameroon's border with Chad.

He said some of the returnees are seeking help.

Foutsou said as community leader in Mayo Danay, he has an obligation to plead with citizens living in Cameroons northern border to help their brothers and sisters returning from Chad. He said people who are not affected by the clashes should share their lodging, food, and water with returning civilians whose houses or farms were torched during the conflict.

Cameroonian authorities say they have rebuilt three markets that were torched in the conflict and are supplying food, seeds, and mattresses to resettle people affected by the clashes.

But community leaders say over 75,000 of the villagers who fled to Chad are still reluctant to return.

The Cameroon Civil Society Organization says it will be difficult to convince many of those who fled to return without the government reconstructing homes and plantations that were destroyed.
A city near Beijing, the site of next months Winter Olympics, has begun a mass COVID testing campaign because of the discovery of at least 40 omicron cases over a two-day period. Officials have initiated restrictions on Tianjins residents in an effort to prevent the spread of the outbreak. Bus and train services between Tianjin and Beijing have been suspended.

The U.K. is set to begin a public service campaign urging pregnant women to get their COVID inoculations, after the Department of Health and Social Care discovered that 96.3% of pregnant women who were admitted to hospitals with COVID symptoms were unvaccinated.

The Cyprus Mail reports that a University of Cyprus scientist and his team have discovered a new COVID variant. Dr. Leontios Kostrikis told the publication that deltacron has the genetic background of the delta variant and some of the mutations of omicron.

The frequency of the mutations was higher among those in hospital which could mean there is a correlation between deltacron and hospitalizations, Kostrikis told The Mail.

Indias health ministry said Monday that it has recorded a daily toll of 179,723 new COVID cases in the previous 24-hour period.

New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has tested positive for COVID. A statement from her office said: She is experiencing symptoms and recovering at home. The Congresswoman received her booster shot this Fall and encourages everyone to get their booster and follow all CDC guidance.

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Monday that it has recorded over 307 million global COVID cases and 5.5 million deaths. The center said 9.4 billion vaccines have been administered.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
Satellite measurements show that 2021 was one of the warmest years on record, with the past seven years being the hottest period recorded globally.

The European Unions Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said Monday that last year was the fifth-warmest year according to records dating back to 1850. It said average global temperatures in 2021 were 1.1 to 1.2 Celsius warmer than in the pre-industrial period from 1850 to 1900.

The hottest years on record were 2020 and 2016, according to the group.

C3S, which tracks global temperatures and other climate indicators, also reported that levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere continued to rise last year, hitting new highs.

The group found that 2021 was Europe's hottest summer on record. It followed an unusually cold April that wiped out fruit crops in some countries, including France and Hungary.

Scientists say higher temperatures can cause the air to absorb more moisture and lead to extreme rainfall. Last year saw flooding in several European countries, including Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Countries that signed the 2015 Paris Agreement have pledged to try to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures. Scientists say that would help the world avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

To reach that goal, the world would need to limit emissions by about half of current levels by 2030, according to scientists. However, the C3S said that emissions tracked higher in 2021, with the level of CO2 in the atmosphere reaching 414.3 parts per million, up 2.4ppm from 2020.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
Officials in Afghanistan said Monday at least nine young students were killed and four wounded when an explosive remnant of war accidentally detonated outside a school in eastern Nangarhar province.



The provincial governors office said in a statement the incident in Lalpur district occurred when an old mortar shell in possession of a corn seller exploded as he tried to remove the dust off it.



Nine children were martyred and four others were injured when an old mortar shell exploded near a corn seller, the statement said. It did not talk about the fate of the vendor, but reports said he was also believed to be among the dead.



International studies have consistently ranked Afghanistan as one of the most landmine- and unexploded ordnance-impacted countries in the world.



Nine members of one family, including four girls and two boys, were reportedly killed last November when an explosive remnant of war went off inside a home in northeastern Kunduz province. Three other children were injured in that incident. One of the children unknowingly had brought the unexploded device into the home after finding it in a nearby field.



The United Nations Childrens Fund, or UNICEF, reported earlier this month that the Afghan conflict had killed more than 28,500 children since 2005, accounting for 27% of all verified child casualties globally.



The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last August and the withdrawal of remaining United States-led foreign troops later that month have effectively ended the war in the country. But aid workers say unexploded ordnance from the conflict and landmines from previous wars continue to kill, injure and maim Afghan civilians.

U.N. and other global aid groups say years of war, natural calamities and extreme poverty have left around 24 million Afghans without enough food this year, with more than 3.2 million children under 5 facing acute malnutrition.
SHENZHEN, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- A pregnant woman in South China's Shenzhen asked for urgent help through the Internet and got timely assistance from the local government on Saturday.

With four locally transmitted COVID-19 cases reported in Shenzhen as of Sunday, epidemic prevention and control measures have been carried out in parts of the city. For hospitalization, a negative nucleic acid test certificate is necessary.

A 28-year-old pregnant woman felt unwell and went to the emergency clinic on Friday. She was told that she needed to be hospitalized on Saturday, so the woman had a nucleic acid test at 9 p.m. that Friday night.

However, the test result was still not available by 11 a.m. Saturday. The woman was not feeling well and needed to be hospitalized as soon as possible. Her husband, with the surname of He, decided to leave a message for help under the Shenzhen Municipal Health Commission's official Wechat account.

"When will the nucleic acid result come out? It has been 12 hours. My wife needs the result to get hospitalized," the message said.

The message was read by Wang Ling, head of the publicity and education department of the municipal health commission.

"Give me your phone number," Wang replied, six minutes after the husband called for help.

After getting in touch with He, Wang contacted Shenzhen Longhua District Hospital immediately, where the pregnant woman had the nucleic acid test. But the result was not found in the hospital's data system.

It turned out that the sample had been sent to a third-party test facility, which replied that the nucleic acid test result of the wife had not been approved due to the lack of manpower but they were going to do it immediately.

At 12:28 p.m. Saturday, the result came out. The woman's condition stabilized quickly after hospitalization, according to the husband. He said he didn't expect to get help from the government so soon. The whole thing was settled in just over an hour.

The local government's prompt response to the issue has been praised by netizens. 
"The bullets were flying thick and fast," said Wilmann Vil, the sole survivor of a recent gang attack that killed two fellow Haitian journalists just outside Port-au-Prince.

Vil himself has gone into hiding, fearful that the criminal gang, one of several terrorizing Haiti's capital city, might find him.

In that fateful encounter Thursday, Vil and two colleagues -- Wilguens Louissaint and Amady John Wesley -- were walking through a dried-up river bed in the foothills overlooking Port-au-Prince while working on a story.

As they walked, members of a gang seeking to dominate the area and control a strategic passage to the country's south, suddenly opened fire.

"The bullets were flying, pouring down on us," Vil told AFP in a phone interview Saturday.

The 31-year-old reporter managed to take cover behind nearby trees and, after scrambling up the rocky hillside, was taken in by friendly farmworkers.

In the chaos of the moment, he had lost track of his colleagues.

"I took my phone to call Amady," with whom he had worked for years, Vil said.

"I asked him where he was and he replied, 'These guys captured me, I'm with them," said Vil, who works for online media outlet RL Production.

Vil then heard his colleague begging gang members to spare him and Louissaint.

"Amady kept telling them, 'We're not bandits, we're journalists. We were here reporting,'" Vil recalled.

He said he put his phone on speaker so the farmworkers sheltering him could listen in.

All they heard was a burst of gunfire.

Vil now knew he was the lone survivor -- and needed to get out fast.

Neighbors gave him clothes so he could disguise himself and led him to a small house to hide.

On the way, he said, "I saw armed guys already on the rooftops who were looking for me."

Knowing the risk they ran by protecting him, the farmworkers found a motorcycle-taxi to take him, along with a local official, out of the gang-controlled zone.

Though he had escaped the immediate threat, Vil said his previously tranquil life has been shattered.

His 4-year-old daughter is afraid and "doesn't sleep," Vil sighed. He and his family have been staying with friends, fearful the gang may have spies in the neighborhood.

Vil knows how the gangs operate, having met them on several occasions while reporting.

"These guys are all-powerful," he said. "I've seen how they work in the ghettos."

"They have so many weapons, and people working for them who you would never have suspected, Vil said.

He reported his colleagues' deaths to the police but has little hope the killers will be brought to account.

"They know who these guys are... they even have their phone numbers," Vil said.

But he questions the ability of the police to dislodge gangs from areas they control, noting they are "better armed than the police."

He also blames certain powerful people -- whom he would not name -- for Haiti's plunge into chaos.

"I'm not defending the bandits -- they're guilty," he said. "But the politicians and private sector in Haiti are also guilty, because these guys in the ghettos don't have the money you would need to buy the kind of weaponry I've seen."

Now he speaks in resigned tones of taking his family abroad.

"The country," he says, "is really finished because of the crime."
In a medical first, doctors transplanted a pig heart into a patient in a last-ditch effort to save his life. A Maryland hospital said Monday that the patient is doing well three days after the highly experimental surgery.

While it's too soon to know if the operation will work, it marks a step in the decadeslong quest to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants. Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center say the transplant showed that a heart from a genetically modified animal can function in the human body without immediate rejection.

The patient, David Bennett, 57, knew there was no guarantee the experiment would work.

"It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it's a shot in the dark, but it's my last choice," Bennett said a day before the surgery, according to a statement provided by the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

There's a huge shortage of human organs donated for transplant, driving scientists to try to figure out how to use animal organs instead. Last year, there were just over 3,800 heart transplants in the U.S., a record number, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), which oversees the nation's transplant system.

"If this works, there will be an endless supply of these organs for patients who are suffering," said Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, scientific director of the university's animal-to-human transplant program.

But prior attempts at such transplants  or xenotransplantation  have failed, largely because patients' bodies rapidly rejected the animal organ. Notably, in 1984, Baby Fae, a dying infant, lived 21 days with a baboon heart.

The difference this time: The Maryland surgeons used a heart from a pig that had undergone gene editing to remove a sugar in its cells that's responsible for that hyper-fast organ rejection.

"I think you can characterize it as a watershed event," Dr. David Klassen, UNOS chief medical officer, said of the Maryland transplant.

Still, Klassen cautioned that it's only a first tentative step into exploring whether this time around, xenotransplantation might work.

The Food and Drug Administration, which oversees xenotransplantation experiments, allowed the surgery under what's called a "compassionate use" emergency authorization, available when a patient with a life-threatening condition has no other options.

In September, researchers in New York performed an experiment suggesting these kinds of pigs might offer promise for animal-to-human transplants. Doctors temporarily attached a pig's kidney to a deceased human body and watched it begin to work.

The Maryland transplant takes that experiment to the next level, said Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the experiment at NYU Langone Health.

"This is a truly remarkable breakthrough," he said in a statement. "As a heart transplant recipient myself with a genetic heart disorder, I am thrilled by this news and the hope it gives to my family and other patients who will eventually be saved by this breakthrough."

It will be crucial to share the data gathered from this transplant before opening the option to more patients, said Karen Maschke, a research scholar at the Hastings Center who is helping develop ethics and policy recommendations for the first clinical trials under a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

"Rushing into animal-to-human transplants without this information would not be advisable," Maschke said.

The surgery Friday took seven hours at the Baltimore hospital.

Bennett was dying, ineligible for a human heart transplant and had no other option, his son told The Associated Press.

"He realizes the magnitude of what was done, and he really realizes the importance of it," David Bennett Jr. said of his father. "He could not live, or he could last a day, or he could last a couple of days. I mean, we're in the unknown at this point."


Somali leaders have agreed to conclude the long-delayed parliamentary and presidential elections by February 25. Somalia's international partners on Monday welcomed the deal but a political stand-off between the president and prime minister has some Somalis still skeptical.

According to Mohamed Ibrahim Moalimu, the spokesman of the prime minister, all involved in the electoral process should respect the rules in order to move forward.

He said in order to safeguard the close coordination of the electoral body, the national consultative council calls upon various levels of the poll management agency to respect the rules and regulations as per the existing electoral agreements. He added the council reiterates respect for the 30 percent quota of seats to be held for women in the ongoing process.

The indirect polls were supposed to be held more than a year ago, but were delayed by disputes over how they would be conducted. More recently, President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble have been at odds over election procedures, heightening the political tensions.

Residents of the capital Mogadishu who witnessed tensions linked to the electoral impasse have welcomed the deal.

Liban Mohamed said the new agreement reached is great because it brings together both Somali leadership and the people and we pray for its successive implementation.

However, many analysts are skeptical about the deal, especially the timeline.

Omar Abdulle is a political analyst and lecturer of political science and international relations at SIMAD university in Mogadishu.

He said the deal is generally welcomed but it will face three main challenges including the timeline set to conclude the parliamentary polls with 45 days. Secondly, the dispute resolution committee where the difference between president and prime minister started; and thirdly the agreement does not make it clear who will select the tribal leaders, which will result in conflict later.

The U.N. office in Somalia has urged Somali leaders to avoid provocations that risk new tensions or conflict and stay focused on delivering a credible electoral process quickly for the benefit of all.
Afghanistans Taliban confirmed Monday their senior delegates met in neighboring Iran with self-exiled key Afghan opposition leaders to urge them to end resistance to the Islamist groups nascent rule and assure them of security if they return home.

Taliban Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi led his team in the meeting with Ahmad Massoud, who heads what is known as the National Resistance Front (NRF), and Ismail Khan, a former Afghan minister and provincial governor.

Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi, while sharing details of the first known direct interaction between the rival sides in Tehran, said that Muttaqi renewed Taliban assurances that it is striving to ensure a secure future for all Afghans to leave no reason for any resistance.

Muttaqi himself confirmed the meeting in video remarks Taliban officials later released at the conclusion of his two-day bilateral meetings with Iranian officials.

Yes, we met with Commander Ismail Khan and Ahmad Massoud in Iran, as well as other Afghans there, Muttaqi said.

We assured all of them that they can come back to live freely and safely in Afghanistan. We (the Taliban) dont intend to cause any security or other problems for anyone, the chief Taliban diplomat asserted.

Neither Massoud nor Khan, both ethnic Tajiks, could immediately be reached for comment. The Taliban are largely ethnic Pashtuns, the majority group in Afghanistan.

The Taliban are under pressure from neighboring countries and the global community at large to promote national political reconciliation and form an inclusive government that respects human rights of all Afghans before the world considers granting legitimacy to the rule in Kabul.

The Islamist group seized power in Afghanistan from the Western-backed government in mid-August after the remaining U.S.-led foreign troops withdrew from the country after almost 20 years. The NRF opposed the power shift and violent clashes have since taken place between the two sides in and around the resistances stronghold of Panjshir, north of Kabul.

Analyst Torek Farhadi, a former Afghan official, welcomed the Iran-hosted talks. We need Afghanistan's internal tensions to be solved through talks, he said.

The second and most important part will be for (the) Taliban to open the door for political participation to non-Taliban (groups) at decision-making levels. That will ensure long-term stability in Afghanistan, Farhadi added.

Some analysts remain skeptical about Taliban security assurances, citing an increasing crackdown on the rights of Afghan women and government critics as well as reports of revenge killings of former officials despite a blanket amnesty the group announced after taking control of the country.

I dont think they (opponents) will trust any Taliban guarantees. The Taliban have a long history of saying one thing and doing another, Jonathan Schroden, who directs the Countering Threats and Challenges Program at the U.S.-based non-profit CNA Corporation, told VOA.

Their actions since taking control of the governmentincluding targeting former members of the ANDSF (acronym for ex-Afghan government forces) in the face of their announced general amnesty and now detaining prominent critics of the regimeare further evidence against a conclusion that they should be trusted, Schroden said.

U.S. officials confirmed in November that the NRF had registered with the Department of Justice to carry out political lobbying in the United States. A State Department spokesperson at the time, however, explained the decision was made by the registrant. The spokesperson said it did not require any further action or approval by the Justice Department or any other U.S. government entity.

The Taliban reject criticism of their policies and maintain that their government represents all Afghans. Taliban leaders have also repeatedly ruled out the possibility of including in the Cabinet any Afghan political figures who had served in U.S.-installed governments over the past 20 years.

No country has recognized the new Kabul government. The Islamist groups return to power led the United States and other Western nations to immediately suspend most non-humanitarian funding for the aid-dependent country and freeze around $9.5 billion worth of Afghan foreign cash reserves.

The punitive measures and long-running international sanctions on Taliban leaders have brought the national economy to the brink of collapse, worsening the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan stemming from years of wars, natural disasters and poverty.

Foreign governments have since been scrambling to work out how to engage the Taliban to scale up humanitarian aid and help in preventing an economic meltdown in the country while avoiding formally recognizing the new government.

Irans Foreign Ministry said Monday the Taliban visit over the weekend did not constitute Irans official recognition of the new Kabul government.

Iranian media, however, quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian as criticizing Washington over the frozen cash reserves and demanding they be released to help in improving economic and humanitarian conditions in Afghanistan.
Mali's military government on Monday responded to West African sanctions by closing its borders and withdrawing ambassadors from nations imposing the penalties. Regional bloc ECOWAS imposed the new sanctions Sunday, after Malis military leaders postponed promised February elections.

In a communique following a summit in Ghana Sunday, leaders of the 15 ECOWAS countries effectively severed economic and diplomatic ties with Mali.

The countries said they are withdrawing all ambassadors and closing land and air transit points with landlocked Mali because they said the militarys proposed five-year transition plan is unacceptable.

International relations and security expert Adam Bonaa has lauded ECOWAS for taking strong action to enforce its charter.

The military, I keep saying, have no business in governance. If you want to govern, resign from being a military leader, put yourself up to be elected, campaign, spend resources and tell the people what you want to do. If they vote you into power, so be it, and if they dont want you, keep trying. Lets not allow this type of impunity to fester on or come back again, he said.

Bonaa also called on France to respect the authority of ECOWAS and stay away from possibly interfering in Malian affairs.

France has not taken its hands off Francophone West Africa. And for me this is something we should be looking out for, hoping that France would not interfere and make it look like ECOWAS cannot do anything. If they stay away from this, I dont see how long the military leaders in Mali will survive from these particular sanctions, Bonaa said.

In an address on Malian state television, Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, a spokesman for the military authorities condemned the ECOWAS sanctions as illegal and illegitimate." He said the military government will also retaliate by recalling ambassadors accredited to ECOWAS member states.

"ECOWAS has ulterior motives. The junta deplores the inhumane nature of these measures which affect populations already severely affected by the security crisis and the health crisis. The government wishes to reassure the nation that arrangements have been made to ensure the normal supply of goods and services, Maiga said.

Innocent Badasu, an expert on regional issues, believes ECOWAS approach is not the best. Instead, he said, the bloc should aim at winning the goodwill of the people of Mali and the trust of the coup leaders in order to restore constitutional rule.

There must be an honest dialogue to win the trust of the Malian military leaders. Trust that will allow them to begin to think that their personal security is not at risk and that they can successfully hand over to a civilian rule and still have a life that they dont need to be worried about, Badasu said.

For the moment, Mali's ECOWAS membership is suspended and members of the transitional authority and their relatives are subject to asset freezes and travel bans.
Myanmars ousted de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been convicted and sentenced to four years in prison for illegally importing and possessing portable two-way radios and violating coronavirus rules.

A source with connections to a court in the capital Naypyitaw told news outlets that Suu Kyi was sentenced to two years in prison for violating Myanmars Import-Export Law for importing the two-way radios, commonly known as walkie-talkies, and another two year sentence for violating the countrys NaturalDisaster Management law for breaching the coronavirus rules.

Mondays sentences come more than a month after Suu Kyi was convicted for inciting public unrest and a separate charge of violating the Natural Disaster Management Law for breaking COVID-19 restrictions while campaigning during last years parliamentary elections. She was initially sentenced to four years in prison, but junta leader General Min Aung Hlaing cut it in half.

The 76-year-old Suu Kyi is facing more than 100 years in prison if convicted of the numerous charges leveled against her by the military junta since she and her civilian government were ousted on February 1, 2021. She is also charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act, inciting public unrest, misusing land for her charitable foundation, and accepting illegal payments of $600,000 in cash plus 11 kilograms of gold.

The UN called for Suu Kyis immediate release as well as others who have been arrested by the miltary government.

Our immediate thought is to, of course, call yet again for the immediate release to all those who have been detained arbitrarily, including Aung San Suu Kyi and many others, whether known political figures or people who have been detained since the coup in February last year, who have been detained arbitrarily, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters Monday. All political prisoners must be released. And clearly this is not a step in the right direction.

Her supporters say the charges are intended to prevent her from ever taking part in politics again.

Suu Kyis National League for Democracy party won the November 2020 general elections in a landslide over the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. The junta cited widespread electoral fraud in the elections as its reason for toppling the civilian government and invalidating the results. The civilian electoral commission denied the allegations before it was disbanded.

Suu Kyi, who led the ousted government as state counsellor, President Win Myint and other high-ranking officials have been jailed since the coup.

Violent clashes between the military and citizens who have staged mass demonstrations against the junta have left nearly 1,400 citizens dead, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a nonprofit monitoring group. Deadly clashes have also broken out between the military and several armed ethnic groups across the country.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday he will not allow governments allied with Moscow to be toppled in so-called color revolutions, a reference to the series of popular uprisings that have shaken former Soviet republics.

We will not allow the boat to be rocked, Putin said.

During an online meeting with leaders of a Russian-led collective security alliance, Putin blamed last weeks violent unrest in Kazakhstan on destructive internal and external forces. He added, Of course, we understand the events in Kazakhstan are not the first and far from the last attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of our states from the outside.

Kazakh officials say a 4-year-old girl was among the 164 people who were killed in last weeks protests. Authorities say 5,800 people have been detained. In an effort to halt the protests, Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev issued a shoot-to-kill order, enabling security forces to open fire on protesters without warning.

The demonstrations were prompted by a fuel price increase but morphed into a broader protest over the countrys authoritarian rule. Tokayev asked Russia for help in quashing the demonstrations amid concerns about the loyalty of some law enforcement units. Russia and several other members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Eurasian intergovernmental military alliance formed in 1994, responded by sending troops, although most are Russian.

The measures taken by the CSTO have clearly shown we will not allow the situation to be rocked at home and will not allow so-called 'color revolutions' to take place, Putin said. He added that the CSTO contingent would withdraw once order had been re-established and when Tokayev thought the forces were no longer needed.

The Kazakh leader said while order had been restored, the hunt for terrorists was ongoing.

Putin alleged Monday that the violent unrest in Kazakhstan was carried out by terrorists trained abroad. He said the violence bore the hallmarks of a Western-coordinated Maidan operation, a reference to the protests that toppled Ukraines pro-Moscow leader in 2014.

Well-organized and well-controlled groups of militants were used, Putin said at the CSTO meeting. (They]) had obviously received training in terrorist camps abroad, he added.

The CSTO consists of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. When requesting military assistance last week, Tokayev invoked Article 4 of the CSTO pact, which commits members to assist each other to defend against foreign interference. It was the first time that Article 4 was cited by any CSTO member.

The Russian Defense Ministry said around 3,000 paratroopers and other service personnel were being flown to Kazakhstan around the clock, with up to 75 transport planes being used in the emergency airlift.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has questioned why Russia deployed troops. Americas top diplomat said Sunday on ABC-TVs This Week that Kazakhstan has the ability to maintain law and order, to defend the institutions of the state, but to do so in a way that respects the rights of peaceful protesters and also addresses the concerns that theyve raised  economic concerns, some political concerns.

Demanding regime change

Sparked by a fuel price increase and cost of living grievances, the protests, which began in the oil-rich western part of the country, rapidly escalated this week into the worst violence Kazakhstan has seen since its independence 30 years ago.

Grievances over fuel prices voiced initially by the protesters grew into a much bigger threat against the government after dozens of people died when Kazakh armed forces opened fire into the crowd.

Demonstrators have demanded regime change and the departures of Tokayev and the countrys 81-year-old former leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, who stepped down two years ago after nearly three decades in power. Nazarbayev, who retained the official title of leader of the nation, is still believed to rule behind the scenes. Protesters reference him with chants of Get out, old man.

The demonstrations prompted Tokayev to dismiss his Cabinet and Nazarbayev from his position as head of the countrys security council. Authorities also announced the arrest of Karim Massimov, former head of the National Security Committee, on suspicion of high treason.

Russian officials and pro-Kremlin media have been amplifying claims that the West is behind the agitation and trying to foment another color revolution with the goal of disorienting Russia during major Russia-U.S. security talks this week amid fears the Kremlin may be considering invading Ukraine.

Russia has previously accused Western powers of being behind popular uprisings revolutions in the former Soviet states of Belarus, Georgia and Ukraine. Kazakhstan has vast energy resources.

Tokayev told Putin during the online meeting that the unrest was an attempted coup and had been planned for years.

The main goal was obvious: the undermining of the constitutional order, the destruction of government institutions and the seizure of power, he said, adding that he would provide proof to back up his claims.

Some Russian analysts have also highlighted the risks of Russian troops maintaining any long-term presence in Kazakhstan.

For now, this is less an armed intervention than a police operation, said Andrei Kortunov, head of the Russian International Affairs Council, a Kremlin-linked research group. But if it drags on, consequences for Russia could mount up, he told the English language newspaper The Moscow Times.

Erica Marat, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington, told The New York Times that Tokayev traded his countrys sovereignty to Russia for his own power and the interests of kleptocratic elites.

Lawmakers in Kyrgyzstan last week voted to approve the deployment of 150 troops to Kazakhstan as part of the CSTO operation, but some have voiced opposition. Zhanybek Kydykbayev has warned that deploying troops could discredit Kyrgyzstan in the eyes of the Kazakh people as it signaled the governments support for Tokayev.

We should avoid getting involved in Kazakhstans internal conflict. And Tokayevs appeal to the CSTO is, in my opinion, just his attempt to hold onto power, Kydykbayev told local reporters.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
Despite having the highest number of COVID infections in Africa, nearly two years into the pandemic, fewer than half of South African adults have been vaccinated. The government has been reluctant to order vaccine mandates, but private companies are to encouraging people to get the jab. Linda Givetash reports from Johannesburg.
Uganda has reopened schools for the first time in two years, marking the end of the world's longest school closure from the COVID-19 pandemic.While many welcomed students' return to the classroom, a low turnout has raised concerns about the long-term impact on education.

Its the first day of school in Uganda and students are checking in. Aside from food items packed for those in boarding session, other items such as masks and hand sanitizers are a must for those returning.

Uganda closed schools in March 2020 for more than 15 million learners at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

At Grace Nursery and primary school, a class is in session. But head teacher Nassozi Divine Kakembo says not all have reported.

I was expecting many children, because Ive been talking to parents and they want to bring their children back to school. But what I expected is not what I have seen. The number is still small. Parents are still looking for money, says Kakembo.

Bakumbi Kawthar, head teacher at the Kiteezi Center for Disabled primary school, says the pandemic has changed the lives of many children.

Some of these children are now parents. They have to go work and cater for their children. Some others have turned to be heads of families. Because some families have lost parents. Others are earning. You can meet a child and he says, for me, I have a construction site where I go and get some money. Such children are not likely to come back, says Bakumbi Kawthar.



Kayaga Doreen escorted her eight-year-old daughter to the Kiteezi school. She has concerns about money  but couldnt hide her excitement.

"Im so happy," she said. "Ive asked every parent along the way to bring their child to school. The children have been home for a long time and they have been such a nuisance. They have grown and should be in higher classes. My main worry was the tuition. After all this, while staying home, now we have to pay tuition, where are we going to start from?

Mary Goretti Nakabugo, the executive director of Uwezo Uganda, a not-for-profit working to promote equitable quality education, notes that the school closure has deprived many students of basic learning.



Even before the closure, 90% of them had not yet acquired the foundations," she said. "For example, reading is extremely critical. So, this is the time for us to rethink our curriculum, our syllabus, our teaching and learning. Can they read, can they do basic arithmetic?

Uwezo says that considering the gaps in education that most children experienced during the shutdown, the majority of parents are keen on seeing their children return to school.
Undocumented Afghan migrants who fled to Turkey to escape the Taliban say they are unable to get treatment and vaccines for the coronavirus.

While officially registered refugees qualify for health care in Turkey, it is believed that thousands of undocumented Afghan migrants are in the country.

The fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in August 2021 following the withdrawal of Western forces prompted thousands to flee to neighboring countries. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan nationals had already left their home country for security reasons or to escape poverty.

VOA spoke to several refugees in the central Turkish city of Erzurum, which lies on a major route for migrants heading west to Europe and is a stopover for many refugees. Some settle and find work in the region.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), citing official figures, there are 300,000 Afghans residing in Turkey, with 183,000 officially registered and the remainder undocumented. A significant number have been living in Turkey for several years. Opposition parties say the true figure of unregistered Afghan migrants is far higher.

Those who are undocumented live and work in Turkey under the radar and are unable to access basic services such as health care.

According to the United Nations, Turkey is hosting around 183,000 Afghan asylum-seekers, while 300,000 Afghans are permanently settled there. However, unofficial estimates suggest thousands more Afghan migrants are undocumented, living and working in Turkey under the radar and unable to access basic services such as health care.

I am from Badakhshan province in Afghanistan. I came to Turkey two months ago. I am 18 years old. We have no ID cards, so the hospitals dont treat us, Afghan migrant Muhammed told VOA.

Lack of ID card a concern

Muhammed works for a local dairy company in Erzurum along with several other Afghan migrants, including his friend Islam. They live in a small, run-down apartment in the city.

There are eight or nine people living in this room. Five people have ID cards, and the rest dont have ID cards, Islam said. If any of those who dont have an ID card catches coronavirus, the hospitals dont treat them. Those who have no ID card cannot have a vaccine. If they catch coronavirus, we all will catch coronavirus.

Several Afghan migrants told VOA they chose not to register as official refugees, fearing arrest and deportation. Many said the status of Afghan refugees remains unclear, and they want clarification from the government.

Ramped up border security

In recent months, Turkey has ramped up border security and detained hundreds of Afghan migrants in deportation centers. Its not clear if Ankara intends to deport the migrants back to Afghanistan. Some migrants report being detained for several weeks before being issued with official refugee status and set free.

The Turkish government did not respond to VOA questions on the number of undocumented Afghan migrants or on the lack of access to health care. Erzurum officials said any unregistered refugees would be arrested.

The United Nations said Turkey is hosting about 4 million refugees, 3.7 million of whom are Syrians fleeing conflict.

Refugees are a shared problem

In an email to VOA, Selin Unal, a spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Turkey, said that other countries must help share the burden of caring for Afghan refugees.

UNHCR is calling on neighboring countries to keep their borders open for those forced to flee and are now seeking protection. Since August, UNHCR has received increasing numbers of Afghans in neighboring countries who have approached our office and partners, indicating their intention to seek asylum. Others still in Afghanistan report hoping to reach neighboring countries to access international protection, Unal said.

Turkey has been hosting the largest refugee population in the world since 2014 and its comprehensive legal framework provides the necessary tools to address the needs of the various categories of Afghan citizens currently living on its territory and seeking its protection. This is a challenging time, effective access to registration remains crucial by Afghan nationals seeking international protection in Turkey and UNHCR is working with national authorities to support effective, fair and fast asylum procedures, the email said.

Memet Aksakal contributed to this report.
BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Cyberspace Administration of China Monday jointly launched a livestreaming cultural event in the run-up to celebrate traditional Chinese holidays such as the upcoming Spring Festival and the Lantern Festival.

The online event will gather intangible cultural heritage preservation institutions and inheritors in designated areas with traditional holiday customs listed as intangible cultural heritage, record videos of these traditional activities in conformity to anti-pandemic protocols and share them on the event's platform as well as other participating platforms, where netizens can upload their own posts, interact and communicate, according to the organizers.

Participating localities have also rolled out their own action plans as well as pandemic control and emergency response plans for the event in accordance with local anti-pandemic protocols.

The event has a considerable meaning in dispelling the negative impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, leveraging the healing and cohesive role of intangible cultural heritage and spreading China's fine traditional culture, said the organizers. 
U.S. cybersecurity officials are still sounding an alarm about the so-called Log4j software vulnerability more than a month after it was first discovered, warning some criminals and nation state adversaries may be waiting to make use of their newfound access to critical systems.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said Monday that the vulnerability, also known as Log4shell, has been subject to widespread exploitation by criminals over the past several weeks, but that more serious and damaging attacking could still be in the works.

We do expect Log4Shell to be used in intrusions well into the future, CISA Director Jen Easterly told reporters during a phone briefing, adding, at this time we have not seen the use of Log4shell resulting in significant intrusions.

This may be the case because sophisticated adversaries have already used this vulnerability to exploit targets and are just waiting to leverage their new access until network defenders are on a lower alert, she said.

The vulnerability in the open-source software produced by the U.S.-based Apache Software Foundation, was first discovered in late November by the Chinese tech giant Alibaba. The first warnings to the public went out in early December.

Cybersecurity officials and experts initially described the flaw in the software as perhaps the worst vulnerability ever discovered, noting the softwares widespread use  in at least 2,800 products used by both private companies and governments around the world.

CISA on Monday said the vulnerability has impacted hundreds of millions of devices around the world, with many software vendors racing to issue security patches to their customers.

So far, U.S. agencies appear to be unscathed.

We, at this point, are not seeing any confirmed compromises of federal agencies across the broader country, including critical infrastructure, CISA Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity Eric Goldstein told reporters.

But he cautioned the danger has not yet passed despite the lack of destructive attacks by sophisticated hacking groups and foreign adversaries.

It is certainly possible that that may change, that adversaries may be utilizing this vulnerability to gain persistent access that they could use in the future, which is why we are so focused on remediating the vulnerability across the country and ensuring that we are detecting any intrusions if and when they arise, he said.

Yet there are reports that other countries have already been targeted by cyber actors seeking to exploit the software vulnerability.

Belgiums Ministry of Defense said last month that some of its computer systems went down last month following an attack, in which the Log4j vulnerability was believed to be exploited.

And some security experts warn other countries, including China, Iran, North Korea and Turkey, have sought to exploit Log4j.

This activity ranges from experimentation during development, integration of the vulnerabilities to in-the-wild payload deployment, and exploitation against targets to achieve the actors objectives, Microsofts Threat Intelligence Center wrote in a blog post last week.

In particular, Microsoft said the Iran cyber threat actor known as Phosphorus, known for launching ransomware attacks, has already modified the Log4j vulnerability for use in attacks, while the Chinese group known as Hafnium has also used it for some targeting activities.

The private cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike separately assessed that a Chinese-based group called Aquatic Panda sought to use the Log4j vulnerability to target an unnamed academic institution.

CISA on Monday said it could not independently confirm such reports, and further said it had yet to discover any ransomware attacks in which the attackers used the Log4j vulnerability to penetrate the victims systems.

CISAs director said one reason could be that there may be a lag between when this vulnerability is being used and when it is being actively deployed.

Easterly also warned about information that U.S. officials are unable to see due to the failure of Congress to pass legislation that would require private companies to report cyberattacks  something the White House and many lawmakers have been advocating for some time.

"We are concerned that threat actors are going to start taking advantage of this vulnerability and having impacts in particular on critical infrastructure, and because there is no legislation in place, we will likely not know about it," she said.
The United States Mint on Monday launched its American Women Quarters Program, a four-year initiative to honor the work and accomplishments of various American women by placing their images on new quarters being launched from 2022 to 2025.

To mark the programs start, the Mint released quarters bearing the likeness of writer, performer and activist Maya Angelou. Best known for her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou is depicted on the coin with her arms outstretched in front of a rising sun and a bird in flight.

Each time we redesign our currency, we have the chance to say something about our country  what we value, and how weve progressed as a society. Im very proud that these coins celebrate the contributions of some of Americas most remarkable women, including Maya Angelou, said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Maya Angelou  used words to inspire and uplift, Mint Deputy Director Ventris Gibson said.

U.S. Mint Artistic Infusion Program artist Emily Damstra created the design, while the Mints Medallic artist Craig A. Campbell sculpted it. According to the press release, the artists were inspired by Angelous poetry and the way she led her life.

The quarter bearing Angelous likeness is one of five new coins being released this year, each featuring the image of a prominent woman who has contributed to a variety of professions and institutions.

Additional honorees include Sally Ride. The physicist and educator made history on June 18, 1983, when she entered space on the shuttle Challenger, following NASAs policy change to allow women in space in the late 1970s.

When the Challenger exploded in 1986, she was one of the top investigators examining the incident.

The Mint originally announced Angelou and Ride as the programs first honorees in April 2021. They later revealed three additional honorees last June: Wilma Mankiller, Adelina Otero-Warren and Anna May Wong.

Mankiller was the first woman elected as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. She had dedicated her life to fighting for the rights of Indigenous people in the U.S. Her quarter depicts her dressed in traditional clothing alongside the Cherokee Nation seven-pointed star.

Otero-Warren was the first woman superintendent of Santa Fe public schools and a top leader of New Mexicos suffrage movement, leading efforts to ratify the 19th Amendment in the state. The amendment gives American women the right to vote. Otero-Warrens coin shows her image with the slogan, Voto para la mujer, meaning Vote for Women.

The first Chinese film star in Hollywood, Wong appeared in more than 60 movies. She was cast in her first leading role in 1922 in the film, The Toll of the Sea. Despite her talent and fame, Wong faced significant discrimination in the U.S., which led her to leave the U.S. after working in the industry for many years.

Wong was also known for her activism, as she raised money and advocated for Chinese refugees during World War II. She also became the first Asian American cast as the lead in a television show with her role in the 1951 program, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong.

For each year of the program, five new quarters will be created. By 2025, 20 women will grace the faces of U.S. quarters.

The Mints Gibson said it was her honor to present the nations first circulating coins dedicated to celebrating American women and their contributions to American history, according to the press release.

Each 2022 quarter is designed to reflect the breadth and depth of accomplishments being celebrated throughout this historic coin program, Gibson said.

The quarters, manufactured at the Mint facilities in Philadelphia and Denver, will now be shipped across the country, according to the press release.

The American Women Quarters program is authorized by the Circulating Coin Redesign Act of 2020, which was initiated by California Democratic Representative Barbara Lee.

According to reporting by nonprofit newsroom The 19th, Lee had been working on this legislation since 2017 and was motivated to honor women through a medium that has traditionally recognized men.

I wanted to make sure that women would be honored, and their images and names be lifted up on our coins. I mean, its outrageous that we havent, Lee said. Hopefully the public really delves into who these women were, because these women have made such a contribution to our country in so many ways.
Diplomats from the United States and Russia held day-long talks Monday in Geneva about Moscows massive troop buildup along its Ukraine border and Russian demands for Western security guarantees.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said the meeting, the first of several this week, began just before 9 a.m. local time and ended in the late afternoon. There were no immediate details available about the outcome of the talks, although both U.S. and Russian officials expressed little optimism ahead of time about the prospects for immediate resolution of disputes between the two superpowers.

The State Department stressed that the U.S. side has been working in consultation with not only Ukraine, but also with NATO and other allies across Europe, in preparing for the talks.

The United States is committed to the principle of nothing about you, without you when it comes to the security of our European allies and partners, including Ukraine, the spokesperson said in a statement. We are lashed up at every level with our allies and partners, and we will continue to be in the days and weeks ahead.

After the Geneva talks, Russia is due to hold negotiations with NATO in Brussels on Wednesday and at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on Thursday in Vienna.

On Sunday, ahead of the Geneva meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken CNNs State of the Union show, Its hard to see were going to make any progress with a gun to Ukraines head.

Were going to listen to Russias concerns about NATO military exercises in central and eastern Europe, Blinken said, but added, theyre going to have to listen to ours about the 100,000 troops Russia has amassed along Ukraines eastern flank.

Meanwhile, Russias state-owned RIA news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov as saying it was entirely possible that the U.S.-Russia talks could end abruptly after a single meeting.

I cant rule out anything; this is an entirely possible scenario and the Americans... should have no illusions about this, Ryabkov was quoted as saying. Officials from the two countries held a working dinner Sunday night ahead of the more formal talks Monday.

Naturally, we will not make any concessions under pressure and in the course of threats that are constantly being formed by the Western participants of the upcoming talks, Ryabkov said.

Blinken reiterated the U.S. threat to impose severe economic sanctions against Moscow in the event it invades Ukraine eight years after its annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula.

Our strong preference is a diplomatic solution, but thats up to Russia, Blinken told ABCs This Week show.

He said there is room for negotiations over military exercises in Europe and renewed arms limitations that he accused Russia of violating in the past.

The top U.S. diplomat said Russia cannot violate other countries borders or dictate whether NATO might accede to Ukraines request for membership in the seven-decade-old Western military alliance. He said 60% of Ukrainians favor the country joining NATO.

Russia has denied it plans to invade Ukraine and demanded an end to NATO expansion and a halt to the alliances military exercises in central and eastern European countries that joined it after 1997.

The United States and NATO have said large parts of the Russian proposals are non-starters.

Some material in this report came from Reuters.
An infant boy handed in desperation to a soldier across an airport wall in the chaos of the American evacuation of Afghanistan has been found and was reunited with his relatives in Kabul on Saturday.

The baby, Sohail Ahmadi, was just 2 months old when he went missing on Aug. 19 as thousands of people rushed to leave Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban.

Following an exclusive Reuters story published in November with his pictures, the baby was located in Kabul where a 29-year-old taxi driver named Hamid Safi had found him in the airport and took him home to raise as his own.

After more than seven weeks of negotiations and pleas, and ultimately a brief detention by Taliban police, Safi finally handed the child back to his jubilant grandfather and other relatives still in Kabul.

They said they would now seek to have him reunited with his parents and siblings who were evacuated months ago to the United States.

During the tumultuous Afghan evacuation over the summer, Mirza Ali Ahmadi -- the boy's father who had worked as a security guard at the U.S. Embassy -- and his wife Suraya feared their son would get crushed in the crowd as they neared the airport gates en route to a flight to the United States.

Ahmadi told Reuters in early November in his desperation that day, he handed Sohail over the airport wall to a uniformed soldier who he believed to be an American, fully expecting he would soon make it the remaining 5 meters to the entrance to reclaim him.

Just at that moment, Taliban forces pushed the crowd back and it would be another half an hour before Ahmadi, his wife and their four other children were able to get inside.

But by then the baby was nowhere to be found.

Ahmadi said he searched desperately for his son inside the airport and was told by officials that he had likely been taken out of the country separately and could be reunited with them later.

The rest of the family was evacuated, eventually ending up at a military base in Texas. For months they had no idea where their son was.

The case highlights the plight of many parents separated from their children during the hasty evacuation effort and withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country after a 20-year war.

With no U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan and international organizations overstretched, Afghan refugees have had trouble getting answers on the timing, or possibility, of complex reunifications like this one.

The U.S. Department of Defense, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday.

Alone at the airport

On the same day Ahmadi and his family were separated from their baby, Safi had slipped through the Kabul airport gates after giving a ride to his brother's family who were also set to evacuate.

Safi said he found Sohail alone and crying on the ground. After he said he unsuccessfully tried to locate the baby's parents inside, he decided to take the infant home to his wife and children. Safi has three daughters of his own and said his mother's greatest wish before she died was for him to have a son.

In that moment he decided: "I am keeping this baby. If his family is found, I will give him to them. If not, I will raise him myself," he told Reuters in an interview in late November.

Safi told Reuters that he took him to the doctor for a check-up after he was found and quickly incorporated the child into his family. They called the baby Mohammad Abed and posted pictures of all the children together on his Facebook page.

After the Reuters story about the missing child came out, some of Safi's neighbors -- who had noticed his return from the airport months earlier with a baby -- recognized the photos and posted comments about his whereabouts on a translated version of the article.

Ahmadi asked his relatives still in Afghanistan, including his father-in-law Mohammad Qasem Razawi, 67, who lives in the northeastern province of Badakhshan, to seek out Safi and ask him to return Sohail to the family.

Razawi said he traveled two days and two nights to the capital bearing gifts -- including a slaughtered sheep, several pounds of walnuts and clothing -- for Safi and his family.

But Safi refused to release Sohail, insisting he also wanted to be evacuated from Afghanistan with his family. Safi's brother, who was evacuated to California, said Safi and his family have no pending applications for U.S. entry.

The baby's family sought help from the Red Cross, which has a stated mission to help reconnect people separated by international crises, but said they received little information from the organization. A spokesperson for the Red Cross said it does not comment on individual cases.

Finally, after feeling they had run out of options, Razawi contacted the local Taliban police to report a kidnapping. Safi told Reuters he denied the allegations to the police and said he was caring for the baby, not kidnapping him.

The complaint was investigated and dismissed and the local police commander told Reuters he helped arrange a settlement, which included an agreement signed with thumbprints by both sides. Razawi said the baby's family in the end agreed to compensate Safi around 100,000 Afghani ($950) for expenses incurred looking after him for five months.

"The grandfather of the baby complained to us and we found Hamid and based on the evidence we had, we recognized the baby," said Hamid Malang, the chief area controller of the local police station. "With both sides in agreement, the baby will be handed over to his grandfather," he said on Saturday.

In the presence of the police, and amid lots of tears, the baby was finally returned to his relatives.

Razawi said Safi and his family were devastated to lose Sohail. "Hamid and his wife were crying, I cried too, but assured them that you both are young, Allah will give you male child. Not one, but several. I thanked both of them for saving the child from the airport," Razawi said.

The baby's parents told Reuters they were overjoyed as they were able to see with their own eyes the reunion over video chat.

"There are celebrations, dance, singing," said Razawi. "It is just like a wedding indeed."

Now Ahmadi and his wife and other children, who in early December were able to move off the military base and resettle in an apartment in Michigan, hope Sohail will soon be brought to the United States.

"We need to get the baby back to his mother and father. This is my only responsibility," his grandfather said. "My wish is that he should return to them."
The situation has stabilized in all regions of the country, the office of Kazakhstans President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said in a statement Sunday, after a week of unrest in which he directed security forces in a televised national address Friday to shoot to kill protesters without warning in the Central Asian nation.

During the week, Kazakh security forces killed 26 demonstrators and detained 5,800, the presidents office said Sunday. The statement from the presidency said "a substantial number of foreign nationals were included among those detained.

Eighteen law enforcement officers also died.

More Russian troops arrived Saturday at Kazakhstans Almaty International Airport, according to video released by Russias defense ministry after the president gave his shoot-to-kill address.

Almaty, Kazakhstans largest city, was mostly quiet on Saturday, according to Agence France-Presse, but security forces were firing warning shots if anyone approached the central square.

Also Saturday, authorities announced the arrest of Karim Massimov, former head of the National Security Committee, on suspicion of high treason. Masimov, 56, led the committee, which is responsible for counterintelligence, until Tokayev removed him earlier this week.

The mostly Russian troops began arriving in Kazakhstan after Tokayev declared a state of emergency Wednesday and appealed to the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Eurasian intergovernmental military alliance, for help quelling the protests.

About 2,500 troops are being deployed, some guarding government buildings in the capital, Nur-Sultan, freeing up part of the forces of Kazakh law enforcement agencies [to] redeploy them to Almaty to participate in the counter-terrorist operation, said a statement from Tokayev's office.

The CSTO is made up of forces from Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Tokayev told Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call Saturday that terrorist attacks are still being carried out in some areas of his country, despite the clampdown, according to a statement on the Kazakh presidential website.

The Kremlin described Saturdays conversation as lengthy, during which Tokayev described to Putin the unrest, noting that it is developing towards stabilization.

Tokayev dismissed international calls Friday for his government to negotiate with the protesters. He continues to claim, without evidence, they are trained and organized by unnamed foreign entities.

He called the protesters bandits and terrorists who must be destroyed and promised this would be done shortly. He also thanked Putin for promptly sending troops, at Tokayevs request, to help crack down on the protests.

The presidents exchanged views on the measures taken to restore order in Kazakhstan and agreed to remain in constant contact, the Kremlin statement said.

Protests broke out in Kazakhstan late last week over fuel prices and escalated into widespread violence.

The U.S. State Department on Friday approved the voluntary departure of nonemergency U.S. government employees and their families from the U.S. Consulate in Almaty and warned that the situation in Kazakhstan could affect the U.S. Embassys ability to provide assistance to U.S. citizens departing the Central Asian nation.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was "very concerned" about the state of emergency in Kazakhstan.

"We're watching the situation with real concern, and we are encouraging everyone to find a peaceful resolution," he said.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also called Friday for an end to the violence in Kazakhstan.

Chinese President Xi Jinping praised Tokayev on Friday for having decisively taken strong measures at critical moments and quickly calming down the situation, and referred to the violence by protesters as a large-scale riot.

China has invested heavily in Kazakhstan, which is a crucial part of Beijings Belt and Road initiative project connecting China to Europe.

Feng Chongyi, an associate professor in China Studies at Sydneys University of Technology, told VOAs Mandarin service that China is very worried about spillover effects from the Kazakhstan violence, which could encourage citizens in Kazakhstans neighbors, or even Chinese citizens, to rise up against their government.

He also noted that while China and Russia often work together on the international stage against the United States, they also have their own conflicts with each other, which he said could flare up over the violence in Kazakhstan. He said if Kazakhstan moves closer to Russia as a result of the current situation this would pose a threat to Chinas interests.

VOAs Mandarin Service and Ricardo Marquina contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.
An opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Alliance activist, John Mupanduki, who was allegedly abducted last Friday by suspected state security agents at Nyika Growth Point in Masvingo, was dumped by his assailants on Sunday in Mashava, about 125 kilometers away from his home.

In a tweet, the MDC Alliance led by Nelson Chamisa claimed that Mupanduki was tortured by his assailants.

The MDC Alliance said, John Mupanduki has made an official report to Bikita Police Station Law and Order after an initial report at Nyika Base. He was abducted in the early hours of Friday & dumped in Mashava. He was tortured by suspected state agents & remains in a state of shock.

Police spokesperson, Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi, was unavailable for comment as he was not responding to calls on his mobile phone.

In what appears to be an indirect criticism of Mupandukis alleged abduction and resurfacing, presidential spokesperson, George Charamba, claimed that the Masvingo MDC Alliance youth leader is being used by the party as a political tool in an attempt to undermine President Emmerson Mnangagwas government.

In a tweet, Charamba said, He is very grateful to be MDCs propaganda poster boy!!!!!.
Gunmen in northwest Nigeria's Kebbi state have freed 30 students and a teacher after seven months of captivity, according to a local official.

More than 1,400 children were abducted in Nigeria last year according to the United Nations, mostly during attacks on schools and colleges by gunmen known locally as "bandits."

Students are often quickly released after ransom payments but 200 were still missing in September, the U.N. added.

Thirty students of Federal Government College and one teacher have arrived in Birnin Kebbi "following their release," Yahaya Sarki, a spokesman for the Kebbi state governor, said late Saturday.

"They shall undergo medical screening and support while being reunited with their families," he added in a statement.

It was unclear if ransom was paid for the release of the students or if any others were still in captivity.

Last June, gunmen stormed the college in the town of Yauri, seizing 102 students and eight staff according to the school.

The attack was confirmed by police but they would not say how many students or teachers were taken.

Security personnel rescued eight of the kidnapped students and a teacher while bodies of three students were found in the bush.

The kidnappers freed 27 students and three staff in October, while an unspecified number were released after their parents negotiated with the captors.

Clashes between herders and farmers over access to land has plagued northwest and central Nigeria for years, with some groups evolving into criminal gangs who now terrorize local communities.

Since last year, gangs have intensified highway kidnappings and mass abductions of students.

On Wednesday, the Nigerian government issued an official gazette declaring activities of bandits as "acts of terrorism."

President Muhammadu Buhari, a former army general, is also battling a more than decade long jihadist insurgency in the northeast and separatist tensions in the country's southeast.
A lawyer representing Sybeth Musengezi, who filed a High Court application seeking an order for the removal of President Emmerson Mnangagwa from the post of Zanu PF first secretary, says police are being used by the state to force him to drop the case.

Nqobani Sithole of Ncube Attorneys told VOA Zimbabwe Service that Detective Assistant Inspector Nyazama of Harare Central Police Station, who recently visited Musengezis inlaws in Budiriro, Harare, has not yet responded to a letter sent him requesting information about their charges to be laid against the Zanu PF activist.

Sithole said, We know for a fact that the matter is before the High Court of Zimbabwe in Harare and that Zanu PF together with other respondents filed their heads of arguments on Thursday. We had a shock of our lives when we were informed by Sybeth Musengezi that on Thursday officers from the Law and Order Section in Harare went to his in-laws in Budiriro looking for him on an unspecified charge.

We were advised by the client that he was not there at that particular time and we have since written a letter to the police to enquire on the veracity of the allegations that our clients is supposed to be facing and we have also made an undertaking that if they want us to present him we shall gladly do so, so that he faces those allegations. But one thing for a fact that concerns us is the use of state machinery in the process of intimidating our client.

He said as Musengezis attorneys, they strongly believe that there is nothing criminal about whatever is taking place but this is a way of intimidating him so that he breaks down and withdraws this matter.

Police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi was unreachable for comment as he was not responding to calls on his mobile phone. VOA Zimbabwe Service was also unable to reach Mnangagwas lawyers for comment.

Mnangagwa lawyers are allegedly pressing Musengezi to withdraw the High Court application in which he is challenging the legitimacy of the presidents leadership of the ruling Zanu PF party.

The lawyers say they will sue Musengezis attorneys if they dont withdraw the case. They have also claimed that he is not a ruling party member.

But Musengezi holds a current Zanu PF membership card. He argues that Mnangagwa was not properly elected when the partys Central Committee held a meeting in 2017, a few days before the late former President Robert Mugabe was toppled in a defacto military coup.
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CHENGDU, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The world's largest stone Buddha statue, the Giant Buddha of Leshan, needs a repair, again.

Less than three years after the completion of the latest large-scale facelift -- the seventh in over a century -- the 71-meter-high statue sitting outside the city of Leshan, southwest China's Sichuan Province, already suffers from a black nose and a dirty face.

Besides, parts of the Buddha's chest, abdomen, hands and legs are now covered with moss and other plants, giving it an entirely different appearance from the one freshly repaired in April 2019.

Over the weekend, Leshan hosted a seminar that saw renowned Chinese experts discuss a new restoration plan for the statue. This time around, however, rather than giving the Buddha another makeover, they decided to address the root cause of its degradations, hoping to give the sculpture extended years of health.

The Buddha statue, carved into a cliff in Leshan Mountain and overlooking three converging rivers, was built over a 90-year period beginning in 713 during the Tang Dynasty (618-907).

"The seminar marked a significant change of our approach from 'curing the symptoms' to 'curing the disease while curing the symptoms,'" said Zhan Changfa, former deputy president of the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage (CACH).

Experts reached the consensus that among many other factors, damage from water, rain and humidity contributed the most to the degradation.

"First and foremost, we need to address the problem of damage from water, otherwise any facelift would be nothing but a stopgap measure," Huang Kezhong, a researcher with the CACH, told the seminar via video link from Beijing.

The experts at the seminar agreed that addressing the water damage involves a multi-faceted approach covering areas such as geological survey, monitoring and evaluation, material research and environmental restoration.

Zhan pointed out some critical questions for systematic planning and step-by-step solutions, which include --Where are the internal cracks? How to deal with weathering? What materials are better to use for the repair? Should an awning be built? Should a cap be put on tourist numbers?

Zhan added that given the natural and geographic conditions of the Buddha statue's location, the restoration plan aims for "better health, less fatal diseases, and ideally a longevity" for the Buddha, rather than finding a cure-all.

Wang Yi, head of Sichuan Provincial Cultural Heritage Administration, said experts from home and abroad will conduct in-depth cooperation and multidisciplinary research on the protection of the giant Buddha.

The Leshan Buddha was inscribed on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage list in 1996. 
Fargo, ND, Jan. 10, 2017  The Womens March on Washington (WMW) has inspired nearly 400 other sister marches to take place on January 21. All 50 states and Puerto Rico are confirmed to have at least one grassroots-led march that day, as well as 55 global cities on six continents.

This is an unprecedented, organic, and viral grassroots global movement that is expanding every day. More than 700,000 people have already committed to march all over the country and world in just a few weeks, said Boston-based spokesperson Yordanos Eyoel, who became a US citizen last fall. The aggregate turnout has the potential to exceed 1 million marchers. What makes this movement even more special is that people who have never been politically active before are now mobilizing.

While each person may have their own reasons for marching, the mission is to bring people together to take a stand on issues that deeply impact us all. The marches will seek to reaffirm the core American values of freedom and democracy for all at a time when many fear that their voices will be lost. Womens rights, immigrant rights, worker rights, reproduction rights, LGBTQIA rights, environmental rights, rights for all feeling threatened by the agenda of the new administration.

Women, girls, men, boys and all gender identities of all ages are encouraged to march in Fargo, ND.

We want to give residents in the Fargo-Moorhead and surrounding area the opportunity to walk in solidarity with the over 200,000 people participating in the Womens March on Washington DC. This march does not represent any political affiliation. We want it to be as inclusive as possible says local march organizer, Maren Day Woods says. So far, based on the attendee counts on Facebook there are over 200 people planning to march and over 600 people are interested in the event.

We would love to have at least 500 people show up, says Day Woods.

The mission statement for the Womens March on Washington and the Sister Marches:

"We stand together, recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us."

Its understood that each person will have their own reasons for marching. The marches will seek to reaffirm the core American values of freedom and democracy for all, at a time when many fear that their voices will be lost. Womens rights, immigrant rights, worker rights, LGBTQIA rights, environmental rights, rights for all races and religious freedom and most importantly voting rights and the free press are being threatened.

This Sister March taking place in Fargo, ND encourages participation of all backgrounds, races, religions, gender identities, ages and abilities and communities of immigrants. We hope to build momentum in the common desire to protect our democracy and its protections for all Americans.

Womens March on Washington, Fargo, ND

Marchers will meet at 10 AM, on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017 at the southwest Parking Lot of the Island Park Swimming Pool, in downtown Fargo. There will be a short program with several speakers making a statement before the march begins. Then we will begin walking north at 10:30 AM on the west side of Broadway to 6th Ave North, cross Broadway and walk back on the eastside of Broadway to Island Park. Marchers are encouraged to spread the word, make signs to express why they are walking and to dress warm. Marchers are invited to Revland Gallery, 409 Broadway, after the march to warm up with a hot beverage.

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/Womens-March-on-Washington

TWITTER: #sistermarch
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Riabkov arrived in Geneva for Russian-US negotiations on peace guarantees. He had dinner with his American counterparts before talks got underway.

He said the US proposals for freezing the situation in Ukraine fell short of adressing the issue. "Other priorities are more important for us: non-expansion of NATO, elimination of the created infrastructure, refusal of measures, and not on a reciprocal basis, but on a unilateral basis from the West ".

Russia considers it unrealistic to wait for a solution in Geneva, but NATO must already start preparing to pull back.
The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, quietly visited Ukraine in early January.

He visited the Donbass front line and met with officials from the European Union Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine (EUBAM) to implement the economic blockade of Transnistria.

Officially, the EU is a peaceful power. In effect, it is preparing theaters of war for NATO.
Photo: Laurent Koffel/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Having released two feature films in 2021, Ryusuke Hamaguchi was already having a good year before his latest, Drive My Car, started racking up year-end awards and nominations. The film is also a genuine hit, playing to sold-out screenings in New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. All of that has now made Hamaguchi, one of the most exciting directors to come out of Japan in the past decade (his two previous features, 2015s Happy Hour and 2018s Asako I & II, were among the best films of their respective years), something of an art-house household name. With good reason, too. Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, Drive My Car (which also appeared on the year-end top-ten lists of all three of Vultures film critics) is a mesmerizing, heartbreaking, occasionally hilarious drama about Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima, who also has awards buzz), an actor-director who, after the sudden death of his wife, travels to Hiroshima to direct an avant-garde adaptation of Anton Chekhovs Uncle Vanya. The film focuses on Kafukus relationship with his driver, Misaki (a transcendent Toko Miura), and with a young actor named Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), who just happened to be having an affair with Kafukus wife before she died. In mood and subject matter, the film also bears some similarities to Hamaguchis other feature released this year, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, which is a series of three offbeat stories revolving around the strange ways that relationships mutate and endure. I spoke to Hamaguchi recently about both films, the liberties he took with Murakamis original, the abstract beauty of driving at night, and more.

Haruki Murakami is a monumental literary figure, and adaptations of his work have been very uneven. What made you want to tackle this story in Drive My Car?

A very direct answer would just be to say that the producer suggested it. But he originally suggested a different story, which I found too difficult to adapt. (Im not going to tell you what story it was.) However, Drive My Car had appeared in a magazine about eight years ago. Id read it back then, and felt maybe thats one I could do. So I suggested this back to him. I was drawn to it because it dealt with themes quite familiar to me: the use of a transportation device as a setting, and the idea of performance.

The short story Drive My Car is structured differently from your film. How did you decide to make its story more linear?

The best thing about the short story is the characters, Kafuku and Misaki. So I needed to figure out the most natural way for that relationship to develop. Additionally, within the story, there is Takatsukis character and his dialogue. I actually pulled some of his words from the short story into the film. I also knew that I needed to inflate the story to make a feature. And Murakamis world is quite unique, so I couldnt just pull from anywhere. At that time, there was a short-story collection out called Men Without Women, which Drive My Car is a part of. I felt that because they all shared this common theme of men without women, I could perhaps pull from other stories within that collection. So I chose two stories, Scheherazade and Kino, and I created one story out of these three.

In the original story, the loss of the wife is something that has happened in the past. By making that marriage essentially the first act of the movie, you make her death a kind of narrative rupture, almost like Janet Leighs death in Psycho. We think were seeing one type of movie and then, 40 minutes in, it becomes a completely different type of movie.

I think one of the biggest reasons here is the difference between film and literature. I dont really like the mechanics of a flashback. I also didnt think that flashbacks would work for this story in particular. But I was thinking, How can I make the audience have a sense of flashback while watching the film? Kafuku as a character does not talk much in the film, especially after the death of his wife, Oto. Hes lost the person that he can reveal his private self to. The audience can understand that massive loss, and how much sadness and pain that Kafuku is carrying later in the film, by seeing those first 40 minutes with Oto. You really understand Kafuku and his loneliness without him actually speaking so much.

Your other film this year, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, made up of three short stories, also came out in the U.S. not too long ago, so its hard not to think of these movies as companion pieces. One theme that does seem to run through your movies is the way that our past relationships continue to haunt us. To what extent did the two films inform each other?

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and Drive My Car really do echo each other in a lot of ways. The production period actually overlapped between the two films. I had shot the first and second stories of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy before the pandemic. We started shooting Drive My Car in March of 2020, right as the pandemic hit, and we had to go on an eight-month halt in production. During that period, we shot the third story of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. After the emergency decree was lifted, we finished the second half of Drive My Car, which is the part set in Hiroshima. Also, I had initially thought of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy in part to prepare for the feature that I was going to work on. I wanted to get used to thinking about these similar themes. I knew I wanted to work with a car driving at night, how to express sexual relationships onscreen, and also of course the theme of performance.

What is it about a car driving at night that appeals to you?

Driving at night is very different from driving in the day. Theres something very abstract about it. The details of the city start to become more blurry, the details of the environment and whats outside go out of focus, so what you start to see is darkness and light. That abstractness is something I was drawn to. I also think that words said at night are different from words said during the day. Daily life is farther away, and you draw out something different from the characters  their inner selves. Conversations during nighttime drives often end up being deeper conversations.

Its interesting to hear you say the majority of Drive My Car was shot after the pandemic started. Theres a brief scene at the end, set where we see the characters masked, and a viewer might assume that was the one part shot post-COVID. Why include the pandemic at that point, after avoiding it for the previous parts of the film? And did your conception of the picture change at all as a result of the pandemic?

I came upon two reasons to have the characters masked at the end. One, it allows us to show that time has passed, that we are now in a very different period from what we just saw onscreen. Also, I felt this could bring the scene closer to our own world, to our own realities, especially at the end.

The pandemic very much affected the conception of the film. All the scenes in Hiroshima were originally going to be shot in Busan, South Korea. But we were no longer able to travel abroad, so we considered other options. We thought about what Japanese city would be a good place to host a theater festival. When Hiroshima came up as an option, I realized that Hiroshima as a noun, as a word, carries a lot of heft. So I really had to think about whether that would be the right choice. But once we went out there and saw all these locations, I saw just how wonderful the nature is there, how wonderful the city is. I started to feel that actually the history of the city itself perhaps can be connected to the theme of the story. Theres a huge scar  this huge pain that Hiroshima the city has gone through  and yet it has reconstructed itself in such a beautiful way. So, Hiroshima ended up clarifying that theme in the film even better.

Hidetoshi Nishijima and Toko Miura in Drive My Car. Photo: Janus Films

As I understand, Kafukus style of working with actors in the film, how he makes them repeatedly rehearse all their lines with absolutely zero emotion, is very similar to your own approach. Can you tell me a little bit about your process?

I dont actually have experience in directing theater, and didnt really know how to go about depicting that. So I researched and interviewed a lot of people who direct and work in theater. After doing this research, I still felt that I didnt quite understand how to go about depicting that world. So I thought, You know what, Im just going to bring in my own process into the movie. When were preparing, I do have my actors read the dialogue over and over multiple times without emotion. That is so that the actors can install the words into their bodies, so it can seep into their bodies. I believe that allows for the actors to be more emotive when theyre in front of the camera, and freer to move, because all the words have soaked into them. So the process that you see in the film is not theater acting; in my mind, its actually film acting that were seeing here. In the end, everything will be captured in front of the camera anyway, so I just brought in my own film process.

How did you develop this process?

The idea actually comes from a short film about Jean Renoir and his directing. I sort of mimicked him and pulled that approach into my own. I had wanted to try it out for quite a while, but it wasnt until Happy Hour that I gave it a shot. That was a big moment for me. Because I was working with people who had no prior acting experience, and I had to think about how I could get them to be able to act. These nonprofessionals werent necessarily there because they wanted to be in a film; they were there because they had an intellectual curiosity toward acting. That made them very appealing to me, but I also had to think about how they could stand in front of the camera eventually without fear. Thats when I first tried out this process.

Your films tend to be quite long. Drive My Car is three hours, but Happy Hour is over five hours. Do you know how long a film will be when you start making it?

Ive made a lot of long films. For Intimacies, which I made about ten years ago, I knew that I was going to make a long film; I went into the production saying that it would be long. The same goes for when I was making documentaries. For Happy Hour, the length was kind of an accident. I had originally thought it would be a two-hour film. However, I later realized that if I cut it down to two hours, it would be a lie, because it wouldnt have expressed the time that I spent with these subjects. We had about eight months to shoot. We decided to shoot as much as we could and then decide in the edit what to cut. But once we were in the editing room, the things we shot were so strong that I felt that I needed to keep it in. If I took away anything, the strength of the whole piece would be lost. Regarding Drive My Car, I figured it would be about two and a half hours long. While I was on location, I could tell it would get longer. It ended up being longer than expected.

The three episodes of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, as I understand it, are part of a project of seven short films. Why those three? And what is the status of the other short films?

Those first three stories that I chose, I see as an entrance into this series of seven. The first story to me is very understandable; its a simple story about a love triangle. The second story has a darker, sexual element to it. The third story, I felt that people could watch it and feel good coming out of it. With that experience, people might want to watch the later stories when they come out. But as I mentioned earlier, this idea of working with short films was to help me prepare for a feature film. I want to make it a cycle between short films and feature films. I do have four seeds of stories, but it will really depend on what my next feature will be. The short stories will ultimately meet the needs of that film.

Tell me about the decision to make Chekhov more of a presence in Drive My Car. His work so often inspires these meta approaches, like with Vanya on 42nd Street or The Last Metro, or Tarkovskys Mirror. It seems to prompt this kind of self-reflection.

Im embarrassed to say I actually dont remember those films that you mention. Uncle Vanya was already in the original short story, but I was also very interested in Chekhov at the time, so it felt very serendipitous. I went back and reread Uncle Vanya and really saw a correlation between Kafuku as a character and Uncle Vanya. Some of Vanyas dialogue can directly be used to talk about what Kafuku himself is going through. As I had mentioned earlier, I was really thinking about how to express Kafukus emotions, even though hes not speaking so much himself. So Uncle Vanya was really helpful. At the same time, I feel that a lot of Murakamis stories have two parallel worlds happening at the same time. There are often two characters who feel like they might actually be the same character, and they end up sort of translating between themselves. So Uncle Vanya allowed me to do the same thing within this film.

What made you want to become a filmmaker?

Ultimately, it comes down to one person: John Cassavetes. When I saw Husbands, I had just just turned 20 or so. Seeing that really was a determining experience for me. It showed me how there could be so much emotion lying underneath daily life, and that film could really capture those emotions. In my opinion, nobody else has done that so clearly. That said, I do feel that American people and Japanese people dont necessarily act the same way. I dont have the same impulses as Cassavetes, so I am still able to figure out what my own process is.
WERE BACK. The delightful and nothing-truly-bad-can-happen-here theme music remains, with its cheerily animated pastoral setting. I love this goddamn show. Just give me some jaunty piano music and people in period hats walking dogs in the countryside.

When we last met in the Yorkshire Dales, Siegfried was lying to Tristan about the latter passing his veterinary exams. Surely this cannot backfire! Mrs. Hall was sad about her worthless son, James was promoted to Senior Vet, and Helen broke off her wedding to Hugh, but do we really care about that?

Are there James and Helen stans for this version of All Creatures? I looked them up on Tumblr, and it appears so, but I am BAFFLED. If you replaced Helen with a handsome coat rack, it and James would have the same level of chemistry (but also, imagine James gazing passionately at a coat rack on the moor and think how fun that would be).

Speaking of stans and ships, I know Mrs. Halls friend Dorothy did absolutely nothing wrong, but I did do a smug Caroline Bingley smile when I realized she was not in this episode. MRS. HALL/SIEGFRIED 4VR. Their relationship is as married as ever, with her calling him by his full name when hes in trouble but also helping him do whats right. Wow. So great. I cant wait for them to inevitably get together, because if they do not, I will picket Channel 5 in the U.K., which is apparently where it airs over there.

James is visiting his family in Glasgow and helping out at the local vet, which specializes in pets instead of livestock. This took me down a research rabbit hole on the rise of pet ownership: Essentially, pets became popular among the middle class in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century, so by the 1930s here, they were well-established. However! It makes sense that they would still not be as common in the farming communities.

On another history sidebar, we can pinpoint the year to 1938, as a newspaper headline says, Britain and Italy Sign Pact, and this is likely the Easter Accords, which was a pact between Britain and Italy to try to keep Italy from becoming a German ally and to keep Britain from helping France when it was inevitably invaded (this pact had minimal success and ended in 1940).

If the year 1938 makes you nervous regarding our peaceful and bucolic escapist show  well, yes, that makes sense. I, too, am nervous! Were one year away from World War II, but I will push that mentally aside and focus on the murdered birds and overly excitable dogs (no connection) to be found in this episode. But also, why cant the Yorkshire Dales be like Brigadoon and just vanish into the mist every evening, reappearing for one day every hundred years. This is but a simple request.

James has a choice to make in this episode. Will he move back to Glasgow and be with his family in his hometown, or stay with the Farnon practice and help sheep? This Glasgow vet whos pooh-poohing farm animals has clearly never met Clive, Bull of my Heart (REMEMBER CLIVE?), but I will forgive him, because to have never met Clive is a true tragedy of life.

James returns to the Yorkshire Dales and is picked up by Tristan. Tristan  is fine. This actor is still not endearing to me, which you need to be for this type of character, but he occasionally tries to do the kind thing, so  he is fine. Hes just tootling along, thinking he passed his exams when he absolutely did not, which, I get Siegfried wanted to save the Christmas Vibe, but this?? would be devastating?? Can you imagine having repeatedly flunked your final test to get your degree, and finally you find out that you passed and you can finally feel genuinely proud of yourself and believe that you havent let your brother down, and then IT WAS ALL A LIE? This is a horribly stressful plotline. Ill come back to it shortly.

Siegfried shows up at a farm in his little green roadster, and I am so excited to see him that my notes say SIEGFRIIIIIEEEEEEEEED. He is clenching his pipe between his teeth! With his little bag! And his bucket hat or whatever it is! James is delivering a lamb and Siegfried is micromanaging him, but I cant pay full attention because there is a different lamb named Herbert who shows up, having been rejected by his mother. I will be your new mother, Herbert. My cats would be very confused but would grow to accept Herbert as he trotted around the apartment.

Other than Jamess decision about whether to stay or go, we have an untrained dog plotline, a dead budgerigar plotline, and a what-do-you-mean-you-lied-about-Tristan-passing-his-exams plotline. (Also, James and Helen and their romance, I guess.)

The untrained dog belongs to Helens sister Jenny. His name is Scruff and hes very cute, but he is also chasing the sheep around until they have a calcium deficiency. This sounds like a joke (maybe?), but it is a very panicky situation and emergency calcium shots are required! At first, it looks like there are fifteen dead sheep in a field, and I had my own panic about whether Herbert was okay (hes fine/perfect), but they are all alive. Side note: do I need a calcium injection? Do we all need them? Do humans get a calcium deficiency when faced with sudden stress, or is it just a sheep thing? Questions to ponder.

Scruff will be put down by Helen and Jennys father, but James and Jenny whisk him away and train him not to attack sheep. As the aforementioned owner of two cats, I am so impressed by how quickly Scruff learns not to go after the sheep. If I try to teach my cats anything, they stare at me blankly or do the exact opposite of the thing I asked. All those sheep would be dead or mildly annoyed.

And so Scruff is saved! I am a little disappointed that my first thought, which was that Scruff would be tamed by learning to parent baby lamb Herbert, did not come to fruition, but I accept that I have just been watching too many The Dodo videos. Herbert is instead adopted by a sheep whose baby died, so he is all set.

Tristan kills a blind womans bird. He goes to visit Mrs. Tompkin, who just needs her budgerigars (read: parakeet) beak clipped. Its such a simple task! Despite allowing Tristan to practice under false pretenses, Siegfried thinks this is a mild enough assignment to entrust him with, and I guess I would agree! I knew when Tristan was walking down the street to her house, and jaunty music was playing, that something silly was going to happen, but what does happen is that he immediately kills Peter the Parakeet while taking it out of the cage.

He tells Mrs. Tompkin that hes going to clip the beak at the office and takes it back there, where he decides to buy a new budgie, and he shoves Peter in a drawer because he is a monster. Siegfried inevitably finds Peter and asks Mrs. Hall if she knew about this (she did), but she swiftly turns the tables by entrapping Siegfried into admitting he lied about Tristan passing his exams. She says Tristan can never find out the truth, which  what?? What were the rules around practicing as a veterinarian in the 1930s??

Not to be a nerd, but I looked it up. According to the Veterinary Surgeons Act of 1881, it was unlawful from 1883 onwards to style yourself a veterinary practitioner if you were not a member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. As of an amendment in 1948, it was illegal in the U.K. for anyone other than a registered veterinary surgeon to practice! This all just seems very potentially harmful to Tristan unless there is a giant loophole I am missing.

Siegfried agrees not to tell Tristan, though (OKAY), and he goes along with Peter the Parakeet being replaced with the ersatz Peter, who isnt even the right color. I think theres something implied about how its all for the best, and to tell Mrs. Tompkin the truth would be cruel, but this is condescending and also a weird theme for the episode! Tell Tristan he isnt a vet! Tell Mrs. Tompkin her bird died because birds are sometimes very fragile and also Tristan isnt a real vet!

Whatever, I love this show.

James stands outside the pub with Tristan, drinking and looking around at all the farm animals. He decides to stay with his chosen family, who all welcome James back. WELCOME BACK TO US ALL.

Items for Pondering

 Will Tristan be arrested in ten years for being an illegal vet?

 Did anyone else think Helen looked like Leia on Hoth with her hair and outfit?

 Can we Brigadoon the town? If we try really hard?
CAPE TOWN, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Nine people were killed when two minibuses collided head-on Sunday night in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, local authorities said on Monday.

The collision happened when a fully-loaded minibus taxi heading for the seaport city of Gqeberha on the N2 road hit another minibus taxi with two occupants travelling in the opposite direction between Makhanda and Nanaga towns, Eastern Cape's Department of Transport said on its Facebook page.

Seven people in the first vehicle and the two, who were suspected to be a couple, in the second one died in the collision, it said, adding that the killed included two children between the age of one and four years.

The accident came days after six people died and nine others were injured in another head-on collision of two minibus taxis in the same province.

South Africa is now at the end of the festive season when more people are travelling.

The official figures released on Dec. 22, 2021, showed that the number of fatalities in car accidents in South Africa dropped marginally, from 848 in 2020 to 822 in 2021. The government said it is concerned about the high number of major crashes where five or more people perish in a single accident.

The figures also showed that car crashes with multiple fatalities increased to 17 from severn over the same period, and the number of fatalities from major crashes increased to 111 in 2021 from 34 in the previous year. 
Italian premier to answer questions about controversial vaccine mandate today.

Italy's latest covid restrictions come into force on Monday 10 January with the government once again expanding the scope of the Super Green Pass, the digital certificate which can only be obtained by those who are vaccinated or have recovered from covid-19.

The Super Green Pass is a "reinforced" version of the "basic" Green Pass certificate which proves the holder has been vaccinated, tested negative or recovered from covid-19.

Already required in cinemas, theatres and stadiums, the Super Green Pass cannot be obtained by a negative covid test result, meaning that it excludes people who are unvaccinated.

From 10 January the Super Green Pass is required on all forms of public transport - local, regional and national - including planes, trains, ships, buses, trams and subways.

Commuters are obliged to wear the more protective FFP2 masks, amid reports that 1,000 police officers will be deployed in Rome to ensure the new rules are being followed.

The Super Green Pass is also now required for dining in restaurants, both indoors and outdoors, as well as in hotels, ski lifts, museums, archaeological sites, gyms and swimming pools, along with a range of other activities ranging from wedding receptions and bingo halls to festivals and theme parks.

Booster

Also from 10 January the minimum waiting time between the second dose of the covid vaccine and the 'booster' shot will be reduced from five to four months.

The tightening of Italy's two-tiered covid restrictions is part of the government's efforts to boost its vaccination drive and stem a surge in coronavirus infections.

Compulsory vaccination

The government recently announced that the covid-19 vaccine would be compulsory for people over the age of 50, with effect from 15 February.

The controversy around the move has led premier Mario Draghi to call a news conference, at 18.00 on Monday, to outline the reasons behind the sweeping measure.

Schools

Also on Monday, Italy's schools reopen after the Christmas holidays, with new covid protocols in place.

In kindergartens and scuola dell'infanzia (up to the ages of six), if one child tests positive for covid, in-person lessons are suspended for the entire class for 10 days.

In primary schools, if one child in a class tests positive, students continue to attend lessons in the classroom, however if there are two or more cases then the class switches to remote learning for 10 days.

In middle and high schools, after three covid cases in the class, distance learning is triggered but only for the unvaccinated.

Those who are vaccinated can continue to attend class in person, with self-monitoring protocols in place and the wearing of FFP2 masks mandatory.

Yellow zones

Monday also sees the number of Italian regions in covid 'yellow' zones rise to 15 with the addition of Abruzzo, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany and Valle d'Aosta.

New Green Pass rules

From 20 January the basic Green Pass will be needed to access hairdressers and beauticians, while from 1 February it will be required to enter banks, post offices, non-essential shops and shopping malls.

The unvaccinated will still be able to access grocery shops, supermarkets and pharmacies.

Neither version of the Green Pass (basic or super) applies to children under the age of 12 or to people exempt from the vaccination campaign on health grounds. For official information about the covid-19 situation in Italy (in English) see the health ministry website. Photo credit: Antonello Marangi / Shutterstock.com.
Italy's new Super Green Pass rules in force on public transport from 10 January.

The first fine in Rome for travelling on public transport without a Super Green Pass was handed to a commuter on Monday morning, the day Italy's new covid restrictions came into force.

The Super Green Pass, a digital certificate which can only be obtained by those who are vaccinated or have recovered from covid-19, is required as of 10 January to travel on all public transport in Italy, from buses and trains to subways and domestic flights.

The passenger, a 39-year-old man, was caught by local traffic police without the Super Green Pass on the 714 bus at Rome's central Termini train station, according to local media.

The man was given a fine of 400, however the penalty is reduced to 280 if paid within two days, reports Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Commuters on public transport in Italy are also obliged to wear the more protective FFP2 face masks, with police stepping up checks at key points across the capital.

In addition to public transport, the Super Green Pass is now required for dining in restaurants - both indoors and outdoors - as well as in hotels, ski lifts, museums and swimming pools, along with a wide range of other activities, from wedding receptions to theme parks.

Italian premier Mario Draghi is to face questions from journalists on Monday evening over the government's controversial new vaccine mandate for the over-50s.
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Thanks to ethics legislation that Senator Jon Ossoff is considering, Congress will have to focus more purposefully on one of Washingtons most persistent and egregious financial conflicts: stock trading. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight The Georgia Democrat will seek to ban trading in individual stocks by federal legislators and family members; he is reportedly looking for a Republican co-sponsor before he introduces his bill.

Including family members goes beyond similar legislation other politicians have crafted recently; those measures focus only on legislators. Allowing, say, a spouse to trade securities whose value might be influenced by pending laws or regulations is an obvious loophole in ethics guidelines and should be closed posthaste. Insiders are often insiders, even if they arent officeholders.The bleak prospects for Ossoffs proposal and others like it indicate just how unwilling Congress has been to fully tackle this problem and plug loopholes that continue to undermine the Stock Act of 2012, which was enacted to blunt insider trading. You can come up with many reasons to argue against tighter trading rules, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has offered one of the worst.Were a free-market economy, and spouses shouldnt face trading bans, the California Democrat said in a press conference last month. They should be able to participate in that.

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Pelosis husband, Paul, a wealthy real estate investor, certainly does participate. Last June, he earned millions of dollars exercising options on Alphabet Inc. shares, trades the speaker disclosed in July; she said she had no prior knowledge of the investment, and there were no allegations of wrongdoing.

Within days of the speakers December press conference opposing trading bans, she filed a disclosure form indicating that the Pelosis had bought options on shares of Alphabet, Micron Technology Inc., Roblox Corp., Salesforce.com Inc., Walt Disney Co. and a partnership investing in a collection of Marriot International Inc. hotels. Come on. Even if theres no wrongdoing here, the speaker has wide-ranging legislative powers and all of this, at a minimum, represents a financial conflict.

The problem is also robustly bipartisan.

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Last August, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican, disclosed that his wife bought stock in Gilead Sciences Inc., the maker of a drug billed as a possible Covid-19 treatment, on Feb. 26, 2020  just before the World Health Organization classified the outbreak as a pandemic. Paul sits on a Senate health committee that the Trump administration privately briefed in January 2020 about the coronavirus. Paul disclosed the Gilead purchase about 16 months after a 45-day reporting deadline required by the Stock Act had lapsed.

The Stock Act has certainly curtailed many abuses as well as some of the financial windfalls federal legislators once enjoyed. Studies indicate that outsized gains from politicians stock holdings decreased after that bill was enacted. But theres still much to be done.

A recent Business Insider examination of about 9,000 financial disclosure forms filed by every sitting federal lawmaker and their senior staff members found that only four members of the House and six from the Senate were trading using qualified blind trusts, which distance politicians from investment decisions. The analysis also found that dozens of federal legislators were violating conflict-of-interest provisions of the Stock Act, while others had indulged in activities that created clashes between their personal finances and public duties.Business Insider highlighted Representative Kevin Hern, an Oklahoma Republican, as a member of a group of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle who are especially exposed to ethical problems. I wrote about Herns financial conflicts in 2020 after learning that the legislator helped ensure that Covid-19 relief money funded by taxpayers was steered to franchise owners like his family. He doesnt appear to be worried that any of this is problematic.

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Congress has company, too. The Federal Reserve has had to show the door recently to officials who played too loosely with their investments. The Wall Street Journal has produced a series of startling reports on financial conflicts tied to securities trading within the federal judiciary. And the Supreme Court remains oddly removed from stricter ethical guidelines and transparency, even though all of the justices either trade stocks, cash in on problematic book deals or accept pricey travel packages and expensive gifts. Chief Justice John Roberts, while acknowledging that even the appearance of financial conflicts is detrimental, has said he doesnt consider it a widespread problem on the court or in the broader judiciary and doesnt necessitate outside oversight.However oversight continues to take shape in Congress, lets hope that Ossoffs bill gets further traction and bipartisan support. He is one of the 10 members of Congress whom Business Insider cited for maintaining a proper blind trust for his investments, and the website rated him a solid for his transparency and ethical vigilance. Many others in Congress should follow his example.

More From Other Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:

 Members of Congress Shouldnt Trade Stocks: The Editors

 Senators Stock Trades Would Make a Poker Cheat Blush: Aaron Brown

 The Federal Reserve Needs to Get Its Ethics Straight: The Editors

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Timothy L. OBrien is a senior columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.

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Since 2014, under three different presidents, the U.S. has imposed travel bans, asset freezes and finance and trade restrictions against hundreds of Russian individuals and companies. These sanctions are part of a multinational effort to punish President Vladimir Putins government for alleged trouble-making beyond its borders and online. The U.S. and its European allies are weighing further measures targeting Russian banks and technology imports should Putin decide to invade Ukraine.

1. What U.S. sanctions are in place against Russia?

More people and companies in Russia have been hit by U.S. sanctions in the last decade than any country other than Iran. Individuals face limits on their travel and freezes on at least some of their assets, while some top Russian state banks and companies, including oil and gas giants, are effectively barred from getting financing through U.S. banks and markets. Among the targets are billionaires such as Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg; close political allies of Putin including his former Chief of Staff Sergei Ivanov and Dmitry Rogozin, a deputy prime minister from 2011 to 2018; and corporate titans such as Rosneft, Gazprom, Sberbank and VTB Group. As a result of sanctions added by President Joe Biden, U.S. financial institutions are barred from participating in the primary market for new debt issued by the Russian central bank, Finance Ministry and sovereign wealth fund.

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2. Why were the sanctions imposed?

The initial ones were ordered by President Barack Obama after Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and supported a separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine. More were added after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election, won by Donald Trump. In 2018, under Trump, another round of measures in response to Russias malign activity around the globe hit Deripaskas United Co. Rusal hardest, limiting for a time its access to the $140 billion global aluminum industry. Other U.S. sanctions were aimed at punishing Putins government for a 2018 nerve-agent attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the U.K. There are sanctions linked to deals with Syria and North Korea, and sanctions against companies involved in building the Russian natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2. Biden, upon taking office in 2021, carried out a promise to impose new sanctions but said he chose to make them proportionate in hopes of limiting the further worsening of the relationship.

3. Why did Biden add to the sanctions?

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The sanctions imposed in March and April 2021 followed a review Biden ordered on his first full day in office into four key areas concerning Russia: interference in the 2020 election, reports of Russian bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, the hacking of Texas-based software supplier SolarWinds Corp. and the poisoning and jailing of opposition leader Alexey Navalny.

4. Who else has sanctions on Russia?

The EU slapped sanctions on Russias financial, energy and defense sectors in response to the annexation of Crimea in a bid to push Putin into a more conciliatory stance over the conflict in Ukraine. Japan joined in those sanctions. The EU also blacklisted six Putin allies as punishment for the attempted murder of Navalny. The U.K. has sanctioned Russia in conjunction with its European allies to ensure the restrictions would continue to operate effectively after Brexit.

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5. Whats been the impact?

The effectiveness of sanctions so far is a matter of debate. They can inflict some pain and be a long-term drag on investment and trade, wrote Bloomberg Economics analyst Scott Johnson. But the ones announced by Biden in March, for instance, imposed travel restrictions and asset freezes on individuals unlikely to travel to America or have assets in U.S. accounts. The Congressional Research Service, in a report updated in 2020, said that sanctions have had a negative but relatively modest impact on Russias growth and that its difficult to determine whether sanctions actually influence Russias behavior. Russia, for its part, maintains it can survive the sanctions. As Johnson and the Congressional Research Service both note, the U.S. is constrained by worries over unintended collateral damage.

6. What sort of collateral damage?

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The April 2018 sanctions targeting Rusal disrupted the global supply chain for aluminum and sent prices soaring by 30%. That affected, among others, soda-can makers, the worlds biggest miners and big banks that finance the aluminum trade. The sanctions on Rusal were lifted in late 2018 after Deripaska agreed to reduce his ownership and relinquish control. (Whether he actually did so is a question that lingered.) Blocking U.S. investors from buying ruble-denominated Russian government debt had long been seen as the nuclear option in financial markets, where the bonds, known as OFZs, are a popular investment. But restricting the limits to new debt sales, and not those trading on secondary markets -- as Biden did in when adding banking sanctions in April 2021 -- blunted the impact.

7. What sanctions may be coming next?

Washington and its allies have been weighing further sanctions on Russias biggest banks and are considering restricting the countrys ability to convert rubles for dollars and other foreign currencies if Putin orders troops into Ukraine. The scope of the potential measures widened in January as the Biden administration stepped up its rhetoric against the Kremlin. They now include possible export controls to curb Russias access to sensitive technology and electronics made with or based on U.S. software or equipment, according to people familiar with the matter. Exports of everything from aircraft avionics and machine tools to games consoles, tablets, televisions and smartphones could be affected, one of the people said. Russia is the worlds fourth-biggest smartphone market by sales, according to the Internet Research Institute. Sanctions could deprive Russians of major brands such as Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. and force them to buy cheaper Chinese or Indian devices instead, said Karen Kazaryan, the institutes general director.

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8. Is there a better way?

Sanctions are not an end in themselves and should not be treated as such, writes Steven Pifer, a former State Department official now with the Brookings Institution. He urged the Biden administration to embed sanctions in a broader U.S. policy toward Russia, link them to specific policy goals understood by the Kremlin, and be willing to reverse sanctions if Russia ceases the offending action.

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Hundreds of thousands of people are newly eligible to vote in New York City elections thanks to a new law extending voting rights to certain non-U.S. citizens. If all goes according to plan and threatened legal challenges fail, these newly enfranchised voters can start participating in elections in 2023. Their voting rights would apply only to New York City elections, not federal or state ones. At a time when some states are applying new restrictions on voting, New York City becomes the largest U.S. city to allow noncitizens to vote in certain elections, joining San Francisco as well as jurisdictions in Maryland and Vermont.

1. Who is affected by the law?

It applies to holders of so-called green cards -- noncitizens allowed to live and work permanently in the U.S. It also covers people who are temporarily authorized to work in the country; included in that group are young people who were children when they were brought to the U.S. as undocumented immigrants, have lived in America much or most of their lives and have received renewable two-year work permits through a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. (This group is sometimes known as Dreamers.) The only other requirement is that prospective new voters must have resided in the city for 30 or more days prior to an election.

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2. What elections can they vote in?

Once registered, they will be able to vote in municipal elections for positions such as mayor, comptroller, public advocate, city council and the presidents of the five New York City boroughs, as well as on ballot initiatives.

3. How many new voters could this enfranchise?

Of New York Citys 3 million immigrants, roughly 1.3 million havent been able to vote because they are not naturalized citizens. Of those, some 476,000 lack proper documentation to be in the U.S., and that group will remain ineligible to vote. That leaves roughly 800,000 people who may gain the ability to vote due to the new law.

4. How quickly will this be implemented?

City elections in 2022 wouldnt be affected. The New York City Board of Elections has until July to create an implementation plan, according to the Associated Press. This includes creating voter registration protocols for noncitizens as well as municipal-specific ballots so that noncitizens do not vote for state or federal measures or positions. Noncitizens would be able to register to vote in December and could cast their first ballot in the election scheduled for Jan. 9, 2023.

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5. What hurdles does the law face?

Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella has said he will challenge it in court. Extending the vote to noncitizens, he said, is unconstitutional and simultaneously dilutes the votes of and devalues what it means to be a citizen. Some opposition to the law centered on the 30-day residency requirement being too short. On a more practical level, the laws efficacy may depend in part on outreach efforts so that noncitizens are aware of their voting rights, as well as language translation services to support voting access. Federal law mandates that the city supply translation services in Bengali, Chinese, Korean and Spanish. Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, who left office at the start of January, the city also provided translation services for those who speak Haitian Creole, Polish, Russian and Yiddish.

6. Where else can noncitizens vote?

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Eleven towns in Maryland and two towns in Vermont allow some noncitizens to vote in municipal elections, and San Francisco in 2023 will allow some noncitizens to vote in school board elections. New York previously allowed some noncitizens to vote in school board elections, though that was abolished in 2002. Former City Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez, who first proposed the new law in 2020, said New York could become a role model not only to other cities in the state of New York, but to the whole country, especially those that have been on the attack when it comes to voting rights in the Midwest and the South. At least 19 states in 2021 passed legislation that restricted voting in some way, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

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All eyes are on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his demands about Ukraine, backed by 100,000 troops and a buildup of military capability on the Russia-Ukraine border. Putin wants guarantees from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that Ukraine will never be allowed to join the alliance, effectively giving him veto power over the membership, which today stands at 30 nations.

But less noticed are two countries to the north that are strong and independent democracies and have long ties to NATO, although neither is a member: Sweden and Finland. Late last month, the Russian foreign ministry made comments about both, indicating displeasure with the idea of either joining the alliance.

But this approach may well have backfired on the Russians, and increased the desire of both Nordic nations to seriously consider membership. It represents an opportunity for NATO, given the character, geography and military capability of the two countries. How should the U.S. and the alliance respond?

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When I was NATOs supreme allied commander, I often interacted with troops from Sweden and Finland, and visited each country several times for talks. I knew I was in the presence of fiercely capable warfighters. My security detail in the Balkans, for example, was provided by tall Swedish soldiers who seemed like modern-day Vikings. When I was in Finland and toured the museum of the winter war against Russia of 1939-40, I could sense the pride.

Technologically, both nations operate high-end combat equipment, notably the Swedish Air Force, which flies locally produced Saab Gripen strike fighters. These were used to excellent military effect in the combat operations in Libya in 2011 under my command. Finland just ordered 64 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighters, the most advanced combat aircraft in the world.

Both Finland and Sweden had significant troop contributions in Afghanistan and the Balkans. Both maintain universal conscription, and have traditions of military training across their societies.

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Over the decades of the Cold War, Finland and Sweden maintained a highly prized neutrality, and diplomatic and trade relations with both the West and the Soviet Union. Back then, polls consistently showed strong majorities of Swedes and Finns felt such independence from either side was the best course.

But more recently, in the wake of Russias invasion of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, attitudes are shifting. In his New Years address, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto opined that his nation would consider NATO membership, although polls continue to show a divided electorate.

NATO should welcome the Finns and Swedes with open arms, but not put any external pressure on them to join. In my conversations in Stockholm and Helsinki with senior military leaders, I found the best course was always to make clear that they would be welcome in the alliance but that there was no obligation.

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I would often say, If you ever want to join NATO, let us know on a Wednesday and well have you in by Friday. This in contrast to the long and tortuous path that other nations including Macedonia to Montenegro have undergone, to say nothing of the endless Membership Action Plans for Ukraine and Georgia.

For now, NATO should quietly assure both Finland and Sweden that the door to membership is open; continue to hold significant military-to-military exercises; and welcome deployments of Finns and Swedes on NATO military operations.

The U.S., in addition to working through alliance channels, should address the issue with the European Union, as both Sweden and Finland are part of that organization.

Bringing both these highly capable nations into NATO would be a huge plus for the U.S. It would also make clear to Putin that he does not hold a veto card when it comes to expanding the democratic alliance.

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More From Other Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:

 Russian Troops Arent the Answer for Kazakhstan: Editorial Board

 Kazakh Protests Will Only Tighten Putins Grip: Clara Ferreira Marques

 Four Ways the U.S. Can Keep Putin From Invading Ukraine: James Stavridis

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a retired U.S. Navy admiral and former supreme allied commander of NATO, and dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is also chair of the board of the Rockefeller Foundation and vice chairman of Global Affairs at the Carlyle Group. His latest book is 2034: A Novel of the Next World War.

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A resident receives a dose of COVID-19 vaccine in Windhoek, Namibia, on Jan. 9, 2022. The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa has exceeded the 10 million mark with the rapid transmission of the Omicron variant, which has surfaced in at least 33 African nations. (Xinhua/Chen Cheng)

by Xinhua writers Zhu Shaobin, Wang Ping, Jing Jing

NAIROBI, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa has exceeded the 10 million mark with the rapid transmission of the Omicron variant, which has surfaced in at least 33 African nations.

Data from the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) released on Sunday showed that as of Saturday evening, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa has reached 10,028,508 while the death toll stands at 231,157.

The surge is alarming. It only took less than one month for Africa to record an increase of 1 million new cases since Dec. 15, before which it took more than three months to record an additional 1 million new cases on the continent.

WORRIES OVER NEW VARIANTS

Dr. Angelique Coetzee, chairperson of the South African Medical Association, said the highly contagious Omicron, which is more prone to mutation compared to previous variants, should be the one contributing to the rapidly increasing cases.

"The region has low vaccination rates compared to the U.S. or the EU and the issue is concerning. We know that with unvaccinated people, immunocompromised people, and people with underlying conditions, the virus is likely to mutate and result in more variants," she said.

Dr. Phionah Atuhebwe, World Health Organization Immunization and Vaccines Development Programme Coordinator for Africa, said the virus knows no borders.

"If just one country lags behind in immunizing, the virus is given space to mutate into more dangerous variants ... this is why high-income countries must step up and help lower-income countries acquire the right resources to vaccinate, no matter what the financial cost," she said.

Cavince Adhere, a Kenyan international relations scholar, said prolonged bouts of the COVID-19 disease in Africa will only fuel new waves.

"To shield their populations from the virus, African countries will be forced to resort to social restrictions through lockdowns. This is only going to cause more economic pain to the already vulnerable continent," he said.

VACCINE APARTHEID

In general, Africa remains the least vaccinated region in the world with only 9.6 percent of its population fully vaccinated by early December. This is compared to the WHO's 40 percent vaccination rate target for the end of 2021.

In contrast, the vaccination rate in developed economies has been far above 60 percent.

With the huge vaccination gap, the term "vaccine apartheid" describes the divide between the world's richest and the least developed countries, especially African countries, in vaccine access.

"It is regrettable that some of the vaccines donated to the continent could not be administered before the expiry date. Most donations appear to be second thought political decisions by developed countries which have seen vaccines nearing expiry shipped to the continent," Adhere said.

According to WHO statistics, only six out of Africa's more than 50 countries, including Morocco, Tunisia, Rwanda, Botswana, Seychelles, and Mauritius, have hit the 2021 year-end target of fully vaccinating 40 percent of their populations.

At the current pace, the WHO estimates that it will take until May 2022 before Africa reaches 40 percent coverage and August 2024 before it reaches 70 percent vaccination.

According to the WHO, the continent faces a shortfall of 1.3 billion U.S. dollars for operational costs, including cold-chain logistics and travel costs and payment for vaccinators and supervisors, as well as a looming shortage of syringes and other crucial commodities.

"We're at a pivotal moment in this pandemic where complacency is the enemy," said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa. "With supplies starting to increase, we now must intensify our focus on other barriers to vaccination."

KEY LESSONS IN COVID-19 FIGHT

Dr. Coetzee said we must learn to live with the virus. "We need to follow all the non-pharmaceutical interventions and not be fed up and ensure access to the vaccines is equitable in order to fight the pandemic."

According to Adhere, vaccine nationalism and politicizing the virus have no role in helping the world climb out of its pandemic hole.

"Politics only brought division, nationalism only erected walls against other countries, yet viruses do not need passports to move across borders," he said, stressing that international cooperation is key to overcoming the pandemic.

He noted China has shown a great deal of concern towards Africa and its pandemic battle.

"Right from the onset, China was forthcoming with information and epidemic control experience that was lacking in Africa ... China's donations were key in giving Africa a strong basis to embrace the fight against the virus," Adhere said.

During the 8th Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation held in Senegal in November 2021, China promised to send another 1 billion vaccine doses to the continent.

This pledge was translated to reality during Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to Kenya where he announced on Jan. 6 that China will donate another 10 million vaccine doses to help the East African nation deal with the virus.

"These examples indicate the strong willingness of China to partner with Africa in confronting the pandemic. It sets a good example of what international pandemic cooperation should look like," he said. Enditem

(Xinhua reporters Bai Lin and Shi Yu in Nairobi also contributed to the story.)

A medical worker prepares a dose of China's COVID-19 vaccine in Windhoek, Namibia, on Jan. 9, 2022. The total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa has exceeded the 10 million mark with the rapid transmission of the Omicron variant, which has surfaced in at least 33 African nations. (Xinhua/Chen Cheng)
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Housing markets are red hot, with prices up more than 18% from November 2020 to November 2021. Thats an acceleration over the previous two years, which saw increases of 4% and 8% each. Its also a faster rate than the U.S. experienced during the housing boom of the 2000s that preceded the Great Recession.

That comparison is causing some heartburn. Are we in another housing bubble? asked Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys. The consensus, shared by Zandi, is that the answer is no  or, at least, that todays bubble is different and less dangerous than the last one. Lending standards are more strict than they were 15 years ago, for example, which ought to mean that fewer homeowners are at risk of defaulting if prices fall.

CNN, though, found a reason for pessimism in that optimism. The good news is that few economists believe that the current run-up in housing prices is a bubble thats about to burst, taking the economy down with it, Chris Isidore of CNN Business wrote on Oct. 27, 2021 before adding ominously, The bad news is that practically no one was worried about the housing bubble in 2007, either.

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But theres another reason for sanguinity about the current housing boom: We may have misunderstood the last one all along.

The economists David Beckworth and Scott Sumner have argued that the timing of the last housing bust does not line up with the conventional wisdom that it played a central role in the recession that began in December 2007. The housing market peaked in early 2006, and sustained nearly two years of decline before the economy stopped growing as unemployment stayed low.

Kevin Erdmann  the author of a new book about housing, Building from the Ground Up, and a colleague of Beckworth and Sumner at George Mason Universitys Mercatus Center  has more recently challenged the claim that the U.S. built too many houses back then. He points out that spending on housing didnt grow any faster than spending on other consumption goods during the boom (or the preceding decades). The notion that the price increases of 2000-2007 were unsustainable, he points out, also doesnt match the experience of other countries. The U.K. had a larger increase, a shorter and less severe decline, and a stronger rebound.

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Erdmann does not deny that average home prices rose too much in some metropolitan areas during that period. But these spikes were a function of too little homebuilding, not too much. Prices rose fast in two types of cities: those with tight constraints on supply (including New York and San Francisco) and those that dealt with an influx of newcomers from those places (such as Phoenix and Miami).(1)

A monetarist explanation for the Great Recession is that the Federal Reserve erred from late 2007 onward by failing to loosen monetary policy enough after initial signs of economic weakness, sending tightening signals to markets as the crisis developed, and then failing again to do what it would take to revive spending levels. Thats what caused a mild decline in housing markets to become a plunge  along with causing a financial crisis and a surge in unemployment and defaults.

What Erdmann adds to the story is that a misdiagnosis of the housing market was one of the reasons for the Feds mistakes. Before the crash, Ben Bernanke, then the Fed chair, said that the economy needed slowing in the housing market (and not, say, a loosening of restrictions on building). During the weak early years of the recovery, he saw sluggish home construction as a consequence of previous overbuilding, not as a sign that monetary policy needed to change.

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This wasnt an idiosyncratic view on Bernankes part. The Feds hawkish critics argued that the Fed should have pursued a tighter policy to moderate the pace of housing starts during the boom.

What caused the Great Recession is a complicated question. There is still some debate, after all, about the causes of the Great Depression of the 1930s. It would be unwise to conclude that speculation in housing played no role at all. But it is possible that insufficient supply was, and still is, a bigger problem than excessive demand.

The questions worth asking are not just whether we are in the middle of another national housing bubble, but whether we were ever in one.

More From Other Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:

 A Shrinking U.S. Wont Fix the Housing Crisis: Conor Sen

 Millennials Real Estate FOMO Goes Haywire: Lionel Laurent

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 Cracks in the Housing Market Are Starting to Show: Gary Shilling

(1) Erdmann writes: In both 2005 and 2006, more than 1.5% of Closed Access city residents migrated to other places, net of in-migrants. In the Contagion cities, net in-migration in 2005 was at about 1.5% of the local population.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Ramesh Ponnuru is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is the editor of the National Review and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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First, there was the disappearance of Kathleen Durst, the wife of the eccentric New York City real estate scion Robert A. Durst. After reportedly confiding to family that her husband had become physically and emotionally abusive, she vanished in January 1982 somewhere between their Manhattan penthouse and their getaway cottage in the suburbs.

Police investigated, but the case  officially a missing-persons matter  went cold. The wiry and intense Mr. Durst spent much of the 1990s estranged from his family. Then he, too, vanished in October 2000 after authorities, acting on a tip, announced they had reopened the Kathleen Durst case.

Days before investigators were scheduled to meet with longtime Durst confidante Susan Berman, she was found dead at her home in Beverly Hills, Calif.  shot in the back of the head, execution-style. The daughter of a Las Vegas mobster, she was compulsive about never letting in strangers.

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Police also received an anonymous handwritten note alerting them to a cadaver at the Berman residence. (Court experts later testified the writing in the note closely resembled Mr. Dursts.)

New York authorities tracked down Mr. Durst in mid-2001, only after he had been jailed in Galveston, Tex., in yet another homicide  the shooting and dismembering of Morris Black, his 71-year-old neighbor in a cheap rooming house. Mr. Durst had been hiding in the Gulf Coast city disguised as a mute woman when Black learned his true identity. Arguments and a fight followed, and in a struggle over a handgun, Black was killed.

Mr. Durst subsequently was arrested, jumped bond and was captured 45 days later in Pennsylvania, wearing yet another guise while shoplifting a $5 hoagie  even though he had $500 in his pocket and $37,000 in his car.

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New York real estate heir Robert Durst was sentenced Oct. 14, 2021, to life in prison after being convicted of murdering Susan Berman in December 2000. (Video: Reuters)

Returned to Galveston for trial, Mr. Durst claimed self-defense and was acquitted in Blacks death but, in a separate legal proceeding, pleaded guilty to evidence tampering. He said he threw the dismembered body into Galveston Bay in an alcohol-fueled panic, fearing authorities would never believe a millionaire cross-dresser.

Bent, frail and exhausted from a long life in the shadow of suspicion and on-the-run survival, Mr. Durst was convicted in September of the murder of Berman, who police believed harbored key information about his role in Kathleen Dursts disappearance.

Bob Durst has been around a lot of years, and hes been able to commit a lot of horrific crimes, Deputy District Attorney John Lewin said outside the courthouse where Mr. Durst was found guilty by a Los Angeles jury. Considering what hes done, he got a lot more of a life than he was entitled to. Mr. Dursts attorney said he would appeal the verdict.

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On Oct. 14, Mr. Durst was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Two days later, he was hospitalized for covid-19 and placed on a ventilator. Two weeks after that, he was indicted by a New York grand jury for second-degree murder of his first wife, almost 40 years after she had disappeared at age 29.

Mr. Durst died Jan. 10 at 78 while in the custody of the California Department of Corrections. His lawyer Chip Lewis confirmed the death, saying it was associated with Mr. Dursts medical issues in recent years, but did not provide additional details.

Born into a real estate dynasty that ranked with the Trumps, Zeckendorfs and Helmsleys in New York, Mr. Durst had been a deeply troubled outlier of the family since his youth. He fought constantly with his younger brother Douglas, who went on to head the family empire. When Robert Durst tried joining the button-down real estate world, he failed miserably.

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He was socially awkward, muttered to himself, belched noisily in public and urinated in office wastebaskets. In other settings, he could be smooth, urbane and enormously generous. He gave thousands of dollars to friends, attended the ballet and partied at Studio 54 and other Manhattan hot spots.

A master of disguises and aliases, he maintained a stash of wigs and masks and assumed false identities, including the names of high school classmates. He lied about his accomplishments, once claiming falsely that he held two doctoral degrees.

Bob is incapable of telling the truth, Douglas Durst told the New York Times in 2015. He is a true psychopath, beyond any emotions. Thats why he does things, so he can experience the emotions that other people have vicariously. Because he has absolutely none of his own.

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Except for the Galveston homicide, he eluded and confounded police for years. Not until the broadcast on HBO in early 2015 of the high-profile documentary The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst did authorities move in and arrest him in Bermans murder.

The meticulously researched film, for which Mr. Durst provided 20 hours of interviews, delved into evidence suggesting his role in Kathleen Dursts disappearance and Bermans death. The filmmakers confronted Mr. Durst with a letter he had once sent to Berman misspelling Beverly Hills as Beverley Hills, the same way the word was spelled on the cadaver note. (He denied writing the latter.)

In the final episode of the six-part HBO series, he is heard muttering to himself during a bathroom break, apparently unaware that a microphone attached to his clothing is still live: What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.

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Andrew Jarecki, director and co-writer of The Jinx, said the comments were consistent with other more guarded statements throughout the film, in which Mr. Durst appeared oddly driven to talk about the evidence against him. (Jarecki had previously directed a 2010 feature film, All Good Things, starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst, inspired by Mr. Dursts life.)

He seems to like to put himself at risk, Jarecki told the Times. It may make him feel more vital. . . . In this case, we felt he had a kind of compulsion to confess.

The precise meaning of Mr. Dursts words came under challenge when an October 2018 courtroom airing of the original unedited audio of the film revealed that his two bathroom statements had been reversed and several intervening comments deleted.

This is show business, Mr. Dursts lead attorney, Dick DeGuerin, scoffed to the Times. Its not a documentary.

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Jinx editor Zac Stuart-Pontier, for his part, told the Times that we put the line killed them all at the very end of the last episode to end the series on a dramatic note, not to link it to any other line.

Robert Alan Durst was born April 12, 1943, in New York City, the eldest of four children of Seymour Durst and the former Bernice Herstein.

His paternal grandfather, Joseph, emigrated from Eastern Europe in 1902 and worked his way into the Manhattan commercial and residential building management business. By 1927, he founded what would become the Durst Organization, which later entered the even more lucrative skyscraper development world and became a multibillion-dollar business.

Robert, called Bobby by acquaintances, grew up in affluent suburban Westchester County. He later claimed, at 7, to have witnessed his mother fall from the roof of the family mansion. His brother Douglas later said none of the children witnessed the death and that Robert was using the tragedy to make himself appear more sympathetic at trial.

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The death  which relatives told the New York Times was an apparent suicide  left Robert emotionally scarred. He underwent psychiatric counseling to control outbursts of rage.

In 1965, he received an economics degree from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., then enrolled at the University of California at Los Angeles for graduate work. There he met Berman, a lively, aspiring writer and only child of David Berman, onetime partner of Nevada mobster Bugsy Siegel.

There was an immediate and potent chemistry between Bobby and Susan, whose mother had died by suicide and whose father had died in a hospital when she was 12. While the relationship was reportedly platonic, they shared deeply held confidences.

Meanwhile, in 1973, Mr. Durst married Kathleen McCormack, a dental hygienist and daughter of a middle-class Irish Catholic family, bringing her into one of the most prominent Jewish families in New York City.

Before marrying, they moved to Vermont and briefly operated a health food store. They returned to New York at Seymour Dursts insistence that Robert join the family business.

Ill-suited for the job and increasingly estranged from his siblings and father, he eventually negotiated a $65 million separation from the family trust. His marriage also was collapsing.

Just after Christmas 1981, Kathleen Durst admitted herself to a New York hospital with bruises to her face and head. Hospital records reportedly indicated the injuries were inflicted by her husband.

A month later, she vanished. As suspicion mounted around Mr. Durst, Berman became his personal handler, fending off police, family and the tabloids.

In 1990, he obtained a divorce from the absent Kathleen, claiming she had abandoned him. Ten years later, amid the new probe into Kathleens disappearance, Mr. Durst quickly married Debrah Lee Charatan a real estate executive and onetime girlfriend. She began managing his financial affairs and also served as heir to his estate, blocking his fortune from returning to the Durst family. They rarely lived together.

In addition to his wife and Douglas Durst, he had two other siblings, Thomas and Wendy. A complete list of survivors could not immediately be determined.

Some time before the airing of The Jinx documentary on HBO, producers of the show forewarned investigators of Mr. Dursts killed them all reference in the final episode. Fearing he might flee the country, agents arrested him hours before the finale. He was in New Orleans living under an alias and was held for extradition to Los Angeles for Bermans murder. Years of pretrial skirmishing followed. His trial began in March 2020, then was postponed for more than a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2016, Mr. Durst pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a .38-caliber revolver at the time of his arrest in New Orleans and was sentenced to seven years in prison for that crime.

Mr. Durst told Los Angeles County prosecutors in 2015 that he had spent much of his adult life on drugs and was on methamphetamine while being interviewed for The Jinx. It should have been obvious, he said, according to court papers. And Im surprised my lawyer let me go ahead with it, because it just  I looked like there was something going on.

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Jordan says he won't cooperate with panel Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight Rep. Jim Jordan, a close confidant of former president Donald Trump, said on Sunday that he would not cooperate with a House committee investigating last years attack on the U.S. Capitol. The panel had asked Jordan (R-Ohio) to disclose conversations he had with Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, the day of the attack by Trump supporters aiming to stop Congress from formally certifying the presidential election victory of Democrat Joe Biden.

This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core constitutional principles and would serve to further erode legislative norms, Jordan said in a letter to the committees chairman, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.).

His rejoinder came after the panel requested an interview with Jordan last month.

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Jordan was one of Trumps main defenders during his two impeachment trials, the second on a charge of inciting the Capitol riot. Both times, Trump was acquitted by the Senate, then controlled by Republicans.

This year, House Republicans nominated Jordan to the committee investigating the riot, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) rejected the choice, citing his support of Trumps false claims of election fraud.

 Reuters

Japan covid fears keep U.S. troops on bases

The United States and Japan on Sunday agreed to keep American troops within their bases as worries grew about a sharp rise in coronavirus cases in the country.

The restrictions starting Monday will last 14 days, confining U.S. military personnel to base facilities except for essential activities, a statement from the U.S. Forces in Japan said. The allies will share information and cooperate on coronavirus measures, given the extraordinary virulence of the omicron variant spreading throughout Japan, the statement said.

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U.S. military members will wear masks, both on and off base, when outside their homes and will continue to carry out strict testing before leaving for and after arrival in Japan, it said.

New coronavirus cases have surged in Japan, jumping above 8,000 on Saturday, a four-month record. The rise has been most pronounced in areas near U.S. bases. Last week, Japan asked for U.S. cooperation in keeping its military personnel on base.

Okinawa, a southwestern group of islands that houses most of the 55,000 U.S. troops in Japan, is among the three prefectures where separate government restrictions kicked in Sunday. The measures, which last through the end of the month, include early closing hours for restaurants at 8 p.m. or 9 p.m. Some restaurants also must stop serving alcohol.

The restrictions also went into effect in Yamaguchi prefecture, where Iwakuni base is located, and nearby Hiroshima.

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 Associated Press

GM recognizes state's emissions authority

General Motors on Sunday said it had agreed to recognize Californias authority to set vehicle emissions standards under the Clean Air Act.

The move will make the Detroit automaker eligible for government fleet purchases by the state of California, GM said.

The automaker made the commitment to recognize Californias authority in a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).

Soon after Joe Biden was elected president, GM reversed course and no longer backed a Trump administration effort to bar California from setting its own emissions rules.

GM has announced plans to eliminate tailpipe emissions from new light-duty vehicles by 2035. In June, GM boosted global spending on electric and autonomous vehicles to $35 billion through 2025, 30 percent over its previous forecast.

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In November 2019, California said it planned to halt all purchases of new vehicles for state government fleets from GM, Toyota and other automakers backing President Donald Trump in the tailpipe emissions battle.

California said it purchased $58.6 million in General Motors vehicles between 2016 and 2018.

In April, the Environmental Protection Agency said it was moving to restore legal authority to California to set tough vehicle emissions rules and zero-emission vehicle mandates.

In July, 16 Republican state attorneys general urged the EPA to reject reinstating Californias authority.

 Reuters

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Currently, there are few or no hospital beds available in Montgomery County, so patients are being treated in the emergency room halls. Hospitals should be required to be transparent about the criteria they use to decide who gets a hospital bed. One of those criteria should be that vaccinated patients waiting for a bed (whether for covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, or other related medical conditions) should get higher priority for a bed than an unvaccinated patient ill with covid. As noted in the Jan. 3 editorial Payouts for vaccine refusers, unvaccinated patients must face the consequences of their decision. One of those consequences should be lower priority to get hospital beds.
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Former American Idol star Clay Aiken announced Monday that he is making a second bid for a congressional seat in North Carolina, this time seeking the Democratic nod in a more liberal district than eight years ago. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight As a loud and proud Democrat, I intend to use my voice to deliver real results for North Carolina families, Aiken, a native of Raleigh, N.C., said on his new website.

In 2014, Aiken prevailed in the Democratic primary in the states 2nd District but was soundly defeated in the general election by Republican incumbent Renee L. Ellmers.

This time, Aiken, 43, is running in the redrawn 6th District that includes much of the territory currently represented by long-serving Rep. David E. Price (D), 81, who announced in October that he would not seek reelection this year.

One of my first experiences in politics and government was asking Congressman Price to speak to my eighth grade class  an invitation he graciously accepted, Aiken shared on his website. He is a legendary legislator who has delivered for the Triangle for over 30 years, and he leaves big shoes to fill. Id be honored to take his place.

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The 6th District includes Durham and other parts of the Research Triangle in North Carolina. Aiken faces what is expected to a competitive primary. The Democrat who wins will be heavily favored in the general election.

Before his second-place finish on American Idol in 2003, Aiken was a special-education teacher. Since his participation in the singing competition, he has released several albums, appeared on Broadway, hosted a Christmas special on television and served as a UNICEF ambassador.

In 2012, Aiken was the runner-up on The Celebrity Apprentice, the reality show hosted by Donald Trump.

During the 2016 presidential race, Aiken defended Trump against accusations of racism, citing his time on the show with him. After the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville the following year, Aiken apologized for having defended Trump.

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Aiken said that, as a member of Congress, he would advocate inclusion, income equality, free access to quality health care and combating climate change.

I also believe we need more civility in our politics, and North Carolina deserves representatives in Washington who use their positions to make peoples lives better, not to advance polarizing positions that embarrass our state and stand in the way of real progress, he said.

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A family in Ozera, Ukraine, buries 43-year-old Andriy Voznenko after a month-long search for his whereabouts. (Video: Joyce Koh/The Post; photo: Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Post)

After the exhumation of hundreds of bodies in Ukraine, families are finding their loved ones, some of whom are receiving their first dignified burials.
KAMPALA, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Schools in Uganda on Monday fully reopened for physical classes after COVID-19 forced the government to close learning institutions in March 2020.

According to the Ministry of Education and Sports, pre-primary, primary, and secondary schools have been reopened and school administrators have been urged to ensure that COVID-19 prevention measures are followed all the time.

The ministry said schools are supposed to have a system of monitoring and isolating symptomatic cases and reporting to the nearest health facility. If several COVID-19 cases are found in the school, the whole school is required to be tested.

At Kampala Parents School, in the capital of Kampala, the school administrators were strict on following COVID-19 prevention procedures as parents brought in their children.

"All our children have masks, including teachers. We have a sanitizer booth at the entrance of the school so that whoever comes in passes through that booth," Daphine Kato, the principal of Kampala Parents School, told Xinhua in an interview.

She said pupils were returning in phases to avoid crowding during the registration process.

Dennis Oryem, a parent at the school, was grateful to the government for reopening the schools.

"I appeal to parents to work with school management to ensure everyone observes SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) as a measure of averting the pandemic," Oryem said.

Patrick Friday, a teacher at Galihuma Primary School in the western district of Kyenjojo, told Xinhua by telephone that the turnout at the school on the first day has been low.

He said out of the 98 pupils expected in Primary Seven class, 65 learners reported.

"The turnout in lower classes is below average. I think parents are still reluctant to send pupils back to school," Friday said, adding that whereas pupils in upper classes were all wearing masks, others in the lower classes were struggling to keep them on.

After the March 2020 closure of learning institutions, the government partially reopened schools and universities to allow final year candidates to sit their final year examinations. In June 2021, all schools and universities were closed as the country faced the second wave of the pandemic.

In August last year medical schools were reopened as a measure to boost the country's number of health personnel involved in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Institutions of higher learning reopened in November last year.

As schools reopen, apart from the COVID-19 prevention measures, Uganda is putting emphasis on vaccinating about 22 million people or half the country's population.

The Ministry of Health figures show that as of Jan. 7, about 12 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered since the vaccination exercise started in March last year.

Ruth Aceng, the minister of Health, last week warned that the country is currently facing a surge of COVID-19 cases, urging the public to take extra care and avoid being complacent.

The country has so far registered 153,762 COVID-19 cases, with 98,693 recoveries and 3,339 deaths. 
Trusted local news has never been more important, but providing the information you need, information that can change sometimes minute-by-minute, requires a partnership with you, our readers. Please consider making a contribution today to support this vital resource that you and countless others depend on.
Another cheating service operator who has spruiked his services to international students on Facebook, claiming he has helped students at Australian Pacific College (APC), says he can provide assessments for $70 to $90. He has warned students on the Facebook private group Brasileiros em Sydney that they risked being reported to immigration authorities if they fail to submit their assignments. Brazilian student Rebeca Fattori attended Nortwest College. The Herald has contacted international students in the group who discussed Australian colleges based on their relaxed attendance requirements. There is no suggestion the students engaged in cheating. Some students in the Brasileiros group have discussed a preference for APC because it was flexible with attendance. One student said she studied marketing at APC and didnt have to attend classes. However you have to submit assignments and the only thing they check is plagiarism, she said in Portuguese. Another said she did not take the course seriously and enrolled to secure her visa.

Brazilian student Rebeca Fattori who attends Nortwest College in Sydney said many international students were looking for colleges that were chill with attendance. Life in Sydney is not cheap, so we have to work, she said. A spokesman for Nortwest said attendance monitoring was not necessary of mature-age students who were required to demonstrate academic progress to fulfil visa conditions. He said Nortwest provided a minimum workload of 20 hours with trainers either face-to-face or online. Lectures were recorded available at all times. Nortwest used software for the detection of cheating and assessment tasks were changed annually. We have detected plagiarism from time to time, usually amongst the students, the spokesman said. Those students are marked as failed and are required to resubmit their work at additional fees to them. We do not have resources to monitor third-party services providing cheating services. A student who has returned to Brazil after studying at ILSC, an English language school in Sydney, Nathalia Mulezini, said many students who are unable to get work holiday visas had enrolled in courses to fulfil visa requirements. You just have to make sure you are sending your assignments on time and once in a while you must show up there, she said.

Loading The courses are strong and some of them a bit hard, but you can find a lot of the content on the internet which helps and the teachers arent very strict. Its a cheaper way to stay legal in the country and to work. An international student who attended ILSC in 2019, who did not want her name published, said many students were doing courses only to keep [their] visa and because migration agents had recommended particular colleges because they get commission for enrolling people there. The Herald contacted ILSC for comment. The Herald has previously reported that some agents who recruit students in Australia are getting commissions of up to 50 per cent and additional cash bonuses as high as $300,000.

Brazilian student Welington Bernardes, who is studying leadership and management at APC, said he needed to attend his course twice a week. He said his main reason for doing the course in Sydney was to fulfil his visa requirements. A spokesman for APC said VET colleges were not required to report on attendance, which APC monitored. They reported on student progress. I know that a lot of people can deduce that more attendance leads to more learning, but thats not the case, the spokesman said. Its a mindset we need to move away from ... Mere attendance does not indicate engagement. The spokesman said plagiarism was a problem faced by all education providers. He said his college had contacted companies that had promoted cheating services to students seeking the removal of all of our assignments from their websites.

Another private college operator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he wanted the federal government to clamp down on colleges that do not require students to complete adequate face-to-face hours because they were giving the sector a bad name. At our colleges we have online classes with a live teacher and student attendance is taken. We are as strict as we can be, he said. The operator said online cheating was difficult to monitor. Oscar Ong, national president of the Council of International Students Australia, said better regulation of contract cheating was needed. In addition to attendance, institutions should look into other ways to monitor student progress in their courses, so that support can be provided in time before they fail their courses and have to repeat, he said.

VET courses were required to offer a minimum of 20 scheduled contact hours per week to international students. More flexible attendance has been allowed during the COVID-19 pandemic, but education providers were required to document assessment standards. Loading International Education Association of Australia chief executive Phil Honeywood said the pandemic had exacerbated a fight for international students who had managed to stay in Australia. In a minority of cases, the need for some colleges to keep their doors open, has led to a lack of focus on quality provision, he said. Ravi Singh, managing director of Global Reach which represents Australian universities in south Asia and president of the Association of Australian Education Representatives in India, described some private vocational and education and training providers as visa factories where the courses are just to enable the visa onshore at relatively low cost.
This week Australia hit a new low point in the COVID-19 pandemic, with record cases, a shambolic collapse in the testing system, businesses closed, workers furloughed without pay, supermarket shelves stripped bare and mass public confusion.

Two years into the pandemic and Australias federal system of government is struggling with some of the most basic elements of pandemic response. While the blame game between Canberra and the states has become more than just unedifying, it is a failure of duty by political representatives to the public they are elected to serve.

Public trust has swung towards state leaders during the pandemic, exposing the Prime Ministers lack of power or lack political will. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Which level of government is responsible for the procurement and distribution of rapid antigen tests? Depending on which politician is speaking, it is either the Morrison government, the state premiers, or the free market.

Who is responsible for international tennis players entry into the country for the Australian Open? On Wednesday, the Prime Minister was telling us it was Victoria, but the following day he was proudly boasting it was him.
The Queens Counsel barrister was behind the push for former chief justice Wayne Martins review of the Criminal Property Confiscation Act (2000), which called for a complete overhaul of the act and also addressed WAs drug laws and mandatory sentencing. Attorney-General John Quigley initially endorsed holding a review after attention was brought to Tam Nguyen, a single mother and factory worker, who faced losing her Girrawheen home because of her former husbands drug crimes. Supreme Court Justice Peter Martino was forced to rule that her childrens home, which she solely paid the mortgage on for two years, be confiscated because there was no discretion in the act to allow otherwise. Tam Nguyen and former Liberal Democrat MP Aaron Stonehouse, who lobbied for a review of WAs criminal confiscation laws in 2018. Wayne Martin consulted extensively with judges, lawyers, police, the Corruption and Crime Commission and university researchers and found the act had the undeniable potential to inflict injustice, and to operate arbitrarily and unfairly.

Even the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, which gets tasked with applying for the seizures, rebuked parts of the act. But the review has sat dormant before Parliament since 2019. Its probably one of the most disgraceful things that the McGowan government hasnt done, Mr Percy said. And the disappointing aspect is that there are a number of lawyers in the McGowan government who do know better; Quigley knows better; McGowan, hes a lawyer, he should know better. And there are others. They know that tough drug laws get you nowhere, you need an alternative approach.

The government says the report remains under consideration. Tough drug laws did not deter those who hid 99 kilograms of the drug in a latex pillow shipment into WA on December 30, which police allege held an estimated street value of $100 million. One of the first amendments to the Misuse of Drugs Act that the McGowan government brought in was life for 28 grams, Mr Percy said. Is that really discouraging people from bringing massive amounts of drugs into Western Australia? Of course it doesnt. The methamphetamine was found in a shipment of latex pillows. Credit:Australian Federal Police

He said WA had the most lucrative drug market because of its tough drug laws, meaning customers paid a premium for this higher risk product. The confiscation act then allows the government to claim frozen cash and assets from police raids under five circumstances: Unexplained wealth, criminal benefits, crime-used property, crime-derived property and where the person is a declared drug trafficker. They will not jail their way out of this problem. Tom Percy QC Almost all raids target drugs, and once declared a drug trafficker for an offence punishable by imprisonment for more than two years, all that person owns or that they gifted before or after their conviction can be seized. There is no capacity for someone to say to a court, hey, wait a minute, this is legitimate. This came to me in my grandmothers will, go and have a look at the probate documents. Thats gone, Mr Percy said.

WA jails are bursting with people facing drug charges or serving time for drug offences. Last financial year, police statistics showed they laid 25,910 drug charges, which was the third highest offence behind fraud and related charges (27,129) and stealing (58,145). WA had the second highest imprisonment rate of the nation with 318 per 100,000 people for September quarter of 2021, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Its almost a third more than the national average of 211, which was significantly bolstered by the Northern Territorys rate of 987 per 100,000 head of population.

Currently, WA prisons house 6662 people daily at $354 each, totalling $2.36 million a day. Notwithstanding that weve got the most punitive and Draconian drug laws and asset confiscation laws in Western Australia, drugs are still out of control, Mr Percy said. Its not as though weve just marginally better rates of offending than other states; we have worse. Its unsustainable. The Australian Federal Polices December latex pillow bust ended a year in which WA Police Force reported three major drug smuggling raids of vehicles crossing the border, plus a joint operation with the AFP that uncovered 77 kilograms of heroin from a Bibra Lake business in 2021.

The vehicle raids resulted in the seizure of 210.6 kilograms of meth and $8.1 million in cash. WA police also froze $83 million worth of assets, including cash, between July 2020 and June 2021. According to court documents, the justice department confiscated more than $9 million cash and eight properties from convicted drug traffickers and suspected criminal enterprises in 2021. More than 80 per cent of Australian cash seizures has occurred in WA, according to state police. The state also benefited from undisclosed amounts in five bank accounts, 11 cash seizures and the sale of four out of the eight seized properties. The four property sales were worth $1.184 million collectively.

Yet most of the house seizures were not related to major organised crime. A Lake Clifton couple, with two young children, were forced to buy back their family property after it was confiscated in August over a marijuana crop that yielded 1 kilogram of cannabis, which the 26-year-old mother told a court she watered under duress. In another example, an older Camillo man has met with great hardship as his only asset, a house he owned for almost 30 years, was stripped from him in November. His crime was growing 13 cannabis plants, only five of which were maturely grown under a hydroponic setup, in his shed for personal use, which resulted in a $3500 court fine. What the government gets back [in confiscation funds] is just a fraction of what it costs to jail people, Mr Percy said.

Its an exercise in futility  not enough to fund the drug squad for six months. WA Police Forces annual budget runs at a total cost of $1.68 billion; $100 million of regulatory fines, such as speeding tickets, or $83 million in seized assets barely makes a dent. Courts and tribunals cost $433 million to run last year, while adult prisons cost just over $1 billion, according to the Department of Justice annual report. The Martin review delivered 60 recommendations but Parliaments upper house attempted to address only one last year, when Brian Walker of the Legalise Cannabis Western Australia Party tried to slightly amend the misuse of drugs act with his independent bill.

Dr Walkers amendment gave judges the discretion over whether a person should be declared a drug trafficker on the balance of probabilities that the person has not engaged in the trafficking of significant quantities of drugs for commercial reward. Yet the bill went nowhere. A spokesperson for Mr Quigley said the existing criminal property confiscation scheme was complex and any reform would be a large body of work. The recommendations remain under detailed consideration by the government, they said. Mr Percy believes that with the increasing legalisation of cannabis globally, in 20 years people will look back at WAs drug laws as being as unenlightened as jailing homosexuals for sodomy  which he was defending West Australians against until 1990.
Australia has locked in its purchase of more than 120 tanks and other armoured vehicles from the United States, at a cost of $3.5 billion, as part of a major upgrade of the armys fleet.

The commitment to buy 75 M1A2 main battle tanks indicates the government is committed to an advanced fleet of armoured vehicles despite the focus in recent years being on other major acquisitions such as submarines, jet fighters and long-range missiles amid the rise of China.

Australia will purchase 75 new M1A2 Abrams tanks. Credit:US Army

Defence Minister Peter Dutton will confirm the upgrade on Monday after the US government approved the potential purchase last year.

The tanks will replace the armys 59 Abrams M1A1s, which were bought in 2007 but have not seen combat.
A few days ago a friend sent me a tweet dividing the world into two camps: those who respond to every bit of news about the latest variant of COVID with a shrug of the shoulders  well all get it, so we cant worry about it  and those who react with caution, determined to avoid illness.

The chart featured in the tweet, my friend suggested, was not quite right. For him, it was less a matter of two camps and more the daily cycle of his own views.

Sydneysiders line up for PCR tests at the RPA clinic in Camperdown on Sunday. Credit:Bianca De Marchi

Increasingly, I find this is the position of most people. In the morning, say, when the stats come out and our hospitals seem threatened, we believe in doing everything that can be done to slow the virus. By late afternoon when pleasant memories of drinks with friends call out to us, we begin to wonder out loud what choice there is, other than getting on with our lives?

This, it seems to me, is the dominant fact of this particular period of the pandemic: widespread confusion. Society feels a little like the wild west. We come up with our own rules. Those rules chop and change depending not just on circumstances, but also on more fickle factors, like what mood we happen to be in.
JUBA, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The African Development Bank (AfDB) announced a 14 million U.S. dollar grant on Monday to boost food security, value addition and trade in South Sudan.

Benedict Kanu, AfDB country manager for South Sudan, said the five-year project will be implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in conjunction with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security.

"With South Sudan being land-locked and experiencing weak urban and peri-urban infrastructure, having good access to lucrative markets especially within the country is a necessary condition for farmers to be profitable, productive and reduce risk of loss of surplus farm produce," Kanu said in a statement issued in the capital, Juba.

The project will help increase the production and incomes of almost 20,000 farming families in Central and Eastern Equatoria and Jonglei states, he said, noting that the grant will benefit formerly internally displaced persons now returned to their homes in need of economic reintegration.

"A key factor explaining Africa's and indeed South Sudan's low level of agricultural value addition is the inefficient marketing infrastructure," Kanu said. "This prevents farmers and processors from realizing the full value of their products, even in their raw form."

The AfDB also said that the project will create aggregation business opportunities for farmers and traders, including women and youth, and provide them with new skills and knowledge, and the agro-processing equipment they need to produce competitive products. 
The booming tree-change trend in property is predicted to continue into 2022, even though homebuyers may be forced back to city offices if life returns to some kind of post-lockdown normality.

Agents say that while the pandemic and its related city lockdowns had prompted many people to move to regional areas over the past two years, there were few signs that the pattern would change in the short to medium term.

From a steady stream of cars to a steady stream, COVID caused a distinct city exodus. Credit:iStock

McCrindle Research social researcher Geoff Bailey said homebuyers would continue to move to tree-change areas in 2022, with flexible work options offering opportunities to work city jobs from a patch of paradise hours away.

We will continue to see Australians who love a simple lifestyle  but who can also live their values, have less commute time and more time for self-care  make the move, Mr Bailey said.
WARNING GRAPHIC VIDEOS

Rio de Janeiro: Ten people were killed when the face of a massive cliff collapsed at a popular tourism spot in south-east Brazil, authorities said.

Boaters who narrowly escaped being crushed captured videos of the giant slab falling into Lake Furnas in Minas Gerais state on Saturday (Sunday AEDT). The rock peeled off after days of intense rain in the area.

A tourist boat navigates through a canyon in Furnas Lake, near Capitolio City, Brazil. A massive slab of rock broke away at the weekend, killing at least seven people. Credit:AP

One video showed panicky boaters who could see boulders tumbling into the lake urging others, Get out of there, people! A child can be heard saying Lots of rocks are falling, rocks are falling as someone urges the pilot to gun the engine down. But their calls appeared not to be heard by boats closest to the cliff.
Salisbury, MD (21801)

Today

Mostly cloudy skies early will become partly cloudy later in the day. High 72F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Showers in the evening with isolated thunderstorms arriving overnight. Low 54F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
BAMAKO/ACCRA, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Mali reserves the right to respond to the "unfortunate sanctions" taken by the Economic Community of West African Countries (ECOWAS), government spokesman Abdoulaye Maiga said in a statement read Monday on national television.

Mali has decided to "recall its accredited ambassadors" in other ECOWAS member states and to close "its land and air borders" with the states concerned on the basis of reciprocity, the spokesman said.

The government of Mali deplores the "inhumane" nature of these measures, which "affect the populations already severely affected" by security and health crises, in particular that of COVID-19, Maiga said, vowing steps to respond to these "unfortunate, illegal and illegitimate" sanctions, which were announced on Sunday at the conclusion of an ECOWAS extraordinary summit in Accra, Ghana.

The sanctions include the immediate withdrawal of ambassadors of all other ECOWAS member states from Mali, the closure of land and air borders between ECOWAS countries and Mali, the suspension of all financial and economic transactions between ECOWAS member states and Mali, with the exception of essential consumer goods, according to a communique issued after the meeting.

Maiga said the ECOWAS measures "contrast with the efforts made by the government and its readiness for dialogue with a view to reaching a compromise with ECOWAS on the timing of the elections in Mali."

He called for "calm and restraint" among the Malian people, adding that "steps have been taken to ensure the normal supply of the country by all appropriate means."

The ECOWAS leadership said the sanctions were taken because the proposed chronogram by the Malian transitional authorities that set the duration of the transition for a total of five and a half years is "totally unacceptable."

The sanctions excluded the supply of pharmaceutical and medical supplies, including materials needed for the control of COVID-19, petroleum products, and electricity.

The ECOWAS sanctions call for a freeze of all assets of Mali in the ECOWAS central bank, a freeze of assets of the Malian state, state enterprises, and parastatals in commercial banks, and the suspension of Mali from all financial assistance and transactions from all financial institutions.

All ECOWAS institutions are instructed to take steps to implement the sanctions with immediate effect.

"The sanctions will be gradually lifted only after an acceptable and agreed chronogram is finalized and monitored satisfactory progress is realized in the implementation of the chronogram for the elections," the ECOWAS communique said.

ECOWAS has 15 member states: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote d'Ivoire, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.

Last November, ECOWAS imposed sanctions on the Malian transitional authorities in response to their claim of inability to meet the transition deadline of February 2022 for holding elections, including a travel ban and a freeze on financial assets. 
ChristianaCare announced Monday it has enacted Crisis Standards of Care protocols to help in their mission to address "unprecedented demand for hospital and health care services" amid a winter COVID-19 surge.

Used in times of emergency "to guide decision-making when the demand for care surpasses the available resources," when contingency plans already in place begin to fall short, the Crisis Standards of Care designates a framework for healthcare providers to allocate resources in order to care for patients with the highest need when it is "no longer possible to deliver care according to normal standards."

'It's as bad as it sounds'

"At ChristianaCare, we take care of people. Our commitment to our community is unwavering," said Dr. Janice Nevin, president and CEO of ChristianaCare. "The health care system is under unprecedented strain. Never have there been this many people in our community who need hospitalization, emergency care and other health care services. We have taken this step to implement Crisis Standards of Care so that our caregivers have the flexibility and decision-making tools they need in order to deliver care to patients with the highest need at this time when the demand exceeds all available resources."

Changes detailed in a release from the healthcare system Monday include broad strokes like "advancing different care models" and "changing workflows," but also included simplified documentation requirements and modification of admissions and discharge criteria.

Surgical, procedural, and diagnostic schedules would also fall victim to the new standards, as would how supplies and treatment resources are allocated and distributed. Non-urgent services will be put on the backburner for the time being. Decisions will be made in a "just, equitable, and transparent way," the hospital ensured.

"This is a moment where we are being much more public about the severity of the situation. This is a dire situation we're facing. This is not a sustainable model for us," Dr. Ken L. Silverstein, chief physician executive, told WDEL. "The demand is outpacing the supply, and the community needs to hear that and the community needs to know that they can join with us arm-in-arm and help us mitigate the spread of this virus and help us curb this pandemic. They can get vaccinated; they can get boosted when they're eligible. They can wear masks; they can socially distance; they can wash their hands; they can be mindful of their social interactions. That's what we need. We need the community to work with us, and that's why [Monday] we are coming forth with a very public message about the circumstances that we face--and have been facing, really, day-in and day-out."

Delaware's hospital systems have been operating at a 100%+ capacity for weeks, and demand for services has only increased as COVID-19 continues to spread in the community, particularly among the unvaccinated.

The hospital is bound by federal law not to turn anyone away, they are encouraging anyone who doesn't find themselves in an immediate COVID-related medical emergency to self-isolate and wait it out. You will not be turned away if you show up in need of care, hospital officials assured in a follow-up call. In this unprecedented time, if you have COVID but you're not experiencing a medical emergency, you do not need to go to the emergency room.

"What I want to say to you is, it's as bad as it sounds, because it's really important to reinforce the message of what we're saying," Silverstein said. "We are here for you. We have a commitment to providing high-quality, safe care. We have a commitment to serve the community. We have a mission of service to the community, and we take that very seriously and people...who are engaged and working together with us, thank you. We need more of that. We can get through this. We can get through this together--and we will--this step that we've taken is really to address that, to position ourselves so that when you come through the door with that acute need, we will be able to address it."

On the heels of their announcement of a move to Crisis Standards of Care, ChristianaCare issued a joint statement on the current situation also signed by Bayhealth's Kevin Snyder, TidalHealth Nanticoke's Roger Follebout, and Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic's Mary Wascavage. That statement read:

"Delaware hospitals have confronted the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic for nearly two years, meeting the demand for acute care with comprehensive surge-capacity plans. We have postponed surgeries and procedures, re-purposed space within our facilities to accommodate more patients, and directed available resources, including staff, to meet the increased needs of our hospitals and emergency departments.

Our health care workers have carried the burden of caring for our community during the pandemic, and they have done extraordinary work under increasingly difficult circumstances.

Due to the dramatic increase of COVID-19 infection in recent weeks, we are treating more patients in our hospitals and emergency departments than at any time since the pandemic began. The current demand for care surpasses the normal resources that we have available. Each of our organizations is taking steps to ensure that we are able to prioritize care for those with the greatest needs.

Today, ChristianaCare, Bayhealth, TidalHealth Nanticoke, and Trinity Health Mid-AtlanticSaint Francis Hospital are operating under Crisis Standards of Care protocols in order to have the flexibility and decision-making tools we need to deliver the best possible care to our community at this time.

We call on the community to recognize that the health care system has been stretched beyond capacity. We are in a moment of crisis, and we urgently need everyone to take action.

You can help end the current crisis in our hospitals. Get vaccinated and receive boosters as indicated. Prevent the spread of COVID-19 by wearing a mask, maintaining distance, handwashing, testing, and staying home if you feel unwell. Please avoid the emergency department for less serious health needs.

We look forward to the time when these changes in the way we deliver care are no longer necessary. Our hospitals and practices have served our community for decades, and we will continue to do so long into the future. With your help, we can end the current surge of COVID-19."

A reintroduction of the mask mandate

Following the issuance of this guidance, Gov. John Carney on Monday, January 10, 2022, announced a revision of his State of Emergency declaration once again requiring all individuals indoors to wear a mask, including at convenience stores, grocery stores, gyms, restaurants, bars, hair salons, malls, and casinos.

Delaware National Guard receives abbreviated medical training to assist during COVID surge Delaware's healthcare system is about to receive a lot of extra help dealing with skyrocketi

The requirement goes into effect Tuesday, January 11, at 8 a.m. It also extends existing mask requirements at school and child care facilities. The governor's announcement also deploys 70 additional Delaware National Guard members--bringing the total number of deployed up to more than 300--to assist hospitals in dealing with non-clinical operations following the DNG's training last week in the medical field.

"Our hospital systems are facing a crisis-level situation with record numbers of Delawareans seeking emergency care. We need all Delawareans in the fight as we face this winter surge of COVID-19 to make sure our hospitals are not overrun," said Carney. "I know were all exhausted by this pandemic. But at the level of hospitalizations were seeing, Delawareans who need emergency care might not be able to get it. Thats just a fact. Its time for everyone to pitch in and do what works. Wear your mask indoors. Avoid gatherings or expect to get and spread COVID. Get your vaccine and, if eligible, get boosted. Thats how well get through this surge without endangering more lives."

The policy for schools and similar facilities had been set to lapse in February prior to Monday's extension. Children under 2 years old don't need to wear masks, while children 2-5 years old are only strongly encouraged to do so. The SOE amendment also addresses a need for educators by offering incentives for the recently retired to return as substitute teachers in an effort to continue in-person instruction.

Businesses with indoor settings are encouraged to provide masks for members of the public who may arrive without them, and signage is required to be posted. Eateries and bars are not required to have patrons don a mask while eating or drinking. Churches and houses of worship are exempt from the requirement.

Spread at the University of Delaware

The University of Delaware spiked during the week of September 5, 2021, with 376 positive cases. From January 3 through January 7, 2022, the university saw 1,034 positive tests among all students and faculty tested, which may be slightly skewed by a change in testing policy, said Senior Director of External Relations Andrea Boyle Tippett.

"Last week marked the beginning of our winter session, and while our classes were online, many students and faculty and staff were returning to campus--many for the first time," she said. "We have now implemented, because of Omicron, testing for everyone who's going to be on campus weekly during winter session. In the fall, we were primarily testing the unvaccinated, but because of Omicron during the winter, we are testing everyone. So we expected to see high returns and high positivity rates, and that's exactly what we did [see.] So in testing everyone who was on campus, we saw positivity rates that were about 9%, which was still significantly lower than the statewide average. But it obviously means that there are a number of members of our community who are ill at this time."

There's not much else they can do, said Boyle Tippett, other than follow guidance presented by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), something they've been doing throughout the pandemic, she said. But there comes a time when the situation must be assessed as the landscape continually changes. Currently, the plan remains to keep as many classes as possible in-person.

"There's conversations that are happening on a daily basis about the spring semester, and even into summer," Boyle Tippett said. "We are just--I feel like a broken record when I say this, but--we are just evolving as the situation evolves, as we have been since...the beginning of 2020. We just have to keep evolving and so we take it as as things come."

But with COVID-19 positive cases skyrocketing everywhere, when asked if this was a pivot point where another evolution of their approach might be called for, Boyle Tippett offered only:

"We're just looking at it on a daily basis."

All students are required to wear a mask indoors whenever they're outside of their residence. For students in a dorm setting, this means any time they exit their room. Individuals who test positive for COVID-19, but remain asymptomatic are required to isolate for seven days--a protocol stricter than the CDC's recommendation of five days.

"We are following the protocol that we've been following all along, which is wearing masks in indoor settings. We have heightened cleaning protocols in place," she said. "We're doing essentially every best practice that we can to keep everyone safe on campus."

The university was conducting another 1,400 COVID-19 tests on both faculty and staff Monday, she said.

While the situation currently remained cloudy, one thing that was certain was the tools available everyone can take advantage of to get onboard and help combat the virus.

"We don't know [how long this situation will last,] but is there a way out? There is a way out: get vaccinated, get boosted when it's time, wear a mask, socially distance," Silverstein said. "I can't say it enough: vaccination is the strongest tool in our toolbox. It is the way we're going to curb the spread of this disease. And the people that are sick may not have availed themselves of vaccination. So let's get out there, and let's get our arms out."
Wilmington, DE (19810)

Today

Considerable clouds early. Some decrease in clouds later in the day. High 74F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A steady rain in the evening. Showers continuing late. Low 52F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
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PHNOM PENH, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen on Monday urged high-risk groups in capital Phnom Penh to receive the fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine starting from Jan. 14.

The fourth-dose campaign will begin with frontliners including leaders of the government, the senate, the National Assembly, frontline doctors, government officials, the army and police, local authorities and the elderly, according to the health ministry.

Staff of embassies and both national and international organizations as well as journalists and celebrities are also invited to join the campaign, the ministry added.

The kingdom has reported three more local cases of the Omicron COVID-19 variant, bringing the total number of the variant to 183, Hun Sen said during the inauguration of a stretch of National Road 5 in northwestern Battambang province and his speech was live broadcast on the state-run National Television of Cambodia (TVK).

"The Omicron has now spread in our community. On Saturday, the first case was confirmed and on Sunday, three more cases were detected," he said.

Meanwhile, Hun Sen announced the start of the new academic year 2022 for general education, saying that more than 3 million students would return to school for the new academic year, beginning from Monday.

Cambodia has reopened all socio-economic activities since November, buoyed by its high vaccination rates.

The country had so far administered at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccines to 14.28 million people, or 89.2 percent of its 16-million population, the health ministry said.

Of them, 13.68 million, or 85.5 percent, were fully vaccinated with two required shots, and 3.91 million, or 24.4 percent, had taken a booster shot, it added.

Most of the vaccines used in the country's inoculation campaign are China's Sinovac and Sinopharm. 
Weatherford, TX (76086)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning. Cloudy skies late. High 68F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Mainly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 59F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph.
TASHKENT, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Uzbekistan is tightening pandemic restrictions as the first case of Omicron variant of COVID-19 virus was confirmed in the country, the Uzbek Health Ministry said on Sunday.

A foreign citizen who arrived in Uzbekistan on Friday was confirmed to be infected with the Omicron variant, the ministry said, noting that pandemic restrictions, such as wearing masks, keeping social distance and checking body temperatures, will be tightened.

The Uzbek Republican Special Commission announced that starting from Jan. 15, foreign visitors will have to submit a negative PCR test for coronavirus infection taken within 48 hours before arrival.

"In the absence of PCR test results, it is necessary to take an express test for coronavirus infection at airports, railway stations and border checkpoints," it said.

Uzbekistan has so far registered 200,341 COVID-19 cases and 1,494 related deaths. 
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SYDNEY, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Australia's state of New South Wales (NSW) recorded its deadliest day since the COVID-19 pandemic began in the country in early 2020, with 18 deaths including a child under five.

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said the child who died at home had "significant underlying health conditions."

The state recorded 20,293 new COVID-19 cases in the 24 hours to 8:00 p.m. local time Sunday, slightly dropped from the peak daily increase of over 45,000 on last Saturday.

However, Chant said the number "clearly is an underestimated" as a result of the do-it-yourself rapid antigen tests (RAT), which is currently used as an alternative to the PCR test, still unable to be registered through the government website.

Chant urged people, even if they test positive on a RAT instead of the PCR test, to connect with health services to ensure they are safe for the duration of the disease.

"If you fall into the categories where you are unvaccinated, you are pregnant, you have chronic underlying medical conditions, please don't delay getting a COVID-19 diagnosis."

At the same time, the number of hospitalizations and people in intensive care in NSW continued to increase, as 2,030 hospitalizations with 159 people in intensive care 47 of whom require ventilation were recorded on Monday.

Meanwhile, the state of Queensland delayed the start of the new school year, as the state is still battling hard with the new wave of the pandemic.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the state's 2022 school year will start on Feb. 7, to avoid the predicted Omicron wave peak and to allow more time for children to get vaccinated.

"Delaying the start of school is a common-sense measure which is particularly important for five to 11-year-old who will be eligible to be vaccinated from Jan. 10."

On Monday, Queensland reported 9,581 new cases, lower from a peak of 18,000 cases recorded on Sunday. 
Willmar, MN (56201)

Today

Sun and a few passing clouds. High 56F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph..

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Partly cloudy skies during the evening will give way to cloudy skies overnight. Low 37F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph.
It was the big day: the day the real instruments would arrive.

Max Fay, 22, who has Down syndrome and autism, had spent months - along with his special education classmates at Annandale High School in Fairfax County Public Schools - prepping for this moment. The students, all of whom have learning disabilities that earn them Category B or "severely disabled" status, had first learned the basics of rhythm under the tutelage of music teacher Annie Ray.

Then she taught them how to read musical symbols. And in recent weeks, she had given them faux instruments made of cardboard. They had practiced taking out the instruments at the start of each class and putting them away at the end, proving they could handle violins and cellos made of wood.

Now, Fay's wooden cello, donated by Jenna Day, the owner of a local violin shop who wanted to support the class, was finally here. Fay stared as it emerged from its glittering black plastic case. He slowly raised the real bow to rest across real strings. He sucked in a breath. His eyes widened.

Ray found herself holding her breath, too. The moment was the culmination of more than a year of dreaming for Ray, 27, who teaches a class on leadership and directs the orchestra at Annandale High.

She first had the idea of an orchestra class for students with disabilities in late 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

At the time, the vast majority of Fairfax County Public Schools' 180,000 students were learning virtually - except for a handful of Category B, or Cat-B, students for whom online education was deemed impossible. Ray was back in the building, too, because the school had asked teachers to return and teach remotely from their empty classrooms.

Ray was seven months pregnant and feeling like a human watermelon. She began taking walks during her planning period to ease the swelling and pain in her legs - which is when she stumbled across the Cat-B classes.

As she lapped the school, peering into the classrooms where specially trained personnel guided the Cat-B students through their daily lessons and therapy, she had a thought.

"Music is very inherently human - you don't have to be able to speak," she said. "What if I could make some music with them?"

It was a good idea.

The discipline of music therapy was founded in the years after World War II. Soon, educators began trying it in special education settings, "using music as a symbol of emotional and personal growth rather than a cognitive skill-set to be learned and practiced," wrote music therapists and researchers Daphne Rickson and Katrina McFerran in a 2007 paper, "Music Therapy in Special Education," published in Kairaranga, a peer-reviewed New Zealand journal of education practice.

The popularity of the technique expanded steadily over the ensuing decades, fueling "a great deal" of research into how musical therapy affects students with disabilities throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, according to Rickson and McFerran. Study after study showed clear benefits.

"It was shown to improve functional hand use, early written communication skills, social skills and comprehension," Rickson and McFerran wrote, as well as "head posturing, in-seat behavior ... and to increase interactions and imitative behavior."

Ray was unaware of the scientific research. All she knew was music.

She grew up in Texas, encircled by a "complete music family": Her mother was a music teacher. Her aunt was an orchestra director, her uncle a band director. All her siblings and cousins are musicians and so is her husband, whom she met when they got called as substitute performers to the same musical gig.

Ray started playing the harp at age 5, and still plays professionally today. Sometimes she performs duets with her husband, who plays the euphonium - for the uninitiated, "a brass instrument that looks a lot like a small tuba," Ray said.

Eventually Ray got into musical teaching, like her mother. From the start of her career, she felt a calling to "expand music education beyond what it is right now," she said. She wanted more students of all kinds to know the joy she felt plucking the harp.

In early 2021, she approached her principal at Annandale High, Shawn DeRose, to ask permission for a trial run of her vision. He was on board, and she began holding lessons during her planning period for a handful of Cat-B students.

They loved it. She loved it, too - and in the fall, with DeRose's encouragement and funding, she expanded the lessons to a full class. This academic year, she is teaching nine Cat-B students for 80 minutes every other day, helped by two school staffers trained to work with special education children.

Over the past year, through trial and error and by relying on online resources, Ray has learned a new teaching style. She starts with what she calls "music scarves," instructing the students how to wave their scarves in a way that mimics creating a music composition.

Then she progresses to egg shakers, teaching the students to shake their eggs - then stop shaking them, which can be a difficult ask - in time to basic musical beats. Next come rhythm sticks, after them poodle noodles and finally cardboard instruments, provided at a discount by a company known as String Rise, whose mission is closing racial and socioeconomic gaps in music education.

Ray has also readjusted her expectations. For the Cat-B students, success can look different.

For one student, "I work on collecting the bow, putting it down then picking it up, and that's big for him," Ray said. "I meet them where they are."

Sharon Fay, the mother of Max, said that is what she appreciates most about Ray - how the teacher tailors her lessons to meet each student's needs, but without underestimating them.

"She is assuming competence, and the students are rising to expectations," Fay said. "If they assume little, Max is going to give them little. If they assume more, he's going to give them more."

Max is in his last year at Annandale High, attending through a program that allows some students with disabilities to continue their education until age 22. Sharon Fay said the orchestra class is a perfect fit for Max, who has always loved music of every kind.

With his father, Max has attended music concerts throughout the D.C. area: The Flaming Lips at the Anthem. Monophonics at Black Cat. Pigeons Playing Ping Pong at the Anthem again. Every night, Max and his father hold a private dance party to clubby tunes before bed. Even though Max is mostly nonverbal in everyday life, he can recite the full sets of lyrics to favorite songs, his mother said.

But Sharon Fay had never thought of teaching Max how to play an instrument - she wouldn't have known where to look for a teacher willing to do it.

"I'm so grateful to Miss Ray for this opportunity," Fay said. "She was able to see that he was capable of more than was immediately obvious."

The only thing missing, Ray decided, was real instruments.

At a recent conference of the Virginia Music Educators Association, she stopped by the table of Day, the owner of Day Violins, to outline her dilemma. The two knew each other through the shop owner's work providing instruments to Virginia educators.

Ray wanted to give instruments to her Cat-B students, she said, but there was a real possibility the students would damage or even smash the instruments - which made finding a willing donor difficult, and paying for expensive instruments impractical.

Day had a solution. In her spare time, Day helps run a charity program called Instruments in the Attic, through which people donate well-used stringed instruments and Day and her husband repair them either at-cost or for free. But sometimes people donate instruments that are so cheap or so damaged they are not worth repairing - and those, Day proposed, could have second lives in Ray's classroom.

Ray, thrilled, agreed immediately. And on a recent Tuesday afternoon, the two women hauled seven violins and two cellos into Ray's classroom.

Then they knelt before Max Fay, watching his every movement.

The 22-year-old slid the bow ever so gently across the strings. A deep, sonorous note thrummed through the classroom. It hung for a moment.

After waiting a respectful few seconds, the women asked how he was feeling. Fay raised his hand to his iPad and pressed a button.

A mechanized voice spoke for him, although not as well as the cello had just done - "Happy," it said, and Fay drew the bow back across the strings.
Winchester, VA (22601)

Today

Mainly cloudy. Slight chance of a rain shower. High 74F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Rain showers in the evening with scattered thunderstorms arriving overnight. Low 57F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
SYDNEY, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Australia's Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has been tracking a tropical cyclone, dubbed Cyclone Tiffany, over the weekend, which is expected to hit the coast of the northern tip of the state of Queensland on Monday.

The BoM issued a warning on Monday morning that the cyclone showed wind speeds of 130 km per hour and was moving west at 18 km per hour just 30 km from the coast.

"Tiffany will weaken slightly over land but may maintain tropical cyclone strength as it moves westward across the Cape," said the warning.

Senior Meteorologist Dean Narramore said On Sunday the BoM would continue to monitor Tiffany.

"From tomorrow (Monday), people in far north Queensland communities will start seeing and feeling the effects of Tropical Cyclone Tiffany as it comes closer to the coast," said Narramore.

Residents were told to expect and prepare for gale force, destructive winds, up to 250 mm of heavy rainfall and abnormally high tides along the coast.

"Tropical cyclones can intensify very quickly, and shift direction, so we will be updating our warnings and advice to the community and our emergency services colleagues as this system progresses."

Meteorologist from the University of Technology Sydney Milton Speer told Xinhua that the cyclone is likely a result of high sea surface temperatures.

"Tiffany developed over sea surface temperatures in the Coral Sea of about 29 degree Celsius. which are up to 1 degree Celsius above average and will likely re-intensify over similar sea surfaces in the Gulf of Carpentaria," said Speer.

"As Tiffany approaches landfall today, damaging winds can be expected in the Cooktown area."

He said the cyclone is part of an active monsoon trough which has caused torrential rainfall near the coast of northern Queensland.

On Friday, a 22-year-old man died after his vehicle was submerged in flood waters, and a 14-year-old girl also went missing, after it was believed she was swept away in floodwaters. A police search was underway.

The Queensland State Emergency Service (SES) has responded to over 140 requests for assistance in the region. 
ATHENS, Greece (AP)  It's only the size of a shoebox, carved with the broken-off foot of an ancient Greek goddess.

Two conservators hold a Parthenon fragment, on loan from the Antonino Salinas Regional Archaeological Museum of Palermo, at the Acropolis Museum, in Athens, on Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. The 2,500-year-old fragment is formally on loan from Sicily's A. Salinas Archaeological Museum, but both sides have said it could well end up permanently in Athens. Greek officials hope the move could encourage the British Museum to return its own extensive collection of sculptures from the Parthenon Temple on the Acropolis  a decades-old Greek demand that the London museum has so far rebuffed. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

ATHENS, Greece (AP)  It's only the size of a shoebox, carved with the broken-off foot of an ancient Greek goddess.

But Greece hopes the 2,500-year-old marble fragment, which arrived Monday on loan from an Italian museum, may help resolve one of the world's thorniest cultural heritage disputes and lead to the reunification in Athens of all surviving Parthenon Sculptures  many of which are in the British Museum.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the Sicilian museum's gesture "opens the way, I believe, for other museums to be able to move in a similar direction."

"Most importantly, of course, the British Museum, which must now realize that it's time for the Parthenon marbles ... to finally return here, to their natural home," he added, voicing gratitude to Italy for the loan.

The fragment was part of a 160-meter-long (520-foot) frieze that ran around the outer walls of the Parthenon Temple on the Acropolis, dedicated to Athena, goddess of wisdom. Much was lost in a 17th-century bombardment, and about half the remaining works were removed in the early 19th century by a British diplomat, Lord Elgin. They ended up in the British Museum, which has repeatedly rebuffed Greek demands for their return.

Officially, Sicilys A. Salinas Archaeological Museum is only lending the foot of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, to Greece for a maximum of eight years. But the ultimate aim, Italian and Greek officials say, is its "indefinite return" to Athens. In exchange, Greece will loan significant antiquities to Italy.

"The solution we found proves that, where there is will among museums and the cultural authorities of two countries, there can be a mutually acceptable solution," Mitsotakis said during a ceremony at the Acropolis Museum, where Greece's surviving sections of the frieze are inset among casts of those in London.

Artemis' foot will snuggle in like a missing jigsaw piece between two original fragments and a copy of a larger section now in London.

Successive Greek governments have lobbied for the return of the British Museum's share of the works, which include statues from the Parthenon's pediments  the all-marble building's gables. They argue that Elgin illegally sawed off the sculptures, exceeding the terms of a questionable permit granted by Turkish authorities while Greece was an unwilling part of the Ottoman Empire.

The British Museum rejects that stance and  despite indications that public opinion in the U.K. favors the Greek demand  has shown no intention of permanently returning the works.

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Mitsotakis raised the matter again in a meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London in November. He said Monday he was "encouraged" by Johnson saying the British government wouldn't oppose a potential deal on the sculptures' return  should the British Museum and Greece reach one.

The Italian fragment, which measures 31 by 35 centimeters (12 by 14 inches), was acquired under unknown circumstances by 19th-century British consul in Sicily Robert Fagan, and his widow sold it to the Sicilian museum's precursor.

Acropolis Museum director Dimitris Pantermalis said the marble foot may have been dislodged from its place in 1687, when a mortar fired by besieging Venetian forces hit the Parthenon, which the Acropolis' Turkish garrison was using as a gunpowder store. But, he said, it was in better condition than other surviving frieze fragments.

"In all other cases, the surface is slightly scratched," he said. "Here it has the freshness of the original, and that makes us proud."

The Parthenon was built between 447-432 B.C. and is considered the crowning work of classical architecture. Despite being successively used as a church and a mosque, it survived virtually intact until the Venetian siege.

The frieze depicted a procession in honor of Athena. Some small bits of it  and other Parthenon sculptures  are in other European museums.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP)  Comedian and actor Bob Saget was found dead lying face up on his bed in a luxury hotel room in Florida with no signs of trauma, according to an sheriff's office report released Monday.

ARCHIVO - Bob Saget llega a la ceremonia de los People's Choice Awards en el Teatro Microsoft en Los Angeles el 18 de enero de 2017. El actor y comediante, conocido por su papel del amado padre soltero Danny Tanner en la serie de comedia Full House ("Tres por tres"), fallecio, informaron las autoridades de Florida el domingo 9 de enero de 2022. Tenia 65 anos. (Foto por Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, Archivo)

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP)  Comedian and actor Bob Saget was found dead lying face up on his bed in a luxury hotel room in Florida with no signs of trauma, according to an sheriff's office report released Monday.

There were no signs of foul play, and the room itself was in order, with items owned by Mr. Saget on the nightstand, television stand, closet and bathroom," according to the report from the Orange County Sheriff's Office.

ARCHIVO - Bob Saget llega al estreno de "Jackass Presents Bad Grandpa" en el Teatro Chino TCL en Los Angeles, el 23 de octubre de 2013. Saget, actor y comediante conocido por su papel del amado padre soltero Danny Tanner en la serie de comedia Full House ("Tres por tres"), fallecio, informaron las autoridades de Florida el domingo 9 de enero de 2022. Tenia 65 anos. (Foto por Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, Archivo)

Saget's left arm was across his chest and his right arm was resting on his bed when deputies and paramedics arrived Sunday at his room at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando and pronounced him dead, the report said.

Saget was best known for his role as beloved single dad Danny Tanner on the sitcom Full House and as the wisecracking host of Americas Funniest Home Videos. He was 65.

Saget had been scheduled to check out of his room on Sunday, and when family members were unable to get in touch with him, they contacted the hotel's security team, which sent a security officer to his room, the report said.

FILE - Host Bob Saget poses alongside an Oscar statue before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 40th Student Academy Awards at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater on Saturday, June 8, 2013, in Beverly Hills, Calif. Saget, a comedian and actor known for his role as a widower raising a trio of daughters in the sitcom Full House, has died, according to authorities in Florida, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022. He was 65. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

When the security officer, Jody Lee Harrison, entered the room, all the lights were off. He found Saget on the bed and cold to the touch, Harrison told deputies, according to the report.

Harrison checked Saget for breathing and a pulse, and when he found none, he had the hotel's security dispatch call 911, the report said.

We have an unresponsive guest in a room," an unidentified man from the hotel said in a 911 call. Not responsive. No breathing and no pulse."

FILE - In this Aug. 3, 2008, file photo, actor and roastee Bob Saget speaks at the "Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget," in Burbank, Calif. Saget, a comedian and actor known for his role as a widower raising a trio of daughters in the sitcom Full House, has died, according to authorities in Florida, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022. He was 65. (AP Photo/Dan Steinberg, File)

Saget was declared dead shortly before 4:20 pm ET. His room key indicated he had entered the room a little before 2:20 a.m. ET, according to the report.

His body was sent to the local medical examiner's office, which said in an email that it could take up to four months from the date of exam to complete an autopsy report.

Saget was in Florida as part of his I Dont Do Negative Comedy Tour. After warm audience receptions to his gigs Friday in Orlando and Saturday in the Ponte Vedra Beach resort area, he celebrated online.

FILE - Bob Saget arrives at the premiere of "Jackass Presents Bad Grandpa" at the TCL Chinese Theatre on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013, in Los Angeles. Saget, a comedian and actor known for his role as a widower raising a trio of daughters in the sitcom Full House, has died, according to authorities in Florida, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022. He was 65. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)

Im back in comedy like I was when I was 26. I guess Im finding my new voice and loving every moment of it, he posted Saturday on Instagram.

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In a statement Sunday, Sagets family members said they were devastated to confirm that our beloved Bob passed away today.... Though we ask for privacy at this time, we invite you to join us in remembering the love and laughter that Bob brought to the world.

The sheriff's office report said hotel management notified Saget's wife, Kelly Rizzo, about her husband's death.

FILE - Bob Saget, from left, Dave Coulier and John Stamos, winners of the award for favorite premium comedy series for "Fuller House," pose in the press room at the People's Choice Awards at the Microsoft Theater on Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2017, in Los Angeles. Saget, a comedian and actor known for his role as a widower raising a trio of daughters in the sitcom Full House, has died, according to authorities in Florida, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022. He was 65. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

Fellow comedians and friends praised Saget not only for his wit, but his kindness.

I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him, wrote John Stamos, who co-starred with Saget on Full House. I love you so much Bobby.

___

Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP
BERLIN (AP)  Damage wrought by Hurricane Ida in the U.S. state of Louisiana and the flash floods that hit Europe last summer helped make 2021 one of the most expensive years for natural disasters, reinsurance company Munich Re said Monday.

FILE - In this aerial photo, the remains of destroyed homes are seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Sept. 6, 2021, in Lafitte, La. Damage wrought by Hurricane Ida in the U.S. state of Louisiana and the flash floods that hit Europe last summer have helped make 2021 one of the most expensive years for natural disasters. Reinsurance company Munich Re said Monday, Jan. 10, 2022 that overall economic losses from natural disasters worldwide last year reached $280 billion. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, file)

BERLIN (AP)  Damage wrought by Hurricane Ida in the U.S. state of Louisiana and the flash floods that hit Europe last summer helped make 2021 one of the most expensive years for natural disasters, reinsurance company Munich Re said Monday.

The company's annual report put the overall economic losses from natural disasters worldwide last year at $280 billion, making it the fourth-costliest after 2011, the year a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan.

Insured losses in 2021 amounted to $120 billion, the second-highest after 2017, when hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria hit the Americas, according to Munich Re.

More than a third of those insured losses last year were caused by Ida ($36 billion) and the July floods in Europe ($13 billion).

Almost 10,000 died as a result of a natural disaster in 2021, comparable to the death toll in recent years, Munich Re said.

The company warned that studies showed a link between global warming and natural disasters.

The images of natural disasters in 2021 are disturbing," said Torsten Jeworrek, a member Munich Re's board of management.

Climate research increasingly confirms that extreme weather has become more likely, he said. Societies need to urgently adapt to increasing weather risks and make climate protection a priority.

Satellite measurements show 2021 was one of the warmest years on record, with the annual average temperature 1.1-1.2 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial period from 1850-1900, the European Unions Copernicus Climate Change Service said Monday.

Europe experienced its warmest summer on record, it said.

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Scientists say that higher temperatures can cause the air to absorb more moisture, which can then lead to more extreme rainfall such as that seen in western Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands last summer.

The resulting floods devastated whole villages and killed more than 220 people in what insurance companies said was the costliest natural disaster Europe has ever seen.

Even though events cannot automatically be attributed to climate change, analysis of the changes over decades provides plausible indications of a connection with the warming of the atmosphere and the oceans, said Ernst Rauch, Munich Re's chief climate scientist, adding that adapting to increasing risks would be "a challenge.

The company noted that not all natural disasters are climate-related, citing volcanic eruptions in Indonesia and Spain's Canary Islands, and earthquakes such as the one that hit Japan in February.

___

Follow AP's coverage of climate news at https://apnews.com/hub/climate
FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP)  Gruyere cheese does not have to come from the Gruyere region of Europe to be sold under the gruyere name, a federal judge has ruled.

FILE - This Feb. 15, 2007 file photo shows a Gruyere cheese with a cup of Italian roast coffee. A federal judge has ruled that gruyere cheese does not have to come from the Gruyere region of Europe to be sold under the gruyere name. A consortium of Swiss and French cheesemakers from the region around of Gruyeres, Switzerland, sued in U.S. District Court in Virginia after the federal Trademark Trials and Appeals Board denied an application for trademark protections. (AP Photo/Larry Crowe, file)

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP)  Gruyere cheese does not have to come from the Gruyere region of Europe to be sold under the gruyere name, a federal judge has ruled.

A consortium of Swiss and French cheesemakers from the region around the town of Gruyeres, Switzerland, sued in U.S. District Court in Virginia after the federal Trademark Trials and Appeals Board denied an application for trademark protections.

The consortium said gruyere  often a mild, smooth-melting cheese that's a favorite for fondues  has been made to exacting standards in the region since the early 12th century and cheese made outside the region can't truly be called gruyere, similar to the argument that champagne can be only be applied to sparking wines from the Champagne region of France.

But the U.S. Dairy Export Council and other groups opposed the trademark protection. They said American consumers understand the gruyere name to be generic, applying to cheeses of a certain style regardless of their place of origin.

In a decision made public last week, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis ruled against the Swiss consortium, finding that American consumers do not associate the gruyere name with cheese made specifically from that region. While similar trademark protections have been granted to Roquefort cheese and Cognac brandy, Ellis said the same case can't be made for gruyere.

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It is clear from the record that the term GRUYERE may have in the past referred exclusively to cheese from Switzerland and France, Ellis wrote. However, decades of importation, production, and sale of cheese labeled GRUYERE produced outside the Gruyere region of Switzerland and France have eroded the meaning of that term and rendered it generic.

Among other things, he cited the fact that the Food and Drug Administration regulates use of the gruyere name and that none of the requirements specify its place of origin.

The gruyere consortium is appealing Ellis' ruling.

Shawna Morris, a senior vice president for trade policy with the U.S. Dairy Export Council, said the legal battle over gruyere is part of an increased effort in Europe to seek international trade protection for a variety of products, including gorgonzola, asiago and feta cheeses and bologna lunch meats.

We're thrilled that the judge made a great call here, in our view, she said.

The European consortium did not return an email seeking comment. In court papers, its lawyers argued that Swiss and French gruyere is painstakingly made from local, natural ingredients using traditional methods that assure the connection between the geographic region and the quality and characteristics of the final product. They said allowing others to use the gruyere name would confuse American consumers.
Years ago, a friend who needed cash sold me a $100 Nordstrom gift card. I wish I knew where the heck I put it.

Years ago, a friend who needed cash sold me a $100 Nordstrom gift card. I wish I knew where the heck I put it.

Gift cards are a popular holiday solution, especially recently, as supply chain disruptions and shipping delays have made gift buying more challenging. Most gift cards are spent within a year, but billions of dollars remain unspent and about 1% to 2% of gift card dollars typically go unused, according to Amy Dunckelmann, vice president of research operations for Mercator Advisory Group, a global payments consultant.

This year, my New Years resolution is to find and deploy every single gift card lurking in our household by Jan. 15, which is this years National Use Your Gift Card Day . For help, I turned to two gift card experts who offered suggestions on how to keep track of cards and use them to the best advantage.

MAKE A PLAN FOR THE CARDS YOU WONT USE

Gift cards come in two flavors: those youll use and those you wont. If a gift card isnt right for you, ask yourself who might be a better fit, says Tracy Tilson , founder of UseYourGiftCard.com and the creator of National Use Your Gift Card Day.

You could regift it to a friend or neighbor, donate to a charity or hand it to a first responder as a thank you for their hard work during the pandemic, Tilson suggests.

Its a good way to create some goodwill if youre not going to use them, Tilson says.

You might sell the card to someone you know or trade it for one of their unwanted cards. Gift cards can be sold or swapped online but scams abound. Buyers may ask you to read off the card numbers to ensure the card is legit and disappear with the cards value once you do. Or the card you get in a swap may be phony or already used. Avoid private-party sales to strangers, such as those on Craigslist or Facebook. If you want to use an online site, make sure it has a post-transaction money-back guarantee.

SET REMINDERS FOR THE CARDS YOU WANT TO USE

If youre planning to use a card, employ your phone and a calendar to help keep track, says Shelley Hunter, spokeswoman for GiftCards.com, an online provider of gift cards. Hunter keeps a running list of her cards on her phone and makes a note on her calendar when she plans to use one.

On Saturday, Im probably going to go out to lunch with my boys, so I will put on the calendar, Lunch with boys. Use Panera gift card, Hunter says.

Even if you dont have a specific plan for a card, consider putting a use by date on your calendar so you dont forget it, Tilson says.

Hunter also recommends treating cards like cash. If you got a $20 bill as a gift, youd probably put it into your wallet right away, Hunter notes. Consider doing the same with gift cards you plan to use.

I put them next to the debit or credit card that I use most often, she says.

Tilson agrees. If she puts gift cards elsewhere in her wallet or purse, I forget about them.

KEEP EXPIRATION RULES IN MIND

How much time you have to use your gift cards may depend on where you live and the type of card.

Under the federal Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, gift cards cant expire for five years although issuers can charge inactivity fees if the card hasnt been used within 12 months.

Some states have additional rules. Where I live in California, store gift certificates and gift cards cant expire. Inactivity fees are mostly forbidden and balances below $10 can be redeemed for cash. The law doesnt apply to general-use gift cards, however, if the expiration date is printed on the card. (General-use cards include gift cards issued by Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express that can be used wherever those brands are accepted.)

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You can find other states rules by searching the National Conference of State Legislatures  site for gift card.

In general, though, the quicker you use your cards, the better. Youre less likely to forget about them and more likely to enjoy the value the giver wanted you to have.

______________________________

This column was provided to The Associated Press by the personal finance website NerdWallet. Liz Weston is a columnist at NerdWallet, a certified financial planner and author of Your Credit Score. Email: lweston@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @lizweston.

RELATED LINK:

NerdWallet: You got a gift card you dont want. Now what? https://bit.ly/nerdwallet-gift-card-options
HALIFAX - Nova Scotia's power utility has released figures indicating $205.5 million was spent on replacement fuels over the past four years because of delays to Newfoundland and Labrador's Muskrat Falls hydro project.

The construction site of the hydroelectric facility at Muskrat Falls, N.L., is seen on Tuesday, July 14, 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew VaughanPRESS/Andrew Vaughan

HALIFAX - Nova Scotia's power utility has released figures indicating $205.5 million was spent on replacement fuels over the past four years because of delays to Newfoundland and Labrador's Muskrat Falls hydro project.

The hydroelectricity project in Labrador was supposed to deliver power to Nova Scotia starting in 2018, but it has been plagued by a series of setbacks.

Nova Scotia Power, a subsidiary of Emera Inc., told regulators in late December that replacement energy costs totalled $49.2 million in 2018, $52 million in 2019, $57 million in 2020 and $47.3 million from January to October last year.

Bill Mahody, the lawyer who represents residential ratepayers during Utility and Review Board hearings,said in an interview Mondaythat the replacement energy costs have been paid for by Nova Scotians.

The Utility and Review Board, the independent body mandated to regulate utilities in the province, is currently considering an application from Emera to recover from Nova Scotia Power ratepayers the approximately $1.7 billion in costs of the Maritime Link  the transmission line from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia.

Mahody said if Muskrat Falls delays continue, there should be a mechanism permitting fuel replacement costs to be shared between Nova Scotia taxpayers and shareholders of the publicly traded Emera.

"There needs to be some way for ratepayers to get some sharing of the costs here," he said.

In an emailed comment, Nova Scotia Power spokeswoman Jacqueline Foster noted that the Muskrat Falls energy is expected to flow, and the Newfoundland and Labrador utility, Nalcor, will make up for the energy lost to earlier delays.

"It is a 35-year source of clean energy that Nova Scotians will benefit from as we move off coal and increase renewables," she wrote.

"Nalcor (Newfoundland and Labrador's utility) will replace the energy in co-ordination with Nova Scotia Power Inc. at a later date. Nova Scotia Power has contracted for 35 years of energy and this is what Nova Scotians will receive," Foster said.

Nova Scotia has committed to phasing out coal-based power generation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Mahody raised concerns about the costs to taxpayers of finding alternative renewable energy sources if Muskrat Falls continues to fall behind schedule.

The original agreement for the creation of the Maritime Link was for Emera to finance and construct the line in return for a fixed block of electricity from Muskrat Falls, Mahody said.

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"If things had been going according to the original plan, ratepayers would have been paying approximately $160-170 million annually, and receiving Muskrat energy that amounts to about 10 per cent of the power needed by Nova Scotia," he explained.

Instead, Mahody said, ratepayers have been paying the cost of building of the link, but they haven't been receiving the expected energy  leading to the annual added costs for replacement fuels.

The province's climate change targets include commitments to phase out coal-fired electricity generation by 2030, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to at least 53 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, and to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

"Moving forward, the problem of Muskrat delays are compounding, and with the environmental constraints it becomes a more pressing point to ensure we get the energy we should be getting from Muskrat," Mahody said.

The various submissions to that Utility and Review Board hearing will close on Friday, with rulings expected this winter.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 10, 2022.
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP)  Slovakia is easing coronavirus restrictions after a decline in new infections while the fast-spreading omicron variant is yet to fully hit the country.

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP)  Slovakia is easing coronavirus restrictions after a decline in new infections while the fast-spreading omicron variant is yet to fully hit the country.

The changes include the cancellation Monday of the overnight curfew between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. The move allows bars and restaurants, stores and others to stay open without restrictions. Only fully vaccinated people and those who have recovered from COVID-19 are eligible to enter bars, restaurants, hotels, ski resorts, religious services and stores selling nonessential goods.

Elementary and high schools fully reopened. but schoolchildren and students have to wear face coverings. The government also decided to partially lift restrictions for various public events, including concerts and sport competitions, allowing the number of spectators to reach up to 50% of capacity. In the case of high-risk events, such as weddings, parties, discotheques and others, up to 20 people can attend. Only the vaccinated or those who have recovered from COVID-19 are eligible.

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Under the delta variant, Slovakia had faced a record surge of infections recently, but new cases have been on the decline of late.

The nation of 5.5 million people has reported a total of around 864,000 COVID-19 cases and 16,989 deaths. About 2.6 million are considered fully vaccinated in Slovakia  that is below the EU average.

Confirming the recent trend, 2,117 COVID-19 patients needed hospitalization on Sunday, down from over 3,600 in early December.

Slovak authorities have been expecting the omicron variant to become dominant later in January. Only 54 omicron cases have been officially confirmed by Friday.

___

Follow APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP)  Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and Republican lawmakers are eager to cut taxes because Kansas is flush with cash, but the annual legislative session that opened Monday is shadowed by redistricting, election year-politics and COVID-19.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly answers questions during an Associated Press interview in her Statehouse office, Monday, Dec. 21, 2021, in Topeka, Kan. Kelly is proposing a one-time rebate of $250 to 1.2 million Kansas residents who filed income tax returns last year. (AP Photo/John Hanna)

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP)  Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and Republican lawmakers are eager to cut taxes because Kansas is flush with cash, but the annual legislative session that opened Monday is shadowed by redistricting, election year-politics and COVID-19.

With GOP supermajorities in both chambers, lawmakers expect to debate what public schools should  and should not  teach students about race and the role of racism in U.S. history. They also are likely to consider tightening election laws during their 90 scheduled days in session.

And legislators are likely to discuss legalizing marijuana for medical use. Kelly and other Democrats support the idea, and some Republicans have warmed to at least a highly regulated version.

Here's a look at some key issues:

REVENUE SURPLUS FUELS PUSH FOR TAX CUTS

Kelly wants to eliminate the states 6.5% sales tax on groceries so that a family buying $200 worth of groceries a week would save $676 a year. Lowering or ending the tax has bipartisan support, and about 100 groups, food pantries, businesses and faith organizations, along with several hundred individuals, sent a letter Monday to lawmakers urging them to eliminate the tax. But lawmakers might consider alternatives, such as lowering the tax on all consumer goods.

The governor also has proposed giving a one-time $250 rebate to Kansas residents who filed state income tax returns last year. GOP leaders have said they prefer ongoing income tax cuts.

Senate tax committee Chair Caryn Tyson, a Parker Republican, said other ideas are on the table, too, including lowering taxes on retirees' Social Security benefits.

Kansas is in strong shape financially, on pace after months of surplus tax collections to end June with about $3 billion in cash reserves.

CRITICAL RACE THEORY ARGUMENT HEATS UP

Tyson wants to require teachers to post lesson plans online that list reading materials. She said her goal is to enable parents to research those materials so they have a chance to voice any objections.

She and other Republicans also expect a debate on banning critical race theory in public schools. They say many parents became alarmed when they monitored online classes earlier in the pandemic.

Critical race theory argues that racism is systemic in the U.S. and its institutions maintain white people's dominance. However, the term has come to cover broader diversity initiatives that conservatives oppose.

The state school board said last year that critical race theory is not part of Kansas' academic standards. Kelly has called the issue a nothing burger and told The Associated Press it has been conjured up by people "who have a track record of being sort of anti-public education.

Rabbi Moti Rieber, executive director of Kansas Interfaith Action, said he worries that lawmakers would enable the most racist parents" to harass teachers and administrators.

GOVERNOR'S RACE, OTHER CONTESTS SHAPE POLICY

Kelly sells herself as a bipartisan problem solver and she's almost certain to tout big legislative victories in appealing later this year to the moderate GOP and independent voters she needs to win another term. She faces a tough race with three-term Attorney General Derek Schmidt as the presumed Republican nominee.

The election gives Republicans an incentive to ditch Kelly's proposals and pass GOP ones instead to raise questions about her effectiveness.

Meanwhile, all 125 Kansas House seats are on the ballot in November.

CAN LAWMAKERS AVOID ANOTHER REDISTRICTING IMPASSE?

Election-year politics are intensified by the once-a-decade redrawing of the states political boundaries. Kansas must account for shifts in population and make districts as equal in population as possible.

Redistricting has national implications as Republicans seek to regain a U.S. House majority, putting a spotlight on the Kansas City-area district held by the only Kansas Democrat in Congress, Rep. Sharice Davids. Her district is overpopulated and Democrats fear that Republicans will draw out Democratic neighborhoods in Kansas City, Kansas, to hurt her politically.

But to reshape Davids' district, Republicans must avoid the internal struggle they saw 10 years ago over new legislative districts. The debate grew so contentious that no redistricting plan cleared the Legislature. Three federal judges drew all boundaries; the state had to push back its June candidate filing deadline, and there were far more incumbent-on-incumbent races than lawmakers would have allowed.

REPUBLICANS CONSIDER TIGHTER ELECTION LAWS

GOP lawmakers in Kansas last year joined counterparts in other states in tightening election laws.

Republican Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab said he'll push for legislation this year aimed at making it easier to remove inactive voters from registration lists. Counties can't remove people from registration lists until they've failed to vote in two federal elections.

And legislation to tighten voting laws have carried over from last years annual session, including a bill to shorten the deadline for returning mail-in ballots.

GOP CONTINUES PUSH OVER VACCINES, VIRUS MANDATES

The days leading up to the session's opening saw a surge in new COVID-19 cases in Kansas and hospitals stressed again.

The state had an average of 6,460 new confirmed or probable COVID-19 cases a day for the seven days ending Monday, according to state health department data  more than double the previous pandemic peak in November 2020.

Kelly declared a new emergency Thursday and issued executive orders that eased state licensing rules to make it easier for hospitals and nursing homes to add staff quickly. Lawmakers must decide whether to keep it in effect past 15 days.

But for GOP lawmakers the biggest pandemic issue was following up on legislation enacted during a November special session to make it easier for workers to refuse to comply with vaccine mandates. Some conservatives want to bar private employers from imposing mandates, but others acknowledge the issue is tough because they've normally argued for less government regulation of businesses.

Some conservatives would also like to strip the state health department of its power to require new vaccines for school attendance without going through the Legislature.

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ABORTION IS ON MANY MINDS

Abortion is usually a major issue facing lawmakers, but not this year. Abortion opponents are waiting for an Aug. 2 statewide vote on a proposed anti-abortion amendment to the state constitution that would allow legislators to restrict abortion as much as the federal courts permit.

____

Andy Tsubasa Field is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

____

On Twitter, follow John Hanna at https://twitter.com/apjdhanna and Andy Tsubasa Field at https://twitter.com/AndyTsubasaF
A health worker takes a nasal swab sample from a man to test with Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) for COVID-19 in Guwahati city of India's northeastern state of Assam, Jan. 9, 2022. India Sunday reported 159,632 new COVID-19 cases, which is over a five-fold increase since the beginning of the new year. On Jan. 1, the total number of new cases was only 27,553. (Str/Xinhua)

NEW DELHI, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- India Sunday reported 159,632 new COVID-19 cases, which is over a five-fold increase since the beginning of the new year. On Jan. 1, the total number of new cases was only 27,553.

The virus continues to spread at an unprecedented pace, largely driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant (B.1.1.529), which is now present in 27 states.

The daily case numbers are yet to match last year's enormous figures seen during the brutal second wave of COVID-19, while thousands died each day and crematoriums maintained round-the-clock pyres for mass cremation of pandemic victims.

Since last Monday, the daily infections have increased over four times, an indication that has worried experts who feared the country's hospitals could be overwhelmed again.

The hospitals across India once had to struggle for oxygen supplies to keep patients alive.

To avoid the spread of infections, authorities in many states like Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Karnataka are implementing restrictions such as a night curfew, ordering a reduction in the gatherings and closure of shopping malls and recreational places.

Data shows the country last year reported over 100,000 cases on June 6.

At present, Maharashtra, one of the worst-hit states by the COVID-19 pandemic, added 41,434 cases in 24 hours. It was followed by Delhi and West Bengal that added 20,181 cases and 18,802 cases respectively during the past 24 hours.

"The active cases today comprise 1.66 percent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate is currently 96.98 percent," the federal health ministry said Sunday.

"The daily positivity rate was recorded at 10.21 percent, while the weekly positivity rate was recorded at 6.77 percent."

Meanwhile, the health ministry on Friday said people flying in from abroad will need to home quarantine for a week after landing in India and test on the eighth day. 

A health worker takes a swab sample from a woman to test with Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) for COVID-19 in Guwahati city of India's northeastern state of Assam, Jan. 9, 2022. India Sunday reported 159,632 new COVID-19 cases, which is over a five-fold increase since the beginning of the new year. On Jan. 1, the total number of new cases was only 27,553. (Str/Xinhua)
The scores of new entrants to the cannabis market combined with plunging prices have resulted in an "unsustainable" situation, Tilray Inc. executives say, but one they feel their company can weather.

A man holds up a bud outside a cannabis store in Winnipeg on Wednesday, October 17, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods

The scores of new entrants to the cannabis market combined with plunging prices have resulted in an "unsustainable" situation, Tilray Inc. executives say, but one they feel their company can weather.

Blair MacNeil, president of the cannabis company's Canadian business, said Monday that 157 new pot brands were launched in the country in the last year and pricing across the market has dropped by 22.6 per cent, while Tilray has only shaved 1.7 per cent off prices.

"We have definitely protected our margins on the way down and I think, as a licensed producer, we have more room than a lot of our competitors do to be able to take from our pricing," he said on a call with analysts.

"The market is getting very diluted and we are going to ramp up our innovation in a big way to fight that."

The country's cannabis producers have a glut of product they are anxious to move as Canada grapples with renewed pandemic restrictions and the continued resiliency of the illicit pot market.

Cannabis companies, which have endured lengthy retail lockdown measures and are already limited in how they market their products, have spent much of the health crisis slashing prices and looking at their offerings with a critical eye.

Along with several rivals and provincial pot distributors, including the Ontario Cannabis Store, Tilray has begun a SKU and brand rationalization program to get its costs in check.

But it still intends to double down on product innovation in hopes of snatching up as much market share as it can.

"Can we do it profitably? Yes, we think we can," said MacNeil.

"We have further costs we can take out of this business to make sure we can do this and grow our gross margins. It is going to be a bit of a bumpy ride over the next couple quarters but certainly, we are in the best position to be able to weather it."

Weathering it will mean winning back some market share, which chief executive Irwin Simon conceded the company had lost in recent months.

"Some of it was self-inflicted," he said, on the same call as MacNeil.

"The easiest thing is to drop price and drop share, but we are here to build something for the long term."

It will also mean continuing to push profits up.

Tilray reported Monday a net income of almost US$6 million in its latest quarter, compared with a net loss of roughly US$89 million in the same quarter last year.

The company, which reports its earnings in U.S. dollars, said its net income for the quarter ended Nov. 30 broke even on a per share basis, compared with a loss of 41 cents per share in the same quarter last year.

Those numbers pushed Tilray's shares up by 15 per cent or $1.26 to reach $9.39 in trading.

Tilray also said its revenue climbed by about 20 per cent to reach US$155 million, up from US$129 million during the same period last year.

About US$58.8 million or 38 per cent of that revenue in its most recent quarter came from its cannabis business, while US$13.7 million or 9 per cent was attributable to its SweetWater Brewing business and another 9 per cent or US$13.8 million came from Manitoba Harvest.

The quarter encompassed a period when Tilray closed down facilities in Nanaimo and Enniskillen, B.C. and quietly ended its Fluent Beverage Co. joint venture it set up with Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2018.

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In quarterly filings, Tilray said it arranged to retain manufacturing equipment and royalty-free licenses associated with cannabis beverages linked to the venture, but did not share why the partnership ended.

In the coming months, Simon teased that the company will take a bigger position in the hemp market and will look to address demand for drinks and other products laden with cannabidiol, a compound found in cannabis and hemp that doesn't produce a high but is believed to relax consumers.

It will also zero in on its recent acquisition of Breckenridge Distillery and SweetWater Brewing, which it bought in 2020, to deliver growth in the beverage category and Manitoba Harvest to help drive market share in consumer packaged goods.

To reflect the breadth of these ventures and its transition from Canadian licensed cannabis producer to a global consumer packaged goods company, the company will begin using Tilray Brands Inc. as its new parent company name.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 10, 2022.

Companies in this story: (TSX:TLRY)
The Manitoba Indigenous Cultural Education Centre is doing its part to preserve and protect Indigenous languages.

The Manitoba Indigenous Cultural Education Centre is doing its part to preserve and protect Indigenous languages.

Prior to the pandemic, the Winnipeg organization was a place to meet and it held weekly language tables to teach Cree and Ojibwe.

The language tables moved online in October and have reached a larger audience.

"We model the sessions as less of a class and more of a community drop-in space," instructor Dene Sinclair said. "The virtual platform has helped us reach a larger group of people than we expected."

The program meets every Tuesday and Thursday for one hour on Zoom and attendees can participate or just listen during each lesson.

The Ojibwe program garnered 212 participants while 104 people signed up for Cree lessons, Sinclair said.

Morgan Fontaine enrolled in the Ojibwe program to honour her late husband Theodore, who often spoke the language and was a residential school survivor.

"Im really grateful theyve offered this program and that its very enjoyable and effective," she said. "Its a great way to honour First Nations people and heritage."

Fontaine said she learned a bit of the language during her 40-year marriage but wants to become fluent.

"I never learned the language in a way that I could converse with him and I regret that very much," she said. "He used to go to the language tables in person and he really loved it."

Fontaine said her husband was dedicated to the protection and retention of Indigenous languages due to his experiences in residential schools.

Manitoba Indigenous Cultural Education Centres language tables have been available online (below) since October. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press)

"They did everything to force him to forget his language and be ashamed of his culture," she said. "Speaking his language was a powerful way for him to finally have his voice back."

Jen Henry, who began attending the sessions in October while on maternity leave, was also drawn to the program for family reasons.

"Ive always wanted to learn my language, but I never had the time or opportunity," she said. "I would love to go home to the reserve and say, these are who my grandparents were in the traditional language and make a connection with my homelands."

Henry said she finds the sessions engaging and appreciates the fluid schedule since she is a new mother.

The one-hour sessions are also beneficial for Brian Chrupalo, who attends during his lunch break from work.

"Its nice not to have to leave the office to attend, but even if they were in person, I would go out of my way to attend because I enjoy it that much," he said. "They have a great, entertaining approach to teaching the program and it makes it fun and enjoyable."

Some participants live in other provinces and even outside Canada.

Jennifer Lickers is an educator from the Detroit area who learned about the tables through Facebook.

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Lickers, who said the Ojibwa language is popular in Michigan, called the sessions fun and empowering.

"It feels more like a healing session than a class," she said. "When were together, theres a lot of laughing, learning and sharing of stories."

Lickers said she looks forward to taking more programs and wants to visit Manitoba for an in-person table one day.

The positive and powerful reviews have led the education centre to open an intermediate program.

Sinclair said more languages will be added. She invites people to register for language tables with open spots on the Manitoba Indigenous Cultural Education Centre Facebook page.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca
For Harvey Stevens, being a volunteer is one of the keys to living a good life: One feels better volunteering, being part of a bigger picture.

For Harvey Stevens, being a volunteer is one of the keys to living a good life: "One feels better volunteering, being part of a bigger picture."

Over the past decade, Stevens has lent his expertise as a retired policy analyst to the Manitoba office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The 77-year-old West End resident first got involved when he co-wrote a chapter of CCPA Manitobas alternative municipal budget.

Since then, he has researched and written reports on poverty reduction, child care policy, and an analysis of the provinces plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"I enjoy being able to use my research and policy skills in working on important social issues, and having the CCPA publish the results and advocate for their implementation," Stevens says. "I appreciate the commitment of the CCPA to championing those issues that are not adequately dealt with by society, such as poverty, inequality and environmental degradation."

Born in Welland, Ont., Stevens was raised with the conviction people are meant to serve others.

By his early 20s, he felt his path in life was to address poverty. A few years later, he became concerned about the environmental degradation occurring given "societys overriding focus on growth and consumption, regardless of the consequences."

He tried doing hands-on work to address these problems, but realized he was better suited to using his research and policy skills to advance those causes.

Stevens moved to Winnipeg in 1973, when he got a job with the Manitoba Basic Annual Income Experiments research team.

He later worked as a policy analyst with the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg for 14 years, followed by 19 years with the provincial government.

Volunteering has been a key part of Stevens life ever since he arrived in Winnipeg. For more than 20 years, he served on the board of directors at two inner-city outreach ministries.

He was a founding member of what is now known as the Green Action Centre in 1985, and has served on its board of directors and policy committee.

Stevens chaired the policy committee of the Green Party of Manitoba from 2014 to 2016, and he is currently involved with a national group preparing a brief for federal MPs on the merits of a basic income for working age Canadians.

"Volunteering is (key) to complementing the essential role government plays in solving social problems," Stevens says.

"Government is essential to solving the structural causes of poverty and environmental degradation, but government has a hard time putting a human face and compassion on the response to poverty. Thats where the voluntary and non-profit organizations come into play  but they need volunteers to run them and govern them."

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Stevens is generous with his time and expertise, says Molly McCracken, director of CCPA Manitoba.

"Harvey is that rare person who is passionate about social issues but has the hard scientific chops to crunch the numbers and outline the path for how we get there using public policy," she says. "His work is detailed and thorough, and he does it at no cost to the community groups he helps.

"Harvey is an incredibly dedicated anti-poverty activist," McCracken adds. "Hes contributed hugely to the discourse on what it takes to bring down poverty rates in Manitoba."

Stevens, who enjoys walking, carpentry and choral singing in his free time, encourages everyone to volunteer.

"Its a life-affirming and life-enhancing activity, and it can involve the smallest acts of kindness and generosity," he says.

If you know a special volunteer, please contact aaron.epp@gmail.com
Within 24 hours, Jon Reyes was famous, at least in the way fame works in the digital age, which is that the Waverley MLAs face and exactly 35 of his words had been devoured and regurgitated by the internets biggest content machines. Hed made it onto Barstool Sports; been mocked by celebrities; been featured as a Canadian dude on tabloid swamp TMZ.

Opinion

Within 24 hours, Jon Reyes was famous, at least in the way fame works in the digital age, which is that the Waverley MLAs face and exactly 35 of his words had been devoured and regurgitated by the internets biggest content machines. Hed made it onto Barstool Sports; been mocked by celebrities; been featured as a "Canadian dude" on tabloid swamp TMZ.

And the tweet which started the whole thing  a photo Reyes took of his wife, Cynthia, shovelling their driveway after a 12-hour shift as a hospital nurse  had swelled, being shared over 15,000 times, taking on a life of its own as folks made it the base chord on which to riff off their jokes. I shamelessly admit, I was one of them, too.

Reyes tweeted: "Even after a 12 hour night shift at the hospital last night, my wife still has the energy to shovel the driveway. God bless her and all our frontliners. Time to make her some breakfast."

Behold, the golden rule of these social media hullabaloos: its rarely the tweet that drives them. Its usually the reaction.

As is typical when tweets go viral, the response was a circus. The majority was all in good fun, with locals scoring zingers off the Tories ("The PC government that doesnt seem to understand exponential spread should study this Tweet," one response read) and most others going for fairly harmless jokes about letting a spouse shovel after a long night at work.

"Shes digging a hole for your body, bud," tweeted Jezebel editor-in-chief Laura Bassett.

Some of the response took it either too far, analyzing what the tweet revealed about the state of the Reyess marriage (may I humbly suggest: nothing) or trying very hard to make it a front in the gender war (one repeated refrain was that it was sexist to suggest a man had to shovel, missing the mitigating factor of Cynthia being a nurse coming off shift in a pandemic).

There were debates about whether or not Cynthia might like to shovel as a way to decompress, which is entirely possible (on Sunday, a new Twitter account under her name stated as much: "All I wanted to do was shovel!" she wrote, with a face-palm emoji). There were critiques that the tweets virality was distracting from bigger issues.

Nothing about this particular fracas needs to be that serious. At the end of the day, the situation is pretty simple: a lot of us are cooped up at home, online and a little bored. The Reyes tweet strolled right into a combination of factors that made it a perfect storm, and watching that storm move all the way to American tabloid news was a spectacle in itself.

Jon Reyes has reminded us its not the tweet, its the reaction. All you can do once it starts is try to play along. (MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES)

But why? Explaining what makes things funny, especially online where the mass collaborative response becomes an integral part of the comedy, is a reliably painful exercise, so theres no point in trying. Either you get why the tweet, and the ensuing mining of it for laughs, hit so many nerves and went so viral, or you dont. If you dont, thats fine too.

Still, once this circus has packed up and left town (it will already be played out by the time this column runs), theres maybe something in it worth noting. Because really, this is a story about communication and public perception. Its revealing about how Manitobans are feeling, at this stage of the pandemic, and about what they expect from their leaders.

Or, to put it another way: the most remarkable thing about the tweet wasnt anything Reyes wrote. Its that it was made in earnest, apparently blissfully unaware of how it could be read in context by a public that is boiling with frustration over the Tory governments handling of the pandemic, and especially its effect on stressed health-care workers.

Not only did this cabinet minister not read the room when he composed the tweet, he didnt even scan its table of contents.

And that it came at a time when the Tories would, no doubt, prefer not to have any such unforced errors that invite public derision, gave it that little extra twist of bad timing. Somewhere, surely, Tory communications staffers were banging their heads against the wall on Saturday night. Picturing that reaction is funny, too.

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On that note, a missed opportunity in the denouement. On Sunday morning, Reyes gave a statement to CBC, calling his wife "amazing" and adding that hes "happy she is getting the worldwide recognition she deserves, and it serves as a reminder to everyone  especially me today  that we can never do enough to show our gratitude to health-care workers."

The better response, I think, would have been to poke fun at himself: a tweet of him shovelling snow while his wife looked on sipping coffee would have done the trick. An offer to shovel the driveways of the first few constituents to reply wouldve gone a long way towards wrangling the spotlight back onto the community, and bringing a bit of delight.

Remember, its not the tweet, its the reaction. All you can do once it starts is try to play along.

Oh, one last thing, as inspired by a tweet from local gynecologist Dr. Leslea Walters. If theres any good that can come out of this  and there may as well be  maybe its to remember that a lot of health-care workers are slodging through difficult shifts right now. And weve had a lot of snow this winter, with the forecast calling for more this week.

So, if a health-care worker lives on your street, and you have time and are able, in honour of Jon Reyes and what he did  or more specifically didnt do  to give us something to chatter about this weekend, why not give their driveway a shovel?

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca
This week a state of emergency was declared due to staff shortages in the Winnipeg Police Service.

Opinion

This week a state of emergency was declared due to staff shortages in the Winnipeg Police Service.

During the first week of 2022, nine per cent of all police personnel were on COVID-related leave. This meant officers from gang and community service units were redeployed and WPS Chief Danny Smyth publicly pondered reducing daily shifts from three to two.

This is nothing to panic about  but requires non-profit organizations, groups like the Bear Clan and Mama Bear Clan, and volunteers to shoulder a bit more of the burden of keeping our communities safe.

This has been the state of health care for almost two years, with thousands of surgeries and procedures cancelled or postponed and services rerouted or sent out of province. Caring for those who needed medical help has fallen to friends or families.

Police and health care arent the only services challenged recently. The Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service announced that five per cent of its staff are off due to COVID-related illnesses.

Were at the widescale deterioration of public services stage of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Or, welcome to a small taste of what its like to live on a First Nation.

Just be glad you still can drink water from the tap here.

In the same vein, this past week also saw a remarkable, landmark agreement to settle the harms and rectify the situation of child welfare on First Nations. After nearly a decade and a half of legal fighting, hundreds of thousands of First Nations children who were forced into the child welfare system due to a lack of basic infrastructure and services  a situation created by Canadas impoverishment of Indigenous families and communities  will be compensated $20 billion.

Another $20 billion will be allocated to rectify the situation, and provide Indigenous families with adequate health and family support systems  or what Canadians experience.

When advocate Cindy Blackstock and the Assembly of First Nations first filed the original complaint about this issue in 2007, compensation and new infrastructure probably would have cost a few hundred million.

Due to consecutive federal governments fighting this claim in court, its now $40 billion.

When basic, functional and well-funded public services arent available, its children and families who suffer the most.

Think about that this week while the provincial government considers whether to send our children back to school on Monday, Jan. 17.

Also think about it as nearly a dozen Manitoba First Nations enter another series of community lockdowns as they battle COVID-19 outbreaks.

As said many times in this column, the lack of basic infrastructure and poverty created by the Indian Act creates a perfect storm for outbreaks of COVID-19.

A recent study by two of my University of Manitoba colleagues showed that infection rates on Manitoba First Nations are as high as 10 times the provincial rates.

The Omicron variant is proving this fact more than ever. This week over half of Manitoba 63 First Nations reported skyrocketing positive cases with 10 in various states of lockdowns, travel restrictions or states of emergency.

The actual number of positive cases on First Nations  as it is everywhere else  are impossible to know due to testing delays and the lack of rapid test availability.

But, outbreaks are evident, occurring even in communities that have had barely any cases the entire pandemic, like Manto Sipi Cree Nation which reports 64 positive cases, or nearly 10 per cent of the community.

In Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, 80 homes are in isolation, or a third of the community.

In Pimicikamak, the nursing station has lost nearly two-thirds of their staff.

In most communities, basic services like policing, fire and paramedic, and health services arent available, so volunteers (or what we lovingly call "aunties" or "uncles") do this work.

Would you be willing to patrol your neighbourhood to protect your community?

Would you help put out a fire or drive a person hundreds of kilometres to a hospital?

Would you be willing to enter an infected persons home to administer medicine?

Thats happening everyday on First Nations. And almost no one is being paid.

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With vaccination, the chances of being hospitalized with COVID-19 are significantly decreased. Unfortunately, with 18 per cent of Manitobans refusing to get a shot, the chances of our health-care system being overrun by serious cases is more and more possible.

In fact, we are already seeing the deterioration of services  a reality that will demand we all pick up the work of keeping our communities safe, secure and healthy.

The coming months may see all of us do a little bit more for our neighbours, friends or becoming a new auntie or an uncle to someone.

Then, when we get out of this pandemic, we need to take seriously the chronic racism that puts certain communities at risk or face the reality of paying for it with billions of dollars later.

Or, costs our lives.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca
NEW YORK (AP)  Investigators sought answers Monday for why safety doors failed to close when fire broke out in a New York high-rise, allowing thick smoke to rise through the tower and kill 17 people, including eight children, in the city's deadliest blaze in more than three decades.

Residents leave their building during a high rise fire on East 181 Street, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022, in the Bronx borough of New York. (AP Photo/Lloyd Mitchell)

NEW YORK (AP)  Investigators sought answers Monday for why safety doors failed to close when fire broke out in a New York high-rise, allowing thick smoke to rise through the tower and kill 17 people, including eight children, in the city's deadliest blaze in more than three decades.

A malfunctioning electric space heater apparently started the fire Sunday in the 19-story building in the Bronx, fire officials said. The flames damaged only a small part of the building, but smoke poured through the apartments open door and turned stairwells into dark, ash-choked death traps. The stairs were the only method of escape in a tower too tall for fire escapes.

Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said the apartments front door and a door on the 15th floor should have been self-closing and blunted the spread of smoke, but the doors stayed fully open. It was not clear if the doors failed mechanically or if they had been manually disabled. Nigro said the apartment door was not obstructed.

The heavy smoke blocked some residents from escaping and incapacitated others as they tried to flee, fire officials said. Victims, many in cardiac and respiratory arrest, were found on every one floor. Firefighters carried out limp children and gave them oxygen and continued making rescues even after their air supplies ran out.

Glenn Corbett, a fire science professor at John Jay College in New York City, said closed doors are vital to containing fire and smoke, especially in buildings that do not have automatic sprinkler systems.

Its pretty remarkable that the failure of one door could lead to how many deaths we had here, but thats the reality of it, Corbett said. That one door played a critical role in allowing the fire to spread and the smoke and heat to spread vertically through the building."

Dozens of people were hospitalized, including several in critical condition. Mayor Eric Adams called it an unspeakable tragedy at a news conference near the scene Monday.

This tragedy is not going to define us, Adams said. It is going to show our resiliency.

Adams lowered the death toll from an initial report Sunday, saying that two fewer people were killed than originally thought. Nigro said patients were taken to seven hospitals and there was a bit of a double count.

The dead included children as young as 4 years old, City Council Member Oswald Feliz said.

Cleaning and recovery crews work outside the apartment building in the Bronx on Monday, Jan. 10, 2022, in New York. Doctors are working to save the lives of several people gravely injured when smoke from a fire knocked them out or trapped them in their apartments in the New York City high-rise building. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

An investigation was underway to determine how the fire spread and whether anything could have been done to prevent or contain the blaze, Nigro said.

A fire department official said the space heater had been running for a prolonged period before the fire began. What caused it to malfunction remains under investigation, spokesman Frank Dwyer said. Fire then spread quickly to nearby furniture and bedding, Dwyer said.

Nigro said the heat was on in the building before the fire started, and the space heater was being used to supplement it.

But Stefan Beauvogui, who lived with his wife in the building for about seven years, said cold was an ongoing problem in his fourth-floor apartment. Beauvogui said he had three space heaters for the winter  for the bedrooms and the sitting room. The heating system that was supposed to warm the apartment dont work for nothing. He said he had complained, but it had not been fixed.

Large, new apartment buildings are required to have sprinkler systems and interior doors that swing shut automatically to contain smoke and deprive fires of oxygen, but those rules do not apply to thousands of the citys older buildings.

The building was equipped with self-closing doors and smoke alarms, but several residents said they initially ignored the alarms because they were so common in the 120-unit building.

Bronx Park Phase III Preservation LLC, the group that owns the building, said it was cooperating fully with the fire department and the city and working to assist residents.

We are devastated by the unimaginable loss of life caused by this profound tragedy, the statement said.

A spokeswoman for the ownership group, Kelly Magee, said that maintenance staff in July fixed the lock on the front door of the apartment in which the fire started and, while doing that repair, checked that the apartments self-closing door was working. No issues were reported with the door after that point, Magee said.

Residents smoking in the stairwells sometimes tripped the fire alarms, and property managers had been working with them to address the problem, Magee said. She said the alarms appeared to work properly on Sunday.

The tower was required by building codes to have sprinklers only in its trash compactor and laundry room because it has concrete ceilings and floors, she said.

Camber Property Group is one of three firms in the ownership group that purchased the building in 2020 as part of $166 million purchase of eight affordable housing buildings in the borough. One of Cambers founders, Rick Gropper, served on Adams transition team, advising him on housing. He contributed to a dozen politicians in the past few elections, including $400 to Adams campaign last year.

New York City has been slow to require sprinklers for older apartment buildings, passing laws to mandate them in high-rise office towers after 9/11 but punting in recent years on a bill that would require such measures in residential buildings.

In 2018, a city lawmaker proposed requiring automatic fire sprinklers in residential buildings 40 feet or taller by the end of 2029, but that measure never passed, and the lawmaker recently left office.

A sprinkler system set off by heat in the apartment might have saved lives, said Ronald Siarnicki, executive director of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.

Most likely it would have extinguished that fire or at least held it in check and not produced the amount of toxic smoke, said Siarnicki, adding that firefighter groups have been lobbying for stricter sprinkler requirements for years.

The building is home to many families originally from Gambia in West Africa.

Resident Karen Dejesus said she was used to hearing the fire alarm go off.

Not until I actually saw the smoke coming in the door did I realize it was a real fire, and I began to hear people yelling, Help! Help! Help!

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Dejesus, who was in her two-floor apartment with her son and 3-year-old granddaughter, immediately called family members and ran to get towels to put under the door. But smoke began coming down her stairs before the 56-year-old resident could get the towels, so the three ran to the back of the apartment.

It was so scary, she said. "Just the fact that were in a building thats burning and you dont know how youre going to get out. You dont know if the firefighters are going to get to you in time.

Firefighters broke down her door and helped all three out the window and down a ladder to safety. Dejesus clung to her rescuer on the way down.

The fire was New York City's deadliest since 1990, when 87 people died in an arson at the Happy Land social club, also in the Bronx. Sundays fire happened just days after 12 people, including eight children, were killed in a house fire in Philadelphia.

___

Associated Press writers Bobby Caina Calvan, Deepti Hajela and Bernard Condon contributed to this report.
GENESEO, Ill. (AP)  An Illinois family has solved the mystery of what happened to their missing cat that likes to sit on horses and donkeys.

GENESEO, Ill. (AP)  An Illinois family has solved the mystery of what happened to their missing cat that likes to sit on horses and donkeys.

Ann Kandis said the cat, named Noodles, jumped into the trunk of her father's car in November 2018 while he was at the family's farm in Geneseo, the Quad-City Times reported. Her father drove off, but stopped along the road when he heard a noise. He opened the trunk and the cat jumped out.

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The family posted lost cat notices and searched along the road but couldn't find Noodles.

Kandis had given up on finding Noodles until she stumbled across a Facebook message that a fellow horse lover posted around the time Noodles went missing. The post showed a cat sitting on a horse and asked whether anybody recognized the cat?

Kandis messaged the woman on Christmas Eve and she still had Noodles. When Kandis and her son went over to the womans house, Noodles ran up to them.

Kandis, who works as an emergency room physician for Genesis Medical Center, said finding Noodles brought her emotional relief during a stressful time. She didn't take Noodles home because she said he has a good gig, but added that she can still visit the cat.

___

This story has been corrected to indicate that Geneseo is in Illinois, not Iowa.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  Robert Durst, the wealthy New York real estate heir and failed fugitive dogged for decades with suspicion in the disappearance and deaths of those around him before he was convicted last year of killing his best friend, has died. He was 78.

LOS ANGELES (AP)  Robert Durst, the wealthy New York real estate heir and failed fugitive dogged for decades with suspicion in the disappearance and deaths of those around him before he was convicted last year of killing his best friend, has died. He was 78.

Durst died of natural causes Monday in a hospital outside the California prison where he was serving a life sentence, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Durst had been held in a hospital lockup in Stockton due to a litany of ailments.

This Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021 photo, released by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, shows Robert Durst, the eccentric New York real estate, who was sentenced in October, 2021 to life in prison without chance of parole for the murder of his best friend more that two decades ago. (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation via AP)

Durst was convicted in September of shooting Susan Berman at point-blank range at her Los Angeles home in 2000. He was sentenced Oct. 14 to life in prison without parole.

Durst had long been suspected of killing his wife, Kathie, who went missing in New York 1982 and was declared legally dead decades later.

But only after Los Angeles prosecutors proved he silenced Berman to prevent her from telling police she helped cover up Kathies killing was Durst indicted by a New York grand jury in November for second-degree murder in his wife's death.

Westchester County prosecutors, who had been trying to get Durst transferred there to face the charge, said they planned to reveal new details about the case in coming days.

After 40 years spent seeking justice for her death, I know how upsetting this news must be for Kathleen Dursts family, District Attorney Miriam Rocah said in a statement. We had hoped to allow them the opportunity to see Mr. Durst finally face charges for Kathleens murder because we know that all families never stop wanting closure, justice and accountability.

Los Angeles prosecutors told jurors Durst also got away with murder in Texas after shooting a man who discovered his identity when he was hiding out in Galveston in 2001. Durst was acquitted of murder in that case in 2003, after testifying he shot the man as they struggled for a gun.

Deputy District Attorney John Lewin said Los Angeles jurors told him after the verdict that they believed Durst had killed his wife and murdered Morris Black in Texas.

FILE - In this Dec. 21, 2016 file photo, Robert Durst sits in a courtroom in Los Angeles. Durst, the wealthy New York real estate heir and failed fugitive who was dogged for decades with suspicion in the disappearance and deaths of those around him before he was convicted of killing his best friend and sentenced to life in prison, died on Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. He was 78. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, Pool, File)

Dursts undoing was in large part due to his hubris.

After beating the charge in Texas, in a bid to rehabilitate his image, he reached out to filmmakers who had portrayed his life  not favorably  in the 2010 big screen feature, All Good Things, starring Ryan Gosling as Durst. He offered to sit down for a series of lengthy interviews about his life.

It was a decision he told jurors he deeply regretted.

Durst, who later said he was using methamphetamine during the interviews, made several damning statements including a stunning confession during an unguarded moment in the six-part HBO documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.

The show made his name known to a new generation and brought renewed scrutiny and suspicion from authorities.

The night before the final episode aired, Durst was arrested in Bermans killing while hiding out under an alias in a New Orleans hotel, where he was caught with a gun, more than $40,000 cash and a head-to-shoulders latex mask for a presumed getaway.

The finale's climax came with him mumbling to himself in a bathroom while still wearing hot mic saying: Youre caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.

The quotes were later revealed to have been manipulated for dramatic effect but the production  done against the advice of Durst's lawyers and friends  dredged up new evidence including an envelope that connected him to the scene of Bermans killing as well as incriminating statements he made.

Police had received a note directing them to Bermans home with only the word CADAVER written in block letters.

In interviews given between 2010 and 2015, Durst told the makers of the The Jinx that he didnt write the note, but whoever did had killed her.

FILE - Real estate heir Robert Durst sits during his murder trial at the Airport Branch Courthouse in Los Angeles on Thursday, March 5, 2020. Durst, the wealthy New York real estate heir and failed fugitive who was dogged for decades with suspicion in the disappearance and deaths of those around him before he was convicted of killing his best friend and sentenced to life in prison, died on Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. He was 78. (Robyn Beck/AFP via AP, Pool, File)

Youre writing a note to the police that only the killer could have written, Durst said.

His defense lawyers conceded in the run-up to trial that Durst had written the note, and prosecutors said it amounted to a confession.

Clips from The Jinx, and All Good Things had starring roles at trial.

As did Durst himself. He took the risk of again taking the stand for what turned out to be about three weeks of testimony. It didnt work as it had in Texas.

Under devastating cross-examination by prosecutor Lewin, Durst admitted he lied under oath in the past and would do it again to dodge trouble.

Did you kill Susan Berman? is strictly a hypothetical, Durst said from the stand. I did not kill Susan Berman. But if I had, I would lie about it.

The jury promptly returned a guilty verdict.

It long appeared he would avoid any convictions.

Durst went on the run in late 2000 after New York authorities reopened an investigation into his wifes disappearance, renting a modest apartment in Galveston and disguising himself as a mute woman.

In 2001, the body parts of a neighbor, Black, began washing up in Galveston Bay.

FILE - This Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021 photo, released by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, shows Robert Durst. Durst, the wealthy New York real estate heir and failed fugitive who was dogged for decades with suspicion in the disappearance and deaths of those around him before he was convicted of killing his best friend and sentenced to life in prison, died on Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. He was 78. (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation via AP, File)

Arrested in the killing, Durst jumped bail. He was caught shoplifting a sandwich six weeks later in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he had gone to college. Police found $37,000 cash and two handguns in his car.

He later quipped that he was the worst fugitive the world has ever met.

He would testify that Black had pulled a gun on him and died when the weapon went off during a struggle.

He told jurors in detail how he bought tools and downed a bottle of Jack Daniels before dismembering Blacks body and tossing it out to sea. While he was cleared of murder, he pleaded guilty to violating his bail, and to evidence tampering for the dismemberment. He served three years in prison.

Durst had bladder cancer and his health deteriorated during the Berman trial. He was escorted into court in a wheelchair wearing prison attire each day because his attorneys said he was unable to change into a suit. But the judge declined further delays after a 14-month pause during the coronavirus pandemic.

At his sentencing, Durst entered the courtroom with a wide-eyed vacant stare. Attorney Dick DeGuerin said he was very, very sick  the worst he looked in the 20 years he spent representing him.

Near the end of the hearing after Bermans loved ones told the judge that her death upended their lives, Durst coughed hard and appeared to struggle to breathe. His chest heaved and he pulled his mask down below his mouth to gulp for air.

He was hospitalized two days later with COVID-19 and DeGuerin said he was on a ventilator. But Durst apparently recovered and was transferred to state prison where mug shots showed no sign of a ventilator.

The son of real estate magnate Seymour Durst, Robert Durst was born April 12, 1943, and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He would later say that at age 7, he witnessed his mothers death in a fall from their home.

He graduated with an economics degree in 1965 from Lehigh University, where he played lacrosse. He entered a doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he met Berman, but dropped out and returned to New York in 1969.

He became a developer in the family business, but his father passed him over to make his younger brother, and rival, Douglas the head of the Durst Organization in 1992.

Durst broke ties with his family, reaching a settlement with a family trust. He was estimated to have a fortune of about $100 million.

Douglas Durst testified at trial that he feared his brother wanted to kill him.

Bob lived a sad, painful and tragic life," he said in a statement Monday. "We hope his death brings some closure to those he hurt.

In 1971, Robert Durst met Kathie McCormack, and the two married on his 30th birthday in 1973.

In January 1982, his wife was a student in her final year at medical school when she disappeared. She had shown up unexpectedly at a friends dinner party in Newtown, Connecticut, then left after a call from her husband to return to their home in South Salem, New York.

Robert Durst told police he last saw her when he put her on a train to stay at their apartment in Manhattan because she had classes the next day.

Prosecutors said Berman, the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster, posed as Kathie Durst to call Albert Einstein College of Medicine the next morning to say she was sick and wouldn't be at her hospital rotation. The call provided an alibi for Robert Durst because it made it appear his wife made it safely to Manhattan after he saw her.

He would divorce her eight years later, claiming spousal abandonment, and in 2017, at her familys request, she was declared legally dead.

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Kathie McCormack Durst's family said they plan to provide an update on Jan. 31  the 40th anniversary of her disappearance  into an investigation of others who helped cover up her killing, attorney Robert Abrams said.

Robert Durst is survived by his second wife Debrah Charatan, whom he married in 2000. He had no children.

Under California law, a conviction is vacated if a defendant dies while the case is under appeal, said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School.

Attorney Chip Lewis said Durst had appealed.

___

Associated Press writer Michelle A. Monroe in Phoenix contributed.
WSHS students Haylee Cada and Jasper Hedin pose with some of the bracelets students purchased to support the Pulsera Project.
SYDNEY, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- An Australian and Canadian study has found that childhood COVID-19 vaccination not only leads to high relative reductions in child disease and mortality, but also benefits adults, particularly the unvaccinated.

The findings, published in MedRxiv and released by the Griffith University on Monday, came at the same time when vaccinations for children aged five to 11 commence in Australia.

The researchers used a mathematical epidemiological model to forecast the effect of childhood vaccination on the number of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, deaths, complications and vaccine adverse effects in both children and in adults.

They found that for children aged five to 11, cases of vaccine-associated myocarditis and anaphylaxis are predicted to be very rare. And vaccinating children would generate an "altruistic" reduction in the number of adult cases, hospitalizations and mortality, particularly among the unvaccinated.

"Our model showed that childhood vaccination carries minimal risk, yet can result in large relative reductions in the disease," said Professor Michael Good from the Institute for Glycomics of the Griffith University.

"Under less intense epidemic conditions, when the effective reproduction rate is slightly greater than 1, the type of modest reductions seen in adult populations due to childhood vaccination can lead to large reductions in the disease."

Three million vaccines are being distributed on Monday ahead of the start of the school year to enable the 2.3 million children now eligible to be vaccinated.

The research showed that the biggest benefit of childhood vaccination will, perhaps, be seen in adult populations because of the implication for immunization programs.

The implication for immunization programs of this effect on adult populations is that childhood vaccination has the greatest potential for population-wide impact when coupled with other public health measures, such as social distancing, masking, improved hand hygiene and adult vaccination, to maximise the reduction in cases.

The researchers thought that while the modeling for this study was generated using publicly available data for the Delta strain of coronavirus, it is predicted that the relative impacts of Omicron on children and adults as a result of vaccination of children will be similar. 
LOS ANGELES (AP)  Robert Durst, the wealthy New York real estate heir and failed fugitive who was dogged for decades with suspicion in the disappearance and deaths of those around him before he was convicted of killing his best friend and sentenced to life in prison, has died. He was 78.

Durst died in a state prison hospital facility in Stockton, his attorney Chip Lewis said. He said it was from natural causes due to a number of health issues.

Durst was convicted in September of shooting Susan Berman at point-blank range in 2000 at her Los Angeles home. He was sentenced to life Oct. 14. Two days later, he was hospitalized with COVID-19, his trial attorney Dick DeGuerin said.

Durst had long been suspected of killing his wife, Kathie, who went missing in 1982 and has been declared legally dead. He was finally indicted in November for second-degree murder in her death.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles presented evidence Durst silenced Berman because she helped him cover up Kathie's killing and was about to talk to investigators. They also argued he killed a Texas man who discovered his identity when he was living secretly in Galveston after Berman's killing. Durst was acquitted of murder in that case in 2003, after testifying he shot him in self-defense.

Durst discussed the cases and made several damning statements including a stunning confession during an unguarded moment in the six-part HBO documentary series "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst."

The show made his name known to a new generation and brought renewed scrutiny and suspicion from authorities. He was arrested in Berman's killing the night before the final episode, which closed with him mumbling to himself in a bathroom while still wearing hot mic saying: "You're caught! What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."

The quotes were later revealed to have been manipulated for dramatic effect but the production  done with Durst's cooperation against the advice from his lawyer and friends  dredged up new evidence including an envelope that connected Durst to the scene of Berman's killing as well as incriminating statements he made.

Police had received a note directing them to Berman's home with only the word "CADAVER" written in block letters.

In interviews given between 2010 and 2015, Durst told the makers of the "The Jinx" that he didn't write the note, but whoever did had killed her.

"You're writing a note to the police that only the killer could have written," Durst said.

His defense lawyers conceded in the run-up to trial that Durst had written the note, and prosecutors said it amounted to a confession.

Clips from "The Jinx," and from the 2010 movie "All Good Things" in which Ryan Gosling played a fictionalized version of Durst, had starring roles at trial.

As did Durst himself. His attorneys again took the risk of putting him on the stand for what turned out to be about three weeks of testimony. It didn't work as it had in Texas.

Under devastating cross-examination by prosecutor John Lewin, Durst admitted he lied under oath in the past and would do it again to get out of trouble.

"'Did you kill Susan Berman?' is strictly a hypothetical," Durst said from the stand. "I did not kill Susan Berman. But if I had, I would lie about it."

The jury promptly returned a guilty verdict.

It long appeared he would avoid any such convictions.

Durst went on the run in late 2000 after New York authorities reopened an investigation into his wife's disappearance, renting a modest apartment in Galveston and disguising himself as a mute woman.

In 2001, the body parts of a neighbor, Morris Black, began washing up in Galveston Bay.

Arrested in the killing, Durst jumped bail. He was arrested for shoplifting a sandwich six weeks later in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he had gone to college. Police found $37,000 cash and two handguns in his car.

He would testify that Black had pulled a gun on him and died when the weapon went off during a struggle. He told jurors in detail how he bought tools and dismembered and disposed of Black's body. He was acquitted of murder. He pleaded guilty to violating his bail, and to evidence tampering for the dismemberment. He served three years in prison.

Durst had bladder cancer and his health deteriorated during the Berman trial. He was escorted into court in a wheelchair wearing prison attire each day because his attorneys said he was unable to change into a suit. But the judge declined further delays after a 14-month pause during the coronavirus pandemic.

DeGuerin said Durst was "very, very sick" at his sentencing hearing and it was the worst he looked in the 20 years he spent representing him.

Durst entered the courtroom with wide-eyed vacant stare. Near the end of the hearing after Berman's loved ones told the judge how her death upended their lives, Durst coughed hard and then appeared to struggle to breathe. His chest heaved and he pulled his mask down below his mouth and began to gulp for air.

The son of real estate magnate Seymour Durst, Robert Durst was born April 12, 1943, and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He would later say that at age 7, he witnessed his mother's death in a fall from their home.

He graduated with an economics degree in 1965 from Lehigh University, where he played lacrosse. He entered a doctoral program at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he met Berman, but dropped out and returned to New York in 1969.

He became a developer in the family business, but his father passed him over to make his younger brother, and rival, Douglas the head of the Durst Organization in 1992.

In 1971, Robert Durst met Kathie McCormack, and the two married on his 30th birthday in 1973.

In January 1982, his wife was a student in her final year at medical school when she disappeared. She had shown up unexpectedly at a friend's dinner party in Newtown, Connecticut, then left after a call from her husband to return to their home in South Salem, New York.

Robert Durst told police he last saw her when he put her on a train to stay at their apartment in Manhattan because she had classes the next day.

He would divorce her eight years later, claiming spousal abandonment, and in 2017, at her family's request, she was declared legally dead.

Robert Durst is survived by his second wife Debrah Charatan, whom he married in 2000. He had no children.

Under California law, a conviction is vacated if a defendant dies while the case is under appeal, said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School.

Lewis said an appeal was filed for Durst.

___

Associated Press writer Michelle A. Monroe in Phoenix contributed.
RACINE  Under the single, butter-warm lamplight in her home office with the sun setting behind her, Jeanne Arnold held her poem in her hand, ready to read it aloud.

But the 90-year-old and newest Writer-in-Residence for ArtRoot prefaced her poem, What lived most deeply in me, with the words: Its kind of corny. It rhymes.

She went on to tell a tale about how she hid her identity as a lesbian. She sought for security in her normalized marriage with her former husband until she came out and met her late partner.

Lines from her poem read, Naively brave we took it on /Despite what did appear. /We lived our lives in disguise, /Could we lose families and careers?

Arnold will be chronicling her experiences in spirituality, the womens movement, Racines history and the LGBTQ+ community in weekly blog posts to the Writer-in-Residence Project website (racinewir.com) until June. Her first post, titled Am I opening Pandoras Box? was published on Thursday.

I want readers to enjoy what Im writing, and then I want to share some other fun things  and some of the really conflicting things that I had to go through in the 70s, 80s and even the 90s, Arnold said.

Ill be getting responses

Arnold is the 12th writer to be chosen for ArtRoots WIR program.

ArtRoot  a local collaboration of artists and advocates dedicated to reinvigorating Southeast Wisconsin through the arts with such projects as the newest mural at Racine Public Library  chooses two writers who reside in Racine or Kenosha counties to write a blog and lead a community-based project.

Residencies take place between January to June and July to December. The residencies are available for emerging, mid-career or established writers. The program is funded through a grant from the Osborne & Scekic Family Foundation; its primary goal is to spotlight the areas literary community while encouraging, supporting and advocating on behalf of writers at all stages of their careers.

Arnold, who just celebrated her 90th birthday in November and was gifted a new computer, has notebooks and completed books and even the ownership of a press and bookstore under her belt as an established writer.

She has been writing ever since she was a little girl  and she kept most of it a secret because it was all very intimate to her, she said.

Ill be getting responses instead of sitting in this room typing or computering away for almost 20 years, Arnold said. I didnt really share it, because it was kind of too intimate or too forbidden of a subject and, where would I publish it?

Having retired in 1994, Arnold is working on her eighth book: an unpublished memoir series titled Whistling Girls and Crowing Hens. Fittingly, each memoir is bound in covers in colors of the rainbow.

The WIR program will help amplify her voice.

Arnold does have one published book, Amy Asks a Question ...: Grandma, Whats a Lesbian? from 1996 that was nominated for a children and teen Lambda Literary Award.

A history

Arnold was born in Racine on Nov. 14, 1931.

In her 90 years, Arnold has done a lot.

Arnold is a graduate of Horlick High School and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She taught English and journalism classes in Wisconsin and also in Frankfurt, Germany in the mid-1950s; there, she taught U.S. Army dependents.

She taught and supervised the religious education program at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Racine and Kenosha, now known as Olympia Brown Unitarian Universalist Church. She spent some time as a reporter for The Journal Times.

She worked as a communications director for an area hospital from 1974-84. She helped establish a womans spirituality group thats still active today. She jammed out on the harmonica and lent her vocals to The Depends, a six-person, all-female band.

Arnold eventually separated from her husband to be with her late partner, Barbara Lindquist. At a time where the LGBTQ+ community was shunned, Arnold recalled being fired from her job for being a lesbian. Lindquist had been fired, too, for her sexual orientation.

I did a really good job of busting my buns because I figured I had to prove that I was good and worthy, Arnold said. She noted that most people were fine with her once they knew she was a lesbian; but she did encounter many homophobes and experienced many homophobic acts, including being fired for her sexuality.

Its tough being a lesbian, she said.

Arnold remembered one instance, as she walked into the cafeteria at a former workplace where her sexual orientation was known.

I felt like everybody was like this, she said, splitting her hands  which had been held together  apart. Thats how you feel. And one of my friends from work, she put her arms on my shoulder, and she said, Come sit with us. And shes a best friend.

Early pioneers

A time Arnold especially treasures is when she and Lindquist  who illustrated Amy Asks a Question...: Grandma, Whats a Lesbian?  opened Mother Courage Bookstore and Art Gallery at 224 State St. It was active from 1978 to 1983.

The pair also ran Mother Courage Press from 1981-2002; they published 25 titles that sold internationally, including two of the first sexual abuse therapy books for children. They worked extensively with author Phyllis E. Sweet to put together one of the books, called Something Happened to Me.

At the time, such topics were rarely discussed. Arnold and Lindquist shone a light on various topics adjacent to what Arnold might call her liberal ideas.

We didnt think we were pioneers, Arnold said. We just did it because we wanted to.

In their still-active spiritual group, Arnold and Lindquist would discuss the meaning of spirituality as Unitarian Universalist women. They covered subjects like witch-burning, goddesses versus gods, nature and life cycles. At one point, they had around 30 people in their group and met more than a dozen times a year.

She said she hopes her work and her time as a writer-in-residence will inspire anyone who reads to be true to their identity.

You just have to be strong in yourself, Arnold said. It makes you strong. In my day, if everybody who was gay would stand up at the same time, people would be amazed. But that is happening now. People are standing up and coming out and giving inspiration.

As Arnold writes, she also plans to work on her community project, which is meant to give recognition to women in Racine and Kenosha counties; she will be calling for nominations.

Her project is called Unsung Women.
Heres the Madison School Districts report card so far for the semester:

For its experienced and dedicated staff who have persevered through a pandemic to teach our children online and in-person, the district deserves an A. Great work.

But for communication, the district just received an F on a very big assignment. The districts science homework is incomplete, and it was tardy returning students to class following winter break.

That leaves a lot of room for improvement.

First the good news: The Madison district of about 25,000 students and 5,000 staff is reopening its school buildings to students Monday after a one-week delay. Public pressure from frustrated parents no doubt helped encourage Superintendent Carlton Jenkins to restart in-person classes  something almost every district across the state had already done the week before.

Our community didnt let the districts tardiness slide without a stern warning. Thats because missing in-person classes for the last week (with two days of online school) badly disrupted peoples lives, especially working parents who dont have easy options for emergency child care.

The districts spokesman had told the State Journal on Dec. 20 that moving to online-only learning was not part of the districts plans for January. Yet an email to parents on the eve of New Years Eve informed families that school buildings wouldnt open the following Monday after all. That left many parents scrambling over the holiday weekend to get time off work, find somewhere safe for their kids to stay, or ask for an impromptu bring your child to work day.

Many teachers were caught off guard, too. They had to quickly rearrange lesson plans and, in many cases, try to figure out what to do with their own children. That was because staff, unlike students, had to report to school buildings as usual.

The surprise announcement was only made worse by its vague duration. Jenkins original email gave no indication of when in-person classes would return. For a district that kept its children out of school buildings for most of the last school year because of COVID-19, that raised the possibility of another long, indefinite and isolating stretch of online classes.

The next day, Jenkins announced his aspiration to open schools in a week. Thankfully, thats now going to happen, the district announced Thursday.

The roller-coaster of changing information earned the district a failing grade for its communication with the community. Next time around, district officials need to keep parents, staff and employers much better informed about what Jenkins and the School Board are thinking.

Infections from the omicron variant of the novel coronavirus are surging across Wisconsin and our nation. Though the new strain tends to cause less-severe symptoms, its still deadly for some people and much more easily spread. Thats why public health officials continue to urge vaccination, booster shots and masking when indoors so hospitals can handle patient demand.

But the dangers of the disease must be balanced against the terrible consequences many children face when not in school, including learning loss, lack of supervision, family stress and trauma. Some school officials in Madison still wont admit they kept our children out of school buildings for too long last school year. The many districts that did bring their students back sooner did not experience terrible consequences.

Even now, with COVID roaring back, the nations top public infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told ABC News last Sunday, Its safe enough to get those kids back to school, balanced against the deleterious effects of keeping them out.

That brings us to the districts grade for science. It did poorly at following the science last year. And now its being slow to address its staffing shortages for the same reason. The district anticipates 547 absences among staff this week, with 193 of those unfilled. Thats roughly 11% missing and 4% unfilled.

So why isnt the district taking the advice of the Centers for Disease Control to reduced its requirement for quarantines from 10 to 5 days? District officials say theyre waiting for state and local officials, including those at the Department of Public Instruction, to change their guidelines.

No offense to the educators at DPI, but the scientists at the CDC should take precedence, especially given the urgency the district professes it faces.

We love Madisons schools. Thats where our children need to be. Theyll learn more than they do online, especially children who dont have parents hovering over them at home or able to help with computer glitches. Online learning didnt work well last school year, and the district should do everything it can to keep its doors open for in-person learning now.

The district still has time to improve its grades for the public. More important, our children need all the time they can get in front of teachers in classrooms learning and safely interacting with their peers.
A series of bills with bipartisan support could give the University of Wisconsin System a new sustainable source of money that is nearly three times more than what campuses received in funding increases in the most recent state budget.

One bill involves the tuition reciprocity agreements between Wisconsin and Minnesota that allow students to attend colleges in their neighboring state while paying in-state tuition. The bill would shift negotiating authority from Wisconsins Higher Educational Aids Board to the System.

More importantly, it would let UW campuses keep more money from Minnesota students paying Minnesota tuition rates, which are higher than Wisconsins. Currently, some of that money  estimated to be about $11.4 million in 2020  is deposited into Wisconsins general fund with the rest going back to Minnesota. The campuses only receive the amount that a Wisconsin student pays.

The idea that campuses should keep the tuition dollars they earn has been around for a long time, interim System President Tommy Thompson said, and its finally gaining traction.

UW-Madison officials were unable to offer an estimate of how much more money would flow to UW-Madison through the new formula. Data shows about 2,800 undergraduates from Minnesota enrolled last school year.

Another bill would allow the UW Board of Regents to invest more of its money. State law currently allows the board to manage investment of gifts, grants and donations, yielding an annual return of about $400,000.

The System is uniquely constrained in lacking the basic authority to manage much of its working capital, which is standard practice at peer institutions and in the private sector, UW-Madison interim chief financial officer Rob Cramer told lawmakers this fall. Expanding the types of revenue streams that can be invested would help fund top priorities, such as financial aid and building maintenance upgrades that have been delayed for years.

Gaining this broader authority would allow the System to invest about $350 million more, officials estimated. Assuming a 3.2% return annually, that would generate about $11.2 million.

I think it just makes a lot of sense, said Sen. Roger Roth, R-Appleton, chair of the Senate committee that held a hearing on the bill in October.

Together, the reciprocity and investment bills would add about $22.6 million to the Systems budget.

In the two-year state budget passed last summer, the System received an $8.25 million increase, which officials have noted is essentially a budget cut. Thats because the money was directed toward specific programs, leaving campuses to tap existing funds for $8.4 million needed to cover a 2% pay increase for UW employees over the next two years.

Engineering building

A third bill with bipartisan support would lay the groundwork for a new engineering building at UW-Madison by freeing up $1 million for the university to begin advanced planning and design work instead of waiting until mid-2023 when the next state budget is passed.

UW-Madison earlier this year requested $150 million to begin construction on a $300 million engineering building that would replace an 82-year-old facility. A third of the initial cost would come from gifts and grants with the rest supported through state borrowing.

The Republican-controlled budget-writing committee removed the project from the budget passed last summer, a move that flummoxed UW-Madison officials who say it would be a boon for the states economy.

College of Engineering Dean Ian Robertson has said some 7,000 students apply each year with the intent to study undergraduate engineering but the college only has space and teaching resources to accept about 1,000 applicants annually. Thats despite peer schools having student body sizes ranging from 6,000 to nearly 9,500 students.

The new building would allow the college to add 1,000 more students to its overall undergraduate student body.

Odds of passing

Thompson put the three bills chances of passing the Republican-controlled Legislature at 80% and said hes confident that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers would sign the bills. The bills, he added, are a good opportunity to break the logjam between the Legislature and the governor by using the System as a fulcrum.

You have to be optimistic just to get up in the morning, he said in an interview. I think we have a very good chance of getting all three passed.

Britt Cudaback, an Evers spokesperson, said the governor is generally supportive of these concepts but will wait to see the final bills passed by the Legislature before making any final decisions.

Representatives for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, did not respond to several requests for comment on the bills.

But both the Senate Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges and the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities have held hearings on most of the bills. Republican lawmakers in charge of those committees said they plan to take votes in early 2022.

I think well be able to get all of those bills (to the floor), said Roth said. Just in conversations Ive had, people have been quite supportive.
The site of the former Badger Army Ammunition Plant could possibly be redeveloped into a multi-use facility.

Sauk County Board Chair and District 20 Supervisor Tim McCumber hopes to redevelop the site with a tourist attraction that will combine five different establishments into one large campus. The ammunition plants demolition was completed in 2013 and the site, which is located between Sauk Prairie and Baraboo on U.S. Highway 12, has been vacant since.

The DNR (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources) had done a master plan, and in that master plan, it called for a welcome center, said McCumber. I started sending out e-mails to elected officials, DNR, etc... to finally develop that site.

Ownership of the land on the site is split between the Ho-Chunk Nation, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the county, according to Sauk Prairie Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Tywana German.

I encouraged Tim and the folks at the county to talk with the Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance, which has done a lot of restorative work out there, to talk with the Ho-Chunk Nation, which had talked about doing an interpretive center for their piece of the land and maybe kind of work collaboratively to make one large interpretive space that tells all the different facets of that property, German said.

The facility could feature exhibit areas, a welcome foyer, gift shop, cafeteria and versatile rooms for classes, conferences, and other community events, according to the email from McCumber. McCumber hopes to utilize tourism-directed American Recovery Plan Act funds from the state and the county, but did not specify how much would be available.

If this site ends up costing $20-25 million, youd have five groups fundraising, McCumber said.

The Friends of Devils Lake State Park Interpretive Center was considered for locations inside the state park as well as a North Shore entrance site, according to the McCumber email. An advantage of the former ammunition site is that it would allow for quicker entrance to the park and attract new visitors, according to McCumber and German.

It would be great if we could pull them in on this project because this land is at the base of that property, German said.

Ho-Chunk Nation owns property on the site and could use part of the location as an education platform for the Ho-Chunk and other Indigenous Peoples backgrounds and contributions to the area, according to the email. No representative from the Ho-Chunk Nation responded to inquiries.

McCumber said the current Badger History Museum would be demolished and replaced with a section of the new facility and related exhibits would be added.

Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance already conducts environmental work on the current site, McCumber and German said. McCumber envisions a chance for members of the alliance to display their contributions to the area and establish prairie exhibits.

The Great Sauk State Trail passes through the vacant site. It begins in Sauk Prairie, but McCumber sees the facility as a key stop on the trail.

This would be a really great opportunity to have one master center that could be more of a museum, interpretive center where we could tell the story of the Sauk Prairie and Sauk County, said McCumber.
How Nigerian cities can cope better with flood risk

Institutional failures, infrastructure, socio-economic challenges and disaster education influence Nigerian cities vulnerability to flood disaster.

Flooding is one of the most prevalent and devastating disasters in Nigerian cities. It happens every year in many states of Nigeria. And it has significant social and economic impacts. In 2010, approximately 1550 people died and 258,000 displaced by 19 flood events. In 2012, Nigeria experienced its worst flooding in recent history. Two million people were forced from their homes and 363 died. The same year, a monetary loss of approximately $6.5 billion in damages was recorded.

The frequency and intensity of flooding in Nigerian cities is attributed to many factors. These include inadequate drainage, haphazard physical developments, and blockage of drainage channels by solid waste. Population growth and illegal erection of buildings and other structures are also cited. A link has also been made between increasing flood incidence and climate change. A combination of these challenges is a recipe for flood disaster in cities.

Attention to the issue is increasing in Nigeria, with a view to reducing vulnerability.

In my PhD thesis, I looked at the typology, trend and impacts of flooding in Lagos and Port Harcourt, cities in the southern part of the country. I also examined factors influencing residents level of vulnerability, using the Sendai Framework.

The Sendai Framework is a global framework the United Nations adopted in 2015 to reduce disaster risk. It emphasises four ways to minimise the risks of disasters. These are: understanding disaster risk; strengthening disaster risk governance; investing in disaster risk reduction; and enhancing preparedness.

Nigeria has not implemented any of the components of the Sendai Framework.

My research

I distributed 443 questionnaires to household heads and conducted 32 in-depth interviews with officials of key government ministries and agencies. These were the ministries of environment, physical planning and urban development and the state emergency management agency in Lagos and Rivers states, the Nigeria hydrological services agency, and the national emergency management agency. I also spoke with representatives of community groups and faith-based organisations.

I found that institutional failures, inadequate infrastructure, socio-economic challenges and disaster education are factors influencing Nigerian cities vulnerability to flood disaster.

Some of the respondents said disaster risk management agencies were not able to consistently carry out flood preparedness and mitigation activities in their cities. These were the national emergency management agency, state emergency management agencies and ministry of environment. They were not carrying out awareness campaigns, identifying hazards, assessing risk or studying vulnerability. Respondents also said the state ministries of physical planning and urban development were not properly monitoring development in Lagos and Port Harcourt. They said these problems were direct consequences of institutional failures.

I discovered, however, that the state ministries and agencies faced challenges. Funding, personnel, operational equipment and remuneration were all inadequate. The cities also lacked appropriate legislation and harmonised emergency systems that would help institutions to do their work.

About 67% of respondents said their cities lacked adequate infrastructure such as roads and drainage system. And development of buildings and facilities did not always conform with regulations and controls.

The study showed that most residents were not well informed about flood hazards and impacts. Disaster education should include early warnings and flood preparedness.

Respondents said a series of floods had resulted in widespread poverty and unemployment. Their ties with families and friends were also affected.

What needs to be done

It is essential for government, non-governmental agencies, community-based organisations and residents to join forces to prepare for floods and reduce their impact. Funding, staff development and technical assistance are particularly important. This will enable and encourage communities to follow effective practices.

Community participation will also strengthen social cohesion and cooperation. It will provide opportunities to integrate disaster management into local development planning processes and systems.

Modern technology, which uses geospatial infrastructure to identify and map out areas prone to flooding, should be embraced. It should inform appropriate action toward disaster preparedness, rescue, and recovery. This is in line with the United Nations International Strategy on Disaster Reduction concept of living with floods rather than fighting them.

As a result of continuous increase in the built-up surface and growing settlements in low-lying areas, the existing infrastructure in Lagos and Port Harcourt cannot cope with the run-off and water volume it faces. This leads to frequent, localised flooding. State governments should invest in roads and drainage systems for effective flood risk reduction.

Public information campaigns in the media and through community-based organisations would encourage a culture of flood preparedness, prevention, mitigation, response and recovery.

Olasunkanmi Habeeb Okunola, DAAD ClimapAfrica postdoctoral fellow at the Global Change Institute, University of the Witwatersrand. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- As a permanent comprehensive strategic partner of Kazakhstan, China is willing to firmly support Kazakhstan in maintaining stability and stopping violence at this critical moment concerning Kazakhstan's future, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Monday.

Wang made the remarks during a phone conversation with Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi.

Wang stressed that, three day ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a verbal message to Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, publicly expressing his support.

This fully reflected the high-level development of the China-Kazakhstan permanent comprehensive strategic partnership, Wang said, adding that it once again proved the profound friendship between the two countries sharing weal and woe at this critical moment.

China stands ready to work with Kazakhstan to implement the important political consensuses reached by the two heads of state, and do its best to provide necessary support and assistance to Kazakhstan, Wang said.

For his part, Tleuberdi sincerely thanked President Xi for sending the important verbal message to President Tokayev when Kazakhstan was in times of danger, and for being among the first to express support for President Tokayev and the Kazakh people.

Today is the national day of mourning in Kazakhstan, on which the phone conversation with the Chinese foreign minister once again showed China's firm support for Kazakhstan and the brotherhood between the two countries, Tleuberdi said.

Tleuberdi briefed Wang on the details and latest developments of the situation in Kazakhstan, saying that Kazakhstan had suffered well-planned terrorist attacks that broke out suddenly and simultaneously at many places across the country, with thousands of law enforcement personnel, military police and medical staff under attack.

The Kazakh authorities have taken timely and decisive measures and the situation has been under effective control, while peace and calm are being restored, Tleuberdi said.

He promised that Kazakhstan will fully guarantee the security of foreign institutions and personnel as well as foreign investment, and continue to fulfill its international obligations and agreements.

On the occasion of the national day of mourning in Kazakhstan, Wang said that China would like to pay tribute to the front-line law enforcement personnel who died in the fight against violence and terrorism in Kazakhstan, and express condolences and sympathy to the innocent dead and injured.

At this moment, the Chinese government and people stand firmly together with the Kazakh government and people, Wang stressed.

"After the storm comes the rainbow," Wang said, adding that he believes that under the strong leadership of President Tokayev, Kazakhstan will be able to fully restore peace and stability, overcome this "darkest moment" and make Kazakhstan more resilient and stronger. 
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BRUSSELS, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), on Monday warned Russia again that a further military aggression against Ukraine would carry a "high political and economic price."

Stoltenberg, at the beginning of what he described as an important week for European security, highlighted the diplomatic efforts under way in search of a solution to prevent an armed conflict, during a joint press conference with Olga Stefanishyna, deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine.

They spoke ahead of a NATO-Ukraine Commission (NUC) session on Monday and a NATO-Russia Council meeting here on Wednesday. Delegates of the United States and Russia are currently meeting in Geneva, while the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will meet on Thursday.

Stoltenberg said Russia's agreement to attend the NATO-Russia Council was "a positive signal." "We will focus on European security issues, transparency related to military activities, risk reduction and arms control," he said.

"We are working hard for ... a peaceful solution," Stoltenberg said. "We also need to send a very clear message to Russia that we are united and that there will be severe costs, economic, political costs for Russia if they once again use military force against Ukraine."

Stefanishyna said Ukraine supported the use of diplomatic channels with Russia to prevent a military escalation, but warned that Russia's demands for Ukraine to be excluded from future NATO membership were not acceptable.

"We should all realize that Russia's demands to the allies cannot be considered a negotiating position," Stefanishyna said.

Russia has repeatedly voiced concern over NATO's eastward expansion and the alliance's deployment of weapons systems near Russia's borders.

In a telephone call between U.S. President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Dec. 31, Biden threatened to take "strong economic and other measures" together with U.S. allies against Moscow should Russia "invade" Ukraine, and the Russian president, in turn, urged his counterpart not to "shift responsibility" and asked for guarantees against NATO's eastward expansion.

Putin noted that imposing wide-ranging sanctions against Russia in case of a possible escalation of events would be a "grave mistake" and could lead to a major "rupture in Russia-U.S. ties." 
"The talks promise to be long and substantial," the Russian diplomatic mission in Geneva tweeted, with a picture of the two lead negotiators standing in front of their national flags.
More than 20,000 Chicago educators are entering their second week of struggle to demand virtual-only classes as teachers, parents and students across the country demand protection from the spread of COVID infections.

On Sunday night, school district officials announced that classes would be canceled on Monday for the fourth consecutive school day. After educators voted overwhelmingly last Tuesday to teach remotely until January 18, Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot locked educators out of their online work accounts, preventing them from conducting online classes with their students or communicating with parents.

Teachers protest for stronger COVID-19 safety protocols outside Oakland Unified School District headquarters on Friday, Jan. 7, 2022, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

The courageous stand by rank-and-file educators has prevented hundreds of thousands of Chicago students from contracting COVID in school as the pandemic rages. Chicago and Illinois are setting COVID case and hospital records and the Cook County Medical Examiners Office last week announced officials have started deploying trailers to hospitals to help decompress their morgues if necessary as they treat the most COVID patients they've ever seen.

In a national television appearance on NBCs Meet the Press Lightfoot reiterated her claims that teachers were engaged in an illegal strike, saying they had abandoned their posts and they abandoned kids and their families. The mayor said her administration was working diligently every single day at the bargaining table to narrow the differences and get a deal done but ruled out any virtual-only classes. Lightfoots own chief of staff extended the ability for the mayors office staff to work from home for at least another week.

Addressing herself to the Chicago Teachers Union, Lightfoot said, We need their cooperation and support and not have them on the sidelines, being critical, throwing bombs. An accusation of throwing bombs from the mayor, a former federal prosecutor who has the closest ties to the Chicago Police Department, reveals a deep level of class hatred for the resistance by Chicago teachers. Her statement recalls the allegations made in 1886 by the citys industrialists and corporate media, used to railroad and hang the Haymarket martyrs, the left-wing leaders of the movement for the eight-hour day.

For its part, the Chicago Teachers Union is seeking to reach a deal to get educators back into classes as soon as possible. On Saturday, the CTU released a concessions offer, which included a district-wide COVID positivity metric that would take schools remote, KN95 masks for teachers and staff, expanded testing, and a return to in-person learning January 18. The union also requested an arbitrator.

A teacher tweeted her reply to Mayor Lightfoots lying claim that the best and safest place for children is a classroom in the midst of the pandemic. The best, safest place for my students right now is NOT my in-person classroom, she stated. Because I have Covid. Which I caught in my classroom to begin with. Illinois teachers also responded enthusiastically to statements by students and teachers in Germany supporting their struggle. One said, As a German teacher, I love this!

The battle in Chicago is the high point of a nationwide struggle by educators, parents and students to halt in-person instruction that has thrust them into a direct political conflict with the Biden administration, which has abandoned any pretext of fighting to end the pandemic. Increasingly, actions are being taken independently of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), which have fully backed the school openings.

Educators in San Francisco and Oakland, California, who began sickouts last week, are pressing to continue and broaden their actions. Significantly, increasing numbers of working-class youth are joining the fight, well aware that the feigned concern for their academic and emotional needs, coming from politicians who have spent years cutting school budgets, is a pack of lies.

Over 250 students in the Oakland Unified School District have pledged to strike and stop going to school January 18 unless the school system shuts down classes and makes learning remote until schools can be safely reopened. We are demanding OUSD to shift from in-person learning to online learning, they write in a letter to the district superintendent.

The students started an online petition demanding the Oakland Unified School District shift from in-person learning to online learning, and for KN95 or N95 masks for every student, twice-weekly PCR tests for everyone on campus and more outdoor spaces to eat safely when it rains. The Oakland Educators Association, the local teachers union, has not even mentioned this fact nor supported the walkout of teachers that took place in the district last Friday.

High school students in New York Citythe nations largest school districtare organizing a Student Walkout for COVID Safety on Tuesday, January 11, across all city public schools. The students organizing the walkout are concerned and upset that there is no remote learning option, despite rapidly rising COVID casesthe citys COVID positivity rate remains above 30 percentand are walking out to keep students and teachers safe. Hundreds of students have already signed a petition to go back to distance learning. Citywide, the attendance figures for last Friday were only 44 percent. Testing is inadequate and reported figures are one in five staff (27,697) and about 6 percent of students (70,241) having tested positive during this school year.

Seattle educators at Kimball Elementary are planning a sickout, shutting the school down on Monday, January 10 in protest. The school is facing pandemic-related staffing shortages so severe, some students were left unsupervised and teachers were having to work through their lunches and breaks with no end in sight.

In Michigan, more than 1,800 University of Michigan students and staff have signed a letter to the administration demanding learning be conducted online. It states: What is critical is to act now and not wait until a last-minute decision is forced upon us by circumstances.

With the backing of unions, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the nations second-largest school district, with 650,000 students, plans to reopen schools for full in-person classes on Tuesday despite high transmission rates. As of Thursday, just over 50 percent of LAUSD staff and an estimated 30 percent of students have been tested prior to schools reopening, showing an alarming positivity rate of 13.5 percent, according to interim superintendent Megan Reilly. The present positivity rates among students and staff are 10 times higher than before the winter break, and results from the remaining students have yet to be reported.

The most conscious expression of the growing resistance has been the participation of hundreds of educators over the last week in emergency meetings of educators rank-and-file safety committees in New York City, Michigan and Illinois, Pennsylvania, the South and the West Coast. The meetings were forums for the most intense discussion on a strategy to close the schools and end the pandemic.

This includes the unity of educators, parents and youth with the broadest sections of the working classhealth care, transit, logistics, manufacturing and othersto demand the closure of schools and non-essential businesses, and the allocation of the necessary financial resources to provide high-quality virtual learning, secure incomes of parents and small business owners affected by temporary shutdowns and carry out the necessary public health measures, including universal testing, contact tracing, quarantining and global vaccinations, to eliminate the deadly virus once and for all.

The World Socialist Web Site calls on Chicago teachers, parents and students to join the Chicago Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee, founded one year ago. We urge all others to join the national and international network of rank-and-file committees by contacting the WSWS.
BRUSSELS, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission generated by economic activity in the European Union (EU) in 2020 decreased by nine percent compared to the previous year, according to data published Monday by EU's statistics office Eurostat.

The figure is 24 percent down from the year 2008, the first available reference year, said Eurostat.

The total amount of GHG generated by EU production activities and households went down from more than 4.5 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalents in 2008 to 3.5 billion tonnes in 2020.

The biggest decrease was recorded in the field of electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply, which recorded a fall of 41 percent between 2008 and 2020.

Manufacturing also recorded a sharp decrease in its GHG emissions between 2008 and 2020, with 276 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent less.

In 2020, manufacturing, households as well as electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply were the biggest emitters of GHG - all stood around the 700 million CO2 equivalents mark.

The top three countries emitting the most GHG in 2020 were Germany with almost 795 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents, France, with almost 406 million tonnes, and Italy with 393 million tonnes.

The EU has been trying to cut down its GHG emissions in order to fight climate change. The Green Deal, an ambitious program aiming at cutting carbon emissions by 55 percent in 2030 compared to 1990 levels and to make Europe the first carbon-free continent by 2050, was launched in 2020.

The European Commission has begun consultations with the member states on a draft text of a Taxonomy Complementary Delegated Act covering certain gas and nuclear activities.

The EU Taxonomy guides and mobilizes private investment in activities that are needed to achieve climate neutrality in the next 30 years. The existing energy mix in Europe varies from one member state to another. Some parts of Europe are still heavily based on high carbon-emitting coal. 
To send us your own story about conditions at your plant, email us today at autoworkers@wsws.org. All submissions will be kept anonymous.

With the highly infectious Omicron variant spreading rapidly throughout the country, autoworkers are calling for a shutdown of production to halt the transmission of the disease.

The situation in Michigan and other Midwestern states where the US auto industry is concentrated is reaching the breaking point. New infections, hospitalizations and deaths are at record or near record levels. On Friday, the state of Michigan reported 40,692 new cases of COVID-19 and 259 deaths over a two-day period, a record number. The number of children becoming infected and going to the hospital is also reaching record numbers, and hundreds of hospital staff in the Detroit area are out sick, a situation described by local press as near the breaking point.

Stellantis workers at Warren Truck Plant in suburban Detroit (WSWS Media)

As has been the case throughout virtually the entire pandemic, the number of infected in the auto plants is being systematically concealed from the public by management with the assistance of the United Auto Workers union (UAW). However, workers report that 500 are currently out at Warren Truck Assembly plant and 300 were out last month at Sterling Heights Assembly Plant (SHAP), both owned by Stellantis. Last month alone, three workers died of COVID at Sterling Stamping Plant, and at SHAP, a worker and her husband both died.

To maintain production, management is dispensing with any semblance of concern for health and safety. At Warren Truck outside Detroit, temporary workers are being required to work six days per week on 12-hour shifts. This follows the imposition of a 90-day critical status period at SHAP in which management, per the terms of the current UAW contract, was allowed to force plant employees to work seven 12-hour-a day workweeks. The critical status expired on December 23, the day before Christmas Eve.

A supplemental worker at Warren Truck sent a letter to the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter describing deplorable conditions including filthy bathrooms, leaking roofs and unsanitary workstations. In response to the letter, the WSWS received several submissions from workers about conditions in their own factories. A Detroit-area autoworker wrote, My son has contracted COVID and is hospitalized. His friend has the new Omicron variant. I was exposed to that. How can they continue to keep the plants open when everything else is being shut down?

Another said, Also with all these COVID cases at Warren Truck theyre still making us work 6 to 7 days in these dangerous conditions. We need a break; our immune systems cant get strong to fight off the virus. They care more about these trucks than people, its getting out of hand!!

In response to the conditions at Warren Truck, a senior worker at the plant has started a petition against the forced overtime for temp workers. A copy of the petition sent to the Autoworker Newsletter said:

We the undersigned, have been devoting our time and energy into launching the new Grand Wagoneer. We collectively agree that if you make us work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week that safety, quality, delivery, cost and moral [sic] will be negatively impacted. We understand that forcing us to work or having forced being available to work on an almost unlimited basis may comply with the CBA, along with State and Federal laws. The fact that something can be implemented doesnt mean that it should be. The companys most valuable resource is its workers, human beings. We need to have time to take care of ourselves not only physically but mentally. We have families at home who miss us. Therefore, we are demanding a reasonable limit to the overtime hours and days that can be scheduled daily and in advance. WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS NOT MACHINES! The only way we can continue to create world class quality vehicles, is if we be treated with the decency and respect that we deserve.

A worker at the new Stellantis Detroit Manufacturing ComplexMack Avenue plant wrote to the Autoworker Newsletter, At D2 there is no COVID cleaning between shifts. Theres not enough time, [as] soon as the bell goes off, they want us to just jump on the line at our stations; no time for cleaning.

Another Stellantis worker wrote, At Sterling Heights assembly plant there is no sanitation or concern for the employees and their families ... our coworkers restrooms are nasty [and] need to be shut down for a week or two for cleaning because COVID is running rampant at FCA Sterling Heights plant.

A worker at John Deeres Parts Distribution Center in Milan, Illinois told the WSWS: They dont text us anymore if there is a case. We have no idea how many have been sent home or not sent home. This company couldnt care less about its employees. My coworkers are like me, they think that the company doesnt care. The company doesnt want anybody to go home.

The worker said her part of the warehouse continues to be overwhelmed with work following the UAWs betrayal of a five-week-long strike by Deere workers in November. My department is so far behind, its ridiculous. They got management in there, who know nothing. We cant turn to the union or the company; nothing would change.

A Detroit-area Faurecia auto parts worker said: We have a problem with them not letting us know who is infected. One line had six people go down with COVID. We didnt know if they quit or what happened until we got a cell phone message [telling us they had been infected]. They got it from a hi-lo driver.

Another Detroit-area auto parts worker wrote: I am an autoworker for IAC Warren and we are under similar conditions. Our company violates contract and our local allows them to do so. We once contacted the news because covid was bad in our plant but the news never aired our problems. We too are being over worked daily.

We have A, B, and C shifts and we have been working 12 hours a day since June. Covid is back spreading in our plant and IAC never covered any worker when they went out on covid they told the worker to call unemployment even though the governor stated that jobs would be reimbursed for paying any worker out on covid.

These unions are sold out and these owners of plants have no respect or concern for the welfare of the workers. Something needs to be done.

A member of the Rank-and-File Committee at Mack Trucks in Macungie, Pennsylvania said, Management tells us nothing; the UAW says nothing. They just send out a text that there were this many cases, this many have recovered.

The WSWS is the microphone for the working class. When you get enough workers involved, you can coordinate action. Schools need to be shut down. We need to be with them to shut it down. The scope of what we are being made to accept needs to be made known.

The government and unions are failing us; its so blatant. We need to build support outside of current channels among both union and nonunion facilities. People are extremely angry. It is a volatile situation; workers need a goal and a direction.
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) encourages high school youth to contact us today to share the conditions in your school

A growing wave of opposition is developing across the country among young people to the unsafe reopening of schools as COVID-19 cases skyrocket in nearly every state. The latest expression of opposition comes in the form of a change.org petition posted January 4 by William Hu, a senior at Boston Latin School.

The petition has gained over 3,000 signatures from students, educators and parents concerned over the rising number of COVID-19 cases across the state of Massachusetts.

Boston Latin School (www.bls.org)

Under the heading, Staying safe should be a right, not something that the government dictates, Hu writes, Over the past few weeks, Ive been a first-hand witness to surging COVID cases in my school community as well as in my local community. Just before winter break began on December 23rd, 2021, my senior class consisting of 370 students alone had over 30 confirmed COVID cases. Even over the holiday break, it became a common occurrence to see fellow peers post on social media saying that they tested positive for COVID-19. To expand further on these alarming statistics, on January 4th, over 1000 Boston Public School teachers and staff members were absent due to COVID-19.

Hu adds, As I am writing this petition on January 4th, 31,184 new COVID cases have appeared just today. 2,221 patients were hospitalized in Massachusetts just today. Each day, COVID-19 death cases increase as well.

An initial target of 1,000 signatures was reached within one day of posting. The target increased to 5,000 signatures for the petition addressed to the Massachusetts State House, Governor Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.

After citing Bakers comment, We count in-person school as school, Hu asks, What is Governor Baker actively condoning here? Are school districts so engrossed in maintaining normalcy that they are unwilling to make a change for the health and safety of our communities?

Laura Lambert posted after signing the petition, I am also a BLS student. The amount of people in the school every day is concerning. During lunch there is no 6-foot distance between students and in the dining hall during the mornings, you can literally feel people breathing down your neck. I didnt like remote last year, but at this point there really shouldnt be another option.

Many students signing the petition shared their fears and the difficulties faced in schools. One poster commented, I do not feel safe going to school anymore. Positive cases are rising rapidly and some students who ARE positive are going home to family members who are at high risk to the virus. This potentially leads to a higher rise in death of loved ones. I think our health is more important than trying to maintain normalcy in the schools and the education system.

A parent of two nine-year-old children wrote that she was very concerned about them, specially during snack, recess, indoor Physical education and lunch. Our school has also had many cases. Children seeing other children testing positive is not a positive or healthy thing. Its definitely traumatic for them to see and wonder when am I going to test positive. How is this a positive feeling, children are scared to socialize, they are scared their friends wont come back, they are scared of whos going to get it and bring it home to their grandma, mom or dad.

Another parent commented, I have kids in the Boston public schools and its awful just awful!! I dont wanna send them but if I dont I get in trouble! I am so stressed sending them I worry about them getting sick and [Ive] been testing them at home but now cant really find any more tests in store and I have bought a lot so far and all gone ... We all got sick on Christmas vacation and dont want that again!! So many sick kids in the schools and a lot still going sick!!!!

Some posts pointed to the political aims of keeping schools open. It is nuts and totally about the economy to not keep the kids safer, said one. Another pointed out, Soon we may not have enough healthy staff to cover in-person classes. Then what? DESEs rigid no remote stance may be politically appealing but is absolutely counter-productive and asinine. Another asked, Why are board meetings virtual but teachers have to teach in person?!

A poster commented, Remote learning needs to be a tool available in our fight against Covid. A temporary return to remote learning to break up a surge in schools or deal with dangerously low staffing levels would be so much better than what we are dealing with right now. I am a parent of 2 public school kids in Boston, and I have seen how remote learning can be done well. It would give so many options to a classroom, or grade level, or whole school to help stem the tide. There are no ICU beds in MA right now, and yet the rigid adherence to in-person school is more important? Please give us flexible tools to fight back against the Covid surge.

The posts reflect concern for students and teachers across the state. So many teachers have gotten ill with covid in the last few weeks despite being fully vaccinated and boosted. They are then putting their students and their own children and families at risk, one post states. A signatory from Pittsfield writes, I believe that students and staff should be able to be safe and with the numbers climbing they need to go back to remote. Here in Pittsfield we have only closed 2 of our schools for a lousy 2 days. Needs to be longer and all schools need to be shut down.

Comments from teachers include one who says, I am a teacher and I worry about the safety of my students, fellow colleagues, and self as omicron covid surges. While another says simply, I am a 68 year old teacher who is afraid of my own classroom!

The petition page on change.org links to another page titled Support Remote Learning and Flexible Grading Policies, which lists 95 petitions with over 30,000 supporters. This page contains petitions from across the country calling for virtual or hybrid learning and the temporary closure of schools.

The groundswell of opposition to in-person learning under conditions of a new surge of the pandemic stands in stark contrast to the declarations from across the political establishment that schools must remain open with kids in the classroomsa prerequisite for parents remaining on the job and producing profits.

As for the teachers union, the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) limited itself to calling for schools to close January 3 so teachers and staff could use the day for COVID testing. The MTA, together with the Boston Teachers Union, has conspired with the political establishment to keep schools open throughout the last year.

Similar situations are playing out in cities across the country. Over 250 students in the Oakland unified school district in Oakland, California have pledged to strike and stop going to school unless the school system shuts down classes and makes learning remote until schools can be safely reopened. The Oakland Educators Association, the local teachers union, has not even mentioned this fact, nor supported the walkout of teachers Friday.

High school students in New York City are organizing a Student Walkout for COVID Safety this Tuesday across all city public schools. The students organizing the walkout are concerned and upset that there is no remote learning option, despite rapidly rising COVID casesthe citys COVID positivity rate remains above 30 percentand are walking out to keep students and teachers safe.

In Chicago, teachers have taken matters into their own hands, independent of the union. Teachers voted overwhelmingly to stop in-person learning at Chicago Public Schools after forcing the Chicago Teachers Union to take the vote after the union allowed schools to reopen January 3.

The World Socialist Web Site and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality encourage youth and teachers to get in touch with us today to share the conditions in your school and learn more about joining the developing opposition of teachers and students around the country.
With a soaring rate of hospitalizations and deaths among children, caused by the new Omicron variant, as well as a likely increase in Long COVID, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now has added diabetes to the list of conditions produced by COVID-19.

A report released on January 7, 2022 found that children infected with COVID-19 are at higher risk of developing diabetes. This metabolic condition affects a bodys ability to produce or use insulin to process the glucose in the blood, leading to a rise in sugar levels with symptoms that include frequent urination, increased thirst, hunger, weight loss, tiredness and lethargy, stomach pains, and nausea and vomiting.

Oftentimes, as in the case of half the patients in the current study, they are first diagnosed when they present to the emergency department with diabetic ketoacidosis, a life-threatening condition of severe dehydration, low blood pressure, confusion, and state of shock and loss of consciousness.

The study drew on health care records of children under 18 from two large medical data analytics companies, IQVIA and HealthVerity, encompassing 15 months from March 2020 until June 2021 (data from IQVIA included 1.7 million children and HealthVerity close to 900,000).

Newadmissions per 100,000 for children in the US. Source CDC. Dashed lines all under 18, Yellow for under 5, and grey for 5 to 17.

A brief description of the study is in order: The patients with COVID-19 were matched to comparison groups by age and sex in the pandemic and pre-pandemic period. In the pre-pandemic period, the comparison group consisted of patients who had developed an acute respiratory illness. In the pandemic period, the comparison group either had only documented negative SARS-CoV-2 tests or never carried a COVID-19 diagnosis in their medical record. According to the CDC study, Incident diabetes was defined as one or more healthcare claims with a diabetes diagnosis occurring more than 30 days after the index date [COVID-19 diagnosis].

According to IQVIAs data, children with COVID were 2.66 times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than non-infected cohorts during the pandemic and 2.16 times more likely than the pre-pandemic cohort that had an acute respiratory illness (non-COVID infection). For the COVID group, the incidence of diabetes was 316 per 100,000 person-years, while for the non-COVID group, it was around 118 per 100,000.

HealthVeritys data found that children who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 were 1.31 times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes. In absolute terms, the difference was 399 vs. 304 per 100,000 person-years, and the difference was statistically significant for both medical data records.

As the author of the study, CDC researcher Dr. Sharon Saydah, Ph.D., pointed out, Even a 30 percent increase is a big increase in risk. The differences likely result from different ways of classifying children as having COVID. Additionally, she noted, it remains to be determined if these developments are transient, because children were only followed for four to five months. She added, Its really important for clinicians, pediatricians, and parents to be aware of the signs and symptoms of diabetes, so they can get their kids diagnosed.

The CDC reported that a recent European study found an increase in type 1 diabetes among children during the pandemic. Providers and physicians have anecdotally mentioned reports of patients previously infected with COVID and high blood sugars. Pre-existing diabetes is a risk factor for severe COVID, but so was having very high blood sugar levels at the time of infection.

The exact pathophysiologic mechanism behind developing diabetes after COVID-19 remains to be elucidated. Some scientists have hinted that the coronavirus can infect the pancreas cells that make insulin. Other research points to the virus impact on fat cells that lead to errors in metabolic signaling that leads to diabetes.

The diabetes report only adds to the dire impact of the Omicron variant on children. According to the CDC, the hospitalization rates among children are soaring across the United States. For all children under the age of 18, rates have more than doubled, jumping from a low of 0.9 per 100,000 on October 16, 2021, to more than 2 per 100,000 in the week ending January 1, 2022, surpassing even the peak of the Delta wave that reached 1.8 the week ending September 11, 2021.

As of last week, the number of children admitted to hospitals has climbed to 800 each day, more than twice the figures from two weeks ago. In the week ending December 31, 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported more than 325,000 children had been infected. This high will be surpassed by all accounts when they publish their report today.

However, the CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and the White House continue to minimize these statistics with rhetorical sleight of hand, suggesting the kids are being admitted at higher numbers with COVID and not for COVID. Yet, frontline physicians are painting a far different picture.

At a news conference last Tuesday, Dr. Elaine Cox, chief medical officer at Riley Childrens Hospital in Indiana, said the children admitted to the hospital are also sicker. More than half the children admitted are spending time in the ICU, and at least 40 percent of those are spending time on the ventilator, she said.

When the CDC data is subdivided between those under five and those five to 17, the divergence in the trends demonstrates that pediatric admissions to hospitals are predominately driven by the youngest, who are ineligible for the COVID vaccines. Perhaps this one fact underscores the malicious nature of the lie that the Omicron variant causes only mild illness, as never during the entire pandemic have so many young children been admitted to hospitals.

After a low of 1.4 admissions per 100,000 for those under the age of five on November 6, 2021, the figure is now over 4.3, or a three-fold jump. By comparison, those aged five to 17 have seen their admission rates hold stable at around one per 100,000. Of note, 2021 has been characterized by a doubling in hospitalizations for children during COVID surges compared to 2020.

Since the Delta wave, hospitalizations have risen nearly three-fold. The rise seen in deaths among children is part of the overall trend of increasing infections and hospitalizations, directly correlated to the policies implemented to open schools for in-class instruction.

Cumulatively, 1,079 children have died during the pandemic345 were 0-4 years of age; 225 were 5-11 years of age; 256 were 12-15 years of age; and 253 were 16-17 years of age. More than 500 have died since September 1, 2021. The current trend in hospitalizations is foretelling more needless deaths among the innocent victims of the criminal policies that keep claiming COVID doesnt harm children. Additionally, according to the CDCs own data, it has been the youngest age group with the highest number of deaths.

Arihana Macias, 7, gets a compress after reviving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children five to 12 years at a Dallas County Health and Human vaccination site in Mesquite, Texas, Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Aside from the horrible prospect families have faced losing their children, they have also had to endure the consequences of chronic illnesses that plague them. Indeed, among children, Long COVID has been shown to impact mood and ability to concentrate. Fatigue, sleep disturbances and headaches are shared in those that carry the diagnosis. A small percentage of children can even develop serious complications impacting their organs, such as the brain, heart, kidneys and liver.

As more information about the impact of COVID on the human body becomes recognized, it becomes crystal clear that this pathogen is not just the flu to be dismissed for the sake of Wall Streets greed. It is an immense public danger requiring the utmost efforts by the public health infrastructure to eliminate COVID as soon as possible. However, all steps are underway by the financial oligarchs to ensure the population accepts the virus in perpetuity. These will have continued deadly consequences unless all efforts are made to bring the pandemic to an end.
A five-alarm fire Sunday in an apartment building in the Bronx left at least 17 people dead, including eight children. Officials reported that dozens more were injured as smoke and flames enveloped the 19-story building. In all, at least 63 were injured, 32 of whom were left in critical, life-threatening condition.

The fire in the Tremont section of the Bronx was the worst fire disaster in New York City in more than three decades.

Emergency personnel work at the scene of a fatal fire at an apartment building in the Bronx on Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

At a press conference Sunday evening, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said investigators believe a faulty space heater in a third-floor bedroom triggered the inferno. The fire quickly spread throughout internal stairwells, cutting off the escape route for many residents on upper floors. The building lacked the external fire escapes which are typical in many New York City residences.

This smoke extended the entire height of the building, completely unusual, FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said. Members found victims on every floor in stairwells.

Residents recounted desperate scenes. We saw moms fainting. They saw their kids dying, a 13-year-old resident told the New York Post. We saw a bunch of bodies coming out. People from my childhood were dying.

One woman explained to the New York Times how she rushed home from work nearby after receiving a call from her children. Upon arrival, she found them jumping from a third-story window to escape the flames.

While the fire alarm system was activated, it likely proved little use. The fire alarm goes off in the hallway all the time, at least twice a week, a resident of the 18th floor told the Post. I dont know if its faulty or what it is, but it goes off all the time. People on the third, fourth, fifth and sixth went about their day until they saw smoke, he said.

Theres no guarantee that theres a working fire alarm in every apartment, or in every common area, US Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat who represents the area, told the Associated Press. Most of these buildings have no sprinkler system.

More than 200 firefighters ultimately battled the blaze for more than an hour before bringing it under control. However, the response was likely handicapped by the vast numbers out sick with COVID-19. As of January 3, the FDNY reported 30 percent of Emergency Medical Services personnel and 18 percent of firefighters were out sick.

They only had four firefighters instead of the five they are called for because of people out sick because of COVID, Uniformed Firefighters Association president Andrew Ansbro said. Several of the first engines were in the same situation. If there was adequate staffing, the fire could have been put out faster, and people would have received medical aid sooner.

Mayor Adams, Governor Kathy Hochul and Senator Chuck Schumer, who assembled Sunday evening for the press conference to feign horror at the consequences of the fire, have all insisted that no significant measures will be taken to cut transmission of the deadly virus, despite record cases and overwhelmed hospitals and emergency services.

Sundays high-rise fire is a disaster on top of a catastrophe. In the same zip code, one out of every four residents has tested positive for COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. One out of every 239 has died. Just this past week, three percent of all residents have tested positive.

The pandemic, together with the underlying issues that contributed to the horrific fire, demonstrate that what happened Sunday in the Bronx was not simply an accident. It was the product of a social order that places no value on the lives of the working class.

The fire took place in a working-class neighborhood in the Bronx, the most impoverished borough in one of Americas wealthiest cities. Many immigrants from Gambia and elsewhere occupied apartments at the now burned-out apartment building. More than 40 percent of the neighborhood is foreign-born. More than a third reside in poverty.

The neighborhood, reflecting conditions throughout New York City and beyond, has a severe shortage of affordable housing. Nearly six out of every ten households spend more than 35 percent of their income on rent.

Many of the residents of the Twin Parks North West, where the fire took place, rely on federal Section 8 vouchers to cover their rent. The development was a publicly financed project built in the 1970s to provide housing for low- and middle-income tenants. However, the state handed over management of the building complex to private companies, which oversaw years of decay.

Maintenance backlogs have long plagued Twin Parks. Housing researchers Yonah Freemark and Susanne Schindler noted in a 2015 piece on Twin Parks that private ownership at the Southeast and Northwest complexes produced a significant number of violations in 2010, the most recent year available (11 and 27, respectively). City data show the problems persist. Since 2018, New York City has logged 11 official violations at the property.

The current group of owners, which purchased Twin Parks North West and several other properties last year for $166 million, includes Camber Property Group. One of Cambers co-founders, Rick Gropper, is a member of Mayor Adamss transition team advising him on housing issues.

The fire in the Bronx comes just days after a blaze ripped through a row house in Philadelphia, claiming 12 victims, including eight children. It also follows a pattern of deadly fires in residential buildings in the Bronx. In December 2017, a fire killed 13 in a five-story apartment building less than a mile west of Sundays blaze.

The tragedy Sunday has been met by an outpouring of solidarity and concern from workers in New York and beyond. In just four hours, a GoFundMe page set up raised more than $100,000 in donations from more than 2,000 people, exceeding the initial goal more than fivefold.

The catastrophic loss of life in the fire in the Bronx, only a few miles from Wall Street, is a product of the same subordination of all of social and economic considerations to the interests of the financial oligarchy that is responsible for the criminal response to the pandemic itself, which has led to the deaths of nearly 860,000 people in the United States.
The German ruling class is reacting to the explosive spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant not with the necessary protective measures but with an escalation of its herd immunity policy. This was underscored by the decisions of the Conference of Minister Presidents of the Federation and Lander (MPK) on January 7.

The meeting centered on the decision to shorten the quarantine period for infected people. According to the MPKs official decisions paper, those infected or in contact with an infected person should now be in isolation for only 10, seven or five days. Previously, the official quarantine period was 14 days.

If those infected or their contacts have a negative PCR test or high-quality antigen test, they can be released from quarantine after only seven days.

Staff at hospitals, care and nursing homes may even be released from quarantine or isolation after five days if they present a negative PCR test and have been symptom-free for 48 hours. Children with a negative test may also be released from quarantine after only five days. Those with a booster vaccination no longer have to be quarantined after contact with an infected person.

The new regulations contradict all scientific evidence and will lead to more sick and infected people returning to work and school. It is well known that infected people can be contagious for much longer than 10 days after the onset of symptoms. Likewise, it is known that infected people can transmit the virus even when they display no symptoms. Even those who have had booster shots can infect themselves or others as a result of vaccination breakthroughs.

In addition, PCR tests and especially antigen tests can provide a false-negative. Moreover, there is nothing to suggest that the officially scheduled tests are consistently carried out. Teachers and students frequently report that those who test positive are sent back to school by the health authorities.

The claim by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD) at the press conference following the MPK meeting that all necessary measures were being taken against the pandemic is a bald-faced lie.

Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the Mayor of Berlin Franziska Giffey (both SPD) at the press conference after the MPK meeting on 7 January 2022 (John MacDougall/Pool via AP)

The only, and completely inadequate, restriction that the traffic light federal coalition, comprising the SPD, Greens and Liberal Democrats (FDP), together with the 16 state governments (Lander) put in place is a so-called 2G-plus regulation for the catering industry, beginning on January 15. This means the unvaccinated are barred, those with two jabs must show a negative COVID-19 test, and those with a third shot must show proof of their vaccination status.

A comprehensive lockdown, which would be necessary to stop the Omicron wave and contain and eliminate the pandemic altogether, is vehemently opposed by all government parties.

The measures taken are explicitly aimed at keeping schools and businesses open under all conditions. Already on the day before the MPK meeting, the state education ministers demanded a revision of the quarantine rules for pupils and school staff. They declared that maintaining school operations was essential, and, moreover, a basis for ensuring the functioning of other critical infrastructures.

At the press conference with Scholz, the mayor of Berlin, Franziska Giffey (SPD), expressed similar views. She said there was a commitment to keeping schools open in order to maintain provisions for the population. She added, People need good child care so they can go about their business, and thats why its important that we keep the schools open here.

Giffey spoke openly about the fact that the murderous herd immunity course is supported by all government partiesthe SPD, Greens, FDP, Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Left Party. The question of school closures was no longer even up for debate in the decisions taken, she stressed, because it is a matter of course that we have reached an agreement on this point.

The return to unsafe schools after the Christmas holidays is also supported by the Education and Science Union (GEW). The day before the MPK meeting, GEW Chair Maike Finnern signaled her support for the federal governments quarantine plans in a tweet. If this was what the federal governments Council of Experts recommended, she said, the GEW could go along with it.

In his speech on January 6, Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) summed up the essentially fascist character of the policies of the ruling class. The protection of health was a high social good, but the highest good of our Constitution is and remains freedom, he declared, in the manner of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

It is clear what freedom Lindner is talking aboutthe freedom of the banks and corporations to enrich themselves off of the death and suffering of millions of workers and their families. To ensure capitalist profit maximisation, the ruling class has been trampling over corpses since the outbreak of the pandemic. Officially, some 5.5 million people have died of COVID-19 worldwidemore than 1.5 million of them in Europe and more than 113,000 in Germany. Over the same period, the share prices and the fortunes of the superrich have exploded.

From its outset, the new traffic light coalition government has been willing to continue this class war policy. Its first official act was to declare an end to the national epidemic situation and thus remove the legal basis for uniform nationwide protective measures. In doing so, it has set into motion an even greater disaster.

In its second statement on January 6, the federal governments COVID-19 expert panel warned of a collapse of the health system, stating:

A high volume of patients combined with acute staff shortages can jeopardise general medical care in Germany within a short period of time. All medical and nursing care facilities must prepare for a considerable stress situation in the coming weeks.

The statement points out that the supposedly milder course of Omicron infections compared to the Delta variant is outweighed by the strong infection dynamics and the associated high number of parallel illnesses. The very high case numbers in individual European countries and in the USA, it continued, were currently leading to a significant increase in hospital admissions.

In fact, the situation in the US and many European countries is completely out of control. Since a week ago, there has been an average of more than 600,000 new infections in the US, and hospitals are on the verge of collapse. Particularly worrying is the rapid increase in hospitalisations of children.

At the same time, opposition is developing. In numerous school districts, including in Chicago, a city of millions, educators are refusing to return to in-person teaching in order to protect their health and that of their students and families.

The rapid spread of Omicron is also evident in Western and Southern Europe and Scandinavia. In Denmark, the 7-day incidence rate is currently 2,334 per 100,000 inhabitants; in the UK it stands at 1,865. In France, where Omicron became the predominant variant over the holidays, the incidence level is now 2,142. On Friday, Paris reported a new record, with 262,787 new infections.

The situation is similarly dire in Italy, where the 7-day incidence rate has more than doubled in one week. On Friday, the Supreme Institute of Health (ISS) in Rome reported an average of 1,646 coronavirus cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The previous week, the figure had been 780.

Omicron is also spreading rapidly in Germany. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), 44.3 percent of all new infections in the country can be traced to Omicron. In eight federal states in northern and western Germany, the variant is already dominant. In Bremen, governed by an SPD-Left Party-Greens coalition, where Omicron already accounts for 85.5 percent of all infections, the 7-day incidence rate is also the highest, at just under 800. The RKI reported 56,335 new infections nationwide on Friday and an increase in the 7-day incidence rate to 303.

The real numbers are many times higher. At the turn of the year, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) said that the real data is currently probably two to three times higher [than] the incidence rates we are recording.

To stop the Omicron wave and prevent the emergence of even more dangerous variants, the working class must intervene onto the political arena. It must organise itself into independent rank-and-file committees and take up a struggle to end the pandemic based on the principles formulated by the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) in its Open Letter to the Working Class:

The current policy of herd immunity, which allows for the limitless spread of COVID-19 in the population, must be rejected. Instead, the implementation of a new strategy aimed at the elimination and eradication of SARS-CoV-2 is required. Containment measures must be guided by public health needs. The protection of human life and the safety of the population must have absolute and unconditional priority over any corporate financial interests. The costs of fighting the pandemicincluding the payment of wages and salaries, compensation for small business owners, comprehensive medical care for the sick and payments to survivorsmust be borne by big business. There also needs to be a 100 percent tax on the pandemic profits made by large investors through the rise in share prices. The fight against the pandemic must be waged on a global scale. The pandemic can be stopped only if SARS-CoV-2 is eliminated in all countries. Workers in Germany and throughout Europe must demand that their colleagues in less developed countries be given the necessary vaccines free of charge.

The implementation of this programme requires a struggle against the capitalist profit system and a clear international socialist strategy and perspective.
In the first week of classes in 2022, with record COVID-19 cases, teacher absences and disrupted classes, students and teachers faced an unprecedented surge of the pandemic in schools across Massachusetts. Despite these dangerous conditions, Governor Charlie Baker and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) have mandated that K-12 schools remain open for in-person learning.

School district administrators who have temporarily closed schools have been threatened with audits, and any school that does go remote will not have those days count toward the 180 required days of learning.

Westborough High School (Wikimedia Commons)

On January 8, Massachusetts reached a 7-day average of 19,902 COVID-19 cases per day, and a 7-day weighted average positivity rate of 23.02 percent.

Waste water samples taken 37 times per week to test the amount of SARS-CoV-2 RNA copies have seen the 7-day average increase nearly sixfold, from the previous weeks tally of just over 2,000 RNA copies/mL in early December to nearly 12,000. Previously, the highest number reached, at the height of the Delta wave, was just 1,500.

Hospitalizations have been increasing by over 100 people a day since the end of December. As of January 6, 2,637 people, 1,106 of whom were fully vaccinated, were hospitalized with COVID-19. Emergency and intensive care systems are already reaching their limits. Dr. Melisa Lai-Becker, medical director for the emergency department at Cambridge Health Alliances Everett Hospital, told WGBH she spent much of Monday searching for an ICU bed for one of our patients, and every single facility is full. Hospitals reached in neighboring states by Dr. Lai-Baker were also overwhelmed, with little to no beds available.

At UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, hospital epidemiologist Dr. Richard Ellison said that some patients are being cared for in hallways, with privacy barriers put up between beds. There is no bed capacity right now in the UMass system, he told WGBH. As soon as someone gets discharged, the bed is being filled immediately.

With case numbers from Omicron currently rising at an exponential rate, the states medical system is on the brink of triaging patients, whereby hospital staff may be tasked with choosing who will live or die based on on-the-spot assessments of which patients are most likely to survive. Under this system, the elderly and those with preexisting conditions face lower odds of receiving care.

Despite the predictability and scale of the unfolding disaster, the mitigation efforts implemented by the state have been uncoordinated and delayed at best, with a one-time distribution of approximately 227,000 testing kits to schools. The non-medical masks dstributed were found not to be 95 percent, but only 25-48 percent effective, a fact that was flatly denied by Baker. DESE released a statement January 5 announcing that the masks are still considered to be highly effective, citing the CDCs effective mask wearing recommendations, which include non-medical cloth masks that have been shown to offer little if any protection from SARS-CoV-2.

DESE is also using the unscientific CDC guidelines reducing the quarantine of positive cases from 10 days to 5, which will lead to many positive teachers and students forced back into schools. According to DESE guidelines, individuals who test positive are to return to school after 5 days and once they have been without fever for 24 hours (and without taking fever-reducing medications); and experienced improvement in other symptoms. They add these individuals must mask for 5 additional days when around others. Even with a 5-day isolation period, repeat viral testing prior to return is not recommended, DESE says (emphasis added).

Against the backdrop of full ICUs and record case numbers, the governor declared Thursday, Kids need to be in school, school is safe, adding that keeping kids out of school did terrible damage to kids all over the country. Its not going to happen in Massachusetts, even as study after study has shown that schools provide ideal conditions for the virus to spread, infecting and potentially hospitalizing and killing students and staff.

Teachers unions, which both campaigned for and then helped implement the back-to-school drive of the Biden administration, have offered no resistance to these homicidal policies or fought for the resources for high-quality remote learning. Instead, they make mild protests about how mitigation measures such as mask distribution and the states failed efforts to deliver rapid tests to teachers before school openings have been mismanaged, as if those measures alone would have stemmed the avalanche of infections taking place in schools.

In an end-of-year statement, the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) called for the closing of schools on January 3 so teachers and staff could use the day for COVID testing. MTA President Merrie Najimy wrote, The last-minute scramble by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to provide 200,000 test kits to educators was jeopardizing our attempts to maintain safe in-person learning as schools reopen after the holiday break.

She added, In this moment, there may be further instances when in-person learning is temporarily deemed too risky, and it is time for the department to show flexibility and leadership in this area. With cases three times higher than any other point in the pandemic and hospital and ICU beds filling up across the state, its worth asking the MTA president: If not in this moment, when would in-person learning be declared too risky?

On January 10, 2021, Boston Teachers Union (BTU) President Jessica Tang signed a Side Letter Concerning Reopening Schools and Returning Students to Schools When the COVID Positive Rate is 5% or Above. Its aim was to force teachers back into unsafe schools to teach all grade levels, regardless of the COVID positivity rate in Boston. The previously agreed-upon rate was 4 percent, which was then raised without explanation to 5 percent with the agreement of the BTU, the City of Boston and the Boston Public Schools superintendent.

The Side Letter stated that if the positivity rate for COVID-19 is above 10% [Bostons rate is now more than twice that] for two weeks BTU may request impact bargain [sic] regarding any impacts from the COVID-19 positivity rate on BTUs members terms and conditions of employment. In other words, teachers must stay in schools while BTU leaders may, if they choose, return to the bargaining table to raise demands for a return to remote teaching.

A BTU member bulletin from February 2, 2021, said teachers have no right to opt to remain working remotely only. Members who are directed in despite their preference or necessity may choose to take a leave, according to all applicable policiesin other words, by using their sick days or taking unpaid leave.

The push to kennel students in schools is a determined effort on the part of big business and the ruling elite to force parents back into the workplace to continue to produce profits for the owners. This policy is being coordinated by the political establishment with the help of unions in states across the country.

Yet teachers and students are beginning to move independently against these criminal policies and against the unions who support them. In Chicago, teachers in the nations third-largest school system are defying Democratic Party Mayor Lori Lightfoots demands that they return to classrooms under conditions in which nearly one out of every four city residents are testing positive for COVID-19, with children aged 17 and under suffering the highest rates. Lightfoot, who has threatened to fine teachers for an illegal strike, canceled classes for 330,000 students for the third straight day after teachers voted by 73 percent Tuesday night to begin virtual-only instruction.

To contain the pandemic, a Zero COVID policy involving universal testing, contact tracing, isolation of infected patients, masking and vaccinations is urgently needed, alongside the temporary shutdown of schools and nonessential workplaces to break the chain of infection, with full income going to all affected. Such measures will be brought about only through the development of a mass movement of the international working class.

Massachusetts teachers must form rank-and-file safety committees independent of the unions, guided by what is necessary for saving lives and preventing lifelong debilitation in children. Rank-and-file committees of educators have already been established in New York City, Chicago, California, Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Alabama and Oregon, and are connected to committees in the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany and Sri Lanka. Contact us today to form a rank-and-file committee at your school or workplace.
With New Zealands new school term beginning in under three weeks, the Labour-Green Party government has declared that it wants students back in class full-time this yeareven as the highly virulent COVID-19 Omicron variant threatens to sweep into the country.

Last week over 90 Omicron cases were detected at the border, with three cases entering the country. There were 64 new border-related COVID-19 cases in MIQ (Managed Isolation and Quarantine) during the weekend, bringing the total to 227.

Whenuapai School in West Auckland (Source: Google Streetview)

With escalating numbers of returnees to New Zealand testing positive, there are fears of an imminent Omicron outbreak in the community. Epidemiologist Michael Baker called the variant a huge threat and said it was not a matter of if there was an outbreak, but when.

Baker further warned that New Zealand is not ready for Omicron and the country needed time to prepare. The governments three-tier traffic light COVID-19 management system, which replaced lockdowns in December, isnt going to help us a great deal with Omicron, he told Newstalk ZB, and a return to localised lockdowns should be considered.

Despite such warnings, Education and COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins told the New Zealand Herald that in 2022, he wants stability and full attendance at schools, with disruptive measures such as alternating days on-site only used at local level in case of an outbreak. He anticipated a high threshold would be required before officials considered closing a school. A couple of cases generally wouldn't be enough to trigger it, Hipkins declared.

The government is seeking to suppress any repeat of the resistance that emerged among teachers and parents late last year. COVID-19 spread into well over 130 schools and early childhood education centres (ECEs) after the outbreak in August of the Delta variant. According to the Teachers Advocacy Group, out of 38 schools and ECEs where students or staff tested positive in November, 22 had remained open and 16 were closed for just a few days.

The Ministry of Education (MoE), supported by the teacher unions, the Post Primary Teachers Association and the NZ Educational Institute, declared at the time that under the governments so-called traffic light framework, which replaced generalised lockdowns in December, schools were unlikely to fully close even with cases of COVID-19.

The MoE posted a standardized email last term, circulated among parents, declaring: Based on international and local evidence and experience, the risk of COVID-19 transmission within school settings is considered low. This is a blatant lie. Schools, including in Auckland, became hotbeds for the spread of COVID-19 among children, staff, their families and the wider community,

As the new school year looms, Hipkins is claiming that vaccination is sufficient to justify re-openings. From January 1 all staff must have been double-vaccinated while vaccination rates for secondary school students are expected to hit 90 percent before the start of term. Pfizer's vaccine for children aged 5-11 will be available from January 17, with 476,000 eligible.

Feigning concern for the welfare of students, Hipkins claimed getting them back to school would help remedy issues like the so-called digital divide, which he claimed was made worse by COVID. Teachers had found hybrid learning was almost impossible, Hikpins added. His focus would be on wellbeing by ensuring students were attending school and engaged. We certainly wouldnt want them to lose any more in-person learning time, Hipkins declared.

In reality, the problems associated with online learning were the product of the governments failure to provide sufficient resources to students and staff.

Public health measures will be in place, the minister said, with indoor masking and cohortingthat is, limiting mixing between class groups. In fact, it is impossible for hundreds of students and staff to meet elementary social distancing and other necessary guidelines. According to David Welch from Auckland University, a massive strengthening of protective measures, including upgrades to ventilation in schools and workplaces is immediately required.

Hipkins is openly embracing the homicidal policy demanded by ruling elites internationally of herd immunity, telling the Herald the best scenario for New Zealand is COVID mutating over time to become more transmissible but much less severe. Last month he flatly stated; We are moving to a different space now, where we are going to have COVID-19 in the community.

The governments policy to let the virus spread is being strongly criticised by scientific experts. Baker warned that every government agency needs to immediately prepare for Omicron, including measures to reduce the risk in schools [and] manage infection in children. That could mean closing classes or whole schools for short periods, as well as frequent rapid antigen tests for students and teachers and indoor masks for kids as young as 5.

In overseas countries, schools were forced to close because many teachers were off sick, Baker warned. Under Labours current policy, he noted, even in an Omicron outbreak under the red light settings schools are still required to remain open. Steps need to be taken before the virulent variant enters, so that classrooms dont just turn into an endless series of super-spreading events, Baker said.

Particularly in Europe and North America, the highly infectious Omicron variant is forcing many schools to shut down as it spreads quickly among teachers and students. The reopening of schools is producing a disaster as governments are determined to keep them running, placing children at risk so that their parents can keep working, generating profits for the economic and financial elite.

Determined resistance is erupting internationally as teachers, students and parents unite to oppose the homicidal agenda. A wave of class struggles has already erupted. Thousands of teachers across the United States are currently staging sickouts in defiance of the unsafe reopening of schools.

Teachers staged walkouts last week in Chicago, Oakland, and San Francisco, to fight for a switch to fully remote learning in order to stop viral transmission. Chicagos Democratic Party Mayor Lori Lightfoot has effectively locked teachers out in response.

The Educators Rank-and-File-Safety Committee in the UK has called an emergency meeting Tuesday to discuss a fightback against the rampant spread of COVID-19 throughout British schools. Teachers in Australia face the same struggle, as record cases of Omicron escalate daily.

To stop an unfolding public health disaster, teachers, school staff and parents in New Zealand must take matters into their own hands and oppose the Ardern governments agenda. The Socialist Equality Group (NZ) calls for the formation of rank-and-file safety committees in every school, ECE and workplace to fight for the closure of all schools and non-essential businesses in areas with COVID-19, and for an elimination strategy to reduce case numbers to zero.

This must be part of an international campaign. We call on teachers and parents to register to participate in the WSWS Global Workers Inquest into the COVID-19 Pandemic, which will expose the government policies that have allowed the coronavirus to spread globally, and what must be done to stop the pandemic.
In remarks reminiscent of the darkest days of the eugenics movement, Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Friday that the fact that COVID-19 predominantly kills people who are unwell to begin with is encouraging news.

As the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 reached a record high, the CDC director was asked in an interview on ABCs Good Morning America about those encouraging headlines that were talking about this morning.

Walensky replied:

The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75 percent, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities, so really these are people who are unwell to begin with, and yes, really encouraging news in the context of Omicron.

As a factual matter, the claim that COVID-19 in general, and the Omicron variant in particular, is only affecting the elderly and ill is false. The spread of the new variant has driven a record surge in hospitalizations of young people, and in particular children and infants. The long-term consequences for those who survive and suffer the consequences of Long COVID are still little understood.

However, the suggestion that the overwhelming number of deaths occur among the elderly and those with preexisting conditions (comorbidities) is encouraging news is shocking in its implications.

Walenskys comments were broadly condemned by doctors, scientists and advocates for the disabled as an embrace of eugenics by the Biden administration.

This is eugenicist, lawyer and disability activist Matthew Cortland, who is chronically ill, wrote on Twitter. The problem is that the people running @CDCgov, including @CDCDirector, **fundamentally believe** its encouraging if disabled and chronically ill people die. And all of their decisions are informed by, and enact, that belief.

None of this is hyperbole. Walenskys comments express the turn on the part of the White House and dominant sections of the US political establishment toward an open embrace of the view that the lives of the chronically ill, the disabled, and the elderly are fundamentally valueless.

The leading advocate of this policy is Ezekiel Emanuel, the former Obama administration official and current Biden COVID task force adviser, who is now being promoted in a full court press in the US print and broadcast media.

On Wednesday, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a set of articles by Emanuel and other former Biden health advisors arguing for making COVID-19 the new normal and calling on states to retire the reporting of COVID-19 deaths. These articles were treated as gospel in the US media, with fawning front-page write-ups in the New York Times and Washington Post.

But this campaign went into overdrive on Sunday, with Emanuel serving as the unstated surrogate for the White House on NBCs Meet the Press. Emanuels call for a new normal was simultaneously hailed by the lead editorial in the Washington Post, which called it a sensible strategy for living with covid, presented by experts.

In reality, the call by Emanuel and his co-authors is nothing more than a recapitulation of the pseudo-scientific Great Barrington Declaration, stripped of the myth that herd immunity would lead to the end of the pandemic. It is a plan for COVID-19 in perpetuity, with wave after wave, variant after variant, taking countless lives each year.

Neither Meet the Press nor the Washington Post editorial mentioned that Emanuel is a leading advocate of reducing life expectancy and slashing the provision of medical care for the elderly and chronically ill.

Emanuel, in the words of University of South Carolina philosophy professor Jennifer A. Frey, thinks of disabled and elderly people as useless and ineffectual; when we run the cost/benefit analysis they cost more than they are worth. Emanuel believes that life after 75 [is] not worth living and old people a drain on our resources, she concluded.

Emanuel has expressed his eugenicist ideas time and time again, noted journalist and disability researcher Laura Dorwart.

Emanuels basic precept is that the fundamental determinant of medical care must not be the individuals rights to decency and dignity, but rather a cost-benefit analysis driven by the costs to society of extending the lives of the ill and the elderly.

Emanuel claimsrightlythat the medical profession is averse to such cost-benefit analysis. But this is because the application of such an analysis to medicine and public health is informed by the legacy of eugenics and the German Nazi Partys murder of tens of thousands of people with chronic illnesses whom the Nazis branded unfit to live.

A Nazi propaganda against the disabled. The caption reads - "A chronically ill person costs the nation 5.5 Reichsmarks (left) A healthy family can live for a day for the same amount (right) (Credit: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Roland Klemig)

In the bioethics textbook From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice, professors Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels and Daniel Wikler note the legacy of cost-benefit analysis in the American eugenics movement.

They cite the Eugenics Catechism of the American Eugenics Society of 1926, which argues, It has been estimated that the State of New York, up to 1916, spent over $2,000,000 on the descendants of one familythe Jukesclaimed to be genetically deficient. How much would it have cost to sterilize the original Jukes pair? asked the society: Less than $150.

The book continues, Similar examples abounded in the arithmetic books of German schoolchildren in the 1930s, extending to the cost of keeping institutionalized, handicapped people alive; not long afterward, tens of thousands lost their lives.

In the autumn of 1939, Adolf Hitler secretly authorized a medically administered program of mercy death code-named Operation T4, writes the US Holocaust Museum. The killings secretly continued until the wars end, resulting in the murder of an estimated 275,000 people with disabilities.

Today, hundreds of thousands of elderly and chronically ill people are dying, not in gas chambers, but gasping for air in Americas hospitals. Seventy-five percent of those who have died from COVID-19 have been above the retirement age of 65, and 93 percent have been over the age of 50. In 2020, a year in which 373,000 Americans died from COVID-19, US life expectancy at birth fell by 1.8 years, from 78.8 years to 77.0, according to federal mortality data released last month.

But this reality is not, as Walensky says, encouraging, but a horrifying source of guilt and shame, a condemnation of an utterly inhuman society driven by the needs of enriching the few at the expense of the many.

Scientists and doctors have responded to Walenskys remarks with the demand that she resign. Their anger is justified. But the fact is that Walensky was speaking not only for herself, not only for the Biden administration, but for the entire capitalist class.

For years, American think tanks and military strategists have systematically advocated reducing the life expectancy of American workers. The pandemic has created the means by which this policy could be implemented through seeming inaction and incompetence.

It is, in fact, a deliberate policy, driven by the diseased reliance of all aspects of American capitalism on the perpetual rise in the markets, fueled by the ever-greater immiseration and impoverishment of the working class. Having bled much of the working class dry, the capitalist oligarchy looks to the elderly and the disabled as a source of untapped value.

If they have their way, the cutting of outlays on Social Security and Medicare is to be accomplished not by politicians touching the third rail of American politics, but by allowing the pandemic to continue in perpetuity.

This filthy policy is accompanied by an equally filthy lie: That COVID-19 cannot be stopped. China has successfully executed a Zero COVID policy, with just 5,000 deaths in a country of 1.4 billion. If a similar policy had been carried out in the United States at the start of the pandemic, over 850,000 people would still be alive.

This homicidal new normal demanded by the capitalist oligarchy is being challenged by a growing movement of the working class to resist mass infection and mass death. Teachers in Chicago voted last week to oppose the resumption of in-person instruction, and teachers in Chicago, New York and San Francisco have launched sickouts. They will be joined this week with a wave of walkouts by students in opposition to the Biden administrations homicidal drive to keep schools open no matter the costs in human lives.

The open turn to eugenics by the ruling class expresses a fundamental reality that is dawning on millions of people: Capitalism is incompatible with the social rights of the great mass of humanity. Securing those rights requires the struggle to end this social order and replace it with socialism.
The New Years Eve fire that burned down Planned Parenthood in Knoxville, Tennessee was intentionally set, officials investigating the incident have determined. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is among the agencies still working to identify those responsible for the fire. A $10,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the prosecution of individuals involved in the crime.

Knoxville Planned Parenthood clinic on fire (Source: Twitter/@cole_sull)

As the World Socialist Web Site previously reported, the clinic was destroyed by fire in the early hours of December 31, 2021. The attack on the clinic came less than a year after a masked gunman unloaded a shotgun into the front doors of the building on January 22, 2021, the 48th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Courts landmark decision legalizing abortion in the United States. While no one was injured in either incident, it is significant that the destruction of the clinic in Knoxville occurred as legal abortion is increasingly under attack in the United States.

In early December, the Supreme Court heard arguments on the legality of a Mississippi abortion law which bans abortions after 15 weeks. Roe v. Wade prohibits states from restricting abortion before fetal viability, around 23 weeks.

The court is set to rule on the Mississippi case this year. Many court-watchers expect the conservative and reactionary majority on the bench to decide in favor of the law, a decision which could severely weaken or simply overturn Roe v. Wade.

Should the court rule in favor of the Mississippi law, the decision on the legality of abortion would be left to individual states. Currently, at least 22 states are set to either ban abortion or place strict limitations on the procedure. These states have trigger abortion bans which will go into effect immediately if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Last month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) preemptively lifted the in-person requirement for dispensing mifepristone, commonly known as RU-486, or the abortion pill. This move allows the mifepristone to be prescribed via telemedicine and mailed to women. However, 19 states already have bans in place against receiving the abortion pill through the mail. Women in those states are required to be present at a clinic to get the medicine.

Abortion has always been a class issue. If abortion is banned, wealthy and middle-class women will continue to have control over their bodies and life decisions while working class women will lose the right to make life-changing decisions in their own best interests. Before Roe v. Wade, women who could afford it were able to travel to states or countries where abortion was legal. Poor and working class women either carried an unwanted pregnancy to term or risked their lives undergoing illegal abortions. If a woman did not die from an illegal abortion, she risked any number of complications, such as incomplete abortion, hemorrhage, infection, uterine perforation, and damage to the genital tract and internal organs.

According to a 1976 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in the year prior to the passage of Roe v. Wade, 130,000 illegal abortions were performed across the US and 39 women died from the procedure. By 1974, illegal abortions dropped to 17,000, with five deaths. As of 2020, the death rate from abortion in the United States is 0.6 per 100,000 procedures, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Banning abortion does not stop women from attempting to end an unwanted pregnancy. The Guttmacher Institute reports that in countries which only allow abortion for the mothers health, the abortion rate is 37 for every 1,000 women. In countries with no restrictions on abortion, the rate is 34 for every 1,000 women.

Anti-abortion laws are being pushed by right-wing Republicans who sit in state legislatures and governors offices throughout much of the South and Midwest. These are the same states that have banned or restricted mitigation measures against the spread of COVID-19 and from which Republican officials and activists joined the January 6 coup attempt in Washington D.C. While anti-abortion laws are rooted in backward religious doctrine, they are ultimately about keeping the most vulnerable layers of society dependent on low-wage jobs and prey to the exploitation of the ruling class.

Despite decades of attacks, the Democratic Party has done nothing to protect the democratic right of women to an abortion. As the World Socialist Web Site has explained: The Democrats have spent the past two decades accommodating and adapting to the right-wing attack on abortion rights.

The Biden administration has embraced the criminal precepts of the Great Barrington Declaration which promotes the unscientific herd immunity approach to the pandemic, allowing COVID-19 to spread without control. In late December, Biden told governors, There is no federal solution. (The pandemic) gets solved at the state level. The White Houses abdication of federal responsibility to end the pandemic, from Trump to Biden, has resulted in 836,000 needless deaths and is currently responsible for a record number of children being hospitalized as the Omicron variant runs unchecked throughout the country.

Similarly, the current administration is content to hand over decisions about the health and safety of millions of women to state governors, at least 22 of whom are set to cut off access to abortion as soon as the Supreme Court hands down its decision.

As the WSWS noted when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments last month challenging the right to abortion: The fight to defend abortion rights cannot be waged through the political parties representing any faction of the capitalist oligarchy or the affluent upper-middle class. As with all democratic rights, it requires the mobilization of the working class as an independent political force in opposition to the ruling class and the capitalist system. Only through a mass movement for socialism will the working class defend fundamental democratic rights and win the struggle against the regressive and criminal policies of the ruling class that threaten our rights and our lives.
Omicron, which is rapidly becoming dominant variant around the world, is threatening a serious disaster in Sri Lanka. However, facing a worsening economic crisis, government is pressing workers back to work, encouraging foreign tourists and re-opening schools despite the obvious dangers.

The government, the media and officials are all seeking to promote a fatalistic attitude that nothing can be done. Last Monday, health ministry viral specialist Nadeeka Janakage, told the media: We have to accept the fact that Omicron is present and spreading in our country. In the coming weeks, it will surpass the Delta variant and become the dominant variant in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankan school students receive their first COVID-19 vaccine from a health workers in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Friday, Jan. 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

The following day, Association of Medical Specialists president Dr Lakkumar Fernando pointed to the consequences of an Omicron tsunami, saying: Many more will be infected with this variant, which will lead to overcrowding in hospitals, and many health workers will be infected and quarantined, severely crippling the health system.

The total number of Omicron infections in Sri Lanka is currently over 50 with the 41 cases confirmed on December 31 by the Allergy, Immunology and Cell Biology Unit at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. Institute chief Chandima Jeewandara said that these infections were identified, not by a group of samples from across the island but samples primarily selected from the Katunayake Airport area.

The fact that 23 percent or 41 of the 176 samples used in the test were Omicron positive points to the high prevalence of the variant. A clearer picture of the spread of Omicron could only be obtained if a higher number of samples from across the country were used, but that has not been done.

Hemantha Herath, deputy director of health services, commented to the media last Monday: Although Omicron infected people have been detected only in few areas yet, it does not mean that they are only present in those areas.

To bolster its false claim that the pandemic is under control, the government is deliberately under-counting infections by reducing the number of PCR tests to just 6,000 per day. Medical experts have recommended that there should be at least 40,000 tests per day. Even on this limited testing, around 600 infections are being reported daily along with 20 deaths.

The Rajapakse government is entirely responsible for the spread of COVID-19 and now the cases of the new variant that have emerged. Vowing not disrupt profit generation, Colombo is not just refusing to implement any new public health measures to stop the pandemic but is removing previously limited measures.

The government, which did not impose any specific travel restrictions during the Christmas and New Year holiday period, has now lifted limits on weddings, outdoor gatherings and sporting events. All public sector employees were directed to return to work last Monday with special leave for pregnant mothers and mothers with children under one year cancelled. The tourism industry and non-essential businesses, including retail, and schools have been fully reopened.

Despite the Omicron infections in the Katunayake Airport area, the countrys main international airport, there are no restrictions on the flow of foreign tourists into the country. The Daily Mirror reported that 11,380 foreign tourists arrived in the first four days of the new year. Sri Lanka does not have a proper quarantine program for foreign visitors.

The government has refused to take any specific measures to stop the new variant spreading, offloading all responsibility onto the population. Whatever the virus, the symptoms are the same and the health measures [against it] are the same, Deputy Director of Health Services Hemantha Herath said last week.

The people must protect themselves There is no point in going after numbers. What needs to be done is to take steps to prevent the spread, he declared. His comments deliberately ignore evidence that Omicron is far more infectious than previous strains, is more vaccine-resistant and is a greater danger to young people.

Like its counterparts around the world, the Rajapakse governments policies are based on protecting the profits of big business not human lives. In order to recover from the deep economic crisis created by the depletion of foreign reserves, Colombo has directed all export industries, including those producing non-essential goods, to remain open, with workers prevented from take any leave unless they have medically-certified COVID infection symptoms.

Instead of allocating more funds to improve the rundown public health care system to meet the challenge posed by the pandemic, the government has provided massive relief packages to boost big business profits.

An article entitled Finance ministers 229 billion rupees economic relief package buoys stock market, in the Island on January 5, reported that the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) index rose by 174.72 points last Monday and Tuesday to close at an all-time high. The huge package amounted to 10 percent 10 percent of projected 2022 government revenues.

Sri Lankan exports hit monthly peaks in November, following the governments full approval of companies demanding that workers return to their factories and workplaces despite the danger of being infected with the deadly virus. Garment exports climbed by 58 percent, rubber products by 47 percent, tea by 22 percent and coconut products by 41 percent.

The Rajapakse government and other capitalist governments around the world insist that vaccination is the only solution, ignoring all other necessary health measures to stop the pandemic. The rapid spread of the virus and its Delta and Omicron variant, even in countries where a large percentage of the population has been vaccinated, has exposed these false claims.

The pandemic cannot be eliminated without a global vaccination program combined with massive efforts to increase the number of tests, proper quarantining of the infected, the closure of non-essential production and schools to maintain social distancing, and the provision of high-quality face masks and personal protective equipment to the general public, including health workers.

None of these measures will be implemented as long as control of the pandemic remains in the hands of the ruling classes. The eradication of the pandemic is inseparably linked to a unified movement of the working class fighting for a socialist program to overthrow the capitalist system and reorganise society according to human need not private profit.

The Global Workers Inquest into the COVID-19 Pandemic launched by the World Socialist Web Site is crucial in developing that consciousness within the working class.
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Netflix's "The Power of the Dog" and 20th Century Studios' "West Side Story" took home the top prizes at the 79th Golden Globe Awards on Sunday night, winning best drama and best musical or comedy, respectively.

The Western psychological drama film "The Power of the Dog" won big this year, not only capturing the award for best drama, the biggest prize of the night, but also walking away with best director for Jane Campion, and best supporting actor in any motion picture for Kodi Smit-McPhee.

Nicole Kidman was honored with the best actress in a drama category for her role in "Being the Ricardos," while Will Smith took home another coveted statue for best actor in the category for his performance in "King Richard."

"West Side Story" dominated the musical or comedy category. The musical film, directed by three-time Oscar winner Steven Spielberg, won best picture in the category, in addition to best actress in a musical or comedy for Rachel Zegler, and best supporting actress in any motion picture for Ariana DeBose.

Andrew Garfield nabbed the award for best actor in a musical or comedy for "Tick, Tick... Boom!"

The winners were announced by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) on its official website and social media pages as NBC skipped the controversy-filled event broadcast.

The HFPA has been under fire over its lack of diversity, alleged sexual misconduct and corruption in the past year. 
25 years ago: Turkey threatens Cyprus over missiles

Cyprus map, indicating ethno-political division of the country

On January 11, 1997, Turkey threatened military action against the Republic of Cyprus over a deal to purchase surface-to-air S-300 missiles from Russia, sparking tensions that lasted through the following year.

The $426 million missile deal was reached January 4, though Cyprus claimed that the missiles would not be deployed for another 16 months. In response, the Turkish Armed Forces then purchased surface-to-air missiles from Israel and also threatened to take Varosha, a highly disputed area that had been sealed off since the 1974 Turkish invasion. The Cypriot Armed Forces were placed on the highest alert amid preparations for mobilization.

The Greek Cypriot government said that the weapons were only for defense, but Turkey, which had occupied the northern section of the island since 1974, saw it as a direct threat to the established military balance in the region.

Turkey maintained 35,000 troops in Cyprus. Of the islands 730,000 population, 78 percent were Greek Cypriot, and about 18 percent were Turkish, most of whom were concentrated in the northern part of the island. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus had declared independence in 1983 but was not recognized by any other government besides Turkey.

Yiannakis Cassoulides, a spokesman for the Greek Cypriot government, told the press that the missile buildup was proportional to that of its Turkish counterpart. None of these arms purchases will be used against anyone, unless attacked, he said.

The United States and United Nations intervened to attempt to persuade Cyprus to get rid of the missiles, which would have been a major concession to Turkey, and failed. Instead, Cyprus ended up storing the missiles in the Greek island of Crete.

50 years ago: South Africa moves against strike wave in occupied Namibia

Namibia, in red, on African continent. South Africa borders it to the South

On January 12, 1972, the South African government flew in extra police reinforcements to Namibia (called South West Africa by the South African government) to suppress a strike by 13,000 miners in the Ovamboland region.

The strike had begun at the end of December and was quickly spreading into a mass movement of all Namibian workers against the South West African apartheid regime. It paralyzed the mining industry. Ten key mines that produced mostly copper and nickel were entirely shut down.

The territory of South West Africa had originally been a German colony whose ownership was transferred to South Africa by the League of Nations following World War I. In 1966 the United Nations terminated the League of Nations decision and voted to directly govern the country itself until it could transition to independence, also officially changing its name from South West Africa to Namibia in 1968. However, South Africa refused to recognize the UN ruling and maintained effective control over Namibia until 1990, when independence would finally be established.

The Ovambo and other native Namibian workers labored in virtual slavery under a contract labor system controlled by the South African puppet government. All able-bodied men would be rounded up by agents from the mining companies, taken away from their homes, and forced into work contracts for periods of nine months to a year at a time, being paid on average 50 cents per day.

The strikers demanded the ending of the contract system, free choice in location of employment, wages equal to those of white workers, the right to leave employment, the removal of police from worksites, and the ability to bring their families to live with them at the worksite villages.

The decision to mobilize extra police forces came as the Ovambo workers began expanding their strike to other areas of Namibia. The police used brutal methods, including arrests of workers leaders and violent attacks on picket lines. At one workers meeting in late January, police killed 10 Ovambo strikers.

Despite the attempt to intimidate the workers, the strike would grow into a general strike throughout the entire country. Fearing that it threatened revolution, at the end of January the South African government agreed to make some changes to the contract labor system. Workers, however, were not satisfied as their conditions remained essentially the same. Strikes would continue up to April even as more intense police state measures were imposed, including banning all meetings of more than five people in Ovamboland.

75 years ago: Truman introduces militarist budget

Harry Truman

On January 10, 1947, Democratic president of the United States, Harry Truman, introduced a budget to Congress which provided for continuing massive outlays to the military and a fiscal surplus to be achieved through the limiting of social spending. The budget, the second since the end of World War II, reflected the determination of American imperialism to cement itself as the dominant imperialist power.

Truman, who was overseeing the first stages of the Cold War, declared: Although we expect the United Nations to move successfully toward world security, any cut in the present estimate would immediately weaken our international position. One contemporaneous media report noted: Defence, interest, and tax refunds together with $3,500 million for international affairs and finance and $7,400 million for servicemens benefits, account for four-fifths of the total budget.

A front-page article in T he Militant, then the newspaper of the American Trotskyist movement, calculated that the budget allocated six times as much money for war as for the needs of the people. Of the $37.5 billion budget, $11.5 billion was directly allocated to military expenditure. But even this was an underestimation, T he Militant noted, with $444 million for atomic weapons development listed under natural resources not primarily agriculture, and $645 million for the rule of occupied lands, dubbed foreign relief.

The Militant pointed to several contrasts. Total outlay on the preparation for nuclear war, at $530 million, compared with $17 million earmarked for public health. Chemical warfare research was over $6 million to just $1.3 million for cancer research. Army ordnance research spending would be $40 million, as against just $78,950 for studies into mental health.

Truman rejected tax cuts, despite Republican demands, on the grounds that this would weaken the US budgetary position under conditions in which American imperialism had major tasks at home and abroad. While escalating a conflict with Soviet Union and seeking to shore up US dominance in Europe and elsewhere, the Truman administration was confronting the largest movement of the American working class in history, with millions engaging in strikes directed against stagnant wages, amid a soaring cost of living.

100 years ago: Second trial of Fatty Arbuckle begins

Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle

On January 11, 1922, film comedy star Roscoe Fatty Arbuckles second trial for manslaughter began in San Francisco. Arbuckle was accused of killing actress Virginia Rappe at the St. Francis Hotel in September 1921 after sexually assaulting her. The San Francisco District Attorney, Matthew Brady, alleged that Arbuckle had burst Rappes bladder after lying on top of her.

A previous trial had ended in a hung jury in December despite a lurid campaign of slander by the national newspaper chain of William Randolph Hearst. After five days of deliberation, the jury in the second trial also failed to arrive at a decision, and another mistrial was declared.

Arbuckle was tried a third time, and on April 12, after deliberating for six minutes, the jury acquitted him. In an unusual step, the jury issued an apology, which was handed to Arbuckle personally by the foreman. Jurors then walked up to Arbuckle one by one and shook his hand.

But Arbuckles film career was ruined. Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (and father of Hollywoods infamous, self-censoring production code of 1930), banned Arbuckle from working in film again, claiming he was an example of poor morals. After a year, Hays withdrew the ban under public pressure, but Arbuckle could not find work as an actor. Theaters refused to show his films.

The trial had all the elements of future American cultural and political censorship, including the McCarthy period, which heavily impacted Hollywood in the late 1940s and 1950s, and the #MeToo victimizations nearly a century later: presumption of guilt in the media before legal findings, an ambitious prosecutor and a public campaign supported by self-proclaimed moral puristsin Arbuckles case, the interfaith Womens Vigilant Committee of San Francisco.

Arbuckle was a comic actor of tremendous talent, noted for his close professional relationships with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. While he was later able to work as a director under a pseudonym, many of his films have not been preserved because of neglect brought on by the witch-hunt against him.
Attorneys representing Gregory Gross, a 65-year-old Northern California man, have served officers from the Yuba City Police Department, north of the state capital of Sacramento, with a lawsuit over their mistreatment of Gross during an April 2020 traffic stop which resulted in his permanent paralysis. The attorneys had also sued Rideout Memorial Hospital, along with the University of California, Davis, Medical Center and some individual medical workers last August for their involvement in the incident as well.

Launching the lawsuit, attorney Moseley Collins stated, Its about police brutality that destroyed his life. Along with obtaining money to pay for his life-long care and nursing needs, Collins said that Gross was motivated by his desire not to see this happen to anyone else.

This image taken from police body camera video provided by the Yuba City Police Department shows Gregory Gross being wheeled into Rideout Memorial Hospital after his arrest in Yuba City, Calif., Sunday April 12, 2020. (Yuba City Police Department via AP)

Gross, a seasonal truck driver, was accused of driving drunk and causing a slow-speed collision at the time of the incident. He faces a jury trial in March on charges of misdemeanor DUI (driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol), hit-and-run and resisting arrest.

Police body cam footage has since come into possession of the prosecuting attorneys, which clearly demonstrates that Gross never represented any kind of threat whatsoever to the officers. The attack on Gross, who is white, bears resemblance to the murder of George Floyd, who was black, by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota a month later.

The Yuba City police officers involved in Gross arrest stated both during and after the incident that they were employing pain compliance against the man. Officer Joshua Jackson is seen in the video twisting Gross arms and neck in order to force him into various uncomfortable positions. Its called pain compliance, Jackson says. It will continue to hurt if you dont shut up and listen.

According to police use of force experts, the use of pain compliance is only acceptable under conditions where the arrested person has not been subdued and is actively resisting the efforts of the arresting officers. In Gross case, the responding officer already had him in handcuffs and was in the midst of escorting him to a patrol car. Gross, while walking slowly, was not putting up any serious resistance to the escort.

In spite of this, Jackson repeatedly manhandled Gross, at one point suddenly trying to raise his handcuffed arms above his head and putting him in various wrestling-inspired choke positions. Gross complained that he could not breathe and that the positions were seriously hurting him. Another office replied, Mr. Gross, we are done with your silly little games.

As is almost always the case in such circumstances, the officers told Gross that they had to be violent with him as he was resisting. Gross responds Im not resisting. Why are you doing this? Jackson smirks and responds that youre just not going with the program.

After putting Gross into a patrol car and driving him to nearby Rideout Memorial Hospital, the officers once again pushed Gross to the ground and applied immense pressure to his upper back and neck area outside of the emergency room entrance. Gross told the officers that he cannot breathe, and like the police who killed George Floyd the next month, the officers respond Youre talking. You can breathe.

The most horrifying moment of the video then occurs when the officers try to lift the 65-year-old, who exclaims, I cant feel my legs. The officers reply, Stand up like a man. You can feel your legs. After Gross is placed into a wheelchair, the video shows Gross nose with blood smeared all around his nose and eyes, likely the result of his face having been forced into the ground by the arresting officers. Gross repeats, I cant feel my legs. Im sorry. Dear God, help me. I cant feel my legs.

One nurse in the emergency room asks what happened and an officer replies that Gross was injured in the process of being assisted to the ground, as several horrified hospital workers look on. What can then be apparently seen on the video is some medical workers unfortunately taking the police at their word that Gross was only pretending to be injured with personnel not making attempt to secure his neck and shoulders when transporting him from one bed to another, possibly leading to further spinal trauma.

After doctors realized that Gross was in fact telling the truth, he required spinal surgery as a result of his injuries, including a six-level posterior fusion at C3-T2 and a laminectomy at C4-C6. He required a second surgery the very next day, involving an anterior fusion at C5-C6. Nonetheless, the leg paralysis turned out to be permanent and the spinal injuries have also caused paralysis to his fingers. Gross is now no longer able to write or grasp objects.

According to one of Gross treating doctors, Christopher Stephenson, the 65-year-old veteran will require nursing care 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the rest of his life along with a nursing case manager 3 to 5 hours per month and a nurse supervisor. Prior to the police incident, Gross had been taking care of his fiancee, who is a double leg amputee.

The story of Gregory Gross is only one of thousands upon thousands which occur every year in the United States. Even as the pandemic has disrupted daily life for millions of workers in innumerable ways, the wanton sadism employed by the police against defenseless members of the working class has in no way diminished.

Millions of people took to the streets in 2020, both in the US and internationally, to protest against the horrific police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and hundreds other innocent people. Much of the of anger at the time was justifiably directed against the would-be-dictator and then-President Donald Trump, however, elements within the Democratic Party couched the killings in purely racial terms while sowing illusions that a new Democratic president would stop the carnage.

The phenomenon of police violence is presented by the Democrats as simply the product of racial animus by whites against blacks. While African Americans are disproportionately represented in the percentages of people killed by police, they make up between 20 to 25 percent of the total of those killed by police each year. The largest share of victims, like Gross, are white, and nearly all those subjected to the brutality of the police are working class or poor.

Democratic politicians across the country have joined with their Republican counterparts in funneling military-grade weaponry and supplies to departments across the country, while at the same time shielding officers from any responsibility for state-sanctioned murder. The Biden administration has allowed for tens of millions of dollars in pandemic relief aid to be handed over to the police. Since January 2021, when Biden assumed office, 1,124 people have been killed at the hands of the police, only three less than Trumps final year in the White House.

According to a recent study published last September by the University of Washington and The Lancet, yearly death counts from police extending from 1980 to 2018 were in fact gross undercounts. The study found that about 55 percent of fatal encounters with the police in that timeframe were actually listed as another cause of death. In other words, the number of people killed by police is likely two times higher than what is being reported.
For my first blog of the year, I want to wish WTO members a good and fruitful New Year. This means, in my view, building on international trade cooperation to achieve results in a set of pressing issues, for the benefit of many around the world. My wishes are not a pie in the sky; they fall in the 20/80 category: 20 percent aspirational and 80 percent pragmatic and achievable. Heres hoping to make the best of 2022!

First, 2022 should be the year where WTO members deliver a trade and health response to the pandemic, including on intellectual property issues. Trade in medical products proved to be a lifeline for people across the world in 2021, but more is needed. A strong framework that would facilitate trade in vaccines and critical medical gear and the inputs necessary for their production would go a long way in saving lives, supporting a more widespread recovery and helping prepare for the future with increased and diversified manufacturing capacity in all regions. This agreement is not only feasible, it's within reach early in the year.

Second, with the adoption of several ministerial statements in December 2021, governments put the WTO on route to strengthen the role of trade rules in effectively combating climate change and supporting environmental objectives, including by exploring work in areas like trade in environmental goods and services, sustainable plastics trade, and fossil fuel subsidies, among others. Work in 2022 could set the stage for launching plurilateral negotiations in some of these areas. Moreover, and as early as possible in the New Year, WTO members should conclude the negotiation of a long overdue agreement to cut harmful fisheries subsidies. Doing so would send a strong signal of their commitment to a green trade agenda  and of their ability to negotiate multilaterally.

Third, building on a very productive year in 2021, the more than the two thirds of the WTO membership participating in the negotiations on investment facilitation for development have set the target of concluding a deal in 2022 with the goal of helping countries improve their business climate and make it easier for investors to invest, manage their business and expand operations. Success would help leverage the power of foreign investment for a strong and sustainable recovery. In a similar vein, advancing significant progress in the plurilateral negotiations on e-commerce could help small and medium businesses in all countries from Senegal to Ecuador to Vietnam and beyond to reap the benefits of participating in international trade, underpinned by one single set of rules and with reduced trade costs.

Fourth, concerns about growing levels of government support distorting international markets, coupled with limited transparency and perceptions of unfairness, erodes public backing for open trade and stifles innovation, competition and productivity. It is increasingly acknowledged that revising and updating WTO rules dealing with subsidies and state intervention in the economy would help reduce some of the trade frictions that are fueling uncertainty and geopolitical tensions. Fiscal and financial considerations add to the rationale for bolstering disciplines and reining in budgetary outlays  both in the industrial and agricultural sectors. 2022 is the year for WTO members to conceptually frame the issue and structure a discussion leading to revised rules and commitments in this area.

Fifth, it is hard to engage in the business of rule-making without a fully operational dispute settlement system. Norms are only as good as their enforcement, which is why restoring a binding mechanism for sorting out conflicts among WTO members is key. It is a tough issue, for sure, and one that is maybe linked to other points. Whatever the shortcomings of the WTO dispute settlement system, it is important to keep in mind that the system has helped sort out many trade conflicts and governments have mostly complied with its rulings. All WTO members, even the most powerful among them, are better off with the system than without it. And if change is needed, as it may, 2022 is the right time to seriously engage in that dialogue.

WTO discussions are complex and take time. They must deal with and accommodate the needs and interests of many countries, with different priorities and levels of development. But it is also the case that global solutions are needed to address the global trade challenges the world faces. Not all 164 WTO members may need to take part in crafting all of these responses, but they all must commit to make the WTO work and let it work. Under the leadership of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the WTO Secretariat is ready and eager to support governments as they embark on these discussions. I wish WTO members all the best in seizing the opportunities that 2022 brings with it to engage, build and deliver a stronger multilateral trading system that effectively serves many across the world.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The latest COVID-19 surge in the United States driven by the highly infectious Omicron variant is leading to critical staffing shortages across the nation.

About 24 percent of the 5,000 U.S. hospitals reporting their staff status to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have a "critical staffing shortage," according to data of the HHS.

More than 100 other hospitals said they are anticipating shortages within the next week.

This is the largest share of hospital shortages since the HHS began releasing the data in November 2020.

These staff shortages kept growing as frontline health care workers are either infected or forced to quarantine due to exposure to COVID-19.

At least ten U.S. states deployed National Guard to help overwhelmed hospitals, according to CNN report.

Virginia governor issued state of emergency on Monday for hospitals. The 30-day state of emergency aims to allow hospitals to increase staffing and bed capacity as hospitalizations hit record levels due to the surge in coronavirus cases and the rise in flu cases.

Child hospitalizations also soared to the highest level of the pandemic.

At Los Angeles Children's Hospital, the positivity rate of children tested for COVID-19 increased from 17.5 percent in December to the current 45 percent in January, according the hospital's medical director Michael Smit.

Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest school district in the country, is requiring all students and employees to test negative before returning to the classroom.

The recent record-high new COVID-19 infections in the United States have put additional pressure on the overwhelmed health care system.

"While early data suggest Omicron infections might be less severe than those of other variants, the increases in cases and hospitalizations are expected to stress the healthcare system in the coming weeks," according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Nearly 5 million new COVID-19 cases were reported across the country last week from Jan. 2 to 8, a record high weekly increase since the onset of the pandemic in the country, according to data of Johns Hopkins University. Up to 11,000 new deaths were reported this past week.

The country set a new daily COVID-19 cases record again last Monday as over 1.17 million daily COVID-19 cases were recorded nationwide.

Currently the country is averaging nearly 700,000 cases each day, the most significant COVID-19 infection surge to date, CDC data showed.

The CDC projected that the Omicron variant may account for approximately 95 percent of new COVID-19 cases in the country.

Health experts have been urging the unvaccinated and those eligible for boost shots to get vaccination as soon as possible.

At least 65.5 million eligible Americans remain unvaccinated. 
TRIPOLI, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Stephanie Williams, the adviser to the United Nations secretary-general (SASG) for Libya, on Sunday stressed the role of Libya's neighbors in supporting the Libyan dialogue.

Williams made her remarks during a meeting with the Algerian Ambassador to Libya Slimane Chenine.

"We stressed the important role of Libya's neighbors to support the three intra-Libyan dialogue tracks," Williams tweeted, noting that they had a meeting to discuss recent developments in Libya.

The UN-sponsored Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF) in February selected an executive authority of a unity government and a presidency council, ending years of political division in the country.

Libya was expecting to hold presidential elections on Dec. 24, 2021. However, the election was postponed indefinitely due to technical and legal issues, according to the High National Elections Commission.

Libya has been suffering insecurity and chaos since the fall of the late leader Muammar Gaddafi's regime in 2011. 
Wisconsin Hospital Association: do not go to emergency rooms for COVID-19 tests
Dominick Black, who bought Kyle Rittenhouse the gun used in Kenosha shootings, has taken a plea deal
Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa (R) meets with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Jan. 9, 2022. (Sri Lankan President's Media Division/Handout via Xinhua)

COLOMBO, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Sri Lankan leaders pledged here on Sunday to further develop bilateral relations, carrying forward the spirit of the Rubber-Rice Pact.

Wang, during his visit, met with Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris, and attended a ceremony to launch a series of events marking the 65th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Sri Lanka, and the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Rubber-Rice Pact.

Wang said at the ceremony that the two countries are always good friends, noting that China has provided a large amount of COVID-19 vaccines and other medical supplies to Sri Lanka.

China and Sri Lanka are also good partners in common development, said the Chinese state councilor, adding that Sri Lanka is on the key route of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative in South Asia.

The first phase of the Colombo Port City project has been completed and new programs are being launched, said Wang, citing that the cooperative management of the Port City has brought profits for Sri Lanka, the Hambantota Port's cargo throughput has continued to see new high, and the industrial zone is developed in full swing.

China and Sri Lanka are good brothers supporting each other, Wang said. "Amid the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic and tortuous process of economic recovery, we need to cooperate more closely than ever before."

He said the two sides should further deepen their mutual political trust, firmly support eath other on issues of core interests, significant concerns and national dignity.

"We will continue to jointly fight the pandemic and cooperate in the research and development of COVID-19 vaccines and effective medicines," said Wang.

He said the two sides ought to keep synergizing their development strategies and upholding multilateralism.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, during the meeting with Wang, said Sri Lanka is willing to work with China to hold a series of events marking the 65th anniversary of diplomatic ties between Sri Lanka and China and the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Rubber-Rice Pact.

Sri Lanka is ready to strengthen cooperation with China in the fields of economy, trade, finance, tourism and infrastructure, so as to benefit the people of the two countries, he stressed.

Wang said the long-standing friendly exchanges between the two countries have shown that they have always adhered to the principle of mutual respect, mutual understanding, mutual trust and mutual support.

He said the two countries opened the door for friendly exchanges by signing the Rubber-Rice Pact, demonstrating their national spirit in the fight against hegemony and power politics, and breaking the Cold War isolation imposed by the West.

"The spirit of the pact characterized by independence, self-reliance, unity and mutual support is deeply rooted in the hearts of the two peoples, and such spirit should be carried forward."

Wang said China is ready to offer vaccines and medical supplies to Sri Lanka, and is willing to work together with Sri Lanka on effective medicines, stressing that the Colombo Port City and Hambantota Port projects could be engines for pushing forward bilateral cooperation.

He said it is imperative to discuss the restart of talks on free trade agreement between the two countries by tapping the opportunities of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement and China's vast market, to facilitate Sri Lanka's economic recovery and development.

Chinese enterprises will be encouraged to invest in Sri Lanka, he said.

The Rubber-Rice Pact was signed in December 1952 when China needed to import rubber and other supplies and Sri Lanka, which sees rubber as a key export, was facing rising price of rice and slump of rubber price.

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, during his meeting with Wang, expressed his gratitude to China for providing COVID-19 vaccines and anti-pandemic supplies, saying China always extends help when Sri Lanka needs it the most.

He hoped to continue deepening bilateral relations and conduct close practical cooperation with China to jointly address challenges.

Wang said the friendly relationship between China and Sri Lanka benefits the development of both countries and serves the fundamental interest of both peoples. It does not target any third party and should not be interfered with by any third party, he said, adding that the all-round cooperation and strategic mutual trust between the two countries contribute to regional peace and stability.

Wang said China is ready to work with Sri Lanka to expand mutually beneficial cooperation in various fields and elevate their strategic cooperative partnership to a new height.

He noted that China encourages Chinese enterprises to invest and develop in Sri Lanka, and combine Chinese capital and experience with Sri Lanka's human resources advantages to help Sri Lanka improve the ability of self-development and accelerate industrialization.

The Chinese foreign minister concluded his tour to the Maldives and Sri Lanka on Sunday. Before this, Wang visited the African nations of Eritrea, Kenya and the Comoros on Jan. 4-7. 

Visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa visit a photo exhibition in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Jan. 9, 2022. Wang, during his visit, met with Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and Foreign Minister G. L. Peiris, and attended a ceremony to launch a series of events marking the 65th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Sri Lanka, and the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Rubber-Rice Pact. (Photo by Ajith Perera/Xinhua)

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa (R) meets with Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Jan. 9, 2022. (Photo by Ajith Perera/Xinhua)
Bob Saget

After news broke of Bob Sagets sudden death at the age of 65 on January 9, his friends and co-workers spoke out about their love of the comedian and actor. Saget was best known for his role as Danny Tanner on the long-running family sitcom Full House. The comedian also hosted the first eight seasons of Americas Funniest Home Videos. In contrast to his family-friendly TV appearances, Saget was also a stand up comedian who famously loved a dirty joke.



After his passing, his former Full House costar John Stamos tweeted, I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby.

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Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, who played the youngest Tanner daughter, Michelle, on Full House, said in a joint statement, Bob was the most loving, compassionate and generous man. We are deeply saddened that he is no longer with us but know that he will continue to be by our side to guide us as gracefully as he always has. We are thinking of his daughters, wife and family and are sending our condolences.



Candace Cameron Bure, who played DJ Tanner, tweeted, I dont know what to say. I have no words. Bob was one of the best humans beings Ive ever known in my life. I loved him so much. She also shared photos of them together on her Instagram, and wrote, I love you sooooo much. I dont want to say goodbye. 35 years wasnt long enough. Dave Coulier, who played Uncle Joey on the ABC sitcom, wrote, My heart is broken. I love you, Bob. Your forever brother, Dave.

Pete Davidson shared a statement via friend and writing partner Dave Sirus Instagram. In it he wrote, When I was younger and several times throughout our friendship he helped me get through some rough mental health stuff. He stayed on the phone with my mom for hours trying to help in anyway he canconnecting us with doctors and new things we can try. He would check in on me and make sure I was okay.

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Saget also voiced the older version of Josh Radnors Ted on CBS How I Met Your Mother. Radnor shared his remembrances of the actor in a long Twitter thread. He wrote in part, He was the kindest, loveliest, funniest, most supportive man. The easiest person to be around. A mensch among mensches. Radnor wrote about how Saget supported him and his performance, saying, This man that Id delighted in seeing on TV for years cheering me on, letting me know I had a right to be there and playing that character I cant overstate how meaningful his words were.

Norman Lear shared a picture of himself with Saget and wrote, Bob Saget was as lovely a human as he was funny. And to my mind, he was hilarious. We were close friends and I could not have loved him more.

Kat Dennings, who starred with Saget on the short-lived WB program Raising Dad, said, Oh god. Bob Saget!!! The loveliest man. I was his TV daughter for one season and he was always so kind and protective. So so sorry for his family.

Saget and his family also received an outpouring of love from other stand-up comedians, past and present. Whoopi Goldberg wrote, Sail on my friend Bob Saget With your huge heart and abject lunacy, my condolences to his daughters & other family, while Jim Carrey said, Beautiful Bob Saget passed away today at 65. He had a big, big heart and a wonderfully warped comic mind. He gave the world a lot of joy and lived his life for goodness sake.

Other comedians including Gilbert Gottfried, Billy Crystal, Jason Alexander, Judd Apatow, and Ken Jeong also honored Saget online.
Japan is known for its intense corporate culture. Charly Triballeau/AFP

Corporate life in Japan can be so intense that dying from overwork is not unheard of.

Last year, the government recommended that companies allow staff to opt for a four-day workweek.

Panasonic recently announced it will start offering the four-day workweek to interested workers.

The electronics conglomerate Panasonic is the latest major Japanese company to announce a four-day workweek to interested employees, Nikkei reported.

"We must support the well-being of our employees," Panasonic CEO Yuki Kusumi told investors at a recent briefing, according to the outlet.

Known for its intense work culture, corporate life in Japan can be so unforgiving that dying from overworking is not unheard of.

In a bid to improve the country's work-life balance, the Japanese government last June recommended that companies allow staff members to opt for a four-day workweek, the German broadcaster DW reported.

Panasonic's Kusumi said the company was looking to support diversity as some workers might have side jobs or personal interests apart from their primary employment, according to the public broadcaster NHK.

The company is also moving toward more flexible work arrangements. This includes encouraging more employees to work remotely and allowing workers to decide whether they want to transfer to another city without their families  a common corporate practice in the country, the NHK reported.

Panasonic joins a handful of Japanese companies introducing four-day workweek arrangements, including the pharmaceutical firm Shionogi and the systems developer Encourage Technologies. Both plan to offer the option starting in April, per Nikkei.

About 8% of Japanese companies offered more than two days off a week in 2020, Nikkei reported, citing an official survey.

In the US, the four-day workweek has been floated for decades but remains out of reach for many workers, Insider's Chris Weller wrote in November.

But this could be changing as the coronavirus pandemic accelerates competition for talent, Jackie Reinberg, a senior director at Willis Towers Watson, told Weller.

Last week, the e-commerce startup Bolt permanently switched to a four-day workweek after a trial saw improved productivity and work-life balance.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Russ the dog rescued

Courtesy Tahoe PAWS

You lucky dog!

A dog buried beneath five feet of snow  and missing since August  has been reunited with his owner.

Four months before the snowy rescue, the 3-year-old pit bull mix named Russ went missing just as the Caldor Fire swept through California's Lake Tahoe area. His owner  a traveling nurse  was forced to evacuate during the fire leaving him unable to search for his missing canine.

"He was very cold and scared and tired, and it was a trying trek coming down the hillside with five feet of snow," Wendy Jones, the executive director of Tahoe PAWS and TLC 4 Furry Friends, told PEOPLE of the daring rescue. "It was freezing temperatures, and it was getting dark. I'm sure this dog has an adventure to tell."

Russ the dog rescued

Courtesy Tahoe PAWS

In December, a skier reported spotting Russ in the snowy Sierra Nevada mountains.

According to The Washington Post, after Russ growled at the skier, the man snapped some photos and posted them on Facebook, describing his encounter with the trapped dog.

That post caught the attention of Jones, who is based in South Lake Tahoe, Calif. Although she was in the middle of another rescue, she reached out to fellow rescuers Leona Allen and Elsa Gaule to help save Russ amid subzero temperatures.

RELATED: Dog Rescued After 'Repeatedly' Falling Through Ice Covering Lake in Northern Colorado

"We knew time was [of] the essence because the dog had been out in the snow all day. And we knew how cold it was. So it was pretty intense, pretty emotional, a lot of adrenaline," Jones recalled to The Post.

Armed with snowshoes, a sled, and dog rescue equipment, the two-woman team trekked up the mountain to rescue the pup they had never met.

"I followed the tracks and all of a sudden saw this dark shape under the tree and thought this isn't good he's not moving and thought to get really nervous and really upset," Allen told KOVR. "And then he opened his eyes, and I'm pretty sure I screamed. I'm pretty sure Elsa heard me down the mountain."

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RELATED: Dogs Can Get Hypothermia Too! Expert Tips on How to Keep Pets Safe and Warm During the Winter

"The sweetest thing on the planet. Just the most amazing dog," added Allen.

"I kind of petted him under the chin a little bit, and he did that thing where a dog rests his head in your hand," recalled Gaule. "We're just like, he's here. Okay, what's next? We didn't really think about that. And then I look over at Leona, and I said, 'How do you feel about riding down on a sled with him on your lap?'"

Once the pair earned the dog's trust, they were able to transport him down the mountain in a two-hour-long return trek.

Russ the dog rescued

Courtesy Tahoe PAWS

"They put him on one of the volunteer's laps to keep him warm and to keep him from trying to take off," Jones said to PEOPLE.

Russ, who "was in pretty good health," was turned over to El Dorado County Animal Services and checked out by a veterinarian once he reached the bottom of the mountain.

The combination of a missing dog report filed in August and a microchip made it possible for animal services to track down Russ's owner in Riverside County, Calif. The dog dad "assumed that Russ had been lost for good," according to a Tahoe PAWS Facebook post.

"He [the owner] was ecstatic," Jones told PEOPLE of the happy reunion that took place the day after Christmas.

She urges pet owners to microchip their animals and keep those microchips updated with current contact information. Jones also recommends equipping pets with collars that include name tags with contact info.

Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle, Allen admitted, "I've worked some pretty gnarly rescues, this probably being the top. I keep reliving the moment when he opened his eyes and lifted his head, and just the joy and elation inside of me was overwhelming. It's one more life that gets to live happy and warm and safe."

Those interested in making donations to the Tahoe PAWS and TLC 4 Furry Friends nonprofit can do so by visiting their website.
Think you've climbed every mountain? Searched high and low? Followed every byway and every path you know? Well, The Connected Communities Project is hoping to remedy that problem by bringing the hiking community a new 600-mile path to enjoy.

The Connected Communities Project, a partnership between the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship (SBTS), the U.S. Forest Service, and other community partners, is on a mission to create a 600-mile network of multiuse trails that will one day connect 15 northern California mountain towns to Reno, Nevada. And it will be known as the Lost Sierra Route.

Graphic with loosely accurate map of the Lost Sierra Route, connecting mountain communities

Courtesy of SBTS

"It will create a vision for a recreation-focused lifestyle through community investment, shared stewardship, economic opportunity, and important new local jobs, all benefiting economically disadvantaged communities in California's Plumas, Sierra, Butte, and Lassen Counties," SBTS explains on its website about the project. "Our work will include planning, environmental review, trail creation, and maintenance of trails. It is the intent of this project to diversify recreation throughout the region, provide economic stability, as well as support fire recovery and prevention efforts."

Additionally, SBTS noted, the trail will create a learning landscape and pay homage to the region and the historic Gold Rush-era mail delivery route as it makes its way over "jagged peaks and high alpine meadows similar to the Pacific Crest Trail and the John Muir Trail."

View of Main Street in mountain town with glowing line on the mountain, indicating trail lines

Ken Etzel

But unlike those trails, this one will allow for all "dirt trail travelers," which not only includes hikers, but also mountain bikers, motorcycle riders, equestrians, trail runners, hunters, and fishermen to create what it calls "A Trail for Everyone."

Along the way, the trail will highlight 15 mountain communities to help support local economies that have been devastated by everything from the loss of the mining industry to more recent events like wildfires and COVID-19.

"Each mountain town has something unique to offer in terms of terrain, nature, adventure, food, camping  and all have a rich history to experience," SBTS shared. "Through our Planning Phase, we've captured input from community locals on what they'd like to highlight about their town, where they want trails to be located, and the outdoor experience the neighborhood topography and landscape has to offer."

The first section of the trail is expected to open in 2023, while the entire route is slated to debut by 2030. Want to help the project finish a little sooner? See all the ways you can get involved, and keep track of the progress on the SBTS website.
Former President Donald Trump (AP)

Former President Donald Trump fired back at a Republican senator on Monday for the senators acknowledgment of the reality that Mr Trump fairly lost the 2020 election.

The back-and-forth was sparked after GOP Sen Mike Rounds of South Dakota went on ABCs This Week and declared that the Trump campaign simply did not win in 2020, a true assertion that clashes with Mr Trumps ongoing falsehoods about supposedly widespread fraud and misconduct that he continues to blame for his defeat.

Mr Trump wrote in a statement: Is he crazy or just stupid? The numbers are conclusive, and the fraudulent and irregular votes are massive. The only reason he did this is because he got my endorsement and easily won his state in 2020, so now he thinks he has time, and those are the only ones, the weak, who will break away.

Even though his election will not be coming up for 5 years, I will never endorse this jerk again, added the former president.

More follows...
GENEVA, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) has created a win-win situation, said Lu Xiankun, managing director of consulting institution LEDECO Geneva.

In a recent interview with Xinhua, Lu said that China has achieved unprecedented development through its integration into the multilateral trading system and that other WTO members have also benefited a lot from China's market economy transformation and opening up.

Before creating in 2017 LEDECO Geneva, which is in close collaboration with international organizations, Lu worked for many years in international trade.

The year 2021 marked the 20th anniversary of China's accession to the WTO. Over the past two decades, the global ranking of China's economic aggregate has risen to the second from the sixth place. Its ranking of trade in goods has risen from the sixth to the first, while that of its trade in services has jumped from the 11th to the second.

Lu cited relevant studies that the economic and trade growth rates of new members, including China, are higher than those of the founding members after their WTO accession, due in part to greater market openness.

China has earnestly fulfilled its WTO commitments and implemented in time relevant amendments to laws and regulations, Lu said.

Lu believes that since China's WTO accession 20 years ago, the country has provided a huge and steadily growing market for the exports of other WTO members.

China has now become the top trading partner of more than 50 countries and regions, and one of the top three trading partners of over 120 countries and regions. Since 2008, it has been the top destination of exports from the least developed countries.

Over the past 20 years, China's overall tariff level has dropped to 7.4 percent from 15.3 percent in 2001, lower than the 9.8 percent the country promised when entering into the WTO. Among the service trade sectors, China has opened up more than 120, far beyond 100 the country promised.

Meanwhile, China has been actively participating in various WTO activities, constantly learning, growing, and gradually emerging as a participant in the formulation of rules, and has also played a leading role in some fields, Lu said, citing such plurilateral negotiations as the Investment Facilitation for Development and the Informal Dialogue on Plastics Pollution and Environmentally Sustainable Plastics trade.

Lu said that with the growth of China's economy and the rising of its international status, the WTO and its members have higher expectations for China, hoping that China will play a leading role and make contributions that are more in line with its current strength and status.

Lu said that in order to deal with the dual impacts of the economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, some countries have adopted restrictive measures with unilateralism and trade protectionism, but these measures are not good "prescriptions" to the crisis, and can only make the situation worse.

A recent report of the WTO shows that members are gradually withdrawing trade-restrictive measures, while trade facilitation measures have greatly increased, Lu said.

"This is precisely the role of the relevant WTO rules, which curb the political impulse of approaching unilateralism and protectionism of some members and their leaders. It fully proves the core value and role of the multilateral trading system will not be marginalized because of one-off events."

Lu said that although economic globalization has encountered some adverse tides and the global industrial chain is undergoing some adjustments, no fundamental changes have occurred.

The economic exchanges between countries such as China and the United States are still closely intertwined and even further strengthened, Lu added. 
Jan. 10Sayed's soft voice competed to be heard in a noisy and full East Anchorage classroom in December. Cultural orientation was beginning, he translated from English to Pashto, and it would continue all week.

Twenty adults filled the room, men in the front, women in back, some kids held in their arms and others running around. Each recently arrived in Anchorage from Afghanistan with help from Refugee Assistance and Immigration Services, or RAIS, an arm of Catholic Social Services. RAIS hosted the class to help them settle in.

The staff and students discussed where to turn for help with health care, employment and food. But first they practiced writing their basic personal information in English.

"Who wants to be brave and stand up and tell me your name and where you are from?" asked Brigit Reynolds, an education and employment manager. Sayed relayed the question to the room. Many of them had never left their home country before, he said.

"My state is Alaska. My zip code is 99504," one man in the second row said. "I am from Afghanistan."

Sayed, a reception and placement coordinator for RAIS, feels proud to offer help and be a trusted adviser to Anchorage's growing Afghan community. RAIS is helping resettle 100 Afghan people here in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal after 20 years of war in Afghanistan and the Taliban's subsequent takeover.

Reynolds called Sayed invaluable in helping the newcomers find their way in Alaska.

"Having somebody that they know, that looks like them, that talks like them, that kind of understands their background as well, makes them feel super comfortable and more willing to ask me questions," she said.

It's not just their words and culture Sayed understands, but also their circumstances. Months ago, he too left Afghanistan to free his life from a danger so ever-present that it had felt like normal daily life. Even though it had taken him six years to get a visa, it was hard to leave when the time came, he said. It would mean separating from his family for now. But as a former interpreter who worked side-by-side with the U.S military, the choice was potentially life or death.

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"Even if I stayed there, I wouldn't be able to help them," he said of his family.

Sayed's flight departed Afghanistan on Aug. 2, just weeks before chaos enveloped that same airport as people scrambled to leave the seized city. Months later, he's in Anchorage, beginning his own new life and helping some of his countrymen do the same. He shared the story of what led to his departure, but asked that the Anchorage Daily News share only his first name due to his safety concerns.

Sayed's journey

A decade ago, it was hard to imagine such drastic measures. In 2011, Sayed worked for a logistics company that contracted with U.S. operations in Kabul. He delivered office supplies and furniture, items they in turn used to support the Afghan government.

Rather than fearing association with U.S. forces back then, he looked forward to speaking with them directly. It was a chance to refine his English skills and participate in the progress he saw underway in his city.

"I was seeing a lot of development everywhere ...," Sayed said. "That created a hope for us that we are on the right path and we are going to the right direction."

That sense of optimism had been hard-earned for a person born into the horrors of civil war. In the early to mid-'90s, factions vied for control of Afghanistan. His family, sometimes caught in the crossfire, moved often. Sayed recalls experiencing hunger. Their home was looted three times, he said.

"We were just moving from place to place to place, just to survive," Sayed said of himself, his mother and two siblings.

He recalls the morning after the Taliban took control of Kabul in 1996. The following morning, residents were instructed to come to a square near the presidential palace to witness the gruesome hanging of former president Mohammad Najibullah and his brother. Sayed was about 7 years old.

"Then we decided we cannot stay here," Sayed said.

Sayed's mother, the family's only provider, moved them to Nasir Bagh, a refugee camp for tens of thousands in Peshawar, Pakistan. There they constructed a makeshift shelter from rocks and plastic sheeting and lived in it for the first two of the four years they stayed at Nasir Bagh. As a boy, Sayed worked as a street vendor and recalls joining other children for classes in a stiflingly hot tent.

"It wasn't a perfect school, but it was at least a place where you can learn something," he said.

His family stayed in Peshawar after Nasir Bagh closed. From ages 11 to 18, Sayed wove Afghan rugs with his siblings at home. When he could afford them, he took computer courses and studied CD-ROM tutorials. He began to learn English also, motivated by a desire to understand the dialog in American action movies like "Die Hard," "Mission Impossible" and "Rambo."

In 2007, Sayed and his family returned to Kabul.

"I still remember the good feeling I had when I entered my country in a truck," he said. "I was really feeling proud that I'm going to my country. I'm going to go there and be a part of the reconstruction."

Cultural adviser

Sayed saw the U.S. as a leader in the effort to build a future for Afghanistan. After a year of making deliveries, his company then maintained perimeter screens, doors and fencing for New Kabul Compound, a hub for the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF. In 2012, he left that job to work as an interpreter directly with the U.S. Army in Kandahar, 500 kilometers away.

At the governor's palace there, he translated between Afghan provincial officials and the U.S. soldiers who advised them. He called the experience, which exposed him to firsthand work in international diplomacy and military operations, "like a college for me." High-ranking U.S. officers considered him a part of their team, he said. That respect that remains a point of pride.

"On paper, I was a linguist," Sayed said. "But I was doing a job of cultural adviser for them."

It was also work he thought contributed to the betterment of his homeland "so that it could somehow help my people in Afghanistan to make a good government or provide good government service."

But the work also provided stark insight into the danger that surrounded him. Part of his job involved translating reports about security incidents into English. Some detailed the bounty extremist groups paid for the killing of Afghan people friendly to U.S. forces, including Afghan military members and police.

Linguists had the highest price on their head, he recalled  100,000 Afghani, or about $1,800 at the time.

"I translated a report that someone was killed because the enemy found a dollar note in their pocket," he said.

Some of Sayed's friends who served in the Afghan military were killed. Concerned for his safety while working, he sometimes requested not to be photographed or filmed. Once, when asked by a U.S. official if had ever been threatened, he made a point to clarify.

"If they found out that I'm an interpreter and working for the U.S. government, they will not threaten me," he said. "They will kill me just right on the spot."

In 2014, he began his application for a Special Immigrant Visa, a possibility extended to a limited number of Afghans who worked with the U.S. "I decided I have to use this," he said. "I have to take this chance."

He also carried on with his work, even when the U.S. and ISAF shrank their presence in Kandahar. Pay and privileges were reduced at one point, he said. Flights home were expensive and leave was restricted. Some linguists quit. Military officers with whom he worked closely asked him to stay.

"I just stayed there for my team, to complete the mission," he said.

'You can leave'

Sayed returned to Kabul and found work as a project supervisor for a construction company that served the U.S.-supported Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan. He supervised 70 people at three CNPA compounds and worked regularly with American contractors.

The long application process for his Special Immigrant Visa continued into 2015. But it slowed in the years that followed, then seemed to stop entirely, he said, possibly because of U.S. political leadership changes and, more recently, the pandemic. What remained was the danger he faced in daily life.

"Every day there was somebody assassinated by unknown people," Sayed said. "Maybe there was people looking for me. Maybe not. But if they knew I was working with the U.S. Army, definitely they would've done something."

In May 2020, an email landed that Sayed thought would never come. He was directed to get a medical exam and complete other final steps toward receiving his visa. His family had grown in the years since he first applied, and he felt unprepared to resume planning for a move to the U.S.

"I was waiting for this two weeks for five years," he said.

His wife, who worried for his safety, supported him.

"She told me, 'You can leave,' " he said.

His departure in midsummer came just before the rapid takeover of the Afghan government by the Taliban. Sayed didn't think it could happen so quickly. Prior to then, he felt confident that the Afghan military was prepared to defend the nation, and thought the U.S. withdrawal must be evidence of that.

"The international community will not let that happen, because we know how much the international community has spent in Afghanistan, how much sacrifices they gave, how much sacrifices we gave," he said he thought at the time. "Many, many people died to have at least a government."

Sayed thinks his flight was one of the last ones to lift off in August before commercial airlines stopped operating from Kabul. On a broadcast weeks later, he caught a glimpse of an airport chair where he sat and waited to leave. It had been destroyed.

"If I stayed five more days, I wouldn't be able to leave," he said.

A new start

Sayed landed in Alaska on Sept. 4. Though he first went to Colorado from Afghanistan, he moved to Anchorage a month later to stay with a friend. Anchorage is interesting and beautiful, he said, and he has found its people friendly and supportive. He's adjusting to having to cook for himself and wash his own clothes.

In his role with RAIS, Sayed is one of the first to greet newly arrived Afghan people at the airport. Carrying two phones and a thick notebook, it's his job to answer questions, ease confusion and help them get what they need.

They call on him days, nights and weekends, he said.

"I don't mind. I just keep answering," he said.

"It's very hard if you don't know the language and you're in a city you know nothing about," Sayed said. "You don't know the people. You don't know the streets. Even the stores. It's totally different."

To date, RAIS has helped resettle 90 Afghan people in Alaska, many of whom have no extended family ties in other states, according to program director Issa Spatrisano. The RAIS program coordinates with a network of community partners to secure housing, provide furnishings and give guidance on education and employment. In addition to the 100 people from Afghanistan, RAIS will also help relocate 130 refugees from other parts of the world this fiscal year.

"RAIS is doing the same work we always do. We greet you at the airport. We take you to an apartment that we already set up for you. ... We're bringing you into the office, doing your intake, helping you get a job," Spatrisano said.

Sayed said his wife, with whom he speaks every day, reports that life is difficult in Afghanistan. His employment with RAIS in Anchorage will help support his family until they can be here, he said. In the meantime, he sends pictures to his children to share the novelty of his new life in Alaska: the wintry landscape, supermarkets where everything is in one place, animals in the wild or at the zoo.

"It was very interesting for my kids that these types of animals exist somewhere in the planet," he said.

Sayed said he never expects help from anyone. His strength comes from his experiences with hardship and the influence of his mother. In Anchorage, he feels safer, but the feeling of relief is incomplete.

"Life is not easy. I might not be having any security issues here, but I have my family there...," he said. "I maybe feel secure here, (but) at the same time I'm insecure there."
Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures as he speaks during a video emergency meeting of the CSTO focused on the situation in Kazakhstan on January 10, 2022. Alexey Nikolsky/Getty Images

Putin defended sending troops into Kazakhstan amid recent unrest.

He blamed unidentified external forces for the protests in the former Soviet republic.

Putin's comments came as the US and Russia met to discuss Ukraine amid fears of a Russian invasion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday made no apologies for sending troops into Kazakhstan amid unrest linked to skyrocketing gas prices, and refused to set a deadline for pulling the forces the Kremlin-led alliance has called "peacekeepers" out of the former Soviet republic.

Putin said Kazakhstan had been targeted by terrorists, blaming the situation on unidentified external forces, per Reuters. The Russian leader pledged to stop "color revolutions" in other former ex-Soviet states, a reference to pro-democracy uprisings that have happened in places like Georgia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

"Of course, we understand the events in Kazakhstan are not the first and far from the last attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of our states from the outside," he said during a virtual summit. "The measures taken by the CSTO have clearly shown we will not allow the situation to be rocked at home."

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which includes Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan (all formerly part of the Soviet Union), is a Moscow-led security alliance that has been compared to NATO.

Putin said the CSTO alliance was able to successfully "prevent the undermining of the foundations of the state, the complete degradation of the internal situation in Kazakhstan, and block terrorists, criminals, looters, and other criminal elements."

After protests over rising gas prices spread across the country, Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev requested that the CSTO send in troops to help quell the unrest. Russians comprise the vast majority of the 2,500 CSTO troops deployed in Kazakhstan.

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Tokayev said he's endured an attempted coup, stating that the primary goal of the recent demonstrations was to "undermine the constitutional order and to seize power," Reuters reported.

Beyond anger over rising gas prices, experts say the recent protests represent broader discontentment over corruption in Kazakhstan and the ongoing influence of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Nazarbayev, an authoritarian who ruled over Kazakhstan for roughly three decades, stepped down in 2019 and handpicked Tokayev as his successor. But he retained the title of "leader of the nation" and continued to hold a powerful position as the head of the country's Security Council. Tokayev removed Nazarbayev from his post last week.

Putin in recent years has taken a series of steps, including military actions, to expand Russia's influence in countries formerly part of the Soviet Union.

The unrest in Kazakhstan, which has killed dozens and injured thousands, came amid rising tensions between Russia and the West over Moscow's disposition toward another former Soviet republic  Ukraine.

Tens of thousands of Russian troops have gathered along Ukraine's borders in recent weeks, prompting fears of an invasion. The US and its allies have effectively threatened to take steps that would aim to cripple Russia's economy and cut it off from the world if Putin gave the order for a military incursion into Ukraine.

"It's clear that we've offered him two paths forward," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said regarding Putin on ABC News's "This Week" on Sunday. "One is through diplomacy and dialogue; the other is through deterrence and massive consequences for Russia if it renews its aggression against Ukraine. And we're about to test the proposition of which path President Putin wants to take this week."

"We've been working in tremendous collaboration with European partners and allies and beyond to make it very clear that there will be massive consequences for Russia if it renews its aggression, by which I mean economic, financial, and other consequences, as well as NATO almost certainly having to reinforce its positions on its eastern flank near Russia, as well as continuing to provide defensive assistance to Ukraine," Blinken said.

The top US diplomat said "Russia has a gun to the head of Ukraine."

Russia, which invaded an annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, has denied any plans for an imminent invasion.

As Putin discussed the situation in Kazakhstan on Monday, US and Russian diplomats held talks on Ukraine in Geneva.

The Kremlin has demanded that the West agree to a number of security guarantees in the region, including never allowing Ukraine or Georgia to join NATO. But the alliance has firmly rejected Russia's calls for halting the admission of new members.

"We will not compromise on core principles, including the right for every nation to decide its own path, including what kind of security arrangements it wants to be a part of," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said to reporters on Friday.

Stoltenberg said Russia's capabilities, rhetoric, and track record "sends a message that is a real risk for a new armed conflict in Europe," underscoring the need for dialogue to thwart such a scenario. But the NATO chief also said the alliance "must also be prepared for the possibility that diplomacy will fail," emphasizing that the alliance "will always take the necessary steps to protect and defend our nations." Ukraine is not a NATO member, but it neighbors countries that are part of the alliance and has sought to join for years.

Putin has blamed the West over the tensions regarding Ukraine, but top experts say the contentious dynamic is a direct product of his aggressive actions in the region  including annexing Crimea and backing separatists in a war against Ukrainian forces in the Donbass region.

"As you interpret US-Russia negotiations in Geneva, please remember the context. Putin threatened war to get concessions. This is a hostage situation, not a normal negotiation between earnest equals," Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia, tweeted on Sunday.

The Geneva talks on Monday are part of a series of discussions over Ukraine set to occur in Europe this week. NATO members and Russian envoys are scheduled to hold talks in Brussels on Wednesday, and the conversation will continue in Vienna on Thursday at a meeting of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Read the original article on Business Insider
US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov attend the security talks between the US and Russia, in Geneva, Switzerland on January 10, 2022. Photo by Russia's UN Geneva Office Twitter/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Senior US and Russian officials met Monday to discuss tensions surrounding Ukraine and the Russian forces nearby.

Russia insisted, as it has before, that it does not have plans to invade Ukraine.

The US side said that Russia can prove that by sending troops back to their barracks or explaining its intentions.

Senior US and Russian officials met for high-stakes talks in Geneva, Switzerland Monday to discuss tensions and growing fears that Russia may invade Ukraine.

The more than seven-hour meeting between US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov came as Russia has built a significant force presence along the Ukrainian border in recent months.

US intelligence assessments of the situation have suggested that Russia might take aggressive military action against its neighbor "as soon as early 2022" with a force of as many as 175,000 troops. Russia is currently believed to have around 100,000 troops in various positions near the border.

After the meeting, Ryabkov told reporters at a press conference that "there is no reason to fear some kind of escalatory scenario," according to The New York Times. The Russian side reportedly told their American counterparts that Russia has no plan to invade Ukraine.

Moscow has previously made this argument while continuing its military build-up near Ukraine.

On a separate conference call with reporters, Sherman said that if Russia wants to prove it has no hostile plans for Ukraine, it should "return the troops to barracks or tell us what exercises are ongoing and what their purpose is," a Washington Post reporter shared. Other outlets reported similar remarks.

Ryabkov characterized Monday's bilateral meeting as "difficult, long, very professional, deep, concrete, without attempts to gloss over some sharp edges," adding that he got the "feeling that the American side took the Russian proposals very seriously and studied them deeply."

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Amid tensions, Russia recently proposed that the US and its European allies bar Ukraine from becoming a part of NATO and reduce their security cooperation with it, among other demands.

Sherman told reporters that the US side pushed "back on security proposals that are simply non-starters for the United States," explaining that the US "will not allow anyone to slam closed NATO's open door policy, which has always been central to the NATO alliance."

"We will not forgo bilateral cooperation with sovereign states that wish to work with the United States," she added. "And we will not make decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine, about Europe without Europe, or about NATO without NATO."

Sherman described the talks as a discussion rather than a negotiation, according to The Wall Street Journal, calling them "serious, straightforward, businesslike, candid."

She said that "we have a long way to go," explaining that "we believe genuine progress can only take place in a climate of de-escalation, not escalation."

Sherman, according to a CNN reporter, further explained to reporters that "we will see whether in fact Russia understands that the best way to pursue diplomacy is for them to reduce those tensions and to de-escalate."

Read the original article on Business Insider
Clay Aiken is using his voice again  but its not for singing.

The former American Idol contestant, 43, announced Monday that he is making a second bid to represent North Carolina in Congress.

As a loud and proud Democrat, I intend to use my voice to deliver real results for North Carolina families, Aiken, a native of Raleigh, says in a video he shared on Twitter to kick off his campaign.

Can you believe it's been almost 20 years since I first got to share my voice with you? That's a long time. A LOT has changed!



We need powerful voices more than ever, so I'm running for Congress.



And my voice is even stronger now! ;-) #JoinTheChorushttps://t.co/aQIm8a2xuZpic.twitter.com/xBtN2CYF30  Clay Aiken (@clayaiken) January 10, 2022

For decades, North Carolina was actually the progressive beacon in the South, Aiken says in the campaign video. But then things changed, and the progressives lost power, and we started getting backwards-ass policies like the voter suppression bills and the bigoted bathroom bill.

He adds that nowadays, the loudest political voices in his state are white nationalists like this guy, cutting to a clip of Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.). The video also shows images of other far-right U.S. representatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).

These folks are taking up all the oxygen in the room, and Ive got to tell you, I am sick of it, Aiken says.

In 2014, Aiken prevailed in the Democratic primary in his states 2nd District. But because he was a former pop star, openly gay and running in a conservative House district, he was defeated in the general election by Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.).

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Clay Aiken gives his concession speech as the Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress in North Carolina's 2nd District in 2014. (Photo: Jeffrey A. Camarati via Getty Images)

This time, Aiken is running in the redrawn 6th District, The Washington Post reports. The district is more liberal than the one he ran for in 2014, and includes a lot of the territory currently represented by long-serving Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.), 81, who announced in October that he would not seek reelection.

In his campaign video, Aiken acknowledges that hes well aware that his shift from performer to politician may be a bit daunting for some voters.

A lot can happen in 20 years, he notes, pointing out that when he was runner-up on American Idol in 2003, there were no smartphones, social media was in its infancy, and Barack Obama was still relatively unknown.

Aiken says a lot has changed for him, too, since he moved back to North Carolina, came out and became a father.

These days, my life looks a lot more like yours than Justin Biebers, I can promise you, he says. But one thing that has never changed for me is how much I love my home state.

North Carolina is the place where I discovered first that I had a voice, he continues. And that its a voice that could be used for more than singing.

If elected, Aiken said, he would be the Souths first gay congressman: If the loudest and most hateful voices think theyre going to speak for us, just tell them Im warming up the ole vocal cords.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
As Donald Trump fights back against increasingly damaging reports of his behaviour during the Capitol riot of 6 January 2021, a Fox News host who has consistently supported him has said the former president needs to learn to lose.

Brian Kilmeade, one of the regular hosts of the weekday morning show Fox & Friends, appeared on his colleague Howard Kurtzs show this weekend to discuss a new book. At the opening of their interview, Mr Kurtz asked him to give his thoughts on Mr Trumps repeated claims that he did not lose the 2020 election.

I think that in life, you have to learn to lose, Mr Kilmeade opined. Hillary Clinton has to learn that. You know, Al Gore pretty much did learn that. Stacey Abrams didnt learn that. And if you did, in fact, get screwed out of this election, put together an A-team list of lawyers  not the ones we witnessed  and show us the districts and show us how. I have not seen any of that.

As noted by Mr Kurtz, while Ms Clinton has spoken and written at length about external factors and forces that she argues account for her electoral college defeat, she also unambiguously conceded the 2016 election  and unlike Mr Trump, she also committed to making sure the presidency passed to him without civil unrest.

We must accept this result and then look to the future, she said in her speech. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power. We dont just respect that. We cherish it.

Mr Kilmeade did endorse the idea that Joe Bidens dramatic victory in the popular vote took Republicans by surprise given the low esteem in which they held him, saying it defies logic to think that a president could win by 7 million votes who never left his basement, who couldnt put together a clear speech, who never really engaged in a challenging interview, who really struggled through every debate, could actually win this election.

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(Mr Biden campaigned extensively while observing Covid-19 safety measures, and it was in fact Mr Trump who backed out of one of the two mens scheduled head-to-head debates.)

Asked by Mr Kurtz if it was anti-Trump for the media to report the fact that there is no evidence of widespread electoral fraud in 2020, Mr Kilmeade said it wasnt. However, he then nodded to the false conspiracy theory propagated by Tucker Carlson that the 6 January riot may have been fomented in part by outside forces seeking to make Mr Trump look bad.

Mr Kilmeades remarks come as a handful of other Republicans remain willing to speak out against what has become known as the big lie. Among them is Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who appeared on ABC News to scorn Mr Trumps election fraud claims in even stronger terms.

We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency, he said. If we simply look back and tell our people dont vote because theres cheating going on, then were going to put ourselves in a huge disadvantage.

However, for the most part, Republican officials have toed the line on the election result and the narrative of the 6 January riot. One of Mr Roundss Senate colleagues, Ted Cruz, was forced into a humiliating appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight last week after using the word terrorism to describe the Capitol attack  something that the far-right host considers beyond the pale.

In his advice to the former president about how to shift his mindset, Mr Kilmeade offered up the example of a 19th century predecessor, Andrew Jackson, who he said lost an election despite winning the popular vote but then cut a deal to be appointed secretary of state before winning the subsequent two elections.

Mr Trump has indeed been compared to Mr Jackson since before he became president, albeit mostly unflatteringly. Jacksons image as a populist outsider is heavily coloured by his intensely racist policies, in particular the expulsion of Native Americans from their land east of the Mississippi river. The resulting forced migration, known as the Trail of Tears, claimed thousands of lives.

From the start of his presidency, Mr Trump hung a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office.
From marijuana, abortion bans and parole legislation to decisions on teacher pay raises, prohibition and virus relief funds, the Mississippi Legislature did more than just remove and retire the state flag as this photo shows at the state Capitol, July 7, 2020.

Roughly $210 million in raises for teachers over two years could make their way through the Mississippi Legislature this year, lawmakers said Monday.

Senate Education Committee Chair Sen. Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann unveiled a plan to raise salaries an average of $4,700 for all teachers over two years. The proposal is expected to cost $166 million the first year and $44 million in year two.

"The reason we're doing that is because all of us recognize the work teachers do for our children," Hosemann said.

The lawmakers released their proposal at a press luncheon organized by Mississippi State University's Stennis Institute of Government.

The plan, formulated after several committee hearings, would give larger raises than expected. For comparison, Gov. Tate Reeves proposed in November a plan to raise teacher pay $3,300 over three years.

"We're grateful for the Senate's work on this and optimistic at this further momentum for a meaningful teacher pay raise this year," Reeves said in a statement to the Clarion Ledger. "Teachers deserve it."

Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, previously said his chamber will introduce its own teacher pay bill but did not provide any details about the size of his proposed pay increases.

Significant raises not an 'election ploy'

Kelly Riley, executive director of Mississippi Professional Educators, a union alternative for teachers with over 10,000 members in the state, said the proposal would provide significant benefits to rookie and veteran teachers, aiding in recruitment and retention.

"Is it ideally where we need to want to be? No," Riley said. "But this is a significant step in the right direction. It will make us more competitive."

In recent years, teacher pay raises have seemed more like an election ploy than an attempt at significant change to the compensation structure, DeBar said. He said he hopes this proposal shows educators the legislature is serious about the issue.

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"This is about providing teachers with a living wage, and they can go out and just be a teacher if that's what they want," DeBar said. "To be focused on their classroom work, not be focused on 'How am I going to pay the bills,' or on their second job."

DeBar worked closely with education committee Vice-Chair Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, to develop the proposal.

Originally, the Senate planned to offer a smaller teacher raise proposal, but after several hearings and teacher input, lawmakers opted to double the proposal. The education committee received comments from more than 200 teachers.

"I can remember one of my first hearings, a (teacher) friend of mine had to leave the hearing early because she had to work a second job and her kids were on Medicaid," DeBar said.

As it stands, the starting salary for Mississippi teachers with a bachelor's degree is $37,000, less than Alabama, Tennessee and Louisiana, according to data from the Southern Regional Education Board, an Atlanta-based nonprofit studying how to improve education.

Under the proposal, a first-year teacher with a bachelor's degree, known as a Class A teacher, would see a $2,000 raise in the first year of the new pay scale, increasing starting pay to $39,000. A first-year teacher with a master's degree, a Class AA teacher, would get a $2,220 raise in year one, increasing the starting salary to $41,500.

More experienced teachers will get larger raises in year one. The size of the raises will vary by years served.

Every teacher in Mississippi would get a $1,000 raise in year two.

About 93% of teachers in Mississippi are either Class A or Class AA. The proposed salaries do not include supplemental pay awarded by school systems.

Each year, teachers would also get a $500 salary increase with a larger increase every fifth year. A Class A teacher would receive a raise of $1,325 every five years, with higher amounts for teachers with specializations or advanced degrees. A teacher with a doctorate's degree would see a raise of $1,625 every fifth year, for example.

Under the current pay scheduled, teachers in the first three years of employment don't see any raises and there are no substantial raises at any regular interval, Hosemann said.

Analysis from the board found Mississippi teachers have the second-lowest starting salaries in a region already 16% below the national average in teacher compensation.

The average Mississippi teacher with 15 years of experience takes home just over $28,000 per year, the education board found. The board recommended raising pay to boost teacher retention.

Lee O. Sanderlin is an investigative and political reporter covering the state of Mississippi. Got a story tip? You can call him at 601-559-3857, send it to LSanderlin@gannett.com or message him on Twitter @LeeOSanderlin.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Mississippi lawmakers float $4,700 teacher pay raise over two years
Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather trilogy is arguably one of the most iconic and critically acclaimed pieces of cinematographic art ever made. And now, you can own the opulent Italian castle featured prominently in the franchise's third installment.

Castello Acireale Italy, interior and exterior images of the house that appeared in The Godfather movie

Courtesy of Italy Sothebys International Realty

Castello Acireale Italy, interior and exterior images of the house that appeared in The Godfather movie

Courtesy of Italy Sothebys International Realty

The stunning property, known as the castle of the Pennisi Family of Floristella, spans a whopping 43,055 square feet and is truly fit for (Hollywood) royalty. The history of the grand estate dates back to the end of the 19th century when Baron Pennisi tapped Palermo architect Giuseppe Matricolo to build a villa for his extensive art collection.

Castello Acireale Italy, interior and exterior images of the house that appeared in The Godfather movie

Courtesy of Italy Sothebys International Realty

Castello Acireale Italy, interior and exterior images of the house that appeared in The Godfather movie

Courtesy of Italy Sothebys International Realty

The result was an eclectic neo-Gothic property comprised of three two-story buildings and two towers.

Castello Acireale Italy, interior and exterior images of the house that appeared in The Godfather movie

Courtesy of Italy Sothebys International Realty

The structure's impressive portico opens to a stunning marble staircase with soaring ceilings and stone arched columns. Ogival arches and battlements add to the whimsical vibe of this unique property. Geometric patterns in gold and blue line the ceilings while Byzantine decor items and paintings by Paul Pennisi fill out the interiors. And speaking of the interiors, the castle has 22 bedrooms, eight full bathrooms, a wine cellar, an artist studio, a library, a small chapel (decorated with jaw-dropping frescos by Giuseppe Sciuti), and two large balconies overlooking a lush 2.1-acre park.

Castello Acireale Italy, interior and exterior images of the house that appeared in The Godfather movie

Courtesy of Italy Sothebys International Realty

"It is a property that expresses a strong character and enjoys enormous potential, for its history, its location, its architecture and its spaces," Diletta Giorgolo, head of real estate company Residential Italy wrote in an email. "Once restored, it can adapt to different needs and contemporary tastes without changing the original structure."

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Castello Acireale Italy, interior and exterior images of the house that appeared in The Godfather movie

Courtesy of Italy Sothebys International Realty

The 140-year-old property miraculously survived the devastating 1908 earthquake that shook southern Italy and destroyed the Sicilian city of Messina. During the Second World War, the British Army bombed Acireale, the small coastal town where the castle is located, but once again, the property didn't suffer any damages. The picturesque town is home to many historic landmarks, including the oldest art academy in Sicily, and overlooks the Ionian Sea.

The castle of the Pennisi Family of Floristella comes with a $6.8 million price tag. We think it's time you start living out your wildest La Dolce Vita dreams.
Friederike Harvie-Clark named Global Head of Project Management; Lucy Pittas hired to lead Spartan's new continental European office

NEW YORK, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Spartan Advisors LLC ("Spartan"), the sponsor-focused independent merchant bank specialized in raising capital for alternative fund managers, announced today a series of company updates reflecting the firm's strong growth in 2021 and positive momentum for 2022.

Effective from January 1, Friederike Harvie-Clark has joined Spartan as Managing Director and Global Head of Project Management, based out of the firm's London office. Harvie-Clark will oversee project management for Spartan's fundraising mandates globally, the drafting of syndication agreements and key client documents, as well as the firm's due diligence processes. As a senior member of the executive team, Harvie-Clark will report directly to Ben Clarke, Managing Partner, and sit on Spartan's investment committee.

"Friederike is a talented addition to our team who complements Spartan's strong performance-oriented culture," said Clarke. "She has commercial aptitude across all aspects of dealmaking and has earned a stellar reputation for developing client relationships, ESG propositions, and fundraising strategies. These qualities will augment our execution and distribution capabilities as Spartan continues to win large mandates from many of the world's highest quality managers."

Harvie-Clark's background includes roles at Zouk Capital, where she managed fundraising mandates end-to-end across Europe, and Quest Fund Placement, where she led fundraising processes for leading private equity GPs. Harvie-Clark trained as a Chartered Management Accountant (CIMA), at Rolls-Royce and most recently worked in KPMG UK's financial consulting practice as a Senior Manager.

Spartan has also opened a new location in Paris (10 Place Vendome) to accompany its New York, Chicago and London locations, as well as the firm's joint venture in Tokyo. Effective from January 1, Lucy Pittas has joined Spartan as a Managing Director to run the new office, oversee Spartan's expansion in continental Europe post-Brexit, and further strengthen Spartan's project management capabilities.

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"We are delighted to welcome Lucy to the firm," added Clarke. "Her deep experience across a variety of mandates, from middle-market buyouts and equity financing, through to special situations and distressed debt, will be a terrific value-add to Spartan. I am fully confident in Lucy's ability to lead our new Paris location, as we continue developing our presence in mainland Europe."

Pittas joins from Octopus Investments where she was an Institutional Funds Manager tasked with leading fund mandates from origination to final close, product marketing, and legal documentation across alternative asset classes including renewable energy and real estate. Prior to this, Pittas was a Senior Associate with Quest Fund Placement, where she built strong relationships with GP clients across the UK, Italy, Switzerland and Sweden, among other countries. Pittas also served as an Investment Banking Analyst at HSBC.

Spartan Advisors applies deep expertise, superior execution, and an unrivaled distribution capability to service an international client base. With more than $19 billion in active mandates as of December 1, 2021, its core services include primary private fund placement, secondary advisory and execution for portfolio companies, co-investment and M&A transactions, and debt placement across the capital structure. The firm is also committed to building a truly diverse workforce through a self-directed hiring policy targeting 50% of new roles be filled by female and/or minority professionals.

About Spartan Advisors

Spartan Advisors is a boutique merchant bank and placement agent that partners with the world's leading mid-market alternative fund managers to assist with their fund capital requirements. The Company's approach includes co-investment of their own capital alongside all clients and therefore an underwriting process with similarities to a fund of funds structure. Founded in 2019, Spartan Advisors is headquartered in New York City, with additional offices in London, Chicago and Paris, as well as a joint venture in Tokyo. Additional information about the Company's businesses and services is available at www.spartanadvisorsllc.com .

Contact

Aidan O'Connor

Prosek Partners, on behalf of Spartan Advisors

646.818.9283

aoconnor@prosek.com

Cision

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SOURCE Spartan Advisors LLC
MELBOURNE, Fla., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Tomahawk Robotics, the leading innovator of common control solutions, is pleased to announce that former Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy has been appointed to its Board of Directors.

Tomahawk Robotics' Kinesis software simultaneously controlling the US Army's CRS-I UGV (QinetiQ Spur) and SRR UAV (Skydio X2D).

"Tomahawk's Kinesis enables the efficient deployment and use of unmanned systems by front line troops," said McCarthy.

Mr. McCarthy was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Secretary of the Army, and he previously served as the special assistant to the 22nd Secretary of Defense Robert Gates under Presidents Bush and Obama. Prior to this, he was the special assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. Mr. McCarthy also proudly served in the U.S. Army from 1997 to 2002 and was involved in combat operations in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom with the 75th Ranger Regiment.

Ryan will bring his tremendous Army knowledge and DOD acquisition expertise to the Tomahawk Robotics team to further their efforts to address the need for next generation unmanned systems in the U.S. Military. "I was deeply involved in assessing technologies across the Army acquisition portfolio over the last 20 years, and Tomahawk's universal command and control software will enable the efficient deployment and use of unmanned systems by front line troops. These technologies are key to the effectiveness of dismounted troops on tomorrow's battlefield," said Mr. McCarthy.

"Ryan was truly impressed by Tomahawk Robotics' technology and its ability to efficiently control a range of unmanned systems already in use by the U.S. Army. Tomahawk Robotics is deploying their products with some of the most sophisticated users of unmanned systems today, and we are pleased that Ryan will be joining our board and ultimately help us position for significant programs with the U.S. Army," said Wes Blackwell of Scout Ventures.

In addition to Ryan joining the board, Tomahawk Robotics has recently announced the completion of a $10M Series A financing round led by Scout Ventures that included notable investments from Kensington Capital Partners, Topmark Partners and Naples Technology Ventures. Funds will support further technology enhancements and expansion of the enterprise.

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Learn more about this announcement on Defense News.

About Tomahawk Robotics

Tomahawk Robotics is the leading innovator of common control solutions that transform how humans and unmanned systems work together to make the world more safe and secure. From the battlefield to remote industrial sites, our products and technology safeguard users working under the most extreme and stressful conditions. Designed from the ground up with the user in mind, Kinesis is the only multidomain, cross-architecture, AI-enabled control system that unlocks intuitive interaction with remote environments from across the room or around the world.

Learn more at https://www.tomahawkrobotics.com

Contact: Sales@tomahawkrobotics.com

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SOURCE Tomahawk Robotics
SINGAPORE, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- TotalEnergies, through its distributed renewable energy generation solutions in Asia, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Aden Group, a leader in sustainable & data-driven management of buildings and business/industrial parks. This MoU is to explore several collaborative prospects in sharing and providing advanced solutions to reduce the carbon footprint of built assets through solar energy and data-driven energy optimization.

TotalEnergies Logo (PRNewsfoto/Total Solar Distributed Generation SEA)

Aden Group Logo

Under the alliance, the partners will team up to explore the potential of TotalEnergies' development of solar energy projects, as well as Aden Group's exploration of new clients for digitalized asset lifecycle management in South-East Asia. This will be accomplished by combining TotalEnergies' expertise in the solar rooftop C&I (Commercial & Industrial) market with Aden Group's experience in providing innovative energy-management solutions to C&I clients in the region through its digital twin platform, Akila. This is a major step in the regional development of energy and data solutions for both parties: Aden Group, which has +300 clients in its ASEAN cluster and an additional +200 clients in Vietnam; and TotalEnergies, a multi-energy company with more than 50 years of presence in South-East Asia. Furthermore, the partners will work together on developing the sustainability values that they will bring to clients.

Joachim Poylo, Founder & President of Aden Group said, "We are excited to partner with TotalEnergies and confident that their world-leading expertise in renewable energy will be a tremendous amplifier for Aden Group's own mission of linking facility management with ESG-supportive solutions for the built environment. This is an exciting acceleration of work we've already begun with our clients across South-East Asia, furthering our goal of managing facilities in closer alignment with international ESG standards. We are looking forward to working with TotalEnergies to have more positive impact for our clients' business needs and for the planet."

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Gavin Adda, Head of TotalEnergies Renewables Distributed Generation Asia said, "TotalEnergies is committed to providing its customers with a solution that fulfils both environmental sustainability and cost-saving goals. As a leading solar service provider for commercial and industrial businesses trusted by small to large sized manufacturing companies as the solar energy partner of choice, we look forward to supporting companies in driving down their carbon footprint, using our expertise in tailor-made solar solutions for any business energy needs."

About Aden Group

Aden Group is a leader in sustainable & data-driven management of buildings and business/industrial parks. Headquartered in Shanghai, Aden Group was founded in 1997 as a facility-management company. Since then, it has expanded its portfolio to ventures in clean and renewable energy; digital twin; property development; handling and automation; and venture capital. Today it operates in 25 countries worldwide, with 26,000 employees and 1,500 clients. Across all of its business lines, Aden is dedicated to maximizing wellness, efficiency and sustainability.

LinkedIn: Aden Group

Facebook: Aden Group

YouTube: Aden Group

TotalEnergies, renewables and electricity

As part of its ambition to get to net zero by 2050, TotalEnergies is building a portfolio of activities in renewables and electricity. At the end of September 2021, TotalEnergies' gross renewable electricity generation capacity is 10 GW. TotalEnergies will continue to expand this business to reach 35 GW of gross production capacity from renewable sources by 2025, and then 100 GW by 2030 with the objective of being among the world's top 5 producers of electricity from wind and solar energy.

About TotalEnergies Renewables Distributed Generation for Asia

TotalEnergies Renewables Distributed Generation is a major international provider of fully integrated distributed solar energy solutions, including solar-powered rooftops, carport and ground-mounted solar power plants, with a portfolio of over 600 MW of projects in development and operation worldwide. Active in Asia since 2018, TotalEnergies Renewables Distributed Generation is one of the largest and fastest players in renewable energy distributed generation in the region for commercial and industrial customers, with a portfolio of over 100 MW of projects in development and operation. https://solar.totalenergies.asia

About TotalEnergies

TotalEnergies is a global multi-energy company that produces and markets energies on a global scale: oil and biofuels, natural gas and green gases, renewables and electricity. Our 105,000 employees are committed to energy that is ever more affordable, clean, reliable and accessible to as many people as possible. Active in more than 130 countries, TotalEnergies puts sustainable development in all its dimensions at the heart of its projects and operations to contribute to the well-being of people.

Twitter: @TotalEnergies

LinkedIn: TotalEnergies

Facebook: TotalEnergies

Instagram: TotalEnergies

Cautionary Note

This press release, from which no legal consequences may be drawn, is for information purposes only. The entities in which TotalEnergies SE directly or indirectly owns investments are separate legal entities. TotalEnergies SE has no liability for their acts or omissions. In this document, the terms "TotalEnergies", "TotalEnergies "Company" and "Company" are sometimes used for convenience. Likewise, the words "we", "us" and "our" may also be used to refer to subsidiaries in general or to those who work for them. This document may contain forward-looking information and statements that are based on a number of economic data and assumptions made in a given economic, competitive and regulatory environment. They may prove to be inaccurate in the future and are subject to a number of risk factors. Neither TotalEnergies SE nor any of its subsidiaries assumes any obligation to update publicly any forward-looking information or statement, objectives or trends contained in this document whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

SOURCE TotalEnergies
The U.S. Mint has begun rolling out quarters which feature writer, poet and activist Maya Angelou, the first Black woman to appear on the coin.

Each time we redesign our currency, we have the chance to say something about our country  what we value, and how weve progressed as a society," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. "Im very proud that these coins celebrate the contributions of some of Americas most remarkable women, including Maya Angelou.

The new coin is part of the American Women Quarters program. Additional quarters will feature astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman in space; Wilma Mankiller, the first woman to be principal chief of the Cherokee Nation; Anna May Wong, who was the first Chinese American Hollywood movie star; and Nina Otero-Warren, the first female superintendent of Santa Fe, N.M., public schools and a leader in the suffrage movement. These quarters will continue to be released later this year and into 2025, according to a press release from the U.S. Mint.

Angelou's first memoir, "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings," narrates her life up until the age of 17 and rose her to national acclaim. She was a prominent activist in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with leaders such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., at one point serving as northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

In 1993, Angelou read her poem, "On the Pulse of Morning," at former President Bill Clinton's first inauguration and made history as the first Black poet to write and perform a poem at a presidential inauguration. Former President Barack Obama awarded Angelou the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010.

The push for wider representation of Black Americans on U.S. currency is not limited to quarters. In 2016, the Obama administration first announced a proposal to replace former President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with abolitionist Harriet Tubman by 2020. The Trump administration halted these efforts, as former President Donald Trump called the efforts to replace Jackson "pure political correctness" on the campaign trail, though former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin cited counterfeit and security concerns.

Shortly after President Joe Biden's inauguration last January, press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration would aim to speed up the process of getting Tubman's likeness on the $20 bill.
New coronavirus cases leaped nearly 62% in New York in the week ending Sunday, as 595,095 cases were reported and many communities outside New York City faced skyrocketing infections that strained the health care system.

The previous week had 367,687 new cases of the virus that causes COVID-19.

New York ranked second among the states where coronavirus was spreading the fastest on a per-person basis, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows.

Nationally, COVID-19 cases increased nearly 76% from the week before, with 4,967,431 cases reported. With 5.84% of the country's population, New York had 11.98% of the country's cases in the last week.

After New York City initially faced the brunt of recent outbreaks, the highly contagious omicron variant sent the number of new cases soaring last week in many counties in the Finger Lakes, Hudson Valley, Southern Tier and Mohawk Valley regions.

Robert Akey of Sloatsburg receives a COVID-19 antigen test from Dexton Cummins at Patriot Hills Golf Course in Stony Point on Tuesday, January 4, 2022.

For example, Broome County had cases spike 221%, while Monroe County faced a 229% jump in cases, Oneida County's cases increased 195%, and Weschester County's cases leaped 145%.

Still, Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday struck a cautiously optimistic tone that the post-Holiday surge could be slowing in New York overall, as cases appeared to plateau in some New York City communities that previously faced the worst omicron-fueled outbreaks.

The steady climb of COVID-19 hospitalizations statewide over the past month also appeared to be slowing, Hochul noted, adding the hospitalizations generally lag case increases by several weeks.

Addressing the recent trends in slowing the rise in coronavirus cases in some communities, Hochul said: "Every day that we can flatten that is going to be a good day."

Meanwhile, the list of hospitals in New York halting elective care to free up beds in the face of COVID-19 outbreaks and staffing shortages increased to 40 on Saturday, up from the original 32 on Dec. 7.

"We will use every available tool to help ensure that hospitals can manage the COVID-19 winter surge," said Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett in a statement. "I want to remind New Yorkers that getting vaccinated and boosted remain the best way to protect against serious illness and hospitalization from COVID-19."

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"Vaccination also protects our hospital system," she added. "We cannot return to the early months of the pandemic when hospitals were overwhelmed."

Nationally, the New Year's holiday weekend significantly disrupted who got tested, how many people got tested, what labs operated and what government agencies reported on time.

Many of the New Year's weekend reports were shifted into the latest week, and the previous week was disrupted by late reporting from the weekend of Christmas. Consequently, week-to-week comparisons will be skewed in some communities.

More: COVID-19 cases are surging in NY nursing homes, reopening scars of pandemic's darkest days

In New York, 929 people were reported dead of COVID-19 in the week ending Sunday. In the week before that, 702 people were reported dead.

How COVID is spreading in New York

New York Governor Kathy Hochul talked about upcoming plans to assist keeping students in school and other COVID prevention measures during a press conference at Rochester Educational Opportunity Center at SUNY Brockport in Rochester on January 3, 2022.

In the latest week, Westchester County faced a 145% increase in new COVID cases, reporting 32,743 cases and 47 deaths in the latest week.

Rockland County's cases spiked 135%, reporting 11,913 cases and 11 deaths in the latest week.

Putnam County's cases increased 99%, reporting 3,276 cases and two deaths.

Orange County's cases leaped 144%, reporting 13,449 cases and 11 deaths.

Upstate, Monroe County's cases spiked 229%, reporting 13,956 cases and 18 deaths in the latest week.

Broome County's cases spiked 221%, reporting 3,713 cases and nine deaths.

Oneida County's cases increased 195%, reporting 4,273 cases and seven deaths.

Within New York, the worst weekly outbreaks on a per-person basis were:

Nassau County with 4,099 cases per 100,000 per week.

Bronx County with 3,865.

Richmond County with 3,826.

The Centers for Disease Control says high levels of community transmission begin at 100 cases per 100,000 per week.

Adding the most new cases overall were:

Queens County , with 84,890 cases.

Kings County , with 82,756 cases.

New York County, with 56,144.

>> See how your community has fared with recent coronavirus cases

New York ranked 8th among states in share of people receiving at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot, with 85.4% of its residents at least partially vaccinated. The national rate is 74.3%, a USA TODAY analysis of CDC data shows. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which are the most used in the United States, require two doses administered a few weeks apart.

In the week ending Sunday, New York reported administering another 900,752 vaccine doses, including 266,389 first doses. In the previous week, the state administered 678,441 vaccine doses, including 217,752 first doses. In all, New York reported it has administered 35,157,266 total doses.

A total of 4,147,154 people in New York have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and 60,611 people have died from the disease, Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the United States 60,074,429 people have tested positive and 837,594 people have died.

>> Track coronavirus cases across the United States

New York's COVID-19 hospital admissions rising

USA TODAY analyzed federal hospital data as of Sunday, Jan. 9.

Likely COVID patients admitted in the state:

Last week: 13,612

The week before that: 11,030

Four weeks ago: 4,321

Likely COVID patients admitted in the nation:

Last week: 187,807

The week before that: 147,897

Four weeks ago: 91,573

Hospitals in 49 states reported more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier, while hospitals in 39 states had more COVID-19 patients in intensive-care beds. Hospitals in 50 states admitted more COVID-19 patients in the latest week than a week prior, the USA TODAY analysis of U.S. Health and Human Services data shows.

People waited more than four hours Thursday morning for COVID-19 testing at the state testing site at the Sarasota Kennel Club in Florida. (Mike Lang/Sarasota Herald-Tribune)

The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control. If you have questions about the data or the story, contact Mike Stucka at mstucka@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on New York State Team: NY's COVID cases surge 62% as omicron wave slams counties outside NYC
State Sen. Andy Billig smiles during a ground breaking for Jubilant HollisterStiers new 50,000-square-foot expansion in November. Billig, D-Spokane, announced Saturday that he had tested positive for COVID-19 but was experiencing no symptoms.
Wheres David Letterman when you need him?

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio deserves his own Top Ten List of COVID Falsehoods.

His hometown, Miami, continues to be the states epicenter of the raging coronavirus pandemic, this time around more contagious in its latest incarnation, omicron, a variant named after the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet.

Almost two years in, most of us  and especially so elected officials  ought to be pros at promoting best practices for how to help the public stay safe or, at least, as safe as possible.

Yet, the record numbers of infected, the hospitalized on the rise and people still dying mean nothing to the senator, who is better suited for Republican foreign-policy talking points than dispensing on-the-fly silly, dismissive  and dangerous  public-health information.

Rubio is so out of his league on the subject of COVID-19 that he keeps striking the wrong chord at the worst time, and in the most public way  via his favorite soapbox, Twitter. Its as if he were doing it on purpose for the sake of the spectacle.

Just when you think he couldnt possibly go there, the senator becomes an even worse caricature of himself.

Infection is preventable, senator

Last Tuesday, when news of the death of a prominent 46-year-old anti-vaccine (all vaccines) California lawyer from COVID was trending, Rubio tweeted this:

We have a record number of cases because Omicron INFECTION is virtually unpreventable. But we have solid evidence that Omicron ILLNESS is far less severe, he said.

That omicron infection is virtually unpreventable is patently and malignantly false. We have infections because people arent wearing masks. And although this new variant infects even the vaccinated, the symptoms have been less severe, knocking the legs out from under anti-vaxxers ridiculous argument that vaccines dont work.

Omicron is more easily transmitted, which makes it so dangerous. But Rubio is cherry-picking half truths. He makes the situation seem hopeless, that theres nothing that can be done. Hes spreading dangerous information that could cost the lives of the unvaccinated, who are more vulnerable to the disease.

Its time to get back to normal & learn to coexist with an endemic virus by managing risk & mitigating harm, Rubio goes on to say, never bothering to tell people that vaccination and wearing a mask are the best ways to mitigate harm.

As to whether this is an endemic virus, that remains to be seen. We dont know what will happen in three months. Maybe the coronavirus will become endemic like the flu, but medical experts arent even going there yet.

Instead, theyre desperately sifting through scientific data and begging states like Florida to be more transparent with theirs because it is vital to assessing everything from risk and probability to treatment.

This calls for a little bit of prudence interpreting scientific data, a Miami-based COVID expert tells me. We dont know what may happen in three months. When it comes to cherry-picking data, the in-your-face-problem is data changing daily. ... Uncertainty shapes new science.

The expert points to monoclonal treatments that Gov. Ron DeSantis keeps plugging despite the fact that evidence is sketchy and they dont work very well.

The most dramatic development is vaccines that work, he said. To suggest otherwise is a sad and cruel deception. If everyone had worn a mask when we said, Wear a mask, if everyone had vaccinated, wed have a lot less dead people.

What Rubio is saying isnt based on good science and, certainly, isnt good public policy.

With Florida breaking COVID infection records by stunning numbers, Rubio tweeted on Jan. 3 this stream of consciousness, no periods. My annotations are in brackets.

There is no Omicron hospital surge in Florida [false, say medical personnel living again through the exhaustion of being care providers]

People admitted for non-COVID reasons get tested [true, of course they should; dont you think their health care workers deserve to know this?]

If they test positive, they get counted as a COVID patient [and why not?]

The majority of the 5,400 COVID patients in #Florida are in the hospital for non-COVID reasons [The point being? Maybe you broke a bone, come to the hospital with COVID, develop pneumonia from it and die.]

COVID can become the more important thing you are in the hospital for.

Its as if Rubio is purposefully twisting information to confuse and push the Republican argument that everything is going swell in Florida, that the DeSantis-led GOP cadre has the pandemic under control when, in fact, they know they dont.

And we do, too.

But guess who doesnt?

The people listening to Rubio and DeSantis-influenced nonsense on Cuban radio in Miami.

The people listening to conservative radio in red Florida.

The people who arent listening to any media, but soak up prevailing falsehoods.

If the management of COVID in this state were going as smoothly as Rubio and DeSantis want us to believe, why is the state withholding information and deceiving us about the data? Why cant the Department of Health show statistics about who getting COVID is vaccinated and who isnt?

No one is asking for patient names, simply numbers. This is particularly perverse.

Truth is, a public official of Rubios rank spreading misleading and false information makes us all less safe  not just from COVID, but from everything.
Greensboro, NC (27407)

Today

Partly cloudy with afternoon showers or thunderstorms. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. High 86F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Isolated thunderstorms during the evening hours. Skies will become partly cloudy overnight. Low 66F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
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The general election this spring will be crucial for the future of all Hungarians, the state secretary in charge of policies for Hungarian communities abroad has said.

The whole Hungarian nation, not only the motherland, must keep moving forward, not backwards, Arpad Janos Potapi said.



Ever since Hungary has had a nationally minded government, the Hungarian nation has been strong and united, he said in a video posted on Facebook.



We consider ethnic Hungarians abroad indivisible parts of the nation, and were helping them keep their identity and prosper in their homelands, Potapi said.



The state secretary noted that the government supported them in developing their institutions, including creches, kindergartens and schools, and promoted their businesses. Potapi said the situation was in marked contrast to the period of left-wing rule before 2010.



The left wing always aims to serve foreign interests rather than promote the rise of the Hungarian nation, he said.



Ferenc Gyurcsany, the former prime minister, who now wants to return to power, pursued a hate campaign against ethnic Hungarians abroad, and he would deprive them of their Hungarian citizenship, he said, appealing to ethnic Hungarians abroad to register and take part in the elections.
The two leading liberal weeklies urge the opposition to stand firm behind Peter Marki-Zay, despite his gaffes.

A pro-government commentator fears that the national interest would be compromised if Fidesz loses. Another right-wing pundit speculates that foreign powers will intervene to help the opposition in the campaign.



Elet es Irodaloms editor-in-chief Zoltan Kovacs calls on the opposition to focus on the large picture and line up behind Peter Marki-Zay. The liberal pundit finds it unfortunate that even the Left is preoccupied with Marki-Zays minor unfortunate gaffes, for example, his suggestion that the Covid pandemic took a toll primarily on elderly Fidesz voters.



Kovacs also dismisses suggestions that he should be replaced with another frontrunner. He acknowledges that Marki-Zay is a maverick, but sees this more as an asset than a handicap, noting that he won twice as an underdog  first in the local election in Hodezovasarhely in 2018, and then in the opposition primary in 2021.



Kovacs suggests that the opposition task is straightforward  to unite behind him and follow his lead, so that Hungary can return to Europe after the victory of the opposition in the April parliamentary election.



In a first page editorial, Magyar Narancs also thinks that the opposition needs to show unity in order to stand a chance at the election. The liberal weekly admits that the opposition has been trapped by the election of Marki-Zay as candidate for Prime Minister.



The authors see Marki-Zay as an impulsive figure, a loose cannon who rejects common political strategies and compromises, and often levels sharp criticism at his own allies. All this, Magyar Narancs writes, weakens the opposition and its chances of defeating Fidesz. In conclusion, Magyar Narancs recommends that Marki-Zay should tone down his rhetoric, and put the oppositions collective interest before his own personality.



In Magyar Demokrata, Erik Toth, analyst of the pro-government think tank Center for Fundamental Rights, sees the April election as a crucial battle for what he defines as the national interest.



Toth suggests that Marki-Zay is an ideal candidate for the international globalist elite, since he embraces pro-immigration and free-market ideals rather than defending national values and interests. He adds that the struggle among the opposition parties to agree on party lists and other business, bodes ill for their ability to govern.



The Orban government since 2010 been successful, the author concludes, because it showed unity and strength  something that the opposition alliance would not be able to do.



Magyar Hirlaps Daniel Deme fears that Western powers, including the US and the EU, may want to interfere in the Hungarian election to help the opposition into power. The pro-government columnist recalls that the right-wing anti-immigrant government in Bulgaria (Boiko Borisovs GERB  a strong Orban ally) was defeated by a party formed only two moths before the election.



Deme thinks that the new party defeated the right-wing government thanks to foreign financial and ideological support. He notes that in Bulgaria as well as in the Czech Republic, corruption scandals leaked right before the election tipped the balance and lead to the defeat of right-wing governments.



He goes on to suggest that the Pegasus spyware allegations were used as a pilot project to test the Hungarian public by the same forces that interfered with the Bulgarian and the Czech elections.



Deme is confident, however, that Hungarian conservatives are mostly immune to such Western hybrid weapons, but he nonetheless deems it necessary for the Right to stay vigilant and expect corruption allegations during the campaign.



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The national public health centre (NNK) has said it is taking legal action against independent lawmaker Akos Hadhazy for alleged violation of personal rights and defamation in connection with Chief Medical Officer Cecilia Muller.

The NNK said a recent Facebook post by Hadhazy had demonstrated a lack of professional knowledge and bad faith as well as discrediting the NKK, an authority in charge of protecting the public against epidemics.



As a result, he has intentionally misled the Hungarian people. The NKK said Hadhazys actions posed a direct and severe threat to epidemiological protection. He has questioned the professional credibility of those involved and undermined public trust in the methods of protection, the NNK added.



His statements strengthened the anti-vaxxer movement and his attacks have been motivated purely by political profiteering, the NNK said.



Hadhazy stated the Facebook post that he had filed a criminal complaint for alleged abuse of office and endangerment committed in the line of duty and attached an image of Muller to the post.



The context and the post directly implied that he was accusing the chief medical officer of those actions, the health centre added.





Photo: Hadhazy's Facebook page
Peter Marki-Zay, the oppositions candidate for prime minister (pictured), denied allegations that he would privatize the Hungarian health care system. At the same time, he appears to be promoting a well-known but unsubstantiated political conspiracy theory about Prime Minister Viktor Orban, reports Telex.

The politicians statements appeared in a short video on Facebook, entitled Who would actually privatize healthcare? As part of his MZPercek video series, the prime ministerial candidate responded to the accusation that he would make health care something people would have to pay for.



Peter Marki-Zay categorically stated that he would not privatize hospitals, but accused Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Fidesz of wanting to do so, and that the Prime Ministers son-in-law, businessman Istavn Tiborcz, would profit from it.



According to the mayor of Hodmezovasarhely, Interior Minister Sandor Pinter has already commissioned a 270 million Ft. study on the topic, which Telex assumes is a reference to a report ordered by the Interior Ministry in 2020 on the complex transformation of health care prepared by the Boston Consulting Group.



Marki-Zay will not make people pay for health care out of their own pocket at a private hospital, but they will continue to receive treatment through social security benefits that they have paid. This treatment, he says, is what Fidesz people get at private hospitals and at a private clinic in Graz [Austria].



The private clinic in Graz is a reference to a well-known conspiracy theory / gossip / anti-Orban trope in Hungarian political circles. Although many people believe the theory, there has been no evidence thus far to support it.



In 2018, Political Capital, together with Median and funding from the German Heinrich-Boll-Stiftung Foundation, conducted a survey on the prevalence of false news, misconceptions, and conspiracy theories amongst Hungarians.



Their results show that an equal number of people both believe and doubt the most well-known domestic anti-government conspiracy theories, such as the Prime Minister secretly receiving treatments at a psychiatric clinic in Graz. Even a quarter of Fidesz supporters hold this belief, they found.



This is not his first statement in which Peter Marki-Zay has brought personal rumors and gossip into the political arena. For example, he previously made unspecific claims that certain Fidesz politicians were homosexual, as well as the Prime Ministers own son, Gaspar Orban.



It worries me that a prime minister, who may himself have a homosexual child, can be so immoral, evil, and inhumane that he is leading a gay-bashing campaign. What kind of storybook could Viktor Orban have read to Gaspar Orban? I wonder what might have happened that steered him in that direction. - Telex reports Peter Marki-Zay as having said.



The opposition leader also added that he was not running a homophobic campaign, but wanted to protect the gay community.



Some of Marki-Zays divisive statements have even been criticized within his own opposition coalition, most recently when he spoke of older Fidesz supporters who have died in the pandemic.





Photo: Peter Marki-Zay / Facebook page
Robert Burns Day or Burns Night is celebrated on 25th January every year, marking Robert Burns  the National Poet of Scotland  date of birth, which in 2022 falls on a Tuesday. Now lets see how Robert Burns and Arran Whisky are related.





Robert Burns was born in Alloway, Ayrshire in 1759 and his links with Ayrshire and Arran are well known. In fact, although the bard never actually visited the Isle of Arran, he is certain to have been able to see it on clear days as he laboured in the fields of Ayrshire on his father's farm.



At that time there were several illicit stills on Arran which produced whisky that was claimed by many to be "among the finest whiskies available". This was shipped to Dunure in Ayrshire - then the centre of the illegal whisky trade - before being shipped to the gentry in Scotland's major cities where they "took the Arran waters".



As we wrote about this earlier, since 2000 The Isle of Arran Distillery is a member of the World Burns Federation which grants the rights to the distillery to bottle official Robert Burns whiskys. To salute the memory of the iconic poet, Arran Whisky created a Robert Burns single malt and a Robert Burn blend, with the poets portrait and signature on the bottle and the packaging.





Lay the proud usurpers low

Robert was the eldest of seven children and worked alongside his brothers on his father's farm. Despite being from a poor family, he and his brother were lucky enough to have a tutor who introduced them to the joys of literature. He was on the point of abandoning farm life in Scotland when his first collection of poetry "Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect - Kilmarnock Edition" was published and was extremely well received.



Although he was not a legend in his own time, Robert Burns left a legacy which has touched Scotland and indeed people in countries all over the world. On his birthday, 25th January, Scots all over the world celebrate with a Burns Supper where they address the haggis, the ladies and, of course, whisky. Such a celebration of his life, work and all of the things he loved in life would surely make Robert Burns proud today.



Arran Robert Burns Malt (0,7 l, 43%)

This exclusive Robert Burns edition of the Arran Single Malt has been skilfully created by combining different ages to produce a beautifully rounded whisky that is smooth, malty and sweet with a delicious spicy twist on the finish. A true drop of liquid poetry and the perfect dram with which to toast the Bard!



Arran The Burns Blend (0,7 l, 40%)

With the acclaimed Arran Single Malt at its heart, this blend is refreshingly dry in character with a smooth finish and the subtlest hints of peat-smoke in the background. An outstanding example of a great quality blended whisky, this is the perfect dram to be enjoyed on any occasion and a fitting tribute to Scotlands greatest poet.





The poet and the beast

Not only The Isle of Arran Distillery has a connection to Robert Burns. The popular Scottish independent bottler, Douglas Laing has a blended malt whisky called Timorous Beastie which also has a link to Burns poetry.



Written in 1785, "To a Mouse" is about a young man who accidentally overturns the soil of a mouses nest. He deeply regrets destroying the tiny field-mouses home, and much of the poem centres around Burns apology to the innocent creature.



Timorous Beastie in tube (0,7L; 46,8%)

Douglas Laing's Timorous Beastie is most certainly not for the fainthearted! This non-coloured, non-chill-filtered Small Batch bottling is a marriage of appropriately aged and selected Highland Malts - including, amongst others, those distilled at Glen Garioch, Dalmore and Glengoyne distilleries.



Budapest Burns Supper  22nd January 2022

One of the years most popular and longest-running charity events will be in Corinthia Hotel in January, where guests can enjoy a touch of Scottish culture in the heart of Central Europe. Traditional Scottish cuisine, pipers and drummers flown in from Scotland, an amazing whisky bar thanks to WhiskyNet, and your chance to try Scottish ceilidh dancing in this incredible five-star setting, not to mention the raffle and auction!



Its a milestone event this year, 25 years of Burns Suppers in Budapest, and 25 years of helping sick and underprivileged children throughout Hungary. With all the disappointment of missed events over the last 18 months, you wont want to miss this one!



All the above-mentioned Robert Burns related whiskys can be purchased in the webshop of WhiskyNet.
YORK  The 2022 York Ag Expo at the Holthus Convention Center was an incredible success this past week, as vendors and producers were able to network and share information right before the growing season begins.

York Area Chamber of Commerce Director Madonna Mogul said she was extremely pleased with the incredible turn-out, as people werent deterred in the least by the really cold temperatures outside.

The convention center was filled with booths manned by implement dealers, banks, technology companies, seed companies and much more.

There were also classes offered throughout the two-day event, including chemigation training and certification provided by the University of Nebraska Extension. Mogul said the session were held both days and were well attended.

We are thrilled to again host this event, as the ag expo was cancelled last year, Mogul said during the event. It was with great excitement that this is being held.

After the fact, Mogul said the Chamber welcomed over 600 guests to the event.

There were over 60 vendors  the space actually sold out. Mogul said there continues to be growing interest, as many vendors want to participate. There is already a list for next year.

There were also donated prizes available to attendees.

All this benefits the chambers ag scholarships, which are available each year to graduating seniors from any of the high schools in the county, Mogul said further.

Early indications are that vendors were happy to be able to connect in person with potential customers, Mogul said further. Our last ag show was in early 2020 and one of the last things the Chamber was able to host prior to the spring shut-down. Everything went very smooth from set up to tear down.

The Chamber is thankful for our Ag Committee, Chamber Ambassadors and Board of Directors and staff at the convention center, Mogul said. An event of this size takes several hands on deck to be successful. And we have begun preparations for the next expo.

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Ace badminton player Saina Nehwal's husband Parupalli Kashyap, who is himself a shuttler, on Monday slammed actor Siddharth for allegedly making sexist remarks against his wife.

The actor had in a Twitter post on January 6 retweeted a post by Nehwal in which she had expressed her concern over the security breach of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Punjab visit on January 5.

Raising concerns over the Prime Minister's convoy being stopped for 15-20 minutes on a flyover in Punjab's Bathinda as the road was blocked by protesting farmers, Nehwal tweeted: "No nation can claim itself to be safe if the security of its own PM gets compromised. I condemn, in the strongest words possible, the cowardly attack on PM Modi by anarchists."

Retweeting her post, Siddharth wrote, "Subtle cock champion of the world... Thank God we have protectors of India. Folded hands. Shame on you Rihanna."

Subtle cock champion of the world... Thank God we have protectors of India. Shame on you #Rihanna https://t.co/FpIJjl1Gxz  Siddharth (@Actor_Siddharth) January 6, 2022

However, the actors Tweet was considered lewd and misogynist by many as he faced backlash for the same.

Meanwhile, Parupalli called out Siddharth on social media following the controversy and termed his Tweet disgraceful.

Kashyap took to Twitter to lash out at Siddharth and wrote - "This is upsetting for us  express ur opinion but choose better words man. I guess u thought it was cool to say it this way. #notcool #disgraceful." Kashyap and Saina had tied the knot in 2018.

This is upsetting for us  express ur opinion but choose better words man . I guess u thought it was cool to say it this way . #notcool #disgraceful  Parupalli Kashyap (@parupallik) January 10, 2022

Also, Nehwal herself had also reacted to Siddharth's comments and said he could have used better words to express himself. The shuttler also pointed out that controversial tweets might be helping the actor stay relevant on social media.

Ya Im not sure what he meant. I used to like him as an actor but this was not nice. He can express himself with better words but I guess its Twitter n u remain noticed with such words n comments," Nehwal said.

Earlier, Siddharth clarified his comments and said he didn't intend anything disrespectful with his controversial comments.

"COCK & BULL". That's the reference. Reading otherwise is unfair and leading! Nothing disrespectful was intended, said or insinuated. Period," Siddharth said issuing a clarification.

"COCK & BULL" That's the reference. Reading otherwise is unfair and leading! Nothing disrespectful was intended, said or insinuated. Period.  Siddharth (@Actor_Siddharth) January 10, 2022

However, the National Commission for Women (NCW) in a statement today said that the comment by the actor was "misogynist and outrageous to the modesty of a woman amounting to disrespect and insult to the dignity of women on social media platforms."
New Delhi: With the fresh wave of COVID-19 plunging the hospitality sector back into uncertainty, industry body HAI on Monday said it has asked the government to consider granting infrastructure status to hotels, extend moratorium on loans and rationalise taxes.

In its pre-Budget memorandum, the Hotel Association of India (HAI) said policy interventions are imperative for the sector's survival and its early and quick rebound to normalcy.

"The hospitality industry was slowly getting into a recovery mode on the strength of domestic tourism ? leisure and events, only to be plunged back into uncertainty on account of the Omicron threat. It is critical to protect the industry during such prolonged periods of flip-flop in business prospects," HAI said in a statement.

Among the major demands from the sector is according hotels the status of 'Infrastructure' as it will resolve a large number of the issues being faced by hotels and hospitality companies, it added.

The step will also help survive operationally and encourage investments in the sector.

"Access to softer funding, longer periods to repay loans, resultant shortening of the gestation period will make hotel investments more attractive and sustainable. More hotels would mean more jobs, more development," HAI said.

Stressing that the sector's cascading effect on the economy has already been well established and documented, the association said,"infrastructure status will also enable hotels to avail benefits of lower taxation, utility tariffs and simplified approval process for projects."

Additionally, it said,"the road to recovery can also be aided through measures like extended moratorium, rationalisation of taxes and facilitating ease of doing business."

Hospitality industry contributes 9 per cent to India's GDP employing nearly 4.5 crore people and providing livelihoods to around 16 crore people, HAI said.

"Due to the pandemic, the potential shock to the livelihood of millions working in the hospitality industry is enormous. The Indian hospitality sector has a critical role to play in the post-pandemic economic revival and has been announced as the fourth pillar of the Indian economy," it said.

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New Delhi: Outward foreign direct investment by Indian companies fell by over 8 per cent to USD 2.05 billion in December 2021 in the current fiscal, data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) showed on Monday.

The domestic companies had invested USD 2.23 billion in their overseas joint ventures and fully-owned subsidiaries during December 2020 in the previous financial year.

Of the total investment made by the Indian companies overseas during the month, USD 1.22 billion was in the form of issuance of guarantees, USD 464.39 million was equity participation and USD 367.17 million investment was made through loans, as per the RBI data on Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) for December 2021.

The major investors who infused capital in their overseas ventures included ANI Technologies -- the promoter of mobility solutions provider Ola -- which invested USD 675 million in its wholly-owned subsidiary in Singapore, and Dr Reddy's investment of USD 149.99 million in a joint-venture in the US.

Reliance New Energy Solar Ltd invested a total of USD 168.60 million in a JV and wholly-owned subsidiary in Germany and Norway, while energy PSU Gail India infused USD 70.17 million in a joint-venture and a wholly-owned unit in Myanmar and the US.

State-owned oil explorer ONGC invested USD 74.15 million in five different ventures in various countries during the month, as per the data.

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Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh reported 8,334 new COVID-19 cases, 335 recoveries and four deaths in the last 24 hours, the state`s health department informed on Monday (January 10).

The active cases in the state stand at 33,946. Of these, 33,563 people are in home isolation. Of the four deaths registered on Monday (January 10), one each was reported from Meerut, Prayagraj, Bulandshahr and Sonbhadra.

The death toll in the state stands at 22,932. Of 8,334 new cases, maximum were registered in Ghaziabad (1,385), followed by Gautam Buddh Nagar (1,223), Lucknow (1,114) and Meerut (1,071).

Meanwhile, India on Monday (January 10) reported over 1.79 lakh cases of COVID-19 and a daily positivity rate of more than 13 per cent.
New Delhi: Amid the unprecedented surge in the COVID-19 cases, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday (January 9, 2022) chaired a meeting to review the COVID-19 situation in the country through a video conference. In the meeting, PM Modi directed officials to accelerate the vaccine drive for adolescents in mission mode.

The prime minister also reviewed the ongoing preparedness of health infrastructure and logistics, status of the vaccination campaign in the country.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Union Health Minister Dr Mansukh Mandaviya, Home secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla, Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba and other officials were also present at the meeting.

Here are the key points of PM Modis review meet on COVID-19:

- In the meeting, the prime minister highlighted the need to ensure effective usage of masks and physical distancing measures as a new normal to control the spread, besides stressing on the need for effective implementation of home isolation for mild and asymptomatic cases.

- PM Modi also said that a meeting with Chief Ministers will be convened. A meeting with the Chief Ministers will be convened to discuss state-specific scenarios, bestpractices and the public health response, he said.

- PM also directed the officials to ensure adequate health infrastructure at the district level and accelerate the vaccine drive for adolescents in mission mode.

- PM Modi put emphasis on the need for continuous scientific research in testing, vaccines and pharmacological interventions including genome sequencing given that the virus is evolving continuously.

- The Prime Minister also spoke about the need to leverage telemedicine to ensure availability of health-related guidance to people in remote and rural areas.

- Top officials gave the Prime Minister a detailed overview of the Covid-19 situation including various predictive scenarios of peak cases.

It may be noted that PM Modis review meeting comes as the country reported more than 1.5 lakh new COVID-19 cases on Sunday and the case tally of the Omicron variant of the virus reached 3,623 in the country.

Additionally, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will chair a virtual meeting with the health ministers of five states and a union territory on Monday to review the COVID-19 situation amid an exponential rise in the cases, said officials sources.

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New Delhi: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy on Monday (January 10) imposed a night curfew in view of the rapidly rising COVID-19 cases in the state, announced the Chief Minsters office.

The curfew would be imposed from 11 pm to 5 am as a daily COVID tally of the state continues to mark an uptick.

Andhra Pradesh CM YS Jagan Mohan Reddy announces night curfew from 11pm to 5am to be imposed in the State, in view of rising COVID19 cases: Chief Minister's Office  ANI (@ANI) January 10, 2022

Andhra Pradesh on Sunday recorded 1,257 fresh COVID-19 cases, the highest since September 2021, triggered by a probable Omicron wave.

The night restrictions come days after a fake social media message of lockdown and other pandemic restrictions Andhra Pradesh made rounds and created a situation of panic among the locals.

The message under question was being widely circulated saying that the State government has imposed a night curfew from 10 pm to 5 am from January 8.

It also claimed that all educational institutions, gyms and spas are closed, while theatres, restaurants will operate with 50% capacity.

Later, the officials concerned and the government clarified that the messages are fake and appealed to people not to believe such forwarded messages

Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Ch. Adinarayana said that they have not received any directives on lockdown or night curfew till now from the State government. He confirmed that the messages were completely fake.

Meanwhile, about the developing COVID-19 situation in the country, India in the last 24 hours reported1,79,723 fresh Covid-19 cases, pushing the active caseload to 7,23,619. The daily positivity rate stood at 13.29 per cent, while 146 deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours.

The Omicron tally stood at 4,033, with Maharashtra (1,216) continuing to top the count.

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New Delhi: Supreme Court on Monday (January 10, 2022) agreed to set up an independent committee to probe Prime Minister Narendra Modi's security breach in Ferozepur in Punjab last week. The Apex court said that the independent committee will be headed by a former Supreme Court judge.

Supreme Court proposes to include DGP Chandigarh, IG National Investigation Agency, Registrar General of Punjab and Haryana High Court, and ADGP (security) of Punjab, in the independent committee to probe PM Modi's security breach in Punjab last week  ANI (@ANI) January 10, 2022

The Court also proposed to include DGP Chandigarh, IG National Investigation Agency, Registrar General of Punjab and Haryana High Court, and ADGP (security) of Punjab, in the independent committee to probe PM Modi's security breach in Punjab last week.

The bench said, "We are taking the PM`s security breach very seriously". The bench added that it will ask the committee to submit its report to it within a short span.

The top court was hearing the plea of an organisation, Lawyers Voice, seeking a thorough investigation into the breach in Prime Minister Modi's security in Punjab to ensure there is no such event in the future.

Earlier, on Friday hearing, a bench of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana, Justices Surya Kant, and Hima Kohli had directed the Registrar General of Punjab and Haryana High Court to secure and preserve the travel records of the Prime Minister during his visit to Punjab forthwith.

The court has also directed the Punjab and police authorities, SPG, and other Central and State agencies to cooperate and provide necessary assistance to seal the entire record.

On January 5, the prime minister's convoy was stranded on a flyover due to a blockade by protesters in Ferozepur after which he returned from poll-bound Punjab without attending any event, including a rally.

Meanwhile, a central team probing the security breach during PM Modi's visit to Ferozepur reached the Punjab town on Friday while the state government submitted a report to the Centre saying an FIR has been filed in the matter and a two-member panel set up.

The Centre's three-member committee will seek details about the sequence of events that unfolded during Modi's January 5 visit. The team first went to the Pyarayana flyover near Ferozepur and interacted with senior Punjab Police and civil administration officials.

(With agency inputs)

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New Delhi: The air quality of the national capital was recorded in 'satisfactory' category on Monday (January 10, 2022) morning as the Ministry of Earth Sciences' System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR) noted an Air Quality Index (AQI) of 53.

Delhi's Air Quality Index (AQI) is presently at 53 (overall) in the ' Satisfactory' category, said System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR)-India.

Delhi's Air Quality Index (AQI) is presently at 53 (overall) in the ' Satisfactory' category, as per System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR)-India  ANI (@ANI) January 10, 2022

The air quality of Delhi improved from the 'moderate' to 'satisfactory' category on Sunday morning after the city witnessed heavy rainfall and thunderstorm for two continuous days.

An AQI between zero and 50 is considered "good", 51 and 100 "satisfactory", 101 and 200 "moderate, 201 and 300 "poor", 301 and 400 "very poor", and 401 and 500 "severe".

Meanwhile, the India Meteorological Department said that cold wave will start from January 11 night in the northern part of the country.

"As the western disturbance is moving towards the east, the temperature will fall drastically as it goes. So, in northern India including Delhi, the temperature will fall between 4 degrees to 6 degrees," he said.

"There has been a fall in temperature in Rajasthan. So, the cold wave in Rajasthan, Punjab, and Haryana will start on January 12. In Delhi, the temperature can be witnessed between 5 degrees to 6 degrees till January 14, but we can't say if there will be a cold wave in Delhi or not as we are still monitoring it," he added.

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New Delhi: Every year, January 10 is celebrated as Vishwa Hindi Diwas (World Hindi Day) to promote the beauty and simplicity of the Hindi language across the globe.

While it has been over 75 years since India attained freedom from the shackles of the British rule, it seems like that the Indian society could not detach itself from the mental bondage of their language - English.

Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary on Monday weighed in on how today in Indian society being an English speaker makes you a well-informed and respected individual, while the ones who dare to converse in Hindi are being frowned and judged upon. Noting that English as a language deserves due respect, he said that Indians must not forget their mother tongue and pass it on to the next generation as an invaluable treasure.

The best example of our deep-rooted English mentality is our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehrus famous Independence speech A Tryst with Destiny, which he even while celebrating the end of a tyrannical British era delivered in the English language.

Indias obsession with the English language can also be seen in our constitution, that despite being the foundation of a Hindi nation, is majorly written in the foreign language.

If thats not enough, the biggest example of this English slavery is the division of our education system into 'Hindi medium and English medium, where parents feel proud and accomplished when their kids learn at an English school, while children with a Hindi background are often shamed and judged.'

What makes this massive popularity enjoyed by the English language among Indians all the more tragic is the fact that over 120 crore people in the world speak Hindi, which means every sixth human on the planet understands Hindi. And still, Hindi has become a topic of shame among Indians.

However, what we fail to fathom is the greatness of our language. Many do not know, but in 2017, the Oxford English Dictionary comprised at least 600 Hindi terms, which were widely accepted and used among the western diaspora.

In fact, Hindi is the worlds third most popular language, after English and Mandarin, and yet, most Indians today either feel ashamed or do not want to accept the value of the Hindi language.

According to a study conducted by Australian National University, today every 20 out of 100 languages in the world are on the verge of extinction due to the growing popularity of foreign languages.

In the end, we must understand that a language is not just a medium of communication, but is an integral and inseparable part of a societys culture. Any language is like a library, which stores all kinds of information in itself, our language stores information about our existence and culture in it. Thus, if our language ceases to exist then our future generation will struggle to understand and be a part of our community.

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New Delhi: Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Monday called on states and Union territories to ensure there is no lapse in the preparation to battle the COVID surge and stressed maintaining a holistic synergy for seamless management of the pandemic.

Reiterating that the Centre is dedicated to supporting states in containing Covid, he said the Union government has provided support under ECRP-II for strengthening the health infrastructure across the country.

India COVID-19 Emergency Response and Health Systems Preparedness Package- Phase-II is a centrally sponsored scheme to prevent, detect and respond to the threat posed by the ongoing pandemic and strengthen the national health systems for emergency response and preparedness across the country.

Interacting with health ministers, top officials and information commissioners of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Goa, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Mandaviya said, "Let there be no lapse in our preparedness as we battle this surge of the pandemic."

During the virtual interaction, he reviewed the public health preparedness of these states for containing and managing COVID-19 as well as the progress of the vaccination campaign.

Mandaviya urged the states to make robust preparation in terms of physical infrastructure and efficiently utilize the approved funds under ECRP-II. He requested the state health ministers to review the implementation of physical activities under ECRP-II, the Health Ministry statement said.

It was also suggested that the operational status of infrastructure like beds, PSA plants, oxygen equipment be filled in by states on the portal -- covid19.Nhp.Gov.In.

They must be operationalised and kept in a functional state to meet any evolving situation in future, the statement said.

It was stressed that for real-time data-driven analysis and information-based decisions in the fight against Covid, states must update their data on the monitoring portals. This would help in planning and assessing preparedness at several levels.

Mandaviya also advised the states to review the buffer stock of essential medicines and ensure the shortages, if any, are replenished.

Increase inoculation of all eligible populations, especially in low vaccination coverage areas and districts, the Union Minister advised the states. "Vaccination results in low hospitalisation and severity, as is seen globally."

He emphasised administering 'precaution dose' for the identified categories and urged the states to ensure full coverage of the vulnerable population. He also requested them to expedite full coverage of the eligible age group of 15-18 years at the earliest.

Mandaviya said that irrespective of the COVID variants, 'test-track-treat-vaccinate' and adherence to 'Covid appropriate behaviour' continue to form the pivotal foundation for Covid management.

States were advised to hold regular meetings with regional officers of ICMR, NCDC, Airport Public Health Officers and the State Surveillance Officers, the statement said.

Mandaviya highlighted the importance of teleconsultation through platforms such as eSanjeevani and advised the states to establish it in every district.

"They should work round the clock... It is important that people know about the available health infrastructure and services. States need to publicise their availability and also establish control rooms to monitor them," the Union Health Minister said.

Union Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar stressed the need for strictly following home isolation guidelines. She also urged the states to ensure the healthcare workers are trained for monitoring those in home isolation.

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New Delhi: Haryana government on Monday (January 10) closed all schools and colleges in the state till January 26 amid the rising COVID-19 infection.

CM ML Khattar said, govt has shut down all schools and colleges till January 26, online classes to continue.

Haryana reported another major increase in new coronavirus cases on Sunday (January 9), registering 5,166 fresh infections, with 2,338 of them from Gurugram district alone, according to an official bulletin.

Meanwhile, in view of a spike in cases during the past nearly fortnight, Health Minister Anil Vij on Sunday urged the people to strictly follow all Covid-related guidelines including wearing of masks and following social distancing norms.

"No mask no service" policy will be strictly followed in the state, he said.

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New Delhi: Amid the unprecedented surge in the COVID-19 cases, India on Monday (January 10, 2022) started administering precaution dose of COVID-19 vaccine to healthcare, frontline workers and those above 60 years in the country.

Delhi begins administering COVID-19 vaccine 'precautionary dose' to frontline workers and senior citizens above 60 years of age with co-morbidities. "We feel fine. There are no side-effects, everyone should take the jab," people said Visuals from RML Hospital. pic.twitter.com/myLublyva7  ANI (@ANI) January 10, 2022

Chennai | Tamil Nadu begins administering COVID19 vaccine 'Precaution dose' to frontline workers and senior citizens above 60 years of age with co-morbidities pic.twitter.com/SwoHeRjpiB  ANI (@ANI) January 10, 2022

COVID19 vaccine 'Precaution dose' being administered to senior citizens above 60 years of age with co-morbidities at Govt Unani Hospital in Hyderabad Telangana Health Minister T Harish Rao present pic.twitter.com/e00IXvyEow  ANI (@ANI) January 10, 2022

COVID vaccine 'precautionary dose' being administered to senior citizens above 60 years of age with co-morbidities at a vaccination center in Patna, Bihar pic.twitter.com/96DES0RV4k  ANI (@ANI) January 10, 2022

How to register for precaution dose?

The online registration for the precaution dose of the COVID-19 vaccine commenced on Friday on the Co-WIN platform. There is no need for new registration for those eligible for the precautionary or the third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine vaccine.

Who all are eligible for precaution dose?

Now, all HCWs, FLWs and citizens aged 60 years or above with comorbidities can access the vaccination for precaution dose through their existing Co-WIN account. Notably, the precaution dose can only be taken after 39 weeks (from the date of administration of 2nd dose).

The Ministry of Health and Welfare has recommended that precaution dose for healthcare workers, frontline workers and senior citizens with co-morbidities will be the same as given previously. It had also informed that the senior citizens with co-morbidities will not be required to produce a doctor`s certificate or prescription at the time of administration of the precaution dose.

The details of the administration of the precaution dose will be suitably reflected in the vaccination certificates. An estimated 1.05 crore healthcare and 1.9 crore frontline workers, and 2.75 crore comorbid people in the 60 plus age group are going to be administered the precaution dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

Which COVID vaccine will be given as precautionary dose?

The National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) has recommended the administration of the homologous vaccine for HCWS, FLWs and elders (more than 60 years of age) with co-morbidities i.e. the same vaccine that has been administered for the previous two doses would be given as the precaution dose to the eligible beneficiaries," said Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan in a letter.

Additionally, Reminder SMS have been sent to more than 1 crore health and frontline workers and 60+ citizens for their precaution dose, informed Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya.

"The government is ensuring the security of the health army that secures the country. Reminder SMS have been sent to more than 1 crore health and frontline workers and 60+ citizens for their #PrecautionDose. Appointments on COWIN are already open. The dosing program is being started from tomorrow," Mandaviya tweeted on Sunday.

On Friday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in a tweet said that the third dose of Covaxin holds promise. "Third dose of COVAXIN holds promise," ICMR had tweeted. The medical research body in its tweet further highlighted the benefits of getting Covaxin`s precautionary dose.

India started administering the precautionary doses on the same day when the country recorded 1,79,723 new COVID-19 cases, 146 deaths in the last 24 hours, pushing the total death toll to 4,83,936, as per data released by the Ministry of Health. The active cases stand at 7,23,619.

(With ANI inputs)

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New Delhi: A Madhya Pradesh police constable has been suspended for refusing to trim his moustache. The suspended constable, Rakesh Rana, who worked as a driver in the state police's transport wing, said that his moustache is a matter of pride and self-respect.

"I am a Rajput, and my moustache is my pride," he told ANI.

Rana said that he has kept his moustache at this length for a long time.

He was posted as the driver of Special Director General, Cooperatives Fraud and Public Service Guarantee section of the Madhya Pradesh Police.

"I am with him since last February, but he never objected before. He has gone on many tours with me. Two-three days ago suddenly Mishra sir asked me to remove my mask and then he started commenting on my moustache. As I removed my mask, he asked me how I had kept a moustache. Do you know that keeping a moustache is against the Police Regulation Act? I did not respond," Rana alleged.

"Earlier, I was with many officers. I was also in CID, even then I had a similar moustache. Abhinandan Ji was discussed later, after seeing him, people started calling me Abhinandan. I stayed with the ADG, IG too and they also praised my moustache. I was asked to cut my moustache to a proper size but I refused. Never before in my service, I was asked to do so. Many IPS officers also have a moustache, so why object to mine? I will accept the suspension but will not cut my moustache," he added.

The suspension order by Assistant Inspector General, Cooperatives Fraud and Public Service Guarantee Prashant Sharma, said, "On checking the turnout, it was found that he has grown hair and moustache around his neck with a strange design, making the turnout look extremely inappropriate. Constable driver Rakesh Rana was instructed to cut his hair and moustache properly to keep his turnout right but the above order was not followed by the said constable and he insisted on maintaining the hair and moustache which is uniform."

"It comes under the category of indiscipline in service and this act has an adverse effect on other employees. Therefore, the said constable Rakesh Rana is suspended with immediate effect. During the suspended period, he will be given subsistence allowance as per rules," the suspension order issued on January 7 stated.

(With agency inputs)
New Delhi: Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev's India visit planned for month-end remains on schedule despite the crisis the country saw in the past few weeks. The President will be on India visit from 26th to 27th January to take part in India's Republic Day celebrations.

New Delhi has invited all leaders of 5 central Asian countries as the chief guest at the grand annual parade. India shares close cultural and historic linkages with the countries of the region and has upped its engagement with the 5 countries.

The central Asian country's massive upheaval which President Tokayev has called an attempted coup during Monday's extraordinary virtual meeting of the Collective Security Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

The largest country in terms of land area in Central Asia, Kazakhstan has been stable and peaceful since it declared independence in 1991 from the then Soviet Union.

India has also reacted to developments in the country. The ministry of external affairs (MEA) in response to a question extended its "deepest condolences to families of innocent victims who have lost lives in the violence", highlighting as a "close and friendly partner of Kazakhstan" New Delhi looks "forward to an early stabilization of the situation".

There are around 7800 members of the Indian community in Kazakhstan. Out of this, about 5,300 are Indian students, about 2,280 are construction workers and the rest are in various professional fields.

On the situation of the community, the MEA statement said, "coordination with authorities has helped ensure the safety and security of Indian nationals. They are advised to follow local security instructions and get in touch with the Embassy of India for any assistance".

In the past as well India has been invited to Kazakhstan as the chief guest at the Republic Day parade. In 2009, the then president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev was the chief guest. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited the country 2 times, one in July 2015 for a bilateral visit and then again in June 2017 for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit.



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New Delhi: In view of the rising numbers of COVID-19 infections in the state, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday (January 10, 2022) directed that the number of attendees at weddings and funerals be limited to a maximum of 50 people.

The decision to limit the number of people at weddings and funerals comes after a COVID review meeting chaired by the Chief Minister, a state government release said.

Kerala | CM Pinarayi Vijayan following a COVID19 review meeting has decided to limit the no. of people who can attend weddings and funerals to a maximum of 50.

Dept of Health & Education must ensure that vaccination of those in 15-18 age group is completed this week, he added. pic.twitter.com/SzYp2ZkgTZ  ANI (@ANI) January 10, 2022

Earlier, last week the government had directed that the number of people at marriages, funerals, political, social and cultural events in closed rooms be restricted to 75 and in open spaces to 150.

However, as per the latest decision taken in the COVID review meet, it has been further reduced to 50 without specifying whether it is for closed rooms or open spaces or both.

Additionally, the officials also decided that reunions, ceremonies, and general social, political, cultural and community events should be conducted online, except in urgent situations, the release said.

Precautions, including physical distancing, should be taken when conducting events with physical attendance and if possible, public meetings should be avoided, the release said.

The state government release also added that directions were issued to the Department of Health and Education to ensure that vaccinations for students over the age of 15 are completed this week itself, adding that the departments were considering carrying out vaccinations at educational institutions also.

Kudumbasree elections and gram sabhas can be conducted by following COVID norms like maintaining social distancing, the CM said in the meeting.

He also directed that the telemedicine system should be implemented as well and that awareness programs should be conducted in connection with Omicron, the release said.

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi: Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya is scheduled to chair a virtual meeting with the health ministers of five states and a union territory on Monday (January 10, 2022) to review the COVID-19 situation amid an exponential rise in the cases.

According to a PTI report, the COVID-19 review meeting will be attended by the health ministers of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.

Earlier, on Sunday, Prime minister Narendra Modi chaired a high-level meeting to review the COVID-19 pandemic situation in the country, ongoing preparedness of health infrastructure and logistics, status of the vaccination campaign in the country and the public health implications of the new COVID-19 variant Omicron.

The meeting was attended by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Bharati Pravin Pawar, Member (Health) NITI Aayog Dr VK Paul, Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, Home Secretary AK Bhalla, Secretary (MoHFW) and Secretary (Pharmaceuticals) Rajesh Bhushan, Secretary (Biotechnology) Dr Rajesh Gokhale, DG ICMR Dr Balram Bhargava, CEO of National Health Authority RS Sharma, along with other senior officials.

PM Modis review meeting comes as the country reported more than 1.5 lakh new COVID-19 cases on Sunday and the case tally of the Omicron variant of the virus reached 3,623 in the country. According to the data released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Sunday, India reported 1,59,632 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the daily positivity rate in the country to 10.21 per cent.

Of 3,623 Omicron cases, Maharashtra tops the chart with 1,009 cases, followed by Delhi (513) and Karnataka (441).

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New Delhi: Barring a handful of Sikh leaders and one prominent Sikh body, Prime Minister Narendra Modis announcement to observe December 26 as VeerBaal Diwas is being widely appreciated as a measure to win the hearts of Sikhs and officially give tributes to Sahibzadas by any Indian PM.

Meanwhile, Damdami Taksal, a Sikh hardliner body, which was once headed by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, has not only hailed Modi for his gesture but also lauded him for being the first Prime Minister ever in the history of India to have fulfilled his duty.

It is Modis gesture to make the world know about the momentous courage shown by Sahibzadasto the world which none of the government in Indias past 325 years of history has done so, said the head of Damdami Taksal Baba Harnam Singh Khalsa while talking to Zee News on Monday.

On the other hand, Shiromani Akali Dal (B) backed Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) has tried to undermine the significance of the announcement made by PM Modi claiming that the announcement was neither endorsed by the Panth nor it was recommended by the Sikh high priests.

Shiromani Akali Dal (Delhi) president Parmjit Singh Sarna said We welcome the state recognition of Shaheedi of Baba Zorawar Singh and Baba Fateh Singh but at the same time we call upon Modi government to name the day as Shahibzade Diwas or Baba Zorawwar/Baba Fateh Singh Diwas.

"Every child of the country will be aware of the bravery and martyrdom of four Sahibzads," he added.

Another former president of DSGMC Manjit Singh GK opined that there wasnt any ill will behind declaring the December 26 as Veer Baal Diwas since PM might not be aware of the Maryada (Sikh code of religious conduct) but, he said, it was the duty of BJPs Sikh leadership to have told the Modi. However, he said the name could still be changed.

Reacting to the PMs announcement president of Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee(DSGMC) Manjinder Singh Sirsa I heartily welcome the decision to observe "Veer Bal Day" every year on December 26.

"The dignity of Sikh history will reach door to door, said SGPC president Harjinder Singh Dhami while appealing to the acting Jathedar of Akal Takht Giani Harpreet Singh to take the lead on this matter of recognition of the martyrdom day of younger Sahibzadas as 'Veer BaalDiwas' by PM Modi.

Panthic traditions, beliefs, and Sikh concerns are very unique and incomparable, therefore, any decision related to them should be taken on the orders from Akal Takht," said Dhami.

At the same time, he said that paying homage to the Gurus may have come out of a sense of respect by PM but it cannot be considered acceptable by the Panth (Sikh community).

It was on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Sikhks tenth master Guru Gobind Singh that Modi had announced to observe December 26 as Veer Baal Diwas as a tribute to the exemplary courage shown by Sahibzadas and their quest for justice.

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New Delhi: The national capital is witnessing an unprecedented surge in the COVID-19 cases. This wave of COVID-19 is affecting almost everyone, especially those who are deployed on the frontline like healthcare workers and Police personnel.

The Delhi Police officials on Monday (January 10, 2022) morning said that over 300 Delhi Police personnel, including the Public Relations Officer (PRO) & Additional Commissioner Chinmoy Biswal, test positive for coronavirus.

Over 300 Delhi Police personnel, including the Public Relations Officer (PRO) & Additional Commissioner Chinmoy Biswal, test COVID-19 positive, said Delhi Police.

Over 300 Delhi Police personnel, including the Public Relations Officer (PRO) & Additional Commissioner Chinmoy Biswal, test #COVID19 positive: Delhi Police pic.twitter.com/prWLsV7OyI  ANI (@ANI) January 10, 2022

The overall strength of the Delhi Police is over 80,000. Recently, Delhi Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana had issued a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for preventing the spread of the coronavirus among police personnel.

According to the SOP, all police personnel should wear face-masks, maintain social distancing and practise proper hand hygiene while performing their duties. All police personnel and eligible family members who have not been vaccinated may be motivated to complete the vaccination process.

Meanwhile, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) is scheduled to meet today to discuss further restrictions, including 'total curfew', under the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP). The agenda of the meeting includes a review of the COVID-19 situation and preparation in the wake of rising Omicron cases in Delhi.

Earlier, on Sunday, Delhi reported 22,751 cases, 12 per cent higher than yesterday's number (20,181). The positivity rate stood at 23.53 percent. The city also reported 17 deaths, most Covid deaths in a day since June 16 last year.

(With agency inputs)

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New Delhi: In the wake of the rapidly rising daily COVID-19 cases, the Andhra Pradesh government on Monday (January 10) took cognizance of the developing pandemic situation and equipped public hospitals for any future exigencies.

144 Oxygen plants

Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy on Monday inaugurated 144 Pressure Swing Absorption (PSA) Oxygen Plants, in virtual mode. The oxygen plants have been set up at various government hospitals across the state.

Speaking on the occasion, the chief minister said that the government has been taking all measures to contain coronavirus ahead of the third wave and as part of it, 144 oxygen plants have been set up in government hospitals at a cost of Rs 426 crore.

Subsidy to private hospitals

Apart from equipping government hospitals with oxygen, the government will also provide a 30% subsidy to private hospitals with over 100-bed capacity to set up an oxygen plant.

The CM said that steps were taken to achieve self-sufficiency of oxygen, as the entire country faced a severe shortage of oxygen during the second wave.

Additional medical facilities

The Andhra Pradesh government had also purchased 25 oxygen cryogenic ISO containers for transporting Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO), along with 74 LMO tanks.

Additionally, Oxygen pipelines were set up to 24,419 beds in various government hospitals at a cost of Rs 90 crore and Pediatric Care Units with 20 beds have been set up at community health centres.

Besides that 20 state-of-the-art VRDL labs have been set up in the state, increasing the testing capacity from zero to one lakh tests per day.

Reddy also inspected 20 types of advanced medical equipment brought by the Medical and Health Department and showcased them at the camp office.

Meanwhile, catalysed by the Omicron variant of coronavirus, India on Monday recorded 1,79,723 fresh COVID-19 cases, pushing the active caseload to 7,23,619. The daily positivity rate stood at 13.29 per cent, while 146 deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours.

(With IANS inputs)

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently sent 100 pairs of jute footwear for those working at the Kashi Vishwanath Dham in his parliamentary constituency Varanasi.

The Prime Minister made the heart-warming gesture after he found out that most people working at the Kashi Vishwanath Dham performed their duty bare-footed because it is forbidden to wear footwear made with leather or rubber in the temple premises.

"He immediately got 100 pairs of jute footwear procured and sent over to Kashi Vishwanath Dham so that those performing their duties dont have to stay bare-footed in the chilling cold," a government source said.

The jute footwear was sent for priests, people performing seva, security guards, sanitation workers and others.

"Needless to say, the people working at Kashi Vishwanath Dham were very happy. This is yet another example of PMs attention to minute details and his concern for the poor," the government source added.

This is noteworthy that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last month inaugurated phase 1 of the Kashi Vishwanath Dham project in Varanasi.

Behind the success of the Shri Kashi Vishwanath Dham project is the hardwork of countless individuals. During todays programme I had the opportunity to honour them and have lunch with them. My Pranams to these proud children of Bharat Mata! pic.twitter.com/iclAG9bmAR  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 13, 2021

#WATCH | Varanasi: After inaugurating Kashi Vishwanath Corridor, PM Narendra Modi starts his address with the chant of 'Har Har Mahadev' (Source: DD) pic.twitter.com/JlrDIF9adC  ANI UP/Uttarakhand (@ANINewsUP) December 13, 2021

Constructed at a cost of around Rs 339 crores, the Shri Kashi Vishwanath Dham project is known to be Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dream project. He had laid the foundation stone for the project in March 2019.

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New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday refused to interfere with an order passed by the Delhi High Court on a plea raising the issue of alleged re-use of expired medicines by erasing original manufacturing details and re-stamping them, saying it was a 'correct order'.

In its February 27, 2020 order, the high court had refused to entertain the petition observing it appeared that there were sufficient provisions for the manner of labelling of medicines/drugs.

The high court, while disposing of the plea, had also said that liberty is reserved with the petitioner to move appropriate proceedings before the appropriate forum for alleged breach of concerned rules of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945 with proper averments, allegations and annexures.

The plea challenging the high court's order came up for hearing before a bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and J K Maheshwari.

Advocate Amit Sahni, who had filed the petition, told the apex court that he had initially filed a representation to the authority concerned on the issue and had thereafter filed a petition in the high court.

He said one of the prayers in his plea filed before the high court was to direct the concerned authorities to take appropriate measures for "replacing the existing mechanism of stamping the strip of medicine with other method viz printing etc so as to avoid or minimize the re-use of expired medicine by stamping afresh with new expiry date after erasing existing manufacturing date/expiry date/price etc".

"If there is something, you have to lodge a complaint," the bench observed, adding, "All the provisions are there." Sahni argued that there are provisions but the authorities are not enforcing them to stop this.

The apex court observed if the authorities are not enforcing the provisions in a particular case, then the petitioner can come and challenge the same. "It's a waste of judicial time," the bench orally observed, adding, "Sorry. It is a correct order".

The bench said the high court has "very rightly" said that the petitioner may approach the concerned authorities in respect of any particular manufacturer or a specific person for alleged breach of rules. "We find no grounds to interfere with the judgement and order of the Delhi High Court impugned in this SLP (special leave petition)," the bench said.

"As held by the high court, as and when any breach is pointed out with specific details, action might be initiated," it said.

In his plea filed in the apex court, Sahni said the matter involves an "extremely sensitive issue" pertaining to non-compliance of Rule 96 of the Drug and Cosmetics Rules 1945, enacted under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940, providing for the manner of labelling with indelible ink in a conspicuous manner.

The plea alleged that the authorities concerned "do not take appropriate measures to enforce compliance of aforesaid rule and most of the pharmaceutical companies are labelling drugs with a stamp (generally blue colour), which can easily be removed by alcohol-based solution viz, aftershave lotion, nail paint remover etc".

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New Delhi: The Supreme Court Monday (January 10) agreed to hear a PIL seeking a direction to ensure investigation and action against those who made hate speeches during two separate events held recently at 'Dharam Sansad' in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, and in the national capital.

A bench comprising Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli took note of the submissions of senior advocate Kapil Sibal that no action has been taken against those who made the hate speeches despite the registration of FIR by the Uttarakhand police.

I have moved this PIL in respect of what happened in Dharam Sansad in Haridwar on December 17 and 19 (last year). We are living in difficult times where slogan in country has changed from Satyamev Jayate' to Shastramev Jayate, Sibal said.

All right, we will take up the matter, the CJI said, asking whether some inquiries were on. The FIR has been filed but no arrests have been made, the senior lawyer said, adding that no action would be possible without the intervention of this court.

The petition, filed by journalist Qurban Ali and former Patna High Court Judge and senior advocate Anjana Prakash, have sought a direction for an independent, credible and impartial investigation by an SIT into the incidents of hate speeches against the Muslim community.

The plea, which specifically referred to the hate speeches delivered between the 17th & 19th of December 2021 at Haridwar and Delhi, has also sought compliance of the apex court's guidelines to deal with such speeches.

One event was organised in Haridwar by one Yati Narsinghanand and the other in Delhi by 'Hindu Yuva Vahini' allegedly calling for the genocide of members of a community.

The Uttarakhand police have filed the FIR on December 23, 2021 under various provisions of the IPC against some persons including Wasim Rizvi, Sant Dharamdas Maharaj, Sadhvi Annapoorna alias Pooja Shakun Pandey, Yati Narsinghanand and Sagar Sindhu Maharaj.

A similar complaint has been filed with Delhi Police for the second event organised in the national capital.

The plea said no effective steps have been taken by Uttarakhand and Delhi police.

Till date no FIR has been lodged by the Delhi Police despite calls for ethnic cleansing at the event organised here, it said.

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Srinagar: Two local terrorists, associated with terror outfit Al-Badar, were killed by security forces in Kulgam district on Monday early morning. This was the 7th encounter of January 2022, and so far the forces have managed to kill as many as 13 terrorists.

The encounter started between security forces and terrorists in Hasanpora village of Kulgam district in South Kashmir on Sunday. Notably, this is the 7th encounter in the month of January.

On Sunday, a police officer confirmed the exchange of fire and said, Encounter has started at Hasanpora village area of Kulgam. Police and security forces are on the job," adding that the two terrorists are believed to be trapped."

The police officer further said that a joint team of Police, Army and CRPF launched a cordon and search operation in Husainpora after having specific input about the presence of terrorists in the area. As the search team cordoned the suspected spot, an exchange of fire began which triggered an encounter, he added.

Earlier in 6 encounters security forces have managed to kill 11 terrorists among them 6 were Pakistani nationals. The security forces have also recovered huge arms and ammunition, including 2 M4 American made rifles and 2AK 56 and 2AK 47 rifles.

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Geneva: Senior US and Russian officials launched special talks on Monday (January 10) on strategic stability, part of a flurry of diplomatic activity in Europe this week aimed at defusing tensions over a Russian military buildup on the border with Ukraine, though no major breakthrough was immediately in sight.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and his delegation arrived under Swiss police escort at the US diplomatic mission in Geneva for face-to-face talks with Wendy Sherman, the US deputy secretary of state, and her team.

The meeting is part of Strategic Security Dialogue talks on arms control and other broad issues launched by Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin during a June summit in the Swiss city.

After an informal working dinner on Sunday (January 9), Ryabkov predicted difficult talks in Geneva that are to be followed by a NATO-Russia meeting in Brussels on Wednesday and a meeting Thursday in Vienna of the multilateral Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Moscow has sought to wrest a string of concessions from the US and its Western allies, including guarantees that NATO will no longer expand eastward into former Soviet states like Ukraine, along whose border Russia has amassed an estimated 100,000 troops in steps that have raised concerns about a possible military intervention there.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said during Sunday's dinner Sherman stressed the United States' commitment to the international principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the freedom of sovereign nations to choose their own alliances, a reference to Ukraine and its aspirations of joining NATO. Many analysts say any such accession would be years away at best.

Sherman affirmed that the United States would welcome genuine progress through diplomacy, Price said.

The US has played down hopes of significant progress this week and said some demands like a possible halt to NATO expansion go against countries' sovereign rights to set up their own security arrangements, and are thus non-negotiable.

But US officials have expressed openness to other ideas, like curtailing possible future deployments of offensive missiles in Ukraine and putting limits on American and NATO military exercises in Eastern Europe if Russia is willing to back off on Ukraine.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said bluntly Sunday that he doesn't expect any breakthroughs in the coming week. Instead, he said a more likely positive outcome would be an agreement to de-escalate tensions in the short term and return to talks at an appropriate time in the future. But the US will have to see a de-escalation for there to be actual progress.

It's very hard to see that happening when there's an ongoing escalation, when Russia has a gun to the head of Ukraine with 100,000 troops near its borders, the possibility of doubling that on very short order, Blinken said on ABC's This Week NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also sought to play down expectations.

I don't think that we can expect that these meetings will solve all the issues," he told reporters in Brussels on Monday after talks with Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraine's deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration.

"What we are hoping for is that we can agree on a way forward, that we can agree on a series of meetings, that we can agree on a process.

Speaking to reporters during a visit to Rome, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said dialogue offered the only way out of the crisis.

At the same time, it's equally clear that a renewed breach of Ukrainian sovereignty by Russia would have grave consequences, she said.

Russia has said it wants the issue resolved this month, but NATO is wary that Putin might be looking for a pretext, such as a negotiating failure, to launch an invasion.

The United States, which has emphasised that Ukraine's government and those of other European countries need to be included in the discussions, plans to discuss some bilateral issues in Geneva ?but will not discuss European security without our European allies and partners,? Price said Sunday.

Russia was coming into the talks seeking a clearer understanding of the US position, and cited signals from Washington that some of the Russian proposals can be discussed, Ryabkov said, according to state news agency Tass on Sunday.

He laid out Russia's three demands: no further NATO expansion, no missiles on Russia's borders, and for NATO no longer to have military exercises, intelligence operations or infrastructure outside of its 1997 borders.

The Russian side came here with a clear position that contains a number of elements that, to my mind, are understandable and have been so clearly formulated including at a high level that deviating from our approaches simply is not possible, Ryabkov told reporters Sunday.

Asked whether Russia was ready for compromise, he said: "The Americans should get ready to reach a compromise."

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Leh: Winter tourism activities in Ladakh, including the Chadar trek and the snow leopard sighting expedition, have been suspended in the wake of a surge in COVID-19 cases in the union territory, officials said on Sunday.

Ladakh has recorded over 1,500 new COVID-19 cases and 13 deaths linked to the disease since November last year, with a majority of the infections being reported in Leh. In January, the union territory has so far recorded 288 cases and two deaths.

Ladakh's COVID-19 caseload increased to 22,472 on Sunday as 59 more people tested positive for the virus, while the death toll stood at 221, 163 in Leh and 58 in Kargil.

District Magistrate, Leh, Shrikant Balasaheb Suse has ordered the suspension of the Chadar trek 2022, snow leopard sighting expedition and other winter tourism activities in the district till further orders in view of the COVID-19 surge, the officials said.

Chadar Trek

The Chadar Trek or the Zanskar Gorge is a winter trail in the Zanskar area of Leh. Traditionally, the only means of travel in the area during the harsh winter months, the trail has become popular with adventure tourists over the years.

The officials said the district administration suspended the tourism activities after consultations with all stakeholders.

They said Suse, who is also the chairperson of the district disaster management authority, has warned of punitive action if the directions are violated.

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New Delhi: Bharat Heavy Electrical Limited (BHEL) is looking to recruit candidates for the position of experienced Engineers and Supervisors in Civil discipline. The company has invited applications from eligible candidates to fill 36 posts in the company.

Candidates need to note that the candidates who will be chosen through this recruitment drive will be engaged purely on a Fixed Tenure Appointment basis at their Project Sites in India.

The interested and eligible candidates can apply for this recruitment drive at the official website of BHEL- pswr.bhel.com. The last date to apply for the posts is January 11, 2022.

BHEL Recruitment 2022: Important Dates

Online submission of applications started on December 28, 2021

Closing of online submission of applications on January 11, 2022

Last date for sending the print-out of the application form at BHEL - PSWR, Nagpur- January 14, 2022

BHEL Recruitment 2022: Vacancy Details

Engineer -10

Supervisor -26

BHEL Recruitment 2022: Salary Details

Engineers - Rs 71,040/- Per month

Supervisor -Rs 39,670/- Per month

BHEL Recruitment 2022: Selection Process

Candidates can check the education qualification and other details of the recruitment drive here- Detailed Notification

BHEL Recruitment 2022: Age Limit

Candidates should be below 40 years of age (as on 1/1/2022).

BHEL Recruitment 2022: How to Apply

The submission of applications will be ONLINE on the official website https://pswr.bhel.com or https://careers.bhel.in. Additionally, the candidates need to send the duly filled-in application form downloaded from the website, along with Demand Draft or QR Code to Sr. Deputy General Manager (HR) BHEL, Power Sector Western Region, Shree Mohini Complex, 345 Kingsway, Nagpur - 440001.

BHEL Recruitment 2022: Online Application Link

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DSSSB Recruitment 2022: The registration process for over 690 vacancies announced by the Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board (DSSSB) has started on Monday (January 10, 2022).

According to the notification released on DSSSB's official website (https://dsssb.delhi.gov.in), the 2022 recruitment drive is being held to recruit Junior Engineers and Section Officers in various Departments of Government of NCT of Delhi, autonomous and local bodies.

Candidates interested in the 2022 DSSSB Recruitment drive can scroll down to know all the important details.

DSSSB Recruitment 2022: Number of vacancies?

Junior Engineers and Section Officers (ELECTRICAL): 116 (40 for UR, 21 for ESW, 34 for OBC, 14 for SC, 07 for ST candidates)

116 (40 for UR, 21 for ESW, 34 for OBC, 14 for SC, 07 for ST candidates) Junior Engineers and Section Officers (CIVIL): 575 (270 for UR, 77 for ESW, 116 for OBC, 85 for SC, 27 for ST candidates)

DSSSB Recruitment 2022: Pay scale?

Rs 9300-34800 + Grade Pay 4800 Group C and Group B.

DSSSB Recruitment 2022: How to apply?

Candidates need to register themselves on DSSSBs portal at https://dsssbonline.nic.in. The user ID and password generated after registration can then be used to log in and apply for the posts notified by DSSSB. Please note that only ONLINE applications will be accepted and applications received by post/by hand/by mail etc will be rejected.

DSSSB Recruitment 2022: Application fee?

Interested candidates need to pay an application fee of Rs 100. Women, SC, ST, PWD and ex-servicemen candidates are exempted.

DSSSB Recruitment 2022: Last date?

The closing date of the application is February 9, 2022 (11.59 pm).

Interested candidates are advised to keep visiting DSSSB's official website for the latest updates.

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New Delhi: The Punjab National Bank is looking to recruit eligible individuals for Chief Risk Officer and other posts. The bank is looking to fill up 6 vacancies in the organization.

The candidates who want to apply for the posts can do so through the official site of PNB on pnbindia.in. It may be noted that the last date to apply for the posts is January 10, 2022.

PNB Recruitment 2022: Vacancy Details

Chief Risk Officer: 1 Post

Chief Compliance Officer: 1 Post

Chief Financial Officer: 1 Post

Chief Technical Officer: 1 Post

Chief Information Security Officer: 1 Post

Chief Digital Officer: 1 Post

PNB Recruitment 2022: Eligibility Criteria

Candidates can check the educational qualification and age limit here- Detailed Notification

PNB Recruitment 2022: Selection Process

The candidates will be selected on the basis of preliminary screening and shortlisting will be done based upon the eligibility criteria, candidate's qualifications, suitability/ experience, etc. submitted with the applications.

PNB Recruitment 2022: Other Details

The interested candidates will be needed to send the filled-up application form to General Manager-HRMD, Punjab National Bank, Human Resource Division, 1st Floor, West Wing, Corporate Officer, Sector-10, Dwarka, New Delhi- 110075.

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A pushback tug caught fire at Mumbai airport earlier today while on duty to push back a Mumbai-Jamnagar flight operated by Air India. The fire was brought under control by the Fire Department in under 10 minutes, mentioned Mumbai Airport's PRO.

#WATCH A pushback tug caught fire at #Mumbai airport earlier today; fire under control now. Airport operations normal. pic.twitter.com/OEeOwAjjRG  ANI (@ANI) January 10, 2022

All 85 passengers on board the aircraft are safe and the airport operations have normalized. Mumbai airport PRO says, "The Mumbai-Jamnagar flight has 85 passengers onboard. The fire was brought under control within 10 minutes. There is no harm to any person. All operations are normal."

There was no damage to the AI's A320 aircraft or any human casualties, though a potential major hazard was averted with the prompt response, and all operations at the CSMIA are continuing normally.

In a freak accident, a pushback truck caught fire when it was preparing to tow out an aircraft at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA), officials said here on Monday.

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New Delhi: The Centre has agreed to remove the cap on Composite Transfer Grant (CTG) in cases where the retiring employee settles at the last station of duty or within 20 kilometres of it, which is great news for thousands of government employees.

Until now, the Centre has paid one-third of the CTG to employees who settle at the last duty station or within 20 kilometres of the last duty station.

The Centre has now decided to eliminate the criterion of being 20 kilometres from the last duty station. However, in order to be eligible for the grant, you must relocate. According to the revised criteria, government employees are eligible for full CTG (i.e., 80% of the previous month's basic pay) to settle down in their last station of duty or any other location after retirement.

For the uninitiated, the CTG is a one-time award issued by the federal government to assist retired employees in relocating from their previous duty station.

The CTG is currently credited to the Central government at 80% of the last drawn salary's basic wage. Employees moving in or out of the island regions of Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep after retirement, on the other hand, receive 100% of their basic wage.

"It has been decided that for the purpose of Composite Transfer Grant in r/o Central Government employee who wishes to settle down at the last station of duty or other than last station of duty after retirement, the condition of 20 km. from the last station of duty is done away with subject to the condition that change of residence is actually involved," the Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, said in a notification.

"Full CTG would be admissible to settle down at the last station of duty or other than the last station of duty following retirement, i.e. at the rate of 80 percent of the last month's basic salary," the ministry's memorandum states.

How to claim CTG

To be eligible for CTG, a government employee must submit to the Central government a self-declaration certificate regarding a change of residence in the approved format, and the grant will be provided as a result.

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New Delhi: The finance ministry data has revealed that deposits in bank accounts opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) have crossed the Rs 1.5 lakh crore mark.

As per the latest finance ministry data, the total balance in over 44.23 crore Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) accounts was at Rs 1,50,939.36 crore at December end, 2021.

Benefits like scholarships, subsidies, pensions, and COVID relief funds are credited to the bank accounts, including Jan Dhan Accounts, through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT).

The PMJDY was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day address on August 15, 2014, and was simultaneously launched on August 28, 2014, to foster financial inclusion.

This national mission was launched to ensure people have access to financial services, namely, banking, remittance, credit, insurance, pension in an affordable manner.

Know which banks have how many accounts

As per the finance ministry data, of the total 44.23 crore accounts, 34.9 crore were with the public sector banks, 8.05 crore with regional rural banks, and the rest 1.28 crore with private sector banks. Also, 31.28 crore PMJDY beneficiaries were issued RuPay debit cards. It may be noted that the number of RuPay cards and their usage has increased over time. As per the data, 29.54 crore Jan Dhan accounts were held in rural and semi-urban bank branches. Nearly 24.61 crore account holders were women as of December 29, 2021. During the first year of the scheme 17.90 crore PMJDY accounts were opened.

Balance required to maintain Jan Dhan accounts

As per the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines, there is no requirement of maintaining minimum balance in Basic Savings Bank Deposit (BSBD) accounts, including Jan Dhan accounts. Depending upon transactions carried out by a Jan Dhan account holder, the balance in any Jan Dhan accounts can vary on a day-to-day basis, and may even become zero on a particular day.

As of December 8, 2021, the total number of zero balance accounts was 3.65 crore, which constituted about 8.3 per cent of the total Jan Dhan accounts, the government had informed Parliament last month.

With PTI Inputs

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New Delhi: In a big shocker, it has been found that 7 lakh farmers in UP may have to return money received under Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme's 10th instalment due to ineligibility of terms and conditions, a newspaper report has said.

As per a report in the Hindustan Times, these 7 lakh farmers are found to be either paying income tax for earnings from other sources or are not eligible to get cash benefit of Rs 2000 per instalment. Under the PM KISAN Scheme, an amount of Rs 6000 per year is released in three 4-monthly instalments of Rs 2000 each directly into the bank accounts of the beneficiaries.

The HT report, quoting officials said that the above mentioned farmers will Such ineligible beneficiaries will still have some window to return the money till the state assembly elections are over. After that, they would start getting notices for returning the money voluntarily or be ready for recovery.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi released 10th instalment of financial benefit under Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme via video conferencing on January 1.

This enabled the transfer of an amount of more than Rs 20,000 crore to more than 10 crore beneficiary farmer families. During the programme, Prime Minister also released equity grant of more than Rs. 14 crore to about 351 Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), which will benefit more than 1.24 lakh farmers. Prime Minister interacted with FPOs during the event. Union Minister Shri Narendra Singh Tomar and Chief Ministers, LGs, Agriculture Ministers and farmers from several states were linked to the event.

The Prime Minister said that PM Kisan Samman Nidhi is a big support for Indias farmers. If we include todays transfer, more than 1.80 lakh crore rupees have been transferred directly to the accounts of the farmers, Modi had said.

Who are eligible to get benefits under the PM-KISAN Scheme?

Under the PM KISAN scheme, an income support of 6,000 per year in three equal instalments is being provided to all land holding farmer families. Definition of family for the scheme is husband, wife and minor children. Hence, if both the husband and the wife applies for PM Kisan, both can't get Rs 6,000 benefit each. The beneficiary amount is for the entire family, hence either of the two has to give up on the amount.

ln the beginning when the PM-KISAN Scheme was launched (February, 2019), its benefits were admissible only to Small & marginal Farmers' families, with combined landholding upto 2 hectare. The Scheme was later on revised in June 2019 and extended to all farmer families irrespective of the size of their landholdings. The Central Government had notified a decision to extend the benefit of Rs 6,000 per year under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme to all 14.5 crore farmers in the country, irrespective of the size of their landholding.

Who are excluded from the PM-KISAN Scheme

All Persons who paid Income Tax in last assessment year are excluded from the PM-KISAN Scheme. Those excluded from the PM-KISAN also include institutional land holders, farmer families holding constitutional posts, serving or retired officers and employees of State or Central government as well as Public Sector Undetakings and Government Autonomous bodies. Professionals like doctors, engineers and lawyers as well as retired pensioners with a monthly pension of over Rs 10,000 and those who paid income tax in the last assessment year are also not eligible for the benefits.

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Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Police has registered a non-bailable case against Malayalam superstar Dileep, his brother Anoop, his brother-in-law Sooraj and other family members. The case was registered following a revelation by a close friend of the actor and Malayalam movie director Balachandra Kumar.

Dileep was arrested in 2017 and lodged in a prison in a case related to a gang sexually assaulting a front-line heroine of South Indian movies and filming the scenes. Police later tracked the gang to Dileep and the actor was arrested in July 2017 and jailed. After two months in jail, he was released on bail and the trial in the case is on.

Balachandra Kumar who has recently fallen out with Dileep had told Police that the actor is in possession of a few clips of the female actor who was sexually assaulted.

On Sunday Deputy SP of Kerala Police Biju Paulose who was the investigating officer lodged a complaint with the Kerala police stating that Balachandra Kumar has deposed that Dileep while watching a YouTube video at his home of former Aluva Rural district police superintendent, A.V. George said that he would do away with the officer as well as other four officers who were responsible for arresting him.

He, according to the deposition of the director, had said that he would cut and remove the right hand of Superintendent of Police Sudarshan who had allegedly assaulted him during police custody. The director also said that one of the accused had told Dileep that for this he will have to spend Rs 1.5 crore for a gang of rowdies who can be engaged for the job.

The Malayalam Superstar, according to Balachandra Kumar also openly said that Kerala DGP, B. Sandhya, ADGP Sreejith, SPs A.V. George and S. Sudarshan, and Dy SP Byju Paulose are on the list of officers who would be attacked and done away with.

Police registered an FIR against Dileep and his relatives and investigations are on.
New Delhi: Five years after she was allegedly abducted and sexually assaulted in Kerala, Malayalam actor Bhavana Menon, on Monday, took to social media to speak about the humiliation she has faced over the years.

"This has not been an easy journey. The journey from being a victim to becoming a survivor. For 5 years now, my name and my identity have been suppressed under the weight of the assault inflicted on me. Though I am not the one who has committed the crime, there have been many attempts to humiliate, silence and isolate me. But at such times I have had some who stepped forward to keep my voice alive," she wrote on Instagram.

The attack on Bhavana reportedly took place in 2017 when she was returning to Kochi after a shooting assignment on the outskirts of the city. Her vehicle was allegedly waylaid, and she was abducted by a criminal gang in a closed van.

On Sunday, the Crime Branch wing of Kerala Police registered a case against actor Dileep and five others for allegedly threatening investigation officers in the sexual assault case of the actress in which he is also an accused.

Bhavana's post came after the particular recent development in the case.

In the post, Bhavana stated that she will not give up and will continue fighting.

"Now when I hear so many voices speak up for me I know that I am not alone in this fight for justice. To see justice prevail, to get wrongdoers punished and to ensure no one else goes through such an ordeal again, I shall continue this journey. For all those who are standing with me - a heartfelt thank you for your love," she concluded.

After seeing Bhavana's post, many social media users and members from the film industry lauded the former for her bravery.

Sharing Bhavana's post on his Instagram account, actor Prithviraj Sukumaran wrote, "courage".

"You know who stands tallest? This lady who has been steadfast in her fight. #BhavanaMenon you're a rockstar. More power to you, lady," a social media user tweeted.

Bhavana is married to producer Naveen.
New Delhi: Actor Varun Sood defends his girlfriend Divya Agarwal after Shamita Shetty mocked her for not even being invited as a contestant in Bigg Boss 15 in the latest Weekend Ka Vaar episode. Divya Agarwal graced the episode as one of the panellists giving her feedback to contestants. She is also the winner of Karan Johar hosted Bigg Boss OTT in which Shamita, Pratik Sehajpal, Nishant Bhat, Raqesh Bapat and Neha Bhasin also participated.

During the episode, speaking about Shamita, Divya said, Agar inka yehi attitude rahega na, yeh agle chaar season aa jayengi na, jeet nahi payengi (If her attitude remains the same, she will not be able to win the show even if she comes for the next four seasons).

To which the former retorted, Tereko toh poocha bhi nahi tha aane ke liye iss ghar ke andar (You werent even offered Bigg Boss 15).

Divya responded, Mereko ana bhi nahi tha, beta (I didnt want to be a part of it).

Shamitas statement did not go down well with Divya Agarwal fans. One of her fan pages asked her boyfriend Varun Sood to comment on the controversy. He responded to it and tweeted, Why should i state the obvious? 1. Why should she compete with people she has already defeated once 2. Her web series started immediately after BB OTT 3. The makers called her and told her that she has already won and they dont want to send her in with people who havent.

Why should i state the obvious?

1. Why should she compete with people she has already defeated once

2. Her web series started immediately after BB OTT

3. The makers called her and told her that she has already won and they dont want to send her in with people who havent.  Varun Sood (@VSood12) January 9, 2022

Divya and Shamita started out as friends on Bigg Boss OTT but later developed irreconcilable differences.
Beijing: China is willing to increase "law enforcement and security" cooperation with neighbouring Kazakhstan and help oppose interference by "external forces", China`s foreign minister said on Monday (January 10), after violent protests in the Central Asian country.

Wang Yi, who is also a state councillor, made the comments in a call to Kazakhstan`s foreign minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

"Recent turmoil in Kazakhstan shows that the situation in Central Asia is still facing severe challenges, and it once again proves that some external forces do not want peace and tranquillity in our region," the ministry quoted Wang telling Tileuberdi.

Government buildings in Kazakhstan were briefly captured or torched in several cities last week as initially peaceful protests against fuel price increases turned violent. Troops were ordered to shoot to kill to put down a countrywide uprising.

Authorities have blamed the violence on "extremists", including foreign-trained Islamist militants, for the violence.

Authorities also asked a Russian-led military bloc to send in troops, who the government says have been deployed to guard strategic sites, a move questioned by United States.

Experts say China worries instability in its neighbour could threaten energy imports and Belt-and-Road projects there, and security in its western Xinjiang region, which shares a 1,770-km (1,110-mile) border with Kazakhstan. China was willing to "jointly oppose the interference and infiltration of any external forces", said Wang.

China`s President Xi Jinping on Friday told Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev that China resolutely opposed any foreign force that destabilises Kazakhstan and engineers a "colour revolution", Chinese state television said.

China and Russia believe "colour revolutions" are uprisings instigated by the United States and other Western powers to achieve regime change.

"China does not want to see an expansion of US influence in Kazakhstan and Central Asia as a result of this unrest," said Li Mingjiang, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

"If a colour revolution in a nearby country leads to political democratisation, it could encourage the liberal-leaning intellectual elite in China to try something similar," he said.

Since the Vietnam War in the 1960s, China traditionally does not send troops to other countries, citing its policy of non-interference, except under the United Nations Peacekeeping banner.

Last month it sent six police officers to the Solomon Islands to help train the police force and quell the riots sparked by the country`s 2019 switch of diplomatic relations to Beijing from Taiwan.

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Woburn, MA (01801)

Today

Periods of rain. Low around 45F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Low around 45F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
South Africa: Looted funds to be recovered by whatever means necessary - SAA

The interim board of South African Airways (SAA) says it will implement all of the recommendations of the State Capture report and subsequently go after those who embezzled any monies from the airline.

The first tranche of the report  which was released and handed over to President Cyril Ramaphosa last week  deals extensively with alleged corruption, fraud and looting at the State-owned airline and its subsidiaries, SAA Technical (SAAT) and SA Express.

[The] Board commits that the findings and recommendations of the Commission will be immediately implemented throughout all levels of the company. This, it is believed, will foster a culture of transparency, accountability and ethical conduct within the SAA group.

In the meantime, the Board is looking forward to the finalisation of Part III of the report, which will include a summary of the Report as a whole, the board said in a statement.

The interim board said it will take whatever actions necessary to recover the assets and money lost from SAA as a result of the alleged corruption and fraud laid out in the report.

Guided by appropriate legal counsel, the Board will cooperate with, and support law enforcement agencies in their pursuit of prosecutions, and where necessary, will institute internal investigations and disciplinary processes with the aim of cleaning the company of all vestiges of its shameful past as exposed in the Commission Report.

The national carriers board reiterated its commitment to turn the ailing airline around.

This Board and its Executive Management is constituted by professionals who were specifically selected on the basis of their non-association with the past of SAA. The principle focus of the board of SAA is to guide, advise and oversee the strategic management of the carrier as it emerges out of business rescue towards a sustainable and profitable future.

This is underpinned by a driving ethos of safety and professionalism that always puts the customer first. This is also being done as SAA prepares to play a vital role ahead of the formal acquisition by a strategic equity partner, the statement read.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-01-10. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Clearly, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) is concerned about his safety. Per his public Federal Election Commission filings, Sen. Warnock spent a remarkable $600,000 on security services during the past year alone.

Your security, by contrast? Well, he doesnt seem to think you deserve any.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with Warnock spending money on self-protection. But there is a lot wrong with his doing so while attempting to deny the same opportunity to others. Back in 2014, when the state of Georgia expanded the number of places in which law-abiding Georgians were permitted to carry concealed weapons, Warnock opposed the measure. Think about all the crazy people you bump into just on the routine, every week, he said. On your job, on the street, some of them in church ... imagine all them people with guns. More recently, Warnock has shown support for post-purchase waiting periods. He used a mass murder at a beauty salon as an excuse to stop Georgians from taking possession of their firearms on the same day as they buy them.

Perhaps Warnock has forgotten that most people in America cannot afford to spend $600,000 per year on personal protection? Perhaps he has forgotten, too, that the criminals he himself fears are inclined neither to observe No Firearms signs, nor to wait patiently while their potential victims arm themselves. Clearly, Warnocks guards do not ask him to wait for three or more days when he calls up to engage their services, nor are they obliged to leave their weapons at the door when he goes somewhere unexpected. It is not too much to ask that Americans who are in charge of their own protection be permitted the same courtesies.

Alas, all too often, American politicians seem to believe that they are more important than everyone else. Pushing back against her critics recently, anti-police Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) asked CBS News whether, instead of having a security detail, they would rather I die? You would rather me die? she continued. Is that what you want to see? You want to see me die? You know because that could be the alternative. But, of course, nobody wants to see Cori Bush die, and nobody begrudges her the right to spend $130,000 on private security every six months, either. What they object to is that Bush seems so completely unconcerned about the fate of those who are less privileged than herself. Concluding her rant, Bush said, Suck it up  defunding the police has to happen. Or, to put it another way: She thinks she has a right to private security, but you have no right even to the police.

The right to defend your life with the best tool available is hardly a new concept. As early as the sixth century, it was written into the Corpus Juris Civilis that that which someone does for the safety of his body, let it be regarded as having been done legally. Even then, this principle was not reserved solely to emperors, senators or aristocrats, but to everyone, as a condition of their being human.

To listen to the likes of Sen. Warnock and Rep. Bush, one can only conclude that they do not share a commitment to this ideal, but believe instead that there are two groups of people: Those who require and deserve armed protection, and those who do not. Fortunately for us, the U.S. Constitutionto which both figures have taken an oathstrongly disagrees.
Press Release

January 10, 2022 Bong Go calls for continued vigilance and cooperation, says remaining disciplined and getting vaccinated are key to overcome recent surge in COVID-19 cases Senator and Chair of the Senate Committee on Health Christopher "Bong" Go reiterated the importance of getting vaccinated and continued vigilance in combating a threat like COVID-19 amid a surge in infections in the country at the start of the year. "In order to win the war against an unseen enemy, we need discipline and cooperation. Vaccination and continued vigilance are crucial if we want to return to normalcy. Our efforts the past years have already brought us closer to our goal if not for the emergence of new threats, such as the Omicron variant," said Go. The lawmaker appealed to the public to get vaccinated as soon as possible, noting that data shows milder symptoms among those infected who have been vaccinated. "Mas delikado talaga kapag hindi bakunado. Kung mahal ninyo ang inyong pamilya, magpabakuna na po kayo. Libre naman ito galing sa gobyerno. Proteksyon ninyo ito laban sa virus at susi upang malampasan ang pandemya," Go appealed to those who remain unvaccinated. Go emphasized that vaccination works and can protect individuals from the worst effects of the virus. He however warned that a portion of the population is still unvaccinated and if they will be infected, they will be at a higher risk against the virus. "We have many documented cases of those who received their vaccines experiencing only milder symptoms and preventing serious consequences to their health," explained Go. The country has so far received a total of 210.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Around 112.8 million doses have been administered, as of January 7. Some 52.1 million individuals are fully vaccinated while 57.6 million have received their first dose. In addition to this, around 3.1 million individuals have obtained their booster shots. He also pointed out that continued vigilance and discipline from all are critical in effectively stopping community transmissions. "Kung gusto natin bumalik sa normal na pamumuhay at talunin ang kalaban na hindi natin nakikita, kailangan ang disiplina at kooperasyon ng lahat," Go stressed. Go specifically encouraged everyone to strictly observe the mandated health and safety protocols, such as proper mask use, social distancing, frequent hand washing, and staying at home whenever possible. "Huwag natin sayangin ang mga pinaghirapan natin nung nakaraang taon. We continue to ask for your cooperation and understanding. As we course through this difficult time, we must all stand together," appealed Go. The senator's call comes after the Department of Health on January 9 logged 28,707 new infections, its highest tally since the pandemic began. The majority of new infections are concentrated in the National Capital Region (59%), Region IV-A (20%) and Region III (10%). Some 35% of the country's intensive care unit beds are in use, while 52% are being utilized in Metro Manila. "Over the past week, we have seen a consistent rise in the number of new COVID-19 cases ... Whether this is because of the more transmissible Omicron variant, the holiday surge or combination of many other factors has yet to be seen," he said. Go assured that the government is working harder to accelerate its vaccination drive and information campaign to curb the sudden increase of infections. On his part, he vowed to pursue initiatives that will strengthen the healthcare system, establish new hospitals, and increase the bed capacity and capabilities of existing healthcare facilities. He continues to push for measures needed to improve the COVID-19 response and facilitate the economy's recovery, while ensuring the country is more prepared for future health emergencies. In 2020, Go had filed Senate Bill No. 2155 which establishes the Virology Science and Technology Institute of the Philippines (VIP). The VIP will enable the country to develop and manufacture its own vaccines against diseases, such as COVID-19. He also filed SBN 2158 in the same year which establishes the Philippine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC, in turn, will serve as the lead agency for developing communicable disease control and prevention initiatives. It will be primarily responsible for controlling the introduction and spread of infectious diseases in the Philippines. "Ibang klaseng giyera ang hinaharap natin ngayon at ang kalaban ay hindi natin nakikita. Kaya kailangan ang disiplina at kooperasyon ng lahat. Nakikiusap ako sa mga kasamahan ko sa gobyerno at sa publiko, we are fighting for survival. Laban ito ng bawat mamamayang Pilipino. Dapat magtulungan at magbayanihan tayo ngayon," said Go. The senator highlighted that the threat of COVID-19, with its many variants, is very real but can be mitigated through a whole of nation approach in order for the country to heal and recover as one. "Let us remain disciplined, follow health protocols, cooperate with the government and become part of the solution. Together, let us all be catalysts of unity and cooperation in order to fully recover and heal as one resilient nation," he ended.
Students at public schools in the southwestern Japanese prefecture of Okinawa have begun attending school on alternate days amid a surge in coronavirus infections.

Oroku High School in the city of Naha separated students into two groups so they can attend classes on alternate days, starting from Friday.

School officials say students study on their own at home by receiving instructions online or watching livestreamed classes.

A teacher says the school had to decide on the move without being fully prepared, as the virus suddenly began to spread. He adds that he wants to do what he can do so that students can continue learning.

Okinawa's board of education says three junior high schools, 59 high schools, and 21 special needs schools operated by the prefecture have taken similar steps. Club activities have also been suspended at these schools, in principle.

The board says officials of two prefectural schools in the cities of Naha and Ishigaki have tested positive for the virus. The schools have been temporarily closed for two days through Friday to test people who have come into close contact with the infected officials.
11:37 | Urubamba (Cusco region), Jan. 8.





Created on January 8, 1981, the Historic Sanctuary is located in the Machu Picchu district of Urubamba Province (Cusco region). It covers an area of 32,592 ha.

The place is internationally recognized for its impressive Inca archaeological complexes, as well as the archaeological sites and monuments of high historical-cultural value.









Moreover, the sanctuary has an important environmental value, including wooded areas, steep mountains, and snow-capped peaks.





The area lies in a transition zone between the Andean and Amazonian regions and is part of a narrow strip of transition between both ecosystems. In addition, a terrain of abrupt relief and steep slopes predominates.





The Historic Sanctuary is situated in an area of exceptional geographical characteristics ranging from snowy peaks above 6,000 m.a.s.l. to the most humid and hottest area of Urubamba River, which divides the sanctuary in two by forming the Torontoy Canyon under 2,000 m.a.s.l.





In addition to this exceptional natural setting, one can find the one-of-a-kind archaeological jewel of Machu Picchu, which was declared a Mixed World Heritage site (which means both a natural and cultural site) by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on December 9, 1983.





Machu Picchu is Peru's most popular tourist attraction, a World Heritage site, and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.









(END) LZD/RMB/MVB

The Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu, declared a world heritage site by UNESCO and which houses the formidable Inca citadel that is one of the New Seven Wonders of the World , today celebrates 41 years as a natural area protected by the Peruvian State.Published: 1/8/2022
Expresamos nuestra solidaridad con el pueblo y el Gobierno de Colombia por el atentado ocurrido ayer en contra de la Policia en Cali. El Gobierno del Peru condena energicamente todo acto terrorista y reitera su firme compromiso para continuar cooperando en favor de la paz.
?? En vivo | Sigue desde aqui la conferencia de prensa de las ministras del @MTPE_Peru y del @MimpPeru para informar el balance de gestion del 2021 y las perspectivas de sus sectores para este nuevo ano. #Inicio2022 https://t.co/Lm61oHukhB
"Damos un importante paso en el avance de nuestro pais hacia un futuro sostenible con la ampliacion de energias alternativas como la electromovilidad", presidente @PedroCastilloTe durante el lanzamiento de electrolinera de carga rapida para carros electricos.#SiempreConElPueblo pic.twitter.com/dqywQGlxNW
YEREVAN, JANUARY 10, ARMENPRESS. Armenia plans to create a new classification for pomegranate wines  calling it Granatus  due to new Russian regulations impacting exports.

From January 1, only the kind of wine made from grapes can be called wine, and the other fruit wines  for example pomegranate wines  will be classified as Fruit Alcohol Production, and therefore will be sold among cheaper alcoholic drinks. This move created problems for Armenian exporters.

Vine and Wine Foundation of Armenia Director Zaruhi Muradyan sat down with ARMENPRESS over the matter.

Professionally speaking, indeed wine is called the drink that is made from grapes, Muradyan said.

Muradyan says Armenia produces nearly 6 million liters of fruit wine, with 4,7 million liters being exported. This figure is growing every year in the recent years, she said. Moreover, nearly 80% of these exports go to Russia.

Pomegranate wine is made from pure pomegranate in Armenia, and over time this drink has become somewhat of a national drink in Armenia. This is why, Muradyan says, it is inadmissible to consider the Armenian pomegranate to be a non-natural, flavored drink.

Therefore, together with wine producers we are thinking about creating an entirely new category of pomegranate wine, and introducing it into the market with this new category, Muradyan said, admitting that this would take some time.

Before this happens, Armenian fruit wine producers will face problems in exporting to Russia. For example, Russian importers could potentially opt out from working with producers of non-grape wines because sales might drop in their market. Russian consumers are very sensitive to these type of changes, and if fruit wines were to be placed on other shelves with other labels, this might seriously reduce sales, she said.

The International Organization of Vine and Wine is also considering introducing the same changes like the Russian authorities.

And the sooner we think about how to re-position and protect what we have the better. Right now, we can give some temporary solution, negotiate to get permission to continue labeling it the same way for six months or some given period of time, but sooner or later we will face this problem, Muradyan said.

The Gevorkian Winery, for example, is exporting wine to Russia since 2009. It is exporting somewhere between 200,000  250,000 bottles of wine, including 7 types of fruit wine, to Russia alone. And in December last year it carried out exports already with the Fruit Alcoholic Product labeling.

The importing company very well understood that it wouldnt be able to sell it if it said fruit wine on the bottles. Thats why we changed the labels. There are fruit wine producers in Russia who make it from powders and flavors, and thats why their government wants to prevent this, Gevorkian Winery founding director Vahagn Gevorkian said.

Gevorkian says they are working with the Vine and Wine Foundation to ask the government to create an individual category and standard for pomegranate wine, just like cognac and champagne in France.

They will further try to advance this standard in the entire Eurasian Economic Union for confirmation in member states.

After that, Gevorkian said they will push for international confirmation and then develop Granatus as a geographical indication (GI)  meaning only the drink made in Armenia can be called Granatus.

Gevorkian also mentioned that he has information that Armenian government officials have already negotiated with Russian counterparts and achieved a preliminary agreement regarding the pomegranate wine within the framework of the EEU.

Interview by Anna Grigoryan
Executives at some Japanese firms are reacting to the pandemic by adopting more flexible work arrangements.

Those at Panasonic say they will allow their employees the option of scaling down to a 4-day week.

Panasonic President Kusumi Yuki says the aim is to support more diversity in work styles. He says some employees might have side jobs, and others may want to pursue studies. He says he will discuss the change with the firm's labor unions.

Kusumi says Panasonic will encourage more staff to work remotely. He says it will also give them a choice over whether to accept transfers that require moving to different cities without their families.

The government has said it wants companies to adopt an optional four-day working week. It incorporated the idea in its basic policy on economic and fiscal management and reform.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 10, ARMENPRESS. The mission of the peacekeeping forces of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Kazakhstan, which, in fact, is the first real joint response operation in the history of the organization, will significantly raise its international reputation, Alexander Khramchikhin, Deputy Director at the Moscow Institute for Political and Military Analysis, said in an interview to ARMENPRESS.

According to him, Armenia, as a chairing country of the CSTO Collective Security Council, played a decisive role in that process.

Probably, Pashinyan is playing such an active role deliberately to some extent so that it would be very hard to reject Armenias request if a similar situation happens in the future. In other words, he acted very wisely in this case. It was a very smart step by Pashinyan. But first of all, he, of course, has consulted with the CSTO leaders, the military expert said.

According to him, with the peacekeeping mission in Kazakhstan, the CSTO finally started working as a real mechanism of collective security. This will greatly raise CSTOs international reputation, if it acts in that way, he said.

Commenting on the ongoing developments in Kazakhstan, Alexander Khramchikhin said they will eventually end with the pressure of the unrest. Moreover, he believes that the CSTO plays a big role on the matter, despite the fact that the CSTO peacekeepers are not so large in number.

Thats not the important part. The important is that the CSTO is there. And this means that there is no place to escape. And that time the Kazakh law enforcement authorities as well will have to work, he added.

On January 2, protests sparked in several cities of Kazakhstan. In several days, they escalated into mass riots and assaults at the bodies of authority in many cities. Thousands of people were injured, and there were casualties. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev asked the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) for assistance. CSTO peacekeepers have already commenced their mission in Kazakhstan. Armenia sent 100 peacekeepers to Kazakhstan as part of the CSTO mission.

Reporting by Aram Sargsyan
YEREVAN, JANUARY 10, ARMENPRESS. So far, a total of 1216 people in Armenia received a booster shot against COVID-19, the ministry of health said today.

The total number of COVID-19 vaccinations in the country is 1 million 694 thousand 518, of which 952,813 received the first dose, and 740,489  the second dose.

The following vaccinations are available in Armenia: Coronavac (only the second dose), AstraZeneca, Sputnik-V, Sinopharm and Moderna.

Vaccinations are free of charge.
YEREVAN, JANUARY 10, ARMENPRESS. The Kazakh Scat airline is resuming Aktau-Yerevan-Aktau flights, the Embassy of Armenia in Kazakhstan said in a statement.

The Embassy said that the Aktau-Yerevan flight will be carried out today, on January 10, at 18:00-18:20.

On January 2, protests sparked in several cities of Kazakhstan. In several days, they escalated into mass riots and assaults at the bodies of authority in many cities. Thousands of people were injured, and there were casualties. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev asked the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) for assistance. CSTO peacekeepers have already commenced their mission in Kazakhstan. Airlines had to change their flight schedules. Several airlines even canceled their flights of coming days.
STEPANAKERT, JANUARY 10, ARMENPRESS. The Human Rights Defender of the Artsakh Republic Gegham Stepanyan sent a letter to Google, urging not to give in to the Azerbaijani provocations, to ignore the baseless demands presented by Azerbaijan, to refrain from removing the Armenian toponyms and geographical names of Artsakh from the digital maps.

The Ombudsman particularly noted that these efforts of Azerbaijan are another manifestation of Azerbaijan's long-standing policy of depriving the people of Artsakh of their homeland and denying the Armenian identity of Artsakh. He reminded that the aggression unleashed by Azerbaijan against the people of Artsakh in the Fall of 2020, aimed at the seizure of the entire territory of Artsakh and destruction of its people, became the culmination of Azerbaijan's criminal policy.

In order to support its alleged rightfulness of claims over Artsakh, Azerbaijan has been deliberately erasing, destroying, and eradicating any traces of Armenians and Armenian culture and history from every centimeter of the territory under its control.

The true motives behind the request of Azerbaijan to remove Armenian toponyms from maps can be easily defined: Nagorno Karabakh is not just a place name, but a totality of Armenian culture and history. The Armenian toponyms of Artsakh are memories of places, as well as living memories of the people who gave these names to such places. It is well-known that toponyms serve as symbols of regional culture and thus reflect the history, habitat, and environment of a place. Azerbaijans request to remove Armenian toponyms from the maps is nothing more than an attempt to create desired reality on the maps, the Ombudsman said.

In the letter, the Ombudsman presented the regulations of international law, which enshrine the right of peoples to freely use and preserve their place names, to inherit from generations. He stressed that international law does not consider toponyms and geographical names to be the property of states, but considers them to be the intangible heritage of peoples.

Gegham Stepanyan noted that the removal of Armenian toponyms will only condone Azerbaijans gross violations of human rights of the people of Artsakh and support its efforts aimed at legitimization of the results of illegal use of force.

Appreciating Googles human-centered approach to use the Armenian geographical names in its maps, the Ombudsman expressed confidence that the company will reject Azerbaijans continuing attempt to alter maps and engage in ethnic cleansing.




STEPANAKERT, JANUARY 10, ARMENPRESS. A civilian vehicle in Artsakh caught fire after being hit by gunfire from Azerbaijani side, the Ministry of Defense of Artsakh said.

It denied Azerbaijani media reports which accused the Artsakh military in opening fire at Azerbaijani positions. The Artsakh Defense Ministry said these reports are fake news and disinformation.

What actually happened is that the Azerbaijani servicemen, who are deployed in positions adjacent to the village of Karmir Shuka in Martuni region, Artsakh, opened sporadic gunfire at the village, which resulted in a car owned by a civilian which was parked outside a kindergarten catching fire, the Artsakh Defense Ministry said.
YEREVAN, 10 JANUARY, ARMENPRESS. US Presidents National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spoke by phone today with Ibrahim Kalin, Spokesperson and Chief Advisor to the President of Turkey, ARMENPRESS reports Turkish milliyet.com.tr informs.

Jake Sullivan and Ibrahim Kalin discussed issues of political and economic relations, development of defense cooperation, as well as exchanged views on global and regional issues: the crisis in Ukraine, the protests in Kazakhstan, the process of normalization of relations with Armenia, the developments in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Ethiopia.

The details and topics of the joint strategic mechanism agreed between Turkey and the United States were discussed during the conversation.
Wales new childrens commissioner Rocio Cifuentes (Welsh Government/PA)

A woman who fled Chile with her parents as a baby and went on to study at Cambridge University has been named the new childrens commissioner for Wales

Rocio Cifuentes arrived in the country as a one-year-old with her parents, who were political refugees.

Having read social and political science before completing a masters in social research at Swansea University Ms Cifuentes became the chief executive of the Ethnic Minorities and Youth Support Team (EYST).

EYST is Wales leading organisation supporting black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.

She previously worked for the Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Organisations, Swansea Young Single Homelessness Project, Gower College and Swansea University.

The role of childrens commissioner for Wales is an extremely important one  the pandemic has caused huge disruption to the lives of children

First Minister Mark Drakeford

First Minister Mark Drakeford announced the news on Monday and said he was proud Ms Cifuentes was taking over the role.

A cross-party panel of Senedd members recommended Ms Cifuentes for the position.

Mr Drakeford said: The role of childrens commissioner for Wales is an extremely important one  the pandemic has caused huge disruption to the lives of children.

Thats why its so important to continue to have a strong voice to speak up for them and to inform our decision-making.

Paying tribute to the incumbent Sally Holland, he said: From embedding childrens rights in key pieces of legislation, to providing an insight into childrens experiences of the pandemic via the large-scale, internationally renowned Coronavirus and me surveys, Sally Holland has made an impressive and long-lasting contribution to a generation of children in Wales.

Ms Cifuentes, who will take over in April 2022, said: Its an immense honour and privilege to be appointed as the childrens commissioner for Wales.

As the First Minister says, the role of commissioner will be more important now than it ever has been, delivering for the generation of children that have lived through coronavirus.

To all the children and young people of Wales, I make the commitment today to ensure your voice, your views and your future is at the heart of everything we do.
ALBANY  The state is squandering millions of dollars each year by refusing to address the high rate of turnover at several state law enforcement agencies, according to the head of a police union.

Officers from the state park police, the SUNY campus police and the Department of Environmental Conservations police and forest rangers often leave their jobs for municipal police agencies that offer better retirement and compensation packages, said Manny Vilar, president of the Police Benevolent Association of New York State.

To get those officers certified, the state spends about $120,000 in police academy costs for each of them, Vilar said. Some are jumping to other agencies just a couple of years after they complete the training.

They are literally throwing away millions of dollars every year, Vilar said. Our guys are leaving for greener pastures, rightfully so.

The municipal agencies that hire those officers are getting a bargain because the new hires come already trained, he added.

The solution, he believes, is simple: Provide the state officers with a benefit package that allows them to retire at half-pay after 20 years, an arrangement in place at many police agencies throughout the state, including the New York State Police.

To be at full strength, the park police, whose officers work for the state Department of Parks and Recreation, would need 387 officers. It currently has about half that number, Vilar said.

Getting the force back up to full strength would allow it to better protect public safety, the PBA leader said. He cited last months death of a woman who suffered from depression and drove her car from Niagara State Park into the Niagara River, perilously close to the American Falls. Had park officers been nearby, Vilar said, there is a chance that death, ruled a suicide, could have been prevented.

The vacancy total at the SUNY campus police was not immediately available, he said. That number tends to fluctuate, Vilar noted, adding that recruitment efforts are ongoing at the campuses. But the state parks agency has not hired any new police officers since 2019, he said.

The Department of Environment Conservation, meanwhile, has made a strong commitment to filling the approximate 40 police vacancies it has now, Vilar said. But it, too, is impacted by high turnover.

You hire them and then you lose them, Vilar said.

A spokesman for Gov. Kathy Hochuls Division of the Budget, Shams Tarek, did not respond to an inquiry about the states plan to deal with the vacancies and the unions proposal for a 20-year retirement benefit.

In vetoing the 20-year pension bill that had been overwhelmingly approved by both houses of the Legislature, Hochul said that she is aware that for certain groups of state employees ... there is a growing concern about the current level of retirement benefits and its impact on the agencies ability to recruit and retain the best officers.

Hochul said she wants to bring labor and management executives together this year to discuss ways to increase retention of the officers.

New York state must have the best and the brightest, she said.

When the public safety component of Hochuls budget is examined by lawmakers this year, the discussion will include input from another law enforcement labor leader, Thomas Mungeer, president of the New York State Troopers Police Benevolent Association.

Mungeer told CNHI the state police now has about 4,600 troopers but at least 400 more are needed as demands for their services soar.

Our people are on mandated overtime every day, Mungeer said, noting he will request the Hochul administration ensure that State Police gets the authority for two back-to-back academy classes, with 250 trooper recruits in each class.

The other thing we need are cars, Mungeer said. We need more money for patrol vehicles. The troopers are driving cars that are high mileage, and its dangerous. So we need more funding for people and we need more funding for equipment such as vehicles.

Mungeer noted he is pleased Hochul has signaled plans to greatly expand gun violence intelligence operations while also doubling the number of community stabilization units, enabling the troopers to partner with local police to target crime problems specific to local communities.

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Nairobi Police has taken 100 Mahindra Scorpio Single Cab pickup trucks in a lease for its official vehicle fleet.

Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra has tweeted a post sharing the images of a fleet of Mahindra Scorpio SUVs as Nairobi police vehicles. He retweeted another post that says the Nairobi Police Service has been officially handed over 100 units of Mahindra Scorpio Single Cab pickup vehicles.

(Also Read: Mahindra, Tata to strengthen product portfolio, manage chip crisis effectively)

Anand Mahindra's tweet reads Nairobi, Kenya. Were delighted to be a part of the Police Service team. The Beast under the bonnet of the Scorpio is at their service!"

Nairobi, Kenya. Were delighted to be a part of the Police Service team. The Beast under the bonnet of the Scorpio is at their service! https://t.co/yrYlDwYhkw  anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) January 10, 2022

The single cab Mahindra Scorpio pickup truck is claimed as a tough and powerful vehicle with nimble handling. The automaker claims that this pickup truck comes with the capability to conquer all terrains.

The images show these Mahindra Scorpio pickup trucks are painted in police colours. They come painted in deep blue colour with red and yellow stripes running at side profiles. The driver's cabin gets a contrasting white paint, while the loading deck gets a retractable soft cover for carrying people.

With this Mahindra has become the first automaker in Kenya to lease vehicles to any government service of the country. "We're delighted with the acquisition of a new fleet of vehicles. Mahindra is a sturdy vehicle and we look forward to serving the nation in these vehicles," said David Njagi, Chief Transport Officer, National Police Service, while receiving the vehicle fleet.

Mahindra Scorpio is one of the most popular offerings from the Indian auto manufacturer. Scorpio comes available in both SUV and pickup truck guise. The SUV is widely used as a police car in India.

The single cab Mahindra Scorpio pickup truck is powered by a 2.2-litre turbo-diesel mHawk diesel engine paired with a six-speed transmission. The engine churns out 140 PS of power at 3,750 rpm and 320 Nm of torque between 1,500-2,800 rpm. The pickup truck comes available in both 4x2 and 4x4 configurations.

First Published Date:
South Africa: Border post vaccination sites to remain open until 15 January

The Health Department will keep pop-up vaccination sites at border posts open until 15 January 2022.

The border post based vaccination sites will enable people to conveniently vaccinate while waiting in the queue to cross the border, the department said in a statement on Monday.

The Presidency, along with the Departments of Health and Transport, clinical operator Vikelizizwe, have been working together to take vaccination services - through pop-up vaccination sites - to the people during the festive season, targeting people travelling along major routes and cross border.

This campaign started on 23 December 2021 and these designated vaccination sites will continue to provide vaccination service until 15 January 2022 at two of our main border posts, namely, Lebombo border (Mpumalanga/Mozambique) and Ficksburg Border (Free State/Lesotho), the department said.

The department said there is no need to register beforehand and anyone living in the area where these border posts are situated will be able to receive vaccination services, including booster shots, as long as they produce any form of verifiable identity document, passport or birth certificate, especially children between 12 and 17 years old.

The department has reiterated that vaccines remain the most effective weapon against severe illness, hospitalisation and death due to COVID-19 infection.

However, the department said it is also important to continue practising non-pharmaceutical interventions at all times, such as a wearing mask, regular hand washing/sanitising, maintaining social distance and avoiding crowded places without sufficient ventilation.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2022-01-10. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Japanese cities and towns are struggling to safely organize Coming-of-Age ceremonies in the wake of another wave of COVID-19 cases, with many of them holding the upcoming events virtually or in separate groups, if not canceling them.

The nationwide tally of infections hit a four-month high of 8,311 on Saturday, three days before this year's Coming-of-Age Day.

All of Okinawa and parts of Hiroshima and Yamaguchi prefectures, especially affected by the spread of the Omicron variant triggered by infections among U.S. military personnel, will be placed under a quasi-state of emergency through the end of this month from Sunday, and a number of municipalities have hastily decided to cancel or postpone the annual ceremonies.

One of the exceptions is the remote island of Ishigaki in Okinawa, where a ceremony was held on Tuesday for about 430 new adults, who were all required to submit negative PCR test results beforehand.

"After graduating from high school, many leave the island. So the ceremony is an opportunity to have a reunion with friends after a long time and it was nice to see the joy of the new adults," a city official said.

Japanese municipalities hold ceremonies on the second Monday of January for those who turned or will turn 20 by the end of the following March to welcome them into adulthood. Women very often wear colorful kimonos and men formal wear to mark the day, which has been designated as a national holiday.
More and more people relied on online space to check out what their favourite automotive brands were up to in 2021.

With every passing year, the hunt for the perfect car and car brand goes increasingly online and automotive companies, especially in Covid-19 times, have hardly left a stone unturned in increasing digital presence and reach. The year 2021 was no different and scores of potential buyers logged online to check out what car brands have been up to. An annual ranking published by Australia's Compare the Market, has now put out data which shows most-searched car brands in major countries and regions across the world last year.

As per the data released, Hyundai dominates online search among people at large in India. The Koreans have had a solid presence in the online space and is the country's second-largest car maker. Hyundai also had several key announcements and launches in 2021, from Alcazar three-row SUV to the i20 N Line. Models like Creta and Venue remain firm favourites with waiting period spanning several months.

But while Hyundai has been playing strong in several markets outside of India too, the online search for the brand tops rivals in only a handful of other countries - Colombia and Argentina, to be exact.

It is Toyota that dominates the world even when it comes to online searches. It is the most-searched automotive brand in countries like Australia, Russia, Japan, several South American and African countries.

China is the world's largest car and EV market and while there is a close watch on online activities of citizens here, the above-mentioned report finds that it is Tesla that dominates the online search here.

Across the Pacific ocean, Americans and Canadians were mostly searching Ford through their smart devices while Mexicans were searching Nissan.

In the UK and many west European counties, BMW managed to top online interests. BMW was also most searched in South Africa. Audi and Volvo figure only in a handful of west European countries.

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Shanghai (Gasgoo)- HOZON Auto, the Chinese startup owning the EV brand NETA, on Jan. 8 celebrated the birth of its 100,000th mass-produced vehicle, according to a post on the company's WeChat account. It took only 42 months for HOZON Auto to achieve the milestone.



HOZON Auto's 100,000th vehicle roll off production line; photo credit: HOZON Auto



The company said the output of the 100,000th vehicle indicates that HOZON Auto has made substantial progress in such capabilities as design and R&D, technique development, manufacturing, quality control, procurement synergy, as well as operation and management.

By the end of Dec. 2021, HOZON Auto had delivered 95,977 vehicles in total, 69,674 units of which were delivered last year, representing a 362% year-on-year surge. Notably, its monthly deliveries exceeded 10,000 units in both Nov. and Dec. of 2021.



NETA S; photo credit: HOZON Auto



Aside from the blooming sales, HOZON Auto launched the Shanhai platform, its in-house developed full-stack platform for automobile intelligence and safety. The first model riding on the platform will be the NETA S, whose mass-produced version is expected to hit the market at the end of 2022.

As a heavyweight product embodying HOZON Auto's pursuit of digital strength, the NETA S will come with two powertrain solutions: an all-electric system and a range-extended electric system. According to the company, the NETA S will leverage HUAWEI's MDC (Mobile Data Center) platform capable of 200TOPS in computing power and is armed with a slew of sensors including 2 LiDAR units, 5 millimeter-wave radars, 12 ultrasonic radars, 13 cameras, as well as high-precision positioning units. Thanks to those facilities, the NETA S is capable of navigation assistant driving on highways and urban roads, and Level 4 intelligent driving in specific scenarios, such as parking and remote hailing.
Beijing (Gasgoo)- Chinas major automaker, Changan Auto, reported a prominent year with its annual sales volume growing in each aspect in 2021 compared to a year ago.

The automaker sold 178,019 vehicles in December, decreasing 11.26% year on year. In 2021, Changan Auto sold a total of 2,300,530 vehicles, representing a 14.82% increase from a year ago.

The cumulative annual sales volume of the companys wholly-owned brands summed up to 1,754,707 vehicles, rising 16.7% compared to 2020. Meanwhile, with 1,204,203 vehicles sold, the groups wholly-owned passenger vehicle sector managed a 23.08% jump from a year ago.

UNI-T; photo credit: Changan Auto



Specifically, Changan Autos self-developed intelligent vehicle line, the UNI series, sold over 120,000 vehicles in 2021. With over 280,000 vehicles sold, the companys most popular model, the CS75, continued to drive the companys sales.

The automakers jointly-owned brands, namely Changan Mazda and Changan Ford, went through 2021 with different fates.

Changan Mazda, after the merge, sold 6,931 vehicles in December, more than halved from the previous year. For the twelve months in 2021, the combined sales volume of Changan Mazda and former FAW Mazda, amounted to 132,407 vehicles in total, still down 3.57% from what Changan Mazda sold a year ago.

On the other hand, Changan Ford saw an 18.5% year-on-year growth in its December sales, with 36,857 vehicles sold. In 2021, Changan Ford sold 304,682 vehicles cumulatively, indicating a 20.29% surge versus 2020.

Additionally, in 2021, Changan Autos overseas sales volume surpassed 110,000 vehicles in total.
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.

Geely's ZEEKR aims to deliver 70,000 new vehicles in 2022

Geely's premium EV brand ZEEKR eyes annual deliveries of 70,000 new vehicles for the year of 2022, according to a local media outlet. The ZEEKR 001 will be exported to EU market from the early of 2023.

Photo credit: Geely Holding



Desay SV forecasts 54.4%-64.05% YoY growth in 2021 net profit

Chinese automotive supplier Desay SV announced its annual net profit attributable to shareholders in 2021 is forecasted to reach 800 million yuan ($125.52 million) to 850 million yuan ($133.365 million), surging 54.4% to 64.05% year on year.

CATL builds new subsidiary working on R&D of lithium carbonate products

Fengxin CATL Zhicun New Energy Materials Co.,Ltd., a 80/20 joint venture between CATL and Jiangxi Zhicun Lithium Industry Co., Ltd., was incorporated on Jan. 9 in Fengxin County, Yichun city, Jiangxi province. It has a line of businesses including R&D, production, and sales of lithium carbonate products and cathode materials for lithium ion batteries.





Photo credit: CATL



Changan Automobile starts preorder of UNI-V

Changan Automobile has begun preorder of the UNI-V, the first sedan model of the UNI series, with only one variant offered.

New BYD Han EV/DM-i to be unveiled at Auto China 2022

The new BYD Han EV/DM-i versions are expected to make its debut at the Auto China 2022 in Beijing, according to a local media outlet.

Cadillac LYRIQ caught in patent images





Cadillac LYRIQ's patent image; photo credit: MIIT



The patent images of the Cadillac LYRIQ, GM's first Ultium-powered model, were recently exposed by China's MIIT.

NIO, Zhejiang Commercial Group to co-build battery swap stations for expressway rest stops

Chinese EV startup NIO on Jan. 7 entered into a strategic cooperation agreement with Zhejiang Commercial Group Co.,Ltd., a Zhejiang-based state-run company providing trade circulation service, to jointly build battery swap facilities.

XPeng leads China's LiDAR supplier ZVisions' Pre-C investment round

China's auto-grade MEMS LiDAR supplier, ZVision announced that it has completed its Pre-C round of financing, led by XPeng Inc., with hundreds of millions of RMB raised.

China to unveil second batch of FCV demonstration city clusters

The governmental review of China's second batches of fuel cell vehicle (FCV) demonstration cities has already been completed, according to a local media outlet, meaning the city clusters led by Zhengzhou of Henan province and Zhangjiakou of Hebei province will soon join the countrys significant program for boosting the application of FCVs.

Changan Auto 2021 sales volume rises 15% YoY to 2.3 million vehicles

China's major automaker, Changan Auto, reported a prominent year with its annual sales volume growing in each aspect in 2021 compared to a year ago.

Beijing opens up 1,000 km roads for autonomous driving tests

On the fifth session of Beijing's 15th People's Congress, the deputy director-general of Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, Wang Lei, said that Beijing had achieved significant success in its V2X and autonomous driving development.

HOZON Auto sees 100,000th vehicle roll off assembly line

HOZON Auto, the Chinese startup owning the EV brand NETA, on Jan. 8 celebrated the birth of its 100,000th mass-produced vehicle, according to a post on the company's WeChat account. It took only 42 months for HOZON Auto to achieve the milestone.

BAIC BJEV Dec. sales increase threefold YoY

BAIC Bluepark, the holding company of BAIC BJEV, saw its December sales volume quadrupling from a year ago, according to its sales performance report.

CATL launches Shanghai-based future energy research institute

On Jan. 8, CATL inaugurated a Shanghai-based research institute dedicated to future energy source, which will be built in cooperation with Shanghai Jiaotong University, according to a post on the battery giant's WeChat account.

JAC Group overfulfils 2021 annual sales target with BEV sales soaring 169.12% YoY

China's auto group, JAC Group, released its December sales performance, with positive monthly and yearly growth in 2021, overfulfilling its annual sales target.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- On Jan. 8, CATL inaugurated a Shanghai-based research institute dedicated to future energy source, which will be built in cooperation with Shanghai Jiaotong University, according to a post on the battery giant's WeChat account.

CATL inaugurating Shanghai-based future energy research institute; photo credit: CATL



The inauguration came after CATL signed a framework agreement with Shanghai municipal government in last August. As part of the cooperation, the Ningde-headquartered battery maker would set up the aforesaid research facility in the megacity. Besides, CATL's global innovation center, headquarters for international functions, and a high-end manufacturing base would be located there as well.

CATL said the newly-launched research institute will aim to make breakthroughs in a number of cutting-edge technologies in the new energy field and build itself into a global innovation center of future energy sources in the long run. Besides, the facility will also help Shanghai develop its own ecosystem related to future energy and become a world's well-known source of innovation and industrial cluster for new energy technologies.

Moreover, CATL has agreed to locate a high-end production base in Lin-gang Special Area, home to Tesla's Giagafactory 3. The decision will greatly facilitate the battery supply to Tesla, a major client of CATL.

The aforesaid framework deal doesn't mention the production capacity details. Nevertheless, a governmental official revealed in late Dec. 2021 that CATL's Shanghai factory would produce battery modules and is likely to start production in Jan. 2022.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.  During her first in-person biology lab on campus, the professor asked the class to find an object and swab it for bacteria. Most students wiped their desks and phones. Sawsan Ahmed reached into her backpack and pulled out her white teddy bear, Ben.

Her Broward College classmates looked at her curiously; one casually asked her age.

Ten, replied Ahmed to the college freshmen and sophomores.

At the beginning of the semester, they often referred to her as sweetie and honey, but by the end, they sought her academic expertise.

That was about two years ago. On Wednesday, Sawsan, who towers at nearly 5-foot-8 like some of her peers, but wears ponytails and other hair-dos carefully styled by her mom, graduated from Broward College, the youngest graduate in the schools 61-year history. A 15-year-old previously held the record.

The now-12-year-old earned an associates degree with a concentration in biological science and a 4.0 GPA. In January, she will go on to the University of Florida, where she will study microbiology and cell science.

It was awesome. Im so happy, Sawsan said after the ceremony, her first graduation. Her favorite part was when Broward College President Gregory Adam Haile recognized her on stage.

Thank you, Sawsan, you have helped us demonstrate that Broward College can support the dreams, regardless of age or academic pursuits, Haile said, while the crowd cheered.

Loves Disney movies, Minecraft

At first glance, Sawsan is like any other girl her age. She likes playing video games like Minecraft and watching Disney movies  she recently saw Encanto and loved it, although Zootopia remains her favorite.

But she has been amazing people from an early age.

Shortly after she was born in Providence, Rhode Island, her dad, Dr. Wesam Ahmed, remembers Sawsan was crying, so he started reciting the Islamic call to prayer. She turned to look at him and immediately stopped crying. He stopped reciting, and she started crying again.

The nurse looked at the newborn, at her father and then back at her. She commanded the dad to start reciting, which led to the end of Sawsans wails  again.

Ahmed rushed to his wifes side and announced he believed the babys IQ was high because she had recognized his voice, noting the months he spent by his wifes side talking to Sawsan in the womb.

Jeena Santos Ahmed laughed at her husband, thinking he was behaving like any other proud dad. She made fun of him, but soon realized he was right.

Now he doesnt miss an opportunity to tease her about it. He brings it up all the time, Jeena said.
Update: 10-01-2022 | 13:36:43

The Lao Ministry of Health announced on January 9 that the country has recorded 924 new COVID-19 infections and seven deaths over the past 24 hours.

COVID-19 patient receives treament in Manila, the Philippines

After a few days back to the 4-digit increase, the number of new cases in Laos returned to a 3-digit increase and decreased by 142 cases compared to that on January 8. Vientiane continues to be the epicentre with 354 new cases.

To date, the total number of COVID-19 infections in Laos has reached 118,880, of which 487 people have died.

On January 9, the Philippines continued to record a new high number of COVID-19 cases with 28,707 infections after a record number of 26,458 infections of the day before.

Since the beginning of the pandemic outbreak, this Southeast Asian country has reported a total of 2,965,447 infections, including 52,150 fatalities.

Cambodias Ministry of Health earlier on January 9 announced that it had detected the first Omicron community case in the country.

It said the man, a 23-year-old from Phnom Penhs Russey Keo district  had visited his cousin at a hospital before being detected with the variant, reported The Phnom Penh Post.

The ministry noted that from December 27 to January 5, the man had travelled with his cousin  who arrived in Cambodia from Australia on December 27  to various places including Phnom Penh and the provinces of Kampong Thom, Siem Reap and Kampot.

He visited the cousin at the hospital on January 5 and was detected with the coronavirus later that day. His sample was then sent to the Pasteur Institut du Cambodge and was confirmed as Omicron on January 8./.

VNA
On the days of late autumn and early winter, taking advantage of the sunny weather, a team of rangers and forestry experts carried many things into the remote forest of Sao La Nature Reserve (A Luoi District) Not to investigate deforestation, not to set camera traps or to rescue animals, this time they embarked on a journey to seek native forest tree varieties from the natural forest in order to perform the mission of planting forest tree varieties and conserving rare genetic resources.

A team of experts researching and recording information on an ancient green ironwood tree root

The deeper they went into the forest, the more rare and precious forest trees appeared in turn to the surprise of the survey team. Rare and precious forest trees were carefully recorded and sampled in turn to prepare for the long-term plan in response to the Prime Minister's Project for planting 1 billion trees in the 2021-2025 period in the province.

In search of varieties in green forest

It took them all day to reach the previously identified forests of Sao La Nature Reserve. After resting for a while, the team members began to partition the field to seek native forest tree varieties.

I thought this tree is the biggest and most dominant tree, but the more I went, the bigger trees I discovered, recalled Mr. Tran Vu Ngoc Hung, Deputy Head of Forest Use and Development Division, Sub-department of Forest Protection. As a member of the variety source survey team, Mr. Hung said that this journey started from July 2021, each trip lasted from 3-7 days, depending on the forest area and weather.

With nearly two decades of experience in the job, Mr. Hung affirmed that variety is the top factor that determines the productivity and quality of planted forests.

He said, Those must be the best trees with outstanding height, large diameter, straight round body, no pests, and high percentage of seeds... Maybe later in the future, when varieties are produced, the new genetic quality with high yield, resistance to pests and other adverse conditions can be improved.

The information in turn was carefully and meticulously recorded by the survey team; in addition, it was also necessary to determine where the dominant trees are located, how the road system is. Not to mention the fact that there is a need to know what kind of soil the dominant tree is grown on together with parameters: slope direction; altitude above sea level; average, minimum, maximum air temperature and rainfall... These data will be for analysis and charting.

Aside from Sao La Nature Reserve, the team surveyed the rare native forest tree varieties also crossed the forest, waded through streams to seek remote forests of Bach Ma National Park, Management Board of Phong Dien Nature Reserve, Management Board of Bac Hai Van Protection Forest, Management Board of Nam Dong Protection Forest... for research.

The further the team went, the more rare tree varieties they discovered such as green ironwood, merawan giaza, black meranti, vein meranti, lauan merantiwith dense growth. This proves that biodiversity should be not only conserved but also propagated and developed.

Variety is conservation

Besides the management role, the passion for seeking forest tree varieties motivated Mr. Nguyen Huu Huy, Deputy Director of the Provincial Forest Protection Sub-department, to cross the forest and wade streams along with employees on many survey trips His fatigue seemed to vanish when he saw a patch of forest with dozens of extremely rare and precious natural green ironwood trees, the diameter of which is too large for several people to hug.

A huge amount of information on native forest trees is carefully recorded, photographed

At all costs, we must propagate these native tree varieties in a sustainable orientation. In the long run, depending on each forest stand, aside from conserving the native forest tree varieties, the propagation will contribute to the ecological environment protection in order to adapt to climate change," Mr. Huy said with confidence and hope.

The survey team went from one forest to another in the province; their notebooks were thick with information and data on rare and precious natural forest trees. All will be appraised and recognized by the technical council before varieties are officially produced.

Although no final decision has been made, the survey team is very confident with the list of 50 dominant native tree varieties, with priority given to endemic varieties such as green ironwood, merawan giaza, black meranti, mukulungu, terminalia, lauan meranti, dalbergia tonkinensis prainThey are seen as a valuable source of varieties on the journey of natural forest conservation for a land with a harsh climate like Hue.

It is possible that as soon as the council approves the recognition of the variety source, in 2022, we will get working with a three-on-site process: on-site variety collection, on-site sowing and on-site planting. Our ambition is not only to conserve the variety source, but also to share this variety source with many other provinces and cities if need be," said Huy.

Mr. Nguyen Dai Anh Tuan, Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, devoted much attention to planting and conserving natural forest trees when he was Director of the Provincial Forest Protection Sub-department. Having gone on business trip, exchanging experience with many colleagues in many countries, he said that currently many advanced countries worldwide have seed museums, the classification and preservation of natural biological seed sources are done in a scientific and methodical manner.

Meanwhile, although Vietnam is assessed as a country with rich biodiversity resources, for various reasons, the variety and conservation work has not yet received attention.

Today, when opening our eyes, we see this tree or the other. However, no one knows whether the treasure may exist in the next few decades with the current degradation of natural resources if there are no specific solutions for preserving and developing natural variety resources, Mr. Tuan shared and emphasized the summary statement made by the conservation scientists when talking about varieties, "Variety is conservation!"

Therefore, the variety work is currently being carried out by the sector with great urgency. Only in this way can we ensure that the coming generation will have a future and understand the significant value of the forest.

At least 7 million trees planted That is the target set by the Provincial People's Committee in the Prime Ministers project In response to planting one billion trees in the 2021-2025 period in the province". Notably, 4.7 million trees are scatteredly planted in urban and rural areas; 2.3 million trees are concentrated in protection forests and newly planted in production forests. Permanent Deputy Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee Phan Ngoc Tho at the time when he was Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee emphasized that this project plays an critical role in protecting the environment and human life. Aside from improving the quality of forests, the coverage rate in response to climate change, environmental protection, disaster mitigation..., it also generates jobs, increase income from forest products as well as agro-forestry-fishery models. The target number is not confined to 7 million trees; efforts should be redoubled to exceed the target.

Story: Phan Thanh

Photos provided by the Forest Protection Sub-department
The United States has agreed to impose stricter COVID-19 measures at U.S. military bases in Japan, a U.S.-Japan joint statement said Sunday, amid concerns that outbreaks at bases have fueled infection in local communities.

For two weeks starting Monday, the movement of U.S. forces personnel outside base facilities will be restricted to essential activities, said the joint statement by the Japanese government and U.S. forces in Japan.

Denny Tamaki, governor of Okinawa Prefecture  host to a bulk of U.S. bases in Japan  said this month he was "furious" about what he called inadequate infection controls at U.S. bases that allowed the Omicron variant to spread to the public.

"The United States and Japan are committed to working together to protect the health of the Japanese people and U.S. service members," the joint statement said.

U.S. forces in Japan have already implemented a mandatory masking policy for all personnel, the statement also said.

The agreement comes after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said during a TV appearance earlier that the United States had agreed to impose tougher COVID-19 measures and details were being worked out.

His comments came as areas near U.S. bases saw some of the biggest increases in infections on a per capita basis, prompting the government to introduce restrictions for the first time in months in some localities. Prefectural governors have blamed the problem at least in part on U.S. forces.
Chapter 14



Peters mind was clouded with a vague face, and a vague lily, in what must have been in a flower shop. Like the figments in a dream they didnt seem real. But unlike a dream that would usually fade away within a day or two, they seemed to stay and settle in him as a real memory.

As his curiosity grew, he decided to revisit the past. He went back to Yuling Road, retracing the pathway from the Little Bar to a possible flower shop. But none of the flower shops he had come across was close to the Shop.

At last, he chose to ask for Xiaobai's help. Xiaobai, do you remember where that flower shop was, you know the one on the way from the Little Bar?

The flower shop? Somewhere on Yuling Road?

?No, there isnt one like that on it.

Then I dont know, but why? Have you lost anything?

No, I just want to have another look, he said quickly, but in another moment, he decided to tell the truth, Wasnt there a lily girl in the shop?

Lily Girl? What are you talking about

I mean the boss of the flower shop.

Oh my god, Xiaobai started giggling, like a girl, did you have a crush on the Boss?

No, no, don't get me wrong ...

No need denying it, anyway, let me ask Ming about it.

A few minutes later he called back, telling of the most possible location to be a few lanes away from Yuling Road. So Peters pilgrimage-like search was expanded. Another two hours had passed and just as his legs felt so tired that he would give it all up, he found the lane he was on slightly familiar, and then, there it was, the Shop he had been painfully looking for.

Peering inside, there were other customers at that moment who he believed might cover him a little from an unwanted spot-on exposure. So gingerly, he entered the shop, and while pretending to look only at the flowers, he managed to steal a few glances towards the counter. A man was there standing, behind the counter, and beside him, a girl sitting on a high stool.

The girl, on a high stool His memory rushed to life. Yes, he had bought her a lily, which was why his mind had registered a phrase of Lily Girl.

She was the reason he had come thus far!

Like a teenager in love he was blushing, and automatically he shuffled his feet for a quick exit. But just then, he heard the man talking. Held back by an urge to eavesdrop, he stayed put and strained his ears to listen.

Lets go to the movies tonight, said the man.

No, I need to be here because Xiaohuang is on sick leave.

Cant you just close the shop for the night?

No.

You really need to learn how to run a business without tiring yourself out. See, I dont get myself stuck in my hot pot restaurant...

After the words, the man, thin and tall, began moving around the counter, which made Peter half-panic, and propelled his feet out of the 'dangerous' zone.

Outside the shop Peter lingered for a long while, not knowing what to do next. Then he saw that man coming out, walking towards a motorcycle over which he swiftly flung his long body, before roaring away very much like a gangster. So, that is her boyfriend, obviously Peter thought bitterly, his cynicism running wild. What a joke, what an idiot, thinking of the face of nobody...

He was heading home, his boring home, feeling downcast as ever. But half way he was daring himself to return to the shop, for that face was still blurry, his mission not nearly finished. And given the fact she already had a boyfriend, what more could he lose?

This time I saw no other souls but Her in the shop. His heart was pounding, and deciding not to be sneaky any more he strode into the shop, picked a lily from a basket, and marched towards her.

Hello, she greeted him politely, just one lily?

Yes, he said, taking a deep breath to calm his wild nerves, and realising she had not recognised him at all, he allowed his eyes to roam over the face.

The eyes were crystal clear, the mouth firmly set, and a dimple, shallow but distinctive, seemed to divide the chin. And overall the face and the features hinted at an air of serenity, or something like a quiet power.

Then, as he handed her a five-yuan note, her eyes lit up, You?

He skipped a heartbeat, his face very hot, Ahh, you still remember meand yes, it is me, my name is Peter. I am sorry for that night, I was very drunk, out of sorts, I must have embarrassed you, or even offended you, haven't I?

Mmmsort of, but that was okay, all past, she said, a faint colour stealing to her cheeks, Indeed you, and your friends, were very drunk, in an amusing way.

Hah, amusing way, or foolish way, he smiled, grateful for her cordiality, trying to slow every second to live with her. Then, as naturally as he could compose himself, he presented the lily to her, Well, I am rather sober today, and I hope you wont mind accepting another lily from me?

She was taken aback, the colour on her clear cheeks deepening. No, you better not, she said, recollecting herself, you should give it to your girlfriend.

But I don't have a girlfriend.

Then, she paused, thinking for a moment, you should take it home and grow it until you find one.

What a smart answer! He sighed inwardly and decided not to be outwitted by her. Perhaps I should, but how about you are not too shy to accept it, and allow me to buy another one for my Future girlfriend.

With a smile the face was relaxing, into a radiant, three-quarter moon. WellI am not too shy, only a little, she took the challenge smartly, And I may only accept it if you are too stubborn but mind you I already have a boyfriend.

I know, I know, he hurried his words out, stopping short of saying he had actually seen her boyfriend a while ago, anyway, thank you for accepting my flower, and by the way, is lily your favourite flower?

Eh? she frowned slightly, How do you know?

Well, the way you handle lilies is very different, you seem to caress them as if they were your beloved pets.

She smiled beautifully, Really? I am not aware of that. Actually I like all flowers but, after what you have just said, perhaps I do have a preference for lilies.

After saying bye bye merrily to each other, Peter was on his way home. Peter held his one lily close to his chest, feeling very happy. Overall his trip had been successful, not only confirming his first good impression of her, but further proving her great intelligence. True that she already had a boyfriend, but after his brief yet quite interactive conversation with her, he didnt feel as upset as he should have been. For some reason, she was like a long lost friend and the existence of her boyfriend was irrelevant or at most, a petty annoyance.

The next time he went to see her again was seven days later. It had seemed that an interval of one week of not seeing her was the longest he could endure. He, again, had persuaded her to accept his lily, while at the same time bought another for his future girlfriend. "It must be the last time for you to do this," she said, to which he replied, "Please just regard me as a regular customer, and the single lily I give you should not have the power to dislodge you from you boyfriend, so you are absolutely safe with him, he made a sly smile, turning to leave the shop, and on the threshold turning again to capture another look of her.

It was not that he hadnt tried to forget her. Actually, there was no lack of excuses for pushing her out of his mind, such as her rough fingers due to her constant handling of prickly flowers, such as her possible low education of not having been to a university, such as her teeth not as white and regular as Melodys, or even Lotus.

Yet, these imperfections, as well as the fact of her having a boyfriend, seemed less important than the special connection he felt he had pre-established with her.

So, he kept on going to the shop, for an interval of a week, or even less if not seeing her was becoming so unbearable.

But on his fifth trip, his clever words failed to work with her. Looking annoyed she said sternly, with that peculiar quiet power now exerting an absolute authority, Listen Peter, I cant accept your flower any longer, please respect my decision. See, my boyfriend was already suspecting, he must have heard some gossip, so please, dont waste more time on me.

Peter, facing the friendly face suddenly turned hostile, felt hurt and ashamed, and as his sense of humour had deserted him, he could only mumble,  sorry butcant I just come here to buy flowers, just just for myself?

A streak of pity was seen flashing in her eyes, but her words were anything but softening, You dont have to come HERE to buy flowers.

The emphatic here was like pinching his ears. For a moment, he stood petrified by her harsh words as well as her cold marble-like features.

Sorrythen, okay, sorry, he stuttered, and robotically he sought his way out.

Then just over the threshold he heard her calling after him, Peter, wait 

He halted, and turned, and forced his eyes to confront hers again, well, for the last time. What

Listen, Peter, she began, My nephews English is very poor. I wonder if you can help? I mentioned to his mother that I have a friend coming back from Australia...

Peter took a long second to grasp her meaning, You mean help your, your nephew with his English?

Yes, yes  she said quickly, as if feeling sorry for her previous coldness towards him.

Errh well Peter muttered absently, still preoccupied in his misery caused by her rejection, maybe not, I am not sure

I know you cananyway, let me know, okay?

Okay Peter said weakly, wanting to escape from her as fast as he could. He desperately needed a place where he could heal himself.

The following weeks, without her, his life had fallen back to its usual dark void. Then one day in his idleness he suddenly recalled the matter of English tutoring.

A streak of light seemed to emerge on the horizon.

Yes, to think rationally it was not a death sentence, yet. He could still call her, contact her in some other way. And yes, she only told him not to come to her shop! And perhaps, perhaps she was only afraid that her boyfriend might accidentally run into him in the shop. All in all, she didnt say she didnt like him, and she didnt say he couldnt see her at other safer places.

With a surge of adrenaline he searched for her shop number he had saved in his phone, and called at once to tell her that he agreed to teach her nephew English, if still needed. On the call she sounded surprised but cheerful to have heard back from him this late. However, her general tone was still very business like, which dampened his revived enthusiasm of courting her further.

But nonetheless a tutoring plan was arranged. He would go to her nephews home, twice a week, as a home-visiting private tutor.

To take an initial assessment, he asked the boy to speak a few lines as in an English dialogue.

Gooda morling, evelywai, myna s Wallian, lice to me you, and sank you...

Apparently the boy, William, had all those mispronunciations in his English speech. Peter decided their first task was to fix his International Phonetic Alphabet, before anything else.

He was putting his heart into every lesson, not only for his own fun interacting with the student, but also, deep down, for not to disappoint the Lily Girl, who at least had enough faith in his English, if nothing else.

And his efforts had paid off. After only one month of tutoring, Willians school report on English had improved significantly, which was an exciting feedback boosting the confidence for both the student and the tutor.

And what was more, thanks to the favourable word of mouth that had been circulating among the parents, he soon got five more students, keeping him rather busy throughout several months.

Hi Peter, Xiaobai called one day, go and set up an English tutoring school, forget about finding a job, and like me be your own boss.

But where is the investment?

There is no lack of capital so long as it makes money. I advise you to talk to your parents first, and also ask Bob and other friends for a possible partnership, you wont know the result until you try.

And when Peter raised the business idea to his parents, his father was surprisingly not vehemently against it, This must be treated as the last resort, said his father, only if you really cannot find a job, and so much hate any further study

And his discussion with Bob, who was still jobless, was also promising. Peter, he said excitedly, this is a good idea, lets consider it and plan it well, and who knows the business wont be more successful than Xiaobais pig farm, haha...

So, after agreeing to have a 50-50 partnership, they began to work on a business plan, estimating the cost and capital requirements. One day, as they searched the lease ads for the possible business location, they came across a two-storey shop for rental, close to two schools, and one university.

The location is perfect, but dont you think the space is more than what we need? said Peter uncertainty, We only need a classroom to begin with.

I agree, but cant we re-lent the first floor? replied Bob.

That is too much trouble, said Peter, then suddenly, he was struck with another idea, Perhaps we can use the first floor for some sort of bar, say an English bar? Or an English saloon? Where foreigners and university students, and the sea-turtles like me, can come to have drinks, and chat in English?

Peter, you are a genius! Bob applauded, If so we will have a place for both English learning and leisuring, imagine we will have our own bar to drink...

Calm down Bob, dont get carried away, think about the need for a much bigger investment, what if

Peter, Bob cut in, impatient, you cant find any business with no risk, it all depends on our efforts, and of course our luck. For investment, if we cant get enough from our parents, we can try from others, my Tingting will surely take a share if I ask her.

That night, in the discussion, Peters dad was very concerned about the suitability of having a bar in the business plan, but his mum, who had been very impressed with his sons success as a private English tutor, and thus become more and more aligned with him in terms of his future, was encouraging, If Bobs parents are okay with it, we can afford the same...

So, all the stars seemed to align with his new fortune. In another two months, the PB English Centre, comprising a classroom and an English bar, was made ready for business. And the most important star, the primal star, he knew from the bottom of his heart, was the Girl.

Hi Lily Girl, he called her, the day before the opening ceremony, I hope you havent forgotten me, but tomorrow is the opening day of our English centre, I would like to invite you, and, and of course, your boyfriend, to come as our important guests, for without you, the business wouldnt have been possible.

Oh, Peter, I havent forgotten you, I actually need to thank you for helping my nephew. He is now doing very well and very interested in the subject. And it is really amazing that you now have your own tutoring school, many congratulations!

Thank you, so you will come?

Yes of course, we will try to make it tomorrow, thank you for the invitation.

You are very welcome...

On the opening day, dozens of relatives and friends, of two partners families, had come to celebrate the event. Tall flower baskets bordered the path of entrance and virtual fireworks were cracking on and on. Red banners and flowing ribbons shone brilliantly on the front of the shop. On the poster that stood at the entrance, it said, Todays Business Opening Special: Half price for all drinks and foods in the English bar, and half price for all English training courses.

The two bartenders, actually two university students majoring in English, wore constant smiles greeting the first batch of curious customers, speaking English whenever possible. On the performance stage in the bar, a band of four were there playing the English song - Scarborough Fair. Sizable photos of landmarks in New York, Sydney, London, plastered on the walls, went very well with a general theme of English. Rows of shiny wine glasses were dangled upside down from a deck of ceilings, glinting with fluid hues and neon lights. And spaced evenly among the tables were the five stylish grass baskets on stand, each storing the bulk of English books. It was Peters idea to allow English lovers to easily reach and pick any of them for reading or browsing, under the focus candlelight that can be switched on and off mirroring those in an aeroplane.

On the second floor, the English training centre had a total of thirty desks, each set up as a multimedia workstation equipped with headphones and computers and stationery. A large touch panel screen was installed in the place of a blackboard, and a long shelf full of books, like a complete aisle in a library, was installed against a wall, annexed by a floor area for the students to sit and read. Peter was planning to source hundreds more of English books, picture books or novels or else, to provide a subversive English learning environment.

Dressed in a suit, with a bow tie, and had his hair styled that made him look a few years maturer, Peter appeared on the day a totally different person. And his proud parents, Bobs as well, had been shuffling about the place since early morning, smiling ear to ear, warmly welcoming guests and friends.

But Peters heart couldnt be fulfilled until his true VIP had come. As soon as the Lily Girl got off the taxi, his heart burst, his eyes glittered. In a beautiful one-piece skirt, she looked so beautiful. She had also brought a flower basket full of lilies with her, and was trying to carry it over by herself. Peter, quickly floating out to her, gave her a hand, helping her sit the basket on the line. Meanwhile, being so close to her for the first time in six months, he couldnt help but whisper a joke, Are these lilies my previous gifts to you? Then realising his blunder, he added hurriedly, Oh, where is your boyfriend?

Eh he is busy and cant make it.

Oh, this is even better, he meant to say, though his voice was quite the opposite, Is he? Oh, what a pity...

Then Peter guided Lily Girl into the bar and towards a table where Xiaobai and Ming were seated.

Hey, Lily Girl, Xiaobai stood up the moment he saw her coming, extending his hand, Do you still remember me?

Yes, of course, Lily Girl smiled, shaking the hand, you and Peter, drunkards, haha..

Yes, yes, said Xiaobai, sinking in the comfortable chair, you know what, when Peter asked me about where your shop was, I had no idea, fortunately Ming had a better memory.

Peter took a seat beside Lily Girl. A bartender came over to pour their wine glasses. Then, raising his glass he made a speech, On that night, six months ago, four of us were in a fairytale flower shop, and today we were here again, in a fanciful English bar, isnt it wonderful? I would say the two events are in a way fatefully connected, without the first I wouldnt have known Lily Girl, and then, I wouldnt have had my first English student, and then no such thing as an English Center would have ever happened ... So, I would like to thank Lily Girl, and also Ming, for remembering the address, and hope our good fortunes will just roll on and on...

Let me add something, said Ming joyfully, it was only because Peter was so drunk and tipsy that you had forgotten Chinese and spoke English, otherwise, how did Lily Girl know you could teach English?

Hang on a second, Lily Girl chimed in, why do you guys keep calling me Lily Girl?

Well, said Xiaobai, that was Peter's invention. He asked, where was the Lily Girl? So

The Lily Girls face started to blush. How fresh and innocent, and beautiful she is, Peter sighed. Anyway, I hope you dont mind us giving you an English name, Lily?

The Lily Girl said nothing, only smiling, blinking her clever eyes.

Thank you, we take it as Yes, Peter said, emptying the glass, And I promise, from today on, your shop will be our appointed flower supplier, and Xiaobai and Ming, your wedding flowers must also come from Lily.

Sure, echoed Xiaobai, and you also promise, any pork you eat must come from our pig farms, hahaha

No problem, but are sure you want to be a butcher as well?

Why not, we are going to become a pork processing empire in China, even in the world. Raising pigs, slaughtering them, and delivering them to the shops, and eventually directly to households, why do we need intermediate supermarkets when we can deliver directly to end customers?

See, Xiaobais pig dream is never ending.

Xiaobai, thus encouraged, continued his big-business talk, your English dream, and Lily, your flower dream should also never be ending. Lily, do you have a website to sell your flowers?

Lily said, No, we are just a small shop

But you can grow your business, in the way that anyone who wants to order flowers for Chengdu residents, will search you out. Your customers will then be from anywhere in China, even overseas.

Really?

Yes, yes, all you need is a website, and to promote it well.

Is there a kind of platform for such a purpose? I know in Australia, there is a flower platform, or a union, where orders from all over the world can be dispatched centrally to local shops, of course there is a fee for the membership.

That is one way, and the platform will take much of the profit. But if you have your own website, and have your own brand, you can do your own marketing, and keep the profits.

Well, there are pros and cons for the different ways of marketing, said Peter conclusively, But Lily, setting up a website is not difficult, I will help you with it.

Really? Thank you in advance. Lily, after a few drinks, was presently seen more at ease, more like herself. Her slender body was relaxed in the chair, her clear eyes twinkling with a promising bright future. Perhaps really, life events are playing out in good fortunes, starting from that midnight, haha, cheers

Cheers, Peter said, meeting her glass, locking his eyes with hers for a long feeling moment.

He had never felt so intimate with her. Their gap is closing, or being closed, and sooner or later this remarkable creature, the body, the smile, the charming dimpled chin will be truly his, his only, he thought dreamily, sipping the beautiful Australian wine.





 to be continued 






The chairman of the Gage County Board of Supervisors is seeking an additional term in the coming election.

Erich Tiemann recently filed for the district 3 seat on the board.

Tiemann said one of the most rewarding aspects of being on the board has been leading the finance committee.

Thats been one of the places I believe Ive been able to help the county as much as anything, he said. Weve had multiple hardships here in the last half a decade and weve worked to control spending as well as pay off our debt, while still being able to do fairly large-scale projects for the county.

Ive really enjoyed my time on the board, working with the citizens of Gage County and having a voice as things come up.

The hardships were in reference to the $28.1 million Beatrice 6 judgment, which the county is now more than halfway to paying off. The judgment against Gage County in the case of six people wrongfully convicted of murder is being paid off with money raised from increased property taxes, but also a sales tax and state assistance.

We will be paying that off sooner with the additional $4 million from the state and the sales tax coming in, he said. We will be paying that off sooner than we had ever anticipated. This will be paid off in the next election cycle. Were shy of three years now that it will be paid off.

While the state assistance is a major asset, Tiemann said hes been in contact with District 30 Sen. Myron Dorn, and does not anticipate another bill this year for even more funding from the state.

It is nothing short of amazing that (Dorn) has gotten two bills through, Tiemann said. There will not be any additional money coming from the state this year. I dont see that happening at all. We do continue conversations. Its just that at the same time we need to be realistic.

Tiemann said balancing the countys budget while also facing a multi-million dollar judgment has been a point of pride during his time on the board.

We really have controlled our budget, he said. Between projects, the Beatrice 6 judgment and insurance carriers, I think weve done a good job negotiating good terms for the county. While keeping numbers under control, weve still had big projects. Weve done two years of paving projects to roads that really needed attention. Were in the middle of a tight-belt season because of the economy and lawsuit payments. In that environment weve still been able to get those projects done thanks to budget control.

Tiemann has served two terms on the County Board and been the chairman for three years.

He represents the county as a board member of the NGage economic development group, as well as as board member of NIRMA and the board chair of Southeast Nebraska Development District. Hes previously served two terms as board member of the Beatrice Area Chamber of Commerce and is a past member of the Beatrice City Council.

The deadline to file for election for incumbents is Feb. 15, and March 1 for non-incumbents.

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South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is set to speak at an upcoming Teton County GOP fundraiser, according to a Friday email from the county party.

Mary Martin, chairwoman of the county party, said the group reached out to the governor and she accepted the invite.

"We thought she would be someone people would be interested in hearing from and help us have a successful event," Martin said.

Martin added that she has three goals for the event, which they are calling the "Patriots Dinner." The party hopes to raise money, build relationships in the community and interest Republicans in running for office.

Noem, an ardent Donald Trump ally, has gained national attention for refusing to follow guidance of medical experts and the federal government during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As governor, Noem remains staunchly against mask mandates and gave her blessing to multiple large events. Her response to COVID has been likened to Trump's handling of the pandemic while in office.

"Shes been a very brave leader," Martin said.

Teton County is the only Democratic stronghold in Wyoming. In the 2020 presidential election, the only other county that voted for Joe Biden was Albany County, but by a mere 2.7 points.

Teton County is also home to the highest concentration of billionaires per capita in the United States, so the fundraising opportunities are ample. That said, many of the county's wealthy residents live their part time, so they may not be as committed or plugged into county politics.

Tickets are selling "really fast" Martin said -- about 190 in the last month. Tables that seat 10 people cost $5,000 and individual seats cost $500.

The Teton County Republican Party said they plan to use the money raised to contribute to town and county level Republican campaigns in their effort to "make Teton County Wyoming again," Martin said in the email.

Wyoming residents sometimes joke that Teton County and the town of Jackson are "the California of Wyoming" or say things like "Jackson isn't 'real' Wyoming."

Noem's Teton County visit will be a "formal event" held Feb. 18 at the Four Seasons hotel, a luxury hotel located in Teton Village.

Noem's office did not respond to request for comment Friday.

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Editor's note: This story is part of the Lee Enterprises series "Grizzlies and Us." The project examines the many issues surrounding the uneasy coexistence of grizzly bears and humans in the Lower 48, which have come more into focus in recent years as the federally-protected animal pushes farther into human-occupied areas. The 10-part series, comprised of more than 20 stories, was produced by reporters and photojournalists across the Rocky Mountain West.

It was an unusual sight, about eight years ago, when 17 grizzly bears grazed on wild caraway plants in a field not far from Malou Anderson-Ramirezs ranch home.

When I was a child I only saw one grizzly bear my whole time being out with the sheep, she said.

The increase in grizzly activity has prompted new technology that may rattle old ranching traditions.

Since they were placed under federal Endangered Species Act protection in 1975, grizzly bears have been mostly a Yellowstone National Park feature in southwest Montana.

That changed about 10 years ago, coinciding with when large die-offs of whitebark pine trees were being recorded. Blister rust and pine beetles were killing the long-lived trees that grow at high elevations. The trees seeds have long provided a high-protein food source for grizzly bears in the fall. Being an adaptable species, capable of dining on a variety of foods, the grizzlies sought out other sources of nourishment and started showing up in Tom Miner Basin.

It was already pristine, perfect grizzly bear habitat, Anderson-Ramirez said.

The basin is located about 30 miles south of Livingston at the base of the Gallatin Mountains and just north of Yellowstone National Park. Wild country surrounds the high meadows and grasslands Anderson-Ramirezs family has ranched since her grandparents bought property there in the 1950s.

So many bears feeding in one place is unusual in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with the exception of high elevation talus slopes where some grizzlies congregate to feed on cutworm moths.

Kerry Gunther, Yellowstone National Parks lead bear biologist, said seeing a dozen bears on a rocky slope was the most unique grizzly interaction hes had in his 39 years working in the park.

Seeing that many bears that close together with no conflicts, they had a hierarchy worked out, he said.

Likewise, the bears feeding in Tom Miner Basin seemed willing to share and be close to each other when feeding, defying human conceptions of the animals as solitary and defensive when it comes to food sources.

There are quite a few sows with cubs that live up here or come through here, Anderson-Ramirez said. Its just kind of a nice place to raise young.

Thats something she can relate to, raising two daughters with her husband, Andres, on the family ranch. In describing herself, Anderson-Ramirez said she is a mother first and foremost, in addition to being a rancher, business owner and community supporter.

I would say that its a gift to be able to be here and to raise children in such a wild place, she said. And its a good lesson in tolerance and understanding. We can learn a lot from the bears and other wildlife around the evolution of change and being able to be adaptable.

For her family and the cattle they raise, that has meant traveling across the landscape in a consistent and predictable pattern so wildlife adapt to their rhythms. That may mean moving irrigation pipes at the same time on the same days, or keeping cows out of densely wooded coulees and draws in the fall when bears are seeking berries or other foods to fatten up before winter. It also requires removing attractants from the landscape, like salt or molasses blocks provided as livestock supplements.

Anderson-Ramirezs sister started a range rider program to check on cattle and keep predators at bay. They also can quickly identify predator-killed livestock to document for reimbursement under the states livestock loss program, as well as remove the carcasses to ensure predators dont camp out at the site. Camera traps have taught them wildlife migratory paths through the area, as well as den sites, so they can alter where they graze livestock to avoid conflicts.

Theres a humility that comes with living in places like this where one really has to understand when a feeling isnt quite right, she said. Ive learned to really follow my gut. When I dont have a good feeling about something I dont push the envelope.

She compared it to a surfer assessing the ocean and deciding not to ride when conditions seem dangerous.

TEAL tags

Anderson-Ramirez is being proactive in another way, co-founding a technology company designed to help ranchers track cattle and monitor them from afar.

Called TEAL  which stands for Technology, Education, Agriculture and Landscape  the goal is to create a cost-effective tracer for livestock. Using cellphone technology, ranchers could monitor cattle by receiving a signal if theres a mortality, or even if the cows heart rate increased rapidly during a confrontation with a predator. The tags could also be used for geo-fencing, creating invisible fences to contain cattle to certain allotments, somewhat similar to an invisible dog fence.

Prototypes of the tags are still being tested, and it may be three years before they are ready to market at a projected cost of $5 to $15 each, she said.

The end result is to have a simple tool for producers to use to better manage their livestock in wild places, Anderson-Ramirez said.

Once developed, encouraging ranchers to try TEAL tags will be the next hurdle she will have to overcome. That could be a tough sell to a ranchers who have been stereotyped as self-reliant.

We are a sentimental and loyal group of people that are nostalgic and sentimental to our old value systems, Anderson-Ramirez said. But with the regenerative movement and looking more at the importance of profitability on ranches and keeping large landscapes intact  I think thats helping to change the language and the narrative around how important it is to diversify, to be open to change, to be adaptable.

The important thing is  honoring our struggle, everyones struggles, including the wildlife and the bears and the badgers and the people, she said. I really think thats what coexistence is for me. Just honoring the struggle that we all have as we try to live and conserve and protect these wild places.

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Its become a foregone conclusion for Riverton outfitter Ken Metzler that when one of his mule deer hunters shoots a buck, the animal is afflicted with chronic wasting disease, he said.

We had 98% last year and this year, Metzler said of the positivity rate. And we had every one of them tested but a couple.

Generally, the lethal diseases sky-high prevalence isnt a deterrent for the out-of-state hunters eager to target a muley on the Fremont County ranchland where Wyoming Trophy Hunts leads its clients, he said. Applications to hunt with Metzlers guides are still pouring in, especially since the pandemic began, even though the likelihood of taking home a trophy-class deer has declined. As the population has fallen, hunting licenses have also been cut.

Ive dropped from 100 hunters to probably, oh, 20, said Metzler. Of the clients who do get out to hunt, Metzler said, were not killing big bucks. Meat from younger, fatter bucks typically goes in the freezer, even though public health experts caution against consuming CWD-positive animals. But when the hunters walk up to a downed animal and find a sickly looking, flat ass skinny deer, Metzler calls up the warden and gets the OK to pitch the remains, he said.

Given the condition deer are in, Metzler would support a larger reduction in licenses if it would help the herd bounce back.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department and U.S. Geological Survey researchers share concern and curiosity over what to make of the mule deer herd that Metzlers business depends on. The Project Herd  as Game and Fish knows it  is easily Wyomings big game herd most ravaged by the degenerative prion disease. In fact, the data show the herd is also among the most CWD-infected wild cervid populations known to exist in North America.

We have a proposal for a study for this herd because of the extraordinarily high rates of CWD, Game and Fish Dubois Wildlife Biologist Zach Gregory said.

Plans are still in the rough, initial phases, Gregory told WyoFile, but researchers intend to find funding for 40 GPS collars that will be fitted to a random sample of deer in the Project Herd as soon as next winter. Some  likely a good portion  will be CWD-positive animals and therefore destined for death, but theyll be tested while alive using rectal biopsies and then let loose.

The hope is to glean some clarity about the factors contributing to the alarming disease prevalence.

Are these positive deer in different places than these negative deer? Gregory asked. Thats going to potentially help us identify the hotspots.

Only time will tell whether those collared, sickened deer point Gregory and his USGS counterparts toward locations like the ranches where Wyoming Trophy Hunts guides  where, according to Metzler, virtually all buck mule deer are CWD-positive.

Whats already understood is that the Project Herd is an anomaly in the region and is itself a hotspot. The herd roams Wyomings deer hunt units 171 and 157, in west-central Wyoming, which are both within the borders of the Wind River Indian Reservation, although non-native hunting is confined to non-tribal lands within.

The herd is considered a priority for CWD surveillance, and between 2016 and 2020 Game and Fish staff gathered tissue samples from 139 of its bucks. Of those, 85 came up positive, for a prevalence rate of 61%.

Preliminary test results for 2021s tissue samples showed a higher rate of CWD: 78%, according to Game and Fish Regional Wildlife Coordinator Daryl Lutz.

Its the highest thats been recorded, maybe anywhere in the world in wildlife, Lutz told attendees at a public meeting last month.

The Wildlife Health Laboratory supervisor for the state of Wyoming, Hank Edwards, wouldnt go that far, instead emphasizing the multi-year positivity rate. There are agricultural parts in southwest Saskatchewan, he noted, where prevalence has been documented in the 60-70% range. Annual reports from the provincial government confirm it, and say that in over a dozen Saskatchewan wildlife management zones, more than 50% of mule deer bucks are testing positive for the degenerative disease.

Edwards did label CWDs prevalence in the Project Herd alarmingly high, and he pointed out its Wyomings most CWD-infected deer herd by a nearly 20% margin. Statewide, 12.5% of the nearly 6,500 CWD samples processed during 2020 tested positive, statistics that span species, sex and cause of death, according to Game and Fishs most recent CWD surveillance report.

Every herd responds differently, Edwards said, for a number of reasons.

In the Sublette Herd, which roams the Green and Snake river basins, CWD is just now arriving, and 0.8% of 375 samples tested to date have hit for the prion disease. Theres also significant variation in herds that for decades have suffered from CWDs inexorable effects, like listlessness, physical wasting and inevitable death. In southeastern Wyomings Laramie Mountains, one of the first places where CWD was found in wild deer, 22% of hunter-killed bucks have been positive in the last five years. But in the Black Hills, the long-term prevalence in mule deer bucks is just 5.9%, though Edwards said that rate may have been dragged down by other diseases, like epizootic hemorrhagic disease (often called blue tongue).

Ahead of the study, wildlife managers hesitate to hazard a guess for why the Project Herds disease rates are a whole order of magnitude greater.

One reason is that the Project Herd today is poorly understood. Its a rare mule deer herd where the population isnt monitored, although Gregory and others are trying to change that. There are several explanations for why the Project Herd is shrouded in so much unknown. Its a smaller, low-density herd, Gregory said, that generally occupies riparian areas, private agricultural ground and the reservation, where its difficult, or impossible, for agency staff to regularly count deer.

Rather than counting deer, Game and Fish has used two metrics to monitor the herd: hunter satisfaction and landowner surveys to gauge perception of the population. Satisfaction has fallen off, and landowners are also noticing downward changes.

As recently as 2018 and 19, nobody surveyed thought the mule deer population was too low. But in the last two years, nearly half of respondents felt there were too few deer.

This dramatic shift in landowner sentiment supports hunter and department personnel observations indicating a substantial population decline in the herd, wildlife managers wrote in Game and Fishs most recent job completion report for Lander-area big game herds.

To help the herd hold up, Game and Fish slashed doe-fawn hunting licenses by half ahead of the 2020 hunting season, though thats still not enough in the eyes of an outfitter like Metzler.

Mike Miller, a longtime CWD researcher and wildlife veterinarian for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, was not surprised outfitters like Metzler are observing so few older bucks in an area where prevalence is so high. Hes seen it before, while studying Colorados Table Mesa Herd, where prevalence in bucks was approaching 50%.

We didnt catch older male deer, Miller said. You just didnt.

The captures he referred to outside of Boulder, Colorado, occurred 14 years ago. But he returned to capture mule deer more recently and it was the same outcome: I dont think we caught any bucks that were aged over 5 or 6 years, Miller said. Theyre just not there.

Chronic wasting disease is killing them before they can reach those middle ages, he said, and thats even true in Boulder County, where hunting is prohibited.

Miller declined to theorize whats going on with the Project Herd directly. But he said common themes tend to emerge among deer herds in the few cases where CWD prevalence rates have been so off the charts. The herds are usually non-migratory, and consistently gather at concentrated food sources. Clay-type soils that effectively bond with the transmissible prions and even enhance infectivity can also be contributing factors, he said.

Im not implying that these deer are captive, but where you do see these really, really high infection rates commonly, is in deer and elk that are in captivity, Miller said. Theyre living in a very small area and feeding and watering in the same places, day in and day out.

When those kinds of conditions exist without a fence, he said, there can be the same effect. There are management methods to encourage these types of deer herds to move around more to reduce transmission, but easy solutions are unlikely, he said.

Its hard when infection rates get this high, Miller said. Youve probably got a lot of contamination in the environment, and in the wild thats just really hard to do anything about.

Still, Edwards hopes that the coming GPS data on the Project Herd mule deer points his agency toward next steps that could create a healthier population. Once the sources of CWDs spread are identified, be it a silage pile or some other hypothetical factor, he said, then more concrete steps could follow.

It all depends on whats going on, Edwards said. You have to know the sources to try to change the transmission factors. Maybe at the end of this research, its not such a gray picture.

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

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Ice fishing season for most Wyoming anglers is, well, not quite a season yet.

By the end of 2021, popular reservoirs like Boysen near Shoshoni and Alcova near Casper were wide open. Some anglers even had their boats out, catching fish more like summertime than late December.

Craig Amadio has spent much of his life in Lander and Wyoming, and in those four decades, he cant remember a time when Boysen was still ice-free by Christmas. And yet this year, wind whipped up waves on the surface well past the winter holiday. The fisheries supervisor for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in Lander said its due to a combination of warm temperatures and unusually strong winds.

And while most reservoirs are likely to freeze up eventually -- even Boysen as of Wednesday had some ice in the bays and near the causeway -- they may not have good, strong ice this season.

With this La Nina weather pattern, meteorologists predicted a warmer, drier, windier winter than we typically have in Wyoming, Amadio said. And that's certainly seems to be true so far.

This means anglers need to use extra caution as they eagerly approach their usual honey holes, Amadio said. And if the ice isnt safe, think about heading down to the reservoirs tailwater to try your luck on open river water.

Be wary of unsafe ice

Matt Hahn, Game and Fishs fisheries supervisor in Casper, reported similar conditions as Amadio. Some ice fishermen found enough ice to fish in places like Pathfinder Reservoirs Sweetwater Arm, but the ice isnt very strong.

Smaller lakes are possibly worth trying, like Goldeneye outside Casper, Dome Rock and 33 Mile Ponds. But even little Goldeneye doesnt have great ice, he said.

The best ice is formed when water freezes solid and stays that way. Most ice this season has formed, then been broken up by strong, warm winds, then refrozen. That process of freezing, thawing and freezing again creates weaknesses in the ice and means anglers should be extra careful.

Glendo Reservoir is mostly open as well.

Closer to western Wyoming, Amadio recommends trying Tory Lake outside Dubois. Its frozen, as is its sister lakes, Trail and Ring. A fisherman caught a 24-pound brown trout out of Trail Lake a couple years ago, and so for those willing to drive from Lander or even farther, its worth trying.

Unfortunately, popular destinations like Louis Lake in the Wind River Range is frozen, but the snow recently had been too thin to use snowmobiles to get there, and too drifted to use 4-Wheelers.

Amadio also discourages anglers from trying Pilot Butte Reservoir this season. The Bureau of Reclamation drained the reservoir over the summer to complete dam repairs and flushed most of the water down into irrigation canals. Game and Fish restocked some rainbow trout, but the fishing wont be good for another year or more.

A changing future

Aside from the immediate result of a tougher-than-normal ice fishing season, Amadio and Hahn worry about what these warmer, drier conditions mean for fisheries this summer.

Most of the concern with this weather on my end is that snow pack is looking really bad, so that could manifest itself in low reservoir discharge rates in the spring and continued drought, Hahn said.

Last summers hot, dry conditions strained fisheries around Wyoming and the West. Game and Fish asked anglers to fish only in the early morning, and many rivers in the West closed to fishing completely. Without deep winter snowpack in the mountains, rivers will lose their source of mid-summer, cool water. Warmer water means less oxygen for trout and higher mortality rates.

Low-elevation snow is important for groundwater, soil saturation and even recharging reservoirs, Amadio said, but its that mountain snowpack thats critical for many of our rivers.

The forecast for most of the state doesnt give Amadio much hope. The La Nina pattern could bring colder, wetter conditions for Wyomings northwest corner, but the eastern half of the state, particularly, will continue to experience warmer, drier weather than average, according to the National Weather Service. Winds will also likely not calm, making it harder to form that good, solid ice.

Amadio also worries that ice-free lakes into January and weak, dangerous ice will become the rule, not the exception.

If this truly is the start of a normal pattern that we're going to see with climate change, then things are gonna change in the future, Amadio said. Our weather is definitely changing.

On the bright side, if the weather ever does turn cold, with a week of negative temperatures and a break from the wind, Amadio said this seasons ice fishing should be on fire.

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(CNN)  The last seven years have been the seven warmest on record for the planet, new data show, as Earth's temperature continues its precarious climb due to heat-trapping fossil fuel emissions.

A new analysis by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, which tracks global temperature and other climate indicators, found 2021 was the fifth-warmest year on record.

Though the long-term trend is up, yearly fluctuations in global temperature are expected, mainly because of large-scale weather and ocean patterns like El Nino and La Nina, the latter of which was present in 2021 and tends to lead to cooler global temperature.

"The really important thing is to not get hung up on the ranking of one particular year but rather kind of see the bigger picture of ever-warming temperatures, and that ever-warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than the next," said Freja Vamborg, senior scientist at Copernicus. "But that was what we've seen so far with every decade warmer than the next  and this is quite likely to continue."

Earth's average temperature is around 1.1 degrees Celsius above average pre-industrial levels, Copernicus reports, 73% of the way to the 1.5-degree threshold scientists warn the planet must stay under to avoid the worst impacts.

Kim Cobb, director of the Global Change Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said a warming of 1.1 degrees Celsius is a "conservative" estimate.

"It is very fair to say that 1.1 degrees Celsius is conservative, because the last half of the last decade has been warmer than the first half," Cobb, who is not involved with the report, told CNN.

Even at 1.1 degrees, 2021 made abundantly clear the world is already feeling unprecedented effects of the climate crisis many are not prepared for, including significant melting events in the Arctic, deadly floods, unprecedented heat waves and historic droughts. Copernicus also found global greenhouse gas concentrations  the root cause of the climate crisis and its worsening disasters  continued to surge.

1.1 Celsius

In 2015, world leaders agreed to heed scientists' warnings and limit Earth's rapid temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with a preferred goal of 1.5 degrees.

That threshold may not sound like much, but NASA scientists say it's similar to how a 1 or 2 degree increase in body temperature can lead to a fever. With every fraction of a degree of warming, the illness worsens with increasing likelihood of needing hospitalization.

For the planet, scientists are tracking Earth's temperature increase from the baseline at the start of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-to-late 19th century, when humans ramped up the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil.

Cobb said for every increment of future warming, the latest climate research outlines cascading consequences that would threaten every aspect and necessity on Earth including biodiversity, freshwater, and food supplies.

"We've just barely crossed the 1 degree threshold for warming, and yet we are reeling from a near-constant series of weather and climate extremes," Cobb told CNN. "With rare exceptions, these extremes can now be definitively linked to human-caused warming. Going forward, we should expect the frequency and severity of such extremes to increase, exacting an enormous toll on societies around the world."

2021 brought heat waves and floods that became mass-casualty events; rain fell at the summit of Greenland for the first time ever on record; and a historic drought plagued much of the Western U.S. and triggered large, destructive wildfires and never-before-seen water shortages.

Almost every corner of the world felt the effects of the rapidly warming planet. Copernicus researchers pointed to several regions that saw the most above-average temperatures in 2021, spanning the Western U.S. and Canada to Greenland, as well as large swaths of central and northern Africa and the Middle East.

Summer in Europe last year was the warmest on record, the agency reported, with several extreme weather events wreaking havoc across the continent, including the deadly floods in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands as well as the intense wildfires in the eastern and central Mediterranean.

In North America, the analysis found periods of incredible temperature deviations from the norm, including the blistering heat wave in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. It also noted the widespread impacts of the Dixie Fire, the second-largest wildfire ever recorded in California, which wafted harmful smoke across the continent.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in August the only way to halt the alarming trend is by making deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, while also removing the planet-warming gases humans have already put into the atmosphere.

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Electronic land posting appears to have been an overall success in its first year in North Dakota, with extensive digital traffic on the day of the deer hunting season opener.

Thousands of landowners last year posted nearly 4 million acres of private land electronically through the first system of its kind in the nation. The 2021 Legislature passed a law for electronic posting that also allows only lawful hunters and anglers to access fenced, unposted land, for hunting and fishing activities only.

The public is able to see the electronically posted land through digital and print maps, at gf.nd.gov/hunting/private-lands#id-posted.

One Game and Fish app had 3 million clicks, pans and zooms on the opening day of North Dakota's deer gun season in November, according to Game and Fish Business Operations Manager Brian Hosek. He called that traffic "pretty impressive."

"This is definitely a big change for North Dakota," he told the Legislature's interim Natural Resources Committee last month. "Were talking over 120 years of posting laws with the physical signage. Any time we bring in something new and we use the word 'technology,' you have varying degrees of comfort with that."

Game and Fish has fielded "a fleet of calls daily on a lot of different questions of this," he said.

Feedback has been mixed, according to Hosek. Some landowners struggled with the technology. Others appreciated the additional tool, especially since signs can blow over.

Hunters appreciated the communication ability with landowners; 56% of electronic posters gave phone or email contact information.

But not every hunter has a smartphone, Hosek said. And their usage of the system depends on how and where they hunt, he said.

Game and Fish Director Jeb Williams told the panel, "This was only year one, and keep it in mind that, all things considered, it went really well." He urged caution in implementing changes or adding features to the system that still is new.

North Dakota Wildlife Federation President David DeWald told the committee the first year was "a great success" for most hunters, with frustration from some people getting used to the technology.

The biggest complaint from hunters with smartphones was "how long it took to download the app," he said.

"If that's the biggest complaint you've got, that's not bad," DeWald said.

North Dakota's electronic posting allowed a group of nonresident duck hunters to plan their hunt a month in advance, according to Joe Schettler, a North Dakota Stockmen's Association district director.

Outdoors GPS app onX absorbed the state's data into its system. More than 15,000 hunters had used the North Dakota electronically posted layer of the onX app as of last fall.

Trespass violations and reports have been down over the past year, but it's unclear whether that's related to electronic posting, Hosek said.

Game and Fish could reopen the system for landowners to post new parcels as soon as Feb. 1, he said.

Land that was posted electronically before a July 15 deadline last year will remain designated through July 2022. Hosek said the system should be easy for landowners to renew their postings and "copy that information forward."

Reach Jack Dura at 701-250-8225 or jack.dura@bismarcktribune.com.

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Bismarck's District 7 House race is well underway, with three Republicans having announced bids for the two seats.

District 7 GOP precinct committeeman Matt Heilman on Monday announced his campaign for a Republican nomination. He is the founder and president of the Bismarck State College chapter of Turning Point USA, a conservative activist group for students. He also is involved with the North Dakota Young Republicans.

He will graduate from BSC this spring and plans to earn a degree in accounting from North Dakota State University.

The Bismarck native said his priorities are "strengthening the initiated measure process, election integrity, health care choice, and property tax reform."

As an activist, Ive proven I can work well with others in accomplishing mutual goals, Heilman said in a statement Monday. I will remain tirelessly committed to promoting Republican platform values, and encouraging other Republican legislators to hold true to these stated principles.

He also supports eliminating "racist Critical (Race) Theory and Gender Ideology from our school and university systems," saying the concepts "serve as distractions from learning fundamentals."

I believe firmly and without question that parents should be the primary stakeholders in their kids education -- not special interest unions, or Higher Ed bureaucrats, he said.

The Legislature during its special session last fall passed a law banning critical race theory from being taught in public schools.

Last week, incumbent Rep. Jason Dockter, R-Bismarck, and State Board of Higher Education Staff Adviser Retha Mattern announced their District 7 House bids.

Rep. Rick Becker, R-Bismarck, who also represents the district, has said he'll announce his election plans soon.

District 7 Sen. Nicole Poolman, R-Bismarck, is not seeking another term. Republican Michelle Axtman is the only announced candidate for the seat.

District 7 Republicans will be meeting later this month to set a date for their endorsing convention, Dockter said last week.

Ninety-eight seats in the Legislature are on the ballot this year, more than is usual due to redistricting, which is done every 10 years with updated census data.

Republicans control the House of Representatives 80-14 and the Senate 40-7.

Reach Jack Dura at 701-250-8225 or jack.dura@bismarcktribune.com.

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Japanese entry restrictions meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus create a barrier for international students, threatening to undermine participation in exchange programs by Japan's universities, school officials say.

The University of Tokyo sent 49 students abroad under exchange agreements in the fall 2021 semester, but took in none from overseas. Flows in both directions plunged compared with fall 2019 -- before the COVID-19 pandemic began -- when they were 124 and 146, respectively.

Many universities revived exchange programs in 2021. Japan eased its long-running ban on new entries by foreign nationals Nov. 8, only to reimpose it at the end of the month in response to the spread of the omicron variant of the virus. Just 228 foreigners were able to enter Japan in this brief window. Only three of them were international students.

"This is not the way student exchange programs are supposed to work," said a coordinator at the University of Tokyo.

Universities waive tuition for exchange students. International rules for these exchanges are intended to balance the number of students going in both directions.

At Tokyo's Hitotsubashi University, another of Japan's elite schools, about 90 students studied abroad in the fall. None in effect came in the other direction, though the school offered online classes to international students.

Japan's prolonged entry restrictions have prompted overseas universities to stop sending students to the country.
North Dakota health officials are cutting back on COVID-19 case investigations amid a surge in cases fueled by the new omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The highly contagious variant that has spread around the globe began hitting North Dakota hard last week. Confirmed omicron cases increased nearly 338% from the previous week, and active COVID-19 cases between Monday and Friday rose 175%. Johns Hopkins University researchers said one in every 97 people in the state tested positive in the past week, The Associated Press reported.

The rapid emergence of the omicron variant and rising cases have resulted in refocusing our priorities for case work. As a result, not all people with recent diagnosis will be contacted by a case worker for an interview, Kirby Kruger, head of the Health Department's disease control division and forensic pathology section, said in a statement Monday.

Case workers will continue to investigate or help with investigations of cases in K-12 students, higher education students and people over 55, as well as cases in health care facilities, long-term care facilities and congregate settings.

The Health Department urges people who test positive for COVID-19 to self-isolate for at least five days and follow guidance from their health care provider. For more details, go to https://www.health.nd.gov/news/nddoh-changes-made-covid-19-investigations. The department also has an isolation period calculator available at health.nd.gov/covidcalculator. A COVID-19 Hotline can be reached at 1-866-207-2880.

Daily data

The COVID-19 case spike slowed on Saturday and Sunday as testing dropped off, as it typically does over the weekend. But test positivity rates continue to soar.

The Health Department's coronavirus dashboard on Monday showed 617 new cases from 2,047 tests handled Sunday, and the state calculated a positivity rate of 29.2% -- meaning nearly one-third of all tests had a positive result. The state's 14-day rolling test positivity rate increased for a 14th consecutive day, to 12.79%. The state target is less than 5%.

Active COVID-19 cases stood at 3,860, down from 4,487 reported Friday. There were 762 active cases in Burleigh-Morton counties.

COVID-19 hospitalizations in North Dakota remained relatively stable Monday, at 122. The most recent state data showed about 8% of staffed inpatient beds available statewide and about 7.5% of intensive care unit beds open. In Bismarck, CHI St. Alexius Health had no available staffed general care beds but one open ICU bed; Sanford Health had none listed in either category.

No new deaths were reported Monday, but one was confirmed over the weekend. The Health Department no longer publicly reports the county, sex and age range of newly confirmed deaths. The dashboard death total for Burleigh County increased by one, to 284; Morton County's total was unchanged, at 131.

There have been 183,013 confirmed COVID-19 cases in North Dakota during the pandemic, which is in its 23rd month. There have been 177,124 recoveries, 7,050 hospitalizations and 2,029 deaths in the state.

More information

North Dakota continues to have one of the worst COVID-19 vaccination rates in the country, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Agency data on Monday showed 64% of North Dakota adults being fully vaccinated. The rate for all vaccine-eligible people in the state -- age 5 and older -- is 57.1%.

The CDC recommends COVID-19 booster shots for all adults; 43.6% of North Dakota adults have received a third dose of vaccine, according to state data. The federal agency last week also recommended that adolescents ages 12-17 receive boosters as well. The state vaccine dashboard does not yet track third doses for that age group.

The coronavirus transmission risk is considered substantial or high in all of North Dakota's 53 counties except Billings, according to the CDC's COVID-19 data tracker website. The CDC recommends people in those risk categories wear masks in public indoor settings.

People can go to https://www.ndvax.org or call 866-207-2880 to see where COVID-19 vaccine is available near them. A list of free COVID-19 testing offered by local public health units is at health.nd.gov/covidtesting. For more detailed information on coronavirus in North Dakota, go to www.health.nd.gov/coronavirus. For more information on coronavirus variants, go to https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/transmission/variant.html.
North Dakota House Majority Leader Chet Pollert wont seek reelection this year, citing a desire to fully retire and not linking his departure to any frustration over a growing divisiveness in politics.

Pollert, R-Carrington, announced his plans Monday. Hell be the third legislative leader who wont be back in Bismarck next year.

"I will say, it's been a long, fulfilling, demanding career, and I now look forward to what my full retirement will be," he said in an emotional press conference at the state Capitol.

Pollert, 66, plans to ride motorcycle, drive his family hobby car and play golf. He said he doesn't yet know "what my next chapter holds," though he will be active in his remaining months in office and plans to help Republican candidates in elections. His wife, Jo, also is retiring from her job.

Some lawmakers have commented on an erosion of civility in the Legislature in recent years, which two senators recently cited in not seeking reelection. But Pollert said civility in politics was not a factor in his decision -- "none whatsoever."

"I've always been one of those folks that tries to get a consensus going, and maybe I compromise more than the normal person does, but there's certain times when that works and certain times it doesn't," he said.

Redistricting, which is done every 10 years when new census data comes out, put Pollert and three other longtime representatives in the same district, where only two can serve.

He was first elected to the House in 1998, representing District 29 of eastern North Dakota. House Republicans elevated him to majority leader in 2018 after former Rep. Al Carlson, R-Fargo, lost reelection.

Pollert said the leadership has been the hardest job of his career, one that seems to require "a Ph.D. in HR (human resource) matters."

"It's relationships. It just is," he said, recommending that the next majority leader keep an open door and be approachable.

He sees accomplishments in his career in friendships, trust among colleagues and a $680 million infrastructure bonding bill last year.

Pollert won his last term in 2018 with 34% of the vote, finishing first in a four-way race for two seats. Before his time as leader, he served on budget-writing and human services committees.

He and his wife owned G & R Grain and Feed in New Rockford, which manufactured pelleted feed for beef cattle and bison producers. They sold the business in 2020, and he retired.

Gov. Doug Burgum said Pollert "has been a champion for farmers, ranchers and the business community and a strong advocate for social services.

"And as a conservative majority leader, he has supported strategic investments in infrastructure, economic development and education while holding the line on general fund spending," the governor said in a statement. Perhaps most importantly, as a true statesman, you always know where Chet stands. His principled approach to challenging issues and his lack of gamesmanship have earned him the respect of his colleagues and certainly of this office."

Pollert will join Senate Majority Leader Rich Wardner, R-Dickinson, and Senate Minority Leader Joan Heckaman, D-New Rockford, in leaving the Legislature when their terms end Nov. 30.

Wardner, 79, decided after his reelection in 2018 that the term would be his last. He has served more than 30 years in the Legislature.

Reapportionment of the Legislature put Heckaman in a district that wont be on the ballot this year. She also is moving to Dickinson with her husband to be closer to family.

House Minority Leader Josh Boschee, D-Fargo, intends to seek reelection to his seat.

Wardner, who announced his retirement last month, said he had hoped Pollert would stay "so it wasn't two (leaders retiring) at one time, but I understand the situation."

He commended Pollert's teamwork during the coronavirus pandemic and the Legislature's special session last fall.

"Communication, trust, respect: those three words," Wardner said of their relationship.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jeff Delzer, R-Underwood, said he hates to see Pollert go but wishes him the best.

"He's done a great job for the state, always been a good legislator. The next Legislature will miss him," said Delzer, the top House budget writer.

Republicans control the House 80-14, a supermajority caucus Pollert has led amid the pandemic and divisive issues in the last year.

He chaired a House panel early last year that handled the Legislatures mask mandate, a requirement many lawmakers did not go along with, despite leaders endorsement.

Pollert oversaw the process that led to the expulsion of former Rep. Luke Simons, R-Dickinson, for workplace and sexual harassment. Pollert acknowledged the expulsion divided House Republicans.

He and Wardner steered the Legislatures special session last fall. But lawmakers strayed to divisive issues outside the primary objectives of redistricting and deciding how to spend $1 billion of federal coronavirus aid. The Legislature approved a ban on teaching so-called critical race theory and exemptions for vaccination mandates.

In one floor debate, Rep. Jeff Hoverson, R-Minot, said he just would really like to see some spine in our leadership, in a shot at Pollert. Hoverson later apologized.

Ninety-eight seats in the Legislature are on the ballot this year, more than is usual, due to redistricting.

Republican and Democratic-NPL lawmakers will elect their caucus leaders after the November election.

Reach Jack Dura at 701-250-8225 or jack.dura@bismarcktribune.com.

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I like to think Im well-traveled in North Dakota, having visited 230 towns. But my great-great-great uncle has me beat.

It seems my ancestor Daniel Willard, one of North Dakotas first geologists, knew every corner, every creek and every coulee in this state. He wrote about them in his book The Story of the Prairies, published in 1902 when he was a professor at the State Normal School in Mayville. I recently acquired a first-edition copy of the textbook and found his descriptions of our state landscapes quite thoughtful despite one shortcoming Ill mention momentarily.

If I could meet Willard, Id take him on a road trip through the western half of the state that Ive come to know well as an energy reporter for the Tribune. Wed head north toward Underwood, where I imagine hed be blown away by the Falkirk Mine and Coal Creek Station. Willard devoted an entire chapter of his book to the geology of North Dakotas lignite reserves, describing at length how trees and plants that once covered the region slowly baked into coal under pressure from overlying sediment.

Willard wrote that an inexhaustible supply of coal underlies the surface of the western half of the State, making abundant and cheap fuel within reach of all citizens.

That holds true a century later, though in Willards day coal was primarily burned to heat homes. Miners often worked underground. The invention of the dragline was two years away at the time Willard published his book. Could he ever have imagined a machine so big? He seemed enthralled upon visiting a ranch in the Badlands to find that when fuel was wanted for the kitchen stove a small boy was despatched to the coal mine in the back yard to get the coal!

I got a kick out of Willards brief mention of carbonic acid gas in his chapter on North Dakotas coal beds. I was not familiar with the term, but when I looked it up, I learned its an archaic way of saying carbon dioxide.

Willard almost certainly was not familiar with human-caused climate change, as it was not until the latter part of the 20th century that the phenomenon became better researched and accepted by scientists. But as a geologist he would have been interested to learn how North Dakotas coal industry is looking to capture its carbon emissions and bury them in rocks deep underground. (We really ought to visit the North Dakota Geological Survey's core library at the University of North Dakota so he could see samples from the rock formations where the greenhouse gas is expected to be stored in the future, but for that wed need to plan an entirely different road trip.)

From Coal Country, we would cross Lake Sakakawea on the next leg of our journey. Willard described the Missouri River as a majestic stream and would be shocked by the Garrison Dam, the mass of water it holds back and the tribal communities it submerged upon its construction 50 years after his book came out.

We would then drive west through the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, the most important part of this imaginary journey, for I got the sense reading Willards book that he had never met a Native American. His writing references hundreds of North Dakota towns but not a single reservation. Its such a shame. Willard could have learned so much more about the states landscape if hed made any effort to connect with tribes.

I would take Willard to the Crow Flies High Butte near New Town because he was fond of vistas. From there, he could see much of the lake and dozens of oil wells -- maybe even a drilling rig or two. The drive from New Town to Watford City would take us through the heart of the Bakken oil patch. Willard made no mention of oil in the first edition of his book, though he did in an update published several years later that I found online. In it, hes doubtful about the potential for oil and gas development in the state.

It may be said that the odds are tremendously against the probability of any of these substances occurring in large amounts, but as a matter of known fact we know the rocks that lie beneath the surface only very superficially, he wrote.

Oh, how things have changed.

Oil was discovered near Tioga five decades after Willards book published. Six decades after that, along came horizontal drilling and fracking, ushering in todays oil boom. Western North Dakota is a geologists dream. At the same time, the oil industry has altered the very landscape Willard wrote so lovingly about. What would he think of this area now?

The oil fields extend south into the Badlands, and I cant quite pin down Willards view of the region. In his first edition, he made reference to the most wonderful Badlands. But in a later version he wrote, There is no beauty here.

What changed? Did a rattlesnake bite him as he climbed a butte? Id really like to know.

Willard wrote a whole chapter on the Badlands, so I think its safe to say he at least recognized the regions importance to the state. He spent considerable time traveling the Medora area by horseback, writing of the Mores Castle on a bluff overlooking the Little Missouri River. He told of a log schack that was once home to Teddy Roosevelt, who was president at the time Willards book came out.

I was elated by the Badlands the first time I drove to Medora eight years ago. It seems Willard first arrived by train and had a similar impression.

Stepping upon the platform of the little station the great nearly perpendicular wall of a large butte meets the gaze, its ribbon-marked side standing like a great curtain 300 feet high behind the town, he wrote.

I know that butte. Ive camped underneath it.

Like me, Willard is not from this state. He moved here from New York and lived in North Dakota until the 1920s, at which point he resettled in the Twin Cities. His niece, my great grandma, grew up in Fargo before she and her dad moved to Washington state, where I was born.

It wasnt until this past year that I learned about Willard. I had assumed I had no roots in North Dakota. I now feel ever so slightly less like an outsider.

Traveling the state has made me better at my job. Surely my great-great-great uncle felt the same. Willard sought to help students and everyday North Dakotans better understand the state with his book, and I do too through my reporting.

I would want to end our journey through western North Dakota with a stop at Salem Sue. Willard wrote of the high peak on which New Salem's giant Holstein cow statue now stands.

Atop her windy hill, I imagine he would tell me about the sandstone outcroppings below us and how some of the sand has been washed thousands of miles away down whats now the Missouri River. I would feign an interest. Really, Id just be there to snap a photo with him under Sues udders. Thats a quintessential modern-day North Dakota experience, one he shouldnt miss.

Newsroom Notebook is a periodic column written by members of the Tribune newsroom that focuses on our community and everyday life.

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Airline boardings at North Dakotas eight commercial service airports in November nearly doubled from the year before.

Meanwhile, millions of dollars is on the way for upgrades at airports in the state through the new federal infrastructure bill.

There were 83,429 people who boarded planes in Bismarck, Minot, Williston, Dickinson, Grand Forks, Fargo, Devils Lake and Jamestown during the month, up 95% from November 2020 during the height of the coronavirus pandemic and down just 12.5% from November 2019, before the pandemic began, according to the state Aeronautics Commission.

Additional travel demand during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend was reminiscent of pre-pandemic levels, and mild weather limited flight disruptions, according to Aeronautics Commissioner Kyle Wanner.

Its wonderful to once again see certain airports experience pre-pandemic levels of passengers as the traveling public continues to look to aviation as a safe and comfortable way to bring friends and family together, he said.

Airports in Fargo, Jamestown and Devils Lake had November 2021 boardings above their 2019 figure. Fargo's Hector International Airport -- the state's largest -- had its best November on record, according to the commission.

Bismarck's November boardings were down 22% from two years ago, however, though up 68% from last year.

Year-to-date boardings in November were ahead of the 2020 pace at all eight airports. Statewide, they were up about 53%. But they were down 26% from 2019.

We hope to end the year on a high note that provides for positive travel experiences and a continuation of the recovery in passenger demand, Wanner said.

Airport aid

The $1.2 trillion federal bipartisan infrastructure bill President Joe Biden signed in November will provide an estimated $18.9 million to North Dakotas 53 airports, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

It's the first of five annual rounds of funding North Dakota airports will receive. The money can be used for everything from runways to terminal upgrades.

With this new funding, urban, regional and rural airports across the country now can get to work on projects that have waited for years, modernizing their infrastructure and building a better America," U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement.

Funding for the Bismarck Airport is estimated at $2.6 million. Theodore Roosevelt Regional Airport in Dickinson is expected to get $1 million, and Williston Basin International Airport about $1.2 million.

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Back in 2015, the now-infamous "Pharma-bro" Martin Shkreli spent $2 million dollars to purchase the only existing copy of a new album from the Wu-Tang Clan, titled Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Here's how Bloomberg described the rare box set:

The 31-track album would come in a hand-carved box, accompanied by a leather-bound book with 174 pages of parchment paper filled with lyrics and background on the songs. The music itself was expected to be spectacular. All the surviving members of the Wu-Tang Clan contributed to Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, along with some special guests. Aside from RZA and his co-producer, Tarik "Cilvaringz" Azzougarh, nobody had heard the entire record. It was stored in a vault in the Royal Mansour Marrakech hotel in Morocco and any duplicates had been destroyed.

Shkreli, of course, then went to prison for securities fraud, leaving the album wasting away in storage until July 2021, when it was sold to help cover the cost of the restitution owed by Shkreli. Vice recently submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. Marshals for information on the album, which was reportedly sold in "as-is" condition (read: beat to shit). In addition to some rare photographs revealing the contents of the previously-unseen boxed set, here's what else they learned:

The feds were close-mouthed about what they sold it for and to whom, but a lawyer who facilitated the transaction listened to some of the album and told Motherboard it was a certified banger. Turns out a crypto collective that parcels out shares of NFTs and other collectibles to sell as investment opportunities paid $4 million for the album. A Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the transaction returned an official (and rather official-looking) bill of sale from the U.S. Marshals, a redacted contract detailing the sale, and 54 photographs that give the most thorough look at the album and its contacts yet. [] The photos give us a wonderful look at the album and its contents, but they're also redacted, so that they don't reveal too much. (The FOIA provision the feds cited in redacting records covers "trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person [that is] privileged or confidential," which perhaps actually applies here.) The track listing, parts of the lyric book, and the CDs themselves have been covered over by a big white block. The boxes also look rough. The outer box has scratches in the leather. There's a big divot to the upper left of the icon Wu-Tang symbol exposing the cedar box underneath.

You can head on over to Motherboard if you want to get a look at a gorgeous Wu-Tang collector's item that you will never ever get to listen to.

Government Photos Show Sacreligious Desecration of Unique Wu-Tang Clan Album [Matthew Gault / Motherboard]
Remember in March when Andreas Flatenex-employee of A OK Walker Autoworks in Peachtree City, Georgiadiscovered his final wages dumped on his driveway in the form of 91,500 oily pennies and a note that read "F*** You"? Now, the US Department of Labor has filed suit against A OK's owner Miles Walker. The lawsuit contends that Flaten contacted the labor department to report that he hadn't received his final paycheck and that Walker retaliated. From the New York Times:

As the penny pile drew widespread news coverage, Mr. Walker posted a message on the shop's website.

"What started out as a gotcha to a subpar ex-employee, sure got a lot of press," the message said, according to the lawsuit. "Let us just say that maybe he stole? Maybe he killed a dog? Maybe he killed a cat? Maybe he was lazy? Maybe he was a butcher?"

In a statement, the Labor Department called that message "defamatory" and said that Mr. Walker had retaliated against Mr. Flaten in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

"By law, worker engagement with the U.S. Department of Labor is protected activity," Steven Salazar, district director of the department's wage and hour division in Atlanta, said in a statement. "Workers are entitled to receive information about their rights in the workplace and obtain the wages they earned without fear of harassment or intimidation."

The lawsuit, which also accuses Mr. Walker and his shop of failing to pay legally required overtime rates and failing to keep adequate and accurate records of employees' pay rates and work hours, seeks $36,971 in back wages and damages for at least eight employees in addition to Mr. Flaten.
Michael Lang, co-creator of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, died Saturday at 77 years old from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. For decades, Lang was the face of the legendary music festival that drew 400,000 people to a Bethel, NY dairy farm in August 1969. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Ravi Shankar, Joan Baez, and dozens of other artist performed to celebrate "peace and music." Lang went on to produce Woodstock '94 and Woodstock '99 which was, er, decidedly less peaceful. He was also spearheading Woodstock 50 but the event was ultimately cancelled. Above, a Guardian interview with Lang from 2011. From NPR:

"Woodstock was a test of whether people of our generation really believed in one another and the world we were struggling to create," Lang wrote in his 2009 book The Road to Woodstock. "How would we do when we were in charge? Could we live as the peaceful community we envisioned? I'd hoped we could."

Born in Brooklyn, NY, Lang briefly attended New York University before moving to Florida. It was there he got the idea for Woodstock after organizing the Miami Pop Festival in 1968, featuring Jimi Hendrix as the headliner.

"I was amazed at the effect music had on the kids," he told Billboard in 2009. "I went from John Lee Hooker to Jimi Hendrix, and they loved it all and looking at their faces and the way music sort of transformed them really started me in that direction."
Ford Motor Co., one of the largest employers in the Town of Hamburg, expects to spend more than $7 million a year over the next five years to update its Buffalo Stamping Plant.

The updates are mostly routine in nature  including office machinery, furniture, computers, electrical infrastructure and other non-manufacturing equipment.

Ford hourly workers' profit sharing checks: $3,625 Ford's hourly workers in 2019 received profit-sharing checks of up to $6,600, and as much as $7,600 in 2018.

But Ford officials said the updates will help the plant remain competitive with other production facilities.

Ford is asking the Hamburg Industrial Development Agency to back those efforts with nearly $3.1 million in sales tax breaks.

Ford expects to spend $35 million on purchases of material and equipment, under a long-term program of regular investment. Capital investments and manufacturing equipment are not included.

Ford giving Woodlawn stamping plant a $60 million vote of confidence Ford Motor Co. will invest $60 million in its Woodlawn stamping plant, according to a United Auto Workers summary of a newly ratified

The automaker called the sales tax exemption "very important to the continued viability of the plant." As many as 979 jobs would be retained.

"Being cost competitive is one of the key variables allowing us to successfully retain current work and compete for new work," the company said. "Ford has several other stamping plants in North America, and the work presently done at the Buffalo Stamping Plant could be resourced to any one of them if the conditions in New York become uncompetitive."

Ford said the Buffalo plant vies with seven other similar facilities, but "it is at a competitive disadvantage" compared with those that are more integrated directly with an assembly plant, because the stampings produced in Buffalo have to be shipped, adding freight costs.

"There is extreme competition within the company, specifically among stamping plants, to address new product development and secure new business," the company wrote. "Ford's investment in the (plant) has been significant in recent years, and we would like to see more investment going forward; securing the HIDA tax exemption goes a long way in staying competitive within the Ford system."

If approved, it would be the third such tax incentive granted to the company by the Hamburg IDA in the last decade  once every five years  but would also be the largest to date. The previous round from 2016, which just expired, authorized $24 million in tax-free purchases, or $4.8 million a year.

Upgrade helps Hamburg Ford plant put its stamp on vehicles The plant along Route 5 is in the midst of an extensive upgrade, thanks to $150 million in new investment. Among the other vehicles the plant supports is the aluminum-bodied F-150 truck, a showroom

"We did notify them that this is up, to see if they have any capital improvement projects or any retooling for electric vehicles," Hamburg IDA Executive Director Sean Doyle said. "It's more so an installment sale agreement to help the plant remain competitive in New York, to maintain employment and viability here in Western New York."

The 71-year-old Buffalo Stamping Plant produces metal stampings and welded sub-assemblies for the Ford Edge, Nautilus, F-150, Super Duty and Econoline cars and trucks, which are manufactured at car and truck assembly plants in North America, Great Britain and Mexico. In particular, it works with the plant in Mississauga, Ont.

Originally 1.24 million square feet, it's been expanded six times, and now totals 2.45 million square feet  or 53.3 acres of floor space.

"Plant management wants to continue the partnership we have with HIDA as it is a great help to us, and we believe we have a significant impact on the Western New York economy," Ford officials wrote in the application.

The plant "is vital to the state and local economy, and continued availability of affordable purchases is a key factor in Ford Motor Company's long-term commitment to the Western New York area," the company said.

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Japan aims to hammer out its very first research and development strategy for nuclear fusion by summer, Nikkei has learned, with the goal of achieving a prototype reactor by around 2050.

The Cabinet Office will set up a forum for discussions with experts as early this month to create a strategy. The plan will be to work with the private sector, including financial support for small companies and startups.

Nuclear fusion generates power by recreating the same processes that occur inside the sun and does not produce carbon dioxide or other global warming gases. No highly radioactive waste is produced. Fusion reactors now being envisioned will be fueled by such materials as deuterium and lithium, which are abundant in seawater and can be obtained without depending on imports.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida mentioned nuclear fusion in connection with a clean energy strategy in a press conference on Tuesday.

Japan is working with the U.S. and other countries on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which is now being built in France. The project aims to see if the technology is technically feasible, though it will not generate electricity. Assembly began in 2020 with completion slated for 2025.
A federal judge in Rochester could decide within weeks whether to allow the federal government to continue pursuing criminal mortgage fraud charges against developer Robert C. Morgan, after defense attorneys accused prosecutors in Buffalo of lying to them and the court.

Attorneys for Morgan and three other defendants want U.S. District Court Judge Elizabeth A. Wolford to reconsider her earlier decision a year ago in which she dismissed an indictment against Morgan over procedural delays but allowed prosecutors to refile the allegations less than a year later.

They want her to dismiss the original extensive charges "with prejudice," which means the government could not come back again on the same matter. That would effectively negate the newer indictment.

Defense attorneys, led by Joel M. Cohen of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP in Manhattan, have argued that the stronger dismissal is justified because of what they call "outrageous" conduct by prosecutors.

They say the U.S. Attorney's Office and its investigators have not only repeatedly botched the "discovery" process in the past three years, but have also shown a flagrant disregard for the court through a series of misrepresentations and misleading statements about what evidence they have and what they've shared.

"Its not just a matter of using adequate resources. They have misled you, Cohen told the judge at a hearing Monday. If Your Honor does not reverse this decision, this is going to be a serious appellate issue."

But that would be a major step, especially coming before the merits of the 104-count indictment have been heard. And it is one the judge called an "uphill battle" for the defense, and one with little or no precedent. She noted that the charges are still very serious, and that any failures to fully search or reveal information so far couldn't have affected a trial that hasn't started.

"I am concerned about some of the information thats been brought to my attention. But the burden is not an easy one that the defense faces," Wolford said Monday. "I will give you an opportunity to try to convince me of that, but Im not there yet."

The four defendants  Morgan; his son, Todd; his finance chief, Michael Tremiti; and Buffalo mortgage broker Frank Giacobbe  are charged with orchestrating a bank and insurance fraud scheme. They are accused of submitting falsified and inflated rent rolls, financial statements, appraisals and other documents to lenders, deceiving them into making commercial mortgage loans on apartment properties for far more than the properties were worth.

The judge has been deeply skeptical and critical of the government's arguments, questioning prosecutors' process and decision-making, their internal communication and their failure to review past conclusions. She and the defense attorneys noted that she repeatedly asked prosecutors previously if there was any more material that needed to be identified and revealed, and was told no  only to learn later of more.

"We now know that wasnt true," Wolford said Monday. "Theres a lot of data that we now know was never processed, never even reviewed by the government."

And she blasted the U.S. Attorney's Office for not taking the case and its responsibilities seriously, putting a junior attorney new to the district in charge of discovery and other matters while his colleagues handled plea agreements.

"You tell me why I shouldnt re-evaluate my decision that there was no bad faith, when I now know that the U.S. Attorney's Office put a brand new attorney in charge of all this stuff?" Wolford asked Monday.

Even so, she said, that's not necessarily enough to justify a dismissal with prejudice.

For their part, prosecutors acknowledge mistakes were made, but say they were not deliberate or deceitful.

"Candidly, I and our office more generally did not fully appreciate the complexities of this large amount of data that had been copied," Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Penrose said Monday. "But in no way, shape or form would I ever intentionally mislead, lie or shade the truth from the court or the defense counsel."

At the urging of defense attorneys, Wolford said she would schedule an evidentiary hearing in a few weeks to get more testimony before making a decision.

Three other defendants  two of whom were named in the original 2018 indictment  have already pleaded guilty to similar charges. But the case has moved slowly through the legal process.

The government was deluged with documents it obtained from computers, servers, cellphones and other sources following the execution of search warrants and a May 2018 FBI raid on Morgan's suburban Rochester offices. It has been slow to provide all of the evidence to defense attorneys as required under court rules, and has provided conflicting answers at various times about the status of its document reviews.

That was the crux of the defense argument that led to the first indictment being dismissed  that the government was violating the defendants' rights to a speedy trial and full discovery. Now they're also asserting that the government is concealing evidence it has collected, and being evasive or even deceptive with the court.

"This is one of the most serious ones Ive ever seen in my career," Cohen said. "The amount of malfeasance, I have never seen this. The lies that have been perpetrated. Theyre lies."

Specifically, Morgan's attorneys accused the government of not disclosing until recently that they possessed a cellphone belonging to Julia Besant  Giacobbe's girlfriend  that the government seized in February 2018. They say the device contains an audio recording of people talking about Morgan being framed  a conversation they insist is significant evidence for them but which prosecutors said they never knew about until a third-year associate at Morgan's law firm found it and showed her bosses.

Defense attorneys have now seized on the government's admission that it was so overwhelmed with data and information that it could not review all of the computers, servers and records it had seized within the "speedy trial" timeframe set by the court. So, instead, prosecutors provided "mirror images" of electronic evidence.

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With the redevelopment of the former Trico Building now back in full swing under a redesigned plan, developer Peter Krog is coming back to the Erie County Industrial Development Agency for $3.7 million in tax breaks to support the $108 million project.

Orchard Park-based Krog Group had already received a package of tax relief for a mixed-use redevelopment that included an extended-stay hotel, residential apartments and commercial office space.

Krog Group set to resume work on Trico project, with apartments replacing planned hotel The building will feature 243 apartments of various sizes, up from the 133 units originally planned, along with 250 interior parking spaces and 60,000 to 70,000 square feet of commercial space.

But the project at 791 Washington St. was suspended when Covid-19 hit in March 2020, and then lenders pulled out of the project because of fears that the hospitality industry would be devastated by the impacts of the pandemic.

So Krog revised the adaptive reuse plan for the historic windshield-wiper factory building that had been vacant for 16 years, since Trico moved out in 2005. The developer dropped the hotel and added more apartment housing to support the nearby Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and University at Buffalo's Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

The new plan now features 243 studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments, with 25 of them  10%  intended as workforce housing for families earning 80% or less of the area median income. The market-rate units would range in size from 560 to 1,866 square feet, with rents of $1,105 to $3,350.

Contaminants removed from Trico building, paving way for redevelopment Cleanup of a brownfield site at the former Trico Plant has been completed, opening the door for one of the citys largest redevelopment projects to move forward in 2020. Plans by the Krog Group call for 135 studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom market-rate apartments, 12,000-square-feet of retail and food space, 105 extended-stay hotel rooms operated by Buffalo-based Hart Hotels, and

The 498,000-square-foot building will also include 60,000 square feet of commercial space for companies seeking to work with the various entities on the medical campus. Two biomedical research and development firms have already expressed interest.

The plan was approved by the city, and is backed by preservationists. Krog already completed "a significant portion of the environmental remediation" on the century-old complex under the state Brownfield Cleanup Program, as well as much of the demolition that was necessary to open up the building and advance the project.

The site has been fenced in during those phases, and though activity was shut down in the early days of the pandemic, work restarted late last year and is expected to be completed by May 30, 2023.

However, Krog officials wrote, "the project will not move forward without financial assistance provided by the agency." The project is majority owned by Krog, with investor Bruce Wisbaum owning 35% of the venture.

Krog is asking the ECIDA to approve just over $3 million in sales tax relief and $712,500 in mortgage-recording tax breaks. It's also seeking a property tax break from the city, under the 485-a program.

Costs include $100,000 for acquisition of the two-acre site, $87.1 million for renovation and reconstruction, $14.53 million for professional fees, $725,000 for furniture and fixtures and $5.5 million in owner contingency expenses. Krog noted that the site "contains contaminants that will add to the overall redevelopment costs" of bringing the site up to clean standards.

Funding for the project includes $70 million in bank loans, $26.6 million in historic and brownfield tax credits and other grants and $11.4 million in developer equity.

The ECIDA board will consider the application when it meets Jan. 26.

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Hormoz Mansouri, an Amherst businessman active behind the scenes for many years as a Democratic insider and contributor, fraudulently obtained $3.4 million in pandemic assistance from the federal government, prosecutors alleged Tuesday.

Mansouri, 67, faces charges of wire fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud and money laundering, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael DiGiacomo said.

Alleged PPP fraud highlights 'brazenness' of some during Covid pandemic At least nine defendants are being prosecuted in the Western District of New York for alleged fraud related to federal Covid-19 relief aid.

Between April 2020 and May 2021, Mansouri paid some $644,805 to a casino, much of which was funded with the pandemic aid to his companies, according to the criminal complaint. And $200,000 was transferred to a newly opened bank account for Mansouri's political campaign, "Mansouri for County Comptroller," according to the complaint.

"We plan to carefully review the charges in the complaint and then determine what our next steps will be," said defense lawyer Joel L. Daniels, who is on Mansouri's defense team with attorneys Joseph Makowski and Herbert Greenman.

Mansouri transmitted or caused to be transmitted multiple applications for Paycheck Protection Program loans, as well as Economic Injury Disaster Loan relief, according to the prosecutor. He received 16 PPP loans, with more than $3 million in proceeds deposited into at least eight bank accounts, and he also received $450,600 in EIDL loans.

Feds charge pair with fraud, allege $1 million PPP loan scam Adam D. Arena of Great Valley, and Amanda J. Gloria of Altus, Okla., conspired to use a defunct business to obtain a $954,000 loan and then misuse the money on personal expenses, according to court papers.

Mansouri transferred the funds back and forth through numerous bank accounts, often times in excess of $10,000, to conceal the nature and source of the proceeds, according to the complaint.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael J. Roemer released Mansouri on Tuesday on $250,000 bail, secured by Mansouri's East Amherst residence, along with conditions that prevent him from gambling. He must also enroll in a Gamblers Anonymous program.

If convicted, the wire fraud charge alone carries a maximum prison sentence of 30 years and a $1 million fine.

Mansouri operates at least eight companies in Western New York, including HLM Holding LLC, a holding company for his business ventures.

The PPP loans were intended to provide businesses with funding for about 10 weeks of payroll. For each of the 16 PPP loans to Mansouri's businesses, the average payroll was inflated or completely fabricated, according to the complaint. Six of the eight entities did not have any employees or payroll expenses.

Appellate judges rule Mansouri off comptroller ballot Mansouri had gathered 1,657 petition signatures for an office requiring 600. But the court agreed with objector Lisa Saunders that many of the signatures had been improperly collected.

EIDL advances are calculated using revenue and costs to come up with the amount of working capital needed for a six-month period. For each of Mansouri's entities, the reported revenue and costs were fabricated, according to the complaint.

Mansouri directed employees to falsify information on the applications for the PPP and EIDL aid, and many of the documents were signed by Mansouri, according to the complaint.

Mansouri did use a portion of the funds to operate the businesses and cover payroll expenses, which included pay for his wife and his daughter, according to the complaint.

The federal government obtained seizure warrants for his accounts on May 28, and seized more than $1.9 million.

This defendant is now part of a growing list of individuals that this office has charged who sought to steal for themselves money which was intended to assist businesses and employees crippled by the pandemic, U.S. Attorney James P. Kennedy Jr. said in a news release. The greed exhibited by such individuals in the face of a national crisis is criminal."

In May, the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court ruled Mansouri off the June 22 ballot for Erie County comptroller, finding that his designating petition was "permeated with fraud," although the justices noted they did not hold Mansouri personally responsible for the improper signatures.

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Health Minister Ong Ye Kung addresses Parliament on Monday, 12 January 2022 (SCREENGRAB: Gov.sg YouTube channel)

SINGAPORE  Of the 802 deaths that occurred due to the coronavirus in 2021, some 555 of them were not fully vaccinated, said Health Minister Ong Ye Kung in Parliament on Monday (10 January).

The remaining 247 were vaccinated with a range of locally available vaccines.

"The unvaccinated and under-vaccinated are still most prone to falling severely ill when infected," said Ong, who was responding to a query from Hougang Member of Parliament (MP) Dennis Tan on the breakdown of COVID-19 deaths.

The minister noted that although the unvaccinated form a small proportion of Singapore's population, they contributed to 70 per cent of the deaths in 2021. Furthermore, such individuals have consistently taken up two-thirds of intensive care unit (ICU) beds throughout the pandemic.

How many are medically ineligible for vaccination?

Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh also asked how many Singaporeans and permanent residents respectively are deemed to be medically ineligible for COVID-19 vaccination. In response, Ong said that around 132,000 individuals aged 18 years and above remain unvaccinated, while around 300 are medically ineligible.

"We will continue to try to convince those who are medically eligible to get vaccinated through their primary care physicians, public messaging and the media. But as Members will appreciate, as the numbers get smaller, it becomes harder and harder to convince them," said Ong.

This was why vaccinated differentiated safe management measures (VDS) were introduced, in order to protect unvaccinated individuals against infections and serious illnesses and taking up hospital resources. "The rest of society who have been vaccinated can also then live life more normally," Ong said.

Last month, COVID-19 vaccination for children aged five to 11 began as Singapore extended the national vaccination programme to cover over 300,000 children. The multi-ministry task force on COVID-19 (MTF) had said then that there were no plans to impose VDS on children aged 5-11.

Story continues

Responding to Sengkang MP He Ting Ru's query on this, the Minister reiterated that there are presently no plans to introduce such measures for children aged 12 and below in community, public, pre-school and school settings.

"This is due to a combination of reasons namely, children are less likely to develop severe illnesses when infected and we want to preserve, as much as possible, universal access to holistic education of children."

For now, children aged 12 and below who are Singapore citizens, permanent residents or long term pass holders and did not travel recently, will continue to have their COVID-19 medical bills fully covered by the government, and this is regardless of their vaccination status.

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NEO Battery Materials Ltd has announced that its NBMSiDE pouch-type full cells have been manufactured to evaluate product performance, viability, and durability in genuine battery charging conditions.

In addition, the company said the Kick-Off Meeting for NBM Silicon Anode Plant project has been convened with the engineering design company to streamline terms and efforts for fast-track construction completion.

NEO Battery Materials said it commissioned a third-party evaluation agency for a product performance and viability assessment of NBMSiDE through manufacturing and cycle-testing 500 milliampere/hour (mAh) pouch-type full cells.

To simulate an authentic battery charging/discharging environment, the pouch full cells utilize NMC cathode materials and a composite mixture anode material with 5% to 10% silicon loading of NBMSiDE and graphite.
Security

Ransomware Attack on Software Provider Finalsite Shuts Down Thousands of School Websites

Thousands of K12 schools and universities found their websites inaccessible last week after website software provider Finalsite was hit by a ransomware attack. The company was still working to restore full functionality Friday afternoon.

The company said in a statement on its website that it had full access to its files and data throughout the incident and a forensic investigation was under way. "We have no evidence that our data or client data has been taken." Finalsite also noted that its database information on client schools is limited to names and email addresses and the company does not store payment information, academic records, Social Security numbers or other personal information.

"It's important to note that the malware is not what took our sites offline," said Finalsite Director of Communications Morgan Delack. "We did so proactively  and immediately  upon learning of the issue in order to protect our data. The reconnection of our websites is taking so long because we had to rebuild everything in a clean, safe environment again. At this time, we have no evidence that data was compromised, and we credit that to our early actions."

Delack said about 5,000 of its almost 8,000 global customers had been affected by the incident.

Finalsite, with offices in Connecticut and the U.K., provides website, marketing, and communications platforms for schools and universities in 108 countries. It is a portfolio company of Veritas Capital.

Late Thursday, Finalsite held a webinar for clients affected by the outage, where company leaders spoke about what happened and why the cause of the outage hadn't been shared until the outage was in its third day, according to a transcript of the webinar.

Initially, on Tuesday, Finalsite posted on its status page for its customers that it was "investigating an issue leading to increased error rates and performance issues," and it posted updates about the "continued outage" several times a day without mentioning the cause of the outage, until just after noon on Thursday.

At 12:04 p.m. on Thursday, Finalsite acknowledged that ransomware was the cause and said in a new status update that the ransomware had been detected on Tuesday.

"We are incredibly sorry for this prolonged outage and fully realize the stress it is causing your organizations. While we have made progress overnight to get all websites up and running, full restoration has taken us longer than anticipated," the status update said. "The Finalsite security team monitors our network systems 24 hours a day, seven days a week. On Tuesday, January 4, our team identified the presence of ransomware on certain systems in our environment. We immediately took steps to secure our systems and to contain the activity. We quickly launched an investigation into the event with the assistance of third-party forensic specialists, and began proactively taking certain systems offline.

"In the ensuing time since the incident, our security, infrastructure, and engineering teams have been working around the clock to restore backup systems and bring our network back to full performance, in a safe and secure manner. Third-party forensic specialists are assisting us in bringing things back slowly and carefully to ensure the environment is safe and stable."

Late Friday afternoon, the company said, "We're continuing to work to restore admin access as quickly as possible, and many more sites can now log in. We are continuing to restore styling, calendar events, and constituents for directories and will update you on our progress along the way."

Speakers on the webinar held Thursday afternoon included CEO and Founder Jon Moser and the chief officers of revenue, marketing, product, and communications.

"Many of you have said, why haven't you been more upfront with us about what is happening until now? As you've read in our letter, because of the nature of the incident, we have had to hold back some information until now and are grateful for your understanding of these difficult circumstances," the officers said, according to the webinar transcript. "After isolating and shifting away from the affected infrastructure components, we needed to rebuild aspects of our network. It's taking us longer to tune this rebuilt infrastructure than we originally anticipated."

The company leaders emphasized that they take security "extremely seriously and are frequently updating protocols" based upon any best practices and new information.

"The Finalsite security team has strict security measures in place to protect the information in our care, and have worked to add further technical safeguards to our environment," the transcript reads. "We've invested $2.5 million into hosting security and our team monitors our network systems 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As we learn more about this incident, we are taking additional steps to further secure the environment and prevent this type of attack from occurring again."
Combined Defence Services Exam (CDS) (I), 2022 https://career.webindia123.com/career/dates_and_events/entrance/upsc/combined-defence-service-cds1-exam.htm Details of Combined Defence Services Exam (CDS) (I), 2022 2021-10-10 2022-1-11 https://career.webindia123.com/career/images/exams.png India India Combined Defence Services Exam (CDS) (I), 2022 UPSC

UPSC Combined Defence Services Examination (I)- CDS 2022, April 10th 2022

Category : UPSC Recruitment 2022 Published : On October 10, 2021 By Webindia123 Editor

Important Dates

Date of Notification December 22, 2021 The Online Applications can be filled upto January 11th, 2022 Date of Examination April 10th 2022

Applications have been invited from interested candidates for admission to Indian Military Academy, Naval Academy and Air Force Academy through Combined Defense Service Examination (I) 2022.

(a) Nationality:

A candidate must be unmarried and must either be:

(i) a Citizen of India, or

(ii) a subject of Bhutan, or

(iii) a subject of Nepal, or

(iv) a Tibetan refugee who came over to India before the 1st January, 1962 with the intention of permanently settling in India, or

(v) a person of Indian origin who has migrated from Pakistan, Burma, Sri Lanka and East African Countries of Kenya, Uganda, the United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Zaire and Ethiopia or Vietnam with the intention of permanently settling in India.

Provided that a candidate belonging to categories (ii), (iii), (iv) and (v) above shall be a person in whose favour a certificate of eligibility has been issued by the Government of India.

Certificate of eligibility will, however, not be necessary in the case of candidates who are Gorkha subjects of Nepal.

A candidate in whose case a certificate of eligibility is necessary, may be admitted to the examination provisionally subject to the necessary certificate being given to him/her by the Govt. before declaration of result by UPSC.

(b) Age Limits, Sex and Marital Status :

For Indian Military Academy

Unmarried male candidates born not earlier than 2nd January, 1999 and not later than 1st January, 2004 only are eligible.

For Indian Navel Academy

Unmarried male candidates born not earlier than 2nd January, 1999 and not later than 1st January, 2004 only are eligible.

For Air Force Academy

20 to 24 years as on 1st January, 2023 i.e. born not earlier than 2nd January, 1999 and not later than 1st January, 2003 (Upper age limit for candidates holding valid and current Commercial Pilot Licence issued by DGCA (India) is relaxable upto 26 yrs. i.e. born not earlier than 2nd January, 1997 and not later than 1st January, 2003) only are eligible.

Note: Candidate below 25 years of age must be unmarried. Marriage is not permitted during training. Married candidates above 25 years of age are eligible to apply but during training period they will neither be provided married accommodation nor can they live with family out of the premises.

For Officer's Training Academy

(SSC Course for men) unmarried male candidates born not earlier than 2nd January, 1998 and not later than 1st January, 2004 only are eligible.

For Officers` Training Academy

(SSC Women Non-Technical Course) Unmarried women, issueless widows who have not remarried and issueless divorcees (in possession of divorce documents) who have not remarried are eligible. They should have been born not earlier than 2nd January, 1998 and not later than 1st January, 2004.

NOTE : Male divorcee/widower candidates cannot be treated as unmarried male for the purpose of their admission in IMA/INA/AFA courses and accordingly they are not eligible for these courses.

(c) Educational Qualification :

For Indian Military Academy and Officer's Training Academy

Degree of a recognized university or equivalent.



For Naval Academy

Degree in Engineering from a recognized University/Institution.



For Air Force Academy

Degree of a recognized University (with Physics and Mathematics at 10+2 level) or Bachelor of Engineering

Graduates with first choice as Army/Navy/Air Force are to submit proof of graduation provisional certificates on the date of commencement of the SSB Interview at the SSB.

Candidates who are studying in the final year/semester Degree course and have yet to pass the final year degree examination can also apply provided candidate should not have any present backlog upto the last semester / year for which results have been declared upto the time of submission of application and they will be required to submit proof of passing the degree examination at the time of commencement of course to reach the IHQ of MoD (Army), Rtg `A . CDSE Entry, West Block III, R. K. Puram, New Delhi-110066 in case of IMA/SSC first choice candidates and Naval HQ DMPR (OI & R Section), Room No. 204, C Wing, Sena Bhawan, New Delhi-110011 in case of Navy first choice candidates and PO3(A)/Air Headquarters, J Block, Room No. 17, Opp. Vayu Bhawan, Motilal Nehru Marg, New Delhi-110 106

How to Apply :

Candidates are required to apply Online using the link www.upsconline.nic.in Detailed instructions for filling up Online Applications are available on the abovementioned website.

The applicants are advised to submit only single application; however if due to any unavoidable situation, if he/she submits another/multiple applications, then he/she must ensure that application with the higher RID (Registration ID) is complete in all respects like applicants' details, examination centre, photograph, signature, fee etc. The applicants who are submitting multiple applications should note that only the applications with higher RID (Registration ID) shall be entertained by the Commission and fee paid against one RID shall not be adjusted against any other RID.

Fee :

Candidates (excepting Female/SC/ST candidates who are exempted from payment of fee) are required to pay a fee of Rs. 200/- (Rupees Two Hundred Only) either by depositing the money in any Branch of SBI by cash, or by using net banking facility of SBI, State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur/State Bank of Hyderabad/State Bank of Mysore/State Bank of Patiala/State Bank of Travancore or by using Visa/Master Credit/Debit Card.

All Female candidates and candidates belonging to SC/ST are not required to pay any fee.

More details can be available from the official website.

Contact Details Address : Union Public Service Commission

Dholpur House, Shahjahan Road, New Delhi - 110069 Phone : Fax : 011-23098591 Mobile : E-mail : Website : www.upsc.gov.in

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Union Public Service Commission NDA and NA Exam (I), 2022 https://career.webindia123.com/career/dates_and_events/entrance/upsc/national-defence-academy-and-naval-academy-examination-nda1.htm Details of Union Public Service Commission NDA and NA Exam (I), 2022 2021-12-2 2022-1-11 https://career.webindia123.com/career/images/exams.png India India Union Public Service Commission NDA and NA Exam (I), 2022 UPSC

National Defence Academy and Naval Academy Examination (I), 2022

Union Public Service Commission NDA and NA Exam (I), 2022 Category : UPSC Recruitment 2022 Published : On December 2, 2021 By Webindia123 Editor

Important Dates

Last Date for submission of Online Applications January 11, 2022 Date of Examination April 10, 2022

An Examination will be conducted by the Union Public Service Commission for admission to the Army, Navy and Air Force wings of the NDA for the 147th Course, and for the 108th Indian Naval Academy Course (INAC) commencing from 02 January 2023. The candidates Joining Indian Naval Academy would undergo 4 years B.Tech Course and would be given an opportunity to join Executive and Technical Branches of the Navy subject to availability of vacancies.

The approximate number of vacancies to be filled on the results of this examination will be 370 [(208 for the Army, 42 for Navy, 120 for the Air Force and 48 for Indian Naval Academy (10+2 Cadet Entry Scheme)].

Vacancies are provisional and may be changed depending on the availability of training capacity of National Defense Academy.

Admission will be made on the results of the written examination to be conducted by the Commission followed by intelligence and personality test by the Services Selection Board of candidates who qualify in the written examination.

Centers of Examination :

The Examination will be held at the following Centers:

Agartala, Ahmedabad, Aizawl, Prayagraj (Allahabad), Bengaluru, Bareilly, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Chennai, Cuttack, Dehradun, Delhi, Dharwad, Dispur, Gangtok, Hyderabad, Imphal, Itanagar, Jaipur, Jammu, Jorhat, Kochi, Kohima, Kolkata, Lucknow, Madurai, Mumbai, Nagpur, Panaji (Goa), Patna, Port Blair, Raipur, Ranchi, Sambalpur, Shillong, Shimla, Srinagar, Thiruvananthapuram, Tirupati, Udaipur and Vishakhapatnam.

Conditions of Eligibility :

(a) Nationality : A candidate must either be :

(i) a citizen of India, or

(ii) a subject of Bhutan, or

(iii) a subject of Nepal, or

(iv) a Tibetan refugee who came over to India before the 1st January, 1963 with the intention of permanently settling in India, or

(v) a person of Indian origin who has migrated from Pakistan, Burma, Sri Lanka and East African Countries of Kenya, Uganda, the United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Zaire and Ethiopia or Vietnam with the intention of permanently settling in India.

Provided that a candidate belonging to categories (ii), (iii), (iv) and (v) above shall be a person in whose favor a certificate of eligibility has been issued by the Government of India. Certificate of eligibility will not, however, be necessary in the case of candidates who are Gorkha subjects of Nepal.

Educational Qualifications :

For Army wing of National Defense Academy :- 12th Class pass of the 10+2 pattern of School Education or equivalent examination conducted by a State Education Board or a University. For Air Force and Naval Wings of National Defense Academy and for the 10+2 (Executive Branch) Course at the Naval Academy :- 12th Class pass of the 10+2 pattern of School Education or equivalent with Physics and Mathematics conducted by a State Education Board or a University.

Candidates who are appearing in the 12th Class under the 10+2 pattern of School Education or equivalent examination can also apply for this examination.

Such candidates who qualify the SSB interview but could not produce Matriculation/10+2 or equivalent certificate in original at the time of SSB Interview should forward the certificates along with photocopies thereof to `Addl. Directorate General of Recruiting, Army HQ, West Block-III, R.K. Puram, New Delhi-110066' and for Naval Academy candidates to 'Naval Headquarters, DMPR, OI&R Section, Room No. 204, `C' Wing, Sena Bhavan, New Delhi-110011' by 24th December, 2020 failing which their candidature will be cancelled. All other candidates who have produced their matriculation and 10+2 pass or equivalent certificates in original at the time of attending the SSB interview and have got the same verified by the SSB authorities are not required to submit the same to Army HQ or Naval HQ as the case may be.

Certificates in original issued by the Principals of the institutions are also acceptable in cases where Boards/ Universities have not yet issued certificates. Certified true copies/photostat copies of such certificates will not be accepted. In exceptional cases the Commission may treat a candidate, who does not possess any of the qualifications prescribed in this rule as educationally qualified provided that he possesses qualifications, the standard of which in the opinion of the Commission, justifies his admission to the examination.

Physical Standards : Candidates must be physically fit according to physical standards for admission to National Defense Academy and Naval Academy Examination. More details

A candidate who has resigned or withdrawn on disciplinary grounds from any of the training academics of Armed Forces is not eligible to apply.

How to Apply :

Candidates are required to apply online by using the website http://www.upsconline.nic.in/. Detailed instructions for filling up online applications are available on the above mentioned website.

The Online Applications can be filled upto 11th January 2022 till 6.00 PM

No other mode is allowed for submission of application.

Note : 1 - The applicants are advised to submit only single application; however, if due to any unavoidable situation, if he submits another/multiple applications, then he must ensure that application with the higher RID is complete in all respects like applicants' details, examination centre, photograph, signature, fee etc. The applicants who are submitting multiple applications should note that only the applications with higher RID (Registration ID) shall be entertained by the Commission and fee paid against one RID shall not be adjusted against any other RID.

Note -2 : All candidates whether already in Government Service including candidates serving in the Armed Forces, Sailors [including boys and artificers apprentices) of the Indian Navy, Cadets of Rashtriya Indian Military College [previously known as Sainik School, Dehradun), Students of Military Schools formerly known as King George's Schools) and Sainik Schools run by Sainik Schools Society, Government owned industrial undertakings or other similar organizations or in private employment should apply direct to the Commission.

N.B. (a) Persons already in Government service, whether in permanent or temporary capacity or as work charged employees other than casual or daily rated employees or those serving under the Public Enterprises; (b) Candidates serving in the Armed Forces, Sailors [including boys and artificers apprentices] of the Indian Navy; and (c) Cadets of Rashtriya Indian Military College [previously known as Sainik School, Dehradun), Students of Military Schools formerly known as King George's Schools) and Sainik Schools run by Sainik School Society are required to inform their Head of Office//Department, Commanding Officer, Principals of College/School concerned, as the case may be, in writing that they have applied for this examination.

Selection :

The Union Public Service Commission shall prepare a list of candidates who obtain the minimum qualifying marks in the written examination as fixed by the Commission at their discretion. Such candidates shall appear before a Services Selection Board for Intelligence and Personality Test where candidates for the Army/Navy wings of the NDA and 10+2 Cadet Entry Scheme of Indian Naval Academy will be assessed on Officers Potentiality and those for the Air Force in Pilot Aptitude Test and for Officers Potentiality. PABT applicable to candidates with Air Force as First choice would also be conducted for all SSB qualified candidates with one of the choice as Air Force subject to their eligibility and if they are so willing.

Two Stage Selection Procedure

Two-stage selection procedure based on Psychological Aptitude Test and Intelligence Test has been introduced at Selection Centers/Air Force Selection Boards. All the candidates will be put to stage one test on first day of reporting at Selection Centers/Air Force Selection Boards. Only those candidates who qualify at stage one will be admitted to the second stage/remaining tests. Those candidates who qualify stage II will be required to submit the original Certificates along with one photocopy each of : (I) original Matriculation pass certificate or equivalent in support of date of birth, (ii) Original 10+2 pass certificate or equivalent in support of educational qualification.

Candidates who appear before the Services Selection Board and undergo the test there, will do so at their own risk and will not be entitled to claim any compensation or other relief from Government in respect of any injury which they may sustain in the course of or as a result of any of the tests given to them at the Services Selection Board whether due to the negligence of any person or otherwise. Parents or guardians of the candidates will be required to sign a certificate to this effect.

To be acceptable, candidates for the Army/ Navy/Naval Academy and Air Force should secure the minimum qualifying marks separately in (i) Written examination as fixed by the Commission at their discretion and (ii) Officer potentiality Test as fixed by the Services Selection Board at their discretion. Over and above candidates for the Air Force, and all the SSB qualified candidates as per their willingness, eligibility and preference for Air Force, should separately qualify the PABT. Subject to these conditions the qualified candidates will then be placed in a single combined list on the basis of total marks secured by them in the Written Examination and the Services Selection Board Tests.

The final allocation/selection for admission to the Army, Navy, Air Force of the National Defence Academy and 10+2 Cadet Entry Scheme of Indian Naval Academy will be made upto the number of vacancies available subject to eligibility, medical fitness and merit-cum-preference of the candidates. The candidates who are eligible to be admitted to multiple Services/ Courses will be considered for allocation/ selection with reference to their order of preferences and in the event of their final allocation/selection to one Service/ Course, they will not be considered for admission to other remaining Services/ Courses.



The details regarding (a) the scheme and syllabus of the examination, (b) guidelines for filling up the online Application Form, (c) Special Instructions to candidates for objective type tests, (d) Physical standards for admission to the National Defence Academy and Naval Academy and (e) Brief particulars of the service etc., for candidates joining the National Defence Academy and Naval Academy can be obtained by the upsc website.

Contact Details Address : Union Public Service Commission

Dholpur House, Shahjahan Road, New Delhi - 110069 Phone : Fax : 011-23098591 Mobile : E-mail : Website : www.upsc.gov.in

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A Dane County judge Monday rejected a request by Wisconsins Democratic attorney general to block former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gablemans demand to interview the states top elections administrator as part of his GOP-ordered review of the 2020 election.

Dane County Circuit Court Judge Rhonda Lanfords decision marks a win for Gableman, who was hired last year by legislative Republicans to review the election, an effort that has become bogged down in multiple court battles. Lanford also denied Gablemans request to dismiss the case entirely, a decision that leaves the door open for Attorney General Josh Kaul, who is representing the Wisconsin Elections Commissions nonpartisan administrator Meagan Wolfe, if he decides to continue to fight Gablemans subpoena.

Should Defendants seek to enforce the subpoenas before this case is decided on the merits through contempt, imprisonment or other means similar to the action pending in Waukesha County  plaintiffs can certainly file another motion for temporary injunction that the Court will schedule as soon as its calendar permits, Lanford wrote.

The reference was to another case challenging a separate request by Gableman for the Waukesha County sheriff to compel the mayors of Madison and Green Bay to meet with him or else face jail time. A Waukesha County judge has scheduled a hearing for Jan. 21 on the matter.

Lanfords decision stems from Kauls October request for a restraining order against a subpoena issued by Gableman seeking election-related documents and the interview with Wolfe.

In her decision, Lanford wrote that attorneys for Wolfe failed to show she would face contempt charges for refusing to comply with Gablemans subpoena.

In his initial lawsuit, Kaul contended that Gableman issued numerous subpoenas to state and local election officials in furtherance of an unlawful investigation focused on debunked theories about the November 2020 election.

Officials have said Wolfe is willing to meet with Gableman or his team, but only in a public setting. An attorney for Wolfe said last month state statutes require that any meeting with Gableman occur in a public setting before a legislative committee, while attorneys for Gableman have contended that the former justice is operating under the authority of the Legislatures Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections.

A primary issue with the subpoenas from the outset was the part about meeting in secret, Wolfe said in a statement. We continue to have a strong preference for providing testimony in public rather than behind closed doors. Weve already provided Special Counsel Gableman with documents and data, and conversations are ongoing regarding additional document production.

Gableman was hired by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, to investigate the election at a cost of $676,000 to taxpayers. His contract expired at the close of December, but Vos has said he hopes to have the review finished by the end of February.

It is my hope that former Justice Gableman will withdraw these unnecessary subpoenas rather than continuing to litigate over them, Kaul said.

Court battles mount

In late December, Gableman subpoenaed the elections commissions Democratic chair Ann Jacobs and Madison officials, demanding in-person testimony and a wide swath of election-related records including emails, internet logs and individual voter information. Gableman has also demanded records related to Dominion Voting Systems machines, though the city of Madison does not use those machines.

The subpoenas also request any records of payments from several nonprofit groups, including the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which is funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Republicans, including Gableman, have targeted CTCL funds as unfairly increasing turnout in the Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine.

In a separate case, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals on Monday denied a recent request from Vos seeking a stay to appeal Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihns order last week that Vos and his attorney need to sit for depositions on Wednesday as part of a liberal watchdog groups lawsuit seeking public records related to Gablemans review.

Vos requested the stay on Friday, a move that attorneys for American Oversight called a last-ditch attempt to avoid discovery in court filings Monday.

As it stands now, the depositions are still scheduled for Wednesday morning, and unless a court says otherwise, we expect Speaker Vos to appear and answer questions, American Oversight spokesperson Clark Pettig said in an email. This could have been avoided if Speaker Vos had released the records of his election investigation to the public as required by Wisconsin law, and its disappointing that hes now going to even greater lengths to conceal the facts from the public.

The case is one of three ongoing lawsuits brought by American Oversight following requests for records filed last year pertaining to Gablemans review. Attorneys for American Oversight have asked that Vos be held in contempt for not releasing the records sooner.

Attorneys for Vos have said all available documents have been provided, while attorneys for American Oversight have questioned whether additional documents exist.

If (American Oversight) believes that a particular document has been withheld it can move the Circuit Court for relief, but it has not even raised such an allegation, Vos attorney Ronald Stadler wrote in a Friday court filing.

In yet another case, Erick Kaardal, a Republican attorney for the conservative Thomas More Society and former secretary and treasurer for the Republican Party of Minnesota, last week filed an appeal in Dane County Circuit Court challenging the Elections Commissions decision in early December to throw out a complaint filed against CTCL grants provided to the states five largest cities to help administer last years election during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Court rulings have found nothing illegal about the more than $10 million in grants CTCL distributed to about 214 municipalities in 39 of Wisconsins 72 counties, including many in areas solidly won by Trump. Nor did CTCL turn down grant requests from any of the Wisconsin municipalities that made them.

A recount and court decisions have affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes.

An analysis by The Associated Press found only 31 potential cases of voter fraud in Wisconsins 2020 election, which represents less than 0.15% of Bidens margin of victory.

Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, on Monday requested that the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau conduct an audit of Gablemans ongoing review. Carpenter, who is a member of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, made the request to the committees co-chairs Sen. Robert Cowles, R-Green Bay, and Rep. Samantha Kerman, R-Salem.

A spokesperson for Cowles said the office had just received Carpenters request Monday afternoon and will give it a review. The committee would have to vote to request a formal audit from the Audit Bureau.

Reviews of the election by the Audit Bureau and the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty found no evidence of widespread fraud but did offer recommendations on how to improve elections.

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Despite a gradual improvement in Japans economic conditions, a labour shortage is slowly starting to bite in industries such as restaurants and manufacturing in which many people decided to switch jobs while on furlough amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

A sharp decline in the number of foreign workers and students due to pandemic measures has also had a significant impact on the labour shortage, shining a spotlight on Japans reliance on foreigners in the workforce.

Warakuan, a soba noodle restaurant in Taito ward, Tokyo, was busy at the end of last month when year-end gatherings are typically held and orders of toshikoshi soba, a traditional dish eaten at the end of the year, increase.

But the restaurant was short-staffed over the holiday season following the resignation of five employees during the state of emergency when business operations were reduced.

According to the Bank of Japans Tankan quarterly economic survey released last month, the index of excessive employment minus insufficient employment for accommodation, dining and drinking services was minus 17, a sharp decline from the plus 19 in September.

The labour shortage rapidly worsened after restrictions on business operations were relaxed at the end of September following the end of the state of emergency.

The labour situation is pushing up hourly wages. United and Collective Co, which operates the Teketeke izakaya chain, has raised hourly wages by an average of 130 yen ($1.10) at about 80 outlets since October.

The hourly wage is 1,450 yen for regular shifts at some outlets in central Tokyo, and more than 1,800 yen for night shifts after 10pm. Even so, the company said it closed nine stores as of the end of last year because it was unable to hire enough staff.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 10)  The countrys total COVID-19 case count surged to nearly three million on Monday after the government reported a record high spike for the third consecutive day with 33,169 more infected.

It is the first time since the pandemic struck that new cases hit at least 30,000, beating Sundays 28,707.

This did not yet include data from 10 testing laboratories, according to the Department of Health. It said these laboratories contributed an average of 6.2% of all samples tested and 6.3% of all positive results over the last two weeks.

Of the added cases, the DOH noted 99% or 32,972 were detected within the last 14 days. The top three contributing regions are Metro Manila with 18,535; Calabarzon with 7,443; and Central Luzon with 3,403.

The latest bulletin showed the overall tally has jumped to 2,998,530, with 157,526 or 5.3% active cases. Of the currently sick, 147,912 experience mild symptoms; 4,994 have no symptoms; 2,858 are moderate cases; 1,461 are severe; and 301 are critical.

The DOH also listed a positivity rate of 46%, a new all-time high for the sixth day in a row. This is based on 73,234 tests reported on Jan. 8.

This positivity rate, which is the percentage of infected people out of all tested, is way above the World Health Organizations benchmark of below 5%. It suggests insufficient testing and that there are likely more infected individuals who have gone undetected.

Meanwhile, the death toll rose to 52,293 after 145 more patients succumbed to COVID-19.

None of these newly reported fatalities occurred this month. The department said all were from the Davao Region and were encoded late, including three deaths that transpired in November; 18 in October; 52 in September; and 72 others in preceding months that go as far back as January 2021.

Another 3,725 recoveries, on the other hand, pushed the total to 2,788,711.

After final validation, the DOH reclassified as deaths 124 cases it previously tagged as survivors. It also removed 86 duplicate entries from its data, including 73 recoveries and two fatalities.

Command center feels rising numbers

According to Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega, the governments One Hospital Command Center has been receiving more calls in recent days, compared to September during the peak of the Delta surge.

From around 550 to 600 calls a day during the previous wave of infections, Vega said the number of calls has climbed to over 800.

Talagang tumaas na [It really rose], much more than the peak of last year. Umaabot na kami kahapon ng [Yesterday, were reaching] 825 calls a day, he told CNN Philippines News.PH.

But he noted that the majority, or 57%, of calls were made by people looking for isolation facilities, which means they don't have severe or critical infection. Meanwhile, he said only 22% were trying to find hospitals  down from around 60% during the Delta wave.

Ang napansin namin medyo tumaas yung calls, tumaas yung bilang, pero 'yung number of severe and critical cases ay nasa low-risk position pa, he said.

[Translation: What we noticed was that the number of calls rose, but the number of severe and critical cases were still in the low-risk position.]
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 10)  A United Kingdom-based think tank cautions on the risks caused by the Omicron coronavirus variant on the Philippine economy, along with the behavior of households as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on.

As things stand, we see no reason to change our below-consensus 4.5% GDP growth forecast for 2022, though the arrival of Omicron implies that risks are tilted to the downside, said Pantheon Macroeconomics senior Asia economist Miguel Chanco in his weekly monitor published Monday.

RELATED: DOH assumes Omicron community transmission

Chanco also expressed concern over the spending of Filipino households, who continue to rebuild the huge amount of savings they lost when the global health crisis struck.

While the percentage of households with savings rose to 30.2% in the last quarter of 2021 from 25.2% three months prior based on Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas figures, the economist noted the latest outturn still dwells below the 36-38% pre-pandemic level.

Another setback can't be ruled out in the current quarter, either, if Omicron forces households to dip back into their savings, in the same way that Delta did in the third quarter, said Chanco.

This is also evident in families spending intentions, with the BSPs Consumer Expectations Survey last quarter showing only 5.1% of households plan to purchase big-ticket items like durable goods and cars in the next 12 months.

While up from 3.6% in the second quarter, it is still below the pre-pandemic peak of 11.1% in mid-2019, he stressed.

Overall, a healthy recover in private consumption will be critical for the Philippines this year, as we expect the upcoming Presidential election in May to apply temporary, but material, brakes to government spending and investment, said Chanco.

Pantheon Macroeconomics earlier warned that economic output could expand slower this year with risks posed by the national polls, particularly if former senator Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr. emerges victorious.

Economic managers expect growth to settle within 7-9% this 2022.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 10)  The Alliance of Health Workers (AHW) and Filipino Nurses United (FNU) expressed their dismay over the government's recent decision to allow hospitals to shorten the isolation and quarantine period for health workers who test positive for COVID-19 or become a close contact.

Last week, the Inter-Agency Task Force authorized hospitals to forego quarantine for fully vaccinated health workers without symptoms but considered a close contact of a patient. If health workers contract COVID-19, the shortened protocol allows them to undergo isolation for only five days instead of the previous 10 days.

FNU Vice President Eleonor Nolasco told CNN Philippines many health workers were unhappy with the new directive meant to ensure there are enough health workers amid an ongoing spike in coronavirus infections.

"Itong shortened quarantine period marami talaga nag protesta on the ground kasi hindi talaga ito safe at nagiging convenient excuse lang ito sa ating gobyerno na instead mag augment ng manpower dahil shortage ng nurses at hospital staff," she said.

[Translation: A lot of nurses on the ground are opposing this shortened quarantine protocol because this is not safe. The new protocol also provides a convenient excuse for the government not to conduct mass hiring of health workers and augment the shortage of manpower.]

Nolasco added that at least 500 of their member nurses contracted COVID-19 during the surge. Some of them prefer to take their time off rather than going to work to make sure they will not infect their co-workers or patients.

"Sa ngayon talagang overwhelmed ang ating nurses sa ating forefront talagang nararamdaman ang atake ng virus lalo nat marami nang nagkakasakit. Dapat mag set up ng protective at safety measures hindi pwedeng lagi silang ginagawang bala sa tuwing may surge," she said.

[Translation: Our nurses are overwhelmed now due to the spike in COVID-19 cases. The government should set up protective and safety measures for health workers and not use them as pawns every time there is a surge]

Alliance of Health Workers leader Robert Mendoza also slammed the shortened protocols, saying health workers should be given the same treatment in terms of isolation and quarantine. He added that asymptomatic patients can also transmit the virus.

"Nakakagalit po kasi hindi naman kami immortal. Ang health workers tao rin kami mga health workers at hindi namin maintidihan bakit magkaiba ang distinction ng health workers sa general public eh magkasama naman tayo riyan," Mendoza said.

[Translation: We are angry, we are not immortals, we are humans. We cannot understand why there is a distinction between health workers and the general public.]

"Bibigyan ng 10 days ang mamayan. Ang health workers bibigyan ng 5 days. Anong pagkakaiba ng kalusugan namin," Mendoza added.

[Translation: The general public gets 10 days and we are given 5. What's the difference between our health? ]

Senator Joel Villanueva appealed to the DOH to reconsider the shortened quarantine period, which he said would put both the workers and patients they care for at risk.

"As we've seen in the nearly two years of the pandemic, the path to recovery knows no shortcuts," he said Monday.

Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson, meanwhile, said he would back the move if it were based on science.

"As long as the shortened isolation period is science-based and not a reaction to the overwhelming infection rate, we should not have a problem with that," he said in a separate message.

Speaking to CNN Philippines' News.PH, Health Undersecretary Leopoldo Vega said the guidelines are based on recommendations from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

He added that the final decision still lies with the hospitals.

Sinasabi naman namin sa hospital institutions na dependent yan sa ano ang recommendation ng kanilang hospital and infection control committee, Vega said. Kung sasabihin naman ng infection control committee nila na talagang pwede na itong tao na, kasi asymptomatic, magbalik sa trabaho, eh pwede.

[Translation: We tell hospitals that the quarantine period is still dependent on their recommendations. If their infection control committee says asymptomatic workers can now return to work, then they're allowed.]

For the general public, the government requires a 7-day isolation for fully vaccinated and 14 days for unvaccinated or partially unvaccinated close contacts.

The FNU and AHW said they will not stop from doing frontline services but they will continue to air their opposition to these policies that are detrimental to the safety of health workers.

The Health Department has yet to address the concerns of the health workers and nurses' groups.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 10)  The government is assessing the possibility of further shortening the quarantine period for fully vaccinated individuals tagged as close contacts of COVID-19 patients and bringing down the cost of testing in the country, a top official said on Monday.

Presidential adviser for COVID-19 response Vince Dizon said they are reviewing the length of quarantine period done abroad. He specifically cited the rules in the United States, which has been questioned by international medical experts.

"Pinagaaralan na rin po ng ating mga eksperto ang ginagawa sa ibang bansa, tulad ng Amerika at Europa, na nagpapaiksi ng isolation lalo na para sa bakunado na. Pinagaaralan natin iyan at hopefully magkaroon tayo ng mga pagbabago sa ating polisiya sa susunod na linggo," he said in a media briefing.

[Translation: Our experts are studying what's being done in other countries like America and Europe that are shortening the isolation, especially for the vaccinated. We are studying that. Hopefully we will have changes in our policy in the next weeks.]

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently cut down quarantine to five days after exposure to a patient. It advises those with close contact to get tested at least 5 days after the last interaction with a COVID-19 patient.

The Philippines' current guidelines requires a 7-day isolation for those fully vaccinated and 14 days for unvaccinated or partially unvaccinated individuals. As for fully vaccinated health workers exposed to a case, the government cut the quarantine period from 7 days to no required quarantine period as long as they are asymptomatic and wearing personal protective equipment.

Dizon, who also serves as testing czar, said they are looking into bringing down the current cost of COVID-19 tests while ensuring private laboratories will not lose money over operating cost.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 10)  A number of senators on Monday rejected another attempt at extending the terms of top government officials.

Its too late in the day, Senate President Vicente Tito Sotto III said in a text message to reporters.

They should try that in the 19th Congress. Good luck, added Sotto, who is running for vice president.

His running mate, Senator Panfilo Ping Lacson, shared the sentiment: no time to tackle charter change in the 18th Congress.

Kung nun ngang mga nakaraang taon, hindi nangyari - lalo na ngayon (If in the past years, it did not happen, it most likely wont happen now) that we have only 9 session days left, he said.

Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon, meanwhile, shrugged it off, saying Papatulan pa ba 'yang ganyang klaseng balita (Should we even pay attention to that kind of news)?

On Friday, Pampanga Third District Rep. Aurelio Dong Gonzales, Jr. filed Resolution of Both Houses 7, urging the Senate and the House of Representatives to convene into a constituent assembly to introduce amendments to the Constitution.

Gonzales pushed for fixing the term of the president and vice president to five years with one reelection, or a total of 10 years, instead of the current single six-year term. Under his proposal, members of the House will also be elected for a five-year term with one reelection, replacing the constitutional limit of a three-year term with two reelections.

Gonzales, a reelectionist, said these would allow continuity in government, lamenting that the current terms of office are "too short."

During the 17th Congress, the House of Representatives approved a resolution seeking a constituent assembly, but the Senate failed to decide on pertinent issues: Whether there is a need to amend the Constitution, and if so, whether it will be done by a constitutional convention or a constituent assembly.

In a constituent assembly, lawmakers convene and decide on the constitutional changes themselves. This is different from a constitutional convention which requires the holding of nationwide elections to select the delegates who will draft the amendments.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 9)  The government on Sunday said it will increase the availability of beds in Metro Manila and nearby provinces in response to the surge in coronavirus cases.

Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles said that upon the recommendation of the national COVID-19 Inter-Agency Task Force, more beds will be made available for infected patients in NCR Plus areas, which include Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal.

The country has been logging record-breaking numbers of new infections and positivity rates in recent days, hitting 28,707 fresh cases on Sunday  its highest-ever single-day count. The positivity rate, or the percentage of infected people out of all tested on the same day, also climbed to an all-time high 44%.

Meanwhile, telemedicine capacity outside Metro Manila will be raised to help decongest hospitals feeling the strain of rising admissions, Nograles said.

The National Task Force Against COVID-19 has also been directed to expand the capacity of temporary treatment and monitoring facilities where needed, and remove referral quotas from hospitals.

Only those requiring hospitalization will be prioritized by emergency operations centers, based on the IATF's recommendations. Nograles reiterated the government's advice for mild or asymptomatic patients to just isolate at home, but he added local government units should still be able to provide them with services such as telemedicine and immediate referral to health facilities if necessary.

READ: What you need to know about COVID-19 home isolation and quarantine

The official added that there will be intensified active case finding and contact tracing efforts, especially in NCR Plus. RT-PCR testing capacity will also be increased in these areas by ensuring all laboratories are operational seven days a week. The IATF has recommended that senior citizens and people with comorbidities be prioritized for testing.

Finally, the National Vaccination Operations Center is directed to increase vaccination rates outside NCR as soon as possible, Nograles said.

Latest government data show the country's total COVID-19 case count has jumped to over 2.96 million. Active cases, or currently ill patients, have reached over 128,000 from just around 21,000 a week ago.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 9)  Vice President Leni Robredo is calling on the government to hasten the issuance of guidelines for the use of home antigen test kits as the countrys COVID-19 testing capacity is being stretched.

Sa ibang bansa, ina-allow na nila yung home testing. Kapag masyado natin inistriktuhan yung testing, nagko-congest [ang laboratories], Robredo said in her weekly radio show on Sunday.

[Translation: In other countries, home testing is already allowed. If we will become strict with testing, laboratories will be congested.]

The Vice President also said there were reports of delays in the release of test results due to backlogs in laboratories, and once the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves the use of home antigen test kits, these would speed up testing.

So napakahalaga ng antigen test. Yung mga may pambili, pwede na makabili. So sana madaliaan na yung paglabas ng regulation nito, para yung mga tao hindi na magsiksikan [sa testing centers], she added.

[Translation: Antigen test is important. Those who can afford, they can just purchase one. So Im hoping that the guidelines for the regulation for this will be immediately released to prevent congestion in testing centers.]

The FDA is accepting applications for Special Certification for COVID-19 home test kits. All the antigen tests currently approved by the FDA are only administered by healthcare professionals in laboratories.

The Department of Health is expected to release the guidelines for the use of home test kits on Jan. 17.

Robredo also renewed her call for mass testing amid the uptick in COVID-19 cases.

Ang dami ngayong asymptomatic. Kung hindi mo ma-test yung asymptomatic, umiikot siya ng hindi niya alam na nakakahawa siya. Mahalagang ang testing kasi ito ang magiging basis kung kailangan mo mag-quarantine o mag-isolate, she said.

[Translation: Many are asymptomatic. If you will not test them, they will just roam around unaware that they are infecting other people. Testing is important because this will be the basis if you need to quarantine or isolate.]

She noted that the government should have already tested many people when the infections started to rise.

Dapat sana nung may uptick na ng number of cases, nag-test na ng test para na-contain na. Eh hindi, pahirapan na yung testing ngayon, added Robredo.

[Translation: They should have tested many people as they can when there was already an uptick in cases. Right now, we are already having problems in our testing.]

On Saturday, the country broke its highest single-day tally of infections with 26,458 new cases recorded.
Editor's note: Alistair Currie is the head of campaigns and communications at Population Matters, a UK-based charity campaigning for a sustainable human population through ethical means, to protect nature and improve people's lives. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN)  Pope Francis' comments this week that couples opting for pets instead of children were acting selfishly, has reinvigorated an important and timely debate about the future of our species. The pontiff's comments, however, are wholly wrong.

"Today we see a form of selfishness. We see that people do not want to have children, or just one and no more. And many, many couples do not have children because they do not want to, or they have just one -- but they have two dogs, two cats ... Yes, dogs and cats take the place of children," the Pope told an audience at the Vatican Wednesday.

"This denial of fatherhood or motherhood diminishes us, it takes away our humanity," he added.

The Pope's suggestion that failing to have children is selfish is far from the truth. Especially for those of us living in countries with a large environmental footprint, the choice to have a small family, or no human family at all, is one that helps everyone -- particularly children, whose future depends on a more sustainable planet.

Additionally, a person's value, moral standing and character is not defined by parenthood. And showing love for animals is surely something that enhances and demonstrates our humanity -- rather than diminishing it.

The Pope has been a strong advocate for the environment and deserves praise for speaking out on inequality, consumerism and social justice. He recognizes the profound threat posed by climate change and biodiversity loss. And in raising his voice and challenging the complacency of politicians, he has done much good.

What the pontiff hasn't done is connect the dots between environmental collapse and the Catholic Church's position on family size and contraception. Indeed, his comments this week echo the church's teachings about the importance of couples either bearing or raising children -- while making unjustified claims about the potential demographic consequences of not doing so.

But population growth is one of the key drivers of both climate change and biodiversity loss, according to authoritative sources. A 2017 study published by Global Environmental Change suggested that if global population growth meets or exceeds the United Nation's medium projection (most likely 10.9 billion people by 2100), it would be impossible to stay under the critical threshold of 2 degrees Celsius warming above pre-industrial levels.

Project Drawdown, a major analysis of all available climate policy solutions, found that achieving the medium projection instead of the higher projection by 2050 (a difference of 1 billion people) would result in emissions savings of 85.42 Gigatonnes of CO2 -- making it one of the most powerful actions we can take in limiting global warming.

It's not just population, of course. There is an urgent need across multiple fronts, not least addressing grotesque inequalities in consumption and the disproportionate contribution to environmental destruction among those of us who are wealthy by global standards -- inequalities Pope Francis has done much to highlight.

The hundreds of millions of people living in poverty worldwide deserve far more land, food, water, energy and infrastructure than they currently have. And the more people there are squeezing nature and generating emissions, the harder it is to dig ourselves out of this hole.

Meanwhile, the Pope calls for more children. The pontiff has been part of a baby bust panic -- touted by Elon Musk, among others -- decrying a "demographic winter," in reference to falling birth rates. Let's put this in perspective. Half the world's population is under 30. Ageing societies are a challenge, but effective, affordable policy solutions already exist. What doesn't exist are solutions to melted glaciers or extinct species. The fundamental prerequisite of a decent future for young and old is a healthy planet.

Does it matter what the Pope thinks? After all, Catholic Italy has one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe, something unlikely to have been achieved by the contraceptive methods the Vatican endorses. But not everywhere is Italy. While Europe and the Americas are still home to a majority of the world's Christians, according to the Pew Research Center, that share is much lower than it was a century ago. At the same time, the Catholic population has grown enormously in sub-Saharan Africa and the Asian Pacific region.

Despite this, provision of contraception worldwide is grossly underfunded. It needs all the support it can get -- and the Pope and his church could do immeasurable good in supporting, rather than opposing it.

Worldwide, 270 million women have an unmet need for modern contraception. Investing in global family planning is also extraordinarily good value for money. A 2014 assessment by the Copenhagen Consensus Center found that every US dollar spent on achieving universal access to sexual and reproductive health services yields a $120 benefit in improving health and reducing pressure on other services.

Our humanity is enhanced by making careful decisions about the size of our families and by giving others the right and opportunity to make those choices too. The "winter" we face if we don't make wiser decisions about how we live -- including about how many children we have -- is not demographic but planetary. The Pope understands that threat. He can and must bring his church's policies into line with it.
Mike Jacobsen was checking his fences near Denton after last months windstorm when his kids pulled up on their four-wheelers.

They said, Dad, dad. Theres something dead down there; a bobcat or a mountain lion.

Jacobsen followed them, and found the dead cat sprawled at the edge of the field, where it meets the tree line.

It was massive; its paws were pretty big.

He called the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, and an officer came out that night to pick up the animal.

Jacobsen heard later from a conservation officer that the lion was an approximately 3-year-old female, that it had been shot through the lungs and, based on the condition of its fur, had been dead before the Dec. 15 storms, he said.

Duane Arp, the commissions law enforcement assistant administrator, would only confirm the cat was a 3- to 4-year-old female. The cause and timing of its death is still under investigation, he said.

The animal is the second confirmed mountain lion in the Lincoln area in less than a month; in early December, a game camera captured images of one near U.S. 34 and the MoPac Trail.

And it capped several months of highly publicized reports of the animals wandering far from the state's resident populations in the Niobrara River Valley, Wildcat Hills and Pine Ridge regions.

Last month, a lion was struck by a car northeast of Arlington, which is near Fremont. It was still alive when Washington County Sheriffs Deputy Jesse Carey responded, but he was told by Game and Parks to put it down.

He was a big boy, Carey said. It took two of us to lift him up into the tailgate of the truck.

Also in December, the commission confirmed mountain lion tracks left in the snow in Norfolk, near Northeast Community College. And in September, a vehicle driven by a high school student struck and killed a lion on Nebraska 14 near Fullerton.

But Sam Wilson, the commissions furbearer and carnivore manager, isnt convinced the number of at-large lions is on the rise. His office fields multiple reports annually that dont make the news, unlike the recent roadkills and urban sightings.

Those are confirmations that get peoples attention, he said. But it looks to me that its fairly similar to how it has been in past years.

Typically, mountain lions found in areas of the state other than their known populations are young males that dispersed from their group to seek females, Wilson said.

Those matchups are rare  forcing the males to keep wandering, sometimes leaving the state  because females dont disperse nearly as often as males.

But it happened last year in northeast Nebraska, along the Missouri River.

Over the summer, a landowner shared trail camera images of a female mountain lion with three kittens, Wilson said. And a commission staffer later transferred an abandoned male kitten found in the area to the Riverside Discovery Center in Scottsbluff.

Wilson and others are researching those animals, to see if they are  or will become  the states fourth known lion population.

And the carcass Jacobsen found Dec. 19 was female. His family raises bison in that field, off Southwest 112th Street, but its far from the road. Which meant someone either shot the mountain lion on his land, or from his neighbors.

Obviously, someone was traveling around peoples property hunting where they werent supposed to be.

Hed heard reports of lions in the Denton area, but hadnt seen one until his kids came calling that day.

I wish I wouldnt have had to see it dead. I kind of like those things."

Reach the writer at 402-473-7254 or psalter@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSPeterSalter

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"We're getting close to a crisis mode in my opinion," Carlisle Borough Fire and Rescue Chief Randy O'Donnell said.
Information is from police reports and may be incomplete depending on the status of an investigation. Phone numbers are nonemergency.
HARRISBURG  A York County teenager on Sunday won top honors in the 106th Pennsylvania Farm Show Grand Champion Junior Cattle competition with a 1,385-pound crossbred steer named Krueger.

For the second time in three years, Karli Berkheimer won the prestigious award and will sell her winning animal at the Sale of Champions on Tuesday. Berkheimer, an eighth-grade student at Northern Middle School, has been showing cattle since she was a little girl.

I named him after Freddy Krueger, Berkheimer said, referring to the fictional serial killer in The Nightmare on Elm Street film series. Actually, hes usually calm and seems to like the Farm Show. Krueger beat 40 other steers for the top prize.

Charlie, a 1,380-pound crossbred owned by Amy Pecora of Harrison City, won reserve grand champion honors.

Berkheimer lives on a 50-acre farm in Carroll Township, where she and her family raise 50 beef cattle. The 14-year-old started showing heifers when she was 5 and has been showing cattle ever since.

I belong to the FFA and to the York County 4-H beef, lamb and swine clubs, she said.

She appeared relaxed during the final judging when the nine champions and reserve champions of the various classes and their owners came into the arena. She seemed overwhelmed when the beef cattle judge slapped her gleaming black steers rump to signify the win. Berkheimer, her family and friends planned to go out for a celebratory dinner.

Pecora, 17, seemed equally pleased to receive the reserve champion honor, her best win in nine years of competing at the Farm Show.

Charlie is super tame, almost like a puppy, she said. Pecora and her family live on a 132-acre farm where they raise beef cattle and swine and grow corn, soybeans and hay. Im really happy to be back at the Farm Show, she said.

Mike Firestine, junior beef cattle show announcer, said the event went well. Weve been pleased with the quality of animals and the showmanship, he said. Were pleased to be back.

The champion and reserve steers, hogs, lambs and meat goats will be auctioned at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Sale of Champions in the Small Arena. Farm Show buyers traditionally pay substantially more than market price for the grand champion animals.

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Cap America Inc. announced recently Grace Schettler has been promoted to vice president of sales. Schettler has been an award-winning member of the Cap America sales force for four years.

Schettler, an industry veteran, joined the Cap America team in 2017 as national sales manager. She was quickly promoted to director of sales, leading a rep force of multi-line reps in both the ASI and sporting goods industries. She has been instrumental in the growth of Cap Americas customer base and sales.

As vice president of sales, Schettler will be responsible for establishing and developing territories, analyzing market statistics, directing staff training, and evaluating the Cap America sales division. She will work alongside the rest of the Cap America leadership team to implement strategies to ensure the continued growth of the company.

Schettler will report to Mark Gammon, president and COO. Gammon states, Grace has excelled from the moment she joined the company. Her drive and determination are undeniable and Im proud to welcome her to the executive leadership team.

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When it comes to education, it's a different world at the Farmington School District's Dayse Baker Learning Center (DBLC), where Dr. Mike Rickermann presides over his fourth year in what he calls a "non-traditional learning environment."

Rickermann's official title is director of student options and alternative programs, but he doesn't like to call his curriculum an "alternative."

"I try not to use the term alternative school because it has a negative connotation; that's where the bad kids go," he said. "That is the furthest thing from the truth. What we're comprised of are the kids that don't have success in a general education environment.

"There's a myriad of reasons for that. Typically, misbehaving is a mask for a bigger problem. That could be educational, home life, it could be a million things. There's that stigma; that you're dealing with bad people or dangerous people. You're just dealing with kids that don't adjust well."

Program description

The students in the learning center range from grades 3-12. Three to four programs are running at one time with some overlap.

"We have three classrooms that are like a general education classroom with the hourly switch like a regular classroom but just small numbers, 6-10, that's mainly grades 7-12," he said. "I have a program called 'Missouri Options,' which is an alternative graduation. It's for kids that are way behind academically.

"They culminate by taking the HiSET, which used to be the GED. We service a lot of seniors in that program. We have a partnership with BJC Behavioral Health which services our kids in grades 3-8.

"We have a teacher and two paraprofessionals that do the educational piece, usually about three hours a day with a group, then that group switches over and works with five workers from BJC that are onsite daily, they do individual and group therapy with the kids. I have a social worker that is on staff full time. She does behavior groups and social groups with them twice a week and individually with a bunch of them."

Substance abuse

According to Rickermann, there is another classroom with all high school kids that originally had substance abuse problems.

"Rather than them being at home on suspension, we provide an environment where they can come to school with some parameters and provisions and still stay on track grade-wise," he said.

Rickermann's primary focus is on providing a safe environment by supporting socio-emotional wellness and regulation in a personalized setting.

"We can't have success with education if we don't have a baseline of the socio-emotional and a kid feeling safe coming to school," he said. "They don't fit in that box. It's no fault to the other staff, the people in the other buildings want these kids to be successful, but they don't know how to help them.

"They don't have the resources where we can spend one-on-one attention with the kid, and they have a classroom of 30 where one kid can be domineering, and it tends to bubble up on both ends and end badly."

For many of Rickermann's students, that "normal" life can be just too much in what he calls the general education buildings. That's where he steps in.

"We are able to eliminate the noise that a big building brings; I'm talking about distractions, outside influences," he said. "If you have a kid that is sitting in a 10th-grade classroom that reads on a third-grade level, is he going to let everybody know that he can't read, or is he going to act like a jerk to get himself out of this situation, so he doesn't get embarrassed?

"We step in, take care of that kid and bring them back to their level and then raise their level and build their capacity to deal with both ends of it, educationally and socially.

"Another noise level can be social media stuff. Kids get so tied into drama. Some kids, especially if they don't have a good foundation at home, live and breathe in that drama and chaos. They can't get away from it. That becomes their every day, and they can't focus on the educational side and focus on their own well-being. We eliminate that."

Not all that different

Rickermann says they don't do anything much different education-wise from the rest of the district. They are just surrounding the kids with other kids that are similar to them.

"My kids are real empathetic," he said. "We are very deliberate in where we place kids. Every time we get a new one, I sit down with my staff and go through the background of the student coming in, and we talk about our different groups and where we think that kid will be most comfortable and which our groups would be accepting of what that kid is bringing to the table. I defer to my staff a lot on that because they are the ones that have to do the hour-to-hour work.

"After two weeks, we cycle back and review if we have made the right choice and what behavior they are showing and how it's going and see how things are. Sometimes you get kids that get behind the eight-ball in high school and have a bad freshman and sophomore year. They can't catch up and feel that there's no hope. It's almost like clockwork. The first four to six weeks, they get nothing done. They have given up. Then they start seeing some kids around them progressing. It's like a light goes on, and they start rolling."

Outside distractions

Rickermann employs a rule to reduce outside distractions that might be considered controversial and unworkable for students today  no backpacks and cellphones during the day.

"Before any kid starts with me, we have a sit down with parents and the kid, and we go through everything getting the nuts and bolts," he said. "The initial reaction from the kids is the eyes get big, and the parents are almost celebratory. A parent doesn't want to tell a kid they can't have it. I get it from the parent's side, too. I have a 20- and 18-year-old. They both have had phones at school. They also knew when it was class time, the phone goes away. These kids can't separate. They don't have the capacity and the discipline.

"One girl, the dad said he didn't know if it was going to work. She's going to buck on this. She was going to start on a Monday. I told her, and she wasn't really in on it. I took her for a walk into one of her classrooms, and my kids were very welcoming. The girl walks in on Monday morning and asked if she had to turn her phone over to me now. She volunteered it. I said no, in first hour, your teacher will take it and lock it up down there.

"It becomes them instead of me. It puts that ownership back on them to make the right choice. Surprisingly, we don't get any pushback on it. We really haven't. It has really leveled off a lot of the nonsense that can take place. You really have to pull that layer back and take that option off the table to allow them to focus. Most of my kids live in a world of chaos and have a hard time focusing on what's best for them."

Cutting off that social media and offsite distractions through cell phone use has been something that Rickermann has been thinking about doing for a long time.

"I've been on the whole gamut of it," he said. "Before I came here, I was a high school principal at De Soto for four years. I was middle school principal at Windsor for six years before that. In the middle of my middle school time is when phones became a real thing. I have trial and errored a bunch of stuff. It's like you open the doors, and you can't shut them back up.

"It took me a while to get there here, to just be hardline. This is where it's going to be. The older the kids, the tougher they struggle with it. It has to be consistent across the board. If they walk down the hallway and one class has their stuff, you're going to have a fight on your hands. If a kid feels like they need to call their parents, go ask, we'll get your phone out, and you call your parents, it's no big deal.

"We are transparent with the why. We sit down with each class and explain why we are doing this. Our work production is going up. Our behavior issues are going down. However, let's be realistic. It is easier for us to police. If I were sitting in Dr. LaMond's shoes in the high school, it's a whole different conversation. They have 1,200 kids, and my kids are with one or two teachers all day. It's not apples to apples, but with this personnel and population, it's been crucial to what we're doing."

Community interaction

This year, Rickermann is trying a new program  one he calls "service learning," where students go into the community to interact with others on a social level. Some of his charges recently assisted the school district with the Veterans Day breakfasts at the civic center.

"We have to be selective about what we do," he said. "I do have some challenging kids. I thought they did a tremendous job. I was selective in who I took and gave them an opportunity, and they would be successful. We go to Habitat for Humanity every Monday. I send five to eight kids over there to work on houses.

He planned to have students read stories to kindergartners and pre-k kids.

"Part of it is having a purpose, having meaning, and feeling like you are doing something that is worthwhile. This is us structurally giving them something that they can be proud of and that they did. It's a confidence builder. We practice everything we do. Before breakfast, I met with the kids. I made sure they dressed appropriately. When they were going to be meeting with veterans and senior citizens that don't often interact with teens, my experience is they like to tell stories, and the students may not understand everything they are talking about, but they're going to be respectful and engage."

Every day different

When dealing with students in a non-traditional setting, Rickermann finds that every day is different. Every morning as he watches the students come in, he can tell what kind of day they will have.

"I can see when they come in the door who we are going to have a good day with and who I need to keep special eyes on," he said. "You may not know why, but you see it. We know our kids very well because we have a smaller population.

"When the kids have class together all the time, they kind of pod off in groups based on interests, and when one has a problem, that problem will tend to spread through the whole group because they share everything. Our kids may not know each other when they start here, but outside they start doing stuff together on the weekends, start pooling together, which is kind of a good thing."

The non-traditional setting often requires an immense amount of close supervision to succeed. Progress is sometimes lost with any long-term breaks  something that Rickermann and his staff try to avoid when possible.

"Last year, when the district went to the hybrid schedule, we did not," he said. "We stayed five days a week. I went to (Superintendent) Matt Ruble and said that I couldn't. When my kids have long breaks, when they come back, it's a disaster to get us back on our feet again. They go backward because of their chaotic home life. Thanksgiving, Christmas, I don't look forward to those breaks because it's challenging to start back up."

To prevent disruptions that may cause the students to regress, it is rare that the school will bring in a substitute teacher when a regular staff member is out.

"Substitutes are tough when I have somebody that doesn't know our kids, and the kids know they don't know them. We really work hard not to have any subs. We try to manage within because it's not fair that a sub is coming in blind, and it's not like a traditional classroom you're walking into. Change is tough for anybody, and with kids that don't have coping strategies to deal with it, it's even tougher."

Some don't make it

Unfortunately, some students simply don't succeed and flourish. There is the occasional kid who just doesn't make it.

"I hate to say it this way, but we have 100% failures when we start with them," Rickermann said. "That's why they're here. To expect to have 100% success out of 100% is not realistic. We have some kids that given an opportunity to succeed, they chose not to take it. That percentage is dropping every year. More often than not, when a kid gets transferred to me, it's not voluntary.

"Our message is always really clear to them: Unless it's a strict safety issue, I never bring up what they did in the past. We start talking about the present and the future. I tell them that they have two choices, you can be angry and make bad choices, or we can turn the page and start moving forward.

"We go through several layers. If plan A doesn't work, I'm going to have B, C and D that we are going to get to depending on where 'A' takes us. Do we have some that don't make it? We have a couple that don't make it. I could give you 50 different reasons as to why, but it comes back to no stability at home and no support externally, and they are just not able to accept support and help.

"Our kids, when they start with us, have real big trust issues. It takes a while to take their walls down and accept us. I will tell anybody; we have great kids. We have great kids that have tough lives that we have to be adjustable and work on."

Creative students

It's interesting that, in general, Rickermann's students tend to be very creative. It was a definite surprise to him when taking on this role.

"I never ever once as a general education administrator really bought into the art therapy type of thing as being a therapeutic outlet," he said. "It's unbelievable how much it is. Whether it be physical art or music, the kids gravitate to that. It centers them more than you would think. I would never have made that connection. Last year I got to hire a teacher with an art background; that was her certification and to give us somebody to support that with some substance."

When asked about students who have stood out after completing one of his programs and going on to graduate, Rickermann says that there are just too many standouts for him to mention.

"In four years, probably 50 of them," he said. "This has been an eye-opening experience with me with my background. After being a building administrator for 15 years before doing this, I did my run as a disciplined person. The growth I see out of the kids here, graduation is a special day. Last year I had a sixth-grade kid that couldn't read kindergarten sight words. To have them come down and read me a third-grade story, to some people that should be done, but if you see where they start and where they go, it is unreal.

Having the small number of students that we have, the attachments you get to them, it's pretty strong. The growth you get to see on a daily basis is huge. Kids will always meet the expectations where you set them. If you set low expectations, they are going to meet them. They're not going to get any higher. If you set high expectations; they are going to meet them. They may trip along the way, but they're going to get there.

"The Missouri Options Program  you talk about kids that walk in here as 17- and 18-year-old kids that have four to six credits and no hope of graduating  for us to give them hope and for them to take advantage of the opportunity and see it through, to see them and their parents emotional because they thought they were going to be high school dropouts, you can't beat that."

Mark Marberry is a reporter for the Farmington Press and Daily Journal. He can be reached at 573-518-3629, or at mmarberry@farmingtonpressonline.com

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(434) 422-7398

In-person classes will resume for Charlottesville and, presumably, Albemarle County students on Monday after a weeks delay, but omicron could make the return challenging.

While schools were closed last week, the Blue Ridge Health District reported 2,260 new cases. The district is averaging 322 new cases on average over a seven-day period, which eclipses records set during the 2021 winter surge.

With numbers rising so sharply, the school systems shared plans for a potential shift to virtual learning. The decision to switch to online classes will be made on a class-by-class and school-by-school basis and based on several metrics, superintendents said.

For Charlottesville, those metrics include employee absences, the number of cases in schools and student absences.

Im using those three things, but Im listening and Im looking at whats happening in the schools. Im just not going to let it create a situation where its over burdening our staff members, Charlottesville schools superintendent Royal Gurley Jr. told board members last week.

In the past week, 25 Charlottesville students have reported a positive COVID-19 result to the school division as have 30 employees, according to the division dashboard. Albemarle County has not updated its dashboard this week.

Im not naive enough to believe that the number of reported cases that we have are all the cases, said Beth Baptist, acting director of human resources and students services for Charlottesville City Schools.

Gurley said that principals spent the last week developing pivot plans that detail how theyll deploy computers and WiFi hotspots, among other aspects, if a switch is necessary.

To track staff absences, Gurley said principals and central office will use a shared document to provide live data. Each school has a minimum number of teachers and support staff needed to operate. If a school drops below that number for consecutive days, administrators will evaluate options.

Although case numbers have reached record highs in recent weeks, Gurley and other school officials have pointed to the first several months of the school year as evidence that they can safely keep schools using a range of mitigation measures.

In the community. COVID-19 is setting a record with the number of cases, most recently created by the highly contagious omicron variant.

In a message to families this week, Albemarle schools Superintendent Matt Haas said the division would monitor COVID-19 cases by classroom and school and its ability to staff each class and school. Administrators would use that data and consult with the health district about whether a class or school should temporarily move online.

For Charlottesville, all the other measures, such as social distancing and 14-day quarantine, will remain in place. Board members also said that they supported keeping the mask policy in place even if state orders change. They also want to see more high-quality masks such as KN95s for staff members.

Gurley said that the division is looking into purchasing those masks for employees. The division has the money but is constrained by the availability of masks.

To get them, we are at the mercy of the supply chain and what they want to charge right now, Gurley said.

Albemarle County spokesman Phil Giaramita said the division provides KN95 masks upon request and has enough supply to outfit all employees. The division also has an adequate supply of paper masks to meet the needs of students, he said.

The Albemarle County School Board will hear a COVID update at its next meeting, Jan. 13.

The health district will hold a virtual town hall at 7 p.m. Monday to discuss the latest data and federal guidance. For more information, go to fb.me/e/1mvPs6Gxo.

Charlottesville has partnered with the state on a COVID-19 screening program that tests participants weekly. That resumes next week. The division also is looking to pilot a program that will allow students to take a COVID-19 test in order to stay at school rather than go into quarantine.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention endorsed that test to stay approach last month as a way to keep children in school.

Through the state partnership, the division has received about 270 PCR tests, which detect the presence of a virus should you have the virus at the time of the test is taken. However, that number is not enough to implement a division-wide test to stay program, Baptist said. Shes reached out to testing companies to inquire about getting more tests.

Charlottesville School Board chairwoman Lisa Larson-Torres said the school system is in a different spot than it was a year ago when all classes were virtual.

We were operating out of a lot of fear and unknown, she said, but we have been very successful. Im very proud of this division and what we have put in place. But I dont want to negate the new fear that people are processing right now.

Larson-Torres said she was committed to having students in the building and doing that in a safe manner.

We have to continue to wear a mask, wash your hands and socially distance  all of those layered approaches that we know, she said. We have to stay vigilant.

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After 17 years in downtown Charlottesville, the International Rescue Committee has moved to a larger office, giving the organization much needed space to grow staff and programs, director Harriet Kuhr said from her new office, just after moving in.

The move to 375 Greenbrier Drive just off U.S. 29 comes as IRC is working to resettle hundreds of Afghan evacuees who arrived in Charlottesville this fall following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

Since Oct. 1, IRC has welcomed 280 new arrivals, essentially doing a years worth of work over a six-week period. The agency has nearly doubled its staff since and is planning to expand its case management, employment and health services.

Were adding staff as quickly as we can, Kuhr said. We also know theres the immediate need when they first get here, but theyre going to be here in this community for years.

IRC, which started in 1998, has resettled nearly 5,000 people  about a third of whom were from Afghanistan.

Typically, bringing refugees to the United States is a long process, which gives agencies time to plan. With the Afghans, that didnt happen.

Were used to those numbers but spread out over a whole year, Kuhr said. But then everybody comes at once and theres staffing issues, but then theres also the pressure on housing and everything.

Many of the new arrivals are still living in hotels until housing can be found for them, though some church groups and other organizations have taken people in, Kuhr said. In addition to helping with housing, IRC helps families enroll in school, access healthcare services and provides job readiness training.

Housing is the biggest pain point currently, Kuhr said. Landlords or property managers interested in assisting this group should reach out to IRC.

Its going to take us a really long time to find housing for all the people here, she said.

New Afghan refugees are expected to continue to move to the area through February.

As part of the move and because of the overwhelming response, IRC paused in-kind donations last month. Kuhr said gift cards to area stores, especially the local Afghan stores, the Grand and Medina markets, have been working great.

Because we can just hand those gift cards off to people and they can go shopping and get what they want, she said.

IRC signed a lease for the new office off Greenbrier Drive last spring but the decision to move was years in the making, Kuhr said. IRC has been in need of more space for its employees and to meet with the people it serves as well as more parking.

With the move, IRC went from about 5,500 square feet of space to 7500 square feet.

The Greenbrier space is not directly on a bus line, but Kuhr said shes hoping to work with Charlottesville Area Transit to improve bus access to the office. Currently, the office is accessible via a Route 5 bus stop on the corner of Commonwealth and Greenbrier drives.

The new space will provide staff with a more professional setup, Kuhr said. Theyve also upgraded their technology in the move.

Kuhr said IRC staff also will be working in a more collaborative space, helping them to work together better.

They also have more meeting space as well as a larger classroom area that they can use to host community events, which they didnt have in their old location.

This year, Kuhr said shes excited to get settled into the new office and fill the open staff positions to really get to a place where were providing high quality, comprehensive services to both our newer refugees who are coming in and the Afghans that are already here.

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Add Kazakhstan to the list of former Soviet republics whose independence is now being threatened by Russia. Russian leader Vladimir Putin is using a similar playbook in Kazakhstan to one that he has used over almost a decade to threaten the sovereignty of Ukraine.

What began as protests over rising fuel prices on Jan. 2, 2021, quickly escalated into violent clashes on the streets of Kazakhstan. On Jan. 5, Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, a firm ally of Putins, requested support from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, of which Putins Russian Federation is the leading member. Russia has responded decisively by sending paratroopers, special operations troops and equipment as part of a nearly 3,000-strong force to Kazakhstan.

Tokayev explained his request by claiming that protesters are really a band of terrorists trained abroad. On Jan. 7, Tokayev escalated the conflict: I have given the order to law enforcement and the army to shoot to kill without warning, Tokayev said.

As a scholar of post-Soviet Ukraine, Russias involvement in Kazakhstan looks very familiar to me. Its similar to what happened in Ukraine beginning in 2014, when peaceful protesters were met with violence by the government and a protest grew into a revolution that ultimately overthrew the Russian-backed leadership of the country.

Dangerous neighborhood

Seizing on that moment of domestic unrest in 2014, Putin gave direct orders to annex Crimea, a Ukrainian territory home to a key Russian naval base. Shortly afterward, he supported a war mounted by so-called Russian-speaking separatists in Ukraines eastern regions.

For more than eight years now, the Russian Federation has continued to support that conflict in Ukraine and has recently threatened Ukraine with a full invasion. This most recent version of Putins aggression toward Ukraine came in November 2021, when he staged 175,000 troops along the Ukraine border. His goal: to use a potential invasion as leverage to stop Ukraine from joining the alliance of Western countries known as NATO.

In Kazakhstan, as in Ukraine in 2014, the Russian government explains its military presence as appropriate and requested by a legitimate government. As in Ukraine, the Russian government emphasizes that external forces are responsible for unrest in the former Soviet republic. As in Ukraine, the Russian Federation has pointed out the need to protect a Russian-speaking population.

These tendencies of the Russian government to assert dominion over former territories that it lost during the breakup of the Soviet empire demonstrate that Russia is willing to act quickly and do anything to keep control of its neighborhood. I see this as an important message about what the Western leaders can expect from a meeting with Russian officials in Geneva on Jan. 10 to discuss the conflict building again along Ukraines border and Russias demands that NATO not expand to Ukraine.

Soviet and Russian legacies

Russia has long seen Kazakhstan as within its sphere of influence. In a press conference on Dec. 23, 2021, Putin called Kazakhstan a Russian-speaking country in every sense of the word.

Earlier Putin claimed that before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhs never had a state of their own. In December 2020, two members of Russias parliament claimed that territories of northern Kazakhstan were a big gift from Russia to Kazakhstan.

Such claims are reminiscent of the language that Putin has applied to Ukraine. He has often claimed that Ukraine was not a real country, including in an article published by the Kremlin in July 2021, in which he claimed that modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era.

The use of the same terminology does not bode well for Kazakhstan.

Putins references to a Russian-speaking population in Kazakhstan are reminiscent of the experience of Ukraines Crimea region. In April 2014, Russian soldiers appeared on the streets of Crimea, forced Ukrainian soldiers to leave their posts, and oversaw a so-called referendum that allowed for Crimea to be integrated into the Russian Federation. The Russian Federation said then, and continues to claim, that its interest in Ukraine is a continued concern for the welfare of the Russian speakers in Ukraine, which in Russias view is being oppressed.

Protecting from foreign invaders

Kazakhstans President Tokayev claimed that the protests in his country were fueled by the free press and foreign forces who were sponsoring terrorist activity in his country. The Russian government willingly accepted this terminology. Tokayev did not specify which external forces he meant.

Putin has long claimed that the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine in 2014, which ousted his ally, President Viktor Yanukovich, was really a coup sponsored and coordinated by the U.S.

Similar arguments about outside influences were made by the embattled Belarusian dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, about the anti-government protesters in Russia-aligned Belarus in 2020.

The spokesperson for the Russia Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said on Jan. 6 that there is a need to stop extremism in Kazakhstan. Her words came in response to European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrells concerns over the Russian troop deployment.

This consistent message supports Putins narrative about the need to protect Russia and the countries in its neighborhood against what he regards as destabilizing influences like the U.S. and NATO, which, according to Putin, support and promote anti-government extremists and revolutions in the region.

Show of strength

Putin continues to cultivate an image as a decisive leader who responded to a call from a neighboring country to help Kazakhstan overcome this terrorist threat.

His actions in Kazakhstan, I believe, are aimed at both internal and foreign audiences.

Domestically, Russian media see Russian troops as a part of a multilateral peacekeeping response, which includes troops from Belarus and Armenia. Deployment of so-called peacekeeping forces in Kazakhstan in the middle of instability and violence will be portrayed in Russia as a huge achievement for Putin.

This is also a message to Ukraine and the West. Putin will not hesitate to show strength to achieve Russias goals. Russia now has nearly 100,000 troops along the Ukrainian border. And while there was a reported withdrawal of 10,000 soldiers in late December in a de-escalation effort, most of the troops and military equipment remain.

Geneva outlook

Negotiations in diplomacy require compromise. However, Russia is entering the talks in Geneva with an ultimatum toward NATO and the U.S.

Russias demands, according to Reuters, include a halt to NATO enlargement, no deployment of its weapons systems in Ukraine and an end to provocative military exercises in the region.

Russian action in Kazakhstan should serve as a sobering reminder to Western countries that Russia is willing to act decisively to protect its interests and retain its influence in the neighboring countries.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/in-kazakhstan-russia-follows-a-playbook-it-developed-in-ukraine-174505.
A developer plans for a five-story building with extended stay hotel rooms and apartments on the south side of Northwest Cornell Avenue near Ninth Street in Corvallis.

Twenty-two hotel rooms would occupy the first two floors, and the remainder of the 18,950-square-foot development would be comprised of 48 residences. The propertys owner and proposed developer is Bill Lawson of Corvallis Investments LLC, according to city documents, which list a Spokane Valley, Washington, address for the company.

Conditional permitting is required due to the size and location zoning of the proposal. Development code exceptions are also needed regarding maximum building height, distance from street, building articulation standards, private path width, and ground-floor window and door coverage. Two existing lots would be combined into one of 1.77 acres.

The development code limits structure height for the zone in questions to 45 feet, although the proposed building is 60 feet high. Compensating for the exceptions would include a 400-square-foot pocket park with a sculpture or fountain, bench with planter, and extra landscaped green space, according to city documents.

The Corvallis Planning Commission discussed the proposed development at its meeting Wednesday, Jan 5. Staff recommended approval with conditions of the developers requests, finding each meets the necessary criteria. Project manager Lyle Hutchens said the irregular shaped lot with minimal public frontage makes the site challenging for meeting development code standards.

Public concerns were raised about traffic, parking and access. Hutchens said he has similar concerns, but noted efforts to maximize on-site parking and allow for public movement. The planning commission voted unanimously to approve all of the requested code variations. The decision can be appealed to the city council within 12 days of signing.

I do believe that this is going to be an improvement in that general area; I think it will help the businesses, Commissioner Carl Price said. There may be some parking from this onto nearby businesses, but I also believe its just as likely that nearby businesses will be parking on this property.

A construction timeline was not discussed during the meeting.

Cody Mann covers the cities of Albany and Lebanon. He can be contacted at 541-812-6113 or Cody.Mann@lee.net.

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Colorado legislators on Monday spoke about improving the availability of affordable housing, bolstering the states education levels and helping businesses recover from the COVID-19 pandemic during the ninth annual Business Legislative Preview by the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.

Senate Majority Leader Stephen Fenberg and Speaker of the House Alec Garnett represented Democrats, while Senate Minority Leader Chris Holbert and House Minority Leader Hugh McKean spoke for Republicans. Denver Business Journal Senior Reporter Ed Sealover moderated the event, held at the Denver Art Museum.

The legislative session will begin Wednesday.

Weve really been hearing from voters that they are focused on the affordability issues facing everybody, whether its housing or whether its the cost of health care, said Fenberg.

Holbert said political leaders need to take more of a leadership role in getting people back to the workforce.

There are so many people who are limited by fear, said Holbert. How do we convey a positive message that it is time to recover, to get out there and get back to where we were?  I dont think fear can be overcome by a bill.

They were asked how legislators were going to shore up the states Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund, which was decimated by record unemployment payouts during the pandemic. Colorado now owes $1 billion to the federal government. Theres a solvency surcharge that can be slapped on employers, or possibly using some of the federal $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan stimulus money.

Weve had conversations about delaying some of the surcharges and really making sure it happens when businesses are in a much better place, said Fenberg.

Both Republicans were against going the surcharge route.

Now is exactly the wrong time to implement a surcharge, or a fee, which effectively attacks employment when that is a key to recovery, Holbert said.

I was really careful to ask the (Colorado Department of Labor and Employment) one question: What is the total amount of increase in unemployment insurance? Its 72%! Thats going to affect every family in the state, said McKean.

Lawmakers were asked if state commissions like the Transportation Commission or the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environments Air Quality Control Commission have overreached their authority with some of their rulemaking.

There have been some concerns raised by industry around the number of rulemakings, said Garnett. However, at the same time, there have been numerous examples with some bills that were issued by the legislature where industry said, 'Please put us in the rulemaking because rulemaking is where there is a more robust opportunity to take hold of your citizen legislators.'  Its increasing the amount of time that you get to sit at the table and have your opinion heard.

Holbert said rulemaking takes local control out of the equation and moves decision-making to a nonelected, statewide commission.

I think our role as legislators is to make sure that the executive branch, Gov. (Jared) Polis and the departments under his administration, that they dont exceed the authority that we delegate to them, said Holbert.

Equal Pay Act has injured every employer in the state because they are no longer able to attract every single person that they would like to make the best choice, said McKean. I think thats one example of where the rulemaking has to be better.

Garnett said they learned a lesson from the failed Employer Traffic Reduction Program proposal by the air quality commission in 2021, which would have mandated large employers to reduce employees single-occupied vehicle commutes.

I think thats what employers asked for is, instead of being a mandate, for there to be incentive-based programs so that employers are incentivized to provide more choices and options to employees, said Garnett.

The legislators also discussed the rules that came out of the Transportation Commission recently, requiring road construction companies to model how road expansion projects will increase carbon emissions and require multimodal projects like bicycle lanes.

Weve had some of the worst days of air quality that Colorado has ever faced, said Garnett.

Transportation is one of the leading, if not the biggest, cause of emissions problems, said Fenberg, both arguing that with more choices residents will have options besides driving.

Republicans maintained that the smoke from forest fires in Oregon and California contributed more to Colorado's bad air-quality days last year.

It frustrates me now that we literally have a rule that says in order to put in a new road, we have to show that it will lower emissions, said Holbert. If we could wave a magic wand and put a new lane on eastbound I-70 behind the Eisenhower Tunnel, we might actually be able to lower emissions because people might spend less time stopped on I-70, waiting to get in and out of the tunnel.

It frustrates me that this bill was supposed to fund what many people thought was more asphalt and concrete, and I think thats one of the lowest priorities of the bill and its now going to incentivize public transit.

He was referencing Senate Bill 260, which Gov. Jared Polis signed into law last year. The transportation funding bill is expected to raise about $5.4 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation.
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The Independent Consumer & Competition Commission (ICCC) of Papua New Guinea has recommended approving the acquisition of Digicel PNG and its subsidiaries by Australian operator Telstra.

The ICCCs commissioner and CEO Paulus Ain said that it had released a draft determination regarding Telstras application which took into account information supplied by the group as well as comments received from both industry participants and other relevant stakeholders, including available market information.

TeleGeography reported that while the ICCC also plans to hold a pre-decision conference, the commission has concluded that the proposed acquisition will not have, or will not be likely to have, the effect of substantially lessening competition in any telecommunication services market, with Ain confirming that the ICCC therefore proposes to give clearance to Telstra to proceed with the proposed acquisition.

The ICCC has now called for feedback on its draft determination, giving stakeholders until 25th January to submit their comments. The authority noted that it will invited certain stakeholders to its pre-decision conference.
Myanmars telecoms industry is the target of new taxes to be implemented by the countrys ruling military junta, with Telenors local unit reportedly telling customers that it will be required to increase its prices.

Local news outlet Myanmar Now quoted a statement in Global New Light of Myanmar as saying that the new taxes introduced under Union Tax Law 2021-22 would include a 15% commercial levy on fixed and mobile data service revenue, as well as a flat MMK20,000 (USD11.13) fee on SIM card sales.

The junta attempted to justify the introduction of the new taxes by somewhat nebulously claiming that they would reduce the impact that extreme use of internet services has on the employment of people and mental sufferings of new generation students.

CommsUpdate notes that these taxes are separate to a directive issued by the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC) in December 2021 which saw operators increase data rates almost twofold.

Telenor noted that all operators and internet service providers in the market would likely have to increase their prices. The Norwegian groups local unit stated that it regretted the adverse impact on customers in terms of affordability of an essential service that the taxes would cause, adding that Myanmars operators had stopped issuing new SIMs until the changes can be reflected in respective IT systems.
The State of Alabama is flush with cash thanks to exponential, but short-lived revenue growth and unspent pandemic relief funds. The challenge for state legislators this year will be deciding how to spend it.

Wiregrass legislators shared concern for spending the money this year on items that are important for the state and their local constituencies during the Annual Eggs & Issues Breakfast, hosted by the Dothan Area Chamber of Commerce on Monday.

Right now, were on a sugar high, Rep. Steve Clouse (R-Ozark), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said. Its unsustainable, and so thats what our job is going to have to be this year is to try to curb the enthusiasm, because things are not going to continue like this as far as revenues are concerned.

In a couple weeks, Clouse expects Gov. Kay Ivey to call a special session so legislators can make decisions on how to spend the remainder of the American Rescue Plan funds, which is approximately $580 million.

Clouse said the funds should be reserved for one-time expenditures that dont require recurring expenses.

Time-sensitive issues like replenishing the unemployment compensation trust fund, so Alabama businesses are not taxed more next year, rural broadband expansion, water and sewer projects, help for hospitals and nursing homes in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and other unnamed infrastructure projects were named as likely top priorities for the money.

Other members of the Wiregrass delegation spoke at the breakfast: Rep. Dexter Grimsley (D-Newville), Rep. Paul Lee (R-Dothan), Rep. Jeff Sorrells (R-Hartford), and Sen. Donnie Chesteen (R-Geneva).

The annual breakfast is a chance for members of the state House and Senate to give a progress report of their activities and efforts during the last legislative session and give constituents a preview of what to expect during the upcoming legislative session, which begins Tuesday and lasts 120 days.

Lawmakers representing districts in the Wiregrass area spent little time discussing partisan, controversial issues that will arise during this years legislative session, as recently discussed by the Alabama House Republican Caucus. Republicans, who have a supermajority in the statehouse, have more power than Democrats to pass partisan and controversial legislation.

Grimsley said his primary agenda this year will be to encourage cooperation from members on both sides of the political aisle as he expressed disappointment over the outcome of the lottery and gaming bill, which failed to pass the House last year. Legalization of lottery and gaming, largely favored by Democrats, will be an issue again this year as Sen. Greg Albritton (R-Atmore) announced he will be introducing a bill for consideration.

During talks at the breakfast, Grimsley said he would also be prioritizing making sure southeast Alabama gets its fair share of state dollars.

Huntsville gets what they want; Birmingham gets what they want; Mobile gets what they want; Montgomery gets what they want. My issue this year is: give the Wiregrass an opportunity to get what we want, Grimsley said.

Talking to attendees, all the delegates emphasized that their teamwork over the last several years has been an important tool in getting large projects to the Wiregrass area in recent years, particularly concerning road construction in Houston and Geneva counties.

Sable Riley is a Dothan Eagle staff writer and can be reached at sriley@dothaneagle.com or 334.712.7915. Support her work and that of other Eagle journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at dothaneagle.com.
[January 10, 2022] Government and Education Entities Streamline Purchasing Process for NEC's Advanced Cloud and On-Premises Communications Solutions NEC Corporation of America (NEC), a leading provider and integrator of advanced IT, communications and networking solutions, announces the award of a new contract with the National Cooperative Purchasing Alliance (NCPA). The new contract extends the successful five-year relationship that provides state, local, education and government (SLED) agencies cost savings and efficiency in the procurement process. "Through NCPA's membership buying power, members receive best value pricing and favorable contract terms to purchase our advanced communications and video collaboration tools, backup and disaster recovery, secure file sharing, touchless check-in systems and more," said Lainey Gordon, Government & Education Vertical Practice Manager at NEC. "NCPA members gain access to NEC's award-winning IT, networking and contact center solutions without the traditional bidding process, enhancing rapid adoption of the latest technologies that solve today's most pressing challenges." NCPA is a leading national government purchasing cooperative working to reduce the cost of goods and services by leveraging the purchasing power of public agencies in all 50 states. Co-op members save time and money by allowing NCPA to take on the long, complex RFP and bidding process. NCPA can further lower costs through specal member discounts up to 41% off list price.

"We're pleased that NEC received an award for an NCPA contract again, which simplifies the purchasing process for local, state and federal government agencies, as well as school districts, higher education, universities and nonprofit organizations," said Matthew Mackel, Director of Business Development at NCPA. "Our members unlock extra savings while getting connected to innovations that improve operational efficiencies." For the first time through this contract, NCPA members will gain access to NEC's UNIVERGE BLUE portfolio, helping SLED entities to move to the cloud with ease. The full suite of cloud services ranges from integrated phone systems, video conferencing, messaging, virtual events, contact center, and backup and disaster recovery. Highly secure and flexible, NEC's innovative solutions and customizable approach improves the administrators' and users' experience, decrease IT costs, reduce risk, simplify technology management and improve productivity. NEC's partnership with NCPA also adds an extra level of customer support. There is no cost to become a member of the purchasing cooperative. To learn more about the partnership between NEC and NCPA, visit: http://www.ncpa.us/Vendors/NEC About NEC Corporation of America NEC Corporation of America (NEC) is a leading technology integrator providing solutions that improve the way people work and communicate. NEC delivers integrated Solutions for Society that are aligned with our customers' priorities to create new value for people, businesses and society, with a special focus on safety, security and efficiency. We deliver one of the industry's strongest and most innovative portfolios of communications, analytics, security, biometrics and technology solutions that unleash customers' productivity potential. Through these solutions, NEC combines its best-in-class solutions and technology and leverages a robust partner ecosystem to solve today's most complex business problems. NEC Corporation of America is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation, a global technology leader with a presence in 140 countries and $29.5 billion in revenues. For more information, please visit www.necam.com.  2021 NEC Corporation. NEC is a registered trademark of NEC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Other product or service marks mentioned are the trademarks of their respective owners. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220110005866/en/

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On December 28, 2021, Russias Supreme Court ordered the closure of Memorial International Society. One day later, the Moscow City Court decided to shut down the groups Memorial Human Rights Centre. With these decisions, Russian authorities attempted to silence Memorial, the country's oldest human rights association.

The purported reason for the closing was Memorials alleged violations of the broad foreign agent law by not labeling all of its social media posts with a foreign agent disclaimer. This law, which requires certain non-governmental organizations operating in Russia receiving any part of their funding from abroad to register and declare themselves as "foreign agents," is widely seen as undermining human rights and fundamental freedoms-- a cudgel that can be used by Russian authorities against NGOs and information outlets to shut down their activities.

Memorial was founded in 1989. Rather than an organization with a centralized leadership, Memorial is more accurately described as a movement. It is a collection of over 50 organizations in Russia and 11 other countries. The Memorial International branch documents historical crimes and mass human rights violations committed in the Soviet Union. The Memorial Human Rights Centre focuses on the contemporary protection of human rights, including in conflict zones in and around post-Soviet Russia.

We deplore the decisions by two Russian courts to forcibly close International Memorial and the Memorial Human Rights Center, said the United States of America, Australia, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom in a joint statement. For more than three decades, Memorial has fulfilled a unique role in documenting historical crimes and recovering for posterity the memory of the tens of millions of victims of political repression in the country  The claim by Russian authorities that Memorial Human Rights Centers principled and peaceful work justifies extremism and terrorism cannot be accepted. Memorials work has never been more needed.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a written statement condemned the Russian Supreme Courts decision to close Memorial. For three decades, International Memorials researchers have worked tirelessly to recover the names and stories of the millions of victims of Soviet repression, promoting historical justice, he said. The persecution of International Memorial and Memorial Human Rights Center is an affront to their noble missions and to the cause of human rights everywhere. The people of Russia  and the memory of the millions who suffered from Soviet-era repression  deserve better.
The Biden Administration will not send any diplomatic or official representation to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games given the (Peoples Republic of Chinas) ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses, said White House press secretary Jen Psaki. U.S. athletes, however, will be participating in the Winter games, said Ms. Psaki. Team USA will have our full support.

She explained that U.S. diplomatic or official representation would treat these [Olympic Paralympic] Games as business as usual in the face of the PRCs egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang. And we simply cant do that.

The Xinjiang region is home to roughly 14 million Uighurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and other ethnic and religious minorities that speak Turkic languages. The most recent State Department Human Rights Report states that genocide and crimes against humanity are ongoing against Uighurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang. These crimes include the arbitrary imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty of more than one million civilians; forced sterilization, coerced abortions, and more restrictive application of Chinas birth control policies; rape; torture; forced labor; and the imposition of draconian restrictions on freedom of religion or belief and freedom of movement.

More than one million Uighurs and other members of predominantly Muslim minority groups are in extrajudicial internment camps and an additional two million are subjected to so-called re-education training.

President Joe Biden has made clear to Chinese President Xi Jinping that the United States has a fundamental commitment to advance human rights in China and beyond. Not sending a diplomatic delegation [to the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics] sends that message, declared Press Secretary Psaki.
Department 2  Judge Al KacinDec. 14

Sarkis Meguerditchian, 41, of Salt Lake City, pleaded guilty to one count of attempted uttering of a forged instrument and one count of attempted possession of a Schedule III, IV or V controlled substance, was given a suspended sentence of 12 to 34 months in prison and was placed on probation for one year.

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Serafin Perez, 43, of Yuma, Arizona, pleaded guilty to possession of a Schedule I or II controlled substance, was given a suspended sentence of 16 to 40 months in prison and was placed on probation for one year.

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Gary Duane Rongstad, 56, of Malta, Montana, pleaded no contest to possession of a Schedule I or II controlled substance, was given a suspended sentence of 12 to 36 months in prison and was placed on probation for two years.

Dec. 16

Ryan Jeffery Cowles, 38, of Wenatchee, Washington, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit possession of a controlled substance and was sentenced to 59 days in jail.

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Judith Irene Zavala, 62, of Fort Benning, Georgia, was found guilty of second degree murder and was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison.

Dec. 21

John Francis Flynn III, 47, of Ogden, Utah, pleaded guilty to trafficking in a Schedule I controlled substance was sentenced to 12 to 32 months in prison and was ordered to pay a $100 fine.

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Ashley Antoinette Rose, 43, of Elko pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit possession of a controlled substance, was given a suspended sentence of 180 days in jail and was placed on probation for one year.

Department 3  Judge Mason SimonDec. 20

Kyle Steven Fink, 32, of Turlock, California, pleaded no contest to one count of attempt to carry concealed explosive, pneumatic gun, firearm or dangerous weapon without a permit and one count of coercion constituting domestic battery and was sentenced to 38 to 96 months in prison.

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Travis Matthew Geer, 42, of Kalamazoo, Michigan, pleaded guilty to one count of attempted using personal identifying information of another person (identity theft) for the purposes of avoiding or delaying prosecution and one count of using the personal identifying information of another person (identity theft) for the purposes of avoiding or delaying prosecution and was sentenced to 24 to 60 months in prison.

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On Wednesday, 6 January a pro-Trump mob marched from the White House towards Capitol Hill, overwhelmed the meagre police presence and disrupted a Congressional session held to certify the electoral victory of President-elect Joe Biden.

The group broke through barricades, scaled the walls and smashed through windows before chasing elected lawmakers away from the heart of American democracy. Rioters, waving flags in support of President Trump, Make America Great Again and the Confederacy, made it into the chambers of both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The mob clashed with police and private security inside the Capitol and one exchange led to a woman being taken to hospital with gunshot wounds, where she was later pronounced dead. In total, the riots led directly to five deaths.

After many hours law enforcement were able to clear the building and allow Congress to return late on Wednesday evening. But with the country still reeling from this violent insurrection in the Capitol, many are asking what caused such a shocking event.

Months of conspiracy-peddling incited the President's support

The mob in Congress that day were acting as part of the Presidents Stop the Steal campaign, which falsely claims that the November election was stolen from Trump. Strikingly, this started long before Election Day 2020 as Trump had repeatedly claimed that he could only only be defeated if the election were rigged. He pointed the blame at mail-in voting, Democrat-led states and the "mainsteam media"; all of which prepared the ground for post-election disputes.

He doubled down on these claims after Election Day, despite President-elect Joe Biden winning the Electoral College by the same margin that Trump termed a landslide in his 2016 victory. The President has spread countless conspiracy theories to his supporters, sowing doubt in the election result and convincing millions of Americans that they had been cheated.

Team Trump launched an extensive legal campaign to litigate their way to election victory, contesting the results in a number of key states and even attempting to take their objections as far of the Supreme Court. But these lawsuits were quickly dismissed and the Supreme Court, a third of which is comprised of Trumps own appointees, refused to even hear the case.

The legal battles were completely unsuccessful but did not dampen Trumps refusal to concede to the victor. That unwillingness to accept reality was one of the most startling components in the shocking scenes in Washington one year ago.

White House Stop the Steal address

The 6 January was the date in the electoral process when the Senate was required to certify the Electoral College vote in favour of Joe Biden, a formality that ushers in the President-elect's inauguration. However Trump was clearly eager to disrupt proceedings and held a Stop the Steal rally at the White House that same morning.

The President told supporters that he would never concede and that he refused to have is election victory stolen by emboldened radical Democrats. He continued, You have to show strength, and you have to be strong, before encouraging them to march on Congress and to make their opposition to Biden's victory known.

Unfortunately the crowd of Trump supporters that marched on Capitol Hill were intent on more than just making their voices heard.

Lack of governance allows the Capitol chaos to go unchecked

Having spent months lighting the match and a morning fanning the flames, Trumps primary reaction as hordes of his own supporters occupied Congress was to praise them. Violent rioters broke into both Houses of Congresses, emboldened by the false belief that they had been wronged, and forced the democratic process to be abandoned for a few chaotic hours.

In response the President posted a couple of weak-spirited posts about remaining peaceful but was much more vocal in his support of their cause. On Twitter he posted a minute-long video, which came as his followers were smashing windows in Congress. In it he repeated the false claims that the election was stolen and refers to those attacking the Capitol as patriots.

He ended the message by saying: "I love you, you're very special.

Reports from inside the White House at the time claimed that the Trump administration actually refused to authorise the National Guard entering Washington DC to help bring the situation under control. The fairly minimal police presence on Capitol Hill was not enough to prevent rioters breaking into the hallowed halls of Congress and DC officials were denied the assistance needed to clear them.
In other words, the challenges we face are enormous and it is easy to understand why many may fall into depression and cynicism. This is a state of mind, however, that we must resist  not only for ourselves but for our kids and future generations. The stakes are just too high. Despair is not an option. We must stand up and fight back.

And here is some very good news. While the corporate-owned media may not be actively reporting it, working people all over the country, with extraordinary courage and determination, are taking on corporate greed, and they are winning.

Workers at John Deere waged their first strike in more than three decades, stayed on the picket lines and eventually won a contract with strong wage increases, a ratification bonus and improved health insurance.

Striking nurses in Buffalo won raises that moved all workers to at least $15 an hour and a reduction in staff shortages. These nurses fought not only for themselves, but their patients  and they won.

Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers won a major victory after rejecting a contract that would have given new workers lower wages and benefits.

Nabisco workers, struggling against forced overtime, inadequate wages and pensions, a two-tier health system and the outsourcing of jobs, went on strike and won. Once again we saw workers fighting not just for themselves, but for the next generation of workers.

More than 1,400 Kelloggs workers in Michigan, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Nebraska went on strike for months and won, fighting back against a plan to give new workers lower wages and benefits.

Starbucks employees in upstate New York, for the very first time, organized a union shop in a fight against a giant corporation that did just about everything it could to stop them.

Those are just some of the inspiring efforts that took place last year. Let me tell you about whats happening right now as workers continue to stand up to some of the most powerful corporate interests in the country.
Screen image taken at Beijing Aerospace Control Center on Jan. 8, 2022 shows the Shenzhou-13 astronauts in China's space station core module conducting the manual rendezvous and docking experiment with the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft. (Xinhua/Guo Zhongzheng)

BEIJING, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- The Shenzhou-13 astronauts in China's space station core module have completed the manual rendezvous and docking experiment with the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft, the China Manned Space Agency said Saturday. 

Screen image taken at Beijing Aerospace Control Center on Jan. 8, 2022 shows the process of the manual rendezvous and docking experiment of China's space station with the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft. The Shenzhou-13 astronauts in China's space station core module have completed the manual rendezvous and docking experiment with the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft, the China Manned Space Agency said Saturday. (Xinhua/Guo Zhongzheng)

Screen image taken at Beijing Aerospace Control Center on Jan. 8, 2022 shows the process of the manual rendezvous and docking experiment of China's space station with the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft. The Shenzhou-13 astronauts in China's space station core module have completed the manual rendezvous and docking experiment with the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft, the China Manned Space Agency said Saturday. (Xinhua/Guo Zhongzheng)

Screen image taken at Beijing Aerospace Control Center on Jan. 8, 2022 shows the process of the manual rendezvous and docking experiment of China's space station with the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft. The Shenzhou-13 astronauts in China's space station core module have completed the manual rendezvous and docking experiment with the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft, the China Manned Space Agency said Saturday. (Xinhua/Guo Zhongzheng)

Screen image taken at Beijing Aerospace Control Center on Jan. 8, 2022 shows the process of the manual rendezvous and docking experiment of China's space station with the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft. The Shenzhou-13 astronauts in China's space station core module have completed the manual rendezvous and docking experiment with the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft, the China Manned Space Agency said Saturday. (Xinhua/Guo Zhongzheng)

Editor: Zhang Zhou
A green sea turtle is released to the sea at Kuta beach in Bali, Indonesia, Jan. 8, 2022. Indonesian Navy along with volunteers on Saturday released 33 endangered green sea turtles confiscated from illegal poachers during raid off coast of Bali in December 2021. (Photo by Bisinglasi/Xinhua)

Green sea turtles are to be released to the sea at Kuta beach in Bali, Indonesia, Jan. 8, 2022. Indonesian Navy along with volunteers on Saturday released 33 endangered green sea turtles confiscated from illegal poachers during raid off coast of Bali in December 2021. (Photo by Bisinglasi/Xinhua)

Editor: ZAD
Off to a hot start in 2022 despite the sub-zero temperatures in Edmonton, Alta., Outlaw Gunsablazin won his second straight Open event at Century Mile while a pair of trainers sent out multiple dominant winners from their stables on Sunday (Jan. 9)

Sent postward as the 6-5 favourite in the featured top class with Jamie Gray in the sulky, Outlaw Gunsablazin was quick to cross to command from an outer post five and never looked back. The six-year-old Blue Burner gelding cruised through fractions of :30, :58.4 and 1:27.2 en route to a 2-1/2-length victory in 1:57 over the 'good' track.

After securing a pocket seat from the inside post, $16,000 claimer Munchie Chris (Jacques Lambert) prevailed in the race for place that ensued down the stretch after Crackle N Burn (Philip Giesbretch) had launched a first-over attack.

Outlaw Gunsablazin, who paid $4.50 to win, is now two-for-two this year after winning just one of his 17 starts in 2021. A career winner of 16 races lifetime, the multiple Alberta stakes-placed pacer has banked just over $180,000 for conditioner Rod Starkewski, who shares ownership with Clauzette Byckal of Onoway, Alta.

Trainers Chris Lancaster and Trevor Williams were on fire on Sunday afternoon, each sending out three winners during the 11-race card.

Team Lancaster swept the early Daily Double, with Nevada Vacation ($3.60) topping a 1-2 finish for the stable in the opener and 11-year-old pacer Portrstownchris IR ($3.10) winning the second race by more than 13 lengths. Claimed from the Williams stable off a victory last week, Pure Addition ($3.50) later capped off the training triple for Lancaster with another double-digit win margin in the ninth race. All three winners were driven by Philip Giesbrecht (who led all reinsmen on the day with a total of four victories).

Williams partnered with driver Brandon Campbell for his three triumphs. The first winner for the Manitoba horseman was in the fourth race as 11-year-old pacer Rock Absorber ($2.80) romped to a seven-length score fresh off a January 2 claim. Just Marvelous ($4.30) prevailed by a head in the sixth race and the streaking mare A Cowboys Dream ($3.90) followed with an 11-length blowout victory in the eighth dash.

To view Sunday's harness racing results, click on the following link: Sunday Results - Century Mile
Black-necked cranes sport at a field in Lhunzhub County of Lhasa, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Jan. 8, 2022. The population of black-necked crane is estimated to reach nearly 10,000 in Tibet, according to the regional department of ecology and environment. (Xinhua/Zhang Rufeng)

Black-necked cranes fly in Lhunzhub County of Lhasa, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Jan. 8, 2022. The population of black-necked crane is estimated to reach nearly 10,000 in Tibet, according to the regional department of ecology and environment. (Xinhua/Huang Huo)

Black-necked cranes fly in Lhunzhub County of Lhasa, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Jan. 9, 2022. The population of black-necked crane is estimated to reach nearly 10,000 in Tibet, according to the regional department of ecology and environment. (Xinhua/Zhang Rufeng)

Black-necked cranes fly in Lhunzhub County of Lhasa, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Jan. 8, 2022. The population of black-necked crane is estimated to reach nearly 10,000 in Tibet, according to the regional department of ecology and environment. (Xinhua/Zhang Rufeng)

Black-necked cranes fly in Lhunzhub County of Lhasa, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Jan. 8, 2022. The population of black-necked crane is estimated to reach nearly 10,000 in Tibet, according to the regional department of ecology and environment. (Xinhua/Huang Huo)

Black-necked cranes fly in Lhunzhub County of Lhasa, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Jan. 9, 2022. The population of black-necked crane is estimated to reach nearly 10,000 in Tibet, according to the regional department of ecology and environment. (Xinhua/Zhang Rufeng)

Black-necked cranes fly in Lhunzhub County of Lhasa, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Jan. 8, 2022. The population of black-necked crane is estimated to reach nearly 10,000 in Tibet, according to the regional department of ecology and environment. (Xinhua/Huang Huo)

Black-necked cranes fly in Lhunzhub County of Lhasa, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Jan. 8, 2022. The population of black-necked crane is estimated to reach nearly 10,000 in Tibet, according to the regional department of ecology and environment. (Xinhua/Zhang Rufeng)

Black-necked cranes fly in Lhunzhub County of Lhasa, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Jan. 9, 2022. The population of black-necked crane is estimated to reach nearly 10,000 in Tibet, according to the regional department of ecology and environment. (Xinhua/Huang Huo)

Editor: ZAD
-- Xi'an, capital city of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, has basically stopped the spread of COVID-19 in communities one month after the resurgence of the epidemic hit the city, thanks to stringent containment measures such as city-level lockdown and rounds of mass nucleic acid testing.

-- Daily cases in Xi'an with a population of 13 million began to drop since the start of this year and slipped to two-digit numbers quickly, with 30 new cases, all in centralized quarantine, reported on Saturday.

-- As notable progress has been made to control the epidemic, Xi'an will gradually lift closed-off management based on the judgment and research conducted by national and provincial experts.

XI'AN, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Xi'an, capital city of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, has basically stopped the spread of COVID-19 in communities one month after the resurgence of the epidemic hit the city, thanks to stringent containment measures such as city-level lockdown and rounds of mass nucleic acid testing.

The virus spread in communities had been basically cut off, Xu Mingfei, vice mayor of Xi'an, told a press conference on Jan. 5. Xu said that all the new cases found over the previous rounds of nucleic acid testing were among the people who were quarantined at designated places (centralized quarantine) or at home.

Daily cases in Xi'an with a population of 13 million began to drop since the start of this year and slipped to two-digit numbers quickly, with 30 new cases, all in centralized quarantine, reported on Saturday.

The city, a popular tourist destination known for the Terracotta Warriors, registered 1,989 locally transmitted confirmed cases as of Saturday since Dec. 9, 2021.

Aerial photo taken on Jan. 1, 2022 shows a view of Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province. (Xinhua/Tao Ming)

The viral genome sequencing of the new cases has identified them as strains of the highly contagious Delta variant, which are highly homologous with imported cases from an inbound flight on Dec. 4, 2021, according to the provincial center for disease control and prevention.

STRICT CONTAINMENT MEASURES

Many positive patients didn't show obvious symptoms in the initial stage, and they tended to ignore their physical condition, which led to community transmission and clustered cases, local officials have said.

The number of confirmed cases in Xi'an rose by more than 150 per day for a week in late December, and the virus has spread to other cities and provinces.

To curb the spread of the virus, the city has launched several rounds of mass nucleic acid testing, with thousands of sample collecting venues set up.

A medical worker takes a swab sample from a resident for nucleic acid testing in Beilin District of Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Dec. 29, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

Mass nucleic acid testing can help health authorities identify the infected cases and put them under quarantine early. Meanwhile, it is conducive to adopting precise control measures and relieving public stress, said Li Qun, director of the health emergency center of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

As the trajectories of the positive cases in Xi'an were complex and involved a wider area, and some could not be traced to known sources, the megacity imposed closed-off management for communities and villages since Dec. 23 last year.

"The strict containment measures introduced are based on the epidemic situation to prevent transmission within the city and spreading elsewhere," said Lei Zhenglong, a member of the Xi'an taskforce team sent by the State Council for epidemic control.

JOINT EFFORTS AGAINST EPIDEMIC

During a recent tour to Shaanxi Province for investigation and research on prevention and control of the epidemic, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said that Xi'an saw a sharp decline in daily-reported new COVID-19 cases and had basically blocked the spread of COVID-19 in communities. However, Sun warned that the epidemic containment is still at a crucial stage, and urged efforts to prevent the rebound of the epidemic.

As of 6 p.m. Jan. 6, the city arranged 431 venues for centralized quarantines, putting 45,760 people under quarantine.

"The quarantined personnel have overcome the inconvenience to themselves and their families for the safety of all. They are also heroes," said vice mayor Xu.

Ma Hui, one of the residents in isolation, recorded his life in a quarantined site in short videos. "Despite some inconvenience at the beginning, the room is warm, and we receive necessities and even snacks," said Ma, 40, in a video.

Community workers and volunteers have devoted themselves to sending free groceries to residents in lockdown. People can also place orders online, and items will be distributed and delivered to each household by community staff and volunteers.

A volunteer arranges packed vegetables in Yanta District of Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Jan. 5, 2022. (Xinhua/Zhang Bowen)

The city government has taken measures to help people under closed-off management overcome inconvenience brought about by containment measures.

For example, responding to people's difficulty in accessing medical services, the city government has dispatched buses to shuttle those who need emergency treatment at hospitals to prevent the risk of cross-infection, said vice mayor Xu.

In Yanta District, the worst-hit district, several officials, including the Party chief of the Yanta District, have been removed from posts due to dereliction of duty.

As notable progress has been made to control the epidemic, Xi'an will gradually lift closed-off management based on the judgment and research conducted by national and provincial experts, Lyu Yongpeng, deputy director of the city's health commission, said on Saturday.

As of Saturday, a total of 262 patients had been discharged from hospitals after recovery.

(Video reporters: Wu Hongbo, Yang Yimiao, Lin Juan, Liang Aiping and Zhao Yingbo; Video editors: Zhang Qiru, Zhu Jianhui)

Editor: WXY
Photo taken on Oct. 31, 2021 shows tourists visiting a scenic park in Jintan District of Changzhou City, east Chinas Jiangsu Province. During the golden autumn season, chrysanthemums are blooming everywhere in Jintan District, attracting many tourists to come and take pictures. (Chen Wei/Guangming Picture)

Photo taken on Oct. 31, 2021 shows tourists visiting a scenic park in Jintan District of Changzhou City, east Chinas Jiangsu Province. During the golden autumn season, chrysanthemums are blooming everywhere in Jintan District, attracting many tourists to come and take pictures. (Chen Wei/Guangming Picture)

Photo taken on Oct. 31, 2021 shows tourists visiting a scenic park in Jintan District of Changzhou City, east Chinas Jiangsu Province. During the golden autumn season, chrysanthemums are blooming everywhere in Jintan District, attracting many tourists to come and take pictures. (Chen Wei/Guangming Picture)

Editor: JYZ
DTEK accepting two more vessels with 158,000 tonnes of American coal in ports

DTEK Energy is accepting two more Panamax class ships from the United States in Ukrainian ports.

According to the company's press release, the seventh vessel with 75,500 tonnes of American coal on January 9 moored in the TIS port, and the eighth vessel with 82,500 tonnes of coal will moor in Pivdenny port on January 11.

Coal from the next Panamax ships will replenish the warehouses of DTEK Energy TPPs.

"These days we are accepting the seventh and eighth Panamax ships, which deliver 158,000 tonnes of fuel. Also, in January, we expect the arrival of the ninth ship with imported coal. In total, this is 215,000 tonnes for the needs of Ukrainian thermal power plants," CEO of DTEK Energy Ildar Saleev said.

As the company recalled, DTEK has contracted nine ship supplies with 618,000 tonnes of coal for the needs of Ukrainian thermal power plants. The first vessel contracted by the company for the needs of state-owned PJSC Centrenergo arrived in Ukraine on November 20, 2021.

In December, another five Panamax ships with 350,000 tonnes of coal arrived in Ukraine for the needs of DTEK Energy TPPs. Three more ship deliveries are in January 2022.

In total, for a stable passage of the heating season, DTEK Energy has currently contracted, taking into account land supplies, more than 1 million tonnes of imported coal.
Ukrainians not injured during mass events in Kazakhstan, embassy provides assistance to those who cannot leave country - MFA

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, there are no killed, injured or detained Ukrainians during mass events in Kazakhstan, speaker of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Oleh Nikolenko said.

"The Ukrainian embassy provides consular assistance to citizens who cannot leave the country due to canceled flights. Now the largest number of people is in Almaty, 116 persons," Nikolenko told Interfax-Ukraine on Sunday.

According to him, the Almaty International Airport has suspended the service of civil aircraft and is used for the military transport aviation of the CSTO member states.

"All stranded citizens are provided with temporary housing and food. There are no threats to their life or safety. The Embassy maintains constant contact with all passengers and will inform them about further steps. According to preliminary information, it is planned to resume regular flights on the Nur-Sultan - Kyiv route on January 9," the speaker said.

He added that the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry interacts with the governments of foreign states, whose citizens also cannot leave the territory of Kazakhstan.

"Given the ongoing military operation and the difficult security situation, in particular in Almaty and the Almaty region, now the safest option for Ukrainians is to stay in their places of temporary residence," Nikolenko said.

He said that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba instructed diplomats to work out alternative ways for Ukrainian citizens to leave Kazakhstan in case of significant delays in the resumption of regular flights. All Ukrainian embassies in the region have joined this work.

"At the same time, the main prerequisite for any further measures is the stabilization of the security situation," Nikolenko said.

On January 2, in the city of Zhanaozen (Mangistau region in western Kazakhstan), rallies began against a sharp increase in prices for liquefied gas. The rallies escalated into massive protests across the country with economic and political demands.

On January 4, protesters clashed with security officials in Almaty. On January 5, the government of Kazakhstan was dismissed. Until January 19, a state of emergency was introduced in the country. On January 6 and 7, riots continued, with looters operating in Almaty and some other cities. Peacekeeping forces were sent to Kazakhstan from the Collective Security Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
The Pechersk District Court of Kyiv has extended house arrest to MP of the Opposition Platform - For Life faction Viktor Medvedchuk in the framework of the case on the coal supply from the occupied Donbas.

"The Pechersk District Court has extended the house arrest suspected to the MP for 60 days," the Prosecutor General's Office told Interfax-Ukraine.

As reported, on May 11, Medvedchuk was notified of suspicion of treason and an attempt to plunder national resources in the Russian-occupied Crimea.

According to Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, the suspicion concerns three episodes of illegal activity and cooperation with the aggressor country. According to the investigation, in 2015, Medvedchuk entered into a preliminary conspiracy with an official of the Russian government to extract minerals on the shelf of the Black Sea (the sea economic zone of Ukraine, temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation).

Another episode of criminal proceedings concerns the transfer of information containing state secrets to the special services of the Russian Federation. The third episode of illegal activity is subversive activities against Ukraine, in particular, in context of the development of the anti-Ukrainian project Luch.

On May 12, Medvedchuk arrived at the Prosecutor General's Office, got familiar with a copy of the suspicion presented to him and said that he did not intend to hide from the investigation, and the suspicions were politically motivated.

The court chose a measure of restraint for him in form of house arrest, the court of appeal upheld it. On September 2, Pechersky District Court extended the measure of restraint in the form of round-the-clock house arrest until October 31.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg assures that the Alliance is helping Ukraine in achieving the criteria necessary for membership in the organization, while the allies and Ukraine will decide on membership, and no one else has the right to say anything about it.

He voiced this position in Brussels on Monday before the start of a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine commission, which will be held with the participation of Olha Stefanishyna, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, answering a question from Interfax-Ukraine about whether the time has come for NATO to provide Ukraine with the Membership Action Plan (MAP) as part of the containment policy towards the Russian Federation.

With regard to the membership Stoltenberg said that the NATO had confirmed that it supports the decision taken at the 2008 Bucharest summit. He added that they are helping Ukraine move towards NATO membership through reforms, achieving NATO standards. He also reiterated that they had made it clear they would never compromise regarding the right of any state in Europe to choose its own path. Therefore, it is fundamental that this principle should not be violated in any way, which means that it is up to Ukraine and thirty NATO allies to decide when Ukraine is ready for membership, he said, adding that nobody has the right to say anything about this.

The Secretary General recalled that the Alliance continues to provide support to Ukraine - political support for its territorial integrity and sovereignty, as well as practical assistance.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine is closely following the development of the situation in the Republic of Kazakhstan and condemns the violence that has erupted in some Kazakh cities and has resulted in casualties.

"We condemn the violence that broke out in a number of Kazakhstani cities and led to numerous victims. We express our condolences in connection with the death of Kazakhstanis, with whom Ukrainians have long-standing ties of friendship and mutual respect," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in an official statement released on Monday.

It clarifies that now the parties "are extremely important to take maximum measures to de-escalate the situation and prevent further violence."

Also, Ukrainian diplomats urge to respect human rights and ensure the restoration of the operation of critical infrastructure and communication systems.

In addition, the ministry says that it took into account the deployment of foreign military forces on the territory of Kazakhstan with the dominance of the Russian contingent at the invitation of the Kazakh authorities.

Diplomats note that foreign troops must respect the independence, sovereignty and national legislation of Kazakhstan and international law, and their stay should not go beyond the declared limited period.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine will continue to protect the interests of Ukrainians in Kazakhstan, in particular, to assist them in returning to their homeland. We keep the situation with our citizens in Almaty under special control," it said.

They remind about recommendations to the citizens of Ukraine who are staying in Kazakhstan to be in places of temporary residence and keep in touch with the Ukrainian embassy, which will inform about possible ways to leave the country.

As reported, protest rallies against the sharp increase in prices for liquefied gas began in Kazakhstan in Zhanaozen (a city in Mangystau region in western Kazakhstan) on January 2. They then escalated into massive protests across the country with economic and political demands.

On January 4, protesters clashed with security officials in Almaty. On January 5, the government of Kazakhstan was dismissed. A state of emergency was introduced in the country until January 19. On January 6 and January 7, riots continued, with looters operating in Almaty and some other cities. Peacekeeping forces were
Two servicemen killed in Donbas, blown up by explosive device  JFO HQ

Two Ukrainian servicemen sustained fatal injuries after being blown up by an unknown explosive device in the area of the Joint Force Operation (JFO) in eastern Ukraine on Monday.

"The command and staff of the Joint Forces express their sincere condolences to the families and friends of the heroes who died for Ukraine," the JFO said on its Facebook page.

From the beginning of the day to 17:00, two ceasefire violations were recorded by Russian-occupation forces in eastern Ukraine. The enemy opened fire twice using heavy anti-tank grenade launchers, large-caliber machine guns and small arms in the direction of the village of Pisky, Yasynovatsky district, Donetsk region.

The boundaries of the Ukrainian units remained unchanged on Monday.
Kazakh embassy in Ukraine sees no reasons for comparing what happened in Kazakhstan to Ukraine's Maidan or the events in Belarus and calls the information on a "Ukrainian connection" in the events in the country a bogus story.

"We know that there are various comparisons of the events in Kazakhstan to Ukraine's Maidan and the events in Belarus. But we are deeply convinced that they cannot be regarded as equal. What happened in Kazakhstan is absolutely different tin nature," the Kazakh embassy said in a report released on Monday.

The embassy said it feels that people in Ukraine have compassion for Kazakhstan.

"Unfortunately, there are individual speculations aimed at casting doubt on our trusting relations. There are bogus stories about a 'Ukrainian connection' in the events in Kazakhstan. But we see that the relevant Ukrainian authorities are reacting to these signals in a timely manner," the report said.

The president is expected to make an address in the parliament in Kazakhstan on January 11, the report said.

"It should restart the political process in the country. A new government is expected to be appointed. It is obvious that Kazakhstan has entered a new reality, which yet remains to be realized. Kazakhstan intends to follow the declared ideology of a 'hearing state.' It will be necessary to forge clearer mechanisms for feedback between the authorities and the population to prevent such radical events from occurring again," the Kazakh embassy said.

It was also reported that flights between Nur-Sultan and Kyiv resumed on January 9.

Thirty-three Ukrainians have now returned from Kazakhstan, and 91 citizens of Kazakhstan have been sent from Kyiv. The issue of repatriation of some 116 Ukrainian citizens who stayed in Almaty is now under consideration. The Kazakh embassy in Ukraine is assisting with their transportation through Nur-Sultan, the embassy said.

The embassy thanked the government of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, and the National Guard for stepping up the protection of the embassy, which increases the trust between the countries and the diplomats' confidence in their security.

"The security and protection of foreign diplomatic missions are being ensured in the same way in Kazakhstan. The situation will soon be stabilized, and no changes in the economic policy and investment climate of the state are envisaged. All our obligations stand in full. The country is only just recovering from what happened," the embassy said.
'Night of Laughter' Benefit Concert for Ailing Comedian 'No Joking Matter'

All-Star Comedian Lineup -- including Sherri Shepherd, Chonda Pierce and Tim Hawkins -- Supports Fellow Funnyman Bone Hampton, Jan. 21







NEWS PROVIDED BY

I AM PR

Jan. 10, 2022



NASHVILLE, Jan. 10, 2022 /Standard Newswire/ -- An all-star lineup of comedians will pool their wit to support ailing Christian funnyman Bone Hampton, who's been hospitalized with kidney and congestive heart failure.



Hampton appeared on Season 13 of "America's Got Talent." He also appeared alongside Hollywood star Sandra Bullock in the romantic comedy "All About Steve," and "Woodlawn" starring Sean Austin and Oscar winner Jon Voight.



"While we'll be leveraging our craft to raise support for my close friend Bone, his situation is no joking matter," said Chonda Pierce, who refers to Hampton, a father of one, as her "comedy son." Hampton opened for Pierce during her Live in Concert Tour in 2020.



"Bone has faced many medical challenges and still has a long recovery ahead with ongoing treatments and therapies," Pierce said. "Right now the financial burden of his illness is enormous."



Night of Laughter

The "Night of Laughter" benefit concert Jan. 21 will feature performances by Pierce, Sherri Shepherd, Tim Hawkins, Akindtunde Warnock, Bob Smiley, Chinnitta Morris, Jeff Allen, Ken Davis, Leland Klassen, PJ Walsh, and others.



The show benefiting Hampton will be held at Brentwood Baptist Church, 777 Concord Rd., Brentwood, Tenn., at 7 p.m., For tickets and details, go to www.etix.com/ticket/p/3869290/?partner_id=3110



For decades, Hampton has brought his brand of "clean comedy" to people across the country. Since his most recent health crisis, fellow comics have rallied around to support him.



Shepherd, former host of "The View" who returns to her standup comedy roots for the event, said: "I'm sending up prayers for Bone, one of the funniest men in standup."



Paying It Forward

Comic Tim Hawkins, best known for parodying popular songs, said: "This will be an amazing night of comedy and our chance to pay it forward to Bone."



Described as "funny as a possum in a petticoat," Hampton's trademark style makes audiences feel like family, with homespun humor and sharp wit.



As a Dove Award-winning "Comedian of the Year," he's one of the most sought-after performers in the business. His appearance in "Thou Shalt Laugh: The Deuce," hosted by Emmy Award-winning comedy legend Tim Conway, led to a repeat in the follow-up "Thou Shalt Laugh 5."



All proceeds from "Night of Laughter" will help with Hampton's medical expenses.



Interviews or further information, contact:

Gregg Wooding

TOUR PUBLICIST

IAmPRonline.com

504 Vicki Lane, Wylie, Texas 75098

972-567-7660

Copyright  2018 I AM PR, Inc., All rights reserved



SOURCE I AM PR



CONTACT: Gregg Wooding, 972-567-7660


The world's largest transport aircraft An-225 "Mriya" damaged the gear when landing at a Polish airport on Monday, January 10, the press service of Antonov state-owned enterprise said.

"When An-225 aircraft landed at the airport in Rzeszow, Poland, the fixing bolts of the flight-to-ground landing gear position sensor were cut off on the right main landing gear," the company said on Facebook.

It is noted that the malfunction did not affect the safety of the Mriya's flight and landing.

After replacing the bolts, the aircraft will be fully operational and the aircraft will continue to operate on a commercial flight.
The joint task of Ukraine and NATO is to ensure de-escalation on the Ukrainian-Russian border, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Olha Stefanishyna said, following a meeting with representatives of the North Atlantic Alliance.

"The price for further aggression must be extremely high. At the Ukraine-NATO Commission stressed that a comprehensive deterrence package should be on the table, including painful sanctions," Stefanishyna said on Twitter on Monday evening.

During the meeting, she informed NATO partners about tense security situation on the ground, she said. "Russia attempts to shift the discussion by threatening with a new war without moving any step toward peaceful settlement within Minsk or Normandy formats. Our joint urgent task is to ensure de-escalation on the Ukrainian-Russian border," Stefanishyna said.
MULTMEDIA

PHOTO GALLERY : Mane fires Senegal to late victory against Zimbabwe in AFCON opener
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Gabon s coach Patrice Neveu looks on during the Group C Africa Cup of Nations (CAN) 2021 football match between Comoros and Gabon at Stade Ahmadou Ahidjo in Yaounde on January 10, 2022. AFP

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Comoros coach Amir Abdou gestures as he gives instructions to his players from the touchline during the Group C Africa Cup of Nations (CAN) 2021 football match between Comoros and Gabon at Stade Ahmadou Ahidjo in Yaounde on January 10, 2022. AFP

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Hundreds of people demonstrated on Friday in front of the national assembly in Bangui, calling for a constitutional change which critics fear is a push to keep the president of the Central African Republic in power, an AFP correspondent said.
Egypt and Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah has been selected in the Best XI of the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations alongside Arsenal midfielder Mohamed Elneny and Ahly defender Mohamed Abdel-Moneim.
Egypts Minister of Emigration and Expatriate Affairs Nabila Makram said on Sunday that the Word Youth Forum (WYF) is an ample opportunity to empower the youth and explain all efforts exerted in recent years to forge a better future for young people.

The WYF is an annual event in Egypt, first launched in 2017, to bring the worlds youth together to promote dialogue and discuss development issues.

The WYF is attended by a wide range of participants, including heads of state, international youth leaders, inspiring youths in various fields, prominent international figures, and youth groups from around the world.

Makram attended on Sunday a workshop held under the title Decent Life, amid preparations to launch the fourth edition of the WYF in the Red Sea Resort City of Sharm El-Sheikh from 10-13 January, under the auspices of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.

Minister Makram lauded the role of Egyptian expatriates in contributing to promulgating the goals of the Decent Life Initiative to upgrade and develop Egyptian rural areas nationwide.

The initiative, which was officially inaugurated in July 2021, aims to improve the standards of living, infrastructure, and basic services, including healthcare, across the countryside. It covers 4,658 villages across the country, which are home to 58 percent of Egypts 102.75 million population, with an estimated budget of EGP 700 billion (about $44.6 billion).

Makram added that Egyptian expatriates are an effective part of the sustainable development equation and key partners to development ventures launched in the various Egyptian governorates.

Challenges impeding development efforts in a number of countries figured high during the meeting's discussions.

At the end of the workshop, participants brought forward a number of practical recommendations on the possibility of applying the Decent Life development approach in a number of countries around the world.

Proposals included restructuring of state resources, wise financial management, supporting a green economy, laying down a model for each country to measure development indices, and forming an African youth committee to transfer related expertise to their countries.

Volunteers take part in organising WYF

A host of volunteers are taking part in organising the fourth edition of the WYF, according to the forums administration.

The volunteers, who are not being paid, are graduates of the Presidential Program for Youth Leadership and the National Training Academy.

Major national and international institutions are keen to participate in sponsoring the forum this year. The sponsors are covering the forum's expenses fully, which avoids putting an extra burden on the state budget.

The WYF's administration will undertake a range of responsibilities, including organisation, registration, crisis management, content, media and public relations.

The administration also works on updating the registration system and the website, considering requests to attend the forum, answering inquiries and solving problems.

It is also assigned to prepare the content of the forum's workshops and sessions as well as produce a host of films about the WYF and publish news and press releases.

The fourth edition of the forum comes after the postponement of the 2020 edition due to the coronavirus pandemic. The main themes of the fourth edition of the forum are post-COVID impacts, climate change, social security, human rights, entrepreneurship, technology, 5G networks, digital transformation, distance learning, the environment, and the future of energy, according to the WYF website.

Over 15,000 people from more than 160 countries took part in the last three editions of the forum.

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Egyptian TV presenter Wael El-Ebrashy passed away on Sunday aged 58 after suffering for months from COVID-19 complications.

El-Ebrashy's funeral prayer will be held on Monday at El-Sherbiny Mosque in his hometown of Sherbeen city in Daqahliya governorate, local reports cited his family as saying.

The funeral procession will take place after the afternoon prayer, which will be performed after 12pm tomorrow.

El-Ebrashy, presenter of Al-Tasea (9 o'clock) program on national TV, contracted the coronavirus in late 2020 and was admitted to the intensive care unit of a quarantine hospital in Giza.

However, he left the hospital in March of last year after his health improved, but continued to receive treatment at home after developing pulmonary fibrosis due to the coronavirus.

This disease prevented him from returning to TV screens, despite frequent reports that he had almost recovered.

In November, El-Ebrashy denied rumours that he had died, saying he was in good condition and was undergoing physiotherapy so that he could return to work.

Hossam Hosny, the head of the Scientific Committee to Combat the Coronavirus at the Ministry of Health, told media in September that El-Ebrashy's health had improved, and that he expected him to return to media work soon.

Over his career, El-Ebrashy presented several programs on many TV channels, including Al-Ashera Masaan (10pm) after renowned host Mona El-Shazly.

He also presented Kol Youm (Everyday) on ON E channel after TV host Amr Adib, and Al-Haqiqa (The Truth) on Dream TV channel after renowned media tycoon Hala Sarhan.

He started his media career as a journalist at Rosaelyoussef journal and then assumed several media positions, the last of which was Al-Tasea on national TV Channel 1.

Renowned TV host Youssef El-Husseiny has been presenting the daily Al-Tasea program since El-Ebrashy contracted the virus.

El-Ebrashy was born in 1963 in Daqahliya governorate in northern Egypt.

Earlier on Sunday, Vice-President of the Supreme Constitutional Court and the countrys first woman judge Tahany El-Gebaly also died in Cairo due to coronavirus complications.

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Jordan's Crown Prince Al-Hussein bin Abdullah II will take part in the fourth edition of the World Youth Forum (WYF) scheduled to open in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh on Monday.

In statements to the Egyptian state's news agency MENA on Sunday, Jordan's Ambassador in Egypt Amjad Adaileh confirmed the princes participation in the forum for the third time.

Prince Hussein took part in the second and third editions of the forum, which took place in 2018 and 2019.

Prince Hussein bin Abdullah's participation in the upcoming WYF attests to his keenness to accept President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi's invitation to partake in the activity, Adaileh said.

An official Jordanian delegation will accompany Prince Hussein, Adaileh said, adding that a number of Jordanian youth will also participate in the forum.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will also take part in the opening of the forum, arriving in Sharm El-Sheikh on Sunday in a two-day visit.

During his visit, Abbas will meet with Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to discuss developments of the Palestinian cause, Palestines Ambassador to Cairo Diab Al-Louh said on Saturday.

Under the auspices of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, the forum will be held from 10-13 January. The fourth edition of the forum comes after the 2020 edition was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The WYF held several preparatory workshops over the past two days ahead of the opening session on Monday with the attendance of experts, officials and a host of young participants from across the world.

Workshops on Sunday included sessions on the coronavirus pandemic and the growing role of financial technology in emerging markets and post pandemic education.

The sessions also tackled the role of youth in confronting environmental and climatic challenges, and the UN's sustainable development goals amid the pandemic.

Workshops on Saturday covered the future of technology and post-pandemic digital transformation, Generation Z's perspective on the post-pandemic world, and Egypts Haya Karima (Decent Life) countryside-focused initiative.

The Decent Life initiative, which was officially inaugurated in July 2021, aims to improve the standards of living, infrastructure, and basic services, including healthcare, across the countryside.

The initiative covers 4,658 villages across the country, which are home to 58 percent of Egypts 102.75 million population, with an estimated budget of EGP 700 billion (about $44.6 billion).

Saturday's sessions also tackled rational water policies for humanity, evolving global role for startups and included a discussion for the model of United Nations Human Rights Council (MUNHRC).

The main themes of the fourth edition of the WYF are post-COVID impacts, climate change, social security, human rights, entrepreneurship, technology, 5G networks, digital transformation, distance learning, the environment and the future of energy, according to the WYF website.

The WYF is an annual event in Egypt, first launched in 2017, to bring the worlds youth together to promote dialogue and discuss development issues.

The WYF is attended by a wide range of participants, including heads of state, international youth leaders, inspiring youths in various fields, prominent international figures, and youth groups from around the world.

Over 15,000 people from more than 160 countries took part in the last three editions of the forum.

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The Chinese foreign ministry Monday urged the United States to unfreeze Afghanistan's assets and lift unilateral sanctions on the country as soon as possible.





Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, acting Deputy Prime Minister of the Afghan Taliban's interim government, is reported saying that the recent rain and snow have aggravated the plight of Afghan people in need of food and clothing, and the economic sanctions imposed by the United States have made Afghanistan face serious challenges.





When asked to comment on Baradar's remarks, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a daily press briefing that the Chinese people sympathize with the difficulties the Afghan people are suffering.





He said that although the U.S. military has withdrawn from Afghanistan, the sequela caused by its occupation of Afghanistan for 20 years continues and is further aggravated.





"We urge the U.S. side to deeply reflect on its mistakes, shoulder its due international responsibilities and lift its asset freeze and unilateral sanctions against Afghanistan as soon as possible," Wang said.





The U.S. side is also urged to take concrete actions to make up for the harm caused to the Afghan people, instead of sprinkling salt on the wounds of the Afghan people, according to Wang.





Produced by Xinhua Global Service
ACSI Welcomes 'Dynamic Leader' as New Director of Early Education





NEWS PROVIDED BY

Association of Christian Schools International

Jan. 10, 2022



COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Jan. 10, 2022 /Standard Newswire/ -- The Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) is pleased to welcome Dr. Althea Penn as its new Director of Early Education.



Penn brings more than 30 years of experience in organization leadership to ACSI, most recently serving as Executive Director of The Shepherd's Academy Private School in Snellville, Georgia. She has served dozens of Christian schools as an educational consultant and professional development specialist.



Penn will lead the ACSI Early Education team in developing biblically based resources and providing professional development to support early educators. She will collaborate with other departments to carry out initiatives in alignment with the organization's strategic plan, including the integration of current research for early childhood program practices.



She begins the role today.



ACSI President Dr. Larry Taylor believes Penn's devotion and innovation make her the ideal fit to lead ACSI Early Education, together supporting early educators in the critical task of laying a spiritual and academic foundation for young students.



"Dr. Penn is a dynamic leader whose passion and expertise are evident in her work," he shared. "I have seen her in action as a speaker and writer for ACSI throughout the years and believe she will truly be a blessing and a resource for our educators."



Penn holds two master's degrees in Education Administration, a doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership, certification as an Early Childhood Educator, and the National Administrator Credential. She has served as a teacher, children's ministry director, and principal. Penn has a longstanding relationship with ACSI, serving as a speaker for ACSI Early Education webinars and as a keynote speaker for the Flourishing Schools Institute.



She looks forward to assuming her new position.

"I am honored to serve this team of early education experts, Christian early educators and program administrators," she shared. "God has prepared us for such a time as this, and I look forward to combining our energy and efforts to develop digital resources that will promote exponential growth for kingdom education."



Penn has written several books including "Christian Education Mandate," "Firmly Rooted: Cultivating Faith Development in the Next Generation," and "Equipping and Empowering Early Educators." To learn more about ACSI Early Education, visit the website or contact ACSI Care Team by calling (800) 367-0798 or by emailing careteam@acsi.org.



About ACSI:

Headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, ACSI exists to strengthen Christian schools and equip Christian educators worldwide as they prepare students academically and inspire them to become devoted followers of Jesus Christ. ACSI advances excellence in Christian schools by enhancing the professional and personal development of Christian educators and providing vital support functions for Christian schools through multiple services including teacher and administrator certification, school accreditation, legal/legislative assistance, and curriculum publishing. ACSI supports more than 5,000 member schools throughout the United States and around the world, which collectively serve approximately 1.2 million students. Through additional training programs, materials, and expertise provided to other educational groups worldwide, ACSI's overall influence and positive impact reaches more than 26,000 schools operating in 100 countries, together serving 5.5 million people.



Follow ACSI on our social channels: Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin | Instagram



SOURCE Association of Christian Schools International



CONTACT: Caitlyn Berman, 719-867-0243, Caitlyn_Berman@acsi.org


Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi launched on Monday the fourth edition of the World Youth Forum (WYF) in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh in the presence of hundreds of attendees from different countries, including heads of state, high profile officials, and international youth leaders.

Addressing the youth attending who hail from 196 countries, El-Sisi said: "The World Youth Forum has become a platform for dialogue and communication among young people, and a tool for exchanging visions between the entire world, especially at this crucial moment in human history."

This juncture, the Egyptian president stressed, makes it imperative to realise the importance of dialogue and managing differences between people and also to believe and be sure that the Creators wisdom and secret in the universe is for us to be different without discrimination.

In his speech during the opening ceremony, El-Sisi added that humanity cannot overcome its current crises and challenges to survive without sincere intentions to end conflicts, manage differences, and work jointly in the interests of humanity and peace.

The annual event, which Egypt inaugurated in 2017 to bring the worlds youth together to promote dialogue and discuss development issues, returned today after a one-year pause due to the coronavirus pandemic, and will be running from 10-13 January.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Lebanons Prime Minister Najib Mikati, and Jordans Crown Prince Al-Hussein bin Abdullah II attended the opening ceremony.

The fourth edition of the forum is being held under the slogan of 'Back Together'.

In a recorded video speech, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the forum is "a great" opportunity for youth to exchange expertise, create a better future, and improve health.

"Most of the worlds population is young people under the age of 30 The future is within their hands, and they are facing the challenges of today and tomorrow, including climate change, pollution, health and others," he added.

The opening ceremony also saw a recorded speech by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who said the pandemic resulted in negative psychological impacts. However, youth will manage to overcome this experience successfully.

"The minds of young people are inexhaustible from innovative ideas," Guterres said.

Three youth representing Egypt, Tunisia, and Ghana spoke at the inauguration, which began with an introductory display highlighting the focal points of the international event.

Under the theme COVID-19: A warning to Humanity and A New Hope, the opening session of the WYF is scheduled to start with the contributions from a bunch of experts, inspiring youths in various fields, prominent international figures, and youth groups from around the world.

The evening of the first day will witness the opening of the World Youth Theatre, which is a youth-to-youth hub that gathers promising artists from all over the world to play their outstanding talents and express their cultures through a wide range of art-related activities.

The keynote of the other three days will revolve around post-COVID impacts, climate change, social security, human rights, entrepreneurship, technology, 5G networks, digital transformation, distance learning, the environment, and the future of energy, according to the WYFs website.

The lead up to the event

The WYF held several preparatory workshops over the past two days that were attended by experts, officials, and a host of young participants from across the world.

The workshops on Sunday included sessions on the coronavirus pandemic and the growing role of financial technology in emerging markets and post-pandemic education.

The sessions also tackled the role of youths in confronting environmental and climate-centric challenges and the UNs sustainable development goals amid the pandemic.

The workshops on Saturday, however, covered the future of technology and post-pandemic digital transformation, Generation Zs perspective on the post-pandemic world, and Egypts Decent Life countryside-focused initiative.

The EGP 700 billion Decent Life Presidential Initiative, which was officially inaugurated in July 2021, aims to improve the standards of living, infrastructure, and basic services  including healthcare  across the countryside.

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President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said on Monday that the health initiatives and economic reforms Egypt had introduced in the years prior to the coronavirus outbreak have ameliorated the pandemic and cushioned its many challenges over the past two years.

Addressing the opening session of the World Youth Forum (WYF) that kicked off Monday in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, El-Sisi said Egypt had launched several health initiatives in the three years preceding the pandemic to screen and overcome hepatitis C and non-communicable diseases.

Among them is the 100 Million Health initiative, which included mass screenings for all citizens over the age of 18 for the early detection of hepatitis C infections, as well as nationwide treatment. The initiative has screened over 60 million people out of Egypts 102-million population.

El-Sisi underscored that Egypt  thanks to this approach  is now one of the countries least affected by hepatitis C. Prior to the initiative, Egypt had one of the highest rates of hepatitis C infections worldwide.

"Let us envisage what would have happened if Egypt had faced the pandemic with this number of communicable disease patients, and how high the infection rate would have been," El-Sisi said during the WYF's opening session themed COVID-19: A Warning to Humanity and A New Hope.

The initiative also targeted and provided treatment for non-communicable diseases like diabetes, hypertension and obesity, which accounts for about 70 percent of premature deaths in Egypt.

Such initiatives allowed us to "vividly see the health of Egyptians, he pointed out.

El-Sisi said Egypt had adopted a partial lockdown with "strict" precautionary measures, unlike other countries that applied a full lockdown, noting that each countrys response was based on the capabilities of their health sector.

Egypt has reported a total of 392,857 infections so far, including 21,964 fatalities, and 327,144 recoveries since the emergence of the pandemic locally in February 2020.

"The result achieved in terms of [coronavirus] infections and deaths in comparison to similar countries in terms of their population is very positive," he stressed.

El-Sisi also asserted that Egypt's adoption of its economic reform programme in 2016 spared the country "greater" repercussions of the pandemic.

Egypt wrapped up of the first phase of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) backed economic reform programme in 2019, and is currently shifting focus to the second phase that covers structural reforms.

The first phase included the floating of the Egyptian pound, lifting nearly all fuel subsidies, implementing a value-added tax and raising the prices of electricity and transport.

This "harsh" programme, El-Sisi explained, allowed the Egyptian economy to "bear bigger shocks."

These IMF-backed measures helped Egypt secure a needed $12 billion loan from the global lender.

Egypt also rolled out other initiatives to handle fallout from the pandemic, El-Sisi noted, stressing that the country has never suspended its development projects over the past two years.

The country has provided financial aid to irregular workers, who are affected most by the pandemic, and also launched the Decent Life initiative to combat poverty across Egypts countryside, he added.

In March 2020, El-Sisi instructed the government to disburse EGP 500 in monthly financial aid payments  initially set for six months and then extended for another six months  to irregular workers.

The EGP 700 billion Decent Life initiative, which was officially inaugurated in July 2021, aims to improve the standards of living, infrastructure, and basic services  including healthcare  across the countryside.

El-Sisi said Egypt is among a few nations that have achieved positive growth rates during the pandemic, with 3.6 percent in FY 2019/20 and 3.3 percent in 2020/21.

"The coronavirus pandemic is the greatest challenge that has faced humanity in modern history, as it has posed compounding problems at political, economic and social levels," the president said.

"But we always say that in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity," he noted.

The annual event, which Egypt inaugurated in 2017 to bring the worlds youth together to promote dialogue and discuss development issues, will be running from 10-13 January.

Earlier during the opening ceremony, El-Sisi said "the World Youth Forum has become a platform for dialogue and communication among young people, and is a tool for exchanging visions between the entire world, especially at this crucial moment in human history."

With over 15,000 people from more than 160 countries taking part in the last three editions of the forum, the fourth edition of the WYF is hosting hundreds of youths who hail from 196 countries.

This juncture, the Egyptian president stressed, makes it imperative to realise the importance of dialogue and managing differences between people without discrimination.

El-Sisi added that humanity cannot overcome its current crises and challenges without the sincere intention to end conflicts, manage differences and work jointly in the interests of humanity and peace.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Lebanons Prime Minister Najib Mikati, and Jordans Crown Prince Al-Hussein bin Abdullah II attended the opening ceremony.

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The issues tackled at the forum are timely and contribute to exchanging ideas politically and globally, stated Maltas President George Vella during his virtual participation in the opening session titled COVID-19: A Warning to Humanity and A New Hope.

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in instability, urging a focus on its implications on younger generations, he said during the session attended by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and his counterparts from Malta, Romania, Colombia, and Zambia, as well as Tanzanias prime minister, the UAE's minister of state for youth affairs, Chinese president's representative, the US ambassador to Egypt, and the high representative of the United Nations Alliance of Civilisations (UNAOC).

Vella said that the eradication of the pandemic would only be achieved through the provision of vaccines globally.

There are attempts to distribute vaccines among countries that cant afford them, but it is not easy, he said.

Fu Zhenbang, the vice-president of All China Youth Federation, said during his virtual participation at the WYF that youths globally should unite to build societies that share to create a better future.

The WYF plays a central and pivotal role, he said, stressing the importance of exchanging expertise on youth development through a global consensus as a top priority to achieve development goals.

He said the world is working on enhancing education and creating a youth-friendly environment, adding that youths are the most creative and should use technology to contribute to the worlds fight against the pandemic.

Intergenerational dialogue

Speaking during the session, High Representative of the UNAOC Miguel Angel Moratinos hailed the WYF as an initiative that brings us together in this intergenerational dialogue.

He highlighted the importance of intergenerational dialogue to establish mutual understanding between the elderly and young people.

El-Sisis vision is to bring all together here in Sharm El-Sheikh in order to... listen to them and they also listen to us, they also take note of our experience, of how we have been trying to overcome certain circumstances and difficulties in our life, that is what is needed today, Moratinos said.

He added that although there have been many conferences around the world, but this one is when you put together, lets say, decision-makers, elders, and young people trying to understand each other.

Partnership to fight COVID-19

US Ambassador to Egypt Jonathan Cohen said he was impressed while attending the third edition of the WYF in 2019 as he met with inspirational young people.

I am delighted that we can be back together this year, he said.

Cohen highlighted the work the US and Egypt have done together to mitigate the effects of COVID-19, saying this has been part of a very broad and deep strategic partnership between the two countries.

Over these past two years, the US has provided over 16 million doses of Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine to Egypt in partnership with COVAX, Cohen said.

The two governments have been working together since the beginning of the pandemic to help each other limit the spread of the virus, Cohen said.

The US government has also contributed over $15 million to helping Egypt mitigate COVID-19 through assistance and relief, he said.

Work in Egypt never stopped amid pandemic

Concluding the coronavirus session, El-Sisi said work in Egypt has never stopped despite the pandemic as we, in Egypt, have not feared COVID."

There have been preventive measures [in place], precautions, and rush for vaccination, but work in Egypt never stopped for a moment no matter what the adversity is, he added.

El-Sisi said participants and key figures during the session have all agreed that the harsh adversity of the coronavirus has shed light on the importance of enhancing communication among each other and called for allowing youth to play an effective role.

The pandemic has also highlighted the importance of global collaboration to confront the challenges in a fair way that is not linked with economic or even technological and scientific capabilities, El-Sisi said, in reference to coronavirus vaccine distribution.

Some countries had the chance, while others did not, to provide vaccines to their people, El-Sisi added.

Addressing youth, El-Sisi said the world will find out in a matter of years that the pandemic had very positive impacts despite the adversity and the suffering that we have been through during the pandemic.
The United Nations will launch talks to help Sudan resolve its escalating political crisis triggered by last year's military take over, the UN envoy said Monday, earning a mixed response.

"It is time to end the violence and enter into a comprehensive consultative process," said UN special representative Volker Perthes, vowing at a press conference to facilitate "indirect talks" between all sides.

Perthes said consultations would be held with political and social actors and armed and civil society groups, but stressed that "the UN is not coming up with any project, draft or vision for a solution".

"These are all Sudanese issues for the Sudanese to agree on," he said, ahead of a scheduled meeting by the UN Security Council on Wednesday to discuss the crisis in the northeast African country.

Sudan was thrown into turmoil when army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan launched the power grab on October 25, detaining Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and his cabinet for several weeks.

The military take over derailed a fragile power-sharing transition between the military and civilian leaders that had been painstakingly put together in the wake of the 2019 ouster of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir.

Crowds of Sudanese have taken to the streets since -- sometimes in their tens of thousands -- to demand civilian rule, and at least 63 people have been killed in violent crackdowns according to medics.

'Towards Democracy And Peace'

The UN-facilitated talks now "aim to support the Sudanese to reach an agreement on a way out of the current crisis," said Perthes, who heads the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission Sudan (UNITAMS).

The UN envoy said there has been "no objection" from the military institutions. But the initial response from key civilian factions was lukewarm.

"We have yet to receive any details about the UN initiative," said Jaafar Hassan, a spokesman for the mainstream faction of the Forces for Freedom and Change, the leading civilian pro-democracy group.

"We are willing to take part in the talks on condition that the purpose is to resume the democratic transition and remove the coup regime, but we are against it if these talks seek to legitimise the coup regime," he told AFP on Monday.

The Sudanese Professionals Association, another key civilian faction, had however said on Sunday that it completely rejected the UN-facilitated talks.

Perthes on Saturday announced that the talks would aim at "supporting Sudanese stakeholders to agree on a way out of the current political crisis as well as a sustainable path forward towards democracy and peace".

The UN's move was welcomed by the United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Burhan has insisted that the military takeover "was not a coup" but only meant to "rectify the course of the Sudanese transition".

A November 21 deal saw Hamdok reinstated after he spent weeks under house arrest in the wake of the cmilitary take over. But Hamdok resigned last week, warning that the country was now at a "dangerous crossroads threatening its very survival".

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Egypt reported 912 new coronavirus infections on Sunday, bringing the total infection toll up to 392,857 since the outbreak began in February 2020, the health ministry said.

The ministry also reported 26 new deaths in the past 24 hours nationwide, bringing the total fatalities nationwide to 21,964.

The statement added that 879 patients have been discharged from hospitals after recovering from the virus, bringing the total number of recoveries to 327,144.

Egypt has so far received at total of 122.2 million doses of coronavirus vaccines, Acting Health Minister Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar said on Wednesday during a Cabinet meeting.

A total of 57.4 million doses have been administered, leaving 64.8 million in stock, since the start of Egypts mass vaccination in January 2020, Abdel-Ghaffar added.

Egypt is expected to receive its first shipments of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca coronavirus drugs later in January, Egyptian health ministry spokesman Hossam Abdel-Ghaffar said last week.

Three national companies in Egypt have also completed manufacturing Mercks Molnupiravir coronavirus drug used to keep COVID-19 patients out of the hospital, Abdel-Ghaffar revealed, without naming the companies.

The three drugs all obtained the authorisation of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use in December.

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Mali's strongman summoned his cabinet Monday for an extraordinary meeting after the West African bloc ECOWAS imposed stringent sanctions on the fragile Sahel country over delayed elections.

In a sharp escalation after months of simmering diplomatic tensions, leaders from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on Sunday agreed to shutter borders with the Sahel state and impose a trade embargo -- a decision backed Monday by France at the UN Security Council.

They also agreed to cut financial aid, freeze Mali's assets at the Central Bank of West African States, and to recall their ambassadors from the country.

The sanctions followed a proposal from Mali's army-dominated government last month to stay in power for up to five years before staging elections -- despite international demands that it respect a promise to hold elections in February.

ECOWAS also rejected a revised proposal the regime submitted to the bloc on the even of the weekend summit.

Colonel Assimi Goita, Mali's strongman who took power in a military coup in August 2020, has not yet responded publicly to the political crisis.

But an official in his office, who requested anonymity, said that Goita had held a long meeting with his prime minister Choguel Kokalla Maiga on Monday.

'Illegal And Illegitimate'

Earlier, Mali's junta denounced the ECOWAS sanctions as "illegal and illegitimate" accusing the bloc of being "instrumentalised by extra-regional powers" in an apparent reference to France.

Relations between Mali and France, its former colonial master which has thousands of troops in the country, have deteriorated since the 2020 coup that ousted elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

At a UN Security Council meeting on West Africa Monday, the French ambassador to the United Nations, Nicolas de Riviere, voiced his country's "full support for ECOWAS's efforts".

US ambassador Richard Mills urged Bamako "to return to democracy in a timely fashion", but stopped short of taking a stand on the ECOWAS sanctions, which it is reviewing.

After an earlier wave of sanctions from ECOWAs following the 2020 coup, Goita had promised to restore civilian rule in February 2022 presidential and legislative elections.

But he staged a second coup in May 2021, forcing out an interim civilian government, disrupting the reform timetable, and provoking widespread international condemnation.

As ECOWAS continued to insist on elections in February, the military regime argued that rampant insecurity posed a problem and that peaceful elections took priority over speed.

Mali has struggled to quell a brutal jihadist insurgency that started in 2012 before spreading to Burkina Faso and Niger. Swathes of its vast territory lie outside government control.

Russia's deputy ambassador Dmitry Polyanskyi called for supporting the junta's efforts to restore order in their country.

Moscow "understood the difficulties" in organising new elections when a lack of security might undermine the outcome, he added.

Western politicians have condemned what they say is Moscow's growing influence in Mali, some alleging that the military regime has hired mercenaries from Russia's controversial Wagner group.

'All Necessary Measures'

Mali's junta has also announced the recall of its ambassadors in ECOWAS states and the closure of its borders in response to the sanctions, vowing to take "all necessary measures to retaliate".

The effects of sanctions are already beginning to be felt.

Air France, for example, announced that it would no longer be serving Mali's capital Bamako over due to "regional geopolitical tensions".

The trade embargo may take longer to take effect, but Malians have voiced concern on social media about the risk of future shortages.

A landlocked nation of 19 million people, Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world.

Mali's junta has said that the new ECOWAS sanctions will "affect populations already severely affected by the security crisis and the health crisis".

It also stated said it had made arrangements to ensure normal supplies, however.

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In a cafe in central Berlin, Wafa Mustafa has spread a cluster of photos across a table. The 31-year-old Syrian points to her father, an opponent of the Assad regime who has been missing since he was arrested in 2013.

As a German court prepares to issue the verdict on Thursday in the first trial worldwide over state-sponsored torture in Syria, Mustafa is one of many Syrians still looking for relatives missing since a brutal government crackdown on dissent began in 2011.

The trial of Anwar Raslan, a former colonel in Bashar al-Assad's regime, is an important "first step", Mustafa tells AFP. "But the most important part is that we don't look at detention in Syria as something from the past.

"We need to save those who can still be saved," she says, her green eyes filling with tears as she recalls lives shattered and dignity destroyed in Syria's devastating conflict.

Tens of thousands of Syrians have been starved or tortured to death inside the Assad regime's detention centres, as documented by "Caesar", a defector who had worked as a photographer for the Syrian military police.

'No one can imagine'

"The amount of horror and the brutality we have seen and we are still seeing is something no one can imagine," says Mustafa, who was invited last year to testify at the UN.

Mustafa arrived in 2016 in Germany, where she, like hundreds of thousands of other Syrians, has sought asylum.

The large population of Syrians who have sought a new home in Europe's biggest economy meant that victims of Assad's regime would sometimes run into their erstwhile torturers.

Tip-offs from victims have led to several investigations in Germany, with prosecutors wielding the principle of universal jurisdiction launching cases against several Syrians over their ties to Assad's regime.

Raslan, an alleged former colonel in Syrian state security, stands accused of carrying out crimes against humanity while in charge of the Al-Khatib detention centre in Damascus.

He is charged with overseeing the murder of 58 people and the torture of 4,000 others at the prison between April 29, 2011 and September 7, 2012. If convicted, he faces life in jail.

A week after Raslan's verdict, a Syrian doctor accused of crimes against humanity in Homs in 2012 will go on trial in Frankfurt.

At the beginning of the Raslan trial, Mustafa organised a campaign to place around 100 photos of missing Syrians outside the entrance to the courtroom.

The photos provided by families exiled in Europe and still looking for their lost relatives were hung on railings and placed on the pavement outside the court.

The fact that "we all think that even showing pictures of our loved ones in front of a court house in Germany is huge" shows "how desperate and how sad we are", she says.

Some 100,000 people have disappeared since Syria's war began with a civil uprising in 2011 -- at the hands of the regime as well as militant Islamist groups, according to aid organisations.

Freedom, justice

Mustafa has not seen or heard from her father since armed men stormed a family apartment in Damascus in 2013 and took him away. He was an opponent of the regime and had taken part in rallies against Assad.

Mustafa, her mother and her two sisters quizzed everyone they knew, knocked on every door and even resorted to bribery. All to no avail.

"This is one of the most difficult aspects of losing a loved one to detention," she says. "They will take your money, your power, your energy, your beliefs."

She has even tried writing to Raslan through his lawyer. Could Raslan, who is said to have been in charge of one of Assad's detention centres, know something about her father?

He replied that he had no information. So Mustafa told his lawyer: "I want you to tell him that no one ever stops looking for their missing relatives. This is part of our suffering."

It has been "a huge challenge" for Mustafa to watch Raslan facing trial, surrounded by lawyers and interpreters, when so many other Syrians are still languishing in jail with no hope of a fair trial.

But she does not want revenge. "Justice for Syria is not revenge. This is what we fought for 10 years ago: freedom, justice and a state of law."

Mustafa regularly posts the number of days that have passed since her father went missing on social media. It has reached more than 3,100.

An inner drive compels her to carry on. "My memory of my dad, of Syria is my main weapon."

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Khader al-Najjar has been unable to leave the Gaza Strip since he returned to the Palestinian territory 25 years ago, not even to seek medical treatment for a spinal ailment or to bid farewell to his mother, who died in Jordan last year.

The reason: Israel refused to allow the Palestinian Authority to issue him a national ID. That made it virtually impossible to leave, even before Israel imposed a punishing blockade when the Hamas militant group seized control of Gaza in 2007.

In recent months, Israel has approved residency for thousands of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza in an attempt to ease tensions while maintaining its decades-long control over the lives of more than 4.5 million Palestinians.

My suffering was huge, said al-Najjar, a 62-year-old carpenter, who described a nightmarish series of failed attempts to get permits to leave the tiny coastal territory. Now he is among more than 3,200 Palestinians in Gaza who will soon get a national ID.

That will make it easier to travel, but he will still have to navigate a maze of bureaucratic obstacles linked to the blockade. Israel says the restrictions are needed to contain Hamas, while rights groups view the blockade as a form of collective punishment for Gaza's 2 million Palestinians.

Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, and Hamas drove out PA forces two years later. But Israel still controls the Palestinian population registry, a computerized database of names and ID numbers. The Palestinians and most of the international community view Gaza as part of the occupied territories.

An estimated tens of thousands of Palestinians do not have legal residency, making it virtually impossible to cross international borders or even the Israeli military checkpoints scattered across the West Bank. Most are people who returned to the territory after living abroad, and Israel refused to place them into the registry.

Ahed Hamada, a senior official in the Hamas-run Interior Ministry, says there are more than 30,000 status-less residents in Gaza alone.

Israel agreed to grant residency to some 13,500 Palestinians in what it presented as a goodwill gesture following recent meetings between Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. It is the first batch since peace talks broke down more than a decade ago.

Israel's current government, which consists of parties that support and oppose Palestinian statehood, has ruled out any major initiatives to resolve the conflict but has said it wants to improve living conditions in the territories. It also wants to shore up the increasingly unpopular PA, which governs parts of the West Bank and coordinates security with Israel.

In a statement after meeting with Abbas, Gantz pledged to continue advancing confidence-building measures in economic and civilian areas.

Palestinians in Gaza rejoiced as they lined up to receive letters from the PA's civil affairs authority that will allow them to apply for national IDs and passports. Some shed tears of joy, while others looked on distraught after learning they were not on the list.

Hamas, which has fought four wars with Israel _ most recently in May _ criticized the Abbas-Gantz meetings, saying they deviate from the national spirit of the Palestinian people.

The residency issue dates back to 1967, when Israel seized east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in a war with neighboring Arab states. The Palestinians want the three territories to form their future state alongside Israel.

Israel conducted a census three months after the war and only registered Palestinians who were physically present. Israel later allowed some without legal status to visit family on visitor permits. Many Palestinians returned after the Oslo accords in the 1990s and overstayed their permits, hoping their status would be resolved in a final peace agreement that never materialized. Family unifications largely ground to a halt after the outbreak of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule, in 2000.

Palestinians are also largely prohibited from moving to the West Bank from Gaza. The latest approvals grant West Bank residency to some 2,800 Palestinians who moved there from Gaza prior to 2007 and who had been at risk of deportation.

Gisha, an Israeli rights group that advocates freedom of movement, says that by presenting the expansion of residency as a goodwill gesture, Israel is merely repackaging something it is obliged to do under international law.

This is a start, in some ways, but this whole problem has been created by Israel's stringent policies toward Palestinians under occupation, said Miriam Marmur, a spokeswoman for Gisha. There are of course thousands that remain status-less and millions that are still subject to the permit regime.

Al-Najjar, who lived in Jordan before moving to Gaza, was one of the lucky ones. This month he, his wife and their four children were all granted residency. Thank God, I can go and visit my sisters and my family (in Jordan) now that we have passports, he said.

Foreign nationals _ mostly Palestinians born in other countries _ who have married Palestinians in the territories have found themselves in a similar predicament.

Tareq Hamada said he is still waiting to get residency for his wife, a Palestinian who moved to Gaza from Kuwait in 1997. He said she has dreamed her whole life of making the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca but has been unable to do so.

Fayeq al-Najjar, a distant relative of Khader, tried to return to Gaza from Libya in 2008 but was turned away because he did not have a national ID. Instead, he snuck in through the smuggling tunnels. He has applied for an ID but does not know if he will be granted one.

I have sisters in Egypt who I wish to visit, he said. I'm 60 years old, when will I get an ID? When I'm on death's doorstep?

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Iraqi authorities have repatriated 111 Iraqi families linked to the Islamic State group from a Kurdish-run camp in northern Syria, a local official said on Monday.

They arrived on Saturday and were transferred to Al-Jadaa camp south of Mosul, in Nineveh province, said the official who declined to be named.

Since May 2021, at least 339 families linked to the jihadist IS group have been moved from Al-Hol camp in northeast Syria to Al-Jadaa which hosts around 7,500 internally displaced people.

These include families of jihadists, some of whom hail from other parts of Iraq, including the provinces of Salaheddine and Ramadi, according to Iraqi authorities.

The prospect of their return to their places of origin has sparked concern among residents who survived the brutal rule of IS when it occupied one third of Iraq between 2014 and 2017.

In late 2017, Iraq declared "victory" over IS after driving the jihadists from all urban areas, with support from a US-led coalition.

Iraqi authorities announced last month their intention to close Al-Jadaa, the last camp sheltering displaced in Iraq, outside of the autonomous region of Kurdistan.

But the process is long and facing resistance from local populations who don't want IS group families among them.

According to the International Organization for Migration, six million Iraqis were displaced during the IS group rule.

Around 1.2 million of them still have not been able to go home, including more than 100,000 who live outside camps in "informal sites".

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The European drug regulator said Monday it has started evaluating an application by Pfizer for its pill to treat the effects of COVID-19.

The announcement comes as countries in much of the 27-nation bloc are reporting soaring numbers of infections as the highly transmissible omicron variant sweeps across the continent.

The European Medicines Agency said in a statement that it could decide within weeks whether to approve Pfizer's application for a conditional marketing authorization for the drug Paxlovid, ``depending on whether the data submitted are sufficiently robust and whether further information is required to support the evaluation.''

Late last month, US health regulators authorized the pill that patients will be able to take at home to ward off the worst effects of the virus.

At the time, Pfizer said it had 180,000 treatment courses available worldwide, with roughly 60,000 to 70,000 allocated to the US.

The company said it expected to have 250,000 available in the US by the end of January.

Pfizer's application to the EMA covers use of the pill to treat mild to moderate COVID 19 in patients aged 12 years and older who are at risk of developing severe symptoms of the disease.

The EMA last month issued advice on use of the drug to EU nations that wanted to begin using it before official authorization.

The agency said it based its advice on a study of non-hospitalized, unvaccinated patients who had COVID-19 and at least one underlying condition that put them at risk of developing severe COVID-19 symptoms.

``These data showed that Paxlovid reduced the risk of hospitalization and death when treatment started within five days of the start of symptoms,'' the agency said.

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By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

Bulgaria receives the maximum possible amount of Azerbaijani gas via the route, through which supplies are temporarily carried out due to delays in the construction of the Greece-Bulgaria Interconnector (IGB).

The independent member of the Bulgargaz Board of Directors, Svetoslav Delchev, made the remarks, Trend said.

Due to the lack of connection with Greece, our country cannot receive more than a third of contracted one billion cubic meters of gas per year. This is the maximum amount of gas we can receive via this route. Due to the delay in the construction of the gas pipeline to Greece, Bulgaria suffers negatives he said.

He noted that Bulgaria continues to buy Azerbaijani gas at the agreed prices.

Azerbaijan and Bulgaria signed a contract for the supply of 1 billion cubic meters of gas per year via the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria starting from 2021. However, as the IGBs construction hasnt been completed, Azerbaijani gas is delivered to Bulgaria via the Kulata-Sidirokastro interconnection point.

The IGB Project (Gas Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria) is being implemented by the joint venture company ICGB AD, registered in Bulgaria in 2011, with shareholders Bulgarian Energy Holding EAD and IGI Poseidon.

The IGB gas pipeline will be connected with the Greek national gas transmission system in the area of Komotini and with the Bulgarian national gas transmission system in the area of Stara Zagora. The planned length of the pipeline is 182 km and the projected capacity will be up to 3 bcm/y in the direction from Greece to Bulgaria. Depending on the interest from the market and the capacities of the neighboring gas transmission systems, the pipeline is designed for increasing its capacity up to 5 bcm/y.

A memorandum for cooperation between ICGB AD and TAP AG has been signed concerning joint actions in relation to the future connection between the IGB pipeline and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline.

IGB project is extremely important in terms of enhancing the security of supply and ensuring the diversification of gas supplies for Bulgaria and the SEE Region.
Pfizer expects a Covid-19 vaccine targeting the Omicron variant to be ready in March, the company's head said Monday.

Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla told CNBC that Pfizer is already manufacturing doses due to keen interest from governments, as authorities contend with huge Covid-19 infection counts, including large numbers of "breakthrough" Omicron cases in vaccinated populations.

"This vaccine will be ready in March," Bourla told the network. "I don't know if we will need it. I don't know if and how it will be used."

Bourla said the existing regime of two vaccine shots and a booster has provided "reasonable" protection against serious health effects from Omicron.

But a vaccine focused directly on the Omicron variant would also guard against breakthrough infections of a strain that has proven highly contagious, but has also resulted in many mild or asymptomatic cases.

In a separate interview with CNBC Monday, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said the company is developing a booster that could address Omicron and other emerging strains in the fall 2022.

"We are discussing with public health leaders around the world to decide what we think is the best strategy for a potential booster for the fall of 2022," Bancel told the network.

"We need to be careful to try to stay ahead of a virus and not behind the virus."

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KYODO NEWS - Jan 10, 2022 - 22:22 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

Japan's COVID-19 border restrictions appear to have prompted more than 300 people to decline offers for foreign language teacher and assistant positions in Japan, leading to a fall in the number of such instructors in the country, according to a Kyodo News survey.

The withdrawal from the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program comes as prospective language instructors from the United States and other countries remain in limbo over Japan's strict immigration policies since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the survey shows.

The actual number of withdrawals could be even higher, given that some municipalities have yet to respond to the survey, which covers prefectural governments, major cities and international groups promoting educational exchanges.

The JET program, launched in 1987, works with municipalities -- alongside the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and the Foreign Ministry -- to send those living abroad to teach at elementary, junior high and high schools across the country for a maximum of five years.

According to the internal affairs ministry, 5,761 candidates joined the program in fiscal 2019. But the ministry has not released data for the subsequent years due to an "inability to accurately state the number as the situation evolves," an official said.

However, the number of JET candidates in fiscal 2021 is believed to have fallen to around 4,000, including those who have been reappointed.

The emergence of the Omicron variant late last year has additionally led to participants expected to arrive between December and January to suspend their travel, with some being told not to come on the day they were supposed to leave.

JET candidate Anna Burbo, who had planned to arrive in Japan this month from Michigan, is one such candidate. The 25-year-old said the suspension has led many to suffer economic distress and be unable to find new employment due to uncertainties over when participants may be able to fly over.

About 600 people due to participate in the program have yet to enter Japan, raising concerns that further withdrawals from the initiative may lead to a reduction in opportunities for international exchange and education.

Bahia Simons-Lane, executive director at the U.S. Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme Alumni Association, said Japan should be more flexible in its border restrictions and make exceptions for some foreigners.

Related coverage:

Japan to keep strict border rules till Feb. amid Omicron spread

Okinawa, Hiroshima report high COVID cases as quasi-emergency starts

12,000 sign petition to ease Japan's tight entry rules over Omicron






KYODO NEWS - Jan 10, 2022 - 19:09 | Arts, All, Japan

Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi's "Drive My Car" won the Golden Globe for best non-English language film Sunday, the latest award for the movie that has been receiving international accolades in the run-up to the Oscars.

The film, based on a short story of the same title by novelist Haruki Murakami, recently won the top prize and was selected for three other awards by a U.S. film critic society, while it also won the award for best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival last year.

The last time a Japanese film won a Golden Globe was in 1960, when Kon Ichikawa's "Odd Obsession" won the award for best foreign language film.

The Golden Globes are a precursor for the Academy Awards in March, with attention focused on whether "Drive My Car" will be nominated in the international feature film category

The brooding, melancholic drama spanning three hours tells the story of a grieving stage actor and director who finds solace in a young woman he hires as a driver after his wife died leaving behind a secret.

On Saturday, members of the National Society of Film Critics gave the best picture, best director and best screenplay awards to "Drive My Car," as well as the best actor award to Hidetoshi Nishijima, who plays the main character.

In December, the film also won best picture and best screenplay at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awards.

The Golden Globes also saw an award for South Korean drama series "Squid Game," which has become a massive Netflix hit. O Yeong Su won the award for best television supporting actor for his role as an elderly contestant with a brain tumor.

The story revolves around hundreds of players in financial debt who are invited to compete in children's games in a deadly battle for a 45.6 billion won ($38 million) prize, with the drama portraying class inequality.

The 79th Golden Globe Awards ceremony was held without being broadcast by U.S. television network NBC, which refused to air it amid criticism over a lack of diversity in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association that votes for the awards.

Related coverage:

"Drive My Car" given top prize, 3 others by U.S. film critic society

Japan's Hamaguchi wins Cannes Best Screenplay for "Drive My Car"
By Eduardo Martinez, KYODO NEWS - Jan 10, 2022 - 14:33 | Feature, All, Japan

Many welcomed Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike's recent announcement that a same-sex partnership system would be introduced for all of Tokyo in fiscal 2022. But some LGBTQ activists have pointed out that much more work needs to be done to reach true equality in Japan.

Currently, 12 of the 62 municipalities in Tokyo have introduced a same-sex partnership system, but Koike's announcement for the whole metropolitan area means that more than half of Japan's total population could now be covered by such a system.

Tokyo's Shibuya Ward became the first to introduce a same-sex partnership certificate program in 2015. As of January this year, a total of 147 municipalities across Japan have introduced similar systems, according to activist group Marriage For All Japan.

However, often these partnerships are not recognized beyond their jurisdictions, and none of them are legally binding, meaning that it is up to individual institutions like hospitals and real estate agents to choose to accept them or not.

It can be one of a number of sometimes overlapping barriers that LGBTQ people face. Japan also lacks laws that prohibit discrimination of LGBTQ people, and transgender people specifically are legally required to be sterilized as part of the gender reassignment process.

Only once they have undergone compulsory sterilization, completed gender reassignment surgery, and changed their gender to male on their family registry can a transgender man, for example, marry a cisgender woman whose gender identity matches her sex at birth.

"Japan is one of only a few countries where surgery is required to legally change gender, as is the requirement of having no children under 20 years old," says Gon Matsunaka, founder and president of LGBTQ project Pride House Tokyo Consortium. "So even if same-sex marriage becomes recognized, other rights issues will remain."

But Matsunaka, who runs Pride House Tokyo Legacy, Japan's first permanent LGBTQ center that opened in October 2020, sees the benefits of Tokyo introducing such a comprehensive partnership system.

Matsunaka is among several LGBTQ activists and rights groups who will consult with the Tokyo metropolitan government in the fall on the specifics of the system planned to be introduced in the next fiscal year.

While only the central government can revise the Constitution to recognize same-sex marriage, Matsunaka believes that the move by the Tokyo government will help pressure the state into acting.

"Until now, the conversation has been prolonged with excuses like "We still need to discuss it with citizens," and "There are a lot of opinions," but introducing the system will be very effective in strengthening the argument in legislative proceedings for recognizing same-sex marriage."

LGBTQ people are not granted benefits enjoyed by straight couples such as medical visitation rights and the ability to make medical decisions for their partners, co-parenting rights and spousal income tax deductions.

Japan also remains the only member of the Group of Seven industrialized nations not to fully recognize same-sex unions.

But in March 2021, the Sapporo District Court made a historic verdict when it ruled that the government's failure to recognize same-sex marriage is unconstitutional as it violates the right to equality.

Shinya Yamagata, 54, is a member of Marriage for All Japan and is part of concerted efforts by the group to file lawsuits and demand marriage equality in several Japanese cities.

"It enrages me that we are unreasonably excluded from marriage that provides a lot of benefits, as though we are second-class citizens, compared with heterosexuals who can get married easily," said Yamagata, who has been with his same-sex partner for 24 years and has spent several years campaigning for marriage equality.

Yamagata is a resident of Tokyo's Nakano Ward and was also involved in campaigns for Nakano to bring in its own partnership system.

While he continues his legal battle in Tokyo, Yamagata's associates campaign in cities like Osaka and Nagoya, and he says he expects that two or three more rulings will be made this year on same-sex marriage, potentially similar to the one made in Sapporo.

The rulings in addition to the Tokyo partnership system could greatly impact public discourse, and Yamagata also believes that this will apply more pressure on the Japanese government to finally recognize same-sex marriage.

Kanae Doi, Japan director of Human Rights Watch, says that including recognizing same-sex marriage, "legislation prohibiting discrimination against LGBTQ people, and removing sterilization as a requirement for gender reassignment surgery is necessary to move forward."

But Doi also expressed concern that despite public perception of LGBTQ issues improving, legislative progress has been slow, making comparisons to campaigns for enabling married couples to take separate surnames that have been ongoing for around 20 years.

While confident that there will be change, Doi noted a sense of urgency. "The reason being is that LGBTQ people face serious and in some cases life-threatening problems. There is a difference in implementing policy after one year and implementing it after 10 years." she said.

"The current reality is that these laws will not pass (yet) in the House of Representatives. But the LGBTQ community, as well as its allies, have made great gains." she said.

"If we do not give up and continue to raise our voices, I am certain there will be a breakthrough."

Related coverage:

FEATURE: Two LGBTQ rights activists of different faiths find common ground

FOCUS: Japan election pledges on LGBT rights boost legislation hopes

Woman sues Hokkaido gov't for not giving benefits to same-sex couples
Scores of the families of war victims in Afghanistan's capital Kabul on Sunday called for justice and demanded punishment for those behind the killings of Afghans.

With about 200 photos and portraits on display in a public park here, the participants alleged that thousands of innocent Afghans had been killed mostly by American military forces' bombardments and the perpetrators should be brought to justice.

"Among the victims' photos, there are those who were killed by the bombing of the American forces in Shindand districts of Herat and Balablok of Farah in the west and parts of the eastern Kunar province during the presence of the U.S.-led force in Afghanistan," the organizer of the photo exhibition Weda Ahmad told Xinhua.

Placards and banners that called for a probe into the war crimes of America, NATO and their proteges were posted on the walls of the park, demanding the punishment of those responsible for killing Afghans.

Weda, a women rights activist who is also the head of a non-government agency the Association of Afghans for Justice, alleged that the U.S. airstrikes had killed countless Afghan civilians including innocent women and children during the 20-year U.S.-led occupation in Afghanistan.

She told Xinhua that her association has collected more than 10,000 photos of the war victims that were killed during more than four decades of wars, most of them by American forces operations over the past 20 years.





Produced by Xinhua Global Service
Visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) meets with Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris in Sri Lanka, Jan. 9, 2022. (Xinhua/Ajith Perera)

Wang Yi said China and Sri Lanka should stick to the right direction of solidarity in the fight against the pandemic, and jointly safeguard international equity and justice.

COLOMBO, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met here on Sunday with Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris, vowing to work together with the Sri Lankan side to jointly oppose politicizing the COVID-19 pandemic and using origins tracing as a tool.

Peiris said during the meeting that Sri Lanka and China have conducted all-round cooperation in various areas, with close communication between the two governments, frequent inter-party contacts and active people-to-people exchanges.

China has provided substantial and strong support for Sri Lanka's economic development and national construction, Peiris said, stressing that the Sri Lankan side will continue to firmly adhere to the one-China policy, support China's just propositions on international occasions, and oppose any attempt to politicize the pandemic.

During the meeting, Wang said the two sides should stick to the right direction of solidarity in the fight against the pandemic, and jointly safeguard international equity and justice.

Noting that China and Sri Lanka are good friends and partners who have always trusted and supported each other, Wang said the pandemic has not affected bilateral relations, with their friendship further enhanced through the joint fight against COVID-19.

The central bank of Sri Lanka issued commemorative coins for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, which reflects the sincere friendship and full trust of the Sri Lankan side towards China, Wang said.

China proposes that a forum on the development of Indian Ocean island countries be held at an appropriate time to build consensus and synergy, and promote common development, in which Sri Lanka can play an important role, said the Chinese state councilor.
BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- China has urged Lithuania not to act as a pawn for anti-China forces and urged the United States to stop playing the "Taiwan card", Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said here Monday.

Wang made the remarks at a daily press briefing when asked to comment U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai's remarks concerning China.

The United States distorted China's legitimate measures to safeguard its national sovereignty as "coercion", which has fully exposed the hypocrisy and deception of U.S. discourse bullying, Wang said.

Wang said that speaking of coercion, the U.S. government forced the military government of Haiti to step down in 1994, and referred to that as "a textbook example of coercive diplomacy"; in 2003, it explicitly listed 30.3 billion U.S. dollars of military expenses for "coercive diplomacy;" it spared no effort to crack down on its competitors like Alstom and Toshiba and coerced the TSMC, Samsung and other companies to provide to the United States chip supply chain data.

"This is flat-out 'blackmail diplomacy'," he said.

Wang stressed that the fact is clear that Lithuania violated its political commitment it had made upon the establishment of diplomatic ties with China, and created the false impression of "one China, one Taiwan" in the world. "People of insight in Lithuania have also criticized this," he added.

The United States instigated the Lithuanian authorities to undermine the one-China principle from the outset and then supported, aided and abetted them, Wang said, adding that the United States tries to seek political calculation aimed at using Taiwan to contain China at the expense of Lithuania's interests.

"We urge the Lithuanian side to correct its mistakes and not act as a pawn for anti-China forces. We also warn the U.S. side that playing the 'Taiwan card' is counterproductive and will get itself burnt," Wang said. 
BEIJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday held a phone conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on bilateral ties and the situation in Kazakhstan.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to China and his attendance at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics will not only be the first in-person meeting between the two countries' heads of state in nearly two years, but also a major event in international relations at the start of this year, Wang said.

China is ready to strengthen coordination with Russia to ensure the complete success and fruitful results of the "get-together for the Winter Olympics" and "meeting in the Spring Festival" between the two countries' heads of state, Wang said.

On the situation in Kazakhstan, Wang stressed that Chinese President Xi Jinping has sent a verbal message to Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, publicly expressing China's firm opposition to any attempt by external forces to provoke unrest and instigate "color revolutions" in Kazakhstan.

The Chinese side agrees with President Tokayev's assessment on the nature of the riots in Kazakhstan, and supports the Collective Security Treaty Organization in assisting Kazakhstan in fighting violent terrorist forces and playing a positive role in restoring stability in Kazakhstan on the premise of respecting Kazakhstan's sovereignty, Wang said.

China and Russia, as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and friendly neighbors of Central Asian countries, must prevent chaos or war from erupting in Central Asia, Wang said. 
Photo taken on Jan. 10, 2022 shows the China Pavilion of Expo 2020 Dubai in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. (Xinhua/Wang Dongzhen)



DUBAI, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The national flag of China was raised on Monday morning under the iconic dome of the Al Wasl Plaza, the central stage of the Expo 2020 Dubai site, marking the start of the National Day of China Pavilion.



Chinese Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Ni Jian, UAE Minister of State for International Cooperation and the Managing Director for Expo 2020 Dubai Reem Ebrahim Al Hashimy, and Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation for International Development Affairs Sultan Mohammed Al Shamsi attended the opening ceremony.

Tourists take photos at the China Pavilion of Expo 2020 Dubai in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, on Jan. 10, 2022. (Xinhua/Wang Dongzhen)



The Chinese ambassador conveyed a congratulation letter written by Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua, in which Hu thanked the UAE for its support for the China Pavilion.

Tourists visit the China Pavilion of Expo 2020 Dubai in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, on Jan. 10, 2022. (Xinhua/Wang Dongzhen)



Speaking highly of the China Pavilion, Shamsi said cooperation between the UAE and China has strengthened over the years under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, in which the UAE has been a key and supportive partner.

Tourists applaud for the opening ceremony performance of the National Day of China Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, on Jan 10, 2022. (Xinhua/Wang Dongzhen)



Under the banner of "Build a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind -- Innovation & Opportunity," the China Pavilion gives center stage to the country's latest achievements in such fields as space exploration, information technology, and artificial intelligence (AI), offering a futuristic vision for the better life of human beings.

Photo taken on Jan. 10, 2022 shows the opening ceremony performance of the National Day of China Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. (Xinhua/Wang Dongzhen)



As one of the most distinctive and popular pavilions, the China Pavilion has received more than 800,000 visitors from all over the world since its opening to the public. 
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi holds talks with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in Wuxi, east China's Jiangsu Province, Jan. 10, 2022. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

NANJING, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks on Monday with Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in Wuxi City of east China's Jiangsu Province.

After an in-depth exchange of views, the two sides reached broad consensus on bilateral relations, practical cooperation and multilateral coordination.

Wang said that China stands ready to work with Saudi Arabia to jointly implement the important consensus reached by two heads of state to promote the development of bilateral relations.

Wang said the two sides should continue to firmly support each other in safeguarding their respective core interests, jointly oppose unilateralism and bullying, safeguard the collective interests of developing countries and the basic norms governing international relations.

Faisal said Saudi Arabia has always opposed interfering in China's domestic affairs, firmly championed the one-China principle and firmly supported China's legitimate position on issues concerning Taiwan and Xinjiang, as well as human rights.

On the Iran nuclear issue, Wang said China supports Gulf countries in setting up multilateral dialogue platforms and taking the initiative in regional issues into their own hands.

The two sides also exchanged views on Yemen, Afghanistan and other international and regional issues of common concern. 
By Azernews

By Laman Ismayilova

The National Carpet Museum has discussed the protection of museum exhibits.

The master class was held on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the museum's deputy director for the protection and registration of exhibits Mira Mammadkhanova

Mira Mammadkhanova has over 30 years of experience in this field.

In his speech, Mammadkhanova stressed the importance of the protection of the museum exhibits.

She informed the master class participants about the preservation of carpets, carpet products, artistic metal, fabric, clothing, embroidery, porcelain, glass, wood, paper and jewelry in the museum's collection.

Founded in 1967, the National Carpet Museum never ceases to amaze everyone with its beautiful architecture.

Initiated by eminent carpet artist Latif Karimov, it is beautiful inside and out. The museum's new building is designed in the form of a rolled carpet.

The Carpet Museum stores over 14,000 exhibits of the finest Azerbaijani carpets.

The museum hosts multiple events, including international symposiums, conferences and various exhibitions.

In 2019, the museum received national status for its significant contribution to the popularization and promotion of the Azerbaijani Carpet Weaving Art.

In 2020, the Carpet Museum enriched its collection with beautiful pile carpets purchased by the Culture Ministry at the Sartirana Textile Show in Italy.

The 19th century Guba carpet Ugakh was donated to the Carpet Museum, while Karabakh carpet Chelebi enriched the collection of the museum's Shusha branch.

The Carpet Museum also focuses on cooperation with world-leading museum organizations.

Moreover, the Carpet Museum won Travelers' Choice Awards for the fourth time in a row last year.
Photo taken on Jan. 2, 2022 shows miniature sculptures carved by Egyptian artist Fady Francis at his workshop in Cairo, Egypt. On a table in downtown Cairo, Fady Francis, 30, aligns miniature sculptures of 100 influential world figures, standing side by side in harmony, although the figures were from different cultures, spoke different languages and lived in different eras in history. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)

by Mahmoud Fouly

CAIRO, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- On a table in downtown Cairo, Fady Francis, 30, aligns miniature sculptures of 100 influential world figures, standing side by side in harmony, although the figures were from different cultures, spoke different languages and lived in different eras in history.

These statues and busts are carved by Francis as part of his 100-figure sculpture project that he has been working on over the past three years and expects to display in exhibitions in Egypt and abroad later this year.

Among the miniature sculptures are the mummy of Egypt's ancient King Ramses II lying down in a little coffin and the bust of China's philosopher Confucius, surrounded by statues and busts of Egyptian writer Taha Hussein, India's Rabindranath Tagore, German-born physicist Albert Einstein, Austria's composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso.

"They gather together in one place regardless of their different languages and cultures," the Egyptian artist and journalist told Xinhua, stressing that it is the theme of his project.

Francis said his choice of Taha Hussein was because he was one of the most influential Egyptian writers in the 20th century and was referred to as "the Dean of Arabic Literature," although he became blind in his early childhood.

"He was a figure that defied all difficult conditions and his influence wasn't restricted to Egypt but extended to the world," he added.

Francis said the bust of Confucius was one of his lastest works, noting that he visited China in 2017 and was impressed by its culture and architecture.

"He (Confucius) is a Chinese philosopher whose thoughts influenced humanity. His works were translated into different languages across the world. I chose him as a symbol of Chinese culture, thought and philosophy," Francis told Xinhua.

Francis started learning to paint since childhood, and was inspired by the ancient Egyptian artistic antiquities in the monument-rich province of Luxor, where he was born and grew up.

Three years ago, his interest turned to sculpture. Now he uses polymer clay as the main material of his sculptures, whose heights vary between 8 and 18 cm, shaping them with simple sculpting tools such as a toothpick and a needle, and using a magnifying glass to be able to take care of the smallest details.

Some of the miniature statues are sculptured in a caricature-based style with bigger heads, while the focus of some busts is on the details of the facial features such as those of Confucius and Tagore, according to the artist.

Although the first year under the COVID-19 pandemic was difficult for the world, Francis took the global lockdown that followed as a "chance" to improve his sculpturing skills and managed to finish 60 miniature sculptures in 2020.

"I believe that art is a message of peace that unites all human beings despite their different cultures and languages," the artist told Xinhua. 

Egyptian artist Fady Francis examines his handmade miniature bust of China's philosopher Confucius at his workshop in Cairo, Egypt, on Jan. 2, 2022. On a table in downtown Cairo, Fady Francis, 30, aligns miniature sculptures of 100 influential world figures, standing side by side in harmony, although the figures were from different cultures, spoke different languages and lived in different eras in history. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)

Egyptian artist Fady Francis shows his handmade miniature bust of German composer and musician Johann Sebastian Bach at his workshop in Cairo, Egypt, on Jan. 2, 2022. On a table in downtown Cairo, Fady Francis, 30, aligns miniature sculptures of 100 influential world figures, standing side by side in harmony, although the figures were from different cultures, spoke different languages and lived in different eras in history. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)

Egyptian artist Fady Francis works on the miniature statue of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso at his workshop in Cairo, Egypt, on Jan. 2, 2022. On a table in downtown Cairo, Fady Francis, 30, aligns miniature sculptures of 100 influential world figures, standing side by side in harmony, although the figures were from different cultures, spoke different languages and lived in different eras in history. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)

Egyptian artist Fady Francis cleans his handmade miniature statue of physicist Albert Einstein at his workshop in Cairo, Egypt, on Jan. 2, 2022. On a table in downtown Cairo, Fady Francis, 30, aligns miniature sculptures of 100 influential world figures, standing side by side in harmony, although the figures were from different cultures, spoke different languages and lived in different eras in history. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)

Egyptian artist Fady Francis holds his handmade miniature bust of Russian writer Anton Chekhov at his workshop in Cairo, Egypt, on Jan. 2, 2022. On a table in downtown Cairo, Fady Francis, 30, aligns miniature sculptures of 100 influential world figures, standing side by side in harmony, although the figures were from different cultures, spoke different languages and lived in different eras in history. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)
Srinagar:

National Conference President Farooq Abdullah's sister, daughter and other women protestors, who were arrested on Tuesday after they took out a protest march, were released on bail by a court in Srinagar on Wednesday evening.

Abdullah's sister Suraiya, his daughter Safiya and 11 other women furnished a personal bond of Rs 10,000 and surety of Rs 40,000 each under section 107 of criminal procedure code, giving an assurance that they would maintain peace, the officials said.

The officials said the women, who were lodged in the central jail Srinagar, were released around 6 pm on Wednesday after the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate granted them bail, they said.

Suraiya and Safiya were leading a group of women activists, who wore black arm bands and held placards, while protesting against abrogation of provisions of Article 370 and bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories.

They were not allowed by the police to assemble and asked to disperse peacefully. However, they refused to do so and tried to stage a sit-in after which they were detained and then arrested.

Post August 5, when the Centre abrogated special status granted to Jammu and Kashmir, the state authorities have detained scores of political leaders including three former chief ministers -- Farooq Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah.

Also Read | Punjab Apple Trader Killed By Terrorists In Jammu And Kashmir's Shopian

The senior Abdullah was subsequently booked under the stringent Public Safety Act last month.

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi:

A Delhi court on Thursday remanded former finance minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram to police custody till October 24, in the case filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the INX Media money laundering case.

According to a report of PTI, judge Ajay Kumar Kuhar of the CBI Court at Rouse Avenue Court Complex allowed the ED to quiz Chidambaram and also granted him permission to have home-cooked food, western toilet, medicines in the ED custody. It is to be noted that the probe agency has sought 14-day custodial interrogation of the 74-year old senior Congress leader.

Also, the Court has extended the judicial custody of Chidambaram in the case filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) till October 24. The court had on Wednesday issued production warrant against him in the INX Media money laundering case lodged by the ED.

The INX Media case pertains to the alleged irregularities in the Foreign Investment Promotion Board clearance to INX Media at the time when P Chidambaram was the Finance Minister. It is the case of the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) that P Chidambaram and his son Karti Chidambaram received illegal gratification from INX Media owners Peter and Indrani Mukherjea for the clearance.

Also Read: INX Media Case: ED Moves Delhi Court Seeking Production Warrant Of P Chidambaram



The CBI had arrested P Chidambaram on August 21 after his anticipatory bail plea in the case was rejected by the High Court. Chidambaram, who spent a fortnight in police custody after his arrest, was thereafter remanded to judicial custody. His plea for regular bail was rejected by the Special CBI Judge sitting at the Rouse Avenue Court Complex in Delhi. Later, bail was denied by the Delhi High Court as well.

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New Delhi:

The security guard of a play school was arrested for allegedly sexually harassing a two-and-a-half-year-old girl in northwest Delhis Pitampura earlier this month, police said on Wednesday.

The child had joined the play school in August, they said. According to police, the childs mother alleged that her daughter complained her on October 5 about pain in her private parts, but they did not take it seriously thinking of it as some minor injury as no injury marks were visible on the childs body.

The woman alleged that after that school was closed for four days, on October 9, when the mother was getting her daughter ready for school, she refused to go to school and started crying, a senior police official said.

Later, the child told that the guard had undressed her following which the girls parents approached the school authorities and the matter was reported to the police, the officer added. A case was registered and the security guard was booked under POCSO Act. He was later arrested, the police officer said.

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New Delhi :

Kamlesh Tiwari, leader of Hindu Samaj, was killed by unidentified assailants outside his office in Uttar Pradesh's capital Lucknow on Friday. Tiwari was reportedly stabbed as well as shot by the assailants, who even had a tea with him. He was the national president of the Hindu Samaj Party. He was also a former member of Hindu Mahasabha.

According to the police, two persons barged into his house cum office. They first slit his throat and then stabbed him several times on the chest before escaping. However, the exact motive of murder is yet to be ascertained. The police have also recovered a pistol from the spot. The police is trying to identify the suspects with the help of a CCTV footage.



Two police constables were deployed for his security but none was present when the incident took place, according to the reports. While one was allegedly not coming to duty for the last two days, another constable was asleep when the attackers slit Tiwaris throat and stabbed multiple times, leaving him critically injured. He was immediately rushed to the trauma center but succumbed to injuries during treatment. Some reports also suggest that Tiwari was shot as well.

#VIDEO | Hindu Mahasabha leader Kamlesh Tiwari shot dead, police suspect personal enemy



READ full story:https://t.co/j3DHMayMmr pic.twitter.com/lYI1cUDuiX  News Nation (@NewsNationTV) October 18, 2019

Tiwari who used to claim to be the president of Hinud Mahasabha had formed his own Hindu Samaj Party after rift with the eladerof Mahasabha's another faction Chakrapani. He had allegedly distributed pamphlets with derogatory remarks on Prophet Muhammad in Deoband, Saharanpur in 2015.
New Delhi :

The MEA has urged Pakistan not to levy a fee of USD 20 on Indian pilgrims saying that the Kartarpur project is Peer-2-Peer (P2P) initiative. Pakistan insists on levying a fee of USD 20 (approx. Rs. 1420) on all pilgrims. We've urged Pakistan not to do so in the interests of devotees, and also because this is a P2P initiative. We hope that the Agreement can be concluded & signed in time for the great event, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.

Earlier, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh slammed Pakistan for demanding USD 20 as service charge from Indian pilgrims, saying it amounted to issuing a "ticket" on visiting the historic gurdwara in Kartarpur in the neighbouring country.

Pointing out that devotees would be placing 'chadawa' (offerings) at the gurdwara of their own volition anyway, Singh said Sikhism propounds 'khulle darshan', an ideology that Pakistan seemed bent on violating.

Last month, Amarinder had equated the service charge to "jaziya" (a tax on non-Muslims).

"It is tantamount to putting a ticket on visiting the gurdwara. How will the poor pilgrims pay this amount," he asked here.

The Punjab government, said Amarinder, was working closely with the Centre to ensure that all infrastructure-related and other works for the Kartarpur Corridor are completed well in time.

He hoped that Pakistan too would meet its promised deadline to make the 550th 'Prakash Purb' truly historic for the Sikh community.

Amarinder Singh made it clear that he would not be visiting Pakistan but would merely go through the special corridor to visit Kartarpur Gurdwara Sahib.

The chief minister said Pakistan was making all-out efforts to revive terrorism in Punjab, asserting that his government was fully prepared to tackle the threat. The security forces are on alert and geared to meet any eventuality, he said.

The Kartarpur Corridor will connect Darbar Sahib in Pakistan's Kartarpur with Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Gurdaspur district in Punjab and facilitate visa-free movement of Indian pilgrims, who will have to just obtain a permit to visit the Kartarpur Sahib located in Pakistan's Narowal district across the Ravi river.

The corridor will be thrown open to pilgrims in November to mark the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. In a major initiative last November, both India and Pakistan had agreed to set up the Kartarpur Corridor.

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New Delhi:

The CBI filed chargesheet in the high-profile INX Media Case on Friday. 14 people including former Union Minister P Chidambaram, son Karti Chidambaram and Peter Mukerjea. Several other government officials have also been named in the chargesheet. The CBI also told the Supreme Court that it cannot reveal the name of witness who was being influenced by former finance minister P Chidambaram. The CBI said that the witness was not Indrani Mukherjee but someone else. The name will be submitted in the court in a sealed cover.

On Thursday, a Delhi court remanded former finance minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram to police custody till October 24, in the case filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the INX Media money laundering case. According to a report of PTI, judge Ajay Kumar Kuhar of the CBI Court at Rouse Avenue Court Complex allowed the ED to quiz Chidambaram and also granted him permission to have home-cooked food, western toilet, medicines in the ED custody. It is to be noted that the probe agency has sought 14-day custodial interrogation of the 74-year old senior Congress leader.

Also, the Court has extended the judicial custody of Chidambaram in the case filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) till October 24. The court had on Wednesday issued production warrant against him in the INX Media money laundering case lodged by the ED.

The INX Media case pertains to the alleged irregularities in the Foreign Investment Promotion Board clearance to INX Media at the time when P Chidambaram was the Finance Minister. It is the case of the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) that P Chidambaram and his son Karti Chidambaram received illegal gratification from INX Media owners Peter and Indrani Mukherjea for the clearance.

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New Delhi :

A Border Security Force (BSF) jawan was killed, while another injured on Thursday in firing apparently by the Border Guards Bangladesh (BJP) troops of Bangladesh along the international border of the two countries in West Bengal, officials said. The incident happened when the BSF party was returning after a flag meeting with BGB patrol.

Both injured BSF personnel were evacuated to the nearest medical facility. Head Constable Vijay Bhan Singh succumbed to injuries, he was declared brought dead. Injured Constable has been taken to Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital Behrampore, the BSF said in a release.

WB: Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB) troops opened fire on BSF party which was trying to trace an Indian fisherman. Head Constable Vijay Bhan Singh received bullet injuries on his head & later succumbed to his injuries. Another Constable has been taken to a hospital in Berhampore. pic.twitter.com/WKyLFxRBfv  ANI (@ANI) October 17, 2019

Head Constable Vijay Bhan Singh received a bullet wound on his head and succumbed to his injury. A constable/crew (boatman) has been taken to Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital Behrampore with a injury on his right hand, a BSF official said. Singh, who joined the BSF in 1990, is a resident of the Firozabad district of Uttar Pradesh and is survived by two sons.

According to reports, three Indian fishermen went for fishing in River Padma in the border area. One of them was apprehended by a BGB patrol party. Around 1030 hrs Post Commander along with 5 troopers in the BSF boat, approached BGB patrol in the water channel of River Padma near Boundary Pillar 75/7-S. During Flag meeting BGB patrol did not release Indian fisherman and also tried to cordon (Gherao) BSF troops, the release added.

The BSF is in touch with BGB authorities and senior officials are on the spot. The relations between the BSF and the BGB have been very cordial for decades and there has never been an incident of firing between the two forces.

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New Delhi:

Karwa Chauth will be celebrated on October 17 this year. The festival is observed during the Krishna Paksha Chaturthi in the month of Kartik. It is mainly celebrated by women from the northern part of India belonging to states like Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, New Delhi. According to Mahabharata, Karwa Chauth can be traced back to the time when Savitri begged the god of death, Lord Yama, for her husbands soul.

The moonrise timings are vital to the festival of Karwa Chauth, because people celebrating the festival, break their fast only after sighting the celestial body.

Here are the moon rise timings at different cities depending on which women will know when to seek the moon for breaking the fast.

Check out the Moonrise timings for some of the main cities in the country:

New Delhi - 08:16 PM

Noida- 08.15PM

Gurgaon: 08.17 PM

Kolkata - 07:41 PM

Jaipur - 08:25 PM

Chandigarh - 08:14 PM

Ludhiana - 08:17 PM

Lucknow - 08:04 PM

Shimla - 08:12 PM

Haridwar - 08:10 PM

Patna - 07:49 PM

Ahmedabad - 08:45 PM



Women start preparing for Karwa Chauth two or three days before the main event. They start their day by eating Sargi prepared by their in laws consisting of a platter full of fruits, sweet preparations and dry fruits to keep them through the day.

Women spend all day in fun activities, getting their palms decorated with Mehendi and spending a lot of time planning their attire for the special day.

Here's wishing everyone celebrating this festival, good health, wealth and happiness for a lifetime.

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New Delhi:

Vehicles of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Cabinet ministers will not be exempted from the odd-even scheme, which is set to return in the national capital for the third time from November 4 to 15. Addressing a press conference, the Delhi CM on Thursday said that the VVIPs, whose vehicles will be exempted from the car rationing scheme are - President, Vice President, PM, Governors, CJI, Speaker of Lok Sabha, vehicles of union Ministers, Rajya Sabha & Lok Sabha Leaders of Opposition, Vehicles of Chief Ministers of States & UTs.

"The scheme will also include vehicles coming from other states, and only be implemented on non-transport 4-wheeled vehicles, 2-wheelers will be exempted," Kejriwal said, adding that those who will violate the odd-even scheme will incur a fine of Rs 4,000.

This time, the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi has also included CNG vehicles in the scheme, taking lessons from last edition's sticker controversy. On the change in policy for CNG vehicles, the chief minister had said, "In previous editions of odd-even, CNG vehicles were exempt. But we observed that the CNG stickers used to denote vehicles were sold in the black market and misused by some people to bypass the scheme. This defeats the purpose of odd-even."

Also Read | Delhiites Continue To Breath Unhealthy Air As Major Pollutants Breach Danger Mark

However, women will once again be exempted from the odd-even road rationing scheme. Keeping in mind their safety and security, women driving alone, cars having all women as occupants and women accompanied by children aged less than 12 years will be exempted from the scheme, he said.

The odd-even is Kejriwal governments flagship scheme to combat the high-level of air pollution in Delhi. During the scheduled 12-day scheme, vehicles will ply alternately on odd and even dates as per their registration numbers. The air quality in Delhi has worsened over the last few days and is likely to deteriorate further mainly due to the stubble burning in the neighbouring states Haryana and Punjab.
By Trend

The Azerbaijani embassy in Kazakhstan addressed the Azerbaijani citizens living in Kazakhstan in connection with the events in this country, Trend reports referring to the embassy's Twitter.

"Dear citizens, the embassy renders assistance to our compatriots who cannot get in touch with relatives or family members living in the Republic of Kazakhstan due to the problems with the communication, the message said.

For this reason, we remind that you can contact the embassy at [email protected] or at +7780002838, +77172755527, the message said. We ask our citizens to take into account the fact that the internet does not work or partially works in the country, as well as there are the problems with communication several times a day.

According to the message, the embassy did not receive any information about the injury of the Azerbaijani citizens as a result of the events in Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan's government announced late Jan. 4 that it was restoring some price caps on liquefied petroleum gas, after the rare protests reached Almaty following a sharp rise in the price of the fuel at the start of the year.

Many Kazakhs have converted their cars to run on LPG, which is far cheaper than gasoline as a vehicle fuel in Kazakhstan because of price caps. But the government argued that the low price was unsustainable and lifted the caps on Jan. 1.

After the price of the fuel spiked, big demonstrations erupted on Jan. 2 in certain parts of the country. Public protests are illegal in the country unless their organizers file a notice in advance.

Following the development of the situation, the government declared a state of emergency all over the country. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the government initiated anti-terrorist operations to deal with the ongoing riots.

Also, the divisions of the united peacekeeping contingent of CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) arrived in Kazakhstan to assist in restoring order and help protect strategic objects of the country.
Washington:

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the partial trade deal agreed with China last week is now being formally put on to the paper. On Friday last week, Trump said that the US has reached a "very substantial" Phase 1 trade deal with China. Echoing his words, China on Tuesday asserted that it was on the "same page" with the US on trade as it confirmed that the two countries are likely to sign a "phase one agreement" soon to end their trade war. "It (the deal) hasn't been papered yet, but it is being papered," Trump told reporters at the White House.

The US and China trade negotiations had collapsed early this year after Beijing backed off from a draft agreement that was negotiated over six months. "We were a piggy bank that everybody else was robbing," Trump said when asked about past trade deals with China.

He said earlier China used to win all trade deals, but now it would no longer happen. "I give China a lot of credit. I give the people who were running our country no credit," the president said.

Trump said China want to make a deal as "their economy has been hurt very badly by what we've done and the tariffs". China and the US have been negotiating a trade deal for more than 10 months now. Trump wants to reach an agreement with the Chinese that reduces the massive trade imbalance between the two major trading powers, which last year climbed to over USD 539 billion.

Also Read | US Is 'Very Tough' On Turkey; Pence, Pompeo To Visit Ankara: Donald Trump

He also wants China to address the issue of theft of intellectual properties of US companies and their forced coercion inside China. The Trump administration had first imposed tariffs on Chinese imports last year in a bid to win concessions from China, which responded with tit-for-tat tariffs. The escalating dispute between the world's two largest economies has depressed stock prices and poses a threat to the global economy.

Both sides have made conciliatory gestures ahead of the next round of talks, but a deal remains elusive. The US postponed a further tariff hike on Chinese goods, and China lifted punitive duties on soybeans. The move helped both American farmers and Chinese pig breeders, who use soy as feed and are struggling with a devastating outbreak of African swine fever.

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ISLAMABAD: When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan after Western forces withdrew and Ashraf Ghani fled Kabul, Pakistan's historical relationship with the Taliban was repeatedly blamed as one of the primary driving causes for the Taliban takeover, which stunned the world.

Many people still feel that Pakistan's covert support for the Taliban prepared the way for the Taliban to assume control of Afghanistan, and that the Taliban win was a triumph for Islamabad.

However, recent incidents in which Taliban border security fighters prevented Pakistani authorities from erecting fences along the Durand line, a 2,670 km long international border between Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and China, followed by Taliban fighters uprooting the fence along the Pak-Afghan border, have changed the perspective of those who saw the Taliban's success in Afghanistan as Pakistan's benefit.

It is not unreasonable to believe that the Duran line, a rocky and unexplored border between the two countries, will become a major source of contention, maybe leading to a dramatic clash between the two countries.

Pakistan claims that border fencing is critical to the country's border security and national interest because it will assist prevent terrorists from entering the country through Afghanistan and carrying out attacks.

Nigeria: 30 native students regained freedom post 6 months in captivity

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Kochi: In the Parallel Telephone Exchange case, a main conspirator from Kerala sold call routes to Pakistani, Bangladeshi and two Chinese nationals, who operated their system illegally in India for several months. Ibrahim Pullatil, a resident of Kadampuzha, was arrested in the case registered at the Kozhikode police station. Who had admitted in front of the Crime Branch team probing the matter that he was in contact with 168 Pakistani nationals. In the investigation, information about parallel telephone exchanges was found at 7 places in Kozhikode city alone.

Explain that illegal call routing, via the Internet or a PABX with multiple lines, is avoided by licensed telecom operators in countries where calls start and end. Now the Crime Branch of Kozhikode Police has made many big revelations in its investigation. Accused Ibrahim has confessed to selling call routes to Pakistan, Bangladesh and China in front of Kerala Police. Ibrahim told the police that he had received Rs 20 lakh and Rs 15 lakh (total 35 lakh) from Pakistani Mohammad Rahim and Bangladeshi Sahir respectively from Koduvalli through hawala. The name of the Chinese woman involved in this case was named by Ibrahim as Fly and Li.

The number of Mohammad Rahim, a resident of Pakistan, is not recorded in the Gulf countries. Indian intelligence agency RAW suspects that this method may be of Pakistani intelligence agency ISI. Indian intelligence agencies are now also searching for other connections of Rahim in India. The Crime Branch has submitted this report in the Kerala High Court opposing the bail of another accused Abdul Ghafoor. Abdul Ghafoor had filed an application to end the ongoing case against him, which was rejected by the court.

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Srinagar: An encounter broke out between security forces and militants in Kulgam in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir on Monday morning. There was heavy firing from both sides. Two terrorists were gunned down by security forces. According to Kashmir police, the encounter between security forces and militants had started since morning. However, it is yet to be ascertained which organisation the terrorists belonged to.

Kashmir police have reported that a large number of arms and ammunition were recovered from the militants who were killed in an encounter with security forces. They have also found disputed material, which has been seized by the police. However, police are ascertaining which organization the slain terrorists belonged to. A day earlier also, two terrorists were reported hiding in the Hussainpora area of Kulgam. A search operation was launched in the area. Earlier, on January 5, there was an encounter between security forces and terrorists in which 3 terrorists were killed.

After the encounter, weapons and ammunition including AK Series rifles were recovered from the terrorists. Last Wednesday morning, security forces received inputs about the militants hiding in a house in the Chandgam area following which the operation was launched.

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South Korean President Moon Jae-in will go to the Middle East later this week to strengthen connections with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, and Egypt in the industries of energy, building, and infrastructure.

Moon will attend a business roundtable in the UAE on January 16 as well as an official event for "Day of Korea" at the Dubai Expo, according to the presidential office, as reported by the state media. He'll meet with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan the next day to discuss ways to strengthen bilateral ties. Following his visit to the United Arab Emirates, the President will travel to Saudi Arabia on January 18-19 to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and attend a business summit.

On the invitation of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the South Korean leader will pay a state visit to Egypt on January 20-21. Moon and Sisi are likely to explore measures to strengthen the two countries' overall cooperative partnership. Moon will speak at a business roundtable about methods to foster cooperation in environmentally friendly firms.

China's Tianjin reports 31 new local COVID-19 cases

Egyptian artist carves miniature sculptures of 100 influential world figures

Chinese Wisdom in Xi's Words: "The essence of governance"
" " In the 1700s and 1800s, many U.S. and English households consulted a copy of "Domestic Medicine" to determine how to treat ailments at home. ilbusca/Getty Images

In the days before the widespread availability of pharmaceutical drugs, people used natural remedies, creating elixirs and teas made from plants, animals and minerals. But how would you know what to take for what? It was mostly folk wisdom until the appearance of "Domestic Medicine" by William Buchan, M.D., a British physician. This book was one of the first to make medical information available to the public, both in Britain and the U.S. It was the most popular health guide before the 20th century, going through 142 printings, from 1769 to 1871. (Buchan died in 1805).

"It was almost like the Dr. Spock of its day except it was not only for children," says Dr. Nathaniel Comfort, a professor of the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

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Some of Buchan's advice sounds very modern. Here he is on breast-feeding: "The mother's milk, or that of a healthy nurse, is unquestionably the best food for an infant. Neither art nor nature can afford a proper substitute for it." He also supported inoculation against smallpox 20 years before Edward Jenner's publication introducing vaccination, and advocated good hygiene practices like handwashing.

Other advice was definitely for its times  Buchan recommended tailoring a patient's food and letting out his blood in order to balance his constitution, a process called humourism.

The book is also chock-full of recipes for simples, ingredients mixed together for various ailments. "If you count simples, an average 18th century household might out-therapy the medicine cabinet of the most illness-besotted patient today," notes historian Comfort. Oyster shells, plant roots, garlic, ginger, mercury, Epsom salts and steel filings are just a few of the simple ingredients Buchan suggested stocking medicine cabinet shelves with.

Here's some other medical advice taken from his book.

Cough and Pain Relief

"OPIATES are sometimes necessary to allay the violence of the cough. For this purpose a little of the syrup of popies, or five, six or seven drops of laudanum, according to the age of the patient, may be taken in a cup of hyssop or penny-royal tea, and repeated occasionally," wrote Buchan.

"In Buchan's day [opium was] something that any well-equipped household would have some of," Comfort says. "It was known to be a wonderful, effective pain reliever and terrific cough suppressant."

Today, however, we know opium to be wildly addictive and potentially deadly in all its forms, including poppy seeds, heroin and certain prescription drugs.

Syphilis

Mercury was used for centuries in a vain effort to cure syphilis. Although Buchan did not suggest it as a first resort, he did say that two mercury pills at night and one in the morning for several days would work, adding, "I have always found it one of the most safe and efficacious medicines when properly used."

Despite that assurance, many people died of poisoning from ingesting mercury. Those who didn't died of syphilis, which was a terrible way to go, too.

Now, thank goodness, we have a better alternative to mercury, in the form of penicillin. Instead, one injection of long-acting Benzathine penicillin G (2.4 million units administered intramuscularly) will do the trick, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Alternatives are available for those allergic to penicillin allergy.

Swallowing Poison

" " A young child with measles from the frontispiece of "Domestic Medicine" by William Buchan. Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images

In the case of mineral poisoning, such as from arsenic, Buchan wrote, "The patient should drink large quantities of new milk and sallad-oil till he vomits; or he may drink warm water mixed with oil." If that didn't work, the patient could take a small amount of ipecac. "Ipecac was standard until very recently. You were being an irresponsible parent if you didn't have ipecac in the house," says Comfort. This syrup was used for centuries to induce vomiting following ingestion of possible poisons.

In 2004, guidelines were changed to steer people away from ipecac, since research showed that the syrup didn't actually benefit people who'd been poisoned. Throwing up didn't keep people from getting sick from the poison. In fact, ipecac can cause major complications, because it can react badly with certain swallowed chemicals or medications.

The current advice is to call 911 if the person who swallowed the poison is having convulsions or trouble breathing. If the product swallowed is burning or caustic and the person is not having convulsions, he or she should take small amounts of water or milk. Otherwise, call the Poison Control Center (1-800-222-1222) for expert help.

As with anything involving your health, it's essential to stay on top of emerging research and information from reputable sources. The advice here is not a substitute for medical counseling.

Now That's  Interesting In the case of flatulence, Dr. Buchan said the best thing to do was to mix equal parts of Peruvian bark and rhubarb "in brandy or wine, and taken in such quantity as to keep the body gently open." Peruvian bark is another name for cinchona bark, from which quinine is derived. Quinine was used for centuries to treat malaria.
The active pharmaceutical ingredient market size is predicted to hit USD 355.94 billion by 2030 and poised to grow at a CAGR of 7.1% during the forecast period 2021 to 2030.

Ottawa, Jan. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to Precedence Research, the global active pharmaceutical ingredient market size was valued at USD 191.19 billion in 2021. The active pharmaceutical ingredients market growth is driven by an increase in the number of chronic diseases, an increase in the number of geriatric populations around the world. The increased utilization of biopharmaceuticals and rising investments in research and development for drug manufacturing are all contributing to the growth of the global active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) market.



Get the sample copy of report@ https://www.precedenceresearch.com/sample/1035

The high production costs and different drug control policies between countries, on the other hand, are projected to hinder the growth of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) market. The expansion of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) market is likely to be aided by an increase in the manufacture of biosimilars, which are generic versions of proprietary medications. The growing importance of generics in the global active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) market is expected to boost the markets expansion during the forecast period.

Regional Snapshot

Asia-Pacific is the largest segment for active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) market in terms of region.The presence of developing countries such as India and China, which the world relies on for low-cost active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) production, is a benefit for the region. The active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) market is expected to develop due to rising healthcare expenditure in the region.

Report Scope of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Market

Report Coverage Details Market Size in 2021 USD 191.19 Billion Growth Rate From 2021 to 2030 CAGR of 7.1% Fastest Growing Market Asia Pacific Largest Market North America Base Year 2021 Forecast Period 2021 to 2030 Companies Covered Albemarle Corporation, AbbVieInc, AurobindoPharma, Reddys Laboratories Ltd., Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, Merck & Co., Inc, Mylan N.V., CiplaInc, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company

North America region is the fastest growing region in the active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) market. This is can be attributed to the rising prevalence and incidence of cancer and other lifestyle related diseases, which encourages research and development and thus boosts the active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) market growth.

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Market Dynamics

Drivers

Surge in the use of biosimilar products

The rising frequency of various disorders, the increased demand for biosimilars in diverse therapeutic applications, and the favorable results in ongoing biosimilar clinical trials are all important factors driving the growth of the biosimilars market. Biosimilars are generic versions of copyrighted biologic medications that do not meet the same severe regulatory criteria as branded biologic medicines. Thus, the patents and other intellectual property rights for originator biologics are likely to expire, allowing biosimilars to join the market. As a result, the surge in the use of biosimilar products is propelling the growth of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) market during the forecast period.

Restraints

Stringent government regulations

The growth of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) market players is projected to be limited by strict supervisory techniques and aggressive medication price control strategies implemented in some nations. The active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) markets growth is expected to be slowed by a shift to digital production and patents for popular pharmaceuticals. Thus, the stringent government regulatory framework is restricting the growth of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) market during the forecast period.

Opportunities

Rising prevalence of chronic disorders

The chronic diseases such as asthma, diabetes, coronary artery diseases, cancer, arthritis, and hepatitis have increased dramatically in key locations around the world over the previous few decades. This is due to an increase in the global elderly population, changing lifestyles, and nutritional changes as a result of rapid urbanization. As a result, the rising prevalence of chronic disorders is creating new growth opportunities for the growth of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) market during the forecast period.

Related Reports

Challenges

High manufacturing costs

One of the major challenges that active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) market players face is the high cost of manufacturing active pharmaceutical ingredients (API). To ensure compliance with government standards, manufacturers frequently have to make costly investments in their manufacturing units. This includes processes such as renovation of production facilities, compiling a portfolio of product safety and efficacy testing, and familiarizing employees with qualification standards. Furthermore, the costs of acquiring regulatory clearances are more expensive for small businesses. Thus, the high manufacturing costs is a major challenge for the growth of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) market during the forecast period.

Report Highlights

In 2020, the captive active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) category accounted for the highest market share. The quick and easy availability of raw materials and large investments by key market players to construct high end manufacturing facilities are expected to propel it forward to a rapid pace in the future years.





In 2020, innovative active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) had the biggest market share. The increased research and development initiatives for novel drug development, as well as favorable government laws, are credited with this surge.





In 2020, the synthetic active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) category had the revenue share. This is due to the increased availability of raw materials and the ease with which these molecules may be synthesized.





Market Segmentation

By Type of Manufacturer

Merchant APIs

Captive APIs

By Type

Generic APIs

Innovative APIs

By Type of Synthesis

Biotech Recombinant Proteins Monoclonal Antibodies Vaccines

Synthetic





By Application

Orthopedic

Pulmonology

Gastroenterology

Endocrinology

Cardiology

Oncology

CNS & Neurology

Nephrology

Ophthalmology

Others

By Regional Outlook

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Middle East & Africa

Latin America





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Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that pulling U.S. troops out of Eastern Europe and committing not to expand NATO to include Ukraine are off the table ahead of planned talks this week with Russia over Moscow's military buildup along Ukraines border.

But Blinken, speaking to host Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union," would not rule out smaller steps such as moving U.S. weaponry in Poland further west, moving missiles and limiting the scope of U.S. military exercises.

"I don't think we'll see any breakthrough in the coming week," Blinken said.

He said the path forward on Russia's military buildup  the country currently has roughly 100,000 troops stationed near the border with Ukraine, raising alarm among U.S. and its allies who fear an invasion similar to that of 2014  is entirely up to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Look, I can't tell you whether [an invasion is] likely or not," Blinken said. "I can tell you this: We're committed to dialogue and diplomacy to see if we can resolve these challenges peacefully. That is by far the preferable course, it's by far the most responsible course. But equally, we're prepared to deal very resolutely with Russia if it chooses confrontation."

Blinken stressed that progress must be reciprocal, with both sides taking steps to address the others concerns, but added it's hard to see making progress "with a gun to Ukraine's head." He said any actions taken would be in coordination with NATO allies, though President Joe Biden previously ruled out at that time unilaterally sending American troops to the region in conflict.

He also said potential consequences for a Russian invasion would include "things that we've not done in the past" to counter previous aggression from Moscow, like economic and financial measures.

"I'm not going to telegraph the details, but I think Russia has a pretty good idea of the kinds of things it would face if it renews its aggression," he said.

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The secretary of State suggested that Putin's own actions had created the crisis he claims to be confronting. For instance, Blinken said, in 2014 about 25 percent of Ukrainians supported the country joining NATO. Since Russias 2014 annexation of Crimea, that number has jumped dramatically. Also, after 2014, NATO felt compelled to put more equipment and forces closer to Russia.

Speaking on ABCs This Week, Blinken said this crisis wasnt just about Ukraine, which had been part of the Soviet Union until it was dissolved in 1991.

This is bigger even than Ukraine, he said. This goes to some basic principles of international relations that are what guarantee peace and security. The principle that one nation cant simply change the borders of another by force. The principle that one nation cant dictate to another its choices and with whom it will associate. The principle that we cant have countries exerting spheres of influence to subjugate their neighbors. That should be a relic of the past.


ZURICH, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Chubb Limited (NYSE: CB) today announced that Julie Dillman has been appointed Executive Vice President, Chubb Group and Digital Transformation Officer. Currently, Senior Vice President, Chubb Group and Global Head of Operations and Technology, Ms. Dillman in her new role will partner and work closely with Chubb's Chief Digital Business Officer, Sean Ringsted, and the company's senior business executives to lead the company's transformation, including how work gets done and the skills and technology employed to serve customers and distribution partners. Ms. Dillman will continue to have executive oversight for the company's global operations and technology.

Julie Dillman

Thomas Kropp, who currently serves as Deputy Global Operations and Technology Officer, has been named Senior Vice President, Chubb Group and Global Head of Operations and Technology, and will report to Ms. Dillman. In this capacity, Mr. Kropp will have global responsibility for technology, service operations, business resiliency, procurement, real estate and general business efficiencies. Ms. Dillman will retain direct responsibility for certain operational areas including workplace experience and flight operations.

The appointments were effective January 1, 2022. Ms. Dillman will continue to report to Evan G. Greenberg, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and John Keogh, President and Chief Operating Officer.

"Chubb is transforming itself to a company built to thrive in the digital age. With her proven experience, character and leadership, Julie is the right executive to lead these core foundational aspects of our transformation," said Mr. Greenberg. "For a number of years, Julie has led our significant investments in technology and talent, building new tools, developing new skillsets and ways of doing business. We are changing how insurance operates enterprisewide. I have every confidence in Julie's ability to accelerate our progress and help us achieve this important strategic objective."

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"Thomas is an accomplished technology and operations executive," said Ms. Dillman. "We are delighted to appoint him to this global senior leadership role. His deep engineering background, international experience and demonstrated leadership across all facets of technology strategy and execution make him the ideal candidate to lead our global operations and technology organization."

Ms. Dillman joined Chubb in 2016 from Travelers Insurance, where, as Executive Vice President, Operations, eBusiness and Analytics, and a member of the company's management committee, she led operations and corporatewide digital and analytics delivery. Ms. Dillman began her career as a personal insurance underwriter and held positions of increasing responsibility including product development leadership and integration leadership roles through multiple platforms. She was appointed Senior Vice President, Chubb Group in 2016. Ms. Dillman received a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin  Eau Claire.

Mr. Kropp joined Chubb in 2020 from Zurich Insurance, where he served as Group IT Services Officer. In that role, he drove the company's simplification and digitization strategies. Before Zurich, Mr. Kropp held senior technology positions at Allianz, and at Lufthansa Systems, where he led global digital workplace services, the enterprise data center and introduced a new passenger services system. He received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University in Mannheim, Germany.

About Chubb

Chubb is the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company. 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: www.chubb.com

Thomas Kropp

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SOURCE Chubb Limited
GUELPH, ON, Jan. 10, 2022 /CNW/ - Canadians interested in learning more about how their food is produced have more opportunities available to them now at www.FarmFood360.ca. Four new Virtual Reality Tours, filmed throughout 2021 on mushroom, veal and grain farms  and research facilities operated by the University of Guelph  have been added to the popular website, joining the 18 farm and food processing tours already filmed and available for viewing.

Farm & Food Care Ontario (CNW Group/Farm & Food Care Ontario)

The tours were developed by Farm & Food Care Ontario (FFCO) in partnership with Good in Every Grain, Mushrooms Canada, Ontario Genomics and Veal Farmers of Ontario.

Using 360 cameras and virtual reality technology, the award-winning FarmFood360 website gives Canadians the chance to tour real, working farms and food processing plants, all without putting on boots or biosecurity clothing.

The mushroom farm tour visits a family-owned facility growing four million pounds of mushrooms each year. Farm owner Murray Good partnered with FFCO and Mushrooms Canada for the project. Said Good, "For many people, mushrooms are rather mysterious. I've always enjoyed hosting tours, as people are incredibly fascinated to learn about how fresh local mushrooms are grown. Growing mushrooms is one part science and one part art! As with many other farms during this time, we haven't been able to offer in-person tours, which is why I was thrilled by the idea of hosting a virtual farm tour."

The second tour takes people through the barns of an Ontario veal farm. In the tour, the farm family shows how their veal cattle are fed and cared for. Jennifer Haley, Executive Director of Veal Farmers of Ontario, said, "Veal farming has a long history and plays an important and fundamental role in Canada's agricultural sector; however, the industry can be the subject of misconceptions and questions by our consumers." She added, "We're delighted to partner with FFCO to open the doors to an Ontario veal farm and answer those questions directly. Our farmers are proud of their farms and animal care standards and we're eager to show that."

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A grain farm tour filmed in southwestern Ontario follows soybeans from planting through to harvest. "Grain farming in Ontario is challenging and rewarding. We are excited to work with FFCO to bring this project to fruition. Engaging video like this will help everyone feel like they are getting their boots on the ground and to see what happens in the fields of a soybean farm during spring planting, spraying and harvest; as well as all of the work that goes into making important crop care decisions," said Victoria Berry, manager, communications at Grain Farmers of Ontario.

In an interesting shift from the more traditional farm and food processing tours on the site, Ontario Genomics partnered on a tour that highlights the exciting and emerging field of genomic research in agriculture. Through a tour of a world class dairy research facility and interviews with research scientists at both Trent University and the University of Guelph, the project highlights research being done to increase food production, reduce stress on livestock thus improving animal welfare and improve the heartiness of crops like hazelnuts so that they can be grown in a cold Canadian climate.

Dr. Christine Baes, a dairy cow researcher at the University of Guelph who participated in the project said, "Genomics, which is the study of DNA, plays a key role in scientific discovery and technology innovation. As we've seen throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, it can also help address some of our most pressing challenges. In this video series we explore how genomics is being used to ensure Ontario and Canada have a secure food system for generations to come, while protecting our environment and constantly improving animal welfare."

The project was also funded, in part, through the AgriCompetitiveness program of the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, a federal, provincial, territorial initiative.

In 2021, the website received one million visitors. A new educator resource is in development by Agriculture in the Classroom Canada and will be live in February, 2022, providing curriculum-based classroom activities for each tour.

Farm & Food Care Ontario is a coalition of farmers, agriculture and food partners proactively working together to earn public trust and confidence in food and farming. Find out more at www.FarmFood360.ca or www.FarmFoodCareON.org.

Good in Every Grain is Grain Farmers of Ontario's public outreach campaign devoted to gaining awareness for Ontario grains. The goal of the campaign is to gain exposure for Ontario farmers, the grains they grow, and the role that grains play in the everyday lives of Ontarians. Good in Every Grain was developed to tell the story of Ontario's grain farmers to consumers across the province. Visit www.goodineverygrain.ca

Mushrooms Canada is a voluntary, non-profit organization whose members are dedicated to the production and marketing of fresh mushrooms in Canada. Canadian mushrooms are available 24/7/365 fresh from Canadian farms. Visit www.mushrooms.ca

Ontario Genomics is a not-for-profit organization funded by the Ontario government and Genome Canada. Established in 2000, Ontario Genomics is the only entity focused solely on stimulating, enabling and nurturing genomics innovation in the province of Ontario. Visit www.OntarioGenomics.ca

Veal Farmers of Ontario is a farmer-run organization that represents the interests of Ontario's veal farmers, providing leadership to promote industry growth and viability through collaboration, innovation, marketing, and education. Visit www.vealfarmers.ca

SOURCE Farm & Food Care Ontario

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Strategic Investment in Broad Arrow Group Accelerates Marketplace Strategy

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/  Earlier today, Hagerty, Inc., (NYSE: HGTY) an automotive lifestyle brand and a leading specialty insurance provider focused on global automotive enthusiasts, further expanded its growth strategy with the formation of a new Marketplace leadership team. Created to both expand and centralize Hagerty's portfolio of automotive-focused offerings, including Hagerty Valuation Tools and DriveShare, the Marketplace team will serve car enthusiasts by offering new services for buying and selling collector cars. New product launches are expected later this year.

Courtesy of Hagerty Media

The announcement closely follows Hagerty's debut as a publicly traded company and illustrates the brand's purpose to save driving and car culture by providing services that reach approximately 69 million U.S. car enthusiasts.[1] Hagerty Automotive Intelligence data approximates there are 43 million insurable collectible vehicles in the U.S.[2] Further, the live and online collector car auction industry sold more than $2.2 billion in 2021[3]  to say nothing of the private Vparty market which represents an estimated market opportunity in excess of $20 billion a year.[4]

"Our recent IPO has allowed for an accelerated investment in ongoing projects related to our technological infrastructure as well as our member services," said McKeel Hagerty, CEO of Hagerty. "Providing high-trust platforms to buy and sell collectible cars benefits our members and further enhances Hagerty's marketplace. It's these on-ramps to enthusiasm that will help our ecosystem thrive."

Concurrent with the launch of its Marketplace business, Hagerty has made a strategic investment and entered into a joint venture with Broad Arrow Group, Inc., the recently formed team of experts in the transactional segments of the collector car market. Central to the joint venture is Hagerty's employment of four key Broad Arrow Group founders: Kenneth Ahn, Alain Squindo, Ian Kelleher and Mike Mortorano. In addition to his role as the CEO of Broad Arrow Group, Kenneth Ahn joins Hagerty as the President of Marketplace.

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"With its longstanding history, stellar reputation and a vision to continue to expand Hagerty Drivers Club membership and its offerings in the collector car industry, partnering with Hagerty represents an incredibly unique opportunity for Broad Arrow Group," said Kenneth Ahn, CEO of Broad Arrow Group and Hagerty's President of Marketplace. "Working together we can leverage resources, experience and passion to establish Marketplace as a leader in the collector car space."

"Our goal is to continue to build a team made up of the collector car industry's finest and by adding Ken, Alain, Ian and Mike, we've done just that," said Hagerty. "We are always looking for ways to innovate and more broadly serve our members. The experience and vision that these four leaders bring to the table is invaluable as we explore new opportunities for Marketplace."

[1] [2] Hagerty Automotive Intelligence, Investor Relations Capital Markets Showcase, link

[3] [4] https://www.hagerty.com/media/market-trends/hagerty-insider/year-in-review-the-collector-car-market-got-larger-and-younger-in-2021/

About Hagerty, Inc. (NYSE: HGTY)

Based in Traverse City, Michigan, Hagerty's purpose is to save driving and preserve car culture for future generations and its mission is to build a global business to fund that purpose. Hagerty is an automotive enthusiast brand offering integrated membership products and programs as well as a specialty insurance provider focused on the global automotive enthusiast market. Hagerty is home to Hagerty Drivers Club, Hagerty DriveShare, Hagerty Valuation Tools, Hagerty Media, Hagerty Drivers Club magazine, MotorsportReg, Hagerty Garage + Social, the Amelia Concours d'Elegance, the Concours d'Elegance of America, the Greenwich Concours d'Elegance, the California Mille, Motorworks Revival and more. For more information on Hagerty, please visit www.hagerty.com, or connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

More information can be found at newsroom.hagerty.com.

About Broad Arrow Group, Inc.

Broad Arrow Group represents the collective vision of its founders, team members, and partners  to be the best advisor, marketplace, and financier for car collectors, with integrity, trust, and innovation. Broad Arrow Group is a holding company, founded in 2021 and headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to develop and operate a portfolio of businesses and brands that address the needs of various segments of the collector car market and to transform the collector car industry. For more information on Board Arrow Group, please visit broadarrowgroup.com.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements reflect Hagerty's current intentions, expectations, or beliefs regarding its business. These statements may be preceded by, followed by or include the words "aim," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intend," "likely," "outlook," "plan," "potential," "project," "projection," "seek," "can," "could," "may," "should," "would," "will," the negatives thereof and other words and terms of similar meaning. Forward-looking statements include all statements that are not historical facts. Such forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, there are or will be important factors that could cause actual outcomes or results to differ materially from those indicated in these statements. Factors that may cause our actual decisions or results to differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements include: (i) Hagerty's ability to recognize the anticipated benefits of the joint venture, which may be affected by, among other things, competition and the ability of Hagerty to grow and management growth profitability following the joint venture; (ii) the future financial performance of Hagerty following the joint venture; (iii) new entrants into the market or current competitors of Hagerty developing preferred offerings; (iv) the loss of one or more of Hagerty's distribution partners; (v) Hagerty's inability to prevent, monitor, or detect fraudulent activity, including transactions with insurance policies or payments of claims; (vi) Hagerty's ability to attract and retain members; (vii) Hagerty's ability to prevent cyberattacks or breaches of data security; (viii) regulatory changes affecting Hagerty; (ix) unexpected increases in the frequency or severity of insurance claims against Hagerty; and other risks and uncertainties listed in Hagerty's Form S-1 filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on December 21, 2021. There is no assurance that any forward-looking statements will materialize. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which reflect expectations only as of this date. Hagerty does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or review any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments, or otherwise, except as required by law.

Any forward-looking statement speaks only at the date on which it is made, and Hagerty does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date they were made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.

Category: Partnerships

For usage guidelines, please refer to the Logo section of our Brand Guide. (PRNewsfoto/Hagerty)

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SOURCE Hagerty
CHICAGO, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Maleic Anhydride Market by Raw Material (n-butane and Benzene), Application (Unsaturated Polyester Resin (UPR), 1,4-butanediol (1,4-BDO), Lubricating Oil Additives, and Copolymers)), and Region - Global Forecast to 2026", published by MarketsandMarkets, the Maleic Anhydride Market is projected to reach USD 3.4 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 4.2% from USD 2.8 billion in 2021. Maleic anhydride is an organic compound produced by the vapor-phase oxidation of n-butane or benzene. It is a colorless solid with an acrid odor. Maleic anhydride acts as a chemical intermediate. It is used to manufacture various end-use products, such as Unsaturated Polyester Resins (UPR), 1,4-BDO, lubricating oil additives, and copolymers. Maleic anhydride can be derived from the raw materials such as n-butane and benzene. UPR is the largest application segment of the maleic anhydride market. Asia Pacific was the largest market for maleic anhydride in 2020, in terms of value. The growth of the market in Asia Pacific is primarily propelled by the growing building & construction and automotive industries. The growth of end-use industries, rapid industrialization, availability of feedstock, and improved living standards of people in Asia Pacific are among the factors driving the maleic anhydride market.



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n-butane is estimated to be the fastest-growing raw material in the maleic anhydride market for the forecast period.

The n-butane-based maleic anhydride accounted for the larger share, in terms of both volume and value, in 2020. This dominance is expected to continue during the forecast period, owing to its high demand from the growing building & construction and automotive industries. The n-butane segment is projected to witness higher growth, in terms of both volume and value, during the forecast period, owing to stringent policies and regulations on the use of benzene for maleic anhydride production.

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The use of benzene to produce maleic anhydride has decreased considerably due to US EPA - 54 FR 38044 standards, which include national emission standards for hazardous air pollutants, benzene emissions from maleic anhydride plants, and other reasons, such as high production cost, complex operation, and costly process control, due to which, the n-butane-based maleic anhydride is being used by industries on a large scale

1,4-BDO was the second major application for the maleic anhydride market in 2020 in the world.

The maleic anhydride market size for 1,4-BDO accounted for the second-largest share of global maleic anhydride after UPR, in terms of value, in 2020 this was led by the demand from various industries.

1,4-BDO is a colorless, viscous liquid derived from butane by the placement of alcohol groups at each end of its molecular chain; it is one of the four stable isomers of butanediol. 1,4-BDO is used in the production of spandex fibers, urethane elastomers, and copolyester ethers. It is used for the synthesis of gamma-butyrolactone (GBL). In the presence of phosphoric acid and high temperature, it dehydrates to the solvent tetrahydrofuran (THF). GBL is used in various industries, such as electronics, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and high-performance polymers.

THF, Polybutylene Terephthalate (PBT), GBL, and PU are the major products of 1,4-BDO. It can be used as a plasticizer, an adhesive (in leather, polyurethane footwear, and plastics), a carrier solvent in printing inks, and as a cleaning agent. The increase in population is expected to drive the consumption of 1,4-BDO in the textile industry, which, in turn, will increase the consumption of maleic anhydride in this segment.



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Asia Pacific is estimated to be the largest region in maleic anhydride market in 2020.

Asia Pacific is projected to be the largest maleic anhydride market, in terms of value, in 2020 due to the rise in the automotive production. The maleic anhydride market in the Asia Pacific is also projected to grow at the highest CAGR, in terms of value, during the forecast period. This dominance is attributed to the growing domestic industries, increasing demand from end-use industries, and growing use of maleic anhydride in different applications, such as agricultural chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The demand for maleic anhydride is growing and is expected to register higher growth in Asia Pacific and the Middle East & Africa than in the other regions.

The key market players profiled in the report include Huntsman Corporation (US), Changzhou Yabang Chemical Co., Ltd. (China), Shanxi Qiaoyou Chemical Co., Ltd. (China), Polynt-Reichhold Group (Italy), Zibo Qixiang Tengda Chemical Co., Ltd. (China), Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (Japan), Nippon Shokubai Co., Ltd.(Japan), LANXESS AG( Germany), Gulf Advanced Chemical Industries Co., Ltd. (Saudi Arabia), Ningbo Jiangning Chemical Co., Ltd. (China), China Bluestar Harbin Petrochemical Co, Ltd.(China), Nan Ya Plastics (Taiwan), Shijiazhuang Bailong chemical Co., Ltd.( China), Yongsan Chemical Co., Ltd.( South Korea), IG Petrochemicals Ltd.( India), MOL Plc( Hungary), PT Justus Sakti Raya (Indonesia ), Global Ispat Koksna Industrija d.o.o. Lukavac (Bosnia & Herzegovina), Tianjin Bohai Chemical industry group Co., Ltd.( China), Cepsa (Spain), Ruse Chemicals (Bulgaria), Yunnan Yunwei Company Limited (China), Shanxi Taiming Chemical Industry Co., Ltd.( China), Huanghua Hongcheng Business Corp., Ltd. (China), and Aekyung Petrochemical Co., Ltd. (South Korea).

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NEW YORK, January 10, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MetLife, Inc. (NYSE: MET) today announced that its board of directors has declared a first quarter 2022 common stock dividend of $0.48 per share. The dividend will be payable on March 14, 2022, to shareholders of record as of Feb. 8, 2022.

About MetLife

MetLife, Inc. (NYSE: MET), through its subsidiaries and affiliates ("MetLife"), is one of the worlds leading financial services companies, providing insurance, annuities, employee benefits and asset management to help individual and institutional customers build a more confident future. Founded in 1868, MetLife has operations in more than 40 markets globally and holds leading positions in the United States, Japan, Latin America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. For more information, visit www.metlife.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

The forward-looking statements in this news release, using words such as "will," are based on assumptions and expectations that involve risks and uncertainties, including the "Risk Factors" MetLife, Inc. describes in its U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings. MetLifes future results could differ, and it has no obligation to correct or update any of these statements.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220110005278/en/

Contacts

For Media:

Meredith Hyland

212-578-9415

Meredith.Hyland@metlife.com

For Investors:

John Hall

212-578-7888

John.A.Hall@metlife.com
- RVR Adding Three New States Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut

- RVR Expands to 93 RV Stores in 29 States

- Strong Platform for Growth in Northeast U.S. When Combined with RVR Existing Stores

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- RV Retailer, LLC ("RVR") today announced it is entering the New England market with the acquisition of Country Camper. Country Camper has stores in Vermont and New Hampshire and a new store under construction in Connecticut that is expected to open in the second quarter 2022. The acquisition is expected to be completed in February.

Center of image: Jon Ferrando, President and CEO of RV Retailer (left of) Layne Gregoire Founder Country Camper, Cindy Gregoire Founder Country, Taylore Elliott CHRO, Kurt Hornung VP of F&I, and Chris Glenn VP of Service and Parts Operations (right of) Don Strollo East Region President, Lane Gregoire General Manager, and Raul Rodriguez SVP of Corporate Development

Jon Ferrando, Chief Executive Officer and President of RVR stated, "The acquisition of Country Camper kicks off 2022 where we left off in 2021 with strong growth and momentum. We are excited to enter New England and serve customers in that region, it has attractive RV demographics. This gives us a strong platform for growth in the Northeast United States when combined with our existing stores where we already rank as the #1 dealer in New York."

"Country Camper has been operating in the New England market since 1996," said Raul Rodriguez, SVP Corporate Development for RVR. "We thank Layne, Cindy and Logan Gregoire for selecting us to acquire Country Camper. The stores will be re-branded under the RV One Superstores name and will be part of RVR's East Region under the direction of Don Strollo, East Region President."

"We had choices and there was no better partner to select to acquire Country Camper than RV Retailer," said Layne Gregoire. "They are true professionals and will provide exceptional growth opportunities for our associates and take our business to another level in the New England market."

"Country Camper RV primarily sells towable RVs with strong brands like Grand Design, Keystone, and Forest River Rockwood," said Don Strollo. "We will be adding key brands which is part of our strategy to drive growth. We are excited for the new store to open in Connecticut this spring along with driving substantial growth in the stores in Vermont and New Hampshire. I look forward to working with Logan Gregoire who will serve as the market leader for us in New England. We welcome all the team members of Country Camper to the RV Retailer family."

Story continues

Country Camper is in Epsom, New Hampshire on the north side of US Highway 202/Franklin Pierce Highway just east of I-93 outside of Concord. The East Montpelier, VT store is located east of US Route 2 and east of Burlington. The Newtown, Connecticut location opens in Q2 of 2002 east of Danbury and centrally located in relation to Boston, MA and New York City, NY.

To learn more about Country Camper RV and RV Retailer, please visit: https://www.countrycamper.com/ or https://rvretailer.net/

About RV Retailer, LLC



RV Retailer, LLC is a leading recreational vehicle retail company in the United States with a focus on providing an outstanding experience for recreational vehicle customers in new and used sales, service and parts, and customer financial services. RV Retailer has 93 RV stores in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming. Regional store brands include: RV One Superstores, Motor Home Specialist, ExploreUSA, Sonny's Camp-N-Travel, Cousins RV, Camper Clinic, Lifestyle RVs, Family RV Group, Northgate RV, Tom's Camperland and Blue Dog RV, which sell a wide range of new and used RV brands with thousands of RVs in inventory.

RV Retailer is led by co-founders Jon Ferrando, Chief Executive Officer and President, and John Rizzo, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Jon Ferrando and John Rizzo were instrumental in building America's largest automotive retailer from start-up to over $20 billion in revenue. RV Retailer's leadership team has over 250 years of automotive and RV retail industry experience.

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SOURCE RV Retailer, LLC
A Squid Game favorite just made history.

On Sunday, Yeong-su won a Golden Globe for his role in the hit Netflix series, making him the first Korean actor to ever win a Golden Globe since the awards show began in 1944  the same year the actor was born.

The 77-year-old actor who played 001 (name Oh Il-nam) was awarded best performance by a supporting actor in a series, limited series or television movie at the Golden Globes Sunday night. He beat out a list of other impressive supporting actors, including: Billy Crudup and Mark Duplass (The Morning Show), Kieran Culkin (Succession) and Brett Goldstein (Ted Lasso.)

RELATED: Squid Game Creator Says He's 'in Talks with Netflix Over Season 2 as Well as Season 3'

Yeong-su's character  an elderly man with a comedic spirit  quickly became a fan favorite in the series, which follows 456 contestants as they compete in a series of violent adaptations of children's games to potentially absolve their debt.

Not only is the award Yeong-su's first major award (and South Korea's first Golden Globe) but it's his first nomination. "While O Yeong-su is a respected stage actor in his native South Korea, his Globe nod is his first ever nomination in a major awards show," the Golden Globes website says.

O Yeong-su in Squid Game

Netflix

Yeong-su was not there to accept the award, as the 2022 Golden Globes ceremony was very different from years past. The event didn't air on television as usual due to a call for more diversity within the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. In 2021, the Time's Up movement pointed out the HFPA had no Black voting members on its board. Due to this, NBC decided not to air the program until internal changes brought more diversity to the program.

Still, the 2022 awards went on, just without a television appearance and without celebrities present.

RELATED: Squid Game's Hoyeon Jung Opens Up About Experiencing 'Chaotic' Overnight Fame: 'I Couldn't Eat'

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Yeong-su isn't the only thing about the series that's made history. Squid Game became the most-streamed series on Netflix ever with 111 million views shortly after airing. It surpassed Bridgerton as the most-watched Netflix series in 2021.

With so much success, season 2 of Squid Game is expected, though there's no official word on what Netflix will do next. The show's creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, revealed he's currently talking about both season 2 and 3 of Squid Game with Netflix. "I'm in talks with Netflix over season 2 as well as season 3," the 50-year-old said in conversation with Korea Times. "We will come to a conclusion any time soon."

Netflix confirmed this in a statement to TV Line. "It's true that we are discussing a wide variety of possibilities for Squid Game, including the production of a Season 3, but nothing has yet been set in stone."
As Biden wraps up his first year in the White House, he has held fewer news conferences than any of his five immediate predecessors at the same point in their presidencies.
As utility crews worked to restore electricity to the last remaining pockets left without power after last weeks massive snowstorm, forecasters are warning Fredericksburg-area residents to keep their snow shovels handy.

The weather is expected to be cold and clear for the next several days. But forecasters say another system well to the west of Virginia is moving east and if it meets the southerly jet stream just right several days from now, more snow could be possible in the Fredericksburg region.

The pattern is there that we could see another winter weather system impact the area sometime late this weekend, said Michael Souza, a meteorologist at the National Weather Services Sterling office. The potential is there. It doesnt mean its going to happen; it just means that it could.

Last weeks 3-inch-per-hour snowstorm knocked out electrical power for thousands of residential customers in the region for multiple days. A week later, Rappahannock Electric Cooperative said about 2,600 homes in its coverage areamostly in Spotsylvania and Louisa countiesstill remained without power.

Casey Hollins, managing director of communications and public relations for REC, said about 1,200 workers from the co-op and 13 other states are still concentrated near Lake Anna clearing trees and using heavy equipment to replace downed or damaged utility poles and other hardware lost during the storm. Hollins said many remote areas are difficult to reach, even with off-road utility vehicles.

There are going to be outages that continue over the next few days, Hollins said Monday. There are several areas in our service territory where we still have power outages that have incredibly significant damage.

Elias Hall of Fredericks Hall in Louisa County finally had power restored to his home Monday afternoon, but he is worried his 47-year-old neighbor who suffers from leukemia still remains in the dark. Halls wife called the situation heart wrenching.

Hall offered a suggestion to the power company for handling lengthy outages in the future.

Reevaluate the way you do emergency outages, Hall said. Do an after-action report and find out what went wrong and why it went wrong and fix it.

Dominion Energy and the Northern Neck Electric Cooperative reported that they had restored power to all customers in the Fredericksburg region impacted by the Jan. 3 storm, which dumped up to a foot of snow in the area. At the peak, nearly 70,000 of Dominions 116,00 customers in the region were without power, Dominion spokesman Craig Carper said Monday.

In addition to the many electrical outages experienced by residents throughout the area, travelers were also faced with dangerous roadways that were not only covered with snow and ice, but littered with fallen trees and dangerous electrical power lines.

An expectant Stafford County mother and her husband who couldnt get out of their home off Tacketts Mill Road last week called first responders for assistance after the mothers water broke.

Stafford County firefighters Joseph Kenny and Andy Smith walked the mother for 40 minutes through thick snow, patiently pausing during contractions, until they made it safely to a waiting ambulance. The next morning, the mother gave birth to a baby girl named Josephine.

Most of the calls required us to get out and hoof it for awhile, Kenny said. With all the trees that fell, the vast majority of calls the crews had to get out on foot anyway to make it to patients, whether they were pulling someone out from a tree that fell or delivering oxygen to some of our senior citizens.

The outcome was tragically different in Louisa County, where 34-year-old Jacob Whaley was found dead several days after attempting to walk six miles to his home after crashing his car during Mondays blizzard. A search team of citizens and deputies found Whaleys body on Thursday.

Sheriffs officials in Orange County reported a couple and their family pet were found dead at their home in the 33000 block of Colonial Lane in Locust Grove. A generator that was not running was found in a garage under the living area. Authorities say no foul play is suspected in that incident which still remains under investigation.

James Scott Baron: 540/374-5438 jbaron@freelancestar.com

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Fredericksburg residents will have an opportunity to weigh in on a proposed interim agreement for the construction of a new middle school Thursday, Jan. 13, at James Monroe High School.

The public hearing will be held during a special joint meeting between the Fredericksburg City Council and the School Board. Both bodies have to approve the agreement, which may be approved at the conclusion of the meeting.

The cost to enter into the interim agreement with FirstChoicea public-private partnership between Moseley Architects and English Construction Co.is $1.3 million.

A copy of the agreement is available on fredericksburgva.gov/1098-Public-Notices.

The new middle school would be located at the intersection of Gateway and Idlewild boulevards and could cost as much as $65 million.

City officials are planning to use the design/build procurement process of the Public-Private Educational Facilities and Infrastructure Act, which it also used for the construction of Lafayette Upper Elementary and James Monroe in 2004, among other major projects.

A memo from city staff contends that the benefits of the PPEA include greater coordination and cost savings, as well as a limit on administrative effort spent for the procurement process. The contractor will also have input from the beginning, which could lower costs.

The memo states that the PPEAs design-build project delivery system establishes single-point responsibility and eliminates much of the risk of contractor claims for differing site conditions and defective specifications.

The school system is the responsible public entity in the agreement. The design-builder is FirstChoice and the appropriating body is City Council.

The PPEA will allow the school system and FirstChoice to enter into the interim agreement to provide for the phasing of the project. The proposal is to use the agreement for 35 percent of the design phase, which could be extended to as much as 65 percent. The agreement also provides a means to advance the design of the project with public input.

The memo states the interim agreement would allow the school system and City Council to have a more defined project to include the design, functionality, expandability and cost to help officials make a more informed decision before entering into a comprehensive agreement.

The goals of the interim agreement are to test and validate the citys vision for the school, provide an opportunity for public input and to facilitate cooperation between the City Council and the School Board.

While the School Board has consistently pushed for the new middle school, some City Council members have been less enthusiastic. Theyve questioned the increased costs of going from a proposed elementary school to a middle school.

Other goals of the interim agreement are to develop a clearer vision for the final middle school project and a clearer potential cost.

If residents cant attend the meeting, theyre encouraged to email Clerk of Council Tonya Lacey at tlacey@fredericksburg.va.gov, mail their comments to P.O. Box 7447 or hand deliver them to City Hall, 715 Princess Anne St., no later than 1:30 p.m. the day of the hearing.

Taft Coghill Jr: 540/374-5526 tcoghill@freelancestar.com

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A makeup date has been set for Spotsylvania County Planning Commissions public hearing on a proposed RV park at Lake Anna.

The hearing had already been extended because of a high volume of letters sent in. This weeks meeting on the proposal was postponed because of snow.

The Planning Commission will continue reading letters on the proposal at its Jan. 19 meeting.

The proposal calls for a special-use permit to open a camp or recreational area with 300 recreational vehicle sites and other amenities on 135 acres along Lake Anna in the countys Livingston District.

The 13,000-acre manmade lake, which cools the Dominion Virginia Energy North Anna nuclear power plant, encompasses Spotsylvania, Orange and Louisa counties. The property is located along Days Bridge Road near U.S. 522.

The Upper Pamunkey Branch of the lake runs along the southern border of the property, with farmland and large residential lots north and east of the site. The propertys west boundary runs along undeveloped land in Orange County.

Residents who sent in comments said such a large, high-density commercial development does not fit in with the rural setting, a key reason many of them bought property in that area of the lake.

Other concerns include effects the RV park could have on the aquifer that serves the rural area. Septic impacts are another concern, with residents pointing out that area of the lake is ground zero for some of the worst harmful algae blooms that have formed at the lake the past several years.

Comments also focused on potential boating safety problems on the lake, as well as road safety concerns over RVs being hauled on the narrow rural roads in the area.

At the November meeting, the applicants attorney said they would comply with all of the regulations of a special-use permit, should the county grant one, including conducting studies that could terminate the proposal.

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By Azernews

By Sabina Mammadli

Azerbaijani police seized weapons and munitions abandoned by Armenian armed forces on their former military positions were found in liberated Fuzuli region, the Interior Ministry press service's Barda regional group has reported.

During the regular control and prophylactic measures, Fuzuli region's police officers detected two machine guns, two "Fagot" and Cornet anti-tank missile systems, four grenades, three clips for the automatic rifle, 18 shells of various types, and 317 cartridges of various calibers.

As reported earlier, Azerbaijan has recently made public the number of weapons found in 2021 on the liberated territories. A total of 225 assault rifles, 102 grenade launchers, 68 machine guns, 64 anti-tank and anti-personnel guided missile systems, 10 mortar installations, eight air defence systems, 721 grenades, 129 mines, tens of thousands of shells and cartridges of various calibers were found on the liberated territories.

As a result of the measures also taken in the liberated lands, about 17 tons of wild hemp plants were burned and destroyed.

During its 30-year occupation of Azerbaijani territories, Armenia used Karabakh and adjacent seven regions for its illegal activities, including arms and drugs trafficking. Although Azerbaijan repeatedly raised the issue before the international organizations, Armenia continued in the same vein, creating all the necessary conditions there for the illegal cultivation, production, and further distribution of narcotic substances.

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.
ASHLAND  A 24-year-old Omaha man died in a fiery single-vehicle rollover accident on Interstate 80 near Ashland early Sunday morning.

According to Cass County Sheriff William Brueggemann, the countys 911 office began receiving calls at 3:49 a.m. of a rollover accident and vehicle on fire on I-80 eastbound just west of mile marker 422.8, south of Ashland.

Within seven minutes a deputy from his department arrived on the scene to find a vehicle in the bridge embankment fully engulfed in flames, Brueggemann said.

Personnel from Ashland Fire and Rescue, Cass County Emergency Management Agency and the Nebraska State Patrol were also dispatched to assist.

Investigation at this time has evidence that a Dodge Ram pickup was traveling east on I-80 and left the roadway entering the center median at a high rate of speed, Brueggemann said.

The vehicle went airborne and landed approximately 80 to 90 feet away on the other side of the ravine, the sheriff said.

The driver was partially ejected through the windshield as the vehicle caught fire.

According to Brueggemann, the driver was identified as Hinwa Allieu of Omaha.

Allieu was a 2021 graduate of the University of Nebraska at Kearney and played football for the school from 2016 through 2019, according to the schools website.

The state patrol is completing the accident investigation and his office is handling the death investigation, Brueggemann said.

The investigation was continuing as of Tuesday.

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The city of Wayne has agreed to pay $45,000 to settle with a man who sued after police officers forced him to go to a hospital or be jailed after responding to a call to check on him when he was seen rolling around in his own yard screaming.

Jeff Olsufka's attorney, Adam Sipple, said the case was important because it addressed the "often abused" community-caretaking exception to the Constitutions warrant requirement.

Under the exception, law enforcement officers can enter a home or yard without a warrant when they have reasonable belief that an emergency exists requiring an officer's attention. For instance, when someone is in danger.

The city argued the case should be dismissed because that's what the officers were doing on the evening of Aug. 18, 2019, after a neighbor called police to check on Olsufka, who had been working in his yard, became dehydrated and fell to the ground.

When Sgt. Brian Swanson and a second officer showed up, they immediately asked if Olsufka was under the influence. He denied it, saying he had a history of seizures and just needed to go inside and drink some water. He stood up and said he was fine.

But police detained him, and Swanson threw him to the ground and put him in handcuffs when he took a few steps toward his home, according to court records.

Ultimately, after talking with Wayne Police Chief Marlen Chinn, Swanson told Olsufka police would arrest him for disturbing the peace if he didn't agree to a blood screen at a hospital. After many objections, he agreed, and the tests confirmed he was dehydrated and not under the influence.

Then, police refused to pay the bill, so Olsufka sued.

"If Wayne police wanted to help Jeff they would have let him have a glass of water to treat his dehydration, rather than forcing him to submit to drug testing, Sipple said this week.

Last month's settlement followed an order in October where U.S. District Judge John Gerrard refused to dismiss the case, saying there were questions for a jury to answer.

He said it was Olsufka's Fourth Amendment right to be left alone on his own property absent a reasonable belief of an emergency requiring medical care.

"The community caretaking exception doesn't operate to allow police officers to remain on an individual's curtilage without a warrant because an individual was belligerent or uncooperative in the absence of an emergency, or the need to protect the person or others," the judge said.

During a nearly 10-minute period, Olsufka had calmly conversed with the officers. As the situation devolved, he insulted the officers, but only after he was taken down and handcuffed did his insults become much louder and laced with profanity, the judge said.

Even then, Olsufka didn't resist or make threats toward the officers, or anyone else.

"The evidence viewed in the plaintiff's favor suggests that the options Chinn (the police chief) and Swanson gave the plaintiff were a choice as to how he wanted his Fourth Amendment rights violated. He could consent to a warrantless search of his person, or go to jail for a highly questionable charge of disturbing the peace," Gerrard wrote.

Mark Fitzgerald, the attorney for the city, didn't return a request for comment. Wayne, population 5,500, is 30 miles northeast of Norfolk.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSpilger

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The Taliban's religious police have erected banners in Kabul that order women to wear the Islamic hijab.

The posters show a woman wearing an all-encompassing burqa and a woman wearing the black chador that is commonly worn by in Iran. Text on the posters proclaims that "according to Shari'a law, a Muslim woman must observe the hijab."

The Taliban-led government's Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice says the posters were installed in Kabul to advise and encourage women to cover themselves in public.

Akef Mohajer, a spokesman for the ministry, told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi that despite the warnings on the posters, the obligatory rule for women to wear an Islamic veil will not be enforced.

Mohajer said the banners are "only an incentive for our sisters to be encouraged to wear the hijab."

He also said the posters depict the burqa and the black veil because they are commonly seen in Afghanistan.

However, the installation of the posters has provoked an angry reaction from Afghan women.

Some say the black veil is not the culture of Afghanistan.

One woman who lives in Nangarhar Province told RFE/RL that Afghan women "cover our faces. We do not wear chadors and hijabs. This is not our custom."

Amina Mayar, a resident of Wardak Province, also argues that the hijab and chador are not part of the culture of Afghan women and girls.

Lina, a resident of Kabul, says she was horrified when she saw the new posters from Taliban ministry.

"By doing this, the Taliban want to instill fear in the hearts of the people," Lina told RFE/RL. "They can rule by force and impose a foreign culture on the people. I am afraid of the day when the Taliban will whip women over their heads."

The Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan during the late 1990s also obliged women to wear an Islamic headscarf. Those who violated the rule were often beaten in public.

Turpiki, an activist and deputy head of the Women's Peace and Freedom Organization, told RFE/RL that the new Taliban regime in Afghanistan "should not think that their previous actions can be repeated now."

"Chador and hijab are not the custom of our women," Turpiki said. "The Taliban should not think that they can once again impose what they want on Afghan women. They will stand up against such actions."

Earlier, the Taliban-led government confirmed that it had ordered bus drivers and taxi drivers not to carry women in their vehicles unless they are wearing an Islamic veil.

According to that order, drivers are also not allowed to transport unmarried women in their vehicles more than 70 kilometers.
Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs on Monday encouraged routine skin cancer screenings after disclosing he has undergone treatment for melanoma, which he said may have been accelerated by his state's altitude.

The Republican lawmaker's office said that after a recent routine checkup at his dermatologist, Lamborn had a biopsy done of "a suspicious sunspot," which was later determined to be melanoma, and was treated "without incident."

Lamborn said in a statement that he has recovered from the procedure and encourages everyone to make time for these screenings.

RON JOHNSON WILL SEEK THIRD TERM

"I am grateful to my team of doctors, and their staff, for their professionalism and the excellent care I received during this process," Lamborn said.

Lamborn pointed to "the mountain landscape that we all know and love in Colorado, with its high altitude and plentiful sunshine," as a factor that may have accelerated damage to skin "caused by the sun."

"A skin check by a dermatologist often only takes a few minutes, but it is a critical part of identifying skin cancer early," he said. "I encourage all of my constituents, young and old, to wear sunscreen and make sure they get checked regularly by a qualified physician."

Dr. Reagan Anderson of the Colorado Dermatology Institute said in a statement, "As there are more skin cancers than all other cancers combined, it is important to seek medical attention if you notice any new or changing spots on your body."

"A few minutes each month looking at your own skin as well as at an annual check-up could be lifesaving," Anderson said.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

With the announcement, Lamborn's office shared resources for reducing the risk of skin cancers, including a reminder that the sun's rays "are reflected by sand, water, snow, ice, and pavement."

Lamborn represents the 5th Congressional District, covering Colorado Springs and its suburbs. Colorado Springs climbs to an altitude of 6,035 feet. Manitou Springs, five miles to the west of Colorado Springs, is 6,320 feet. Further west, the towns of Victor and Cripple Creek are over 9,500 feet.

Original Location: Doug Lamborn, disclosing melanoma treatment, warns constituents of mountain air skin threat

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Two vehicles and one home were hit by gunfire Saturday night after a fight broke out at a party, officials with the Colorado Springs Police Department said.

Police began receiving calls about multiple shots fired in the 400 block of Bonfoy Avenue around 11:20 p.m. A police investigation revealed that the incident stemmed from a fight that broke out at a party in a home that was a short-term rental, officials said.

Officers found around 30 shell casings in the area. Two unoccupied vehicles and one home were hit with gunfire, law enforcement said.

Police have made no arrests and have not identified any suspects at this time.
By Azernews

By Sabina Mammadli

Azerbaijani and Belarus officials have discussed further prospects of cooperation at a meeting in Belarus, Azertag has reported.

At the meeting held between Azerbaijani ambassador Ulvi Bakhshaliyev and Speaker of the Council of Belarus Nataya Kochanova, the latter described Azerbaijan not just as a partner for Belarus, but a close friend, the report added.

Azerbaijan is a country that connects us with friendly, economic, political, humanitarian ties. This collaboration is very important to us as we feel Azerbaijans support in international organizations on all levels. And surely, in many ways, such good relations between our countries have developed thanks to our presidents," Kochanova said.

The speaker noted that an intensive political dialogue is underway between Belarus and Azerbaijan. She stressed the importance of a closer relationship between the sides in such a difficult time.

Our contacts should be more effective, and I think the resumption of meetings, parliamentary visits to Azerbaijan and Belarus will contribute to this. We have found a complete mutual understanding of the ongoing processes, in support of each other, and we will do our best to intensify cooperation. We have a good trade turnover this year: in 10 months - $ 442 million, she added.

Ulvi Bakhshaliev expressed gratitude for the organization of the meeting in the Council of the Republic.

I am very happy to be here as an ambassador. We are very grateful to our presidents for the pace that they set for our relationship. And we must try to realize the set tasks in time with the bilateral agenda, she said.

Earlier it was reported that Azerbaijan disassociated itself from paragraph 11 of the Joint Declaration of the Eastern Partnership Summit of December 15, 2021, as it has a reservation to any operations in conflict-affected regions referred to in paragraph 8 of the Annex to this Joint Declaration carried out in the absence of a relevant request and agreement with Azerbaijan.

At the summit, EU Council President Charles Michel officially stated that Azerbaijan had not agreed with paragraph 11 of the joint declaration concerning the internal political situation in Belarus and expressed its position on this paragraph.

Due to the discrepancy between the views expressed in the Joint Declaration on Belarus and the principles of Azerbaijan's foreign policy, Azerbaijan adopted a Joint Declaration with its reservations. That is, Azerbaijan stated that it does not share the position on Belarus in paragraph 11.

Azerbaijan and Belarus are cooperating in various fields of economy, such as agriculture, transport, remote sensing services, etc. The trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Belarus amounted to $335.7 million, with the export accounting for $233.2 million and import for $102.5 million in the first 10 months of 2021.
Tax season is underway, but there are some changes I want you to know about this year. As always, you should also watch for common scams and f
On a chilly night in Manitou Springs, members of the Twelve Tribes met at the home Malak Chesed for prayer, chai tea, and dancing. Twelve Tribes is a communal liveing religious movement founded during the 1970s in Tennessee. Members try to live according to practices of the earliest church and follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. There a groups worldwide and in the United States. Members give themselves Hebrew names. Malak Chesed and Qoshet Steen play guitar and the flute while other dance. The Gazette, Bryan Oller
By Azernews

By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijan expressed condolences to Kazakhstan on the national mourning day in the country on January 10.

"We express condolences to the families and relatives of those killed in the districts of the fraternal country as a result of tragic events in connection with January 10, the day of national mourning in Kazakhstan. We wish Kazakhstan peace, stability and prosperity," the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry wrote on the official Twitter page on January 10.

It should be noted that on this occasion the flags of members of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) were lowered at half-mast at the organization's headquarters in Turkey's Istanbul.

"Always in solidarity with the people and government of brotherly Kazakhstan, the Organization of Turkish States wishes God's mercy to those killed, healing to the wounded, and the country's return to normalcy as soon as possible," the organization said in its statement.

Moreover, a representative of the Azerbaijani embassy in Kazakhstan, Anar Huseynzade, stated that 20 Azerbaijani citizens were recently evacuated from Kazakhstan.

On January 11, the foreign ministers of OTS member states will discuss the current situation in Kazakhstan via videoconference. The incumbent OTS secretary-general is the representative of Kazakhstan, Baghdad Amreyev.

Earlier, on January 6, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held telephone conversations with his counterparts from Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Kyrgyzstan Sadyr Japarov, and Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev. The presidents stressed that stability and security are important for the region. They expressed their confidence that fraternal Kazakhstan will overcome this problem through dialogue.

Amid the fuel prices increase, big demonstrations erupted on January 2 in certain parts of Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan's authorities declared a state of emergency, following the illegal demonstrations. On January 5, the Kazakh president accepted the government's resignation. The curfew was imposed in Almaty and Mangistau region, as well as the entry into and exit from these territories, was prohibited. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the government initiated anti-terrorist operations to deal with the ongoing riots.

The divisions of the united peacekeeping contingent of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) arrived in Kazakhstan to assist in restoring order and help protect strategic objects of the country.

In addition, under the president's order, Kazakhstan will introduce state regulation of the prices of liquefied gas, gasoline, and diesel for 180 days.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev recently stated that constitutional order has largely been restored in all regions of the republic, and local authorities are in control of the situation.
Luke Niforatos is a resident of Lone Tree, and proudly serves as Executive Vice President of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM).
Law enforcement vehicles have barricaded a 5-acre compound west of Boulder for days, but officials have not said what they are doing there.

Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle has said the 6,026-acre Marshall fire started in an area of unincorporated Boulder County near the compound at 5300 Eldorado Springs Drive. There is video of a shed on fire at the compound taken at 11:45 a.m. Thursday by a man who had been living next door to the property for the last three months. Pelle said the investigation into the cause of the fire includes the compound and surrounding area.

The property, located at Marshall Road and Colorado 93, is owned by a religious sect called Twelve Tribes, which owns and operates a popular Boulder restaurant called Yellow Deli.

In a phone interview, a representative from the Twelve Tribes organization said the 30 members who lived on the Boulder County compound are safe but have evacuated the area.

The man, who said he was somewhere on the East Coast a very long way away and wished not to be identified, said: Until the investigation is complete, its hard to know what to say about (the fire).

He said there are Twelve Tribes organizations spread throughout the world. When asked about the speculation that Thursdays wildfire may have broken out at the Boulder sects compound, he said: People talk about each other all of the time. They talk about us because were different.

The neighbor, Mike Zoltowski, said that as the winds roared, he was alarmed by a commotion outside as firetrucks maneuvered on nearby roads. It was like a war zone, said Zoltowski.

He said his white picket fence flew through the air: A 12-foot section broke into the kitchen door. My head was in a swivel at that time.

When he saw smoke coming from a shed on the Twelve Tribes property, he picked up his phone and braved the winds to find out more. I said Oh boy, this is not a good situation.

When Zoltowski walked over to see what was happening, he found three people huddled between two vehicles. One of them, an older man, had fallen and sustained a dislocated shoulder.

I asked them what the hells going on here? They said Oh one of our dwellings caught on fire. Its under control, said Zoltowski. I was like, This doesnt look under control.

Zoltowski took many videos, one of which shows two men supporting a third in obvious pain as they walked down a dirt road. In another, fierce winds feed the flames of the shed, which is located on the far west side of the property down a gravel and dirt road.

He said the shed was downwind, which didnt make sense to him. The fact that the shed caught fire either says that it started there at the shed or there was electrical wiring that was going to that shed that was connected to another dwelling, Zoltowski said.

Zoltowski represents a Canadian company called Just BioFiber Structural Solutions, which builds homes made out of material designed to withstand fire.

Twelve Tribes  one of the few groups surviving from the Jesus movement of the 1960s and '70s  traces its origins to the day of Pentecost, which is celebrated by Christians worldwide 50 days after Easter, and was described in the New Testament book of Acts:

Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.  All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.

The group has another branch in Manitou Springs associated with the Mate Factor Cafe.

David Boyd of the Bureau of Land Management said wildfire experts with the U.S. Forest Service are helping the Boulder County Sheriff's Office in the investigation.

Zoltowski said forensic investigators interviewed him and have taken his videos into evidence.
Colorado Springs U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn has been named as the ranking member of the subcommittee overseeing space defense, missile defense and nuclear weapons, gaining key leverage over space programs at a time when Colorado is fighting to hold onto Space Command headquarters.

Rep. Mike Rogers, the lead Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said he appointed his GOP colleague because of his passion on defense issues and "they recognized my dedication to these issues partly because so much of this activity takes place in Colorado," said Lamborn.

"Over the past few years as the Ranking Member of the Readiness Subcommittee, it was my honor to consistently work to provide service members and their families with the training, resources and equipment they needed," Lamborn told The Gazette on Monday. "I am pleased to continue my service as the Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces."

Its a years-long dream of Lamborns to become the top Republican on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, which makes sure the U.S. is properly prepared for any missile or nuclear attacks.

"I set my sights on this 14 years ago when I got on the Armed Services Committee," said Lamborn, who noted that no other Coloradan has ever been ranking member or chairman of the subcommittee.

The appointment could help cement Colorados role in the future of space since the subcommittee sets priorities for national security programs like Space Command and Space Force, both of which are currently based in Colorado Springs. The subcommittee was the body that initially set up Space Force.

"So much of the aerospace work we do in Colorado is national security-related," Lamborn said.

Military space makes up the bulk of defense contracting across Colorado, which has the second biggest space economy in the country, behind California. Colorado has the biggest concentration of national security space jobs and companies in the U.S.

Rocket makers and satellite builders, along with companies offering direct support to the Space Force bases at Schriever and Buckley, account for the vast majority of Colorados $15 billion aerospace economy.

"Representative Lamborn has been a strong leader on the Readiness subcommittee," said Rogers. "I know he will continue his hard work in support of our national security needs in his new role as the Ranking Member of the subcommittee on Strategic Forces."

Lamborn sees the protection of the U.S. assets in space as one of the countrys highest defense priorities.

"It is no secret that China is undergoing a rapid, unprecedented nuclear buildup including testing new hypersonic missiles," Lamborn said. "Russia's nuclear program has undergone significant modernization of all three legs of its triad, including the development of anti-satellite weapons that significantly threaten the space domain. It is vital that our military has the resources and capabilities necessary to keep our country safe, particularly in light of these new and growing threats."

Lamborn has been Colorados most vocal opponent to a Trump administration decision to move Space Command headquarters from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Ala., in five years.

The appointment to the strategic forces subcommittee "certainly doesnt hurt" his efforts to push to keep Space Command in Colorado, Lamborn said. "It gives me a platform to make this case."

The House Armed Services Committee last year passed, with bipartisan agreement, Lamborn's amendment to the annual defense bill to prevent the move of the command to Huntsville and work leading up to it until after the Government Accountability Office and the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General complete their reviews of the decision.

But congressional negotiators dropped the provision when they passed the defense bill.

Lamborn was the congressman who originally called for the GAO probe, the findings of which are expected to be released in March.

Lamborn has cited political pressure exerted on Air Force leaders to locate the command in Huntsville and irregularities in how the Pentagon judged the contest.

If the GAO finds wrongdoing, it could increase pressure on lawmakers and President Joe Biden to reverse the decision to move the command to Alabama.

Lamborn was first elected to represent Colorados 5th Congressional District in 2006.
The 2,000-3,000 members of the Twelve Tribes, one of the few groups surviving from the Jesus movement of the 1960s and 1970s, seek to obey God
The 2,000-3,000 members of the Twelve Tribes, one of the few groups surviving from the Jesus movement of the 1960s and 1970s, seek to obey Gods will as revealed in the old and new testaments. They take Hebrew names, live communally, home-school their children and try to keep to themselves.

But privacy may be hard to find now that Colorado officials are investigating claims that a small Dec. 30 fire on the groups rural property jump-started two major fires south of Boulder, which, fanned by 100-mile-per-hour winds, destroyed more than 900 homes and forced the evacuation of 35,000 people.

One local resident posted videos showing a fire he said started on the Twelve Tribes property that day.

As one news headline put it, Shed fire on land of cult eyed as cause of devastating Colorado blaze.

Some 30 Twelve Tribes members lived on the property before evacuating, with many working at their Yellow Deli cafe in Boulder. Three dozen additional members live communally in Manitou Springs, near Colorado Springs, where they operate The Mate Factor Cafe.

A man who answered one of the Colorado Springs members phones said the group had no comment but was working with the Boulder County Sheriffs Office. The groups website was disabled Tuesday morning.

Federal officials are helping in the investigation, which could take months. Early claims that the fire was caused by downed power lines were not confirmed.

Twelve Tribes members trace their origins to the New Testament book of Acts: Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.  All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.

They believe they are gathering together the 12 biblical tribes described in the book of Revelation in preparation for Christs return. They dont proselytize, but are more than willing to talk about their faith. They spread their message through their Freepaper, which is distributed through their cafes and restaurants, which are their primary means of both financial support and community outreach.

Members receive no pay because they work as volunteers. And because of their common treasury, the IRS classifies the group as a 501(d) religious and apostolic association or corporation, similar to monasteries.

They comprise more than two dozen communities in the U.S., as well as Canada, Argentina, Australia, England, France, Japan, Brazil (where they harvest the mate used for drinks) and Spain (where they make olive oil). They look like Amish or Mennonite believers, with males wearing simple beards and bound hair, and women dressed in simple, homespun clothing.

At the Manitou Springs community, which is led by three male shepherds, members gather for worship every morning and evening, and welcome guests to their Friday evening services. During the day, some work at the cafe while others home school the children or do other tasks. They dont watch TV or read the news. Sensationalism, one member said.

They follow a strict morality that some see as family values on steroids, and practice corporal punishment on disobedient children. Twelve Tribes communities have frequently been accused of  and occasionally found guilty of  child abuse and labor violations, and have faced penalties for requiring children to perform adult work by farming and doing crafts.

Twelve Tribes members deny they are part of a cult, and say members are free to communicate with family members and other outsiders. They typically avoid the media, even in good times, but gave The Gazette access to do a story in 2020 because one member had been introduced to the group by a Gazette story years earlier.

They teach that communal living is essential for salvation. A disciples life is a tribal life, said one Freepaper article, families, clan, and tribes, in stark contrast to the suburban loneliness of the world. But they say members are free to leave the group if they wish.

When asked about the spiritual status of the millions of Christians who dont live communally, Hushai, one of the Manitou Springs shepherds, quoted 1 John 5:19: We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

We believe very sincere people are part of the flawed mainstream religious system, Hushai said. We hope we can learn to love one another, obey his commandments and recognize the leaven of unrighteousness that comes in to separate us.

At times, their beliefs and behaviors have raised criticism. A Vice story about the group bore this headline: The Idyllic Restaurant Chain Owned by a Homophobic, Racist, Child-Beating Cult.

Members largely turn their backs on the world, but exhibit no hatred for worldly sinners. And they say the criticism they receive is part of the persecution they must face for faithfully following Christ. You cant fit us into a box, said a shepherd named Zaccai.

Such criticism may grow if investigators find that the groups carelessness led to the devastation of the Marshall fire.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev received the credentials of newly appointed Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of People's Democratic Republic of Algeria to Azerbaijan Abdelouahab Osmane on January 10.

Ambassador Abdelouahab Osmane presented his credentials to President Ilham Aliyev.

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev then had a conversation with the ambassador.

Hailing the good level of relations between the two countries, the President stressed that there was extensive cooperation within international organizations, including the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Non-Aligned Movement. Pointing out the economic relations, President Ilham Aliyev stressed the need for stepping up efforts in this area and exploring the opportunities for increasing the turnover. The President also noted the importance of promoting active contacts between people in terms of developing bilateral relations. President Ilham Aliyev expressed his confidence that bilateral relations between the two countries would successfully develop during the tenure of Abdelouahab Osmane.

The head of state noted that during chairmanship in the Non-Aligned Movement, Azerbaijan had always been guided by the rule of international law and the Bandung Principles, which form the basis of the Non-Aligned Movement.

President Ilham Aliyev touched upon the occupation of Azerbaijani territories for nearly 30 years and the destruction of these territories committed by Armenia and acts of vandalism against the cultural heritage of Azerbaijan, and said that a post-conflict peace agenda was already being implemented.

Ambassador Abdelouahab Osmane conveyed the greetings from President of Algeria Abdelmadjid Tebboune to the President of Azerbaijan.

President Ilham Aliyev expressed his gratitude for the greetings and asked the Ambassador to convey his greetings to the Algerian President.

Ambassador Abdelouahab Osmane said that Algeria was fully committed to the principles and goals of the UN Charter, including respect for the countries national sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-interference in internal affairs. The Ambassador said he would spare no effort to further develop bilateral relations.

Ambassador Abdelouahab Osmane highly appreciated Azerbaijan's chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement.
By Azernews

By Sabina Mammadli

Baku has dismissed as false the Armenian social media reports alleging the ceasefire violation by the Azerbaijani troops in the direction of Girmizi Bazar in Azerbaijan's Khojavand region currently under Russian peacekeeper control.

The information spread by Armenian social network users about the alleged firing by the Azerbaijani army units in the direction of Girmizi Bazar as a result of which a car burst into flames, the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry reported on January 10.

The ministry stressed that the Azerbaijani units had not fired on civilians and facilities.

"Presently, the situation is calm in this direction and such provocative information spread by Armenia is unfounded," the report added.

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 November 10, 2020.
Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig recently announced that the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardships Pesticide Bureau has expanded the option for online testing to all commercial and private pesticide applicator category exams. The Department also strongly encourages pesticide applicators to apply for certification using the online self-service portal at https://iowaagriculture.gov/pesticide-bureau to avoid delays in the spring.

The online testing platform gives commercial and private pesticide applicators the flexibility to take the exam from their homes or offices at a time that works for them, said Secretary Naig. The expansion of online testing options, along with the Departments new online pesticide self-service portal, are examples of our continued focus on customer service across the Department. We encourage applicators to take advantage of these online options as they work to get certified for the upcoming growing season.

Online commercial pesticide applicator testing:

All commercial pesticide category exams are now available online. Commercial pesticide applicators can create an account to take the online exam at data.iowaagriculture.gov/pest_signup/#online. The online exams are monitored, recorded and reviewed by a third-party proctoring service. A web camera, high-speed internet connection and government-issued photo ID card are required for online testing. There is a $25 fee for each commercial pesticide applicator test completed online, payable directly to the third-party online testing service.

Commercial pesticide applicators will receive a preliminary pass/fail test result as soon as they complete the online exam; these preliminary results cannot be used to apply for pesticide applicator certification. The third-party proctoring service will certify the test results and send the final scores to the email address used to register for the exam. Feedback on test results is only available at in-person testing sites and will not be provided for online exams.

Online private pesticide applicator testing:

Private pesticide applicators who want to obtain or renew their certifications can register to take the private certification exam online. To register for the online exam, visit iowaagriculture.force.com/pesticideapplicator/s/login/.

In-person testing:

The Department is also partnering with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach to host in-person applicator testing sessions. In-person testing sites are located in Black Hawk, Cerro Gordo, Dallas, Dubuque, Humboldt, Jasper, Johnson, Jones, Scott and Woodbury counties. In-person commercial and private applicator testing is free. Pre-registration is required online. Applicators can visit iowaagriculture.gov/pesticide-bureau/guidance-person-pesticide-exam-sites to reserve a spot.

Apply for pesticide applicator licenses online:

Once applicators pass the online or in-person exam, they should use their certification number to log-in to the Departments pesticide self-service portal to submit their application, test results and payment. Once the application, payment, training and testing information are received and processed by the Pesticide Bureau, the The licenses and certifications will be sent directly to the applicants.

For more information, contact the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardships Pesticide Bureau at 515-281-8591 or pesticides@iowaagriculture.gov.

Jason W. Selby is the community editor for the Mitchell Country Press News. He can be reached at 515-971-6217, or by email at jason.selby@globegazette.com.

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An Osage man was sentenced to five days in jail as part of a plea agreement last week in Mitchell County District Court.

Jarett Scharper, 20, was charged in August 2020 with felony third degree sex abuse after police say he committed a sex act upon a young woman without her consent and while she was incapacitated, according to the original charging documents filed in Mitchell County District Court.

Scharper initially pleaded not guilty in September of 2020, but forged a plea agreement with prosecutors in late December of 2021. The sex abuse charges were dismissed and Sharper instead pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault causing mental illness.

The five days in jail was part of a 180-day sentence, 175 days of which were suspended. Scharper will also spend a year on probation.

According to court documents:

After the Osage senior send away and fireworks on May 8, 2020, there was another party for graduating seniors out in the woods near the city. Alcohol was served and both Scharper and his victim were in attendance. When the owner broke up the party on their land, the victim claims there was unwanted sexual contact by Scharper while the two were in the back seat of a car.

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The week between Christmas and New Years is a usual respite from the fast-paced holidays. The regular coffee gang gathers at least once to brag, complain, debate, gripe and arbitrate between each other for one last time before the year folds into last year.

Whomever gets there first snags an accommodating and appropriate table; sufficient in size, seats and with a little isolation. Today it was me. And that makes me today's kibitzing facilitator.

After ordering coffee, the tribe straggles in with the usual greetings tipped a little to acknowledge the holidays. As each of the five tribesmen takes their seats, I am directly asked, "Where you been?"

Being somewhat confused by these identical queries, I slough it off with no comment and a hand gesture for emphasis. As the roundtable progresses with stories of grandkids growing and family gatherings, some cancelled and some postponed and some accomplished via Facetime, I am once again asked," Where you been?"

To which I responded, "Look, it is nothing new, I am either here or I'm not."

The response not nearly in chorus and while stepping all over each other is, "Nah. You haven't had a column in the Globe in six weeks. What's up with that?" Those columns seem to add to discussion, debate, and good natured ribbing and have become part of this group's routine.

All I could say is the truth; "I lost my swing."

"You lost your swing?" "Where did it go?"

Although I had already assessed and identified the cause of said "Lost Swing," I really had no intention of adding this discussion to the mix of world problems to be mulled over.

You see, this whole thing is more than writer's block. In fact, I have no problem having words easily flow from the tips of my fingers. The problem is that my words have become angry, vicious and acidic, and very personal.

Some time in the middle of 2021, as I would give a column a final read before submission, it became clear that my sarcasm was sharper, and that calling people and issues out, had become uncharacteristically harsh; far beyond an attempt to encourage people to think.

And I had seemed to have lost my sense of humor. There seemed to be fewer funny things to write about, all the time knowing that couldn't be true. The problem had to be mine and it had to be internal.

In retrospect, my normal writing process that had been smooth, confident and satisfying, shape-shifted to chaotic, disconnected and vitriolic.

The clear signs of which became my penchant for emailing Regional Editor Smith asking her to withdraw columns previously submitted, before they got published.

In writing commentary, there is a fine line between convincing readers to maybe think about subjects in a uniquely different way, and of shutting down their thought processes entirely.

I had ventured over that line.

Even my mother commented that maybe I should start looking over my shoulder a little more. If you lose your mother, well, there you go.

We all have virtually exact lists of everyday 21st century occurrences that move us from at least a semblance of civility, decorum and peacefulness, to incivility, hostility, and volatility.

Do I need to recite that which is drummed into us daily; that which is said to create the chasm that divides us all? I should hope not as we may be on opposite sides of some of the issues, but the issues are common nonetheless.

There is a fallacy in claiming that issues divide us. The issues are inert. It is us who divides us.

My dear old coffee friends are as mixed a bag as the people of the US. There are Viet Nam veterans, and also hippy peace protestors of the same vintage. There are law enforcement and there are criminals. There are Red and Blue died in the wool.

Yet my point is that we have found commonality in some things that renders a level of respect and in fact joy of each other's company.

That we can meet and visit about those common and equal joys of life and we can walk away each week knowing there is nothing that will keep our meeting from repeating the next week.

What anger could possibly eclipse, transcend and prevail over my two beautiful grandchildren; My two terrific sons and their happy and healthy families; my wonderful and supportive partner in life; longevity, health and cohesiveness of family and friends; lives well lived for those whom have passed before; and a hopeful, bright outlook for those who follow?

This anger has a name. It is intolerance and it will be the death of all we should cherish, value and protect above all else if we do not make every effort to defeat it.

Robert F. Kennedy in a speech while running for president in 1968 said, "What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.

God Bless America.

JW Sayles is a Mason City resident and maybe Iowas own Samuel Clemens in the making? You be the judge. Opinions are his own.
CHARLOTTE  After a large fight broke out at Harding University High School around lunchtime on a Tuesday in late November, a pistol was found stuffed in a 15-year-old students backpack.

At the time, that was the 17th gun found on a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools campus this school year. Within two weeks, another six firearms were found at area schools, including another at Harding.

The 23 weapons broke the districts record for guns found on campus in a single school year  a record going back to 2007 and likely longer  though publicly available state data only goes back that far.

Much of Charlotte is feeling in the dark about why so many firearms are turning up on public school campuses. But some experts say it was predictable heading into this school year.

Criminologists, both local and national, say an increase in violent crime over the past couple of years mixed with a surge in gun sales made it almost inevitable that this problem would spill onto school campuses.

State officials know of 123 weapons seized from school campuses so far this school year  more than the 83 found in the shortened 2019-20 school year. Thats nearly equal to the 124 firearms found during the full 2018-19 school year.

Weve seen an extremely high number of weapons on school property, said William Lassiter, deputy secretary for juvenile justice in the state Department of Public Safety. Thats alarming and concerning for us.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has accounted for nearly 20% of guns found in North Carolina school districts so far this school year despite having less than 10% of the student population, according to state data.

In a Department of Public Safety survey from 2019, the majority of students said they brought guns on campus for protection. That aligns with what criminologists are seeing now.

Kids are feeling less safe on their way to school, said Lyn Exum, a professor of criminal justice at UNC-Charlotte.

State officials say they are alarmed at the degree to which students feel they need to take their protection into their own hands.

After large declines in violent crime over the past 30 years in the United States, the numbers began trending up a couple of years ago.

In 2020, violent crime across the country was up 5.6% from 2019, according to FBI data released in September.

In North Carolina, that spike was even larger. Violent crime in the state jumped 7.5% from 2019 to 2020, FBI data shows. Homicides were up by a startling 23% in North Carolina in 2020.

The national increase increase in violent crime, experts say, cant be separated from a raging pandemic that upended life for just about everyone, or from a spike in gun sales in a country already awash in firearms.

A gun industry report from early 2021 shows that gun sales in North Carolina jumped about 60% in 2020.

The more guns on the street, the more likely a gun is going to be used in an assault and robbery. The more likely a gun will be carried to school, said Richard Rosenfeld, a nationally recognized criminologist who teaches at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Whats underlying the uptick in firearm purchases? Clearly the pandemic has played a role. Its produced a lot of uncertainty. I would also argue that what we saw during the summer of 2020 after George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis may have also played a role.

And while all this was playing out  the stress and deaths from COVID-19, the social unrest, 2020s spike in crime  Charlotte-area students were stuck at home without access to the structure that school usually provides.

And when kids returned to classrooms in August, they brought that baggage with them.

We cant help but to see it locally, said Nicola Bivens, a criminology professor at Johnson C. Smith University. I think whats going on in the communities and whatever is going on outside of the schools is starting to trickle into the schools.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and police have released very little information about the 23 guns seized on school campuses. The school district did disclose that the majority of the seized firearms had not been reported stolen, in response to a public records request.

Police did not describe how theyre tracing the guns, what theyre doing to try to prevent guns from being carried onto campuses, or how theyre working with the school district on this problem, despite The Observer requesting that information multiple times.

While there has been no public disclosure about where the weapons came from, the state has found guns on campuses generally come from students homes about half the time, Lassiter said.

Superintendent Earnest Winston has announced a number of steps the district is taking to prevent guns from being carried onto school campuses, including requiring clear backpacks, beginning with high schools.

The district has also launched a working group to find ways to reduce guns at schools. Part of that groups work includes evaluating body-scanning equipment and metal detectors as well as focusing on the schools that have seen the most guns.

While state and local officials have said theyre alarmed by the spike in guns, theyre also concerned about another underlying factor: Kids appear to feel less safe at school than in the past.

Lassiter, the deputy secretary of juvenile justice, said his organizations survey found that the two biggest reasons for bringing protection were bullying and gang retaliation.

The conflicts that were occurring in the community are now occurring in schools, he said. It starts with put-downs and trash talk, and it continues on that continuum until kids are bringing guns to school.

We need to start engaging in conversations with kids at these schools.

Local data shows that even before the pandemic, kids in Mecklenburg County schools didnt feel as secure as they once did. In 2019, 15% of Mecklenburg County public high school students said that at some point they did not go to school because they felt unsafe on campus or on the way to school, a county Health Department survey of more than 1,600 students found. That was up from only 8 percent of students who avoided school for safety reasons in 2011.

Joseph Asamoah-Boadu, an 18-year-old senior at Olympic High School, said students arent keen to report threats to police officers at school. He was a freshman when a 16-year-old student was shot and killed at Butler High School in 2018. Since then, he has seen dozens of guns seized on Charlotte-area campuses.

Asamoah-Boadu said he and his friends are not convinced the school district is doing enough to address the problem.

It seems like every day theres something else, he said.
A fingerprint of the North Carolina man arrested Thursday in the 1986 kidnapping of a 4-year-old Lexington, S.C., girl was found in the home where she was abducted, according to warrants.

Thats one detail from three arrest warrants issued for 61-year-old Thomas Eric McDowell, a Wake Forest, N.C., man who S.C. police charged in the 35-year-old cold case of Jessica Gutierrez.

Jessie, as she was known, disappeared in 1986. Her mother awoke on June 6 and found a window open in a bedroom and her daughter vanished.

Thursday, the Wake Forest Police Department, located in a suburb of Raleigh, took McDowell into custody on arrest warrants from the Lexington County Sheriffs Department.

He is charged with murder, kidnapping and first-degree burglary in Gutierrezs disappearance.

McDowell was also picked out of a photo lineup as the kidnapper, the warrants show. The documents dont indicate who picked the photo from the lineup, but Jessicas then-6-year-old sister was in the room when the girl was kidnapped. She told her mother that a man with the magic hat and the beard had taken Jessica.

Also, McDowell made statements to other sources that he had kidnapped (Gutierrez) and killed her, the warrants say.

The warrants dont indicate when the fingerprint was connected to McDowell nor when he was identified in the photo lineup. Its unclear from the warrants what new evidence not available in 1986 led to McDowells arrest Thursday about 250 miles from the Gutierrez residence.

The warrants also confirm that investigators have not found the young girls body.

Mothers allegations

The information in the warrants coincide with allegations that Gutierrezs mother, Debra, has alleged for decades. She told The State as recently as 2017 that a man in prison confessed to kidnapping and killing her daughter.

McDowell was in an N.C. prison in the 1980s and 1990s after being convicted in March 1987 of rape, criminal sexual conduct, breaking and entering and larceny, according to North Carolina incarceration records. South Carolina court records indicate he pleaded guilty in November 1987 to attempted burglary and grand larceny.

Debra Gutierrez contended that the man who confessed to killing her daughter had stolen a van weeks after her daughter was abducted and later raped a woman in North Carolina.

Investigators have not confirmed whether McDowell was the person who confessed in prison.

Lexington County Sheriffs Department Deputy David Pritchard, who is the lead investigator on the case, signed the warrants.

The case will be prosecuted by the South Carolina Attorney Generals Office.
A Pilot Mountain woman who took her 14-year-old son into the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021 was sentenced Friday to three months in federal prison and three years of supervised probation.

Virginia Marie Spencer, 38, pleaded guilty on Sept. 9, 2021 to a misdemeanor charge of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a federal building. The maximum sentence for that charge is six months in prison. She also had been facing three other misdemeanor charges  entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds and disorderly in a Capitol building. Those charges were dismissed Friday.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said she could not comprehend why Spencer, a mother of five who works as a cashier at a restaurant, would bring her 14-year-old son into a U.S. Capitol building during a violent insurrection where rioters were seen assaulting armed law-enforcement officers.

Kollar-Kotelly said she hoped the child was not permanently traumatized by what he witnessed that day.

Its a complete lack of judgment on your part, she told Spencer on Friday. I really hope hes alright.

Her husband, Christopher Raphael Spencer, 41, is charged with similar charges. In addition, he is also facing a charge of obstruction of an official proceeding. He has pleaded not guilty. Christopher Spencer was the first person from North Carolina to be arrested in connection to the Jan. 6 insurrection. His next court date is Jan. 13.

Virginia Spencer must report to federal prison by Feb. 25, according to the Associated Press. She also was ordered to pay $500 in restitution.

Spencer was among hundreds of people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in an effort to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential race. They falsely believed that the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. Rioters assaulted 139 law-enforcement officers and caused $1.5 million in damage to the Capitol building, including broken windows.

More than 725 people from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. have been arrested on charges connected to the U.S. Capitol attack, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

In court papers, federal prosecutors said Spencer and her husband took their 14-year-old son into the Capitol. They said that in initial statements to FBI agents, Virginia Spencer sought to minimize her involvement, saying that within 15 minutes, they tried to find an exit to get out.

But prosecutors and Kollar-Kotelly said that video evidence contradicts that account. Kollar-Kotelly said the couple spent more than 30 minutes inside the building and passed at least three possible exits.

Christopher and Virginia Spencer also joined several different groups of people within the Capitol. Christopher Spencer live-streamed via Facebook, and Virginia Spencer took selfies with her phone.

At one point, prosecutors said, Virginia Spencer took a phone call and smoked a cigarette.

The couple was part of a group that overwhelmed law-enforcement officers near the Crypt, a large circular room underneath the rotunda. Then they briefly entered the suite of offices belonging to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before turning away, which Christopher Spencer caught in his livestream, court papers said.

In Statuary Hall, the Spencers joined another group of people outside the House Chambers as they tried to get inside. Members of Congress were inside at the time. Prosecutors said Virginia Spencer was not at the front and was not vocal but the group of rioters chanted Stop the steal! and Break it down!

Kollar-Kotelly said Virginia Spencer could have spoken up against such activities but she didnt.

Christopher Spencer joined one group, saying Smile m*****f*****! Smile b****!

Allen H. Orenberg, Virginia Spencers attorney, filed court papers in which he argued that Virginia Spencer never planned to go into the U.S. Capitol building and only went to Washington, D.C. to attend a rally and exercise her First Amendment rights to question whether the election was fair.

He also said in court papers that Trump and the media led her to falsely believe that there were problems with the election. He also said that media coverage of the protests in 2020 over the death of George Floyd led her to believe that she could avoid criminal liability.

But Kollar-Kotelly said nothing about Jan. 6, 2021 was peaceful.

This was an insurrection, she said.

Virginia Spencer apologized for her actions on Friday. Kollar-Kotelly acknowledged that Spencer was remorseful but doubted whether she fully understood the significance of her participation in an insurrection.

Kollar-Kotelly said that Virginia Spencers participation in what she called an attack on democracy was inexcusable and a total disrespect for the rule of law.

There has always been a peaceful transfer of power, she said. This is the first time that has been challenged.
Chase Laws first year as president and chief executive of the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County seemed to go by quickly.

I blinked my eye, and it was a year, said Law, who started her job Dec. 1, 2020.

Previously the vice president of development at Blumenthal Performing Arts in Charlotte, Law changed jobs and moved with her family to Winston-Salem amid the pandemic.

Overall, it has been a great transition, Law said. The one thing that I keep saying about all this is, Opportunity, opportunity, opportunity. Where is the positive thats coming out of the negative of the pandemic?

She has noticed that the pandemic is allowing people to be more thoughtful, not only from the arts councils perspective, but just across the arts and cultural sector, not only with each other but with the entire community.

She said people are thinking differently and forming new partnerships.

Ive been very impressed with the arts scene here, Law said. I see a lot of exciting new projects coming out of the woodworks as were reopening.

Rick Moss, chairman of the arts councils board of trustees, said Law has done a terrific job.

I led the (arts councils CEO) search committee when we established our expectations, Moss said. She has more than exceeded them at this point. She has done a great job reaching out into the community and has established her credibility in the community as a really strong arts organization leader.

I think a lot of donors and other constituents, organizations and our arts partners in the community have all responded really well to her. Shes been a great addition.

The challenges

Despite some of the exciting things starting to happen in the local arts scene, Law said the challenges, especially those from the pandemic, are real.

Half of my time here, we were still shutdown. But then as late spring and summer came, we started to reopen  to re-emerge, if you will  and more activity was happening, she said. But we still had to be safe and that was a challenge.

In its complex on Spruce Street in downtown Winston-Salem, the arts council has three multi-function theaters  Hanesbrands Theatre, Reynolds Place Theatre and Mountcastle Forum/Theatre.

Law said that the arts councils resident companies and several local theaters were ready to return for shows last year.

Of course, I made decisions on how we were going to reopen and do things and stay safe, but I definitely didnt do it in a vacuum. I called them and said, This is what Im thinking about doing.

She watched what other arts organizations and venues were doing locally, across the state and nationally.

The arts council was already following the City of Winston-Salems mask mandate for indoor events.

Then, on Aug. 30, the arts council started requiring that patrons, performers and stage crew members 18 and older who attended and worked events and performances at its campus show proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 or a negative PCR lab test result from 72 hours prior to a scheduled event.

That was a hard decision for me to make, Law said. Im not going to lie. It still is. But at the end of the day, the question was, Is this the right decision? And my answer was always, Yes.

She said her decision was not about her but about bringing the arts back.

Every city, especially Winston-Salem  the City of Arts and Innovation  needs to have a thriving arts and cultural sector, Law said.

The arts council got pushback from some people about its COVID-19 safety policy, but Law said the majority of people were happy about it.

She said she has been fortunate to develop relationships and talk regularly with the leaders of organizations such as Greater Winston-Salem Inc., the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership and Visit Winston-Salem.

I listen and learn what they are doing and what their goals are, and I say to myself, to my staff, to the board, to the community, How can we help all of these groups and others achieve their goals as we achieve ours? Because its a collective. No one is in a silo. Were working together for the greater good. I think that as we want to attract and keep businesses here, bring in visitors and residents, the arts and cultural sector can help with all of that.

Law has found the local arts community to be resilient during the pandemic.

Every organization had a different experience during the pandemic, she said. Most of them had to cut back. They cut back on staff and operations and programming.

She said organizations pivoted to a virtual space in an incredible way.

Then when they came back to in-person events, organizations had plans and were ready.

I was so impressed with the fact that folks didnt sit back and wait for this to end, Law said.

Now, the local arts community is rebuilding.

Youve got large organizations that have big staff, Law said. Then youve got the smaller ones who dont have any staff and everything in between.

A big help, Law said, is the fact that the local community is generous with donations and understands and supports the arts.

Successes and changes

During her first year at the helm, the arts council exceeded its campaign goal for its 2020-21 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, by raising $2.1 million, up from $1.9 million in 2019-2020.

That was a big achievement ... Fundraising is hard for the arts right now, Law said.

In early March 2021, the organization teamed up with the Forsyth County Health Department to bring musical performances to the health departments COVID-19 vaccination site at the Winston-Salem Fairgrounds. Originally, the performances were to last one month but were extended for an additional month. Performers received honoraria from The Arts Councils Artist Relief Fund.

Not only was it a great way for us to pay those artists and get them working again, but it provided such a respite and some comfort as folks were out getting their vaccinations, Law said.

In mid-October 2021, the arts council underwent a restructuring of its staff.

Law said that some positions were eliminated, some will be eliminated as people leave the organization, while other positions were restructured and realigned based on organizational needs accessed over the last fiscal year.

She said the decisions were made based on the needs of the organization as Arts Council tightens its operations and reduces overhead expenses.

The arts council had 16 full-time positions budgeted within the organization when Law started her job. As of Jan. 1, there are 11 full-time positions and one part-time permanent position on the administrative staff.

These decisions were made with the community in mind and to show how Arts Council is being a better steward of the support we receive and how we can best serve Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, Law said.

She said the organization has also ramped up its marketing efforts to put a spotlight on offerings in the local arts and cultural sector.

On Dec. 15, the arts council announced it had made Organizational Support Grants to 20 arts partners and Wells Fargo Arts-In-Education Grants to 17 awardees for fiscal year 2022. In addition, Reynolda House was a Sponsorship Grant winner for the same year. The 38 winners received grants totaling $689,183. Recipients include Authoring Action, Bookmarks, N.C. Black Repertory Company, Sawtooth School for Visual Art, Piedmont Opera, Piedmont Wind Symphony and RiverRun International Film Festival.

Authoring Action has been a grant recipient from the arts council for a number of years. The nonprofit arts and outreach organization is dedicated to developing youth as articulate authors and advocates for social change.

We appreciate the consistent communication, the streamlining of the grant process and the support for operations, Lynn Rhoades, co-founder and executive director of Authoring Action, said.

Rhoades said that Authoring Action officials sense a commitment by the arts council to racial equity and inclusion, listening to the voices of all organizations, providing arts and education programs, as well as an interest in responding to the community violence challenges in the community.

Nathan Ross Freeman, co-founder and artistic director of Authoring Action, said he is impressed by the proactive relationship that Law is developing with nonprofit organizations in Forsyth County.

Shes done that not only in a strategic way, but shes created another platform, Freeman said. Shes created a strategic planning task force.

Freeman and Rhoades agreed that the arts council is making systemic change through the task force.

As for systemic change, to actually make the arts more accessible and beneficial throughout the community, Rhoades said.

Next steps

As 2022 starts, the arts council is working on a new strategic plan.

Were envisioning and trying to understand and discuss the direction of Arts Council, Law said.

She said the organization has received feedback from the community and will announce its new goals and trajectory in early spring.

Its the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, so my goal is to make sure that we are truly serving all of Forsyth County, she said.

Law said she wants to know from people what is needed in the community and not assume what is needed.

Its understanding. Its listening. Its learning and then responding accordingly, she said.

The fatal shooting of a Mount Tabor High School student in September 2021 led the arts council to have conversations about ways to respond to such incidents through the world of arts and culture and creativity.

Some of those conversations were with Authoring Action.

Law said the conversations included talk about how the immediate response to a shooting might be to put up barriers in a school. But other possible responses to consider are helping with literacy, history, heritage, science and math.

The arts can play a role in lifting that up and providing a strong foundation for families and kids that dont often have that, Law said.

The Arts Council estimated at least a $20 million loss in revenues for the arts and cultural sector in Forsyth County from March 2020 through August 2021. The organization is hopeful it will receive some of the coronavirus relief money through the American Rescue Plan Act funds awarded to Winston-Salem and Forsyth County.

We are hopeful that we will receive additional funding to help with the relief, recovery and revitalization of our community, as well as programmatic expansion throughout our area to address a variety of community needs through the lens of arts, culture and creativity, Law said.
'Night of Laughter' Benefit Concert for Ailing Comedian 'No Joking Matter' All-Star Comedian Lineup -- including Sherri Shepherd, Chonda Pierce and Tim Hawkins -- Supports Fellow Funnyman Bone Hampton, Jan. 21







NEWS PROVIDED BY

I AM PR

Jan. 10, 2022



NASHVILLE, Jan. 10, 2022 /Christian Newswire/ -- An all-star lineup of comedians will pool their wit to support ailing Christian funnyman Bone Hampton, who's been hospitalized with kidney and congestive heart failure.



Hampton appeared on Season 13 of "America's Got Talent." He also appeared alongside Hollywood star Sandra Bullock in the romantic comedy "All About Steve," and "Woodlawn" starring Sean Austin and Oscar winner Jon Voight.



"While we'll be leveraging our craft to raise support for my close friend Bone, his situation is no joking matter," said Chonda Pierce, who refers to Hampton, a father of one, as her "comedy son." Hampton opened for Pierce during her Live in Concert Tour in 2020.



"Bone has faced many medical challenges and still has a long recovery ahead with ongoing treatments and therapies," Pierce said. "Right now the financial burden of his illness is enormous."



Night of Laughter

The "Night of Laughter" benefit concert Jan. 21 will feature performances by Pierce, Sherri Shepherd, Tim Hawkins, Akindtunde Warnock, Bob Smiley, Chinnitta Morris, Jeff Allen, Ken Davis, Leland Klassen, PJ Walsh, and others.



The show benefiting Hampton will be held at Brentwood Baptist Church, 777 Concord Rd., Brentwood, Tenn., at 7 p.m., For tickets and details, go to www.etix.com/ticket/p/3869290/?partner_id=3110



For decades, Hampton has brought his brand of "clean comedy" to people across the country. Since his most recent health crisis, fellow comics have rallied around to support him.



Shepherd, former host of "The View" who returns to her standup comedy roots for the event, said: "I'm sending up prayers for Bone, one of the funniest men in standup."



Paying It Forward

Comic Tim Hawkins, best known for parodying popular songs, said: "This will be an amazing night of comedy and our chance to pay it forward to Bone."



Described as "funny as a possum in a petticoat," Hampton's trademark style makes audiences feel like family, with homespun humor and sharp wit.



As a Dove Award-winning "Comedian of the Year," he's one of the most sought-after performers in the business. His appearance in "Thou Shalt Laugh: The Deuce," hosted by Emmy Award-winning comedy legend Tim Conway, led to a repeat in the follow-up "Thou Shalt Laugh 5."



All proceeds from "Night of Laughter" will help with Hampton's medical expenses.



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CONTACT: Gregg Wooding, 972-567-7660



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By News Center

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the Turkish National Combat Aircraft will leave the hangar in 2023, Yeni Shafak has reported.

Erdogan made the statement at the National Technologies and New Investments Collective Opening and Promotion Ceremony held at the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) Facilities in Kahramankazan, the report added.

He added that some 2,300 engineers have been involved in the project to carry out their work in the center.

Today, the Turkish defence industry has become one of the most important sectors of our country. The number of operating companies increased to 1,500. The number of defence projects, which was only 62, 20 years ago, has exceeded 750 this year, he underlined.

Erdogan stressed that the industrys budget had increased from $5.5 billion to $75 billion, its annual turnover had reached $10 billion dollars, and the exports had grown from $248 million to $3.2 billion.

Turkey mobilized all possibilities for a self-sufficient, fully independent system in the defence industry and became a country meeting the needs of friendly and allied countries. Turkey is among the 10 countries that designed their own warships and among the top three countries in the world in the production of UAVs, the Turkish president underlined.

Turkey has reached this level despite all the difficulties caused by global suppliers, the hidden and open embargoes it has been exposed to, and the sabotage carried out from inside and outside, Erdogan said.

He added that Turkey had gained great achievements in the defence industry by producing a variety of products such as UAVs, naval platforms, unmanned vehicles, artificial intelligence and satellites.

Speaking about the TAI achievements in the defence industry field, Erdogan said that the domestic attack helicopter had become one of the most important tools in the fight against terrorism and the company was planning to launch its first unique helicopter, Gokbey, in 2022.

Turkeys position in the UAV production is also getting stronger in the world and the testing procedures of the countrys first jet-powered aircraft, Hurjet, continue, Erdogan said.

Today, we are putting our maintenance and repair center into service, where the parts of our aircraft will be maintained, repaired and refurbished. Our more than 500 engineers will also meet the important needs of the industry, he added.

Erdogan noted that the country made important steps in space technologies as well.

There are seven satellites in space, four of which are used for communication and three for observation purposes. The journey of the TURKSAT 5-B satellite, which was built with the contribution of local and national sources, continues in space. With TURKSAT 6-A, Turkey is increasing the investment of TAI, which will meet many needs in this area, he said.

Erdogan reminded that all necessary measures had been taken to support the Turkish industry in the aerospace fields and aviation to bring local and foreign companies together, to provide synergy and to increase the export.

Today, we are putting our 16 facilities, the construction of which has been completed, and our organized industrial zone management building into service. When all investments are completed, this place, which will host 300 businesses, will contribute to the employment of 15,000 people, he underlined.

Turkey continues the establishment of the technology development zone, where companies will carry out their research and development activities and very special opportunities will be offered to those who want to develop and produce new and advanced technology with the support of universities, relevant institutions and organizations in the region, Erdogan highlighted.

We always put the defense industry in a separate place. We are focusing on this field with national sensitivities in order to develop and produce the weapons used by our soldiers, police and gendarmerie in domestic and cross-border operations without relying on anyone, he said.

Turkey will become one of the leaders in the defence field and the government will suspend importing the products that are produced in the country. The development of the defence industry will continue to be the governments main priority and more effort and results from the defence industry sector are being expected in this regard, he added.

The level we have reached is important but not sufficient. In order to reach much higher levels, I invite the industry to work harder, produce products, and exhibit global successes. As the president, I will continue to give the strongest support to the defence sector, as I have done so far, Erdogan emphasized.
An off-duty law enforcement officers shooting of a Black man in Fayetteville sparked protests Sunday afternoon, as activists questioned the law enforcement narrative of how the man died.

The shooting took place just after 2:15 p.m. on Saturday along Bingham Drive, when Jason Walker, 37, was struck by the truck of an off-duty Cumberland County sheriffs deputy, according to a Fayetteville Police Department news release.

The deputy, whom police did not identify, proceeded to shoot Walker. He then called 911, police said.

Walker was pronounced dead at the scene.

The police department said a preliminary investigation determined Walker ran into traffic and jumped on a moving vehicle.

At least two people who say they were at the scene disputed that narrative on social media, claiming the deputy hit Walker as he was crossing the street and then shot him.

They posted a video online appearing to show the scene shortly after the shooting.

In a news conference Sunday evening, Police Chief Gina Hawkins said investigators examined the vehicles black box computer, which logs speed, braking impact and other events.

That computer did not record any impact, with any person or thing, she said. We currently have no witnesses who claim that anyone was hit by this truck.

Hawkins said individuals at the scene indicated they did not witness the incident. She added the department had spoken to a witness who claimed Walker was not struck by the vehicle.

Hawkins said she did not know how many times or where Walker was shot.

Investigators with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation have taken the lead on the investigation at the request of Fayetteville police.

Cumberland County District Attorney Billy West said the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys had been assigned to serve as an independent prosecutorial agency in the case.

What the video shows

In the video, a man the people posting on social media identify as the deputy can be seen standing by a red truck and speaking over the phone, while another man, who they say is Walker, lies on the ground near the back of the vehicle.

Sirens blare in the background as a woman, who one of the people who shared the video says is her, crouches down and appears to apply pressure to the mans wound.

People are hostile right now, the driver identified as the deputy says in the video.

Nobody is hostile, a man across the street says. Dont you (expletive) say that.

I dont know where the entry point is, the woman giving aid says. He wont tell me where he shot him.

About a minute into the video, police officers arrive on the scene.

I was coming down here, the driver tells them. He ran across the street, so I stopped. He jumped on my car, started screaming.

The driver says the man pulled on his windshield and hit the glass.

When officers ask the man recording the video if he saw the shooting, he replies thats my wife, referring to the woman applying aid.

I dont know how many times he shot him, she tells paramedics.

As they begin to work, she moves to the driver and says something to him.

Maam, Im going to protect my wife and my child, he says.

An officer interjects, stating, Were not doing this right now.

You have a vehicle, she tells the driver.

The News & Observer has reached out to those who posted the video and the Cumberland County Sheriffs Office for more information.

At the Sunday news conference, Hawkins said investigators noted that a windshield wiper was torn off and the metal portion was used to break the windshield of the truck in several places, but declined to comment further on what that might mean.

She added there was no indication Walker and the deputy knew one another.

Hawkins said she was aware of the video and had watched it.

We dont know what occurred beforehand, and thats why were here, she said when asked about the exchange between the deputy and a bystander at the start of the video. Were here for anyone who has evidence, video or even a person who was there beforehand at any point to come and provide statements to the SBI.

Investigators do not have any footage of the incident itself, Hawkins said.

Demonstrations in Fayetteville

In the aftermath of the shooting, local activists rallied against the law enforcement agencies.

The Fayetteville Activist Movement said members of the community would gather outside the sheriffs office at 3 p.m. to demand the arrest of the deputy.

When Fayetteville Police arrived they did not disarm the shooter, they did not arrest the shooter, and worst of all they did not render aid to the victim, the group claimed in a social media post.

At the Sunday news conference, Hawkins said police took the deputy into custody but did not arrest him, and were currently in possession of his firearm. She did not address whether he was still in custody.

She said officers did not render aid because the woman providing it to Walker was a medical professional.
WILMINGTON  The Port of Wilmington can handle the largest container ships that call on the East Coast, but only if those ships arent full.

Thats because the shipping channel in the Cape Fear River is not deep enough. The channel, which runs 26 miles from the docks to the ocean, is 42 feet deep at the lowest low tide.

It would need to be 47 feet deep to handle many of the fully-loaded ships that now call on East Coast ports, says Brian Clark, the executive director of the N.C. State Ports Authority.

So the state has asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the channel and widen and straighten it in spots, and that has lots of people concerned about how the dredging work and the bigger channel would affect the environment and property along the river.

Clark says the project would enable the Port of Wilmington to keep up with other East Coast ports, several of which are also deepening their channels to accommodate big fully-loaded ships from Asia.

Its a big piece for us to remain competitive, Clark said.

The state has spent $265 million upgrading its ports, including new cranes and a bigger turning basin to accommodate larger ships at Wilmington. But as at most East Coast ports, those ships arrive and leave less than full, because the channels arent deep enough.

That has set off a wave of planned or recently completed dredging projects. Among the first was at the East Coasts busiest port in New York and New Jersey, where the Army Corps of Engineers spent about $2 billion deepening the channels to 50 feet in 2016.

The Corps is nearly finished deepening the channel at Georgias Port of Savannah from 42 to 47 feet and is expected to finish dredging the channel in Charleston to 52 feet this year. Dredging work has also begun on the channel in Virginias Norfolk port which would make it the deepest on the East Coast  55 feet  by 2024.

Congress authorized deepening the Cape Fear River channel late last year, at a total cost of $834 million. The decision was based on a feasibility study commissioned by the N.C. State Ports Authority.

But the Wilmington Harbor Navigation Improvement Project has other hurdles to cross and is still years away from getting started. Congressional approval is conditional on the Army Corps of Engineers completing economic and environmental studies, which will provide opportunities for the public to comment.

A draft of the ports feasibility study, done under the auspices of the Corps, drew about 100 comments from the public, most critical. People said the report failed to adequately address the projects potential impacts on marshes, wildlife and water quality as well as beaches and shoreline, particularly along Bald Head Island near the rivers mouth. Several urged the Corps to require mitigation measures and to assess more deeply whether the project is needed at all.

Public hearings on the Corps environmental impact report have not yet been scheduled.

Meanwhile, state lawmakers showed their support for the Wilmington project by putting up North Carolinas share of the money. The budget signed into law by Gov. Roy Cooper in November put $284 million into a reserve account for the work if and when the federal government approves.
Helena firefighter Dillon DeLaHunt and Lewis and Clark County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Clint Pullman are nearly a generation apart, one just hitting his stride in a career in public safety, the other nearing the end -- but both represent the area's finest.

DeLaHunt and Pullman were named the Helena Exchange Club's Firefighter and Law Enforcement Officer of the Year for 2021, respectively, an honor they both said reaffirms lifelong dreams.

"I wanted to be on highway patrol since I was a little boy," Pullman said as a preface to a discussion about the beginning of his 24-year career in law enforcement, which began with the Montana Highway Patrol.

Sometimes in one's life, time and place align, and as an ambitious Montana State University graduate with a degree in criminal justice, Pullman said his shot at MHP was just what he needed.

"I was the youngest state trooper at a good agency," he said. "Timing in life is everything. I was really lucky that time."

He credited the leadership at MHP in the late '90s with putting him on a path toward success.

For DeLaHunt, a life in firefighting was almost preordained.

His grandfather, Rich Meyering, was a fireman with the Tri-Lakes department, then known as Lakeside.

DeLaHunt's father, Kasey DeLaHunt, still fights fires with HFD, though at a different station.

"Growing up, I always said I wasn't going to do firefighting because that's what my dad did," DeLaHunt said.

But after witnessing a bad accident during a trip to the grocery store, DeLaHunt volunteered with a fire department in Butte.

"I quickly realized why my Papa and Dad liked it so much," he said.

DeLaHunt has been fighting fires with the HFD for six years and the Tri-Lakes Volunteer Fire Department for nearly a decade.

While there are certainly days during which DeLaHunt's service can feel like just another job, he said his comrades motivate him to perform his best anytime he dons the uniform.

"Honestly, it's a great group of guys that I work with," he said. "It truly makes coming to work fun and easy when you're working with guys of such high caliber."

Pullman has been with the LCSO for about 17 years. He too said it's his coworkers who have kept him at the agency for so long.

"They're really the reason I'm still here," he said. "It's a hard thing to give up when you have such a great team and leadership."

Pullman said every agency goes through its cycles, and that LCSO is currently in the midst of a positive turn.

"I believe we're at the pinnacle of our success as an agency and it's good to be a part of that," he said, crediting Sheriff Leo Dutton for implementing a workplace culture second to none that benefits not only his deputies but the community as a whole.

"There are so many people here who work hard," he said. "It's because of their efforts. They make my job look easy."

Such careers are taxing and it takes extra effort to maintain a separation between life and a career in public safety.

Pullman said his wife has been the glue that keeps their family together.

"The key is having a spouse who understands the difficulty of the work," he said, referring to the mother of his two children whom he married while still attending the Montana Law Enforcement Academy. "She is supportive of the work."

DeLaHunt and his wife, also a member of Tri-Lakes Volunteer Fire and an emergency room nurse, welcomed their first child, a son named Bridger, into the world just three months ago Tuesday.

"It completely changes your life for the better," he said.

Both parents understand keenly the sacrifice the work requires, and DeLaHunt said he would understand if his son decides on a different path.

"I hope he does whatever he wants to do, but I certainly wouldn't be disappointed if he decided to be a firefighter," DeLaHunt said.

Both DeLaHunt and Pullman called their Exchange Club awards an honor.

"I was very happy and honored to get it," DeLaHunt said. "It's very nice to be recognized."

As part of the award, the Helena Exchange Club donates $500 to the recipient's agency and $500 to the charity of their choosing. DeLaHunt chose the local 4-H chapter.

Pullman was nominated for the award by Dutton and Undersheriff Brent Colbert.

"I'm happy to know the bosses still think I'm contributing at a high level," he said.

Pullman chose to donate the $500 to the local Heroes and Helpers program that delivers economically disadvantaged children and their families a special holiday season.

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Editor's note: This story is part of the Lee Enterprises series "Grizzlies and Us." The project examines the many issues surrounding the uneasy coexistence of grizzly bears and humans in the Lower 48, which have come more into focus in recent years as the federally-protected animal pushes farther into human-occupied areas. The 10-part series, comprised of more than 20 stories, was produced by reporters and photojournalists across the Rocky Mountain West.

For tens of thousands of years, likely as long as grizzly bears occupied North America, they have coexisted with humans.

Tribes ranging from the far northern tip of Alaska to central Mexico, the coast of California to the banks of the Missouri River, found ways to live alongside the massive omnivores.

That all ended with Europeans.

The Spanish came first, pillaging their way up the California coast. Grizzly bears there numbered in the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, feasting on rich coastal ecosystems, grasses, insects, berries, deer and nearly anything else edible.

Accounts from Spanish explorer Sabastian Vizcaino tell of a group of bears feeding on a whale carcass in 1602, according to naturalist and bear advocate Doug Peacocks book Grizzly Years.

Extermination of the California brown bear began as quickly as the Spaniards settled the area. Grizzlies in the rest of the U.S. would have another couple hundred years.

The Lewis and Clark expedition first ran into grizzlies in North Dakota in 1804. It was verry large and a turrible looking animal, William Clark wrote, and extreemly hard to kill.

Voyage of Discovery members reported killing 43 grizzlies and wounding several others during their cross-country odyssey. A majority of those encounters occurred in what is now Montana along the Missouri River.

In his journal entry on June 28, 1805, Lewis wrote that after portaging around the Great Falls of the Missouri River, The White Bear have become so troublesome to us that I do not think it prudent to send one man alone on an errand of any kind, particularly where he has to pass through the brush.

Another Euro-American mention of grizzlies near the Beartooth Mountains appears in Osborne Russells book, Journal of a Trapper. During his visit to the Yellowstone River valley in 1837-38 Russell wrote that grizzlies were more numerous than in any other part of the mountains, owing to the vast quantities of cherries, plums and other wild fruits which this section of country affords. When going to set his traps in the morning, he would often see seven to eight bears along the 3- to 4-mile ride.

In 1872, Yellowstone National Park was created in part to protect wildlife from being hunted to extinction by Euro-Americans migrating westward, as well as unregulated trophy and meat hunting. The U.S. Army was called in to provide enforcement.

Yellowstone created a 3,400-square mile refuge for what was left of once numerous species like grizzly bears and bison. It seems hard to believe that only 70 years earlier they had flourished on the Great Plains.

By the early 1900s, grizzlies proved no match for modern guns, white settlers, government bounties and the sheer determination of Europeans interested in reshaping the West as quickly as possible.

Starting in 1914, the federal governments Predatory Animal and Rodent Control program sent agents to spread poisoned bait across 30 million acres of the West. The effort nearly eliminated wolves, mountain lions and especially grizzly bears between Canada and Mexico.

The bears near extermination in the Lower 48 States is also in part explained in Malcolm Mackays 1925 book, Cow Range and Hunting Trail  unrestricted hunting. Mackay, a Wall Street stockbroker, created the Lazy E-L Ranch along the Beartooth Face in 1901.

He was also an avid hunter, and in the book he writes about traveling from the region in the early 1900s to hunt grizzly bears because there were none along the Front. On one hunting trip to Canada he killed eight bears, two of them grizzlies.

Like many other once-abundant species, grizzly bear history becomes a tally of the last ones recorded or killed. In California, it was 1922. In Oregon, 1931. In Arizona, 1935; and in Colorado, 1979.

What had once been a creature accustomed to moseying through the plains, grasslands and foothills feeding on carcasses or blueberries or laying underneath plum trees on the banks of meandering rivers, became a mountain species hiding out in a small fraction of its historic range. And in Yellowstone, it was a mountain species living off garbage dumps.

Massive open-pit garbage dumps held up to 7,000 tons of edible garbage a year from tourists flooding the countrys first national park. The dumps themselves became tourist attractions, visitors lined up to take pictures of bears feasting, wrote Mary Meagher, a former wildlife researcher for the National Park Service.

But researchers and managers decided the best path for long-term grizzly survival would not be dependence on humans discarded lunches, so park officials closed the dumps in 1970  against guidance from famed ecologists Frank and John Craighead  covered the pits, and bear numbers plunged as those used to feasting on human food scraps were viewed as a hazard.

In 1975, grizzly bears were placed on the endangered species list. Their numbers began, slowly, to climb back up. In the Yellowstone Park area, just 210 grizzlies were estimated to persist. Perhaps 600 were left in the Lower 48 States.

Today, that population has grown to an estimated 2,000 grizzlies, based on newly revised counting methods. Each female grizzly requires about 50 to 300 square miles of habitat, 200 to 500 square miles for males.

Although grizzlies can be long-lived, females arent sexually mature until they are at least 4 years old. Litter sizes average about two cubs, and mothers often keep family groups for two or three years before breeding again. So replacing bears on the landscape can be a slow process.

In 1982, the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee formed to link together all the federal, state, tribal and local efforts trying to recover grizzly bears. A decade later, the IGBC designated six recovery areas in four states: the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem surrounding Yellowstone National Park in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho; the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem in the Montana Rocky Mountains; the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem in northwest Montana and Idaho; the Selkirk Ecosystem in northern Idaho and Washington; the Bitterroot Ecosystem along the Montana-Idaho border; and the North Cascades Ecosystem in Washington.

Of those, only the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide have seen success, with an estimated 750 and 1,000 grizzlies respectively. The Cabinet-Yaak and Selkirk ecosystems have about 50 bears each, and depend largely on transplants from the bigger ecosystems. The Bitterroot and North Cascades have no confirmed resident grizzlies, although both historically were prime grizzly habitat.

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What a difference a week can make. On Jan. 6, we shared a solemn day of remembrance and reflection on the one-year anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol  a stark reminder of continued threats against our democracy in our country, state and communities. Yet, Jan. 13 can be a day of promise for renewed unity in Montana, as political candidates across the state file for elective office with the Secretary of States Office.

This year, Jan. 13 is the opening day for filing and can be Montanas opening day of hope. We encourage candidates to step up to serve with integrity, honor and respect for one another. We encourage them to defend our state constitution, the rule of law, and our precious, fragile democracy. We encourage others to run for office and get involved in campaigns that promote civility, dignity and respect for fellow Montanans. Together, lets come together, build strong civic engagement, and condemn disinformation, division and disrespect. Lets return to decency, unity and honesty.

Jan. 6 should always be a national day of remembrance. This year, Jan. 13 can be a celebration of renewed commitment to democracy, our Montana Constitution, and the rule of law in Montana.

Rep. Mary Ann Dunwell, a Democrat, represents Helena and East Helena in the Montana House of Representatives and is a candidate for state Senate. Linda Beischel is a community advocate and an officer with the Lewis & Clark Democratic Central Committee.

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CROWN POINT, Ind.  Police wrestled with an injured man while removing him from a burning car following a pursuit and crash Friday, but they didn't learn the man's girlfriend had been decapitated and his child killed in the wreck until their bodies were found by others, court records show.

Eric K. White, 20, of Calumet City, Illinois, was charged Saturday with felony neglect of a dependent resulting in death, two counts of resisting law enforcement resulting in a death and misdemeanor carrying a handgun without a license.

White's girlfriend, Britni Griffin, 20, and son Ky'Air Lucas, 1, who were passengers in White's 2010 black Audi, both died from blunt force trauma, according to the Lake County coroner's office.

Griffin and Ky'Air both lived in Matteson, Illinois, in Cook County, a coroner's release said.

White, who was booked into the Lake County Jail after being treated at a hospital Friday for head injuries, was being held on a bail of $150,000 surety or $15,000 cash. He has not yet entered pleas to the charges.

If convicted of his highest count, a level 1 felony, White could face 20 to 40 years in prison.

The pursuit started about 11:30 a.m. Friday, when a Lake County sheriff's officer patrolling Gary noticed a black Audi speed south on Broadway and run a red light while turning east on 25th Avenue, according to Lake Criminal Court records.

When the officer turned east from Broadway to 25th Avenue, the driver made a U-turn and began traveling west on 25th Avenue, records state.

The officer lost sight of the Audi as it traveled north on Broadway, but a second officer spotted it and gave chase.

The Audi's driver eventually headed back south on Broadway with both officers in pursuit, entered westbound I-80/94 and began weaving in and out of traffic and cutting off other vehicles in an attempt to evade them, records state.

A third sheriff's officer joined the pursuit on I-80/94 at Grant Street.

Police lost sight of the Audi for 20 to 30 seconds, spotted the car swerving around other motorists and saw a large amount of smoke and debris as multiple vehicles braked ahead, records state.

One of the officers noted the driver was traveling at more than 130 mph just before he hit the back of the semitrailer.

Indiana State Police, who conducted a crash reconstruction investigation, said the Audi spun across all lanes after rear-ending the semitrailer and hit a median wall. The Audi then continued back across all lanes before it was T-boned by the same semi it had rear-ended.

Griffin suffered fatal injuries during the initial impact and was ejected from the car, state police said. Ky'Air, who was in a car seat, also suffered fatal injuries.

The Audi sustained heavy damage and was missing its roof when sheriff's police approached it, records state.

Officers looked through the open roof and saw White slumped over the center console, records state. They did not notice anyone else in the car at that time.

White, who had a large cut on his face, began thrashing around when officers moved an airbag, court documents state.

The car's engine compartment caught on fire, so two of the officers began trying to remove him from the car as he clung to the steering wheel, records state.

Police found a handgun in White's left front pocket and removed its magazine and a live bullet from the chamber, records state.

Police told White to lie on the ground because of possible internal injuries and put the fire out with an extinguisher. At one point, an officer had to hold White down to prevent him from getting up, records state.

Someone in a passing vehicle told police about a body in the road, so the officer ran about 100 yards east and discovered part of a woman's body lying on the inside shoulder, according to court documents.

Police shut down traffic for further investigation. While one of the officers was washing up in an ambulance, he learned medics found a baby dead in the heavily damaged back passenger seat of the Audi, records state.

White consented to a blood draw to test for alcohol and other substances, documents state.

Police also were working to obtain a video from an on-board camera of a 2018 Kenworth semi-tractor and trailer that was involved in the crash, records state.

Lake County Sheriff Oscar Martinez Jr. said his officers previously arrested White on Nov. 24 following a pursuit. No charges related to that chase could be found in online court records.

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Kelly Ernby was no doubt a good person, a friend to her friends, a companion to her husband, a crime-fighting prosecutor. She presumably had all the decent qualities we usually celebrate after a person dies, when we generally say only the kindest things we can think of.

But she was also a vocal critic of vaccine mandates whose posts on social media risked lives, denied science and confused Americans. She was an activist with a mini-megaphone  an Orange County deputy district attorney, a local Republican Party official and a 2019 GOP candidate for state Assembly  spreading the message of a dangerous populist movement.

So when Ernby died of COVID-19 recently at age 46 (unvaccinated, of course), her death set off an ugly public debate, reflecting all the bitterness, polarization and frustration in American pandemic society. A resident of Huntington Beach, she suddenly became a symbol rather than a person, a blank slate onto which we could all project our harshest gut reactions.

Social media blew up. Supporters praised her as a hero and bemoaned the "leftist ghouls" they said were reveling in her death. People on the left either held out her death as a cautionary lesson or crowed nastily with a sort of macabre, I-told-you-so pleasure.

"She did this to herself."

"Congratulations on winning your very own Darwin Award."

"Freedumb!"

"Another Trump MENSA member hits the dirt."

"I feel worse for all the innocents that believed her BS."

Mocking anti-vaxxers when they get sick has become a bit of a sport. Sorryantivaxxer.com, for instance, is a website that runs names, photos, social media posts and commentaries about people who have preached anti-vax messages and then died of COVID. ("Suicide by COVID," as some have called it.)

Of course, there's a measure of truth to some of the callous comments. Ernby wasn't vaccinated even though vaccinations have been widely available for many months and the data are clear: People who are vaxxed and boosted are far, far less likely to be infected, to be hospitalized or to die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others. So, yeah, maybe she did do this to herself.

And not just to herself. When she became sick, she may have infected others. Furthermore, as an outspoken anti-vaxxer, her misinformation may have persuaded still others that vaccines were not necessary  or, worse yet, dangerous  leading more people to become infected. "The vaccine is not the cure to COVID," she wrote on her Facebook page, "and mandates won't work." So, yes, we should certainly be concerned for the innocents who believed her.

Ernby's behavior was certainly irresponsible. But I'm not feeling vindicated by her death or indulging in schadenfreude either. I object to the glib, nasty comments on the web. I don't understand how crowing over the death of others furthers useful debate  or increases vaccination rates.

Not that I'm claiming any particular moral superiority. In fact, Ernby's death has brought back to me some feelings I've had in the last two years that I'm not proud of: I admit to wishing some people's COVID cases had been a bit more serious than they were.

It didn't seem fair that politicians who pooh-poohed the virus or downplayed mask-wearing or objected to vaccine mandates could come down with a mild case and recover as if nothing had happened  and then start spouting the same old nonsense.

It sent the wrong message.

But when Ernby died, I felt no desire to gloat. And when I saw cruel comments on social media, I merely felt tired, exhausted, depressed.

I wondered wearily: Why do we live in a world where people let their politics make their decisions for them rather than relying on science or data or expertise? How have people become so untethered from reality that they believe in QAnon or that President Biden stole the 2020 election  or that vaccines are a liberal scam? How have we lost our common shared belief in facts and reality?

And what will we do to repair our society now that people have grown so vicious toward one another?

Nicholas Goldberg is an associate editor and Op-Ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

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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  Opportunities to help others are limitless.

From raking leaves for a neighbor to simply opening a door for a stranger, the assistance we offer others can benefit us as well as others.

Ed Rexroad is an example of the volunteers utilized to help Decaturs seniors.

For 16 years, Rexroad has been delivering for Meals on Wheels. He also volunteers for Decaturs Faith In Action.

It was something I felt like I needed to do, Rexroad said. Im retired, I could stay home, watch TV or play video games. I do have a hobby I like to do, but thats just about me. I felt its something I need to do for somebody else.

Rexroad was recently awarded the Governor's Service Award for his volunteer work in Decatur. The awards are handed out annually by the Serve Illinois Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service to recognize individual volunteers and highlight the importance of volunteerism and community service in the state.

Faith In Action offers services, such as transportation to medical appointments, shopping and errands, as well as phone calls and visits, for their homebound clients. Our goal is to help our care receivers to remain independent at home, to maintain their dignity, and to enhance their quality of life, the agency promotes on their website.

Sarah Sanchez, Faith In Action coordinator, nominated Rexroad for the award. "He just wants to serve Jesus," she said.

Volunteers with a serving heart are needed for Faith In Action, according to Sanchez. "For those who need someone to advocate for them," she said. "That's a lot of sacrificial work, but it's very rewarding."

But for volunteers, such as Rexroad, the assistance they provide helps everyone.

When I volunteer, its not for me, its for them, he said. But I get so much more taking people where they need to go.

#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.

Laura Cullison, volunteer coordinator for Meals on Wheels, appreciates volunteers like Rexroad. She said the pandemic has affected the service in various ways.

Weve been facing challenges this year for our volunteers, she said.

According to Cullison, businesses that once encouraged employees to volunteer now recommend they stay home for social distancing. And our elderly volunteers, they are in the vulnerable population, they arent volunteering, she said. Anytime anyone feels like they have a cold or a cough, they have to call in and cancel. They take it seriously.

Since COVID-19 hit Macon County nearly two years ago, the number of Meals on Wheels food deliveries has risen, according to Cullison. Weve added about 200 new people, she said. We havent taken off one day since COVID hit.

COVID has affected Rexroads volunteer opportunities as well. We used to be able to talk to people, the customers we deliver to. We developed a relationship with them, he said.

For the safety of all parties, the volunteer places the warm meal in a cooler placed on the clients doorstep, rings the doorbell, then leaves. I do miss that contact with people, Rexroad said. I do get that with Faith In Action, because I do talk to them when I take them where Im going.

Everyone can do volunteer work, according to Rexroad. You can start little and go up from there, he said.

Rexroad is the go-to person when Cullison has a dilemma. If we have a bunch of call-offs or if we have an open route, if I dont ask him, he is mad at me, Cullison said. He is my number 1 guy.

Meals on Wheels utilizes 100 volunteers each week for its 37 Macon County routes.

To volunteer for Meals on Wheels, the job doesnt require much, according to Cullison. They dont have to be energetic, she said. We have people who are a little more reserved.

The only qualifications needed for services such as Meals on Wheels and Faith In Action include a driver and someone who can read directions. We have a lot of people that come as pairs, Cullison said. It only takes an hour and it's something they can do together.

Several clients are dependent on the services provided by Rexroad and other volunteers.

For most of our clients, that package that the volunteers bring, thats their only meal for the day. If they didnt have Meals on Wheels, they wouldnt be at home, Cullison said. And for most of our clients, that volunteer is the only person they see all day.

Contact Donnette Beckett at (217) 421-6983. Follow her on Twitter: @donnettebHR

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By Trend

Iran and Russia may sign a strategic agreement that would help Iran develop its gas sector, said President of Vienna Energy Research Group in Austria Fereydoun Barkeshli, Trend reports citing ILNA.

The draft of the new strategic deal is underway and would possibly focus on the Caspian, Sardar-e-Jangal, and Chalous gas fields, Barkeshli noted.

It could also be possible that Russia will export gas to India via Iran, he explained.
Police in Indiana wrestled with an injured man while removing him from a burning car after a pursuit and crash, but they didn't learn his girlfriend and child had been killed until later.
New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms early, then cloudy skies after midnight. Low 73F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms early, then cloudy skies after midnight. Low 73F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
President Joe Biden's efforts to halt the spread of COVID-19 through vaccine mandates underwent the ultimate test Friday  a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court. At the heart of this debate is just how much authority federal agencies have to apply such sweeping orders.

Federal courts have rightly called into question this apparent overreach by the Biden administration, with judges around the country halting all iterations of the mandates, whether for certain health care workers, federal contractors or private employers. Just over the weekend, a judge in Louisiana ruled that Biden can't force teachers in the Head Start early education program to get the vaccine, saying the order illegally bypassed Congress.

It's the mandate impacting private businesses with 100 or more employees that is especially egregious, however. The 500 pages of rules issued in early November by the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration require employees at these companies get vaccinated or agree to regular testing. If employers don't comply, they face hefty fines.

The "emergency temporary standard" rules, which bypassed the typical notice and comment period for rulemaking, as well as Congress, were almost immediately put on hold by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on constitutional grounds.

Then last month, 6th Circuit in a 2-1 ruling allowed the rules to proceed. In her strongly worded dissent, Judge Joan Larsen (a Trump administration appointee who formerly served on the Michigan Supreme Court) wrote the following, "This emergency rule remains a massive expansion of the scope of (the administration's) authority."

She also compared OSHA's far-reaching rules to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's eviction ban, which the Supreme Court overturned last year.

Challengers, including business groups, appealed to the Supreme Court. Attorneys general in more than half the states have fought against the mandates.

The Michigan Chamber of Commerce has voiced its concerns, as well as those of many others in the business community. It has argued that while it supports vaccines, mandates are not the answer, and targeting employers with 100 or more workers could harm their ability to keep on or hire workers at a time when many employers are already having difficulty finding staff. Even Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last month admitted vaccine mandates would be a "problem for all of us."

Given the Supreme Court's decision to hear the case, the Biden administration has slightly delayed enforcement to Jan. 10 from Jan. 4, but this still puts employers in a bind in trying to figure out how to proceed.

The nation is already facing a shortage of COVID tests, despite Biden's assurances he'd fix the problem. It's unclear where businesses would acquire the necessary tests to comply with OSHA's rules.

In a call with governors late last month, Biden said "there is no federal solution" to COVID. The president should take his own words to heart.

Breakthrough cases are becoming more common, and vaccines alone will not stop the spread. A better approach would be to focus on ensuring states have adequate access to testing and the early virus treatments that are coming online.

Such expansive federal mandates go against our system of federalism and our constitutional rights, and are unlikely to significantly slow the virus.
A Lenoir-Rhyne University graduate won the title of Miss Cosmos United States in July.

Madison Mace, 21, said that in addition to competing in pageants, she loves spending time with family, serving her community and racing four-wheelers.

She said she has always had a lot of love and support from her family. My parents are really supportive of it. My mom loves them. When she was little she would always watch Miss Universe and Miss America. So, she was really happy that pageantry was something I wanted to get into, Mace said. My family loves giving back to their communities, and they are so supportive of my pageantry stuff. It is something that we can all talk about and it brings us together.

Mace was born in Rutherfordton but has lived in Hickory since she was around 3. She attended Fred T. Foard High School, Catawba Valley Community College and Lenoir-Rhyne.

Mace is a traveling nurse. She said she hopes to return to school in the fall to become a nurse practitioner.

Mace recently discussed her love of pageants, four-wheelers and her career. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

On winning Miss Cosmos United States

It felt like a dream come true. I couldnt believe it, because there were so many beautiful women that I was competing with and I tried that whole week not to compare myself to others. But it is always kind of hard when youre there. I went into that week telling myself, Do your best. Dont pay attention to what anyone else is doing. I think that is what really got me through it.

There were around 10 girls in my division and probably 60 or 70 altogether. Cosmos has been around for a long time in a lot of other countries, but it is really just starting to take off in the United States. With COVID-19, the numbers dropped off, but they are picking back up. In one of the other countries, they gave a car or something like that for their winner. They really go all out with prizes in the other systems. I do think within the next several years it is going to be just as big here. They keep making the prize package bigger and bigger.

I had heard about Cosmos for several years before I ever competed in it. I heard that they were having a state pageant this last February and so I entered that. I won the state title and then went to nationals.

I also went to New York fashion week. I would have never gone, if Cosmos hadnt given me the opportunity to go. We actually were able to work with a really prestigious designer, Cesar Solorzano, and model his gowns and stuff. I got to walk on the runway. It was super fun.

On her platform

Certain systems have a main platform they want to support, but with Cosmos they let you bring in your own. All of our platforms are different. The platform I created is called GLAM.

GLAM stands for Girls Learning Advocacy Matters, and I started that because I raced four-wheelers growing up, which is a very non-traditional womens sport. I got picked on pretty bad being the only woman and men thinking that I shouldnt be racing in a class against them. I started this so girls can learn how to advocate for themselves. When I was younger, I had wonderful women role models who showed me, Hey, dont let people say that to you. Stand up for yourself and be proud of what you are doing. That is my goal to make sure that other women and men dont feel that way, especially when they are in a field that is dominated by the other gender.

On racing four-wheelers

My dad started teaching me to ride when I was 12 and I started racing when I was 14. He taught me how to use a clutch and everything out in the middle of a random field. He took me to a race just to watch it. I told him I wanted to do that and he was like, Um, and I was like, No, I am serious I want to do it. So, he started taking me to practice at different riding parks. My first race I finished literally dead last. I was so slow and I actually got thrown off my four-wheeler during that race. Then I was like, OK, I really need to start practicing. It kind of took off from there.

When I was racing full-time, I would do Mid East Racing and GNCC Racing (Grand National Cross Country). Mid East Racing is more like North Carolina and South Carolina. GNCC is anywhere from New York to Florida.

On her nursing career

All through high school I wanted to be a lawyer and when I was a senior I was like, I actually think I might hate that. My whole life my mom had told me to go into health care and I was like, No, there is not a chance. That spring my grandma got sick and we were all rotating taking care of her and it kind of just showed me how much I like taking care of people. I applied to the RIBN program which was where you are enrolled at LR and CVCC to become a registered nurse. I got accepted and its been history ever since. I never saw myself going into nursing originally.

I do traveling nursing now. I worked for 16 months in the intensive care unit at UNC Health Care and then started travel nursing four months ago.

Its been really tough. COVID hasnt been easy on any health care worker, but I feel like I am kind of meant to be there. Like some of the situations I have had at work, I get to be there for people in their most vulnerable times. Its tough but it is kind of bittersweet because they need people when theyre in that state.

This story was updated at 10:39 a.m. on Jan. 10.

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SECOR  Whether you like to follow the tracks of deer and coyotes or in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, you can do both at the ParkLands Foundations Kenyon-Baller Woods Preserve in rural Secor.

Located at 1917 County Road 500 North, Secor, the 178-acre Woodford County preserve is the farthest west preserve managed by ParkLands, a private, nonprofit organization working to manage and restore natural areas in the Mackinaw River watershed.

This preserve is unique for many reasons, one being that it serves as the confluence between the Mackinaw River and Panther Creek, both very high quality waterways, said Craig Lutes, volunteer and outreach coordinator for the foundation.

The actual meeting of the two waterways is not part of the preserve, but they each serve as its borders. About a mile of Panther Creek and a half mile of the Mackinaw River line the preserve.

The foundation bought the initial portion of the preserve from dairy farmer Frank Kenyon in 2002. The most recent acquisition was purchased from Dr. Robert Baller, a Bloomington ophthalmologist in 2019. Both purchases were made with the help of grants from the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation.

The land had been used primarily for grazing cattle and harvesting hay. ParkLands is restoring prairie and planting trees in the river bottomland and along the middle loop trails.

Lutes described it as a very scenic place with a lot of quality hiking in addition to good quality habitat on land and water.

The terrain is gently rolling with a few hills that can get your heart rate up. There are more than four miles of trails. Lutes said more are being added each year. Several can be done as loops.

A trail map can be found at www.parklandsfoundation.org by clicking on the Our Preserves tab then selecting Kenyon-Baller Woods.

Lutes led a hike at the preserve with about 30 people on New Years Eve. Originally planned as a First Day hike to welcome 2022, the outing was moved to the last day of 2021 in advance of predicted storms.

The narrow, somewhat hilly roads you need to travel to reach the preserve are not something you want to tackle in icy conditions.

Those participating in the hike ranged from enthusiastic youngsters running down hills and walking across downed trees as if they were balance beams to older hikers with handy trekking poles.

The bluffs in this area are unlike what you will see in many areas of Central Illinois, said Lutes. In the winter,  this is a great time to come because, with the leaves down, you can really take advantage of the scenery and the views of the bluffs.

The New Years Eve hikers were treated to an unusually comfortable day for the end of December and sightings that included a small flock of trumpeter swans and a large flock of greater white-fronted geese flying overhead.

A small monument as you drive to the preserve commemorates the once-thriving town of Bowling Green that was located there during Abraham Lincolns circuit-riding days as a lawyer.

Guy Frakers book, Looking for Lincoln in Illinois, describes Lincolns journeys through the area. Lincoln is believed to have debated Methodist minister Peter Cartwright in Bowling Green in 1846 when they were running against each other for Congress.

So whether youre interested in history, nature or exercise, Kenyon-Baller Woods is a nice place to visit.

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A 6-year-old boy found dead early Saturday in Gary, Indiana, became unresponsive after he was forced to take a cold shower for an unspecified period of time Dec. 30, according to the Lake County (Illinois) state's attorney's office.

Damari Perry was removed from the shower after he began to vomit, but his family members did not call for emergency help or seek medical treatment, Assistant State's Attorney Kyle Doyle told a judge during a hearing for Damari's older brother Jeremiah R. Perry.

A 19th Judicial Circuit judge in Lake County, Illinois, ordered Jeremiah Perry held on a $3 million bond, said Jim Newton, a spokesman for the Lake County (Illinois) state's attorney's office.

Jeremiah Perry is facing charges of aggravated battery causing great bodily harm to a child under 12, concealing a homicidal death and obstruction of justice.

A hearing Sunday for Damari's mother, Jannie M. Perry, 38, was continued, Newton said. She's facing charges of first-degree murder, concealment of homicidal death and obstruction of justice.

The state's attorney's office also filed undisclosed charges against one of Damari's juvenile siblings. That sibling appeared Sunday in the 19th Judicial Circuit's juvenile court, Newton said.

Charges filed Saturday allege the family, which lives in North Chicago, Illinois, became upset with Damari on Dec. 29 and placed him in the cold shower Dec. 30, Newton said. The reason the family was upset has not yet been disclosed.

After Damari died, his mother planned to take the boy's body to Indiana and worked with others to leave his body near an abandoned home in Gary, the state's attorney's office said.

Damari was reported missing Wednesday from North Chicago, according to a news release issued by the Skokie (Illinois) Police Department. Family members told police Damari was last seen Tuesday and may have traveled to Skokie.

Investigators determined the family's story about Damari's disappearance was false, North Chicago Police Chief Lazaro Perez said.

Officials working with multiple agencies interviewed several children in the family Thursday and Friday, officials said. Jannie Perry, Jeremiah Perry and the juvenile sibling facing charges were taken into custody Friday, police said.

Information from witnesses helped North Chicago police and FBI agents recover Damari's body about 2:30 a.m. Saturday near an abandoned home in the 700 block of Van Buren Street in downtown Gary, officials said.

The boy's cause and manner of death were pending an autopsy scheduled for Monday at the Lake County (Indiana) coroner's office.

Times Staff Writer Anna Ortiz contributed to this story.

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A federal judge has dismissed claims of racial discrimination filed by current and former Winston-Salem firefighters almost a year ago, although the court has left the door open for the firefighters to re-file their lawsuit.

Judge Catherine Eagles on Wednesday granted motions by the city and Fire Chief William Trey Mayo to dismiss the lawsuit that five men filed claiming multiple incidents of racism had occurred in the citys fire department over a number of years.

Eagles adopted the recommendation of U.S. Magistrate Judge Joe Webster to dismiss the case, but she also dismissed the complaints without prejudice, meaning that the firefighters can choose to re-file their case at some future point.

Webster, in his recommendation to dismiss the case, said the firefighters had failed to sufficiently show facts that backed up their claims. Most of the alleged racist incidents did not involve the firefighters who had filed suit, Webster found.

Thomas Penn Jr., one of the suing firefighters, said in response to the dismissal that the group is still gathering evidence of city misdeeds and that the stories will be told in the coming weeks.

The lawsuit was filed by Penn, Delbert Hairston Jr., Gerrod Hardy, Ricky Brown and Eddie Forest. The men were among members of Omnibus, a group of firefighters who made allegations of racism against members of the fire department over a period of months from the summer of 2020.

In its protests, the group called for the dismissal of Mayo and other department personnel it fingered as having engaged in acts of racism. The city didnt take that action, but did bring in consultants to take the racial temperament of the department. The consultants concluded that the department was not racist as a whole, but said that allegations of individual acts of racism showed the need for more diversity training.

The firefighters filed their suit about a month after the study came out.

In their lawsuit, the firefighters repeated many of the allegations they had publicized earlier, including an incident in which someone allegedly left a gorilla mask at the desk of a Black firefighters, and comments on social media that those filing suit found offensive.

In addition to claims of racism, the lawsuit alleged the city had created a hostile work environment for Black firefighters, and had retaliated against those who complained.

In recommending dismissal, the magistrate judge (a judge who assists the lead judge in federal court) essentially said that to sue, the complaining firefighters needed to be the actual victims in the incidents they recounted, but that in most cases they were not.

In two instances identified by the magistrate judge as allegations that two of the plaintiffs personally experienced retaliation, the judge said the lawsuit did not make the case that the alleged retaliation met the required legal standards.

City attorney Angela Carmon declined to comment. Penn, speaking for the Omnibus group, said the firefighters are not surprised or discouraged by the courts decision.

Anyone who has been watching this case, and we know that people as high as the mayor himself has been, knew that this decision was coming, Penn said. The judge only said that we need more people who have directly suffered discrimination and harassment in the fire department to come forward. Their stories are not enough. Their names need to be attached. So that is what we will do.

Penn said Omnibus has gotten more evidence and more examples of the racism in the Winston-Salem Fire Department.

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BANNER ELK  Several people were hurt at a North Carolina ski resort when a damaged hydrant sprayed a blast of water onto skiers riding above on a lift, prompting several skiers to jump.

Management at Beech Mountain Resort told WBTV-TV that a guest skied into the water and air hydrant Friday while snowmaking operations were underway. Video circulating on social media shows skiers on the chair lift getting hit by blasts of water.

The resort said in a statement that two people were taken to an area hospital by Avery County emergency medical workers with what appeared to be injuries that were not life-threatening. The person who skied into the hydrant was not injured.

"As soon as we became aware of the problem, our operations and safety team took action as quickly as possible to drain the system safely and assist the remaining skiers in disembarking at the top of the lift," resort management said in a statement.

WSOC-TV spoke to two women who said they jumped 25 feet from the ski lift when the water hit them.

Emma Lopinto said she was at the ski resort celebrating her 19th birthday Friday when she and her best friend were doused in water as they rode above on the chair lift.

"We just grabbed each other and ducked our head and all I remember is the metal bar flying up and then me flying up. I don't remember anything and I remember opening my eyes belly first on the ground," Lopinto said.

"I have bruises from head to toe, some big, some small, like all over my body," she said.

Lopinto said her friend also was hurt.

WSOC reported that Lopinto was one of two people who were transported to the hospital by ambulance. A third woman was taken to the hospital by her family.

Ivy-Elise Ivey told WSOC that she and her boyfriend could see what was happening and decided to jump along with several others.

"Everyone was in shock. You're not going to jump from 25 feet, if you don't think you have to," Ivey said.

She said she broke her arm, fracturing it around her elbow.

Ivey said she is disappointed in how the resort handled the problem. Resort officials said that Ivey was not instructed to jump by resort staff.

"This was a very difficult situation for both our guests and our staff. We very much regret that the incident occurred and we again offer our apologies to the guests that were adversely affected," the resort said in a statement.
By Azernews

By Laman Ismayilova

Azerbaijan`s national parks and reserves are pleased to announce Open Doors Day on January 11.

The initiative is timed to International Day of Reserves and National Parks.

Since1997, January 11 is celebrated worldwide as International Day of Reserves and National Parks at the initiative of the Biodiversity Conservation Center and the World Wildlife Fund.

Throughout the day all visitors have a chance to enjoy the country`s nature in all its beauty.

There are 10 national parks and 10 state nature reserves across the country.

For those who are lovers of amazing landscapes and brilliant nature formation definitely should visit some of these parks.

For those who are lovers of amazing landscapes and brilliant nature formation definitely should visit some of these parks.

Gobustan State Historical-Artistic Reserve

Settled since the 8th millennium BC, the area contains more than 600,000 distinct paintings, going as far back as 20,000 years to as recent as 5,000 years ago.

The reserve attracts not only local scientists but also foreign archaeologists. The State Historical-Artistic Reserve has been functioning since 1967. In 2007, the reserve was included in the UNESCO list of World Cultural Heritage.

There are approximately 6,000 drawings in Gobustan  petroglyphes - stone and iron-age figures carved thousands of years ago and now considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The pictures dating back to 8 millenniums reflect different hunting scenes, ceremonial and ritual processes of the habitants of these places.

Absheron National Park

Absheron National Park is a great place for all those fascinated by nature.

Established in the basis of Absheron State Nature Sanctuary, the national park stretches 783 ha area of administrative territory of Baku city.

Gazelle, jackal, fox, rabbit, badger, Caspian seal, birds such as silver gull, wheezing swan, grey and red-headed black, white-eyed black ducks, big white bittern, sandpiper, bald-coot and other migrant birds have inhabited here.

Caspian seal which is considered rare species is encountered in the Caspian sea area of Absheron National Park, It is observed in seal cape mostly in May-August.

Notably, Caspian seal is included into the Guinness Book Records as the smallest seal in the World Ocean.

Goygol National Park

Anyone visiting the Land of Fire should enjoy the magnificent views at Goygol National Park.

Cold climate with dry winter prevails in the area. Annual temperature of the weather wavers between 4-10 degrees C. Annual precipitation is 600-900 mm. It includes one of the most beautiful and cleanest lakes in Azerbaijan- Goygol.

The lake gets its name from its deep blue-colored water. It was formed in 1939 as a result of earthquake occurred in Ganja. Kapaz mountain was tumbled down, blocked up the Aghsuchay river.The water in lake is always cold even in August does not rise above + 17 ?C.

More than 423 types of trees, shrubs and medicinal plants grow here. In the surrounding forests you can meet wolves, foxes, deer, jackals, bears, lynx and many other animals. The lake area is ideal for walking, traveling, and family picnics. Recreation on the shore of the fresh lake is the best decision on hot days.

Shahdag National Park

The Shahdag National Park covers the territory of 115,895 ha, including five regions of the country. The Park was established in December 2006 to preserve mountain forests and pasture ecosystems located in high mountainous areas.

The height of the National Park territory is the main reason behind its climatic diversity, fertility of flora and richness of animal life. The landscape of the territory is fantastic and the mountains attract not only tourists, but also sportsmen to the highest peaks of the country, Bazarduzu Mountain of 4,466 meters above sea level.

The major types of trees are Caucasian Oak, Caucasian, European Hornbeam, Oriental Hornbeam, Oriental Beech, Silver Birch, Birch, Common Yew, White Willow, Common Walnut, Wild Cherry etc.

The national park is home to the rare East Caucasian tur, a mountain dwelling goat antelope found only in the eastern half of the Caucasus Mountains. Other large mammals found here are the Caucasian, Bezoar ibex, domestic goat, Caucasian lynx, Syrian brown bear, wild boar, Indian wolf, common jackal, common jungle cat, red fox, roe deer and others.

Zangazur National Park

Zangazur National Park was in 2009 on the base of Ordubad National Park in Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. It was named after Academician Hasan Aliyev who is considered as a founder of ecology in Azerbaijan.

Furthermore, Nakhchivan is known to have 62 mammal species and subspecies. Some 32 of them such as blazilius horseshoe bat, southern horseshoe bat, porcupine, manul, bezoar goat and Caucasian muflon occur in the Zangazur National Park.

Moreover, approximately 12 carnivorous mammals such as leopard, wolf, jackal, fox, stripped hyena, badger, wild cat and other predators represent the major part of the fauna in the park.

In addition to mammals, 217 bird species and subspecies such as Levant sparrowhawk, great white pelican, Dalmatian pelican, white-tailed eagle, lammergeyer, short-toed eagle, great bustard and little bustard can be found in Nakhchivan. Notably, 15 of those species were added to the Red Book.

Zangazur National Park is also rich in rare plants. About 77 plants, including Iris elegantissima, Himantoglossum formosum, Dorema glabrum and other plants can be found here.

Altiagach National Park

Altiagach is mostly covered by temperate deciduous broadleaved forests. The major types of trees are Persian Ironwood (Parrotia persica), Caucasian Oak (Quercus macranthera), Caucasian Ash (Fraxinus angustifolia subsp. oxycarpa), European Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus), Oriental Hornbeam (Carpinus orientalis), Oriental Beech (Fagus orientalis), Silver Birch (Betula pendula), White Birch (Betula pubescens), etc.

Established in 2004, the national park is home to the rare East Caucasian tur (Capra cylindricornis), a mountain dwelling goat antelope found only in the eastern half of the Caucasus Mountains. Other large mammals found here are the lynx (Lynx lynx), brown bear (Ursus arctos), wild boar (Sus scrofa), wolf (Canis lupus), golden jackal (Canis aureus), jungle cat (Felis chaus), red fox (Vulpes vulpes), roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), badger (Meles meles), and otter (Lutra lutra), etc.

Hirkan National Park

Hirkan National Park is located on the shores of the Caspian Sea in the southeast of Azerbaijan. The national park was established in 2004.

Its mission is to ensure the conservation of relict and endemic plant species of the Tertiary period, the protection of typical flora and fauna representatives of this area listed in the Red Data Book of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the implementation of environmental monitoring, public environmental education as well as creating conditions for research, tourism and recreation.

The park is rich in plant species. The vegetation cover is mainly represented by trees and shrubs that form forests here.

Forests in the lower part predominantly comprise chestnut-leaved oak, ironwood and hornbeam together with black locust, Hirkan fig, Caucasian persimmon, etc.

Of 435 tree and shrub species occurring in Azerbaijan 150 ones grow in the Hirkan forests.

Front-Asian leopard, lynx, wild cat, badger, wild boar, roe deer, sika deer, raccoon are found among. Front-Asian leopard, protected under the Red Data Book of Azerbaijan and IUCN list can be found here.

The Red-listed species also include Talish longhorn beetle, Talish ground beetle, speckled wood, and many other insects.

Hirkan National Park numbers over 118 bird species, 16 of which, including black stork, osprey, Northern goshawk, imperial eagle, Talish Caucasian pheasant, black francolin are listed in the Red Data Book of Azerbaijan.

Ag-Gol National Park

Ag-Gol National Park was established in 2003 for the preservation of migrating routes, areas of wintering and nesting of waterfowl and wader birds, as well as for breeding of commercial fish species.

The area of 4400 hectares covers the water area of lake Aggyol.

One of the most beautiful lakes in Azerbaijan is located on the territory of Agjabadi and Beylagan regions. This lake is inhabited by many species of birds included in the Red Book of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the Red Book of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

These are lesser white-fronted goose, white-headed duck, marbled duck, ferruginous duck, little bustard, little comorant, as well as flamingoes, pelicans, all 7 species of herons and a variety of species of ducks, geese, rails, waders and others. Wolf, jackal, fox, hare, the reed beds and a lot of bats are found here.

Shirvan National Park

Established 2003, Shirvan National Parkwas created with a view to the conservation of foremost components of a semi-desert landscape, the protection of goitered gazelles listed in the Red Data Book of Azerbaijan and species of fauna that are typical to this territory. Its functions also envision the implementation of environmental monitoring, public environmental education, as well as creating conditions for tourism and recreation.

A chain of hills is the main terrain that developed as a result of the winds work and serves as an excellent refuge and shelter for gazelles.

Gazelle is considered a lesser spread species among mammals. In this regard it exists mostly in Azerbaijan, Front, Middle and Central Asia. The territory of Azerbaijan is considered the main existence area of the gazelles.
The Triads three largest health care system leaders warned Monday their hospitals are at a critical stage in how effectively patients can be treated as the COVID-19 omicron variant spreads.

The chief executives of Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist, Cone Health and Novant Health Inc. made a rare joint appeal Monday, asking people to follow vaccination and testing recommendations and urging the public not to seek COVID-19 testing in emergency departments.

They emphasized the physical and emotional toll on the frontline medical workers nearly two years into the pandemic.

The new year has certainly brought new challenges just when we think (COVID) is going away, Baptist chief executive Dr. Julie Ann Freischlag said.

The executives shared the viewpoint of their infectious diseases experts that the omicron variant surge could begin to decline by early February.

However, Freischlag warned that if the public doesnt assist with tamping down community spread, we may continue for an extra few months with the same type of scenario in terms of cases and hospitalizations.

Were waiting to see whether or not people actually pay attention and are able to go back to the constraints we need you to do  even though we dont like them and you dont like them  to make it happen.

More record cases

The appeal comes as Forsyth County likely reached another record high in daily COVID-19 cases.

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services reported Monday that Forsyth had 2,653 new cases over the weekend, including 577 reported Monday. The remaining 2,076 new cases were counted during the period between noon Friday and noon Sunday.

The highest-ever daily case count for Forsyth was 939, reported Thursday, Jan. 6.

There were two COVID-related deaths reported over the weekend for a total of 630 in Forsyth since the pandemic began.

Statewide, DHHS reported a record 29,069 cases Saturday, followed by daily counts of 23,857 Sunday and 18,254 reported Monday.

North Carolina has recorded 1.89 million cases and 19,685 COVID-19 related deaths since the pandemic began.

The majority of new cases are the omicron variant, according to state and local health care officials.

Positive test rate, hospitalizations

Forsyths positive test rate was at 32.2% as of noon Monday, while the statewide rate was 31.1%.

By comparison, Forsyth health director Joshua Swift said that, when the delta variant was the prominent form of the coronavirus, the peak positive test rate was around 14%.

With Mondays report, Forsyth averaged 172.3 cases per 100,000 individuals over the most recent two-week period. Thats up from 67.6 cases per 100,000 as of Dec. 31.

Both Swift and Dr. David Priest, an infectious diseases expert with Novant Health Inc., have said the number of COVID-19 cases likely is underreported, in part because most at-home test results arent reported to county health officials and some infected individuals have mild cases and dont seek care.

The statewide COVID-19 hospitalization total was at 3,850 as of noon Monday  up 372 from noon Friday and at the highest level since Sept. 23.

The hospitalization count has increased for 14 consecutive days. Of the latest total, 423 patients are on ventilators.

Hospitals in the 17-county Triad and Northwest N.C. region reported a combined 938 COVID-19 patients as of noon Monday.

There were 88 children hospitalized with COVID-19 statewide, including 21 in the Triad region.

Health care efficiency threatened

The chief executives of the Triads hospitals chose to make their appeals not only because of the waves of individuals seeking COVID-19 testing in their emergency departments and their nearly full intensive care units.

COVID-19 is affecting the very infrastructure of what we use to take care of our communities, Cone Health chief executive Mary Jo Cagle said. Were seeing increasing numbers of our employees becoming ill.

At this time, we see that our health systems are being threatened  our abilities to care for our communities are being threatened  because of the rising volume of COVID-19.

Were asking you to help us help you. We want to be there when you need us.

Baptist spokesman Joe McCloskey said COVID-19 infection rates among staff members have increased just as the rates have increased in the community.

Cone spokesman Patrick Wright said staff call outs are significantly higher over the last two weeks. We are more than double our usual call outs and also significantly higher than at the beginning of the pandemic.

Priest said infection rates among Novant health care employees is at a higher rate than weve had at other points during the pandemic.

McCloskey and Priest said most health care workers are experiencing relatively mild cases due to vaccination and booster rates.

Still, Freischlag said that with so many of our staff is getting infected, so many people are unable to come to work. Everyone is truly exhausted.

Weve been telling you we are short-staffed, and that has affected our ability to test.

Local and state health officials have advised getting tested for COVID-19 when most cold and flu symptoms appear as a way to determine what kind and level of care to seek.

Levels of frustration

Freischlag spoke of having to tell patients  including those who have been fully vaccinated and either boosted or waiting to be eligible  that their elective surgery cant happen when scheduled or has to be delayed.

Its getting personal, getting comments from individuals who are asking, Why cant you take care of my loved one? Freischlag said.

I have had patients not come to clinic because they had been exposed. I have patients that I had to say, Your surgery needs to be done, but I cant do it the next couple of weeks. Clinics may have to close early.

Ive had patients come in with acute issues that were worried were not going to be able to care for them, Freischlag said. Thats the urgency that were seeing.

Novant chief executive Carl Armato said the sacrifices made by health care workers signal their dedication to caring for their communities.

But I can tell you they are tired  of being heroes, Armato said. We need to remember that they are wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, parents and children.

All three of us are asking their communities to help these heroes, who are exhausted from caring for unprecedented numbers of patients, who have seen more death than the rest of us can ever imagine.

Armato said health care workers are asking for more than thanks and gratitude.

Theyre asking all of us to be heroes  to do your part to help reduce the number of COVID cases so that they can deliver care under more reasonable circumstances.

ICU bed capacity

Baptist, Novant and Cone continue to stress they have enough bed capacity, either internally or with affiliated hospitals, to handle the current community surge in COVID-19 cases.

Yet they warn they are experiencing low levels of available beds in intensive care units.

An interactive map by the New York Times, updated to reflect adult ICU bed occupancy and number of COVID-19 patients as of Dec. 30, showed the Triads three main hospitals with ICU occupancy rates far higher than the national average.

Those ICU beds are filled with patients with and without COVID-19-related illnesses.

Forsyth Medical Center had 116 patients with COVID-19 related illnesses. There were 11 ICU beds available for a 90% ICU occupancy rate.

Baptist had 50 COVID-19 patients. There were 11 ICU beds available for an 89% ICU occupancy rate.

Atrium affiliate High Point Medical Center has 35 patients and one available ICU bed for a 98% ICU occupancy rate.

Cone had 82 COVID-19 patients. There were 32 ICU beds available for a 70% ICU occupancy rate.

The average ICU occupancy rate statewide is 81%, while the national average is 77%, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data.

Taking out the politics

Adding to the burden, Armato said, is knowing that the pandemic continues to persist in ways that are avoidable with vaccinations and boosters.

Each chief executive said that more than 80% of their hospitalized COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated. Among COVID-19 patients in the ICU at the hospitals, more than 95% are unvaccinated.

They said they are discouraged by the way politics has contributed to the longevity of the pandemic, particularly in how it has influenced about 30% of adults in the Triad and statewide to opt not to get vaccinated.

A lot of times people get caught up in the political discord around vaccines and national numbers, Armato said.

Were focused on local numbers and we thought we should take the time to let people know whats happening and the impact COVID is having on all of us.

Cagle stressed that health care workers are not political people.

Its the entire safety net structure in your communities being affected. Too many of our firefighters, EMS drivers and police officers are ill with COVID.

Its going to require all of us, working together, to help keep you safe, Cagle said. Were telling you were at a point where we need the public to hear us and help us.

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FAYETTEVILLE  Protesters gathered outside a police station Sunday to decry the fatal shooting of a Black man a day earlier by an off-duty sheriff's deputy in North Carolina.

The demonstrators disputed an initial account of the shooting given by police Saturday. Police in Fayetteville said a preliminary investigation shows that Jason Walker, 37, "ran into traffic and jumped on a moving vehicle," a truck driven by an off-duty Cumberland County sheriff's deputy. The deputy, who was not identified by police, shot Walker and then called 911, police said.

Walker was pronounced dead on scene.

A group of protesters who demonstrated outside the Fayetteville police station Sunday disputed the account given by police.

Elizabeth Ricks, who said she witnessed the incident and applied pressure to Walker's wound, told the crowd Walker was attempting to cross the street to get to his home when he was struck by the deputy's truck and then shot by him.

Ricks told the News & Observer she was on the scene and watched the entire situation unfold. As a trauma nurse, she jumped into action and tried to save Walker's life.

"I did not see anyone in distress. The man was just walking home," said Ricks.

Fayetteville Police Chief Gina Hawkins said during a news conference Sunday that investigators examined the black box computer of the truck, which did not record any impact with any person or thing. In bystander video of the shooting's aftermath, it appears the off-duty deputy had been driving a red truck that wasn't a law enforcement vehicle. She said the only person at the scene who indicated they witnessed what happened said Walker was not struck by the truck.

Hawkins said investigators noted that a windshield wiper was torn off the truck and the metal portion was used to break the windshield in several places.

"We would like to hear from anyone who saw what happened," Hawkins said.

Investigators with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation have taken over the shooting investigation, Fayetteville police said.

WRAL-TV spoke with Walker's family, who described him as a happy-go-lucky man with a big heart.

"I was sad. That's my best friend. We were really close," said cousin Brittany Monroe. "It really broke my heart because he would never hurt anyone. I don't understand how it could happen to him. He would do anything for anybody."
Trumps fault

On Jan. 6, 2021, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy begged then-President Trump to call off the attack on the Capitol building.

He didnt ask House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi. He didnt plead for antifa to stop. He called Trump.

He knew exactly who was responsible.

Afterward, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, Former President Trumps actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty. ... There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said, When it comes to accountability the president needs to understand that his actions were the problem, not the solution.

Trump finally called the attackers off, telling them, So go home. We love you. Youre very special. Was he speaking to antifa? No. He was speaking to the violent insurrectionists who were fighting on his behalf.

It didnt take long after President Bidens Jan. 6, 2022, commemoration speech for Republicans to claim that he was politicizing the event because he pointed to Trump as the cause. What was he supposed to say? Somebody did something?

Trump tried to overthrow a free and fair election. He later begged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to change the election and make him president. We have it on tape. Why isnt he in prison?

April Reaves

Winston-Salem

Unaffiliated voters

The letter writers wish (My New Years wish, Jan. 5) to dissolve both major parties is understandable. He recognizes that this will not likely happen. We are going to have political parties and movements.

Parties are OK and possibly useful. But they have demonstrated over and over that they cannot be trusted to conduct an honorable election. The dominant party uses everything from gerrymandering to voter suppression to keep their hold on power.

But as Byron Williams has pointed out (As Democrats try to predict the future , Dec. 19), the unaffiliated voters outnumber those in either party. Both major parties will try to keep the independents from gaining power. And we need the voices of these independents in our Congress and state legislatures to soften the polarization stifling us now.

In addition to stopping gerrymandering, voter suppression and other tricks, one thing that would help is open primaries. Make the rules the same for everyone to get their names on the primary ballot. They could identify as a member of a political party if they wanted to, but that would be irrelevant to whether they win the right to be on the general election ballot. Voters could mark preferences from one to whatever for the various offices. Then we vote on the top two vote-getters in the general election.

OK, this probably wont happen in my lifetime either. But it could. It would take a grassroots movement  we are unlikely to get much help from the political parties.

Everette Hartzog

Yadkinville

Basic voting rights

I am sure many of us have friends and relatives we cant seem to reason with. And we have been taught to find common ground and look for points we can agree on.

So I want to agree that the last election was very stressful. In part it was stressful because we were in a pandemic and we did not know how safe it would be to wait in line to vote.

State legislatures acted quickly to expand mail-in voting but each state created different rules. And that expansion and lack of consistency is the only rational way I can interpret the constant claim of election fraud.

Lets make the election easier to understand. Yes, the early returns can be misleading when so many mail-in votes are still uncounted (misleading one to think he was winning).

However, a universal voting rights bill that can guide states with consistency on mail-in ballot cut offs or drop slots for those ballots might help us find common ground! We would understand that the true result of an election comes later than election night.

Give us fewer things to fight about. Make voting rights basic, let everyone have their vote and make it the same in all of our states. We might find we have a lot more to agree on and we may find more ways to work together!

Kathy Cooper

Winston-Salem
Internet access for rural Lancaster County residents and those who live in its small towns and villages is likely to get significantly faster in the next year.

Lancaster County commissioners are considering a $12 million project using federal stimulus money that would install the same broadband infrastructure Lincoln has  lines of underground conduit that carriers can lease to bring wireless service to rural communities.

David Young, the citys chief information officer, said the project would put about 170 miles of conduit pipe around the county  including running to all its towns, villages and unincorporated communities. It would also run near schools and county maintenance sites, and include extension points that connect to neighboring counties so they can connect to the infrastructure in the future.

County Board members said they supported the idea of extending broadband to rural areas, but before approving the plan wanted to get more detailed information on cost and make sure the new federal infrastructure bill would not provide a better source of funding.

Young said at this point it appears federal infrastructure money would come to the state, not directly to counties or municipalities.

Theres unanimity, said board member Rick Vest. We all want to expand broadband, we just need the right plan to do it.

The city has about 4,000 miles of conduit, an effort the city began years ago in the downtown area and that eventually covered the entire city. Today, 13 carriers, including Allo Communications, lease the conduit to provide service to customers.

Leasing revenue can only be used for broadband maintenance and expansion, Young said.

The carriers own the conduit that runs to homes in residential neighborhoods and businesses, and the city owns the conduit that runs under the arterials to the neighborhoods, Young said.

The project with the county would work similarly, with the county owning the conduit in rural areas that runs to the communities and private carriers owning the conduit that runs to homes.

Todd Heyne, director of plant operations at Allo Communications, said the company could not afford to provide service to Lancaster Countys rural residents without the county providing the conduit.

The Nebraska Public Service Commission just awarded grants to Allo to connect homeowners in Sprague, Holland and Martell to high-speed internet, part of $17.8 million the commission awarded to providers through the Nebraska Broadband Bridge Program.

It cost the city $20-$25 a foot to install the conduit in Lincoln  a much denser and more urban area and therefore more expensive than the county, Young said. Having that infrastructure there means it cost carriers about $1 a square foot to install the fiber in Lincoln.

Lincoln's infrastructure means it now has the sixth-fastest broadband speeds of any city in the country, Young said. In 2012, it ranked 121st.

The county would see a similar bump. Now residents get about 25 megabyte internet speeds. The project would increase it to 1 gig, or 1,000 megabytes.

"It's a big deal," Young said. "I think it's a very good thing."

If the county began the project by Feb. 1, with construction starting in mid-April, it would be done by June 1, 2023.

The infrastructure would be managed through an interlocal agreement with the citys information services.

The County Board must approve all the requests for proposals and contracts, and could choose to do all or a part of the project, Young said.

The board is expected to make a decision within the next few weeks.

Reach the writer at 402-473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSreist

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They screwed the slender wooden box to an oak tree two weeks ago, hoping Lincolns newest species  the southern flying squirrel  would make it a home.

But the instructors at the School of Natural Resources on East Campus havent encountered any of the critters in their new digs yet.

They did find possible evidence of visits  tiny tooth marks on the peanuts, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds theyd left in the box.

The entrance is too narrow for the more common fox squirrel to get in. A small bird could have squeezed through, but it couldnt have left tooth marks, said Larkin Powell, a professor of conservation biology. That left the possibility that a mouse found the meal.

Still, a trail camera Powell trained at the tree caught nighttime images of the nocturnal animal scurrying around the trunk, and then leaping off a limb.

Im comfortable saying theres evidence theyre using that box, he said.

Powell got involved last month, after an East Campus tree crew taking down a burr oak encountered four flying squirrels living in a hollow limb.

And that surprised him, because he didnt know Lincoln to be home to flying squirrels; the nearest population was nearly 100 miles to the southeast, in and around Indian Cave State Park.

He contacted the state Game and Parks Commission, which wasnt as surprised; since 2018, its biologists had confirmed 11 flying squirrel sightings around the city.

After the East Campus discovery made the news, Powell learned of other encounters.

Several sightings from the Country Club Neighborhood, including a homeowner whod had six in his attic last year. A report from Fremont. One from an East Campus-area yard.

A lot of reports, he said.

But the School of Natural Resources hopes to field more, so they can learn all they can about the species. It recently launched a website  Southern flying squirrels: a citizen science project for Nebraska  with a pair of goals.

First, its encouraging anyone who sees a flying squirrel to fill out a reporting form, with the location and description of the encounter and  ideally  a photo of the animal.

Any sightings people have will tell us how widespread they are, he said. And it would also start to answer questions about how long theyve been in Lincoln, if theyre really widespread, or if theres just a couple of little hotspots.

Its already working. The site got its first report Thursday morning from a homeowner near 40th and Normal, who included photos of flying squirrels squatting in his birdhouse taken in 2020 and 2021.

The site also has detailed plans for building and installing nesting boxes. The design was perfected by Don Althoff, a flying squirrel researcher in Ohio who has built and installed 400 boxes. But he also has East Campus connections -- he earned his masters degree there in 1978 and, in the past few weeks, has shared his expertise with Powell and others.

Powell hopes homeowners use the plans to build their own boxes, and that they agree to participate in the research project. That could mean allowing UNL students and instructors and Game and Parks staff to come inspect the boxes, or it could be as easy as emailing any flying squirrel activity updates.

The website also includes a reminder: Flying squirrels are considered a threatened species in Nebraska, and shouldnt be disturbed without a special permit.

And you dont want to handle them anyway, because they have nice big teeth, even though theyre little cute critters.

The lone nesting box on East Campus will soon be joined by more. Once students return for the spring semester, Powell and School of Natural Resources director John Carroll plan to host what theyre calling a box-raising party.

Well have the pieces, and have the students put them together and help put them up.

How to help a flying squirrel

For plans to build and install a nesting box, or to report flying squirrels for part of a research project, go to: go.unl.edu/flyingsquirrel

Reach the writer at 402-473-7254 or psalter@journalstar.com. On Twitter @LJSPeterSalter

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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  Former "American Idol" runner-up Clay Aiken announced Monday he's running for Congress again in North Carolina, this time seeking to succeed the retiring U.S. Rep. David Price.

In a video announcing his bid in the 6th District, Aiken said he's joining the already crowded field for the Democratic primary, which has been delayed from March to mid-May due to litigation.

Aiken, 43, has had a career in music, theater and reality shows  in addition to political and social activism  since finishing second to Ruben Studdard on the TV singing contest in 2003.

"Hey, folks. It's been awhile. Now, I know I look a little different these days, but we've met before," he says in the video.

Aiken won the Democratic nomination for a largely rural central congressional district in 2014, edging former state Commerce Secretary Keith Crisco. But he lost in the general election to then-Republican incumbent Renee Ellmers, receiving 41% of the vote.

While that district was comfortably Republican, the proposed 6th District that Aiken is running in is overwhelmingly Democratic. It includes all of Orange and Durham counties  home to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, and very affluent western Wake County.

The high-tech Research Triangle Park is within the 6th District and where Price has been serving almost continuously since 1987.

Aiken, who grew up in North Carolina and now lives in the Raleigh area, said he'd work to promote inclusion, provide free, high-quality health care and fight climate change.

"As a loud and proud Democrat, I intend to use my voice to deliver real results for North Carolina families, just like David Price has done for decades," Aiken said in a news release.

The 6th District primary winner would almost assuredly win the general election. The state's congressional map is being challenged in court as an illegal gerrymander, however, meaning the lines could be altered and candidates may reconsider the district in which they could run. But any Triangle-area district should favor a Democrat.

Announced 6th District Democratic primary candidates include state Sens. Valerie Foushee of Orange County and Wiley Nickel of Wake County; Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam; and virologist Richard Watkins.

Aiken, who would be the first openly LGBTQ person elected to Congress from the South if he won in November, said he would provide a counterweight in state politics to hardline Republicans such as Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn. Many Democrats have called on Robinson to resign for comments he's made about sex education in schools that critics say disparaged LGBTQ people.

"As Democrats, we have got to get better about speaking up and using our voices, because those folks ain't quieting down anytime soon," Aiken says in the video.

Aiken said it was Price who helped him get interested in politics as a child. He told The News & Observer of Raleigh that when his eighth grade middle-school class studied the 1992 election, Aiken asked his teacher if he could invite a politician to speak, and contacted Price, who agreed.

Aiken's celebrity status is not quite as strong as it was eight years ago, and he still has not served in elected office before, Meredith College political science professor David McLennan said in an interview Monday. But Aiken proved to be a credible candidate in 2014 and could benefit in the primary from efforts to link himself to Price, he said.

The top two vote-getters would advance to a runoff if the leading candidate does not receive more than 30% of the vote.

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By Trend

Terrestrial broadcasting of Turkish TRT-1 TV channel has been stopped in Azerbaijan, the Radio-TV Broadcasting and Satellite Communications Production Association (Teleradio PA) told Trend on Jan. 10.

The contract between the Azerbaijani Teleradio and the representative office of the Turkish Radio and Television Corporations Directorate in Azerbaijan for the channels broadcasting has expired.

"The Turkish side didnt extend the term of the contract, due to which terrestrial broadcasting of the TRT-1 channel was stopped," the Teleradio PA said.

This channel on the territory of Azerbaijan can continue to be watched using satellite networks and the Internet added the association.

The Teleradio Production Association has stopped terrestrial broadcasting of TRT-1 in Azerbaijan since January 5, 2022.
OMAHA -- Nebraska's prison inmate population is growing faster than anywhere else in the nation, way out of sync with nearly every other state.

And the smoking gun behind much of that growth  and the millions of dollars that those extra inmates are costing Nebraska taxpayers  is a 2009 state law that created new gun crimes and toughened penalties. The law also helped steer hundreds of offenders from federal prisons into the state system, adding to the tab for Nebraska taxpayers.

As Gov. Pete Ricketts and the Legislature debate whether a new $230 million prison is needed to deal with the state's chronically overcrowded and understaffed corrections system, the World-Herald has uncovered a significant untold story behind the prison crisis.

No state grew its prison population more in the last decade than Nebraska. Its inmate count increased 16% between 2010 and 2020 even as such numbers nationally fell by nearly a fourth, according to an analysis of U.S. Justice Department data. In fact, Nebraska and Idaho are the only states whose prisoner numbers didn't decline over the decade.

So at a time when many states across the country are closing prisons, Nebraska is staring at the possibility of building a pricey new one to deal with what has recently become the nation's most overcrowded prison system.

Why is Nebraska trending so out of step with the nation?

Amid a complex web of reasons, the World-Herald analysis indicates the tougher penalties for gun crimes passed by the Legislature in 2009 have been a major driver.

Enacted in response to an epidemic of gang violence in Omahas inner city, the law significantly ratcheted up penalties for assaults and gun crimes, including a number of new mandatory minimum sentences. And it did so at a time many other states were beginning to rethink stiff criminal penalties.

Now offenders facing longer gun and assault sentences are stacking up in Nebraskas prisons. In hindsight, that result seems obvious and predictable. But it wasn't fully appreciated at the time  or even since.

Between 2008 and 2020, Nebraska corrections records show that the number of inmates whose most serious offense was a gun crime skyrocketed from 85 to 777  an increase of more than 800%.

Those incarcerated for assault jumped from 539 to 730. The increase of inmates in those two categories alone account for the majority of the inmate growth in that time.

While few would dispute that those who commit crimes involving violence and guns deserve serious prison time, some question whether lengthening sentences and stacking charges under the 2009 law was necessary to tackle the problem.

Is that really success? said Mark Foxall, a former Omaha and Douglas County law enforcement official who now teaches at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. "Are you doing anything to prevent them from carrying a gun in the first place?

The state's increased gun crime incarceration came as fewer Nebraska gun crime cases were prosecuted federally after passage of the new law.

It's unclear how much the Nebraska law  which sought to make the state's gun laws more closely mirror federal ones  contributed to that decline. A UNO criminologist at the time predicted it would lead to a shift of cases from federal to state courts.

Regardless of the reasons, it's clear hundreds of gun offenders who previously would have done their time in federal prisons over the past decade have instead helped fill Nebraska's badly overcrowded system.

Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine, who backed the law and whose office prosecutes many gang and gun cases, defended the law as a necessary response to a serious problem.

"We said we were going to go after people who were illegally using guns and committing violent crimes, and it shows we've done that," he said.

Gun offenders are indeed paying the price under the law, but the state is, too, in the form of both overloaded prisons and huge costs to taxpayers.

The annual average cost of housing an inmate is more than $40,000 per year. If Nebraska had simply kept its prison population flat over the past decade, the state could have spent tens of millions of dollars less.

It's little wonder that in the past decade, only two states on a percentage basis have increased spending on corrections more than Nebraska. The state's $250 million corrections budget is up 60% over the past decade, well outpacing the 39% rate for the rest of state spending.

Prison spending is set to take an additional leap in coming years under sizable pay increases for corrections workers that are aimed at addressing longtime staffing shortages. And that doesn't take into account the cost of new facilities.

To be sure, its not just offenders sentenced under the 2009 gun law who are filling up Nebraskas prisons. Numerous other factors contribute to Nebraskas nation-leading incarceration growth.

* The number of Nebraska inmates whose most serious crime is a drug offense was up 21% between 2008 and 2020, despite widespread belief that such offenders should be diverted from expensive prison beds. Nebraska has a higher percentage of prisoners locked up for nonviolent offenses than most states.

* One in 3 Nebraska prisoners is back behind bars within three years. Nebraska needs more programming within prisons to help inmates change their lives, and also could do more to support them when they return to the community. Prison staff shortages in recent years have limited prisoners ability to receive such programming.

* Parole remains elusive for many offenders. The median time an offender spends in prison in Nebraska before being paroled increased 60% between 2011 and 2020.

The Legislature now has a historic opportunity to chart a new course on corrections.

A working group that includes law enforcement officials, judges, lawmakers and others has been studying the challenges facing Nebraskas prisons. With help from the nonprofit Crime and Justice Institute, it has put together a report that could spur possible action by the 2022 Legislature.

To help lay the foundation for that debate, The World-Herald plans an occasional series this year on Nebraskas prison crisis  what's driving it and what can be done to relieve it.

The series begins today with the revelation of Nebraskas nation-leading incarceration spike, and how past actions by state lawmakers have played a direct hand in that growth.

In many ways, the 2009 law was just part of a long-term pattern.

State lawmakers over the years have frequently been willing to stiffen criminal penalties, while at the same time showing no appetite for paying for the expensive prison space needed to properly house new inmates, said Bob Houston, former director of the Nebraska Department of Corrections.

It makes no logical sense, said Houston, now a UNO criminal justice professor. But it makes political sense.

The kinds of gang-related shootings that sparked the gun crackdown in 2009 continue  including the death last month of a 14-year-old Omaha girl. Overall, however, trends for homicides and shootings in Omaha have been down in recent years.

But other factors make unclear what role, if any, the 2009 law played in those reductions.

Since then, Omaha police have worked closely with community leaders to overhaul their strategy for tackling gun violence, with positive effect.

Thanks to a beefed-up gang unit, greatly enhanced Crime Stoppers rewards and shot-detection technology that speeds police response, those who commit such crimes are far more likely today to be caught. Research has consistently shown the certainty of being arrested is a vastly more powerful deterrent than punishment.

Some justice advocates say the state would be better off putting the millions spent annually locking up offenders longer into treatment and services that will help them succeed when they are released into society. After all, according to one report, 95% are expected to get out one day.

The state and community also could address the chronic poverty, broken households, generational offending and lack of school success that push kids into gangs and breed crime.

Rather than continue to invest more and more on penalty-driven systems, lets invest more in our youth and families, said Willie Barney, a North Omaha activist who has helped lead community efforts to combat gang violence. There would be an incredible return on investment, and drastic improvement in our communities, if we allocate more funds to prevention and rehabilitation.

* * *

With roughly 50% more prisoners than they were designed to hold, Nebraska prisons have now surpassed Alabamas to become the nations most overcrowded, the World-Herald analysis of federal prison data found.

The analysis also found no state is seeing its prison population grow quite like Nebraskas.

Nebraska at 16% and fast-growing Idaho at 10% are the only states that posted prison population increases between 2010 and 2020  the latest for which state-by-state data is available. Almost half of the states went down more than 20%.

Due to the pandemic, Nebraska and all other states but one saw prison populations drop between 2019 and 2020. The pandemic closed courts and slowed the movement of cases through the justice system.

But most states had broader inmate declines that long preceded the arrival of COVID-19. Nationally, incarcerations were already down 11% in the decade prior to the pandemic. They've now fallen for 11 straight years.

In fact, Nebraska and Idaho are the only states that finished 2019  just before the start of the pandemic  with new all-time-high prison populations. All others saw their inmate populations peak in prior years. Iowa and more than a third of the states peaked a decade or more ago.

Experts have cited generally declining crime rates and efforts to reform criminal justice systems as the main drivers of those national numbers.

The United States by percentage still locks up more of its people than any other country in the world. Nebraska historically has had an incarceration rate significantly below the U.S. rate, and it remains lower today.

But in the past decade-plus, that gap has narrowed significantly. Based on pre-pandemic trends, Nebraska's rate was on pace to top the U.S. rate within a decade. A consultant previously projected Nebraska's prison population, now about 5,500, will top 7,300 by 2030.

For years, Nebraska's lower incarceration rate has given the state a financial advantage, allowing it to spend its money on things like education or social services rather than prisons, said Hank Robinson, a former UNO criminal justice professor.

But its losing that benefit it used to enjoy, Robinson said.

A number of state officials and other observers in Nebraska were stunned by the numbers behind Nebraska's nation-leading prison growth. After the World-Herald uncovered the state's sharp spike in gun offenders being locked up, one of the biggest reasons for that growth became apparent.

"Those weapons numbers are startling, said Len Engel of the Crime and Justice Institute, commenting before the nonprofit began working with Nebraska on its possible criminal justice reforms.

But Robinson already knew what had been driving those numbers. Because he saw it all from two perspectives  during the legislative process, and from inside Nebraska's prisons.

* * *

In 2007 and 2008, rival gangs were at war on Omahas streets. One shooting incident would frequently spark a series of retaliatory shootings.

During the 31 days of July 2007, there were 31 shootings in the city. During a 15-day period in September 2008, there were 19 shootings, including six resulting in death.

"When there were serious gang battles going on, I remember every night getting a phone call at home of a shooting or homicide," Kleine said.

With homicides in Omaha reaching levels not seen in decades, state Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha sought to do something about it.

The centerpiece of his 2009 gun violence bill was a proposed new State Office of Violence Prevention. It would fund intervention programs like CeaseFire, a celebrated, often emulated program in Chicago in which former offenders worked to talk kids out of gang life.

But Ashfords bill also included provisions creating mandatory minimum penalties for gun crimes.

At the same time, then-Attorney General Jon Bruning proposed an anti-gang crime bill of his own that went all-in on enhanced penalties for gun crime.

Ashford and Sen. Mike Friend of Omaha, who had introduced Brunings bill, agreed to marry the two proposals, creating what Ashford called a carrot and stick approach to gangs and gun violence.

The "stick" included a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for using a gun during a crime, and a three-year mandatory sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm. The felon in possession law was also broadened to include other prohibited persons, including domestic violence offenders.

The bill also mandated a three-year minimum term for shooting at an occupied structure, and created a new crime of drive-by shooting carrying a five-year mandatory minimum.

The measure created a new crime of possessing, but not using, a gun during the commission of a felony. The federal government had long had such a possession law, but not Nebraska.

Backers of the bill said they wanted to make Nebraskas laws and penalties on criminal gun possession more aligned with those on the federal level. In the case of felons in possession, the Nebraska penalties became more severe.

The bill also more than doubled the maximum penalty for first- and second-degree assault, and it made some graffiti offenses felonies, too.

Without the stick approach, youre not going to get anywhere with these kids, Ashford said at the time of LB63. Its a tool to get people to understand the gravity of what theyre doing.

While such statements are politically popular, they run counter to what criminal justice experts say.

The National Institute of Justice says studies have consistently shown that increasing the severity of punishment is not an effective deterrent to crime, in part because criminals know little about the sanctions for specific crimes and arent thinking about such things before they offend.

LB63 carried huge budget implications for the state. But you wouldnt know that by looking at fiscal projections at the time.

The total cost to the state budget was officially estimated at just over $500,000, all just to fund the "carrot" in the bill: Ashfords violence prevention office. Due to the difficulty of projecting such impacts into the future, the Legislature and corrections officials offered no estimate of what increased incarcerations under the bill would cost the state.

One of the few voices speaking out publicly against the plan was Robinson, who at the time was director of the juvenile justice institute at UNO and who had been studying gangs.

Testifying in the public hearing, Robinson questioned whether the increased penalties were necessary. He estimated they would cost between $15 million and $20 million a year.

And his estimates didnt include the cost to Nebraska of housing inmates in state prison who previously would have been sentenced under federal gun crimes laws. Robinson anticipated such a shift, with offenders merely trading a federal cell for a state one.

"Constituents demand a response to thuggery and gun violence making headlines around the state, but not at any cost," Robinson said then.

If lawmakers wanted to deter potential shooters, he said, the best way was to give police more resources so offenders would know theres a high likelihood they will be caught.

Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, a consistent and fierce opponent of proposals in Nebraska to lengthen prison sentences, had just left the Legislature due to term limits, not to return for another four years.

Ben Gray, a former Omaha city councilman who has worked to stop gun violence in Omahas Black community, went to Lincoln to testify in favor of Ashford's violence prevention program.

But he says today he never would have offered that support had he known it would be tied to the harsher criminal sanctions. He wonders whether some state lawmakers were similarly blind to all that was in the bill.

Thats a draconian bill, he said recently.

On the floor, the measure sailed to final passage on a 43-4 vote.

The bill was so relatively non-controversial that one of the senators voting for it  despite stated reservations about costs and penalties  was Danielle Conrad. Today, she's the leader of ACLU of Nebraska, which for years has sounded the alarm on Nebraska's overcrowded prisons and called for reforms.

* * *

One criminal who soon became subject to the new gun laws was an 18-year-old gang member named David Castillas. He would serve as an early example of how the new law functioned.

Targeting a rival he believed was seeing his girlfriend, Castillas in June 2010 twice wielded a rifle and shot up occupied Omaha homes during drive-by shootings. One bullet struck a woman in the arm.

Castillas was lucky he didnt kill someone. And under any circumstances, he was likely to face serious prison time for his crimes.

But with the new gun laws on the books, Douglas County prosecutors proceeded to throw the book at him.

He was convicted not only of second-degree assault, but also two drive-by counts and three tack-on charges of using a deadly weapon during a felony. Each of the latter five charges carried new five-year mandatory minimum sentences.

Whether such mandatories were necessary to appropriately punish Castillas is subject to debate.

Under previous state laws, even taking into account time off for good behavior, the judge had the discretion to sentence him to up to 25 years for using a firearm to commit a felony. And shooting at an occupied dwelling previously carried a maximum potential 10-year term. The judge arguably would have had the tools to send him away for as long as he felt was necessary.

But under the new law, with the conviction on the five mandatories, the judge was bound to imprison Castillas for a minimum of 25 years.

The judge apparently felt that was enough, as he tried to set that as the low end of the teens sentence. But the judge erred and accidentally added another 2 years to the minimum.

In the end, Castillas will serve 27 years before he is eligible for parole, and without parole would serve 52 years before completing his sentence. Arrested as an 18-year-old, Castillas would by then be 70 years old.

Kleine, whose office prosecuted the case, defends the sentence as what state law prescribed.

"The bottom line here is people shouldn't shoot into houses that are occupied trying to kill people," he said.

The sentence was upheld by the Nebraska Supreme Court in 2013 in one of the first legal tests of sentences under the new law.

The court also made clear those sentenced under such mandatory minimum laws dont start earning any time off the back end of their sentence for good behavior until they complete the minimum  contrary to corrections department practice at the time.

While the Castillas case may be an extreme example, a look at who is increasingly filling Nebraskas prison beds offers much evidence of the 2009 laws impact.

Before the law change, about 50 offenders per year entered prison in Nebraska whose most serious offense was a gun charge.

Within a few years, the number was up to 100 a year. And then 200 a year. Then 250. At first, they came mostly from urban counties, but over time they have come from all over the state.

And those offenders began stacking up. Between 2008 and 2020, the total number of inmates imprisoned in Nebraska whose most serious offense was a firearms charge shot up more than 814%.

Between 2011 and 2018, the annual percentage of Nebraska inmates admitted with mandatory minimum sentences also quadrupled from 4% to 16%  an increase likely strongly tied to new minimums in LB63.

While it's impossible to determine how long offenders actually would have been sentenced to prison under the old laws, typically increased legal penalties and mandatory minimums do tend to mean more time behind bars. Mandatory minimums give judges less discretion, must be served consecutively, and keep offenders from earning time off of their sentence.

Another indicator of the law's impact: Total incarceration has grown in the past decade even though the number of new admissions has been falling. Offenders are simply staying longer.

If the sentences get longer, it has a compounding effect, as the offenders stack up on top of each other, Robinson said.

Robinson had a first-hand look at the new laws impact on the prison population. For two years beginning in 2012, he worked as an administrator for the state corrections department.

At the time lawmakers passed LB63, the states prison system was already among the nations most overcrowded  41% over design capacity. The inmate population had been flat for several years, but once the law took effect, it soon began to shoot up  27% over the next 10 years.

Robinson and other prison officials would at times suggest to local prosecutors and other law enforcement officials that they try to take gun cases through the federal system, given the impact of the new law on prisoner numbers.

But it didn't make much difference. The numbers just kept going up.

Before the pandemic hit, the Nebraska system topped out at nearly 60% over capacity.

* * *

Brad Ashford today admits that his 2009 anti-violence bill turned out to be a lot more stick than carrot.

The violence prevention office, while today still handing out grant dollars for local programs aimed at stemming violence, has never really lived up to its promise. And he now believes the escalation of penalties went too far and was wrong, putting Nebraska out of step with national criminal justice trends and reforms.

I think it was a wasted opportunity, Ashford said recently. And were paying a price.

Friend, the other LB63 sponsor who went on to serve as the first director of the new violence prevention office, defended the law. One of the prime obligations of public officials is protecting the public, he said.

But Friend also said its always appropriate to look at how a law is working.

I dont think LB63 was a mistake, but time can give you a decent perspective on how a piece of legislation built by humans functions, he said. Maybe we can go back and look at those penalties. But we had an opportunity to handle this issue from every angle, and we did that.

The Nebraska ACLU says the law clearly isn't working as intended and should be fixed as part of "smart justice reform."

Nicole Porter of the Sentencing Project, which has worked to overhaul sentencing policies across the country, said shes not at all surprised to see Nebraskas prison growth under such a law.

She said Nebraska followed a playbook many states had used before, lengthening sentences and creating multiple crimes that can be charged in relation to the same offense, allowing prosecutors to pile penalties on top of penalties. She said prosecutors also use multiple charges and charges carrying mandatory sentences to try to force defendants into plea deals.

Overlapping criminal codes that empower prosecutors to stack charges that result in decades behind bars is the root of the mass incarceration problem in the United States, Porter said.

She said many states have been rethinking such policies. Indeed, one of the ironies of the Nebraska gun crimes law is that it passed just as many states were beginning to embark on criminal justice overhauls meant to reduce incarceration.

Beginning with Texas in 2007, at least 35 states have launched efforts to curb prison growth and save money, according to Pew Charitable Trusts research.

Louisiana, which for years has had the nations highest incarceration rate, enacted changes in 2011 that have helped reduce its prison population 33%.

Alabama, which had the nation's most overcrowded prison system before recently being overtaken by Nebraska, has reduced its inmate count more than 20% since 2012.

Utah, which at one point like Nebraska was looking at the possibility of building a new prison, has seen a 23% inmate decline since 2013.

Actually, Nebraska is among the states that have attempted a similar overhaul. After a previous task force study, the state passed a bill in 2015 that it was hoped would reduce Nebraskas prison population by as much as 20%.

But that measure failed to make its anticipated dent, and it's possible LB63 played a role in that.

New prison admissions for nonviolent crimes like theft, burglary and fraud are down sharply since the reform efforts. But the increased numbers of gun offenders appear to have helped offset those changes.

During the 2015 Nebraska reform effort, lawmakers proved reluctant to touch any of the state's mandatory minimum sentences. At least eight states since 2007 have adjusted mandatory minimums, according to Pew.

Overall, national polls show the public is divided on whether they believe the United States overuses incarceration. A recent Pew poll found 28% of Americans believe people convicted of crimes spend too much time in prison, 32% don't feel they spend enough, and 37% say they spend the right amount.

While such polling tends to split on partisan lines, it's not just a partisan issue. The federal government under Republican President Donald Trump in 2018 passed a law seeking to roll back unnecessarily long federal sentences. And numerous states led by Republicans have passed reforms.

Now Nebraska is again looking to enact changes that could take it off its current course of higher incarceration, overcrowding and bigger spending on prisons.

Sen. Steve Lathrop of Omaha was in the Legislature in 2009 and voted for the gun bill. He was also one of the leaders of the recent state prison working group.

He said he supported the 2009 law as reflecting the prevailing "tough on crime" political views of the time. But he said it's fair now to question whether longer sentences are the best investment for protecting public safety.

"I don't think it has resulted in the public safety we wanted," he said.

He said he will be looking to find a more balanced approach, including "thoughtful changes" to sentences that "don't throw prison doors open," more focus on rehabilitation of offenders while they are incarcerated, and services to help offenders succeed once released.

Ashford believes the state needs both to reconsider criminal penalties and improve prisoners' reentry into society.

Its not acceptable anymore, for political reasons, or any reason, to simply address a problem by putting people in prison for long periods of time, Ashford said.

If we are going to keep these sentences on the books and not enhance reentry options, then, yes, we will have to build another prison. And we will fill it.

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SIOUX CITY, Iowa  Iowa environmental regulators are seeking what could add up to millions of dollars in penalties from the City of Sioux City for repeated violations at the city's wastewater treatment plant.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources also is seeking injunctions enjoining the plant from future violations and requiring the city to meet compliance requirements contained in its state wastewater treatment permit. The DNR is asking a judge to assess penalties of $5,000 per day for hundreds of days on which the violations occurred.

A lawsuit filed Friday lists numerous violations dating back to March 2012 and including a three-year scheme in which two former plant supervisors manipulated water sample test results to ensure that plant discharges into the Missouri River met environmental requirements. It also said that the city declined to fix problems at the plant because doing so would have exposed the city's dishonesty to the DNR about the effectiveness of its operations.

The city also received a substantial economic benefit from inadequately treating wastewater, while attracting new industries and delaying capital investments in the facility, the lawsuit said.

"The city potentially endangered human lives and wildlife by violating water-quality rules and perpetrating a fraud to conceal its employees' actions," Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said in a press release Friday after the lawsuit was filed in Woodbury County District Court.

According to the lawsuit, as early as 2012, plant officials knew the facility could not consistently disinfect the millions of gallons of wastewater each day.

The city has and continues to address the issues that have led to violations, said Guy Cook, a Des Moines attorney representing the city.

"The city has been working diligently to address and make improvements to the wastewater treatment facility," Cook said. "That effort is ongoing and substantial. The city staff has worked cooperatively with the DNR."

Built in 1961, the 28.73 million gallon-per-day plant at 3100 S. Lewis Blvd. accepts industrial, commercial and residential wastewater from Sioux City. The city also accepts wastewater from Sergeant Bluff, South Sioux City, North Sioux City and Dakota Dunes.

From 2012 through April 2015, former plant superintendent Jay Niday and shift supervisor Patrick Schwarte manipulated chlorine levels to make it appear the city was meeting federal E. coli standards when wastewater samples were tested. The two would raise chlorine levels added to wastewater on days that E. coli samples were taken, producing test samples showing plant discharges met federal limits for levels of fecal coliform and E. coli before they were discharged into the Missouri River.

Once the samples were taken, chlorine added to the wastewater was reduced to minimal levels, leading to the discharge of water containing high levels of E. coli and potentially endangering public health and fish and water organisms.

During that time, the lawsuit said, the city was touting the effectiveness of the plant's system in an attempt to convince the DNR to grant a higher rating so the city could increase its treatment capacity in order to recruit more businesses and industries producing high-strength wastewater. The DNR trusts municipalities to self-report its test results and inform regulators of any noncompliance.

"Cheating on required environmental tests gave the city an unfair advantage in this competition to attract business and industry among other municipalities," the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit says the city concealed problems with the disinfection process from the DNR beginning in 2011, and by May 1, 2012, had notified an engineering firm that the system could not meet E. coli treatment levels. Engineers advised the city to conduct additional testing and submit it to the firm, but the city never provided the data. The city also did not seek a contract to replace or upgrade faulty systems, actions that would have cost millions of dollars and required DNR approval, a process that would have revealed the city's deception to the state and endangered its ability to increase capacity and attract new business.

The engineering firm in 2013 sent the city a draft master plan in which it said the plant was unable to provide adequate disinfection and also included recommendations for treatment alternatives. The city instructed the firm not to finalize the plan and began using a different firm.

In April 2015, a plant employee tipped off the DNR to Niday and Schwarte's actions. The city fired the two in June 2015, and both surrendered their state wastewater licenses.

A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency investigation ensued, resulting in criminal charges against Niday and Schwarte. Both pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges of conspiracy and falsifying or providing inaccurate information. Niday was sentenced in April to three months in prison with two years of supervised release to follow and fined $6,000. Schwarte was sentenced in November 2020 to two years' probation and a $5,000 fine.

Niday's attorney said at sentencing he did not know the motive for Niday's actions, but he did not profit financially.

Cook, the city's attorney, on Friday reiterated the city's position that Niday and Schwarte acted on their own and were not directed by city department heads or other top officials. Friday's lawsuit does not implicate any other city workers or administrators by name, though it said at least four other plant workers said Niday and Schwarte directed them to manipulate the chemical levels.

"This conduct was rogue conduct by Mr. Niday and Mr. Schwarte," Cook said.

The DNR had put its case against the city on hold while federal authorities investigated the allegations and prosecuted Niday and Schwarte.

The attorney general's office is not conducting its own criminal investigation, spokesman Lynn Hicks said.

"There's been no referral to our office for criminal charges," Hicks said.

An EPA official would not comment on whether its investigation has concluded and referred questions to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Iowa. A U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman said Friday he had been unable to confirm the investigation's status.

The DNR lawsuit also is seeking penalties for a number of other wastewater violations. The DNR said that the city exceeded ammonia concentration limits on several occasions in 2018 and 2019, resulting in the DNR issuing a compliance schedule requiring the city to meet more stringent ammonia limits by April 1, 2025.

The city also exceeded daily maximum total residual chlorine, or TRC, concentration limits and daily maximum TRC mass limits in 2017, 2018 and several months in 2019. Again, the DNR has issued a compliance schedule requiring the city to meet stricter TRC limits by Dec. 1, 2023. The DNR says the city continues to have difficulty meeting those TRC limits and exceeded them in March, May and June of 2021.

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It is unclear why it took Racine County authorities more than six months to close the investigation into the death of Malcolm James, the 27-year-old man suffering a mental health crisis who died June 1, 2021, in the Racine County Jail.

James family said they had no direct contact with the Racine County District Attorneys Office, which elected not to file any charges in the case, until they were brought in Wednesday for a meeting upon the investigation being closed.

On Thursday, James mother, Sherry James, said that the day before was the first time I ever sat down with any official regarding my son, and this happened to him on June 1st.

The family found out he had died via social media, after the Racine County Sheriffs Office issued a release regarding James death soon after he died. James death was the second within four days in the jail; the first was Ronquale Ditello-Scott Jr. on May 29, a death blamed on a fentanyl overdose. His investigation was officially closed Dec. 3.

James family said they were never contacted by any representative of the Racine County Sheriffs Office, which operates the jail, or Kenosha County Sheriffs Department, which conducted the initial investigation.

The KCSD investigation concluded in August and was delivered to District Attorney Patricia Hanson that month.

In November, Hanson received reports from two doctors she requested provide their opinions on what may have cause James death. It has not been disclosed when Hanson requested these doctors opinions.

The Milwaukee County Medical Examiners Office, which performed the autopsy, concluded James had died of asphyxia because of the position he had been put in by jail guards as they struggled for minutes to remove Taser barbs from his back. These two doctors, Tom Neuman of the University of California-San Diego Medical Center and Darrell Ross of Valdosta (Georgia) State University, concluded he had not died of asphyxia but rather passed because of pre-existing heart conditions.

Citing this disconnect, Hanson ruled that no charges should be filed against any of those involved.

On Thursday, The Journal Times asked Hanson, Can you share why Kenosha Countys investigation concluded in August but it was not until yesterday that your investigation completed? in an email, among two other questions regarding Ross and Neuman.

She answered the questions regarding Ross and Neuman. She did not reply to the question about why it took so long for the investigation to conclude.

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A series of bills with bipartisan support could give the University of Wisconsin System a new sustainable source of money that is nearly three times more than what campuses received in funding increases in the most recent state budget.

One bill involves the tuition reciprocity agreements between Wisconsin and Minnesota that allow students to attend colleges in their neighboring state while paying in-state tuition. The bill would shift negotiating authority from Wisconsins Higher Educational Aids Board to the System.

More importantly, it would let UW campuses keep more money from Minnesota students paying Minnesota tuition rates, which are higher than Wisconsins. Currently, some of that money  estimated to be about $11.4 million in 2020  is deposited into Wisconsins general fund with the rest going back to Minnesota. The campuses only receive the amount that a Wisconsin student pays.

The idea that campuses should keep the tuition dollars they earn has been around for a long time, interim System President Tommy Thompson said, and its finally gaining traction.

UW-Madison officials were unable to offer an estimate of how much more money would flow to UW-Madison through the new formula. Data shows about 2,800 undergraduates from Minnesota enrolled last school year.

Another bill would allow the UW Board of Regents to invest more of its money. State law currently allows the board to manage investment of gifts, grants and donations, yielding an annual return of about $400,000.

The System is uniquely constrained in lacking the basic authority to manage much of its working capital, which is standard practice at peer institutions and in the private sector, UW-Madison interim chief financial officer Rob Cramer told lawmakers this fall. Expanding the types of revenue streams that can be invested would help fund top priorities, such as financial aid and building maintenance upgrades that have been delayed for years.

Gaining this broader authority would allow the System to invest about $350 million more, officials estimated. Assuming a 3.2% return annually, that would generate about $11.2 million.

I think it just makes a lot of sense, said Sen. Roger Roth, R-Appleton, chair of the Senate committee that held a hearing on the bill in October.

Together, the reciprocity and investment bills would add about $22.6 million to the Systems budget.

In the two-year state budget passed last summer, the System received an $8.25 million increase, which officials have noted is essentially a budget cut. Thats because the money was directed toward specific programs, leaving campuses to tap existing funds for $8.4 million needed to cover a 2% pay increase for UW employees over the next two years.

Engineering building

A third bill with bipartisan support would lay the groundwork for a new engineering building at UW-Madison by freeing up $1 million for the university to begin advanced planning and design work instead of waiting until mid-2023 when the next state budget is passed.

UW-Madison earlier this year requested $150 million to begin construction on a $300 million engineering building that would replace an 82-year-old facility. A third of the initial cost would come from gifts and grants with the rest supported through state borrowing.

The Republican-controlled budget-writing committee removed the project from the budget passed last summer, a move that flummoxed UW-Madison officials who say it would be a boon for the states economy.

College of Engineering Dean Ian Robertson has said some 7,000 students apply each year with the intent to study undergraduate engineering but the college only has space and teaching resources to accept about 1,000 applicants annually. Thats despite peer schools having student body sizes ranging from 6,000 to nearly 9,500 students.

The new building would allow the college to add 1,000 more students to its overall undergraduate student body.

Odds of passing

Thompson put the three bills chances of passing the Republican-controlled Legislature at 80% and said hes confident that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers would sign the bills. The bills, he added, are a good opportunity to break the logjam between the Legislature and the governor by using the System as a fulcrum.

You have to be optimistic just to get up in the morning, he said in an interview. I think we have a very good chance of getting all three passed.

Britt Cudaback, an Evers spokesperson, said the governor is generally supportive of these concepts but will wait to see the final bills passed by the Legislature before making any final decisions.

Representatives for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, did not respond to several requests for comment on the bills.

But both the Senate Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges and the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities have held hearings on most of the bills. Republican lawmakers in charge of those committees said they plan to take votes in early 2022.

I think well be able to get all of those bills (to the floor), said Roth said. Just in conversations Ive had, people have been quite supportive.

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On Nov. 21, the nation looked on in horror to see a man drive through the Waukesha parade, killing six people and injuring dozens more.

Then, not long after, it was revealed that he was out on a $1,000 cash bail after allegedly running over the mother of his child.

Time and time again this story plays out, not just with Darrell Brooks, who has been charged in the Waukesha deaths.

Time and time again, someone who is out on bail commits another crime. In many cases, even then they are able to get out again, on another bond.

Legislation has been introduced in Madison to address this issue.

The Republican-authored bills would require a $10,000 minimum bond for defendants who have previously committed a felony or violent misdemeanor, bar judges from setting an unsecured bond or releasing without bail someone previously convicted of bail jumping, and require the Wisconsin Department of Justice to create a bond transparency report detailing crime and bond conditions.

To be clear, the bail system is an important part of our criminal justice system. A person is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. All individuals charged with a crime need the opportunity to prove their innocence  not just those who can afford it.

With that said, there needs to be a real system in place to protect the public particularly in cases involving a violent offender charged with a new crime.

Following the Waukesha tragedy, a group of Milwaukee taxpayers filed a complaint with Gov. Tony Evers against Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, triggering a process that could end with Evers removing Chisholm from office. That complaint was filed because the $1,000 bail came from an attorney in Chisholms office. Ultimately, Attorney General Josh Kaul said the voters should choose whether to remove Chisholm from office.

While the governor and attorney general want to leave the election up to voters, the attorney general should still take a lead on evaluating bail bond discretion throughout the state.

Minor nonviolent offenses dont need to be treated like violent offenses. But there needs to be consequences for crimes committed.

The Waukesha tragedy may be what is behind the urgent push for bail reform. But its just the case that has gotten the most publicity. Hopefully the magnitude of that tragedy can help garner bipartisan support for change.

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Killeen, TX (76540)

Today

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 72F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 72F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph.
1. Yes. Raising the bar for future developments will boost the citys housing market.

2. Yes. It will help in newer areas, but more needs to be done to change Killeens image.

3. No. The new standards will just slow down homebuilding and drive away developers.

4.No. The ordinance will do little more than drive up the price of new homes in the city.

5. Unsure. Its hard to say what the effect will be until they have been in place for a while.

Vote

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UAE-based Azizi Developments said it has partnered with Cummins, a global leader that designs, manufactures, distributes and services a broad portfolio of power solutions, to facilitate supply of its power generators for the developer's flagship waterfront project, Riviera, in Dubai.

Riviera is part of Azizis award-winning portfolio. It is a waterfront-lifestyle destination conveniently located in the heart of Mohammed Bin Rashid City, in the midst of all the business, leisure and retail hubs of the city, stated he developer.

Cummins products cover diesel, natural gas, electric and hybrid powertrains and powertrain-related components, including filtration, aftertreatment, turbochargers, fuel systems, controls systems, air handling systems, automated transmissions, electric power generation systems, batteries, electrified power systems, hydrogen generation, and fuel cell products.

On the deal, CEO Farhad Azizi said: "We are pleased to announce our partnership with Cummins as part of our commitment to procuring only the best of components. Our developments are known for delivering unrivalled modern luxury - a design and construction philosophy that distinguishes us and assures investor satisfaction."

"Cummins was chosen as the best fit to power up our buildings at Riviera," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
In a forum hosted by the La Crosse Area Chamber of Commerce on Monday, area leaders discussed some of the more pressing issues for the region and possible solutions.

La Crosse Mayor Mitch Reynolds joined La Crosse County Board Chairwoman Monica Kruse for the forum, and both emphasized that regional collaboration and partnership has grown in the last year.

This has been evident through recent collaboration on launching bridge housing that would help individuals escape homelessness. The city and county recently made an offer to purchase the Chambers current headquarters, but it was unsuccessful.

But its definitely not the end of the road, Kruse said Monday. Both she and Reynolds said that the groups continue to search for other properties for the project, which would in-part be paid for using American Rescue Plan Act dollars.

Reynolds said that other partners, such as the Chamber, could help by being advocates for the cause and spreading the message that solving homelessness is good for everybody.

It makes our entire region, our entire area healthier if we can find lasting and permanent solutions to homelessness, Reynolds said.

As for future partnership between the city and county, Reynolds said everythings on the table.

Vaccine mandate impacts?

As the Supreme Court continues to debate a new vaccine mandate from President Joe Biden, Kruse and Reynolds differed slightly on the impact it might have.

The vaccine-or-test policy, which technically went into effect Monday, mandates private businesses that employ more than 100 people to require employees to either be fully vaccinated or test regularly.

Chamber CEO Neal Zygarlicke, who moderated the forum, said that medium-sized businesses in the area, especially those who just cross the threshold of 100 employees, are worried.

Theyve heard from their workforce that says, If this is happening I might not be here anymore, Zygarlicke said.

Kruse  who said she supports the mandate and encouraged everyone who was able to get vaccinated  said she thinks it wont have an adverse effect and instead would make people feel safer to visit businesses.

I dont see a lot of downside, she said.

Reynolds said that he thinks there will be a reshuffling of the workforce if the mandate is allowed to continue, where employees will do a job hop to find a workplace that matches their vaccine stance.

Both agreed that the impact the pandemic has had on the regions workforce has been significant, though, with Kruse saying the area is not immune to the great resignation.

Taxes, housing

Housing remains top-of-mind for officials. An added stressor on the troubling area housing market includes last years city assessments that raised property values and threatens to raise rent.

Well have certainly an impact on the level of affordable housing in our community, Reynolds said.

The mayor, who has been on the job for just under a year, said his sister has been considering moving to the La Crosse area from Virginia, but has been stunned by the lack of housing and how high rent is.

The solution, Reynolds said, is to continue adding to the housing stock. This includes affordable and market-rate units, he said, and he pointed to the 5th Ward Residences, River Point District and 4th Street housing developments as examples of this work already underway.

But Reynolds also cautioned that this strain on housing is likely to continue as the city continues to become compliant with the state on its assessments. The city is required to be within 10% of market value once every five years.

Were not at that point where were even assessing what we should be assessing, Reynolds said. So just as a fair warning: Theres more coming just in order to stay compliant with state law.

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The Welsh Congregational Church in Bangor was a religious organization from 1855 to its dissolution in 1904 and was founded and attended by many Welsh immigrants in that area of the county. Prominent last names of Bangor Welsh are Wheldon, Jenkins, Jones, Williams and Evans. Services were held solely in the Welsh language. Eisteddfod, a festival of Welsh song and poetry held a few times each year, attracted the Welsh community from all parts of the county.

But by 1904 most of the families who made up the congregation were third or fourth generation Welsh-Americans who no longer spoke or understood the Welsh language. Upon dissolution of the Congregational organization, many members then joined the Welsh Presbyterian Church, an earlier splinter group from the Congregational Church, which eventually became First Presbyterian United in Bangor.

Anyone with more information about this photo or wishing to donate photos of the Coulee Region may contact the La Crosse Public Library Archives at (608) 789-7136 or email archives@lacrosselibrary.org.

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The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources plans to allow one of the states largest dairies to nearly double its herd, prompting criticism that the agency is failing to use environmental protection powers granted just six months ago.

In July the Supreme Court affirmed the DNRs authority to cap the number of animals on a farm and require groundwater monitoring as conditions of a permit.

The case involved a decadelong fight over Kinnard Farms efforts to expand its feedlot operations in Kewaunee County, an area rife with groundwater contamination.

Based on the courts ruling, the DNR drafted new permit conditions for the farm, which has about 8,000 cattle and is expected to generate more than 103 million gallons of liquid manure, according to the agency.

The draft permit would give Kinnard Farms until March to come up with a plan for monitoring groundwater around more than 16,000 acres of land where it spreads manure. It would also allow Kinnard to expand its current herd by nearly 90%.

Tony Wilkin Gibart, executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates, said the draft permit is an egregious missed opportunity to use the authority confirmed in the Supreme Court decision to make headway in bringing clean drinking water to Kewaunee County.

Gibart said the animal limit is not based in science.

The proposed limit in no way responds to the extent of the contamination around Kinnard Farms, Gibart said. Or that the landscape in Kewaunee County cannot safely absorb additional manure spreading.

Jodi Parins, who lives about three miles from the Kinnard farm, said the current proposal represents a complete abdication of the DNRs responsibility and authority.

The court has given you the go-ahead, Parins said. Why wouldnt you use that authority to actually protect our water instead of continuing to protect the polluters? What happened to the year of clean water?

Parins, who previously served on the towns planning committee, noted the proposed cap is triple the number of animals Kinnard had in 2014 when a judge declared a massive regulatory failure had caused widespread contamination of the areas drinking water.

If you are going to put a cap, make it be meaningful, she said.

Kewaunee County resident Nancy Utesch called the proposed permit completely negligent.

Its inhumane, she said.

Chris Clayton, chief of the DNRs agricultural runoff section, said the cap is based on Kinnard Farms growth projections, although the farm would first have to show it has enough capacity to store and safely spread any additional manure before it could grow.

While it will be up to Kinnard Farms to design and carry out groundwater testing, Clayton said it will be subject to DNR review. A DNR hydrogeologist recommended the system include at least three monitoring wells in at least one field.

One thing we would look for is to make sure that data is useful as scientific information  for the impacts of manure on groundwater, he said.

Evan Feinauer, a staff attorney for Clean Wisconsin who argued the case before the Supreme Court, said its a huge deal that the DNR is requiring groundwater monitoring, but the proposed requirements dont go far enough.

We always knew that DNR would have to take a look at each farm individually to decide what conditions are needed, and that we would have to press DNR to do more than they have in the past, Feinauer said. We never stop advocating for DNR to improve these permits and better protect public health.

Have your say The Department of Natural Resources is proposing to modify a wastewater permit for Kinnard Farms that includes a limit nearly 90% higher than the Kewaunee County dairy's current 8,000 cows. To view the draft permit visit go.madison.com/kinnard-farms. Written comments can be submitted by email to Tyler.Dix@wisconsin.gov or mailed to Tyler Dix, CAFO Permit Coordinator, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, 101 S Webster St., Madison, WI 53707. The deadline for comments is Jan. 25.

Kinnard Farms did not respond to requests for comment on the permit or its expansion plans.

Kinnard is currently the states seventh-largest dairy farm, according to DNR records. Under the proposed permit modification it would be the largest by a margin of more than 40%.

According to the DNR, shallow and fractured bedrock make the landscape around Kinnard Farm particularly vulnerable to groundwater contamination, and water under the farm already exceeds state standards for nitrate and bacteria. During a 2014 hearing, a judge heard testimony that up to half of the wells in the town of Lincoln were contaminated.

The DNR is accepting comments on the draft permit through Jan. 25. Clayton said its not clear how long it will take the agency to issue the final permit.

We are receiving quite a bit of public comment, he said. Well have to review those and consider them.

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CONESTOGA VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT

Conestoga Valley School District Board of Directors will meet at 7 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 10, at the administration center, 2110 Horseshoe Road.

Among the agenda items:

 Commentary on district activity: (a) Superintendents comments; (b) board comments.

 Public/professional/staff input: (a) Student report  Fritz Elementary School; (b) public comments.

 Actions/discussion items: (a) Review of change orders for the new Gerald G. Huesken Middle School; (b) review of PlanCon Part F for renovations of the new Smoketown Elementary School; (c) review of updated COVID isolation and quarantine guidelines; (d) budget  (1) budget update; (2) budgetary exceptions; (3) review of capital projects for 2022-23 budget; (e) policy review  621 bonding, 623 capital assets and GASB statement 34, 624 credit cards and 625 stabilization funds; (f) review of Lancaster County Career & Technology Center budget for 2022-23; (g) review of new course proposals for 2022-23; (h) review of Frontline Education quote; (i) review of IU13 statement of work  differentiated teacher supervision plan; (j) ESSER grant update,

 Review board agenda: Jan. 18.

HEMPFIELD SCHOOL DISTRICT

The Hempfield School District School Board will meet at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 11, at the administration building, public board room, 200 Church St., Landisville. Among the agenda items:

 School Director Recognition month.

 Superintendents report: COVID update; draft 2022-23 school calendar.

LANCASTER CITY COUNCIL

Lancaster City Council will meet at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 11, in council chambers, City Hall annex, 120 N. Duke St., Marion St. entrance.

Among the agenda items:

 Proclamation, honors, awards and resolutions of recognition: Mayoral proclamation honoring Addie Cunningham.

 Reports of committees of council meetings held on Jan.: (a) public safety committee; (b) public works committee; (c) economic development committee; (d) finance committee; (e) community planning committee; (f) personnel committee.

 Legislative agenda: (a) Nomination for appointment to consider a nomination for appointment to the City Revitalization & Improvement Zone Authority; (b) Heritage Conservation District to consider the following applications and recommendations from the Historical Commission for improvements to properties within the Heritage Conservation District  (1) Lancaster General Health, owner of 530 N. Queen St., 534-536 N. Queen St. and 48 W. Frederick St. (rear), proposes demolition of two brick structures on North Queen Street and a rear wing on a building on West Frederick Street; (2) Lancaster General Health, owner of 528-550 N. Queen St., 38-48 W. Frederick St., and 547 N. Prince St., proposes construction of two multifamily residential buildings, a parking garage and a medical office building. (These applications were recommended for approval by the Historical Commission.); (c) ordinance for first reading  Administration Bill No. 01-2022, authorizing a cable franchise agreement; (d) resolutions  Administration Resolution No. 05-2022 authorizing a funding project of the Lancaster Higher Education Authority on behalf of Harrisburg Area Community College, Administration Resolution No. 06-2022 authorizing a funding project of the Lancaster Municipal Authority on behalf of Homestead Village, Administration Resolution No. 07-2022 amending civil service rules and regulations, Administration Resolution No. 08-2022 authorizing conditional appointment of firefighters.

LANCASTER CITY TRAFFIC COMMISSION

Lancaster City Traffic Commission will meet at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 11, at council chambers, 120 N. Duke Street, Among the agenda items:

 Old business: No. 45-2021, consider the request of Camille Hopkins, principal of Ross Elementary, to change the 800 block North Market Street to one-way northbound from Ross to Liberty streets.

 No. 52-2021, to consider the request of Alex Otthofer to remove the turning lane from West King Street onto North Mulberry Street.

 No. 53-2021, to consider the request from Jake Thorsen to discuss the intersection of Manor and Filbert streets and the hazards of pedestrian crossing

 No. 54-2021, to consider the request from Jake Thorsen to discuss the intersection of Water and Vine streets and the hazards of pedestrian crossing, especially with the Boys and Girls Club.

 No. 55-2021, to consider the request of Jeremy Young to request immediate traffic calming measures and discuss the Citys high injury network identified in the Vision Zero plan.

 No. 56-2021, no action requested, status update only.

 New business: Consent agenda: No. 01-2022 the following signs have been tentatively approved/installed  handicapped parking, 14 E. Filbert St., 310 Ruby St, 655 N. Pine St., 144 N. Broad St., 456 Manor St., 711 E. End Ave., 238 N. Prince St., 524 Hand Ave., 821 Rolridge Ave., 309 S. Queen St., 527 N. Mary St., and 822 E. Chestnut St.

 No. 2-2022: The following signs have been removed  handicapped parking 205 W. King St., 747 New Holland Ave., 336 New Dorwart St., 541 S. Queen St., and 563 E. Frederick St.

 No. 3-2022: The following conditional/temporary parking permits have been issued by LPA  250 N. Duke St., Apt. 2, 335 W. Chestnut St. Apt. 11, 119 College Ave. Apt. 3, 510 N. Duke St. Apt. A, and 130 N. Prince St. Apt. 1.

 Action agenda  No. 4-2022, consider the request of Don Styer regarding a dangerous intersection of North Duke and East New Street, No. 5-2022 to consider the request from Samantha Schwartz requesting a stop sign at the three-way intersection of East Frederick and North Marshall streets; No. 6-2022 to consider the request of Karen Rodriguez regarding dangerous intersection at Fairview and Seymour and Fairview and Wabank streets; No. 7-2022 to consider the request of Adriana Atencio to discuss the problems with vehicle parking in the bike lane; No. 8-2022 to consider the request from Clark Albrecht requesting to extend the no parking area for the driveway located at 620 S. Prince St.; No. 9-2022 to consider the request to extend the no parking area on East Fulton Street; No. 10-2022 to consider possibly the concerns of Bill Hannegan regarding the proposed redevelopment of 210 College Ave.

LANCASTER COUNTY PLANNING

The Lancaster County Planning Commission meeting scheduled for Monday, Jan. 10, has been canceled. The next meeting is planned for 2:30 p.m. Jan. 24 at the Lancaster County Government Center, 150 North Queen St. Rooms 102/104; livestream: https://call.lifesizecloud.com/1696302; or call 312-584-2401, code 1696302#.

MANHEIM TWP. COMMISSIONERS

Manheim Township Commissioners will meet at 6 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 10, at the municipal building, 1840 Municipal Dr. Among the agenda items:

 Public hearings/presentations/appointments: (a) Manheim Township Ambulance Association monthly report; (b) fire rescue monthly report; (c) police department monthly report; (d) Resolution 2022-23  appointing Michael B. Warfel to the position of police officer with the Manheim Township Police Department.

 New business: Consent agenda (1) Belmont Lot 3 apartments for preliminary/final subdivision and land development plan, Fruitville Pike and Belwyck Boulevard, zoned R-3 & T-4 Overlay, financial security reduction No. 2; (2) Brent L. Millers Jewelers  preliminary/final lot add-on and stormwater management plan, 1610 Manheim Pike, zoned B-4, financial security reduction No. 1; (3) 801 Lititz Road  stormwater management plan, zoned R-1, financial security release; (4) Lancaster Bible College turf field  stormwater management plan, 901 Eden Road, zoned IN, financial security release.

 Resolutions: Resolution 2022-24  Dissolution of the Police Advisory committee.

 Ordinances: (a) Ordinance 2022-01  street dedication (Grandview); (b) Ordinance 2022-02  authorizing the Board of Commissioners to appoint a deputy tax collector and modify the tax collectors compensation; (c) Resolution 2022-25  Approving the tax collectors appointment of the Lancaster County Treasurers Office as the deputy tax collector.

 Motions/decisions: (a) Motion  request approval to receive bids for various public works equipment, materials and projects; (b) motion  appointment of chairperson and vice chairperson for the agriculture/farm advisory committee; (c) motion  appointment of commissioners as department liaisons; (d) motion  appointment of commissioners to the Lancaster Intermunicipal Committee, Central Lancaster County Council of Government (COG) and General Municipal Authority.

 Acknowledgments: (a) Shaker Patel, zoning ordinance text amendment petition, amend Article V, Section 503, Article XXIV, Section 2408 and Article XX, Section 200; (b) David and Jennifer Ishler, conditional use request, Article XXI, Section 2101.2, 2650 Sutton Place, zoned R-3.
Updated on Jan. 10 at 4:28 p.m.

Lancaster County had 228 COVID-19 patients in its three hospitals Monday, up 18% from a week ago and marking the fifth-straight day of setting new pandemic records for hospitalizations.

The number of patients hospitalized was more than three times what it was just two months ago, when the tally was 72 on Nov. 10.

About 75% of the 146 COVID-19 patients at Lancaster General, the countys largest hospital, are not fully vaccinated, including all but one of the hospitals COVID-19 patients on ventilators, according to hospital data.

The surge of patients has led overburdened hospital systems in Pennsylvania to ask for additional help from the federal government. A federal strike team was approved two weeks ago to assist at WellSpan York Hospital, and Lancaster General said last week that it was weighing a similar request to support its overwhelmed staff.

Our health system leadership is in ongoing contact with Department of Health and our local state legislators regarding COVID-19s impact on our operations, and potential solutions, as we weigh all options to assist the staff in managing the volume of patient care, Dr. Michael Ripchinski, LGHs chief clinical officer, said Monday.

Despite the increase in total COVID-19 hospitalizations, the number of COVID-19 patients on ventilators declined slightly to 23 Sunday and Monday. The pandemic record for patients on ventilators is 29, last reached on Jan. 3.

The Omicron variant of the coronavirus, thought to be more contagious but less severe than previous strains of COVID-19, has been driving a sharp increase in county cases. The countys average daily case rate hit 1,148 Sunday after surpassing 1,000 cases per day on Friday. Before the latest surge, the daily case average, measured over seven days, had peaked at about 429 per day in December 2020.

For the fully vaccinated, the likelihood that Omicron will cause any serious lung injury is low, said John Goldman, an infectious disease specialist at UPMC in Harrisburg. The unvaccinated on the other hand will still run a good risk of having the virus running throughout your lungs which is more severe.

The Lancaster County Commissioners on Wednesday will consider approving use of the Lancaster County Public Safety Training Center in East Hempfield Township as a drive-through COVID-19 testing site for the next month. Lancaster General Health and the county's three other health care systems would be allowed to use the center for free to conduct COVID-19 testing, according to the draft agreement.

Forty-nine people in the county have died of COVID-19 this month, putting the county on track to record more deaths than the 134 it did in December 2021, which was the fourth-highest of the pandemic.

Gillian McGoldrick contributed to the reporting of this story.
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DMCC, a flagship free zone and Government of Dubai Authority on commodities trade and enterprise, has announced that it achieved its best year on record, attracting 2,485 companies to Dubai in 2021.

The year also saw DMCC achieve its best June, August, September and November, reaching a total of over 20,000 member companies. The record-breaking performance follows on from the 2,025 companies that joined the business district in 2020.

Driven by strong international demand, the expansion of its commodities centres and the launch of the DMCC Crypto Centre, DMCC attracted companies from a broad range of sectors. Significant attraction was seen in key target markets, including China, US, UK and Russia, demonstrating Dubais continued commercial appeal, and the ease of setting up and doing business at DMCC, a statement said.

Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, DMCC, said: With our sights set firmly on positioning Dubai as the preeminent place to do business in any sector, DMCC has seen substantial growth across all aspects of the business.This unprecedented performance is reflective of the value that DMCC provides to its member companies through its facilities and services, and the significant progress we are making in emerging sectors such as crypto.This year, I have seen first-hand how crypto interlinks across our industries, so I am proud that DMCC is championing the cryptographic space in Dubai.Given the incredible momentum that the DMCC team has collectively achieved this year, I am convinced that 2022 will feature major milestones, including the completion of Uptown Tower.

From 2018 to 2021, 8,347 new companies joined DMCC and became ambassadors for doing business in Dubai. Had our trade ecosystem  strategically developed and enhanced over two decades  not been in place, Dubai could have lost out on the substantial associated economic impact. The future is bright and further records will be broken. We look forward to working alongside our leadership, governments abroad, DMCC members and the wider private sector and together, continue delivering for Dubai, he added.

Feryal Ahmadi, Chief Operating Officer, DMCC, added: Ending the fiscal year with record-breaking performance is a true moment of pride for everyone at DMCC  and also sets the bar high for the year ahead. Our business district has become the location of choice for over 20,000 companies and with that comes tremendous responsibility in enhancing our services and offerings, forging new partnerships, and driving new trade flows. We have a number of exciting projects in the pipeline for 2022, including DMCCs landmark Dubai Diamond Conference in just 7 weeks, and the launch of the next edition of our flagship Future of Trade report later in the year.

Hub for crypto innovation

DMCC, in partnership with CV Labs, officially inaugurated the DMCC Crypto Centre, a comprehensive ecosystem for businesses operating in the cryptographic and blockchain sectors. Located in Almas Tower, the DMCC Crypto Centre has become a hub for the development and application of crypto and blockchain technologies. The Crypto Centre offers a home to all types and sizes of crypto businesses, from companies developing blockchain-enabled trading platforms, through to firms offering, issuing, listing, and trading crypto assets.

In April, DMCC signed a land sale and purchase agreement with REIT Development to establish the largest precious metals refinery and storage facility across the GCC and the first to be completely enabled by blockchain in the GCC. The facility will refine and store precious metals including gold, silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium.

DMCC also launched two special editions of its Future of Trade thought leadership series. The crypto-specific edition focuses on the decentralised finance (DeFi) sector and its impact on trade, which is set to revolutionise current financial systems through the use of blockchains and other cryptographic technologies. Titled Perspectives on Decentralised Finance, the free to download report examines three core themes: whether DeFi will substitute or supplement traditional finance systems; DeFi representing a tool that can benefit both developed and developing markets; and the crucial topic of establishing progressive regulatory frameworks that facilitate trade and innovation. The report is available in Arabic, English and Mandarin.

Driving global commodities trade

Throughout 2021, Dubai built upon its status as the global hub for the commodities trade.

The Dubai Diamond Exchange (DDE), the worlds largest diamond tender facility, held 68 diamond and precious stone tenders, and Dubai is now the fastest growing diamond hub in the world.

The DMCC Tea Centre handled over 35,580 metric tonnes of tea, with an overall value addition volume of 6,482 metric tonnes, representing a 14% increase from 2020.

The DMCC Coffee Centre stored and processed more than 9,000 MT of both green and roasted coffee from a broad range of producing markets across Central and Southern America, Asia and Africa. The Centre doubled its Membership count, demonstrating the significant growth seen within the coffee centre as businesses turn to Dubai for high-quality logistics and distribution solutions as the market struggles with supply chain issues.

Held under the theme Disruption in the precious metals industry  technology, regulation and sustainability, DMCC convened over 300 of the worlds top gold experts at the Dubai Precious Metals Conference, which sought to identify current market opportunities within the precious metals sector. The event was officially endorsed by the UAE Ministry of Economy.

Earlier in the year, DMCC announced plans to add to its portfolio of commodities with the addition of a dedicated Cacao Centre and other commodity trade centres including meat, honey and saffron.

DMCC Tradeflow, a fully digital and interactive ownership registry, recorded a total value of AED 1.1 trillion ($299 billion), an 48% increase over 2020.

Attracting trade and FDI

DMCC continued to promote Dubai as a prime destination for FDI during 2021, conducting roadshows physically and online in seven markets across the world to highlight the opportunities in the emirate. With the world convening in the UAE for Expo 2020 Dubai, DMCC hosted a range of high-profile delegations from countries including Brazil, the Netherlands, Botswana, Colombia, Fiji and Poland. The conversations centred around how DMCC and Dubai can better connect with these markets to boost bilateral trade and demonstrate the commercial appeal of the emirate.

DMCC also held a series of virtual, hybrid and in-person events as part of its flagship Made for Trade Live roadshows in destinations including Ukraine and Shenzhen. These events are designed to familiarise participants with the unparalleled access DMCC offers to leading markets, its bespoke business services and world-class infrastructure. Over 302 webinars and events were hosted in 2021, attracting over 32,635 attendees. - TradeArabia News Service
A Penn Township woman defrauded more than a dozen brides-to-be out of thousands of dollars in a scheme where she offered hair and makeup services with no intention of completing the work, according to Northern Lancaster County Regional police.

Holly Ann Boyer, 37, defrauded at least 18 people from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Delaware, police said in a news release. The scheme resulted in the victims losing a total of $15,590.25.

Boyer, also known as Holly Ann Klein, advertised her Extreme Beauty business on social media and various bridal websites, claiming to be a hair and makeup artist. Customers were required to prepay for Boyers services, though she had no intention of following through with providing them, police said.

Boyer informed customers in October that she was unable to follow through with providing the services that had already been paid for, then refused to offer refunds and blocked customers numbers when they attempted to contact her.

Some customers were only notified the day before their weddings that Boyer had no intention of providing the previously agreed upon services.

Boyer continued contacting new customers to offer discounts if they agreed to pay in full, though she had no intention of actually providing the services, police said. Boyer continued accepting money through the scheme into December.

A Northern Lancaster County Regional police desk sergeant was unable to provide additional information Monday.

A social media movement called the Brides of Justice helped identify Boyers scheme, police said. The groups Facebook page describes themselves as a collection of brides and hair and makeup artists in central Pennsylvania who have been impacted the scheme.

Brides of Justice members shared their stories how they were defrauded on social media, helping piece together the scope of Boyers scheme, according to the news release.

Attempts to contact the Brides of Justice through social media Monday were not immediately successful.

Boyer was arrested Monday on 18 counts of deceptive or fraudulent business practices and 18 counts of theft by deception.

Court documents did not list an attorney for Boyer.

Judge Edward Tobin set Boyers bail at $50,000. She is currently free on unsecured bail, court records show.

Boyer will face a preliminary hearing before Tobin on Jan. 31.
The Calving Corner has returned to the Pennsylvania Farm Show for 2022 and has produced its first calves.

Twins were just born Monday morning at about 8 to Candy of Burk-Lea Farms in Chambersburg. Watch that livestream, below:

The first calf arrived at 5:42 p.m. Saturday. Hailey from Mercer Vu Farms in Mercersburg was the first cow in labor at the Farm Show and gave birth to a heifer calf, Midnight. Shortly after, another calf, Shadow, was born at 6:51 p.m.

On Sunday, three more calves, Lilly, Caroline and Raspberry, were born from Mercer Vu Farms.

The exhibit, which was virtual in 2021, is located in Northeast Hall at the Farm Show in Harrisburg and is hosting several farms over the course of the farm show.

Livestreaming of the Calving Corner can be found on its Facebook page or YouTube page.

To sign up for text alerts so you can get notified when cows are close to giving birth, text calvingcorner to 833-985-1834.

Watch the first birth below:
The general public's health has been foremost in the minds of many Americans since the COVID-19 pandemic began two years ago. Public health also was a subject of primary importance a century ago, during the pandemic initiated by the Spanish flu.

Louise Stevenson, professor of history and American Studies at Franklin & Marshall College, drew that parallel during a virtual address Monday for a monthly lecture series sponsored by the Lancaster Medical Heritage Museum.

Stevenson approached the subject by reviewing the career of Dr. Charles P. Stahr, a public health advocate who commanded the 111th Medical Company of the 103th Medical Battalion, 28th Division, U.S. Army. After the war, Stahr served as medical director of Lancaster General Hospital from 1919 to 1940.

After graduating from F&M in 1897 and earning his M.D. degree at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Stahr joined the medical staff of LGH and became a public health advocate. He took that experience with him when he joined the National Guard in 1916 and when he led the 111th to France in 1918.

In the early years of the 20th century, Stahr served as the first medical inspector of the Lancaster Public Schools. He worked to eliminate outhouses attached to city schoolhouses and promoted other sanitary measures.

He introduced a free smallpox vaccination program for needy students. Lacking a vaccination certificate, students could not attend school.

To reduce transmission of disease when outbreaks of measles, chicken pox, and diphtheria occurred, he closed classrooms and schools until the danger passed.

He also took public health to include education of school personnel and the public with a series of talks in the public schools to promote public health and newspaper articles for the public, Stevenson said.

While medical inspector, Stahr served as secretary of the Lancaster City Board of Health and became concerned with milk as a source of disease. He wrote Lancasters first Pure Milk Ordinance in 1912. It required that milk had to come from cows that had been tested negative for bovine tuberculosis.

Stahr took his engagement with public health to the war front with service as a surgeon in the Pennsylvania National Guard in the conflict with Mexico in 1916 and as captain of the 111th Ambulance Corps in France.

Arriving on the European war front with the American Expeditionary Force in the spring of 1918, the medical unit entered the action during the AEFs engagement in July 1918 during fierce battles at Chateau Thierry and then in September in the Argonne Forest.

Stevenson emphasized that the rapid delivery of the wounded to medical care via motorized ambulances sharply reduced the death rate. She illustrated her talk with drawings of how casualty evacuation worked from battlefield to field medical station to base hospital.

She also presented compelling information in the form of statistics: more Americans died of disease than of injuries during the war. Pneumonia, precipitated by influenza, caused almost half of those deaths.

Stahrs medics treated all of these men at First Aid Dressing Stations (FADS), whether they had been wounded in battle or felled by influenza.

The virus had begun infecting Europeans on the home front and in the trenches in the spring of 1917, Stevenson said, and it continued to plague the world for several years after the war as allied troops returned to their countries.

Information on the Lancaster Medical Heritage Museum's lecture series can be found at lancastermedicalheritagemuseum.org/events/.

Jack Brubaker, retired from the LNP staff, writes The Scribbler'' column every Sunday. He welcomes comments and contributions at scribblerlnp@gmail.com.
Monday, January 10, 2022

From NBC News:

Is the bakery's refusal to decorate a cake with supportive same-sex marriage messages, upon customer's request, a subject of a discrimination lawsuit? A top European court declined Thursday to rule in a high-profile discrimination case centered on an activists request to have a cake decorated with the Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie and the words Support Gay Marriage.

The European Court of Human Rights said the case was inadmissible because activist Gareth Lee had failed to exhaust domestic remedies in his case against a Northern Ireland bakery. Initially, he ordered the cake to support a campaign that succeeded when Britain's Parliament brought the region into line with the rest of the country. After Britain decided that the refusal to make the cake Lee ordered did not amount to discrimination, Lee then took his case to human rights court alleging that the U.K. Supreme Court decision breached the European Convention on Human Rights.

The rights court, in a written ruling, said that it could not rule because Lee failed to raise the convention in his U.K. court actions. Many concerns are brought to the communities' attention, such as the creation of legal uncertainty throughout the country after the 2018 U.K. Supreme Court ruling.

Read more here.

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/family_law/2022/01/northern-ireland-discrimination-case-arising-from-a-cake-decoration.html


China already has one of the worlds largest economies. However, it cannot yet fully support its technology industry. It does not make its own computer processors, or chips.

Factories in China build cars, computers and smart phones. But they need parts from countries including the U.S., Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and some European nations.

If Chinas diplomatic relationship worsens with any of these countries, its technology businesses might have problems.

Self-reliance is the foundation for the Chinese nation, President Xi Jinping said in a speech last March. He said China must become a technology leader to protect its national economic security.

Chinas first move is to help one of its largest companies, Alibaba, make computer chips.

So far, Alibaba is best known for its internet business, which includes selling items and providing data storage. But in the last three years, Alibabas company T-Head started making chips. It now makes three models and said they are not for sale outside of China.

Two other companies, including Tencent, a company that develops games and other social media are working on building chips, too.

If China is successful in closing its technology industry to the world, experts say trade, inventive effort and wealth might lessen around the world.

But the same experts say China will find it risky and difficult to meet the goal of complete technological independence. Peter Hanbury is with Bain & Co. Bain is a company based in Boston, Massachusetts that studies industry and offers advice to businesses with the goal of helping them solve problems and earn money. Hanbury said it is hard to imagine one country building everything it needs and also having the best technology.

The experts also say it will be hard for China to get everything it needs if it separates its technology industry from the rest of the world. If something new is created in a country China does not trade with, the industry in China could suffer.

U.S. and European officials are concerned about Chinas goal. Experts say a separation might hurt technology worldwide because it is hard to develop parts and software that work on different systems at the same time.

The issue also worries the United Nations. In September, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told The Associated Press that the United States and China needed to avoid that the world becomes separated.

Chinas concern about computer chips grew over the last two years as work at chip factories slowed because of COVID-19. Computer chips are Chinas largest import.

One example of the way the policies of one nation affect technology and economic development came in 2018. That year, the U.S. declared Chinese tech company Huawei a security risk. It barred the company from using U.S. technology. The U.S. declared Huawei a risk to cyber-security.

Huawei has denied the accusation. But, it can no longer buy computer parts made in the U.S.

The conflict between the U.S. and Huawei continues today. In 2020, the U.S. barred factories around the world from using American technology to make chips for Huawei.

Another problem for Chinas technology industry is it has very few factories to produce chips once they are designed. Experts say Chinese manufacturing is about 10 years away from being able to equal the production of large chipmakers.

Even if companies like Alibaba get better at designing chips, the tools they need to produce them are restricted by the governments of the U.S. and some European countries.

The Semiconductor Industry Association said China lags significantly in everything it needs to be able to make the chips.

Experts say China also faces measures by nations to restrict their technologies from use in China. China is currently in a 15-year-window for investing $150 billion in its chip industry. The window closes in 2030. That sounds like a lot of money, but other companies are investing more in shorter periods of time.

Chinas interest in buying equipment from a company in Europe is also an issue of concern for international officials.

The newest chip-making technology is called photolithography. The world leader is a company in The Netherlands called ASML. A company in China called SMIC wants to buy equipment from ASML but so far, the Dutch government has not yet decided to make a sale.

Im Dan Friedell.

Dan Friedell adapted this story for Learning English based on a report by Joe McDonald of the Associated Press.

What will China need to do in the future to make sure it reaches its goal of tech self-reliance? Tell us in the Comments Section and visit our Facebook page. ____________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

self-reliance  n. the ability to get work done without help from others

lag  v. to happen more slowly than expected or wanter

significantly  adv. used to say that something is important or meaningful

window  n. a period of time during which something can happen


Europes sky is filling with near-empty, polluting planes that serve little purpose other than to keep airlines valuable time slots at some of the worlds most important airports.

The slots to fly into and leave from an airport for well-traveled routes are extremely important in the industry. To keep them, airlines must have a high percentage of flights. It is why flights are flown at a loss - so companies can keep their slots.

It was an accepted system even with the pollution, but the pandemic decrease in flying has put that in question. Normally, airlines had to use 80 percent of their given slots to keep their rights. The European Union has cut that to 50 percent to make sure as few empty or near-empty planes are in the sky.

The omicron variant of COVID-19 has reduced the number of people flying. An unlikely group has appeared: environmentalists and major airlines are working together. They want to cut down on empty or near empty flights by pressuring the European Union, a worldwide leader in fighting climate change, to change the rules on airport slots.

One airline, the large German company Lufthansa, said it would have to fly an additional 18,000 unnecessary flights through the winter to hold on to landing slots. The holidays brought a big increase in people flying, but it also brought thousands of flight cancelations. The rest of winter, however, could be slow as omicron cases increase.

The Federal Aviation Administration in the United States has let go of similar slot-use rules through March 26 because of the pandemic. Slots are limited only at a few airports. They include two airports near New York City, Kennedy and LaGuardia, and Reagan Washington National outside of Washington, D.C.

Last month, when there was still hope the pandemic might finally get better, the European Commission confirmed the 50 percent rule. It said, however, that it would increase it to 64 percent at the end of March.

Major airlines like Lufthansa, Air France, and KLM say they are counting on additional flexibility. This would include decreasing the number of flights for time slots.

This puts the E.U. in a difficult situation. On one hand, it needs to make sure airport slots are open to fair competition. The competition permits new airlines to compete for the slots if they are not being used. On the other hand, it wants to prevent polluting planes from flying.

E.U. Transport Commissioner Adina Valean last month recognized the threat of omicron to the travel industry. She has not announced any new regulations.

Belgian Transport Minister Georges Gilkinet wrote Valean a critical letter and was pushing other E.U. politicians to join the movement and increase pressure.

The letter, which The Associated Press received, said The high-level pollution created by these flights runs totally counter to the E.U.s climate objectives.

Im Gregory Stachel.

Raf Casert reported this story for The Associated Press. Gregory Stachel adapted it for VOA Learning English.

_____________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

slot  n. a period of time that is available or used for a particular occurrence or event

route  n. a way to get from one place to another place

variant  n. something that is different in some way from others of the same kind

flexibility  adj. willing to change or to try different things

counter  adv. in a way that goes against or does not agree with something

objective  n. something you are trying to do or achieve: a goal or purpose
Dubai ports giant DP World is set to build an inland port in Jammu and Kashmir as part of plans by the emirate to invest in the Indian territory, reported Reuters, citing Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, who is in Dubai this week to promote investment.

DP World would soon visit the 250 acre site earmarked for the inland port facility, stated Sinha who had earlier held discussions with DP world Chairman Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem.

This would be the third major Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in J&K after the UAE-based Emaar and Lulu groups who have signed MoUs with the J&K Government, said media reports.

Accompanied with a team of his high-ranking officials, Sinha is in Dubai on a four-day visit to rope in big business houses, seeking Rs 60,000 crore domestic and foreign investment for the development of businesses and infrastructure in Jammu and Kashmir.

While 250 acres of land have been identified for the UTs first dry port in Jammu, another location is under consideration near Srinagar for boosting the Kashmirs Rs2500 crore fresh fruit industry.

The Indian government had last year announced that Dubai would be investing in infrastructure and other projects in the India territory.

"We will finalise it shortly," Sinha told Reuters, describing the project as a "firm commitment" by state-owned DP World.

A DP World spokesperson said the company had a "productive meeting" with Sinha on Thursday and that it was preparing a proposal for the project.

The announcement last October that Dubai would invest in the region was the first by any foreign government since Kashmir's autonomy was revoked in 2019 by the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Emirati newspaper Khaleej Times reported this week that Dubai developer Emaar Properties would build a mall in Srinagar, the main city in Jammu and Kashmir.

Lulu Group, an UAE-headquartered company headed by an Indian billionaire, also plans to set up a food processing hub there.


Researchers are sailing to a distant part of Antarctica so they can better understand how much and how fast seas could rise because of global warming. The area, which is where the Thwaites glacier is located, is sometimes called the place in the world thats the hardest to get to.

Thirty-two scientists are starting a more than two-month trip aboard an American research ship. Their goal is to study the area where the large, but melting, Thwaites glacier faces the Amundsen Sea.

The glacier, which is about the size of the American state of Florida, has gotten the nickname the doomsday glacier. The nickname comes from how much ice it has and how much seas could rise if it all melts  more than 65 centimeters over hundreds of years.

Because of its importance, the United States and the United Kingdom launched a $50 million mission to study Thwaites, the widest glacier in the world. Not near any of Antarcticas research stations, Thwaites is on Antarcticas western half, east of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Anna Wahlin of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden is on the research trip. In a discussion while aboard the Research Vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer, Wahlin said Thwaites is the main reason I would say that we have so large an uncertainty in the projections of future sea level rise.

She added, the area was difficult to reach.

Thwaites is putting about 50 billion tons of ice into the water a year. The British Antarctic Survey says the glacier is responsible for 4 percent of global sea rise.

University of Colorado ice scientist Ted Scambos said from the McMurdo land station last month that the conditions driving Thwaites ice loss are increasing.

No one has stepped foot before on the key ice-water meeting point at Thwaites. In 2019, Wahlin was on a team that explored the area using a robotic ship, but never went on it.

Wahlins team will use two robot ships, her own large one called Ran which she used in 2019, and Boaty McBoatface, the drone that could go further under the area of Thwaites.

The scientists will be measuring water temperature, the sea floor and ice thickness. They will look at cracks in the ice and how the ice is structured. They will also study seals on islands off the glacier.

Thwaites looks different from other ice shelves, Wahlin said. It almost looks like a jumble of icebergs that have been pressed together. So, its increasingly clear that this is not a solid piece of ice like the other ice shelves are.

Im John Russell.

Seth Borenstein reported on this story for the Associated Press. John Russell adapted it for Learning English

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

glacier  n. a very large area of ice that moves slowly down a slope or valley or over a wide area of land

nickname  n. a name that is different from your real name but is what your family, friends, etc., call you when they are talking to you or about you

doomsday  n. the day the world ends or is destroyed

projection  n. an estimate of what might happen in the future based on what is happening now

shelf  n. a flat area of rock, sand, etc., especially underwater

jumble  n. a group of things that are not arranged in a neat or orderly way


A recent study found that Americans who completed college or university are more likely to have friends and are less lonely than those who only finished high school.

The findings come at a time when many Americans question whether a college degree is worth its cost.

Daniel Cox is director of the Survey Center on American Life and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He said that, in general, Americans are experiencing a "friend recession, meaning a decline in their number of friends.

Cox noted that "Americans have fewer close friends today than we did in the early '90s. But some groups were particularly affected in that they seem to have experienced a much more dramatic decline over that time period.

He added, "And there are two groups that really stood out. The first is men. And the second one is people without a college degree."

The Survey Center on American Life questioned 5,054 people this past summer. It found that Americans with a college degree feel more socially connected and are more active in their communities than people who did not go to college. As a result, those who completed college report feeling less lonely.

Cox believes that the issue is a result of the decline in traditional institutions, meaning religion, marriage, and unions.

"Unions were primarily financial, but they also offered a lot of social support and social connection and feelings of belonging as well. The decline of unions, the decline of marriage and the decline of religion have all disproportionately affected the noncollege group."

Disproportionately, in this case, means too large in relation to something.

Previous research shows that Americans who did not go to college are less likely to marry. A 2013 study of people born between 1957 and 1964 found that both men and women who did not finish high school were less likely to marry than those with more education.

A 2012 study found that college-educated women were much more likely to get married than women who dropped out of high school.

Cox points to research that shows that people who are married are more likely to have larger social groups and more close friends and report feeling lonely less often.

Today, 65 percent of college-educated Americans over age 25 are married. About 50 percent of people with a high school diploma, or who dropped out of high school, are married.

Those numbers were different in 1990, when marriage rates among the college educated were at 69 percent, compared with 63 percent for those who did not go to college, says a Pew research report.

Pew also finds that Americans are less religious overall. The percentage of Americans who say they're "religiously unaffiliated" rose from 17 percent in 2009 to 26 percent in 2018 and 2019.

When it comes to unions, the percentage of workers who belong to a union has declined by almost half since 1983, when 20 percent of U.S. workers were union members. Union membership had dropped to 10.8 percent by 2020.

The American Community Life Survey found that around 1 in 10 college graduates say they have no close social connections. That number rises among Americans without a degree, where almost 1 in 4 say they have no close friends.

Im John Russell

Dora Mekouar reported on this story for VOA News. John Russell adapted it for Learning English.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

dramatic -- adj. sudden and extreme

decline -- n. the process of becoming worse in condition or quality

primarily  adv. used to indicate the main purpose of something, reason for something, etc.

graduate  n. a person who has earned a degree or diploma from a school, college, or university
A new study suggests that severe storms are likely to start affecting wider areas that include cities like New York, Boston, Beijing and Tokyo.

An international research team predicts that big atmospheric storms called tropical cyclones could move further to the north or south. It said this is because of the effects of planet-warming climate change.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration describes tropical cyclones as organized systems of clouds and thunderstorms that develop over bodies of water.

Major tropical cyclones are declared either hurricanes or typhoons, depending on where the storms happen. In the North Atlantic, central North Pacific and eastern North Pacific, the term hurricane is used. In the Northwest Pacific, the storms are called typhoons.

The researchers suggest that hurricanes and typhoons could start appearing farther north in the northern half of the world and farther south in the southern half of the world. Those areas contain larger population centers that traditionally are not struck by large hurricanes or typhoons.

Joshua Studholme is a physicist at Yale Universitys Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. He was the lead writer of the study, which recently appeared in Nature Geoscience.

Studholme said in a statement the study represents an important, under-estimated risk of climate change.

This research predicts that the 21st centurys tropical cyclones will likely occur over a wider range of latitudes than has been the case on Earth for the last 3 million years, he added.

The researchers note that tropical cyclones form close to the equator in warm, tropical oceans. This usually happens away from the intense effects of the jet streams  strong wind paths that circle the planet.

But the study suggests that warming climates on Earth will create smaller temperature differences between the equator and the poles. In the summer months this could cause the jet stream to weaken or split. If this were to happen, it could open a window in the mid-latitudes for tropical cyclones to form and intensify, the researchers said.

The team reached the findings by examining computer models of warm climates from Earths distant past. They also used satellite observation and a range of weather and climate estimates.

The researchers said their models estimated that, during periods with warmer climates, tropical cyclones formed and intensified at higher latitudes. These periods of warm weather include the Eocene, which was 56 to 34 million years ago, and Pliocene, 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago.

Alexey Fedorov is a professor of oceanic and atmospheric sciences at Yale. He was a co-writer of the study. He said in a statement that there are still large uncertainties about how tropical cyclones will change in the future.

However, he added that multiple lines of evidence suggest more tropical cyclones are likely to happen in mid-latitudes, even if the total frequency of tropical cyclones does not increase.

One leader of the research was Kerry Emanuel, a climate specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Another recent study led by Emanuel suggests that the North Atlantic experienced an increase in hurricanes over the last century.

That study, published last month in Nature Communications, used historical records to build computer models to create climate conditions for the last 150 years.

Emanuel said he added hurricane seeds  conditions that could produce a storm  throughout the models to see how many would lead to storms. The results showed that the number of intense Atlantic storms would become more frequent as world temperatures rose.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from Yale University, Reuters, NOAA and Nature Geoscience.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

Quiz - Study: Severe Storms Likely to Hit Wider Areas, Cities Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz

___________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

hurricane  n. a violent storm with very strong winds; a powerful ocean storm with wind speeds measured at 119 kilometers an hour or above

typhoon  n. a powerful storm with very strong winds (similar to a hurricane)

occur  v. to happen; to take place

range n. a group or collection of things that share some similarity

latitude  n. the distance of a place north or south of the equator

poles  n. parts of the Earth that are furthest north and south

uncertain  adj. not sure or not able to decide about something

frequent  adj. happening often
Former New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof asked the Oregon Supreme Court to keep his endangered campaign for governor alive on Friday.

The day after Secretary of State Shemia Fagan ruled he was not eligible to run for governor, Kristof's lawyers asked the court to keep his name on the ballot, citing a March 17 deadline to print ballots that would be hard to meet through the normal appeals process.

"The effect of her decision is that Kristof will be excluded from the ballot unless there is a timely judicial intervention," the filing said. "Kristof thus petitions this Court for a peremptory or alternative writ of mandamus requiring the Secretary of State to accept his declaration of candidacy and submit his name for printing on the primary ballot. With voting rights under unprecedented attack around the country, fidelity to democratic principles  especially to the right of the public to choose its government  has never been more important."

Fagan ruled Kristof off the ballot on Thursday, citing a constitutional requirement for candidates to reside in the state for three years prior to the election. She noted he had lived in New York and voted there while working for the Times as recently as 2020.

Kristof had argued that he grew up in Yamhill, and considers Oregon to be his home. He has returned there every summer for the past 30 years, has built an addition on his family farm for his wife and children, and has paid taxes in Oregon since 2019.

Kristof's lawyers filed a nine-page petition and 56-page supporting memorandum with the court asking it to keep his name on the ballot on Friday. They argue his candidacy is valid and could be unfairly prevented by the approaching ballot printing deadline. Otherwise Kristof will have to start his appeal in Marion County Circuit Court and proceed through the Oregon Court of Appeals before reaching the Oregon Supreme Court.

Kristof filed as a Democrat for governor on Dec. 20. Fagan's office, which regulates elections, sent him a letter the next day asking for more proof of his Oregon residency.

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"Until late 2020 or early 2021, Mr. Kristof lived in New York and has for the past 20 years," Fagan said at a news conference Thursday morning. "Until recently, he was employed in New York. He received his mail at his New York address. He filed income taxes in New York. And perhaps most importantly, Mr. Kristof voted as a resident of New York for 20 years, including  and this is important  as recently as November 2020."

Kristof responded several hours later during a press conference that characterized the ruling as a political, not legal, decision. He accused Fagan, a fellow Democrat, of being part of an establishment that favors other Democrat candidates for governor such as former Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek and State Treasurer Tobias Read.

"My willingness to challenge the status quo is the reason state officials want to toss me from the ballot," Kristof said. "This was a political decision, not one based on the law."

Fagan insisted her office reviewed Kristof as it would have any other candidate.

"In the end, our election officials told me it wasn't even a close call," Fagan said. "And while there have been creative legal arguments and an impressive PR campaign, given the evidence, I venture that most Oregonians who are paying attention have reached the same conclusion."

In a previous letter to Fagan's office, Kristof's attorney's said there has only been one Oregon court case that considered the question of whether voter registration determines residency, over a state House seat in 1974. A Marion County judge ruled that "the question of domicile is largely one of intent," a precedent that supports Kristof, who has owned property in Yamhill County since 1993.

Dillon Mullan contributed to this story.

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When the Lebanon Community Schools ask the voters this year to support a $20 million bond to address some needed facilities upgrades and repairs, the district will have $4.3 million in state matching funds in its back pocket.

The schools get that money, however, only if voters say yes to the bond measure.

The district, which serves more than 4,000 students from preschool through 12th grade, says renovations are needed to improve safety and security at facilities and for maintenance to extend the lives of buildings. The projects aim to bring the facilities up to code and in line with districtwide standards.

This is fantastic news for taxpayers and our community as a whole, Superintendent Bo Yates said in a statement. The grant will complete more projects and helps reduce the amount of funding we need from property owners.

The Lebanon School Board meets 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 13 to consider a resolution putting the bond on the May ballot. The meeting can be attended in person or virtually.

A portion of the bond would renovate the Lebanon Community Pool, which is owned by the school district, and add space in school buildings for preschool programs. Property owners with an assessed value of $175,000  the average home in Lebanon, according to the district  would pay about $50 extra each year in taxes.

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The maintenance work would include heating, air conditioning and ventilation upgrades (which are critical during the pandemic and for summer school), fixing roofs, streamlining security, and doing seismic upgrades, such as at the high school gym where students might gather in an emergency.

Superintendent Yates has acknowledged that the $28 million is short of the more than $41 million needed for repairs for the district indicated in a 2019 assessment.

More information about meeting access and the facilities bond can be found on the school district website.

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In 1939, Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees does not play against the Detroit Tigers at Briggs Stadium, ending his streak of 2,130 consecutive
About 24% of US hospitals are reporting a "critical staffing shortage," according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services, as public health experts warn the Covid-19 surge fueled by the Omicron variant threatens the nation's health care system.

"Given how much infection there is, our hospitals really are at the brink right now," Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, told CNN on Sunday.

Of the approximately 5,000 hospitals that reported this data to HHS on Saturday, nearly 1,200 -- about 1 in 4 -- said they are currently experiencing a critical staffing shortage, the largest share of the entire pandemic. More than 100 other hospitals said they anticipate a shortage within the next week.

The US health care system is Jha's greatest concern, he said, noting the Omicron surge could hamper its capacity to care for patients suffering from conditions other than Covid-19.

"The health care system is not just designed to take care of people with Covid ... it's designed to take care of kids with appendicitis and people who have heart attacks and get into car accidents," he said.

"And all of that is going to be much, much more difficult because we have a large proportion of the population that is not vaccinated, plenty of high risk people who are not boosted," he said. "That combination sets up a large pool of people who as they get infected will end up really straining the resources we have in the hospitals today."

These staff shortages are growing as frontline health care workers are either infected or forced to quarantine due to exposure to Covid-19 just as the demand for treatment skyrockets: More than 138,000 Covid-19 patients were in US hospitals as of Saturday, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. That's not far from the all-time peak (about 142,200 in mid-January 2021) and an increase from around 45,000 in early November.

To safeguard hospital capacity, some facilities are forced to cut elective surgeries. In New York, for example, 40 hospitals -- mainly in the Mohawk Valley, Finger Lakes and central regions -- have been told to stop nonessential elective operations for at least two weeks because of low patient bed capacity, the state health department said Saturday.

The University of Kansas Health System is also close to implementing crisis standards of care, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Steven Stites said Saturday, telling CNN, "At some point ... we're too overwhelmed to do any of our normal daily work."

"At that point we have to turn on a switch that says we got to triage the people we can help the most," he said, "and that means we've have to let some people die who we might have been able to help but we weren't sure about -- they were too far gone or had too much of an injury, or maybe we can't get to that trauma that just came in."

Stites said two waves were hitting Kansas simultaneously -- with Delta accelerating post-Thanksgiving, to be met by Omicron -- describing it as "almost a double pandemic." The vast majority of those being hospitalized are unvaccinated, Stites said.

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University, told CNN on Saturday the next several weeks will "look bad in many American cities."

"Forty hospitals in New York just canceled elective procedures. The DC Hospital Association, where I work, has asked the DC government for permission for hospitals to enact crisis standards of care," he said. "And that's coming to every city in the United States."

Los Angeles sees record weekly case numbers

About 62.5% of the total US population -- 208 million people -- is fully vaccinated, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 75.4 million people have received a booster dose, meaning 23% of the total US population is fully vaccinated and boosted.

But still about 21% of the eligible population, or 65.5 million people 5 and older, have not received a single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, the CDC data show.

Nationwide, 39 states are reporting a 50% or greater increase in cases during the past week compared to the previous week, according to a CNN analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. As of Saturday, the seven-day average of new daily cases in the US was 701,199, per JHU data.

Some localities are now seeing the most new cases they've seen the whole pandemic, including Los Angeles County.

On Saturday, the county reported more than 200,000 confirmed cases over the previous seven days -- the highest number of cases in one week since the start of the pandemic, according to a news release from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Hospitalizations doubled over the week to 3,200 and there were 135 Covid-related deaths, the department said.

With infections rising, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday announced a proposed $2.7 billion Covid-19 Emergency Response Package designed to bolster testing and vaccination efforts, support frontline workers and battle misinformation, his office said in a news release. Newsom also signed an executive order Saturday "establishing consumer protections against price gouging on at-home test kits," according to his office.

The rise in infections is also hitting Los Angeles' children hard.

At Children's Hospital Los Angeles, the positivity rate for children tested for Covid-19 has increased from 17.5% in December to 45% to date in January, according to CHLA Medical Director Dr. Michael Smit.

CHLA currently has 41 patients in-house who have tested positive for Covid-19, and roughly one quarter of the children admitted to the facility with Covid-19 require admission to the pediatric ICU, with some requiring intubation, Smit told CNN on Saturday.

The rise in cases comes just as Los Angeles students are preparing to return to in-person classes Tuesday.

Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest school district in the country, is requiring all students and employees to show a negative Covid-19 test result before returning to the classroom.

The baseline test requirement was implemented at the beginning of the school year in August, and the district announced a week ago both the baseline test, along with required weekly testing for all employees and students would continue through January, given the current Omicron surge.

Shannon Haber, chief communications officer for LAUSD, told CNN Saturday similar protocols in the fall, along with vaccination requirements, universal masking and "Ghostbusters-level" sanitation practices, have made it possible for every one of its more than 1,000 schools to stay open for in-person learning this academic year.

Haber said 100% of LAUSD employees are fully vaccinated and students 12 and older are required to be fully vaccinated by the beginning of the next school year, with 90% so far meeting the requirement.

Disputes over in-person learning

In response to rising pediatric infections, disputes over whether in-person learning is ideal during the Omicron surge and how students can safely attend school are playing out in various school districts this week.

For the week ending December 30, children accounted for 17.7% of new reported cases in the US, the American Academy of Pediatrics said, noting a record 325,00 new cases among children -- a 64% increase from the week prior.

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system has canceled classes since Wednesday due to a dispute between city officials and the teachers union over returning to the classroom. The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) voted Tuesday to teach remotely due to the Covid-19 surge, but the school district canceled classes, saying schools were safe and it wanted in-person learning.

CTU have said conditions are unsafe, citing in part inadequate staffing and testing. They say they want more testing, along with additional mitigation protocols.

The CTU presented a new proposal to Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Saturday which included a resumption of virtual learning for CPS students beginning Wednesday and in-person instruction on January 18 unless health officials determine it's not safe. City officials rejected the proposal -- though it accepted some requests, like providing KN95 masks for all staff and students -- saying it looked forward "to continued negotiations to reach an agreement."

Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, Lightfoot said she was still "hopeful" a deal could be reached before Monday, again insisting Chicago's schools are safe.

Dr. Julie Morita, the former Chicago health commissioner and executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said children and teachers can safely be in the classroom with certain measures, like requiring vaccinations and masks, ensuring good ventilation and testing capacity.

"When those systems are in place, children and teachers can be safely in the school environment," she said, "but those systems have to be in place."

Dr. Richina Bicette-McCain, medical director at the Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN schools could be safe but she believes they are currently "high-risk."

"Not because of the nature of schools in and of themselves," she said, "but because although we know what tools are available to us and we have the tools to mitigate those risks, they are not being employed adequately."

"Students need proper access to testing, we need to give students and staff high quality masks," she said. "Let's employ HEPA filters in schools to increase ventilation and increase air circulation.

"Let's make sure that if we're going to send our children to school we're doing it safely," she added.

In Georgia, public school teachers who test positive for Covid-19 no longer have to isolate before returning to school if they are asymptomatic and wear a mask, and contact tracing in schools is no longer required, according to a letter to school leaders released Thursday from Gov. Brian Kemp and public health commissioner Kathleen Toomey.

But Lisa Morgan, president of the Georgia Association of Educators, believes the changes are the "absolute wrong thing to do at the absolute worst time." Educators want to be in classrooms with their students, she said, "but that should be achieved by keeping people healthy.

"We know that there are increasing cases in our children, there's increasing hospitalizations in our children," she told CNN Saturday, "and this action shows a lack of regard for the health and safety of educators, students and our families."

The-CNN-Wire

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CNN's Deidre McPhillips, Travis Caldwell, Keith Allen, Raja Razek, Natasha Chen and Anna-Maja Rappard contributed to this report.
Lapwai, ID (83501)

Today

Cloudy with light rain this evening. Low near 40F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Cloudy with light rain this evening. Low near 40F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
The Dubai Integrated Economic Zones Authority (DIEZ) will create more promising prospects for investors, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman of DIEZ, has said.

A new leadership team will drive DIEZ's free zones and central divisions towards a new era of excellence and integration, said Sheikh Ahmed, appointing Amna Lootah was appointed as Director-General DAFZ, Dr Juma Al Matrooshi as Director-General of Dubai Silicon Oasis, Eng Muammar Al Kathiri as Chief Engineering & Smart City Officer, William Chapel as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Youssef Behzad as Chief People & Organisational Development Officer, Bader Buhannad as Chief Corporate Support Officer, Saeed Al-Suwaidi as the new Chief Legal & Regulatory Affairs Office and Abdul Rahman Basaeed as Chief Internal Audit & Enterprise Risk Management Officer.

DIEZ aims to raise Dubais position as a regional and global investment destination and contribute to achieving the emirates strategic priorities through its economic zones, which are the Dubai Airport Free Zone, Dubai Silicon Oasis, and Dubai CommerCity.

Further, DIEZ aims to boost economic growth, contribute to shaping the future economic map of Dubai, and create more diverse investment opportunities.

Sheikh Ahmed emphasised that the new appointments for the Authority's top leadership positions came in line with the directives of HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, in developing and strengthening the role of human resources for sustainable growth, business expansion, and in consolidating the emirate's position as a global investment hub.

He called on them to strengthen the spirit of teamwork and openness, foster best practices, improve commercial services and solutions, and stimulate the culture of innovation and proactive thinking while keeping pace with the rapid economic developments.

Sheikh Ahmed added: We look forward to the success of the Dubai Integrated Economic Zones Authority and its new structure. We are confident in the competence of our new top officials, which they have proven over the past years. We believe in their capabilities to lead the Authority in providing comprehensive and integrated solutions to the business community and investors in the free zones in Dubai. DIEZ presents an equal economic model that creates new prospects and expansion opportunities through providing seamless and efficient services and solutions to the business community, which in turn improve the operational efficiency of the three free zones.

Lootah as Director-General DAFZ will lead and implement strategic plans according to the approved structure, driven by its vision, mission, and values. Further, Lootah will also lead the executive management team at the Dubai Airport Free Zone.

Dr Al Matrooshi will supervise the implementation of its strategy according to the new organisational structure.

At central divisional functions, Eng Al Kathiri will lead and direct engineering planning and make strategic planning, design, and construction decisions.

For DIEZ's financial goals, Chapel will be responsible for financial management. He will oversee strategic financial direction to ensure the achievement of strategic business objectives and increasing economic returns for all stakeholders.

Behzad will lead and implement the institutional approach in empowering human capital, ensuring the quality of human resources in all departments and the authorities functions. In addition, the duties include providing means to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the organisational structure, backed by creative talents capable of leading operations to achieve the organisational goals.

Buhannad will be managing and directing digital and information technology activities, managing the supply chain, in addition to providing the necessary guidance for the Authority's integrated management and project management office functions.

DIEZ is envisioned to directly contribute to Dubais economic growth by providing a successful investment experience for all investors and major companies, in addition to innovative services and solutions that meet the needs and aspirations of the business community.-- TradeArabia News Service
At any given time, Mark Overbay, president of Big Spoon Roasters, is keeping a running list of 40 or so nut butter recipe ideas.

These ideas go beyond the Durham, North Carolina-based companys existing lineup of nut butters, which already features ingredients like chai spices, espresso, Fiji ginger and toasted coconut. Theres also a carrot cake almond-walnut butter, a lemon-coconut cashew butter and Hot Mamba, a spicy-sweet flavor inspired by a traditional Haitian recipe. Big Spoon does a pecan and peanut butter blend with wildflower honey, and another with maple and cinnamon, and a dark chocolate and sea salt almond butter. And thats not all. But Marks brain is always going  "What about pistachios? Figs? Pineapple and lime?" Well, thats where the R&D club comes in.

Comprised of Big Spoons biggest fans, The R&D club gets exclusive access to test recipes that we ship directly to their home, explains Megan Overbay, COO of Big Spoon. Its an exciting way for us to engage with a connected customer base, and to also get input on what would be successful.

Just talking about nut butters as a category of products is exciting to the Overbays, who are co-owners (and husband and wife). The couple first debuted their products in January of 2011 at a local bike race near their North Carolina home and, by that spring, they were selling at area farmers markets. While people eagerly grabbed up the spreads, they didnt quite understand what Big Spoon was selling.

At farmers markets and events, we had a sign that said handcrafted nut butters and a lot of people came up to the table and said, Whats that? Whats a nut butter? recalls Mark. You had peanut butters, almond butters, cashew butters, etc. But no business that we knew of was using that term to describe a whole category of goods that they made.

Organic growth

Mark cites living in Zimbabwe as a Peace Corps Volunteer in his early 20s as part of Big Spoons origin story. But he also credits the instinct and appreciation of preserving food that was baked into me from an early age.

My great-grandparents in Tennessee had a basement with shelves of canned tomatoes and green beans and okra and corn, just anything you could grow in the summer, Mark says.

In 2010, while Mark was working in marketing at the third wave North Carolina coffee roaster Counter Culture, he and Megan hatched the idea for Big Spoon.

The couple wanted to source ingredients as locally as they could, bringing slow food and sustainability values to the brand. It was clear in my mind how I wanted the brand to feel, says Mark. Pre-digital, timeless, a reaction to the over-industrialization of food.

At Counter Culture, he learned about the channels of specialty retail, coffee shops and grocery stores. He also developed relationships with press reps at national magazines.

Thankfully, we got a lot of really early press, and we didnt pay anything for marketing for a really long time, says Megan. We kind of walk the walk, doing what we do. Were carved out a new section of the market and the attention weve received has all happened very organically.

To the Overbays and their small team at Big Spoon, walking the walk means taking into account the full spectrum of sustainability.

Committed to sustainability

Unconvinced by improvements in eco-friendly palm production, the company has committed to never using palm oil, which decreases separation in nut butter but has negative environmental consequences.

And when it came time to expand into almond butter, Mark tested some 30 nuts before settling on an heirloom variety from Texas called Mission almonds. Theyre sometimes considered throwaway almonds because many people think theyre ugly  theyre short and squatty and wrinkly. But I think theyre beautiful. Youll never see them in a bulk bin at a grocery store, Mark says. But some genius shelled these almonds and roasted them, and theyre incredible. Theyre sweeter, theyre crunchier, they have slightly lower moisture, which means they require less water to be cultivated.

Even better, the companys California-based almond processor, Treehouse, is on the cutting edge with low water cultivation, explains Mark, a frequent concern with almond production. It all fits into the overall story Big Spoon wants to tell, about why and how they make their butters the way they do.

As more people have entered our market and made similar claims, we have had to be much more intentional about helping people understand the choices we make, Megan says. They see the value in the experience you have when you taste it. But on the shelf, things like values, process and mission can be challenging to convey.

Thats why, now, youll see little symbols on the packages: non-GMO, bee-friendly almonds, palm free.

Bigger batches

Big Spoon Roasters is looking to the future with a planned expansion to a larger facility in nearby Hillsborough, North Carolina. They continue to workshop new ingredient combinations for their portable, handmade nut butter bars, with already come in flavors like cranberry cashew, apple ginger, lemon blueberry, cherry pecan and figgy chai.

Our vision is that nut butter doesnt have to be this kind-of-salty, kind-of-sweet source of nutrition, Mark says. It can actually be a really phenomenal, delicious food experience.

As for those R&D club members, they point the way forward. A small-scale test that does well could go on to become a limited batch. A limited batch that turns out to be well-loved could move to the big leagues, and possibly join the starting lineup.

One recent promotion, a limited batch of pistachio crunch almond butter, earned them loads of unexpected love mail, as Mark calls it.

Really funny things! Megan adds, laughing. A customer wrote in saying its so good I wanted to smack my mama! laughs Mark.

Were still in this explosion of American craft foods, and I love it, says Mark. Its an honor to be a part of that. Were redefining what nut butters can be  foods that are more than just fuel.
The trial for a 32-year-old Waupun man, accused of killing his grandmother, has been postponed from this week until a week in April.

Gregory Spittel, 32, faces felony charges of first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless injury, first-degree reckless endangering safety, two counts of aggravated battery, false imprisonment, intimidating witnesses and battery or threat to a judge, prosecutor or law enforcement officer.

He faces misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct, resisting or obstructing an officer, possession of cocaine and possession of drug paraphernalia. If found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide, he faces a mandatory life sentence.

Spittel's trial had been scheduled to begin Monday, but the trial was removed from the court docket this morning with a scheduling hearing replacing the trial. The Wisconsin ccap entry was updated with new court dates from April 4 to 8.

According to the criminal complaint, officers responded at 8:54 a.m., Aug. 24, 2019, to an ambulance call to 130 Brandon St. Spittels 75-year-old grandmother, Carol Foreman, from Mayville, was found unconscious in the basement, as was a belligerent Spittel, police said. Foreman had suffered a head injury and was transported to Waupun Memorial Hospital before being transported by medical helicopter to ThedaCare Regional Medical Center in Neenah, where she died four days later.

The front door was open when police arrived and a small phone and tan purse were seen in the doorway. Officers also saw broken glass on the floor and upturned furniture. They heard screaming coming from the back of the residence.

A neighbor, who had called 911, told police the victim was in the basement. Police said Spittel was seen at the bottom of the staircase wearing only his underwear, and they noted a smell of alcohol coming from him. According to the criminal complaint, Spittel picked up a plastic bottle of whiskey and began taking swigs from it.

According to the criminal complaint, Spittel became more agitated and threw a couch cushion at an officer. He also allegedly clenched his fists and threw the whiskey bottle at the officer. He was stopped after the officer used an electronic control device to subdue him.

Follow Terri Pederson on Twitter @tlp53916 or contact her at 920-356-6760.
The four people killed when the minivan they were in was hit by two semitrailers on Interstate 39/90/94 last week have been identified, the Dane County Medical Examiner's Office said Monday.

Ryan L. Murch, 39, and Shawn D. Thurston, 26, both of Wisconsin Dells, and Alexis D. Hudson, 36, and David R. Celmer, 18, both of Lyndon Station, died in the crash Thursday, the Medical Examiner said.

All four were killed by injuries sustained in the crash and were pronounced dead at the scene, the Medical Examiner said.

The crash took place just before 10:15 p.m. in the town of Vienna when the group pulled over their 2005 Chevrolet Uplander to assist another vehicle that was disabled on the interstate's right shoulder, State Patrol Sgt. Adam Zoch said in a statement. When the driver, Hudson, pulled back into traffic, the minivan was hit by two semis, Zoch said.

The drivers of the semis, a 25-year-old man from Ashland, Ohio, and a 61-year-old man from Havana, Illinois, were not injured, Zoch said.

I-39/90/94 south was closed at Highway 60 for about three hours following the crash. DeForest fire, EMS and police, Dane County and Columbia County sheriffs offices, the Dane County Medical Examiners Office and the Columbia County Highway Department assisted with the response and investigation.

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Prosecutors on Monday took jurors through evidence collected from accused murderer Chandler Haldersons home and from the hobby farm where the headless torso of his father was found, including the rifle they believe Halderson used to kill his father and the shoe where hed hidden both his parents phones and drivers licenses.

Halderson, 23, is charged with killing and dismembering his parents, Bart and Krista Halderson, and then burning parts of their bodies in a family fireplace before scattering other parts around southern Wisconsin. The dozens of photos and pieces of physical evidence introduced Monday, the fifth day of testimony, included three rifle magazines containing a total of 55 rounds of ammunition, a bullet fragment and casing, and an ax covered with human blood  all found in the Windsor home Chandler and his parents shared.

Prosecutors say Chandler committed the murders at home on July 1 after his father discovered hed been lying about attending Madison Area Technical College  one of a series of lies prosecutors say hed long been telling the world about his education and his work for American Family Insurance, SpaceX and as a scuba diver. In reality, they say, Halderson was unemployed and had dropped out of school.

The rifle was found behind some boards in the barn on the property where Barts torso was found, but not until three months after the barn was first searched by the Dane County Sheriffs Office in the days after the discovery of the torso and long after the property had been turned back over to its owners, the girlfriend of Chandlers then-girlfriends mother, Cresent LSai, and her family.

Prosecutors brought in witnesses from the Sheriffs Office to explain how the search of the barn was conducted and displayed photos of its interior packed with tools, boxes, two tractors and other items.

Lt. Jessamy Torres said she oversaw that search on July 12 and described missing the rifle as an oversight and human error. LSai found the rifle in October and reported it to the Sheriffs Office.

Deputy Erik Schneider also described how, just after the torso was found, he found several items used for sawing and cutting, including a bolt cutter and saw blade, on the inside of an old oil tank on the LSai property. He was among a group of crime scene investigators who found a tarp stained with a reddish or brown substance in the barn, and he was the one to unpack the rifle and show it to the jury on Monday.

Prosecutors say Chandler was fond of Russian-made rifles like the one found in the barn and had been given such a rifle by a friend with whom he played online first-person-shooter video games.

Crime scene investigator Greg Leatherberry also testified Monday about finding the three rifle magazines hidden behind a section of insulation on a basement wall of the Halderson home, and that the bullets they contained were of the same type as the bullet Chandler had given to his brother, Mitchell, a few weeks before the killings. That bullet had get well written on it and was meant as a gift after Mitchell was diagnosed with diabetes.

Detective Dan Feeney identified photos presented Monday of a plastic Target shopping bag found in a garbage cart on the LSai property. On the bag was a sticker with the first initial and last name of Haldersons girlfriend at the time, Cat Mellender, and inside the bag was another plastic bag containing rags stained with a reddish or brown substance and two Brillo pads.

Mellender was given the bag when picking up groceries on July 1 at Target, according to her testimony last week. That bag was then brought over to Haldersons home on July 2, prosecutors contend. Feeney said when he opened the bag, he first smelled cleaning supplies, which were quickly overtaken by a rancid, putrid smell.

Leatherberry also testified about the drops of blood found near the familys downstairs fireplace, as well as the piece of human bone found in it, and that his attention was drawn to different kinds of burn residue on the fireplaces grate.

I knew that there was something more burnt in this fireplace than wood products, he said.

Testimony from the Sheriffs Office last week was that Barts torso was found in a wooded area of the LSai property three days after Chandler had been seen in the area July 5.

Found in the same stand of woods was a Rubbermaid garbage cart containing a tarp that also appeared stained with a red or brown substance, according to testimony Monday from deputy James Plenty, who noted that in photos of the scene vegetation under the cart was still green, suggesting the cart had only recently been placed there.

Plenty also testified about searching for shoes in the Halderson home in an attempt to match tread marks found at the LSai property to shoes at the home. The jury saw photos of a pair of Brooks Launch 5 running shoes with what appeared to be spots of blood on one of them, and then of a floral-print shoe that had been hidden under some shelving in the Haldersons garage and found to contain two phones and Bart and Krista Haldersons drivers licenses wrapped in a paper towel and foil.

Prosecutors contend that a text message Chandler received on July 4 from his mothers phone  and which he pointed to as proof she was still alive  was really sent by Chandler from his mothers phone after hed killed her.

Other evidence introduced or referenced Monday included:

An email exchange between Bart and Krista about MATC.

A toothbrush head believed to have been used by Krista.

Black lengths of rope found in the Halderson garage and around Barts torso.

An empty bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a common cleaning agent.

A swab containing human blood that had been taken of a drain of a freezer in the familys basement.

On Friday, the jury saw images of parts of Kristas body recovered from undeveloped land owned by the Department of Natural Resources near Prairie du Sac on the Wisconsin River.

The prosecution contends that around the time he killed his parents, Halderson concocted a story about the two of them having left town for the family cabin on July 2 with an unidentified couple. No evidence was found that Bart and Krista had been to the cabin, in Langlade County on Sawyer Lake.

The defense has not presented its case yet and its cross-examination of prosecution witnesses has been limited.

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HUNTSVILLE, Ala.  A man in Alabama has been accused of trying to hire someone on a phone app to kidnap and rape a Sun Prairie woman he met online, federal court documents show.

Matthias Jacob Edward Mann, 22, was arrested last week in the north Alabama town of Hartselle on charges of attempted kidnapping and attempted coercion after a person who he believed was willing to assault the woman turned out to be a police officer working undercover online, according to a sworn statement from an FBI agent.

Mann allegedly sent $75 through a payment app to cover expenses for the supposed abduction, the statement said, and was arrested Wednesday. Mann has addresses in Hartselle but also listed addresses in metro Atlanta, where the would-be victim believed he lived, documents show.

Two public defenders named to represent Mann did not return an email seeking comment Monday.

A detective with the Owatonna (Minnesota) Police Department was monitoring a channel on the Kik app on Dec. 29 when he saw a message from a user trying to hire someone to abduct an acquaintance in Sun Prairie, the statement said. The person later said he wanted the woman subjected to the most brutal ... rape imaginable, the statement said.

The detective began communicating with the person, determined that the request was real, and began trying to locate the user while also locating and contacting the would-be victim in Sun Prairie to make sure she was safe, the statement said.

The Kik account was tracked to Mann through computer records, the statement said, and phone location records were used to pinpoint the residence where Mann was arrested, apparently while visiting relatives. The FBI office in Huntsville was brought in when evidence indicated the suspect was in Alabama.

The woman, who was not identified in court records, told police she had met Mann online and chatted with him on Twitter but they had not met in person, the agents statement said.

Mann, who was jailed in Morgan County, made an initial appearance before a federal magistrate by video on Thursday.

No one from Kik immediately responded to an email requesting comment Monday.
Kira Sotos has been creating art since she was a child, but getting a camera in her sophomore year opened up a new direction for her creativity and has led to a prestigious award.

Sotos, a senior at West High School, has received a 2022 YoungArts award in photography and design.

Her winning portfolio, which was titled One Girl, One Pair of Earrings, Ten Decades, featured the same model portraying the various time periods.

I knew I wanted to experiment with different photography looks from the early to late 1900s, but I wanted to add a modern constant. That is where the idea of using one model throughout all 10 decades came in, but to really solidify that idea, I wanted to incorporate something timeless  the pair of pearl earrings, Sotos said. My art style and projects are often influenced by media and techniques from the past, but overall, I enjoy making art that incorporates both past and future.

YoungArts was established in 1981 and its award winners have included well-known people working in the arts such as actors Timothee Chalamet and Viola Davis and poet and activist Amanda Gorman.

Sotos was recognized at the merit level, the organizations third highest honor, and joins 720 other visual, literary and performing artists from throughout the country.

The prestigious competition is open to students who are 15 to 18 years old or in grades 10 through 12. YoungArts award winners gain access to a comprehensive program for artists in the United States, which provides opportunities for financial, creative and professional development support throughout their careers, including a wide range of fellowships, residencies and awards; microgrants and financial awards; online and in-person presentation opportunities in collaboration with major venues and cultural partners nationwide; and access to YoungArts Post, a free, private online platform for YoungArts artists to connect, collaborate and discover new opportunities.

I was really excited when I got that email (about winning). It is just kind of a fun thing for me to do with my art, Sotos said. I like vintage and retro photography and I just want to emulate that. I want to put my own twist on it.

Sotos, who will graduate early in January and then enroll in the graphic design program at Madison Area Technical College, said she started drawing and painting as a child but then began venturing into other mediums. This year she has been working with block printing and wood carving.

Her grandmother, Christine Sotos, who taught art in Lake Geneva schools and sold mostly watercolor paintings in a gallery, was a big influence. Not only was her grandmother creating art, but her home filled with old artwork, trinkets and other artsy items that served as inspiration for Kira.

Sotos chose her friend, Sophie Thai, a fellow senior at West, as a model as the One Girl in her photos.

She just kind of had a timeless look about her face, Sotos said. I wanted someone who looked like they could be part of each time period.

Thai, who has modeled for her friend before, said Sotos always does my makeup kind of fancy. Thai said Sotos always has a particular concept she is trying to achieve and directs her to take on certain moods.

She said the two found props to represent the time periods from items they had on hand.

We were trying to get a specific look but obviously we dont have clothes from 1910 so we had to kind of improvise, Thai said.

Sotos said Claire Roszkowski, her ceramics teacher at West, has continuously supported her artistic endeavors, helped her grow and branch out as an artist and pursue different opportunities.

Roszkowski has seen Sotos photography and says she is deserving of the award.

She is such a creative and prolific artist, she is always just making something, Roszkowski said.

She has been impressed by how Sotos takes assignments to another level. One example was a coil pot she made after Roszkowski sent home 15 pounds of clay and some tools when students were learning at home last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than creating a typical coil pot, Sotos built in the profile of a womans face and her hair.

Even if you made it at school (it would have been impressive) but the fact she made it at home was really impressive, Roszkowski said. She was the only person (of 150 students) who took it in that direction.

Sotos also made a really awesome birdhouse that looked like Garfield the cat, Roszkowski said.

Its really funny to think a bird would want to live inside a cats mouth, she said.
A Dane County judge Monday rejected a request by Wisconsins Democratic attorney general to block former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gablemans demand to interview the states top elections administrator as part of his GOP-ordered review of the 2020 election.

Dane County Circuit Court Judge Rhonda Lanfords decision marks a win for Gableman, who was hired last year by legislative Republicans to review the election, an effort that has become bogged down in multiple court battles. Lanford also denied Gablemans request to dismiss the case entirely, a decision that leaves the door open for Attorney General Josh Kaul, who is representing the Wisconsin Elections Commissions nonpartisan administrator Meagan Wolfe, if he decides to continue to fight Gablemans subpoena.

Should Defendants seek to enforce the subpoenas before this case is decided on the merits through contempt, imprisonment or other means similar to the action pending in Waukesha County  plaintiffs can certainly file another motion for temporary injunction that the Court will schedule as soon as its calendar permits, Lanford wrote.

The reference was to another case challenging a separate request by Gableman for the Waukesha County sheriff to compel the mayors of Madison and Green Bay to meet with him or else face jail time. A Waukesha County judge has scheduled a hearing for Jan. 21 on the matter.

Lanfords decision stems from Kauls October request for a restraining order against a subpoena issued by Gableman seeking election-related documents and the interview with Wolfe.

In her decision, Lanford wrote that attorneys for Wolfe failed to show she would face contempt charges for refusing to comply with Gablemans subpoena.

In his initial lawsuit, Kaul contended that Gableman issued numerous subpoenas to state and local election officials in furtherance of an unlawful investigation focused on debunked theories about the November 2020 election.

Officials have said Wolfe is willing to meet with Gableman or his team, but only in a public setting. An attorney for Wolfe said last month state statutes require that any meeting with Gableman occur in a public setting before a legislative committee, while attorneys for Gableman have contended that the former justice is operating under the authority of the Legislatures Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections.

A primary issue with the subpoenas from the outset was the part about meeting in secret, Wolfe said in a statement. We continue to have a strong preference for providing testimony in public rather than behind closed doors. Weve already provided Special Counsel Gableman with documents and data, and conversations are ongoing regarding additional document production.

Gableman was hired by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, to investigate the election at a cost of $676,000 to taxpayers. His contract expired at the close of December, but Vos has said he hopes to have the review finished by the end of February.

It is my hope that former Justice Gableman will withdraw these unnecessary subpoenas rather than continuing to litigate over them, Kaul said.

Court battles mount

In late December, Gableman subpoenaed the elections commissions Democratic chair Ann Jacobs and Madison officials, demanding in-person testimony and a wide swath of election-related records including emails, internet logs and individual voter information. Gableman has also demanded records related to Dominion Voting Systems machines, though the city of Madison does not use those machines.

The subpoenas also request any records of payments from several nonprofit groups, including the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which is funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Republicans, including Gableman, have targeted CTCL funds as unfairly increasing turnout in the Democratic strongholds of Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine.

In a separate case, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals on Monday denied a recent request from Vos seeking a stay to appeal Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihns order last week that Vos and his attorney need to sit for depositions on Wednesday as part of a liberal watchdog groups lawsuit seeking public records related to Gablemans review.

Vos requested the stay on Friday, a move that attorneys for American Oversight called a last-ditch attempt to avoid discovery in court filings Monday.

As it stands now, the depositions are still scheduled for Wednesday morning, and unless a court says otherwise, we expect Speaker Vos to appear and answer questions, American Oversight spokesperson Clark Pettig said in an email. This could have been avoided if Speaker Vos had released the records of his election investigation to the public as required by Wisconsin law, and its disappointing that hes now going to even greater lengths to conceal the facts from the public.

The case is one of three ongoing lawsuits brought by American Oversight following requests for records filed last year pertaining to Gablemans review. Attorneys for American Oversight have asked that Vos be held in contempt for not releasing the records sooner.

Attorneys for Vos have said all available documents have been provided, while attorneys for American Oversight have questioned whether additional documents exist.

If (American Oversight) believes that a particular document has been withheld it can move the Circuit Court for relief, but it has not even raised such an allegation, Vos attorney Ronald Stadler wrote in a Friday court filing.

In yet another case, Erick Kaardal, a Republican attorney for the conservative Thomas More Society and former secretary and treasurer for the Republican Party of Minnesota, last week filed an appeal in Dane County Circuit Court challenging the Elections Commissions decision in early December to throw out a complaint filed against CTCL grants provided to the states five largest cities to help administer last years election during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Court rulings have found nothing illegal about the more than $10 million in grants CTCL distributed to about 214 municipalities in 39 of Wisconsins 72 counties, including many in areas solidly won by Trump. Nor did CTCL turn down grant requests from any of the Wisconsin municipalities that made them.

A recount and court decisions have affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes.

An analysis by The Associated Press found only 31 potential cases of voter fraud in Wisconsins 2020 election, which represents less than 0.15% of Bidens margin of victory.

Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, on Monday requested that the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau conduct an audit of Gablemans ongoing review. Carpenter, who is a member of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, made the request to the committees co-chairs Sen. Robert Cowles, R-Green Bay, and Rep. Samantha Kerman, R-Salem.

A spokesperson for Cowles said the office had just received Carpenters request Monday afternoon and will give it a review. The committee would have to vote to request a formal audit from the Audit Bureau.

Reviews of the election by the Audit Bureau and the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty found no evidence of widespread fraud but did offer recommendations on how to improve elections.

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Democratic Gov. Tony Evers raised another $5 million in the second half of last year, bringing his 2021 fundraising total to more than $10 million  the most raised in a year by any gubernatorial candidate in state history, his campaign said Monday.

Evers $10.5 million on hand was announced hours after former Lt. Gov. and Republican gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Kleefisch reported raising more than $3.3 million in the first four months of her campaign, marking one of the biggest hauls among a Wisconsin candidates first fundraising report.

Wisconsins 2022 gubernatorial race is expected to draw in a bevy of financial contributions, with Democrats looking to stave off a GOP push to unseat the incumbent governor, who has blocked several Republican-authored bills over the last three years. If Republicans oust Evers, the party would regain a trifecta of GOP control in Wisconsin.

Our fundraising success highlights the overwhelming grassroots support Governor Evers has earned by bringing common sense solutions and Wisconsin values back to the governors office, Evers campaign manager Cassi Fenili said in a statement. Wisconsinites know how important it is to re-elect Governor Evers and continue moving Wisconsin forward.

Evers campaign reported receiving more than 38,000 donations over the second half of last year, including contributions from all 72 counties in the state. Evers received contributions from more than 32,000 donors in all of last year, according to his campaign.

Evers $10.5 million in campaign funds is twice the amount raised by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker at this point in both his 2014 and 2018 reelection campaigns.

Neither Evers nor Kleefisch provided formal campaign finance documents for the second half of 2021, which are due to the Wisconsin Ethics Commission next Tuesday. Fundraising figures are just one component of a successful campaign or political party, but they can offer a glimpse into the campaign or partys organization, donor base and overall support.

Kleefisch, who spent eight years in office with Walker, must first win a GOP primary on Aug. 9, though her campaign has directly targeted incumbent Evers.

The former TV news anchor reported raising more than $3.3 million since launching her campaign in September. That amount is more than 10 times the roughly $312,000 raised by Evers in the early months of his campaign leading up to his eventual victory over Walker in 2018. Kleefischs fundraising total also surpasses the previous high of $1.3 million reported by Republican Mark Neumann in 2010. In 2009, Walker raised about $1.1 million in his first reporting period.

Our campaign has the infrastructure that will unite conservatives to take back Wisconsin and retire Tony Evers, Kleefisch said in a statement.

Kleefischs campaign reported raising funds from nearly 7,000 people across the states 72 counties since joining the race in September. The Associated Press reported on Monday that Freedom Wisconsin PAC, a political action committee created to help Kleefisch, reported raising $277,000.

While Kleefisch remains the most prominent Republican currently running for governor, Kevin Nicholson, a former U.S. Marine who lost in the 2018 U.S. Senate Republican primary, and Madison businessman Eric Hovde also are weighing potential gubernatorial bids.

Hovde, who lost in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in 2012, told The Associated Press on Monday that he was seriously evaluating a run for governor and would decide within weeks.

Hovde, a millionaire with the ability to self-finance, was unfazed by Kleefischs fundraising totals.

Good for her, but that would not have any impact on my decision making, he said.

Nicholson previously said that he would run for governor if U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson sought a third Senate term. With Johnson formally announcing his reelection bid on Sunday, Nicholson tweeted that its no secret that Im considering a run for Governor. It is time for new leadership in Wisconsin.

I do believe I have a role to play in setting the course for a better future for all of us, Nicholson tweeted Sunday. Over the coming days my family, friends, and I will continue to pray for wisdom for our next steps.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure (PIANC) and the Oil Companies International Marine Forum (OCIMF) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to formalise their long-standing working relationship.

Its key aim is to enhance the impact of both organisations in the area of waterborne transport infrastructure, to cooperate, communicate and collaborate in the area of the ship-shore interface while recognising and respecting their individual identities, membership expectations and traditions.

Their primary focus will be on supporting the work of each other through participation in relevant committees, workshops, conferences, and seminars as well as dissemination of technical information, joint activities on international issues and reciprocal representation in key groups.

Francisco Esteban Lefler, PIANC President and Karen Davis, OCIMF Managing Director, signed the memorandum of understanding in January 2022.

Lefler said: The MoU is a direct consequence of several years of cooperation in topics of common interest. It (or the MoU) opens the path for further fruitful cooperation in knowledge sharing, oriented to the technological and environmental improvement of port and offshore infrastructure dedicated to transportation and handling of energy-related bulks, promoting safety and reliability.

Davis said: PIANC and OCIMF have been collaborating for several years. By formalising this partnership on the back of OCIMFs refreshed strategy, this partnership will support OCIMFs vision to be a global marine industry that causes no harm to people or the environment. It should strengthen our risk-based, future-focussed approach to meet OCIMFs mission to develop best practices in the design, construction and safe operation of tankers, barges and offshore vessels and their interfaces with terminals. We look forward to working together to strengthen our existing safeguards against current risks and developing new safeguards to protect against emerging risks particularly in health, safety, security and environmental matters.-- TradeArabia News Service
IDAHO FALLS  Alan Reed leads a successful dairy business and popular ice cream empire. But in his spare time, he chairs one of the most controversial committees in Idaho public education. The professional and public service roles can seem worlds apart, but Reed sees some parallels.

You should deal with the FDA like I have to, he recently recalled telling a local charter school leader bothered by his committees state oversight role.

Reed, a third-generation owner of Reeds Dairy, chairs the Idaho Public Charter School Commission, a panel that oversees 57 Idaho charters  nearly three-fourths of the states total of 75.

After reshaping the family dairy into a successful business decades ago, he dove into education leadership, serving for years as a trustee in the Idaho Falls School District before being appointed to the commission.

Today, Reed, who drives a black diesel pickup and wears Wranglers, has a say in approving or closing the taxpayer-funded schools.

Its not always as simple as mixing cream with sugar, Reed acknowledged, and it can be much more political.

Its a hard balance, he said.

From farmhand to business man

Reeds family dairy lies on the outskirts of Idaho Falls, where his great grandfather bought land in 1930.

Reed recently breezed through some family history from his office on the same sweep of land. How his dad and two uncles went on to run the dairy, selling cream to another local ice cream company. How he worked on both the dairy and another nearby family farm growing up. How he was ready for a change by the time he finished high school.

Reed went off to Ricks College  now BYU-Idaho  in nearby Rexburg but didnt finish. Instead, he returned to the dairy and worked up a business proposal for his dad and uncles.

Rather than selling the dairys cream to the Farr Candy and Ice Cream Company across town, the dairy should make its own ice cream, he said. I saw a market for it pretty early on.

The men bought into the idea and sent Reed back to school. He enrolled in North Carolina State Universitys food science program in 1984.

But again, he didnt graduate. Equipped with the information he thought he needed to create the best ice cream, he returned to East Idaho early and set out for the right mix of cream and sugar.

After six months of taste testing with family members and throwing out a lot of ice cream, Reeds Dairy ice cream was born.

The other family profession

By 1985, Reeds Dairy was making its own ice cream, and morphing into a milking, bottling and sales company that would eventually send specialty dairy products across the country and oversees.

But another family profession  and an expectation  had crept into the Reed household.

Reeds wife Holly began working at a local elementary school in 1979 and snagged her first teaching job in the Idaho Falls School District four years later. Her mother was also a local elementary school teacher.

Education was a part of the family, too, Holly Reed recently told Idaho EdNews.

Reed worked on the business full time, and would eventually became its president. But something else pulled on him, and education was a driving force.

It wasnt an expectation, Reed said, recalling the various boards and committees his forebearers had been on, including his dads seat on the National Potato Committee. But some sort of public service role beckoned.

I didnt want to be like that, Reed said of his fathers prior commitments, but I did have a desire to serve.

He ran successfully in 1994 for a seat on Idaho Falls school board. He recalled the flashpoint issue that election cycle: sex education.

Its funny how issues repeat themselves, he said, referencing recent debate and contention over a House bill aimed at requiring parents to sign permission slips for youth to learn about human sexuality in Idahos schools.

From trustee to commissioner

Reed served as an Idaho Falls trustee until 2004, chairing the board for seven years.

Then the governors office called with a request. Would he serve on the states fledgling seven-member commission tasked with overseeing a growing number of public charter schools?

Reed admits not knowing much about charters at the time, but you dont get a call from the governors office everyday.

I took it as an honor, he said.

Reed accepted, and leaned into his accounting and business experience to work schools over on their budgets and other potential financial issues the commission uncovered, he recalled.

Accountability is still a focal point for the commission. But the level to which that happens is a lingering source of debate when it comes to the commissions charters, which seek renewal before the oversight body every five years.

That process revolves largely around assessing a schools student achievement and operational track record, including issues of financial distress or possible misuse of public funds.

The commission can close charters that dont meet standards, but it doesnt happen. Since its inception in 2004, the oversight body has closed just one of its schools, though several have consistently failed to meet performance expectations and make ends meet financially.

Reed recalled his early emphasis on questioning schools about their finances, but said his focus changed when he became commission chair in 2012, and got cornered by concerned lobbyists and charter administrators who said some schools had grown to fear and resent the commission.

I had no idea, Reed recalled, adding that his outlook on the commissions role shifted to one more cognizant of helping schools improve, not threatening to shutter them.

But in 2019, finding that balance between accountability and granting schools flexibility reached a boiling point, and found Reed reassessing even more his purpose on the commission.

You know I dont like being recorded

You know I dont like being recorded, Reed joked during an interview for this story.

The intended comical reference stemmed from a not-so-comical event from the spring of 2019, which found Reed and his fellow commissioners reeling after audio from a closed-door meeting became public.

On April 11, 2019, commissioners and staff met for nearly two hours behind closed doors. The meetings stated purpose was legal, since commissioners needed to review confidential student data. But the discussion drifted and found the group talking about closing some struggling charters, and how to convince legislators to get on board.

The commission made critical remarks about Jerome-based Heritage Academy, its administrator and the community. At one point, Reed voiced regret that the school remained open. He later apologized and asked to meet with Heritage officials, who declined.

Attorney General Lawrence Wasdens office concluded that the commission likely violated Idaho law during the meandering meeting. Commissioners later admitted to breaking the law and underwent open-meeting training from a Wasden deputy.

Critics, who had long viewed the commission as a problem, pounced. The lights went on, said Coalition of Idaho Charter School Families President Tom LeClaire, who told EdNews in 2019 that the meeting confirmed his suspicions about how the commission views some of its schools.

LeClaires group had emerged as an ally and voice for parents and students at some charters struggling academically and financially. For LeClaire, the meeting was the last straw.

Its become a dead relationship, and thats not what we want, he said amid the fallout.

Reed found himself again reconsidering the balance between accountability and flexibility.

There is an issue, and rightly so, of trust, he told EdNews in the summer of 2019.

A wonderful thing

Reed recently recalled the ordeal with a smile from his uncles former home on the farm, which now serves as office space for the family business.

A receptionists desk rests just inside the front door. An old kitchen table is now a conference table in Reeds office down the hall.

But the botched meeting  and its backlash  have further shaped his outlook on charters and the purposes they serve.

He pointed to two recent graduation ceremonies he attended: one featuring students at a high-performing charter and one for students at a low-performing virtual charter.

Some of those kids wouldnt have graduated had it not been for online schooling, he said of the group of online learners. The school might struggle, he added, but helping kids achieve something they might not have is a wonderful thing.

Yet while LeClaire and others may chafe at efforts to scrutinize charters, other prominent leaders have raised questions about whether the commission does enough to hold some of its schools accountable to taxpayer investments  including its virtual schools, which continually struggle when it comes to student achievement.

That is their job, said outspoken charter advocate and Bluum CEO Terry Ryan, who has called for greater scrutiny of struggling charters. In 2019, Ryan compared student achievement at charters to the classic spaghetti western The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and suggested that schools that continually struggle, including virtual ones, should close.

That hasnt happened under Reeds watch, but other officials have expressed confidence in the commissions approach. House Education Committee chair Rep. Lance Clow told EdNews Reed is a dedicated, leader, especially when it comes to charter schools.

Clow, whos known Reed for six years, said his committee has always relied on Reed and the commission for sincere and truthful information. (Senate Education chair Steven Thayne told EdNews he had nothing to add for the story and doesnt work much with Reed.)

From his office on the farm, Reed reiterated his goal to continue providing time for struggling schools to improve instead of shutting them down  an emphasis hell continue if hes allowed to.

Another call from the governor to keep going would be hard to turn down, said Reed, whos term on the commission expires next year.

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On any given day, the atmosphere at Idaho abortion clinics is tense. Whether its protesters yelling outside the building or clinic staff comforting patients through difficult procedures, the work is often accompanied by a layer of managed stress.

But abortion advocates say one fear, in the past few months, has been more stressful than all those factors combined: the possibility of losing abortion access altogether.

This year, women could see abortion access severely curtailed in Idaho. Some Idaho bills already have threatened to hamper access to the procedure, and more could be on the way. Idaho abortion advocates said theyre already hearing from more patients who are worried about abortion access, unsure whether the procedure remains legal in Idaho and even attempting to end pregnancies on their own.

That has providers concerned about those who rely on Idahos already sparse resources. Neighboring states abortion clinic staffers said theyre already preparing for an influx of Idaho patients who could stretch their clinics to capacity.

Debates could trigger Idaho law to ban practice

Any ruling that returns abortion decisions to states could trigger laws in several states, including Idaho, that would essentially outlaw the procedures. One Idaho law already on the books makes abortion a felony if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Last year, Idaho legislators passed a bill similar to one in Texas outlawing abortion when a heartbeat is detected  but the law goes into effect only if an appellate court upholds a similar heartbeat law. The only exceptions would be pregnancies that endanger the life of the mother or those that come from reported rape or incest.

The national abortion debate largely focuses on two laws. The first, passed in Mississippi, is in the U.S. Supreme Court and bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the case in June, and justices have indicated that they may be willing to alter or even overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

The second law is the Texas bill that bans abortion when a fetus heartbeat is detectable  typically around six weeks of pregnancy, so early that experts said its often before women know theyre pregnant. Several lawsuits are pending against the Texas law, which also allows citizens to bring a lawsuit against anyone who performs abortions or aids someone in getting an abortion.

Once federal courts rule on abortion laws, Idaho courts would need to determine whether the state can enact its new laws.

State Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston, who co-sponsored last years heartbeat bill, expects more abortion-related bills to be introduced early in the session and said theyll include some adjustments to (Idahos) trigger law to coincide with decisions in other states.

REPUBLICAN LEGISLATORS PLAN ANTI-ABORTION BILLS IN 2022

Blaine Conzatti, Idaho Family Policy Center president, told the Idaho Statesman that his organization is poised to push legislation inspired by the citizen enforcement component in Texas. It would add a similar private enforcement mechanism to last years heartbeat bill.

While Texas allows anyone  including people outside of the state  to bring a lawsuit over abortion, Conzatti said the Idaho legislation would be narrower, allowing the family of an aborted fetus to sue abortion providers as the family has been directly harmed by the abortion.

Conzatti said this provision would go into effect 30 days after the bill is signed into law, without the need to wait on higher courts decisions. He expects support from the Republican-dominated Legislature and Idaho Gov. Brad Little. He said it would prevent more abortions in Idaho while the U.S. Supreme Court weighs the Mississippi case.

Were on the cusp of fixing (Roe v. Wade), but the question is, what do we do until then? Conzatti said.

Littles office already has signaled approval for the Mississippi law by signing an amicus brief in support of the legislation.

Emily Callihan, Littles spokesperson, told the Statesman in an email that Little is pro-life and supports states rights. She said the governor is in favor of undoing Roe v. Wade, which has been the law of the land since a 7-2 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973.

Gov. Little welcomes a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that would clarify there is no constitutional right to an abortion and restore state sovereignty by allowing states to regulate all abortions, Callihan said.

Dr. Kara Cadwallader, chief medical officer for the Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, said the organization worries legislators could remove the trigger language in last years heartbeat bill. Such a law would essentially outlaw abortions, she said.

If that happens, the vast majority of women dont know theyre pregnant (at six weeks), Cadwallader said. The vast majority of women coming into our clinics will be too late to receive care.

IDAHOANS SEEKING ABORTIONS COULD STRAIN OTHER STATES

Four clinics in Idaho provide abortion services, all of them in the southern part of the state. Three of the four clinics are run by Planned Parenthood, one in Twin Falls and the others in the Treasure Valley. The fourth is a private Boise OB-GYN.

Cadwallader said Idahos laws are often the biggest obstacle to accessing abortions. The state requires patients to wait 24 hours after mandatory counseling with an abortion provider before they can have the procedure.

Idaho also allows only doctors to perform abortions, limiting the number of providers and the volume of procedures they can perform. In other states, physician assistants and nurse practitioners can perform abortions.

Cadwallader said Idahos Planned Parenthood locations will continue to provide other services that make up the bulk of their work  family planning, contraception, breast cancer screenings, STD testing  even if theyre required to shut down abortion services. But she worries about patients who want to end their pregnancies.

The impacts of laws restricting abortion access in Idaho go far beyond the states borders. Abortion providers and advocates in neighboring states say any further restrictions will lead to more Idahoans traveling to neighbor states clinics, which are already busy serving their own residents.

Some Idaho residents already travel out of state for services to such states as Washington, Wyoming and Montana, where providers are much closer. Further restrictions on abortion, though, could mean those living in some of Idahos largest cities could have to make the same long trips for services.

Idahoans drive an average of 21 miles one way to receive services, but a total ban on abortions would increase that distance to 250 miles each way, according to a study by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit abortion-rights advocacy organization.

The costs of such travel can add up quickly. Advocates said gas, airplane tickets, hotels and food can all cost someone hundreds to thousands of dollars, further complicating access for lower-income individuals.

Abortion funds can often provide financial assistance to those who need to travel for care. Jade Pfaefflin Bounds, volunteer coordinator for the Northwest Abortion Access Fund, said their organization is expecting a significant spike in calls. While donations and awareness have also increased, the organization might have to be more frugal with how they provide help.

We might not be able to be quite as generous or help everyone to the extent that we would like to, Pfaefflin Bounds said. Even our fundraising needs would probably go up.

For Boiseans, the nearest clinic outside of Idaho providing surgical abortions is in Kennewick, Washington, about four and a half hours away by car.

Washington could see a flood of new patients because it has some of the least-restrictive abortion laws in the U.S., according to the Guttmacher Institute. That could lead to longer wait times and additional pressures on staff working in Washingtons clinics. Abortion providers are already seeing a high demand for services from those in their local area.

The impact would be absolutely devastating to patients, said Paul Dillon, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho. Weve already seen patients from Texas.

Dillon said Planned Parenthood will be lobbying the Washington Legislature to provide funding for additional staff at abortion providers to better handle new patients from other states.

Blue Mountain Clinic, which provides abortions in Missoula, Montana, receives about 10-12 patients from Idaho per year. Nicole Smith, the executive director, said the clinic expects more Idaho residents to travel to Missoula if abortion restrictions go into effect.

Smith serves on the board for the Susan Wicklund Fund, which provides financial aid for those traveling for abortions, and said the organization has seen an increase in out-of-state patients asking for assistance. She said the financial burden of finding care can dissuade some from trying altogether.

People that live in rural parts of this country, who already have a hard time accessing health care, are (going to be) required to travel even further, she said. Theres going to be a lot of people who do not end up accessing the care that they need.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD SEES INCREASE IN SELF-MANAGED ABORTIONS

But that doesnt mean people wont get abortions. Some are resorting to desperate measures months before a possible Supreme Court decision. Already, Planned Parenthood clinics in Idaho have seen an uptick in women trying to self-manage abortions, Cadwallader said.

Before Roe v. Wade, weve all heard stories of back-alley abortions, or coat hangers, or taking herbs to try to cause an abortion, she said. Now women are often getting (abortive) medication from the internet.  Theres no one supervising their care at all, counseling them about what to expect. If they have a complication or problem, they have no one to watch out for them.

Cadwallader said without proper guidance, abortion pills can lead to infection or severe bleeding, which can end in infertility for some people.

She said she worries about a chilling effect on women who seek safe abortions. Cadwallader said the Texas law, which Conzatti hopes to emulate, could create a fear-mongering environment of vigilante justice.

Thats a big fear, that even if Roe v. Wade isnt overturned, it will be so gutted and women will be so scared, theyll try to take things into their own hands, she said.

Cadwallader urged abortion-rights opponents to reconsider their view of people who pursue the procedure  many of whom are low-income and already have children to support, she said.

Its easy to depersonalize it and think these women are bad people, Cadwallader said. These are our sisters, our mothers, our daughters. Theyre real people who are seeking health care like anyone else.

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The renewed Iraqi parliament held Sunday its first session in the capital Baghdad, almost three months after legislative polls.

The parliament, Anadolu news agency reported citing Iraqi state-run news agency INA, is due to elect a speaker and two deputies during Sundays meeting. Lawmakers will later elect a new president who will task the largest bloc with forming the government.

The session, the agency added, was chaired by MP Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, 74, the oldest member of parliament. Millions of Iraqi went to polls on October 10 to renew the parliament. Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadrs bloc came first through the process after winning with 73 seats in the 329-member house.
Lebanon and Iraq on Sunday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aimed at strengthening ties in the economic, industrial, scientific, environmental and technological fields, according to a statement released by Lebanons Industry Ministry.

The MoU also intends to improve business cooperation between the two countries, the ministrys statement said.

The MoU was signed by Iraqi Minister of Industry and Minerals Manhal Aziz al-Khabbaz and Lebanese Industry Minister George Bouchikian, who is on an official visit to Iraq to discuss ways of boosting relations between the two countries.

George Bouchikian said he discussed technical and economic issues with Iraqi officials in order to facilitate exchanges and set up joint investments in the industrial and production sectors that meet both countries demands, particularly in the pharmaceutical and food industries.

Iraq is looking forward to benefitting from Lebanons pharmaceutical manufacturing expertise, al-Khabbaz on his part said.

In addition, the two countries agreed to remove technical barriers to the flow of commodities between them.
Some of the political prisoners amnestied by the Prime Minister on Friday, January 7, are already out of prison. Abiy Ahmed took advantage of the Christmas ceremonies in Ethiopia to pardon the main opposition figures who had been behind bars for a year and a half. The authorities had accused them of terrorism. Their release coincides with the Ethiopian governments plan for a national reconciliation dialogue.

They have been granted amnesty even though they have not yet been tried and sentenced. About 20 political opponents were released, on Friday, on the orders of Abiy Ahmed.

The Prime Minister had pardoned political opponents in 2018, when he came to power but since then, thousands of opposition supporters are back behind bars. Among the released prisoners are various opponents. First, the Oromo nationalists, led by Jawar Mohamed, a former ally turned Abiy Ahmed critic.

Five leaders of the TPLF, the Tigrayan party that is recognized as a terrorist organization and is still at war in Tigray against the Ethiopian government, were also released. And finally, members of the opposition political party, Balderas.
The regional organization met in an extraordinary Summit in Accra, Ghana, on Sunday and endorsed the decisions taken by the West African Monetary Union a few hours earlier.

In order to bring the junta to a rapid return to constitutional order, the West African countries meeting at a summit in Accra have taken very tough economic and financial measures in addition to the previous sanctions.

ECOWAS decided to freeze Malian assets at the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), to cut off financial aid, to close the borders between Mali and the member states of the organization, and to suspend transactions with Bamako, with the exception of medical products and basic necessities. ECOWAS also decided to withdraw the ambassadors of all member countries from Mali.

The summit found that the transition had failed to hold elections by February 27, 2022, as agreed. Diplomats consider the timetable proposed by Mali unacceptable. They called on the Malian transitional authorities to suspend major reform measures until the legitimate institutions that will be put in place after the elections take office. Mali, which proposed a transition period of four years, will have to review its plan.
The African Development Bank (AfDB) announced Monday a $14 million grant to South Sudan destined to boost food security, value addition and trade.

The five-year project will be implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in conjunction with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, AfDB country manager for South Sudan, Benedict Kanu, said.

With South Sudan being land-locked and experiencing weak urban and peri-urban infrastructure, having good access to lucrative markets especially within the country is a necessary condition for farmers to be profitable, productive and reduce risk of loss of surplus farm produce, Kanu noted in a statement.

The project will help increase the production and incomes of almost 20,000 farming families in Central and Eastern Equatoria and Jonglei states, he added, noting that the grant will benefit formerly internally displaced persons who returned to their homes and are in need of economic reintegration.

A key factor explaining Africas and indeed South Sudans low level of agricultural value addition is the inefficient marketing infrastructure, Kanu stressed.

This prevents farmers and processors from realizing the full value of their products, even in their raw form, he underlined.

The AfDB also said that the project will create aggregation business opportunities for farmers and traders, including women and youth, and provide them with new skills and knowledge, and the agro-processing equipment they need to produce competitive products.
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Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are on the rise all over the worldand Switzerland is no exception. Each year, infections caused by multi-drug resistant bacteria lead to at least 300 fatalities in Switzerland alone. Rapid diagnostic testing and the targeted use of antibiotics play a crucial role in curbing the spread of these antibiotic-resistant "superbugs."

However, it often takes two or more days to determine which antibiotics are still effective against a particular pathogen because the bacteria from the patient's sample first have to be cultivated in the diagnostic lab. Due to this delay, many doctors initially treat serious infections with a class of drugs known as broad-spectrum antibiotics, which are effective against a broad range of bacterial species.

Now, researchers at ETH Zurich, the University Hospital Basel and the University Basel have developed a method that uses mass spectrometry data to identify signs of antibiotic resistance in bacteria up to 24 hours earlier.

"Intelligent computer algorithms search the data for patterns that distinguish resistant bacteria from those that are responsive to antibiotics," says Caroline Weis, a doctoral student in the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich in Basel and the study's lead author. The researchers published their method in the latest issue of the journal Nature Medicine.

The time to optimal therapy is critical

By identifying significant antibiotic resistances at an early stage, doctors can tailor an antibiotic therapy to the relevant bacterium more quickly. This can be particularly beneficial for seriously ill patients.

"The time taken to optimize antibiotic therapy might mean the difference between life and death if an infection is serious. A fast, accurate diagnosis is extremely important in those kinds of cases," says Adrian Egli, professor and Head of Clinical Bacteriology at the University Hospital Basel.

The mass spectrometry instrument that supplies the data for the new method is already in use at many microbiology labs worldwide to identify bacterial types. The device analyzes thousands of protein fragments in each sample and then creates an individual fingerprint of the bacterial proteins. This process also requires bacteria to be cultured beforehand, but only for a few hours rather than a few days.

Huge new data set has been created

The researchers in Basel have developed a new method that extends the uses of mass spectrometry to include the identification of antibiotic resistance. For this dataset, the teams extracted more than 300,000 mass spectra of individual bacteria from four laboratories in northwestern Switzerland and linked these to the results of the corresponding clinical resistance tests. The result is a new, publicly available dataset covering around 800 different bacteria and over 40 different antibiotics.

"Our next step was to train artificial intelligence algorithms with this data such that they could learn to detect antibiotic resistance on their own," says Karsten Borgwardt, professor in the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich in Basel, who led the study together with Prof. Egli.

In order to make their predictive model as widely applicable as possible, the researchers analyzed how the algorithm's performance was influenced by the training data. The different approaches compared in the study included training the predictive model with data from just one hospital and training with data combined from multiple hospitals.

While previous studies in this field of research have focused on individual bacterial species or antibiotics, this new study draws on several bacterial types isolated in hospitals as well as a multitude of associated resistance characteristics. "Our dataset is the largest to date to combine mass spectrometry data with information on antibiotic resistance," Borgwardt says. "It's a great example of how existing clinical data can be used to generate new knowledge."

Model reliably detects common resistances

To gauge the usefulness of the computer predictions, the researchers teamed up with an infectious diseases expert to analyze around 60 case studies. Their goal was to determine the extent to which the predictions would have influenced the choice of antibiotic therapy if they had been available to the clinician at an early stage in the decision-making process.

The research team deliberately chose case studies featuring the most important antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and gut bacteria resistant to broad-spectrum beta-lactam antibiotics (E. coli).

One reason this case study is so important is that doctors also tend to base their choice of antibiotic on factors such as a patient's age and medical history. The results showed that the new method would indeed have prompted the clinician to opt for an improved antibiotic therapy in some cases.

Planning underway for a clinical trial

Before the new diagnostic method can be implemented in patient care, the team will need to overcome additional challenges, which include the implementation of a large-scale clinical trial to corroborate the benefits of the new method in a routine hospital setting. "The planning for such a study is already underway," Egli says. As an expert in clinical microbiology, he is confident that the project will improve how infections are treated over the next few years.

Borgwardt says that the project also raises many important research questions concerning the use of artificial intelligence in medicine. "This dataset allows us to take a closer look at the changes we need to make at the algorithmic level to further enhance the quality of predictions for data gathered at different points in time and at different locations."

Explore further Bacterial viruses: Faithful allies against antibiotic resistance

More information: Caroline Weis et al, Direct antimicrobial resistance prediction from clinical MALDI-TOF mass spectra using machine learning, Nature Medicine (2022). Journal information: Nature Medicine Caroline Weis et al, Direct antimicrobial resistance prediction from clinical MALDI-TOF mass spectra using machine learning,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41591-021-01619-9
The Radisson Group has announced plans to open 20 new hotels over the next three years in key Saudi cities including Makkah and Jeddah as part of its big expansion strategy for the kingdom, offering a total of 1,600 rooms.

This will be added to the 24 hotels, resorts and hotel units currently being operated by the group in the kingdom.

Other hotels scheduled to be launched include the Radisson Blu Hotel at the Riyadh International Convention and Exhibition Centre, the Mansard Hotel in Riyadh and the Radisson Collection Hotel, the second hotel for the luxury brand "Radisson Collection" in Riyadh, it stated.

Announcing this today (January 10), Radisson Group CEO Federico Gonzalez said it aims to boost its investment portfolio in the kingdom to around 50% of its total investments in the Middle East by 2026.

The group is set to open a regional office in Riyadh this year to support plans to double its operational portfolio by adding more hotels in various regions, corresponding to its five-year plan to create more job opportunities.

"The commitment of Radisson Hotel Group to developing new hotels in Saudi Arabia and opening a regional office in Riyadh is an effective contribution to enhance the steps taken by the kingdom to achieve its goal of receiving 100 million visits by 2030," he stated.

Gonzalez was speaking to the media following a meeting with the Minister of Tourism Ahmed Al-Khatib.

The Radisson move will be a major boost to National Tourism Development Strategy, which aims to make available 854,000 new hotel rooms, 70% of which will be financed by the local and foreign private sectors, in line with Vision 2030 target to hit the 100 million visit benchmark in the next 10 years, thus putting the tourism sectors contribution to the countrys GDP at 10% and create one million new jobs.

"This cooperation is a continuation of our partnerships with world-leading hotel brands," stressing that continuing the partnership with the private sector is a vital element of the Kingdom's tourism strategy," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
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Parents have a new tool to protect their young teens during the current, record-breaking omicron surge: boosters.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommends Pfizer boosters for young people ages 12 to 15 who finished their two-dose vaccination series at least five months ago. That means anyone who is 12 years and older who received the Pfizer series at least five months ago should get a booster.

"Vaccination in children is exceedingly important, and getting boosters for children who are age-eligible is important, too," says Colleen Nash, MD, MPH, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Rush University Medical Center. "We know that booster doses have really augmented the protection that adults have seen against the omicron variant, and we expect that will be true for children as well."

In Chicago, more than 76 percent of children ages five and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine. "Any dose that a child receives is certainly beneficial, and we would encourage parents of those children who have received one dose to follow through with that second dose and complete the two-dose series," Nash says. "We would also encourage parents to get their kids boosters when they are eligible."

Getting kids boosted can also help protect them against multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a rare but severe and sometimes fatal illness, Nash says. MIS-C creates inflammation throughout the body that affects all of the major organs. Children with MIS-C can quickly become very ill and require intensive care.

Besides getting kids boosted if they are eligible, Nash recommends the following advice to slow the COVID-19 surge:

Make sure kids have masks that fit well over their mouth and nose.

Teach kids to wash their hands regularly.

Practice social distancing.

Get everyone in the household vaccinated and boosted if they are eligible.

Explore further US advisers debate Pfizer boosters for younger teens
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As others go through different experiences, we can sometimes learn from watching their example. Researchers have long explained that we experience social understanding, meaning that in order to learn by watching, we need to first know what the other person is doing or experiencing by recognizing our own emotions and needs from those of others. But what is going on in the brain during this process? Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine believe it is related to memory recall and have identified, in rats, activity patterns supporting this idea.

The findings are published online in the current edition of Neuron.

"We recorded the brain activity of a rat familiar with a certain maze or trajectory, as it watched another rat run the same maze, receiving rewards at different points. We found that the brain activity during this process is similar to memory recall," said Dr. Daoyun Ji, professor of neuroscience at Baylor and lead author of the study. "The actual replay during or right after the observation is different from the brain activity of self-learning. It is a different type of activity pattern and activation."

Ji and his colleagues used two subjects, an observer rat and a demonstrator rat, both trained in the maze.

"This allows us to see the brain activity of the observer as it watches the demonstrator making free choices" said Dr. Xiang Mou, assistant professor of neuroscience at Baylor. "The advantage to this is that we can monitor both the brain activity and the behavior to see the process as it happens in relation to the activity."

Every time the demonstrator rat made a correct move and was rewarded, the observer rat had to acknowledge that action then it was rewarded too. It was then placed in the maze and had to copy the trajectory of the demonstrator to be rewarded again.

"The observer watches, it can't guess which way the demonstrator is planning to go to be rewarded. The behavior of the observer while watching the other rat run the maze, and behavior when placed in the maze again, depends on what it sees," said Mou.

Researchers measured the electrical impulses in the hippocampus while the observer ran the maze, using that brain activity to make a "codebook" to understand what activity was similar to that while it watched the demonstrator run the maze.

"As we predicted, when the observer sees the demonstrator running left, we can see that the activity patterns associated with self-running of the left direction are reactivated. If it is activated multiple times, this shows us that the observer knows that the demonstrator went to the left and also keep that info in mind so that later if put back in the maze, the observer knows he needs to go left," Ji said.

Both Ji and Mou explain that this might be the same framework for how our brain works as well. We all see things from different perspectives, but we are capable of understanding another person's experiences, physical and emotional, in relation to our own. For some, the cognitive capability needed to do this does not function properly. For example, those with autism might have trouble understanding social cues.

"While we can show in a rat model what activity is used in this process, exactly how the circuitry of our own brain works in more complex examples of social understanding is still a mystery. Our work is moving toward one day being able to correct these types of circuits," Ji said.

Explore further Study shows that rewarded life experiences are replayed and consolidated during sleep

More information: Xiang Mou et al, Observational learning promotes hippocampal remote awake replay toward future reward locations, Neuron (2021). Journal information: Neuron Xiang Mou et al, Observational learning promotes hippocampal remote awake replay toward future reward locations,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.12.005
Description of control and TOPAZ1 proband testis histology and aberrant acrosome formation. a, b H&E stainings of (a) control and (b) Proband_060 with pathogenic mutations in TOPAZ1 gene. The epithelium of the seminiferous tubules in the TOPAZ1 proband show reduced numbers of germ cells and an absence of elongating spermatids based on the analysis of 150 seminiferous tubules in control and patient. c, d immunofluorescent labeling of DNA (magenta) and the acrosome (green) in control sections (c) and TOPAZ1 proband sections (d). (c) The arrowhead indicates the acrosome in an early round spermatid and the arrows the acrosome in elongating spermatids. Spreading of the acrosome and nuclear elongation are hallmarks of spermatid maturation. (d) No acrosomal spreading (see arrowheads) or nuclear elongation is observed in the TOPAZ1 proband. The asterisk indicates an example of progressive acrosome accumulation without spreading. Scale bar: 40 m (a, b) and 5 m (c, d). Credit: DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27132-8

Scientists at Newcastle University have identified a new genetic mechanism that can cause severe forms of male infertility.

This breakthrough in understanding the underlying cause of male infertility offers hope of better treatment options for patients in the future.

The study, published today in Nature Communications, shows that new mutations, not inherited from father or mother, play a major role in this medical condition.

Experts have found that mutations occurring during the reproduction process, when the DNA of both parents is replicated, can result in infertility in men later in life.

Improving understanding

It is hoped that this new knowledge will help to provide more answers in the future about the cause and best treatment options available to infertile couples.

Professor Joris Veltman, Dean of Newcastle University's Biosciences Institute, led the research which involved patients from Newcastle Fertility Centre and Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands.

He said: "This is a real paradigm shift in our understanding of the causes of male infertility. Most genetic studies look at recessively inherited causes of infertility, whereby both parents are a carrier of a mutation in a gene, and the infertility occurs when the son receives both mutated copies, resulting in problems with their fertility.

"However, our research has found that mutations which occur when the DNA is replicated during reproduction in parents plays a significant role in the infertility in their sons.

"At present, we don't understand the underlying cause in the majority of infertile men, and this research will hopefully increase the percentage of men for whom we can provide answers."

Scientists collected and studied DNA from a global cohort of 185 infertile men and their parents. They identified 145 rare protein-altering mutations that are likely to negatively impact male fertility.

As many as 29 of the mutations affect genes directly involved in processes related to spermatogenesisthe process of sperm cell developmentor other cellular processes related to reproduction.

Experts identified mutations in the gene RBM5 in multiple infertile men. Previous research carried out in mice has shown that this gene plays a role in male infertility.

Importantly, these mutations mostly cause a dominant form of infertility, where only one mutated gene is required. As a consequence, there is a 50 percent chance that infertility caused by these mutations will be passed on to the man's child (if assisted reproductive technologies are used) and this may result in infertility, particularly in sons.

Millions of children have already been born through assisted reproductive approaches as a result of infertility. This research indicates a significant proportion of these children may inherit infertility from their father.

Professor Veltman said: "If we are able to obtain a genetic diagnosis, then we can start understanding better male infertility problems and why some infertile men still produce sperm that can be used successfully for assisted reproduction.

"With our information, and the research others are doing, we hope clinicians can improve counseling for couples and recommend what is the best course of action in order to conceive, either by proposing an appropriate medically-assisted procedure or in cases where none is suitable, provide appropriate alternatives."

Infertility problems

It is estimated that up to 7 percent of men are affected by infertility and 50 percent of fertility problems within a heterosexual couple are due to the man. In around half of male infertility cases, the cause is unexplained.

Moving forwards, the scientists want to expand their work by studying thousands of patients and their parents in a large international consortium.

They will follow-up their research by conducting further studies into the role these newly identified mutated genes have on the impact of spermatogenesis and on the overall fertility in humans.

Explore further Discovery of new genetic causes of male infertility

More information: M. S. Oud et al, A de novo paradigm for male infertility, Nature Communications (2022). Journal information: Nature Communications M. S. Oud et al, A de novo paradigm for male infertility,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27132-8
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The quest to discover how some people can compare or "match" the intricate details of faces, fingerprints and even firearms only by sight has taken a new, exciting twist.

While TV programs like CSI show computer algorithms performing forensic science taskslike fingerprint-matchingthey are actually performed by forensic scientists who train for many years. However, new research led by Dr. Bethany Growns, a cognitive psychologist from the University of Exeter, suggests there may be ordinary people with a natural talent in this task.

In a pioneering new study, Dr. Growns and colleagues investigated how well some people can compare complex visual images like fingerprints and faces.

The researchers asked a group of people to carry out four visual identity matching tasks containing faces, fingerprints, firearms, and artificial prints. Participants were asked to compare two images side-by-side and decide if they came from the same source or different sources.

They found that some participants were highly accurate across all four tasksa feat achieved without any forensic science background or training.

The research suggests there are likely to be rare individuals in the general population who could be as accurate as expert forensic scientists, but who naturally possess this ability without any training.

Dr. Growns suggests that these "super-matchers" may not even realize they have this skill. She said: "This is not a task people do often as part of their daily lives, so they may never realize they have this gift. We think this ability may be related to a broader pattern-recognition skillfor example, some people are 'super-recognizers' of faces and they tend to do really well on our tests as well. But this is something that still needs to be investigated."

To help with this investigation, Dr. Growns and her team have created a new online testwhich you can attempt hereto help find these "super-matchers" and understand what makes them better than the average person.

This finding challenges long-held beliefs that forensic scientists' abilities are solely the result of years of experience and training. However, with this new research, Dr. Growns suggests, "Knowing there are people who are naturally gifted in visual comparison means we can design tests to identify and recruit them in forensic science laboratories around the world."

Much more research is needed to identify individuals who excel at this task and what makes them so different to the average person. Currently, we know very little about how or why they might outperform so many people. The long-term research goal of Dr. Growns' team is planning to explore the underlying psychological processes that might make these people so good. But first, we have to find them.

The study, entitled Match me if you can: Evidence for a domain-general visual comparison ability, is now published in Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.

Explore further Forensic examiners pass the face matching test
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An Australian and Canadian study has found while childhood COVID vaccination leads to high relative reductions in child disease and mortality, it is more beneficial to adults, particularly the unvaccinated.

Accepted into mBio, but available currently on MedRxiv, the research uses a mathematical epidemiological model to forecast the effect of childhood vaccination on the number of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, deaths, complications, and vaccine adverse effects in both children and in adults.

"Our model showed that childhood vaccination carries minimal risk, yet can result in large relative reductions in the disease" said Professor Michael Good from the Institute for Glycomics, Griffith University.

"For children between five to 11 years of age while we will see a high percent reduction in hospitalizations and deaths, there will not be a huge reduction in the actual number of children being hospitalized or dying because these events were so rare in the first place, even in unvaccinated children."

The study showed that the biggest benefit of childhood vaccination will, perhaps surprisingly, be seen in adult populations.

"A critical point is that for children aged five to 11, cases of vaccine-associated myocarditis and anaphylaxis are predicted to be very rare, so childhood vaccination can be used altruistically to work for the greater population," said Professor Michael Hawkes, School of Public Health, University of Alberta.

"Our results indicate that childhood vaccination generates an "altruistic" reduction in the number of adult cases, hospitalizations, and mortality particularly among the unvaccinated, who have a high risk of adverse outcomes.

"The observed effects on herd immunity were significant however, with a reduction in hospitalizations and deaths of 8 to 13%."

The implication for immunization programs of this effect on adult populations is that childhood vaccination has the greatest potential for population-wide impact when coupled with other public health measures such as social distancing, masking, improved hand hygiene and adult vaccination to maximize the reduction in cases.

"The success of childhood vaccinations on the broader community is highly dependent on the intensity of the epidemic and the rate of transmission," Professor Good said.

"Under less intense epidemic conditions, when the effective reproduction rate is slightly greater than 1, the type of modest reductions seen in adult populations due to childhood vaccination can lead to large reductions in the disease."

The authors also acknowledge that vaccinating children to benefit adults must be considered from an ethical as well as a public health perspective.

The researchers point out that in the first 19 months of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in the U.S. there were 349 deaths of children due to COVID-19 while the annual death rate of children due to influenza was 116.

"Currently, many children in Australia and Canada don't receive vaccination for seasonal influenza, suggesting that a substantial fraction of parents would be similarly reluctant to vaccinate their children against COVID-19, despite the fact that by vaccinating children, they are benefiting the rest of the community," Professor Good said.

"These ethical considerations can become blurred, however, because the people childhood vaccination will be protecting are often older individuals who refuse to be vaccinated in the first place, or the small percentage of vaccinated people for whom the vaccine is ineffective.

"From a global health perspective, an additional ethical consideration is the justice of giving priority to children in high-income countries who have low risk of severe disease, while vaccines have not been made available to vulnerable adult populations in low-income countries. Doing the latter will have the added benefit reducing the likelihood of new variants of the disease emerging."

Modeling for this study was generated using publicly available data for the Delta strain of SARS-CoV-2. The researchers acknowledge that case numbers will be higher for the Omicron strain but it is predicted that the relative impacts of Omicron on children and adults as a result of vaccination of children will be similar.

Explore further Brazil regulator approves COVID vaccine for children

More information: Michael T. Hawkes et al, Vaccinating children against COVID-19: commentary and mathematical modelling, (2022). Michael T. Hawkes et al, Vaccinating children against COVID-19: commentary and mathematical modelling,(2022). DOI: 10.1101/2022.01.05.22268820
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

As the two-year anniversary of the pandemic approaches, a new commentary provides insights into reforming the "labyrinth of conflicting and uncoordinated actions among state and federal regulators" that in early 2020 hampered Seattle researchers from community testing for COVID-19.

The commentary, written by members of the Brotman Baty Institute (BBI), the research collaboration among UW Medicine, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Seattle Children's, was published recently in the journal Nature Medicine.

"Despite the severity of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants, many people are seeking to move on and re-establish life as they knew it before the COVID-19 pandemic," write the authors. "But public health policy makers cannot move on unless and until a sustainable surveillance system is in place."

The article chronicles efforts by the Seattle Flu Study, a city-wide platform established by BBI in November of 2018 to conduct surveillance of respiratory pathogens, more than a year before the onset of COVID-19. Its lab was operating in a research capacity, thereby allowing it to collect and test samples for research. But it was not authorized to return results to participants.

Beginning January 22, 2020, one day after the nation's first case of SARS-CoV-2 was discovered in Snohomish County, and continuing through May of that year, leaders of the Seattle Flu Study engaged with representatives of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seeking to establish protocols for COVID-19 testing.

In early February, the FDA allowed the CDC to manufacture and distribute a COVID test for public health laboratories. Subsequently, it was discovered these tests produced inconclusive results, due to contamination in one of the controls.

"During the weeks needed to resolve these problems, testing for SARS-CoV-2 required samples to be sent to the CDC in Atlanta, thereby causing significant delays (which) eliminated any effort to contain the emerging outbreaks in U.S.," according to the authors.

Throughout the next several months, federal regulatory requirements kept changing, thereby requiring "frequent pivots" by Seattle Flu Study researchers, lab technicians, and others. The authors contend, "It is imperative that our nation's regulatory systems become nimbler to enable certified laboratories to provide critical information to our communities and healthcare providers in real time."

Among the authors' recommendations to improve those systems are:

Enabling clinical and academic laboratories to continue to be regulated by the federal Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA), whose regulators have "flexibility to implement amended regulations during public health emergencies."

Modernizing the current regulatory structure, without additional regulation by the FDA, thereby enabling healthcare professionals to respond rapidly to emerging outbreaks, including returning individual results and "allowing the FDA to focus its attention on the agency's core regulatory responsibilities, including vaccines."

Offering five key principles for a regulatory framework during a pandemic: (1) community surveillance and engagement, along with ongoing collaboration with public health agencies; (2) data collection and accurate analysis; (3) modeling transmission dynamics and genomic epidemiology; (4) regulatory oversight of clinical laboratory testing under CLIA; and (5) lab flexibility to help address emerging pathogens and supply chain disruptions.

"Such a regulatory framework is vital to ensure research studies and clinical testing are conducted in an ethical manner that does no harm, provides benefits to society, and limits risks to individuals," the authors write.

The authors of the study are: Dr. Michael Boeckh (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center); Dr. Helen Y. Chu (UW Medicine); Dr. Janet A. Englund (Seattle Children's) and Drs. Christina M. Lockwood, Deborah A. Nickerson, Jay Shendure, and Lea Starita (all UW Medicine).

Explore further New recommendations to improve diagnostic testing response for current COVID-19 pandemic and future emerging outbreaks

More information: Michael Boeckh et al, The Seattle Flu Study: when regulations hinder pandemic surveillance, Nature Medicine (2021). Journal information: Nature Medicine Michael Boeckh et al, The Seattle Flu Study: when regulations hinder pandemic surveillance,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41591-021-01587-0

Provided by Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine
Image of the ultrastructural morphology exhibited by the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Credit: CDC

China is battling coronavirus outbreaks in several cities, testing the country's strict "zero-COVID" strategy just weeks before Beijing hosts the Winter Olympics.

Here's a rundown of the measures in place in key areas of the world's most populous nation.

Xi'an

The historic city of 13 million people is in its third week of lockdown as it races to stamp out a 2,000-case outbreak, one of the largest within China for months.

Residents may not leave their homes or drive cars around the city under new rules which built on existing business shutdowns and a ban on travel out of a city famed for its Terracotta Warriors.

Local authorities have come under fire for their handling of a lockdown that has included supply issues and medical tragedies.

A top health official made a public apology last week over the miscarriage of an eight-month pregnant woman, after a viral video of her being refused entry to a hospital without a COVID test prompted outrage on social media.

Officials also admitted they were struggling to ensure households had enough foodalthough that problem appears to have eased in recent days.

Tianjin

Fears are growing about a cluster of infections in the northern port city of Tianjin, where at least two cases involve the fast-spreading Omicron variant of the virus.

Authorities on Sunday ordered people not to leave the city "unless essential" and barred all departures without official permissiona move that has been a precursor to lockdowns in other cities.

Schools and university campuses have been closed, and officials are testing all 14 million residents.

While small, the Tianjin outbreak is noteworthy because of the city's proximity to Beijing just 150 kilometres (90 miles) away.

Trains from Tianjin to the capital have been cancelled and road checkpoints have been set up to stop any vehicles entering Beijing from the port city.

Henan

Several cities in the central province of Henanwhich lies near Xi'anhave stepped up virus controls in response to a spate of over 250 local cases since the end of December.

Provincial capital Zhengzhou has imposed a partial lockdown and ordered its nearly 13 million residents to get tested.

Last week, one million people in Yuzhou city were put under stay-at-home orders.

On Monday, the city of Anyangwhich is testing its five million residents for COVIDsaid it had found 18 cases, including Omicron variant positives that were linked to the Tianjin cluster.

From Tuesday, officials said, the city will essentially seal itself off from the surrounding area with highway checkpoints and long distance train and bus sales halted. Classes will also move online.

Beijing

The capital last week sealed off its Winter Olympics "closed loop", which will cocoon thousands of athletes and Games staff for weeks without direct physical access to the outside world.

Anyone entering the bubble must be fully vaccinated or face a 21-day quarantine when they arrive in the city, and everyone inside will be tested daily and must wear face masks at all times.

Rules outside the loop are far less strict, but the city has barred entry to people travelling from places that have recorded COVID cases in the last two weeks and requires all arrivals to show a negative test from the past 48 hours.

Shenzhen

After logging a handful of cases in recent days, the southern tech hub just across the border from Hong Kong has locked down some housing compounds, launched a mass testing initiative and shuttered some long-distance bus stations.

Explore further China detects more Omicron cases as cities tighten restrictions

 2022 AFP
Registered nurse Sara Nystrom, of Townshend, Vt., prepares to enter a patient's room in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, N.H., Jan. 3, 2022. The omicron variant has caused a surge of new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and many hospitals are not only swamped with cases but severely shorthanded because of so many employees out with COVID-19. Credit: AP Photo/Steven Senne, File

Health authorities around the U.S. are increasingly taking the extraordinary step of allowing nurses and other workers infected with the coronavirus to stay on the job if they have mild symptoms or none at all.

The move is a reaction to the severe hospital staffing shortages and crushing caseloads that the omicron variant is causing.

California health authorities announced over the weekend that hospital staff members who test positive but are symptom-free can continue working. Some hospitals in Rhode Island and Arizona have likewise told employees they can stay on the job if they have no symptoms or just mild ones.

The highly contagious omicron variant has sent new cases of COVID-19 exploding to over 700,000 a day in the U.S. on average, obliterating the record set a year ago. The number of Americans in the hospital with the virus is running at about 110,000, just short of the peak of 124,000 last January.

Many hospitals are not only swamped with cases but severely shorthanded because of so many employees out with COVID-19.

At the same time, omicron appears to be causing milder illness than the delta variant.

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that health care workers who have no symptoms can return to work after seven days with a negative test, but that the isolation time can be cut further if there are staffing shortages.

Registered nurse Nvard Termendzhyan, center, sets up a table for Linda Calderon, right, as her twin sister Natalie Balli, left, rests in her bed in a COVID-19 unit at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Los Angeles, Dec. 13, 2021. Hospitals around the U.S. are increasingly taking the extraordinary step of allowing nurses and other workers infected with the coronavirus to stay on the job if they have mild symptoms or none at all. Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File

France last week announced it is allowing health care workers with mild or no symptoms to keep treating patients rather than isolate.

In the Phoenix area, Dignity Health, a major hospital operator, sent a memo to staff members saying those infected with the virus who feel well enough to work may request clearance from their managers to go back to caring for patients. Dignity Health hospitals in California have not yet implemented the new guidelines but said it may need to do so in the coming days and weeks.

"We are doing everything we can to ensure our employees can safely return to work while protecting our patients and staff from the transmissibility of COVID-19," Dignity Health said in a statement.

In California, the Department of Public Health said the new policy was prompted by "critical staffing shortages." It asked hospitals to make every attempt to fill openings by bringing in employees from outside staffing agencies.

Clinical Nurse Supervisor Melinda Chapin, of Holderness, N.H., right, departs an isolation room while Edward Merrens, left, chief clinical officer at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health, visits a COVID-19 patient at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, N.H., Jan. 3, 2022. The omicron variant has caused a surge of new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and many hospitals are not only swamped with cases but severely shorthanded because of so many employees out with COVID-19. Credit: AP Photo/Steven Senne, File

Also, infected workers will be required to wear extra-protective N95 masks and should be assigned to treat other COVID-19-positive patients, the department said.

"We did not ask for this guidance, and we don't have any information on whether hospitals will adopt this approach or not," said Jan Emerson-Shea, a spokesperson for the California Hospital Association. "But what we do know is that hospitals are expecting many more patients in the coming days than they're going to be able to care for with the current resources."

Emerson-Shea said many hospital workers have been exposed to the virus, and are either sick or caring for family members who are.

The 100,000-member California Nurses Association came out against the decision and warned it will lead to more infections.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state health leaders "are putting the needs of health care corporations before the safety of patients and workers," Cathy Kennedy, the association's president, said in a statement. "We want to care for our patients and see them get betternot potentially infect them."

A nurse suits up with protective gear before entering a patient's room at the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, N.H., Jan. 3, 2022. The omicron variant has caused a surge of new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and many hospitals are not only swamped with cases but severely shorthanded because of so many employees out with COVID-19. Credit: AP Photo/Steven Senne, File

Lori Pond, left, a certified nursing assistant, removes protective gear after stepping out of a patient's room in the COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, N.H., Jan. 3, 2022. The omicron variant has caused a surge of new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and many hospitals are not only swamped with cases but severely shorthanded because of so many employees out with COVID-19. Credit: AP Photo/Steven Senne, File

Earlier this month in Rhode Island, a state psychiatric hospital and a rehabilitation center allowed staff who tested positive for COVID-19 but were asymptomatic to work.

At Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital, chief medical officer Dr. Hany Atallah said they are not yet at the breaking point and that workers who test positive are staying away for five days. "We still have to be very careful to prevent spread in the hospital," he said.

Kevin Cho Tipton, a nurse at Jackson Memorial, said he understands why hospitals are eager to have employees come back after five days of isolation. Yet he worries about the potential risk, especially for patients at higher risk of infection, such as those receiving transplants.

"Yes, omicron is less deadly, but we still don't know much," he said.

Explore further France allows some COVID-19-infected medics to keep working

 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Indian policemen wait with others to receive the third dose of COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in Bengaluru, India, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Healthcare and front-line workers along with people above age 60 with health problems lined up Monday at vaccination centers across India to receive a third vaccination as infections linked to the omicron variant surge. India calls these 'precautionary' doses and not boosters. Credit: AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi

Healthcare and front-line workers along with people above age 60 with health problems lined up Monday at vaccination centers across India to receive a third dose as infections linked to the omicron variant surge.

The doses, which India is calling a "precautionary" shot instead of a booster, were given as new confirmed coronavirus infections rocketed to over 179,000 on Monday, nearly an eightfold increase in a week. Hospitalizations, while still relatively low, are also beginning to rise in large, crowded cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.

Dr. Ravindra Kumar Dewan, who heads the National Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases in New Delhi, queued up for his shot. He said boosters are a "significant step" because there are still many unknowns about the omicron variant.

"Yesterday, the mortality ... has increased in Delhi. So, whether our health care system will get overwhelmed or not is yet to be seen," he said.

India is better prepared now than it was last year when the delta variant overwhelmed hospitals. When cases spiked in March last year, not even 1% of its population of nearly 1.4 billion was fully vaccinated. India's creaky medical infrastructure meant millions likely died.

Since then, the government has bolstered healthcare, built oxygen plants and added beds to hospitals. About 47% of the population is now fully vaccinated and many have antibodies from previous infections. This may provide "hybrid immunity"a combination of immunity from previous infections and vaccinescomparable to boosters, said Dr. Chandrakant Lahariya, an Indian epidemiologist.

Elderly people chat as they wait to receive the third dose of COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in Bengaluru, India, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Healthcare and front-line workers along with people above age 60 with health problems lined up Monday at vaccination centers across India to receive a third vaccination as infections linked to the omicron variant surge. India calls these 'precautionary' doses and not boosters. Credit: AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi

Although the omicron variant seems to cause less severe illness than the delta variant, India's massive population, crowded cities, and understaffed hospitals mean that health systems may still become strained. Elections may further spread the more infectious variant, allowing it to infect vulnerable people that previous variants didn't reach. But the biggest fear is that hospitals will be overwhelmed because of sick medical personnel, said Dr. Vineeta Bal, an immunologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in the city of Pune.

"There would be beds (in hospitals) but no people to take care of individuals," she said.

India's hospitals are short-staffed at the best of times and health workers are distributed unevenly across states. Already, hospitals are becoming crippled as hundreds of health workers fall sick with the variant. Federal hospitals have been forced to relax quarantine rules and some have stopped routine services.

A health worker administers the third dose of COVID-19 vaccine to a policeman at a vaccination center in Bengaluru, India, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Healthcare and front-line workers along with people above age 60 with health problems lined up Monday at vaccination centers across India to receive a third vaccination as infections linked to the omicron variant surge. India calls these 'precautionary' doses and not boosters. Credit: AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi

"Every third doctor is either symptomatic or positive. There is an acute shortage of staff. And there is an acute crisis," said Dr. Anuj Aggarwal at New Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital, one of India's largest government hospitals.

At the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences in Ranchi city, the capital of Jharkhand state, a quarter of the 800 health workers were down with mild infections, said Dr. Prabhat Kumar, in charge of COVID-19 treatment there.

The delay in providing boosters could be costly, said Dr. T. Jacob John, former chief of virology at Christian Medical College in southern India. He said that having to administer third shots as a surge threatens to overwhelm hospitals would put an additional burden on health workers.

The belated boosters are being given to high-risk groups who were among the first to receive vaccines last year and whose immunity may be waning. Unlike other countries, where many people receive a different vaccine as a booster, most Indians will receive the same type, in most cases the AstraZeneca vaccine produced by India's Serum Institute, the world's largest vaccine maker. The benefits of this are "relatively limited," and India had been hoping to have more vaccines available so it could mix the booster shots Lahariya said.

Elderly Indians wait to receive a third dose of vaccination for COVID-19 at a government hospital in Gauhati, India, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Healthcare and front-line workers along with people above age 60 with health problems lined up Monday at vaccination centers across India to receive a third vaccination as infections linked to the omicron variant surge. India calls these 'precautionary' doses and not boosters. Credit: AP Photo/Anupam Nath

An elderly Indian man receives a third dose of vaccination for COVID-19 at a government hospital in Gauhati, India, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Healthcare and front-line workers along with people above age 60 with health problems lined up Monday at vaccination centers across India to receive a third vaccination as infections linked to the omicron variant surge. India calls these 'precautionary' doses and not boosters. Credit: AP Photo/Anupam Nath

A health worker administers the third dose of COVID-19 vaccine to an elderly man at a vaccination center in Bengaluru, India, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Healthcare and front-line workers along with people above age 60 with health problems lined up Monday at vaccination centers across India to receive a third vaccination as infections linked to the omicron variant surge. India calls these 'precautionary' doses and not boosters. Credit: AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi

A policeman fills in the registration form as elders wait to receive the third dose of COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in Bengaluru, India, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Healthcare and front-line workers along with people above age 60 with health problems lined up Monday at vaccination centers across India to receive a third vaccination as infections linked to the omicron variant surge. India calls these 'precautionary' doses and not boosters. Credit: AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi

An Indian policeman buttons up his shirt after receiving the third dose of COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in Bengaluru, India, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Healthcare and front-line workers along with people above age 60 with health problems lined up Monday at vaccination centers across India to receive a third vaccination as infections linked to the omicron variant surge. India calls these 'precautionary' doses and not boosters. Credit: AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi

An elderly Indian woman sits at an observation room after receiving a third dose of vaccination for COVID-19 at a government hospital in Gauhati, India, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Healthcare and front-line workers along with people above age 60 with health problems lined up Monday at vaccination centers across India to receive a third vaccination as infections linked to the omicron variant surge. India calls these 'precautionary' doses and not boosters. Credit: AP Photo/Anupam Nath

A health worker administers the third dose of COVID-19 vaccine to an elderly woman at a vaccination center in Bengaluru, India, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Healthcare and front-line workers along with people above age 60 with health problems lined up Monday at vaccination centers across India to receive a third vaccination as infections linked to the omicron variant surge. India calls these 'precautionary' doses and not boosters. Credit: AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi

"India does not have that kind of choice," he said.

Serum Institute's AstraZeneca vaccine accounts for nearly 90% of all doses that have been administered in India, even though emergency approvals have been given to eight vaccines.

Some Indian vaccine makers have had manufacturing woes, while others such as Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have asked for protection from lawsuits over side effects, which India has been reluctant to grant.

India's vaccine drive has also been patchy. Around 30% of the population over the age of 60 wasn't fully vaccinated as of the end of 2021 and vaccinations for those below 18, about a third of India's population, started just last week.

The rate of vaccinations also varies vastly among states, from 75% in northern Himachal Pradesh state to 31% in eastern Jharkhand state, among India's poorest.

"These gaps will certainly get exposed," said Bal, the immunologist.

Explore further India begins vaccinating teens as Omicron fears rise

 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Health workers walk through a market as they conduct mass coronavirus tests in Jakarta, Indonesia, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Credit: AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim

Indonesian authorities on Monday granted emergency authorization for the use of five different COVID-19 vaccines as booster shots that will prioritize vulnerable groups.

Penny Lukito, head of Indonesia's Food and Drug Monitoring Agency, said Sinovac, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna and Zifivax vaccines would be distributed as a third vaccine shot in the country. Lukito added there are several additional vaccines that are currently in the process of clinical trials to obtain emergency use permits.

"We need to give the booster vaccine to maintain vaccine efficacy against COVID-19 infection," Lukito said at a news conference on Monday.

The Health Ministry-run booster program will begin Wednesday and put at the front of the line high-risk populations aged 18 years and above, namely the elderly and groups of immunocompromised individuals, according to a ministry statement. The government has distributed booster shots to medical workers since July of last year.

The government is also distributing free booster vaccines for the elderly and other vulnerable groups.

Indonesia, as of Sunday, had recorded more than 4.2 million COVID-19 cases and more than 144,000 deaths. During the peak of the last surge in July, it hit 56,757 cases per day as hospitals became overwhelmed by sick patients and ran out of beds and oxygen supplies.

116 millions people in the country have received the complete two doses of vaccines out of a government-set target of 208 million people.

People wearing face masks as a precaution against the coronavirus walk through a market in Jakarta, Indonesia, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Credit: AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim

A woman wearing a face mask as a precaution against the coronavirus walks through a market in Jakarta, Indonesia, Monday, Jan. 10, 2022. Credit: AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim

Explore further Australia approves vaccine booster shots for adults

 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
NEWS PROVIDED BY

ChinaAid

Jan. 10, 2022

MIDLAND, Texas, Jan. 10, 2022 /Christian Newswire/ -- Zhang Qing, the wife of Guo Feixiong, died today from terminal illness in the hospital. The Chinese Communist Party prohibited Guo Feixiong from visiting his wife in the United States and now continues to bar his efforts to visit his survived children. In response, ChinaAid is republishing Chen Guangcheng and Bob Fu's "2022 New Years Declaration on China's Human Rights Crisis" from January 1, 2022.

"We are extremely saddened to hear the passing of Mrs. Zhang Qing, who was rescued to the USA along with her two children in 2009 by ChinaAid," said Dr. Bob Fu, founder and president of ChinaAid. "We demand the Chinese regime to immediately allow her husband Mr. Guo Feixiong to travel to the US to comfort their two surviving children."

2022 New Year's Declaration on China's Human Rights Crisis

January 10, 2022

We, the initiators of this open letter, are civil society organizations that have long been committed to human rights in China and strive to push forward China's progress from a society ruled by law as a tool of oppression to one that follows the rule of law, as well as guiding the Chinese people to become citizens of the world who can pursue freedom and justice.

As many are aware, the communist red tide rose in the 19th century and continued into the 20th century. It brought about a global-scale disaster for all to witness and caused hundreds of millions of innocent lives to be lost. Since Xi Jinping became the supreme leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China's legal system and human rights conditions have been continuously deteriorating. Even the slight progress that came after the opening up and reform of the CCP, such as the term limits on the supreme leader, was removed; this is a clear indication that this setback in the rule of law and human rights has no sign of being reversed in the foreseeable future. It is bound to cause greater disasters and endanger the lives of more innocent people.

Since Xi Jinping came into power, the CCP's perverse practices at home and abroad in politics, economy, military, diplomacy, etc. are countless, but we will not discuss them all in this letter. Let's first take a look at its domestic policies: from the suppression of human rights lawyers to the elimination of civil society; from large-scale violations of human rights in Tibet and Xinjiang to the full-scale crackdown and persecution of house churches; from the surveillance on all citizens through big data to the deprivation of citizens' freedom of speech, assembly, association and other constitutional rights, even unjustifiably depriving citizens of their personal freedom and private property. During the Hu-Wen era, the "black jails" used to arbitrarily detain and torture prisoners of conscience had spread throughout the regions of China. After the Jasmine Revolution in the spring of 2011, the CCP set out to "legitimate" it; on March 14, 2012, China's National People's Congress passed a law and implemented it on January 1, 2013; under Article 73 of the Criminal Procedure Law, the black jail was replaced by "residential surveillance at a designated location," the arrest of a person can go on for six months without notifying family members and lawyers, and the duration can be extended an unlimited number of times for another six months.... it is darker than the black jail. There are other cases of dissidents being diagnosed as "mentally ill," being illegally detained, teachers who lost their jobs because their students had exposed and reported them to authorities...... the resurrection of an intensified "Cultural Revolution" will inevitably bring about economic depression, fear in people's hearts and result in anger and resentment. In order to divert internal conflicts, the Chinese Communist Party, headed by Xi Jinping, abandoned its promise of "Hong Kong will remain unchanged for 50 years," threatened Taiwan, incited xenophobia, and made enemies on all fronts around the world. The fruit of China's prior 40 years of reform and opening-up has nearly all been lost.

In today's world, when the CCP headed by Xi Jinping brazenly brags about its "whole-process people's democracy," we only need to cite a few cases where the lives of people are at stake to see how little the CCP regards life and humanity! From just the humanitarian perspective, we strongly protest against the CCP's inhumane violation of civil rights.

Chinese citizen Yang Maodong (pen name: Guo Feixiong) and human rights lawyer Tang Jitian have family members overseas whose time on earth is nearing its end, but they have been barred from leaving the country to visit and take care of their dear ones. The female journalist Zhang Zhan's life is at the edge of death while imprisoned, but she was still refused medical parole. Prisoner of conscience Huang Qi's mother wanted to see her son for one last time before she died and was denied that before she passed away.

Guo Feixiong's wife Zhang Qing, who resides in the United States, was found to have end-stage bowel cancer in January of this year and was in urgent need of Guo Feixiong's company and care, but Guo Feixiong's trip to the United States in January was cited by China's Ministry of Public Security as "endangering national security," and was stopped by authorities at the airport. For ten months thereafter, Zhang Qing's condition deteriorated as each day passed, and in early November, the intestinal tumor caused the second intestinal obstruction, and her condition became critical and could turn life-threatening at any time. Guo Feixiong gave his utmost effort to go to the United States and accompany his sick wife, he made many sincere appeals to Chinese government departments and relevant leaders. At the same time, he also kept in communication with China's public security departments at various levels. However, the Chinese authorities repeatedly obstructed Guo Feixiong, until he was arrested on December 5th and is still held in secret detention.

Lawyer Tang Jitian's daughter was studying abroad in Japan when she suffered from tuberculosis in May of this year, and she was subsequently in the intensive care unit due to complications, in need of her father's company. Lawyer Tang Jitian was barred from leaving China because he would "endanger national security." Thereafter, lawyer Tang sought various government departments to make known his circumstance and even visited the ministry of public security, but his attempts were in vain. He was forcibly disappeared on December 8th.

Authorities arrested Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan last year for simply publishing the true living conditions of the Wuhan people during the coronavirus outbreak, and she was sentenced to four years in prison on the charge of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble." The staunch Zhang Zhan began a hunger strike at the beginning of her arrest and her life has only been sustained through tube feeding and injections. But by the end of October this year, Zhang Zhan, who was nearly 1.8 meters tall, lively and healthy, now weighs less than 40 kilograms and is so weak that she can hardly raise her head. Her brother thinks it will be difficult for her to survive this winter. Family members and lawyers repeatedly requested medical parole, but no matter how critical Zhang Zhan's conditions are, the Shanghai CCP authorities refused her parole.

Prisoner of conscience Huang Qi was arrested in 2016 and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment on the charges of "intentionally leaking state secrets" and "illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities." Huang Qi was targeted because he created the website "Tian Wang," which originally covered kidnappings and human trafficking, and has now expanded to all acts of human rights violations. His only family is Pu Wenqing, his 87-year-old mother who was suffering from cancer. The Chongqing authorities not only prohibited the elderly mother from meeting her son during her final moments before she passed, but also imposed the "four prohibitions" that deprived Pu Wenqing of her citizenship rights: no petitioning in Beijing, no media interviews, no contact with petitioners, and she was not allowed to hire human rights lawyers.

We believe that the above-mentioned cases display the CCP authorities' inhumane actions and abuse of public powers, and highlight the CCP's anti-humanism nature. These deplorable acts of violence have also made the inherently illegitimate nature of the CCP's dictatorship even more evident. Those in power are also born as human beings, but where is their conscience? Their inhumane acts should face questioning from humankind. The CCP authorities have various excuses and reasons for their blatant behaviors that not only fail to convince the freedom-loving world citizens who are passionate about democracy and oppose the CCP's one-party dictatorship, but also more and more Chinese people who were forcibly brainwashed by the CCP are no longer deceived.

Guo Feixiong and Tang Jitian, as citizens of the People's Republic of China, enjoy the rights of free movement and free travel per the Constitution. They are neither terrorists nor public officials, how can they "endanger national security" if they leave the country to look after their dying family members? Zhang Zhan has already reached the point where she must leave prison for medical care. There are many precedents of criminal offenders in prison who obtained medical parole, so why is Zhang Zhan, a dying woman prisoner of conscience, repeatedly rejected? Huang Qi's mother is a free citizen, why was she illegally deprived of many civil rights? Family members of prison inmates have the right to visit, so why couldn't Huang Qi's mother do so?

These four dying women show clearly the nature of the CCP's departure from humanity. The tragedies of them and their families can only be attributed to the fact that they and their families did not want to be submissive to the one-party dictatorship, and thus suffered violent retribution from a dictator. This is why we must stand up and protest against the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government -- for the sole reason that we are human beings, from a humane standpoint of today's human civilization, we cannot accept such man-made human tragedies, we cannot accept it and cannot ignore it.

The CCP authorities have taken their citizens hostage and thoroughly politicized and weaponized relationships and blood kinships that transcend politics, using them to coerce dissidents into submission. These dangerous, extreme, destructive crimes and trampling on human relationships are happening across China; this has become a critical threat to the basic rights and freedoms of the Chinese people, which constitutes one-sixth of the human population.

Since 2005, Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng defended the rights of Christians and Falun Gong practitioners, represented the North Shaanxi Oilfield case, and performed his duties as a lawyer. The police arrested him in August 2006 and on December 22 of the same year he was sentenced to three years and five-year probation for "inciting subversion of state power." Lawyer Gao was kidnapped and tortured many times during his probation period, he recounted his experiences in "Dark Night, Dark Hood and Kidnapping by Dark Mafia." Nearing the end of Gao Zhisheng's five-year probation, at that time he had been missing for 21 months, in 2011 he was sent to Shaya Prison in Xinjiang to serve his three-year sentence. Gao Zhisheng was subjected to prolonged solitary confinement, various forms of abuse, and appalling torture. After Gao Zhisheng was released from prison, he was under house arrest in his older brother's cave home in a remote village in northern Shaanxi. Even though a majority of his teeth were destroyed with only a few of them intact, he was still prohibited from visiting a nearby county hospital for dental treatment. Under the circumstances of restricted freedom, Gao still penned many articles for the 709 lawyers whose human rights had been violated, such as "The Possible Fate of Lawyer Wang Quanzhang" and "The 2nd Anniversary of the 709 Crackdown." On August 13, 2017, Gao Zhisheng's family discovered that after being under house arrest in the cave-dwelling for nearly three years, he went missing. Gao Zhisheng, who is a free person under the law, has been forcibly disappeared for more than four years and four months. His family members desperately wait for any news of lawyer Gao but have received no information, his whereabouts and current status are unknown to this day.

The CCP's kidnappings and threats have long gone beyond its borders. The kidnapping of Swedish citizens abroad and the holding of Canadian citizens as hostages have posed a threat to the safety of citizens of the free world and created the kind of threat only posed by terrorist organizations.

We have long called upon the corrupted powers, the Chinese Communist Party, to respect the law and basic humanity, but to no avail. We are now calling upon all the righteous people who stand for basic humanity, and all media, governments, and international organizations around the globe to oppose on China from all fronts and to fully unveil the antihumanism of the Chinese Communist regime so that the world can recognize its evil nature. This includes a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, and speaking up for the victims on different occasions to stop all the CCP's ongoing human rights abuses, especially to prevent the upcoming humanitarian tragedy from unfolding before the eyes of the world.

Therefore, we want to alert all of mankind: these humanitarian tragedies that are happening inside of China are an extremely serious indicator; please pay serious attention to this. China already possesses tremendous power to influence the world, and the totalitarian system has the ability to do evil to all mankind, and has exposed its desire and ambition to expand its power and do evil in multiple spheres.

The various vile acts that are taking place in China severely trample on human rights and human relations, and violate the basic freedoms of citizens, they will not only endanger the Chinese people, but the repercussions are destined to overflow and will undermine human freedom and peace, and cause harm to all mankind. The grim "today" of the Chinese people is likely to be the "tomorrow" for the rest of the world. There can be no illusions or flukes about this. This generation of human beings should not repeat the appeasement policies of the world towards the Nazis in the 1930s with their disastrous consequences.

We are now urgently speaking up to protest and appeal, not only for the universal freedom and dignity of the Chinese people, including Zhang Qing, Tang Zhengqi, Zhang Zhan, Pu Wenqing, and Gao Zhisheng who was forcibly disappeared, but also to fight and prevent the dangers that have already appeared in China to endanger the freedom and peace of all mankind. We hope that through their cases and other similar humanitarian and human rights cases our fellow human beings will push forward quickly with their cooperation; not only to say "no" to the totalitarian communist dictatorship, but to also seriously consider how to fundamentally eradicate the malignant tumor of communist tyranny!

We eagerly hope that our fellow human beings with noble aspirations will stand with us in protest and appeal through various forms, a

nd use pragmatic actions to refuse any association with evil!

Signed,

Mr. Chen Guangcheng, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Center for Human Rights, Catholic University of America

Dr. Bob Fu, Ph.D., Founder and President, ChinaAid


The protesting women said that the Hindu right-wing forces attacks to suppress Muslim women will be futile and will not prevent Muslim women from speaking out.

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KOZHIKKODE, KERALA  During a protest held by Girls Islamic Organisation under The Muslimah Resistance in Kozhikkode, Kerala, several women activists stated that the Sangh Parivars attempts to silence Muslim women by fetishizing them through Sulli deals and Bulli Bai will only end in vain.

The protest gathering at Kozhikkode called for a similar model of anti-NRC/CAA protests will emerge against such Bulli Bai attacks.

The protest was inaugurated by activist Khalida Parveen who criticised the Delhi Police for not taking timely action against the perpetrators of Sulli deals when it first came out in July last year.

Muslim women will fight against such cybercrimes if the law enforcing body continues to remain a mute spectator, Parveen said.

On the occasion, Afreen Fathima, the National Secretary of Fraternity Movement said that in present times in India, for a Muslim, there is one law and another law for the rest.

The Muslim women of this country will not succumb to living here as secondary citizens. We will fight against this, she said.

Activist and anti-NRC protest-leader Aysha Renna was also part of the protest gathering. We will neither be afraid nor will we come to any terms against such crimes against Muslim women, she said.

The women leaders criticized the Chief Minister of Kerala for not intervening in the matter and seeking no actions even after registering their complaints multiple times.

After the Sulli Deals attacks, I registered a complaint in Kerala. But it was dismissed by the Kerala Police. Now there are Bulli Bai attacks, and a complaint has been registered with the Commissioner of Kozhikkode, activist Ladeeda Farzana said.

The speakers expressed concern that if similar rejections will also occur this time.

The women leaders questioned that how could the Government of Kerala be different if they also follow the same lines of the Police under the duress of right-wing forces.

The Jamaat-e-Islami Womens Wing President, P. Ruksana said that Oppressing Muslim women is the agenda of right-wing forces.

Attacks like Bulli Bai can never shun the revolutionary strength and inspiration of Indian Muslim Women, she said.

On the occasion, Girls Islamic organisations president, Adv. Thamanna Sulthana presided over the gathering, while Samar Ali delivered the welcome talk and Lulu Marjan gave the vote of thanks.
Preference for social novelty behaviors were similar in OXTRAvil WT and KO males and females. OXTRAvil mice displayed a preference for social noveltya preference for a tower holding a novel stranger mouse (stranger tower; gray markers) over a tower holding a familiar mouse (familiar tower; white markers)as evident by increased approach frequencies (B; F1, 60 = 51.23, p < .001; d = 1.85) to the stranger tower, increased sniffing (C; F1, 60 = 52.208, p < .001; d = 1.864), and chamber durations (D; F1, 60 = 17.855, p < .001; d = 1.09). Social novelty preference was not impacted in OXTRAvil KO mice (no significant genotype x tower type interaction). Data are graphed as individual data points and group averages. Difference scores were calculated by subtracting approach frequency and sniffing/chamber duration towards the familiar conspecific from the stranger conspecific. ns = not significant. See also S3 Fig in S1 File, S1 Table in S1 File. Credit: DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260199

Oxytocin's role in regulating and influencing social behavior is well known. Numerous ongoing clinical trials are focusing on the levels of the hormone in the brain but now a Florida State University research team has found evidence that oxytocin receptors outside of the brain may play an important role in shaping social behavior.

Elizabeth Hammock, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, and her team, including graduate student Manal Tabbaa and undergraduate student Ashley Moses, observed the behavior of mice lacking oxytocin receptors in cells outside of the brain. They found that receptors outside of the brain in other areas of the body could be keys to how oxytocin shapes interactions between animals.

Their study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

"This study shows there is a population of cells outside of the brain that have oxytocin receptors and when that population of cells is missing those receptors, it impacts social behavior," Hammock said. "A key takeaway is that to understand oxytocin's role in social behavior we need to look at the whole organism. We can't assume the brain is doing all the work."

Hammock said her team removed gene coding for the oxytocin receptor from some cells during pre-natal development.

"We left the developing brain alone and instead, specifically removed oxytocin receptors from a population of cells outside of the brain," she said. "We let the mice grow to adulthood and then we tested these genetically altered mice and 'typical' mice on some standard social behavior tests routinely used for lab mice."

Hammock said the genetically altered mice in the study exhibited reduced social interest, and males were quicker to show aggression compared to mice that were not genetically altered.

Hammock noted that there are already a number of drugs aimed at regulating oxytocin levels in the brain, with additional clinical trials underway pursuing the same goal. The results of this study suggest scientists may need to broaden their scope.

"There are a number of clinical trials attempting to use oxytocin to modulate human behavior and there are research efforts to improve drug delivery to get oxytocin to the brain," she said. "Our data suggest we might not need to target the brain if it can regulate behavior through more drug-accessible sites outside of the brain."

She added: "We still need to determine if the lack of oxytocin receptors in those specific cells outside of the brain alters the development of the mice causing changes to their adult behavior. If so, it makes drug treatment in adulthood after development more challenging. Also, our study is in mice, not humans, which is important to remember. We have more work to do."

Hammock added: "We focus on the brain so muchand rightfully sobut the brain is an integrated part of a larger system."

Explore further Researcher develops method for mapping brain cell change, development in mice

More information: Manal Tabbaa et al, Oxytocin receptor disruption in Avil-expressing cells results in blunted sociability and increased inter-male aggression, PLOS ONE (2021). Journal information: PLoS ONE Manal Tabbaa et al, Oxytocin receptor disruption in Avil-expressing cells results in blunted sociability and increased inter-male aggression,(2021). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260199
MNDA regulates dsRNA- and virus-stimulated IFN induction in monocytes. a, b Quantitative PCR analysis of IFN (a) and IFN (b) mRNA from THP-1 cells expressing control or MNDA shRNA transfected with poly(I:C) (2.5 g/ml) for the indicated times. c, d Release of IFN protein from THP-1 cells expressing control or MNDA shRNA and infected with Sendai virus (SeV) for 24 h (c) or with VSV-GFP at the indicated MOI for 48 h (d). e Analysis of GFP protein expression by flow cytometry, as a measure of viral replication, in THP-1 cells expressing control or MNDA shRNA infected with VSV-GFP at an MOI of 5 for the indicated times. Data are mean  SD of triplicate samples and are representative of three independent experiments (ad) or are mean of two experiments (e); two tailed unpaired Students t test; *p

Scientists have just slotted into place a big piece of the puzzle that explains how our blood cells mount their first line of defense against viruses. They hope this discovery will help them one day better control the response to either boost it or calm it down as appropriate.

The scientists behind the discovery include Andrew Bowie, Professor of Innate Immunology at Trinity College Dublin, who is based in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, and Drs Lili Gu and David Casserly (formerly at Trinity as postdoctoral and Ph.D. researchers respectively).

Their findings, which provide a target for new therapies that could improve anti-viral responses in some patients and reduce autoimmune problems in others when immune responses run out of control, have just been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Interferons and MNDAa major piece of the puzzle

"Interferons" are key proteins that tell our immune systems when viruses, germs or cancer cells are in our bodies. Type I interferons are produced when the innate immune system senses the presence of a virus. In such circumstances interferons trigger a complex chain of events in which other cells are kicked into gear to "interfere with" and fight those invaders.

Scientists don't fully understand how certain links in that chain of events are controlledmaking it difficult to stimulate or suppress an immune response with therapeutic interventionsbut this new research has provided key new insights into the process.

The scientists have discovered that another protein, myeloid cell nuclear differentiation antigen (MNDA), is needed for Type I interferon production from human blood cells in response to viruses. Their work shows that MNDA regulates a transcription factor, IRF7, which in essence drives Type I interferon production.

Professor Andrew Bowie said, "We have been interested in better understanding how Type I interferons are produced from blood cells because they are required to fight viruses, and because too much of themwhen the production process runs out of control, for examplecontributes to nasty autoimmune diseases such as interferonopathies.

"There is a family of proteins called PYHIN proteins which we have been working on for some time, as they are implicated in regulating innate immunity. To our surprise, one such PYHIN protein, called MNDA, turned out to be a big missing piece in the puzzle in understanding how type I interferon production is sustained, which makes this discovery all the more exciting.

"If we can learn how to manipulate MNDA's activity it could be really beneficialon one hand to boost an interferon response during a viral infection, for example upon COVID-19 infection, or on the other hand to supress interferon production and treat an autoimmune disorder."

The scientists are currently examining how MNDA contributes to innate immune responses to COVID-19.

Explore further Nose cells could be key target in fight against severe COVID-19

More information: Lili Gu et al, Myeloid cell nuclear differentiation antigen controls the pathogen-stimulated type I interferon cascade in human monocytes by transcriptional regulation of IRF7, Nature Communications (2022). Journal information: Nature Communications Lili Gu et al, Myeloid cell nuclear differentiation antigen controls the pathogen-stimulated type I interferon cascade in human monocytes by transcriptional regulation of IRF7,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27701-x
Schematic summary of new hippocampal circuit connections that are revealed in the new PLOS Biology study. The illustration of spatial topology of non-canonical inputs to dorsal hippocampal CA3 (top), and the diagram of differential input strengths and patterns to the dorsal CA3 subregions (bottom) are shown. Credit: UCI School of Medicine

A research team led by University of California, Irvine has discovered new neural circuits that regulate spatial learning and memory in the brain's hippocampal formation. The team identified novel functional roles of new circuit connections between the venal CA1 region and dorsal CA3 regions of the hippocampus and demonstrated that genetic inactivation of this projection impairs object-related spatial learning and memory, but does not modulate anxiety-related behaviors.

The study, titled "Non-canonical projections to the hippocampal CA3 regulate spatial learning and memory by modulating the feedforward hippocampal trisynaptic pathway," was published today in PLOS Biology.

The hippocampus is not a homogenous brain area. The septotemporal axis, along which the trisynaptic pathway is located, separates the dorsal region of the hippocampus, which is more involved in learning, memory and spatial navigation, and the ventral region, which plays a role in emotional behavior. The trisynaptic's feedforward, unidirectional circuit organization is well documented, but the connectivity across septal to temporal regions is less well described.

"Our findings extend the knowledge of hippocampal connectivity and its relation to learning and memory processes across the septotemporal axis and provide a circuit foundation to explore these novel functional roles," said Xiangmin Xu, Ph.D., Chancellor's Fellow and professor of anatomy and neurobiology, and director for the Center for Neural Circuit Mapping (CNCM) at the UCI School of Medicine. "The new hippocampal circuit mechanism is highly relevant to treating learning and memory disorders, including Alzheimer's disease."

Building on their earlier work, Xu and his team used multiple viral tracers, including monosynaptic rabies retrograde tracing and herpes (H129)-based anterograde tracing to establish new hippocampal CA1 projections to CA3. Robust mapping results showed that CA1 inputs to CA3 run opposite the trisynaptic pathway and in a temporal to septal direction. They also found that genetic inactivation of the CA1 to CA3 projection impaired object-related spatial learning and memory, but did not modulate anxiety-related behaviors.

"The emergence of viral-genetic mapping techniques enhances our ability to determine the detailed complexity of brain circuity," Xu said. "Our study was made possible by the new viral genetic tools developed by our CNCM investigators at UCI. We are developing these new viral tracers as brain mapping tools, which we plan to share through our center for use by the neuroscience community."

Explore further Study reveals critical role of brain circuits in improving learning and memory

More information: Xiaoxiao Lin et al, Noncanonical projections to the hippocampal CA3 regulate spatial learning and memory by modulating the feedforward hippocampal trisynaptic pathway, PLOS Biology (2021). Xiaoxiao Lin et al, Noncanonical projections to the hippocampal CA3 regulate spatial learning and memory by modulating the feedforward hippocampal trisynaptic pathway,(2021). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001127 Yanjun Sun et al, CA1-projecting subiculum neurons facilitate objectplace learning, Nature Neuroscience (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41593-019-0496-y Journal information: PLoS Biology , Nature Neuroscience
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

It's been nearly 50 years since a group of researchers in Chicago reported an extraordinary finding: They'd created a vaccine against drug addiction and an early test showed it might work.

The scientists provided a rhesus monkey with drugs like heroin and cocaine; it became addicted. But when they injected the monkey with a compound they'd developedone designed to coax the immune system into fighting addictive drugs as if they were pathogenic invadersthe animal stopped seeking drugs.

Their finding, published in the top scientific journal Nature in 1974, heralded a new frontier in treating addiction. But despite millions of dollars in researchand decades' worth of studies, including a high-profile but failed attempt at a nicotine vaccinethere's still no Food and Drug Administration-approved shot against any addictive substance.

Scientists at a new University of Washington research center hope that will soon change.

"What I'm hoping to achieve is pretty much every year, we're going to start a new clinical trial," said professor Marco Pravetoni, who was recently recruited from the University of Minnesota to lead UW's new Center for Medication Development for Substance Use Disorders. The center, which has raised more than $2 million in initial funding, officially opened last week.

The investment comes as the number of overdose deaths in Washington has increased sharply: 1,855 Washingtonians died of drug-related deaths in 2020, up 33% from 1,399 the year before. Nationwide, more than 70,000 Americans died from drug-induced overdoses in 2019, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, nearly 50,000 of which were tied to opioids such as heroin, fentanyl and prescription drugs.

Public and scientific perspectives on the nature of addiction have changed over time. Once thought of as the result of personal moral failure, scientific advancements have shown addiction is instead driven primarily by genetic and environmental influences.

Currently, people seeking help with addiction can take medications like naltrexone, methadone and buprenorphine: These often life-changing medications prevent cravings, feelings of being high or both. For people addicted to opioids, medications like methadone and buprenorphine also dampen withdrawal symptoms.

But the medications also come with downsides. Methadone itself can be addictive. And such medications have to be taken regularlyevery day or soand require a prescription or visit to a specialized clinic.

Vaccines, on the other hand, hold long-lasting and potentially cost-effective promises that available medications don't, experts say. Similar in nature to vaccines against disease, addiction vaccines stimulate the body to create antibodies that recognize a drug, and prevent or slow it from reaching the brain. A shot every few months, or once a year, has the potential to seriously ease a person's path to recovery.

"[Existing medications] don't work for everyone. And a lot of people don't stay on them in the long term," said Rebecca Baker, director of the National Institutes of Health's Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative, which has funded Pravetoni's work. "Would the outcomes be better if we had more options?" A vaccine, Baker said, could make treatment more accessible.

In animal studies, Pravetoni and other researchers have shown vaccines against a variety of drugs are safe and effective. Now, he and collaborators in New York and New Jersey are running the first-ever opioid vaccine trial in humans in the U.S.; they intend to enroll about 45 people to test a vaccine against oxycodone, a commonly abused prescription pain medication.

UW's new center will build on this research and prior animal studies on other drugs like fentanyl and heroin, he said. But Pravetoni admits he'll be up against the same challenges that have bedeviled addiction vaccine development for decades. Clinical trials in people are incredibly expensivePravetoni estimates it would take more than $200 million to $300 million to get a vaccine to marketand big pharmaceutical companies have shown little interest in chipping in.

"[Researchers] are trained to overcome adversity," he said. "I don't give up."

Rocky road

Pravetoni's early work involved researching the mechanisms behind the effects of drugs like methamphetamine and cocaine. He eventually decided he was more interested in developing medications, and under the training of Dr. Paul Pentel, a pioneer in nicotine cessation research, started working on a vaccine against nicotine addiction.

At the time, an addiction vaccine seemed "tantalizingly close," as a New York Times article from Oct. 2011 described it.

The story featured work by Kim Janda, a chemistry and immunology professor at Scripps Research Institute in California. Back then, Janda had already spent nearly three decades at work on vaccines against addictive drugs.

But a nicotine vaccine never panned out: All clinical trials failed. Trials showed people who received a placebo quit smoking at the same rate as those who received a vaccine.

Janda was also studying opioids and tested vaccines in nonhuman primates. He licensed some technology to the biotech company Cessation Therapeutics, where he's a board member, but didn't attract the level of interest from large pharmaceutical companies or private investors he needed to test his vaccines in humans. Running clinical trials involving people addicted to drugs is expensive and logistically difficult, he said, and pharmaceutical companies didn't see a clear path to financial returns.

Pravetoni said several valuable lessons still emerged from that early work. For one, the nicotine vaccines did seem to work in a subset of people, raising questions about whether someone's biology might make some, but not others, good candidates for a vaccine. This finding continues to fascinate Pravetoni, who has since found certain biological indicatorslike having high levels of a particular immune-related proteinpredict who might benefit.

Secondly, nicotine posed its own set of challenges: Nicotine molecules are small. And because smokers often flood their body with nicotine by smoking several cigarettes a day, developing a vaccine that generates enough antibodies to notice so many nicotine moleculesand then block themwas difficult.

But a vaccine against more potent drugs like fentanyl, which requires a much smaller dose to feel the effect, might work better.

"We've learned a lot more [about] what is possible, what's maybe not going to be as fruitful," said Janda, noting that he doesn't expect to see vaccines work against all drugs of abuse. "But if there's enough money to put behind these vaccines, and you had the infrastructure to do it, then you could move it along fairly quickly."

Fresh start

For the past decade or so, Pravetoni has led a laboratory of scientists in Minnesota dedicated to discovering vaccines and other substance use disorder medications.

Opioids interested him because some of them can be effective medicationsbut their effects can also be toxic; a single dose could kill someone. "I sort of felt I could have more of an immediate impact," Pravetoni said.

This year, he and a Columbia University researcher launched the first Phase 1 clinical trial of an opioid vaccine. They're studying the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, which is intended to stop the euphoric and dangerous effects of oxycodone. The vaccine is being tested in people who are already addicted and not being treated for substance use disorder; some participants will be given a placebo, while others will receive either a low or high dose of the vaccine.

If the vaccine works, Baker said she could imagine it being used by people who aren't currently using drugs, such as those in prison or long-term treatment recovery programs who worry about relapsing when they're released. Overdosing after release is a serious problem in Washington: A large study here found that in the two weeks after their release, formerly incarcerated people are 129 times more likely than the general population to die of a drug overdose.

Pravetoni and his colleagues also have about $50 million in funding for a future clinical trial to test a vaccine against fentanyl, and more funding to test vaccines against heroin and other drugs. Pravetoni says he hopes to enroll participants from Washington when those studies launch.

His goal, he said, is to get enough funding to get through at least Phase 1 and 2prove his vaccines are safe and likely workand then get a pharmaceutical company to fund the rest.

But Janda's experience offers a cautionary tale, Pravetoni says. "He's pretty famous, a pretty significant player," said Pravetoni. "If he didn't succeed in getting somebody on board as a commercial partner, that speaks volumes."

Although the new UW research center will focus on vaccines to start, it will likely expand to other novel addiction therapies, said Jurgen Unutzer, professor and chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Once the center has hired more faculty and staffPravetoni is currently its sole faculty memberand has the capacity to run clinical trials, he envisions it as a translational research hub. Housed inside Harborview's Research and Training building, the center will help translate the university's notable basic science program into practical treatments, he said.

"We could look at other medications, for example," Unutzer said. "We have other addiction problems like methamphetamine addiction ... and there are really virtually no treatments."

Meanwhile, Janda has moved on to studying another category of addiction treatment: monoclonal antibodies, which are antibodies made in labs instead of inside the body, and when injected, zero in on targeted molecules to keep them at bay. Such a treatment is faster-acting than a vaccine and could prevent or reverse overdoses on drugs like fentanyl.

Pravetoni is also working on monoclonal antibodies against fentanyl, and says his work is showing promise in animals. Like vaccines, the next step is bringing the treatment down the long path of clinical trials in people.

Explore further First-in-human clinical trial for a vaccine to treat opioid use disorders enrolls first patients

2022 The Seattle Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Credit: Pixabay / jarmoluk

Treating the fear of dental care in childhood is effective and predicts more regular dental examinations later in life, according to a study by the University of Oulu, Finland.

Approximately one in two adults say that they are at least somewhat afraid of dental care, and one in ten says that they are very afraid. One manifestation of dental fear is the avoidance of treatment, which can lead to a vicious circle of deteriorating oral health and pain treatment.

The study followed patients treated at the Clinic for Fearful Dental Patients (CFDP) of the City of Oulu. At the clinic, patients receive help with their dental fear alongside dental treatment as part of comprehensive treatment. The operating model is quite unique in Finland, when the focus is both in dealing with dental fear and simultaneously giving necessary care.

The study investigated the long-term effects of the fear treatment period, i.e. whether patients visited their own clinics for examinations after the end of treatment in the CFDP; whether they did not visit dental care at all or how often they had to go to primary health care for emergency treatment. The ten-year follow-up included a total of 152 patients.

"The low-threshold treatment of dental fear in primary health care in conjunction with the dental care of the patient has only been studied to a limited extent. A study on long-term effects has not been published before," says head researcher, dental specialist Taina Kankaala.

Treating the fear of dental care in childhood is effective

According to the study, a childhood care period (at the age of 210) at the dental fear clinic was associated with a higher number of dental examinations later on compared to treatment at older age.

"It was also surprising, how well those who were successfully treated at the fear clinic coped with dental care in primary health care later on. On the other hand, it was as expected that if the treatment was unsuccessful for one reason or another, dental care visits would not be regular later on," Kankaala says.

According to a previous study by the research team, up to seven out of ten patients are successfully treated at the fear clinic, so that patients can be treated in primary health care successfully and a new referral to the fear clinic is not needed.

Patients who are afraid should be identified

According to Kankaala, the fear of dental treatment should be discussed, especially if the patient cancels appointments, does not come to dental care at all or repeatedly seeks emergency treatment for pain.

"Patients who are afraid should be identified and their dental fear alleviated at an early age. Fearful patients can be challenging, and their treatment can be burdensome for oral health care workers. If the situation is not addressed, contrary to common belief, the child's severe fear of dental care will usually not ease as the child grows. Appropriate, individually designed treatment of dental fear benefits not only the patient but also the medical staff, as well as reducing the costs of treatment for all parties in the long term," Kankaala says.

More information: Taina Kankaala et al, 10-year follow-up study on attendance pattern after dental treatment in primary oral health care clinic for fearful patients, BMC Oral Health (2021). Taina Kankaala et al, 10-year follow-up study on attendance pattern after dental treatment in primary oral health care clinic for fearful patients,(2021). DOI: 10.1186/s12903-021-01869-6

Provided by University of Oulu
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

In order to fight the pandemic in the long term, it is crucial to understand why one variant prevails over another. An international study conducted by the Institute of Virology and Immunology and the University of Bern, in collaboration with the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut in Germany, has provided important answers by comparing the spread and transmission of different emerging variants in parallel. This approach is now applicable to the comparison of new variants, such as Delta and Omicron. This unique study has just been published in the scientific journal Nature.

As new SARS-CoV-2 variants continue to emerge and drive the pandemic, the Institute of Virology and Immunology (IVI) and the University of Bern with international collaborators have studied emerging variants in animal (in vivo) and biophysical interaction and cell culture (in vitro) models. The originality of this new study is to have put the variants in direct competition in multiple models to reveal why some variants had a real advantage to spread globally.

According to Charaf Benarafa, senior author of the study: "Taken independently, each of the variants appears to be as effective as their progenitor, the initial virus: it is difficult to separate them. By recreating the natural conditions of competition, where an emerging variant and its progenitor are simultaneously present, it becomes possible to truly detect which variant will preferentially propagate and be transmitted to another individual. The challenge of our study was to associate different experimental models to better understand these mechanisms; and the combined analyses enabled us to discriminate the differences between the variants."

Alpha wins in restrictive models, while beta is the "big loser"

The competition between the alpha and beta variants and their progenitor clearly show that the alpha variant has an advantage. Charaf Benarafa explains: "The more restrictive models of virus competition showed us that the alpha variant dominates and spreads better in the upper respiratory tract and transmits more efficiently. All the models also showed that the beta variant is the 'big loser.' It seems that the beta variant has benefited from favorable epidemiological circumstances to develop locally. On the other hand, the alpha variant, which has spread globally, has demonstrated its intrinsic high transmission potential through its spike mutations."

Meanwhile, other variants are emerging

Predicting which variant will better spread and why continues to be a challenge. Only in-depth studies can provide a better understanding of the factors associated with this spread. According to Charaf Benarafa, "It is with a combination of different in vitro and in vivo models that we were able to consolidate our results to explain the dominance of the alpha variant in immunologically naive populations. Now that a significant proportion of the population is vaccinated, we will also have to consider the impact of immunity on the advantage of new emerging mutants."

Explore further More variants but delta still dominates

More information: Lorenz Ulrich et al, Enhanced fitness of SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern Alpha but not Beta, Nature (2021). Journal information: Nature Lorenz Ulrich et al, Enhanced fitness of SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern Alpha but not Beta,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04342-0
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Diabetic foot ulcerationsopen sores or wounds that refuse to healare a devastating complication affecting more than 15 percent of people with diabetes and resulting in more than 70,000 lower extremity amputations per year in the United States alone. Notably, more than half of patients undergoing amputations due to diabetic foot ulcerations are expected to die within five yearsa mortality rate higher than most cancers. Yet, the biological processes at work in diabetic foot ulcerations are poorly understood.

To gain a better understanding of what causes diabetic foot ulcers and how they might be treated, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the Emory School of Medicine compared cells taken from patients with ulcers that healed to those taken from patients whose ulcers failed to heal, as well as to cells taken from intact forearm skin in patients with and without diabetes. The scientists mapped the cellular landscape in the diabetic foot ulcers of healers and non-healers using a leading-edge technology known as single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis, which provides deep insight into cell function and the development of disease by revealing gene expression in individual cells in tissues comprised of various cell types.

"Various cell types, including endothelial cells, fibroblasts, keratinocytes and immune cells, play an important role in the wound healing process but little is understood about their involvement in impaired wound healing in diabetic foot ulcers," said co-corresponding author Aristidis Veves, DSc, MD, director of the Rongxiang Xu, MD, Center for Regenerative Therapeutics and research director of the Joslin-Beth Israel Deaconess Foot Center. "We have now substantially expanded the number of cells sequenced and gained novel insights into diabetic foot ulcers. Our data suggests that specific fibroblast subtypes are key players in healing these ulcers and targeting these cells could be one therapeutic option. While further testing is needed, our data set will be a valuable resource for diabetes, dermatology and wound healing research and can serve as the baseline for designing experiments for the assessment of therapeutic interventions."

The ressearch was published in Nature Communications.

Explore further Safe and effective wound healing preparation reaches Clinical Phase II

More information: Georgios Theocharidis et al, Single cell transcriptomic landscape of diabetic foot ulcers, Nature Communications (2022). Journal information: Nature Communications Georgios Theocharidis et al, Single cell transcriptomic landscape of diabetic foot ulcers,(2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27801-8
Using social media increases our natural tendency to compare ourselves. How does this affect our well-being? Credit: Shutterstock

We all have a natural tendency to compare ourselves to others, whether intentionally or not, online or offline. Such comparisons help us evaluate our own achievements, skills, personality and our emotions. This, in turn, influences how we see ourselves.

But what impact do these comparisons have on our well-being? It depends on how much comparing we do.

Comparing ourselves on social media to people who are worse off than we are makes us feel better. Comparing ourselves to people who are doing better than us, however, makes us feel inferior or inadequate instead. The social media platform we choose also affects our morale, as do crisis situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a Ph.D. student in psychology, I am studying incelsmen who perceive the rejection of women as the cause of their involuntary celibacy. I believe that social comparison, which plays as much a role in these marginal groups as it does in the general population, affects our general well-being in the age of social media.

An optimal level of comparison

The degree of social comparison that individuals carry out is thought to affect the degree of motivation they have. According to a study by researchers at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, there is an optimal level of perceived difference between the self and others that maximizes the effects of social comparison.

Specifically, if we see ourselves as vastly superior to others, we will not be motivated to improve because we already feel that we are in a good position. Yet, if we perceive ourselves as very inferior, we will not be motivated to improve since the goal seems too difficult to achieve.

In other words, the researchers note, beyond or below the optimal level of perceived difference between oneself and another, a person no longer makes any effort. By perceiving oneself as inferior, the individual will experience negative emotions, guilt and lowered pride and self-esteem.

Unrealistic comparisons on social media

Social comparisons therefore have consequences both for our behavior and for our psychological well-being. However, comparing yourself to others at a restaurant dinner does not necessarily have the same effect as comparing yourself to others on Facebook. It is easier to invent an exciting existence or embellish certain aspects of things on a social media platform than it is in real life.

The advent of social media, which allows us to share content where we always appear in our best light, has led many researchers to consider the possibility that this amplifies unrealistic comparisons.

Research shows that the more time people spend on Facebook and Instagram, the more they compare themselves socially. This social comparison is linked, among other things, to lower self-esteem and higher social anxiety.

A study conducted by researchers at the National University of Singapore explains these results by the fact that people generally present positive information about themselves on social media. They can also enhance their appearance by using filters, which create the impression that there is a big difference between themselves and others.

In turn, researchers working at Facebook observed that the more people looked at content where people were sharing positive aspects of their lives on the platform, the more likely they were to compare themselves to others.

COVID-19: Less negative social comparison

However, could the effect of this comparison in a particularly stressful context like the COVID-19 pandemic be different?

A study from researchers at Kore University in Enna, Italy, showed that before lockdowns, high levels of online social comparison were associated with greater distress, loneliness and a less satisfying life. But this was no longer the case during lockdowns.

One reason for this would be that by comparing themselves to others during the lockdown, people felt they were sharing the same difficult experience. That reduced the negative impact of social comparisons. So, comparing oneself to others online during difficult times can be a positive force for improving relationships and sharing feelings of fear and uncertainty.

A different effect depending on the social media

There are distinctions to be made depending on which social media platform a person is using. Researchers at the University of Lorraine, France, consider that social media platforms should not be all lumped together.

For example, the use of Facebook and Instagram is associated with lower well-being, while Twitter is associated with more positive emotions and higher life satisfaction. One possible explanation: Facebook and Instagram are known to be places for positive self-presentation, unlike Twitter, where it is more appropriate to share one's real opinions and emotions.

Trying to get social support on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic may reactivate negative emotions instead of releasing them, depending on which social media platform a person is using.

Many things motivate us to compare ourselves socially. Whether we like it or not, social media exposes us to more of those motivations. Depending on the type of content that is being shared, whether it is positive or negative, we tend to refer to it when we are self-evaluating. Sharing content that makes us feel good about ourselves and garners praise from others is nice, but you have to consider the effect of these posts on others.

Yet overall, I believe that sharing your difficulties in words, pictures or videos can still have positive effects and bring psychological benefits.

Explore further Teenage girls with perfectionist tendencies need to take extra care with social media

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.


Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind (JUH ) Delhi Vice President Haji Yusuf Sheikh said that the atmosphere of hatred never flourished in the country, and some people today want to divide the country by damaging the fabric of peace and dignity.

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NEW DELHI  Prime Minister Modis silence on hate speech during a Dharm Sansad (religious gathering) in Haridwar despite many appeals is dangerous for the country, said Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind (JUH) Delhi Vice President and eminent social activist Haji Yusuf Sheikh in a press conference in New Delhi on Monday.

Sheikh said that such a silence on such a big issue (impacting minorities of the country) will always be remembered in history.

Targeting a particular religion through a Dharam Sansad program in Haridwar, Uttarakhand and making uncivilized rhetoric and hateful declarations of killing people, and instilling hatred in the minds of youth is against the country, he said.

He stated that India is a country where it has been a tradition that everyone was living together like one family. The atmosphere of hatred never flourished in the country, but some people today want to divide the country by damaging the fabric of peace and dignity, he said.

Stating that Maulana Tauqir Raza gave a befitting reply to such evil elements in Bareilly saying that thousands of youth are ready to sacrifice for the country, Sheikh said that the hate-mongers were appealed to join in the fight against countrys enemies, especially China.

Maulana Syed Mahmud Asad Madani had announced in the meeting of Meerut that if Ulama of Barelvi came forward to serve the nation, we were ready to follow them, Sheikh said.

He added that the above statements and announcements made by community elders are commendable. These statements will create an atmosphere of unity and harmony among the countrymen, he said, and added, In future, the whole country will be united and respond appropriately to the situation. 
MONDAY, Jan. 10, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Vaccination is still the best way to protect someone from COVID-19, but new research suggests that immune system activation of T-cells by common colds may offer some cross-protection.

The study might also provide a blueprint for a second-generation, universal vaccine that could prevent infection from current and future variants, the research team said.

"Being exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus doesn't always result in infection, and we've been keen to understand why. We found that high levels of preexisting T-cells, created by the body when infected with other human coronaviruses like the common cold, can protect against COVID-19 infection," said study first author Dr. Rhia Kundu, from Imperial College London's National Heart & Lung Institute, in the United Kingdom.

"While this is an important discovery, it is only one form of protection, and I would stress that no one should rely on this alone," Kundu added in a college news release. "Instead, the best way to protect yourself against COVID-19 is to be fully vaccinated, including getting your booster dose."

The study began in September 2020, when many people had neither been infected nor vaccinated, and included 52 people in the United Kingdom who lived with someone who had a SARS-CoV-2 infection and had been exposed. The participants took PCR tests after the exposure and again four to seven days later.

Their blood samples were taken within between one and six days of their exposure so that researchers could analyze the levels of pre-existing T-cells they had from previous common cold infections that also cross-recognized proteins of SARS-CoV-2.

The research team found significantly higher levels of these cross-reactive T-cells in the 26 people who did not become infected, compared to the 26 people who did.

To protect against SARS-CoV-2 infection, the T-cells targeted internal proteins within the virus, rather than the spike protein on the surface of the virus that helps it latch on to human cells.

Study limitations include that most of the participants were white Europeans. The findings were published online Jan. 10 in the journal Nature Communications.

Current COVID-19 vaccines don't induce an immune response to those proteins, so this offers a new vaccine target that could provide long-lasting protection, the researchers suggested. T-cell responses persist longer than antibody responses, which wane within a few months of vaccination.

"Our study provides the clearest evidence to date that T-cells induced by common cold coronaviruses play a protective role against SARS-CoV-2 infection. These T-cells provide protection by attacking proteins within the virus, rather than the spike protein on its surface," said senior study author Ajit Lalvani. He is director of the NIHR Respiratory Infections Health Protection Research Unit at Imperial.

"The spike protein is under intense immune pressure from vaccine-induced antibody which drives evolution of vaccine escape mutants. In contrast, the internal proteins targeted by the protective T-cells we identified mutate much less," Lalvani added in the news release. "Consequently, they are highly conserved between the various SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron."

More information

The World Health Organization has more on COVID-19.

SOURCE: Imperial College London, news release, Jan. 10, 2022

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MONDAY, Jan. 10, 2022 (HealthDay News)  "Full House" actor and comic Bob Saget was found dead Sunday in his Florida hotel room, the night after performing at a concert hall near Jacksonville. He was 65.

Best known for playing Danny Tanner on Full House and Fuller House and as the host of Americans Funniest Home Videos, Sagets death was confirmed by the Orange County Sheriffs Office, The New York Times reported.

The cause of death was unknown, but there were no signs of either foul play or drug use, according to the sheriffs office, which said he was found unresponsive in a hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes.

Saget had tweeted earlier on Sunday thanking the appreciative audience.

I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight, he said. Im happily addicted again to this.

Saget was born in Philadelphia and graduated from Temple University in 1978 before becoming a comedian. He studied film at Temple, receiving a student Academy Award for documentary merit for the film titled Through Adams Eyes.

His stand-up routines were known to be raunchy and filled with profanity, even though he was conversely known for playing squeaky-clean characters on his network television shows.

In 2017, Saget told Jimmy Kimmel how long-time friend and comedian Don Rickles described his act. Rickles said Saget "comes out like a Jewish Clark Kent. Saget then sang about a dog and a monkey before using a verb censored on network television, the Times said.

From 1987 to 1995, Saget played a widowed father who was raising two daughters with the help of his brother-in-law and best friend on the family show Full House. His co-stars included John Stamos, Lori Loughlin, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen and Candace Cameron Bure.

Stamos tweeted Sunday, I am broken. I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby.

More information

Read more about Bob Saget on his website.

SOURCE: The New York Times

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MONDAY, Jan. 10, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- A temporary falloff in the number of Americans who kill themselves and others with guns is over, newly released U.S. government data show.

"Firearm homicides and suicides are an urgent public health concern in the United States," said Scott Kegler, lead author of a new study of gun violence in America by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It noted that guns were involved in 75% of all homicides and 91% of homicides involving youths between 2018 and 2019 -- a rate basically unchanged from 2016.

But those new numbers represent a significant and troubling uptick from a decade before, said Kegler, from the CDC's Division of Injury Prevention.

"In 2015 to 2016 and 2018 to 2019, rates of firearm homicide in large metro areas were comparable to those seen a decade earlier in 2006 to 2007, reversing a sustained downward trend," he said. "During this period, overall firearm suicide rates among persons ages 10 years and older have continued to increase in major metropolitan areas."

Homicides involving guns are a persistent problem in cities, especially among Black men, but are also spreading to less populated areas, according to the report.

Earlier research has linked economic hardship and lack of trust in institutions with firearm homicide rates.

The researchers said the high rates of homicides involving firearms among minority youths might owe to the stress of living in poor communities, systemic racism or multigenerational poverty resulting from limited educational and economic opportunities.

Gun homicide rates for all ages varied widely across U.S. regions in 2018-2019, ranging from 1.1 per 100,000 in the Providence, R.I.-Warwick, Mass. area, to 18.9 in the Memphis, Tenn. area, the study said.

The rate for all metro areas combined was 4.8 per 100,000, and the nationwide rate was 4.5 -- similar to levels in 2015-2016, according to the study.

Meanwhile, firearm suicide rates increased for 30 of the nation's 50 largest metro areas, according to the report.

In 2018-2019, gun suicide rates ranged from 1.4 per 100,000 in the New York, Newark and Jersey City metro area to 12.9 in Oklahoma City.

Rates for large metro areas and nationwide were 6.2 and 8.1 per 100,000, respectively, both up from 2015-2016.

Suicides up among white males

The study noted that gun suicide rates were particularly high among white men. Researchers said contributing factors include family and relationship issues, job and money problems, mental illness, substance use and stigma about getting help for mental problems. They also said the drug overdose epidemic might be contributing to the risk among youths.

One of the biggest contributors to both murder and suicide trends? The ready availability of guns, Kegler and his team said.

"Reducing access to lethal means before or during an acute suicidal crisis by safely storing firearms or temporarily removing them from the home can help reduce suicide risk, particularly among youths," they wrote Jan. 7 in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The good news, Kegler said, is that firearm homicides and suicides can be prevented with a comprehensive approach.

"This approach relies on prevention strategies and approaches with the best available evidence and seeks to prevent risk before it starts," Kegler said.

The researchers outlined some of the strategies that have shown success, including:

Adopting policies and practices to strengthen economic supports for individuals and families, for example, by providing generous unemployment benefits or housing supports to prevent evictions.

Making sure that insurance covers mental health care at the same rate as physical health care.

Teaching coping and problem-solving skills early on to children and teens, so they learn how to handle conflicts and address negative influences.

Building positive and nurturing relationships with friends, family and community, and connecting youth to caring adults so they have someone to turn to in times of struggle.

Putting programs into place to boost neighborhoods, for example by improving abandoned buildings and blighted areas, creating and maintaining green spaces, and investing in basic services and commercial activities.

Promoting safe storage of guns to prevent suicide and homicide.

"We haven't really made a big dent in firearm violence in the country," and people, especially the young, continue to be at risk, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

Laws can regulate firearms

Benjamin said preventing gun violence begins with background checks to keep firearms out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them, like those with mental illness.

Guns also need to be locked up away from children, he said. A gun stored apart from its bullets is also a deterrent to an impulsive suicide, Benjamin added.

He also supports so-called "red flag laws" that allow guns to be temporarily taken away from people who might harm themselves or others.

Benjamin would also like to see guns made safer. Right now, your smartphone is safer than a gun, he said. When your phone is locked, no one can use it without your passcode, your fingerprint, or your faceprint to unlock it, he said.

"This is not going to go away until our nation decides that we want to put an end to it," Benjamin said. "And we can do it while respecting the current interpretation of the Second Amendment."

More information

For more on gun deaths, head to the Pew Research Center.

SOURCES: Scott Kegler, PhD, Division of Injury Prevention, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Georges Benjamin, MD, executive director, American Public Health Association, Washington, D.C.; Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Jan. 7, 2022

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MONDAY, Jan. 10, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- More than 30 years after passage of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), many doctors still don't know how to provide accessible care, a new study finds.

"Despite the fact people with disabilities comprise 25% of the population, they often confront barriers to basic health care services such as physical examinations, weight measurement and effective communication with their physicians," said lead author Dr. Lisa Iezzoni of the Mongan Institute Health Policy Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

"To achieve more equitable care and social justice for patients with disability, considerable improvements are needed to educate physicians about making health care delivery systems more accessible and accommodating," she said in a hospital news release.

For the study, the researchers surveyed 714 U.S. physicians in outpatient practices. Thirty-six percent knew little or nothing about their legal requirements for patients with disabilities. More than 70% did not know who determines the reasonable accommodations required to provide equitable care.

"The lack of knowledge about who makes accommodation decisions raises troubling questions about health care quality and equity," Iezzoni said.

The survey found that 21% did not know who is obligated to pay for required accommodations and 68% said they believed they were at risk for ADA lawsuits.

Previous studies have found individuals with mobility problems being examined in wheelchairs instead of being transferred to an examination table, resulting in substandard care and delayed diagnoses, Iezzoni said.

Patients who are deaf or hearing impaired have reported that doctors often ignore their preference for effective communication accommodations, such as an in-person sign language interpreter.

"All patients with disabilities should ask their physicians office staff about accommodating their needs and preferences when they schedule an appointment, Iezzoni said. Physician practices should retain that information in electronic health records and always ask at the time of scheduling if these needs and preferences have changed."

Passed in 1990, the ADA bars discrimination against people with disability, including in health care. It requires doctors and patients to work together to determine what reasonable accommodations are needed to ensure accessible and equitable care.

Researchers called for more training of physicians about the rights of patients with disabilities and their responsibilities under the ADA. They said that training should start in medical school and be part of a physician's continuing medical education.

"Medical schools are currently training students about combating racism, and there should also be training in combating discrimination against people with disability, also known as ableism,'" said senior author Eric Campbell, a survey scientist at the University of Colorado, who studies access to care for patients with disabilities.

"Every practicing physician can expect to see increasing numbers of people with disability, and they need to know how to accommodate them," Campbell said in the release.

The findings were published Jan. 4 in Health Affairs.

More information

The U.S. Department of Justice has more about the Americans with Disabilities Act.

SOURCE: Massachusetts General Hospital, news release, Jan. 4, 2022

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MONDAY, Jan. 10, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- It's a COVID phenomenon that had, until now, gone relatively unnoticed: You can be infected with COVID-19 and the flu at the same time.

Thanks to the internet, it even has a name -- "flurona." And it will likely happen much more often this particular winter, as the flu season kicks into gear and the highly contagious Omicron variant continues to surge.

While the idea of battling both the flu and COVID-19 might sound terrifying, the same measures used to prevent the spread of COVID-19 also work against the flu, including masking and social distancing. And crucially, there are vaccines available for both viruses. The vaccines guard against severe infection, even if you are unlucky enough to catch flurona.

Flurona is not a distinct disease or a new variant, said Dr. Allison Messina, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins All Childrens Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla. The proper term is "co-infection," which describes when a patient is diagnosed with more than one pathogen simultaneously.

Co-infections are more common than you might think. You can catch two, three or more viruses simultaneously, including COVID-19. "Probably everyone has had a co-infection at some point," Messina said.

Long before the recent wave of flurona coverage, doctors were encountering all different types of COVID-19 co-infections. In a Journal of the American Medical Association study published in April 2020, researchers identified COVID-19 patients who were co-infected with viruses including rhinovirus and enterovirus (which are often the culprits behind the common cold), adenovirus (which can cause cold or flu-like symptoms), and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which can cause severe disease in young children and older adults.

Cases of flurona have also been reported throughout the pandemic, even as early as February 2020, when a man in Queens, N.Y. tested positive for the flu and COVID-19. Widespread awareness of the phenomenon started to pick up last week, after the Times of Israel announced that a pregnant woman came down with a co-infection that the publication dubbed flurona. Other cases have been reported in various parts of the United States, including Houston, Florida and Los Angeles.

Still uncommon

For the time being, co-infection with COVID-19 and influenza is rare, and it will likely remain that way if flu activity continues to be suppressed.

During the past two years, the United States and much of the rest of the world have experienced historically low influenza levels. The flu seemed to be kept at bay by all the COVID precautions used during the pandemic, such as lockdowns, masking and social distancing.

"All of those things that you're doing to prevent yourself from getting COVID are probably the same things you can do to prevent flu as well," Messina said.

As social distancing measures relaxed in the fall of 2021, many experts feared the flu season would return with a vengeance, considering that flu vaccinations were down and the general population had reduced immunity to the virus.

While the flu season has so far been less severe than many feared, that could quickly and easily change.

"In most years, we typically see flu peak kind of anywhere between November, December, and into January and February, so I don't think that we can say yet how bad the flu season is going to be," Messina said. "It still could get worse."

Flurona will likely become a more common occurrence if it does, said Dr. Soniya Gandhi, infectious disease specialist and associate chief medical officer at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.

"If we start to see a lot more flu in the community, it's possible that we could start to see co-infections if COVID is still very widespread," Gandhi said.

But some flurona cases may fly under the radar. As respiratory viruses, COVID-19 and influenza tend to cause similar symptoms. It would be challenging to know that you have a co-infection without being tested for both, and a health care provider typically conducts flu tests. Patients with a mild COVID-19 infection who aren't admitted to a hospital may never find out if they had a case of flurona.

Future uncertain

Due to the low level of flu activity, too few cases of flurona have been studied to grasp its potential effects on patients. But experts seem to agree that having COVID-19 and influenza together is not ideal.

"Generally speaking, being co-infected with two potentially fatal respiratory pathogens is never a good thing," Gandhi said. "I think theoretically you can imagine if your immune system is trying to fight off two serious infections, that's going to be taxing."

Influenza and COVID-19 are respiratory viruses that attack the same region of the body: the nose, throat and lungs. Also, patients with compromised immune systems or underlying medical conditions are more susceptible to severe infections with both viruses.

"What we worry about with coronavirus and flu is that they both have the potential to be more serious viruses than some of the other viruses we see. Will that spur more severe disease? I think the jury is still out on that, but that's the fear," Messina said.

Fortunately, there are treatments available for both viruses. To avoid the possibility of flurona altogether, or to blunt its potential harms, vaccines make all the difference, according to Messina.

"Everybody over the age of 6 months is eligible to get their flu vaccine. And, of course, kids over the age of 5 can be vaccinated for coronavirus as well," Messina said. "So, I think the best thing you can do to try to avoid that from happening is to be up to date on both of those vaccines."

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on influenza and COVID-19.

SOURCES: Soniya Gandhi, MD, vice president, medical affairs, and associate chief medical officer, Cedars-Sinai, Los Angeles; Allison Messina, MD, chief, pediatric infectious diseases, Johns Hopkins All Childrens Hospital, St. Petersburg, Fla.

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MONDAY, Jan. 10, 2022 (HealthDay News)  Need in-home health care? Know this: The quality of your care may depend on where you live.

That's the takeaway from a new study from New York University that gave agencies in urban areas high marks for keeping patients out of the hospital. It found that home health agencies in rural areas, meanwhile, get care started sooner.

Our study highlights the persistence of disparities in quality of home health care, said study author Chenjuan Ma, an assistant professor at NYU's Rory Meyers College of Nursing.

For the study, her team analyzed performance measures from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services between 2014 and 2018.

Limited improvements have been made over time, and gaps in quality of care did not significantly shrink over the period, researchers found.

They analyzed data from 7,908 home health agencies, of which nearly 20% were in rural areas. Quality measures included timely initiation of care, a process measure, and hospitalization and ER visits, which are outcome measures.

Researchers found that rural agencies consistently began home care quickly  either upon a doctor's orders or within two days of hospital discharge or referral.

But urban agencies consistently performed better on preventing hospitalization and emergency room visits for home care patients.

Over the five years studied, ER visits rose for both urban and rural home health agencies, however.

The geographic gaps were steady over time except for hospitalization, which narrowed slightly, researchers said.

Home health care is care delivered in the home of a patient, typically by nurses. It is among the fastest-growing health care sectors in the United States.

In 2018, more than 5 million Medicare beneficiaries received home health care. About 9% lived in rural areas.

Providing early, intensive visits to patients during a home health episode has been shown to be effective in reducing hospitalization and improving functional status, so timely initiation of care is a critical component of quality home care for patients, Ma said in a university news release. Strong relationships between rural home health agencies and local hospitals, as evidenced in previous research, may be facilitating the timely initiation of home health care to rural patients.

Researchers said it's important to take into account the geographic, staffing and health challenges facing agencies.

Providers from rural home health agencies often spend significant time traveling to and from patient homes, which could result in less efficient care delivery. They also have staffing and resource challenges. Rural patients are in poorer overall health status than urban patients, the study also noted.

The findings were published Jan. 6 in the Journal of Rural Health.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has more information about home health care.

SOURCE: New York University, news release, Jan. 6, 2022

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One mom said she feels like she's endangering her kids' health. Another said she feels lonely and exhausted by the pressure of what to do. And a father said he and his wife live in fear that their daughter's school will close.

"The world at large is forgetting about anyone with kids under 5," one mother, Rachel Lekherzak, said.

Their experiences represent a snapshot of the broader chaos facing the country as Omicron infects hundreds of thousands of people daily, creating major staffing shortages for schools, hospitals, airlines and emergency services.

Their perspectives help illustrate the tricky position that millions of parents are in. All acknowledged the value of in-person education; all also knew the risks that in-person class could present with this wave of cases.

Here is a sample of their stories.

'Mommy, I'm sorry I failed you'

When Jane Peng's 13-year-old daughter spiked a fever and started vomiting Monday, Peng quickly used a home test kit. The result was negative, but there appeared to be a shadow where the line should be, she said.

The eighth grader at Eisenhower Middle/High School in New Berlin, Wisconsin, has been isolating and wearing a KN95 mask at home since then, the same day that class reopened. On Tuesday and Saturday, home tests came back positive, her mother said. Peng asked that her daughter not be named in this story.

Peng scrambled to find her daughter a PCR test Monday, but all the local pharmacies and testing centers she tried didn't have availability until Friday. "I'm angry and frustrated," she said. "I'm almost unable to get my daughter a test at any official sites ... at the time when she got sick."

The family's doctor couldn't see her daughter until Thursday. On Saturday afternoon, her daughter's PCR test results came back positive. Her husband, a healthcare worker, has tested negative with tests at work.

"Mommy, I'm sorry I failed you, that I didn't protect myself, that I got this Covid and I put you and daddy into danger," Peng said her daughter told her, crying.

Peng told her daughter, who has been wearing a KN95 mask to school, it wasn't her fault. "It's our adults' fault. It's the CDC and school district and me, the mother, that we failed you," Peng said.

The timing of her daughter's illness stung. She tested positive one day before the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its recommendations for the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine booster to include children as young as 12.

Her daughter's school did a good job with Covid-19 safety measures last year with mask mandates, social distancing and glass dividers set up for lunch, she said. Her daughter was struggling with virtual learning, so Peng let her go back to in-person classes in March 2021.

But for this school year, the School District of New Berlin is recommending masks for students and teachers, as opposed to requiring them, according to a May letter from the superintendent.

CDC guidelines for isolation changed from 10 days to five days if you do not have symptoms, plus five days of wearing a mask around others. It makes Peng angry, she said. The school district sent an email to parents on December 30 saying it would adopt the same reduced isolation period, though not the mask requirement.

"This is like drinking the sea water when you are really thirsty, and your children got sick because of this policy change. I blame the CDC and I blame our school district," Peng said. "I want to send this message to a school district -- open your eyes, look at the data, protect our children."

'I feel like I'm endangering them'

Rachel Lekherzak, 40, and her husband decided to hold their 4- and 6-year-old kids back a grade last year, hoping the pandemic would be over by now. The rise of Omicron and decisions made by the Cobb County School District in Georgia have foiled that hope, she said.

"It just feels like a trap," she said. "I feel trapped by it. On one hand, I want my children to have an education. On the other hand, I feel like I'm endangering them by sending them there."

Lekherzak's 6-year-old is in kindergarten and fully vaccinated, but her 4-year-old is in pre-K and is not yet eligible for the shot. School reopened in person on Wednesday. Remote learning is an option in Cobb County, but they would have had to sign up months ago, she said.

"It really is just a series of bad options right now. (People say,) 'You're in a pandemic, what do you expect?' But at some degree it's infuriating," she said.

Lekherzak suspects that the school will be closed by next week due to staff shortages, so she planned to keep her kids home for now to at least keep them from getting sick. Her husband disagrees and wants to send them to class. The situation has caused constant stress, and she was hardly comforted by the knowledge that Covid-19 is generally milder for children.

"There are so many decisions that have been from this pandemic that just puts kids at the short end of the stick. It's like, 'oh they won't get it that bad.' For people who are parents, it doesn't matter how you minimize it, if your child is sick and gasping for air, I'm sorry it's scary," she said. "That's what happens with this virus. That's a normal symptom of a coughing fit."

In a statement Monday, Cobb County School District said schools would reopen after the holiday break on Wednesday and advised parents to "not send a sick child to school." The district strongly encourages students and staff to wear face masks but does not require them, and there are no vaccine or testing requirements, according to its policies.

The district on Thursday also said that they would not continue contact tracing and loosened its quarantine rules, citing new state guidance. "Cobb's Public Health Protocols are intended to balance the importance of in-person learning and the frequent changes associated with Covid-19," a district spokesperson said in a statement.

'Are you gonna wrap yourself in bubble wrap?'

Brian Nagele, of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, said he lives under the constant fear that his 6-year-old daughter's school will close due to Covid.

He and his wife aren't able to work from home, so closing in-person class means they have to scramble for day care or take the day off work. Sometimes his daughter's grandparents are able to babysit for the day, but not always.

"It's tough. There's nobody else that can help us out. If they can't do it, one of us has to take off work. Then we run the risk of losing our jobs or bringing less money in," he said. "We have options, but none of them are good."

Remote learning also has not worked for his daughter, he said.

"It's a constant (stress)," he added. "My wife is constantly worried about whether they're going to shut down. If they do, what do we do?"

Nagele and his wife are vaccinated, and their 6-year-old has gotten her first shot. He said safety has never been a concern and he trusted that his daughter's immune system was strong enough to keep her healthy.

He understands the idea of erring on the side of caution, but the district was being overbearingly cautious, he argued. People in a car should wear a seat belt, he said -- "but are you gonna wrap yourself in bubble wrap in the off chance you get in a crash? No."

'It wasn't a tough decision to send them back'

Timothy Lin lives in Cobb County, Georgia, and works as a pulmonologist in nearby Cartersville, so he treats patients sick and dying of Covid during his working hours. Talking to his kids after work about their time at school doesn't give him much of a reprieve from Covid issues.

"It's just hard. It's just in my face 24/7," he said.

Even so, he said it was not a hard choice to send his two vaccinated children, ages 8 and 10, back to Mountain View Elementary School on Wednesday with masks in hand.

"At the end of the day, with Covid here to stay for the foreseeable future, we really do need to do in-person learning," he said. "When they're just watching a video screen, I think there's a lot lost in that. It's valuable having peers who are with you, around you, (and) a teacher talking in front of you."

He expressed his ongoing frustration, though, that the school was not requiring students to wear masks.

"I think it's just a matter of heightened awareness and nervousness of them being at school. For us, it wasn't a tough decision to send them back in person because we felt the risks are outweighed by the benefits," he said. "That being said, you're just waiting to get the email saying, 'Hey, your kid needs to isolate for five days' or whatever."

'I'm not ... cool with getting Covid'

For single mom Anmari Linardi, it's all about her and her 14-year-old daughter, Diana Lesny, who has autism. She can't afford to get sick, and neither can her daughter, she said.

"I'm not one of these people that are cool with getting Covid, even though it's not going to kill us. I don't want it at all," the 51-year-old said. "I'm triple vaccinated, my daughter's double vaccinated. She's going to be getting her booster when it's available."

With the surge in Covid-19 cases, Linardi decided to pull Diana out of school just a couple days after she returned from the holiday.

Diana attends Springbrook, a private school for children with developmental disabilities. The mother and daughter live in Oneonta, New York, which is at the foothills of the Catskill Mountains.

"I have 100 percent confidence in the staff that they're doing everything they're supposed to be doing, but I know that kids who are autistic are not necessarily going to want to wear a mask," Linardi said. "I don't know if those kids' parents are vaccinated or are they as diligent about following the CDC guidelines as we are."

Diana has only five classmates, but Linardi also worries about what her daughter can't tell her. "My daughter is non-verbal, so it's not like she can tell me if her classmates are wearing masks or not, or if anyone's getting close to her face," she said.

Linardi said her daughter is at a kindergarten level of education, so she can supplement her education at home. She subscribes to an online learning tool called IXL for her daughter. Linardi has a flexible work from home situation, so she can spend time teaching her daughter, as well as doing yoga and other physical activities together.

She isn't sure when she will send Diana back to school, which has a year-long program. Linardi thinks it will be safer after the flu season, she said. "It's the outside world that determines how much we will experience."

'Trying to find that balance'

Micheal Garza, 46, said he and his wife are nervous about Omicron, but they decided they were comfortable sending their daughter Emma to her private preschool in Marietta, Georgia, on Wednesday.

Emma turned 5 last month and has received her first vaccine dose, so she has some protection. Still, Garza's elderly mother-in-law lives with them, so they plan to send Emma to school with an upgraded mask such as an KN95 or KF94.

"We're trying to keep her from getting this and also making sure she's in a good learning environment socially with other children, and trying to find that balance," he said. "We're making sure she's safe enough and making sure she gets educated. She loves pre-K, she loves her friends, and the idea that she wouldn't get to go back and see them is really too much for us to even consider pulling her out."

He praised her school, Holy Family Catholic Preschool, for hearing their concerns and making them comfortable with the decision.

"They may not put every measure we prefer in there, but we know they respect our wishes, and for us that means everything," Garza said.

'They missed their friends'

Aubree Norton, 43, is both a parent of two boys and a teacher at the Mercer County School District in Aledo, Illinois, a rural enclave near the Quad Cities. Her dual perspective has given her firsthand knowledge that remote learning didn't work for many kids last year, including her own.

"It's a very, very uneven playing field," she said, noting some students didn't have parents around or proper technology. "I saw my own kids struggle with remote learning. I saw their mental health decline. They missed their friends."

Her school is back in-person now, and while she had concerns about the spread of Omicron, she praised her district for keeping classes open and keeping people safe. Every family has different circumstances, she noted, and no one in her family is high-risk.

"I, of course, have a concern, but I don't think I have a concern as much as some people might," she said.

'It feels lonely, as well as exhausting'

Megan Dominy, of Marietta, Georgia, made a pros and cons list with her husband to decide whether to send their 5-year-old daughter to kindergarten on Wednesday. On the pro side, they noted their daughter is vaccinated and enjoys school.

"Our daughter absolutely loves social interaction with her peers, she craves interaction with other kids all the time. And she needs school," Dominy said.

The cons outweighed the pros, though. Covid cases are surging in Cobb County, and their 2-year-old daughter is too young to be vaccinated. Dominy also heard that another student's parents had contracted Covid but still planned to send their child to school.

Adding to her concern was a brief email from the Cobb County School District saying that classes would remain open, with little in the way of explanation or attempt to assuage concerns. The lack of specific guidance or support meant she and her husband were on their own.

"It feels lonely, as well as exhausting," she said. "Each family has to make their decision that's best for their family."

They ultimately decided to keep their daughter out of school on Wednesday. How long would she stay out? They weren't yet sure.

"Everybody has pandemic fatigue, but I feel like being a parent during the pandemic is a special sort of weariness," she said.

'Anger, fury, rage'

Patty Murphy, 47, of East Cobb, Georgia, has rheumatoid arthritis and takes medicine that suppresses her immune system. She said she's worried her two sons, ages 11 and 14, could catch Covid-19 at school and then infect the family, leading to a potentially serious case or even death.

"I understand it's statistically unlikely, but it's still a possibility," she said.

Still, she and her husband agreed to send them back to in-person class on Wednesday so that they don't fall behind in their studies.

"It was kind of an impossible decision. If I could have kept them home I would have," she said.

She supports in-person school but said she's frustrated by Cobb County's decision not to require masks or testing. The issue has so animated her that she has become an active critic of the school district and board and has emailed them ad nauseum about her concerns, she said.

"(I feel) anger, fury, rage. I feel despondent, helpless, hopeless, frustrated," Murphy said. "But also it motivates me. It encourages me to help be a voice for people who can't be a voice and want to say these things, or can't say these things, like teachers."

'We don't know how' Omicron will effect pregnancy

There's a new part of the equation for Kumar Santosh to consider when sending his child back to preschool: He and his wife are expecting a child in May, and they worry about the effects of Omicron on her pregnancy.

Santosh decided to keep his 4-year-old daughter, Akshara, out of school for one to two weeks to see what happens with Covid-19 cases in Austin, Texas. He said his wife's obstetrician suggested this measure as a precaution.

"That's one major concern that we don't know how this Omicron is having an effect on the pregnancy or the newborn," he said.

Before the holidays, the couple had been sending their daughter to in-person preschool at Casey Elementary School.

"She had been doing fine, but all of a sudden with this Omicron spread, that's the only thing we're worried about because it's something very contagious and it's spreading fast," Santosh said.

Santosh said he does have faith in his daughter's school. He said the spread of the variant and his wife's pregnancy weigh more on their decision to send their daughter back to school.

"I don't know how much we can stop the children from getting infected," Santosh said. "It's like kids to roll around and touch things."

The school has been using HEPA filters since school resumed in August, according to a district newsletter.

With the Omicron wave, the school clarified measures in place to protect the students, including extra ventilation and sanitization, as well as a mask mandate, social distancing and contact tracing, according to a January 5 school newsletter sent to parents. The principal urged students aged 5 and older to get boosted.

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A Jonas Gerard painting vandalized on Jan. 12, 2019.

A panel of North Carolina appellate court judges Jan. 4 denied the appeal of a convicted Asheville woman who destroyed a now-deceased artist's work during a 2019 event.

A Buncombe County district judge in October 2019, and then a jury in December 2019 found Zena Marie Redmond guilty of injury to personal property in excess of $200.

The charges stemmed from a Jan. 12, 2019, incident in which Redmond hurled a balloon filled with black paint at one of Jonas Gerard's paintings.

Gerard  who died in September 2020 at age 79  had just finished the painting as part of a performance at the Jonas Gerard Fine Art gallery in Asheville, according to the appeal ruling.

Employees at the gallery suspected there might be "protesters" at the gallery on Jan. 12, since they discovered "blackish tar substance" and "busted balloons" in the space that morning.

After Gerard completed a painting during a performance that day, someone in the crowd screamed and at least one balloon was thrown at the painting he had just finished, splattering it with a black substance.

Redmond was seen fleeing the building.

Law enforcement pursued her, found a black mark on Redmond's hand, black paint on her and a black-paint-filled balloon in her purse, according to the ruling.

After this evidence was presented in Redmond's trial, she was sentenced to 30 days in the custody of the county sheriff.

That sentence was then suspended, and Redmond, instead, was placed on 18 months of supervised probation and ordered to pay $4,425 in restitution for the damaged painting.

The painting was valued at $8,850, according to testimony during the jury trial, allegedly the base price of all Gerard's paintings of a particular size. The price was called into question by Redmond's attorneys.

Related: Vandals owe Jonas Gerard over $34,000, Buncombe court rules

Redmond entered a detailed appeal on Dec. 18, 2019, trying to move the trial's venue out of Buncombe.

Story continues

In this early appeal, she and her representation emphasized allegations of sexual abuse leveled at Gerard in 2014 and 2015 via U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints.

Gerard acknowledged social media and legal accusations against him, including a criminal charge of misdemeanor sexual battery, which was filed along with the EEOC complaint, according to court documents.

Public protests that often involved destruction of property followed Gerard during the final years of his life. His art, billboards displaying it and his studio all were vandalized in apparent acts of protest that started around 2015, according to the appeal.

The words "rapist" and "predator" were spray-painted on the door of his Clingman Avenue studio and van at one point, the venue change appeal stated.

These accusations of sexual abuse and the protests were often the subject of media reports, according to the appeal, and therefore may have caused the jury to be biased against Redmond.

So she requested a trial in a court that wouldn't be "prejudiced" against her. The court denied this request and, on the same day, the jury founder her guilty.

An advertising display at the Asheville Regional Airport for Jonas Gerard is bare Tuesday following two acts of vandalism. The artist has been accused of sexual assault, which Gerard denies.

The latest appeal was filed in April 2021 and argued the trial court erred because it didn't adequately define who owned the painting and what its actual value was at the moment of the incident.

"The State incorrectly identified Mr. Gerard as the owner of the painting when charging the crime of damage to property," the appeal stated, arguing that the painting was owned by Gerard's company - Jonas Gerard Fine Arts, Inc. (JGFAI) - not the man himself.

The appellate court panel disagreed about the relationship between Gerard and his company as it related to Redmond's argument.

"Even after a painting is catalogued and posted for sale in the gallery, testimony showed that Gerard retained the right to revisit his finished creations and to alter or improve them if he felt they needed 'a little more love,'" the ruling stated. "JGFAI employed Gerard for the purpose of creating paintings and granted him control over new and finished paintings."

Redmond's attorney also argued the value of the painting -- which formed the basis of restitution she was ordered to pay -- was speculative since it hadn't sold yet.

According to the testimony of a gallery employee, the painting was damaged just as someone expressed interest in buying it. That person allegedly asked Gerard how much it cost, and he replied, $8,850.00, the gallerys base price for all paintings of that size.

"The evidence adduced at trial was sufficiently specific to show the market value of the painting prior to damage by Defendant on the date of loss, damage, or destruction, and therefore we will not disturb the trial courts award," the ruling argued.

Gerard's gallery is still in Asheville's River Arts District. Prints of his work are sold at his website.

Andrew Jones is Buncombe County government and health care reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow or reach him at @arjonesreports on Facebook and Twitter. Email him at arjones@citizentimes.com.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Woman who destroyed now dead Asheville artist's work loses appeal
Burke County saw nearly 400 new cases of COVID-19 over the weekend.

The Burke County COVID-19 dashboard showed 1,410 active cases on Monday, up from 1,025 active cases on Friday. On Sunday, Burke County Health Director Danny Scalise said 175 new cases were added between Friday and Saturday.

UNC Health Blue Ridge reported 28 COVID-19 patients  20 unvaccinated  hospitalized on Monday, with six of them in the intensive care unit, all unvaccinated. It also reported 296 patients in its COVID-19 virtual hospital, which is down from 354 patients on Friday.

However, the reason the virtual patient census dropped is due to a change in admission criteria, according to the health care system.

Due to the high numbers, we are selectively admitting those at the highest risk for complications from COVID, said Dr. Gandhari Loomis, primary care physician at Table Rock Family Medicine and medical director of CVH. The decreased virtual hospital census does not mean community cases are declining. In fact, it is the opposite. Saturday, we hit a record high of 362.

So far, Burke County has reported 279 residents have died due to the virus.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reported 18,254 new cases of the virus with a daily percent positive rate of 31.1% on Monday. It also reported 3,850 people hospitalized in the state due to the virus, and a total of 19,685 deaths, up from 19,619 deaths on Friday.

The virus in Burke County has forced Hallyburton Academy, North Liberty School and the Burke County Register of Deeds to close for this week. The school system has said it hopes classes at Hallyburton can resume on Thursday.

Testing

The health department says it has an adequate supply of PCR tests but not the rapid antigen testing kits. Chae Moore, public information officer for the department, said on Friday that those testing kits are on back order.

But the department is still conducting testing from 8-11 a.m. and 1-3:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 8-11 a.m. and as needed in the afternoon on Fridays, Moore said.

Due to increased testing needs across the county, UNC Health Blue Ridge is now requiring appointments for COVID testing and has opened a testing clinic at the Valdese Express Care.

The Express Care is open Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sundays from 2-6 p.m.

To make an appointment, go to uncbr.org/test or call 828-580-7387.

The health care system is asking that people do not go to the emergency room or other Urgent Care locations for testing.

This allows UNC Health Blue Ridge to fill the needs of other patients while still serving the needs of those with COIVD symptoms, said a hospital spokesperson.

To find a COVID-19 testing site, visit ncdhhs.gov/GetTested.

Vaccines

According to NCDHHS, Burke Countys population of those 5 years old and older who are fully vaccinated against the virus is at 47% and the population of those who have had at least one does of the vaccine is at 50%.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended Pfizer booster doses for children 12 to 15 years old and a third dose of Pfizer for children 5 to 11 years old who have compromised immune systems, according to NCDHHS.

The wait time for boosters for anyone who received Pfizer COVID-19 vaccinations has been reduced from six months to five months. People who received two doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine should receive their booster in six months. People who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine should receive their booster two months after their vaccination, according to NCDHHS.

NCDHHS said COVID-19 vaccines and boosters are effective in reducing the severity of illness in those who become infected. People who are unvaccinated run the highest risk of infection, severe illness, hospitalization and death. Currently, 87% of the patients in the ICU are unvaccinated, the department said.

The Burke County Health Department also is encouraging people to get vaccinated, as well as those who are due a booster dose to schedule an appointment as soon as possible. There have been no recent changes to booster eligibility for those who have received Moderna or J&J, the department said.

Vaccination is now open to everyone 5 years old and older. Visit myspot.nc.gov to find a location.

The county health department said once the standing orders from the state regarding quarantine and isolation have been received, it will update the public with the newest guidance. The department is encouraging the public to layer up this winter by getting COVID and flu vaccinations.

The health department offers COVID-19 vaccines on Fridays from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The department also will be offering a flu vaccination clinic on Friday, Jan. 14 from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Appointments can be made by calling 828-764-9150.
The History Museum of Burke County will welcome Molly Hemstreet, owner of Opportunity Threads and executive co-director of The Industrial Commons, who will speak about her work at 10 a.m. Thursday at the museum as part of its Coffee at the Museum series. The presentation is free and open to the community.

Hemstreet was recognized by the Rotary Club of Morganton last year when the organization named her its Distinguished Person of the Year for 2020 for her positive impact on the community and for helping transform the way people work in a way that enriches their lives.

Hemstreet co-founded The Industrial Commons with Sara Chester in 2015. The nonprofit founds and scales employee-owned social enterprises and industrial cooperatives, and supports frontline workers to build a new southern working class that erases the inequities of generational poverty and builds an economy and future for all, according to its website.

The organization provides its incubator companies loans, space, infrastructure and other resources, as well as a variety of workforce development and training programs.

Hemstreet graduated from Freedom High School and was awarded the Benjamin N. Duke scholarship to study at Duke University, where she graduated cum laude.

She returned to Morganton to teach English as a Second Language in Burke County Public Schools. She saw how the high unemployment rate at the time affected her students and their families, which sparked her interest in economic development. That interest led her to found Opportunity Threads LLC in 2008, described as an immigrant-led cut and sew factory.

The company, which now employs 70 people, was designated as Cooperative of the Year by the US Federation of Worker Co-ops in 2016, according to the Industrial Commons website.

The website explains how Hemstreets company evolved into a much larger vision.

Opportunity Threads then partnered with Burke Development, Inc., our local economic development entity, to start the industry cooperative, the Carolina Textile District LLC, winner of an IEDC Gold Award for Innovative Economic Development, the website reads.

The Carolina Textile District is a member-governed and member-driven network of values-aligned textile manufacturers in North Carolina, South Carolina and beyond, according to a previous News Herald article.

Hemstreet also serves the community through a variety of volunteer positions. She is a member and former committee member of the Burke Womens Fund, a member of the Quaker Meadows Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and serves on the campus and operations steering team for the Morganton campus of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.

Her community development work over the past two decades, deeply focused on creating good work and including all community members, has impacted many lives, said Deborah Jones, secretary of the Morganton Rotary Club. Her model of community driven, participatory wealth building has been heralded as an authentic, U.S. based rural example of true grassroots economic development.

Molly has spoken about her innovative approach to rural, participatory community transformation and development at the Aspen Ideas Festival and was invited by the Vatican to participate in the World Meeting of Popular Movements. For her work in environmental stewardship, Molly has been selected to participate in the Eileen Fisher Womens business grant program and the Levis Strauss Collaboratory. Her work has been featured on National Public Radio, in Vogue Business, and the Wall Street Journal.

During her presentation, Hemstreet will showcase a video highlighting the mission of the Industrial Commons.

I really look forward to sharing the work and our story, she said.

The museum will follow all COVID-19 safety protocols, and visitors will be required to wear masks. For more information, contact the museum at 828-437-1777.
We yawn as we drift toward doom. The news is relentless, for those who deign to pay attention.

For instance, scientists discovered last month that a massive (and, until now, stable) ice shelf at the bottom of the globe is rapidly crumbling, with serious consequences for us all: The rapid transformation of the Arctic and Antarctic creates ripple effects all over the planet. Sea levels will rise, weather patterns will shift and ecosystems will be altered. Unless humanity acts swiftly to curb emissions, scientists say, the same forces that have destabilized the poles will wreak havoc on the rest of the globe.

The havoc is here already. Unprecedented tornadoes destroy entire Kentucky towns, unprecedented wildfires destroy Denver suburbs, the sea routinely runs wild in the streets of Miami, New York City subways drown in floodwaterits just life in the 21st century.

According to one report about last weeks Colorado conflagrations, heat and dryness associated with global warming are major reasons for the increasing prevalence of bigger and stronger fires, as rainfall patterns have been disrupted, snow melts earlier and meadows and forests are scorched into kindling.

And yet, film critics and armchair curmudgeons are whining that the Netflix satirical film Dont Look Up!  a bitter attack on climate change deniers  is too heavy-handed, too broad, too angry, a veritable sledgehammer at the expense of subtlety. I watched the film during the holiday doldrums  like many of you in semi-lockdown mode, I was binging TV  and I frankly cant fathom those complaints.

Because the same indictment could be leveled against Dr. Strangelove (on orders from a general named Jack D. Ripper, a gung-ho Texan rides an A-bomb), and against Network (a lunatic anchorman is assassinated on the air because his ratings went bad). Heck, you could say the same thing about Jonathan Swift, the 18th-century satirist who suggested, in his treatise entitled A Modest Proposal, that poverty in Ireland would be cured if only the impoverished Irish families would agree to fatten their children and sell them as food to the English landowners. He even suggested some yummy recipes.

Spoiler alert: Nobody thought that Swift was literally serious. Satire, by definition, uses humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize peoples stupidity or vices,  and, in case you havent noticed, rampant stupidity currently reigns in our benighted disunion. Witness the latest deluge of lies on social media, with keyboard loons insisting, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary, that the Greenland ice sheet has not been losing billions of metric tons of ice each year.

In Dont Look Up!, a killer comet is hurtling toward earth  theres incontrovertible scientific proof  but the morons on social media still call it a hoax. A male astronomer gets a lot of air time only because the viewers think hes hunky, while his female assistant gets canceled by the Twitter haters because shes deemed too shrill. Meanwhile, a MAGA-type president and her dimwit chief of staff (her son, naturally) worry that the comet will sink her poll ratings. An Elon Musk-type billionaire thinks theres money to be made from the comet, brainless followers chant that the comet will create jobs, and in no time a sizeable chunk of the doomed populace is refusing to look up, wearing buttons that feature an arrow pointing down.

And finally, when its too late to do anything, Leonardo DeCaprios astronomer says plaintively, We had it all, didnt we?

This is the fractured and fool-infested America we know all too well. If anything, the film is a documentary masquerading as a satire  a veritable metaphor for life as we know it, with tens of millions of people (mostly Trump chumps) still spewing, circulating, and swallowing COVID-19 lies, adamantly refusing to look up.

Anyone who thinks Dont Look Up! lacks subtlety needs only to look around and behold what mass stupidity has wrought.

Dick Polman is a national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a writer in residence at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com.
Thomas L. Napton was born in Missouri in 1840, son of the Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court. He arrived in Butte with his attorneys license in 1883.

Napton was successful enough to invest in a two-story office building at 21-29 East Granite Street, which contained five ground-floor store fronts including a restaurant and a doctors office. By 1900, the street level held a saloon, assay office, barber, and two additional offices. The second floor was furnished rooms, but several suites were occupied by physicians.

Dr. B.C. De Freye boasted that he had been surgeon to the French army, professor of surgery and dean of a college in San Francisco, and founder of the New York Orthopedic Institute. He brought experience in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin to Butte, and advertised that he could conduct consultations in all modern languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian. His offices in Butte in 1884 were on West Park Street between the Renshaw Opera House (Terminal Meats today) and Warfield & Hauser stables. DeFreyes office was where Dakota Street intersects Park today. In the 1880s, Dakota Street did not go through to Park.

In 1888 after an absence to Paris for about a year, DeFreye returned to Butte and relocated to the new Napton Block, which had opened in late 1887. He offered free initial consultations, and a full examination, including urinalysis and advice, ran $5, with cures guaranteed. Doctors Spinney, Mintie, and Liebig also occupied spaces in the Napton in 1888. DeFreye was one of the founding members and vice president of Buttes Liederkranz Gesang Verein, the German choral society established by George Fitschen in 1883. Hannover-born Fitschen had organized Buttes first band in 1876.

Thomas Napton died unexpectedly in 1888 at age 48, leaving a wife and two children. His daughter Mary married Eugene Carroll, long-time manager of the Butte Water Company, and they moved into the home her father had built in 1883-1884 at 315 West Granite, a house that is still standing.

Thomass son, also named Thomas, became a prominent Butte physician. With his sister Mary Napton Carroll and investor John ORourke, they had the old Napton Block on Granite Street demolished in 1906 and constructed a new upscale 4-story apartment building at a cost of $125,000, an important part of the building boom of 1906, commemorated in huge numerals 1 9 0 6 on the new Napton. Some of Buttes most prominent residents lived there, including Judge George Borquin and Ella Knowles Haskell, Montanas first female attorney.

Local geologist and historian Dick Gibson has lived in Butte since 2003 and has worked as a tour guide for various organizations and museums. He can be reached at rigibson@earthlink.net.

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ARCHIVED - More than 8 million students return to school across Spain



Classes in Spain will have to quarantine if more than 5 Covid cases are confirmed

More than eight million students, 35% of whom are Primary-school age, will return to school as planned on Monday January 10 despite the worrying prevalence of the Omicron variant across Spain.

Last Friday, the Public Health Commission agreed not to quarantine entire classrooms unless five positive cases of Covid are confirmed, or the outbreak affects more than 20% of students. In this case, the children will have to isolate for seven days.

The only exception is in Madrid, who will continue to consider an outbreak three or more cases in the one class.

From Monday on, mask-wearing will be mandatory at all times for children over the age of six, including in the playground during recess. In addition, classrooms will have to be adequately ventilated.

Image: Archive

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MUSCATINE  As the Muscatine County Board of Supervisors began its yearly budgeting work, a group out of Eastern iowa is demanding the county allocate $2 million of the $8 million the county will receive in federal funding to assist residents who didnt get stimulus checks.

In an email to the supervisors, the group Escucha Mi Voz (Hear My Voice), a spin-off of the Iowa City Catholic Worker, reported that during the COVID-19 health crisis frontline workers had risked health and safety to keep society running. It also said that too many frontline workers have been excluded from stimulus checks, childcare payments, and unemployment insurance, slowing down the economic recovery. It asks for a quarter of the American Rescue Plan funding to be given to workers.

We demand the county invest Muscatines ARPA dollars in an Excluded Workers Fund to distribute $1,400 of direct assistance to every Muscatine County resident who was excluded from previous rounds of pandemic relief, the email said.

The supervisors did not discuss the email other than to acknowledge they received it. The email was delivered by people from Muscatine County and four spoke during the meeting.

Based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, an estimated 1,500 excluded workers live in Muscatine County.

Previously the group has visited the Columbus Junction City Council and the Louisa County Board of Supervisors to make a similar request. In a previous interview, Rev. Guillermo Trevino Jr. said there are many reasons the workers did not receive a stimulus, including that many are undocumented immigrants. Iowa City Catholic Worker is an immigrant and refugee-led community.

In the last three months, essential and excluded immigrant workers have been organizing into core teams at their Hispanic Catholic parishes in Iowa City, West Liberty, Muscatine, Columbus Junction and Washington. The teams are forming a new regional organization called Escucha Mi Voz.

Iowa City and Johnson County have contributed $2 million to such a fund. LULAC and Catholic Worker House of Iowa City, a nonprofit that houses undocumented immigrants, are two of the 16 groups that lobbied for the Excluded Workers Fund.

Under the American Rescue Plan Act, Louisa County will receive $2.4 million; Columbus Junction will receive $275,000; West Liberty will receive $522,000; Muscatine County will receive $8.3 million; and Muscatine will receive $3.3 million.

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WAPELLO  An annual report of the Wapello Police Department (WPD) showed the department handled 1,845 calls for service (CFS) in 2021. The report was presented to city officials by Wapello Police Chief Ed Parker during the City Councils regular meeting on Thursday.

The CFS, which averaged five per day, were broken out in the report. Traffic stops accounted for the most service calls with 564, followed by sick (100); civil paper (99); speak with an officer (71); information (66); medical transport (62); and animal complaint and falls/back injuries (both 57).

In his report, Parker noted that Fridays were the busiest day of the week with 18.7% of the calls coming on that day; and Sundays were the least busiest with 10.8% of the calls.

The departments three full-time officers, which included one vacancy since July; four part-time officers; and four reserve officers made 172 arrests in 2021. There were 370 charges  34 felonies and 336 misdemeanors  related to those arrests; and 77 of them, or 20.8%, were drug related.

Many of the other charges, including thefts, assaults, criminal mischief and some driving related charges, included drugs as a contributing factor.

In the rest of his report, Parker described training, overtime work and other activities the departments officers had taken during the past year. He also told the council the departments volunteer reserve officers had donated over 699 hours of time to the city in the form of patrol, training and community service.

In the conclusion of his written report, Parker outlined several goals he had established for the WPD in 2022. These included to continue: to proactively pursue investigations and arrests involving narcotics; to be involved in community type policing and events; to proactively enforce traffic laws; and to work with other city personnel and community member in cleaning up and maintaining properties in the city limits.

Parker also pointed out it would be his departments goal to work with the City Council to adjust the current pay scale for line staff officers to attract and retain qualified personnel.

The citys ambulance service also had a busy year in 2021, Ddirector Jason Griffin and Assistant Director Sam Gillip reported. Griffin said the service ended the year with 521 calls, while Gillip said 15 calls had already been made in 2022.

In other action, the City Council made a fiscal year 2022 budget amendment that added $511,032 in additional Total Expenditures/Transfers Out to the original spending.

Those additional expenses covered a water tower painting and repair project ($192,000), Mill Street resurfacing ($208,000) and several other smaller projects.

In addition to the additional spending, the amendment added $192,000 in revenue to the existing budget. That revenue comes from a loan taken out for the water tower painting work.

The council acted after holding a public hearing where there were no comments.

The council also approved a $1,826 transfer from the Road Use Fund and a $722 transfer from the Water Fund to the Debt Service Fund for a routine payment on a loan that was used to finance the 2nd Street Repair project.

The fiscal year 2022 budget will also be reviewed during a special budget work session on Jan. 13, the council agreed.

The Wapello Republican was also named the citys official newspaper.

In final action, the council approved a tax abatement application submitted by TKC Enterprises, LLC, for 1150 Industrial Park Road. According to the application, the company plans to renovate the building for office space and a restaurant.

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House members look on as Speaker Edmund S. Villagomez reads the bipartisan legislation they have co-sponsored to fund bonuses for CNMI retirees and propose local stimulus initiatives.
In the shadow of geopolitical conflicts: How China triggers domestic division in Pacific island nations
South African researchers from the University of Stellenbosch may have determined the cause behind long Covid.

Physiological sciences professor Etheresia Pretorius and her team found that an excess of inflammatory molecules inside microscopic blood clots could cause some long Covid symptoms.

The team published their research in the journal Bioscience Reports.

According to Pretorius, Covid-19 impacts the circulation system of patients in addition to the adverse effects it has on the respiratory system.

Acute Covid-19 is not only a lung disease but actually significantly affects the blood flow and blood clotting systems, she told the Sunday Times.

A recent study in my lab revealed that there is significant microclot formation in the blood of both acute Covid-19 and long Covid patients, she said.

With healthy physiology, clots may form  for instance, when you cut yourself. However, the body breaks down the clots efficiently by a process called fibrinolysis.

Pretorius explained that in patients experiencing long Covid, these microclots become persistent and are resistant to the bodys fibrinolytic processes.

We found high levels of various inflammatory molecules trapped in the persistent microclots, she added.

As a result of these microclots, the body can no longer sustain normal bodily function as cells do not receive enough oxygen  a condition known as cellular hypoxia.

The lingering after-effects of Covid-19 were dubbed Long Covid by the World Health Organisation in 2021, BusinessTech reported.

Symptoms of long Covid include anxiety or depression, fatigue and brain fog, muscle weakness, shortness of breath, and difficulty sleeping.

These patients may also have an elevated risk of stroke and heart attacks.

According to Pretorius, Widespread hypoxia could be to blame for these symptoms.

Noluthando Nematswerani, head of Discovery Healths centre for clinical excellence, explained that there is still much more to learn about long Covid.

Long Covid affects every aspect of life. It affects ones mental health and ones ability to focus and work, and could have economic consequences too, she said.

This is why its so important that we acknowledge the prevalence and growing awareness around long Covid.

Pretorius has emphasised the need for urgent investment into research and clinical trials to better understand and further confirm the link between abnormal blood clotting, hypoxia and vascular dysfunction in patients with long Covid.
NASA announced that its James Webb Space Telescope reached a major milestone on Saturday when the agency opened its gold-plated primary mirror.

The unfolding of the 6.5m primary mirror marked the completion of all primary spacecraft deployments to prepare for scientific applications.

The successful unfolding is a huge relief to NASA. Not only was the mission 20 years in the making, but the agency said it was also the most complicated deployment it has ever undertaken.

The Webb observatory has 50 major deployments  and 178 release mechanisms to deploy those 50 parts, mission systems engineer Mike Menzel explained.

Every single one of them must work. Unfolding Webb is hands-down the most complicated spacecraft activity weve ever done.

Today, NASA achieved another engineering milestone decades in the making, said Bill Nelson, NASA administrator.

While the journey is not complete, I join the Webb team in breathing a little easier and imagining the future breakthroughs bound to inspire the world.

#NASAWebb is fully deployed!  With the successful deployment & latching of our last mirror wing, thats:

50 major deployments, complete.

178 pins, released.

20+ years of work, realized. Next to #UnfoldTheUniverse: traveling out to our orbital destination of Lagrange point 2! pic.twitter.com/mDfmlaszzV  NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) January 8, 2022

More powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope and costing approximately $10 billion (R156 billion), the space science telescope will now begin aligning its 18 primary mirror segments.

NASA said the alignment would take months to complete, after which the team will calibrate the scientific instruments before delivering Webbs first images later this year.

Webb will also undergo a third mid-course correction burn, which is one of three aimed at placing the telescope in orbit around the second Lagrange point. This point is located approximately 1,500,000km from Earth, on the other side of the moon relative to the planet.

I am so proud of the team  spanning continents and decades  that delivered this first-of-its kind achievement, said Thomas Zurbuchen, chief of NASAs science missions.

Im emotional about it. What an amazing milestone. We see that beautiful pattern out there in the sky now.

The James Webb Space Telescope launched at 14:20 on Christmas Day on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europes Spaceport in French Guiana.

Now read: Long Covid breakthrough from South African scientists
Papers filed in the Pretoria High Court show that South African officials are demanding R115 million from Switzerland for victims of a R4 billion pyramid scheme called Travel Ventures International (TVI), the Sunday Times reports.

Alleged TVI mastermind Tarun Trikha turned $36 million (R561 million) over to the Swiss in 2016, reportedly as part of a plea deal the Indian national made with the Bern government.

The Swiss released $4 million (R62 million) to Trikha as part of the deal, and ultimately $20 million (R312 million) was seized by the state. It is unclear what happened to the balance.

Veteran journalist Tania Broughton reported for The Mercury in 2012 about the collapse of TVI, which was considered South Africas biggest pyramid scheme at the time.

The South African Reserve Bank deemed TVI an unlawful scheme in 2011 and appointed attorney Johan Kruger as an inspector to investigate and take action.

Kruger has since been appointed as repayment administrator for the case by the Prudential Authority.

Kruger explained in the court papers that TVI surfaced in India in 2008 and spread to over 150 countries.

Participants bought worthless travel vouchers for R2,700 each. They would progress along a traveller board by marketing the scheme before moving to the express board.

Moving from one board to the next came with a promise of a R108,000 reward.

Reporting for the Sunday Times, Broughton quoted Kruger saying that 25 South Africans have been convicted so far. He has also instituted legal proceedings against those implicated to take control of their assets.

After finding out that victims money had been located in Swiss bank accounts, Kruger said he tried to have it returned.

Kruger said he appointed a Swiss law firm to act on his behalf and met several high-ranking officials in Bern, but nothing has come of it.

The source of the money seized by the Bern government was reportedly traced to the South African bank accounts of TVI distributors who convinced as many as 600,000 people to put money into the scheme.

According to the court documents, TVI made almost R4 billion in South Africa alone.

Swiss officials initially agreed that some of the money should be returned to South Africa, Kruger stated, but they backtracked and questioned his authority.

They also informed Kruger that South African victims would have to make individual applications to recover money they believed they had lost.

Kruger approached the High Court in October 2021 for an order confirming his authority. The Swiss did not oppose his application.

The Swiss embassy told the Times it would not comment on legal proceedings.
Samsung has launched its latest entry-level budget smartphone, the Galaxy A03 Core, in South Africa.

The company said the feature-packed smartphone was designed to make the experience of being a first-time Galaxy smartphone owner unforgettable.

The Galaxy A03 Core features a 6.5-inch Infinity-V display with 720 x 1,600 resolution.

That comes packed in a body with rounded edges and a textured back to provide a comfortable grip.

The smartphone is powered by a Unisoc SC9863A octa-core processor, coupled with 2GB RAM.

While that would place it firmly in the lower performance category, it runs on the Android 11 Go platform.

That means it can make more efficient use of limited hardware than standard Android 11, with custom apps that take up less storage and are less CPU-intensive than their non-Go versions.

Google has claimed that launching apps in Android 11 Go is around 20% faster than on Android 10 Go.

The A03 Core comes equipped with an 8MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture and a 5MP front camera for snapping photos and videos.

In terms of storage, users get 32GB of internal memory, while the microSD slot can expand space by a further 512GB.

The smartphone packs a 5,000mAh for all-day usage, although it does not support any fast-charging capabilities and still uses a microUS port.

The Galaxy A03 Core is priced at R1,799 and is now available from the Samsung South Africa online store in two colour options  black or blue.

At its price point, it is set to compete with Xiaomis Redmi 9A. That budget smartphone primarily offers similar specifications, except for a 13MP rear camera and support for 10W fast charging.

Below are the specifications and images of the Galaxy A03 Core.

Samsung Galaxy A03 Core OS Android 11 Go Display 6.5-inch 720 x 1,600 LCD Processor Unisoc SC9863A Storage 32GB RAM 2GB Rear camera 8MP Front camera 5MP Connectivity 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2 Ports microUSB 2.0 Cellular LTE SIM Single or Dual SIM Biometrics n/a Battery and charging 5,000mAh Dimensions and weight 164.2 x 75.9 x 9.1 mm (211g)

Samsung Galaxy A03

Now read: Smartphones to look forward to in 2022
The Napa Valley Vintners rolled out their new Collective Napa Valley on Monday, inviting locals as well as global wine enthusiasts to join a year-round program to celebrate Napa wines while raising funds to support the community.

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Linda Reiff, president and CEO of Napa Valley Vintners, described the Collective as "a joining together of winemakers and wine lovers with a common passion for doing good.

Collective Napa Valley is a tiered-program beginning with a complimentary membership. "The goal is to allow anyone who wants to become involved, at no cost," said Kat Corcoran, director of marketing and partnerships for the Vintners.

In 2022, Collective Napa Valley will be organized around three events with additional opportunities to acquire Napa Valley wines and experience local hospitality both online and in person.

Collective Napa Valley replaces the annual Auction Napa Valley, which over 40 years have given more than $200 million to local nonprofits supporting initiatives for healthcare, housing, and education.

The auction, launched in 1981, was inspired by the French L'Hospices de Beaune, a charitable wine auction in Bourgogne with medieval roots. Auction Napa Valley went on to become the model for American philanthropic wine auctions as it grew from an afternoon event to a weekend drawing guests from around the world for dinners with vintners, a barrel auction, and live auction.

In 2020, after the auction was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Vintners announced they had decided to end the auction as it existed and focus on creating a new fundraising platform.

Our view: A continuing tradition of giving For decades, when Napa County was in need, the Napa Valley Vintners have stepped up to help, the Editorial Board says.

Collective Napa Valley will kick off this spring with Welcome to the Collective coinciding with budbreak and the start of the new growing season. Vintner Robin Lail is chairwoman for this event that includes live 60-minute online broadcast, as well as local events that will focus on the next generation of Napa Valley winemakers.

The popular Barrel Auction will return in summer with the Futures Barrel Auction Weekend hosted by Gina Gallo and Jean Charles Boisset on June 2-4. It will include vintner-hosted events culminating in a barrel tasting at Raymond Vineyards.

In November, winemaker Andy Erickson and the Araujo family will host a Vintage Celebration that includes a live auction and dinner celebrating the harvest.

Access to the events will be determined by the level of donor membership.

"What it represents is our continuing commitment to supporting the Napa Valley community," said Blakesley Chappellet of Chappellet Winery.

She noted that when the Vintners announced the end of the wine auction in 2020, they pledged to give $15 million over the next three years, and in 2021 they provided $5.9 million in support to local programs.

"Our goal is to use our wines and region for the good of the community," Chappellet said.

For more information about membership, visit collectivenapavalley.org.

Sasha Paulsen is features editor at the Napa Valley Register. Reach her at spaulsen@napanews.com

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Eurozone economic sentiment falls much more than expected in April

Apple faces big fine

Armenia ex-president joins discussion in France Square

Poland wants the EU to set a clear date for stopping Russian oil imports

Armenia FM meets with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken

Armenia FM meets with Director of USAID Samantha Power

Ann Linde says Finland will almost certainly apply for NATO membership

European Commission may relieve Hungary, Slovakia of embargo on Russian oil purchase

Resistance Movement to continue large-scale civil disobedience actions on 3 May in Yerevan and regions

EU countries to continue to pay in euros or dollars for Russian gas

Resistance Movement participants return to France Square

Russian and Turkish defense ministers discuss current situation in Ukraine

Ukrainian intelligence accuses Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan of helping Russia evade Western sanctions

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PACE initiates resolution on threats to journalists and human rights defenders in Azerbaijan

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In recent days, I have been closely following the developments in Kazakhstan, which are worrying and dangerous not only for Kazakhstan, but also for neighboring countries and contiguous regions. Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) President Arayik Harutyunyan wrote this on Facebook, Monday morning. He added as follows:

"It is apparent that extremist groups and formations are behind the plans to destabilize the situation, to create a zone of terrorism and instability in and around Kazakhstan.

In the context of the above, it is also obvious that radical Pan-Turkic circles are actively involved in the process.

The developments that have led to the current situation show that the most effective and efficient mechanism for preventing the growing danger and avoiding new disasters was the entry of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) peacekeeping forces into Kazakhstan, which took place in accordance with the relevant application of the authorities of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Thanks to the absolutely timely intervention of the CSTO Collective Forces and, in particular, of the peacekeeping mission of the Russian Federation [(RF)], the relevant bodies of Kazakhstan pursue the fight against organized crime and its neutralization.

Thus, it became possible to prevent the destabilization of the situation in Central Asia and the contiguous regions, which would definitely have been a serious threat to the security of Artsakh and Armenia, too.

Not long ago, in September 2020, during the large-scale war unleashed by Azerbaijan, we personally witnessed the most brutal manifestations of extremism and terrorism.

With the serious efforts of a number of members of the international community, and in particular thanks to the decisive contribution of the RF and the role of the Russian peacekeeping mission, it was possible to stop the war, reduce tension, and establish stability in our region.

The example of Kazakhstan and a number of other countries once again showed the need for the development of coordinated approaches and expansion of practical cooperation on key international and regional security issues, in particular against the threat of terrorism stemming from extremist organizations and groups.

And in general, the security, economic, ecological, and many other challenges of the modern period reaffirm that the promotion of integration processes, the establishment of a new level of cooperation, and the formation of various union structures have become imperative and more viable means to minimize various threats and develop effective mechanisms to combat them.
What happened in Kazakhstan, naturally, is the result of both internal political and, by and large, geopolitical processes, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Foreign Minister David Babayan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

"Of course, one should not completely ignore the internal political reasons, the various preconditions of political, social significance. Nevertheless, far-reaching geopolitical steps were the catalyst and the main goal. The Pan-Turkic circles played a special role. The fact that Kazakhstan has a special significance for Pan-Turkic ideas, I believe, is quite obvious.

First of all, it was relatively easy to work there for those circles, the country is much more open than other countries in the region, the country is multinational in its composition, there are many organizations. Moreover, there is practically no guarded border with Russia; that is, there is a possibility of penetration of different types of flows into Russia through Kazakhstan, which is also one of the main goals of the Pan-Turkic circles.

This is evidenced by the hysterical attitude in Turkey and Azerbaijan. True, a camouflage approach was manifested there. The authorities seem to be in favor of neutrality, but the most various circlespoliticians, analysts, public circles which are funded by the governmentthat express the real opinion of the authorities have geopolitical ambitions and goals, and at the same time voice accusations against the CSTO, Russia, Armeniain terms of Pan-Turkism.

Why, after all, Kazakhstan? As already mentioned, it is more open, it has huge resourcesoil, [natural] gas, uranium, other resourcesand at the same time, it is very volatile in terms of engagement, and influence on neighboring countries. Naturally, if the Pan-Turkic circles managed to seize power in Kazakhstan, the struggle would not end with that. Representatives of different peoples live side by side in Kazakhstan. The centrifugal trends that have emerged would inevitably reflect on Russia, China, the Russian population living in Kazakhstan.

The situation was fraught with an explosion, which would spread to many neighboring countries and cover a large geopolitical area, cause a huge outbreak of violence, destabilize the situation. This would give an opportunity for Turkey to be more actively engaged. We now see Ankara actively promoting the resolution of Turkic unity, sending soldiers to the armed units of the Turkic states. This is a clear indication that they intend to continue to act in a destructive spirit.

It is necessary to pay attention to the excellent readiness of 20 thousand militants. This actually means that they were able to take control of a large area, including Almaty, for some time. Many analysts make assumptions that the militants had come from Afghanistan, elsewhere. That route is possible. But there is also a shorter and absolutely uncontrolled routefrom Turkey via Azerbaijan, the Caspian Sea. There are many grounds to assume that this very route was used. The outbreak of anti-Russian and anti-Armenian rhetoric in Baku and Ankara testifies to the same thing; that is, we see a planned action to destabilize the situation. Probably they did not think that such attempts would be stopped so abruptly.

The CSTO operations showed the effectiveness of the peacekeeping operation. But I believe that the battle is not over, nonetheless, and there will be attempts to destabilize the situation in other Central Asian countries as well. We see Pan-Turkism in action.

We should not forget the map which [Turkish president] Erdogan recent showed, and Kazakhstan plays one of the key roles there because it will be incomparably more difficult without pushing Kazakhstan's pan-Turkism forward against Russia and China. These are the planned actions of Turkey and the Pan-Turkic circles to implement the dangerous expansionist project. I believe if implemented, the project would pose a deadly danger for us as well. They do not conceal this in Turkey, Turkish politicians cite Karabakh as an example of the main result of Turkish unity. These processes have quite a certain interconnectedness.

Therefore, it is necessary to stop the radical Pan-Turkish vectors cool-headedly, by not giving in to emotionsand we see such inadequate perceptions. The result may be the fire on a global scale," the Artsakh FM concluded.
All participants in the negotiations in Vienna to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran's nuclear program seek to achieve a reliable and stable agreement.

The Islamic Republic Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said this on Monday, speaking at a briefing in Tehran, IRNA news agency reported.

He said that there is a positive atmosphere at the ongoing consultations in Vienna, and there is progress on four issues under discussion: lifting sanctions, the nuclear dossier, the verification mechanism and obtaining guarantees.

According to the Iranian diplomat, the parties involved in the talks do not discuss or accept anything beyond the JCPOA agreement.

For his part, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said to the national broadcaster that the talks in Vienna are aimed at ensuring a responsible return of the United States to its obligations under the nuclear agreement. He said there was an informal exchange of messages between Tehran and Washington.

On January 3, the eighth round of talks resumed in the Austrian capital after a New Year's break, with the goal of restoring the JCPOA to its original form and bringing the US back into this multilateral agreement. Following a meeting of the Joint Commission of Iran and the five international mediators (Russia, Britain, Germany, China and France), the sides agreed to accelerate the process of working on the draft agreement and complete it by early February.
STEPANAKERT.  The Azerbaijani armed forces opened fire in the direction of Karmir Shuka and Taghavard villages in the Martuni region of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) at around 2:30pm Monday, Armenian News-NEWS.am has learned from the Artsakh Police.

A car that was parked next to the Karmir Shuka kindergarten had caught fire as a result of this yet another Azerbaijani provocation targeting civilians.

The firefighters who were dispatched to the scene were also targeted by these shots while carrying out firefighting.

According to preliminary data, there are no affected from these shootings that lasted about ten minutes.

The bullets that penetrated the trunk of the aforesaid car were found at the scene.

Law enforcement officers are working at the scene.

At the moment, the situation is relatively stable.
The Turkish Ministry of National Defense has issued a statement on the meeting between the minister of national defense and the Turkish envoy in the process of normalization of relations with Armenia.

In this regard, the Turkish Ministry of National Defense solely noted on Twitter that National Defense Minister Hulusi Akar met with Turkish envoy Serdar Kilic in the process of normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations.

To note, the first meeting of the Armenian and Turkish envoys is slated for Friday in Moscow.
A special session of the CSTO Collective Security Council chaired by the Chairman of the CSTO Collective Security Council, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan took place, the agenda of which included the issue "On the situation in the Republic of Kazakhstan and measures to resolve it," informed the Office of the Prime Minister.

The session held through videoconference was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon, Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers and Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office of the Kyrgyz Republic Akylbek Japarov, and CSTO Secretary-General Stanislav Zas.

At the beginning of the session, Prime Minister Pashinyan noted that based on the application of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, with the support of the CSTO leaders, a special session of the CSTO Collective Security Council is being held today. Nikol Pashinyan added that a national day of mourning has been declared today in the Republic of Kazakhstan, offering to honor the memory of the victims of the events taking place in the Republic of Kazakhstan with a minute of silence before starting the work.

Afterwards, in his opening remarks, the Prime Minister thanked the leaders of the CSTO member states for their prompt response and participation in today's special session of the Collective Security Council.

"Taking into account the situation in the country, which may worsen in the future, the President of Kazakhstan has officially applied to the CSTO Collective Security Council. Based on this application, in accordance with the Collective Security Treaty and the CSTO Charter, acting in accordance with the functions of the CSTO Chairman, I have launched a mechanism of holding consultations with the leaders of the CSTO member states.

Taking into account the official request of Kazakhstan and the tendency of rapid development of the situation, as well as considering the emergence of a threat to the security, stability and sovereignty of the country, the CSTO Collective Security Council made a consensus decision to send limited-term peacekeepers to Kazakhstan for the protection of objects of strategic importance according to the Collective Security Treaty, the Charter of the Organization, as well as the agreement on CSTO peacekeeping activities," Prime Minister Pashinyan said.

Then, the leaders of the CSTO member states made speeches, presenting their observations and views on the situation in Kazakhstan and its stabilization.

And in his concluding speech, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said:

"Dear Heads of Delegations, Dear Secretary General,

Thank you for the informative speeches and for detailed information. Unfortunately, there is no visible reduction of tension in the CSTO area of responsibility, we continue to face new types of threats. The situation in the Republic of Kazakhstan is of particular concern to us in terms of receiving information on the involvement of international terrorist organizations. Not long ago, we ourselves encountered foreign terrorists in our region.

We hope that the efforts to help friendly Kazakhstan within the CSTO framework will help restore the normal life of the country as soon as possible.

Colleagues,

It should be emphasized that one of the key priorities of our presidency is the strengthening of the Organization's crisis response mechanisms. Based on this, we expect that the CSTO member states will make joint efforts to further improve these mechanisms, which will undoubtedly contribute to both the further development of cooperation between the member states and the strengthening of the relevant structures and mechanisms of the Organization.

Dear Colleagues,

We finished the exchange of views on today's agenda. Summing up the results of our todays session, I would like to state with satisfaction the high level of mutual understanding between our countries on the situation in Kazakhstan. It is obvious that our actions are aimed at stabilizing the situation as soon as possible and returning the country to the normal life. This is an extremely important moment for the provision of basic living conditions for the citizens, as well as for the security of objects of strategic importance.

Thanks for attention."
50 years ago on January 10, a British Royal Air Force Comet aircraft flying from London carrying Sheikh Mujibur Rahman landed in Delhi to a remarkable reception at Palam Airport. The entire Indian cabinet led by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was on the tarmac to receive him. It was the climax of a co-operation between India and the freedom fighters in East Pakistan - a territory that had now become Bangladesh. 25 days earlier - on December 16 - Indian armed forces liberated Pakistan's eastern wing and obtained the surrender of 93,000 Pakistani servicemen from generals to foot soldiers. Two day before his descent on Delhi or January 8, under irresistible international pressure, Pakistan was compelled to release Mujib, who had been incarcerated in West Pakistan for nine months and sentenced to death for allegedly waging war against Pakistan. London-based Indian diplomat Sashanka Banerjee, who was deputed to accompany Mujib as an officer on special duty on the flight, recalled: "After about an hour of small talk, 'Bongo Bondhu' stood up and started singing 'Aamar Shonaar Bangla, Aami Tomaye Bhalobashi' (Oh my golden Bengal, I love you dearly). I was seated next to him, and as he started singing, I too stood up as he did. Mujibur Rahman asked me to join him in singing the song with him, which I did." He went on: "At the end, he turned towards me and asked what I thought of the song. I had understood that Mujib wanted the song to be the national anthem or 'jaatiyo shongeet' of Bangladesh. Who could deny that it was a beautiful song fit to be the Jaatiyo Songeet of Bangladesh. 'You are right', he said, 'that was what I was thinking too. Good then, that will be the song that will be the national anthem of Bangladesh'." Composed by the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore in the first decade of the 20th century, it was duly adopted as such. After arriving in the Indian capital, Mujib rested for a while before formal discussions with Gandhi. Banerjee informed the Prime Minister that Mujib desired withdrawal of Indian forces from Bangladesh be advanced to March 31 from June 30. She, according to Banerjee, asked him to communicate back to Mujib that this be officially mentioned at the ensuing meeting. This Mujib did bring up, and she immediately accepted the request. British Prime Minister Edward Heath was holidaying in the country when Mujib was flown from Rawalpindi to London. He quickly returned to his official residence-cum-office at 10 Downing Street to meet him. The talks lasted about an hour and Mujib asked Britain to recognise Bangladesh. Following this, Heath told the House of Commons: "We would do our utmost to help Bangladesh in the present situation." Less than a month later, the United Kingdom announced the establishment of full diplomatic relations with Dhaka. Mujib also requested Heath to persuade the US which had nakedly supported Pakistani General Yahya Khan's junta in their brutal repression of East Pakistan to acknowledge Bangladesh as a sovereign nation. Heath argued before Nixon: "If we delay too long, the Communist countries will get a start on us." The US duly fell in line in the spring of 1972. Heath shared with Nixon: "He (Mujib) was anxious to reach Dacca (as Dhaka was then spelt) as soon as possible and we gave him an RAF aircraft for the onward journey." Mrs Gandhi had arranged an Air India plane for the purpose but now agreed with Heath that the British jet would stop in Delhi en route to Dhaka. The Sheikh heartily endorsed this. After spending a few hours in Delhi, Sheikh Mujib returned home to a tumultuous welcome. Banerjee's eye-witness account portrayed: "Over a million people had gathered to receive the Bangladesh leader at the Romna Maidan, echoing slogans of 'Joy Bongo Bondhu, Joy Bangla'. Raising his very masculine voice, Bongo Bandhu (friend of Bengal) declared standing on the podium: 'My countrymen, rejoice. Bangladesh is now a sovereign, independent nation'." --IANS ashis/vd ( 681 Words) 2022-01-09-22:34:02 (IANS)
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday paid tributes on the 50th anniversary of Homecoming Day, which marks Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's return to the country in 1972 after spending months in a Pakistan jail. She paid homage by placing wreaths at the portrait of her father at the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum in Dhaka, after which she stood in silence for a while. The Prime Minister was accompanied by her younger sister Sheikh Rehana. Following his return to Bangladesh, Rahman's first statement to the media was: "Gentlemen, as you can see, I am alive and well." He was abducted by the Pakistan Army in the early hours of March 26, 1971 at the onset of Operation Searchlight, in an attempt to defeat Bangladesh's struggle for independence. But Rahman's foresight in delegating responsibilities to his trusted deputies and faith in the people ensured they would not only wage one of the fiercest wars for independence, but also ensure victory. After Bangabandhu was released on January 8, 1972, he wished to return to Dhaka immediately. But as Pakistani aircraft were banned in Indian airspace, Pakistan's new President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had taken over from a disgraced General Yahya Khan, ordered that Rahman fly to Tehran or another 'neutral' location, not India. He then decided to fly to London, where he addressed the world media in a sensational meet-and-greet at the Claridge's Hotel. After a brief stopover in Delhi to thank then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for her assistance to the Bangladesh cause throughout the Liberation War, he finally returned home, where millions of people lined up the streets of Dhaka to welcome him. Upon his return, Bangabandhu delivered a speech on January 10 at the Race Course (now Suhrawardy Udyan) outlining the principles upon which Bangladesh would function as a sovereign state. "My Bangladesh is independent today, my life's desire has been fulfilled today, people of my Bengal have been liberated today. My Bengal will remain free. "In my state, in this Bangladesh, there will be a socialist system. There will be democracy in this Bangladesh. Bangladesh will be a secular state. "Together we will build a new and prosperous Bengal. The people of Bengal will be happy again, live life merrily and breathe freely in an open atmosphere," he had said. The historic day will be observed across the country, but with Covid-19 protocols. The ruling Awami League has arranged various programs. --IANS sumi/ksk/ ( 422 Words) 2022-01-10-11:38:03 (IANS)
The Covid-19 Crisis Management Coordination Centre (CCMCC) suggested banning gathering of more than 25 people and closing primary and secondary schools till January 29, reports Xinhua news agency.

Within this period, the Ministry of Health and Population will have to supply vaccines to inoculate students aged 12-17 and fully vaccinate teachers and other staff members.

A senior CCMCC official told Xinhua that the decision was taken over suggestions by Health Ministry officials.

"There is a projection that the Covid-19 situation may worsen in the third week of January, so we decided to recommend restrictive measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19," said the official.

As suggested by the CCMCC, people need to present their vaccination cards for entering public places like offices, hotels, restaurants, cinema halls, stadiums, airports and parks.

The Centre also recommended the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation to arrange domestic flights so that there are no crowds in airports and make it mandatory for passengers to produce vaccination cards starting from January 17.

The restrictive measures will go into force once government ministries decide to implement them.

Schools in the Kathmandu Valley reopened in late September last year after being shut down for some five months to curb a second wave of the pandemic.

Nepal has so far confirmed 24 new cases of the Omicron variant.

On Sunday, the South Asian country reported 841 new Covid-19 cases, a sharp rise from 213 logged on January 2.

--IANS ksk/

( 282 Words)

2022-01-10-13:00:02 (IANS)
Australia based company, AdzGuru in collaboration with Indian Economic Trade Organization, Asian-African Chamber of Commerce and Industry, India Pacific Islands Trade Council and World Peace and Diplomacy Organization, organized 'Papua New Guinea Trade Investment Summit' alongside the launching of PNG coffee in India. The event was graced by Tamil Nadu's Minister of Finance Palanivel Thiagarajan, High Commissioner of Papua New Guinea to India Paulias Korni OBE, AdzGuru CEO Sujoy Maitra, Minister of Non-Resident Tamil Welfare Gingee K. S. Masthan, IETO President Dr Asif Iqbal and National Director Asian Arab Chamber of Commerce RL Kannan. High Commissioner Paulias Korni depicted how coffee binds us together - people from various cultures, creeds, religions, and ethnicities get easily connected through a single sip. He stressed on the growing importance of strategic partnerships between the resource-rich island nation and the emerging economic player in the global arena, the incredible, India. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between AdzGuru and GD Cafe PVT LTD was signed to launch PNG Gold Coffee in India. "This welcome move certainly comes as a major development so far as the trade relation between India and Papua New Guinea is concerned. It is a stepping stone to grow the economic ties and minimize the present trade imbalance between the two nations. This first of its kind initiative will be beneficial to more than three million coffee farmers in PNG and Indian business owners who want to promote coffee and culture to the other side of the Indian Ocean," AdzGuru CEO Sujoy Maitra told media personnel here. Tamil Nadu's Finance Minister Palanivel Thiagarajan welcomed the initiative and emphasized on the growing trade opportunities between the two countries. He promised all the support needed for the growth of the economy of Tamil Nadu and India at large. He congratulated all the stakeholders of this trade connect initiative. The Papua New Guinea High Commissioner to India stated that there are challenges like double taxation, high import duty in trade relations between Papua New Guinea and India. He has requested the central government in this regard and hopes to resolve these issues in favour of the people of both countries. Speakers emphasized that Sujoy Maitra was instrumental in not only launching the highland grown, exquisite, PNG Gold Coffee in India but also to make such a diplomatic talk happen, which eventually strengthens the bond between the two nations and connects the respective merchants, business community and commoners together. AdzGuru will be branding, marketing, and promoting PNG Coffee across Indian cities. The company is also going to set up coffee chain stores in different metros. (ANI)
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], January 10 (ANI/BusinessWire India): DevOps Enabler & Co., one of India's fast-rising DevOps service providers and IT operations companies, has proudly announced that they celebrated their 6th anniversary on the 12th of December 2021. For six years, they have built a name and cemented their track record as one of the country's leading providers of DevOps Consulting, DevOps Automation, Cloud Computing & Containerization Services. "We wanted to show our appreciation to everyone who has been there since we started in 2015. We won't attain the success we have now without the hard work and loyalty of our talented employees, trust from our wonderful clients, and the help and support from our reliable vendors," shared Ram Suresh, DevOps Enabler & Co.'s Vice President. As an ISO 27001:2013 certified company with Microsoft Gold partner in DevOps competency, certifications in Gitlab migrations and Red hat OpenShift and other industry-leading competencies, DevOps Enabler & Co. is poised to achieve its vision to become a globally respected organization that provides best-of-breed DevSecOps services. Santhosh George Varghese - Leader For Professional Services at DevOps Enabler & Co. said "We always strive for operational excellence. Our company provides a working environment that enables seamless collaboration wherein teamwork is well-cultivated. We encourage each member of our team to keep on learning and growing with us,". One of the recent milestones DevOps Enabler & Co. has attained is the Microsoft Gold DevOps and Cloud Platform competency in the third quarter of 2021. For the past six years, we developed strong and strategic partnerships with some of the world's leading tech entities to help us provide the best solutions to our clients, "Earning the Microsoft Gold DevOps and Cloud Platform competency shows our devoted commitment to meet Microsoft Corp. customers' evolving needs," Santhosh explained. DevOps Enabler & Co. is now stepping into its 7th year. It looks forward to leveling up its DevOps and Cloud services to provide consistent and top-notch solutions to solve the DevOps requirements of startups and SMEs. The leading tech entities that DevOps Enabler & Co. has established strategic alliances which include Microsoft Gold Partnership, GitLab and Red Hat, and VMWare Connect. DevOps Enabler & Co. provides consultation services to help startups and large enterprises maximize their output and fortify their business. They implement DevOps solutions to help them in every step of their digital transformation journey. True to its mission, DevOps Enabler & Co. has successfully supported numerous strategic initiatives around operations, cloud migrations, and custom agile development to deliver advisory. It has also implemented and managed services that increase the effectiveness of many organizations during the development, deployment, and customer support. This story is provided by BusinessWire India. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/BusinessWire India)
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], January 10 (ANI/Hunk Golden and Media): Suumaya Industries Ltd. (NSE Code: SUULD), an emerging diversified conglomerate group, through its 100 percent fully-owned subsidiary Suumaya Retail Ltd. forays into an unique hybrid model of retail business for rural India. In the pilot phase, the company plans to open 30 plus "Suuvidham Superstore" retail chain in Uttar Pradesh in the first quarter of 2022. "Suuvidham Superstore" will be based on Company Owned Company Operated (COCO) and Company Owned Franchise Operated (COFO) business concept. The retail outlet will offer wide array of products covering food and household utility items. The company aims to make "Suuvidham Superstore" as a ready platform to help home grown brands to expand their footprint as an enabler for local businesses. It will be a go-to-store for every local villager as the company will be providing quality goods at subsidised rates. All these stores will be technology enabled to simplify placing of orders to processing invoices thereby bringing ease into their day-to-day lives. "Suuvidham Superstores" are designed around customer centric approach. Ushik Gala, Chairman & Managing Director of Suumaya Industries Limited said, "Suuvidham Superstore retail business will strengthen Suumaya Retails foothold in the value retail segment in the smaller towns. By launching stores across the states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat in both online and offline model, the company will provide opportunities to franchisees and rural retailers to scale their business. B-town consumers will hugely benefit from the access to various brands at economical price points. We believe in the humongous potential of rural India and our Suuvidham Superstores will change the lifestyle of rural Indians by giving them right choice at the right time at the right price. We will play a catalytic role in enhancing their lives by offering them the advantage of urban living in terms of all the normal buying choices." Ushik Gala further added that "We have audacious goals and big plans for the rural retail sector as the power of the rural India is immense. The group already has a strong foothold in agri supply chain which will give Suumaya retail a tremendous edge over other players. This new venture will create a solid presence for Suumaya in the Indian retail space with strong assortment of products and extensive geographical footprint in tier 2, 3 & 4 cities. We have a strong back-end and technology infrastructure to ensure seamless operations and boost the growth. The focus on smaller towns and talukas through the online and offline market has huge potential. We are expecting good footfall due to strong assortment of products offered at optimal prices and well calibrated store positioning. A high footfall conversion rate can be leveraged to expand Suumaya's market penetration. The model is likely to significantly empower rural entrepreneurs and is likely to boost rural economy." Suumaya Retail undertook an extensive survey and research across villages and identified the immense untapped potential of rural business, which is hampered by lack of initial capital, technology and supply chain. The local retailers already have their own premises and work force to run the store. Hence, Suumaya Retail's hybrid model of operations will play a significant role wherein the company will provide them with goods, basic infrastructure, technology and supply Chain whereas the franchises will run the operations at the store level. Under the pilot phase, Suumaya Retail will be establishing its presence through "Suuvidham Superstore" retail chain in 30 plus villages of Uttar Pradesh. The company plans to gradually scale up its retail chain rollout in the coming year across pan-India. Indian rural retail sector is growing very rapidly. Marketers are shifting their focus to rural retail as it offers huge potential which can be tapped effectively through innovative distribution channels with retailing being the most critical element. Indian rural market has demonstrated accelerated growth rate as compared to urban market. There's been a shift in consumption patterns in the rural population. Rural consumers are aspiring multi-brands and seeking increased convenience to buy products at stores closer to them. They want differentiated customer experience similar to the urban India due to heightened exposure. Rural retail sector in India has an addressable market opportunity of over US 100 billion by 2025 according to market research firm Nielsen. Another report by McKinsey Global Institute forecasts the annual real income per household in rural India to rise to 3.6 per cent by 2025, from 2.8 per cent in the last 20 years. The Government of India has also taken various initiatives to improve the rural retail industry in India. The new framework for retail digital payments in offline mode to accelerate digital payment adoption in the country by RBI has also provided the much needed impetus to the rural economy. This story is provided by Hunk Golden and Media. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/Hunk Golden and Media)
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], January 10 (ANI/BusinessWire India): Arch Pharmalabs Ltd., India, announced the signing of a Technology Access & Services Agreement with Orochem Technologies Inc., USA, on an exclusive basis. The Agreement allows Arch to collaborate with Orochem for using Orochem's proprietary Simulated Moving Bed (SMB) platform for Pharmaceutical and other applications. Simulated Moving Bed (SMB) technology is a highly engineered process for implementing chromatographic separation. It is used to separate one chemical compound or one class of chemical compounds from one or more other chemical compounds to provide significant quantities of the purified or enriched material, more cost effectively than obtained using simple (batch) chromatography. SMB Technology provides for the "highest purities" of industrial or "metric ton" scale purification for API's, nutritional supplements, fatty acids, and specialty sugars. Ajit Kamath, Chairman & Managing Director, Arch Pharmalabs Ltd. commented, "We are extremely excited with the technology collaboration we have signed with Orochem Technologies Inc. for use of their proprietary SMB process, under license to us for various applications. Orochem Technologies Inc. is based in Naperville, Illinois, USA, and has been a pioneer in large scale chromatographic purification of small and large molecules for the pharma and nutraceutical industry. The partnership with Orochem provides Arch Pharmalabs vast opportunities for separation and purification of various small molecule Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients from its three USFDA approved facilities in India. It also allows Arch Pharmalabs to collaborate with other pharmaceutical companies to conduct contract manufacturing of APIs at its Vitalife facility in Gurgaon. We look forward to this association with Orochem and expand the applications of their proprietary platform and offer unique solutions to the pharma industry worldwide." Dr Asha Oroskar, CEO of Orochem Technologies Inc. commented, "We are very pleased with this new partnership with Arch Pharmalabs. Over the past 25 years Orochem Technologies Inc. has been successful in commercializing the SMB Chromatography Technology around the world. Applications include: Omega-3, Phospholipids, Sugars, Active Pharma Ingredients, Proteins etc. from Kilo to ton scale. Orochem Technologies has over 20 US Patents covering SMB applications in various fields. Orochem's Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Anil Oroskar is world renowned expert in SMB Technology with over 100 US patents. This partnership with Arch Pharmalabs establishes an expert skill center for SMB Technology Development at Arch Pharmalabs' Vitalife Facility in Gurgaon, India. The commercialization of the SMB Technology allows Worldwide Pharma and Nutraceutical Industry an avenue to shorten product development cycle time for new and generic active ingredients." Arch Pharmalabs Ltd., is a Mumbai Headquartered company based in India. Arch has multiple USFDA approved facilities with multiple chemistry capabilities from kilogram to multi-ton scale. Arch has been at the forefront of attracting and practicing path-breaking technologies, in the field of manufacturing of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients and Intermediates. Arch has been manufacturing, commercially, various import substitute and complex intermediates covering, but not limited to, blockbuster drugs like Atorvastatin, Rosuvastatin, Ursodexycholic Acid etc. Recently it has also diversified into Lithium compounds. Orochem Technologies Inc., is a privately owned company registered in Naperville, Illinois, USA, since 1996. Its subsidiary Orochem India is based in Mumbai, India. Orochem specializes in chromatography products and services covering lab products to commercial scale SMB products. This story is provided by BusinessWire India. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/BusinessWire India)
Gurugram (Haryana) [India], January 10 (ANI/BusinessWire India): GroCurv.com announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Extramarks, India's most trusted EdTech giant in the industry. The company will be adopting GroCurv's innovative "Scope to Work" Platform for sourcing and procurement of marketing services. Extramarks has always believed in using technology to strengthen its own business as it does the consumer experience in education. Extramarks looked at various collaboration and services procurement platforms before selecting GroCurv. With GroCurv's Platform, the Marketing team of Extramarks will be able to scope projects in 15 minutes and match their unique requirements to the best suppliers around the country. The decision is attributed to GroCurv's easy-to-use technology, the largest selection of curated agencies, and the accuracy of its matchmaking algorithm. Since 2019, GroCurv has supported over 1500 clients, including large enterprises such as Coca Cola, SSF Plastics, TATA Group, DOLE International and others. Arpit Agarwal, Vice President - Marketing, Extramarks, said, "Through our association with GroCurv, we want to leverage technology to ensure quick agency selections, competitive bidding and close monitoring of the work delivered by the agencies. We are confident of the team's ability to service our expanding marketing requirements." Vipul Gupta, Co-founder and Director, GroCurv, said, "We are thrilled that an industry leader and a gamechanger in the digital learning space has chosen us to partner and support their growth ambitions. We look forward to improving our algorithms and our agency options to ensure our esteemed clients experience Quick, Transparent and Reliable services procurement." This story is provided by BusinessWire India. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/BusinessWire India)
Mumbai (Maharashtra)/ Bengaluru (Karnataka)/ New Delhi [India], January 10 (ANI/BusinessWire India): In its mission to promote literary works and industry, PragatiE Vichaar Literature Festival initiated PVLF Excellence Awards. They are perhaps the first 100% authentic awards and are driven by data and numbers. Frontlist Media joined hands with the Federation of Indian Publishers [FIP] and brought Nielsen as a knowledge partner. These awards are powered by Nielsen Bookscan Data, the only real source that tracks actual book sales across India and the World. Data used for the awards was from Jan 2019 - Nov 2021. Pranav Gupta, Hony General Secretary of FIP and Co-founder of Frontlist Media said, "These dates were selected to ensure the bias of Covid may be removed from the end-result. We went till 15 months before the pandemic hit." The industry has come forward to support the event. Conceptualized by Frontlist, co-organized with The Federation of Indian Publishers; with Nielsen as knowledge partner and hosted by PragatiE, the event got industry-wide support with publishers such as WonderHouse Publishing, Repro India, FingerPrints Publishing, Disha Publications, Dreamland Children Books, Prints Publications, LiFi Publications, Solh Wellness, BuyBooksIndia and Advit Toys joining as sponsors. All top publishers around the country had participated with their books, evangelizing their readers to vote for them and the coveted PVLF Excellence Award. In a 10 day voting period, PVLF garnered 40,000+ votes. According to Kapil Gupta, Co-founder of Frontlist Media, "the target was upwards of 20,000 votes. However, the publishers and the authors really appreciated the awards. They combined their resources to promote their books and get the readers and fans to vote for them." List of awards and the winners: PVLF Author Excellence Awards: These awards were based on nominations by authors, who were allowed to nominate themselves into a maximum of 2 categories. The nominations were shortlisted by a Jury along with the Nielsen Bookscan Data. The final winner in each category was awarded on the basis of Public Voting. Below is the list of the winners of the PVLF Author Excellence Awards: PVLF People's Choice Publisher Awards: According to Pranav Gupta, Co-founder of Frontlist Media, "Publisher awards were meant to specifically recognize the Indian Publishers. Going beyond some of the international publishers who dominate all awards. We chose only the Indian Publishers in this category and decided upon them strictly based on the Nielsen Bookscan Data." There were 3 categories under this award section and the top 3 Indian Publishers in each category were selected. PVLF Reader's Choice Book Awards: These awards were to recognize the most sold books across all categories. The results were based on the Nielsen definition of Silver, Gold and Platinum Books. The final winner amongst these categories was selected by Public voting. The company would like to congratulate all supremely talented authors who participated in the event to make it a grand success. The next version of PVLF awards certainly promises to be a big one. Go to www.Frontlist.in for more information about PVLF Excellence Awards. This story is provided by BusinessWire India. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/BusinessWire India)
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], January 10 (ANI/PRNewswire): Mirae Asset Mutual Fund, one of the fastest growing fund houses in India, today announced the launch of 'Mirae Asset Nifty India Manufacturing ETF', an open-ended scheme replicating/tracking Nifty India Manufacturing Total Return Index and the 'Mirae Asset Nifty India Manufacturing ETF FOF', an open-ended fund of fund scheme predominantly investing in Mirae Asset Nifty India Manufacturing ETF. The NFO for both the funds will open for subscription on January 10, 2022. While the Mirae Asset Nifty India Manufacturing ETF will close on January 20, 2022, the Mirae Asset Nifty India Manufacturing ETF FOF will close on January 24, 2022. Both the schemes will be managed by Ms. Ekta Gala. The minimum initial investment in both the schemes will be Rs 5,000 and multiples of Re 1 thereafter. Key Highlights: Allows investors the opportunity to participate in potential emerging segments like Electric Vehicles, Electronics, Battery Tech, Defense etc. The Nifty India Manufacturing Index aims to track the performance of stocks that represent manufacturing sectors in India Nifty India Manufacturing Index has outperformed Nifty 500 Index during period of economy recovery & make in India push ^ Nifty India Manufacturing Index has outperformed NIFTY 50 Index, in last 6 out of 8 calendar years (including 2021 YTD) ^ Portfolio covers majority of sectors where government aims to provide around Rs 2Tn incentive for capacity expansion which may contribute to significant growth. "While services and consumption have been focus areas for investors, manufacturing has seemingly been underrated despite a strong performance over the last few years. Going forward, the Manufacturing segment has the potential to become the next growth driver for India, backed by strong government initiatives like Production Linked Incentive schemes and the Make in India push. Over the past few years, India-based manufacturing companies have been increasingly incorporating digital and Industry 4.0 into their processes becoming more efficient, productive and competitive, with improvements in quality as well. This could potentially open up a larger domestic market for them as well as provide increased export opportunities, and that augurs well for the sector," said Swarup Mohanty, Director & CEO, Mirae Asset Investment Managers (India) Pvt. Ltd. Offer for Sale of Units of the Mirae Asset Nifty India Manufacturing ETF will be at 1/100th value of the Nifty India Manufacturing closing Index as on the date of allotment for applications received during the New Fund Offer ("NFO") period and at approximately indicative NAV based prices (along with applicable charges and execution variations) during the Ongoing Offer for applications directly received at AMC. Offer for units of Mirae Asset Nifty India Manufacturing ETF FOF will be Rs. 10/- each during the New Fund Offer and continuous offer for units at NAV based prices. ^ Source: Data as on Nov 30, 2021. National Stock Exchange (NSE). Past performance may or may not sustain in future. The index return is in Total Return Variant. The data shown above pertains to the Index and does not in manner indicate performance of any scheme of the Fund. Mirae Asset Global Investments (India) Private Limited ("MAGI India") has transferred its asset management business to its wholly owned subsidiary, Mirae Asset Investment Managers (India) Private Limited ("Mirae AMC"), as part of internal restructuring of its business with effect from January 1, 2020. Over the last 2 decades Mirae Asset Global Investments Ltd. (the sponsor) has become one of the world's largest investors in emerging market equities, managing total assets of over USD 217.9 billion as on 30th September 2021. Headquartered in South Korea, Mirae Asset Global Investments Ltd also has investment management operations in Hong Kong, United Kingdom, India, Vietnam, USA, Canada, Taiwan and Brazil. Apart from Asset Management, Mirae Asset Financial Group has business interest in Life Insurance, Securities and Investment & Venture Capital. DISCLAIMERS & PRODUCT LABEL: MIRAE ASSET NIFTY INDIA MANUFACTURING ETF (An open-ended scheme replicating/tracking Nifty India Manufacturing Total Return Index) New Fund Offer open on: 10/01/2022 & closes on: 20/01/2022 | Scheme re-opens for continuous Sale and Repurchase from 31/01/2022 Product labelling- Mirae Asset Nifty India Manufacturing ETF is suitable for investors who are seeking* Returns that are commensurate with the performance of the Nifty India Manufacturing Total Return Index subject to tracking error over long term Investments in equity securities covered by Nifty India Manufacturing Total Return Index *Investors should consult their financial advisors if they are not clear about the suitability of the product MIRAE ASSET NIFTY INDIA MANUFACTURING ETF FUND OF FUND (An open-ended fund of fund scheme predominantly investing in Mirae Asset Nifty India Manufacturing ETF.) New Fund Offer open on: 10/01/2022 & closes on: 24/01/2022 | Scheme re-opens for continuous Sale and Repurchase from 01/02/2022. Mirae Asset Nifty India Manufacturing ETF Fund of Fund is suitable for investors who are seeking* To generate long term capital appreciation/income Investments predominantly in units of Mirae Asset Nifty India Manufacturing ETF *Investors should consult their financial advisers if they are not clear about the suitability of the product For further Index, BSE/NSE & other disclaimers scan the QR Code: Link for QR Code- https://www.miraeassetmf.co.in/docs/default-source/marketing/manufacturing-disclaimers.pdf?sfvrsn=aa0bbc67_2 Mutual fund investments are subject to market risks, read all scheme related documents carefully. For further information, contact: Rajesh Joshi The Good Edge rajesh@thegoodedge.com M: +91-9833171525 This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PRNewswire)
Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) [India], January 10 (ANI/NewsVoir): FlowTrack has announced its brand-new addition, a real-time employee monitoring software for Linux users. This software is touted to be the flagship solution for monitoring the internet and computer activities of employees all across the world. To know more about FlowTrack, check here www.flowtrack.ai. The FlowTrack employee monitoring software helps companies record their employee's activities, web pages visited, official chats, keystrokes, applications used, and documents printed. Screenshots of the employee's laptop/computer screen are taken at regular time intervals so that employers can check it whenever required. FlowTrack employee monitoring software is supported on all Windows platforms too. It aims to offer the employers a clear visual representation of what each employee does during working hours. "We aim to bring the much-needed transparency in workforce management and help companies improve their employee engagement and productivity levels. We can assure you that any organization who chooses our software would absolutely love it," Chandrakumar, the company spokesperson explained when quizzed about their new flagship product. FlowTrack is feature rich with an enhanced user interface. It comes with a comprehensive dashboard to provide a detailed view of how an employee uses their computer and internet sources. Organizations can create customized reports and charts using the data obtained from FlowTrack to address the specific problem areas or needs of the business. FlowTrack also offers multiple capabilities and tools for monitoring the employees and keeping track of their productivity levels. It offers powerful search capabilities to help employers search through voluminous data and find a particular string or word they need. In short, this new employee monitoring software for Linux, stealth mode, promises a lot of opportunities to the organizations out there. FlowTrack is one of the best employee monitoring software or platform that help businesses accelerate their operational efficiency. It offers smart solutions for the problems organizations face on a daily basis and helps drive their productivity levels. To know more about FlowTrack, please visit www.flowtrack.ai/about-us. This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], January 10 (ANI/PRNewswire): MedPiper Technologies, the online healthtech eco-system for healthcare professionals, has introduced MConnekt, an online platform exclusively built for the healthcare industry. MConnekt is a web-based software that enables doctors to discover, connect, and track their professional engagement across online digital platforms and offline hospitals. Be it traditional healthcare providers, retail clinics, or digital health providers, companies across the spectrum are realizing the value of telehealth. However, it has become too expensive, complex, and inefficient to manage a clinical workforce and build your own medical consult infrastructure required for nationwide care. MConnekt allows doctors to discover, engage and connect with offline opportunities and digital health platforms, and optimize their workflow and work hours. The doctors can also access the MConnekt dashboard, where they can manage all their calendar engagements in real time and find out about current opportunities, wage trends, and other related information, on any mobile or browser. Apart from discovery of jobs, MConnekt also offers a pool of additional consultation opportunities for the healthcare practitioners. Services include teleconsultation, review, and interpretation of medical records as well as clinical advice on preventive health checks of the patients. "Our simple technology integration connects a marketplace of board-certified clinicians to deliver on-demand, compliant consults without geographic limitations. MConnekt has a flexible, modular foundation for delivering virtual healthcare - the resilient springboard for rapid innovation," Nitthin Chandran, Co-Founder and CEO, MedPiper Technologies said. Digital health platforms can use the MedPiper API to directly connect with verified, active practitioners across the country in real time, thus reducing their operational hassles, improving the turnaround time of their patients, and doing away with one-on-one onboarding of practitioners across the country, thereby ensuring better and more efficient care delivery to their patients on their platform. "The existing systems in the country today take a long time to acknowledge, authorise and verify new practitioners. MConnekt helps to make the onboarding process entirely seamless and transparent for both doctors and hospitals," Pranay Suyash, Co-Founder and CTO, MedPiper Technologies said. As an added feature, the exclusive healthcare-based platform also offers an online resume builder specifically created for medical professionals, with pre-set online templates certified by a senior panel of doctors. MConnekt also offers MedPiper Community, where doctors can interact with each other as well as participate in various healthcare-based forums, creating an online support and resource system for healthcare professionals in the country. MedPiper is currently building standardized APIs to help connect and engage practitioners, digital health platforms, hospitals, insurance service providers and other healthcare stakeholders in real time. The healthtech company previously also launched MScribe, a digital prescription tool for doctors. Bangalore-based MedPiper Technologies Pvt Ltd is a YCombinator-S20 health-tech start up that verifies and connects doctors and healthcare professionals (HCPs) with hospitals and healthcare organizations for duty vacancies, clinical assignments and partnerships with pharma and manufacturers. Launched in September 2019, MedPiper also helps HCPs with their CME needs. From building a medical resume to medical webinars, we provide the platform and resources to help medical practitioners hone their professional skills and update their medical education. Our company boasts of a database of over 65000 verified HCPs, and we provide our services for 35 healthcare organizations at present. We are affiliated with MeITy and IIM Bangalore and associated with healthcare-based organizations like the Indian Dental Association (IDA) and Private Hospitals & Nursing Homes Association (PHANA) among others. Surya Nair MedPiper Technologies Associate Manager - PR and Communication surya@medpiper.com 9740603291 This story is provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PRNewswire)
New Delhi (India), January 10 (ANI/PNN): IASRM have organised a one-day scientific online event on Regenerative Medicine: Innovation & Innovators dated 8th January 2022, in which world-leading doctors and scientist shared their work journey and experience. Some of the leading speakers Dr Manjula Anagani (Padmashree Awardee Gynaecologist), Dr Sharda Jain, Dr Red M Alinsod, Dr Carolyn De Lucia, Dr Alex Bader, Dr Rashad Haddad, Dr Rahul Bhargav, Dr Leila Soudah, Dr Ihsan Naimat, Dr Amr Seifeldin. Dr Pravin Potdar, Prof Dr Shilpa Sharma (AIIMS Delhi) and others have participated and shared their experiences and development. Regenerative Medicine Innovation & Innovators webinar & award ceremony organised by Shri Prabhu Chandra Mishra, President & Dr Diana Mihai Vice President of organisation. Regenerative Medicine: Innovation & Innovators award is awarded by the International Association of Stemcell & Regenerative Medicine. The IASRM Awards recognize outstanding contributions in Stem cell & Regenerative & Functional Medicine and are presented in the categories of "Basic Medical Research," "Clinical Medical Research," "Bench to Bedside developments" "Public Service," and "Special Achievement in Medical Science," and are widely recognized as the highest honors bestowed upon medical scientists by the global organization. President of IASRM Shri Prabhu Chandra Mishra said, " Regenerative Medicine will transform the healthcare and still developing science and required extensive training, research and awareness. It's time to think out of the box. IASRM is conducting various workshops, short term training and fellowship courses in stem cell, Regenerative Medicine, Cosmetic Gynaecology, Aesthetic Medicine and fertility management. IASRM Vice President Dr Diana Mihai said our major focus is infertility indications with stem cells, Platelet Rich Plasma, Amniotic membrane and other minimally invasive procedures. Some of the key indications like Asherman Syndrome, Low AMH ovarian insufficiency, Premature Ovarian Failure and thin endometrium. Dr Osama Shawki from Egypt has also shared his experience of stemcell & PRP in endometrial disease. Dr Sharda Jain demonstrated a holistic approach to Anti-ageing & Dr Manjula Anagani discussed ovarian Rejuvenation. Dr Red M Alinsod discussed Radiofrequency & Biologics in cosmetic Gynaecology and gynaecological disorders. Dr Shilpa Sharma presented on liver regeneration and many other advances discussed by other luminaries. Regenerative medicine is an inspiring and multifaceted new advancement in the world of clinical treatment. It aims for novel therapeutic approaches to replace or repair the original functionality of tissues, functional systems or even complete organs. The field also consists of stem cell treatment and gene therapies, tissue engineering and materials science. Indications of Regenerative medicine can be range from wound healing and tissue transplantation to repairing damaged organs and even curing entire illnesses, such as cancers, genetic disorders and autoimmune diseases. Stem-cell and cellular therapies signify a major revolution in medicine. They also represent a revolution for patients, switching the aim from treatment to healing. While, for now, the majority of the innovation will get from chemical and biological compounds and molecules, expanding pipeline of stem-cell and gene therapies can be seen that will play a vital role in the pharmaceutical market in the coming future. It can be seen from a human prospect, these new innovations and approaches are also very attractive from both a scientific and a commercial perspective. One of the flagship training course of IASRM is Fellowship in Stemcell & Regenerative Medicine which are highly scientific and contributes to advancing science and knowledge of doctors and scientists globally. Mishra also added Our scientific board are focused to developing innovative procedures and processes for Anti-ageing and functional medicine. At IASRM, we never forget that we are here to accelerate stem cell research to patients with unmet medical needs. To meet this challenge, our team of highly trained and experienced professionals actively partners with both academia and industry in a hands-on, entrepreneurial environment to fast track the development of today's most promising stem cell technologies. This story is provided by PNN. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/PNN)
New Delhi [India], January 10 (ANI/GIPR): Innovation is the key when it comes technological advances in business sector. With the pandemic having hit the world two years ago, the past months have seen a wave of innovations in the technical know-how when it comes to ease of doing business worldwide. The companies who are at the forefront of this advancement in technology are the cornerstone of economic growth, no doubt. Whether it is keeping track of client problems, or supplying solutions to the same, making strategic decisions and their subsequent execution cannot be done without necessary patents and technological help. GreyB, a visionary company launched when recession was at its peak during 2008, understands this dilemma of not every company owner being able to afford the extra cost of hiring the innovation necessary for the successful run of operations. Therefore, the company decided to launch a platform where knowledge was available to companies who wanted to piggyback on innovation, without having to burn a hole in their budget. Just like one could learn from other's mistakes, GreyB offers a chance to business owners to use technology and innovation invented by others to resolve their own problems. The company is actively involved in the following three areas - 1)Helping companies pinpoint future technology areas and whitespaces; 2) Helping companies generate money for their innovations; and 3) Helping companies defend themselves in patent-related legal cases. Shikhar Sahni, Sr. Vice President at GreyB for its R&D Strategy, explains his company's approach, "One easy way companies can innovate is by correlating insights from nearby industries that can impact the business. Patent activity doesn't always have to be a solution to present-day problems. Sometimes, a company can benefit by keeping an eye out for startups that are solving problems that might arise in the future of business world. By looking at futuristic patent activity, companies can resolve the cost and solution problem at once." Usually, if a company doesn't innovate with time, the technology that it is using may end up being obsolete. With that the chances of success of a company are also reduced. Technology keeps advancing with every passing minute and the best way to keep track of it is by asking for help, such as provided by companies like GreyB. This story is provided by GIPR. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/GIPR)
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], January 10 (ANI/Heylin Spark): For all the budding authors, StoryMirror has brought a brilliant guide to navigate and enlighten everyone who loves to read and write. 'A Book Inside You' has left readers stunned at its marvellous approach to penmanship, befittingly securing one of the top spots as a writing guide. This dynamic handbook or enchiridion not only covers all the viewpoints of writing but also it is intelligible to students as well as adults. "A Book Inside You - Come & Learn to Write Effectively" will leave the readers, writers, students, and educators amazed after reading. Those who hesitate to start their book will definitely find their musings after reading Danish Sayanee's 'A Book Inside You'. Writing is an art and we have seen several scribes, novelists and poets create divine pieces of literature. Among such authors, educationist and write-o-preneur Danish Sayanee is a popular name praised by booklovers. Being an educator, the idea of carving an apt guideline for writers came to the author and he introduced a fine work depicting elaborate procedures and thorough facts about book writing, publishing and marketing. 'A Book Inside You' covers all the norms and regulations of penmanship in a simple yet meticulous way. By obtaining this helping hand, anyone can start his/her own narrative smoothly. This edition is an eyecatcher that demonstrates new, innovative ideas and also enables one to air his/her own perspectives in the provided space after each chapter. Now that is perfection. Isn't it? 'A Book Inside You' is detailed, complete and it clears all the doubts about book's promotion and publishing, making it beneficial to newcomers as well as established authors. From strategies to morals of penmanship, this bible of book writing bestows a lot of benefits. The businessman and write-o-preneur Danish Sayanee, from the beautiful, multi-cultural city of Dubai, has introduced not just a guidebook but a great support that caters to a writer's every need for knowledge. His book focuses on the little things as well as the bigger by-laws of authorship and publishing. The pertinent narrative is as inspirational as the author himself. Leaving a deep mark on the reader's mind, 'A Book Inside You' really highlights the factors, the challenges that every beginner faces while starting his/her book. From schoolgoers to budding writers to established litterateurs, his charismatic and well-executed book has influenced every worshiper of reading and writing. The crucial rules carved in the book navigate the writer to go on smoothly with his quest of scribbling down a fine tale. The instructions, morals, and norms of penmanship provided here enable the author to finish his/her story with perfection and poise. This perfect and compact guidance presents features and traits of all types of writings. Be it novel, drama, short story, non-fiction, poetry, this handbook caters to a writer's every need. It shows how to begin and end a story as well as how to enhance the middle. As said earlier, the narrative provides spaces after each chapter to reflect on it and air your own ideas and point of view. Truly innovative! One review says - "Inspirational - A phenomenal, concrete narrative, 'A Book Inside You' has helped me rectify all my flaws. It caters to my need for information and boosts my confidence as a scriptwriter". Another review goes like this - "The remedy of my writer's block - From writers' block to writing one short story, I have come a long way since the pandemic lockdown last year". Therefore, 'A Book Inside You' by write-o-preneur Danish Sayanee has created a new genre, a new path for writers as well as readers. If you're eager to start a book, then there's no need to think twice because with this guide you can confidently begin your journey of penmanship. One of the bestselling books of StoryMirror 'A Book Inside You' sets the correct examples for budding scribes at present. 'A Book Inside You' is indeed the guiding light to scribes and it truly is aligned with what StoryMirror believes in - Every individual has a story / book inside them! So, is there a A Book Inside You? This story is provided by Heylin Spark. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/Heylin Spark)
Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) [India], January 10 (ANI/NewsVoir): HRAPP, also known as the best employee monitoring software, has announced the addition of data loss prevention capability. With this new addition, the employee monitoring software is now armed with a tighter security framework that promises better data integrity and privacy. To know more about HRAPP, visit: hrapp.in/employee-monitoring-software. HRAPP is an employee time tracking software that helps employers to track the websites visited by the employees, their online activities, chats with team members, keystrokes, file transfers, applications used, instant messages, and documents printed by them. HRAPP is supported on all Windows platforms and helps companies get the exact visual detail of what their employees do in every single second of their working hours. "Being one of the best in the field, we have always strived to keep up with our customer expectations. This data loss prevention capability aims to improve the security of data transferred within and outside the organization. We help protect critical business data and other intellectual property within the network, at the end-points, and on the cloud. Businesses can thus ensure compliance and safeguard crucial business information from landing in the wrong hands. It further helps streamline business operations and manage the common policies," the company spokesperson explained in detail when quizzed about the exclusive features of this new module. "We are well aware that security is something businesses really need at this moment. Hence, I'm really excited to share that this capability will further enhance our platform's advanced security features. We are eagerly looking forward to learning how this feature is going to make an impact in today's business scenario," the company spokesperson noted. As HRAPP makes this announcement, companies all over are looking forward to seeing the changes it brings to the market. HRAPP is an employee monitoring software that is exclusively designed to help manage the 21st-century workforce. It is an end-to-end platform aimed at helping HR managers manage employees, their productivity levels, engagement, activities, payroll, and so much more. Right from hiring to retiring, HRAPP manages it all! To know more about HRAPP, check out their page: hrapp.in/our-story. This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)
To avoid contempt, DMRC on Monday filed an urgent affidavit in Delhi High Court disclosing details of all its bank accounts having funds worth Rs 6,208 crore. In an earlier affidavit filed on January 5, DMRC had made partial/limited disclosure of bank account with respect to only Rs 1,642 crore. According to the new affidavit filed today, DMRC has Rs 6208 crore in its various bank accounts as on January 3, 2022. DMRC has to pay Rs 6,268 crore to Delhi Airport Metro Express Ltd. (DAMEPL) as a part of Supreme Court's Rs 7,200 money decree. Earlier, Delhi Airport Metro Express Pvt. Ltd. (DAMEPL) filed an application in the Delhi High Court on January 7 stating that DMRC, in blatant disregard and contempt of Delhi HC, had failed to comply with the last order of the court passed on December 22 that had directed DMRC to make full disclosure of their all bank accounts and the funds lying in those accounts, within one week. The application filed by DAMEPL was in response to DMRC's belatedly filed affidavit on January 5 in which it has made a partial/ limited disclosure of its bank accounts only with respect to Rs 1642.69 crore out of the total funds of Rs 5800.93 crore that it had disclosed in its last affidavit submitted in the court on December 21, 2021. Notably, from December 17 to January 3, DMRC has spent a further sum of Rs 122.06 crore out of Rs 1642.69 crore. DAMEPL said DMRC had intentionally not provided details of its remaining funds and bank accounts, which is blatant disregard and contempt of the Delhi HC order. DAMEPL said the conduct of DMRC clearly exhibited that it was deliberately trying to defeat and delay the execution process of the Arbitral Award, and also ensure that the next hearing scheduled on January 11 became ineffective. It will be the seventh hearing in the execution process and DMRC is nowhere near complying with the Supreme Court decree. DAMEPL in its application had also stated that delay in the payment of Arbitral Award by DMRC was costing the taxpayer an additional interest burden of almost Rs 1.75 crore per day. It may be noted that DMRC in its last affidavit dated December 21 had informed the court that it had total funds worth Rs 5,800.93 crore as on December 17, 2021. Out of this, Rs 1,642.69 crore were classified as DMRC funds, Rs 2,412.12 crore as Project funds, and balance Rs 1,746.12 crore as other than DMRC funds. DAMEPL had requested Delhi HC to direct DMRC to comply with the previous order passed by the Hon'ble Court in letter and spirit and furnish complete details of all its bank accounts and the funds lying in those accounts along with the respective bank statements, on or before the next date of hearing, i.e., January 11. The Supreme Court (SC), on September 7, 2021, had upheld the arbitration award of Rs 7,200 crore in favour of DAMEPL. DAMEPL then filed an execution petition in the Delhi HC on September 12, 2021, seeking court's directions to DMRC for honouring the SC order and pay Rs 7,200 crore to the company. DMRC, out of Rs 7,200 crore, has so far paid only Rs 1,000 crore. --IANS dpb/ ( 571 Words) 2022-01-10-14:10:03 (IANS)
The Foxconn company plant at Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, is likely to resume operations from January 12 with a small workforce. The company which employs a 15,000 workforce will have a full-fledged operation in a phased manner and in all likelihood, only 100 workers will join duty during the first phase when it resumes operation on January 12. The plant was shut down after food positioning was reported of about 100 women workers on December 18. It may be noted that Apple had put the plant on probation and Foxconn had apologised for the incident. A spokesperson for Apple on Monday said: "For the past several weeks, teams from Apple, along with independent auditors have been working with Foxconn to ensure a comprehensive set of corrective actions are implemented in the offsite accommodations and dining rooms in at Sriperumbudur. Workers will start to return gradually as soon as we are certain that our standards are being met in every dormitory and dining area. "Foxconn's Sriperumbudur facility is on probation and we will continue to monitor conditions very closely." Foxconn in a statement on Monday said: "We have been working on a series of improvements to fix issues we found at the offsite dormitory facilities at Sriperumbudur and to enhance the services we provide to our employees. We have implemented a range of corrective actions to ensure that this cannot happen again and a rigorous monitoring system to ensure workers can raise any concerns that they may have including anonymously." Tamil Nadu health and labour department officials were in touch with the Foxconn management and directed them that all safety measures are in place. Chief Minister M.K. Stalin had informed the Legislative Assembly on January 7 that the Foxconn plant would open soon with 500 employees. --IANS aal/ksk/ ( 309 Words) 2022-01-10-15:54:03 (IANS)
Accordingly, the Sensex and Nifty settled at 60,395 points and 18,003 points, up 1.09 per cent and 1.07 per cent from their previous close, respectively.

"Amid weak global markets and rising Covid cases, the domestic market displayed strong momentum on expectations of a healthy start to the earnings season. PSU Banks led the sectorial rally as reports suggested an increase in FPI limits while the realty sector followed the trend on robust sales numbers and expectations of support measures in the upcoming budget," said Vinod Nair, Head Of Research at Geojit Financial Services.

Latest data shows FPIs have infused Rs 3,695 crore in equity segment so far in January 2022.

All sectoral indices rallied during Monday's session, NSE data showed.

Amongst the stocks, UPL, Hero Motocorp, Titan, SBI, and Maruti Suzuki India jumped the most, rising 4.6 per cent, 3.3 per cent, 3.1 per cent, 2.8 per cent, and 2.7 per cent, respectively.

On the other hand, Wipro, Nestle India, Divi's Labs, Asian Paint, Power Grid Corporation stocks tanked the most.

Besides, One97 Communications-backed Paytm's shares fell nearly six per cent during the day as global brokerage house Macquarie lowered target price for the stock.

"Markets have gained momentum in the past few days on the back of low impact of Omicron variant leading to less stringent restrictions or lock down by various government authorities. This has raised hope of economic recovery along with expectation of strong corporate earnings," said Siddhartha Khemka, Head - Retail Research at Motilal Oswal Financial Services.

"After two strong quarters of earnings growth, we expect Nifty to register another healthy quarter of 22 per cent YoY growth in 3QFY22. The growth will be driven by four sectors - Metals, BFSI, oil & gas and IT."

--IANS ad/vd

( 324 Words)

2022-01-10-17:54:04 (IANS)
James Mtume, the R&B and jazz percussionist, recording artist and producer best known for the 1983 smash 'Juicy Fruit' and his work with Miles Davis and other top jazz musicians, has died at the age of 76. According to Variety, the news was confirmed by his son to a music publication, among other sources, though no cause was cited. Mtume's affiliation with Davis began with 1972's funk-driven 'On the Corner,' and he also worked with jazz greats such as pianist McCoy Tyner, trumpeter Art Farmer, keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith Jr., saxophonists Gato Barbieri and Pharoah Sanders and even Duke Ellington. In his solo music, Mtume ran the gamut from disco to avant-garde jazz, as well as dramatic compositions for television ('New York Undercover') and film ('Native Son'). Mtume also produced and co-wrote hit singles for Stephanie Mills ('Never Knew Love Like This Before') and Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway ('The Closer I get To You') in collaboration with his musical partner and fellow Davis alum Reggie Lucas. He was born into jazz royalty in Philadelphia as the son of saxophonist Jimmy Heath. Raised by his stepfather, Philly jazz pianist James Forman, the young musician grew up with activist roots and moved to California in the mid-'60s on a swimming scholarship. There, he joined the Black empowerment group, the U.S. Organization, and recorded his earliest solo albums starting with 'Alkebu-Lan - Land of the Blacks'. After returning to the East Coast, Mtume played with jazz bandleaders such as McCoy Tyner and Freddie Hubbard as well as recording with his uncle, Albert 'Tootie' Heath on the 'Kawaida' album. Around this time Mtume joined Miles Davis' band for a four-year stint that included some of the jazz legend's most adventurous material, including 'Dark Magus' and 'Pangaea'. As per Variety, an active advocate for young musicians, executives and activists, Mtume said in a 2014 Red Bull Music Academy speech, "I believe that every generation produces its own music, and actually, this is one of the most fertile times ever for young artists, with the Internet and social media." He continued, "But we are reaching the point of considering 'How are we defining and redefining originality?' One of the things that is missing is people having their own fingerprint on their music. And that's the most important thing, having your own voice." (ANI)
Five years after she was allegedly abducted and sexually assaulted in Kerala, Malayalam actor Bhavana Menon, on Monday, took to social media to speak about the humiliation she has faced over the years. "This has not been an easy journey. The journey from being a victim to becoming a survivor. For 5 years now, my name and my identity have been suppressed under the weight of the assault inflicted on me. Though I am not the one who has committed the crime, there have been many attempts to humiliate, silence and isolate me. But at such times I have had some who stepped forward to keep my voice alive," she wrote on Instagram. The attack on Bhavana reportedly took place in 2017 when she was returning to Kochi after a shooting assignment on the outskirts of the city. Her vehicle was allegedly waylaid, and she was abducted by a criminal gang in a closed van. On Sunday, the Crime Branch wing of Kerala Police registered a case against actor Dileep and five others for allegedly threatening investigation officers in the sexual assault case of the actress in which he is also an accused. Bhavana's post came after the particular recent development in the case. In the post, Bhavana stated that she will not give up and will continue fighting. "Now when I hear so many voices speak up for me I know that I am not alone in this fight for justice. To see justice prevail, to get wrongdoers punished and to ensure no one else goes through such an ordeal again, I shall continue this journey. For all those who are standing with me - a heartfelt thank you for your love," she concluded. After seeing Bhavana's post, many social media users and members from the film industry lauded the former for her bravery. Sharing Bhavana's post on his Instagram account, actor Prithviraj Sukumaran wrote, "courage". "You know who stands tallest? This lady who has been steadfast in her fight. #BhavanaMenon you're a rockstar. More power to you, lady," a social media user tweeted. Bhavana is married to producer Naveen. (ANI)
"Due to the significant spike in Covid cases in the country and the current scenario on theatres being partially or fully shut down in many states, we have decided to postpone the release of our movie 'The Kashmir Files'. Let's fight the pandemic together. Wear mask & stay safe," Zee Studios said in a statement.

Helmed by Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, 'The Kashmir Files', which revolves around the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990, was supposed to release in theatres on January 26 this year.

Apart from 'The Kashmir Files', release dates of Shahid Kapoor's 'Jersey' and Alia Bhatt's 'RRR' also got postponed recently. (ANI)
Facing massive social media backlash over his comments on badminton player Sania Nehwal, actor Siddharth issued a clarification that he did not mean to disrespect anyone and his tweet contained no kind of insinuation. Taking to his Twitter handle on Monday, the 'Rang De Basanti' actor wrote, ""COCK & BULL" That's the reference. Reading otherwise is unfair and leading! Nothing disrespectful was intended, said or insinuated. Period." On January 5, Nehwal had tweeted her concern over the incident in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi's convoy being stopped for 15-20 minutes on a flyover in Punjab's Bathinda as the road was blocked by protesting farmers. "No nation can claim itself to be safe if the security of its own PM gets compromised. I condemn, in the strongest words possible, the cowardly attack on PM Modi by anarchists," Nehwal had tweeted. Retweeting her post, Siddharth wrote, "Subtle cock champion of the world...Thank God we have protectors of India. Shame on you #Rihanna." The National Commission for Women in a statement on Monday said that the comment by the actor is "misogynist and outrageous to the modesty of a woman amounting to disrespect and insult to dignity of women on social media platforms." Taking suo motu cognizance of the matter, NCW Chairperson Rekha Sharma has written to the Director General of Police Maharashtra to immediately investigate the matter and register FIR under relevant provisions of the law. The NCW Chairperson has also written to the Resident Grievance Officer of Twitter India to "immediately block" the actor's account and take "appropriate action" against the actor "for posting offensive remarks" on Saina's post, which it said has "outraged her modesty" and "insulted her right to live with dignity". (ANI)
Actor Angad Hasija was last seen in the show 'Waaris', and he returns to Hindi television with the youth-centric show 'Ziddi Dil Mane Na' after a four-year hiatus. The actor, who plays the character of Kundan in the show, is quite keyed up about his new journey. "I am coming back after four years, the first year went into lockdown and in the second year, I was doing a Punjabi show called 'Tera Rang Chadeya', which is coming soon on ZEE5. I have joined 'Ziddi Dil Mane Na' to play a character role and it really feels amazing. I was waiting for quite a long time to do something different. Whatever characters I have played till now, they all have been different, even Kundan is a new experience. As an actor, I felt it would help me grow and I would learn from it a lot," he says. As per the story, Kundan is a village boy and is very particular about what he believes in. "Usually, in small villages and towns the family conditioning is such where you have to follow what your parents tell you, and girls should not go out and work. Kundan's character is not like that. Instead, he thinks that even girls have the right to enjoy their lives as we are there to work. His thinking is quite different and he respects his mother a lot. His points are very clear but there is a gap between his thinking and the modern generation," adds the actor, who enjoys interior designing and now runs an architecture and interior business. The show has an Army backdrop and Angad found the concept different. He says: "I took up this show as it is a wonderful new-gen story and then suddenly a boy, who has a different thought process, arrives and how that affects the present set-up. Kundan also develops a good friendship with Siddharth (Kunal Karan Kapoor)." Angad shares that he relates to Kundan, as much like the latter his family values are strong and he is strongly attached to his mother. The story of 'Ziddi Dil Maane Na' revolves around the cadets of the Parakram Special Action Force. It features Kunal Karan Kapoor, Shaalien Malhotra, Kaveri Priyam, Simple Kaul and Aditya Deshmukh. --IANS ila/kr ( 398 Words) 2022-01-10-14:00:05 (IANS)
The new release date is yet to be announced. The film was earlier scheduled to arrive in theatres on January 14, 2022.

Taking to his Instagram handle, on Monday, the Malayalam star shared the news of the postponement.

The caption read, "We at Wayfarer films are bound to show social responsibility ahead of our personal interests. Just like all of you, we were most excited and eagerly awaiting our next release. Owing to recent developments and the spike in Covid-19 and Omicron cases, we have taken the difficult decision to postpone the release of "Salute". We apologise if we've disappointed you. But in times like this we must prioritise health and safety."

Further, it added that they will be back at the earliest.

"We request everyone to stay safe. We will be back. At the earliest. We thank each and every one of you for your support," the caption stated.

Directed by Rosshan Andrrews, 'Salute' also features Diana Penty, Manoj K. Jayan, Saniya Iyappan, Lakshmi Gopalaswamy, Saikumar and Ganapathi S Poduval. (ANI)
AIADMK Chief Coordinator and former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, O. Panneerselvam (OPS) has called upon the state government to shut the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (Tasmac) liquor shops. He said that the liquor outlets must be closed till the Covid situation becomes normal in the state. Panneerselvam said that at present the Test Positivity Rate (TPR) is now 8 per cent and the liquor outlets of Tasmac must be closed at least till the TPR comes down to 5 per cent. Panneerselvam in a statement on Sunday said, "Within three days those tested positive for Covid-19 have doubled. The state government allowing these shops to function is a reason behind this rise in cases." He said that when M.K. Stalin was Opposition leader, he had staged a protest before the Tasmac shops on May 7, 2020, to shut the shops down and the Covid-19 positive cases were only 580. Panneerselvam said that after he had become Chief Minister he went on to announce on June 14, 2021, that the liquor shops would continue to function from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and the total number of cases was then 12,772. The former Chief Minister lashed out against the DMK and said that he condemns the stand taken by the Chief Minister regarding the Tasmac shops. --IANS aal/shs ( 231 Words) 2022-01-10-00:50:05 (IANS)
The one-day lockdown on Sunday, announced by the Chief Minister, M.K. Stalin was total with strong police contingents monitoring the movement of people and vehicles across the state. While health care professionals including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and medical laboratory technicians were allowed to carry out their routine jobs, police were vigilant on people who had come out of their homes unnecessarily. Police blocked the flyovers or in some flyovers, restricted entry was allowed. Passengers who were traveling to airports and railways stations were allowed by showing the journey tickets. Suburban trains in Chennai worked with fifty percent occupancy. Metro rail services and bus services were not allowed to function. Tamil Nadu Health Minister, Ma. Subramanian inspected several places in Chennai and met people who were traveling to airports and railway stations, and cautioned them on the spread of the new variant of Covid. Ma. Subramanian while speaking to IANS said, "I went around some areas and told people who were traveling to airport and railway stations for their pre-planned travels to be cautious and to adhere to all Standard protocol measures announced by the health department including wearing masks, social distancing and use of sanitizers and washing of hands regularly with soap water." The hotels were allowed only to deliver take away food parcels from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. and food delivery boys were allowed to travel by showing their identity cards. In a similar manner health workers, essential services like gas agency staff, petrol pump staff, electricity and water authority staff were allowed to travel with their identity cards. Police also charged cases against people who did not wear masks and the total number of cases charged in the state is yet to be announced. The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, M.K. Stalin had ordered a night curfew from 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. and a Sunday lockdown on January 9 to curb the spread of Covid-19. The Tamil Nadu health department is apprehensive of a huge spread of Covid-19 with both the delta and Omicron variant amounting to the spread. --IANS aal/shs ( 358 Words) 2022-01-10-02:42:02 (IANS)
Called "Together for Liberty", this new protest movement on Sunday rallies together people "to make it clear that we will not tolerate the Covid Safe Ticket", Xinhua news agency quoted as organiser Ezra Armakye as saying.

"It is not forbidden," said Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo to Belgian Media group VTM on Sunday. "But there is a very large silent majority doing the right thing."

About 5,000 people took part in the demonstration at the capital's North Station, and more than 30 people were arrested, said the Brussels police.

Belgium has so far recorded more than 2.23 million Covid-19 infections and 28,459 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to data published Saturday by the Sciensano Health Institute.

The numbers were still climbing as the Omicron variant was spreading across the country with about 11.5 million population.

The government has implemented strict rules to curb the spread of the virus, including mandatory use of the Covid Safe Ticket for many public occasions.

However, several rounds of large demonstrations, some turned violent, have been staged in Brussels to protest against the government's measures since last November.

--IANS int/shs

( 228 Words)

2022-01-10-04:22:03 (IANS)
According to a recent study, many patients who undergo heart surgery won't have to take opioids as a pain medication after they get discharged from the hospital. The research has been published in 'The Annals of Thoracic Surgery Journal'. "In some cases, patients assume that after surgery, especially a big operation like cardiac surgery, that they will need to go home with prescription pain medicine," said Catherine M. Wagner, MD, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "This study shows that discharge without opioid pain medicine after cardiac surgery is extremely well tolerated by some patients. In other words, we should not be reflexively prescribing pain medicine to people after surgery just in case they need it," she added. Dr Wagner and colleagues examined data from 2019 for patients who underwent coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), heart valve surgery, or a combination of those operations via median sternotomy (a vertical incision in the centre of the chest) at 10 centres participating in the Michigan Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons Quality Collaborative. The researchers found that more than one-fourth of patients (547/1,924 or 28 per cent) did not receive an opioid prescription at the time of discharge. Patients who were older, spent more time in the hospital after surgery, or who underwent surgery and were discharged during the last 3 months of the study period (October-December) were more likely than other patients to leave the hospital without an opioid prescription. Conversely, patients with a history of depression, those who were treated with opioids on the day prior to discharge, or patients whose race was non-black and non-white were more likely to receive an opioid prescription at discharge. Importantly, discharge without an opioid prescription appeared to have been well-tolerated, as fewer than 2 per cent of patients subsequently required a prescription after their discharge and before their 30-day follow-up appointment. "This study's findings should provide patients with reassurance that postoperative pain can be managed with non-opioid pain medications at home," said Dr Wagner. The researchers also found that among the 909 patients who did not take any opioids on the day before discharge, 415 (46 per cent) still received an opioid prescription at discharge. "One should consider if these opioid prescriptions were truly necessary for patient pain relief," said Dr Wagner. "Our study shows that, particularly for patients who did not take any opioids on the day before leaving the hospital, discharge without opioids is safe. I think we need to ensure that only patients who truly need opioids get sent home with a prescription," she added. Opioid addiction continues to take a major toll on lives in the US. More than 70 per cent of overdose deaths in 2019--more than 49,000 deaths--involved opioids, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2021, more than 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses (28.5 per cent increase from the year before); the CDC reports that the main driver of these deaths was opioids. "For decades, surgeons have unwittingly but substantially contributed to the opioid epidemic," said Thomas E. MacGillivray, MD, from Houston Methodist in Texas, who was not directly involved in this research. "No one wants any patient to be discharged home after surgery without adequate pain relief. With the best intentions to help relieve pain and alleviate anxiety about pain, discharge practices have frequently erred on the side of prescribing too many rather than too few narcotic pain pills. We have learned that many of the unused, unneeded narcotics end up in the community. This very important study will help surgeons identify patients who may comfortably be discharged home without narcotics," he added. Dr Wagner explained that prior to the relatively recent awareness of the opioid epidemic, patients often would be prescribed 50 to 100 opioid pills after surgery for various reasons. Unrelated research has shown that leftover medication may be diverted into the community, contributing to the opioid epidemic. "With increased attention on the excessive prescribing of opioids for pain treatment after surgery, national efforts such as prescribing guidelines and patient education programs have begun to help limit unnecessary opioids in the community and decrease the risks of developing new persistent opioid use in patients," she said. Moving forward, the researchers plan to focus on ensuring that only patients who truly need opioids are sent home with a prescription, while also eliminating "just in case" prescriptions that leave unnecessary opioids in communities and put patients and their family members at risk from the opioid diversion. "It is important to balance excellent pain control while limiting unnecessary opioids. We are still learning how to best find this balance for our patients and recommend that patients always work closely with their physicians/provider teams to decide what is best for them," said Dr Wagner. (ANI)
The new COVID-19 Omicron variant is more transmissible than the Delta variant. However, its biological characteristics are still relatively unknown. The study about this variant has been published in the 'Nature Journal'. In South Africa, the Omicron variant replaced the other viruses within a few weeks and led to a sharp increase in the number of cases diagnosed. Analyses in various countries indicate that the doubling time for cases is approximately 2 to 4 days. Omicron has been detected in dozens of countries, including France, and became dominant by the end of 2021. In a new study supported by the European Union's Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), scientists from the Institut Pasteur and the Vaccine Research Institute, in collaboration with KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), Orleans Regional Hospital, Hopital Europeen Georges Pompidou (AP-HP) and Inserm, studied the sensitivity of Omicron to antibodies compared with the currently dominant Delta variant. The aim of the study was to characterize the efficacy of therapeutic antibodies, as well as antibodies developed by individuals previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 or vaccinated, in neutralizing this new variant. The scientists from KU Leuven isolated the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 from a nasal sample of a 32-year-old woman who developed moderate COVID-19 a few days after returning from Egypt. The isolated virus was immediately sent to scientists at the Institut Pasteur, where therapeutic monoclonal antibodies and serum samples from people who had been vaccinated or previously exposed to SARS-CoV-2 were used to study the sensitivity of the Omicron variant. The scientists used rapid neutralization assays, developed by the Institut Pasteur's Virus and Immunity Unit, on the isolated sample of the Omicron virus. This collaborative multidisciplinary effort also involved the Institut Pasteur's virologists and specialists in the analysis of viral evolution and protein structure, together with teams from Orleans Regional Hospital and Hopital Europeen Georges Pompidou in Paris. The scientists began by testing nine monoclonal antibodies used in clinical practice or currently in preclinical development. Six antibodies lost all antiviral activity, and the other three were 3 to 80 times less effective against Omicron than against Delta. The antibodies Bamlanivimab/Etesevimab (a combination developed by Lilly), Casirivimab/Imdevimab (a combination developed by Roche and known as Ronapreve), and Regdanvimab (developed by Celtrion) no longer had any antiviral effect against Omicron. The Tixagevimab/Cilgavimab combination (developed by AstraZeneca under the name Evusheld) was 80 times less effective against Omicron than against Delta. "We demonstrated that this highly transmissible variant has acquired significant resistance to antibodies. Most of the therapeutic monoclonal antibodies currently available against SARS-CoV-2 are inactive," commented Olivier Schwartz, co-last author of the study and Head of the Virus and Immunity Unit at the Institut Pasteur. The scientists observed that the blood of patients previously infected with COVID-19, collected up to 12 months after symptoms, and that of individuals who had received two doses of the vaccine, taken five months after vaccination, barely neutralized the Omicron variant. But the sera of individuals who had received a booster dose of Pfizer, analyzed one month after vaccination, remained effective against Omicron. Five to 31 times more antibodies were nevertheless required to neutralize Omicron, compared with Delta, in cell culture assays. These results help shed light on the continued efficacy of vaccines in protecting against severe forms of the disease. "We now need to study the length of protection of the booster dose. The vaccines probably become less effective in offering protection against contracting the virus, but they should continue to protect against severe forms," explained Olivier Schwartz. "This study shows that the Omicron variant hampers the effectiveness of vaccines and monoclonal antibodies, but it also demonstrates the ability of European scientists to work together to identify challenges and potential solutions. While KU Leuven was able to describe the first case of Omicron infection in Europe using the Belgian genome surveillance system, our collaboration with the Institut Pasteur in Paris enabled us to carry out this study in record time. There is still a great deal of work to do, but thanks to the support of the European Union's Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), we have clearly now reached a point where scientists from the best centers can work in synergy and move towards a better understanding and more effective management of the pandemic," commented Emmanuel Andre, co-last author of the study, a Professor of Medicine at KU Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) and Head of the National Reference Laboratory and the genome surveillance network for COVID-19 in Belgium. The scientists concluded that the many mutations in the spike protein of the Omicron variant enabled it to largely evade the immune response. Ongoing research is being conducted to determine why this variant is more transmissible from one individual to the next and to analyze the long-term effectiveness of a booster dose. (ANI)
The Centre has asked the states and UTs to deploy the final year MBBS students, resident doctors, and nursing students to augment the human resources and particularly the healthcare workers amid rising Covid cases. In two different guidelines issued to states and UTs on January 8 and 9, the Union Health Ministry has sought regarding the utilising the services of final-year MBBS students, interns, senior Re and junior Residents and the third and fourth year of B.Sc Nursing students, along with M.Sc first and second year nursing students. The ministry has said that the active cases that needed hospitalisation care was 20 to 23 per cent during the second Covid surge. However, only 5 to 10 per cent of active cases need hospital administration presently, though, the situation is evolving and the need for hospitalization care can change dynamically, it said. The states have been told to keep regular watch on the number of active cases, cases under home isolation, number of hospitalised cases, cases on oxygen beds, ICU beds and on ventilator support. Citing that human resources have limitations, the government has asked states to conserve healthcare workers by initiating staggering wherever possible and by restricting elective procedures in the hospitals. The government has asked to earmark different categories of beds in private hospitals and to ensure that charges levied by them is reasonable. The states have been asked to upgrade the beds to oxygen-supported beds wherever possible at Covid Care Centres and to train community volunteers in basic care and management there. The Centre has also asked to engage retired medical professionals and MBBS students for provision of tele-consultation services. It has also asked that hospitals be divided into three different zones of non-Covid areas, Covid area looking after patients with mild to moderate illness, and critical area like ICUs. In addition, a triage area needs to be developed in the emergency where patients with accute severe respiratory illness will be coming, said the ministry. --IANS avr/vd ( 346 Words) 2022-01-10-17:32:02 (IANS)
According to the official spokesman, all government and private offices will function with 50 per cent strength at a time. The government is also encouraging work from home module and has urged to implement a rotation system at the workplace to bring the transmission levels down.

While reviewing the Covid condition in the state with senior officials in a high-level meeting on Monday, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has said that efforts should be made to save both "lives and livelihoods".

Underlining the need to promote 'work from home' culture so that there is no inconvenience in the work, he also directed to implement a rotation system in the offices.

According to the new Covid control guidelines of the state government, if an employee serving in private sector offices turns out to be Covid positive, then he will also be given 7-day leave with no deduction in salary.

Additional Chief Secretary, Health, Amit Mohan Prasad said that a total of 8,334 new patients were found Covid positive on Monday in the state.

At present, the total number of active cases is 33,946, out of which 33,563 people are in home isolation.

--IANS amita/vd

( 223 Words)

2022-01-10-17:52:03 (IANS)
While back pain has been a common symptom of viral diseases, doctors are witnessing an increase in the case of severe back pain among Omicron patients, even after recovery. The four most common symptoms of the Omicron variant are cough, fatigue, congestion and runny nose, according to US CDC analysis. Recently, the UK-based Zoe Covid app study added new symptoms such as nausea and loss of appetite. "Back pain, though common in most viral fevers, but compared to Delta, Omicron patients tend to have more back pain and less loss of smell and taste," Dr Ann Mary, Consultant, General Medicine, Amrita Hospital, Kochi, told IANS. "A significant number of these patients are having back breaking pain in the lower back and severe myalgia which is adding to the patient''s woes," Mary added. Omicron is a variant of global concern due to its high transmissibility. Emerging research has revealed that the Omicron variant causes less damage to the lungs and less severe disease when compared to other variants. "It''s a well known fact that myalgias are commonly seen in viral infections. Covid is not an exception but we are seeing more cases of back pain with Omicron even after recovery which patients label as weakness," Dr. Arun Chowdary Kotaru, Consultant, Respiratory/ Pulmonology and Sleep Medicine, Artemis Hospital, told IANS. However, since data on Omicron is limited and gene sequencing is costly, the reason is "difficult to explain", Kotaru said. First detected in South Africa and Botswana in late November, Omicron has been discovered in more than 100 countries and across all seven continents, as per the open access data sharing platform GISAID. India on Wednesday registered 4,033 Omicron cases from 27 states. Of these, 1,552 have been discharged from hospitals. Meanwhile, scientists at Department of Biotechnology''s Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) in India said that the highly transmissible Omicron with three sub-variants - BA.1, BA.2 and BA.3 - is likely replacing the previously dominant Delta strain in India, pushing the daily tally of Covid cases in the country. Among the three sub-lineages, the scientists have noted the significant presence of both BA.1 and BA.2 in genone tests conducted in the country. BA.1, in particular, has been co-circulating with Delta and also replacing it in Maharashtra and several other states. BA.3 has not been detected so far in the country, media reports said. "The rapidity with which the infection is spreading, it looks like the Omicron is replacing the other variants in India, like the Delta variant. So we can say that it will be the predominant variant," Dr Rahul Pandit Director-Critical Care, Fortis Hospitals Mumbai, told IANS. "However, the Delta variant is still there and contributes to some amount of infection," added Pandit, who is also Member of National and Maharashtra''s Covid-19 Taskforce. He said that Omicron is also causing the reinfection because we can see that most of the patients still remain asymptomatic. "With the sudden surge, and if the South African trend is to be looked at, we can expect that cases will go up rapidly in the next 4 to 6 weeks, and come down rapidly as well," Pandit said. --IANS rvt/vd ( 539 Words) 2022-01-10-19:28:03 (IANS)
The arrested individual has been identified as Rahul Bhat.

According to CCB police who are investigating the case, the accused had sent a video to the cellphone of Minister for Cooperation, S.T. Somashekar in the last week of December 2021.

The video contained footage of his son. The accused demanded Rs 1 crore ransom from the minister to stay quiet.

Minister Somashekar had referred the case to the police department and his son Nishanth had lodged a complaint in this regard.

The police after investigations arrested Rahul Bhat and took him into their custody for five days after presenting him before the court.

The investigations revealed that the video had been sent from the mobile number of the daughter of Indi constituency Congress MLA Yashwanth Rao Patil.

MLA Patil has told the police that his daughter is presently in the US and while she left the country, she had given a SIM card to one of her friends.

The police now have got details of her friend and launched a hunt for him. Further investigation is on.

--IANS mka/pgh

( 230 Words)

2022-01-10-00:02:03 (IANS)
Talking with ANI, Parande said, "VHP strongly objects to sanction of Rs 78 lakhs for Missionaries of Charity by Odisha Government. This is taxpayers' money."

"Missionaries of Charity is involved in conversion. No CM has right to give the money of Hindus to an organization that converts them," he added.

On January 4, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has sanctioned Rs 78.76 lakh from the Chief Minister Relief Fund (CMRF) to support 13 institutions run by Missionaries of Charity in the state.

Patnaik had directed district collectors on December 30 last year to ensure that no inmates of Missionaries of Charity suffer from food security and health-related issues.

According to the Chief Minister's Office, this sanctioned assistance for 13 Missionaries of Charity institutions across eight districts of the state will benefit over 900 inmates in various leprosarium and orphanages in the state.

Mother Teresa had founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. (ANI)